Talk:Once upon a time

message: I put back the opening line formulations from a variety of languages. I came back to this page after perhaps a year, in order to find one of the phrases. I have professional use of them, and recall the joy of finding these phrases here. I believe there are thousands of storytellers around the world that will find this information very amusing and helpful. I cannot understand the reasons for having them deleted. --Xact (talk) 13:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. Ekem (talk) 16:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Re-entering the opening line formula

message: "It was commonly used in the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, or The Brothers Grimm"
Really? Surely the former wrote in Danish and the latter in German, so this exact phrase in English can't have been used. Are there any good examples in stories originally written in English? --David Edgar 15:18, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Commonly used in

message: Considering the very phrase "once upon a time" is now somewhat archaic, I'd like to see the original meaning of the phrase noted. I think it means something like "once, at a certain unspecified time, ...". Dcoetzee 03:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meaning? 

message: I think the list of translations should be merged with the (smaller) list at Wiktionary, and possibly deleted from here. --Ørjan 07:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. The Wiktionary is an English language dictionary. It seems that if anything, the list in the Wiktionary should be assimilated into this one. Kingnosis 22:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah but the English Wiktionary doesn't only store English words. Its purpose is to define English words and translate non-English words into English. For examples, please see wikt:boy and wikt:sugar. Thanks GizzaChat © 04:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

text: There are also already many such translation lists from English over at Wiktionary.  My impression is that English is only the language for explanations, the dictionary itself is multilingual to/from English. --Ørjan 07:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Partial) transwiki? 

message: Surely there is no place for made-up sci-fi langauges in what is essentially an anthropological article?
:Agreed, removed. 128.227.68.119 20:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Galactic Basic? 

message: The first part of the article is of encyclopedic significance, and should be kept in Wikipedia. It is also an helpful complement to other articles (see: What links here). Velho 20:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My understanding is that transwiki only means copying, and that the question of what if anything should be removed from the original page is separate.  I did suggest removing the list of translations however. --Ørjan 06:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do not move it to Wiktionary 

message: --CopyToWiktionaryBot 04:33, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope I did not do anything wrong by adding the template to the main page immediately, this is the first time I tried to suggest a transwiki.  The article seems to be under heavy revision, do the further revisions get transferred automatically or does this tag need to be removed to repeat the process once things calm down? --Ørjan 06:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The further reversions do not get transferred automatically.  If you wanted an article to be transwikied a 2nd time, you would need to add the Copy to Wiktionary tag again to the article.  Note that the current Copytowiktionarybot tries not to transwiki an article more than once, so the 2nd transwiki might not be done, unless you requested it from the person running the bot.  --Xyzzyplugh 13:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  2007-04-14 Automated pywikipediabot message 

message: Someone put the lyrics to The Fresh Prince in this article. I'll remove it. 75.109.148.221 (talk) 19:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, didn't realize I wasn't logged in. Sailorknightwing (talk) 19:41, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fresh Prince

message: The Korean more literally translates to "days and years in the past"  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.60.147.90 (talk) 01:38, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Korean 

message: There is a sweeping similarity to the translations of this phrase from dozens of other languages, these languages ranging territorially from farthest Asia, west  along the Silk Road and then up through the mid-East and southern Europe and into Ireland and Scandinavia. And that is the path that most of the Indo-European languages took over many centuries.  For a single phrase to have occurred in so many different languages, territories, cultures and continents, that seems to imply that the phrase was handed down from a common ancestral language into all the offspring languages. And the phrase, therefore must be very ancient.  Much, much more ancient than the written word in Europe.  Therefore, The original transmission mode of this phrase must have been through the oral tradition. Before the written word, all cultural knowledge, including myth and wisdom, was taught by storytellers and passed through generation after generation.  To assure accuracy and consistency, the knowledge was converted to song or recited poems and was memorized.  A certain reverence must have attached to the telling and the teller.  Doubtlessly, this telling occurred often at night after work was finished, or during long harsh winters.  The purpose wasn't only to impart knowledge and tradition, but to do it as entertainment so it would "stick" in people's minds.  That would make speaking the phrase "Once upon a time" an announcement that the entertainment was about to begin, and something of a magic incantation. ClanIrvine (talk) 16:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Once Upon a Time" 

message: It's stated that an alternative to Det var en gång could be En gång för länge sedan.  I have never heard that last one...  Has anyone else?  Or is it just a modern translation from English once upon a time?  Because then it should be removed, buried and quickly forgotten. :-)  Fomalhaut76 (talk) 10:24, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Swedish opening line 

message: The fact this novel begins with these four words ought to be noted, although from the immediate context it is clear they are used to set the opening section in the character's extreme youth -- "and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down the road met a nicens little boy name baby tuckoo...." (Whether or not Joyce intended any irony by using these 4 words is another issue entirely.) -- llywrch (talk) 03:38, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' 

message: It has been suggested here that Mukashi mukashi should be merged to this article. That sounds like a good idea to me, but if anyone has any thoughts please leave them here. – Margin1522 (talk) 07:15, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mukashi mukashi