User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 27

Koine and Medieval periodization

I know that you have a huge workload, and that you are interested mainly in classic Ancient Greek, Homer and dialects. But I notify you as #admin for grc.
I was wondering if you had any objection to extending Late Koine ending to 6th century instead of 300 as in proposals at MedievalGreek@BeerParlour. Also, for changing the title over medieval lemmata (Category:Byzantine Greek) to Medieval Greek and creating it a separate autonomus language Section. Thank you. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 21:14, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sarri.greek: I don't have any objection, but I just don't know enough about the topic to express an opinion in the discussion. That's why I've been staying out of it. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:34, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I understand. I hope that the introduction of the CambridgeGrammar [1] would persuade you. Because, what would my next step be supposing noone expressed objections? How can I go on changing things without permission? I have alerted all three grc.administrators. Thank you and sorry for bothering you with all that. (mainly, etymologies for ModernGreek are very dysfunctional without Med.Greek. Also, I think, en.wikt, being very accurate and updated, is also a factor for change) ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 06:42, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sarri.greek: If and when a consensus is reached to separate gkm from grc and to call gkm Medieval Greek rather than Byzantine Greek, it will take an administrator to implement the change. I'm happy to do it myself. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Thing is... noone is interested in greek. The only people commenting at that discussion (usually to object) are people who have never dealt with greek lemmata, never added quotations for any period of greek whatsoever. (-- I am not a linguist, but I have added hundreds of them at el.wikt (also made a list of them); at least, I am aware of the difficulties of registers (learned or vernacular, diglossia etc).--) I would not add Med lemmata here at en.wikt, or add complicated labels. I would like to just correct the title 'Ancient' over them. I shall wait a bit longer, and then try to proceed. I do not see any other objections except by one editor -not of greek-. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 07:34, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sarri.greek: Once gkm is a separate language, there can be no harm in going to CAT:Byzantine Greek and adding entries for the terms there. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:35, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

/h/ in Old Irish verbs

Hi Mahāgaja, I noticed you added an h after the first preverb in the pronunciation section of verbs like doicc, doimmoirc, and doáirci. What's the reason for that? I can't find evidence for an h in any of the reference works. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 10:06, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if it's explicitly mentioned in reference works, but it has to have been there. By now Celticists all agree that the difference between the absolute and conjunct endings derives from the presence vs. absence of a particle -s that was attached to the end of the first element in Proto-(Insular) Celtic; in absolute forms it was added to the end of the verb and in conjunct forms it was added to the end of the preverb. Thus beirid comes from *bereti-s, while ní beir and do·beir come from *nī-s beret(i) and *to-s beret(i) respectively. The presence of this s is proven by the fact that the b of ní beir and do·beir is unlenited. And between two vowels *s became h, so *to-s annket(i) became do·[h]icc but with the [h] unwritten, as was usually the case in Old Irish. (Compare "her father", which was spelled a athair but pronounced a hathair, just as in Modern Irish.) Basically, in Old Irish as in Modern Irish, h-prothesis of a vowel-initial word is equivalent to non-lenition of a consonant-initial word, including cases like do·beir and do·icc. In leniting relative clauses, on the other hand, the particle was yo rather than s; *to-yo-beret(i) and *to-yo-annket(i) became do·beir with a lenited b and *do·icc with no [h]. So do·icc pronounced [doˈhʲiɡʲ] means "(s/he) comes" while do·icc pronounced [doˈiɡʲ] means "who comes". —Mahāgaja · talk 14:32, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. With this I managed to find a reference: Schumacher: Die keltischen Primärverbien (page 100, footnote 104). The reason I asked is because Stifter in his book Sengoidelc (page 92 and other places) gives /do·ig'/, even though he does subscribe to the *eti-theory (page 121 eg). I guess he must have made a mistake. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 10:51, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

He probably just didn't think about it. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:55, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

συμπέρασμα

Hi Mahāgaja. Thanks for specifying that the first alpha is pronounced short. Looking at the conjugated forms of περαίνω, I couldn't be sure myself. However, why the uncertainty about the length of the second alpha? I thought that would definitely be short. Am I missing something? Fruitless Forest (talk) 22:44, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

@Fruitless Forest: It is definitely short. So definitely, in fact, that you don't have to specify it. {{grc-IPA}} knows that vowel in the final syllable of a proparoxytone or properispomenon is short, so it doesn't need to be marked. It doesn't hurt anything to specify it, of course; it isn't "wrong"; it's just unnecessary. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:17, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

OK, thanks; that makes sense. So these changes are all fine, yeah? Fruitless Forest (talk) 13:16, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Sure. I was only talking about {{grc-IPA}}, where the long and short marks don't appear on the page but simply determine how the word should be transcribed in IPA. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:38, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I assumed. Thanks. Fruitless Forest (talk) 23:54, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Another issue: Do you think συμπέρασμα 1.1 ("conclusion in a syllogism") and 1.1.1 ("subject of the conclusion") are really distinct senses? I find them rather difficult to distinguish. Fruitless Forest (talk) 00:20, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

That's above my pay grade. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:13, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

OK, no problem. I'll defer to LSJ on this occasion. Fruitless Forest (talk) 12:38, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

ɢ

Hi. This is the IPA letter. The modifier letter is included in the same article, like other modifiers, but is only relevant where mentioned. kwami (talk) 05:50, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Φρεαττώ

Do you think this is derived from φρέᾱρ (phréār)? The form Φρεᾱτώ (Phreātṓ) suggests a derivation from φρέᾱρ, φρεᾱτ- + -ώ (-ṓ), with Φρεᾰττώ (with the quantity you specified) resulting from quantitative metathesis. The only trouble is that I'm not sure whence LSJ got the form Φρεᾱτώ — they don't cite a source for it, AFAICT. What do you think? Fruitless Forest (talk) 23:38, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Douglas M. MacDowell's 1963 Athenian Homicide Law in the Age of the Orators, ch. VIII: “In Phreatto”, pp. 82–84 is worth reading on this. The single-tau spellings are apparently attested. Fruitless Forest (talk) 00:31, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I have no idea if it comes from φρέᾱρ (phréār) or not. I only marked the vowel short because vowels are usually short before geminate consonants, and entries get sorted into CAT:Ancient Greek terms with incomplete pronunciation if they have an unmarked α,ι, or υ. If you think the vowel was long for etymological reasons, feel free to change it. Google Books won't show me the pages you mentioned. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:50, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

powieść rzeka and temat rzeka

The modules can't handle the exceptional voicing so we are entering it manually. Vininn126 (talk) 11:51, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

@Vininn126: OK, then at least don't forget to put slashes around it. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:52, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

wng / wnc

Re wng/wnc, no, they're not used at all in the modern language. I'd never heard of them or their derived terms before. I'm not even sure that words wncw and onco come from wnc. I'd have thought they were in that group of terms that include e.g. hwnna ← hwn yna, honna ← hon yna, wncw ← hwncw ← hwn acw, onco ← honco ← hon acw (cf. manco ← y man acw). Llusiduonbach (talk) 17:22, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

@Llusiduonbach: That does seem likely. Having o in a feminine correspond to w in a masculine is of course analogical to adjectives where it's etymologically regular. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:53, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

"Juǀ'hoan"

Hi. This is misspelled. Where do I go to correct this? kwami (talk) 19:07, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

WT:RFM is the place to request language name changes. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:08, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! kwami (talk) 19:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Changes on Cantonese entries

Hello I saw that you've changed some of the templates from Chinese (zh) to Cantonese (yue) or vice versa (e.g. Special:Diff/73276512/75520047 and Special:Diff/72873162/75519787). Apart from being inconsistent in your approach (which also introduces inconsitenties with the other existing entries), these changes are incorrect as Chinese is treated as a macrolanguage (see WT:LT) and they should all use Chinese as the L2. – Wpi (talk) 04:28, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

@Wpi: Sorry about the inconsistency, I hadn't noticed that. My goal was to get them off of Wiktionary:Todo/Derivation category does not match entry language, where an entry appears if it is included in a "[language] terms derived from..." category but does not appear in the same "[language] lemmas" category. If these Hong Kong Cantonese terms need Chinese as their L2 (and I didn't realize that was the case since there are a large number of Cantonese lemmas), then their etymology sections also need to say {{der|zh|en|...}} rather than {{der|yue|en|...}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 05:39, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

This is a standard practice. See also Wiktionary:Todo/Template language code doesn't match header which specifically excludes Chinese. I believe the correct thing to do here would be adding Category:Cantonese lemmas to the entry; these entries lack the category because they don't use {{zh-pron}} which would add the category properly. Maybe @Justinrleung could comment on this? – Wpi (talk) 06:15, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

@Wpi: Another problem is that in tabbed languages view, the Cantonese categories don't appear in the Chinese tab but in a preceding tab (because "Cantonese" alphabetically precedes "Chinese"). That's not a huge a problem, but it does make viewing the pages confusing. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:29, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Arguably, this is already the case for many of the other pages, like work. Tabbed languages is flawed in itself - this is just one of the many other things that it breaks - and I don't see why we should shoehorn things to accomodate for its issues. – Wpi (talk) 06:39, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Sure, it happens whenever categories don't match their L2s. But I don't think tabbed languages are the only feature that glitches in that circumstance, and I haven't noticed any other problems with tabbed languages. It's certainly orders of magnitude better than having all the languages displayed on a single page, especially for pages with lots of languages (more than 4 or so). I do wish we'd find a way to put each language on its own subpage, but until then I think tabbed languages are the best viewing option. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:25, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic reconstruction *maťerъka

Hi @Mahagaja,

You added that P-Sl. form to the Proto-Slavic *-ъka reconstruction page as an example derived term in this diff. Do you have a source for that reconstruction? I've only been able to find *maťerъka on Wiktionary. It's relevant to a Bulgarian entry I'm about to write.

Thanks,

Chernorizets (talk) 08:05, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chernorizets: No, but I also added it to the entry for Lower Sorbian maśerka at the same time. I don't remember why I thought it must be inherited from PSl rather than coined directly in LSorb. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:32, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

@Mahagaja I see. If you don't have any reference sources for it, would you mind removing it from the PSl reconstruction page? Or, if you'd rather keep it in there, how would it have been derived from *mati? ESSJa does have a reconstruction *materъka which is a type of plant, and would fit with the suffix derivation.

Thanks,

Chernorizets (talk) 08:45, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

 Done —Mahāgaja · talk 09:30, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Irish entries

Hi Mahagaja, I'd like to help with Irish entries, but I have very little knowledge of the language itself. Is this doable just with the reference dictionaries and some copy+paste? What are some gotchas? Could you check stádas which I've just added. Thanks! Jberkel 12:14, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

@Jberkel: It's definitely helpful to have some familiarity with the language, and obviously you can't copy+paste out of a dictionary that's still under copyright. I try to distill definitions from a wide selection of dictionaries and include the glosses that appear in multiple sources. For words that are likely to have been around for more than 100 years, I also like to check {{R:ga:Corpas}} to see if the word appears in any of the texts collected there; it's also a good way to find the older (pre-reform) spelling of a word. For more recent words I'll often do a Google search for the term in question plus the word bhfuil as the latter is extremely common in Irish but bizarrely spelled enough that it doesn't occur in any other language. If the term in question and bhfuil appear on the same page, then it's pretty likely that the term in question is a real word of Irish that appears in written texts. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:30, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm planning to learn some basics anyway. I meant copy/paste from existing Irish entry structures on Wiktionary, not from reference dictionaries. Jberkel 12:52, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed that many glosses in Irish verb entries to include "to " before the infinitive. Is that a special convention? Jberkel 10:03, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

It's my personal custom. Because so many English verbs are spelled (and often pronounced) the same as nouns, it helps reinforce in the reader's mind that we're talking about a verb. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:18, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I miswrote. I meant "do not include". Ex. aontaigh, achainigh (I agree it's useful to include). Jberkel 15:47, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Both of those were created by Embryomystic. They first used the "to" in the glosses of aontaigh and then removed it later; achainigh was created without the "to" and has stayed that way ever since. I prefer the "to", but I don't think it's a big deal. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:52, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

I favour omitting 'to' mainly because Irish doesn't imply this. The citation form is not an infinitive form (Irish has none), but rather an infinitive. Like Mahagāja, though, I won't generally edit just to correct this (I'm sure I've done this, because I have had way too much time on my hands at some points). It doesn't make much of a difference either way, regardless. embryomystic (talk) 05:54, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, my fingers got away from me. I meant to say that the citation form is an imperative rather than an infinitive. embryomystic (talk) 05:55, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

True, but I am of the opinion that lemma forms should be glossed with other lemmas forms, because the lemma form stands for the verb as a whole. I don't think they should be glossed with their literal translations; thus Old Irish beirid and Latin ferō should both be glossed with "to carry" (or just "carry"), not with "carries" and "I carry" respectively. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:41, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

powldoody

I ran into this while working on mollusc categories and thought you might be interested. It's a special kind of oyster with a name that's pure Irish Gaelic. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:31, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: Is it? It doesn't sound particularly Gaelic. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:29, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

[2] Chuck Entz (talk) 06:36, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz: That link isn't showing me anything useful. What does it say? —Mahāgaja · talk 06:41, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Never mind, I found it. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:47, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

𐌿𐍃𐌱𐌴𐌹𐍃𐌽𐌰𐌹

@Mahagaja instead of counting this as a normal noun, shouldn't it be a noun form? Stríðsdrengur (talk) 13:56, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Yep, fixed now. Thanks for catching it! —Mahāgaja · talk 13:58, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

templates for indicating missing tenses

where can I find a template that I can use for AG verbs that are missing tenses (inflections)? so I can add them to relevant pages? regards henry — This unsigned comment was added by L0ngh3nry89 (talk • contribs) at 16:37, 18 September 2023‎ (UTC).

@L0ngh3nry89: You can use {{rfinfl|grc|verb}}, although if an Ancient Greek verb entry has some verb-inflection tables but is missing certain tenses, it often means that the verb is never attested in that particular tense. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:29, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

beirid

Hi @Mahagaja, re: [3], the first problem with this is that it produces patent falsehoods. For example, the perfective forms are not derived from do·rat. Rather, do·rat is secondary to the perfective forms represented by the citation form *do·rata, which itself happens to not be attested. So if you want to stick to attested forms, I think things need to be rephrased so as not to be misleading.

Secondly, is there a policy for this? I can't picture what a policy built on the principle of only using attested forms would look like. What if no 3sg form is attested? You can't use any old form as if it's the citation form. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 11:17, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

It's not a policy, but I think it's common sense. And what's the evidence that do·rat is secondary to *do·rata? Since perfective forms in general (not just in this verb) are found primarily in the perfect and the subjunctive, it seems far more likely that it's the scantily attested perfective present indicative forms that are secondary. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:25, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

*dāti certainly didn't have an s-aorist. It was formed in analogy to weak a-stem verbs. All tenses and moods (except the imperative) can take the augment and the verb in question bears that out. Frequency discrepancy may give you a hint as to its usage (the imperfective preterite was almost only used as a narrative tense and the perfective preterite is therefore ubiquitous in the glosses, whereas in other tenses/moods the use of the perfective was much more limited), but not its chronology. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 01:06, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

The perfect do·rat comes from the basic form *to-ɸro-ad-dāti, the present indicative was formed later by adding the class A I present ending to the perfect. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:00, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

Wait what? do·rat is clearly an s-preterite. *to-ɸro-ad-dāti is a present indicative. It inflects like a weak a-stem in Old Irish throughout (with minor exceptions).

-Schumacher, Stefan, Schulze-Thulin, Britta (2004) Die keltischen Primärverben: ein vergleichendes, etymologisches und morphologisches Lexikon [The Celtic Primary Verbs: A comparative, etymological and morphological lexicon] (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft; 110) (in German), Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, →ISBN, pages 265-66

-McCone, Kim (1997) The Early Irish Verb (Maynooth Monographs 1), 2nd edition, Maynooth: An Sagart, →ISBN, page 133

—Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 14:19, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

I still think learners are more likely to think of these as forms of do·rat and do·uic since those are the forms they'll encounter most, but I'm tired of arguing about it. Do what you like, I won't revert. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:15, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I just want to say, just in case and because it won't do any harm, that I appreciate your input on this stuff. This question made me carefully read McCone's chapters on the augment (which I recommend, if you haven't). I'm inclined to think the conjugation tables should be changed at some point to systematically distinguish augmented forms and the terms 'perfect' and 'perfective' both avoided, because they're quite unfortunate. Incidentally, do you know why noun tables work so differently in that they don't just show attested forms? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 12:40, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Mostly because noun forms are so much easier to predict than verb forms. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:46, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

What do you do when there's variation, like is(s)ind altur/alltar? What if it's only spelling variation? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 13:29, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I ever got around to including this info in the documentation, but most of the noun declension tables allow parameters like |dat_sg2= for alternative forms. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:41, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

One more follow-up: do you rigorously distinguish Old and Middle Irish when it comes to forms? I just know that the glosses are definitely Old Irish, but beyond that I can be pretty tricky. DIL also doesn't tell you when a text is from, unlike GPC for example. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 14:10, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, I try to, but I can't guarantee 100% accuracy. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:17, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

frienemyships

Please can you explain (to me as a novice Wiktionary editor) why you removed the link from frienemyships to frenemyships? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:32, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I didn't see any benefit to linking to an entry that's virtually free of content, saying only that it's the plural of frenemyship. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:36, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Brovid

It sounds more like a bro with covid and nothing like Brexit lol. Rolando 1208 (talk) 22:00, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

How about "Brexvid"? —Mahāgaja · talk 22:07, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Much better mate. Rolando 1208 (talk) 22:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)