Talk:ajaa partansa

RFD discussion: June–October 2016

See Talk:ajaa karille#RFD discussion: June–October 2016.

RFD discussion: May–June 2020

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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ajaa partansa

ajaa karille

ajaa ylinopeutta

ajaa takaa

Earlier discussion: Talk:ajaa karille

I'm bringing this to reconsideration, and voting to delete all but undelete ajaa takaa, for the following reasons:

• ajaa takaa is idiomatic - from the words alone you cannot tell that this means "to chase, pursue" (the literal meaning is "to drive from the behind of someone", which is also possible), but it also has an idiomatic meaning of "to hint at, mean", such as of a subject.
• On the other hand, the rest three are SOP:
  • ajaa karille = "drive on a reef". You can also "ajaa rantaan", whatnot. If anything, the entry for "run aground" should be ajaa maihin.
  • ajaa partansa = "shave one's beard"; a beard is not the only thing you can shave; you could also shave a moustache (ajaa viikset), for example
  • ajaa ylinopeutta = "to drive over-speed"; you can drive at any speed. There's nothing really special about this, either.

    Well, I think there's a difference in the English translation: ajaa maltillista nopeutta = to drive at a reasonable speed; ajaa 50 km/t = to drive at 50 km/h etc., but ajaa ylinopeutta = to speed (very seldom "to drive over-speed"). --Hekaheka (talk) 09:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Tropylium, Hekaheka, Dan Polansky, Wikitiki89 as having voted in the earlier discussion. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 11:07, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

The previous discussion is at Talk:ajaa karille, where I said "I am inclined to keep but do not really want to override Finnish editors on this. Hekaheka is a Finnish editor who seems to argue pro-keeping." Not boldface vote from me on this right now. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:24, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Support: I still hold my earlier stance that these would be mostly better noted as collocations on ajaa (and as for ajaa takaa 'to pursue', note that the verb can already mean 'to pursue' even on its own, e.g. ajaa hirveä). However, point taken about ajaa takaa (“to hint at”), this at least does seem to be indeed idiomatic. --Tropylium (talk) 16:35, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

There's also ajaa jonkin takaa vs. ajaa jotakin takaa. --Hekaheka (talk) 09:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Support. Ajaa takaa is not SOP, those others are. Ajaa karille can sometimes be used figuratively, so I'd have nothing against keeping it either, but ajaa partansa and ajaa ylinopeutta are good to go. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 17:40, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Keep all. They just happen to be the most common way to express their concepts in Finnish and are not so readily understood in English from their parts, or at least it takes quite a bit of imagination to do so:

1. ajaa partansa, literally to drive one's beard is equal to shave
2. ajaa karille, literally to drive to a rock is equal to run aground; well this isn't so difficult to figure out, but why the heck do we have run aground then? We do not need to outpope the Pope. Additionally, one uses the expression ajaa karille even if the vessel runs on something else than on a rock, e.g. on a sandbank, i.e. whenever the vessel is stuck from it's bottom.
3. ajaa ylinopeutta, literally to drive at overspeed is equal to speed. True, not so difficult to figure out for an English speaker who reads a Finnish text. But: an English-Finnish-English dictionary has two main groups of clients to serve: 1) Finnish speakers who want to know how a Finnish term translates into English and 2) English speakers who would want to go the opposite way. I can imagine that someone might want to look up "ajaa ylinopeutta" in a dictionary. As a minimum, you would have to include it as usage example or something in the entry ylinopeus.
4. ajaa takaa, literally to drive from behind is equal to chase. Supporting Mölli-Möllerö.

Having these as separate entries does not prevent adding them as collocations to ajaa, parta, kari, ylinopeus and even takaa. One advantage of a computerized dictionary is that we don't need to worry of limited number of space available on the pages or of saving paper. We are not going to run out of bits any time soon. If we do delete the above mentioned entries, then the only collocation of ajaa that is left as separate entry will be ajaa paskaa. Not good. --Hekaheka (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC) PS. We have already once ended up to keeping them back in 2016.

Point taken about ajaa karille, but I still disagree with keeping the other two - the first one is like saying we'd need an ajaa tiellä for "to drive on a road" in order to separate it from the other meanings (we don't; "to shave" is simply one of the meanings of ajaa, equal in its rank as "to drive"), and for ajaa ylinopeutta, an usex would certainly already serve that purpose, while by that rationale we could also have ajaa alinopeutta, ajaa nopeusrajoituksen mukaista nopeutta, whatnot. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 10:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Ok, I give in with parta and ylinopeus, but do we agree that we need to re-enter ajaa takaa? --Hekaheka (talk) 17:10, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

The vote is as much to undelete ajaa takaa as it is to delete the three other entries. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 17:32, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I strongly support the deletion of ajaa partansa. That is so often used without the possessive suffix (ajaa parta), plus we also have ajaa häpykarvansa 'shave one's pubic hair', ajaa kainalokarvansa 'shave one's axillary hair' (both more commonly used without the possessive suffix, "ajaa häpykarvat"/"ajaa kainalokarvat") etc. so that "shave" is just one meaning of the verb ajaa. Unless we want entries for ajaa häpykarvat and the other "shavables", ajaa partansa should go too. Those would still probably fit well into some other Wiktionary. For example, the Estonian Wiktionary seems to have a high tolerance for SOP phrases, they have an entry for e.g. et:abuse a privilege, et:have breakfast and et:aatteelliset erimielisyydet (Finnish for 'ideological differences'), so I would be surprised if they didn't accept ajaa partansa as well. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 17:13, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

On second thought, I still maintain that ajaa karille is SOP - joutua karille, päätyä karille is equally possible. It's better to have a definition under karille. Thus I still think it should be deleted. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 11:28, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

But ajaa karille is by far the most common of them. In a Google search ajaa:joutua:päätyä relate as 4.640:91:4. Also, I believe there's a difference in meaning. I would interpret the verbs joutua and päätyä as describing a case of drifting or being forced aground rather than running there with the ship's own steam. Also in English other verbs are possible: run 1.66 M, force 7.520, end up 1.100, drift 730 plus others. The choice of other verbs seems to indicate that the ship has gone aground due to act of God rather than a navigational error. --Hekaheka (talk) 21:16, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

mennä karille is also possible. ajaa karille is the most common, yes, but I don't think that itself justifies the existence of the entry as it currently stands. How collocations should be handled is still an open issue, though. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 21:18, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Mölli-Möllerö pointed out that ajaa karille has figurative usage as well. For example it's quite common to say that neuvottelut ajoivat karille although neuvottelut kariutuivat seems to be about 10 times as common. --Hekaheka (talk) 21:24, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Those figurative uses are not exclusive to ajaa karille. In fact, quite the opposite - with other verbs like joutua, the figurative use is proportionally more common than with ajaa. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 21:41, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I've undeleted ajaa takaa and deleted ajaa partansa and ajaa ylinopeutta, but I'll let a greater consensus develop about ajaa karille. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 11:05, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Inactive, but the consensus remains to delete ajaa karille, thus RFD-deleted. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 22:44, 7 June 2020 (UTC)