4 ms·
How can a paper like the New York Times not even get the name of dynasty right and this across multiple articles? It's the House of Habsburg, not Hapsburg.
by steve1977 11mo ago
How can a paper like the New York Times not even get the name of dynasty right and this across multiple articles?
It's the House of Habsburg, not Hapsburg.
- sweettea 11mo agoAlready addressed: "While the family spells its last name with a B, the New York Times stylebook spells Hapsburg with a P, which brought no shortage of scolding emails upon publication."
- snthpy 11mo agoHow can the New Iork Tymes just choose how they spell things? That's messed up.
- renewiltord 11mo agoThese idiosyncrasies are amusing but they do have a habit of dominating the conversation. E.g. the New Yorker (I think) uses diaeresis to represent distinct syllables resulting in words like “Cooperate” being decorated. Or that chap here who insists on using 5 digit years. But some go missed. My personal favourite is that I prefer to fully close clauses within quotations. > The President said, “I will never bomb the moon!”.
- monerozcash 11mo agoThe same way they just choose to anglicize Владимир Путин and בִּנְיָמִין נְתַנְיָהוּ, although there are certainly a plenty of much better examples.
- hurfdurf 11mo agoThe Habsburg Family never used a different writing system, though.
- tanseydavid 11mo agoBut I bet they used the metric system!
- steve1977 11mo agoProbably, but only since the 19th century ;)
- monerozcash 11mo agoThey did use a different language with different pronunciation rules, though. I'm not convinced that sticking with the original spelling is obviously better. Bibis’s first name certainly doesn't accurately transliterate to Benjamin, and that's probably fine.
- hurfdurf 11mo agoThey use the name "Habsburg". Who is the NYT to tell them they are in fact not "Habsburg"?
- monerozcash 11mo agoI don't think the NYT is telling them that.
- kmoser 11mo agoLike the way the French and English write "Cologne" for the city Germans call "Köln". The NYT is just adhering to a different standard, not making up anything new.
- steve1977 11mo agoAddressed, but not fixed.
- monerozcash 11mo agoIt's not at all unusual for English-language press to anglicize names.
- steve1977 11mo agoBut it's not any more anglicized than Habsburg would be. I mean, English does have a letter B, doesn't it? And as far as I know, the difference between B and P is the same as in German.
- monerozcash 11mo agoThe first "B" in "Habsburg" is pronounced rather more like the letter "P" than the letter "B".
- steve1977 11mo agoNot where I live (which is near Habsburg). I would pronounce it the same as the B in -burg. Where are you from (if you care to answer, no problem if not)
- monerozcash 11mo agoThat's interesting, I'm not originally German but went to school in Berlin since I was 7 and always heard it pronounced as "Haaps-burk". I'd think this is just because of how final obstruent devoicing works in German, to me it just seems like the obvious natural way to pronounce the word.
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agoDevoicing is more common in northern dialects https://youtu.be/9-BBgc_uBZQ?t=1m11s https://youtu.be/9-BBgc_uBZQ?t=1m11s Seems to be there tho just very subtle EDIT: it's why GP is not "steffi1977" XD
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agoGerman usage https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHabsburg&year_start=1800&year_end=2025&corpus=20&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CHapsburg%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CHabsburg%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHab... Vs https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHabsburg&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en-US&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Hapsburg%2CHab... US (In my head NYT is an anachronism from the 60s but I've a feeling the editors would be more than fine with that characterization)
- steve1977 11mo agoThat’s interesting, but since the Habsburg is an actual castle (burg) here in German speaking Switzerland, there is only one right way of spelling it.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- gsf_emergency_6 11mo agoAh right, here's the Schloss Habsburg page for those interested https://www.museumaargau.ch/en/habsburg-castle https://www.museumaargau.ch/en/habsburg-castle (Winter hours apply?) There's a middle German word hap (ford) which could make the NYT correct in 1100 :) It's on par with spelling Koeln Cologne imho pity those guys
- steve1977 11mo agoHap seems to be an old word for Hafen (i.e. port). Now the Habsburg is on a mountain and no ports in sight ;) Also, according to historians, the name probably stems from "Habesburg" (haben = have in English). There's also a myth that it stems from Habicht (Eurasian goshawk), but that is likely just that, a myth. In either case, the castle was never spelled with a p, even in the middle ages. So there's no way to spin this spelling into something that makes sense. It's just wrong. Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_(Burg)#Geschichte https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habsburg_(Burg)#Geschichte
- s1mplicissimus 11mo agoI think it's a pretty strong indicator of the low level of care the authors put into this, so I'll upvote the grey parent. Imo it's embarassing, but at the same time the NYT hasn't been what I would consider "quality journalism" for quiet a while, so I guess it's par for the course