Talk:neanderthalensis

RFV discussion

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Request verification that neanderthalensis is a word in any language other than Latin. Yes, it is part of a species name, but it in not the name of any scientific taxon. --EncycloPetey 22:30, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

You also speedy deleted the Translingual section of (deprecated template usage) erectus. I'd probably favor {{rfd-sense}} in both cases. It seems to be a question of admissibility, not whether the words exist or not. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:32, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

It's a simple matter for erectus because it's Latin only. For neanderthalensis I can imagine that the species Homo neandertahlensis might be nicknamed neanderthalensis. I doubt it, but am looking for evidence. Lacking such evidence a conversion to a Latin entry should happen, not deletion, so rfd seems inappropriate. --EncycloPetey 22:43, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

How many of lower case Latin terms have Translingual sections?

If there are many, then once we've established the unlikelihood of anyone citing these by RfVing a few, we can perhaps tag this class of purported Translingual terms en masse and close out the RfVs expeditiously (30 days). DCDuring TALK 22:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

There are lots that are mislabelled this way, but only a few that might have merit as Translingual entries. This one, and a few that name microorganisms are the only possibilities I know of, and those that name microorganisms might not be used outside of English. --EncycloPetey 22:56, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I've readded the translingual form of (deprecated template usage) erectus as a usage note to the Latin entry. Is that acceptable? SemperBlotto 08:10, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

No, because it's not a usage note about the word; it's a list of translingual proper nouns that happen to incorporate that word. Usage notes are for grammatical usage. Lists of scientific names by epithet would be better in an appendix. --EncycloPetey 20:09, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It's not hard to find occurrences of "neanderthalensis" in English contexts outside of exact expressions such as "Homo neanderthalensis" and "H. neanderthalensis" and "Homo sapiens neanderthalensis" (where that last treats Neanderthals as a subspecies of the same species we belong to, rather than as a distinct species). For example:

• http://books.google.com/books?id=g5oOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA219&dq=neanderthalensis:

  This has important implications because of the nature of the skulls for, although classified as Homo sapiens, they have strong supra-orbital ridges and features that are reminiscent of erectus or neanderthalensis.

• http://books.google.com/books?id=nMwFsuehTTUC&pg=PA90&dq=neanderthalensis:

  Genus	Homo
  Species	habilis	erectus	sapiens
  Subspecies			neanderthalensis	sapiens (modern)
  […]

• http://books.google.com/books?id=-VKEjAbpggcC&pg=PT168&dq=neanderthalensis:

  If H. ergaster gave rise to the later Homo species heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, and sapiens, there is a considerable temporal gap between the most recent ergaster, at about 1.5 million years, and the oldest heidelbergensis, at about 0.8 million years.

Actually, I think it's easier to make the case that this is ==Translingual== than to make the case that it's ==Latin==. Unfortunately, EncycloPetey is AWOL at the moment, and no one else seems to share his POV about these terms, which makes it difficult to try to tease out the issues and find a consensus on how to handle these.

—Ruakh_TALK 22:20, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

To me, these look like Translingual adjectives designed to look as if they were Latin. By the way, I believe EP is gone for ever. SemperBlotto 22:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

I tend to agree, the uses of it in English texts (and other languages) show that it can't be only Latin. The problem is even more clear with words like darwinii which aren't used in any Latin texts, just languages such as English, French, German (etc.) Would we want a Latin entry for every part of a species name, even when it is never used in Latin, only in other languages? Mglovesfun (talk) 22:27, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

For plants (and fungi ?) apparently there is still a Latin species description for each species. I think the descriptions are supposed to distinguish the species or subspecies from near relatives. This suggests that there could be usage in (New) Latin. I think the same once applied in zoology. If we have no one willing to sort all this out, we should perhaps just presume that all of the species (and subspecies) epithets are Translingual. Alternatively we could presume that any botanical/mycological epithet is Latin. The presumptions could be rebuttable by contrary attestation. DCDuring TALK 23:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

That might account for EncycloPetey's POV, since he has a background in botany. —Ruakh_TALK 23:44, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

For species/subspecies epithets that exist in any vintage of Latin other than merely as part of taxonomic names, the case for a Translingual entry would depend on tedious verification in an undetermined number of languages. I don't see the point.

For species/subspecies epithets that are apparently found in scientific works or textbooks, they would almost always be used first as part of a full binominal name before being used either alone or with the initial of the genus. That could be deemed Latin usage, not justifying Translingual sections. The alternative is to have translingual sections that define the epithet as meaning each of the binominals in which it ever appears. That seems quite lame to me.

In any event there will be cases where the genus name or abbreviated binominal has clearly entered the lexicon in a non-Latin language (eg, forsythia, gladiola, E. coli). Per research reported by Lakoff, the genus tends to correspond better to natural categories so species epithets are not so commonly borrowed as vernacular names. DCDuring TALK 00:38, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

An argument for keeping these words as translingual words is that many are used in other languages more often than in Latin — that is, the Latin word darwinii is used italic in the middle of a document written in German, Russian etc. about what plants are in Chile. If a word (for example, homo) is also used in Latin, it needs a separate Latin section. Some redundancy results.

Another possibility is to provide darwinii and homo Latin sections only, and have a meaning of each "(New Latin, in taxonomy) ..." — although the Romans used the word homo, they did not used it in taxonomy, so every entry can have that separate meaning. - -sche 19:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Notice Talk:darwinii, which suggests another possibility: provide the words in appendices only. Sapiens makes everything messy however: if one finds three quotations of "felis catus" that are not italic, does it earn its own English section? Homo sapiens has translingual and English sections already. Is there a standard? If no, should we start a discussion? - -sche 19:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Kept. No one except EP seems to feel that these are Latin rather than Translingual. —Ruakh_TALK 19:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)