User talk:Stephen G. Brown/2009

when every verb in a certain tense is also a noun, e.g.

You may interested in Wiktionary_talk:About_Hebrew#present_tense_verbs.2C_and_.22actor.22_nouns.—msh210℠ 20:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:Latf

Hi. I'm changing the class for Fraktur from LA to Latf, to match all of the other script templates. Hope that's okay. —Michael Z. 2009-01-02 22:21 z

That’s fine with me. I didn’t know if the syntax required a certain thing or even anything at all. —Stephen 22:29, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Heads up

You might want to check on заебись. --EncycloPetey 20:37, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

biзin

Can you check on biзin and faзola? Why is only the 'z' in Cyrillic, with all the other letters in Latinica? —Stephen 19:57, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

З is considered to be part of the Montenegrin "Latinica" alphabet. As far as I know, it is used to represent the sound /dz/, which is not found in other dialects of Serbian. I have not been to post-independence Montenegro, so I don't know what the language status there is. I have no idea how it would be represented in Cyrillic, if any speakers of "Montenegrin" would use Cyrillic. --Dijan 08:18, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, thanks, Dijan. But very unusual. Yesterday I saw a remark about купон being borrowed from the French word "соироп", so I was afraid that biзin might be something weird like that. —Stephen 14:21, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:als

I just thought I'd let you know about my reversion of your edit here. It's my understanding that our language template are to conform to ISO codes, even when they conflict with Wikimedia codes (which shouldn't happen, but....). If you are opposed to this, I am open to discussion. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:44, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

My understanding was the opposite, that the codes in use by the Wikipedias and Wiktionaries were the last word for our particular purposes. We are not likely to need to resort to using separate codes for the Albanian dialects any more than we do for the dialects of English, and there is not likely to be a separate Albanian Wikipedia for any form of Albanian but Standard. The main use for these codes by us, as far as I can see, is to identify the languages that we are actually using, and als is what we use for Alemannic. If the time should come that the nonstandard form of Albanian should start its own Wikipedia, and if it should be decided that it will be identified with the tag als, and that all the Alemannic pages have to be renamed with a different code, then we can easily change our als template in about three seconds...and since we only use it to identify words from the Alemannic Wikipedia and then expand it to the full name, we won’t have but very few instances here to rename...which is very unlikely to ever happen anyway. —Stephen 14:34, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess I would respond to that with a link to Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Template:nrm. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 15:02, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Not sure what that means, but if you’re not going to keep als as Alemannic, then you should at least put in it a message such as AMBIGUOUS CODE...DO NOT USE THIS LANGUAGE CODE. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on with the recent spate of Albanian dialectal entries and why they all seemed to be German words. I scratched my head for days trying to comprehend why Albanian would use the German word for water when Albanian has a perfectly good native term for it. Eventually I figured out that some contributors were entering words from the Alemannic Wikipedia, but calling them Albanian because of the misnamed als template. The only purpose that I see the als template being used for is the identification of Wikipedia words from the als Wikipedia. So if we aren’t going to call a spade a spade, then at least mark it as unusable. After I realized what was happening, I had to search for all the Albanian words and change those that were actually Germanic to Alemannic. It was a giant waste of time. —Stephen 16:12, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

We use the correct ISO code for the language, we do not follow WMF errors (which are severe carelessness, if not abject incompetence). If we did, we would be leg into a continuing and increasing number of errors. Mind you, getting the s/w types to fix those errors is a problem; zh-yue to yue has been open in bugzilla for two years. als to gsw is pending, and then there is the idiotic creation of nrm, still to be fixed to some extension code. Hammer them. There is no excuse. But at least we can keep ourselves straight. Our template is correct. (Oh, and users using it and not even glancing at the result, let alone checking it is more the problem.) Robert Ullmann 17:57, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

What is the practical use of the als template as Albanian dialect? Who uses it for that purpose? What was the practical use of the als template as Alemannic? Who used it for that purpose? —Stephen 18:00, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

It is necessary to know these four factors in order to understand the argument and problem and to reach a reasoned conclusion. —Stephen 18:39, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I want to express my full support to Stephen's edit, since als is a widespread code for Alemannic, in German Wikipedia there was even a code among users for Austrian German, but I forgot it. Why do some insist on the Albanian dialect, if in both cases this is a dialect? als is used for Alemannic by thousends of Wikimedia users and that certainly does not apply to yonder Albanian dialect. (Moreover I am sure that more Germans speak Alemannic than Albanians whichsoever dialect of Albanian). Please return to the German dialect. Bogorm 19:57, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

MW made an error in assigning the wrong ISO code for the language. While many Wikimedians use this code incorrectly, the rest of the world does not. The ISO code als is for Tosk Albanian. Albanian, although usually regarded as a single language, the two primarily dialects are not always intelligible. As Wikipedia's article on the Albanian language concisely notes: "Although the literary versions of Tosk and Gheg are mutually intelligible, many of the regional [sub-]dialects are not". The primarily reason they are considered a single language is political. If Albania were to break apart in the way that Yugoslavia did, we might probably see these "dialects" elevated to language status quickly. There is just as much reason to recognize the varieties of Albanian as there is to recognize Alemannic as distinct. The Albanians should not be punished for an error on the part of MW's German contributors. --EncycloPetey 20:11, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

That all just begs the question and I don’t think it has anything to do with what we’re talking about. This is not about our teaching the world the correct language codes. If you want to do that, make an appendix. The questions are, what is the practical use of the als template as Albanian dialect? Who uses it for that purpose (and by it, I mean the template)? What was the practical use of the als template as Alemannic? Who was using it for that purpose? —Stephen 20:40, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

You make a good point concerning usage, but I wonder if it's not quite the right question (or at least not the only one). Perhaps we should also be considering what we are using the system (i.e. the language templates collectively) for? I think we are using them so that we have a standard (which exists outside of Wiktionary) for defining the most fundamental distinction we make here on Wiktionary. The ISO codes provide the standard we need to define languages and sort them. Thus, in my opinion, a break from that standard which might, in isolation, be a good thing is a bad thing because it is detrimental to that overall system. Also, to counter your point on the small usage of als as Tosk Albanian (a small usage indeed), I went through and fixed all the als calls to gsw, and there couldn't have been more than a dozen of them. So, while the benefit might well be small, it seems the cost is also small. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Brion is fixing all of these (hit "next message" about six times to see where our particular code is brought up). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I’m afaid I don’t understand what you’re saying except for the first sentence.

As for the basic questions that nobody seems to have the answers to, my guesses are as follows:

(1) What is the practical use of the als template as Albanian dialect? ANSWER: None.

(2) Who uses it for that purpose? ANSWER: Nobody.

(3) What was the practical use of the als template as Alemannic? ANSWER: It was used to expand Wikipedia language names whenever terms were harvested.

(4) Who was using it for that purpose? ANSWER: Polyglot and other editors who were busy harvesting such words. —Stephen 03:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see, it was very useful the way it was, useless as it is. If continued in its use to expand the language name Alemannic, it could be retasked at a moment’s notice if the Alemannic Wikipedia changed its name and a Tosk Wikipedia ever got started (unlikely). As it is, it’s even worse than useless, because it causes any words harvested from the Alemannic Wikipedia to be misidentified as Tosk Albanian. That’s why I said that if we are to lose the practical utility of the template, then we should at least fix it so that it does not cause further damage (damage being the mislabelling of Alemannic words as Tosk). Since there is no practical use of the template for Tosk, disabling it as I described above should be an easy fix, and easy to reverse if there is ever a need. Somebody stated above that the only the (4,300) pages of our Alemannic Wikipedia used the code for Alemannic, while the rest of the world (apparently 3 or 4 pages) use it for Tosk (if a mention can be termed a use).

So unless something in what you said means that there is actually a practical use of als for Tosk, then at least fix it for the time being so it cannot mislabel Alemannic. —Stephen 03:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've deleted {{als}} for the time-being. Hopefully editors who try to use it will be forced to look around, and will eventually find the correct code {{gsw}} (I suggest others involved in this discussion put the template on their watchlists, so we can guide folks who need guidance). My hope is that this will satisfy those who see it as an error that we don't want Wiktionary propogating (i.e. Robert, EP, and I), as well as those who don't want to see Alemannic mislabeled as Tosk Albanian. Once the Alemannic project are relocated to gsw (which is apparently on Brion's to-do list), we can reinstate the code as Tosk Albanian (perhaps with a bit of a delay, to allow things to settle). Does this work for you Stephen? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 04:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

håla

I found this Swedish word as I am currently working on form of entries so I was wondering if you knew what gender it is since there is no gender listed for it. 50 Xylophone Players talk 19:57, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

You can always add {{g|Swedish}} to the end of the headword/inflection line. — hippietrail 23:04, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Judging from Danish cognate hul it should be neutral, since Danish and Swedish cognates usually have the same gender. Bogorm 09:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

It’s common gender. Fixed. —Stephen 03:28, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Yupik

I was wondering if you could help me understand this old conversation (the bottom-most thread). As best as I can tell, your position is that Yup'ik (also known as Central Yupik) is one of the Yupik languages, and has the code {{esu}}, but there are other Yupik languages, such as Pacific Gulf Yupik ({{ems}}), etc. Is this correct, or am I way off. Please bear in mind that I am not trying to argue anything here, but rather simply trying to understand your POV, which I currently intend to accept as far more informed than my own. Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:41, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Yup’ik and Yupik are two different things. Yupik is a subgroup of Eskimo-Aleut languages, and Yup’ik is one of the Yupik languages. The Yupik languages are: Naukanski {{ynk}}, Central Siberian Yupik {{ess}}, Yup'ik {{esu}}, Alutiiq {{ems}}, and Sirenik {{ysr}} (extinct). —Stephen 04:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 04:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Old Transwikis

Any chance you can salvage content from this 2005 Transwiki? Transwiki:Haqiqa

Also, I assume that Transwiki:koleda is total garbage, but wanted to run it by you on the off-chance it's not 100% bogus. --EncycloPetey 06:12, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --EncycloPetey 17:17, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

hash

Hello,

in the Netherlands, certain types of hashish are named after their country of origin. Is that worth including? So you'll have Moroccan/Maroc, Afghaan, Nepal and various other. I'm not certain, it's usually used by people actually producing/importing/exporting/vending hashish. I don't think the "common" hashish smoker really cares for these terms and therefore not really uses it. Oh, before you are concerned about me using hash or any other drugs: I don't use drugs. Greetings Mallerd 15:17, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

One more thing, if you don't mind. Do you know this commercial? Is that actually a language? Or is it just made up. Mallerd 16:01, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, we have Appendix:Cannabis slang, so I suppose there could be a similar appendix for hashish. I believe hashish use is far more common in Europe than in the U.S. Here in the U.S., people seem to prefer marijuana. Perhaps because of obtainability and availability. Since Britain is virtually in Europe, I assume hash use is common there, too.

Part of the commercial is Italian, but most of it seems to be a made-up language, read by an Italian speaker. —Stephen 06:31, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Nationality

Please justify your revert on "nationality". Thank you. (Taivo 11:58, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

You deleted a lot of material without any justification. —Stephen 12:07, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Justification was on Talk page. (Taivo 12:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

The talk page is nonsense and a bunch of pasted quotes. Nobody is going to try to make sense of that mishmash. —Stephen 12:22, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

As a dictionary, Wiktionary relies on authoritative sources to provide the background for its definitions. As such, quotes from other dictionaries are the bread and butter of justifying changes in the definitions of an entry. Without examining what the dictionaries of English say about a given word, then editors are just spouting opinion. If editors cannot be bothered to read quotes from dictionaries, then what is Wiktionary left with? (Taivo 12:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

Nobody is going to try to figure out what the longwinded statement on that talk page means. Restate it in a single, concise sentence or two. —Stephen 12:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I find it disappointing that an administrator just protects a page from change rather than engaging in a discussion of the meaning of the word. I have stated the conclusions of my research on the Talk page for nationality. Please unblock the page so that the constructive changes can be made. (Taivo 12:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

Discuss it at WT:RFV. Perhaps you will find an ear. We do not engage in edit wars here. The page will remain locked until it is sorted out. —Stephen 12:54, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That is interesting since you were the one who initiated the edit war. I was making constructive, justified edits to an entry and discussing them on the Talk page. You were just reverting. (Taivo 13:19, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

That’s a lie. You began the edit with with this. You’ve already burned your bridges with me. You have the option of trying to convince someone else at WT:RFV. —Stephen 13:23, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that was later in the issue. I simply went back to an earlier, more accurate version and rewrote. The current definition was based on an edit war going on in Wikipedia at Taras Shevchenko where one editor was rewriting the Wiktionary entry to bolster his claim there. I still find your unwillingness to actually participate in a discussion on the entry's Talk page disturbing. If this is the way that Wiktionary administrators are taught to conduct their affairs then I find the whole enterprise loses credibility. (Taivo 13:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

You’re wasting your time. If you just want to argue, keep it up. If you want to make any progress, restate your arguement concisely at WT:RFV so that somebody will be convinced. —Stephen 13:37, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

meshugge

Hi Stephen,

Last month, you added {{attention|he|Needs all sorts of stuff}} to [[meshugge]], but I'm not sure what it is that it needs. If you'll be more specific, I'll try to add what it is that you're looking for.

Thanks,
—Ruakh_TALK 18:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

No, that wasn’t me, that was Atelaes here. I simply added pronunciation, vowel points, Yiddish, etc., and I may have move the "Needs all sorts of stuff" from one place to another. —Stephen 22:42, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, oops. Thanks. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 03:18, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Alternative forms of numerical symbols

Would it be worthwhile for me to write a template that would generate a table like that on the page 100? Such a template would standardize the order of the numerical systems, permitting similar systems to be close enough for visual comparison and to always appear in the same location in the table. I have in mind to use the standard script abbreviations for the parameter names, to make things easier. Should I start such a template?

I think it would be helpful to have it, but I don’t know how it would work. I assume it could only be made to work for languages that use an ordinary decimal system, but not for languages that work more like Roman numerals (Amharic, Tamil, etc.). —Stephen 22:16, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Certain number systems could be set to be "turned off", I suppose. Would it be better to do so by requiring the wikilink to be explicitly added when they are given, or to not display them at all under certain situations? Personally, I'd put Roman numerals in for every case, but wouldn't lnk them except in specific circumstances (like C, X, etc.). --EncycloPetey 22:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

It’s hard for me to say, because I can’t imagine how it will work. If it can handle Roman numerals, then it should be able to handle any of the others, but I don’t understand how it will be implemented. Some of the languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Tamil and Amharic have special symbols for 10, 100, 1000, and so on, and use them rather than a zero to form larger numbers. Most but not all of these languages have recently created a zero symbol, but its use can be erratic. But if the table will work for Roman numerals, then I don’t see why it can’t be made to handle Tamil and Amharic. —Stephen 22:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

What I intend is that, for those systems that function like Roman numerals (or perhaps all systems?), the numerical form is displayed without generating a link unless the editor explicitly adds square brackets around the parameter value. The template {{infl}} does this, in that it can specify a headword form, but only links components of the head= form when the square brackets are included as part of the parameter value. --EncycloPetey 22:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that there isn’t any need to link numbers above 100, except for some of the main numbers such as 1000. This would be more or less the same for all numbering systems. —Stephen 23:09, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll go ahead with a draft of the template then, since it sounds as if the specifics are at issue, but not the template's use. Afterwards, we can decide what might regularly be linked or not. I do notice that some entries less than 100 exist (e.g. 82), while others do not (e.g. 35, which is a redirect). Should we have entries for all the numbers 21 - 99, (disregarding tens for the moment), and should we likewise include their counterparts in other decimal systems as entries? --EncycloPetey 23:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I think we should have all the numbers up to 100, both in numerals and in words, and we should show them likewise in all the other languages and systems. Above 100, only the main ones are needed, which may vary somewhat from language to language. —Stephen 23:47, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

For English words and for the numerical entries, those are my sentiments as well. However, I don't agree when it comes to the words in some other languages. English hyphenates words for values from 21-99, which makes it easier to justify those entries, but many other languages write such words as a literal sum. Thus, the words for many of those numbers are (explicitly) sum-of-parts, like Spanish treinta y cinco or Latin triginta quinque. I don't think number words above 20 for other languages (when formed this way) should be included...although I wouldn't object if the community feels inclined otherwise. --EncycloPetey 00:06, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Some of the languages such as Spanish are more logical this way and it’s easier to put numbers together, but it takes a good number of examples to see this. I don’t think 100 examples is too many. For other languages such as Russian, they combine like Spanish as two separate words, but they decline, and some of them (those ending in 1 or 2) have gender concordance, so they are harder than their English counterparts. Some like French do odd things centered around the number 20 (quatre-vingts-dix...four-twenties-ten=90). If you only have numbers up to 20, it is very difficult to know for certain how to make 45 or 81. You can’t be sure that a language is simple and logical in its numbers from an English point of view unless the numbers are actually shown. —Stephen 00:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

That's one reason I started an Appendix:Latin cardinal numerals and Semper created Appendix:Italian numbers. Placing many examples together and providing explanatory text makes a huge difference. The {{cardinalbox}} template provides a visible means of linking such appendix pages from the relevant entries. As I say, I don't have a particularly strong feeling about this issue, and if people here feel as you do, then I'm fine with that. --EncycloPetey 00:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I think an appendix like Appendix:Italian numbers is useful if the system is simple, but if the numbers decline and show gender, then wouldn’t it be too complex for an appendix page? It might be a good idea to have an appendix page that gives an overview and links to individual numbers for more complex information, at least for the languages that have more complex numbers. The biggest problem that I can see with an appendix is just writing one. It’s a lot easier to make an entry for harminchárom than to write a good Hungarian appendix, and I’m not sure anybody will ever be able to make one for a language such as Kannada that is usable by non-Kannadians. If we could get entries for the first 100 numbers, then maybe a good table-maker would be able to format them all into a comprehensive appendix, and then the numbers above 20 could be deleted. I’m pretty sure I am not capable of making a good appendix like that for Russian or Arabic. It takes special talents. —Stephen 01:07, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, in a conversation in the BP, we've been discussing placement and structure of the Alternative forms section (which is not specified explicitly in the ELE). These numerical pages look like a situation where they might be better placed under the POS, since they push the definition down the page in favor of forms in specific scripts. Do you agree or disagree that the Alternative forms would be better placed at L4 on these pages? --EncycloPetey 22:00, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I thought the placement of these numerals at the top was very odd. I really don’t like the heading "Alternative forms". They are translations, not alternatives. —Stephen 22:16, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The difficulty with "Translations" is that ELE explicitly limits them to English language entries. We'd either have to vote a cahnge for these cases or select a new section header for them. Neither prospect appeals to me. --EncycloPetey 22:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I’ve never been able to get my mind around the notion of "translingual". Wherever it’s used I avert my eyes and hurry past like a cemetery after midnight. —Stephen 22:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Numerical template

I've started Template:mul-numberchart, so that you can see explicitly what I have in mind, but have only coded the first column for now. --EncycloPetey 00:58, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Opinions? --EncycloPetey 03:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I would alphabetize the entries. It looks like it won’t actually generate number tables, but will require a separate template for each number, sort of like the color/colour template. Seems good but a lot of work. —Stephen 03:27, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The color/colour concept is an idea I hadn't considered, but a good one. It should be possible to set up a master template, then have children like Template:mul-numberchart/35 that can be called from the various pages with a value of 35. It would indeed initially require a good bit of work to set up, but should not require maintenance after that, unless a new numerical system is to be added. --EncycloPetey 03:37, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I've set up a template that is in place on 100 as a test. All the linking is optional, and is controlled from Template:mul-numberchart/100. The real advantages I see to using such templates are (1) the table is managed from a single location for each value, so a missing/incorrect value entered once is added to all the pages with a single edit, (2) no one has to insert script templates over and over on all the pages.

I did notice three script templates that we don't seem to have: {{Guru}} (for Gurmukhi), {{Limb}} (for Limbu), and {{Mong}} (for Mongolian) --EncycloPetey 05:03, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I think 100 looks good the way it is.

Yes, we should make script templates for {{Guru}} and {{Limb}}. Mongolian Cyrillic is pretty simple, just the Russian alphabet plus ө and ү, so we could just use {{Cyrl}} for it. We might want to keep {{Mong}} for the Mongolian vertical script. Or we could name them MonC for Cyrillic and MonV for Vertical. —Stephen 06:41, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

There are several other scripts that could be added to this list, such as the Lepcha of Sikkim and Bhutan; as well as Ol Chiki, Osmanya, Saurashtra and a couple of others that I can think of. Lepcha, Balinese and Sundanese would definitely require script templates if we include them. —Stephen 06:53, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

If there are additional numerical systems that you think we should include, and for which you or someone else would be able to add the symbolic forms, then it would be easier to add those now (rather than later). Feel free to make additions to {{mul-numberchart}}, following the pattern already set up. If you take a look at {{mul-numberchart/10}} (which is deliberately empty for the moment), you can see why adding them now would be easier. The contents of that template include all the parameter names, and merely need the specific values equal to 10. The current (blank) text can thus be copied into any other templates (for 11, 12, etc.) to save time editing. With all the eventual parameters in there from the start, we won't have to go back and re-edit them all to insert additional parameters. ...I hope that made sense. --EncycloPetey 07:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Now it needs {{Bali}} (Balinese), {{Lepc}} (Lepcha), {{Osma}} (Osmanya), {{Saur}} (Saurashtra), {{Sund}} (Sundanese) to be created. —Stephen 07:54, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The new script template system makes it hard for me to see what works. I have not been able to get the Lepcha or Balinese to work, as far as I can tell, so I’m going to remove those two. Sundanese seems good, haven’t messed with Osmanya or Saurashtra yet. —Stephen 18:16, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I've started the templates {{Osma}}, and {{Saur}} to keep the table from balking, but the templates may need some additional magic somewhere to make them work. I don't know what magic that might be, but you seem to have that in hand. If there are scripts that don't seem to work, you can set their calls up the way I did for Mong, which is to simply display the text without calling a script template. Or, you can choose to remove such problem scripts entirely from the chart.

Are there any other scripts you plan to add, or will I be able to safely proceed with creating a few number-specific templates later this evening? Just let me know when any changes you intend to make are completed. --EncycloPetey 18:21, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Balinese and Lepcha are among the newest additions to Unicode and there are few fonts that display them. Most older scripts show up with Code2000, Tahoma or Arial Unicode, so it’s easier with them. If we just let Balinese and Lepcha without a fontcall, nobody will see anything but boxes or question marks, so I’ve removed them. I think Osmanya and Saurashtra will be okay.

I think we can proceed with what we have. It will probably be a year or two before Balinese and Lepcha are usable, and they are pretty rare anyway. Just need to check to see that the columns are still balanced. —Stephen 18:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Looking at 100, everything looks balanced and readable, so it’s all working now. —Stephen 18:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

How comprehensive do we want to be? For example, do we want to include Hebrew numerals? How about Attic ones? —Ruakh_TALK 23:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I think it would be good to include Hebrew numerals at least, because they are not intuitive. We were thinking about putting the numbers from 1 to 100, but I think Hebrew numerals usually deal with dates and are in the thousands range. So it might not be much use to adding Hebrew 1-100. But if you want to put some others like Hebrew and Attic, it would still be easy to do at this point. —Stephen 00:43, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I've added Hebrew to the template, thanks. :-)   (As you say, one use of Hebrew numerals is for dates, but they're also used for a lot of other things — everything from chapter and verse numbers in the Bible (1–89 for the Torah, maybe higher in later books) to year in primary and secondary school (1–12) — so I do think 1–100 could be useful to someone learning Hebrew.) —Ruakh_TALK 02:23, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:ssw

May I ask why you deleted this? It is a code, and it seems to have been properly named. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:42, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

It does not appear to be deleted. According to the history, I created it. —Stephen 08:45, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I restored it (the restoration may still be in RC). It appears that you created it, edited it once, and then deleted it, all within an hour or so. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:46, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Then I’m sure there was a reason but I don’t remember anything about it. —Stephen 08:51, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. I may not remember the motivation for every single edit I've ever made either :-). Let me know if your motivation to delete it reappears. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:54, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

It probably has to do with the fact that Template:ss is for the same language, and because Template:ss is what is currently in use for the Swati Wikipedia. —Stephen 08:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that would make sense. I guess I'm not sure what our policy is on 639-1 and 639-3 codes coexisting, but as long as {{ss}} exists, I don't really care what happens to {{ssw}}. Thanks for clearing that up. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:03, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

briseur de grève

Could you take a look at this because the format is giving me a headache (I can't get the proper feminine plural to appear). 50 Xylophone Players talk 12:11, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

The French templates are extremely difficult, and you could spend hours trying to get it to do something, only to find out that it will never work. I only use them for very simple cases, single words. If it’s complex, it’s better to forget the templates and just put in hard formatting. —Stephen 13:30, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Русские слова

Привет, Стивен!

Благодарю за правки статей с русскими словами, что я создавал. Я ещё не полностью разобрался в том, как правильно оформлять статьи в wiktionary, поэтому делаю некоторые ошибки. Надеюсь на дальнейшую совместную работу. Úlfur-R 05:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Ничего. Ведь удобно иметь другое лицо на сайте, владеющее русским языком как родным. —Stephen 07:22, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Mint Jelly

Hello, Stephen.

I added a definition for mint jelly earlier today which you subsequently removed.

I agree that the form I added is probably not best described as an adjective. I do not, however, know how to better describe it. If you would please, instead of removing it entirely, kindly change the entry to be more technically correct.

Thank you for your expertise.

Gregory L. Brown (a.k.a. Loopback)

Besides the terminology, I don’t think it’s really anything more than a figure of speech, a metaphor. You could use all sorts of things in its place: it was mint jelly; it was icing on the cake; it was cream in my coffee; it was parmesan on my spaghetti; it was the cherry on my sundae; it was caviar on my bagel. I don’t think mint jelly actually has that as an intrinsic meaning. —Stephen 02:12, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Transwiki:Zahed

Hi Stephen. Thank you for adding Arabic script per my recent cleanup request. In your opinion (if you know Arabic) is the definition correct? If I moved it from Transwiki to becoming a main entry in Arabic script, would it be acceptable as the definition? ... and as a proper noun or as a regular noun? Goldenrowley 00:01, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

It’s an adjective and common noun and the meaning is pretty accurate. It’s from the verb زهد (záhida, “to abstain, to renounce”). Basically, زاهد (zāhid) (plural زهاد (zuhhād)) means abstemious, abstinent, self-denying; and the noun means ascetic. —Stephen 02:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the help, I've incorporated your comments and moved it into a main entry. Goldenrowley 06:04, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Translations of Elena

Wouldn't it be enough just to say "see Helen" for translations, instead of adding a new translation table? Actually Atitarev is right. Elena is also one of the romanizations of Russian Елена. He is also adding translation tables to Anatoli, Mikhail etc. though I'm not even sure if those names can be called English. How to represent transliterated names is an eternal problem. It has been discussed countless times and nothing ever comes out of it.--Makaokalani 13:42, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you could say "see Helen" if you wanted to. And yes, Elena is one of the romanizations of the Russian, but I believe there are a number of different languages of the former USSR that wrote the name Елена, and Elena could be the transliteration of a number of them. I don’t think I would include romanizations in the definition of Elena. That’s why I did the translation section, which is a more appropriate way to show the Russian and other forms. And the etymology of the Russian Елена would appear not on the Elena page, but on the Елена page.

We make transliteration entries for Japanese and Chinese, but not Russian. Russian transliterations are provided as an aid to reading for those who do not know Cyrillic, but we don’t give the transliterations any more consideration than that. Russian women who are named Елена may write their name Elena when they emigrate to the U.S. or GB, but I would not treat Elena in any way other than an English name from Italian and Spanish, and would leave the Russian Elena to be covered by Елена. —Stephen 13:58, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, translations of Russian names belong on the Russian Wiktionary. English Wiktionary should have Michael with a translation section showing Russian Михаил, and the Russian name as written in Roman letters for use in the West should give the etymology as Михаил and link to the equivalent name Michael. Translations of Михаил/Mikhail belong at ru:Михаил and Michael, but not at Михаил or Mikhail. —Stephen 14:08, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

User:Robert Ullmann/Trans languages/uncoded

I've been working on clearing this out as of late, and I've kind of reached an endpoint of sorts, and I was wondering if you'd care to help me out a bit. If you sort the list by "notes", you'll find a bunch at the very end marked with question marks. These were items which I could not determine conclusively whether they were languages or not. Would you be willing to take a look at them? I guess I figure that if you haven't heard of a language, it probably does not exist. Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Lan might possibly be Man Cao Lan {{mlc}}; Kiseri could be an alternative name for some dialect of Rombo {{rof}}; Lema is a dialect of Vunjo; Pidgin English...there are many Pidgin Englishes, impossible to narrow down; Siberian is an invented language based on Russian; Sundan = Sundanese; Turan = constructed language based on Turkic languages.

I would delete Lan, delete Kiseri, delete Lema (since we already have Vunjo), delete Pidgin English, delete Siberian, change Sundan to Sundanese, and delete Turan. —Stephen 08:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Hello from Anatoli

Hello Stephen,

Just wanted to say hi. Don't hesitate if you wish to comment on my entries or edits.

Regards, Anatoli Titarev

Anatoli 03:01, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Anatoli. —Stephen 06:54, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Pamiri Proto-Bulgarian

Hello, recently I noticed that you are interested in the Iranian origin of Protobulgarian/Bulgar language. I have been discussing with Ivan Štambuk on his talk page the etymology of some Bulgarian, Russian and Serbo-Croatian words recently discovered to be of Iranian origin by leading Bulgarian scholars. If you are interested, some sources are this one and this one. I would appreciate your opinion. Bogorm 21:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Hen and egg

Stephen, your comment about the hen wasn't friendly but I am not offended. I wasn't teaching you, just editing my own edit with your romanisation. I am not a beginner in languages, rather new to Wiktionary but not so new to Wikipedia. If you insist on certain things we can discuss rather edit warring. You yourself admit that Arabic romanisation standards are not used by Arabs. As for names, let's not rush. Anatoli 04:00, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

It’s just very irritating to have you revert my work when I’ve been doing such extensive work in Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Georgian, Thai, Greek and some other languages for so many years. Everybody has a different idea about how things should be, but after they change a few of my entries, they usually vanish into thin air, and I am left to do not only the remain new work, but have to find and fix all of their alterations.

I have tried many approaches to the Arabic problem over the past seven or eight years here, and every approach is problematic. One of the biggest problems is how to write the Arabic lemma. We developed a system, but nobody wants to follow it, and this lack of cooperation makes even simple Arabic searches difficult, since you never know whether to put an initial hamza. Our system has been to indicate initial hamza in the transcription where appropriate, but not to put it in the Arabic lemma. There are several other problems of this type, but reverting me only creates more work for me and makes the Arabic more unorganized and disheveled.

I do all of the Khmer transcriptions, and find it amazing how people who don’t want to do the work will nevertheless want to tell me that it must be this way or that way. I do our Georgian transcriptions and Thai transcriptions. Some people complain that they want the Thai transcribed by a different system, but they don’t know how and don’t want to help. I’ve been added Mandarin, Japanese and Korean transcriptions for several years, and it amazes me how many people want to edit me according to their own favorite ideas (usually unenlightened, like your Greek K), yet don’t actually want to do any work or solve the big problems. —Stephen 04:43, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure I reverted any of your edits, I edited them perhaps? I am more interested in adding stuff, rather than changing other people's work, if you noticed, I used templates for Russian cities.

There must something we can agree on. I'd like to add Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. If you use Wikipedia, you'll notice they use throughout capitalisation on proper names - Arabic, Chinese, Japanese. Visually, ad-Dār al-Bayḍāʼ is more appealing to than ad-dār al-bayḍāʼ, don't you think (الدار البيضاء)? Not suggesting to change anything but perhaps new entries? I saw an ISO on pinyin and romaji about capitalisation, just yesterday. So, it's not forbidden, at least. I won't insist on caps but they are no harm, IMHO. I admit, I know little about Greek, I assumed all transliterations used "K". Apologise for changing the Greek transliteration. Actually, hamza is also arguable, whether it's always pronounced as a glottal stop (at the beginning of a word), it's just a thing that a word can't start with a vowel in Arabic, and Usāma looks better than ʼUsāma (-h is added in strict translit for reverse transliteration only). I am only discussing with you, not suggesting to change your edits. I'll talk to you in a few days, have a good weekend! Anatoli 05:07, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

You have to consider the audience. I know very well the issues with the hamza, because I’ve been reading and writing Arabic for more than thirty years. On the Arabic Wiktionary, they can do whatever they like with regard to hamzas and other diacritics, because their Arab audience knows when and how to put them or remove them. Our audience, for the most part, does not know, and it’s likely that if they search for a particular Arabic word, they have copied and pasted it into the search box. Since most Arabic texts ignore most initial hamzas in most cases, our audience will probably be searching for a spelling without hamza.

But, since Arabs know when a word starts with a hamza, whether or not it is written, and yet our audience usually does not know, we mark a required hamza in the transcription. There are numerous other problems of this type that we have yet to deal with, such as words with prefixes (e.g., و, ك, ب, ف, ل), as well as words that are often written one way, but which should really be written another (e.g., جداً, جدًا, جدا ... alif does not support nunation, but the double fatha has to be over a consonent), or the fact that final yaa’ and final taa’-marbuta do not have to be written with dots, not to mention the difficulties with the definite article and the many suffixes. Another problem is that Wikimedia does not allow the use of complex diacritics for Arabic, such as shadda-fatha or shadda-damma. I have found a way around this, which I used in the conjugation tables at كتب, but it is still difficult to remember how to do them.

The important thing to remember is that our audience usually knows little or no Arabic, and we have to accommodate that. This means no initial hamzas in the lemma, although it is good to add some redirects that have hamzas. There are a few words where the initial hamza is usually written, such as أو, but that’s exceptional. And since the hamza is missing in the lemma, it must be indicated somewhere since our audience does not usually know when it is required. That’s why we put it in the transcription.

If we were using a transliteration system like that of the United States Board on Geographic Names, and if we were emphasizing the usage of our transliterations, then capitals would make sense. But we don’t use a system like that, and we do not support the use of transliterated Arabic. We want to offer the real thing, in Arabic script, and our transliterations, unlike Wikipedia’s, are nothing more than a simple pronunciation guide. Our transliterations aren’t intended for use in writing Arabic words. That’s why we transcribe ’usāma instead of Usāma. It’s only to show in a simple way the pronunciation, but it is not intended for use in any texts. We expect the actual Arabic word to be copied and used in any texts. We still have a lot of difficult problems to tackle, but capitalization and issues of initial hamza are already done. —Stephen 06:12, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Chinese is much easier. In Chinese, you just need to try to show both the traditional and the simplified (in that order), when there are both, and the biggest problems are deciding when to use spaces in the transliteration and which hanzi to link together as a single term, and how to make the phrases that are split parenthetically. Japanese is also easy, but the Japanese transcriptions should show an acute accent marking a final high-pitch syllable...unfortunately, few of our contributors know how to do it, and some have an unpleasant tendency to delete them when I put them (unenlightened editing). All of the oriental languages have complex categorization, which I have avoided learning about.

We still have a huge amount of work to do in Russian, especially the verbs. I’m not really happy with our conjugation templates, but I don’t know enough about the markup language used for templates to try to improve them. Even the templates for nouns and adjectives need improvement, but somebody else will have to do it. I know most of the Russian forms, but I don’t try to write templates. —Stephen 06:12, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Stephen, let me know, in your opinion, which areas of Russian need attention. --Anatoli 05:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

One place in particular that bothers me is the template {{ru-adj8}} for possessive adjectives. My own Russian has a tendency to be old and outdated because I learned it so long ago. Modern speech is sometimes a little different from what I am used to. In my opinion, there is a problem in this template with the masculine singular prepositional ending. I think it should show both -е (о Петрове) and -ом (о Петровом). But perhaps the modern usage is -ом only, I’m not sure. —Stephen 06:21, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I have to leave soon. Just briefly, - the endings differ if it's a possession (Peter's or Pyotr's): -ом (о Петровом) and the common Russian surname Petrov: -е (о Петрове).

That’s what I thought. However, some of the adjectives and nouns that use {{ru-adj8}} do not have both possibilities. Possibly a separate template is needed just for names, which shows both endings. —Stephen 06:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The new template may work for Russian surnames ending in -ов/-ев/-ёв/-ин. The endings are identical with {{ru-adj8}}, except for the prepositional. The accusative plural will be -ых, of course, (animate nouns). --Anatoli 09:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds right. The same as {{ru-adj8}} except for the prepositional. I don’t have a preference for name, but the next free number is {{ru-adj11}}. —Stephen 09:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

banyan

How are you with Gujarati? The word (deprecated template usage) banyan is slated to be WOTD later this month, but the etymology says only "Gujarati" at the moment. Is this an etymology you could flesh out? --EncycloPetey 01:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I don’t know much about Gujarati except that it’s quite close to Hindi. I made some additions to the etymology, but they’re only educated guesses. User:Dijan would probably know more about Gujarati. —Stephen 12:53, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --EncycloPetey 16:48, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

קרבן#Yiddish

Hi Stephen,

Are you sure there's a dagesh in the tav of the Yiddish plural? There isn't in the Hebrew plural, and one of the salient features of Ashkenazic speech is that they pronounce dageshless tavs, such as in Hebrew feminine plurals, as /s/. I'd find it really weird if their own plurals end in /t/. —Ruakh_TALK 00:15, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I can't imagine there's a dagesh. And are you sure about the translitration? I know an 'n' can turn to an 'm' after in 'b' in many languages, probably in Yiddish too, but I don't think it did so here.—msh210℠ 00:45, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

A dagesh is what it shows in the dictionary where I found it, but probably it was a typo. And yes, I believe that is the transliteration, korbm for the singular, korbones for the plural. Google gives over 4.5 million hits for korbm, including this one: http://www.yiddishtr.com/english-letters/k-red.htm , which lists both the singular and the plural. I also tried to check the dagesh by googling, but Google ignores the dagesh. On a few Yiddish pages that I checked, such as http://yiddish.forward.com/node/523 , dagesh was not written in this word.

Also no dagesh in Yiddish Wikipedia: yi:w:קרבן. —Stephen 11:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for correcting Mapudungun alphabet. -Edelstam 10:16, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

You’re welcome. It’s good to finally be getting some Mapudungun material. —Stephen 10:27, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

fjöl-, filu

Hey, I remarked that you expressed misgivings about BiT's claim of Greek filu. I only added the rfscript template, because I am not in the least conversant with that language. If you are convinced that there is no such word and given the fact that filu is the transliteration of the Gothic word which is undoubtedly a cognate, I will be willing to replace the AG with the Gothic word. Would such a replacement be acceptable? Bogorm 19:37, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think you should replace it with the Gothic. The Greek cognate would be πολύς (polýs), as shown at the beginning of the paragraph. —Stephen 19:44, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

mutawa

Hi Stephen...I've had a go at the etymology here, but it's not a word I'm familiar with. Would appreciate your having a look at it. Ƿidsiþ 10:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 10:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Horbucher

Why did you delete Horbucher if the page that I created was the same page that you just created? It doesn't make any sense. Thanks, Razorflame 08:31, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Never mind. I see why now. Cheers, Razorflame 08:35, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Penis

Er... how is my edit "vandalism" and why are you edit warring and not using the article talk page to discuss the reasons for your repeated removal? Also, why are you using sysop tools in a dispute you're involved in to enforce your point of view? —Locke Cole • t • c 15:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

You are edit warring, I put a stop to it. Your idea of English grammar is nonsense. —Stephen 15:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Edit warring with you and you won't stop long enough to talk about it. Further, the word appears to meet the criteria for inclusion, so how are your actions here appropriate? —Locke Cole • t • c 15:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Please add appropriate cites to Citations:penis (preferably using the citation templates). Conrad.Irwin 15:41, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Surely you mean Citations:penii? I note another administrator has deleted penii without discussion. Is this how things work on Wiktionary? On en.Wikipedia this kind of behavior could result in a desysop. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:42, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

This is how it works here. Wiktionary is not Wikipedia, we have different goals, different challenges, and different policies. —Stephen 00:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

In MSA it's ’ánta (أنت), not ’ínta

Stephen, in MSA it's ’ánta, not ’ínta, especially if the hamza is written above, not below alif - أنت. The same applies to all derivatives (’ánti, ’ántum, ’ántunna). Alif with the hamza above (أ) can only be read as /a/ or /i/. ’ínta is dialectal, it may be written with the hamza below إنت. You can check with Hans Wehr dictionary. --Anatoli 19:11, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The Hans Wehr shows phonemic transcription, not a phonetic one. Have you ever spoken MSA with native Arabic speakers? I have spoken using these forms for decades and I have never heard anyone (except beginning students of Arabic) say ’anta. Whether from Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia or Egypt, they all pronounce it ’ínta/’ínti when speaking MSA. It is a common misspelling to write إنت...the only correct spellings are انت or أنت, and when the first vowel is specified, it is only fatha, not kasra. Regardless of the spelling, it is pronounced ’ínta, ’ínti by native Arabs when speaking MSA. Not even once in my entire life have I heard it pronounced the way you said. The derivatives, OTOH, may be pronounced with an á, because those forms are not commonly used. I have only encountered them in writing. —Stephen 19:37, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I thought you are more into the standard pronunciation. I only wrote briefly, of course, I am aware that Arabs commonly say ’ínta, even if they speak MSA but not when a teacher teaches standard Arabic, or when a TV anchor uses a very standard Arabic accent. I use Al-Jazeera or even SBS radio Arabic in Australia as a guide. The attitudes to MSA are different but Arabs I know prefer to teach standard Arabic to foreigners. In any case, I would rely on more standard sources like Hans Wehr, the Sakhr dictionary is going to be back up soon, as I was told (http://dictionary.sakhr.com). If we continue this trend, then Arabic definite article becomes il- or el-, not al-. Anatoli 21:48, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

This may serve as a source. The text compares MSA to Palestinian Arabic. Word Order, Agreement, and Pronominalization in Standard and Palestinian Arabic --Anatoli 22:34, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

http://dictionary.sakhr.com only gives the spelling with the vowel points, it does not give pronunciations. Hans Wehr only gives phonemic transcriptions (which is equivalent to what sakhr.com does, but in Roman transcription). The definite article is only the consonant -L-, and the initial alif is the alif of liaison ... the helping vowel that is put for it is normally the final vowel of the preceding word. It is usually shown as a at the beginning of the breath group, but it is of little importance and could easily be represented by a different vowel in that position. Anybody who has even the most elementary knowledge of Arabic can clearly see the alifs as they are written, and telling him that an alif is an alif is unnecessary and uninformative. I would never pronounce ’inta/’inti as ’anta/’anti and I feel that no student of Arabic should say ’anta/’anti after the first day of class. If you are hearing a TV anchor saying ’anta/’anti, then it could be added as a secondary choice, but I do not remember hearing anybody pronounce it that way. —Stephen 22:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Why are you talking condescendingly, Stephen, as if you are trying to show that I am naive or ignorant, explaining me the role of alif? I've got a few textbooks and references, some are popular or respectable, which show the right pronunciation. It's easier to prove that it's anta, you still insists it's inta. Vowel points are for pronunciation, at least fatha is not to pronounced as /i/ but /a/ or /æ/, if you wish but not as /i/. Talking about elementary Arabic, you should know that أ (alif with hamza above) is never /i/, but /a/ or /u/. Please give up this tone, since I addressed you nicely without trying to humiliate you. I respect you, please respect me.

I don’t know what you mean by that. I explain the role of alif because I don’t know whether you were aware of the information I gave you. Most people don’t know it. But vowel points are for spelling, not pronunciation. In most cases, the spelling and the pronunciation are in harmony, but in some cases, the pronunciation is different from the spelling. The vowel points are always for the spelling, not always for the pronunciation. In ’inta, the vowel point is fatha, not kasra. No matter how you pronounce it, the vowel point remains fatha. أ is normally a or u, but in the case of ’inta, it is ’i. No matter how you pronounce the word, the spelling is always أ, although the hamza does not have to be written. No matter how you pronounce it, the spelling is not إ. That is to say, there is only one spelling, أَنت, but the fatha is usually not written and the hamza does not have to be written. That is the spelling if you pronounce it ’anta, and that is the spelling if you pronounce it ’inta. It has fatha, not kasra, but normally is pronounce ’inta. —Stephen 00:01, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

al- can be read as il if the final vowel is -i but not at the beginning of utterance, otherwise it's a more colloquial pronunciation.

Please provide sources for your claim. Even if you do, I've got too many to prove that it's anta, not inta. Actually, in some families they say ’ánta, even speaking collquially.

Lastly, when I say /a/, it's definitely a fatha but not the sound as clear as /a/ but more like /æ/ in apple, so the difference between ’ánta, ’ínta and ’énta is not that strong and clear but the sound can be identified when listening to recordings. May find audio here, a more Quranic or classical pronunciation: Qur'an Transliteration

Anatoli 23:05, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Provide sources for which claim?

As per the topic, that it's ’ínta in MSA. --Anatoli 00:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

That’s why I asked you about your real conversations with native Arabic speakers in MSA. I had daily conversations stretching over 30 years. If you had similar real experience, you would know what I know.

Check this sura سُورَة البَقَرَه (Sūrat Al-Baqarah), search line containig قَالُوا سُبْحَانَكَ لاَ عِلْمَ لَنَا إِلاَّ مَا عَلَّمْتَنَا إِنَّكَ أَنْتَ الْعَلِيمُ الْحَكِيمُ (Qālū Subĥānaka Lā `Ilma Lanā 'Illā Mā `Allamtanā 'Innaka 'Anta Al-`Alīmu Al-Ĥakīmu), it has the audio link (MP3). --Anatoli 23:19, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

In that one he pronounces æntæ, but it sounds very stilted, ritualized and unnatural. —Stephen 00:01, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Both MSA and classical Arabic are indeed considered stilted. Initial /æ/ proves it's fatha, normally romanised as /a/, that is أنت should be romanised as ’ánta. Let's romanised ’ánta and ’ínta, marking the former as more formal and the latter as informal? Anatoli 00:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

When I speak MSA with Arab speakers, as I have for many years, it is not stilted, it is formal. Initial æ doesn’t prove that it’s fatha, but it is fatha regardless of the pronunciation. Listen, I’m not going to argue about this anymore. Inta is normal and formal. This is basic. If your position is so vulcanized and immutable, then I will let you take over the Arabic. As I said before, I am happy to quit working on the Arabic entries. —Stephen 00:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I am leaving you alone, Stephen. You are getting angry over nothing. My position is not vulcanized and immutable, it can change if I am proved wrong, I have only seen emotions from your side, no facts or logic. To me, fatha is /a/ and I've heard ’ánta too often on the recordings, despite that, no doubt, you obviously know Arabic better than me and your contributions to Wiktionary are many. No need to reply if you don't want to. Sorry if I caused you trouble. Anatoli 01:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I’m not angry at all. This is fundamental stuff. I can tell that there is no possible way that I will ever be able to change your thinking on this, so I give up. You have a completely different idea about how the script works, and it is incompatible with what I know about it. —Stephen 01:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

But....,

Stephen, even though I highly regard the depth of your knowledge of Arabic, the MSA pronounciation is anta and never inta Quran, news anchors, poetry, ...etc. All use anta. True, it is, however, that dialectically inta is far more common than anta (In fact, I can't think of any dialect that uses anta, but I'm sure it exists).Hakeem.gadi 05:56, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

མོ་མོ་

Do you know anything about Dzongkha? I moved it from the page momo but I'm not sure about the correctness / transliteration. Nadando 02:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 16:44, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi!

Would you, please, delete my user page – I'd like to begin it myself by my user account. Thx! --Watsimous 19:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 19:39, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanx! --Watsimous 19:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

argan

This is a typography query really. The Arabic in the etymology here is not quite correct -- the /g/ sound is a letter they call gaf in Morocco, but I can never find a Unicode representation for it so I usually end up using the Persian/Urdu equivalent. But it should look like a kaf with three dots over it. Do you know where this is in Unicode? (For that matter, can it be added to the EditTools?) Ƿidsiþ 11:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

That would be ڭ, but there is also ݣ. —Stephen 11:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yikes, I can't even see the second one. Can you tell me a font which will display it? (The first looks like what I was after though..) Ƿidsiþ 11:50, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The first one is used for the "ng" sound in some Turkic languages. The second one, ݣ, is for Moroccan gaf. The only font that I have that displays it is Scheherazade, available at http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=arabicfonts . —Stephen 12:00, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Got it. Cheers. Ƿidsiþ 12:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

But now I see that even Scheherazade doesn’t show it correctly, because it won’t connect: أݣادير (Agadir), الݣروج (El Guerrouj). The ڭ gives the correct shape in the initial and medial, but wrong for the final and isolated. —Stephen 12:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's annoying. I don't really know how to solve this...I guess I will use ݣ and hope that future fonts will catch up with the display issues. Ƿidsiþ 12:19, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Checking further, it appears that it is not a problem with the font, but with the Uniscribe shaping engine (usp10.dll). A newer version is needed to make these new Arabic characters connect properly. —Stephen 12:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Georgian transliteration

Hi, Stephen. I notice you're the main contributor of Georgian translations, so decided to run this by you. I want to standardize the Georgian transliteration according to ISO 9984. If I'm right, thus far you have been using this transliteration table, which does not correspond to any of the systems in the WP article. Notably, your table uses the apostrophe sign both for aspirated and unaspirated consonants, for example თ=t'= [tʰ], ტ=t=[t], but წ=ts'=[ts], ც=ts=[tsʰ]. What do you think? --Vahagn Petrosyan 12:59, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I transliterate them this way. I suppose that this was at one time in the WP article, or possibly it’s from one of my books. I’ve been using it for so long that I don’t remember anymore.

ა a, ბ b, გ g, დ d, ე e, ვ v, ზ z, თ t‘, ი i, კ k, ლ l, მ m, ნ n, ო o, პ p, ჟ ž, რ r, ს s, ტ t, უ u, ფ p‘, ქ k‘, ღ ġ, ყ q‘, შ š, ჩ č, ც ts, ძ dz, წ ts‘, ჭ č‘, ხ x, ჯ dž, ჰ h

It is not a problem to transliterate them this way instead:

a b g d e v z t' i k l m n o p ž r s t u p' k' ḡ q š č' c' j c č x ǰ h. —Stephen 14:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed then, let's stick to the second way (ISO 9984) in the future. It's more intuitive and transliterates each Georgian letter by only one Latin symbol. --Vahagn Petrosyan 18:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

匾

Hi, what does that character mean? It was added by interwicket as a Chinese entry to the plakka page. I thought I'd add it to the English wiktionary as well. Thanks Mallerd 21:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

匾 (biǎn) is both Simplified and Traditional, meaning a tablet, or a board with an inscription, placard, or a sign hung above a door. —Stephen 01:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, so added under a Maltese header with tablet, or a board with an inscription, placard, or a sign hung above a door, that would be correct? Mallerd 01:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Maltese? I think you mean Mandarin. Otherwise, yes, that’s what it means. —Stephen 01:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Hm, well the Chinese interwiki page showed that the word 'plakka' was translated into Mandarin as 匾. The language header above that, I can't read it though, turned out to be Maltese when I entered it here. Mallerd 01:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you’re saying, more or less. No, I don’t think that would be correct. The definitions I gave you are for the Chinese character, not plakka. As far as I know, plakka (feminine) is a Maltese word that means plate, as in licence plate or tectonic plate. It does not have the precise meaning of the Chinese word. —Stephen 02:07, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me, sir

I have the Japanese kanjis for the word grand, but I don't know what kind of word it is can you help me? Thank you.

This is a list of kanji for the word GRAND: 壮麗な, 尊大な, 壮大-grand

yuuen, doudou, gurando, gurande, soudai=grand

Can you decipher them accurately for me? Thanks. One more thing. Try not to forget about the Japanese entries for grand as well. There's still more translations that the articles of the words are lacking. Steel Blade 03:18, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I was informed by an admin to find capable users who can do this. Steel Blade 03:20, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

You have my graditude, sir. How did you know? Steel Blade 03:25, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

壮麗な (sōrei na) is an adjective. 壮大 (sōdai) is a noun (grandeur). 尊大な (sondai na) is an adjective, but it doesn’t mean grand, it means arrogant, haughty, self-important, overbearing. What do you want to do with yūen, dōdō, gurando, gurande? —Stephen 03:32, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

What to do with the other words for grand? Translations to be checked? Steel Blade 03:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean that you want to know how to write them? yūen = 優婉; dōdō = 堂々; gurando = グランド; gurande = グランデ. —Stephen 03:43, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, you can say it that way, but I also meant for them to be included for the word. Thank you, though. Steel Blade 04:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Here.

1. 壮大な、豪華な
2. 重要な

1. Template:おくりがな
2. 重要な、重大な
3. 高貴な Steel Blade 04:03, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, those are all adjectives.

壮大な = sōdai na (grand, magnificent, splendid); 豪華な = gōka na (wonderful, gorgeous, splendid, grand, extravagant)

重要な = jūyō na (important, momentous, essential, principal, major)

大, 大きい = ōkii (big, large, great)

重大な = jūdai na (serious, important, significant, grave, weighty)

高貴な = kōki na (high class, noble). —Stephen 04:20, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe we should add them into the article (grand). Am I correct that those accurate details are similiar with the adjective word "grand"? Steel Blade 04:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, some of them fit some of the senses of grand, but others do not seem to fit so well. —Stephen 04:30, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

What about the word "bitch"? There's like several Japanese words for it. Can you show me what they are? Thank you. Steel Blade 04:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Here are a few. There are lots more. —Stephen 04:52, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

阿魔 (ama)

尼 (ama)

すべた (subeta)

ビッチ (bitchi)

雌犬 (me inu)

牝犬 (me inu)

婆 (babā)

婆あ (babā)

いけいけ (ikeike)

雌犬 (mesu inu)

牝犬 (mesu inu)

あば擦れ (abazure)

阿婆擦 (abazure)

阿婆擦れ (abazure)

鬼婆 (onibaba)

Thank you, Mr. Stephen, but when somebody says "Kisama", I though this means "you bitch." Steel Blade 16:01, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

let tis -- Chinese entry you helpd me with! smiley

lettuce(my speech recognition played up again, and I rely on it as I cannot physically type sad smiley) I meant -- I have seen the forms/漢字 template before, but would have likely not realized it/the entry was tagged because of that was missing, and would have had to ask somebody, so thank you very much!!

Is there a way the wiki code framework for such a straightforward entry couldcom up automatically, like by pushing a button? On the other hand and also, are there bots or could they be created so that say once one has giving in the numbered pinyin notation[which is easiest do dictate], the pinyin with diacritical signs and the according IPA would be addedautomatically? It would surely be a good thing in my case for my RSI -- inflicted arms!

[this entry /in the header is basically two things: the meaning and the pronunciation, but for that to appear properly and standardly , for now, one seems to have to input lots of code and re duplicated information... sad smiley]

And the same could be done for Japanese and Korean whear for now, no entries as far as I know [, though I do not know how to look specifically for such entries admittedly]carry IPA, spacethus holding me back in my learning efforts sad smiley.

By the way, when creating the Dutch entry "slordig" I couldn't get the adverb -- form of the inflections to work properly, would you mind having a look?

. My apologies for the multiple questions, and I am very impressed by your Babel by deway!! Smiley--史凡 05:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

For the Dutch adverb, I used {{nl-adv}} instead of {{infl|nl|adverb}}. Is that what you meant?

yes, I tried that one before actually, but the inflections didn't display, and another established user told me that template didn't exist yet confused smiley.

"het slordigst, het slordigste ": I'm a Brabantian/Dutch native speaker,and we generally don't care much like in school about the distinction between adverbs and adjectives as they are essentially the same in form. [ and with adverbial "bepalingen" even our teachers in Flanders seemed to think that was too hard a topic matter to teach]]

Upshot is, the above, and the fact that the template is rather abstract to me in its form without example sentences, it is just that I assumed the superlative not taking on an "-- e" -- would you have an example sentence for the latter instance, at the same time we could/might as well include it in the entry smiley--史凡 08:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

You can see some examples here. It might be better to search Google Books, but I have not done that before for Dutch, and I don’t know the best sources in print for that language. —Stephen 08:34, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

on page 1, they were all adjectives, only this one:

"wat ik het slordigste vind, is dat ze ook nog...."

Is a bit different. Now I'm in the process of refreshing my grammar knowledge and trying to work out what part of speech it represents there--well I don't manage to work it out, would you have an idea? Is it used like an adverb there?--史凡 09:17, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

To me, in "wat ik het slordigste vind, is dat ze ook nog...." it seems to be an adverb, but Nederlands is not my moedertaal, so could be mistaken. —Stephen 09:25, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I learn languages by most needed deducing tho relevant grammar an' in Flemish it wasn't really pushed much in the curricula in my schoolsystem "humaniora"high school ( teenagers)

som Flemish verbs like " to seem/schijnen" work like "to be/zijn", so what looks like an adverbial usage is actually adjectival

, it translates as " what I find [to be] the most careless [ thing/aspect ( of their album)] is that additionally/to top it off [they only took a supershort sample]

{ not easy translating I notice sweating smiley)

But still. I do not manage to work out that example to my satisfaction sad smiley

"dat het slordigste gespeeld wordt"

this example seems clearer, seems an advorb [. I'm never sure with that kind of things sad smiley] -- only. I am not so sure whether I would put an "--e" behind it when speaking;, as I pointed out, I speak Brabantian, and even so the rules are supposed to be unified, that is in my opinion an artificial thing anyway; but to know for sure what should in this Dutch sampling, one would have to go to those rules, which I don't know off the top of my head, and reference books here in South Taiwan I have none -- but if whoever it may be that made this template did be according research about this particular aspect of Dutch, then I'm happy to go along with it:).

Sorry this got lengthy--史凡 11:01, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

A famous, but in my view pompous, and not very useful reference dictionary with lots of quotes, but at least in the 80/90s no etymology, is "(de dikke= extended/unabridged) van Da(e)le" which unfortunately used to be the reference book in the 90 's, like in TV shows etc.

[ Sorry if thiere was gibberish before, once again my speech recognition and my computer got instable, so I tryd to save 30 minutes worth of dictation here and restart my computer, which takes time -- apologies]

I just now checked to see who wrote the template and I see that it was User:EncycloPetey, who doesn’t speak much Dutch. Also, it is used on very few pages. I don’t know why User:EncycloPetey would be writing Dutch grammar templates, so use with caution. —Stephen 11:13, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

oh, he is tho userI referd 2as having giving me a hand with the cleanup of my entry -- in that process. It showed/emerged that the adverb template for Dutch apparently wasn't created yet; I offered my knowledge of Dutch in perhaps the creation of one, but perhaps EP found pertaining Dutch rules somewhere or found a more established user than I am to help out-- as a newcomer im rathercareful, or trie to be so among other things with mentioning names, that's why I didn't, also I didn't know how to check a templateorigin; generally I like the looks of it layout wise, and don't mind. having my gramatic knowledge of my old language refreshed; it is perhaps like in English. wheir native speakers might doubtas whether a certain word takes on a definite, indefinite or no article at all, in a similar way.

I wouldn't be surprised that me myself as the so called. native speaker would say things a bit differently than the actual rules say, especially so as I feel in Dutch, those rules are pretty prescriptive (I'm no linguist, that is just my guessthough], so in summary, again, if he found a pertainingrule somewhere I guess it's okay for now.

That's why I was trying to find some example; if such rules are found an 'i seem to notice a discrepancy between them and how peopleactually talk in my memory(I've been living 15 years abraod by now.] then perhaps a usage note or so could be attached [butit 's a template argh -- not sure then, though I guess it's a minor aspect in the end of Dutch, I mean. even when I would have to assess somebody's Dutch or Flemish um I wouldn't perhaps even notice the "mistake"

But that is also why I asked how com I cannot define Brabantian on my babel(still on Sven 70 shy smiley); it is a bit different from "Dutch" which I find a bit of an artificial constructionand an ambiguous term in as far as I understand things by and for. now, the reason I haven't tried much to add to the Dutch entries or translations (thoughthe latter, I actually only learned from EPthis week endhow to do that)

byte way, say the adverb template gets uzd and only then changed thee already made entries will then update the displayed inflections according to the then modified template will thay not ?in that case, which I assume, I guess not to much harm is gone either way[though it might be confusing to learner, I see what you mean by being careful, using his advert template for now -- whoever said making a dictionary iseasyLOL

Thank you for having checked--史凡 14:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

EP actually posted in the beer parlor"Dutch adverb template", which I only noticed now -- it is a bit technical2me[like what is"acceleration" in this context?], but perhaps clearer to you smiley--史凡 15:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

As for an easy way to get a template for an entry, perhaps you could make some basic templates in your WordPad or :NotePad program. One could be like this:

===Mandarin===

{{zh-forms|[[莴]][[苣]]|[[萵苣]]}}

===Noun===

{{cmn-noun|s|pin=āáǎàēéěèīíǐìōóǒòūúǔùǖǘǚǜ|pint=aeiouü1234|rs=艸07}}

# [[]]

And another like:

==Mandarin==

{{zh-hanzi|[[明]][[日]]}}

===Noun===

{{cmn-noun|ts|pin=āáǎàēéěèīíǐìōóǒòūúǔùǖǘǚǜ|pint=aeiouü1234|rs=日04}}

# [[]]

Then you could open the NotePad file, copy the one you want to Wiktionary, and fill in the information. Just an idea, I don’t know if it could work for you. —Stephen 06:38, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

ohye, computer Moron me,and tomorrow I need to be on a plane out of Taiwan for two mainlycomputer free weeks --word pad is a simplified version ofWord, Right, the text processor, I mean--is the <no wiki> necessary? ah, I understood, of course not LOL!so I would still have to copy and paste from there, a bit like I do know from other entries right?still not very elegant thoughtful smiley... any way thank you for your help! Smiley--史凡 08:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, WordPad and Notepad are simplified versions of Word. You would set up the WordPad page to include the difficult templates that you want to use, and the difficult letters. Then you copy and paste the page and replace or fill in the blanks to make a new page. —Stephen 09:16, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

thank you; actually my speech recognition has a function like that,like VoiceCommands conjuring up a letterhead, same principle and one can create 'm, but first I need to get that software functioning properly, sad smiley--史凡 11:31, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

wat ik het slordigste vind, is dat ze ook nog; that slordigste is an adverb. On the other hand, the speaker might have substantivised slordig meaning there were several slordige things he or she noticed. In that case, it's a noun. Might be terribly wrong here, though. --User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 00:29, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

kapieren, Sclavus/Sclavin

Hi Stephen,

I was watching this German programme, in it they said kapieren and Sclavus (later Sclavin). I thought kapieren was understand and Sclavus was obvious. Are these words used a lot in German? I also thought kapieren might have come from capire, is that a correct thought? Mallerd 17:32, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

If they were saying Sclavus, that’s Latin. German would be ein Sklave, eine Sklavin (bzw. Slawe), so I would not think that Sclavus is used a lot in German. The word kapieren is what I would call school slang. It means to understand, to grasp, and it comes from Latin capere, capiō. I think these are words that will be more common in the speech of high-school or university students, but not so common in regular German. —Stephen 04:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if they said it with an k or c, but I definitely heard -us. Anyway, thank you for your help :) Mallerd 14:06, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Japanese words, Chinese words, and Korean words

Pardon me, sir, but I need you help with these. Steel Blade 16:14, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

List for these:

ひどく苦しい= Excruciating

驚くべき= Phenomenal

巨大な= vast

isuu= phenomenal

Do you know the Japanese adverb "perfectly"?

ひどく苦しい (hidoku kurushii) = awfully painful, exceedingly painful; or exceedingly difficult, terribly difficult (adjective)

驚くべき (odorokubeki) = astonishing, amazing, surprising, wonderful (adjective)

巨大な (kyodai na) = huge, gigantic, enormous (adjective)

異数 (isū) = unusual, exceptional, phenomenal (noun, used with の to make adjective)

Some words for perfectly include ばっちり (batchiri), ちゃんと (chanto), きちっと (kichitto), 全く (mattaku), 丸っきり (marukkiri). All of these words are Japanese. —Stephen 15:48, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

How about "you bitch" in Japanese? Thank you for your help, Mr. Stephen. Steel Blade 15:39, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, you could say そこのバアさん！ (soko no baa-san!) —Stephen 16:08, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

How do you know the Japanese letters for "grand king"? There was Daio (Great king). Steel Blade 23:41, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

大王 (だいおう, daiō) = great king. —Stephen 23:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

How do you say grand king in Japanese then. Steel Blade 01:16, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I suppose grand king is the same as great king, except that great king sounds better. Grand king seems a bit odd. Which king is being called a grand king? —Stephen 01:23, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

No one. Do you know the kanji or Japanese letters for them? Steel Blade 01:40, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You have to translate meaning, not sound. As far as I know, the meaning of grand king is 大王 (だいおう, daiō), unless you have a different meaning in mind such as heroic. —Stephen 02:16, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I choose your view to be better. Maybe "guranō"? If not, what about another one? Steel Blade 02:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

There is グランド (gurando), but you wouldn’t use that with king. グランド is for grand piano, grand opera, grand design, grand slam, grand finale, grand sale (Western ideas, nothing to do with kings). —Stephen 02:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You say the Japanese word for excruciating, kurushii? Steel Blade 02:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, 苦しい (くるしい, kurushii) = painful, difficult. A better word for grand is 盛 (せい, sei), but I don’t think it is used with kings. 盛 is for grand ceremonies, grand spectacles, anything prosperous and magnificent. —Stephen 02:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Seiō? Steel Blade 02:50, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

西欧 (せいおう, Seiō) = Western Europe. —Stephen 02:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I guess that's a no. Steel Blade 09:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Equinox

To be fair, I'm informing you of Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2009-03/User:Equinox for admin.—msh210℠ 17:48, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Open sunshine

Hi, I have an on-going problem with the term "open sunshine". Twice it has been deleted without discussion. The second time I created it, I did so after opening an entry on the Tea Room page. I provided a group of examples that proved to be bad, so I then provided three more very good examples. When there was no response, I recreated the page. The word is in common use and it seems to me that the bureaucrat (SemperBlotto) and administrator (Ruakh) are POV pushing (not to mention being rude and counter to the spirit of Wiktionary). Can you please help with this issue? Wakablogger 02:23, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

SemperBlotto deleted it as a protologism, and most recently Ruakh deleted it ‎because it does not appear to be in use. I have never heard of it before, but if it is actually in use (and isn’t a protologism), then you should supply three relevant citations in the Tea Room. SemperBlotto and Ruakh are not POV pushing, they simply find no credible evidence that it meets our CFI. That’s what the three citations might dispell if they are good ones. —Stephen 02:45, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

An especially good place to search for citations is Google Books. —Stephen 02:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I looked at your Tea Room citations and they were hidden deep within a long argument. You should simply introduce your citations with a remark such as "here are three citations". It is up the the rest to determine whether the citations are worthwhile, so you should not present an argument for them, which will only serve to cover them up. Probably nobody ever even looked at them. —Stephen 02:53, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

After SemperBlotto deleted the entry, against convention without discussing it at the Tea Room, I opened up the entry at the Tea Room. Ruakh then discussed the issue with me, and I provided samples. We discussed them and Ruakh concluded my samples were bad. I provided better samples. Nobody responded.

I then announced I would recreate the entry in the Tea Room. I linked the entry to the Tea Room and I used the three good samples in the recreated entry. It seems clear to me that I have done everything in a collaborative manner. It's unfortunate that SemperBlotto and Ruakh are not familiar with this work (and you as well), but it is in common use and I have provided clear citations for it.

I have created the entry twice and bent over backwards to move in a positive and collaborative manner. But my entry has been deleted twice without reasonable collaborative conversation. It seems clear that this is an abuse of administrative power. Can you please undelete the entry? Wakablogger 22:58, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

It would be bad form to undelete it at this point. You need to reinvigorate the discussion in the Tea Room. I think your citations were overlooked because of the lengthy surrounding argument. You should find good citations and post them in the Tea Room with a short intro. Don’t try to defend the citations, they have to speak for themselves. If the citations are good, they will generate interest and the page will be undeleted. If the community does not like them, the issue is dead. —Stephen 09:52, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. Wakablogger 16:18, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Phonology links

Please see this regarding language specification of Template:IPA.

Peter ^Isotalo 06:40, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

What’s your point? —Stephen 06:44, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

That linkage to phonology articles at Wikipedia doesn't make much sense. If you're going to keep reverting me, do you think you could provide a bit more cohesive explanations? I'm already adding links to our own Swedish pronunciation guide, and having an additional link that says "IPA" that leads to a linguistic article isn't really helpful.

Peter ^Isotalo 08:32, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

While there is definite merit in your proposal, it requires two arduous things: some decent discussion at the BP and a fair amount of infrastructure (creating all those Wiktionary side appendices or seeing whether the 'pedia has IPA charts for a sizable number of languages). In any case, we just can't go about this half-cocked, inserting the new template into random articles. This has to be done consistently, at the {{IPA}} level. If you want this to become a reality, I suggest you get crackin' on those things, instead of fighting with Stephen. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:45, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I've already made a local Swedish pronunciation guide which I am consistently linking to, so why are you insisting on a Wikipedia link? If you're so determined to keep that template, please change the link, or it'll just be confusing. There are plenty of charts over at Wikipedia that can be moved here and used as a base for building good pronunciation guides. I see no reason why a dictionary shouldn't be able to host its own pronunciation guides.

So how about helping out here instead of just telling me that I'm "fighting". Stephen isn't exactly doing his best to explain the situation nor to help out.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

We don’t have a different format for each word, we use {{IPA}} for the IPA pronunciation section. I personally do not care whether IPA links to an IPA chart here on Wiktionary as it once did or to a phonology page on Wikipedia...I only care about maintaining our standardized format, which happens to require {{IPA}}. So if you want IPA to link somewhere else, you have to make your case on WT:BP so that the link from {{IPA}} is changed to something else. —Stephen 09:15, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Whether you care or not, there are problems with the current format. I don't need to repeat any of my arguments for that to be perfectly obvious. Terse and uninformative replies and a general "I don't really give a damn"-attitude doesn't help.

Peter ^Isotalo 10:04, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

You think any reply that doesn’t give in to your wishes is uninformative and don’t-give-a-damn. Atelaes and I both have told you what you need to do, and it’s the only thing you can do if you hope to get your way. We could not have said it any plainer. If we didn’t give a damn, we’d just let you and everybody else do whatever-the-hell you want. And as Atelaes already told you, you’re wasting your breath and our time here. You have to go to WT:BP to make your case. —Stephen 10:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I've already started a thread. Try to actually paying attention to those you snub. My complaint here is your lack of interest in meaningful communication. Single-sentence replies to attempts at meaningful discussion is very unfriendly. Telling me I'm doing "whatever-the-hell" I want is just more of the same thing. I'm not exactly trying to turn any largely unwritten guideline on its head. The IPA template is very rigid, and there's really no documentation on how to deal with pronunciation of non-English words. I used IPAchar because it removed an irrelevant and confusing link to an external article and it seemd to make virtually no difference to layout.

If you were just a regular editor, I'd be content with slight dissatisfaction, but considering you're an admin, I think it's a bit more important to ask you to be more communicative. You know, explanations and discussion first, authoritative threats later. Stuff like that.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

You’re perpetually disgruntled. —Stephen 09:44, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Pashto

Hello, Stephen, could you help with the proper typing of two words in Pashto for Appendix:List of Balkanisms? I found them in one Etymological dictionary of the Iranian languages and they are rendered only in transliteration as follows: γā´ṛa (macron and stress at the same time) meaning neck, throat and γāṛg∂y meaning necklace. It is intriguing, because the Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian words (ђердан/đerdan, гердан, they are found between letters d and e) in the appendix mean the same as this last Pashto γāṛg∂y. I have no idea who else could give a helping hand in Pashto. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 10:10, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. I did not change the romanization, but it could be written "ghā́ṛa" and "ghāṛgạy" instead. —Stephen 21:23, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 06:48, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Fraktur in Unicode

Hi. The quotation in Fraktur seems to be encoded according to some standard other than Unicode. Since Wiktionary uses UTF-8, a slash should be a slash – \ – and a long s a long s – ſ – (I can't tell what any of the other broken characters are supposed to be).

If the intention is to illustrate Fraktur type, then much better to insert an illustration, rather than show the text in a roman serif to readers who don't go out of their way to download and install some software. Anyway, since the font doesn't seem to support Unicode, sooner or later it will have to be removed from our style sheets and templates, breaking this text.

There are some good candidate images on commons.

• 
• 
• 

 —Michael Z. 2009-04-01 00:53 z

This not only illustrates Fraktur, but offers a way of producing it. This is how Fraktur and (somewhat more complicated) Sütterlin have been done for a long time. I don’t believe that a Unicode solution is foreseen for Fraktur, because (1) the choice of letterforms is too complex for even an Opentype font, (2) there is not enough call these days for Fraktur, and (3) it would not be compatible with existing texts. Unicode is about character compliments, and Fraktur is not that. Fraktur is more along the line of a simple font change, a different typeface, but with an added twist and some special complications that cannot be handled by a font change.

I’m sure that Fraktur and Sütterlin will never be handled by Unicode, but will remain the way they are. They make special keyboards for typing Fraktur, and a more complex one for Sütterlin, but it is possible to type a Fraktur text with a regular keyboard if you’re careful. Sütterlin is too difficult, and it requires a Sütterlin keyboard.

The Fraktur font is a free download, and any other Fraktur font will do as well. The only footprint is a tiny stylesheet that takes up little space. The stylesheet could easily be replaced by a simple template, which is what I had originally intended, but we should keep one or the other. An image of Fraktur is, in my opinion, of very little value. An image might be useful on the Wikipedia page. —Stephen 01:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Stephen. I’d meant to thank you at the time when you sorted this, but felt I should try actually to understand what you did first. Unfortunately, such understanding still eludes me, given my poor knowledge of computer programming. Anyway, a belated thanks! So, do we have a template (similar to {{unicode}} and {{polytonic}}) for wrapping text in so that it displays in Fraktur? Does it require the user to download the font before viewing the text? If so, can we make a box (similar in style to {{wikipedia}}) for inclusion next to the quotation which allows users to download the font with maximum convenience? Would this require the font’s release into the public domain under GFDL? Thanks again. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:41, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

All you need is the font mentioned in the instructions at Fraktur. Download and install that font, since it is specifically mentioned in the stylesheet, and you will see that paragraph in Fraktur. Originally I had made font templates like {{Cyrl}} (before {{Cyrl}} was changed to its current form). After you download the mentioned font, the stylesheet will call that font for that paragraph. Or you can copy the paragraph into Notepad or other word processor and then apply any other Fraktur font that you prefer.

Immediately above the Fraktur paragraph is a short instruction and URL to get the font. That’s all you need for viewing the paragraph. Typing in Fraktur is more complicated, and you have to know German in order to do it. For example, t+z becomes a single ligature in a word such as Platz, but if the t and z belong to different syllables or phonemes (entziehen), then they do not make a ligature. Now as far as GFDL and public domain, I know absolutely nothing about that sort of thing. I don’t know anything about law, patents, copyrights, or anything related to them. —Stephen 01:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Stephen, points taken. I'm planning to learn more about this.

I have to disagree with one fairly significant detail, however: the entry currently does not illustrate Fraktur to any reader who comes upon it, while in image would. Millions of readers in schools and workplaces can't administer their computer, so this is just like waving a photo in their face, but not letting them see it. Tutorials and font links don't belong in entries. Maybe a blackletter equivalent to Appendix:Old Cyrillic alphabet is in order. —Michael Z. 2009-04-01 01:58 z

No, it will only be useful to someone who is interested enough to download the font. Most people will need nothing more than a short definition and a link to the Wikipedia article. If you like, we could put an image here, but a shorter text is better, since that makes it big enough to be seen. There are some good ones on Wikipedia that are big enough to see. —Stephen 02:10, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

How about one of these type samples? I created them from two of the commons images, above. Both Fraktur, I believe. —Michael Z. 2009-04-01 05:55 z

Fraktur type. Detail from a poster of Kaiser Wilhelm II's address to the German people, at the outbreak of the First World War, 4 August 1914.

Fraktur type. Detail from the dedication page of Goethe's Faust, a 1920 edition.

One more thing: I downloaded the Humboldt font, to see how it works. It looks great, but it lacks the typical straight-left, round-right shape of the letter o, which is usaully the primary characteristic in descriptions of the style. The font is not typical, and hence not a good example of Fraktur. —Michael Z. 2009-04-01 16:43 z

I would go with the second one. I disagree that the Humboldt is not a good example. I learned German in the days when a lot of material was still being written in Fraktur, and I originally learned to write it in Sütterlinschrift. Comparing Humboldt to the first example above (Kaiser Wilhelm II), I consider the Humboldt to be a far better representative of the script. Consider, for example, the uppercase A. And I have not run across a description of Fraktur that said the primary characteristic is a particular shape of lowercase o until I read the Wikipedia page. The o can have the shape you describe or the shape in Humboldt or any of quite a few other shapes. The appearance of a text in Humboldt on the printed page is an excellent example of classic Fraktur. But each letter in Fraktur can vary considerably from font to font. One descriptor that I have encountered before is the shape of lowercase k that you see in Humboldt, claiming that the k absolutely must look like that, but some genuine Fraktur fonts have a k that is much more Roman-looking. Or that uppercase K must have a sweeping bonnet, but some do not have it that way. Humboldt is a typical Fraktur face and a good example of it. Nevertheless, if you have a different one with the o that you like, I’m sure it will be fine too. I only prefer the Humboldt because it’s the first on the download page and the easiest to get.

But I like the second Fraktur example best. —Stephen 11:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Well I'm not an expert or a native reader, but Bringhurst says of blackletters: “they can usually be distinguished by reference to the lowercase o alone,” and goes on to describe and illustrate the o's of textura, fraktur, bastarda (~Schwabacher), and rotunda. w:Blackletter also tells us “Its use was so common that often any blackletter form is called Fraktur in Germany.” I don't doubt that Humboldt is classified as a fraktur, but its utility as an example depends on having the typical characteristics. —Michael Z. 2009-04-02 18:02 z

I’m just the opposite, I don’t know anything in particular about blackletter, but I know about Fraktur. If somebody says blackletter has to have a D-shaped o, I can accept that as so, but as far as Fraktur goes, Humboldt is very typical. Since Fraktur is intended for German, the uppercase is especially important. In Fraktur, the lowercase is quite readable and not so different from Roman, except for the four letters d, k, x, z (d, k, x, z), as well as long ess and the ligatures \, ß, ¢, £, <, >, ‡, ¥, , , ¤, ¬. In Fraktur, the really unusual letters are the uppercase ones, in particular A-U, I-J-T, O-Q-D-P, C-E-G-S, K-R, B-V, M-W, 3-Z, X (A-U, I-J-T, O-Q-D-P, C-E-G-S, K-R, B-V, M-W, 3-Z, X). —Stephen 18:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Mzajac, it is August 4th 1914, but this is not the main point. Where did you come across the Kaiser's address? Please, tell me, since I am keen/impatient to read it (and when it is in Fraktur, it is even more thrilling) and anything else from the Kaiser. Where is the source? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 21:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Just follow the links to the commons. To trace it back further, you'll need better German than mine (which is none).

• my crop: commons:File:AnDasDeutscheVolkWilhelm1914 crop.png
• full scan: commons:File:AnDasDeutscheVolkWilhelm1914.jpg

The poster is dated 6 Aug. I can't prove that it's genuine, and I have seen fake historical posters before. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2009-04-01 23:35 z

Thanks for the link, my reamrk was concerning the year (not the day), 1914, you have written above 1913. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:27, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Oops, thanks. —Michael Z. 2009-04-02 18:02 z

first interjective sense

Although badly written that anon.’s contribution is talking about something that does indeed happen (I’ve seen it, and, yes, it is annoying). I’m not sure that he defined it correctly, though: it’s æquivalent to saying “I’m the first person to post in this thread!”; is that an interjection? It doesn’t really interject AFAICT… Opinion? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I have not seen this activity before, and I would probably think that anyone who claimed special consideration for being first to give an opinion was a young child. But if someone yells "First!", it is short for "I was first to comment", and I suppose that would be an adverb. It could also be an interjection, since an interjection refers to a way of using some word or phrase such as an adverb or adjective. —Stephen 02:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

In re the removal of rfv-sense from cruz gamada

Please stop removing that requæst out-of-process. If you wish to assert that sense’s existence, please find quotations for its verification and a dictionary reference to show its standard-ness. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 11:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I only do foreign language articles such as Portuguese, Spanish, German, Arabic, Georgian, Russian, etc. I do the grammar, definitions, declensions, etc., but I don’t do any quotations. Cruz gamada means swastika. If you are good at looking up and inserting quotations, then you should do that. In the tens of thousands of foreign words I’ve defined, I have occasionally included examples of use but never a quotation. I don’t think I’ve even seen a quotation except in the English words. —Stephen 12:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Foreign-language entries occasionally also contain quotations of actual usage; A-cai, for example, makes a point of including them in his Mandarin entries. When I RfV’d the Latin word (deprecated template usage) foemina, EncycloPetey cited the word before removing the requæst; you can see thereat, at [[vacuüm#Noun_2|the Dutch entry for (deprecated template usage) vacuüm]], and in the proto-policy document WT:QUOTE the form which foreign-language quotations are meant to take. As for adding these quotations myself, I sometimes do, if the term is monosemic and I can read the script (as was the case when I cited the Latin word (deprecated template usage) gradātim); however, (deprecated template usage) cruz gamada is polysemic and therefore, owing to the fact that my Portuguese is near–non-existent, I cannot add any quotations to help verify that sense. I ask again that you either provide the necessary references to support the inclusion of this sense, or desist from removing the {{rfv-sense}} tag; our criteria for inclusion do not exempt Portuguese words from the requirement that they be suitably attested. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:08, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I can tell you that a Portuguese word such as mais means but, but I don’t provide attestation for it. As far as I’m concerned, if someone who speaks two languages says that something in one language means something in the other language, that is attestation. Cruz gamada means a swastika...if you have evidence that it doesn’t, what is that evidence? It can’t be very good evidence, since that is in fact what it means. If you want quotations to support a sense of some word in a foreign language, you just have to study that language until you are able to see what it means. But Portuguese cruz gamada means swastika. Put your evidence to the contrary on its talk page if you have any. —Stephen 09:58, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” — Carl Sagan
The burden of proof is on the person who asserts something, not on the person who doubts that assertion. My reason for doubting is this: (deprecated template usage) swastika and (deprecated template usage) suástica are clearly cognates, whilst (deprecated template usage) crux gammata and (deprecated template usage) cruz gamada are also clearly cognates; therefore, it seems to me that the cognates would be the correct translations for each other. As I said, I can easily believe that (deprecated template usage) cruz gamada is used to mean (deprecated template usage) swastika, but I imagine that that happens for the same reason that the English (deprecated template usage) crux gammata is used to mean such — namely confusion. Things pertaining to the Nazis or which seem to pertain thereto are often conflated and used very loosely (consider that (deprecated template usage) Nazi, (deprecated template usage) fascist, et seqq. are banded about and applied to those whose beliefs and behaviour are not remotely similar to the original referents’). All that notwithstanding, may I remind you that there is no onus on me to provide reasons for my requæsts for verification, only upon you to satisfy them. Your criterion (“if someone who speaks two languages says that something in one language means something in the other language, that is attestation”) is not part of the CFI. You are not above policy; please follow it. It would be ridiculous for me to have to bring in other(s) from the editing community to resolve this disagreement. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 14:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

All I can tell you is that I can tell you what something means in the languages that I speak, but I won’t go to so far as proving that anything means such and such. Mais means but, but if you need proof of it, you have to look for it yourself. I don’t do that. If you want me to attest to the meaning of a word, I will do it if I know the word...however, I won’t do references and quotes. —Stephen 14:33, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

In that case, don’t remove {{rfv}} and {{rfv-sense}} requæsts; if you “won’t do references and quotes”, then leave them for someone else. Now please unprotect (deprecated template usage) cruz gamada and revert yourself. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:33, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Nobody is going to look for and provide and format the proofs that you want (if it’s even possible). The article is correct as it is and you won’t stop reverting. I suggested that you state your contrary evidence, if any, or your concerns otherwise on the discussion page. Either that or study Portuguese until you can speak it well enough to realize that I was right all along. It’s not that difficult. —Stephen 01:40, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I explained my reasons for the requæst above, though no policy compelled me to. I also dismissed as invalid your requæst for “contrary evidence”. All our policy requires that you verify that sense or leave the {{rfv-sense}} where it is; I consider it an abuse of your admin. privileges that you have protected (deprecated template usage) cruz gamada from my edits to enforce policy. I do a lot of referencing and quoting on Wiktionary; you should try it — you’ll find that it’s not difficult; it’s a hell of a lot easier that learning a whole language from scratch, that’s for sure. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:51, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

You didn’t explain your reasons at all. You are not compelled to. If you hope to have somebody attend to your concerns, since I won’t, you should do what I say and put your evidence or thoughts on the discussion page. If you do referencing and quoting, then you can do it for this. I don’t do referencing or quoting. I don’t believe any references or quotes will address your concerns, and you will only come to understand that if you try to do it yourself. —Stephen 02:02, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Sufficient quotations to satisfy the CFI to show this sense’s existence and a reference to a reputable Portuguese dictionary (or other authority) to show the sense’s standard-ness would exactly address my concerns. I cannot do this myself because I cannot read Portuguese to know in which sense a text would be using the term. That is as clear as I can make it. Anyway, I’ve brought this issue up for discussion in the Beer Parlour; hopefully, it will find resolution there. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:12, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, I’ve done as you suggested. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:19, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

If I provide a quote, I will have to translate it, and the translation will be swastika. It defeats the purpose. If somebody has a difficulty with some word, phrase, form or usage, I will do an example to show how the grammar works, but the example comes out of my own head. I don’t mess with quotes. —Stephen 02:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Of course it will be! The quotation would not belong under the “swastika” sense if that were not the most appropriate translation for the Portuguese use of (deprecated template usage) cruz gamada. What that shows is the way that the Portuguese (deprecated template usage) cruz gamada matches up with the English (deprecated template usage) swastika, rather than with the English (deprecated template usage) crux gammata or with any other term. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:28, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Word choice and meaning are two different things. Even if one word might be the preferred usage, if the other word is a legitimate choice, then the other word gets named. Writing translations for foreign words isn’t a popularity contest, it’s meaning. Portuguese cruz gamada, even if usually translated with other words, means English swastika, and a translator can use select this translation if he wants. Judging from your usual choices of English words and forms, you probably want the translation to be "çreuxeaux Γämmatidiæ", but I consider your graphical and semantic trinkets just that, silly trinkets. In the places where I read Portuguese cruz gamada, I will usually if not always translate it swastika, and as a lifelong professional translator, I would be correct in doing so. —Stephen 02:38, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Proove itt. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:44, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you have "prooveđ itt" for me. —Stephen 02:47, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Returning to margin…

The spellings I used were a joke, intended to address your argumentum ad hominem; you still haven’t proven your assertion about (deprecated template usage) cruz gamada. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 03:22, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Nor shall I. And you write in your odd language so consistently, how does one tell when you’re joking? It all looks the same. —Stephen 03:37, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, they tend to have a strong etymological basis; something that isn’t true of “çreuxeaux Γämmatidiæ” &c. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 03:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Alfalfa

I've found the solution however it wasn't easy. Lucerne is the British word and alfalfa is the American but nowadays the second one is widely used everywhere in Anglophone countries. That's what is very hard your language: the regional words, spelling, grammar, etc... :) Hope it explains. Sincererly --Ferike333 16:16, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, thank you, that makes sense. Until the last ten years when the Internet became so popular, Americans and British did not need to concern themselves with the way the other spoke, but now I have to learn a whole new English (including the British spelling and punctuation rules). I think English had been growing apart for over two centuries, but now it appears that soon there will be only one English again. That will make things easier for everyone. —Stephen 16:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I have a few pages full of these differences in the appendix of the book I've been learning from. If you want I can send it on email. It contains mainly vocabulary, but some grammatical issues, too. The only problem is that I've left it at my grandma's and she's going to get it back to me next weekendxD Otherwise, even though it makes learning more difficult, I adore these differences, it makes learning more colo(u)rful. Sincererly, --Ferike333 09:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

You mean issues between British and American English? It would be interesting to see the list. As far as I know, we don’t have an appendix or list of such differences on this site. —Stephen 09:35, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Butting in: we don't have it here at WT, but I'm currently plodding through w:American and British English differences, which is quite long, and yet it even links to other long articles like w:List of British words not widely used in the United States, w:List of words having different meanings in British and American English and w:American and British English spelling differences. --Duncan 10:15, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the references. If there are that many differences, then Wikipedia is a better place for them. When we hear British speech on TV, it sounds like most of the differences are superficial, but here and there they use a word or phrase that makes no sense...or worse, that makes sense, but the wrong sense. —Stephen 11:08, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I mean. It's like that pages but different. Not so big issues it contains but things that can make people confused, mainly non-natives. In a page there are two columns Br-Am and there are several headlines eg: Spelling differences, Different words for the same thing, Grammatical differences (tenses, etc...), Prepositions and examples under them. For example the word pavement is something I try to avoid using since because it has two opposite meanings in the two countries. Oh, I've already met some of those pages and learned a lot of things from them, I just forgot them. Thanks for reminding me. I think I would complete them later. Btw, could you please tell me some examples of situations where a phrase or word makes no or wrong sense? I don't know any (or just can't remember). I use the word that comes into my mind faster, doesn't matter weather it's American or British, and I didn't actually realize its importance until December 2008, when I wrote a comment someplace to an American and as we are tought British English, I used British words and phrases. And he said he had had to use a dictionary for clear understanding and it was a big surprise to me. Then I started to learn these differences, the only problem is that, American is not acceptable in most Hungarian language exams. Even though, I learn that, too and it's a calmed demonstration by me:D So if I know one's origin, I try to use his/her dialect on my actual level. Sincererly, --Ferike333 21:05, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Pavement is an example that usually makes no sense or has the wrong sense. In British TV comedy programs, someone will warn a driver to be careful of someone walking or bicycling. The driver answers with dismay and consternation that that person is on the pavement. To us, it means that the walker is in the road and in danger of being hit...and therefore the consternation makes absolutely no sense. Or a woman says lightheartedly that an acquaintance knocked her up last night (to us, it means she got pregnant...wrong meaning). —Stephen 22:58, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Imagine, my godpa was so kind that he brought the book back to me. I've skipped a cycling. So if you give me your email address (or if you don't want here you can see my address above) and I may send it to you tonight (in CET). Unfortunately I cannot upload it to here as it's copyrighted. --Ferike333 10:44, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, but all of those links that Duncan mentioned above on Wikipedia should keep me busy for quite sometime, and I think they will address all the differences that give me trouble. —Stephen 17:00, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. I've deleted my email addresse from above as it's not public, but you can find it in he history if needed. Two weeks later I'm gonna work on them, too, cos there are some words not contained yet. Next week I'm off. --Ferike333 20:17, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

-ko, Japanese

Hi there Stephen, I've asked Tohru the same but since you speak Japanese as well: I've been playing this game Red Alert. Now it's sequel has crossed my path and in it, there is this girl called Yuriko. Sounds really strange this, huh? Well, I've heard that Yuriko means "daughter of Yuri", Yuri is a character in Red Alert. So, you are getting me? =P Is that true? If so, does -ko actually mean "daughter of"? An antry could be created. Thanks Mallerd 19:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

That is a very common suffix for girls’ names and is written this way: 子. It means child, infant, girl, daughter. So the answer is yes, Yuriko means Daughter of Yuri...except that it’s not an optional word the way "daughter" is, it’s a permanent part of the girl’s name. I have no idea who Yuri is or what Red Alert is or any of that. Yuri is a Japanese place name or surname, and Yuriko is a girl of that name or place. There are actually many different names that are pronounced Yuriko, each written a different way. Here are some of them: 結利子, 結梨子, 結里子, 弓里子, 夢里子, 百利子, 百理子, 百里子, 百英子, 百合子, 雪凜子, 英合子, 佑利子, 佑吏子, 唯理子, 愉吏子, 愉理子, 愉里子, 有利子, 諭吏子, 諭里子, ゆ里子. These are all the girl’s name Yuriko. —Stephen 20:56, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

石菖蒲

Hi Stephen, thanks for your contribution. i am really impressed by your phenomenal knowledge. Psoup 12:54, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

You’re welcome, and thank you. —Stephen 16:10, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

батюшка

Dear Stephen, could you perhaps point out the actual meaning of батюшка as an interjection? It says "goodness" in the example but "dear friend" or "old boy" in the translation. Thank you --User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 16:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. It needs to be changed a bit. The interjection should probably be in a separate section. —Stephen 17:13, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

However, a separate interjection section does not really seem appropriate here, because it doesn’t rise to that level in my opinion. Originally it was under an Idioms header, but that header seems to have been against standard policy. The only solution that I can think of is as an example (as it is now), but it’s a little tricky since, as an idiom, the meaning is a little different from the definitions of the noun. But the meaning is closer to priest than to friend, so I’ll move it up one. —Stephen 17:29, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

May I butt in? The days when I knew Russian are gone, but I remember there was an idiomatic expression батюшка-царь. Do you think it would be worth an entry? --Duncan 19:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I’ve heard that before. I think it’s southern, perhaps from the Ukraine. I think it deserves an entry, but I don’t have a good feel for how to say it in English. —Stephen 20:00, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Only in form "батюшки!", not батюшка. --Alexander Widefield 16:45, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I thank you, I also did not realise that the picture of that fire in Helsinki was meant as example for Russian usage until you said so. Anyway, I've been looking up coke (short for cocaine) and did not find the Russian equivalent. It sounds something like "koks", can you confirm that? User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 19:20, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, кокс, кока, кокос, корс, белый, дорогой, орех, орт, первый, си, снег, and чарли are all slang words for cocaine. —Stephen 19:30, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Slivovic

Do you happen to know IPA and the languages mentioned in the lead? If you do, could you please add the IPA pronunciations as is done already with the Polish name? If you don't, would you know someone who knows IPA and these languages? Thank you very much User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 12:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Servisch: шљивовица or šljivovica ([ʃʎi.ʋo.ʋi.tsa]) (not certain about the stress); Sloveens: slivovka ([ˈsli.ʋoʋ.ka]); Kroatisch: šljivovica ([ʃʎi.ʋo.ʋi.tsa]) (not certain about the stress); Bosnisch: šljivovica ([ʃʎi.ʋo.ʋi.tsa]) (not certain about the stress), Macedonisch: slivova ([sli.vo.va]) (not certain about the stress); Pools: śliwowica ([ˌɕli.voˈvi.tsa]); Roemeens: şliboviţă ([ʃli.bo̞ˈvi.tsə]); Bulgaars: сливова ([sli.vo.va]) (not certain about the stress); Slovaaks: slivovica ([ˈslɪ.vo.vɪ.tsa]); Tsjechisch: slivovice ([ˈslɪ.vo.vɪ.tsɛ]). —Stephen 18:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about the others, but the Czech and Slovak letter c is read /ts/ - /c/ would be written ť. --Duncan 19:11, 12 April 2009 (UTC) (Same goes for Polish, come to think of it). --Duncan 19:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I didn’t know that there was a difference between IPA /ts/ and /c/. They sound the same to my ear. ť seems like Russian ть. —Stephen 19:31, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

IPA's /c/ isn't like Russian ц, though Czech and Slovak c is. Of course ť is like Russian ть - but that's IPA's c, see (I mean listen) eg here. --Duncan 19:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I listened, but the speaker did not enunciate clearly. He pronounced /c/ as though it were something like /dja/, /tja/, or /tʃ/. I could not grasp the sound. But it appears that the Slavic languages that use the letter c do not pronounce it /c/, but /ts/. —Stephen 19:52, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, when in Czech / Slovak / Polish we write c we pronounce it like Russian ц or German z. The IPA /c/ is on the other hand nearest to /tj/. --Duncan 20:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Yep, the article first said "Slivovitsj", tsj being ч. Changed that though. Thank you guys for the help :D User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 23:36, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Etymology of knight

Hi, I saw you put into brackets my etymology of the word knight. The source is mine. I work on indo-european roots and I saw a connexion between these two words by phonetics. In my dico, there is knemidotos( wearing greaves). The sense is militar. In my work, I found that words with the syllable "du" or "do" disappear in indo-european ( for example induperator-->imperator, indupedio-->impedio) or become b( duellum >bellum). Knemidotos>knemibtos. If the"i" becomes mute, we hawe the word "knembtos", that seems very near knight im ny opinion. That's why I added that root. --Mark Mage 23:36, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you should discuss this theory with Atelaes and Ivan Štambuk first. Atelaes does most of our Ancient Greek, and Ivan Štambuk is most familiar with PIE, descendants and etymologies. To me the connection with κνημιδοφόρος sounds forced, but Atelaes and Ivan might agree with you. —Stephen 06:53, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

To begin with, we don't deal with the opinions of amateurs here (and please don't take that as an insult, rest assured that I am an amateur myself). So, the simple fact that it's not proposed by a professional etymologist nixes it. Additionally, there are certain problems with the connection. To begin with, the semantic connection is difficult to swallow. The Germanic forms seem to imply a male, young man, boy, something like that. (deprecated template usage) κνημιδωτός (knēmidōtós) comes from (deprecated template usage) κνήμη (knḗmē), which is difficult to connect with "boy." Additionally, there are phonetic problems. There is no explanation for how to connect the Germanic palatal-dental with the Greek nasal. The Greek has been connected with Old English (deprecated template usage) ham, which seems much more probable. I will remove the addition altogether, as it really should not be here. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 07:12, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Russian templates

What's the difference between {{ru-noun}} and {{ru-noun1}}? They are both extensively used. Also, are there any more declension templates beside these and {{ru-noun2}}? --Vahagn Petrosyan 14:51, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

The difference between {{ru-noun}} and {{ru-noun1}} is the order of the forms. In {{ru-noun}}, you do all the singular first, then the plural forms. With {{ru-noun1}}, you put nom. singular, then nom. plural, then gen. singular, then gen. plural, and so on.

Yes, there is another Russian noun template: {{ru-noun m-inan-null-nv}} (see небоскрёб). For Russian templates, see Wiktionary:Russian inflection templates. —Stephen 15:21, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I made many templates during the last couple of days. You can find them in Category:Russian declension templates, and, yes, they all need accents. I'm working on it and was able to add accent functionality to {{ru-noun-anim-m-ин}} for starters. The others might be trickier to accentize, we'll see. As concerns the mixing of fonts, I'll make transliterated templates redirecting to the original ones: thus, you can use {{ru-noun-anim-m-in}} the same way as {{ru-noun-anim-m-ин}}. Please, continue looking through the templates: they are somewhat crude yet and I'm happy to hear more observations. --Vahagn Petrosyan 21:54, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Burmese transcription

It's not a great way of indicating the pronunciation of Burmese, that's true, but as a transliteration of Burmese letters, it's a good way of distinguishing mr- and my-. The system I'm following is the MLC Transcription System, which enjoys at least some level of acceptance. I usually try to add Burmese pronunciations too (in the ===Pronunciation=== section) to make up for the inadequacy of the transcription to reflect pronunciation. Angr 15:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I know about the MLCTS. It uses etymological transliterations from Pali (phonemic rather than phonetic). Even though Pali is not even the same language family as Burmese, it stands to Burmese as Latin does to English. Since Burmese is Sino-Tibetan, its sound system is extremely different from Pali and Burmese doesn’t have that sound. It’s just a conventional method of distinguishing between two letters that are pronounced the same. But since we have the actual Burmese word written in Burmese script, there can be no confusing the two letters. So the transcription would be more useful if it were based on phonetics, since the orthography is unmistakeable in our case. —Stephen 16:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The point of a transliteration is to render differences in the source script unambiguously in the target script (in this case the Latin alphabet). I'm not real thrilled with the MLCTS as it seems to be a mishmash of transliteration and transcription; I would prefer to transliterate the Burmese letters according to the IAST of their Devanagari equivalents (e.g. reinterpreting မြန်မာ as म्रन् मा and transliterating it mran mā), but that too will distinguish mr and my (as I think any transliteration should). However, I'm not aware of such a transliteration having any widespread use (Julian Wheatley uses it in the article on Burmese in The World's Major Languages), while the MLCTS has some sort of official or semiofficial sanction through the MLC (whether you and I like it or not!). Angr 16:28, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

There is not just one point to transliteration. In the past, most transliterations in virtually all non-Roman languages were used in lieu of the original native script (usually because it was difficult or impossible to provide the words in their native script), and it was paramount that the transliteration reflect the etymological spelling, and phonetics were secondary at best (the phonetics usually were completely ignored). In our case, we have the actual word written in its native script, so do not have to be a slave to the etymological letter of the word. That’s why we use phonetic rather than phonemic transliterations for Korean, Arabic, Russian, and so on. The presence of the actual word in original script and orthography means we do not have to worry about etymological transcription at all. We can afford the luxury of providing a phonetic transcription. —Stephen 16:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

But doing so makes the transcription redundant with the pronunciation which is provided anyway. And I find it very convenient to use an unambiguous transliteration for Burmese rather than a phonetic transcription (or rather, in addition to the phonetic transcription in the pronunciation section) because, for example, on my work computer I have no Burmese font installed and all I see is a row of question marks. On my home computer I do have a Burmese font installed, but it's troublesome for me to remember which little circular squiggle stands for what letter (I'm constantly referring back to w:Burmese script to remind myself, even though I wrote large portions of that article myself), so the transliteration is an easy reference point to tell me the spelling of the Burmese word no matter which computer I'm sitting at. And I'm sure I'm not the only person in that situation. But another problem with using a quasi-phone(t/m)ic transcription rather than an orthographic transliteration is that for Burmese at least there is no standard transcription system. Every book and article I've read on Burmese uses its own transcription system, and no two are alike. So which do we pick? Do we make our own? By using the MLCTS, at least we have an established standard. Angr 17:04, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

First, the pronunciation is usually provided for English words, rarely for foreign words. Even when the pronunciation is given (and it’s nice to have, even if it’s rare), it’s only for the head word. The phrases and examples that are provided do not have pronunciations, but only transliterations. Second, most people have a lot of trouble with the IPA and SAMPA. For Americans, IPA and SAMPA are more difficult than learning the script of the language of interest. Our transliterations are much simpler than IPA and give a reasonable approximation of the pronunciation. If somebody needs to know the orthography, he does not need to rely on the transcription (as in days past), he only need look to the actual foreign word in its proper script and orthography. Most users want to know more or less how to say it, and if they happen to be more interested in etymology, they don’t need the transliteration to get it. For our transcription, just spell the way it sounds. Instead of "Mranma", write "Myanma". Instead of "Rankun", write "Yangon". I think there is the BGN/PCGN romanization system for Burmese, which should reflect pronunciation, but I don’t know how to find the data. Generally, I just write it the way it sounds. —Stephen 17:55, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I almost always add pronunciations for foreign words, unless I'm unsure of them, and I own a pronouncing dictionary of Burmese and am willing to add pronunciations for all the Burmese words at Wiktionary I can find in it. For me as a linguist, "just writing it the way it sounds" is too imprecise to be helpful. The BGN/PCGN romanization of Burmese is here, but it's inadequate as a phonological representation since it ignores both tone and syllable reduction. In addition, it assumes that voiceless consonants are always voiced between vowels in Burmese, and they aren't: it's actually fairly unpredictable when an intervocalic voiceless consonant will be voiced and when it won't. For example, their recommended romanization of နေထိုင် ("reside") is nedaing but it's pronounced [nètʰàiN]. Angr 20:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It would be great to have pronunciations added for each word, but I would still use phonetic rather than phonemic transcription, just as we do for the other languages. Too many people cannot make heads or tails of IPA, and a simple but phonetic transcription is a big help. Since we have the original words in the original script, I don’t see any advantage to using etymological transcription for just this one language. For နေထိုင်, nedaing is very good as a transcription. We should not use [nètʰàiN] for the transcription. It’s only for the pronunciation section. Transcription should be as simple as possible, meaning no IPA characters or symbols. —Stephen 21:05, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Considerably more native English speakers (presumably our primary target audience here) can interpret IPA than can interpret untransliterated Burmese script. Your proposal gives people pronunciation info twice in two different ways (once in IPA and once in transcription) but gives orthographic information only to people who can read the Burmese characters and who have an appropriate font installed; other people get no orthographic info at all. My way gives pronunciation info once in one way (the IPA) and gives orthographic info as well both for those who can't see or can't understand the Burmese characters and for those who can. I'm not suggesting we use [nètʰàiN] for the transcription, but nedaing is a very bad transcription since the word is neither pronounced with /d/ nor spelled with a letter that corresponds to d. It should be transcribed in some way that mirrors its orthography, such as nehtuing (MLCTS) or nethuiṅ (ALA-LC). The other languages are a bit of a red herring since their pronunciation is very close to their orthography; at least, much closer than Burmese is. Still, I would expect Korean 닭 to be transliterated talk rather than tak, to match its spelling rather than its pronunciation. Angr 21:46, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, having slept on it, I think I've come up with a possible compromise. How about this: in the translation lists under English words, we give a modified version of BGN/PCGN that shows tone, vowel reduction, and correct consonant voicing. This will have a minimum of special characters. On Burmese entries, in addition to the pronunciation in IPA, we give a romanization box like the one used for Korean at 닭#Pronunciation, which gives the modified BGN/PCGN, the MLCTS, the ALA-LC, and the transcription used in John Okell's A Reference Grammar of Colloquial Burmese (which is probably the most familiar of the phonologically based academic transcriptions). So, for example, at reside, there would be a line for Burmese saying "နေထိုင် (nehtuing)", while at နေထိုင်, there would be [nètʰàiN] in the Pronunciation line as well as "BGN/PCGN: ne htaing, MLCTS: ne htuing, ALA-LC: ne thuiṅ, Okell: nei htaiñ" in the Romanization box. How does that sound? Angr 05:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it’s fine to give BGN/PCGN, MLCTS, ALA-LC, and Okell. There probably will not be many contributors who can manage it, but if someone does, it will be helpful. —Stephen 07:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Abkhaz transliteration

It would be great if I knew how you transliterate Abkhaz. I have no set rule and just use whatever seems best (or none at all), but it should preferably be standardized. -- Prince Kassad 15:49, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I wasn’t sure what the standard system was for Abkhaz, so I had been using IPA (when I did the months and days of the week). But now I see that w:Abkhaz alphabet shows a standard system. There is lists ҩ = o̩, and ы = y. —Stephen 16:10, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Hm, it uses a variety of combining diacritics which won't display well on most if any computers (for example the combining retroflex hook, which is officially deprecated and not supported by any fonts I know). It might be better to base a transcription system off ISO 9, which still uses combining diacritical marks but much more sparingly. -- Prince Kassad 19:09, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. —Stephen 19:11, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You can find the draft at Appendix:Abkhaz transliteration. Is it alright, or does it need to be improved somehow? -- Prince Kassad 20:01, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it will be fine. I made a couple of minor changes, ğ to ġ, and ʷ to w. Otherwise, it looks good to me. —Stephen 21:08, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

etymology of sing, ring, thing, king, wing

Good morning ! What do you think of my theory ?

Sing< seduct+ suffix= se+ duct( take away), charm, seduce, connected with sect( cut) ring<reduct+ suffix= re+duct( take back), reduce, connected with rectus ( right) thing< teductus*= te+duct( unknown + take/drive)connected with tectus( protected, roof) and thetos< thektos( laid in Greek) wing<veduct+suffix= ve+duct( take away), connected with vectus ( driven) king<conduct+ suffix( together drive), connected with cunctus ? = driver Mark Mage --86.218.93.114 09:35, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I’m afraid it is not written well enough for me to understand what you are saying. Before using any symbols such as + or <, first write it out in formal English with good punctuation, and no abbreviations. Afterwards, some of it may be carefully abbreviated (if we think it makes any sense). —Stephen 09:43, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

• Sing( chanter) comes from the root "seduct", with prefix "se" and root "duc"( take apart, drive apart). In Latin, the word means seduce, charm, take apart. It's connected with "sectus"= cut ( syncop of syllable du)
• Sink( couler, évier)comes from the same root. The meaning of destruction of a boat comes from the idea of taking apart. The meaning of place to wash is perhaps connected with the idea of going apart
• Ring ( anneau, ring de boxe) comes from the root "reduct", with prefix "re"(again, back) and root "duc"( take back, drive back). In Latin , it means also reduce. Ring would mean reduced place. It's connected with rectus ( right) with the meaning of re-erect.
• Thing, German Ding( chose) comes from the root "deduct" with prefix de ( from) and root "duc" ( take from, drive from). In Latin, it's connected with the word tectum( with an alternance of mute and voiced consonant), which means protect, roof. In my opinion, it's connected too with Greek thêtos (posé, laid) that would come from disappeared "thektos".
• Think, german denke, comes from the same root with the meaning of deduce( one of the meaning of the verb in latin).
• Thank,german danke comes from dedic with prefix "de" (from ) and root "dic"( say). In Latin, it means dedicate.
• Wing (aile) comes from the prefix ve( away) and root duc( drive , take). The word doesn't exist but is supposed by the series. It's connected with the word vectus( transport)
• Wink( cligner de l'oeil) comes from the same root. The meaning comes from the fact that winking is used as a way of seducing.
• Bonus( good) comes from adjective bovinus( related to a beef) with the syncop of syllabe vi( as in amasse coming from amavisse). It comes also from divinus (related to god) with the same alteration that gives bis (twice)from duis. The two meanings are found together in greek adjective theotauros( god-Bull), attributed to Zeus.

Thank you for your answer. --Mark Mage 14:22, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I consider this to be folk etymology. Since sing can be traced back to PIE base *sengwh-, and sink to PIE base *sengw-, it appears that you are proposing etymologies that go back much farther than PIE. In any case, this is original research and we don’t permit any original research here. —Stephen 18:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Correcting errors in inflection lines

Hi, I've noticed you've corrected today several errors I'd made in inflection lines for sco and gd - thanks! However, it set me thinking - how did you find them? Is there some category or something where the "red" categories thus created are displayed (and those obviously wrong could be consequently spotted) where I could check now and then and correct these mistakes of mine by myself? --Duncan 20:57, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

What were the words? If I see them, I will probably remember how I found them, but I don’t know which words you’re referring to. —Stephen 15:24, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I just found one of them, orra. I found this when I was going through Special:Categories. One of the categories listed was "Category:Scottish Gaelic g-fs", which clearly was an error. —Stephen 15:50, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

The others were lang syne, thoir breith, latha and tro. --Duncan 17:03, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, all of them showed up in Special:Categories, as redlinked Category:Scots advs, Category:Scottish Gaelic Verbs, Category:Scottish Gaelic lathas, and Category:Scottish Gaelic pepositions, each containing one member. —Stephen 17:09, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for explaining, I added the category to the list of those I'm checking now and then. --Duncan 19:26, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Aramaic

Stephen-I see you have done a lot of aramaic, any chance you can work out "be made whole"? Thank you in advance for even taking the time to read this, I have been scouring the web for the resources to do this myself but will probably make a mess of it.

N

Actually, User:334a is the Aramaic expert. He would be the best one to ask about this. —Stephen 15:27, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Centauri

Can some sober Latin expert please look at Centauri before SemperBlotto gets it deleted? Proxima Centauri 16:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I don’t know about the English use. In Latin, it is not capitalized. The noun form centauri is the genitive singular of centaurus (centaur). —Stephen 16:31, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Auto-hiding of inflection templates (ru)

May be you know something. Why the templates are autohided now? And I need to extra click to look at them? Was this discussed somewhere? --Alexander Widefield 09:36, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I have never seen the discussion, so I don’t know why this was done. I have had some problems with it, too, and I don’t see the advantage. —Stephen 12:03, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll remove them all. --Alexander Widefield 17:23, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

It was me introducing the autohiding in my major effort to rework all Russian declension templates. I didn't assume it was worth discussing, as most of other languages use it. The logic behind is the assumption that most of simple users won't need the declension tables and will only get distracted by them. And the ones who do need them, can always tick the "Show the translation sections expanded, instead of having them collapsed" at WT:PREFS and have the tables always collapsed. Anyway, Russian declension tables are small and, I think, it's OK to always show them, but the verb conjugation tables need to be autohidden, IMHO. --Vahagn Petrosyan 17:59, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I thought it was something else. I was thinking of the hiding of categories, not tables. I have my WT:PREFS set to leave tables expanded, so this is not a problem for me. —Stephen 19:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and now without the nav stuff, those of us that like the default auto-hide don't have that option :D I'm going to change it back. Stephen's pointed out the WT:PREFS thing. Use it if you don't want to make an extra click :D — [ R I C ] opiaterein — 19:55, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Russian stuff

Do you think we should mark gender for Russian adjectives, that is, m for красивый and f for красивая? My Russian dictionaries don't do that, then again, they are meant for Russians. I'm planning to re-vamp our adjective templates, that's why I'm asking. Also, is the adverbial form in {{ru-adj}} necessary? We don't do that for other languages. --Vahagn Petrosyan 14:52, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

No, in the header there is no need to mark gender for adjectives. It only needs to be in the declension tables. I don’t think there is a need for the adverbial form. The adverbial form is a bit irregular and often appears as a short form in the table. In those cases where we need to mention the adverb, it can be done in the Related terms section. —Stephen 15:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

What do you think about the "о or об (before prepositional)" parameter in templates like {{ru-adj1}}? Why do we need it? There are other prepositions like в, на; why о? I want to remove this functionality completely. Also, the templates ru-adjX and ru-adjectiveX are exactly the same, right? I think I know a bot who can replace one with another for consistency. Finally, I made templates like {{ru-noun-inan-vel-o-1}} (with Latin "o") to redirect to {{ru-noun-inan-vel-o-1}}. This is true for templates with -а- (like {{ru-noun-inan-vel-a-1}}) and -е- in them too. Don’t think it’s a good idea for other templates though. --Vahagn Petrosyan 10:57, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

It’s not terribly important, especially with adjectives, but prepositional о/об helps a little in nouns since there is often a difference as against true locatives, marked by в or на (о две́ри, в двери́). Ideally, we should have a prepositional case for о/об (and then о/об would not need to be marked), and a separate locative where needed for в/на, as well as a separate genitive-partitive (or genitive 2) and a vocative. But the main difficulty is the incomplete prepositional/locative merger, and that’s where о/об can be helpful. There is another, though lesser, concern, in that Western students are often confused about when to use о or об. Just as Russian will write "an union" (taking 'u' for a simple vowel), Americans tend to use об before е- (об Европе).

But as I said, it isn’t terribly important, and the main advantage is differentiating the prepositional from the locative. We can drop the о/об if you prefer.

The templates in ru-adjectiveX are an incomplete set and I never use them. We should delete them in favor of ru-adjX.

At first I thought that templates with Roman -a-/-o- would be more useful, but in practice, the Cyrillic letters seem to be convenient enough. —Stephen 12:06, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I added the functionality of displaying locative and vocative to {{ru-decl-noun-1}}. You can see it in use in дверь, Иисус and отец. Unfortunately, I can’t add this feature to automated templates, so whenever there is a need to mention a locative, vocative or genitive 2, {{ru-decl-noun-1}} will have to be used manually. --Vahagn Petrosyan 17:45, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. These templates are working out great. It’s something we’ve been needing for years, but, due to the complexities, I didn’t think it could be done. They use hundreds of declension templates in ru:Викисловарь, but I see many mistakes there, and the templates are so difficult that I usually can’t make corrections. —Stephen 18:00, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

The two etymological roots of её

Thanks; this makes the distinction crystal-clear. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:33, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Is this a wiki?

Or something else? I notice that penis is still permanently protected after three months when you protected it to your preferred version during an edit war. Despite the issue of penii being resolved seemingly with the page being created and cited. I note above I was told this is a "different project with different goals", but unless some small group here has taken over Wiktionary from the Foundation, I don't see how the behavior displayed here is of a net benefit to this project. Semi-protection seems more sensible for this article since it's a likely vandal target, but full protection for this extended period is just totally inappropriate. —Locke Cole • t • c 07:17, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Au contraire, it is appropriate as long as the article is threatened with being infested with this proscribed unrefined unorthodox ignorant plural form. Stephen is an established contributor, he is fluent in several languages, including Latin, so his judgement is reliable and the inappropriateness of this plural form which is inconsistent with the basic rules of the 3rd declension was already explained at Talk:penis. So, even though I myself can not edit the entry (I am no admin), the protection is far less deplorable than in, say, a Wikipedia article - whoever wants to add a translation, writes it on the talk page and an administrator adds it. On this wise controversial edite are prevented, which is undoubtedly laudable. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 13:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

He protected it while in an edit war with me. That's called a conflict of interests, and is generally considered inappropriate in any area where authority exists. And it was totally unnecessary, but he chose to revert war rather than use the talk page (which already had discussion of the issue on it). Being "established" does not give one the right to trample new editors, or does Wiktionary not have a policy or guideline similar to WP:BITE? —Locke Cole • t • c 15:15, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

The way I see it WP:BITE deals with real newcomers to wiki, not with people who have over 10,000 edits in a sister project (somehow it doesn't surprise me that less than a quarter of those are in the "article" space). And I don't think they would be oh so much considerate at 'pedia to humour somebody who comes with an idea he puts on two pages, gets reverted (by different admins) on both, starts an edit war on one, then when he doesn't have things his way goes away to sulk somewhere else and only returnes after almost three months to find out whether perchance he couldn't have his way now. --Duncan 16:22, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

You misrepresent things. I note Wiktionary also doesn't have an "assume good faith" guideline (or if it does, clearly you regulars don't bother complying with it). There was discussion on the talk page regarding plurals, the onus was on Stephen to join that discussion rather than blindly reverting. Remember: it takes two to edit war, I wasn't doing it all by myself, and presenting otherwise is a pure lie. As an aside, another editor, obviously more patient with this project, found the requisite citations for the word and it exists here now. Go figure, but I guess I must have been some vandal, what with the 10,000 edits to another project and everything. *rolls eyes* I'm still confused how permanent page protection meshes with a wiki projects fundamental goal of being open to contributions from as many people as possible. Or how using administrative tools in a dispute you're involved in isn't a conflict of interest. Maybe you can clarify those two points for me, since you seem to have the time to go spelunking through my history. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Unluckily for you, I've better things to do both here and elsewhere than wasting my time with the likes of you twice ;-). --Duncan 18:55, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Template:italbrac You may find the page I wrote at Help:Interacting with humans relevant; and if not, could you please improve it so that it is. I have reduced the protection level of penis, as the requests on the talk page lead me to believe the page would be better served unprotected. Please refrain from further snide remarks, no-one cares. Conrad.Irwin 18:58, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

French 'no longer', 'no more', 'not any more'

Hi! Could you please add a French translation to the entry no longer? I mean this sense: I don't have that mascot any more/any longer. or I have it no more/longer. Sorry if you didn't need an example, I just wrote it because these words are most different in Hungarian and don't know how it is in French. Thank you. --Ferike333 16:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 10:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. --Ferike333 16:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: n

Thank you very much for clarifying, I'll be more careful now. EOZyo 20:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Obsolete in templates for Russian declension

Forms ending on "-ою", "-ею" etc. in singular instrumental are obsolete and are not used at all.

And forms for some (especially modern) words such as "информациею", "молниею" are not used and even sounds bad in Russian, nobody use them.

I think, if we cannot omit these forms than we MUST mention that these forms are not used today. --Alexander Widefield 11:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I know. This is something that foreign students do not have any problem with. When we study Russian in high school or university, we know all about the "-ою"/"-ею" forms and it presents no problem whatever. Translation tables, at least those used by English-speaking students of Russian, do not make a special treatment of these forms, since we know all about them. And it makes the tables look bad. —Stephen 11:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Transwiki:Dichtdoen (Dutch)

Hi Stephen. I am reaching out to you as an active Dutch expert. This looks like a good entry with samples of how to use the verb. Fo you know how to put it in proper Dutch format? Thank you for any assistance you might offer. Goldenrowley 04:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Done, moved to dichtdoen. —Stephen 16:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! Looks nice! Goldenrowley 00:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Category attention

Could you take a look at Category:Bulgarian words lacking transliteration if you have the time? It's form of words that I've been working on, but I don't know nearly enough of the language to transliterate it. --Neskaya kanetsv 01:54, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Gradually, gradually. There are lots of these that have cropped up. —Stephen 09:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Mayak

Hello. Should we keep this redirect? [1] Maro 22:07, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

We don’t need it as a redirect, but it should be made into an English entry as defined on Маяк. —Stephen 22:12, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

giddyup

Thanks a lot for expanding the template. What I actually couldn't manage was to point directly here – is it possible at all? 87.69.130.159 13:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, done. —Stephen 14:18, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

marshmallow - pronunciation

Hi there! Could you please check out the American pronunciation of the word mentioned above, in the headline? I'm not sure in the first a and r. Ferike333 14:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Very good, except for the stress. Primary stress is on the first syllable. I’m not sure of the stress placement for the British. —Stephen 15:14, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much. You might be right with the British, too. I'm unable to pronounce the stress on the second syllable (it may be just me). I've asked Widsith, who added the British pronunciation to the entry. For the soonest answer check my talk page as I'm going studying now -.- but just two weeks and vacation!!! Ferike333 16:35, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

It was OK. Ferike333 17:46, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

ภรณ์

Hello, I'm in need of the etymology or an entry on the suffix ภรณ์, which appears in a great many Thai names. I think it comes from Sanskrit but can't nail down which Sanskrit term it comes from. Thank you, 24.29.228.33 02:08, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Names are especially difficult. I don’t know if it might be related to พร (it seems to be different). When words are borrowed from another language such as Pali, they often change beyond recognition. I found one place that said the name ภัทราพร means เจริญและประเสริฐ, while the spelling ภัทราภรณ์ is said to mean มีความเจริญเป็นเครื่องค้ำจุน. —Stephen 13:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

German help

Hi, again. I'd like to ask you if the German seit can mean both for and since in structures like:
Ich lerne Englisch seit 8 Jahren. - I've been studying English for 8 years.
Ich lerne Englisch seit 2002. - I've been studying English since 2002.

So for seems to have two general German translations, für und seit and since has only seit. Am I right? I'm absolutely unsure. By the way I make this work for German Wiktionary, and it seems to be a bit hard to me to translate English into German. Thanks in advance. Ferike333 19:22, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Right, seit (plus dative) means for as well as since. seit damals = since then; seit kurzem = of late, lately; seit langem = for some time, for a long time; seit Menschengedenken = within the memory of man; seit drei Wochen = for the last three weeks; seit wann? = how long ago?; seit einiger Zeit = for some time; seit undenklicher Zeit = from time immemorial. Similar to seitdem (since, since then, since that time, ever since); seither (since then, from that time, till now, up till now); and seitherig (subsequent). —Stephen 17:54, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh, thank you very much. These collocations seem to be very useful. Unfortunately, some of them I've never heard before. As I guess seitdem is a linking word, too, ins't it? And if it is, does it take the same word order as nachdem? Thanks again. Ferike333 11:38, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

No, seitdem isn’t always like nachdem. seitdem can be an adverb meaning since, since then, since that time, or ever since (es sind seitdem 5 Jahre vergangen = 5 years have passed since then); or it can be a conjunction like nachdem, meaning since...es ist schon lange her seitdem ich ihn zum letzten Mal gesehen habe (it’s been a long time since I last saw him). —Stephen 03:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Danke schön. Du weisst nicht, wie viel du mir geholfen hast. Ferike333 17:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Ich freue mich einfach, dass ich dir helfen konnte. —Stephen 09:25, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Burmese transcription again

I've written Appendix:Burmese transliteration as a guideline on how to accommodate Burmese words at Wiktionary. Let me know what you think! Angr 17:41, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I think it looks good, but quite complex. I doubt that many people (including native speakers) will be able to follow it when entering a new word. —Stephen 17:47, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

You may be right, but I couldn't think of how to make it simpler. Angr 18:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

It will just entail some cleanup whenever new words are added by other contributors. —Stephen 19:11, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

"yoshsh" (よし)

Hi Stephen,

do you remember me asking about that Japanese word that sounded a bit like hosss to me? I've found a video where I heard the karatekas say it: Video. It is at 5 minutes and 30 seconds, if you wish to fast forward. Perhaps you can confirm your answer (よし). Thanks User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 09:10, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I listened, but it was not clear to me. It did not sound like よし. You should ask TAKASUGI Shinji or Tohru. They will know for sure. —Stephen 06:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean the phrase after Fire version curry and ありがとう and just before eating? They say いただきます itadakimasu. — TAKASUGI Shinji 13:45, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

It's the part after the American says I believe arigato. They all make a little bow while they say it. User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 09:06, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Then I was correct. It’s itadakimasu, a common interjection you say before you eat. — TAKASUGI Shinji 11:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Are you serious? I also heard Japanese say (at least something very similar) when they enter a room and greet someone. They were not eating then. Is that not the same interjection or is it? User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 09:11, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Tohru has provided the answer to your recent question about a Yakuza greeting. Not よし (yoshi), but 押忍.

Hey Stephen, I appreciate your help a lot :D and Tohru's as well! User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 18:12, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

User:Meno25

This user has moved a large number of Arabic entries to new titles. I do not know Arabic well enough to say whether this is justified. Could you have a look? --EncycloPetey 02:30, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

He is moving them to the strictly correct spellings that would be appropriate for an Arabic dictionary intended for native Arabic users. But these forms are much more often written in the way that he is moving them from, and which are correct literarary spellings, and therefore are the spellings that non-Arabs are most likely to encounter. As I have argued many times, I think we should put the entries at the usual spellings, not the strict spellings, with redirects from the strict spellings. However, as long as there are redirects from the normal spellings to the strict spellings that this guy insists on, it should be okay. But we have to preserve the redirects. —Stephen 06:00, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

hair

Hi Stephen! I wrote some usage notes about the usage of plural and singular forms and articles with the word hair. Could you please take a look at them and confirm? Thanks in advance, Ferike333 14:51, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Done. Can’t use "a piece of" to refer to a single hair, it’s simply "a hair". —Stephen 06:21, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

punding

Hi. I just thought I'd throw this one at you because you're familiar with a lot of languages. Do you have any idea what the ety might be? Equinox ◑ 06:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I don’t know this word, but pund is Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Old English for pound. There might be a connection with that. —Stephen 06:43, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

supercompress

I need an administrator like you to improve on this word please. Thank you! Steel Blade 22:03, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian

The BP is again discussing Serbo-Croatian vs. Serbian et al. If you have any expertise, can you weigh in, please? I, for one, would like to know your views.​—msh210℠ 17:21, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.​—msh210℠ 19:34, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

دخترباز

This entry has been created many times, but never with useable content. Is it ever likely to be an entry, and if so, could you get the entry started? --EncycloPetey 15:08, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --EncycloPetey 04:02, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Unwanted history

User:Hohohohohohohahahahaha vandalised my talk page yesterday with an unwanted picture - is it possible to remove this unwanted page? I am unsure what effect delting one page form a history has! Thanks —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 14:09, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I don’t think that removing a page from a history would have an effect, but it could be a little trouble if there is an extensive history. As far as I know, the only way to do it would be to delete the page completely. Then we would restore the page, ticking only those history boxes that you want to have restored. No trouble if the history is short, but I have not tried it with a long history before. —Stephen 14:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if the image itself is deleted, then that page history will be effectively destroyed and impossible to pull up. The image is located in the Commons area, and I unfortunately do not have admin status there, so I can’t delete it. I’m sure one of the Commons sysops would be willing to delete it for you. After all, it has no value at all. —Stephen 14:26, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Option 2 looks good - cheers —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 14:29, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm - Commons seems to have a whole category on the subject, sp perhaps I'll just leave it! —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση}

I have added the image to MediaWiki:Bad image list. Hopefully that will do some good. —Stephen 14:52, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

He's uploading these pics himself. Adding them to the bad image list won't do any good, because he can upload other images. -- Prince Kassad 15:32, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

They've gone from the Commons, hopefully any reappearance will be under another name! ευχαριστώ! —Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 10:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Gender of Russian plurale tantum nouns

I'm confused, is there a way of knowing the gender of Russian plural only nouns like нарды? Never thought about that.--Vahagn Petrosyan 08:42, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The genitive plural in -ов indicates the masculine. If the genitive plural has a null ending, then often the nominative plural is an indicator. A nominative plural in -а with genitive null is likely to be neuter, but if the meaning is something that comes in twos or pairs, such as many body parts, the nominative plural for neuter gender is probably -ы or -и (which is an old neuter dual).

In the word нарды, I think the genitive plural is нардов, which makes it masculine. However, some people use the genitive нард and consider it feminine. I think it’s incorrect, but fairly common. Should be masculine. —Stephen 14:54, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Aha, thanks. The genitive нардов is confirmed by Zalizniak: http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/morph.cgi?word=[nardy]. So I'll go ahead and change our entries to reflect this. --Vahagn Petrosyan 15:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Nevertheless, the gender of plural only nouns is senseless in Russian. --Jaroslavleff 10:51, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I would not say that it was nonsense. At the very least, it has etymological interest. Practically speaking, knowing the gender gives a clue about the declension. I know that this is not useful to native Russians, because you all know how to decline a word before you ever think about gender. But for Americans, we learn the base form first, such as деньги, then we learn the gender, and that helps us with the declension (денег instead of деньгов). So for foreigners, knowing the gender of plural-only nouns is useful. —Stephen 17:21, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, now I got it. :) BTW, for деньги: there are two variants of stress place: де́ньгами/деньга́ми, де́ньгам/деньга́м, о де́ньгах/о деньга́х. First used by Moscow people and was formal several years ago, second is used by others Russians and is formal now. --Jaroslavleff 17:42, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

पगडी

Would you say this is a Hindi noun? I am working on the final 2006 Transwiki's. I've got it currently classified as Devanagari, but I understand that is the name of a script, not the name of a language. Also I am a little unclear on the rules... do you know if we can only enter words from India, China, and Japan in their native scripts, or could I Transwiki Romanized script versions of those languages? Goldenrowley 03:41, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The entry with the correct spelling already exists at पगड़ी. --Dijan 08:40, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Words should be entered in the script that is standard for that language. Indian words can be entered in the Roman alphabet if they have been borrowed into the English language, such as Brahmin or kimono, but for the Hindi equivalent of Brahmin, it should be in Devanagari, ब्राह्मण, which is the proper script for Hindi. For the Japanese word for kimono, it should be entered in Japanese script as 着物.

There is a difficulty especially with the Indian languages, mainly when dealing with philosophy and religion, in that a great many Hindi, Sanskrit, and Pali words are used in English when writing about these topics, but we really need a Hindu expert and Buddhist to decide what has been adopted, what the meaning is, the proper spelling and usage, etc., and we really don’t have anyone who fits the bill. So I usually don’t like to see Indian/Hindu/Buddhist terms unless the word has already been entered in the original Indic language and in the proper script first. I think we should have the Hindi word for Vishnu before we get the English word Vishnu. —Stephen 22:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok thank you, very much for the advice on different languages. Goldenrowley 01:04, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

English pronominal adverbs

You would not object to the replacement of the long "See also" list by a link to the category for these, would you? I had noticed those long lists myself but hadn't undertaken to create the category. DCDuring TALK 16:50, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

No, it’s silly to have the same list repeated on every page. —Stephen 16:52, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I think I will limit the insertion of "See also" with the category link into the Adverb section to the entries that are long enough so the category line at the bottom of the entry wouldn't appear on the same screen as the adverb section (after deleting the long list). DCDuring TALK 17:35, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

hold down

Hi Stephen! Could you please create an article on hold down? I got the Hungarian meaning here but don't think I could explain it in English. Probably 'not to let somebody do what they want' or 'not to let someone move/stand up'. Taking a look at the dictionary I linked you here I don't know why hold down a job means what is given in Hungarian. Thank you in advance, Ferike333 10:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay. —Stephen 10:58, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Ferike333 22:33, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

See Talk:автобус

please -- Wesha 19:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Online dictionary

Hi Stephen,

I wonder if you are still using any good online Russian dictionary, which you particularly like. I want to share with my Russian learning friends and add as a resource in a language forum. Ideally it should have word accent in Russian words and some grammar info. I am dropping out of wiktionary, at least for now. Anatoli 05:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Anatoli, I like to use http://www.gramota.ru/slovari/ and find it very useful. I hope you will be back with us soon. —Stephen 05:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Stephen. Anatoli 06:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Stephen, their Help Service ("Справочная служба") often made mistakes. Better use www.rusyaz.ru. --Jaroslavleff 17:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

long vowels

I hesitated between long and short vowels and decided to put doubled vowels to transliterate the spelling. I know they serve as the indication of which vowels they are in foreign words. It looks better without too many long vowels and closer to the pronunciation, though. I write my name أناتولي in Arabic with long vowels but pronounced short.

Did you notice many US States are still uncategorised and need to be translated? :) Anatoli 02:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi

Hi, Stephen.
Now is 4:22 Central European Time. These are my edits [2].
How come that you've appeared on my talkpage after I've made only two edits?
Only two!
The first one is my intro - I've edited my userpage.
The second one is my reply to the user Ivan Štambuk. He has iniciated the discussion, not me.
Stephen, I've been active on Wikipedia project for more than 4 years, and in Croatian, and in English. With thousands of edits in the mainspace.
I'm here to contribute in positive and friendly manner. To tell you the truth, I won't contribute here a lot. I'm here just to vote, because I saw some dirty game of evading the targeted communities (merging of Wiktionaries, without notifying the concerned communities) and imposing of things that are an insult. To Croats, "Serbo-Croatian" is the symbol of enslaving ("enslaving" is the strong word, but if your mother tongue hasn't been suppressed, you won't understand me).
"But if you are here to stir up trouble and fan the flames of ethnic hatred" - just tell me, please, who gave you that idea? Have you ever checked on my work on Wikipedia in English? Where did you get those words? "Ethnic hatred"?! Stephen, it's not "Who spilled the milk? Let's blame someone!". That phrase is heavy accusation. Defamatory. Please, don't rush with such things. You don't need that. And where is "Assume good faith"? You don't know me that much so you can already have prejudgements like "ethnic hatred".
"...we don’t want you here." - whose words are that?
"Make up your mind, we don’t tolerate that stuff." - again, whose words are that? How can you judge me after my only two edits? How can you estimate my behaviour from only two edits?
You don't have to answer me right now, I don't want to start unnecessary discussions.
Now I'll vote (and give explanation) and give one more reply to Ivan Štambuk, because he threatened me with blocking. I have a reasonable fear that he has vindictive motives (he already threats me with blocking here on English Wiktionary [3]), since he was blocked on Wikipedia in Croatian block log (please see, mostly because of his personal attacks and obstruction of Wikipedia) because of his personal attacks against me and his inflammatory edits pointed against me. I've warned him on that [4] (breach of rules "no trolling", "no personal attacks", "harassment", "Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point"). And finally, he has deleted the entries on his talkpage, instead of archiving them. These "unwanted entries" were explicit my warnings on his behaviour [5].
Please, do not allow any abuse of admin powers.
And that's it. Sorry for taking your precious time. Kubura 03:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Your one and only edit, besides creating your user page, was an attack on Ivan Štambuk. You were sent here by Robert Ullmann to try to destroy the terrific work we have done on your language. From now on, either confine yourself to valuable dictionary contributions, and refrain from attacks on Štambuk. I have judged you because I know why you’re here, and I know that you do not intend to make a positive contribution here. Straighten up or I will block you. —Stephen 03:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I haven't seen your reply earlier, since it was not on my talkpage.
"You were sent here by Robert Ullmann..."? Really? What do you think, that I never browse the Internet and that you and Štambuk are the sole persons on this world that deal with linguistics?
"to destroy the terrific work we have done on your language." So-called "Serbo-Croatian" is not my language. And don't impose that name to my language. That's an insult against me and all speakers of Croatian, on national basis. If you don't know what submitting of your mother tongue (to another language) is, please, don't mess into this matter. That's humiliating feeling.
Further, you cannot know that I was sent by someone. Because I wasn't. Please, don't accuse me because your clairvoyance tells you so.
"I have judged you because I know why you’re here..." - How can you know that? You cannot know that. We never talked to each other before. On no wiki-project. Never.
"I know that you do not intend to make a positive contribution here." - How can you know that? You cannot know that after only two edits. Simply it's impossible.
"Straighten up or I will block you." Please, don't demonstrate force on the user that cannot defend himself. You're too easily pulling your gun.
"refrain from attacks on Štambuk". What? We are not allowed to criticize his actions, no matter how wrong they were/are? If you want to adore him, OK, that's your personal attitude, which other users are not obliged to share. Your can also build him a shrine, but please, don't use wiki-space for that.
If you're an serious admin, you are not able to judge someone after only 2 edits. And you're not allowed to exercise your admin powers on defenseless user, just because your clairvoyance or your prejudices told you so.
Or someone filled your head earlier, because your (dis)informer expected that sooner or later the news 'll spread and that I'll probably appear on voting? And you naively believed to defamator? Just because the defamator pointed his finger towards someone?
Or you're someone's meatpuppet? You're repeating someone's words and wishes. They look like Štambuk's. When I read your message on my talkpage, I thought: Štambuk again. But - another signature...
It's interesting that your beloved Štambuk exercised his admin powers against the user he was in conflict with (me). That's called abuse of admin powers.
And despite being explicitly warned by another, uninvolved user, Štambuk hasn't undone his action. Kubura 01:00, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Kubura, I'm delighted to (ab)use my powers against trolls like you anytime. --Ivan Štambuk 01:41, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

edit

Hi Stephen,

I made this edit on wikipedia, but it was reverted. It contained too much grammatical errors and other. Could you please point them out? I've had some other edits as well that were reverted for similar reasons. I think now it's because the style is OK in Dutch, but in English it is rubbish. Thank you User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 09:43, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

• • Mysterious videocassettes start arriving on their doorstep. Tapes that show extended observation of their home's exterior from a static street camera that is never noticed. (the second sentence has been left without a main verb…before the edit, "start arriving" was the main verb for the entire sentence.)
  • At first passive and harmless, but later accompanied by crude and disturbing crayon drawings. (there is no main verb…before the edit, "lead" was the verb for the entire sentence.)
  • The tapes lead little by little to questions about Georges' childhood that he does not want to discuss, not even with his wife. ("does not want" is negative, so "not even" makes a double negative.)
  • Georges confronts Majid about the tapes, but the latter denies involvement. ("the latter" sounds like legalese. Simple context makes clear who is meant by a simple "he".)
  • When she confronts him with this apparant trust issue Georges has, he tells her that she is acting exactly like Majid <-- in Georges' mind --> wants her to act with his videos. ("apparant" is misspelled…should be apparent. It is not clear who is meant by the first "him", and therefore also the first "he" and "his", Georges or Majid. The phrase "this apparant trust issue Georges has" seem a little colloquial and informal…better would be "confronts Georges about his apparent trust issue", or Majid, as the case may be. I don't understand what is meant by "act with his videos.")
  • The police arrest them, but they are released the next morning. On that morning ("that morning" is confusing since it seems to be in opposition to "the next morning"…is "that morning" the morning they were arrested or the morning of their release?)
  • a distressed Anne was seen permitting ("was seen" is a passive construction, which should usually be avoided where possible and replaced with an active construction such as "we saw a distressed Anne".)
  • Georges returns to Majid's apartment at Majid's invitation and after stating that he had nothing to do with the surveillance, (no need to repeat "Majid"…a simple "at his invitation" is understandable by context. The comma after "surveillance" is a final parenthetic comma, and requires that there be an initial parenthetic comma at the start of the phrase, before "after". There should also be a comma before the "and" separating the two independent clauses.)
  • After Majid's suicide, his son confronts Georges at his office. (it is not clear whose office is meant by "his office", Majid, the son, or Georges.)
  • When Georges asked him if he wanted to fight, Majid's son says he only wanted to know how Georges felt (tense agreement…"asked" is past tense, but "says" is present tense. Should be the same tense.)
  • with a boy who resists to get in the car ("resists to" plus an infinitive is not English...you have to say "resists getting".) —Stephen 15:39, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I see now. In some cases I felt it wasn't clear enough who actually "denies involvement" but in other cases I felt there was too much repetition when it said for example "whose office" or "invitation" it actually was. Also a number of errors is neither Dutch or English, which means I really need to go back to school. I believe that in English it is normal to write "He bought apples, pears, and strawberries", right? I can't stand such writing. Well, I hope you don't find me dumb or anything. Bye User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 16:34, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, one more thing. Is "he kills himself by cutting his own throat with a knife." understandable by context?

Yes, "He bought apples, pears, and strawberries". In American English, it is more common not to place a comma before a serial "and": "He bought apples, pears and strawberries". No, I don’t find you dumb or anything. You write English almost as well as a native speaker, which is very difficult to learn to do. Foreigners find it easy to learn to speak English reasonably well, but they almost never learn to write it well. Wikipedia is full of bad English written by Slavs, Hindus, Spaniards, Japanese, and so on, and the vast majority write English that sounds foreign. The only "foreignism" that you used was "resists to", which is something that no American of any age or education level would ever say. Everything else you wrote sounded like normal English that just needed polishing.

And yes, "he kills himself by cutting his own throat with a knife" is understandable just as it is. —Stephen 16:54, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It's good to hear that, Stephen. User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 17:14, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

howcom rv stephen?not ok4TR/BP?

ihad same q myself bout v. i/t... == transitive and intransitive verbs == In my experience, pretty much all english language dictionaries, when giving the part of speech of a verb, specify whether the verb is transitive or intransitive, right alongside the part of speech. Usually just write "vi" or "vt" for part of speech, from which I can infer that it is consider equally as important as the part of speech itself. I was disappointed to see that, s far as I can tell, Wiktionary doesn't give this information anywhere, let alone alongside the part of speech. Is this intentional? Or just a gross oversight? Or is it there and I'm just overlooking it? [[User:Lethe|Lethe]] 21:26, 8 August 2009 (UTC) --史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 08:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Wiktionary offers information on transitivity, but, like all aspects of Wiktionary, it has to be added by somebody. Personally, I don’t deal with English definitions of English words, or with English grammar in general. Some of the languages that I study and work in do place a heavy emphasis on transitivity, for example, Ojibwe, where where verbs have animate and inanimate forms, as well as transitive and intransitive forms. In the case of English, it’s just a matter of somebody who has an interest in the transitivity of verbs adding in that information. In other words, it has not been left out or overlooked, it’s that the people who want to do the work simply have not done so yet. The job is up for grabs. —Stephen 23:15, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

ic :)-ta4tr-help btw!--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 04:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

• {{ttreq|chinese}}:how2get itrite usin'edit-mask pl?--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 05:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I suppose you mean the Chinese vs. Mandarin problem. I don’t know of an easy way. I enter Chinese with the zh prefix, then save it. Then I open the section and move it to the proper place under Chinese. —Stephen 05:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

He means adding a translation request via the assisted method. The function doesn't have this functionality yet but was listed on "to do list". I just add {{ttreq|Chinese}} manually. Anatoli 05:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

ic-taboth ofu!--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 07:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

check

Hello, Stephen. I just created an impending vote for the voting threshold, but my style is often formal or dated and it might contain errors. Could you check it for grammatical or stylistical oddities, because I do not want to repel supportive editors because of my writing style? Feel free to modify it or to discuss the threshold. I picked the number 150, because in the BP some editors proposed higher threshold, some looser, so I tried to propose sort of aurea mediocritas. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 18:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. I added a little to the time, but I think it is still very lax. I strongly prefer the Wikimedia standard of at least 600 edits made prior to 30 days before the vote, with at least 50 edits made between 01 January of the current year and 30 days prior to the vote. —Stephen 20:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

How about 400 edits? I agree that contributing to Wiktionary requires less energy per edit, but I do not want to miss the votes of those people who are in favour of some threshold, but not too strict. If you think that 600 may attract more support, feel free to modify it. By the way, if you are interested in Proto-Bulgarians (as one section from this discussion reveals), I would apprecitate your opinion here, because sometimes it is difficult to persuade people of the obsoletion of some far-fetched theories about their origin which formerly enjoyed almost incontestable authority and one has to deal with imperviousness even when one tries to mention recent discoveries refuting them. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 17:39, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I think 400 edits should be sufficient for our purposes.

Yes, very difficult to persuade people to drop an old idea in favor of a new one. From all that I have read, and based on some linguistic clues, I think the proto-Bulgarians were a mixture of mainly Turkic, Ugric, and Iranian peoples, as well as others that came to be included as they migrated westward. I think Pamir languages were spoken as a mother tongue by a significant portion of the population, which accounts for traces in the modern language. I am pretty sure that there was never a single, homogeneous Bulgar people until they settled in modernday Bulgaria and assimilated the local Slavic language. —Stephen 23:43, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Stephen, where would you place the stress on (transcribed) Russian "Torzhokskoi"? Could you please reply on my talk page? --EncycloPetey 04:36, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

German-Croatian-English-Hungarian translation

Hi Stephen. Could you please help me with a translation from something like translingual (:P) finally into Hungarian? I don't know if you speak any Croatian, but finally I have a German text I trust. It's the webpage of a Croatian hotel I want to translate into Hungarian. The staff who wrote it speaks German natively so I'd like to make it primarily from German, and just check if my version means the same as the English one to me. But I had a couple of sentences I don't clearly understand. Would you please check out the sentences I paste here. Or if they are ok, please paraphrase me. I tried to find out which might be the Croatian one but I don't even speak a word of it. If you need there are some versions available in other languages. [6] - It's the German one, but you can switch it down left clicking on the round flagicons.

Wir werden alles tun damit Sie sich angenehm und sorgenfrei bei uns fühlen und die beste Betreuung bekommen. Auch größere Gaststätten würden sich unserer nicht schämen. -- We will do everything to make you feel pleasant and carefree, and make sure that you get the best service of which also bigger establishments would not be ashamed. <fron the mainpage>

Wenn Sie etwas geschickter sind, werden Sie bestimmt Ihr erstes richtiges dalmatinisches Essen fangen – Fisch vom Grill wird auch von den größten Feinschmeckern geschätzt! -- If you are somewhat skilful, you will catch certainly your first true Dalmatian dinner - fish of the grill is estimated also by the biggest gourmets! - I think they just used a wrong translation of von which should be from but such a mistake may totally confuse me. <from contents>

Thanks, in advance. Ferike333 19:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I would say it like this:

We will do everything possible to make you feel comfortable and worry-free, and to provide a quality of service that even establishments much larger than ours would be proud of. <from the mainpage>

With a little skill, you will certainly catch your first real Dalmatian fish dinner — grilled fish that will be the envy of the finest gourmets! —Stephen 17:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. It helped me a lot. The English one is not my business, there are some things I would also say different than it is said now (e.g.: ..., together with ... --> ..., along with ... is what I would say, instead <first sentence on the mainpage>). Ferike333 17:43, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

{{ru-decl-noun}}

Thanks for the hard work of cleaning this up. Now I want to move this {{ru-decl-noun}} to some {{ru-decl-noun-column}} or whatever, bring {{ru-decl-noun-1}} to its place and bot-replace {{ru-decl-noun-1}} with {{ru-decl-noun}} everywhere, simply to get rid of annoying -1 suffix. What say you? I would have deleted current {{ru-decl-noun}} at all, but User:Jaroslavleff is pretty adamant about keeping it as an alternative. --Vahagn Petrosyan 09:03, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Please keep it as alternative like {{ru-decl-noun-by-column}} (which may be will be wrapper for ru-decl-noun like all others), it's more preferable for me.. --Jaroslavleff 11:53, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems like a good idea to move {{ru-decl-noun-1}} to {{ru-decl-noun}}. The current columnar table (now {{ru-decl-noun}}) could be changed to {{ru-decl-noun-1}} or {{ru-decl-noun-col}} or something like that. —Stephen 16:13, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

pita Croatian -> Serbo-Croatian is incorrect!

Stephen G. Brown, your edit is incorrect because pita in Croatian means pie in English, but in Bosnian and Serbian pita is another kind of food, in Croatian we call it savijača, in English strudel, you can check articles and interwikilinks of Pita (hrana) and Savijača.

My question is why you destroy Croatian language, if what you are doing is obviously wrong? Or you maybe used some source for your edit, please tell me, so we can together estimate validity (or better nonvalidity) of this source. --Roberta F. 12:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed the entry. There's no need for such drama Roberta, the meaning of "pie" is not exclusively Croatian (and neither is the word itself, mind you). --Ivan Štambuk 14:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I don’t think it’s destroyed. I think it looks great! круто, что ли! —Stephen 16:20, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

If factual lie is for you круто, I rest my case. --Roberta F. 11:39, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

It's hardly a "lie". pita and savijača are not mutually exclusive concepts, and mean different things in different ragions; see Talk:pita. --Ivan Štambuk 12:38, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for the help cleaning up those categories. Creating articles is great, but cleaning up the ones we already have is important too. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:36, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

ჷ

It is now obsolete in Georgian. - I was under the impression that this letter was never used in Georgian to begin with. Am I right there, or was it actually used at some time for Georgian? -- Prince Kassad 18:32, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

You’re correct, it was not used in Georgian. It was a later addition to the alphabet for use in Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan. —Stephen 18:36, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

圣迭戈

Perhaps you can discern what variety (or varieties) of Chinese this is? It's been on Special:UncategorizedPages for a little while now. 50 Xylophone Players talk 14:24, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

I've done it and its fantizi variant. Anatoli 23:38, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

de:Billett vs Billet

Hallo Stephen! Ich habe eimal eine Übersetzung zum Eintrag ticket hinzugefügt. Sie heisst Billett. Aber es gibt keinen Eintrag, der so heisst, aber es gibt einen anderen, der heisst Billet mit einem "t". Welches ist korrekt? Meine Wörterbucher reden, dass es mit zwei "t's" ist, aber ich haette auch dich darüber nachfragen mögen. Wenn es mit zwei t's ist, sollte ich einen neuen Eintrag erstellen und von diesem Alten einen Redirekt machen? Gruss und Dank, Ferike333 20:20, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Ich würde sagen: Billet → {{obsolete spelling of}}, da es anscheinend eine veraltete Form ist. Dementsprechend brauchen wir den Eintrag Billett mit den entsprechenden Bedeutungen und vor allem Regionalmarkierungen, da dieses Wort in Deutschland nicht geläufig ist. -- Prince Kassad 20:34, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Dann, wo genau ist es gelaeufig? Nur in der Schweiz oder auch in Österreich oder Lichtenstein? Wie siehen die Eintrage jetzt aus? Bitte, korrigiert und ergaentzt! Danke, Ferike333 21:42, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

In Germany I have seen Billet used, but in Switzerland and Austria, the correct spelling is Billett. So there should be an entry for both spelling. Both spellings should also work as a link to the German Wikipedia. In each spelling, include the section ===Alternative spellings===, mentioning the other spelling. —Stephen 06:31, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Billet is/was seldom used (with one t) but becoming more common, most dictionaries have only Billett with two t's. Billett is standard in Switzerland, Austria and Lichtenstein, it is obsolete in Germany but understood, the standard spelling in Germany is Billett. Ticket (plural Tickets) is also common for train and air tickets in all German-speaking countries. Billett is not Swiss German (dialect) but Hochdeutsch in Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein, obsolete in Germany. I learned this feature in my student years back in 80's, don't have a source handy, sorry. Anatoli 10:51, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Pardon me, I forgot one thing. Fahrschein is also common in Austria (not Fahrkarte), even more common than Billett. Germans prefer Fahrkarte to Fahrschein. Anatoli 11:26, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

About the Spanish verbs...

I know the meanings of "destroy, demolish, overthrow, dismantle, tear down and take down", I know the differences between those words because I am a native English speaker, but I am learning a different language, and Spanish is a language where word order and correct grammar is very important unlike in English, so I want to know, if you can tell me, how are the verbs "abatir, demoler, derribar, derrocar" used in Spanish, how are they used differently in Spanish and in what contexts would I use those verbs, would I use one of them in reacting to a tree being cut down, would I use one of them to react to an overthrow of a government, would I use one of them in reacting to knocking down someone or something, how would I use these verbs in specific times and places and actions?

Thank you very much. Muchas gracias.

Lingualove 00:53, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, that’s what I was saying. These verbs have a similar meaning, but not exactly the same. Abatiendo un árbol is cutting down a tree. Demoliendo un árbol is destroying a tree. Si abates una pared, you’re tearing down a wall. Derribando un interceptor is shooting down an interceptor. Derribando un gobierno is overthrowing a government, and derrocando un gobierno means the same thing. Derribando a tu amigo means humiliating your friend, and in a rodeo the cowboys try to derribar los toros, or throw the bulls to the ground. There is no simple rule that says to use this word in this case and that word in that case...every case is different and it all depends on exactly what you want to say. I mentioned earlier the common usages of each of these verbs, some being used for overthrowing governments and leaders, others not.

The best way to really learn how to use different words in different situations is to read Spanish newspapers and magazines. Then you’ll soon learn the preferred words for common situations. You should just read the mags and newspapers straight through, without bothering to look up every unfamiliar word in a dictionary, but just forging on ahead and soon the meanings and usages will just come to you naturally. —Stephen 01:55, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

душ

Hi Stephen,

Could you please fix the declension template for душ if it exist. I am not sure, which one is to show no accent when it's one syllable only. Please let me know, if there's no right template, then I'll do it manually. Anatoli 22:54, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

All of the Russian noun declension templates add an accent on every form, even those of only one syllable. No need to do it manually. —Stephen 11:14, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Anatoli 23:15, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2009-08/Voting eligibility 2

Hi Stephen. There are some difficulties with interpreting the votes, because the way the vote has been set up it becomes less obvious whether those who voted for more restrictive option 1 are also supportive of less restrictive option 2, unless they haven't explicitly said so (by also voting for option 2). Therefore, I kindly ask you to reconsider voting also for option 2, if you are supportive of it (note that you cannot vote against it). We need 75% of supportive votes for it to pass. --Ivan Štambuk 13:15, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Why can't he vote against it, if he can vote for it? --Rising Sun 13:56, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

I will vote for #2 if you wish, but I honestly feel that it is no better than the status quo. Actually, it is worse than the status quo, because then it will be necessary for someone to count the ridiculous and meaningless 50 edits that may have been made over the past ten years. —Stephen 12:05, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

pronunciations, German

Hi Stephen! I'd like you to check the stress placement of the entry elevator, please. I would tip it were on the third syllable, but not on the first. However it's just my feeling. Another pronunciation question for me is reptile, to which both the recent US and UK pronunciations have been given by me, but I could find no source to the American. I would also like you to check this out: Talk:Junge, if you have time. TIA, Ferike333 19:16, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Checked and fixed. Elevator is stressed on the first syllable. Reptile probably should be /ˈrɛp.taəl/, but the "a" isn’t right. I don’t know which IPA symbol to use for that vowel. In words such as tile, aisle, bile, mile, Nile, pile, guile, dial, while, vial, they are not pronounced /_aɪl/, but /_(a)əl/ (perhaps "a" = ɐ, ɑ, ɒ?). —Stephen 12:27, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm so thankful. Now that you mentioned it, I can feel a slight difference, I can't pronounce the i in Nile like in nice. Mine would probably be /-ajəl/ or /aɪəl/. I think RP would be with /aɪ/ and so would GenAm, though, but people in Devon (or only North Devon?) seem to use /ɑɪ/ instead, and a simple /ɑ/ even when an RP speaker would use /a/ and you /æ/ (eg: happen). At least my host brother used to say so. Thanks again, Ferike333 14:16, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

крутиться

Hello,

is кружим a form of крутиться? Also, does кру- indicate some sort of 'surrounding' or '(en)circling' movement? Not literally per se, if you understand what I am saying. Last but not least, is there some sort of consensus on whether verbs are derived from nouns or the other way around? I am curious about that. Thank you User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 20:18, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

No, кружим is from (deprecated template usage) кружить (kružitʹ).

• ж <=> г, д, з
• ч <=> к, т
• ш <=> х, с
• щ <=> ск, ст

Therefore, круж- = (deprecated template usage) круг (krug). In many cases, nouns derive from verbs, but in others, it is the other way around. —Stephen 23:42, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean with that list? Does it show how letters change in certain words? User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 22:14, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

It shows mechanical mutations. These mutations often occur in verbs when the consonant is followed by certain stressed or unstressed vowels: глодить, гложу, глодал; лететь, лечу, летишь, летел; просить, прошу, просил. In the case of кружим, ж may become г, д, or з, but not т, and therefore it cannot be related to крутиться. Rather, кружим is related to круг (where ж <=> г). —Stephen 22:53, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I wasn't really sure. Thank you User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 05:44, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

About other Spanish verbs...

ababillarse, abacorar, abadernar, abajar

Since you wrote that those four verbs come before abalanzar, can you or someone create pages for these verbs?

I cannot do this, since I am not an established editor and I do not know the Spanish language yet.

Thank you very much.

P.S.- Do you know the meaning of the verb ababillarse? The definition (and a confusing one) I have found so far is "an animal sick with the stifle, the hind legs", and both Google Translator and Study Spanish Translator do not reconzigne ababillarse, so I am a little confused about that verb, and does anybody know how many verbs there are in the Spanish language and if they are all listed on any website or even on Wiktionary or Wikcionario so that I would have a complete list of all the Spanish verbs, instead of just 100 or 500 verbs because I know that there are more verbs than that.

Lingualove 12:16, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

There is no count of Spanish verbs, just as there is none for English verbs. There is no complete list of Spanish or English verbs. ababillarse means to be sick with the stifle (q.v.). —Stephen 13:12, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Verb lemmata

Perhaps you could comment at WT:BP#Verb lemma forms for various languages, providing the lemma form we use for Arabic, Russian, etc.? --EncycloPetey 04:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

User:Neskaya

Somebody has deleted part of User:Neskaya's userpage, including the history. Luckily I was able to recover the lost text. I’ll put it here so that I can keep an eye on it.

User:Neskaya: Ivan Štambuk

Well, User:Neskaya, it would appear that you have finally succeeded in running off one of our best editors, one of the best we’ve ever had, not only for Serbo-Croatian, but for many of the Indo-European languages and even the Semitic languages, who had been frustratingly tied up by a large gang of extreme-rightwing Yugoslavian meatpuppets that RU had drug in in order to get his way with a language that he knows nothing about. Maybe now you can get the one or two meatpuppets who may linger here to do a hundredth of Ivan’s work (but now that Ivan is gone, the meatpuppets are sure to go away, thankfully). Nice day’s work! —Stephen 14:33, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry

I'll understand if you don't feel like answering this question, but what did Neskaya do to Ivan making him leave? User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 05:54, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

RU had gone to the Croatian Wikipedia to bring right-wing extremists here to block a vote and to disrupt the work that Ivan was doing. They were attacking Ivan and arguing with him for perhaps two months or more, and Ivan could not get any work done. Then last week as some of the outsiders were baiting Ivan, Neskaya blocked Ivan for one day. Of course, Ivan could have unblocked himself, and he could even have blocked the outsiders, but he did not want to abuse his powers. When Neskaya blocked him, it was the last straw, the last slap in the face. It looks like he has gone for good. At least now the extremist thugs from the Croatian Wikipedia will finally leave us alone. —Stephen 06:33, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps they're gone...but this doesn't seem worth it. --User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 07:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

ello

Hippietrail and Prince_Kassad have been helping me with sorting through the logistics of pictographically displaying Tibetan Verbs and I have been directed to contact you. If it helps, I have uploaded a simple list of verbs here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19640562/basic-tibetan-verbs-by-kristoffer-linqvist. Please refer: Category:bo:Grammar. In theory, we have a "present" ལྟ་ད, "past" འདས་པ, "future" མ་འོངས་པ and "imperative" སྐུལ་ཚིགས; and generally we have a "voluntary" ཐ་དད་པ and "involuntary" ཐ་མི་དད་པ. I am a newb to learning Tibetan as well so...
:~D
B9hummingbirdhoverin'^{æ•ω•ॐ} 11:32, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I don’t understand what you need. Is it in regard to the font display, such as font size? Or do you want help to make a conjugation table? Or is it in regard to converting the romanized words into the Tibetan alphabet? —Stephen 12:21, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Rostov and Ростов

Hi Stephen,

When you have a moment please check these 2 entries. I made formerly deleted Rostov-na-Donu and Rostov-on-Don redirect entries to Rostov. Anatoli 01:15, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Just noticed, we discussed this a long time ago but I forgot what template to use. Ростов (city) is "Росто́вом" in instrumental case and Ростов (surname) is "Росто́вым". I think we talked about neuters but it applies to masculines as well, in short surnames and city names have different endings in instrumental. I put a temporary fix. Anatoli 01:24, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 09:40, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Anatoli 19:51, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

اورېدل

Hi, the stress is on the third syllable: aw-re-DəL. Avestan Pashtun 06:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

cedilla

I was wondering where you got the Catalan translation of (deprecated template usage) cedilla. All I have been able to confirm absolutely is that (deprecated template usage) ce trencada is the name for Ç, but I have been unable to confirm that (deprecated template usage) trencada, the translation you provided, or any other term is the name for the cedilla itself. The Viquipèdia uses (deprecated template usage) trencat, the masculine past participle of (deprecated template usage) trencar, for the name instead of the feminine past participle as you have provided, and logically either of those or the present participle (deprecated template usage) trencant could be the name, assuming Catalan engages in some form of genericization of the concept, but as I said, I haven't come across a reference that says specifically, that's how its done. — Carolina wren discussió 18:08, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

That’s what we called it when I lived in Sitges. However, it’s an adjective, not a noun. The noun that refers to the cedilla diacritic is simply el trencat. —Stephen 14:46, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Good enough for me under the circumstances. I've added the meaning as a noun to (deprecated template usage) trencat and changed the translation in (deprecated template usage) cedilla to match. — Carolina wren discussió 04:25, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Достоевский

Hi Stephen,

Need your assistance again before I get more comfortable with declension templates! Great job but I struggle to find the right one at times. Please check the entry for declension, categories and other information you see fit in Достоевский. Is Vahagn also comfortable with the Russian declension templates? Anatoli 00:10, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I am going to create an entry for Толстой. Will be searching for the right template as well. Please help. Thanks in advance. Anatoli 00:16, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

The one you used ({{ru-adj2}}) is the only one that we have for -ский. The only template that we have for names is {{ru-adj11}}, which is for -ов, -ёв, -ев, -ин. The templates for names and adjectives are shown at Wiktionary:Russian inflection templates. Толстой will be the same, all we have for that is {{ru-adj4}}. I guess we need to make adj. templates #12 and 13 for names in -ский and -ой. —Stephen 07:54, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

If there are no restrictions for creating surnames, then Андреев, Розанов, Леонтьев, Мещерский, Победоносцев et cetera could also be created without any fear that they can be nominated for RFD? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 08:40, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Sure, surnames were allowed all along. --Vahagn Petrosyan 08:55, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Stephen. I have tried to follow the logic of templates but failed. Please fix Template:ru-adj13 and Толстой. --Anatoli 12:00, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing, appreciate this. --Anatoli 20:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

One thing I noticed that doesn't seem right - the new templates add the names to "Russian possessive adjectives" category, which they are not. Anatoli 22:45, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

That’s true, those two are not possessives. The category needs to be removed. —Stephen 22:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Transwiki:Poorna

I'm not sure how to handle the final term, since it appears to be 3-in-1. Would it be best if I split the entry into 3 different words (one for each language)? Goldenrowley 05:15, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, three entries, with the Sanskrit and Hindi on one page since they use the same spelling. The Bengali needs a separate page, but with the Sanskrit as its etymon. —Stephen 06:56, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

OK thanks for the help, I formatted and moved it to पूर्ण. Goldenrowley 05:46, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

you

Explain why you reverted http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=you&diff=7409846&oldid=7409648, please. I know that そこの is a phrase for "the individual or group spoken/written to" and この is a word for "used before epithets for emphasis" in Japanese language. Thank you if you will answer me in simple English. 118.19.110.87 03:05, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

For the word that is "used before epithets for emphasis", I agree that it should be そこの or この. However, for "the individual or group spoken/written to", I think it is a mistake to delete all of those words. I think that there are many ways to translate an English sentence such as "Do you people want to eat?". I think that あなた, あなたがた, そちら, or some of the others are a possibility. —Stephen 03:26, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

saline

Hi Stephen! Could you please confirm what I wrote on Talk:saline under pronunciation, at least for the US? And I would like to ask another, not wiki-related question, too. By the end of this semester I have to decide what subjects I want to study in more lessons. This mostly depends on what university I want to continue my studies at. And I have not decided yet, whether I wanted to be a linguist or an architect. Would you mind to tell me what spheres of linguistics exist and what job can one hold down with them? About architecture I know pretty much but nothing about linguistics. You can email me if you wish so. TIA, Ferike333 08:54, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

There are a number of jobs related to linguistics. The ones that I am most familiar with are language teachers (for a difficult language such as Hungarian, this would mean at the university level), diplomatic service, and translator/interpreter. I owned two translating companies and have hired and worked with several hundreds of translators over the years. Some people enjoy translating, but others find it boring and tedious. If it’s something that you enjoy and are good at, it pays well. I don’t know very much about the situation in the EU, but in the U.S., Hungarian is not a frequent request, but it pays better than more common languages like French and Spanish, and there are far fewer translators that do Hungarian. European translators have to take translation courses and obtain a certificate, but in the U.S. we don’t have anything so formalized. In the U.S. you would work as an independent contractor for many different translating companies all over the country. Besides having to know English and Hungarian, you should also specialize in some technical field such as finance, engineering, medicine, law, etc. In Europe, you probably would translate only into Hungarian, but in the U.S. you would be asked to translate in both directions, from and into. —Stephen 22:10, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind answer. The problem with being a Hungarian teacher is actually that no one wants to study Hungarian. And I realised that it's easier to me to study French from English than from Hungarian, because the very different structures don't need to be explained on the way it should be to a person who speaks just Hungarian. To see the logic in Hungarian structures is very hard, it may sound strange but we discuss very often if what we said is correct or not. A translation can be boring or even tedious, but usually I take interest in them. Hungarian isn't a frequent request at all. Some people learn it because it's 'exotic' - they say, but they are very few. Probably in the sorrounding countries, which have huge Hungarian minorities, Hungarian translation requests are more frequent. I've also thought of something English-German and the other way round because if I had the vocabulary, the structures would be much easier to be planted into German than into Hungarian. I've done a couple of translations for hu:wiki, from English into Hungarian, and i had a lot of problems with passive, 'one' etc. which we can't always use. I just should have the vocabulary. First of all, as the beginning I should pass my language exam in December. And the German one in May. Thanks a lot, again. You must have been a great boss of your employees. Ferike333 19:02, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Hungarian is too difficult and too exotic for our high school students, but big American universities such as Columbia University offer degrees in Hungarian language. My old school in Monterey, California, taught advanced Hungarian, but during the past ten years they have stopped offering some of the Eastern European languages and have begun to teach languages such as Dari, Tausug, Arabic, and Pashto instead. I’m not sure whether they still have Hungarian or not. But, because of the rise of the Jobbik political party, which is considered very dangerous, Hungarian may soon become a priority language again. That school teaches languages that are important to national defense.

A good friend of mine comes from Czechoslovakia. Czech is a language that is not much in demand, so he studied Japanese and English. Now he translates patents from Japanese to English. He is very good and companies all over the country try to send him work. He only accepts jobs from an elite few clients that are willing to pay his high rates.

But I have another Czech friend who translates English and Czech. He translates in both directions, but his English is very bad. He can understand English but he does not write it very well. But there are so few Czech translators that he also only accepts work from special, high-paying clients. Czech is not much in demand, but there are so few Czech-English translators that they cannot keep up with the demand.

I don’t deal with the EU, but I think the EU requires that a lot of material be translated into each of the EU languages, and that keeps a lot of translators busy.

German is a very good language for translation in the U.S. We have much more work in Spanish and French, but also there are lots and lots of Spanish and French translators. There are not many good German translators here. Chinese and Japanese are probably the best languages in the U.S. from a translator’s viewpoint, there is a huge demand and it is difficult to find any good translators for those languages into English. —Stephen 20:40, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I would not have thought you have so many universities teaching Hungarian. I met some people online who claimed to have learnt Hungarian in the U.S., and one of them was a real expert. If she had not said it I would not have realised that she was not a native Hungarian. Then I could not appreciate that. Well, I'm glad that Hungarian may be of bigger importance but I feel pity that we need somewhat Jobbik for that. I'm surprised it's so known. I'm interested what you are told about them. I'm very disappointed because we are recently known to be a brutal nacionalist folk but that's not true at all. But I don't really want to speak about it in public, but I can write you a pretty long email if you wish so. It just takes time, I'm very busy this week.

I think Chinese is the most important language everywhere. But it is also very hard to learn to write it. But I will see. Now, I'm just hoping that I can chose French and English together to learn in more lessons, but that's not only up to me. I plan to take a German intermediate by next spring. These will be totally enough for this year;) I have no idea how acceptable my English is. Und ich weiss über mein Deutsches eigentlich nicht, aber es wird gehen. Thanks for your answer, Ferike333 20:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I traveled around Hungary, Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria about 35 years ago and saw many Roma there, who seemed to be an interesting and old culture, and they were always very colorful and friendly. The main thing that I know about the Jobbik is that, like the skinheads and neo-Nazis, they blame the Roma as well as recently immigrated people such as Azeris for all of Hungary’s problems, and they want to eradicate them. We have a similar problem in the U.S., where our radical, right-wing Republicans blame Mexican immigrants for all of our problems and want to get rid of them by any means. Right-wing extremist groups are popping up everywhere and they are all looking for scapegoats. Russia is becoming dangerous for its foreign immigrants, especially those who are not Caucasian. It’s also happening in China, Germany, France, everywhere.

When I was studying Russian, I had friends in the Chinese language program. These were total-immersion courses. Chinese took a full extra year because of the writing. Studying Chinese is like learning two languages at once, one spoken and one written. —Stephen 20:42, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Some Roma are truely friendly but they are the minority, unfortunately. And it's the worst for them. I have some Roma friends, who work and try their best and it feels really bad when they are derogated. The places tourists are likely to see are not dangerous, but I bet you have not been to the 8th district of Budapest. I hope you liked Hungary. I think minorities are problematic everywhere. I will see, I'm interested in Chinese, but the current order is: English, German, French, Russian, and then I'll have the opportunity to choose again. That's enough for now. By the way, I was going to go to China in summer 2010, but it seems to have to be postponed or cancelled. Ferike333 14:49, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Thai romanisation and People's Republic of China

Hi Stephen,

I know you sometimes add Thai translation with the romanisation.

I started using this tool: [7] and romanised People's Republic of China. Is it any good, in your opinion? I only know about half of Thai letters but keen to learn more. --Anatoli 04:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

It’s not too bad, but it needs some tweaking. —Stephen 04:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks, Stephen Anatoli 10:58, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Ө

I believe Ө is not used in Karachay-Balkar. My source is С. А. Гочияева, Х. И. Суюнчев, Карачаево-балкарско-русский словарь, Moscow 1989, →ISBN, which does not list Ө. -- Prince Kassad 19:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The first Cyrillic alphabet for Karachay-Balkar was made in 1924, consisting of these letters: А а, Ä ä, Е е, О о, Ö ö, Ы ы, И и, У у, Ӱ ӱ, К к, Қ қ, Г г, Ӷ ӷ, Х х, Х̆ х̆, Н н, Ң ң, П п, Л л, Т т, Д д, Ж ж, С с, З з, Ч ч, Ш ш, Б б, Р р, Ф ф, М м, В в, Ц ц, Ю ю, Я я, ь, й. In 1936 it was modified to include the standard Russian alphabet plus Гъ гъ, Къ къ, Нг нг. Much later, from 1961 to 1964, other changes were made, which included the addition of Ғ ғ, Ө ө, Җ җ, Қ қ, Ң ң, Ў ў, Ү ү, Һ һ. The question is whether these latter letters actually form a part of the alphabet or if they are simply auxiliary letters for special use. I’m pretty sure that some of them are auxiliary letters, but I think a couple of them are now part of the alphabet. —Stephen 20:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

From that list, I've only seen Ў still being used, and even then only in Karachay dialect. Balkar dialect does not seem to use this letter. I've never seen the other letters, and they would surely be redundant as their sounds are already covered by other letters. -- Prince Kassad 20:59, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think they are used mostly for place names and similar words that come from a different language, just like Spanish w and k, which are used for loans from English and other languages. —Stephen 21:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Question is, should they appear in Appendix:Cyrillic script if they're not used? I think no. -- Prince Kassad 14:29, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

You can take them out if you want to. They are used in some foreign words, but I am not sure that they are actually part of the official alphabet. They may simply be considered to be auxiliary letters like ғ, җ, қ, ң, etc. —Stephen 14:37, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

страшиться, грядущее

Hi there, could you perhaps create these two entries? Thank you User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 17:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 03:13, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

tijdens

Is it common to say "During the holidays I was ill" or is "I was ill during the holidays" better? User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 11:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

ill sounds technical or literary. Usually we say sick. If you mean from start to finish of the holidays, then "I was sick over the holidays" or "over the holidays, I was sick." If it was just a day or two during the holidays, the "I got sick during the holidays" or "during the holidays, I got sick." The choice between "sick during" and "during, sick" just depends on focus or emphasis. In the case of "I got sick during the holidays", the focus or emphasis is on "I got sick." In "during the holidays, I got sick," the focus is on the holidays (during the holidays, this and this and this happened...e.g., I visited family, I got sick, I went to a movie, and I bought a new car). —Stephen 12:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 19:07, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

What's this?

Hi, Stephen. Do you know by any chance how to type in Unicode this word? It's Ottoman Turkish. I can't understand what's that thing after first alef (a ligature?). How's it different from (deprecated template usage) الماس (almas)? --Vahagn Petrosyan 23:43, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's a ligature of lam and mim. You can see it in your computer if you switch to a font with Arabic ligatures (Sakkal Majalla). -- Prince Kassad 23:50, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. As long as we're at it, do you know if there are any additional characters of Ottoman Turkish that are not included in the edittools-Arabic section? Also, are the 6 letters of Persian mini-section used in Ottoman? --Vahagn Petrosyan 00:07, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the Ng ((deprecated template usage) ڭ) is missing from the edittools. From the Persian section, all characters except for the Persian Kaf are used in Ottoman Turkish. -- Prince Kassad 00:15, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

ḥababáur / ḥababawrah

Copied from WT:RE:ar so to ensure you see this while your thoughts on this are still fresh in your mind.

• Andalusian Arabic ḥababáur (unknown transliteration scheme) (Andalusian or Classical?) Arabic ḥababawrah (possibly a transliteration of حاباباوراه. Word is from the Latin (deprecated template usage) papāver and from it is derived the Catalan ababol, which in Catalan refers to the red poppy. — Carolina wren discussió 04:41, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

  (I can't think of anything like this. hababawrah does not have an Arabic look to it. Possibly it's two words, and the first could be (deprecated template usage) حب (ḥabb) or (deprecated template usage) حبة (ḥabba). Still can't think what the rest could be —Stephen 18:38, 27 October 2009 (UTC))

  Given the Latin word it is derived from, I'd be likelier to assume the break is ḥa+babawrah, with babawrah being due to a mutation of p to b at some point. So what is ḥa ? — Carolina wren discussió 20:15, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

  It doesn’t seem likely. (deprecated template usage) حاء (ḥa’) is the name of the letter (deprecated template usage) ح (ḥ); and (deprecated template usage) خاء (kha’) is the name of the letter (deprecated template usage) خ (ḵ); and (deprecated template usage) هاء (ha’) is the name of the letter (deprecated template usage) ه (h); and (deprecated template usage) ها (hā) means look!, there!. Almost all Arabic words have three consonants in the base form, though some have only two, some have four, and a small few have only one. The other consonants that might appear in a word are prefixes, infixes, and suffixes that make plurals, duals, participles, articles, singulatives, feminines, elatives, imperfectives, and so on. The first word, if this is multiple words, needs to have either two or three consonants (if two consonants in a row are the same consonant, often only one of them is written). —Stephen 20:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

  One of the nice things about DCVB is that it is rather zealous in citing sources, and the source of their etymology for (deprecated template usage) ababol (Glosario etimológico de las palabras españolas by Leopoldo de Eguílaz y Yanguas, 1888) has been scanned into Google Books. Here's the link for the relevant page [8] and hopefully you can make sense out of it. — Carolina wren discussió 00:15, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

  That says that the Arabic is (deprecated template usage) حببورة (ḥababawra) or (deprecated template usage) حببورا (ḥababawra). I don’t find that in my dictionaries, but it might be an old word or dialect. But that’s the spelling. User:Hakeem.gadi or User:Beru7 may know of it. User:Hakeem.gadi in particular is good with dialects. Not sure how often they check in here. At the bottom, it says that the Hispano-Arabs formed the word from the Latin papaver by prefixing h-a, which represents (deprecated template usage) حب (ḥabb). —Stephen 00:42, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

  Thanks. I've updated the Etymology of (deprecated template usage) ababol with that. — Carolina wren discussió 01:32, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

krotovina

This word supposedly comes from Russian. Do you think you could expand on the etymology? Thanks. Nadando 17:56, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 20:33, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

mammals

Re the issue you raised: I've now added cat:Mammals to every entry from which I previously removed the context tag. (I have not yet done so for fruits, but hope to.)​—msh210℠ 18:13, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! :) —Stephen 19:37, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Deleted

Hello,

I just created singa batu, saw that singa came from sanskrit simha. After watching the Disney film Lion King, I couldn't help wondering if the Swahili word simba was related. Now, the father of Simba was called Mufasa meaning, according to wikipedia, king. As you can see, you have deleted it at one point. Why? Does it not mean king? User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 18:47, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I deleted mufasa because it was just a redirect to Mufasa, and we don’t need redirects from lower- to uppercase or vice versa. Mufasa was tagged with rfv, but no one verified it, so it was deleted as well. I think the lowercased mufasa may mean king in some Swahili-related language, or possibly in some dialect of Swahili, but I don’t know of it in Standard Swahili. It may have been a proper name in some Bantu tribe of Kenya. Sanskrit सिंह (siṃhá) probably is related to Swahili simba, but I am not sure how or in which direction. Note that singa is also related to Singapore. —Stephen 20:35, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

goosebump

Hi Stephen. Could you make order amog the entries goosebump, goose bump and their plurals? I tried to figure out which spelling is used, and if it was normally in plural or singular, but I've just got more confused. At least I added the Hungarian to both in singular. We don't use the plural. Thanks in advance. Ferike333 13:33, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

The most common spelling is goosebumps, but goose bumps is also widely used. The singular is almost never used. Nobody gets just one goosebump. When they occur, there are thousands (or hundreds of thousands) at once. So the singular is theoretically possible, but the plural is the normal word. —Stephen 22:37, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. It makes it clear. Ferike333 19:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

say to me your solution

Hi, i am mahjoob from iran(persia),i try to add persian words in translation place for english entry i add both persian word in persian alphabet and latin alphabet but your caution message is:"Persian must be written in the Persian alphabet" if i write only in persian alphabet that is illegible for many people. what is your solution?(Mahjoob 13:29, 2 November 2009 (UTC))

Hi, Mahjoob. You are right, it should be in both. Nobody can know what the vowels are unless they speak Persian, so it needs to be Persian alphabet and also English alphabet. —Stephen 13:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Autopatroller?

Hi Stephen, I noticed you added me to a group of Autopatrollers. What does that mean exactly? Thanks.--Tyranny Sue 14:52, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

It means that your edits no longer appears on special:recentchanges as "unpatrolled" for admins to check and make sure they're not vandalism. Someone nominated you at wt:WL and someone else seconded the motion, so your edits are now autopatrolled. No benefit accrues to you from it (it's only so patrolling admins can ignore your edits as safe), but it may be nice for you to know you're trusted.​—msh210℠ 17:28, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Msh210. That's cool. --Tyranny Sue 04:34, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Zot, Zotëri

Hello, I'm nemzag, i created those entry i'm an albanian greek, orthodox pop and i'm sure of what I say please leave my add... Thanks

Yes, I know who you are. You add those etymologies before and we had to remove them. You have unconventional and unsupported ideas about etymologies, which is something that we do not like here. Please do not add any more etymologies here. —Stephen 23:55, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary is open to everyone, i know my language and my people more than other people and if i can explain is my right to express my self. Please be nice and accept others ideas & opinions.

We don’t allow w:original research. Even though you know your language, you must follow best practices and widely accepted standards. In the past you have tried to create links and entries to support unconventional ideas of etymology, especially in regard to Arabic and Hebrew. We have never allowed those kinds of contributions and you must avoid that kind of work. —Stephen 08:38, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok I understand that i make mistake, but i wan't to share my knowledge about my people. About source, don't need source but just greek logic... Also some people say that Albanian zotëri & zot came from the Persian word Zaotor (Zût, Zot) Persian Zoroastrian Head Invoker Priest (source : [[9]] & [[10]]). Still the word connect to greek σωτήρ : savior (messia in hebrew), also called Χρισωτάρης (Chrisotarês), who is the head priest of Zeus  : ιερεύς από Ζεύς (سر رأس رئيس زيوس), the zotëri, the Zaotar, the Sôtêr (Savior, Messiah Christ מוֹשִׁיעַ מָשִׁיחַ). So please leave my information... I'm an albanian from Macedonia, and Shqipëria is near greece, so a lot of word came from very ancient greek orthodox Nemzag 11:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC).

About source vladimir orel is a Russian, not an albanian romanian persian, and the two others source are deutsch, both tryed to conquer albania in the second world war. So please, leave my information Nemzag 11:54, 11 November 2009 (UTC).

And all his explanation about Zotëri made by Azaleapomp2, are just inadequate, and useless. Zotëri is Sôtêr (in greek) and have no etymology with Hindu Praja Pati, विश्पति (víś-páti), “‘lord of the house’”) जास्पति (jā́s-pati : “‘head of a family’), *desyās + *poti (“‘lord, master’”) *deywós (“‘skyling, deity’”) + *átta (“‘father’”), Praja Pati & Others are the roman Iupiter Dius (God of Earth Sky, because Ouranos / Varuna is the god of Universal Sky). Every body know that roman cult came from persian & hindu (aryan), because roma is a persian colony, made after the alexander & Darius / Xerxes war on greece. Nemzag 12:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

A decent online Arabic dictionary

Do you know of any free online dictionary for Arabic that lists gender and plurals for nouns and subjunctives for verbs? That would be remarkably helpful to me — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 00:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

No, I have not seen anything like that. English Wiktionary gives more plurals and genders than anyone else that I have encountered. The only other online sources are just simple glossaries. —Stephen 01:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi. Nothing fits your description, Opiaterein but Sakhr: [11] is good for readings, Word Reference Arabic dictionary: [12] is not bad for usage examples (they promise to add more), a copy of Hans Wehr (scans) only exists on the web. That's all. Hans Wehr paper dictionary must be on of the best dictionaries available for English speakers. For verbs, you probably mean the perfect form, not subjunctive. --Anatoli 01:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

No, I think he means the full conjugation including subjunctive, the way we did on كتب. —Stephen 01:34, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I see. I am under impression that subjunctive and jussive cause no problem, if the perfective forms is known, it's only the ending that different (more applicable to a very formal speech). There a very minor difference in the feminine and plural written forms too, quite consistent. Please check if this is true [13]. I will check more carefully the entry كتب, thanks. Anatoli 01:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but it all has to be expressly laid out in a table, like we do with other conjugations and declensions. We cannot do justice to the grammar by merely stating that they "cause no problem". For most students, they do cause a problem for the first couple of years or so. —Stephen 01:59, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually I'm not sure what the form is in MSA (the يكتب (yaktubu) form), but in Egyptian (which is what I'm focusing on mostly) it's more like a simple present or general form, like the "yapar" form of Turkish yapmak... but it's also used in cases where languages like the Romance language would use a subjunctive. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 02:05, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

In MSA, يكتب (yaktubu) is the imperfective or incomplete, which often corresponds to the present tense. كتب (kátaba) is the perfective or complete, which often corresponds to the past tense. The subjunctive is يكتب (yaktuba). In Egyptian, the incomplete يكتب is yíktib (he writes), and the complete كتب is kátab (he wrote). I don’t know Egyptian well enough to comment on the subjunctive. —Stephen 02:31, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

So Egyptian uses prefixes such as bi-: بيكتب (biyíktib), he is writing; and ha-: حيكتب (hayíktib), he will write. It appears that these indicative forms, along with particles such as إذا or لو (if), are used according to certain periphrastic formulas in place of a subjunctive. For example, إذا كتبهوله (iza katabhuuluh), if he write it to him (literally, if he wrote it to him). —Stephen 03:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I see where you are coming from, Stephen, but I meant in MSA, the endings are consistent and perhaps and can added/taken away from the imperfective form, that's why dictionaries usually don't provide this form. Those endings are often relaxed in a less formal setting, so both yaktubu and yaktuba can be just pronounced yaktub making both identical. The important things are perfect, imperfect, maSdar and active participle for a dictionary verb, IMHO. Anatoli 04:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Imperfect of وصل

In MSA should the imperfect of this verb be يصل (yaSilu)? I thought the weak و would be dropped with the imperfective prefixes... or am I just confused? — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 00:26, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, active imperfect is يصل (yaSilu). The passive imperfect is يوصل (yuuSalu). —Stephen 00:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

quinceaños

I'm not sure about the plural myself, but I have a suspicion that it's the same as the singular. I'll do some asking/checking. --EncycloPetey 05:07, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

My suspicion seems to be right, judging by b.g.c. returns...but with a twist. This appears to be a word that is sometimes treated as a singular (with su and el), but sometimes as a plurale tantum (with sus and los, but with a singular meaning). --EncycloPetey 05:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it’s the same as the singular. It seems like every languages template works differently and I tend to give up when I have an irregularity. —Stephen 05:13, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

I have the same headaches. I added usage notes (with quotes), which was no problem, but when adding the etymology, I couldn't get "gloss1=" to work in {{compound}} (which is how {{suffix}} and {{prefix}} work), so I had to go look up the documentation to find out which idiosyncratic parameter name was used.

I'm planning a revision of the Spanish noun templates to more closely match what's being done with noun templates in other Iberian languages, which is much simpler. If we can pull off such a massive revision with {{es-verb}}, then we ought to be able to do the same with the nouns, especially since this time most of them could be handled by bot. --EncycloPetey 05:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Translation - English to Russian on Logo vote

Hi Stephen,

I wonder if you are interested in having a go at this English-Russian translation - it's about the logo vote (the request is in my talk page), here's the page, which is linked to the English original: [14]. Although I agreed and I will have to do it eventually, I am not so excited in translating the whole page. Don't be shy if you are not sure about phrasing or anything in Russian. I can certainly assist or check your translation if you are interested, I'll have to check myself how to translate a few terms, e.g. "runoff vote", etc. --Anatoli 00:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

When I have some time, I’ll have a look. —Stephen 19:47, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Stephen, if you are still interested and have some time, please try some sentences, the vote will start in 3 days. Thank you in any case. --Anatoli 05:41, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I had forgotten about it. I will try to do some, but there are some hidden English notes in the text that are confusing to me. I hope I don’t make it worse. —Stephen 22:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I got in a bit of a hurry but I think it is finished. You can check it here. Let me know if I have forgotten something. —Stephen 07:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Большое спасибо, Стивен! Ты меня очень выручил. Я твой должник. :) --Anatoli 10:22, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

artery

Could you please check out the pronunciation added by me, please? I'm most unsure about the sound 'ʃ'. TIA, Ferike333 18:47, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Done. Definitely no ʃ. (I’m not certain of the British pronunciation.) —Stephen 00:32, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Sranan Tongo

Hi there,

would you happen to know any native speakers of Sranan Tongo on Wiktionary? I can't seem to find the language in the categories. Thank you User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 12:43, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, happy Thanksgiving :) User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 12:44, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I don’t know any personally, but you may be able to contact User:Jordi, User:IpeGiki, or User:Pol-Sranan. Also see Category:Sranan Tongo language. —Stephen 14:09, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much :) you're a peach User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 11:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:ru:CIS

I noticed that when you chose to undelete the category, you chose to not restore the edit that nominated it for deletion. That makes it seem as if it never was nominated, which is a distortion. I also disagree with you as creator of the category choosing to restore it. I'll admit that the 2-1 consensus in favor of deletion was thin (2-0 at the time it was deleted) which is why I've chosen to send the issue to the Beer Parlour in hopes of finding a wider consensus rather than simply redeleting it. However, as I've expressed before, I strongly feel that the CIS and other intergovernmental organizations are not suitable topical categories for the Wiktionary. — Carolina wren discussió 20:59, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

If you redelete it, I will stop working on Russian altogether. A way to collect the states that make up the CIS is precisely what categories is meant to be used for. I’m not going to argue about it with you. Either it stays or I’m not doing any more Russian here. —Stephen 02:35, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I see that we have a fundamental disagreement over the purpose of topical categories. As for redeletion, I will be waiting to see if the beer parlour develops a consensus one way or another on this class of categories. I do hope that if the consensus goes against you that you'll continue to stay active. As I've stated, my own preference for deletion in this case has nothing to do with the Russian language or the CIS in particular, but rather it is due to the fact that I feel that topical categories should help to concisely organize entries, and intergovernmental organizations don't do that. For example, the CIA Factbook lists Russia as being a full member of 66 different intergovernmental organizations, and I think you can agree that it would not be helpful to have Russia placed in 66 categories. I don't see a way to uphold NPOV and have categories for only a few favored intergovernmental organizations. If you can suggest a method to decide which IGOs should have categories that doesn't favor particular POVs, I'll certainly consider it. — Carolina wren discussió 03:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I am a linguist with degrees in a number of languages. I have done the lion’s share of our Russian entries, as well as a lot of Arabic, Portuguese, German, Spanish, and other languages. I believe that I am competent in the subject of Russian and things Russian and that you are not competent. I stopped doing Portuguese because an incompetent editor who did not know a word of Portuguese pulled a stunt similar to yours. I stopped working on Arabic because I got tired of arguing with tyros. I stopped working on German because an incompetent editor who did not know any German pulled a stunt similar to yours. If you succeed in deleting this in spite of your incompetence in the matter, then I will consider that my professional expertise is being wasted on Russian and I will stop.

I’m finished arguing. If the above link turns red, that’s the end of my Russian contribution on this wiki. —Stephen 03:39, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

So be it. My nomination has nothing to do with Russian and everything to do with topical categorization. I see it as a bad category for the reasons I presented, regardless of language. While I could change my opinion if presented with a coherent argument, I'm not going to change my opinion on the subject because another contributor is going to take their ball and go home if they don't get their way. — Carolina wren discussió 04:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Fine. You can have it your way and I’ll take my ball and go home. See how much deleting it improves the project. —Stephen 05:11, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Arabic request

Hi Stephen. I just added a request for (deprecated template usage) منارة (manārä) (whence, ultimately, the English (deprecated template usage) minaret &c.) at WT:RE:ar. Could you create the entry for me please? Thanks in advance. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:29, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 18:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much. † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:08, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

خائن

Hi. In fr:avanie the origin of the word avanie is given as the Arabic khawan (traitor), but here on traitor#Translations I found only خائن which is transliterated as khaa'in. Do you know whether this is the same word and whether it can be pronounced khawan? If yes, which of those two pronunciations is more widespread? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 08:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

(deprecated template usage) خائن (khaa'in) is the word for traitor (plural = (deprecated template usage) خوان (khuwwaan) and (deprecated template usage) خونة (kháwana)). It derives from (deprecated template usage) خان (khaana). The verbal noun of (deprecated template usage) خان (khaana) is (deprecated template usage) خون (khawn). Related words are (deprecated template usage) خوان (khawwaan) and (deprecated template usage) خؤون (kha'uun). The French seems to be from the noun (deprecated template usage) خوان (khawwaan), a synonym of (deprecated template usage) خائن (khaa'in). —Stephen 22:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

adminship @nv.wiki

hi stephen - I hope you won't feel like I'm "overrunning" you, but our temp-adminship on nv.wiki ends in two weeks, and I figured if both go to meta again, none of us will get permanent adminship. So just for the heck of it, I posted another thread on Wikiibíídiiya:Áłah_náʼádleehdi. nv:Seb az86556 16:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Could be, but I suspect all will be renewed automatically. Whether for another three months or permanently, I can’t say, but it is clearly counterproductive to pull the admin statuses and leave only a single absentee admin who does not speak the language (if he were ever to show up). —Stephen 21:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

hydrate

Hi there Stephen. Would you be willing to add as many translations to the noun form of the word hydrate as you can please? I saw that the Polish word for hydrate was hydraty, but I wanted to make sure that it was correct before I added it. Thanks, Razorflame 13:22, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

hydraty is a Polish plural. Singular would be hydrat. This is often the case when you look to Wikipedia. Often another Wikipedia selects the plural or another related form. —Stephen 13:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the heads-up! I'll be sure to look out for them in the future. Am I correct in saying the Hydrat is the German translation for hydrate? Razorflame 13:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, German is Hydrat, which is neuter. —Stephen 13:44, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I added that, but removed it because I didn't know if it was correct or not. Thanks for the clarification, Razorflame 13:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Logo vote

Do you know what "Click here to vote" is in ru? The logo vote starts in 20 minutes and we don't have a translation for that. --Yair rand 23:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Нажмите здесь, чтобы вы проголосовали. —Stephen 23:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Stephen. I have replied to Yair rand in my talk page to the same question. It's "...чтобы проголосовать". --Anatoli 23:52, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Aaand we are live with the 2009 Wiktionary logo vote. Thanks, guys! --Yair rand 00:02, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh wait, I thought we might have forgotten something. Did either of you notify the Russian Wiktionary? --Yair rand 00:05, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

No, I haven’t. I’m not even sure where to do that. —Stephen 00:08, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, we have an interwiki link to ru in the BP, so I suppose that would be the best place. The other Wiktionaries were notified in advance, most with invitations to help translating or notifying other Wiktionaries. I'm not sure what kind of notice the ru wt should be given. Maybe something like the notice logomaniac just gave in the bp, with a link to the ru voting page. --Yair rand 00:14, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I have just now! I am not very active in the Russian Wiktionary, wasn't sure where either. [15]. I hope this will get noticed it's posted in Викисловарь:Организационные вопросы - Wiktionary:Organisational questions, they don't seem to have a Beer parlour. --Anatoli 00:18, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

By the way Yair rand, send me some links and I will duplicate the announcement or add some info. Don't hesitate to post in English in the Russian Wiktionary if you wish - this an event concerning multilingual Wiktionary. Most editors understand English. --Anatoli 00:21, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I do not want to come across as contumelious but please consider casting your vote for the tile logo in m:Wiktionary/logo/refresh/voting as—besides using English—the book logo has a clear directionality of horizontal left-to-right, starkly contrasting with Arabic and Chinese, two of the six official UN languages. As such, the tile logo is the only translingual choice left and it was also elected in m:Wiktionary/logo/archive-vote-4.

Warmest Regards, :)--_thecurran Speak your mind ^{my past} 02:48, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of template:flower etc.

Some time ago, you were surprised to see a template similar to template:flower deleted. You may let your voice be heard at Wiktionary:Requests_for_deletion/Others#Template:flower. I do not know whether I will be accused of canvassing, but I cannot see anything wrong about notifying a person of an ongoing voting on whose result the person may have an interest. --Dan Polansky 11:35, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:tl-stress

I don't know anyone who speak Tagalog. Broken template, I blanked it to avoid the undesirable red links. I can't fix it until I know what it is. Thanks. Oh, I made a minor edit to your use page, see its history. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

User:Strabismus

Hi. I was reviewing some of Strabisums' edits, and noticed a lot of SOP translations. I corrected a few, for the languages I have some understanding of, but many of these languages are out of my depth. Can you review? --Rising Sun talk? 01:19, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It is difficult and perilous to try to weed out SoPs in other languages, especially since SoP alone is not a problem. If a term is a set term, like Merry Christmas, finishing nail, driver's license, and so on, then it is a valid term even if it also happens to be SoP. It is only if a term is SoP but without anything else to recommend it that it needs to be deleted (like yellow pencil, interesting book, boring speech, delicious dinner). It is often difficult to decide if a term is a set phrase or not even for native speakers. I don’t recommend trying to judge them unless you have native fluency in the language as well as a good grounding in linguistics.

English is an opaque language, and those who speak it often believe, mistakenly, that all languages are like that. But most languages are much more transparent than English. English is opaque because it is such as admixture, with a Germanic base and a broad Italic superstratum with Greek and other languages mixed in. Most languages are transparent in relation to English, and speakers can understand words and phrases that they have never heard before.

Some English speakers think all languages have predicate and attributive adjectives and nouns, but many languages do not have them. Scandinavian languages, for example, do not have attributive nouns at all, and our silly rule about attributive use is meaningless for them. English gets new words by adopting them straight from another language, like souflet, anthem, sauté; but some languages do not adopt foreign words, but every new concept and foreign term has to be translated with standard langauge, which means that the vast majority of nouns and concepts are SoP. The Navajo word for tank is chidí naaʼnaʼí beeʼeldǫǫhtsoh bikááʼ dah naaznilígíí, which literally means "car+it crawls about+a big boom is made with it+on it they sit up+nominalizing suffix". These ideas of SoP and attributiveness are pretty arbitary for English, and plain silly or impossible for many other languages. —Stephen 04:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

flashbang

Hello,

do you know what this is in Russian? I searched for this, but that also shows флэш-гранат for example. Thanks in advance :) User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 22:59, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is a светошумовая граната or (more modernly) светозвуковая граната. —Stephen 23:14, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It's светошумовая граната (svetošumovája granáta) f. [16]. --Anatoli 23:22, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Oops, you have already replied, Stephen. This site mentions this too [17] --Anatoli 23:24, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys :) However, it seems Anatoli's initial reaction was the old-fashioned (?) form. Shouldn't that be included? User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 18:32, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Anatoli 19:11, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2009-12/Proposed CFI exception for SI Units

In light of your participation in Wiktionary:Beer parlour archive/2009/September#SI units and abbreviations, please contribute your thoughts to Wiktionary:Votes/2009-12/Proposed CFI exception for SI Units. Cheers! bd2412 T 21:02, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Question about Arabic noun entries

Hello, Arabic dictionaries often give "al" as part of a noun, such as القفزات. Should we create two entries, one for القفزات and one for قفزات, so users searching for either can find what they need? 24.29.228.33 07:28, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

For some terms, it doesn't seem possible to render without "al," as الحنطة السوداء, whereas for the above (القفزات and قفزات) they can be. 24.29.228.33 07:35, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a major concern and one that has not been addressed yet. Usually the form without al- is the basic and primary form, but sometimes the form with al- has a specific meaning, in which case we need separate entries for them. But in most cases, such as القفزات, we could either make a entry that says "definite form of قفزات" or we could just use a redirect. My preference is for a redirect, but I suspect that some would prefer the fuller entry. —Stephen 07:40, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for this information. I see that there are extremely few internal wikilinks from "al." Thus, I think I will simply make entries without the "al," as ar:WP seems to use as their article titles. 24.29.228.33 07:52, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:ar:Stars

These entries are all new, and many request etymological info or require other Arabic-specific attention. --EncycloPetey 00:24, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen 02:36, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --EncycloPetey 02:37, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Stephen, could you please help me how to include what I meantioned on talk:Tokaj. Do you know about it? It's first time I've heard it from a native English in the movie Transporter3, so I'm pretty clueless about this. Ferike333 19:59, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Talk:يلا

Need help at Talk:يلا. 24.29.228.33 02:21, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Dutch appendices

Stephen,

what category should I add to say that many people including myself always drop the final n of a verb? As in afgesproken -> afgesproke in which the final e is a schwa. I'd like to know, thank you in advance 81.68.255.36 00:45, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

I think most of the people in the Nederlands do that (and many in Germany as well, to a lesser extent). If it were just to a few special words, then it would be no problem, but since it is a global linguistic phenomenon, I don’t think it can be addressed by a category. I think the only way to handle it is to add a pronunciation section with the /ˈaf.həˈspro.kə/ given there. —Stephen 00:54, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, most people do it. But should I really add that pronunciation to every lemma? That would be insane. 81.68.255.36 01:04, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, every lemma should have a pronunciation section in any case, so it is not that insane. I really cannot think of any other way. —Stephen 01:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose you're right if you put it that way. I sure hope some Dutch guys are going to help me. Wiktionary has quite a lot Dutch words ending with -en. 81.68.255.36 01:20, 31 December 2009 (UTC)