Talk:Christopher Columbus

map of 1st voyage

Is the map presented as the route for the first voyage correct? It does not match the textual description or the map above which shows the routes of all four voyages. This map looks more like the route of the third voyage.

Flat Earth Myth Citation

Fischer, Irene (1975). "Another look at Eratosthenes' and Posidonius' determinations of the earth's circumference". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 16: 152–167. Retrieved 2015-10-13.104.173.68.20 (talk) 19:03, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Popular culture section. Do we need to know a cartoon rabbit played him once?

Can we move the Popular culture section to Christopher Columbus in fiction where other things are already listed? I don't see how it helps to understand this real life person, to see how many people mentioned him at all throughout various media. Listing where he has statues of him built may be worth keeping, if there weren't probably thousands of them around the world. I see no reason to mention "Christopher Columbus is played by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in the 1934 cartoon Chris Columbus Jr." and things like that. You don't prove your notability by having a cartoon rabbit play you in what was probably more comedy than serious documentary. Dream Focus 23:39, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

No. Get rid of that. Get rid of much of that section. Wikipedia has rules about this and most of that stuff doesn’t qualify. Strebe (talk) 05:27, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Cris-to-fo-ro or Cri-sto-fo-ro, linguistic discussion (help needed)

Let me explain. In en.wikipedia exist special pages named "Help:IPA for (insert language)". For example, Help:IPA for Italian. Those pages contain indications, conventions, instructions and everything needed to represent the IPA spelling of words and names of an X language. Help:IPA for Italian works in the same way. During last months there were also discussions in the related talk page to clarify some conventions and establish some others till consensus. That page must be used as reference for Italian phonetic transcriptions. Indeed the standard arrangement of symbols where the IPA is included creates a wikilink to that page: Italian pronunciation: [kwi]. You have to know that several IPAs already existing following previous conventions have been changed in last months (example). Current conventions are different from DiPi's which you linked. An example? A ː symbol is always used when the stressed vowel is long. Some more? The . is used to separate 2 vowels which otherwise would make a diphthong; DiPi doesn't use it. The ˌ is used for secondary stress mainly in compound words or names; DiPi doesn't use it. Italian Z is represented by (t)ts or (d)dz; DiPi uses (ʦ)ʦ and (ʣ)ʣ instead. And so on. You can't use the DiPi as a source for how to write Italian IPAs here. It can be used to know how to pronunce a word where there's a doubt, but DiPi's phonetic transcriptions use different standards. Here we write the stress at the beginning of the stressed syllabe while DiPi doesn't alwasy do so, for example when there's an "impure S" (S + other consonant). In French, German and other languages the syllabes are diveded like this: aS-Ca; in Italian instead we divide syllabes like this: a-SCa. That's why Cri-stò-fo-ro is sillabised like that. That's why the correct IPA is [kriˈstɔːforo]. Have I explained what you needed to know? I didn't want to make edit wars so I preferred to came here to explain everything, it took me so long but if you've understood why my edit is correct and why yours is wrong it was worth it. Will you please rectify the IPA now? Thanks. Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 17:59, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Qwertqwertqwert – thank you for discussing this, although it is better to discuss things about articles on the talk page of the article (discussion moved from my user talk page). I understand your concerns, and yet the Help page that you continue to refer to over and over references the DiPi website at the bottom of the page. Nothing on the Help page itself gives the detail you have given above, which by the way is impressive. Since the Help page you reference links to the DiPi as an IPA reliable source, then until you can show an alternative reliable source, the status quo pronunciation should remain in the article. To be clear, I have shown a reliable source for the pronunciation [krisˈtɔforo koˈlombo], and you have not shown a reliable source for the pronunciation you prefer. Wikipedia relies upon reliable sources first, consensus second, and consensus has never gone against reliable sources. Please show a reliable source for your change, or else the status quo must remain in the article. Thank you for your understanding! Be prosperous! Paine  19:26, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Ok. I've understood it's totally useless talking with a wall. We aren't going anywhere. I told you that this Wiki uses some conventions, I told you that Italian IPA spelling here has a different standard from DiPi which can't be considered universal, I told you that all (I underline ALL) articles containing an Italian word or name follow those convention. Conventions such as the stress before the impure S and, above all, the ː symbol for a long stressed vowel. You, instead, have immediately removed also that symbol just because it didn't appear in the DiPi, which has different spelling conventions. Then watch here and here, here and here and here, here and here, here and here and here. Either ALL these spellings are wrong and your Cristoforo's spelling is right, or ALL these spellings are right and only yours is wrong. Either you undo ALL those wrong spellings, or you admit you were wrong and you revert yourself. But I think I've understood enough about Wikipedian veterans to know that you'll do neither one nor the other, because you're right and others are wrong, that's the default. If I think that I came to en.wikipedia to improve it... That's the result. I'm getting out of this, you're free to leave the wrong IPA of Cristoforo, also to edit all other pronunciations you want so that they're wrong too, I don't care at all any longer. Bye. Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 22:41, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Kwamikagami or Florian Blaschke Can you help here? User:Qwertqwertqwert These are two experts in linguistics. Corinne (talk) 00:42, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

The thing is – you've shown no reliable source to support what you've "told" me, all you've done is tell me. I realize that there may be a slight language barrier here, but you seem to have enough of a handle on English to be obnoxious. Why don't you try being civil instead, and why don't you try sticking to GLOBAL Wikipedia's rules about reliable sources? If you really do go, then know it's not because of me, it's because you wrongly frustrate yourself over this. All you have to do is come up with a reliable source that supports the strengths of your convictions. Why is that so much to ask, Qwertqwertqwert?  Paine  00:54, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

e ˈstre mo

Stay in your incoherence.

Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 10:47, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Since you didn't indent your response, I'll have to assume that you are attempting to begin a new thread rather than responding to me. I would like to point out that you link to a page from an extract that is being discussed below, and even the person who first linked to it says it's "an extract from what 'appears to be' a reliable source, rather than "an extract from what 'is' a reliable source". Stay also in yours if you like. Be prosperous! Paine  01:46, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Does it matter that e ˈstre mo has three clustered consonants, whereas krisˈtɔforo has only two?  Paine  10:43, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

No, it doesn't.

(ol-tran-zi-sta tung-ste-no)

Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 11:05, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

mo-struo-so ol-tran-zi-sta tung-ste-no (Treccani)

Stay in your incoherence.

Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 8:58, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Now, don't be so hard on yourself – you are truly forgiven. (AGF, CIVIL and NPA)  Paine  11:03, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

...Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 11:35, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

The syllabification of /VsCV/ (and of other intervocalic consonant clusters that are also allowed word-initially) is often ambiguous. For example, Latin borrowings in English often have two pronunciations, one assuming /Vs.CV/ and one assuming /V.sCV/ and thus differing in the position of the English stress and vowel quality.) One way to tell is by whether the vowel takes its syllable-final allophone. Say, /o/ is [o] at the end of a syllable but [ɔ] before a coda consonant: you could then determine the syllable boundaries by whether /osCV/ is [o] or [ɔ]. I suspect that many languages go by an orthographic convention that can neither be demonstrated to be correct nor to be incorrect. We'd need a source here if you want to change the treatment of Italian. BTW, "ʦʦ" and "ʣʣ", while perhaps not technically incorrect, are quite confusing and should be avoided. (They suggest the pronunciation is [ts.ts] rather than [t.ts].) — kwami (talk) 01:41, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Here is an extract from what appears to me to be a reliable source that supports (on p.40) Qwertqwertqwert's syllabification of "Cristoforo". As far as I can see, the orthographic distribution of consonants in Italian between the start of a stressed syllable and the end of the preceding unstressed syllable doesn't make an iota of difference to the pronunciation of the word. It would make a difference if the distribution were between the end of the stressed syllable and the start of the next unstressed syllable, so possibly that's why the syllabification rules in the above-cited reference take the form that they do (and why the online Dictionary of Italian Pronunciation can get away with an (apparently) non-standard syllabification without specifying an erroneous pronunciation).

David Wilson (talk · cont) 02:25, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Looks like it does make a difference even when not stressed. Apart from environments where /e/ and /ɛ/ contrast, //E// is [e] in open syllables and [ɛ] in closed syllables, and in //EsCV// it's [ɛ]. Thus our current syllabification is supported by the //E// section of this ref. — kwami (talk) 03:32, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

No. The reference does not say that "//E// is [e] in open syllables and [ɛ] in closed syllables". It merely describes the difference between the open and closed pronunciations of the vowels "o" and "e". In spoken (as opposed to sung) Italian, unstressed "e"s and "o"s are always pronounced with a closed pronunciation (see here, for example). Stressed "e"s and "o"s occur with both open and closed pronunciations (but only one of these is normally regarded as correct for any given word), and there are certainly open syllables (namely, sometimes at the ends of words) which are pronounced with a closed pronunciation, indicated orthographically by an acute accent: perché, sé, poiché.

Also, with regard to the distribution of two consonants between syllables, the reference explictly says on p.40:

"Otherwise [i.e. other than in the three cases already dealt with], put two consonants, including the digraphs ch [k], gli [ʎ], and gn [ɲ], with the syllable that follows."

Since the digraph pair of consonants "st" is not covered by any of the preceding three cases, it must fall under this provision, and therefore the reference most certainly does not support the article's current syllabification of "Cristoforo". On the contrary, it quite clearly supports editor Qwertqwertqwert's syllabification, just as I have already pointed out above.

P.S. Since writing this, I have realised that there are erroneous syllabifications of the ends of unstressed syllable which would suggest erroneous pronunciations, though I doubt whether anyone reasonably familiar with Italian phonetics could be misled into thinking that the suggested pronunciations are correct. An example is inc-in-ta which suggests the incorrect pronunciation inˈkinta rather than the correct inˈʧinta. Even so, with my limited knowledge of the use of IPA, I can't see how the IPA representation inʧ'inta with the stress mark incorrectly placed could indicate a pronunciation any different from the correct inˈʧinta.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 05:22, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

That is very interesting. In the beginning, I believe you stated that this is from an extract from what appears to me to be a reliable source..., rather than from what is a reliable source. Does this mean that you question whether or not this source is reliable?  Paine  01:39, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't put it that way. But whatever reservations I had about this source are now irrelevant, since editor Qwertqwertqwert has come up with this one, which I would consider impeccable. Its rule for distributing "s" and a following consonant between syllables is exactly the same:

"– i gruppi formati da s seguita da una o più consonanti formano una sillaba con la vocale che segue ... "

Translation: "Groups formed by s followed by one or more consonants form a syllable with the vowel which follows ... "

Also, a google search on the expression "Italian syllabification" brings up several articles which cite what appear to be very authoritative sources by experts in the area. I haven't had time to track these down yet, but I have now at least read the article at the top of the list returned by the google search. I can't see any grounds for doubting its reliability, and it also gives the same rule (p.306):

"2.2 With all other sequences of consonant-letters [i.e. apart from those already dealt with, none of which include "s" followed by other consonants], place the hyphen before the sequence: pa-sta " paste," mae-stro, " teacher" .... "

David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:47, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Also, A digraph is a combination of two or more letters that represent a single sound, and I'm not sure that "st" qualifies as a single sound, but more like two distinct sounds, no? It doesn't seem to matter according to this source, though, because the indication is for "two consonants including the digraphs...". To me that means "any two consonants, not just digraphs". So if we can establish that this source is reliable, then we have this source and DiPi "at each other's throats", so to speak.  Paine  11:15, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

The use of the term "digraph" to refer to the pair of consonants "st" was simply a mistake on my part. If I was ever aware that the term was normally restricted to meaning pairs of characters representing a single sound, I had long forgotten that fact, probably because I am now very accustomed to having seen the term used in contexts such as this, where that restriction is completely ignored.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:47, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, a digraph does not always represent a single sound, according to both Merriam-Webster: [1] and Wiktionary: wikt:digraph. OED gives only the one meaning: [2]. Corinne (talk) 15:59, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Reliable source?

I have read all of the above again, and I fail to see where the crooked-page .pdf link has been established as a reliable source in comparison with the IPA DiPi link. Yet the original editor has once again placed the questionable pronunciation in the infobox. Unless that source can be established as reliable, then the pronunciation should be reverted back to status quo, which I intend to do if someone does not soon give good reason.  Paine  17:27, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Treccani - La cultura italiana | Treccani, il portale del sapere The Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Italian for "Italian Encyclopaedia of Science, Letters, and Arts"), best known as Treccani for its developer Giovanni Treccani or Enciclopedia Italiana, is an Italian-language encyclopaedia. The publication Encyclopaedias: Their History Throughout The Ages regards it as one of the greatest encyclopaedias, along with the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition and the Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana.Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 19:28, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

If you have read all of the above, why on earth are you continuing to focus on just the two sources whose reliability is subject to question (I would now definitely include the DiPi in that category), when two other clearly reliable sources, indicating that the DiPi's syllabification is erroneous, have already been provided? To those two I can now add the Accademia della crusca, which is the authority without peer on matters concerning the Italian language. The page devoted to syllabification of Italian words on its website says:

"Non si divide mai un gruppo formato da s + consonante/i: o-stra-ci-smo; te-schio; co-sto-la; sco-iat-to-lo; co-stru-i-re; ca-spi-ta, stri-scio-ne."

Translation: :"A group formed by s + consonant/s is never divided: .... "

thus agreeing with the two good sources already provided.

Of all the online Italian dictionaries I have checked, including the highly authoritarive Garzanti, the DiPi is the only one whose syllabification does not follow the rules enunciated in the above-cited sources. Here are some examples

Garzanti: [mi-stè-ro], [ca-stà-gna], [cri-stàl-lo]

Sabatino Colletti dizionario italiano, hosted on the website of Corriere della Sera: [mi-stè-ro], [ca-stà-gna], [cri-stàl-lo]

Hoepli's Grandi Dizionari: [mi-stè-ro], [ca-stà-gna], [cri-stàl-lo]

Dizionario italiano: [mi'stɛro], [ka'staɲɲa], [kri'stallo]

as opposed to the DiPi's apparently non-standard syllabifications:

[mis'tɛro], [kas'taɲɲa], [kris'tallo].

A google search on "regole di sillabazione" or "divisione in sillabe" returns an enormous number of Italian sources, many of which (such as the web page of the Accademia della crusca cited above) are undoubtedly reliable, and all of which that I have checked give the same set of syllabification rules as those sources already cited. From all of this, I would certainly question the reliability of the DiPi on this issue. But even if it can be regarded as satisfying Wikipedia's criteria for reliability, it is flatly contradicted by several undoubtably reliable sources, at least two of which I would consider much more authoritative, and an apparently huge number of other sources of varying or unknown degrees of reliability. It therefore seems to me that imposing the DiPi's syllabification on the article would be a blatant violation of Wikipedia's policy on neutral point of view.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 06:39, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

David Wilson: *bow*

You know what's ironic in PE's point? Its intrinsic contradiction. On the one had, DiPi is the most super-duper reliable source about Italian language, so if it contradicts all other dictionaries, encyclopedias, vocabularies, grammar-orthography-pronunciation manuals about Italian language syllabification it's it the right one and all others are wrong. But when I make him become aware of the fact that his very DiPi doesn't use AT ALL (I'll repeat: AT ALL) symbols such as the ː (which is indicated after a stressed long vowel in open syllables, always and only in that case, in every single Italian IPA, and I brought several examples), the secondary stress and the hiatus point, which are instead always used in this Wiki, what does he do? He restores the ː he'd removed from [kriˈstɔːforo]. Didn't he talk about DiPi's reliability, about discussiong in Help:IPA for Italian talk, about consensus, etc? Does it apply only to syllabification (disproved by every different source provided) and not to everything else? Ironic, as I've said above...

Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 12:51, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

You know what's ironic in PE's point?

Nothing if you consider that by reinserting the colon I was agreeing with you on that point. Nor do I take any stand that DiPi is the penultimate source, the "last word" on Italian syllabification. As I see it, my point is that according to the Help page, which you QQQ gave as an example on en Wikipedia of pages (that) contain indications, conventions, instructions and everything needed to represent the IPA spelling of words and names of an X language, the DiPi source that you so loudly proclaim as unreliable is indeed reliable. Then you proceed to name several other sources that are found nowhere – nowhere – on en Wikipedia. If you want those sources to be deemed reliable on Wikipedia, then they must be added to Wikipedia, so that other editors will not have to read your mind and will be able to read that those sources are reliable on Wikipedia. And if DiPi is indeed an unreliable source, then you should get it removed from the Help page you cited. So you see, QQQ, I do not argue for or against the validity/reliability of any source on Wikipedia – I argue that for an editor to merely give their opinion on a talk page about the reliability of sources does absolutely nothing to actually include any of those sources as reliable on Wikipedia. You are cordially invited to read WP:RS with understanding.  Paine  16:52, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Nor do I take any stand that DiPi is the penultimate source, the "last word" on Italian syllabification. Surely you mean “ultimate” here, User:Paine Ellsworth. And as a kibitzer, I don’t find Qwertqwertqwert’s position as weak as you’re stating here. This feels more like stubbornness than adherence to policy. Whether or not a source is already noted on Wikipedia is irrelevant to reliability; otherwise we’re perpetuating mistakes instead of fixing them. An editor isn’t obliged to discover for you how reliable a source is; that is a job for each of us as independent minds who must reach a consensus. If you think Qwertqwertqwert’s source is less reliable, then prove it. Until then, “his” reasoning seems sound to me, and with User:David_J_Wilson’s due diligence (as opposed to endless procedural wrangling), your points seem rather pallid. Strebe (talk) 23:18, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

www.dizionario-italiano.it sample Qwertqwertqwert (talk) 09:45, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I value your good opinion, Strebe, and it is interesting that you should "feel" as you do. In this case, an editor, new on en Wiki with no indication of being a veteran on another Wikipedia, comes in and changes the Italian pronunciation of Columbus' given name with this edit (note there is also no edit summary). I think any editor who maintains a custodial watch of this page would have done the same thing I did, which was to revert and warn the new editor. No edit summary – no reason to change the pronunciation from what reliable sources say it should be. When that editor does come to the talk page, it's my talk page, and the post comes in the form of a mild personal attack. Then the discussion ensues on this talk page where it should be, and the first thing QQQ does is to cite the Help page shown above. In other words they cited a page that has the DiPi source for detailed pronunciations. Where else should we look? I do give both QQQ and David a lot of credit for their source-finding diligence, and I realize that they are certainly within their editorial rights to add the other pronunciation to the Information box, along with one or more cited sources, below the present entry. When we have two or more sources that give different facts, then all should be heard. And I still say that it would be best if the sources are added/subtracted as necessary from that Help page, so that other editors won't have to guess about their validity in this and in other articles. Be prosperous! Paine  00:48, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, User:Paine Ellsworth. It is Qwertqwertqwert’s technical merits I defend, not his etiquette. Certainly improvements should get made to Help:IPA now that we’re gelling on a consensus here. I did not have any problem with your original reversion, and for the reasons you gave. But when Qwertqwertqwert, however surlily, began giving credible reasons and sources for his edit, it behooved us to take them seriously. Rather than putting the burden of proof on “him” as the provocateur of change, it should be on us as veterans. A lot of experts new to Wikipedia don’t understand the rules and guidelines, and there is no particular reason they should. When we demand procedure from people who have no idea what the procedures are, or why, we drive them out. Veterans should conduct the due diligence in the face of apparent competence. I can only imagine how boggling it is to someone in Qwertqwertqwert’s position that so much time, energy, and rancor has been invested in placement of a single symbol whose correctness might be obvious to experts. Strebe (talk) 09:52, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

This is not about whether this was a major or minor edit. When you edit like a vandal you get treated like one. Many more people have lost their jobs due to their behavior, attitude and surliness than for not having the needed expertise. If QQQ worked for me, I'd fire them. Be prosperous! Paine  20:43, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

If you have read all of the above, why on earth are you continuing to focus on just the two sources whose reliability is subject to question (I would now definitely include the DiPi in that category), when two other clearly reliable sources, indicating that the DiPi's syllabification is erroneous, have already been provided? To those two I can now add...

"Why on earth?" Because the DiPi is given as a reliable source on the very page cited by User:Qwertqwertqwert:

• Help:IPA for Italian

In the External links section of that page we find two links:

• Template:It Dizionario italiano multimediale e multilingue d'ortografia e di pronunzia (not based on IPA)
• Template:It Dizionario di pronuncia italiana online by Luciano Canepari (based on IPA)

At the first link, all I could find was where the accent is placed, but no syllabic separations. And we already know what is found at the second link – the "based on IPA" link – krisˈtɔforo. So here's the thing... that is supposed to be the page on Wikipedia that gives what the community consensus is for Italian pronunciations. And consensus trumps editorial opinion every time, every time. We have your opinion, and we have QQQ's opinion, and we set that next to Wikipedia's consensus. So "why on earth?" – That's why on earth. If you want your reliable sources to become part of what Wikipedia deems "reliable", then in my humble opinion you must begin on the talk page of that Italian Help page. If DiPi is unreliable, then it must be removed, and if your sources are reliable, then they should be added to that page. Until that is done, the community consensus is to return this article's infobox to the status quo condition with the reliable (or as you deem it, unreliable) source.  Paine  10:29, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

I no longer have any doubts about the reliability of the DiPi, not because of any supposed consensus—which, as far as I can see, has not at all been established by any activity IPA for Italian help page or its talk page—but because I have finally discovered why it places the stress marker where it does, and found an indisputably reliable source—namely the 2016 edition of lo Zingarelli—whose placement of the stress marker coincides with that of the DiPi's. These do not contradict the reliability of the other sources I have given—with the possible exception of the Dizionario Italiano—because their syllabification of the IPA rendering of a word is based on different criteria (namely, phonetic principles) from the rules of orthographic syllabification used to divide the normal written form of the word into syllables. Since it's now well past my bedtime I'll leave the remaining details for later.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 14:46, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Makes sense. English has analogous differences of convention. Thanks, David Wilson, for all the productive work you’re putting into this. Strebe (talk) 17:20, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Seconded, and I am deeply sorry if any of my lack of respect for the other editor spilled over into my responses to you. You are an awesome Wikipedian!  Paine  19:03, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

PS. A gentle reminder about consensus on Wikipedia: Established long ago (when there were far fewer editors) was that consensus may just mean that an editor made a change that was not challenged by another editor(s). Consensus has come to be defined in other ways on Wikipedia in addition to the definition I gave above. So even if an edit wasn't explicitly decided by a group of editors on a talk page, a community consensus can still mean simply that no member(s) of the community has challenged the edit, either immediately or over time. PS added by  Paine  19:21, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Just a brief note to publicly apologize to QQQ for completely misreading their original intentions. I left a little more detailed msg on their talk page. Be prosperous! Paine  00:53, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

A little remark to @David J Wilson:: the orthographic syllabification follows phonetic principles too. The division in syllables in Italian is so accomplished, to allow the reader to pronounce correctly a word also when another line (or page) starts, and I does not know what the continuation of the word is: I learned this in 3rd grade. :-) Alex2006 (talk) 05:33, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the information. I didn't mean to imply that the standard orthographic syllabification rules ignore phonetic principles. Modern principles of acoustic syllabification, as enunciated in the Italian Wikipedia aricle Sillaba, nevertheless do sometimes give different syllabifications from those obtained from the traditional orthographic syllabification rules, and this happens to be the case for the syllabification of sequences of the form [VstV] under discussion here. This is syllabified as [V-stV] under the traditional rules of orthographic syllabification, but has to be syllabified as [Vs-tV] according to the acoustic principles described in the Italian Wikipedia article.

In the following remarks I will concentrate on the single issue concerning the article's content which seems to me to remain not quite yet settled—namely, whether its IPA representation for the pronunciation of Cristoforo should be

• [kriˈstɔːforo], as argued for by editor Qwertqwertqwert or
• [krisˈtɔːforo], as currently in the article.

We have so far, in fact, only a single reference of any kind—namely, the DiPi online which gives an IPA representation for the pronunciation of the name. While the dictionary lo Zingarelli (2016 edition) does have an entry on the name, it doesn't provide an IPA representation for its pronunciation, or for those of any other names, as far as I can tell. It seems to provide such IPA representations only for ordinary words. Therefore the challenge to the DiPi's representation has so far had to rely on general principles governing the placement of the stress marker, which supposedly dictate that it should be placed as in the first representation given above, rather than as in the second, which is where the DiPi puts it.

As far as I can see, no-one, with the possible exception of editor Qwertqwertqwert, still now disputes the DiPi's reliability. Ignoring the apparently supposed authority of discussions elsewhere on English Wikipedia to settle the issue, which, as far as I can tell, do not exist, I gather that Qwertqwertqwert's argument against the IPA representation currently used in the article boils down to the following assertions:

• The well-established rules for othographic syllabification of Italian words require that a letter sequence of the form [VsCV] must be syllabified as [V-sCV], rather than [Vs-CV].
• Therefore, when a stressed vowel of an Italian word is preceded by a letter sequence of the form [VsC], the stress marker in the IPA representation of its pronunciation must be placed between the 's' and the preceding vowel (i.e. [V'sC]) rather than between the 's' and the following constant (i.e. not [Vs'C]).

The truth of the first assertion is incontestable. The rule has been explictly enunciated by several good sources, including the impeccable Treccani encyclopedia and Accademia della Crusca's website, it is followed by the two most authoritative Italian dictionaries—the Garzanti and lo Zingarelli—, and no-one has provided a single source of any kind that contradicts it.

The second assertion, however, implicitly assumes that the stress marker in the IPA representation of a word's pronunciation must be placed in a position where the rules of orthographic syllabification require the placement of a syllable separator. While this assumption might appear to be highly plausible at first sight, further reflection should convince you that it is not completely obvious. And, in fact, the 2016 edition of the highly authoritative lo Zingarelli dictionary demonstrates unequivocally that it is false. That dictionary gives exactly the same orthographic syllabifications of the words "mistero", "castagna" and "cristallo", for example, as the above-cited other dictionaries—namely, [mi-stè-ro], [ca-stà-gna] and [cri-stàl-lo]—but its IPA representations for the pronunciations of these words coincide exactly with the DiPi's—[mis'tɛro], [kas'taɲɲa], [kris'tallo].

The article's current IPA representation for the pronunciation of "Cristoforo" is thus perfectly acceptable, according to conventions followed by reliable sources, and, in my opinion, editor Qwertqwertqwert's alternative should not be adopted. There is perhaps a little more, though, that might be worth saying, but to avoid burying the main point in a welter of verbiage I'll collapse the rest.

Warning: Ingredients may contain traces of (gasp!) Original Research. Susceptible wikipedians should proceed with extreme caution.

The reason why the placement of of the stress marker in an IPA representation of a word doesn't always follow the orthographic syllabification rules is partly explained by Luciano Canepari, editor of the DiPi, in his Handbook of Pronunciation (p.135): "On the subject of syllabification, apart from the unsatisfactory nature of modern ‹phonological modes›, one must recall that even traditional grammars are not the most objective—quite the opposite, in fact! As well as the absurd graphic syllabic division of -sC- (which, despite its obvious flaws has been entrusted to computers too, so, unfortunately there is no hope of changing it), from a phonic point of view, the only real division (and natural too: just listen to it!) for /sC/ is after /s/, not before ..." The same point is made a little more clearly and explicitly by Isabella Chiaro in her appendix II to Tullio De Mauro's Linguistica elementare: "Per la scansione in sillabe fonologiche dell'italiano bisogna rilevare almeno due casi di discrepanza rispetto alla scansione ortografica: Il caso in cui all'interno di parola vi sia un nesso consonantico in cui il primo elemento sia [s] o [z], ossia una <S> ortografica: nella sillabazione ortografica una parola come pasto si sillaba <PA.STO>, dal punto di vista fonetico invece, bisogna sillabare pas.to, come as.pro, or.ches.tra, es.co ecc. ... " Translation: "For the phonological division of Italian into syllables, it is necessary to highlight at least two cases which differ from the orthographic division: The case when there is a string of consonants inside a word whose first element is [s] or [z], or an orthographic <S>: in orthographic syllabification a word like pasto is syllabified <PA.STO>, on the other hand, from the phonetic point of view it must be syllabified pas.to, likewise as.pro, or.ches.tra, es.co etc. ... " Frustratingly (to me) neither of these sources explain the phonetic principle giving rise to these assertions, but after a little googling and delving into the sources returned—including the Italian Wikipedia article Sillaba cited above—, I discovered that it appears to be something known as the "Sonority Sequencing Principle". In any language, distinct phonemes are graded on a scale of a quality called "sonority", with vowels being the most sonorous, and stops being the least. A syllable is supposedly a sequence of sounds between two successive minima in the sonority of an utterance, with a minimum itself being assigned to the syllable which follows it. Since [s] is higher than [t] on the Italian sonority scale (see the table of sonorities on this page, for instance), the minimum between the peaks of sonority represented by the vowels in a sequence of the form [VstV] occurs at the [t], so the Sonority Sequencing Principle requires it to be syllabified as [Vs-tV]. I include below an audio file of myself pronouncing the name "Cristoforo" and a screenshot of the resulting waveform. I initially thought that this provided a good demonstration of why, on acoustic principles, the IPA representation [krisˈtɔːforo] should be regarded as correct, but I'm not so confident now that it's at all relevant. I'm not a native speaker of Italian, but the main features of the wave form produced by a female native speaker uttering the word "Cristoforo" about 8 seconds into this YouTube clip are very similar. Since Wikipedia policy only allows non-free images to be uploaded under a fair use rationale if the image is used in an article, I'm unfortunately not able to upload a screenshot of that waveform.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 12:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

If you aren't able to find conclusions, why don't you ask for help here? It is the talk page of italian wikiproject linguistics, I am sure they could help you out. I would like to add that, even if a pronunciation like cris-to-fo-ro could make sense exactly because of the reasons inside the {{collapse top}} David Wilson made (it reflects a very good understanding of italian pronunciation, IMHO), italians are taught in primary schools that correct syllables are cri-sto-fo-ro, but, even if I am a native italian speaker, I am definetely not into linguistics, and there could be some shift between orthography and pronunciation, and surely italians understand both pronunciations.--Nickanc (talk) 16:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

expanding on genocide and holiday sections

[3], [4], [5], [6]. do you need more? 178.148.10.191 (talk) 03:37, 8 December 2015 (UTC)