User talk:Eirikr/2012

Navajo conj

putting the conjugation tables @ 3rd person sg flies in the face of every expectation. Navajo verbs' dictionary base forms are 1st person sg. Seb az86556 07:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you. I’ve already argued about that at Talk:nahatʼeʼii with User:Eirikr and with others on other pages that I don’t remember anymore. They seem to have the idea that, since Arabic and Hebrew used the 3rd person as the citation form, there is an inherent (but unexplainable) logic for choosing the 3rd person. I think I pointed out that many language use the 1st person for the citation form, including Greek, Latin, and Bulgarian. I always added etymologies with the 1st-person in mind, but when User:Eirikr and others started adding verbs, they went with the 3rd person in spite of my objections. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah well. I'm just pointing that out. They might as well want to spell German with a macron if suits their fancy. Seb az86556 16:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

霊力

Hi, Eirikr. When you have a chance, could you check out 霊力? It was linked-to from 霊漿, which I deleted, because my understanding of the RFV discussion is that it (霊漿) failed RFV. - -sche (discuss) 04:31, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks -sche --

霊力 shows up in reputable dictionaries, so I'm happy keeping the term in general. I've cleaned out the bogus See alsos, which was actually all of them so I just got rid of the subsection entirely. Cheers, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:58, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

我が家ほど良い場所はない - there's no place like home

Hi,

Re: your edit and edit summary.

I added this translation a while ago. It is attestable on Japanese language web site and was actually used on a site translating the Russian equivalent of the proverb, so I added it. 住めば都 may be more idiomatic but 我が家ほど良い場所はない seems like another synonym to me. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Hiya, Anatoli --

Interesting background. That phrasing sounds a bit unnatural to my ear, so I tried googling for it, and after much weeding of the results, it seems like the web is just a giant echo chamber -- all the hits I could find were ultimately mirrors of Wiktionary. 8-\

While 我が家ほど良い場所はない is certainly understandable as Japanese, it has that いわゆる「翻訳語」 sense to it. 住めば都 and 地獄も住家 (jigoku mo sumika) would be more natural turns of phrase -- pulling either of these out in the right social context is pretty certain to get you a 「うぁ、日本語がすごく上手ですよね」.  :) -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:21, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The problem is also that the meaning of 住めば都 is more like (copying from EDICT) - you can get used to living anywhere; home is where you make it; wherever I lay my hat is home. Perhaps it's more natural for Japanese but the meaning is not the same. In my opinion, like words, proverbs do get translated into other languages and find new homes if there is no perfect natve equivalent. I don't know if 我が家ほど良い場所はない is a translation as there are variants even used in books, eg. 家のようなところはない, わが家ほどよいところはない, see [1]. I'm going to add it back, if you don't object. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:40, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Heh, this seems like it really boils down to a question of: whether to translate proverbs, by using the words of the target language to most closely approximate the meaning of the original; or whether to localize proverbs, by finding the proverb or turn of phrase in the target language that most closely approximates the original.  :)

It might be worth noting that "there's no place like home" arose from a longer version, "be it ever so humble, there's no place like home" -- which is where I find more hits for google:"我が家ほどよいところはない", as the second half of どんなに粗末でも、我が家ほどよいところはない or たとえどんなに粗末であろうと、我が家ほどよいところはない. In this older version of the English expression, the "be it ever so humble" part points out that 住めば都 is actually closer to the original meaning -- "no matter how run-down it is, where I live is the best". If memory serves, the English phrase gained particular currency during the Great Depression, when things were quite dire, and having a home of any sort at all was something to be thankful for. This suggests that 地獄も住家 is also a good fit -- "even hell can be home", i.e. if you live there, you can get used to it, and some home is better than none, even if it's hell.

And no, I don't object to re-adding the translated version, so long as we include the localized versions as well.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

If the translated version only exists on websites that mirror Wiktionary, should we include it, though? We're just coining something at that point. Meh, maybe qualify it as {{qualifier|literally}} and don't link it...? Because if (if!) we've coined it and it's not used in Japanese, we can't have an entry for it (it's not a proverb), so we should linkify it. - -sche (discuss) 23:20, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

The phrase does exist on Japanese sites, not only those copying Wiktionary and in Japanese books, in this and other variant spellings/forms, where words are written in kanji/kana and words like 場所, ほど and 良い are in spelled in various synonyms - ところ,　のよう,　いい. Another variant I have found: - わが家にまさるところはない Putting a Google Books search in quotes restricts the spelling but without the quotes it gives a variety of forms, which have the same basic meaning. Just take a look at this link [2]. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 00:37, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• @-sche --

It turns out that the specific wording, 我が家ほど良い場所はない, is only on WT and WT mirrors. However, as Anatoli notes above, variants of the phrase appear in more places than just WT. This is a translation of an English proverb rather than an old home-grown saying, and is consequently less settled in Japanese, with variable wording.

• @Anatoli --

The variety of versions for this expression in Japanese strongly suggests to me that it is not as much of a set proverb in Japanese as it is in English. I have no qualms about including the 我が家ほど良い場所はない version or some other version (or versions?) of "there's no place like home" translated into Japanese, so long as any such JA entry page makes it clear that this expression is more variable than the English version.

FWIW, my handy copy of Shogakukan's 国語大辞典 lists 我が家に勝る所無し (wa ga ya ni masaru tokoro nashi) as the headword, and explains this as 自分の家ほどよい所はない (jibun no ie hodo yoi tokoro wa nai) (which is precious close to phrasing I've seen online as the translation for "there's no place like home"). -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 05:11, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, I just checked Wiktionary:ELE#Translations, where the second-to-last item in the list of do's and don'ts clearly states:

Do not give literal (word-for-word) translations of idioms, unless the literal translation is what is actually used in the target language. Most idioms do not translate word for word. For example, the idiom "none of your beeswax" cannot be translated into German literally as "nicht dein Bienenwachs", as this does not have the same meaning in German; an idiomatic translation is "nicht dein Bier" (which means, literally, “not your beer” in English).

I also checked Shogakukan, and the reason the headword and def for "there's no place like home" are so similar is precisely because they provide translations of proverbs and idioms from Chinese and Western languages, with 我が家に勝る所無し (wa ga ya ni masaru tokoro nashi) as one of those translated entries.

This changes my perspective, and I now oppose including this or 我が家ほど良い場所はない as entries in Wiktionary. I'm fine with the text being included somewhere in an explanatory or descriptive use, but as a translation into Japanese of a non-native saying, I do not believe this should be included as a Japanese entry.

Incidentally, this means I'm also deleting 馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない from the translation list on the "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" page, and any other non-native translations of idioms that I run across, in accordance with the Wiktionary:ELE#Translations guidelines. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:01, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Please don't delete or seek broader consensus. Mark as a translation, choose a more common version if not happy with the current one but don't delete. Consider this: The proverb to err is human is Latin and is translated into other languages using the most common version. The way I read the section in Wiktionary:ELE#Translations - don't use a literal translation, which may be wrong, like "nicht dein Bienenwachs". The translation I have given is not wrong, it has the same meaning, it is used and attested, even if it may be known as a borrowed proverb (not sure about this part). It's perfectly OK to borrow sayings and this can be marked as such if needed. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 07:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, the bit about the horse is decidedly non-native-Japanese, and after weeding out the Wiktionary-related entries, Google doesn't give me much -- google:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない" -wiktionary -wiki does generate 3K+ hits, but most of these contain the dubious back-translation "you may take a horse...". Removing this specific phrase from the results reveals that roughly 3,300 of these sites were just echoing each other. Of the remaining 58 hits, weblio.jp, a known WT copier, has 50 of them. The remaining 8 hits suggest that this phrase is not that widely used in Japanese. C.f. google:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない" -wiktionary -wiki -"you may take a horse" -weblio. Also:

• google books:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない": 0 hits
• google scholar:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない": 0 hits
• google groups:"馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない": 0 hits

Similarly:

• google books:"我が家ほど良い場所はない": 0 hits
• google scholar:"我が家ほど良い場所はない": 0 hits
• google groups:"我が家ほど良い場所はない": 0 hits

By way of comparison:

• google books:"住めば都": 4,610 hits
• google scholar:"住めば都": 282 hits
• google groups:"住めば都": Unknown, but pages upon pages, and so many that it apparently breaks Google (says "Showing 1-10 of about 0" despite there being 14 pages of hits just for Google Groups, and 43 pages of hits for all groups)

I appreciate your concern about taking due consideration, Anatoli, but these Google results suggest that these translations of English idioms do not have much currency. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:49, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for providing the counts. I was mainly referring to the other translation. As for the "horse bit", I still insist the obviously literal translation is merited, simply as a "translation" albeit non-idiomatical. As a native Russian speaker I do translate proverbs and sayings into Russian as well, even if there is no equivalent idiom available. Any translation school will recommend this. (Books and movies are translated into languages). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 09:53, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I can certainly see the merit in providing a translation if that is all there is; my concern then is that we don't go beyond that to create full-blown pages for non-idiomatic, non-phrasebook-worthy phrases. The examples we discuss above would seem to fail WT:CFI, for instance. Would it be acceptable to you, for example, to add the bit about the horse to the translation list, but with the links only going to the individual terms? Example:

Japanese: 馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない (うまをみずべにみちびくことはできるがうまにみずをのませることはできない, uma o mizube ni michibiku koto wa dekiru ga uma ni mizu o nomaseru koto wa dekinai) (literal, rare, non-idiomatic)

This provides a translation into Japanese for the ostensible English speakers who might look up "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink", but does not suggest that we have or should create a page for 馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない (which we probably shouldn't, since it seems to fail CFI).

Would that be a palatable workaround for you? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:52, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

(my 2c again) Given that you're looking to reverse a specific part of WT:ELE, it's probably appropriate to bring this up in the BP for wider comment. FWIW, I think Japanese: 馬を水辺に導く事は出来るが馬に水を飲ませる事は出来ない (うまをみずべにみちびくことはできるがうまにみずをのませることはできない, uma o mizube ni michibiku koto wa dekiru ga uma ni mizu o nomaseru koto wa dekinai) (literal, non-idiomatic) (note that I'd leave out rare, since many literal phrases will be rare) is one acceptable solution, although I'm not opposed to the current ELE practice of forbidding literal translations, either. - -sche (discuss) 19:04, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm OK with your suggestion to link individual words (the same would apply for phrasebook entries). The only reason it's not done because it's time-consuming. Bring it up in BP as well, if you wish but at the moment, I don't think it's really contradicting ELE, if the translation is correct and no idiomatic translation exists or there are various translations. The template {{qualifier}} can explain everything. A literal translation that closer matches the original also helps non-English speakers to understand a proverb better (as with the "home" proverb. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

@-sche Thanks for your input. Re: contradiction to ELE, please see the ELE section again and pay attention to "unless..." and "most..." parts. Again, if your main concern is unidiomatic translations (to both of you), breaking up into words can be done. I'm not too happy about doing this myself, though, as I often add translations into phrasebook entries, multipart collocations (fall ill, catch cold, feature film, etc), proverbs, sayings and words that can differ in the number of words across languages but I promise to pay attention to comments. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 23:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I have read the paragraph in WT:ELE, and I think it applies here: the word-for-word equivalent of this proverb is not used (idiomatically) in Japanese. I'm not necessarily opposed to including it, but I have started Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#literal_translations_of_idioms so there can be a broader discussion. - -sche (discuss) 01:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

IPA

Hi, I saw that you posted about the このこ deletion on my wall and I guess I'm still not sure which it is either (though I'd like to believe the "folk etymology" since it makes it easier to remember), but if valid sources prove it, then I guess I was wrong. Also about IPA, in many of the pages, there is an inconsistency on using [] or // for Japanese, so I only used the slashes when I was sure that that was the phonemic transcription (such as /hana/ which would be the same phonetically [hana]), otherwise I used []. The reason is because certain sounds such as [tɕ], [dʑ] and [ɕ] are sometimes treated as phonemes and sometimes as allophones of /t/, /z/ and /s/ before [i], but they have more or less phonemicized now since syllables like [tɕa] "tea" also exist (which would contrast with /ta/). Sometimes this is used as evidence for separate phonemes, sometimes it's treated as /tja/. In order to avoid the issue, whenever I came across these sounds, I used a strict phonetic transcription in square brackets [].

Also, I downloaded an IPA keyboard that allows you to type the symbols needed without having to copy and paste. You can download one too, here: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=UniIPAKeyboard

– Jmolina116 (talk) 18:23, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Cool, thank you for the explanations. I'm growing a bit muddled about IPA on WT as it is, and just posted at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#IPA_brackets in an attempt at clarifying how folks here are using brackets and slashes. And thank you very much for the web link, I'll certainly take a look. I installed AllChars a bit ago (http://allchars.zwolnet.com/download/index.html), and while that's useful for some characters and diacritics, it doesn't cover all the bases. I'll see how the SIL folks do.  :)

-- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:33, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Of course. :) I personally think there should be a consensus as to whether we should treat [ɕ] etc. as separate phonemes or not. I personally think /sja/, /sju/, /sjo/ look weird and aren't descriptive enough about the sounds produced in actuality and that /ɕa/ etc. are they're own phonemes (despite Japanese orthography and the history of these sounds) because they have undergone phonemicization now. For now, maybe it would be best to include both transcriptions as a phonemic/phonetic pair? EG. /syuusyoku/ [ɕuːɕoku]. I'm not sure of any good way to do this. That also brings up the question of whether to treat long vowels as long vowels or double vowels. Anyway, thanks again for the information about 茸 and the standard punctuation for glosses. –Jmolina116 (talk) 02:20, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

/ɕa/ is contrastive with /sa/, whereas /sja/ or /sʲa/ don't really exist in modern Japanese. Depending on the speaker, /ɕa/ might be pronounced as [sʲa], but it would still be contrastive with [sa]. /sja/ and /sya/ might correlate better to しゃ, but the whole point of IPA is the "P" in the middle of the acronym, so changing the IPA transcription to match the writing system seems to be the wrong way to go about it. Basically, I'm a fan of using /ɕ/.  :)

About long vowels, I think the only reason to use doubled vowels instead of the colon-looking /ː/ marker would be where the second mora of the vowel sound takes a different pitch or is pronounced distinctly. For instance, /o.kaː.san/ versus /ma.sa.a.ki/.

Does that sound sensible to you? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:55, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

That is the main reason for using double vowels, but Ancient Greek has the similar process of pitch assigning, and they are usually marked as long vowels instead of double vowels (probably because the writing system employs a single letter for them). If the high pitch is marked on the second mora it is written over the long mark. E.G. [ɔː́] in ὀκτώ [oktɔː́]. So it doesn't seem like a good enough reason for me. I'm am also a fan of using /ɕ/ in both phonetic and phonemic transcriptions. But there are also morphological reasons to not use them. For example the transcriptions /hanasimasu/ and /tatimasu/ show more clearly that the root is /hanas-/ and /tat-/, as opposed to /hanaɕimasu/ and /tatɕimasu/ where you'd have to indicate the allomorphs /hanaɕ-/and /tatɕ-/ for the root before the phoneme /i/. So you have to choose between allmorphs of roots or allophones of sounds. I think that for the purposes of WT, however, /hanaɕimasu/ and /tatɕimasu/ are better, because phonetics play a bigger role here than morphology.

Also demarcating by morae like in /ma.sa.a.ki/ would also mean that /ko.ɴ.ɕu.u/ and /ke.k.ko.ɴ/ (more accurately /ke.Q.ko.ɴ/ where Q represent the sokuon) would be the correct transcriptions. But the symbol /./ is a syllable marker, not usually a mora marker. Since in Japanese, syllables don't play any significant roll, morae do, I think it's best not to include it at all and just use /masaaki/. I also agree that where there is a morpheme boundary such as in this word or in inflectional endings between two of the same vowels, they should be marked separately: so /masaaki/ and /ataraɕii/, not /masaːki/ and /ataraɕiː/. But I think in other cases, it should be marked as a long vowel. That's just my personal preference though. –Jmolina116 (talk) 02:48, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

NOT saying that romanizations should sway anyone one way or the other, but in some romanizations まさあき is still transliterated with the w:macron (masāki). I completely disagree with this usage of it, but the pronunciation is still technically that of a long vowel. -Jmolina116 (talk) 03:01, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting about Greek, that's not a language I'm at all familiar with. But when you say "so it doesn't seem like a good enough reason for me", I can't tell if you mean that we shouldn't use doubled vowels, or that we shouldn't put pitch accent over the long-sound marker.

About allophones, I agree that we should lean more towards the phonetics than the morphology, since the IPA is intended to mark the sound.  :) Adding /tatimasu/ would be misleading to anyone not familiar with Japanese phonology. (My sense is that the final /u/ shouldn't be there in transcription, since it's really only ever pronounced when someone is being über-polite or overpronouncing; do you have strong opinions about that? Perhaps that's more square-bracket territory than slash?)

My intent with /ma.sa.a.ki/ was actually not to demarcate morae, but instead to point out a sound boundary between the two /a/s. The /a/ sound is two morae long, but qualitatively different here than the two-morae /a/ sound in /o.kaː.san/ (where I again used the periods to group by sound boundaries). Perhaps just using /aa/ for the former and /aː/ for the latter would suffice?

Incidentally, I'm fine with /ataraɕiː/, since again my assumption with the IPA information given under the ===Pronunciation=== headers is that we're trying to represent sounds, regardless of underlying grammatical inflection, and the final /i/ in /ataraɕiː/ is indeed just a long /i/, with no sound boundary and no pitch change. (or is this again something that would be more appropriate within square brackets?) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 04:35, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the quality in /okaːsaɴ/ is any different than that of /masaaki/. Again this is just a perception based on the morpheme boundary between /masa/ and /aki/ and only in careful pronunciation would such a thing be distinctive from a long vowel (masaʔaki), but I myself have never heard this form. A long vowel and a double vowel in IPA are really the exact same thing since it's just a sound twice as long with no pause and no change in quality. Also /a/ and /a/ will always have the same quality, because they are the same vowel, the same phoneme, so that can't be a reason to mark them differently. So IPA tends to mark these sounds as long sounds in languages, unless there is evidence in the modern language that this only stems from a doubling of a vowel (such as morpheme boundaries between the two). Some of the long vowels fall under this category but a great deal don't, even in historical evidence (such as /oː/ from /au/, kjoːto > kjauto), which is why I favor long vowel markings.

By "so it doesn't seem like a good enough reason for me" I meant that I think pitch shouldn't affect transcription to me, especially since in Japanese pitch is usually never marked (because of dialectal differences in pitch).

And as for the /ataraɕiː/, this is the same as the case with /masaːki/ where there is a morpheme boundary between the two i's: ataraɕi-i, new-ATTRIBUTIVE. /ii/ and /iː/ are two ways of transcribing the same sound in IPA so I think it doesn't matter which you use phonetically. And in cases of morpheme boundaries, there is evidence that these vowels are double since it's just an /a/ that happens to be followed by another /a/. Another good example would be the /kuː/ in /kuːki/ as opposed to /kuu/ "to eat". So perhaps, one way of transcribing should just be picked for whatever reason, and people should stick to it. –Jmolina116 (talk) 14:55, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

And the final /u/ in /tatɕimasu/ is voiceless, so it's almost silent. The same as the u in /huku/ or /suteki/. So it should still be included. Having consonant clusters and ending in a coda other than the nasal /ɴ/ is a violation of Japanese phonology. –Jmolina116 (talk) 16:04, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

• About Masaaki -- it's not a glottal so much as a tone/pitch shift, where the second /a/ is tonally distinct from the first, in a way that speakers don't use with okāsan -- i.e., a "change in quality". It's subtle, but it's there, phonetically and not just morphologically. However, if tonality is not enough to mark the first /a/ and the second /a/ separately in Masaaki in slashed phonemics, I'm copacetic about leaving it as a long vowel /aː/ in IPA.
• Ditto for /ataraɕiː/ and transcribing 食う as /kuː/ (i.e., let's use long vowels instead of doubled, and leave the doubled vowels to romanization, where morphological structure is more important than phonetic).
• About final /u/, it's often completely silent, not just almost -- such as in ですか, which in running speech is often [de̞s.ka̠]. But as your reply suggests, leaving the final /u/ out would apparently be more appropriate in a square-bracket phonetic transcription, but not in a slashed phonemic transcription, so yes, let's include final /u/.
• Thank you for your replies, I really appreciate the dialog. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:41, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Of course. :) All of this has been extremely useful, and I'm glad we figured out what we're going to stick to for this. I also hope you found the SIL keyboard useful. Thanks :) Jmolina116 (talk) 17:24, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

-suru demo and conj template question

Hi Eirikr, I went ahead and put a Verb section under 判断 as a demo. Let me know what you think. I was joking with the "off the rails" comment in the page history because there's so much debate about minor changes and this is a relatively big change.

Also, I noticed that {{ja-suru}} no longer has spaces before most of the -suru forms. I'm not objecting but just wondering if that was intentional and if so, why. I thought it didn't matter much but was a style issue and that the spaces made the words more readable.

Thanks --Haplology (talk) 05:54, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Cool, thank you for the demo -- will give that a look -- and for the heads-up on the template screw-up -- I added some code to handle cases where there is no kanji, but then goofed the regex. Doh! I'll put the spaces back in. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:35, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

テメ

Is the new (current) definition of テメ valid? Haplology's edit summary "as best I can tell" doesn't sound completely confident, and a search for "テメ"+"deception", hoping to turn up other dictionaries, turns up mostly just Wiktionary. If it's valid, let me know and I'll close the RFV as resolved (or you can); if we can't find a reference or clear citation supporting it, the entire entry should be deleted as RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 07:21, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Ta, I'll create the lemma 手目 entry. I thinka Hap's gloss is mostly OK; the kicker is that the テメ entry is written in katakana, something that very seldom happens for the word 手目 (or for the word 手前 that we first thought this might be). Do you think a marker of {{rare}} or a usage note would suffice, or does the rarity of the テメ spelling warrant that entry's removal? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:37, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Hm, one way of handling such entries (attested katakana forms of words normally written in other ways) would be to make them soft "katakana form of..." redirects like this. What do you think? - -sche (discuss) 21:08, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

That looks good to me, and rings a faint bell in my memory -- did we discuss something like this before? Anyway, I like the way that scans on the page. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:23, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Spelling error

How do I correct a spelling error I did not catch in the 'plural section'? Scienceexplorer (talk)

Um, what 'plural section'? I have no idea which entry you're referring to.

That aside, any subsection within an entry should have a blue link marked [edit] to the right of the subsection header. Click that to edit just that section. Alternately, click the Edit link at the top of any editable page to edit the whole page at once.

-- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

following up on LT

Hi. Apologies for duplication if you and Yair are already discussing this somewhere else, but if you aren't... [[Thread:User talk:Yair rand/following up on the discussion of LT]]. - -sche (discuss) 21:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Vienna

Take a look at the first discussion on KYPark's talk page. - -sche (discuss) 08:57, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Very interesting. And not just that first thread, but most of that page. I sympathize somewhat, as there are some very interestingly suggestive correspondences between PIE and some Korean terms -- but the extreme paucity of Korean texts with clear pronunciation information before the arrival of Hangul in the 1400s makes Korean etymological study a bit of a dead end. KYPark's apparent refusal to assess the work of others objectively and then "stand on the shoulders of giants" suggests that s/he won't get very far, which is a shame given the obvious enthusiasm. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:40, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

pre-existing -suru pages

Hi Eirikr,

What do you think should be done with the -suru pages that have already been made? It's inconsistent to have both styles but I suppose it wouldn't be all that bad to keep the pre-existing -suru pages, as long as they have the etymology section that we talked about. If I created them I'll go ahead and delete them though, since I assume nobody would notice or mind.

Thanks --Haplology (talk) 12:29, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Yah, I'm not sure what would be the best way forward. Deletion is attractive, as it cleans things up and prevents potentially misleading newcomers into thinking that we should have such pages. I guess so long as people can still find the terms -- for example, if I type in 放出する into the search box, I'd expect to be directed to the 放出 page, or at the bare minimum to get that page in the list of search results.

... That currently doesn't happen. Even searching for 放出 + する as copied directly off the 放出 page doesn't find anything either, which seems a rather bad failure on the part of WT's search feature. I'll ask about this in WT:Grease pit. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:46, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

shōjo vs shojo vs shoujo

Until a moment ago, we had romanisations of 少女 at shōjo, shojo and shoujo. I deleted the Japanese section of shoujo because I don't think we provide nonstandard romanisations, and I merged the English sections per WT:RFM#shojo, but I'm not sure if the Japanese sections of shōjo and shojo should be merged or not. They say they have different hiragana and pronunciations. Can you take a look? - -sche (discuss) 17:46, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll work on shōnen / shounen / shonen too, later today. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:48, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

BP discussion re: context

Hi Eirikr,

The Beer parlour discussion about {{context}} is about a change that some have suggested making to the common practices that editors are supposed to follow. I did my best to outline the reasons for the change, and most of those reasons are technical in nature, but I'd rather not get sidetracked with technical proposals that are completely under the covers, since (1) they don't really belong in the Beer parlour, (2) they could potentially cause less-technically-minded editors to miss the true point of the discussion, and (3) they duplicate, and fragment, existing discussion at the Grease pit. (See Wiktionary:Grease pit#Rewrite {{context}}? — {{User:Ruakh/label}}, where I proposed, and presented an implementation of, the same changes that you're now proposing.) Would you be terribly offended if I asked you to re-examine your comments in that light, and see if some parts of them should perhaps be removed as irrelevant to that discussion (and perhaps moved to the Grease pit discussion(s) instead)?

Thanks in advance,
—Ruakh_TALK
23:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

P.S. If you edit your comments there in a way that renders my reply there irrelevant, then please feel free to remove that as well. Thanks again. —Ruakh_TALK 23:42, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Gah, forgive me. Sometimes I lose track of which page a thread is on. Would it be better form for me to delete my comment, or just strike it out and add a note as to why? (I'll have a look-through the GP thread later, probably this weekend or maybe Monday, and chime in there -- hopefully more intelligently.) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:08, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Never mind my previous question. I just removed the technical part and will repost as appropriate later in the WT:GP thread. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 00:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! Sorry to be a pain about this one — usually we're not sticklers here about distinguishing between the various discussion rooms (except perhaps RFV vs. RFD), but in this case I'd made a point of splitting the one BP-relevant part off from the GP discussion, and I was worried that that was about to backfire. :-P   —Ruakh_TALK 00:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Link to Commons radicals

Hallo Eiríkr, du sagst du kannst auch Deutsch, das wiederum kann ich besser als English (oder polynesisch oder 한글).
Inzwischen sind in allen 214 Seiten Index:Chinese radical die Radikale verlinkt, das hat mir User:CodeCat mit MewBot gemacht. Um auch noch alle Radikale von 一 bis 龠 mit so einem Link zu versehen gibt es mehrere Möglichkeiten, wie ich dir auf meiner Talkpage geantwortet habe. Am liebsten würde ich es als kleine Erweiterung von {{Han char}} einbauen, das wäre der geringste Aufwand und die eleganteste Lösung; in Template talk:Han char#Expansions habe ich das mal andiskutiert.
Siehst du dir bitte mal die verschiedenen Möglichkeiten in 月 an? Damit ich dort bald wieder aufräumen kann. If you answer after some days, please give me a note on my talk page -- sarang♥사랑 14:50, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Hallo Sarang, danke sehr für dein Antwort. Ich habe die 月 Seite angeguckt, und ich glaube daß vielleicht "Test: before" oder "Test: Han ch" wie das Beste aussieht. Ja, "Test: float" tut meine Augen weh, eigentlich. Diese Beispiele zu machen, 감사합니다 / mahalo nui / どうもありがとう / 多謝 / tusind tak / muchas gracias / ahéheeʼ / danke sehr.  :) -- Tschüß, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 02:33, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Ich kann gut verstehen dass die float-Version keinen Beifall findet; es war einer der Versuche. Nun werde ich mich bemühen die "Test: Han ch"-Version einzusetzen; das kann ich allerdings nicht allein, weil {{Han char}} geschützt ist. Es wird also noch dauern, 月 kann ich wieder frei machen. kia ora, [감사합니다 -- sarang♥사랑 08:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Chinle

I was there 2 weeks ago, I've added (with reference) the meaning of the name. 81.109.118.115 14:37, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Doug! I appreciate it. I'll add the etyl to the EN WT entry soon. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:56, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

完壁

Special:Contributions/Tomzo changed the definitions of 完壁 to "wrong kanji phrase," from alternative form and after checking it seems that he or she is right, that 完壁 is considered incorrect, but I wonder if you think there's a more...professional way of writing "wrong kanji phrase." Similarly 完璧 has the header "wrong forms". In English it would be "common misspelling of", but do you think you can say "spelling" with Chinese characters? Thanks --Haplology (talk) 04:25, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

How do things look now? And if there is a "common misspelling of" template, feel free to add it -- I think "spelling" is perfectly appropriate for kanji as well.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:07, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look at that. There is such a template, and I plan to add it later. --Haplology (talk) 17:09, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

einander

This edit made two changes, and I actually disagree with both of them.

• Re: ''...'' vs. {{term|...}}: {{term}} adds HTML annotations to indicate that the text is in German. It also uses CSS, rather than <i>, to induce italics, so its appearance is customizable. And — it explicitly indicates, in the wikitext, that this is a mention, whereas italics are used for plenty of other things as well. We don't use {{term}} as consistently as I'd wish, but I don't see what downside you see.
• Re: [[Special:BookSources/3423325119|→ISBN]] vs. →ISBN: Since, on en.wikt, →ISBN links to [[Special:BookSources/3423325119]] anyway, this has no advantage that I can see, but it does have a few disadvantages: (1) someone changing the ISBN has to do it in two places, one of which is less obvious than the other; (2) this puts the link to the Special: page in the wikitext, so that mirrors have to filter it out.

What am I missing?

Thanks,
—Ruakh_TALK
21:57, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Heya, thanks for the feedback --

1. {{term}} vs. italics: I was going purely for brevity. I had not considered any annotations, and was unaware of any such. I'm happy for that to be reverted. Sorry for the trouble.
2. Wow. I don't know if there was a browser hiccup or my eyes are just crap today -- I did not at all see that that was still a link, and I could just about swear that the text appeared black (i.e. as regular non-linked text) when I previewed. I didn't know it would automatically link, and not seeing that it was a link, I thought it needed an explicit link to work. I'm really sorry about that.

Thank you very much for saying something, I've learned a couple new things from this! (And, I've just rolled back that last change of mine.)

-- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:07, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Japanese

Hi, how come there is a "ki" in the pronunciation at (deprecated template usage) 戦闘? Surely this is an error? 50 Xylophone Players talk 19:53, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

You're right, I had too many tabs open at once and mistook which tab I was entering text into. Fixed. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:55, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Translation

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me with a little translation. I was wondering, would 僕の憎しみが君の憎しみになりました be how you would say "My hatred has become your hatred" in Japanese? (Yes, I am aware "boku" and "kimi" are informal pronouns.) It doesn't seem right according to Google translate but I don't know where to trust it or not. 50 Xylophone Players talk 21:37, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, the parallel construction might come across ambiguously in some ways. As with so many things, the best translation depends on the context.

If you mean something like a transfer of ownership, where "I" previously hated something and now "you" own that hatred, you could say:

• 僕の憎しみが君のものになった。

If you mean that "I" and "you" now share a hatred of something due to a change in circumstances, where previously only "I" hated it, you could say:

• 僕が憎んでいることは今君も憎むようになった。

Frankly, it's a bit of an odd turn of phrase in English, so it's a bit of an odd turn of phrase in Japanese. It might help if you could say what the object of the hatred is; that might suggest different wording.

Given the sentiment, I suspect that 俺 and お前 might be better than 僕 and 君. Either way, use plain form (する・だ) instead of polite (ます・です). Polite could work with 僕 and あなた, but it sounds a touch odd with 僕 and 君. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:50, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I see, so the second option, is that read as "Boku ga nikunde iru koto wa ima kimi mo nikumu yō ni natta" 50 Xylophone Players talk 21:58, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:00, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

possess

Could you formulate a definition of [[possess]] as used in the Twelfth Night line you cite? Shakespeare is well known, so the sense meets CFI and passes RFV... I just can't work out how to define it; simply "to occupy" seems too brief and unclear. - -sche (discuss) 22:12, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, lemme see what I can come up with. It's really a causative use -- "to cause someone to possess something". This can then used in a passive way -- "to be possessed of something". As I understand the line from Shakespeare, the missing indirect object is the information that Maria has and that Sir Toby wants to know.

By way of reference, google books:"possessed him of" gives us:

• "...I have possessed him of by a deed of Gift under my hand..." -- Foster genealogy: Part 2 - Page 982
• "He is required to prove, "that after the execution of the mortgage, he bona fide lent the property to the mortgagor, or otherwise honestly possessed him of it."" -- Reports of cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Tennessee (1818-1837), Volume 7 - Page 442
• "I possessed him of the danger of a partial, and the inevitable mischief of the total, rejection of the bill." -- The works of Edmund Burke: Volume 5 - Page 487

Then google books:"possessed her of" gives us:

• "I give to my daughter, Mary Magdalen White, all the property that I have heretofore possessed her of, to her and her heirs forever." -- Virginia reports: Jefferson--33 Grattan, 1730-1880 - Page 81
• "Then those demons that had possessed her of that vice took the defendant's senses away from her..." -- The Inquisition Of Francisca: A Sixteenth-century Visionary On Trial - Page 135
• "Again the forward push and her current speed possessed her of a soft landing." -- The Falling Tree - Page 85

I should have added the years of publication above, but it's not always clear from the summary list of Google hits, and I'm actually a bit under the gun IRL right now, so suffice it to say that the last quote is apparently from 2007, but the others all seem to be from the early 1900s or earlier.

-- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:48, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

PS: Looking again at possess, all the quotes above, and the one from Twelfth Night, all look like the current sense #4 to me: "To vest ownership in (someone) with ownership." (That wording could use some help.) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:50, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

A sample section for labeled-section transclusion

And here's some sample text.

• And a bullet point.

Mentoring program

インラカプテ(こんにちは in Ainu)! Metaknowledge just told me User_talk:Britannic124 is adding Ainu terms, so I invited them to the WT:Mentoring program. I would love to be involved in that, but I know nothing about the complexities of editing with Japanese and might need help. Would you be interested in signing up to be a mentor and/or help me if B124 wants a mentor? --BB12 (talk) 00:07, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Heya Benjamin, I'm certainly happy to help if I can. I just learned that my second job is back in season, so I may not respond as quickly as might be optimal, but feel free to post any questions / concerns / brainstorming / etc. here and I'll reply when I can.  :)

What kind of JA editing complexities are you concerned about? I know that WT:AJA is somewhat out of date; do you have any specific questions? -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 03:29, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations on the new job. I don't have any questions in particular right now, but I know the About Japanese page is pretty complex and I can imagine that questions will come up. I appreciate the offer to help! --BB12 (talk) 07:32, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa

I noticed that you speak some Hawaiian - could you fix my (probably faulty) translation of a quote here? (I had to reorder some words because Hawaiian uses demonstratives so strangely...) Thanks so much! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:47, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Heya, I'd be happy to help as best I can. My Hawaiian materials are actually in my cubicle at work, so it'll have to wait until Monday.  :) -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:31, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Great! I await your corrections. Thanks again! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:38, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, there's egg on my face, and not because I've been messy with my breakfast -- I seem to have misplaced my Hawaiian materials, as they're not here in my cubicle either. I'll give the page a shot, but I won't do too much at the moment, as my Hawaiian is limited and rusty enough that I don't feel all that confident without my books to hand.  :) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:25, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, really any help is appreciated. It's a little embarrassing around here when it comes to the point where I have to do Hawaiian translations :) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:12, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Took me blooming forwever, but I finally tweaked the etym. Only real changes were for the ā conjunction and then the expanded translation. C.f. the ā entry at Wehewehe.org, specifically sense #4. HTH, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello @Eirikr:, I'm relatively new to Wiktionary and all of this stuff, so I don't know if I this is the correct way to leave a message in the talk page. I wanted to address you about the pronunciation of humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, it think it should be [ˌhumuˌhumuˌnukuˌnukuˌwaːpuˈwɐʔə], since according to Wikipedia itself the pronunciation of Hawaiian words are this way. To start with the āpuaʻa, long A like ā is [aː], but when Hawaiian a is short and stressed it's [ɐ], and unstressed a is [ə] as shown in here, in note 6 and in here. Also, the [w] before the ā and a is because the u before them triggers a [w] sound after, as said in here, in note 4. I'm open to disagreements, I'm not native to Hawaiian. If I sent you this message incorrectly, please teach me how this works :). -- SantiChau23 | 26 July 2018 (UTC)

@SantiChau23 -- Thank you for posting. I've reverted myself.

I had mis-remembered the phonology of the long-a ā particle as disallowing the /w/, and a native-speaker friend doesn't seem to round his lips quite enough in this word to produce a /w/. That said, last night, I dug out my copy of Ebert, and confirmed my mistake -- some speakers at least do seem to pronounce a clearer interstitial /-w-/ glide. Different book from mine at home, but same basic info from Ebert et al, available online here via the U of Hawaii.

However, in checking for any online videos that might further clarify the pronunciation, I did find this one, suggesting a pronunciation more like:

• /ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi.ˈhʌŋ.ɡɹi.kəʊˈɑːlə.puːp.ˈɑː/

Perhaps we should update the entry? :D (JK!)

Cheers! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 16:50, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

巫毒教

Just letting you know that although you got rid of the Japanese entry here which you said was bogus, the Japanese translation given at voodoo still points to that entry. ---> Tooironic (talk) 11:06, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I have removed 巫毒教 and added ブードゥー教 as the Japanese translation for voodoo. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:32, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:38, 25 January 2013 (UTC)