Talk:ǁKaras Region

ǃKaras versus ǁKaras

According to President's statement region was named !Karas not ǁKaras. Aotearoa (talk) 21:54, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

• The correct spelling is ǁKaras. There was some confusion in the days just after the renaming. Very few high government officials speak Khoekhoe, and the ǁ is hard to find on a computer keyboard. The ǁKaras spelling is now used by all major newspapers (New Era, Republikein, The Namibian, Allgemeine Zeitung). Actually, the combination ǃK is not even a valid consonant in Khoekhoe language. I think this is exactly why we prefer secondary sources of information (newspapers) over primary sources (the Government Gazette). So even if the President decreed ǃKaras, if all other coverage used ǁKaras, so would Wikipedia. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 06:09, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
• Question - excuse my ignorance, but is this place name from !Kung language or which language? Why should it be represented in Khoekhoe language? ....With a better represented country a MOS:Namibia should settle such questions consistently. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:06, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

  As far as I know ǃKung is a language of the San people, whereas Khoekhoe language is that of the Damara people and Nama people. Both languages have 'clicks', but they are not the same. ǁKaras Region is core Damara/Nama territory; the San are (today) further in the East (Botswana and Omaheke Region). Hope that helps --Pgallert (talk) 08:55, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

  Spelling ǃKaras is used in the Government Gazette of the Republic of Namibia where decision about name change has been published. Therefore ǃKaras is only official spelling of the name of this region. Aotearoa (talk) 09:15, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:Article titles says that the title most frequently used for the topic is the one that Wikipedia should use. I think I've shown above that all major Namibian newspapers use ǁKaras, not !Karas. Besides, these sources are independent, secondary sources whereas the Government Gazette is a primary and dependent source. !Karas is a spelling error, which has been repeated a few times in August 2013, and almost never since. Anyway, here is the official {{Requested move}}: --Pgallert (talk) 13:31, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion 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 proposal was no consensus. BOLD move reverted. --BDD (talk) 19:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

ǃKaras Region → ǁKaras Region – Moved the other way round yesterday, based on a primary source from Government, and dismissing the secondary source in the article. All major newspapers use ǁKaras Region, examples on the talk page. As unlikely as it sounds, ǃKaras Region was a spelling error by a non-Khoekhoe language speaker. The consonant combination ǃK cannot even exist in written Khoekhoe; to produce a K-like sound after an alveolar click, one would write ǃG, not ǃK. Relisted. BDD (talk) 19:14, 11 March 2014 (UTC) Pgallert (talk) 13:31, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

• Comment WP:TSC avoid special characters. "ǁ" is a special character. It looks like IIKaras Region or llKaras Region or 11Karas Region or variation on that theme. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 06:06, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
  • variations IlKaras Region,I1Karas Region,1IKaras Region,1lKaras Region,lIKaras Region,l1Karas Region,ⅡKaras Region
    • WP:TSC does not say that special characters are to be avoided (and ǃKaras Region contains a special character as well). It says, for this particular case, In such cases, provide redirects from versions of the title that use only standard keyboard characters. The redirect Karas Region has been provided. --Pgallert (talk) 14:10, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
      • That special character violates TSC, it should be !Karas Region -- 70.50.151.11 (talk)
        • Specifically which phrase in TSC do you see violated? --Pgallert (talk) 09:40, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
          • There is no violation of WP:TSC. bobrayner (talk) 00:57, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose: Spelling ǃKaras is used in the Government Gazette of the Republic of Namibia where decision about name change has been published. Therefore ǃKaras is only official English spelling of the name of this region. Potential error in the spelling of this name is irrelevant. The name of region has been official changed into ǃKaras and only another one official publication in the Government Gazette can change it. Aotearoa (talk) 11:22, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
  • That's not in accordance with the Wikipedia policy Wikipedia:Article titles: Wikipedia prefers the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources) is what it says. As already stated in the thread above, all major newspapers (New Era, Republikein, The Namibian, Allgemeine Zeitung) use ǁKaras Region. Besides, the Regional Government office itself carries the sign "ǁKaras Regional Council"... unfortunately that's a few hundred km away, such that I cannot provide a picture. --Pgallert (talk) 14:10, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
  • I should point out that the spelling used in that document is different from the current title, which surely undermines any argument against moving. That document says !Karas Region but the article is currently at ǃKaras Region. Best explanation is a dubious transcription in that document. bobrayner (talk) 00:56, 2 March 2014 (UTC)
• Comment. WP:UE, which is also part of the article titles policy, says that "names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated." "Ⅱ" is a letter, not a "special character" under WP:TSC, right? I'm having a hard time seeing "Ⅱ" as a letter of a Latin alphabet recognizable to a large portion of the reader base in English, its use in local/regional newspapers aside. As one of these underinformed readers, however, I do recognize the phonetic value of "!" Dekimasuよ! 20:34, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
  • I see that, even through copy and paste, my computer was unable to handle the symbol used in the request and substituted a different character. Dekimasuよ! 20:36, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
    • I don't think a transliteration of the Khoekhoegowab clicks has ever been attempted. You find the correct character underneath the edit box, select "IPA" in the drop-down menu. Not sure if I correctly understand your I do recognize the phonetic value of "!" - are you saying you can speak/understand the alveolar click ǃ, but not the lateral click ǁ? The alveolar click ǃ is not the same symbol as the exclamation mark !, even if it renders alike in many browsers. --Pgallert (talk) 05:55, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
• Comment: We're discussing to move the article from one special character to another special character at the beginning of [?]Karas Region. I therefore don't quite understand the resistance based on WP:TSC and WP:UE. If the feeling is to rather keep the article under "Karas Region" with no special character at all, it might be better to oppose this RM, and start another one once this discussion closes. --Pgallert (talk) 05:55, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment it should be using a standard exclaimation mark per TSC "!", so !Karas Region would not be using characters not normally found on English keyboards. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 06:28, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
    • But the character is a click, not an exclamation mark. ǃ is the correct IPA symbol, and no, nowhere in TSC is there any regulation that you could base your recommendation on. --Pgallert (talk) 09:38, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
• Support ǁKaras Region, as a more accurate spelling, but we can leave a redirect in place to cope with any stray uses of the ǃ version. WP:TSC does not tell us to replace a rare character with a different, more common character that looks similar; that's silly - would you replace Ezh (Ʒ) with the number three? Or replace a cyrillic В with a latin B even though they are completely different consonants? However, WP:TSC does suggest a redirect (after all, it's plausible that editors might type ! instead of ǃ, even if strictly incorrect). So, I'd be happy with redirects from both ǃKaras Region and !Karas Region. bobrayner (talk) 22:09, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. 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.

!Karas versus ǃKaras

Just to add to the confusion, I see both !Karas (with EXCLAMATION MARK, U+0021) and ǃKaras (with LATIN LETTER RETROFLEX CLICK, U+01C3) being used. Certainly the "click" version is correct, but the referenced article itself uses the exclamation point. Perhaps the article did not care about this distinction. Rightly or wrongly, I took the liberty of updating the article to change the EXCLAMATION MARK spelling with the LATIN LETTER RETROFLEX CLICK spelling. Discussion? Nellisks (talk) 16:05, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I think the whole phrase should go, as it is a once-off spelling error in a primary source. However, discussions above seem to say that there would be no consensus for that. But yes, the click-version is a bit less wrong than the exclamation mark version ;) BTW, how do you see which character it is, @Nellisks:? For me they render exactly alike. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 10:18, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

You need a tool that tells you the Unicode Scalar Value of the character. I like my own tool at https://nellisks.com/tools/char2codepoint.html, where you copy-and-paste in the character in question and it gives you the USV. Nellisks (talk) 13:42, 6 January 2020 (UTC)