Talk:Γελλώ

Unexpected changes

@ObsequiousNewt: Re these changes, would you mind explaining why you took out those two quotations, as well as why you removed the brachiae from the link to Λᾰ́μῐᾰ (Lámia), please? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 19:15, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

@I'm so meta even this acronym: Hesychius was a lexicographer, that is to say, his works (at least to me) fall at the "mention" end of the use-mention distinction. Appendix material, certainly, but not dictionary material, in my view (which you are free to challenge.) Suda was a quotation of the Sappho quote. The brachea/makra thing is... probably not something I should have done, but I'm honestly having trouble deciding whether that policy is a good one to have, as (at least until font-makers get off their collective cūlī and fix combining diacritics) having ᾱ̓ everywhere really seems to detract from readability. Plus I can't remember where we had the original discussion to change the policy from "headword and inflection tables" to "everywhere but the title". Admittedly a part of me wants to bring up the whole issue, perhaps even on a universal basis (given e.g. Latin, Old English, Middle High German, Serbo-Croatian, and who knows what else.) —ObsequiousNewt (εἴρηκα|πεποίηκα) 19:26, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

@ObsequiousNewt: Yes, the quotation from Hesychius does look like a mention to me; however, because Ancient Greek is an extinct, low-documentation language, “one mention is adequate subject to the…requirement…[that] the community of editors for [Ancient Greek] maintain a list of materials deemed appropriate as the only sources for entries based on a single mention”. IMO, Hesychius, as an ancient lexicographer should be on that list; moreover, even though his is not the only source we can cite in the case of Γελλώ, it does give definitions, which surely helps to support the entry. As for the citation of the Suda, that's useful because it tries to elucidate Sappho's meaning (right?) and uses a different spelling from hers. Anyway, I've added all the citations which had text to Citations:Γελλώ; I hope you don't mind that. Re combining diacritics, I think the oxia and baria combine well enough on minuscules with macrae and brachiae, but I agree that the psile and dasia don't; the majuscules, however, are wrong by themselves — their macrae and brachiae are themselves in the wrong place. I've never done any font development, but I was planning on contacting the creator of the Quivira font to offer to fix up his font's display of polytonic Greek; do you have any idea whether that would be an easy or difficult thing to fix? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:22, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

@I'm so meta even this acronym: If we include Hesychius, we should put him in the References section. Suda is a weird situation, and I don't especially like having both it and Sappho directly there, but I'm not sure about a good solution on that front; I'll have to think about that one. ᾰ́ ᾱ́ is readable but not pretty, and ᾰ̓́ e.g. is just awful. Ugliness aside, though, it seems kind of silly to include lengths everywhere but the entry title... it kind of raises the question of why we would lack lengths there. And I really don't know what the best solution is. So I suppose I'll have to bring up a discussion at some point. —ObsequiousNewt (εἴρηκα|πεποίηκα) 17:08, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

@ObsequiousNewt: Could I get you to make the entry for Γέλλω (Géllō)? I get the feeling that the declension logic for pax-oi does not exist. —JohnC5 18:41, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

@ObsequiousNewt: I would be fine with consigning Hesychius to the References section, and ditto the Suda, though they'd both be OK staying on Citations:Γελλώ, IMO. (BTW, could you create an entry for Σοῦδᾰ (Soûda, “Suda”), please? I don't know if it's ἡ Σοῦδᾰ — declined: nom. Σοῦδᾰ, gen. Σούδᾱς, dat. Σούδᾳ, acc. Σοῦδᾰν, voc. Σοῦδᾰ — τὰ Σοῦδᾰ — declined: nom. Σοῦδᾰ, gen. Σούδων, dat. Σούδοις, acc. Σοῦδᾰ, voc. Σοῦδᾰ — or something else.) Re brachiae and macrae, why not include them in the same situations that'd we'd include macra on Latin words? By the entry title, I assume you mean the {{PAGENAME}}, yes? Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to use {{DISPLAYTITLE}} to add brachiae and macrae to it, because the only differences permitted are letter-casing and space–underscore variation. (@-sche: You develop fonts, right? How easy would it be to fix this issue with combining diacritics on Greek characters?) — I.S.M.E.T.A. 20:59, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

It's not neuter plural, but I don't know whether the genitive is Σούδης or Σούδας. The main problem with not including length marks everywhere, as I see it, is that it's not how the word was ever actually written. Really, prosody is information similar to pronunciation, and it would not seem entirely incorrect to write it in a separate header, similar to how LSJ puts it in brackets. I'm not saying it's the best option, but it is an option I am not opposed to. I don't know what the standard for Latin is, but I see no reason (bar ugliness with combining diacritics) that it should not be identical to that of Greek, and to Serbo-Croatian, and whatever else, and I don't know which is the best standard for everything—there are multiple options, which include, at least, (0) writing it in a separate section, (1) only marking in the headword, (2) marking in the headline and inflection tables, (3) marking everywhere except the page title, (4) marking the page title as well (either with DISPLAYTITLE or by actually linking to e.g. μοῖρᾰ); I'm inclined towards former options but I don't know which is best. Fonts, however, I have not developed ever, and I believe that the fonts WMF uses are public fonts. —ObsequiousNewt (εἴρηκα|πεποίηκα) 01:50, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

@ObsequiousNewt: Thank you for creating Σοῦδα! So, it may decline: nom. Σοῦδᾰ, gen. Σούδης, dat. Σούδῃ, acc. Σοῦδᾰν, voc. Σοῦδᾰ — yes? If you could point me to a text or texts where I could search for these forms, I'd be happy to undertake the drudgery of inferring the declension from attestations.

If I knew of such a text, I would be searching it myself. Unfortunately, I do not.

Re orthographical infidelity, all sorts of information is added and/or standardised in the way Ancient Greek is presented here: diacritics are always supplied, even though they didn't exist before Aristophanes of Byzantium invented them in the early second century BC; the letter-case distinction is maintained, even though that might never have been formalised pre-1453; numerous allographs (ϐ, ϵ, ϑ, ϰ, ϖ, ϱ, ϲ, etc.) and the countless ligatures of the grecs du roi are standardised to the basic polytonic Greek alphabet; and so on. We specify vowels' lengths because they're important, and we specify them with macrae and brachiae because that's a convenient way of doing so; Latin is treated the same, even though macra and breves are almost never used in actually writing that language. (When it comes to quotations, however, I agree with you very strongly that we should be as faithful to the source text as it is feasible to be.)

Yes, there are many arguments on both sides. I will undertake to create an actual poll soon.

Re "how LSJ puts [information about prosody] in brackets", actually, if you consult printed copies of the LSJ (7th ed., 1883, 8th ed., 1901), you'll see that it includes macrae and brachiae on the headwords themselves; it only brackets that information when the vowel to be marked already has another diacritic atop it (see, e.g., at the bottom of page 802/2, “κηκίς [ῑ], ῖδος, ἡ, anything gushing or bubbling forth, ooze,…”). Woodhouse’s English–Greek Dictionary, by contrast, stacks diacritics (like we currently do). In my opinion, stacking diacritics is what should be done, and is in keeping with the Greek practice (compare, for example, ⟨ ΅ ⟩, ⟨ ῁ ⟩, ⟨ ῏ ⟩, ⟨ ῟ ⟩, ⟨ ῭ ⟩, and ⟨ ΅ ⟩) — it's just a shame that most fonts seem to screw up diacritic stacking when the psile or dasia is involved.

True (although when the length varies, there are still prosodic notes in brackets.) It's still an acceptable option, though, in my book.

Re your options, I prefer № 3, but I would be OK with № 2; the most important place for macrae and brachiae to appear is in inflection tables, because vowel lengths need to be specified for inflected forms, and the only alternative would be creating separate entries for all the inflected forms, in which those lengths may be specified (which alternative contrasts starkly with the near-complete absence of entries for inflected forms of Ancient Greek lemmata on the English Wiktionary). Lastly, what do you mean by "public fonts"? If you mean free fonts, then that's fine, because Quivira is a free font. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 18:46, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

The point there was something like "I'm pretty sure asking WMF to change their fonts is a long and arduous process and anyway I don't even know if it's possible to fix the fonts so that they'll combine nicely." But hey, if you want to look into it, be my guest. —ObsequiousNewt (εἴρηκα|πεποίηκα) 21:48, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

@ObsequiousNewt: AFAIK, this doesn't involve WMF, since the fonts that govern the display of polytonic Greek are defined locally, by MediaWiki:Common.css. I'll look into whether fixing up the font is possible. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 22:08, 9 August 2015 (UTC)