Talk:Flag of France

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Contents

1 Flag of France 2 Tricolor vs. Tricouleur 3 Stripe widths 4 Article title 5 General "Tricolore" spelling issues 6 Page move 6.1 Tricolore → Flag of France; Tiranga → Flag of India 7 History

Flag of France

As currently stands I agree Tricolore is the place for this, but ideally it'd be nice to move it back to Flag of France and expand the portion on past flags of France, along the lines of Flag of Germany. --Delirium 09:57, Aug 25, 2003 (UTC)

drat! I just moved it here! A history of all the different flags of france sounds like a very good idea though -- Tarquin 09:59, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

To bring this article into parallelism with the rest of [[Category:National flags]], I wish to have this article moved back to Flag of France. Denelson83 04:56, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Tricolor vs. Tricouleur

Too bad about 'Tricolore' instead of 'Tricouleur.' Might be why no page links here. Does it mess things up to change a title? User:Wetman

Stripe widths

The three stripes are NOT of equal width. If the white stripe was the same width as the others the eye would perceive it as being broader because it is lighter. The blue and red stripes are actually wider by precisely-defined amounts so that all three are perceived as possessing egalité. And I know that's true because I read it somewhere. :-P - Lee M 03:40, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think that's only the case when the flag is seen at sea. The national flag on land has equal widths for the three stripes. Denelson83 22:52, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

They ARE now of uniform width, except at sea, according to the French site (and they ought to know I guess). So did the "regulation dated 17 May 1853" relate to chaging the width of the naval flag back again? I've assumed so in my edit. 80.43.134.61 00:30, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Article title

"Tricolore" is unfortunately not an English language word, and "Tricolor" is the way this flag is referenced in English. I think it really ought to be back to the drawing board on this particular disambiguation: the distinction between tricolored flags and the Tricolor is through capitalization or specification, and since Wikipedia doesn't permit the capitalization distinction, another way ought to be found that is less misleading. - Nunh-huh 07:22, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

A distinction should be made between tricolor (tricolour) flags in general and the proper name of the French tricolor flag. The former should be rendered in English; the latter is a proper noun that should be capitalized and may or may not have an accepted English-language variation. (I'm still hunting for Wikipedia and printed style guidelines on this area.) The one thing I can say for sure at the moment is that, for the generic usage, "tricolor" is preferred in American English, while "tricolour" is preferred in British English. For this reason, any link to the article "Tricolour" should be spelled that way (based on Wikipedia policies to [A] retain spelling of article creator for non-US, non-UK subjects and [B] use direct links rather than redirected links). Mentioning the alternate US spelling is not a bad idea. On the other hand, the statement "more commonly known as the Tricolour" [emphasis mine], which refers to the specific Flag of France, appears to be inaccurately based on British POV. I am researching this and will shortly report my results (and edit the article text on that basis) in the "General 'Tricolore' spelling issues" section below. -- Jeff Q 22:29, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

General "Tricolore" spelling issues

The current state of the phrase "more commonly known as the Tricolor (Tricolour)" still strikes me as odd, since these labels are implicitly preferred over the article's name. One might ask, "Which is it? Tricolore, Tricolor, or Tricolour? (Or even Tricouleur?) And who says which?" I was going to revise this phrase to say the following:

… more commonly known as the Tricolore (French), Tricolor (US English), or Tricolour (UK English)…

… but I was unsure on two points. First, my French isn't adequate to discern the difference between tricouleur and tricolore, so I don't know which is the correct term for The Flag. Second, if the French term is given, shouldn't it be "le (drapeau?) tricolore" rather than "the Tricolore"? Could someone with a better command of not only the language, but the usage in this case, make a definitive statement? As a self-appointed member of the Wiki link cleanup crew, I'd be happy to move around and/or rename pages and links from any pages using any variation, if I only knew the answer. — Jeff Q 21:21, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

To sum up the spelling and usage issues at hand in this article…

There are three basic prevailing practices for referring to non-English, Latin script-based proper nouns in English:

1. Use the original language's exact spelling (possibly dropping accents).
2. Use an English translation of the name.
3. Use an Anglicized spelling of the original name.

For the most part, en:Wikipedia seems generally to recommend #3, but indicates that the overriding concern is to ensure English speakers recognize the name. (Tricolore would seem to need no Anglicized spelling for such recognition.) The current Wikipedia:Proper names article doesn't provide explicit guidelines on which practice to use for things with proper names. As is mentioned somewhere in the Wikipedia:Naming conventions oeuvre (I don't recall where), modern practice is moving toward #1; i.e., using original names for terms in Latin alphabets that don't have an English translation in common use.

Two issues raised in this Talk page are:

1. What do the French call their flag?
2. What do English speakers call the French flag?

There are apparently four relevant variations on the spelling of this article's subject:

1. Tricolore
2. Tricolour
3. Tricolor
4. Tricouleur

I checked with six different online French-to-English dictionaries. Four had no entries for any of these. Two (french-linguistics.co.uk's French/English Dictionary (http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/dictionary/) and univ-rennesl.fr's Dictionnaire Français-Anglais (http://sun-recomgen.univ-rennes1.fr/FR-Eng.html)) had entries for tricolore, but no alternate. A French-only Google search turned up about 82,000 hits, 89% of which used tricolore. (Even though the French would for "color" is couleur, the spelling tricouleur had less than 0.1% Google prevalence.) Along with some other specific references I ran into, plus my rusty memory of French, this strongly suggests to me that the French call their flag le tricolore (or le drapeau), without capitalization. I will proceed on this basis unless and until someone with more French experience corrects me. This also means that the article title is accurate, excepting only that, if it weren't for the Wiki practice of capitalizing the first letter of any article title, it might more accurately be tricolore. (And thus the problem is effectively moot.)

For English usage, an English-only Google search gave about 330,000 hits, 58% for "tricolor" and 33% for "tricolour" (reflecting a preponderance of US-based Web pages, I suspect). I found that Merriam-Webster Online (http://www.m-w.com/) (US) listed "tricolor" as both the general term and the name of the French flag. Cambridge Dictionaries Online (http://dictionary.cambridge.org/) (UK) was more informative, giving the spellings as "tricolour UK, US tricolor". Neither MWO nor CDO gave a proper-noun citation of this term. (MWO cited its use as "the French tricolor", CDO "the French tricolour". Both uses imply the general case; i.e., "the tricolor that is French", rather than specifically "the Tricolore".) The lack of a proper noun (e.g., "Tricolor" or "Tricolour") in either reference suggests that neither English spelling is in scholarly use as the proper name of French flag. (It may very well be used in common writing and in modern news articles — even the latter of which demonstrate an increasing illiteracy through egregious spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors — but a capitalized English variation is apparently not accepted as official.) On this basis, I plan to change the wording of the first sentence in the article to the following:

The tricolore is the national flag of France. Known to English speakers as the French tricolour (UK) or tricolor (US), it features three vertical bands coloured blue (hoist side), white, and red.

This accomplishs three previously-unmet goals:

1. The first line of the article matches the article's title in a Wiki-standard fashion.
2. Both English spellings are provided.
3. The link to the general term tricolour is included without implying any official English name in preference to the français tricolore.

I will also change the other "tricolour" reference to "tricolore", the latter of which is already used in the article, both for consistency and to avoid further debate of UK vs. US spellings in an article on a French subject. Hopefully this will put a rest to this issue. -- Jeff Q 00:26, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Page move

(from WP:RM)

Tricolore → Flag of France; Tiranga → Flag of India

• The reason for this move is to bring the article into parallelism with the other articles listed in Category:National flags. Denelson83 04:59, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Would not object if you realized that the spelling is la "tricoleur." Tricolore is the Italian flag. Therefore, I'm forced to object. —ExplorerCDT 17:30, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• An objection on the grounds that "tricolore" refers to the Italian flag makes no sense to me, since the content of the article is about the French flag--in fact, that is all the more reason to move the content to Flag of France. The only issue resulting from the fact that the article has been at the wrong name is that the redir created by the move should be changed to redir to Flag of Italy. I totally support this move, and hope ExplorerCDT reconsiders. I kinda wish someone had just brought this to my attention on my talk page, instead of posting here--I would have just corrected the problem without delay. Niteowlneils 18:01, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• ExplorerCDT: According to the Oxford Hachette French Dictionary, tricolore is a French word, having among its meanings "the tricolour, the French flag". The Web site of the Présidence de la République also calls the French flag le drapeau tricolore. [1] (http://www.elysee.fr/instit/symb2.htm) Feel free to correct them. (BTW, drapeau tricoleur only gets 14 hits on Google.) --Tkinias 13:45, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • Google also has about 806 hits for tricoleur, which is the preferred spelling according to Dictionnaire de l’Académie francaise. —ExplorerCDT 15:02, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
    • As opposed to 461,000 hits for tricolore (some of which do, indeed, refer to the Italian flag, but some also to the French). Try "drapeau tricoleur" (quoted) and you get zero hits, plus a helpful Did you mean: "drapeau tricolor". Drapeau tricolor is never going to be Italian. Since only A-N of the Dictionnaire are on line, I'll have to take your word for their preference... but I see no reason not to have tricoleur as a redirect. I agree, BTW, that tricolore more commonly refers in English to the Italian flag. However, it is not at all unambiguous, and tricolore should be a disambiguation page pointing either to tricolore (France) and tricolore (Italy) or Flag of France and Flag of Italy. —Tkinias 15:58, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Agree (I never exactly voted in the above discussion). To clarify: as ExplorerCDT pointed out, tricolore can also be the Flag of Italy, so the article should be moved and a disambig page set up at Tricolore. —Tkinias 00:36, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• I am from France, and I would like to add something here, since I don't really understand the controversy. In the French language of France, "tricolore" is an adjective, it means "having three colors", and it can be used for the French flag (as in "le drapeau tricolore"), but also for traffic lights (as in "un feu tricolore"), and son on. It is not a word reserved only for the flag. "Tricolore" is very rarely used as a noun ("le tricolore"). In fact when French people refer to their flag, they either call it "les couleurs", as in "saluer les couleurs" (salute the flag), or they call it "le drapeau bleu-blanc-rouge", as in "agiter un drapeau bleu-blanc-rouge" (to waive a French flag). The word "tricoleur" simply does not exist in French.
  Now in English, there's the word "tricolor" (or "tricolour" if you are in the British Isles), and this word can be used as a noun unlike in France, and it refers to any flag with three stripes of colors, oftentimes the French flag. It seems because English speakers say "the tricolor" when they refer to the French flag, they assume that French people say "le tricolore" when they talk about their flag, which I'm sorry to say we don't. So if you want the article to have a French title, it should be "Drapeau tricolore" or "Drapeau bleu-blanc-rouge" or "Drapeau de la France", but if you want the title in English, which seems more logical to me since this is the English Wikipedia, then the title should logically be "Flag of France". To have the article titled "Tricolore" (with an "e" in the end) is simply silly, because "tricolore" with an "e" is not an English word, so it basically pretends to be the way French people call it, whereas as I explained we don't call it "le tricolore". Check "Drapeau de la France" rticle on the French Wikipedia. Hardouin 01:36, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • I second Hardouin; "le tricolore" is just the conventional nickname of the French flag. Us Québecois refer indirectly to our flag as "le fleurdelisé" and to the Canadian flag as "l'unifolié" in the same fashion. These are just periphrases. It may be it's used more in English than French ("le tricolore" seems more often used on this side of the Atlantic, apparently), but that is a moot point.Urhixidur 00:33, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)
• Agree to the move. Should not redirect based on Hardouin's explanation. DCEdwards1966 00:49, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)
• Agree. And please also move Tiranga to Flag of India. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality/^talk]] 21:13, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)
  • And Union Jack to Flag of the United Kingdom? -- ALoan (Talk) 13:31, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Agree. But tricolore should stay, the term is sometimes used in English, and it should be a disambiguation page between Flag of France, Flag of Italy and tricolour. Nikola

History

"by 1789 the colours of Paris were no longer in use" I don't agree with that : In his diary, Gouverneur Morris wrote, on July 17th 1789 that when Louis XVI came to Paris on that day "The King’s Horse Guards, some of the Gardes du Corps, and all those who attend him, have the cockades of the city, viz., red and blue." and that, at the Hôtel de Ville, the King "put in his hat a large cockade of the red and blue ribbons, and then, and not till then, received the general shouts of “Vive le Roi!" marcparis6 09:57, May 10, 2005 (UTC). Nothing in your quotation is incorrect. The blue and red, on July 17th, were no more associated with the colours of the city of Paris... but, associated with white, to the Revolution... That's it.