Talk:Mate (drink)/Archive 2

Spelling
The OED, MW, Collins and Random House all give the accented form as the primary spelling, or even direct the reader there from the unaccented form. As one editor who claims this is "incorrect" admits, it's also the form preferred by marketers. If marketing and the dictionaries agree on the spelling, it's hard to see how it's "incorrect", just because that's not how it's spelled in Spanish. This isn't Spanish Wikipedia, so the Spanish spelling is irrelevant. As for maté meaning something else in Spanish, that's again irrelevant, as the acute accent means something different in English and Spanish. In Spanish it means the vowel is stressed, but in English it just means the vowel is pronounced -- as in café, which in RP has the same vowels, and the same stress on the first syllable, as maté. (OED: café /ˈkæfeɪ/, maté /ˈmæteɪ/.) There was also a bit of POV in this article claiming the English form is incorrect because it's not Spanish, which is fine for an opinion piece but doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Of course, if the word is given as Spanish, rather than as English, it should be spelled as in Spanish. — kwami (talk) 23:50, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * You moved it again? I am quite angry with your ignorance on relying on English dictionaries and marketing as the primary source. Most foreign language names and terms respect the spelling of the language itself. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:59, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
 * This is how the word is primarily spelled in English. Disregarding RS's in order to push your POV of what English should be is not encyclopedic. — kwami (talk) 00:02, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * So you're saying that the entire Spanish language is not a reliable source? That's WP:POV on steroids! Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * ENGLISH IS NOT SPANISH! English words assimilated in Spanish are often given Spanish spellings. Is that "incorrect"? As for "most foreign language names and terms respect the spelling of the language itself", that's true — but this is no longer a foreign term. And anyway, by that argument, it should be spelled "mati", because that's how it's spelled in Quechua, so we'd need to "correct" the Spanish spelling as well. Except, of course, that Spanish is not Quechua. — kwami (talk) 00:08, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Really? English isn't Spanish. I'm glad I came to this encyclopedia. You learn something new every day.
 * Did you read what I wrote about how we defer to foreign language spellings? Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:13, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know where you get the mati spelling from, but it's not correct based on pronunciation of native speakers of the language. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:14, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Did you not read my response?
 * Perhaps we could start a discussion at tomato to change it to "tomate" because that's the foreign-language spelling. Or we could be even more authentic and change it to "tomatl".
 * I may be wrong about "mati". Do you have a source to support your claim? It should be in the article, since the etymology is missing. — kwami (talk) 00:16, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * MW says the etymology is from French & American Spanish; French maté, from American Spanish mate maté, vessel for drinking it, from Quechua mati vessel. So, if you're set on being "authentic" with English words, you could always say it's the French spelling.
 * Spanish Wikipedia, for what it's worth, agrees with Webster. — kwami (talk) 00:23, 26 April 2020 (UTC)— kwami (talk) 00:23, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * No, tomato is sufficiently common in English that it is o longer a loan word. The drink is a loan word. It has not reached a critical mass of common understanding. As for the etmyologist who gives it French origin, they're that's probably because they assumed the hypocorection made it a loan word from French. It's not of French origin. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:28, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The Spanish entry, Mate (infusión), makes no mention of French, no. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:32, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * What it does say is, "The expression 'mate' comes from the Quechua word matí, which means pumpkin (the container for drinking mate is usually made of pumpkin)." So the gourd was known as matí, with the accent over the "i", and the drink's Spanish name is a bastardization of the Quechua word. Ignorant Europeans. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:35, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Of course the Spanish entry doesn't mention the French. It doesn't mention the English either. The etymology is Quechua > Spanish > English and, in parallel, Spanish > French > English, just as many English words with international distribution are simultaneously from French and Italian, and we can't really be sure if English "tomate" (as it was originally spelled) came from Spanish, French or Portuguese. An etymology normally only gives where a word comes from, not where it's subsequently gone. If you think the editors of MW can't tell the difference between French and Spanish, you may be right, but to make that claim on WP you'll need a RS to back you up.

Quechua doesn't distinguish between /e/ and /i/. It's quite possible the Spaniards heard it as closer to their /e/. Also, stress is penultimate in most varieties of Quechua, so the form "matí" may be a later hypercorrection. Other sources give it as just "mati", and the French dict as "mate or mati".

The word has been used in English for 300 years. The variant spellings matte and mathè attest to its assimilation, as do compound words such as maté-cup for the calabash and maté mangosteen for Garcinia purpurea. — kwami (talk) 00:47, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * But the word is not a common English word. There are many words that have been part of the English language for centuries that my co-workers still have to look up to understand what I'm saying. And no, the template was not meant as snark. Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:01, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * But if the dictionaries all prefer one form, and you say that marketers prefer the same form, then what's the reason to not use it? Your only reason is what it is in another language, but that's not directly relevant. It would be different if it were italicized in English to indicate that it's a foreign word, but AFAICT people haven't done that for a couple centuries. There are a lot of rare words in English that nonetheless have English spellings. — kwami (talk) 23:11, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * It's incorrect in Spanish. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:18, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

It should be mate. Mate is still relatively unknown to the English speaking world, and just because some dumb marketers spelled it maté enough times to get it into the dictionary that way doesn't mean we have to accept this hypercorrected, annoying spelling. Sgtpepper43

(talk) 02:58, 13 July 2020 (UTC)