Talk:Lyda Roberti

message: It is different from the one at Find-A-Grave. Lincher 16:51, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Date of birth

message: As far as I know, 'comedienne' remains the proper term for female comedians.  69.138.229.246 has been changing 'comedienne' to 'comedian' solely on the basis of 'comedienne' being the rarer word, according to her talk page, and I was just wondering how the greater Wikipedia feels about that. - Saaber 13:26, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In my view, accurate language is not about "political correctness," but it is about "correctness." Kukini 14:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

text: *I wouldn't call a word that was in common use just forty years ago an 'antique'. -- Centrx 16:24, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Language can change quickly, 40 years is a long time in view of language. But I do agree that it is not worth going round wikipedia and changing it all. Cpt. Morgan 16:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Language is determined by its use, but the vast majority of that use is from literature written before forty years ago. Spoken use is fickle and has little lasting effect beyond what is written of it. -- Centrx 18:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *That's true, but this isn't as issue of spoken use. Comedienne is falling out of use in print. The fact that it's virtually non-existant in spoken English only strengthens the argument that its use in print will continue to decline. When academic sources begin to accept a spoken-word trend as "more correct" than its older and less common form, the handwriting is on the wall. I realize Wikipedia has no specific obligation to be linguistically progressive persay, but given that comedian is considered acceptable for a comic of either gender, is there a reason not to use the inoffensive, gender-neutral term?
*Comedian is a far more often used word. Comedienne is deprecated. I'm in agreement with Lee Bailey's points. -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 18:41, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Really?  It gets over 2 million google hits. User:Lee Bailey is right though, and the word is falling out of favour and out of use.    I'm amused and bemused - I'm the one who started this article and I'm the one who used the word "comedienne".  I never imagined anyone would read it, let alone discuss it. Lyda Roberti is a very obscure person, so I'm wondering how did you all come to stop by here?  Did someone send out invitations?    Why doesn't someone just edit the article and change it?  Rossrs 12:19, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There was an annoucement on this poll of WP:POLLS, soliciting remarks on the general use of the word as much as on the specific case. Lee Bailey(talk) 12:50, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  I was wondering.  I mean... how many people have even heard of Lyda Roberti? ;-) Rossrs 14:20, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

text: *Comedian. It may not be a dead word -- you said yourself, comedienne gets over 2 million Google hits. But comedian gets over 32 million, if we're using that standard. I do wonder if perhaps it's more common in British verbiage, but to be honest, I've never heard it before that I can remember. While "actor" and "actress" do denote genders, I think that's a bit different; where an actor's gender is directly relevant to the roles they can or can't play, a comedian's gender isn't exactly relevant to their ability to find humor, I think. In the interest of appearing both consistent and professional, I'm leaning towards comedian. And awesome post, Lee. 70.132.42.16 10:06, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If people don't understand a word they could perhaps look in a dictionary.  An encyclopedia should never be aimed at the lowest common denominator - its objective should be to educate, enlighten and inform and if people learn a new word, how bad could that be? Rossrs 12:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Good point.  For the record, I favour "proctologist" as it is more encyclopedic ;-) ....  Rossrs 12:06, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've gone ahead and changed this back to "comedian" pursuant to this discussion. Comedian is not less correct than comedienne -- they are both about equally correct. Choosing one over the other isn't an issue of "ignorance", either: many, many people choose to use the term "comedian" because they feel it's less offensive to women. English doesn't have masculine and feminine nouns, except as exceptions dictated by tradition. The tradition of usage has changed, and comedienne has been left a throughly irrelevant term which many major publications shun, and is not commonly used in day-to-day spoken language. I can understand if someone has a different opinion, but at the very least, please don't revert this term using vandalproof. It's not vandalism to prefer commonly-accepted gender-neutral language. -- Lee Bailey(talk) 19:48, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

text: no we don't, at least not for its own sake,  but "comedian" is more politically correct than "comedienne" so I don't understand your point. Rossrs 13:42, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comedienne/Comedian? 

message: Did she become an American citizen - if so, when? Nietzsche 2 (talk) 06:11, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Citizenship