Talk:Veld


 * Veld Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Delete for the same reasons Lekker was deleted. .Angela. 01:55, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete, agree. Daniel Quinlan 07:32, Dec 11, 2003 (UTC)
 * Delete. Anjouli 11:33, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Added missing VfD tag. Anjouli 11:39, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * At least three articles link to veld. Redirect to countryside. Dysprosia 11:41, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep, move to cleanup. Velt isn't just an adjective, it's a specific instance of a biome (I dunno if it's officially Deserts and xeric shrublands or Tropical Savannas), and has specific geography, geology, hydrology, and plant and animal life. -- Finlay McWalter 11:51, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Keep. It needs work, but it belongs in an encyclopedia.   -- Popsracer 10:51, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

To suggest that this article should be deleted is silly. The veld is not simply an adjective, it is a specific region and type of countryside in Southern Africa. If it is deleted one might as well delete the articles on the pampas of Argentina, the prairies of North America or for that matter the Sahara or the Amazon Rainforest. Booshank 19:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I've redirected it temporarily until more can be written about it. It is also listed on Cleanup. Angela. 01:35, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

bushveld and thornveld
These are terms that keep cropping up in Africa articles. Anyone able to explain these terms beyond the obvious? --Derek Andrews (talk) 13:29, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Veld fire
Would love to have a section on a veld fire. Rauterkus (talk) 14:52, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Veld/Veldt
Someone arbitrarily removed an entry on the correct spelling of veld on the curious justification: "removed language that would only be of interest to south africans". This unsupported claim is illogical anyway; many people interested enough to refer to the article might well want to know how to spell it and why, as long as there is an incorrect usage peculiar to the subject matter. Such foreign terms for regional concepts are of intrinsic interest to large classes of persons, so just because one editor is uninterested, is no justification for its removal. Compare say, "Chaparral", "Prairie", "Pampas", "Fynbos" and other words where the etymology is of interest. One's personal uninterest is no justification for deletion of relevant matter. Unless someone can strongly justify this apparently arbitrary deletion of material and historic information, I shall reinstate it within a few days. I have left a similar note at the address from which the deletion was done.JonRichfield (talk) 15:25, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

In the late 1930's Count and Countessa Van Vryveldt lived in an apartment block on Manning Rd in Glenwood South Africa. Could this name be part of the etymology of the term "Veldt"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.24.55.197 (talk) 16:29, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Image Removal Request
G'day. Just noticed the image subtitled 'Springboks in the burned veld; Etosha National Park, Namibia' on this article. It is inappropriate for this article. The emphasis is on the springbok's not the veldt, further the colors have been altered with the entire image being black and white except the animals. It gives us no further understanding or explanation of what a veldt is, besides showing us some springbok's and some black and white scrub and, as I said, is just totally inappropriate an illustration and if anything would confuse a viewer who knows nothing about the subject into thinking that that is possibly what a veldt looks like after a veldt fire or some such, or assume that the photo isn't a manipulation and that is actually what it looks like. For this reason I ask that the editors of this article remove it, and hopefully find something more appropriate. Whilst it may sound daft, remember that not everyone understands things as well as you do, that and we have kids using Wiki to learn, so both of those demographics may be stupid enough to make the aforementioned assumptions, which to you and I may seem silly, but really isn't. BaSH PR0MPT (talk) 09:53, 8 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Right mate, I take your point. However it is not as obvious what to do about it as it might seem. I was just having a look to see whether to remove it as suggested and what to put in its place, when I realised that veldfires are hardly mentioned and they deserve to be. So far so simple. So I thought that I might have a crack at it. Oopsie! It is quite a subject! Material on conservation and burning is pretty badly scattered and fragmented in WP and not much of what I found was very relevant to veld. I was wondering whether to leave this article as is, with mostly a few links, or whether to insert a section on veldfires or start a new article on veldfires. At the moment I am contemplation the second option of the three, which should meet your objections, and at least I could concentrate on getting the context right. I am just worried that the resulting article might be a bit top-heavy. Any remarks? JonRichfield (talk) 11:43, 8 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I have been away and not able to do much about the article myself. However I wandered by on other business and added another pic. It seems to me that the paired pics have something to say about a certain kind of veld that a single photo does not. Whether the black-and-white editing is important is a debatable point; it is not (to my eye anyway) obtrusive or misleading, though I would not have edited it myself. Meanwhile, I'll keep an eye open for photo-opportunities of veld so that I can add some material to WM commons. (Slavery! That's what it is! ) JonRichfield (talk) 17:55, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Why this deep loathing for Yorkshiremen?
Am I the only one to wonder why "Yorkshiremen" is so much more acceptable than "Someone from Yorkshire"? Am I supposed to feel offended if someone calls me "South African" rather than "Someone from South Africa"? What sort of POV is either mode of expression supposed to push? Or didn't I notice when the powers that be added PC to the POV pillars of WP? JonRichfield (talk) 18:19, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

You spelt that rong!
@Mark Marathon said:
 * Veldt is still a common form in English.
 * So are beleive and cemetary. I trust you do not suggest that we accommodate illiteracy to the extent of encouraging the use of all common misspellings?


 * Unreferenced material attached to references
 * Don't be coy; point them out! It is a lot more helpful than deletion of sound material. We appreciate that you are very busy, but so are other people and we have the "Citation needed" tag for just such eventualities. Note that just because a citation occurs at the end of paragraph, need not mean that it applies to the whole paragraph, especially when the paragraph in question was edited at various times in various contexts by different people.


 * Poor spelling (spelt?)
 * Distinctions in spelling are not necessarily poor spelling. In some words spelt "spell", as in spelling words with letters, "spelt" is the older, sounder, form and still the most comfortable, because it is more naturally phonetic. In the different word spell (of different etymology, NB!) "we spelled each other at the pumps", or "they spelled the horses halfway up the slope", "spelt" would be stupid, because that isn't how it is pronounced, and anyway (have just checked in the dictionary) Oxford does not offer "spelt" as an option. So next time you see us spelling "spelled" "spelt" consider correcting it rather than deleting it; and similarly when you see us spelling "spelt" "spelled".

I see incidentally that you have reverted again without waiting to see what appeared on the talk page. Trenchant no doubt, but is that an example of your cooperative spirit? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JonRichfield (talk • contribs) 08:18, 14 October 2014‎ (UTC) OOOPS! Sorry; forgot to sign! Thanks ‎ JonRichfield (talk) 13:52, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh good. A (poorly) sarcastic editor with article ownership issues. Any way, to address the actual issues concerning your edit.
 * Your edit that says that the word was " at one time also spelt veldt in English" is simply wrong. This isn't arguable. It's undeniably, provably and simply wrong. Every online dictionary I can find, including the OED, lists veldt as an alternative spelling. That alone is sufficient to have the edit removed. But then we check Google news, and we find that the spelling "veldt" was used in a publication just 12 hours ago ("In modern society, we don't live in the veldt anymore. But we're still using the same basic hardware.....), then two days ago (" the zoo remodeled the former African Veldt area into the current African Journey...), then three days ago ("The answer came in an enthralling, lung-busting match yesterday on the high veldt against their greatest rivals..."). In fact, if we exclude southern African and Dutch news sources, "veldt" was used in 151 publication in the past 30 days, and "veld" in just 94. So any edit that claims that the words was "at one time also spelt veldt in English" is flat out wrong and has to be removed. The word is still commonly spelled "veldt" in English, and outside southern Africa that appears to be the most common spelling. When you can provide a WP:RS that substantiates your claim that "veldt" was only used "at one time" and is no longer used, we can discuss this further. Until then the edit is out. WP:VERIFY says that it's out. WP:StatusQuo says that it's out.
 * Your edit that says that veldt is "Anachronistic at best" is wrong for the same reasons. It is also unencyclopaedic. The wording that says it is anachronistic is only just passable because it is indeed anachronistic in Dutch languages. However it is not anachronistic at all in English, and this is English Wikipedia, not Afrikaans Wikipedia. As a result of this little hissy-fit of yours, I am now going to have to ask for a reference check on the source that says that the word is anachronistic in English. I am also going to have to remove the two statements attributed to Google Ngram, since they are clearly WP:RS. But we sure can't say that "veldt" is "at best" anachronistic.
 * Your edit that deleted the sentences about Veld landforms occurring over a wide climatic scope is just mystifying. I can't see why your removed what seems like an utterly uncontentious statement.
 * You little edits such as changing "ranges" to "varies" or adding a superfluous "is" to a sentence aren't actually harmful, but they don't improve the article.
 * We are not "accommodating illiteracy" by not tolerating your unreferenced and provably wrong assertions about the usage of the spelling "veldt". If the OED lists it as an acceptable variant and it is being used in publications worldwide on a literally daily basis, then it ain't illiteracy. It may annoy the anal retentive, but any word that is in common usage and appears in a dictionary is a real word. Get used to it.
 * There is no requirement under Wikipedia policies for edits that incorporate unreferenced material be left in place and simply tagged. Get used to that too.Mark Marathon (talk) 23:43, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

I didn't even know veld was a spelling until reading this article, my spell checker didn't know either.


 * As a child growing up in Britain I only ever saw the spelling 'veldt', and was quite unaware that 'veld' existed. The article says 'this seems to have been mainly an English confusion with the already obsolete Dutch usage', but I can think of a far better reason. Anyone unfamiliar with Dutch and Afrikaans would tend to pronounce the 'd' as in the English word 'weld', and the 't' (which was quite certainly used at one stage in both Dutch and English, though not in Afrikaans when it later became standardised, which among other things involved eliminating what had become silent letters) provides a clue to the correct pronunciation - in both Dutch and Afrikaans a final 'd' always sounds like 't'. This use of 'dt' is not uncommon in English when dealing with words from German and Dutch - for instead, the Dutch word 'stadhouder' (the political leader of the independent Dutch Republic from the 16th century onwards) is generally rendered in English as 'stadtholder', which is not - or at least no longer - correct Dutch, but does suggest the correct pronunciation of the first 'd' at the end of the word 'stad' (= 'city'). So we are not, as some contributors have suggested, dealing with 'illiteracy' - any comparison to such outright misspellings as 'beleive' and 'cemetary' is unhelpful and misleading. 'Veldt' has always been an acceptable English spelling, although it may now be less common than it used to be. I can speak and read all three languages, so I know what I'm talking about!213.127.210.95 (talk) 15:56, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

As long as "veldt" remains Kipling's use, I don't think it can be considered incorrect. J S Ayer (talk) 15:13, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Removal of Google Ngram history or spelling use.
I've removed material that made assertions about the relative use of the two spellings of "veldt". It was based entirely on Google Ngrams. This is clearly original research, the references didn't even say what the editor claimed, and Google Ngrams wouldn't be a reliable source even if it did say it. This removal should be uncontroversial, but o thought I'd add it to the talk page just in case.Mark Marathon (talk) 00:08, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Please explain why you think that it is OR to quote statistics not compiled by myself, any more than it is OR to consult a dictionary, or to justify your edits with consultations of google? Please note as well, that to copy text instead of paraphrasing it, is not permitted in WP, so that for you to argue that the reference didn't state what the editor claimed is in fact misleading in this instance. Do also please consider what you write in future before responding; it should help you achieve that coolness of spirit that is necessary for proper editing of the type necessary in WP; I am sure that on rereading your foregoing and following responses, you would prefer to reword them to avoid embarrassment and giving the impression of unintended discourtesy. JonRichfield (talk) 07:59, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * You can quote statistics any time you like. What you can't do is put any interpretation on them not given by the authors. When you can show us that Google ever claimed that those stats indicate that "veldt" has become obsolete, then you can use them.


 * If you actually read what Google has to say, you will find that they state explicitly that, using Ngrams, "there is no way of telling how words were used, in what context or in what form". In other words, we have no way of telling whether, for example, Veldt was popular at some or all points because there were famous people with that surname or because of Bradbury's story, or Veld was popular because of a scare concerning veldgrass. This is the single biggest limitation ot the use of Ngrams and precisely the limitation that Google warned you about. You can get some idea of how important this potentially is by just looking at a simple Google search. Excluding dictionary sites and Wikipedia the first ten pages of Google results are concerned with "The Veld Music Festival", people with "veld" in their surnames, brands with "veld" in their names and places called "veld". Not a single usage of the term veld in the context of this article until a reference to a veld fire on page 11. In contrast, a search of "veldt" has the first page taken up with references to songs and books, but uses the term in the context of this article on the second page. If this has been even remotely similar historically then we simply cannot draw any conclusions from Ngram searches. And of course there is no way of knowing whether this is true because Ngram doesn't allow searches of that sort.


 * There is also the limitation that Ngram only searches books, not newspapers, magazines, Hansards etc. If one spelling is preferred in scientific or anthropological texts, for example, then that may heavily skew the results.


 * We can also surmise that if "veld" is preferred in southern Africa, where the term is most commonly used, that one small geographic region could swamp the rest of the world even if "veldt" is preferred everywhere else. You can see the same thing with "grizzly bear" vs "brown bear". Even though brown bears are only called grizzlies in North America, it completely swamps the name preferred in the rest of the English speaking world because most works concerning brown bears come from North America because they are extinct in the rest of the English speaking world. You can see this quite clearly when you search for the same terms using British and American English. In British English "brown bear" predominates. Since we have no way to search for "African English" we can't even attempt this analysis to see the effect of regionalisms on "veldt".


 * Those are only some of the more obvious limitations which you can make yourself aware of if you read the actual material provided by Google.


 * But at the end of the day, we have a clear policy: WP:OR. "Wikipedia articles must not contain... any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources... Source material should be carefully summarized or rephrased without changing its meaning or implication. Take care not to go beyond what is expressed in the sources". It's that simple. You may present these statistics on there own if they are notable, but you may not analyse them as you have done to reach a conclusion  about when the word became obsolete or even when one form surpassed another in written English. That is OR. Furthermore you can not "combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source". IOW, you can not combine the part of Ngram that says "the usage of 'veldt' is X in the sources searched" with the part that says that "the use of 'veld' is Y in the sources searched" to reach the conclusion that "veldt" is obsolete. That clearly violates WP:OR.


 * You do not seem to understand that WP:OR, along with most other Wikipedia policies, only applies to material in Wikipedia articles. There is no policy that prohibits or discourages the use of original research to make a point in a discussion with other editors, just so long as that material isn't used as a reference within the article.


 * And you are simply wrong that copying text instead of paraphrasing is not allowed on Wikpedia. If you refer toWP:PARAPHRASE you will note that "quoting (with or without quotation marks) is acceptable so long as the material is clearly attributed in the text".


 * Do also please consider consulting and contemplating Wikipedia policies before challenging uncontroversial edits in future. It will save you much embarrassment as well as making other editors more inclined to actually discuss points with you rather than simply seeing you as a time waster and linking you to policy pages.. I am sure that on rereading your foregoing and following responses (sic) you would prefer not to have made requests for information that is so easily available to any Wikipedia editor.Mark Marathon (talk) 09:30, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Reference checks
I've called for a couple of reference checks for offline sources.

The first if for the claim that "veldt" is anachronistic. Specifically, I would like to see a quote of the section that says that the word is currently regarded as anachronistic in English. As noted above, the word is still in common use in English language publications and dictionaries, and appears based on a Google search to be the more commonly used form outside southern Africa. I suspect that the source actually says that the word is anachronistic in Afrikaaans, but since his is English Wikipedia that would make it highly misleading to say that it is anachronistic in the lede.

The second is for the claim that "A typical authoritative dictionary will devote columns, or even pages to the subject". I find this claim to be highly doubtful. I suspect that the reference itself may devote pages to the subject and sees itself as an authoritative dictionary, but that doesn't mean that a typical authoritative dictionary does so. I would like to see a translated quote of where the source makes this claim.Mark Marathon (talk) 00:19, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120511224120/http://www.ecotravel.co.za/Guides/Reserves/KNP/EcoZones/Thorn_Veld.htm to http://www.ecotravel.co.za/Guides/Reserves/KNP/EcoZones/Thorn_Veld.htm
 * Added tag to http://agriculture.kzntl.gov.za/publications/production_guidelines/veld_in_natal/veld_4.8.htm
 * Added tag to http://www.arc.agric.za/limpopo/pdf/basin_profile_part1c.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120915124212/http://www.fao.org/ag/agp/agpc/doc/counprof/botswana/botswana.htm to http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPC/doc/Counprof/Botswana/botswana.htm

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