Wiktionary:About Livonian

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy. Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

This page is intended to complement WT:CFI and WT:ELE specifically regarding the Livonian language.

Headings

Classifying headings by how many equals signs are used to enter them in wiki markup the classification (and the order they should be in) is generally as follows:

• ==Livonian==
• (===Alternative forms===)
• ===Etymology===
• ===Pronunciation===
• ===Noun, Adjective, etc.===
• ====Declension====
• =====See also=====
• ===References===

Some of them are likely to be needed much less often, for example, "Alternative forms." "See also" also isn't vital but is often useful for displaying coordinate terms.

Etymology

There exist sources specifically on Livonian etymologies, but usually they are confined to one specific type of word origin, for example, Latvian loans. Sources on Estonian and Finnish etymology (such as {{R:et:EES}} or {{R:fi:SSA}} will often mention Livonian cognates, if they exist.

An editor who is familiar with, for example, Latvian or Estonian can suggest likely etymologies. For example, "Apparently a borrowing from Latvian...," "Apparently cognate with Estonian...," etc. In case of doubt one can write simply "Compare Estonian..." without necessarily implying a connection. However, there may not even be a need for such speculations as Suhonen's JLL offers etymologies for ca. 2500 Latvian loans in Livonian (see: {{R:liv:JLL}}) and eesti etümoloogiasõnaraamat lists Livonian cognates in its etymologies of Estonian words.

The last donor is assumed to be the source. For example, un (alternative to the inherited ja) is a borrowing of Latvian un in Livonian, however, after specifying this it can be noted that it is "ultimately from Low German" by using the {{der}} for both Latvian and Low German (which would put the entry in both Category:Livonian terms derived from Latvian and Category:Livonian terms derived from Middle Low German.

Pronunciation

See Appendix:Livonian pronunciation.

Declension

Mostly {{liv-noun}} is used to display nominal inflection. See below for verbal conjugation.

The page Appendix:Livonian declension is intended to list types words from which already have entries.

Examples of nominal entries

A comprehensive list of different nominal declension types with examples of entries pertaining to a specific type can be found at Appendix:Livonian declension.

Nouns

• tōvaz

Proper nouns

• Lețmō
• Moldov

Adjectives

• knaš
• nūoŗimi (an -imi comparative form entry)

Adverbs

• vel

Prepositions

• jo
• juo

Cardinal numerals

• īdõkssadā

Ordinal numerals

• ežmi
• tuoi

"Pseudo-compound"

• vīžkimdõ

Pronoun

• minā

Verbal conjugation

See Appendix:Livonian conjugation.

Speeding up form of creation

The following is a (somewhat incomplete) step-by-step guide on creating form ofs with AWB.

• Open the entries which have inflection tables in the form of {{liv-noun}} but do not have the forms created (links are black not blue.)
• Open the dictionary at {{R:liv:LEL}} and double check that the inflected forms correspond to the inflection type given there. This is the most time consuming part but it's almost guaranteed that somewhere somehow errors will have slipped into the inflection tables.
• Copy the liv-noun markup from the declension subheadings onto some page, maybe a subpage on your userpage (it doesn't matter.)
• Replace the template name "liv-noun" with "User:Neitrāls vārds/CSV".
• Append with part of speech, e.g., ...type=157}} → ...type=157||Proper noun}}
  • If all of the entries you selected belong to the same part of speech you can "Search & Replace" both of these things in Notepad++ in one go. (And the user who created this template does not remember what is the empty parameter before part of speech for. Although it doesn't matter.)
• Hit preview or save and copy the contents of the page in a txt file and save it (make sure it's UTF-8. Although Notepad++ uses this by default.)
• Open AWB and load the CSV plugin.
• Where it asks how the contents of the file are to be interpreted and what is the "skeleton" of the new entries to be created provide what's on {{User:Neitrāls vārds/CSV}}.
• Somewhere along the way you will probably have loaded the txt file. Now you can click start and start creating entries.

It is probably possible to create up to 120 entries per minute (0.5 seconds per entry) but it's probably advisable to glance over the wiki markup one last time before saving amounting to maybe 3 seconds per entry for a total of 20 entries per minute (but these are very rough estimates.)

A slower but perhaps easier (at first) way is using {{liv-noun/forms}} which gives markup to be then pasted manually in the entries but that would amount to maybe 5 entries per minute.

For form of creation subtemplates for verbs see Appendix:Livonian conjugation.

Sources

LEL is probably the single most important Livonian source. Its nominal declension table is assumed to be the standard.

Sjögren's 19th century Livisch-deutsches und deutsch-livisches Wörterbuch can be downloaded on Google Books (one must bear in mind that in many aspects it is outdated and should probably be used only for cross-referencing.)

EKI offers a searchable online version of the Sjögren's dictionary mentioned above: liivi-saksa sõnaraamat.

Tartu University features an extensive collection many of which they also offer for download as PDF files.

Sources on etymology:

• Die jungen lettischen Lehnwörter im livischen features 2534 entries of Livonian words Suhonen classifies as borrowing from Latvian (many ultimately from Low German as well as other languages.) The words are given in a phonetic transcription, cross-referencing with LEL would be necessary.

• Eberhard Winkler has worked on Latvian loans in Livonian as reported in Renāte Blumberga, Tapio Mäkeläinen, Karl Pajusalu (2013), Lībieši: vēsture, valoda un kultūra, Rīga: Līvõ Kultūr sidām, →ISBN.

• An article by Viitso in a compilation by Boiko (page 249) list some cognates Livonian shares with the Mordvinic languages that are absent in other (Baltic) Finnic languages which could be of interest.

Media

• Full interview with Kristiņ, the interviewer speaks Latvian with her and she is asked to reply in Livonian
• Edited down version of the latter (the English slides don't match up to what Kristiņ is saying)
• Draft of a transcript of the parts in the Youtube video: User:Neitrāls vārds/Livonian conjugation#Spoken Livonian transcript (although it would probably be better to focus on the first part of the complete video instead of the edited down YT video because it is audible that Kristiņ is getting tired later in the interview and it's not so easy to understand anymore)