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Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/January

< Wiktionary:Beer parlour

Transclude thesaurus pages to display synonyms edit

Module:thesaurus provides a tool to transclude thesaurus pages to display synonyms in all languages (hopefully). With this, editors will no longer need to repeat adding the same synonym list to each individual entry. They can just keep the list in a single thesaurus page. (This idea was inspired by Template:zh-syn-saurus.)

An example of how to use it is given here:

Please share your opinion of whether this new tool is worth a go or how to improve it. give up -- Huhu9001 (talk) 10:35, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Old Latin entries edit

Per Wiktionary:Votes/2019-08/Abolish the Old Latin header, the “Old Latin” header has been abolished on 14 September 2019. Nevertheless, there are still Old Latin entries (see Category:Old Latin language). J3133 (talk) 15:36, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@J3133, Fay Freak In order to get rid of them, how should we do it? I propose at least (a) Old Latin should be an etymology-only language; (b) there should be an 'Old Latin' label. Words like duenos and deivos are pretty far from standard Latin and should clearly be distinguished as Old Latin, IMO. Benwing2 (talk) 04:50, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is 𐌃𐌖𐌄𐌍𐌏𐌔 seen in the head right? If the letters are mirrored, shouldn’t this be written right-to-left 𐌔𐌏𐌍𐌄𐌖𐌃?  --Lambiam 11:34, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Benwing: The label is already used, e.g. in Divana, and entries are added into Category:Old Latin similar how there's Category:Medieval Latin. -11:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC) — This unsigned comment was added by 2003:de:373f:4000:4d99:f4d5:92d:4559 (talk).
Should Old Latin entries not have {{la-IPA}} because the pronunciation was different (most in Category:Old Latin use {{la-IPA}}, whereas those in Category:Old Latin lemmas have different pronunciations)? J3133 (talk) 13:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
 @Benwing2: The main reason I moved to abolish the Old Latin header was the noxious definition. Plautus is Old Latin, and what was aimed at was even older Latin, pre-Livius Andronicus Latin, Early Latin, mainly found in now hard to understand inscriptions, and calling this just Old Latin, as all pre-Classical Latin is called, is an understatement. I have no objection to correct labelling. Whereas I am not sure that Old Latin and Early Latin etymology-only language codes would be useful: For what would be derived specifically from the Latin when the Empire of Rome was still small? Nor would one use the designations Early Latin and Old Latin in descendant trees – although on the other hand, since we already have many codes for later Latin, Late Latin, Medieval Latin, Renaissance Latin and so on, it is logical to have codes for Classical Latin, Old Latin and Early Latin – but meseems nobody has deemed them needed.
@J3133: I can’t think of notable pronunciation differences from Early Latin to Classical Latin standard pronunciation, you would need to elaborate that. Of course one could restrict the template to not spit out ecclesiastic pronunciations, yet I have never found such pronunciation issues in Latin anyhow pressing since I always opined that the pronunciation section tells the reader how a word would be pronounced according to a certain imaginated standard not how it actually was pronounced – the reader would have to derive from date of use of the word which pronunciation is applied and it’s patronizing to rule out certain pronunciations which the 21st century reader would transmit a word in because it does not fit the period of use. We also have Modern Egyptological pronunciations in Egyptian entries, you see … Fay Freak (talk) 16:08, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fay Freak: E.g., the entry linked above (duenos) has {{IPA|itc-ola|/ˈdwe.nos/}} (IPA(key): /ˈdwe.nos/) in its pronunciation section. Using {{la-IPA}} ({{la-IPA|duenos}}) instead would result in a different pronunciation:
J3133 (talk) 16:20, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@J3133: I deem /dw/ correct, otherwise we would not obtain /b/ in Classical forms. So you pass to {{la-IPA}} dvenos or dwenos to get this result; as {{la-IPA}} expects u is a vowel and not a semiconsonant. Fay Freak (talk) 16:29, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Benwing2: I have now merged the bloodclat mess of entries. Some 400 uses of the code itc-ola are left, deployed mostly for etymologies copied without sense of proportion and probably no understanding what Old Latin would mean – this bit of removal now just strengthened my observation that the deletion of Old Latin as a header and as a code is right – and that should rather end at Latin, so you can perhaps replace these occurrences by bot, ending them at Latin with added {{dercat}}, whereas when it occurs in Latin entries one can replace the coded wording “from Old Latin blabla” with ”from older {{m|la|…}} …”; we may then check the bot’s edited pages for nonsense and then one can remove the language code from the language module data, perhaps catching the rest with a list of all occurrences or with Cat:E. Fay Freak (talk) 20:33, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fay Freak I would prefer to make itc-ola be an etymology-only language with Latin as its parent. No need to eliminate it entirely. Benwing2 (talk) 05:19, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Benwing2: Why, there is insufficient terminology. I distinguished between Old Latin and Early Latin when replacing, but now I find Early Latin also means even Terence. But it would be more needed to bring out that hard-to-understand inscriptional Latin than the 3rd to 1st century BCE which is not all that different from the Imperial-Era Latin that sometimes even imitated this Old Latin (Sallust). The intended thing is called in German Frühlatein as opposed to Altlatein from the mid 3rd century to the beginning of the 1st century BCE. If you don’t have certain names for the language states than you can’t have any codes. The Wikipedia article Old Latin is not helpful here and we have to wean from it. As always Wikipedia mushed together heterogeneous stories from different authors under a headword without understanding because thinking about the definitions would be POV or something like that – you know the ting, Wikipedia is not a dictionary and concerned with pointing at the objects more than the correct or unequivocal ways of designating them. You see I think that people cling towards this Wikipedia picture too much, and I didn’t, as we should first know what lects there are that we want to describe and then we can name them. Similarly I judged about the Aramaic question. It’s technically too much a lumping header but splittings proposed must be maintainable with consistency. Fay Freak (talk) 06:18, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fay Freak As usual your writing is not a beacon of clarity :) but I think you're proposing splitting "Old Latin" into two periods, which I agree with. I would call them "Old Latin" and "Early Old Latin", which makes it clear that "Early Old Latin" precedes Old Latin. We can have two etymology languages, itc-ola and itc-eol, both of which have Latin as the parent. I can fix the inherit code so that a Latin term can inherit from itc-ola or itc-eol. We'd have labels Old Latin and Early Old Latin which categorize respectively into Category:Old Latin and Category:Early Old Latin. Benwing2 (talk) 07:25, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Benwing2: That sounds better already, although it would be problematic that now you still don’t have a proper name of Altlatein, or you actually call it Old Latin, I am not utterly sure how you mean it: anyway it’s ambiguous whether with Old Latin you mean the the mid 3rd century to the beginning of the 1st century BCE or anything from the 1st century BCE backwards of which then Early Old Latin is a part (which is suggested by the wording “Early Old Latin” containing “Old Latin”, so it is not clear Early Old Latin precedes Old Latin). I honestly don’t try to be stupid but it is important other editors do not confuse what we come up with. You would of course add a description to the category Category:Old Latin of what it is supposed to be used for but then people would reasonably complain it’s arbitrary and intransparent because the language names in the dictionary pages (which most readers read alone) shouldn’t be misleading in the first place.
I still uphold the notion that many etymologies now containing “Old Latin” should end at Latin, because that’s the first blue link and because the wording “Old Latin” was unreliable in what is being meant. Fay Freak (talk) 14:25, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Extended mover right edit

Hello and a happy new year to all. I am seeing many entries with wrong title lately, I'm moving them with redirects, I'm bringing them to WT:RFD and tagging the left over redirects for imminent deletion. If I am given this right, it would really help as I'd be able to straightaway move the page without a redirect instead of moving it first and then requesting its deletion. Thanks and regards - द्विशकारःवार्त्ता•योगदानानि•संरक्षितावलयः•विद्युत्पत्त्रम् 16:51, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that you personally address this matter to some administrator. — inqilābī ‹inqilāb·zinda·bād› 19:48, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@AryamanA Can I be given this right? Thanks, 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 16:32, 7 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@शब्दशोधक: Sure, I don't see the harm. —AryamanA (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान) 02:08, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@AryamanA, शब्दशोधक: I am seeing posts on शब्दशोधक‘s user talk page indicating that the user was recently blocked by @Chuck Entz (the reason was not evident from what was on the talk page), and concerns over a number of the user’s edits. I think further inquiry is required before any rights are granted. — SGconlaw (talk) 06:32, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sgconlaw: You can, of course check the block log for the reason but I will tell it straightway - Abusing multiple accounts, block evasion : Impersonating an IP vandal. However, you should read User:शब्दशोधक/पुराचर्चापृष्ठम्#Block? to understand what actually happened - in short, someone else accessed my account and did it. Regarding the concerns about my edits - they are only about my Prakrit entries. 🔥𑀰𑀩𑁆𑀤𑀰𑁄𑀥𑀓🔥 07:31, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Both the block logs for Dviśakāra and शब्दशोधक showed "No matching items in log" the last time I checked. Since @Chuck Entz knows more about what is happening, I will leave it to him to comment. I was just flagging up what I saw on your talk page. — SGconlaw (talk) 07:35, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sgconlaw: See [1]. 🔥𑀰𑀩𑁆𑀤𑀰𑁄𑀥𑀓🔥 07:59, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I see that I filled in the log request form wrongly. — SGconlaw (talk) 09:38, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid I don't see any clear resolution of the matter from the discussion. I'll defer to @Chuck Entz who is more familiar with it. — SGconlaw (talk) 13:29, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in itself it's not much, but it's part of a long pattern of variations on "I'll never make that mistake again". This user tends to blithely launch out into new things without any thought about what could go wrong. What's more, they don't seem to notice any problem until it's pointed out to them. It's true that they will then take it to heart and very rapidly correct how they do things, but I simply don't trust them when they say they know what they're doing. Yes, they won't make the same mistake again, but there are an infinite number of ways to do things wrong, and they seem to have a knack for finding new and creative ways to unintentionally wreak havoc... Chuck Entz (talk) 06:31, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Chuck Entz: Would you please consider granting me this right? Thanks. 🔥𑀰𑀩𑁆𑀤𑀰𑁄𑀥𑀓🔥 17:14, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Sgconlaw: Please consider re-granting me this right, it won't be abused. 🔥𑀰𑀩𑁆𑀤𑀰𑁄𑀥𑀓🔥 11:16, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No. You are not getting the right back. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 17:09, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Metaknowledge: The right would not be abused again. As it is, I did not know that using this to delete pages was abusing the right. Also, I didn't not delete any page I felt like deleting, and only the pages marked with {{d}} (that too by auto patrollers only) were deleted. I confirm that nothing such will happen again, after I am given the right. Thanks. 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 06:42, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@शब्दशोधक: Maybe ask AryamanA again, as he was the one who gave you this right? -⸘- inqilābī ‹inqilāb·zinda·bād› 21:29, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī: Well, maybe, but I don't think I'll get it since almost every admin is opposing. I think I'll request a bit later (a month or two?). 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 03:34, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I, on the other hand, would like to get that extended mover tool. Seems practical. (AND no one's ever complained over any pages I've moved) Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 17:24, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@शब्दशोधक: I don't think you need the right right now--not really because of your actions but because we will have enough South Asian-language editing admins to manage this kind of stuff soon. I think some wait is best. —AryamanA (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान) 21:02, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Simplified form of 嗰 (and simplification by analogy in general) edit

@H2NCH2COOH has recently changed the simplified forms of words with 嗰 from 𠮶 to 嗰, making 𠮶 a nonstandard simplified form of 嗰. Their argument is that 𠮶 is not standard because it is simplified by analogy even though it is not allowed by 简化字总表 (predecessor of 通用规范汉字表). This has led to a bit of discussion on their talk page and mine. I'm wondering how we should proceed: (1) keep it as it is, with 嗰 being the "standard"/default simplified form and 𠮶 labelled as nonstandard, or (2) have both be shown as "valid" by having 嗰 in |s= and 𠮶 in |s2= of {{zh-forms}}. Pinging @RcAlex36, Suzukaze-c, Mar vin kaiser, Atitarev, 沈澄心, 恨国党非蠢即坏 for thoughts. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 08:29, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think both characters (嗰 and 𠮶) should be given equal, valid status as alternative simplified forms. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 08:41, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No particular opinion. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 08:46, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am the one who made this change. Explanation of why 𠮶 is nonstandard can be found on 嗰. --H2NCH2COOH (Talk) 09:16, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Pinging @RcAlex36, Mar vin kaiser, 沈澄心 for response. If you don't have an opinion, like Suzukaze-c, please say so, so we kind of know what the community thinks. @H2NCH2COOH has been continuing to make other similar edits like at 𡅏. As I've said at before, the issue here is that we are privileging analogized simplified forms allowed by 简化字总表 even if they are not part of 通用规范汉字表, which may be problematic until we indicate in {{zh-forms}} whether a form is in 通用规范汉字表. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 05:15, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Justinrleung: I'm leaning towards option (1). However, we would have to add a special note that explains why these "non-analogizable" simplified forms are considered non-standard on Wiktionary. We would also have to note that 𠮶 is attested despite the fact that 嗰 cannot be simplified by analogy per 简化字总表. As I understand it, 無限類推 is undesirable and messy. RcAlex36 (talk) 06:28, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No particular opinion too. --沈澄心✉ 08:48, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RcAlex36, 沈澄心: Thanks for responding. When we come to some consensus, I think it's best that we put guidelines at WT:AZH so that we know what to do with characters that aren't found in 通用规范汉字表. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 22:42, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Schröderization" as WOTD? edit

The word Schröderization was nominated as a Word of the Day by @Illegitimate Barrister. I've done a Google Books search and it is verifiable. However, is it too controversial to be a WOTD? It has a derogatory sense, and refers to a living former politician (though it appears that his actions that led to the word have been widely criticized – and so tough luck to him?). If it is not too controversial, would it be inappropriate to feature the word on Gerhard Schröder's birthday, or should we definitely feature it on a different date? I look forward to your comments. — SGconlaw (talk) 08:31, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I like featuring fringe words, but this one is a bit too obscure and specific, it doesn't seem to get used much outside of the initial context (Schröder's deals with Russia). I don't think there's a problem with it being too controversial. – Jberkel 09:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we have been featuring other words which are somewhat obscure (in the sense of not being in very common use). Since there aren’t many objections, I’ve gone ahead and listed the word as a WOTD on Schröder’s birth anniversary. — SGconlaw (talk) 06:35, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

German 2nd person past subjunctives edit

(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, Kolmiel, -sche, Atitarev, Jberkel, Mahagaja): Not sure if this belongs here or elsewhere. I am cleaning up the German verb templates, which are a mess. So far I have created Module:de-verb and {{de-conj-table}} to replace the old {{de-conj}}. Eventually I will expand Module:de-verb to do automatic conjugation and replace the old flawed, half-written Module:de-conj. I have a question though about 2nd person past subjunctives. The forms as listed are e.g. du wärest, ihr wäret and du begäbest, ihr begäbet but I have come across also du wärst, ihr wärt and du begäbst, ihr begäbt. Are these latter forms standard? Should they be listed (possibly with a footnote)? Also what about composed forms like du wärest losgeworden and ihr wäret losgeworden? Should forms like du wärst losgeworden and ihr wärt losgeworden also be listed, possibly with a footnote (or listed as the only possibilities)? Benwing2 (talk) 19:39, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

One other question: For senden and derivatives, does the imperative send (du) exist and should it be listed (possibly with a footnote)? Duden says yes it exists, but our old templates sometimes purposefully omitted it. Benwing2 (talk) 19:41, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To my fluent but nonnative ear, du wärst and ihr wärt sound completely normal (although I know Duden doesn't prescribe them), but du begäbst and ihr begäbt sound rare and rather poetic. If we're going to be writing footnotes about the past subjunctive anyway, though, we should probably mention that it is very rare in the colloquial language except for wäre, hätte and the modals (würde, könnte, wollte, dürfte etc.) and is usually replaced with the periphrastic construction with würde. So even du begäbest and ihr begäbet sound odd to me, as the usual construction would be du würdest begeben/ihr würdet begeben. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:00, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mahagaja Thanks. Let's see what others say about adding a general past subjunctive note. One other question, about the new (post-1996) spellings kennen lernen, spazieren gehen and similar: Currently the tables have subordinate clause dass ich kennen lerne and zu-infinitive kennen zulernen. Are these correct (especially the zu-infinitive)? I learned German with the old spellings so I have no intuition here. Benwing2 (talk) 20:10, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
dass ich kennen lerne is right, but the zu-infinitive is kennen zu lernen. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:19, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The past subjunctive is indeed used very rarely in spoken German, often by older speakers, or with some auxiliary verbs, this should be mentioned in the footnotes. It still gets some use in news reporting as indirect speech marker: "sie sagten, sie begäben sich..." The forms begäbt / wärt are acceptable and probably more common than the -et variants. – Jberkel 23:15, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
wärest/wäret/begäbest/begäbet should be labeled as archaisms. When these forms are used they mark a deliberate deviation from everyday language. --Akletos (talk) 09:14, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Akletos Thanks, I'll add that when I have a chance. Benwing2 (talk) 04:31, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, Kolmiel, -sche, Atitarev, Jberkel, Mahagaja): How are the following verbs conjugated? gegenbeschuldigen (ich gegenbeschuldige or ich beschuldige gegen?), endlagern (ich lagere end or ich endlagere? ich habe geendlagert per Collins? ich habe endgelagert per Wiktionary? ich habe endlagert?) Benwing2 (talk) 04:41, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, Kolmiel, -sche, Atitarev, Jberkel, Mahagaja): Another question, maybe more relevant, concerns stems ending in -s, -x, -z or -ß. dewikt [2] lists the 2sg preterite of e.g. lassen as either ließest or ließt, but the 2sg past subjunctive as only ließest. (We list the 2sg preterite as only ließt.) Are the two preterite forms ließest or ließt equally used, or is one archaic? Does there exist in this case a 2sg past subjunctive of ließt, and if so is the form ließest archaic per User:Akletos? BTW same appears to apply to strong verbs in -sen e.g. preisen and in -zen e.g. schmelzen. Benwing2 (talk) 06:36, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Verbs that are back-formations from nouns like gegenbeschuldigen (< Gegenbeschuldigung) and endlagern (< Endlager) are often variable in German, with native speakers themselves sometimes being uncertain. Sometimes such verbs show separable-prefix behavior in only some forms (e.g. the past participle babygesittet is OK) but not others (*Ich sitte heute Abend baby is definitely not, it has to be Ich babysitte heute Abend). Sometimes the forms just don't exist: I read a linguistics article once about how the finite forms of uraufführen (< Uraufführung) simply cannot be used in main clauses: *Wir uraufführen heute Abend, *Wir aufführen heute Abend ur, *Wir führen heute Abend urauf are all equally ungrammatical, but Ich hoffe, dass wir heute Abend uraufführen is OK. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:19, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Akletos, Benwing2: wärest/wäret/begäbest/begäbet should not be labelled as archaisms, they are the current standard written forms. wärst/wärt/begäbst/begäbt are colloquial, of which wärst/wärt is less marked, as of an irregular verb anyway, but begäbst/begäbt could be marked as errors (A, Ausdrucksfehler) by schoolmasters (more likely than not). Also contrary to what @Jberkel says the past subjunctive is used often enough in spoken German, and I think particularly of moderately formal spoken German e.g. in university, before court and the like – this is the norm to be reflected. I guess in Berlin they don’t learn German anymore, they do Schreiben nach Gehör. Fay Freak (talk) 22:53, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Notifying Matthias Buchmeier, Kolmiel, -sche, Atitarev, Jberkel, Mahagaja): @Fay Freak OK, one more question about past subjunctives. I'm writing a module to do automatic German conjugation and I have added a footnote to this module for past subjunctives. It appears there are three categories of past subjunctives:
  1. Verbs where the synthetic form is preferred over würde + infinitive: haben, sein, können, müssen, dürfen, mögen, sollen, wollen, werden
  2. Verbs where both the synthetic form and würde + infinitive forms are frequent: brauchen, finden, geben, gehen, halten, heißen/heissen, kommen, lassen, stehen, tun, wissen
  3. Verbs where the synthetic form is rare compared with würde + infinitive, and highly formal: all the rest.
My questions are (1) are any verbs miscategorized here? (2) are any verbs missing from categories (1) or (2)? (3) what about compounds of the above verbs, e.g. spazieren gehen/spazierengehen, abkönnen, auslassen, wehtun, etc.? Do they behave the same as the base verb, or are they in category (3)? Benwing2 (talk) 05:29, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Benwing2: 3) They behave the same. 1) mögen because the meaning is different in the subjunctive which replaces wollen as a more polite form, so “würde mögen” is totally common. “würde haben” also does not sound odd, apparently only with the modal verbs it sounds unusual, brauchen, dürfen, sollen, wollen, müssen, and with werden because of the duplication; and even with those it is not too odd to use würde, so perhaps the distinction between (1) and (2) is unneeded. The synthetic forms are just rare and formal when they are identical to the preterite forms, that is in all weak verbs (also including those with Rückumlaut like kennen and brennen). Else, Berliners might not believe it, we Westphalians also use hülfe as well as stürbe (this latter of sterben does not sound archaizing at all, potentially only hülfe but it is occasionally used in speech). erklimmen, called highly formal here, would be well understood in the subjunctive II erklömme and not frowned upon, and so on with all that is in Category:German strong verbs: The subjunctive II can be used just like würde periphrasis, and even more, in formal speech the periphrasis would be doubtful style. So actually your category 2 should contain most or all all strong verbs and category 3 all weak ones, as stilted forms but none are archaic, in formal speech and writing every subjunctive II is expected. Fay Freak (talk) 15:51, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fay Freak: Should we mention that bräuchte, though widespread in everyday use, is proscribed by prescriptivists and probably better avoided in formal written German? We do already have a note more or less to this effect at brauchen#Usage notes. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:24, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mahagaja: Hö, this prescription is completely unreal. Maybe you read too many prescriptivists? I am not sure I have ever heard brauchte as a subjunctive II, though I have probably read it at some bloggers – it’s so rare that one can think somebody missed the Ä key and it is likely to be mistaken for just the preterite –, and it is now unlikely that bräuchte is ever marked as an error (if only because luckily correctors don’t read as many trashy language materials as you as a non-native speaker naturally have to encounter?). Although the usage without “zu” is likely marked to be wrong, in spite of being consequential with its status as a modal verb, such that I prefer to view the use with zu as pretentious. Fay Freak (talk) 16:41, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

compound vs. affix vs. univerbation edit

I created یڭیچری (“janissary”) as a {{compound}} of یڭی (“new”) + چری (“soldier”). @Fenakhay changed the template to {{af}}. Then @PUC changed the template to {{univerbation}}. Are there any guidelines on when to use each template? They all seem to mean the same thing in this case. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:56, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vox Sciurorum: I probably shouldn't have meddled in, as I don't know anything about Turkish or Ottoman Turkish. I've simply followed the lead of @Fay Freak, who wrote that یڭیبهار (yeñibahar) is a univerbation. What does @Lambiam think?
However, I was actually just discussing this issue with @Inqilābī at Talk:double penetration. They mentioned the case of wasteland, which is currently categorised as a compound; but seeing that waste is an adjective (per [3]), and that [adjective + noun] phrases don't usually solidify in this way in English (as opposed to [noun + noun] phrases), I think it is best described as a univerbation. PUC – 13:07, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for drawing me to this discussion.
@Vox Sciurorum: I think that it is indeed possible to have compound words having an adjective as a component word, and I support categorizing words like یڭیچری, wasteland, double uncle etc. as compounds. — inqilābī ‹inqilāb·zinda·bād› 13:22, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
{{af}} categorizes things as compounds if none of the arguments contains a hyphen (which would indicate an affix), so the choice between {{compound}} and {{af}} is without significance in this case. The question is really whether this is a compound or a univerbation. Without knowing anything about Turkish, Ottoman or otherwise, I'd be inclined to call this a compound. For me a univerbation, unlike a compound, doesn't have a head, i.e. the part that determines both the part of speech and the semantics of the whole: in yeñiçeri, the head is çeri, as yeñiçeri gets both its noun status and its semantics (a kind of soldier specified by the adjective portion of the compound) from çeri. And wasteland is also a compound for the same reason; where did anyone get the idea that we don't have [Adj + Noun] compounds in English? —Mahāgaja · talk 13:30, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mahagaja: I have reverted myself on that Ottoman Turkish entry.
As for [Adj + Noun] compounds in English: I may have been mistaken / not thought this through. But would you really describe items such as genuine article and double penetration as "compounds"? PUC – 13:42, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is more like blackbird and headland than those examples. It's not that you can't have Adj + Noun compounds, but that those particular examples aren't Adj + Noun compounds. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:25, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Chuck Entz: So what do you think of words like double dribble, double Dutch, true blue (noun), true love etc. These should certainly qualify as compound words. @Mahagaja. — inqilābī ‹inqilāb·zinda·bād› 20:13, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well it probably was at one point just “new soldiers”, not “new-soldiers”. It’s written apart even, or with zero-width joiner or non-breaking half-space, in Redhouse’s dictionary linked under چری as opposed to together at یڭیچری (“janissary”), both equally common. So if at some point it was adjective + noun, it later does not become a compound but an univerbation – that’s my understanding of an univerbation at least …
You are right to observe that in Turkish the distinction between derivation, compounding and univerbation is formally particularly intransparent; only luckily there are only few proper Turkish prefixes, but in Ottoman there must have been more Persian ones autonomously employed, where with some then one could doubt whether it is rather a compound with an adjective or adverb or an univerbation so there are three possibilities, and the varying spelling یكیچری ~ یكی‌چری seems to show that the Ottomans themselves looked varyingly upon this word. Fay Freak (talk) 14:49, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The components are not of Persian origin. Originally, the term yeni çeri (“the new military corps”) must have been a completely transparent adj + noun combination, also (in spoken form) to illiterate speakers of kaba Türkçe. (For a collective sense of çeri, see e.g. here. The term probably underwent a similar sense development as English police, in which the collective term was re-interpreted as an unmarked plural of a count noun.) Neither component can reasonably be considered an affix. The primary stress on the first component (/jeˈni.t͡ʃe.ɾi/) is typical for adj + noun combinations that solidify to lexical units; cf. karakuş /kɑˈɾɑ.kuʃ/ vs. kara kuş /kɑˌɾɑ ˈkuʃ/.  --Lambiam 17:08, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Let me add that in the Redhouse Çağdaş Türkçe-İngilizce Sözlüğü (Redhouse Contemporary Turkish–English Dictionary) (1983) the entry for çeri is simply “çeri  (hist.)  army, troops.”  --Lambiam 16:00, 7 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yeniçeri is a compound, not a univerbation. {{af}} handles it correctly. On another note, I do not think diacritics such as three dots over the kaf should be used in the pagename to indicate the /ŋ/. This kind of spelling was found almost exclusively in dictionaries. It can be added as alternative spellings. The transliteration should feature /ŋ/, though. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 10:41, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I followed the policy in Wiktionary:About Ottoman Turkish both for consistency and because I have no specialized knowledge of my own to bring. (I only add entries in obsolete languages when they are particularly interesting to me as sources of etymology, like the origin of the widespread word janissary, or due to subject matter, like the Germanic words for squirrel I added recently.) By that policy, "the ڭU+06AD ARABIC LETTER NG is used in the place of the old /ŋ/." But checking Redhouse's 1890 dictionary, I see he spells yeñiçeri without the dots. And I've seen vowel marks in some places but not in others. I don't have an opinion on what the rule on Wiktionary should be. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 14:24, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That page is Fay Freak's essay on his views. Some things there are fine, others are just that, his personal views. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 14:40, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Allahverdi Verdizade: No, it isn’t. I continued what was started before. There had been entries with گ and ڭ, and the page informs about a uniform practice. If I had made the first Ottoman entry on Wiktionary all would look differently. It is incorrect to claim I would be responsible for Wiktionary’s coverage not being “in accordance with the current state of the field”, and if you want a specific thing then you should go for it and tell it. There is nothing to “expect”. Fay Freak (talk) 15:21, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion to deprecate Template:ko-syllable-hangul edit

An example at 강#Etymology 1.

These are not dictionary material, and they are not necessary because all of the (very little) relevant information is contained in Template:character info anyways. I think they should be automatically removed.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 03:00, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Notifying TAKASUGI Shinji, HappyMidnight, LoutK, Karaeng Matoaya, B2V22BHARAT, Quadmix77): In general, I agree with @Karaeng Matoaya's proposal. The info, which is somewhat useful is covered by {{character info}}.
Does it actually mean that all Korean entries, which don't have any PoS sections but ====Syllable====, will also be deleted? That should be covered by the proposal because there may objections or they could potentially be usefull. I actually think that perhaps we should have some (very basic) Translingual sections for each Hangeul syllables with {{character info}} at the very top where there is no other sense (no word exists). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that they should be removed. They are not useful anyways. — LoutK (talk) 18:41, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Atitarev, I think we can leave entries for definitionless Hangul entries as they are for the time being.
@Benwing2, do you think this could be done automatically (delete all etymology sections which include {{ko-syllable-hangul}} in pages with multiple Korean etymology sections, and renumber the etymology lables)? Or should this be done manually?--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 01:39, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any cases where Template:es-IPA shouldn't be transcluded? edit

I started adding it to some entries and I was concerned that maybe it wouldn't be able to handle ceceo/seseo or lleísmo/yeísmo, etc. but it seems like a pretty good, flexible template. Since Spanish has a pretty phonetic and reliable pronunciation system, this is going to be accurate 99.99%+, so can anyone tell me why a bot shouldn't add this to every Spanish entry? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:43, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Too soon: see Module:es-pronunc/testcases. PUC – 10:20, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I added a few South American words borrowed from indigenous languages and declined to use {{es-IPA}} for two reasons. I don't know if the Spanish word retains any trace of the pre-Spanish pronunciation. I don't know how to suppress the Castillian pronunciation. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 12:01, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why suppress it? Surely even Castilian speakers are allowed to utter words that entered the language in Latin America, just as British speakers have their own pronunciations of English words borrowed from Native American languages. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:35, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer not to create unattested forms. If somebody from Spain knows how an originally Quechua word is pronounced there, go ahead and add the pronunciation. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:41, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who is not a native, nor a bilingual anglo/hispano, but who knows more than the average person about Spanish and other Romance languages, I've never experienced a Hispanic pronouncing an indigenous term with a phonology outside of standard Spanish. The only loanwords I know of that break this are a few aspirated hs, like in hip hop or sometimes pronouncing a w in words like Kuwaiti (rather than "koo-bay-tee"). Very anecdotal but I'd be interested in knowing if South American Spanish that butts up against living indigenous languages (e.g. Jopara Guarani) have non-Hispanic phonemes. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:22, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • But this does bring up a general consideration, which I don't have the solution for. How we could include LOADS of pronunciations in the template - from Cádiz, Buenos Aires, Uruguay, Chile, Asturias, Cuba, the different parts of México etc. which all have notably different pronunciations. Jonely Mash (talk) 00:51, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • While there are differences in pronunciation other than just ceceo/seseo and lleismo/yeismo (e.g. dropped -s in some Central American varieties), I think that Spanish has some fairly predictable pronunciations and the thing that would probably make this much easier than (e.g.) English would be the smaller amount of vowels. Even attempting this for English seems pretty daunting but for Spanish, it seems doable. Maybe I'm just too ignorant of Lua or Spanish phonology. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:24, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This module still has many problems. ununquadio is still wrong after I pointed out the error over 2 years ago on the talk page, as are many other issues raised there. I'm happy to do research and work with anyone who offers to refine the module. Ultimateria (talk) 07:55, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, ununquadio was a simple fix. I'd also say we should be careful using the IPA template for obsolete terms, like huviesse, çarça, ortographía. Can we know for sure how they were pronounced? Do we care enough? Jonely Mash (talk) 11:07, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Only if we take care of everything else first. That's still a temporary solution on ununquadio, but thank you for fixing it. Ultimateria (talk) 18:55, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Would one of you like to add ununquadio to Module:es-pronunc/testcases so it can be tracked? Or is its issue already covered by an existing testcase? - -sche (discuss) 17:35, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  Done. Ultimateria (talk) 19:05, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Benwing2: I know you already have a lot on your plate, but would you be interested in getting this module up to par? PUC – 17:39, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PUC I can take a look. I'm not sure some of the existing pronunciations e.g. of accidental are wrong, though. Wikipedia specifically gives [oβtiˈmista] for optimista, for example. Benwing2 (talk) 17:58, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some antonyms seem like a stretch or outrite wrong edit

E.g. misandry and misogyny are listed as antonyms. Hating men is not "the opposite" of hating women. In addition to the fact that this seemingly ignores the existence of anyone who is intersex, the opposite of hating [group] is loving [group]. It's not clear to me that these bigotries are complementary, graded, or relational antonyms. Am I just being dense here? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:48, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree they're not antonyms. I'd call them ====Coordinate terms====. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:24, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Antonymy is a particularly easy concept to misapply, but coordinate terms isn't so easy either. In both cases there is question of opposite|coordinate with respect to what attribute(s) of the target term. Is brush, mop, or vacuum cleaner the best coordinate term of broom? What is the antonym of broom? Why not vacuum cleaner? It draws dirt in, instead of spreading it. DCDuring (talk) 21:02, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Can't they all be coordinate terms? —Mahāgaja · talk 22:53, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Or else cohyponyms: men-hate and women-hate are forms of hate. broom and vacuum are both cleaning utilities. --93.221.60.158 23:10, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As are dust cloth, soap, sponge, washing machine, dishwasher, buffer, polish, detergent, lint brush, face cloth, carpet sweeper, whisk, swab, nail brush, pressure washer, feather duster, etc. DCDuring (talk) 00:57, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"What is the antonym of broom?" It has no antonym; not every word has an antonym anymore than every word has a synonym. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:51, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think it was a rhetorical question. PUC – 11:54, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Use ISO 15919 for Hindi transliteration edit

There's an ongoing discussion here regarding updating the transliteration scheme that Wiktionary uses for Hindi (and Urdu) to be compliant with ISO 15919, which is the international standard and the one used on other Wiki sites. Let's continue the discussion there. Getsnoopy (talk) 01:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Affected project page: Wiktionary:Hindi transliteration
Possibly affected project page Wiktionary:Urdu transliteration
(Notifying AryamanA, Benwing2, DerekWinters, Kutchkutch, Bhagadatta, Msasag, Inqilābī): Notifying Hindi editors.
(Notifying Taimoorahmed11, RonnieSingh, AryamanA): Notifying Urdu editors.
Please respond to Getsnoopy's proposal. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:25, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Atitarev As an Urdu editor, I would have to say ISO 15919 isn't really compatible with Urdu, as it's quite Indic-based and doesn't really represent Urdu spelling/pronunciation, but having said that I don't think there are any transliteration standards which accurately represent Urdu. I was actually going to propose that we use a custom/modified transliteration standard for Urdu spelling and takes into consideration things like 'loan letters', Fatha/Kasrah/Dammah Majhool and other forms of diacritics/pronunciations in Urdu, See here, as well.
-Taimoor Ahmed(گل بات؟) 00:27, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Taimoorahmed11: I see Urdu may further deviate from Hindi. It's probably fine - I saw discussion on Module talk:ur-translit and your talk page. I think you need to start a discussion on Wiktionary:Urdu transliteration, if you're proposing a change to match your module (it is a policy page). Pls note ISO 15919 isn't just for vowels but consonants, which would be easy to automate than vowels but we need an agreement on what the differences are going to be, for example, the Urdu خ is "x" but the Hindi equivalent ख़ is "k͟h", etc. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:15, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Atitarev: When it comes to consonants, I prefer it to be transliterated as "x" in Urdu, and "k͟h" in Hindi, just to highlight the spelling difference in Hindi and Urdu.
-Taimoor Ahmed(گل بات؟) 01:35, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Taimoorahmed11: While that is somewhat true, the ISO 15919 standard has specific pages dedicated to transliterating from Urdu consonants, which ends up accounting for most (if not all) characters in the Urdu alphabet meaning that it supports Urdu to a large extent as it does any other Indic script. You can see this on the ISO 15919 wiki page. The diacritics, as you pointed out, are another matter, so an "ISO + Urdu diacritical customizations" strategy would probably be a good way to go to keep its compatibility with other Indic languages, since Urdu is an Indic language after all. Getsnoopy (talk) 01:59, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Atitarev, Getsnoopy: I don't really feel strongly about this. On one hand I think the macron on e and o are redundant because their short versions don't exist in Hindi and there is no need to distinguish the two. But then I'm also aware that transliterating ख़ as x does look strange to a reader who is not familiar with our transliteration conventions and may interpret the word as having an actual "ks" sound.
Since here you say this is supposed to cover all the languages of India (Not just "Indic" but Dravidian as well). Does this mean that this standard should also be applied to other languages that use the Devanagari script and the ones that use other scripts viz. Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali etc. ? If that is the case then the already pinged editors here viz @Kutchkutch for Marathi, @Inqilābī for Bengali, @Msasag for Assamese, @RonnieSingh and @Taimoorahmed11 for Punjabi and Urdu should know what they are voting for. -- 𝓑𝓱𝓪𝓰𝓪𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓽𝓪(𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓴) 03:22, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bhagadatta: Yes, that's correct. ISO 15919 covers all Indic (being used in the script sense here, so it includes all Brahmic scripts including Dravidian scripts) scripts. This is exactly why the ē and ō characters exist: most (if not all) Dravidian scripts distinguish between short and long versions of those vowels, so ISO distinguishes between the two since it's meant to be one standard to rule them all. The point about "x" being read as "ks" is a good one and is exactly one of the reasons I'm proposing sticking strictly to the ISO standard: it works for almost all intents and purposes as far as Indic transliteration is concerned. Getsnoopy (talk) 05:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]


I do not think ISO 15919 is a good romanisation considering the fact that different IA and Dravidian phonologies are different and trying to merge them under a single romanisation is ridiculous. I don't think we should transliterate at all, rather transcribe them phonemically. I would suggest getting rid of length in transcriptions in languages that don't make a length distinction for certain vowels. Moreover, I'm completely against using using ⟨k͟h⟩ for ⟨خ⟩ and ⟨ख़⟩. Like I said, transcribe, don't transliterate. And there's no point distinguishing Urdu and Hindi transcriptions or having different letters for the same sound that's written with different letters. People cam already see the spelling there. As for ⟨x⟩ being read as [ks], Persian transcription still uses ⟨x⟩, even though laypeople wouldn't directly make an association in chats and stuff and read it as [ks]. Wiktionary and Wikipedia are academic spaces, albeit for common people. If they come to Wiktionary enough, they'll get used to the usage of ⟨x⟩. Let's not unify all IA and Dravidian transliterations under one umbrella. They have differences and those differences matter. RonnieSingh (talk) 08:15, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Atitarev, Getsnoopy: The primary issue appears to be to have some way to compare the romanisation of characters in one script and the comparable characters in another script, particularly those at Brahmic_scripts#Comparison. Perhaps it would be better to satisfy this need for comparability in other ways. For example, the appendix could to be used to compare Wiktionary's language-specific romanisation schemes with other schemes such as ISO 15919, Hunterian, IAST, etc. Kutchkutch (talk) 10:00, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(Thanks for the ping.) While we the normal editors are busy with serious editing, Getsnoopy is fruitlessly asking for something we know is never going it happen. Even if they start a vote on this, I would call that illegitimate. The ISO standard is good only for Sanskrit, also MIA languages. For any NIA language that is phonologically innovative (or any non-IA language for that matter), we must only use appropriate phonemic transliteration schemes, these obviously being Wiktionary’s modifications of the ISO standard, to varying extents, per the phonology of the language in question. As others have already pointed out, we are not here to simply transliterate the orthography of the language, but rather to transcribe it phonemically so as to faithfully represent the phonology of the language through our transliteration scheme. -⸘- inqilābī ‹inqilāb·zinda·bād› 18:53, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RonnieSingh: Out of curiosity, could you elaborate on what differences you're referring to and why they wouldn't be accurately captured via ISO 15919?
@Inqilābī: Yes, apparently seriously editing entries written for people who can't seem to understand what they're reading. Perhaps tone down the sarcasm and actually bring up criticism for the proposal? use appropriate phonemic transliteration schemes That is somewhat of an oxymoron; transliteration does not relate directly to phonemics or phonetics, transcription does. Regardless, somewhere around 90% of the phonemes used in IA and non-IA Indian languages are shared, so suggesting that ISO isn't a great fit for unifying the transliteration of these languages is dubious. Could you provide examples of where the problem occurs? Also, as @RonnieSingh suggests, doing away with transliteration entirely is a respectable position to have, as then we're dealing simply with transcription (which is what you seem to be fundamentally in favour of). But then again, we would all be using IPA (an international standard) for that and not arbitrary conventions developed here and there. The point is about following international standards that everyone (not just the editors of Wiktionary) can understand and follow. Getsnoopy (talk) 22:13, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: The length distinctions that the proposed ISO standard makes aren't all made by the languages. It proposes <ē> for Gujarati <એ> which is never long in Gujarati. Similarly, even though distinguished in the spelling, Gujarati and Bengali and many other IA languages do not distinguish length for /i/ and /u/ in their phonologies. Moreover, it suggests use of <ê> for Devanagari <ऍ> which is used to represent /æ/ in English loan words in Marathi and sometimes also in Hindi. Also, when I talk about doing away with transliteration and transcribing instead, I'm still talking about Roman transcription and not IPA, because IPA isn't Roman. On the English Wiktionary, it's customary to have both a romanisation of the non-Latin script word and a phonetic transcription in a separate pronunciation section. — This unsigned comment was added by RonnieSingh (talk • contribs) at 10:08, 10 February 2021 (UTC).[reply]
@Getsnoopy: We aren't doing transliteration to begin with since all our IA langs have a transcription that includes schwa deletion. Transliteration is not useful for a reader (that's why the native script is given!), but a transcription is because it represents how a word is said in a language-suitable consistent manner.
I think this argument is not going anywhere, no one besides yourself has said anything positive about the ISO system, and I see no problem in our current systems. The fact is, a dictionary is only going to be useful to someone who has a basic knowledge of the language at hand, and at that level of knowledge one knows that Hindi "x" is not /ks/ because such a cluster doesn't exist in Hindi. Plus, we provide IPA for Hindi. —AryamanA (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान) 19:13, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RonnieSingh: I actually just reviewed the standard, and section 9.1 states that there is a "non-uniform vowels option" where you can transliterate "Bengali, Devanagari, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, or scripts whose character repertoires fall within the character repertoires of these scripts" with long e as "e" and long o as "o", so this seems to cover those cases you mentioned. As for lengths of /i/ and /u/, it seems like the sounds are allophonic with their short versions in those languages, but the distinctions are still maintained in certain edge cases and for etymological reasons. I don't see how showing them as such where they're used would be bad. I don't know what problem you're suggesting there is with ê representing ऍ. It seems like the primary issue you have is with vowels, but I'm more focused on the consonant transliterations. Either way, I think this discussion has become something larger than what it was originally intended to be: relevant only to Hindi transliteration, as the title suggests.
@AryamanA: Like I've said already, schwa deletion is a special case. in a language-suitable consistent manner I can say with high confidence that people reading "x" would not read it as "ख़" unless they are familiar with IPA or with Perso-Arabic transliterations, so it's not suitable for the language at all. I'm not aware how much time you've spent in India, but there are plenty of places where words like लक्षमि are written as "Laxmi". As for the cluster not existing in Hindi, a counterexample is अक्स. And similarly, no one (and I'm actually willing to bet on this) would know how to read "ŕ" other than probably you and the other maintainers of the project; it's ironic that even one of the editors called that one out as perplexing. I don't know why you keep trying to rationalize such an obviously absurd transliteration. It's important to remember that these transcriptions are for ordinary people, not for the people who edit regularly using the very transliteration system they created. Given that there's a lot of contention over vowel transliterations and my responses about how ISO allows for wiggle room there, I suggest we at least fix the transliterations for ख़ and ऋ so that we can restore some rationality to the pre-existing scheme. Getsnoopy (talk) 06:44, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: The only reasonable change is r with ring below for that grapheme. I haven't seen the Wiktionary type r with acute anywhere else. And I'd hardly say Metaknowledge "called" anyone "out" there. kh with a line below is not an epitome of rationality (That thing is not an aspirate! Why the digraph? We're not underlining anything else! It's just so inconsistent with all the other fricatives if we do that).
And yeah, I speak Hindi natively and am well aware of ad-hoc romanisations of it. We need consistency so we have to sacrifice some simplicity: च and छ are usually ch and chh, श is sh, फ is f, etc. in everyday use but we don't do that and reserve digraphs for aspirates. Making a consistent romanisation is a decision that had to be made for every dictionary. These transcriptions are indeed for ordinary people, but they're meant to be consistent and scientific and this modified IAST is one such system that we all have maintained a consensus on for many years. I'm hardly imposing anything here. —AryamanA (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान) 09:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(perhaps I could be pinged earlier as I'm a Hindi editor) @Getsnoopy, I'm also not in support of changing the transliteration system for Hindi here, and I can say for sure that this is not going to happen, seeing that almost all editors are opposing. I think you better give up, so that we don't waste time for useless things and focus on improving Wiktionary! 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 07:05, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@शब्दशोधक: The ultimate goal of Wiktionary's existence is to be accessible to ordinary people, and improving Wiktionary involves any effort toward that goal. Using cryptically transliterated characters flies in the face of that goal; you could have the most comprehensive dictionary in the world, but it would be useless if people couldn't access it and understand what it says. I don't understand why people keep parroting this tired idea that transliteration (or any other such fundamental item) is somehow useless. If it's useless, why do it at all? Getsnoopy (talk) 23:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Aryamanarora: Then I propose changing the transliteration of ऋ to r̥ (and likewise of ॠ to r̥̄); I'll take some change over none at all. Getsnoopy (talk) 23:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: Well, actually for native Hindi speakers who may search for some word of Hindi, we don't need transliteration at all. For some non-native speaker, transliteration is necessary. s with diacritics to make श and ष is confusing again, since it is not used commonly. Daily life transliterations are very unstable. I've seen many write नहीं as nhi, even dropping the a which they do pronounce. sh as श & ष, f as फ and फ़ (regardless of it having nuqta or not), a as अ & आ (sometimes also aa or A but that's rare) and so many more. About ऋ, I asked User:Bhagadatta earlier, but he said that it is to avoid confusion between ड़ and ऋ, and I'm sticking to that - ŕ may be strange, but it does differentiate itself from ṛ. On the other hand, r̥ is a bit too similar to ṛ (although I don't deny dot != ring). Our transliteration system seems perfectly fine to me, and I   oppose any change to it. 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 03:10, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@शब्दशोधक: s with diacritics to make श and ष is confusing again, since it is not used commonly This is the standard in both IAST, ISO 15919, ALA-LC, etc. which are the overwhelming standards of transliteration for Indic languages, especially including Hindi. Daily life transliterations are very unstable Yes, if you're referring to essentially the lack of any formal standard; using that as a reason for why Wiktionary shouldn't have one is not a strong argument for this discussion, especially considering the reasons @AryamanA mentioned (i.e., we use a scientific standard, not one that is arbitrary). Our transliteration system seems perfectly fine to me Having an "s" with diacritics to distinguish श and ष is something our standard already does, so essentially criticizing the standard and then saying it is perfect is contradictory. Also, IAST/ISO 15919 are ubiquitous when it comes to any academic context, so saying that you recognize the difference between the dot and the ring while still saying that they're not different enough makes no sense at all. Most other people (including the audience for Wikipedia) are already familiar with the difference, so if you see the difference as well, then that should mean you're for it more than anything.
Anyway, @AryamanA, it seems like you're for changing the transliteration for ऋ? This is among other users in this discussion as well, so I say put it to a vote. Getsnoopy (talk) 08:40, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Getsnoopy, please stop this, it is fruitless. It seems AryamanA and Bhagadatta are too busy to respond to you, so at best Kutchkutch and I can reply. I never said that we should transliterate श and ष as sh, and neither did I criticize our system. I said, that we should accept that daily life transliterations are not the same as any proper system - be it IAST, ISO 15919, or our system. Many dictionaries have their own transliteration system and I don't see why we can't. See this entry and compare dot and ring. They are different but do look 90 percent similar. Forgive me, but I have already said what I had to and I am not explaining more. 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 09:08, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: Let me explain to you what I said - s with diacritics makes things

confusing for a person who transliterates it as sh in his daily life, but still we, IAST, and ISO 15919 have it, isn't it? And if others agree for r with a dot, I am fine with it (although I would say that the current one is better). And yes, transliteration is useless for a native speaker who comes here for looking up a word, but not for a foreign person who wishes to do so. Again, I'm saying, if so many dictionaries have there own different transliteration system, why can't we? Are we bound to follow other dictionaries or any fixed pattern, in whatever way? No, we aren't. Talking of other dictionaries, though, I feel that McGregor's dictionary has the closest-to-perfect transliteration. Platts' dictionary's transliteration is absolutely ridiculous. Dasa's dictionary uses 'pure IAST without any nuqtas and Hindi's modifications. So, yes, as I said, these 3 dictionaries have there own transliteration and so should we. 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 03:48, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@शब्दशोधक: If by "daily life" transliteration, you mean the Hunterian scheme, then I'll have you know that even that is systematic; it's just that it is ambiguous. For any scientific use and even common uses (see Aśoka), IAST and/or ISO 15919 is used.
why can't we? I don't think using a "because we can" argument is going to have much currency, especially when considering standards. Here's a simple reason: because we don't want to confuse people with yet another "standard" that no one else is going to use when its existence is only justified by the reason of "we want to be different". You'll notice that IAST is almost universal when it comes to Sanskrit: it's because it has been around the longest and is great for getting the job done. There are very few authors who strike out on their own just to prove a point because it serves no purpose. Since most of the academic literature on other Indic languages was already written by the time ISO 15919 came around, it's understandable that they had to improvise, which is why we get to see so much variety. This doesn't mean it's something to aspire to because there's no reason to do that anymore: the standard already exists, is very systematic and scientific, and is widespread. You might not be aware of this, but all Windows computers (~80% of all computers in the world) who use the "English (India)" locale can type in ISO 15919 (using the AltGr keys), which is yet another reason to adhere to standards. If we were materially improving a standard that is just irreparably flawed, then I'd understand your argument. This is clearly not the case here. And I get it; you don't like that the dot and the ring are similar, so if that's the argument you want to make, then fine. But just be aware that people are already familiar with this, and the standard is widespread. Getsnoopy (talk) 23:30, 22 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Already said what I had to. I strongly oppose any change, even if you think it is without a reason - I have my reasons and I've already explained it. Ping other editors of Hindi using {{subst:wgping|hi}} if you want to and then see what they say once again. I'm wasting no more time on such a useless thing and I have enough already going on - Sanskrit, Hindi, Prakrit merger, Urdu, etc. You already have my vote -   Oppose - and that is not going to change. 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 04:49, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Just ran into this issue again wondering what it meant, and it's nonsense. (Notifying AryamanA, Atitarev, Benwing2, DerekWinters, Kutchkutch, Bhagadatta, Msasag, Inqilābī, SodhakSH): Pinging Hindi editors to propose changing ऋ's transliteration to r̥ from ŕ. Getsnoopy (talk) 04:36, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You should really start a vote, Getsnoopy, because then you won't be able to propose the same thing over and over again, when all are opposing it. Please do so and please do not ping me again and again, when I am not going to change my vote! If you can't understand why I am opposing, just take it so: I don't want to change the current system, and in my humble opinion, it is fine. You really don't need to say what I said is nonsense, because, everyone has their own distinct opinion, and they are more than free to express it. Thank you and best regards, 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 04:56, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a separate process for a vote other than just soliciting it here? Also, I used the template that you mentioned, which has your name listed in it; I didn't mean to ping you again. And I didn't say what you said is nonsense; I was referring to the fact that I ran into the issue again on a few other words and had to remember what ŕ means, which is nonsense. Getsnoopy (talk) 05:01, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: So long as switching to r̥ from ŕ is the only proposed change, I'll support it. You can start a new vote at Wiktionary:Votes; fill in the details and set the vote to last a month. -- 𝓑𝓱𝓪𝓰𝓪𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓽𝓪(𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓴) 05:15, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy, Bhagadatta: I am then thinking of creating a countervote to transliterate ऋ as simply ri because in Hindi & other modern languages, it’s not pronounced as a syllabic consonant but as रि (or रु in Marathi). Both the characters, ŕ & r̥, look so odd, and are without any possible purpose or benefit, and to the detriment of our system of phonemic transliterations. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 07:21, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī: Your saying seems pretty logical to me. Our Marathi transliteration transliterates ऋ as ru already, as I just observed at तृप्ती, so even Hindi ऋ should be transliterated as ri, per its pronunciation. @Getsnoopy: I'm sorry for my sarcastic comment and wrongly interpreting what you said. See Help:Creating_a_vote for instructions on how to create a vote. 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 13:00, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SodhakSH: So you are inviting Getsnoopy to create a vote that would just change ŕ to r̥, and at the same time you agree with my proposal of having ri‽ -⸘- dictātor·mundī 14:33, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, Inqilābī, giving just information on how to start a vote, does not, by any chance, imply that I'm supporting his proposal! Apparently, Getsnoopy doesn't know much about votes, so I just told him to see that page for instructions on how to create one. I'm no way inviting him to create this vote. @Getsnoopy: If you did interpret my words so, please be aware that if you create such a vote, my vote'll be oppose as I have made it clear so many times earlier in this discussion. @Inqilābī, I do   support your proposal, but I also have no problem with the current system. If you do create a vote for this, I'll support. 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 14:55, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SodhakSH: Oh, sorry for misunderstanding your comment. I do not wish to create a vote for my proposal right away, but I was actually worried about the similar appearance of ṛ & r̥ (the former is used to transliterate the retroflex rhotic sound). And also, some time before I had actually asked User:AryamanA about using ri, but he was opposed to that (I do not remember now where that discussion occurred, but I think it was on some talk page of an entry). What I suggested above was that if Getsnoopy does create a vote, then I would create another to overturn it. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 15:34, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī: It's already so in case of Marathi; ऋ is transliterated as "ru". But now that Marathi has a functional pronunciation module, @Kutchkutch had agreed that it can go back to ṛ now. The reasoning is that transliteration is supposed to be the conversion of one script to another and should be free of phonetics. -- 𝓑𝓱𝓪𝓰𝓪𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓽𝓪(𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓴) 16:15, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Bhagadatta: The reasoning is that transliteration […] should be free of phonetics. I wanted the transliteration of ऋ to be ri / ru for the same reason as we take into account, for example, schwa-deletion in transliterations of IA languages. And our transliterations of Eastern Indo-Aryan languages is purely phonemic, anyway. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 17:03, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī: Agree with @Bhagadatta here. Schwa-deletion is a special case. ऋ is still pronounced as a syllabic/vocalic consonant by many, so it's not so clear cut. Transliteration and phonemic are oxymorons; we should reserve phonetic/phonemic information to IPA transcriptions. Getsnoopy (talk) 17:25, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: ऋ is still pronounced as a syllabic/vocalic consonant by many […] Evidence please? In which New Indo-Aryan language is it pronounced as a syllabic consonant? And as for the ’oxymoron’ argument, know well that in our IPA transcriptions, we transcribe both phonemically and phonetically; whereas transliterations are just to represent the form of the word (it has more to do with morphology than phonology), but we do not represent the (non-phonemic) orthography. However, even then the “phonemic” (for want of a better term, actually) transliteration and the phonemic transcription do not necessarily correspond to each other. Let me give one example: in Modern Bengali, ঢ় is pronounced with no aspiration, and is a homophone of ড় (ṛ), and yet is transliterated ṛh so as to distinguish it from ড়. In light of this, I see nothing wrong with a form of transliteration that does not conform to the orthography. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 18:42, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: "ऋ is still pronounced as a syllabic/vocalic consonant" Do you hang out with Vedic pandits or something? It's not syllabic in a single modern South Asian language. —AryamanA (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान) 22:16, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī, AryamanA: Apparently I do hang out with Vedic pandits, since I know many who pronounce it that way. Here's one example of someone I don't know who pronounces it that way. The point I'm making is that it's not applicable to everyone.
@Inqilābī: I'm confused by your example, since it supports my point: despite how something is pronounced, we should be transliterating it as it is written or at least is represented phonemically, which is why ऋ should be written as r̥ in the same way those Bengali letters are written as ṛ and ṛh, respectively. रि and ऋ are two separate phonemes. Getsnoopy (talk) 06:41, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: No, I was showing how your statement Transliteration and phonemic are oxymorons is wrong. ঢ় is transliterated as ṛh because it was originally pronounced with an aspiration, but in the contemporary speech it’s deaspirated. But रि and ऋ should not be regarded as ‘separate phonemes’ inasmuch as the letter ऋ occurs in modern South Asian languages only in learned borrowings from Sanskrit, and not as any native sound. रि and ऋ are as such merely homophones and there is no need to transliterate them differently. As a matter of fact, Urdu does not even have a dedicated letter for ऋ !— the usage of ऋ in Hindi & other languages is just to claim a pure lineage from Sanskrit. On the other hand, ঢ় is an inherited sound and it is transliterated as ṛh to distinguish it from the now homophonous ড়. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 08:52, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī: I miswrote it, my mistake; I mean "phonetic", not "phonemic". But the point is that regardless of what the origin is, ऋ is absolutely a different phoneme from रि, which is evidenced by the example I quote where the person pronounces it with the original pronunciation and the fact that they're used in different contexts. You're saying the phones are the same in many cases, which is true, but that's exactly my point: even if we were to use your point about our "transliteration" being phonemic rather than orthographic, phonemes belong in the "transliteration" while phones belong in the IPA. Which is why we should be transliterating them differently. Getsnoopy (talk) 17:26, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: You have yet to present any evidence that ऋ & रि are different phonemes: that guy is not teaching any Hindi stuff, is he?— he’s just proposing a new Indic script. He’s wilfully pronounced ऋ as a syllabic in keeping with Sanskrit (yes, Sanskrit, not any modern South Asian speech!) phonology. Every Hindustani speaker pronounces ऋ as रि, and I wonder when you will be convinced therewith. Now, your argument is akin to avoiding schwa deletion while uttering tatsamas and then demanding that Hindi transliteration not represent the same! And well, I have already given my Urdu example to prove that ऋ is not any separate phoneme: the Urdu alphabet is so systematic that it had to devise new letters for the native Hindustani retroflex sounds, and at the same time it does not have any equivalent of ऋ, simply because why would it need to have another letter for the same phoneme? -⸘- dictātor·mundī 19:39, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī: He's obviously not proposing creating a new Indic script for Sanskrit, an essentially extinct language; it's for all modern languages of India. But fine; here's another example. I'm not alone in pronouncing it this way; the point is that your superlative statements about "every Hindustani speaker" are clearly incorrect. The Urdu argument is not apt, as Urdu doesn't really use words which employ the ऋ (as far as I'm aware). Furthermore, it doesn't have its own characters for ङ or ष either, both of which are phonemic in Hindi. Are you saying those distinctions don't exist either, and that we should transliterate all non-labial nasals as n and श and ष both as sh (or even ś)? Getsnoopy (talk) 00:38, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Getsnoopy: I never used the words ‘proposing a new Indic script for Sanskrit’, see my comment carefully. “Every Hindustani speaker” still stands because no one would pronounce it as a syllabic in everyday speech; some youtubers teaching about ‘correct’ pronunciations does not prove your claim. And there are Urdu learned borrowings from Sanskrit words that contain the letter ऋ, such as رشی (riśi), رتو (ritu) (in Hindi the spelling variant रितु (ritu) exists, thereby corroborating my point that ऋ is not a separate phoneme) etc. Of /n/, /ŋ/, /ɳ/ the first two are phonemes while the retroflex nasal is generally not a phoneme, some might utter it in everyday speech— I am not really sure, but it is not an inherited sound. /ʃ/ is not an inherited sound but it occurs in loanwords so it is a phoneme, whilst ष is pronounced as श and therefor should actually be transliterated as ś. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 22:58, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Inqilābī: “Every Hindustani speaker” still stands because no one would pronounce it as a syllabic in everyday speech The people I cited are Hindustani speakers, and they pronounce it that way in everyday speech. The fact that I pronounce it that way, and that I've pointed to 2 examples of where people pronounce it that way (and there's plenty more examples) evidently shows that "every Hindustani speaker" doesn't pronounce it as "ri"; this is plain fact. I don't know why you're denying this. the retroflex nasal is generally not a phoneme, some might utter it in everyday speech This is patently false. The Urdu script as a benchmark for what are and are not phonemes in Hindi (or Hindustani) is not a good one at all, as evidenced by your comments. As for whether ष should be transliterated as ś as well, that seems like an unlikely suggestion to materialize, seeing as by analogy ख/ख़, क/क़, फ/फ़, ग/ग़, ज/ज़ would all need to be transliterated identically according to your logic, but I'll let others comment on that. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:55, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Getsnoopy: “Every Hindustani speaker” doesn’t pronounce it as "ri": So like < 0.1% of Hindustani speakers? Anyway, do your kith and kin not laugh down your learned affection (of pronouncing ऋ as a syllabic)? Many pronounce the nuqta letters by their foreign sounds, otherwise User:AryamanA would not have shown these sounds (/x/, /q/, /f/, /ɣ/, /z/) in {{hi-IPA}}; the nuqta letters are not comparable to ष. I used the Urdu script as a benchmark for what are phonemes in Hindustani because the Urdu script is not Sanskritised like the (Hindi) Devanagari script. Yes, the Urdu script is Persianised, but that is irrelevant here. Hindi, like many other South Asian languages, claims a pure lineage from Sanskrit, therefor the Hindi alphabet is not reliable in deciding what are phonemes in Hindustani. -⸘- dictātor·mundī 21:36, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Jeez this thread is way too long and pedantic. I am not making any changes to current transliteration system as I do not see a consensus to do so. —AryamanA (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान) 03:10, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Aryamanarora: My sentiments exactly. I don't understand why @Inqilābī is derailing this conversation by going on a tangent about how ऋ is not phonemic, but the nuqta letters are apparently. It was a simple proposal, but this is getting exhausting. I'm tempted to just put it up for a vote anyway, ignoring this derailed part of the conversation.
@Inqilābī: Do you have sources for the 0.1% number? Or for the "many pronounce the nuqta letters by their foreign sounds" statement? Because in another conversation, @Aryamanarora argued with me that many do not pronounce them as such, which is why they're not "standard" in Hindi. Regardless, I can tell you right now that /x/, /q/, and /ɣ/ at least are surely not phonemic in Hindi (without regard to Hindustani, though it might extend to that as well). Without evidence, it seems like your statements are just happening to conveniently be applicable to your position and not anyone else's. Getsnoopy (talk) 05:50, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Created the vote here: Votes/2021-05/Change Hindi transliteration of ऋ. Getsnoopy (talk) 00:32, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

t:ja-compound auto-categorize affixes edit

Just like t:affix, it can check whether a constituent begins or ends with a hyphen and then add categories like cat:Japanese words suffixed with める. Would you like this feature?

(Notifying Eirikr, TAKASUGI Shinji, Atitarev, Suzukaze-c, Poketalker, Cnilep, Marlin Setia1, 荒巻モロゾフ, 片割れ靴下, Onionbar, Shen233): -- Huhu9001 (talk) 13:03, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Support —Suzukaze-c (talk) 13:24, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  Support ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 08:13, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Added to Category by Mistake? edit

@Tommassammot [4] and [5] added Kyrgyzstan and Nepal to Category:en:Places in China --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:04, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed those, but there are lots more with the same problem. Code like <<c/...>> is only for holonyms, that is, places that the subject of the entry is part of, not for coordinate terms, which are things of the same type and part of the same larger grouping. Neighboring countries should be made into simple links with [[...]] or a linking template like {{l}}. It looks like most of @Tommassammot's edits will have to be either fixed or reverted. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:34, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
After going through all of the ones with {{place}}, it turns out to not be as bad as I thought. They mentioned neighboring countries in only a few of them, and those are now fixed. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:10, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Codifying Western Yughur edit

I would like to propose a codification of Western Yugur in order to enable its lemmatization. Western Yugur is not written and there is no standard orthography.
Right now, we have 6 entries in the language, but it could be expanded using Roos (2010)[1]. It is a great source, containing texts and a wordlist, also providing etymologies and cognate lists for most items. The entire work is written in a phonological notation. Using it to lemmatize WY is less desirable for the following reasons. 1) some characters are not really found in unicode, such as LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CURL; aspiration is indicated in an IPA-style, with an ascended h; 2) some characters cannot be found for upper case (true for most IPA-inspired characters). 3) some characters are not conventional from the IPA point of view either, such as <ɕ> for /c͡ç/ or <c̨> for /ʈ͡ʂ/.

Therefore, I propose the following system for lemmatization of Western Yugur. There you find a comparative table of characters in Roos (2000), their phonetic values and the characters under proposition. There is also a list of sample words in all three notations and a sample text in the proposed orthography. The benefits of the proposed system are the following:

  • Full phonematicity, which will make the construction of an IPA-module very easy.
  • Closeness to the "Common Turkic alphabet" where possible (this will make comparisons in etymology sections and reconstruction space more easily accessible).

I am open to discuss individual solutions to the different aspects of the system under proposition. If we can agree on a standard spelling, I will take on creation of a core bulk of entries. —⁠This unsigned comment was added by Allahverdi Verdizade (talk • contribs) at 11:12, January 13, 2021 (UTC).

Responses edit

The issue arises for many LDLs. I think that Wiktionary is not, and should not be, in the business of devising or promoting systems of orthography; if we include a term, it should normally be in a spelling that is attested (where the bar for attestation is lower for LDLs).  --Lambiam 16:33, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As there is allegedly no spelling for Western Yughur - it is not written - we cannot record spellings for this language. The best we can do is record pronunciations! For pronunciations, we should use (uncased) IPA. Recording the lemmas in the IPA seems the most neutral option for recording an unwritten language. --RichardW57 (talk) 00:22, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How are Wiktionary users most likely to encounter this language? If Roos's system is the most likely, then perhaps we should use his system, and naturally exclude words that are not written in the current repertoire of Unicode. --RichardW57 (talk) 00:22, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know how Wiktionary users are most likely to encounter this language. Roos (2000) is perhaps the most known work, but there is an important PhD-thesis on the language from 2019[2]. There are earlier dictionaries and collections of texts as well. If you visit glottolog, you will see a more complete list of references. All of them use different notations, even the several papers co-authored by Roos. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 08:13, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References edit

  1. ^ Roos, Marti (2000) The Western Yugur (Yellow Uyghur) Language. Grammar, Texts, Vocabulary, Leiden: University of Leiden
  2. ^ Zhong, Yarjis Xueqing. 2019. Rescuing a Language from Extinction: Documentation and Practical Steps for the Revitalisation of (Western) Yugur. (Doctoral dissertation, Australian National University; xxxi+467pp.)

Pali Pronunciation edit

I am not keen on attempting to record this, but @Octahedron80 has requested it for citta. Firstly, the ancient pronunciation seems not to be certain - were orthographic clusters of resonant + h murmured or simply clusters as written? Secondly, there are a lot of present-day regional variations, and nowadays even variations due to inconsistent attempts to achieve a more authentic pronunciation.

For example, how do we accommodate the Sinhalese and English failure to sound aspiration and distinguish dentals and retroflexes?

Should we tie pronunciations to scripts, or where possible tie them all to the trans-script (in this case, Latin script) form. For traditional Tai pronunciations, Pali is a tonal language. Phonemically, it should have two tones (etymologically voiceless v. voiced), but the allophones will belong to different tonemes in the speakers' mother tongues, and irregular pronunciations may make some of these differences locally phonemic. How do we handle regional variation in the tones within countries - and do they occur?

We also have the issue that the citation forms do not always occur in the language, or, I suspect, in the script. --RichardW57 (talk) 15:09, 13 January 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Appendix:Japanese counters page edit

An apparently well-meaning user, Zenkaino_lovelive (talk • contribs), has created this page. I find it bafflingly organized. I think what they're trying to do already exists at Category:Japanese_counters.

@Zenkaino, could you please have a look at Category:Japanese_counters and see if that might already list up the various entries you appear to be collating at Appendix:Japanese counters? If the Category page already does what you need, we should delete your Appendix page. If the Category page doesn't do what you need, could you please explain what you were trying to accomplish with your Appendix page?

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 08:19, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise, I think the Appendix:Jōyō kanji by Kanten degree page might be re-creating content we already have somewhere else. @Suzukaze-c, Huhu9001, TAKASUGI Shinji, other Japanese editors, could you check? My bandwidth lately is very restricted, and I likely won't be able to spend any appreciable time on Wiktionary for a while. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 08:23, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Eirikr: I made the appendices because I think that conjunction of numbers and counters is necessary for foreigners. Also, I think that we should divide Japanese kanji by Kanten degree. These are just my thought, though. Zenkaino lovelive (talk) 08:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Zenkaino_lovelive: No, understanding and learning numbers and counters is necessary. Simply throwing them together in one place without explanation just creates an incomprehensible wall of Japanese characters. I challenge anyone not fluent in Japanese to figure out what information is being presented. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:57, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Then what is the best? Zenkaino lovelive (talk) 09:00, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I personally think that the best location is the entry for the counter itself ([6]), but I can't imagine what header would be good for it. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 09:02, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that adding information (when to use the counters) is the best. BTW, @Suzukaze-c, could you correct my errors in Appendix:Japanese counters? I think that there is something incorrect. Zenkaino lovelive (talk) 09:05, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, both "Classifier" and "Counter" are listed as permissible POS headers at WT:EL. Barring those, I would argue against "Noun", which we use for English measure words, because the classifier system is semantically more like the noun class system in many African languages. I would note that we tend to use "Particle" when we can't think of anything else. If you're talking about the header to use to house a list, that's trickier. They're definitely not "Derived terms" or "Coordinate terms", and none of the nyms fit. I guess we would be stuck with "See also". That said, maybe it would be better to have something along the lines of the subcategories of Category:Chinese nouns by classifier, except with information on the semantic characteristics the classes have in common. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:12, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What's "Kanten degree"? Can't find it on Google. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 12:13, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Kanten is "漢字検定". Degree is "級". Zenkaino lovelive (talk) 12:48, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Zenkaino lovelive: What? Romaji for 漢字検定 is Kanji Kentei. Where is this Kanten stuff? -- Huhu9001 (talk) 00:41, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Huhu9001:漢字検定->漢検->Kanken. I've corrected. BTW, could you correct my errors in Appendix:Japanese counters? Looks like there is something incorrect. Zenkaino lovelive (talk) 00:44, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Good intentions and efforts but it's not a very useful page. Delete. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:02, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 07:02, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. -- Huhu9001 (talk) 11:43, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think that if I add when to use the counters, the appendix will be useful. Zenkaino lovelive (talk) 05:41, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've written all when to use the counters. See: Appendix:Japanese counters. Zenkaino lovelive (talk) 08:02, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I do find it useful for Japanese learners, and it functions differently than the Category. Jonashtand (talk) 16:09, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Countable/uncountable edit

Is the label uncountable applied correctly in the def 1.2.1 ("(uncountable, measure word for livestock and game) A single animal."; usage example: 200 head of cattle) in head? The label seems to be used to indicate that head doesn't take a plural-s. The question arose over German Stück, but could be similarly asked for other German measure words (Glas, Meter, and other units of measurement). How should these forms be classified? --Akletos (talk) 07:54, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see it as a plural, not uncountable. "100 million head of cattle are..." Equinox ◑ 08:22, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
snow (state of water) is an example for something being uncountable, there's no 1 snow, 2 snows, 3 snows. (Well, in technical language there could exist such a plural (Artenplural or Sortenplural) when there are different types of snows, but then it also has another meaning.) --幽霊四 (talk) 11:18, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Would it be better to write {{lb|en|singular}} => (in the singular)? Vox Sciurorum (talk) 16:11, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But Equinox's example shows it to agree with a plural verb. I would call it invariant, ie, plural form = singular form.
Snow is both countable and uncountable: "We only got three significant snows last year.". I suppose one could argue that the countable use is informal. DCDuring (talk) 16:19, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
[[head#Noun]] is a great example of the variety or English plurals and (un)countability. It has a conventional plural and an invariant plural for at least one sense. It has senses that are almost always countable and some that are both countable and uncountable. It is probably a mistake to put (un)countable labels on senses rather than subsenses. I am not so sure about the inflection line either, but we have have (un)countability labels there for single-definition nouns and for multi-definition words that are only one or the other. The prospect of reforming the presentation of countability and uncountability for polysemic terms that have some uncountable and some uncountable definitions seems unlikely to generate a consensus or enthusiasm. DCDuring (talk) 17:48, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Liywy is mass-removing Japanese term written in katakana edit

@Eirikr, TAKASUGI Shinji: Hi. User:Liywy is mass-removing Japanese terms written in katakana from translations. Please review. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 09:48, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(copying response here:) I for one agree with Liywy that most of these katakana words can be omitted (perhaps not all of them— but some of these are obviously marginal/marked, like エンゼル and フッテージ). —Suzukaze-c (talk) 09:51, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Individual terms can be disputed but mass-removing valid terms is bad. Even フッテージ (futtēji, “footage”) or エンゼル (enzeru, “angel”) can simply be labelled as rare. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 10:37, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Labelling marked/marginal/rare terms seems like the better way (if the terms do exist, of course). Alternatively, the usual term could give uncommon terms as synonyms, but firstly, that doesn't seem like a better way, and secondly, currently 天使 doesn't give エンゼル or エンジェル (both are in アルゼンチン) as synonyms. --幽霊四 (talk) 11:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The ban seems a bit over-hasty. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 14:56, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, they are given as synonyms for "angel", not for "Argentina" on that oage. You can also view some Japanese dictionary entries: https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/エンゼル and https://kotobank.jp/word/エンジェル-1847#E7.B2.BE.E9.81.B8.E7.89.88.20.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E5.9B.BD.E8.AA.9E.E5.A4.A7.E8.BE.9E.E5.85.B8 I only mentioned エンゼル as an example that the word does exist on my talk page, it's not the edit that I have undone. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:25, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
These links are dishonest. Note that for the Weblio link, there are 26 example sentences in total, with the vast majority of them being about baseball and the rest featuring "エンゼル" in a compound word, while the Kotobank link primarily features encyclopedia pages on proper names "Angel", or angel investors, with only one (1) dictionary definition featuring 2 literary quotes from 1891 and 1907, and I encourage everyone to use Google Translate on the latter link to personally verify. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 02:36, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Deletion of エンゼル" is not the translation that I have reverted. Not sure about dishonesty. The examples given in both dictionaries use are unhelpful for our CFI but the definitions/translations are. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 04:16, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is an old issue and Liywy is long gone, but I agree with Suzukaze-c, there is far too much katakana English in the Japanese translations. The fact that a katakana word is found in Japanese does not mean it is ordinary Japanese usage (see my talk page). Often the Japanese term is found only in articles having the nature of "What does インヴェストメント mean?" or in the names of companies (スズカゼ・インヴェストメント株式会社, just to make one up). If you don't really know Japanese you won't pick this up. Bathrobe (talk) 19:19, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I know very well that not all katakana respellings are valid Japanese words. Please see my response at the bottom of this topic from “04:16, 19 January 2021 (UTC)”. I mentioned, which words I reverted, all are attested and common words. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 21:30, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I saw them. They are valid words. I'm not agreeing that katakana words should be deleted en masse. But there is definitely a tendency on Wiktionary to indiscriminately include katakana transliterations as Japanese translations of English words where they are of questionable validity. I have removed (or demoted) a few, although I try to be careful what I remove. Of course, native speakers can get it wrong if they are fixated on the issue (as can sticklers for using kanji that are no longer in common use -- see the entry for "emu"). Still, both Liywy and Suzukaze-c are justified in regarding the tendency on Wiktionary to include katakana respellings as valid Japanese words has gone a little too far. Bathrobe (talk) 23:52, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have called on the community to check words, which are in doubt. The tendency, not only for Japanese but e.g. Korean or Hindi and Urdu is explainable, transliterated loanwords are more likely to be understood by English speakers and they are more likely to be added by anyone. Still, the effort to clean up foreign "contaminations" shouldn't include deleting those if they are attestable in a given sense, even if there are more common or better native words and the percentage of loanwords seems too high. It's up to contributors to add more important, useful, native and appropriate terms. If the words are attested and kept, they can be labelled "rare", specific to certain contexts, etc. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:06, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with what you say. Yes, Liywy was going too far in his ideologically-inspired edit wars to indiscriminately remove katakana terms. Still, the indiscriminate addition of katakana terms by non-native editors is also a problem (which you appeared to recognise when you wrote "transliterated loanwords are more likely to be understood by English speakers and they are more likely to be added by anyone"), and I would suggest that some circumspection should be exercised. If you don't know the language, be careful what you add.
Incidentally, I am doubtful about the word ピル as a normal Japanese term for medicines in solid form. Do a Google search and virtually all the top results refer to the contraceptive pill. In other words, ピル for most Japanese would conjure up what in English is known as "the Pill", not ordinary everyday tablets. Bathrobe (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Atitarev, I also think it was a bit hasty to ban @Liywy, especially when they're a native speaker. If these gairaigo removed by Liywy are anything like their equivalents in Korean (and I freely admit they might not be, since I don't speak Japanese), many of them would be marked or unusual forms—purposeful Anglicisms, to some extent used precisely because of their foreignness—and if so, I see why Liywy might have wanted to remove them from the translation tables.
In addition, many of Liywy's edits were adding non-gairaigo equivalents into translation lists without removing established English loans (1, 2), which I don't see as disruptive. I think this should have been discussed more.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 15:16, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Liywy has removed many attestable terms, I have only undone some of them. The disruptive edits were in the edit-warring that followed on some entries, not the edits themselves. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:16, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can understand why we would want to stop @Liywy from making mass changes until they're discussed, but a sitewide block is overkill. They're not being disruptive in general, but (allegedly) in a very narrow context. I changed it to mainspace-only so they can participate here, and I think we can reduce it or remove it once we understand better what's going on. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have invited User:Liywy to this discussion on their talk page. DCDuring (talk) 17:55, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A Japanese speaker should try to engage this user (e-mail, other projects, invitation to WT:AJA in case their Babel box accurately characterizes their English skills as non-existent. DCDuring (talk) 18:07, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Their English is apparently fine judging by what they told me on my talk page.
My block decision was based not on the edits themselves or [opinion] but because of the edit warring. I have reverted some of their removals with an explanation and a link to Google books but they have reverted again with no explanation. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:10, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Their validity is highly disputable, and casually presenting them in a translation table on par with common terms is misleading. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 02:38, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Which particular translations are highly disputable? So far I have reverted removal of Japanese loanwords from English for the following words: discount, pill, boyfriend, girlfriend, rival, sportsman, electronics. The existence and use of valid corresponding katakana words are easy to prove. I haven't gone through all removals, though. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 04:16, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Chagossian Creole edit

What could be the code for the Chagossian Creole? --Apisite (talk) 12:33, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd think it's classified as part of the Mauritian Creole on Wiktionary, so mfe. Thadh (talk) 12:43, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Thadh: How different are the creoles from each other? --Apisite (talk) 12:54, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Apisite: No idea, I'm hearing of Chagossian for the first time; I just noted the probable answer to your question, since Wikipedia (and ISO apparently) classifies it as a dialect of Mauritian. Thadh (talk) 13:06, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Turkish words derived from Old Turkic edit

I have seen Old Turkic used with {{etyl}} as if it were an ancestor of Turkish, but it is not configured to be one in the module data. It is unclear if the intention is to indicate inheritance from Old Turkic, borrowing from Old Turkic, or mentioning of the word as a contemporary cognate of an unattested ancestor. I wonder if Category:Turkish terms derived from Old Turkic and Category:Ottoman Turkish terms derived from Old Turkic should have as many entries as they do, or if the Old Turkic words should generally be listed as cognates. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 19:44, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vox Sciurorum: Quote Allahverdi Verdizade at Wiktionary:Etymology scriptorium/2020/December § Moving Proto-Turkic words on /*g-, *d-/ to /*k-, *t-/: Nişanyan doesn't deal with Proto-Turkic (only Common Turkic) and obviously equals Old Turkic with Common Turkic, and views it as an ancestor of all modern Common Turkic languages […]. He has also said in one of his streams (in a series of youtube-videos called Dilbilim ve etimoloji, if the memory serves) that "Old Turkic is the ancestor of all modern Turkic languages", a view that we of course cannot support. Quote end.
And Nişanyan is the most accessable etymological dictionary of Turkish, so this is why Turkish editors treated the Old Turkic cognates, which Old Turkic words are only in relation to Turkish, barring rare cases were Old Anatolian Turkish may have borrowed from Old Turkic, given by Nişanyan as ancestors. So the derivations are wrong altogether and Old Turkic words are cognates. Fay Freak (talk) 20:15, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I remove them when I see them, but I haven't gone through all entries systematically. Someone should do it, but it's a hell lot of work, 377 entries. Many Old Turkic cognates are moreover entered in Latin script... Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 21:48, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that Sevan Bey has a different understanding of the term Eski Türkçe (literally “Old Turkish”) than what we call “Old Turkic”. The latter name is a bit confusing; one would expect it to mean “an older version of Turkic”, a progenitor of the various branches of Turkic, instead of referring to merely one among several older versions of Turkic languages.  --Lambiam 01:02, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are there any cases where Spanish terms shouldn't have a link to the DLE? edit

Many of our entries have links to the DLE using {{R:RAE}} but some don't and I trying to add them whenever I see it missing (e.g. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=byte&diff=prev&oldid=61611329). Is there any good reason to not add this link as long as there is an entry in the DLE to point to for an entry? Seems like this is almost bot-like work and it seems obvious that it should be included without any real human discrimination but maybe there's something I'm missing. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:14, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think {{R:RAE}} should normally be used. I expect there are a few entries where it will not match our definition, maybe because there is a new or distinctly American sense that hasn't been recognized (yet) by the authorities in Spain. A bot would need to parse the HTTP response from dle.rae.es to see if it contains a definition, a pointer to an alternative form, or an error. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 15:10, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This was done several years ago with links in French entries to the TLFI. I believe it was considered a success, even though there are still entries being discovered with bad links. It might help if we could track down discussions on that operation to see what lessons were learned (here is a search for mentions of it in the Wiktionary, Talk and User Talk namespaces). For reference, it was done by @Kc_kennylau using User:Kennybot. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:37, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Interface admin rights edit

I'd like to get the interface admin bit to add a bit of a WikiHiero related kludge to common.js. Since I am a bureaucrat, I'm technically able to add the right myself, but I'd like to first make sure that the community would agree with that decision. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 20:07, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Before the introduction of the interface admin right, all admins could edit those pages. I oppose any bureaucracy limiting admins from becoming interface admins, and I would support a measure to give those rights to all admins by default. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 20:14, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Seconded. If you don't trust admins' judgement, then why are they admins? Everyone makes mistakes but I think the community here is generally pretty conservative in its editing anyway and tends to stick to areas of competence as it is. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:40, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I’ll throw in a third support for extending this to admins in general. The current situation was only intended as a stopgap solution to begin with. Also chiming in with support for Surjection’s IA-ship (and WikiHiero-related changes) in any case. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 05:50, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Makes sense to me. --{{victar|talk}} 08:12, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It makes sense, and I agree to this individual request of course. But the Wikimedia guys made a general decision that admin rights should not automatically entail interface admin rights. So at least we had this small hurdle of somebody requesting this right so not all who don’t even need it have it, for security reasons. One could only argue that the supposed danger with en.Wiktionary in particular is not that great anyway because there are so few admins anyway so Wiktionary can give it to every admin anyway, but this is difficult to argue if even en.Wiktionary with its now seemingly few editors is in the tops of the most-edited Wikimedia wikis – I don’t know which are the most-edited wikis, when I search this I only get endless articles about the most-edited Wikipedia articles which is of zero interest as I’d like to know the largest wikis by frequency, but at least we have lists for total size, and en.Wiktionary takes the tenth place by total admin count, and that is only an eleventh of English Wikipedia’s total number of admins, so the assumption is likely that we are not allowed to just give interface admin to every admin. Fay Freak (talk) 17:32, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A book that may interest Wiktionarians edit

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955480798/the-liars-dictionary-is-a-clever-delight-for-language-lovers —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:46, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A second: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/25/960299623/voice-author-explores-accents-language-and-what-makes-a-tone-sexy —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:19, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Module:IPA-deva edit

I'm not sure whether this should be moved or deleted, but the name is incorrect- it's a Hindi headword template, and it's definitely not ready for prime time. At the very least it should me moved to a subpage of "Module:User:Kushalpok01". Pinging @Kushalpok01, who may not have seen my message on their talk page yet. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:20, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Requests for quotation/Johnson edit

I started working on Category:Requests for quotation/Johnson, and after the first dozen or so, I considered this a useless pursuit. For all those I checked, the only Johnson quotations supposedly requested were actually from Samuel Johnson's dictionary. Perhaps Samuel Johnson in his day was requesting quotations? Perhaps whoever first added {{rfquotek|Johnson}} was confused and wanted to add a reference tag instead, like "hey, this term appears in SJ's dictionary!"? Even so, I kinda just wanna delete all instances of {{rfquotek|Johnson}}. Unless someone gives me a good reason not to (specifically the Johnson rfqs), that's exactly what I propose. Alexfromiowa (talk) 21:23, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they are references to entries in Johnson's dictionary. Some might have quotations there though. Equinox ◑ 09:10, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Close WT:TRREQ? edit

I just took a moment to look at WT:TRREQ. Of the roughly 90 requests on the page, only one has actually been answered. We even have this BJAODN-worthy request, which I guess I am "answering" by means of this BP post.

The incoming traffic presumably is coming from this Quora answer with more than a million views (it is the fourth or fifth result for this Google search if you can't read it via the direct link).

Since nobody is actually translating anything on this page anymore, I'd like to suggest marking the page archived, closed, historical, or whatever the practice is on this site. It is pretty misleading to give people an expectation that their phrase will ever be translated, when in fact only 1 or 2 percent of requests are fulfilled. This, that and the other (talk) 04:11, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If we retire this and if it also has a lot of incoming traffic, we should have a big banner at the top explaining that it was retired and why. Maybe even edit-protect the page and offer alternative suggestions. Frankly, I'm surprised that anyone would even come here to ask how to translate from English to Spanish "The girls that were following u yesterday was trying to fight u" since this is a phrase that online translators should easily be able to resolve. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:10, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Might as well. It was mostly Stephen G Brown who used to fulfil the requests. Machine translation such as Google's free service has improved a lot in recent years too. Equinox ◑ 05:13, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I also support closure. Koavf's plan (edit-protection with an explanatory banner) sounds like the right call. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:23, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto. Let's close it. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:40, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  Support PUC – 12:06, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'll add that I support closing this page because I don't see how it relates to the work we do here. We're not a forum for learning languages or for providing free translation services. If it helped filling up gaps in our coverage (in our translation tables, for example) I would keep it, but it clearly doesn't do that. PUC – 22:51, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  Support closure, the addition of a banner explaining what and why, and edit protection of the page. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 19:15, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  Support closing with a banner. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:57, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why not start translating the requests again (which would be the obvious solution) instead of closing? J3133 (talk) 12:24, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Because 95% of the requests are utterly inane. I used to follow that page and provide translations wherever I could, but I eventually got fed up with the ridiculousness of the requests. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:19, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think he means to oppose J3133's suggestion. But either way, I think you would be willing to support the above proposal, Eirikr? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:57, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Oppose Rather than close it down, maybe there should be a better process. For instance, you could ask for the original text and then an attempted translation, either manually or via AI, which must be included with any translation request. Any translation request that does not include a translation attempt of some type or a justification for why an attempted translation or AI translation is not included is summarily deleted. Anyone else left after this process should be looking for a refinement, clarification or some kind of other special assistance. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:47, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Adding surface analyses to fill in gaps in suffix categories edit

Most of the suffix category pages (e.g. Category:English_words_suffixed_with_-ation) are missing many words that could be placed in those categories. I have an interest in making those categories as complete as possible, so I have started adding suffix templates where appropriate.

For example, I recently added

"Morphologically combine +‎ -ation"

at the end of the Etymology section of the combination page.

I eventually hope to be making many such edits, so I wanted to drop a note here in case anyone had any comments or objections.

Jonathanbratt (talk) 22:38, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This type of information is more common in Romance entries for some reason. We typically use “corresponding to ... + ...” or “equivalent to ... + ...”. — Ungoliant (falai) 22:44, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As long as you are analyzing your edits by hand and not just automatedly adding the categories to any word ending in "ation" I have no problem with it. DTLHS (talk) 22:48, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I object. Doing so clutters up a category that should show actual historical derivation (and mostly does so) with John-come-lately morphological reanalysis. DCDuring (talk) 22:49, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am indeed analyzing by hand, though I have been submitting the edits via the API to streamline the process. And I am happy to use "Equivalent to..." or whatever preface is preferred. I've seen several varieties in use, and don't have a strong opinion about it. I sympathize with the desire to avoid cluttering up the Etymology section with "surface" morphological reanalyses, but there is also value in providing such surface analyses. If there were a section besides Etymology to place these edits in, I would be happy to make them there. Jonathanbratt (talk) 23:00, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Would combine (/komˈbaɪn/) + -ation really give combination (/kombɪˈneɪʃən/) and not *combination (/komˈbaɪneɪʃən/)? --幽霊四 (talk) 23:07, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, regarding historical etymology vs. surface analysis, I had based my approach on the guidelines at Wiktionary:Etymology#Surface_etymologies. Jonathanbratt (talk) 23:21, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with DCDuring. I'm not against showing surface etymologies, but I think they should use |nocat=1 in the affix template. Ultimateria (talk) 04:07, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It probably should be discussed if |nocat= is to be made mandatory. I don't think everyone would agree with that. --{{victar|talk}} 05:10, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm ok with using |nocat=1 in the templates, if that's the preferred approach. But if it is, I suggest that the guidelines (linked above) be updated accordingly. Jonathanbratt (talk) 05:05, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The existence of a productive suffix facilitates the borrowing of foreign terms that show the respective equivalent in the foreign language, that's a self-reinforcing process. So this productive suffix plays a major role in the borrowing of terms as you can see e.g. in the way these words are pronounced. You can't explain the pronunciation of -ation in combination without taking -ation into account. A parallel case are compounds; even if there was a ME predecessor of barnyard, the word's still a compound of barn+yard and should be categorised as such. --Akletos (talk) 07:20, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need to have clean diachronic (historical) etymological derivation categories. If the cost of that is having synchronic (morphological) categories also, that would be fine with me. It might take quite a while before the two are properly populated, but this is a giant work in progress anyway. DCDuring (talk) 17:09, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Add a note on pages with Lua memory errors edit

Which would link to Wiktionary:Lua memory errors, in order that readers be informed about this problem and that it is known (i.e., we are aware of it; see Wiktionary:Feedback § a, § i). J3133 (talk) 12:06, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary:Grease pit/2021/February § Lua error: not enough memory, Talk:a § Lua error. J3133 (talk) 19:50, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@J3133: that’s a good idea. And some radical workaround should be seriously considered, such as moving content into subpages. — SGconlaw (talk) 17:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/May § Add a note on pages with Lua memory errors (2). J3133 (talk) 17:35, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Deprecating bbz edit

Babalia Creole Arabic language is considered a spurious language, and its ISO 639 code bbz was retired in 2019. Can we deprecate it at WT:LT and delete the code from Module:languages/data3/b? —Mahāgaja · talk 18:17, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mahagaja: Did we miss a set of code changes? We should probably be more on top of that... —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 18:30, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Metaknowledge: I dunno; I didn't check the others at w:Spurious languages#Retired 2019. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:37, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Of those, we still seem to be using ayy, bbz, cca, lmz, tbb. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:50, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I noted some of these (e.g. lmz, tbb) at Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2020/October#2019-2020_ISO_code_changes, but missed bbz; I wonder whether it was part of a different set of changes? (Or I just missed it.) I held off on retiring "lmz" (and evidently no-one else did anything, either) because there's been controversy over recognizing the Lumbee as an Indian People or Tribe, and I wanted to research whether controversy over recognizing a Lumbee lect was connected to that; it appears no Lumbee language is attested, and w:Lumbee#Language asserts that one never existed. I suppose we could retire the code and later re-add it as an ety-only code if there are words in Lumbee English that sources have suggested might derive from "Lumbee". - -sche (discuss) 23:24, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@-sche: Thanks. I was just reading a bit about Lumbee English; I do think we should remove the code entirely. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:26, 28 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, following up on this, I removed bbz. - -sche (discuss) 23:16, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unnecessary sidebar links edit

I think that the "Create a book" and "Download as PDF" links in the sidebar are pretty useless for a dictionary. Any objections to just removing these? --Yair rand (talk) 06:34, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The PDF one might be very useful for somebody using an e-reader for offline reading (or maybe printing it out; Web pages don't print well). Certainly at least get usage statistics before killing the working feature. Equinox ◑ 06:44, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure those stats are available anywhere, unfortunately. It strikes me as unlikely that one would save a dictionary entry for offline reading in the first place, though. --Yair rand (talk) 07:07, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What's the harm in leaving 'Download as PDF'? This seems like a solution in search of a problem. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 07:10, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Do we get any specific benefit from removing either of these or is it just a rage for tidiness? DCDuring (talk) 14:44, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The latter, kinda. Having unnecessary components of the interface is bad for the user experience. --Yair rand (talk) 02:10, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If it is a question of whether it is worth the effort to determine whether it is worth repairing the Book gadget, I could see the point of putting the matter to a vote or asking whether anyone would be willing to work on it. The pdf creator doesn't seem to have any problem. The book gadget might be useful to create first drafts of specialized glossaries, though I don't know of anyone trying to do such a thing. Also there is a supposed 'partner' that would print up such books. Do they still offer the service? Would they be willing to work to repair, enhance, or replace the gadget? DCDuring (talk) 21:48, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am against a removal like this one proposes. Some entries have multiple definitions or have a lot of example sentences. Someone might want to use this information in an offline presentation like a 4-H meeting or some kind of small gathering, or maybe want something to read or confer with while deprived of internet access on a plane or on a bus or something like that. I remember downloading a pdf of a Wikipedia page or two a long time ago. However, I think it would be good to get usage stats if they can be gotten. If really no one is using it, then I think trashing it becomes very reasonable. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:10, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objection to removing "create a book". "Download as PDF" might be useful, as described above. We could see if the devs could give us stats on how often the features are used. - -sche (discuss) 02:20, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Moving Wikimania 2021 to a Virtual Event edit

 

Hello. Apologies if you are not reading this message in your native language. Please help translate to your language. Thank you!

Wikimania will be a virtual event this year, and hosted by a wide group of community members. Whenever the next in-person large gathering is possible again, the ESEAP Core Organizing Team will be in charge of it. Stay tuned for more information about how you can get involved in the planning process and other aspects of the event. Please read the longer version of this announcement on wikimedia-l.

ESEAP Core Organizing Team, Wikimania Steering Committee, Wikimedia Foundation Events Team, 15:16, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Arabic script isolated forms edit

Should ﺝ (U+FE9D "Arabic letter jeem isolated form") be a hard redirect to ج (U+062C "Arabic letter jeem")? The latter page lists U+FE9D among the possible forms. There may be others. This is one I was confused by when I cut-and-pasted a character that was a non-combining form. (@Atitarev) Vox Sciurorum (talk) 21:00, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, all the special isolated, initial, medial, and final forms should be redirected. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 21:08, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Template:senseid edit

Is it allowed to use this template directly under an etymology heading to point to an etymology rather than to a specific sense? If not, is there any other template for that? — surjection ⟨??⟩ 22:18, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Project Grant Open Call edit

This is the announcement for the Project Grants program open call that started on January 11, with the submission deadline of February 10, 2021.
This first open call will be focussed on Community Organizing proposals. A second open call focused on research and software proposals is scheduled from February 15 with a submission deadline of March 16, 2021.

For the Round 1 open call, we invite you to propose grant applications that fall under community development and organizing (offline and online) categories. Project Grant funds are available to support individuals, groups, and organizations to implement new experiments and proven ideas, from organizing a better process on your wiki, coordinating a campaign or editathon series to providing other support for community building. We offer the following resources to help you plan your project and complete a grant proposal:

Program officers are also available to offer individualized proposal support upon request. Contact us if you would like feedback or more information.

We are excited to see your grant ideas that will support our community and make an impact on the future of Wikimedia projects. Put your idea into motion, and submit your proposal by February 10, 2021!

Please feel free to get in touch with questions about getting started with your grant application, or about serving on the Project Grants Committee. Contact us at projectgrants<<at>>wikimedia.org. Please help us translate this message to your local language. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:01, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

PageNotice extension again edit

In my reading of the matter, the community intends that the {{reconstruction}} template currently transcluded at the top of every page in the Reconstruction: namespace be displayed automatically using the PageNotice extension. See Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2019/January#PageNotice extension.

In order for this to be done, evidence of community consensus needs to be shown to Wikimedia developers. This doesn't need to be a formal WT:VOTE, but can be a discussion or vote here showing that the community is in favour. Pinging @Erutuon and @Victar.

This, that and the other (talk) 09:48, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

AWB access redux edit

I'm planning to do a whole bunch of edits using AWB; to avoid clogging up my contribs, I've created an alt account (User:Citrarta); could that account have AWB access? Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 01:59, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Hazarasp:   Done. Will you need a flood flag on that account? Also, if you plan on bulk edits, have you considered starting a vote to get a bot flag on that account? —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:17, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If all goes smoothly with the first batch of edits I do, I'll consider both of those (I don't want to enable the flood flag if the edits end up being prone to mistakes) Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 02:43, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Metaknowledge Probably going to make another bunch of edits with AWB; it'd be good if the flood flag was enabled on User:Citrarta. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 22:56, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hazarasp I noticed that no one had done anything about the flood flag, so I went ahead and took care of it. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:47, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Hazarasp: Note that pings only work if they are added in the same edit as your signature. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:11, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Merging of U+34A8 㒨 and U+20457 𠑗 edit

The character 20457 𠑗 appears to be a duplicate of 34A8 㒨, but there is a page for each of them, with different references in Kangxi Zidian (where supposedly only 20457 𠑗 is present but 34A8 㒨 would be on the next page) and Hanyu Dazidian (where 34A8 㒨 comes immediately before 20457 𠑗). I do not have a copy of HYDZD with me, and while Wiktionary supposedly uses the first edition, all online resources I have seen so far point to the second edition. Could someone with a copy confirm that both these characters (if they are different at all) appear?

The Chinese Text Project has also normalized 20457 𠑗 to 34A8 㒨, but I am not certain of its authoritativeness.

Compare the duplicates 3DB7 㶷 and 2420E 𤈎 which both use one page with a note that 2420E 𤈎 was encoded as a duplicate by mistake.

If there is no evidence that 34A8 㒨 and 20457 𠑗 are different characters in HYDZD, I propose that these two pages get merged into one. OosakaNoOusama (talk) 00:06, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@OosakaNoOusama: The Hanyu Dazidian data is according to Unicode's Unihan Database. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 19:09, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As for duplicate-ness, GlyphWiki seems to be treating them differently (different default [un-suffixed] glyphs). —Suzukaze-c (talk) 19:11, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@OosakaNoOusama: While this blog by Andrew West does say the two characters are unifiable, characters 5 and 6 in HYDZD, volume 1, page 239 are different. Character 5 does not have 囟 in between 𦥑, but something similar to 同 with 丿, except the 口 is stuck to the left (sorry for the bad description). It seems like this character was removed from in the second edition of HYDZD, though. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 21:09, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is how it looks. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 01:03, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, Wikipedia states: "U+20457 is the same as the China-source glyph for U+34A8, but it is significantly different from the Taiwan-source glyph for U+34A8."  --Lambiam 11:19, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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