Talk:Battle of Dien Bien Phu/Archive 1

Page one

Yes, we all insert the proper tones when saying the name. Danny

That's what redirects are for. -- Modemac

Yes, but it should work the opposite way, with Dien Bien Phu being the target. It seems senseless to discuss. Lir does whatever she wants, and despite discussing the topic for several weeks on the mailing lists, nobody stops her. I won't begin a new edit war on this. -- Cordyph Is this REALLY serious ??? user:anthere

Serious troll who contributes useful articles intermixed with worthless junk and look-at-me-I'm-horrible ploys like this. Leftist who does not know the difference between proletarian and proletariat. Ortolan88

(Note to Martians who one day find the remains of Jimbo's server in the ruins of civilization: I'm pretty sure Orto means Lir.)

Sure, let's go all the way. Of course, it will now have to be Viêt Nam for consistency's sake. You work on that, while I change all articles mentioning Egypt to al-Misr. Danny

be careful Danny, english spelling is probably Viet Nam, not Viêt Nam. Check out the Viet Nam article. No ^ is indicated, so that's not an acceptable spelling.

and I will really enjoy the edit war breaking out when I will rename Jerusalem to al-Quds. I think the remembrance of this battle should stop any further attempts to localize names in the future. Hey Lir, go forward, don't be shy! --Elian

LOL! Danny

This pedantic absurdity in no way counters the serious proposition that in the age of Unicode, the *correct* spelling in English of this place will become the Vietnamese spelling. Adding accents is *improving* the spelling now one has the technology. Hotlorp

Im down with that. Lir 00:07 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

How do you refer to placenames as an outsider? This has always been a problem for style guides, never solved, rather compromised in various situations depending on the technology and the audience. The trend in the UK, but less so in the USA, has been to try hard to place the right accents on Western European words: French, German and Spanish do very well. Computer keyboards and fonts are partly to blame. Polish and Czech accents are sometimes available in fonts, and when they are it seems right to use them even though it might be tricky to input the characters. Since Wikipedia allows use of full Unicode, since it presumably aims at a world-wide English-speaking audience, and since its English readers are not expected to know how to pronounce even European words (for which accents are seemingly encouraged), it seems unjustifiably Eurocentric for Wikipedia to discourage Vietnamese accents. Hotlorp

No, it isn't Europcentric; it is simply English-centric. The English language has 26 letters, none of which contain umlauts, accents, or other diacritical marks. If we are going to start using letters from other non-English alphabets in this ostensibly English language encyclopedia, then perhaps we should also use the Cyrillic place names untranslated into our alphabet. soulpatch

Wikipedia goes beyone ASCII and unaccented letters very often indeed: El Niño, Citroën, Göring. Sometimes this is used in the URL & title, sometimes not, but Wikipedia editors use the accented forms consistently in the text. It's just a technical limitation that accented words can't be searched using their unaccented forms - the functionality is quite easy to implement using data from unicode.org, btw. Hotlorp

Of course, terms like Vietnam, Sao Paolo, Munich, etc. have well-established unaccented spellings in English, so it would be wrong to change those. Dien Bien Phu is also mentioned, unaccented, in so many English books that this might not be the best place to fight this particular battle. But let's have the full Vietnamese spelling back, in brackets. --Hotlorp

When there is a common English term, use the common English term and tell them what the indigenous term is in that article. What's so hard about this? --GABaker

You're treating this subject too strictly: it's not black and white. DBP is not *that* common an English term, and the Vietnamese spelling is not *that* "indigenous" (i.e. incomprehensible). Indeed, it's the type of spelling an international English encyclopedia might well try to move towards. --Hotlorp

There's nothing wrong with putting the diacritical marks in the body of the article, but let's not use them in the page title. -- Zoe

Agreed. Any idea why Ed Poor's accents are different from Lir's? -- Hotlorp

Actually, Lir's accents (according to the article history) were introduced by you, Hotlorp. Can you confirm that it is "Ðiên" and not "Diên"? — Toby 07:23 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

Hmmm, it seems it was me! I'm no Vietnamese expert, and - I think - I copied the spelling from the very URL someone's added down below. Hotlorp

Actually, it's "Điện", not "Ðiện" - it looks the same, but that's a capital đ rather than a capital ð, and it'll make a difference if anyone tries to search for it. 2005-04-14

I also agree with Zoe's sugestion. Danny

Sounds good to me. As long as people can find it in the search, then diacriticals are useful. --GABaker

Sos what's Diên Biên Phú? -- Zoe

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Not intending to open up a whole nother can of worms, but the diacriticals are meaningless to a provincial american such as myself. Can somebody provide a pronunciation guide?

Explain to me why we shouldn't use the diacritical marks in the page title? Lir 05:47 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

Because it is the English Wikipedia. Hephaestos 05:55 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

So? I speak English as my native language and yet I clearly understand that Dien Bien Phu is a mis-spelled word. Perhaps I speak English better than some of you and thus recognize that English speaking people are expected to know certain words like kindergarten, which although not technically English are most certainly part of the English language and should only be banned in times of great national racism against the barbarians who don't think we should rule the world. Lir 05:59 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

Those who cast stones should learn first to indent for the facilitation of conversational flow in an online environment.

So? I speak English as my native language and yet I clearly understand that Dien Bien Phu is a mis-spelled word.

You're one in a thousand at best, and I, for one, congratulate you for it.

certain words like kindergarten, which although not technically English

You might want to check a 1940s dictionary; "kindergarten" will be in there; Dien Bien Phu will not. (With or without the diacritcals.) Languages adopt words slowly but surely. "Language" itself, in English, is taken from French.

Hephaestos 06:13 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

Im gonna go eat some liberty cabbage.... Lir 07:25 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

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Technical issues. Don't use diacriticals in the English Wikipedia BECAUSE IT MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SEARCH. Most people don't know how to type them in, so they will skip them. We don't have special collations on the database backend to make up for these omissions. Insisting on original language correctness here makes the Wikipedia far less useful to the people that will use it the most. If you are concerned about the mispelling, just put a clause at the top of the article saying "Proper spelled as (version with diacriticals)". --Clutch

Clutch, that argument is invalidated by #REDIRECT ! Lir 07:38 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

No, it isn't. You don't understand the database internals. ASCII is the standard for English on the internet, and it's important that we stick with it where we can. Doing anything else gets very messy. Are you prepared to rewrite the Wiki software underlying the Wikipedia? Did you get bored with the phileleutherian article? --Clutch

Wikipedia could relatively easily add searching for accented words (see stuff about Unicode above). The world is a messy place. Hotlorp

Are you saying that REDIRECT isn't working? Seems to work to me. 129.186.80.130 08:22 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

By Golly, this is the ENGLISH wikipedia, and I want to see correct ENGLISH spelling used. I don't give a flying fuck if we borrowed the word from another language; we have a correct ENGLISH spelling, even if it looks almost exactly the same as the spelling in the other language. Just because there are some similarities, don't assume that English is merely an amalgam of other languages, and not a language in it's own right. --Clutch

I agree 100% with your points Clutch. Lir and co. are trying to change our Anglicization naming convention on the Wikipedia mailing list WikiEN-L. As you say, it is not at all useful to use non-English words in an English encyclopedia. That is just silly. --mav

Lir's arguments are nonsense. She always uses terms like "racism", "nationalism", "anglocentrism". May be, that she really thinks, we not-native-english-speaking peoples feel insulted, if anybody uses an english form of a placename. I can tell you, Lir: As far as I know, nobody does. In every language placenames are spelled differently, so it is not a phenomenon of the english language only. Lir, do you know anyone outside the USA, who gets really excited about the spelling of placenames? To me this question seems absolutely absurd. I agree to state the native spelling in the articles, but not in the titles. -- Cordyph

We don't expect the French pedia to write "London" instead of "Londres" -- Tarquin

No, but the English language, being more international than French, is definitely evolving to be more accommodating of local spelling. Where the name is traditionally very similar, it is often becoming identical. "Marseilles" and "Lyons" are rarely seen now, although they are the "correct" spellings as defined by numerous correspondents above. Cologne and Munich, being far more different from the German forms, are less likely to change soon.

Can you accept that there are graduations of linguistic difference: Marseilles/Marseille at one end, and Londres/London about in the middle, and Jerusalem/al-Quds at the far end? The very similar names are already changing, as English becomes more international and search engines become more important. Correct accents for eastern European and Dien Bien Phu can't be far behind. Of course, variant names which reflect disputed territory, like Jerusalem/al-Quds, become more entrenched than ever. Since Cologne/Köln and Strasbourg/Straßburg reflect histories of different peoples in those places, they're similarly unlikely to change for the French or Germans. Hotlorp

Another addition to this debate from someone with to much time on his hands: I support the use of the dialectics in the article titles because it can be seen as a gesture of respect for the Vietnamese language and its users; also, quite frankly, the lines and slashes look cool.  :) -- Modemac (And besides, I've added dialectics to the Tolkien entries here as well, such as the entry for palantir.)

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http://membres.lycos.fr/dienbienphu/

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I question the truth of this sentence "It also had historical significance as the first major military victory in modern times of a ruled people against a colonial power." It would be nice to know what "modern times" means in this sentence. I suggest "post WWII" - thoughts? - reboot

The Lakotah defeated the United States at Little Big Horn in 1876. The amaZulu defeated the British at Isandhlwana in 1879. I'm sure there are many more examples. Ortolan88

They did not defeat the United States. They defeated a small detachment of Custer's 7th Cav about 150 men. This hardly defeated the US... DMarino

I agree that this statement seems questionable. I would suggest just removing the sentence altogether if ruled people in "modern times" have won military victories against colonial rulers before Dien Bien Phu; and if so, then I don't really see the "historical significance" associated with the fact of a victory of this nature. soulpatch

It also had historical significance as the first major military victory in modern times of a ruled people against a colonial power.

Not true. Adowa in 1896

It does appear to have been a signifcant event For french colonialism and lead into a particular french political psyche which lead to a particular handling of algeria (and indirectly to the return of DeGaulle to political life). However I've been unable to find sources which note further such ties. The main historical implications seem to be limited to french colonialism and the involvement of the United States. As for winning millitary victories before Dien Bien Phu, its probably going to depend on your definition of "modern times" humm? If you trace it to 1900, yes. If you start at WWII, its questionable. If no one comes up with a better rewording I'll give it a go. However even if no earlier events are found I fear asserting Dien Bien Phu (without references to prove otherwise) is the root of the fall of post-mdoern collonialism might be a [hoc] fallacy. reboot

I'm the one to blame for writing that para, and I agree it probably has to go. The words "major" and "modern times" show a distinct POV, or at least a lack of explanation about what I was trying to say. I think we just have to explain its significance better with respect to French prestige & colonization policy, US involvement, possible warnings for British decolonization, etc. -- Hotlorp

How about something like this:

"The defeat became a 20th century symbol of the power of colonized peoples against a European colonial power. Not only the were the French shocked, but avoiding a repetition became part of the history of American effort in Vienam, and of British plans for decolonization, as well as an inspiration to modern revolutionaries in Afria, Asia, and Latin America.

Ortolan88

Do you have a reference proving that it did? Thats the thing, I don't see any reference material that show that it meant anyone outside of the French sphere of influence. I'm not sure characterizing countries as having emotion is a good thing. I think expanding and mentioning its effect on French Algeria, the return of DeGaullle and the rest makes a lot of sense. I'm not saying that it didn't inspire other peoples, just I can't find anything saying it did. Reboot

I don't have a reference, but I'm sure they exist. The point I think the original questioned sentence and my rewrite are trying to make is that "Dienbienphu" is like "Pearl Harbor" or "Waterloo", an instantly understood shorthand expression in international politics. If the article doesn't say that in some way then it is not a good article on Dienbienphu. The fall of Dienbienphu was not some little French disappointment, it was a watershed in international affairs. We are looking for a way to say that. Ortolan88

So "I don't have a reference or any proof but I'm sure it was?" -- Umm. isn't that the very essence of PointOfView? The facts. Prove it and of course it should be in there, otherwise its just your opinion. I searched for a good 30 minutes or so and couldn't find anything saying that.

Oh grow up. This is the "talk" page where we discuss this sort of thing. I didn't put it in the article. The article won't be complete if it doesn't include the point of the symbolism of the fall of Dienbienphu, and I am trying to help someone else who knows more about it than I do (or you, evidently) to find a way to say it. Ortolan88

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Changed US "reneged" on Geneva accord to US opposed election because you cannot renege on a promise that you didn't make. The US and South Vietnam governments never supported the election provision. --rmhermen

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Geneva Accords

Can anyone verify the linked document below, it appears to contradict the above revision:

The American Response to the Geneva Declarations, 3 July 21, 1954

J d noonan 12:15, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

French Casualities?

Sorry for being on topic, but --

The battle summary table gives numbers for French causalities which seem to exceed the number of soldiers. Although I understand that this probably comes from the reinforcements constantly flewn in, it's fairly confusing at first.

Wouldn't it be better to simply insert the total number of French soldiers involved? -- Syzygy 11:43, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Pronounciation

Is the Ph in Phu pronounced like an f or an aspirated p?Cameron Nedland 00:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how a vietnamese speaker would pronounce it, but in english it is always pronounced as an 'f'. Raul654 00:52, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It's pronounced like an "f". See Vietnamese alphabet. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:59, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks guys.Cameron Nedland 19:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Viet Minh losses

According to "History of PAVN's General Staff in the anti-French resistance war", PAVN's General Staff, 1991, total losses of Viet Minh (or PAVN) in the battle of Dien Bien Phu were 4,020 KIA, 792 MIA, 9,118 WIA. Truong Son 08:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

That number strikes me as being very low - the PAVN had virtually no medical facilities, so the relatiely high wounded-to-killed ratio is even more surprising. Raul654 13:39, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

7950 KIA is estimation from French who is the losing side. The reality number must be lower than this. On the other hand, "History of PAVN's General Staff in the anti-French resistance war" hasn't made public. This textbook, then as now, is for internal circulation only. I have no more commnent on the number in this. vo quoc tuan 58.187.97.96 20:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ðiện Biên Phủ

How about not using phrases like Hà-Nội, Hải-Phòng, and Sài Gòn, but still allowing phrases like Ðiện Biên Phủ, Võ Nguyên Giáp, and Hồ Chí Minh? Diacritics can do no harm, but on the contrary provide more information. --Ionius Mundus 00:17, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I have one remarks about names for strongpoints in Dien Bien Phu valley. They were NOT named by commanding officer's mistresses, but simply ALPHABETICALLY:

A - Anna-Marie
B - Beatrice
C - Claudette
D - Dominique
E - Elaine
F - Francoise (not on the map!)
G - Gabrielle
H - Huguette
I - Isabelle

And other remark: In publication "Ground War - Vietnam Vol.1 1945-1965" by Jim Meshko, 1990, from Squadron/Signal Publication ISBN 0-89747-251-9, page 27, You can see different map of fortress Dien Bien Phu: Huguette and Anna-Marie are "switched" and East from Airstrip lies another strongpoint named FRANCOISE. --JanChvojka

Protected

Raul654, however, protected the main page without providing a protection summary. I'm sure this is to stop ongoing edit wars. If so, please add {{protected}} to the main page. I requested that at WP:RfPP, after I looked at this page there that an "edit warring" user wanted it to be unprotected. But the request was removed. -- ADNghiem501 01:36, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Done. --CBD 11:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

One-side point of view

Not to say that this article is POV or not neutral, but to me it lacks details on the Viet Minh's staff and plan-making process. It always state Giap did this, Giap did that, gosh Giap wasn't everything! Also, it mentions some French's small victories like the attack on the AA machinegun nest which I think not neccesary especially since there's no similar information on the Viet Minh. It also mentions the demoralization of the Viet Minh's troop from certain losses, this is somewhat POV because morale is something you cannot measure for sure, again there's no information on the morale of the French soldiers although I have heard several stories in which French soldiers suffered from mental and physical problems. In addition there are some details on French individuals which I think is not needed. We had a fairly good article FROM the French point of view, how about some more from the Viet Minh's?.Hawkie 18:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Let's balance this article out. --Ionius Mundus 19:19, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Your criticisms are, for the most part, wrong (for example, when troops are mutinious and refusing orders, yes, they are clearly demoralized. This is an objective fact). Ditto for your observations on the stratetic planning. Vietnamese stratetigic planning was rather trivial - go where the French had isolated themselves, surround them, and annihilate them.

HOwever, you do bring up one valid point, in that French had severe morale problems not mentioned here - I should probably add information on the 'internal desertor' problem. Raul654 02:52, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

For my criticím about measuring morale, I agree I was wrong. But Viet Minh's strategy was not that simple as you said. Previously, the French army only concentrated its elite units in Hanoi. Then the Viet Minh had a strategy of attacking several critical points in Indochine where the French clearly didn't want to lose but didn't have enough troops to defend either. SO they had to seperate their elite units and spread them all over Indochine, as stated in the article, and among these points is Dien Bien Phu. Therefore, the French were isolated by the Viet Minh, not by themselves. I can't have specific source for this so I only mention it so you can get more information. Also I think we should add some information about Viet Minh's staff?. And maybe we should mention the way the Viet Minh carry such heavy artillery into the dense forest and mountainous terrain? I'm quite curious because I have heard stories that they carried their heavy guns with manpower through elevated terrain. That's a significant effort you know.Hawkie 04:36, 28 August 2006 (UTC)