Talk:𒊕

Sumerian entry

• I don't think the following belong here (sag̃ = head):

  𒇽𒊕 ((lu₂)sag̃, “a palace official”) ==> I haven't found this on ePSD2...

  𒊕𒉺𒆸 (zaraḫ, “lamentation, wailing”) ==> not sure it count's as a derived word (it just contains the same cuneiform sign as the entry, but doesn't contain the word "sag̃")

From Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup

Language? Translingual symbol or something? --Connel MacKenzie 17:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

It’s a script, like Arabic, Cyrillic, and Hiragana. —Stephen 17:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying that like Cyrillic а and Hiragana あ it should have language/translingual at L2 as appropriate, and split meanings/pronunciation in individual languages into separate L2 language headings? (Arabic أ is a redlink; see also a α ᐊ द ア 阿 ㅏ א) Cynewulf 21:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Not exactly. ==Cyrillic alphabet==, then ===Letter===, then #Azeri, #Russian, #Serbian; then if, besides being a letter, it is also a word or an abbreviation, then: ---- ==Russian== ---- ==Serbian==, etc. —Stephen 17:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

For Arabic letters, see Appendix:Arabic script. —Stephen 17:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

What happened to using ==Translingual== for alphabets? "Cyrillic alphabet" was never acceptable as a language heading. --Connel MacKenzie 19:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

We go round and round on this, but I'm not particularly happy with calling them Translingual. In all the discussion, I haven't seen an approach that really seemed to work well. On the one hand, yes certain letters, glyphs, or characters are used in multiple languages, but some of them are restircted to a single language. Using a consistent header (like Translingual) is good, but it doesn't make a distinction between different systems of writing. Having ç and ю and ω and ग all identified as "Letter" by the third level of header fails to make clear the fundamental fact that no language uses all four symbols to spell words. For words, we begin by distinguishing between languages at L2. That's the fundamental distinction we want to make. So, why aren't we making a fundamental distinction between character systems when it comes to letters? Stephen's proposal would do that, making our L2 distinctions consistent across both words and characters. Labelling them all as Translingual > Letter does not. --EncycloPetey 19:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

And as I am pleading over and over again now, let’s just introduce ==Symbol== and keep ==Translingual== for internationally used abbreviations such as kg, ms but also g. H. (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

RFC discussion: December 2006–January 2009

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

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.

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𒊕

Where in the Appendix does this go? --Connel MacKenzie 07:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Does belong in the main namespace, it is a single cuneiform sign. Needs some serious formatting though. (Translingulal/Akkadian/Hittite/Sumerian language sections.) Robert Ullmann 08:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it belongs in the main namespace, just like letters of the alphabet and Japanese kana syllables. Instead of ==Translingual==, I prefer ==Cuneiform script==, with Akkadian, Hittite, and Sumerian sections. —Stephen 12:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Level 2 headers are all languages, or "Translingual". "Cuneiform sign" belongs at level 3 (in Translingual). The language sections following do belong at level 2, in alphabetical order. The references should be at L4, under the L3 Cuneform sign heading. All this is the same way we do everywhere else. Robert Ullmann 12:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Alphabets and scripts are different from words. We spent a lot of time thinking about this before doing the Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets and came to the conclusion that names of scripts and alphabets where letters are concerned were the equivalent of names of languages where words are concerned. As for "translingual", I wouldn’t consider anything to be translingual unless it was used by most major languages. Periods, commas, and numerals are translingual (used not only by all languages that use the Roman alphabet, but also the languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet and some languages that use the Arabic script, and to a large extent in languages that use Chinese ideograms and in most languages that use various syllabaries), but cuneiform glyphs, while used by several ancient languages, are not, in my opinion, translingual and are not used by any language except those few that use cuneiform. Cuneiform certainly is not equivalent to modern periods, commas and numerals. —Stephen 13:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather have a consistent way of dealing with all symbols, by placing them in ==Translingual== so we know where they can be found. "Cuniform script" is a little too specific to only one alphabet. Do we need a ==Miscellaneous== language heading? I don't want to see 7,000 separate alphabets, listing only the alphabet of a rare script and nothing else. --Connel MacKenzie 17:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Symbols and letters are different. Symbols such as !@#$%^&* are translingual. Alphabets may be used by many languages (Roman), some languages (Arabic), a few languages (Cyrillic), or only one or two languages (Greek, hiragana, hangul, Tamil, Oriya, Khmer, Thai, Lao, and many, many others). It is very consistent to treat symbols as translingual (when they are, since some are not), and scripts according as done for the Cyrillic and Arabic scripts. —Stephen 17:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I followed that. Wouldn't that imply that there would be a language heading for each language that uses that character? Or should alphabets simply be kept in the Index: or Appendix: namespace, with no trace left in the main namespace? I know this has been discussed before, but I do not recall where, nor what the outcome was. --Connel MacKenzie 20:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

No, each language that uses the letter in question would be in alphabet order following a #: ==Cyrillic alphabet==, ===Letter===, Г, г, # Fourth letter of the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet, representing the sound ...; # Fourth letter of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, representing the sound ...; # Fourth letter of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, representing the sound ...; # Fourth letter of the Ukrainian alphabet, representing the sound ...; etc. Then if, besides being a letter of the alphabet, it is also a word or abbreviation, it gets the usual language headers: ---- ==Russian== ===Abbreviation===, etc. —Stephen 17:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Since all level two headings are considered "languages," that approach will really hose up the statistics I currently generate. I'm sorry, but I don't see the compelling reason to make the exception to the "Translingual" language heading. That already is our one place to put stuff like that. --Connel MacKenzie 18:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Where is your place to put all the letters and syllabary syllables that are used by only a single language, such as most of the Asian scripts (both alphabets and syllabaries) as well as some African and American scripts (such as the Cherokee syllabary). Headings like ==Cuneiform script== and ==Cyrillic alphabet== seems much more useful and practical to me than statistics. —Stephen 17:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

My understanding is that they go under ==Translingual== because even in English, we refer to those symbols as "An alphabet character of the xxx script." --Connel MacKenzie 23:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

My understanding of translingual is that, like !@#$%^&*(), it can be used in numerous languages. Many scripts and alphabets are used by only one language, and most other scripts contain several or many glyphs that are used by only one language. A letter such as the Ӳ ӳ of Chuvash. While it is a Cyrillic letter, it is not translingual since no other language uses that Cyrillic letter. Actually, I think the symbol № should be listed as Cyrillic rather than translingual, because it is only used by languages such as Russian that use the Cyrillic alphabet, due to the fact that these languages have no N on their keyboards. Languages that use the Roman alphabet, such as English, do not use that symbol, but write No. instead (or nº, etc., depending on the language). —Stephen 06:45, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

That still seems unsatisfactory (inconsistent) to me. What other approaches haven't we tried yet, or mistakenly rejected in the past, that would work better? --Connel MacKenzie 21:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems like we rather simply have to think about another word for ‘Translingual’, such that letters also fit under it, since I really think they belong there. What difference does it make whether a symbol is used in only one language or more than one? We want an entry for it, and we want that entry to explain what kind of symbol it is and how it is used in which languages. It is generally agreed that this should not be put under the header for the languages in question, so a general header is needed. This is Translingual, but due to the ‘trans’ some people are not happy with it. How about just Symbol? (And have those that are now ==Translingual== ===Symbol=== be ==Symbol== ===More specific type of symbol=== (i.e. punctuation or IPA or ...)) Re: ‘We spent a lot of time thinking about this before doing the Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets’: who is we here? I already planned to ‘clean up’ those entries after I finished the Greek alphabet (in the far future, that is ;-)) H. (talk) 13:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

This isn't yet perfect (still needs some cuneiform script, but has been tagged with a script request), but has been greatly improved. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:36, 8 January 2009 (UTC)