¿Son offtopic las preguntas sobre términos en inglés que se refieren a aspectos del idioma español?

Question

Recientemente se ha formulado en el sitio la siguiente pregunta:

When talking in English about Spanish orthography, which diacritics does "tilde" cover?

Iba a responder a la pregunta cuando me di cuenta de que esta en realidad no pide aclaración sobre una voz española sino sobre una inglesa, y por tanto debería formularse en English Language & Usage.

Nuestro amigo guifa argumenta que la pregunta puede estar en un limbo dado que para responderla hacen falta conocimientos del idioma español:

I think it occupies one of those fairly gray areas and could be asked in either SE. While it's asking for terminology in English, that terminology is fairly directly related to Spanish, far more so than, say, asking how to say a given Spanish expression in English. – guifa

Sin embargo, creo que ese "limbo" viene dado por nuestro conocimiento del inglés como segundo idioma. Pero consideremos la siguiente pregunta:

When talking in Hebrew about Spanish orthografy, which diacritics does "טילדה" cover?

¿Habría habido duda en ese caso acerca de si es offtopic o no?

En todo caso entiendo el argumento de guifa dado que el inglés se considera un idioma conocido de forma más o menos universal, mas no por ello dejo de plantear la cuestión aquí.

¿Son offtopic las preguntas sobre términos en inglés (o, en general, cualquier otro idioma excepto el español) que se refieran a conceptos para los que haya que conocer un mínimo del idioma español? ¿Debería mantenerse en el sitio principal, moverla a ELU? ¿O moverla a Meta, como argumenta nuestro amigo walen?

Actually, given that this is more or less akin to asking "What terminology should I use when writing questions in English about the Spanish accent marks?", I think it would fit better as a Meta question, like @guifa's famous one: "How do we show how things are pronounced?". We keep it in the stack, we answer it, but we do not encourage users to ask in the main site about English terminology. – walen

Answer 1

Our Help Center says the site is for Spanish language enthusiasts (among others). The question about English terminology of Spanish markings drawn over vowels in certain circumstances is especially relevant to Spanish language enthusiasts. So, even though the question would probably be on topic at ELU, I think it is also on topic here. The OP posted it here, and I see no reason to migrate it. I think it can happily stay at Spanish Language.

Note that if you are a Spanish speaker, and Spanish language enthusiast, and you aren't restricted to monolingual Spanish speaking environments, then you'll have the opportunity to talk with people in English about the special symbols used in writing Spanish sooner or later. So it's good for the general Spanish Language SE participant to know this terminology.

Also, this q-a helps Spanish learners avoid confusion. The potential confusion comes from accents functioning differently in different languages, and being called different things in different languages. "Tilde" could be especially confusing, as it's a term in both languages, but with a different meaning.

For all these reasons, I see this q-a as making a contribution to the site.

Similarly, I don't see any particular reason to move it to our Meta.

Answer 2

La pregunta, tal cual está planteada, en mi opinión es off-topic. Ahora bien...

Quizá sería beneficioso para el sitio disponer de una pregunta canónica en el sitio principal, similar a la de Recursos, en la cual se recojan las equivalencias inglés ↔ español en cuanto a terminología usada para hablar de nuestro idioma: nombres de los signos ortográficos, nombres de los tiempos verbales, complemento directo, locución verbal, adjetivo relativo, pronombre determinante, etc.

Una especie de glosario, útil tanto para poder expresarnos con claridad en las preguntas como para poder comprender adecuadamente las respuestas.

Answer 3

When I talk about Spanish use of accent marks in English, I use the following terminology.

the acute accent mark as in: á
the umlaut as in: ü
the tilde as in: ñ

Personally, I say accent marks for them as a group, and acute accent mark, umlaut and tilde individually. And I also say spelling and not orthography.

[The International Keyboard here is very useful for people using a QWERTY keyboard].

This question is not off-topic necessarily because a well-intentioned English speaker who is learning Spanish might pose a question in English about Spanish in the Spanish forum. Or there can even be questions from academics or others who want to know something about or in Spanish and who do not speak it.

An example of a question like that might be: Where exactly in Don Quixote does it say: to tilt at windmills, in the text?