Talk:Anglicisation

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment[edit]

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Paige.Reimer.155.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:17, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proper Names[edit]

Loss of Anglicized names due to "national pride" or official pressure: Not sure Bombay/Mumbai and Peking/Beijing are good examples of this. "Bombay" to "Mumbai" was a real name change: the two names are etymologically differerent, although they do look like they could be related. As for China, there's nothing "official" about Peking becoming Beijing. The only official name for China's capital is 北京, and the Hanyu Pinyin spelling of these characters happens to be Běijīng. While the PRC government may be promoting Hanyu Pinyin as its preferred Romanization scheme, this seems to be more about consistently representing the Mandarin Chinese language in Roman letters than dictating what appears on maps intended for non-Chinese speakers --- as evident from the fact that the pronunciation of some letters in Hanyu Pinyin bears no relation to their pronunciation in English or indeed most languages using the Latin alphabet --- e.g. q, x. In any case, Francophones seem quite happy with Pékin. What may have happened is that English-speakers caught wind of the Pinyin spelling and thought that some sort of name-change *had* occurred and for that reason started using "Beijing" (of course missing out the tone diacritics when writing it).

Sometimes a place name appears anglicized, but is not. In some cases, the form being used in English is an older name that has now been changed. For example, Turin in the Piedmont area of Italy, is named Turin in the original Piedmontese language, but now officially known as Torino in Italian. In some cases, link English-language media overcompensates for this in the mistaken belief that the name being used in English was imposed by English speakers and is some sort of injustice. Locals tried to get Piedmontese included as an official olympic language, but were unsucessful. Well, I guess someone has to finish what Mussolini started.

Still-Anglicized place names are certainly not all Western European, and includes some where the name might be expected to be the subject of political contention (e.g. Jerusalem)

Better examples of official de-Anglicization might be Ivory Coast, where the government insists that the name not be translated from the original French (Côte d'Ivoire), or Calcutta becoming Kolkata. --- Alex -- 2005-07-29 17:45 UCT

Names were not changed by immigration officials in the United States. This is an urban myth that has been propagated for many many years. Immigration officials didn't write down names, but rather worked from manifests provided by the shipping companies. Any errors were made by the company, and not the Immigration clerks. Immigration officials were available who spoke the native languages of the immigrants. This is not to say that name changes did not occur. They did. It happened in my extended family when a grade school teacher told an great uncle of mine that he was spelling his last name wrong. My paternal grandfather changed the family's name for unknown reasons; but to say that name changes occured by government officials is simply untrue.[1][2][3]

It is also a bit of an overstatement to say "personal names have been heavily anglicised." The examples given of Johann/John, Piotr/Peter, Giorgos/George, and Yeshua/Joshua have been anglicised. These are all biblical names, and have analogs in all European languages via Hellenistic Greek translation/transliteration of Hebrew names. It is possible to find analogs of these names in other Middle Eastern languages as well. There's examples of this, Peter the Great, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope's ruling name for three. However it seems like this phenomena primarily occurs with individuals of historical prominence, not average persons, and not recently practiced (with the notable exception of the Pope). If someone can cite some stats or examples of widespread anglicisiation of personal names, I think this section should be rewritten. I guess its ultimately a judgement call, but I lean against the characterization of "heavy." -- 70.106.209.48 05:37, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I see "German names have also been anglicised (from Licht to Light) ...". Should say "such as from Licht to Light", because there are other names that were anglicized from German. "Obergfell" presumably became "Oberkfell" (there is a baseball player with that surname) and also could become "Oberfield". In the Wikipedia talk page for "Moore", I have asked about "Mohr" being anglicized (scenario of illiterate person who had to give name to, say, a census taker or recorder of deeds). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.63.16.20 (talk) 17:09, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Americanization[edit]

Isn't it good to rename this article Anglicization? I think Wikipedia has many more -ization entries than -isation entries. - TAKASUGI Shinji 09:35, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To quote "Anglicisation is a process of making something English". We spell things -isation in England, American's would spell it -ization. Hence, Americanization is correct, Anglicization is incorrect. Selphie 09:46, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC) *talk*

It doesn't make much sense, because Americans speak English, not American. This article is mainly about changing non-English words to English or English-like ones, and it happens both in England and America. This is clearly different from Americanization, adoption of American culture. Anyway, I'm not enthusiastic on Americanizing the spelling, and it's okay if majority prefer Anglicisation to Anglicization.

I think it's better, like I said - it's talking about British English not American English and therefore the British English would be the correct spelling. Selphie 12:12, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC) *talk*

Nobody here has ever heard of OED English? The -ize spellings are acceptable for British English, too. --/ɛvɪs/ 15:33, May 6, 2005 (UTC)
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the Manual of Style states not to use regional variants for topic titles, but to use forms used in all dialects. This is the reason the aircraft article is not at airplane or aeroplane. --/ɛvɪs/ 15:37, May 6, 2005 (UTC)
...Plus the article isn't talking about just British English, but rather all dialects. --/ɛvɪs/ 21:26, May 6, 2005 (UTC)
Whatever the OED may or may not say I, as a true Brit (being of both English and Welsh extraction), would always consider the use of -ization as American (I mean -isation just comes off the pen/keybourd more naturally to a Brit, I'm sure the converse is true for an American, one doesn't even think about it). About not using regional variants, who's to say that your spelling is not a regional variant? Be that as it may, I do not see either usage as wrong per se, but should be at the discretion of the founder of the article. If the article is started as Anglicisation, then why change it? As long as it's made clear that alternative spellings exist, and as long as people are re-directed here when they use the alternative for a search, then why the grief? Your demands smack of cultural imperialism and personal opinion (even POV) to me.

--Alun 05:53, 15 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary seems to imply that it isn't a regional variant:
Either spelling may be used. The form -ize has been in use in English since the 16th century; although it is most widely used in American English, it is not an Americanism. The alternative spelling -ise is used particularly in British English. --/ɛvɪs/ /tɑːk/ /kɑntɹɪbjuʃənz/ 18:48, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

Eh? Did you not read what I wrote? Are you bound only to repeat yourself? I can also repeat ad nauseum if you like (but I think this'll be my last), Whatever the OED may or may not say I, as a true Brit (being of both English and Welsh extraction), would always consider the use of -ization as American (I mean -isation just comes off the pen/keyboard more naturally to a Brit, I'm sure the converse is true for an American, one doesn't even think about it. I don't dispute your practical knowledge of being American, so why should you dispute my practical knowledge of being British? I merely point out that as a Brit anglicization does not come as a natural or normal spelling, whatever the OED may or may not say. I'm absolutely sure the OED gives definitive spellings for other words that you would heatedly dispute yourself!!!!! What I mean by a regional variant is that, what is a variant is dependent on what region a person lives in at any given time. Take the term bloke for example. You may consider it a British or Australian regional variant of guy. Whereas a Brit or Aussie would consider guy a regional variant of bloke. Everything is relative. I might add that there is no standard English. I live in Finland and the state actually controls the language, (i.e. decides what is standard Finnish or not, I believe the same is true in Germany and German), the same is not true of English, ipso facto anything goes in English, there is no such thing as correct English. Or if you like, there's no such thing as a regional variant, or perhaps all non standard parochial words are regional variants. Both definitions work for me. Chill out. If the meaning is generally accepted and anglicized is redirected to here, with the proviso that other spellings exist, then why the grief? I suspect cultural imperialism. I've been to your user page and have the impression that you consider anything other than americanisations (sic) beyond the pale, or why else all the references to encyclopaedia?--Alun 20:28, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And of course us Aussies use -ise as well, so that's two Englishes to one. I suspect our mates across Tasman are -ise-a-holics as well, that's 3-1! -- Paul 18:07, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'm fine with British spellings on UK-centered pages (such as the United Kingdom article) and American spellings on America-centered pages (such as the United States article). I'm just trying to say that Anglicization/Anglicisation isn't something limited to the UK, even if the language was invented there. As for having a governing body, English really could use one. As for the name of this article, I give up. And no, I don't hate British spellings/words, especially since I feel that the football (soccer) article would be better at association football, but that's just me. --/ɛvɪs/ /tɑːk/ /kɑntɹɪbjuʃənz/ 17:15, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
By the way, isn't it assuming bad faith that I'm trying to spread cultural imperialism? Also, I would prefer a move to anglicization for the same reason I prefer grey over gray, and that's that more dialects accept it. Just because most English dialects have more speakers that use -ise over -ize doesn't mean that the -ize variants can't be accepted. Similarily, I'm pretty sure that more Americans, including myself, use gray over grey, though grey is still acceptable. Plus, I actually kind of like the move from yogurt to yoghurt since it's closer to the original Turkish word. --/ɛvɪs/ /tɑːk/ /kɑntɹɪbjuʃənz/ July 2, 2005 02:01 (UTC)
Have a look here Evice. Why bother to change any spelling if the spelling is an accepted English spelling, from whatever English variant. Personally I don't find your arguements compelling enough to warrant any sort of change. I tend to agree that an overseeing body for the English language would be a good idea, the problem really is that it would have to be an international body, and we would end up with all variants being accepted anyway.Alun 05:26, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing really to add to the argument here. Just saying as a person lived in Hong Kong and Canada equally for half his life, I still prefer isation and most other fine British spellings. I do spell tires for those wheelie things, however. --Kvasir 06:28, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about anglification? --Oddeivind (talk) 12:16, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why only 'language'?[edit]

Why are we accepting that anglicisation is most commonly discussed in the more abstract context of language? I'm not sure this is true, and is it not somewhat POV? I mean does it not depend on who's doing the discussing? I recently linked my user page here, because I mention that Gwent is one of the most anglicised parts of Wales, only to find that this article is all about language. I think that this article is unbalanced and doesn't reflect the true meaning or usage of the word.--Alun 05:45, 15 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Outside of the United Kingdom, I think it's much more commonly used in a linguistic sense. If there is something interesting to say about the other sense though, feel free to add a section or split this article. I don't know much about anglicisation as it applies to making things more English in a cultural sense, beyond the simple definition that I already included in the first paragraph of the article. --Delirium 23:23, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

It is very common to say things like "'Pavement' is the Anglicised version of 'Sidewalk'", where the word anglicised specifically refers to the form used in England, rather than the form used in English. This article should definitely at least mention that usage, though I'm not quite sure that there's anything "interesting" to say about it; rather, the article is currently misleading by claiming that anglicisation usually refers to the English language. The word Anglo-American is related, of course. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.110.192.219 (talk) 22:57, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation?[edit]

Would the pronunciation of words in an Anglicized way count as Anglicization? For example, many U.S. cities have names originating in other languages, whose pronunciations have been mangled (to use a POV term) to conform to English conventions. Some of the most infamous examples are French names in the Midwest and Spanish names in Texas:

I wanted to get some opinions about whether this counts as Anglicization, before adding anything to the article. Onyourside 15:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would so say so. An Siarach
Moscow -- mosCOW --12:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I could be wrong but the US pronuciation of Moscow as /Mɶsgau/ stems from the German name for Moscow "Moscau"? An Muimhneach Machnamhach 11:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

unreferenced[edit]

This article is a ramble it needs to cite its sources (WP:CITE). There are lots of generalisations that have been added which are clearly a POV. Often this is to do with degree of the type covered by some/many/most which allows for lots of non-NPOV. Eg often even with diacritical marks that do not normally exist in English and others like this With languages that use non-Latin alphabets, such as the Arabic, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets, a direct transliteration is typically used, in order to secure faithfulness to the original pronunciation rather than conformance to the norms of English. Who says so? If the word is directly translated from the native language into English then unless the grammar rules are the same as English the word will not be read that way. Besides it is not translation from one alphabet to another it is transliteration. Even if the word is from the Latin alphabet one needs to know for example that in German "W" is pronounced as a "V" if one is to have hope of "secur[ing] faithfulness to the original pronunciation" and unless one has learnt German this is unlikely to be true. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:09, 26 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

removed the following[edit]

"Anglicisation in language" There are two primary types of Anglicisation in language: Anglicising non-English words for use in English, and Anglicising non-English languages through the introduction of English words.

The latter does not follow a standard definition of 'Anglicize'; the use of English words in non-English cultures is more a form of acculturation. - IstvanWolf 00:04, 14 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's not true at all. "Anglicize" means simply to make more like English. It's true that a common use is to describe anglicization of individual words when importing them into English, but it's also common to describe anglicizing other languages or even entire cultures; one of the two canonical quotes the OED has under its 'anglicize' entry refers to the British 'anglicization of India'. Compare Hellenize. --Delirium 21:53, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

anglicisation or Anglicisation[edit]

There was a hopeless inconsistency about the use of capital letters. Wikipedia prefers lower case in general, especially when dictionaries allow a choice so I moved it that way.--SE16 00:37, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think these terms are usually capitalized, though Anglicisation seems to be used lowercase more than others. Compare (all capitalized) the terms Americanization, Hellenization, Arabization, etc. --Delirium 23:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


The spelling of the word is incorrect- Anglicisation is properly spelled Anglicization. This articles page needs to be corrected to address the matter. Even the British encyclopedia says ize is correct. Check all dictionaries for your self.

1913 Dictionary with both spellings. Only the correct one is listed.

--70.126.135.8 (talk) 07:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's true, but in modern British English, -ise is more common, outside the relatively limited number of people who use Oxford spelling. It's discussed a bit here. But in any case, Wikipedia usually spells descriptively, and on a descriptive basis Anglicisation is the common spelling in British English. --Delirium (talk) 20:35, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What's the 'British Encyclopedia'? Britannica.com is a commercial site owned by a company incorporated in the U.S.A. I don't think a 'descriptive' case can be made for preserving -isation, we'd have to have a head-count, and I fear the Englishized version would be more popular. It's not worth arguing about, is it? If people want an article on Anglicization, they can just create a redirect page. Wikipedia has a policy regarding national variations in English: [4] - see in particular the clause 'Retaining the existing variety'. If this page was started in UK English (my skin is crawling, so ingrained is my POV), then the current spelling is the one that must stay. SeanCollins (talk) 01:58, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oxford English Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The five entries for the anglicize words in the Oxford English Dictionary favour spellings with a 'z' and with a lower-case letter 'a' at the beginning, for these words: anglicize, anglicized, anglicizer, anglicizing, anglicization. The OED entry for anglicize begins as follows: anglicize, v. Forms: 17- anglicise, 17- anglicize, 18- anglocise (rare), 18- anglocize (rare). Also with capital initial. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as follows: anglicize: verb (UK usually anglicise). Both agree on the lower case beginning, while the Cambridge dictionary asserts that 's' is favoured over 'z' in the UK. Therefore, the two British dictionaries take slightly different approaches to the question of 's' or 'z'. The American Merriam-Webster Dictionary has entries for both anglicize and anglicise (both with lower case 'a'). The latter entry says, chiefly British variant of anglicize. While both entries say, Usage: often capitalized, the headwords are defined in the dictionary with a lower case default spelling. --O'Dea (talk) 09:58, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In accordance with the above and with MOS I have decapped within the article text. --candyworm (talk) 16:30, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Italian to English[edit]

The article names a number of Italian cities as examples of anglicisation. I wonder if this is appropriate since most Italian place names came into English via French. The English exonyms thus follow largely French pattern. Names like Milan, Venice, Rome, Naple, Turin, Florence, are all examples of straight borrowing of Francisation. o (talk) 04:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anglicised historical personal names[edit]

There are many names of historical persons which commonly appear in "English translation" in English texts. This is regularly the case for older foreign royalty (frederic rather than Friedrich), and often holds for well-known classical persons with Latin or Greek names (Aristotle rather than Aristoteles).

I sought out this page in order to read about this phenomenom, but found only references to immigrants voluntarily changing their names. If this is described elsewhere, I think adding a link could be advantageous. If not, then perhaps this is the place to describe it - or should there be a split, as with the various articles on Latinisation?

Of course, "translating" proper names seems to have been more common formerly in many other languages, as well. Is there an article about this in greater generality, then I think we could link to this. JoergenB (talk) 16:10, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since absolutely no response has come, I suppose that no-one opposes, but also that no-one wants to do the work. I'll try to add a little along the lines i proposed myself. Unhappily, this means that the text will be less well sourced than it could have been, if someone with English as first language wrote it.
E.g., I do not have access to any history scool book in English; I suppose that there could be some discussion or mentioning of the various name forms there. I also do not know if there is a change as to using the angicised or the native forms; nor if there is any geographical variation (e.g., between U.K, US, or Australia). JoergenB (talk) 16:30, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not Peking and Tsingtao[edit]

These two names are not anglicizations. The K in Peking is there because there actually was a K sound centuries ago. We write Beijing now because in Mandarin there was a phonological change where some K sounds were replaced with something a little like J (also a little like CH). Peking represents the historical Mandarin pronunciation, and the K is still pronounced in other Chinese languages. The spelling Tsingtao actually represents the same exact sound as Qingdao. They're just different romanizations. If Tsingtao is anglicized, then Qingdao is every bit as anglicized. The romanization that produces Tsingtao is simply older. Neither place belongs in the article. (Ejoty (talk) 10:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Yep. They're different (English-based) romanizations, as opposed to the Cyrillic & made-up system eventually employed in Hanyu Pinyin. Hence, Anglicized. (You're on firmer ground arguing that Tsingtao is actually based on a German transcription system, as it was.)— LlywelynII 16:35, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is anglicise the opposite of americanise?[edit]

If you change American spelling to British spelling, is that anglicising? Given that the former was English too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.134.95.147 (talk) 16:55, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right, 'American' is but a slightly altered form of English. We more usually anglicise words from non-English languages, e.g., the Welsh name Dafydd is sometimes anglicised as 'David'. (Americans might prefer to spell it 'anglicized' !!) Cheers, Bjenks (talk) 13:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

'Anglicisation' covers more than language[edit]

Why is this article only concerned with the Anglicisation of particular words? Isn't Anglicisation also a form of cultural transformation (even imperialism) whereby British customs and culture are exported and/or accepted? Should this article not be extended to cover that form of Anglicisation? Pipin81 (talk) 22:07, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ENGVAR & move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. 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 move request was: not moved per WP:RETAIN and the non-stub point below. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:53, 15 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Anglicisation → Anglicization – Since it involves a move as well as a fairly major replace text operation, I'll note this here. Per WP:ENGVAR and this initial edit, the page should be in American English. It is somewhat cute that a page about (linguistic) Anglicization has been itself (culturally) Anglicized, but not enough to avoid fixing.

(WP:RETAIN has two aspects: personally, I feel the don't-bother-changing-things is much less clear cut and helpful than the first-edit rule & that it doesn't obtain in the face of repeated restorations of the American spellings, arguing on the talk page, &c; but we can go ahead and establish a concensus if everyone else here disagrees with me on that. =) — LlywelynII 16:27, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fwiw, from the discussions above, the vote would be
[Support.] TAKASUGI Shinji
[Support.] --/ɛvɪs/
[Support.] 70.126.135.8
[Support.] SeanCollins [since was actually mistaken about first use]
[Oppose.] Selphie
[Oppose.] Alun
[Oppose.] Paul
[Oppose.] Kvasir
[Oppose.] Delirium
although most of those editors were arguing about 'correctness' or personal preference. In any case, the page's use is contentious and not 'established' (one of the most recent edits involved "Englishing" it). — LlywelynII 16:50, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting case here. Fwiw, it appears I wrote the first non-stub version of this article, and I did so with BrEng spellings, despite myself being American and used to AmEng spellings. My feelings at the time were that the term could cover both the linguistic and cultural senses, so the BrEng spelling was more appropriate. My preference isn't particularly strong, though. I'd lean towards not moving, because while I'd usually go with the first edit rule in ambiguous cases, the main purpose of that rule imo is just to avoid edit wars over location by hewing to precedent. But when an article's been at the same location for 8 years, and the only previous history was a one-sentence stub, just keeping it there feels more like the stare decisis solution. --Delirium (talk) 17:49, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, the page hasn't been here for eight years. It's been repeatedly Americanized, moved around, and simply restored. The first edit rule is a good bright line rule for stare decisis; the "don't-bother-restoring" one just begs for the kind of slow attrition you see on this page, where editors go one way or another and then subsequently claim hegemony.
The non-stub bit is a very good point; the irony is fun, particularly given that the American spelling is roughly twice as common on the net and there's nothing late-British about the practice that actually warrants a BrEng spelling. — LlywelynII 04:43, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support a move. "Anglicization" isn't only an American spelling, it's Oxford Spelling also. ~Asarlaí 18:21, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The initial edit pointed to above is itself contradictory: the title is spelt with an 's', whilst the text itself (one sentence of dictionary definition) is spelt with e 'z'. In any event, as User:Delirium correctly states, he is the "first significant contributor" to the article. Per WP:ENGVAR and more specifically WP:RETAIN, the 's' form spelling (ie non-Oxford) should therefore prevail. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 04:29, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. It really doesn't matter much. I am more interested in stylistic coherence, conformity with Wikipedian style as given WP:MOS and its auxiliaries, clarity, and accuracy. I have adjusted some details to that end. The article has a long history of using British English, and that surely carries weight. I would say it carries more weight than even the first non-stub editor's choice, and certainly more than the chancy usage of a one-line initial text with which the article began. As for "-ze" being British as much as American, again I don't care much. The choice of "-ze" or "-se" is then just a separate styling question; and it seems that for most of its history, "-se" has predominated and the article has become stable with that ("romanisation", for example). Stability is a Good Thing; so is turning our attention to more pressing matters. NoeticaTea? 04:37, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per WP:ENGVAR and WP:RETAIN. The first non-stub version of the article [5] was written in British English. Jenks24 (talk) 09:18, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per WP:ENGVAR (WP:RETAIN): "When an English variety's consistent usage has been established in an article, it is maintained in the absence of consensus to the contrary" and "When ... discussion cannot resolve the issue, the variety used in the first non-stub revision is considered the default." The usage in this article, which is in accord with the first non-stub version, is consistent and established, so there's no reason to change it. SSR (talk) 08:00, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. 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.

ethnicization/domestication[edit]

All languages domesticate words that they take up from elsewhere and do various things with them. Take, for example, the Greek word 'kritêrion':

English (criterion) changes the first grapheme but is faithful to the phonology, while the 5th grapheme can be expressed only phonologically; the Greek plural ending is retained;

German (Kriterium) retains the first grapheme, for largely domestic visual reasons, i.e. older printed German are as likely to use a 'c' as a 'k', e.g. the name of my adopted city Kassel, which used to be Cassel; the 5th grapheme is as in English; the ending is transposed from Greek to Latin, and the plural is then Germanicized into 'Kriterien'.

If the term 'Anglicization' is to be used of this perfectly normal and universal phenomenon, then why not 'Francization', 'Italicization', and so on ? English is not the only language that does this, but since it has been (compelled to be) an extremely receptive language, with an extremely diverse superstructure on the West Germanic substrate, it seems hardly surprising that foreign words in English will sometimes appear in a guise other than that of the source language. Pamour (talk) 15:47, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Historic process of Angliciz/sation of colonial America as discussed by Murrin in the 1970s is omitted[edit]

I'm not inclined to research this or post anything extensive, but the use of the term as an historical process leading in part to the breakdown of the differentiated American colonial societies between the south, the middle colonies and the northeastern coastal areas is a standard one that seems not to have any representation here.

Basically, "they had to become more English (or see each other by some more unifying identity, and it happened to be that of Englishness, hence the insistence on their rights as Englishmen (sic) which was among the rallying cries for representation in the British government) before they could unite enough to become American," as I understand it.

The original article, as nearly as I can tell, is here: J. Murrin, “England and Colonial America,” Princeton Alumni Weekly Review, Vol. 75, 1974, pp. 42-42. There are several very inaccurate discussions of this phenomenon on the web, and it would seem that some inclusion of a section on it would be in order to clean those confusions up, if nothing else.108.20.74.63 (talk) 23:26, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Italics[edit]

The use of italics is all over the place in this article: sometimes the Anglicised names are italicised, sometimes the native names, sometimes both and sometimes neither. One solution would be always to italicise the native name; another would be always to italicise the older name. I favour the former; any thoughts? Dave.Dunford (talk) 10:47, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A couple points that could help improve this article[edit]

The lead section could be expanded a little more – giving a definition one could find in a dictionary is not very helpful as an introduction to the article. Perhaps a couple main background points about the history or etymology of the word, as well as how it is used currently would be much more helpful.

Subsections (1) and (2) could be improved through expansion. These contain very plain statements, which don’t help much as a starter point (which is usually why people come to Wikipedia articles). For example, it is stated under the ‘Social anglicisation’ heading that this was an important process for the UK, however this is a pretty dry statement as it doesn’t explain anything further. Giving expanded explanations as well as examples would facilitate understanding of these points being made.

Double-checking of grammar, run-on sentences, and punctuation. There are some easy-to-fix mistakes in the article which interrupt the flow of the sentence and distract from the main points, as in the opening statement ‘In terms of language, anglicisation is a policy of use of the English language, such as was one of the causes contributing to the Boer War.’

Lastly, there are a number of ‘citation needed’ footnotes which should be fixed, so that this article is credible to people as a legitimate source for the topic. Dianamen (talk) 06:24, 19 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also, there is grammatical flaw in the clause "or pronunciations were changed to fit the spelling (Benoît, pronounced [bənwa], became /bɛnˈɔɪt/) Benedict". The word "Benedict" could be removed completely; then everything would be fine. Alternatively, the content of the parenthesis could be changed as follows: "(Benoît, pronounced [bənwa], became /bɛnˈɔɪt/ or Benedict)" since "Benedict" can be seen as a translation into English of "Benoît". This does, however, not fit well with the statement that precedes the parenthesis as "Benedict" is not the same spelling as "Benoît". Maybe, the author of the cited line could clear up his or her meaning? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheseusX (talk • contribs) 06:47, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ghent[edit]

'Ghent (Gent, or Gand)' should be changed to 'Ghent (Gent)'. Ghent is a Dutch-speaking city, known locally as 'Gent' (presumably the 'h' was inserted in English to prevent the name being pronounced like the abbreviation for 'gentleman'). 'Gand' is a French exonym, like 'Anvers' for Antwerp (Dutch 'Antwerpen') and 'Courtrai' for Kortrijk, and hence has no business here. Some surviving English exonyms for Dutch-speaking Belgian towns and cities are in fact copied from the French ones (such as 'Bruges' for Brugge and and 'Ypres' for Ieper), but 'Gand' isn't one of them. The fact that Dutch-speaking Belgians had to struggle for over a century to gain equal treatment for their language makes this a particularly unfortunate slip.31.15.247.228 (talk) 10:13, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Confusing[edit]

The article is unlike other cultural assimilation articles, lacking a coherent description and example(s) of what consitutes Anglicization.--Sıgehelmus (Talk) |д=) 01:02, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'll give it a try[edit]

This discussion is very informative, and I will attempt to edit this article to incorporate some of the above considerations and examples. This will however, inevitably involve deletions and reorganization and take time, so I hope you will wait a couple of days before evaluating my attempt. --Remotelysensed (talk) 08:43, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, may things fall into place for you. groupuscule (talk) 09:09, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks for your encouragement I have now made an attempt at focus and reorganization, as suggested in the two Wiki requests and on this talk page, but the sections I have blocked with a hidden comment need to be moved to some other appropriate Wiki article, as I do not feel free to delete them but do not know myself where they should optimally go.
I think the lengthy discussion about British vs. US spelling is a non-issue. Both options are possible in Wikipedia articles, although one should strive for consistency within one article. This is a desirable but hopeless goal, since nobody can expect all editors to be knowledgeable about all the orthographic and punctuation conventions of the “other English”.
By the way, as an illustration of the uncertainty, the Oxford English Dictionary, to my surprise, as well as Webster’s Third New Unabridged Dictionary both use a “z” in the words anglicization and anglicize. I would also use the "z", but as the main article title has an "s", and such things are not in our power to change, I guess we should leave it "s".
On the capitalization of these words: the OED does not go into capitalization; Webster’s says “often capitalized”. I personally would opt for the proposal mentioned above to use the lower case for the reason mentioned there.
Over to you all now to continue the cleanup, as inspired to do so. --Remotelysensed (talk) 12:58, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal: A new structure for articles re. Anglicisation[edit]

I've been trying to add some of the history of anglicisation in the British Isles to the article. These processes - alongside the ongoing anglicisation of foreign cultures - are well-documented in literature. However, I've noticed this article seems to be dealing with two slightly different concepts which use the same title.

On one hand, there is the socio-cultural, economic and political anglicisation, such as what happened in Ireland, Wales and the Channel Islands as noted in the article. And there is the linguistic anglicisation, i.e. translating names into English, anglicising loan words and the anglicisation of foreign languages. I therefore propose that we review and change the structure of these articles.

My proposal is as follows:

An overarching Anglicisation article which defines the term, distinguishes the forms of Anglicisation and then links to two articles:

  • Socio-cultural anglicisation - which covers social, cultural and institutional adoption of English/Britishness
  • Linguistic anglicisation - which covers the alteration of terms into Englishness

Alternatively, socio-cultural & institututional anglicisation could be covered in the main article, with a separate article for linguistic anglicisation called "Anglicisation (linguistics)"

I also propose that the article Anglicisation of names forms the basis for the linguistic anglicisation article, with the lists of anglicised names in that article transferred to English translated personal names. Jèrriais janne (talk) 18:27, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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