Talk:Dniester

Untitled
I moved it here (Dniester), because it appears to be the most common used spelling in English and is used by Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia and BBC. [[User:Bogdangiusca|Bogdan[User:Bogdangiusca|Bogdan 23:43, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Names
There were too many names in the article. I left only the languages which are relevant to the geography nowadays (Ukrainian, Romanian, Russian) and Latin (as it can be found on many older maps) and I removed:
 * Polish Dniestr, Yiddish‫נעסטער ‬ (nester), Serbian Dnjester

bogdan 22:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Not a good idea. At least Polish is relevant, because a small part of Poland (the river Strwiąż) is part of the Dniester basin. Also, the small picture showing the basin on the map is not correct. The basin's Polish part is missing. --46.142.206.86 (talk) 12:18, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a good idea if an article does't yet have a name section to cordon off a general mess but the relevant names should never be entirely removed. At most they should be turned into a name section or removed to the relevant Wiktionary entry. — Llywelyn II   21:25, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Nistru and Dnister against one Dniestr. River is mostly flows in territories of Moldova and Ukraine, so it must be called Nistru or Dnister. SOROSHENKO (talk) 12:35, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

--Can anyone pronounce SRPSKA ??? This is the name Bosnian Serbs gave to the territory they control in Bosnia. Can you pronounce Tbilisi ?? (Georgia's capital city name). In fact, Russians changed this name into Tiflis, for the ease of pronunciation (that happened before WWI). With the exception of Semitic languages, people use vowels to pronounce words easier. The easy way to pronounce Dniester would be: "Diester" or "Niester". Romanians have chosen the last one, that eventually resulted into Nistru. Slavic peoples, especially in modern times, have changed toponymy of probably Romanian, Tartar or other origins with something more "slavic", or just different. I will try an empirical explanation: peoples going from west to east ,like Romanians, used Nistru and therefore called Nipru the river slavs called Dnieper. The same happened with slavs, which were familiar with Dnieper, therefore Nistru didn't become Niester but Dniester. As about the strange "DN" instead of simple "N": migratory peoples coming into Europe from Central Asia met first the huge Volga. Then, at the west they crossed the Don river. And with Don begins the show: almost all major rivers at the west (probably) gained a "D" as prefix like Donets, Dnieper, Dniester. Two escaped: Bug river and Prut river. Sorinutsu (talk) 20:17, 28 March 2008 (UTC)Sorinutsu 28March2008
 * If there's a point to this post, it successfully eluded me. Can you pronounce "Strč prst skrz krk"? I had trouble spelling out words like "serendipitous", or "consciousness", or "daughter" (8 letters for 4 sounds)... so what? If one form finds its way into common English usage, then that's it. Discussions about how wrong it was to use it fall under WP:NOTAFORUM. As for the "Nipru" et al - these articles both have an explanation of the rivers' names. Might as well read them. --Illythr (talk) 22:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * What makes you think that the Semites don't use vowels? Of course, they do.  They just don't always write them down. 76.123.208.229 (talk) 17:05, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * So an English-speaking tourist should pronounce it "NEE'-stur"? Casey (talk) 18:05, 26 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Pretty much. The (Slavic) natives do pronounce the 'D', but, according to Webster's, this is not the case with English. --illythr (talk) 18:37, 26 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Tnx. It would be helpful to have this info in the article, which does devote quite a bit of space to the spelling in various languages.  It's not uncommon to give an English pronunciation guide in English Wiki pages for place names not pronounced as would be expected.  See, for example, Refugio, Texas, which goes into considerable detail including a spoken word.  Simplier is Bronte, Texas, giving both IPA (which I have never learned) and just plain phonetics so readers can differentiate from the more-familiar English authors' name. Casey (talk) 01:00, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I added the respelling key, but it's pretty much the same as IPA for this word. --illythr (talk) 11:57, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The (US English) pronunciation currently shown is not IPA which would be ˈniːstər (rhotic pronunciation as per M-W). 92.236.204.50 (talk) 07:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing this out, I reverted that anonymous edit. --illythr (talk) 23:40, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, you're the source of the incorrect transcription. I restored the IPA. — kwami (talk) 02:27, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Uh, what? ...geographical name \ˈnēs-tər\ says M-W. What is your source? --illythr (talk) 18:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Invaders and defenders
It would be neutral to say "During the war, battles were fought on the banks of the river between the German and Romanian invaders and the Soviet defenders." This does not imply any value judgment. It is an objective statement, because an "invader" is someone coming from the outside and trying to take over the territory, whereas a "defender" is someone who wants to prevent that from happening and who is already there. If we need to clarify, we can specify the left bank of the river. On the right bank, the Romanians would not be invaders since they already held that territory. The Dniester was an international border at the time. - Mauco 20:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Separating Moldova from Transnistria NPOV
I'm concerned that it is inaccurate to say "the Dniester separates Moldova from Transnistria". First there is the region's overall controversial status, secondly there are certain areas on the left bank where Moldova has defacto/dejure control.

I have rephrased the statement to make up for this shortcoming: "...after which it flows through Moldova for 398km, separating most of it from Transnistria."

Feel free to make suggestions for a more eloquent way of expressing this. luddz Luddz 04:30, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested move
Propose to move Google hits almost double for "Nistru". Suchwings1 (talk) 12:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose: "Dniester" is an established English name used in major English encyclopediae ,. Additionally, a Google search refined to look on English sites only for the river (and not the many other things containing "Nistru" in their names) demonstrates that "Dniester" is more than three times more popular: Dniester+river, Nistru river. --Illythr (talk) 12:37, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Bogdan (above) cites Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia and BBC use of Dniester. Rand McNally uses Dniester on its small-scale maps (i.e. the most general); it also uses Nistru on the Moldovan side and Dnester on the Ukrainian side on large-scale maps. World Book Encyclopedia uses Dnester (or Dniester) (1982 US edition; may be different in more recent and International editions.) Klippa (talk) 12:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That was in old times. Nowadays, everything is updated and is used only the easier spelling word: Nistru without "Dn" because Nistru doesn't sound Russian. It's more English, so to say. --Suchwings1 (talk) 13:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Speaking of modern usage, here's another Google search, this time in English language news sources for the period of 2000-2007. It looks for Nistru river and Dniester river: The relation is 30 to 800 in Dniester's favor with most of those 30 either using "Nistru" as a secondary name or being in articles by Socor. --Illythr (talk) 15:00, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Now that Suchwings1 has been revealed as a Bonnie sock, the discussion can be closed. --Illythr (talk) 15:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Closed; no support and initiation by indefinitely blocked sockpuppet. Dekimasu よ! 04:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Map
The article needs a map of the Dniester River drainage basin. One is included in many of the other articles on the world's rivers. 76.123.208.229 (talk) 17:07, 3 November 2008 (UTC)"
 * Still no map! Caeruleancentaur (talk) 11:46, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

more secs
lacks sections on hydroelectric stations\dams and navigation (although I'm not sure if there's one). Ukrainian article has it all.

Also Dniester Pumped Storage Power Station. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.72.233.80 (talk) 18:55, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Edward Gibbon
From the article: Edward Gibbon refers to the river both as the Niester and Dniester in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I'm not seeing that in the book:
 * http://www.gutenberg.org/files/731/731-h/731-h.htm and
 * http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/gibbon-the-history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-vol-1

That statement in the article might not be correct. --NoToleranceForIntolerance (talk) 00:07, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Ukrainian name-changing
I've just corrected all instances (I found) of Dnister to Dniester, the English common name. I also changed Dnipro (and the completely incorrect Dniper) to Dnieper. I suspect that there are more rivers/features whose names have been changed to a Ukrainian or Pseudo-Ukrainian form, but I'm not an expert of the geography of the region so I advise other editors to keep a lookout.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:39, 31 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, you may not have been wrong at the time but you probably overdid it, since it's now getting so pro-Ukrainian in Western media that we're even using Kyiv and Dnipro. Dniper wasn't "completely incorrect"; if anything, it's more correct than the Frenchified Dnieper; it's just less common. — Llywelyn II   21:26, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Where is this scale from for "more correct"? Mellk (talk) 14:46, 13 April 2023 (UTC)