Talk:Bede

Pronunciation

We give "beed" as the only pronunciation but it is not even the correct pronunciation of his name, which is more like "beda", even if spelled as "bede". AFAIK, it's not until (late) Middle English that "bede" would be pronounced "beed", but I am not sure when that spelling came about. Seems to me like it was merely another way to spell a schwa at the end. "Beda" is used sometimes as a spelling today in fact (schools named after him). Is there some better way we can handle this so people see right in the first part of the lead what the correct pronunciation of the name is? —DIYeditor (talk) 18:58, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

To me this would be analogous to Goethe's pronunciation being given as "gewth", or Gödel's given as "gohdel", or Nietzsche given as "neechee". Surely, people do often pronounce them that way in English, but that is not how those names are properly pronounced. (Modern) English speakers may not be able to get those names exactly right, but equally well we shouldn't give a completely wrong pronunciation just because many people say it that way. Of course, we need to go by reliable sources. I am open to any solution to this which would put the correct Anglo-Saxon pronunciation closer to the beginning of the lead (or lede if you will). —DIYeditor (talk) 03:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Err, according to MOS:LEAD "In Wikipedia, the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents. It is located at the beginning of the article, before the table of contents and the first heading. It is not a news-style lead or "lede" paragraph."

Back to Bede, when reading Middle- or Old-English I was taught to pronounce every letter. If the scribe made the effort to write it then he did so because it is needed. For instance words like þone have to be pronounced "thonuh" (short o) to accommodate the metre of poems such as Beowulf. I've never seen Bede's name in a poem, but would agree that DIYeditor is probably right, it is bi-syllabic and my personal guess (ie not RS) is bed-ah. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:14, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

FWIW I was born on Bede Burn Road near to the location of the monastery. Everyone pronounces it "Bead". I suppose one could claim that all the locals are wrong but it seems a bit something or other. (Burn is nothing to do with fire, btw, it's the local dialect for beck or dene.) --Vometia (talk) 15:54, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Modern English people pronounce lots of words differently than they were pronounced in Middle or Old English. —DIYeditor (talk) 21:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

True, though there seems to be variations depending on the regional dialect and/or accent. My observation was simply "this is how it's pronounced by the locals", as in a pronunciation that exists, since nobody really knows for certain how it was pronounced 1400 years ago. FWIW I've never heard anybody pronounce it "Beda" or the like. --Vometia (talk) 06:26, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

The article says the pronunciation is "beed". It says the Anglo-Saxon name would be "beeda". His name is commonly given as Beda. I don't think there is any question that "beeda" is the Anglo-Saxon pronunciation. We do have linguistic information about how Anglo-Saxon was pronounced. See Silent e for some starter information.

If you are challenging giving this as the original pronunciation after we give "beed" as the modern one, we can work on this more. —DIYeditor (talk) 12:35, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I've no idea what's the original pronunciation; it's speculative at best. I was simply referring to the existing pronunciation by the people in the same region. It's a pronunciation and the one that's currently used by the locals. The point was nothing more than that. I mean other than being a local who's been helpfully corrected by a non-local for supposedly pronouncing e.g. "Newcastle" incorrectly... --Vometia (talk) 13:38, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

The article says the pronunciation is beed. —DIYeditor (talk) 14:15, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

New pic in infobox

I think the medieval depiction looks far worse than the modern one and is just not nearly as good for the first image people see, especially when both depictions are imaginary. Does anyone agree/disagree? SaturatedFatts (talk) 02:26, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the medieval one is fine, even though it's not contemporary. It's probably not far from what a contemporary depiction would have been. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:28, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I like the current picture. Which modern one do you mean? —DIYeditor (talk) 03:37, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

This was the original lead image, which I moved further down in the article to the section on Bede's works. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 10:09, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Revertion

@Keeper of Albion could you undo the reversions you just made? The copyedits I made have added more links, but I also removed duplicate links, and fixed grammatical errors, among other things, and the last change you made just restored all of that. Wikieditor662 (talk) 16:56, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

The trouble is that your edits are a mixture of the helpful and unhelpful. Apart from the Americanisations: 1. an abbot "known as" Ceolfrith sounds as if it is not his real name. 2. The change from "well-to-do" to "doing well" is from a clear phrase to a vague and unhelpful one. Ditto the change from "may have existed" to "need not have existed" 3. Linking should be for words readers may need further information in to understand the article, not for common words such as "priests", "church", "autobiographical", "miracles", "pagan", "God" and "lustful". Dudley Miles (talk) 17:46, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

So why not only revert the edits you disagree with while keeping the ones you do agree with?

That would take a lot of time and I have other priorities. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:44, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

As for your specific examples:

1. The reason I phrased it that way was to avoid one linked word next to another

"Abbot" does not need to be linked. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:44, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

2. "well-to-do" sounds akward

You could use another word such as prosperous. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:44, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

2b. I'm pretty sure you have it reversed, and that I changed it from "need not have existed" to "may have existed", not the other way around

You are right. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:44, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

3. Oh, alright, well sometimes it's difficult to know when a word should be linked.

Wikieditor662 (talk) 18:13, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

I had to revert probably about half your changes. I’m bothered least by the inclusion of more links, especially in relation to religious or uncommon concepts, but we don’t need to link "autobiographical", for example. I took brief notes whilst copy-editing your copy-edit:

1. You changed British English spelling to American English in an article that has a British English tag. If you don’t understand British English then please don’t copy-edit British English articles. You even did this in a quotation: " Formerly I possessed a wife in the lustful passion of desire and now I possess her in honourable [changed to honorable] sanctification and true love of Christ." Please see MOS:QUOTE.
2. Sometimes you merely modified wording to your personal preference, which you are of course free to do as any editor is, but often when you did this you introduced grammatical errors or awkward sentence structure. See, for example, the phrase "These ended in disaster when Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, killed the newly Christian Edwin of Northumbria at the Battle of Hatfield Chase in about 632." You changed this to "These ended in disaster when Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, killed Edwin of Northumbria, the newly Christian, at the Battle of Hatfield Chase in about 632." Did you do this just so you could include a link to the article Christians? The sentence is perfectly comprehensible without this link or this odd clause that ends in an adjective.
3. You linked "Briton" to the article British people. British people did not exist in the 8th century. The link target should have been Celtic Britons for those were the inhabitants of the western parts of Great Britain. This is what was meant by the historian cited in the paragraph.

Many of the links you added are certainly helpful, but when another editor has to perform cleanup like this because of the sheer number of mistakes and strange choices in your edit, your copy-editing is at this point more disruptive than beneficial. Please take the time to go over WP:MOS (especially MOS:LINK) and brush up on your grammar. Please also recognise that this is a WP:GOODARTICLE and edits to it are held to a higher standard than those to regular articles. Introducing the link to British people, which I have just mentioned, is not insignificant; it can genuinely mislead a reader. This is a common mistake of inexperienced editors who may, for example, link to the modern state of Romania, when the paragraph is about the historical Kingdom of Romania.

Best regards. Keeper of Albion (talk) 18:49, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! And my bad on the American and British English things, for some weird reason the British version had a red line under it and suggested I change to the American. I very much appreciate your help. Do you need any more assistance with this article? Also, I'm glad you find certain links I had to be helpful, can I ask which of them it was? Wikieditor662 (talk) 18:57, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

The red line is your computer or mobile device suggesting a "correction" to American English because, presumably, you are an American with an American IP address and your device is configured to use American English.

This article’s subject was an Anglo-Saxon, and so this article, having strong national ties to England and Britain, uses British English. Articles on American topics, such as Henry Ford, use American English. Articles on Irish, Indian or South African topics use Hiberno-English, Indian English or South African English. The article Hinduism, for example, uses Indian English.

On an article with no strong national ties, such as thermodynamics, or an article about a person whose nationality or ethnicity has no corresponding national variety of English, such as Claudia Sheinbaum or Franz Kafka, the first variety of English ever used on the article is generally the one preferred, although sometimes consensus overrides this. Please see MOS:ENGVAR about national varieties of English.

If in doubt about which variety of English the article uses, you can check the tags at the top of the page when you are editing. On an article with a British subject it will say "Use British English" or "EngVarB". Rarely it may say "Use Oxford spelling"; Oxford spelling is the same as British spelling but with the use of ize rather than ise, as in theorize. If there is no tag then check the prose. If no instance of any variety can be found then use whichever spelling you please.

Many of the links you added, such as the date of the birth of Jesus, Easter, archbishopric and oblate, are genuine improvements to the article. An explanation of the term translation was also a helpful addition. Please continue with this kind of thing.

Best regards. Keeper of Albion (talk) 20:01, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks again, and I took a look at both MOS and MOS:LINK! Wikieditor662 (talk) Wikieditor662 (talk) 02:12, 28 November 2025 (UTC)