Talk:Acute accent

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This article contains a translation of Acute accent from en.wikipedia.

Discussion from Talk page[change source]

I copied this over from my Talk page to keep the discussion with the article for future reference and to keep the discussion and the subject of the discussion together. Gotanda (talk) 22:25, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Acute accent.[change source]

I see you have tagged acute accent as complex with the change summary "more complexity from EN". This is untrue. If you compare the two versions, you will see that I have made significant changes and have done everything I can to simplify it. Diacritics is a complex topic in its-self and until we get articles written on things like vowel quality and stressed vowels, it will remain so. There is nothing I can do to further simplify the article since I already spent the best part of an hour simplifying the paragraphs I took from EN. I could add parenthetical explanations but other than that, that's about all I can do. Therefore, having a complex tag on an article that can't be further simplified isn't really helpful. That said, I will go over the article again and simplify everything I can see that could be simpler. -Orash matash- 16:09, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Orashmatash. Thanks for the comment. I'll give a little explanation then.

1. It is from En. That's right there in the history.
2. It is still complex. I see that you have made changes and it is not just a copy and paste.
3. It can certainly be simplified further. Right away, I can see two ways of simplifying it: get rid of all of the passives and reduce the level of detail. The "needs sources" template was brought over with this. The source article is relatively low quality, so one approach would be to cut this back by going ahead and removing some unsourced sections that go into minor detail. Macdonald-ross wrote about this, saying, "It is important not to import excessive detail from enWP. This is the key issue: If a reader wants more detail, they can find it on enWP. But if a reader wants to find a simpler version of something on enWP this is the only place they can go to get it. It is why we were created. The more we look like a mirror site for enWP, the less we are doing our job."
4. That takes time, as you have said. I don't have time personally to clean up all of the articles or content imported from En. If I have time, I do simplify them. If I don't have time, I tag them as complex so that I can either come back to them later, or someone else can.

Finally, content that is complex should be marked. I always consider language learners and people learning to read. It says "Simple English" right at the top of every page, so that is what readers expect. Beginning readers and language learners can become discouraged very easily. If they are told "this article is simple" but they find it very difficult to read, this often demotivates them. It is good to have more articles here, but it is always important to keep them simple. If I have time, I may come back to the acute accent article and try to simplify it. Gotanda (talk) 22:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say it wasn't from EN, all I was saying that I have made some significant changes. I apologise if I misinterpreted the summary. Again, with the complexity, diacritics is a complex topic even without any complex language. We'll probably need articles on vowel length, stressed vowels, pitch etc. That's for another day, I'll get round to it eventually. Anyway, yes, I agree there is some wording that could be simpler, but I got bored after spending around an hour simplifying it. I understand your point about detail and feel that it's a good one, so I'll go ahead and remove everything that goes too in-depth. However, I must insist that the sections dealing with pronunciation remain unless it's too in-depth. Not having the pronunciation sections pretty much makes the article pointless. I'll get started on it later. Thanks for all your comments. :) -Orash matash- 23:07, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Notes for simplification[change source]

Much of this was brought over from En. It needs simplification here, but to be honest, it needs simplification over there too. It has been tagged for improvement on En for almost a year. Looking at the talk page on En shows discussion about splitting the article. Sometimes using En as the basis of an article here on simple is not helpful. This is one of those cases.

Getting the infobox etc may be helpful, but the source article is a grab bag of very detailed info (Usage of the acute accent in Leonese? The history of SPanish computer keyboards?) Also, a lot of info is actually about the phonology of languages, not the mark itself. Finally, the organization of the article is poor. For example, why is the History of the mark a subsection of its Use?

Language is complex in two ways. Complex vocabulary and complex sentence structure. High frequency, simple words should be used whenever possible. Use active verbs not passive in a subject verb object sentence structure whenever possible. Those are the basics of simplifying an article. See Wikipedia:How_to_write_Simple_English_pages. Thanks, Gotanda (talk) 22:36, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well I have done a lot of simplifying in my time here, so I know how to do it, but I agree that it has too much detail which I will remove. -Orash matash- 13:12, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Orashmatash. I didn't mean to point out the obvious to you. You have been around a while. I just wanted to make really clear what I was going to do and why. I've removed all of the detailed language information about vowel sounds. Here's why. There is nothing consistent about it. It was basically just a list of different languages and all of the different ways they may or may not use the accent. Readers who are looking for information on using the acute accent in Catalan, for example, would be better off looking at an article on Catalan. I did go and look at some of the EnWP articles on many of those languages. I didn't turn up any short descriptions of the sound changes with an acute accent that were sourced. We probably need good articles on those languages, but that will take expertise I don't have. Thanks for helping get this article in shape. I left the Sources message there since I haven't addressed that problem yet. I don't think there is anything at all controversial in here though. Gotanda (talk) 06:17, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]