User talk:Metaknowledge/2016

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 2016.

Romanian translations

I'm sorry to bring this up again, but since you were involved in the discussion at his talk page, I hope you don't mind me contacting you. I've monitored Baican's translations and today he has instigated a conflict due to this article I have proposed for deletion. I did my due diligence when I proposed this article for deletion, so I don't appreciate being accused for "copy-pasting". Does any user deserve this kind of treatment from a fellow user? --Robbie SWE (talk) 16:30, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

@Robbie SWE: I'm sorry that you've had to deal with this issue again. I cannot find any uses of the term in either the form Baican entered nor the definite form on Google Books, so I cannot speak to attestation except to say that I can't find any. As to his accusation, it's undeserved, but there's not much we can do about that. If he personally attacks another user or does something that he has been warned about before on his talkpage, he may be blocked. However, as someone who's been involved, I'd prefer if someone else were to do it — ISMETA or Chuck Entz, perhaps. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:39, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Metaknowledge! Thank you for your advice! He started adding superlative adjective entries again which have been deleted before. I marked them once again for speedy deletion since they don't fulfil the requirements for inclusion. If more incorrect translations are added and if he continues this editing war (he has on several occasions reverted my corrections), I'll talk to ISMETA or Chuck Entz. --Robbie SWE (talk) 12:38, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Tell me if there's anything more I can do. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

One noun to add

In case you haven't noticed, I added גריווע (grive) to a translation table in the entry mane. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 17:12, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:30, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Block time

Hey MK. I'm due a wiki-vacation. Can you block this account please, and any others of mine you might happen to spot in the upcoming 25 years or so, please? Ta. --Stubborn Pen (talk) 22:54, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Sure, but I can't promise re future incarnations. Enjoy your freedom. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:57, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

re: Kikuyu etc.

Thank you for your comment, but I only posted what I could attest. There are quite a few resources about this language although I have not accessed any of them. By the way, I have a question about this. Reading WT:CFI#Number of citations I thought that obvious attestation was strictly compulsory. Did I misinterpret it? Yours sincerely, Eryk Kij (talk) 15:46, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

@エリック・キィ: Indeed, it is not compulsory, and if you look at the business about durability, you'll see that your citations are not actually useful for supporting the validity of the entry per Wiktionary policy. (I can't speak for other resources, but I'll say that the Swadesh lists, though usually not containing anything that's outright wrong, are somewhat less than 100% reliable.) But in all honesty, you needn't worry much about attestation as long as you're adding verifiably correct words from reliable sources. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:42, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

All right. Thank you. I remove Swadesh lists at least and will someday find out more reliable sources about them. --Eryk Kij (talk) 19:22, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I have almost nothing to fix since there is no obvious error there. Leading on-line Lithuanian dictionaries include the term starting with a lowercase letter as you did. If I do something, I would like to add See also section indicating parlamentas et vice versa. --Eryk Kij (talk) 21:07, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you

This was my first attempt to add a word to Wiktionary. Thank you for the correction. I should have been more observant. Caeruleancentaur (talk) 19:35, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

@Caeruleancentaur: No worries. Please ask me if you have any further questions. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:41, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you again

I didn't know what the "t" meant. As some entries don't have it, I was simply doing copy and paste using one of the other languages. I'm retired and I've had some small education in Haitian Creole. I really like it and I noticed that Haitian Creole words were missing in so many of the entries that I decided to add them when I could. Caeruleancentaur (talk) 21:51, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Yiddish book from 1543 fully available on Google Books

Just thought I'd share my find, in case you're interested (although I couldn't verify the publication date from within the book): https://books.google.com/books?id=TOYdlPFPp98C&pg=PT1. --WikiTiki89 22:00, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

That's very, very cool (although hard for me to read). I have a lot of work to do with contemporary Yiddish first, though! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:26, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

On second look, it seems to be handwritten, not published. The script is vaybertaytsh, which is similar enough to modern cursive Hebrew (although it took me a while to figure out that the letter that looks like

is a ג, and interestingly that נ is written in its final form ן when preceding it). --WikiTiki89 16:26, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Renaming of "cite meta" to "quote-meta"

I have been working on bringing some coherence to the {{cite-}} and {{quote-}} templates. Essentially, the former are now for citing references in "Reference" sections and on talk pages, whereas the latter are for quotations in dictionary entries. I would like to propose that {{cite meta}}, which is used by many of the {{quote-}} templates, be renamed {{quote-meta}} for consistency. The template is currently protected. Should this be discussed at the Grease Pit or elsewhere? Smuconlaw (talk) 10:42, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I think that needs discussion. Traditionally, WT:RFM would be the place to do it, but that's a rather slow venue, so WT:GP would fine, I reckon. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:58, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

OK, I'll start a discussion there. Thanks. Smuconlaw (talk) 18:16, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Re: Formatting

Thanks for the comment and I will add the gender and translations next time. :) Jackninja5 (talk) 06:36, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Are you a human or a robot?

I intended to revert my edit myself, and you did that for me. That's good. Do you use some program to help edit? --202.195.129.247 05:31, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult, but I do like to pay attention to recent edits, especially by anonymous users, so I can remove vandalism quickly. For future reference, you can use the 'Preview' button to check your changes to a page before you save it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:34, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

That's neither a compliment nor an insult. I edit that page so that I can have direct links to those French words. And I was just about to revert my edit when I found you had already done it. So I think maybe you are a robot account since you edit so quickly.

I did that editing beacause I'm learning French and I want to start with simplest words one by one. So I add direck links so that I can look up those words more quickly. I was about to revert it and then just view the old version. That way, I don't affect any other users and I can still look up words more quickly.

So, that's not an insult, though it may sound like so. I asked that question simply because you edit so fast that I'm curious how you manage to do it. Do you use some program or so? That maybe a silly question, but trust me, I'm not insulting. Feel sorry fot that. --202.195.129.247 05:51, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

No worries. I do have a gadget enabled that makes reverting a little bit faster, but for the most part it's still a manual effort to identify problematic edits. In any case, good luck with learning French! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:55, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, both for your editing and your words. I always respect wiki contributors like you, for your efforts to make wiktionary a valuable source. --202.195.129.247 06:05, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

When I want to try out links, I preview the edit and use right-click or ctrl/cmd-click to open the the link in a new tab. That way I can try all kinds of links without having to save the original edit. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:12, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

That's a good idea. But actually I saved that editing simply for myself. Since I'm not a wiki contributor, so I'm really selfish, I edited for myself and revered it so as not to affect others. I guess it's not proper to do something like that, though.--202.195.129.247 06:21, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

affzer

Eh, how is a newgroup not about the Internet topically? It exists entirely on the Internet. Equinox ◑ 23:19, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I guess you're right. I suppose what we really need is greater granularity in those categories. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:26, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Aha, thank you.

Should the Norman dialects be deleted from Module:languages/datax? —JohnC5 05:52, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Last I checked, they hadn't all been switched over, so we were leaving them in the module to above module errors. If that's no longer true, go for it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I've removed all the references to roa-jer in Mainspace, Appendix, Reconstruction, and Template (see here). There are a fair few mentions in talk pages. Should we delete it or move it to mod:etymology languages/data? —JohnC5 16:53, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

roa-grn is also cleaned out (see here). —JohnC5 18:19, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't know; maybe @embryomystic, -sche will be able to tell you whether or not to add it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:35, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

As far as I know, everything's been migrated over. embryomystic (talk) 22:49, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

So, should we move it to etymology languages or delete? —JohnC5 18:31, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Vulgar Latin declension

Are you sure that the genitive case is still present in Vulgar Latin? --kc_kennylau (talk) 17:04, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, Romanian has always had one, so at least in the eastern half of Rome, it never vanished. We could just put a regional footnote next to the case. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 17:07, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Alright. --kc_kennylau (talk) 17:15, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Based on my reading, it does not seem that simple. Also, Romanian does not seem to possess a distinct genitive form, just genitive usage of a shared genitive-dative form. —JohnC5 17:48, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction. There’s also a theory that their vocative case does not come from Latin, but I haven’t looked into that much. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 21:09, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

• There was no single Vulgar Latin, so having a declension table for it is a little silly regardless. I had a source for what I did there, but I don't remember what it was; feel free to change it if you have references to back you up. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:41, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

There’s no unified form of Vulgar Latin. That is correct. Still, I think that a declension table is salvageable. If you look at conjugation tables for Old French, they have various different forms for the regions and dates, so we could do the same thing for Vulgar Latin. The most obvious disadvantage is that the tables might look crowded. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 21:09, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

regyratio

I honestly thought that I broke a rule until I noticed that you had recently created this entry. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 05:24, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I was too lazy to click a couple times more so that I could add an edit summary. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:28, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

No big deal, I was just confused for a moment. By the way, have you already seen this? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 05:30, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I hadn't. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:37, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Wait, arma ignifera can’t mean gun? Why? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 05:57, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

It's hard to explain, but it seems only to have been used when the author was trying to calque firearm (or arma de fuego, etc) in their native tongue. So when translating from English to Latin, it wouldn't be appropriate to start at any point other than firearm and get to that term. Also, you got the gender wrong. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:01, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Haha, yeah, I was projecting the Romance interpretations onto a Latin word. Thanks for catching that; I was being a bit arrogant there. Still, how would somebody translate gun into Latin? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 06:07, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

No worries, diachronic changes are nearly impossible to predict if you're looking backward. The default catch-all term is seemingly sclopetum; I guess I should add another sense there. (I've never really thought much about firearms in Latin before, and I don't read a whole lot of New Latin in general, so this is largely new lexical territory for me.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:13, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

How does somebody say vandalism in Latin? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 15:02, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

If you're speaking New Latin, you can go with vandalismus, which seems to have seen limited use as a borrowing back from French. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:30, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I was actually hoping for something more antiquated in this case, but I suppose that this shall suffice. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 17:46, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I thought about it for a while, but nothing came to mind. The closest equivalent concept the Romans had to a vandal was a grassātor, but he was more concerned with rioting, hence the meaning of the abstract noun grassātiō. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:52, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

corrumpō and dēcolōrō may mean deface which is close to vandalize. Theoretically corruptiō or dēcolōrātiō could be used. Apparently, w:Lex Aquilia had laws against “burning, breaking or rending” (ūrō, frangō, rumpō) and the Wiki article says “Note that rumpere (rupture) was generally understood as corrumpere (spoil), and thus came to encompass a very large number of different sorts of damage.” If this be the case, then it seems like corruptiō or ruptiō would be what you want. I guess you could go dig through medieval legal texts, but that sounds deadly dull. —JohnC5 21:12, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Nice find, John. To me, the noun vandalism and the verb vandalise occupy somewhat different semantic zones, so those nominalisations don't make as much sense to my ears. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:26, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

seeing all your creations

Is there some special page on the project that lets you see all of the entries that you’ve created? I’m trying to find it. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 04:36, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

X!'s Tools has a function for that, but be warned that it's exceptionally slow. [1] —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:48, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

In Special:Contributions just check "Only show edits that are page creations". --WikiTiki89 18:21, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

coelum

Could you please explain this revert en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=coelum&oldid=prev&diff=37420073 to me, because I think you are in error.
As for my edit:

1. The entry once was incorrect (when it was {{misspelling of|}}). So it could still be incorrect.
2. "Probably" and a text without sources look like it's just speculation by a wiktionary user.
3. In Lewis and Short's it is "caelum (coelum; cf. Aelius ap. Varr. L. L. 5, § 18 Müll.; Plin. 2, 4, 3, § 9; Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 52, § 129)", which should mean that "coelum" was used before medieval times.

-Poskim (talk) 22:43, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Good point; I can't source that and I'll trust the texts L&S cite. I've changed it back to your version, but I added in a bit about it being standard by mediaeval times. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:22, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Bellman-Ford algorithm

Please explain. I change such entries to proper nouns regularly. It's "the XYZ algorithm", like "the Eiffel Tower", one specific thing. Equinox ◑ 02:20, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

You oughtn't to. Please read W:Proper noun. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:35, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Rather unclear and vague. So do you object because (it claims) "only single-word proper names are proper nouns", and the algorithm's name is more than one word? Equinox ◑ 03:39, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, here's the relevant passage: "Common nouns refer to a class of individual entities, whereas proper nouns name a unique referent, and mass nouns refer to non-individual referents. In English syntax they can fulfill the same functions, but proper nouns behave different in that, like mass nouns, they cannot take the determiners "the" or "a" - this is a consequence of the fact that since they denote a unique referent they cannot be indefinite, and they do not have a plural form except in special cases where they are used as common nouns." Note that BGC turns up uses like "the Bellman-Ford algorithms make each router periodically broadcast its routing tables to all its neighbors". Your edit summary indicates that you have the concept of mass nouns confused with this, by the way. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:39, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't considered it might occur in the plural. Ignore the edit summary though: I made a mistake there because of mental crossed wires. Equinox ◑ 04:43, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

It's also the business with determiners; your statement opening this thread doesn't square with the linguistic description of proper nouns in Wikipedia. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:48, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Why so? It says "some [proper nouns] may be taken to include the article the, as in the Netherlands". Equinox ◑ 04:50, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't think I can explain it, but I'm sure you can use your sense as a native speaker to see that though there are some exceptions (the Netherlands are also an exception in being a plurale tantum), "the France" sounds wrong unless in very specifically crafted common noun usage ("the France of Napoleon's time"). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:53, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I just don't see why "the Bellman-Ford algorithm" shouldn't count as one of the exceptions. Equinox ◑ 04:56, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

En dashes as L2 separator

I noticed in this edit you accidentally used en-dashes, rather than hyphens, to separate the L2 section. I wonder if you made the same mistake anywhere else. I'm also baffled as to how that could have accidentally happened. --WikiTiki89 20:52, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

I have no idea on either count. It can't be a common mistake I've made, though, and it should be easy to search for if you are so inclined. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:49, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Maybe this is another case of some autocorrect software "correcting" more than it should? (If this happened inside an L2 header, e.g. "Wuvulu–Aua", I'd blame copy-pasting and Wikipedia's insistent use of en-dashes.) As of the 2016-02-03 database dump there was only one other page like this, which I just changed. - -sche (discuss) 06:28, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I disable autocorrects... I can only imagine that my finger was resting on the opt key, and given that I'm not really able to see the difference between - and – in the editing window, my odd mistake was left. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:47, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh you're an Apple person. That explains everything. --WikiTiki89 15:31, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

That actually made me laugh out loud. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:57, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Here's another case from after this discussion: diff. Look out for that opt key! --WikiTiki89 00:10, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Oy gvalt. Maybe it's worth adding a filter to prevent any such edits getting through. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:41, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Done. --WikiTiki89 15:21, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Reversion of edits to entry for "person".

I recently added some Scots definitions for person and corrected (and added) some Scots translations for person, only to have my edits reverted. If this was done in error by a program, then please modify the program to ignore my edits or something along those lines. No offence, but as a native Scots speaker, I know what I'm doing. John Gordon Reid (talk) 02:58, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Your formatting was very problematic, but the semantics of the translation are as well. To give more specific translations, you can use {{qualifier}} after the translation in question, but in this case, I think that the distinction you're making is akin to that in English; then Scots translation human then belongs at human#Translations instead. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:03, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the {{qualifier}} code, the Scots translations look much better, and I've added Scots "Human" to the translation chart for Human. But my reason for making the distinction in the translations for "Specifically a Human Being" has not changed. In Scots, you never conflate "Genus Homo" with "Homo Sapiens", and it's sadly very common for native English speakers to conflate the two, (and even with "person" for some reason). Juggling the nuances of two different languages is quite a challenge.John Gordon Reid (talk) 22:45, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Sure. I had to fix it, though, because you used two lines, and the specific epithet should never be capitalised. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:48, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

The relevant entries look quite good now, thanks for your input.John Gordon Reid (talk) 00:23, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

You've spent a lot of time talking about the phrase "Genus Homo" as if it meant something beyond merely a taxonomic category used by scientists. Could you explain why the average speaker of Scots would delimit a common word like bodie by whether the referent was a hominin as opposed to an australopithecine? Are you saying that w:Homo erectus can be referred to as a bodie, but Australopithecus afarensis can't? Why? Chuck Entz (talk) 00:45, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

That's a tough question, (but a good one). The best that I can say is that the basic idea of (genus) Homo has been in the folk consciousness for, as long as there's been a folk consciousness, and Australopithecus really hasn't entered the folk consciousnes at all. And because of that, I myself see no reason to extend the meaning of the word "bodie" to include Australopithecus. Of course this is not my decision alone, but the decision of everybody that speaks Scots fluently, (whatever his dialect), I've just not seen any evidence of such a change. And as for my somewhat unorthodox use of taxonomic nomenclature, I simply decided that it was the best way to convey exactly what "bodie" really means in Scots, even if it obscures the fact that it's primarily used as a vernacular word.John Gordon Reid (talk) 22:14, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

aër

Judging from Books, it seems that some Latimers used diaereses to avoid confusion with diphthongs. Is there any reason to exclude these spellings? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 10:06, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I'd include them (cf. poëticus), but I don't think we have consensus on that, as WT:ALA will unhelpfully tell you. If you want to, create a thread on the talkpage there and see if you can rustle up a consensus. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:49, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

disruption

I believe that, like the phrase below, it shouldn't have a full stop at the end because it's not a sentence. Antondimak (talk) 21:15, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

It's common dictionary format to do otherwise, and WT:Entry layout specifically states the following: "Each definition may be treated as a sentence: beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop." —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:19, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

self‐racism

I’m curious, does Yiddish have any derogatory autonyms? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 00:25, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Not counting offensive terms used to refer to other groups of Jews, but ones aimed at one's own community, ייִדענע (yidene) comes to mind as one that's often derogatory. There's also זשיד (zhid), but that's not organic, as it's a borrowing from Russian. The language itself is what most commonly gets hit with a derogatory autonym: זשאַרגאָן (zhargon). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:39, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

ייִדענע could suffice as a hyponym of זשיד. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 00:45, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Nah. The former has some specific stereotypes attached (which I tried to document in the entry), whereas the latter is just a slur. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:47, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Ah, all right. Fair enough. Sorry for my inaccurate addition. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 00:48, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

No worries. I'm glad you asked, because it's always good to notice more words I have left to add! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:50, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

What are the slurs for other Jews, such as the Sephardim? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 13:55, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

There wasn't a lot of direct day-to-day interaction with Sephardim among the Yiddish speakers in Eastern Europe. If you want slurs, you need to look for sources of tension. The Chassidim had a slur for the non-Chassidim: מתנגד (misnaged, literally “opposer”), but this evolved into an actual term for the non-Chassidim (see w:Misnagdim). There is יעקע (yeke) for German Jews. I'm sure there were slurs between the Polish, Galician, and Lithuanian Jews, but I don't really know what they are (I have read that פּײַליש (paylish) was a humorous way for Lithuanian Jews to refer to the Polish Jews and לוטוואַק (lutvak) for Polish Jews to refer to the Lithuanian Jews, both based on cross-dialectal hypercorrections, but I don't know if you can call them "slurs" and they probably are not citeable). --WikiTiki89 15:22, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

How well‐known is Yiddish?

How many Americans do you think are conscious that Yiddish (at least) exists? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 14:58, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Using a Fermi method, I would estimate that about one-third of Americans know that there is a language called Yiddish. --WikiTiki89 15:35, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

@Wikitiki89: the consciousness of Ladino is probably lower, possibly because it’s had a much less influence on English. Ladino might be somewhat well‐known (more‐so than Yiddish) in Latin countries, but I don’t have a good reason for that.
I know that this remark is going to upset somebody, but it seems like Americans are especially linguistically illiterate. Almost everybody knows English, therefore they don’t have to spend time learning foreign languages. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 03:04, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

No need to look for other explanations when there's an obvious answer: demographics. There have been multiple large waves of immigration by Yiddish-speaking people from Eastern Europe in the past couple of centuries due to various pogroms and the Holocaust. Ladino-speakers, on the other hand, migrated mostly to the Middle East, and several centuries earlier. There are some interesting exceptions like the conversos in New Mexico and a few smaller communities here and there, but not really big enough to avoid being mostly absorbed into mainstream US culture before being noticed.

As for US ignorance of non-English languages: the country was settled when transportation and communications technologies were just starting to take off, so we have a small linguistic variety spread over a huge area and little isolation to allow for any significant differences to develop- most of the barriers are cultural rather than geographical. That means we simply haven't had as much exposure to other languages until recent decades except along the Mexican border. Plus, we speak the leading international lingua franca, so most of us have been able to live our lives just fine without learning a second language. The rest of the world doesn't have that luxury, so they're forced to be better at learning other languages. There again, it's demographics. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:43, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Chackoony

Hi, this is from the user "Chackoony" on Wiktionary. Would just like to thank you for the patience and help in showing me how to work the Wikipedia terminal commands. Sorry if I've put this message in the wrong place! Chackoony (talk) 20:36, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Template:quote-book/source

Hi, thanks for deleting some of the pages relating to {{quote-book/source}} that I tagged. However, could you make two changes?

• Please undelete {{quote-book/testcases}}. The template {{quote-book}} still exists, and so the /testcases page is still in use.
• Please delete {{quote-book/source}}. As I indicated, I tagged its talk page as the template page itself is protected and so can't be edited. You have deleted the template talk page but not the template subpage itself. However, {{quote-book}} (the main template page) should not be deleted.

Thanks! — SMUconlaw (talk) 06:37, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I got rather confused when deleting. Might be better next time to leave somebody a message explaining what to delete rather than tagging them, but it's not your fault that I messed up. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:47, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't sure who to message, so I explained in the {{delete}} tag why I was tagging the template talk page rather than the template page itself. Anyway, thanks! — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Sprea

Hello Metaknowledge, you wrote in the edit summary "looking at Google Books seems to confirm it as masculine". Could you please be so kind and give me any example which seems to confirm this gender of the Latin word Sprea? Older dictionaries often say something different and L&S has for example "Mosella, ae, m. and f." which would mean that Latin rivers can indeed be feminine. Greetings, Boðberi (talk) 06:11, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

That's why we try to use evidence in the wild rather than dictionaries. You can have a go and look for yourself — a couple minutes of searching revealed "unde curvum Spream nuncupant". —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:28, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, I know the advantages of real examples while I also know the advantages of dictionaries. I just wasn't able to find any example indicating the gender. Now I found this: "et ad plagam Spreae Lusaticae occidentalem" (in Urkunden und historische Nachrichten). I guess Lusaticus means Lusatian, refering to the region Lusatia. So the example should mean "and at the western region of the Lusatian Spree". Doesn't this example proof that it is also feminine? -Boðberi (talk) 07:27, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Seems good. We should say it can be both m and f. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:16, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

OK, I'm going to add it. Thank you very much. -Boðberi (talk) 20:45, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

walrii

Hello. What's the reason for the revert? -Ikiaika (talk) 05:02, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I suppose the statement should be softened rather than removed. There are nearly no such words, although I just thought of one. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:10, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Well, there are Latin words spelled with 'w'. At least proper nouns in New Latin, like Westphalia or Westfalen which is Vestphalia, VVestphalia or Westphalia in Latin, depending on the orthography.

Also, even when there would be no 'w' in Latin, it could be that there is a form like "walri" for "walrus". For example, in German the Latin word compositum was also spelled with 'k' instead of 'c' but declined like a Latin word, that is Kompositum, genitive Kompositi etc. The German wiktionary has examples with "Kompositis", "Kompoſito" and "Kompoſiti". In the same way a Latin 'v' could have been replaced by 'w' while keeping the Latin declension or at least the Latin plural.

But I see, you already re-corrected the entry. -Ikiaika (talk) 05:25, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Native Speaker

Hello. How is adding "anglicism" before the translation helpful? We're already saying that in the etymology section.

PS: Next time you should tell me that when you're reverting (in the edit summary). 89.72.244.110 20:12, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

My understanding is that this term is viewed as an anglicism in formal German, unlike (for example) Handy, which is obviously from English, but is the standard term, rather than being a more anglicised equivalent. If a German speaker can demonstrate that I am wrong, I would be happy to have the context label removed.

Also, we don't have time to explain every reversion. You should be thankful that I created the vote that led to the default rollback summary suggesting that the rollback be discussed if it was made in error. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:19, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. 89.72.244.110 00:33, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Rollback

The label "vulgar" is repeated twice in the entry you rolled back. When adding "obscene" label it becomes "vulgar" for some reason. [2]

Hmm, I didn't know that. Sorry. It might be worth indicating that in your edit summary next time. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:54, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

mail

Can you send me an e‐mail? I would just send you one, but I can’t send mails through Wikiprojects any more. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 22:13, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Sure. Why can't you send mail? Is it a technical problem? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:52, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I don’t know for sure why I can’t, but it’s probably not a browser issue. I already complained about it here, but it was never resolved. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 23:02, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

User:Maggidim

Maggidim (talk • contribs) has been removing certain parameters from many Latin declension tables. It seems a little fishy to me, can you check this out? --WikiTiki89 21:14, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

All I see is removal of loc=1, which is certainly appropriate for country names; the rule I was taught for Classical Latin is that (besides lexical exceptions) it is to be restricted to "cities and small islands". I'll take a look at some more of their contribs now, but if anything else pops out at you, please leave me the diff and I'll check it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:20, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok thanks for clarifying about the locative case. But in this one he removed the singular-only parameter: diff. --WikiTiki89 23:49, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. I've added it back in; theoretically, I suppose all such nouns could be pluralised, but no plural forms are attested (unsurprisingly). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:04, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Except from a few words like domus, only cities and small ilands have a locative. In Medieval Latin or New Latin the locative maybe was used more freely, but then this has to be proven and then there has to be a note.

Removing the num=sg was a little mistake which can happen when one fixes many entries. Only a few countries should have a plural like China, Korea, Germany, Sudan, Kongo, but it should be very likely that a plural is not attested in Latin.

Many of my other edits improved the categorisation of Latin words, and sometimes derived terms or related terms were added.

Some entries for ilands still mention a locative. But I doubt that Australia or Cuba are small. Even Malta and Cyprus should be too big to be small.

-Maggidim (talk) 10:31, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

@Maggidim: Thank you for your contributions. My inexperience with Latin combined with your one mistake led me to incorrectly doubt your edits. --WikiTiki89 14:09, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Vote eligibility

Hi, I just saw the strikeouts. I didn't realize there was any voting eligibility criteria (perhaps the details could be added at the top of that page?).

I simply saw the suggestion in IRC to take a look at the vote, and so I did! I've also been active in a few logo votes at Metawiki over the years, and if I remember correctly there generally aren't any criteria there beyond being active in one of the wikimedia communities. I hope my struck-out votes can at least remain, so that my ideas might be read and considered. Let me know if I need/ought to do anything else, otherwise I'll leave it at this.

Thanks, and hope that helps. Quiddity (talk) 00:57, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

They are at the top of that page. Take a look.

I don't know who was advertising this vote in IRC; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but IME the community hasn't been very active there, and I try to keep most communication on-wiki.

We're not Meta. That's why this vote exists here in the first place.

I have left your votes, as you can see. If you want them to count, you can feel free to become a Wiktionarian. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:01, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm working on it... :) Quiddity (talk) 03:48, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

As Chuck quoted below, the criteria must be met "by the start time of the vote". --WikiTiki89 14:05, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Huh, I was just stopping by to ask about this. While not a very active contributor on this project, there are multiple senses, citations added within 1 year. What is a "wiktionarian"? - Amgine/ ^t·e 03:13, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

The relevant part of the voting policy: "Their account must have at least 50 edits in total to the main, Citations, Appendix, Rhymes, Wikisaurus, or Concordance namespaces on English Wiktionary by the start time of the vote.". Chuck Entz (talk) 03:35, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

buy & sell in Yiddish

I recently read a rumour that Yiddish contains hundreds of words for purchase and vend. Is that true at all? I seriously doubt it. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 06:49, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Eskimo words for snow is reporting for duty, only with an antisemitic twist. And as for why these ideas aren't left for dead in a little-seen blogpost: דער עולם איז אַ גולם (der oylem iz a goylem). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:02, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Ha, yeah, I was pretty sure that this was a racist lie, but I’m surprised to see anybody gullible enough to credit it. Although I would be curious to see any synonyms of פֿאַרקויפֿן and קויפֿן… I believe that there were at least two words for ‘buy’ in Proto‐Germanic: one Latin and one native. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 07:25, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

There's האַנדלען (handlen), which is something like "to engage in trade", and I see that מיסחרן (miskhern) apparently exists with similar meaning, but as I haven't ever heard the latter used, I'll check to make sure I have the shade of meaning right before I create the entry. I try to take extra care with verbs, because it's always so hard to document them accurately if I don't have native input. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:41, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

New version of Template:R:Webster 1913

Hi, I created an updated version of {{R:Webster 1913}} at {{R:Webster 1913/sandbox}}, and wonder if you can replace the old version with the new one as the template is edit protected. I am proposing to update the old version for two reasons: (1) to bring its formatting in line with other templates through the use of {{cite-book}}; (2) unfortunately, it appears that the University of Chicago has discontinued its online version of Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. The link created by the old version to http://machaut.uchicago.edu is now generating a "server not found" error. I'm not sure how long this has been going on for. I tried looking for a new online version of the Dictionary at the University's ARTFL Project website, but there doesn't seem to be one. Thus, the new version of the template removes the external link. — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:41, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this. The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48: consists almost entirely of Webster 1913 material. It is available online through The Free Dictionary. It might be possible use template code like:

http://www.freedictionary.org/?Query={{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}&button=Search

I don't know whether is possible to jump to the first occurrence of The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48: header. DCDuring TALK 12:26, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I found three other websites that we might be able to use. Which one do you think we should use?

• http://www.websters1913.com (no ads, but doesn't look as up to date as the other two)
• http://www.webster-dictionary.net
• http://www.webster-dictionary.org

— SMUconlaw (talk) 14:56, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I think the first one is preferable. I tried searching connascency in all three, and the first was the only one that recognised my input and sent me to the appropriate entry. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:55, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

OK, I added websters1913.com to {{R:Webster 1913/sandbox}}. Try it out. I'm not entirely sure what the text within the braces is supposed to indicate, though (e.g., "Con*nas"cence (?), Con*nas"cen*cy (?)") – stress? hyphenation? — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:10, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, it's stress. It seems to work well, and it links to the entries right, which is my chief concern. I'll replace the real template now. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:24, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Great, thanks. By the way, I noticed there are a whole bunch of "R:Webster" templates. I think we may have to check if all of them are working. {{R:Webster 1828}}, which also relies on http://machaut.uchicago.edu, clearly doesn't. Can we find an alternative source for the 1828 dictionary? — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:40, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

@Smuconlaw: 1828 isn't protected, so if you find a replacement, feel free to change it yourself. If you can't, we should still remove the dead link. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:30, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

@Smuconlaw, DCDuring: So... —JohnC5 14:45, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Mmmm, I'm not keen on getting involved in a potential edit war. — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:20, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

The first source above has the etymology, but the others don't. The others also have extraneous content, as did the Collaborative. DCDuring TALK 16:41, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

I prefer the shorter version of the displayed reference info. DCDuring TALK 16:43, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

103.242.218.9

Should we do something about this user? I know that technically they aren’t breaking any rules, but their apathy towards simple instructions is quite consistent with a troublecauser. --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 08:08, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

It was it? Very strange behaviour, and although the entries aren't wrong, they aren't formatted perfectly either. I don't really have the patience needed to clean them all up a bit, which is really what has to be done. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Domhnall

I don't know when I'll get around to adding the entry (or maybe someone else will), but the most common pronunciation I know of is /ˈd̪ˠoːnˠəl̪ˠ/. There is a Connacht variant with /uː/, and perhaps a Munster variant with /au/, though I'm not sure about that. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:12, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:21, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Deleting Template:R:Webster 1913

I object to your deleting Template:R:Webster 1913 out of process and replacing it with another template. I ask that you restore the revision history of Template:R:Webster 1913 if possible. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:23, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Refer to the section above on this topic. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:25, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

#New version of Template:R:Webster 1913 does not contain anywhing useful. In particular, it does not contain anything like evidence of consensus on deleting the template.

Can you please post here below the content of the deleted template? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:10, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

<onlyinclude>[http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?resource=Webster%27s&word={{urlencode:{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}&use1913=on {{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}] in ''[[Wiktionary:Webster's Dictionary, 1913|Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary]]'', G. & C. Merriam, 1913</onlyinclude> [[Category:English reference templates|Webster]] —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:55, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

The content is available from the The FreeDictionary.com (access to entry for location is http://www.thefreedictionary.com/location) and The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 at http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict. DCDuring TALK 22:25, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm confused what the issue is here. The template was changed to the standardized {{cite-book}} format. What's wrong? —JohnC5 02:51, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Meanwhile, -sche has restored the revision history of the template, as obvious from template logs. In the logs, I see Metaknowledge deleting the template on 11 May 2016 and -sche restoring the page on 23 May 2016. Before that restoration by -sche, the history was lost via deletion by Metaknowledge. Thanks to -sche for restoring the history and to Metaknowledge for posting above the previous template content. Problem solved. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:19, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Rollback on https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wifmann#Noun May 17 2016

Hello Sir/Ma'am:

Was your rollback, undoing my edit to the dictionary entry which is a legitimate meaning of the word, automated or with intent? Please reply if you wish upon MarkWilliamVinerMD my account, as I'm simply not logged in. Or here is alright. Here's my source. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=woman and I quote "woman (n.) Look up woman at Dictionary.com "adult female human," late Old English wimman, wiman (plural wimmen), literally "woman-man," alteration of wifman (plural wifmen) "woman, female servant" (8c.), a compound of wif "woman" (see wife) + man "human being" (in Old English used in reference to both sexes; see man (n.)). Compare Dutch vrouwmens "wife," literally "woman-man."" End quote. 24.2.173.227 20:32, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Your addition was poorly formatted and a copyright violation by copying word for word from another dictionary. Please do not do that again. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:55, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Question about SOP

I was thinking of adding the Dutch jargon term oorkondenhypothese, "documentary hypothesis", but I wasn't sure whether it could pass SOP. At an earlier stage, oorkonde meant something like "written document" or "source". But in current Dutch the meaning of oorkonde has been narrowed to only include official documents. What are your thoughts on how it would fare under SOP? Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 12:59, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

SOP has been consistently interpreted to apply to terms of multiple words only, and in Dutch, that means words separated by a space. So oorkondenhypothese is totally fine as a single word, even if the English equivalent wouldn't pass CFI (in which case have the definition link to the constituent words, or in this case to the Wikipedia article). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:37, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Wait, there really isn't any restriction on compounds as long as they're one continuous string? Doesn't that risk WT getting to many unnecessary analysable but attested lemmas, like uienhandel or (arguably) bananenkoning? Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 13:24, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

It does. It makes more sense for English than for many other languages. So don't waste too much time on adding such compounds in the languages that famously form long ones. But also consider that language learners with limited vocabulary may not understand what the components are, even where the divisions between them are. DCDuring TALK 14:50, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

WT:NOT

Contested rollback: I came from the English Wikipedia, but some entries are encyclopedic are transwikied into Wikipedia. You can call me KGirlTrucker87, and I have autism and make some mistakes. CitiesGamer66 (talk) 22:03, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

We don't transwiki pages to Wikipedia much any more, and it's not helpful at all to add a bit of extra impenetrable wikijargon to the page. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:12, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Could you please unblock my robot

Hi Metaknowledge, could you please unblock my robot User:OrphicBot? I am going to request a vote for bot status and because my current entries are not representative, I would like to make five to ten new contributions to link as representative edits. Thank you! Isomorphyc (talk) 15:54, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

 Done —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:32, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate it! Isomorphyc (talk) 18:51, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Hi Metaknowledge, just so you know, I have had to go over the five to ten edits I suggested I would make -- I am up to fifteen now in the process of producing diff-files for the voting dialogue process. I didn't know about patrolling on Wiktionary at all until you Autopatrolled me, or I would have been much more considerate about all of my edits in the past, not least the robot ones. Thanks for your involvement in this; it's appreciated. I am trying to make robot test edits in the smallest possible groups now, per others' expectations for diff-files. Isomorphyc (talk) 02:27, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

PIE roots on suffixes

You're right. I'll reverse the edits. Thanks for the heads up. 73.206.73.84 05:18, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

rollback on Kingdom of the Netherlands

Salute! (since you read Interlingua)

What I was trying to accomplish on Kingdom of the Netherlands was to make the heading of the translation table agree with what the definition says:

The Kingdom of the Netherlands is a monarchy that consists of four constituent countries: the Netherlands, Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. The four are constitutionally on a par, though in practice the Netherlands, which has about 98% of the Kingdom's population and territory, is the dominant partner. So the Kingdom of the Netherlands is a distinct entity from the Netherlands (the constituent country), and it seems incorrect to say that Kingdom of the Netherlands is the official name for Netherlands, the constituent country. The same claim is made in Netherlands, so after what I thought was a clarifying change on the "Kingdom..." page, I intended to change "Official name:" to "constituent country of" on the "Netherlands" page.

I'm wondering why the edit to Kingdom of the Netherlands drew your attention, but not my earlier edit to Netherlands. At issue there was a confusion between Paises Basse, Interlingua for the Benelux region, and Pais Basse, the Netherlands (both distinct from Regno del Paises Basse, the Kingdom of the Netherlands). That fix left a red link, and a page Pais Basse should probably be split off from Paises Basse, where the two terms are conflated. So if you see me doing that, you'll know what's going on. And that page has interwiki links, and one thing leads to another; I've made a tweak on the Dutch wiktionary and pray I don't have to cope with Polish and Lithuanian.

I'll cease activity for a while to let the dust settle. Please let me know if you object to my proceeding as outlined. Would it be okay to reintroduce the edit to Kingdom of the Netherlands?

Cordialmente, Tortoise0308 (talk) 12:01, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

This is a stickier issue than I realised. The problem is that formally, Aruba isn't part of the Netherlands, but of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. However, we're a dictionary, not an encyclopaedia, and colloquially, rather few people who are not Dutch are aware of such intricacies; in common parlance, Aruba is indeed part of the Netherlands.

I reverted the tgloss because it's supposed to serve as a gloss of the term in question, and what you changed it to does not gloss it particularly well. But as for the general issue at hand, this kind of problem isn't really in my wheelhouse. I'm sorry I can't be of much use, but perhaps you could post in the Tea room and see if you can get some help there in handling this in a lexicographically appropriate way. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:33, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Aepyornis

I added an English entry, but I'm not sure... how would you distinguish English use from Translingual? DTLHS (talk) 05:05, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

If I see lowercase use and pluralisation, I call it English. Otherwise, I default to Translingual. DCD may have a more nuanced approach. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:10, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Do you know the etymology? What would be the expected plural form? DTLHS (talk) 05:13, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

The etymology is in the entry. I'd pluralise it Aepyornithes, but nowadays, as classical scholarship wanes among the science-minded, Aepyornises is likely to be commoner. The first is attested, the second is unclear (the hits are dominated by reprints of H. G. Wells). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:21, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately Aepyornithes is or was the name of the taxonomic order of the bird, so that has the same problem. I'll think about it tomorrow. DTLHS (talk) 05:46, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Look at the cites. It's not hard to tell which sense is being used most of the time, I think. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:47, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Sandernista

I don't go to turf wars in a language foreign to me, but according to simple Google search "Sandernista" is 15 times as popular as "Sanderista". --Hekaheka (talk) 06:11, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, but there's WT:ATTEST. Check out google books:"Sandernistas" OR "Sanderistas". It should be an alt form, and you shouldn't copy the cite over either. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:14, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

I noticed the citation copying error as well and was just editing it when you intervened. --Hekaheka (talk) 06:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

Reversion on ṯanewwašt

Why did you put the Etymology subheading back onto L2? Frederick (talk) 17:05, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

My mistake. I misread the diff. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:38, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

modelos de prezentasion lojika

Te agrada el kezo? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 03:13, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, but I'm trying to eat less of it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:17, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Tagalog issues

No solid basis for deletion of "maluwat", nomination was done in my sleep. Hours have passed with no debate progress.— This unsigned comment was added by JaijetJasmin (talk • contribs).

Relax. The deletion process normally takes at least a week after nomination, so it's early yet. It's true that things can be speedily deleted in extreme or obvious cases, but the entry would already be gone if that were the case. This is a wiki, so most decisions take time and consensus. After all, SemperBlotto is in England. I'm in Los Angeles. Others are in New York, Texas, Brazil, Australia, China, Japan, Armenia, Georgia, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany... you get the idea. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:27, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

second language acquisition

Hi Meta, I see you speedily deleted my entry for this. I don't agree it is SOP. Actually, there is a case for def 1 I had, but not for def. 2 - the academic study of. I'd prefer to leave the entry and put it to a vote about its SOPness. Would that be okay? - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 07:47, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Could recreate it and do an RFD if you want, sure. I'm pretty sure you can use that "academic study of" for any appropriate term, though — "underwater basket-weaving" is both the act of making the baskets as well as the class/academic study ("I'm a professor of underwater basket-weaving"; "I'm taking underwater basket-weaving next term"). It's not a separate sense, lexicographically speaking. And the first sense is, of course, merely the acquisition of a second language. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:52, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Giallo.

Hallo,
I have seeen you rolled back my correction at the etymology of the italian word "giallo".
Also, the actual etimology does not have any sense because every ceap book become yellow and not uniquely the crime novels.
Anyone in Italy know that the etimology is the ones I pasted yesterday; you can verify that thing simply by reading "Giallo" page in italian Wikipedia.
Please compare also: "giallo" at "Grande dizionario della lingua italiana", Armando Curcio editore, 2°edizione Bologna 1971. Vol. 1 Pag. 468. (oder im "Treccani" online.)
Grazie.
--Einreiher (talk) 07:46, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

My mistake; I've restored it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:34, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

consessus

Could you check my Hebrew transcription here? Thanks. DTLHS (talk) 05:06, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Fixed. See סיעה. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:07, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Quote for "kritiki"

Thank you for your explanation about citations and lemmas.

I had added a quote for the imperative form "kritiku", and then replaced that with a quote for the infinitive "kritiki". You then reverted both my edits. Do you have any objection to me having a quote on the page kritiki to show usage of the word? Ruzulo (talk) 19:47, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

No, both are good. I'll fix it. Also, for future reference, you can respond on your own talkpage. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:15, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you

Apologies for the recompilation spam, the absurd name, and the appearance of sockpuppetry. Isomorphyc aka Serenedijppitty (talk) 02:32, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

"I will be on holiday until mid-June"

Wow! 11 months! I'm envious. I can't begin to imagine the pile of work on my return if I did that... ;p Chuck Entz (talk) 01:14, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I can't tell how serious you're being, but I'm so glad you caught this! I'll only be away for a month. I hope I'm only making silly mistakes on my user page and not in any entries... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:18, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

לאַפֿער

Are you sure this means "knight" rather than "bishop"? It can hardly be unrelated with German Läufer (“bishop”). Kolmiel (talk) 23:27, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! I don't play chess, so I completely missed that Raphael was wrong on this one. I have corrected the relevant entries. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:45, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Old revert in "aunque la mona se vista de seda..."

Hi MK,

I just noticed this old change you reverted: https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=aunque_la_mona_se_vista_de_seda,_mona_se_queda&oldid=prev&diff=32862934&markasread=3046412

It's a very minor thing, but I do think that rollback wasn't right. Why did you revert it? Did you see something wrong with my explanation? My native tongue is Spanish, by the way, and I am pretty confident about what I'm saying there.

Thanks, Jordi Burguet Castell (talk) 21:17, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I do think that this additional connotation should be included, if it's relevant to how speakers understand the phrase. —CodeCat 21:40, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

If you want to add that back, feel free. I think I probably reverted it because it seems like a false flag, irrelevant to the basic meaning of the phrase ("a leopard cannot change its spots", etc). That said, I'm not a native Spanish speaker, so if regular L1 speakers think of that meaning when they use the proverb, then as CC said, it should probably be included. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:00, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Weird Etymologies

Werdna Yrneh Yarg has made some weird edits to the Etymology section of the adjective worth. — This unsigned comment was added by Mountebank1 (talk • contribs).

Also, should we add a postposition header for the usage: I have twenty-seven dollars worth of chicken salad. Is this a postposition? —JohnC5 15:50, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

No. It's just a noun preceded by a possessive. Technically it should be spelled twenty-seven dollars’ worth. --WikiTiki89 17:33, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm a dummie. —JohnC5 17:47, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

• Given the warning on his talk page after a history of bad edits and ignoring basic etymological principles, I guess this is block-worthy, but I don't feel like looking through the edits and making a decision. @JohnC5, Chuck Entz, or any other admins, can you guys decide whether to block him? Thanks. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 13:51, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

  So, I had been worrying about this for a while. This user seems earnestly to mean well, but his theories are wildly inaccurate and often difficult to understand. He also has a habit of making formatting errors over the course of long strings of edits to a page. It would sadden me, though, to have to block someone just because he's almost always wrong. I'd say it makes sense to do so, but I'm not sure I could bring myself to do it. —JohnC5 14:23, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

  Alright. I warned him, I'll block him — but just a week. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:09, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for WYY intervention

Is there a way I can thank for that intervention, like for an edit? Anyway, thanks. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:14, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

You could have thanked me for my most recent edit to this page. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:29, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

dammit

Hello. You reverted my edit to dammit. I changed the pronunciation from /ˈdæmɪt/ to /ˈdæmᵻt/ to reflect that the second syllable is not necessarily a tense vowel, but actually a schwi (like the "e" in roses as opposed to the "a" in Rosa's). This reduced vowel's true pronunciation varies between /ɪ~ɨ̞~ə/. This also applies to the word it as a clitic. Why did you revert my edit? - Gilgamesh~enwiki (talk) 14:11, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

At Wiktionary, we represent this vowel phonemically as /ɪ/. This is just an arbitrary matter of choosing a symbol and /ɪ/ is what we chose. --WikiTiki89 14:37, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

But it's a schwi. Not everyone pronounces schwi the same as the KIT vowel. Australia doesn't, New Zealand doesn't, much of Britain doesn't, much of North America doesn't... - Gilgamesh~enwiki (talk) 08:22, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Who said it has to be the same as the KIT vowel? --WikiTiki89 15:25, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

/ɪ/ is the KIT vowel. A tense vowel. /ᵻ/ is the schwi. A reduced vowel. - Gilgamesh~enwiki (talk) 20:03, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

You're mistaking phonemes and phones here. A phone is what it says on the box, that exact (more or less) sound, and is denoted with [ ]. But we're talking about phonemes here, the more abstract underlying units of speech. There is no guarantee that a phoneme will be pronounced the same in every circumstance. Take /m/ for example, it is pronounced as the phone [m] in many cases, but as [ɱ] before the phonemes /f/ or /v/. In this particular case, the phoneme /ɪ/, when unstressed, is realised as [ᵻ], while there is no distinct /ᵻ/ phoneme at all. —CodeCat 20:14, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Requesting a page to be protected?

Hi Metaknowledge! Hope all is well! Just a quick question, hope you don't mind: do we have a "request for protection" function around here? I'm aware that administrators can protect certain pages, but is there a way to signal pages worth protecting? --Robbie SWE (talk) 19:18, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Yep, just use WT:VIP or contact an admin directly. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:20, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Ahh, cheers! --Robbie SWE (talk) 19:33, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Etymologies on the Entry Pages

@Metaknowledge Thank you for only blocking me for one week - I deserved to be blocked for four weeks! Initially, I knew nothing about formatting as you know; but while ideas may be pioneered on Talk Pages, this is certainly not acceptable on those of the Main Entry; hence my reversion of my edit on FUN (on its Entry Page, having no evidence of its current meaning before the 17th century. All my Entry page edits are souceable from reliable dictionaries, such as O.E.D. (the most accurate), the general Online dictionary, Skeat's and the less known Gresham's New English Dictionary, that has very few inaccuracies. Merriam Webster's is excellently helpful for its initial lexeme editing. It then occasionary jumps over the bounds as in that of "DYE", where it erroneously relates it to a Germanic lexeme "to hide, or darken"; whereas "DEAG" is simply the genetive of "DEAH". I have not followed the Main Entry formatting procedures on its or other Talk Pages, for simplicity and so kept to a consistent format, but am prepared to change these if required. My ambition has always been to make Wiktionary etymologies the most accurate.

When reverting most of my edit on the worth page, the Wikipedian also deleted a blatant semantic error that could begin to discredit Wiktionary; so that page is more accurate now than it had been for a long time! It was that serious error that impelled me to edit that page at all, but in so doing confounded the etymology still further! All edits of Entry pages that I had made are clearly visible on the Watch List, and all the rest therein are quite reliable. I have had to learn a deal more about etymological rules during the past ten months in order to present true etymologies. To present an example of a lexeme that should demonstrate that I am not biased by Celtic origins; it is that of loop, where other etymologists connect it with Celtic "LUB" (bend) - and I always had some difficulty about that derivation, without intermediate meanings - but it only took seconds for me to accept the Main Entry form, related to leap, whence "leap knot", that is clearly Germanic. I have had to patrol my Talk Page edits, since I found a few inaccuracies therein. My due apologies for any inaccuracies in formatting, as well, and for the inconvenience caused! Even though most of the Entry edits were correct (and are all so now), uncorrected edits (after being pointed out), still left or unreverted, would be a blockable offence. Although I never look for thanks for the helpful edits, I do welcome adjustment or constructive criticism when or if required.

Andrew H. Gray 12:21, 4 August 2016 (UTC)Andrew

Reverting air hose SOP within seconds?

Seriously? This term is pretty clearly SOP. "a hose for conveying air". We might as well have water hose, "a hose that squirts water". Please at least leave reasons for reverting my edits, especially within literal seconds of me editing it. Philmonte101 (talk) 23:08, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

WT:COALMINE —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:09, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Fine. I don't like this decision, however. If I were there, I would have opposed this. Philmonte101 (talk) 23:10, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know how it was entered, but "alternative form of" should be perfectly OK. Personally I dislike the compound form. DonnanZ (talk) 23:24, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

(Your revert at) tovenares in tovenaar

Why? How does it then qualify as an antonym? Thanks for any explanation, --FuLAmGNut (talk) 06:51, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

The qualifier is referring to the sense in the entry, not to the antonymous sense. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:07, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

I removed it altogether because there's no way it's an antonym. How can you have the opposite of a wizard? Wouldn't that be a not-wizard? —CodeCat 12:23, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

What about using "Coordinate terms"? Equinox ◑ 12:26, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Your revert on "wrong"

I've seen bits and pieces of the Spanish dub of Watchmen, and I could've sworn I heard the line "Wrong as usual!" at the very start translated as "¡Error como siempre!" Did I hear it wrong? --96.38.112.116 21:11, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

That doesn't mean it's an appropriate translation for that word out of context. Don't add translations in languages you don't know. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:53, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Animal calls

I had been looking for a good name for this category for an hour by combining 'animal' 'call' 'husbandry' 'interjection' and 'word' in Google and seeing what came up. So far this is the only germane hit.
"Ronkh Wolof has an elaborate system of animal calls which does not overlap with the verbal gestures. The inventory includes calls to summon a dog, horse/donkey, cat, sheep or a goat, with a set of different deictic calls for ‘come’ and ‘go’. We tested the recordings of animal calls with speakers, who correctly identified them out of context. Second, Dialonotes that the use of clicks and the other verbal gestures identified here is in decline in urban Wolof, explaining this as a consequence of the lack of animals"
Verbal Gestures in Wolof:Lenore A. Grenoble, Rebekah Baglini, Martina Martinović
Kullman's Mongolian Grammar has "Interjections of husbandry", but it's a mouthful. Any suggestions?Crom daba (talk) 23:04, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't think there's any standard category for that, but perhaps there should be. Also, as a native English speaker, I really can't think of what the right term would be. Perhaps others will comment here; if not, I'd suggest that you raise the issue at WT:TR. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:40, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

kaph

Why the reversion? Is khaph wrong somehow? Equinox ◑ 22:37, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Not sure how we should handle these entries, but kaf and khaf do not have the relationship of alternative forms, but instead refer to different referents. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:49, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Are you able to correct the definition at khaph (with the kh)? Equinox ◑ 10:37, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Done, I suppose. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:56, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Yiddish noun "herb"

@Embryomystic also: I added Yiddish noun הערב (herb). --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 18:16, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I fixed it up a bit. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:56, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Rollback

Why this reversion? Many other languages also mention the gendered words. — This unsigned comment was added by Robin van der Vliet (talk • contribs).

This is a strange nonstandard way of showing something that is entirely unnecessary. @Mr. Granger had already removed them, by the way. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:57, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Reversion of unstressed accents

Why are you undoing my work? If you think the accents should be different, change them, but please quit turning a 2-syllable (or more) word back into a 1-syllable word. Bcent1234 (talk) 19:30, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Dot together with the stress marker

When all syllables are separated with periods (.), should we use the primary stress marker (ˈ) in addition to the period? The entry abdominohysterectomy uses /æbˈdɑm.ɪ.noʊ.hɪs.tɚˈɹɛk.tə.mi/, but shouldn't it be /æbˈdɑm.ɪ.noʊ.hɪs.tɚ.ˈɹɛk.tə.mi/? (with the period in the middle of tɚ.ˈɹɛk). --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:49, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

No. Stress markers necessarily imply a syllable break, so to add a period would be nonstandard and useless. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:52, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 20:02, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

On a technical note, for at least one language (Template:et-IPA/documentation), the templates we use don't predict where the start/end of a syllable is (or behave the way they do for some other reason?) and put the stress marker after the consonant, even if that isn't where the syllable break is, as in the example /pˈoːd̥ʲ/. I seem to recall that the desirability vs undesirability of this was discussed before somewhere. - -sche (discuss) 22:25, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

It's a technical issue. The difficulty with the IPA stress mark overall is that sometimes you want to just say "this syllable nucleus is stressed" without also delimiting the syllables. Figuring out where syllables should be split is tricky, and I don't know enough of Estonian to do this. However, I also didn't think that should mean having no IPA at all, so I left it this way because it's better than nothing. —CodeCat 16:22, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Speise

Please explain your revert. -Šmuel (talk) 22:35, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

I misread it, sorry. I reverted myself. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:38, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Ok.

The forms do exist and are still in use, nowadays often together with und and Trank in "Speis und Trank" or "Speis' und Trank". Three modern usages without und and Trank:

• 2013, Rätsel des Tages: Die besten Denksportaufgaben der beliebten facebook-Gruppe, p. 120

  Und bei jeder Speis', ob Fleisch oder Fisch, triffst du mich an jedem Tisch.

• 2009, Lars Kramer, Axt im Wald. Humor, poem entitled Bremsspur

  Hat Euch die Speis' denn nicht geschmecket [...] ?

• 2003, Raimund Samson, Das Paradies auf der Bratpfanne

  Jähsinn schob die Speis zusammen, lüpfte eine Portion auf das Vorderteil der Kelle und klatschte den Brei auf die noch freie Fläche.

-Šmuel (talk) 23:04, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Please feel free to create the alternative form entries and stick those citations in as appropriate. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:15, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Platzangst

Is the citation for the second sense kosher in your book? The author specifies he means agoraphobia with a gloss, but it's not otherwise obvious from the context. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 12:19, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Canonically kosher, even. CFI says: "On the other hand, a sentence like “They raised the jib (a small sail forward of the mainsail) in order to get the most out of the light wind,” appearing in an account of a sailboat race, would be fine. It happens to contain a definition, but the word is also used for its meaning." —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:16, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Empty mentions with alternative text

Hey, I just noticed your edit on адгуус. I used the original construction in order to get the transliteration for people who have trouble with Cyrillic, I sometimes do this if something needs to be explained about consonant clusters or other strings of characters that shouldn't have their entry. In this case an entry for г exists, but I don't think anyone perusing that page will find a link to the letter itself useful, so I'll go ahead and revert your edit. Crom daba (talk) 01:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Ah, forgot about the translit. The real issue with what you did is that you had it link to this page, which is definitely the wrong thing to do. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:25, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Seems like I did it wrong, here's what I meant to do. [3] Crom daba (talk) 05:10, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

That's a good solution. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:21, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Please guide me re IPA

I put a "z" in the pronunciation of this word (https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=ambushes) because I detect the z when saying the word. The issue is that I don't really say as hard a z as I usually do. Is there a "softer" z that I should have used ? Bcent1234 (talk) 14:05, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Also, why does the IPA for [[4]] not have a schwa but the rhyming information does ? I think I pronounce it with a schwa, myself. Bcent1234 (talk) 14:55, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Re ambushes: In many dialects of English, /z/ can be slightly devoiced at the end of a word. This may be noted on a phonetic level, but the // denote a phonemic transcription, and there is no phonemic contrast. The IPA there is correct.

Re ample: Good catch, there is definitely a schwa there. (Some editors have used a vocalic l instead, but a schwa is better.) I've fixed it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:35, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

[grammatical exceptions like kijana] (talk) 22:16, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Interesting to see the fast reaction to my first edit in Wiktionary! Though I fully understand that a more well thought out format would be good, I still think it was better there than gone. To me it seems a bit strange to just assume "that people coming here already know" things, especially about exceptions. My edit was about the swahili kijana which belongs to the ki-vi- class which usually has also ki and vi as the fitting subject prefix. But this is one (of few!) members of that class that DON't do that because it is about people. I would think that a best case resolution would be to have some marking (to put on words that are exceptions) and a link to a page explaining the animate subjects exceptions. What do you think about that? Jeffforssell (talk) 07:20, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

It would certainly be possible to write up a short template to be used as a usage note. However, the work involved in adding that template to all relevant entries would be quite intensive, and not particularly valuable. We would also have to distinguish animals from other animates, as in at least some dialects of Swahili, animals in the n class do not take animate concords when used in the plural. In short, we all know that a list of words in Swahili is not sufficient for someone to be able to speak the language unless they study the grammar elsewhere. Wiktionary's role is to be a dictionary, not a grammar, and we should lean towards storing this kind of information in Wiktionary appendices or on Wikipedia instead of distributing it in entries. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:47, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Swahili usually has the m wa class for people. There are exceptions (for plural) like kijana. I think it would be great if I could be reminded of the practice around this particular case, and similar ones if other people fill in. Adding to ALL relevant entries would be intensive and that hasn't been my suggestion. Making a dictionary at all is intensive :-) . Making these comments is more intensive than just letting the original edit remain and now we are back to ZERO = "I know about m wa and how it is used. I know how ki vi is (usually) used. But this word is about a person so it is most probably an exception in the ki vi class. Where do I go to check words that could be exceptions?" I don't see an easy way to do that (check kijana) inside wikipedia. (I get the "8th Vice President of Kenya")

For me one of the wonderful things about the net is hyperlinking capability. It can be so easy to connect things, like wordlists and grammar. When there are breaks in usual patterns that would seem to be a good idea. Languages are holistic things and grammar always has specific words in it and word lists, dictionaries, have grammatical elements. I assume that we all are wanting to create resources for the Swahili language as a whole and the more we can tie things together for users the better. So I wonder, where "in Wiktionary appendices or on Wikipedia" this information is best already written up, so that I could link to it. Jeffforssell (talk) 07:20, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Personally, I see the matter of kijana as being a regular rule, though it does form an exception to other rules. Irregular rules constitute a parameter associated with specific lexical items and therefore must have their own usage note. Regular rules are best documented on Wiktionary in appendices that are linked to by each relevant entry. You are correct that languages are holistic things; dictionaries are not, and we have to struggle with the disconnect between the two.

Now for practical matters. When I made the headword-line template for Swahili nouns, {{sw-noun}}, I had it link the name of each class to Appendix:Swahili nouns. That appendix is pretty good as a backbone, and better than the documentation for nouns in any other Bantu language here, but it could use work. I think that this kind of information could conceivably be incorporated into an expanded and improved version of that appendix.

Finally, one important thing about Wiktionary that may not be immediately obvious: we have extremely strict formatting rules (most of which is described at WT:EL). This is necessary because there is such a large amount of linguistic information and it is so difficult to manage it all, so it all has to be standardised as best we can. That is why we have to decide on a way to handle cases like this, and not add prose to some part of the entry where a robot or a script won't expect it or know how to handle it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:53, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, I've tried looking at the appendi (There wasn't any for Swahili nouns) - I followed the ki-vi class link from kijana. There was nothing there about what happens to the animate objects that ARE in the ki-vi class, so I added a small paragraph that you are welcome to improve.

Is there any place in the appendi where the irregular rule about animate objects can be found (and linked to?

When I look at the sw noun template it seems like there are only 2 parameters. but WT:EL has MANY possible parameters, where Example sentences and Usage Notes could be used in a clarifying way in a case like this. Jeffforssell (talk) 08:50, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

honyock

Thanks for reviewing my changes to this entry! Can you please share the specifics of your concerns with some of my edits [5]? I believe they served to enhance accuracy (previous version claimed a degree of regionality to the word not backed up by a brief survey of its' use in literature), and completeness of the entry. Thanks for taking the time to help me learn.

—User:Brycemilton

I only saw your final edit, which was adding a term to 'Related terms' which does not belong there. Most of your additions had various formatting errors as well; please see WT:ELE or look at how existing entries are formatted. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:59, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! —User:Brycemilton

meänkieli

Why would you want to revert the link to the English WP although the link to the Finnish WP is useless to users of this, the English version of Wiktionary? --Espoo (talk) 11:54, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

That's how things work around here — if the section is X language, it links to X language Wiktionary. Meänkieli#English is the place to link to the English Wikipedia. (And though it seems odd and counterintuitive, I find it rather helpful as a language-learner.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:44, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

{{t-}}

FYI, {{t-}} is actually long-deprecated; it's been a redirect to {{t}} for almost three years now, aside from a four-month period when it was simply deleted. —Ruakh_TALK 06:17, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

@Ruakh: Thanks. I'm not sure what I did to merit this notification, but I hope it means you'll be around more. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:50, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I should have linked to the edit I saw: adjectivization?diff=40568798.
As for being around more . . . maybe? Not sure. :-P
—Ruakh_TALK 05:27, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

@Ruakh: Ah, I just wasn't thinking in that edit. And, er, please come back... you're a remarkably sane person and a good editor, and we have more than enough work to go around. :) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:33, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

transability

Dear volunteers,

For the entry “transability”, I added a reference and link under Quotations. Since the definition provided for transability is clearly inspired by one sentence in my work (the one for which I added a quotation and reference), I would really appreciate if the quotation was not removed. I tried to add it a few times but for a reason that I don't understand, it was removed. Thank you very much. All the best, ABscholar1979

It is not clear why what you are trying to add even belongs in the entry. We are only concerned with the word, and your "quotation" does not even contain that word. There is no reason for us to fix your formatting for something that doesn't even need to be there. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:39, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Acela Republican

This is completely ridiculous. We know the word exists, we know it's used a fair amount, and we're still trying to delete it. This is a good idea HOW exactly? This improves learning the language HOW exactly? It's not. DC and Equinox are being overly bureaucratic about this, and I am mad at DC in particular for his insistence on bureaucracy while he does nothing to try and add citations. All he does is say I must do it. Purplebackpack89 05:47, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

If you really wanted to be able to add this word and improve Wiktionary, you'd work with experienced editors to craft a vote that would expand and clarify durability. Instead, you ignore the rules, insult other editors, and act insufferably immaturely.

Also, I would prefer it you wouldn't bring your drama with others to my talk page. I don't intend to respond to you further here unless the situation changes. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:52, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

You don't seem to understand why I think this is ridiculous... Purplebackpack89 06:09, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Booties is fashion slang for boots

I added booties into boots because I have seen it a few times and recently it was also on Aliexpress where they advertised boots, take a look at this: https://www.google.si/search?q=fashion+booties&client=firefox-b&biw=1216&bih=590&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjU9e6ehNPPAhUHNhoKHV2cDmcQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=booties Just think about it, someone says "I want those those booties" in informal affectionate way.

• That's just the plural of booty (meaning bootee) SemperBlotto (talk) 15:18, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

water and wahter, wahtuh

Sorry for edit-warring you right back on water, but I have to wonder whether you're actually in favour of retaining links to those forms (I could give every word an eye-dialect respelling; the targets of those links don't even have citations), or whether you've just mistaken me for some kind of vandal based on the form of my username... 4pq1injbok (talk) 03:28, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

I know you're not a vandal, you just don't know what you're doing. The entries don't have to have citations on them to be citeable; just glance at Google Books and you'll see they pass. Now, I reckon they should be marked as eye dialect (and I appreciate that you did that on their pages), but there's no call to remove them (especially after someone's reverted you). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:37, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

I know what I'm doing. I'm trying to fight cruft, and those lines are crufty, though your latest is an improvement. Eye dialect is a fully productive process! If we carry this through to its logical conclusion, shouldn't we write a bot that changes -er to -uh in every English headword, searches Google Books, and slaps up a link if it finds something? That wahtuh should have a page of its own isn't cruft, since it might be searched for, and it's useful that it can be found; but I see no use in the link going this way. Anyway, I'm not going to argue further about this here, that's all from me. 4pq1injbok (talk) 03:50, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, plurals are productive as well, but we have entries for them and link to them from the lemma. If someone could write a bot that could do that, it would be an acceptable contribution to Wiktionary. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:19, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

co~tempt

I've never seen that tilde thing on an English word before (except Spanish loans). I am truly curious about the ety/origin. Equinox ◑ 19:29, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

In the middle ages, the tilde just indicated a following letter n (or occasionally m or even other letters) written above the letter to save space. It was used in pretty much all Latin-script languages. --WikiTiki89 19:35, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Module:fa-translit not working

Hey @Metaknowledge, fa-translit is not working. Why is that? Using {{xlit}}, I will use an example of it not working:

>>> <<<

There! — AWESOME meeos ！ ＊ （「欺负」我） 23:41, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

It never worked and never will work. Persian text cannot be transliterated automatically because the vowels usually cannot be deduced. --WikiTiki89 23:59, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

• You don't need to ping someone on their talk page; it accomplishes nothing. Also, I have no association with that module and have not contributed to the Persian entries here. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:35, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

"fix indent" edit

Hi. Re: diff. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not sure if it does any good. It looks like a reply to an unsigned post of another person. I intentionally used "::" to align to my previous paragraph. Am I missing something? --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:44, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I hope it's better now. In numbered lists, every consecutive line must start with # otherwise the numbering restarts. --WikiTiki89 01:51, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Your edit

is in error at a macro level, even if the formatting could be improved. Wiktionary:List of languages is a list of the language codes used at Wiktionary, not a list of languages in some overarching Wikipedia or ISO principle. If we have some separate lists of codes like NL. and other "etymology only" "languages" they should be linked prominently until they can be fully merged. Keeping them at separate namespaces is a needless timesuck and inconvenience. — LlywelynII 04:46, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

It's not a terrible idea to add it, but you could at least try to do it right. Ask someone who can if you can't. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:52, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Voilà! —JohnC5 05:07, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

I didn't know of that page. Thanks, John. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:24, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Neither did I, but I had a suspicion that such a thing should exist. —JohnC5 14:46, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

About votes

Are you, personally, annoyed at the fact that I've been creating some votes? I remember you saying sometimes: "People are annoyed", but I don't know who these people are (except, perhaps, 1 person which I mentioned in the BP). I think you said that phrase like 5 times if I'm not mistaken. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 10:37, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

I also find the large number of votes annoying. Pretty sure I said so before. Equinox ◑ 15:01, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

• I find it only slightly annoying. However, quite a lot of other people are clearly annoyed (this is not particularly difficult to see), and that in turn has a large effect on how people feel about participating in votes in general. I have some votes that I want to create, but I keep putting them off in large part because I feel like we are saturated. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:22, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

  Ok, I apologize, then. I can slow down on the votes. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:27, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

We should be less saturated now; I wonder if you would be more comfortable creating votes now if you want, Metaknowledge. (Don't put your votes off because of me!) There are 3 votes now; only 1 of those was created by me. I'll probably want to create another soon, which would make 4 votes. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 22:30, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, now is a welcome ebb, and you can certainly create a vote. I'm a bit busy, unfortunately, but I may try to get a vote going myself. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:21, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

תרועות

Hi Meta. Thanks for responding to my RFP. Unfortunately, the Modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, /tʁuˈot/, suggests the English *truot not teruot or whatever. Would it be possible for you and/or other Hebrew-knowledgable editors to add transcriptions for any trisyllabic pronunciations of this word that exist or have existed, please (like the Biblical and Ashkenazi versions you mention, I imagine, for example)? Also, re listing non-lemma descendants under non-lemmata, the practice is atypical (most descendants are lemmata listed under other lemmata) but justified in the case where a non-lemma in one language was clearly borrowed from another language's non-lemma alongside that recipient language borrowing the related lemma from the source language; other examples include ethe and ethea, from the Ancient Greek ἤθη (ḗthē) and ἤθεα (ḗthea), respectively, which are plural forms of ethos, itself from the Ancient Greek ἦθος (êthos). — I.S.M.E.T.A. 00:11, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Re pronunciations: You have to understand that the English spellings comes from the Hebrew spellings, not the pronunciations. Choices of whether to treat tav as <t>, <s>, or <th> are of course influenced by pronunciations from various times and places, but many people (including me) will use a spelling in running English text at odds with their pronunciation.

Re non-lemma descendants: It's not a big deal, but it's a ridiculous duplication of information if you think about languages like Yiddish that pluralise nouns differently based on their sources. We need to avoid duplication so that errors in the dictionary do not persist, and that's why this should only be done in exceptional cases. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:26, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

@I'm so meta even this acronym: I agree with what Metaknowledge said, but I humored you and added more pronunciations, some of which are closer to the English spelling. --WikiTiki89 12:52, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

That "careful Ashkenazi" one sounds really weird to me. I think I've only heard the first Ashkenazi transcription. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:19, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

It's definitely used, such as when reading the Torah, for example. At other times, the same pronunciation but with penultimate stress (/t(ə)ˈʁu.ɔɪ̯s/) is also common. --WikiTiki89 18:38, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

In my shul, as is probably true in much of the world, the Israeli pronunciation (or something similar to it) is somehow considered superior and used for leyning, etc (but the Ashkenazic pronunciation is still sometimes used in the context of prayer). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:43, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's pretty common nowadays, but in many of the shuls I go to (I hop around a lot), the Ashkenazi pronunciation is still used by at least some of the leyners. But even aside from that, before the 20th century or so, the Ashkenazi pronunciation was ubiquitous in Ashkenazi congregations. Just because it has lost prestige doesn't mean it disappeared from history. --WikiTiki89 18:57, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Believe me, I'm not happy that it's even lost prestige. But who am I to complain, I can't even speak Hebrew. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:05, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Wikitiki89: Thanks for adding all those pronunciations! I recognise that the content I look for in Hebrew here is usually to elucidate etymology, which may not be the content that is of most intrinsic importance to actually learning the language (especially since, etymologically, it's usually Biblical Hebrew that's relevant), but I appreciate being humoured. :-)  — I.S.M.E.T.A. 11:56, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Not meant for vandalism

Hi, Meta. I didn't mean to vandalize something. It was a rollback error. I was trying to be more accurate for the given names that was translated from another language. BrianChiem1996 (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

@BrianChiem1996: I know you're not a vandal. You are still proliferating errors by adding translations in languages that you clearly do not know, with faulty transliterations. Please stop adding these, and stick to editing what you do know. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:33, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Reconstruction:Proto-Bantu/-jíjì

I would like to rename this page to include the noun prefix, *ma-. But since this name includes tones, I have to figure out what the tone of the prefix would be. Do you know? —CodeCat 21:17, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

The prefix is low tone. But we should keep them as roots, especially because some roots have changed noun class in the descendants. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:26, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

@CodeCat: I see you've already moved one (where low tone is unmarked, incidentally) to the full form. We need to create standards before moving entries. Also, you should probably do some reading about Proto-Bantu first. If you send me an email, I can give you some papers and books. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:31, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

I've done quite a bit of reading already, w:Proto-Bantu is mine, mostly. —CodeCat 21:32, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

I'll set up a basic WT:ABNT. —CodeCat 21:34, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Zulu and Swahili -fa "die"

I looked up "die" in BLR, but the main result that came up was "kú". This seems rather different from the Zulu and Swahili forms. Is there really a sound change that turned ku into fa into both of these languages? —CodeCat 14:02, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Just regular sound change. /ku/ goes to /fu/ in many noninitial positions, and then the verb */-fua/ joined the monosyllabic set and became /-fa/. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:37, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I see. I noticed that BLR drops the final vowel of verbs, how should we deal with this? Having -kú- with hyphens on both ends looks a bit silly. How are the verbs of various Bantu languages lemmatised? —CodeCat 18:41, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Generally, Bantu verbs are lemmatised with the stem (≠root, because it includes the final vowel). In PB, the final vowel is a toneless -a. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:47, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Is a toneless -a different from a low-tone -à? In Zulu they're equivalent, but not sure about Proto-Bantu. —CodeCat 19:21, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, the PB contrast is, on a phonemic level, solely between H and L. However, verbal extensions seem to have been "toneless" in the sense that they simply matched the tone of whatever was next to them, and the FV *-a may have carried that to some degree, although it probably experienced downdrift and those resembled a low tone phonetically. You can think of these as underlyingly L, which may be conditioned to H by their environment. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:49, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

So, should we name our entry *-kúa or *-kúà? —CodeCat 14:56, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

The former is the standard notation. Of course, we still might be better off just using the root, *-kú-. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:51, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

I'd rather use the form that more closely agrees with the descendant lemmas. We use the infinitive of Proto-Germanic and Proto-Slavic for that reason, and the 1st singular present in Proto-Italic and Proto-Hellenic. —CodeCat 23:57, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

otb

When you removed otb from Module:languages/data3/o, you overlooked the fact that bo lists xct as its ancestor, and xct lists otb as its ancestor. I removed the reference to otb from Module:languages/data3/x, but that's just a stopgap to get rid of the 70+ module errors until this is sorted out. You obviously can't merge the grandparent and the grandchild, but leave the parent separate, so this may require some rethinking. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:47, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Oy vey. Thank you for catching that. We can solve this by making otb etymology-only, right? Might not be a bad idea anyway. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:15, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Proto-Bantu class 1a/2a

I believe that class 1a nouns have no prefix whatsoever in Proto-Bantu, is this correct? What about class 2a? —CodeCat 18:42, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

You are correct about 1a. I don't think that PB had 2a. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:51, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Tone marks in descendants

I noticed that tone marks are used for Chichewa headwords. Should we also include them in the descendants on Proto-Bantu pages, for easier comparison? —CodeCat 23:02, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

If we start marking tone in all the descendants, we're just getting ourselves into more trouble, in my opinion. Some languages, like Lingala, seem to be lemmatised here with tone marking in the pagetitle, so we should keep those for linking purposes. For most languages, we don't even have consistent standards about how tones should be marked. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:05, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

umzali and -zala

Meeussen mentions this derivational pair, but the suffix is a close *-i which would lead to -zi in Zulu, not -li. Do you think the l was restored here by analogy? Also, while *-bíadì is in BLR, it says there are no zone S descendants. —CodeCat 22:09, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, since BLR says it isn't in Zone S, this must've been formed from the verb post-PB. The suffix -i has remained slightly productive in many groups, so it wouldn't be too surprising. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:36, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

espan

Does Swedish espan also derive from Munsee? Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 09:55, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Geographically, it seems likely. That said, I'm not knowledgeable about Munsee and its close relatives, so asking -sche might be better if you have doubts. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:14, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

All right, thanks for the answer. Also, is it me or does the sound example at kinnesinne sound like it stresses the first syllable. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 11:16, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Definitely as a secondary stress, at least. I am probably biased by seeing the IPA before playing the audiofile, though. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:22, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Oops, so I misphrased my question. What I intended to ask was whether it sounds to you like the primary stress is on the first syllable (which is a pronunciation I've never heard and haven't seen in any print dictionaries). Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 13:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't think it sounds like that, but I lack a particularly well-tuned ear, so to speak. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:42, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Your behavior

Hello Wiktionary Admin Metaknowledge, your reverted (my edit) without any comment and as minor, which obtain on Wikipedia either for vandalism or for rude behavior. @Uploader is a more common synonym to "Hochlader" (which you now added without any ref). Bing, Google and also Babylon had only Uploader as translation. Anyway it is a very specific terminus for a common dictionary. On the other hand you seems not familiar with German language. Thanks for attention --Perhelion (talk) 00:38, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

This isn't Wikipedia. Your formatting was a mess, and I simply made an effort to correct it; it was actually faster to revert it. I'll add Uploader as a translation. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:41, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Ok yes indeed, and yes there was now 2 lines instead of one line (hidden behind a click menu). I was aware that here other rules could apply, but not the basic ones. In this way, new users could are more likely to feel pushed (which are most likely come first from Wikipedia). Thanks for your additional edit. Perhelion (talk) 00:51, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

this revert

While the edit summary may have been profane, what's inaccurate about that? He's (unfortunately) going to be president in a few weeks. Purplebackpack89 00:57, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

He's not the president yet. What if he drops dead? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:53, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Much as I'd like that, it is exceedingly unlikely. Purplebackpack89 02:01, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

We're not a crystal ball. Point is, we don't say it until it's true. The current wording is true now and will continue to be true even after his probable inauguration. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:03, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

At this point, the only thing more crystal-bally than saying he's going to be president is saying he's not going to be President. Purplebackpack89 02:26, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

The likelihood is irrelevant. Even if it's 100% certain that he will be President, he is not President yet. --WikiTiki89 04:53, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Rollbacker

No responsibilities! No promises! <channels inner Nac Mac Feegle> No lawyers! maybe, if I must. - Amgine/ ^t·e 02:39, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

I haven't read any Pratchett. But done. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:13, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

w:Nac Mac Feegles, sometimes called pictsies as they small, blue-ish, but not at all fairy-like. - Amgine/ ^t·e 04:44, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Illion numbers

You can see the larger number to Wiktionary.

Millillion - 10^3003

Dumillillion - 10^6003

Myrillion - 10^30003

Micrillion - 10^3000003

Nanillion - 10^3000000003

Picillion - 10^3000000000003

Femtillion - 10^3000000000000003

Attillion - 10^30000000000000000003

Zeptillion - 10^3000000000000000000003

Yoctillion - 10^3000000000000000000000003

Xonillion - 10^3000000000000000000000000003

ʜɨ

Cyrus noto3at bulaga (talk) 07:45, 5 December 2016 (UTC) ッ

And they're all bogus, indefinite, just for fun, Cyrus noto3at bulaga, unless you can provide genuine citations. And did you notice that after "Myrillion" they switch to progressively smaller prefixes. See w:Indefinite_and_fictitious_numbers#-illion. --Thnidu (talk) 03:27, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

tofelemoon

This word is said to derive from Yiddish, but an etymon is never given. You wouldn't happen to know any candidates, would you? Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 13:38, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

With some help from Dutch websites, it appears to be a compound of תּיפֿלה (tifle, “church”, literally “idleness, vacuousness”) + אמונה (emune, “faith”). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Is it attested in Yiddish as a compound noun or construct phrase or not at all? Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 10:21, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Not at all, AFAIK. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:58, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Past participle of verb "romper".

Hey, "rompido" isn't nonstandard, it's just wrong. It's the same as saying "breaked" in English, just a child learning to talk would ever say it. I don't know how to edit it, please teach me. Sorry in advance for my ignorance. — This unsigned comment was added by Rodrid (talk • contribs).

Hey Rodrid. At Wiktionary, we try to describe languages as they are really used, not as someone thinks they ought to be used. We have the entry for rompido because of that, and it should be marked as nonstandard (because it doesn't conform to the standard), but not as "wrong", which passes judgement on those who are using it. See Linguistic description (which is what we follow) and Linguistic prescription (which is what you seem to be talking about). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:57, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

We could remove it from the conjugation table however. (Or add a note that says it's nonstandard). DTLHS (talk) 01:21, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Either of those would be good. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:23, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Thinking about it, I don't know if it is commonly used enough to show in the table. DTLHS (talk) 01:24, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Treeconomics Page deletion

I believe that Treeconomics / Tree-economics certainly meets the critera:

"A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means. This in turn leads to the somewhat more formal guideline of including a term if it is attested and, when that is met, if it is a single word or it is idiomatic.[2]"

It's a field of study. I personally give talks at universities and schools on the topic and the term is used in the media on a regular basis. I would like you to restore the page I was developing on, and help wiki fy it so that it meets the community standards.

--Jiwhit01 (talk) 00:35, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I thought you had made the term up; it appears to be used (though rather rarely). There were a wide range of problems with your entry, beginning with the fact that it was capitalised. I will create an entry for it at treeconomics. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:39, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Revert

See here Please explain why you removed this. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:29, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Consistency For what it's worth, the English equivalent isn't in the category scheme, so that makes a lot of sense. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:31, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

More to the point, the category is for the scientific discipline. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:32, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Kamba Noun Classes

Hi! It's me, Khu'hamgaba Kitap. Thanks for your comment! I am editing the noun classes right now.
Thanks for the help!
Khu'hamgaba Kitap (talk) 00:15, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Khu'hamgaba Kitap, that's good (as it's correctly formatted), but what I meant is that it'd be better to have a dedicated template that could automatically generate the plural and categorise by noun class. Also, I believe Kamba has tones, so shouldn't we be showing those? See the markup on a page like chifuwa to see what I think we need to adequately cover nouns in Bantu languages. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:29, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps the plural's class should be indicated as well. We can indicate it like we do for Proto-Bantu nouns, like *mʊ̀ntʊ̀, with the plural class following the plural form. Zulu currently uses a different format, but I'd rather move away from it. —CodeCat 00:37, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Kamba Tones

Hey, it's me again. Thanks for your response. Like most Bantu languages, Kamba has tones. Though, I can't find any references to them. The only English-Kamba reference that includes tones that I can find is Ĩvuku ya Mboya kwa andũ Onthe, Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Kamba. Other resources that go more into depth (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ien.35556023396658, or the World Servants' report on Kamba) don't seem to include tonal marks. Are tonal marks used normally in Kamba, or is the case similar to that of Hebrew? Most of the documentation of Kamba was done at, or before 1963, so if any major changes to the language have happened since then, is there any way of knowing?
Khu'hamgaba Kitap (talk) 00:48, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

It seems that tone marks aren't normally used, but we should be including them in the page, just not in the pagetitle (as in the entry I gave as an example). Indeed, you may not be able to find this information online; some languages do have to be learned from books or conversation. Kamba is relatively obscure, so you may simply not have the resources necessary to create quality entries. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:23, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Khu'hamgaba Kitap. I'm a linguist, and while leaving an unrelated note here for our host Metaknowledge I saw this discussion, and went to see if Wikipedia has any data on that. As you probably already know, it doesn't: Kamba language is only a stub, with minimal information and some references, but nothing about the structure of the language, including phonology, including tones. Alas. --Thnidu (talk) 02:45, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

edits reverted

You just reverted my edit on phantom. That was an anchor to link to, to clarify this note I sent to another Wikipedian. I've made such anchors before with no trouble — at least, none that I've been told of. I should have put an edit summary explaining the reason; usually I do, but this time I forgot. I did the same with fathom for the same purpose in the same note. --Thnidu (talk) 02:10, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I reverted my revert immediately after making it. Just a misclick. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:21, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. --Thnidu (talk) 02:45, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

PS: My attempts to add a comment to the Kamba stuff get thrown into weird places, and I can't understand why. --Thnidu (talk) 02:46, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Thnidu Use [[User:Metaknowledge|Metaknowledge]], not {{User:Metaknowledge|Metaknowledge}}. —suzukaze (t・c) 03:00, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Oops, I should know better; thanks, suzukaze. --Thnidu (talk) 03:30, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

A proposal on splitting Monguor into Mangghuer and Mongghul

Hey, a proposal I've made at Wiktionary:Requests_for_moves,_mergers_and_splits#Splitting_Monguor_into_Mangghuer_and_Mongghul seems to be stuck for a long time now, could you perhaps take a look at it, share your thoughts and vote? Crom daba (talk) 00:35, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

//NOTE: This message was crossposted to multiple talk pages. Crom daba (talk) 00:35, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Proto-Nguni

I've created a few entries for Proto-Nguni. I picked only the most obvious words for now, that can be easily reconstructed, and for which the notation is not really an issue. Nguni has many more consonants of course and I'm not quite sure of the inventory, in particular with respect to clicks, aspirates and the breathy voiced b. There is also a question of notation. The Nguni languages all use very similar orthographies, but they use digraphs and trigraphs whereas in reconstructions the norm is one character per phoneme. On the other hand, it makes a lot more sense to use the "common Nguni" orthographical conventions that already exist, instead of making something up that is much less understandable.

I've avoided creating entries for nouns entirely, because I'm not really sure of the status of the augment in Proto-Nguni. Swazi has it on some prefixes, but not all, so were they once present but lost, or did Zulu and Xhosa innovate post-Nguni? And the class 6 ema- in Swazi is a bit of a mystery. CodeCat 21:32, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I haven't studied any Nguni language in depth, and I can't give good answers to any of these questions. I think you should be very careful in trying to create these entries, and I would advise you to refrain in any cases where you are unsure. I don't have Comparative Reconstruction of Proto-Nguni Phonology, but it looks like it might be helpful. In the mean time, there is some Proto-Nguni in Ehret (2008). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:35, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I know, I am normally very cautious with these things. I specifically picked out low-tone verbs that are very obvious phonologically as well. d > l is a no-brainer, as is the merger of the near-high vowels with the high ones. As for tone, Nguni is pretty tricky, and there's an extra HH verb tone class that didn't exist in Proto-Bantu. According to a source on Xhosa tone that I have, the HL-HH distinction originates in the bimoraic vowels of PB: a CV́VCV verb becomes HL in Nguni, CV́CV becomes HH. —CodeCat 11:37, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

What do you think of the idea of using the augmentless form as the lemma for Proto-Nguni? That would bypass the question of whether the augment was present in PNg the way it is in e.g. Zulu and Xhosa (all classes have it) or like in Swazi (only some classes). The only downside would be that the lemma doesn't match that of the descendants in some or all cases, but it would match the Proto-Bantu lemma at least. —CodeCat 12:18, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking at it some more it appears that although Phuthi and Swazi don't have the augment on most nouns, there is still a tonal contrast on what remains of the prefix. The basic prefix is low, while the full prefix is high, even though they are usually (always?) the same morphologically. Note that Nguni has rightward tone spreading in the noun prefix, so the second syllable of the prefix (the original PB part of it) can be high toned. This suggests that they inherited the augment and then lost its phonetic component, leaving the tone (after right-spreading) as a residue. Therefore I'd say that the augment should be reconstructed for all noun classes in Proto-Nguni. —CodeCat 14:54, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Primitive Irish

Does Primitive Irish have a phonology more like Old Irish or Proto-Celtic? Thank you and Merry Christmas. ÞunoresWrǣþþe (talk) 19:13, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Primitive Irish phonology. Try checking people's user-pages to see what languages they work on before asking them. User:Angr is by far the best person to ask on this sort of issue. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:13, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

I suppose it's closer to Proto-Celtic, but mostly it's (unsurpisingly) in between the two. Pr.Ir. doesn't usually show the syncope of unstressed syllables that's so pervasive in Old Irish, but it is starting to show the loss of final syllables. Lenition of consonants had certainly already happened, but it hadn't become phonemicized yet, so it isn't shown in the spelling, meaning the consonants look in writing as if they hadn't changed from Proto-Celtic. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:39, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Languages in user pages

Are there limits as to what non-mainspace languages one can have on user pages? I'm thinking of adding stuff about an old conlang that never caught on. Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 15:23, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

You can use your userspace for whatever you like, but Wiktionary really isn't a great place to document your conlangs. I'd recommend FrathWiki or Linguifex, the latter of which even has Wiktionary-like entries for conlangs. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:09, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

לעקן

I am back from California, and I have found a Yiddish verb (לעקן) that has to be expanded. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 10:52, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

 Done. Thanks. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:23, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Block

Hi Meta. WF here. I've had my username for too long. Please block me, and I'll see you in the New Year under a new name. --Derrib9 (talk) 09:51, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Sure. I've been intermittently working on a project collecting Portuguese redlinks; it looks like it won't be finished before I go on holiday, but I hope you'll be able to help out when I finish it up. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:15, 30 December 2016 (UTC)