Talk:Materiel

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Spelling

I've just moved this article back to "Materiel" from "Matériel" (with redirect from Matériel instead). Matériel is the French word, but the established English spelling is "materiel". Matériel indicates that you should stress the first "e", but in English you stress the last.

If we compare the major dictionaries, we find mixed views, but it's either "materiel" only or both spellings. None of them gives "matériel" as the only spelling:

• Oxford only accepts "materiel" [1]
• The 1913 Webster only accepted "materiel" [2]
• Ultralingua only accepts "materiel" [3]
• Online Etymology only accepts "materiel" [4]
• American Heritage has "materiel" as first choice and "matériel" as alternative spelling [5]
• Dictionary.com has "materiel" as first choice and "matériel" as alternative spelling [6]
• Encarta has "matériel" as first choice and "materiel" as alternative spelling [7]
• Infoplease (Random House) "matériel" as first choice and "materiel" as alternative spelling [8]
• Merriam-Webster has a strange bug (when you search "matériel", it says it can't find it and throws up "materiel" as suggested entry three times, and these three links all lead to "matériel" with "materiel" as alternative spelling - and pronounciation stressing the last "e" [9]

If you check official military websites from the US, the UK and Australia, I don't think you'll find "matériel" ever used, only "materiel'.

The word's etymology is French, but that doesn't mean that the spelling must be, especially as you don't pronounce it in a French way in English, i.e. it is not regarded as a French word, but an English word. Thomas Blomberg 11:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

About this sentence: "Matériel indicates that you should stress the first "e", but in English you stress the last." Erm, no; French also stresses the last "e". The accent does not indicate stress, but pronunciation. Ratfox (talk) 15:17, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

material

It seems quite extraordinary to me that English feels obliged to use the French versions of words and phrases which it is perfectly well able to handle on its own: materiel (lexical) and court martial (syntactic). 'Materials' is a fairly obvious choice, another being 'material resources'. There are plenty of useful French words in English that nicely fill a gap (svelte, niche etc.), but this ludicrous form is not one of them. Pamour (talk) 07:47, 4 August 2011 (UTC)