Talk:compère

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

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.

---

compère

English, this spelling. If cited, this should probably be an alternative spelling of compere. DCDuring TALK 17:11, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

[1], [2], [3], [4],[5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18].  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 22:47, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The OED [2^nd ed.; 1989] lemmatises the spelling with a grave accent for both the noun and the verb. For the noun, it lists (deprecated template usage) compere as an 18^th- and 20^th-Century variant, solely supported by a 1738 citation of an obsolete sense; for the verb, it lists no spelling variants. The 2009 Oxford Paperback Dictionary & Thesaurus lists only the diacriticked spelling. The pronunciatory information given by the OED 1989 for both the noun and the verb is (‖kɔ̃pɛr, ˈkɒmpɛə(r)); without the grave accent the pronunciation which the spelling suggests is /ˈkɒmpɪɚ/.  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 22:59, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

That's very interesting. It seems then that we can steal a march on them by recognizing that the accentless spelling in overwhelmingly more common on bgc (plurals to eliminate the proper nouns) in the works Google claims are English, excluding any with some common French words. and with at least limited preview: Google count 623.

I wonder how the untutored actually would pronounce this, if forced to. DCDuring TALK 23:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Of the first twenty hits of your search query, [19], [20], and [21] actually spell it (deprecated template usage) compères; [22], [23], and [24] are scannos for (deprecated template usage) competes; [25] is a scanno for (deprecated template usage) compares; [26], [27], and [28] are French; and [29] misspells it *(deprecated template usage) compéres. That is to say that, according to that sample, over half those hits are wrong, and that, notably, 15% of them should properly be counted as instances of (deprecated template usage) compères, not (deprecated template usage) comperes. I admonish everyone to bear in mind, once again, that Google Books sucks at picking up diacritics.  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 00:44, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Noun cited, verb RFV-failed with no citations in the entry, and deleted. - -sche (discuss) 01:21, 9 May 2011 (UTC)