[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Diên Biên Phû

Thu Nov 21 07:19:23 UTC 2002

Lir wrote:

>Ðiên Biên Phú was a battle between the French and the Vietnamese and a name
>which is not in common usage. It is a disgrace for the Americans to think they
>can rewrite this otherwise. This name must be rendered in either French or
>Vietnamese, being a Vietnamese sympathizer I vote for Vietnamese, but I am
>willing to compromise, however this was certainly not an American battle.

It's not about sympathy; it's a Vietnamese town, not a French town.

And we currently normally include diacriticals on foreign proper nouns
that can be written in Latin-1, as in [[Poincaré conjecture]].
Or is the idea to be consistent within Vietnamese
and drop all diacriticals in that language
since it also includes some non-Latin-1 diacriticals?
We could still agree to mark the letters but not the tones
(as is the case in "Ðiên Biên Phú", in fact,
which has some tonese too that aren't marked here).
It seems to me that it should be [[Ðiên Biên Phú]] under *current* rules.

-- Toby

PS:  Lir, this is going to <wikiEN-l>!  Go there too!
     <http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>!