Talk:Handschuh

Does the german term "Handschuh" really have 3 separate senses which neatly map to different English terms? Or are we using a different format for non-English words and English words where we number translations into English in the former, and senses in the latter?

Or what should we do? I put mitten and glove together because I felt the distinction was likely a quirk of English, but that was just a guess. It's quite likely that any kind of thing that's worn on the hands is just a "hand shoe".

I think the ideal is to go by sense as for English either by seeing what monolingual dictionaries for the language in question do, or letting a native speaker judge. Until then we should at least each be aware that it's unlikely that there is a neat mapping between English terms and foreign senses of the same word. — Hippietrail 13:37, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

I've no idea what the translations of "Handschuh" are, but I separated "glove" and "mitten" as these have distinct meanings (a mitten is a glove in which the fingers go in one part and the thumb in another, whereas a glove has a section for each finger).

Clearly there are 3 different words in English. This does not mean that the German word has 3 different senses. Just as we don't decide the number of senses of the English word "pot" based on the number of words which translate it into German. — Hippietrail 03:50, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

The format that I have seen used here for non-English words since joining nearly about a year and a half ago is to list translations without definitions, much as you would see in a bilingual or multilingual dictionary.

Actually I have quite a collection of bilingual dictionaries. The smaller/cheaper/poorer ones may include only a simple English equivalent. The better ones will include a definition if needed. This is the common sense approach. If we don't know enough for a definition, an English equivalant is a good start but I would never recommend removing a definitions for instance if one is already there.

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking here. What is it you are querying? — Paul G 14:20, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The number of senses of a given word do not cross linguistic boundaries. For instance I'm not aware of an English words for "glove with open fingers" but other languages may have a word. Similarly, German might not distinguish "handschuh with separate fingers" from "handschuh with the fingers combined". — Hippietrail 03:50, 13 May 2005 (UTC)