Talk:Gentile/Archives/2006/December

Untitled
I had heard the origin of the word "gentleman" can be found in Gentile. Apparently not the case? -- 68.42.98.97 20:13, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Opening needs a rewrite
The opening of this article reads a rewrite. After reading the article, I'm more confused about the term than when I started reading the article. That's certainly a bad thing.

What is the focus here? That gentile is a translation of a Hebrew word? If so, the opening line should be something like "Gentile is an English translation of several Hebrew words. Which Hebrew word it derives from depends on the specific context it's used in..."

Or if the focus is the religious connotations, the opening line should be something like "The word gentile is used by members of certain religions to refer to people who are not members of their religion. In Judism..."

Right now in the first paragraph, we have the latin the word came from, which doesn't help an English reader learn gentile's meaning, two Hebrew words that hold zero meaning for an English reader, a hedged and vague description of it being derivied from another latin word that has multiple meanings - again not terribly helpful to the reader, a call that it's often used in the plural which still doesn't nail down the meaning for the reader, and a vague statement that it means "heathen" or "pagan" with a dubious tag to boot!

In short, we've told the reader nothing and used an entire opening paragraph filled with difficult prose to do so. We can do better than this! --Don Sowell 18:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)