Category talk:English words spelled with nonstandard characters

It should be noted somewhere on this page that en-us and en-uk (presumably en-au, etc.) treat borrowed characters differently. Additionally, while most publications try to use unfamiliar diacritics, dictionaries (particularly in America) tend to list the un-adorned forms in preference to those with borrowed markings. Likewise, informal writing avoids the excess markings, particularly on the internet, where graphics characters often have unexpected results. --Connel MacKenzie 18:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * "most publications try to use unfamiliar diacritics"? -- Beobach972 18:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

RFC
The RFC complained of the "nonstandard" spelling, "non-standard", which has been corrected by moving the category to "nonstandard"; any other problem can not be addressed though RFC, but requires sending the category to RfD. What, exactly, would you propose needs to be cleaned up? If the problem is that you think no category should exist under this name, an RFC is a useless and therefore improper solution. bd2412 T 16:06, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You cannot remove an RFC without due process. The issue is not about the spelling of "nonstandard" but the use of this word. It seems the person who renamed this category from "English words spelled with diacritics or ligatures" was looking for a word to describe letters beyond the basic unadorned 26 currently used in the modern English alphabet. The term "nonstandard" is the wrong word for this job since the standard spelling of many of these words do in fact use diacritics or ligatures. If certain contributors believe such characters are nonstandard then this is their personal point of view (POV). If supporters of this term can provide some independent sources which also use "nonstandard" then I would withdraw my claim that it is POV. The term I suggested was "exotic" but it was claimed this would mislead people into thinking about tropical islands and palm trees. No attempt was made to find a mutually acceptable term.


 * Perhaps this belongs more under "rfv" or some other rfX but it cannot stand as it. &mdash; Hippietrail 00:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
 * What do you propose? A vote? bd2412 T 01:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I guess the usual rfc/rfv process. People suggest other ways to word the category. If one seems obviously superior we go with it. If we can't agree what is best we vote on it.


 * Some things to keep in mind:
 * Æ / æ has been used since Old English so cannot be considered borrowed or foreign. Retaining it might be considered conservative.
 * Usage of such characters on computers and the Internet cannot be considered representative of English usage due to various technical problems, some of which are long-standing, others endure to this day. These issues have never been a problem for traditional typesetting.
 * Some authorities such as Merriam-Webster are much freer with replacing accented and ligated characters with unadorned forms. Note however that even Merriam-Webster lists a few words such as Provençal with only a spelling using such characters. In such a case the spelling must be condidered to be standard. Labelling it as nonstandard in any way would be confusing.
 * Usage varies by country, by publisher, by writer, by era, by preferred usage standard, etc. For instance The New Yorker continues to this day to use tremas where almost nobody else does because that is their house style. Also take a look inside a couple of printed books handy. That a particular book prefers the spelling café does not imply it will also prefer façade or naïve.
 * For some words, the spelling using diacritics are actually gaining on unadorned spellings. For example the spelling Māori is currently being pushed in favour of Maori. The same might be said about Devanāgarī and Gurmukhī if you look at edits and talk pages on Wikipedia. Even Zürich has had diacritic-related disputes.
 * &mdash; Hippietrail 04:12, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

RFC II
Tagged with an RFC --well over a year ago -- because the name of the category is apparently offensive to those sensitive to the feelings of characters that would not like to be called "nonstandard". I'd like to see the RfC tag removed as pointless, as the only way to avoid having a name for a category of English words that contain characters beyond the unadorned 26 letters of the Latin alphabet is either to call those characters something that hurts their feelings, or to rename it something silly like Category:English words that contain characters beyond the unadorned 26 letters of the Latin alphabet.

Also, shouldn't all the words belonging in this category but lacking articles be in an appendix, rather than on the Category page? bd2412 T 10:33, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Entries using characters that require keyboard gymnastics that the vast majority of Native English speakers don't know how to access merit a special category. Perhaps we could call it "Words too noble to be directly accessed by commoners". I would love to see usage statistics for these pages from the search line or from any searche engine. Or perhaps we could leave it here to see if anyone can come up with a good name. DCDuring TALK 12:43, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * "nonstandard" &rarr; "unusual" ? (they aren't usual for English. I concur that "nonstandard" is wrong, they are perfectly standard, just not common. "uncommon" might also be a good replacement. Move the list to some part of "requested entries", and reference it from the cat? Robert Ullmann 13:19, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * +1 —Ruakh TALK 18:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I used to call them exotic letters (or characters) but somebody objected that exotic made them think of an island with a palm tree or something. Anyway these letters are in the standard spellings of many many words in both my big fat Oxford (British) and Websters (American) dictionaries. By standard I mean the actual headword rather than appearing as an or or also spelling. For some words neither dictionary even offers an alternative spelling free of such letters. The most common would be Provençal and its derivatives. &mdash; hippietrail 23:25, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * What perçentage of users (especially native English speakers) could produçe a [[ç]] without cutting and pasting? What perçentage of admins? Hint: upper bound is less than 100%. My estimate so far is 50%. What print dictionaries do is less relevant than that, IMHO, though çertainly not irrelevant. DCDuring TALK 00:13, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * What is the Average Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow?
 * What does your question have to do with the topic? Are you saying we should guesstimate potential polls of English keyboard users to determine how we use the words standard, nonstandard, exotic, or whatever to describe interesting letters is some English words? Is your objection against any kind of prescriptivism, against tradition, against your keyboard? Nonstandard is clearly a loaded word here so it cannot be the best choice if we want Wiktionary to be balanced. &mdash; hippietrail 00:31, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * In a word, yes. I am interested in broadening the usability of Wiktionary beyond a base of regular Wiktionarians. We have a low market share among those using enwikt from English-speaking countries, especially the US. I am not at all clear as to the right answer to the question at hand. I wouldn't want to imply that these are second-class entries, only to indicate that they are problematic and of questionable direct utility for monolingual English users.
 * The diversity of our target user base forces all manner of ponderousnesses on us that limit our appeal to speakers of English who have little interest in other languages. Ligatures in English were principally a space-saver for printers and don't deserve excessive respect. Acute accents, tildes, diaereses, and cedillas would already be beyond the outer limit of comprehension for most monolingual English users, I'd bet. DCDuring TALK 01:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Just looking at our own definitions, exotic seems slightly more likely to invoke Polynesian than Parisian. Well, maybe not. Nonstandard is intended to not evoke anything - it's about as boring a word as I could come up with. Is there no word in the English language that precisely refers to all letters outside of the 26 plain vanilla artifacts that constitute our typical spelling regime? bd2412 T 06:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

This discussion has now been moved here from RFC based on its 10 months of inactivity. If no one has any better suggestion, I'm going to remove the RfC tag in a few days. Cheers! <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 01:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Not good enough. Our article on nonstandard has this very specific definition: "(linguistics) Not conforming to the language used by the educated  sections of a society."
 * "Linguistics" and "dictionary" are most definitely in the same field.
 * "café", "façade", and "naïve" can in no way be said not to conform to the language used by the educated sections of a society.
 * The English language is not defined by computer keyboards. Characters such as "é", "ç", and "ï" may not appear on English computer keyboards but they are common in English books, magazines, advertising, movies, dictionaries, handwriting, signage, and on the internet in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Australia, and Canada.
 * To compare to another language, I am typing on a Japanese keyboard right now. Not one key when pressed produces a kanji character without "keyboard gymnastics" so would this mean all Japanese words spelled with kanji are "Japanese words spelled with nonstandard characters"?
 * Prescriptively labelling traditional spellings as "nonstandard" does not "broaden the usability of Wiktionary".

How about "English words spelled with letters not on English keyboards" for words like "café", "façade", and "naïve" and leaving this category for the words which actually fit the biill of "with nonstandard characters" such as "*nix", "sk8r", "Hawaiʻian", "qəpik", "pr0n", "maṇḍala", etc? &mdash; hippietrail 15:36, 20 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd be amenable to something like that, but could it be truncated to something more concise? Is there no word in the English language which references the basic 26 letters of the English alphabet, sans accents, ligatures, and the like? <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 19:18, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * All I can think of is "unadorned" which would cover accents and diacritics but perhaps not ligatures or letters from Old English or Middle English such as Ash, Yogh, Wynn, Thorn, Eth. Or "typewriter" or "keyboard" which is the one place in the English-speaking world where these letters really are never seen. "English words with non-keyboard letters"? I really don't know what the problem was with the original name "English words spelled with accents and diacritics". &mdash; hippietrail 23:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Also ligatures, and as I recall, ø is not considered to be any of these. I'm warming to "non-keyboard letters". <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 04:03, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes what is a diacritic and was is a letter seems to not have a crisp separation. If we were to use Unicode as a guide there are many letters which visually look like they have diacritics like ø and ł but which cannot be expressed with combining characters. There are also letters such as Icelandic thorn and edth which are apart from diacritics and ligatures are Latin letters and are not on English keyboards. &mdash; hippietrail 10:39, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Hence the need for a broader name. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 01:22, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Deletion debate
Tagged by JackPotte. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 17:01, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep DCDuring TALK 22:58, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete This category contains terms with whitespace (eg c u l8r and μ-oxido dihydrogen) and could contain many more. Use a category name with "terms" rather than "words" so as not to inaccurately describe its contents. Move entries to Category:English terms spelled with nonstandard characters. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:33, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. For the same reason as . JackPotte 20:10, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete and merge into English spellings by character. --Daniel. 09:52, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Fails. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:35, 16 February 2010 (UTC)