Wikipedia talk:Stress marks in East Slavic words

Requested move 23 July 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved to Wikipedia:Stress marks in East Slavic words per WP:NOTCURRENTTITLE. (closed by non-admin page mover) – MaterialWorks 19:42, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Stress marks in Russian words → Wikipedia:Stress marks in Russian and Ukrainian words – The native convention is practically the same in Ukrainian as in Russian. This advice should be expanded to cover both.

I presume it might be similar in Belarusian too, so perhaps it should be moved to Stress marks in Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian words or Stress marks in East Slavic words. Or is it still more broadly used?  —Michael Z. 19:00, 23 July 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. – MaterialWorks 20:48, 3 August 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. CLYDE ^{TALK TO ME}/_{STUFF DONE} 20:17, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Stress marks in Cyrillic? Nardog (talk) 13:40, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  Not unacceptable. Maybe it can just be Wikipedia:Stress marks, if they’re not used in other writing systems. If I have a chance I’ll try to check some dictionaries in other languages to determine where this convention is used.  —Michael Z. 19:07, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Stress marks in Cyrillic words Summer ^talk 15:18, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

The words aren't Cyrillic. Nardog (talk) 15:58, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support either Wikipedia:Stress marks in East Slavic words or Wikipedia:Stress marks in Cyrillic, which seem like the most natural and concise ways of expressing this idea in its most inclusive sense. Oppose Wikipedia:Stress marks as there are some languages (e.g. Greek, see Greek diacritics) where stress marks are natively used. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 19:11, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  Ah, thanks for reminding us about Greek. Would Wikipedia:Syllabic stress marks still conflict with the Greek usage?  —Michael Z. 19:29, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  It would. At that point we might as well make it cover all auxiliary symbols denoting that are not usual in orthography, like Arabic diacritics and Furigana. Nardog (talk) 19:38, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you MZ for pointing out the issue. I've been thinking of it before, esp. of Ukrainian.
  At first glance, "Cyrillic" looks better within the title, but if we look at Cyrillic script, we'll see some legitimate letters with accents there, such as Sje. So we perhaps have to resort to "East Slavic", which at the very least definitely wouldn't be erroneous. (Cf. {{Family name hatnote}} that uses "Eastern Slavic" as one of the values for its |lang=.) I'd appreciate it if someone comes up with more ideas. — Mike Novikoff 23:15, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  Though I'm not necessarily opposed to "East Slavic", just because the title says Cyrillic doesn't mean the essay should be about all languages written in Cyrillic. Nardog (talk) 23:18, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

  Fair enough. In fact, I'd rather see "Cyrillic", if only it isn't to be mistaken. — Mike Novikoff 23:32, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Another tack might be to turn it around into a positive statement about stress notation: syllabic stress is an aspect of pronunciation and belongs in IPA (and in WP:RESPELLing for English). It should not be shoehorned into words, including foreign-language text, whether in Latin characters, in foreign-language scripts, or their romanization (e.g., Russian and Ukrainian). Except where it is native to the normal writing.

(Are there any known exceptions to this?)

I realize this would lead to a major rephrasing of the essay, but then it would be generalized and broadly applicable. Future additions would more likely be special-case exceptions than an overall change of scope. —Michael Z. 23:36, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

You know, some 25 years ago (does the time really run that fast?) I've been taught the basics of practical psychology, and one of the few things that I still remember is exactly the positive wording. And as you might have guessed, I wrote this essay out of frustration, so it hasn't been carefully planned. Your proposition looks good in general, although it's better to discuss the major changes first. Please also note that I'm having kind of a wikibreak now, so excuse me if I don't reply promptly. I hope we are not in a hurry. :) — Mike Novikoff 00:55, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Well the East Slavic dictionary-style stress notation is a specific phenomenon. This idea would maybe make this less of a satisfying essay on it, but I hope that redirects and keywords should still attract readers and get the same practical point across.  —Michael Z. 02:07, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean now. The essay is meant to justify the edits and furthermore to attract people to do so. And I'm really glad that the aim is now reached: even the IPs now do the right edits referring to this essay. Anything else is just a matter of style and perfectionism, isn't it? — Mike Novikoff 02:30, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Quite right.  —Michael Z. 02:39, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting to get a consensus on what title should be used. – MaterialWorks 20:48, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Essays has been notified of this discussion. – MaterialWorks 20:48, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

• If an article would be more useful to break out Ukrainian to a separate article, but this is just a convention. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:11, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
• Don't move before rephrasing The essay refers to Russian elementary schools, Russian dictionaries and the Russian WP. The notion that Ukrainian is something like a Russian dialect is fringe in linguistics and is currently being used by the Russian government to justify uncountable and unspeakable crimes. So, please could somebody with some understanding of the situation in other languages add something on that ? Maybe start with Ukrainian ? After that, any of the proposed names would be OK with me. Rsk6400 (talk) 06:49, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

  I have generalized the text for the three East Slavic languages.[1]  —Michael Z. 22:00, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

  OK, your edit is acceptable. — Mike Novikoff 23:25, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

• Support Thanks, Michael Z. I think the best name now would be Stress marks in East Slavic words. Stress marks in Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian words would also be OK, but rather long. We'd also need to change the short cut or add WP:BELSTRESS and WP:UKRSTRESS. Rsk6400 (talk) 05:14, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
• Support owing to the similarities if the topics; they can be adequately covered together here. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 06:19, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Not a guideline

This is not a community-vetted guideline and one cannot make massive changes in Wikipedia citing this page. There is an established procedure to promote essays to guideline status, WP:PROPOSAL. If one is seriously concerned with this issue, please do this.

P.S. I am not particularly in favor of stress marks and probably vote against them, but I am against massive changes without establishing a community-wide consensus. - Altenmann >talk 18:22, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I actually think this essay is outdated or incomplete since there is no direct reference to this MoS RfC closed in May 2021 that found that there was a consensus to "generally omit stress marks". Malerisch (talk) 22:18, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

This was a malformed and an improperly closed RfC . Four participants is far from being a valid decision-making Wikipedia-wide consensus. - Altenmann >talk 22:43, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Is there any evidence that the closure was improper? I don't think anyone appealed the closure, so I suspect that would be a surprise to the participants of the discussion (I count more than four, by the way). Malerisch (talk) 23:01, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

OK it was 5 (I didnt count SMcCandlish because he didnt vote, just wrote up a suggestion. There was two clear support votes, one clear oppose and one confused "limited support": this !voter wrote "I support the suggested inclusion of stress marks on Ukrainian words" , i.e., not support of removal of diacritics. - Altenmann >talk 23:39, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Why I say RfC was malformed? Because the page is MoS, and the RfC did not discuss any suggestion for MoS. An lest it did not update MoS in this respect. - Altenmann >talk 23:39, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

That said, an essay remains a non-binding essay and cannot serve as a basis for wikipedia-wide removal of stress marks. - Altenmann >talk 23:39, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

That that said, I am personally nearly always against stress marks, because in 99.9% it is original research and wikipedia is not dictionary. At the same time, there are cases when the stress is not evident even for Russian speakers, and what is more, stress can be phonemic, i.e., it used distinguish one word from another, e.g., "zAmok" vs. zamOk". For the latter case almost always a reliable reference exist. I also agree that for a layman stress marks can be confused with spelling such as in French (Les Misérables) or Spanish (cabrón) pardon my French :-). For these situations I would advice to relegate the nuances into a footnote, in order not to clutter the lede. - Altenmann >talk 23:39, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the closer included the comments directly above the !voting section as well in their consideration as they wrote that Since the RfC below is inextricably linked to the preceding discussion it makes the most sense to evaluate them as a singular whole. Many RfC comments explicitly invoked the preceding discussion so it would be inappropriate to apply a formal close to the RfC only, so there would be even more than five participants.

Also, although the closure didn't modify the MoS itself, it did establish that removing stress marks is supported by existing policies. (I personally think it's a strange type of close, but that's what the closer decided.)

I agree that citing to an essay is not ideal, but I think that citing to the discussion itself is okay (the closer wrote that this discussion can be linked as normal to demonstrate this interpretation has consensus support). Malerisch (talk) 00:32, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, in the "comments directly above" I see two more editors supporting stress marks. All the more towards my opinion it was a malformed RfC and inappropriate close. - Altenmann >talk 00:42, 13 February 2024 (UTC)