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May 27

Usage guides and "It's me"

Usage guides tell people it is incorrect (not just disliked by formal grammarians, but incorrect) to say "It's me" because "is" is a linking verb. Do these people understand that we cannot control how language is used in practice?? Are there any sites online that are flexible enough to ensure they're not saying that the rule that we use subject pronouns after linking verbs is followed by good speakers even in everyday talk?? Georgia guy (talk) 16:12, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are the usage guides you're reading 100 years old? Any modern guide will tell you that the use of objective pronouns after "to be" is now practically universal. Zacwill (talk) 16:42, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Zacwill, I find them by doing Google searches on sites like Grammar Monster. Here's a page that really says it is incorrect: https://englishplus.com/grammar/00000021.htm Georgia guy (talk) 17:08, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In general "usage guides" are for written language, not spoken. It would be unusual to say It's me (or It is I, for that matter) in print. --Trovatore (talk) 18:19, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Usage guides are usually conservative, because writing or saying the technically correct "x" will rarely annoy anyone, while writing/saying the technically incorrect but casually popular "y" may offend a significant number (such as officials, job interviewers, prospective in-laws, etc.) even if only on the unconscious level. In anything beyond so-called "social media", written English is usually expected to be more formal or 'correct' than spoken.

Most if not all languages have different registers of speech, 'ascending' from how one might speak to fellow youths in the street, through friends, parents, work colleagues, employers, speech audiences, and (say) judges, perhaps culminating in royalty. These registers can include different grammatical constructions, so saying "It's me" (and similar locutions) is appropriate at many levels at which "It is I" would be laughable, whereas saying "It's me" might be less appropriate than "It is I" (or similar) when, say, getting knighted. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.154.147 (talk) 20:03, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Notice how even in this thread, nobody considers the form "it's I". Why? Because it would be a mix of registers. "It is I" is formal, "it's me" is informal, but "it's I" is just not used at all, except perhaps for comical effect. — Kpalion^(talk) 10:12, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"It is I, Leclerc!" DuncanHill (talk) 11:49, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So if you can't say either "it's me" or "it's I", how can you say it? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:32, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's-a-me! ---Sluzzelin talk 12:34, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You can say either: the former (though incorrect by strict grammatical rules) will sound normally acceptable in anything but very formal speech, the latter (though correct by those rules) will sound odd, suggestive of not-native English or an attempt at 19th-century style.

Grammatical 'rules' are an after-the-fact attempt to analyse and systematise how people speak and write (a long and ongoing process of evolution-by-consensus); they are not some Platonic ideal from which speech and writing stem. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.154.147 (talk) 19:52, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

L'État, c'est moi. If it was good enough for Louis XIV, it's good enough for moi. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:26, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the Indo-European languages with grammatical case I'm familiar with, the nominative case is used for both the subject and the predicative expression. So this shows once again that English has lost its case system. Which doesn't mean that Germans normally say Es ist ich. They turn it around: Ich bin's "I'm it." Or if they want to emphasise the it-part: Das bin ich "That am I." And so do the Dutch. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:05, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Swedish, the main option is mainly the nominative Det är jag, while I think that in Danish and Norwegian, on the other hand, it's the oblique Det er meg. (I'm not sure on whether Det here should be interpreted as it or that though, as Scandinavian basically only has one single word.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:07, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In colloquial German one would say, Das bin ich or Ich bin's (with overlapping but not identical meanings), not Es bin ich. ‑‑Lambiam 19:57, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Italian you would say sono io, again conjugating the verb to agree with "I". Italian is a pro-drop language but I'm not sure what pronoun you would be said to be dropping here. Spanish seems to be similar, at least if Don Quixote can be trusted in his musical version. If that's playing in your head right now, you're welcome; if it isn't, get some culture, baby. --Trovatore (talk) 20:03, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

«Io sono io, don Chichì è don Chichì.»^[1] ‑‑Lambiam 19:20, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh that is very interesting. Without really knowing the story, I still love the writing. Don Camillo pensò che in uno sporco e pidocchiosissimo mondo in cui non è possibile avere un vero amico è una gran consolazione poter trovare almeno un vero nemico. I may have to order these books. --Trovatore (talk) 05:21, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, Trovatore, I had that Broadway-cast album as a teenager, and I well remember Richard Kiley belting out "It is I, Don Quixote, the lord of La Mancha. ..." Deor (talk) 20:56, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nice. But the lyric is "I am I, Don Quixote". Presumably calqued from Spanish soy yo, I'd guess, which would be the same as Italian sono io. --Trovatore (talk) 23:18, 29 May 2025 (UTC) [reply]

You're right, of course. My memory isn't what it once was. Deor (talk) 01:02, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

May 29

The Isle of Man

I'd like to have a go at rewriting the Name section on the Isle of Man article (which is somewhat messy at the moment) and am in the process of gathering sources. I'm having trouble finding any that discuss the Manx name for the island (Mannin), however. Wiktionary claims that the name was originally Mana but that the dative form later displaced the nominative form. This sounds plausible (the same thing happened with Albain in Irish), but I can't find anything outside Wiktionary that endorses it. The seven-volume work Placenames of the Isle of Man is useless in this regard, devoting only one paragraph to the name of the island itself. Zacwill (talk) 16:25, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe not terribly helpful, but see The Name 'Man' in Gaelic Literature and Topography by W. Walter Gill.

Also Manx Place-Names: an Ulster View. Alansplodge (talk) 16:46, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Place-Names of the Isle of Man With their Origin and History (1925) by John Joseph Kneen; especially Introduction: The Isle of Man... Its Name (p. xxii) (PS: I've just seen that you said this was useless, but there appears to be more than one paragraph in the linked section). Alansplodge (talk) 16:52, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is helpful, thanks. I was referring to a different work with a similar title in my original post. This one I hadn't come across yet. Zacwill (talk) 17:01, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're most welcome (I probably should have clicked on your link first!). Alansplodge (talk) 17:11, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have not explored its 26 pages of dense text, but the booklet "Mann" or "Man" (by the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society, no less) may have some bearing? -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 22:20, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

May 30

What languages have the earliest and latest start and end era for "Middle"?

And what languages have the earliest/latest end dates for "Early Modern"? Also I see large differences in dates for Early Modern English like mid-17th century or 1800 for the transition to Modern English why? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:52, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why? Because these are arbitrary labels imposed on a process (Language change) that in this instance was mostly continuous, and different scholars disagree on how to define and apply them.

In history, one can point to and argue about specific events that might be used to mark transitions from one period to another; these might be battles, invasions, or changes of rulership, and in more distant eras broader events like adoptions of new pottery styles or new metals, or whatever.

What sort of markers can be used to make precise deliniations in the history of a language that develops mostly continuously, though unevenly according to local regions within its range and the educational levels of its speakers and writers? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.154.147 (talk) 17:30, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) There is no reason to expect any systematicity in such arbitrary labels as "Early", "Middle" and "Modern"; each of these will obviously be relative to the overall temporal outline of the development of a language. There are things like Middle Egyptian and Middle Babylonian – you'll probably find your "earliest" examples somewhere there. "Middle Persian" seems to be slightly older than "Middle Chinese", and so on. It's only in the European languages that there has been something of a convention to tie these labels to the overall cultural era terms for the "Middle Ages" and the "Modern Era", so if a language has a "Middle" phase, it will most likely be located somewhere in what is conventionally described as the medieval period. Not many languages besides English and German seem to have conventional periodization involving a separate "Early Modern" stage. Still, the individual period boundaries between such stages will differ quite widely between languages, depending when each of them had significant changes in their social and structural status (e.g., when did a language develop literacy, when did it produce particular highlights of "classic" literature, when did it get affected by the changes brought about by book printing, when did it experience particular pushes towards standardization, and so on. "Middle French" is significantly later than "Middle English" and "Middle High German", while "Middle Irish" is a good bit earlier; "Old Polish" is generally synchronous with "Middle" rather than Old English; Spanish has "Classical Spanish" where English has its "Early Modern", and so on. Much of this is of course primarily related to when each language started to be widely written. Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:53, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is any evolutionary stage of a living Modern [Language] that's older than Middle Aramaic called Middle [Language]? Does any Middle [Language] end later than Middle Frisian? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:24, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you consider Coptic to be the modern continuation of Ancient Egyptian — it has died out as an everyday language, but is still used as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Churches). Middle Egyptian as a language spanned 2000–300 BCE, compared to Middle Aramaic's 200 BCE to 200 CE.

Middle Persian spanned 450 BCE to 650 CE; Modern or New Persian is also called Farsi, or Iranian, Dari and Tajik where spoken specifically in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Afrikaans had a 'Proto-Afrikaans' stage in the 19th century CE; if it were analysed into 'Early' 'Middle' and 'Modern' stages, "Middle Afrikaans" would certainly post-date Middle Frisian (1550–1800 CE).

Hebrew, though a contemporary of Ancient Aramaic, died out as a regularly-spoken language by about 400 CE if not earlier (scholars argue, some say 200 BCE) though it persisted in written-only form. Modern Hebrew's revival from the late 19th century might be thought of as the creation of a new language, which if analysed into stages might yield a "Middle Modern Hebrew" within the 20th century — but I doubt that any linguist has done that. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.193.154.147 (talk) 01:09, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Middle-Atlantic Accent was in fashion until around 1950. --Amble (talk) 21:30, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Middle geographically not temporally. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:52, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

May 31

"Good" ship

Where does the habit/style/preference of calling a ship "good" come from? Lightfoot uses the construction a few different ways in The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and of course there's the plane of On the Good Ship Lollipop. More infamously, there's the much earlier Good Ship Venus. How did the "good" appellation become standard? Matt Deres (talk) 14:44, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've only found an even earlier song: I sailed in the good ship the Kitty (c1777-1778), by Charles Dibdin. There's some uncited speculation on a language board that it originally meant a "goods ship" as opposed to a warship. Alansplodge (talk) 17:01, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aha! A bit more digging reveals that the traditional formula for a bill of lading (a certificate from a shipper that goods had been received and loaded onto a particular vessel) was from the 18th century:

"Shipped by the Grace of God in good Order, and well conditioned by... in and upon the good ship called the..."

(From THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BILL OF LADING: ITS FUTURE IN THE MARITIME INDUSTRY (p. 52))

The "good ship" element was a confirmation that the ship was in a seaworthy condition. Apparently, the need to make this declaration was removed in the UK by the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1924. [2]

Alansplodge (talk) 17:22, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Persuant to the above, I found this text of a bill of lading of 1636:

Shipped by the grace of God in good order and well-conditioned by Mee, Thomas Goold merchant in and vpon the good Ship called the Mayflower of London. Whereof is Master under God for this present voyage Willyam Badiley and now riding at ankor in the Riuer of Lisboa and by Gods grace bound for London to say tene Chests of sugarrs namely Muscouado & 2 whites for the account present of the worshipfull Thomas Crossing of Exon merchant being marked and numbred as in the margent and are to be deliuerd in the like good order and wel conditioned at the ofersaid Port of London (the danger of the Seas only excepted) vnto Master Richard Poerry, or in his Absense Hugh Sander or to their assignes, he or they payning fraight for the said goods, After 16/8 per chest with primage and Avarage accustomed. An witness wherof the Master or Purser of the said ship hath affirmed to three Bills of Lading all of this tenont and date, the one of which three Bills being accomplished, the other two to stand void. And so God send the good Ship to her desired Port in safety. Amen. [3]

Alansplodge (talk) 17:42, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Whether it's directly derived from "goods ship" or not, it seems like "goods", "good order", and "good ship" share a long history. Before posting, I wondered if perhaps it came from the ratings ships were given for insurance purposes. Example. If given the choice, people would want their goods carried on a "good" ship. Matt Deres (talk) 19:08, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OED has it "In extended use of a ship, town, river, etc. (chiefly with reference to things personified or conventionally treated as feminine" under good: "Of a person: distinguished by admirable or commendable qualities; worthy, estimable, fine" in a 1400 MS of the Cursor Mundi, "Euer-mare þai lokid doun. quen þat gode ship sulde droun", and 1589 in Hakluytt "Being imbarked in the good shippe, called the Gallion of London". DuncanHill (talk) 18:59, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So having a good ship is like finding a good woman? Or man, for that matter, though I hear those are hard to find. Matt Deres (talk) 19:10, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Or good hearts. DuncanHill (talk) 19:54, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For some reason specifically for doctors, the good doctor, but rarely the good nurse.^[4] ‑‑Lambiam 05:53, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reminded of goodwife and goodman, and good-king-henry. It's a medieval honorific, seems calling everything respected "good" was once a common habit. Card Zero (talk) 10:25, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And Good Queen Bess. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:37, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good King Wenceslas, in versions old enough not to reverse the wording, says, "Mark my footsteps, good my page...". ("...my good page..." would imply the existence, or at least the possibility, of a bad page, which is nowhere suggested in the story.) 213.143.143.69 (talk) 13:03, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"My good lady wife" is a cousin of "goodwife". It's confined to a particular register. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:22, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

June 2

UK Parliament capitalisation rules

When we are referring to the UK parliament (or any other legislative body which functions in a similar way) as a common noun and not a proper noun, should it still be capitalised on Wikipedia pages? notadev (talk) 19:15, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It might say somewhere in WP:MOS. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:53, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant specific section of the MOS is MOS:INSTITUTIONS. It appears that "Parliament" is usually capitalized here in a UK context when it refers to the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, just as "Senate" is capitalized in a U.S. context when it refers to the United States Senate. Similar bodies in other countries are usually referred to by their specific proper names, but common noun usages ought not be capitalized. Note that MOS:INSTITUTIONS says, "If you are not sure whether the English translation of a foreign name is exact or not, assume it is rough and use lower case (e.g., the French parliament)." Deor (talk) 01:56, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

June 3

How to find the most likely or common English text strings of a pattern?

i.e. " the " likely tops the list for string pattern " abc " case-sensitive, " ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ " case-insensitive is probably " subdermatoglyphic ", one of the more common "Abcdc! Abef ef abga abehi gigeh! Ga abc aghj E abehj ea hcckl bc" patterns case-sensitive is "There! This is that thing again! At the tank I think it needs he" and so on. There's likely a webpage or app that shows if a pattern matches a text corpus and how many times it's each string? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:52, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are many such websites readily found through a simple Google search. Most can be searched for patterns like this using regular expressions or similar. Searching across several of the corpora available here, "the" is indeed the most common three-letter string; the most common 17-letter string varies quite a bit across the different corpora but "interdisciplinary" seems to be ranked the highest on average in web and news sources while "misunderstandings" and "institutionalized" dominate in film and television scripts (not counting hyphenated words, as I assume you aren't). I was unable, however, to find a freely available online tool that would accept regex strings longer than five words (per your third query), nor one which allowed their sources to be downloaded and searched independently by the end user. (fugues) (talk) 03:57, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Interdisciplinary would be ABCDEFAGHAIJABKEL not ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ, the 1st letter appears 4 times the r appears twice and the n appears twice. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:29, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see — for some reason I assumed you were just using the letters of the alphabet as wildcards, not distinct characters... I'm sure there's a way to do this in regex too, but the pseudo-regex system available on the website I linked to previously isn't robust enough to deal with this sort of search. If a large enough corpus were available freely for download somewhere, this wouldn't be a particularly difficult computer science exercise, so if you make some progress in that area feel free to reach out. You may also find it valuable to ask this question over on the computing board. (fugues) (talk) 15:41, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is generally easy in an extended regex to require equality of strings, but requiring inequality is not as common. Attempting to match abcdc may find, next to where and there, also halal, error, rarer and tests. ‑‑Lambiam 16:51, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cornwall

In Language and History in Early Britain, Kenneth H. Jackson reconstructs the Brittonic etymon of Kernow and Cernyw (the Cornish and Welsh names for Cornwall) as *Cornou̯i̯ā. In Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology on the other hand, Peter Schrijver gives *Kornou̯(i̯)ī as the etymon. This raises a couple of questions. Firstly, which reconstruction is more correct? Secondly, I gather that the first element means "horn", but what do the different suffixes mean? Zacwill (talk) 15:51, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary gives, without source, the etymon Proto-Brythonic *Körnɨw. For the latter, the etymology section has:

"Consistent with derivation from Proto-Celtic *Kornowī with final and internal i-affection, i.e. *Kornowī > *Kornɨwī > *Körnɨw. This would imply an earlier place name *Kornowī (“people of the horn”), which can possibly be inferred from the Ravenna Cosmography; see Cornovii, Cornovii (Cornwall), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (“horn”).

A fossilized genitive of this form may be found in Middle Welsh Corneu < *Kornowyās."

‑‑Lambiam 17:03, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The entry actually cites the books I mentioned, which only adds to the confusion, since neither Jackson nor Schrijver give the forms *Körnɨw, *Kornowī, *Kornowyās. Zacwill (talk) 17:23, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's what EO says about it:[5] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:37, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is *C ever used in reconstructions for the [k] sound? It appears ambiguous... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:35, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe because there's no letter "k" in the Welsh alphabet. Alansplodge (talk) 11:12, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

June 5

Question from اُسید محمود on Urdu alphabet (17:46, 4 June 2025)

Moved from User talk:Aaron Liu § Question from اُسید محمود on Urdu alphabet (17:46, 4 June 2025)

– Aaron Liu (talk) 12:00, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How do I romanize the Urdu letters ں and آ --اُسید محمود (talk) 17:46, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are different systems in use for the romanization of Urdu.

Our article on the Uddin and Begum Hindustani romanisation system does, unfortunately, not show the letters of the Urdu alphabet that are being romanized, but I think ں is romanized as (n), a letter n enclosed between a pair of parentheses. The آ is romanized as a', a letter a followed by an apostrophe.

In the ALA-LC romanization, ں is romanized as n, a letter n with an underscore, while آ is romanized as ā at the beginning of a word and as 'ā at the beginning of a syllable within a word.^[6]

There is also an informal way of romanizing Urdu using only the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It has no written rules. I suppose some speakers will simply omit ں while others may represent it with an n. The representation of آ is almost certainly a simple letter a. ‑‑Lambiam 15:28, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

June 6

Increasing use of foreign diacritics for non-English names

I'm starting to see a trend of foreign diacritics being increasingly used for non-Anglophone names, starting with ice hockey (NHL-centric), Wikipedia or even the local-ish news (CBC). Is it supposed to be particularly astute or respectful? Writing "Ngô Đình Diệm" each time (having to use Google and copy/paste), seems quite the hassle. Matt714931 (talk) 20:29, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's more correct, at least. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Someone's name may become a vulgar term when projected on the 26 letters of the English alphabet. ‑‑Lambiam 22:29, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's the flip side of the increased technology we have these days. In living memory, all we had access to on typewriters was the basic 26-letter alphabet in upper and lower case, hence diacritics were simply ignored. But now we have all this newfangled stuff, and this gives us choices: continue to ignore diacritics, or use only the commonest ones, or become the Compleat Diacritician.

The more interesting issue, for me, is just what language is it we're writing in? Just because we can now access all the diacritics that are used in Vietnamese or whatever else, and all manner of non-Latin alphabets as well, does that mean we should use them in an otherwise English-language text? Why not write Putin using Cyrillic letters (Путин), or Mitsotakis using Greek letters (Μητσοτάκης), etc? They would be no more foreign to most anglophone eyes than Ngô Đình Diệm is. A version of the Latin alphabet that differs in any way from the one we use (and that includes French, German, Italian, Spanish, all the Scandinavian and Balkan languages, Icelandic, Romanian, Polish, Czech ...) is just as foreign as Arabic or Urdu, Greek or Cyrillic. Where should the line be drawn? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:27, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is not that long ago that "æsthetic" and "archæology" were completely normal spellings.^[7][8] It is also not that long ago that authors generally wrote their books with pens on paper; typewriters were not common household items but found in offices. French proper names would be written and printed with accents: "Géricault","Guérin", "Eugène".^[9] Technology giveth and Technology taketh away; Technology be praised. ‑‑Lambiam 05:58, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Latin letters with diacritics are not as alien as Arabic. To an English speaker, the diacriticised České Budějovice (a.k.a. Budweis, of the beer) shouldn't be much harder than the diacritic-free Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel. If you try to pronounce them, you'll get half the sounds right and the other half reasonably close, good enough to buy a train ticket to those places. With names in Arabic script, you won't even be able to guess. Typing the diacritics is easy most of the time (hint: <compose> v C, <compose> ' e, <compose> v e) and it helps the people who do know something about foreign pronunciation rules. Only few are absolute monoglots; even most English speakers have some knowledge of French or Spanish pronunciation rules. PiusImpavidus (talk) 11:31, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

June 7

"Is" vs. "Was"

I've been having a discussion (more of an argument, really) with Gemini regarding "is" vs. "was" in (for example) the Guruvayur Keshavan article which begins:

Gajarajan Guruvayur Keshavan (c.1912—2 December 1976) is perhaps the most famous and celebrated temple elephant in Kerala, India. He was donated to the Guruvayur temple by the royal family of Nilambur on 4 January 1922.

I contend that he still is "perhaps the most famous..." Gemini disagrees, stating that ... he was a famous elephant (while he was alive and in his historical context), and his fame persists, but he himself is no longer alive. (The discussion continues at length)

Which is correct? 136.56.165.118 (talk) 22:32, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is squarely that being famous or celebrated is not a very concrete thing to be (there are not celebrations taking place that we're counting!). This is part of why both is ... famous and was ... famous should be avoided at all costs in encyclopedic writing. Remsense 🌈 论 22:37, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's arguably an issue as well, but it is not about tense per se, which I have addressed below. --Trovatore (talk) 22:40, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not directly no, but I think the fronting of fame is what obscures the actual issue, maybe? Remsense 🌈 论 22:41, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's a recurrent problem in biographies of deceased persons about whom you want to say something that remains true. Shakespeare's bio absolutely must begin in the past tense, but when discussing his importance to modern literary studies, you'd use the present tense. It can get a little awkward; careful phrasing can often get around the issue. --Trovatore (talk) 22:49, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the first sentence of an article about a deceased person or animal, you should definitely use "was". I think the problem here is that you're trying to talk about his life (which is past tense) and his fame (which is present tense) in the same clause. You could separate them out by making the first sentence about his life, and put his fame in a later sentence, phrase or clause. Something like Gajarajan Guruvayur Keshavan was a temple elephant in Kerala, India. He is possibly the most famous and celebrated of all Kerala's temple elephants. More elegantly, these could be condensed into a single sentence along the lines of Gajarajan Guruvayur Keshavan was a temple elephant in Kerala, India, perhaps the most famous and celebrated of all Kerala's temple elephants. --Trovatore (talk) 22:39, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done Thanks! --136.56.165.118 (talk) 23:18, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd just note that there are lots of other classes of recurring problems in this area. Extinct taxa; old TV shows; deceased mythological figures. I personally would use "was" for all of these. I think it's very weird that the first sentence of The Steve Allen Show is in the present tense. It makes sense for serials that have a unified story arc, say Babylon 5 or Breaking Bad, but for these episodic things that were never even really meant to be shown more than once, it strikes me as just an entrenched position that some editors have adopted and will not be budged from. --Trovatore (talk) 23:35, 7 June 2025 (UTC) [reply]

I think software is the area where people become totally split and tend to prefer the present tense. Remsense 🌈 论 23:36, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm totally fine with software in the present tense, at least as long as copies exist and there's still hardware that could run it. I think that's different from episodic TV shows. At least in original intent, they were more like recurring events than persistent works of literature.

As for mythological figures, I think if the myth says he's dead, we should use past tense. Odin is, but ~~Cronus~~ Hector was. This is different from fictional figures, which should be in the present tense even if they die in the fictional work. The difference is that fiction does not assert itself to be reality, whereas myth does.

Extinct taxa are awkward because you usually want to say something about them that's true in the present (such as their relationship to living taxa), but that strikes me as parallel to the issue that started this question. --Trovatore (talk) 23:48, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Odin dies at Ragnarök, although that is arguably in a future point of time. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 00:57, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, taking the myth at face value, I think you have to put Ragnarök in the future, but if that's thought to be ambiguous, substitute Zeus. --Trovatore (talk) 01:05, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

...although that does bring up another point. Odin still has worshipers; I'm not aware that Zeus does (my guess would be that he does and I just don't know about them, but still I'm not aware that he does). It's possible my intuitions could be affected by whether the myth itself has any modern currency. --Trovatore (talk) 01:30, 8 June 2025 (UTC) [reply]

According to Hellenism (modern religion), practice of the classical Greek religion died out mostly by the 9th and completely by the 13th century CE, but was revived in the 18th, and there are current practitioners. It would be difficult to determine how many of them view it as performative recreation, how many find value in the religion taken as metaphorical, and how many sincerely believe in the literal existence of Zeus, etc. (I am in a similar position regarding Wicca, with which I take the second approach.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.81.243 (talk) 08:33, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have heard that even when paganism was ubiquitous, few worshippers believed in a literal existence of the gods, in the way monotheists seem to do today. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:44, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Original research from me! I think a lot as to whether one can metaphysically speak of predication abstracted from any synchronicity—i.e. whether to be has some meaning apart from that indicated by is or was. I forget who I was reading, but I remember a philosopher using βε as the "time-independent copula" while discussing this, which I thought justified the entire effort of course. Remsense 🌈 论 23:54, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, we could go deep into metaphysics if we wanted to, but that's not my point. My preferences here reflect my intuition about how people actually use the language (in this register, etc), not any claims about the ontological status of tense logic or the truth or falsity of presentism or the block universe. --Trovatore (talk) 00:10, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just on the persistence of fame: An expression beloved of sports commentators is "a former great". I'd argue that if their greatness came from whatever they achieved in their careers, that greatness never goes away, not even if every record they broke has since been surpassed. Their fame, on the other hand, is indeed a fleeting thing. Sometimes we see people being inducted into some Hall of Fame, and most onlookers say "Who's that?". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:42, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Saying "a former great athlete" is kind of condescending. Saying "a great former athlete" works. In the case of the original example here, I think they're trying to say too much in a single sentence. The subject was an elephant. Past tense. He was famous for such-and-such. Past tense. He may still be famous. Present tense. It might be instructive to see how this kind of thing was handled in the Jumbo article. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:39, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

June 10