Talk:Lasagna

Requested move 21 August 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. per discussion consensus, based on WP:COMMONNAME. While it is true that some other countries sometimes use "lasagne", it was most persuasive to discussion participants that "lasagna" is the most common almost everywhere, and it is mixed usage outside the US. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 10:36, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

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Lasagne → Lasagna – per WP:SINGULAR. An extensive RM discussion occurred nearly 10 years ago and much of the evidence marshal(l)ed is still valid. After having bounced between two titles, the present title was established by no-consensus intertia after the article was created and spent most of its life at lasagna. To make things interesting, the name lasagne is used as plural in the article, to conform with Italian, not English, usage. This Google ngram shows that "lasagna" is the more common name and that both it and "lasagne" are overwhelmingly used in the singular. If lasagne is indeed correctly a plural, then the article should be moved per WP:SINGULAR. If the title should remain lasagne (per WP:ENGVAR vs. WP:COMMONALITY or whatever), then the article should be edited to use that name as a singular. What say ye? —  AjaxSmack  16:45, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate that pun Red Slash 19:34, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

• ​​​​​​​​​​​​I have no opinion on this move, but is there any policy/guideline-based reason not to use either the title in the singular? (No, lasagne/a is not a class of objects in English.) —  AjaxSmack  16:45, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

  If you have no opinion, why are you proposing it? This article has been stable for nearly a decade, and I don't think the guidelines have changed substantially since then in a way that would affect the outcome. Ibadibam (talk) 09:26, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

  ​Because a) the current title does not appear to be the common name (not in accord with WP:UCN), (b) if "lasagne" is a plural, the the title is contrary to WP:SINGULAR and (c) if "lasagne" is singular as the ngram seems to overwhelmingly show, then the article text "Lasagne (singular lasagna) are a type of pasta" is at best non-idiomatic and at worst contrary to WP:UE. Two of these three issues involve the title of the article, so I chose the RM process to bring them up. "I have no opinion" means I don't have a preferred solution, but hope to spur discussion to resolve these issues. —  AjaxSmack  15:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. To me, the point we have lots of articles about different pasta shapes: spaghetti; fettucine; ravioli; rigatoni etc. They are all (as far as I've checked) titled using Italian plurals. To me, this article is about just another pasta shape and ought to follow the same pattern. No one is going to apply WP:SINGULAR to move spaghetti to spaghetto; that would just be silly. This is a "common-sense exception" to WP:SINGULAR. --Trovatore (talk) 19:46, 21 August 2022 (UTC)
  • ​Spaghetto is not a common name and is not English; lasagna is. And the spaghetti article uses the singular ("Spaghetti is a long, thin,...") and so is in perfect harmony with WP:SINGULAR. —  AjaxSmack  00:25, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
    • Some of the other pasta articles do use the plural, though. Look, this is not the hill I'm going to die on. A move to lasagna is plausible and wouldn't break my heart. I'm just suggesting that consonance with the source language is an advantage, even if a small one, and that it militates for lasagne. --Trovatore (talk) 03:14, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
      • ​Would you support no move but a text change "Lasagne or lasagna is a type of pasta, possibly one of..." (singular verb) with a footnote explaining the Italian singular-plural distinction? —  AjaxSmack  15:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
• Support WP:USEENGLISH "lasagne" is not English -- 64.229.88.43 (talk) 04:45, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
• Support move. The common name in English is "lasagna". O.N.R. ^(talk) 05:45, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose - Per Trovatore, all pasta articles on Wikipedia are titled in the plural. And as was demonstrated in the prior discussion, lasagne is the dominant usage in UK English, while lasagna is more common US usage. That makes this a case of WP:RETAIN, not WP:USEENGLISH. Ibadibam (talk) 09:19, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
  • ​But a Google ngram shows that "lasagne" is not plural in English. And not all pasta articles use the plural. Fettucine, macaroni, penne, spaghetti and vermicelli among others use the singular in the first line of the intro. —  AjaxSmack  15:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

    Let's clarify our terms: when I say "titled in the plural", I mean that the noun itself is in the morphologically plural inflected form. I'm focusing on the noun alone because the purpose of this discussion is to determine the title of the article; usage within the article is a secondary issue. When you say those articles "use the singular", I agree that the article bodies treat the nouns as syntactically singular by way of notional agreement. Your example articles treat the plural form as a class name or collective noun, in some cases explicitly describing it as a "type". Note:

    1. "Fettucine is a type of pasta" (ngram: is)
    2. "Macaroni is dry pasta" (ngram: is)
    3. "Penne is [a] ... type of pasta" (ngram: is)
    4. "Spaghetti is a ... pasta" (ngram: is)
    5. "Vermicelli is a ... type of pasta" (ngram: is)

    In none of these do we see, for example, "A spaghetti is a ...". And note also:

    1. "Bucatini" are a ... pasta" (ngram: inconclusive, trending toward is)
    2. "Gnocchi are a ... family of dumpling" (ngram: are)
    3. "Ravioli are a type of pasta" (ngram: inconclusive, trending toward is)
    4. "Rigatoni are a form of ... pasta" (ngram: is)
    5. "Tagliatelle are a ... type of pasta" (ngram: inconclusive, trending toward is)

    All that to say, there isn't uniform consistency in the way pasta names are treated on Wikipedia or the wider world, so I don't have a strong opinion which construction this article uses. Second issue (in this specific example just a nitpick, but in another example it could affect the statistics), the ngram result you linked uses a case-sensitive search with "Lasagna" and "Lasagne" capitalized, which excludes lowercase "lasagna" and "lasagne". For complete results, use the case-insensitive setting. Ibadibam (talk) 19:50, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

  ​Thanks. I appreciate the "nitpick". I forgot to click the "case insensitive". The nouns are not in the morphologically plural inflected form in English, though. And English usage should drive the title: either "lasagne" is plural, in which case move to "lasagna", or it's singular (which ngrams suggests), in which case simply WP:RETAIN the current title and edit the article. —  AjaxSmack  02:09, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

• Sorta oppose, but ok with either - dictionaries do a good job at codifying actual usage, and they seem to all be perfectly ok with lasagne (with a UK/US split).

  Merriam Webster (US) - lasagna ("less commonly lasagne") for noodle, lasagna for dish

  Cambridge (UK) - separate entries for both: lasagne ("mainly UK") or lasagna ("usually US")

  Collins (UK) - entry at lasagne for dish, entry at lasagna ("American English") for pasta or dish

  Oxford (Lexico, UK) - separate entries for lasagne ("also lasagna") and lasagna ("also lasagne") 🤷‍♂️

  American Heritage (US) - lasagna, "also lasagne"

  Macquarie (Australia) - lasagne "also lasagna" Fredlesaltique (talk) 13:13, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

• Support per WP:COMMONNAME.--Ortizesp (talk) 14:06, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
• Support per Garfield, who calls it "lasagna". Iggy (Swan) (Contribs) 20:40, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
• I supported moving to lasagna last time on the grounds that the article (unlike other pasta articles) is about the dish more than it's about the noodle. As far as I can see that's still the case, but I'm open to arguments otherwise. Powers ^T 01:24, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

  Didn't we figure out last time that lasagna is the name of the dish in North American English only, and that the dish is lasagne everywhere else? Ibadibam (talk) 21:38, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

  My own understanding is that the dish is only "lasagna" in American English (maybe not 100%, but 90%) and it's mixed use everywhere else. Red Slash 15:44, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

• Support per nom.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:29, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
• Strong support per last time; it's a name that provides commonality between varieties of English, and it is by far the common name overall in this language. Italian grammar is irrelevant, just like how I am not going to go over to the Spanish Wikipedia and criticize them for saying "smoking" is a noun that refers to a jacket. Red Slash 19:32, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

  Out of curiosity, however, I did check, and... voila Spanish's article ends with an "a". Red Slash 19:34, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

  Just a note on the "commonality" point: lasagne most definitely is in use in the United States. If I remember correctly, you took the position last time that it was not, but that is not so. --Trovatore (talk) 19:47, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

  It's not even close, actually; the "a" version is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more common (for comparison, gray,grey in British English Red Slash 15:31, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

  For further comparison, your same word pair but in UK English is about 2:1 in favor of -e. Ibadibam (talk) 04:31, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose a move. I've seen no strong evidence in this discussion to override or ignore WP:RETAIN (although the article was also called "lasagna" for long periods in the 00s) and no reason why "lasagne" can't be used as a singular in the article's text to settle the WP:SINGULAR issue. —  AjaxSmack  18:55, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
• Support per common usage in the English language. BD2412 T 03:08, 29 August 2022 (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.

Co-op disagrees

https://www.coop.co.uk/products/co-op-beef-lasagne-400g In ictu oculi (talk) 19:10, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Usage

Notice the following from April 2019, "‘Lasagna’ is also the American English spelling of the word, with ‘lasagnas’ being the American plural. English speakers outside of North America usually use ‘lasagne.’ ... Most pastas dishes in Italian are referred to by their plural name because recipes requires the use of more than one lone noodle (of course) ... many popular Italian foods in the United States nowadays are referred to by the wrong name." https://craves.everybodyshops.com/lasagna-or-lasagne-which-is-correct/ and, from August 2020: "... I very recently realized I (along with most Americans) have apparently been spelling my favorite Italian dish wrong my entire life. Recently, Google Trends reported "lasagne" saw a nearly 200% increase in searches within the United States." https://news.yahoo.com/lasagna-lasagne-same-thing-191015380.html.

Since the spelling with a at the end is exclusively American (and there appears to be a change in America) surely there's less reason for the WP article intended for all English speakers to spell it that way. Mcljlm (talk) 22:23, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

"ALSO"?

"Either term can also refer to an Italian dish made of stacked layers of lasagna alternating with fillings such as ragù (ground meats and tomato sauce), béchamel sauce, vegetables, cheeses (which may include ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmesan), and seasonings and spices." "ALSO"? This dish is only Italian, the others are just imitations. JacktheBrown (talk) 17:56, 24 April 2024 (UTC)