Talk:Oban

What is the population?

It is inane to mention a tourist-swelled population at the beginning of the article in addition to commenting on the town being the largest in a certain area without mentioning the actual permanent population. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.137.168.76 (talk) 03:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Frugby

I am removing the sentence "Oban is also well-known as the home of the rugby- American football combination, "Frugby"." since I have lived near Oban for years and never heard of it; web searches for "Frugby Oban" yield nothing. I couldn't really call that "well known". Notinasnaid 11:34, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I am surprised that there is no mentioning of the famed Oban whiskey.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.112.35.213 (talk • contribs) 10:54, 23 July 2005

Yeah, its even famous here in germany (bremen) though I personally think it tastes like baseball-bat on forehead... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.137.98.113 (talk • contribs) 23:35, 1 December 2005

Dear Mr. Frugby...

I don't really feel like an editing war tonight, especially considering the wikipedia page on "frugby" has a vote for deletion on it which it is currently losing miserably. I'm impressed that you can tell I'm not a resident in the Oban area (lucky guess?) but I would like to point out that the history page is not the place to carry on a discussion about what should or shouldn't be in the articles. If you want to write page upon page of moving verse about the importance of "frugby" then do it here, I just might not read it. All the best, --LemonAndLime 20:41, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Dear MR Lemon and/or Lime

If we are going to go down the road of "what does Frugby have to do with Oban", tell me what exactly Dunstaffnage castle has to do with Oban? its in Dunstaffnage.... Of course not being a local you wouldnt have known that.

what Frugby has to do with Oban is that a large number of Obans youth have worked exceedingly hard to promote a develope a new sport. would you rather we sat on street corners drinking buckfast?

I really cannot understand the harm of an external link and a very brief single line refering to the game. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Frugby (talk • contribs) 20:57, 20 August 2005

• The "harm" is in that the game of Frugby appears, as far as we can see from it's article, to be a joke. Lines like "Unfortunately due to so called "family commitments" Andy 'quackface' Lennox was unable to attend" don't exactly make me think "ooh, this sounds promising". Be honest, the list of "notable" members is just your mates, isn't it? Hence why the word "vanity" is being thrown around (justifiably I might add). If "The story of Frugby's birth" really is "a long and complex afair involving love, deceit, treachery and eventually, murder", can I ask a couple of questions please? (a) Was it you who did the murdering and (b) if so, why hasn't anyone locked you up somewhere where you can't add irrelevant links to wikipedia articles? --LemonAndLime 21:03, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

• nice avoidance of the subject.

answers.

1. yes
2. they tried, but i murdered them on the field. the way it is meant to be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Frugby (talk • contribs) 21:15, 20 August 2005

Because of this Frugby crap that has been added and removed constantly, I locked the page until the VFD mess is over. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 04:40, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

History

I have removed some information from the Oban Distillery article, which I feel belongs better here, perhaps in a history section?

• Oban was more or less a hamlet back in the late 18th Century before it was greatly enhanced by the settling of 2 brothers called Stevenson. The Brothers were involved in slate quarrying, housebuilding, and shipbuilding, and, in 1794, Hugh Stevenson built the the Oban Distillery.

• By the late 1800's, Oban was a busy port which shipped wool, whisky, slate, and kelp to Liverpool and Glasgow. A new era of prosperity was also brought to Oban via the railway and tourism.

CarolGray 20:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Question

what is the colliseum looking place in Oban? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.182.31.155 (talk • contribs) 04:17, 18 October 2006

McCaig's Folly --jmb 06:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Or, see Wikipedia: McCaig's Tower. Signalhead 00:38, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Tourist Office

Is there any evidence that the Oban tourist office is the busiest in Scotland? An Edinburgh government webpage describes it as the second busiest. Can some figures be cited or the claim changed. "miles ahead" seems a very poor phrase for Wikipedia and would be best removed. --jmb (talk) 23:35, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Gaelic

"Oban "The Gateway to the Isles" has a large Gaelic speaking population. All road and street signs are translated into the Scottish language."

What is the proportion of Gaelic speakers in Oban? "Large" implies to me something well over 50% and perhaps over 75% which seems unlikely. Are ALL streets bilingual or just most/many? Should it it say "Gaelic" and not "Scottish language", or perhaps "Bilingual" would be more appropriate? --jmb (talk) 16:35, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

When I lived there as a child (1966-1972) I almost never heard a word of gaelic in daily use. As far as I was concerned it was only ever spoken by those who came into Oban from the islands (and their children who stayed in a hostel and went to school in Oban). On a recent visit I noticed all street signs now have Gaelic which they certainly didn't in my day (back then the "welcome to Oban" sign was notable for being the only sign with Gaelic on it). So if Oban truely has become a fully Gaelic-speaking bilingual town, then this is a recent innovation and not from my experience historical. Jaf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.171.145.238 (talk • contribs) 10:04, 1 May 2009

Well actually all the road signs and street signs in Scotland are written in English and Gaelic - not just in Oban. Richerman (talk) 12:09, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Not quite true - this says: "Bilingual road signs and street names (in both Gaelic and English) are gradually being introduced throughout Gaelic-speaking regions in the Highlands, Islands and Argyll." Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:29, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, I knew a sweeping statement like that would come back to bite me, but they're certainly widespread and not unique to Oban. And in answer to the question above, a google search revealed that in 2001 (the last census) the percentage of Gaelic speakers in Oban was 9.4% so I've changed the figure to that and referenced it. Richerman (talk) 00:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Loch Melfort

No mention of Loch Melfort? 199.200.253.9 (talk) 19:00, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Oban/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This page has been added to WPSI, as it is a ferry terminal for a great number of the major Scottish Islands. --MacRusgail 15:26, 12 November 2007 (UTC) The article should have footnotes as references rather than external links. Most sections need expansion. The external links section needs a trim. The transport, schools and culture sections are fairly comprehensive and well-written, but mostly uncited. More pictures would be a good idea. Lurker (said · done) 16:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 16:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 01:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

update infobox, add gallery, gen edit

@Springchickensoup: I'm going to revert the recent commit "update infobox, add gallery, gen edit". Some of these changes are ok but many others are not. The whitespace changes to the infobox are unnecessary, and make it difficult to tell what else has changed. The semicolon in the first sentence is wrong. The image gallery with one image is not useful and the caption makes no sense. The Wikivoyage and commons templates belong where they were, at the top of External links, per WP:LAYOUT. If you want to break this up into smaller edits that might help. Kendall-K1 (talk) 12:59, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I cannot win on Wikipedia, I'm told by some to stop making small edits, now being told not to make large edits? {Springchickensoup (talk)}

Moved Comment

Hello. This is the first time I have used the 'talk' page facility on wiki!

I'd like to draw attention to a problem with the pronunciation guide at the top of the article on Oban. The IPA script shows /oʊbən/. Notice that it starts with a dipthong /oʊ/ (That is, two single vowels run together, as in the French words 'au' and 'ou' said in quick succession.) This is indeed the BBC 'Received Pronunciation' of 'Oban'. However, local speech, indeed educated Scottish speech, does not say that. Rather, the word starts with a single vowel /o/ (as in the French word au), and with some emphasis on the first /o/.

By all means give the RP pronunciation. But I suggest that the local pronunciation should also be there, i.e. /obən/, or even /o:bən/. Please note - this is what is actually enunciated in the audio clip! That is, the audio clip does not play what is written! It plays /o:bən/, not /oʊbən/. So there is, strictly, a mistake there.

I am unfamiliar with editing wiki at this level of detail. And I don't want damage the page. Perhaps best also to open the matter for discussion. Perhaps, if agreed, someone more skillful than I could correct it.

(Incidentally, it's not the only instance on wiki of place names shown with phonetic transcription of RP, which does not reflect the local (and indeed educated) pronunciation.)

Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.97.142.38 (talk) 01:01, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Moved the above to a new section LordHarris (talk) 11:50, 12 September 2021 (UTC)