Talk:North Laine

"Recently"
"The City Council has recently redeveloped a notorious gap site, constructing a new library and public square." - the word "recently" should be avoided in an encyclopedia article which is intended as a permanent record. It needs to be replaced with the actual date. --rossb (talk) 07:52, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Laine
The origin and meaning of the term "laine" is confused, and the "official" Brighton Council / North Laine Traders version is wrong! I'm not sure how this is best resolved on Wikipedia, or even if it is a Wikipedia issue.

For starters laine is NOT an Anglo-Saxon term - rather this is a Middle English term. The Anglo-Saxon root was lane, related to our modern lane, and with the sense long and thin.

A laine was a long, thin strip of arable land - part of the mediaeval strip system. Fields consisting of laines were themselves called laines. The original srips were lost long ago as the strip system came to an end, and only the term laines for the bigger fields remained in common use. Rev Parish in his Sussex Dialect Dictionary records the word only in the plural. However the use of the plural was erratic - the OED records it only once in the five laines it records in Brighton - the reality is that the term North Laines (correct) and North Laine (incorrect) were used interchangeably.

The present use of North Laine is a conscious anachronism when Brighton Council decided to bring back an old name for the area north of North St. They should have called it North Laines, the correct name for the whole of the big field. But they were overly influenced by a map which has the singular form North Laine, so North Laine the area is now called. Lots of visitors and locals by mistake call the area North Laines, and their mistake is actually right!

22:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you are quite mistaken here. Brighton used to have various areas all called "Laine".  e.g. "West Laine", "Hilly Laine" (now Hanover).  Are these the "bigger fields" you mention?  My Father went to West Laine School in the 1950s, so the usage of "Laine" in the singular is not without precedent.  I have never seen these referred to in the plural, so it makes sense not to refer to North Laine in the plural.  The mistaken visitors and locals often fail to differentiate between "Lane" and "Laine", and so many times you hear the distinction "North Lanes" / "South Lanes" (meaning the Lanes).  In any case, the official name for the district is "North Laine", so whether or not you think the council made a mistake in naming the area, it remains correct.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The North Laine as urban renewal?
Would it be an idea to emphasise Brighton Council's part in revitalising the area by naming it North Laine? (? late 1970s I think). As far as I understand it was a run down area with few surviving shops until the rebranding and is an extraordinary example of urban renewal? --William1shaw (talk) 06:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Why not? If you can get some decent sources, then this would make a good addition to the history section of the article.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Cafe vs. café
This asserts the accent-free version is a misspelling. I could not disagree more:
 * Café is a French word, meaning coffee.
 * Cafe is an English word, meaning a place where coffee and food can be purchased and consumed.

Yes, cafe is a corruption of café, and it was obviously a borrowing from French. But it has long since become a fully-fledged English word and it does not require a diacritic.

I make the same point about 'premiere', 'debut', 'resume', 'role' and various other words. To continue to spell them with diacritics is wrong-headed at best. --  Jack of Oz   [Talk]  05:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Interesting, I'd never considered 'cafe' might be anything other than a misspelling. Coffeehouse doesn't come down as strongly as you do. -Lopifalko (talk) 06:22, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * It's not as clear cut if you check the talk page. --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  06:29, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * My reading of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Coffeehouse#Cafe_or_Caf.C3.A9 is that so far more people there prefer café. I'm not overtly opinionated about this but it's interesting to learn this for myself and any further editing. -Lopifalko (talk) 06:59, 6 May 2013 (UTC)