Talk:rumân

RFV discussion: May–July 2020

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rumân

Because of the (somewhat strange) conjunctive in the etymology: "As this now obsolete form of the word was mostly used before the language's orthographic reform and shifting of script to the current Latin-based one, it would have been represented mostly with the old Romanian Cyrillic alphabet". --Marontyan (talk) 20:27, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

@Marontyan: So? Shouldn’t Romanian words from the time only or mostly Cyrillic was used always have a Latin spelling entered too so one can always find the word in the Roman alphabet? And think about Romanian contributors, too, they naturally have it hard to write the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet on the computer. Similarly words from Albanian before the current alphabet should be normalized, as before about 1900 one had pure debauchery with Roman, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic etc. alphabet, and Serbo-Croatian generally does not need to be attested twice for both Latin and Cyrillic script to appear, not only and if only for political poignancy. The criteria for inclusion say only the term needs to be attested, not its spelling. What do you even do if you attest from audio records? Template:normalized needs to be used more. Fay Freak (talk) 18:47, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't think spelling should be normalized willy-nilly. Serbo-Croatian is an unusual case. Romanian may fit, but I'd like to see Wiktionary:About Romanian mention it. The original spelling should have an entry, as well though, so people can look it up in the original spelling. Albanian is something I would be deeply concerned about normalizing. Normalization works when there are multiple spellings that have a simple conversion between them. If there's more than four different scripts in "pure debauchery", then there's far too much independent judgement about the proper current spelling and not enough representing what's actually in the works at hand.

Attesting from audio records is painful. I wouldn't have a problem with citing a sense of a word otherwise cited from text, but it's something we can generally avoid and should.

Normalization is something that at least needs documentation on WT:About Foo, if not broad discussion, before starting in practice.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:17, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

If "rumân" is not attested as Romanian, let's delete it via RFV, consistent with WT:ATTEST. We generally attest spellings; there are exceptions e.g. for systematically created romanizations based on votes that codified such exceptional practices. Whether template {{normalized}} saying "The spelling of this entry has been normalized" should exist at all is open to discussion; it is currently used in less than 50 entries and looks very suspect to me, appearing to be contrary to the empiricist spirit that I have known in the English Wiktionary for years. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:01, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure about Romanian, as a biscript language with, I believe, fairly stable orthography. But it should have a full discussion.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:00, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

I am even sure about English. Only English and French have an orthographic depth that does not always allow to derive a spelling from a pronunciation, but even if so then in these languages one can just look how people on the web write a word, and since we shan’t be Anglocentric and Francogallicocentric these two languages can’t set the expectations; technically one also uses manuscripts and in handwriting there is interpretation again – one cannot remove the subjectivities in editors’ choices, and one does not need to since it is better to have a word than not because of anxiosity; it is pleasurable that in dictionary entries one often sees the grounds for presentation choices though they be arbitrary and subjective and all these nasty things that the Anglo-Saxon pseudophilosophers, calling themselves objectivist and analytic, pretend not to have. Of course Dan Polansky’s views on what “we generally do” are not at all meaningful. Apparently @Word dewd544 who created this entry and others for Romanian word which are long obsolete and whom I now ping to confirm did not think like Dan Polansky — like auă; don’t such words appears in Latin reeditions of Romanian works anyway, or are such reeditions of old Romanian works not quotable? – complications Dan Polansky did not grasp, which are solved if one does not assume in the first place that spellings have to be attested —, nor did @HeliosX who with his deletion request for all Romanian Cyrillic spellings appears to imply that Romanian entries should only have modern spellings in each case. I also ping @Robbie SWE who might not look here otherwise. These Romanian editors might write the stance that Romanian entries can be written in the modern alphabet independently of their original writing into Wiktionary:About Romanian; though this alas does not solve the problem that the CFI are written in a way that many people misunderstand and misbrook them – I would need to rewrite this big ball of mud. Fay Freak (talk) 11:44, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

We can be Anglocentric, we probably should be Anglocentric, as we're the English wiktionary. As for only English and French cannot derive a spelling from a pronunciation, Spanish is another example, and Spanish could not have a spelling system where you can derive a spelling from a pronunciation, because different dialects have different phoneme sets. Chinese and Arabic are more examples where converting pronunciation to spelling is nontrivial.

If such words appear in Latin editions of Cyrillic works, then they should count as an attesting.

WT:CFI could possibly use a rewriting, but it's a policy, not a constitution or religious canon. It means what we need it to mean, and if the majority of users have an understanding that differs from some reading of the text, at best they should clarify or modify the text; they are not wrong.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:20, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Blame it on the quarantine or whatever, but I'm having a hard time understanding what we're actually discussing here. Are we (a) proposing a deletion of the term rumân, (b) a rewording of the etymology or (c) deleting the problematic passage? The term rumân exists and is attested in Romanian, both contemporary usage (albeit dialectal or poetic), but even in historic literary works thus making it mostly archaic. The explanatory text which caused this nomination doesn't give me any useful information so deleting it would definitely not make the entry worse. If anyone cares to dumb it down for me, please do so because I want to help. --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:30, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I think the question is whether rumân is actually attested, or if it's just found in Cyrillic. It then spiraled off into a discussion of whether Romanian Cyrillic should be transliterated, and whether all languages should be canonized in spelling.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:26, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

It is definitely attested – it is even used in contemporary literature to refer to people in the 16th to 18th century who belonged to a lower social class. A Wikisource search gives us countless quotes from prose and poetry. In my opinion, transliterating Romanian Cyrillic does not make Wiktionary any better – I mean, it hasn't been used for more than 170 years and it would not make sense to any Romanian person. --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:23, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

• RFV-kept. This was a frivolous nomination in the first place. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:36, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Was român just a modern invention?

From what I understand, while rumân was the most common version, român was still found in some dialects, particularly in Moldavia. Obviously the variant chosen to be the standard was român due to its similarity to romanus.

For instance, Letopisețul țărâi Moldovei of Grigore Ureche (1647) uses both versions in the same book. Bogdan (talk) 20:26, 25 November 2022 (UTC)