User talk:Echtio

compère

Use {{obsolete}} for senses that are obsolete. In this case, add the lang= parameter to indicate it's for French. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 23:36, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for that useful instruction --Echtio (talk) 23:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Pronominal?

What does this mean? —CodeCat 23:04, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

When I say for example the verb "écrier" or "ébattre" is a pronominal verb it means it can't be used without a reflexive pronoun. You can't say "°j'écrie", "°j'ébats"; you can only say "je m'écrie", "je m'ébats" or "après s'être écrié ce n'est pas moi ! il est sorti [=after having cried it's not me (who did that)! he went out"]. The thing is, the meaning of the pronoun "m" in "je m'écrie" is not reflexive : it doesn't mean °I cry myself" but simply "I cry" (or "I shout"); that's why I prefer to use in such a case the expression "pronominal verb" rather than "reflexive verb"; in French we use the expression "verbe essentiellement pronominal"; we speak then of the verb "s'écrier" but in the dictionaries we find the verb under the letter "e" and not under the letter "s". A minority of verbs is "essentiellement pronominal" but a lot of verbs like "laver" (=wash) can be used pronominally (for some of their senses). Then the meaning can be reflexive like in "je me lave" (=I'm washing myself), but often the meaning is not reflexive like in "je ne me suis pas aperçu de son absence" (=I didn't notice he wasn't there), it doesn't mean "I didn't see myself" although the transitive verb "apercevoir" means "to see"... The conjugation of ébattre has to be corrected : je m'ébats, tu t'ébats... s'être ébattu etc. --Echtio (talk) 00:30, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I think "reflexive" is the normal term used on Wiktionary for such verbs, though. If you want to use something else, you may want to discuss it first. —CodeCat 00:34, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I saw some entries where the term "pronominal" was used, sometimes with the "reflexive" pronoun and the verb close by, but I will follow your opinion. What matters is to indicate if or when the verb is used with a reflexive pronoun, but the conjugation of ébattre has still to be corrected. --Echtio (talk) 01:08, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Comorian

Do you actually speak this language/dialect? Where are you getting this orthography from (it seems very unlikely that people actually write like this instead of using Swahili orthography)? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:31, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I've been learning systematically Shingazidja, the language or dialect spoken in Ngazidja, for about 2 years. My wife is a Comorian woman from that isle. I'm being given Shingazidja lessons by a cousin of my spouse who naturally has also this language as mother tongue, and studied it at university. I hear it every day at home and often also when invited. Now I can understand texts and say simple sentences or get them by hearing.

There is no official orthography for this language. I've adopted the system used by Michel Lafon who wrote about 22 years ago the only modern existing dictionary Shingazidja - French. Sacleux wrote a Comorian-French and French-Comorian Dictionary in the first half of the past century (with a lot of swahilisms in it), but no one nowadays uses his spelling. However contrary to Lafon I make a distinction between b and ɓ, and d and ɗ, as Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga does in his dictionnaire français-comorien (dialect Shindzuani). Thus the spelling I've adopted is similar to the one you can find on following page : http://www.nonise-shi.com/shing/?page=regle_lecture#index. There is meanwhile an important difference. When Lafon and I write a word with “mpb” at the beginning, it begins with “mb” on the linked page.

There are some differences between Swahili and Shingazidja orthography : The sound [ʧ] is written “tsh” and not “ch”. The letter “j” is pronounced [ʒ] like in French “jupe, Jean, jardin etc. and not [ɗʒ]. Consequently the sound [ʤ] is written “dj”. “pv” = [ß], a sound that does not exist in Kiswahili... --Echtio (talk) 06:26, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, at least you seem to have a good source. I'm a beginner learning Swahili, so some of your translations look questionable to me; for example fundi for "teacher" (Swahili has it as meaning "craftsman", and uses the Bantuised Arabism mwalimu for "teacher"). Otherwise it looks very similar to Swahili and pretty readily interpretable, at least in terms of my limited vocabulary.

There was a discussion recently to merge all the Comorian dialects on Wiktionary and treat them with a single code; what do you think of this proposal? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:51, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't learn Swahili but I am also interested in it. Comorian dialects are not Swahili dialects but they are both Bantu dialects. That signifies they have a lot of common roots and there are many similarities in grammar (class systems). But for hundreds of years (1000 ?) Swahili and Comorian have developed separately. That's why the words have a different history in Africa and in the Comoros. So the word “fundi” means in Comorian not only "craftsman" but also “teacher”. Formerly one could address a university professor by using the title “mwalim” but now it's outdated.

I think it would be an error to merge the dialects of the four Comorian isles and treat them with a single code, for several reasons. An inhabitant of a village on Ngazidja who never went to the other isles and had only few contacts with their inhabitants can't understand well Shindzuani or Shimaore. There are a lot of important differences both in grammar and vocabulary between Shingazidja, Shimwali, Shindzuani and Shimaore. If we keep only one code for the Comorian languages spoken on the Comoros, then we have also to suppress, for example, the codes for Sicilian, Sardinian, Venetian... and to keep only the code for Italian. — This unsigned comment was added by Echtio (talk • contribs).

• OK, you are more knowledgeable than me on this issue, so I will withdraw the proposal to merge them. By the way, a lot of pages have an 'About' page, like WT:About Latin or WT:About Swahili. It's not necessary to put that much information, but if you could record what orthographic norms you're using or what written resources one could rely on, it would be very useful. It could just be something short like WT:About Rapa Nui. Just a suggestion. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:11, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Noun classes

For Comorian words you can use noun classes in the same way as genders in other languages. The classes begin with "c" followed by the number. So for class 1 it's "c1" and so on. If you want to show two classes (singular and plural) then give them as two separate genders. So in the translation for "ball" you would write: {{t|zdj|mpira|c3|c4}}. Different templates have different ways for showing genders ({{head}} uses g=, g2=) but it's the same idea. —CodeCat 00:36, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Vielen Dank für Deine Hilfe, I appreciate very much. --Echtio (talk) 00:45, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Comorian adjectives (and maybe verbs)

I'm not sure what the practice is for Swahili, but for Zulu (a more distantly related Bantu language), we add the hyphen at the beginning like you seem to be doing. However, the hyphen is only displayed, it's not actually included in the entry name. Look at khulu for example, where the word is displayed as "-khulu" but the page name is "khulu". Links to the word are created as {{l|zu|khulu|-khulu}} or {{term|khulu|-khulu|lang=zu}}. I think this practice may be good to adopt for Comorian as well.

A related point is that Zulu has two different types of adjective. One is just "adjectives" but they are limited and no new ones are created, while "relatives" are more common and new ones are formed as well. I don't know if there is such a distinction in Comorian but it may be worth taking into account. —CodeCat 00:05, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

We have the same practice with the hyphens for Swahili as in Zulu (display but not link to), so Comorian should as well. Swahili does not have this odd relative-adjective distinction, so I doubt Comorian does either. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:26, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I did some searching and relatives also occur in other languages of southern Africa, but it's hard to find much information about them as the Wikipedia articles are usually not well developed. There is some information about what relatives are on WT:AZU. Basically, they're a distinct class of modifier that takes relative clause (verbal) concord prefixes rather than adjectival (nominal) ones. So grammatically they behave like mini relative clauses. —CodeCat 00:39, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Here is a paper that discusses them some. They are limited only to the southern languages apparently. —CodeCat 00:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I will adopt the same practice with the hyphens for the Comorian dialects, I'll follow the Swahili practice for the verbs. It'll be an improvement. Again, thank you for your help! --Echtio (talk) 17:27, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Comorian translations

The pages bee, Comorian, water just use "Comorian" with the code swb. Could you clarify which dialects these translations fall under? DTLHS (talk) 00:40, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

You're right, the code swb should be used only for Maore Comorian. I've modified the pages bee, Comorian and water. --Echtio (talk) 18:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

{{l}} and {{t}}

Please use {{t}} in translation tables instead of {{l}}. If you want to display an alternate text in a translation, use alt=. For example, {{t|zdj|vundza|alt=uvundza}}. It will link to vundza but display uvundza. Ultimateria (talk) 19:32, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Welcome

Hi Echtio,

Metaknowledge told me you are making additions to Ngazidja Comorian. That's really exciting!

I want to welcome you to Wiktionary. As you probably know, we have places to ask questions (WT:CP) and guidelines for creating entries (WT:ELE, WT:CFI)).

I see you have been making contributions since 2010, so my welcome is really late, but if I can help you in any way, please let me know.

Best regards. BB12 (talk) 19:36, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

{{tø}}

{{tø}} is obsolete now, because {{t}} and {{t-}} no longer link to the relevant Wiktionary anyway. So we still use {{t+}} when the language has a Wiktionary and the Wiktionary has an entry, but for all other purposes we can just use {{t}}. ({{t-}} and {{tø}} still exist, for the benefit of editors who are used to them, but they just redirect to {{t}}, and a bot runs every so often that replaces them with {{t}}. And for that matter, the same bot converts between {{t}} and {{t+}}, so if you want, you can just use {{t}} everywhere and let the bot sort it out.) —Ruakh_TALK 07:40, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Ngazidja Comorian numerals

I added an entry for Ngazidja Comorian -dzima (one), so make any corrections that you feel are right for it. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 21:23, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Ancient Greek translits.

Hello. I'd like to enquire about these diffs: 1, 2, 3, 4. Did you add the manual transliterations yourself? If yes, please don't; if not, it's a bug that must be fixed. Module:grc-translit is supposed to take care of everything. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 11:19, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello, I don't remember about these particular "diffs". But it is certain that I have added a lot of manual transliterations by copying them mostly from the Ancient Greek entries of the wiktionary. Now I've understood that the transliterations are added automatically, so I won't add any more Ancient Greek manual transliterations. Thank you for your explanations. --Echtio (talk) 22:20, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Ngazidja content at en.wikt

Hi Echtio. I see that you've added a lot of Ngazidja Comorian lemmas to fr.wikt, but over here at en.wikt we still have almost none. :( I was wondering if you're interested in a collaboration between the two wikis. If we can add content here, I can work on adapting our Swahili template infrastructure, which is far advanced beyond what fr.wikt has, to Ngazidja Comorian. That way, you can take advantage of that same infrastructure copied over to fr.wikt. Are you interested? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:16, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Metaknowledge. Yes, I am, because I already saw that your Swahili template infrastructure was "far advanced beyond what fr.wikt has". Help is always welcome, more collaboration between the two wikis is a very good idea.--Echtio (talk) 03:01, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

As you have seen, we choose to omit the hyphens in page titles for verbs and adjectives in Bantu languages, but most of our practices are more or less the same. I suppose the first step should be making {{zdj-noun}}. If you have a reliable grammar of Ngazidja Comorian (in English or French, it doesn't matter) that you could share with me, that would be ideal. If nothing like that exists, you'll have to answer my questions about how the noun classes differ from Swahili. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:17, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

To omit the hyphens in page titles for verbs and adjectives in Bantu languages is (after reflection) a better solution than the system I've adopted for Shingazidja in the French wiki. The best grammar I have on Ngazidja Comorian is : Ahmed Chamanga Mohamed, (2015) Initiation à la grammaire comorienne Le ShiNgazidja Editions Cœlacanthe. It describes with a lot of examples in its first chapter (page 17 to 32) the Shingazidja noun classes as it has been done in the page "Appendix:Swahili noun classes" of your wiki.--Echtio (talk) 04:01, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Re hyphens: you can still fix them on fr.wikt! Maybe you could ask someone to run a bot to move the entries. It would be helpful here as well, because then the French and English entries would link to one another.
Do you have a PDF of that book, or some way I could access it online? I do have a grammar of Maore Comorian (Manuel Grammatical de Shimaore), if that would be a better point to start from than Swahili. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:20, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

No,I haven't a PDF of that book, I could not find a way to access it online but it seems it's still available as a book "made of paper". You know there are 19 Maore Comorian lemmas more than Ngazidja Comorian lemmas in the French wiki. You could start from your "Manuel Grammatical de Shimaore" (not available on the market), I would correct it if necessary (there are at least 3 to 4 manners of writing some Maore Comorian sounds for example the sound [β]) and than give you the differences between the two "dialects" (which are not many as far to the noun classes).--Echtio (talk) 18:49, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately, paper books are a little bit harder to get my hands on, so I'll follow your advice. I see that at WT:About Maore Comorian, you have designated v̄ for [β] — do people really write it that way? I'd prefer if we use a spelling system that matches what native speakers use, if possible. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:38, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

I think most of the native speakers don't write Maore Comorian, they speak Maore Comorian and French but they write French. However I didn't see anyone except me outside the grammatical part (!) of the site http://ylangue.free.fr/ use the sign v̄. In the following page of the same site http://ylangue.free.fr/alphabet.htm it appears as a v underlined... In schools and in some books it seems they (have) adopted the sign "vh". Search for example for the word "vhahanu" on Google. But no Maore citizen seems to have adopted the "Comorian" solution "pv", probably for political reasons. Finally in the lexical part of the site http://ylangue.free.fr/ and in other books they write the sound [β] and the sound [v] both with "v" making no distinction.--Echtio (talk) 01:42, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

It's annoying that they don't distinguish them consistently. I see use of <vh> in official-looking documents, like here, so that appears to be a better option to me. Are there any other orthographic pitfalls I should be aware of? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:53, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I think you can follow the orthographic rules which I have adopted from the ylangue site with the exception of the sign v̄ and are explained on the page http://ylangue.free.fr/chap_001.htm . I hope the orthographic system used in the "Manuel Grammatical de Shimaore" is similar to the system used by the ylangue site. Blanchy, Sophie in her "Dictionnaire Mahorais-Français Français-Mahorais Paris: Editions L'Harmattan 1996" makes no distinction between ɓ and b, ɗ and d, v and vh except at the beginning of the introduction. Anyway, if there are some differences, that should not be an obstacle to your undertaking. Continue questioning me each time you are in doubt and in any case I'll verify the result(s). — This unsigned comment was added by Echtio (talk • contribs).

It turns out that what I thought was a PDF of a book was just a copy of the ylangue site! That's convenient, anyway. I have created {{swb-noun}}, and I'd like you to test it out a bit. I have made a couple of guesses that I would especially like confirmed. Is it true that all class 5 nouns starting in dzi- will change that to ma-? (For example, what is the equivalent to Swahili jitu?) Also, is there a default plural assignment for class 11 nouns? The way I have set it up, you have to specify what the class the plural is every time for class 11, and even then it tends not to do a very good job of getting the plural right. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:18, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll answer now your first question : seul un très petit nombre de noms de la classe 5 prennent le préfixe singulier DZI (http://ylangue.free.fr/chap_013.htm). I found in the aforementioned "Dictionnaire Mahorais-Français Français-Mahorais" only five : dzianindri, pl. it's not clear, dzinyo pl. manyo, dzipuzi pl. it's not clear, dzivuzi (probably : dzivhuzi) pl. mavuzi (probably : mavhuzi) and dzitso (pl. matso). The dictionary however is by far not exhaustive. I could not find a Maore Comorian equivalent to Swahili jitu. But there is a well-known one in Ngazidja Comorian : djindru, pl. madjindru (= a giant or something very big). And I could find the Ndzwani Comorian word "djintru" (pl. ?) which almost certainly has the same origine as "jitu" and "djindru". If the Maore Comorian equivalent exists, it should logically be : "djitru" or "dzitru" or "both" (pl. ?). I'll answer your second question this evening.--Echtio (talk) 03:44, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Reminder to test out the template and see what you think, especially for class 11. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:24, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I have begun to test out the template. I have been able to use it till now in a satisfactory manner (pleinement satisfaisante) except for https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ulevu --Echtio (talk) 00:05, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

The template is very useful in most of the cases, but I don't know what to do do with the exceptions, like following https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C9%97ukutsi with the worst result till now. Probably I did not understand : "2 Plural form override if the plural cannot be generated automatically." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:swb-noun --Echtio (talk) 03:25, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

It's impossible to predict all the special cases, but you should never write it out, just specify the correct plural in the second parameter. See the changes I made to ulevu. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:51, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Look at my other changes. I'm also confused by why the stem changes in waswiya. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:58, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. You have done a very good job. Now, I have understood how to use the new template. It is very convenient. I found many occurences of the plural "nyasiya" in Maore and Ndzwani Comorian texts. My wife and my nephew only use "nyaswia" in Ngazidja Comorian. Ngazidja Comorian has often "sw" where Maore Comorian has "s" in words of arabic origin. Often also two forms coexist in the same "island language". But it's not common to find "sw" for singular and "s" for plural or vice versa as with waswia.--Echtio (talk) 22:12, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Take a look at shofera. The language codes in the etymologies matter (and in this case, you can use the {{bor}} template because it's a borrowing. Also, the line produced by ---- is only for separating language sections, so it isn't needed when this is the only (or the last) language section on a page. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:02, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Μετάknowledge. The Maore Comorian template is OK. No problem. Now I give you the rules for Ngazidja Comorian classes. I won't mention the exceptions as they are numerous. Class 1/2 m- → wa-, but mu- → wa- (proper Nouns), mw- → w-, class 3/4 m- → mi-, but mu- → mi-, mw- → m-, class 5/6 Ø- → ma-, but Ø-ɗ... → ma-l..., Ø-p... → ma-pv..., Ø-tr... → ma-r..., class 7/8 hi- → zi-, i- → zi-, sh- → z-, class 9/10 singular = plural, class 11/10a u- → nyi-, class 11/4 u- → mi-, class 11/6 u- → ma-. If you create for Ngazidja Comorian nouns a template similar to the Maore Comorian template offering the same possibilities (for example, nouns of class 6 without singular, nouns of such or such class without plural etc.), I think there will be no problem. For almost all aformentioned rules you will find examples (and also exceptions !) by starting from the pages Catégorie:Noms communs en shingazidja https://fr.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Cat%C3%A9gorie:Noms_communs_en_shingazidja&from=u#mw-pages

uvhandre

Hi Echtio. Hope you're doing well. I'm working on getting en.wikt up to fr.wikt's level of coverage for the Comorian languages, and I saw the issue with the plurals for this entry (see the history, where it was changed based on ORELC). Can you shed any light on this? I'm having trouble finding any use of plural in the wild. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:09, 31 July 2020 (UTC)