Talk:short a

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short a

And all the other similar entries by the same person. No headword, no proper definition. SemperBlotto (talk) 20:31, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

They should at least have the IPA symbols, rather than just giving a couple of random example words. But they seem rather SoP anyway: e.g. a "long o" in Old English was a different sound from a long o in Modern English, right? (Not purely because of vowel shift.) Equinox ◑ 20:39, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think they're SOP at all as applied to modern English, especially in accents like General American that doesn't even have phonemic vowel length. The "short a" in a word like bad is not particularly short, and long i isn't a long vowel at all but a diphthong. These are historical names, but in modern English they're misnomers and thus do not have a meaning that's predictable from their component parts. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:00, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Aɴɢʀ, a long a could potentially refer to a vowel such as occurs in "You've been a baaaaaaaaaad cat." But, in linguistics it doesn't, so not SOP. As for long oo and short oo - these are perhaps from the field of "phonics" as opposed to phonetics, but I had never heard of them and so didn't understand their meaning until I read the entries, so again not SOP. That said, the entries added by Pizza86 certainly need work (but not deletion).--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 11:18, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

• Keep per Aɴɢʀ, Sonofcawdrey. bd2412 T 16:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
• I'm with Angr too. Let's start with the deletion rationale. "No headword, no proper definition" those are easily fixed. So there simply is no deletion rationale at the moment, I can't think of one so keep due to lack of reason to delete. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:31, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
• Keep: There should be entries for concepts like these. Also, implore @SemperBlotto to refrain from deleting or RfDing entries solely on cleanup concerns. Purplebackpack89 19:46, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
  • There's nothing wrong with the nomination. It brings the issue to the attention of the community for discussion. bd2412 T 22:22, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
    • Is nominating for deletion really the best way to do this? I'm sure I could think of lots of perfectly valid entries that need clean up that I could nominate for deletion if I were so inclined. Renard Migrant (talk) 23:41, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
      • If there is an argument to be made that the entries should not exist at all, then this is the appropriate venue. A phrase with "no proper definition" may be one that has no sense suitable for inclusion in a dictionary. Although this may not be how the nomination turns out, I still think it is fine to bring it here. bd2412 T 02:56, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
• Comment Maybe it's a US/UK thing, but this article and long a don't correspond to what I think of when I hear the terms – namely, the GRASS vowels: short a is the Northern England /æ/ and long a is the Southern England /a:/ (not /eɪ/). See 1, 2, 3 Smurrayinchester (talk) 23:38, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Ah yes! As I thought, there are two definitions - the linguistics long-a (= /a:/), and the phonics long-a (= /eɪ/). A quick Google of "phonics" and "long a" will provide plenty of examples. I suspect the original editor was coming from a phonics perspective, e'en tho' they labelled every entry "linguistics". If no one makes clean-up of these entries their pet project, I will, but am too busy for the next week or so to get around to it.--Sonofcawdrey (talk) 00:56, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
• Keep. Not SOP. The phonemes "long a", "long e", "long i", "long o" and "long u" used to be actual long vowels, and then there was the Great Vowel Shift. They're not SOP in modern English. 2602:306:3653:8920:F14D:7716:1583:E124 01:07, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
• Keep. Shoof (talk) 20:42, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
• Keep per Angr. - -sche (discuss) 05:13, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Kept. There is no reasonable chance of deletion at this point. bd2412 T 19:03, 23 November 2015 (UTC)