Talk:Marion Sparg

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Why Guerilla should be used instead of guerilla fighter

Meaning in English

The word guerilla in English means "A member of an irregular, usually indigenous military or paramilitary unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to harass and undermine the enemy, as by surprise raids."[1]

Meaning in Spanish

In the same dictionary[2] alongside the heading ETYMOLOGY the following can be found: "Spanish, raiding party, guerrilla force, diminutive of guerra, war". Since etymology refers to the origin of a word or its components, it is obvious that the original Spanish usage and the English usage are quite different.

Literature

In Walter Laqueur's text "The Guerilla Reader" reissued and expanded after 9/11 as "Voices of terror" Francis Lieber's essay Guerillas in international war (pp 289-293) clarifies the distinction: "The term guerilla, however, is not applied in Spain to individual members of the party. Each is called a guerillero...". Having clarified the Spanish usage, Lieber continues: It has been stated that the word guerilla is not only used for individuals engaged in petty war but frequently for an equivalent of the partisan."(p 291)

Google

If you google the word "guerilla" (please note that the use of quotation marks in Google provides all hits containing the exact phrase only) you will receive in the vicinity of 9.3 million hits, for the term "guerilla fighter" 30,900 hits. If, however, you use the following "guerilla" -fighter restricting the search to English pages only (-fighter ensures that the search ignores any instance in which the words guerilla and fighter occur together) you will receive 1.5 million hits. The significance of the latter is that the phrase "guerilla fighter" is less common than the phrase guerilla used in the singular. The likely reason is discussed in the last section.

Usage in Afrikaans

According to the 8th edition of the "Tweetalige woordeboek/Bilingual dictionary" (i.e English Afrikaans) published by Tafelberg under the editorship of Bosman et al, the following is clear: the words guerilla or guerrilla are translated as guerilla stryder or ongereelde vegter which in English means guerilla fighter and irregular fighter respectively.

"Guerilla fighter" is an Afrikanerism

"Guerilla fighter" is both a direct translation and an Afrikanerism, ("a word, term, or usage peculiar to or originating among Afrikaners")[3] In the same way that the use of Anglicisms in af:wikipedia would be inappropriate, the use of Afrikanerisms in en:wikipedia is inappropriate.

Guerilla "fighter" is tautological

If guerilla in English is used as a singular and refers to (see above) " a member of ...[a] paramilitary unit...[used to]... harass and undermine the enemy" then the word fighter (which essentially repeats the connotative meaning of harass/undermine the enemy) appended to the word guerilla is tautological. Tautology means "1a. Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy. b. An instance of such repetition".[4]

Suidafrikaan 08:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I will concede that "guerrilla" (or "guerilla") could be used, but not that "guerrilla fighter" is incorrect and it is most certainly not an "Afrikanerism". Here are just two books published by authors that aren't Afrikaans or even from South Africa: [5] and [6]

And here is a dictionary, not only stating that the term "guerilla fighter" was first used in 1809, but also using it extensively: [7]

As for basing arguments on Google, please read Wikipedia:Search engine test and Argumentum ad Googlum –Why Getting a Million Hits on Google Doesn't Prove Anything. --Deon Steyn 13:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]