Talk:de gustibus non est disputandum

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The Italian Wikipedia entry has discussed the form of the phrase, so I would correct it here because it is different from the Italian article which is referenced and this might create confusion. I don't know how to change titles or create pages or redirect, so someone with the know-how would be welcome to do so. --David Be 08:53, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Italian page also does not seem to make reference to the medieval origin, but claims Caesar via Plutarch as the source.

Equivalent French phase[edit]

"Les goûts ne sont pas à discuter"

Not sure how that could or should be worked in. -- Kendrick7 (talk) 03:40, 22 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How about as a translation? Though this site isn't user-friendly enough for me to have a stab at adding it.

Comment[edit]

Moved from the entry to this talk page: "Note that this is not a reliable source: (Reasons follow below.)

[1]"

  1. ^ Sorini, Editor, Alex (2002-2015) “Julius Caesar and his board”, in TaccuiniStorici.it‎[1], Esimple, retrieved 08 January 2016 Reasons: 1) It's directly contradicted by the source it quotes. 2) Overall, the scholarly level of the site doesn't seem very high. 3) The author seems to be more interested in telling an entertaining story than in sticking too closely to the facts.

-17:01, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

RFD discussion: March–May 2021[edit]

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This is Latin, not Danish. @Gamren —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 08:57, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Danish sources call this a Latin proverb.[2][3][4] If this is Danish, then argumentum ad hominem is Slovak, and petitio principii is Turkish.  --Lambiam 13:07, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"And we can make beans, into peas!" ← I'll take obscure movie references for $500, Alex! 😃 ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 19:09, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Lambiam We currently have English entries for both of those.__Gamren (talk) 20:05, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wild theory: These kinds of entries are often created by monolinguals because they are not confident in creating entries in other languages, even translingual. Surely there is a state of naivety where one cannot imagine the concept of translinguality, and everything that one encounters in the environment of one’s native language is ascribed to this language, because it expresses a concept like no other term. Fay Freak (talk) 20:14, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So, are those two examples also strictly Latin, or are they translingual? Have you phoned "the objective third" to get his opinion on the matter?__Gamren (talk) 23:24, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I like the suggestion of making common Latin proverbs translingual. (Otherwise delete as Danish per code switching.) MuDavid 栘𩿠 (talk) 01:37, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RFD-deleted. Imetsia (talk) 14:15, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]


RFV discussion: November 2020–May 2021[edit]

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de gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum[edit]

In Latin. Definitively attested (the first one at least) in German, Swedish, Danish, English, and doubtlessly a bunch of other languages.__Gamren (talk) 15:48, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gamren: It would be a stretch to call it German, Swedish, Danish or English. At best it is translingual. But it is clearly even alleged to be a phrase the Romans used and thus denied to be German, French etc. when used in German, French etc., and people who use it in German must have relished Latin education to even memorize it so it is code-switching. It is alleged to be a phrase some scholastics used, and that makes sense, though I do not find who did so. Maybe @Lambiam does.
So I reckon it should be deleted as Danish because it is not Danish. People, to show off, change languages while writing, even to languages they don’t understand. Fay Freak (talk) 17:11, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I know the phrase only in versions such as de gustibus non est disputandum, without reference to colours. It is seen here in a Latin text from 1637 by Tommaso Campanella, where it is cited as a proverb. It may be post-classical, but it is definitely Latin. Here is a use of the phrase ἀνερρίφθω κύβος in an English book. That ain't make it English.  --Lambiam 21:24, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that this is used by people who speak no Latin, or in a book written for people who aren't expected to know Latin, is proof that it's not code-switching.__Gamren (talk) 14:09, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gamren: Iff you define code-switching like that. But beyond that it is not excluded that people speak sentences in other languages without understanding the language in whole, so that there is a language switch other than one which is code-switching according to your restrictive definition. It is also impractical to check whether and how much all the cited authors know Latin, so that criterion should be irrelevant. Fay Freak (talk) 14:19, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's not that impractical, really. See: if a 1600-AD priest writes an internal missive to other clerics, and switches into Latin, that's probably just code-switching. If a 20th century writer uses a Latin phrase in a book intended to the general public, it's not code-switching, because the general public isn't expected to know Latin. If a 21st century writer uses an English phrase, were back in potential code-switching territory. It's not necessary to check whether the writer speaks the language, because code-switching only occurs when both the speaker, and his (perceived/intended) audience (which in general differs from his actual audience), speaks both languages.__Gamren (talk) 14:33, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gamren: That’s another criterion you have added; what the speaker excepts the perceived audience to know – which is impractical to check; and you just assume blanket-wise a certain horizont of authors and (imagined) readers. Authors assume different things about the readers, for some it is more important to appear smart or most important to be sold rather than to be understood; and they perhaps do not esteem their readers’ Latin skills as low as you do. And an author or audience can well know certain foreign-language phrases while not knowing the language. And you not address the fact that there can be a language switch irrespectively of the definition of code-switching.
What decides which language something be is the doxa, the judgement of the objective third, and not the subjective knowledge or/and expectations of the author of words. The usual judgment is that what is now under Danish at de gustibus non est disputandum is Latin. Only someone corrupted by linguistic dogmatics, hearing about things like “code-switching”, can assume it to be Danish. But the natural and thus reasonable assumption is that it is Latin in Danish. Fay Freak (talk) 15:02, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea how to respond to that. Do you reject the very concept of a loanword altogether? Are i.e., quid pro quo, pro bono, etc. also not English words?__Gamren (talk) 15:34, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Gamren: No, else I wouldn’t ever have used {{borrowed}}. But there is also a case group of what is just foreign but not a loanword. An occurring in foreign context without being intended by the speaker or perceived by the intended recipients as pertaining to that language the rest is written. Cases where people would be surprised if you told them like here that it is Danish. It is a case-group that not only comprises code-switching and is overhastily skipped from consideration. I am especially skeptical of proverbs being that simply loaned – surely, one has to ask how a whole sentence could be a loanword , but this is not just a wordplay: If several academics cite some longer passage, a whole text once said by someone, then this is never considered a borrowing either. You must be reasonably surprised if e.g. the sentence “A language is a dialect with an army and navy” appears in the dictionary as “German” because some linguistics books in German quote this sentence. I am not sure if you call it “code-switching” because German linguists are expected to know English, the “code-switching” label is rarely applied to academical discourse. But one must recognize that it is a widespread practice of academia to quote texts untranslated, obviously because the text itself is the topic as in philological or philology-heavy sciences or the wording is crucial as in philosophy (@Andrew Sheedy), and the categorization as a lexical borrowing does not depend on the superficiality of which languages the author or the readers know or typically know in the field. A quotation practice squarely does not fit into the category “lexical loan”. This de gustibus non est disputandum is such, a sentence that is alleged to have been said by scholastics, and it isn’t to be deemed “borrowed” because the claim of origin is inaccurate or the sentence is short enough to be memorized and occasionally even said in oral speech. Fay Freak (talk) 19:16, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm inclined to agree that it isn't Danish (and not Translingual either). People writing for educated audiences, up until the mid-20th century, regularly used words in classical languages without intending to borrow them. As you mention, this is a common practice in philosophy. Heidegger, for instance, regularly used Greek words and phrases in his texts (without transcribing them into the Latin alphabet). That doesn't make those words borrowings into German (or whatever language the text has been translated into). Delete. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 19:55, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, keep the Latin entry and delete the rest. PUC – 17:49, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is an RFV discussion, votes are meaningless. Also, the quotes I've given aren't restricted to a philological, or even academic, context, nor does it appear as a quote. It's simply used as an interjection.__Gamren (talk) 18:19, 7 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly the Latin entry should stay, it's common in New Latin. No time rn to sift through all the non-Latin cites on Google Books to find a Latin one, but the variant with esse found in subordinate clauses has tons of Google Books hits in Latin texts: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22de+gustibus+non+esse%22&hl=nl&tbm=bks&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw1YnExaDtAhWmsKQKHUFhCwYQ_AUILSgC&biw=1408&bih=667 — Mnemosientje (t · c) 15:43, 26 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In my view de gustibus non est disputandum has been cited; furthermore Lambiam's cites can also be added and I believe that the cite embedded in an English sentence and any similar cite should also stand as valid. The complete syntax of the clause de gustibus non est disputandum remains Latin after all and it is often marked through italics as distinct from the rest of the utterance. I have not found indisputably Latin cites for de gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum; all attestations that I have found were embedded in other languages.
I believe that having a Danish section for this is less than ideal. That should probably be first resolved through the Beer Parlour rather than RFD, however. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 15:15, 23 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
RFV passed for both. Since the Danish RFD passed, I've moved those cites to the Latin section. Since the consensus appears to be that usages in foreign languages still support a Latin word, the coloribus variant also passes, even though it only has English and French cites.__Gamren (talk) 16:48, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]


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