Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 March 20

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 20

Capital Of the UK

why do we say that the capital Of the UK is in London when all of the Institutions of government are in the separate city of Westminster. The city of London proper is miniscule and a business district. The rest is just the 32 boroughs and Greater London which, while important, don’t qualify as a capital city. —Andrew 22:31, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Andrew. Our article Capital city explains that there is not a standardized convention across countries for which city is called the capital. A capital is typically a city that physically encompasses the government's offices and meeting places; the status as capital is often designated by its law or constitution. In some jurisdictions, including several countries, the different branches of government are located in different settlements. In some cases, a distinction is made between the official (constitutional) capital and the seat of government, which is in another place. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:36, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

True, but that's not what's going on. What's going on is that when people refer to London they generally do not, and in this case specifically they do not, mean the City of London but rather the entire metropolis, including Westminster. I thought the "London" article used to address this in the lead section, but if it ever did, it doesn't now. It does say lower down that "London" can mean "Greater London". --76.69.46.228 (talk) 23:01, 20 March 2019 (UTC), confusing wording corrected later.

Wikipedia will follow what sources say. A lot of human language is pretty vague. You seem to not like the use of the word "city" when there's some kind of "subdivision" below the level of "city", but this is true in places all over the world. Just in the U.S., some cities are also their own counties, and some cover multiple counties. Let's not even get started on city-states. In practice, "city", in informal contexts, generally means "a single area covered by a human settlement without any significant unsettled area", though, like all definitions, there are inevitable exceptions. In olden days, cities were often walled for protection, and since walls became infeasible beyond a certain size, the walled area (as well as that delimited by any natural barriers) was the "city", and anything outside was suburbs, villages, etc. In the modern age, city walls are no more, and faster transport makes it possible for a larger area to be a single, cohesive community. This is why formerly walled cities like London and Paris now sprawl far beyond their historical boundaries and have swallowed up what used to be separate cities, towns, and so on. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 08:13, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

So in short, Andrew you are simply confusing London with the City of London. They are not the same thing, the City of London is a tiny part of the Capital of the United Kingdom. --Lgriot (talk) 14:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• I’m not sure I am Westminster is an entirely separate city and as far as I know the only one of the boroughs with City status —Andrew 07:57, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

• The City of London and (City of) Westminster are entirely separate and are the two boroughs of Greater London with city status. But it's Greater London that's the capital. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 08:54, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

See London#Toponymy: "Until 1889, the name "London" applied to the City of London, but since then it has also referred to the County of London and Greater London". Prior to that, organisations that covered the wider London area used the adjective "Metroplitan"; the Metropolitan Police and the Metropolitan Board of Works are examples. However, the term "London" was used colloquially for the whole conurbation before well that; for instance, London Labour and the London Poor (1851) encompasses Southwark, Clerkenwell and Holborn as well as the City. Alansplodge (talk) 20:02, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Even if the OP were correct in noting that the Capital (City of London) is not the Seat of Government (City of Westminster) for the UK/England (which if they were writing this at some point in the past they would be correct, so even though they are both part of London now, they weren't always!), even if we take that as given, it is not unique or uncommon. See Capital_city#Capitals_that_are_not_the_seat_of_government which has some current and historical examples. If you also include countries with multiple capitals, or with distributed government (those where the government functions are spread out over a number of locations, with no defined or de-facto capital) then there are well over a dozen countries that have such arrangements. --Jayron32 14:01, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Indian Writing Scripts

I sometimes see character sets used to write Languages of India that I do not recognize, except in vaguely recognizing them as Indian character sets. Are these character sets alphabetic in the sense of being representations of phonemes? What is their history? In particular, do they historically trace back to the ancient North Semitic abjad, which is said to be the ancestor of all alphabetic scripts, or do they have a separate origin? What articles do we have in the English Wikipedia on the character sets, other than the Roman alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, that are used to write languages of India? Robert McClenon (talk) 23:43, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

I see that Devanagari is the most commonly used of the scripts, and that it is an abugida. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:48, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

That's a good link! I see we also have Brahmic scripts, about this family of scripts. These articles don't seem to have a definite answer (and there may not be a definite answer) about whether the original Brahmi Script had any Semitic influence or not. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 00:02, 21 March 2019 (UTC)