Talk:s̲h̲āh

RFD discussion: November 2020–January 2021

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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s̲h̲āh

RFD of the English section, see Wiktionary:Tea room/2020/November#s̲h̲āh. The citations (1) do not support this as a string with combining low lines under the individual letters "s" and "h", and also (2) do not support this as an English word, being instead clearly transliterations, on which topic see Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2014-06/Allowing attested romanizations, which failed with 3 support !votes to 7 oppose !votes (see also Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2014-06/Excluding romanizations by default, 5-6). (So, delete.) - -sche (discuss) 02:44, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@-sche: If {{wrongtitle}} is added then the first point is not relevant. J3133 (talk) 03:01, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Violates romanization standards, for one. Speedy delete. --{{victar|talk}} 04:22, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@Victar: “Speedy” is very inappropriate here. Fay Freak has argued against this point. J3133 (talk) 11:05, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Keep, speedy deleting for violating standards (possibly in bad faith) is absurd as we include nonstandard terms. J3133 (talk) 11:18, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Lambiam’s remark in that discussion stating “there is, in my opinion, an essential difference though between S̲h̲āh with i̲n̲d̲i̲v̲i̲d̲u̲a̲l̲ l̲e̲t̲t̲e̲r̲s̲ marked with a ‘combining low line’ as in the entry, and Shāh, with an underscored digraph, as in the citations”. I had and have not taken the time to look unto the citations as printed. I remark as often that in Unicode questions, outside practice is a bad guide, and that printed books are no guide at all but we cannot complete map print content onto the computer and there must be compromises. The most appropriate encoding appears to be s͟h, that is using U+035F COMBINING DOUBLE MACRON BELOW between both letter code points. So the entry has only to be moved to the most correct place, and as mentioned decorated by {{wrongtitle}} if it is still not correct enough, -sche’s point 1 is irrelevant thus.

I have already sufficiently shewn against -sche’s point 2 and Victar’s reproof as a “romanization” that it is not one particularly in the sense of the here linked votes, which concerned Russian and Etruscan etc. in Latin alphabet letters. This is English no less than when one talks about shahs in ASCII letters, otherwise I am invited to RFD shah because it is just a romanization rather than English. We must accept that some academics are more assiduous or autistic than the general populace in loaning terms from other languages in shapes true to the originals. It would be an even stranger and outright dubious view that the educated employ the English language less while talking English, or constantly code-switch, while others write cleaner English as indicated by their using fewer diacritics. Don’t you recognize doublethink? Fay Freak (talk) 12:59, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: Re “the most appropriate encoding”: an online version of the citation from the Encyclopaedia of Islam uses combining low lines (the current title). J3133 (talk) 18:54, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Delete as an English word, and there is no need to include it as a romanization because removing the lines yields the correct English word. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:43, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

@Vox Sciurorum: And why wouldn’t it be a correct English word with line? Because you do not like it? Fay Freak (talk) 15:51, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

s̲ is not an English letter, s̲h̲āh is not one of the few hypercorrect forms that have become naturalized in a foreign spelling, and the context of the uses is consistent with treating it is a foreign word. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 08:15, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

• Keep -- Dentonius 08:24, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
• Delete – In diacritics as seen in the loanwords fiancée, rôle and façade, the word retains a spelling from the donor language. Also with a combining double macron, s͟hāh is not an accepted form in the ort͟hograp͟hy of Persian or any other language. For example, here we can read in an English text that Heracles was “the son of Alcmēnē”. That is no argument to include Alcmēnē as a variant spelling of Alcmene.  --Lambiam 20:33, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Your argument made me wonder if my dislike of s͟hāh is more discrimination than reason, as I would have no problem with Alcmēnē. "ē" seems like a reasonable character for English word loans, where s͟hāh is from one of those orthographies that makes really annoyed; š, ŝ, or ś are perfectly reasonable characters, and if you're worried about obvious understanding, "sh" is clear and virtually never problematic.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
• Neutral. Meh. There's no practical need to include it, and it's a horrible orthography, but it does use an s plural, instead of the an plural used in Persian.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:38, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
• Delete, for a few reasons: not English, poor utility (not a very useful entry), bad encoding, poor usability (can't input characters needed to get to this entry).

As others have noted, this is not a term used as English in English text. We have the English term shah, and then we have this oddity as something more like a kind of hyper-correct, academic romanization scheme. By analogy, we have the English term honcho, and we have the romanized Japanese term hanchō. If an author of an otherwise-English text were to use the latter, I would interpret that as code switching and a use of a romanized Japanese term. Likewise, looking at this s̲h̲āh term, I view it as a romanized Persian term, not as English.

Separately, as others have also noted, any attempt at cleanly indicating a digraph should use U+035F COMBINING DOUBLE MACRON BELOW, rather than single macrons below each letter.

And given the strange encoding and characters used, exactly how would we ever expect users to arrive at this page? I have no idea how to input U+035F COMBINING DOUBLE MACRON BELOW, nor indeed how to input the s̲ or h̲ used here in s̲h̲āh.

If we are to keep this, I'd argue that this is not English, but rather romanized Persian, and the entry should be reformatted accordingly. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 01:14, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

It's not purely romanized Persian, as the Persian plural is "šâhân", yet we have examples of s͟hāhs, pluralized like English.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:48, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

It may not be purely romanized Persian, but it's also not English: the English term is shah. If someone were to use hanchōs, I would again view that as code-switching usage of a romanized Japanese term in an English context. C.f. one such example, where the author even glosses this English-pluralized-Japanese-term in explicit recognition of its non-English-ness. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:41, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• Delete. Not actually useful to readers. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:59, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
• I would delete this even on the basis of no actual knowledge of the derivation. Even if it does actually exist, it is too esoteric to be called "English". Mihia (talk) 00:09, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
• Delete per Mihia. Checkmate, shahs. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 11:16, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
• RFD-deleted. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:28, 1 January 2021 (UTC)