Talk:Central German

Requested move to Middle German
Could we move this back to Middle German? That's the standard phrase for it, AFAIK. BovineBeast 1 July 2005 22:26 (UTC)

Votes
Middle German is the direct translation of Mitteldeutsch which is what this group of dialects is called in German linguistics. -- j. 'mach' wust ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x 10:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Support -- j. 'mach' wust ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x 10:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose. In linguistics, Middle is used in chronological, not geographical sense. Middle German would be 11th-15th century German dialects. I wouldn't mind it being moved to Central German, though. -- Naive cynic 12:42, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose Unnecessary ambiguity with Middle as chronological, as in Middle High German. Wikipedia practice is to include Language on language pages (so Greek language) as preemptive disambiguation, but I doubt that's necessary here. Septentrionalis
 * Support. This is called Middle German, I've looked it up in other encyclopaedias – such as Britannica – and the website Ethnologue report for Middle German. – AxSkov ( T ) 04:43, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose Middle German would cause confusion with the linguistic distinction of Middle High and Middle Low German Davidkinnen 09:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Support In the context of German, 'Middle German' is used to refer to the collection of dialects, rather than a time period in a language. If you wanted to refer to the German spoken between 1000 and 1400, you'd use Middle High German and Middle Low German, depending on the dialect.  BovineBeast 09:56, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose Central German is the usual terminology in English-language lingustics today. It is less ambiguous than German usage, and there seems no merit in losing that.  There is no reason why the English name for a German concept must be a literal translation of the German name.  The Britannica is not an authority - it's hopelessly out of date. --Doric Loon 13:41, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Vote closed - see below

Approval poll
This is approval voting. Please vote for as many choices as you find acceptable, and add more if you want to. One sentence comments only here please; longer ones and replies under. (I have added votes when clear from above; please correct them if I've misunderstood.)

Central German language (no change)
 * 1) Naive cynic (second choice)
 * 2) Septentrionalis 15:00, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) --Doric Loon 13:41, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Central German
 * 1) Naive cynic (preferred)
 * 2) Slightly prefer, as more natural direct link. Septentrionalis 15:00, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Davidkinnen 09:48, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) --Doric Loon 13:41, 4 August 2005 (UTC) (second choice)

Middle German
 * 1) BovineBeast (moved from first line)
 * 2) j. 'mach' wust ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x
 * 3) AxSkov ( T )

Vote closed - see below

Discussion
I see no reason why the English name for a group of German dialects should not be a translation of its German name.

Talking about "Central/Middle German language" seems as inappropiate to me as talking about, for instance "Australian English language". Varieties of English are called XXX English. Why should this be any different with varieties of German. Of course, the different varieties of English are usually more intelligible with each other than the different varieties of German, but that's a characteristic of the German language, and mutual intelligibility is only one factor among others that are used to define language.

See also at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages. -- j. 'mach' wust ˈtʰɔ̝ːk͡x 10:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Whatever choice is ultimately made, the links will have to be fixed. At the moment, about a third of them link to Central German language (i.e. HERE), two thirds to Central German, and only talk pages to Middle German.--Doric Loon 14:23, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Decision
There is no consensus to move this, so it's not going to be moved for the present time. violet/riga (t) 19:26, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Huh?
Rather than postulating that it would be nice to call these dialects Central German because it would prevent confusion with Middle Low German and Middle High German, can we actually use the terminology that is actually used? I am not a specialist in the German language, but from general linguistic studies, I have only ever seen this dialect chain referred to as Middle German (in contrast with High and Low German rather than Old and Modern German). Conveniently, linguists who study Middle Low German and Middle High German call them just that (from everything I've seen: language atlases, linguistic essays on dialect chains, etc.), so there's really no confusion among scholars about this.

It's not Wikipedia's place to arbitrarily use new terminology when a general consensus already exists for a particular term. Analogously, maybe it would be nice if Wikipedia referred to Australia as That Place Down Under to prevent confusion with Austria by those ignorant of geography, but the people who actually know anything about Australia call it Australia when they discuss it.--75.132.12.246 05:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You are absolutely right about Wikipedia's "place" and the rejection of original research. Unfortunately, you are not on top of what people in German studies are actually doing.  The reason we use "Central German" here is precisely because that is the usual terminology in the subject. --Doric Loon 00:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Map
If some of you want to do something useful rather than pursue this daft name-change, there is an excellent map at de:Mitteldeutsch which could be copied over here. I'd do it, but I don't know how to work with graphics on Wiki. (Or if one of you wants to point me in the right direction I'll learn it now!)--Doric Loon 13:47, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

(And can anyone tell me how to cross-link to German Wiki: my attempt above hasn't worked!)--Doric Loon 13:53, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * You have to put a colon before it (as I just did). --Angr/undefined 18:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Zentraldeutsch
"Zentraldeutsch (rarely)" was used as a German translation for Central German on this page, and on a few other languages' Wikipedias. I removed it, because a Google search for Zentraldeutsch mostly displays Wikipedia pages, and a search for "Zentraldeutsch" without the "rarely" gets little apart from international Wikipedia pages too - I believe this shows it isn't a widely-used enough term to justify its inclusion. Responsible? (talk) 05:53, 30 October 2011 (UTC)