User talk:Ivan Štambuk/Archive 1

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;)

Hope you don't mind me checking the croatian words..:) Libellula 14:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Declension template for Croatian nouns

Regarding the template {{sr-bs-noun}} that you made, and which apparently has been used for Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian nouns - in Croatian grammar books it is common for Instrumental case to follow the Locative, and here they're listed the other way around.

I would like to make {{hr-decl-noun}} template and start adding declensions to Croatian nouns, and since I haven't read any Croatian grammar in English, I'm puzzled with the proper ordering of cases. Are there any guidelines in the wikt docs on this topic? --Ivan Štambuk 18:39, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I haven't found any actual help or guideline pages concerning declension templates. I created the new {{hr-decl-noun}} template and I've simply reversed the order of the two cases. You may change the template however you wish. --Dijan 21:08, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for help! --Ivan Štambuk 09:17, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Anytime! --Dijan 14:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

brat

Nouns brat and gospodin don't have plural forms. Instead, collective nouns (zbirne imenice) braća and gospoda are used. braća and gospoda also have only singular forms (some other collective nouns such as granje can have both singular and plural forms). Therefore, I think appropriate thing to do would be to make note that braća is used as a plural, but not list it in declension template. What do you think? --Ivan Štambuk 08:40, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

You're correct. I only followed the Russian example, where there, too, someone listed the collective as the plural. Yes, we should remove it and definitely make note that it is a collective used for plural where the meaning is closer to English brethren. Thanks for catching that! --Dijan 19:47, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you think it would be a good idea to create a template (the same as the noun one) where we replace the "plural" with collective? That way we can include the collective declensions next to the singular ones. --Dijan 19:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

t template

Hi, you might want to use {{t}}, see rectangle. Gives the right section link here, and a link to the hr.wikt. Robert Ullmann 11:59, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Works great, thanks. --Ivan Štambuk 12:12, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Experiences elsewhere

Welcome. I see you've been run through the wringer on hr. I hope that has not clouded your Wiki experience too much. From what I've seen in all that drama, hr.wiki makes en.wikt "sysop abuse" seem positively angelic. But then, I'm sure much of it is lost in translation for me.

If you get a chance, could you please clear out Category:Translations to be checked (Croatian)? TIA!

--Connel MacKenzie 18:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

milestone

See Wiktionary:Milestones. SemperBlotto 11:10, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Deletions

All those old cats and templates are now gone, i've also migrated all of the material in the category Old Church Slavonic to Category:Old Church Slavonic language using {{infl}}.--Williamsayers79 10:25, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Serbian and Bosnian common nouns

Yes, these entries need to be recategorized and the categories deleted. They followed an earlier Wiktionary example of "common" and "proper" noun categories. However, those have been dropped a long time ago. --Dijan 22:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to but in folks, we have a few noun inflection line templates tat we can use to help here {{bs-noun}}, {{sr-noun}} and of course {{hr-noun}} - which was edited by Ivan to a much better state than my basic attempt when I first set up the others. Regards --Williamsayers79 08:25, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

ты

Ivan, I’m pretty sure that the Russian letter ы was always written as two separate letters in OCS: ъі (occasionally ъи). (The form ы is occasionally found in OCS, but it is rare.) I realize that there is not supposed to be a dot over the і in ъі, but Unicode has not yet seen fit to provide for this distinction. Also, I believe the usual transliteration of ъі is y (but sometimes ŭi), so that тъі = "ty". —Stephen 13:53, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

You're correct - wikipedia article on w:Yery confirms this interpretation of ы. However, on various places I found consistent usage of ы:

• Wikipedia article on w:Old Church Slavonic in the box on the right translates the language name as "Ѩзыкъ словѣньскъ"
• OCS wikipedia article on OCS: [1] uses it too all over the place.
• On the other hand, University of Texas OCS lessons (apart from a few notable academic papers, the biggest OCS resource on the net) (discussion of alphabet here) use strictly the form you suggested, and transliterate it is as y. I thought this was wrong!

Anyway, although it's preferable to use one-letter form over a digraph, it is historically wrong to do so.

As for the transliteration of ъі/ы - you're also right. I found "ū" being suggested in this wikipedia article, and used in various places such as w:List of numbers in various languages (see OCS entries). "y" is used in all the other places I've been able to found. I think that another error in w:Early Cyrillic alphabet article is transliterating ъ as ǔ instead of ŭ.

Thanks for this and please let me know if you see me doing anything else wrong. --Ivan Štambuk 19:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

{{top}}

This is only supposed to be used in Translations sections, others use {{top2}}, {{mid2}} (background is a different colour). I know, fiddley little detail ;-) Robert Ullmann 09:48, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Roger that. If AutoFormat can't fix this, I'll do it in a few days. --Ivan Štambuk 09:57, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of them out there; several hundred to a thousand; I'll probably run something separate to catch them all sometime. AF only looks at these templates within Translations sections. If you use {top2} going forward, that'll be fine. Robert Ullmann 10:25, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Slovene inflection templates

Thanks for fixing those :D I noticed that the other day and thought "Oh gee, I should really fix that," but then went on to do something else and forgot. So thanks for picking up my slack :-) — [ ric | opiaterein ] — 01:25, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't mention it :> Your noun/verb inflection templates look so sexy (like in biti), that I think I'll just blatantly copy them for BCS :) --Ivan Štambuk 01:31, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

84.120.10.38 (talk)

hrvatski je ljepši --— This unsigned comment was added by 84.120.10.38 (talk).

Zamoljavam nije pravilna konjugacija, a srbohrvatština nije riječ i ne poštuje glasovne promjene. Konačno, novohrvatski ne dozvoljava tuđice kao što je 'revertiranje'. Odakle si ti uopće? -- — This unsigned comment was added by 84.120.10.38 (talk).

U tom slučaju, moj osobni doprinos Wiktionary-u te se ne tiče.

Please do not be insultive

No, I am not that IP. First of all: please do not insult me, or my contributions to Wiktionary. I'm neither illiterate, nor a sheep, nor I use crappy words. Second of all: while you are entitled to your view of colloquial language, as much as it is anal-retentive, I would like to remind you that Wiktionary is not a prescriptive source of words. Third of all: Although your particular choice of dictionary may avoid mentioning "ko" as a pronoun, that does not mean the word does not exist. I am sorry for the harsh tone, but I am not big enough of a person to use less vulgar choice of words when talking to somebody who believes one "grabbed god by his balls" (uhvatiti boga za muda, that's a nice idiom to add!) simply because one was blessed to be born to speak a nationally-awakened language of the South Slavic linguistics continuum. Peace --Dcabrilo 22:11, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Your shallow accusations of my "insulting" you are not worth commenting (where I was actually refering to common dialectal diversification of all Slavdom, so that "it's used" cannot possibly be criteria for inclusion).

Unlike what you would like to believe (wiktionary is not prescriptive), WT:CFI does exists and is proactively applied to lexems ranging from propaganda of corporate puppies ("Nortel") and ungoogleable slang to neologisms and obscure non-dictionary material like assembly instructions and Harry Potter coinages.

Plese reply to Wiktionary:Requests_for_verification#tko, since I'm obviously using the wrong "dictionaries" and you seem to evade my direct questions. --Ivan Štambuk 11:57, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Reflexive verbs in Czech

Hi, I have just replied to you at User_talk:Daniel_Polansky#reflexive_verbs.

Hi, do you perhaps have an idea how to solve the problem mentioned in User_talk:Daniel_Polansky#reflexive_verbs?

plamičak

"little lame"? Robert Ullmann 15:09, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, from plam + diminutive suffix -ičak. In Slavic languages, some nouns that already designate something "small" tend to bind diminutive suffixes, even though they have the same meaning as the noun they derive from. Same goes for dijete + -ešce = djetešce (baby = little baby), cvijet + -ić = cvjetić (flower = little flower) etc..

Stupid, I know :)...but this is present for at least 1000 years. I've read about this just recently in this great paper (linked from my Notes subpage):

• Problems of Proto-Slavic Historical Nominal Morphology

See especially sections 4.5.1.4.7.4, 4.5.2.3.8 --Ivan Štambuk 15:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not doubting the diminutive. But you mean "little flame" ? Robert Ullmann 15:40, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes...thanks for catching that.. --Ivan Štambuk 15:43, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

In Swahili, a rat or other small similar animal is panya, ki- (diminutive) + panya is kipanya: mouse. Robert Ullmann 15:46, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

slobodan

Tbot found this in the translation table at free, and created this entry. Someone making a funny? The table entry needs to be fixed? Robert Ullmann 15:14, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

No, the translation table entry is correct. I don't know what made you think it isn't... If it's for the name of Slobodan Milošević - his name really means free :) --Ivan Štambuk 15:36, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I thought someone might have added it in as a joke. Like adding "bush" as a synonym for "terrorist" ... I see. Robert Ullmann 15:42, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

varoš

To get mf in infl, use g=m|g2=f . A number of templates with g= work this way, with g2 and g3. "g" means gender/number, so there are case where you might use g=p or g=m|g2=p.

What do you think of the Tbot entries? Robert Ullmann 10:26, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! I was really wondering how to provide headword for those plurale tantum and collective nouns that have obscure combinations of gender/grammatical number :)

Tbot entries are wonderful idea. Not simply because of generating new articles, but also for checking incorrect translations (I've already corrected few ones). --Ivan Štambuk 12:57, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Central Europe

Is this the correct Croatian translation for Central Europe: Srednja Europa? If so, would you please create the entry? If not, would you correct the translation? The word Central Europe and its translations in the languages of Central Europe is one of my pet projects. --EncycloPetey 17:42, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's the term generally used in geography books (altough more proper Središnja Europa is slowly gaining ground). --Ivan Štambuk 19:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Note that our native Czech speaker says that střední Evropa‎ is not capitalized, as he created the entry. All my Slovak sources indicate they don't capitalize their form either. --EncycloPetey 20:10, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Tocharian A and Tocharian B

I think we need entries for the actual languages before we start adding words! SemperBlotto 11:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I almost forgot.. :) --Ivan Štambuk 12:33, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you very much. Can you move those categories:

1. 23:34, 5 December 2007 (hist) (diff) Category:beppe‎ (top)
2. 23:33, 5 December 2007 (hist) (diff) Category:pake‎ (top)
3. 23:33, 5 December 2007 (hist) (diff) Category:aldafeder‎ (top)
4. 23:32, 5 December 2007 (hist) (diff) Category:aldemoder‎ () (top)
5. 23:31, 5 December 2007 (hist) (diff) Category:aldemoder‎ (New page: ==Old Frisian== ==Noun== aldemoder # grandmother Category:Old Frisian nouns)
6. 23:31, 5 December 2007 (hist) (diff) Category:aldafeder‎ (New page: ==Old Frisian== ==Noun== aldafeder # grandfather Category:Old Frisian nouns)
7. 23:29, 5 December 2007 (hist) (diff) Category:beppe‎ (New page: ==Frisian== ==Noun== beppe # grandmother Category:Frisian nouns)
8. 23:29, 5 December 2007 (hist) (diff) Category:pake‎ (New page: ==Frisian== ==Noun== pake # grandfather Category:Frisian nouns)

When I created them I accidentally only changed a part of the URL and I can't move them back. 130.89.224.139 23:36, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

And the same applies for Wiktionary:bidda (move to bidda). Apologies, I will now be more careful. Thanks in advance 130.89.224.139 23:40, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I will makes something more handy for myself SK luuut 23:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC

Re: redirects

I doubt anything beginning with "list of" constitutes a word in any language, but for the sake of avoiding an uncomfortable wikifight I'll just go back and change the WP links. 63.172.28.111 12:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

What exactly are you talking about? ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 12:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I was replying to the message you left on my IP's talk page. Blast 12.12.07 1044 (UTC)

No, we don't want List of Slavic surnames in NS:0. Not even if the WP has link(s) to that; the WP should be changed. Robert Ullmann 11:29, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you an admin? Can you have the power to block?--Acdeoliopyut 18:45, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

No. But why do you ask? --Ivan Štambuk 18:49, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Serbian language in the Swadesh list

Здраво. Ја сам тај, ко преобратио српски речи са латинице на ћирилицу. Опростите, што не објаснио ово на странице дискусије. На колико ја знајем, официаљно српски језик имает само ћириличну азбуку, а народ употребае ћирилицу и латиницу 50/50, и српска википедија употребае углавном ћирилицу. Или ја нисам точан?

Ја лоше знајем српски (српскохрватски) језик, тако што опростите ми ако нисам појмљив. Ако што није исправано, тада молим вас, исправите. Stefan 15:29, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, both Cyrillic and Latin are official for Serbian, just like both ijekavian and ekavian variants (much like it was valid for Serbo-Croatian of Yugoslavia). As far as I recall, constitutional changes in 1997 that made Serbian official language say the the "official script is Cyrillic, with Latin where it's appropriate", or something like that. Serbian wikipedia is displayed in Cyrillic by default, but there is "Latinica" tab that converts text to Latin (that works fine in 99% cases, except for nouns such as "nadžupan", injekcija and alike). I have no problems with either script being used, it's just that I add Serbian in latinica by default because it's easier for me to type it (don't want to waste time using Latin-Cyrilic converters). In Swadesh lists, or for lists such as those of inside Category:Proto-Slavic language there isn't much space to add both script, so one should be chosen and consistenly used. You can convert those too to Cyrillic if you please. --Ivan Štambuk 16:29, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Hvala. So, I shall convert them later...Stefan 17:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

hinder

Happy New Year! When you have a moment, could you please add Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian translations to the entry for hinder (both verb and adjective)? Do watch out for edit conflicts, though, since I'm asking several folks for help with this. --EncycloPetey 20:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Aj svrati na gtalk.--193.198.152.14 21:01, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

{{proto}}

FYI: fixed to use term with its syntax and CSS customization magic. Robert Ullmann 17:20, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Fonts

Hi, I was under the (obviously incorrect) impression that I had one of the best available fonts for cuneiform, but I cannot see 𒈾𒀜𒋫. I was wondering if you possess a font which can see all these characters, and if so, if you would direct me to where I can also acquire it. Many thanks. Atelaes 20:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I had the IdgSerif, but not the others. I'm seeing a lot less boxes. Thanks much. Atelaes 21:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Mycenaean

A discussion is afoot at Wiktionary talk:About Ancient Greek#Mycenaean.......Greek? Redux. You have been invited because you participated in a previous discussion, I thought you might have a particular insight or interest in the discussion, or simply because I wanted to spam your page and irritate you. Check it out. Atelaes 09:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Since nearly everyone invited to the discussion seems to support Mycenaean Greek, all the Mycenaean cats have been deleted in favour of Mycenaean Greek. I switched the L2 of one of my creations to Mycenaean Greek. It seems you have got to the rest, and I imagine all the entries you're writing have Mycenaean Greek. So, I think everything's all set. If you need an admin for any other deletion or anything else, just give me a holler. And thanks for your vast improvements to and enlargement to Mycenaean. Atelaes 05:28, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Indo European roots

First of all, thanks for the work on δεξιός‎. I noticed that you are trying to blue-link a number of important PIE descendants. If you need any A. Greek articles created (either for that, or as cognates for Sanskrit entries or whatever else), please feel free to drop them on Wiktionary:Requested articles:Ancient Greek, and I'll write them up. Atelaes 09:52, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'll add them! --Ivan Štambuk 09:58, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Admin

Hi, I'd like to nominate you for admin. Would you accept? DAVilla 21:48, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes I would :) --Ivan Štambuk 18:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Please accept here. DAVilla 19:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

More Sanskrit cleanup

If you feel like doing some more Sanskrit cleanup, you may want to take a look at Special:Contributions/8, but only if you're feeling masochistic. Atelaes 21:59, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, if you're planning on really doing the thing proper, you may want to expand Wiktionary:About Sanskrit. That way, you can get the arguments out of the way first, before a bunch of entries are formatted. It can save you a lot of tedious changes later. Just a thought. Atelaes 22:02, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I was just doing that - looking at his contributions :) Most of them are uncategorized, and that's the only way to find them. It's absurd to add transliterated lexemes in a language that is written in 10+ well-established scripts, so I was generally redirecting them to Devanagari spellings. The only exceptions are the transliterated terms of Buddhism and similar - like sūtra (which was expanded by User:Doremítzwr :), for which thousands of citations can easily be found. But they're not Sanskrit but English terms originating from Sanskrit in that case anyway. --Ivan Štambuk 18:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Govinda

One does see the proper name "Govinda" rendered in Latin letters, in fact quite a bit (in proper names, films, history books, etc.). I don't think the objection should be raised so strongly, but if it is, it should at least be a redirect. But, in fact, the name is quite prominent and I made the entry because I wanted to know what it meant. Now it's there for others to find. If they don't know how to search in Devanagari they'll still find it. Best, 24.93.170.200 07:57, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Genus

You are right, my mistake. I fixed it. Unorthografair 11:57, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Etymology help

I was wondering if you could help me with the etymology for δειράς. First, my LSJ cites Sanskrit dṛṣad "rock" as a probably cognate. Could you find out what word that is? Secondly, would you be willing to cite a source for the info given at the PIE index (if you happen to know which one was used, or can find one which argues for *gʷer-)? Beekes disagrees with both of them, arguing for a Pre-Greek origin. I'd like to present each viewpoint on the entry. Many thanks. Atelaes 10:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

According to Monier-Williams dictionary, दृषद् (dṛṣad) is "a rock , large stone , mill-stone , esp. the lower mill-stone (which rests on the upala).

I found "gʷer" or "gʷerH"- in several sources, which all seem to trace back to Pokorny. Max Vasmer (in his etym. dictionary of Russian, presented in Russian translation on that site, which is also a source of most etymologies on ru.wikt ;) lists all the same cognates, except for Greek branch, for which he lists "Homeric βορέης, Attic βορέᾱς, βορρᾱς" (north wind?). The latter Greek cognate I also find in this university script (written in Croatian unfortunately - page 114 at the very bottom). This wouldn't be the first or the last Pokorny's cognate to be considered semantically "weak" by modern standards --Ivan Štambuk 04:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Telugu Translations

Thank you for directing me to formatting conventions being followed by Wiktionarians. I am new to this domain and I am learning my ropes. Thanks for your thoughtful suggestions.

If I follow the example given by you, good that it generates a superscript which directs the reader to Telugu Wiktionary; however, there is one problem. It looks as if it is generating a page for a Telugu word in English Wiktionary. Why should there be a page for Telugu word in English Wiktionary? I don't follow this logic. I would appreciate if you could enlighten me on this..... Sundru 22:51, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

New template

Seeing as you were the one to come up with the idea, I thought I'd let you know that I created a new etymon language template. Please feel free to drop by Wiktionary_talk:Etymology#New_template. Thanks. Atelaes 04:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Adminstration

Congratulations, you are now an adminstrator! If you have any questions about what this entails, please contact one of the other administrators. Enjoy your new role. — Paul G 20:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Cool! :)) Thanks! --Ivan Štambuk 20:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. Now that you have it, could you use "rollback" instead of "undo" when reverting vandalism - this does multiple edits at the same time, and marks them as patrolled as well. Cheers. SemperBlotto 14:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

OK! --Ivan Štambuk 14:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

pół

Yes, it is a numeral (in Polish: liczebnik), not noun or adverb. But there is a difference between English numeral and Polish liczebnik. Numeral is a word that represents a number, whereas liczebnik is a word that represents quantity, or sequence (ordinal numbers). Look here. --Maro 22:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

What you're saying that Polish noun liczebnik means is basically English noun numeral + "some more", i.e. the translation of liczebnik is too precise. English Part of speech header ==Numeral== is referring to the English meaning of the word numeral, not the Polish (or any other language) translation of that word.

With that in mind, I'd still say that ćwierć, wiele etc. are definitely not numerals. --Ivan Štambuk 22:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Proto Confusion

I have a question about Appendix:Proto-Indo-European *ǵhuto-. The bit about the Proto-Germanic participle at the top makes it look as though all the descendants come from a Proto-Germanic source, which obviously isn't the case. Would you be willing to clarify this a bit? Also, thanks for adding Devanagari to the grc entries. Atelaes 02:08, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Edit check

Would you double check this? I figured it was Armenian based on the script, but I wanted to make sure I didn't remove info that was supposed to be there. Thanks. Oh, and let me just take a second to mock you for such a foolish mistake, which is nearly as dumb as placing an inflection template under the References header........ Atelaes 23:49, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that...I was adding OHG entry igil just before that one, and copy/pasted it's =Etymology= section, but unfortunately L2 language header got copied too ;) --Ivan Štambuk 13:12, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

WT:PREFS and patrolling

Hi there, Please remember to erase any/all personal information from deletion comments. At the bottom of the WT:PREFS page, are sysop-only function - one of which replaces the deleted text by default. (Clicking in that boz and pressing ^Z restores the text, if desired.

Keep up the good patrolling.

--Connel MacKenzie 01:12, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, didn't know that. Lot's of those tricks to learn by practice ;) --Ivan Štambuk 01:15, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Yup. The others in that section mostly pertain to WT:WL. --Connel MacKenzie 01:42, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Crimean Gothic

Would you be willing to revisit this, so we can settle it quick and allow the editor to continue their work? Thanks. Atelaes 23:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Tocharian

I've just noticed all your work entering Tocharian words. Good stuff! However. I'm slightly concerned about the fact they're here in Latin alphabet, which is not what they were written in. Does the "slanting" script used for Tocharian exist in Unicode? Or are we arguing that its presence in so much linguistic literature makes Latin appropriate? Any thoughts? Widsith 16:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Tocharian script [2] unfortunately is not present or Unicode, nor have I seen any proposals announcing it's soon presence. One day, when Unicode starts supporting it, all those entries should be tagged with {{rfscript|Tocharian}}. A lot of ancient scripts have been added to the Unicode standard over the last few versions (5.1 coming in March will support 3 more obscure scripts for IE languages of Anatolian branch ^_^), so certainly there is a potential for it's inclusion in the long term. Unicode 5.2 will hopefully even support Avestan and Egyptian hieroglyphs!

Generally I think the only two cases when some sort of "transcription" Latin script is supposed to be used on wiktionary is for 1) languages that don't have their own native script encoded in Unicode 2) Languages that have no original writing in some sort of their native script, but were recorded by non-native speakers or their speakers where completely illiterate (the case of Crimean Gothic and Polabian and I presume some Aboriginal languages of Australia too). --Ivan Štambuk 23:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for these comments. My thoughts exactly. Widsith 23:27, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

reflexive verbs

Why reflexive particle should be omitted? It is integral part of the verb and cannot be separated. "Bać" always collocates with "się". Maro 20:44, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Indo-European *nébʰos

Hi Ivan. You've listed English nephology as a descendant. But that's just a borrowing. Surely we should keep them separate - it confuses the issue of how languages actually evolved if we include all instances of borrowings as well. It also makes it very difficult to compare development in different languages. I don't know any PIE textbooks which list these sorts of borrowing, for exactly that reason. Widsith 09:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes it's borrowing all right, I don't think anyone disputes that, I just thought that kind of information might be interesting to present in the hierarchy. I saw Dbachmann's adding in akʷā how English suffix -ey came out of Old Norse ey and eventually ended up in place names. That kind of information could be well placed into appropriate etymology sections of entries in the main namespace, but one would need to dig up individual articles to figure out how it traces back all the way from the same PIE root. It's not that I'm advocating adding every borrowing of every language, just some interesting cases :) The are some fine PIE roots that ended up in Uralic languages (ratas - wheel) or even Chinese (via Tocharians) thousands of years ago, and mentioning them could be really interesting.

Etymological dictionaries of PIE are limited with their paper medium, and rarely even mention modern IE languages, let alone borrowings between branches or into other superfamilies. Slavic word for milk - *melko was borrowed from Germanic a long time ago when all Slavic languages where still one, and there's no reason to mention that in the hierarchy of once the article is created. Surely no one will think that the whole Slavic branch descended from Germanic, apart from that specific word!

Now that I think about it, borrowings/descendants in hierarchy should be separated in at least some way, like the colour of text of their language name. Maybe marking the language names of languages borrowers with blue or something? There are cases such as nephology present in some other PIE articles, I'll see to open a discussion on the appendix page About:PIE on this first. --Ivan Štambuk 09:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, if they must be included, they should definitely be distinguished in some way on the page - maybe just putting them in italics or brackets or something. Widsith 09:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Slavic *korva

I've taken care of all the grc words listed here, but you may want to consider removing everything except κεραός. None of my sources gave it a PIE origin. But, your word, your call. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:22, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I've seen κεραός (keraós) listed as a cognate in plenty of places, and the other ones just in one book on PIE fauna. Since I know nothing on Hellenic languages, I'll remove them per your suggestion. --Ivan Štambuk 08:43, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Redirects

I've answered at my talk. Alessandro 19:54, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Re: Aramaic transliterations

Hi Ivan,

The problem with Aramaic transliterations is that, keeping in mind Aramaic's long history and large number of dialects, there could be any number of ways to pronounce any given word. Even some of the most common words have wildly varying pronunciations between the dialects. I gave up trying to transcribe the pronunciations a long time ago (both because of time/effort and lack of knowledge of all the possible pronunciations, not wanting to favour one dialect over any others). --334a 17:55, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, there have been a few standardized dialects over the centuries. Some have even tried standardizing the modern Aramaic dialects, foreign borrowings and all. The most complete and accurate standardized Aramaic dialect is probably Syriac, the dialect I'm familiar with. If I had to pick a dialect's pronunciation to use, I would use Syriac, but you're still leaving out a large portion of Aramaic dialects. --334a 04:00, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Галич

I'm going through some of the more esoteric languages and doing some cleanup, and couldn't figure out what to do with this. Have any ideas what the L2 header should be for that first section? Thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

'Old East Slavic' is politically more correct term for 'Old Russian'/'Old Belarusian'/'Old Ukrainian', i.e. their common ancestor language ("language" in a sense "collection of mutually intelligible dialects that eventually gave modern standard languages). However, I don't see it having separate ISO code, so first we should discuss whether to include it at all, or to format it separately as be/uk/ru/rue, marking it with context label 'Old East Slavic' that would presumably sort them in common category that would be distributed in Category:Belarusian language, Category:Russian language, Category:Ukrainian language (just like Crimean Gothic is a subcategory of Gothic) The user who made these entries, User:Kevlar67, was still active up until recently, maybe he should have something useful to say. --Ivan Štambuk 12:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

هیچ‌کس

hi, I am trying to create this entry, could you un-protect it please? Pistachio 15:35, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

thanks, maybe it should be protected again, just give me a few minutes because I want to check the part of speech which I'm not sure about. Pistachio 15:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

OK I think it's right thx :] Pistachio 15:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Welcome

Thanks for the welcome! I really enjoy wiktionary, so don't be surprised if I stay. Have a splendid day (: --EivindJ 12:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Polish nouns

It's great that you're cleaning these up, but please don't eliminate the genitive singular from the inflection line unless you add the conjugation table. Polish genitive forms are not always predictable, and are actually more valuable for recognizing an inflection pattern than the plural in most cases. --EncycloPetey 15:40, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, but they just create a mess in the inflection line. --Ivan Štambuk 15:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

What we've done in Latin is to give the nominative and genitive singular in the inflection line, instead of the plural. I don't know whether that would be an appro[riate way to handle Polish, but it is possible to have three forms placed neatly in the inflection line. We do it all the time with Latin adjectives (see albus), and English verbs regularly have three additional forms on the inflection line. --EncycloPetey 16:26, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Etymology/language_templates

I just added a column for the use of {{etyl}} to the table of etymology templates. I was wondered if you'd check to see if things look right. If there's a language with a code that's not listed, please fill it in. I wasn't sure whether or not to use the collective/macro- language codes, so I left them red-linked. Also I put a dagger next to two I wasn't sure about (language of table is a bit more specific than the available language code). Thanks for any help. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 21:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

"Obscure Ethiopian languages"

I wouldn't call Amharic "obscure"; it's the second-largest Semitic language, and in the top fifty worldwide. Thanks for adding it; I don't know how I missed it. :-)   (For that matter, I wouldn't consider Ge'ez or Tigrinya really "obscure", either, but they're less clear-cut. Either way, thanks for adding them.) —Ruakh_TALK 03:33, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Made {{Ethi}} some time ago for Ge'ez, after I started messing around with Proto-Semitic, and forgot to update the template up until now. Most of them are definitely obscure, as the Internet resources on them are basically non-existing ^_^ They even discover new ones from time to time ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 03:43, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

*wiHrós vs *wíh₁ro

Do we have a certain place we get these from? The Spanish Wiktionary (where I found *wíh₁ro) is the only thing that comes up on google, and *wiHrós brings up somebody's livejournal. — [ ric ] opiaterein — 13:14, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no central place, you'll have to dig it from different places. I don't really know where did that dude get the h₁ laryngeal from; in all the sources I checked "unknown laryngeal" symbol is used; of those available online are Matasović, AHD (schwa is another symbol identical in meaning to H), some b.g.c hits (those that are not gibberish ^_^) and, of course, etymonline (*u̯iHro- = *wiHro-). And that Spanish dude is missing nom. singular suffix -s (either that, or put the "-" at the end so that one know it's a stem!). --Ivan Štambuk 14:22, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I am the Spanish dude!. I just found this discussion page and I can see several mistakes in my entries. Unfortunately, no one has commented anything in es:Wiktionary (I'm alone ;) until now, so I would appreciate any suggestion you want to make in order to improve and correct the spanish entries as soon as I can. My talk page in es:wikt: es:Usuario Discusión:Juan renombrado. Apologies for my poor english and ¡saludos!. --150.214.214.36 14:18, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for stopping by Juan, I would've commented on es.wikt talk pages before but I thought it would be weird discussing in English on Spanish wiktionary :) It would make sense at least for interwiki links to point to the same reconstructed form. PIE work in Category:Proto-Indo-European language has been frozen for the last 1-1.5 months here, even though there are plenty of basic form (like Category:Proto-Indo-European numerals) which are no-brainers anyone can contribute to. Making thoroughly complete entries like *bʰréh₂tēr, *ḱḗr or *nókʷts is very time-consuming, and I'm not always in the mood for doing that.. :) --Ivan Štambuk 15:04, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Yiddish vowel marks

The policy for Hebrew words is that vowel marks are not included in the headword, but rather specified on the inflection line (like Latin macrons). While I don't know for sure, I have to imagine this would apply to Yiddish as well. You may want to discuss this with the Hebrew folks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:57, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Yiddish is not a Semitic langauge, and it doesn't make much sense to apply the same rule here.. Foreign language wikt's and some online dictionaries I browsed always place the vowels into headwords/page titles. --Ivan Štambuk 18:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't speak Yiddish, but my understanding is that it uses the vowel marks in ordinary text, in which case I'd agree with Ivan's conclusion if not his reasoning. (I don't see that language family has anything to do with it; we wouldn't drop vowel marks from Maltese, for example, just because it's Arabic.) —Ruakh_TALK 23:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

ἀπό

It appears this PIE root needs some expanding (or perhaps my spelling is wrong). Would you be willing to look into it if you have time? Many thanks. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:22, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Also, would you be willing to take a look at the etymology of bourgeois? Your knowledge of proto-langs far exceeds my own, and I'm getting conflicting signals from my sources on where it goes beyond the Old French (a number of them say Latin). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 04:04, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

LL burgus/burgensis definitely comes from the same Germanic root that gave gave OE burh, but I have no idea which one of etymologies on burgess and bourgeois is more correct. You should probably mention both of those potential sources of Old French word if you cannot definitely rule out one them. --Ivan Štambuk 11:32, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The template looks amazing. I would definitely post a note somewhere more public, as I have to imagine there are a number of people who would like to adapt it to other scripts. But, it is certainly an excellent idea. Thanks for looking into ἀπό, and thanks for the extra etyma (for some reason, I find an etymology to be so much more impressive when it has words in a bunch of exotic scripts :-)).

And you verified that the Latin comes from a Germanic root, you say? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

So it says here, here and numerous other places on the Web. The same Germanic root ended in Common Slavic *bergъ, and interestingly borrowed into Semitic too (Arabic برج (burj), also apparently in Aramaic and Hebrew). --Ivan Štambuk 19:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Text2image

These are cool ... I looked at several entries, very nice ... ;-)

I edited one (then reverted) to try something, see this. Using head=(the template). Looks very good.

Of course, if one has the fonts, that sticks you with the images anyway. (Which isn't a horrible thing for now! And they look really good in the right place as headword. And we often display the headword with larger fonts, etc anyway.)

(later: If we had classes (say) Phnx-image and Phnx-font, with the first display:inline, the latter :none, then someone with the fonts could set preference to use them instead of image display. (Or the other way around.) E.g. checkbox in WT:PREFS: "I have a Phoenician font.")

I like it ;-) Robert Ullmann 15:40, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Great! It would be good to default them all to image display, since 99.99% of viewers probably don't have appropriate fonts installed and configured. Text2Image requires arbitrary number of positional parameters, so I guess specialized template for this "dual" display would have to be created because {infl} already uses those for it's cause (or to provide a special trigger, like {infl|phn|pos|sc=Phnx|tr=abcdef|plural|foo|image|a|b|c|d|e|f}, that would cause it to pipe the rest of params to Text2Image..). Or anything more simple that you can come up with, I tend to overthink solutions to problems ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 17:09, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Look at the wikitext in the example above, which uses head={{Text2image|... I think that would be just fine. (there wouldn't need to be any sc= on {infl} itself) Then CSS magic if desired later can be put inside Text2image. There isn't any reason to complicate {infl} for the other 99% of its uses, when it already allows an arbitrary headword. You might want to just call it {t2i} or something if you want it shorter or simpler {{infl|phn|numeral|tr=šlšmʾt|head={{t2i|sc=Phnx|t|ʾ|m|š|l|š}}}} ("t2i" doesn't conflict with ISO code space or anything)

I'll take the liberty of re-writing the conditionals inside it at some point; the way the template language works the subtemplates and switches are always expanded with "normal" use of #if (!). So it always parses hundreds of lines. The changes won't change the result at all, just suppress a lot of unneeded expansion. I really like it; always wanted to see these things. Robert Ullmann 17:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and the way the switches take the actual characters or simple latin transcriptions is very good. Robert Ullmann 17:40, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Appendix:Old Persian cuneiform alphabet

Cool! You might want to link somehow with Appendix:Alphabets. --EncycloPetey 01:17, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Will do, l8r ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 01:26, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

𒌋

Since you seem to have a knack for Sumerian, would you be willing to clean it up? The rfc tag was removed some time ago, but it is, in my opinion, still a mess. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Also 𒀸 (these have been sitting on rfc for some time). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Cleaned up some, but lots of content needs to be relocated to separate pages. Verifying cuneiform words is very time consuming, and some of this material Dbachmann appears to have copied from some obscure German books. --Ivan Štambuk 12:51, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like something Dbachmann would do. :) Well thanks for working on them, they're both much improved. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Slovene vs. Slovenian

Please see Wiktionary:Slovene vs. Slovenian. --Andrejj 21:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requested articles:Sanskrit

And it comes complete with a request! -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry

Is there some kinda list of abbreviations for languages? (like how { { De. } } stands for "Deutsch" (German), and how { { Hy. } } stands for "Hayar" (Armenian)) ?? thanks

Re: Wiktionary:Requested articles:Aramaic

Hey Ivan, I think the word you were looking for was חרת. The word זרע is more often used for "sow." Cheers. --334a 23:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! --Ivan Štambuk 09:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Chicken Fryskasee

I was just coming back to that talk page to ask for approval to do precisely that--fix the frysk template. Gheheh. I'll put the rest on the public page.

Winter 12:30, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Horilka

When you have a chance, would you please have a look at горілка? I sure got some practice applying templates there.

I inserted derivation templates from languages which contributed or may have contributed to the etymology, even if they were considered unlikely. I also linked most of the terms in modern languages, but not most of the old forms.

I found {{Sla.}}, but I think there is need for something for Old East Slavic, which is cited in the references, like {{OES.}} or perhaps using the language code {{orv.}}.

My references cite *gᵘher-, *gᵘhor- (warm, hot), and I assumed these were the same as **gʷʰer-, **gʷʰor- mentioned elsewhere in Wiktionary—is that correct? I believe we can add a line for *gorěti/гореть/горіти (to burn) to Appendix:List of Proto-Slavic verbs#Semivocalic root.

Thanks for all your guidance. —Michael Z. 09:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

One more question: the plural and genitive, both spelled горілки only differ in the location of the stressed syllable. What's the correct way to format the page? —Michael Z. 10:22, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the PIE roots are *gʷʰer-, *gʷʰor. You can make separate template for OESl., but the more elegant way would be using {{etyl}}: {{etyl|orv|uk}}. However, I have no sources for OESl., but I do know that горѣти was attested in OCS. You might want to drop comment here before adding any OESl. content, whether we want the master category to be named "Old East Slavic" or "Old East Slavonic". They're really synonymous, but I have a feeling that we should follow the most common term in English literature.

Your current format of горілки is OK. All the other Slavic language that don't mark stress or pitch accent in standard orthography have exactly the same problem...The real fun occurs when inflected forms have different pronunciation but same written form as the lemma (that happens to large classes or nouns in Serbian/Croatian).

Also the {{plural of}} - I've seen it used on plenty of places for languages that have cases for nouns (i.e. not just simple singular/plural) like Latin, Russian, and that's IMHO simply wrong. I'd just format those with {{nominative plural of}} (or {{inflection of}}).

Also, there's a general guideline here to categorize entries that in the definition lines have these morphology "stubs" into "POS forms" category, like Category:Lithuanian noun forms, Category:Lithuanian verb forms etc. However, if somebody is diligent enough to "adapt" translations from the lemma (infinitive, nominative singular) to these inflected forms, put example sentences etc. - there's no reason not to place them into main POS categories.

List of PSl. verbs is the only one I left unfinished..I added nouns, pronouns, prepositions...and just got fed up in the middle of adding verbs thinking "holy shit, who's gonna populate all this :D". In the meantime some folks showed interest and I totally forgot about that unfinished business. Feel free to add more lemmata into any of those lists or place them in the talk page if you're not sure. When I think about it, I don't particularly like now the current division in List of PSL. verbs which uses morphology instead of semantics, but dividing verbs by semantics could be quite tricky. Maybe just sorting them alphabetically.. --Ivan Štambuk 20:06, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it preferable to use the more generalized {{etyl}} or the more reader-friendly {{OCS.}}? I guess language code has the advantage of being standardized and international. In the long run it's probably easier to maintain one template than dozens.

Regarding горѣти, both my Ukrainian sources do cite OES as well as OCS. I just figured out that стсл. ("Old Slavic") is the same as OCS, so I'll double-check which is in the etymology and which is being compared.

Excerpt from Rudnyc’kyj: "MUk. горѣло (XVII c.), ... горіти — ardeo (XVII c.), ... OES горѣти (XI c.) ... OCS. gorěti". Mel’nyčuk: "др. горѣти, ... стсл. горѣти, псл. *gorěti, *gorjǫ, *goriši".

I'm not 100% sure how to interpret all of the languages and apply them in Wiktionary entries. Rudnyc’kyj's citations include "MUk." = "Middle Ukrainian (XV—XVIII c.) — unless quoted otherwise"—I suppose I would just treat this as lang=uk, adding a text label where appropriate.

Here are some of the languages Mel’nyčuk includes which I may have to figure out how to cite.

• псл. = праслов'янська = Proto-Slavic: {{etyl|sla-pro}}
• др. = давньоруська = 'Old Rus’' = Old East Slavic: {{etyl|orv}}
• стсл. = старослов'янська = 'Old Slavic' = Old Church Slavonic: {{etyl|chu}}
• цсл. = церковнослов'янська = Church Slavonic: {{etyl|chu}}
• р.-цсл. = русько-церковнослов'янська = Church Slavonic eastern recension?: {{etyl|chu}}

Rudnyc’kyj's etymology also includes "PS. *gorěti ‘ts’"—any idea what "ts" means?

{{inflection of}} looks good—the other inflection templates don't seem to be formatted consistently. Should I suggest adding sc=, tr=, and gloss parameters for it? The template could be able to automatically categorize entries by POS form too, perhaps with a flag to turn the option on, to preserve the old behaviour (cat=1).

I'll add PSl. forms to the list when I can. But I think I'd better get some real-world work done presently. Thanks for all the advice. —Michael Z. 22:09, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's more preferable to use generalized {{etyl}}. However, {{etyl}} was created just recently, and there are tens of thousands of entries that use those individual languages so those are not going away anytime soon. An example where those specialized templates become handy are the language families, i.e. for borrowings that cannot be traced to a particular source, but rather to a specific family (e.g. Iranian, Germanic, Turkic etc.). These families don't have ISO codes so the only option is using templates such as {{Iran.}} or {{Ger.}}.

Yes, in Slavic philology, "stsl." ("Old Slavic") really means "Old Church Slavonic", while psl. (Pra-Slavic) generally refers to Late Proto Slavic (aka "Common Slavic") - the last phase of Slavic linguistic union. So you got that right.

As for the Middle Ukrainian, I don't see it having separate ISO 639 code, so it should probably be kept either as a subcategory of Category:Ukrainian language, or you could sort them into normal Ukrainian POS but mark those entries with special context label (like you're using for the dialects) that will sort them all into one general category of "Middle Ukrainian".

AS for the Church Slavonic and it's later recensions, apparently SIL categorizes them all under cu/chu code, just like OCS, which is totally brain-damaged and we won't follow that. OCS refers just to the particular corpus of text, so called "the canon" (which you probably heard of :D), and that we should stick to that. Adding CS entries under ==Old Church Slavonic== or OCS entries under ==Church Slavonic== would be terribly wrong. If you want to add Church Slavonic entries please create Category:Church Slavonic language and handle individual recensions with context labels.

I have no idea what could "gorěti ‘ts’" mean. What do marks '‘' and '’' indicate? I doubt that the consonant clusters like 'ts' were not simplified to affricate 'c' (/ts/).

That would be good idea to modify {{inflection of}}. Lots of templates around here still don't support basic parameters as lang= (which is sometimes actualized in a horrible way accepting the whole language name not ISO code), sc= or tr=. It might be good to just propagate all of those to {{term}} (which is generally used to maintain use/mention dichotomy in "running text") and which already has support for them, including CSS customizations. --Ivan Štambuk 08:50, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

PIE - to read

The Baltic etymology database gives these options for PIE ancestors of the word skaityti, to read: (s)k^weit- and (s)k^woit- I'm not sure really what to do with that, though :D — [ ric ] opiaterein — 13:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

That parenthesized prefix *s- would the be mysterious w:Indo-European s-mobile, that also operated in daughter languages - cf. Common Slavic *kora (“bark”) - almost everywhere it remained "kora", "kara" or similar but prefixed in Sorbian, Polabian and Slovenian with "s-". Since only the Lithuanian verb actually has the prefixed versions, we can either assume that 1) it acquired it later from non-prefixed root 2) the original root had the *s- but was lost in Slavic. So the best thing would be to mention it in parentheses to let the readers know it was possibly there ^_^.

It is also one of those examples where you can literally deduce Slavic word from Lithuanian (which is more conservative than Slavic): BSL. *keit- > *kit (regular monopthongization of *ei into *i) > *čit- (regular palatalization of velar /k/ into /č/ next to front vowel /i/). You add onto the root thematic -a- and infinitive suffix -ti, and you end up with Common Slavic *čitati :D

BTW, take care of Derksen's notation - in diphthongs use always 'y' and 'w' instead of 'i̯' and 'u̯'.. --Ivan Štambuk 19:15, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Moving category

Hi Ivan, could you please move Category:Spices and Herbs to Category:Spices and herbs? I would appreciate it. I would then move the contents manually. --Daniel Polansky 10:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...I don't think that categories can be "moved". I think you'd better relocate content to new category and put {{delete}} on the Category:Spices and Herbs --Ivan Štambuk 10:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I see. I thought admins can move categories, and only a non-admin cannot. I wanted to keep the history of the category. Thanks anyway. --Daniel Polansky 10:25, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Turkish derivations

Shouldn't all these really ought to be Ottoman Turkish derivations, written in Ottoman Turkish variety of Arabic alphabet? According to w:Turkish language, Latin alphabet wasn't used up until 1928, and all of these borrowing heavily predate 20th century, and correspond historically to Ottoman Turkish conquests.. --Ivan Štambuk 07:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but Ottoman Turkish, as far as I know, still cannot be properly displayed with any Arabic font. I'm refering to Ottoman "gef" which combines the Arabic final "kaf" with Persian "gaf", thus preserving the mini stroke (hamza lookalike) of Arabic "kaf" on the tail of "kaf" but at the same time adding the Persian double stroke to indicate that it is pronounced as "g". If you find a font that allows this let me know. --Dijan 08:18, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

nl:w:Westerlauwers Fries

I don't know where Ethnologue got the idea that this is a dialect of fry, but it aint so. Jcwf 04:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes it is, just like Súdhoeksk, Wâldfrysk, Klaaifrysk and others mentioned in the WP article. In either case, English Wiktionary cannot pay significant attention on local conventions employed by Dutch linguists in disfavour of those more prevalent in the English literature. It's probably as confusing as for Bulgarians coming here and seeing what they call "Old Bulgarian" labeled as "Old Church Slavonic" (the term the rest of the world uses, OTOH what they call "Middle Bulgarian" is what the other call "Old Bulgarian") - but that just isn't our problem ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 15:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it is disconcerting to see incompetence coupled to arrogance.

Jcwf

Look, there's no individual language called Frisian in English. You can use whatever terminology you like in Dutch WT/WP, advocating whatever particular language/dialect division you envisage (or want to envisage, ignoring the rest of the world) but English WT must follow widespread English terminology otherwise chaos will arise. There are some statements and reasoning lines in Ethnologue that reflect to ISO codes assignments by SIL that are complete nonsense (like Crimean Gothic being classified as a "dialect" of Gothic that was extinct a millennium before CG was attested; or putting Old Church Slavonic and Church Slavonic in the same category), but these three Frisian languages are not even mutually intelligible! We can't just call one "Frisian" and use "North Frisian" or "Saterland Frisian" for others - that would be as nonsensical as using "Norwegian" for Bokmal and "Norwegian Nynorsk" for Nyorsk (whoops, we already did that and now try to undo the damage). If there were some codified literary version of Frisian (like e.g. for Arabic) that everyone would understand, then it would make sense to use ==Frisian==. But it ain't so it doesn't. --Ivan Štambuk 01:23, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Just so. Except that you go off the rails a bit at the end: in English Bokmål is called "Norwegian", and Nynorsk is called "Nynorsk" (or "Norwegian Nynorsk", which is redundant, but perhaps helpful to someone who doesn't know the meaning of "Norsk". Maybe "Norwegian New-Norwegian" would be good? ;-) This despite what the Nynorsk speakers would use, just as English uses "West Frisian" despite what the Dutch would use (your important point). Cheers, Robert Ullmann 13:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: 't "Dûdsk"

Thanks. Yeah, I think I get it now. It just took me a little while to catch on. Trivia for the day: You know, there's another reason it never occurred to me to wonder whether the familiar term was the right one--until the issue was debated. The Saterlandic¹ word for West Frisian is Wäästfräisk.

¹ The term I favour, but it's just a personal preference. I hadn't even planned to mention it. :-P

Winterxx 2008-03-31 T 19:44 UTC}}

Hey, admin

Little help here?

Thanks. Winter 11:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Edit: On second thought, I think maybe we should move the template fy-pron--the only thing buried in the two subcategories above--into the new West Frisian hierarchy. Even though only one entry links there at this time, it's potentially useful. (I left the single entry link in place.) Winter 11:43, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

roa

Sorry to bother you, but I couldn't find the right place. {{roa}} (used only in heart, chanson, and bouônjour) points to w:Jèrriais language. But "roa" is the code covering several Romantic languages, including that one.[3]. I need to use etyl to cite "Romanic" (= Romantic), in Metis.

I think that {{roa}} should be renamed "Romanic" or "Romantic". But then how to specify Jèrriais? Perhaps {{etyl}} needs a parameter for language name (but is it a problem that derivations from several Romantic languages would be aggregated in one category?). —Michael Z. 19:09, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

It is horribly wrong to assign generic language code to some particular (especially the one that doesn't have it's own code assigned, and can reasonably be argued not be a real language at all, but a particular dialect). For sourcing etymology to some generic Romance language source, I suggest you create {{Rom.}} or something, like we have {{Sla.}} for Slavic borrowings in Hungarian, Romanian etc. (that cannot really be traced to a particular Slavic language). Either that, or use {{etyl|roa}} (now that I think about it, {etyl} can in this way deprecate even those generic macrolanguage etymology templates)

Google says that Romance is much more used in English than Romantic so I think {roa} should have 'Romance' as text..

As for the Category:Jèrriais language, whether it merits inclusion as a separate language or not, I'll leave that to other folks. One thing is certain though - {{roa}} should not be misused for the purpose of promoting "language status" of Jèrriais. --Ivan Štambuk 20:31, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up Jèrriais. After a bit of reading, I'm confident that my dictionary's "Romanic" (no t) is a synonym for "Romance". I think the generic {{etyl|roa}} is a fine way to use the template, as long as there is a language code defined as generic ({{etyl|sla}} can probably replace {{Sla.}}, if we accept "Slavic" and "Slavonic" as synonyms).

Please check the categories which I've placed the new Category:Romance derivations into. —Michael Z. 01:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Lydian

Please see: [4]. When applied to an inhabitant, the word is not a proper noun since it describes membership in a group or class. --EncycloPetey 00:16, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, but "Lydian" can also designate a member of Indo-European ethnic group that spoke Lydian language, which is a proper noun in English AFAIK. --Ivan Štambuk 00:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

And don't forget the adjective describing the 5-tone modal shift of the major scale. (Just being nosy and coming up from below.) Snakesteuben 13:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Courtesy pointer

Hi, Ivan, I hope all's well

I cited one of our discussions here under the horizontal line. (I try to avoid any semblance whatsoever of talking about people behind their backs.)

And while I'm here, I've been wanting to ask -- do you think you might be willing to help me translate some Coooolooooniiiiiaaaaaaa!!! lyrics some time, maybe next month? (Half a dozen songs or so, maybe. And some might already be available somewhere.)

Snakesteuben 13:24, 6 April 2008 (UTC) (Winterxx)

Sure, no problem ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 13:28, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Xsux

(Whoever came up with that code? It isn't like they were running out or something? Cune? ;-) Should AF be doing Cuneiform->Xsux it it finds one? Robert Ullmann 14:01, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, ISO 639-3 for Sumerian is sux, and I don't know what 'X' is supposed to mean (maybe "eXtinct" ?). Similarly Xpeo is for Old Persian Cuneiform (peo = Old Persian). I noticed that lots of extinct languages have their own ISO 639-3 code prefixed with "x" which is probably for 'eXtinct'. Yes, it would be good for AF to do this (and I even suggested this in that Tea Room discussion initiated by Pistachio), but you didn't add it to AF's task list and there isn't much articles using {{Cuneiform}} so I thought to do it manually. There are 100 articles still left using {{Cuneiform}} so once it's completely unlinked, it might be deleted (without fear that someone would be continue using it, cause I think I'm the only one adding Cuneiform words lately..) --Ivan Štambuk 14:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I see. I've added it. Will be simple to drop again when orphaned; as you say, it isn't likely others would keep using it. Robert Ullmann 14:35, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Now here's a fun little entry...

Hey, Ivan, Fryskypedy tells me that the English word for Klaaifrysk dialekt is "Clay Frisian." I thought I should reality check that with you. Does that sound right? Then, what to do... I'm planning to enter it as West Frisian, and just make a note somewhere that it's Clay Frisian dialect. Make sense? Thanks! Snakesteuben 15:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that would be w:Clay Frisian. It's a dialect of West Frisian, so it should go under ==West Frisian==. Dialects can be handled differently; you can either 1) treat all dialectalisms generically with {{dialectal}} 2) create individual context labels for particular dialects, which would group them in their own categories under Category:Regional West Frisian. For the latter approach see the context labels inside Category:Regional templates, and try to make something similar for Clay Frisian. --Ivan Štambuk 15:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

---

I think I'll go with the omnibus dialect category option, with lang=fy. I don't think we need individual context labels; I don't think I've found more than two of any particular dialect. If they pile up at the last minute, I can always plug more detail in later. <shrug> One more reality check, looks like the proper name for "Stedsk" is Stadsfries. I'll give that the same treatment. Hi, Robert. ;-) Since this is just a little bit, and the names aren't shared by more than one language, I assume it's not essential that I grok that example ↓ entirely? Or? Winter/User:Snakesteuben 13:39, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

---

In Template:Kajkavian you should be using regcat=Kajkavian|lang={{#if:{{{lang|}}}|{{{lang}}}|hr}}, see {{context}}. Then the category is "Kajkavian Croatian", which is important because otherwise we will have 50,000 dialect categories floating about under the region/dialect names. (While this name may be very specific to one language, a large number are not. Some may not even have useful default languages.) Robert Ullmann 16:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Kajkavian is Croatian-only, so I'm not sure that lang= or renaming Category:Kajkavian to Category:Kajkavian Croatian is really necessary, but I agree with your advice generally for dialects (or dialectal isoglosses) shared by several languages. --Ivan Štambuk 17:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

he:שלג#אטימולוגיה

Hi Ivan,

Would you be willing to add to שלג the information at he:שלג#אטימולוגיה? (The cognates it lists, in order from right to left, are from Judeo-Aramaic, Syrian Aramaic, Ugaritic, Akkadian, and Arabic.) I'm not sure how we do these, and I dimly recall that last time I tried, you re-did it somehow. Once you've done this one, I'll make a note of it for the future.

Thanks in advance! :-)
—Ruakh_TALK 01:47, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

O.K., thanks. For some reason I thought it was something more complicated. Now I feel silly. :-P —Ruakh_TALK 04:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

head, -head, and head-

I was wondering if you could give me a little advice on suffixes and prefixes. I am interesting in the distinction between a combining form and a suffix or prefix. For example, see -head. I would argue that the first etymology suffix is clearly different in kind from the second ety suffix. It is not used for inflection but is used for a kind of basic morphological transformation of the word to a different PoS, from concrete to abstract, from standard to small, etc. The second instance seems to contribute a higher level of meaning. Having said this, I also realize that this is often a matter of how old the suffix is and how widespread its use. Where this can matter is in how and where the combining-form is presented. Is it something that is so routine that it should not normally be presented (analogous to attributive use of a noun in English, to which there are few exceptions, or adjectival use of present and past participles of verbs)? Any thoughts would be appreciated. DCDuring TALK 17:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea why you chose me for an opinion abut this; I'm not English native speaker neither do I have enough proficiency about it to give advice to people as knowledgeable as you (you might notice that I keep out of English RfV/RfD discussions ^_^). But, since you ask, some personal comments:

• At the level of derivational morphology, every combining form really is an affix. By definition, both are bounded morphemes (bios and isms aside), and as far as the "part of speech" criteria is concerned, it's OK to put Category:English prefixes and Category:English suffixes as a subcategory of Category:English combining forms. Personally I'd do it the other way around - put Category:English combining forms as a subcategory of Category:English affixes, because the definition of a term combining form involves a bit more (i.e. semantics - definition of an affix doesn't care about semantics).
• Both prefixes in -head are properly separated by etymology. It doesn't matter even if they had the very same sense - if a difference in use and productiveness of a suffix can always be determined for particular lexemes in particular time periods, they should be separated.
• I don't know if this is the case with the second etymology in -head (it says "from head", but which one of 40 meanings is referring to, or is it some missing one, is unclear to me), but affixes that are derived from stand-alone words and carry their lexical meanings should not be treated as combining forms in IMHO.
• Personally I think that the idea of a combining form is a similar to that of a determiner - vaguely defined academic bullshit used to generate papers but of very little practical importance. I suggest you google out some of those, like e.g. this one; the conclusion of which might interest you (FCF=Final Combining Form):

Surprisingly enough, contrary to labellings in a considerable number of dictionaries, pedagogical and native-speaker ones alike, definitely not belonging to the categories of either synchronic suffixes or synchronic FCFs are adjectives like -free, -rich, -wide (simple), -friendly, -ridden, -worthy (derived), which occur in adjectival compositions like sugar-free, feature-rich, nation-wide, user-friendly, debt-ridden, seaworthy. The same applies to a semantically and grammatically interrelated foursome of nouns: -man, -woman, -person, -people, found in nominal compositions like salesman,5 saleswoman, salesperson, salespeople. The members of the groups mentioned here are not bound input elements at all, but free-standing bases with specific, restricted meanings, not much different from nominal bases in nominal compositions like (arm)chair, (tea)cup, (boat)house. In consequence, there is no reason whatever for the citation forms of these elements to contain a hyphen. Secondly, and more importantly, there is no reason for according these elements separate entries in dictionaries, because they do not constitute separate elements; instead, these elements should be included in the entries of their source words, where they morphologically and semantically indubitably belong HTH ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 20:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Obviously I made a good choice in asking you. BTW, the 4 reasons were: 1. you had edited head, related to the question; which also meant 2. you were active today online; 3. you had specifically editted the linguistics sense which reminded me of 4. the high quality and professionalism of your contribution to other matters, including one about the presentation of near and distant morphological relatives.

On occasion, the derivation of a combining-form use of a word is not from a current meaning of the stand-alone word or the combined form is much more common and widely known than the senses of the components (eg, bulkhead. If the user is interested in how the meaning arose or in nuances connected to the etymology there might be some value to helping. Perhaps I need to revisit how the entry might help a user of any kind (excluding linguists and word mavens). The point of saying in the -head that -head is a combining form of head is just to prevent a user from wasting time on the fairly obscure suffix and direct them to head where they could more productively spend time trying to figure out which of the 40 senses was involved in their query.

I was interested in your negative thoughts on Determiner. I was actually disappointed that the linguists could not come up with some benefits (other than elegance) for the use of the Determiner PoS. I was quite open to the possibility. DCDuring TALK 20:51, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Dunno if I'm one of "the linguists" you refer to — I'm a linguist only the same senses you are, but then, that seems to have been true of everyone in that discussion — but in my own defense, I did provide what I considered to be benefits. —Ruakh_TALK 21:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Minion report :-)

Checked categories - empty, no pages link to, new category created --> ready for deletion at your convenience, oh mighty one.

• Dien articles
• Dien numerals
• Dien verb forms
• Dien verbs
• Dien conjunctions
• Dien palindromes

Winter/User:Snakesteuben 20:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Off they go - to the oblivion ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 20:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

%1% Frisian: More advice sought from the guru.

Hi, Ivan. Hope all's well. Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, today I started thinking about the one-liner translation Frisian entries embedded in all the English definitions. I can find the ones under "lacking gender," and "needing to be checked." But how do I find the others? I can't seem to find a category or anything... And there's gotta be a better way than this! (Sorry if this is an astonishingly dumb question...)

Mainly, I'm just curious and would like to know, because:

The one-liner translations I've seen all seem to be culled from other wiki sites and online wordlists of varying quality. So of course, those are all West Frisian. I think we can safely bot them. I wouldn't be surprised if there were no North and Saterland entries present at all. There might be a handful of Old Frisian. Or there might not. But, IMHO, there's certainly not enough nonconformists to merit combing through them, especially if there are even 1/5 as many as turn up in my query there.

Winter/User:Snakesteuben 15:10, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, no easy way. First, I suggest you fix/check "Frisian (Western)", "North Frisian", "Northern Frisian", "Saterland Frisian", "Saterlandic" and "Western Frisian" language names listed in translation tables and which are listed in User:Robert Ullmann/Trans languages, and then ask mr. Ullmann or some of the other dudes that regularly mess around with database dump (such as Conrad, Bequw or Connel) to dump you a list of all the 854+ English articles that have translations that use "Frisian" (ideally both the article name + translations). Then you should check/correct those, and only when you're sure that those that are left are all of West Frisian, should you ask for bot to do search/replace of Frisian/West Frisian (or AF could do it, or someone you ask - ask in WT:GP if you have no idea who to ask ^_^) --Ivan Štambuk 17:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

---

> ask mr. Ullmann or some of the other dudes that regularly
> mess around with database dump

No need. As Robert well knows (that man has serious patience to help deal with my 'am horrendousten' templates), I'm certainly no programmer by any means, but even I can
find /i /n "blah blah" enwiktionary-20080315-pages-articles.xml >scratch.txt. <shrug>

> Then you should check/correct those,

Now, I will compromise with you. Check to ensure they are all West Frisian. Yes. Correct the accuracy of all 800? Absolutely not.

Our primary goal is to categorise the entries among the three languages, correct? Verifying the accuracy of each translation is not necessary to complete the far more important and urgent goal--cleaning up the mess you folks made before I answered your call for help. If you think about it for a second, don't you agree we should not lose sight of that goal? Would you want this jumble gradually diminishing for months, but still existing maybe a year down the road? This ridiculous state of affairs, making this project look like a bunch of amateurs--oh wait, we are amateurs, gheheh. But still...

Furthermore, I do not believe it is even remotely close to fair to try to task a single person with verifying the accuracy of every translation in a given language. I did not agree to do that. And I will not agree to do it now. Wiki is supposed to be a collaborative effort right? I'm not a native speaker. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I look most of these up in some abbreviated, or not abbreviated, way or another. (If I wanted a solo project, I'd make my own dictionary in a far more accessible format. Something supporting wildcard searches, and returning an immediate result in under a second. Something with a a direct database entry facility that doesn't require ploughing up and down trees, waiting for slow previews and messing with 20 or more extra keystrokes and mouse clicks just to tug with the blasted interface to make a single entry. Well, actually I am on a project doing exactly that, but that's beside the point. No freakin' thanks. Especially not with form-over-function-priority admins hanging around who apparently have nothing better to do than ride my arse for excess blank lines and lack of boldface.)

However, I have been verifying those that actually request translation check. And I will complete that, in addition to the original task. Hmmm... Just ran find "ttbc|Frisian" and there's 94 of those. That, cleaning up this grand mess, and verifying the accuracy of the 300 entries in chief (also not part of the original task--I was adding more content, from time to time, but I've quit that due to considerations in the parenthetical above) is enough contribution on my part, I think.

---

Progress report: I've finally completed the nouns, as well as the other entries on my main user page pointing to recently deleted categories.

---

And lastly, my habitual courtesy pointer; I mentioned your name again here.

Kindest regards, Winter/User:Snakesteuben 09:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

You're correct, it wasn't fair to oblige you to do that. However, I suggest we do a bot run for translations 'subst/Frisian/West Frisian' as the very last thing, when you finish cleaning up ttbc's and everything. --Ivan Štambuk 14:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. :-) Winter/User:Snakesteuben 14:41, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Two only vaguely related thoughts on organization

So I have two questions for you on language organization. The first concerns ἐστί. To begin with, I should clarify that I am in favour of minimalist stub entries for inflected forms, so that there is a main lemma page with all the info (etymology, definitions, inflection, etc.) and then the forms of that word simply say what form of what word they are, as well as any information in which they differ from the lemma entry. So, for example, the pronunciation of an inflected form is invariably going to differ from the lemma, so they get that. So, my preference would be for ἐστί to not have an etymology, since it is a duplication of the one given at εἰμί.

The second question concerns your recent request for πρωτο-. DCDuring's thing about -head has gotten me thinking a bit more about affixes. So, basically, my thoughts summed up (which can also be read at DCDuring's talk page) are thus: Affixes should only be given entries when they don't have a standalone counterpart which means the same thing. So, I don't think πρωτο- should get an entry, because it has a standalone counterpart, πρῶτος, which means the same thing. Your thoughts on all this? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:44, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

PIE "to be" verb *h₁es- is irregular and most daughter languages have inherited it combining it with suppletive stems such as *bʰuh₂- in it's inflection. English is is a lemma form (you can look it up an any en-en, en-FL and FL-en dictionary), and I suppose the same is valid for most (if not all) of the other daughter languages. With that in mind, it should have it's =Translations= section (this was so wrong), and the FL entries that can be translated to it should link to is, of course with inflection details in =Etymology=, inflection line or =Usage notes=. There's really no reason to have "present active indicative third singular of εἰμί" instead of "is". Cognates are pretty important, for you see in some branches, such as Slavic, 3PS of "to be" verb is the only place where the original PIE *-t suffix has been preserved. Similarly, there should be no problem mentioning that e.g. Latin fuī is cognate to Slavic infinitive бъіти (byti) or Sanskrit 3PSPAI भवति (bhávati) (translated as infinitive though). For all the other regular cases - yes, the lemma form should probably be the only one with diachronic etymology.

For affixes issue, if πρωτο- (prōto-) was morphologized in Ancient Greek as a productive prefix (I mean, combining form ^_^), it should have an entry, if not, it shouldn't. I don't know Ancient Greek, so I can't tell ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 21:33, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, you've convinced me on the merits for highly irregularly inflected words, and "to be" words are about as irregular as they come. However, you're going to have to use smaller words for πρωτο-. Morphologized? Huh? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:43, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I mean, became regular part of morphology - like πολυ- (polu-) in πολυμαθής (polumathḗs), πολύσημος (polúsēmos), which was borrowed in many languages from completely formed AGr. lexemes and continued to be used productively by analogy in fancy academic coinages, so you can say technically poly- < πολυ- (polu-). If it was not, than proto- < πρώτος (prṓtos) and end of story ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 01:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I guess I'm still missing your point (sorry for being so dull). I fail to see why, for example, the fact that poly- developed into an independent affix in English would have anything to do with whether πολυ- gets an entry. From what I can tell, for those words you pointed out, they are simply using πολύς as part of the compound, with normal compound rules (i.e. accent changes, final sigma drops). The key difference is that English doesn't have a word protos or polys, whereas Ancient Greek does. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Because English usage of poly- is directly reflective of Ancient Greek prefix πολυ- in Ancient Greek compounds, not of Ancient Greek adjective πολύς (polús). Now, I don't know whether πολυ- is treated as a prefix/combining form in Ancient Greek grammars or not. If it was not, than poly- < analogical usage of AGr. πολύς in AGr. compounds, otherwise it's from πολυ-. Similarly for proto-. AGr. Adjective is in either case ultimate source, it's just the "middle step" that is questionable. --Ivan Štambuk 02:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I think I'm with you now. Thanks for clarifying. From what I can tell, grc lexicons note very few affixes. It seems like, in general, the Ancient Greeks didn't actually have very many strict affixes, but rather preferred to simply form a lot of compound words. So, in general, I've been creating few affix entries. There are a few that clearly are, such as δυσ-, which has no stand-alone counterpart, and ἀρχι-, which, while it may well be the combining form of ἀρχός orἀρχή, at least has some spelling changes ( ο --> ι or η --> ι). So, yeah, in general, if a possible prefix has a noun or adjective which is simply the prefix plus a sigma, then I'm going to treat it as a compound word, not an affix. Thanks for bearing with my sluggish comprehension. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Hey buddy :D

Got another PIE root for ya to look at at sapnas. — [ ric ] opiaterein — 23:46, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I would have to imagine that it's the same as ὕπνος (húpnos). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd rather give it to Ivan, because I know he has a better idea of what he's doing with PIE than I do. thnx — [ ric ] opiaterein — 12:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, of course.

Re your comment on my talk page. Yes, of course. Besides this sourced en.wiki section, and this Hans-Peter Schmidt article in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, you can find a summary of preceding linguistic analysis of the word and its semasiological developments in Ilya Gershevich's Avestan Hymn to Mithra, Cambridge UP, 1959. -- Cornucopia 01:26, 14 April 2008 (UTC)ps: I note you know of Dbachmann, in which case you might wish to get his take on it. [cf. also edit history of the above-mentioned en.wiki article]. :)

You're correct. Also, Sanskrit मिहिर (mihira) is Persian borrowing [5], not a cognate. I suggest you redo your edit, but this time without losing the Persian sense of Arabic borrowing of "dowry, dower". Very interesting word indeed ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 05:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

1. That Monier-Williams is available as scans is neat. Very good to know.
2. I'd read of mihira within the framework of ´Sakadvipiya Brahmanism. I didn't realize it was more common than that. Interesting.
3. Apparently, User:Dijan has other ideas of what is "correct". Heck, I'm almost surprised Greek didn't appear in his "etymology". While sound laws are probably out of range of the average editor, and it would be too much to expect everyone to know that IIr -tra becomes -ça in OP (and that this fact led Kent to famously misinterpret va(h)umisa), or that most cultures -- Semitic and Iranian included -- did not translate theonyms, or that it is not wise to think that the Iranians of 5th c. BC Asia Minor spoke OP, I would have thought that everyone here would at least know the difference between a loan word and a cognate. Ah well.
4. Arabic mehr does not actually mean "dowry" (read on). Nor is this meaning in Persian necessarily an adoption from Arabic. Marriage in Islam is a social/civil contract, and the mehr is an oath/promise (made by the groom to the bride during the marriage ceremony itself) of money/property to which the wife is then henceforth entitled (in the advent of a divorce). This concept is not comparable with the Western idea of a "dowry." It is an entitlement of the wife, not of either family. It is also mandatory, and without which the marriage ceremony is not complete.
   The mehr -- the promise¹ of payment should the couple divorce -- is what actually seals² the marriage (cf the Koranic story of the covenant³ between Mohammed and God, which God seals by pressing a stone⁴ into the prophet's left shoulder).
   In any case, the practice of sealing a marriage under the same circumstances is also known from Syriac Christianity and from Judaism, so its certainly not per-se an Islamic concept that would per-se have entered Iranian languages from Arabic. Of course, in an Iranian language context, I don't think this concept is attested from pre-Islamic times so -- regardless of origin -- it would be quite true to say Iranians have adopted a loan meaning. Just like Skt mihira I suppose, complementing svar/surya in much the same way that the Iranian languages had received another word for the Sun. (Iranic hvar is still evident in NPers. xor[šid] "Sun").

C'est la syncrétisme. -- Cornucopia 20:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

ps: I see you copied the discussion to my talk page. Should I continue this thread there or here? Either way is fine by me.

pps: Thank you for your politeness and courtesy. I wish all editors were equally well mannered.

Current Wiktionary practice is not to source "semantic borrowings" in etymologies. If meanings of a word that is normally inherited from ancestor language, are overloaded with those of other languages, or even if the new ones completely suppress old ones, it shouldn't be classified as a loanword - just like calques. So if Persian mohr is normally inherited word from common Indo-Iranian stock and gradually acquired "seal" meaning via Arabic/Islamic influence, as you suggest, it shouldn't really have Arabic source in etymology.

Since this word seems to be pretty important in whole II branch, and has some peculiar semasiological developments, I suggest we put it into appendix page whence it could be linked into articles - see *mitra. Feel free to expand with reflexes in any other of 308 languages in II branch ^_^ I'm not sure where exactly in the hierarchy to put Sanskrit mihir and New Persian mohr. --Ivan Štambuk 16:08, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Right. Not sourcing borrowed meanings is what I would expect too. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the Arabic mahr derived from the Persian mihr. The two are unrelated. I was just trying to comprehend if/why anyone would think that the word for "seal" etc (==Arabic م‍ﮩ‍ر mahr) belongs on a page titled مهر mihr. They are different words, from different languages, are pronounced differently and have different meanings. Mohr and mehr are dialectal variations, but even so, these are articulation issues and not orthographic ones. While I can imagine that (because vowels tend to rise in Tehrani dialect aka "New Persian") one might articulate mahr as mohr in Tehran, it would be most unusual to see the fremdwort written that way. Similarly, mihr is pronounced mehr in the south-west, but a standard (i.e. Tehrani dialect) dictionary is not going to get into that. At any rate, as far as we need be concerned, the standard forms are written differently and have different meanings, and thus belong in different wikt articles.

On another notes re: *mitra:

a) The Avestan word is a fricative miθra (not mithra). The OP ***theonym loan*** is likewise fricative miθra, miθ^ra (not mitra). The genuine OP form and OP common noun is unattested and reconstructed as *miça (IIr /-tr-/ to OP /-ç-/ is regular). Given that OP and Av. are the only two attested OIr languages, and no Middle Iranian language preserves the palatal in miça (but do so for other words), and the /r/ didn't appear out of thin air, and that the OP word is itself a loan, and that Av is a sacerdotal language, and /θ/ usage is known in the west before OP usage is, how did you conclude that mihr comes from OP? Following Diakonoff it might be somewhat possible to say "Median", but OP? And even though the article itself says it comes from Av? Do you and Dijan know something the Encyclopedia Iranica and I should knows? :)

b) The "Pahlavi" used for Parthian form is not the "Pahlavi" used for MP form. The former is Inscriptional Pahlavi (Nisa variant) from the 2nd. c. BCE, the MP form is in Book Pahlavi from the 9th-11th c. CE. Book Pahlavi, aka "Pahlavi", aka Zoroastrian MP, is not representative of Middle Persian of course. (And "New Persian" is also not a continuation of Middle Persian).

c) with the exception of Pazend (which--as "Avestan"--already exists as Unicode) for MP, there is no non-pictoral way of representing any of the various Middle-Iranian versions of the Aramaic/Syriac-derived scripts (all of them would be just huge ligature collections, not to mention the many ideograms). There was a Unicode suggestion once, but I don't remember if anything came of it.

-- Cornucopia 04:09, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Now you got me confused ^_^. WP article says that both OP variants are attested, 5x and 4x times respectively: ''Mitra'' <!-- (5x)--> or ''Miθ<sup style="font-size:90%">r</sup>a'' <!--(4x), -θr- represents a sibilant, see Meillet "Gammar" 56, also applied by Ward/Kent -->. Was it wrong to mention that? If -θr- represents a sibilant, miθra > mihr doesn't look so strange to me ^_^ WP article does mention that mihr/myhr both derive from Avestan, so I thought consequently that those were continuations of previous forms of borrowing, not independent borrowings. It looked strange that the borrowed form differ so much at different stages of the same language.

Actually, Unicode proposals make a difference between Inscriptional Parthian (ISO 15924 Prti) and the Book/Inscriptional/Psalter Pahlavi (ISO 15924 codes Phlv/Phli/Phlp respectively). None of them is present at Unicode yet, but we'll definitely have Inscriptional Pahlavi in Unicode 5.2 in 2009/10, and the other ones will soon follow (see here - click onto titles to get PDFs ). So far I used "Pahlavi" as a generic script container for any of variants, which is really just a note for the time when these scripts really get encoded into Unicode planes, which articles to check for spelling. I'm sure that Michael Everson will do an excellent job, as usual. Avestan was unfortunatelly postpoend to Unicode 5.2, together with Egyptian hieroglyphs. --Ivan Štambuk 12:51, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Yep, 5/4 times as the proper name of the divinity, but not as the common noun. So, per "not sourcing borrowed meanings" and all that, I'd think one would want the etymology of the common noun, and not the proper name of the divinity. :) (btw, the NP/MP meaning of "Sun" doesn't come from either OP or Avestan, or rather, inasfar as it isn't attested with that meaning in either OIr language).

Ah, I stand corrected re: Unicode Pahlavi. That is indeed an interesting development, and as a placeholder, a general "Pahlavi" container makes sense. I too am very impressed with Everson (& Pournader as well).

-- Cornucopia 20:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I hope this is OK now (at least in accordance with your edit on مهر). Avestan range in Unicode is pretty much fixed (it's in the last stage in the pipeline), and I'd be happily adding Avestan lexemes in Wiktionary were there a Unicode font to support it (Just read a PDF on Zaraθuštra and feel particularly inspired, looking how to remap glyphs of some non-Unicode fonts on avesta.org in proposed Unicode range ^_^). --Ivan Štambuk 01:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

𒀭𒌋𒁯

I'm not sure what the images on this page are for, they look different to the way my font renders the text. Incidentally I really like {{t2i}} but want to make a WT:PREF to show text instead ;). Conrad.Irwin 20:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

{{Xsux}} should be split (see the code - so far a workaround for post-parameter) to handle font variations for different Cuneiform "stages" (see e.g. 𒀭 (DINGIR), different ideogram for Sumerian and Neo-Assyrian, but the same Unicode code point). Note that I've put into {{t2i}}'s table at the docs page space for {{akk-Xsux}} ! However, the Commons category on Cuneiform [6] has a fantastic contributions for Neo-Assyrian cuneiform ideograms by Margret Studt, but unfortunately not all signs of the basic syllabary are represented :/ so it would only partially work in t2i, unless I finish up missing ones (which shouldn't be too hard, combining the already present pictures). However, AFAIK no font supports all stages and all ideograms, and barely anyone actually has the cuneiform fonts installed, so I thought that linking those pictures would be cool enough ^_^.

Making a translation table codepoint->picture could work, but it would be really huge (almost ~1000 characters). OTOH, cuneiform is barely readable on the usual font sizes, and if you take a detailed look at some of those ideograms (such as here - 1.8MB PDF), you'll see that they really look alike and differ in lots of little details, and are as such readable only enlarged. For things such as cuneiform and hieroglyphs (Egyptian, Anatolian and Maya - soon coming to Unicode ^_^), this "headword" philosophy doesn't make much sense. It wouldn't make much sense e.g. to show those pictures enlarged (at the size they were actually written in) to 100px+ inside {{infl}} (or any custom inflection template), and next to them e.g. a transliteration in usual font size ^_^.

I haven't really given much thought about cuneiform formatting (new cuneiform entries are coming at the rate 1-2 a week ^_^), but would be glad if you have some other visually more appealing ideas on how to format them. I don't comprehend what you mean by "to show text instead". To disable the display of images? --Ivan Štambuk 20:47, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Diacritic redirects

Well, as we don't create pages with definitions for words with diacritical marks, as per this guideline, what are we supposed to do if not create redirects? Leave them as permanent redlinks? That's a little counter-productive... J Milburn 16:04, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

No, diacritics were not part of standard orthography (though it's a bit silly to speak of "standard orthography" for extinct languages but anyway..), they were also not phonemic, ergo we shouldn't use them for entry names at all. Similarly for Latin - article is on alea but the headword says ālea. Paper dictionaries of lots of languages often use additional diacritics to mark things such as long/short vowels, stress/pitch accent - but that are (almost) never used in ordinary circumstances (i.e. actually written spoken language). Most people don't even know how to type them. You should link to articles without diacritics, but provide them as "alternate text", i.e. such as for above-mentioned alea: {{term|alea|ālea}} or [[alea|ālea]]--Ivan Štambuk 16:28, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I just can't understand what's wrong with a redirect- saves people typing the piped link. However, I'll pipe them from now on. I'll change the thorn/eth thing, rereading the guideline, I see it doesn't say to redirect at all, but to create alternative entries. J Milburn 18:53, 18 April 2008 (UTC)