Category talk:European English

RFM discussion: February 2016

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Category:European English

This category should either be deprecated in favour of, or should exist only as a container for, the British English and Irish English categories, and the label "European" should be deprecated from English entries in favour of "Ireland|UK". Compare how Category:North American English is just a container for the American English and Canadian English categories. - -sche (discuss) 02:16, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I wholly agree. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:49, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

 Done, perhaps a bit speedily, since there were only a dozen entries in it to begin with, and several of them were using "Europe" not to indicate that the word was restricted to European dialects, but just that the word denoted a European thing (like the ESA, which Americans also talk about whenever it launches stuff into space). - -sche (discuss) 16:56, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I actually prefer "Europe" over "UK, Ireland". —CodeCat 16:58, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

That dilutes British English entries (and ditto Irish English entries) into two categories — most in "British English", and then a few squirrelled away in "European English" — instead of one category. It also seems inaccurate, in that the only consistent "European" Englishes are British and Irish; English speakers outside the UK and Ireland in e.g. Germany might use either a US or a UK form depending on whether they studied British English in school, or spent time abroad in America (and in either case, they're using a UK or a US form). - -sche (discuss) 17:31, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

But we do the same with other languages as well. Compare Category:Southern Dutch versus the more specific Category:Brabantian Dutch. We also have Category:European Portuguese. —CodeCat 17:35, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Presumably, "Southern Dutch" exists as a dialect. Hence, the Dutch categories are comparable to Category:Southern US English + Category:Virginian English. Things which are used in both Southern US English and Midwestern US English (e.g. gullywasher, break bad) go into two separate categories for those two separate dialects, however; we don't lump them into a category "Category:Southern and Midwestern US English", and we shouldn't lump Irish and British together. - -sche (discuss) 18:13, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

European Portuguese isn't really a parallel case. That's the normal term for Portuguese from Portugal as opposed to Brazil (Angola, Mozambique, etc.). But "European English" is not a normal term for anything, however convenient it might be to have a term that means "UK + Ireland + Isle of Man + Channel Islands + Gibraltar + Malta English". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Which is exactly why I endorse using it. Everything else we use is inaccurate. —CodeCat 22:39, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

The trouble is, that isn't really a natural class. As far as English spelling is concerned, there's no difference between the English used in European countries and the English used almost everywhere else in the world (except Canada, the U.S., and countries currently or formerly associated with the U.S. like Liberia, the Philippines, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau). There really is no fully accurate name for that (some people call it "Commonwealth English", but Ireland isn't in the Commonwealth, and Canada has distinct spelling but is in the Commonwealth). As for terminology, I'd be very surprised if there were any words used in all the European countries I mentioned above but not in any of the GB-spelling non-European countries. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:28, 21 February 2016 (UTC)