Talk:Roof shingle

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"Historically, at the roof ridge there was a cap consisting of copper or lead sheeting which in modern times has been substituted by shingles with a plastic underlay." - US centric. The variety of traditional ridging materials worldwide is massive. 89.243.233.227 (talk) 02:45, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Fiberglass-based asphalt shingles

Fiberglass-based asphalt shingles! This is exactly what I was looking for! A word for what I want to get, when I can afford it.

Plus, that's a super picture of the largest wood-shingled home in Europe!!!

However, ideally the article would have a link to a definition, for the word, "composite", especially since all the other words around it have link definitions.

But maybe the word, "composite", is no longer in very much usage, replaced by more specific terms such as "fiberglass-based asphalt".

If so, maybe we should say that.

Entwhiz (talk) 02:59, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

corruption

The English 'shingle' and German 'Schindel' are probably from the same source, ultimately Greek 'schidax', the Proto-Indo-European (known to the modest Germans as Indo-Germanic) root meaning 'to cut'. There is no question of corruption (Pamour (talk) 07:26, 25 April 2014 (UTC)).

Definition and US-centric view ?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge, but to distinguish the topics, recognizing nomenclature differences over the English-speaking world. Klbrain (talk) 08:58, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

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If most of the English Speaking world doesn't define all slates and tiles as "shingles", only the US, as the article itself states, is this really the right way to express the word, or should the article be adjusted? I'm not arguing; I don't know anything about what words other countries use, I'm just going by what the article itself says. Certainly as a British person I can assure you nobody uses the word shingle for anything but wooden shingles over here (which we hardly ever use)- slates are "slates" and tiles are "tiles" and "shingles" are seen as an old US fire-hazard! ;)

IceDragon64 (talk) 10:11, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

This, at face value, seems reasonable, but neglects something regularly missed missed whenever it is raised — the US population (and in this case, Canada too, as they too express roofing similarly) greatly outnumbers the sum of every other natively English speaking country, so is it really unreasonable for it to be most relevant to our regional expression?

Your definition of 'most of the English speaking world' is a common fallacy seen in Britain when discussing uniquely American ways — you are defining this on How many other English speaking countries there are bar the US, as opposed to actual number of native English speakers on Earth. When looked at through the lens of how many humans speak English as a first language, the US is 'most of the English speaking world' — therefore this article is fit for purpose.

As a dual national expat of the aforementioned I frequently hear this mistaken argument in pub conversation when I'm back in Britain getting berated about the things we say and do over here haha :)

With this in mind it makes more sense to not merge the article, but to edit both this and the Roof Tiles article into more specific definitions, separate them enough to remove the dialectical gray area between them, and note in this article the vocabulary difference. ChaseMonty (talk) 20:00, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I agree – as a Brit I would use "shingles" only for wood, stone or asphalt. If made from clay or concrete they are tiles or perhaps roof tiles, with pantiles being a sub-category, and slates are, er, slates (not "slate tiles" as in the article"). In fact there is another article called roof tile, which uses the British terminology but covers the same territory. Surely these articles need to be merged, and the dialect variations explained. I've put a tag on both articles. Richard New Forest (talk) 20:27, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Oppose merge. This pages is the target of a merger request notice, Roof shingle and Tiles. Shingles and tiles are not the same thing and there is no need to jam everything together in one massive article. Carrite (talk) 18:28, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.