User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 3

Burmese Script

Is the Burmese script supposed to show as squares, or is it because I haven't the Burmese script installed on my computer that it is showing me this squares? — This unsigned comment was added by Razorflame (talk • contribs) at 20:34, 18 June 2012‎ (UTC).

Butting in, I had the same problem until a week ago when I installed the Padauk font onto my computer. It's the first Burmese font listed at MediaWiki:Common.css. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:37, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

(ec) It's because you don't have a Burmese font on your computer. Burmese script is supposed to look like little circles, not little squares. This is what Burmese script is supposed to look like. There are some open-source Burmese fonts here; you'll want one that is Unicode 5.1 compliant. —Angr 20:42, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Installed the font Mglovesfun mentioned. Razorflame 20:43, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Tie bar

I inquired about the tie bar before I made that change and the opinion I seemed to get was that the tie bar was the "proper" way to show those consonants; but either worked. I think the reason that the tie bar is less prevalent on this website is that instructional pages like that one don't show the tie bar (or relegate it to a footnote). The question shouldn't be, Do we use that fomat on wiktionary? but What is the proper format? Just talking, but I would like to use the proper one when I am working. Thanks Speednat (talk) 01:49, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Using the tie bar in English is completely optional. It's equally "proper" to use it or to omit it. But the point of Appendix:English pronunciation is to show how the pronunciation guides really are used at Wiktionary, and most of the time the tie bar is omitted here. —Angr 09:46, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

no in Burmese

Hi,

Could you add the Burmese translation for no, please? Thanks in advance. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 23:56, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

kw in Celtic

The spelling doesn't have to be the same as IPA. In Germanic, the clusters hw, kw and gw are also single sounds, but as they don't contrast with sequences of labial and velar, they are written the 'easy way'. The same applies to Celtic too. I would prefer the spelling with w just for simplicity and accessibility. —CodeCat 11:24, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not very accessible, though, when almost all of the entries in Celtic languages that list etymologies of affected words list them with kʷ because that's what people are most used to. The sources (Matasovic, McCone, Schrijver, etc.) all write kʷ gʷ etc., not kw gw. Germanic has a different tradition. —Angr 11:27, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

D. Ringe writes kʷ in his book about Germanic so that isn't saying much... And I meant accessible to Wiktionary users who can easily type w but ʷ is much harder to type as I can't think of any keyboards that have it. —CodeCat 12:08, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

We use lots of characters here that people don't have on their keyboards, so that's not much of an argument either. But using kʷ makes it clearer that it was a single segment that became p in Gaulish and Brythonic, not a consonant cluster. —Angr 13:41, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Sortable table

That is fantastic. Thank you! --BB12 (talk) 18:38, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. I'm just sad they don't have Burmese. —Angr 11:30, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Rhymes:German:-eːɐ̯də

Looking at the edit history; we're both credited with the same page move. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:09, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I was just correcting my mistake at the same time as you were correcting it for me! —Angr 21:13, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Old Irish digital dictionary?

Do you know of any good and reliable dictionaries for Old Irish that are available online or for download? —CodeCat 20:44, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

The Dictionary of the Irish Language (DIL), http://www.dil.ie/ -Catsidhe (talk) 20:47, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Apparently when I search for a word there, it brings up all entries that contain the word, not just the entry with the headword that I typed. Rather cumbersome... —CodeCat 20:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Try the Browse function instead... ---Catsidhe (talk) 21:02, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Or click "Advanced search", then open "Fielded option", and enter the search term next to "Headword". And you have to click "Search", merely hitting return doesn't work for some reason. —Angr 21:03, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok that's a bit better. Is there something like a manual about how to read the entries? They are so terse that I can't really make sense of them still. What does "bri g, f." mean? —CodeCat 21:07, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Context? What is the entry you're looking at? ---Catsidhe (talk) 21:11, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

The entry "bri" :p —CodeCat 21:12, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

It means it's a feminine g-stem. —Angr 21:14, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I think I am beginning to understand... I notice it lists it as "bri" and not "brí". Does that mean that our entry actually has the wrong name? —CodeCat 21:18, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Which means ns bri; a,d,gs, np brig; ap briga, dp brigaib. OIr was notorious for not consistently marking long vowels, and the headers in DIL may not always be a canonically normalised spelling. If bri is a gutteral stem, then it's in the same class as rí. It might be considered some effort to enter versions without long vowel markings as alternate spellings for all OIr words. (But you certainly can't automatically go the other way: I would say that all OIr words with a long vowel have been spelled with the vowel unmarked, but not all unmarked vowels were long...) ---Catsidhe (talk) 21:25, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

(ec) No; the vowel was long in Old Irish (Old Irish didn't allow monosyllabic lexical words to end in a short vowel), but the scribes didn't always bother marking vowels as long. Thurnysen and Strachan both spell it brí. —Angr 21:27, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

BTW, one thing you have to watch out for with the DIL is that it isn't a dictionary of Old Irish only. It lists words from Old Irish, Middle Irish, and Early Modern Irish, so you can't assume that every word in there is really Old Irish. Lemmas are always spelled according to Old Irish conventions, even when the word itself isn't attested until EMI (and therefore is attested only in a different spelling). —Angr 21:44, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

So the vowel is long in the nominative but short in the others? Etymologically, the vowel should be short. —CodeCat 21:47, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes. The vowel is lengthened by the rule that a monosyllabic lexical word can't end in a short vowel. (Basically the rule was that a lexical word can't consist only of a light syllable, a constraint that is very widespread among the world's languages.) In the other cases, where the word ends in a consonant, the vowel doesn't need to be lengthened. Perhaps that's why DIL decided to give the lemma as "bri" rather than "brí", but the nominative singular really did have a long vowel even though the other cases had a short vowel. —Angr 22:26, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. Many Germanic languages have a similar rule too. —CodeCat 22:38, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

German R

Hi Angr! I wondered if you had an opinion regarding the transcription of "R" in German: Wiktionary_talk:About_German#R. - -sche (discuss) 22:24, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for taking the time to help me at fixture. Now I know everything! Metal.lunchbox (talk) 00:24, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Also regarding '/r/' in English. If its all the same I'd really rather preserve the upright 'r' in English transcriptions of American English whenever I am referencing a third party source which has transcribed it in this way. There are other reasons but all else being equal 'r' is better than upside-down 'r' becuase it is simply easier to read. Is this some kind of convention that was formally discussed here at wiktionary? If so would you happen to know where? I'm new to wiktionary, so I don't know anything, and I'd like to be clear about such special policies if they exist before I go adding a ton of IPA transcriptions which are not compatible with the way things work here. Frankly, I find the '/r/' transcription to be a confusing issue and feel a little out of my depth. For this reason, I would most prefer being able to stick with what I can verify in an outside source (a dictionary). If you know of an article or discussion which clarifies this, a quick link would be much appreciated. Metal.lunchbox (talk) 00:36, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

There was a vote that decided it, so it is policy. Anyway, it's more accurate, because in IPA, /r/ is a trill like a hypercorrect Spanish-influenced proununciation of (deprecated template usage) burrito as /bu.ˈri.to/ and /ɹ/ is decidedly not, instead representing the sound in the standard English pronunciation /bəˈɹiːto/. Does that clarify it? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:48, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

It certainly does. thanks Metal.lunchbox (talk) 05:25, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I prefer using right-side-up /r/ too, because all IPA characters are subject to certain conventions that have to be defined by the author, and using /r/ for the non-trill approximant of English is no less correct than using /t/ for an aspirated alveolar stop in English or using the same symbol for an unaspirated dental stop in French. I consider using /ɹ/ the height of pedantry, but it's Wiktionary policy, so I roll my eyes and go along with it. —Angr 06:25, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

We've been more pedantic... but rhotacism can be really complex, and I find it helpful to be as clear as possible in this regard. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:03, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:About Yiddish

Hi! I've just created this page, which is meant to have a centrally located repository of information about the standardized treatment of Yiddish on Wiktionary. I'm giving you this message because you have shown interest in Yiddish, and we need your help! The page especially needs better coverage of the many undocumented headword-line and conjugation templates, but any assistance is welcomed. Please feel free to edit the page, and to raise any issues for discussion at Wiktionary talk:About Yiddish. Thanks so much! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:14, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Archiving GP

The whole idea of having monthly subpages is that they wouldn't need archiving anymore... —CodeCat 15:15, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh. Well, I did it because the archive box at WT:Grease pit was showing June and July as redlinks. August through October are still redlinks. —Angr 15:31, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I figured out how to fix that and have moved the pages back. —Angr 15:40, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

WT:RFV#suffrage

Hi! Can you take a look at my comments about the prayer sense and let me know if I've reached the right conclusion? - -sche (discuss) 00:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it looks fine now. I was never supporting the vague definition "a kind of prayer". —Angr 16:58, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

moon (Bengali)

The transliteration of the Bengali translation of [[moon]] is currently tʃām̐da, complete with IPA characters and chandrabindu. Since you knew what to do with the Template:my transliterations, I thought you might know whether this was OK or not. - -sche (discuss) 06:04, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

The Bengali entry itself uses the transliteration "cãd", which looks right to me. —Angr 19:43, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

punt

Hi. Can you check my recent addition at punt. I claimed the etymology is from Irish, but there's probably important information missing. --Adding quotes (talk) 14:08, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Slieve Donard

Another recent Ireland-related creation of mine which could benefit from your help. I don't feel confident or qualified in adding anything Irish to Wiktionary. --Adding quotes (talk) 11:21, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2012-10/Enabling Tabbed Languages

Since you voted in the recent Beer Parlour poll about Tabbed Languages, I'm informing you of this ongoing vote on whether to enable Tabbed Languages. --Yair rand (talk) 08:39, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Rhymes:Italian:-ui

Since you never responded at RFM... do you know what the hell is going on here? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:09, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I believe what the page is trying to show is a difference between words in which /ui/ is two syllables, i.e. [u.i], like dui; words in which /ui/ is a falling diphthong, i.e. [ui̯], like vui; and words in which /ui/ is a rising diphthong, i.e. [u̯i], like cui. But I don't know enough Italian to know for sure. —Angr 06:21, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Better question: is it worth splitting the page? Is there a precedent? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:02, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't know, and I don't know. —Angr 20:29, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

SemperBlotto created these based on spelling not IPA, I am under the impression he'd be more than happy for someone who knows IPA for Italian to reorganize these pages. Just sadly that person isn't me. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:05, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I know some Italian, but phonology was never my strong suit. This is the only Italian rhyme page I didn't fix. I guess I'll g searching for someone to ask. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:45, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is about the three ways that -ui can be pronounced: /uj/, /ui/, /wi/. I don’t mess with the rhymes very much. Different languages can have very different concepts of rhyme (Spanish, for example, has numerous types of rhyme...an important one is assonant rhyme, where the words muerta, penas, and golpean are rhymes based on the two vowels e in the penultimate syllable and a in the ultimate syllable). I don’t know about the kinds of Italian rhyming. In my opinion, it is too complex a matter to get too deep into it. I think the page should be left with all three pronunciations together, because many contributors won’t know how to distinguish them. Someday if a good Italian poet comes along, he might be able to do something more scholarly with the Italian rhymes, but I think it is unlikely that the Italian rhymes will be just like English rhymes, which are very childish and primitive by Romance standards. —Stephen ^(Talk) 01:18, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Nuß

Please remember to use {{de-usage obsolete spelling}}! Thanks —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:56, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Eclipsed form

Your entry at bpianadh makes me think we are missing a linguistic sense at eclipse (or eclipsed). Would you be able to add it? Equinox ◑ 13:19, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I added a sense at [[eclipse]], cleaned up the sense at [[eclipsis]], and added a sense at [[mutation]]. —Angr 13:26, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

kristallisieren

Hi, the four-syllable pronunciation variant is not really rare. I'd say it's far more common in everyday speech than the other one. /ʁ/ is often vocalized to non-syllabic [ɐ]. Longtrend (talk) 19:25, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

But not usually before a schwa. Kristallisieren isn't a word one hears every day, but I've certainly rarely if ever heard fahren and frieren in one syllable or frittieren in two. —Angr 20:09, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Baran

It says baran here : http://hjp.novi-liber.hr/index.php?show=search I don't know if that is a trusted source,but I draw etymologies from there.

24.135.79.187 15:24, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

They're probably thinking of the stem, but here at Wiktionary we list Proto-Slavic nouns in their nominative singular forms, which are usually either identical or very similar to their Old Church Slavonic forms. And that means most masculine nouns end in ъ. —Angr 15:27, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic had a rule that every syllable must end in a vowel or in -l/r (but -l or -r never appear at the end of a word). So if a word ends in a consonant then it is automatically suspicious. —CodeCat 15:37, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

acarofobia

Please note that you should use {{es-noun}} and {{pt-noun}}, etc, when adding entries. Or, if you don't know enough about a language to feel comfortable with its template system, you should add {{attention}}. Thanks! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:19, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I tried that first (and {{it-noun}} too), but it wanted to add automatic plurals to them, so I thought the hell with it. —Angr 16:28, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's why we have documentation :) See {{es-noun}}, for example. Actually, I think the plurals exist, but the words are so rare that their plurals can't be cited... but maybe based on usage it would be better to consider them uncountable? I'm not sure. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:31, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I couldn't be arsed to look at the documentation. I'm a guy, you don't expect me to read instructions, do you? ;-) Most phobias are uncountable anyway, aren't they? —Angr 16:33, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Nope, Romance languages don't count nouns like English does IME. Your userpage says you're fr-2, so take a gander at google books:"acarophobies". —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:35, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you think it would make sense to adopt a general guideline that templates like {{es-noun}} shouldn't try to generate plurals and such automatically unless told to do so? That way, even someone who isn't familiar with the language can still use those templates. Note that {{nl-noun}} already works this way, and displays a notice requesting the forms to be filled in when they are missing, but does not generate any itself. —CodeCat 20:36, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. I hate it when computers think they're smarter than me, which includes things like templates automatically producing plurals when I haven't told them to. —Angr 21:42, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. Sounds like more work for those of us who actually know the language and its templates (that is, most editors). Spanish nouns are really regular, and once we Luacise {{es-noun}} (that's one of my goals), the template's autogenerated plural will almost always be accurate, because Spanish is almost as predictable as an auxlang that way. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:53, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

In that case it's ok. For a language like Dutch it's not as easy though, because there are several possible plurals and there are also other changes which are not predictable from the written form alone. Compare the two conjugations of bedelen to get an idea. —CodeCat 22:57, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

At least for the languages I work with, the templates are good as is. Yiddish templates will allow you not to put in stuff like plural, and Latin templates will freak out if they don't get a genitive, but both of those can be pretty irregular when they want to be. The Romance languages, not so much. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:25, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Classifier parameter for {{my-noun}}?

Could classifiers such as ချပ် (hkyap) ever have a parameter for them in {{my-noun}}? It's a suggestion. Cheers. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 17:28, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

That's been suggested at Template talk:my-noun, but as I said there, "I don't know of any other dictionary that provides that information, which means we'd have to rely on native speakers' judgment to determine which classifier to use, and the native Burmese speakers who are registered at Wiktionary are not very active here". You asked in an edit summary at ခေါင်း whether gaung: 'head' and hkaung: 'coffin' use different classifiers. I don't know, but in Cornyn's Outline of Burmese Grammar he mentions a classifier lon: used for spherical or cubical things like pots and boxes, so I could imagine that might be used for counting both heads (spherical) and coffins (cubical). But we'd have to ask a native speaker to be sure. —Angr 23:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

"real" documentation

DCDuring added empty documentation pages to a lot of templates some time ago. I have no idea why. —CodeCat 19:43, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

I deleted the one I saw because the template page itself said the /doc subpage ought to be moved to /documentation, which seems stupid when the /doc subpage consists only of a tag saying that there isn't a /doc subpage yet. —Angr 19:46, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

dewed/dude

Not homophones universally, in the UK dewed is /d͡ʒuːd. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:03, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

But certainly not only homophones because of yod deletion after coronals. If you pronounce one of them /du:d/, you pronounce the other one /du:d/ too. And a priori I wouldn't expect yod coalescence to be lexically specific either, so that if you pronounce of them /dʒu:d/, you pronounce the other one /dʒu:d/ too; at the very least I'd expect both of them to vary between /dju:d/ and /dʒu:d/ in yod-coalescing accents. —Angr 11:12, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Nope, because dude is /duːd/. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:14, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Why? Because it's a loanword from American English? Etymologically it shouldn't be. —Angr 11:15, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

I think so, yes. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:17, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, I still think tune/toon is a better example. —Angr 11:19, 23 May 2013 (UTC)