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User:PeterKa/Diacritics proposal

< User:PeterKa
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by PeterKa (talk | contribs) at 06:56, July 14, 2014. It may differ significantly from current revision.

Is it "pho" or "phở"? Why Vietnamese diacritics don't belong in English-language writing.

  1. The major U.S. style guides, including The Chicago Manual of Style, recommend Merriam-Webster spelling.[1] British style guides recommend Oxford spelling.[2] Both Merriam-Webster and Oxford give Vietnamese names without diacritics. Merriam-Webster's Geographic Dictionary has over a hundred Vietnamese place names.[3] So this treatment is not restricted to well-known or "anglicized" names. An encyclopedia should give the reader a correct English-language name of the subject. To add diacritics that are not part of any editing style is to mislead the reader.
  2. Other standard reference works that cover Vietnam also remove the diacritics: Britannica,[4] Spencer Tucker's Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (2011), Encyclopedia of Modern Asia (2002), National Geographic Atlas of the World, and Lonely Planet Vietnam.[5]
  3. Go on Amazon and search for "Vietnam" books. I guarantee that no book that comes up in the top twenty will use Vietnamese diacritics in the running text.
  4. They're "distracting," according to the style guide of National Geographic, certainly a publication that knows its diacritics.[6] Style should be as unremarkable as possible so that readers can focus on content.
  5. The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (1993), the top specialist work on Vietnamese history, drops the diacritics.
  6. Publishers in the English-speaking world who have tried to include Vietnamese diacritics have found that non-Vietnamese copy editors tend to screw them up.[7] Of course, this is not an issue for a publisher based in Vietnam itself. In fact, Vietnam has several English-language news sites that are professionally edited, including Voice of Vietnam. But you won't find diacritics on those sites either.[8] They model conventional language use for the benefit of Vietnamese who are learning English, so they have no interest in promoting Viet-lish.
  7. Who does put Vietnamese diacritics in English-language material? Besides Wikipedia,[9] there's Thế Giới Publishers in Hanoi. Much of the material this company puts out is old-style war propaganda. Tourists can buy it and show the goofy language and lettering to their friends back home. The print edition of Viet Nam News also uses diacritics. This newspaper is a Cold War dinosaur that disappeared from newsstands years ago.[10] In "patriotic-language" publications of this type, Vietnam is "Việt Nam," Hanoi is "Hà Nội," and mainstream English has been left far behind.
Wikipedia Merriam-Webster American Heritage[11] Oxford[12] Webster’s New World[13] Encyclopedias U.S. Board on Geographic Names[14]
Collegiate[15] Geographical[16] Britannica[17] Columbia[18] Conventional Approved
Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Formerly Sai·gon Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh
Hanoi Ha·noi Ha·noi Hanoi Hanoi Hanoi Hanoi Hanoi N/A Hà Nội
Haiphong Hai·phong Hai·phong Haiphong Haiphong Haiphong Haiphong Haiphong N/A Hải Phòng
Cần Thơ Can Tho Can Tho N/A N/A N/A Can Tho Can Tho N/A Cần Thơ
Da Nang Da Nang Da Nang Da Nang or Da·nang Da Nang Da Nang Da Nang Da Nang N/A Đa Năng
Biên Hòa Bien Hoa Bien Hoa also Bien-hoa N/A Bien Hoa Bien Hoa Bien Hoa Bien Hoa N/A Biên Hòa
Huế Hue Hue or Hué Hue Hué Hue Hue Hue N/A Huế

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names sets U.S. government usage in geography. The “conventional” name is the name BGN deems suitable for English language usage. The “approved” name is the official name in the local language (or official Romanization if the local script is non-Latin).

Wikipedia RFC

Should our guidelines on diacritics and spelling be rewritten to reflect the recommendations of major style books?

Executive Summary: Wikipedia guidelines recommend resolving diacritic and style issues by doing a Google Book search in order to determine “general usage.” This is an “invented here” approach not recommended by any published style guide. It is also laborious when it is done correctly (as it rarely is) and is easily manipulated by partisans. The current proposal would revise the guideline to emphasize the use of reference works, in line with the recommendations of the major style guides.

Wikipedia is built on the idea that our article on Foo should reflect what reliable sources have to say about Foo. By the same logic, our guideline on diacritics should reflect what published style guides have to say about this subject. No guide advises editors to “follow the general usage in reliable sources,” do a Google Book search, and count how many books use a diacritic and how many don't. GBooks isn't structured to do this type of research, and counting diacritics is an unusual skill with application only on Wikipedia. As for Ngram, it may be able to tell you which name is more common or which spelling is more common. But it doesn't detect diacritics with any accuracy.

We need guidance that is short, sweet, and based on the advise of style specialists. All the major guides recommend that editors consult a widely available reference work, preferably a general purpose dictionary from a major publisher. The current guideline includes the parenthetical clause "including other encyclopedias and reference works." This clause suggests that editors are already permitted to follow the approach outlined below. But it needs to be made clear that this is the preferred approach, the one the experts recommend. The guides recommend various dead tree dictionaries for use as a first reference. But their online counterparts obviously make more sense for our purposes.

I propose replacing the following standard for diacritics:

Issues concerning style, spelling, and diacritics may be resolved by consulting a widely available English-language reference work. Online dictionaries are available from American Heritage, Collins, Merriam-Webster, Oxford, Random House, and Webster's New World College Dictionary. Encyclopedia Britannica and Columbia Encyclopedia may also be consulted.

The Chicago Manual of the Style recommends Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (for American spelling), Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary (for place names), and Merriam-Webster’s Biographical Dictionary (for personal names). The Associated Press Stylebook recommends Webster’s New World College Dictionary. The Oxford Style Manual recommends The Concise Oxford Dictionary (for British spelling) and The Dictionary of National Biography (for the names of British individuals).

Here are some examples:

Wikipedia Merriam-Webster American Heritage[11] Oxford[12] Webster’s New World[13] Random House[19] Encyclopedias
Collegiate[15] Biographical[20] Britannica[17] Columbia[18]
Edvard Beneš Be·neš, Edvard Be·neš, Edvard Be·neš, Eduard Beneš, Edvard Beneš, Edvard Be·neš, Ed·u·ard Edvard Beneš Eduard Beneš
Tadeusz Kościuszko Koś·ciusz•ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura Koś·ciusz•ko, Tadeusz Andrzei Bonawentura Kos·ci•uśz•ko or Kos•ci•us•ko, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Thaddeus Kosciusko, Thaddeus Kos·ci·us·ko, Thaddeus Tadeusz Kościuszko Thaddeus Kosciusko
François Mitterrand Mit·ter·rand, François (-Maurice) N/A Mit·ter·rand, François Maurice Mitterrand, François Mitterrand, François (Maurice) Mit·ter·rand, Fran·çois (Mau·rice Ma·rie) François Mitterrand François Maurice Mitterrand
Ngô Quyền N/A Ngo Quyen N/A N/A N/A N/A Ngo Quyen N/A
Hideki Tojo Tō•jō Hideki Tōjō Hideki To·jo, Hideki Tojo, Hideki Tojo, Hideki To·jo, Hi·de·ki Tōjō Hideki Tōjō Hideki
Mihály Vörösmarty N/A Vö·rös·marty, Mihály N/A N/A N/A N/A Mihály Vörösmarty Mihály Vörösmarty

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names sets U.S. government usage in geography. The “conventional” name is the name BGN deems suitable for English language usage. The “approved” name is the official name in the local language (or official Romanization if the local script is non-Latin). Although I used the chart to focus on difficult cases, it is common for all the references, including Wikipedia, to be in agreement, as you can see here. In other words, the way editors currently determine article titles is much closer to the proposed method than to the GBook counting approach.

Wikipedia Merriam-Webster American Heritage[11] Oxford[12] Webster’s New World[13] Encyclopedias U.S. Board on Geographic Names[14]
Collegiate[15] Geographical[21] Britannica[17] Columbia[18] Conventional Approved
Istanbul Is·tan·bul İs·tan·bul Is·tan·bul Istanbul Istanbul Istanbul Istanbul N/A İstanbul
Jyväskylä Jy·vas·ky·la Jy·väs·ky·lä N/A Jyväskylä N/A Jyväskylä Jyväskylä N/A Jyväskylä
Kinmen Que·moy Que·moy Que·moy In Pinyin Jin·men N/A N/A Quemoy Island Quemoy Quemoy Jinmen Dao
Lübeck Lü·beck Lü·beck Lü·beck Lübeck Lü·beck Lübeck Lübeck N/A Lübeck
Ploiești Plo·iesti or Plo·esti Plo·ieş·ti or Plo·eş·ti Plo·ieş·ti or Plo·eş·ti Ploieşti Plo·ieş·ti or Plo·eş·ti' Ploieşti Ploieşti N/A Ploiești
Zürich Zu·rich Zü·rich Zu·rich Zurich Zurich Zürich Zürich N/A Zürich

References

  1. ↑ Chicago Manual of the Style, p. 350. “For general matters of spelling, the University of Chicago Press recommends using...Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary."
    CMOS, p. 350. “Although the University of Chicago press uses Webster as its spelling authority, the use of other standard dictionaries such as the American Heritage Dictionary and the Random House Dictionary of the English Language is also acceptable.”
    CMOS, p. 387. “For the names of well-known deceased persons, Chicago generally follows the spelling in Merriam-Webster’s Biographical Dictionary or the biographical section of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.”
    American Psychological Association, "APA Style", "The APA Publication Manual recommends Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2005) as the standard spelling reference."
    Gibaldi, Joseph, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (2003), p. 61. "Your instructor will probably recommend a standard American dictionary such as The American Heritage College Dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, or Random House Webster College Dictionary."
  2. ↑ Oxford Style Manual, p. 160. “The best advise is to treat any one item consistently within a given text and follow the newest edition of a suitable dictionary, such as the Concise Oxford Dictionary.”
  3. ↑ CMOS, p. 403, “For the spelling of names of places, consult Merriam-Webster’s Geographic Dictionary.” Oxford's Atlas of the World has even more Vietnamese place names given without diacritics.
  4. ↑ Britannica is edited by University of Chicago Press copy editors trained in Chicago style. It has even more entries on Vietnam than the Merriam-Webster dictionaries do. Its style for diacritics was revised in 1974 to take advantage of improvements in printing technology. Merriam-Webster and other publishers adopted this style a few years later, and it is now standard. Pre-1974, the standard style was to use only eight Western European characters with diacritics (originally from International Morse Code). This is still a common style in non-academic writing.
  5. ↑ I found these works in the reference section of the main library in Taipei, as well as in the reference section of the University of Minnesota Library. U of M also has Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (1993) (no diacritics) and William J. Duiker's Historical Dictionary of Vietnam (2006) (which includes diacritics).
  6. ↑ National Geographic Style Manual. "Although Vietnamese is written in the Latin alphabet, the number of accent marks can be distracting and may therefore be omitted."
  7. ↑ Tucker's Encyclopedia was originally published in 1998 with diacritics.[1] There were complaints that these were done incorrectly.[2] They have been removed from the current (2011) edition of the work.
  8. ↑ The major news sites are aggregated by Bao Moi. You look up a name on this site and get an overview of how the Vietnamese press handles this issue.
  9. ↑ Vietnam-related titles were moved to diacritic forms en masse soon after I was banned.
  10. ↑ They still hand out copies of Viet Nam News to passengers who request it on Vietnam Air. Otherwise, the print edition doesn't have any circulation worth mentioning. The web edition of VNN is the top English-language site in Vietnam and a very different publication. It is diacritics free and far less propaganda-oriented than the print edition.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Oxford Dictionaries
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Webster’s New World College Dictionary
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 U.S. Board on Geographic Names
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
  16. ↑ Merriam-Webster Geographical Dictionary (1997)
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Encyclopædia Britannica
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Columbia Encyclopedia
  19. ↑ Random House Dictionary
  20. ↑ Merriam-Webster Biographical Dictionary (1995)
  21. ↑ Merriam-Webster Geographical Dictionary (1997)
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