My work-in-progress Wikipedia page

[chrisild]

Aaah, time to discuss German spelling.

Right, the term Taler is derived from the place called Joachimstal. However, the name of that town was spelled with an H (Joachimsthal), and so was "Thaler". In the 1901 orthography reform the word lost its H (here are a few examples of what changed back then). Proper names, however, are not affected by such reforms; same thing with the 1996 reform by the way.

Today you find various place names in Germany that end in -thal, and many that end in -tal. (There is a Joachimsthal in Brandenburg, for example.) Anyway, the German word "Thaler" became "Taler" in 1901. By that time, however, the term had already been adopted by the English "community" - the H included.

Jürg Richter's "bible" about Schützentaler und Schützenmedaillen uses today's spelling of course, as it is written in German. But from an English language book, article, etc., I would usually expect the "thaler" spelling ...

Christian

[RHM22]

You can always call up the draft in edit mode and copy/paste it to a new lemma, complete with all coding.

Would it not be useful to note that many Schützentaler were valid in terms of Swiss francs up to a certain date? This would establish at least the theoretical possibility that they could circulate within that time span.

Personally, I prefer Taler, as the word comes from Joachimstal, no h in the last syllable. However, I would also be sensitive to avoiding useless squabbles over nothing.

Peter

Good idea! I didn't think to mention that.

As for the spelling issue - I do prefer 'Taler', but I understand that 'Thaler' is more appropriate when writing the denomination in English. Personally, I think all denominations should be written in the native language. When someone named Juan emigrates from Mexico, we don't call him John, and if someone named Andrej moves here from Russia, we don't call him Andrew, but we do change the name of denominations. Nonetheless, there's no reason to upset the pedants of Wikipedia over a simple matter of an 'H'.

[RHM22]

Well, the article is now live.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_Thaler

If any ideas do come up, either me or someone else will edit it! I hope they don't delete the article because the subject is too obscure.

[Figleaf]

It looks great on an iPhone.  Congratulations!

Peter

[RHM22]

Thank you, Peter! I'm very excited to see if it'll be approved!

[RHM22]

Another member sent me a message earlier to let me know that I spelled 'etymology' as 'entymology'. Turns out I've been spelling it wrong for years! It's been fixed anyway.

[RHM22]

Actually, I believe "entymology" is the study of the tree-like creatures from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

[RHM22]

I just added an automatic redirect, so if anyone types "shooting thalers" they will automatically be taken to "Shooting Thaler".

[Afrasi]

In the time of the Thalers the spelling with "th" is the correct one: Joachimsthaler. The spelling was changed in 1902. You have the common German tokens with Werthmarke and Wertmarke, which allows to put them before or behind that date.