User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 8

már

Hi Angr, I saw your note at this entry: "rm unnecessary note—this must be true for hundreds or thousands of Hungarian words, not to mention words in hundreds or thousands of other languages with contrastive vowel length." I'm surprised you found this note unnecessary. When I learn foreign languages, I always appreciate when someone brings such differences into my attention. I don't think these differences are as obvious as you think. Especially, if the student is not aware that there is another similar sounding word with a completely different meaning. --Panda10 (talk) 14:49, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

But surely that sort of thing needs to be taught as part of the entire sound system of the language, not on a word-by-word basis. It would be absurd to have a note like this on every single word that forms a minimal pair with another word with respect to vowel length in Hungarian! And even more so since the vowel qualities of mar and már are different anyway: the former is /mɒr/ and the latter is /maːr/. But even if the vowel qualities were the same, the word entry just isn't the place for that kind of information, because that isn't information about the word per se, it's information about Hungarian phonology in general. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Czechia and Czech Republic

Dear Angr, on the Czechia site should be translations of the geographical name "Czechia", because because translations of the political name "Czech Republic" should be on the Czech Republic site. Frequencies of use of 'Czechia' or of the 'Czech Republic' are in this case irrelevant. User [1] alias Dan Polansky is a fanatic enemy of the English word "Czechia" and it is the only reason, that he delete "Czechia" everywhere he can. Translated, Polansky/Yopie is a vandal. Polansky/Yopie/... is a psychically ill person. Ignore him.

On the contrary, you (who shouldn't be posting at all here since you're currently blocked) are a fanatical enemy of the English language. "Czechia" is barely a word of English. The Czech government does not get to dictate English usage. Only native English speakers get to do that, and native English speakers have shown by how they use the two terms that "Czech Republic" is the usual name of the country in English. "Czechia" isn't. Frequencies of use are not irrelevant at all; on the contrary, they're the most important evidence in the question. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:28, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I love the way they started with "Dear Angr", then switched to Czech so they could use their full repertoire of angry insults, attacks and threats without losing anything to translation. I changed the block to a range block of /65, because most IPv6 ISP accounts tend to have private use of just about any IP within that range, so a regular single-IP block tends to be pretty much useless. I did check first, though, that there were no other edits from within that range. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:27, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

OK thanks. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:44, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Two things...

Hello, Angr. I have two questions for you, if you wouldn't mind answering them.

1. How does one pronounce your username? Up till now, I've been pronouncing it variously as /ɑŋ/, /ɑŋʁ/ and /ɑŋʁ‿ɹ/. But perhaps it's pronounced /æŋ.ɡɚ/ or /eɪŋ.ɡɚ/?

2. Might you be able to shine some light on this topic?

Thanks for reading my message. I look forward to your response. Tharthan (talk) 16:47, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I pronounce my user name as a homophone of anger, though the homophony is a coincidence. I know that Irish craic comes from English crack, but I don't know the origin of the latter beyond what the entry already says. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:55, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

cordifolia

When adding another headword like you did for the ablative, could you include a separate ===Noun=== header above it as well? I know that many of our existing entries don't have this, but I do think we should do it. After all, cordifoliā is really an entirely different word from cordifolia, so we should treat them as such. —CodeCat 22:01, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Breves in Ancient Greek

As far as I can tell, the result of the Grease Pit discussion regarding this was for breves to be stripped from grc links, but that we lacked an administrator to make the necessary change to Module:languages/data3/g. As Atelaes is currently absent, and you are an administrator with knowledge of Ancient Greek, will you oblige? ObsequiousNewt (ἔβαζα|ἐτλέλεσα) 19:08, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the Welsh entries

Thanks a lot for correcting all those Welsh entries. Sorry for all the incorrect categories; I'll be more careful with those in future. EdwardH (talk) 15:32, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

No problem; editing Wiktionary takes some getting used to! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Template:sc

"sc" tends to mean "script" around these parts, so… I would rather avoid that name for something completely unrelated. — Keφr 23:27, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

OK. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:45, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

There is a Wauja-English Wiktionary

It's at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Wauja_lemmas Regards 38.105.99.161 23:49, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

That's the list of of Wauja words at the English-language Wiktionary. It's not a Wauja-language dictionary, in which all definitions as well as the entire interface would be in Wauja. If there were a Wauja-language Wiktionary, wau:mapa would be a link to it instead of a red link. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:52, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Harassment by another admin

Another admin, Kephir, is harassing me. He removed comments I made on another user's talk page, here and here. When I asked him not to do that, he deleted the message on my talk page, claiming it was vandalism here. There are many other instances of harassment of me by this editor. Could you PLEASE get him to stop? Purplebackpack89 22:18, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Template l

Hi Angr, I am asking this out of curiosity. I noticed your changes at vág. I think I understand the reason to add {l|hu} to entries that are common with multiple languages. It will jump to the specified language. But what is the significance of adding it to phrases such as vág az esze, mint a borotva, where no other language is expected ever? It just unnecessarily increases the number of templates on a page. --Panda10 (talk) 21:33, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Using {{l}} tells the HTML code what language the words are written, which is useful for a variety of reasons, such as user-specific formatting (if you want, you can tell your CSS page to put all Hungarian words in green text, or boldface, or blinking) and letting screen readers for the blind know what language they need to be reading in. It's not only about linking to the right section of the page. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:20, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I see. However, the functions you mentioned would be completely useful only if {{l}} would be applied to all linked words in all entries. Otherwise, it remains a partial solution. --Panda10 (talk) 22:01, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

That is the end goal, but it will take a long time. We'll never get there if we don't start, though. —CodeCat 22:46, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Template:h-prothesis of

I reverted your edits as a precaution because they caused module errors in 4 entries . Once I looked at other entries, though, I realized what was wrong (missing lang parameters), fixed the 4 entries and restored your edits. You need to update the documentation, though, so contributors aren't left wondering why they're getting an error that says {{{lang}}} isn't a valid language code, when they followed the example exactly. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for your help! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:40, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Sorbian verbs at Proto-Slavic *vitati

Did you somehow screw up the ordering of the Sorbian verbs at Proto-Slavic *vitati? You could revert my edit if you want to. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 22:55, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

The two Sorbian words were reversed, but that wasn't my doing. The page was created that way. All I changed was the Czech word. Thanks for correcting it! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:11, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

ofkorsu=rong

aas1.anclulesidjet[komoni/d=kindagardnn2.u=disabld8r[nutin2b.ashamdofi/'sivil'society http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Feedback&diff=31969895&oldid=31967769

Maybe if you wrote in complete sentences, with spaces between your words and using standard spellings, people would understand what you were trying to say. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:49, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacan_islands ipa?

I don't know, sorry, I don't speak Indonesian. My best guess is /ˈbatʃan/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:47, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:YGM Tharthan (talk) 16:22, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:30, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Proto-Arawak

Hi, could you do me a favor and create a language module for Proto-Arawak using code arw-pro and have it link to Arawakan languages? Alternative names are Proto-Arawakan and Proto-Maipuran. Thanks for your help!--Victar (talk) 09:32, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not the person to ask. I have no idea how to edit modules. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:38, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, no worries. Thanks though. --Victar (talk) 00:04, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Maybe if you have a moment though, you can help comment on this discussion? Thanks for your time. --Victar (talk) 00:07, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't really have an opinion on that question. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:01, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Only naturally you wouldn't have an opinion about the spelling of Taíno either way, but maybe you can speak to the preference of defaulting to academic sources. --Victar (talk) 17:01, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

AWB

You might find that WT:AWB (w:WP:AWB) would speed up the process of merging the Norman entries, for the dialects with relatively few entries. It can be instructed to do (semi)automated text replacement of the headers and templates and such. Jèrriais has so many entries that it would seem wiser to do it by bot; you could ask Renard if he could do that; I think he wrote a bot that merged a lot of Serbo-Croatian entries. - -sche (discuss) 20:12, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, but that looks too complicated for me. I don't know how to write code. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm not very good at writing code, either. But AWB doesn't require writing code (though its capabilities are greater if you know a little bit of regex); it's basically an enhanced browser; you just download it and install it and (it has a graphic user interface and you) tell it to make a list of entries in Category:Guernésiais lemmas. Then in the "normal settings" box (in the "options" area... OK, it does have a lot of buttons), tell it to replace ==Guernésiais== with ==Norman==, and {{head|roa-grn| with {{head|nrf|. (But leave out the <nowiki> tags.) Then go over to "start" and start processing the first page on the list; it'll show you a diff of the changes it proposes to make, and you can undo any that don't need doing or make any additional changes that need to be made, and then save the page, and it'll load up the next page from the list. I'm sure there's a more comprehensive walkthrough on Wikipedia. - -sche (discuss) 20:30, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

OK. Do I have to be approved first, or am I automatically approved as an admin? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Your name has to appear on Wiktionary:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage; I just added it; admins don't need to be approved by any sort of cabal, since it's assumed you know better than to keep hitting "save" if you notice that the program is doing something it shouldn't be doing. :b (The program itself won't actually change a page until you hit "save".) Sorry for the delayed response; I got distracted in real life. - -sche (discuss) 21:18, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:20, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/exanthem[atous#English

ipa?

Thank you .

I forgot about copyright. So,the copied the word.But now,I know that I should add something more. Thank you Yin May Lwin (talk) 16:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Proto language in cognate list

I use Proto language to link to attested languages (≥ 1), also sometimes given cognate doesn't have own article. Now i'll be adding Proto language inside the brackets if it's not forbidden. —Игорь Тълкачь 18:52, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not forbidden, but I know there are Wiktionary editors (besides me) who dislike seeing a proto-form listed as a cognate of an attested form. Comparing a proto-form to an attested form is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:29, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

Your revert at page brony

Why you reverted the Interwiki link on brony to the german version? --Nin-TD (talk) 15:47, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

A Welsh etymology that needs checking

The edit comment on this diff doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but it looks like they're in the right ballpark, so I thought it would be better to bring this to the attention of someone who might be able to confirm it or correct it, rather than just reverting it. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:14, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

It looks right to me, especially given the equally old byform py, which even has the right vowel. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:51, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Flanagan

Hey. Can you Irish up the page Flanagan a bit more please? --Sucio green (talk) 10:21, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

nhâl

Category:Welsh mutated alternative forms showed up in Special:WantedCategories, but we would have to add "mutated alternative forms" as a POS in order to use {{poscatboiler}}, which doesn't look right. Also, this is the only entry to use this, so it seems inconsistent with the practice even in entries for other mutations of tâl. You know far more than I do about this, so I didn't attempt to redo anything, but it does seem rather strange. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:54, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

That's really weird. I created that page automatically by clicking a green link at tâl; apparently if a Welsh lemma is more than one part of speech, then the automatic loader calls the POS "Alternative form". Of course it shouldn't do that, but I have no idea how to fix those automatic loaders. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 06:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

The script looks "upwards" to find the part of speech. It has a list of headers that it should ignore (look near the bottom of User:Conrad.Irwin/creation.js) so that it doesn't think that things like "Declension" are a part of speech. But "Alternative forms" is not in that list, so it uses that as the part of speech. The problem is threefold in this case, though. Aside from not realising that "Alternative forms" is not a part of speech, that header normally goes above the POS header rather than below it. Furthermore, in this case the mutation (presumably?) applies to both the noun and the verb, so the new entry should really have both headers. The script can't deal with that. —CodeCat 18:24, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, in this specific case it should only be Noun, since finite verb forms never undergo Nasal mutation, though verbal nouns (i.e. lemma forms of Welsh verbs) do undergo it. But of course in general, the script should at least be able to find the closest POS header (in the case of tâl that would be Verb), rather than Alternative forms. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:33, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I added "Alternative forms" to the list of headers to ignore, so it will now pick "verb". —CodeCat 19:40, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Your stance on atheism

I am writing this note to you to hopefully dissuade you from removing "or lack thereof" from the section of ism pertaining to atheism. I am asserting it is you making claims of opinion, employing the fallacy of argumentum ad populum to support it. My position is backed by evidence (definitions in accepted authoritative sources) and logic. Here are three, of many, reasons I am using to counter your position that I am asserting an opinion:

1. The Negative and positive atheism entry from Wikipedia you reference says "is the form of atheism", meaning it is a subset of atheism as a whole. It explains positions within atheism that express varied degrees of confidence in the lack of belief in god(s). The definition "a lack of belief in god(s)" is universally applicable to all forms of atheism and the root definition of being atheist.

2. The definitions of atheism, ideology, doctrine and belief system from authoritative sources, and from within Wiktionary and Wikipedia, individually and as a whole definitively show atheism is not a doctrine, ideology, or belief system. Only the entry on ism asserted this claim.

3. You can not logically assert that "a lack of belief in god(s)", or lack of belief in anything, necessarily or inferentially supports a claim that it indicates an ideology, doctrine or belief system, or that it is a cause of any action or assertion. Any inference of this can be shown to be a misapplication, a conflation, of the term atheism to represent the actions and assertions resulting from (caused by) the ideology, doctrine or belief system of another ism (humanism, secularism, anti-theism, etc.).

FYI, I am just as adamant about this against atheists who make these assertions as I am with everyone else. I will be glad to continue discussing this disagreement if you so desire. You can even move it to my talk page if you do not want to clutter yours.

Of course I'm making claims of opinion, but so are you. Your and Dan's assertions that no form of atheism is an ideology are your opinions. As I said, some forms of atheism go far beyond "a lack of belief in god(s)" and have become the active, sometimes even fervent, belief in the nonexistence of god(s), which in my opinion (but apparently not in yours) makes it an ideology. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:26, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

"As I said, some forms of atheism go far beyond "a lack of belief in god(s)". No, some atheists make that claim, but it is inaccurate. It seems accuracy on Wiktionary should have at least some consideration. I have presented hard evidence using authoritative sources and logic that show atheism does not have a doctrine, ideology, or belief system. That is not opinion. Your claim is based solely on the notion that if a bunch of people assert it, even though they are inaccurate, it must be a valid position and merits inclusion in ism without clarification to represent it accurately. You are claiming an argumentum ad populum is sufficient to exclude clarification of the verifiable definition. Using your position I could get a large group of atheists to be very outspoken as Christians, do a lot of stuff in the name of Christianity and get media attention for some amount of time acting as Christians, and be justified in editing the entry for Christian to include a third definition of, "Atheist Christians." Yeah, I know it's ridiculous, it goes against the many contentious definitions of Christian, and it's the position you are taking. I don't think you understand the difference between opinion and definition. If you don't concur please don't just reiterate your position. Please address my claims directly and show they are inaccurate or false. -John Andrew Morrison("talk")

You have not presented "hard evidence using authoritative sources and logic". You have presented your opinion. Your sentence "No, some atheists make that claim, but it is inaccurate" is an opinion. We're a descriptive dictionary and show how words are used by speakers, not how we think they ought to be used. The fact that there are people who describe themselves as atheists and for whom atheism is an active belief in the nonexistence of God means that there is a definition of atheism that does have a doctrine, ideology, and belief system, even if you wish people wouldn't use the word that way and even if you believe it's illogical for them to do so. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

So you claim authoritative sources of definition is not evidence? You don't think logic is valuable? You think allowing a descriptive dictionary to be purposefully inaccurate is OK?

Authoritative sources can claim whatever they like. Just because they say something means a thing doesn't mean that it reflects common usage. Wiktionary is descriptive, therefore it doesn't follow any authority. The highest authority for Wiktionary is always the speakers themselves, and how they use language. —CodeCat 02:36, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

On that point, then, I am a speaker and my position represents a far more common usage than what you claim. Those that use atheism in the way you assert are a small percentage of all atheists, it's just more publicized because it creates controversy. On this basis atheism should be completely removed from the list, but I am happy with "or lack thereof" as it represents this common usage of the term. -John Andrew Morrison("talk")

I don't mind "or lack thereof" as it represents one usage of the term. Whether the nonideological meaning of atheism is more common than the ideological meaning, I'm in no position to say, but it doesn't matter. Both meanings exist, and including "or lack thereof" at -ism covers one of the meanings. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:00, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I think you've touched on what may be a big part of the disconnect here: you're talking about usage among atheists, but atheists are a very small part of the English-speaking population- most of the people who use terms such as -ism and atheist don't know or care what atheists think. The fact that atheist refers to you and is part of your identity doesn't give you any special say in what it means or how it's used. It would be nice if everybody listened to those most directly effected by terms when deciding how to use them, but that's not how usage works in the real world. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:54, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I am confused by this entire discussion. If there are a CFI-worthy number of references showing that a word is used with a distinct meaning, then we craft a definition that conveys that meaning to the reader. It doesn't matter what community the usage stems from. bd2412 T 22:33, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

It may be that the attestable usage context for a particular definition is narrow. That would be normal for many terms. For example, a lay definition of iron is not the same as a chemist's definition, which is also different from a metallurgist's definition, which is different from a nutritionist's, etc. DCDuring TALK 23:08, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to de-sysop/de-checkuser Connel MacKenzie

Since you participated in the the 2012 vote to de-sysop and de-checkuser Connel MacKenzie, you may wish to participate in the current discussion of this proposal. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:00, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

ei

If Proto-Celtic had no ei, how come it appears in Celtiberian? —CodeCat 16:45, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

According to Matasovic, it was probably the Celtiberian orthography's way of representing ē. Just like Gothic had something spelled ei that came from PIE *ey, but it wasn't pronounced [ei̯]. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:06, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like an unfalsifiable claim, though. —CodeCat 18:24, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm re-reading Matasovic now, and I can't see that he actually said that. Maybe it was someone else, like Kim McCone or Peter Schrijver. I'll see if I can track it down and see if they provide a more falsifiable argument than what I remember. It may simply be Ockham's razor: it's simpler to assume that ey > ē happened in Proto-Celtic and was spelled ei in Celtiberian than to assume that monophthongization happened separately in the other branches of Celtic (Gallo-Brittonic and Goidelic; or Insular and Gaulish; or Goidelic, Brythonic, and Gaulish; whichever you prefer). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:40, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that's so far fetched. After all, many changes occurred in all Germanic languages except Gothic, including one very notable areal change, i-mutation. —CodeCat 19:11, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

If it helps, Dagmar Wodtko's Outline of Celtiberian Grammar reconstructs its phonology as including a, e, i, o, u, ai, ei and oi and some u-diphthongs, and says:

• e seems to interchange with ei on occasions, cf. the fem. adj. arekoratika (K.0.11) and the masc. areikoratikos (A.52) [...] In most cases an original diphthong *ei (sometimes *ēi) may be assumed. […] In other Celtic languages PIE *ei has been monophthongized > *ē; in Celtiberian however, it appears often preserved, particularly in root syllables. If there was a tendency towards monophthongization, it was perhaps not far advanced. A clear example of PIE *ei is to be seen in ueiđos (K.0.11) derived from the root *u̯eid- 'to see, look' and probably meaning something like 'witness'; cf. also the family name teiuantikum (K.1.3), ultimately derived from *deiu̯os 'god' (OIr. día, Scr. devá- etc.). In inflectional endings the LSg. in -ei of o-stems goes back to *-ei. Consonantal stems and i-stems show an ending -ei which seems to be dative or locative, e.g. in tokoitei (K.1.1), kenei (with NSg. kenis, both K.6.1). However, there are also case forms in -e, as in gente (K.11.1) with NSg. kentis /gentis/ (K.1.3), stenionte (K.11.1) from a stem in -nt- (cf. § 29). It seems, therefore, that ei at least in non-initial syllables was sometimes monophthongized.

- -sche (discuss) 19:45, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

@CodeCat - -sche (discuss) 19:48, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

To me, cases like arekoratika ~ areikoratikos are good evidence of its being purely orthographic. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:51, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

How do you know that they don't represent distinct pronunciations? Perhaps differing by dialect, or indecisiveness resulting from a sound change that was in progress. —CodeCat 20:02, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Of course it could be that too, but that seems to me to be the more complicated hypothesis. At any rate, I trust we can all agree that Proto-Celtic didn't contrast ē and ei, which is what the declension-table templates implied before I made changes like this one. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:21, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Why is that more complicated? I find the suggestion that ei did not represent a diphthong far more complicated. Celtiberian is written in its own script that does not resemble Greek as far as the sound values of the letters go, so we can rule out Greek spelling influence. That means that the mixup of ei and e must have a native origin. The simplest explanation is that ei was becoming ē at the time of writing, as -sche's source confirms. When that happened, writers no longer felt a need to add the sign "i" as ē and e now had the same phonetic value. —CodeCat 23:25, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter Schrijver's Studies in British Celtic Historical Phonology has a section on The Development of the Proto-Celtic Long Vowels and Diphthongs, which says PIE eh₁, ē became Proto-Celtic ē which then, in Proto-Brittonic and other languages, merged with Proto-Celtic ī and ū as i, while PIE "ei, h₁ei, eh₁i" became Proto-Celtic ei which became Proto-Brittonic ē > uī. This suggests to me that Proto-Celtic had both ē and ei.(?) The book also has a section on The Development of Proto-Celtic *ei > ẹ̄ in British. - -sche (discuss) 01:44, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Pre-Celtic ē becomes ī already in Proto-Celtic. So there was no ē left. There was also no ō, which became either ā or ū. So Proto-Celtic had 3 long vowels: ī, ā and ū. —CodeCat 02:26, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

cwyn and cwys

Hi Angr,

As you might know, the soft and aspirate mutations of cwyn (“complaint”) should be gŵyn and chŵyn respectively, to avoid confusion with gwyn (“white”) and chwyn (“weeds”). Same goes for cwys (“furrow”) (when I get round to adding it), whose mutated forms are written gŵys and chŵys to avoid confusion with gwŷs (“summons”) and chwys (“sweat”). Is there any way to change or override the display of the mutation template to get these correct forms to show?

Cheers, BigDom 05:19, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, they can be spelled either with or without the circumflex, depending on how ambiguous the context is. At any rate, the templates are all generated automatically by Module:cy-mut, and I don't know of any way to override that. Maybe User:kc_kennylau, who wrote the module, can help. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I apologize for the problem and for the inconvenience caused. I have created a new template Template:cy-mut-table, which is modified from an older edition of Template:cy-mut, whose author is User:Angr and User:SPQRobin. Please refer to cwyn for usage. --kc_kennylau (talk) 14:27, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, @kc_kennylau! No reason to apologize; you had no way of predicting this highly esoteric exception to the usual rule. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:31, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I think the circumflex is recommended, although probably not always used. Thanks @kc_kennylau for your help! BigDom 15:45, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Sänger

As a short advice regarding "is only masculine" &c.: You shouldn't equal gender of words and gender of things as they can be different. Examples include: das Kind, das Mädchen, die Person, die Katze (either Kätzin or Kater). So please refrain from doing the same error twice (or multiple times). -13:47, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I didn't confuse them. Sänger only refers to male singers. You cannot call Sarah Connor ein Sänger. She is only eine Sängerin. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:51, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, most likely one could, but indeed it's uncommon. But one can say "Sänger" (plural) and refer to singers (plural) of both genders and one can say "ein Sänger" (usually an indefinite, unspecified singer) to refer to a singer (singular) of both genders. So it's more like "person, esp. male" (as there's "Sängerin" for explicitly female ones), but simply "male" is wrong. -14:50, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

That's true of any masculine personal noun, though, not just Sänger. Knowing that is part of knowing German, it's not lexical information about this word, so it doesn't belong in the entry. In addition, I highly recommend avoiding insulting words like "retards" and "sexists" in your edit summaries; making personal attacks can get you blocked. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:01, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not sure that that is true for all masculine personal nouns (of course this doesn't include e.g. "Tisch" and "Enterich" or "Kater"). E.g. "Junge" could only refers to males, as there is "Kinder". Well, maybe it can also refers to females, but than it should it least be that it is more common for some words (e.g. those on -er) than for others (e.g. Junge) to refer to females too.
• Entries are also read by persons who don't speak said language or don't speak it very well. Thus the limited information "male person" is misleading. And as there's no note on German grammar here -- or is there something like Help:German grammar with a note like "masculine personal nouns can also refer to females, though this is omitted in the entries"? --, it's also wrong.
• That weren't personal attacks. It was just a note, to whom my explanations especially refers. It was not an attack against anyone, and I don't need such things as they aren't arguments.

-16:22, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

People who don't speak the language aren't going to get much use out of a dictionary alone. Dictionaries can't take the place of foreign language education. Information about learning German that goes beyond lexical information is outside of Wiktionary's scope. The German textbook at Wikibooks is the place for that kind of information. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:27, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

One could read something like "Soldaten sind Mörder", enter every word into wiktionary and get "[Nominative plural of Soldat = male soldier] [are] [Nominative plural of Mörder = male killer/murderer]", which is "male soldiers are male murderers", while it actually means "soldiers are murderers". (I've done similar things with languages I don't speak (very well), too, and I guess there are more persons who do such things.) So limited information are misleading/wrong. But I guess we can't solve the difference, so: Wiktionary:Tea_room/2015/April#German nouns. -17:01, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello Angr. Just in order to clarify this user’s disconcerting activity: Two weeks ago there was an identical insertion into the article Polizist of some peculiar concoctions like: policeman (a male or a female one). The user’s claim that he was a fluent speaker of German is refuted by his own misconception about the gender of Messer. Back then Chuck Entz tried to explain his errors to him (regarding English). Meseems, a centralised place for dealing with aforementioned disturbing edits of this kind would be appropriate, especially after he just haunted PalkiaX50’s talk page. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:15, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

P. S. If you do not regard using this section for discussing the IP’s edits at a centralised place as befitting, I am ready to commence a new conversation thereabout at Wiktionary:Vandalism_in_progress. Regards, The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:15, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to chime in, but I happened to be in the neighbourhood. On the topic of 'vandalism' I wanted to make a note as an educated native speaker: While his way of conduct might be less than optimal, in terms of content he has a point. Polizist, Sänger etc. can refer to both a male and a female person, both in plural and singular. Either usage is common. A potential complaint about vandalism hence cannot be based on adding wrong content. At best it can be about poor implementation or bad manners. _Korn (talk) 19:45, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

My only real problem at Sänger was that he wanted to add songstress as one of its glosses, but while Sänger may under certain circumstances apply also to female singers, songstress is specifically female and so is a very misleading gloss for it. I'd be happy to get rid of the rather dumb word songster as a gloss of Sänger anyway; glossing it as singer is certainly sufficient. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:52, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see your point then. Songstress is misleading. _Korn (talk) 20:02, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hallo Korn. Inwieweit kann er Recht bezüglich des weiblichen Polizisten haben? Kann man auf Deutsch sagen Ein Polizist hat X gefangengenommen (nicht: Polizistin) und dabei eine weibliche Person im Sinn haben? Was passiert dann mit Polizistin? Was die Umsetzung anbelangt (Übersetzung mit policeman (a male or female one)), sie war fürwahr verfehlt. Schon gut, ich werde keinen Bericht verfassen, aber würdest Du ein bißchen umständlicher den weiblichen Polizisten im Singular (seit wann, unter welchen Umständen) darlegen? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:13, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

(Songstress is misleading) Wenn songstress (=a female singer) irreführend ist, warum ist a female police officer im Fall von Polizist nicht irreführend? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:13, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Presumably Polizist can refer to a specific female officer in a context where she's one of a mixed-gender group. When Angela Merkel became chancellor of Germany, there was some talk about how she was simultaneously the first Bundeskanzlerin and the eighth Bundeskanzler of the Federal Republic of Germany. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:18, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I had written a long an detailed paragraph on this, but basically, yes. If you say: "Hol' einen Polizisten", you are using the male masculine singular, but you mean a member of a general group and most probably don't actually speak of someone of male sex. The phrase 'Sarah ist ein Polizist' would be semantically correct, for example. Of course, with a specific female form existing, it's unlikely to be heard often. Females commonly refer to themselves with masculine forms when they describe themselves as members of a group, even when feminine derivatives are available. For example: "Ich bin Student", "ich bin ein Idiot". _Korn (talk) 20:45, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I knew a closeted gay German guy once who told his coworkers he was dating an Anwalt and they still didn't guess he was gay even though he didn't say Anwältin. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:48, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

German pronunciation again.

If you're going to revert my edits, we'll have to have a talk. And because I find your revert a tad provocative, I'd like to have that start with me asking you why exactly you replaced the line with the underlying structure with a specific variant and then untagged that variant. Korn (talk) 15:56, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

What underlying structure? You had a nonstandard dialectal form given as the broad transcription. I replaced it with the standard form as found in any German dictionary. There's nothing wrong with listing dialectal variants too, but standard educated pronunciation should be listed first, not relegated to a position below a nonstandard form and dismissed with an accent marker suggesting it's just a local colloquial pronunciation. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:05, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I had the underlying structure of all standard varieties given as a broad transcription, you replaced it with one variant of the standard language of one of three German-speaking countries. It is a local pronunciation. It is nonexistent in standard Swiss German, standard Austrian German and the Bavarian variant of standard German German. Korn (talk) 16:40, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

It's not the underlying structure of standard German because you had it start with /s/, yet /s/ and /z/ are separate phonemes in standard German and contrast in initial position. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:44, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll have to ask you for an example where they contrast in initial position, because I cannot think of a single word where they contrast in initial position. For the variants that actually use [s], it is identical with the phoneme /s/, contrasting with /z/ word-medial. Korn (talk) 17:08, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Sex vs. sechs is the most obvious example. There's also Cent vs. the admittedly rather rare form sännt from sinnen, but a common word like senden is enough to show the phonemic contrast. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:33, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Sex is a Latin loanword and the pronunciation with [s] is learned. The one with [z] is acceptable standard, albeit much rarer these days. Cent is an English loan and probably has kept its original pronunciation because competence in English is extremely widespread today. It also has the pronunciation /tsɛnt/ (cf. Duden), typical of words decended from Latin /k/. While for this word, in one pronunciation, and voicing dialects your point is true, for the non-voicing dialects (voiceless is the original form), literally every single word, native or borrowed, has /s/, which in these dialects too contrasts with /z/. If you're absolutely unwilling to budge, I would settle for accepting /z/ as the underlying phoneme, but I'm not happy with the thought of rewriting the entire structure of a language on the basis of one of two pronunciations of a single loan word. So if you insist on keeping /z/, I propose we give both forms as underlying. I cannot extend this courtesy to /-r/, though, as there are perfectly acceptable formal and colloquial rhotic standard variants and rhoticity is the original state of all German dialects. I also have to mention that Swiss German (dialectal and standard) does not feature final obstruent devoicing and I plan to reflect that in the basic structure too. (I figured that it can't harm to try to work out a broader set of conventions while we're at it.) _Korn (talk) 19:04, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

There's no reason all dialects have to have the same phonemic representation. General American and RP don't. We're a dictionary, not a 1980s phonology dissertation, so we really shouldn't be giving highly abstract underlying representations to begin with. (If we did, we'd have to eliminate final devoicing from our representations too and give /raːd/ for Rad and /ɡraːz/ for Gras; not to mention eliminating the /x/~/ç/ distinction and giving /braux+en/ for brauchen and /frau#xen/ for Frauchen.) There's no question that /s/ and /z/ are separate phonemes (reißen vs. reisen); whenever there's a conditioned merger (like /s/ and /z/ at the beginning of native words, or all voiced and voiceless obstruents at the ends of syllables) we should show the one that actually occurs. And for initial s- + vowel in native words, that's /z/, and for -er that's /ɐ/, not only in the northern two-thirds of Germany, but for L2 learners and for native speakers from all countries who aspire not to sound like they have a regional accent. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:38, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I can agree with you on most points, except the last. You are under the false impression that there is a "non-regional" German. There isn't. You have to pick a region. Just like you can't sound just "English" but have to sound either English (non-rhotic) or American (rhotic) - I know this is simplifying, it's just for the point. You have to either sound Swiss or Bavarian (this includes Austria) or most-of-Germanian. Initial [z] is not perceived as 'normal' standard in Austria and Switzerland, it's perceived as a German accent, i.e. an accent of a foreign country. And the German variant of Bavaria is not substandard. It's regional, yes. But so is the form you want to elevate. If you speak with /ɐ/, you have picked a regional accent, even though that region happens to be bigger. That's what I'm telling you all along. Don't get confused just because most German media is produced in Köln, Berlin and Hamburg and hence you rarely hear forms that aren't their respective regiolects on German TV. You could just as well be arguing to tag RP as a dialect of GenAm. _Korn (talk) 20:00, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Alright, if you absolutely must have it your way, I could let your last edit stand as it is, because the result works well enough and I don't want to go into edit wars. But I'd like to know why you consider the phonemic representation invalid. There is no phoneme /ɐ/ anywhere. By your argumentation, I assume we speak the same accent of German. For this, our accent, [ɐ] alternates with [əʁ] (sicher - sicherer), showing they're clearly allophones of /əʁ/ even up here; unless you want to define [əʁ] as an allophone of /ɐ/, which with regards to history and other forms of German doesn't seem a good choice. And there is no reason to postulate an initial phoneme /z/, since initial [z] equates to /s/ in both historical German and current other dialects and is not actually contrasting with initial /s/, outside of learned pronunciations of borrowed words. _Korn (talk) 14:32, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
All I want is to show how the phonemes of the common language are realised in the different standards. Why are you working so hard to exclude that information from the dictionary? _Korn (talk) 18:44, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think dictionaries are the place for abstract underlying representations. We should just focus on surface phonemes; /ɐ/ is the surface phoneme because you can find minimal pairs for it with both /ə/ and /a/, so we show it as /ɐ/. Showing it abstractly as /əʁ/ or /ər/ or something would be like showing the middle consonant of Sänger as /nɡ/ instead of /ŋ/. Most people reading a dictionary want to know how to pronounce the word; most of them aren't interested in the theoretical phonology behind the pronunciation. Alternations like /zɪçɐ ~ zɪçəʁɐ/ are interesting to phonologists but not to most dictionary users. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:03, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Comment: I agree with Angr on all points here, especially "we should show the [phoneme] that actually occurs". - -sche (discuss) 19:20, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

While what you say is reasonable, I don't see how it is in any way an argument for exclusion. I'm not trying to enter a whole dissertation on German phonology, I'm trying to enter one single line that ties all the variants together by showing the pan-German phonemes. (For whose falseness you haven't provided an argument yet.) Anyone not interested in that one line is free to ignore that one line and only read the actual pronunciation section which does have 'the phoneme that actually occurs' and is clearly labeled. _Korn (talk) 11:03, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

But by putting that line at the top, you're implying to the reader that what's there is the "correct" version in some way, the version for learners to emulate, when in fact it's your personal analysis of a pandialectal diaphonemic transcription. And we don't do pandialectal diaphonemic transcriptions here. We don't do them for English, I don't do them for Irish and Welsh when I add pronunciation info there, and no one but you wants to do them for German. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 18:45, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Nobody but me wants to enter any info on Middle Low German, but, you know, that's not an argument for anything. And they sometimes are entered for English, e.g. star. I take it you'll be up in arms complaining to whoever put /stɑr/ at the top that it's his personal analysis and we don't do that here and correctness and whatnot. Not like there is any universal consensus that /ɐ/ is an allophone of /ər/. Not like it is pronounced [ər] exclusively in standard Swiss and conservative standard Austrian and standard German. How can I be so barefaced to abuse this modern day Berlin-focused project for my personal dimwitted fringe theories? How about in the future you spare me the ad hominem and I spare you the snide in return? The thing about emulation is a good argument for excluding this piece of information. Much better than "I don't care about this specific thing". Although formatting and labeling could take care of it. _Korn (talk) 23:03, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm tired of arguing with you about this. Do whatever the fuck you want. I don't care anymore. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:00, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

bracio

A new user has created this (no doubt attracted by the subject matter) as an ordinary Latin verb, complete with the usual pronunciation and conjugation templates. What makes me nervous is that this is somewhere in the Medieval Latin/Gallo-Romance realm, and was no doubt quite different in pronunciation and morphology from what our Classical-based templates show. I don't know enough about post-Classical Latin or our treatment of it to have any clue as to what we should do with this. I'd appreciate it if you would take a look. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 03:00, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but Medieval Latin is beyond my ken too. The Classical pronunciation is almost certainly anachronistic, but how it was pronounced depends a lot on where the word was used. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:33, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, I found it in a list of British-Irish Latin words...sort of. The list precedes it with an asterisk, as if it were not actually attested (then why is it in the wordlist?). See Talk:bracio. - -sche (discuss) 17:36, 26 April 2015 (UTC)