Welcome edit

Welcome!

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Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/ken- edit

Can you add some content to this, please? A single external link is not suitable content for an appendix. Hopefully, no administrator will delete it before you get a chance to wikify it. --Mglovesfun (talk) 11:18, 14 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

You probably know the guidelines for formatting such etymological appendices in Wiktionary better than me. So you could put the right information into the page, too, and you might even be more successful than me in this. One can gather more content for the text from the external link as well as from the "Etymology" sections of the pages that link to this root's page. Thanks for your attention to what I did!--Imz 11:25, 14 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I've deleted for emptiness, as I don't know how to format it. Try Category:Proto-Indo-European nouns, best person to ask is CodeCat (talkcontribs). Mglovesfun (talk) 22:38, 16 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

recēns edit

About your comment on this edit. First of all the deleted redirect was a redirect to itself. Secondly it had a non-existent an unwanted template "R from another spelling" as known from Wikipedia. Lastly macrons indicating a long vowel are optional in Latin, so the current praxis is to not use it in page names, but indicate them on the page. I expect somebody will delete the redirect at some point, but I'll leave it for now.--Leo Laursen – (talk · contribs) 08:51, 16 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

1) I'm sorry if there was an error in the previous version (redirecting to itself).
2) And are there analogous templates for classifying redirects here?
3) I'm fine with that the macrons are optional, and that there is a policy not to use them in article names, but all these doesn't contradict the wish to have the spelling with macrons be redirected to the article where this word is defined, does it? (The redirect is supplementary, and does not contaminate the main page's title.)--Imz 11:41, 16 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
WT:REDIR and also Wiktionary:Todo/Redirects with macrons. Macrons aren't part of Latin spelling anyway, they represent hypothetical vowel length. Actual vowel length is of course unknown, as there are no audio recordings from Ancient Rome. --Mglovesfun (talk) 11:46, 16 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the links! There is nothing said there about redirects from macrons to the canonical spelling however. (Also, the topic of whether we classify redirects and how is not covered--that was my other question.)--Imz 22:17, 16 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
Redirects are discussed quite a lot; see Wiktionary talk:Redirections. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:37, 16 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Etymology. edit

Hi Imz,

The first sentence of a Wikipedia article about a city typically lists the names of that city in relevant local languages. That is not the etymology of any one name (though there may be overlap between this list and such an etymology).

Thanks,
RuakhTALK 02:59, 30 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for leaving me a note!
So what? I understand things; and as a human rather than a machine, I used the information listed in Wikipedia to fill the etymology section (with an understanding of what I am doing).
Superficially, "etymology" is the set of words in different languages that have the same origin, and to spell those words correctly I have to use a reliable source--a dictionary or, perhaps, Wikipedia.--Imz
I just can't understand what I should explain to you. To make things more clear, I can suggest to have look at the "near etymology" section for a proper name in a traditional etymological dictionary: the entry for 'Ivan' in Vasmer's Russian etymological dictionary--it lists the ancestors of the modern form of the proper name in Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic, then states that it was borrowed form Greek. Fine! Compare to the etymology section I wrote and you deleted now (i.e., the name was given by the Greek, then it appeared in the Italic languages and Italian "dialects", now it is present in Italian)...--Imz 21:57, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
Actually, no. The etymology of a word is the path by which the word arose, not simply a list of other words from the same origin. Your "etymology" includes the Modern Greek form of the name, which was not involved in the creation of the Italian name. A good etymology should trace the origin of a word backwards through time. Your name dictionary example does that; it does not simply list a series of related derivatives. --EncycloPetey 22:01, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
I would say not "the path" but the network of paths leading from the original word/root to its descendants observed in several languages. (Cf., for example, the entry for беру "I take" in Vasmer's dictionary with its further etymology section--to see what I mean on the example of a traditional etymological dictionary.) If you protest against listing the modern Greek form, please delete it and leave only the Ancient Greek one; actually, I'm quite neutral on the point whether to list it. (I was inclined to include it because I believed it is an independent path descending from the orginal name, not a modern borrowing to Greek from a modern Italian dialect; hence, more corroboration for the etymological info.)--Imz 22:19, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
That's part of the point. If the Modern Greek is not involved with the modern Italian, then it should not be listed there. You added the Modern Greek as part of the Italian etymology section. --EncycloPetey 22:24, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'd say it should just have been made clear that it's a different path of the development of the original name; still, it can be seen as a part of the whole "etymological network" of the word. And that's another (also important) point: the more independent "reflexes", the more trust in the suggested history. (Well, I agree, in this case, if the Ancient Greek form is known from written sources, the other descendants are much less important and interesting than in the cases of reconstructed hypothesised forms.)--Imz 22:40, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
Please feel free to improve the etymology sections! I just wanted to add more value to the Wiktionary entries by adding etymologies and linking the individual words to the entries for the corresponding words in their languages, so that one can study further their history and their morphology. (I don't think that deleting is improving.)--Imz 22:48, 8 July 2011 (UTC)Reply