Talk:Zeeuws

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

Hi,

I recently added an entry for Zealandic. During my WP harvest, for which I used the Dutch word nl:Zeeuws as the base, found that the English WP refers to it as Zeelandic though. A google fight ([Thu Dec 18 2008] [09:14:13] <know-it-all> Googlefight: 'Zeelandic' beat 'Zealandic' with 26,100 to 21,200 hits. [17:03] <know-it-all> Googlefight: 'Zealandic' beat 'Zeelandic' with 21,200 to 10,400 hits.) slightly favoured Zeelandic at first and then favoured Zealandic 8 hours later.

When using Google directly the pages for Zeelandic seem a lot more language related.

The bureaucrat of the Zealandic WP who is asking for a Ze[a|e]landic Wiktionary project talks about Zealandic though Zealand is also the English name of the region where the language is spoken, in Dutch it's Zeeland, of course...

The iso639-3 language code is zea. Since it's the name of a language, it's rather important we get it right, since it appears in translations sections and in the {{zea}} template. If we choose to keep using Zealandic, we may have to try and convince the WP crowd to use that as well. --Polyglot 16:17, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

There isn't any reason we have to get them to go along with the English spelling of the name; the cross-wiki links are by code. (We do have to agree on meaning of the codes; als (which is Tosk Albanian) vs gsw (the correct code) has been a problem.) In this case the native language name the s/w defines is Zeêuws; we have the language named Template:zea. Doesn't cause any more trouble than 日本語 and Template:ja. (Look at the source for this 'graph to see what I'm showing.) The English WP has redirects from Zealandic to Zeelandic; also not a problem.

All that said; we should ask ourselves if Zeelandic would be a better name for us to use. The WP use of it is odd, since the place is w:Zealand. The 'crat is correct on that point. (And that spelling is very standard in English, cf. New Zealand, not "New Zeeland"). But as noted, no problem if we stick with "Zealandic". Robert Ullmann 16:58, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

The reason why I bring it up is that I was surprised to find WP uses Zeelandic. It didn't seem logical. I do think it's not nice if our entry is Zealandic and when one clicks on the Wikipedia link one gets redirected to Zeelandic. That's why I would like to see both projects use the same name. It also seems important for us as a dictionary project to determine whether one is really an alternative spelling of the other or whether it's an error. If only to decide if we add it as a synonym or not. --Polyglot 18:07, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: your first paragraph: Agreed.

Re: your second paragraph: Not agreed. I believe Wikipedia is correct in its distinction between (deprecated template usage) Zealand and (deprecated template usage) Zeeland. (As Wikipedia says, the spelling (deprecated template usage) Zealand does sometimes occur for the latter, but google:"Dutch province of Zeeland" gets 13,100 Google hits to google:"Dutch province of Zealand"'s 622.)

—Ruakh_TALK 19:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Ruakh, it's not entirely clear to me whether you are saying we should start using Zeelandic for the language name, or not. You start talking about the entry for Zealand. I wouldn't mind splitting of the Dutch province meaning to Zeeland, if that's the right thing to do. But I'd especially like for everything to be streamlined. It's true that Zealand/Zealandic seems more 'English-like' than Zeeland/Zeelandic. So Robert has a point there, but on the other hand there are many language and location names that are not very English-like. Polyglot 20:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I guess what I'm saying is that your first instinct — the Google-fight — was correct. We should figure out which name is more standard. My comment was a bit off-topic, because it dealt with the name of the province (usually (deprecated template usage) Zeeland), which doesn't necessarily determine the name of its language. In fact, oddly, it seems (from b.g.c. searches) that the English prefers (deprecated template usage) Zealandic to (deprecated template usage) Zeelandic — but that may not be relevant either, because it seems to prefer (deprecated template usage) Zeeuws to either one. For example, google books:"Zeeuws dialect" gets 47 hits, google books:"Zeelandic dialect" gets 3, and google books:"Zealandic dialect" gets 2. (But funnily enough, with "language" instead of "dialect", google books:"Zealandic language" gets one relevant hit and the others get none.) —Ruakh_TALK 23:45, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

So should we use Zeeuws then? That's very hard to read for native English speakers (or maybe most readers not familiar with Dutch), I think. It is what iso639-3 calls it though.) --Polyglot 14:27, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

What "iso639-3" prefers isn't necessarily relevant. My experience is that, when there is not an obviously preferred English name for a language, they use the native language name (provided it's in Roman script). There's no intrinsic reason for us to prefer their name in this situation. Personally, I think I prefer Zeelandic because it's less likely to be confused with New Zealand (which is more familiar to most English speakers than the Dutch province). However, that's purely a gut feeling. --EncycloPetey 18:33, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

But then the native name is Zeêuws; Zeeuws is Dutch (;-) Here, we have an English name, or rather, one too many. Robert Ullmann 15:36, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Danish

It is vital to recall that there is also the Danish isle of Sjælland (spelt Zealand in English) and Zealandic may also refer to its dialect of Danish. Is there any objection against adding a 3rd meaning? Bogorm 14:58, 26 December 2008 (UTC)