Talk:ت ر ج م

Varia

@Vahagn Petrosyan: I ping you because you have written on թարգման (tʻargman) that the dragoman word is native Semitic. Palaestrator verborum (loquier) 15:03, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

@Palaestrator verborum: My source was Ačaṙean, who is not an authority on Semitic. I removed the claim of native Semitic origin. --Vahag (talk) 15:22, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: BTW I know that Fraenkel is templatized, but I have been disinclined to use the template because of the format “Surname, Forename (year): Title, Place: Publisher” instead of “Forename Surename: Title. Publisher, Location Year”. Now the reference looks different from the listing of Leslau’s Comparative Geʿez dictionary (which should also get a template btw if it hasn’t already).

But more importantly: You have used the blurry Harvard scan for linking the Fraenkel book instead of the Oxford scan. Can you make the template use the Oxford scan? It is more readable, compare the here relevant page in the Oxford scan and the Harvard scan.

What is to be done with the different citation styles? I see all kinds of styles even on the Wiktionary namespace pages. But I prefer Forename Surename: Title. Publisher, Location Year and this is probably more wise if there are divergent original publication and printing dates which are sometimes both specified in quotes for words. On the other hand it is more easy to see the dates if the year is in brackets and can help journal citations and book citations look alike. But even then I disprefer using the form “Surename, Name” as one does not know what do if the person has multiple surenames (as Spaniards always have) or nobility predicates (as: “Wilhelm von Humboldt”. If one separates the names by parameters one gets the line starting with a lowercase name). Additionally, the “Surname, Forename (year): Title, Place: Publisher” format is markedly Anglo-Saxon, German for example does never use it, and for Russian it is also quite marked. Probably templates should contain a switch? Palaestrator verborum (loquier) 16:34, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by "blurry". Your version of Fraenkel has a lower resolution.

Wiktionary has an obligatory citation style provided by {{cite-book}}. If you would like to change the status quo, then you will have to start a conversation at WT:BP and reach concensus. I would oppose putting the forename first. --Vahag (talk) 17:49, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan I don’t know what you mean by “lower resolution”. The Oxford scan I preferred is more detailled in the letter forms. The single letters in the Harvard scan are more indistinct. Notably, the former has twice the byte size, the latter seems to suffer from compression. I find the latter harder to read, therefore I always read the former. Which can you read better? Specifically, aren’t the Arabic/Hebrew/Syriac characters more discernible in the Oxford scan?

How is that form obligatory? No policy nor thinktank page makes notice of this, notably Wiktionary:References lists the year at the end and does not use forenames and is the result of a vote last year. Wiktionary:Quotations#How_to_format_quotations is also inconclusive (and not applicable to references). Somebody has just implemented his personal style into the templates. However I have searched the whole beer parlour and the grease pit and there is no discussion about the style of references. Palaestrator verborum (loquier) 18:33, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I can read the current version of Fraenkel much better. But feel free to change it, I don't care.

When there is no author, the template automatically pushes the date to the end. The current style is not just someone's arbitrary preference. The same style is used on Wikipedia. It conforms to what I have seen in professional linguistic literature. Russian sources too put the last name first, followed by the initials of the first name and patronym. The last name is first, because the sources are usually referred to by a last name, e.g. "Fraenkel 1896". --Vahag (talk) 19:44, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan We should see what others see. Hey @Atitarev, @Metaknowledge, @Backinstadiums, which can you read better? the Harvard scan or the Oxford scan?

I think I will create some other Ethiopian templates though they will as it now looks stay unused so far, so there is a good start for whoever comes to create Ethiosemitic entries.

For the reference style, I really do not want to rile, but there are certainly some problems with the “Surename, Name” style. I think the problem names like Wilhelm von Humboldt, Otto von Habsburg, Leopold Fürst zur Lippe-Biesterfeld are the reason why the Germans (including German Wikipedia) never cut the name into parts. But there are problems in English too. What do you do with Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (known as “Shaftesbury”)? Surely that citation style comes from the United States of America. Lol that example where a reviewer required to provide a forename for the author Aristotle is even from Britain.

For Russian, I see that the Russian Wikipedia has a remarkable mix: Mostly either “Forename Surename” or “Surename, Abbreviated Forename”, which is of course a heritage of communist economic planning and a loss of information that should be as such avoided at the web.

For Spanish, I observe that the Spanish Wikipedia puts both surenames to the front, but books also put only the first surename to the front.

I have technical concerns too, in relation to the format “Surename, Forename”: It is a bit harder for Names in Right-to-Left languages and requires additional bidirectional control characters: Really, it breaks the templates constantly if you use Arabic titles etc., see for example that Hebrew reference in دَيْر (dayr), it took me like twenty tries so that it does not bug in display. And of course the Arabic names can be complicated. Also it is questionable SEO, as people do not search names in that format.

Not to speak about that the whole splitting thing first requires the act of splitting instead of just using the naturally appearing forms, generally added work for the editors.

In sum: It is easier just to use the name of a person in the natural order, whereas for the reader I doubt the use of splitting as the comma is obnoxious and the references are sorted anyway after the surenames (well, at least with my Germanized eyes one sees it this way, but for enough knowledge, there should be a study with some experiments made where participants are asked to perform some reference-related tasks). There is nothing that recommends it except group pressure. People just do it, and it is too easy to say they do it for a reason like “because the sources are usually referred to by a last name”. It might be true, but as I have shown it is not enough to convince. So far I do not know about any paper published that would argue for and against current citation styles, rather I see many papers from professors recommending “do this” where another professor suggests “do that”. Everywhere a lack of understanding about foundational matters, I could become melancholic again, and this post is way too long. Palaestrator verborum (loquier) 21:41, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

@Palaestrator verborum Oxford --Backinstadiums (talk) 00:21, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Sanskrit cognates

@AryamanA Why does the page of Sanskrit तर्क (tarka) state that the Sanskrit word is from the IE root *telkʷ-? Well, @Mahagaja has added it. Does /l/ become /r/ from Indo-European to Sanskrit sometimes? Frank Starke p. 30 puts the Sanskrit word to *terkʷ- as torqueō (“to twist”) (see this Latin, also there is Germanic *þwerhaz) as there can easily be a shift from a metaphorical mental “turning around” to “reasoning”. Also meseems that you’ll should somehow bring तर्का (tarkā) in relation to the other word. Palaestrator verborum (loquier) 22:14, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, PIE *l often becomes r in Sanskrit, though the environments in which it happens aren't always clear. It's the usual case with the syllabic allophones (e.g. वृक (vṛka) < *wĺ̥kʷos), but it often happens with the nonsyllabic allophones too. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 15:10, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

@Palaestrator verborum: As Mahagaja said, *l usually becomes r in Sanskrit, except in some consonant clusters AFAICT. Sanskrit likely had an r-dialect and an l-dialect that grammarians synthesized when they standardized Classical Sanskrit. Mayrhofer gives *terkʷ- (“drehen”) as well, but I feel *telkʷ- has a closer semantic field. I suppose the roots could have merged in Proto-Indo-Iranian to *tark-. तर्का (tarkā) is just an added feminine suffix. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 17:47, 26 November 2017 (UTC)