User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 22

*ageti and suppletion

Rua formerly added a preform of Old Irish ebla into the conjugation table, but then changed her mind and removed it. Another editor put the ebla-preform back (I'll call this *ɸeleti from now on), confusing me. So basically after a little cursory research on the suppletion among the descendants of *ageti, I found that:

• *ɸeleti nor Old Irish ebla are mentioned nowhere in the EDPC, not even in the entry for *ageti.
• Old Irish aigid suppletes *ɸeleti for its future, while Brythonic languages like Welsh mynd (where all the *ageti forms ended up) suppleted the root for its subjunctive instead.
• The derivative *toageti also shows *ɸeleti suppletion in the subjunctive of Welsh dod. Cornish seems to have suppleted its cognate bod instead in this position. The Old Irish descendant do·aig has no attested future forms. Also, Welsh dod (“to come”) and Old Irish do·aig (“to drive off”) have very incompatible semantics for some reason.

The main question is, should suppletion be reconstructed for this verb at the Proto-Celtic level? Or should we reconstruct *ɸeleti independently and deal with the suppletion in usage notes or the descendants section? mellohi! (僕の乖離) 18:14, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: It's probably best to reconstruct *ɸeleti independently, though probably not under that form, since the only forms known to have existed are future *ɸiɸlāti and subjunctive *ɸelāti. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:39, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: That didn't stop Matasović from reconstructing *werVti despite only being known to exist in the suppletive preterite of another verb. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 07:47, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: Matasović doesn't reconstruct present indicative forms though, as we do, he reconstructs roots; he doesn't list *werVti, he lists *wer-V-. But yeah, I don't know why he doesn't list the root *ɸel- (in his spelling, *fel-). —Mahāgaja · talk 08:26, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: I finally managed to track down where ebla and its cognates were in the EDPC. Turns out Matasović parked it, under its absolute form eblaid, under *ɸalnati, also the source of ad·ella. Presumably in Proto-Celtic it was B IV-ish and the future of this verb was suppleted into the reflexes of *ageti, and by Old Irish *ɸalnati turned weak. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 22:32, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

commons:Special:Contributions/Joe_byrne

Regarding the audio files: Are these actually Irish pronunciations, or are they English? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:52, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: He may not be a native speaker, but the pronunciations sound pretty authentic. At least he uses a real /x/ sound, unlike a lot of English-speaking Irish people who just use /k/. —Mahāgaja · talk 23:01, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Someone removed one of them at Sinn Féin and I didn't know why. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:10, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that person has removed a lot of Irish audio pronunciations; he seems to be a purist. And they are nonnative pronunciations, just not the worst ones I've ever heard. —Mahāgaja · talk 23:22, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

So should we keep them removed or revert the deletions? mellohi! (僕の乖離) 23:14, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Keep them removed I guess. —Mahāgaja · talk 23:16, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

A bot will just re-add them if we don't take any action. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:06, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm inclined to do nothing and let the purist edit-war with the bot if he wants to. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:09, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

absolute verbs: in Irish Gaelic, or Irish English?

There's a definition at absolute:

• {{lb|en|Irish|Welsh}} Being or pertaining to an [[inflected]] verb that is not preceded by any number of [[article]]s or compounded with a [[preverb]].

I suspect this was an attempt to say that such verbs are found in Irish and Welsh, not (what it actually displays as) that this definition is limited to Ireland and Wales. Can you confirm and, if appropriate, remove the label? - -sche (discuss) 02:13, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Declension discrepancy between DIL and Matasovic again about mír

DIL calls this a neuter n-stem while Matasovic calls this a neuter s-stem. Which one is right? DIL cites a blatant neuter n-stem accusative plural in "mírend" from LU. However, a neuter s-stem origin would explain how it did not end in /m/ in the nominative singular. Both options would end up with a genitive terminating in /e/ anyhow. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 17:40, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Thurneysen pp. 212–13 says mír is declined as a neuter n-stem synchronically in Old Irish but that it probably wasn't originally one, and compares it to Latin membrum. Rather, it was probably attracted to the declension of boimm (“morsel”) and/or loimm (“draught”). I have no idea why Matasovic thinks it was an s-stem. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:48, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: My first guess was that Matasovic thought the n-stem forms are of secondary provenance and left them out, and assumed that it was an s-stem attracted to the n-stems via both declensions sharing a genitive ending. But that doesn't solve another difficulty in Matasovic's etymology - he assumes that the s in the PIE *mḗmsrom would assimilate with the r to make rr yet there is no evidence for unlenited r (such as doubled R) in the attestations. The neuter o-stem transferring to the neuter s-stems also is puzzling. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 20:02, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Thurneysen agrees with the etymology, but doesn't call it an s-stem. I wonder whether Matasovic was confusing this word with μέρος (méros), which is an s-stem. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:08, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Angr

I miss your old username. --{{victar|talk}} 22:29, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, one doesn't want to be angr-y all the time. For what it's worth, I still think of Rua as CodeCat. —Mahāgaja · talk 05:13, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I guess. Yeah, same. That said, I would have supported @Equinox's name change to Inebrinox, Equitoxicated, or and any equally funny alcohol themed username. --{{victar|talk}} 05:29, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

lol. I don't know why people keep changing their names. We must accept our mistakes, and swallow them, like disgusting piles of salmiakki. Equinox ◑ 01:16, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't find salmiakki disgusting! And I have no desire to change my name. So there. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:21, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I've legally changed my name twice. Then I realised that if you hate yourself you still hate yourself. I still get bank statements with the wrong initials though. My pronouns are OOPS, DUH, and FUCK IT. Equinox ◑ 01:22, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

And (serious for once) it's also very difficult for me to gender Rua correctly, bc once you first know someone, something is burned into your brain. I don't really have to talk to Rua ever. But I have a friend in the same situation, M2F, I have no problem using the new name, but I always slip up and say "he" when talking to others. And then you don't wanna correct yourself because it seems like you're making a big deal and drawing attention, ARGH! Oh well. It's hard to get this right. I'm a horrible alt-rightist and I try and I'm old. BTW I don't care about your old user name, I was just drawn here due to someone dirtily pinging me. Equinox ◑ 01:26, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I have several IRL friends like that too. It's going to take awhile for my brain to adapt, but adapt it will, yet funny enough, the name change is harder than anything else. --{{victar|talk}} 02:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Ooof, too real for my liking, but cheers to coming out the end of that shit tunnel. As someone also going through a IRL name change, as slight as it might be, all I can say to my fiends is sorry for the hassle and please don't fuss over me. --{{victar|talk}} 02:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I love all forms of liquorice, salted or not. --{{victar|talk}} 02:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, I think Mahagaja is a great user name with no unfortunate connotations. And it even has an etymology: big elephant. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:27, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Very unsurprisingly, Dan Polansky. --{{victar|talk}} 02:57, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

A lot to respond to here! I didn't change my username to cover up past mistakes, or because I hate myself (I don't). My signature said "previously Angr" for a whole year after my name change so that people would know who they were dealing with. As for Rua, I didn't realize she was trans. I knew that Liliana-60 used to "accuse" her of it, as if it were a crime or a character flaw, but I didn't put much credence in anything L60 had to say. I have a couple of M2F trans friends IRL too, including my own niece, and I feel like getting the pronouns right is harder than getting the new name right, but really both are achievable with a little bit of effort. But then, it's generally easy for me to forget people's old names. I know many cis/het women who have changed their surnames upon getting married, and within a few months I've actually forgotten what their maiden name was, even if I knew them for years before they got married. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:13, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Real life is totally different than online, in that respect. Online we only have names, so the very image of someone's username is a surrogate for their face. When someone changes their username, it's almost like that other person died. If that's your goal, to reinvent yourself, mission accomplished, but that's a mindfuck for people that have worked with you 13 years. --{{victar|talk}} 06:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Maybe not super-relevant but I was just doing a large data import for work, and IDs scrolling past my eye, and suddenly we hit numbers in the range 1980 to 2000 or so, and they really gave me a feeling. Oh 1996! That's when I was finishing school and hearing some bad drum and bass music -- etc. If anything can convince you that you mentally read "a word at a time", and not a character a time -- lol. I have decided I probably know more individual words and meanings that any other British human being. Feels okay. But not great. whooooohhf. Equinox ◑ 10:38, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

frk Module Errors

First, a big THANK YOU for all the work you've been doing on this!

There are some entries that haven't hit CAT:E yet. At least some of them can be found by searching on ' "frk" is not valid'. I'll see if I can figure out how to do a more specific search. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:22, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

They're trickling into CAT:E, and I'm fixing them as I find them. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:30, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Here's a full list from the latest dump if you'd like to go at them a bit quicker. — Eru·tuon 18:42, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

The {{der}}, {{bor}}, etc. ones are okay, since they get converted to the right language code by the system. It seems to be only the {{etyl}} and {{m}} ones that end up with module errors. The list is huge enough without adding that stuff in. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Even {{etyl}} is only a problem because it's used in parallel with {{m}}. The templates that fail are {{l}}, {{m}}, and {{m+}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:54, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Ach, I should've thought of that. Here I've removed the templates that accept etymology language codes. — Eru·tuon 19:18, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Then there are the cases where the template is right, but there's no asterisk. That causes a module error too. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:53, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Ahh, here's a list of asterisk-less cases. It includes alt parameters without asterisks, though they don't seem to trigger a module error.

Frankish Language

Hello Mahagaja,

What happened to the Frankish language lemmas page and such? All those reconstructed words are all gone.

Please get back to me ASAP. Leornendeealdenglisc (talk) 05:48, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Leornendeealdenglisc: In accordance with Wiktionary:Votes/2020-01/Make Frankish an etymology-only variant of Proto-West Germanic, they've all been moved to Proto-West Germanic. —Mahāgaja · talk 05:54, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Declension class of Old Irish mí (“month”)

I really feel like changing this noun's declension class from "masculine s-stem" to irregular as its synchronic and diachronic evolution had absolutely nothing to do with the neuter s-stems. It's a miscellaneous consonant stem akin to cnú (which incidentally is usually called a "feminine u-stem", an outright nonsensical label), but with its stem ending in -ns- instead of -w-. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 19:02, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Mellohi!:, OK, I don't mind. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:03, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Template:R:DIL

There's a massive problem with this template - it's citing one edition of DIL (the print edition published 1976) but links to a completely separate, later edition (published 2007-2019). I'm thinking of changing the R:DIL template to match the online edition since it's the most up-to-date and accessible version, looking something like this:

• Gregory Toner, Maire Ní Mhaonaigh, Sharon Arbuthnot, Dagmar Wodtko, Maire-Luise Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “Mahagaja/Archive 22”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

Any other ideas? mellohi! (僕の乖離) 06:23, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

I didn't realize it was a new edition. I thought the online edition was just a copy of the print edition. If not, go for it! —Mahāgaja · talk 07:43, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Present conjugation classes of marnaid and at·baill

Amongst Thurneysen and McCone's many disagreements include the class placement of these two verbs. Thurneysen places them in B V while noting that they are "inflecting wholly like B I" (page 356 of GOI), while McCone assigns them to B III (i.e. his S1d). Which is which? mellohi! (僕の乖離) 19:36, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Unless McCone defines B III differently from Thurneysen, I don't see how they can possibly be B III, which is supposed to be verbs with a nasal infix present. For both of these verbs, the nasal is suffixed, not infixed. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:20, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: McCone's primary motivation for placing the two verbs in B III is exactly because of their B I-ish present inflection combined with losing their -n-. It could be explained that their -n- looks suffixed since their n-infixes stood between a liquid and a laryngeal, the latter of which was destroyed on the way to Proto-Celtic. Though they should have ended up in B IV because of that class's identical etymology. McCone and Stifter also state that class B V never palatalized their n-affix except ro·cluinethar (!!!). Stifter places at·baill in "S1" (which could mean either B I or B III) and marnaid in B IV or B V (he uses McCone's umbrella category S3, but Stifter defines the two subcats of S3 with one, equivalent to B IV, having e as stem-vowel, and the other one, equivalent to B V, having i or u as the stem vowel. Obviously marnaid has neither; and in this classification Stifter also contradicts his earlier non-palatalization statement). mellohi! (僕の乖離) 22:21, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

έω

Thank you for creating ξυμπλέω, and for all your care for ancient greek. About -έω bisyllabic verbs: ζέω θέω νέω ξέω πνέω πλέω ῥέω τρέω χέω δέω & δέομαι. And their compounds. They never contract anything except ε+ει or ε+ε (rules) δέω has some exceptions. I have tried to correct Template:grc-conj-present-con-ε-mono in Novermber, and added it at θέω But I need your corrections, perhaps I have made mistakes. I cannot correct all these verbs without your permission and help. I hope you are well and safe, dear, with that corona over our heads. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ | 21:01, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

But I've been using {{grc-conj|pres-con-e-mono}}, not {{grc-conj-present-con-ε-mono}}. And I don't understand module editing well enough to correct it. —Mahāgaja · talk 04:29, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

There are no ζῶ -not the ζῶ i live -, θῶ, πλῶ, νῶ, etc. They do not contract. The imperfect also has the same problem.

The initial table with local contr at Module:grc-conj for con‑e‑mono looks correct, but apparently, it is not applied. Maybe somewhere at the section Apply contraction with lots of if? I do not see con‑e‑mono there. Is it Erutuon who could check? Otherwise, the persent Contracted Template:grc-conj-present-con-ε-mono and an imperfect Contracted -if found- could be used. δέω has to be handled twice, individually. Thanks ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ | 07:46, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Old Irish quote template trouble

I've had issues with two Old Irish quotation templates I created (Template:RQ:sga-MonTall and Template:RQ:sga-Trip), namely that categorizing the templates under Category:Old Irish quotation templates is not letting the two templates appear on the category page itself. (The link to the category page correctly appears on the template pages themselves.) (I've also started on Template:RQ:sga-Laws but it's very unfinished, only having Crith G. and Laws V on there.) mellohi! (僕の乖離) 07:05, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: Fixed now. The template page has to be regenerated, by editing or purging for instance, for the categories on the documentation page to show up (and hence for the template to show up in the category). — Eru·tuon 07:29, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

The name of the River Boyne: Reconstructable for Primitive Irish?

This should be reconstructable for Primitive Irish, given that it turns up loaned into Ancient Greek Βουουινδα (Bououinda) in the second century, in addition to turning up directly in Old Irish later on. Is this reasonable? mellohi! (僕の乖離) 14:25, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, Proto-Celtic *abū windā would mean "White River", that's all I can think of. There's the river goddess Boann whose name is claimed to be *bāus windā (“white cow”) (or a bahuvrihi *bowowindā (“having white cows”)?), but that seems like an odd name for a river goddess, and I think deities of locations are usually named after the locations, even though popular mythology tends to assume the naming goes the other direction. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:53, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

ISBN magic words and user page autonomy

Hello Mahagaja, I recently noticed your edit to my to-do list. I'm a little confused as to why you made the change. I appreciate the general idea of assistance in the workings of my to-do list, but I actually did not mean to utilize any magic words nor generally create a link, merely to leave a quick book identifier for future reference. One of the reasons I'm a little confused is because the edit summary gives the impression that it was done through some process of automation. Another is that I am generally used to myself (and others) have autonomy with respect to pages in their under their user space. Your insight into the edit and its intentions would be greatly appreciated. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 23:35, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

@The Editor's Apprentice: I'm sorry if you felt that I violated your autonomy; I'm just trying to keep Category:Pages using ISBN magic links clear. Basically, the functionality that typing simply ISBN 1234567890 will result in a link to Special:BookSources is going to be removed at some point across all Wikimedia projects, so if you had typed that ISBN because you wanted the link, then at some point you would be dismayed to find it not working. If you don't care about the link, then it's a good idea to type ISBN <nowiki/>123457890; that way no link will appear and the page won't appear in the cleanup category. —Mahāgaja · talk 05:43, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

Alright. Thanks for the clarification. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 16:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Time off

Yo, Angr. Gis a lil block, would ya, guvnor? --Vitoscots (talk) 19:39, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanking

Thank you for helping me with verb (viir). —Thalyson Teixeira1 (talk) 02:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Old Irish declension trouble, again

For dúthracht, first of all DIL states that "Gender not attested in O.Ir. [...] m. in later lang.". It then lists these forms (many also stated in GOI): nominative and dative singular and genitive plural dúthracht, genitive singular dúthrachtan, and nominative/accusative plural dúthrachta (also turning up in Early Modern Irish!), and dative plural dúthracht(a)ib.

This is a very bizarre declension as this means that this term declined as a masculine/feminine n-stem in the singular (also evidenced by an Early Modern Irish form dúthrachtain also found on DIL, which I assumed derived from an accusative singular) and either a neuter o-stem or feminine a-stem in the plural. Out of curiosity, I checked out the quotations for the alleged nominative/accusative plural form in Ml. They are both glosses in the form inna dúthrachta, with the parts of the relevant Latin sentences which they gloss in bold:

profetatur qua exortatione Ezechias ab Assiris et a periculo mortis abductus ussurus sit ad Iudeos, ut gratiarum actiones agantur Deo, et vota reddantur pro tantīs beneficiīs

and

Resuscitari sē petit ut gratiarum vota restituat.

If inna dúthrachta proves to be nominative and accusative plural, this means that it cannot be masculine in the plural. It can't be neuter in the singular since in the quotation cid dúthracht duin[i] from the The Rule of Ailbe of Emly no eclipsis appears. fortacht has a similar oddity, but is decidedly feminine.

It might be one of the few cases where we're forced to list the entire declension manually with {{sga-decl-noun}}. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 14:27, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: According to Thurneysen §727, there are a number of feminine verbal nouns in -t that decline chiefly as i- or ā-stems but that do have some n-stem forms because they've gotten conflated with the suffix -tiu (= Latin -tiō), and this is one of them. Another one is bendacht, for which we've simply listed two declension tables. It's most likely to be feminine, and pace DIL's statement that it was masculine in the later language, modern Irish dúthracht is feminine. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:01, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

You ninja'd me double-checking GOI. Thanks for helping. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 15:05, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: Do you own a copy of GOI? You can get from DIAS for fairly inexpensive, I think. I'm currently in the process of adding the German original to Wikisource, but the translation is still under copyright. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:10, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

出没 devoicing

I see how devoicing messed up the IPA, but then again the devoicing is at しゅ not つ. I don't know if there is a way that shows accurate devoicing and not mess up the IPA. Shen233 (talk) 22:38, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

@Shen233: I'll bring this up at Template talk:ja-pron#char count or mora count for "dev"?. —Mahāgaja · talk 05:38, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello

What went wrong with the IPA "g" in these [1], [2], [3]? I noticed you fixed it. At first I was confused, because, it seems, to my browser it all looks the same. But then I put the two different "g"s through Notepad, and it seems like they are indeed different, which is odd since I use Wiktionary's inbuilt set of IPA symbols to add the pronunciations (and there's also an alert for when you input the "g" incorrectly, if I'm not wrong). Anyway, how can I avoid this in the future? Thank you in advance. — This unsigned comment was added by Alves9 (talk • contribs) at 19:42, 4 July 2020‎ (UTC).

@Alves9: The easiest way is to use {{subst:x2IPA}}, which will automatically convert the normal "g" into the IPA "ɡ" (which is a different Unicode point, although the two look identical in some fonts). The templates {{subst:x2i}}, {{subst:x2ipachar}}, and {{subst:x2rhymes}} do the same thing, and not only for "g" but for all the X-SAMPA characters. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:46, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

grc contracted verbs

Hello! I need a copy-paste-model for -ῶ contracted verbs, and I was wondering if τιμῶ is ok (the 'contracted' label is improvised at the moment). Thank you dear Maha! ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ | 08:16, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking for. Are you talking about the inflection tables at τιμάω? —Mahāgaja · talk 10:22, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Νο, just the page τιμῶ. Is it ok with you? Because I might copy similar ones lots of times. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ | 12:52, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

I guess so. I usually put "contracted" into {{inflection of}} as one of the parameters (usually the last one) rather than putting it into {{lb}}, though. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:13, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Old Irish personal numerals like óenar

DIL thinks all rhotic-final personal numerals are masculine, while GOI and virtually everyone else thinks they're neuter. Which gender is correct? mellohi! (僕の乖離) 13:18, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: GOI §388 actually provides evidence they're neuter (nominative plural in a broad consonant, not a slender one), and if VKG §479.2 is right that the "compound of fer" theory is just folk etymology and the actual source is a suffix *-aro-, then there isn't even an a priori reason to expect a masculine. I suspect DIL is thinking of Middle/Modern Irish. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:00, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Thurneysen's trí nónbor is from the TBC (LU edition). However, in the YBL edition, the final r is in fact slender. In Fled Bricrenn (the extant recension of which is c. 875-900), it also inflects as a masculine o-stem, within the phrase ro marb trá na tri nonboru (section 84). His other neuter example is from BDD, the major recension of which is in Middle Irish. This discrepancy can be resolved by assuming that the gender was idiosyncratically changed to masculine by later copyists or whatever to match up with that of fer. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 18:35, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, Middle Irish was beginning to lose the neuter anyway, and it's easy to see that a word referring to humans – especially one popularly believed to be a compound of fer – would easily become a masculine if it was originally neuter. It's much harder to believe an originally masculine form would sometimes be treated as a neuter. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:43, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

wood

@Mahagaja: Is it true that 'uudu' was in fact the name for letter 'u' in Irish ogham script? According to the Irish Picts site it meant 'wood' and was alleged to be derived from an identical Indo-European lexeme. If so, it explains how wudu was borrowed into Old English later than the native widu and may also indicate potential separate roots for fiodh and Old Irish fid; or else raises the question as to whether the true Proto-Celtic root was widu or uudu. Kind Regards. Andrew H. Gray 17:31, 16 July 2020 (UTC) Andrew

@Werdna Yrneh Yarg: As far as I know the name for the Ogham "u" (ᚒ) is úr, not uudu. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:47, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Werdna Yrneh Yarg: Re: The assumption that "wudu was borrowed into Old English..."; The u instead of i can be easily explained as an irregular rounding. It's not the only English word witnessed doing this — woman is another well-attested case of this. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 18:45, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks. Andrew H. Gray 18:54, 16 July 2020 (UTC) Andrew

Identifying SMMD as from 1160

I would like a clarification on dating the extant recension of SMMD to that of the compilation of the Book of Leinster in Template:RQ:mga-SMMD. Thurneysen prefaced his edition with the following:

Judging by the language as a whole, I think the original tale was composed roughly about A.D. 800. [...] All our manuscripts agree in such late forms as do·cúadais-siu, tánaccais-siu [Mellohi note: I assume they are respectively s-preterites derived from those of téit and do·icc, respectively]. The neuter was occasionally preserved [...], but often changed [...]. Thus we may presume a common source, say, of the tenth or eleventh century.

1160 is not in the 11th century. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 18:42, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

You bring up a good point. It's hard to know how to date an oral tradition, but our templates for the Iliad and Odyssey (for example) list the date as the approximate date of composition (800–600 BC), not the date of the earliest manuscript. I don't mind if we change the date of SMMD to "ca. 1000". —Mahāgaja · talk 19:38, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

eye dialect

Im confused. your reply here starts out with "no" but it seems like youre making my point for me when you show that only a few of the words in that paragraph represent colloquial mispronunciations. that is, the speaker pronounces their words just fine, but cant spell. i plan to stick with this subject but i dont think the debate is relevant to the vote itself so I wont post an additional reply on the main page ... instead i posted on the talk page and made a few edits to the Wikipedia article. —Soap— 14:59, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the point is that the speaker doesn't know how to spell. We're not seeing the words as the speaker believes they're spelled. The speaker could be completely illiterate (and thus not have the remotest idea how anything is spelled); or the speaker could actually be a good speller and simply sound uneducated. (I've met people who sound like uneducated hicks but actually have bachelor's degrees.) The goal of eye dialect is just to make the reader believe that the character has some kind of thick accent associated with uneducated people. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:06, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, but Im not satisfied .,... if by sounding uneducated we mean talking with a thick accent, and by eye dialect we mean words improperly spelled but properly pronounced, how can the two coincide? All I can see is the edge case where eye dialexct spellings are mixed in with spellings depicting actual mispronunciations, but then that leaves us with no term for eye dialect proper, where the pronunciation is entirely normal. Thanks, —Soap— 14:52, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the point is that the speaker isn't doing the spelling, the person quoting them is. The speaker might very well be pronouncing everything perfectly according to the standard, but the quoter is deliberately using nonstandard spellings to give the appearance of mispronunciation. That's why it's called eye dialect- it's strictly for the eye of the reader, not the ear. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:02, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

(e/c) It's exactly the fact that eye dialect is mixed in with spellings representing actually nonstandard pronunciations that lets us know it's eye dialect. On the vote page, I directed your attention to the following quote at wimmin:

I thank the lord that thare aint menny wimmin in the wurld who want tu know evry thing. I kalkerlate that 9 out ov evry 10 ov the wimmin who luv their huzbands and glory in their children, will sa that tha had ruther be looked down upon in luving tenderniss than tu be looked up tu in silent aw.

In this quote, thare, menny, wimmin, wurld, tu, evry, ov, luv(ing), huzbands, sa, tha, tenderniss, and aw are all eye dialect. Only kalkerlate and ruther actually represent nonstandard pronunciations. The overall effect of the passage lets you know that the speaker "sounds like a hick"; if the author had used only kalkerlate and ruther but spelled all other words in the normal way, the reader would have thought the speaker pronounced only those two words strangely. But all the eye dialect lets you know the entire passage is pronounced in a "hick accent". And sometimes nonstandard pronunciations differ from the standard in ways that can't really be depicted in spelling. In Southern U.S. English, for example, the stressed vowel of the words love and husband sounds quite different from how it sounds in educated General American, but it doesn't sound close enough to any other vowel to allow us to use a different spelling to indicate it. Using eye dialect tells us indirectly that the speaker probably uses the nonstandard pronunciation, even though there's no direct way to show that vowel difference (short of using IPA, which of course no novelist is going to do!). —Mahāgaja · talk 15:32, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, thank you both. It just doesnt sit right with me .... it reminds me of a classmate who I heard insisting that wood and would were pronounced differently but unable to explain the difference .... but pushing my opinion at this point would be against the spirit of the project so I'll let it be. My votes on the thread are unrelated to this side issue so I am leaving them up. —Soap— 13:33, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Old Irish suppletion trouble, gataid edition

There's this hypothesis floating around since Pedersen and Thurneysen that the forms listed under "1 do-alla" on DIL served as suppleted augmented forms for gataid. As such, I have listed several forms of do·alla under the conjugation table at gataid. EIV states that the hypothesis was "strong but not proven". However, gataid has a ro-augmented passive preterite attested in the Táin Bó Fráich, but given how the passive preterites and non-passive preterites derive from different stems in many verbs in general I believe it is not counter-evidence. Given an examination of the conjugations of both verbs, do you think it's plausible for the augmented/perfect forms of gataid to be from do·alla this way? mellohi! (僕の乖離) 23:41, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Sure, it's plausible. It's probably a good idea to mention the "strong but not proven" comment in an etymology section or usage notes section, but there's no reason not to mention the hypothesis. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:10, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

References

adipose

Thanks for adding this rhyme. Note that as it is stressed on the first syllable, it does not belong in the section to which you added it (words there must be stressed on the final syllable). I have moved it to the "Partial rhymes" section. — Paul G (talk) 18:02, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Paul G: That wasn't me, that was an anon. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:07, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the apostrophes in my Ojibwe entries

Much appreciated. I'm not sure i even know where to find the curly one on my keyboard. Have you done a systematic review, or should i keep looking? SteveGat (talk) 13:32, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

@SteveGat: You can't find the curly one (the modifier letter) on your keyboard, but you can find it in the menu below the edit box: go to the dropdown menu, select "IPA and enPR", then click the apostrophe-looking thing right after "Ejectives:". You can also type {{subst:x2i|_>}} and that will make it too. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:53, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

mucár again

According to The language of the annals of Ulster (Tomás Ó Máille 1910), apparently the Annals of Ulster from c. 750, onwards are in "contemporary language" (section 17), making mucár in fact Old Irish, since it appears in the year 828 in the Annals of Ulster, where DIL approximately records the term. In that attestation, it also referred to a slaughter of porpoises, not pigs. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 20:11, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, the entry in DIL gives the quote as "mucār mār di muccaibh mora" with a very suspiciously Early Modern-looking bh. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:55, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

The surviving manuscripts themselves were copied in the Early Modern Irish period, obviously. The bh may have come from the copying or later editors. It's not even the most severe example of copyist mutilation; Aislinge Óenguso is dated by virtually everyone to the 8th century but its surviving 16th-century manuscript is infested with typos introduced by Middle Irish and Early Modern Irish copyists. mellohi! (僕の乖離) 04:09, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh, the same old story. OK, we can call it Old Irish then. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:40, 31 July 2020 (UTC)