User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 9

Sorbian word for pain

Atitarev added the Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian word for pain, ból. I just wanted to let you know (and possibly cheer you up). --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 06:05, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you and you're welcome, and besides: would you rather be right? or would you rather have peace? --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 19:38, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Backaroma

Did you notice that this is defined as English, not German?SemperBlotto (talk) 09:45, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

It was, but I've fixed that now. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:46, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

သွားပိ

Hi,

I have a Burmese textbook - "Burmese for beginners" by Gene Mesher, it has a phrase သွားပိ (swa:pi.) translated as "goodbye". I can imagine it's something like "I'm going (now)". What's the meaning of "ပိ", if you know? Sealang's translations don't help. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:55, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

The verbal particle is spelled ပြီ (pri), which I've glossed as "indicates a completed action", but it's a little more complicated than that. သွားပြီ (swa:pri) could roughly be translated "I'm going now, at last" or "I've begun to go now, at last". Okell writes that it "is used with verbs when the action or state they express is regarded as having a point of fulfilment or realization which is approached by degrees with the passage of time. Further, this progress is considered in relation to a certain point of time, usually the time of speaking. [It] indicates that at or before this time ('by now') the point of fulfilment has been reached." So yeah, it means "I'm going" but with an implication that you've been working up to going, and now the moment of your departure has been fulfilled. If that makes sense. (It can also be spelled ပီ (pi), but I saw a preview the book you mentioned at Amazon, and in the book he spells it ပြီ (pri).) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:55, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. It seems the particle is similar to the Chinese particle 了 (in sense 2) (the definition at entry is far from complete) as in 我走了 - I'm going (now) or 吃饭了 - time for dinner. --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 10:36, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Twpsyn

No, I'm not calling you one (just in case you wondered). I added twpsin to {l|cy|twp} yesterday, but I've just checked geiriadur.ac.uk and found it to be twpsyn for men and twpsen for women. My question to you is: is there a standard way of showing both forms, or do you just link to the masculine? cwbr77 (talk) 12:17, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Just list them both separately, thus:

• twpsen f
• twpsyn m

—Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:23, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks. cwbr77 (talk) 17:05, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

regelmäßig

The change I made to the etymology seems to make sense, but I thought I would get a reality check from someone who knows more than I do. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 04:35, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Peking

I'm not trying to start an edit war here, but you are mistaken about Peking. I am a native English speaker, and am aware that some people mispronounce it. However, it is normally (and correctly) pronounced based on the Postal Map Romanization, in which it is transliterated. We don't choose the incorrect IPA, lest we perpetuate the problem beyond the few that currently mispronounce it. Even back in high school we were taught how to read this form of Romanization. P is pronouced half-way between a P and B. E is prounced similar to EI in pinyin, or AY in the English word "Say." K is pronounced between CH and J. ING is the same. The original IPA I put was incorrect, but I had fixed it. All you need to do is look at a Romanization chart to confirm it. Thank you, Hazmat2 (talk) 14:47, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I confirmed that the IPA I wrote was correct with reliable sources, but if you or someone wants to change it back to an incorrect one, you're more than welcome. I'm not going to fight over something so minor. Hazmat2 (talk) 14:54, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Native speaker of English or not, you're mistaken. When an English speaker sees the spelling Peking, he pronounces it "pee-KING". When he sees the spelling Beijing, he pronounces it "bay-JING" (or, hypercorrectly, "bay-ZHING"). But no one sees the spelling Peking and pronounces it Beijing (unless they're showing off, but I don't think we need to include showoffs' pronunciations here). That's absurd. That's like saying when an English speaker sees the spelling Munich, he pronounces it München. P is pronounced "half-way between P and B" if you're speaking Chinese, yes, but not if you're speaking English. In English, P is pronounced P and B is pronounced B, and there isn't anything half-way in between (except after S, but that's beside the point here). The IPA you gave would be fine at 北京#Chinese (except it isn't needed there because there's already pronunciation information at that entry), but it's flat wrong at Peking#English. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that your teacher taught you how to pronounce Beijing, not Peking. In half a decade of hearing people pronounce Peking in the US, I've never once heard it pronounced like Beijing. To be consistent you should pronounce Paris as "Pah-GHEE", with "p" being the same sound as the "B" in Beijing and "gh" being the French "r", or Madrid as "Mah-DREED", with the d's sounding sort of like the "th" in "the", the "r" being a single tap of the tongue that sounds like some people pronounce the "tt" in "butter", and the "ee" sounding halfway between the "i" in "machine" and the "i" in "my shin".

As for "correct" pronunciation, we're a descriptive dictionary, so we document how people actually say things, not how your teacher taught you how to say them. For that matter, have you looked up the pronunciation in a regular dictionary? I would be astonished if any of them gave Beijing and Peking the same pronunciation. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:03, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Genitive in Celtic languages

Several of the Celtic languages have a form that's labelled "genitive" in our templates. Is this always the genitive singular? Can I safely change {{cy-adj}} so that it says "genitive singular"? —CodeCat 18:45, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Welsh doesn't have a distinct genitive at all, in any part of speech, nor does {{cy-adj}} say anything about one. Neither does {{cy-noun}}. For Irish, {{ga-adj}} already distinguishes "genitive singular masculine" and "genitive singular feminine", but {{ga-noun}} does just say "genitive", so you can change that one to "genitive singular" if you like. Any others? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:23, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I got myself mixed up. I was talking about the genitive in the Goidelic languages but the feminine in Welsh. Is the feminine of adjectives for singular only? —CodeCat 19:29, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, feminine adjective forms are singular only. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:54, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Ancient Greek transliterations and bot errors

Hi Angr. Did you already fix all the issues raised in Wiktionary:Grease pit/2015/July#Errors in Ancient Greek or translit and Wiktionary:Grease pit/2015/July#More Ancient Greek bot issues? I was about to start dealing with them, but found you'd fixed the first few. Are there any left to do? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 00:22, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, never mind; I failed to notice these. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 00:29, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

mir

You're in error:

1. After other section titles like "Etymology 1" there's no empty line, so there shouldn't be one after "Pronunciation".
2. mirs (= contraction of mir es) exists, e.g. see [zeno.org/Zeno/0/Suche?q=mirs].
3. Other inflected forms shouldn't belong to an entry of an inflected form, e.g. there's also no declension table at Wände but just the info that it's an inflected form of another word. For other inflected forms one should visit the entry of the basic form.

-84.161.1.209 07:29, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Proto-Celtic names

Our regular nonsense-adding IP User:109.211.80.130 has added some names in Proto-Celtic today. Could you please check them? —CodeCat 20:38, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Do you suppose this is Victar? That's who's obsessed with creating Proto-Celtic names for every name attested in Gaulish, regardless of whether the name is attested in any other branch of Celtic. The edits themselves look OK; at least, no sillier than what was there before. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 04:49, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

No, this is the French IP who adds modern "Gothic" to Proto-Germanic descendents lists and translation tables. They know quite a bit about lots of difficult languages, but they seem to think that attestation rules are solely for the purpose of spoiling their fun- so you can't trust them. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:31, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, proto-languages are by definition unattested (except Proto-Norse), so they seem to feel free to whatever they want there. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:24, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

léine

Hi Angr! I'm a beginner in Irish and linguistics (especially in historical linguistics). I made the edit to the page léine, whose etymology which relates it to Latin līnum I found at MacBain's, and I found it quite convincing since léine and līnum has some phonological similarities. I have not read about 'é vocalism' previously, and a search did not seem to yield useful links, so it will be very kind of you to give me some direction as to where I can find more about it. Thank you! —User:Shirai vitron 11:41, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I studied historical linguistics and Irish too. MacBain is over 100 years out of date and very unreliable. If you can get your hands on Ranko Matasović's Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic (Leiden: Brill, 2009, →ISBN, it's a much better source for Irish etymologies. All I meant by é vocalism is the fact that the vowel of this word is é rather than í; līnum was in fact borrowed into Old Irish, but as lín (“linen”), which became modern Irish líon. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:03, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually, on reflection, I'm not sure whether lín (“linen”) is a Latin loanword or an inherited cognate. They can be difficult to tell apart in the Celtic languages. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:30, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Albanian words I have been adding

Thanks for the info you sent me. Most of the words I am adding are rare, now obsolete or are found in remote regions of the country. Some of these are found in old text and the meaning is not entirely clear. Some of these are found in Arberesh but are sometimes used in the remote Southern regions even though they don't appear in any dictionary. I was thinking of using "label" for adding obsolete, rare, archaic etc... how's the best way of using it? By the way, I will be adding all the other words under Albanian and then I will complete each entry and sort it out correctly under the specific dialect.

Like this. A few other things: you can use {{sq-noun}} instead of {{head|sq|noun}}, but it does expect you to add the gender (so if you don't know the gender, you can keep using {{head}}); please add a link to an English gloss (like I did for "tile" and "slab" in the diff); and please sign your comments on talk pages with four tildes ~~~~. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:32, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh, one other thing: please use {{unk.}} in etymologies only if scholars have agreed that the etymology is unknown. Don't use it for words whose etymologies you simply don't happen to know yourself. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:34, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

The problem is most of the words I am adding have never been studied before (I checked Cabej, Orel, Demiraj, Lubotsky and Hamp for all of them). For some of them I was able to find the etymology, either from some other language, from a compound of words or folk etymology (I am personally gathering some of theese from alive speakers). 8mike (talk) 21:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

unprotect

Hey. Can you temporarily unprotect Template:es-adj please? --A230rjfowe (talk) 20:25, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

I've bumped it down to semiprotection so autoconfirmed users can edit it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:26, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Your edit to *maþô

You changed the Sanskrit word, h to k. Was that intentional? —CodeCat 19:49, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes. See here, about halfway down the middle column. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:52, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

tiny edit

Just out of curiosity, what did that edit do? --A230rjfowe (talk) 20:35, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

It tagged the label as being attached to an English word, thus removing the page from Category:Language code missing/context. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:36, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Lots of those are pages I created. I guess I'd better start using Template:lb instead. --A230rjfowe (talk) 21:54, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

You can keep using {{cx}} if you like it better, but in that case you have to write {{cx|informal|lang=en}} (or {{cx|lang=en|informal}}) instead, which is more keystrokes. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 05:04, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

oráiste, as an adjective.

Prompted by the Colour Table thing, I've been looking up the status of adjectival oráiste. Ó Dónaill and Foclóir Beag give the word, very firmly, as a noun only: the fruit. It might be permissible to say le dath oráiste air, but almost grudgingly. In the process of investigation I found this paper, which describes oráiste as an adjective, and describes the relatively recent invention of flannbhuí in any case: before that, the orange was described as having buí skin.

I know there is usage of adjectival oráiste out there... but I can't seem to attest it. Even while Duolingo is telling me that oráiste is a colour. (And that if it's expecting that a red thing is dearg, then rua is wrong, but that's another argument.)

Do you know of any sources which could help document adjectival oráiste? Would that paper itself count? --Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 12:15, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

No, and I'm not convinced we should have an entry for it as an adjective. At best, I'd use that paper to source a usage note saying something along the lines of "There is some use of this as an adjective in constructions like Tá sé oráiste "it is orange [in color]", but this is not considered standard. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:52, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

avourneen

Hi there. Just stumbled across avourneen, an Irish/English word for sweetheart. Some research suggests this is a vocative form of an Irish word, but I don't dare touch Irish! Could you help with the entry? --Zo3rWer (talk) 09:28, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Combining etyl and m

{{inh}} doesn't actually do this, since it has a different purpose. I have considered such a change, but the problem is that {{etyl}} takes its parameters in backwards order: the current language comes second instead of first, which is unlike all the other etymology templates, which take the current language first. I'm not really sure how to work around this. A second template might work, but then we get stuck with the {{term}} vs {{m}} issue where some people block a wholesale move to the new template, and we end up with two identical templates. Same with {{usex}} vs {{ux}}. —CodeCat 16:32, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

bad#Etymology_1

Do you still use the word ‘bad?’ --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 06:21, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Huh? Why wouldn't I? It's a perfectly good word. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:24, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Because it may come from bæddel and bædling, which used to mean ‘effeminate male’ or ‘hermaphrodite’… though admittedly nobody is absolutely certain where it comes from.([1]) The noun badling is still used similarly. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 06:33, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Well exactly. And even if it were known for sure to come from that word, no one remembers the word bæddel. It's not like gyp or jew down or welsh. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:39, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

Compounds

About your last edit do drag queen: According to Wiktionary:Etymology#Compounds, only words without spaces or hyphen qualify as compounds, that's why I used two {{m}} templates rather than the {{compound}}. I believe that entry should not use {{compound}}.

Also, most entries in Category:English compound words are without spaces or hyphens. The few that have spaces or hyphens seem to be rare uncorrected mistakes. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 05:36, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

That seems like a silly distinction to make. We have dragqueen as an alternative spelling; it makes no sense to say dragqueen is a compound but drag queen isn't. Orthography has nothing to do with linguistics anyway (you can't hear spaces in spoken language!); whether a word is or is not a compound depends on its etymology, not its representation in black squiggles on a white background. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 05:40, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

OK, I take your point. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 05:53, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Südkoreaner

Südkorea +‎ -er - that is "Südkoreaer" and not "Südkoreaner". Thus the template is incorrect here (and in some other entries). The category "Category:German words suffixed with -er" could be added manually. But, is it suffixed with -er, which should make n an infix or something, or is it suffixed with -ner, which should be an alternative form of -er used after a or vowels in general? -84.161.48.205 16:49, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

It's probably that -ner is an alternative form of -er used in certain situations (but not always after a, cf. Jenaer, not *Jenaner. It could even be the -aner found in Hannoveraner with the two a’s merged. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:57, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Patreon message

Helllo, I've sent you a message through Patreon message system. Cheers! --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:27, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Found it, thanks! It's probably better to send me an e-mail in the future, though, since I'm not likely to go back to the Patreon page very often to see if I have any messages. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:37, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Irish entries with substed inflection tables

There's several more of these. My edits were an attempt to fix it in a way that agrees with how this is handled in the languages I've worked with. If you have a better way, that's fine, but your comment "rv: that doesn't explain when to lenite mormónta and when not to" doesn't make much sense to me. Is this information not presented elsewhere? This is clearly some kind of set phrase, but I would assume that our entries would contain enough entries to inflect nonidiomatic phrases that don't have their own entries. —CodeCat 21:39, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

First of all, the inflection tables weren't substed; {{ga-decl-noun}} is intended to be used in cases where the forms can't be predicted by a simple algorithm. The lenition or non-lenition of the modifier is clear when the modifier is an adjective, because the adjective inflection tables indicate when they are to be lenited. But when the modifier is a genitive-case noun, the information on lenition is not presented anywhere else. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:22, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

But is it not the preceding noun that triggers the lenition, rather than it being a fixed rule of the adjective itself? What if the adjective is used without the noun? Granted, I am going more by what I know of Old Irish, but I imagine the rules are still somewhat the same? If this information is included in the noun entry, then it solves this problem. —CodeCat 15:43, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

The adjective inflection tables show the cases where the lenition is triggered by the preceding noun; see milis for an example. The noun inflection tables don't show the cases in which they trigger lenition, because it often depends on the specifics of the noun phrase (set phrases follow different rules from unidiomatic noun + noun sequences). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:48, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

frêle

Could you create more doublets, and teach me how to read Devanagari?

Thanks! --Fsojic (talk) 20:46, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I create doublets whenever I'm aware of them. I only added fragile because I saw frêle in the category without its doublet. I don't think I can teach you Devanagari, but maybe this site can. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:54, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Your refusal is... violent --Fsojic (talk) 22:59, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I was kidding, just so you know. It's just that I have a weird humor sometimes! Cheers, --Fsojic (talk) 12:12, 21 December 2015 (UTC)