Talk:vacuüm

vacuüm
The English section. All quotes are from Dutch speakers that probably hypercorrected, using the Dutch form in English. (Note that Wim is a common Dutch name.) H. (talk) 21:27, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep, possibly with a dialect marker to place in Category:Netherlandic English if that's where the majority of the usage is coming from.  I use the two syllable pronunciation of vacuum myself, but the three syllable variant is well attested.  While the use of the diaeresis is largely absent from English today, it's still valid to indicate adjoining but separated vowel sounds, and certainly vacuüm is no less proper to include as an alternate spelling than blessèd. — Carolina wren discussió  02:27, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. †  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:35, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Category:Netherlands English I think, unless Netherlandic English is standard terminology. —Michael Z. 2009-04-07 03:13 z 


 * If there is a standard term for Dutch-influenced English, it is probably Dutch English. — Carolina wren discussió 04:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Dutch also refers to the people and their language, while Netherlands is unambiguously a geographic label. —Michael Z. 2009-04-07 04:11 z 


 * Hold on a sec, we need to be careful here. If there's a body of  native  English speakers in the Netherlands, with their own quirks, then that's something worth documenting.  If, on the other hand (and I rather think this more likely), there are a bunch of Dutch speakers who have learned English as a second language, and added some quirks to it from their native tongue, then I don't think Wiktionary should give two shits about that (others are free to disagree, of course).  I think we're only concerned with native tongues here.  If, and this may well be quite difficult to prove, one way or the other, these quotes are from native Dutch speakers, then I think Hamaryns' point is valid, and this entry should be deleted.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:08, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * But we include Chinglish, Spanglish, Singlish, etc. How is this any different? DAVilla 02:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. "All words in all languages" comes to mind here. The word is used, correctly or not, by some of the English-speaking population who happen to be Dutch. I suggest a usage note, stating that it is predominantly used this way in the Netherlands, (and I suspect in other places in Europe where English is not the first language). English is very well spoken in the Netherlands, especially amongst the young where it is almost univerally understood.--Dmol 06:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * But well and natively are two very different things. "English-speaking population" is, I think, a rather misleading phrase.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:02, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, and from all the cites given (and under assumption that the authors are Dutchies, and therefore don't have English as a native tongue), this is just a (frequent?) error by Dutchies. I'd be worried if we started putting in here errors that non-native speakers make, no matter how well-educated they may be. --Jackofclubs 09:11, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * On second thoughts, keep. I have reread WT:CFI, and was aghast to discover there was in fact nothing in there about disallowing English words used by Dutchies in permanently recorded media. --Jackofclubs 16:58, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Only “native English” counts is a fallacy.
 * WT:CFI says nothing about “native English”, and there is no way of knowing whether many authors are native English speakers or not. Wiktionary has hundreds of quotes by non-native anglophones, and there's no way to identify and remove them.  What about the ones we can identify?  Joseph Conrad, for example, wasn't a native English speaker – is someone trying to disqualify Heart of Darkness as an attestable source?
 * Welcome to the 21st century of English as a second language. English-speaking countries nos. 2 and 3 are India and Nigeria and no. 5 is the Philippines.  That's over two hundred million speakers, very few of them are first-language anglophones.  Every country in the world will have English regionalisms, and if they're attested, then we should document them.  Be careful what you call an error.
 * If all of the attestations are Dutch, then we label the term or sense as restricted to the Netherlands, and date the etymology 1981 or whatever. Whether you consider the term an embarrassing national error, or a new buzzword to drop over herring and waffles, is completely up to you. —Michael Z. 2009-04-07 10:07 z 


 * If properly tagged, keep all words in all languages. If you want to be proper then restrict yourself to the Queen's English, but even the OED doesn't do that. DAVilla 00:44, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep but properly tagged as a misspelling, not as a spelling of some fictitious "Dutch English" or "Netherlands English". Angr 11:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Definitely not a misspelling. I'll grant that persons who are not influenced by the Dutch spelling are not likely to use the optional diaeresis on vacuum, especially if they use the two syllable pronunciation instead of the three syllable one, but it is a perfectly valid alternate spelling. — Carolina wren discussió  17:20, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * What makes you say "definitely not a misspelling"? Is it sanctioned by any dictionary? Angr 08:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not a misspelling since the use of a diaeresis to indicate adjacent vowel sounds are in separate syllables (i.e. va-cu-um instead of va-cuum) is a well documented option in English. It would only be a misspelling if the writer used /ˈvækjuːm/ and not /ˈvækjuəm/ as eir pronunciation. — Carolina wren discussió 20:07, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know if using any sort of rules to defend English spelling will get you very far. As English spelling is largely etymological (as opposed to phonetic), there really are no rules, only history.  Diaereses are basically obsolete in American English (with a few rare exceptions, such as naïve, which is probably on its way to extinction, in favour of naive), although I can't really make any claims about any other English.  Thus, the spelling "vacuüm" would certainly look quite odd to an American English speaker.  Obviously it is heavily influenced by the Dutch spelling/is the Dutch spelling/is there really a difference?  I don't think that we've really figured out what the difference between an alternative spelling and a misspelling are on Wiktionary, and the distinction is usually made somewhat haphazardly, based on frequency and tradition.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:33, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Dictionaries these days are documentary. I don't think any of them take the role of “sanctioning” usage, although I believe the AHD does add usage recommendations based on a panel of experts to some entries.  Other dictionaries do have constraints on research budgets, the existence of corpora, and limits on the size of print publications, so they are quite unlikely to try to document English regionalisms in places like Holland.
 * But according to Netherlands, 70% of Netherlanders “have good knowledge of English,” so how could a community of 11.5 million anglophones in a small country not develop some of their own regionalisms? And if they do, then why should we ban them from our dictionary? —Michael Z. 2009-04-11 18:25 z 

Kept per WT:BP discussion. DAVilla 05:37, 12 April 2009 (UTC)