Talk:Zurich

Zurich vs. Zürich

Zurich is the normal spelling in English. No dots. There is no letter ü in English. Zürich is a pedantic or foreign spelling. This article seems NPOV now. Stating that this spelling is the "variant" and implying the other is the norm.

Doing a Google search restricted to English shows double the hits for the English spelling as for the German spelling. Searching the domain of English-speaking countries shows more like a 5:1 ratio in favour of the English spelling.

— Hippietrail 14:49, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You need to get a user name, 138.130.36.104. Anyway, Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary lists it as Zurich or G Zürich. Its next entry is Zurich, Lake of without the umlauted version whatsoever.—Red Prince 14:57, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Whether to use Zurich or Zürich is not an easy question (as the discussion this very word inspired on Wikipedia w:Talk:Zürich verifies). As a dictionary we shouldn't take a stand, so we can mark them as alternative spellings of each other, but for simplicity's sake only one should carry the definition (unless someone wants to be in charge of keeping the entries synchronized against future edits...) I left an explanatory note in Zürich. —Muke Tever 18:26, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sorry edited from a different computer last time. "Variant spelling" implies that one spelling is superior. "Alternative spelling" is free of judgement and therefore preferable. But if only one article is to carry the important info, that should be the one most used in English. Zurich without non-English diacritics is clearly the one. Some accents are permissible in English but always optional - and most people opt not to use them. We should reflect this usage. In a German dictionay things might be different since that language often preserves more foreignness in its borrowings. — Hippietrail 23:27, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Later, 2018: I moved the English content from Zürich to Zurich, noting that Zurich is many times more common in GNV: Zurich, Zürich at Google Ngram Viewer. There is a discussion on the subject at W:Talk:Zürich/Archive_1#Spelling. I was surprised to learn that Britannica online uses Zürich[1]. http://www.uzh.ch/en.html shows "University of Zurich"; https://www.zurich-airport.com/ shows "Zurich airport news" in one box. My instinct is to go with GNV as the most representative aggregate of English usage we have. --Dan Polansky (talk) 23:15, 16 March 2018 (UTC)