Talk:haĉek

RFV discussion
The discussion text that follows was removed from WT:RFV in this revision. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 04:20, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

There's two issues here. First, as per RFV, I can demand to see a third cite. Second, even if there is a third cite, this is still just a rare misspelling. There's no etymological support, there's no logical reason for this spelling, except that someone confused č with ĉ.--Prosfilaes 22:35, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I've just added a third citation to the entry (the 2006 one), so this spelling is now attested. I don't know why those writers decided to use a circumflex instead of a háček for writing undefined:, but the facts that the author of that most recent citation is herself Czech, that the passage quoted is discussing the correct use of the háček, and that the rest of the book features háčky being used correctly all suggest to me that this spelling has nothing to do with "someone confus[ing] č with ĉ." — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 02:16, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I wonder if it could be a typesetting error, not the author's fault. Equinox ◑ 02:21, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe it's Esperanto? —CodeCat 02:31, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * All the uses are in English contexts. As I said, the 2006 citation has undefined: occurring in the same sentence as letters with háčky (namely undefined:, undefined:, and undefined:). — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 02:48, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Further up on the same page occurs this sentence: “Examples of the family names fixed on mail boxes that left a lasting impression on the history of Creechville were: Bětik, Bouška, Brožek, Fabera, Galetka, Haškovec, Holy, Janiček, Jarešh, Janoušek, Jurčik, Krajča, Mach, Marušak, Matouš, Patak, Petr, Skřivanek, Slovak, Slovaček, Taraba, Tojaček, Trpak, Vrana, Vrla, Zaidle, Zhanel and Zmolik.” I see no typesetting problems. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 02:55, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * None of which were in italics, which could be a cause of typesetting error.--Prosfilaes 06:47, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I checked further on in the book. undefined: occurs in italics on pages 32 and 33 (first in a section title, and then in the main text), undefined: is italicised on page 50, undefined: crops up again on page 56 alongside an italicised undefined:, and by the time I came across the Czech song name undefined: printed in italics on page 57, I considered the point made and didn't bother checking any further. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 08:40, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * While we're looking at context, doesn't it seem odd to anyone that a sentence containing an accurate description of the shape of the haček uses a haček that doesn't match its own description? "My father always wrote Bětik with a little 'v' called haĉek, above the 'e'; Marušaks placed the haĉek above the 's' ".
 * One can easily come up with scenarios such as the author misspelling the word and it being "corrected" later using a global find and replace. When assessing the likelihood of these scenarios, remember that all the likely occurrences eliminate the results from our sample. With the examples being so few, it's hard to eliminate random chance as an explanation.Chuck Entz 17:20, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * But the author doesn't use a háček; she uses a circumflex. Had her sentence read "…always wrote Bětik with a little 'v' called haĉek (as on the 'č' in the word itself), above the 'e'…", or contained some other such comment, then we would certainly conclude that the spelling used was in error. All you have to go on is that the spelling that actually occurs seems odd. Small sample size will affect any rare spelling. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 09:00, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * All we have to go on is that the spelling, by any objective standard, is wrong. It uses a letter not otherwise used in English for no etymological reason.--Prosfilaes 10:29, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Not to mention that it apparently isn't used in Czech either, except to spell foreign words (I believe it may be found in Slovak) Chuck Entz 03:04, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, it's used only in Esperanto. ĉ only mentions Esperanto, and ĉ only mentions Esperanto. Both Czech and Slovak use č, not ĉ.--Prosfilaes 04:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * All you're saying is that 〈Ĉ〉 is only used in the standard orthography of Esperanto. Any stronger claim that 〈Ĉ〉 is only used in Esperanto, period, is manifestly disproved by the three English citations of undefined: that I have already provided. What about and ? Both those spellings are also unsupported by their etymologies. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 11:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * If we're turning off common sense, let me point out that you've only given one clear citation of haĉek. I believe the 2002 citation is actually hаĉek, and the 2006 one is haĉеk.
 * Both saké and eleëmosynary are perfectly English spellings. The ' in saké tells you to pronounce the e, that it's not pronounced seɪk, and the ¨ in eleëmosynary tells you that the ee is two vowel sounds, not one.--Prosfilaes 11:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Neither the undefined: nor the undefined: calls for explanation; you would need to offer a reason why you think those authors have used Cyrillic letters. The undefined:, meanwhile, does call for explanation; I say it's intentional, you say it's a mistake. Much of the rest of the argument herein consists in the conflict between those two assertions. My point with undefined: and undefined: was that neither of those uses of diacritics has etymological support; no standard system of Japanese Romanisation (ローマ字) uses the acute accent, and Latin does not use the diæresis. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Both saké nor eleëmosynary are perfectly normal English spellings; that's how you use the acute accent and diaeresis in English words.--Prosfilaes 01:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Right. And if one were to use undefined: in English, one would use it to denote . — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 03:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The same could be said of "չ", but I wouldn't use it to spell a Czech word Chuck Entz 06:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I certainly don't agree about the second one., . Equinox ◑ 01:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It is true that undefined:'s etymology does not support the spelling undefined:; however, it is also true that a given word's etymology tends not to support any (or at least not very many) spellings apart from the one that it has as standard. If your aim was to have your grievance with this spelling noted somewhere (be it at undefined: or at the lemma, undefined:), I would support you; if this word's lemma were located in undefined: and not in undefined:, I would support you in calling for it to be moved from the former to the latter; however, you simply want to delete this spelling — when it has the prerequisite three citations — which I do not support. This spelling is supported by the word's pronunciation as much as undefined:. I am not aware of any "objective standard" that undefined: violates whilst undefined: doesn't, but I am sceptical of its validity. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 18:43, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I gave you an objective standard that haĉek violates that hachek doesn't; it uses a letter not used in other English words without etymological reason. (Hachek is actually a rather nice spelling, as it's probably the most natural English spelling for haːʧɛk, but it's far from the most common.) And just because I didn't list a spelling here doesn't mean I agree with it; there were a couple other spellings I would object to, but haĉek jumped out as the most blatantly wrong.
 * I wouldn't really object to using misspelling of, but I was not under the impression that we were recording every single misspelling that had three attestations. Should I make an entry dargon for the three quote-"rare" spellings of dragon I found? (I was going to use theif, but given that it has more examples then probably every form of hacek put together, including some historical ones where it's not a clear misspelling, I figured there were better examples.)--Prosfilaes 02:39, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You assert that 〈Ĉ〉 is "a letter not used in other English words without etymological reason". Please prove that. The three citations I have provided are counterexamples against your claim. The letter is rarely used in English, period; etymological derivation will tend to support its use, but is not the sole reason for its use. Beware Hume’s Guillotine.
 * I contend that *undefined:, wherever it occurs, is a mistake where undefined: was intended, whereas undefined: is an intentionally used, albeit rare, spelling of undefined:. Note, too, that whereas undefined: is supported by pronunciation, *undefined: is not. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 11:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Category:English terms spelled with Ĉ is empty except for this entry. I regard that as plenty of evidence it's not used in other English words. For the most part, English characters outside the normal collection of English characters are not used without etymological support.
 * You are welcome to prove that dargon is a mistake, but at this point, I'd like something more than "trust me". There is no evidence that haĉek is supported by pronunciation; just because a letter is pronounced one way in one language doesn't mean it's pronounced the same way in another, and there is no evidence of pronunciation of ĉ in English.--Prosfilaes 11:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The devil is in the detail with what you're saying — “For the most part, English characters outside the normal collection of English characters are not used without etymological support.” I don't deny that, but I would deny your statement if it was made unqualified by the preamble that I emboldened.
 * OK, then; on what basis do you assert that *undefined: is used intentionally, and is not just a mistake where undefined: is meant? For the pronunciation of 〈Ĉ〉 as, I invoke Occam's razor — in the only uses outside of English that we know of it, 〈Ĉ〉 is pronounced as ; in the English examples hitherto advanced (undefined: and, below, *undefined:), 〈Ĉ〉 takes the place of a letter or combination of letters representative of ; ∴ the pronunciation of 〈Ĉ〉 in English is probably . Or is there a more parsimonious explanation? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Whilst I was attesting and antedating undefined: in its various forms, I came across a book which remarked that diacritics were "coy" for being absent from their names (i.e., e.g., undefined: is not spelt *undefined:, undefined: is not spelt *undefined:, undefined: is not spelt *undefined:, undefined: is not spelt *undefined:, &c.), with the singular exception of undefined:. Other diacritics' names give us little reason to expect undefined: to be so . — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 09:09, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The 2003 cite says "BTW, Esperanto uses a “breve” on the “u”, i.e. ŭ, not a haĉek." Even if we accepted as the existence of some word spelled haĉek, I think there's reason to reject it as a citation of a word meaning háček. What the author clearly meant was that Esperanto uses a breve on the u, i.e. ŭ, not a circumflex, like it uses on other letters like ĉ. Given the thinko replacing the word circumflex with the word haček, the spelling change was an obvious mistake.


 * In general, ĉ is a letter that only appears in Esperanto. None of the accented letters that appear only in Esperanto appear in English (with the arguable exception of two entries in Category:English terms spelled with Ŭ, where Ŭ appears as a romanization of Bulgarian). If we were looking at a case where we had a line of derivation from the Esperanto, I wouldn't disagree, but without that, Occam's Razor leads us to conclude that the replacement of č with ĉ is an error in the use of unfamiliar diacritics.--Prosfilaes 06:47, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * No. I think that sentence was primarily intended as a correction of a previous poster in the discussion, Harlan Messinger. As context, Harlan Messinger wrote (with my emboldenment added for emphasis): "Will Swedes use 'aa' if 'å' (a-ring) isn't available? Esperantists conventionally use 'x' after a consonant to indicate the haceked version of that consonant." — to which Lee Sau Dan responded: "There are many conventions for Esperanto. Zamenhof recommended using a post-'h', e.g. 'ch' for 'ĉ'. Some people prefer to use a pre-'^' mark. The post-'x' convention is established quite lately, perhaps not before we have digital computers. It was invented so that sorting routines for pure ASCII do not need rewriting just to sort Esperanto word lists. [¶] BTW, Esperanto uses a 'breve' on the 'u', i.e. ŭ, not a haĉek." In that context, bringing the breve into things just looks like a non sequitur, though I'd put that down to Lee Sau Dan's confusion at what Harlan Messinger meant. The idea that a person might confuse the háček with the circumflex might not have occurred to him; it might've seemed more plausible to him that a person might confuse the háček with the far more similar breve. That interpretation makes it very plausible that when Lee Sau Dan wrote undefined:, he did, indeed, mean "haĉek". As for his choice of spelling, 〈Ĉ〉 denotes, so the spelling undefined: is as justified by the word's pronunciation as undefined:. Lee Sau Dan exhibits a knowledge of Esperanto, so it is plausible that he chose the spelling undefined: due to a penchant for Esperantisms. Whatever the case, if Lee Sau Dan knows about Esperanto and seems to know the difference between a háček and a breve, it is implausible to explain his use of undefined: as "an error in the use of unfamiliar diacritics". Since I only maintain that Lee Sau Dan meant to write what he wrote, I'd say that Occam's razor supports me in this matter. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 09:34, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * General comment: we never have, to my knowledge, had a good way of telling misspellings (which we generally exclude, even if they are one-fifth as common as the usual spelling), especially hapax legomenon misspellings, from alternative spellings (which we include, even if they are only one-five-thousandth as common as the usual spelling). - -sche (discuss) 02:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I think this is the exception; that when someone using a letter not otherwise found in a language with no etymological support, it's an error.--Prosfilaes 02:44, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I certainly am inclined to view haĉek as a bizarre, self-contradictory misspelling, by authors and/or typesetters, and to delete it accordingly. - -sche (discuss) 03:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Unlike *undefined: (which Prosfilaes claims to be analogous in his post above, timestamped: 02:39, 13 February 2012), undefined: is not so easily explained away as a mistake (as I have explained above). Why is undefined:, which is supported by the word's pronunciation, so readily interpreted as a misspelling, whilst undefined:, which is not so supported, could very plausibly result from a mistake, not so readily interpreted as such? Also, @-sche, what is "self-contradictory" about undefined:? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 11:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * 'Haĉek' is self-contradictory because it uses a circumflex rather than a haček...! As Prosfilaes said above, it is as if the person using the term doesn't know what the referent of the term is.


 * See my post hereinbefore (timestamped: 09:09, 12 February 2012): Is undefined: self-contradictory because it's not spelt *undefined:? Is undefined: self-contradictory because it's not spelt *undefined:? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 03:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It would be self-contradictory if grave accent were usually spelt gràvè àccènt, but then someone spelt it grávé áccént. (I can't think of a diacritic other than háček which actually uses itself in its name to make an example of. It'd be interesting to know if there are any; I suppose I'll ask in the TR.) It's standard for English to strip some or all diacritics from diacritic-laden words, hence hacek, hácek, haček, but to use the wrong diacritics? It's best explained as an error. Eh, because we do (as I said) have no good way of distinguishing errors from alternative spellings, I would be willing to compromise and let this stay, tagged in the way you and Prosfilaes are discussing below, if it had even just tens of book hits to the 9790 for "háček" and 24400 for "hacek", because one could then argue "well, 3+ of them are probably acceptable under CFI". I just checked Google Groups and Books, however, and two of the three citations currently in the entry are the only ones I see. It's unclear whether or not the citations are misspellings, and there is reason to believe some or all of them are misspellings, so I argue that this simply fails RFV. - -sche (discuss) 05:04, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Citations:háček has seventeen citations; of those, thirteen were picked up by Google Books as undefined:, one as undefined: , and one as undefined: . Just searching for "háček" yields 9,460 hits, but restricting the search to English hits reduces that number to 453, and of the first ten of those supposedly English-only hits, four are Czech and one is German . I hope this demonstrates that Google Book Search is terrible at handling diacritics (at least when used in English), and that raw searches are therefore worthless. There may be more uses of undefined: out there, but they'd be an utter bitch to find. It would have been primâ facie plausible to suppose that uses of undefined: were mistakes, but subsequent argumentation should by now have discredited that hypothesis. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 23:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I appreciate that it's difficult to search Google Books for diacritics, but Google Groups and even raw Google searches pick up diacritics, and "haĉek" gets only 174 raw Google hits. Here's how the various spellings compare: háček [2,250,000], haček [73,300], hacek [44,400], haċek [only 1: us], hachek [130,000], hǎcek [only 5, including us], hatchek [104,000], hacheck [6,030], hac̬ek [only 1: us], hatschek [1,460,000 including as a name], haczek [320,000 including as a name], háçek [93 including some which may be gibberish], hácek [27,500], haĉek [174, including us]. In fairness (not singling out haĉek), I'm submitting the even more uncommon spellings as possible misspellings (below). - -sche (discuss) 02:04, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, raw searches are suggestive, but they are not conclusive. If we made decisions based on raw search results, WT:RFV would be in a very sorry state and would have no claim to authority. As for *undefined: and *undefined: — the two other spellings you've submitted to RFV below — I've reviewed them, and I agree with you that those two are indeed probably misspellings. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 03:54, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Again, haĉek is haček if you forget which way the accent goes, i.e. screw up. Hacek is haček if you drop the accents, a common way of nativizing words in English. Not only that, "c" is found in running English text about a million times in the Project Gutenberg corpus; ĉ, zero. As I said above, if we're going to assume that ĉ is normal in English text, I don't see how we can assume your printed citations are spelled haĉek instead of hаĉek, or haĉеk; after all, it's entirely natural and correct to sprinkle whatever letters you want into English text, right?--Prosfilaes 11:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * A poster called Haruo uses undefined: for undefined: in this post; in his signature, he links to lernu!, a website for learning Esperanto. I'm not saying that using undefined: is "normal in English text"; such Esperantisms are very rare, but occasionally they occur. Would you call Haruo's use of undefined: a mistake? I think he uses it intentionally. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Unlike the 3 cites given for haĉek, we know that Haruo knew how to spell the word and made a choice otherwise, and unlike 2 of the 3 cites, it's clear he was thinking of Esperanto instead of completely screwing up. And I oppose adding ĉange as an entry that implies that it is a normal variant of the word change in English. It needs tagging like l33t and other deliberate violations of English orthography. ĉange is not a rare spelling; it is deliberate use of an alternate spelling system, and needs tagged like that.--Prosfilaes 01:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with you re how we should treat undefined:, if it were to satisfy the CFI. I would not object to treating undefined: in the same way that you advise we treat undefined:. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 03:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * With the rise in popularity of Esperanto, it's likely that more people became familiar with ĉ. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 13:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * "haĉek" is not so easily explained as a mistake? Google hits on the open web offer two English hits besides WT: and, where the first one says "maybe "mêch" (with the haĉek, of course) fits" and the second one says "the suffix we see in many other Slavic names as -ovich or -oviĉ (the so-called haĉek in Czech)". In both cases showing what they claim to be the hacek printed as a circumflex.--Prosfilaes 11:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I'll have to agree with Doremítzwr. In all citations, especially the 2003 and 2006 ones, the authors seem to know what they are talking about. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 13:24, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Repeating my general comment that we have no good way of telling misspellings from alternative spellings, I am bowing to the spirited defence of haĉek; let's err on the side of inclusion and keep it. We can certainly tag it as rare and nonstandard, and have a usage note explain that the diacritic over the c is not a hacek. - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 16 February 2012 (UTC)


 * How's this? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 02:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay. I don't see much point in keeping this RFV open; that note represents a working compromise for me.--Prosfilaes 01:11, 18 February 2012 (UTC)


 * OK, then; I'll strike the header. RFV passed. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 08:15, 18 February 2012 (UTC)