User talk:Widsith/archive2

Strong verbs

You may have noticed that I'm compiling a list of Dutch strong verbs. I was wondering, though, whether we could compile a comparative list with the various Germanic languages together. I'm not sure of the design yet, but it'd be great to have Old English in it as well. What do you think? (I got the idea from here). —Vildricianus 18:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes indeed, thousands. It won't be for next week, though. I'll have a good thought about them, and think how we can tackle it best; I'll do some reading and stuff. Apart from that, you're doing an awesome job for Old English; it's brilliant to see how the language is related to Dutch, I've never known that. If only I had some more time! Cheers. —Vildricianus 18:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia strong verbs

I see that you have added links from Old English words in Wikipedia:Germanic strong verb to Wiktionary—a good change. But several of the links are broken, rīdan for example. --teb728 23:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

More particularly, the broken links are rīdan, wrītan, scēotan, flēogan, scūfan, sweltan, ceorfan, feohtan, berstan, scieran, sprecan, swerian, feallan, cnāwan, grōwan, and hlēapan. --teb728 22:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I made a start on pages for these words: Pronunciation, strong verb class, principal parts. Only the definitions from the Wikipedia page. No attempt at etymology or examples. I omitted the 3rd singular present for swerian because it wasn't given on the Wikipedia page --teb728 03:07, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Congrats!

Congrats for creating the article for Ursprache, the winning word in this years Scripps National Spelling Bee here in the U.S. I'm mildly shocked anyone had heard of the word :) Ral315 02:30, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Mortal, Mors

Hi, where did you get your information on mortal and mors etymology? Kassios 16:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello? Kassios 16:38, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I really don’t understand…. The form *μροτός is unattested (hypothetical) while Ancient Greek μορτός (mortos) “mortal” is attested, derived from μόρος (moros) “doom, death, corpse” (Homers Il.18.465, Il.19.421, Od.1.34, Hesiod Th.211, Aeschylus Th.420, etc). Yet all the books you mentioned obviously don’t seem to bother to take that into consideration, who knows why…!

Βροτός (brotos) “a mortal man”, possibly derives from the hypothetical form *μ(β)ροτός, considering the attested existence of the word άμβροτος (ambrotos) “immortal” and its derivations, of which a well-known one is αμβροσία, “ambrosia”.

Νow a morphological, chronological, historical and geographical analysis between Latin mortalis < mors and the Ancient Greek μορτός < μόρος, clearly shows that these Latin words derive from the Ancient Greek words, as already stated by many etymologists such as Valpy, Camacho, Halsey, Maltby, Dill, Koumanoudes, etc. Don’t you think the etymology of mortal and mors should be corrected accordingly with the above data?

No I don't. μορτός and μόρος represent a different PIE root altogether, probably something like *(s)mer-. They are in fact related to μειρομαι and cognate with Latin words like merere ‘deserve’. The point is that syllabic liquids in Indo-European developed a prothetic o before them in proto-Italic, but not in Greek. That is why PIE *mr̥- produces Latin mor-; in Greek it would produce either μρ- (which later becomes βρ-) or μαρ-; it could never produce Greek μορ-. (At least I don't think so.) For an analogy of the vowel development, consider PIE *k̑r̥d ‘heart’ --> Greek καρδία (Homeric κραδία) but Latin cor, cordis. Widsith 08:19, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Days of the week

Could you do something for Category:ang:Days of the week? On its talk page, someone asked a couple of things, and I'm also wondering why the capitalization is different (in the Appendix, too). — Vildricianus 20:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Gothic characters

Some of your definitions have Gothic cognates in Gothic script (which is in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane of Unicode, for which font support is rare). I see that there is a sentiment to transliterate SMP characters. Such a transliteration makes sense to me; do you agree? If not can you recommend a free font that supports Gothic script? --teb728 02:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Gothic transliteration is no substitute for using the original script. Wiktionary's policy is ‘all words in all languages’. There are plenty of good free Unicode fonts which support Gothic, see w:Wikipedia:Gothic_Unicode_Fonts for some examples. Widsith 06:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the Wiktionary policy of ‘all words in all languages’ (in the sense that no word in any language is excluded). But of course Wiktionary will never contain all words in any language—even English—or any word in some languages. But the question of whether Gothic should be written in Wulfila’s Gothic alphabet or in transliteration (or in runes) is a different issue.

The Unicode Consortium has a similar philosophy: all characters in all languages, but even for them the Gothic alphabet is rather a specialized sideline.

In your Old English entries you don’t use ƿynn and do use diacritics (although Anglo-Saxon scribes did use ƿynn and didn’t use diacritics). I agree with your usage and your reason that that is the way Old English is often presented in modern texts. In my experience modern texts present Gothic cognates in transliteration.

But the main reason I don’t like to see the Gothic alphabet used in Wiktionary is that it makes the Gothic words inaccessible. It’s true that I and everyone else could download a Gothic font, but most people won’t; so they won’t see the Gothic words. --teb728 22:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

fold

Would you please check the etymologies at fold? Thanks Andrew massyn 16:54, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Redirects

Thanks for the welcome & the note on redirects. I guess you can tell I tend to frequent Wikipedia. :) --Joe Sewell 11:44, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Change of name

Just so you know... cheers! BD2412 T 23:07, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

tarse

I used onelook. The root entry is Webster Dictionary, 1913: [1]

of which these are copies

• [2]
• [3]

Jonathan Webley 12:12, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Latinx template

The Latinx template is supposedly fixed: it should have no effect now on browsers other than IE6. Is it working for you now? ǣ --teb728 02:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Ooh – yes it is. Widsith 17:01, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

attercoppe

Hi, Widsith. I created the "attercoppe" entry based on the etymology at "cobweb", which was originally my submission. I don't have access to my sources now, and won't until Monday. I probably made a typo, substituting an "e" for what should have been an "o". Either wait until Monday for me to research it or rfd/delete it and I'll confirm later that it was my typo. Rod (A. Smith) 15:56, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

It was a typo. Deleted. Rod (A. Smith) 17:09, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

nightshade

My source is wikipedia:Solanaceae. I know some wiki articles are not to be trusted. If you know better, change it.--Allamakee Democrat 11:42, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Index:Old English + Index:Anglo-Saxon

Aren't these the same language? Weren't there any slight differences or didn't it depend on POV or whatever how to call it? — Vildricianus 14:30, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Aargh, this is a complete nightmare. The answer is yes, they're the same. Anglo-Saxon is the old-fashioned name for the language. But looking at these indices, they are probably based on Webster, because ‘Old English’ here seems to refer to archaic or Middle English. That is a weird peculiarity of Webster's which has caused no end of problems. The ideal solution would be to delete the current Index:Old English (it is no use to anyone – just a hangover from early Webster-classifications), and then rename Index:Anglo-Saxon as Index:Old English. Confused yet? Widsith 14:36, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, deleted and moved. — Vildricianus 14:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

meth and meths

Hello, thanks for tidying up my scrappy work! I assume that the format prefered for etymologies is to keep them seperated as in your contrib to meth? Anyway I'll try to keep things short and simple. Cheers.--Williamsayers79 15:58, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

constabulary

Hi. Please look at the etym. of constabulary and see if I got the Old English right. Many thanks. Andrew massyn 20:14, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

My people and my cattle.

Kith and kine is archaic', except as a saying. But "my people and my property (my cattle)" is what it means.

And do please trample thru my contributions, correctingly teasing as you see fit.

heresiarch

The breathing in the Greek is a square in my browser, as are many transcriptions. I am not too good at reading IPA, but aren't we missing an R? The transcription seems to represent an R-dropping accent. --Allamakee Democrat 18:06, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

My accent is American midlands, where we do ALL our Rs, even with there're, where euphony normally reduces it to there/their. Right now, I live just under the isogloss of the Minnesota accent, which one of my bro-in-laws has a version of (with some Newfoundland in there, no less). As for downloading a decent Greek font, I have done that in the past, and I still get squares, tho' not on this (new!) machine and not recently. There are lots of articles with wrecked pronunciations. Is there a reason to not set your browser to Unicode, which is quite capable of doing a huge number of letters and symbols? --Allamakee Democrat 07:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

bill

This is an etymological mess. Could you take a look at it? — Vildricianus 19:52, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Much better! — Vildricianus 08:05, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

tiller

I'm not sure of the etymological things I introduced there... Could you run your eye over it? — Vildricianus 17:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

-ón

You're right, I removed that; it was an accident, as I meant to add it back in, but I didn't realize that I had forgotten until later. –Andyluciano 18:24, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

And actually the reason I removed it is because it was incorrect. It said it forms a noun, but it can also form adjectives. –Andyluciano 18:25, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

crib

I do see how you did it, and understand, but it leaves too much white-space, particularly with my long, fully documented usage quotes.

Nonetheless, 21 defs scare off the foreigners. There is one I did not post. The problem is to make this shorter. This cannot be done with the current software. We need to be able to abc defs, just like a regular dictionary. PS, forgot to sign. --Allamakee Democrat 08:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Arabic sister

Hi! Nice entries. Just have a question about the word sister. Is the correct spelling: Template:ARchar? Or is it Template:ARchar. --Dijan 18:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we don't do vowel markings as the word entry itself, but we do list it on the page (just for disambiguity - some nouns are spelled the same way without vowels as verbs and adjectives, but have different pronunciation). --Dijan 03:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The second usage note of hoi polloi

What you wrote was a fair synthesis of my critical denunciation and the meaningless unassertive blather it supplanted. However, I reïnserted a couple of words which do not violate NPOV. However, I still believe we should advise against the second usage, is there a way to do this which does not violate NPOV? Doremítzwr 18:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Spanish and Arabic

You've done a good job in improving alcaide's etymology entry. Do you think you might be able to do similar things for some other Spanish words of Arabic origin, such as alcalde, alquiler, azúcar, almohada, etc? It would be nice to have those in the original script, for instance. –Andyluciano 16:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for those – interesting ones. I've updated three of them; though I couldn't work out the exact source for alquiler – Stephen will probably know, if you want to follow it up. Widsith 16:23, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Egyptian

As requested I did the originating words for the etymologies of pharaoh, pschent, and ba. Tell me if that's the sort of thing you were looking for and certainly tell me if you think of any others! CAmbrose 01:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Fantastic – great stuff. If I think of more I'll let you know! Widsith 07:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

jaconet

Me again. I wasn't entirely sure about the spelling of the place-name in this etymology – can you verify...? Widsith 19:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I've corrected the spelling and fixed the etymology a little bit. You were almost close, hehe! One thing to remember is not to confuse Arabic and Urdu "h"'s. Although they appear very similar, they are different. In Urdu they can also take different shapes (which don't appear in Arabic) depending on where they are. Urdu has two types of "h"'s. One is the double-eyed "h" (ھ) and serves only as an aspirating companion to other letters. The other "h" is (ہ). --Dijan 06:56, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

OK cheers for that – interesting about the Hs, I didn't know that. One of these days I should probably just sit down and actually learn some Urdu, and stop trying to guess it! Widsith 07:22, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

ibrik

Hi Widsith! We're having a little bit of chat on the etymology of the word ibrik on its talk page. Since you were the one to add the entry, would you mind explaining where you got your etymological information? The part of the etymology in question is the Persian part. Thanks. --Dijan 06:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

wot

Etym.3. If it is Mr McCawber, (I havent checked), then isn't this a deliberate misspelling on Dickens' part? I personally wot that Etym 3 should be deleted. What wot you? Andrew massyn 08:05, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

plamph and reekin o' pish

Hello Widsith, these two words have been on RFD for a while now and apear to have passed RFD? can have their RFD status removed yet?

On another related topic I've noticed that people have put in the dicussion pages of articles whether or not they have passed RFD, RFV etc. Is this something that is standard practice or would it be a good idea to do this anyway?

Cheers, --Williamsayers79 07:50, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Onscene Vandalism - please help!

Hello there, yesterday there was a slew of vandalism from some oddball called User:ProfessorBob - he/she was found out and blocked for ever by User:Mike. This Prof guy was putting obscene pictures all over the place. On happened to be on my watch list and I was currious to see what the content of the original vandalism was (did not know it was obscene at the time tho!) and I was shocked at the filth this vandal had loaded. I tried to flag the offending picture for delete it self (see Image:Jojomall.jpg) however it seems to have made a link to it again in Wiktionary, I'm sorry for any hassel I may have indavertently caused, but could you have the offending article deleted?

The obscene image in question was on a previous version of Northumbria article (see the history) the article in question containing the picure is - careful where you click on this -File:Jojomall.jpg. I flagged it for deletion but don't know where that got to.--Williamsayers79 16:03, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

lubra

Lubra is apparently from one of the Tasmanian languages, which we know little about, and I certainly know nothing about. So I can't give specifics. --Ptcamn 17:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks. Widsith 17:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

transportation

Hi Widsith, thanks for your explanatory note. I'm surprised to hear about the consensus on the usage of Transportation; we certainly don't use it in that sense around here. Perhaps it would be helpful, instead of just reverting changes, if you were to expand the article to discuss the point head on, with references of course. -- OrangUtanUK 16:20, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I have added some example sentences, which hopefully makes it clearer. Widsith 16:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Vildric*

Isn't it possible to prevent someone from creating a username having the string "Vildric"? All those impersonators, it becomes really annoying, especially for you administrators. Good luck nevertheless!

You'd think it would be just as annoying for them, but I guess some people are really bored. Widsith 22:05, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

BCA

I just removed BCA from Category:Stamp collecting, but I see that you removed all references to stamps from the article, as well as the mention that this was formerly Malawi. The overprint. "B. C. A.", (It should probably be moved.) did appear on a set of Rhodesian stamps in 1891. The name changed to Nyassaland Protectorate in 1907. Eclecticology 17:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Hiya, yeah I put all that info on the British Central Africa page and made BCA a simple link. Although I got rid of the philately stuff, since similar things could be said of most country names. B. C. A. could perhaps be added as well, and the two forms linked together via =Alternative spellings= headings. Widsith 18:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The colleague who added a lot of the material in Category:Stamp collecting did not seem to have a thorough grasp of the subject. It did get me thinking about these overpronts which do in fact occur on stamps, and did leave me puzzled when I was a young collector. Others are likely to encounter them and be just as puzzled. Seeing a few of these did inspire me to statrt Category:Overprints as a sub-category of Category:Philately. The latter is more comprehensive than "Stamp collecting". Eclecticology 19:07, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

cadge, cadger etymology

Where did you get Anglo-Norman from? There's no reference to it in the World Wide Words article, and the word is not recorded until the 15th century, when Anglo-Norman was effectively gone. Widsith 08:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Must have got confused I'll correct them. Cheers--Williamsayers79 08:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I did see a program once, I think part of the Southbank Show?, anyway there was a series of episodes called The Journey of English the whole cadge, cadger, codger thing was mentioned as an example of inherited words from Norman but the guy presenting could of had his facts wrong of course. I think we'll stick with the World Wide Words reference for now.--Williamsayers79 09:00, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Talk:outwith

Since you have some knowledge of Scots language could you provide some guidance/help with the dicussion on Talk:outwith? Cheers --Williamsayers79 07:31, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Scots index and templates

I've started, a while back actually, the Scots index. The templates you've knocked up are great and should make adding Scots words a lot easier. Cheers big man --Williamsayers79 16:13, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

For plurals in the index, I just started adding the plurals because the blurb at the top says all words of that lanuage I think I agree with you and remove the plural forms from the index. Would this also go for the verb forms or do we put them in on the same line for instance?--Williamsayers79 16:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

némoral

Wonderful, that exists! If you want a good French dictionary, you might want to check http://atilf.atilf.fr/. It says: némoral = growing in the forests. Do you think the English means the same and should be redefined? Kipmaster 14:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Interesting words

I have found your list of words very fascinating. I added a link to it on my user page at Wikipedia.--71.107.229.136 16:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Link away! I add to it fairly regularly. Widsith 16:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

derm

I love the cites, but the haggis one does not seem to be really an attestation of use in English...? Widsith 20:19, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

It came from a television programme called Carte Blanche. The presenter was talking to the interviewee in English, who was also speaking English. he lapsed into his home language Afrikaans, but believe me, the term is widely understood in S.A. I will add a third English citation to boilerplate it. Andrew massyn 20:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

No, I believe you! I just think that if someone ‘lapses into his home language’ it's no longer a citation demonstrating usage in English. Maybe the cite in question should be dropped down into the Afrikaans section..? Anyway, thanks for looking at it. Widsith 20:29, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

w:Pronunciation of English th

I left a reply for you at w:User talk:Hroðulf#Eths --Hroðulf 10:30, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

reply to your comments on my citation format

Hi: Thanks for your comments. Not sure it's an appropriate way to reply. I changed the citation format of the entry "brim". I did not use author since it's not that important I think. Let me know if you have any other suggestions. Thanks. — This unsigned comment was added by ALife (talk • contribs).

Bermudan

Thank you for your edit to the usage note for Bermudan! It has been bothering me since I changed it myself, and I was actually on my way to take out that second half when I saw it had already been done. I'm not so sure about changing "heavily favoured" to "preferred" though, as I know that some people can get very worked up about it. Bermuda-Online.org[4] — one of the dominant sources of information on Bermuda available to the world, and used extensively as a source by encyclopedias and such — goes so far as to claim that the word "Bermudan" doesn't even exist.

And out of curiosity, did you see what the usage note was before? From the history:[5]. I believe the IP address in one in Bermuda. — This unsigned comment was added by 155.68.109.232 (talk).

No problem. Bermudan certainly exists; it's in most dictionaries. It's good for us to point out the fact that Bermudians themselves prefer Bermudian, but beyond that we should probably just let users make their own mind up, based on citations etc. Widsith 07:30, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

cunny

One of the pleasures of wiktionary is finding a very good (and early) quote and the page to add it to. Thank you for the edit, but did you really manage that without noting I had written "dairy" instead of "diary" ? (;-) — This unsigned comment was added by Robert Ullmann (talk • contribs).

Ah yes, Samuel Pepys's dairy. Where all of Restoration London got their semi-skimmed milk... Widsith 12:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Scots language articles / Geordie words

Hello there, I'm looking at populating the English Wiktionary with Scots words. I thought it may be a good idea to use the Scots Wikipedia as a source but would like to know any other reliable sources.

I've already added quite a few Geordie words and categorised them accordingly. Since I'm a Geordie, an a can taalk propa like, I've been able to check up on most of these words and reference them accordingly to stop any unnecessary RfV/RfD'ing. Do we need to do the same for the Scots words and reference the source of them using quotes from the Scots Wikipedia?

Regards --Williamsayers79 10:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. The only other decent use of modern Scots on the internet that I know of is on the Scottish Parliament website. Unfortunately, newspapers and media outlets in Scotland are notoriously dismissive of Scots so there's fairly little out there. Widsith 06:46, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Myall

I had a book (Aboriginal English by Jay Arthur) that I know had the origin of myall, but I took it back to the library just the other day unfortunately. --Ptcamn 16:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Sidhe

I've created these two articles: Sídhe ‎and sídhe‎‎‎. Would you have a look at them? The definitions need to be checked and corrected. Also, as far as I understand, the '-shee' in banshee is just another spelling of 'sidhe', am I right? Dart evader 09:44, 2 October 2006 (UTC) P.S. We've got a problem. Why is that link red? Let's try this one: sidhe. :-)

Looks OK to me, I always just think of them as fairies. You're right about banshee (it means ‘woman of the fairies’ in Irish). I can add all this to the entries, but I wonder if it belongs under Sidhe and sidhe (ie without the accent) in English. The accented forms I would think of as Irish. Checking Google Books, it seems to be used more often without the accents in English. Widsith 10:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree about spelling. Those accented forms (I borrowed them from Wikipedia) produce glitches: the letters change themselves from the standard encoding to Unicode and vice versa. That freaks me out, as I cannot enter a working link to the article which I perfectly know to be here :-). So it would be much better to clear them of accents. But someone should first delete the redirects from Sidhe and sidhe. Dart evader 10:30, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

half-mast

I'm not sure why, but 'popups' didn't inform me there was a newer version when I rolled it back. I've restored your version now. Too bad I can't rely on that convenience. I do wonder if I've had any others like this. --Connel MacKenzie 20:30, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

No worries, popups confuse me at the best of times. Widsith 20:45, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

hende: help?

This was an anon contribution from last night, claiming to be "old midieval English" or some such. The word as defined seems to check, but I wonder if you could look into it and provide the correct language header and perhaps a bit of verification. I have no knowledge of old English, so I don't really know where to look. Thanks. —Dvortygirl 04:26, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The word exists, but means something else. I've changed the entry and added two citations, having failed to find any evidence for the meaning originally suggested. Thanks for that, interesting one! Widsith 08:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Spanish inflection templates

Hi, I'm sorry I'm very late in communicating this, but I am responsible for the changes in {{es-adj}} and {{es-noun-mf}}. I do confess that the table output format is... very bad.

You mentioned that you thought es-adj was broken. Well. The rationale for the changes I put in was that this makes it much more simpler when several of the forms are the same. For example, using the old semantics for something like gigante, it would be {{es-adj|feminine={{subst:PAGENAME}}}}, and give a very verbose output. The two changes I made is that:

1. if no feminine form is specified, it assumes it to be the same as masculine.
2. if forms are the same, it gives quite a bit less verbose output, at least in non-table mode.

This means that for gigante you now only have to do {{es-adj}}, and at least in the non-table format it looks much better than before.

This does not break old pages that used the template correctly. I tested it a lot to verify this. {{es-adj|feminine=casera}} still works exactly as expected before. The only thing that would break would be pages that don't specify a feminine form, which didn't display nicely (i.e. would have displayed an ugly [[feminine]] before this change.) So I don't know why you describe the new semantics as "broken".

So I would strongly defend my changes to the parameters and textual output of that template. They were thought out pretty well. I went back to old pages and made sure nothing was broken, and it makes both input and output of pages like gigante or guay or chupacabras much simpler.

Now... As for the table... That is totally my fault and I regret it. I discussed this with Rodasmith and he mentioned something about en-noun. I looked at en-noun and I figured it wouldn't look nice with genders and whatnot... So I borrowed that table code from some of the French templates, which had gender. And I admit that it looks bad and inconsistent. This has to be fixed. –Andyluciano 17:58, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, you said that the parameter names should be wikified... I based them on what some French templates use. And also kept the older ones introduced by Rodasmith for backward compatibility. –Andyluciano 18:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for this reply.

1. The problem I am still seeing with the es-adj output is with the feminine plural. Eg on the casero page it gives casero, caseros, casera, and caseros again – in other words, the feminine plural is displaying the same as the masculine plural. There is no caseras displayed.
2. I think Rodasmith was right to mention en-noun – that is the sort of thing we should be aiming for. Actually if you look at en-verb, that has 5 arguments displayed across one line, so the Spanish adjective would be almost the same as that, but with only 4. I think there are some Latin templates that do something similar. Most templates in other languages don't even include a separate table output though, so it's good that you tried to do something with it!
3. I understand about the wikification. However, the French verb templates have (almost) all been changed now and I think the general feeling is that all terms should be wikified. That is not a particularly big issue though, for me anyway.

Thanks again. Widsith 10:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I switched my output format to the tables and now I see the problem. casero is now fixed. –Andyluciano 15:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

ha'p'orth

We had an edit conflict which I finished off rather quickly since my dinner was just being served -- without time to note in the edit summary that I moved your Abyssinia quote (which through the wonders of books.google I had found as well) to ha'p'orths. I had also added that, in three-ha'p'orth, etc, the plural is ha'p'orth (which I have cited) (I suspect that in that case, it is actually a shortening of halfpenniesworth but decided to keep quiet about that!).

So I don't think anything of yours was lost, but if anything was, apologies. --Enginear 18:34, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

No worries, I don't mind if you'd rather have the plural cites at the plural page. But why remove the publication details and page number? Surely that's useful information and allows users to check our cited sources. Widsith 18:45, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Purely my error -- now corrected. Thanks for pointing it out. I really should add that info in my own cites, rather than keeping to the bear minimum allowed by our format recommendations. (I don't always add plural cites to the plural page, but since the previous editor had claimed there was no plural, I thought it best to cite it specifically, with 3 cites to demonstrate CFI, and the "headword" page was getting a bit overloaded.) --Enginear 19:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks! I think it's important that our evidence is easily verifiable. Widsith 19:23, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Empathy

Hi widsith, if you have time could you take a look at the etymology given for empathy, and tell me if it is correct, or if the one on wikipedia [6] is correct, as they are in foul conflict :D Sbandrews 12:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

ah, much clearer, many thanks, and congrats for finding me on wikipedia :) Sbandrews 15:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Inflection Templates

I wanted first to thank you for welcoming me to Wiktionary. I have been writing Templates for Attic Greek nominal morphology; I was wondering if there were a way to create my own category and, on that page, to explain my system for creating templates and likewise what the names of said templates mean. Thank you! Medellia 01:29, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you can add them to the Wiktionary:Inflection templates page. We don't currently have any for Greek, so it sounds like yours might fill a gap! It's good to have someone working on ancient Greek, as I do a lot fo work on etymologies where such forms crop up a lot. Widsith 06:17, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Scots templates

Hello there, I've just knocked up {{sco-proper noun}} from {{en-proper noun}}. It seems to be working OK and thought you'd like to know.--Williamsayers79 12:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Nomination

Hello there, with regard to talk:SemperBlotto (Nomination) I have had an odd message from wikipedia:User:Dangherous on Wikipedia. Is this guy for real?

On a related note how would I run for admin and what do think my chances for nomination would be? Do you think I'm ready?--Williamsayers79 13:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Dangherous is a sockpuppet (one of many) of Wonderfool, an amiable but disruptive former sysop who deleted the Main Page a couple of times. Best not to take him very seriously. However, I'm sure you would make a decent admin and anyone is welcome to nominate themselves. You may want to wait till you have a few more edits under your belt, though plenty of people have been made admins with fewer! Widsith 15:01, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your faith in me, I may go for it in a while once I've finished fixing any errors I've made in the past!

As for the Wonderfool lark, I thought that was the case.--Williamsayers79 15:05, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

fash

Hello Widsith, do you know if fash is also a Scots word? It's used by Geordies but could not find it when searching the Scots Wikipedia.--Williamsayers79 10:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, good word! I'd forgotten about that. A good place to check Scots is the Scots National Dictionary. Widsith 12:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

dziewczyna

Where do you take IPA pronunciation from? --Derbeth ^talk 14:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Only from speaking it a little and studying it, and from my knowledge of phonetics. There is a good guide to the basic phonemes of Polish at w:Polish phonology. Why, did I get something wrong? Widsith 17:39, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I was just curious. I copied your IPA pronunciation and wanted to know if it comes from some sort of dictionary; it's always a bit safer than making it on your own. Anyway, good to find someone who writes IPA pronunciation for Polish words, we lack it on Polish Wiktionary.

By the way, you have quite a long discussion page, would you mind archiving some old threads? --Derbeth ^talk 18:29, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, Polish pronunciation is pretty regular thankfully, but it certainly can seem intimidating at first glance. It's great to have the audio files that you've added. Widsith 07:39, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, how have you learned Polish? I'm always a bit surprised when I find people who know Polish language but don't come from countries near Poland. --Derbeth ^talk 12:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I spent a few months travelling round Poland a few years ago, and loved it. I started learning it before that trip and I've kept it up (on and off) ever since. I'm not very good though, unless I'm ordering a coffee or asking the way to the bank... Widsith 13:24, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

romanisation

Hiya. Although it is good practice to include romanised forms of Greek words on a Greek page, it is not normal to wikify them or to give them their own pages. We try to keep such languages in their own scripts where possible. (The exception is Japanese, because it is often written in romanised form). Widsith 09:18, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear. It's been a little difficult to get answers to my questions because Ancient Greek (or at least the morphological side) is as yet fairly uncharted territory here on Wiktionary. Two things:

1. I know when I want to look up a word, I rarely if ever have my Greek language support on. I would think that it would simplify matters greatly, therefore, to have a searchable version of the word in Roman characters.
2. Were Romanization simply placed on the page, would it receive its own header? Or would it be preferable to simply place the Romanization below the {{grc-noun}} information?

Thank you for your help! Medellia 14:38, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, for languages like Arabic or Russian, the romanisation is simply given in brackets after the headword. However, you may feel that Greek deserves to have romanised forms as page titles as well – I don't really know the language well enough to disagree. Perhaps you should raise the issue at the Beer Parlour. Widsith 14:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

scarceler

--Connel MacKenzie 19:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

• OED - (Obs) A kind of courier: see quot.

14.. Direct. Travellers in Eng. Stud. VIII. 278 Who-so woll ride faste and with-oute hevy cariage, good were to fynde atte Brigges suche a scarceler as bereth marchauntes lettres; which will fayne ride with men for fyndyng of hym and his hors, wtoute eny other wages.

This has been on Rfv for a while. Any idea whether it is an actual word, or just an oddity? Andrew massyn 07:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I've never heard of it. If that's the only quote on the OED, it may be a nonce word. I'll check it tomorrow at work (where I have access to the OED). Widsith 08:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's only been recorded once. Not easy to verify the meaning..it could have been a typo or anything. Widsith 14:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

stot

Hi Widsith, I've started a conversation with SemperBlotto that you might like to contribute to. Its on his talk page under stot. Cheers--Williamsayers79 12:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Full OED online at home, free

I noticed you said to AM that you had access to the OED at work but not at home. It may be worth checking to see if your local library has quietly signed up to allow you to access it from home via their website (see eg [7]). I don't know if all the councils have signed up, but SB found his had too. --Enginear 13:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Brilliant, that works for me too! Thanks. Widsith 16:48, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

wooley backs, and chookters

Hello again, another Scots related question for you. I have a Scottish colleague at work and refers to Highlanders and rural folk as chookters - I thought it would be nice to have this in the Wiktionary but wanted to check how it should really be spelled. Any ideas?--Williamsayers79 14:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe this is a regional variation on teuchter which I think has that meaning. --Enginear 15:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah yeah, teuchter - I'd forgotten that - well spotted! That must be it. Widsith 17:35, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

ⴰⵔⴳⴰ

Are you aware that the last character of ⴰⵔⴳⴰ is a Private Use character, and so comes up as all sorts of random stuff depending on what font you're using? Currently I see a leaf dingbat.--Ptcamn 00:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, that's not right. Are you seeing the same problem at w:Tifinagh? The relevant character is U+2D63. I thought that Unicode range was Tifinagh-dedicated. Widsith 07:55, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

2D30 to 2D7F is Tifinagh: [8] True. But that last character is not U+2D63, it is something like U+Ennn (EE.81.B4) (U+2D63 TIFINAGH YAZ is E2.B5.A3) Robert Ullmann 21:24, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

The whole UTF-8 string is E2.B4.B0.E2.B5.94.E2.B4.B3.E2.B4.B0.EE.81.B4 (this section's title) Robert Ullmann 21:29, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon derivations

Hello there again, thought I'd ask you about this: There still seems to be a category for Anglo-Saxon derivations in category:Etymology. The template {{AS.}} seems to be part of the cause. I thought that nowadays we were calling Anglo-Saxon, Old English. I therefore put a {{catred}} on category:Anglo-Saxon derivations and plan to update {{AS.}} and any stragling entries to category:Old English derivations. Is this OK?--Williamsayers79 14:34, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Lemmata of Classical verbs

I've initiated at discussion at WT:AL about the lemma for Latin (and Greek) verbs on Wiktionary. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have, as one of the more experienced people here in both languages and editing issues. --EncycloPetey 01:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

clew

To be convinced of Old English 'cliewen,' you may consult 'clew' here. Anyway you are welcome. But I expect you to restore my edit if you regard Merriam-Webster Online as a reliable source. --KYPark 09:51, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I regret I simply regarded cliwen as wrong as different from M-W. Keep it as far as used by OED or any other authority than M-W. --KYPark 14:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

templates

Thank you very much, I will use it now. 16@r 16:36, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

PIE

I've replied on my talkpage. Could you direct me to the beer parlour discussion? I don't want to make a fuss, but I do think that the consensus so far is not suited for significant additions of etymological entries. See also my reply in the "Cuneiform" section on my talkpage. Dbachmann 11:25, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

wee

Hello again, the Scottish English word wee has the comparative weer and superlative weest. However when consulting the DSL I found no mention of these forms in the Scots language. Is this the case or are they spelt differently in Scots to you knowledge?--Williamsayers79 12:25, 28 December 2006 (UTC)