User talk:LlywelynII/3

The following discussion has been moved from the page User talk:LlywelynII.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

Template:vern

Please leave these. They categorize into Category:Entries missing English vernacular names of taxa and allow me to create lists of the most frequently "wanted" vernacular names, that is those that appear within {{vern}} on the most pages. See User:DCDuring/vern. Removing {{vern}} makes it less likely that I or anyone else using the frequency list will add the name. Feel free to add entries for such names. DCDuring (talk) 16:50, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Sure, as long as someone is going down the list and correcting them. No one else is going to be, since you make it look like it's a new policy to change redlinks to wikipedia ones. — LlywelynII 18:30, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Correcting? It's not wrong to omit them. I insert {{vern}} whenever I find a redlinked vernacular name. There are a few users who follow my practice for new entries in their languages. As a result vernacular names used in definitions in their entries get entered before other vernacular names. Chinese, Cebuano, Tagalog, and Kikuyu are languages with contributors who use both {{taxlink}} and {{vern}}. DCDuring (talk) 20:45, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Capitalizing Arabic romanizations

Arabic doesn't use majuscules, and thus we do not represent them in our romanisations. For further information, see WT:About Arabic. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:04, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Well, that's an idiosyncratic and mistaken policy that seems unhelpful for our users but I don't edit Arabic entries much and it's certainly easier to just let the template spit everything out the same. Thanks for letting me know. Kindly remember not to delete other non-disputed aspects with your uncorrected reverts concerning particular points of an edit. — LlywelynII 21:19, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

This is done a lot in romanization in Arabic/Islamic/Oriental studies. So it's definitely not idiosyncratic, though I personally agree with you that it's a bad policy.

understand

Good work on the page. I monitor Category:Requests for date and noted that you removed all the templates that placed the page there, but didn't insert content by John Locke (AFAICT). Do you think that these older authors are not worthwhile in general or just in this case and in similar? What considerations influence you? DCDuring (talk) 12:58, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words. It's certainly not that I think old uses aren't helpful.

[Possibly unimportant explanation] I'm in favor of bringing over as many of the first instances of senses from the OED as possible; even when they're in Old or Middle English, it's an important part of the word's history that a really authoritative entry should include. Apart from those, though, my thought is that we should aim to include obviously important uses (Shakespeare at "rose" and "yonder"; Costanza at "it's not you, it's me") and very illustrative uses (e.g. the Fry quote I added to "intellectual" that captures how it's often a pejorative and how that's often out of annoyed inadequacy). Beyond that, sometimes there will be funny quotes or ones from a book more people should see.

[Germane bit] Locke is certainly important enough to cite and wise & interesting enough to cite often but that particular quote seemed a) to lack basic info about the quote b) presumably because it was just lifted from a public-domain dictionary c) which we don't need to slavishly imitate. d) As far as I know, this isn't a major quote in general culture or even Locke's works. e) It's ambiguous whether the quote appropriately fits the sense of proper or of assumed understanding and f) its grammar is so archaic/bad/unhelpful that an editor felt it necessary to add notes in a code comment. In any case, g) we had other, better cites already and h) the Locke cite omits the actual words under discussion and so communicates almost nothing except that he feels he has a grasp on which interpreters were sufficiently learnèd and which infra dig. i) Locke is important for his philosophy and political heritage, not his theology, which is what this passage was about. j) "Understand" is a very common verb and there's certain to be plenty of other options.

So all in all, thought it was better to just nix it altogether. If my understanding was somehow mistaken (maybe it's a famous or important passage to theologians?) or you just like it, feel free to add it back... but ideally with more content, links, and context so it's clear w/t/f he's talking about.

In any case, thanks for keeping an eye on things and being polite about it. — LlywelynII 13:56, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Evidence for reading

Is there any evidence for this reading: 'Měngjiǎ'? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:40, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Not sure why you're asking me. My edit to that page had nothing to do with that pinyin. If you're just asking around, I think there are some templates you can put on the page to ask for usage cites to verify a point. You can look at {{fact}}. — LlywelynII 02:01, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

For what it's worth, it's just a transcription of the sound kah (which is much closer to jia than xia, esp. given previous southern Mandarin pronunciations that realized j as k) and the four Shanghainese I just asked to read the name all used jia when they did. If there's some variant local pronunciation, they probably both need to be noted with an explanation. Also, fwiw, Chinese Wikipedia's article on the town doesn't note an unusual local pronunciation and also needs to have something added to its lead sentence if it's not jia. — LlywelynII 02:08, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

This article on an unrelated place does seem to prefer reading xia as a transcription of the same word but a) still includes jia as a common alternate reading and b) says that the original word can also mean "the canoes" (="a place storing outrigger canoes"), which seems like a more likely etymology than just "canoe" itself, which is what the entry has right now. — LlywelynII 02:13, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your great work! Because of your comments here, I took a little excursion to the so-called 'Mengxia Park' to figure what was going on with this pronunciation. The reason I contacted you was because it was you created the pinyin page for 'Měngjiǎ' ([1]). Later on, I realized that this IS the official form for Taiwanese Mandarin for the name [2]; [3]. As expected, no one in the area had any clue that the area might be called 'Mengxia Park'. They told me it was definitely 'Mengjia' in Mandarin, just like the Shanghainese you asked. I changed the name of that Wikipedia page to 'Bangka Park' because all the signs in the area use this spelling. Not sure what to think about 'canoes' etymology. I will read the pictures I took of the signs in the park and make more edits. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:52, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

chlorus

Shouldn't this be an adjective? Definitely not a proper noun. SemperBlotto (talk) 15:40, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, absolutely. I had fixed the template but not the header. [Fixt.] — LlywelynII 04:12, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Empty Link

Hey- FYI there is a link that goes nowhere in an edit you made in 2016; I am not familiar with the issue. [4] --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:43, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Coordinates of Yanzi

Hey- do you have the coordinates for Yanzi?? I'm trying to do Wiktionary-grade attestation/citation collections for all these minor locations and their Wade-Giles derived names, and I assume you may know a little more about this location. Thanks for any guidance. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:00, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

"currently"

In 2014, you wrote the word 'currently' here: [5]. I would like to write to you about why I don't think that use of the term 'currently' in this context is neutral with respect to the Republic of China (Taiwan).
"An archipelago in the Taiwan Strait currently held by the Republic of China." would perhaps be an appropriate description of the Pescadores at some point in the 1950's during the active stage of the Chinese Civil War when the world was on the brink of nuclear armageddon twice, but I think this wording is not descriptive of the situation that has existed since that time. There is not an 'hot' exchange of territorial zones of control between the PRC and ROC at this point as there was during the Chinese Civil War. When you and I write "currently", the idea is to maintain a genteel politeness and neutrality with respect to the claims of the PRC against the ROC. But if you stop for a second and think about it, the use of the word 'currently' is actually blatantly pro-Peking bias implying that Taiwanese territory is subject to transfer to PRC control either imminently or "one day". Does Taiwan think that? No, they believe that they will control the territory they have been in control of unless war breaks out or a 一国两制 special deal or arrangement is worked out. That deal is not yet evident and the war is always looming but never in motion, as with the Korean peninsula. On this basis, I would advise removing any reference to 'currently' throughout the wikis if you see it. I plan to remove that word here unless you disagree or have some concerns. I know this is a sensitive issue, but we can't afford to push Cai Yingwen's view or Hsi Chin-Ping's view: we just have to "lay it out straight" for the folks at home. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:33, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Chinese

With this diff you removed a lot of instances of {{vern}} and {{taxlink}}, which I painstakingly add to entries such as this so that I can count the number of instances in Wiktionary which call for the vernacular or taxonomic names. Could you please undo the damage? DCDuring (talk) 23:47, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@DCDuring While I unquestioning appreciate your helpful improvements to the project, could you point to the policy or formatting page that in any way suggests that deforming the derived terms lists in that fashion is actually something others agree with? Obviously, the reason I removed them from that location is that they seem entirely extraneous and a waste of everyone's time. We want the lists to point to entries, not to become little minientries that need to track the various senses in any detail. Just keep the vern & taxlinks in the actual listings and out of the der lists.

Of course, if it is a policy that I missed, yeah, that sucks and it'll be good to know where to put my arguments to get that mistake fixed.

In any case, thanks for realizing the work involved on my end expanding and cleaning up the lists, so that you didn't just do a rollback. — LlywelynII 12:41, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

There is no policy - one way or the other - about this. There has been a little discussion recently. FayFreak was also a discussant.

The vern and taxlink markers are not a waste of my time: I use them to prioritize efforts to add vernacular and taxonomic name entries. Removing {{vern}} and {{taxlink}} simply moves the terms further down my priority lists of "wanted" entries. The alternative approach of adding vernacular and taxonomic names from out-of-copyright dictionaries and arbitrary wordlists, which are destined to be orphans or nearly so, seems a true waste of time. What also seems to me like a waste of time is random addition of derived terms without evidence that they are actually in use. When I add a derived term, I try to make sure that it at least meets the lemming test. DCDuring (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I have no intention of sto:pping the addition of vern and taxlink items and "mini-glosses" in any English entries until there is an explicit policy prohibiting such. DCDuring (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

@SemperBlotto: This seems amazingly unhelpful. Could someone higher up and 3rd party step in to explain that (a) synonym/coord/derived/&c lists should simply be lists and not turned into minientries; (b) detailed formatting and cross-wiki links should be held at entries, however sparsely they begin; and (c) any terms that pass the "lemming test" well enough to be on a derived terms list should just have those entries created and anything that isn't worthy of an entry isn't deserving of inclusion on a list either?
Alternatively, if I'm missing something here, lemme know. — LlywelynII 02:29, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Also, while you're here, I've never had an issue where a derived term was imaginary but there are plenty (and probably plenty at Chinese) that the OED might list but that Wiktionary might consider overly SOP and not worth including. That's probably the thing that actually needs to be cleaned up about the latest version of the page, if you have some guidance about the things that were there or that I added but that should just be left out. — LlywelynII 02:33, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Random person butting in, sorry, but isn't it possible to just put, for example, |{{vern|Chinese artichoke}} ({{taxlink|Stachys affinis|species|ver=160924}}) as a parameter to the template instead of |Chinese artichoke? Seems like you could just leave such lines alone when converting a list of terms to use {{related terms}}. 70.172.194.25 02:44, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

We're all random people so that's fine. The entire idea seems misguided, though, as above. There's no reason to add, maintain, or repair laundry lists of all the scientific names of general terms like "deer", "rose", or "Chinese cabbage" in der lists when all of that should be held at the entries in the first place. The der lists should just be pointing at the entries. Anything else is unhelpful and extraneous makework. — LlywelynII 02:49, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

I thought {{related terms}} with {{vern}} inside may be acceptable as a compromise solution, but I just noticed it makes the sorting weird. Anyway, isn't the benefit of {{vern}} that it allows taxonomically-inclined editors to find vernacular terms that need to be created? That appears to be a valid goal. OTOH, I'm not sure how much benefit there is to having the taxonomic identification when the entry already exists. 70.172.194.25 03:08, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Removing glosses from redlinks because people should get their information from the entries doesn't really make sense- where exactly in a non-existent entry are people supposed to find the information? As for bluelinks, glosses can be overused, but when the entries are complex or ambiguous they can be quite helpful. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:27, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Admin

Hi. We should get you as an admin. Sure, you had some disagreements in the past, even a block, but Wiktionarians can forgive easily (I think). Can I nominate you? Notusbutthem (talk) 22:07, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@notusbutthem I'm not sure if all the regulars are as open minded and they seem a close bunch but I don't mind, no. At the same time, I work 7 days a week so I wouldn't be able to commit to any firm maintenance schedule if that's required.

The suggetion is a pleasant honor, though: Thanks. — LlywelynII 04:12, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Etymology

FYI- in this edit: [6] at Chung-nan-hai, you removed a crystal-clear elucidation of the origin of a word for the people who do not know that origin, namely the phrase "Wade-Giles romanization: Chung¹-nan²-hai³", and replaced it with "q.v.". I'm happy to see someone working on these words, but surely you could not believe this is an improvement for a hypothetical reader unfamiliar with Wade-Giles. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:00, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative I absolutely believe it is an improvement. (a) The new etymology is terser without losing any information. That's an improvement. (b) Almost no one, including Wade and Giles themselves, actually appended the tone marks to anything. The previous version was well intentioned but hypercorrect. (c) The tones for those who are curious are clearly marked on the pinyin transcription. (d) Even if it were to be included (which again it shouldn't be), you put it in the wrong place in the etym. It should follow the word romanization or transcription before you get to the Chinese. It shouldn't go back and forth from Wade-Giles to Chinese back to Wade-Giles. (e) You should be marking the English forms as "the ... romanization" or "transcription" instead of "from ..." and (f) should note that these are the atonal forms, again making the superscripts needless, even though we want to see the tones on the tr= for the Chinese template, whichever one we use.

Yes, I absolutely believe that the new version was better in every way, with apologies for the work you put into formatting the Wade-Giles so carefully. Totally understand if you want to throw it up to a group discussion at the Village Pump or wherever, but the other problems noted would still need to be addressed even if we include the needless repetetition of the Wade-Giles form of a Wade-Giles term. — LlywelynII 19:12, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

"Almost no one, including Wade and Giles themselves, actually appended the tone marks to anything."- dictionaries using Wade-Giles would show the tone numbers- I could find an example if you need one. This is a dictionary. Do you dispute this? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:16, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative There were other sentences around that one that already covered your other concerns. We aren't doing a dictionary with Wade-Giles gloss formatting. We use pinyin for that. Again, well intentioned but mistaken and open to throwing it out to a wider audience.

For what it's worth, I am completely in support of making a Wade-Giles format (with tone numbers!) show up automatically on Chinese entries' pronunciation templates. We should have that. — LlywelynII 19:17, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm taking this to dispute resolution. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:18, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative Sure thing. I'm pretty sure that's what I just said. See also the edit to my last comment. — LlywelynII 19:20, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Proscribed Status

Hey, again I want to thank you for working on these words. I want to encourage more people to work on this subject matter, and I appreciate your work and your mind. I am obviously not as intellectual as you; I want to "do it right". My question on an unrelated matter is: who was proscribing the form "Chungnanhai"? I changed your "proscribed" to "sometimes proscribed" on the basis that ROC publications have been no-dashes Wade-Giles in many cases, including at least one cited on that page. Let me know what you think. Your viewpoint is important to me and I value your input. (I am partially convinced by your other argument.) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:28, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative I have put that tag on a number of terms that derive from but are not Wade-Giles transcriptions that (a) were not formally adopted by the Postal Map (eg, Shanghai) or otherwise entered general English use (eg, Suchou). It's less that someone would be offended by this use (eg, race traitor) than that the editor of the T'oung Pao would be inclined to "correct" it in a draft as a misapplication of the system.

If you think that's unhelpful or my subjective calls on particular words' relative use in English versus its status as misadaption from a Chinese romanization scheme, I would understand removing it from the meaning and just taking care of the issue in the etymology: An irregular form of the Wade-Giles romanization... or something similar. — LlywelynII 19:35, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Also, thank you for your kind words. Always unusual and nice to hear from someone on the internet, especially someone whom one recently disagreed with xD — LlywelynII 19:39, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. While I have been thinking about what you've said, I'm trying to imagine how to implement the concept of "sometimes proscribed/irregular" outside of the Wade-Giles context. If you have a thought, I'd like to ask- how would you view the etymologies for (no geyin fuhao apostrophe) Boao, Puer, Taian, Taierzhuang, Tiananmen Square, Xian, Xiongan, and Yanan and for pages like Shaanxi, Shanxi (etymology 3), Lvliang, Lyuliang, Lvshunkou and similar? These entries are all documented with good cites, so check them out if you would- Reuters, OCLC, etc etc. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:32, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative Well, since I guess you and I are the main ones dealing with these entries, we could just work out something here but it might be more formal and binding to future editors if we had the same conversation at the Village Pump. My initial thoughts would be:

Shaanxi is 100% correct. It's a specific exception included in the rules of pinyin to keep the distinction from Shanxi clear. You could just say "The atonal pinyin romanization..." and it would be correct; you could say something like "A special atonal pinyin romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 陕西 (Shǎnxī) (Shǎnxī) preserved from earlier Postal Map romanization in order to avoid confusion with the separate province of Shanxi (山西 (Shānxī), Shānxī)." Something along those lines is probably better.

Wade-Giles forms without their tone numbers are (for the purposes of English entries) 100% correct. Losing the difficult-to-type and eyesore-inducing numbers basically is the process by which something goes from being a Chinese transcription to an English name, just like pinyin losing its hard-to-type tones in the same process. I personally think it's worth (very briefly) noting the tones have been removed in the etymology, for all the many native English speakers who might otherwise not understand what's happened as they look at this word or that.

Forms with v for ü are always mistakes and should get a note. V hasn't been an English vowel for centuries and no system—not even Gwoyeu Romatzyhw—formally uses it. The only reason it appears is because a you have many Chinese who are used to entering it that way on their typewriter/computer/phone/tablet keyboards and don't honestly care what it looks like when spelled out, since in their minds the "real" version to check for accuracy is the one in Chinese characters, and b you have many foreigners who are completely unfamiliar with the rules of pinyin or confused by the different romanization systems who simply end up copying a Chinese mistake.

Forms with u for ü, forms with ue where that would otherwise be uncommon (eg, Yuennan for Yunnan), forms missing their distinguishing apostrophe, Wade-Giles terms missing their hyphens, &c. are in between and judgment calls.

To my mind, it's like Rome vs. Roma. Things that are used in English as English words might note "irregular romanization" in the etymology but they aren't "wrong" any more than Rome is. Tiananmen might mention its lack of apostrophe and point at the right proscriptivist form as the main entry, but it's common enough that it isn't a mistake that a normal editor would correct in English running text. Suchou might be marked as obs. or historical but it was once common enough as an English placename that it wasn't wrong; it could even go into the "terms derived from Wade-Giles" category even though it shouldn't be treated as directly being Wade-Giles. Similarly, if a name was ever adopted for Postal Map romanization, it's simply correct but the etym should talk about PMR instead of the other systems. Suchow isn't Suchou.

On the other hand, terms as infrequent as Chungnanhai or even rarer are "Roma" forms of names. They're not English or pretending to be; they're Chinese words being romanized for clarity but being romanized badly, to the point a careful editor would step in and get it to follow the usual rules. I had put some proscribed or sometimes proscribed tags on those, but it's fine by me to leave that off anything but patent mistakes (Shanxi for Shaanxi should be marked as proscribed within English) and just note the irregularity in the etymologies: variant form of... irregular romanization of... &c.

Something along those lines. — LlywelynII 14:29, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

As a side note, you may notice I prefer {{m}}, {{l}}, {{bor}}, {{der}}, &c. and hate {{zh-l}}. If you feel otherwise, I perfectly well understand since it is the general template specially done for Chinese text. Unlike Japanese ruby script, though, there's nothing particularly helpful about {{zh-l}} since a most English terms first derived from Chinese when it was still using traditional characters, b Chinese characters are only used in English listings for clarifying origins and meanings, and c the link to the traditional form goes the main entry that includes everything we currently have when people are curious. Since simplified character entries do absolutely nothing but say go look at the other one, there's nothing particularly helpful about going out of our way to include them imho. — LlywelynII 14:38, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for this big comment. I am so happy to have this conversation, because I have these kinds of thoughts on my own, but I'm not sure exactly how to proceed. It will take a while for me to process through what's being said here, but I would like to ask: could the Lvliang and Lvshunkou spellings ever reach the level of acceptance in English that the Boao, Yanan, Tiananmen, etc have? What standard could be applied here? (Also: when I went back and looked at the cites I have put up for Lvliang and Lvshunkou, they all seem to be from Chinese ethnicity authors- I don't know if that affects things.) Should both categories be considered "irregular" and/or "sometimes proscribed" regardless of level of acceptance by English editors? For instance, Tiananmen is probably pretty well accepted, but despite that fact, it's probably still "irregular" or "sometimes proscribed" from an official point of view. No need to respond immediately to any comment I make. Thanks again for your help. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:29, 26 April 2022 (UTC) (modified)

@Geographyinitiative Sure thing and again feel free to bounce stuff off the Village Pump or ping other people like Justin who do a lot of work on Chinese listings.

I'm not going to be able to do anything but repeat what I already wrote above, pending unexpected new data. 110%, rendering ü as v is never going to be anything but a texting kludge or complete error to native English speakers, even though the Chinese writers are doing that because the English default (treating u and ü as one letter) messes with their heads. English used to use v for initial u but not ever for internal ones and everyone's forgotten that anyway; same thing with how the OED points out that Chinglish "I am a Chinese" (for 我是中国人) would seem fine to 17th century writers but isn't any more. I can mentally understand why Chinese writers would use v; it's still "wrong" the same way Shaanxi isn't ever Shanxi within English, even though Shǎnxī is ok when it's only being parsed as a transcription and not as an English word.

Of the 3 names you wrote, only Yan'an really needs its apostrophe. Standard Chinese doesn't have the single syllables boa or tia (those would be parsed as bo'a and tiya), so distinguishing the syllable break isn't strictly necessary for anything other than consistency. In any case, English is simply less used to treating ' as a letter apart from abbreviations and writers who don't already know Chinese won't understand that it's important and will treat the apostropheless version as equivalent. Even Chinese writers aren't always solid on it, albeit more because they can be awkward with hard word breaks in transcriptions. They learn pinyin in books and classes where eve ry thin gis writ ten with syl la ble breaks ra ther than the technically correct word breaks; they tend to be more comfortable writing Xi An or XiAn than Xi'an to begin with, so when they try to follow English rules, it's easy for them to pick up English errors and just run it together as Xian themselves.

It is more of a judgment call, though, whether those should count as "wrong". Mostly the more prominent it is in English (like Tiananmen) the more comfortable seeing it without the apostrophe will be; but Xi'an needing its apostrophe is a pretty common first-day-of-learning-pinyin lesson that people go out of their way to teach and bother other people about. (They do the same thing with Tian'anmen but then follow it up with "but don't worry about that one".) I'd say things fairly well sourced within reputable English sources should just get treated as alt versions with an irregular note in the etymology section. If you need a bright-line rule to work with we could just put proscribed on all the -v- versions that can be sourced, omit the ones that aren't altogether, and just treat everything else as alt versions with a note in their etymology. — LlywelynII 23:05, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

I want to close out here on a theoretical note if possible. You write: "Of the 3 names you wrote, only Yan'an really needs its apostrophe." I agree with this opinion on one level, but by "need" what do we mean here? There are different kinds of "need" in this context as I see it. The first would be "needed because the rules of normative Hanyu Pinyin transliteration require it". In that case, all three "need" the apostrophe. In the second case, by which I mean it above when I agree with you: yes, there is no danger of a Mandarin "tia" or "boa" syllable, but there is a bona fide danger of confusion with a "ya" syllable since the use of these apostrophes is spotty in many cases (if it wasn't spotty, we would KNOW that Yanan means Ya/nan, because any word made up of Yan/an would strictly be spelled Yan'an). In the third case, there is actually no other location called Yanan in English with which to confuse Yan'an, so there is 0.00% necessity in English language communication to use the apostrophe.
Because I am banned on English Wikipedia in part for overcommenting, I have created a personal rule of artificially concluding conversations after four posts on my part. Because of that policy, I have to close it out here, but I will communicate about related issues in other conversation threads. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:19, 29 April 2022 (UTC) (modified)

@Geographyinitiative You're overstating the case for 3. You can't trust Wikipedia's disambiguation pages to exhaustively list every Chinese location any more than you can expect Wiktionary listings to bother to include even western towns and villages. Yan'an is the most common and famous place with the name Yanan, Yan'an, Ya-nan, Yan-an, &c. but Chinese only has about 450 syllables to work with and has an abiding fetish for bisyllabic placenames. I found Yanan in Yamen, Guangdong, in about 10 seconds and I'm sure there's probably another 20 or 30 spread around the country. You can't really count on Wikipedia to have all the Chinese towns and villages even listed as redlinks, although it has made real progress on that.

When I was talking about 'need' as opposed to 'rules', it was in your 2nd sense. I understand there aren't any "Xian" cities nearly as famous as Xi'an so most of the time it doesn't matter. There are marginal cases where it helps (e.g., people who know pinyin but are lousy at geography). I've never read the Chinese rules of pinyin though and only gone through the English ones once. It may be part of the formal system that it's only necessary to mark vowels where confusion is possible (based on the standard dialect's phonemes not based on potential geographical confusion). — LlywelynII 18:16, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Found it. The official rules are use them except when the syllable break is already marked with a hyphen. (This is the pinyin hyphen that gets used for chengyu and certain other specialized applications, not the Wade-Giles one where it goes everywhere.) The one I was thinking about based on ambiguity is how the US Library of Congress explained pinyin to Americans and within its own collection and has nothing to do with the formal Chinese system. — LlywelynII 18:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

&c.

Please don't change the well-understood, everyday "etc." to the dated and pedantic "&c." Equinox ◑ 23:09, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

As a proud pedantically inclined person, I deeply resent that remark! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:00, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Eh, fair enough not to change existing listings as long as it's not a complete rebuild. Otherwise horses, courses. It's good we lost the long s, but &c. should make a comeback and does through continued usage. It's right to say that it was much more common in the past and wrong to pretend that it's only a pedantism, at least per the corpus Ngram is based on. — LlywelynII 17:57, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Is this where I remind you to be sure to change the dated and pedantic etc. to the well understood everyday "and more"? Come off it. xD — LlywelynII 19:47, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Shanghai

If you have a moment, and because you're interested in Shanghai geography topics and I respect your opinion, I want to check with you about the origin of the words 'Shanghai', 'Shang-hai', 'Shanghae' and maybe 'Shanghái' in English. Do these words (or some other equivalent) exist in English before the mid-19th century? (See Citations:Shanghai.) I tried to start a discussion [7] but no one is interested yet. If you know someone else I should ask, what I should go read, or if you find some books or sources for additional citations that you don't want to take time looking through, please send me any of that. Thanks for any help. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:06, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

law enforcement

Curious why you added "law-enforcement" as an alternative form for the noun sense. I don't recall seeing the term hyphenated in a well-edited source except when it is used as a modifier, although I do come across it in news articles published by outlets that have fired their proofreaders, where it is used with maddening inconsistency. In these cases it appears to result from confusion between the substantive usage (always unhyphenated, I would submit) and the attributive usage (where the hyphen is optional but should be included or omitted consistently by a given publication or author). Mere counterexamples would not prove that the hyphenated substantive usage is anything but a mistake; is there a stylebook that specifically allows it? 2603:6081:8040:E92C:9D4:9DF3:8587:45E7 21:47, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Too many links

This diff has them. [8] Please don't. Theknightwho (talk) 09:26, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

links is more useful, generally speaking. You know, if you want to use a hypertext based dictionary but hate the idea of hyperlinks, you can configure the links to show up as black so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities. For the rest of them, you have no idea which words someone might need to check. You aren't obliged to type them in yourself. Removing functionality for others on the basis of nothing apart from your personal sense of aesthetics, though, seems counterproductive, especially since it's so easy for you to fix your problem on your end. — LlywelynII 09:58, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I never said that I "hate the idea of hyperlinks"; I said that that diff has too many of them. The reason being that they overwhelm the reader. Given that we care about how the dictionary appears to the average reader, I am informing you of the problem. Note that Wikipedia takes the exact same approach. Theknightwho (talk) 10:17, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The fix was correct, and aesthetics is not only personal. Impacting legibility on the basis of nothing apart from a tiny chance of use cases seems counterproductive. You should have an idea which words someone would like to check—not only generally speaking but also on the individual pages what would be useful. Fay Freak (talk) 14:35, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree that we often have too many blue links. For example, to hyperlink words like plant, tree, shrub, leaf, wood in a definition of a vernacular organism name or a specialized botanical term is at best distracting. I find it annoying. More importantly, the presence of a link may imply that there is some special, restricted meaning to the linked term. Blue links often seem to be a way of fobbing off on the normal user what should be our job: making a definition that can stand on its own, not one that requires any cognitive gymnastics. DCDuring (talk) 17:16, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Just to Make it Clear...

Entries have talk pages, and there's always WT:RFDE. Making an entry argue with or insult itself is really, really bad. Remember, when you're writing in an entry YOU ARE WIKTIONARY and it doesn't matter what the provocation may be- DON'T EVER DO THAT!

Sorry for the melodramatics, but I've never seen a veteran editor do anything like this. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:07, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

The entry wasn't arguing against itself. It was accurately presenting where that "expression" originated, to the extent organ grinder, not the monkey has ever been "an expression".

That said, sorry to've upset you over it. You're right, the better thing would've been to have allowed the correction to go through without the revert and the needless administrative procedures just to position the correct information at organ grinder and monkey (as set figurative senses) and/or at talk to the organ grinder, not the monkey (as an idiom). I'll check Equi's talk page periodically for the reminders I'm sure will be forthcoming. — LlywelynII 07:18, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Běijīng

This blocked user is asking that their block be reviewed:

LlywelynII (block log • active blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • abuse filter log • user creation log • change block settings • unblock)

---

Request reason:

Aside from the fact that my points were objectively correct, within policy, and in line with the thoughts of most editors, this wasn't edit warring. I get the general idea of spanking me for the things above (fair enough), but here User:Theknightwho made up the idea of 'edit warring' over one single revert, correcting the original which was (as the RfD is proving) entirely mistaken.

Even if whoever reviews this dislikes me personally for my actual mistakes above, even if this doesn't lead to any censure or spanking for TKW, one of the other admins really should set him/her down and nip this kind of abuse of power in the bud before they actually scare other people off of the project. As is, this is going to keep me from fixing the entries on Lan Xang that should have some Vietnamese added and some etyms included. I'm sure I'll be on to different things before the ban dies off.

S/he also separately just made things up and ignored correction of the layout and formatting of the Beijing entry. I don't want to edit war (or 'edit war') over that either, but it'd be nice if a disinterested admin could look over the change, assess whether or not it was actually correct, and provide feedback. Defdates belong with the senses, not the etym, and there's no reason to repeat the same information twice or be needlessly vague over the sense's date. That said, if you guys insist that it's absolutely great, then eh that's worth knowing. It's an eyesore and redundant (just like the "English" for tonal pinyin) but if it's actually standard now... eh... at least I should know. (As for removing the 'provide source', none of that was made up, as TKW went out their way to (wrongly) personally insult me about. There are entire articles on Beijing's name and they're thoroughly sourced. There's no reason to clutter up the entry here with each of several different points, when TKW doesn't actually have a stated objection to any of them. There's no one on Talk:Beijing actually objecting to any of it either, so it's completely opaque what the problem with the entry is supposed to be.)

Related, obviously: There doesn't seem to be an easy to find Wikt/WT article/redirect or link via Community Policies about an edit warring policy. Is there one anywhere? If it's different here from WP:3RR, also fair enough... but this would a pretty counterproductive way of informing other people about it. — LlywelynII 13:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@LlywelynII You were objectively wrong to remove an entry by speedy deleting it instead of going through the RFD procedure. You can either accept that and move on, or you can continue to make the same mistakes and land yourself longer bans.

You have a very poor approach to collaboration, and are consistently difficult to work with. I suggest you work on that before returning to the project. Theknightwho (talk) 14:52, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Of course you aren't going to disagree with your own administrative decision. I was asking for a second opinion from an uninvolved admin even though, sure, the default position will be to defer to your position, if not your specific actions. Apparently you're building up a track record though, and this is just further documenting one part of it. — LlywelynII 11:21, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

@LlywelynII I know have concerns about me (diff) concerning gatekeeping/ownership & such accusations. But just remember: I didn't do the specific thing you thought I had done. You said: "This is just gatekeeping/ownership, given that you took the time to get some cites." But I hadn't gotten those cites nor did I make the entry- it was someone else that did! I would never have made that entry myself for similar concerns that you have. Maybe those cites and the new cites I found are actually relevant to 'Mandarin' as code-switching. IDK! You've changed my mind at various points. I sincerely hope to keep working with you over time. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:10, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative ffw, I wrote that in response to the other guy. Sorry if I got personal, esp if it ended up in a response to you, who I well know are one of the good ones. Keep on keepin' on and don't let the bastards (myself incl.) get ya down. =)

Edit: Oh, I had misremembered. It was towards 'this' as the situation, not you personally, though you were part of it. Of course you were right that an RfD was better procedure even though the silliness of the argument speaks to how the RfD will go. Anyone who supports it now because they think it's uncommon to have a few people on the internet or in academic journals use pinyin tones in running text has no idea, and they'll support it after the next few hundred entries get done and sourced by a completionist and it starts spilling over into French and other languages that have sinologists. — LlywelynII 11:19, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Please don't let any mistake I make or someone else makes turn you off to making edits here! Thank you for being here. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:29, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative Exact opposite. I'll be here til the other hotheads with more admin powers toss me out xD but hopefully neither they nor I put you off your feed.

In any case, sorry for having said sth you took so much to heart. I do know better w/r/t you and was annoyed at (I thought) the other guy for the revert. I wouldn't've kept going past the once but TKW chose to ride in at that moment, obviously for personal issues of their own. If tonal pinyin survives the AfD for this entry, it won't after some completionist decides to build their edit count by throwing some sinologist cites together in English, French, German, etc. and adding it to almost any major placename, every personal name, and some major concepts like mianzi and xiao. It's just a waste of everyone's time.

If it ultimately gets pinyin treated as translingual, which is more accurate if scientific Latin is "translingual", I guess that would be fair. No one is using it as English qua English, though, just marking what it should sound like in proper Mandarin. It's the precise same thing as if someone started marking plant names with Latin macrons: it's not English in any way shape or form, just more accurate Latin. — LlywelynII 11:47, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Vote open

Just dropping you a line to let you know that the desysop vote is now open since some of the evidence concerns Theknightwho's engagement with you. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 03:46, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks & Alt Forms

Thanks for your kind words about me in Wikipedia. There's an interesting discussion going on at Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2023/May#alternative_form_of_alternative_forms about alt forms of alt forms. You created a "double alt" situation at Chung-nan-hai. Are there other Wade-Giles or similar words in Wiktionary where you would do a "double alt" set up? Thanks. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:23, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Using opaque abbreviations in entries

I'm not the only one who has told you to stop using these: they are not user-friendly, and they are completely unnecessary. Tell yourself whatever narrative you like about how common you want to pretend they are, but the fact is that Wiktionary exists to be user-friendly. I also don't care about whatever personal beef you think you have with me: I'm going to treat you in exactly the same way as any other user. Theknightwho (talk) 08:03, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Romance < Latin etymologies

Hello,

Could you please use {{der}} in such etymologies in the future? You have been using {{inh}} for various borrowings, most recently Italian tergiversatore.

There exists an appendix relating to the matter of inheritances versus borrowings in Italian, should you wish to peruse it.

Best, Nicodene (talk) 09:42, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

If you are not certain whether a given word was inherited from Latin or borrowed, then please avoid adding using either {{inh}} or {{bor}} and use {{der}} instead.

@Nicodene Sure thing. Is it better to use uder? or der works just fine in this context and other editors will go through them later for sorting? — LlywelynII 03:59, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, {{uder}} is probably better, yes. Nicodene (talk) 17:47, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Usage Notes

At Haerbin#Usage_notes, I talk about use of the geyin fuhao. What do you think about this? Could something like this be used at Chungnanhai for the hypens and elsewhere for words with an omitted Wade-Giles spiritus asper? Please ping me. Thanks! --Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:18, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative After the random abuse I got for explaining my thoughts on that Cantonese town, I'm not particularly anxious to get into it.

Since you asked, though, my own opinion is that (a) you should be sure that the form you're seeing actually is bad pinyin. For example, continued modern use of Shanghai is influenced by pinyin but the actual derivation of the English name long predates it and has a different origin. If the 'bad pinyin' forms of these names is actually from an earlier irregular romanization, you'd just say that. Then there'd be a note in the etymology that continued use of the form might be influenced/reinforced/&c. by pinyin with omission of the technically required apostrophe. (b) Even when you're sure bad pinyin is the origin like with Xian, that's just something to very quickly note in the etymology (...irregular form of...) and in each inaccurate sense (lb|en|proscribed, lb|en|usually|_|proscribed, &c.) and not anything to do with a usage note, let alone a paragraph of opinion and instruction that just belongs at Wikipedia's entry on Hanyu Pinyin. It's not a note on usage at all. It's a note on the mistaken etymology that produced this form. (c) There's absolutely no reason to talk about it as a "geyin fuhao" in the English language. It's an apostrophe required by the rules of pinyin. In the Chinese language, that apostrophe is called a geyin fuhao. In English, it's an apostrophe and there's no special sound (like with okina) that makes it worth preserving a special name for just that item. (Note the lack of any entry at Wikipedia's geyin fuhao and our geyin fuhao and note that my pointing that out is not an encouragement to create one.) At most, you'd gloss it as the syllable-dividing mark or sth w/o the inappropriate and off-topic Chinese characters.

Same thing applies to misapplied Wade-Giles that can't just be called Postal Map. — LlywelynII 15:34, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh and for things that are just mistaken forms, the rest of the way to handle that would be—like with Xian—use of the template alternative form of... pointing directly at the correct form. Basically what that entry looked like before you got ahold of it and it ended up needlessly glossing traditional and simplified and pinyin forms of a Chinese grammatical term twice... — LlywelynII 15:40, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your comment. I appreciate you and I really appreciate your comments and criticism. What I would like to say is that the reason I see this as a 'usage note' is that I write the sentence "Xian can be considered a misspelling of Xi'an." I see that statement as a comment on usage in English rather than an explanation of etymology. Then, once I establish that this term can be considered a misspelling, I guide the reader to understand what makes it a misspelling. Even though that explanation is rooted entirely within the rules of another language, it provides what I see as a valuable thought experiement and aid to someone who doesn't know about these issues, with more clarity than a general explanation on Wikipedia. There are several other issues you mentioned as well which I would like to get into. Also, I would like to direct your attention to Hawai`i and the Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification/English#Hawai`i. I don't know what you'll think about that, but I'm sure it would be valuable. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:49, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative

...can be considered a misspelling...

As before, my own opinion, is that is much better handled by proscribed or sometimes proscribed as an lb tag. Similarly, discussion of why it's a misspelling is better handled in the etymology: ...pinyin romanization of... without the usual syllable marker. Similarly, discussion of the proper form is better handled as a alternative form of... the correct form. There's nothing that's aided by a "usage note" here, except the editor showing off why s/he knows the form is less correct. It's much more elegant and helpful to the reader to simply explain where this form came from and then guide them to the correct usage since (at least with Xi'an) this is only ever an informal or uneducated mistake.

It's nothing so wrong that I'm going fight or revert anything. I just know you're a completionist, so whatever you end up deciding to do will end up on 1500 related entries and, yeah, it's worth at least explaining why I think that's wrong even and there's a better way to handle it, even though your heart is obviously in the right place. — LlywelynII 22:27, 7 July 2023 (UTC)