Talk:Blond
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This article conveys the common misconception that blond hair is bright yellow. Actually the lighter hair can be colored naturally is "red," called strawberry blond in this article. Complete lack of pigmentation gives pale yellow, but that albinism, not blond.
Move to Wiktionary? -- Seth Ilys 19:56, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- Maybe a copy could be put there, but I think that what could be said about blondness (i.e. what mammals it occurs in, traditional perception as most beautiful hair color in women in the West, stereotyping blond women as unintelligent, &c.) is enough to leave it here. Check out Red hair for an example of how this page could be expanded. -- Djinn112 00:31, Jan 27, 2004 (UTC)
- Fair enough. More than enough reason for it to stay. :) -- Seth Ilys 04:45, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I have since rewritten and expanded the article. Chameleon
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'Blondus' vs 'BLONDVS'
Is there a 'standard' for writing Latin in Wikipedia? I doubt it.
In English, Anglicised Latin words are of course written in the modern manner, as are Latin quotations (very often mediaeval rather than classical or ancient) used in English. However, etymological studies within Romance languages are a quite different affair. I was referring to the ancient language known as Latin, so I wrote in the ancient language known as Latin. And, in that language, lower-case letters did not exist. If people want to use lower-case letters when discussing such etymologies, that is acceptable, but no changes need be made to the texts of those of us who are a little more pedantic on these matters.
If a Wikipedia policy contradicts this, it is wrong and I'll have to change it. However, I don't believe there is such a policy. BLVNDVS stays. — Chameleon My page/My talk 02:07, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- I'm of the opinion it looks ugly, myself. That could originate from years of having studied Cicero and Virgil in lowercase, mind. However, I note that it is general Wikipedia practice to provide the (ahem) romanized forms of words in other languages, when quoted in etymological discussion. Logically this would result in something like
- 'BLONDVS' blondus
- but that looks like it came out of the Department of Redundancy Department. Really, we should be writing to the casual user. To paraphrase the Wikipedia Japanese MoS, anyone who knows enough to understand 'BLONDVS' can take care of themselves.
- Also, and equally importantly, I have never seen (in dictionaries or in linguistics texts, treatises, or discussions) the style 'BLONDVS' used in discussions of etymological studies. Typically the romanized forms -- to be precise, the anglicized forms -- are used, even for the Greek from which the Latin originally came.
- Besides, if I recall correctly, nine times out of ten they didn't bother writing the '-VS'. And that would be no help at all. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 02:08, 2004 Aug 31 (UTC)
Marilyn Monroe - Redhead?
Can anyone actually find any reference that Marilyn Monroe was a redhead? (as per caption in photo)
I can only find information that she was a brunette!
USA American, Canadian and West Indian statistics?
Can anyone find them out?
Roman blondes
Weren't blonde wigs a mark of prostitution among Roman women?
Etymology
The etymology section is misleading on the subject of gender: the predominant French system of gender simply doesn't exist in English, even among 'careful writers'. We wouldn't say a finger is 'long' but a hand is 'longue', for example, because neither word has any concept of gender attached to it. What is meant by gender in English is a semantic notion of gender, ie it's based on the meanings of nouns rather than the nouns themselves.
There are some people who use 'blond' to describe a man's hair, and 'blonde' to describe a woman's hair, and indeed this convention is currently used in the article. But it makes no sense at all to call this a careful emulation of French. In French, the phrase 'Ses cheveux sont blonds' could mean 'his hair is blond(e)' or 'her hair is blond(e)' - the adjective is inflected according to the noun it describes, which is 'hair', not the person who owns the hair. AFAIK this curious form of inflection doesn't exist at all in standard French, and by the looks of it it's an example of 'confusion' which arose when the word passed into English usage.
- It's not so much confusion but adaptation to the English gender system, which is a natural one. — Chameleon 09:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Heraldry
Because it's totally unclear what meaning the baroque punctuation is supposed to convey, I removed the following obscure passage:
- In heraldry, a "woman" is, almost without exception, young and blonde, though she is nevertheless somewhat redundantly blazoned crined or {i.e., "crined" (her hair [is the tincture to be named]) "or" [gold]}.
—Herbee 10:32, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)
- I don't see your problem. — Chameleon 10:48, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)