[Wikipedia-l] "Proper" foreign names

[Daniel Mayer]

Stevertigo wrote:
>This may sound offlandish - but I want to throw support 
>behind the idea of spelling proper names in close accord 
>to their actual names' pronunciation. The English spelling/
>pronunciation "Prague" would redirect to "Praha" - the
>actual name of the place. This is not something that should 
>simply be left to stand along English lines.

But the English word for the city is Prague, not Praha. If you present an 
average English speaker with the word "Praha" they are not going to know what 
that is. But present the same English speaker with "Prague" and they will 
recognize it. Same for Deutschland vs Germany. Why should we needlessly 
confuse our readers and make them feel stupid for not knowing the "right" 
word for Prauge or Germany? They will probably take one look at the foreign 
title and leave thinking they landed in the wrong place (if not the wrong 
language). 

Please don't use characters and words in en.wiki for titles that are 
unpronounceable and unrecognizable by most English speakers - it is counter 
to our purpose of being understandable by the largest number of English 
speakers and especially native English speakers (when writing in English, of 
course). That will only lead to having misdirected links as English speakers 
can't remember the spelling of a foreign word. We already had a major fight 
with Lir over Cristóbal Colón vs Christopher Columbus - please don't open up 
old wounds. You have already pissed a bunch of people off by having a nick in 
non-English characters because they couldn't read or pronounce it. 

All that matters is what the majority of English speakers recognize as the 
title and for us to make modifications and compromises where needed to 
overcome ambiguities. Oh, and there is no such thing as a "real name" for 
anything - words play a nominative role and different words are used in 
different languages to mean the same things. This is such an elementary fact 
that I'm embarrassed to have to mention it to you. 

Sometimes this means we use words that are very close to or even the same as 
the words used in the country of origin of the thing but other times it means 
we use an Anglicization (which is the process modifying foreign words to make 
it easier for English speakers to use and pronounce them). All that matters 
is what is known and recognized by most English speakers at all familiar with 
the subject (and making sure there are no significant naming conflicts and 
also making sure we aren't just making up Anglicizations). 

This aids in linking for writers and the ability of readers to find what they 
are looking for. That's all. Redirects can and should be used for less common 
forms of the term so that people looking for those forms can find the 
articles too. But leave the terms that are most widely known and used by 
English speakers at the head of their articles - not some form of the name 
that is seldom used by English speakers (especially native ones).

And article titles should reflect a strong bias toward what English speakers 
are going to most often write in a sentence when referring to the subject 
(with modifications based on ambiguities). That whole point of doing this is 
to maximize the number of direct links to a title - redirects are a hack used 
for less common terms. 

And why in the world is this being placed on the general policy list when this 
is something specifically about en.wik?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)