Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. +Angr 05:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations
AfDs for this article: 
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Was nominated for deletion a year ago and closed with no consensus. Still has the same problems: no definition of counterintuitive, and no references. What is counterintuitive is inherently WP:POV, and so the list is either WP:OR or WP:SYN. -Mairi (talk) 02:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. If the loose definition of the term counterintuitive is ever going to lead to the page being flooded with frivolous entries, surely it would have happened by now. I do not see the problems you see.  -- Soap Talk/Contributions 03:12, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Currently only 2 entries on it are sourced. Which could lead to all the others being considered frivolous (or, at a minimum, removable as unsourced). -Mairi (talk) 04:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, pace sophistry by Mairi. Inherently interesting article; the kind of thing kids might be intrigued by. Sourcing is no worse that a couple hundred thousand other articles. kwami (talk) 04:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:INTERESTING is really not a valid reason. you have not stated how the article meets WP:N. LibStar (talk) 11:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep You dont AfD an article due to low quality or low participation. If you dont want to work on it yourself, leave it alone.  It doesnt need to be deleted. -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 05:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem is that it is inherently low quality. What is a referenced, non WP:OR definition of 'counterintuititive'? There isn't one, as a discussion a couple months ago on the talk page demonstrates. -Mairi (talk) 13:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions.  +Angr 05:13, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Never mind the kids: this old user finds it useful and interesting. --Old Moonraker (talk) 05:20, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete a number of WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS, WP:ITSUSEFUL, WP:NOHARM arguments presented here which should be avoided. as nominator says, its open to WP:OR and WP:POV in adding it without some sort of verifiable linguistics reference. LibStar (talk) 08:12, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that a lot of these keep arguments are as you described. I don't think the lack of referencing is excusable, but I think it could be turned into a decent list with sourcing.  In any case, its not inherently non-notable topic, its just very poor quality at the moment.  Also I hope you weren't interpreting my argument as a WP:NOHARM argument.  I think it is reasonable expectation that there are sources out there for many of these pronunciations (and their being counterintuitive) and this could be turned into a decent article without deleting and recreating.  -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 09:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, a valuable resource which I have now bookmarked as I think I'll be going back there to use it in future. --Tris2000 (talk) 09:04, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:ITSUSEFUL is really not a valid reason for keeping. LibStar (talk) 11:50, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Reluctant keep. Like most Englishmen, I secretly enjoy hearing Americans and other foreigners try to pronounce "Leicester", "Cholmondeley" or "Dalziel" (and while I'm confessing, I also take a perverse pleasure in seeing them try to spell "manoeuvre").  It's particularly good fun not to tell them how it's really done.  However, I'm forced to admit that Wikipedia should educate and inform.  This article does make a genuine contribution to the sum of human knowledge, so it belongs on Wikipedia.  And any argument based on WP:ATA that purports to suggest otherwise should be disregarded.  ATA is an essay that can't prevail over Wikipedia's mission to produce valuable encyclopaedic content. As for being "open to" OR and POV—well, so's Barack Obama.  We don't delete material because it's "open to" misguided or bad-faith editors.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  11:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not just "open to" OR and POV; it is inherently OR and POV. --Alynna (talk) 12:28, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Two limbs to that, so two answers. 1) "Inherently POV"—Well, "lieutenant" is variously pronounced "leftenant" or "loot'nant" . This is either intuitive or counterintuitive.  I put it to you that the idea that it's intuitive is a minority POV, and the idea that it's counterintuitive is mainstream.  Would you disagree? 2) "Inherently OR"—This would be true if there were no published sources.  But a quick glance at my bookshelves gives me:  Baugh, Albert C. & Cable, Thomas: A History of the English Language.  Routledge, first edition 1951.  My 5th edition (2002), ISBN 0415280990, discusses the matter in the context of English - American dialect changes and Mr Webster's spelling reforms, on pp 367-376.  I can't immediately lay my hands on my copy of Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, but I seem to recall the matter is discussed there as well.  Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words is also likely to prove a rich resource. In short, it's well-covered by sources, and I think it's neither POV nor OR.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  16:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * (later addendum) I found my copy of Mother Tongue, and to my delight, Chapter 6 is all about pronunciation. It's a joy to read.  (Bryson points out on p. 78 that the word for the study of pronunciation, orthoepy, can itself be pronounced two ways.) Chapter 12 points out the various different ways foreigners pronounce English words, and would be a good source for describing how "intuitive" to a native Japanese speaker varies from "intuitive" to a Frenchman. Chapter 13 is even better, addressing a series of specific pronunciations directly on pp 191-192.  This is ISBN 014014305X.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  01:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Mother Tongue is indeed a wonderful book. However, I'm not seeing anything that would define what would be "counterintuitive" (much less the distinction between that and non-intuitive). There's certainly discussion of names variously described as "unfathomable", "unpronounceable" (obviously a rhetorical flourish, since they are pronounced), ones that "bear almost no resemblance to their spelling", etc. But the article as it stands now relies on a definition of intuitive and counterintuitive, otherwise it's simply a List of names people think are pronounced strangely, which is hardly encyclopedic. Indeed, in talking about English spelling, Bryson says "If there is one thing certain about English pronunciation it is that there is almost nothing certain about it." and "But in English, pronunciation is so various-one might almost say random-that not one of our twenty-six letters can be relied on for constancy.", neither of which lends much hope to finding a definition of intuitive/counterintuitive. -Mairi (talk) 19:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete, for the same reason we don't have List of inherently funny words. The criteria for inclusion are entirely subjective.  I think the pronunciation of "Poughkeepsie" is counterintuitive; someone on the talk page of the article doesn't.  The "funny words" list redirects to Inherently funny word.  There may be a place for an article on the concept of place names that are confusing to outsiders.  The most notable examples from this list could even be mentioned in it.  But we definitely don't need a list. --Alynna (talk) 12:26, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: What could be an actually good article is a list of places that have the same name as other places but are pronounced differently. (Under some more concise title.)  You could write about Lima, Versailles, and DuBois, among others. --Alynna (talk) 12:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as inherently POV. I've just looked at the "Place names in Britain and Ireland" and find at least one third of them to be completely intuitive. (I'm a U.S. American.) This just illustrates the problems with the notion of "counter-intuitive" raised by others above. I agree with Alynna that a discussion of the concept might be interesting, but worry that even that would require original research via synthesis. Cnilep (talk) 14:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Addendum: Most of the place names are blue links. Isn't it likely that anyone needing to pronounce Frome would look at Frome, Somerset rather than a list of British and Irish place names? Cnilep (talk) 14:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * See my reply to Alynna. I completely agree with you that some of the names are not counterintuitive, and I agree that the list needs substantial revision.  However, neither of these issues mean that the article should be a redlink on Wikipedia; there are alternatives to deletion.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  16:47, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Right, there's no reason why this article is inherently POV or OR. As already stated it need A LOT of work, but bad content doesn't make it a bad idea.  -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 20:25, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * But the list words I find intuitive may differ from S Marshall's list. It all depends on ones, erm, point of view. Cnilep (talk) 20:20, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Surely it depends on what words the sources say are counterintuitive? I see several "delete it because we can't agree on exactly what counterintuitive means", and I don't think this argument stands up to close scrutiny. You go to a source that says it's counterintuitive, and if it is, you list it here.  Simple. Incidentally, there's a helpful list of "disputed pronunciations" in Fowler's.  In my revised 3rd edition of 1998, ISBN 0198602634, it's on page 630.  One can presume that if they're "disputed" pronunciations, then at least one of the variations is counterintuitive for someone.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  01:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Isn't it OR to decide that "disputed" --> "counterintuitive"? And if we're going to expand the definition of "counterintuitive" to "any word that one person could pronounce in a way that another person wouldn't expect", our list is going to include nearly every word in existence.  Also, I could find a source that says a word is stupid.  Does that mean we can have "List of stupid words"?  --Alynna (talk) 11:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 *  weak delete, simply because a huge number of words in English have counterintuitive pronunciations. Spelling and pronunciation in English are often wildly different things. (compare, if you will: dough, through, rough, cough, blough...) Hairhorn (talk) 16:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Great topic, poor presentation made with the conceit that everyone can read the "international phonetic alphabet" with ease... ænd ðæts hwaɪ ðɪs ɑrtɪkəl səks. Mandsford (talk) 17:40, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * In other words, WP:IDONTLIKEIT? A need for cleanup is not really a reason for deletion. Eauhomme (talk) 15:36, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Good information, needs better presentation (IPA is not necessarily the best way to present pronunciation), and some sources may be difficult to find, as regional pronunciations are not always sourced well. But source where we can, and give it a chance to be improved--all in all, it adds to, rather than detracts from, the body of knowledge. Eauhomme (talk) 15:36, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep In re-examining the article, it's clear that various editors have been making this article more useful, by adding English-language dictionary pronunciations to the IPA ones, and that the improvements are a work in progress. Mandsford (talk) 16:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak Keep Very useful resource, although it is obviously original research. Byronwrites (talk) 04:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:ITSUSEFUL is not a valid AfD argument. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * 'There are some times when "usefulness" can be the basis of a valid argument for inclusion. An encyclopedia should, by definition, be informative and useful to its readers. Try to exercise common sense, and consider how a non-trivial number of people will consider the information "useful"' (From WP:ITSUSEFUL). Eauhomme (talk) 17:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Inherent original research. --Cybercobra (talk) 05:17, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.