Talk:naïveté
Latest comment: 15 years ago by DCDuring
Kind of a silly source, eh? When you google "naivete", it automatically also includes naïveté. In fact, just looking now... it seems the searches were set up to have a bias towards naivete, weird. The searches in the article are "naivete" and "naïveté -naivete". If you search "naivete -naïveté" (which they failed to do so), you actually get 20 million less results for naivete. EgyptianSushi 14:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
- Er... and, naivety is completely taken out? Which has far less than the other two spellings mentioned. I think naïveté would be the actual spelling, based on Google results. Naivete second, and finally the bizarre naivety that this claims is the real spelling. EgyptianSushi 14:07, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
- The diacritical versions drive me crazy and seem of lesser importance to me because I think many users just ignore them, though actual facts about that are tedious to collect. Both naivete and naivete can be found at MWOnline. I think the OED online ($$$) would a good summary source on regional frequency of use, especially for the spellings with diacriticals. DCDuring TALK 16:18, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
- And I am driven crazy by omissions of the crucial and indispensable diacritics. ai with one dot missing lays bare only one's infamiliarity with the fundamentals of French phonetics (where ai is pronounced open e(I do not have the IPA symbol, that means like ä in German), whilst here the diphthong is expected). On this wise, having raciocinated to a limited extent, one is to draw the inference that it is certes only people with more limited education or limited access to French keyboards (or simply indolent) who have written these 1,4 million misspellings
naivete.Bogorm 16:56, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
- And I am driven crazy by omissions of the crucial and indispensable diacritics. ai with one dot missing lays bare only one's infamiliarity with the fundamentals of French phonetics (where ai is pronounced open e(I do not have the IPA symbol, that means like ä in German), whilst here the diphthong is expected). On this wise, having raciocinated to a limited extent, one is to draw the inference that it is certes only people with more limited education or limited access to French keyboards (or simply indolent) who have written these 1,4 million misspellings
- Bogrom is right that naivete would, going by rules of regular pronunciation for spelling, be pronounced *[nɛvet] in French and *[ˈneɪviːt] in English (though, granted, the situation is not quite that simple). (BTW Bogrom, the IPA character you want for an “open ‘e’” is <ɛ> invalid IPA characters (<>).)
- Naïveté, like gravitas and pietà, is in a weird position in English: French’s -té words, Latin’s -tas words, and Italian’s -tà words all, as a rule, become English’s -ty words. However, whereas (deprecated template usage) gravitas means something different from gravity and (deprecated template usage) pietà means something different from piety (thus encouraging and justifying the retention of the foreign spellings to distinguish those meanings), the same is not true of (deprecated template usage) naïveté vs. naïvety, so it’s curious to wonder why (deprecated template usage) naïveté is still, more often than not, favoured over and retained in place of (deprecated template usage) naïvety. That said, even if we accept that degree of naturalisation, it’s still no argument for omitting the diæresis which would be, as indirectly indicated above, vital to denoting the correct English (UK) pronunciation of /naˈiːvɪti/ (and not */ˈneɪvɪti/) — irrespective of any consideration given to French pronunciation. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:19, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
- I dispute "indispensability" for an on-line English-language dictionary. English-language orthographic conventions in no way require any diacriticals, as, say, The Chicago Manual of Style points out. (They also strongly recommend no use of ligatures.) It seems to me like a large amount of pettifogging pedantry to ever have entries with diacriticals and ligatures be anything other than "alternative spellings". I submit that one of many the reasons for the vigor and competitive success of English relative to other languages is that it has proceeded to (eventually) dispense with inessential accompaniments such as diacritical marks, ligatures, use of grammatical rules from other languages, respect for non-English-style pluralisation and spelling, and academies of language. If we would seek to reduce Wiktionary to a short-lived role as a specialised dictionary for a small community of the academically oriented, we could attempt to reverse these trends. DCDuring TALK 18:13, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
- If your thoughts were true about the reason of how one language is becoming a lingua franca, then French would never have taken over at the expense of Latin as the language of educated Europeans(including Russians) in 17-19 century and we all here would be conversing in Latin. Furthermore, the Chicago-based Source could hardly seem entitled to claim any jurisdiction over the Britsh English(official in Eurasia). Bogorm 18:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
- I dispute "indispensability" for an on-line English-language dictionary. English-language orthographic conventions in no way require any diacriticals, as, say, The Chicago Manual of Style points out. (They also strongly recommend no use of ligatures.) It seems to me like a large amount of pettifogging pedantry to ever have entries with diacriticals and ligatures be anything other than "alternative spellings". I submit that one of many the reasons for the vigor and competitive success of English relative to other languages is that it has proceeded to (eventually) dispense with inessential accompaniments such as diacritical marks, ligatures, use of grammatical rules from other languages, respect for non-English-style pluralisation and spelling, and academies of language. If we would seek to reduce Wiktionary to a short-lived role as a specialised dictionary for a small community of the academically oriented, we could attempt to reverse these trends. DCDuring TALK 18:13, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
- Not all shift is away from diacritics. In even the most "diacriticphobic" dictionary I have at my disposal, "Merriam-Webster Online", certain words are listed only in a "with diacritics" spelling: [1], [2]
- Certain terms pertaining to specific cultures are currently in a "pro diacritic" phase with people actively pushing the "with diacritics" spellings for use everywhere in English, and have been active on Wikipedia and Wiktionary. The words Māori and Devanāgarī come to mind.
- There is a trend related to the second above which promotes the use of the apostrophe and various alien-to-English varations of it as the only currently correct English spellings of Hawaii and Hawaiian (Hawaiʻi, Hawai`i, Hawai'i; Hawaiʻian, Hawai'ian, Hawai`ian, etc). — hippietrail 23:38, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
- I'm sure that what you say is true. I get testy because an effect is to make the user experience for mono-lingual English speakers bad. This is just one of many aspects of this problem. Perhaps I just misunderstand whom enWikt is directed to. We certainly aren't succeeding in competition with the proprietary dictionaries among those operating from IP addresses in English-speaking countries (compared to WP's success against proprietary encyclopedias). DCDuring TALK 00:41, 12 December 2008 (UTC)