Magnus Manske wrote:
Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
First off, in regards to whether anglicization (or rather americinization) is dumbing down...why yes it is. As we all know, the biggest argument against using more foreign names for foreign objects is, "Oh, but its soooooo confusing".
It is, for the Americans. ;-) With redirects, we can catch all common spellings. The idea is that when someone who doesn't know the "correct" spelling (if there is such a thing) links to a topic, (s)he will use, with some likelyhood, the most common spelling. On the English wikipedia, that's the most common one *in English*. So, we'd want to put the article under that spelling, as to avoid redirects as much as possible when reading the 'pedia.
Why such antipathy to redirects? Whether we choose English spellings or original spellings, the redirects should still be there. The only difference is which way they're pointing.
So the English wikipedia should use more accents in their article titles because you and armed terrorists tell them to? Now that you mention it, it *does* fit with your prior actions ;-)
"Armed terrorists!" - That's raising the smell of the debate a little high isn't it?
I demand that the authoritarians recognize the value of other cultures and languages and that while a german katze is most certainly a cat, Dumkopfmeyerstrasse is never Dumbheadmeyerstreet, no matter how many americans say otherwise, unless the local inhabitants decide that the americans are right and go and change the street signs.
Let's call it Dummkopfmeyerstrasse in the German wikipedia, and call it what ever is common English spelling in the English wikipedia. As there's probably no know spelling of this specific street, it would likely be the German one.
Yes, but many anglophiles would like to believe that there is an English form even when they have to make it up.
Eclecticology