Category talk:Commonwealth English

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Latest comment: 10 years ago by ElisaVan in topic Category:Commonwealth English
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Orphaned and redirect, per Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/2009/March#British EnglishMichael Z. 2009-05-04 14:23 z

But why redirect to UK of all things? (I don't see explanation for that redirect in the BPA discussion, although maybe I'm missing it.) Why not either delete it outright (my own choice) or redirect it to, say, Commonwealth or the BPA?—msh210 16:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
That's just temporary, until this category is deleted. Category:UK will be renamed Category:British English. (Both categories UK and Commonwealth represent British English.) Michael Z. 2009-05-04 17:10 z
Oh, silly me. I meant to redirect it to Category:UK, not the entry UKMichael Z. 2009-05-04 23:39 z
Couldn't it be a larger category containing British English, Indian English, etc? Mglovesfun 21:18, 11 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
But that would be redefining the meaning of British English. Linguists and dictionaries don't use “Commonwealth English” as a grouping – British English is the “standard” language used in both Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries, and in the British Empire before there was a Commonwealth. Regionalisms belong to whichever country or territory.
Without any linguistic significance, cat:CE is just a convenience grouping category, equivalent to Category:NATO English, or Category:General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs English. I have no problem with that, but editors will use the category for terms, and create nonsense labels like Template:Commonwealth English, which I have worked hard to orphan. All of our other regional categories correspond to linguistic regions, and that's how it should be. Michael Z. 2009-05-12 15:51 z
Keep, we don't have to follow other dictionaries, and this intuitively seems correct to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:44, 16 September 2009 (UTC)Reply
When your reference has the label Brit., will you intuitively type {{Commonwealth}} into Wiktionary? And then would Category:British English intuitively represent something other that what British English represents in every dictionary and linguistics book ever written?
We could add a lot of things which “intuitively seem correct” on their own, but are wrong and don't work. This is why this should be deleted, not redirected. Michael Z. 2009-09-21 04:39 z

Kept/restored, no consensus. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:31, 25 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

FWIW this seemed like a bad nomination, the fact that other linguists are using a convient, misleading incorrect name doesn't mean that we have to be as stupid. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:36, 25 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes, it's smart to make up Wiki-names for things and stupid to use the names used by experts and reference works. Especially smart if new Wiki-names ignore the reality that Canadian English is a variety of (North) American English. Michael Z. 2013-01-23 22:53 z

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Category:Commonwealth English[edit]

Geopolitical organization whose territory doesn’t correspond to any category of English. Both British and American English are used both in and out of the British Commonwealth. No terms in the category. No opposition in the BP discussionMichael Z. 2013-04-12 01:55 z

I agree, much better to list the individual countries than to put 'Commonwealth' which in my opinion is not nearly as clear. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:56, 14 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, we do have combined categories, like Category:North American English for US + Canadian. There needs to be a catch-all to use when we don’t have a breakdown of usage in the dozens of countries whose English comes from Britain and not North America. The problem is that what has conventionally been called Category:British English is not universally popular, and its label text has been changed to “UK,” which is problematic. Michael Z. 2013-04-14 16:00 z