Template:Did you know nominations/Saint Tetha
- The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
The result was: promoted by Fuebaey (talk) 15:09, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
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Saint Tetha[edit]
- ... that the names of Saint Teath and her eponymous town in Cornwall rhyme with death, not teeth?
- ALT1:... that Saint Teath and her Cornish town are pronounced /tɛθ/ and rhyme with breath, not teeth?
ALT2:... that St Teath's odd pronunciation is accounted for by its parish church's dedication to Saint Tetha?- Reviewed: Mamadou N'Diaye (basketball, born 1993)
Created by LlywelynII (talk). Self nominated at 14:12, 1 December 2014 (UTC).
- ALT3 ... that Saint Teath rhymes with death? -- EEng (talk) 20:27, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
- ALT3's punchier, so long as it doesn't mean we need to include an extraneous pronunciation for death in the article. — LlywelynII 06:42, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
The article checks out fine: it is new, plenty long enough and sourced well throughout. There is no evidence of close paraphrasing or copyvio. The hooks do present a slight issue. None of them are actually stated in the article at all. The pronunciation guide is given, and referenced, but beyond that I think we're skating on very thin ice. I would either expand to article to explicitly state the pronunciation, or go down a different line. In ALT2 for example, what makes this pronunciation odd? If it rhymes with "breath" and "death", which are spelt similarly, then surely the pronunciation makes sense? English is full of these oddities after all. Harrias talk 15:35, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
- A) The pronunciation is given and referenced and surely you don't think it's actually helpful for articles to just start listing rhymes for their entries. If WP:NOTDIC, then surely it's not a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary either. B) This pronunciation is given because it is odd and misleading. Just like "done" is very common but people don't expect to pronounce "clone" similarly, the natural pronunciation of some unknown word spelled with -ea- is going to be /i/: "Meath" doesn't look like it's pronounced "meth" any more than people read "plead" as "pled". Lead (the metal) is the PRIMARYTOPIC for L-E-A-D but starts off with a pronunciation guide; leadership doesn't. So, no, it's certainly understandable to etymologists but doesn't "make sense" to people seeing it for the first time. C) It's much more helpful to illustrate that with a rhyme, however, than giving people flat IPA. The rule about sourcing hooks is there to make sure the information is accurate and dealt with. With regard to the subject of the article it is sourced and, with regard to the pronunciation of "death", it can be taken as common knowledge by anyone with enough English to understand the hook.
Now, that said, I can add scrollover text about the rhyme... I just don't think anyone really wants or needs that, if you really think about it.
If you have more general qualms about pronunciation-based hooks, my feeling is that this is the most unexpected, interesting, and helpful information in the article but you're welcome to suggest ALTs you prefer. — LlywelynII 23:07, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
- A) The pronunciation is given and referenced and surely you don't think it's actually helpful for articles to just start listing rhymes for their entries. If WP:NOTDIC, then surely it's not a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary either. B) This pronunciation is given because it is odd and misleading. Just like "done" is very common but people don't expect to pronounce "clone" similarly, the natural pronunciation of some unknown word spelled with -ea- is going to be /i/: "Meath" doesn't look like it's pronounced "meth" any more than people read "plead" as "pled". Lead (the metal) is the PRIMARYTOPIC for L-E-A-D but starts off with a pronunciation guide; leadership doesn't. So, no, it's certainly understandable to etymologists but doesn't "make sense" to people seeing it for the first time. C) It's much more helpful to illustrate that with a rhyme, however, than giving people flat IPA. The rule about sourcing hooks is there to make sure the information is accurate and dealt with. With regard to the subject of the article it is sourced and, with regard to the pronunciation of "death", it can be taken as common knowledge by anyone with enough English to understand the hook.
- With regards to your point A, I don't disagree, but technically DYK rules state that the hook has to be mentioned in the article, and while the pronunciation is, the rhyme isn't. Maybe this is a case to ignore the rules in favour of common sense though. For point B, I accept that a native English speaker would assume one over the other, but isn't a non-native speaker more likely to know the words death and breath, and rhyme it with them, than sheath or wreath? I don't know, I can see your point, but I think that the use of "odd" is too subjective. @EEng: I take it from your ALT suggestion that you would be in favour of relaxing the rules slightly to allow hooks that aren't strictly mentioned in the article? Harrias talk 10:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
- Absolutely I'm in favor. Or, if it's distasteful to associate a saint with death, we could instead say that "Teath rhymes with meth". Drugs or corpses, take your pick. EEng (talk) 15:21, 1 January 2015 (UTC)
