Template talk:hu-af

@Panda10 what do you think about this template? Can we start using it? I don't like having nearly a thousand subcategories in Category:Hungarian words by suffix when these morphemes could be meaningfully classified into much fewer groups. Adam78 (talk) 14:15, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Adam78 If I understand it correctly, the new template would not change the current suffix category system, it would just add a new category to the category list at the bottom of the entry. If you'd like to implement it, I'm not against it. But I still have some questions because I'd like to understand it better.

1. The proposed category name is (in case of -gat) Hungarian verbs taking -gat/-get/-eget/-ogat/-öget. What do you think about Hungarian verbs suffixed with -gat/-get/-eget/-ogat/-öget?
   • Sure, why not, as long as it conforms better to the existing system across Wiktionary.
2. Where would you put this new category in the category tree?
   • I thought it would be the very first category in Category:Hungarian words by suffix (sorted at the " " character), so that this search option can become clear immediately.
3. How will it help you or other users to list all -gat/-get/-eget/-ogat/-öget verbs in a single category instead of separately?
   • To enable searching by suffix morphemes (including all their allomorphs, i.e., form variants) rather than morphs in their particular phonetic forms. [1] For example I'd like to see what verbs exist (or what verbs have entries in Wiktionary) with the same suffix, but I'm not interested in what form this suffix takes in terms of vowel harmony, nor whether there is any linking vowel. For example, I'd like to find out what verbs exist where the -gat​/​-get​/​-eget​/​ogat​/​-öget doesn't have an actual frequentative sense, such as in mosogat (which is not mos repeatedly) or látogat (which is not lát repeatedly). Another example: which adjectives take -ul​/​-ül as opposed to -n​/​-an​/​-en, to form an adverb out of them? There should be an easy way to review all relevant cases, without having to click through different variants.
4. We could actually reduce the number of categories in Category:Hungarian words by suffix by conforming to the Wiktionary standards and use only (to continue the previous example) Category:Hungarian words suffixed with -gat without having a subcategory Category:Hungarian verbs suffixed with -gat. It would immediately reduce the 949 categories to 473. Would that be a more reasonable number?
   • It's not really sufficient because e.g. -an may be an adverb-forming suffix and a verb-forming suffix, but I may want to browse a suffix only as one out of these two, but all its forms, irrespective of harmony and linking vowel.
5. What is the reason you have to browse Category:Hungarian words by suffix?
   • I'd like to give its existence some purpose and at the same time make this kind of search possible, as described above.
6. There is an alphabet list at the top of each category page, it does make browsing more efficient. I assume it is still not what you are looking for. Panda10 (talk) 18:01, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
   • Indeed, it has nothing to do with the alphabet. What it has something to do with is the rhyme pages and rhyme categories, which are fine for several purposes but not for this goal. In fact, I'd like to make the treatment of harmonic suffix variants more efficient and more meaningful, because their definitions are currently redundant and involve several instances of content forking (duplication, where all relevant versions always need to be manually synchronized with the others). As a counter-example, look at the entry of an as an article: it says "Form of a (all article senses)". It would be funny to see all the senses of the article "a" listed there again. I think that, in the same vein, -nek could be either something like this (which requires one more click, being a bit less user-friendly), or a template should be created for every suffix with multiple variants (like I recently did for -hat​/​-het and earlier for -a​/​-e​/​-ja​/​-je). I'm not very happy that we haven't made much progress on this matter. Is it because we haven't resolved ourselves on one particular implementation? Or because we haven't found an effective way to create all these templates, with the relevant harmonic examples supplied in each? – This question is closely intertwined with the matter of having suffix group categories. Adam78 (talk) 18:52, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Adam78 OK. The only possible issue I see is the category tree placement. Originally, there were no categories named Hungarian words suffixed with xx. A bot created all of them. So there is a chance that the same will happen with your new categories. You might want to create a brand new Category:Hungarian words by suffix cluster or perhaps by suffix group or something similar and place all new categories under that, outside of the standard system.

There is an interesting option used by Finnish and Turkish words. All -gat/-get/-eget/-ogat/-öget verbs would go into a single category by using this method. The category name would be Category:Hungarian verbs suffixed with -gat but it would contain all variants by adding the alt2 parameter. The other variant categories will not be needed. For example, for beszélget: {{af|hu|beszél|-gat|alt2=-get|pos=verb}}. This displays beszél + -get in the etymology line, but it would place the entry in Category:Hungarian verbs suffixed with -gat. When users click the -get in the etymology line, it would take them to the -gat entry. Whether this is better or not, I'm not sure, I just wanted to mention.

About the duplication issue: I think we started moving toward this direction (see -hez and -höz) but never fully completed it. Panda10 (talk) 19:56, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Panda10 It's great, I like this solution the most. Now that you mention, I seem to recall having encountered this way in a Turkish entry but I didn't realize it could be implemented systematically. In fact, this could also be a solution to the lopsided method we apply in the case of entirely assimilated suffixes like -val/-vel in kéz-zel: why the etymology line reduces it to kéz-vel but not kéz-val? Supposing we consider the -val form to reflect the abstract morpheme, which is actually useful as it gives more information about the vowel quality than the front variant: -on/-en/-ön vs. -an/-en. So we could stick to the back-vowel form in terms of collecting words and inserting the actual links.

Could we also apply this principle to inflectional suffixes, or only to derivations (those that create new lemmas, thus requiring their own categories)? I think we could include inflectional etymologies as well, for the sake of consistency and also if it makes more sense, why not? If so, what would the etymology line of kézzel look like? {{af|hu|kéz|-val|alt2=-zel|nocat=y}} or {{af|hu|kéz|-vel|alt2=-zel|nocat=y}}? (Or {{af|hu|kéz|-vel|nocat=y}}?) I'd vote for the first (-val|alt2=-zel).

And now we instantly arrive at the question of whether the entry of -vel is supposed to give any more (or even any different) information than that of -val. Is it? For the reader's point of view, providing the same information via templates seems to be the best method, doesn't it? Being redirected like at -hez does entail some annoyance, so I'd prefer the solution at -het. Adam78 (talk) 22:40, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Adam78 The solution applied by Finnish/Turkish editors (and maybe others I don't know about) is definitely clever but has its shortcomings. When I first noticed it, I found it disorienting, confusing. I thought I clicked on suffix xxx but I arrived at yyy. Then after some code checking, I realized what's going on. So it's not as straightforward as our current system where you click on -get and end up in -get. Another concern of mine is the full dump of words into a single category named misleadingly Category:Hungarian verbs suffixed with -gat. If this is the name why does it contain verbs suffixed with -get/-eget/-ogat/-öget, as well? This might be corrected by changing the category name to Category:Hungarian verbs suffixed with -gAt to indicate all variants. Except there may be users out there who would need one category per suffix variant. Who can tell?

As I mentioned before, my goal has always been to provide information to learners of the Hungarian language (as opposed to linguists). The proposed changes might be more for the linguistic experts to make their research easier. But will it be easier for the beginner student? I really don't know the answer. We don't know how wiktionary is used and who is using it. I can only rely on my own experience in learning foreign languages. So to help our decision, I recommend initiating a discussion in Beer parlour. We need the insight of other editors what they think of these two systems. For testing purposes, we could also create the entire new system by editing a few representative entries, suffix groups, and categories. Not sure if this is necessary, but it's an option. Testing always brings up details that were overlooked before.

Inflected entries: You said "I think we could include inflectional etymologies as well" - I think we already do that.

Definition templates: I'm fine with using definition templates as in -het. We just have to make sure the naming of the templates is standard, they are collected in one template category and not confused with the numerous usage templates we already have. Panda10 (talk) 18:05, 4 October 2021 (UTC)