User talk:Nicodene

Archives: 2021–2, 2023

Adding a redirect to a full page

This is a very bad idea, because it leaves the page in all the original categories, but no one can get to the page. The content and/or the page needs to be moved, or at least deleted. Just remember that all content must be attributed to comply with our license, so the source needs to be in the edit history or the talk page. I'm sure this is clear as mud, but your solution isn't a solution. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:22, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I see. Thank you. Nicodene (talk) 21:41, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

clāmōsus

Citing from EDL: Lat. clamare looks like a derivative of a noun, maybe *klama- or *kIamo- 'shout, shouting', which was later replaced by clamor. clāmōsus looks like its derived from exactly that. What makes you think a haplology to be more likely? Imbricitor (talk) 17:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Imbricitor The way it was written, it seemed *clāma was assumed merely on the basis of clāmōsus and so a questionable 'one-off' reconstruction. I have reinstated the etymology and made it clear that there is other evidence that such a noun existed. Nicodene (talk) 20:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

So are you saying that if I cite De Vaan in the etymology, you will reset it no more? Imbricitor (talk) 20:21, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Never mind, just saw you already edited it. Thanks. Imbricitor (talk) 20:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Imbricitor No problem. With the full picture available, I prefer that etymology as well. Nicodene (talk) 20:26, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Also note that as De Vaan writes klāmo- he refers to an o-stem noun, that is, either *klāmos or *klāmom. Imbricitor (talk) 20:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Special:Diff/78171703

How should the audio be presented? It would be a terrible shame to lose audio for Latin and Ancient Greek. 0DF (talk) 02:07, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

That is the realm of fantasy and conlanging. There are YouTube channels for that, not serious academic sources. On the other hand, explicitly modern pronunciations (labelled as such, not masquerading as ancient) would be fine - for example, recordings of Luigi Miraglia. Nicodene (talk) 02:25, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@Nicodene: But audio of reconstructed Classical pronunciations is OK, right? 0DF (talk) 02:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

That's the fantasy and conlanging I am referring to. Nicodene (talk) 02:40, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

An IPA transcription is just a representation of sounds. It is the sounds that are reconstructed. A reconstructed transcription has the same factual validity as an utterance that matches that transcription. There is a major difference between the two in terms of accessibility, however: you and I may be familiar with IPA, but most people are not, so they can't access the information it represents; by contrast, anyone with functioning hearing can access the information in an audio recording. I can't imagine that removing this information has wide support. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask about this in the Beer Parlour. OK? 0DF (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@0DF It is physically impossible to only pronounce a Latin word with the few phonetic features that are reconstructible with a high level of confidence, because the very act of speaking involves the assignment of millions of phonetic variables that are not, and never will be, reconstructible for Classical Latin.

To put it another way: if we were to invent a time machine and send any human alive who thinks they actually speak in a Classical Latin accent back to Rome in the year 60 BCE (clad in toga and sandals) they will not be able to so much as open their mouth without natives recognising them as the foreigner that they are. Try learning a modern language without actually interacting with or hearing native speakers and exactly the same thing will happen. Certainly we would not accept a recording from such a person as actually representative of the native pronunciation of any modern language - why would it be any different for pronunciations dating to millennia ago?

Why do we not present recordings claiming to represent accurately the pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian, Classical Chinese, or Middle English? (The last of which we know infinitely more about, pronunciation-wise, than we ever will of Classical Latin.) Because that is a level of fantasy best suited to a role-playing game, not an academic project. Nicodene (talk) 17:00, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I know all that, but I think that anyone who reflects on the matter will also know that. People get that microphones weren't invented yet circa 50 BC and that any pronunciation can only ever be a "best guess". I would have no objection to a prominent "note of caution" being included that linked to a full explanation of all these issues. I would also be in favour of audio being added for other reconstructed pronunciations, also with their own notes of caution. BTW, why does vox Aloisii Miragliae get a pass from you when reconstructed Classical pronunciation doesn't? 0DF (talk) 22:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@0DF I question that. I've run into too many people quoting random uncited things on Wiktionary or Wikipedia to believe it's harmless and everyone (or even most people) know better than to take what they find at face value. I don't mean that they would be misled to believe that the recordings are of real ancient Romans, mind - that wasn't serious on my part - but rather that they would be misled to believe that the recordings are in any way a reliable representation of an ancient Roman accent, or that they are anything more than the result of someone reading a Wiki page, looking up English approximations for all the fancy new symbols, setting up a microphone, downing a beer or two, and wingin' it.

In any case I'm glad to see your view is consistent and you do, logically, see it as just as valid to have recordings in Middle English, Classical Chinese, and Ancient Egyptian. If you can get a vote to pass approving this general concept, I'll sure be surprised but I'll have nothing further to object.

Recordings of Miraglia are fine under the label modern italianate ecclesiastical, since that's what they are. By no means is he pretending to accurately (or even inaccurately) portray the accent of a Roman from the first century BC. Nicodene (talk) 22:53, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I think you're being unnecessarily derogatory about editors' sincere efforts. I listened to Miraglia speaking before I wrote my previous message, so I know his Latin has an Italianate pronunciation (even featuring that stereotyped Italian schwa-offglide on some consonant-final words). You will surely know that there are many Latinists who endeavour to speak Latin with a pronunciation as close as they can manage to the academic reconstruction. Why are their utterances any less valid than Miraglia's? 0DF (talk) 23:17, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@0DF The question isn't how 'valid' their utterances are in general, out in the real world, but rather how acceptable it is to put whatever they produce on a Wiktionary entry labelled as if it is actually an accurate portray of an accent from two thousand years ago.

I speak both Latin (within the bounds that Allen gives, by the way) and English as foreign languages - I would never dream of using a recording of myself in either of those languages as an authoritative guide to anyone on the native pronunciation of either language. Because I'm not a native speaker. That doesn't mean I think I'm not allowed to speak English, or that I believe my English is rubbish, it means I accept the reality that my accent is not native and I have no business trying to pass it off as such. Nicodene (talk) 23:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Miraglia isn't a native speaker of Latin. Indeed, it is generally agreed that there are no native speakers of Latin alive any more. Why is Miraglia's non-native Latin Italianate pronunciation acceptable, but a non-native speaker's Latin reconstructured-Classical pronunciation unacceptable? 0DF (talk) 00:01, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

@0DF I've answered this. Because nobody, least of all Miraglia himself, is pretending as if his accent is an accurate portrayal of 1st century BC Roman. Nicodene (talk) 00:13, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

All we need do is label the reconstructured Classical pronunciation as reconstructed and it shows we aren't claiming anything of the sort. This is a labelling issue, pure and simple. 0DF (talk) 00:26, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

"Reconstructed" doesn't even begin to approach what such audio recordings actually represent, which is more like "approximate guess of some details of Classical-era phonetics, based on scraps of data collected and compared millennia later, all filtered through a modern English speaker's pronunciation habits, with the remaining 80% of the phonetic details just randomly made-up by the speaker (because nobody can possibly know them)".

I'll even say it right now: if a majority on this site vote in favour of approving audio recordings pretending to represent Proto-Indo-European, or Classical Chinese, or Ancient Egyptian - I'd simply leave the place forever. I have more faith in the place than that, but then again - here you are, passionately arguing in favour of just that. I don't know what to think. Nicodene (talk) 00:43, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

It appears that the main issue has been resolved through discussion between Fay Freak and you below, which gratifies me. I'd like to clarify here that I am less gung ho about audio for PIE, Classical Chinese, and Ancient Egyptian than I am about "Classical" Latin. In reverse order:

• Ancient Egyptian writing doesn't indicate vowels (AFAIK, and not until Coptic), so the vowel system is far less confidently described than the consonant system; however, whilst a transcription may dispense with vowels (or use an abstract "any vowel" stand-in such as ⟨V⟩), an audio recording cannot. Nevertheless, if there's an established system of pronunciation, audio for that would be worth including (accurately labelled, of course). w:Egyptian language#Phonology states “Since vowels were not written until Coptic, reconstructions of the Egyptian vowel system are much more uncertain and rely mainly on evidence from Coptic and records of Egyptian words, especially proper nouns, in other languages/writing systems. / The actual pronunciations reconstructed by such means are used only by a few specialists in the language. For all other purposes, the Egyptological pronunciation is used, but it often bears little resemblance to what is known of how Egyptian was pronounced.”; if that is correct, I would support the addition of audio of “the Egyptological pronunciation” and of the reconstructed pronunciations “used only by a few specialists in the language”.
• Re Classical Chinese, I quote w:Classical Chinese#Phonology: “Classical Chinese is not read with a reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation; […] pronunciation in non-Mandarin speaking parts of China such as Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian is either based on everyday speech, such as in Standard Cantonese, or is based on a special set of pronunciations borrowed from Classical Chinese, such as in Southern Min. In practice, all varieties of Chinese combine the two extremes of pronunciation: that according to a prescribed system, versus that based on everyday speech.” — I suppose that audio of the “special set of pronunciations borrowed from Classical Chinese” would be worth having, although it rather sounds as if there are multiple special sets; each of these would need to be labelled appropriately, as e.g. “Southern Min Literary Chinese” or whatever. w:Old Chinese phonology suggests that there is too little consensus concerning its reconstruction for any audio to conform to any academic standard.
• Reading w:Proto-Indo-European phonology tells me that there is nowhere near consensus on PIE's phonetic realisation to permit audio that wouldn't be too strongly arbitrary to include.

I hope that, even if you disagree with my conclusions, that you will consider my positions reasoned and reasonable. 0DF (talk) 13:49, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I can't agree since a reconstruction is a barebones linguistic construct, and in these cases a rather precarious one at that, whereas an audio recording is the former swamped under kilometres of phonetics added by the speaker and therefore not itself a reconstruction so much as a piece of creative performance loosely inspired by one. Nicodene (talk) 14:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh, well. It's a good thing that none of that is consequential to the current discussion. 0DF (talk) 18:05, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Sounds contradictory to me. To portray some tendentious modern pronunciation instead of an attempt to portray the accent of a Roman from the first century BC/AD. At this point you admit the recording but only argue about its label.

For Middle English it is not the time to record audios because there is too much confusion one who has the motivation to record would get entangled in, in other words mistakes are to be feared more. Our pictures of historical Latin are more stable. It is good enough if it does not sound dubious or with a recognizable accent to the modern man of letters—good that the we don’t have natives recognising speakers as the foreigners that they are!

There is another argument of languages that are used as a Dachsprache or only liturgically never being pronounced without accent anyway: High Arabic, Coptic till it died out, some Aramaics, or German as spoken in Switzerland, which you are not opposed to be present in German pronunciation sections, I assume, only because they are “native” pronunciations, just like Arabic pronunciations would reflect a native dialect, though I can imagine Arabic-speaking foreigners reflecting the educated standard even more fairly. You create a false dichotomy between foreign and native accents. There might of course be a reason behind the reasoning in your opposition, in that you actually distrust website editors not to enter ridiculously accented recordings, and that such an opportunity would be a fly-trap for conlangers, not that it would not be Roman enough. You just opted for Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2024/February § Setting Classical Latin transcriptions to phonemic only, hence a recorder would not need to aspire to nail all phonetic details, only the phonemic level, as is probably the case with ominous Arabic-speaking foreigners in the Near East. Fay Freak (talk) 23:26, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@Fay Freak I'm sorry that I don't quite understand your prose as usual but as far as I am aware the details of Middle English pronunciation are far better-known thanks to the lesser time-depth, abundance of rhyming poetry, more original texts (as opposed to copies of copies of copies...), absence of a rigid spelling standard, and so forth. But in any case, the point isn't specifically about that language but about the idea of someone trying to pass off their accent as an accurate portrayal of one from several centuries ago, or millennia.

I would actually love to see Coptic recordings on this site - for example - so long as they are by competent speakers and clearly labelled as representing a modern pronunciation, not masquerading as an accurate rendition of fourth-century Alexandrine. That would be interesting to see, maybe, in a video game, but beyond silly in an actual dictionary. Nicodene (talk) 23:50, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Fay Freak's interpretation that you seem to be objecting to what you regard as mislabelling. IMO, labelling a pronunciation "reconstructed" shows it's no masquerade, but if that isn't enough, I've already suggest adding a prominent "note of caution" to these audio pronunciations. 0DF (talk) 00:06, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I am going to insist on this because what you're portraying as a mere opinion on my part is simply fact: it is mislabelling. There is no such thing as a recording of Classical Latin, by definition, because there were no audio recording devices in Classical times. If you want that, or Proto-Indo-European fables, etc. - the place for that is conlanging forums, or YouTube, or Discord servers with linguistically-oriented friends - where the resulting thought exercises or fantasy does not belong, is on an actual dictionary, where passers-by are liable, extremely liable, to take what they find as actually correct. Nicodene (talk) 00:24, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Absence of a rigid spelling would actually cause people to get confused. We do not attract the ideal scholar. So even though Latin pronunciation be less certain overall (which is not the case if one is a linguistics student swamped by the material), getting confident in some ancient Latin pronunciation is more straightforward than obtaining an accurate picture of the (Middle) English one(s). It is actually remarkable that you argue the pronunciation of Middle English less convolute exactly because of the convolute spelling situation, in spite of the Latin writing system being tailored to the Latin and not English language. Executive functions differ, some become rocket surgeons in messy rooms while others get along worse in suchlike.

The best attempt is all we want—which is the second best of all times if natives are extinct. The label should say what the speaker sought to do, as 0DF tried to point out: many Latinists who endeavour to speak Latin with a pronunciation as close as they can, I am not really interested to click at an audio if it is not that. They do not seek a conlang masquerade nor attained it, this narrative incorrect. As a Fedora-hat-wearing libertarian atheist I would also gainsay being called “ecclesiastic” if I ever record such pronunciations—Italianate it would not be either, nor Germanate nor Russianate or what (made-up exaggerations by you), maybe Multicultural Reconstructed Latin. We all know Jafaican is the real English contra Received Pronunciation passed off as the standard while dismissed by the King’s children. And we are still not in the conlang realm, my PLAY affect is utterly cancelled, danke Merkel. Fay Freak (talk) 00:45, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

A rigid spelling norm conceals phonetic realities - the absence of one allows them to be reflected better. In chaotic ways, sure, but that chaos is data: the raw material for comparisons and meaningful conclusions. There's a reason why Romanists value - nay, adore - finding original spellings from the least literate periods: they are infinitely more useful for understanding evolving pronunciation than standardised proper spellings, which indicate nothing but the writer's educational competence.

I've nothing more to say about Middle English versus Latin, in any case, because the point is the same for both. Any recording from someone pretending to accurately portray a pronunciation from several centuries ago, let alone millennia, is unacceptable in a serious academic source. Some professor's personal blog, where (s)he makes it clear that it's a sort of artist's impression? Sure. Love to see it. Some YouTube video or a video game? If well done, could be interesting. But fantasy nevertheless, no matter how we look at it. Nicodene (talk) 01:03, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

But you do accept phonemic IPA. So we can make a plausible pronunciation from it. Suppose it would even be machine-generated! A reader might just want to hear the thing, learning with multiple senses or something. The dictionary is all about creating an impression as accurate as feasible. I do not follow the narrative about pronunciation being disconnected from writing, and mashallah I have favoured the underexplored realm of Literary Arabic rather than being excited by the Romanist obsession with detail, which in its output is disproportionate to the scholarship about Semitic languages; educated pronunciation is a thing and something tells me that there would not be opposition to someone mimicking a historic Classical Syriac or Mandaic pronunciation, while only an Akkadian one would make us uneasy. Roman exceptionalism here: You think about Rome everyday, hence formidate it too much, to the point which leads to the vocable of religious adoration, to admit entryists distilling its spirit into an MP3. It is too great in space and time for a record not to be aniconic! Philologic iconoclasm. Fay Freak (talk) 02:12, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I actually thought someone might come to that conclusion - that I adore ancient Rome and can't bear to see it desecrated with the shoddy phonetic pretenses of posteri barbari. Or the direct opposite: that I as a Romance linguist hate Classical Latin and would prefer to see it buried in obscurity, forever lost to those who would seek its light. Or something to that effect, who knows. In truth, it's neither: I just have a deep dislike of fantasy-claimed-to-be-reality, especially in linguistics since that is an area of great interest for me (for us all).

Anyway, I should say this much: if the recordings were actually presented as what they are, I'd have no objection. What they are, however, is neither "Classical", nor "largely Classical but with some deviations", nor even "Reconstructed Classical". They are in fact "Modern Latin, in a style that includes what phonetic details of ancient pronunciation that Allen et al. deduced - some quite certain, other inevitably shaky - and with all remaining phonetic details, that is the vast majority of them, simply made up at the speaker's discretion". Or to put it briefly, and in more charitable phrasing, "Modern classicizing". That I can fully accept. With that description we move from the land of fantasy and make-believe, to the land of sociolinguistic description. There really does exist a modern community of speakers using (variants of) the accent just described, myself included. Does a single one of them actually sound like any native speaker of CL who ever lived? No. And that's okay. They (we) don't need to. We can try our best, and research is a beautiful thing, but one has to recognise reality. Nicodene (talk) 02:51, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

“Modern classicizing” sounds alright to me and not wrong, so we shall have them and you not remove them for pedantic phonetic pretenses: if they are at least good barbaric ones. “I am a native speaker of Proto-Slavic and Proto-West Germanic and spent quite some time in grammar school and with the Roman kids, should be good enough a teacher for you Barbarians.” As the label of “reconstructed” pronunciation is problematic for claim of accuracy in your view and for attraction of conlanging in my view—with “modern classicizing” site users are reminded sufficiently about what attempts they are, restorations on present data rather than the animus of larp fantasy. In reality we always have idiolects, which can be good or bad in their contexts. We have way too much material to rebuke feeding this emprise and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Fay Freak (talk) 03:31, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good to me as well. Some form quality-control is probably advisable but that is another matter.

Will we see (traditional French) or (German academic) one day? I hope so. Nicodene (talk) 05:19, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, Nicodene: I have restored the Latin audio, using the “modern Classicizing” label agreed upon herein. 0DF (talk) 18:13, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Latin versus Vulgar Latin

Hello, Nicodene. I understand your edit. But one thing is the Latin word, pronounced /korˈdari̯u/, and another one is the Vulgar Latin version, certainly pronounced /korˈdai̯ru/ by means of adjacent metathesis, the source of Romance descendants. The name of the page is 'Reconstruction:Latin/cordarium', not *'Reconstruction:Vulgar Latin/cordairu'. Cheers. --Alpinu (talk) 02:39, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi. It is a reconstruction based purely on Romance data. The question to ask is: is there any evidence that a version of this word existed with /ri̯/? Nicodene (talk) 02:41, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

dercat

I see your eagerness to use the dercat template on Georgian lemmas. However I personally think you're overusing it. On პრიორიტეტი for example, приоритет is not a Russian word in origin, it's a borrowing itself, and only mentioning the Russian can give off a wrong impression to novices. Especially if, in the future, this information is copied to sites in sharply different languages like Japanese or Chinese, to give you a picture. Furthermore, it's not even 100% certain it entered Georgian through Russian as it does not show particular sound changes that would fully confirm this.

I know that there are no official policies about this. But I personally go as far as possible with the similar roots with the same sense. To me, it seems that Dercat is there to categorize stuff like Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Kartvelian etc. for ultimate statistical analyses of this type. Shoshin000 (talk) 11:51, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

@Shoshin000 The chances of p'riorit'et'i not being from Russian are 0%. Pre-1991, modern 'Europeanisms' entered our language via Russian. Even today, direct German-to-Georgian borrowing is negligible; we'd be far more likely to borrow from English and make *ფრაიორითი or similar (edit: it exists, marginally).

I'm not 'eager to use dercat on Georgian lemmas' specifically - I use it for all languages I edit: Russian, French, Catalan, Latin... The use of dercat is to avoid de-synchronisation of etymologies across languages, which is a highly annoying issue. If a given etymology is wrong, and people have entered it incorrectly into several dozens or even hundreds of eventual descendants, then it is incredibly burdensome to fix it all. For example, I had to spend an entire day fixing the incorrect 'Greek' origin of not only Latin cuniculus but also all of the numerous direct or indirect descendants which were also claimed to derive from Greek, like Breton konikl. So please, for my sanity at least. Nicodene (talk) 17:24, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

The use of dercat is to avoid de-synchronisation of etymologies across languages => Does it automatically fix it or something? I don't really get it, I'm not familiar with this.

In any case, even if prioriteti is 100% a Russian borrowing (I'll take your word for it) I believe it's still relevant to mention the further origin for the reason previously mentioned. And perhaps I poorly worded it: I don't want you to quit using dercat, only to use it differently, let's say. Hopefully it's clearer. Shoshin000 (talk) 20:54, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

@Shoshin000 What I mean is that substituting long-range etymologies with 'from [immediate source]', with anything else put into {{dercat}}, prevents desynchronisation issues in the displayed etymologies (i.e. what readers see). If something incorrect is put into {{dercat}} of course that will still be an issue but one that I expect we will be able to detect automatically in the near future with bot assistance.

Indeed, however, there is no official policy on this.

As for 'the reason previously mentioned' - that readers might think приоритет is a native Russian word? I don't know why someone would assume this. And the entry for that word shows it coming from German. As for Wiktionaries in other languages importing our entries for only one language but not the other - it would not be our problem to fix, but theirs. Nicodene (talk) 21:09, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Proto Balkan Romance *cavula

Hi. Are we certain that the pronunciation for this would have been \ɡavrə\? Maybe that is too close to the Aromanian form gavrã, which I believed underwent further changes. I was under the impression the intervocalic Latin -v- in cases like these would disappear or become -u-? And that the -v- in Aromanian was due to later influence from Greek in places where the diphthong -au- precedes cetain consonants, as we see in cases like tavru from taurus (vs. Romanian taur), or avru, avrã, avdu, lavdu, adavgu, caftu, etc? Admittedly, these are not the same situation, but I imagined it would've been a similar influence.

Or do you think it was first a \b\ that then became \v\ in Aromanian (and proto-Romanian), later \u\ in Romanian? Cf. heavrã vs fior from febris (but also hior)? And favru vs faur from fabrum?

Would all spoken Latin have transitioned from \u̯u\ to \v\ before becoming any type of Romance? Word dewd544 (talk) 21:17, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 You're absolutely right, thank you. I'll fix it.

A year ago I was unaware of the Aromanian sound-change /au̯r/ > /avr/. Without that the only way to account for a /u̯r/–/vr/ variation seemed to be to assume an original */vr/, with coda */v/ subsequently undergoing vocalization in Romanian. In fact fabrum > */ˈfavru/ was the exact comparison I had in mind.

As far as *cavula is concerned this meant assuming that syncope eliminated */u/ before the loss of intervocalic */v/ yet after the rhotacization of intervocalic */l/. At the time I already had my doubts that this was chronologically feasible. So your correction is a very welcome one.

As for Latin, the transition from [w] to [β] is attested from the early first century AD onward, with the amount of evidence escalating as time goes on. Reconstructing back from Romance leads to a fricative as well. Nicodene (talk) 22:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Yes, I also believed proto-Romance would've had a fricative of some sort. Thanks for confirming. I did hear anecdotal mention from someone about a strange and dwindling dialect somewhere in central Italy that uses [w] in place of the voiced labiodental fricative [v], but this must have been some quirky later development.

As for this Balkan Latin word, I suppose originally it was something like ca-ula > caura > gaurə? Though anything beyond that last part is just speculation rather than based on existing languages.

Also, I wonder when the change from /c/ to /g/ occurred, or even why it did in this case (seems to have been possibly arbitrary?) I guess you can see it in agăța, although that still has variant forms with /c/. Word dewd544 (talk) 00:53, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 Perhaps to do with Albanian gavër, unless the latter comes from Romance. If the etymology given for the latter were more convincing I'd even suggest abandoning *cavula. Nicodene (talk) 04:19, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Vissire

Hi, do you have any more in depth information or resources on vissire, where it came from and what kind of Latin we should put it in? It was apparently attested. Is there anything in DuCange on it? Thanks. Word dewd544 (talk) 19:04, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 I've done what I can to improve things. Nicodene (talk) 19:23, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Awesome, looks much better, thank you! Word dewd544 (talk) 20:13, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Catalan corder

Can you review the etymology of corder#Catalan? I've rewritten it in ca:corder but I'm not sure how to explain it in wikified English. It is based on Coromines, by the way his great dictionary is now available online. Basically, he refuses a loanword from Spanish due to the use in Pyrenean valleys not easily subject to external influences, and the use in Eastern Valencian lands far from border areas. He points to the influence of the popular form 'cordero' of Mozarabic origin, probably used by Mozarab shepherds. Vriullop (talk) 07:55, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Vriullop Done. I've phrased the etymology neutrally as I think both arguments have some merit.

Also I've added a reference template for DECat. Thank you for mentioning it’s available online now – I've been wanting to access it for years. Nicodene (talk) 15:43, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Latin disfacere

Attested c. 864 - https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/152270/Hill_umn_0130M_13627.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y (p. 155) - "Et qui eas disfacere non voluerint, comites, in quorum comitatibus factae sunt, eas disfaciant". Kwékwlos (talk) 00:14, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Checks out. Interesting. Nicodene (talk) 00:36, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Latin participle reconstructions

I noticed that half the Vulgar Latin participle reconstructions are in the nominative form (ending with -s, including in the pronunciation, presumably due to some older Romance maintaining it occasionally) and half in the accusative, ending with -m (with the pronunciation not reflecting the final consontant). Which should we go with as the standard, going forward? Thanks. Word dewd544 (talk) 15:56, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Word dewd544. I strongly prefer that we generally use accusative lemmas for the following reasons:

• Three lower-order reconstructions do not have a nominative case at all: Proto-Balkan–/Proto-Italo–/Proto-Ibero-Romance.
• For higher-order reconstructions, it is the accusative form that is most securely reconstructible, as Romance overwhelmingly inherited accusative forms. It can often be unclear what the nominative of a given reconstruction should have been.
• Even when Romance languages had a nominative case, e.g. Old French, we lemmatize in the ‘accusative’ (oblique).
• Sometimes it is not clear whether a given form should be reconstructed as masculine or as neuter. The accusative would be the same in both cases, so the lemma would be the same either way if we generally use the accusative.

I've not yet converted all of the reconstruction pages to an accusative lemma, hence the mixed situation. Nicodene (talk) 19:27, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

All right, that makes a lot of sense. I can help with some of the conversions as well. Thanks. Word dewd544 (talk) 20:59, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Latin seperare

Attested in "Uberto Decembrio, Four Books on the Commonwealth - De re publica libri IV", p. 59 "seperati/seperare/seperavit". Kwékwlos (talk) 04:01, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Template:frp-conj-ar

I stumbled on this gem while going through the Todo lists. Of note is Category:Pages using bad params when calling Template:frp-conj-ar, which, not coincidentally, contains all the entries that transclude it. It seems that it originally took 4 parameters, but 8 years ago, an IP pruned it drastically, including all support for the second parameter. That apparently means that the parameters in all of the entries have been effectively scrambled, and only someone who knows the language would be able to unscramble them. In short: if you ever find yourself without a wall to pound your head against, this has your name written all over it... Chuck Entz (talk) 00:15, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz As it happens I have been thinking of making an auto-conjugator for this language, like the ones we have for French, Catalan, and so on. I haven’t quite grasped how the latter work yet though. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind making a ‘dummy’ version and I can fill in the appropriate endings? In effect there are two regular conjugation types, -ar and -iér, and any other verbs have to be handled individually. (NB: the current conjugations/endings all need to go as they do not actually reflect the standard orthography that they claim to.) Nicodene (talk) 00:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

marron

No, that's not an editorial comment, but...

The page has a module error because you didn't provide a gender, and Module:frp-headword doesn't allow an empty gender parameter. You should probably ask the person who created the module what to do... ;p Chuck Entz (talk) 20:52, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Fixed. That was quite possibly the funniest entry to make such a mistake on. Nicodene (talk) 21:21, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Latin imperator descendants

It seems like most of the descendants of imperator outside of East Romance borrowed this term (usually semi-learnedly). If you check most of the etymological dictionaries, they indicate it was an old borrowing. Even Italian seems to be the case, and presumably other Italian languages that follow a similar pattern. You also have the related Catalan verb emprar where the unstressed -e- has disappeared as expected as opposed to emperador. It may seem surprising at first that Eastern Romance preserved it (admittedly the Aromanian form is odd/iffy) but it sort of makes sense, since they did not preserve rex (Romanian rege being a much later borrowing), while all the western Romance languages did. What do you think? Word dewd544 (talk) 16:42, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 Results like imperatorem > French empereur are indeed generally regarded as ‘semi-learned’ on the grounds that the second vowel would ordinarily have been lost in an inherited word. Since you've asked for my opinion, I'll say that I don't quite agree. The oddity of a surviving e is outweighed, I think, by the numerous and otherwise regular sound-changes leading from the Latin form to the French one. Nicodene (talk) 07:56, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Alright, fair enough, thanks for fixing that as well as the Aromanian... I had a feeling that was probably unrelated but couldn't find an obvious source quickly. The superficial similarity to the Megleno-Romanian 'ạmpirat' threw me off a bit (plus the fact that the DEX mistakenly listed 'ampirat' as Mr. (Macedo-Romanian/Aromanian) as opposed to Megleno, so I assumed it was some weird variation of that. Word dewd544 (talk) 12:54, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 I'm happy to mark the French, Spanish, etc forms as derived from Latin rather than clearly inherited or clearly borrowed.

In principle they could be seen as early and well-nativized borrowings, with both the im- and the -atorem matched to their vernacular equivalents (*[em-], *[-aˈdoːɾ]]). To me though that level of adaptation suggests a period prior to there being a clear split between Latin and Romance.

@Catonif is the man to thank for the edit to the Aromanian entry. Incidentally, is it true that the last vowel is stressed?

Nicodene (talk) 04:42, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, Greek -άς corresponds to Aromanian stressed -ã. Catonif (talk) 08:37, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. And yes, let's mark the French and such as derived I guess. Word dewd544 (talk) 12:53, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Module errors

On the off chance you may be unaware, see CAT:E for 64 errors in Franco-Provençal entries that have been there for over a day now. These need to be fixed. If you have to, temporarily change {{frp-altform}} to a dumber template that doesn't depend as much on other pages until the other pages are ready. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:12, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz My apologies, I’ll clean that up shortly. Nicodene (talk) 19:34, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

question

Is anonymity required on wiktionary 4eonardo (talk) 17:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@4eonardo I don’t think it is. There are people here whose usernames are their names in real life. Nicodene (talk) 19:00, 29 October 2024 (UTC)