The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. \ Backslash Forwardslash / {talk} 10:15, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of words of disputed pronunciation[edit]

List of words of disputed pronunciation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

WP:OR/WP:Listcruft. Could potentially include any word with different pronunciations in different dialects. Which is going to be nearly every word. We already have Regional accents of English, which captures the general pronunciation variation in English, and Differences between General American and Received Pronunciation, which covers the differences between two specific dialects. -Mairi (talk) 02:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete this unverifiable listcruft.Auspex1729 (talk) 02:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Seems to have indisputably reliable sources, though the article needs to be completed by giving them in every instance. . The words are limited to those with articles in Wikipedia , and so the list is not indiscriminate or infinite, and ones where the differences are particularly significant. . Appropriate summary of one aspect. The functions of a dictionary and an encyclopedia overlap. DGG (talk) 03:47, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It actually isn't limited to those with articles on Wikipedia; the links are to sound files not articles. E.g. applicable. And even when the articles exist (and aren't redirects or disambigs), they're about concepts, not words. Also, the refs are only that they have multiple pronunciations, not disputed pronunciations. -Mairi (talk) 04:02, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete this is English biased, what about German? Or Russian? Or Japanese? And there are thousands of regional pronounciations of English, this list is unmanageable. 76.66.202.123 (talk) 07:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. By "words of disputed pronunciation", this article seems to mean "words that are not pronounced exactly the same way in every dialect of English". Given the variation between dialects in vowel sounds alone, this is going to cover nearly every word in the language. Even in a single dictionary, there are a huge number of words with multiple pronounciations listed. Here's the list from one page of my 1378-page dictionary:
  • caveat emptor
  • cavern
  • cavetto
  • caviar/caviara
  • caviler/caviller
  • cayenne pepper
  • Cayuga
  • Cayuse
  • CBer
  • CD4
  • cDNA
  • cedar of Lebanon
  • cienture
  • celadon
  • celandine
  • celebratory
  • celeriac
  • celery

Articles on dialect, as mentioned by the nom, are sufficient to capture the differences. We don't need a list of words that differ. --Alynna (talk) 12:19, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. —Alynna (talk) 13:17, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. As several others suggest, the criteria given in the lede, "words which are often pronounced by native speakers of the English language in ways which many others consider to be incorrect," makes the list unmanageably long. Furthermore, there is no discussion of what leads to these differences (as might be discussed in Historical linguistics, Dialectology, etc.) or the social bases for or effects of such disagreement (as might be discussed in the Sociology of language or other fields). The list is little more than an open-ended compendium of sociophonetic trivia. Cnilep (talk) 13:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Wikipedia is inherently redundant, unwieldy, unbalanced, incomplete and imperfectible. That's what makes it great. Anybody who believes that Wikipedia will ever be the Encyclopædia Britannica is deluded. Deleting an article simply because it is redundant, unwieldy, unbalanced, incomplete and imperfectible is hypocritical, unless we intend to delete Wikipedia entirely. The article in question is clearly well-researched and carefully compiled, and trashing all that wonderful work would be a vicious mistake. Am I the only person who reads Wikipedia for pleasure? This article is a delight to read. That alone makes it worth keeping. The fact that other languages don't get the same treatment is weak justification for deleting this one. Should we delete every article that happens to be the first of its kind?--Jim10701 (talk) 14:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as unmanageable list that might be nice on someone's website but not on Wikipedia. --DAJF (talk) 14:51, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete potentially unbounded and totally unmaintainable list. Powers ^T 15:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as I see no reason to have this list. Nor does the author or one of the commentators advance one here(yet). Wefa (talk) 22:33, 4 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Pronunciation is not an absolute thing as well as its status of being disputed. I see no way this page could be useful/reliable. Triplestop x3 00:31, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep (croons tunefully) you say tomay-to, I say tomah-to...tomay-to, tomah-to, potay-to, potah-to, let's call the whole thing off. Notable - 'nuff said. Maybe if we stick to notable ones the list'd be manageable. In any case notable. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:21, 5 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Even having worked on this article a bit, it's pretty clear from everyone's arguments that this article is best deleted. Plus, trying to communicate on the talk page is next to hopeless, as many editors eschew IPA and the like, preferring their own homemade phonetics. Teh Rote (talk) 19:47, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The argument to delete something because of its size is not a valid one. You don't ignore a subject simply because of its size. This is a perfectly reasonable encyclopedic topic. Dream Focus 00:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The topic of disputed pronunciations is indisputably notable. Attempting to create an exhaustive list of such pronunciations is a different thing entirely; it is in those cases that size (under the metric of maintainability) becomes an issue. Powers ^T 16:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.