Talk:Kangerlussuaq

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Move To Sondrestrom

By far the most common name. OttomanJackson (talk) 14:26, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Google hits:

"kangerlussuaq greenland -wikipedia": 565,000

"sondrestrom greenland -wikipedia": 70,200

← ZScarpia 15:01, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ngrams disagrees

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Sondrestrom%2C+Kangerlussuaq&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=3

OttomanJackson (talk) 14:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, Google Ngrams jives with my own anecdotal experiences along west Greenland as well, even the Danes on the ship I was on used the term, and Sondrestrom seemed to be limited to specific reference to the military base. I'm a civilian, military usage might be different. --j⚛e decker ^talk 15:18, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Try it using "English" instead of "American English" and remember that there are probably other Sondrestroms in the world: Google Ngrams search using "English" ← ZScarpia 18:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP: Use English OttomanJackson (talk) 16:40, 21 July 2012 (UTC) EDIT: There aren't any other Sondrestroms in the world.[reply]

? Did you try following the link I left on the 19th? ← ZScarpia 18:49, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of what is most current in English, an English exonym, even a barely used one, is more English than a endonym, even if it is more common. However, I do not make Wikipedia's policies, and I am willing to accept the current policy, though I may begin an effort to change it. However, Sondrestrom is more important to America than any other Anglophone nation, due to it's history. Therefore, shouldn't the fact the Sondrestrom is used exclusively in American English (Kangerlussuaq is nonexistent, according to ngrams) count for something???

Thanks,

OttomanJackson (talk) 02:18, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, appears I misread the ngrams data, which may have made my point unclear. Let me try again: I believe and continue to argue that modern usage in English-language sources strongly weighs toward, not against, Kangerlussuaq. Try site:nytimes.com Sondrestrom and site:nytimes.com Kangerlussuaq, and for Brit Eng try going to "The Times" and checking their search results (the Kangerlussuaq results are a 6:1 superset of the Sondrestrom results). This doesn't appear to me to be a UK vs. US ENGVAR issue. Instead, it appears to be an issue of currency, perhaps related to the increasing political independence of Greenland. --j⚛e decker ^talk 03:09, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't a conflict between American versus British English usage. Note that there is a separate "British English" corpus in Google Ngrams which returns zero results for either name, a result which is even more bizarre than the zero results returned for the name Kangerlussuaq in the "American English" corpus. As far as which group of English speakers have the closest connection to the place, I think that you'd find that Greenlandic and Danish speakers of English would object to US claims of priority. As a matter of interest, how do American guidebooks (such as the US edition of the Lonely Planet one) refer to the place? ← ZScarpia 11:13, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Neither Greenland nor Denmark is an Anglophone nation. I was referring specifically to native speakers. Virtually all English speaker there learned it in school. If I, for example, learned German, and I decided to rename Cologne, to Koeln, would that be okay just because I am American? However, isn't ngrams a better source than Newspapers, which are inherently biased?

Also, here is a link to a modern agency that calls it Sondrestrom.

http://isr.sri.com/

Here Is a link to a recent news story.

http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&btnmeta_news_search=1&q=Sondrestrom&oq=Sondrestrom&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j43i400.34559.37604.0.38213.11.7.0.4.0.0.410.410.4-1.1.0...0.0...1ac.yQMgiAi0I70

OttomanJackson (talk) 13:44, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]