Talk:Pieniężno

Untitled

I may have problems understanding the way that Wikipedia treats UTF-8 characters, yet moving the Pieniezno page to the correct spelling Pieniężno created a wrong character encoding, so I moved the page back.

Improper Italicization

There is no grammatical or expository reason to italicize former German names of now-Polish, -Lithuanian or -Russian localities in ex-German areas transferred under border changes promulgated at the Potsdam Conference. In English, italics usually denote foreign (non-English) words for things or concepts, but not place names. In German times, Pieniężno was officially Mehlsack, not Mehlsack, and the German name should not be italicized. Sca (talk) 17:07, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Come on. The standard is to use the {{de template for German, {{pl template for Polish and so on for pretty much every single name. I also question your interpretation what italics mean in English but never mind. This is trivial. We could solve this problem by just removing the German name altogether per WP:UNDUE. Volunteer Marek  17:11, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Marek: The 'standard' is misleading to readers – as I previously explained to you. My concern, as previously stated, is historical transparency. I find your obdurate reverting of my efforts in this regard bardzo annoying.

Has it occurred to you that the information presented to readers in my un-italicized versions remains exactly the same? Think about it, proszę. Then give me a reason for italicizing ex-German names that doesn't depend on someone's idea of standard procedure. "We've always done it this way" is intellectually the worst argument for any assertion. Sca (talk)

PS: My "interpretation" of what italics mean in English is based on a degree in journalism and decades of newspaper work – not to mention a lifetime of reading English-language books, especially history books. Sca (talk) 17:44, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

PPS: I also find your ostentatious blue & gold nameplate annoying. Sca (talk) 17:44, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Lorraine (region).

And are you seriously arguing that if we italicize "Mehlsack" that will confuse the readers?

And it's orange and blue not gold and blue. Volunteer Marek  18:49, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

My profoundest apologies.

You'll be thrilled to know that my sisters attended a high school whose team colors were orange and blue. Sca (talk)

Repeat: The automatic italicization of former German names of now-Polish or -Russian places misleads English-speaking readers to think the former, historically actual German names are merely German exonyms for pre-existing Polish or Russian place-names, which often is not the case. Sca (talk) 15:33, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

But it does no such thing. Seriously, nobody's going to come to such an article, see the German name italicized and think "this place has nothing to do with Germany that's why the name is italicized". And italicizing foreign names, whether former names or exonyms, is how Wikipedia puts these names in. See the example with Lorraine. This isn't specific to Polish or Russian places, it's how we do all places. Volunteer Marek  19:39, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

And actually those place names are exonyms. They're former names too, but they are exonyms. Volunteer Marek  19:40, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

No they aren't. In modern German usage, three generations after the WWII, names of smaller cities and towns usually are given in Polish, not German. This was true of, for example, Wałbrzych when it was in the news recently – even though it's a sizable place with a long history as Waldenburg. And even though Wałbrzych is a challenge for a non-Pole to pronounce.

Frequent exceptions to modern German practice are references to Danzig, Breslau and Stettin. That made sense for a few decades after the war, when those names were familiar to a great many Germans. But most of those people are gone now. As I've noted elsewhere, I don't think the German media should continue to refer to those notable cities by their German names, except in dealing with their pre-1945 histories. And it's not all that difficult for Germans to pronounce Gdańsk and Wrocław, though Szczecin is a bit more daunting. Sca (talk) 15:21, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Regardless, this is not an argument to drop the italics. Volunteer Marek  17:10, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Difficulty in pronouncing the names of cities is a reason for devising exonyms that are easier to pronounce. Such is the case for Munich and Cologne, English (and French) exonyms for München and Köln, which due to their umlauts are difficult for English speakers to pronounce.

But I'm still waiting for you to give me a reason for italicizing historical German names that doesn't depend on someone's idea of standard WP procedure.

Consider Warschau and Krakau. If they were for some reason to be employed in English prose, they would properly be italicized because they are indeed German exonyms for Polish places.

Such is not the case for German names of Polish places formerly in Germany – places such as Pieniężno. For six centuries it was named Mehlsack; it's been named Pieniężno only since 1945 or '46 – and that in honor of someone who lived most of his life in then-Allenstein (now Olsztyn), not in Mehlsack-cum-Pieniężno. Sca (talk) 21:01, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

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