Talk:Once upon a time

Re-entering the opening line formula
I put back the opening line formulations from a variety of languages. I came back to this page after perhaps a year, in order to find one of the phrases. I have professional use of them, and recall the joy of finding these phrases here. I believe there are thousands of storytellers around the world that will find this information very amusing and helpful. I cannot understand the reasons for having them deleted. --Xact (talk) 13:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Ekem (talk) 16:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

German?
I am German, and to be frankly, I only know the ending "und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute". It even is used as a mockery phrase to point out that one suspects that people are making up stories which simply aren't true. "Sie lebten glücklich und zufrieden"? Cannot remember that phrase at all. I think "und wenn sie nicht..." is the more common version. Kennin (talk) 16:30, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Aparently there are discussions about German endings of fairy tales. There was someone who asked about those things, and almost everyone answered "und wenn sie nicht...". One said "Und sie lebten..." as an alternate ending.


 * Oh, and "aus die Maus" was suggested too in the discussion! That one I remember as a matter of fact, now they said it! It's not really common, but it is used once in a blue moon.


 * 


 * Anyway, as this is no book knowledge but more of a personal experience, can I change this and add "aus die Maus" without real sources? Kennin (talk) 16:35, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Commonly used in
"It was commonly used in the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, or The Brothers Grimm" Really? Surely the former wrote in Danish and the latter in German, so this exact phrase in English can't have been used. Are there any good examples in stories originally written in English? --David Edgar 15:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone know what the equivalent would be in Chinese? 24.165.174.123 01:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC) Anne Barringer, 19 October 2005

Meaning?
Considering the very phrase "once upon a time" is now somewhat archaic, I'd like to see the original meaning of the phrase noted. I think it means something like "once, at a certain unspecified time, ...". Dcoetzee 03:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

(Partial) transwiki?
I think the list of translations should be merged with the (smaller) list at Wiktionary, and possibly deleted from here. --Ørjan 07:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree. The Wiktionary is an English language dictionary. It seems that if anything, the list in the Wiktionary should be assimilated into this one. Kingnosis 22:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah but the English Wiktionary doesn't only store English words. Its purpose is to define English words and translate non-English words into English. For examples, please see boy and sugar. Thanks GizzaChat  &#169; 04:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There are also already many such translation lists from English over at Wiktionary. My impression is that English is only the language for explanations, the dictionary itself is multilingual to/from English. --Ørjan 07:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Galactic Basic?
Surely there is no place for made-up sci-fi langauges in what is essentially an anthropological article?


 * Agreed, removed. 128.227.68.119 20:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Jedi? --AnYoNe! 15:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Do not move it to Wiktionary
The first part of the article is of encyclopedic significance, and should be kept in Wikipedia. It is also an helpful complement to other articles (see: What links here). Velho 20:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that transwiki only means copying, and that the question of what if anything should be removed from the original page is separate. I did suggest removing the list of translations however. --Ørjan 06:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

2007-04-14 Automated pywikipediabot message
--CopyToWiktionaryBot 04:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I hope I did not do anything wrong by adding the template to the main page immediately, this is the first time I tried to suggest a transwiki. The article seems to be under heavy revision, do the further revisions get transferred automatically or does this tag need to be removed to repeat the process once things calm down? --Ørjan 06:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The further reversions do not get transferred automatically. If you wanted an article to be transwikied a 2nd time, you would need to add the Copy to Wiktionary tag again to the article.  Note that the current Copytowiktionarybot tries not to transwiki an article more than once, so the 2nd transwiki might not be done, unless you requested it from the person running the bot.  --Xyzzyplugh 13:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Fresh Prince
Someone put the lyrics to The Fresh Prince in this article. I'll remove it. 75.109.148.221 (talk) 19:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, didn't realize I wasn't logged in. Sailorknightwing (talk) 19:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Korean
The Korean more literally translates to "days and years in the past" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.60.147.90 (talk) 01:38, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

"Once Upon a Time"
There is a sweeping similarity to the translations of this phrase from dozens of other languages, these languages ranging territorially from farthest Asia, west along the Silk Road and then up through the mid-East and southern Europe and into Ireland and Scandinavia. And that is the path that most of the Indo-European languages took over many centuries. For a single phrase to have occurred in so many different languages, territories, cultures and continents, that seems to imply that the phrase was handed down from a common ancestral language into all the offspring languages. And the phrase, therefore must be very ancient. Much, much more ancient than the written word in Europe. Therefore, The original transmission mode of this phrase must have been through the oral tradition. Before the written word, all cultural knowledge, including myth and wisdom, was taught by storytellers and passed through generation after generation. To assure accuracy and consistency, the knowledge was converted to song or recited poems and was memorized. A certain reverence must have attached to the telling and the teller. Doubtlessly, this telling occurred often at night after work was finished, or during long harsh winters. The purpose wasn't only to impart knowledge and tradition, but to do it as entertainment so it would "stick" in people's minds. That would make speaking the phrase "Once upon a time" an announcement that the entertainment was about to begin, and something of a magic incantation. ClanIrvine (talk) 16:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Swedish opening line
It's stated that an alternative to Det var en gång could be En gång för länge sedan. I have never heard that last one... Has anyone else? Or is it just a modern translation from English once upon a time? Because then it should be removed, buried and quickly forgotten. :-) Fomalhaut76 (talk) 10:24, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The fact this novel begins with these four words ought to be noted, although from the immediate context it is clear they are used to set the opening section in the character's extreme youth -- "and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down the road met a nicens little boy name baby tuckoo...." (Whether or not Joyce intended any irony by using these 4 words is another issue entirely.) -- llywrch (talk) 03:38, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Mukashi mukashi
It has been suggested here that Mukashi mukashi should be merged to this article. That sounds like a good idea to me, but if anyone has any thoughts please leave them here. – Margin1522 (talk) 07:15, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment most of the mukashi mukashi is not relevant, only the first sentence is relevant, the "examples" are not actual examples, as they do not illustrate the use of the terminology, only showing that folklore is used in animanga, which is a tangential subject. -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 06:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment I agree. The anime/manga examples are sort of irrelevant – about folklore in general rather than the specific expression mukashi mukashi.– Margin1522 (talk) 09:39, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed and ✅ (nothing left to merge, so redirecting). Klbrain (talk) 12:15, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Lingala
"Ezalaka, mokolo moko"

A True Story by Lucian of Samosata
A True Story, of the 2nd century, has this phrase, in translation. I don't know if the original does. The preface(s) (disclaimers) do not begin with "once upon a time" but the actual beginning of the story does.

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Once Upon a Time which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:19, 26 June 2024 (UTC)