Talk:Etienne

I don't think this is translingual or a misspelling; a lot of authorities would say that Étienne is a misspelling of Etienne because capital letters do not take diacritics in French. With Égypte and États-Unis as well, they might be better listed as alternative spellings of each other. It's probably the toughest policy issue in French. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Deletion debate

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RFD translingual section. It's only as translingual as all given names are, and the definition isn't correct. Etienne isn't considered a misspelling, if anything it's the standard spelling of Étienne as capital letters don't take accents in French, although you do sometimes see them. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:32, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Delete the section (it's not translingual). But I repeat here that in French, capital letters do take accents, except if you use a cursive script or if there is a technical impossibility (old typewriters). On computers, it's possible, but not very easy, and accents are often omitted, especially in forums. Lmaltier 14:17, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That's prescriptive though. Walking around Abbeville most of the time capital letters have no accents. And certainly some consider that putting accents on capital letters is actually an error. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:22, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Look at LIBERTÉ ÉGALITÉ FRATERNITÉ on front of French city halls. I'm surprised by your statement that some consider it's an error... Wikipédia discusses this point in detail in its Capitale et majuscule page. Lmaltier 16:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes but what about LE PALAIS DES CONGRES ("the palace of Congress", but could theoretically mean "the palace of conger eels"). I always put the accents but in reality, most people don't. I'm also told that Microsoft word replaced États-Unis with Etats-Unis automatically. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:44, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Most people don't, you're right, because they cannot enter them with standard keyboards (they would have to use a menu). Diacritics on capital letters are omitted in some books (I tried 5 novels, I found one case in each of them: 2 Ç (with the diacritic), 1 Ô (with the diacritic) and 2 A (without the diacritic). However, dictionaries never omit them (except the Word one, probably). Lmaltier 17:06, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree, but how can we omit the more common form and keep the less common one? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

But I don't propose to omit it. I created a number of pages of fr.wikt for this reason (for French towns). Lmaltier 19:03, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

In Germany this name is commonly written without accent. As such a German section might be warranted. -- Prince Kassad 19:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Translingual sections are not needed if the (mis)spelling appears in the original language, and refers to a Frenchman, just like a German entry for Étienne isn't needed. All names with diacritical marks are often written without them in English, that doesn't mean it is worth recording. I'll leave it to you French speakers to decide if the E-spellings are acceptable French.--Makaokalani 12:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Deleted translingual section. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:13, 16 February 2010 (UTC)