User talk:Houses39

Etymology

Please note that edits that add unsourced, unlikely content that is probably also original research, like this, this and this, are not tolerated in mainspace. SURJECTION _{·talk·contr·log·} 21:30, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Please stop adding highly dubious and speculative etymologies to entries. —Rua (mew) 20:37, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Again, heed the warnings above. Why would an Uralic word be related to a Polynesian word??? — surjection ⟨?⟩ 14:39, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Maybe it's just that ancient? Houses39 (talk) 14:42, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 14:42, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

This is the final warning - if you have no idea how etymology or comparative linguistics works, stop editing etymology sections. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 20:53, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

This blocked user is asking that their block be reviewed:

Houses39 (block log • active blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • abuse filter log • user creation log • change block settings • unblock)

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Request reason:

May add words or learn etymology, do not want such a long block, also found the etymology scriptorium

The issue is that while the Etymology Scriptorium is a step-up from straight up inserting extremely dubious etymological information into entries, it's not a massive step-up if you flood it with all sorts of theories. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 16:01, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

(To other parties viewing this, the editor in question has chosen to contact me via e-mail). Comparative linguistics and etymology are best learned with books rather than online websites, but I don't have any kind of specific recommendations to give. My only stipulation for an unblock is that you don't waste our time any further with etymological theories unless you have well-researched and trustworthy sources for them. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 16:05, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

OK. Houses39 (talk) 16:07, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

• Relatedly, please at least read the etymologies we already have before adding your own theories. For instance, your ideas about katana are wholly unfounded -- if you check the lemma (i.e. "main") entry at 刀#Japanese, you'll see in the etymology there that katana is from kata (“one side”) + na (“blade, edge”), and thus the initial kat- cannot possibly related to “cut”. Good luck, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:45, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

What did I tell you about putting your theories on the mainspace? — surjection ⟨?⟩ 18:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Um I was pretty sure they were correct. — This unsigned comment was added by Houses39 (talk • contribs).

Doesn't matter how much you believe in your theories - an explicit condition of your unblock is that you do not waste our time by littering the etymology sections in the mainspace. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 18:21, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

OK Sorry I would need a source right? — This unsigned comment was added by Houses39 (talk • contribs).

That's one of the basics when editing etymology entries. It appears that you're too young, uninformed, or have little knowledge about how to edit in Wiktionary, am I wrong? ～ POKéTalker（═◉═） 00:34, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Maohi

"native, indigenous, real, genuine" are adjectives, not nouns. Can you fix the entry please? Equinox ◑ 19:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Likewise for [[maoli#Tahitian]]. This has numerous problems:

• Missing horizontal rule between language sections

  Add ---- before and/or after a new language section.

• Inadequate etymology

  We never direct users to a different language to read the etymology of a term. Doing so is bad practice.

• Odd formatting

  What is ma'о̄li? If the Tahitian term is maoli, then the headword should be maoli and the entry should be located at [[maoli]]. If the Tahitian term is ma'о̄li, then the headword should be ma'о̄li and the entry should be located at [[ma'о̄li]].

• Mismatch between the part-of-speech header and the definitions

  As Equinox pointed out for the [[Maohi#Tahitian]] entry, if the part of speech is a verb, the definitions should show verb senses. You cannot define a verb using only adjectives -- just as you cannot define an adjective using only nouns, or a prefix using only verbs, etc. etc.

Please clean up [[maoli#Tahitian]]. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:27, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

"Urlanguage"="Nonsense"

This is a descriptive dictionary. If a term isn't known to have been in actual use, we can't have an entry for it. Making up a language by uninformed guessing is simply not allowed. We do have a Reconstruction namespace, but it's only used for terms arrived at by scientific methods used in scholarly works.

In general, remember that this is a reference work. Accuracy is critical, and adding idle guesses as if they're facts will get you blocked. Permanently. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:02, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

But you said I could put them in the protologism section...OK I won't do my guesses here anymore. Houses39 (talk) 14:12, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Even for the Appendix pages, your edits should be reference-able, as in, showing that someone somewhere has used the term. Personal reconstructions and guesswork do not belong on the Appendix pages.

For your own guesswork, I believe you can add that to pages in your own userspace without running afoul of any policy restrictions. But before you add anything to the main space or the appendices, make sure you've researched and found reputable academic works that back up your edits. If you have any questions about whether a given reference is "reputable" for Wiktionary purposes, you could post questions to the Wiktionary:Beer parlor page. (Other editors, please correct me if this is wrong.) ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:02, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Could I research and write a phonetic science and statistical paper to confirm and come back to post? P.S. You speak Islands?! You could help me research ancient languages! Houses39 (talk) 17:20, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I think we'd be looking for academically rigorous references from peer-reviewed journals etc., not something put together by our users. Equinox ◑ 17:38, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I'll try to get a professor to take up the project (they probably won't) Houses39 (talk) 17:41, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Things Wiktionary is not for

Wiktionary is not to be used as a personal website for your conlang. You have been warned about adding made-up etymologies to entries, but please also refrain from putting wild guesses on talk pages. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:24, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Somebody else said it was OK, but if not, just give me some time. Houses39 (talk) 22:27, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Unsupported theories

English Wiktionary is not the place pre-PIE, Proto-Nostratic, Proto-Altaic, or any other theories not supported amongst most linguists. Please desist in adding anymore or you will be blocked again. --{{victar|talk}} 22:58, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

OK- Houses39 (talk) 23:28, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, both Starostin and Dolgopolsky have been found to be quite lacking in rigor when deriving their purported etymologies. They cast their nets so widely, across so many languages, that they don't understand what they are seeing in the sea of words that they fish.

I picked apart some of this a while back; you might benefit from reading this section of a discussion thread, and indeed reading through the whole thread from the top might also be informative for you.

I suspect you might also find value in this older article from the Zompist blog: "How likely are chance resemblances between languages?" The main thrust is that, statistically speaking, it is surprisingly easy to find a bunch of words in a bunch of languages that just accidentally happen to sound kinda sorta similar and have kinda sorta similar meanings. But when you dig into the derivations and histories of the terms themselves, you've actually got a whole lot of not much, disparate pieces that aren't actually related at all.

My favorite example of this is Hebrew גויים (goyim) and Japanese 外人 (gaijin), both of which can be loosely glossed as "outsider, not one of us". Some have tried to use this correspondence as "evidence" that the Japanese and Hebrew languages are somehow related. But digging deeper than the mere surface, we find that the Hebrew term is actually derived from גּוֹי (goi, “nation; non-Jew”) + plural suffix ־ים (-im), while the Japanese term is actually a borrowing from Chinese and not originally Japanese anyway, and is derived from 外 (wài, “outside”) + 人 (rén, “person”). So the suggested ancient Hebrew-Japanese cognacy argument falls apart really quickly.

If you're really interested in how languages work, and how they interrelate, you'd be well served to learn more about phonology, phonetics, sound change through time, word formation, and etymology. Simply flipping through dictionaries to find words that kinda sorta sound alike and kinda sorta mean the same thing won't get you very far. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 00:10, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Although it may get you into mainstream newspapers saying you've cracked the Voynich manuscript. SMH. Equinox ◑ 00:21, 13 September 2019 (UTC)