Talk:Exapostilarion

"Exapostilarion" is how it is spelled in Bishop Kallistos' texts. It is also spelled this way in the Boston texts, Fr. Ephrem Lash's translations, and in the Menaion and Octoechos by St. John of Kronstadt Press.

Exapostilaria beats Exaposteilaria by 535:340

Wikipedia also has it's article spelled this way:

w:Exapostilarion

Both transliterations are defensible, but I think the "exapostilarion" transliteration is the one found in the best examples of Orthodox English translations.

Frjohnwhiteford 15:45, April 15, 2007 (PDT)

It's of no major importance to me either way, but I am convinced that the ei rendering is preferable here and of course more faithful to the Greek, which uses ει. FWIW, the plural Google ratio comes to 1.57:1 (i to ei), while the singular is 1:3.66 (i to ei), which indicates that the singular is used on the web far more than the plural, and when it's used, it is much more overwhelmingly toward the ei.

Exaposteilarion is the spelling used by the Nassar "Five Pounder" (and thus pretty much almost everything in the N.A. Antiochian Archdiocese), along with most of the books issued by the GOA. So, in terms of popular use, I would say that exaposteilarion wins out.

Now, the argument of which is the "best" translation is an interesting debate that is of course subjective in a lot of ways. (I'm of the opinion that "mode" is a better translation than "tone" for the Greek ichos, but "tone" clearly wins in terms of popular use in English.) I am certainly of the opinion that most of the translations you name above are of the highest quality available, though our policy here is most often to use whatever is the most commonly recognized name for something. That's why the Google test helps.

So, I won't insist on the ei if you are hostile to its use, but I do believe that, based on the evidence and how it matches up with our conventions, the ei is the best choice. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs 16:38, April 15, 2007 (PDT)

I would say "hostile" is a bit too strong a term for my opinion on the matter. However, when it come to having a good feel for English, I trust Bishop Kallistos over Fr. Seraphim Nassar -- with no disrespect to him. There are traditions regarding how Greek words get transliterated into English. For example, we have the word "idol", not "eidol", though "eidol" is literally closer to the spelling in Greek.

It would probably be best to have both spellings point to the same article. The transliteration into Slavonic, by the way, is "Exapostilari". In modern Greek, there is no distinction between the pronounciation of the dipthong "ei" and "i". Which is probably the origin of the Slavonic and Bishop Kallistos transliterations. Frjohnwhiteford 17:43, April 15, 2007 (PDT)

I keep my Hapgood book in the trunk of my car, but curiousity finally got the better of me, and I went out and checked. She(Blessed Isabell) has it the same as Bishop Kallistos as well. This is the mother of all English Orthodox translations.  :) Frjohnwhiteford 17:49, April 15, 2007 (PDT)

Yes, I checked Hapgood, too, and noted what you noted. Anyway, our convention here has been to use whatever is most common, which is why my preference here is for the ei. What may be "better" is not really as big of a deal for our articles. (Encyclopedias generally use whatever is the best-known term for something rather than what may be most technically correct by expert standards.)

Either way, though, a redirect article should be made for the spelling that isn't used in actual article.

You're right about idol, of course, though idol is not so much a transliterated Greek word any more as it is now an English word, having come to us via the Old French idele, from the Latin idolum. (Idol first shows up as ydele in Middle English in 1250.) But exaposteilarion is a technical term from Greek which is only recently being used by English speakers. In such cases, the usual approach in scholarly English is to follow the standards for Greek transliterations in English which were established in Latin, which would thus use ei for ει. (I'm honestly actually a little surprised that Metr. Kallistos used the i instead of ei. He also spells Matins as Mattins.)

Anyway, I'm not saying that exapostilarion is "wrong," just that I think we should use exaposteilarion on OrthodoxWiki due to its broader use in English and its conformity to standard transliteration conventions for Greek terms. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs 18:11, April 15, 2007 (PDT)

Compromise?

I don't know much about correct Greek transliteration, but I added the alternate spelling with the e at the beginning of the article. This way, you should find it no matter which spelling you use when searching. Any objections? Gabriela 20:32, April 15, 2007 (PDT)

Hmm... Interesting that Google's built in dictionary prefers it without the 'e' though Google has many more results with the 'e'. I really do prefer it without the 'e' as cleaner English (or rather as Greek technical terminology transliterated into English). I like Gabriela's solution here. — FrJohn (talk)

What does "cleaner English" mean? Would it be "cleaner" if we called you "FrJon"?  :)

Anyway, whichever spelling is used, the alternate spelling should of course be included parenthetically, as Gabriela has done. The question is which spelling will be used in the article's name.

One of the reasons that the Google test is important is because OrthodoxWiki articles on relatively obscure (to the Anglophonic world, anyway) technical subjects often become the number one Google hit (e.g., Kyriopascha). One would hope that our article makes it to the top of the biggest pile rather than a smaller one due to using a minority spelling. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs 04:36, April 16, 2007 (PDT)