Talk:Dniester

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Rivers
 This article is part of WikiProject Rivers, a WikiProject to systematically present information on rivers. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page (see Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ for more information)
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article needs a map.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. To participate, improve this article or visit the project page for more information.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography by William Smith (1856).

I moved it here (Dniester), because it appears to be the most common used spelling in English and is used by Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia and BBC. Bogdan | Talk 23:43, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agree. It's also much closer to Ukrainian spelling (Dnister). Let's make Dniester a Wikipedia convention. Best wishes, AlexPU

Contents

[edit] Names

There were too many names in the article. I left only the languages which are relevant to the geography nowadays (Ukrainian, Romanian, Russian) and Latin (as it can be found on many older maps) and I removed:

Polish Dniestr, Yiddish‫נעסטער ‬ (nester), Serbian Dnjester

bogdan 22:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


--Can anyone pronounce SRPSKA ??? This is the name Bosnian Serbs gave to the territory they control in Bosnia. Can you pronounce Tbilisi ?? (Georgia's capital city name). In fact, Russians changed this name into Tiflis, for the ease of pronunciation (that happened before WWI). With the exception of Semitic languages, people use vowels to pronounce words easier. The easy way to pronounce Dniester would be: "Diester" or "Niester". Romanians have chosen the last one, that eventually resulted into Nistru. Slavic peoples, especially in modern times, have changed toponymy of probably Romanian, Tartar or other origins with something more "slavic", or just different. I will try an empirical explanation: peoples going from west to east ,like Romanians, used Nistru and therefore called Nipru the river slavs called Dnieper. The same happened with slavs, which were familiar with Dnieper, therefore Nistru didn't become Niester but Dniester. As about the strange "DN" instead of simple "N": migratory peoples coming into Europe from Central Asia met first the huge Volga. Then, at the west they crossed the Don river. And with Don begins the show: almost all major rivers at the west (probably) gained a "D" as prefix like Donets, Dnieper, Dniester. Two escaped: Bug river and Prut river. Sorinutsu (talk) 20:17, 28 March 2008 (UTC)Sorinutsu 28March2008~~

If there's a point to this post, it successfully eluded me. Can you pronounce "Strč prst skrz krk"? I had trouble spelling out words like "serendipitous", or "consciousness", or "daughter" (8 letters for 4 sounds)... so what? If one form finds its way into common English usage, then that's it. Discussions about how wrong it was to use it fall under WP:NOTAFORUM. As for the "Nipru" et al - these articles both have an explanation of the rivers' names. Might as well read them. --Illythr (talk) 22:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Invaders and defenders

It would be neutral to say "During the war, battles were fought on the banks of the river between the German and Romanian invaders and the Soviet defenders." This does not imply any value judgment. It is an objective statement, because an "invader" is someone coming from the outside and trying to take over the territory, whereas a "defender" is someone who wants to prevent that from happening and who is already there. If we need to clarify, we can specify the left bank of the river. On the right bank, the Romanians would not be invaders since they already held that territory. The Dniester was an international border at the time. - Mauco 20:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Separating Moldova from Transnistria NPOV

I'm concerned that it is inaccurate to say "the Dniester separates Moldova from Transnistria". First there is the region's overall controversial status, secondly there are certain areas on the left bank where Moldova has defacto/dejure control.

I have rephrased the statement to make up for this shortcoming: "...after which it flows through Moldova for 398km, separating most of it from Transnistria."

Feel free to make suggestions for a more eloquent way of expressing this. luddz Luddz 04:30, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Propose to move Google hits almost double for "Nistru". Suchwings1 (talk) 12:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Oppose: "Dniester" is an established English name used in major English encyclopediae [1],[2]. Additionally, a Google search refined to look on English sites only for the river (and not the many other things containing "Nistru" in their names) demonstrates that "Dniester" is more than three times more popular: Dniester+river, Nistru river. --Illythr (talk) 12:37, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Oppose: Bogdan (above) cites Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia and BBC use of Dniester. Rand McNally uses Dniester on its small-scale maps (i.e. the most general); it also uses Nistru on the Moldovan side and Dnester on the Ukrainian side on large-scale maps. World Book Encyclopedia uses Dnester (or Dniester) (1982 US edition; may be different in more recent and International editions.) Klippa (talk) 12:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
That was in old times. Nowadays, everything is updated and is used only the easier spelling word: Nistru without "Dn" because Nistru doesn't sound Russian. It's more English, so to say. --Suchwings1 (talk) 13:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
Speaking of modern usage, here's another Google search, this time in English language news sources for the period of 2000-2007. It looks for Nistru river and Dniester river: The relation is 30 to 800 in Dniester's favor with most of those 30 either using "Nistru" as a secondary name or being in articles by Socor. --Illythr (talk) 15:00, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


Now that Suchwings1 has been revealed as a Bonnie sock, the discussion can be closed. --Illythr (talk) 15:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Closed; no support and initiation by indefinitely blocked sockpuppet. Dekimasuよ! 04:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)