Talk:Caron/Archive 1

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no consensus, with 8 for caron and 6 for háček. (I'd personally be for the latter, but meh.) —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 09:40, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

Caron → Háček

Note: I have now reorganized this to follow the standard procedure as described at Wikipedia:Requested moves. I have crossed out some text below (sorry about that), because it seems to suggest that the vote result will be eternally binding, which I don't believe is the case for Wikipedia:Requested moves votes. -- Curps 16:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

The previous votes were disorganized and incomplete. This vote will stay in effect until any major developments regarding the háček. Just say either Caron or Háček along with any comments, in the AfD fashion. Vote closes in 7-days, on Saturday, 1 April 2006 at 06:23:14 UTC. So, where should this article be located? -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hexagon1 (talk • contribs)

You should have followed the procedure described at Wikipedia:Requested moves, to announce the vote more widely (if you want to have an official vote). Note: I have now done this. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "this vote will stay in effect until any major developments regarding the háček". -- Curps 12:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Darn it, I knew there was some policy I was missing, I even tried searching for it, with no luck. The reference to it is tucked away at the bottom of WP:MOVE apparently. Oh, well - Curps fixed it, and we all learn from our mistakes. +Hexagon1 (talk) 11:18, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

---

Add *Caron or *Háček followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Caron is the common, traditional name. Thumbelina 00:08, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Háček. That's just what it is, unicode notwithstanding. We shouldn't name things by what general geek think it is, but by what geeks within the relevant subject think it is. The relevant subject here is linguistics, not HTML. Also, háček appears in far more English language dictionaries than caron. Finally, "Caron" as a common-ish name/proper noun is going to ultimately create nightmares on the disambiguation pages. Háček is much more precise. CzechOut 21:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Keep at Caron. Jonathunder 03:38, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Háček - proper name, been around for hundreds of years. +Hexagon1 (talk) 06:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not a proper name in the sense that proper nouns talks about. It's a generic noun, and hence must be a native English word. č is never found in native English words.--Prosfilaes 00:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I meant proper as in the 'correct' sense, caron just popped out of nowhere, it has no linguistic backing at all. +Hexagon1 (talk) 11:35, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Caron. Regardless of the circumstances under which the Unicode consortium chose the then-obscure name "caron" back in 1991 or earlier, this is now (many years later) not only the official name but by far the most commonly used name, as Google searches show (see other discussion on this talk page). Caron can no longer be considered a "neologism" (see Discussion section below). -- Curps 12:21, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Háček — It's been called háček since 1412. Caron is a neologism, popular only because of its use in Unicode and thus HTML documentation. See also my earlier comment.   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 13:58, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Caron. Regardless of what the name is in the languages which use the character, caron is the name for it in English. In English the term Hacek is virtually unknown. -- Jordi·✆ 14:15, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Háček - while caron is the proper technical term in context of character encodings, the article is not just about encodings and charsets, but also about orthography and typography, where the term caron is unknown (or neologism carried in recently by computer people). rado 14:57, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Háček—No one seems to even know how or why the name caron appeared, and now it's only established in the narrow context of computer jargon. —Michael Z. 2006-03-26 16:15 Z

Caron. I don't care what you call it in some other language, this is the normal English name today, the only name familiar to a wide range of computer users and not just people in a narrow occupational field who likely know both names. Note also that while the 1961 Webster's Third New International Dictionary lists haček illustrating the mark it describes under discussion, there is no diacritical mark on the a Other English possibilities probably more common than haček include wedge and inverted circumflex. Gene Nygaard 16:54, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

My 2004 Canadian Oxford Dictionary contains the headword "háček"', but not "caron". Caron is not widely familiar to computer users, it is a technical designator in the very narrow field of computer character set manipulation, while háček is actively used in typography, translation, and linguistics. —Michael Z. 2006-03-27 17:54 Z

Caron. There are no carons on English letters; if you suggest a name for a generic item that has a caron on it, it's probably not English. There's a perfectly good English name for it, the caron.--Prosfilaes 00:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Quite true there are no carons, but there are háčeks on Czech letters, and we sometimes need to speak and write about them in English. —Michael Z. 2006-03-27 17:54 Z

Caron is the appropriate English name for the V-looking diacritic. Otherwise, we better rename the ^-looking diacritic from Circumflex to Circonflexe, the Diaeresis to Umlaut, the Ring to Å, the Acute to Aigue, the Macron to Makron, the Cedilla to Cedille, etc. ad infinitum. Only diacritics or symbols that don't have established English names should use a non-English name. Examples of that would include Ogonek or Schwa. The only way in would be hacek with NO diacritics involved. If a word is adopted into English, it loses diacritics. (P.S. I believe caron is derived from the same Spanish word that was the source for carom, considering they both refer to small angles.) --Sturmde 00:24, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

the caron was invented on the spot hacek is the correct name, michael z puts it well in discussion section.

Yes, it's the proper name in Czech. But it's not correct in English (nor Slovak, nor Finnish, nor....). Is that so incomprehensible to you who goeth anonymously and sans grammar? If you hadn't noticed, this is a VOTING section, not a discussion or comment section.--Sturmde 05:58, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

But the IP user has a valid point, caron WAS just invented on the spot, and it's use today is pertty much confined to the Internet, whereas 'háček' is the valid term accepted in typographic and linguistic fields. And don't discredit users for not using proper grammar, that doesn't exclude them from having an opinion, and he didn't post directly in the Voting section, he threaded the post under yours as a comment (using '::'), which is quite valid. +Hexagon1 (talk) 06:45, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Save for the fact it wasn't a valid point in a section set up to be a vote and give-your-own comment section.... Furthermore, your claim about caron being "invented on the spot" is patently false--where's proof of that? I've put down in the DISCUSSION section below, some things that are reachable by Internet, a link to the 1986 ISO specifications, and the reaching-back-to-the-1970's University of Waterloo SCRIPT specifications. Caron is NOT confined to the Internet. It's in the OED, and it's also in a number of American university linguistics texts. Furthermore, caron is both UNICODE and ISO standard. These are legitimate sources, and legitimate authorities. Hachek is still a Czech word, no matter how you slice it. Finally, unsigned comments are essentially vandalism and appropriately chastised, in any event. And how exactly do you know the anonym is a he? --Sturmde 07:17, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Where is the proof it wasn't? In the comments section you state that caron predates 1991, well, guess-what girlfriend (sorry, couldn't resist :D) háček predates 1491. And why don't you prove that it wasn't invented on the spot? Háček has been around for more then 500 years. And UNICODE and ISO is what I meant, I should have said 'technical jargon' instead of the Net. On to your next point, Háček is a Czech word. Most of English words are also Latin, Greek or French word. Don't see the point in stating that it's a Czech word. So is 'robot'. And I always refer to an unknown party as a male, which is also a commonplace practice dating back over 500-years. And don't go all feminist on me, I respect women as equals, I just don't see how I should have to modify my language to suit their insecurities. +Hexagon1 (talk) 10:25, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

You are surely exaggerating: usage of háček in English surely does not date to 1491. In any case, appeals to "seniority" are not germane. The term "Persia" was used for millennia... shall we renounce the term "Iran" because it is a recent neologism in English, not even a century old? And with respect to an earlier point, it is odd to describe "computers" as a narrow field, as opposed to typography... I suppose no one uses computers, while almost everyone is an amateur or professional typographer? In any case, "caron" is used even in some typography texts (including the English version of a Czech typography website, see elsewhere on this page for the link). -- Curps 05:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Well there must have been some term for it, and it sure as hell weren't caron (I'm not saying it was háček either, but háček at least came into English earlier by far then caron). We use Iran as that's what the Iranians want and use, we should use háček because that's what typographers want and use. What you didn't seem to get is that no matter how large a field computers is, we are talking about a TYPOGRAPHICAL mark here. Same as we don't keep the article "Gamma-hydroxybutyrate" at it's common street-names Juice, Liquid X, Liquid E or Georgia Home Boy, even though their use FAR outnumbers the use of "Gamma-hydroxybutyrate". And caron is an alternate name for the mark known as háček, there are no laws I am aware of forbidding websites from using it, but that doesn't change the correct name of the mark. +Hexagon1 (talk) 12:05, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Note Septentrionalis's comment below: he states that according to the OED, hacek was first used in English in 1953 in a Czech grammar, and did not come into general usage until 1980. -- Curps 01:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

And yor point is? Caron didn't come into general usage until the 1990s. Háček is still older (so it's got that going for it too :))! And I see it as odd you haven't taken issue with almost any other points I made, I take that to mean you agree with me in those aspects. +Hexagon1 (talk) 08:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

What other points? Your entire argument seems to consist of claiming with a straight face that the word "caron" doesn't even exist, that "hacek" has been used in English for centuries (oops, that turned out not to be true and would be irrelevant even if it were), and arguing that the field of typography is more significant and better known than the field of computing (even though some typography texts and websites, including the English version of at least one Czech typography website, use "caron": see for instance [1]). -- Curps 23:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hexagon, I think it's clear that caron hasn't come into general usage, period. It has no confirmed appearance in any English dictionary. It only appears in computer programmers' references, and programmers don't write about "carons" or háčeks. Its existence in the SCRIPT specification is apocryphal, and appearance in ISO and Unicode reference tables hardly makes it part of the English language. —Michael Z. 2006-03-30 16:06 Z

Take a look: here the word "caron" is used in a linguistics website [2]. The guy grumbles a bit about its origin, but he has the sense and good grace to use what has become the prevalent term for the diacritic. And earlier, I mentioned the English version of a Czech typography website that uses it: [[3]. If you were trying to argue that caron is the less commonly used term, that might be a basis for discussion and debate. But if you are trying to pretend that the word doesn't even exist, and is solely used within Unicode code tables, well that's just silly. -- Curps 23:36, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Sure it's used, but these are anecdotal attestations. It also appears in one of the most respected typography sources: The Elements of Typographic Style, which carries more weight. But it still hasn't hit the radar of the dictionaries, the authorities on the language (and these days they do not prescribe the language, they do research and describe what we use). It's a word, but it's not a well-established part of the language. —Michael Z. 2006-03-31 00:20 Z

• Háček, because the use of "caron" in Unicode looks like it was a mistake, and because I bet there's as many English-speaking people with an interest in Slavic languages (who would call it a "háček") as there are with an interest in Unicode. -- Mwalcoff 04:54, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The link you provide doesn't indicate it was a "mistake"; rather it documents that "caron" predates Unicode. Unicode merely popularized and "officialized" the term, but did not invent it. -- Curps 05:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

It says it's proven to date back only to 1984, with no explanation. Maybe "mistake" was the wrong term for it. -- Mwalcoff 23:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

• Caron See below. In English usage, haček is the innovation, c. 1980. Septentrionalis 22:51, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

It is hardly accurate any longer to call "caron" a neologism: the first edition of the Unicode Standard was published in 1991, which makes "caron" about as old as the World Wide Web and all the "neologisms" invented for it (such as "webpage", "website", "weblog", "wiki", etc) which really aren't neologisms anymore either. The issue is not which word was invented first or used in 1412, but which word is most commonly used now. Google hit counts show that "caron" is not only the official term but far more commonly used (see discussion elsewhere on this page). -- Curps 16:14, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

That's just incorrect. Email, weblog, and website are part of everyday English language: they appear in many publications, newspapers, books, and dictionaries. They are a part of many people's active vocabulary.

Háček is the name for an accent used in some foreign languages and in romanization schemes derived from them, used, in English, by typographers, translators, and linguists who write about and use the háček. It is not a word in popular culture, but it is actively used in this set of knowledge domains. For this reason, háček appears in English dictionaries.

Caron is technical jargon for a code point, used as a stand-in by the developers of an obsolete character set for unknown reasons—it has been inherited by the Unicode specifications, and remains a placeholder in references for people who write software which converts and displays character sets, but who don't use the diacritic in question, and don't really care what it's called. The equivalent designators caron and U+02C7 are identifiers in technical specifications, and are not words actively used in any realm of knowledge. For this reason, caron is absent from English dictionaries —Michael Z. 2006-03-27 17:28 Z

Untrue. Caron is not a "technical jargon for a code point", it's an appropriate rare English term for the mark. It predates 1991. Hachek on the other hand (using the English spelling of the term) is a parochial Czech term, not used in other Slavic languages that use the same mark. Choosing to use a Czech word, for something that has an English name, over perhaps using a Slovak word, or a Croatian word, or a Finnish term, etc... is a biased POV in favor of the Czech language over other Slavic languages. Thus, caron is perfectly NPOV. I'll keep posting older references that are online as I come across them to counter your claims, as sadly the OED isn't in the public domain. Maybe at some point, you'll realize that in linguistics study in the English language, caron is a valid term. Check out the 1986 ISO 8879 at http://www.bbsinc.com/iso8879b.html I also find it was in the University of Waterloo's SCRIPT markup and formatting system (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.risks/browse_thread/thread/fc14d28d38efc1df/b64d1b13af7200a6?lnk=st&q=caron+diacritic+origin&rnum=1#b64d1b13af7200a6) by the same time, and that goes back into the 1970's. --Sturmde 07:02, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Refer to my reply to your previous post at your vote in the Voting section. And about the Czech POV, Czech is the language that uses the diacritic the most (except Chinese romanization, but that's more of a logical tone symbol then a háček). It was invented for, and named in the Czech language. A minority of English-speakers are frightened by this ugly big word, and seek to find alternate 'English-looking' words, such as caron. Háček is commonplace in linguistic and typographic usage. It's the proper typographic name for this typographic symbol. The very fact we are having this argument contributes to the status of 'háček' as a legit English word. Sorry if I'm rambling - too much blood in my caffeine-stream. :D +Hexagon1 (talk) 10:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Sturmde, what does the OED say about "caron" and hachek, and which edition did you find them in? English dictionaries seem to contain the English word háček—are you saying English dictionaries are all "POV" in favour of the Czech language, and to maintain neutrality we should use your unattested spelling? Your "ISO" reference is just another programmers' reference, but don't programmers make their programs handle "carons" merely for the sake of translators, linguists and Czechs who want to print háčeks? —Michael Z. 2006-03-29 15:28 Z

Would critics of háček please stop asserting that it is not an English word? It appears in many English dictionaries, while caron is apparently only present in the gigantic OED.

Would someone kindly tell us how caron is defined in the OED, and what etymology and dates are given? (You can relate these facts without infringing on Oxford's copyright.) It sounds like a Spanish or French loan word to me. Any insights? —Michael Z. 2006-03-28 17:59 Z

"Caron" isn't in the online version of the OED, which I think has everything that's in the print version. -- Mwalcoff 04:51, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a copy, but someone apparently already confirmed that it's in the print edition (see elsewhere on this page). This is only marginally relevant though: the usage is very thoroughly attested, as anyone can easily verify for themselves, and any dictionaries that omit it are in need of updating. Surely no one is pretending with a straight face that the word (with the given definition) doesn't actually exist. -- Curps 05:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Sturmde stated that "caron" is in the OED, but he is contradicted by the online OED and this 2001 article [4]. I'm waiting for confirmation. —Michael Z. 2006-03-29 15:28 Z

I have here New Oxford Dictionary of english, printed in 2001, and caron is not there. háček (with all the proper diacritics) is. rado 07:12, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

That's not the OED. -- Curps 07:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Use of the term in English

I'd like to take issue with Jordi's statement that the word "háček" is "virtually unknown" in English. As I said above next to my vote, there's probably as many if not more English speakers with an interest in Slavic or Baltic languages than with an interest in Unicode. Anyone studying Czech, Slovak, the South Slavic languages, Lithuanian, etc., would know the symbol as a háček, not as a caron.

If you do a Google battle between /caron diacritic/ and /hacek diacritic/, you get a ratio of about 16:13 in favor of caron. But many of the result documents in the first batch are simply lists of unicode characters. If you do a Google Usenet search battle, /hacek diacritic/ comes out ahead, 85-57.

So I think we can at least call it a tie when we're talking about familiarity to English speakers. To break the tie, I'm favoring "háček" over "caron" because the latter is such a new term and of unexplained origin. -- Mwalcoff 05:06, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

A better Google comparison is to search for "hacek + breve - caron" and "caron + breve - hacek". As most of the people discussing here are aware, breve is like a hacek, only rounded rather than pointed. Including "breve" in the search ensures that "caron" is being used in the context of diacritics (and not some other use like Leslie Caron), and excluding the alternate term helps eliminate cases where one term is merely defined in passing as a synonym for the other. When you do the two searches, the Google hit count is overwhelmingly in favor of "caron". -- Curps 05:29, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that's a fair comparison. English speakers who deal with Slavic or Baltic languages are unlikely to need the word "breve." But people who use the word "caron" are likely to deal with Unicode or related subjects and therefore would be far likelier to use both words in the same document. It seems most of the results of the /breve caron -hacek/ search are just lists of Unicode characters. -- Mwalcoff 05:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly right, or other Internet documents based on those Internet references. Character set references are duplicated thousands of times on the Internet. A Google search is not a fair yardstick. —Michael Z. 2006-03-29 15:28 Z

Caron Haček is the innovation is English. OED dates introduction to 1953, in a Czech grammar; first general usage is 1980. Septentrionalis 22:07, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

For me, the "fair" Google test is that which would be applied by a person with no knowledge of the word entering the word alone into the search box. If you put "hacek" in, you immediately get documents relevant to the diacritical within the first 10 hits. If you put in "caron", it's not until page 2, and only because of this article that you get something about this diacritical. The next hit isn't until page 12. "Caron", therefore is an awfully ambiguous word in general use, whereas háček has the advantage of being both English (it appears in English dictionaries, with suggested English-rules pluralization) and precise.CzechOut 23:51, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

This test is irrelevant. There are plenty of words which have multiple possible meanings or homonyms: Windows and Apple for instance. The mere fact that "hacek" has no homonyms and there are few people named Mr. or Ms. Hacek is not an argument either for or against it. -- Curps 01:34, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

And someone who is a little smarter about using search engines will search for something like caron AND typography (basically what you get if you do a Google search without putting the "AND" in there and without enclosing it in quotations or using the advanced search exact phrase box) and get 16,500 hits, versus a mere 332 hits for hacek AND typography. Gene Nygaard 03:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Septentrionalis, what does the OED say about caron? —Michael Z. 2006-03-30 04:12 Z

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Renamed to caron

Unicode exclusively uses the name "caron" for the official names of Unicode characters. See for instance http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0100.pdf (scroll down to the third page), for instance U+010C = "Latin capital letter C with caron".

Also, the HTML entity names for Š š are Š and š (see http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/sgml/entities.html ).

The Unicode usage in particular can be considered normative. Accordingly I've moved the article to Caron and revived the old pre-redirect contents of "Caron" as Caron (disambiguation). -- Curps 19:39, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Typographers invented their own word. Please cite an English dictionary that includes the word caron. I have only found dictionaries that include the word haček. If you cannot find such a dictionary, this entry should be moved back to Haček.   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 21:01, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

The Unicode Consortium is surely a more authoritative (and normative) reference than any general-purpose dictionary. They are officially in charge of, quite literally, compiling and naming any symbol that can be written in any language, including all letters and their associated diacritics, not to mention syllabics and ideographs. For whatever reasons, after sufficient deliberation they chose the term "caron". W3C (the organization that standardizes HTML) has followed suit, by naming two character entity references "Scaron" and "scaron" rather than "Shacek" [5]. Other organization such as Microsoft have followed suit in their documents [6].

You can find tens of thousands of examples of this usage of "caron" with any Google search; it's a bit disingenuous to pretend the word doesn't exist. I don't know how the word originated or when, I merely take note that it is in very extensive use today and is the term preferred by official organizations in charge of naming such things.

We can do a Google lookup to try to gauge the relative popularity of the two terms. To avoid false positives caused by other uses of "caron", we do searches on hacek + breve and caron + breve. I get 4,570 hits and 60,900 hits, respectively: "caron" is more common by a factor of more than 10.

Actually, it's even much worse than that. Most of the usages of "hacek" occur together with "caron", merely listing it as a synonym for "caron". We can search on hacek + breve - caron and caron + breve - hacek. I get 642 hits and 58,200 hits, respectively. Almost a factor of 100.

I believe this method to be completely spurious. The result of overthinking things by "almost a factor of 100". Consider, as I have said below, the kid of 14 who's heard this word, knows nothing about it, and goes to Google it. They're not going to do some advanced, multivariate search. They're going to put in the word "hacek". And they're going to put in the word "caron". Then they're going to hit "search". When they do that, "hacek" will reveal sites detailing the diacritical mark instantly. Right there on the first page. If they put in "Caron", the only hit they'll get that has anything to do with linguistics is this page. It takes another 12 pages (at Google's default of 10 entries per page) before there's another reference to Caron-as-diacritical. The word "caron" is simply imprecise, and does not generally appear in many standard English dictionary, whereas some variation of the word háček is and does. I'm quite certain that there are more hits overall for "caron + <insert your favorite modifier here>", because there are generally more pages on the internet for how to do (something) than there are about (something). How you get an wide-angle v-lookin' diacritical over a letter is to type a variation of "&car"--but only because &hac already existed in other languages like BASIC. That doesn't mean that the name of the damn thing is actually a caron. What's next? We gonna start officially callin' chickens "plucks" because that's what ya gotta do to 'em before you throw 'em in the pot? Please consider very carefully whether we want to create a reality based upon many of our own biases towards the computer language term.CzechOut 00:30, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps "hacek" was more popular at one time, but that is not the case in current usage. As for dictionaries, well, I don't have one handy, but User:Sturmde mentioned on this very talk page that "caron" is in the Oxford English Dictionary (see below or [7]).

-- Curps 01:04, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Regarding older dictionaries (your 1963 dictionary cited below), it may well be that caron has only come into prominence relatively recently. We can speculate that the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1992 (Dissolution of Czechoslovakia) may have had something to do with it, because according to our article Czechs and Slovaks have different names for it (háček in Czech and mäkčeň in Slovak), and a neutral term may have been needed. Whatever the history, Google certainly seems to show that in addition to being the official term, "caron" is by far more common in current usage. -- Curps 01:24, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not just older dictionaries.

• http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=caron — not found.
• http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=hacek — found in the American Heritage Dictionary from 2000 (incidentally, they spell it the same way as that 1963 dictionary with the haček over the c and no mark on the a).

Please cite something respectable that defines caron as an English word.   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 03:20, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

As I already mentioned, User:Sturmde has already cited the Oxford English Dictionary. That should be respectable enough. I don't happen to have a copy handy and the online subscription is a bit too pricey, but you can check this if you wish. Nevertheless, this argument borders on irrelevance. Caron is manifestly in widespread use, as any Google search will show. Dictionaries that fail to include it are either incomplete or not up to date. Are you seriously claiming this word doesn't exist, in the face of overwhelming evidence of very widespread actual usage? -- Curps 04:39, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Háček, with the diacritics, appears in my Canadian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed. (2004), and at dictionary.com; caron's not in either. This seems to be the more established term, coming from linguistics.

Caron, I'm guessing, is a computer-oriented neologism, invented or popularized by some people writing technical specs. It appears to have some authority in typography, as Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style presents this as the primary name, with wedge and háček as alternate names. Of course it will Google: it's in a zillion copies of Unicode and HTML references on the net. —Michael Z. 2005-09-5 20:05 Z

Apparently, it is not quite a neologism: some use has been documented from the 1980s: see this this FAQ at Unicode.org.

See also this bilingual Czech/English typographical article, which uses "háček" in the Czech text and "caron" in the English text. (at http://www.magtypo.cz/download/TYPO_2004_10.pdf )

You state that hacek is the established term from linguistics, but this is a puzzling statement since linguistics usually concerns itself with the underlying structure and grammar of a language rather with the writing system used to write it down. If a caron/hacek is used in Slovak, for instance, to indicate palatalization, then it is usually the latter phenomenon that linguists will study, not the caron mark itself. To a great extent, linguistics focuses on the spoken language and language acquisition and grammatical structure and much less if at all on the written language. On the other hand, naming and studying the various symbols and elements of the written form is much more the province of typographers and folks like the Unicode Consortium. And if even Czech typographical publications (like the example cited above) use "caron" in English, then it seems this term is now very firmly established, regardless of its possibly recent origin and the failure of some general-purpose dictionaries to take note of this usage. -- Curps 06:08, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Hm. The diacritic has been used in linguistics since the late 19th century (Scientific transliteration is based on the Preussische Instruktionen). Since all the dictionaries I've seen only use the term háček, I assume that it's been called that by linguists for over a century, hence the term is better-established than "caron". I could be wrong, though.

Thanks for the references about the mysterious origin of caron. Interesting to learn that it appears to predate Unicode and possibly even ISO-8859-X. —Michael Z. 2005-09-6 07:27 Z

Hacek or caron?

Should this article not be at caron? All English language references I checked, including the ISO/IEC 8859 and Unicode, call the glyph caron, with hacek as an alternative name. Jordi·✆ 17:35, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

But it seems that "caron" appeared out of nowhere (or out of limited typographical usage) in those documents, while hacek/háček has been usually used in English speaking world before. rado 08:03, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've made caron a redirect here. Does anyone think this is a bad idea? --KelisFan2K5 00:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

That's a good short-term solution, but this really should be adjudicated. Frankly, "caron" is the proper English name for the mark, and this is the English Wikipedia. Why should it be redirecting to the Czech language name? As is, this article is impossible to locate. In linguistics textbooks, it's usually referred to as a simple hacek without any diacritics. The name itself has always seemed suspicious. Even though it is a Czech word for "little hook", it also reads directly as being "ha (the letter h)" + "Czech".... as if someone were calling it a Czech H. In many transcription systems of the XIX century, ch, sh, and zh were used in place of the caron. (In Zamenhof's own Esperanto, he also used +h when his circumflexed letters weren't available.) By the way, "caron" didn't appear out of nowhere. It's in the OED. --Sturmde 21:23, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

currently hacek and caron both redirect here so finding the article is not an issue the only issue is what it should be titled i think a poll is in order. Plugwash 22:28, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Haček is in my latest Canadian Oxford, but I can't find caron in any dictionaries. Do we know when caron first appeared in the OED?

Is it relevant that ch, etc., were used in some transcription systems? —Michael Z. 2005-09-5 20:15 Z

Czech is 'čech' /ʧɛx/ in Czech, not 'ček' /ʧɛk/ (as in on the end of /hʌːʧɛk/), háček DOES mean 'litle hook', not 'Czech h', and 'ch' /x/ is treated completely separately from 'h' /h/ in Czech, not as a variant of h) +Hexagon1 (talk) 02:19, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

English doesn't have /x/. I said it "reads" (in English) as if one is saying "ha; Czech". I'm quite well aware of the translation as "little hook". By the way, I'm fascinated by the observation that the Czech language wiki doesn't even have and article on hachek. http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speci%C3%A1ln%C3%AD:Search?search=h%C3%A1%C4%8Dek&go=J%C3%ADt+na --Sturmde 07:27, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Well in Finnish, it might read nazi. You're making false analogies. And the Czech Wikipedia is considerably smaller then the English one, it has different priorities then making petty diacritical mark pages. But I made one just to make you happy. +Hexagon1 (talk) 07:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Háček

• Oppose: I don't really care which of the other three is chosen, but this word has "too many" diacritics to be an English word. In particular, the čárka over the á represents vowel length, a concept completely foreign to native English speakers. —Bkell 21:23, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

• Support This is the most established English name for this diacritic. —Michael Z. 2005-09-5 20:10 Z

• Support Not sure if this discussion is still active (I guess it is now) but this is what the OED uses for the spelling of the name, and how they spell it. They also indicate that the word is foreign to English. I couldn't find caron in the OED online at all, which is surprising to me. If it were there and/or if historical usage of the term "caron" could be proven, I would support that name for the page instead. Theshibboleth 08:01, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Haček

• Support – I have access to a copy of Websters Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged, 1963). Caron does not appear. Haček is spelled with a plain “a” and a wedge above the “c”.   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 11:15, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Caron

• Support: its what most english typographical documents call this diacritic Plugwash 22:28, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Jan Hus

Is it just me, or is Jan Hus' supposed invention of the háček just a legend? I'm no historian of Central European orthography, but on my trips to Czech historical museums, I've seen what we today would call the Polish system -- "cz," "sz," and "rz" -- used in Czech-language documents up to the 18th century. And at the Bethlehem Chapel, a reproduction of one of Hus' letters from prison lacks hačeks. He is writing to his "przateli." Mwalcoff 30 June 2005 16:36 (UTC)

Plural of Háček

The plural of háček in English is háčeks. There have been several changes to the Czech form, háčky, but this is incorrect. I am looking in a copy of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary.   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C July 1, 2005 12:33 (UTC)

Geez, that's really fascinating! But would you care to pin-point where in the atricle anyone mentions any plural forms in English? And any English-speaking person with any brains could tell that a plural is usually made by adding an 's' at the end of a word. And what's with people and trying to define other languages through usage of English dictionaries? That's like trying to define an obscure Lithuanian word (or something), through a Macquarie (Australian English) dictionary. -- Hexagon1

It is actually fascinating, because it lends support to the notion that háček is actually an English word, as well as a Czech one. That an English language dictionary uses standard English rules for pluralization on what so many seem insistent on calling a "Czech-only" word does in fact give weight to the argument that it's the right term to use here. You know what my copy of Oxford American Dictionary gives for the plural of caron? Nothing, cause it ain't listed.CzechOut 23:15, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I completely forgot about this ancient discussion, this was, like, when I first signed up. I was just rather surprised someone was telling me to make a plural by adding an 's'. And I'm a big 'háček' arguer, don't go all anti-'caron' on me. :D +Hexagon1 (talk) 02:28, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Where have carons gone below edit screen?

Where have all the diacritic marks, located below the "edit" screen, for insertion into articles, gone? The caron isn't there any more, nor most others. Badagnani 08:56, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, the special characters are back; just click on the drop-down menu just below the edit screen (the top line is labeled "Wiki") to get diacritics and foreign character sets for various languages. Badagnani 09:48, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

IPA

How is /r̝/ supposed to represent Czech "ř"? As far as I can see, the up tack does not mean fricative, or sibilant, or whatever characteristic of ř I can imagine. It is defined to mean "raised", and it is typically used for vowels. -- EJ 17:08, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

See Obsolete & Nonstandard IPA Symbols.   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 19:54, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

So, where did that table come from? Is it an official recommendation of IPA? -- EJ 21:17, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Do a basic internet search for IPA AND Czech AND r. You're not the first one to complain that the current IPA does not have a means to fully and properly represent ř.   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 23:26, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I did of course a similar Google search, and it didn't answer the question. Anyway, I realized that the source I should consult is the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.

BTW, I am not complaining. I am just curious, as I've never seen this particular solution to the "Czech vs. IPA" problem before; the answer I've usually heard was that it is impossible to represent ř in current IPA. But I can't say I like this solution either. Apart from stretching the phonetical reality, it has an obvious technical drawback: the voiceless variant of ř would require two diacritics below the letter, which is quite awkward: [r̝̥]. -- EJ 00:35, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Is the the Czech 'a' an IPA 'a' or 'ʌ'

According to the Handbook, the Czech 'a' is represented as 'ʌ' in the IPA? And aren't IPA transcriptions supposed to appear in slashes, not brackets? Could anyone verify this and correct the IPA transcription of háček if I'm right (from [haːʧɛk] to /hʌːʧɛk/)? Thanks +Hexagon1 (talk) 11:50, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

No-one seems to care what I have to say, so I changed it myself. +Hexagon1 (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

It is ['ɦaːʧɛk] in Czech, that however does not mean that the established English pronunciation should be the same - for the beginning, there is no [ɦ] sound in any(?) English dialect. Slashes are for "broad" transcription, so (again) in Czech, if you use slashes, /ɦaːʧɛk/, /haːʧɛk/ or even /haːʧek/ are acceptable transcriptions since there is no contrast in the phonemes. Not so in English. If you use brackets, you probably have to care about particular English dialect you want to use, with slashes, you wrote down just the most appropriate representations of phonemes. rado 15:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, you use [] for a more or less exact phonetic representation but // to show the phonemes that account for it.—Wikipeditor 17:46, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Official Move Vote

This has been moved to top of page, following procedure described in Wikipedia:Requested moves. -- Curps 16:01, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

New Proposal

Since clearly the hachek-phile Wikipedians seem so insistent on calling this mark by its Czech name, instead of its English name, perhaps the best solution is Solomonian: Split this into two articles. A Velvet Diacritic Divorce. One article, styled h, a-with an acute accent, c-with a caron, e, k will be devoted exclusively to hachekigraphia, and its glorious uses in the Czech language, and seeing to it in time that the English Wikipedia has every instance of Czech replaced with C-with a caron, e, ch as a single glyph sorted after h. Of course, there still won't be a Czech wikipedia article on hachek, but the English one will be there.

Meanwhile, another article, called caron will stick with the usages of the diacritic in every language except Czech, particularly Finnish, Slovak, Estonian, Livonian, Croatian, Slovenian, Friulian, Romany, Bosniak, Serbian written in Latin script, Macedonian written in Latin script, Karelian, Sami languages, older Chinese tonal accent marking (where it was NEVER called hachek, but caron or wedge), Americanist phonetic notation, Lithuanian, Sorb (both Upper and Lower Lusatian), in a number of conlangs and artlangs, old linotype indexes, font indexes,.... --Sturmde 19:21, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I support the second paragraph; perhaps the Czech nationalists will consider whether they have earned the first. Septentrionalis 22:09, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

They haven't even put even one of the three most common spellings used in the English language of the Czech háček (viz., "hacek" and "hachek" and "haček") in this article. Gene Nygaard 05:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I strongly dispute Sturmde's continued assertion that háček (or some less-accented version of the word) is not the English name. This is a POV statement that can't be verified with any commonly-available English language dictionary. Just because there are different words for it in other Slavic languages doesn't preclude the possibility that English has taken the name from Czech. We could have taken it from Slovak, for instance, but we didn't. It came into English in the same casual, don't-mean-to-offend-other-languages way that robot and pistol did. There are different names for things all over the world, but at the end of the day, words often pass into English (or even just one form of English) from a single source. American English uses the word apartment because we chose to anglicize the French version of the word; the British call it a flat because they didn't. It doesn't make Americans believers in the "glorious" French language; it's just how it was. There are thousands of words in the English language that can be traced directly to another language, when other words for the same thing existed at the same time in other languages. I strongly oppose this Dissolution of Czechoslovakia thing, and would ask you to please stop making statements which seem to vaguely imply that those who support calling this thing by its English name are guilty of some sort of Czech nationalism. (And I'll spare you the trouble, that is richly ironic because my name is CzechOut 00:44, 1 April 2006 (UTC)).

By the way, this business of there being no accented words being allowed in English is unsupported POV as well[8]. It's completely proper, in English, to use the words "résumé", "déjà vu", and "sautée" without italicization to indicate it's a "foreign" word. English language dictionaries offer the unaccented versions, when they do at all, as secondary spellings, not the main listings. MIcrosoft Word's spellchecker set to American English automatically corrects a user's typing to include accents. While it does not add accents to the word "hacek", it doesn't mark it as incorrectly spelled. Caron, by contrast comes up in Word with a big, fat red line underneath it. And, in typing my many responses to this article in my browser, the only time hacek has come up as misspelled is when I've done it with no accent marks at all.CzechOut 01:08, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

So what happens if you type "inverted hat" or "inverted circumflex"? What does your spellchecker do? How about making $h{\acute {a}}{\check {c}}ek\,$ this way, using math markup? Guess that suggests another name it is known by in English, at least in the field of mathematics, doesn't it? That's "check", not "czech", by the way. Gene Nygaard 03:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Caron in the OED

Okay, the vote is over, but I'd still like to know if caron appears in any English dictionary at all. Can anyone confirm that it is or isn't in the OED? —Michael Z. 2006-03-31 14:39 Z

It's not in OED Online, which is a superset of what's in the printed version. OED is just based on attested use though so it'll probably show up as soon as an editor finds out about it and has a chance to write up an entry. DopefishJustin 03:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Curps

I din't get a chance to reply on the vote, so I'll reply here. I never stated that caron doesn't exist, if you think that, re-read my posts here. I never said háček was centuries old - in fact I disctinctly said the contrary - "(I'm not saying it was háček either, but háček at least came into English earlier by far then caron)" in reference to the word used centuries ago to talk about the háček. Why do you keep claiming that computer usage should be preffered when talking about the háček? It is a typographical mark. It is NOT a computer mark. No, we shouldn't overlook the computer use, but we should give overwhelming priority to the one field the háček is most relevant to - typographics. And typographics has for ages and ages used háček. And the few (computer) websites that use caron can be summed up nicely, as you have done, in three or four links. +Hexagon1 (talk) 02:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, there did seem to be an over-emphasis on the fact that many dictionaries have, for whatever reason, lagged in adding the word. That did seem to be a major component in arguments made against it. I still don't agree that typographers have any natural monopoly interest in this topic. Anyone who sees, say, the name "Slobodan Milošević" written out (as per Serbian in Latin script) has an interest in being able to give a name to the accent on the "s". It's a matter of broad interest, not limited to specialists in any one narrow field. The issue is, what is the most common name for it in overall English-language usage. -- Curps 08:16, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, whatever. I still think that háček should be used here, as typographers DO have a monopoly in the field. Your Alice who wants to name the caron in Milošević has just entered the field of typography. But I don't this anyone has much interest in this anymore - not after the vote, so let's all drop this everyone until any major revisions regarding the háček/caron/wedge/inverted circumflex/v-thing. The reason for my posting here after the vote is that I'm one of those people who get upset if they don't get the last word. So, peace? :D +Hexagon1 (talk) 11:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

OK then. -- Curps 11:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Unicode

http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/

Caron is merely a technical name for "hacek". I suggest move to hacek. Reopen the survey. ackoz 07:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Requested move 2

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no consensus - FrancisTyers · 00:12, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• Caron → Háček — Caron is geek newspeak, created by someone who didn't know the name for "hacek" not a real term [[9]] — Talk:Caron — ackoz 07:58, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

• • Change nom to háček (with diacritics) per comments bellow. ackoz 21:44, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''' followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Support

Please check http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/ before you vote.

1. Support per above. ackoz 08:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
2. Suport This vote has been held before. Is there anything new to consider?   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 11:08, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

   Comment - an article at the unicode webpage, wich clearly states that caron is a new word created by some geek :)

   Comment: no, it doesn't. What it says is "Its true origin may be lost in the mists of time." --Pak21 14:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

   True, but did you read the sentence before this? ackoz 15:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

   "The term "caron" is suspected by some to be an invention of some early standards body, but it has also been claimed by others to have been in use at Linotype before the days of digital typography." Trying to claim that this "clearly states" anything at all is at best an exaggeration. --Pak21 15:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

   Ok, we dont share common terminology: Linotype / standards body = geeks (for me). Thus, the article clearly states that the word "caron" was created by some "geeks". Remember we are talking language here, not typography. ackoz 17:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

   "Linotype" = professional typesetters, not "geeks". — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

   professional typesetters = geeks. is it because of the fact that wikipedia is a web thing that we should use more IT-talk here? the main field in which this is used is linguistics, not IT. Use the proper academic term, not the IT neologism, ok? ackoz 11:55, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

   Professional typesetters are not geeks by any widely accepted definition of the term. I'm beginning to feel that you don't actually understand who and what Linotype are. --Pak21 12:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

   Does it matter? Even if I don't know what Linotype are, what geek means, and even if someone at linotype invented the word "caron", the most widely used word for this in linguistic literature, dictionaries etc. would be háček and caron is IT / typesetting indurstry newspeak. If the comments on the unicode page say clearly "it should have been called hacek", I think that the situation is clear. ackoz 11:18, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

3. Conditional support, only if this is moved to "háček" (with the diacritics), not "hacek" (without). I see no reason to screw up this naming dispute further using háček without diacritics. And this vote has been held before. +Hexagon1 ^(t) |*̥̲̅ ̲̅†̲̅| |>̲̅-̲̅| 09:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
4. Support Háček is the only English name for this diacritic in the dictionary. —Michael Z. 2006-06-28 15:18 Z
5. Support ad infinitum the same arguments rado 14:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
6. Support háček. It's the original English word for it. —Nightstallion (?) 12:40, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
7. Support háček. That is the term most commonly used in linguistics education and practice. I've never encountered the term caron in use in linguistics contexts. It may be appropriate to note that caron is sometimes used as a typesetting term. Derek Balsam 15:05, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
8. Conditional Support as per User:Hexagon1 - háček rather than hacek (which should be a redirect). Anyway, I came here by way of the Languages Reference desk. My first inclination was to oppose, but I went to see if there were any usenet posts by linguist Peter T. Daniels, co-author of The World's Writing Systems and I found this thread. He also gives wedge as an alternative, which is what I vaguely heard before. In any case, given his scholarship in the field of linguistics, I will side with him. --Chris S. 22:15, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
9. Support -- "Caron" seems to have been invented out of the blue by some unknown and probably unqualified individual at Adobe in the 80s, while linguists have been using "hachek" for many decades... AnonMoos 22:28, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
10. Support -- as a doctoral student in Linguistics many years ago, I learned its name as 'háček'. I never heard of 'caron' until today. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 23:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

Please check http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/ before you vote.

1. Oppose, like last time. This vote has been held before; and there's nothing new here. Septentrionalis 17:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

   Erroneous, invalid and irresponsible that you would vote before even checking the facts. The previous vote was held in March, but the the Unicode document [10] is from MAY.

   Stop shouting! The claim that the origins of caron were cloudy was part of the last debate; it was irrelevant then too. It doesn't matter why it's English usage; we are not here to make English logical, but to follow her whims. Septentrionalis 12:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

   Mr. Anderson, I am not shouting. No exclamation marks in my contibutions :) The key part of the text that was provided is not that the origins of caron are cloudy, but that the "caron" should have been called hacek. And another key fact - it was a typesetting expert at unicode who wrote this exact sentence. However, it is irrelevant, we are wise wikipedia editors and we know everything, right? Are you a typesetting expert??? I don't think so. Another argument, a wikipedian, Derek Balsam, who identifies himself as a linguist, said he never saw hacek being called "caron" in linguistics. This article is not about typesetting, but about diacritics - ie. it belongs to linguistics. Both groups, however, typesetting experts as well as linguistics experts state that (exact quote) it should have been called hacek. I don't get how more irrelevant this could be. We are not here to make English logical, we are here to make english use the IT / Computing / Tech terms because we are all computer geeks? Let's change this all to 1337opedia then. 85.70.5.66 16:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

2. Oppose — even more so than last time. (I don't often monitor WP:Requested Moves.) Since the Slovaks call it something else, even professional typographers might choose to use the ISO name. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
3. Stronly oppose: only Czeck calls it a hacek; Slovakian calls it something else, as do other languages. English calls it a caron. Bubba ditto 23:29, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

   There are no printed English dictionaries that establish caron as the word for this symbol. Many do list haček.   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 17:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

4. Oppose per Septentrionalis for reasons discussed at length last time. Jonathunder 21:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

   Same as Septentrionalis above, ignorance of newly existing evidence.

5. Oppose - it looks like "caron" is more common. Krugs 03:55, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
6. Oppose: Caron is the more common name in English. Thumbelina 15:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

   Caron is the more common last name in English, that's what you get when you google Caron. 90% of the hits are last names.

   Only on computers, linguists usually call it háček. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 09:10, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

7. Oppose. I completely agree with Sophia 81 in discussion below. --jonsafari 02:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
8. Oppose, per Septentrionalis.--Aldux 22:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

• Neutral the page should probably be at háček, deferring to Daniels. Nevertheless, the poll should probably be restarted after people have discussed this for longer presenting their sources. I would like to further note that comments such as 'Caron is geek newspeak, created by someone who didn't know the name for "hacek" not a real term' are not condusive to a harmonious editing environment. That comment is deliberately antagonistic and I would recommend the closing admin discount the vote for incivility. - FrancisTyers · 00:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Please check http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/ before you vote.

Add any additional comments

This document contains information about the terms caron and hacek and was created in May, so it was not disscussed in the previous survey (held in March). Arguments like nothing new since the last vote are therefore quite funny.

• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Czech) suggests that Czech articles should use the accented form; so why Hacek and not the accented Háček? --Pak21 10:20, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, even some English dictionaries have the form with diacritics (as an English word). Keep háček, with haček and hacek as redirects. rado 12:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

This is a (valid) argument against hacek; but caron is its English name. Septentrionalis 17:51, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

But háček is an English name too. rado 14:25, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Um, no. It isn't found in any of my dictionaries, and the fact that it's not in the English alphabet is another clue it's not English. "Caron" is the English word. Bubba ditto 23:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying your dictionaries have caron in them? The Canadian Oxford Dictionary has the headword háček (it's in the American Heritage too), but I haven't seen any that contain caron, so perhaps you should trade your dictionaries in for one good one.

Your "English alphabet" argument isn't very convincing—are you going to argue that café, cliché, déjà vu, exposé, façade, naïf, resumé, touché, and tourtière are misspelled because they have letters not in the "English alphabet"? All of the letters in háček are used in thousands of English words—please don't get upset because one of the diacritics only appears in English words adopted from central European languages. —Michael Z. 2006-06-30 00:00 Z

• Has anyone found a printed dictionary that includes the word caron? I have only found dictionaries that include haček. Why do we want this article stored at a word that doesn't even have enough usage to be listed in a dictionary when there is a perfectly good word for this symbol already in the dictionary?   — Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 13:30, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

• The argument pursuing itself as long as it is, it is evident that both caron and hacek (with or without the accents) are both very acceptable terms and conveys the same idea. Just mention the origin of the above words and examples of their usage in different arenas, while mentioning the fact that they are both in common usage, and leave the article alone. The superficiality settled, the basic problem lies then in what to use in the article body. A temporary solution would be to replace all usage of either caron or hacek with solely the image of the caron/hacek. Eg. the "," is used... (where the "," is the caron or hacek). This being a cop-out of sorts, a grammarian must be consulted to give light on the official linguistic term, and if both are used interchangingly, the article must then mention so. --Sophia 81 21:11, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

  This dispute is about where the article should be located, at [[caron]] or at [[háček]], not which name should be prefered in the body of the text. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 08:04, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• Folks, he said Please check http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/ before you vote. The Unicode standards folks themselves in the referenced document Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names say "The "caron" should have been called hacek and combining hacek." This indicates that referencing the Unicode standard as being normative for the use of caron is now known to be in error, based on new evidence as of May 2006. Wikipedians should take that into consideration, in addition to the widely accepted usage of háček within the linguistics field.Derek Balsam 03:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

• Pak21, the link to unicode notes was provided as new evidence (the date of the document is May, i.e. followed the last vote) and as a reason for repeating the vote. However, most of the editors who voted didn't notice the new source, and frequent argument was "nothing new here". That's why we changed the formatting and we ask the voting editors to check the new document carefully, because it is the reason for repeating the vote. Even after checking the reason for repeating the vote, editors might still oppose the move, but they should at least check the new source and not just say "this was here before, nothing new". Moreover, the term "linkspam" you used is only applicable to articles, not to talkpages. 85.70.5.66 09:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The link is already mentioned in the "Unicode" section above. Why is it necessary to add it another three times in BIG BOLD TEXT? That would appear to me to be assuming that other editors are not capable of evaluating the evidence presented, which would be a fairly major violation of WP:AGF. --Pak21 09:48, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Check the votes. Many of them have "the same discussion", "nothing new" etc., these editors clearly didn't notice that there is a new document concerning this problem from the unicode itself. I do assume good faith, but I don't assume that the editors pay attention to detail. Without stressing the new document, the vote really does look just like a repeat vote. It doesn't have to be 3 times with big bold text, but it should be at least 1 time at the top with something like "the vote is held again because there is a new document from Unicode, please re-evaluate" or something, and stressed enough so that it doesn't get overlooked. Feel free to do any modification, but last time, you removed even the link that was in the comment section from the start (yet not bold and big). 85.70.5.66 11:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Exactly what are you saying I removed? As the diff clearly shows, the only links I removed were the three big, bold links. I deliberately left the one at the top. --Pak21 11:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
        • You also removed the bottom one, that was originally (i.e. from when the survey was created) in the Discussion section. I only made it bold and big here [11], then you removed it. I know you left the one at the top, but it should also have been left in the disucussion. It's all ok don't get angry. 85.70.5.66 12:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
          • It's all a bit academic really. There's clearly no consensus to move this page, so let's just let this one die. --Pak21 12:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

(reset indent) Just wait a bit longer, however, the one who moves the article will also consider the validity of the arguments in the survey. Would you please attract someone philosopher-admin, z.B. George, to decide what to do? 85.70.5.66 15:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.