Talk:Cần Thơ/Archive 1

Requested move: Removing Vietnamese Diacritics

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus at this time. Thanks for the civil discussion,   A rbitrarily 0    ( talk ) 02:48, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

– According to WP:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names): ''Consult English-language encyclopedias (we recommend Encyclopedia Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia, Encarta, each as published after 1993). If the articles in these agree on using a single name in discussing the period, it is the widely accepted English name.'' None of these sources use Vietnamese diacritics. That should settle the issue, but nonetheless editors ask, “What’s the harm in putting them in anyway?” Vietnamese diacritics have near zero usage in published English. Not even the official Vietnam News Agency uses them. I checked Lonely Planet's Vietnam and Frommer's Vietnam’s, and the guidebooks don’t use them either. For readers who know this, a title with Vietnamese diacritics will appear to be non-English. Those who do not know this might be misled into thinking that the diacritics are mainstream English-language usage. The version of the name with diacritics would still appear both in boldface the opening and on top of the box (if applicable), so no information would be lost. The version of the name without diacritics should appear somewhere in the article. The most logical place for it is the title since a typeable title is easier to search for and easier to link to. The issue of Vietnamese diacritics in biography articles was discussed earlier at Talk:Ngo Bao Chau and Talk:Dang Huu Phuc. There are no borderline cases in this group. Each one has an entry in Britannica where the city name is given without diacritics. Kauffner (talk) 06:00, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Cần Thơ → Can Tho
 * Cà Mau → Ca Mau
 * Cao Lãnh → Cao Lanh
 * Mỹ Tho → My Tho
 * Nam Định → Nam Dinh
 * Phan Thiết → Phan Thiet
 * Quảng Ngãi → Quang Ngai
 * Rạch Giá → Rach Gia
 * Thái Nguyên → Thai Nguyen
 * Thanh Hóa → Thanh Hoa
 * Thủ Dầu Một → Thu Dau Mot
 * Vĩnh Yên → Vinh Yen
 * Vũng Tàu → Vung Tau
 * Yên Bái → Yen Bai

Here are the links to establish English-language usage: Can Tho, Ca Mau, Cao Lanh, My Tho, Nam Dinh, Phan Thiet, Quang Ngai, Rach Gia, Thai Nguyen, Thanh Hoa, Thu Dau Mot, Vinh Yen, Vung Tau, and Yen Bai. Kauffner (talk) 06:00, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Very weak support My own reference of National Geographic eschews diacritics for Vietnamese. The majority of Vietnamese articles use no diacritics in their titles. I've never supported use of Vietnamese diacritics, and I suspect that many people who are intimidated by them, like me. OTOH, I don't see any point of moving all of these; it might start another flame war. -- Ohconfucius ¡digame! 07:34, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I am personally intimidated by Maltese diacritics. I was afraid to visit Wikipedia for nearly a week after a stumbled on Baħar Iċ-Ċagħaq.  (WP:IDONTLIKEIT)   —  AjaxSmack   02:55, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Support For all the reasons laid out by the proposer, who hits the nail right on the head. If its not used by our sources, we shouldn't second guess them and in the process mislead our readers about English convention.Erudy (talk) 12:40, 28 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Support If we settle this, once and for all, now, it will not come back to visit us later - unless English usage elsewhere changes (in which case we should reverse ourselves); is that likely? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:25, 28 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Support But how about Huế? The diacritics help to distinguish the article title from Hue. BertholdD (talk) 04:31, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose. With the diacritics, is the correct spelling. Omitting the diacritics started for the convenience of non-Vietnamese printers and typists. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:01, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * With the diacritics, is the correct spelling. Got any evidence for that? The correct spelling of a place in English is what English-speakers use. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:53, 29 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose. This is one of a set of group page move requests, which indicates that a lot of pages on Vietnamese topics use diacritics in the page titles. I do not believe the arguments given justify changing the status quo. In particular, I disagree with the interpretation of WP:UE employed here - this is not a situation of multiple terms for the same city (like "Florence" and "Firenze", where we use the term most common in English). These cases involve same term with or without diacritics. Precision and correctness should triumph when unicode permits. Gimmetoo (talk) 13:48, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It's like Nürnberg against Nuremberg, or Beijing v. Peking: different spellings of the same name. A useful Wikipedia will use the one normally employed in English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:53, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see the absence or presence of diacritics as a completely different spelling. These are the same terms spelled with the same letters, but one form has diacritics on some of the letters. I think Midi-Pyrénées (currently article) vs. Midi Pyrenees (currently redirect) is comparable. It's the same term. If the diacritical form is verifiable (official, for geographic entities), I think it should be used. Gimmetoo (talk) 02:15, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the point is that the diacritical form is not verifiably conventional in English sources. Whatever the semantics are ("different spelling" or "same term with diacritics"), we should do what users of English can be shown to do.  That's why Tōkyō, Běijīng, Shànghǎi, and Hà Nội are all redirects to Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hanoi.
 * Mangoes and jackfruit. Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hanoi are all exonyms.  The places nominated here are not.  Furthermore, Tōkyō, Běijīng, Shànghǎi are not names of the cities in any language.  They are romanizations.  —  AjaxSmack   02:50, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Support. Clearly the common usage not to use diacritics for Vietnamese people. Even Britannica, which is generally pro-diacritic, does not use them. I see no reason to go against what, Britannica, National Geographic, etc. do. Jenks24 (talk) 07:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose The diacritics are the correct spelling (for all but a few cases where such as Hanoi where there is an established exonym). It doesn't matter that they're unfamiliar to most English speakers. We're an encyclopaedia, we're not here to spoon feed people with only facts they find easy to swallow. Our readers are perfectly capable of mentally stripping off the diacritics if they don't know what they mean. (I include myself in that group - I don't know what they mean, but I do want to know that there's a gap in my knowledge). The very fact that all contributors to the debate can talk about whether or not to use them demonstrates that that's how readers see them -- as unfamiliar markings added to familiar letters, no different from, though less commonly recognised, than other diacritics such as an acute accent or diaresis, which there is little argument about. Colonies Chris (talk) 09:43, 4 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Wikipedia generally keeps diacritics on placenames that are not true exonyms (like Hanoi or Saigon; cf. Düsseldorf, Seyðisfjörður, Ħaż-Żabbar, Đurđevac, Ikšķile).  Removing them accomplishes nothing.  With no prior knowledge, Nam Định and Nam Dinh are equally meaningless.  —  AjaxSmack   02:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose per the preservation of CORRECT Vietnamese name. Without diacritics, people will never know that "Nguyễn Văn Dũng" and "Nguyễn Vân Dung" are totally DIFFERENT people. Moreover, this guy Kauffner already changed the name of a lot of articles about historical figures in Vietnamese history (some of which are, to be clear here, written by me) with the same argument he got from the discussion about a contemporary Vietnamese (Talk:Ngo Bao Chau) without consulting the WP:VIET, or at least, having some words with me. I cannot agree with that kind of manner. Grenouille vert (talk)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.