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I came here looking for an explanation of "broken rice". But the article doesn't explain that, and contains a link to "broken rice" which redirects back here.
I wish someone who knows about broken rice would fix that.
Thanks. -- 72.92.8.13023:56, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Very True. Com Tam means broken rice. It doesn't matter what is served with it. Com Tam or "broken rice" is half a grain of rice.
Origin of the fractured grains
I heard from a Vietnamese friend that the broken rice grains aren't browkn purposely, but are in fact a substandard byproduct of the rice polishing process; a certain number of grains will be fractured "rejects," formerly thrown away, fed to animals, or sold to poor people. But in the late 20th century (?), Vietnamese figured out a way to make the food desirable and thus eliminate waste, getting a good price by creating such dishes. If this is correct, it should definitely be added to the article. Badagnani (talk) 05:11, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Requested move
The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Com tam → Cơm tấm – Restore, prevented by edited redirect (i) revert/restore back to Vietnamese spelling per article status quo 2007-2011. (ii) sources, e.g. Meera Freeman The Flavours of Vietnam 2004 page 42 do not show up on Google Books OCR results, but are there on page view. (iii) This anglicization is particularly unhelpful as "com" could mean either cốm (pronounced "cohm") green uncooked rice, or cơm (pronounced "kerm"), as in cơm nắm and cơm rượu white sticky rice. (iv) this isn't really a name, it's a phrase per category:Vietnamese words and phrases "tấm" simply means "broken", broken rice. "tam" without the accent could just as easily be wikt:tắm "bathroom rice" anyone? (v) MOS "consistent with related articles" in Category:Vietnamese cuisine. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:42, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
Oppose, per Viet Nam News (here, here, and here), VietnamNet Bridge, Tuoi Tre News (Vietnam's top newspaper), Vietnam Plus and Lonely Planet Vietnam, Amazon's top-selling Vietnam title. The title should appear the way it might in a published reference work, per WP:EN. I didn't find any reference that actually mentions "com tam". But other encyclopedias like Britannica, Columbia, and Encarta do not use Vietnamese diacritics. For Vietnamese food in general, I recommend following the style of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, the current top-selling Vietnamese cookbook. This book gives each food a main title in English without diacritics, followed by an italicize Vietnamese name with diacritics, for example, "Beef Pho — phở bò". Some might ask, "What harm is there in putting the accents in?" In general, Wiki titles are the common name of the subject in English, per WP:UE. So if a form that is used only in Vietnamese is given, the reader is misled. The Vietnamese name appears boldfaced in the opening whatever the title, so there is no issue of any information being lost. Kauffner (talk) 16:24, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
Support per nom and WP:UE (strangely enough): "follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject". This term is not English and has not been nativised. Most of the quality uses of the term do include diacritics, even in English-speaking countries. The most common usage RS usage is probably in cookbooks which frequently keep diacritics (my copy of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen uses diacritics for this term — see this image). Widespread usage is also naturally on Vietnamese restaurant menus which almost never omit diacritics. Use of the diacritics causes no harm and is more precise and accurate. Now I'm off for a meal of Niçoise salad, pâté aux pommes de terre, sole meunière, and a dessert of crème brûlée. — AjaxSmack16:37, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
So Britannica is not a quality source, but a restaurant menu is? The "harm" is that the reader is misinformed as to what mainstream English language usage is. We would not put Chinese characters in a title no matter how few romanized examples there might be. The picture linked to above shows the cover of the book, which does have not have any diacritics. The book does give the Vietnamese name of each food, which is a commendable feature. But as I explained above, each food has its own section. The section titles are English-language names without diacritics. Kauffner (talk) 17:15, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
I couldn't find cơm tấm or com tam and Britannica so I have no idea what its position on this subject is. I also don't know the minutiae of Britannica's style manual or what technical limitations Britannica faces. Therefore, I rely on judgment grounded Wikipedia policy and practice. Diacritics such as these do no harm (there is no "mainstream" English usage and they can be "read through", i.e. ignored, by those who take offence) but they do make an affirmative contribution to the topic as User:In ictu oculi has noted above. As far as Into the Vietnamese Kitchen goes, I am referring to the print version which uses diacritics. I will try to make a scan when I get a chance. — AjaxSmack19:00, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
So the problem is that you don't know what Britannia`s style regarding Vietnamese is? Allow me to remedy that. Take a look here: "Rice is the staple food....beef both (pho)... spring roll (cha gio)...fish sauce (nuoc mam)...are among the many noteworthy dishes." The reason for reaching for Britannica is that it is one of the most diacritic friendly English-language publications. Until Unicode, Britannica and National Geographic were pretty much the only ones publishing non-Latin-1 diacritics. If you look up the name of a Vietnamese city or political leader on GBooks, you'll find that nearly 100 percent of English-language usage is without diacritics. Kauffner (talk) 19:38, 15 July 2012 (UTC)
Support. Others have already pointed out the "no well-known anglicized form exists" argument and the "read through" argument. Regarding some English-language sources that don't use diacritics for Vietnamese even when they do for European languages, the likely cause of this is because typing in and proofreading Vietnamese diacritics requires some minimal proficiency with the language and its input methods whereas European diacritics require no language knowledge at all to select them by visual inspection from Character Map (in Windows) or similar tools, and while commercial publications can't commit to perpetually maintaining Vietnamese-speaking staff, a crowdsourced encyclopedia like Wikipedia does not have this problem. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 04:26, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
support the sources cited by Kauffner are not relevant; what we need to make this determination is a source that *does* use VN diacritics, but declines to use it for this word, because it has become anglicized. that doesn't seem to be the case here.--KarlB (talk) 17:55, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
It is not reasonable to assume that the sources would use diacritics if they the could. Lonely Planet has a glossary in the back where they give Vietnamese spellings. So they certainly have the technical capability to produce them. The media sites based in Vietnam that I listed above have vernacular editions where the same names are given with diacritics. P.T. Aufrette treats "no established usage" as a rule that overrides all other considerations. But it is not even among the top five WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. Kauffner (talk) 07:53, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
Discussion
Let's review the guidelines. WP:DIACRITICS says, "follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language". Here is WP:EN: "The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language". Those are guidelines. WP:UE is policy: "The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage." In short, a title should tell the reader the conventional way to refer to the subject in English. Lonely Planet, the top-selling reference on Vietnam, gives this word without diacritics. In fact, the book does not use Vietnamese diacritics at all. This is in line with the usual practice of English-language references, including encyclopedias. There are also the examples in the Vietnamese press that I gave above. UE's examples for "no established use" are "German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on." These are both Latin-1 languages, so the situation is quite different than for Vietnamese. It is not reasonable to interpret this rule as applying to every language. After all, we don't use Chinese characters in titles no matter how rare the romanized form might be. The articles on Vietnamese cities, bios, etc. are now predominately at ASCII titles. Kauffner (talk) 00:53, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Again "reliable" is defined Wikipedia:SOURCES#Reliable_sourcesWikipedia:Identifying reliable sources "best such sources" "reliable for the statement being made". It is interesting that Lonely Planet Vietnam (English edition) doesn't give accents while the Lonely Planet Vietnam (Italian edition) does. But since Meera Freeman The Flavours of Vietnam 2004 - Page 42 has "Cơm tấm - broken rice.." further discussion is rather pointless. Unless a move to broken rice is under discussion. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:58, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
Freeman`s heading is, "Cơm tấm broken rice". I interpret that as a statement that cơm tấm is Vietnamese and "broken rice" is English. That supports the use of diacritics in an English-language title? You could just as well look up the word in a Vietnamese-English dictionary. Those have diacritics too. Freeman is ranked 3.7 million on Amazon and has never been reviewed.[1] So this work is quite obscure, at least compared to Lonely Planet Vietnam (#6,196). So we are back to WP:EN, which says that a title should appear as it would in a reference work or in major media. Vietnamese diacritics do not appear in other encyclopedias or major media. By quoting the Latin-alphabet rule, you are making my point for me: The "no established usage" rule is presumably not meant to apply to every language, since would override various other guidelines. Kauffner (talk) 09:43, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
I live in a big city in Vietnam. Nearly all the bilingual menus I saw in the restaurants here use "broken rice" to describe "cơm tấm". Violetbonmua (talk) 12:00, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Archiving reverted
I have undone this archive edit for three reasons. (1) there is no actual discussion at this page creating long talk requiring archiving, (2) this discussion above stands as a useful record, (3) previous IP and logged-in archiving of articles before RMs such as at Lady Trieu led to previous RM objections not being visible when second RMs were launched. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:47, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Requested move 2: → Broken rice
The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Oppose, oppose, oppose - Just put "broken rice" into Google Books and see what sort of hits come up: J.W. Hertrampf, F. Piedad-Pascual Handbook on Ingredients for Aquaculture Feeds - 2003 Page 357 "Broken rice is a useful component of aquaculture feed and often used by small scale farms in on-farm made feeds. However, it is not ready available as a feedstuff. It is a raw material for the food industry for producing extruded breakfast cereals, rice flour and for beer brewing"..." and so on and so on. This article is about a Vietnamese dish, Cơm tấm. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Broken rice has always been a redirect to this page. If you google "broken rice" -wikipedia, lots of Vietnam-related stuff comes up. Only one hit in the top 20 relates to animal feed. People can also just eat the broken rice. They don't necessarily have to connect it to Vietnamese cuisine, and they shouldn't have to learn Vietnamese to read about it. Anyway, we can always call it, "Vietnamese broken rice." Here is an example: "Vietnamese broken rice: If its broke, don't fix it, eat it." Kauffner (talk) 13:01, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
Oppose/ Seems to be the name of the dish, named after the main ingredient. Let's face it, the dish could be made with whole grain rice instead of broken grain, and when we do that, it would still be 'Cơm tấm' – we wouldn't dream of changing the dish name to 'whole grain rice' (or whatever that is in Viet). -- Ohconfucius ping / poke02:49, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Say what? Cơm is "rice". Tấm is "broken". So "broken rice" is a direct translation. That "broken rice" is also the name of the grain used should not be allowed to confuse the issue. Kauffner (talk) 03:50, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Just because it's a literal translation is of no relevance. Many terms acquire greater individual significance (or a different meaning altogether) when it originates from another language. So for the same reason we shouldn't have "mercy blow", which would be a literal translation of "coup de grâce", this article should stay where it is. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke06:12, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
You could try reading the nomination, you know. GBooks has hundreds of examples of the term "broken rice" being used to refer to this dish. "Use English" is supposed to be a basic principle, not something that needs to be re-justified at every RM. Kauffner (talk) 07:45, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
You've missed my point, by a light year. Usually, you're happy enough to strip names of their diacritics, thus robbing the reader of proper clues as to their pronunciation; now you're going a whole lot further with this proposal to reducing it to the English name of its main component. This does the reader a huge disservice. By calling Cơm tấm 'broken rice', you introduce cognitive distortion by replacing the specific with the non-specific. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke00:11, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
That's not all. I also take out non-Latin script and parentheticals. I didn't invented the proposed name. I have given examples of it being used in cookbooks, restaurant reviews, and so forth. Readers should be able to recognize the title as the name of the subject. That's the No. 1 criteria in WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. The Vietnamese name would still be inside the article. Not everything goes in the title! Wiki is not a bilingual dictionary, and the title is not the place to teach the reader a language he doesn't know already. Kauffner (talk) 03:03, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for that confession. I agree that WP is not a dictionary, but its mission is to educate and inform. "Readers should be able to recognize the title as the name of the subject" – Most people who have never heard of the Viet dish would automatically associate 'broken rice' with the bags of rice with fractured grains sold as 'seconds' at a lower-price. In the case of this dish, there's clearly no need to "translate" the name and lose valuable nuance in the process, for its appropriate 'English name' already exists and in common use. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke08:22, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
The ngram shows that "cơm tấm" is not even close to common use, at least not compared to "broken rice." Like I've said before, students all over the world want to learn to speak English like a native speaker. The purpose of a title is tell the reader the English-language name of the subject. Making "English" Wiki a website of many tongues would be teaching all the wrong lessons. This RM appears to be a straight question of whether this title should be in English or in Vietnamese. None of the usual handwaving about "quality sources", "IRS", "correct spelling", or "BLP" would make much sense here. Kauffner (talk) 11:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
[waving arms frantically ;-)] you could try and argue the case for 'drink tea' against 'yum cha', on the same basis, but that would be just as nonsensical as 'broken rice' because we're talking about terms that originate from a foreign language. In both cases, the terms carry a greater meaning in their evolved contexts that mere literal translation would make a mockery of them. don't know why you're fighting so hard over this one, for I suspect you already know you would be laughed out of court if you tried to move 'yum cha' to 'drink tea'. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke13:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
Do you read anything I write? No, "broken rice" is not something I came up with by translating literally from Vietnamese. It is phrase used by many English language sources, and I have given plenty of links to show this. It used by the restaurants that sell this dish, as you can see in the picture I took below. Kauffner (talk) 14:37, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
No, I'm not saying you invented it, at all at all. And what about 'yum cha'? You read about yum cha, and 'drink tea' also gets a mention. I doubt if you, or anyone else for that matter, can find a better parallel. I say it pretty much demolishes your argument. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke16:20, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Proposed WP:SPLIT
Following 65.92.180.137's sensible suggestion, unfortunately however I put that into Google Books and was surprised to find 43 hits.
42 of them were for 42 repeat advert-reviews paid for by a Dunwoody Village restaurant called Cơm (yes Cơm, complete with Vietnamese umlaut) in Atlanta Magazine 2006-2007,
the 43rd hit was Voice of Malaysia in Summary of world broadcasts: The Far East. Weekly economic report 1991 3-A-35 "The Malaysian oil corporation Petronas has agreed to supply 200-300,000 barrels of refined oil a year to Vietnam. Vietnam has also asked Malaysia to import Vietnamese broken rice, which is suitable for animal feed. (Voice of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur)." ...which again relates to User Leef's 2009 addition of grain/animal feed related content and sources into article;
In any case "broken rice" obviously is not just animal food, rotture di riso, brisures de riz, are sold as dry uncooked rice types in European supermarkets, but when cooked what we get is a dish not a grain. Nancie McDermott Quick and Easy Vietnamese - 75 Easy Recipes 2012 "OMELET WITH BEAN THREAD NOODLES AND PORK - Order com tam bi in a Vietnamese café serving rice dishes, and you'll get a fabulous feast of rice along with shredded pork, peppery pork chops, and a chunk of this tasty omelet, ... " Order com tam and we don't get served uncooked (or even just cooked) broken rice, we get com tam. It would have taken 3 minutes to WP:SPLIT out Leef's broken rice content into a Category:Rice varieties stub. It will still take 3 minutes. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:14, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
It sounds like someone should write a broken rice (grain) article. I have already given examples in the nom where the phrase "broken rice" refers to this dish. For those who respond better to visual stimuli, I took a picture of a restaurant and put it on the right. The sign says, "Broken Rice Restaurant: Cơm Tấm Cali". No, they don't serve cattle. When you cook broken rice, you are not necessarily making Vietnamese food. But that doesn't require a separate article; It is something that can be covered briefly in this article. Kauffner (talk) 14:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
What the broken rice article would look like
Current paragraph
Broken rice
Some rice grains break in the transport and processing of the rice from the field to the pot.[3][4] Machinery is available to separate the broken grains from the whole grains.[5] Broken rice may[4] or may not[6] have lower fiber and nutrient content, but generally has a similar energy content to intact rice.
The broken varieties are often less expensive,[7] so are preferred by poorer consumers[8] or used as raw material (such as in beer brewing).[3][4][6][9] Due to the different size and shape of the grains, broken rice has a different, softer texture from "unbroken" rice.[10][11] Some chefs and consumers may prefer the qualities of broken rice for certain dishes.
What the broken rice article would look like
Broken rice is a term for rice grains which break in the transport and processing of the rice from the field to the pot.[3][4] Machinery is available to separate the broken grains from the whole grains.[5] Broken rice may[4] or may not[6] have lower fiber and nutrient content, but generally has a similar energy content to intact rice.
The broken varieties are often less expensive,[7] so are preferred by poorer consumers[8] or used as raw material (such as in beer brewing).[3][4][6][9] Due to the different size and shape of the grains, broken rice has a different, softer texture from "unbroken" rice.[10][11] Some chefs and consumers may prefer the qualities of broken rice for certain dishes.
Broken rice is preferred by cooks and consumers for some dishes in South East Asia, for example Cơm tấm in Vietnam
You want to create another article with the title broken rice so that this article will have to be disambiguated, and you can frustrated my RM? What a guy. This article has been primary for "broken rice" for over five years now, and I don't think this has even come up as an issue before. If you google "broken rice", the results on the first page all relate to the Vietnamese dish. Until there are page view numbers, I don't see a basis to say that something else is primary. As I wrote before, if it is decided that this dish is not the primary topic, the title should be "Vietnamese broken rice." When you google Vietnamese "broken rice" you get pretty much the same thing as when you google "broken rice." The dish and the grain are closely related subjects and I don't see a need for separate articles. Kauffner (talk) 03:25, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
If the title of this article is changed to "broken rice", I assume the material about the grain would stay here. It looks like most readers typing in "broken rice" are seeking the Vietnamese dish. So this article should remain the primary topic for "broken rice" even if it is not moved (or moved to "Vietnamese broken rice"). In that case, the material on the grain could be cut-and-pasted to broken rice (grain). If the page view numbers show that the grain is the primary topic, the title can be adjusted later. Kauffner (talk) 05:00, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
Two articles seem like a good idea. Considering a simple google search for "broken rice" results in many non-Vietnamese congee pages, IIO's "broken rice" article is reasonable. Still, google shows "Vietnamese broken rice" quite often as well for the Vietnamese dish. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 06:15, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
I don't see much utility for an article on the ingredient, for there really isn't all that much to be said about it. The paragraph of text above covers it all. Having that paragraph located within the body of the article would suffice, IMHO. The dish (and its potential variants) is what the gastronomes are interested in, and it should be properly called 'Cơm tấm'. -- Ohconfucius ping / poke06:07, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
If we are going to put the dish and the grain together, we can use an ngram to determine the common name. Far more authors are using "broken rice" than "com tam". They don't count because they aren't gastronomes? Kauffner (talk) 00:17, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
