User talk:Metaknowledge/2012

The following discussion has been moved from the page User talk:Metaknowledge.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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This page shows conversations on my talkpage from 2012.

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Enjoy your stay at Wiktionary! Ultimateria 05:54, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirects

If something is a word, don't redirect it to another word, create it! If it's an inflected form use {{head|rap|pronoun form}}, if it's an alternative form, # {{alternative form of|au|lang=rap}}. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:15, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Again, please do NOT create redirects. If you need to create a redirect, then you're doing something wrong. --EncycloPetey 19:21, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

No. If the orthography in the Swaedish list is wrong, then it needs to be corrected. If the Swaedish list is using a different orthography than the standard, but the list's orthography is still a valid alternative, then an alternative form entry must be created. Wiktionary does not use redirects from one form or spelling of a word to another.

For examples of how this is handled:

• See (deprecated template usage) gray and (deprecated template usage) grey for a situation where both spellings are standard and common, but one is US-standard and the other is UK-standard. As a result, both have full entries.
• See (deprecated template usage) naïveté and (deprecated template usage) naiveté where one entry is the full entry, and the other is a "form-of" entry. "Form-of" entries must be used in these situations rather than a redirect.

See Wiktionary:Redirections for more information about the reasoning behind this policy. --EncycloPetey 20:12, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

tzedakah

See my changes to the etymology section of this word. This is the proper way to link word etymologies here. Jamesjiao → ^{T ◊ C} 03:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

cephalon

Note: the Greek eta is transcribed as ē (with a macron, not a caron). Also, adding an etymology is not considered a "minor" edit. --EncycloPetey 04:36, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Fluffy

[1] Equinox ◑ 22:19, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, the citations seemed to support this as a valid definition, even though it is in-universe. Metaknowledge 22:21, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Etymon glosses

Just thought I'd drop you a note to let you know that {{term}} does have a spot for glosses, namely the second unnamed parameter. So, instead of {{term|ἔμετος}} "vomiting", you could do {{term|ἔμετος||vomiting}} (note the two pipes between the word and its gloss), or if you feel especially ambitious {{term|ἔμετος||vomiting|tr=emetos|lang=grc|sc=polytonic}}. There are a few advantages to doing so. Firstly, it makes it easy for computers to figure out that "vomiting" is the gloss and not something else, and we like to have computers do a lot of our work here. Also, it allows us to build in options for users to alter how entries are styled for them. Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for all your work on grc etymologies. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:32, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:35, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

consecution

Please take a look. Does anything seem wrong? Note the usage note, which is intended to discourage use by translators, except in logic. DCDuring TALK 20:30, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks fine to me, but I have no experience with actual people using the word 'consecution' in speech or translation, so I have no way of knowing if the usage note really covers the right ground.--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:35, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

My experience is in seeing some bad translations and poor choice of English words by writers who were almost certainly not native speakers of English. DCDuring TALK 21:53, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Etymologies

Thanks for fixing up some of the Greek. The Greek script seems to have been lost through encoding issues when Webster was digitised (by whoever originally did that), so the actual root words are missing. Equinox ◑ 20:41, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I wish we had more grc entries to flesh out the etyms, but my Ancient Greek is so bad that I don't trust myself to add them. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:43, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried this link? It has both Greek and Latin dictionaries as well as other resources. DCDuring TALK 21:51, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Descendants

At panis, you added English words that do not derive directly from panis, nor from a direct descendant of that word. Rather, (deprecated template usage) companion derives from another a Late Latin word (see the etymology on the English entry), and (deprecated template usage) pantry derived from a French word that, although related to panis, is not a later form of that word. Such distant relations are not counted among "Descendants". --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:11, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

ELE is extremely unclear on the matter, but for the time being I will align with your view, which seems reasonable enough to me. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds}

I have written some guidance along these lines at Wiktionary:About Latin#Descendants. Please, could you take a look at that and see whether the text there clearly delineates the view it was intended for, or whether it needs revision? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I think that's good, although it would be better if it defined direct. The problem was that I checked at WT:ELE#Descendants, which gives little or no help (although I don't think it would make any difference if we changed it). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:10, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

There are a number of specific language guides that have much more detiled ideas than any of the general ones. My hope is that some of these specific guides will be thorough enough that we can adopt a version of their contents to be more generally applicable, either in ELE, one of its subsidiary pages, or in a Help page. That's at least been my approach with writing WT:ALA. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:23, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Request for tokens

Thank you for the support on the sparsely documented languages initiative. (Failed vote)

In the discussion, you mentioned that this vote would provide support for Fiji Hindi. In response to Dan Polansky's request for actual tokens (word examples), I am gathering examples. Would you be willing to provide a list of words from Fiji Hindi or other languages that would benefit from this vote? BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 23:46, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I am not personally familiar with Fiji Hindi, but I will find examples from some relevant language for you. Where will you want me to put it (or should I just put it on your talk page)? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:48, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the prompt response. If you could put it on this page, then it will be easier for me to give credit to you for the assistance :) BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 23:53, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Tok Pisin, a sparsely documented language:

Krio, similarly sparse:

In Bislama:

In Pijin:

Thank you so much, Metaknowledge! I hope to present a new proposal in about a week.

Sorry, I intend to add more, but my life has been very hectic and I may not be able to, so I wanted to at least give you one a few. If I can, more will follow. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:17, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate the kind follow-up. I'm almost done drafting the new proposal. I have a list of five languages now and one more I will add tomorrow. I think that will be enough to demonstrate the issue clearly, but if you have time to find more, that would also be much appreciated! BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 03:38, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Jalpi Türk Tili

See: The Representation of Korean and Other Altaic Languages in Artificial International Auxiliary Languages, Journal of Universal Language, March 2012, 125-167

That is a scholarly paper that notes that Jalpi Türk Tili is an auxiliary language, which is not approved for use in the main namespace of Wiktionary unless there is consensus for it. See here: WT:CFI. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:35, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok, that means Wiktionary has its own rules. I see. --85.101.112.194 04:40, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for languages with limited documentation

Thank you for your assistance and suggestions with this so far. Although I'm sure I'll see new things that need to be edited and changed tomorrow, I feel like the proposal is about ready to be published. I left in the part about voting to exclude languages. You suggested that should be left out (left in by natural implication), and I'm still on the fence about it. If you have any feedback or suggestions on that or anything else before I release this, I would appreciate it ;) BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 03:10, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Really, a bunch of small stuff. Prince Kassad prefers to be called Liliana-60, your use of the word "hyperlinking" seems out of place, the background section is excessive for the demographic that will vote on this, the "potential for abuse" section should be heavily reworked or probably just relegated to a short sentence elsewhere, and the "community rules" section is unnecessary for understanding the issue. A shorter, clearer vote is always better, in my opinion, and will get more support (most likely). Perhaps in your vote of support, you should mention specifically how you met concerns (for example, about not changing the wording about extinct languages). Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:33, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Great, thank you. I think I'll put pretty much everything but the proposal itself onto the discussion page. I'll spend another day or two on the issues you mention and see if I can streamline it! BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 05:44, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Phrasebooks by language

Nice spot! I added this to {{pbcatboiler}}, so can I now revert your edits? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:26, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, not really. It doesn't list them in the category page for me - but is that just because I haven't cleared my cache? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:28, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Nope, I cleared my cache, and something I didn't manually add like the Thai phrasebook still doesn't show... can you purge the page, perhaps? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:31, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

CodeCat is trying to fix it (I can see the bug in my edit). Chalk it up to another list of things created by Daniel Carrero which are brilliant in every detail, apart from the bloody thing doesn't work. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:35, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I took a look at the templates, but I knew it was waaay past my comfort zone. I don't mind if you revert my edits, but only after this is fully functioning (and then we can remove the tag, too). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:38, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

The thing with Daniel Carrero's template is, if they work, great, but when they don't, the templates rely on subtemplates, which themselves rely on subtemplates (and so on) trying to find which one to modify is a massive nuisance. I've got more experience than most, but I honestly try and stay away from them. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:41, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Now that's it's been moved to [[Category:All phrasebooks]], can you please fix the link on the main page? Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:42, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I've spent some time revising the catboiler templates so I'm fairly familiar with how they work. I do think they are kind of messy, but I'm not sure how to improve them without losing out on some of the features they provide for us. Maybe some features that aren't actually needed, such as automatic generation of documentation pages, can be removed. Maybe this can be discussed further at Template talk:catboiler? —CodeCat 19:03, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Unexplained reverts

Next time please explain your reverts Pass a Method (talk) 17:33, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

See your talkpage. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:14, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

List of languages with limited documentation

I've made a list of languages that would qualify for one usage or citation because of limited documentation. I excluded patois because it has so many meanings, and I think the intended languages qualify as pidgins or creoles. Would you be willing to take a look at the list before I put it in the proposal? BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 21:13, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Koine is also a pretty unclear term, so that may need specification. Something in there about "natural languages" and "that have ISO codes" might be in order. My other comments fall into two distinct categories:

• Exclusions needed: Malayalam, and also probably Telugu as well, should be excluded. As for African languages, you haven't excluded any, and just counting languages that originated in Africa, Swahili and probably many others (I'm thinking of the likes of Coptic, Amharic, and Malagasy) are well documented.
• Inclusions needed: A bunch of languages fall throught the cracks in this proposal. One class is that of non-indigenous, non-creole, non-pidgin languages of the Americas, like Hunsrik and possibly Língua Geral Paulista. Another class is that of indigenous languages of Siberia and the Eurasian steppe, like all the Uralic languages (except Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian), the Tungusic languages, the Paleosiberian languages, and the Eskimo languages spoken only in Siberia. Your division of Southeast Asia needs to be expanded to include (probably) the Tibetan languages, and definitely Dzongkha and Lepcha (in fact, all the native languages spoken in India east of the Siliguri Corridor). Yet another class needed is that of any language that is spoken outside of Oceania, yet only on a few small islands, like Dhivehi, Andamanese, Jèrriais, Guernésiais, and Sercquiais. This means that the European exclusion clause needs to be modified, because Ladin, Friulian, and Istriot also probably need this.

I hope you see now why listing languages is such a monumentous task. However, if you make these changes, I think most languages with limited documentation will actually be part of the proposal. To be honest, making an exhaustive list is impossible, and it will likely be necessary to vote in more languages, but this would cover everything of importance. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:19, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

(By the way, you might also consider asking somebody like User:Chrisportelli, perhaps through email, if Maltese should qualify.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:50, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

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This is a wonderful list, thank you! Believe me, I am not a fan of listing languages, but I have come to the conclusion it can't be helped :)

I don't want to put in the ISO requirement. Not all of the languages you listed, particularly the Andamanese languages have codes. I've added the word "natural."

I think w:Koiné_language is specific enough, though there are some languages that don't seem like they should qualify, such as four English-based languages. I don't have a solution yet.

I also deleted the European exclusion with the hope that people will interpret the intention. I would rather not say "excluding colonial languages."

Running through your list:

I added Malayalam and Telugu.

I know nothing about African languages, but those all seem reasonable exclusions and I've added them. (Someone might claim the source materials are hard to get as with the case of Tok Pisin, but that's a topic for another day.)

• Hunsrik - added
• Língua Geral Paulista - covered by extinct language category
• Siberia and the Eurasian steppe - I assume most of these are in the UNESCO Atlas. Anything in particular?
• Uralics

  Kven Finnish - added

  Tornedalen Finnish - needed?

  Ingrian, Karelian, Liv (I met a speaker once), Livvi-Karelian, Ludian, Veps, Vod - all listed as endangered in the Atlas

• Tungusic - all in the Atlas
• w:Paleosiberian_languages: Wikipedia says there are a total of 23K speakers for all of them, so I'm going to assume they are all covered in the Atlas
• w:Eskimo–Aleut_languages: Only Inuktitut and Kalaallisut have large populations. Should they be included?
• Tibetan: I see three languages near the top of the list that are not in the Atlas, so Tibetan should be added, but any exclusions?
• w:Dzongkha is Tibetan
• w:Lepcha_language - added
• native languages spoken in India east of the Siliguri Corridor - anything specific? Perhaps these are listed in the Atlas.
• w:Dhivehi_language - added
• Andamanese languages - added
• Jèrriais, Guernésiais and Sercquiais - added
• Ladin, Friulian, and Istriot are all in the Atlas

Will look into Maltese, thank you! --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 00:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

A run-down of your (excellent) run-down:

• Tornedalen Finnish: I'm not sure if we treat this as a dialect or a language around here. If it's a language, it ought to be on the list.
• Paleosiberian: Well, Ainu is not endangered AFAIK, but it needs to be listed.
• Dzongkha: There seem to be several Tibetan languages, but in any case the entire subfamily needs to be on here (that would cover Sikkimese, too).
• East of the Siliguri: Assamese is the big one that won't be on the Atlas but needs to be listed. Manipuri, Tripuri, and Mizo also need listing.
• Taiwanese: There's a mess here, with Hakka, Hokkien, Fujianese, Min Nan et al., but whatever the standard is on Taiwan, it ought not to get the exemption.
• Siberian Eskimo: I think everything in this category is either endangered or mostly North American, so it's in the clear.

I'll add more after a little research. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:26, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Here are some more:

• All Turkic languages except Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek (notably, that means including Tatar, Uyghur, and Tuvan)

--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:35, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I have to get back to work, but these are great. Ainu is definitely endangered and is probably technically extinct. (I met two Ainu last year.) Here's one other branch that should probably be added: [Gallo-Italian]. Two of them you mentioned: Friulian and Ladin. Romansch (despite the small population) and big languages like French should be ruled out. I can check the others against the Atlas, but how about languages like Emiliano-Romagnolo? I bet there isn't a lot of written documentation even though there are a lot of speakers... Oh, and I once corresponded with someone who talked about how there are lots of Germanic varieties that don't get any official status and are generally ignored. Perhaps in the Low-Saxon branch of Germanic. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 01:38, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

More stuff (sorry to give you so much to sift through): I forgot to mention that for African languages that are exceptions, Arabic must be explicitly listed due to African varieties treated as separate languages on Wiktionary (Egyptian Arabic, Maghrebi Arabic, etc). The Berber languages, Igbo, Shona, and Hausa might qualify to be on the list of African exemptions, but I don't know enough about them to make a judgment, so those probably ought to be figured out by an expert or a native speaker. Oh, and Afrikaans definitely has a strong written tradition, so that's another African exemption.

A partial solution for Gallo-Italic and company is just to say that all living languages and dialects from Italy, San Marino, Monaco, and Switzerland are included, leaving Standard Italian, Swiss German, Swiss Italian, and Swiss French as the exceptions. Notably, that handles Venetian and Sicilian as well.

Another class of languages are the languages of the Caucasus; all need inclusion except Georgian, Armenian, and Azeri. Notably, Ossetian, Abkhaz, and Lak get covered.

I don't know anything about varieties of German or Dutch, but I'm sure there are many users here who could help with that. By the way, do you think you have successfully responded to all the criticisms in the failed vote (except maybe Dan Polansky's...)? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:40, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional feedback. I added the list to the talk page; I should have waited 10 more minutes :) Anyway, I don't see how Standard Italian, Swiss German, Swiss Italian and Swiss French are excluded, but could we work out something that applies to Arabic as well (and maybe the Caucasus languages), so that "national or official languages" are excluded but their dialects are not?

My intention was that I addressed all the criticisms in the first failed vote, but thank you for the reminder. I'll put that on the list of things to do! BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 06:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Always more. Tamil needs to be excluded from the Dravidians, Breton needs inclusion, and after a bit of investigation, it seems that Iberia has a similar mess to Italy and Germany. By the way, when I say "include" or "listing" I mean it needs to get the exemption, and when I say "exclude" or "exception" I mean that it shouldn't. Just making sure I'm clear.

Anyway, these all ought to come in on later votes (as per the new vote's talkpage).--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:56, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

A quick review, then:

• It would be nice to add African languages
• The Ethnologue has 34 Caucasian languages, so they should be checked. (Now is the easiest time to do it.)
• The language continua like Gallo-Italic, German and Iberian Romance we can leave till later.
• Tamil needs to be excluded from the Dravidians.
• Breton is in the Atlas, so it's fine.

--BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 08:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

That's everything except for excluding Taiwanese, adding those east of the Siliguri, and adding the Turkics (with the exceptions I mentioned). I don't feel comfortable editing someone else's subpage, else I would have added things myself. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:27, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I added in the Formosan languages and the Caucasians. It turns out w:Ossetian language is Indo-European, but it is in the Atlas, so it's fine.

Of the Altaic languages (including Turkic), the only ones not in the Atlas are: the Eastern Turkics (except Ili Turki which is in the Atlas), the Azerbaijanis (except Turkic Khalaj (klj) which is included), Turkish (except Turkish (tur)), and tuk, kaa, kaz and kir. So I won't adding any of those unless there is something in particular that needs to be added. BTW, Ainu (aib) is not listed as endangered. It's Ainu of Japan that I was talking about above :)

East of the Siliguri: I added Assamese, Manipuri (Meitei), Tripuri (Kokborok), and Mizo

I think that covers the list so far except Maltese :) --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 18:14, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, and I added Tornedalen Finnish (Meänkieli) in, too. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 18:20, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, let's see. At this point Taiwanese is being included; it needs to be explicity excluded. Africa has become a total mess now, so I think that's going to be a drag - for now I would at least add the w:Grassfields languages. Really, listing Africa's languages will NOT be fun. Also, there are still indigenous languages of the Americas not getting covered (AFAICT), especially Quechua, Aymara, and modern Nahuatl.As for the Caucasians, that doesn't list the smaller Kartvelians. Mingrelian? Laz? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:32, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the reminder and additions. Always something else :) I keep forgetting Taiwanese. I reworded so it says "Formosan" which takes care of that because Taiwanese is a Sinic language. I added the Wide Grassfields languages, please confirm that's the appropriate level.

Quechua is a complex term, that can be applied at different levels of the language tree and the Atlas has some forms. Aymara is in the Atlas. A number of Nahuatl languages are not in the Atlas. Really, though, the way to handle American and Australian languages is to allow everything indigenous, and then make exclusions such as Hunsrik. I'm concerned that someone will list a language we didn't think of and vote against the proposal for that reason. So I propose we hold off on any other American/Australian languages and put that in a follow-up.

I also added Kartvelian which includes Mingrelian.

I'm going to _try_ and stay away now for 24 or 48 hours so I can get a clear head and rework the policy. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 20:18, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

When you return, be sure to fix the Kartvelians - all of them either qualify or are already endangered EXCEPT for Georgian, which is well attested. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:37, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Admin vote?

Hi. You seem competent and I've noticed you putting delete tags on the occasional bad entry. Are you interested in becoming an administrator on en.wikt? If so I could start a vote for you. Equinox ◑ 22:54, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! That would be really great. Not much would change around here, but at least some nonsense entries would get deleted more quickly. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:00, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, you need to edit this page and fill in a couple of things (acceptance, time zone...): Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2012-04/User:Metaknowledge_for_admin. Cheers. Equinox ◑ 23:05, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Your vote has passed, you are an Admin. Please add your name to WT:Admin. Also, see Help:Sysop tools. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:48, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:06, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Korean vowel length

Regarding your edit [2], I have a newbie question: how exactly am I supposed to indicate vowel length in transcription? Ignoring it seems likely to mislead people. Thanks, Quant18 (talk) 08:42, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I do not know Korean, so first off I am not the best informant. However, I am well-acquainted with RR, and I believe all the major transliteration systems do not mark vowel length. If a user is unaware of it, they can always check the IPA transcription. Sorry about being so picky about this, but I believe this to be a standard feature of our Korean entries. I'm sure you already know this stuff, but more info is available at Wiktionary:About_Korean/Romanization. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 13:53, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Butting in here, although it has never been represented in the hanguel or Chinese writing systems, Korean had a contrast between long and short vowels that was recently lost. I'm not sure when, but there are probably still some elderly people who still have it. I have a dictionary that includes it in the pronunciation. As with all language changes, it is certainly possible the contrast is maintained in dialects, including North Korean. For that and historical reasons, it may be worthwhile considering a system that provides that information. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 20:58, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Again, I am no expert, but my understanding is that the only people to have completely dropped vowel length are younger people in the big cites of ROK (Seoul, Incheon, Busan). I still think that it is considered to be more "correct", as in formal speech, and thus deserves to be noted in the IPA transcription. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Benjamin & Metaknowledge. Not all South Korean dictionaries indicate vowel length, but those which do usually do it by placing the IPA long vowel sign after the hangeul syllable in question, e.g. 면ː세 /mjɘːnse/ or something similar. It seems that among the Wiktionary entries which do include pronunciation information, they're following this convention, e.g. 한국어#Pronunciation. (The North Korean dictionaries I've seen don't seem to bother). Yale romanization actually has a standard accepted way of indicating vowel length (a macron), so I guess the solution I'm looking for is to add Yale romanization (so there's at least one transcription in "Pronunciation" sections that reflects vowel length). Cheers, Quant18 (talk) 02:38, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I dislike Yale translit, but that seems like a good method for the entries, especially if you'll be adding multiple transliteration systems. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Quick update on Zarma

I just got an e-mail from CW. He says that the Wikipedia page has a number of errors, and that there are a handful of irregular words. Nothing further than that.

Also, I will try to update the proposal over the next two to three days. I added a provision that says a box has to be included stating that entries are not fully attested. Hopefully everything will be good enough to move to a vote.

I hope the bot testing is going well! Based on your threads and that Mac page, I think I should be able to get an upload bot working. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 17:25, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Please ask Christopher either to specify the errors on WP or to fix them himself, because even a bot will have to use templates (i.e. my inflection template). Yeah, having bots will be great. Definitely it will help my self-esteem in relation to technical matters (I still am a dummy in this regard...). At this rate, Zarma will be ready sooner than the vote! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I've set up a Google Docs spreadsheet and asked him for all the paradigms. When I get them, I'll put them into the spreadsheet for easy entry. The resulting forms can be concatenated in Excel/Word into full entries that can then be uploaded by bot. The template calls for paradigms can also be incorporated into those full entries. I think that's the easiest way to do it, though maybe I'm missing something.

Also, once his thesis is done and the vote passes (if it does), his thesis can be used as the basis for Wiktionary entries. It sounds like he might fix the Wikipedia page, though we haven't discussed it. I feel like I'm already asking for a great deal. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 01:47, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

That would be great. Yeah, it is asking for a lot, but whatever we can get would be good, I suppose. What aspects of Zarma will the thesis cover? Will it be readily available online? (By the way, for this new vote, I will wait a week, and after that start contacting people from the old vote - supporters will support again and opposers will (hopefully) have their concerns met.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:22, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't know anything about his thesis or whether it will be online. There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed. One of my main concerns is copyright and WT:Requesting_copyright_permission. I hope to do two or three pilot language projects to learn about the issues before publishing the LDLP (limited documented language project) page and inviting the public at large.

Thanks for the offer on contacting people. That sounds like a great plan. I see I'm up against the deadline once again. I need to create a complete draft and then go through all the concerns like you reminded me, and then post. I'll delay the vote tomorrow. We'll get it done eventually :) --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 03:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the sooner, the better. As for copyright, that is worrying... I'm not sure how copyrightable dictionary definitions are. Also, make a note in your new vote that it supersedes the old one (just in case that one miraculously passes). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:01, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I know that facts cannot be copyrighted, but if someone puts a ghost entry in a glossary or makes an error, then it seems to me there is an issue. In fact, the more I think about this issue, the more I'm convinced I need to take this issue higher. I don't think I can let the proposal go to vote in conscience without making sure this is on firm ground. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 05:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why the vote has to be postponed, though. :( --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:15, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Because if it's not on firm ground, a new vote would have to be held. I think I'll start by contacting one of the administrators. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 05:20, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Eh, start a thread in the BP. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:21, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I e-mailed an administrator. I would like to get general feedback on copyright issues, but for now, I want to just solicit one person's opinion and then decide what to do. BTW, the link above was wrong. It should be w:Requesting_copyright_permission. BTW, I don't think this will delay the vote much or at all since the proposal still needs to be commented on before going to vote. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 05:31, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Language list reworked

I still haven't verified against any of the past discussions, but I've rewritten the proposal with a framework that I hope will work. I also reordered the languages by geographical area and put the creoles and pidgins in a different section (I think that was sche's idea). I think this new structure is better as it allows languages like Pennsylvania Dutch and Jèrriais without mentioning them specifically. Again, I haven't gone back to double-check the languages. Dhivehi is in there, but as Maldivian as per Wikipedia. Any suggestions are welcomed. Hopefully these revisions will be acceptable to most people, and over the next few days, I'll go through the history of everything to make sure everything is covered. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 21:26, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

A warning: this overview may seem harsh, but I'm just trying to utilize constructive criticism. Now that I've got my disclaimer out of the way, here we go:

I don't have any hair left, but it will grow back, LOL. These are great points and getting it right the first--er--second time is important.

• "List of materials deemed appropriate": This asks way too much of each "community" (in reality, just a couple fanatical editors like me covering many languages). Conversely, a list of materials deemed inappropriate (on the About:Xyz language page) would be a welcome thing, IMO.

  I see this as a natural part of the citation process that should be pretty painless. So the community (as you say, the fanatical editors) says, "Let's use Smith's Hunsrik-Portuguese Dictionary." They list it on their page and create a template, something like Template:hrx-Smith (see, for example, Template:R:Webster_1913). Then every time they use that to include a word, they put {{hrx-Smith|page XX}} in the entry, and a full citation appears. So the thinking is: Only add citations if there is a template, and if there is no template, create one and list the source on the source page. If you still think it's tedious, let's discuss it. I see this as a vital part of allowing one mention for inclusion.

  Look at that Krio cite I provided and you'll see the issue. It's a book, mostly in English, with a little real Krio in it. A lot of cites will be sourced that way. Making all those templates would be ridiculous. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:46, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

  Ahh, I didn't think of that. How about requiring this only for single mentions, not uses? I don't want to make this an exercise in tedium, but I'm imagining people using glossaries.

  Aha! I guess such a list could simply be a list of the mention templates. See my comment below.

• You mention a box (perhaps {{ldl}} would be good) to put in affected entries. If it's easy, I'm willing to add that in, but it's pretty unnecessary. If you really want to use it, I recommend that you make a template for it (I can make one for you if you want).

  I have some ideas but nothing concrete yet for the wording. I got the idea from Template:webster, which warns people on pages such as abhor.

  Personally, I find that template annoying. I guess I was unclear on what your box's function is meant to be. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:46, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

  LOL. Basically it should say something like, "This word has not yet been documented. If you can provide another source, please consider adding it." I'm also considering variations where it says, "Verification of this word is not considered complete. It has been documented in one source and one/two/three speakers of XX." The templates would be named something like hrx-1, hrx-2, hrx-3.

  Wonderful. I would definitely support it for mentions. Of course, it needs to be phrased in such a way that it doesn't sound like LOP material is in the entry. Also, it would optimally be a single template that works for any affected language. Maybe it would also add the word to a category specially for that purpose ([[Category:Ancient Greek mentions]]).

• Why do you keep mentioning Dacian? It's extinct and thus totally irrelevant. Examples for that line include Romani and Jèrriais.

  It was in an earlier conversation, and the fact that Dacian is kept out was an important point.

  My mistake. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:56, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• The exclusions are phrased in an unclear manner. I advise that all exclusions go in parentheses that directly follow the name of the language family or geographical region they are to be excluded from. As soon as I read "Kartvelian languages", I should see the exclusion for Georgian so I don't get worried.

  I agree. I kept changing my mind. It still is not clear. I grouped by geographical region, but as Atitarev points out on the discussion page, Sinhalese appears to be included in the Dravidian languages. I don't see a clear way to do this, yet, other than by bombarding the list with semicolons. Any ideas?

  Semicolons + parentheses = clarity. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:46, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

  Okay. I would like something simpler, but you're right. I'll try to get to that tomorrow. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 05:59, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• Three minor points: I would prefer that the word in question for Krio be "famble", because "kushe" might actually be one of the few terms currently citable in Krio (due to being the most commonplace greeting in Sierra Leone). Also, you misspelled CW's name as "Christopher Weedal" in your courtesy line. As for Dhivehi/Maldivian, Tripuri/Kokborok etc, I don't mind at all what we call each language (I learned about much of these from sources that would now be considered severely outdated, and were so even then).

  Got famble and Weedal, thank you! I keep thinking I should list the ISO code for languages, but I think it will work this way...

It looks good, and primed for success, considering that the old one even gained majority support (although not the required supermajority).--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:09, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

"That's right! I had forgotten that the earlier vote actually got reasonable support. Hopefully we're almost there. (No word on the copyright issue, yet...)--BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 05:37, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

On templates and the LDL project

I'm going on vacation Monday. I'll check in to continue shepherding the LDL vote, but I'm not going to look into templates for at least two weeks.

You suggest above that a category be added for single mention entries. I really like that. Can the {{ldl}} template be made so that that category is added and the disclaimer text appears when someone just copies the template into a page?

If the vote passes, then I plan to run two or three language tests and then invite endangered language specialists to contribute. (I don't know if people will be interested, but I hope so.) To that end, I want to build the LDL project page so contributing is as easy as possible, and this LDL template would be one step toward doing that. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 05:43, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, a lot of templates automatically add a category. That shouldn't be too hard to make. If you can specify exactly how you want it to look (size, color, wording, name of category that gets added, etc) I can make it. After all, I could use the practice.

By language tests, do you mean Zarma, Makah, etc? I think for specialists to directly contribute, we'd need a lot of helpful material. Wiki markup can't be learned in a day, and Wiktionary is especially demanding. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:02, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Glad to hear that! Yes about Zarma. If CW is interested in going through the process, then Zarma can be the first test. I'm happy to basically do most of the markup--in fact, I mean to use Excel/Word (or Google Docs) to generate the markup w/template code as necessary and then a bot to upload it. Once the markup meta code is worked out, everything should go pretty smoothly. I expect it will take a couple languages before we get to the boilerplate stage, but surely it's possible. My goal is to create a path for people to contribute without learning the markup. Oh, and if I can get copyright permission for the Makah thesis, then that can be the second (with myself as the guinea pig). --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 23:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Vote recap

I've now run through the languages above and think everything mentioned is covered. I also went through the objections in the previous vote and the discussion page of the current vote. I think those are covered as well. I also (finally) contacted Chrisportelli about Maltese. I'm still waiting to hear about the copyright issue, but otherwise I think the wording is pretty well set for a vote. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 17:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

If Maltese needs treatment, I'm sure we can add it in later. I only brought it up because Wiktionary has almost 1000 terms in Maltese, so it's a case more about protecting existing entries rather than adding new ones. Anyway, sounds great! Thank you!--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

LDL template

I'm on vacation now, but want to briefly talk about the LDL template wording. It currently says:

This entry is based on less than three non-mention citations, the minimum considered necessary for attestation and may not be accurate. If you are a speaker of this language and see something that can be improved, please consider editing this entry or adding citations.

I'm concerned about two things:

• I think this template should be for less than three mentions and uses. In both cases, there is a real concern that the entry is not accurate.
• I do not think words like "mention" and "attestation" should be used because they really leave the general user in the dark. Even people who know what attestation means will not fully grasp what the intent is.

Aloha. --BB12 (talk) 18:15, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Do not, I repeat do not ruin your vacation worrying about this. In fact, don't even log in to Wiktionary (you can use it if you want, but our Hawaiian section is weak in my opinion). When I return to Southeast Asia this summer, I assure you that I won't be around much on Wiktionary (maybe that's not true; I've heard there are a lot more internet cafés there since my last visit).

If you have disregarded the message above, please consider my following responses: your first point is valid and you can change it; your second point is moot because both words you mentioned are linked in the template to richly informative pages.--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:59, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

LOL. There was another concern about the vote, so I will be watching that. I think I found a solution and hopefully that will be it! --BB12 (talk) 02:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

WT:AGRC

Your most recent comment on inflection tables reminded me that you have some Ancient Greek background, and so I was wondering if you would have time to read this page, and possibly offer some feedback on it. I have this bad habit of unilaterally dictating grc policy, largely because there are few others who have anything to say about it. I also have an even worse habit of making poor decisions on the language and its treatment, as I am no Ancient Greek scholar (not by a long shot). Because of this, I try and get as much feedback as possible, in order to help keep Ancient Greek policy on Wiktionary from being comprised solely of my whims. The original incarnations of this page were greatly improved because of the feedback of others, and I'm hoping my recent changes might suffer a similar fate. Thanks very much. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:18, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I cannot conjugate a single grc verb, I don't understand the grammatical structure, and I don't know enough vocabulary to even put grc-0.5 on my BabelBox. I think you do a fine job, although as a whole, I find grc entries around here to be messy (i.e. some entries for verbs don't even have all the principal parts, etc). However, I would be glad to go over AGRC; I'll write my response here. I may be critical but I aim for constructive criticism. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:01, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

My feedback:

• Biblical Greek: "Various theological nuances" should be appropriate. Just because it is not "solely a biblical study tool" doesn't mean that it can't be useful for that purpose. However, all the fluff about "volatile factors" and respecting Christians needs to go; semi-related wiki-etiquette simply doesn't belong on AGRC.
• General stuff: Why are we hand-holding so much? This page is quite educational, but I doubt, for example, that we need to explain what sound the acute makes.
• Specific guidelines: There are a bunch of little things in here, like a declaration that alternative forms should be listed with bullets, that are too nitpicky. Bullets are probably the best, but I've seen other formats and they look fine. I see no reason to legislate these kinds of details.

These are the main things that caught my attention. You might also want to add a link to Category:User grc or, even better, get active grc editors like Saltmarsh to sign at the bottom like you did (it's a bit presumptuous to do it for them, I should think).

I decided not to edit the page out of deference to you, and because I would just end up deleting a lot of material. However, I certainly think that what I have pointed out above deserves to be fixed or at least discussed. My overall views on AGRC, however, are different than yours; I cannot imagine most of it ever being used, because only an editor who already knows most things there would add grc entries. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the feedback. The Biblical Greek and diacritics sections were two sections that I had grown more uncomfortable with over time, but not quite enough to change. I have now changed/removed them. As to nitpickiness, I think I'm going to leave a lot of that stuff in for now. I think most of it is pretty standard (for example, while there are different ways that alternative forms are done, I think bulleted is pretty standard practice), and all else being equal, I'd just as soon have new editors do things the way I've been doing them, for consistency's sake. Nothing in here is written in stone, and if anyone wants to propose something else, it can be changed. As for other editors at the bottom, there are precious few other editors who have both made a habit of editing Ancient Greek entries and given the impression that they're comfortable answering questions about it. Saltmarsh is really just a Greek editor, and as such runs into Ancient Greek from time to time, but I strongly suspect he would not want to put his name there. Medellia and Gilgamesh have done a lot of good work on grc, but they're both long gone. Flyax is the only active editor that I can think of, and I have asked him to consider putting his name there. Chuck Entz is still really new, but I suspect that I'll ask him in time. As for the messiness in our Ancient Greek section, you're certainly correct. There are a lot of entries that need to be cleaned up/expanded, and a lot of basic words that don't even have entries yet. I'd like to encourage you to use {{attention|grc}} and Wiktionary:Requested entries (Ancient Greek) when you come across such deficiencies. The grc section is simply too large for me to go through it all one entry at a time (when I started, it wasn't :-)). In any case, thanks very much for taking the time to read AGRC, and offer your input. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 21:23, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I skimmed through a second time, with a couple new insights. In AGRC, the Synonyms and Antonyms sections are very repetitive of each other and should be merged. Also, do you think that the infinitive-as-lemma proposal for Latin in the BP should apply to grc? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I'll take a second look at the antonyms/synonyms section. As for verb lemmata, the same arguments for, and really none of the arguments against apply to grc. The PAI1S has traditionally always been the lemma form, and is used in all Ancient Greek dictionaries I've ever seen. Fortunately, Greek retains this form as its lemma, so it makes for a clean, easy connection. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:13, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and why don't we mark acutes and circumflexes in transcription? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:19, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

That has been a somewhat contentious issue for some time. I wish I could think of a previous discussion on the subject, but the best I can think of is User_talk:Atelaes#Macrons_in_Ancient_Greek. In short, my reasoning is that a transliteration is meant to provide a very rough and dirty approximation of the pronunciation of the word, for those who can't read the script. Diacritics in transliterations are unlikely to provide much help to those people, and are more likely to simply confuse them, especially as English doesn't really make use of any in its spelling. Additionally, different accents mean different things, and the same accents mean different things in different time periods. All in all, I can't think of a way to meaningfully capture all of that in a transliteration scheme. The fact that we have the actual Greek script, as well as IPA pronunciations on most of our entries mitigates, in my mind, any shortcomings that might be present in our transliterations. A fair number of people agree with my approach on this, but some disagree. However, no one has come up with a comprehensive counter-treatment. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:27, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

It makes sense to me, simply because I believe that if someone cares about this, they will teach themselves the Greek alphabet and its diacritic system (as I did). However, as you noted in the linked discussion, current grc translit policy is hypocritical, because we use macra for ēta and ō mega. Is merger a good idea? Is it feasible (easy to change by means of bot)? (I would enjoy it simply because macra are a pain for me to enter). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:08, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I suspect it is feasible to make such a change by bot. The situations where transliterations are used are limited enough, and formatted strongly enough that a bot could do it. Mind you, I don't have the requisite technical skills to pull it off, but I strongly suspect we have someone on Wiktionary who does. Getting a consensus for such a change is a little more iffy. As you may have noticed from the linked conversation, I am somewhat ambivalent about the limited use of diacritics to distinguish eta/epsilon and omega/omicron, so I wouldn't make such a proposal. If someone else were to do so, I probably wouldn't support not oppose it. I do sympathize with what a pain in the ass it is to pull up the special characters drop-down every time I want to transliterate an eta/omega. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:27, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I didn't quite understand your second-to-last sentence. You would support such a proposal or oppose it?--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:16, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Neither. If there was a consensus one way or the other, I would happily comply with it either way. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:51, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

In a situation like this, that would almost certainly cause a net increase in percent opposition. So I guess it's not going to happen any time soon. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:19, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

LDL project

Just a note to say I'm back from vacation. It looks like the vote will probably pass (hooray!). I want to continue working on the LDL Project page with the idea of using it myself for the first test language. Feel free to modify or make suggestions if you're interested, though right now it's just an outline.

No update on Zarma at this point.

Congratulations on making admin, too! --BB12 (talk) 06:24, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Hrmm. Well, to start off, thanks, and congratulations on a vote that is honestly taking way less criticism than even I expected. I must say you made a very thorough and well-written proposal.

I am afraid that I'm not so interested in the LDL project page, because I think that we would only be priming contributors who would honestly make some sort of a mess. I simply don't think that users adding only in one language will bother to read through all the pointers that it takes to learn wiki markup, for example. Perhaps I'm wrong, and contributors of that kind are waiting to increase our linguistic knowledge. It's just hard for me to see the issue optimistically. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:45, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

(Oh yes, and if we ever get a chance, finishing up with the languages of Africa and India would be good.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:46, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

That's certainly a possibility with the LDL page; I hope not, though. I don't know enough about the languages of Africa and India to move forward without some direction from others. I've asked at least twice for guidance on African languages, but didn't get a response (or not much). --BB12 (talk) 03:05, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

The next week will be hellish for me (I hope you don't mind if I don't notify all the people from the old vote about the new one as I planned to do). If you are so kind as to remind me 10-12 days from now, I will pull down the dusty old volumes and educate myself on these, and report back my findings. (Actually, Wikipedia might be more helpful, but you never know.) Did Maltese ever work out? I think User:Dick Laurent has some experience as well. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:20, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Contacting those people sounds good. I'll remind you about the languages. Never heard back about Maltese. --BB12 (talk) 21:30, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

You say 'okina, I say ʻokina...

I just "discovered" the difference between the single quote and the apostrophe in Hawaiian terms, and realized that I was responsible for every one of the entries with the apostrophe, except one: 'ehu. I've since moved all of my Hawaiian entries to single-quote spellings (being careful not to mess with Samoan or other languages), and would like to create an ʻehu entry and move the Hawaiian contents of 'ehu to it- but it only seemed proper to check with you first.

On a completely unrelated note, I hope you noticed Category:Polynesian canoe plants, which I recently created (Polynesian ethnobotany is a pet subject of mine). Mahalo! Chuck Entz (talk) 04:11, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I have long been aware that 'okina usage differs across Polynesia, mainly due to the whims of whichever minister printed the first local bible. The reason that all my entries in Rapa Nui, Samoan, and related languages use ' is that it is simply easier for me to input (so Stephen just added Hawaiian to a Rapa Nui entry I had already created). I think Hawaiian comes closest to a standard out of any of these, so I would definitely support moving those to ʻ spellings (with redirects and {{also}}s as necessary). If I can help, just tell me.

Your category is great - I'll try to add a few more terms to it when I get a chance, and I'll put links in pages like vaka. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:57, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, you were the one who added the Hawaiian entry, but that's neither here nor there. I was just focusing on Hawaiian, because that's pretty straightforward. I'm not sure whether converting the other languages is a good idea, since usage seems to favor the apostrophe. I can see good arguments either way. I decided to bring up the topic in BP, since others may blunder in like I did and re-complicate things again. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:55, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I only added the Rapa Nui (diff from my initial entry to its present form). In any case, I guess moving it to the BP was a good idea, so I'll comment there. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:01, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Samoan language entries

Hello, I've noticed that you've added a lot of the Samoan language entries, which is fantastic (it's a not easy to find online!). I was wondering if I could find out what sources you are using-- I've noticed words and forms that I'm not familiar with and I'm hoping to improve on it without tripping over any toes. Thanks, --MichaelBillington (talk) 11:43, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I will have to admit that I tend to feel a little guilty about Samoan entries, because my Samoan is simply horrendous beyond belief. I used any source that would talk about Samoa that I own, and I'm afraid my standards were probably lower than they should have been (whereas fale#Samoan is easy to prove correct, laititi#Samoan may not be). Please do me a favor and don't worry at all about stepping on or tripping over my metaphorical toes, but instead go through all of Wiktionary's entries with an objective eye.

If you're having trouble finding and verifying terms in Samoan online, however, I do have an answer for you. This dictionary is out of copyright, and thus its definitions may be used on Wiktionary and the entire book can be viewed and conveniently searched, courtesy of Google. For terms that a dictionary wouldn't cover, or that have been coined in the intervening years, the Samoan wikipedia is a good place to look, although its coverage can be best desribed as spotty. Finally, I'm an admin here, so if you find any entries that are obviously errors or misspellings that I made, just tell me and I'll delete them (after a quick check on the nets, of course). Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:15, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I almost forgot to mention - the dictionary should not be used as a sole source, because, among other things, it's extremely untrustworthy with niceties like the 'okina and marking long vowels. Anyway, I'm sure you'll notice that on your own. Again, thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:02, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've seen Pratt's dictionary before and it's a nice bit of history. I'll watch out for those inconsistent koma liliu. I have some newbie questions which I'm hoping you can answer:

• Do we have our own style guide about which long voewls to mark in polynesian languages? I say this because Dictionaries tend to mark all of the long vowels (presumably for pronunciation) regardless of how the word is written, but modern written Samoan uses them rarely if ever in regular prose.
• Is there a template that can be used to show the parts of compound words? eg olamatua → ola (life) + matua (old age). --MichaelBillington (talk) 01:53, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

• Great questions! We always mark long vowels if the word is pronounced that way, but we recognize that most Samoans can figure it out based on context and thus omit them. If you add an entry with a long vowel and we already have an article (covering any languages) that has the same letters but doesn't have the long mark, add {{also|the name if the page you just created}} to the top of the other page. If that other page doesn't exist, the search function will solve the problem.
• Just put in the Etymology section {{compound|ola|matua|lang=sm}}, and it will handle it for you. Please tell me if you have any other problems or questions, or if any of this was at all unclear. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:36, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Allow me to add: there are a couple of nice comparative databases that cover Samoan:

• [3]
• [4]

You have to be careful, though, because they're only interested in whether the word exists in the language, not how it is used- or even if it's still used at all: the word they give may have been completely replaced by a synonym from a different origin to the point that most speakers won't recognize it as belonging to their language Chuck Entz (talk) 14:23, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:35, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

RFV and RFD

Hello. It's best not to close these too early, as there may be feedback about the quality of the citations (see e.g. the recent kif), or other further discussion. I dunno the precise rules but we tend to leave them open for a month or more even after they are marked cited. Periodically some good saint will go through the page and zap the ones that are clearly resolved. Equinox ◑ 22:18, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I figured it would be fine with something so comprehensively cited as Citations:leather cheerio, but I'll let it wait if you want. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Reply to a message directed at me

Hi there MK. This is a reply to the message at http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary%3AWhitelist&diff=16900029&oldid=16900020 . You mentioned "stop adding entries you don't know the definitions of". Let me explain: I often add rfdef to entries not because I don't know the definition, but for a few reasons: Firstly, I often find quotes and add them here (which of course, is very helpful). Occasionally, there is no definition on the entry that fits the quote so I add a rfdef with the quote and sometimes come back later when I'm feeling more in a defining-words mood to add a definition. Sometimes I leave the rfdef because I've repeatedly been told that I suck at the art of defining words in English. Anyway, I figure that a quote without a definiton is better than nothing (or better than a quote with a lousy definition). Anyway, well done for spotting me. I guess that is also an art (or something). --Maria.Sion (talk) 18:11, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I guess you're right about that. It's just that seeing an rfdef annoys the hell out of me when I just want a definition. Also, I don't think anyone really goes through the requests for definition category (maybe I should). Neither spotting you nor making definitions is really an art in my eyes, and I doubt you're really that bad at it, considering how long you've been here. Finally, you're the first person I know of who has called me MK, and I'm glad to finally have a biliteral moniker. Makes me think of M.K. Gandhi... --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:24, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not fond of rfdefs either, but I dislike missing definitions even more. And bad definitions even more. And being stung by hornets even more. Anyway, some people go through that category from time to time. Normally it is SB (who I naively assume will do everything eventually) who every year or so adds definitions to these. Anyway, let's go for some harmonious editing. --Maria.Sion (talk) 20:16, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I think an entry with rfdef is still better than none at all. Especially if the entry contains other information like inflection or pronunciation instead. —CodeCat 21:06, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't know about harmonious editing, but, despite your wishes, I'm not planning to ever block you. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:23, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I have concluded that, as a general rule, the number of missing senses is more than proportional to the number of senses for a given PoS, unless one of our very best contributors has worked very hard at it, whereas the number of senses that might be redundant or unattestable seems less than proportional. Well-placed {{rfdef}} templates are helpful, especially if accompanied by a helpful comment on the talk page and one (preferrably more) citations and most especially for basic verbs, prepositions, and adverbs not ending in "ly". DCDuring TALK 23:39, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

βλέπω

Hello - you have marked βλέπω for attention, it lacks an ancient Greek entry - is there something particularly wrong with the modern ? — Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 04:30, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It lacks a conjugation template. Sorry, but I really rely on those (I have a lot of trouble with Greek verbs). I just noticed that it was already tagged for that, but still. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:33, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Right - nearly all the Greek verb entries lack conjugations - a field I've lacked the courage and time to start on - yet! — Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 14:19, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, thank you anyway, and I hope you get to it soon. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:23, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Switch to exclusion

I've been thinking about how to do this. Basically, a switch to exclusion means that the section Wiktionary:CFI#Languages_with_limited_online_documentation is no longer necessary. So my proposal would be to delete that (but keep " When considering exclusion, consideration of how to handle existing entries should be taken into account.") and link the list directly from Wiktionary:CFI#Number_of_citations. As per the discussion, I would add languages with official national status in Europe and note that Maltese is not an exclusion. Does that sound about right? --BB12 (talk) 15:35, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I fully understand this, but if I do, it looks like a bad idea. Can you demonstrate? As a side note, I reckon a note mentioning that although most languages on Wiktionary are covered, most words on Wiktionary are not would be in good order. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:41, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure which part is the bad idea. I've put it up at the top of User:BenjaminBarrett12/scratch2. Also, I don't understand your suggested note. --BB12 (talk) 16:27, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Yeah, that looks pretty good, actually. #4 needs a lot of revision, though (if you're going to mention the 8th schedule, don't bother listing some of the languages in it). We have a data structuring problem now, though. It's logical, but counterintuituve. Consider (you'll have to click edit to see what I mean):

                       Yes --> LDL status
Listed on CFI <                                      Yes --> No LDL status
                       No; listed on subpage? <
                                                              No --> LDL status

Sorry, I was too lazy to make a structured tree. The <s are branches. Anyway, the point is that on the CFI, being listed make it get LDL, but suddenly, when you're on the subpage it's the other way around. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:42, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm 100% with you. That's actually what's been bothering me the most. My only other solution is to divide the languages into three-use (the "general" rule), one-use (extinct) and one-occurrence (everything else). --BB12 (talk) 17:05, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

That could work, iff we modify the CFI to that effect as well as the subpage. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:09, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I think that's what has to happen. I think this will take until tomorrow to work up. --BB12 (talk) 19:22, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Back to inclusion

I have the copy nearly ready at User:BenjaminBarrett12/scratch2. I think this is the clearest, most concise version of anything so far. --BB12 (talk) 14:41, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

There are problems. See w:Languages_of_the_European_Union where Maltese is listed. Also, Romansh is listed as a national language at w:Switzerland. It will be several hours, but I will tackle this later today, US time. --BB12 (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Or feel free to edit :) --BB12 (talk) 14:47, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I think we're in the same time zone. It being a weekend, I just woke up. I'll take a look later today, and I'll respond here. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:52, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

OK: I'm not sure what's going on with the Number of citations section, and it includes some aspects I think we agreed not to include, so if you're planning on doing anything with that, it needs revision. I made a bunch of edits, but I tried to use descriptive edit summaries so you can see what I did in the History tab. I think I addressed all the concerns raised in the BP except CodeCat and West Frisian. Can you do a followup with CodeCat, specifically asking if W Frisian terms are fully citeable on bgc, and that sort of thing? Maltese is a little messy, but it doesn't matter, since we list it explicitly. There is a little problem I noticed about official languages and such in relation to Fiji, but few people care about the languages of Oceania like I do, so I'm sure nobody else will notice and it will be fine. Is it just me, or are we covering a lot less African languages now? Well, I reckon that's about it. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:13, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

It looks like some of the changes you made were to older sections. I've deleted those now. I then put in each language of Europe to make everything explicit and get rid of some exclusions that would have been necessary otherwise. The number of citations sections had to be changed, but I tried to keep it to a minimum. I think it still reads pretty much like the original. Part of this proposal will be to eliminate the "Languages with limited online documentation" section. Such a lot of work gone!! Oh, well. This is better. Is there a Fijian language that should be excluded? I'll ask CodeCat, though we may post before getting a response. --BB12 (talk) 19:44, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh my. There are a lot of linguistic issues. Some of them I'm just going to change (there are two Norwegian languages around here, for example). I made a bunch of additions, because you forgot some important stuff (like Albanian, for example). If you're curious, the reason for "Standard" Indonesian is to avoid the common grouping of Javanese and similar languages. I'm sure there are more omissions I didn't notice, though.

So much for the list. The top part has some issues. After resolving the Dacian issue, Dacian is now left out of the loop again. We have the the problem of the fictitious language community upkeeping a list of mention-worthy materials (if we change that to a list of unworthy materials, it would be a lot more realistic), and also the strange citation requirement that appears to go beyond 'normal' requirements.

I must say, a lot of these languages have varieties and sublects that don't merit inclusion. Instead of linking to the page on the language here, can we link to About page when possible, and maybe link to the votes on Unified Romanian, Tagalog, and Serbo-Croatian? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:10, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Me and language complexity

I really like the second paragraph of your "Me and language complexity." I've never been able to put that into words, but it's exactly how I feel about language! Two ways I get around my laziness are Skype lessons from [www.myplt.com/ PLT] and Pimsleur CDs from the public library. --BB12 (talk) 17:54, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I never expected anyone to read my userpage, much less appreciate it.
I am rather suspicious of the Pimsleur method, solely because of the outrageous claim that one can a learn a language in a few days, and by association with my disenfranchisement with Rosetta Stone, which I found to be awful (unhelpful approach to grammar and bad selection of vocabulary). Does it work for you? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:38, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

It's a stretch, but their advertisement is essentially accurate. After the first thirty-minute lesson, you really can speak and understand a couple of expressions at native speed. So far, I've found that if I have some classroom experience, Pimsleur works excellent. For other languages, it's still really tough, but I learn far faster than anything else I've tried. (Zero luck with tones languages, but oh, well!) If you library doesn't carry them, they offer 30-day rentals as well as sales. --BB12 (talk) 01:00, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I'll have to give it a try. It would be nice to do so before I go away (10 days from now, to Thailand, Laos, and South Korea), but I'll settle for mastering the Thai and Lao abugidas (Thai is the most complicated writing system I have ever seen of the ones that do not use characters). Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:07, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Learning an abugida. That is awesome! I've never had reason to do more than look at them, but that's a good project. --BB12 (talk) 01:12, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, it sure beats memorizing kanji/한자/hanzi.--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:17, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Something I will NEVER do again, LOL. --BB12 (talk) 01:21, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm treating that as a long-term goal so I don't get discouraged by the fact that I am unlikely to ever memorize very many :) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:27, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I just got 8 hours' worth of Pimsleur from the library. Thanks for the tip! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:36, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

How is Pimsleur working? Also, two days and no disagreement about the LDL changes. How many days before you take off? --BB12 (talk) 20:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Exactly a week! LDL seems to no longer be a hot issue (BTW, isn't it funny that everybody only cared about European languages?) in the BP, but I think it might still need a vote. At least, I'd don't think I'd personally feel comfortable interpreting lack of disagreement for community consensus.
Pimsleur is pretty good, and they do a fine job with grammar, but I feel like they move a bit too slowly for my tastes. I also am messing up their Pimsleurian theory by doing at least 2 days' worth every day. I think it will pay off, though. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:55, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Would you feel comfortable in taking the BP discussion as consensus if I advertised it there once more? --BB12 (talk) 06:35, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

If it's the sort of discussion where people say support (like the style of an RFD discussion), and nobody's raising Cain, then probably.--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:37, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

your assistance please

Thanks for directing me to WT:CFI -- which I am sorry to say was the first genuinely helpful tip on this matter in five years.

You wrote: "Please don't waste our time further with this, or at least provide the evidence that Ruakh has requested and is required under the CFI."

I provided 8 links, and I would be grateful if you returned to that thread and told me whether they would be suitable for the attestation WT:CFI mentions.

Thanks Geo Swan (talk) 20:21, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

A little help understanding code please?

Hey, I was wondering if you could help me a little. As you know I'm preparing a bot for some form of stuff, just Icelandic nouns initially as I said at BP. See, I've been looking one of the Icelandic declension templates to try to right code to make entries for noun forms in that declension...but it's not so easy due to the way in some cases Icelandic nouns mutate horridly (like change a vowel in the middle of the word). Since I've never known much about the code in templates on here I was wondering if you could explain this snippet I took from one of the declension templates.

|dats={{{1|}}}{{{2}}}{{{3|}}} {{#switch:{{{4|}}}|i={{{4}}}

In the switch part there, "i={{{4}}}" Does that mean {{{4}}} or whatever becomes "i"? Or am I misunderstanding? 50 Xylophone Players talk 20:43, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

A switch means to look at a value and to give different values depending on the initial value. It's similar to a set of several 'ifeq' together. The code you gave means: 'look at the value for {{{4}}} and if it equals i, use {{{4}}}. It's a bit silly to write it that way, because you could also write i=i instead of i={{{4}}} there. —CodeCat 21:05, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

OK. First things first, I'm not a technical expert, and while I'd be glad to help, a user like CodeCat may be able to do a much better job, depending on the complexity of the template.
#switch is a parser function; its complete behavior is described here. Does that make sense to you now? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok thanks guys. Since I have Java experience, I am familiar with Java switch statements but I've just been getting so bogged down in trying to understand this template I was doubting if it was really the same kinda thing or not...I'll look at the template again when I can and give you a shout if I'm too confused CodeCat. 50 Xylophone Players talk 21:28, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

+1

Hi,

At [[+1]], did you maybe mean to add like and unlike in a "See also" section, rather than a "Related terms" section? Because the latter is supposed to be for etymologically related terms, which I don't think these are?

Thanks in advance,
—Ruakh_TALK
02:50, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, yes. I tend to get those headers a bit confused. Do feel free to fix those without consulting me. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:32, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

question

Just checking, did you mean to remove my last comment. Geo Swan (talk) 04:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Very sorry about that. I was in an edit conflict, and got confused. I would never knowingly remove another editor's comment unless I found it extremely offensive (direct attacks on another user, spam, etc). If you see this happening again, feel free to undo my edit without notifying me. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:58, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

• OK. And if I make a similar mistake feel free to do likewise. Geo Swan (talk) 05:28, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. And—

Mate, I appreciate your kind message very much. (If you're on LJ yourself let me know, as most of the more interesting stuff is hidden from public view – though since I had a baby a couple of months ago, updating has become a bit sporadic.) Unfortunately, I can't help much with the Egyptian problem you mentioned. I think I once spent a long weekend working on hieroglyphics here, but I don't even have all the right reference books with me now. FWIW, I agree with you that entries should be under transliterations as well. If I recall correctly, when editors first started adding them here, it was before hieroglyphics had been added to the Unicode standard, hence a situation now where there is not much standardization. But I suspect I'm not the editor to fix that – there are others who have studied it a lot more than me. Ƿidsiþ 06:28, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

South Korea and Zarma

I hope you have a good time during your travels! During a Korean class, I learned about a folk village in South Korea where people go to learn about folk ways, dressing up in clothes, etc. No idea if it's any good or just a tourist trap, but it sounds like fun.

Also, I think CW and I are going to start adding Zarma words in a few more days. Unfortunately, almost no references use tone marks, so we'll probably wind up putting tone marks only for pronunciation. --BB12 (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! During my time in 한국, I'm planning on trying to stay just in the old part of 서울. As for Zarma, I think that would be a mistake (a lot of Etymology 1 and Etymology 2 and multiple pronunciations because in Zarma, different words are sometimes distinguished only by tone). However, I will trust that Christopher knows best. Have you noticed that Ungoliant is already adding {{LDL}} to Hunsrik entries? Not much, but it's a start! Also, I think you can move the new vote out of the 'Proposed votes' section, since it'll be active soon. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:37, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it seems that the only resources with tones are inconsistent in tone use. I would like to use tones, but the resources just don't seem to be there, but there are resources without tones. I noticed the Hunsrik entries and had assumed you were doing that! I've moved the vote. --BB12 (talk) 19:35, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Pity. Well, as long as reliable tones are marked with the IPA, it'll be fine. If it would help, I can construct a template to make that easier (maybe something like a scaled-down {{grc-ipa-rows}}?). Just ask in the next two days!
I've never studied Hunsrik, but once I get back I'm planning on doing a lot of work with Samoan, possibly Māori, Tok Pisin, and maybe Tok Pisin's close relatives Pijin blong Solomon and Bislama (I've only added (deprecated template usage) ovaspen so far). Looks great! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:18, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

User:Dick_Laurent/despre_mine

I'm surprised he didn't mention me by name on that page XD Razorflame 00:23, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that's kind of par the course for him, but I guess it was especially bad with you. He keeps threatening to go inactive, but I don't really care so long as y'all refrain from wikibattles. Old talkpages are fun indeed. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:39, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Telugu pages

I have started writing about Telugu language words a month ago. There are now some 30,000 pages in this language. Fortunately some Wiktionarians are helping my work and improving them. I have seen that you are helping many languages. Can you help me in the templates for the Telugu languages and their documentation. The Index:Telugu is taking long time to do manually. Can you help me through your bot and save my time; so that I can concentrate in improving by adding the information in Telugu language. Telugu language is now in 31 position in Wiktionary statistics. Your help further boost the prospects which is called "Italian of the East". Thanking you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:03, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I can help with templates, but I don't have a bot. User:Conrad.Irwin has a bot (User:Conrad.Bot) that does language indexing based on XML dumps. You should try asking him if he get his bot to work with Telugu. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:09, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately User:Conrad.Irwin is presently not responding to my request. There are about 50 common Telugu verbs now. Can you prepare a template for them accommodating verbs in different forms.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:11, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I am leaving for a month-long trip, sorry. You can either wait until I return or perhaps ask User:Stephen G. Brown to help make you verb conjugation templates. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:54, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Peace Corps manuals

Exciting news from the Peace Corps: their old manuals can be used as long as proper attribution is given. (They evidently no longer maintain their manuals.) I received a response from their Information and Exchange office in response to a question about a Zarma manual at [5]. --BB12 (talk) 19:06, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

That's great! I wonder how many languages they have available. It would be good for languages where I struggle to find citations with correct (i.e., modern) orthography.
Still working on my Thai and a little conversational Korean - no better time to practice than a 12-hour plus plane ride! By the way, I completed my goal of 8 hours of Pimsleur, but I can't understand how you can do it while driving. It really makes it too hard to focus on the road. Oh yeah, and I set it so that my vote should automatically appear in the support section about within a day after the vote begins. 안녕히 계세요! (or something like that...)--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Well maybe it's not age that makes me deficient at language learning, then, LOL. Thanks for the vote and bon voyajee! --BB12 (talk) 07:06, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think you're deficient! I believe I coded my vote incorrectly, so once it displays, please remove the code that surrounds it (the #ifeq stuff and the <!-- comments, as well as the text in the comments). Thanks! ~~~~ — This unsigned comment was added by Metaknowledge (talk • contribs) at 12:53, 20 June 2012 (UTC).

Template:tpi-cite-bible

Why the rollback? —Ruakh_TALK 00:14, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, even if it's really important to you for some reason that the template contain #* and #*:, you still need to include #* in the entries themselves. —Ruakh_TALK 00:15, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I realized it was rather rude to do a rollback after I did it; I guess I should explain. I am unable to see why I should type a couple more characters in, because in every instance the template is transcluded, it accompanies those characters. Thus, I decided that those characters ought to be part of the template. If I have overlooked something, please let me know.
(after ec) Sorry; I don't understand. Why do I need to put #* in the entries? For example, skai has it but bosim doesn't, and I don't see a difference.--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Because of Wiktionary:Grease pit#Dump analysis request and Index:Tok Pisin and every other situation in which a dump analysis is helpful. Consistent formatting makes it possible to extract information from Wiktionary. —Ruakh_TALK 00:25, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. I didn't think of that. Thanks for explaining. This template is now transcluded in quite a few places, I'm afraid. I'm sorry to make you clean up after my mess, but is that possible? I don't know nearly enough programming to make the job faster. (Note: I undid my revert.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:32, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

 Done —Ruakh_TALK 00:55, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Looks good. Again, sorry and thanks. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Online dictionaries

I just found three dictionaries of Vanuatuan languages:

• Vurës or Mosina (msn) at [6]
• Tamambo (perhaps Tamabo (mla)) at [7]
• South Efate (erk) at [8]

All of them are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. The only problem is that they do not appear to be durably archived. Any ideas? --BB12 (talk) 05:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Um, I've never dabbled in native Vanuatuan languages, just Bislama, so I don't know them and won't be adding terms from them. I can't think of any solution except the cutthroat method, which suggests that you put them on a public Google Group so that they become durably archived. I'm honestly not sure if that's legit. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:23, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that is the one fear I had, that people would do something like that, undercutting a good-faith policy. I'll sleep on this, but this would probably require contacting the site owner.

Separate from that issue is a gold mine at Series List. Click on, for example, series six, then the first sub-series, SIKUSA. This has one inventory item. Click on image (shortcut), where you will find six pages of Kusage words, under the CC license and durably archived. The enlarge button makes the text readable. (I'm not sure which language Kusage is.) --BB12 (talk) 05:28, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure that counts as durable? It's physical, but not published. I honestly rather doubt it. Sorry to crush your hopes so quickly. Maybe you can try asking around? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:32, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Being published isn't required, AFAIK. [9] says, "We have established a framework for accessioning, cataloguing and digitising audio, text and visual material, and preserving digital copies. The primary focus of this initial stage is safe preservation of material that would otherwise be lost, especially field tapes from the 1950s and 1960s." That looks golden to me, no? --BB12 (talk) 05:36, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

The phrase "material that would otherwise be lost" seems to undermine the CFI's requirement that physical papers and audio must be stored "durably". Again, I think you should ask somebody really knowledgeable or raise the issue in the BP and wait for consensus (or the usual lack thereof). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:39, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, posted! --BB12 (talk) 05:55, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Nobody responded on durability, so I'm going to consider them good. I need to get to the Welcome issue and then think about contacting them about the copyrights. --BB12 (talk) 05:23, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

This still worries me a little, but I'll roll with it. As a side note, User:BD2412 is a lawyer with copyright experience, so you can ask him if you come up with legal questions in relation to the project. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:27, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

39 (Japanese for thank you) --BB12 (talk) 05:36, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Hahahaha! That's really witty! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:38, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I didn't make it up, but I am trying to make it Net lingo. Pass it on!! --BB12 (talk) 05:46, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there aren't many people like me who don't know Japanese, but remember enough basic vocabulary to get the joke. But I'll try! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:48, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Portals

I think I want to form a proposal for language portals. They've been discussed before but no action ever taken.

In addition to providing basic background information on the language, including the ISO and links to Wikipedia, the Ethnologue and Multi-Tree, they can be the collection point of various pages like the About and template pages.

Any thoughts before I bring this to the BP? --BB12 (talk) 20:52, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of this. Note: I am not Metaknowledge, just a nosy fucker. Equinox ◑ 21:04, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

LMAO! --BB12 (talk) 21:12, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

It might be good. Note that they already exist on French Wiktionary, where they don't actually help very much. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Now you're thinking with Portals! :) I would support a vote to introduce them. —CodeCat 00:44, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Why do you think they don't help much on the French Wiktionary? I'm no good at French so going there isn't going to help me. (Another feature: a link to the page that lists contributors with that language in their Babel box.) --BB12 (talk) 01:20, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure you can infer from Italian. Theoretically, fr:Portail:Français should be the best portal they have. However, the links and resources seem worse than what English has now at WT:AEN and Category:English language. (Combining the two would be messy, for technical reasons.) I would want concrete lists of features that show how we could use Portals, and do a better job than the cheese-eating surrender monkeys did. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:25, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

You're right: It's not that hard. And yes, I want a list of features. Any ideas (you, MK, or the nosy, err, eavesdroppers?) --BB12 (talk) 01:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

stake

i added the spanish translations, should i create an entry for "poner en juego" the third verb meaning of stake (i.e. to be at stake) or is there a way to link to poner and should i add an "en juego" variation to that verb's entry? poner en juego is the only way to express this sort of stake in spanish verbly.Lucifer (talk) 21:18, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

I mean, (deprecated template usage) poner en juego seems idiomatic to me, but hell, find somebody who knows Spanish. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:08, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

{{FWOTD}}

I rewrote {{FWOTD}}. Can you help me testing it? Just try crazy parameters and if it doesn’t work, tell me. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 06:05, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not flexible enough, although your edits are great. For Gothic terms, for example, we can't have boxes appearing on the main page. It'll need to be able to display an image from Commons instead (a zoomed-in screenshot from a user who can view it correctly). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:59, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

There is a parameter for images now. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 03:03, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! For some reason, I never knew you're so good at this! The multiple audios raise a question, though. In the Latin example on the doc subpage, you have the Classical and Ecclesiastical pronunciations ("dialects"). Should those be marked as such? Also, should there be a place to put IPA? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:14, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Could be. I’m against putting IPA. Every now and then there are complaints in WT:FB about IPA being too complicated, so if we put it in the FWOTD those who don’t know IPA (probably a significant amount our readers) will be upset. Those who know IPA can just check the entry. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 15:57, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

There are parameters for audio description now. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 17:10, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Wonderful! I'm OK with not having IPA, although I would rather it. More questions: what do you think about having the word itself (and the image, where applicable) be larger than they are now? Also, should there be a title= parameter for a title at the top (maybe for focus weeks?). Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:19, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

• (larger words): it would look better. On the other hand, it would be nice if {{FWOTD}} looked the same as {{WOTD}}. No strong opinion here, if you insist I can easily make it larger.
• (title=): how would this be displayed? I can’t think of a way that doesn’t cause clutter.

There are two more things that WOTD has and FWOTD doesn’t: part of speech and date. Do you think they are necessary? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 18:23, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Got it. I already thought about those two. No date is necessary, but POS would be good when all senses that we show have the same POS. Maybe it should be a named param.
I played around with previews, but it made the top section seem too big - I thought perhaps you could figure it out. If not, that's OK. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:28, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I added a parameter for the focus week and PoS. Is there anything else that needs doing? If not, I better move on to the other templates we’ll use and see how they work. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 21:12, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

You're great! All we need is to clean up {{was fwotd}}, to match {{was wotd}}. {{fwotd-nom}} needs better links, but it's good as a template. As for the mechanism of having it on the main page, we can just do it the same way the English WOTD does, with magic words. I'll create the archive now. You can see how the FWOTD looks aesthetically at User:Metaknowledge/Main page. Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:28, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

The infrastructure seems to be working now. Can we announce this project already? Before we draft the vote we’ll have to address Liliana’s concerns about reconstructed terms, Chuck Entz’s concerns about a FWOTD being political in nature, and any other concern that may be raised. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 01:03, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Do you want me to make the announcement, or do you? Also, do you think this will necessarily require a vote? Note: Liliana seemed somewhat on the fence, and Chuck can be appeased by telling him that we'll check entries first (of course we will, it would be madness not to) and he is welcome to do so himself. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:02, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I’d prefer if you wrote it, since you are a native speaker of English. It may or may not require a vote; depends on the result of the BP discussion, but my guess is that it will. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 02:23, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

You're way better with English than some native speakers I know. Before I get it out, is there anyhting specific you want me to say or link to that I might forget? (If you don't respond soon, I'll just post it.) Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:58, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Link to User:Metaknowledge/Main page, {{FWOTD}} and previous discussions. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 03:07, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Got it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:10, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

 Posted --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:24, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

nonmetal

metaloido seems to be correct. c.f. Krause, Erich-Dieter: Großes Wörterbuch Esperanto — Deutsch. Buske Verlag, Hamburg 1999, →ISBN. --Yoursmile (talk) 09:16, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

The authors of that book were linguists, not chemists. Very simply, I find it very hard to be believe that Esperanto metaloido is not equivalent to English metalloid. Metalloids and nonmetals overlap, but cover different groups of elements. In fact, the infix -oid- carries the meaning of "similar to", not "different from". --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:23, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for your kind message. Yes, regretfully, I've decided to withdraw from the Wiktionary project. I might make an occasional edit if I see vandalism or something broken, but I don't intend to be an active contributor as I have been, hence my reason for wishing to return to a redlink state (if you or another admin would delete my talk page and archive, I'd greatly appreciate it). Astral (talk) 20:35, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I just redeleted your talkpage, but Equinox had left you a message. If you didn't see it, I can post it here for you.
Astral, I hope you didn't leave because of something that somebody did here. In any case, I hope you gained from your time here, and that you have good luck in the future, whatever your exploits may be. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:23, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I've had issues with some of Wiktionary's policies for a while. In particular, the "durably archived" provision of WT:CFI, and how it's interpreted to mean the only acceptable cites are print media and Usenet. (Briefly: it seems illogical to me for a wiki, an inherently changeable, eternal work-in-progress, to privilege paper over pixels, and denies the changing realities of the digital age, in which many things once released in a physical format are now being released digitally instead).

I've tried to work within this framework because, simply put, I love words, but I've finally reached the conclusion that Wiktionary's rigidity isn't only embodied in its policies, but in the general attitude held by many of its members. Things had reached a point where I was gunshy about participating in community discussions, because my thinking doesn't always align with that of the majority.

On the whole, people on Wiktionary are knowledgable and friendly, and I've had few disagreements, but those which I have had have taken a heavy toll. Yesterday, there was an incident on RfD that was kind of the final straw. I always attempt to be as civil in the way I communicate as possible, but bluntness seems to be ingrained in Wiktionary's culture. I've tried to stay objective and keep in mind that what looks like incivility to me might simply be someone having an off day, as well as the fact that this is a global project, and that not everyone is going to hail from a cultural setting/background with a conception of civility identical to my own. Sometimes, though, it's not just a matter of my own subjective reaction, and the other party really has done or said something out of line.

I don't want to butt heads with people. I don't like conflict — especially not when it interferes with my ability to be productive. But at the same time I don't want to bear feeling that I've got to keep my head down, lest I bump my head into the generally low ceiling of this wiki's tolerance.

Thanks for re-deleting my talk page. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see Equinox's message, so if you could copy it here, that'd be great. Astral (talk) 00:52, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Then I guess Equinox's message might be relevant. He said:

Sorry to recreate your talk page; I was gonna e-mail you, but you don't have it set up. I am no doubt one of the "clique" you dislike, but that's really only because I'm impatient with people who refuse to read the documentation, and because I am traditional about what a dictionary should include. It is not an actual spirit of cliquishness, and I don't act how I do in order to be like others; it is just a consensus and a bad temper. I hope you'll continue editing at some point. Everyone leaves at least once :) Equinox ◑ 22:15, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you about durability, but I think it functions to provide another limitation (like 3 cites) so that not any word ever used can be included. To be blunt, I know that we're blunt. Many of us probably have Asperger's, or are borderline (like me). That doesn't excuse incivility, though, nor intolerance. I suppose at this point, there's not much I can do for you, but if there is, just ask. It really hurts me to see this happen. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:00, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge — I definitely think there needs to be some type of standard establishing what constitutes an acceptable citation, but I think other aspects of CFI in place already do the job of preventing the addition of any old word (the one-year usage span criterion, for instance), and that precluding the usage of all web-based sources except Usenet ultimately only serves to make the task of citing things unnecessarily difficult. Not to mention that it's going to become progressively more difficult to cite new terms, as Usenet usage has been steadily in decline for the last decade. I've thought that something like two "durable" (i.e. print or Usenet) citations and one non-Usenet web citation might be a workable alternative to the current attestation standard (and the non-Usenet web citation should preferably be an article/story on a notable site like the the Huffington Post, GameSpot, etc. rather than someone's random WordPress blog or LiveJournal).

If many people around here have Asperger's, I should fit right in (formally diagnosed), but there's probably a lot of truth to observations that we find it hardest to interact with the people most like ourselves. The reason I make a concerted effort to maintain a civil tone is because social skills aren't exactly my natural forte.

@ Equinox — In retrospect, "cliquish" was probably the wrong choice of word. But Wiktionary does seem very set in its ways to me. Obviously, a wiki needs to have a reasonable level of stability in order to be a useful resource, but too much resistance toward change within its ranks will ultimately just stifle growth and discourage new users from joining.

Thank you both for your kind words. I don't know. Maybe the unpleasant taste I've been left with will wear off with time, and I'll once again feel motivated to contribute regularly. After all, it's become hard for me not to collect potential words to add; I'll read something interesting in an article and wonder if Wiktionary already has it. Astral (talk) 04:04, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I would support that idea myself, although that would make us very susceptible to linkrot. If you ever feel like going through the bureaucracy and proposing a vote to that effect, I would help write it and develop it. The people that I hang out with in real life and the ones I avoid the most are very similar to me; I'm quite used to that by now.
The choice remains yours, and I can accept it either way, but I still hope you, at some point, choose to stay around or at least return. Vedder you do or don't, thank you. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:21, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I would hasten to add that there will be a vote to change that policy in the near future. See Wiktionary:BP#Durability_and_online_archives. If this isn't taken up by someone else, I eventually will do it. --BB12 (talk) 04:55, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Appendix:I don't speak in Thai

Hi,

I have added this translation. Although ฉัน (chăn) is originally female, it's colloquial and applies to both sexes, unlike ดิฉัน (dìchăn) f or ผม (pŏm) m. Just a demo on grammar, like a few other Asian languages, all depends on the level of formality, gender and the social status, it's cumbersome to add all forms for each translations, so I used a generic form, which is also used in some textbooks or phrasebooks. Also, ไม่ (mâi)เป็น (bpen) (mâi bpen) expresses "can't", "unable to do" but there are other ways to say it. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 02:14, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

What I can tell you is that I struggle to read Thai, I make stupid mistakes with tones, and I have never seriously studied Thai grammar, but I have spent a fair amount of time in the country (I just came back from Thailand a few weeks ago). If you want to deal with gender, either split it (like the Hindi on that page) or just leave it out altogether. Thais never begin a sentence with "I" in colloquial speech, unless they're thinking about it (or in certain regionalisms). In my experience, phut thai mai dai (RTGS) would be the form most likely to be heard on the street. (As a side note, a lot of Thai language learning materials, like Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone, teach a higher class level than most Thais use, and do not match what I've heard.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:51, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Your phrase is พูดไทยไม่ได้ (pôot tai mâi dâai). Will you be happy if I convert the translation the way I did the Thai translation for I'm hungry and a few others? With male/female/generic pronouns + polite endings? I can also remove the pronoun altogether if it confuses you or you dislike it. Do you want it with the polite gender-specific endings - ครับ (kráp) / ค่ะ (kâ) to mark the gender? The phrase พูดไทยไม่เป็น (pôot tai mâi bpen) is quite common and to me it's identical to yours. As I said, both ไม่ได้ (mâi dâai) and ไม่เป็น (mâi bpen) are used to express inability to do something.

My Thai skills are not great and I'm currently not learning it but I've got a few resources handy, which I can share with if you're interested. I'll try to confirm a few things with a Thai person I know next time when I have a chance. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 12:03, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, one more edit. Please take a look at my translation of I don't speak English (format) to get an idea what I was talking about. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 12:12, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Again, a class thing: in colloquial Thai, the polite endings are mostly reserved for requests of another person or set phrases like ni khrap/kha ("here you go") or sawatdi khrap/kha ("hello"). Personal pronouns are only used when otherwise the meaning would be ambiguous, or on formal occasions.
Please, though, don't take my suggestions at the expense of your own. I would much rather have a native speaker write it, and I will accept whatever they say. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:55, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Funny, do you think only native speakers can add translations or add entries? I was asking your confirmation, not because I don't know the usage of Thai particles or pronouns. Not a very productive discussion, indeed. Personal pronouns are optional, that's true but they ARE used, especially in sample sentences and phrasebook phrases are such examples. Have you seen Thai phrasebooks, textbooks? Polite endings, unlike Japanese or Korean are not mandatory for each sentence. It's sufficient to add them occasionally but they can be added to any phrase to make your speech more polite. Have you heard how TV announcers speak? They add ครับ (kráp) / ค่ะ (kâ) quite often, not just after "hello". I will change the entry as I see fit. Don't put your alert messages unless a native speaker does it. I have already confirmed my sentences with a native speaker. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:48, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean my comments that way. I hope you have not taken any offense.
I simply asked for a native speaker because I disagreed with you, and I would not argue with somebody who grew up speaking Thai. If they have approved your sentence, I accept it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:56, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

It's OK. You disagreed but you haven't suggested something more concrete. I will remove the pronoun making it gender-neutral in this particular case but in some phrases it's better to show it, like "my name is". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 23:27, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Choosing FWOTDs

Since Foreign Word of the Day will be a “diarchy”, I propose the following system to prevent conflict: for one week you choose the week’s focus and I choose the FWOTDs; then the next week I choose the focus and you choose the FWOTDs, and so on. One may only choose a focus for which there are at least seven valid nominations, but if that is impossible a focusless week may be chosen. What do you think? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 13:36, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I suppose it's doable, but it seems too rigid. I also think we ought to get the hang of it before we start with focus weeks, although that may not be necessary. I'm a lax sort of person, so I was just thinking that we'd choose focus weeks when somebody gets a really good idea, and choose and improve any interesting entries that look like they would work. I don't expect conflict, so I'm not trying too hard to prevent it. If you feel like I'm choosing too many, for example - just tell me, and I'll slow down.
I'd rather our diarchy be shared power instead of a kind of rotating monarchy. If we ever have a problem, I feel like we can just discuss it, and not start a civil war. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:04, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Sounds OK. BTW let’s move the draft to WT:Votes? No start date yet; just to encourage people to comment. Unfortunately the BP discussion was drowned too quickly. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 21:30, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright. I'll set the start date a week from now, so if nothing important happens that makes us want to postpone it, it will just run. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:37, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Should I re-announce it in the BP, perhaps, as a stub with a link to the vote? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:58, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

There could be a separate queue for focus weeks. We could then ask people to suggest a focus, along with the seven terms that they believe should appear in that week. It's then up to you to decide when to have a focus week, and you can just take the next one from the top of the queue. That would reduce the burden on the two of you without overly complicating things. —CodeCat 23:01, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea, and maybe somebody would like to fill up the options presented at Wiktionary talk:Foreign Word of the Day/Nominations. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:06, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Which options do you mean? —CodeCat 00:07, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, to be specific, the focus week options presented by BB and Ungoliant at Wiktionary talk:Foreign Word of the Day/Nominations#Focus weeks. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:41, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Old English versus Anglo-Saxon

Is there a reason you reverted GlakitGowk's use of "Anglo-Saxon" back to "Old English" ([10])? My understanding is that specialists prefer "Anglo-Saxon." --BB12 (talk) 08:22, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

My experience is that linguists prefer the opposite. —CodeCat 10:54, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Moreover, we are not only a community of linguists, but a community of linguists with strict rules. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:05, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

When I took an OE class, Anglo-Saxon was what I recall being told it is generally called by specialists. As a linguist, I generally refer to it as OE/Old English, but I'm not a specialist.

But what I really want to get to is that discussing it with the user would have probably been better than changing it, which sends the message, "I'm an established user and hereby overrule you. If you don't like it, eat my shorts." Even with the kind boilerplate thrown in on the change line, it can still come across as a slap in the face. --BB12 (talk) 19:05, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

I know that's true, and it is one of the reasons we scare away newbies, but that just takes too much time. We get a lot of vandalism, idiocy, and other contributions that need to be reverted or rewritten. I put in the effort to add that line to my .js file (slightly modified from the original by Ruakh). It's just too much, though, to ask me to put in the effort to write a message to every user each time I revert. I can only hope that if they notice and care, they raise the topic here (as the boilerplate suggests, and as has happened successfully). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:58, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Edit: I just noticed that I did give a message about my change to GlaikitGowk (talk • contribs) along with the welcome message. (S)He did not respond to it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:00, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Mea culpa, then. In this case, it was an about page with clearly good intention, which is what you saw and why you sent the message :) --BB12 (talk) 20:11, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

By the way, are you interested in a vote to make this boilerplate the default for the revert summary? As of now, one must add it in manually, and most administrators/rollbackers don't. 20:15, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes. --BB12 (talk) 20:25, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

OK. I'll draft something at User:Metaknowledge/Rollback edit summary. Remember the extinct vote needs to be dealt with, and I'm thinking about an emoticon vote as well. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:29, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

＾ー＾

^u^

Special:Log?page=only_nixon_could_go_to_china

FYI: Special:Log?page=only_nixon_could_go_to_china —Ruakh_TALK 20:27, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks for the heads-up. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:30, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

reversing my edits

if you take offense with my updated, good faith edits, then take it up with me instead of reversing them without any explanation. if you explained your reasoning behind deleting my edit, then it would be different. — This comment was unsigned.

Please understand that more than 20% of edits made by anonymous editors must be reversed or rewritten. Naturally, I am suspicious. In any case, I disagree with you about the definition and its use as such, but (again) if you bring it up at WT:TR, the community can have a discussion about it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:15, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

collatrix

When you add a Latin term to Semper's bot list, please be suree all the macrons are added. Cleaning up macrons later takes far more work than inserting them before the bot does its thing. I'm guessing that you're using one of the sources that deliberately omits macrons from all the suffixes on the (faulty) assumption that users will know they belong there. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, that was a stupid error. I personally know where the macra go, but I'm not used to writing them (and no primary sources except maybe some modern textbooks even print them). Thanks for noticing and fixing it! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:04, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia template

First off, I love wikis but with work and school (which I should be doing homework right now) I don't have the time to become an expert, so thanks for the help. I mostly just know how to make broad brushstroke changes that experts can tidy up.

After saving the change I figured there's probably a better way to do it and was trying to figure out how to use a template to link to Wikipedia when you made the change.

I found http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Template:PL:pedia and was trying to figure out how they used it to make the Wikipedia globe appear on the cloud link. I can view the HTML, but that's no good (I want to see wiki language, not <a href=... html. I can't view the wiki for the template by clicking "Edit" and then canceling changes because the template is locked. "View Source" is no good because I can't see the cloud link. From the "View Source" page I noticed the [[w: usage and was trying to figure out how to make that work, but I keep getting links that have "w:" in the link (show up as blue, underlined text). How do I use the template properly? Am I confusing templates?

I have another question. I know if you leave an entry on my talk page, I'm notified about it by the system. But if I reply to your entry, are you notified to check it and reply? If I leave my messages on your talk page and you leave your messages on mine, the conversation is disjointed and confusing to us, let alone to anyone else who tries to read it and learn from previous discussions. Do wikis have some sort of chat function that continues to notify everyone involved in the discussion so it can continue?

Thanks, --Yoda of Borg (talk) 07:16, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, I don't know what you're talking about with cloud links. 'View source' shows you everything there is to see. w: is not a template (templates are called with double curly brackets). All you have to do is write w:Foo, which formats a link to the Wikipedia article on 'Foo'. Even better, hide it by writing [[w:Foo|Foo]], which makes the same link but just looks like Foo. Don't use {{PL:pedia}}, if you're on a certain page here and notice that Wikipedia has a page about the same thing there, just put {{wikipedia}} in. I watchlisted your page by clicking the star just to the left of the search bar, so I can just click on 'My watchlist' at the top and see your reply. Feel free to move this conversation back to your talkpage if you prefer. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:31, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

pioner

I see it now. At pioneer there's a sense (no longer the most common) of a military sapper or digger. So in that sense, Shakespeare's pioner is the same thing. Equinox ◑ 23:59, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

block

thank you.Lucifer (talk) 23:47, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I didn't do it for you - but you're welcome. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:52, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

GanimalBot

Hi Metalknowledge!

I am ready to run my bot.Best regards--George^Animal. 18:33, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

 Unblocked. Tell me if it gets re-blocked. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:59, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Metaknowledge!

You can re-block the bot.Bot's edits.Thanks--George^Animal. 16:56, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

 Reblocked. Thanks so much for your dedication to Kurdish! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:47, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. About scisne and enclitics...

Hi. You recently posted to my talk page on how we don't add entries which are just terms plus enclitics when I created a page for scīs + ne. This definitely makes sense to me, and I would ordinarily not have posted something like this, since you could just add an enclitic to any Latin word which would make for a lot of unnecessary entries.

However, I created the page out of interest of the word scin, which currently lacks a Wiktionary page. It's hard to find a lot of information for the word online, but it seems to be a contraction of scīsne. It's found on the Latin Wikipedia homepage, under the section "SCIN TV...?," so I figured it might be important to add an entry for the contraction and the word it was contracted from.

Do you think it's important to add a page for scīn, a contraction that may not be obvious to Latin beginners? There's even a category, albeit small, for Latin contractions on Wiktionary. I can see that a separate page for scīsne is unnecessary regardless, but what about a page for its contracted form?

Thanks.

--Maxisaninja (talk) 05:36, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your follow-up. I'm surprised that we don't have scīn - you should definitely add it under the 'Contraction' header. We don't just cater to beginners, but try to add every term in Latin (under certain restrictions). We don't need scisne to have scin - just put in the etymology section (deprecated template usage) (from (deprecated template usage) ) + -ne (“do you?”). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:42, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Scīn now has a page. I tried to get the basic info but might have missed some stuff, so it may need a little cleaning up. Thanks for all the help! --Maxisaninja (talk) 06:05, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks great! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:16, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

But if SOP redirects are pointless,

then why are Spanish language and Portuguese language and French language and Italian language and Hebrew language and Arabic language and German language and Dutch language and Danish language and Russian language and Polish language and Greek language and Urdu language and Turkish language and Chinese language and Japanese language and... -- all redirects? That looks to me like accepted practice. Or should we delete all of them? And what is an SOP redirect, by the way? (NB: WT:REDIR is unofficial -- it says so in its first sentence.) --Pereru (talk) 06:03, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Because some bugger created them? I dunno. If you want, you can raise the issue elsewhere (BP?). I personally would delete all of them (after checking WhatLinksHere first, of course). By "SOP redirect", I mean a redirect from an SOP to a non-SOP version of the same thing. I know that WT:REDIR is unofficial, but most of our rules are. I just linked to it because it makes the point that the community generally doesn't like mainspace redirects. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:16, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I see. I suppose I should raise the issue, since either these redirects should be deleted, or then similar ones should be allowed -- or else, my sense of harmony feels hurt... But what does SOP stand for? I only know it as the acronym of 'standard operating procedure', but here it seems to have a different meaning. --Pereru (talk) 08:58, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry. It means "sum of parts" - i.e., not deserving an entry of its own. (We tend to use jargon, but something like WT:Glossary might help; I think one of those pages has a list of our standard slang.) It comes up a lot at WT:RFD, which is a good place to get used to that kind of terminology. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:25, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation

For dialect-determining tokens, check this out:[11]. Nosily yours, --BB12 (talk) 04:01, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to be harsh, but that quiz was kind of crappy. Most of it seemed to be about the w:cot-caught merger, and it concluded that my dialect is (wait for it): Neutral. That's right. They have no clue. The quiz then postulates that I moved around a lot when growing up (I've never moved more than a mile away from where I now live) or that I come from the ancestral home of w:General American, in the Des Moines-Peoria area. Dead wrong. I've never even been there. Try again. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:41, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't mean the quiz was crappy! It means that it didn't work for you. Unlike other quizzes I've tried, this one worked for me.

But I'm curious: Although I've lived only in Seattle and the Bay Area I generally consider the West Coast to be pretty homogenous, so I'm surprised it didn't get yours correct. I wonder what it was picking up on. Also, what does "neutral" mean for the cot-caught merger? I have the merger, though I know some people from California do not.

BTW, one difference is the use of "the" for highway names. From just a couple of samples, I think use of "the" kicks in about Los Angeles going southward. --BB12 (talk) 05:12, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Whoops. You're saying your dialect is neutral. That's my understanding for West Coasters. When I've gotten feedback on my accent from people in other English-speaking countries, I've gotten that word, too. --BB12 (talk) 05:13, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Except that there's a Californian accent, theoretically, that ought to be distinguishable from an Iowan. I don't have the merger, needless to say. In the quiz's defense, I was taking it for my 'Wiktionary accent', in which I am most precise. I talk to my friends in a noticeably different lect that includes more tone and emphasis for semantic meaning, as well as a different vocabulary — but most vowels are still realized the same way. I still say that you ought to find a better quiz (or make one). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:38, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

AFAIK, nobody has postulated a Californian dialect, just a Western one. I think it's safe to say there's also a general West Coast one, but perhaps it's difficult to tease that out of the Western dialect. I have the merger and had guessed that all younger Californians have it as well, so that's interesting. Do you know if your peers have it? I'd love a better quiz, but it's hard to figure out what's good and bad except based on whether your own dialect is diagnosed correctly. --BB12 (talk) 05:55, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

None of them do in careful speech. I only hear the merger in speech with generally shortened vowel length (which leads to nonstandard schwas and all sorts of context-driven lectal differences). Even local L2 English speakers don't (judging based on Cantonese, Mandarin, Thai, and Hebrew). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

If that's the case, there's probably a split then on the West Coast. It's not in Seattle, but there is now such a huge influx of population here that it might be a contender to become established. It may be I missed the lack of the merger in SF because I didn't hang around with enough locals, though it is extremely hard for me to catch, a real drawback when I took Korean. --BB12 (talk) 06:23, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not even going to guess how you managed to live in a city and studiously avoid its locals. I do suppose that having a vowel merger might desensitize you to the inherent differences between such sounds. Off topic: you know all that voice recognition software? Could that stuff transcribe speech into IPA? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:07, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

LOL. Most of my friends were also transplants, drawn to the area for various reasons. Not having the merger in English is even worse than many cases: the difference is common on TV but because it didn't exist in my environment, I grew up learning to ignore the difference. I bet people have tried to get voice recognition to do IPA, but there are surely problems with that (such as broad versus narrow, allophones versus phonemes) as well. --BB12 (talk) 17:45, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Strange. Then again, the first pronunciation at Olympic#Pronunciation is how newscasters tend to say it, and the second is how I say it. Language development is a careful process of ignoring how others say things :) And allophones can't be as bad as English orthography! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:49, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Challenge

So, er, question 1: How do you pronounce the name of your town? :) Equinox ◑ 10:54, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

/hoʊm/. Not bad, not bad at all...--Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:01, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

You pronounce a five-word sentence with a single syllable! :-O — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 16:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, "a five-word sentence" should have six syllables. (If you can cheat that way, so can I.) Equinox ◑ 03:50, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I might actually pronounce it [həʊm]. (We mark that pronunciation as British, and I'm most certainly not, but my dialect can be a little strange at times.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:05, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Isn't "a five word sentence" /ə . faɪv . wɜːɹd . ˈsɛn.təns/ only five syllables? What am I missing? lol - -sche (discuss) 04:35, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Haha, oh yeah. But it still isn't a single syllable. Equinox ◑ 04:36, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Is it around the Great Lakes area? Illinois? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 04:39, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Nope. But what exactly made you think that? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:00, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

A failed attempt to cheat my way into an answer: I looked at the history of random Rapa Nui nouns until I found one with an IP edit from early 2012. It traced back to Illinois. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 05:08, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Fascinating to think that there are other RN fanatics out there. Unfortunately for you, AFAIK I have never edited Wiktionary as an IP. I made my first edit 1 January 2012, and by then SUL had happened, so I was forced to use the same account that I had registered at en.wiki. BB can attest to how tricksy IPs can be in terms of accurate geolocation. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:17, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

It is meant to be guessed from questions about his accent. This would be much easier if we all did audio recordings now and then. I've done some in the past but it is frankly a hassle: record (and filter for background noise), upload, choose a filename (within certain bounds, part of it matching the exact page title), add a lot of boring licence info to prove you are the "recorder", then generate the audio tags and embed it into the article under the appropriate header. If you could just record'n'go(tm) then we would have my lovely clipped tones for half the words in this dictionary by now. Equinox ◑ 04:43, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Plus you need a separate account on Wikimedia or something, which is just stupid. let me speak, you foul audio censors Equinox ◑ 04:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Too true. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:00, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Here’s a real attempt. How do you pronounce the following words: but, ferry, fairy, got, my, mad, father, sit, you’re ?

BTW, since you’re so interested in Oceanic languages, is it Hawaii? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 03:08, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

No, it's not Hawaiʻi. I'm also interested in Latin, but that doesn't make me a Roman :)
bʌt/bət; ˈfɛɹ.i; ˈfɛɹ.i; gɑt; maɪ/mʌ; mæd; ˈfɑː.ðɚ; sɪt; joʊɹ/jɚ are my pronunciations. Some notes: pronunciations that have a second form after them show the unstressed form. The schwa in mʌ is actually a different vowel (midway between a, e, and schwa) which I don't know how to write in IPA. I'm not so sure about the ɚ, but it's pretty close (maybe more rhotic?). Oh, and I do differentiate the vowel of home from the vowel of your, but I don't know how to write the latter (and I don't think it's ɔ, if you're wondering). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:27, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but everyone is interested in Latin. It is a proven fact that every person in this planet with more than 1336 neurons likes the awesome language that’s Latin ^{[citation needed]}. Oh well, I give up. Can’t say I’m familiar with American dialectology anyway.— Ungoliant ^(Falai) 04:11, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

All that for nothing? I put a lot of work into inputting all those IPA characters ^{[reference needed]}. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:16, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

The template to add nominations for FWOTD

Would it be easier if the template assumed that the entry needed citations and pronunciation, and that you had to specify 1 to say "yes, this entry does have citations"? That way, people unfamiliar with templates would be able to leave out those parameters altogether. —CodeCat 16:52, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it would. Feel free to change it, as long as you do these two things as well: fix WT:FW to reflect your changes (in the 2012 section, of course), and update the documentation, which really needs some work. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

What's with the new distinction between pronunciations that need checking and those that need adding? Can't we assume that they're right (and check them if they seem off)? Also, you've made the template fail on the doc page and at FW, in case you didn't notice. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:26, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Something can either be there, or not/badly, or it still needs to be checked (by you or someone else) whether it is there or not. The idea behind this is that whoever nominates entries doesn't have to be aware of all those details. If you don't think that is a useful distinction I can remove it again. —CodeCat 17:53, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

We'll be checking entries anyway. Also, the gram= parameter doesn't seem to be useful to me, because (again) we're obviously not going to have entries in French without gender, or in Latin without inflection. Many languages (like Rapa Nui) almost never have any of these things, and there will no reason to "check". Some, like Mbabaram, may be hard to find info on, and those may be showcased without necessary grammatical information simply because we don't have access to it.
Anyway, you can talk to Ungoliant if you disagree with me, and then he gets the final word. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:58, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

But what about languages where you are not sure if there is grammar information missing? For example, would you know to check a Gothic entry for a conjugation table? —CodeCat 18:12, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I would check. I've brought up a similar issue for another nominee, at Talk:oilam. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:17, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

So I should remove the grammar check and the 'needs to be checked' status? —CodeCat 18:58, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Please do. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:00, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

In regard to religious comment.

I put that there because I am a Catholic who uses the Hebrew text (and, in the case of the New Testament, a Hebrew translation) for my holy texts. Tharthan (talk) 19:47, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

lento

I removed the declension of "lento" as it was in the Spanish section. But, I don't think it should be in the Finnish section either, at least not in the adverb section, because as an adverb it is never inflected. In rare occasions, "lento" might be used as a noun to denote a section of a piece of music which is played slowly. I have seen some similar music terms used that way, at least forte and allegro, but never lento. Of course my experience alone does not prove a thing, and I tried to find usage in Google but couldn't find any. Therefore I think that adding a noun section for music term lento would require attestation. --Hekaheka (talk) 18:59, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

OK. I was just trusting Jyril's judgment, but I don't know much about Finnish grammar. It sounds reasonable to me to leave it out until a cited noun sense is added. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

pes

Um, so by this edit, I assume you mean that Tok Pisin only uses pes as anatomical jargon. So what is the "everyday" word for "face" then in Tok Pisin? --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:24, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

No, I've just been doing that because some other editor started it. If you disagree with that style of context labeling, I would be much indebted to you if you removed it from every member of Category:tpi:Anatomy and replaced it with a link to the category at the bottom of the language section. The same goes for most of the categories in Category:tpi:All topics. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:52, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Context is not for the purpose of categorization; it's for the purpose of marking restrictions on usage. If there are many such entries, this might be better handled by a bot. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:30, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

rollback

Hi, you rollbacked my edit in the article "grann". The translation of the Swedish example sentence "se vad vår gran är grann, det är det grannaste granen i stan" was "see how fine our Christmas tree is, it's the finest tree in town" where I changed the expression "the finest tree" to "the finest spruce" because the meaning of "granen" is "the spruce" (a tree species) while "the finest tree" (any tree plant not defined by species) would be translated "det grannaste trädet" in Swedish. Why to rollback? By the way, I see, there is something to be fixed in the original Swedish sentence, also, but I'll leave that for the next time :) --193.167.207.18 09:55, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't speak Swedish. We get a lot of people subtly changing our example sentences for some strange or promotional reason of their own, and it seemed suspicious. I will rollback my rollback :) By the way, if you register an account, this sort of thing is less likely to happen (for better or for worse, anonymous contributions are looked at more closely). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Bashkir requests

Hey MK, User:Borovi4ok has some questions about making templates for Bashkir. Can you help? They're also asking about generating English WT pages based on other language pages. I think there's a bot that does that for Chinese but I don't know anything about it. --BB12 (talk) 09:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll be glad to help with templates. I'm not sure what you mean with that second part. (By the way, I was messaging with a friend and I managed to have a really basic conversation in Chinese, with Wiktionary's help. I still got some word order stuff wrong, but I am getting somewhere.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:01, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Glad to hear that's working out. While I'm waiting for the next Pimsleur Italian CDs, I'm redoing the current ones, which turns out to be a good idea. I think I need to do each set twice, partly because I'm in the car when I'm doing them and partly due to cranial atrophy! --BB12 (talk) 19:19, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, can you explain why 的 in a statement like 我们敏的人 ("our smart person") belongs in that placement? Or am I totally getting it wrong? (My internal grammar suggests that de ought to precede min3, if I have that all correct.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:38, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know any Mandarin, but that's used for possession. I would read it as "person of smart" or "smart's person" inside my head as an easy way to gloss it. You probably know all that. As to not being placed after "we," I did a search on 我们母親 and got a lot of hits, so it may be that pronoun-type words don't take 的. --BB12 (talk) 23:23, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

But...but... you have cmn-1! (And please use simp., trad. is evil IMO.) Pronouns do take 的, but it looks like particle-repitition is cut down on in general and I think that adjectival use is more important than contextual possession. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:31, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

LOL. Did I put that there? Well that's because I'm not zero. My 漢字 are actually a mix. I don't know Chinese well enough to do input with any speed, so in the string above, I copied the first two and typed 母親 in Japanese. I highly recommend learning both. Taiwan hasn't switched, it's not clear what will happen in Hong Kong, Korea uses the traditional and Japanese uses simplified that are not as simplified as Mainland Chinese. Your analysis seems reasonable and this is something that will become obvious probably fairly quickly. Just for reference, 我的母親 gets twice as many hits without 的 as with, but both are still in the millions, so it may be a semi-optional thing (influenced as you say by subsequent adjective use and other factors). --BB12 (talk) 00:41, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Then put 0.5 or something. I input Chinese using 拼音 (I don't get 仓颉 at all, and I don't know stroke order). Anyway, Taiwan is stupid and will eventually realize that simplified/Hanyu Pinyin is the way of the future, not traditional/Wade-Giles/bopomofo (regardless of old-style 国民党 anti-communist rhetoric). 한국 will back away from 한자 as they have been for decades. Japanese kanji already match up with simplified characters much more often than they don't, and in any case it's of limited use until I learn hiragana (and katakana too, for that matter). So I hope you aren't offended if I don't want to pursue traditional (well, right now). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:07, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Inputting with pinyin is fine, but I don't know the pronunciation in Chinese. I'm not sure why you would say Taiwan is stupid, but given the move toward computerization in phones and everything else, it seems likely Taiwan will never worry about converting. Why should they when it takes no more time to type in either system? I seriously doubt that Korea will give up their hanja. They are too important for homophones. And it is not the case that Japanese characters line up with simplified characters more often than they do not. --BB12 (talk) 02:56, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I think that Taiwan is stupid because they are resistant to the changes in the written standard of their language. The mainland population is so comparatively massive that to do so is unlikely to be a good plan in a long-term sense. Linguistic divergence would have economic repercussions. I was talking to some young Koreans who had a large chest-of-drawers, with a hanja on each drawer. I asked if they could read them. None of them could read them all; only one of them felt sure that he could read most of them correctly. There were a few people doing hanja calligraphy on the street and in the subway, but they were all over the age of 50. I will trust you on the Japanese. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:31, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, you can say the UK is stupid as well for being resistant to the changes the Americans made to their language. (It is true that they now accept US spelling in schools, but that is very recent.) Also, linguistic divergence will happen no matter what they do in Taiwan. Your Korean example doesn't change my opinion one bit. My favorite example is a Korean document I saw with 常温 and 上温. The first means steady temperature, the second rising temperature, but they are pronounced identically in Korean (and Japanese). Also, there are lots of words English speakers cannot pronounce; that does not mean those words are on their way out. To be clear: I'm not saying that hanja are suddenly going to be used everywhere, but I do not believe they are going to disappear, either. They occupy a minor, but important part of Korean, and while that status may shift, I don't think character use will go away. --BB12 (talk) 05:39, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Er, the UK isn't anywhere near resistant. The national authority for British chemistry decided that it ought to be (deprecated template usage) sulfur, not (deprecated template usage) sulphur. Oxford now promotes (deprecated template usage) -ize over (deprecated template usage) -ise. I see a national giving-in (Bill Bryson has talked about this, as has Mario Pei if I remember correctly). Why won't the same thing occur in Taiwan, where Standard Mandarin (fa'a 北京, to be exact) is taught across the country and indigenous languages are dying out at worrying rates? I'm not saying that hanja will miraculously disappear, but I am saying that they will become more correlated with education level and thus less important to Korean as a language. Korean is creating more homophones as vowel length disappears, but that doesn't seem to be a problem (and languages like Hawaiian and Japanese seem to survive with even more ridiculous undistinguished homophones that rely on context, respect level, and standard expressions). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:52, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

And it took the UK a long time to get there. That was a lot of "resistance." Of course, the changes originated outside of the home of English in the US. My understanding is that "Standard Mandarin" already differs between Taiwan and the Mainland, not surprising given that a couple of generations have now passed. But trying to change all those textbooks and force all those teachers to change is a mammoth undertaking, something best done under a dictatorship or when there is a huge social reason to do so (such as the adoption of hangul during the Japanese colonization). And yet another reason to _not_ change: Keeping the traditional characters differentiates Taiwan from its Communist neighbor (who still claims sovereignty over Taiwan), giving them a source of pride for being different and, I suspect, for maintaining characters in what can be labelled their pure form. Since the widespread adoption of hangul, my understanding is that hanja have always played a minor part, but as the technical words I cited show, it is extremely difficult to get rid of them when they carry important semantic meaning. Additionally, hanja are a sign of education, a distinguishing mark that makes it difficult to eradicate them. --BB12 (talk) 06:04, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Hard to say if it's really a long time; American world economic dominance is really only about 60 years old. Will Taiwanese pride preside over the benefits of switching? Quite possibly, although I would be surprised not to see any relent. I don't think the Taiwanese care about purity, though, if the past and present popularity of POJ and bopomofo are anything to go by (romanization and bastardized characters). Finally, French and Latin were the old standards of education (not that old; my mother was taught them as required classes). Parlez vous français? Loquine latine potes? I don't think so. (BTW, thanks for moving the thread over to the left!) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:24, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Society always defies predictions, but as long as Mainland China remains communist, I doubt that Taiwan will change. A change like this requires tremendous pressure. (The UK educational system buckled because the kids read American books.) Taiwan is in a geopolitically precarious position, and pride is important. Regardless of the bopomofo, they are the standard-bearers of two millennia of Chinese writing. And since they have computers and smartphones, the incentive to change is not great. --BB12 (talk) 06:33, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

So American books can do it, but mainland media can't? Are movies subbed in traditional as well as simplified? I find that hard to believe. I think they're using to computers and smartphones to check the premier sources of information in Chinese on the web, like 摆渡 (hope I spelled that right, I'm trying for 'Baidu'), which are written in simplified. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:43, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

As long as Taiwan and China are ideological opponents, I don't think mainland media can. I don't know the situation with subtitles, but if the movie is in Mandarin, there is no need for them. In any case, I think my overall point is that it's not stupidity, but complex sociolinguistic factors (including inertia) that are behind the continued split. --BB12 (talk) 07:11, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

But most successful media worldwide is from the US, Japan, or Europe, and I'm guessing the companies try to reduce costs by only producing one Chinese sub. (Or maybe they dub them. The dubbed anime in Thailand was really awful, but that appeared to be all they have.) How about this: I'll concede that it's due to a complex mix of sociolinguistic factors that look like stupidity and reflect short-term thinking, pride, and inertia. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:45, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I was thinking media from Hong Kong and China. I'm sure there is a mix, where some gets just one set of subtitles, and others get two. There's no doubt that you have to learn both; My information is old, but when I last heard, they continued to teach the traditional forms in Mainland China.

Well, this thread seems to have come to a satisfactory close. お休みなさい. — This unsigned comment was added by BenjaminBarrett12 (talk • contribs).

Ah, another pointless, fascinating argument about language! Noctem bonam habe quoque. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 09:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Ordering coffee in Mandarin: [12]. --BB12 (talk) 20:21, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't like coffee — but a study tool is a study tool! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:23, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Latin pronunciation

Hello. I have the following question: is there a standard regarding IPA-transcription of Latin words? In my edits here I usually use as a guide the Wikipedia article which bases its IPA map of Latin vowels on Vox Latina. I have come across several inconsistencies among Wikt. entries: confer: cuius, huius. So are we to use ʊ or u (in cui and hui)?, and j, ɪj or jj (in cuius and huius)? --Omnipaedista (talk) 19:20, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

In hoc studio pronuntiationis latinae, non expertus sum, propter magistrum meum qui dictione pseudoclassicali me instruxit. Si me rogare vis, optio optima in hoc casu /u/ et /j/ esse videtur, respective. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:19, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Many instances of /ʊ/ that you find in Latin pronunciations are relics from when I started editing here. They should be corrected to /u/. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:30, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

bensin

Hi Metaknowledge, do you have a specific reason to assume that Tok Pisin borrowed bensin from Dutch benzine, but not from Benzin? --129.125.102.126 21:30, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but it's uncertain. U.MI 1979 says that it's from German (deprecated template usage) Benzin, but Crowley 1990 says that the German etymology isn't necessarily correct. I am suspicious of U.MI, which was not written by Tok Pisin experts as far as I know. Crowley, however, cites Clark 1987, who notes that because of Pijin and Bislama cognates, such a word would have to be pre-c. 1885. The Germans colonized New Guinea in 1884; most Germans who came before that were on Dutch trading vessels, presumably speaking Dutch to their shipmates. So I'll put the two as alternatives in the etymology. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:39, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

But then, how are you sure it isn't Low German/Low Saxon/Platt (from e.g. Hanover, or the eastern Netherlands)? Germany (as a unified country) didn't exist until 1870. In general, why would one assume that an unknown western Germanic language would have to be Hollands, High German or English? It's somewhat anachronistic, IMHO. --129.125.102.126 00:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I can't be sure. Out of the possible languages, I see this as the most likely. If you want to hunt down better scholarly opinions, or to write a more explanatory etymology, I will be appreciative. Muhlhauser, who's usually a good source, doesn't seem to say anything on the subject, so it won't be easy. As it is, Tok Pisin etymologies are often on the edge of being lost to time. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:19, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Low German would actually make more sense than High German. Most Dutch sailors came from the coast, because they lived close to it. Presumably the same applied to the Germans. And of course there is the Hanseatic league... —CodeCat 01:30, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Wrong time frame. The last executive meeting of the Hansa was in 1669. Anyway, Low German is likely enough, but I don't know enough about the linguistic breakdown of 19th-c. German principalities to feel more sure, and sources on Tok Pisin don't distinguish. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:37, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I know... I just thought that it was a good example of the Low Germans being seafarers and traders in the past. They had the experience. :) —CodeCat 10:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Low German 1: Remember that defunct trading league we established that collapsed hundreds of years ago and that failed to protect us in every Swedish invasion? Low German 2: Ummm... Low German 1: So let's use our forgotten naval abilities to help some random Dutch joint-stock companies grow rich and influence an obscure creole halfway around the world! Low German 2: Ummm... Sure. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:50, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

You should add that to WT:BJAODN :P —CodeCat 15:21, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

The demise of a trading league doesn't mean that its former member cities aren't harbours anymore. See e.g. w:de:Johan Cesar VI. Godeffroy#Ausweitung des Handels "Der Blick der Seehandels-Gesellschaft fiel beim aufkommenden Welthandel auf die Südsee. Erste Stationen wurden auf Tuamotu, Tahiti und Samoa eingerichtet. Auf Samoas Hauptinsel Upolu wurden 1865 große Gebiete gekauft und erste eigene Plantagen eingerichtet, um in den beginnenden Koprahandel einzusteigen. Godeffroy organisierte Expeditionen ins Landesinnere, bei denen Ureinwohner verschleppt wurden, um diese auf den Plantagen als Zwangsarbeiter einzusetzen. Es erfolgte eine Ausweitung des Interessengebietes auf andere Gebiete in Ozeanien, Mikronesien und Melanesien. Stationen entstanden auf den Karolinen (Yap), den Tonga-Inseln, Fotuna, Uvea und den Neuen Hebriden. Godeffroy beauftragte den aus Wilster stammenden Hamburger Kapitän Alfred Tetens in den 1860er Jahren mit einer Handels-Expedition und stellte ihm dafür das Schiff „VESTA“ zur Verfügung. 1869 wurde der erste permanente Sitz des Hamburger Handelshauses Godeffroy unter Leitung von Alfred Tetens auf Yap errichtet. 1873 wurden dann die Marshallinseln mit eingebunden, bis 1875 auch das Bismarck-Archipel und Neupommern.", which makes objections that the word entered Polynesian creoles "pre-c. 1885" and your "most Germans who came before that were on Dutch trading vessels" somewhat exaggerated. --129.125.102.126 23:57, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Basically, there's a lack of evidence, so I wrote a suitably vague etymology. Also, you seem not to know much about Tok Pisin; it's not a Polynesian creole, and none of those records you have copy-pasted here mention any location in New Guinea from what I can tell from a brief read of it. I don't think my claims are exaggerated. The former claim is backed by scholarly research cited above, and the latter claim has not been refuted. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:36, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

On Polynesian vs. Melanesian: you're right.

Excluding Low German as a possible source for bensin seems somewhat premature when German and Dutch are considered possible sources: Low German isn't a part of German; like Dutch, it mostly didn't take part in the High German consonant shift (only 'th' → 'd').

w:de:Neupommern (w:en:New Britain) and the other islands of the w:de:Bismarck-Archipel (w:en:Bismarck Archipelago) are part of Papua New Guinea and close enough to the main island to not need Dutch ships. --129.125.102.126 03:50, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Again, I won't argue, because I don't have conclusive evidence, linguistic or historical. If you want to add Low German as another possibility, I don't have a problem with it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:03, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Could you explain why you are editing without arguments? If you don't have arguments, why do revert? --129.125.102.126 20:44, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Because your edit was undoing an edit by User:-sche, whom I trust, because you made a strange nationalistic comment in your edit summary, and because you made the etymology more narrow when we don't have evidence for that. I would advise that you bring it up to -sche (just please link back to this discussion). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:42, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Bot test edits

It seems WT:BOT say a maximum of 100 edits, though that part of the page isn't protected, so it could be modified if we wanted to, for some reason. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

That's way too much. Can we agree on a number between 10 and 50? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:11, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Certainly for interwiki bots it's too many as the only have one function, bots which have many functions then again I think 50 is enough. I would just change it as since the page isn't protected, any editor can undo it if they choose to. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:50, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/2012-08/Extinct Languages - Criteria for Inclusion

I'm confused by your position, on WT:RFV#Haifa you say I'd be ridiculous to allow mentions in the language other than the one being cited, but you've voted support on Wiktionary:Votes/2012-08/Extinct Languages - Criteria for Inclusion. Have you simply changed your mind? Or is it one of those things where if it's ridiculous but legal you can still do it regardless of how ridiculous it is. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:49, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm confused by your confusion. I see my position in the two discussions to be pretty similar. I gave any example of the kind of citation I would accept for such word in Tatar, and that example was very similar to many of the citations that Roman literature provides us for Dacian and Vandalic. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:41, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Talk:roundrect

I've amassed a list of words in my time away, and the compulsion to add them is too strong for me to resist. :) If you want to reach me, it's probably best to do so on my talk page, as I might easily miss a message for me if it's posted to an entry's talk page. If it's possible, you could undelete my talk page history (preferably to the last version before my three-paragraph spiel >_<), or otherwise just re-create the talk page the next time you or someone else wants to leave me a message.

I'm accustomed to leaving edit summaries, however brief, as a matter of good wiki practice. I certainly won't mind saving myself a few keystrokes from now on, but I'm a little curious about why it's preferable to leave the edit summary blank when creating new entries here. Astral (talk) 04:51, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I was going to use your talkpage, but then I thought that it would be rude to recreate it. I'll undelete it as you suggest.
The software automatically produces a more useful edit summary, as I tried to explain. Create a page without writing an edit summary, and the look at the history, and you'll see what I mean. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:58, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

By the way, I hadn't noticed that jeremiad before. It's an engrossing and highly important topic, but I get the feeling that you might not want to talk about it :) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:07, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

The talk page restoration looks good. Thanks! And yes, there's still some things about the way this site operates that I'd like to see change, but it's probably best to let my grievances related to the interpersonal hiccups I've experienced go, as pursuing them won't solve anything. Astral (talk) 09:09, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

If there's anything specific, I can help. I proposed a vote with newbie-ism in mind, and it's gotten wide support (and the change is effective, as you will notice from reading this page). So a good vote in that vein would pass, if you have ideas. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:32, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

cazh

The term is not widely found in published text as it is highly colloquial, but it is explicitly cited in Victor and Dalzell's Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Routledge, 2008) as going back to the early 1980s and it has plenty of Google hits up to the present day. Please revert the deletion of this page, and I would ask that in future you please refrain from deleting pages so rapidly; you deleted it even before I had finished my own edit to include the published sources for the word. Unilateral and hasty deletions such as this are not conducive to encouraging new and inexperienced editors. Thefamouseccles (talk) 05:16, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I apologize if you found the deletion rude. Please see WT:ATTEST. We require words in English to have at least 3 durably recorded uses. Dictionaries are mentions, not uses, and Google hits are not durable (although Google Books and Google Groups are). Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:21, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

No worries. Well, since you seem to have admin privileges, would you restore the page if I can offer three book citations? I have them available but as a mere newbie I don't know how a deleted page gets revived from the ether. Cheers. Thefamouseccles (talk) 05:24, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure. First add your three book citations to Citations:cazh. Follow the formatting guidelines at WT:". If they look valid, I'll undelete it. Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:26, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Not a problem! The citations are now done. Thanks for being understanding, and my apologies if I seemed curt in my turn. I actually abandoned Wikipedia after some years of editing because of clashes over anal-retentive reversions so it's nice to come across someone who's willing to explain things. Cheers. Thefamouseccles (talk) 05:49, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! I undeleted the entry and formatted it (please see my changes). BTW, I'm trying to get better at being patient. Feel free to ask questions, and I'll do my best. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:57, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

revert of "whole cloth" changes

This change was intentional. You seem to have reverted my change semi-automatically (by bot?), with no explanation, so I put it back. See also User Talk:Ruakh, who seems to operate an identical bot. Benwing (talk) 07:15, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, it seems that Ruakh has more than adequately explained our reasoning there. By the way, these aren't bot edits — they're deliberate. But if somebody undoes your edits, it's probably better to talk with them before re-adding. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 13:40, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

vandal whacking stick

I hereby award you this vandal whacking stick, so you won't wear out your wrist on your recent changes patrols.

Thank you! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:32, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

About:Egyptian

I have begun an about page for Ancient Egyptian, which can be found here: Wiktionary:About Egyptian. I invite/encourage/need comments and criticism. Furius (talk) 02:39, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Obviously, it still needs work, but what you've written and compiled is excellent. I do quibble with your transliteration system of preference. Why are we using a messy mix of systems? Either we go all-out and use a good system like European (which is what Allen uses), or commit to a more input-friendly system like Budge. You also need to give examples from existing entries on which templates to use and how to use them, about general entry structure, more about the fact that we have transliteration entries and entries in original script (Unicode). Mostly, what I see looks good, and I laud your efforts! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:28, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah! I didn't have your talk page added to my watchlist and I completely missed this! So sorry! As regards your points - I've been using Hoch and Allen so it is possible (probable) that I've got confused, but I thought I had taken the transliteration system from Allen (Oh, wait, I used z for the doorbolt unilateral. You're right - I should take that out). I've been creating entries to see how templates end up working in practice, I think I'm about ready to add more explanation to the About page on those points. As for the transliteration vs unicode business - for that I really wish that I'd seen this a month ago, because I only really noticed them yesterday. I think that transliteration and original script entries are incompatible. And perhaps I'm biased because I've been adding the transliteration entries for the past month, but I think that the unicode entries are the less useful for a number of reasons:

1. 1. They display only for the very few people who have an ancient Egyptian font installed
   2. Their lines are so thin that they are difficult to read (especially when they are hyperlink blue),
   3. They are extremely difficult for someone who is searching for a word to enter,
   4. They can't be stacked like real hieroglyphs, with the result that they look nothing like the actual hieroglyphic words that they are supposed to more accurately represent.

It is going to be a problem, because User:HeliosX is currently adding entries in unicode - they aren't just leftovers as I'd initially thought. Eventually we're going to run up against one another (in the politist way possible, I'm sure, because he/she seems like an exceptionally nice fellow/fellowess), or (worse) we'll end up creating two parallel Egyptian systems. I have now alerted him to the existence of the About page, and asked for his feedback. Furius (talk) 10:58, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Chinese self-study

Hi,

I'm learning Chinese on my own, although I was also enrolled in formal and conversational classes. I've got HSK Basic with a good score and Certificate IV (Australia) in Mandarin. I have added my comments on Tooironic's page. There are many great books for beginners. I'm also teaching my son with a series of Chinese books for children (I don't have a title ready). All depends on your level, ability and interests. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:40, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! The only reason that I didn't ask you is that I can clearly see that you're much better at language learning than I am :) If you can provide websites, that would be the best, but book recommendations are welcome as well! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:47, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think I have great talents in languages just strong and ongoing interest. I have been learning Chinese for many years and would have been fluent if I were consistent in my studies. I get distracted by learning or dabbling other languages I have started Japanese before I started Chinese. Will send your resources when I get hold of them. Also, recommend to join www.chinese-forums.com for more questions regarding Chinese. They answer pretty quickly and the forum itself is full of resources too - podcasts, movie/drama transcripts, textbooks/ website or reading recommendations, etc. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:01, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

<start of text moved from User talk:Tooironic#Starting with Chinese>

I possess Integrated Chinese but New Practical Chinese Reader (very similar in approach, structure, etc.) is much better. This was voted on www.chinese-forums.com. The latter is used in Universities more often. I have stopped enjoying it (that much) after volume 4 but at this level you can use any other textbook. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:49, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Self-study is possible, of course. Graded Chinese readers is a good start after finishing some decent textbooks. "New Practical Chinese Reader" - (3 volumes, at least, with audio). From Graded readers, I recommend "Chinese Breeze" and "Graded Chinese Readers". They come with pinyin and audio making it easier for complete beginners. You need to have some vocabulary and grammar. 100 characters is too few. You need about 800-1000 to start reading Graded Readers. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:34, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

<end of moved text>

I am forcing all my Chinese friends to help me with my pronunciation, but I still am unable to hold a basic conversation at requisite speed. Do you think that any textbook would be sufficient for the most basic level (Int. Chin. is very available, whereas I would have to buy any of the others)? I will definitely join chinese-forums. Thanks for the tip. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:33, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Int. Chinese would also do, if you study thoroughly. I did a lot of "shadowing" - reading out loud each sentence after the speaker, so that I gained some confidence in saying the words/phrases I already knew. In order to learn to speak you have to start speaking. Don't worry about mistakes. It can be frustrating if your Chinese friends switch to English. It won't happen if you continue your conversation in Chinese and show that you can speak it. Learning Chinese is different form other languages, you can't learn it on the fly, just by getting a bit of exposure. Even reading simple stories requires efforts in finding how to read those characters. I have been using pinyinised books (hanzi + pinyin) for a long time before moving on to character stories but I uses electronic look up/mouse over dictionaries, which make looking up process much faster. Don't use "just pinyin" material. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:29, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I have to get more vocab down first, though. My friends also speak so fast that I have trouble processing what they say when they talk in Chinese. I'll start in with the textbook, and try to get in a fair amount per week. I have a lot of work, but I think this is a worthy diversion. So far, I find the character database plus common Mandain words that we have to be sufficient; do you think I will need to use a better dictionary? Also, where do you find pinyinised books? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:39, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Serious language learners always buy book dictionaries. I've got "Oxford Chinese Dictionary" among others. Electronically, I also use w:Wenlin, NJStar Chinese Word Processor would do if you can't afford or get a crack of Wenlin. [13] is my favourite but not the only online dictionary. [www.perapera.org peraperakun] is a must-have Firefox plug-in (with mouse-over dictionary). Pinyinised books are those I have already recommended - "Chinese Breeze", "Graded Chinese Reader" but there are many others. These two are particularly good because they come with audio. The audio quality is excellent, slow and clear. Read my review of 汉语分级阅读1 (Graded Chinese Reader 1) - I got the first volume as a promotion gift and have now read three volumes. "Chinese Breeze" is easier, so start with this, not graded! [14] is a good website to order Chinese textbooks. They also ran the promotion on Chinese-forums. Me and Tooironic are both part of that forum. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:52, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

That review is 4 years old, I wrote it when I only finished the first two stories of volume one. "Chinese Breeze" has levels, so start with level 1 but not before you finish your textbook! I recently read its "The Third Eye" (第三只眼睛), level 3 as a refresher. Tooironic will probably laugh that I still read such simple books :) I'm currently reading Harry Potter in Japanese and Chinese. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:58, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, nciku looks very good. They also have a lot of example sentences (I like those, because they help me internalize the structure and make my own sentences). I will look into the other recommendations, but some of them will be more useful further down the line, I think. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I highly recommend Pimsleur CDs. Of all the classes and books I've taken, this is by far the best. [15]. Libraries often carry them and they have a rental program. --BB12 (talk) 03:42, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, yes, I've tried Pimsleur, but it felt like I had no control over my learning process, and there were also some other annoyances (on the l~r continuum, for example, they chose speakers that seemed to have opposite preferences). I do think that Pimsleur has merits, but I just don't see it as being good for long-term gain with character recognition. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:47, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Pimsleur can be good in gaining confidence in pronunciation and some really common phrases. Its vocabulary is extremely low, though. You spend weeks just to learn a few hundred words but some people just need this confidence booster. It doesn't teach you writing at all. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:29, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Ach, chinese-forums won't let me register! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:49, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I have contacted someone about you. What error message did you get? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:20, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I've got a response. The main admin - Roddy is on leave and he doesn't want to be overwhelmed with new registrations when he gets back. The other admin - Imron kindly agreed to help. Please email me your preferred login name and your email address, I'll pass it on and he will create an account for you manually! --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:40, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

It's good to know what people dislike about Pimsleur, thank you! For the vocab, I don't care because I'm more interested in the grammar and I supplement with other lessons. --BB12 (talk) 04:55, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think you can learn much grammar from Pimsleur. Just very basics, to be able to link some words. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:31, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

BTW, does your objection to Pimsleur apply to any CD program? --BB12 (talk) 18:08, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

No. I see a lot of benefits of CD programs, especially for listening comprehension and practising pronunciation. I always use textbooks with CD's. They may be hard to use without prior familiarisation with texts, though. I am 100% negative about Pimsleur either. Some people never find time to sit down and read textbooks but they are happy to listen when they drive or catch train. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:31, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Request and question

Would you mind taking a look at this discussion if you've got an opportunity? It's kind of reached an impasse, and I think a third perspective might help move it in a constructive direction.

I've also got a question. When I created the entry linea nigra, I added the Icelandic equivalent sorturák to its translations table although I don't know Icelandic, as the sorturák entry turned up in the search results when I checked to see if there was already an entry for linea nigra, and since it was created by an admin (User:BiT) who's an Icelandic native speaker, so it seemed reliable. Is it okay to do this? Astral (talk) 07:12, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the discussion mentioned above, I'm currently thinking it might be a misunderstanding caused by misreading each other's comments. So mediation/additional opinions may not be necessary. Thanks. :) Astral (talk) 10:56, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, I disapprove of EP's style of delivering his comments, but I think he's essentially right. I didn't look too closely into it, though, after you said mediation was unneeded. I'm not a very good person to choose as mediator, either :)
It's definitely OK to add translations when you are fully certain that the information is wholly correct and that you know the language's conventions (i.e., Latin translations need to have gender where appropriate, be in specific lemma forms, and display macra but not have them in the actual link). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:55, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Regarding EP, I gave the benefit of the doubt that I had completely misread his comments, and that he had done the same with mine because I hadn't laid out my argument clearly. But in his last post, made after I pointed out that we might both be badly misinterpreting each other's words, he conflated two different things I'd said, which finally lead me to conclude that the issue may not simply be due to misinterpretation on both sides, but also one party's apparent willful disinclination toward fully absorbing what has actually been said. And being told that I "don't seem foggiest notion of what science is" when I was trying to point out that cryptozoology is a pseudoscience was just too much.

I've decided it's not worth pursuing. EP is a bureaucrat. That, to me, indicates that Wiktionary's civility deficit extends all the way to the top. That isn't something I can deal with right now. Another Wikibreak is probably the only solution.

Thanks for clearing up my question regarding translations. :) Astral (talk) 05:35, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

EP is a 'crat, but that's more a reflection of how much he's done here than of his civility. There's not much of a power structure here, if you haven't noticed. It's also not impenetrable, and it's not a cabal (I hope). Do remember that I only joined Wiktionary this year. Take a look at my archives. EP reprimanded me back then in a rather newbie-unfriendly way (or at least I didn't take it very well at the time), but I somehow ended up as a veteran (member of the mostly nonexistent clique, you might say). Wiktionarians cycle through, and newbies are the life of the project just as much as old-timers keep it running. Anyway, that's my take on it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:46, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Say, Astral, glad to see you're back! Did you see Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2012-08/Citations_from_WebCite? It's far from a certain thing, but I hope you'll vote! BTW, I totally empathize with you. --BB12 (talk) 05:53, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

@Meta - There's no question the oldbies are knowledgeable, dedicated, and invaluable to the project. But, at the same time, they can't realistically maintain everything on their own. If they're unnecessarily harsh in their approach to dealing with newbies/midbies/everyone in general, they're going to drive those users away, and ultimately just leave themselves with even more tasks to juggle. One or two isolated incidents of incivility can be put down to someone having an off day, but when there's multiple instances with different users, I think it's indicative of a greater issue with community's general mindset. Some users, who've been working together long enough to come to know each other, may develop enough of a rapport to get along fine when they communicate very frankly. But the blunt approach doesn't work with everyone — quite the opposite, in fact — and I really wish certain Wiktionarians could learn that it's ultimately to the project's benefit to moderate their approach sometimes.

@BB12 - Thanks. :) And yes, that proposal looks like a good idea, so it's definitely got my vote. :)

We've had users who were undeniably offensive in general, and we continue to have users that hate each others' guts with a vengeance nowhere near "rapport". I don't have any clue how that continues to work, but it does. I don't think our general mindset is thus, however. AFAIK, EP is a teacher, and this is around the first week of school, which is always a stressful time. I'm not being an apologist, but I do think that could very well be a factor. But the main problem is that I can't force somebody to be polite. I can do a little, like forcing them to take special effort to avoid having a more polite rollback summary, for example (that's a current vote), but there's still nothing stopping them from being rude to newbies. Is a culture as moveable as it is tangible? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 13:30, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Samsung

Hi,

Which part of the etymology you didn't like? The "powerful eternity" bit? Number 3 and star have additional meanings in East Asia. The info is confirmed by Wikipedia. I have removed 그룹 (geurup) (group) from the etymology. alt doesn't work on {{l}}. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:40, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

My mistake with alt=. No, it's just that I can't find "삼성" meaning just the Buddha (usually it appears to be a triad). The company is officially called 삼성그룹, but I don't know how much that carries over into real Korean texts. (By the way, I got a textbook to keep — Hànyǔ Book 1. It should be sufficient as beginner material, I think.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:49, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

You can see SOME meanings of 삼성 (samseong) in the entry. I have removed the "Buddha" part. IMO, the word "group" is better left out. The entry is more about the word itself, not the company as such.

Hmm, I don't know, which book it is. There are so many book with similar names! Is it "Hanyu for Beginning Students: Student Book" by Peter Chang, etc.?--Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:06, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Please, don't remove anything unless you are sure. I trust your judgment in this case much more than mine.
Yes, it is the Peter Chang one. (I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a lot of textbooks are called 汉语...) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:09, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

modifer letter vote

Personally, I wouldn't rerun the vote. Note that had it passed, honᵇˡᵉ would still be allowed if specifically attested, so if you want to prevent that, you'll have to find a wording that does so without other unintended side effects like the one my wording had which Liliana brought up. Given that the only contributor who used modifer letters in entry titles has left, and consensus (though not behind my deficient effort to codify it) is behind not using them, and it seems even "basic" things like 1ˢᵗ aren't attested on Usenet ... thinking through the wording of a new vote wouldn't be worth the bother, IMO. - -sche (discuss) 03:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

OK. Did you RFV them all, then? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:46, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

All the ones I could find. Actually, it occurs to me to see if I can download a dump of pagetitles and find any more that way.

I'd still like to persuade someone with a bot to fix all of the user's uses of ᵗʰ, etc in entries (change it to th, etc), but that's neither here nor there. - -sche (discuss) 03:49, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah, lovely technocracy. Good luck with that, and thanks. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:51, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

ilobolo

Um... why did you add it to Category:Zulu entries needing inflection? —CodeCat 12:51, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, that was a mistake. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 13:38, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

FWOTD

It looks like FWOTD is going to pass at the end of today. Are you ready to feature the first word? I don't want to miss it. :) —CodeCat 22:37, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I suggest that we add this for two weeks. A BP discussion will be necessary, since it’s not what we voted on (and also, sadly, a BP discussion for adding the correct code instead of the bugged one). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 22:52, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I was hoping for just one week, actually, but that's up for debate. In any case, we don't have a definitive list set up, but there are a bunch of 2012 noms ready to roll. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:43, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

On second thought, one week is fine. Even if we limit ourselves to at most 2 FWOTDs per language per month we still have enough for a month. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 23:53, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I think that limit is good. (I hope we can also try to limit our specialties, because there's honestly a lot of Germanic, Romance, Polynesian, etc. But I guess that that's unavoidable to a certain degree.) By the way, do you know if we can get hiero tags to behave in {{FWOTD}}? I'd like to nominate something in Egyptian (maybe mdw j3wj, "a son who cares for his father", although I'll have to create it first). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

That’s because most of the valid nominations were nominated or cited by you and I, and those are the languages we’re interested in. Once/if that request is placed on the Main Page we will hopefully be getting some Southeast Asian and Indian languages, Chinese, Slavic, Welsh, Arabic, etc.. For Egyptian terms, what about this:

? I wonder if Egyptian pronunciation is known. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 04:16, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

When I have time, I plan to go through all my dictionaries (physical and online) of obscure languages and add terms for nomination. Anyhoo, it looks like Egyptian works well. As for pronunciation, there is a standard way that Egyptologists pronounce it (you might call it the Egyptological dialect), which for this would be something like IPA^(key): [ʁ̞buː], but original pronunciation, especially of vowels, remains lost to time except for the more recent Coptic pronunciation, which is far removed. But I've only cursorily studied Egyptian, so you'd have to ask User:Furius for more. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:33, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I also tried learning some Egyptian (when I was 11 lol), but never got to the part about pronunciation. I just noticed that the hieroglyphs don’t link to the entry. I guess the solution is to have the transliteration link to it (look again). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 04:41, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Egyptian is a great language to get exposed to, because it's a good primer for understanding how languages and writing systems wholly unlike the modern European ones function, without overly complex inflection. Off topic, but related: what do you think of revising the external links in {{fwotd-nom}} so they're actually all useful? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:59, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

We should remove them for all I care. Links to website search engines will only show non-durable cites anyway. Links to Google books, groups, BibleGateway, etc. would be more useful, but I don’t think it’s worth the clutter and lag. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 05:12, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

OK. I'll do that. (Lag? Did it really affect page loading times noticeably?) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 12:32, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for bumping in but I've got the impression from the discussion that only the 2012 nominees will be eligible for FWOTD. I hope I'm wrong. --BiblbroX дискашн 16:05, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

For clarity it would probably best, yes, but of course anyone could renominate them? —CodeCat 16:31, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Pre-2012 nominations are eligible. Valid nominations are marked with instead of , which means they have at least one citation, pronunciation and, for uncommon scripts, an image of the word. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 16:43, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I've imagined that was the case right 'cause of those icons and 1s and 0s in the cite and pron params, but I just wanted to be sure. So, one doesn't have to hassle with bureaucracy of renominating the nominees in this year section, right? They're already nominated, yes? --BiblbroX дискашн 17:04, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

No, we're not planning on erecting a bureaucracy (well, a little bit, but asking you to fix up the entry isn't asking that much). It's just that pre-2012 noms tend not to meet all our requirements, so not as many of them are ready for mainpageship. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:10, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Latin requests.

Hullo. You said that you have been meaning to create terms from Vulgar Latin. Have you already seen Wiktionary:Requested_entries_(Vulgar_Latin)? Curious. Ciao. --Æ&Œ (talk) 00:09, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

No, I didn't know about that! I wish I had more time, but I will try to make some entries from there (a few look suspicious, but I'll verify with an etymological dictionary anyway). I learned Classical Latin, but the colorful and vibrant nature of the Vulgar tongue always intrigued me. Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:42, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

At Korean transliteration

You finally stressed me "please use RR." You may not precisely know but there are two valid ways of the dualist RR:

1. 1:1, hence simple, clear-cut, academic, orthographic transliteration of written Korean (cf. "my way" in WT)
2. 1:1+, hence complex, confusing, secular, orthoepic transcription of spoken Korean

You are supposed to suggest transcription (2), though you mentioned transliteration (1), to be precise. No. 2 is "1:1+, hence complex, confusing" so that I have to be embarrassed hence stressed annoyingly. So I ask you at least to answer WT:BP#What is the WT way of RR?. Sincerely --KYPark (talk) 01:47, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Tok Pisin Bible

I have Nupela Testamen na ol Sam, but not the rest of the Bible, in Tok Pisin. I got it many years ago at Wycliffe's Quest. I also have Bibles in other languages and regularly bring Spanish, English, Greek, and Hebrew to church.

The Tok Pisin version and the English version are (hopefully) translated from Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, not one from the other. Although Tok Pisin is based largely on English, in grammar and breadth of vocabulary it is quite different. That's why I think it would be better to back-translate the Tok Pisin rather than show an English translation from the Hebrew. PierreAbbat (talk) 03:14, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

The best free online version (it is faulty, but not too bad) is here. The Tok Pisin was almost certainly translated from the English, and there are various clues in the text to that effect. I do think that back-translations are better, but they are a lot more time-consuming, and they can be arguable (should i amamas be taken literally as an intransitive verb in English or be translated more loosely as a predicate adjective?). If you want to do more, many quotations from the first few chapters of Genesis, added by yours truly, can be found at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:tpi-cite-bible. I aim to work through as much of the Bible as I can before I lose interest. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:49, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

רוך

FYI, rúakh is a transliteration of the Hebrew word רוּחַ (rúakh, “wind, spirit”). No word could be spelled רוך and transliterated as rúakh. Though TBH, I've used the handle "ruakh" or "Ruakh" in various online contexts for more than a decade now (I am many, but not all, of the top Google-hits for ruakh), and I have never used the handle "רוח", so if you're looking for a term that refers to me, that term is Ruakh, and רוח is merely its etymon. (Not that I mind, if you want to refer to me as רוח, or even as רוך or whatnot, in your edit-summaries. It doesn't make a difference. But I thought you might want to know.) —Ruakh_TALK 03:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

P.S. If you particularly enjoy using non-English characters in your edit summaries, as your comment about Ƿidsiþ implies, I suppose you could refer to me by my Hebrew given name, which is רן or רַן. I was born in Israel, so although I've lived in the U.S. my whole life, רן is still more than just an etymon for me. :-)   —Ruakh_TALK 03:29, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I realized that myself, and actually edited my comment to cover the edit summary, in hopes that you would not see it. Ah well. I never seriously studied Hebrew, but I tend to recognize my horribly stupid mistakes. I actually have given edit summaries before that read @רן, although I suppose you haven't noticed. My eyesight is not exceptional (hence my using the ʻokina when I mean the apostrophe, because I don't realize it) and in edit mode, Hebrew vowels all look about the same to me, so I'll gladly stick with consonants. Oh yeah, and a Google search on "metaknowledge" turns me up multiple times on the first page, even though metaknowledge is a real concept that has academic papers written about it and gets occasional attention. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:41, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Re: "I actually have given edit summaries before that read @רן, although I suppose you haven't noticed": I had noticed them, but didn't remember that they were yours. Sorry. :-/   —Ruakh_TALK 12:11, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your welcoming ! --Fsojic (talk) 13:15, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. Really, it's nothing. Glad to have you here. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 13:45, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Template:mdash

"Used to avoid —". Why would we want to avoid that? —CodeCat 01:27, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Because it looks messy and annoys the hell out of me. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:29, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it would survive WT:RFDO though. —CodeCat 01:31, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Then nominate it, if you really care. I still think it's worth having (well, no duh, I created it). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:33, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I, too, dislike &mdash;, so I'm pleased to learn of this template. :) Since it's designed to be subst:ed, I see no harm in it and would vote to keep it at RFDO. - -sche (discuss) 00:00, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the support! It's always great to have em-dash believers — even those who (like me) lack it in their keyboards. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:02, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Why does it look messy to you? Wikitext is not HTML, but is there much point in inventing our own substitutable templates for things that W3C already invented substitutable templates for? Equinox ◑ 00:04, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Good website infrastructure doesn't show the code to casual readers (or in the case of a wiki, editors) but instead calls logically named functions that are used in a manner that does not require much, if any, prior knowledge. Obviously we've failed to make that dream a reality, but HTML in running text is such an easy thing for me to get rid of that I see no reason not to make that small step. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:08, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

(a)bantu

Hi! Did you move this word in reaction to my message to CodeCat or was it coincidence? Jcwf (talk) 03:35, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Not exactly coincidence. I noticed that you edited Proto-Bantu *-ntu, and then I realized the problem, so I moved it and created umntu before I noticed your message to CodeCat. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:37, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, I went through the category of Xhosa nouns and created two templates in analogy to the Zulu ones. There are two 'elided' pages tolofiya and bafana. I do think such forms need to be generated at some point. E.g. the plural iindlovu generates a vocative zindlovu (i.e. the z comes back that was lost in i(z)indlovu). The are a few other forms like locatives and predicatives, both positive and negative.

Another problem is how particularly class 6 nouns are treated in the xh-noun (and zu-noun ?) template. This class is sometimes a plural of a class 5 word, but often is more a collective noun like a nation, the singular then can very well be class 1 like amaXhosa and umXhosa. A third possibility is that it is a word for a quantitative word rather than a countable, e.g. amanzi= water, amandla= power. I'm not sure you can call that a 'plurale tantum'.. I don't want to mess up the template though. Jcwf (talk) 04:26, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that's part of the reason why I don't like the Bantu noun templates. I wrote {{lg-noun}} for Luganda, but Luganda is a lot simpler and the template is more manual. Anyway, thanks for your work so far, and I hope you continue! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:32, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Why other languages' entries?

I've seen many other languages' entries on the English wiktionary like ਦਰਿਆ, دریا and many more. I want to know why? We have separate wiktionaries for that languages then why they are here? If it's okay to have them, then why we have separate wiktionaries for every language; only one (wiktionary) would be better. I'm not opposing anything, just keen to the concept behind it. I've more on it but that's all for now. --TariButtar (talk) 04:45, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

What if you only spoke English, but wanted to look up a word in Punjabi, and get an English definition? Or what if it was the other way around, and you only spoke Punjabi and wanted to know the meaning of an English word with a Punjabi definition? That's why each language's Wiktionary has entries for as many languages as possible. One Wiktionary would be unmanageable, because we all speak different languages and the pages would get extremely large as the definitions themselves were translated into each language. Does that explain it? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:51, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

To say it another way: if you speak English and you're learning Punjabi, you'd go to a bookshop and buy a Punjabi-English and English-Punjabi dictionary written in English. If you're a Punjabi speaker and learning English, you'd go to a bookshop and buy an English-Punjabi and Punjabi-English dictionary written in Punjabi. And if you speak English and just want to find more about English words you'd buy an English-only dictionary, while if you speak Punjabi and want to know more about Punjabi words, you buy a Punjabi-only dictionary. —CodeCat 18:06, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Or to put it a third way, what if you want to know the meaning of వివరణ? Try looking at its entry at te:వివరణ on the Telugu Wiktionary. Can you get the meaning, pronunciation, etc., in English from te:వివరణ? Before people can understand వివరణ, we have to make an entry for it here in the English Wiktionary so that వివరణ is explained in English. —Stephen ^(Talk) 18:56, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'd know actually how to pronounce it if te.wikt at least gave some IPA. But now I'm really curious to know what it means... --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:58, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

It means explanation, description. —Stephen ^(Talk) 19:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh! Thanks a lot guys. Didn't thought from that point of view. Thanks a lot. --tari buttar (talk) 11:24, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

bezwaren

bezwaren is on the the list with words with incomplete gender. Also it is asked for a plural and diminutive~, but it is a plural word. Please change the headline in a way the plural form of a plural word isn't asked for.DrJos (talk) 21:42, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I have fixed the entry. It needed different templates. Please see it now. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:45, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Extinct language vote

The voting period is up for the extinct language vote! It looks like it passed. Would you like to close it? :) --BB12 (talk) 01:49, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks for noticing. I just remembered about my rollback edit summary vote a couple days ago, after it should have been closed. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:23, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Great. That finishes three important votes! --BB12 (talk) 05:51, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

What's next? I have an idea, but I want to hear if you've got anything first. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:55, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

LOL. I'm headed to Hawai'i in a few hours and have nothing in mind at all. My hope was to be content for at least a couple weeks. Aloha! --BB12 (talk) 08:33, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Again?!?!? What's with you and contentment? ;) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 13:42, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

And so it begins

The months of effort have paid off, and it looks so nice, doesn’t it? If we lived close to each other we could have had a celebratory drink :-) — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 00:17, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Yay! *is glad to have helped* This is a dictionary after all. I'll offer a dictionary entry! sláinte! —CodeCat 00:21, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Ah you’re certainly invited to our hypothetical celebratory drink. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 00:50, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow. It's a reality. Kind of shocking, really. If you ever feel like taking a holiday in the States, and you figure out more or less where I live based on my accent, feel free to ring me up! (I'm planning on going to Ecuador next summer, but that doesn't exactly qualify as "close", I think.)
Related: Wikipedia's article of the day, Wikiquote's quote of the day, and Wiktionary's WOTD are all sent to people on a mass mailing list — do you think we could convince them to add FWOTD? (I'm not sure who to talk to, so if you know more, do tell.) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:55, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I’m afraid where I live in Brazil is far from Ecuador, and my USA visa was cancelled (studied there for 1.5 years). We could ask Angr, he is involved in several other Wikimedia projects and might know something about it. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 01:01, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The email for the mailing list admins is dal-feedback AT wikimedia.org. Now we just need to figure out what to say. I'll write it, if you want, but do you have any specific ideas for points that should be raised? Also, do you know how we can set up RSS feeds like the ones the WOTD has? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:27, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Update: waiting for a response from the mailing list people. I still don't know how to do RSS, maybe we should ask User:Yair rand? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:16, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

WT:FW#About

LMFAO! I can’t believe we forgot to remove “This project is a test run for a foreign language word of the day. It would mimic the English Word of the Day”!

On a related note, take a look at this: WT:Foreign Word of the Day/Emergency. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 01:59, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I noticed. A little disappointing, mainly because I have no idea where that would be linked from and because the vault is only two unexciting Portuguese words. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

The point is that if we ever forget to add a FWOTD for a certain day (or, you know, die suddenly), anyone can add it in 10 seconds. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 02:05, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

If both of us suddenly die, this won't be enough to save FWOTD. If only one of us dies, we can probably keep up, just with considerably more difficulty and a depressive quality. I think a better emergency plan would be to make sure that a few users who have shown interest (like CodeCat) know how to run it. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:15, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

My recollection is that Meta told me I'm the backup if you both die, so I need to know how it runs. --BB12 (talk) 18:52, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

tb

User_talk:Metallurgist and nice coding change of the logo lol

Luci

Blocking me for no reason is bullshit and you are nothing but an abusive motherfucking cunt.71.142.72.131 01:50, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a hyphen in "motherfucking"? --BB12 (talk) 07:50, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

@"Luci": Hardly "no reason". I seem to remember that the reason I gave was "Abusing multiple accounts", which is perfectly true. Chill. For a year. @BB: I'm not sure. I think it's grammatically debatable. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:22, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi, what about writing a page for VV.AA.?

It's different from VA as well as various artists is different from various authors. Source. --Mauro Lanari (talk) 20:23, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

You need 3 independent, durably archived (in books, mostly) citations spanning more than a year. See WT:ATTEST. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:39, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

billigen

Hi, you put the template {{rfc}} on billigen; what's your problem with it? Longtrend (talk) 20:10, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Never mind. The link in the template didn't work, so I didn't see the section on WT:RFC. Longtrend (talk) 20:31, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

User:Jacecar

Thanks for the introduction and the helpful links. I'll try to make the most of them. --Jacecar (talk) 03:03, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

You're most welcome. Fortuna bona and keep editing! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:14, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Roundabout question here (My ADD mind working its own magic): I was perusing Tea Room when I came upon a discussion on a man saying we're pregnant, referring to his wife and obviously not himself. Someone mentioned that it really should belong as an alternate usage or explanation to we... so I looked that up. Talk about a complicated page. Anyway, I noticed various other languages that used the word we and I noticed that it didn't contain entries for some languages. I didn't see an entry for Russian, which uses we in Cyrillic (which I am going to need to figure out how to type in order to add/edit Russian entries). Does that mean that the Russian we, obviously spelled differently, is kept somewhere else, or should it be on the main we definition page? --Jacecar (talk) 04:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand. Do you want the entry for the Russian word meaning we? If so, you'd best look at мы. There is no Russian word that is transliterated as we, so I'm not sure what you mean. Perhaps it would help you to look at WT:ARU and WT:RU TR. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:08, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

No, you answered the question perfectly. I am just seeking to understand how Wiktionary works, and if I should add or edit something I see missing -- but in this case it isn't missing, it's just referred to differently. I'll look at WT:ARU and WT:RU TR before I try to add/edit something like that.--Jacecar (talk) 04:16, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, Wiktionary can be a little confusing at first. Just look around, skim through the useful links, and feel free to ask questions! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:24, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Hopefully, I'll figure it out before I screw something up too badly -- but I suppose that's what editors help with, in case newbies get in over their heads. I'm guessing that the Wikipedia's Be bold rule applies here too? Or should we be more conservative and discuss things first? --Jacecar (talk) 04:44, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

BOLD does apply, although you can't always assume that Wikipedia policies apply (see WT:Wiktionary for Wikipedians). I advise that you make bold edits, but if you're not sure about anything, that you drop a link to the page in question on my talkpage (or any other active editor's talkpage). --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:12, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting that every policy crosses over. Theses are related Wiki projects, but have very different goals. Encyclopedic entries are frowned upon, etc. I get it ;) Thanks again for your quick responses. --Jacecar (talk) 05:54, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

I just thought I'd let you know, because a lot of people get tripped up over it. Thank you! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Another question (and a request). Could you review (if you can find them quickly) the comments I have made in Beer parlour, Requests for deletion, etc. to see if they are appropriate? I've tried to make arguments without too much POV, but I'm not sure my statements come across that way.

Also, how would I go about cleaning up ax to grind, axe to grind, have an ax to grind, and have an axe to grind as per my comments on ax to grind talk page? I know there is an ongoing RFD concerning one of those, but I think I could clean up the whole thing and make the RFD discussion moot.--Jacecar (talk) 09:31, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

A quick review of your comments reveals naught amiss. I can't really answer the second question; you might try WT:ID. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:37, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

YAQ (Yet Another Question). I intend to work on message to clean it up, make it usable, its definitions more accurate than the current ones (which use message in its own definition). Where is a good place to work on the edit before I finish my changes and present the final product? Typically, I would think one would perform incremental edits until it was finished. But I don't know exactly how I'm going to handle/format it, how much detail I'm going to use, and where I'm going to end up. Also, I am unlikely to be able to finish it in a single session. I would like to avoid the "he made it worse" complaint, or the "he didn't do it right" complaint before I am done. 'Pedia has work-in-progress pages. We just seem to have a generic sandbox. What should I do?

Ok, now that I think about it, I'll just edit as I go, and if I make major changes, I'll document them. --Jacecar ^talk/actions 15:20, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Form-of definitions in FWOTD?

I've added the nominated word format to FWOTD: WT:Foreign Word of the Day/2012/October 23. But one of the definitions is a form-of definition. Should we include it or not, or maybe translate that definition into English? I have no idea what formoinethar means and we don't have an entry for it. —CodeCat 22:51, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

No. We only put interesting senses in the template, not every possible sense (and definitely not inflected forms). Compare what WOTD does (picking & choosing senses). But for neatness's sake, I would ask Angr to create formoinethar before this word gets featured anyway. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:54, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

By the way, the FWOTDs are getting less careful. Please remember to follow standard Wiktionary transliteration (per WT:AGRC, for example, no acutes in Ancient Greek transliterations) and link the gender to the corresponding Wikipedia article for gendered languages (see some of the early ones for an example). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:00, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Peace Corps manuals

FWIW, today I got approval of the format used for citing words from Peace Corps manuals. --BB12 (talk) 06:04, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa

Hi, my Hawaiian is quite as awful as yours and Stephen's, but this word is supposed to be Foreign Word of the Day on Oct. 19, and I think the citation is translated wrong. I think it means Kamapuaʻa went to Molokai in the reef triggerfish form (ma ke kino). Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa is one of the fish forms of the Pig-man - I checked in the Pukui-Elbert 1972 dictionary. heleāiʻa isn't in any dictionary, but wouldn't it be hele + ā + iʻa "become fish" or "go as fish"? Where did you take "the man's fish" or "very quickly"? But how to translate the whole sentence is beyond me. Those small words drive me crazy. Where is the verb, besides hiki? Whom can we ask? User:Kalathalan has disappeared. Would it be safer to find some other Word of the Day than to make fools of ourselves?--Makaokalani (talk) 13:17, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Blasted if I know, but you've obviously done more research than me. I don't have time right now to explain my translational choices, but you're quite right that we need a native speaker's attention instead of our motley attempts. I'll de-FWOTD it and contact someone (maybe at haw.wiki?), but if I don't deal with it by the 17th, please remind me (this goes for anyone watching my talkpage). Thank you so much for your admirable attention to detail! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm so sorry, I forgot about this. I think your change was the best solution we had, though. As you may have noticed, I've been essentially inactive for a little while as a result of extraordinary constraints upon my time. Please bear in mind that I can't be trusted until I can be a regular again. Sorry :( —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:13, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Template help

Hello,

could you edit this template to not to mark the verb form when it is the same as the page, if thas is even possible?

Greetings HeliosX (talk) 19:17, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Zwarte Piet, word order in the translation

I don't think the word order of the translation is wrong. The Dutch original also uses an unusual word order for artistic purposes, and I tried to preserve this in the translation. —CodeCat 19:47, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I noticed that, but I thought that it would be better to preserve unambiguous meaning rather than ambiguous artistry. Moreover, I'd rather not have people thinking that our English is so bad that we can't translate that in a natural-sounding way. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:49, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Merge

Hello,

I have just remembered I had asked a while ago that Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/seh₂wel- and Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/sóh₂wl̥ be merged. The second is better and much more complete, so a simple redirect would be enough. Could you do this ?

Regards, --Fsojic (talk) 18:00, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, AFAIK you're just as able to do this as I am. But as I know very little about PIE, I think in general User:CodeCat would be a better person to talk to about this kind of thing. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:35, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I have made a simple redirect (I hope it was not a mistake). Sorry to have disturbed you, I thought I had to do something else... CodeCat had agreed to the merge on WT:RFM. Regards, --Fsojic (talk) 15:39, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

question

Hi Metaknowledge!

could you see here.best regards---George^Animal. 15:42, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:38, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Metaknowldge

Could I nominate a Kurdish word next year (for Januar/Februar if possible) if I have nominated the word kirin?ThanksGeorge^Animal. 20:38, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes. We accept languages to have words featured at most twice a month. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:39, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Rapa Nui orthography

In translations tables, I've noticed Rapa Nui words written with apostrophes, okinas and even curly quotes and backticks. Do you think we should standardise on the apostrophe or the okina? - -sche (discuss) 19:49, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

To start with a disclaimer: I cannot really speak much Rapa Nui. But I guess I'm the best person around here for it.
There is no real standard in terms of Rapa Nui orthography; I've done my best. All entries follow those guidelines, but translations may not. The apostrophe is pretty much the most commonly used of those options, but okinas are usually not marked, and written Rapa Nui often has a lot of other irregularities (g vs ng vs ŋ etc). I guess I don't mind too much as long as it remains coherent. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:45, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I'll standardise things on the apostrophe for now. Thanks! - -sche (discuss) 00:30, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

showing spam

Why do you partially show the content that advertisers insert? Isn’t that helping them? --Æ&Œ (talk) 01:35, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

That's the default, and I'm too lazy/inept to change it. I just don't think that it helps them ernough to make it worth clearing. PS: I didn't know you were creating Yiddish entries. You would do well to look at WT:AYI, perhaps. (Although you need some basics first. Exempli gratia, the lemma form of an adjective is never masculine.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:41, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I create very few of them ever, and I do not much understand Yiddish. I believe that I found that word from the translation page of Soviet. I don’t see why anybody would care if I obey an unofficial page or not, especially since policies are worthless on Wiktionary. --Æ&Œ (talk) 01:49, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah well. I wasn't suggesting obedience to non-policy so much as exposure to handy templates for the Yiddishist (?), but evidently it makes not a difference. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:06, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

HotCat

Thanks ! I always forget to use gadgets. Regards, --Fsojic (talk) 22:41, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

The FWOTD queue is nearly empty!

It needs more words urgently! —CodeCat 13:49, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I've been really busy lately. I can't tell you how exuberant I was to look today and see that you had filled up the queue. When I get a break, I guess I'll refill the nominations page. Thank you so much! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:33, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Edit conflict?

Sorry I never got a message... —CodeCat 02:21, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I assumed that. Probably an odd MW glitch. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:49, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Macedonian

Thank you for the appreciation and the encouragement. As I meantioned to Anatoli earlier, I cannot understand why there is such poor representation of the language here, especially in the individual entries. It has a total of 4 million speakers (Macedonia and abroad), all of which have ready access to this wiki. For myself, I had in mind to add as many translations as possible, and then to start working on the entries. I've done some entries already, but I remember that I didn't do it properly and I'm unfortunately not familiar with the handy templates that one is supposed to deploy and write in. I would therefore appreciate if you can somehow point me in the right direction as to the way of filling in word pages, and I promise that I shall do my best to make as many entries as possible. I fear that there is only so much that I can do as an individual, though. --B. Jankuloski (talk) 07:04, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, a lot of individuals have made a big difference in their native language or langauge of interest. If you have programming ability, the job goes even faster. When I get a chance (i.e., if I don't do it this week please remind me) I'll try to find a "perfect" Macedonian entry with all the necessary templates. If I forget I'm not ignoring you, just being irresponsible about dealing with stuff :) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:10, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

vraka

No I'm not sure if vrakes is the English plural - just that following the original language normally applies. I have to logoff now - but I should look further for its pre-Greek etymology. I have found vrakia which is certainly/probably wrong! — Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 07:08, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but bgc should be able to shed light on the issue if I take the time to deal with it. (By the way, I know the feeling of forgetting to switch keyboards for translit...) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:10, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Germanic/skaftaz

You wouldn't happen to know the Yiddish descendant(s) of this, would you? - -sche (discuss) 07:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I actually already looked, to no avail. As you may have noticed, I've been going through some of your recent contribs for lack of a better way to randomly go through some of the PG pages looking to add Yiddish descendants. However, a lot of native MHG words have been replaced across the language from Hebrew, Russian, English, etc, or just relegated to another sense of an existing word (as I believe happened in this case). A bit like a creole, there is a marked simplification of grammar and vocabulary, so a specific word for this concept ceased to be needed, I think. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:37, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Regarding

Regarding your revert at Raëlism, there are several sources describing it as a religion. Furthermore, on its official website, they self-describe as a religion too (see here). Do you mind if i add back the "religion" description? Pass a Method (talk) 18:46, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

OK, sure. I just thought that your change was suspicious, but if they describe themselves that way, then I'm fine with it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:14, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

db dump

Actually, I'm scraping the pages using ?action=raw. But, let me know what you need and I'll let you know if I can do it. - Francis Tyers (talk) 15:32, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll continue this at your talkpage. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:33, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Xmas compo

I suppose I'm not much of a fan of these, really, because they can tend to cause the creation of dubious crap because it fits the rules rather than because it merits inclusion. However, if you're looking for feedback, I'd say that Wiktionary:Christmas Competition 2008 was by far my favourite, probably because (i) it involved a bit of playing around with the literal (letterwise) structure of words (I love anagrams too) and (ii) each turn was linked to the previous turn, which made it much more interactive and spontaneous than a competition where you can go off on your own and try to rack up points by doing solitary tasks. Equinox ◑ 23:32, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

1. But... but... I like dubious crap! (And honestly, I'll RFV stuff with vengeance if I see a need to.)
2. Yes, looking through the archives, I like that one best of all too. But we can't just copy it. Is there something similar (maybe playing on the structure of both the word and the language's name?) but different enough that you can think of/find/steal/plunder? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:37, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Thinking one up is your job (well, you took it, heh). I'm just mentioning what I think are good traits! (I expect to be on holiday from about 20 Dec to 5 Jan so I might not be able to participate properly either.) Equinox ◑ 23:40, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

The 2008 game seems like it was fun. I don't see why we can't recycle it four years later. Or perhaps a simpler, compound-based game of word chain: lamppost -> post box -> boxcutter. Extra points awarded if a player adds a quote, translation, etymology, etc. to the entry for whatever term they're playing.

Or, if the goal is to cite/verify entries, we could opt for a turn-based quote-posting game:

1. At the start of a round, the game moderator would choose a word. Let's say the word chosen is rose (flower sense).

2. The first player then finds a quote featuring said word and adds it to the word's entry:

Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II

What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

3. The next player chooses a word contained in the first player's quote (say, sweet), finds a quote featuring it, and adds it to said word's entry.

The goal would be to single out words that lack citations, rather than add more citations to words that already have them. More "quotable" quotes would also get higher points. Astral (talk) 00:46, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Re recycling: I view that as a last-ditch maneuvre, myself. Re compounds: how would that work for a multilingual game? Re quote-posting: I think we'd need to put restrictions on that somehow. As Equinox alluded, old Xmas competitions that focused on quoting like that did tend to be a bit more boring.

Honestly, I'm not cut out for this. I'm too critical and I can't think of any ideas that I actually like (perfectionism, anyone?). I wonder if it would be immoral to make the competition somehow angled toward nominating, citing and pronouncing words at FWOTD (enWOTD too, I suppose, although you're not as deprived as we are). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:28, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

It would be acceptable to play non-English compound words so long as they contain an approximate translation of the last link in the word chain: lava lamp -> Lampenschirm -> screen door.

I also somewhat think that the competition should lean more toward having fun and learning new words than doing something to improve the wiki (e.g. adding translations or cites). Like Equinox pointed out, there's a chance of less-than-scrupulous players adding content of questionable value just to rack up more points. Astral (talk) 03:46, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

What I meant was, most languages don't make compounds like that, and I don't want to favor them so heavily. In Rapa Nui, we'd need to use a whole phrase to explain what a lampshade is, and compounds, when they exist, are usually just reduplicative. If I can't think of something soon, maybe I will repackage the 2008 standby. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:04, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry I don't have any other ideas to bring to the table right now. :( Astral (talk) 06:26, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Here is an idea for a competition, though it might exclude those who know nothing about sound change so it shouldn’t be the only one. It’s called Foo is the superior language and its purpose is to mock people who insist that such-and-such term is derived from their language of choice. Player A picks two random words, one English and one in language X. Player B has to prove that X is the superior, master language by making up some realistic sound changes so that the term in language X becomes the English term. If Player B doesn’t figure one out, or if Player A isn’t convinced, Player B loses. The loser has to improve either term’s entry, and Player B (whether he wins or loses) picks the next two terms.

Here is an example. I picked two words at random from my bilingual dictionary paul and haughty.

• paul → pautl (à la Icelandic)
• pautl → ϕautl → fautl (à la Germanic)
• fautl → hautl (à la Old Spanish)
• hautl → hautil (epenthesis)
• hautl → hautiʎ (assimilation, l becomes ʎ after i)
• hautiʎ → hautij (yeísmo)
• hautij → hɔtij (à la Gothic)
• hɔtij → hɔːtij (stressed vowel lengthening)
• hɔːtij → hɔːtɪj (unstressed vowel centering)

There you go, haughty in British English. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 04:27, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I like it (although it's not exactly family-friendly). Maybe we should run this and the compound game simultaneously to give everyone a chance at glory? (Oh, and Latin is the superior language. Semper superior. So, um, yeah.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:51, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Saved by the bell. That I said 'Semper superior' seems oddly appropriate in hindsight. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:25, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

xanemuu rfe

You want to know the origin of xanemuu? That makes two of us. It's obviously a loanword- not just the historical fact of chickens being recent introductions, but also the accent not being on the first syllable of the root and the vowel ending with no absolutive suffix are very strong signs of a non-native origin. The only problem is that the likely suspects- English and Spanish- don't seem to have any good candidates, and Cahuilla tends to keep Spanish "g", anyway. My best guess is borrowing from a neighboring language, which would have, in turn, gotten it from Spanish. If I had to guess, I would say Mohave- but that's a wild guess. I could swear I ran into this somewhere, but I can't remember where. I will definitely put an etymology in the entry, if I run into that again. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:44, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

This isn't very helpful, but FWIW, it could be a direct borrowing but of a word for something quite unrelated to chickens, e.g. the Nahuatl term for "chicken" is "caxtil" (Castilian). - -sche (discuss) 09:56, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Question

Greetings, I went and created a simple entry just to test the waters here. Would you mind taking a look to see if I got it right? Kumioko (talk) 21:52, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Excellent. I have nothing to add except that we usually link to entries with double brackets (UIC) or with a template like {{term}} ((deprecated template usage) UIC), because they're much handier than URLs. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:32, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I'll work on that. Kumioko (talk) 03:59, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Russian?

Are you interested in working with Russian, under my guidance? We have too many red links that need to be filled. In return, I can teach you some Russian. Verbs are the hardest and time-consuming but other entries are not too bad, only need to choose the right template. No pressure, I'm not sure what your language aims are. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:49, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I like almost every language, but I don't have time for most of them. Don't mistake the fact that I am comfortable with Cyrillic to mean that I am comfortable with Russian! Honestly, I have a long list of languages I want to learn, and Russian isn't that high up... but I would like to learn Slavic declensional patterns for nouns and adjectives. Where is a good place to start with that (considering that I already know how the cases work, from Latin)?

Re redlinks: Maybe we can ask Руах to bring back that feature of Тбот, as you suggested on Стевен's talkpage (I shamefully used Google Translate)? Then I can add the templates and you can check that I've got it right :) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:04, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, nothing to be ashamed of, there's nothing private here :). If you know someone who can do it, that would be great! I gotta go to a Japanese class, will talk later about the patterns in more detail. Stephen and Vahagn are the guys who designed the patterns, you can also talk to both of them. I know how to use them now and of course, I know Russian. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 06:12, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's a dream, but still, all of this is. (If you're curious, other languages on my list are Yiddish, German, Dutch, Swahili, Mandarin, Spanish, Ancient Greek, Korean ... but not in that order, and I know I can't achieve that without a level of work I can't put in anytime in the foreseeable future.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:28, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Good luck with your endeavors! --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:17, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Hanukkah

Hi Metaknowledge, I nominated a few Hanukkah related words for FWOTD. It seems December 8th is already taken but I assume it can be changed. --WikiTiki89 13:11, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, everything is just a placeholder until it actually happens (unless it is in fact nominated for a specific day). The hardest part will probably be citations. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:59, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Honestly I don't think they really need translationscitations. They are ordinary nouns that have no special usage. --WikiTiki89 20:21, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

You mean citations, not translations, right? Well, we require one and I see no reason to abandon that. I like to see how a word is used in real life, and I suspect other users do to. (Not to mention that Even Shoshan should provide some citations we can pilfer from.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:25, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I meant citations. And that's exactly what I mean, these words are not used in any special or interesting way. It's only their meaning that's interesting. But I guess I could try to look for them. Coincidentally, I just bought an Even Shoshan about 30 minutes ago. --WikiTiki89 20:28, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Great! Well, I was thinking maybe something like freylekh or yontef would be better for Yiddish (sorry, no access to non-Latin keyboard at the moment), but latke will do it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if you know, but Hanukkah is not a "yontef". --WikiTiki89 20:47, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

TBH, realized that after the fact. Strictly speaking, I guess traditional holy days and modern holidays have overlap but are by no means equal. As perhaps you've guessed by now, I'm one of those oxymoronically religious atheists who is more bark than bite. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:51, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

It's not that it's not a holy day. It's just not holy enough for us to not have to go to work. As for religious atheists, there are a lot more of those than you'd think, especially in Judaism. --WikiTiki89 20:58, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, well, do you like the freylekh idea? *goes back to brainstorming answer to Christmas Competition* —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:09, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah but it's not as specific to Hanukkah. --WikiTiki89 21:19, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

The reason there is a citation requirement is that when we decided to have a FWOTD, a bunch of nominations from the 2009 attempt had failed RFV. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 20:32, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Erm, when was this? (By the way, I suspect we still have some unciteable terms nominating for FWOTD right now.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

[16]. Not as many as I had remembered (only 2), but still, it would be very unprofessional to risk having fake words as FWOTD. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 20:40, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Quite right. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:42, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. --WikiTiki89 20:47, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

So are any of them gonna be made FWOTD? Hannukah won't last forever... --WikiTiki89 09:11, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Foreign Word of the Day/2012/December 14 is the only one that's cited AFAIK. If you cite one of the Hebrew ones, we can move another word later down so that we can fit it in before the candles are put away. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:07, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for this. Actually, I wish you were always there to correct every single mistake I do :p

Gratias vobis ago, --Fsojic (talk) 16:45, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Nihil erat. Nota bene verbum (deprecated template usage) vobis plurale esse; verbum (deprecated template usage) tibi uti melius est. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:44, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Salve, Metascientia. Persona prima pluralis reverentiam significat. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 01:29, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Salve, Ungolians. Quid causa casūs accusativi in verbo 'reverentiam' supra est? Et distinctio T-V in oratione classicali non praesens est in multis scriptis. Eam idoneam linguis vulgaribus existimo, non latinitati. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:10, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

In phrase anglica “X indicates reverence”, estne “reverence” casum acusativum? Existimaba quid distinctio T-V eram inventionem oratoribus linguae latinae classicae. Sed studium meus de lingua latina abhinc paucos menses initiavit, ita paucum scio. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 06:04, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Mea culpa, latine legere celeriter mihi errores facere est. Portugallicene putas, et tum transfers? Latinitas tua similis anglicae vulgarique est, et non facile compraehensioni se dat. Supra, formas irreales et genera incorrecta uteris. Tibi auxilium correctionesque dabo si ea voles, sed nunc oratio tua mihi dolorosa est :) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:38, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

O, et magis nescio, sed Vicipaedia dicit distinctionem T-V postclassicalem esse hic: w:T-V distinction#History and usage. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:43, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Damn, right in the ego. What I wanted to say was: “In the English phrase “X indicates reverence”, isn’t “reverence” accusative case (I actually meant objective though)? I though the T-V distinction was an invention of Classical Latin speakers. But my Latin studies only began a few months ago, so I know little.” — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 06:45, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Apologias, te insultare non volo. Mea natura directa est, et mea latina inflexibilior quam anglica. Visne me anglice dicere? (Te perfecte intellexi, sed dificultate. Fortasse melior me in mensibus primis es. Vero, scientiam meam latinitatis spatium minus quam tres anni paulo pertinet.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:10, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I could understand what you said perfectly (at least I think I did) after three dictionary searches (quam, fortasse and pertinet), so it’s fine. Do you recommend any book? I’m using Latin for Beginners, by Benjamin D’ooge because it’s out of copyright (from my experience trying to learn German, modern language-learning textbooks tend to be rubbish), but annoyingly the exercises don’t have answers. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 07:27, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Illum librum nescio... hmmm. Omni honestate, solum meum Our Latin Heritage erat. Ab illo per modernam literaturam contendi (etiam Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis legere volo!), quod Cicero partes aequales splendentes et horribiles habet. Libri qui a prima declensione coniugationeque ad ultima procederunt et grammaticam lente aedificant boni sunt. Laetus responsa correctionesque, ex libro aut non, si voles, ut semper agere ero. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:41, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

*declinatione. (Corrected by someone who hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s talking about! How’s your ego now!). Couldn’t get that last bit (after ex).

In a completely unrelated note, I’m writing a script that will (hopefully) help writing Wiktionary entries faster. It will be useful for cases where multiple languages have similar entries. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 08:33, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Aha, gratias! Sententia ultima anglice est "As always, I will be happy to give answers and corrections, from a book or not, if you want them." in interpretatione lata. Translatio literalis euphoniam talem auriculae meae non habet. Tengo un escrito por lo también - es la copypasta. O di meliores, mein Sprachen son mixing. Spero meam crappy שפּאַניש is right. In ullo casu, hoc means I'm tired, itaque I am to bed. May fortune shine on your bloody script! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:48, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Did you know that what you just wrote has a name? Regarding your שפּאַניש, I think it’s “están mixing”. Thanks for the offer; I’d like to know what I did wrong in my post with 4 indentation levels. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 18:01, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I'm doing the opposite of you. Misusing "son" there was me Latinizing Spanish, just as you Romanicize your Latin (it actually reminds me of Vulgar Latin). Europanto seems fun. By the way, you can speak to me in Latin again if you want, and also Esperanto, Spanish, and German, although I'm less likely to respond in those languages. Spanish would be good, because I do need to learn it before I go to Latin America. Below, I have copied your post and made fixes in bold or crossed out, as necessary. Also, your word order needs work; try to keep to SOV. You can see why it caused me pain; if you have any questions on the reasoning behind my changes, just ask.

In phrase anglica “X indicates reverence”, nonne estne “reverence” in casum accusativumo? Existimabam quid distinctionem T-V eramesse inventionem ab oratoribus linguae latinae classicae. Sed studium meusm de linguae latinae abhinc paucos menses initiavit, ita paucuma sciocognovi. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:09, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Mi Alemán no es mucho mejor que mi Latín, a pesar de lo tener estudiado por más tiempo (cuando digo “estudiar”, significa leer algunas páginas de vez en cuando, cuando tengo tiempo). Culpa de la declinación. Por qué que aquéllos malditos hablantes de Latín Vulgar tenian de usar orden de palabras en vez de casos!?!? Hablo español con alguna dificuldad, pero es mucho similar a lo portugués y lo estudié en la escuela. É uma grande dificuldade para os que aprendem línguas estrangeiras quando diferenciam-se significados que são expressos por apenas uma palavra na língua nativa. Por exemplo, no seu caso a diferença românica entre “ser” e “estar”, que não há no inglês. In my case, I can’t tell the difference between English “in” and “on” ([17][18]), because in Portuguese both are “em”. Thanks for the correction. My only question is: why not scio? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 01:09, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Vero, vero. Sed ordo verborum facilior dicentibus, IMO (in mea opinione!). Hispanice, cum verbis "para" et "por" saepe contendo; potesne haec obviosa mihi facere? Ubi ab hispanica ad portugallicam vertis, difficultas legendi multo auxit. I will leave off Latin to try to explain cognosco vs scio, because my stilted speech makes it a little difficult to make myself perfectly clear. Scio implies that you just happen to know something, but cognovi implies that it is something you have gained the knowledge of. It's kind of like the difference between the perfect and imperfect tenses, in the fact that one is aorist and the other progressive. I suppose that might not make any sense, but how about this: in the sentence, "do you know the sum of one and two?" I would use scis, and in "do you know João?" I would use cognovisti. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:24, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I don’t guarantee that por and para’s usage is exactly the same in Spanish and in Portuguese, so take this cum grano salis:

Para indicates destination where por indicates means:

• Fomos para a estrada - we went to the street (the street was our destination). A can also be used.
• Fomos pela estrada - we travelled on the street (we walked/drove/whatevered on a street until we got to our destination). (note: pel[o/a/os/as] = por + definite article).
• Mandei a mensagem por correio - I sent the message by mail;
• Mandei a mensagem para o correio - I sent the message to the post office.

Por indicates the author of a deed where para indicates for whom this deed was done.

• O novo mundo foi descoberto por Colombo - The new world was discovered by Columbus.
• O novo mundo foi descoberto para o rei da Espanha - the new world was discovered for the king of Spain.
• O presente foi dado por mim para ela - The gift was given to her by me.

In some cases, they are used where English uses do vs. make:

• Eu fiz isso por ti - I did this for you (I committed this act for your benefit);
• Eu fiz isso para ti - I made this for you (I created this object, and I am giving it to you);

In some cases they have the same meaning:

• “soon”ness: O rei está por/para morrer - The king is about to die.
• future participle: Há trabalho por/para fazer - There is work to do.
• goal, but para takes another verb: Lutamos [por]/[para conseguirmos] liberdade - We fight [for]/[to get] freedom.

• but when the goal is expressed by a verb, only para can be used: Comprei uma andorinha para transportar cocos - I bought a swallow to transport coconuts.

Both terms have dozens of other meanings, but these are the ones that might confuse foreigners most, I think. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 03:50, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much! The Portuguese is a little more confusing to me, but I think this helped a lot. Is the swallow African or European? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:07, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Question on the UIC article

Sorry it took me a little while but I had a followup question on the UIC article. I noticed the changes you made and they all make sense to me except one. Why would we not want to give a definition of the terms in some fashion. I realize my formatting may be wrong (eventhough I used a couple other words articles as a guide) but it seems like we would want to have a definition of the term. Thanks in advance. Kumioko (talk) 03:12, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia. We leave that kind of stuff to Wikipedia when we can. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:11, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

ME dictionary

Aren't a lot of dictionaries incomplete though? I added it basically because content on Wiktionary (an etymology entry) insinuated it, so putting good faith in that entry, I put it there.

If this is wrong: it serves to draw attention to an incorrect etymology entry, right? Etym (talk) 11:07, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, a lot of dictionaries are incomplete, but the MED is really good. It's probably the best dictionary of any medieval language I have ever seen. I think it is reasonable to take everything there on faith, unless you have reason to believe it to be wrong. Their database is massive and excellent. Don't use the "drawing attention" excuse, please. If you aren't willing to check on the MED, now that you know about it, then it isn't in good faith to create a Middle English entry that you're unsure about. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:06, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Xuongrong789

moved from User talk:Xuongrong789 Abusing multiple accounts, apparently. Stephen, if the translations are good enough quality, we can just fix those that are wrong, but otherwise, we have grounds to indef-block this user's accounts. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:16, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Isn't it a pity that as soon as we get someone who wants to add, say, Lao translations, it ends like this? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:28, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

It's not all the time like this. His/her translations needed to be checked, anyway, making mistakes, as pointed out by Stephen. I also noticed that he added Burmese punctuation together with words. I seriously doubt this person is a native speaker of Lao, Khmer, Burmese, etc. I have already verified some of his Lao translations (OK) and added the transliteration from the dictionary or from lo:wiki. Although he/she was working with languages, which need a boost, I don't think they would add much value. Any careful editor with some interest in these languages could do it. No regrets. After some time this duplicate user's pages can be deleted, if no-one stands up for him/her. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:39, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but it also looks like they're not a native speaker of English. So I don't know what they speak. I kind of gave up on Thai and Lao because the tones were so much worse than Mandarin, and the writing system so much less elegant. I must remember to talk to Ruakh about my Tbot ideas. Anyway, I reckon you can delete the user talkpages now if you want. We just need to stay on the lookout for an editor making these kinds of edits, because a sockpuppeteer is likely to repeat the trick even when they are unwanted by the community (like Luciferwildcat). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not planning to learn Lao, Khmer or Burmese but planning to improve my Thai, especially before the trip to Thailand. The Thai (and Lao) tones are not hard (objectively) if you have good listening material, it's Vietnamese tones, which I found impossible but I haven't given up yet, only having a break. The Mandarin's third tone is considered hard to use. Thai and Lao tones are rising, falling and flat, no jumps (Mandarin), creaky sounds (Burmese), glottal stops (Vietnamese). Burmese and Cantonese tones are also very hard. The proverb "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is also true here, Thai script is beautiful but absence of spaces makes it look cluttered and very hard to read. The method of approaching it is the same as with all monosyllabic languages, including Mandarin or Vietnamese, even if the script looks differently. Thai, Lao, Khmer are not harder than Mandarin but really understudied, with very poor resources and less advertised. Yes, restarting Tbot would be good. Perhaps we should only do it for selected languages, where there are people to check for quality. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:11, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I moved the discussion without asking you first. :) --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 09:53, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

'Sall good. Where are you going to in Thailand? As for tones, they all mess with my mind, but in Mandarin I follow this format: 1st - unearthly and high, 2nd - rising (as in English), 3rd - a short grunty low-rising thing, 4th - really short, low but not actually falling much. Obviously this isn't a very accurate method, but I've found that it allows me to be understood by Chinese speakers. Perhaps it is a cultural thing, but I never felt like my bad approximation of Thai or Lao tones were ever understood by native speakers. I can't explain it, but to me, 汉字 are beautiful, Thai is not, and Lao is just slightly better than Thai, a little more full and less cramped. I'm going to make my Tbot proposal now (see here).

Forgot to answer. I don't have any definite plans yet but Thailand, South Korea, Fiji are on our list of countries to visit next, if we don't go on a cruise or go to Japan or China first. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:16, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

griva

It's not just longer hair growth on back of neck of a horse.It is not specified.It can be on a neck of lion or some other animal. Zabadu (talk)

Then fix the gloss instead of removing it. You could have changed "horse" to "animal". —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:36, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I thought mane is enough because Russian and Slovenian entries don't have an explanation of the word. Zabadu (talk)

Isn't it better to have more information than less? If it's incorrect, then fix it, as I said. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:15, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I fixed it. Zabadu (talk)

Capitalization in "Foreign Word of the Day", etc.

We don't usually put page-names in title-case; rather, we usually capitalize only the first word. Hence, for example, Wiktionary:Beer parlour (rather than "Parlour", which is a redirect), Wiktionary:Word of the day (rather than "of the Day", which is a redirect), Wiktionary:Requests for verification (rather than "for Verification", which is a redlink), and so on. Would you be willing to rename Wiktionary:Foreign Word of the Day and its subpages to match that pattern? Or failing that, can Wiktionary:Foreign word of the day at least be a redirect?

Thanks in advance!
—Ruakh_TALK 01:26, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I noticed the incongruence myself, but I honestly don't care. As long as Ungoliant doesn't object and you fix the double redirects, you can do whatever you want. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:37, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

I have a feeling we discussed this before, but I don’t remember where. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 05:43, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

kung fu

No need to mark /ː/ in American English. Fête (talk) 00:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Why? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:05, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia says that. Fête (talk) 00:09, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Can you provide a link? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:10, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't have an authoritative link, but it is our practice (here are two comments by EP, Angr can also vouch for it), because vowel length is not phonemic in American English. Of course, (sub)dialects of American English are another story. - -sche (discuss) 00:28, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, at least you have a reason. אוי, that's somewhat annoying. [must study phonology] —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:31, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Your Edit for 'Dilazak' entry

Dear metaknowledge,
Please put me wise as why did you edit my 'Just created entry' - Dilazak?
Do you know something about Afghan people and Afghan as an academical subject?
This is not to offend you but just curios before I discuss further.
Regards

No, I have not studied Afghan ethnology. I simply fixed the formatting and made the entry less expansive. Please remember that we are not Wikipedia, and entries must not be encyclopedic. Thanks —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, that's fine. However, please place 'Plural' as 'The Dilazak'. The problem in English noun syntax is that it would add an 's' to the end. However Afghan tribes are named differently e.g.
A 'Yousafzai' is an individual from 'Yousafzae' tribe or a group of few Yousafzai individuals will be called 'Yousafzae' and NOT 'Yousafzais'. Same way an individual from 'The Dilazak' tribe is called A Dilazak' but a group or the whole tribe is called 'The Dilazak' and not 'Dilazaks', it is rather considered abusive in Afghan culture.
I hope I am clear on this first point.
Before creating this entry, I did read some guidelines of 'Wiktionary' and very much followed those guide line. I think all information is 100 % according to these guidelines. For example 'Related wiki pages, 'External Link' and 'Synonyms' etc. After all on a modern day digital dictionary, a visitor may like to find out some thing extra, if he is already looking for a term like this.
I am 50 year old and certainly not for some stupid 'War of Words'. If my point of view carries some wait, logic and reason, then please rather help me improving it further. I shall be grateful.

Well, I'm afraid that you did not actually accurately follow all our guidelines, but that's OK, because I cleaned it up. The definite article 'the' is not part of the plural, so I will set the plural to 'Dilazak'. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:18, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

RE: Thanks!

Hello there. The link you posted on my talk page-- WT:TH TR (for Thai transliration)-- does not work. Best, --Alif - le reformeur siamois (talk) 00:42, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

correction: transliteration --Alif - le reformeur siamois (talk) 00:44, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I reverted myself when I realized that we in fact have no good, real standard. If you would like to talk to Atitarev (talk • contribs) about this to try to create a transliteration system, I would much appreciate it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

hecko

hello. look here please. Kind regards--Pierpao (talk) 10:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

It's not about whether it's reliable, it's about whether it's attested. Please read WT:CFI#Attestation. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:30, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

ch vs. kh

Re diff, we haven't actually decided on the ch vs. kh question. (See WT:AHE, which indicates as much.) So there's no reason to make that change (or its reversion).​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:38, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Can we choose one? I don't think I've ever before seen a Hebrew entry that didn't have substandard formatting and yet used ch. I think using kh is the best option, but any standardization is for the best. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:42, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Every Hebrew entry I've created with a transliterated ח or כ has usedd ch and none, I hope, has substandard formatting. Sure we can choose one — if we can agree on one. We haven't been able to. See [[Wiktionary talk:About Hebrew/archives/2007#Romanization]].​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:49, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, perhaps I haven't seen as many Hebrew entries as I'd thought. I'll raise the issue again, now that we have a slightly different set of editors around. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:02, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of plurals

So now that I (presumably) know what your line of work is, there are a couple of things with which I thought you might be able to help me. Firstly, some Spanish nouns that form plurals by adding -es can be pluralized by simple adding "es" in the noun template after the gender, but I can't do the same with adjectives. Also while "|p=" works for adding an irregular plural form in nouns "|pl=" is needed with adjectives. The way I see it being able to add "es" and using "p" for both would be ideal. Secondly, I was working with Friulian entries a short while back and plurals are much more regular. Usually it's adding -s (which is already available as the default plural), but with nouns ending in -e it's -is: ìsule » ìsulis and for nouns ending in -l or -li it's -i: vescul » vescui. The plurals I've done so far I did manually, but it'd be great to have some sort of template, if you can give me hand. I hope I'm not being overbearing. /: —Koszmonaut (talk) 07:45, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, I have a feeling that you don't know what my line of work is... but that's neither here nor there.

Re -es: probably doable, but I haven't taken a look yet

Re |p: should be very easy, although there may be lagtime

Re: Friulian: no can do, MediaWiki won't give the rightmost substring of a string without fucking you over in the process. Not worth it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:00, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

THANK YOU!!!

Thanks for the info. I now understand the babel boxes, and you can see mine if you want. I'm still wondering if you go on Wikipedia also. Venomxx (talk) 20:30, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, yours isn't quite right, actually... by the way, please use the 'Preview' button at the bottom, because otherwise we have to manually patrol every edit you make. And no, I don't spend that much time on Wikipedia. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

I'll start pressing the preview button. If mine isn't right, I don't understand then, can you give me a tip?Venomxx (talk) 20:45, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

May I try fixing it for you? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:46, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes you can fix it for me, and i searched meta in Wiktionary and it said this: a female given name. Are you a girl or did you use meta as one of it's different meanings?

 Done. Meta's not my name; take a look at (deprecated template usage) metaknowledge. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:03, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Thats very funny- almost. Thanks for the new start up page, I created the page R.E.S., you should see it, and I figured out how to make a hyperlink. I have a question, how do you make the babel box have wht gender?Venomxx (talk) 21:48, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

You can set your gender in WT:PREFS. Maybe you might find this page to be helpful?—Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:44, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

toé

Can you protect the page toé please ? Because Wikitiki89 don't stop to revert. Fête (talk) 22:34, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Because the word toé is pronounced /twe/, not /twɛ/ ? Fête (talk) 22:42, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Except that Wikitiki's usually right, and you're not. Go talk to him about it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:43, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

The French Wiktionary marks /twe/. Fête (talk) 22:44, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

As I just mentioned on Fête's talkpage, I believe I was wrong about the pronunciation. The problem I had with Fête was that he kept making changes on the page before the discussion was finished even when I told him not to. Anyway, Metaknowledge, since you protected the page, can you update the pronunciation to /twe/ (and maybe add a ref to this book)? --WikiTiki89 23:49, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

@Wikitiki: OK. I unprotected it, edit as you see fit.

@Fête: Please do not remove interwikis. That's counterproductive. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:51, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

dude

Yeah, feel free to remove it. I'm not sure why they posted that. The codes really aren't that bad, just try to learn them and test stuff out in the sandbox. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:51, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I deleted it, but also I will try my best with the codes, and could you take a look at my user page, i don't know if i over did it. Venomxx (talk) 17:36, 24 December 2012 (UTC) Do you know how to put pictures on the talk/user pages?Venomxx (talk) 18:53, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Really, take a closer look at w:WP:Cheatsheet. It tells you how to do all that. But don't overuse it... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:55, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Meta. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 05:37, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Er... late Happy Hanukkah and/or early Joyous Kwanzaa, Ungoliant! I've been yelling out "Happy Hanukkah" to people in Santa costumes for a week now. Sometimes I just can't help being flagrantly non-Christian. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:22, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas from me, as well. :) Astral (talk) 11:56, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, thanks, both of you. I swear, you make it seem like I'm actually human or something :) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:52, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy new thing. What happened to your evil red man CSSed over the top+left corner? Is it only missing due to alien foreign laptop? Equinox ◑ 22:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I got bored of him. I tried to CSS in some fun with the display of some other stuff, but MW wouldn't let me (party poopers!). Anyway, I jacked him from Yair and DP was trying to use him as a strange ad hominem, so I figured he'd gotten enough mileage. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Samsung

Samsung is also pronounced /ˈsæmsʊŋ/. Fête (talk) 18:50, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Never heard it, anywhere in the world. Please prove it (YouTube videos OK). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:39, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I say it that way. —CodeCat 19:40, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

See http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=samsung&submit=Submit. Fête (talk) 20:21, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Strange, but OK. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds}

Is this site using recordings of a human voice or electronically produced sounds? If it is a humna voice, is the speaker a native English speaker? from where? There's no way that I can see to verify anything they've done or to determine context, except by trial and error of listening to multiple words and trying to guess what region's English they're using. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:40, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

jook-sing

Some jook-sing know to speak Chinese. Fête (talk) 18:28, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Our definition already claimed (and continues to claim) otherwise. I personally don't use this term, so I can't be sure. Maybe check another dictionary, or find a quote that makes it clear that the jook-sing in question knows a Chinese language. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:46, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

It's me again, just wanting to say thank you for all your kindness and support when I was so confused and frustrated. Venomxx (talk) 18:47, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Luganda plurals

Luganda is a Bantu language so maybe you can do the plurals the same way as they are in Zulu, by grouping them by noun class and showing the class in the headword line. See abantu for example. —CodeCat 03:50, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Traditionally, Luganda scholarship has not followed that route. The designation of classes works a bit differently from what you might be used to from Zulu. Both omuntu and abantu are said to be in Class I. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:53, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

estafar

'staffare' is listed as the Italian source for Spanish/Portuguese 'estafar' on this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Portuguese_words_of_Italian_origin. Does that give it validity?

Well, we need a better source than Wikipedia... usually cases like that are actually cognates, not derived from one another. Unfortunately, I don't have a good etymological dictionary for Portuguese or Spanish, but someone who has one may comment. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:07, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

It’s correct (according to my dictionary), but don’t trust Wikipedia’s Portuguese etymology lists, I quickly scrolled that list and found at least one mistake. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 20:25, 1 January 2013 (UTC)