Wiktionary:Information desk/2016/February

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← January 2016 · February 2016 · March 2016 → · (current)

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Sectum

nice to know the accusative and nominative of sectum but what about the definition? That's what I clicked on your site for. Best, Joe Taylor, New York City

I am sorry that it was unclear, but sectum is a form of sectus which has the definitions. It means cut; divided; amputated. - TheDaveRoss 13:47, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Link template?

So according the tutorial, one should use [[page]], but Template:link seems to do the same thing, and also gives you the option to specify the language. Are there any rules on which one I should use, or are they interchangeable? NINTENPUG (talk) 17:39, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

[[page]] can only be used for English, but {{link}} ({{l|en|page}}) can be used for any language, including English. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:26, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Can somebody identify this consonant?

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1uTwqvAmz3N --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 05:02, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

It sounds like a voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant to me. I'm not 100% certain, though. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:49, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

To me it sounds like sʲ, a dentalized laminal palatalized voiceless alveolar fricative. For example, listen to the audio at всё (ignoring the initial f sound). —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:21, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

My best guesses are also [ɕ] and [sʲ], but identifying sounds on the basis of their acoustics alone without any knowledge of the phonological system they belong to is very tricky. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:12, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

To me it sounds like [sʲ] or [xʲ] or [ç], but certainly not [ɕ]. --WikiTiki89 16:21, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I think [sʲ] is a likely candidate (it sounds palatalized, now that I listen to it again), but I'm doubtful of [xʲ] and [ç]. I'm no expert, though, so I'll gladly defer to the judgement of others when it comes to finer points of the IPA. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:25, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

It sounds to me like a very forceful s (I almost thought it was an ejective for a minute there), with palatalization (sort of [sʲ] fortis). The vowel is nasalized, which contrasts strongly with the consonant. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:29, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that [sʲ] is my first choice. --WikiTiki89 16:11, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

User:Conrad.Irwin/editor.js

Hello everyone, I just tried this js. on de Dutch Wiktionary and expected that the template trans-top gets the gadget voor adding of translations. However it isn't work and I can't understand what went wrong. Can somebody help me to solve this? Thank you very much. -- Denis Marinov (talk) 22:43, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Quality check -- does this meet the requirements for inclusion on Wikitionary / have I formatted this correctly

During a brain fart, while reading The Faerie Queene in preparation for revamping an essay I'd written on it, I was stumped by the spelling "vniust" and Google gave no easy-to-find definition. I realized it was "unjust" but I noticed an old discussion page on Wiktionary about whether or not the word should be defined. Defining it would have been a great help to me in this case and I regularly study Spenser, so I imagine that vniust has stumped quite a few people who don't have a specialization in a poet who always writes with those forms, especially based on the results I saw from searching vniust (lots of people asking w/ no answers, it would seem).

So, I added vniust, along with some citations, and I was hoping some Wiktionary veterans could check the page out to make sure I've done it properly (the guides were of some help but I figured out most of the formatting by just opening "edit" on various pages that had archaic forms, quotations, and all that stuff). I'm pretty sure the word does qualify for inclusion in Wiktionary since any readers of Spenser, the Wycliffe Bible, King James Bible, and various other Middle English / anachronistic modern English texts will probably run across it (at the very least, people who major in English will probably take a Middle English course and read some Chaucer and such, and it is not translated in the footnotes of the Standard Edition of Spenser. It is in the Middle English Dictionary

Bradapalooza (talk) 16:16, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I've changed it to {{obsolete typography of}} as it's spelled the same as 'unjust' just using different characters, the same way I can write cɑt instead of cat. The community's pretty split on these; some have been deleted, some not (that's what happens by the way when your deletion process is based on voting). Personally I think the pragmatic solution might be to allow these but to not allow them to be created by bot, no 'mass creation'.

In terms of your formatting, which was the question after all, it's very, very good. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:28, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Looks OK to me. But you don't need to repeat the definition. (I don't know if it should be Old English or Middle English though, rather than English) SemperBlotto (talk) 16:30, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, vniust is really more applicable to the one definition of unjust (3 iirc) than a pure carbon copy of the modern usage of the word as far as I know. It's not Old English -- it starts popping up in Middle English as "vniuste" but Spenser and the KJV are considered the start of Modern English just with somewhat anachronistic spellings (Spenser and the writers of KJV were purposefully writing words to LOOK like Middle English while intending them to be pronounced like the spellings of their day because it was "more formal") -- it's sort of a liminal point between Middle and Modern English. Bradapalooza (talk) 17:16, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

are

Are there any dialects that use are in place of am or is? I know that you can say ‘jag är’ in Swedish, but if I said ‘I are’ in English people would look at me like I’m brain damaged. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 13:59, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, in the Midlands and East Yorkshire (UK), they say "I are". In the Northwest dialect, they say "I is". In the Southwest dialect, they say "I be".

Even in Standard English, we say "aren't I?" (which I believe derives from an earlier "ain't I", where ain't was pronounced /ɑnt/). —Stephen ^(Talk) 00:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

In Ireland, though, they do say "amn't I?" for that, which I rather like. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:30, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Confirmed, I be a Southerner. —Aryamanarora ^{(मुझसे बात करो)} 01:35, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Swedish is a bad example, though, because it does not distinguish person in verbs at all. --WikiTiki89 15:36, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Catalan subjunctive

@Stephen G. Brown, @Ultimateria, is there any variant of Catalan that has a distinct future tense in the subjunctive mood? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 14:09, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I don’t think so. Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician have a future subjunctive, but even in Spanish it is now almost obsolete. Since the vast majority of Catalan speakers also speak good Spanish, I suppose that it could happen that some Catalan speaker who is very interested in verbs and grammar might borrow the Spanish future subjunctive endings (since they are so simple) and apply them to a Catalan verb, but I would think the occurrence of this would be quite rare, there being so little need for it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:02, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Monitoring changes in a certain category

Hey everyone, sorry if this is a stupid question, but I was wondering if it is somehow possible to see all recent changes to pages in a given category, or, ideally, a group of categories. In my case I am interested mainly in Category:Ancient Greek lemmas and Category:Latin lemmas. Thanks in advance! - Rathersilly (talk) 06:59, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

There is a "Related changes" link under "tools" on the left side of the page. --->>>Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Ancient_Greek_lemmas

The edits aren't guaranteed to be related to Ancient Greek 100% of the time (it tracks edits made to pages that are in the "Ancient Greek lemmas" category, not edits to the Ancient Greek sections of pages that are in the "Ancient Greek lemmas" category) but it works—suzukaze (t・c) 07:11, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, that should indeed be useful! Is there also a way to do this with multiple categories at once? - Rathersilly (talk) 07:13, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure about multiple categories. —suzukaze (t・c) 07:17, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

@Rathersilly: there is also a watchlist feature you can opt into: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2016/February#Watching_page_categorization. - -sche (discuss) 08:26, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that too will come in handy. - Rathersilly (talk) 12:13, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Statistics

I just want to say I'm proud that I managed to bring Veps into the top 10 of increases in gloss definitions, all by myself. It may not be a widely spoken language, but I feel we have a duty to preserve and promote threatened languages as well. —CodeCat 21:32, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

We absolutely do. In fact, I consider it one of our strongest selling points. It's difficult for us to compete with professionally edited dictionaries for English definitions and for widely studied foreign languages like German, French, Spanish, etc., but we have the potential to be unbeatable when it comes to small and threatened languages. I'm pretty sure we are the only Lower Sorbian–English dictionary in the world. There is a print Upper Sorbian–English dictionary, but I don't think there's one for Lower Sorbian. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed! - -sche (discuss) 23:54, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

User:Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV/translation statistics

FYI that this very interesting and useful page exists. Among other things, it seems like it catches cases of incomplete language rename (including "Waray"). - -sche (discuss) 23:54, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Moses, and Abraham (Latin)

In the source there was this comment: "I shall have to create a declension table for this proper noun; however, what are the forms of the dative and vocative cases?". The declension AFAIK is as follows:

• Nom.: Moses
• Gen.: Mosi (in Vulgata), Mosis (outside Vulgata)
• Dat.: Mosi
• Acc.: Mosen, Mosea (according to dictionaries: "Mosea, Iuvenc. 4, 15")
• Voc.: Moses (Exodus 3:4: "et ait Moses Moses qui respondit adsum", Nova Vulgata with better punctuation: "et ait: “ Moyses, Moyses ”. Qui respondit: “ Adsum ”.", in English: "the Lord [...] and said: Moses, Moses. And he answered: Here I am.")
• Abl.: Mosi (Exodus 33:9: "cum Mosi", Nova Vulgata has: "cum Moyse"), Mose (Joshua 1:5: "cum Mose")

As for the ablative, "Mosi" could be an error by incorrectly using the dative, or an OCR or typing error when someone converted the Latin Bible into a digital form. But "cum Mosi" can indeed be found in google books. "ab Mose" can also be found, while I couldn't find "ab Mosi". That is, maybe the dative "Mosi" is incorrectly used here with "cum".
Bibles that I used were

• www.latinvulgate.com/lv/ (has the Latin and English text)
• la.wikisource.org/wiki/Biblia_Sacra_Vulgata_(Stuttgartensia)
• www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_vetus-testamentum_lt.html (Nova Vulgata)

The book books.google.com/books?id=y847nKBVLxIC&pg=PA27 mentions the following forms:

• Nom.: Moses
• Gen.: Mosis, Moseos
• Dat.: Mosi
• Acc.: Mosem, Mosen
• Voc.: Moses
• Abl.: Mose

Moseos and Mosem can be found outside the Vulgata. So one has:

• Nom.: Moses
• Gen.: Mosis, Mosi, Moseos
• Dat.: Mosi
• Acc.: Mosem, Mosen, Mosea
• Voc.: Moses
• Abl.: Mose (Mosi)

The google book above also has the abl. Abraham for Abraham. A google book search has results for both "cum Abraham" and "cum Abraha". I've once read, that in later Latin cum was also used with acc., so Abraham could be acc. and not abl. there. google also has results for "ab Abraham" and "ab Abraha", though results for "ab Abraha" were based on OCR errors like misreadings of "ab Abrahæ ..." or "ab Abrahã". Nevertheless, both forms exist. -Balebatim (talk) 03:41, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

PS: As pointed out at Module:la-noun/data one has to search for e.g. ""cum Abraham" "Abrahae"" or ""ab Abraham" "Abrahae"" to see that Abraham is the ablative of Abraham, -ae, m. and not of Abraham, m. indecl.. -Balebatim (talk) 07:55, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

pascha (Latin)

• Is it spelled "pascha" or "Pascha"? Dictionaries have "pascha", but google has results for "pascha" and "Pascha". So both forms should exist.
  Also sometimes both forms are used in the same text. Did some people somehow differ between these forms, like using "pascha" for the Jewish pascha and "Pascha" for Christian Easter?
• There is also the declension pascha, -ātis, n. besides pascha, -ae, f., and this declension is also mentioned in dictionaries. So how should the two forms be mentioned? Should there be two sections with "=== Noun ===" or should both forms somehow be mentioned under one header?
• The entry pascha just has the accusative pascham. books.google.com/books?id=y847nKBVLxIC&pg=PA27 has the accusative Pascha. Google has results for both forms, like when searching for "post Pascha" or "ad Pascha". There are these possibilities: (a) The results might have the accusative of the neuter noun Pascha. (b) There might be Pascha, f. indecl.. (c) It is an accusative of Pascha, -ae, f.. So searching for e.g. ""Paschae" "ad Pascha"" one can find for example "Parasceve Paschae non est praeparatio ad Pascha ..." (books.google.com/books?id=F-RjAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA340) and "... Parasceve Paschae, hoc est, Praeparatio ad Pascha ..." (books.google.com/books?id=AMJVAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA287). So the accusative "Pascha" for Pascha, -ae, f. does indeed exist. Might someone verify this or correct me?

-Balebatim (talk) 07:55, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Iesus (Latin)

In the entry Iesus it is:

• "(Classical) IPA: /ˈjeː.sus/, [ˈjeː.sʊs]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA: /ˈje.sus/, [ˈjeː.sus]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA: [ˈjeː.zus]"

That is, it has two syllables and a j sound (in English often written as y). In modern Latin it has indeed two syllables and is also spelled Jesus, and with Je- it also fits to the Hebrew name begining with ye- (English transcription). But as the name is derived from Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs), the Latin name once could have had three syllables, i.e. I-es-us. In Lewis and Short it es e.g. "Jōsēph or Ĭōsēph", "Ĭēsus (in late Lat. also dissyl.)" and "Ĭōnas (or Jōnas, Vulg. Jon. 1, 1 al.)". Jonas 1,1 is (depending on the Vulgata used):

• et factum est verbum Domini ad Ionam filium Amathi dicens
• Et factum est verbum Domini ad Ionam filium Amathi dicens:
• Et factum est verbum Domini ad Jonam, filium Amathi, dicens:

(English: Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying:)

I can't see how an ancient Latin spelling (without distinction of u and v, and of i and j) would support any reading here, but in case of the modern Latin spelling (with distinction of u and v, and of i and j) it is indeed Jonas (two syllables and with j). However, I wasn't able to find "Iesus" in a modern Latin edition (which differs between J and I). For comparision: In modern Latin one can find jambus (2 syllables) as well as sometimes iambus (3 syllables) and ïambus (3 syllables, with trema).
So:

• Did Iesus, Ionas, Ioseph (etc.) also have three syllables in ancient Latin, as Lewis and Short state?
• Did Iesus, Ionas, Ioseph (etc.) also occur in modern Latin (with distinction of I and J), that is did they sometimes also have three syllables in modern Latin?

-Balebatim (talk) 08:32, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

To complicate things a bit more: In Hebrew, these all had j, a phoneme apparently not present in Ancient Greek (at least there was no way to spell it). The Ancient Greek Ἰ could have been either either a j written with the closest letters available in the Greek alphabet, or it could have represented actual Ancient Greek pronunciation after the sounds were modified to match Ancient Greek phonotactics. I don't know enough about Ancient Greek pronunciation of Hebrew loanwords to even guess. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:36, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Gaffiot also has Iesus and Jesus, Georges just has Iesus (and doesn't differ between I and J), Pons has neither form. Are two dictionaries sufficient to include Iesus (three syllables)? Well, I doubt it. But how about a note that some dictionaries state it once had three syllables? That should be okay, or? -Balebatim (talk) 20:24, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Words with no lemma form?

The name for the Veps language is vepsän kel', a formation consisting of a genitive and the word kel' (“language”). So it translate more or less literally as "language of Veps". Other Finnic languages use similar formations, such as Finnish suomen kieli. Finnish uses the nominative alone as a synonym, so suomi also means "Finnish language" by itself. For Veps, the genitive vepsän is securely attested modifying a variety of nouns, but the nominative is apparently not used. Another attested case is vepsäks (“in/into veps”, translative), and there is also the derived adjective vepsläine (“Veps”).

The difficulty I am having is where to place these forms together. vepsän and vepsäks could be defined as an independent indeclinable adjective and an adverb, respectively. vepsläine is clearly derived as veps + -laine, but this former term can't link anywhere since it doesn't exist. So what should its etymology say? And should vepsän kel' have its own entry, the way suomen kieli has? I recall a similar discussion concerning some other language for which the name of a language was some word + "language".

Also, to keep this in perspective, Veps does this with many languages. Russian, for example, is venän kel', with the translative venäks (“in Russian”), the adjective venälaine (“Russian”) but also the compound noun venäkel' (“Russian language”), and the name for Russia itself, Venäma. —CodeCat 00:20, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I feel like if a word only occurs in the genitive, then make the genitive the lemma for that word, even if for most nouns the nominative is the lemma. That's certainly what we do for Primitive Irish, where the vast majority of nouns are attested only in the genitive. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:21, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, you think that it would be ok to say that vepsläine is derived as vepsän + -laine? What about vepsäks, the other attested case form? —CodeCat 20:30, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Re "I recall a similar discussion": Talk:bulgarian kieli, Talk:старославянский язык, Talk:tadžikų kalba and Talk:Türk dili. Apparently we tend to keep "X language" type names; for a while we even had German language! - -sche (discuss)

For Veps in particular, there is some additional evidence though. The Veps Wikipedia articles about countries list the language(s) spoken in that country without kel' attached, although the articles linked to do include it. So [[alaman kel'|alaman]] on w:vep:Alamad (Netherlands). That suggests that the combination of genitive and kel' is not idiomatic and inseparable. Interesting is also that Alamad is a plurale tantum (like its English calque counterpart), so its genitive is Alamaiden (“of the Netherlands”). However, for the language and as a general modifier, the singular alaman (“Dutch”) is used, in lowercase. —CodeCat 22:30, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Do abbreviations go under synonyms or alternative forms?

I'm inclined to put them under alternative forms myself, but maybe others have different ideas? —CodeCat 01:23, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

That's where I typically see them, and I think that's where they belong. They're usually pronounced the same, anyway. In cases like photograph and photo, however, where the abbreviation has become a word of its own (usually the shorter form isn't pronounced like the full word in these cases), I think it should go under synonyms. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 05:55, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't call photo an abbreviation but a clipping. Things like Dr/Dr. for doctor and pp. for pages and ff. for following are abbreviations. I suppose they go under alternative forms, though I wouldn't be adverse to a separate L4 "Abbreviations" header. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I usually put them under Derived terms with the qualifier "abbreviation". --Panda10 (talk) 13:00, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

I tend to put them under alternative forms if it's just the same word but abbreviated in some way, like an initialism to me isn't a different term to the full term, but rather comes from it. Renard Migrant (talk) 20:41, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

How is this: Amerikan Ühtenzoittud Valdkundad? —CodeCat 21:17, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

present–future tense

Just curious, are there any languages that don’t distinguish between the present and future tenses? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 16:15, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Most Germanic and Uralic languages do. —CodeCat 16:16, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

But English must use shall or will to indicate the future tense, which may be what you are thinking of. I’m assuming that other Germanic languages do the same, but I haven’t done any research on that. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 16:21, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Most modern Germanic languages do use an auxiliary to form a future tense, although in some cases the auxiliary isn't necessary and the simple present can stand in for the future. In English, consider "I'm flying to Vienna tomorrow", which uses a present progressive with future meaning, and "If you see Alejandro, tell him hello from me", which uses a simple present with future meaning. In the second example, the simple present is obligatory: *"If you will see Alejandro" is ungrammatical (or at best, means something different). The older Germanic languages (Old English, Old Norse, Gothic) don't even have auxiliaries for the most part but simply use the present tense with a future meaning. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:37, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Wow, strange how I never noticed that. But doesn’t the if indicate the future tense? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 17:13, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, not directly. You can tell from the semantics of "If you see Alejandro, tell him hello from me" that "you see Alejandro" refers to the future. But in "If my husband is in here, I'm going to ring his neck!", the "my husband is in here" refers to the present. But grammatically, there's no difference between those two sentences in English. Irish, on the other hand (and maybe Romance languages as well), distinguishes the sentences grammatically, using the future tense in "if you see Alejandro" but the present tense in "if my husband is in here". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:44, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Is your husband Alejandro? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 19:01, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

He'd better hope not! ;) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:08, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Translations of beverage and drink

Should the translations of beverage and drink be merged? —suzukaze (t・c) 01:21, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Not in the entries' current state. None of the senses at drink quite matches either of the senses at beverage. The first sense at beverage could be subdivided similarly to part of drink: "tea is my favorite beverage" and "the lunch special comes with a free beverage" aren't really the same. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:03, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, I was thinking more of the merging of the single table at beverage#Translations into drink#Translations, as drink#Noun is defined as "A beverage.", while beverage#Noun is defined as "A liquid to consume, usually excluding water; a drink." —suzukaze (t・c) 02:26, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Translations of come and arrive

Can come#Translations (sense 2 / translation box 2: "To arrive: The guests came at eight o'clock.") be merged into arrive#Translations? —suzukaze (t・c) 03:29, 28 February 2016 (UTC)