Wiktionary talk:About Old English

viewing this page

I seem to have trouble seeing the special characters on this page. I have tried changing internet explorer view settings (view... encoding...) and trying some of the various options and it does seem to change the dislay of these characters. However, I am not sure which one is the right one to use, or indeed if this is the right thing to do. Can anyone help me out? --Hauskalainen 09:06, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

It might be an issue with fonts. Which of the following six characters are not displaying properly: ġ, ċ, þ, ð, ȝ, ƿ ? Widsith 09:54, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

problem is that I'm not sure what they are supposed to look like! What windows font has these characters? I can certainly change my font with no problem.--Hauskalainen 12:07, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

insular g presently shows like a small box.--Hauskalainen 12:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

If that's the only one that isn't displaying, I wouldn't worry. We don't use it here - I only included it for the sake of completeness. Not many fonts support it as yet. Widsith 13:31, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Insular glyph characters

I wonder if we might want to note that, in addition to being unnecessary, the use of the insular characters is technically incorrect in this context. They're included in Unicode for use as phonetic characters, but in actual Old English texts, they'd be nothing more than glyph variants of their respective letters (g, r, s, etc.) and thus should be represented by the corresponding "ASCII" characters. This seems like a potentially relevant note, as the relationship is somewhat different than that between ƿ and w. —Leftmostcat 01:46, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Templates

This discussion was moved from the Grease Pit

Starting the verb templates, I've come up with {{ang-conj}} to standardize these. AFAICT since {{ang-verb-weak}}, {{ang-verb-strong}} and {{ang-verb-anomalous}} don't specify any defaults, they can be merge into one, at least for now. I think it would be nice to have our declension templates as similar as possible to limit entropy. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:01, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Wow, is Old English so unpredictable that the template can only provide table formatting? I assume you've left a note for Widsith, right? I don't know how close an eye he keeps on the GP, and the discussion is nothing but silly without his input. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 12:53, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand; why are you telling us this? Surely Wiktionary talk:About Old English is a more relevant forum? —Ruakh_TALK 13:51, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Possibly. But if I post it there maybe nobody will read it. How about moving it there and leaving a note here, since it concerns templates, which is a GP sort of issue. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:55, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

(After page move) Old English, from my experience of updating templates and all that is perhaps our worst formatted language. I have no real knowledge of Old English, but if it's a case of replacing

'''hūs''' ''m''

With

{{ang-noun|g=m|head=hūs}}

I can certainly do that. But yes, help notably from Widsith would be much appreciated. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:35, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

• I'm not sure exactly what the question is. But what I can say is that OE weak and strong verbs are usually fairly regular, by which I mean that if you entered three or four initial forms the rest could be worked out. (It couldn't be done from just one input though.) The only reason I never did that myself is just because I'm not really any good with templates. If anyone wants to make them I'm happy to explain what's needed though. Also, I should note that some verbs (generally classed as "anomolous") are completely unpredictable and at least one, beon-wesan, even has two parallel paradigms. Ƿidsiþ 13:05, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
  • I don't think there is a question. Basically {{ang-conj}} replaces the old conjugation templates, with type=strong, weak, anomalous and pretpres. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:41, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Palatalized sċ

In entries with palatalized sc, representing [ʃ], I've been replacing sc with sċ. As I understand it, sc is almost never a cluster with velar c. However, I thought I should check with other editors to see if this is right, and if I should go on making replacements. Perhaps it's not right, because Northumbrian would have unpalatalized sc more frequently than southern dialects. Not sure. Eru·tuon 21:45, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Well most (print) editors don't do this because, as you say, almost all examples of <sc> are palatalised. But I have no objection I guess. There are probably cases where it's not palatalised, I have been away from OE reading for so long that examples are not coming to mind right now. Ƿidsiþ 10:20, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

The only example I can think of is ascian. Most examples come from Old Norse, like sky and skirt, or another language later on, like askew and mask. Still, I feel like readers would find it easier to think of sc as standing for sh when it has a special mark on it... Eru·tuon 02:25, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm late to this party... Anyway, there are a few; tūsc comes to mind as an example of /sk/ finally. I think that sċ is better, but inconsistency is a very annoying thing. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:41, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

I would have no objection to using sċ for palatised sc either Leasnam (talk) 23:44, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Mentionings

WT:CFI: "For terms in extinct languages, one use in a contemporaneous source is the minimum, or one mention is adequate subject to the below requirements [...] the community of editors for that language should maintain a list of materials deemed appropriate as the only sources for entries based on a single mention" (bolding adding)
So how about adding (old Anglo-Saxon) glosses to that list?
As an example, there is:

• Anecdota Oxoniensia. Old English Glosses. Chiefly unpublished. Edited by Arthur S. Napier, Oxford, 1900

(Compare also WT:Requests_for_verification/Non-English#stæfleahtor). -84.161.1.61 02:03, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Standard dialect/further standardization?

I think the West Saxon dialect has de facto been treated as the "standard" lemma dialect. However it may be worthwhile to codify this so we can simply link different dialects as alt-form entries to a single main lemma. Compare for example the situation at ælc/ealc right now; it's kind of muddled. It would be nice to have a standardization scheme like the one Old High German has, especially w/ regards to vowels which differ quite a bit between dialects, to make the spellings of main lemma entries predictable for users and to allow us to unify lemmas in one place as opposed to spread over various dialectal forms. (Of course we should absolutely have entries for dialectal forms, it's just nice to not have info shared between all dialect spread all over the place between these various dialect entries.) Thoughts? — Mnemosientje (t · c) 14:55, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

ang-IPA changed /h/ > [x] globally

In December, WingerBot went and replaced all the IPA|ang templates with ang-IPA. Suddenly every initial h in Old English was changed from /h/ to /x/ (with the /h/ pronunciation following in parentheses).

I looked all over for discussion of this change, how it was decided. The new template simply refers onward to Wikipedia's Old English phonology article. There was no discussion there either. Wikipedia's Old English phonology article does not support [x] for initial h. Finding no discussion anywhere, I thought I'd ask here. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 07:24, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

@Benwing2 wrote that module. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:11, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I noticed. Did Benwing find general agreement among editors that this change was wanted or justified, or was it a unilateral move? Where's the discussion and agreement in favor of it? Right now all that Wiktionary offers on OE phonology is a link to the article on Wikipedia, which does not support the change, and there was no discussion of it over there either. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 22:30, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

I found discussion over on Benwing2's talk page in December about the module, but not any questioning of or explanation for this change. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 22:37, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

@Johanna-Hypatia, Metaknowledge This was discussed in detail on Module talk:ang-pron. Benwing2 (talk) 00:51, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I had searched a lot but couldn't find that page. All I had seen in the articles was ang-IPA. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 01:33, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Etymology-only code for West Saxon?

Should we have one for West Saxon? There are codes for Mercian, Anglian, and Northumbrian already. 70.175.192.217 20:01, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Seems a little unnecessary since we're basically treating West Saxon as the standard language. Anything not labeled as a different dialect can generally be assumed to be West Saxon. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:19, 23 January 2022 (UTC)