User talk:Paul G/2005

Wikisaurus

Buona serra Paul. You might like to use an uppercase letter to begin each WikiSaurus|Xxx - but it's up to you. SemperBlotto 18:04, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi SemperBlotto (is that Latin for "always drunk"?) - thanks for the suggestion. It looks like it is a necessity rather than an option - the entries I have just added have come out separately from those with an upper case initial letter. I'll modify them and update the template accordingly. — Paul G 18:17, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, semper (like it-sempre) means always, but blotto should be in your WikiSaurus under drunk. By the way, I'm adding some Italian words myself - working on some templates for verb conjugations at the moment. See Ritornare for example. While I think of it, perhaps you could show the difference between that and Tornare which seems to be the one normally used. Cheers (Jeff) SemperBlotto 18:35, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

On second thoughts, maybe all of these should begin with a lower-case letter, given that that is how they are displayed. It would mean a little bit of work to change them all, of course, but better to do this now, if at all, before the list gets too long. What do you think? — Paul G 18:41, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the difference between "tornare" and "ritornare". I usually use "tornare" ("sono tornato a casa" - I went home). Thanks for adding the Italian content, by the way. It is good to see another contributor of Italian on here other than myself (so I don't feel like it is all my responsibility). — Paul G 18:41, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Italian Translations

Paul, I use Collins Concise as a guide, and try to use my own wording where possible. I shall try harder in future, but will be translating zucchero as sugar as I can't think of calling it anything else. I shall revisit the Z-words and see what I can do. SemperBlotto 22:22, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK Paul. I also have a Zingarelli Minore monolingual dictionary. I shall consult that as well, and, when in doubt, try to make my own translation from its Italian descriptions. SemperBlotto 10:05, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. Using the Zingarelli, I have just edited zattera, which used to say just raft and created Zattere from personal knowledge. SemperBlotto

"Square" characters in your Ryhme articles

Hello Paul,

when I look at your various rhyme pages, there are very many "square" characters where some sort of special character should be. Do you know what I have to do to my browser in order to see them properly? I use MS Internet Explorer under Windows 98. SemperBlotto 15:54, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi SB (what is your real name?),

I had the same problem with IE in Windows 98. I couldn't find how to change this (although there might be a way to do it). What worked for me in the end was to use a different browser (Firefox, which is better than IE and is much, much more secure - I would recommend you change to this anyway if only to protect your machine from all the nasties that get through the loopholes in IE. See the Firefox homepage.) — Paul G 16:14, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I thought that you might say that. I shall try to get round to trying it on my wife's laptop - with Windows 2000.

And yes, sorry for the silly name. You will find my real name (and a picture) over on Wikipedia.

Yes, the Gentium font works (but I don't like the look of it, so won't use it all the time). I have an old version of MS-Office without Ariel Unicode, and MS have removed it from their download site. I won't go to any more trouble as I don't understand IPA anyway !! SemperBlotto 17:37, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Italian conjugation templates

I found a prototype on Italian wiktionary and added the choice of Avere / Essere to it.

I have since cloned it for -ere -ire and a few standard mini-irregularities, and will have a go at reflexives some time. For irregular verbs (See andare) I copy the body of the closest fit template into each article and edit there.

I have put basic documentation on Index:Italian

Cheers Jeff SemperBlotto 12:22, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

crenelate/crenellate

PaulG,

No problem. ARTFL listed it as an alternate spelling; I had no idea it was a US/UK variation (I wouldn't think it is; just because it is a spelling difference, doesn't mean it belongs in the US/UK flamewar.) Also, I thought the color/colour issue is still up in the air...if I had know this was involved I would not have created the article. As it is, I think I may take these off my watchlist. --Connel MacKenzie 18:44, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

---

1. PaulG, I guess my problem with the whole thing is that just because crenellate is the only British spelling, does not cause the US spelling of crenellate to be invalid; it just implies that crenelate is preferred in the US (which I have no way of checking.)
2. ARTFL I link to when editing entries using {{artfl}} during preview (+ open in new tab) then remove the template once the separate windows/tabs are open, before saving. ARTFL I *think* is a US university project, making Webster 1913 available online, unencumbered.
3. As for "Variant" vs. "Alternate", I'm just going off what I think is in Wiktionary:Entry_layout_explained. Unless it's changed since I last looked (which was fairly recently.) --Connel MacKenzie 19:09, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Gaaaah! You changed it January 8th! {sigh} Perhaps alternate has a different meaning "across the pond" as well. My oh my. If I ever get bored, I'll look that discussion up. (It WAS discussed, right?) --Connel MacKenzie 19:18, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So if ARTFL is based on Webster 1913, it does indeed have American content.

Which way are you going across the pond? I think "alternate" means both "every second one" and "different but equivalent" in the US, whereas it is only used in the latter sense in the UK.

Yes, I made that change. I don't remember it being discussed. I think it is one of those things that just came about because a couple of people started doing it, maybe after a similar discussion to the one we are having now. — Paul G 10:01, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm in the US. As someone replied on my talk page, variant is apparently more POV than alternate. --Connel MacKenzie 14:04, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the laugh. Thanks for the insight, and rational discussion! --Connel MacKenzie 17:19, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So, were you going to change it back to alternate in Wiktionary:Entry layout explained? --Connel MacKenzie 06:25, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. I've changed it to "alternative", which I am assuming is universally understandable. I have also added "Alternative forms" as an extra header, which is midway between alternative spellings and synonyms. This is especially useful for phrases, where there might be small variations in phrasing that are not changes of spelling and don't make the phrase different enough to count as a synonym (such as those phrasal verbs ending in "around" where "about" may be used instead in UK English). — Paul G 16:17, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Webster 1913 abbreviations on {{artfl}}

Hi Connel.

Does Webster use the abbreviation "OHG." or "OHG" for Old High German? It seems a bit strange if they only put a point after the G. I would have thought it would be either "O.H.G." or "OHG" but not "OHG." — Paul G 10:07, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Paul, the abbreviations I've seen are all "OHG." not "OHG". Strange. I'm about to redirect OHG to OHG. for a little consistency. --Connel MacKenzie 10:10, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I didn't think you would have made that sort of mistake, so I am surprised at Webster. Maybe it's something they corrected in the later editions. Redirecting from the "correct" abbreviations to Webster's ones makes sense. — Paul G 10:17, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I believe the Webster 1913 dictionary was *very* concerned about pages and ink. The type-space for "O.H.G." even with kearning is considerably more than "OHG.". As long as they were consistent, I don't think it mattered much.

Someone had started creating a series of templates for abbreviations used in Webster 1913, and I've been trying to use them. But they are wrong. Anglo Saxon is the same as Old English, BUT the use of this person's templates commingle the two. Since the scheme that person was using is too hard to remember, I'm now creating new templates, that match the Webster abbreviations EXACTLY. No more worrying about which is which, I hope. --Connel MacKenzie 13:13, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Number 3

I was highly inflected as to what to do to exactly get that right, Paul G. Thank you for the direction and, of course I will use it. "AJ" --HiFlyer 15:18, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

--robotrobot

Hz

Hi Paul,

I noticed you changed the entry for Hz. Does something being a scientific symbol preclude it from being an abbreviation? In this case, it seems to be both. Also, you seem to have (indavertantly?) removed the descriptive text about what the term actually means, differentiating it from, say RPM.

Do you think perhaps symbol should/could be an additional sub-category of types of abbreviations? Or would a category:symbols make more sense as a stand alone category? Or is it adviseable to move this conversation to the beer parlor? --Connel MacKenzie 21:59, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is certainly a moot point, and I was fairly sure you would comment on it.

I think that Hz, m, V and all the other symbols for the SI units are just that, rather than abbreviations, because must never be written with points (unlike, say, "in." for "inches"). Similarly, C, N, He, etc, are symbols for chemical elements, and not abbreviations (this is clearly the case if you consider Au, Ag, Sn and others derived from Latin words).

We could certainly have a symbols category - there's no harm in that, and there is certainly a clearer distinction between symbols and abbreviations than there is between acronyms, initialisms and other forms of abbreviation. If you think this could do with being considered by everybody, by all means move this conversation to the beer parlour. — Paul G 09:37, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think the Beer Parlor/Tea room are for issues that are debated. You explained the distinction so clearly that I honestly can't imagine any further discussion needed. I'll just move what I can of your explanation to the relevant category pages ("be bold") then start adding some in. I have not made it very far with abbreviations, acronyms, or initialisms as of yet; the 50 states were uncategorized to begin with. Actually, now (after tossing in a few scientific symbols into the symbols category) might be a really good time to ask for opinions on the overall concept... Unless of course, you tell me before then of something ELSE that I've overlooked. --Connel MacKenzie 11:37, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rhymes with brighten etc

Would you add quieten here? SemperBlotto 11:52, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No - this has an extra syllable (qui-uh-tuhn). Compare the sounds of the words "bright" and "quiet" - you'll see that they are different. — Paul G 12:07, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Place Names in England

Well, I just did the historic counties for a start. I hadn't seen that list, but I have added it to my "turn red links blue" task list. I'm not sure about Avon though - a bit Thatcherite for me (a socialist Bristolian). SemperBlotto 19:56, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

WikiSaurus

Thanks for getting on board with a lot of entries in WikiSaurus. As a more expert Wiktionarian than I, I would also like your thoughts on whether this growing example is the right way to go, has value, for now at least. What, if anything, can be done to improve the format, before we get to many to bring up to scratch ?--Richardb 22:40, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Richard, thanks for asking me for my thoughts.

I think first of all it is important to get some sort of agreement for the project from other contributors. The discussion in the beer parlour (which I think ended up being moved to a separate area) seemed to show that there was a fair amount of opposition. I think before WikiSaurus becomes more fully-fledged, there needs to be support for it, in whatever form becomes agreed upon. At the moment, of course, it just a handful of pages, so any changes to the structure or format would not be too arduous to put into place.

Assuming that it gets the go-ahead, my thoughts, in no particular order, on the format are:

• Have different sections for different parts of speech
• Within each of these, have a different section for each sense of the word that has synonyms
• Separate (as I have been doing) standard, technical, slang and taboo slang terms - I think it is useful for the reader to know, for example, that "buttocks", "nates", "bum" and "arse", despite all referring to the same thing, are not interchangeable in most contexts.
• Sort out the capitalisation. I think that it would probably be better for entries to use the template [[WikiSaurus:xxx]] (no lower-case initial letter) given that the entries are in the form "WikiSaurus:xxx". Yesterday I had to fix several entries that someone had created of the form "WikiSaurus:Xxx". As you know, these end up being listed in the category page under the capital letter rather than the lower-case letter (eg, "WikiSaurus:Instruction" was listed at I rather than at i).
• A minor point: change "WikiSaurus" either to "Wikisaurus" or simply to "Thesaurus". My reasons for suggesting this: first, "Wiktionary", "Wikipedia" and the like don't have internal capital letters ("WikiPedia"); I think though that "Thesaurus", as someone has already suggested, might be better because WikiSaurus isn't a separate wiki, in the way that Wiktionary and Wikipedia are separate; it is a namespace within Wiktionary.
• I think the word at the top of the page merely needs to be wikified but not made a section (see WikiSaurus:penis, I think); that is, as [[word]] rather than =[[word]]=, otherwise everything becomes included in this one section, which I think it is unnecessary to do.
• Finally, once a format and style have been agreed on, a page needs to be written (perhaps by you, or by both of us) describing how to write a thesaurus entry. This will help maintain consistency of the format as new pages are added.

That's all that comes to mind at the moment. Is this the sort of thing you wanted from me?

As I have mentioned before, this probably needs reviving (again) in the beer parlour discussion to get acceptance and a majority behind it.

Regards, Paul G 09:50, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Paul, exactly the sort of thing I was after.

Some of the things you say actually match my own thinking.

• The capitalisation does seem to be a nit of a problem. I myself created a couple of wrong entruies. But, I someone else actually did that part, not me. I was waiting for someone elese to contribute, and doing that template thing was useful, but had that small flaw.
• I agree that we should have the parts of speech separation, and the standard, technical, slang and taboo idea. Also the Language section bit. and not the word itself as a section.

But, about WikiSaurus vs Thesaurus - Hmm. This is not Roget's Thesaurus, or anyone else's Thesaurus, it's the Wiki Thesaurus. It's part of the project Wiktionary (absolutely no sense in being separate), but a Thesaurus is not part of a dictionary. It has a separate name. I'm not hung up on it, but I do like the name WikiSaurus. But Thesarus would be OK too. I gues we need to get some sort of vote/consensus.

Personally I find the Beer Parlour rather a noisy, rowdy sort of place to sort out the details of some Project/Idea. I prefer a separate Project Area/Back room snug, which doesn't attract the louts/vandals as much. With a discreet notice posted in the Beer PArlour to let people know they can drop into the back room if they are interested.

Plus, the Beer parlour really is getting unweildy, too big to load quickly. I keep finding my edits get rejected as the submit takes too long.

No time now, but I'll see what I can do tomorrow.

And thanks again.

No Bios Here

Thanks for the info Paul. I added some to fill in Wikified links in some pages. Perhaps it is best to link directly to w:, and I will do that in the future. --HiFlyer 17:16, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

French language conjugation table -er

Paul, I have created Template:fr-conj-er and tried it out on Aimer. However, it is 45 years since I failed my GCE 'O' level French, so I am not over-confident. There is a bit of Italian hiding somewhere, and I have used a mixture of English and French names for the tenses. It needs a good looking at. Could you correct it and improve it please, if you have the time. Cheers. Jeff. SemperBlotto 10:38, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jeff,

I've had a look and the endings look OK to me, although I'm not too familiar with the more obscure ones, so I would need to look these up.

I've made some changes: "plus-que-parfait" is the pluperfect and "passé simple" is the past historic. I'm not sure what the "passé antérieur" is called in English - it would be something like the "pluperfect historic" but I've never heard of that. The "condizionale passato" would be "conditional perfect" or something, but I'm not sure what the term is in English.

One minor change I have made is to change "plus" to "followed by", which I think sounds better - more of a personal preference, really.

I've said it before, but I think these tables look really great. — Paul G 15:08, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Found it - it's "past anterior". I'll change that too. — Paul G 15:08, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

...and it is indeed the conditional perfect. All done now. — Paul G 15:08, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Place Names in England

Hello Paul, I thought that all the place names in Place names in England had been added by you, and therefore needed to be articles. I shall restrain myself. You might like to remove unwanted entries from the list (especially the minor Scilly Isles places). Jeff. SemperBlotto 10:45, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Removing contents of articles: Hundreds and thousands

Hi Paul,

Would it be too much to ask that you not remove content from main articles until a mechanism is in place for WikiSaurus contents to be better displayed inside articles? My remaining complaint about WikiSaurus is that it implicitly removes content from articles that otherwise would be there. Actively whacking content (especially while WikiSaurus is still experimental) just does not seem like a good idea.

--Connel MacKenzie 17:54, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, this seems fair. User:Richardb, who came up with WikiSaurus, and I have been discussing what to do with WikiSaurus for a little while now. Clearly this needs further discussion in the beer parlour, where it has been dormant for a while. — Paul G 18:03, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Birmingham

Paul, would you like to add a pronunciation section to Birmingham to show the difference between the UK and US cities. Cheers. SemperBlotto 14:51, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, done. I'm not quite sure about the symbol to be used for the vowel sound in the first syllable of the US pronunciation, but I've indicated the main difference (British "uhm" versus US "ham"). (Note that the pronunciation depends on the speaker, not on the city referred to.) — Paul G 15:12, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Paul. And thanks for your work on the French template. I won't be adding any more, as its not my speciality. If you were wondering about some of my strange choice of words to add - I took a lump of random text from my website (part of my autobiography), wikified it and tested it out in the Sandbox. I'm slowly working through the mass of red links. Cheers Jeff. SemperBlotto 15:32, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Floccinaucinilipilification

How do you spell floccinaucinilipilification then? --Connel MacKenzie 14:03, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Floccinaucinihilipilification. — Paul G 14:11, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. --Connel MacKenzie 15:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

French conjugation templates.

Paul. I think that I am getting in over my head - I'll stick to Italian from now on. SemperBlotto 17:08, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The "professor/terrorist" vandal

Paul,

Thanks for the support. I was actually having breakfast with some friends. I assume it was more of the same "censor" type nonsense. I'm trying to think of a polite way to instruct this person on the finer aspects of NPOV, but keep getting caught up in what seems like absurd vandalism. That the "professor" is sincere I do not doubt; that he is correct I doubt highly. Who knows, maybe he really is a professor, and he's just sleep deprived or drunk or something.

Perhaps I'll just take a day or two to mull all this over. It makes me wonder why people think of Wiki* as a good place to push an agenda. I don't know why that is a natural human response, but it does seem to be prevalent.

--Connel MacKenzie 16:36, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rhymes - napoleon etc

I was going to add galleon but is says that word must be stressed on penultimate syllable. Is that true for napolEon? Or are you treating the -eo- as a single syllable (in which count the number os syllables seems to be wrong). SemperBlotto 12:16, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks - my mistake. It should be "antepenultimate". I'll change it. "Galleon" is not a rhyme - this would go in the table for the short "a" sound. — Paul G 12:17, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

pronunciations

Paul,

Thank you for taking the bait. Pronunciations are a gigantic subject that it is very hard (at least for me) to get started with.

The IPA pronunciations do not "read" well, as the AHD style does, but there seems to be concensus that IPA is better. I don't understand why, but I also don't speak more than a few dozen phrases outside of American English.

Your example for "bed" vs. "bed" has me baffled still. How does a Britton say "bed"?

The Dipthongs/Tripthongs: um, I'm still lost on those.

I think your explanations deserve a place in the pronunciation guide somewhere. What do you think is an appropriate place for them?

I'd like to start by recording the sounds of all of these. Before linking them to the pronunciation pages, I think you'd better check my pronunciations of them. (Maybe this next weekend I'll record them? Maybe?)

I'll start this week tying to enter pronunciations for items appearing in category:acronyms - I would appreciate it if you gave them careful review, so I can learn this pronunciation system.

Thanks again. Looks like this will take me a few weeks to get comfortable with.

--Connel MacKenzie 16:16, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After the lecture, time for questions :)

That's right, IPA doesn't read as well as, say, AHD, but AHD is designed for used with American English only, whereas IPA is designed for use with all languages. Some symbols will be familiar in some languages, others in others, and some in none at all. Unfortunately the alphabet wasn't big enough to cover all phonemes, so extra symbols were brought in.

That's why IPA is considered better - AHD has a go at representing some of the sounds of French or German, but doesn't cover, say, Xhosa, or some of the phonemes of the sounds of Italian. So what you lose in immediate readability, you gain in scope. It takes a while to be able to read it, like it does to learn to read music or any foreign language.

Yes, that much is clear; but because it is a black art simply to read it, I can't imagine ever providing an IPA pronunciation without an AHD one also. --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

/e/ versus /ɛ/: some dictionaries use one, some use the other. We agreed at some point to use /ɛ/ rather than /e/. I might have missed out /eɪ/ from the diphthongs. This stands for the "ay" sound in "day". Try saying "day" slowly and notice that there is an "e" sound that blends into an "i". Now say "bed". In RP, the mouth is more open for the latter than for the former. You might not notice any difference in your way of pronouncing these words.

I grew up in NY. I don't get this. Day sounds nothing like bed; the /ay/ sounds nothing like the /e/ to me. I don't "hear" an /e/ sound in day anywhere. Hmmmm. --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm still having trouble thining of "bed" as anything other than one sylable. Does a thick British pronunciation of "bed" come out as [howling at the moon] \bay-ud\? --Connel MacKenzie 17:43, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Or is it more of \bAY-ud\ or \bay-UD\? --Connel MacKenzie 18:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Diphthongs/triphthongs - here I'm referring to groups of two/three consecutive phonemes used in a single vowel sound. So, for example, in "no", the vowel is written using one letter, but is pronounced as two sounds - this is a diphthong. IPA recognises this and transcribes the sound as two symbols (/əʊ/ - try saying the word slowly in an RP accent to hear the two sounds) rather than one, which is what AHD does (ō).

I don't pronounce the /o/ in no as two sounds. Do I? How would Homer Simpson's Doh! sound? Isn't that /oh/ a single sound? --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There is a pronunciation guide somewhere - I don't remember where - maybe in an appendix - which tries to give examples of many of the IPA symbols in various languages, not just English. I didn't write it. It's a bit messy though. I've tried cleaning it up but it could still do with some more work. Definitely, though, it would be useful if this could be put somewhere for other users to refer to, as IPA can be seen as a bit of a black art. Perhaps called Wiktionary:xxx and linked from the "Articles" section of the main page would be a good place.

Recording the phonemes is a great idea, but if these are to represent RP, then we will need an RP speaker... can you do that? Even though I'm British my English is rather like Estuary English so I might not be the best person to do this either. But by all means go ahead and I'll be happy to review them for you.

Absolutely, positively, NOT. I want to record them, not to be the "offical" pronunciation, but so that I can check with you to see if I'm getting even close. Uploading all the separate sound files will likely inspire someone adept at RP to offer corrections (I hope!) --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After Easter, (and posting concordances) I'll start on these. --Connel MacKenzie 17:43, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If you want me to look at your IPA contributions, perhaps you could post links to the pages on this page, as then they'll be flagged up every time you add a new one and I'll be able to check it as soon as you do, provided I'm on Wiktionary, or the next time I'm on otherwise.

OK. I haven't started yet. Sounds like a plan. --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good on you for taking this on :) — Paul G 17:29, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If it proves to be too cumbersome, I'll quickly drop it.  :-( --Connel MacKenzie 18:42, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

---

Paul,

I'm not normally such a slow learner. But when you say Homer Simpson's "d'oh!" is a diphthong, my brain still gets stuck. He has a few variations on how he says it; I'm talking about the very short one - are you talking about "D'oOOoooOOOoooOOOh!" or "d'oh!"? --Connel MacKenzie 18:49, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

D'oh and diphthongs

I've just seen this, which has been hanging around unanswered on my talk page for a few weeks. Sorry for not having seen it sooner.

Recently, I was too busy to think of this, anyhow. Connel MacKenzie 18:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

> I'm not normally such a slow learner. But when you say Homer Simpson's
> "d'oh!" is a diphthong, my brain still gets stuck. He has a few
> variations on how he says it; I'm talking about the very short one - are
> you talking about "D'oOOoooOOOoooOOOh!" or "d'oh!"?
> --Connel MacKenzie 18:49, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Compare the vowels in "fit" and "fear". In "fit", the sound of the "i" is the same from beginning to end. In "fear", it starts off something like the "i" in "fit" and ends up a bit like the "ir" in "bird" (in a US accent) or the "er" in "manner". So it's really two vowels, or a diphthong.

The same applies to "oh". In UK standard English, it starts off like the sound at the end of "Hannah" and ends up like the "oo" in "foot". In US English, it starts off as one vowel sound and ends a bit like an "oo". So, again, this is a diphthong. If you were to take a recording of Homer Simpson's "d'oh" - even a rapid one - and slow it down, this change would be clearly audible.

— Paul G 18:04, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, I still have trouble grokking that. "D'Ooh" (what you seem to be talking about) is very different from "D'oh." In my brain, "D'Ooh" is a homynym of "dough" and "d'oh" a homynym of "doe." I can see how it can sound as a dipthong, but more often, it is not. Is that the rule then? If it can be then for IPA pronunciation, it must be listed as a dipthong? That would explain some of my difficulty with IPA. --Connel MacKenzie 18:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hm, maybe it's a single vowel sound in your accent. We would have to speak to each other for me to be able to explain it. You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to... :) (No one really says "po-tah-to", but we do differ on "to-may-to" and "to-mah-to".) — Paul G 09:31, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Alabama

Hi Paul,

Just wondering about your change to Alabama; did I get the capitol wrong? The State and capitols are often refered to collectively; the capitol is not obscure information like the state flower, or the state tree. --Connel MacKenzie 20:41, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

I don't even know what the capital of Alabama is :) However, I think it is a good principle on Wiktionary to keep any encyclopedic info to a minimum in a Wiktionary definition, referring the user to Wikipedia for all the other info. My thinking is that a Wiktionary entry should define a word so that a user knows what it means after having read the definition ("What does the word 'Alabama' mean? Oh, it's a state of the US"), while a Wikipedia entry should give in-depth information about a subject. The capital does not add anything to the definition, to my mind - Alabama is still a US state whatever its capital. In other words, my view is that Wiktionary defines words, while Wikipedia gives full treatment of the thing or concept that the word represents. The same idea applies to other entries that are proper nouns. — Paul G 11:14, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree that entries here must not be encyclopedic. In my mind, the capital is always listed with the state; flags, birds, flowers, mottos etc. are superfluous, but the capital isn't. For consistency, do you want to change the one entry Alabama back, or remove information from the other 49? --Connel MacKenzie 18:35, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've restored the capital for constistency. — Paul G 09:32, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

dedurre

Paul, I have just added dedurre but have forgotten how this sort of verb conjugates (and my little grammar book doesn't say). Do you have the facts to hand - otherwise I shall do some Googling this afternoon. SemperBlotto 12:12, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The handful of verbs ending in -urre represent the "forgotten" fourth verb ending in Italian - compare verbs ending in -oir in French (such as "pouvoir").

I think it is "deduco, deduci, deduce", um, I can't remember, "deduciamo, deduciate", perhaps?, "deducono". Almost... the second-person plural is "deducete". Here's a link you'll find very, very useful. — Paul G 12:29, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

rollback

Hi Paul, yes, I'm familiar with the computing usage. When I tried it out on a test edit of my User Page, it took me right back to an edit by Guano Boy instead of to my previous edit. Easy to fix, but unexpected. SemperBlotto 17:54, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

leet

I wasn't sure yesterday what to do with that 'leet' entry - I do not think Wiktionary allows them at this time; I just wasn't sure what to do with it. Do you know something I don't? I can't seem to find the relevant conversation at the moment. --Connel MacKenzie 18:31, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There was a discussion about whether Leet is part of English in the beer parlour. I think it's still there. I was going to delete the entry. Maybe it should be marked for deletion and brought up in Requests for deletion so we can debate it. — Paul G 18:36, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate page mess

Hello Paul. I understand that now. I thought it was some sort of glitch. Sorry, it won't happen again. — Malcolm of Pelshire 19:08, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Re Welsh letter pages... Very well, I'll work on a way to do that. It had occurred to me, but I thought the resulting page would be too encyclopedic. Bum gall unwaith-hynny oedd; llefain pan ym ganed. (Welsh proverb) — Malcolm of Pelshire 19:08, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Paul, I'd appreciate it if you would look at Wiktionary:About Welsh pronunciation and see if that's close to what you had in mind. Thanks, Malcolm of Pelshire 22:23, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Rhymes suggestion

Hello Paul. Do you think it would be useful to have Rhymes entries for all the words ending in all the different pronunciations of -ough? Even if people don't understand the pronunciation characters, they might know the pronunciation of one of the rhyming words, so would know how to pronounce another. Just a thought. SemperBlotto 11:46, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hello Jeff. I'm not quite sure what you are suggesting. There are already rhymes pages for "cough", "though", "bough", etc, which are easily accessible through the table on the Rhymes:English page (the vowels in these words are as in "pop", "mow" and "cow", respectively, so users would just follow the links above these words).

Do you mean a page that has all of the words ending in -ough on it? They rhymes are ordered by sound, not by spelling, so I'm not sure how this might fit in. — Paul G 14:23, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I did a "search" on /Rhymes slough/ (and a few others) and didn't find any. I hadn't found the Rhymes:English page. Jeff. SemperBlotto 15:18, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Webster template

Paul, I think you created the Webster template. Perhaps you could change it, or create another modified form, to reflect that "part or all" of the page was imported, and that "some current usages may be missing."

Since Webster is such an important assist in so many words, the newly created page could then be altered and the user will have a better understanding of how the page was created. See Plebeian for an example of where a modified form of the Webster template would be appropriate. --HiFlyer 22:00, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It looks like it was Dmh who created the page. I have made the modifications you have suggested. — Paul G 09:57, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good show! People were going to use the Webster reference anyway. Now they, (and I) have the option of bringing some new changes to the table in an honest way. --HiFlyer 15:37, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

dewikifying common language names

Hi Paul,

Where is the list of "common" language names. Can you point me in the direction of the relevant debate? I personally disagree with de-wikifying language names; common ones especially. But it might be worthwhile for me to read up on the extended discussion, before going on a massive revert spree.

--Connel MacKenzie 16:27, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

Each and every link in an entry puts strain on the server (a lookup has to be executed to know whether the linked to page exists or not, in order to color it red or blue). In the beginning even the names of parts of speech were links. By not wikifying the names of common languages, pages can be loaded a bit more quickly and the servers get to be more productive. That's the reasoning for not wikifying terms that will eventually come back on each and every page of Wiktionary. Polyglot 07:25, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this is has been accepted practice in Wiktionary for quite some time. I wrote some guidelines on which language names to wikify and which not too - this is in the "Translations" section of the very useful Entry layout explained page. — Paul G 09:38, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Foreign language entries

Hello Paul, thanks for the clean-ups, they are certainly more eloquent now. Given that foreign language entries should be translation only where possible, is etymological info too much info? Thanks. E. abu Filumena 16:58, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi E.,

I was thinking about this just the other day. The honest answer is that I don't know. I'll raise it in the beer parlour. — Paul G 11:11, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No need - Polyglot has answered the question on your user page. — Paul G 11:11, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Quale

Hi Paul, could you have a look at Quale please. I have created it with example quotations as it's a bit confusing without. I am sure that you will find things to correct and improve on. Jeff. SemperBlotto 17:38, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jeff,

The examples certainly make things much clearer. I've made some changes to the format, and added the feminine and plural forms of the relative pronoun. I'm not sure about the plural forms though; your example does not use "i quali" but "quali". I don't know which is correct. I'll request input from an Italian speaker. — Paul G 11:21, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Given names

Hello Paul. I notice that you add the occasional minimal given name, and I wondered what the normal practice is. I have added Geoffrey - is it over the top? Jeffrey is quite minimal and Godfrey will be in between. Cheers (variant Jeffery) SemperBlotto 16:03, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jeff(rey),

Looks good to me. It's good you've added the etymology. I'd lose the "famous people called Jeffrey" bit though - this seems a bit unnecessary to me, as it adds nothing to the meaning of the word. Is there a page called "Jeffrey" on Wikipedia that could be linked to instead? — Paul G 17:30, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

An entry for Geoffrey would not be over the top, in my humble newbie opinion. Geoffrey is the original spelling of Jeffrey, and is still regularly used in Britain. I've even known there to be Geoffs [sic] from the British Isle. In our lifetime, even. Bennmorland 12:57, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

its history

arright, dunno if u wanna merge past historic with past historic tense somehow. I'll leave it up to you, as ur sysop n all and know these things better. And I never heard vire ton cul de mon paysage before I heard it on TV, but the Frenchies found it funny and said they use it occasionally --Wonderfool 18:18, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, thanks for letting me know. — Paul G 18:18, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gerunds, Participles, etc.

Please have a look at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#Gerunds,_Participles,_etc. and give your opinion. You were involved in an ealier, similar discussion, so I thought you will be able to make some valuable contributions. — Ncik 15 Mar 2005

Smoke explosion

Thanks for cleaning up my entry, I'll use the changes you made as a guide for the other words I plan to write definitions for. I hope to get a lot of the firefighting entries that are blank filled in soon, and may brush up the backdraft entry in Wikipedia a little more. Just curious, should anything about a term being a type of jargon be added, perhaps in the etymology? catseyes 16 Mar 2005

Hunky(-)dory

I'm not sure that I've ever seen hunky dory as a hypenated word. Perhaps that's a UK format and not common in the USA? In any case, in Japanese, honcho dori, the probable origin of the term is not hypenated. Suit yourself, but I'd have left it without a hyphen. Rever it if you like; it's not my call, really.

Best,

frankatca Frank Ferguson Lexington, MA

Frank, see this dictionary entry, or any paper dictionary. — Paul G 09:32, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Dictionary collection

I'm sorry if I sounded boastful about my dictionary collection, but much to the displeasure of my wife my bibliomania is more severe than my wikiholism. It would be nice to list them all, but cataloguing is one of those tasks that I keep putting off until I have time to do it. My reference was not only to dictionarries, but also to style guides and other books about language. A significant portion of my collection is bilingual dictionnaries; I currently have an eBay bid on a Slovene-English dictionnary. When I was commenting on binomial names I was referring to the Council of Biology Editors Style Manual.

I just had to interrupt writing my letter to win another one: "Lexilogus or critical examination of the meaning and etymology of numerous Greek words and passages - intended principally for Homer and Hesiod" by Philip Buttmann (translated by Rev Fishlake)" published in 1861. What's remarkable is that Abebooks does not list this in its English translation.

Some of the Eric Partridge books are very good; I was first introduced to him back in my highschool days when I picked up a copy of his Shakespeare's Bawdy. I also have his Origins on etymology, and his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is especially useful. If you find the 2002 paperback 8th edition, ask for a substantial discount on this pricy book. Pages 1042 and 1095 contain the material for pages 1142 and 1195 respectively on all copies! Among other things I have the classic Hobson-Jobson Dictionary for Indian English. My oldest one is now a two volume French book from 1767 which gives interesting usage comparisons between pairs of similar French words. I also pick up more limited books about words. Looking at the spines in front of me without causing a collaps of a pile I see Kacirk's The Word Museum, Elster's There's a Word for It and Novobatsky's Depraved and Insulting English. Eclecticology 18:24, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

61,000

Hello Paul. It was knaggy. I had just finished loading a bunch of words connected with my surname (w:Knaggs) when I looked at Recent Changes and saw it had clicked-over. Anyway, should we change to larger intervals now the rate of addition is increasing? Maybe every 5,000. SemperBlotto 11:35, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've corrected the Milestones page.

Well, it does look as though the rate of increase in the size of Wiktionary is increasing: I believe there were around 20,000 entries when I joined. Can you suggest this in the beer parlour? — Paul G 11:51, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Searches

Hello! I think that <input type="hidden" name="num" value="50"> should be inserted to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Googlesearch so that 50 search matches could be displayed at one time. Greetings --Dubaduba 20:26, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks - I've raised this in the beer parlour. &madsh; Paul G 09:23, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

SCRIPT

i wanna know, what script is it best u use so that i can read, and write the syntax or font for the rhymes-Wonderfool

Best to use Mozilla or Firefox as your browser. They display fine in these. For Internet Explorer, see this link. — Paul G 13:42, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

banning our friend

The ass pus user has been active for several weeks now. I, or somebody else, regularly bann him almost every day (sometimes twice a day). It would be nice to find his underlying IP address and ban that - but I don't know how to do that. p.s. thanks for the spelling correction. SemperBlotto 09:04, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hm, thanks for the info. I'll raise the question of user's IP addresses in the beer parlour, but one of the reasons for allowing usernames is to protect users' privacy (see the Wikipedia page about "why should I get myself a username?" or somesuch - sorry, I don't know the link to it). — Paul G 09:06, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

At one point, it was possible to block (or lengthen the block) of say, [[User:#263]], as that would correspond to an auto-blocked IP address. A day or two after I discovered it, it was turned off. I certainly do not wish to invade Kenneth's privacy! {shudder}. I just want him blocked better. Any information on how to get that ability turned back on would be greatly appreciated. --Connel MacKenzie 06:33, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

IPA Symbos in Edit Mode

I can't find the secondary stress (looks like ', but is supposed to be about level with a comma) in the box of symbols in edit mode. Could you add it? Ncik 06 Apr 2005

Oh, I must have overlooked that one. Yes, I'll add it. Thanks for letting me know. — Paul G 16:30, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've just checked, and it's there already. It's in the "other IPA symbols" - there are four: ˈ ˌ ː . (primary stress, secondary stress, length mark, syllabification mark) — Paul G 16:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply. I probably mistook it for a misplaced comma since it's the only symbol which isn't underlined, and so small that it might as well be black instead of blue. Is there any chance you could magnify the IPA symbols slightly? Ncik 06 Apr 2005

Well, I could, but that would make them look out of place with the others. I could just magnify everything. Of course, you can do this in your browser (Ctrl + increases the font size and Ctrl - reduces it in mine - Mozilla - or you can probably do this from Preferences or Options). I'll increase the size anyway because they are tinier than the font used in the edit box. — Paul G 16:54, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Done. There was an HTML <small> tag in there, which seems to be quite unnecessary. The characters should be more comfortably readable now. — Paul G 16:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Much better now! Ncik 06 Apr 2005

glutin

I don't think that there is any such thing as glutin. Do you mean gluten - the protein in cereals? SemperBlotto 13:39, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, "glutin" is what I meant. Gluten is pronounced /'glu:t@n/. I found this in http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=glutin - it might be worth checking it in a print dictionary though. — Paul G 13:42, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Found it. SemperBlotto 13:55, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

RfD

In regards to your message on my talk page, I'd be requesting it for deletion for being the wrong sort of g. (-ægd instead of -æɡd). Should I go ahead with it anyway? Note I copied your version to -æɡd. --Wytukaze 15:52, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. If it has the wrong g, the page should be moved rather than deleted. I'll check. — Paul G 15:57, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks. — Paul G 16:02, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No problem. And thanks for the corrections of my efforts on -æɡd, I didn't bother to read up too heavily on the formatting. My bad. --Wytukaze 16:08, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Plurals

Heh, I added the pl. for the ten previous words, and forgot one! Thanks for catching! (Too bad we don't have that wikidata system in place so this can all be form fillin...) Stan Shebs 23:56, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Now, form-filling would be great, and would save a lot of typing. I've thought about that in the past. I think the format is standard enough to allow for it, provided a bit of flexibility could be catered for (perhaps with a free-text field). Why not mention this in the beer parlour and see what others think? — Paul G 08:57, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fæces

I reverted your edit of fæces. I think it is wiser not to have a proper noun section which tends to make people add translations, pronunciation, and other stuff where they should rather use their time to make ((more) essential) contributions to faeces. Ncik 19 Apr 2005

In that case it would be better as a redirect, which will prevent anyone from doing this. I'll change it. — Paul G 13:08, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I this case a redirect will most likely do the job. But this is not a general solution (and I'm only ever interested in general solutions) since the word might exist in another language in which it isn't just a spelling variant. Ncik 19 Apr 2005

I agree that this is a makeshift solution, and in this case, it is a word in another language, namely Latin. The appropriate solution is to write the entry something like this:

English

Noun

fæces

See faeces

---

Latin

...

This shows that all the definitions, translations, etc, are to be found at "faeces". Maybe this is what we should go with. — Paul G 13:24, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

comport

Thanks, Paul. I am still familiarizing myself with Wikimedia conventions, so your comment is appreciated. That todo list is infact all of the red words from a 1001 word list of vocabulary words which I had sitting on my computer from the SAT/AP days, so I figured they would be good additions to wiktionary. TheDaveRoss 17:27, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

When to use 's

Hi Paul. I just noticed your usage notes for when to use the possessive. You might want to add a note on how to refer to decades since many people do not know the correct way and write "the 1980's" or "the 80's" when "the 1980s" and "the '80s" are the correct forms. Thanks. — Hippietrail 01:56, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've added "1980s" and "'80s" to the examples of correct plurals - is this what you were looking for? — Paul G 09:33, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually I've added "'80s" and "80s", as the former can be considered an abbreviation of "1980s" and the latter as "eighties" written using numerals. There is no apostrophe when writing "eighties" as a short form of "nineteen-eighties", so I believe this makes "80s" (without an apostrophe) acceptable. In fact, to my eye, the apostrophe-free version looks more correct. It's possible that usage varies locally. — Paul G 09:41, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi again Paul. Glad you were able to use my tip. Keep up the good work (not just my tips either or course)! — Hippietrail 13:48, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Merci 66000

Cela flatte mon égo!

Parlez vous français?

--MG 08:18, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

plus

You couldnt look over the French part of this could you? i explained the difference as best as i could. --Wonderfool 11:06, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've made a few changes but I think it needs more. In particular, I'm not convinced that the usage note is correct. I've asked User:MG, who is French or a French speaker, to have a look too. — Paul G 09:27, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Related vs. See Also

Thanks for that clarification Paul, I am sure I should have noticed that by now. Keep settin' me straight! TheDaveRoss

unavoidable / inevitable

I have merged the definitions in unavoidable and wikified the existing inevitable (where I was able to find two meanings!) SemperBlotto 16:19, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Now I have been able to add the French translation. — Paul G 16:27, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

AP

The AP vandal has struck again. Don't you admin types have a way to quickly revert that stuff? Check Recent changes. Kevin Rector 09:07, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Æ/Œ

Dear Mr. Giaccone, The use of "æ" and "œ" is not archaic or old-fashioned, but the correct way of writing certain English words. It also helps to differentiate between pronunciation of words such as "æon" and "aeroplane". Therefore they should be used where appropriate as the primary spelling of a word, as they are in many dictionaries such as "Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary". Such spellings are still frequently used by people, including me, in their writings. The use of "ae" or "oe" where "æ" or "œ" should be used is not correct English.

However, this is not how English is currently used. Wiktionary aims to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, as all good dictionaries do, and so cannot operate on the principle of "we think language should be used like this" - it reflects actual usage, not how its contributors think it ought to be used. What is considered correct changes from age to age.

If you look in an up-to-date version of Chamber's Dictionary (Chamber's having dropped "Twentieth-Century" a couple of editions) you will find "aeon" spelled thus, rather than as "æon". If you consult other modern editions of dictionaries, you will find that they all consider spellings with ligatures to be considered old-fashioned. Wiktionary is also a modern dictionary, and so must treat these spellings as old-fashioned, whether or not they were once considered useful for highlighting distinctions in pronunciation. — Paul G 10:33, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

How to create a sysop account

Hi, Paul! I wanted to create a Wiktionary in the Norsk (nynorsk) language (my mother tongue), and I wonder if you can help. I found that there was already an empty wiktionary under nn.wiktionary.org, and that it is possible to edit pages there. But apparently it has no sysops and no bureaucrats. Do you have any idea how I or someone else can become an administrator there?
I'd appreciate any pointers you can give me!
Verdlanco 17:38, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply on my talk page, Paul!

User:Kevin Rector has now pointed me to meta:Requests for permissions as the correct place to get this done.

--Verdlanco\^talk 11:47, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

You're welcome. Good luck with your Wiktionary! — Paul G 11:54, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Bureaucrats

You've been nominated to be promoted to Bereaucract status. Please either accept or reject the nomination at Wiktionary:Bureaucrats. Kevin Rector 02:56, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. What does this role involve?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bureaucrat Basically it just means you would have the authority to make a person into an administrator on the English Wiktionary. That and it's can be a token of esteem and trust by the community. We currently only have only one bueaucrat and he has been MIA for a few weeks (maybe on holiday?). So I thought it might be a good idea to have more than one. Also, it was Wonderfool who nominated you. Kevin Rector 13:32, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Words of other languages

Don't tell User:Jérôme not to add proper definitions or translations to non-English words. That's just silly, and if it really is English Wiktionary policy, this rule should be scrapped as quickly as possible. Ncik 04 May 05

This is English Wiktionary policy, is well-established and has sound reasoning behind it. If you disagree with it, perhaps you'd like to raise your objection and give your arguments against it in the beer parlour. — Paul G 08:51, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I must confess, I do not see the point in giving foreign translations to words, except as a way to flex the hyperlinking muscles of any online encyclopedia/lexicon/etymolexicon. I do rue, however, the lack of cognates on Wiktionary entries. If this is a dictionary that encorporates the properties of thesauruses and etymological dictionaries, should it not have at least a subsection of cognates based on etymology, rather than translations based on definition? Bennmorland 12:55, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

won

Thanks for picking up that mistake I made calling Korean "won" uncountable. That's normally the kind of thing I watch for with other people! By the way, I'm not sure whether the correct term for such words is invariable or invariant. I'll have a think about marking them and probably starting a category — Hippietrail 11:53, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

No problem. I'm not sure either. I've seen the abbreviated form "inv" used in dictionaries but don't remember which word it stands for. I'm inclined to think it is "invariant". — Paul G 13:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

jawn

Hi paul, yeah here are the citations I found in google for "jawn" meaning marijuana cigarette

I found it with this search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=marijuana+jawn&btnG=Search) Anyway here are the web cites that states that jawn is in fact a slang term for marijuana and/or a slang for a place or thing http://www.rapdict.org/Jawn http://www.420dictionary.com/j420a-h.htm http://www.deflok.de/HipHopLyrics/Texte/Dictionary/hiphoplyrics.de_dictionary_J.html http://www.virtuallyinfamous.com/articles/2004/april/drugs.php http://www.amyth.com/Odd/Words-2004.html http://www.panikon.com/phurba/alteng/j.html

Jawn - "Joint." This is the Philly pronunciation of "joint" in meaning 3. See "joint" 1-3 and also "jon." Evidently this word came from Philadelphia and that's why joint sounded like jawn and so the word took off in the urban community. I'd imagine that's how jawn was also given the meaning for a thing or place...many criminals fear going to the "joint" which is jail...I hope this information helps you out.

Names on the wiktionary

Hi Paul, nice to meet you again. Names normally do not belong to a wiktionary, but it often can happen that you need to know the translation of the name of a person. We do have Aristoteles there, We do Have Giovanni Paolo II there. There are translations for their name and so there is going to be a section with names of people with their translations. The same like the names of Cities and their translations. These translations often are used by translators and there is no dictionary that gives you the names. This is one of the huge advantages Wiktionary has: we can simply create it. Yes, we are going to insert also other names, but for now there's no specific project. All this is then, in the near future, going to be part of the Ultimate Wiktionary, I don't know if you followed this thread, but it will avoid a lot of double work and will be a many-to-many languages ressource with the possibility to upload, download and update contents using xml structure. More info on Ultimate Wiktionary can be found on meta]. Btw. if you have further questions please contact me on the [Italian Wiktionary]. Ciao!!--SabineCretella 05:21, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Ciao Sabina, nice to hear from you again. I understand what you are doing - thank you for the feedback. I'll add your comments to the discussion that is happening on the English Wiktionary about the inclusion of Pope Benedict XVI here. — Paul G 08:33, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Ciao Paul, yes, please do so. I just added the translations and pronunciations we already have there (I noted the article was marked for deletion - I don't think that this should be done - so maybe the list helps). The religious project is far bigger than it seems to be now - it started by chance, but now we want to deepen this terminology so maybe I'll add the list of the former pope's names onto one page and from there whoever wants can create them. If you create translation lists, I'd highly recommend to use the templates we use on serveral other wiktionaries - so it is for now easy to copy and paste contents and then it will also be easy to acquire the data for the Ultimate Wiktinary. In the meanwhile I was told that you are one of the best people the EN wiktionary has - didn't know that as I am not very active here - I already knew that you are a great person - so what I thouhgt was just confirmed :-). Have a great day! --SabineCretella 08:52, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I have added your comments to the discussion. Wow, thank you very much for the compliment! Abbia una buona giornata :) — Paul G 09:40, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

benzene

Hello Paul, could you do me a favour, and add pronunciations to the English and Italian sections of benzene. The English is ben-zeen, and the Italian is ben-zen-ay. Thanks Jeff SemperBlotto 14:11, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jeff, I've done the English one, but I'm not sure about the Italian one. I suspect the e's are closed, open, closed and the z is /dz/ rather than /ts/ (making /ben"dzEne/) but I would need to check this. — Paul G 14:56, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I have only heard it said once by an Italian speaker, and the nz was pronounced the same as in benzina - if that helps. SemperBlotto 15:05, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks - that means it's /dz/, as I thought, which makes sense. I still need to look it up to check when I remember to. — Paul G 09:16, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Question

Hugh!

Pourquoi ne contribuez vous pas aussi ou plutot dans le Wiktionnaire fr:woktionnary?

http://fr.wiktionary.org

A moins que vous ne le fassiez déjà!

Cela renforcerais la francophonie mondiale

Toutefois il reste judicieux celon moi de faire des articles en français dans le wiktionary anglophone américanophone (dans la mesure ou il sont acceter; le sont'il?) cela permettra de participer a l'apprentissage du français francophone.

Une précision quand même; je ne suis pas professeur de français!

--MG 08:51, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Notez bien dans les pages anglaises américaines il manque trés souvant le lien vers la page en français: fr:Page d'accueil Page d'accueil

--MG 08:58, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Salut,

Pourquoi est-ce que je ne contribue pas davantage au wiktionnaire français? Parce que je suis trop occupé ici...

Oui, les articles français sont acceptés dans le Wiktionary anglais - en fait, on les encourage. Moi non plus, je ne suis pas prof de français mais j'aime de temps à autre entrer mes connaissances ici.

Quel lien est-ce que vous voulez dire? On ne fait pas de liens à d'autres Wiktionaries ici - c'est pour ça que vous ne voyez pas ces liens.

En plus, ici l'anglais est mondial - on ne favorise ni l'anglais américain ni l'anglais britannique. — Paul G 09:24, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

login

Hey Paul, sorry, I read you are sysop, could you help me? I am User:Ben, but I forgot my password so I am now logged in as ~~. I checked the option for remember me, but obviously it didn't work so well. Could you send me a new password if I give you my mail address? Is this possible? 133.91.8.3 09:50, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi Paul, unfortunately I don't have the ability to do that. You can however request a new password from the "Send me a new password" link on the log-in page. — Paul G 10:04, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

On my user page it has links to other wikis, so e.g. I could provide an email on my user page in en.wikipedia and you send it there... please... I like my user name 133.91.8.3 10:10, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

This only gives you a new password, as far as I can see - it shouldn't change your username. — Paul G 10:26, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

(It's the "Mail me a new password" button on the log-in page, by the way.) — Paul G 10:38, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Paul, I know that. But I didn't give my email address there so I can't use it. Is there something else you can suggest?

BTW, my name is not Paul. 133.91.8.3 05:11, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi, sorry, slip of the fingers - it's Ben, I take it. As you haven't given an email address, there is nothing I see I can do. I suggest you try contacting some of the other administrators to see if they can help you out. — Paul G 08:44, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll try that. 133.91.8.3 11:46, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

arsenic

Hello again Paul. Would you like to add pronunciations to the noun and adjective forms of arsenic? The stress is in different places - noun is ARSenic, the adjective is arSENic (trust me, I'm a chemist). Cheers SemperBlotto 14:59, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jeff. All done. I'm in Linux at the moment and the IPA symbols don't come out right for me, so could you have a look at them for me? What you should see is something like the following:

noun: apostrophe, lower case "a" without a tail at the top, a symbol like two tiny triangles pointing to each other, "r" in brackets, "s", inverted "e", "n", small capital "I", "k"

adjective: lower case "a" without a tail at the top, a symbol like two tiny triangles pointing to each other, "r" in brackets, "s", apostrophe, epsilon (a small backwards 3), "n", small capital "I", "k"

If you see things like backward Ns then don't worry because that's what I'm seeing in my Linux browser. I usually do this stuff in Windows where it all works fine.

Thanks. — Paul G 15:17, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Ginormous

Ok. Is it a neologism, should it be marked as such? No need to answer, just posing the question. Kevin Rector 18:33, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Re: Variants of Idioms

Thanks, Paul, as usual, for keeping me honest. I do appreciate the pointers. I can't promise to be vigilant about dreaming up and redirecting alternate forms (not a strong point of mine), but I prefer not to leave behind any unnecessary messes, so I will try. It may take some time to revisit all my old entries, though. — Dvortygirl 14:28, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

listing

Just noticed your (and User:SemperBlotto's) changes to listing.

A listing can technically be an item on any list, but the word "listing" is chiefly used 1) in a nautical context (very rare), 2) regarding a printout of a single computer program, or 3) in reference to the MLS. Other uses of the word are either in the plural form, or just don't happen. #3 is the only really common use.

Is the word "listing" really used that differently on the East side of the pond?

I need to add the adjective sense, but before I do, I'd like to know if these should be tagged as US vs UK.

--Connel MacKenzie 20:43, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

I don't know about US vs UK usage of this word, and I was unfamiliar with the sense that I commented out (or did I remove it?). Please go ahead and restore it - my apologies. The commonest usage of "listing" in the UK is as an entry in a directory or list, as in "He has a listing in the phone book" ( = his phone number is listed in the phone book) or "look in the TV listings to see what is on tonight" ( = ... the lists of TV programmes ...). — Paul G 08:54, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Wow, was I in a bad mood yesterday, or what! The uses you indicate are of course, valid over here as well. But the real estate twist on the word kindof takes listing's meaning in a different direction. I think I'll just add the adjective sense to highlight that. But while I'm asking, could you please explain to me how splitting the gerund into a separate heading from the noun helps? A verbal noun/gerund is still a noun. Wouldn't the distinction (of interest only to grammarians) be better highlighted as an italicized note at the start of the line? It certainly is my preference not to notate the difference at all, since the distinction is so fluid. Does a word being a verbal noun make it more of a noun than the others? Less? {shrug} Would be interesting to know why you and others think it is an important distinction, anyhow. --Connel MacKenzie 07:26, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. It's too late - I need sleep. I tried again at listing but now it seems to convey even less meaning. --Connel MacKenzie 08:21, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

PM / Milestone / Morse Code

1. sorry about the PM, I copied the capitalization from Wikipedia without thinking
2. Entry 70,000 may have been Ordstäv from User:Mike - either that or Hallucinogenic from me. I think that we were both trying for it; I had a number of acids lined up and was filling in time with odds and ends, then Mike zoomed in with four Sewdish words at the same time (probably multi-sessioning). I then went off to "work" for the morning.
3. Thanks you for dah - I wasn't sure how to spell it. By the way, what do you think of adding Morse Code letters? We already have ... --- .... I think that Wiki doesn't like [[.]] or [[..]] though.

PM - OK, no problem. It's worth checking for existing pages with alternative spellings/capitalisation before creating a page, and then creating redirect pages appropriately (e.g., Prime Minister now redirects to prime minister).

70,000 - Hm, when I logged on yesterday morning, there were 70,005 entries and malonic acid was the sixth in the list of new entries, making it pretty likely to be the 70,000th entry. I don't think it matters too much, as the number of entries goes down as well as up and where the milestones really are becomes obscured after quite a short time.

I checked "dah" in a couple of dictionaries before posting. How about adding the Morse code as an alphabet, along with the NATO alphabet too? I think there is an appendix for alphabets somewhere. I don't think it would be appropriate to create entries for all the symbols, though. I think ... --- ... does not belong here - I'm going to nominate it for deletion. — Paul G 10:16, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Here you go - there is a red link for "Morse code" on this page — Paul G 16:18, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

• OK. I have made a start with letters, will add numbers &c tomorrow - SemperSbronzo

That's great. You saw my Italian entry, then :) I'm going to change the hyphens to en-dashes to make them more readable. — Paul G 16:56, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

• the change that you did makes them wider, so some of them go onto two lines for me (I use View => Text Size => Larger because of dodgy eyesight) SemperBlotto 19:00, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

• Hm, OK, but I think the change I made is important for clarity. Perhaps they could be put on to three lines of 9, 9 and 8. — Paul G 08:39, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Scoptophile

I cannot find the scoptophile entry on the Requests for Deletion page. Therefore, I can neither submit a vote nor read why it was thus requested to be obliterated. I just wish to know what the reasoning was. I can give you my source: "Insulting and Depraved English" by Peter Novobatsky, et al. Bennmorland 07:10, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

You can read the request for deletion here — Paul G 08:50, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks man, I appreciate this quite a bit. I was in error of my source, as well. Scopophile does not appear in "Insulting and Depraved English" -- nor does scoptophile, whom, we may presume, someone who finds sexual pleasure from humorous verbal lashings... Bennmorland 12:52, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

wikification

Yes Paul, I had realised that I wikify more than other people and, yes, it is deliberate. I think that related words should be wikified, and also those which a potential reader might want to follow up for any reason, either because he doesn't know the word, or because he wants to be taken on a wiki-tour. It is also very useful for us Wiktionarians - the many red links show us what still needs to be defined. I shall probably carry on much as before. Cheers Jeff. SemperBlotto 12:25, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Re: cha-ching / kerching

Paul, I have just had a chat with Wytukaze (in IRC...please come visit sometime!) about "kerching". I have never heard "kerching" used in the U.S., and he hadn't heard "cha-ching", so we have concluded that it's the British equivalent. If you can shed any light, or want to enter a definition, please do, but I cannot offer much additional input. I think cha-ching may have extended in the U.S. to celebrate other sorts of "scores", such as scoring in a game, with a boss, with a girl, etc., but I'm a bit short on written evidence for that sense. —Dvortygirl 14:26, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Slight niggly clarification, I have heard cha-ching before, but it's as good as not, because it seems entirely due to American influence in this part of the country. Kerching is far and away the most common where I live. --Wytukaze 14:31, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Kerching is now live - I've just written it. — Paul G 15:22, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Bernard etc

Hello Paul. Would you like to add pronunciation to show the difference between US (bernARD) and UK (BERnard) stress. Cheers. SemperBlotto 07:14, 27 May 2005 (UTC) (p.s. Maurice needs some help as well)

OK Jeff, "Bernard" is done. Following up on some earlier threads, I've checked the transcriptions of the pronunciations of "arsenic" and they've come out OK. As for "benzene", my bilingual Italian dictionary gives me the Italian translation but does not translate it back into English on the other side, so I cannot check the pronunciation there. The "z" is more than likely pronounced /dz/, as it is pronounced that way in "benzina".

Does "bernard" as in "Saint Bernard" refer to the breed of dog only? I have assumed so and linked to the Wiktionary page instead of the Wikipedia one.

Maurice - I take it you mean the difference between "MO-ris" (same as "Morris") and "m'-REES"? Is this a UK/US distinction again? — Paul G 07:42, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks Paul. Bernard wasn't my entry, but I suppose the dog is what is meant. And yes, that is what I meant about Maurice. Americans seem to pronounce some names in the French way - I'll see if I can think of any more. SemperBlotto 11:34, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

• • No problem. There's Basil as well - I'm not sure about this one. The herb is pronounced "BAY-zl" in the US but the name seems to be pronounced as in UK English. However, I heard the US pronunciation used in the name of a church called "St Basil's" so I wonder if there is some more complex rule at work here. — Paul G 10:39, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

• • Which made me think of oregano. I have heard it pronounced both as oREGano and oregANo in Italy - maybe it is a North/South thing. SemperBlotto 11:21, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Shilling sign

Hi again. Do you want to say something about usages such as 7/- meaning seven shilling and no pence? Cheers SemperBlotto 10:42, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) (back into chemistry mode soonish)

Good idea. It crossed my mind, but I didn't do anything about it. I'll add an example with pence in as well — Paul G 10:52, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC) (old enough to remember sixpences, threepenny bits and florins but too young to remember farthings)

systematic element names

OK, I've added all ten, but with no translations. Also I need to investigate the etymologies - they seem to have used a mixture of Latin and Greek. I had a look at some entries such as hexa- but they are also missing Greek etymologies. SemperBlotto 16:29, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well done. — Paul G 16:32, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ugly (unbalanced) translation tables

Hi Paul.

I just noticed that in your cleanup of lose that you undid my work trying to keep tables balanced. From the conversations I've had either in the Beer Parlour or on Talk pages, people prefer the balanced tables because they're not ugly. The dumbed-down A-I / J-Z are kept because it seems to be felt that it's too much to ask editors to split tables by number of translations rather than by first letter because the former may be too hard for some! Personally I hate the unbalanced tables - no print dictionary editor would let anything so ugly pass - so I've been doing my best to smarten them all up. I really don't understand why you would want to revert my work here.

Some of our guidelines are "minimal guidelines" where it's possible to do better but we don't want to encourage editors to do anything worse than the minimum. I think splitting tables by first letter is one of these cases. In a perfect world the tables would all be done by the software and us poor editors wouldn't have to worry about them. — Hippietrail 22:02, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I see your point. I propsed the A-I/J-Z split as a simple way to ensure tables are balanced when they are complete (or as near as we can get them to being complete). I think I determined the split by looking at iron or butterfly, I don't remember exactly. Many of the commoner languages (French, German, Italian, Dutch) seem to fall in the first column and so there is often an imbalance until the table becomes fuller.

Despite your work at balancing them, I can guarantee that the tables will not remain balanced. Unfortunately, people adding new translations will not make the effort to do so, I am sure of that. As it is, people adding new definitions do not add new translation tables for them - I have seen both of these things happening.

I agree that in a print dictionary, an editor would insist on evenly distributed columns.

I reverted your work only because I assumed it had been done by someone who was unaware of the split - I did not realise it was someone better informed - sorry :)

What do you think we can do about this? I fear that either solution (splitting by initial letters or 50-50) will inevitably leave most tables unbalanced most of the time. Like you say, software would sort this out - perhaps someone could write a little macro that we could just throw the translations into which would sort them and tabulate them neatly - but short of that, what approach will ensure that most tables remain balanced most of the time? — Paul G 08:42, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the A-I/J-Z split is a good solution. Manually balanced 50-50 split tables will only cause confusion with new editors and not remain balanced for long. Ncik 17:56, 11 Jul 2005

Table balancing makes the whole article look nicer. Balancing them by bot would probably be optimal. Having a client-side section balance edit button-thinggy would be a good interim solution. But having the "Translations A-I go here" stuff makes the article text harder to wade through...since there is top/mid/bottom to use now, I can't see why you'd want to do it manually anymore. The fact that the A-I/J-Z split is not real intuitive combined with it not being explained anywhere, I find the argument for it (somehow being less confusing than top/mid/bottom) to be a little lopsided. --Connel MacKenzie 23:41, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

The only reason I still use the non-template form of the tables is because I have it as a text file that I copy and paste. I've updated this file to the top/mid/bottom format now, in anticipation of a future update that formats the tables. From now on I won't add the "A-I/J-Z" comments and will leave the tables free format. I'll endeavour to balance any new tables that I add. — Paul G 08:34, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

periodic acid

Another pronunciation for you, if you have the time. Could you show that it is purr--iOdic, and not like periodic. Cheers. SemperBlotto 15:47, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

All done. Interesting. — Paul G 08:55, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, (Medical Glossary)

Thanks for those links, they look like very good resources. I know that mikro isn't in Greek, it is a trasnliteration of a Greek word which we don't have, and, as soon as we do have it should point at the proper entry. - TheDaveRoss 19:39, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Archive

In the rfd there is mention of the material at User talk:Paul G/archive that was put there by someone else. I've deleted these pages where for users who either absent or have a short page. However, for those who are active and have a long page it seems better to just leave a notice and let you do what you wanbt with it. I will be removing the reference from the rfd page. Eclecticology 05:59, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

People Eating Tasty Animals

Hello Paul,

In the interest of being NPOV, I think the counter-organization that was created as a reaction is as real as the original and therefore deserves equal or similar recognition. Although it is humorous, it does not seem to be just a joke? --Connel MacKenzie 20:01, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Connel - I just didn't know what it meant. I thought it might be an alternative expansion of the acronym referring to the anti-fur organisation. I'll restore it. — Paul G 09:19, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Now restored. I did a bit of research and have added an explanation. — Paul G 09:25, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

denier

Hello again Paul, would you like to add a couple of pronunciations - dEnier and denIEr - cheers SemperBlotto 07:38, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

tib-fib or tib fib or tib/fib

What is the name of the common fracture of the legs, typically from playing football? Or should it be tib/fib fracture and so on. SemperBlotto 28 June 2005 10:37 (UTC)

Hm, I don't know... maybe try a Google search. — Paul G June 28, 2005 10:52 (UTC)

Uppercase rhymes

Did you mean your latest rhyme article to be 1st letter uppercase? SemperBlotto 30 June 2005 09:18 (UTC)

Thanks, but no, not any more - we've gone "decimal". Read all about wonderful new policy that has been foisted upon us, if you haven't already. The namespace has been changed from "Rhymes" to "rhymes" and I'm not going to change them all back... — Paul G June 30, 2005 09:21 (UTC)

That said, I have many, many links beginning "Rhymes...", and I'm not going to change all of those to "rhymes...". So I'll stick with the "Rhymes" namespace for future entries. — Paul G June 30, 2005 09:23 (UTC)

penititi

This definition was dredged up from the back of the mind with no documentary evidence. Is it correct? The original was "meaning repentant terrorists". SemperBlotto 10:04, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, "penitenti" (different spelling) is "the penitent ones" in Italian, while "pentiti" is "repented" (the past participle of "pentirsi", to repent, and so, at a push, "those who have repented"). I wonder if it is Sicilian rather than Italian. Two Google hits: one use as a noun: "He noted that the so-called penititi have spoken at length on their past crimes but never have they given up their bank codes." [1] and an attributive use: "apparently loosely based on the Italian “penititi” laws, that offers amnesty for any PKK. members who turn themselves in, “repent of their crimes,”" [2] (but not actually on that page, so maybe it has been updated since Google's spider got there).

So I can't say for definite - what does your Zingarelli say? — Paul G

Zingarelli has penitente (plural penitenti - fairly close), penitenza and penitenziario. I'll stick with it and see if anyone complains.

transpire

Hey Paul, thanks for calling my definition pretentious. If you read the usage bit of the link you provided, you'll see that while some panelists and language critics find it to be so, the majority of the (presumably) native English speakers polled found that usage to be acceptable. In any case, disparaging commentary was unnecessary. E. abu Filumena 20:58, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I've replied to you on your user page. — Paul G 08:49, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Template:checktrans

I know you have worked hard in dealing with this template, but I often wonder whether any of these translations ever get checked. It would be nice if the explanation that appears on every page were shorter. Better still, can we have the approach that any translations still not checked after 90 days from the date the template is posted may be removed. Eclecticology 16:52, July 17, 2005 (UTC)

Hm, that's a fair point. I'll work on cutting down the verbosity. I think it is essential we keep this in as many of the translations are incorrectly assigned and so useless.

The 90 days limit is an interesting idea. How do you propose we could police it? — Paul G 09:45, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Of course, the category is useful for listing which pages need attention, but I too wonder if the translations ever get checked. It would be very nice if we could assign languages to trusted contributors who could look through the list and check translations for us. I think I'll suggest this in the beer parlour. — Paul G 09:50, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi Paul, could you comment on my proposal to add <!--DefA> tags to the definitions, translations and synonyms. It would make it easier for a script to determine what belongs together I applied it to square and total Polyglot 15:42, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization in Definitions

After seeing your changes to common I'd like you to comment again on Wiktionary:Capitalization in definitions. Ncik 16:12, 19 Jul 2005

Thanks - I've updated my comments on that page. — Paul G 16:23, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Derived/related terms after translations and level 3?

Hi Paul. I was just looking at the changes you've made to pyramid. One thing which surprised me was that you moved the translations about the derived/related terms. For over a year I've been doing the opposite based on the observation that most users are looking for a regular (monolingual) dictionary with only a minority of users looking for translations. Since the translations section can grow quite large, it often pushes the English-only related & derived terms sections off the end of the page where people not interested in translations are less likely to look.

It also surprised me to notice that you demoted the derived/related headings to level 3 meaning that it is no longer subordinate to the noun headword. My observation and practice was that we only did this when an article had multiple homonyms or parts of speech and we are unable to tell from which of these the terms are derived. In this case we do know which they are derived from since there is only one. — Hippietrail 15:04, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. This makes sense. I'll try to stick to that approach in future. — Paul G 15:17, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

gaufrure

Hi Paul, any idea what this means (it's a stub)? It is not in my pocket dictionary - closest is "gaufrer" (to emboss) SemperBlotto 16:42, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Possibly "embossing" (noun) then. I'll have to check my large monolingual French dictionary when I get the chance. — Paul G 08:48, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation labels

Hi Paul,

I leave the # in front of the disambiguation labels. Maybe we should switch to automatically generated bullets instead of numbers. I started using letters inside of the labels, because in most entries 26 is enough. Where it wasn't enough, I went on with Greek letters. The reason why I didn't start using numbers is because, indeed, we wanted to get away from numbers. What do you think of Hippietrail's suggestion to use mnemonic labels? That way they would contain a meaning of their own and it would be easier to remember what belongs where. It will take more time to create them though, as some thought will be required to find a snappy, meaningful label, while still remaining distinct from the other meanings.

Polyglot 10:19, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Just for giggles I changed lead to have bullets instead of numbers. Is that better? I have to say though that I didn't see them all being numbered as 1. The reason for leaving the #-signs is because I want to change as little as possible. Polyglot 10:35, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi Paul,

Glad we agree that it looks hideous without numbers. Anyway, I had a look at your latest edits and you also leave the numbers in front of the definitions under the POS header. The Visual labels get a * in front of them. That's the way I was also doing it. Adding the invisible labels between the # or the * and the visible ones. If I did it another way somewhere, it was in error and should be corrected. The same goes if somebody else did so. Polyglot 12:25, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi Paul,

Can you tell me what you think about what I did with tin? I tried to make those labels mnemonic. Polyglot 13:41, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I hope you actually looked at the labels and not just to the general appearance of the entry. Since those labels are invisible they don't have any effect for the user. So why are they useful? I don't know if you know anything at all about programming, but one thing about programming is that you have to tell the computer everything, every little step it has to do has to be coded. I won't say it's impossible to have it correlate the contents of our definitions and the synopsis we add above the translation tables, but it would be very hard and it would be error prone. For a computer to compare two things that are exactly the same is easy. Trying to match two things that are almost the same is a hopeless endeavour.

Anyway, what I'm trying to achieve is to write a program that can parse a Wiktionary page and convert it to internal symbols/objects. Either for exporting to another Wiktionary, or for exporting it to the UW, or for importing it in my own dictionary project. Once Wiktionary entries can be parsed, migration to other formats becomes possible. (Well, I'm still in the progress of writing that script and it isn't easy, so it will still take a considerable while before it becomes useful). I'm extending the existing pywikipediabot to accomplish it. It gives a headstart and Python seems like a very good language to do this with.

Of course, there is one other thing such a bot will be able to do. It will/should be able to interpret an article with a not quite standard formatting or a formatting that has been deprecated and turn it into a correctly formatted entry. An example is the replacement of those 4 lines of table code into a {{top}} template.

One thing I stumbled upon while trying to create this bot/script/parser program is the matching of what belongs together. These labels allow me to know unambiguously.

Maybe they can be useful for an editor as well. I don't know. I do agree it's a lot of work to add them. But I think it's worthwhile to do so. At least it may appease some loud voice(s) saying that we are creating content with a free license in a way that renders it proprietary due to the difficult/unparseable format we use. I must say that most of my suggestions regarding to the format we developed have always been with export of data in the back of my mind, so I think it should be possible to do so. It is true though that for example entries of nl.wiktionary are easier to export, but their content isn't as rich as ours (yet). Anyway, it's only now that I try my hand at actually writing a parsing bot, that I encounter certain difficulties. One of those problems would be solved with these disambiguation labels.

The other reason for my suggestions was to avoid duplication of effort and the ability to find a certain kind of information in a predictable place, but you knew that already. Anyway, don't hesitate to ask if something is still not clear.

Cheers, Polyglot 09:26, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

the province and the principality

Just checking. When we refer to Wales and Northern Ireland as just "the principality" and "the province", should they be capitalized? SemperBlotto 21:42, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I think "the Principality of Wales" is correct. I have not heard "the principality" by itself, unless it has no special meaning other than referring to Wales as a principality, in which case it would be lower-case. If it is short for the full phrase, then it would be capitalised. You'll have to check elsewhere, sorry...

Wikipedia's article on Northern Ireland mentions "the Province" as a Unionist name for Northern Ireland. — Paul G 08:44, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

WT:RFD#Vandalism_in_progress

Hi Paul,

Congratulations again on your newly increased status. Regarding the discussion at WT:RFD#Vandalism_in_progress, do you as a bureaucrat have the ability of renaming users? Also, do you have the ability of listing users? Looking at the User: namespace, I can see many users, but I cannot see every account that has ever been created, nor can I see every anon IP that has ever contributed. Thanks in advance,

--Connel MacKenzie 21:13, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

That is to say, there seems to be a general notion that the garbage usernames of our most regular vandal, should all be combined into one. At the same time, all those entries can then be removed. But you and Ec are the only ones here who know for sure if the capability exists, as you to are the only ones who can possibly do it, right? --Connel MacKenzie 03:41, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Hello Connel, thank you for the congratulations. I'm afraid at the moment you know more about being a bureaucrat than I do - Eclecticology promoted me a little while back and I have not yet found out what this enables or requires me to do. I'll contact Ec and found out a bit more. — Paul G 08:57, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

chemistry

You left a message for me a while back about capitalisation of chemical names. Do you know chemistry? I have entered an acronym for DEET (which I think is important because I think it's Catnip). I respectfully request that you check this for formatting. Cheers, --Stranger, SSL69 14:46, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I'll reply on your page. — Paul G 14:04, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! But I found your reply confusing - in looking at the history of DEET, I found out why: Semper had already performed his magic on it. I had simply made an initialism; Semper expanded it. So, I can't take credit for his, I'm sure, excellent entry. I'll copy our conversations on his talk page so he'll have the benefit of your correction wisdom. Cheers, -- Stranger, SSL69 14:26, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

null set

Hi there. Wikipedia has a somewhat different definition for w:null set, but my maths (especially set theory) is getting a bit dusty, so I won't do anything about it. SemperBlotto 10:52, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, "null set" means the same as "empty set" in set theory, but has a different meaning in measure theory. I'll update the entry accordingly. Thanks for pointing this out. — Paul G 10:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

vi

Hi Paul. in this edit, you wrote about the Swedish word "vi" that it is a first-person plural singular subject pronoun - I don't understand what that say, or rather, what "singular subject" means. Could you please enlighten me? \Mike 08:07, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

"Singular subject pronoun" means a subject pronoun that is singular, rather than a "singular-subject" pronoun, which doesn't make sense, as you say. Subject pronouns are pronouns that are used as the subject of a sentence, such as "I", "he", etc, as opposed to object pronouns, which are used as the object of a sentence, such as "me", "him", etc. — Paul G 08:39, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

bum

Hi Paul,

Can you have a look to what I did to bum and tell me what you think about it. The reason I made those changes is that I want to try and have the entries in such a way they can be parsed by a program. It's very hard to write a program to do it. I know, as I'm in the process of doing just that. It becomes impossible though if there are more blocks for synonyms than there are definitions and even an other amount of blocks for translations. Is it OK, the way I changed it? I also changed the order of the definitions to conform to the order of the translations and synonyms. I don't which comes first, the American or Commonwealth usage, but I would like to see the order between the different sections be the same. Anyway, I'm really glad with all the effort you put in introducing the translation tables and helping us get rid of the numbering that broke so easily. The project got a lot better because of that. I think we didn't do that to save space at first, but it was the wrong kind of saving. Now some translations are coming back in several tables, but everything became a lot clearer and more correct. Polyglot 10:56, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Hm, I don't like this. It makes it look as though "bum" has three separate meanings, one that is just "buttocks", one that is "anus" and one that is both, when really the distinction is only to be made in the synonyms. I think it is important to remember that first of all this is a resource for users, so this change, which has only been done so that your parser will work, will look strange. Please could you change it back, and consider changing your parser? I don't think it's right that we should make the dictionary machine-readable at the expense of human-readability.

Alternatively, the specific synonyms could be doubly nested. This would probably make it human- and machine-readable. I'll make that change. Let me know if it works for you. — Paul G 13:38, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, natural languages are weird, aren't they? They will always be hard to grasp with logic. There always seem to be deeper levels. I guess I will have to make it work. The exercise is already hard enough as it is, without this kind of supplemental inconsistencies. I try to make it not overly strict, so it can get across typing and entry errors and fix them. And then there are several ways to do a lot of things. The problem is, I have to make some assumptions and now I saw one of my basic assumptions was being violated. My problem is not only with the parsing; I attach synonyms and translations with meanings internally. The meaning objects get generated while parsing the definitions, so if 2 definitions are encountered everything goes up in smoke if 4 blocks with synonyms are encountered and then 3 blocks with translations. I have nothing to attach those synonyms to. The most obvious way for me would then be extra definitions that remain hidden from the user (ugly) or the way we take care of this with translations when for instance there are different words for paternal uncle and maternal uncle (unwieldy when many synonyms are involved and when all the languages make those distinctions, which is very likely)

You may think it's not as important to make the entries machine readable as to make them present well to the user. The purpose is not only exporting entries though, it's also the ability to clean them up with less strain of repetitive manual labour. I understand the word doesn't have 4 definitions though, so we have to find another way to solve this. As far as the bot is concerned I'm going to postpone implementing this though. I'll concentrate to get it working on easier/less problematic entries first. Polyglot 18:22, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

See template

I noticed you using the See template a day or two ago - good idea. I got childish pleasure today in typing

See also: saw

SemperBlotto 16:12, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Admin on sl:wiktionary

Hi Paul! Where can I put request for admin on sl:wiktionary? There are three active users at this time. Tnx! --Andrejj 20:58, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Rhymes in DoubleRedirects

Hello Paul. in Special:DoubleRedirects there are a number of rhymes. As I don't see all those strange characters, I thought it might be safer if you could have a go at sorting them out. You will need to use the "500" option to see them due to a wiki bug. Cheers. SemperBlotto 09:30, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I've cleaned some of these up, but there are rather a lot. — Paul G 11:16, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

metro

Hello again Paul (thanks for the rhymes). Do you think that the second Italian entry for metro should be moved to metrò? I've just had a look on it.wiktionary and they have it in with the unaccented word. SemperBlotto 14:54, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, please do move it, with a cross-reference under the Italian entry at "metro". The people at it.wiktionary no doubt know what they are talking about :) and I've confirmed that it has an accent (a grave accent) here

As for the rhymes, thank you for pointing it out - there were a fair few errors there (not to mention a whole swathe of words rhyming with "or" that were linked to the wrong page). It took me a while to fix everything, and there is still a little more to do, but I've had enough for today :) — Paul G 15:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

for

1. Would one of you East-ponders please hook up a microphone? (Note that the little question mark to the right of the audio link provides help for listening and recording.)
2. Trying to compare the IPA symbols becomes nonsensical for an article like for. I am certain the American pronunciation does not have a rhotic/rolling "R" sound...with the audio there, why is it now identified as such? --Connel MacKenzie 17:33, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I take it I'm the East-ponder you're referring to, as your question is on my page. Yes, you're quite right, but hasn't there been a discussion somewhere before about using a minimal set of symbols, so that /r/ (even though it is the wrong IPA symbol for "American" "r") is used to mean the "r" sound relevant according to the context. If this is in appropriate, which "r" is the right one to use? Is it /ɹ/, /ɻ/ or /ɾ/?

I'll move this discussion to the Beer Parlour. — Paul G 08:50, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, people here are in the habit of reading other's talk pages. On IRC the one country that never seems to get representation, oddly is England. But really, any English accent recording of Wiktionary would be appreciated. Likewise the word for. If you (all of you English) get a chance, please look into Wiktionary's IRC channel. I appreciate the advice I hear on IRC.

Despite your tutorial a while back, I still do not have my head around IPA symbols. The /r/ vs. /ɹ/ controversy seems to rear up every time I look into IPA. And the answer seems to be different every time...so yes, I think the BP might be a better place to talk about it. --Connel MacKenzie 09:20, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I've raised it in the Beer parlour. I think it needs discussion and some agreement on standards. Thanks for bringing the matter up. — Paul G 09:34, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 05:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

John Milton

What is the point of removing John Milton from the list of wanted articles? The links are still broken, right? I was queuing the entry so it wouldn't get lost. Now that you've pointed out it should redirect to Wikipedia, well, why not just have it redirect to Wikipedia then? --Connel MacKenzie 05:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Connel, yes, they're still broken, but we don't anyone to create a Wiktionary entry for John Milton, which is why I have removed it twice from the list. The thing to do is not to create a redirect, but to change the links themselves to point to the Wikipedia article. This will get sorted out in time. — Paul G 08:30, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

OK then, no rush. I still don't understand the objection to having an entry here that points to Wikipedia as a soft link or a hard redirect. I think many things here (in general) work better when links are not broken. Double redirects can always be fixed after the fact. But yes, this certainly will sort itself out. --Connel MacKenzie 00:11, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Talk:dogging

When I punch this up, all I get is: dogging is 1337. Yet the "history" shows an extensive conversation with you as the last contributor (which is why I'm sending this to you). I don't understand. Is this vandalism? Cheers. --Stranger 02:53, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. It looks like it might be vandalism, as it was an anonymous user and all they left was the unsupported claim that dogging is 1337 (leet). I have restored the full content. — Paul G 08:53, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

still here?

Are you still here? Check recent changes. --Stranger 09:57, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I think I got it. I uploaded an exclamation point over the offending images - I still don't have a blank one available, but I'm working on it. Sometimes I panic unnecessarily. Cheers, --Stranger 10:11, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Deleting your user page

Hello Paul,

I was perusing the user namespace for other stuff and came across an older version of your user page that had been page-move vandalized. To restore that history, I'd need to temporarily delete your user page, then move the vandalized page back to your page, then restore all deleted versions, then finally, restore the current version.

Is there some reason you don't want the edit history of your user page?

--Connel MacKenzie [+] (contribs) 20:12, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Connel - I've been away on holiday so that's why you haven't heard back from me.

Thanks for pointing this out. I don't think I particularly want the edit history of my user page, given that it has been edited many times. It looks like it would be a lot of hassle anyway. — Paul G 08:57, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

refried beans

According to Wikipedia, these are only fried once, the "re-" not meaning "again". However, I really have no idea, and have never eaten them. SemperBlotto 11:22, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

That's interesting. I've never eaten them either, but dictionary.com says that they are fried, mashed and then fried again. I've no idea which is correct, so maybe it's best to leave the usage note out until we find out one way or the other. — Paul G 11:33, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Rivers

I don't agree with your suggested level of detail for rivers. I think a couple of sentences is appropriate to a dictionary, and this practise is followed by other online dictionaries. However I'm willing to compromise and from now on I will use your format: "A river in France that flows from A to B.", though sometimes I might use "A river in France that flows from A through C to B."

However I think Rubicon is an exception since the history aids the meaning of the phrase "crossing the rubicon".

Sorry for butting in, but while you're on the subject . . .

I like/need the restrictive label (river) in the template because it lets me know the template actually exists. I know there are other ways of telling, but on late at night when clicking the "preview" button, if I don't see that my {river} tag did anything, I'll likely just delete it. (I had this problem with Mississippi.) While I agree it's redundant, please keep it for the sake of newbies (and Strangers).

And please sign you posts Jonathan W.

--Stranger 12:17, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Jonathan: Yes, Rubicon is definitely an exception. You can certainly put in a couple of sentences if you want. Just to be clear, my motivation here is that, when someone is looking up what, say, "Seine" means, the fact that is a river in France gives them the information they need, but the length of the river adds nothing to their understanding of the meaning of the word and so belongs in Wikipedia instead. — Paul G 14:50, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

--Stranger: The label (river) is redundant and looks odd when the definition is encountered. The definition tells you it is a river, so there is no need for a label. The purpose of labels in Wiktionary is to show the area in which a term is used (such as geology) or to show the level of language (such as slang). They are not intended to be used simply to show that a template exists.

However I do see your point. I'll raise this in the beer parlour. — Paul G 14:50, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

(geology) is fine. I hadn't thought of that. I just knew Ec and Jonathan had been working on Rivers and thought they wanted them classified as such.

What about making the {rivers} template print out (geology) (instead of (river))- that works for me too. --Stranger 16:36, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Better still, how about (geography), as Missouri, etc, are geographical names? I've added this label. It will show up the next time you add the template to an entry or edit one that already contains it. — Paul G 16:52, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Works for me. Thanks! --Stranger 17:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

For consistency, it would probably be a good idea to create a {{placename}} template that includes this label too, so that (say) "Missouri" shows up with the label ("geography") in both of its definitions. — Paul G 13:58, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Talk:Romanica

I was originally gonna ask for you to delete this, but given the depth of insight, I think this should be saved. :-) --Stranger 18:52, 29 September 2005 (UTC)</nowiki>

facade

Please do not ever replace real content with a redirect.

Also, please join the Beep Parlor discussion on ===Alternative spellings===, your opinon on the matter is valued.

--Connel MacKenzie 16:48, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Connel, I am aware of this policy, but I don't believe this is what I have done. All of the content is already at façade. I have raised this in the beer parlour and will have a look at the discussion on alternative spellings. — Paul G 16:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, thank you for your response and thank you for raising it separately in the BP. I don't know that we have any solid poilicy, but I do know that standard practice dictates that we do not replace articles with redirects. --Connel MacKenzie 17:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Move this page?

Paul, I stumbled upon the entry place names in Northwest Territories this evening. It seems to me that this is not our usual sort of headword. Perhaps this matter should go in a category or appendix page, instead. Since it seems to be your work, I thought you might decide its fate. Thanks. --Dvortygirl 05:49, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Dvortygirl. Yes, you're quite right. I created a load of these quite a while back. I was a less experienced user then and did not realise that these should properly be in a namespace (probably Wiktionary_Appendix). I've acknowledged in the beer parlour that these need to be moved, but haven't done got round to moving them yet. — Paul G 08:50, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

aspiette

Hello Paul. In cleaning up this word recently, I searched Google, and it seems to have an Italian meaning. It isn't in my dictionary, and I can't figure out what it might mean. Any ideas?

Hm. My first thought was that it is an obscure inflection of "aspettare", but this seems unlikely. From my search of Google, I find a Wikipedia redirect to Autistic culture that doesn't feature the word itself; there is also this page that suggests it has a psychiatric sense (although I haven't had a look at it).

I also find a few pages in Italian as you did, but these are in Italian dialect (not standard [Tuscan] Italian). This link suggests it could well be Neapolitan. My knowledge of Italian dialects is close to zero, so you might need a bit more research elsewhere. — Paul G 16:26, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see you've got the English sense already. Anyway, to answer your question, I would guess that it means the same as Italian "aspetta" (ie, the third-person singular present indicative of "aspettare"). From the third link above:

Io le domando si aspiette a me e me risponne: "si 'o vvuò sapè... cca nun ce sta nisciuna!"

probably means (although I don't know what the tenses should be) "I ask her if she is waiting for me and she answers me: "<something pretty impenetrable :)>" — Paul G 16:31, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

access time

Hello again Paul, sorry to disturb you. Could you look at access time and the discussion on the author's talk page. I'm not getting very far with him. SemperBlotto 13:21, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jeff, no problem. I've added a brief comment. I'll clean the entry up accordingly. — Paul G 13:41, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I've taken the initiative and cleaned it up. Take a look now. I've also rephrased "...data are..." to avoid any nasty controversy over whether "data" is singular or plural (it's singular in computing use, pace anyone who knows Latin, such as you).

He might not like it, but as it says at the bottom of the page, "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here." — Paul G 13:49, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

WT:ELE - Homophones

Hello Paul,

I was reviewing some of Wiktionary:Entry layout explained today and for the first time noticed something you added way back on Jaunuary 8th: that Homophones should be listed as subheadings to pronunciation.

Up until now, I've automatically put homophone headings at the same level as pronunciation. While they are related to one another, I don't see one as subordinate or less important than the other.

A concern I have is that some of us are not familiar with IPA; making the entry of homophones dependant upon first entering a pronunciation heading seems awkward. Especially when we strongly discourage (as has always been the case) headings with no content. I do like the ordering of having homophones immediately after pronunciation.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the topic. I have no strong preference on the matter, but I would appreciate clarification. Am I completely off-base putting them at the same level?

--Connel MacKenzie 16:37, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Connel,

I do it that way because homophones depend on the pronunciation of a word, but now that I think about it, I agree that they should have to be dependent on whether or not anyone has entered the pronunciation yet. I think that is the the right thing to do (enter them with three equals signs and put them immediately below the "Pronunciation" header). I'll edit "Entry layout explained" accordingly. — Paul G 16:41, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

starring

Hello Paul, I was just about to cleanup this entry, but was unsure of the part of speech to use for the senses given. Perhaps you would like to have a go.

By the way, it is from User talk:Connel MacKenzie/todo3 - in case you are ever short of work. SemperBlotto|Talk 10:50, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Hm, I thought at first it might be an adjective, but I think a verb is more appropriate. "This is a film starring Joe Bloggs" means "This is a film that stars Joe Bloggs", so "starring" is clearly a verb. "Starring Joe Bloggs" is just a shortened version of this. — Paul G 11:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I was going to put adjective (as in "a starring role") and thought about present participle - but isn't that always preceded a form of to be? SemperBlotto|Talk 12:46, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

The adjective sense you mention should certainly be added. Participles are always used with either "have" (past) or "be" (present), yes. — Paul G 13:27, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

nowiki

Paul,

Could you please fix the typo you added on my talk page where you have </nowki> instead of </nowiki>? I don't want to sign that entry for you. Thanks.

No problem with the anon. It hasn't happened to me recently, but when it does, it is nice to see a "You have new messages" banner to warn me that I'm no longer logged in. I had no idea it was you; I was going to complement the new user on their Wiki Expertise, until I saw Wonderfool's clue. --Connel MacKenzie 13:43, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Done. I wondered why the rest of your page came out all messed up. I thought there was something wrong with the software. Sorry about that. — Paul G 13:56, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

No prob. I've made that mistake before also. Thanks for the cleanup. --Connel MacKenzie 15:31, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requested articles:English

Hi Paul, I think that this page should be for our actual users to request words that thay would like a definition of. Perhaps words that contributors think that we should have ought to go in Index:English. These pages need a good cleanup though - it's full of entries such as hades,Hell - so much to do, so little time. . . SemperBlotto|Talk 14:48, 26 October 2005 (UTC) p.s. Sorry for the didgy sentence construction, but you know what I mean.

OK, fair point. I tend to treat it as a list of undefined words, as you know. Does anyone ever look at Wiktionary:English index though? — Paul G 15:04, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I do. Among other things, I am ploughing through "th" at the moment. SemperBlotto|Talk 15:46, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Template:blend

Your opinion, please.

My apologies about the change. I have never really made a big distinction between the two. My motivation was based on having conformity between the template title, the template text and the category. If you really have strong feelings about this feel free to undo my changes; I won't change them back. I would suggest though that the page include a comment to explain the irregularity, or someone else may may repeat my error in the future Eclecticology 17:47, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks - it's a subtle point. I'd like to change it back, and I'll add suitable comments. I am using "Category:Portmanteaus" only because that already existed, and I agree that it makes things a little untidy. Moving everything over to Category:Blends would require all the pages to be edited so that they go into the new category. I wonder if this could be done with a bot - is that something you might be able to do? — Paul G 10:04, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

rhymes:French: -aille

U're the rhyming enterer around here, could you bung in a proper IPA for rhymes:French: -aille please? Thanks mate --Wonderfool 18:42, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I will move it for you. — Paul G 10:31, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

All done... take a look. I think it is helpful to link to the infinitives rather than to the inflections. I've also changed the number of syllables: "aille", etc, have two syllables (the "e" is pronounced) and so "travaille", etc, have three. — Paul G 10:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:irregverb

User:Connel MacKenzie has been maintaining a dispute with User:Ncik over a number of things, and I'm trying to find common ground. One in particular has been over this template that Ncik has been using to replace the "accepted" template used by you and others. I personally think that Ncik's template is an improvement, and I don't see you or the others mentioned by Connel as raising any objections about Ncik's changes. Do you have any strong opinions over the verb template? Eclecticology 00:38, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out - I hadn't seen the changed template or the discussion. I agree that it looks neater and more readable, and am happy to go with it. What I'm not so keen on is the similar table for the singular and plural of nouns - I don't think this adds anything to the readability and spreads things out too much across the page.

I'll have a look at what has been discussed. — Paul G 10:58, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Having read Connel's misgivings, I'm reminded of what I was going to post, but forgot to, about what I didn't like about this template: the format is different from similar templates used in Wiktionary. We already have a standardised format for templates for this sort of grammatical information, and it doesn't make sense to change it for just one template. So I'm undecided; if I were to go one way or the other, I would favour keeping what we already have (that is, rejecting Ncik's template(s)). — Paul G 11:03, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. Connel had mentioned four senior editors as supporting his version of things, but (sigh!) now that I have responsesfrom all four I find them evenly split with no really strong feelings either way. I agree that Ncik's template gives a neater result for verbs, but is not as effective for nouns. Connel's preference has been around longer, but only by less than three months. What really bugged Connel was that Ncik was converting everything he found without discussion. Ncik's template could probably be improved by moving the bolding parameters inside the template instead of having them determined separately for each verb.

The other problem with these verb templates is the number of variations for regular verbs. Establishing these rules and algorithms seems to be the passion of computer geeks, but the downside is that few people can remember the underlying rules. To me typing in the five verb forms in full is less onerous than trying to remember which template. The aggrevation cost for saving a few keystrokes does not seem worth it. I would be inclined to recommend a single template for all English verb conjugations that produces something similar in appearance to what Ncik has produced.

Sorry if this reply is so lenghthy. Once I had the four replies I had to think things through aloud a little. :-) Eclecticology 20:04, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

gli etc

Thanks Paul. I have added some compound pronouns based on gli (could you also check the meanings, as I tend to get them confused). I have not added any of those run-together words like darglielo as I wasn't sure of the part of speech. I have also added Llanelli to see how the Welsh double L should be pronounced. Cheers. SemperBlotto|Talk 20:23, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll take a look at the "gli" compounds for you.

I think we'd be on a hiding to nothing entering "darglielo", etc, because all verbs that can take a direct and indirect object pronoun at the same time will have a form like this. I suppose though they'll have to go in some time, even if only as cross-references (or redirects, provided the page for the infinitive mentions them) to the infinitive. Of course, there are also the forms that take just a direct or indirect object pronoun, such as "parlarmi", and the irregular forms, such as "dimmi", "dacci", etc. I think I have entered some of these irregular ones already.

I'm guessing the part of speech might be something like "pronomial verb" because it combines a verb and a pronoun. I think this term is used in of French reflexive verbs (eg, "se reveiller"). I wondered about Italian words such as "dal" and "nello" and discovered via a Web search that the these are called "prepositional articles".

I'm curious to see what the Welsh "ll" comes out as too. It's a different sound from the German "ch" in "ich" (which I think is /ç/ in IPA) and the Scottish/German "ch" in "loch" and "ach" respectively, which are /x/ in IPA.

— Paul G 09:53, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I've done Llanelli, but I need to check whether the e's and o's in the glie... pronouns are open or closed before I enter their pronunciations. — Paul G 10:28, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

toh

Does this make any sense? Can it be saved? SemperBlotto 15:51, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I've done a little research, and it seems so. See the changes I've made, including the comment (visible only when editing the page.) — Paul G 10:12, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, you live and learn. Thanks. SemperBlotto 10:25, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

shaped

Hi Paul. I'm not over the moon about the format. Wouldn't it be better with ===Verb form===, ===Adjective=== and ===See also=== entries? SemperBlotto 16:24, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. Thanks for the suggestion - see what I've done with it. — Paul G 16:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Brill. SemperBlotto 16:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Deletions

Some of the redirects you are deleting deserve to be entries in their own right (such as "satisfied", which is an adjective as well as a past tense/past participle) rather than deleted. I agree that they should not be redirects, but is deleting them the right thing to do? — Paul G 16:13, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely. Entries are much easier to recreate properly if the redirect is first deleted. I've set up User talk:Connel MacKenzie/redirects to assist in the effort. For now, I am simply trying to clear off the double redirects list by deleting the entries that clearly should not be redirects. However, my wikitime these days is quite limited. I do intend to go back to the redirects list, but not until I've cleared the double redirects down to something manageable. After that, I plan to devote the rest of my time to filling in entries from User talk:Connel MacKenzie/Gutenberg, but not until I've reentered all the deleted redirects as proper entries. --Connel MacKenzie T C 18:40, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, that seems appropriate. It just looked to me at first sight that a lot of potentially legitimate material was being wiped, but this isn't the case. — Paul G 09:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

anagrams

I added a couple of words - asper and apres to the alphagram, thereby rendering your old set mine. There may be another anagram in there still, who knows --Wonderfool 13:44, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Hm, it's debatable whether these are "simple words" though. — Paul G 09:40, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

phobias

Actually I noticed there were two categories "Disease" and "Diseases". The former has more entries, so I am moving everything from "Diseases" to "Disease". Once complete I will request a deletion of the empty category.

"Phobia" was already categorised.

Jonathan Webley 12:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

irrupt

Hello Paul. Could you have a look at this ugly entry. I have already had my modifications removed. SemperBlotto 16:39, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Jeff. Looks like someone wants to impose his/her own format, and has copied and pasted this from an online dictionary. Anyhow, it's "forcibly", not "forceably". I'll make some changes. If they get reverted, I'll have a quiet word... — Paul G 17:55, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks like a copyvio - see here. — Paul G 17:57, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed, marked as a copyvio, and a polite reminder added to Primetime's talk page. — Paul G 18:10, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

manganese

Well, I can't give a definite answer as I have never heard it pronounced by an Italian. But I would pronounce it exactly as cinese. Cheers SemperBlotto 16:43, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I've only got the "Zingarelli Minore" - it doesn't give pronunciations. (when my Premium Bonds come up, I'll get the big one!) SemperBlotto 17:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Interestingly, my Collins bilingual dictionary has the -ese pronunciation (with an "s" as in "see") but I've noticed that it sometimes seems to get this wrong, with an s for a z. — Paul G 20:11, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

A couple of RfDs

Hi Paul. Could you have a look at A.P.P.L.E. and Call-A.P.P.L.E.. I deleted them once and reinstated them afted a couple of emails. Jeff. SemperBlotto 18:07, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

These are encyclopedic. Wikipedia has articles on them. I'd leave the rfd, or just go ahead and delete them. If you get more emails, I'd just say quote chapter and verse about what Wiktionary is and isn't. — Paul G 20:08, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Would you like to add a sentence to the RfD entry - just for the record. Cheers. Jeff. SemperBlotto 15:23, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, will do, if it is still there. — Paul G 14:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)