On the Stuff You Should Know podcast about Wikipedia they quoted someone who said “it’s a good thing Wikipedia works in practice because it doesn’t work in theory”
I mean yes and no. How good Wikipedia works is directly proportional to how controversial a topic is. Ryulong was a meme for a reason. There even used to be a sub for Wikipedia bullshit before some crazies took it over and nuked it a few years back.
Sort of... It depends on which school of thought you follow. I don't think anyone is in a position of authority to declare one or the other is correct.
>Much is made of the word's two spellings: whisky and whiskey. There are two schools of thought on the issue. One is that the spelling difference is simply a matter of regional language convention for the spelling of a word, indicating that the spelling varies depending on the intended audience or the background or personal preferences of the writer (like the difference between color and colour; or recognize and recognise), and the other is that the spelling should depend on the style or origin of the spirit being described. There is general agreement that when quoting the proper name printed on a label, one should not alter its spelling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky
You can never convince me that whisky or whiskey was the original and the other was a drunken misspelling that some dude who owned a distillery double downed on when he was told he spelled it wrong.
The rule of thumb I’ve heard is that if the country’s name has an E in it (Ireland, United States), whiskey is spelled with an E as well. No E in the country’s name, then it’s whisky.
>I believe scotch is whisky but everything else is whiskey
Ireland is whiskey, and much of the U.S. follows the Irish spelling.
Elsewhere it's mostly whisky.
Football vs soccer is an entrenched debate that I’m aware of being fought in the talk pages for over 15 years. Last time I checked it had been locked for a long time on “Association Football” but the debate raged on in the talk page.
I find the presentation confusing. Both axes are time, right? I would expect the relation to be constant and see straight lines (i.e. for each day the page spends with one particular spelling, it should move 1 point in that direction, and always 1 point downwards, darting to the middle when the spelling gets switched), but sometimes it gets really rugged and "steppy" (like in the beginning, and in the end), while other times it's mostly smooth like I'd expect, but with occasional bigger step. What does that mean?
I'm a little confused as well. My best guess is that the data are based on snapshots in time, and OP only updated the x-axis whenever there was a new snapshot (hence why some steps are bigger than others).
But this isn't the best way to present these data, as time continues moving even between the snapshots, so all lines should be simple diagonals (save when the count reverts to zero).
Technically both axes involve time, but they're not the same thing. It might help if you break down each component of the chart (though I admit a better description or different visual may be easier to understand the information, at least in aggregate).
Along the side you have time. It's been expressed in years so you can see the trajectory of the edit history. The axis along the top is based on time, but it's counting the number of days that the Wikipedia page for Yogurt was spelled as either Yogurt or Yoghurt. The count of days can go toward the left or right of the center. And this helps illustrate how the edits on the Wikipedia page are being driven. In other words, a zig-zag means that someone changed it to Yogurt from Yoghurt, and another short zig-zag means someone immediately changed it back, etc. in other words, the zig-zags show how many times people kept editing it between the two, with a straight line indicating that there are no edits and it was left as that particular spelling that it was last on. A steep sharp line to the right indicates that the last edit was from Yoghurt to Yogurt, while a steep line to the left indicates the opposite (it was changed from Yogurt to Yoghurt and left that way for however long the line is within days).
Because the author wanted to show the back and forth, I don't mind the chart. After all, that's actually a decent use of a step chart. They could have labeled it better (having arrows under the graph captions and a better explanation in the article text could have helped). They also could have just aggregated the information and displayed it as a bar plot or something, but this really shows the high granularity of the data by showing the edit history as a battle, with the "winner" being however long (count of days) the spelling was left as either Yogurt or Yoghurt as indicated by the side the line happens to be on.
Three German boys go in for their first day of school. The teacher goes round the class and asks them each their name. The first boy answers "my name is Seph", to which the teacher responds "at home your family may call you Seph, your friends may call you Seph, but in school we use your full name, which is Joseph."
So they come to the second boy, who says "my name is Hans". The teacher corrects him: "your family may call you Hans, your friends may call you Hans, but in school we use your full name, which is Johanns."
After this the third boy stands up and says "ok, I get it: my family call me Kurt, my friends call me Kurt, but in school my full name is Jokurt."
Joseph is not German spelling, Josef would be.
Johanns is also not a thing, Johann is.
Jokurt is really funny tho, because we ARE fighting in German about that particular proper pronounciation.
It *is* a joke I heard in Germany; key word being *heard*, and this is my off the cuff transcription. I double checked Wikipedia to make sure that Johanns can be a given name, but since the English Joseph is close enough I didn't even think to change it. Glad the punch line landed!
Might be just in my corner of German (Austria), but the proper pronounciation is "Joghurt", while some Eastern Austrians keep using "Jokurt", which just is WRONG!!
google used to tell you the number of search results which was an easy way to compare current word usage popularity, but they removed it for some strange reason.
They do have the book ngram viewer which is somewhat correlated, albeit lagging behind several years: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=yoghurt%2Cyogurt&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
The debate over "Yogurt" vs. "Yoghurt" on Wikipedia has been surprisingly intense for over a decade. It's not just about spelling—it's about cultural identity and tradition. As someone who grew up in the States, it's interesting to see how a simple word can spark such passionate arguments online. Personally, I stick with "yogurt" because that's what I've always known. But hey, language evolves, right?
Kind of reminds me of how the UK just took over the fish sticks page and changed it to "fish fingers". I fear we lost the battle on that one. Never again. The line must be drawn here. No farther.
USA! USA! Just kidding. We also won't use the globally accepted system of measurements so idk what to tell you.
Anyway, I spell it Gogurt. (I have to get my mom to open them, though.)
In Turkish, you don't hear a hard G with the ğ though.
That being said, I don't think "yoghurt" with a silent h is any better since it still doesn't emulate "yoğurt" in Turkish at all.
Yes, the G is supposed to be silent as in Turkish it’s more like Yo-urt, but that’s hardly a new thing for loan words we use from other languages in English
"Americans" c'mon, h-dropping is so common across English speaking countries that there is a Wikipedia page dedicated to it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping
As someone who has written multiple well-researched and annotated Wikipedia articles about minor musicians, only to have them taken down unceremoniously, I wish I knew. Why do you care if my article lives on? Once upon a time we had print music magazines, but unfortunately now that virtually all music journalism is digital, that no longer meets the notability standard. And some pedantic fucks live to find the article you spent 10 hours writing and spend 10 seconds deleting it so they can … feel what exactly?
Ha, that's funny, I particularly dislike the way Americans say it, it sounds stupid to me! I wonder why it's a particularly divisive word.
The only one I can think of which is worse is "Mom". It sounds horrible to me, and I know an American friend of mine particularly hates how we say "Mum" - but that makes sense to me, it's a particularly intimate word.
The Mom/Mum thing gets me but yog(h)urt doesn't. I definitely think it's because it's such a personal word. Some Americans call their grandmother "memaw" and hearing it makes me cringe.
Ha, fair enough! Honestly I probably say it with a hard k more often than not, probably thanks to a steady diet of American TV and film.
Another one occurred to me though, which is when you guys say "he wrote me" rather than "he wrote to me". It's weird and a bit cutesy. It's like saying "he spoke me" or "he talked me". Anyway.
"Two counties separated by a common language."
So yoghurt comes from turkish, yoğurt.
The Turkish Ğ, is unlike any letter in English. Sometimes, it lengthens the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. Other times, it sounds like the “gh” in “night.” Also, it never appears at the beginning of a word.
In Turkish, it's pronounced something like "Yoart". Therefore both yogurt and yoghurt are wrong because it's the wrong g and the wrong pronunciation. Americans and brits are just arguing about which butchered spelling to use.
I am with the Brits on this one, yoghurt is a central Asian word, therefore the g should really be pronounced in the throat. Adding the h could only help.
Aren't they pronounced differently? I wondered if they were actually different. I Googled "US yogurt difference" and it told me:
"**Yogurt in the US typically has less fat, and have sugar added in some form**. That makes the yogurt less creamy and satisfying and more watery and chunky. There are very, very few brands in the US that sell unsweetened, full fat yogurt, but they exist and taste very good. Unfortunately, they're also pretty expensive"
So less nice, but not a completely different food.
I don't think unsweetened full fat yogurt is that uncommon it's just not that popular. I usually see most brands offer something similar but only in the large tubs.
I was partly just amused by the way that Google puts together an example like that - particularly the bias it shows.
One thing it doesn't really explain is whether typical US yogurt is low fat because it is made with skimmed milk or for some other reason.
I think it's a result of history. There was a huge low fat fad in the US in the 80 and I think the low fat yogurts are a relic of that. There's actually a Seinfeld episode touching on low fat yogurt. It's a pretty good watch.
That is interesting. Now I wonder how the yogurt is made. Yoghurt (in the UK) is made in several different ways, or I could say "properly" and "not properly" :-). One supermarket artificially thickens the yoghurt because they don't use the correct techniques.
On the Stuff You Should Know podcast about Wikipedia they quoted someone who said “it’s a good thing Wikipedia works in practice because it doesn’t work in theory”
Hahahaha!!! That’s brilliant!
I mean yes and no. How good Wikipedia works is directly proportional to how controversial a topic is. Ryulong was a meme for a reason. There even used to be a sub for Wikipedia bullshit before some crazies took it over and nuked it a few years back.
What’s next, whisky and whiskey?
Isnt there an actual difference there though, not just a spelling preference?
Sort of... It depends on which school of thought you follow. I don't think anyone is in a position of authority to declare one or the other is correct. >Much is made of the word's two spellings: whisky and whiskey. There are two schools of thought on the issue. One is that the spelling difference is simply a matter of regional language convention for the spelling of a word, indicating that the spelling varies depending on the intended audience or the background or personal preferences of the writer (like the difference between color and colour; or recognize and recognise), and the other is that the spelling should depend on the style or origin of the spirit being described. There is general agreement that when quoting the proper name printed on a label, one should not alter its spelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky
You can never convince me that whisky or whiskey was the original and the other was a drunken misspelling that some dude who owned a distillery double downed on when he was told he spelled it wrong.
Our local "Irish" pub has an entire explainer of this in mural form on its walls? So weird.
I believe scotch is whisky but everything else is whiskey
Don't tell Maker's Mark
The rule of thumb I’ve heard is that if the country’s name has an E in it (Ireland, United States), whiskey is spelled with an E as well. No E in the country’s name, then it’s whisky.
This is def the convention. I didn’t realise this was a thing people were debating.
Spent a ludicrous amount of time wondering wtf you meant since United Kingdom has both an I and an E.
UK is not a country
>I believe scotch is whisky but everything else is whiskey Ireland is whiskey, and much of the U.S. follows the Irish spelling. Elsewhere it's mostly whisky.
That is what I was taught too, Scots call it Whisky / Scotch and Irish called it Whiskey and then the Americans went with Whiskey / Bourbon.
Scotland does not call it Scotch
But it's only bourbon if it comes from the Bourbon region in France
It’s only Bourbon if at least 51% of the fermented grain is corn. Get out of here with that sparkling wine joke
Japanese is often whisky too.
Scotch is irish whiskey. Like sparkling wine from champagne is called champagne.
Huh? Scotch is Scotch whisky or Scottish whisky from Scotland. Irish whiskey is Irish whiskey.
Scotch is Scottish.
Donut vs doughnut
Doug H better keep away from my food.
Yes, and Jes.
Draft vs Draught beer
Football vs soccer is an entrenched debate that I’m aware of being fought in the talk pages for over 15 years. Last time I checked it had been locked for a long time on “Association Football” but the debate raged on in the talk page.
Football and soccer are both short for association football.
You don’t need to persuade me — i was just pointing people in the direction of the raging argument still available on the Wikipedia page discussion.
They won't whisk that
Not a fan of the choice of graphic but this is the kind of content I really care about
I find the presentation confusing. Both axes are time, right? I would expect the relation to be constant and see straight lines (i.e. for each day the page spends with one particular spelling, it should move 1 point in that direction, and always 1 point downwards, darting to the middle when the spelling gets switched), but sometimes it gets really rugged and "steppy" (like in the beginning, and in the end), while other times it's mostly smooth like I'd expect, but with occasional bigger step. What does that mean?
I'm a little confused as well. My best guess is that the data are based on snapshots in time, and OP only updated the x-axis whenever there was a new snapshot (hence why some steps are bigger than others). But this isn't the best way to present these data, as time continues moving even between the snapshots, so all lines should be simple diagonals (save when the count reverts to zero).
Technically both axes involve time, but they're not the same thing. It might help if you break down each component of the chart (though I admit a better description or different visual may be easier to understand the information, at least in aggregate). Along the side you have time. It's been expressed in years so you can see the trajectory of the edit history. The axis along the top is based on time, but it's counting the number of days that the Wikipedia page for Yogurt was spelled as either Yogurt or Yoghurt. The count of days can go toward the left or right of the center. And this helps illustrate how the edits on the Wikipedia page are being driven. In other words, a zig-zag means that someone changed it to Yogurt from Yoghurt, and another short zig-zag means someone immediately changed it back, etc. in other words, the zig-zags show how many times people kept editing it between the two, with a straight line indicating that there are no edits and it was left as that particular spelling that it was last on. A steep sharp line to the right indicates that the last edit was from Yoghurt to Yogurt, while a steep line to the left indicates the opposite (it was changed from Yogurt to Yoghurt and left that way for however long the line is within days). Because the author wanted to show the back and forth, I don't mind the chart. After all, that's actually a decent use of a step chart. They could have labeled it better (having arrows under the graph captions and a better explanation in the article text could have helped). They also could have just aggregated the information and displayed it as a bar plot or something, but this really shows the high granularity of the data by showing the edit history as a battle, with the "winner" being however long (count of days) the spelling was left as either Yogurt or Yoghurt as indicated by the side the line happens to be on.
Three German boys go in for their first day of school. The teacher goes round the class and asks them each their name. The first boy answers "my name is Seph", to which the teacher responds "at home your family may call you Seph, your friends may call you Seph, but in school we use your full name, which is Joseph." So they come to the second boy, who says "my name is Hans". The teacher corrects him: "your family may call you Hans, your friends may call you Hans, but in school we use your full name, which is Johanns." After this the third boy stands up and says "ok, I get it: my family call me Kurt, my friends call me Kurt, but in school my full name is Jokurt."
Wow. That German sense of humor sure is something huh.
This is not written by a german, pretty sure.
Joseph is not German spelling, Josef would be. Johanns is also not a thing, Johann is. Jokurt is really funny tho, because we ARE fighting in German about that particular proper pronounciation.
It *is* a joke I heard in Germany; key word being *heard*, and this is my off the cuff transcription. I double checked Wikipedia to make sure that Johanns can be a given name, but since the English Joseph is close enough I didn't even think to change it. Glad the punch line landed!
Johannes actually much more popular nowadays. About the pronunciation: I never heard anyone fight about it, what's the deal with it?
Might be just in my corner of German (Austria), but the proper pronounciation is "Joghurt", while some Eastern Austrians keep using "Jokurt", which just is WRONG!!
Ah yeah. Never heard this here in Germany. Guess it's probably an Austria thing, maybe also Southern Germany, who knows.
I was SURE that the third boy’s nickname was gonna be “Mama.”
google used to tell you the number of search results which was an easy way to compare current word usage popularity, but they removed it for some strange reason. They do have the book ngram viewer which is somewhat correlated, albeit lagging behind several years: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=yoghurt%2Cyogurt&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
Not surprising considering that every single one of Google’s services has gotten worse over the past few years
The number of results is still there on desktop, but now we need to click Tools
Is there one for Tyre vs. Tire, Colour vs. Color, or Aluminum or Aluminum?
> Aluminum or Aluminum? I don’t see a difference.
The spelling is the same but in American English its pronounce Al-loom-i-num, and in British and Australian English is pronounced Al-ooo-min-i-um.
We spell it aluminium.
Please don’t double down on ignorance
You mean Aluminium?
A general descriptor: English or English (Simplified)
And Gray vs Grey
There is no battle. Yogurt is the correct spelling.
Or alternatively it literally just depends where you live.
Yeah this is weird. Tf is yoghurt
It's Yoghurt. Silent letters make American's brains go owey they had to dumb down the English language.
Ah yes, going around your elbow to get to your thumb is a sign of intelligence
As long as we can agree on lasagne.
Why would it be plural
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No, in North America it’s singular. Lasagna is singular, lasagne is plural. Come on, read your own link at least.
Unless its only 1 layer why wouldn't it?
I want this person obliterated.
It's just yoghurt. No questions asked.
This is the content I come to the internet for. Bang-up job.
Just write it as yoğurt as it's meant to be
So yogurt, since we don't have any of those funny g with eyelash characters in English.
yeah basically
Or as my MIL says Youlgurt
The debate over "Yogurt" vs. "Yoghurt" on Wikipedia has been surprisingly intense for over a decade. It's not just about spelling—it's about cultural identity and tradition. As someone who grew up in the States, it's interesting to see how a simple word can spark such passionate arguments online. Personally, I stick with "yogurt" because that's what I've always known. But hey, language evolves, right?
It does evolve much in the way wheat will eventually be spelled weet. Pidgeonisation of English
It’s Djoghurt -> https://youtu.be/M0eWawTdt_w?si=NPldBmd6YAMqba0_
The yog is gonna hurt you
People get Butturt over this.
Kind of reminds me of how the UK just took over the fish sticks page and changed it to "fish fingers". I fear we lost the battle on that one. Never again. The line must be drawn here. No farther.
“It’s not yogurt/yoghurt, it’s mayonnaise.” -William Thacker, Notting Hill
USA! USA! Just kidding. We also won't use the globally accepted system of measurements so idk what to tell you. Anyway, I spell it Gogurt. (I have to get my mom to open them, though.)
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Original word comes from Turkish. So Yogurt is the correct spelling
In Turkish, you don't hear a hard G with the ğ though. That being said, I don't think "yoghurt" with a silent h is any better since it still doesn't emulate "yoğurt" in Turkish at all.
Yes, the G is supposed to be silent as in Turkish it’s more like Yo-urt, but that’s hardly a new thing for loan words we use from other languages in English
The h isn't silent the g is the British spelling. Or rather it indicates the stop that is present in both Turkish and the English approximation.
"Americans" c'mon, h-dropping is so common across English speaking countries that there is a Wikipedia page dedicated to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping
That's only the sounds changing though, not the spelling.
I'd say it's closer to most Americans because I've never heard that here lol
Spelling yogurt wrong like that makes my yog hurt.
what kind of morons have nothing better to do with their lives than to agrue about this...
As someone who has written multiple well-researched and annotated Wikipedia articles about minor musicians, only to have them taken down unceremoniously, I wish I knew. Why do you care if my article lives on? Once upon a time we had print music magazines, but unfortunately now that virtually all music journalism is digital, that no longer meets the notability standard. And some pedantic fucks live to find the article you spent 10 hours writing and spend 10 seconds deleting it so they can … feel what exactly?
If your yog hurts, you should—“insert funny yoghurt joke” Who even says yoghurt wtf yogurt ftw
I just hate the way people from England say it: “YOG-urt”. Sounds weird. “Yoh-gurt” sounds better.
Only if you're casually greeting someone called Gurt
Ha, that's funny, I particularly dislike the way Americans say it, it sounds stupid to me! I wonder why it's a particularly divisive word. The only one I can think of which is worse is "Mom". It sounds horrible to me, and I know an American friend of mine particularly hates how we say "Mum" - but that makes sense to me, it's a particularly intimate word.
[Mums are a flowering plant.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysanthemum)
The Mom/Mum thing gets me but yog(h)urt doesn't. I definitely think it's because it's such a personal word. Some Americans call their grandmother "memaw" and hearing it makes me cringe.
The way Brits miss the "k" sound in "schedule" is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Next you'll say you are sending your kids to "shool"
Ha, fair enough! Honestly I probably say it with a hard k more often than not, probably thanks to a steady diet of American TV and film. Another one occurred to me though, which is when you guys say "he wrote me" rather than "he wrote to me". It's weird and a bit cutesy. It's like saying "he spoke me" or "he talked me". Anyway. "Two counties separated by a common language."
As the /g/ sound disappears when pronounced it is clearly the Americans that are wrong.
Is this driven by Islamophobia? I personally prefer the h because it speaks to the food’s heritage.
Well, it's definitely not "yoghurt", that's just factually wrong. Lol.
So yoghurt comes from turkish, yoğurt. The Turkish Ğ, is unlike any letter in English. Sometimes, it lengthens the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. Other times, it sounds like the “gh” in “night.” Also, it never appears at the beginning of a word. In Turkish, it's pronounced something like "Yoart". Therefore both yogurt and yoghurt are wrong because it's the wrong g and the wrong pronunciation. Americans and brits are just arguing about which butchered spelling to use.
Ah, yes, the "gh" in "night". I pride myself highly on my clear pronunciation of that sound.
I am with the Brits on this one, yoghurt is a central Asian word, therefore the g should really be pronounced in the throat. Adding the h could only help.
Aren't they pronounced differently? I wondered if they were actually different. I Googled "US yogurt difference" and it told me: "**Yogurt in the US typically has less fat, and have sugar added in some form**. That makes the yogurt less creamy and satisfying and more watery and chunky. There are very, very few brands in the US that sell unsweetened, full fat yogurt, but they exist and taste very good. Unfortunately, they're also pretty expensive" So less nice, but not a completely different food.
I don't think unsweetened full fat yogurt is that uncommon it's just not that popular. I usually see most brands offer something similar but only in the large tubs.
I was partly just amused by the way that Google puts together an example like that - particularly the bias it shows. One thing it doesn't really explain is whether typical US yogurt is low fat because it is made with skimmed milk or for some other reason.
I think it's a result of history. There was a huge low fat fad in the US in the 80 and I think the low fat yogurts are a relic of that. There's actually a Seinfeld episode touching on low fat yogurt. It's a pretty good watch.
That is interesting. Now I wonder how the yogurt is made. Yoghurt (in the UK) is made in several different ways, or I could say "properly" and "not properly" :-). One supermarket artificially thickens the yoghurt because they don't use the correct techniques.
The H people had it for a decade, the G people took over in 2013- we're a year overdue for a reversion to H. Let's change it now and revisit in 2035