Wikipedia:Stress marks in East Slavic words: Difference between revisions

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This is an essay on the Russian spelling.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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WP:RUSTRESS

This page in a nutshell: stress marks don't belong in any Russian word and should be removed at sight

Stress marks in Russian words originate in the first grade of Russian elementary school, along with the syllabification, and almost never occur in real life, except for very special cases. However, they were routinely used in Russian dictionaries and encyclopedias of the 20th century. Thus they made their way into the modern Russian Wikipedia (that has a series of similar technical cargo cults, such as reverse name notation [Surname, Name] in article names, as if there's no DEFAULTSORT, and so on). Even ruwiki itself never had a consensus to put these stress marks, and that's no wonder since ruwiki seldom has any consensus at all. While a native Russian reader can at least sort this out, in English Wikipedia they are utterly misleading: that's not how the words are really spelled, and definitely not how they are spelled in the reliable sources.

So we have a lot of Russian terms imported from ruwiki with these stréss márks. Our goal is to eliminate the latter, they belong there no more than they do in English, and should be removed at sight.

The correct way to show the pronunciation in any language, including the stresses, is International Phonetic Alphabet which is already present in most of the articles that need it. (A stress mark goes just before the stressed syllable.) The tools to implement this include the IPA family of templates, most relevantly {{IPA-ru}}, and the {{lang-rus}} template with its |p= parameter.

This is not to say that all Russian terms and names should have the IPA. Even if there's none, it's still preferable to show a clean and correct spelling first.

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 {{essay|WP:RUSTRESS|interprets='''the Russian spelling'''}}
-{{nutshell|There is no consensus as to whether stress marks should be used on English Wikipedia.}}
+{{nutshell|stress marks don't belong in any Russian word and should be removed at sight}}
-'''Stress marks on Russian words''' do not appear in "normal" Russian texts such as newspapers, magazines or books (other than those mentioned somewhat below). During a certain historical period, stresses were mandatory, but the [[Civil Script|reform of the Russian alphabet in the early 18th century]] made their use superfluous in normal texts. Nevertheless, stresses have been routinely used in all major Russian encyclopedias and explanatory dictionaries since at least the 1780s (and they continue to be used today; see the [[Great Russian Encyclopedia]] in 36 volumes, published by the [[Russian Academy of Sciences]] between 2004 and 2017), as well as in many bilingual dictionaries, reading books for young native speakers and those for foreigners. This is how they made their way into Russian Wikipedia. However, while a native Russian reader knows that stresses are ''not'' mandatory in Russian words, in English Wikipedia stresses can be misleading: a non-Russian speaker might think that they ''are'' mandatory (this confusion can be solved simply by adding a short explanatory note, though). One way or another, both spellings (stressed and unstressed) are correct in Russian.
+'''Stress marks in Russian words''' originate in the first grade of Russian elementary school, along with the [[syllabification]], and almost never occur in real life, except for very special cases. However, they were routinely used in Russian dictionaries and encyclopedias of the 20th century. Thus they made their way into the modern Russian Wikipedia (that has a series of similar technical [[cargo cult programming|cargo cults]], such as reverse name notation [Surname, Name] in article names, as if there's no [[mw:Help:Magic words#Technical metadata|DEFAULTSORT]], and so on). Even ruwiki itself never had a consensus to put these stress marks, and that's no wonder since ruwiki seldom has any consensus at all. While a native Russian reader can at least sort this out, in English Wikipedia they are utterly misleading: that's not how the words are really spelled, and definitely not how they are spelled in the [[WP:reliable sources|reliable sources]].
-So we have a lot of Russian terms imported from ruwiki with stress marks. The goal of some users is to eliminate the stress marks on English Wikipedia, for they argue that stress marks belong in Russian words no more than they do in English ones, so they say that these should be removed from enwiki to avoid confusion. Other users, however, insist that stress marks should be used on enwiki for they show how a word is pronounced: the stress in Russian follows no established pattern, so it is often impossible to determine the correct stress placement even for a native speaker (especially in place names and in last names other than the common ones).
+So we have a lot of Russian terms imported from ruwiki with these ''stréss márks''. Our goal is to eliminate the latter, they belong there no more than they do in English, and should be removed at sight.
-A similar situation exists with English technical terminology. Some English technical dictionaries add an acute accent to stressed syllables but do not otherwise indicate pronunciation. This is because English orthography, like Russian, is close to phonemic for Latinate words, and stress marking is all that is typically needed. Another parallel is vowel marking in Arabic and Hebrew, which is similarly useful in making written words pronounceable to L2 (non-native) speakers but is otherwise only used for children, dictionaries, religious texts and the like.
-A standard way to show the pronunciation (including the stress) in any language is the [[Help:IPA|International Phonetic Alphabet]], which is already present in most of the articles. (A [[Help:IPA#Marks added to letters|stress mark]] goes just before the stressed syllable.) The tools to implement this include the [[Template:IPA templates|IPA family of templates]], most relevantly {{tl|IPA-ru}}, and the {{tl|lang-rus}} template with its {{para|p}} parameter. This is not to say that all Russian terms and names should have the IPA. However, it is argued whether the IPA can be used as a replacement of the stresses or simply as an additional tool.
+The correct way to show the pronunciation in any language, including the stresses, is [[Help:IPA|International Phonetic Alphabet]] which is already present in most of the articles that need it. (A [[Help:IPA#Marks added to letters|stress mark]] goes just before the stressed syllable.) The tools to implement this include the [[Template:IPA templates|IPA family of templates]], most relevantly {{tl|IPA-ru}}, and the {{tl|lang-rus}} template with its {{para|p}} parameter.
+This is not to say that all Russian terms and names should have the IPA. Even if there's none, it's still preferable to show a clean and correct spelling first.
-So far, no consensus has been reached as to whether stress marks should be used on English Wikipedia or not.
 ==See also==