Talk:Was (Not Was)

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In the movies

Songs from Was (not was) appear in The Dream Time starring Michael Keaton and Pump up the volume starring Christian Slater (Hello Dad, I'm in jail) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.6.79.200 (talk) 18:49, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Were they not German?

I thought that this group were German - the name "Was Not Was" meaning that one pronounced the first Was as in the German for What, not as in the English past tense form of the verb "to be". ACEOREVIVED (talk) 18:51, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No. Ghmyrtle (talk) 19:00, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Debra Dobkin

Debra Dobkin was the percussionist for the group. Why isn't she listed as one of the members? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.55.181.5 (talk) 12:13, 10 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciation

Because of the way the rules have been interpreted on this site, my edit explaining the pronunciation of the name of this band was removed peremptorily.

Maybe it's not all that important in the grand scheme of things, but it is at least interesting that the overwhelming majority of the world pronounces the name of the band "woz not woz", whereas it is of course "wass not woz". Unfortunately the only online evidence I could find indicating this was on a blog.

It sucks that this was reverted, but then I'm not surprised given the exclusionist attitude towards marginally cited facts. Would it not have been politer to have just flagged it up as needing better citation than just bluntly deleting it? The manners of the administrators here are utterly disgraceful. But then, it's no better than I have been led to expect. --Matt Westwood 16:09, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you show reliable and publicly-available proof that this pronunciation is correct, and you write it in IPA so everyone in the world can understand what you mean, I would hope it ought to be accepted. I'm willing to help sort out how to write the IPA, but by what you've written here I can't clearly make out the right way to say it. For example, to me your "woz" seems like it must rhyme with "jaws", and I can't figure out how to say your "wass" - should it rhyme with "mass", or "loss", or something else? (In most accents of American English, "was" rhymes exactly with "buzz".)

So ... Can you show proof from a reliable well-known source that your way is correct? If you had a link to a video of one of the band members saying the name, that would be good proof, for example, or a clear explanation given by them in an interview in a famous magazine or something. If it's just obvious in your opinion, ... well, on Wikipedia, being right without proof is unfortunately no better than being wrong.

Edited to say: Looking at what's currently in the article about the band name, it seems clear that the name ought to be pronounced "wuz not wuz", simply the verb and its negation. So it might take some extra-strength proof to show that it's something else.TooManyFingers (talk) 15:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]