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Enjoy your stay at Wiktionary! Vininn126 (talk) 08:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

Including obsolete terms

edit

I saw your comment, thought I'd explain. I don't see why we shouldn't include obsolete terms. It's not like they aren't words, and often they are the missing piece in a chain or help understand the historic development, etc. etc. We'd have to exclude things like Ancient Greek, since technically, no one speaks that way. Vininn126 (talk) 08:40, 26 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sorry just saw this—-I forgot what specific page I left that comment on, but my reasoning is that Wiktionary does have specific pages for historical ancestors languages to separate them from current languages and current usage; there’s a page for Middle English and Old English for example. Same for Middle French, Old Japanese, etc. Obsolete terms are related to a word in etymology and historical usage, but not in its current usage, and there’s a multitude of obsolete terms with multiple spellings due to the historical lack of standardization; should the English “me” page include the obsolete emphatic “mee”? It’s one thing to include archaic forms of a term as they may still be seen in some older texts, but it doesn’t seem as important to include obsolete terms in parts that are meant to denote current usage, as the very definition of “obsolete” is no longer in current use nor currently recognizable in older texts.
I’m not saying obsolete terms aren’t important, just that they shouldn’t be included in an entry outside of the etymology section, and this seems to be standard practice due to the above example. The Tran Dynasty (talk) 19:20, 1 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
Don't think that the only obsolete forms are Middle English etc. Modern English can have obsolete meanings, like from the 19th century. Vininn126 (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
yea I know, just that you dealt with two different topics in your original comment—-historical languages and historical terms, and combined them to a theme of “historical parts of a language”—-and I tried addressing both parts. but I did write my message in a bit of a rush/while multitasking so sorry if some parts were a bit ambigious. The Tran Dynasty (talk) 19:56, 1 September 2024 (UTC)Reply