User talk:Drmargi

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The Editor's Barnstar
For your scrutiny, diligence and commitment to fairness and accuracy in the Robert Irvine and Dinner: Impossible articles. Thanks! -|Godofbiscuits| 21:10, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Hey! I noticed you have edited quite a few times on the ER (TV Series) article. If you'd be interested in joining a new WikiProject dedicated to maintaining, expanding and improving articles about ER, please go to this page, find the ER entry, and add your name to the list of people interested. Josh 20:09, 18 August 2007 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Welcome!

Welcome!

Hello, Drmargi, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome! Spellcast 03:11, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome, Spellcast.


[edit] Višnjić - Visnjic

Hello to you. Your edits are positive and very constructive, so I have no quarrels with you. I just wanted to explain why I am insisting upon Goran's name being used with the diacritics. First of all, you may be forgiven for thinking that diacritics as such are relevant to the source language, but irrelevant when applied to the target language if that language does not contain those letters. Ironicly, that is the ignorance behind the media leaving them out in the first place. The diacritics used here are the caron and the accute; they were created and have been adopted for the Roman alphabet. This is why some languages, primarily written in a non-Latinic script, may use these letters for transliterations. For instance, if Cyrillic /ж/ is romanised to /ž/, only to be treated as /z/ in languages generally unfamiliar with the caron, then the caron serves no purpose from the beginning. It is actually perfectly legitimate to use diacritics in English or any Roman alphabet language. As a matter of fact, some writers actually do this; you may often find diacritics on foreign names used in broadsheet newspapers or other publications. It may be showing off on the half of the editors; but no rules or regulations any more proscribe it than demand it. This raises the question as to why ER and other sources do not use the diacritics. The answer is long and varied. Originally, television printers did not have the facilities to produce the symbols, neither did newspapers. And even when they did, often the editors with the responsibility simply couldn't be arsed with those things. This is what you need to consider when analysing the mentality of your ER scriptwriters in the first place. Then take into consideration your average ER viewer: even if the presentation did contain diacritics, it would be painful for the eyes of the viewer, "what the (explitive removed)????", they'd think. Another reason why diacritics may be left out sometimes is that some people consider a language such as Croatian to be "too exotic", so their additional features are ignored; but when it comes to Spanish or French, the very same newspaper which gives you Dokovic instead of Đoković will happily print the Spanish or French ñ, ç, or é, because these languages are considered "mainstream enough" to be accepted into their English. Of course, English too sometimes uses these things, such as in the name Zoë. But on principle, there is no rule to say you will or you won't. Now on wikipedia, this is the same. Diacritics can be a pain, which is why if you should expand the Visnjic article, you just write his name however you choose. If one day, someone ammends it to Višnjić, then just do not worry...nobody expects if of you. The last thing I'll leave you with is technical again. When a foreign name becomes an integral part of one culture's everyday life, the target language may transcribe the name from the source language. In a case where the name was a transliteration in the first place (not with Goran as Croatian uses Roman), the transliteration will act as the source; either way, if this were the case here, you might have expected to find the name spelt as Vishnyich at a guess. As it isn't, we need to respect that Goran has not yet warranted a change of name. When this happens, I will be the first to induct his English name into English Wikipedia; whilst it remains a letter-by-letter copy of his actual name, with the pronunciation expected to as in his language, it is more appropriate that we keep his diacritics. Or the whole thing is a mess. Do you know for example that the /nj/ is a digraph? Evlekis (talk) 19:53, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

And all that regarding the spelling of the name in his American work would be fine, were it accurate. But it's not. Visnjic (professional spelling) himself removed the diacritical marks from his name when he made his first non-Croatian English-language films, several years prior to appearing in ER. If you check all his English-language work from at least The Rounders (made in Canada) forward you'll find them consistently absent, reappearing only in the Croatian-language film/series Duga Mracna Noċ. At the time he began working in the US, there was considerable discussion of whether he should change his name to one more easily pronounced by Western audiences. Visnjic felt this was something he could not do, in part because it would offend his father. But he did decide to remove the diacritical marks in order to simplify the appearance of his name (I'm not sure he is sufficiently conversant in the various alphabets to have been very analytic about it.) This is well documented in both print and visual media interviews with him as recently as an appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show less than a year ago. Consequently, I have both reverted your edit and corrected the "conventional variant" notation to the more accurate "professional spelling."
I would also caution against extended narrative discourse on the various differences in Eastern/Western spellings, including such basics as the identity of variants in a variety of languages and phonological elements such as the digraph without knowing your audience first. While I accept your motives are well meant and intended to be instructive, your message is easily construed as patronizing given your both guns blazing writing style and the assumptions implicit in the level of detail present above. You know almost nothing about me, but deduce a low level of knowledge on my part, largely I'd suggest because of your own past experiences and because of certain stereotypes that accompany interest in handsome male celebrities. But look at the first two letters of my ID and ask yourself why they are there. It certainly isn't for being decorative, empty headed, a fan-girl or slavishly devoted to one highly enthnocentric view of spelling. If you knew the first thing about my degree, much less my specialization, you wouldn't have to ask if I knew that /nj/ is a consonant digraph, much less provide me with an interesting, if unneeded lesson on various linguistic variations in spellings from your particular point of view. Drmargi (talk) 20:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Apology

Yeah, you're right, I need to think this stuff through more carefully. -mattbuck (Talk) 14:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oops

I'm sorry for not my signing my post, I don't know the time stamp came up but not my user name(did I miss out a tilde or something?) I just wondered if you were aware of the blanking thing, that's all, as I was surprised when I read it myself. Of course I agree that WP:CIVIL is just as important, if not more so. Regards, Pawnkingthree (talk) 08:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Your actions were quite understandable; I shouldn't have got involved really. As you say, time to move on. Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)