Talk:Manila

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I've made a German entry and marked it as a proper noun. Given that every German noun begins with a capital, does this make sense? Does German have proper nouns as such? -- Paul G 14:48, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * It's not my language either, but I don't see why they wouldn't have proper nouns. Given that they capitalize all their nouns, it seems even more important to me to indicate that it is a proper noun. Polyglot 15:06, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Don't confuse cause and effect. Do we call them proper nouns because they have a capital letter or did we give them a capital letter because they were proper nouns? Hippietrail 01:24, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Surely the latter. A proper noun is a noun proper to, that is, belonging to, a particular person, place or thing.  Hmm . . . that doesn't sound so convincing.  So first, our sister publication makes the same distinction, specifically saying that German capitalizes all kinds of nouns, i.e., common, proper and collective.  See noun.


 * Still not convinced? Try translating "proper noun" into German.  It comes out "Eigenname" (lit. "own name").  Then google that.  The top entry I got for "Eignenamen" was http://logik.phl.univie.ac.at/~chris/skriptum/node38.html, which says, roughly, "A proper noun is a part of speech having the role of indicating a precise individual."  I would expect some of the other entries are from more authorative sources, but I doubt they say much different. -dmh 03:23, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Etymology
The second half of the English etymology (“ probably under influence via Spanish, from أَمَان اَللّٰه‏ (ʾamān allāh, God’s protection)”) is confusing and seems to contradict the first half. — Ungoliant (falai) 19:20, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it's just bullshit, and I've removed it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:59, 20 January 2018 (UTC)