Talk:vierzehn Tage

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RFD discussion: June 2014[edit]

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

Fourteen days. This is as uncontroversial an SOP as we're ever likely to see. Smurrayinchester (talk) 16:02, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. How would you know from looking at vierzehn and Tage that you can translate this as "fortnight"? Here are some dicts that have this: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/german-english/vierzehn-tage, http://www.babylon.com/definition/vierzehn%20Tage/. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:14, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All of those are bilingual dictionaries, and all but one are German-English and presumably have it as a translation of fortnight. I can't find any native German dictionaries that have it. Smurrayinchester (talk) 08:31, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. Re "How would you know from looking at vierzehn and Tage that you can translate this as 'fortnight'?": erm, because fortnight means "fourteen days/nights", lol. You could also 'translate' (replace) the English collocation fourteen days (and any of a number of other equally-SOP phrases in any of a number of languages, such as zwei Wochen, fourteen consecutive nights, etc) with fortnight. - -sche (discuss) 16:32, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So what is the most idiomatic German translation of fortnight? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:19, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There is no idiomatic translation of it, there are only SOP phrases like this one (vierzehn Tage (“fourteen days”)) and zwei Wochen (“two weeks”). The latter is slightly more common these days ([1]) and is already linked as SOP in the translations table at fortnight. We just need to link vierzehn Tage the same way. - -sche (discuss) 18:44, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I did today (link as SoP). BTW, delete. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 08:37, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, not idiomatic. --kc_kennylau (talk) 08:53, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Dan Polansky is there anything I can say to convince you that our readers are not total morons and can (literally in this case) string two words together and understand the meaning. Renard Migrant (talk) 10:19, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete DCDuring TALK 16:31, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I am reluctant to vote on an RFD in a language I barely speak, but I do oppose having terms only because they are translation targets for things that are stylised/idiomatic in other languages (i.e. English fortnight, French quinzaine). So if that's the case here then I would want to see it gone. Equinox ◑ 16:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, so if I said "I'm spending a fortnight here in America" the natives wouldn't know what I'm talking about. Great, they use another language! Donnanz (talk) 20:50, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Many wouldn't know, no. And many others would understand it, but would find it amusingly quaint. But to return to the point: if anyone wants to know how to say "fortnight" in German, they are just as well served by a translation line that says {{t|de|[[vierzehn]] [[Tage]]}} as by one that says {{t|de|vierzehn Tage}}. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:01, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Negative thinking doesn't get you anywhere. It could be linked via "Derived terms" under vierzehn and Tag. Donnanz (talk) 20:59, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As could vierzehn Hunde, vierzehn Stunden, vierzehn Kartoffeln, vierzehn Vierzehnen... The fact that a term is derived from another is not grounds for keeping it. Smurrayinchester (talk) 11:47, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nomination. German speakers who are confused by the word fortnight can find the information they need at fortnight. — Ungoliant (falai) 21:11, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I find the "it's a translation of a one-word term" very ignorant to be honest with you. French has a single word for person who feels the cold easily (frileux) but there's no English entry for person who feels the cold easily. Renard Migrant (talk) 08:46, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I'm surprised this isn't unanimous. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 13:55, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as I as a native speaker have a feeling that it's not SOP. Colloquially, you can talk about what happened vor vierzehn Tagen or what will happen in vierzehn Tagen even if it's not exactly 14 days. Well, admittedly the same could be said about drei Jahre. But unlike this case, vierzehn Tage is a set phrase (i.e. when talking about three weeks, it's not common to say einundzwanzig Tage, or even one week is not as well described as sieben Tage, whereas it's absolutely common to talk about two weeks as vierzehn Tage). Longtrend (talk) 19:43, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    @Longtrend It's all well and good to treat one's idiolect as data, but it is just one data point. Do you have evidence about the 'setness' of this collocation from any corpus? There doesn't seem to be support from authorities such as lexicographers. DCDuring TALK 19:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    Good point. Some evidence can be found by doing a Google Books search. For example, a search for the phrase google books:"in vierzehn Tagen" yields 629.000 hits, whereas in sieben Tagen yields only 253.000 hits and in einundzwanzig Tagen 1.870 hits. I think you would expect a decreasing number of hits with greater numbers in the phrase (compare in sieben Jahren vs. in vierzehn Jahren vs. in einundzwanzig Jahren). It's even clearer with vor vierzehn Tagen vs. vor sieben Tagen vs. vor einundzwanzig Tagen (or even vs. vor dreizehn Tagen and vor fünfzehn Tagen). That's all I can come up with right now, but it's a first indication. Longtrend (talk) 20:16, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    A phrase can have some "setness" to it, while still being a transparent SOP. For instance, "twenty-four hours" (and indeed its German counterpart "vierundzwanzig Stunden") is far more commonly used than "twenty-one hours" or "twenty-seven hours", and it's commonly used as a synonym for day... but it still just means twenty-four hours. That said, although I didn't see anything useful on Google Books, I did find this interesting Martin Luther quote, where he counts time thus: "vierzehn Tage, drei, ja vier Wochen". Smurrayinchester (talk) 20:38, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    The reason why "twenty-four hours" is more frequent than "twenty-one hours" or "twenty-seven hours" probably is that the first happens to be the equivalent of a whole number of days (1). That's why I compared "vierzehn Tage" to "sieben Tage" and "einundzwanzig Tage" which also make up a whole number of weeks each (as opposed to "dreizehn Tage"). The Martin Luther quote is really interesting as it shows the setness of the phrase very well IMO. I also found something in the Deutsches Wörterbuch which calls vierzehn Tage a "Fristbezeichnung" ("name for a period of time") and compares it to French quinze jours. It even cites an author with the phrase in drey vierzehen tagen ("in three fortnights"), which would prove its idiomaticity, though admittedly such a construction is not possible in today's language anymore. Longtrend (talk) 20:59, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not convinced that it's even relevant. In English (at least, in American English, I don't know about British English), we use "15 minutes" and "45 minutes" in the same general way (when I'm speaking German I have to remind myself to say eine Viertelstunde and eine Dreiviertelstunde because 15 Minuten and 45 Minuten have a precision in German that they don't have in English), and both of those collocations are probably way more common than "30 minutes" or "60 minutes", but I still would not want us to have entries for 15 minutes and 45 minutes, because they're still transparent SOPs. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:54, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    I've found a couple of old dictionaries which support the claim about the plural, and "drei vierzehn Tage" gets a lot of relevant hits on Google Books (even when you exclude things like "drei vierzehn Tage lang Perioden"). As such, I'm willing to accept that this is idiomatic in an unusual way. I've updated the article and am withdrawing my RFD. Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:17, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't know about German, but note that, in French, quinzaine or quinze jours (15 days) are often used to mean 2 weeks (dans quinze jours generally means in two weeks). Lmaltier (talk) 18:07, 17 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Changed my vote to keep as idiomatic. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 12:09, 25 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per the usage note. --WikiTiki89 12:13, 25 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]


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