Template talk:plural of

Irregular plural support

There should be a parameter or a matching template that starts the definition with "Irregular plural...". I think this is important. — Hippietrail 02:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

There seem to be many aspects of plurals that may be helpful to show in a definition line. If we're going to distinguish between regular and irregular plurals, we should decide on the granularity of differentiation.

E.g., should this tempalte apply only to English noun plurals or also to plurals of various parts of speech of various languages?

Assuming it's only for English noun plurals, should it also differentiate between plurals of common nouns and plurals of proper nouns?

Should the template differentiate between plurale tantum and common plurals for terms that have both types of plurals (e.g. "pants", which is both a plurae tantum and a common plural).

Should the template differentiate between prescriptive and descriptive plurals?

Should the template differentiate between archaic and contemporary plurals?

Rod (A. Smith) 08:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Please take this to the Pit if it's important. I think it shouldn't take any parameter, but that's personal. — Vildricianus 19:21, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Deprecated?

Is the plural of template deprecated? If so, maybe that should be mentioned here, to prevent (more) unwanted edits.

Heavens no! It's used quite a lot, in fact. --EncycloPetey 03:19, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! A little bit of confusion: it's the en-plural template that seems to be unwanted :-)

The en-plural is just a shorter shortcut, adding the language header and other headers to the equation. Has to be subst'ed in. bd2412 T 14:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Brackets around singular

On User talk:BD2412#plural_of TheDaveRoss advises to put brackets around the singular term, when using the plural of template.
If this is a valid advice - though apparently not applied in most cases - then these brackets should be added to the template. — This unsigned comment was added by 84.197.168.185 (talk).

Why do you think this is not applied in most cases? The change was only recently effected, but is pervasive. The template currently adds them only if needed; the entries should have them to be counted, however. --Connel MacKenzie 08:18, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

If I said that is not applied in most cases, I meant on part of the contributors, not the software. Isn't it confusing to ask contributors to put brackets if that is done by the software? By the way, I can't see any brackets in the examples above, e.g. words/word.

I notice that if the brackets are omitted then the word does not cause the "Current number of entries" to click on by one. But does it get included in the Statistics page? SemperBlotto 11:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

{{plural of|word}} or {{plural of|[[word]]}}

I see both {{plural of|word}} and {{plural of|[[word]]}} is used, but what is preferred and what should not be used? SPQRobin 22:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Use {{plural of|[[word]]}}; there needs to be at least one literal-in-wikitext link in an entry for the entry to count toward our total number of entries, and apparently that's something we care about. —Ruakh_TALK 04:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I will use it in the future. SPQRobin 09:42, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

No longer true, thanks to Robert. DAVilla 07:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

This is such a pain for newbies. Can we have User:AutoFormat just do it? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 16:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Presumably. Have you dropped Robert a note? —Ruakh_TALK 00:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Will do. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 13:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Error introduced with lang= parameter

I don't know why I didn't notice sooner, but an error was introduced when the lang= parameter was added: all the Category:English nouns memberships were removed at that time. I'm correcting it back, to assume English, and always add a category, correctly. Note that Special:Statistics will show an enormously high Job queue, for a while. When it gets to zero, the categories should be complete. --Connel MacKenzie 11:22, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

So should I bother removing the "lang=English" parameters already added? There's a few thousand, though I suppose a bot could do that job just as well - you may want to check the verb form templates as well, I think I saw the same problem, at least with the third-person singular template. bd2412 T 11:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Also note that the >17,000 items on the job queue haven't started yet (but will in a few minutes, when de.wikipedia gives up its job-queue timeslot.) --Connel MacKenzie 11:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please remove all "lang=English" parameters. If other templates have similar problems, they need to be corrected, too. --Connel MacKenzie 11:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, then I'll presume that they will be, and remove the parameter from verb form templates as well (after a good night's sleep, tho, unless someone wants to set a bot to the task sooner). Sorry for the inconvenience. bd2412 T 11:34, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll wait for the job queue to clear (to make sure there are no other errors with this) before moving on to the next template. WT:GP would be a much better place to keep track of these. --Connel MacKenzie 11:32, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Plural feminin forms of adjectives

How do I use this if I want to introduce the plural feminine form of an adjectiv? Do I just say the plural form of the feminine singular (which is a form of the adjectiv as well), as I did in obscene, or does the format include a parameter for it too? Skepsis 00:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Plurals that are not nouns

Any possibility to include a part of speech parameter? Because some languages have plurals for other parts of speeds such as adjectives and pronouns. For example, pos=adjective could modify [[Cateogry:nn plurals]] to [[Category:nn adjective plurals]]. Categorization of plurals would be more sensible.--Jyril 18:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

That gets my vote too, i anyone has the necessary template editing skills that would be most useful as many languages have plural adjectives etc.--Williamsayers79 18:06, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

But does Nynorsk have forms that can be described simply as "adjective plurals"? It seems like any mention of a Nynorsk adjective form needs to mention whether it's strong (indefinite) or weak (definite); or am I missing something? (That said, if there are languages where adjectives are declined for number but nothing else — or at least, where plural marking precludes any other distinction — then it does make sense to extend this template.) —Ruakh_TALK 18:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, in Finnish the adjective follows the case of noun it describes: punainen talo (red house) → punaiset talot (red houses), punaista taloa (about red house) etc. Should punaiset be seen just as a form of adjective? If we regard noun plurals as a special case this makes sense.--Jyril 09:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

What about instead of pos= we add a cat= parameter. That way, for instance, with lang=WXYZ and cat=masculine noun we get the category [WXYZ masculine noun plurals]? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 16:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

English translations of plurals in other languages

When adding german plurals i noticed that some of them give direct links to the english translation and some do not. Given that we would like to see the translations on all pages, could that be included in the template, so that i could insert {{plural of|[[Huhn]]|lang=German|trans=chickens}} on Hühner f.e.? When adding it manually the question is also in which place the translation should be inserted, if you compare Planeten, Blumen & Häuser you already have 3 different ways and you will eventually find more in the Category:German plurals. Putting it in the template could straighten that out,too. Mutante 09:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea, with a similar addition to {{form of}}. We should probably discuss this in WT:GP to solicit feedback on whether to use a positional parameter or the named parameter (probably {{{gloss}}}). (Note that for languages that use a non-Latin script, a transliteration parameter may also be needed. Similarly, for Latin and Old English, an alternate form parameter is needed. Finally, the resulting link should probably be to a language-specific section, using a {{{lang}}} parameter with the language's ISO code. To accomodate all of those requirements, a positional gloss parameter may be confusing.) Rod (A. Smith) 17:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

It becomes very problematic when the plural has multiple translations. Do we want to overturn our practices on formatting non-lemma pages? Or, do we want to institute a practice that can only be applied to some pages and not others? I agree that the BP is the place to take the issue. --EncycloPetey 02:02, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

links to english translations

When adding non-english words with this template, in my case i want to add german plurals, people on IRC all agreed we also want the link to the english translation right on the page. So could that be added as a parameter to the template? Example: {{plural of|Katze|lang=German|cats}} added to the page Katzen creates "German..plural of Katze "cats"". 11:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

That seems helpful. In the interest of consistency, the glosses should probably be formatted as those produced by {{term}}. Rod (A. Smith) 01:57, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

include PAGETITLE too?

Also, could the PAGETITLE line that is (almost?) always right above the {{plural of|.. line be included in the template? That would save time when always copy/pasting the pagename itself in between ''' ''' in the page body manually and adding plural pages would be even quicker.. Actually inserting {{plural of|[[Huhn]]|lang=German|trans=chickens}} could be enough to create a complete page, the ==German== heading, PAGETITLE , the "plural of" sentence, the translation and the category. Mutante 09:57, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

This would be a bad change. Many programs that read Wiktionary entries need each definition line to begin with #. Rod (A. Smith) 17:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

lang= parameter accepting ISO 639 code

Could this functionality be added to the template? So if Template:lang:{{{lang}}} or simply Template:{{{lang}}} exists, it expands it and uses it in categorization, otherwise it assumes that the {{{lang}}} is fully expanded language name (as it is now).

Most other templates use lang= parameter with ISO code, and some contributors tend to get confused with this dual logic. --Ivan Štambuk 21:50, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd appreciate that too. Are there any other templates that want full language name parameters? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 16:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

This is done now. Robert Ullmann 14:57, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

gender

How do I indicate gender with this template? There doesn't seem to be any coding for it. 70.51.8.110 05:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The genrally accepted thing to do is to state the gender of the inflection line using one of the following templates: {{m}}, {{f}}, {{c}}, {{n}} e.g.

'''plurals''' {{m}}
 
# {{plural of|[[plural]]}}

plurals m

1. Plural of plural.

Spanish plurals

Currently all Spanish plurals are grouped together into Category:Spanish plurals. This lumps all adjectives in with nouns. A new category is Category:Spanish plural nouns. We need a way for this template (plural of) to not include any categories (like nodot does), because Template:es-noun-pl already puts it into the correct category. Is this possible? Nadando 03:24, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I just put in an optional pos= parameter which you can fill in with the part of speech in singular form (omitting the parameter should leave all usages the same). For example {{plural of|XXXX|lang=es|pos=noun}} produces the category Category:Spanish plural nouns. See it at work in pies. I'll wait a bit to put this parameter into wider play, just in case anyone objects to the implementation. Besides Spanish, some other languages should add this parameter to their invocations (such as French). That way there's no need to hand-categorize. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 07:52, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, as discussed above, adjectives in languages like Spanish shouldn't be using this template. In fact, I'm not aware of any language that marks adjectives for number but not for anything else. (Spanish, like many languages, marks adjectives for noun class (gender) as well; and other languages tend to mark adjectives for categories like case and definiteness/state. Technically I suppose this template could be used for words like (deprecated template usage) calientes, but I think it's better to be explicit about those.) I do agree that Spanish plural nouns shouldn't just go in Category:Spanish plurals, but adding a pos category seems too broad. I think cat=-, like Nadando suggested, is the best approach. —Ruakh_TALK 16:54, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't take away the prohibition of using this template with gendered languages from your earlier comment, but now I get the implication and agree. {{feminine of}}, {{masculine plural of}} and {{feminine plural of}} currently don't categorize either. I also hadn't seen {{es-noun-pl}} or {{es-adj-pl}} and any other automatic categorizations could be done using {{infl}}). I'll take out the POS option leaving the nocat option. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 01:11, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Persian Font

Would it be possible for this template to display Persian words with the Persian fonts by specifying 'lang=fa|sc=fa-Arab' as with the {{wikipedia}} template (example: اسب)? At the moment Persian plurals are all written out without a template (example: انوار). Pistachio 23:54, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

what's "plural"?

For those who may not know: could "plural" be wikified to plural#Adjective ?
Thanks in advance,
--Jerome Potts 08:25, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I've we're concerned about that, it would be better to add an entry to [[Appendix:Glossary]]. The definition [[plural#Adjective]] is wrong; we need to add the right definition, but we also need to keep the wrong definition, because people actually use it that way. The appendix, by contrast, would give only the correct definition, the one that Wiktionary uses. —Ruakh_TALK 15:06, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Sc=

It seems that hundreds of uses of this template (for example, all Hebrew plurals) use the "sc" perimeter to change the font, but in fact, the sc perimeter does not do anything. Any particular reason for this, or was this just a mistake? --Yair rand 02:08, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

No longer true. Yair's added sc support.​—msh210℠ 17:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

language-specific re- or non-categorizing

{{plural of|foo|lang=es}} categorizes at category:Spanish plurals, which is marked as "should be empty, please populate Category:Spanish noun forms instead". Template:plural of can be made to do so: It seems it would require, in place of [[Category:{{langname|{{{lang|English}}}}} plurals]], {{#switch:{{langname|{{{lang|English}}}}}|Spanish=[[category:{{langname|{{{lang|English}}}}} noun forms]]|[[Category:{{langname|{{{lang|English}}}}} plurals]]}} to start with, with further language-specific tweaking as needed. Any objections?​—msh210℠ 17:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Not too fast though, see Category:Noun forms by language. We have a lot of double categorization. There's also been talk of eliminating some of these for lesser inflected languages, notably Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese which only have plurals and feminine forms, as a opposed to Russian or Romanian which have a case system. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:16, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

One problem that we did not have before is that this template is used both for noun plurals and adjective plurals, and it is not smart enough to distinguish them for the category without us adding another parameter. Really, the issue of this kind of categorization should be dealt with in the inflection template. All of the auto-created plural forms for Spanish simply use the "nocat" option by default, and add the category through the inflection template. {{infl}} is smart enough to be able to create categories based on the information we give it. Though, perhaps the best solution for some of the Romance languages, especially Spanish, is to get away from using {{infl}} and integrate plural forms into the noun and adjective inflection templates (or make new plural inflection templates), since then we can control the categories for those specific languages directly from the templates, and the entries will also be able to show the lemma and other inflected forms in the inflection line (which {{infl}} doesn't do). Dominic·t 05:04, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

sort

Can we agree to allow {{{sort}}} for the category <langname> plurals? I would do it now myself as 'uncontroversial' but it doesn't use a hard category, it uses the template {{categorize}} which is harder to use. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Done, hopefully with no screwups. Documentation is now out of date btw. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:54, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

It's working of âge. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

2 bugs

 Done

1) The template itself was oddly categorized among plural nouns for English, Old English, and Spanish. So I have added "nocat=1" to all sample displays of its documentation subpage: this fixed all but one last categorization, because the template code itself performs a default, unconditional Category:English plurals. I think this should be fixed by surrounding the template code's auto-cat section with "includeonly" tags.

2) All other similar templates have a cap and a trailing period. I don't see why this one shouldn't, too. 62.147.24.196 13:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Both fixed, thanks! —Ruakh_TALK 14:53, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization

For English definitions, how does one get this capitalized to show "Plural of"? Better yet, is there a way to default to capitalization when the language is English for all form of templates? DAVilla 07:49, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Same question, two years later. DAVilla 15:04, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

@DAVilla This issue is known about but not yet solved. I suggested a few years ago that all form-of and related templates should have initial caps and final period in English but not in any other languages, but there were some objections; although I'm not sure they are still present and/or valid. Benwing2 (talk) 19:30, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Edit request

N Not done

Could somebody capitalize “plural”? Other templates, such as {{alternative spelling of}}, have the first word capitalized. Interqwark ^{talk contribs} 13:43, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

nocat parameter

@Rua You removed it from the documentation (Special:Diff/24232101; also its related categories: Special:Diff/25189284, Special:Diff/33355852) in 2014. What does it do (and why is it added to plural forms created using WT:ACCEL)? J3133 (talk) 09:49, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Originally, this template added pages to a category. That feature is now gone, but the parameter was used to help with the changeover. It does nothing now. —Rua (mew) 13:44, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

@Rua: As you have edited WT:ACCEL, do you know how to remove it? J3133 (talk) 13:48, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Specific links

Linking to relevant part of speech

N Not done

Please document that the template cannot yet target a specific part of speech (type) reliably. I have done such targeting in this modification, but for all languages other than English, it is too unreliable as anchors are automatically generated and adding or removing other languages in the entry would automatically change the target. Even for English (which should remain the first language), the anchor could vary. --Chealer (talk) 17:30, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Linking to specific sense

N Not done

Please fix/clarify the documentation for senseid. Instead of:

A sense id for the term, which links to anchors on the page set by the {{senseid}} template.

...this could read:

The identifier for a specific sense for the term, which points the link to a precise anchor set by using the {{senseid}} template on the singular entry (target page).

I also recommend to move senseid higher in the list of parameters given its importance. Chealer (talk) 11:40, 13 August 2023 (UTC)