User talk:Ivan Štambuk/Archive 8

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Collective nouns

I've come up with a possible solution for words that use a collective noun instead of a plural. I created two templates, {{sh-coll-link}} and {{sh-sg-link}}, to create a standard note under the declension table in the singular and collective words' entries, respectively. As an example, see štene and štenad; also pače and gušče. What do you think? By the way, pače also needs a bit of cleanup. The accent was wrong; HJP says that pȁče is duckling, but pàče is some obsolete adverb, the meaning of which is unclear to me. Cheers, Krun 14:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Looks fine, but I wonder if that decoupling is something preferable. How about adding an additional parameter for all such notes, |note= to {{sh-decl-noun}} (and all the other upper-level templates that invoke it), and which would display the message within the inflection table, e.g. at the very bottom. That parameter could invoke one global dispatch template with one big switch which would convert a set of standardized parameters into standardized messages. So that one could only need to add e.g. |note=collectives or |note=see-singular. What do you think about that idea? --Ivan Štambuk 15:40, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that might work as well, but the collective noun itself has to be mentioned and linked to somehow, though. – Krun 19:09, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

It could be worked out with additional unnamed parameters, which would be interpreted inside the switch statement depending on the type of message. I'm not in the mood to tinker with that now, perhaps later, and in the meantime you do as you see the most fitting. --Ivan Štambuk 19:41, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Etymology of -icus

There's a question about the etymology of this Latin suffix at Talk:-icus, if you can help. --EncycloPetey 02:22, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Note: If it's truly a cognate of -ish, then the etymology for that suffix needs improvement as well. --EncycloPetey 14:01, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

poduška

I can't find this in any dictionary. I don't know about the sense pillow, but on this site it seems to mean the handle (ear) of a jug (pod- + uška?). The sense “pillow” might rather be connected to dušek “mattress”, although I'm not sure, as a pillow is also “under the ear”. Can you help with this? – Krun 14:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Confer подушка. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 15:04, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't find anything either. It's probably borrowed from Russian or Czech. The original meaning is almost definitely “the thing under the ear”. --Ivan Štambuk 18:02, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Stuff to check out

tvoj / твој and Appendix:Proto-Slavic *tvojь. The template on tvoj and твој is a bit crazy, but the only usage note would be... "put it in the entry". So if that's good I can start on others, hopefully. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I love the {PAGENAME} trick! --Ivan Štambuk 18:15, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I guess I had a lucky stroke of brilliance with that one... I didn't even know it would work at first, but I tried it in the Sandbox and hit gold :D I think I should be able to do the template for moj/мој really easily, just a quick find/replace job. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 21:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Looks like somebody beat me to it :D — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 21:38, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Example sentence for nekoliko.

I want to put an example sentence with the translation "I haven't seen him for several days", but of course I'm not yet 100% on how to put it together. On first run through my head I get "Nisam video ga za nekoliko dana" but the two things I'm most worried about are the order of the first three words, and whether za is the correct preposition to use in this case, or if any preposition is even necessary. Plzhalp :D — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 22:21, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

nekoliko dana itself acts as a temporal adverb so the preposition is not necessary. ga always acts as a verbal enclitic. So: Nisam ga video nekoliko dana. --Ivan Štambuk 22:47, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Hvala, brate. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 00:21, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

𒉈

The size 15 character really messes up the layout for me- it floats outside of the language section. Is there a better way to display it? Nadando 03:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's completely unreadable in normal-sized fonts in the inflection line. If you have better ideas on how to display it in a magnified manner, I'll be happy to hear. 4 of my installed browsers all display it properly. --Ivan Štambuk 03:05, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

In mine opinion, the most reliable way of displaying the sign regardless of fonts is by means of a picture. Does the picture on the right correspond to the sign? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 10:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah that's it. Not all signs have pictures on Commons, but for those that do they should be used (and I've used them already in several entries). --Ivan Štambuk 16:49, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Талијан

Hi, Ivan. May I ask why there exists Italijan, Италијан and Talijan, but no Талијан? Why is a tag Croatian in Talijan, despite the fact that this citation from Код хипербореjаца of Crnjanski proves that the form is widespread in the (literary) Eastern variety of Serbo-Croatian? Crnjanski also regularly uses талијански and Талијан in this work, but if you demanded more citations with this form of the noun, I would be overwhelmed, since I am reading right now this particular work. Do you insist on the tag (Croatian)? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 17:36, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Today it's prevalently considered a 'Croatian' term. In the past, prior to the artificial standardization efforts committed by nationalist forces, such differences were much more blurry in character. The reason why I didn't add that particular Cyrillic-script spelling is simple: it didn't yield enough search results on .rs and .ba domains :) However, if it appears to have been used in the past, as you state it was, then there is no reason not to add it. Please add at least one citation first, though; Crnjanski's work would suffice alone. --Ivan Štambuk 18:28, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

The Citation is already added to the Citations space. I remember at least one other appearance of this form in the 75 pages I have read hitherto. There remain ca. 600 pages, but I would præfer the second citation to be from another work. There is also the intriguing form Шпањур=Шпанац which I also came across there. I added Шпањур to Wiktionary:Requested entries:Serbo-Croatian. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:06, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, never heard of that either xD Our primary reference point is modern literary language, and I can imagine that Crnjanski's work abounds in relatively obscure or obsolete terms... Do you perhaps have Kod Hiperborejaca in a digital form? I wrote a program that can lemmatize any SC text and extract lemmata missing on Wiktionary... --Ivan Štambuk 20:35, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it is a book, →ISBN and 978-86-87019-27-0 (first and second volume, respectively). The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:41, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

More fuss from your favorite ... person

Ullmann's saying my reversion of cvijet to SC-only is "vandalism" and a violation of community (in)decision. Atelaes suggested I ask you about it, so here I am :) Was it correct of me to assume that you added Bosnian when you were adding SC because there were already Serbian and Croatian sections? And that, non-SC-speaking detractors aside, you would've preferred to just have one SC section? — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 13:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I added Bosnian so that all 3 would balance themselves. Either all of them are present, or none. Otherwise it doesn't make much sense. Sure I'd prefer only one section. --Ivan Štambuk 00:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Štambuk, you made it very clear that B/C/S/(M) sections added now would be left alone; you referred to it as a "win-win" situation IIRC. Deleting them is out of order. (You might note that being bullying and abusive in pushing your POV attracts "supporters" who live only for the opportunity to be abusive for the sake of abuse, and destructive for the sake of destruction. Your problem to deal with. Part of growing up.) best regards, Robert Ullmann 10:41, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Robert, your accusation of "bullying and abusive" on this topic is flat out absurd, as you've been as nasty as anyone else. It should be noted that there are plenty of people who support Ivan's view who are plainly not bullies. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 11:38, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah Robert, stick it up to your comrade Kubura [1], he was the one who originally removed the Serbo-Croatian section. As if the cloning of content to 4 identical sections would make them "different languages".

And puh-lease finally dispense with these obscene accusations of me "attracting abusive supporters" - I never, ever requested any of those folks actively supporting the SC unification effort (some of which have even commenced learning the basics of language!); they did it on the basis of their own free will, with plenty of prior credentials in benevolent contributing. The only one who demonstrated systematic 'abuse for the sake of abuse' is you. --Ivan Štambuk 04:17, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

čagalj vs šakal

I can't tell by HJP if these are regional variations so I have them listed as synonyms... if that's ok, I guess you can just leave it but otherwise could you add little qualifiers or som'thin? — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 00:47, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be completely synonymous, both words used for centuries.. --Ivan Štambuk 04:24, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that "čagalj" has been used for centuries, but "šakal"? Was "šakal" so much used that there're so many surnames Šakal? Where did you get the information about "šakal"? Do you have any old dictionary with that entry. If you do, please, tell me. Kubura 01:55, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

šakal is a 19-th century borrowing from German. I don't have any old dictionay at hand, and the online version of ARj does't yet cover letter š. --Ivan Štambuk 05:15, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

SC bot

Hi Ivan. Seeing as SC is one of the most well-organised languages on this wiki, I'd say it's a strong candidate for an inflectobot. I've been looking at adapting User:Dawnraybot to work with SC, and think it could be quite successful. Are the SC conjugation and inflection tables complete and accurate? I could quite easily work with them and set up the basics of a bot - the double script isn't too much a problem either. --Rising Sun talk? contributions 09:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

He's already working on a bot that will do just this, but it is currently still a work in progress. Razorflame 10:25, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi! Well, I've been preparing an inflectobot for Serbo-Croatian for some time: User:ŠtambukBot. The thing is that it's not as simple as it may seem at first sight, because lots of lemma collide and some of them have to be linked in a particular manner. For example, the verbs doprijeti and dopreti display Ijekavian/Ekavian variation in their infinitive stem, and are lemmatized as variant forms at different pages (and mutually linked to in ===Alternative forms=== section). However, their present stems are equal, which can be see in present tense conjugation which is the same: doprem, dopreš, dopre.... If these present-tense forms were to be generated as entries, they should link to both of the infinitives (e.g. first-person singlar present of doprijeti/dopreti). Some adjectives (in comparative an superlative forms) and nouns (in some cases) exhibit the same Ijekavian/Ekavian alternation. This would require all of them to be pregenerated, inflected forms that collide and which have different lemma forms to be "merged", and only then generated.

My bot so far is nowhere near complete with regards to inflected form generation (in fact, I haven't even started that pat), but I've managed to complete almost all of the preparatory parts. I have code that can extract live all the SC entries, check their structure for various anomalies, store it to hard drive and do various kinds of lookups. My calculation from about month and half ago show that there are some 350k inflected for entries that could be generated. What I had in mind is write a bot that would generate inflected forms in one pass for all the existing entries, and work without any manual guidance to generate inflected form entries for all the new lemmata created ever since the last time the bot was run. This wouldn't require any template pages, copy/pasting: just doubleclick and go. SC uses very few inflectional templates so the interface part would be piece of cake. Before running the bot, I am planning to do lots of additional checkings: I have two very extensive databases of SC inflected forms, which I would run against all the existing inflections to check for errors. I'm also bothered with the inflection of verbal participles and gerunds: some can have comparatives (as adjectives) and plural forms, and some can't, and since their existence chiefly depends on semantics of the verb, it cannot be easily machine-generated.

So in short: Feel free to generate SC forms for now until I set up my bot, but please ignore all the entries that have ==Alternative forms===, and ignore verbal participles (those in -o, -la, -lo, -li, -le, -la, and -n, -na, -no, -ni, -ne, -na) and verbal nouns (those in -nje). Also take care of multiple forms separated with '/', and some which contain parentheses '()' to separate optional parts (which means both should be generated). (I personally don't think that inflected forms are much of a value anyway, so it's not in my list of priorities. The whole "race" thing with French Wiktionary is IMHO absurd and childish.) --Ivan Štambuk 10:49, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

mnijenje

Could you rectify this bullshit, please? :) (As far as Msh's comment about the declension, it looks like Mr.(sic) Roberta has just included the grammatical plural forms, regardless of whether it's actually countable.... — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 19:22, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Appears to have some rare countable usage after all, even thought it shouldn't really be countable. --Ivan Štambuk 19:30, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

"Javna mnijenja u Hrvatskoj i Crnoj Gori." - There's the possibility of plural.
Use the Google test "javna mnijenja" (public opinions). Kubura 01:28, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said above, mnijenje is an abstract collective noun and cannot have plural forms. The fact that some people use it that way just shows how illiterate people are. --Ivan Štambuk 05:06, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Abstract or not, but in the structure "javna mnijenja", it has plural. "Javna" is the adjective, "mnijenja" is the noun. Do you agree?
It's simple.
Jabuka u mene, jabuka u Štambuka - dvije jabuke. Moje mnijenje i Štambukovo mnijenje - dva mnijenja.
Nije baš kao sa kliještima (a meredu i klišća, ako ti je takuo lišpe :)) )Kubura 02:30, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

glasnik

Hey, I want to ask you about accent/pronunciation. HJP has only glȃsnīk (gen. glȃsnīka), but RSHKJ has glȁsnīk (gen. glȁsnīka) and glàsnīk (gen. glasníka), with glȃsnīk in parentheses. Which is the original form, which do you think should be the main form(s), and how should we mention all of them in the entry? – Krun 17:43, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

glȃs -> glȃsnīk, and that's the form I've heard all my life. There are many such words which have multiple accents/accentual paradigms - usually one of them is the dominant one, and the other(s) being regional variants still dragging in dictionaries. --Ivan Štambuk 18:22, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Sklonidbe

About amoralan and amoralni:
compare to cat/cats and dog/dogs. Was this helpful? Kubura 02:54, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

It does't compare well, because both cats and dogs do have soft-redirects to the lemma entry by means of {{plural of}} template, as I explained you was the normal way of linking them. dogs also apparently has idiomatic plural-only meanings, which none of those definite forms that you created does. Some people here do manually engage in creating inflected form entries (as a means of relaxation, or at least it gives them a sense of fulfillment; I personally consider it a waste of time when compared to the mountains of unfinished work left which everyone could do just as easily), but if you chsose to pursue that path (presumably to pump up the edit count, aye? ^_^), at least try to do it the proper way. Which means every definition line containing soft-redirect to lemma describing which case, gender and number it is. --Ivan Štambuk 05:36, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Ophodna postaja

Have you ever heard for "ophodna postaja" [2]? Znači, policija kad ide gradom i obilazi, onda su zapravo u orbiti. A postaja Mir je patrolirala. Da nas ne napadnedu Kardasijanci. Kubura 03:47, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

The point was that it was a relative adjective (odnosni prid(j)ev in Serbo-Croatian grammar terminology), thus the proper lemma form being ophodni. ophodan is on the other hand passive participle of ophodati (which seems to be a rare verb, not found in dictionaries but some usage can be verified), meaning "that which was/is trodden around". --Ivan Štambuk 05:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

PIE numerals

I've been working through the Latin numerals ūnus ad decem, and have noticed that the associated pages such as Appendix:Proto-Indo-European *óynos are very short on Descendants, especially in Slavic langauges. I thought you might like to help, when you have the time, as these could be great model pages and coordinating centers for a very important set of core articles on Wiktionary. --EncycloPetey 17:40, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Sure. --Ivan Štambuk 17:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Armenia translations edit

Hi Ivan. Is this edit kosher? Just thought I'd check. BTW, I like cool map on your user page. :-)  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:23, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

How about this way Cyprus, all BCS translations grouped into one SC, marking regional Cipar (Croatian) in brackets? As for the map, IMHO, it shows some presence of some very small languages, not the language of the majority of the population, notably, Canada, Russia, Australia. --Anatoli 23:53, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I added all 6 variants of Armenia translations under Serbo-Croatian but left BCS for now. Please check. Perhaps it's worth marking {{qualifier|Bosnian}}, {{qualifier|Croatian and Serbian}} or something. --Anatoli 00:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Bosnian standard is an inconsistent cross-mutation of former Eastern and Western varieties of Serbo-Croatian. I would be surprised if some Bosnian language dictionaries/orthographies list all three as "proper". B&H is a multiethnic state, and depending on one's definition of Bosnian ("language of Bosnians", "language of Bosniaks"), either/all can be "proper", depending on the region. Halilović's orthography book of Bosnian takes Ermenija as the primary entry, and lists the other two as soft-redirects. The qualifier guidelines for Serbo-Croatian require that the labels be used only inclusively, i.e. if a particular word is considered to be only or prevalently e.g. Croatian, one should note it as such, otherwise it's implied that the word is not regionally/standardologically confined. --Ivan Štambuk 17:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

-an ending SC words

Hey there Ivan. -an ending SC words seem to imply an adjective, yeah? For example, destrukivan was destructive, so would that make a word like impulsivan impulsive? (This was just an example, not an actual word that I know of) Razorflame 19:59, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

That is correct. When in lemma form, it almost always implies an adjective, but it also covers a small number of nouns. The corresponding adverb ends in -no (destruktivno, impulzivno in case of abovementioned words). --Ivan Štambuk 20:04, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

do viđenja

Could you take a look at do viđenja and doviđenja? I'm taking a Croatian audio course and I'm guessing the accent should be doviđénja (although in the recording it sounded more like dovidžȇnja). Also, could you maybe do zbogom as well? – Krun 11:48, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Now that I think about it, I've heard both forms doviđénja and doviđȇnja, although the first one seems more "proper" IMHO, and is the form that can be found in several dictionaries (e.g. the big Anić). Interjections are a bit tricky, because they often don't abide by usual accentual constraints (e.g. you can have accents also on final syllables, even with rising tone). --Ivan Štambuk 14:25, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

But isn't this just a prepositional phrase, do + vìđēnje in the genitive (which should be viđénje^{see below}, right?). The change in intonation could simply be because the phrase usually acts as a sentence of its own, and sentence intonation can vary, is that not so? I've even heard hr̀vātskī spoken with both falling and rising tone in different context (different sentence structure) by the same speaker. I guess there is a subtle difference between the underlying tone and the actual realization of it, which may become identical in some situations with something else (much as phonemes can). Dialectal/regional/foreign influence could also be a factor in this, like đ=dž in some areas (and in Slovene); are there perhaps areas where e.g. r̀=ȑ, é=ȇ? – Krun 17:35, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

It is a prepositional phrase in origin, but phonetically it is one word and [o] in do is not accented. I'm not 100% sure, but viđénje could be alternative accentuation of vȉđēnje. That would require the verb vȉd(j)eti accented as vìd(j)eti, which is obviously not the case. Sentence intonation can vary, but only in case of clitics stealing/transferring their tone. All monosyllabic prepositions can act as proclitics, but only when the following word has a falling tone, which excludes cases such as do viđénja.

There are major regional differences in pronunciation. The proper, Neoštokavian, pronunciation that you're comparing the speaker to is actually not spoken by most of the common people, and even the professional speakers pay little attention to proper accents and vowel lenghts, and introduce their own regional speech. You shouldn't bother yourself that much with such details, because accents present no communication obstacles, and even when they do introduce lexical difference, the sentence context is used to disambiguate. Memorizing them by heart is very hard, since they're generally completely irregular.

Yes there are lots of areas where [đ] = [dž], especially former Čakavian and Kajkavian ares that are today Štokavianized. Namely Zagreb urban speech where there is no difference between /č/ and /ć/, and also /dž/ and /đ/. Zagreb urban speech also completely lacks Neoštokavian accentual pitch-accent system, and uses stress-based, dynamic system, mostly completely lacking lengths. But since 60% of population there are in fact immigrants from various other regions, you can hear all kinds of mixed pronunciations as newcomers subconsciously try to "adapt" their speech the prestigious idiom. My advice is to generally only pay attention to the accented syllable, and the corresponding vowel length if you really want to go deep.

Also isn't that a bit absurd when you think about it?! On the formal, standardological level, B/C/S are so much the same, and the real differences overwhelmingly lie in regional pronunciations such as those that you're coping with now, and which are all sub-literary and thus irrelevant, yet all those nationalists insist on "different standards" which are mirror copies of one another... --Ivan Štambuk 18:57, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all that. Sorry about my typos causing the confusion in the first paragraph of your answer. What I meant was that viđénja (mistyped by me above as viđénje) is the genitive of vȉđēnje (mistyped by me as vìđēnje; yes, I should probably get some good sleep :S), not that that word's accent system could be different. Doesn't the genitive always properly have a rising tone? – Krun 20:49, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

There are several accentual paradigms where the genitive gets long rising tone, but I think all of them require rising tone (long or short) in the nominative singular stem too in case of polysyllabics such as viđenje. When you have short falling tone, that's usually an indication of "fixed" paradigm. (but again, there are exceptions: kȍnj - kónjā, snȍp - snópā & snòpōvā ...but all monosyllabics). See the grammar book by Barić et al.; it lists all the paradigms down to the details that will blow your brains out (starting on p. 116) --Ivan Štambuk 07:49, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Vrela su vrela

Lipi moj Ivane, a ča biš jin ti mogal ni povit kad ne pripovedaš hrvackim zajikom, batiš o srbohrvackom, a kadi ti bivaš i z kin povedaš po srbohrvacki to anke niki ne more reč vero j' to tako al ni, ma jušto tako ne znan za zemlju ka se Srbohrvacka zove ni kadi ta stoji. Bušac --Roberta F. 15:52, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Roberta F., можеш надгледати оваj врло занимљиви чланак и посебно По Марјановићу, на Балкану су живела само три словенска народа - Словенци, Србохрвати и Бугари. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 18:05, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Roberta, what you're writing there is not Serb-Croatian, but Chakavian language. 99% of Croats (including southern Chakavian speakers) don't understand a word of that. Languages are not named after the countries, but usually after the people who speak it. There is no American language, Belgian language, Netherlandic language... The word srpskohrvatski is a compound composed of srpski and hrvatski, meaning that it denotes a language spoken by both Serbs and Croats. --Ivan Štambuk 18:25, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Dragi Ivane, ako ti nije poznato u članku 12. Ustava Republike Hrvatske stoji: U Republici Hrvatskoj u službenoj je uporabi hrvatski jezik i latinično pismo, kao i što je po članku 13. Glavni grad Republike Hrvatske Zagreb. A ove ideje o serbokroatizmu su originalno istraživanje i živimo u 2010. godini, ne 1850. Iz povijesti se serbokroatistike znade da se uz naziv srpskohrvatski kao sporedna istoznačnica upotrebljavala oznaka srpski. Nasuprot tomu i unatoč nekim izuzecima naziv hrvatski ista ta serbokroatistika nikada nije rabila kao sporedni zamjenski naziv za srpskohrvatski (Leopold Auburger, Die kroatische Sprache und der Serbokroatismus/Hrvatski jezik i serbokroatizam). Također nije pristojno ljude koji svakodnevno govore čakavštinom nazivati neobrazovanim pastirima (takva razina ponižavanja nestomišljenika ti nije potrebna), a znanstveni se radovi i knjige koje obrađuju čakavštinu redovito objavljuju. Meni je zaista žao što svoju veliku energiju ulažeš u razaranje umjesto u stvaranje. Još jedan ispravak, ovce su na hrvatskim otocima u pravilu slobodne i ne nadziru ih pastiri. Lijep pozdrav :-) --Roberta F. 00:47, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE KOOL-AID — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 01:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

And it isn't sugar ;) Razorflame 02:18, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Ma da u ustavu piše da je fakin klingonski to ga opet ne čini drugim jezikom, kako ne shvaćaš!? Kad si ti išla u osnovnjak, predmet kojim si bila učena se zvao hrvatskosrpski jezik, zar ne? U ustavu federalne republike je službeni naziv bio također hrvatskosrpski. Promjena same terminologije bez promjene sadržaja je bespredmetno pretakanje iz šupljeg u prazno. Sad se možete busati u prsa kako "imate državu" (do srži korumpiranu prćiju kradezeovskih kristo-talibanskih lopina obdarenih intelektom kišne gliste), i "vlastiti jezik", no jedino što ustvari imate je slobodu da to proklamirate a koju niste mogli uživati za bivšeg režima.

Iz povijesti se serbokroatistike znade da se uz naziv srpskohrvatski kao sporedna istoznačnica upotrebljavala oznaka srpski. - Ne, srpskohrvatski i hrvatskosrpski su bili sinonimni, eventualno bi se činila razlika kad bi se htjelo naglasiti razliku između zapadne i istočne varijante, napose u leksiku.

Nasuprot tomu i unatoč nekim izuzecima naziv hrvatski ista ta serbokroatistika nikada nije rabila kao sporedni zamjenski naziv za srpskohrvatski - Opet krivo; obilno se koristila sintagma hrvatski književni jezik kao zamjedbenica za hrvatskosrpski. Čak su se i knjige tako nazivale. Npr. Priručna gramatika hrvatskoga književnog jezika iz 1979., izdana od strane Školske knjige, preteča današnje institutove sive gramatke (Barć et al.)

Također nije pristojno ljude koji svakodnevno govore čakavštinom nazivati neobrazovanim pastirima (takva razina ponižavanja nestomišljenika ti nije potrebna), a znanstveni se radovi i knjige koje obrađuju čakavštinu - E vidiš, znanstveni radovi koji obrađuju čakavicu, i čakavica kao svakodnevna komunikacijska platforma su dvije totalno različite stvari. I ja i ti znamo da onaj tvoj gornji pasus većina naših sunarodnjaka ne bi razumjela ni slovca :) Baš kao što ti ne bi razumjela ni slovca neku kumicu iz Bednje.. Zar ne uviđaš koliko je besmislno njih sve skupa utrpavati pod zajednički nazivnik "hrvatštine" (čakavce, kajkavce i štokavce), a istovremeno inzistirati da su bosanski/hrvatski/srpski standard "različiti" jezici!?

Meni je zaista žao što svoju veliku energiju ulažeš u razaranje umjesto u stvaranje. - Pa sad...doprinosim ja ovdje poprilično, i to izuzetno brzo i produktivno. Ne "razaram" ja nikakav sadržaj koji nisam sam doprinio. --Ivan Štambuk 07:36, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Kad si ti išla u osnovnjak, predmet kojim si bila učena se zvao hrvatskosrpski jezik, zar ne? Ne! U riječkim školama u kojima sam završila osnovnoškolsko obrazovanje nisam nikada učila hrvatskosrpski jezik. Na hr:wiki radi suradnik koji gotovo svu prepisku sa suradnicima čini na čakavštini i nisam do sada vidjela nijednu primjedbu od niti jednoga suradnika s kojim je došao u kontakt (a došao ih je s većim brojem) da bilo koji od tih suradnika ima problema s razumijevanjem čakavštine. Čakavština, kajkavština (kojima govore isključivo Hrvati) i štokavština su dio hrvatskog književnog jezika, a Bošnjaci su devedesetih godina jekavicu sa srpskim i hrvatskim osobinama bogato nadopunili turcizmima i dobili svoj jezik. Nasreću, ono što ti tvrdiš nije vjerodostojnije od onoga što piše u Ustavu. Reakcionarna politika istrjebljivanja hrvatskoga, srpskoga i bošnjačkoga za mene je nasilan čin prema svim govornicima ovih triju jezika (kojima pridružujem četvrti crnogorski jezik). Ti čini kako ti drago, jer se očito ne možemo sporazumjeti, a dio suradnika ovoga projekta zajedno s tobom ne prihvaćaju činjenicu da je 2010. godina i da svaki jezik živi uz svoje govornike pa bili vama mrski Hrvati, Srbi, Bošnjaci, Makedonci, Crnogorci ili tkogod govorio i pisao onim jezikom kako ga sam naziva. Lijep pozdrav --Roberta F. 18:47, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Ne pitam te ja što ti misliš da si učila, nego što je pisalo u školskoj knjižici kao naziv predmeta. A pisalo je (svima) hrvatskosrpski... Dezignacije se mijenjaju, no sadržaj ostaje esencijalno isti. Jedini koga znam da na hrvatopediji forsira čakavicu je Kubura, a on to radi isključivo iz nacionalizma, i pri tome se ne libi izmišljati riječi (legendarni trošci i slični biseri). Čakavica i kajkavica su kao književni jezici mrtvi ima sad već 3-4 stoljeća. Područja gdje su se nekad govorila se rapidno poštokavljuju, a s obzirom da ne potoji ni mrvica želje da se djecu gdje ti dijalekti prirodno opstoje na njima opismeni, nema te sile koja će spriječiti njihovo izumiranje. Od čakavice će ostati samo to "ča", baš kao što je u Zagrebu ostalo od negdašnje kajkavice samo "kaj" u svakodnevnom govoru. Nije to nikakva "reakcionarna politika istrjebljivanja" (LOL), to je prirodni proces uspostavljanja ravnoteže. Čitav svijet se globalizira, kulture i identiti nestaju preko noći...svake godine se na Zapadu rodi desetine milijuna djece koje da pitaš koje su nacionalnost, ne bi znali što će ti reći... Mi nismo ništa bit ćemo sve... :) Mene iskreno boli neka stvar što vi nešto tako zdravorazumski percepirate kao "nasilan čin". Što više ustrajete na tim glupostima o "različitim jezicima", to izgledate luđi. Da nije vas pacijenata i vaših bedastoća ja bih se odavna sa srpskohrvatskog prešaltao na X drugih jezika u doprinošenju (koji me stvarno zanimaju i koje učim), a ovako jadan moram nastaviti sve dok ne dodam top 99% sh riječi. Muko moja... --Ivan Štambuk 19:06, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Uzalud vam trud, "lingvisti"

U knjizi "Osam i po ogleda iz razumevanja " srpskog esejista Dejana Ilića pronašla sam na nekoliko mjesta riječ "učinkovitost". Grozno sam se nanervirala, i napala jadnog čovjeka; kao, kako može koristiti tu odvratnu tuđmanicu, zna li on da nas ovdje prisiljavaju upotrebljavati takve stupidne neologizme. A on meni mrtav 'ladan veli: "Baš me briga. Meni se reč sviđa."

Eto, to je bit artificijelnih čerečenja štokavskog govora na tri polovine: ma koliko god se mi trudili razlikovati od srpskoga i bosanskoga, tamošnji živalj pohvatat će sve to u hipu. Internet, knjige, filmovi... Kaže mi jedna profesorica srpskoga da đaci stalno pletu hrvatske riječi, na primjer "zrak" umjesto "vazduh".

Ispisujem ove retke s vedrom lingvističkom zlobom. Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf 16:25, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

LOL ^_^ Velim ja to već odavno - što komunjare nisu silom, masovni mediji i Internet će milom! S obzirom da cijeli proces nije institucionaliziran, već se odvija samoinicijativno na razini pojedinca, nemoguće ga je zaustaviti. Takozvani "hrvatski standardni jezik" nepogrešivo koraca stazama izolacionizma, gdje je opreka između onoga što slaboumnici sa kojekakvih katedri i zavoda (intelektualna paprat sa peteroznamenkastim plaćama koja na grbači poreznih obveznika štanca "radove" koji bi bili bezvrijedni i kao tariguz) imaginiraju kao "pravilni jezik", i onoga što raja svakodnevno koristi, svakim danom sve veća i veća.

Čitam baš jučer da se osniva regionalni centar za borbu protiv organiziranog kriminala. A to znači zajedničke propise, procedure, postupno usaglašavanje terminologije... :) Još samo da raskrstimo sa Jarankom Vlaisavljević i njenom kristo-talibanskom bandom lopova, pa možda nešto i bude od ove banana-države. -Ivan Štambuk 17:58, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

мука

Hi, Ivan. I noticed that мука already has a Serbo-Croatian section, but it does not encompass the regional ( покраjински ) meaning of flour. In the Речник српскохрватскога књижевног jезика it is denoted as покр.. Is this meaning somewhat rare? Could you please add it? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 05:56, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

It's an old world preserved in some dialects, ousted nowadays by normal Štokavian word brašno (probably because of the similarity with the "torment" word; both of which are inherited from Proto-Slavic, but there they differed more significantly in accent and vowel lenghts..). --Ivan Štambuk 12:15, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Štambuk

No, really, the phonetic and, some would say, the semantic resemblance to ստամբակ (stambak) is uncanny :D. What's the etymology of Štambuk? --Vahagn Petrosyan 17:42, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Obviously a transparent compound of štam + buk, German(ic) in origin. John Steinbeck is my Anglicized variant xD. Štambuks in Croatia all originate from this island, where, according to my uncle who investigated the issue, some 4 centuries ago Jedediah Štambuk, the progenitor of our race, migrated from the territory of today's Czechia/Germany. It has various variant forms: Stambuch, Stambach... Don't know what exactly it means in origin (no, I don't think it's related to German word Stammbuch, which appears to be much recent coinage). I'd like to imagine that it's related to Sanskrit stamba "stupidity", + abstract no forming suffix -ka (as in sw-asti-ka), thus personifying all forms of human stupidity which I'm cursed to grapple with on a daily basis. --Ivan Štambuk 18:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

If you want some truly heinous human stupidity, watch the little American shows called 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom. You'll cry yourself to sleep for weeks. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 18:28, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Good heavens! --Ivan Štambuk 19:01, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Just created Štambuk. Sorry I didn't catch on to the Simpsons joke :D. Anyway, this could be a good test run for Serbo-Croatian surnames. Accent, declension? Does it work like a noun or an adjective (as in Russian)? – Krun 19:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Surnames inflect like regular nouns, except a limited number of those that are adjectives in origin and inflect like adjectives (e.g. possessives in -ov/-ev, just like in Russian). --Ivan Štambuk 19:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I think I etymologized your name: Steinbock. Sorry. --Vahagn Petrosyan 19:25, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I always thought I was cognate to Einstein... --Ivan Štambuk 19:42, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Your last note on User talk:Robert Ullman

I just want to let you know that I disapprove of the very last statement that you wrote on Ullman's talk page. Instead of saying that, and doing anything about it if Ullman does decide to do anything about those people that you have mentioned, you should bring it to the attention of the community and let the community decide on how to handle the situation, should it arise. Saying this is inflammatory and is not needed in this instance. Therefore, I believe that you should do the above if this situation arises. Seeing as how you are the polar opposite of Ullman, much like I am the polar opposite of Opiaterein, you should only deal with the situation if it arises, and only in as neutral of a way as possible. That would be the best way that you could handle this situation. I agree that I might not have handled my situations the right way in the past, but you have the opportunity for handling your situations much better than I have mine. Razorflame 07:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

• (Ivan – please just ignore this. Razorflame apparently enjoys trying to start fights.) Ƿidsiþ 07:37, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not trying to start a fight. I'm saying that this should have been handled differently. Razorflame 07:40, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't planning to do anything on my own anyway. I don't know if you noticed: but I never actually did anything abusive ever since SC handling issue arose last year (talkpage verbiage aside). I never blocked anyone, "reported" them to authorities, or reverted other people's edits: it was always me who received their goodies. If Kilibarda or other "trolls" be blocked for "vandalising" or sth, I'll make sure he's unblocked, that's all. I appreciate your overview of the issue, but rest assured I know what I'm doing :) --Ivan Štambuk 07:45, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I know that you know what you are doing, but there is one thing that you should not do if the situation arises, and that is unblock Kilibarda or any other so called "troll" that you know hasn't done anything wrong. Instead, you should ask a neutral administrator like EP or Semper for assistance and ask them if they could do the unblock. That way, you don't soil yourself of a potential bad situation and the person blocked still gets unblocked. That was what I was trying to say is all :) I used to be an administrator and bureaucrat on the Simple English Wiktionary in the past, so I am pretty sure that my advice would be helpful to you :) Hope this helps you in the future :) Razorflame 07:50, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, you're probably right. SB is the only admin left not yet "involved" in all this mess, and I can imagine the horror on his face when asked to intervene. We'll see... --Ivan Štambuk 07:59, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Ivan, using the threat of death and then stating is just a common phrase that is used around is not something that you can do in some languages. But even in the language you use every day this is still not considered appropriate, especially when it is written. As a Wikipedian you should not use threatening language nor you should be demeaning to other users. However following what you have been working on over the past year or so, your demeanor is only becoming darker as time goes. You are toxic, vile, and treat people without any respect. With your work on this wiktionary, you have destroyed and deleted so many entries. You are hung up in the past, trying to recreate something that has failed. You will see what you are trying to achieve is a battle with a very large river, the harder to paddle, there will be no change. You will stay motionless, and as soon as you stop paddling you will be at the end. Why bother ? When you burn up, will there be anyone that will feel sorry for you. I don't think so. Vodomar 12:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

What is it with these people who don't edit here and think this is wikipedia? Oh btw, you're blocked for 3 days for directly calling someone toxic and vile. Have a nice day! — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 13:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I hope the pleasure was mutual. Vodomar 01:33, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

As a Wikipedian you should not use threatening language nor you should be demeaning to other users. - I agree, but there is no other way in this particular issue. A benign "threat" will save us all lots of needless worries later. U was calling some very productive users who were adding lots of good content "trolls", and it was necessary for me to react.

However following what you have been working on over the past year or so, your demeanor is only becoming darker as time goes. I am particularly glad that nationalists such as yourself perceive it as such. Your reprimands are like tap on the shoulder. The more you feel threatened, the more I get the motivation. I feed on your fears and prejudices.

You are toxic, vile, and treat people without any respect. - that is just nonsense. Pointless generalization not founded by actual evidence. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt in every issue. However, if a particular individual ignores productive points of a discussion, starts playing dumb, and focuses of ad-hominems, politics and similar irrelevancies as the whole point of the discussion - I don't feel obliged to treat them with courtesy. This applies to persons such as yourself: you come here uninvited, giving us your "opinion" which is, all summed-up, worthless. Now, I don't mind that you've come here out of the blue, the point that bothers me is that you claim that I'm "vile" and have "deleted entries", which is simply a plainly stupid simplification of all the great efforts that were put in building up SC word base. If you were benevolent and well-intentioned, you'd behave properly, and use actual arguments why the common SC treatment couldn't work. But since it can, all that you're left to argue about is politics and ad-hominems...

You are hung up in the past, trying to recreate something that has failed. ou will see what you are trying to achieve is a battle with a very large river, the harder to paddle, there will be no change. You will stay motionless, and as soon as you stop paddling you will be at the end. Why bother ? When you burn up, will there be anyone that will feel sorry for you. I don't think so. - What on earth are you talking about? Are you on drugs or something? --Ivan Štambuk 14:18, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Ivan, you call the hr.wikipedia.org project cronazipeida, and you continue to do this all the time. Show some respect, will you. Hey, you can issue death threats and they are treated as minor figure of speach, but that must be just the way the SC once the debate heats up. You call me a nacionalist in a negative way, and why not you have every right to do so - because in your value system it is ok to do so. This is the way you are. Do I feel threatened, don't make me laugh. The SC debate is really a dead one, it was killed twice in history and what you are trying to do will also fail. Why it will fail, read the history books and you will find out why. There is no point in entering in any SC debate with you, because you are a fundametalist zealot. You are so convinced in your ideas and your view of the world, that you know the best (in your mind) for everone. This is why you in some previous discussions you have held with users state that the ordinary Struggle Street Balkanite does not give a rats arse of how their language is called. You claim this because you know best. Brave statement ! No reference, no survey. Bravo ! Ace ! I hope you have a great day. Vodomar 01:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

It's remarkable how many lies and general BS you've managed to squeeze into that tiny paragraph. I'm not particularly interested in engaging in a political discussion with you here, so unless you have some Serbo-Croatian specifics to raise - sod off. --Ivan Štambuk 06:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Please see this discussion about your comments at meta:Wikimedia Forum#Death threat, immediate action required. --A. B. 19:37, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

gravitacija

You should add to a derived term the SC word for gravitational here. Razorflame 17:42, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't bother doing it manually; I plan to write a bot that will add all morphologically transparent etymologies and derivations. --Ivan Štambuk

Well, then tell me the word for it so that I can add it. Razorflame 17:48, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

You shouldn't be adding words in languages you're not familiar with. --Ivan Štambuk 17:49, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Lol — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 18:22, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

posjet

Hey. I noticed your unusual Ijekavian/Ekavian pair posjet/poseta, so I looked it up and lo, both exist in both pronunciations, so posjet/poset (m) and posjeta/poseta (f). Also, I noticed a discrepancy between HJP and RSHKJ: both agree that the feminine is pȍs(j)eta, but for the masculine, HJP has pȍsjet, but RSHKJ has pòs(j)et (which might more likely based on the accent of the corresponding verb, although I'm not sure). In any case, I'm more inclined to trust RSHKJ to have the more traditional/original accent. Do we have access to any older material such as that of Broz/Iveković or Karadžić in digital form? – Krun 21:37, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Both can be found on Internet Archive and Google Books, but unfortunately none of them lists posjet(a). I agree that the form pòs(j)et should be more "proper". At any case, both should be listed at the pronunciation section. --Ivan Štambuk 21:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Pozdrav

Mozes li pobrisati ovo? Morao bi pobrisati te dvije verzije u historiji. Dva puta postavlja pravo ime danas, a i prije toga je par puta postavio ali ne mogu naci. Ako ne zatrazicu oversight na meti. Poz --WizardOfOz 15:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

OK. --WizardOfOz 17:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

amfiteatralan

I think with such kind of edits Kubura has already crossed the line. What do you think of a permanent block? He also claims as a basis some message from you and spams the summary field with a link to one of his own disruptive edits with no trace of any massege from you soever. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:56, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

He's be been blocked indefinitely. --Ivan Štambuk 08:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary:About Serbo-Croatian

C'mon Ivan. We have no other definition of consensus than a vote, and the vote failed. Even without all the SC nationalists, it's questionable whether it would have passed. I agree that Dan's warning sign was a bit much, but it's not unreasonable to have a small notice. If you'd like to discuss an alternate wording, I'm willing to work with you. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 12:24, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I find it a little redundant (the box) as WT:ABOUT pages aren't official policies. They're guidelines. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a difference between an actual, established consensus, and verification of consensus by a vote. Just because that vote vote failed due to the lack of voting regulations, so extensive canvassing, meatpuppetry and anti-propaganda made it "fail", it doesn't mean that the A:SH page doesn't reflect existing community consensus. That ugly message was specifically put so that it can discourage new Serbo-Croatian editors, such as Kilibarda (talk • contribs), which explicitly follow it. --Ivan Štambuk 12:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Rest assured it wasn't. I was the one who put it there, and I most certainly support the proposal, and support folks using the 'Serbo-Croatian' L2 header. It may well be redundant, but as the issue is so remarkably controversial, I think it merits clarification. Again, bear in mind that the vote might not have passed, even without all the outside interference. If you look at the first twenty oppose votes, most (not all) of them are folks that are most definitely part of this community. It's been awhile, so I don't recall the numbers off the top of my head, but I went through it once, only counting the votes from people I knew, and it was close, something like 65%. Now, granted, all of the people who really have any knowledge of Serbo-Croatian were on the support side, but that isn't good enough here, and it never has been. It takes time and patience to convince people who aren't in the know about the subject, but that's what we have to do. The ideal route at this point would be to open up another discussion, find out what problems people had with the SC proposal, and see if they can be addressed. We would also have to find some way of dealing with the nationalist cadre. Both are issues I think people are receptive to addressing. However, neither can be addressed, because every time someone brings them up, you and Ric immediately jump on the scene and start shouting obscenities and rants. Subsequently, anyone who might have been predisposed to argue on your side (such as myself) thinks better of it, so as to avoid being tainted by your juvenile behaviour. So, until you two can grow a little self-control, there is not and never will be any consensus on the issue, because it's a huge fucking controversy. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 13:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

"However, neither can be addressed, because every time someone brings them up, you and Ric immediately jump on the scene and start shouting obscenities and rants." - I'd appreciate if you wouldn't talk about me like I'm completely incapable of being civil. Every place I see you talk on this subject, you say Ivan and I always 'immediately jump on' people and you then degrade yourself to the same level you perceive us as being...at. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 15:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Untrue - the original perpetrator of this absurd act was RU, indubitably inspired by users such as Kilibarda making their appearance (i.e. complete outsiders driven solely on their own). Then along came Polansky turning it into a huge freaking Christmas tree, making it sound like "THIS IS DANGEROUS! DO NOT FOLLOW THIS PAGE! SOMEBODY IMPORTANT DOESN'T SUPPORT IT!". Well nobody important doesn't support it, and everybody important does support it. I don't really care what anybody outside the actual Serbo-Croatian editors thinks on the issue, especially if they're not conversant in the language at all. Why should I be bound by their opinions (if they even have enough backbone to make their opinion public and elaborate on it; usually it's just "cast a vote, and get back to the shadows")? Please..

Also, please terminate labeling me as if I'm some kind of uncivil troll. I certainly do not "shout obscenities" and as for the rants - well they only come as a response to actions committed by others. I've repeatedly made it very clear that I'm receptive to any constructive criticism regarding the SC treatment, but the problem is: none of the "other side" is. All they really, really want is to get rid of me. They don't care a iota about Serb-Croatian. I've made dozens of variants of proposal, and they all landed on the barren land: either ignored, or some imaginary "problems" were found (like that lang= HTML idiocy). The problem is not in "us", it's in "them". --Ivan Štambuk 14:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

There is still another thing that you might want to consider: you used to be one of “them”, but you then got wiser (i.e. read up on the subject with an open, scientific mind). There is no reason to think others could not do the same. I think some contributors, such as perhaps Pepsi Lite or Kubura, might prove useful if they were persuaded to work with us. I know it doesn't look likely, but you must remember how vehemently you were against SC back in the day. There is a possibility for change of heart/wisening. I also know that the vast majority of what you say is justified in some way, but sometimes it is just better not to comment. Much of what you write on the issue seems heated to others (including me), however you may view it yourself, and some of it can actually discourage productive discussion, even when you make good, valid arguments in the same instance. I think we should start to focus on getting some more of the people who want to edit SC on board. I think it's time for a new discussion on the topic, and I would advocate a special discussion with the native speakers who oppose the common treatment and try to reconcile them with our proposal. I don't expect everyone to turn, but I do expect something good to happen if these people are presented with all the arguments of the case insult-free. We don't need a vote or a flame war, just to discuss these technical details, find out why people oppose them, and get them to realize what exactly we're doing, because I honestly think most of the Croatian Wikipedia/Wiktionary folks just don't know what we mean; they have not followed the whole discussion, never seen all the relevant arguments, and they're not all very good at English. I think it's clear, for example, that Kubura does not know our definition of “Serbo-Croatian”. He seems to think it means “the standard language of (communist) Yugoslavia” and seems to understand it as something on par with and different from “Croatian” and “Serbian”, rather than being a grouping containing them. We need to explain better exactly what we mean. Granted, we also have to acquaint people with the ideas of our CFI and how we base our linguistic information on use, independently of other dictionaries, although other dictionaries are a valid source of gathered linguistic information. – Krun 21:01, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh they understand very well what our treatment of SC means: I personally explained them on on Croatian Wikipedia's central discussion board, in many details, during the original vote. All I got in return was insults ("you Yugo-nostalgic anti-Croat Serbophilic twat" type of). I also cited them several Croatian linguistic authorities on how modern standard B/C/S/M cannot be considered different languages which seemed to have infuriated them even more. Then they put my name into Croatian newspapers (in an arranged article which was also picked up by certain Serbian newspapers) portraying me as if I'm some kind of "national traitor", and blocked me indefinitely, after which I was gonna take the whole issue to meta but eventually desisted due to the pending ArbCom case which in its decision ruled out to desysop and ban two particularly distinguishing extremists (SpeedyGonsales (talk • contribs) and Roberta F. (talk • contribs)) who are the main background forces of much of their collective efforts. Anyway, you are wrong if you thing that these people can be treated with a healthy dosage of common sense: they cannot. This is Balkans, Krun, the cursed lands of linguistic darkness and insanity. Kubura and Pepsi Lite and the worst representative of the two camps (it's really funny how they'e managed to form that unholy alliance: in reality they hate the other side to their guts): both of them have completely distorted perception of language and reality, and are willing to lie just to further their cause (which was seen in many occasions). Kubura for Christ name invents his own words in an effort to make "Croatian" more different than "Serbian"! There is really nothing to talk about with the "other side": they're completely ignorant to the linguistic and practical lexicographical aspect of the issue, and all they want to talk about is about politics, their imaginary "right to their own language" and the "perils" of letting foreigners know that standard B/C/S are less different than the so-called "Croatian dialects" spoken in adjecent villages in the Adriatic. I've put forth all of the arguments many times - I could do it again, if it's necessary, in a more clear form. But I have no doubts that it will be ignored, "refuted" with some worthless citations which don't refute anything, and politicized to the point of disgustingness. There is no hope. --Ivan Štambuk 21:31, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'm not saying anybody'll convince Roberta and Speedy, although you never know. ;-) However, I don't believe the two users I mentioned are as bad as you think. And about the “lying”: you should know what it's like on the other side (as you say, “this is the Balkans, the cursed lands of linguistic darkness and insanity”). Most of the people involved are not really “lying”. They are expressing what believe to be true (or what the hope or want to be true). It is a low-level confusion/brainwashing that prevent their thinking outside the box. A lot of people like neologisms and with for a purer language less tainted by foreign influence. For the record, I admire this effort. With Icelandic, for example, this has turned out to be a big success. Of course, we still have foreign borrowings, but many of them have been overtaken by new Icelandic synonyms. We no longer automatically take in every foreign technical and scientific term that comes along, etc. The same goes for Serbo-Croatian; this could be largely a success. However, as a tool to split the language of Croatians/Croats from that of their neighboring brethren, I find it quite unamusing and counter-productive. My personal opinions aside, however, we must of course include any neologisms that have already gained regular usage (actually, per CFI, we should include many rare ones as well, as only 3 cites are necessary; these should still be tagged as rare, though). These should then also be tagged for a specific region (e.g. Croatia) if largely restricted to it. As we must explain, there is a difference between wanting or wishing Croatian to be more different from Serbian (even striving for it, as some do) and alleging more differences than there actually are now. Wiktionary is of course not a platform for efforts to purify languages or influence their evolution, as our goal here is merely to describe linguistic reality as best we can. As for Pepsi Lite; he is, as I understand it, not living in the Balkans, but in America (I think). He is probably largely removed from the political rhetoric down there. He is probably interested in keeping his heritage, etc., so he studies Serbian, and tries to use strictly Serbian sources on that. He also seems to rather resent Croats, but as I understand it, he has good reason to: most of the news he hears about his motherland and his fellow Serbs is how they have been oppressing Croats and Bosniaks, etc., and then he encounters Croats like those extremists at the Croatian Wikipedia. He has every reason and right to resent such treatment of Serbia and Serbians as has been, the blaming of the whole nation for genocide, etc. He has expressed mostly that it is better not to work with Croats given the most recent history of Serb-Croat relations. This is all very understandable, but I feel it is our duty to prove him wrong convince him that at least some Croats can be worked with. He probably has more potential for a great editor than most of the other “them” that we've encountered. Also, Ivan, you should try to be more optimistic. I know it's difficult under the circumstances, but, if you're interested in my assessment of the situation, I don't feel that we're losing. I think we are ever more successful and that we are, slowly but surely, reaching our goals for Serbo-Croatian on Wiktionary. – Krun 06:09, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, Pepsi lite [3] tagged as "non-Serbian" the verb ovisiti which himself used on several occasions on Serbian pedia :) Now I wouldn't call that lying but....it goes along the same lines. Again, this is a perfect counterpart to those failed neologisms such as generalica, brzoglas, samohod... that Croatian nationalist push. I was hoping to get them to add more actually used words of Croatian provenience, but unfortunately so far we've managed to attract mostly that kind of useless junk. So another burden has fallen on my shoulders and I've been adding lots of Croatisms lately. BTW, check out these interesting articles from Serbian purist perspective: [4], [5] ("Stalnom upotrebom kroatizama razara se srpski jezik i srpska kultura." :D :D - exactly the same type of rhetoric as on Croatian side!) [6]. I agree that there is more potential in Serbian side for cooperation than Croatian (complex historical and political reasons why exactly is so), but so far most of the efforts have not proved to be fruitful. Our Serbo-Croatian coverage is growing healthily and we don't really need them that badly. If you want to try to engage into productive discourse with some of them - feel free to do so, but I warn you: all that you'll get is bloodcell counting ("whose side are you on") and a bunch of obnoxious political pamphlets. --Ivan Štambuk 17:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Pepsi Lite resides in Australia, Canbera/Sydney, as indicated on his wikipedia page. Astonishingly, Australia has also harboured a large Macedonist (supposedly the largest) clique who are financing FYROM’s intransigently irredentistic policy towards two of its neighbours. They (this clique) happen to reside there, but of course Australia is not accountable for that. I just do not know why exactly in Australia. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 18:12, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Australia also harbors relatively large Serbian and Croatian diaspora - they regularly yell at each other at football games :) Vodomar is also from Australia (and as in case of Pepsi lite, he makes a lot of little errors that betray his non-native proficiency in Serbo-Croatian). I guess that lots of Balkans folks emigrated abroad, and took their national memes along.. --Ivan Štambuk 18:20, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

maternjem ?

Hi, Ivan. AugPi has revoked his support for the voting policy, because of the Serbo-Croatian æquivalent of native/maternal. Could you please explain to him that an ending such as -em is completely impossible for SC adjectives in nominative? I am not sure whether that would help, but at least it would sound more plausible from the mouth of a native speaker. Besides, I fail to understand why he is collating those two completely unrelated issues (SC and voting policy). The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 06:56, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

On the recent subject of 'Croatisms', I was talking to a Serbian friend a while back and he said that Latin-derived terms that Serbians and Bosnians usually end in -ijum are more likely to be used ending in just -ij in Croatia. Would you say that's accurate? — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 17:55, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

That is correct, especially in case of chemical elements. --Ivan Štambuk 17:58, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Macedonia/Macedonian Translated into Spanish Differently in En & Ja Wiktionaries

Hello! Your contributions (those that I have seen, of course) have impressed me as scholarly with an effort towards a balanced viewpoint, so... Would you mind looking into something for me or finding someone who is able to? I only ask because I live with an exhausting & painful illness (as I discuss on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geekdiva) and frankly, just trying to explain the problem here is tiring! I only mention this to explain why I'm asking for help instead of working on this myself.

Here are the translations into Spanish on the following two pages: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Macedonian

Spanish: macedonio es(es) m

http://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/マケドニア語

スペイン語: Makedonska (The Japanese word before the colon is Supein-go, or Spanish. The Japanese headword in the URL is Makedonia-go, or Macedonian.)

In other words, en.wiktionary says that Spanish for Macedonian is X, and ja.wiktionary says that it is Y. I suspect the correct word is macedonio, but I don't know.

Sorry if this is confusing, and sorry I can't do more right now. I'll try to watch this page actively.

By the way, your English grammar and vocabulary are both excellent! I want to share two minor suggestions for improvement, since it's already so good. Based on skimming your discussions, I'd suggest reviewing the difference between its (possessive, belonging to it), it's (it is), and it was (which is never abbreviated "it's"). If you have more time to study, I'd suggest reviewing common collocations. For example, you wrote, "...if it is acceptable by you," which should have been, "...if it is acceptable to you."

I just wanted to give something back in presumptive gratitude after requesting so much help. :)

Thanks, Geekdiva 05:52, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Your question is convoluted. Macedonian language in Spanish is (idioma) macedonio m. The Japanese Wiki is incorrect. --Anatoli 06:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Fixed the Japanese Wiki. --Anatoli 06:10, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Anatoli. --Ivan Štambuk 08:12, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Geekdiva for your kind words. I know next to nothing about Japanese so I'm hardly the person to ask for help in that area. You should direct your future queries to some of our regulars actually conversant with Japanese, such as Anatoli above. I'm aware of the difference between its and it's; it's just that when I type replies I rarely bother to check for minor mistakes such as the apostrophe and articles, which are IMHO excusable given the non-formal nature of this media. I think that there is a slight semantic difference in the usage of preposition by as opposed to to in the abovecited snippet, but nonetheless thanks for mentioning it, now I'll definitely have it mind for future usage :) --Ivan Štambuk 08:12, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Geekdiva, there was another blunder in ja.wikt and it was the Greek translation. Mακεδονικά can only refer to the Greek dialect spoken in Egean Macedonia, whereas the official written norm in the Δημοκρατία των Σκοπίων is always designated as Σλαβομακεδονικά . This is due to the fact that the cultural heritage of the region of recent FYROM before the 8th century AD is a subdivision of the Ancient Greek (and Byzantine) culture. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 12:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok--Sokac121 12:50, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by this ok?? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 12:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

SC idea

Another idea that I had to help quell some of the people who don't like the SC unification is to provide them with qualifier tags on every SC entry that shows which of the four unified languages the word exists in.

For example, if there are no qualifier tags, then it is in all four languages. If it is not in Montenegrin, but is in B/C/S, a qualifer saying B/C/S would be great. B/C for just a Bosnian/Croatian word and if it only exists in one of the languages, individual tags could be used.

Another idea is to use qualifier tags to show where the differences (however subtle) in the four languages are. You would use it if the word is different in one language than another or something like that.

What do you think of this idea? Razorflame 16:55, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

That's already being done, and is the whole point of the unified approach. See WT:ASH. --Ivan Štambuk 17:44, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

antidemocracy

Hi Ivan. You make probably the most unreservedly antidemocratic comment around here. I'm curious: Why are you opposed to democracy?, and what system do you regard as a preferable system, if only inasmuch as it represents the least worst system?  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 23:01, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Democracy gives the majority the opportunity to treat the minority like lesser humans. Only in civilized ...civilizations can democracy be truly fair in that sense. The majority also does not actually know what is the best decision for it. So it can end up fucking itself. </opi's 2 cents> — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 03:23, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Not that I particularly hate democracy, it's jut that I'm fed up with folks constantly bringing the "this is not a democracy" argument as if that's the end of the world, so I feel obliged to react :) My fav system would be either technocracy along the lines of what we have today in China: 8 out of 9 Politburo SC members have engineering degrees..isn't that wonderful? :) Or the original American republic, albeit in a global scale (no artificial borders and stupid sovereigns!) and a more modernized form (e.g. now that we know that free will is hardwired into the stochastic fibers of the quantum universe, there's no moral justification for an individual to "pay debt to the society", esp. not those horrendous intergenerational Ponzi schemes). But that's all fantasy anyway, very soon Homo sapiens will be obsolete and the self-destructive apes will be kept on a short leash by a greater intelligence, as they should have always been. It's a shame: we should be colonizing and terraforming other planets by now, an yet we're mired in some pathetic ethno-religious tribalism. With the (democratic) majority of the population thinking that it's OK for me to go to jail for several years for committing "crimes" such as having a piece of vegetation in my pocket, or being forced at gunpoint to give away 2/3rds of my income to the government who'd than completely waste it (among other things, for making weapons which it will sell to other governments so that thy can kill people in some godforsaken part of the globe), there is really no space for further improvements that could ultimately make a difference. Screw that all. I'm very much with George Carlin's take on all this (in essence: there is no hope, but we can at least have some fun!). --Ivan Štambuk 08:00, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

"..."crimes" such as having a piece of vegetation in my pocket..." — Hah! I should have known ^^ lol — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 13:59, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for meddling here, but I just could not resist the temptation of participating in this catching topic.

(@Doremítzwr) Here is how Thomas Carlyle defines democracy (from Past and Present which I peruse now): Democracy, which means despair of finding any Heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them, - alas, thou too, mein Lieber, seest well how close it is of kin to Atheism, and other sad Isms: he who discovers no God whatever, how shall he discover Heroes, the visible Temples of God?. Not that I embrace the definition, but I thought it was noteworthy, especially when one tries to refute this system.

It is also noteworthy that when a vicious person is mistaken for a leader and given immense power, he resorts either into tyranny or into corruption, tertium non datur. Unfortunately, in democracy vicious, non-descript persons are given more chances of attaining the leadership. Au contraire, if virtuous people attain leading positions, the country thrives. My favourite system is this of Gabriel García Moreno, an embodiment of virtue and care for the own people and an aristocrat by descent, but it lasted only 10 years. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 15:59, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

If, if... the whole "wise leader" thing is alpha male instinct ran amok, if you ask me. There are some basic rights and liberties derived from the laws of nature, and absolutely nobody can deprive you of them. If you can't own your own body (which you can't in almost all the countries in the world, wherein the very act of voluntary consummation of naturally-occurring herbs you grew by yourself is "unlawful"), what can you own or do?! Plus, the whole idea of the wisest and most benevolent contender for leadership being democratically elected is absolutely ludicrous IMHO: perhaps in theory, but in practice people usually vote either for the most lying scumbag available, the one backed-up by the biggest amount of cash pumped into his campaign by big businesses, or the one most appealing to their deepest selfish desires (electioneering catchphrases and slogans are like psychograms of the respective electorate). It's most disheartening to realize that the masses of today are as feeble-minded and manipulable as they were in Roman times of 'bread and circuses'. God I hate Homo sapiens... --Ivan Štambuk 16:45, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

the whole idea of the wisest and most benevolent contender for leadership being democratically elected is absolutely ludicrous - exactly that was my point - in democracy any hope of wise leadership is to be given up because of the means by which this leadership is determined. masses of today are as feeble-minded and manipulable as they were in Roman times - but Ivan, in Roman times there were heroes and outstanding leaders. Think of Marcus Aurelius or Diocletianus or Aëtius for example. Mankind which then numbered several millions, was able to rear them. In the middle ages there were many more. In democratic systems, there are none (after Moreno and Sanctus Pius X), irrespective of the fact that the Earth's population is 6 milliards. As for the body, well, the body is not the most important constituent of a Homo sapiens - it is the spirit which can be depraved much more easily by brain-washing and reduced to a mundane, common-or-garden superficiality with no other needs than physical ones. Epictetus was a slave when he embarked on making himself familiar with the ancient philosophy and became himself a philosopher. This is an example that a free spirit can blossom in an enslaved body. However, nothing outstanding or enduring can be produced by an enslaved spirit. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 17:24, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

In America we don't generally vote for the most qualified people. If we're republicans, we vote for the guy who believes in Jesus the most, and if we're democrats, we vote for who thinks America is most like Gandhi - even though we know nothing of Gandhi. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 17:34, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

You've put it very poetically, but the "spirit" is but a bunch of semantic inference algorithms running on a very inefficient and wasteful biological hardware. Soon they'll be running on bare metal and, lo and behold, Homo sapiens shall be overcome. Today there are no heroes of the past simply because nobody wants them. In the old days, smart and intelligent people were worshiped because, you know, intelligence and knowledge was very important for survival, and the community couldn't risk losing its precious members. Today it's all upside-down. I have a feeling that you were born in a wrong epoch :/ --Ivan Štambuk 17:53, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all for the interesting comments. Now I shall attempt to make some of my own:

1. (Ivan Štambuk): "Not that I particularly hate democracy, it's ju[s]t that I'm fed up with folks constantly bringing the 'this is not a democracy' argument as if that's the end of the world, so I feel obliged to react" — That's completely understandable. That all political systems must be democratic and that the more democratic an arrangement the better are two reprehensible dogmata of contemporary public discourse. The irony is that people rarely have a clear idea of what it even means for something to be "democratic", let alone whether it's a good thing for it to have such a nature. Such unquestioned legitimacy makes those who act in the name of democracy arrogant, just like the overzealous application of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings made monarchs supercilious and intransigent. As I wrote elsewhere, "valid criticism can have a positive effect in itself. It can puncture self-assured arrogance and deflate præsumptuous self-righteousness. It can make people feel that they need to justify themselves, and it makes them less likely to assert themselves when it is not warranted." The present political climate disallows any such criticism. Pride comes before a fall.
2. (Ivan Štambuk): "no artificial borders and stupid sovereigns!" — Do you advocate a global unitary government? Or a (con)federation? If the former, what about a community's right to regulate its own members without outside interference and to offer its own members certain privileges to the exclusion of non-members? I'll get to the "stupid sovereigns" bit later.
3. (Bogorm): "It is also noteworthy that when a vicious person is mistaken for a leader and given immense power, he resorts either into tyranny or into corruption, tertium non datur. Unfortunately, in democracy vicious, non-descript persons are given more chances of attaining the leadership. Au contraire, if virtuous people attain leading positions, the country thrives." – (Ivan Štambuk): "[T]he whole idea of the wisest and most benevolent contender for leadership being democratically elected is absolutely ludicrous IMHO: perhaps in theory, but in practice people usually vote either for the most lying scumbag available, the one backed-up by the biggest amount of cash pumped into his campaign by big businesses, or the one most appealing to their deepest selfish desires (electioneering catchphrases and slogans are like psychograms of the respective electorate)." – (Bogorm): "[I]n democracy any hope of wise leadership is to be given up because of the means by which this leadership is determined." — To quote the current second paragraph of w:Hans-Hermann Hoppe#Theory: "In Democracy: The God That Failed, Hoppe compares dynastical monarchies with democratic republics. In his view, a dynastical monarch (king) is like the 'owner' of a country, because it is passed on from generation to generation, whereas an elected president is like a 'temporary caretaker' or 'renter'. Both the king and the president have an incentive to exploit the current use of the country for their own benefit. However, the king also has a counterbalancing interest in maintaining the long-term capital value of the nation, just as the owner of a house has an interest in maintaining its capital value (unlike a renter). Being temporary, democratically elected officials have every incentive to plunder the wealth of productive citizens as fast as possible." – I believe that gives a succinct hypothesis for why democracy tends toward kleptocracy. In re "stupid sovereigns" (Ivan Štambuk), whilst competence is certainly a concern, I think ensuring good intention is the greater priority. In any political system, the interest of the ruler ought to be tied to that of the state; monarchy is closer to this ideal than democracy. Of course, greater competence is not a claim that democracy can make – winning elections only proves an ability to win elections, which is different from the ability to govern; the skills needed to win elections are skills of presentation, like oratory, flattery, and PR – in short, demagogy.

I'm too tired to make any more points now; those that I've already made, I've made badly. I'll pick this up tomorrow or somewhen.  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 01:35, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

1. Yes, yes, yes! Pride comes before a fall, and humiliation before a victory! I'm almost thinking of creating this is not a democracy; it's such a common catchphrase. Yes, a singular world government, but prior to that, a world constitution. It is inevitable, not only because it's being proactively planned and seemingly architected by shadow forces, but because it's a perfectly natural tendency of balancing out immense differences among world's populations. It's life itself reorganizing collective intelligence to the state of lesser entropy. And rest assured that it will be elected "democratically". With 10 billion people voting yes (half of which living in abject squalor in some godforsaken shitholes), of what influence would be the voices of a few hundred million dissenters? If one would be naive enough to actually vote no (and thus bestow legitimacy on the corrupted process), he'd be in all likelihood termed "racist", "elitist"... Best to sit on the sidelines and have a good laugh at the freak show :P I personally like that outcome very much: one government will be much more easy to behead than 200-headed Hydra of what we have today. I hope it comes sooner rather than later, because we don't have much time, and in a few hundred million years there'll be whole lotta less stars in the sky, and this planet would be whole lotta less life-friendly, and worse: the rate by which we've been "undoing" evolution is picking up.
2. There is no such thing as the community. (paraphrasing M.T.), only free individuals who can voluntarily associate. Communities can exist as voluntary associations, but they have no "rights" on their own. They cannot own land (there is no such thing as "collective ownership"), and cannot inflict harm or anyone (people vs. person - haha what a joke!). Sovereigns draw imaginary lines on the map and say: on this side of the imaginary line, it's "ours", with "our rules", and on the other side of the imaginary line its "you" and "your rules". It's absurd! They must be forcibly abolished, because they were forcibly instituted in the first place (their "right" of sovereignty is completely imaginary), and the natural order of things must be established. Government should be there to protect the law and that's it.
3. I agree 100% with the "renter" analogy. That's why Beijing Consensus is so successful: Chinese leadership makes economic plans 10, 20 even 30 years ahead, and doesn't need to bother whether some future ruling clique will kill them (because the contemporary "public" wouldn't like it): there is only one clique, and that's them. It's been working remarkably successfully for the last 3 decades, and it's a shame that other countries have't embraced their development model. (Doremítzwr): "winning elections only proves an ability to win elections, which is different from the ability to govern" - The last one who also tried to govern, beside being democratic smokescreen, was JFK, and we all know what happened to him :) No, they can't govern even if they want to. This detachment of democratically (= demagogically) elected politicians and the actual decision-makers is the kernel of the problem. From the perspective of the "people" it means empowerment, and an outlet to channel frustrations; from the perspective of the elite, the show is but a defensive mechanism to rein in the mob. And unfortunately, it works great :/

--Ivan Štambuk 09:01, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

1. "I'm almost thinking of creating this is not a democracy; it's such a common catchphrase." — You could quite conceivably defend it at RFD, too. Democracy and its ilk, like fascism &c., have so many weakened senses that, were we to be consistent in absolute descriptivism, they would have dozens of vague senses leaving them meaningless. George Orwell said some pretty right-on things about this:

   "The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.' The words DEMOCRACY, SOCIALISM, FREEDOM, PATRIOTIC, REALISTIC, JUSTICE, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different."

2. "I hope [a one world government] comes sooner rather than later, because we don't have much time, and in a few hundred million years there'll be whole lotta less stars in the sky, and this planet would be whole lotta less life-friendly, and worse: the rate by which we've been 'undoing' evolution is picking up." —
   1. I believe that a one world government is in the offing, largely because of the growth of multinationals, whose increasing power will need to be checked by universal regulations in order to ensure workers' rights, environmental responsibility, and the like. There is and will continue to be resistance to that idea from several quarters, but it strikes me, as it does you, as an inevitability.
   2. I don't see what use there is in coming at this sub specie æterni. Our little species is but two million years old, and the oldest civilisation emerged less than two myriad years ago; do you really think we should be concerned with 2億 years in the future? My paltry knowledge of physics caused that talk to remind me of the Big Rip, which is pretty good at shaking one's attachment to permanence. Let's think about the next two centuries before we start thinking about the next two million centuries.
   3. What do you mean by "undoing" evolution? Evolution is adaptation to a particular niche, not some kind of absolute scale of progress. What is it that we're becoming less well-adapted to?
3. "There is no such thing as the community.…Government should be there to protect the law and that's it." — Whose law? Quot homines tot sententiæ, suus cuique mos. Rights of any kind do not exist, but such language is useful shorthand. In practice, if communities, like individuals, are deprived their autonomy, they become resentful, uncoöperative, at times rebellious. Those "imaginary lines on the map" may not follow geographical contours, but the customs in force on either side can vary wildly: One people may choose to tax lightly and spend modestly, whereas another people may choose to tax heavily and spend generously; different laws befit different people, it is an ineradicable fact.
4. "The last one who also tried to govern, beside being democratic smokescreen, was JFK, and we all know what happened to him :) No, they can't govern even if they want to. This detachment of democratically (= demagogically) elected politicians and the actual decision-makers is the kernel of the problem." — Who, then, are the true rulers?

 — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 22:21, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

1. WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. ^_^ Good ol' Orwell was spot-on with his predictions on the manipulative abuse of the language in media outlets. On [[democracy]] we're definitely lacking the common sense "majoritarian will", as used in phrases such as "This is not a democracy.". The same trend of terminological manipulation has created those horrible contradictio in terminis, such as "anarcho-capitalism" or "liberal socialism". Like in the movie The Distinguished Gentleman where this guy gets elected to congress simply because he shared the same name with recently deceased politician, to whom people voted by inertia. That's why political parties need to be abolished completely: if you were voting for individuals on the basis of their own personal qualities and views, manipulation by words (in party names and slogans) and the burden of tradition associated with them would be minimal. Such democracy would be much more efficient and less susceptible to manipulation.
2. The point which I was trying to make was that we're effectively denying any other species an opportunity to reach sentience (which is why this universe was created in the first place, for the carbon-based life to evolve to achieve self-awareness) through our destructive influence on the planet (hundreds of millions of tones of inorganic waste generated each year, killing trillions of higher organisms that took tens, hundreds of millions of years of evolve). You're much too generous with 2 megayears estimate - human apes all came from a population of a few thousand units in eastern Africa, some 200k years ago. All the "civilization" that we ever created, from flint tools to Hubble telescope, space shuttles and Mozart, is in some 1-2% of difference from our closest ape "relatives". Can you imagine how incredibly dumb we'd look like to an enhanced version of us, just 1% genetically ahead in cognitive abilities? Two centuries from know is as distant as two millions of years from now, because history is "accelerating" itself and disruptive technologies emerge which completely change the big picture and make it impossible to predict anything even few decades ahead. Just imagine the tectonic changes that occurred in the the 20th century alone: 1900s, 1920s, 1940s, 1960s, 1980s... I'd personaly be shocked if there were anything barely resembling modern humans 2 hundreds yeas from now :D Evolution is essentially about two things: 1) maintaining balance 2) proliferation of new life forms on the basis of already extant ones. There is, indeed an "absolute scale of progress", that can be measured in amount of biodiversity and higher forms of life. Things such as horizontal gene transfer: change the picture quite a bit (Ordinarily it is, of course, but the universal tree is no ordinary tree, and its root no ordinary root. Under conditions of extreme HGT, there is no (organismal) "tree." Evolution is basically reticulate.). There is nothing that humans apes can become more adapted to biologically - we're complex franken-organisms cobbled up by a bunch of bacterial and viral genes whose sole purpose is to overcome primtive instincts hardwired in our brains and further evolution non-organically. Bacterias are the pinnacles of evolution in terms of adaptation to specific niches: they can survive in most extreme imaginable scenarios, where no amount of protective technology could help us. They're here to bootstrap us.
3. Multinationals do exert a certain influence in globalization (national trade agreements etc.), but in the bigger scheme of things they're relatively unimportant. World's politics in the last 150 years is essentially a showdown among Anglo-America, Russia and China. The rest of the sovereigns are either their satellites or puppets, or are completely irrelevant. The best way to observe gobalization IMHO is as a mechanism for balancing out differences among individuals. All the "progressivism" and "liberalization" boils down to eliminating aritifical (culturally-induced) obstacles in human interaction. Eventually most of the ethnolinguistic differences will perish, and soverigns (as well as statism) will be looked back with the same type of scorn that we hold today for medieval kingdoms, monarchies, empires and other violently-established forms of subjugation of the free human spirit. World government will not be "established"; it will simply impose itself as the only reasonable form of governance as statism grows obsolete. Politicians simply harness these trends as they spontaneously emerge.
4. Rights of any kind do not exist, but such language is useful shorthand. - there are basic rights that can be derived from the laws of nature, and rights that derive from them on the basis of the laws of logic; every other "right" is an imaginary type of privilege, on somebody's else expense. In particular, there is no such thing as "worker rights", that's all just stupid commie propaganda. Indeed, customs, taxation policies, laws and collective psyche may very significantly across those imaginary lines that we call borders, but that just shows how pointless they are and why they all have to be forcibly abolished, because they make aboslutely no sense at all. It is because of them that people's "collective mentalities" (or "communities" if you will) differ; it's not that they reflect communities "inherent" attitude. As much of the planet eventually turns to become America's backyard, these differences will first be ironed out on the social plane, and eventually on the formal political plane, because no progressive self-styled "liberal" would wanna anything to do with those "degenerate" values of the past. :)
5. Who, then, are the true rulers? - There are no "rulers" in the absolute sense of that word, only individuals pursuing their own selfish interests, which oftentimes match up and who by their collective efforts mold the world as we know it. In the strategic sphere it's people like Brzezinski who is right now jamming a giant dick down the China's ass by butchering Pakistan and Sudan. And there are of course central banksters - unknown owners of the private institutions called "central banks" who reap hundreds of billions of $ and € of profits each year, paid by taxpayers as interests to the governemental debts that cannot ever be repaid. And if they don't own the shares of the country's central bank, they own the bonds which yield the interest of the national debt, and when they don't own the bonds they own the commercial banks that sell the bonds at a fee. Those individuals are the true slave masters of the world. A large part of our lives we work for them, without ever knowing who they are and without ever knowing what wars they finance with their unimaginable wealth. Their ultimate goal is to create technocratic neofeudalism, citing Brzezinski: "The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities". We're already halfway there, but will never quite reach it in a manner that he envisions it. The "rulers" will remain essentially the some coterie of self-supporting interests, but as I said: it's way better to have them concentrated rather than dispersed, because that way they can be disposed of much more easily. --Ivan Štambuk 18:24, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Two regionalities

In your SC entries, you list two regionalities. Which regionalities are which languages? Thanks, Razorflame 14:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

What exactly do you mean by "regionalities" ? -Ivan Štambuk 14:39, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Ekvakian and the other one. I probably used the wrong term to define them, but they are regional uses of a word, right? Razorflame 14:53, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Ijekavian and Ekavian - these denote variant forms of the same word with different reflex of long Proto Slavic yat sound *ě (originally pronounced as [æː], or sth like that). In Ekavian speeches it's reflected as /e/ (always) and in Ijekavian speches as /e/, /je/ or /ije/, depending on the phonetic environment. Mapping to modern standards is this: Bosnian, Croatian and Montenegrin are all Ijekavian, and Serbian is standardized on both Ijekavian and Ekavian. All Serbo-Croatian textbooks mention this as a lesson #1. --Ivan Štambuk 15:05, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

So Ekavian is Serbian words only, then? Razorflame 15:09, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Correct. There are also some Croatian dialects with Ekavian reflex, but we ignore them (for now), because they're not literary, and the usual alphabet is not suitable for their transcription. --Ivan Štambuk

veljeti

After reading your notes on Kilibarda's talk page, do you agree that maybe we could redirect this page to velim whilst we wait for it to become non-hypothetical? Razorflame 02:34, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I suppose a redirect couldn't hurt anyone :P --Ivan Štambuk 06:25, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Recent protections

Hey there Ivan. Your recent protections seem to be a little over the top to me. If I were in your position (hypothetically), I would have just temporarily semi-protected them for a week. That should dissuade any further vandalism on those pages. Hope this helps :) Razorflame 13:08, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

It can't hurt, because IP addresses are responsible for all the wrong or unnecessary information that has been being added there throughout history. These pages are exclusively edited by a small number of well-known editors, and the preemptive protection seems justifiable. --Ivan Štambuk 13:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Could you at least try the 1 week semi-protect, and if they come back, you can indef semi-protect it? Give me a chance to show that I know what I am talking about :) Just try it :) You'll see that they won't be hit after the protection expires ;) Razorflame 13:31, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't feel like clicking 28 pages again.... :) It's not that I think that they'll be back in one week: they probably won't; the point is that all the edits by IPs on those pages are 99% likely to be wrong or useless anyway. --Ivan Štambuk 13:35, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, I agree with you on that point, but isn't that what the revert tool is for? Razorflame 13:40, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

No, you need to click the "unprotect" tab, change the duration period manually, and then click to save.... --Ivan Štambuk 13:56, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

When I said isn't that what the revert tool is for, I was talking about the people who vandalize those pages, not the protection of the pages itself. I know that you have to change them manually, but it should not take too long. You could easily have it done within 5 minutes ;) Razorflame 14:02, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

It's easier to protect and get done with it once and for all. --Ivan Štambuk 14:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

True :) By the way, by looking at Serbo-Croatian entries, how can I tell which of the four languages that entry covers? Razorflame 15:54, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Just look at the labels. If there are none present, it means it's shared. --Ivan Štambuk 15:59, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Don't worry, I'm not planning on making any entries in Serbo-Croatian :) I just wondered the answer to that question ;) Razorflame 16:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh really (grow the fuck up).

I just caught up with the Beer Parlour (as I have had finals and midterms for the past two months and have been by and large away from Wiktionary). I would like you to know that I take offense to being called anyone's minion. The time where I blocked you was of my own accord due to the fact that your actions are continuously horrific in terms of civility. And trust me, I'm sorely tempted to start another discussion about the removal of your admin privileges if you don't prove that you can grow the fuck up, be mature about interacting with other editors, oh, and yeah. Stop insulting people ad hominem. And if my comment seems a bit blunt or rude to you, I don't give more than a hundredth of a damn at this point, because I really hate sitting by and watching every Beer Parlour discussion be entirely unpleasant, thanks to you. Have a nice evening. --Neskaya ^{contribs – talk?} 06:32, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Oooh, I'm scared. --Ivan Štambuk 06:36, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Also, what's with the (fairly childish) censoring? --Neskaya ^{contribs – talk?} 07:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I admit, I lost my temper a little bit. I'm sorry. But I retain the fact that I'm trying to make a few points here as to your behaviour. Your civility could use work (a lot more than mine, even :P). The insulting everyone who disagrees with you is still obviously present ages after the vote. And you're making the project in general an unpleasant place to be. --Neskaya ^{contribs – talk?} 07:14, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I would very much appreciate if you'd omit the f-word while interacting with me. If you have problems with my civility try making points in a more productive and direct manner, and evade cursing, threatening and blank accusations. Use diffs or wikilinks, since I don't have eidetic memory of who wrote what when and where, and tend to discard overly generalized statements as a white noise. Your statements are simply too broad and incoherent for a specific objection to come across. --Ivan Štambuk 07:46, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

This is the most bitter batch of irony I've tasted to date. :( Honestly, how is telling someone to improve on their behaviour while displaying the same kinds of ... you know what, I'll leave it at that. Should be painfully self-evident what I mean :p — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 12:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)