Talk:Basel/Archive 1

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Archive 1


Links

http://www.basel.ch

http://www.basel.com

Basle?

The article claims that the traditional English spelling be Basle. Is this really the case? I thought it is an alternative English spelling that is more or less disused today. Kokiri 09:21, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I used to see "Basle" in British English texts written before WW 2. Occasionaly I still see it. But the prevelent spelling today seems to be "Basel". --TGC55 18:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I think writing "Basle" is incorrect and has to do with writing what is closest to what was pronounced. But in order to be politically correct, one should separate pronounciation and style of writing - I think. LIllIi 23:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)Ran J. 21:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. Does anybody have any proof that English speakers other than bankers refer to the city by its German name? If we start calling Basle "Basel" where will it all end? Calling Geneva "Genf" or "Genève"? Surely an encylopaedia has to reflect fact as it is today rather than what the Basle tourism board wants. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.6.205.113 (talk) 03:12, 24 May 2007
This English speaker (in the U.S.), along with everyone I know to have an opinion the matter, uses "Basel." If this is not enough to satisfy you, check the work of the leading American scholar on this city, Lionel Gossman. In his earlier work he spells the name "Basle," but he switched to "Basel" well before the end of the last century. So "Basle" appears to belong with "Peking" on the list of obsolete English spellings of geographical names. -- Rob C (Alarob) 20:17, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
  • As a Briton living in Basel, I too have seen Basel spelt "Basle" and pronounced the French way. My understanding is that this is the traditional way. However probably because of the not so great impact of the town in the English-speaking world, this has almost mostly been forgotten. Note that in UK airports today, it's still spelt "Basle" and pronounced as it is in French. After reading the Wikipedia "Circumflex" article <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumflex>, it seems translating the letter "a" with a circumflex or carret ("â") into English becomes "as". So "Bâle" becomes "Basle" like French "hôpital" becomes English "hospital". However for some reason we're still using French pronunciation for "Basle".
  • I disagree with the usage of the phrase "British English traditionally: Basle". "British English" describes a dialect of English. Here I believe you're trying to refer to what the people of Britain (exclusive to the rest of the English speaking world) have traditionally used (which I disagree with anyway--see my previous paragraph).
  • I always assumed that the English people choosing to pronounce it Bale did so under the misapprehension that Basel was in fact a French speaking city or a split city like Biel/Bienne. Now whilst we may not want to call Geneva Geneve, we certainly wouldn't call it Genf either. Fundamentally, I don't think that Bale/Basle have had enough impact on the English language to become so ubiquitous that we absolutely have to maintain them out of deference to 18th century travel writers, as frankly, they are ludicrous. It should be Basel, of course.

Some Google figures: Google, Basel 51 million, Basle 1.4 million. Google Scholar, Basel 1 million, Basle 90'000. Google Books, Basel 10'000, Basle 4'000. — 213.38.11.86 (talk) 08:58, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

  • Actually, the City Council of Basel wants to have Basel instead of Basle used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.167.102.233 (talk) 16:39, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation

@CdaMVvWgS:
At http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=basle you will find that the traditional English pronunciation which corresponds to the traditional spelling is [ba:l] rather than [ba:sl] (which is what you wrote) or [ba:zl] which is the more modern English rendering corresponding to the endonymic spelling. --Akkolon 10:05, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

That is incorrect. The website you linked in your post reads, quote "Pronunciation: ['bä-z&l]". This surely is a misunderstanding on your part, because [ba:l] - what you suggested to be the traditional spelling - is infact the French variant: Bâle. LIllIi 23:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, even though its traditionally written Basle in British English its spoken like the French [ba:l] (mind that travelling from Basel, Switzerland to England (and back) ment travelling through France...) - Kind regards from Basel, --Goonies 10:32, 12 April 2006 (UTC) (Oh, btw... nobody's going to kill you if you still use Basle)
Helen Williams, in her 1798 book (A tour in Switzerland; or, a view of the present state of the governments and manners of those cantons...), consistently spells the city's name Basil, suggesting to me that she pronounced it like the name of the herb (or of certain men...). -- Alarob 19:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
She might have taken it from the italian/latin name of Basel: Basilea. Plus, 'Basil' in English and 'Basel' in Swiss-German are pronounced pretty much the same. --Goonies 09:31, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Ciba SC

Added it back to the article as it isn't a subsiduary of Novartis. Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy merged in 1996 forming Novartis, and Ciba Specialty Chemicals was formed as an operationally independent company the following year.

Roger Federer & Patty Schnyder

Hello, I think that those two people:

  1. Patty Schnyder (1978--), tennis player
  2. Roger Federer (1981--), tennis player

Are not from basel city, they are actually from basel country. Roger currently lifes in Oberwil ( a little village) and about Patty I don't know.Fanatisch 13:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Please note that this is the Basel article not the Basel-City one. Roger Federer is from Münchenstein, which is technically in Basel-Country but belongs to the agglomeration of Basel(-City). It's a bit of a gray zone but usually everybody in the agglomeration of Basel states that he/she is from Basel, when beeing asked. (Except if a local person asks). Therefore I think its ok to have those two (and some others) in the list. --Goonies 09:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
You are contradicting yourself if you are arguing in favour of keeping mentioned individuals stating that this is an article about Basel. Basel is a city in the canton of Basel-Stadt. Inhabitants of cities located in Basel-Land should be mentioned in their respective cities' article. LIllIi 23:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh well, sorry, I always confuse this basel/basel-city thing... dooh! But I did some research: According to Patty Schnyders official webpage she IS from Basel. Also, for me it's OK to have Federer here as well. First, you can find the precise details in his Biography. Second, it's not me wanting Federer to be in the Basel article, its just that the information, that he's from that region might not be that obvious anymore after removing. Where else do you want to put this useful information? He's born in Binningen (stub, there is a note in the article already) as many, many of the people in the agglomeration of Basel (why? its where the Bruderholz Hospital is located). He grew up in Münchenstein (stub) and lives now in Oberwil (stub). All these cities are in the agglomeration of Basel (see also my comments above). But I agree that technically he is not from Basel and you could remove his name if you'd feel the need to do so. --Goonies 16:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Basel population

Although this article says that Basel's conurbation, with 690,000 inhabitants, is Switzerland's second-largest, that honor in fact belongs to Geneva (750,000). Brendan 619Brendan619 19:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know whether this point is still up for discussion, but according to official figures, the Basel conurbation has 730'000 inhabitants while the Geneva conurbation only has about 660'000 inhabitants. Besides, Basel is Switzerland's second most important economic centre. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.188.255.28 (talk) 18:27, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Person rellevant?

I'm afraid this person (Daniel Bernoulli (1936-?) Geologist) is not rellevant, because:

I suggest erasing this name from the article, unless notability was proven.--Pere prlpz 18:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The same applies to those not well-known (only locally or nationally) football players (I am going to delete them). We should be a bit careful to add people which are still alive. Everybody can claim to be someone.

Quarters

"Basel is not subdivided into official counties, districts or boroughs, but into unofficial quarters. There are 19 quarters; the municipalities of Riehen and Bettingen are not included." It's not at all clear what that means. If the quarters are unofficial, who defines them? The author of that sentence? What's the distinction between a "quarter" and a "district" anyway? Lfh 10:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Here's a link to the official Basel-City statistical website: http://www.statistik-bs.ch/quartier -- The terms Quartiere (quarters) and Gemeinden (districts, more literally communes) are used by the city. The word "unofficial" may be confusing here. -- Rob C. alias Alarob 14:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Basel Elite

sources? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sochi is mine (talk • contribs) 03:59, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

German-speaking?

The article does not currently mention whether most people in Basel speak French or German. Could this be added? thanks. Itsmejudith 12:45, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Swiss-German —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.164.252.161 (talk) 15:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

sister cities

it was not mentioned that basel has become city partners with shanghai china

also, nothing is mentioned of Novartis Campus

ditto ETH Zurich opening research labs here.

- Art —Preceding unsigned comment added by Artclay (talk • contribs) 04:58, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

So, write something. But please use capitalization and punctuation. -- ℜob C. alias ⒶⓁⒶⓇⓄⒷ 15:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Chronological table

I removed the Chronological table section, which is in a space-hungry format and had not gotten past the 3rd century. I suggest it would be more appropriate to write a History of Basel article. The information in the table can be recovered in this diff. -- ℜob C. alias ⒶⓁⒶⓇⓄⒷ 15:54, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Notable people FROM Basel

I found these "notable people from Basel" aren't actually from Basel:

Erasmus (Rotterdam, the Netherlands; died in Basel), Andreas Vesalius (Brussels, Belgium; lived in Basel later in life), Albert Hofmann (Baden, Switzerland; later invented LSD in Basel), Daniel Bernoulli (Groningen, the Netherlands; did live most of his life in Basel from age 5)

The meaning of "from"? Perhaps it's easiest to keep it simple and let it mean "born there", otherwise multiple places can claim one person as being "from" there.

Perhaps the simplest solution is rename the section "notable residents of Basel". Any objections?

Evlshout (talk) 02:20, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I think "residents" is a good idea, because it would be far more informative: it would allow Erasmus and bring in people like Holbein, who was a citizen of Basel. qp10qp (talk) 16:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

English Wikipedia uses the phrase "people from NN" to refer to people who resided in a place for any significant amount of time, not just to people who were born in that place. This is what the categories called "People from NN" are meant to signify. But if you think many readers would interpret the section heading as referring to people who originated in Basel, then we could change it to "Notable residents of Basel." (All four of the people listed certainly qualify.) — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 17:30, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. I looked at 15 random European non-capital cities, and found that listing famous people is actually quite rare. For the four that did, "notable people from XXX" was never used, so if we changed this section name it wouldn't be defying a wikipedia standard. Most were less ambiguous, referring to denizens (suggests particular privilege level), inhabitants (correct) or citizens (suggests legal status).
I'm sure tons of users won't interpret 'from' incorrectly, but reducing the proportion that does by making it less ambiguous can never be a bad idea. I might go ahead with it. Evlshout (talk) 06:46, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Basel or Basle?

The question keeps coming up of which of the two ways to spell the city's name in English — Basel or Basle — is the correct one. An earlier discussion reached consensus that "Basel" is more generally accepted today, while "Basle" is becoming less common. Neither spelling can be dismissed as incorrect, and people doing research on the city should search for information under both spellings.

It seems clear that the Basle spelling came to the English language via French, and Basel came from German. Basel is a German-speaking city, and its German name has been Basel at least since the city became Swiss in 1501. But Basel is also situated right on the border with France, and the French language has been important in Basel for as long as there has been a French language. In present-day French, the city's name is spelled Bâle, but 200 years ago it was often spelled Basle (for example, in the 1803 Act of Mediation imposed on Switzerland by Napoleon — (here's a link)). At that time, French had considerably more prestige in Europe than German, so it's not too surprising that English speakers adopted the French name for a German-speaking city on the border of France.

A third variant spelling is Basil, but this occurs (AFAIK) only in one source from 1798.

As to pronouncing the name, Basel is always /ˈbɑːzəl/, but it seems likely that Basle can be either /bɑːl/ (like the French Bâle) or /ˈbeɪzl̩/ or /ˈbeɪsl̩/ (like the British/Commonwealth pronunciation of Basil). Probably it's also pronounced /ˈbɑːzəl/ (like Basel). Printed reliable sources on pronunciation will probably be hard to come by. — ℜob C. alias ᴀʟᴀʀoʙ 19:54, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Basel is definitely more common, Basle is increasingly less common. As anecdotal proof, EasyJet fly to Basel, and have always done so. British Airways used to fly to Basle a few years ago, and their website didn't recognise Basel if you typed it in, but now they also fly to Basel (see [2]). Some airport departure boards in the UK list "Basel", some "Basle", but that depends on the airport, not the airline.
The usual pronunciation is the German one ("Bah-zel") English-speaking aircraft cabin crews usually use the French pronunciation ("Baal"), but I think that is because Basel airport air traffic control is the responsibility of the French. They also annoyingly play the French recording of the safety announcements, not the German one. They claim they do this because the airport is in France, even though the city, and most of the passengers, are German speaking. TiffaF (talk) 08:25, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Modern Latin

"Regio TriRhena". Seriously? They have introduced camel case into Latin? It looks dumb in Latin.
Sorry, Varlaam (talk) 16:05, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

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