Talk:Flysch

I wrote this article all over. In the process I removed two big errors:

The term is not archaic. It is in use in geologic literature and in every day use too (at least on this part of the globe).
Flysch is only formed in foreland basins, never in backarc basins. Since the article quoted a source (Stanley's Earth history book) I checked it. Stanley, however, did not write anything about flysch in backarc settings. I corrected that.

I added two more sources too. Woodwalker (talk) 19:50, 12 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments re Vocabulary

To the writer of this article: I am a former English teacher with a doctoral degree in psychology. I really ought to be educated enough to understand Wikipedia articles. But I have noticed a tendency on Wikipedia over the last few years, for articles on scientific and mathematical topics to be written in a manner that might be appropriate for research journal articles on those topics, but which is amazingly opaque to a non-expert on those topics. I looked up "flysch" because I didn't know anything about it, but the rock formation certainly looked interesting. I have quoted the first paragraph, so I can demonstrate the problem. I have inserted comments about the vocabulary.

Flysch is a sequence of sedimentary rocks that is deposited in a deep marine facies (I don't know what facies are, much less a deep marine facie! -- I hope I got the singular right. Or perhaps facies is the singular.) in the foreland basin ( a foreland basin ! I had to look that up.) of a developing orogen. (An orogen !! I did also look that up, but then I got frustrated by the apparent need to look up all the important words of an introductory paragraph.) Flysch is typically deposited during an early stage of the orogenesis. When the orogen evolves, the foreland basin becomes shallower and molasse ( Molasse ! ) is deposited on top of the flysch. It is therefore called a syn-orogenic sediment (deposited contemporaneously with mountain building).

Now as an English teacher, I wonder about a "sequence of sedimentary rocks". I know enough to know that all sedimentary rocks are formed as a sequence of layers, but I don't think that fact is what this sentence is implying. But I haven't got a clue about what it is implying. Despite my obvious ignorance of geology, I think my objections to this kind of writing should be taken seriously. A person ignorant about geology should be able to read this article painlessly and actually learn something about geology. Please pass my objections along to the science writers of Wikipedia, and I will also try to see to it that general editors learn that this kind of writing seems to be becoming pervasive. Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 02:44, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing this out, Janice. I have done a little triage on the lead and the tectonics section. More could be done, but I have a lot of other articles on my list. I hope it helps. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

The German article has a quite different explanation for the word 'Flysch' - it has apparently nothing to do with 'fliessen=flow' but with 'flach=flat':

Der Ausdruck ‚Flysch‘ entstammt hierbei dem lokalen Dialekt im Simmental und bezeichnet schiefriges, leicht spaltbares, zu Plättchen verwitterndes, leicht erodierbares Felsmaterial. Studer selbst brachte das Wort später mit dem ursprünglich niederdeutschen Wort ‚Flöz‘ in Verbindung, das wiederum verwandt mit verschiedenen alten Wörtern der germanischen Sprachfamilie ist, die alle so viel wie ‚flach‘ oder ‚Ebene‘ bedeuten. Somit dürfte die Bezeichnung ‚Flysch‘ wohl auf die schiefrige Natur der im Simmentaler Schweizerdeutsch so bezeichneten Gesteine zurückgehen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fuzzyrandom (talk • contribs) 11:08, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]