User talk:Paul G/2006

EDIT WAR WARNING

An edit war is starting at Wiktionary:Entry layout explained. Please take a look at the page.

Gerard Foley 03:05, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

question about slang

Should slang categories for a language (French, in this case) be split up into sub-categories when there are different regional slangs? Or, to be more precise, do you think I should create a category Quebecois slang for those French slang words and expressions that are almost exclusively used in Quebec?

Paul Willocx 12:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Paul,

This is definitely a good idea. You can create a new page called "Category:Quebecois slang" (without the quotes, of course) and edit it to include the text [[Category:fr:Slang]] (and nothing else). Anything categorised as Quebecois slang will then also automatically be categorised as French slang (but not vice versa). If you have a look at [[Category:fr:Slang]] you'll see that it is a subcategory of "Slang" and "French", so Quebecois slang will end up being categorised as Quebecois slang, French slang, slang and French. This nesting of categories is something that we encourage, so by all means go ahead and create this category — Paul G 13:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

chemical compounds

My word. You are building up enough work to keep me going for years to come. I was going to do items of laboratory equipment as well soon! SemperBlotto 16:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering when someone would comment :) I just got started on it and found loads and loads... Don't feel that they are all for you to do :) In any case, these are only chemical compounds derived from the names of elements - there are thousands of others that are not, and I have no intention of going anywhere near those. — Paul G 16:08, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

RP

We already have received pronunciation - do we need both caps form? (by the way, your talk page is getting really big - I archived mine for the new year) SemperBlotto 17:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the capitalised form is the right one. I'll merge the two pages and make the lower-case one a redirect.

Yes, it is rather... can you tell me how to do an archive, please? — Paul G 17:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, looking at your page, I see there's nothing magical about it. Thanks. I'll get to it. — Paul G 17:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

There, how's that? Much better, isn't it? — Paul G 18:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

"English" header

Coming back to WT:RFD#dord, I would like to remark that accidently is a misspelling of an English word and hence should go under the English header. I don't think we have a policy saying 'only English words are allowed to go under the "English" header'. We include whole phrases, even sentences, and affixes, which also aren't words, as well. Ncik 20:04, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. The "English" header in this case means "in the English language" rather than "this is an English word, expression, etc", so it should go in. Apologies - the point I made about "accidently" was incorrect. — Paul G 10:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Italian possessives

Hello Paul. Yesterday I saw tua loaded and was surprised that we didn't already have it. It turned out not to be Italian, so I added the Italian word. On further investigation, I saw that tu has red links to things like la tua. I didn't think that was what we wanted, so did nothing more. Would you like to investigate, and maybe come up with a best-practice format for the possessives that we have (and those we haven't)? It would make a break from Chemistry. Jeff. SemperBlotto 08:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC) p.s. see also the Italian translation section of yours

Yep, I seem to remember entering all those "la tua"s, etc, myself. As you know, "your house" can be translated as "la tua casa" or "casa tua" (the second form being poetic/literary/informal? I'm not sure - I've only ever seen this format in a few phrases, such as "casa tua" and "mamma mia") but not as "tua casa" (but "tua mamma" is correct - the article is dropped with close relatives), hence the "la tua", etc. Perhaps the article need to be expanded to reflect this, if it does not already. I'll take a look. — Paul G 09:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Jeff, your looks quite thorough. I've added a couple of usage notes. Perhaps you and yours could be given similar treatment. — Paul G 09:25, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

cancelled and canceled

US/UK spelling explains things. For some reason I want to spell it with two Ls even though I'm American, one L just looks like it would be pronounced cancealed (second c pronounced soft).

Merriam Webster online at [1] has both but lists the version with one L first. I asked someone who is a really good spelling and said two Ls.

Probably needs a usage note and maybe tagging. JillianE 17:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

The spelling rule here is rather tricky and long-winded, so I won't repeat it here. Verbs ending in consonant-vowel-L obey the rule in US spelling but are an exception in UK spelling, which gives the difference. I agree, though, that the US spelling with one L does look odd. — Paul G 17:53, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

7/7

I keep forcing myself to deal with the oldest RfD entry, and this has risen to the top. I am prepared to accept that this one should stay. We all know that 9/11 is spoken "nine-eleven". How 7/7 is spoken is not clear to those of us outside the UK. Since in the course of the RfD discussion you mentioned its usage by newsreaders, could you please add a pronunciation section to the article to clear this up. Eclecticology 08:08, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Done. — Paul G 09:46, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

User problem

Hello Paul. Could you have a chat with User:Primetime about the format of his entries (see footer as an example - levels, no #). He takes no notice of me. Jeff. SemperBlotto 09:55, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've given him a nudge. He's been around long enough by now to be familiar with the standard format, so I haven't gone into details (yet). — Paul G 10:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I notice he never seems to reply to any of the comments people make. Maybe he takes them on board silently, maybe he is ignoring them, or maybe he never bothers to read his discussion page. — Paul G 10:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Also - could you look at his latest modification to nonet - using HTML in place of wikification! SemperBlotto 12:29, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorted, as we say in London. The article, that is, at least. — Paul G 12:52, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Formatting

Hi,

Regarding the issue above, I do not think it is best to number entries with a single sense. I tend to follow Wikipedia's listing format, instead. I don't know of any published dictionaries that use this format, either--probably because it doesn't guide the reader's eye very well. I still number my entries with more than one sense, though.

As for dual entry words, we already give the entry word at the top of each page, so I don't usually give it again after the part of speech (e.g., noun followed by footer).

As for internal links, I tend to follow Wikipedia's example. There are editors adding links to my entries that pretty much no one would want to cross-reference. For example, in my entry "long sweetening," there's a link to the entry "long". My belief is that if it wouldn't say q.v., see also, or see in another reference work, then it shouldn't have a link here.

I am discussing the Entry layout explained page with Eclecticology right now and he has written that it will probably need to be revised to explain that it really isn't a guideline, but a suggestion.[2] I also explained my views to SemperBlotto on his talk page.

Best,

Primetime 10:36, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi,

I take your points, but:

• this is the established format, so we should be using it for now until we decide to change it
• Wikipedia's style manual applies to Wikipedia, but not necessarily to Wiktionary.
• there are other (albeit minor) ways in which your style diverges from the standard format, such as Computing rather than (computing)
• using a standard format helps make Wiktionary cleaner and more consistent
• the "Entry layout" page is a guide (I would say more of a recommendation), but not one that, I feel, we should allow users to diverge greatly from
• the entry word is repeated under the part of speech so that grammatical information can be given (plurals, inflections, etc)
• print dictionaries don't give numbers for single senses because they are static; Wiktionary is, however, dynamic, so putting in a number ensures that any additional senses added later will also have a number, keeping the page consistent with others

So please could you stick to something closer to the recommended format until such time as any changes to it are adopted officially.

— Paul G 10:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi,

I think that the formal layout should only apply to more complex entries. For example, I sometimes add an extra entry word, but only to highlight significant divergences in spelling (e.g., zoaea vs. zoea). This could be why there is some disagreement between you and Eclecticology over whether the guide is to be applied in all cases. Keep in mind that even published dictionaries are different from entry to entry. In the case of words with many synonyms, there is often a set-off subheading included titled Synonyms, but with words that have few, the synonym is usually run in after the word (e.g., to walk fast; HURRY or to walk fast. synonym: hurry).

In any case, it's my opinion that the current system should be clarified. If we go Eclecticology's route and be lax about it, then we should make it clear on the Entry layout explained page that this is the case. If we take your route, then we could specify that in all cases single definitions aren't numbered, but that in others they are. (I still think that certain entries should be un-numbered because the cleaner look outweighs the inconvenience of adding a number to subsequent definitions.) Right now, the Entry layout explained page can't be followed in all cases because it's so incomplete.

Best,

Primetime 11:35, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

You make some fair points. I'd be interested to hear what Eclecticology thinks about this. Have you raised them with him too? — Paul G 11:39, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I have raised most of the points with him at Wiktionary talk:Entry layout explained#Four policy proposals. We would be fortunate to have you join in. --Primetime 11:46, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Chlorous & Chloric

These are both a bit dated and also rather woolly - but I've made a small edit to show a bit of precision.

On another matter, I would appreciate it if you could monitor new edits for a while as I'm sure that I have missed quite a lot of rubbish and petty vandalism lately. Cheers Jeff SemperBlotto 08:52, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's better.

Will do. I normally keep an eye out but not meticulously so. — Paul G 08:56, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

(In)transitive verbs

Hey Paul, would you mind not creating headers like ===Transitive verb=== anymore? I brought it up in the BP not too long ago, and people seemed to agree with me on the matter. Ncik 23:17, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I saw this matter raised before but didn't give it much consideration. Having read through the arguments, it makes sense, and I'll take it up. We still need to retain (transitive) and (intransitive) (as well as (countable) and (uncountable) for nouns that are both) as these labels give important grammatical information that help the reader to use the words. — Paul G 09:57, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

In this matter the only remaining inconsistency I have so far failed to eradicate are the ===Proper noun=== headers, which people keep using instead of tagging definitions with Template:proper noun. Ncik 23:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with this usage. Why use this template when the header works fine, and is easier to remember to use? Some print dictionaries use this part of speech. — Paul G 09:29, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi

Hi, thanks. Yes, I've seen the TOW list. I think I've translated a few. Some of them seem very long for Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian translations (eg: clockwise and anticlockwise). They usually consist of more than four words since we don't have simple words for them.  :) But, I'll try to do more of those. --Dijan 10:50, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Deal

What an excellent cleanup you've done on deal. I separated the etymologies out a few weeks back, but couldn't face attempting any more - the page was a real mess, and one of the reasons I brought up the Wiktionary:Beer_parlour#Historical_principles discussion. Nice work! Widsith 11:36, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. You're right - it was as complete mess. It took me ages, but it had to be done as this page is one of the translations of the week and people would have been wasting their time adding new translations if the page hadn't been cleaned up first. — Paul G 11:56, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi again Paul. A couple more thoughts about this page. I'm not sure I agree with your moving deal with to a separate place - the sense of deal in "deal with" is the same as in "deal in" - i.e. that of interaction or engagement. It is a complicated page, but although the verb has many different senses, they seem to me to be divisible into two main strands. I wonder if it is possible to organise the page to reflect this. I have drafted something at User:Widsith#Deal - would you mind having a look and commenting. Cheers. Widsith 12:11, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I checked this before I did it. My dictionary at home (Chambers, 1998 edition) treats "deal with" as a separate entry. Let me have a look at your version and I'll come back to you. — Paul G 12:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you've done. We don't subdivide senses in this way in Wiktionary, although some print dictionaries do (Merriam-Webster, the OED). Perhaps you could raise this as a suggestion in the beer parlour to see if it something we should adopt. — Paul G 12:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

ToW

Sorry about the lateness, I fixed ToW yesterday (not logged in). Gerard Foley 05:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, no problem. — Paul G 11:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Template:IPA

Hi. I saw you changed a pronunciation constructed with this template to one without in deal. Any reason I should be aware of? Cheers. Vildricianus 22:51, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

This template gives the wikified text "IPA" and displays the text that follows it in a font that has the IPA characters in it. However I wanted to fill in the AHD and SAMPA transcriptions too. Currently, the most common format for this is <AHD>, /<IPA>/, /<SAMPA>/, so that's what I used. However, I see that there are also templates for AHD and SAMPA, so I could have used those. I'll change deal accordingly, given that my changes took away potentially useful content. — Paul G 08:11, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I asked that because I'm planning to add quite a number of pronunciations in IPA with that template. — Vildricianus 14:02, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

In reply to what you suggested at User talk:Karmosin: we already have Template:IPAchar for in-text usage. Cheers. — Vildricianus 15:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Vildricianus. I'll let Karmosin know, if you haven't already. — Paul G 15:38, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

search

Thanks for the search tip, I should have remembered the google trick.

BTW, I've given abstract some good clean-up. Could you take a look at it when you find a moment? Do you think it could do for a ToW? (There are meany translations to be checked). — Vildricianus 18:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

That looks much better - good job. Yes, I would definitely say it could do with being a ToW: any entry with lots of translations to be checked should be a ToW, as far as I am concerned. You know that there is a list of these at Category:Check translations, don't you? I suggested to Gerard Foley that perhaps we should be tackling these first as in ToW. There are around 1000 entries there - that category is getting far too long, I think. — Paul G 11:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I was aware of that category; it's on my todo-list. However, unless I'm mistaking it's not that bad: there are only about 750 items and not all of them are priority, e.g. apothecary or buoyancy have only one to check. — Vildricianus 18:20, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

You're right - there are 742 at the present time. I thought I had counted 1000 at one point - perhaps I misremembered that. Still, this shows we do have a lot of unreliable information currently in Wiktionary, which bothers me. Like you say, though, there are a lot of less common terms there and some with few that need to be checked, so it isn't as bad as all that. I feel that we ought to prioritise the worst of these in ToW as this is an excellent way of getting these cleaned up that seems to be working. — Paul G 10:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Quick index

I was thinking the "quick" index shouldn't have the script names as that would take up too much space on the Main Page. I'd like to do a separate page on which the script names (and the languages they're used for) would be listed. Hang on... lemme work up something to illustrate. - dcljr 23:14, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

It seems I was a bit too optimistic in my previous comment. As you could probably tell, I haven't worked up anything yet, although I do have the stuff at User:Dcljr/Scripts waiting for me to get back to work on it... Anyway, the redesign has now gone live, so (currently) any sufficiently bold registered user can make any change they want to my "quick index". (I think the consensus, though, would be to not include the language names, for the reasons I cite above.) - dcljr 21:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

frei cleanup

I have cleaned up frei and leave this so that you can comment or revert! Saltmarsh 08:00, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Good job. — Paul G 07:34, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

bombadier beetle

Please delete. I am flushed with embarrasment. Cant spell. I have fixed it under bombardier beetle Andrew massyn

• All done - no problem. — Paul G 07:40, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Our new "friend"

Paul, I think User:SonicChristian is the same person as this IP, which I just blocked. The pattern fits, including rfv-ing his/her own weird entries and leaving the comments in the template formats. I can't quite tell whether this individual honestly believes his/her contributions are helpful, but so far they're not, generally. Please help me keep an eye on this one. --Dvortygirl 19:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up on that one. — Paul G 07:32, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Translations to be checked

Hi Paul.

I've been considering a major change for Category:Check translations.

I was reading your proposal from some time ago, and I was wondering whether it ever got anywhere. I think we need to take action right now, as you have stated several times before (and because of the above stated ever-growing number of articles in the category).

My proposed change is to make the whole system of Translations to be checked (TTBC) more akin to what we now have for RfC and RfV. I'd set up Wiktionary:Translations to be checked and make Template:checktrans more like Template:rfc.

The main reason why I think my proposed system might work better (and make the job a bit less discouraging), is that in the current category-only structure, one can't see which translations are actually needed. Each time I tried to work through it, I quickly quit because of a) the fact that my work went largely unnoticed (by myself), because I could not remove a single article from the category due to other translations needing review; and b) because, after reviewing 50 entries, I noticed many many simple TTBC, for which I felt it would be convenient to warn a knowledgeable someone (unwieldy job, though).

Therefore, a central RFV-like page for that. The main advantage there would be that one can quickly list the required languages, which will attract those who can do the job.

Known problems already are translations into exotic languages for which none may have the ability to check. However, they can be archived after some time. More so, the 800 present TTBC, which will all need to be put on the page (I volunteer). Certainly, I would not put them all under a separate ==header==. As for the probably quickly derailing length of the page, I have no clear view on that. Perhaps it won't become that long after all, when a number of people are working on it.

Note: before I came up with this, I considered making distinctive categories like Category:Check Dutch translations, which could be added, but that would lead us to far off I guess.

I'd like to hear your opinion on this. As the more experienced Wiktionarian, you can probably come up with a number of issues I haven't foreseen. Also, I haven't addressed this on the BP, since I guess someone must have considered this before. Cheers. — Vildricianus 14:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a fantastic idea. I've done the same as you - made a start on a particular language, done one or two entries and not been able to remove any from the list as other languages remain unchecked. The problem here has always been, as you say, that you can't tell what languages remain outstanding or which pages need the most effort.

Having a specialised page that lists what languages need to be checked for any given word would certainly help deal with this. Those people who volunteered to help could be directed to this page and quickly be able to find out where their contributions are required. Entries could take the following form, perhaps:

===word===

Dutch, French, German, Italian, Kurdish, Latin, Macedonian, Occitan, Russian, Swedish, Urdu

(note that the languages are listed in alphabetical order for ease of finding them)

Users could then sign off the languages as they do them, by saying (for example) "Dutch done" and signing their name, which would show who did the checking and when, thereby giving us an audit trail.

I'm glad to hear you are putting your money where your mouth is by volunteering to post all the words on the page. Perhaps, as they are added, they could also be removed from "Category:Check translations" so that none of them get forgotten, this category then either being phased out or retained and checked from time to time to make sure that the "rft" page is up to date.

Once entries are complete, they can of course be removed from the page, so the page needn't get too long.

One resource that we can make use of, especially for the lesser-known languages, is Category:User languages. I propose that all users listed there are invited to contribute.

I don't think anyone has addressed this before, you know, so please do raise it in the Beer parlour (you are welcome to copy and paste my comments there). — Paul G 15:00, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

There it goes. Thanks for your encouraging support! (I've already posted some additional thoughts). — Vildricianus 15:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

(paste) Hi - I'm glad to see this is gaining some momentum in the Beer parlour. I had a thought after I posted my initial proposal for the layout: perhaps the layout should look like this:

===word===

• Dutch:
• French:

etc

so that information could be filled in alongside each language as it is checked (what has been done, who did it and when). What do you think? — Paul G 09:43, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm currently not certain anymore about the TTBC system. I'm waiting for Connel to evaluate Template:ttbc, while I watch from the sideline thinking of possible faults.

Is it completely clear from the BP what is actually happening? Me and Connel had a conversation on IRC; he overhauled my main proposal and instead developed my initial one about the categorizing of all entries that need checking. I'll explain further at the BP so that it be clearly understood.

Your comments are more than welcome, as I'm biased since I came up with it, and currently, few others seem interested). — Vildricianus 19:39, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

de:, eo:, mi:, ro:, yi:: Halló Paul! I posted messages at w:eo:, w:mi: and send an email regarding "ro:". Will take care about the others later. See you on #wiktionary. Best regards Gangleri | w: Th | T 14:16, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello. I have received your message. Yes, I would like to check Chinese translations as far as I can.--Jusjih 11:04, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I have received your message again with a format error. When you wrote [[Category:Translations_to_be_checked|this page]], that would go to the bottom of the page. I have corrected it to [[:Category:Translations_to_be_checked|this page]] so it would stay in the talk page. Though I do not really understand Cantonese, Japanese, or Korean, I will do what I can check for translations.--Jusjih 10:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

charlie card

A charlie card is a plastic card used to enter the boston railways. I defined this in wiktionary, however I noticed stephen g. brown deleted it so would this be a legit word? Eddie 10:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Eddie.

Stephen obviously thought it was not, but what he should have done was marked it for verification so that proof of its existence could be provided. I'll restore it so that we can check it out. Thanks for letting me know.

By the way, it is helpful to add citations (examples of actual use of a word or expression from books, etc) when defining a word or expression to prove that it is legitimate, especially when it is obscure or only used by certain groups of people (such as Bostonians). — Paul G 11:23, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I did, check out MBTA's official site which was on the page before He deleted. Eddie 11:26, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at the page now. There is a link to Wikipedia which demonstrates that the term exists. — Paul G 11:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

• Please stop loading variations of exic*nt, Mr. Segoura. It makes us automatically reject invalid submissions such as charlie card. Also, please stop with the backslashes. Your use of a 'bot to post here (necessitating "escaping" certain characters) is not appreciated. For the moment, your account is not blocked, presumably to keep communication open. Please do explain why you feel you must keep reloading terms that do not meet our criteria for inclusion, especially without three running text published citations. --Connel MacKenzie T C 14:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Backslashes

You seem to have developed a rash of backslashes. SemperBlotto 11:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Paul, I have reverted your page to the last healthy version and then repasted the comments made since then. The evil perpetrator was User:EddieSegoura (see [3]). — Vildricianus 13:33, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I wondered where they were coming from. — Paul G 14:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

few

Hello Paul, I've just added the noun sense to few. But what should we do about the Battle of Britain pilots? Are they Few, the Few or The Few? I shall need a different example sentence in few whatever we decide. SemperBlotto 15:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jeff - hm... the Few or The Few, certainly... probably the latter, I would say. Can you find examples of usage in print.google.com or elsewhere? — Paul G 15:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Modern vs Ancient Greek

Please be careful when moving a translation not to add incorrect information. When you transferred the Greek translation of chameleon to that page, you labelled it as "Modern" but it was in fact "Ancient". I have made the correction. --EncycloPetey 11:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you're right - I overlooked that. Thanks for spotting it. — Paul G 11:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Latin entries

Is there a standard format for Latin entries that has been agreed upon? I notice you've made minor formatting changes, and since I'm adding a number of Latin words lately (through work on the constellations), I'd like to be working consistently. Up to now, I've been doing mostly nouns, but I need now to enter a verb, and don't have a style page to refer to for that. In short, are there written reccomendations or standards for Latin noun and verb entries, particularly for showing inflection and conjugational forms? --EncycloPetey 11:53, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. Things like declensions certainly seem to be part of the format. Translations into English should be given rather than definitions, as you know. Other than that, I would say have a look at some existing Latin noun and verb entries to get an idea of what is the usual way of doing things, and perhaps propose a format in the Beer parlour so we can decide on an official format for Latin entries. — Paul G 11:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Invitation

Hi Paul! Thanks for the info. I'll be sure to check those pages out. --Dijan 10:48, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Paul for doing this. I was actually about to set myself to it! Good job. In a week, I'll take on Dutch of course (if there's still work to be done then). — Vildricianus 11:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Great, I've put you down for Dutch. — Paul G 08:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Paul, I had already added the Italian category to my watchlist, and will do a few at a time. SemperBlotto 12:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

That's great, thanks Jeff. I'm planning to work on Italian too, so you won't be doing this all by yourself :) — Paul G 08:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Done all that I knew, or could easily check with my concise Welsh dictionary/Wikipedia. But I'm just a cy-1, my German and French are better than my Welsh (but not as good as others' German and French, so I'll be content with being the "expert" Welsh speaker around here). --Dangherous 15:29, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

That's great, thank you for your help. Please feel free to work on French and German too if you feel confident. — Paul G 08:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the invitation :) Greetings Pill δ 17:20, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I hope you'll be able to help with German and anywhere else you can. — Paul G 08:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Sure you didn't forget Stephen, did you? He probably knows about this but as it seems that you keep a list of people who work on this, you had better not forget him. He doesn't use Babel. — Vildricianus 10:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I've only contacted people who use Babel or who expressed an interest in this in July last year when I started a discussion on it (see Wiktionary talk:Translations). I haven't contacted Stephen yet, but I'll do that now. Thanks for reminding me. — Paul G 10:10, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Invitation for Connel MacKenzie

LOL! --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:46, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I was only laughing because you invited me to contribute to Swedish translations. All the Swedish I know, I learned from the Muppets' Swedish Chef! --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see what I did. I looked at the list of native speakers of Swedish in Wiktionary:Babel and saw your name there. Unfortunately it was a link from your talk page, not from your user page. Oh well, if hurdy-burdy or bork-bork need to be checked, I'll know who to ask :) — Paul G 08:56, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Paul, thank you for the laughs! On a serious note though, many of the checktrans are of the numbered variety. That is, the numbers can (by looking at the edit history closely) identify the correct translations in many cases. Many new "meanings" will not have the benefit of translations, but for many of these entries, we may never get contributors for those languages. Many of the larger translation lists seem to have been imported from elsewhere. I think it would be beneficial to go through all 800 entries, and find them, and tag them separately as "TTBC (Numbered)" or something. That way, English (and Swedish-Chef speaking) contributors can actually help out on this monstrous task. The instructions for clearing numbered translations should be very clear that when in doubt, leave it alone!

Agreed - this will help resolve a lot of these, but, as you say, must be done with great care. — Paul G 09:56, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Again, I think the problem of imported lists of translations means that we probably will never have language experts on hand for a lot of these. Two months from now, we can consider just remving the ones that remain, that clearly can't be corrected. Maybe three months, six months, whatever.

I fear that this may be the case. Any that have been imported by people without expertise in the particular language(s) are probably of dubious accuracy in any case. — Paul G 09:56, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, I think template:checktrans should be expanded some more, to give instructions for new taggings. The process of marking things with {{ttb|...}} should be spelled out somewhere for new checktrans taggings...the template itself seems like the logical place for that. --Connel MacKenzie T C 09:48, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Good - I'm not sure what you have in mind here, but if it will help, please do go ahead. — Paul G 09:56, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, I did it. I'm glad you took over the whole translations coordination thing, BTW. Figuring out the templates was more my speed, but the ongoing rallying of support is not. I'm glad this seems to be working out nicely. --Connel MacKenzie T C 01:56, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Invitation of Patrik Stridvall

Thanks for the invitation I have already started with Swedish some days ago and have done about about 40 that is 25%. As for French, I hope it was a cut and paste example because my babel level is 1... :-) --Patrik Stridvall 09:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, French was just an example. Thanks for the valuable work you are doing. — Paul G 09:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for invitation to contribute to Sannab

Thank you for your kind invitation. Yes, I did know that there was a new system, and I have been using it a bit already, though I am putting most of my energy at Swedish Wiktionary. --sanna 18:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Bizarre wiki-behavior

For some reason, the pages Pavia and orthography do not show up at all in my browser snce you edited them, though the older versions look fine. Do they displat correctly in your browser? --EncycloPetey 14:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Plese check RC

Vandal has hit; need help on rollbacks. - Amgine/^talk 18:08, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I'm about to go so I someone else will have to do these - sorry. — Paul G 18:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Etymology edit question

Hi,

I noticed your edits in "Melanesia", "Micronesia": (etymology: fmt; Greek -> modern Greek in trans section).

However, I re-edited them, since in my etymology edits I bold the root words that a new word is combined from (or the whole word if it was used like that in its primary form) to emphasise exactly that that root (or the compound word) is the primary one.

Also, I put the English translation of the Greek word in parenthesis and italics (parenth) and the meaning in modern English in "…". Is that wrong and if so, why?

Thanks, Kassios 16:59, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

There isn't really an agreed format for etymologies, but going by what some print dictionaries do, I prefer to do the following:

• Italicise foreign etymons (as they are foreign) and wikify them if they are words
• Embolden English etymons (as they are headwords in Wiktionary)
• Put quotes round English translations of etymons only if omitting them would be confusing
• Put transliterations of foreign etymons in non-Latin scripts in parentheses

For example (a made-up example for the made-up word "runking"):

Finnish raank, squortle, from raan, squort, from Greek ραν (ran), squoit + -ing

But these are my preferences, and, as I say, there is no official format. Perhaps we should discuss coming up with an official policy in the Beer parlour. — Paul G 17:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

TTBC

With regard to the Ga translations to be checked, I can't do anything about Wiktionary, I'm afraid. I don't know whether "wikishinari" would be valid or not. --Wytukaze 21:11, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, there was another translation in there, which I fixed. (On walk - It's nyiɛmɔ not nyiemo as it previously displayed.) As for the Tok Pisin, I've done what I can, but there's still a few left. I won't be checking the TTBC page much in the near future, so if either of them somehow start filling up, don't hesitate to contact me. Cheers, Wytukaze 16:13, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That's excellent. Thanks, Wytukaze. — Paul G 16:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

216.220.231.226

Tell me Paul G iglu? 216.220.231.226 17:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, what are you asking me? — Paul G 17:26, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Paul i ask you help recent changes for my works?

OK, I see what you mean. I'm not sure whether it is "iglu" or "iglù". If you are not sure, it is better either not to make the edit, or to ask in the Beer parlour or Tea room. — Paul G 17:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Stephen just edited and i hope more to come you too Paul G add more and help edit recent changes... even italian.. english??? watever 216.220.231.226 17:41, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I see you've been warned about this before. If you aren't sure what you are doing to an entry, it is better to do nothing. You should not rely on other people coming along later to clean up after you - it's not anyone's job to do this. If you don't know whether what you are doing is right or wrong, don't do it. — Paul G 17:44, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

It works sometimes though Paul! hlep friend rice riso fritto heard?? 216.220.231.226 17:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I am not going to do this for you. Please check what you are doing is correct BEFORE you enter it. — Paul G 17:47, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

checking translations to Spanish

Hi Paul, Yes. I'll check those translations from time to time. Miguel Andrade 14:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Italian translations

I got your message Paul, sorry it took me this long to respond! I'm sorry, but I cannot do any Italian translations on account of I have never spoken or learned Italian. I simply forgot to take that Babel box of my userpage. However, I am fairly good at French so if you need a French-to-English or English-to-French translator I would be happy to help. Thebends 15:32, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Checking Finnish translations

Hi! I can check Finnish translations from the category occasionally. I'm not currently visiting Wiktionary very often, so this comes a bit late. ¦ hyark digyik 21:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Checking Turkish Translations

Hi Paul, I've just read your message and i can check the Turkish translations but it can be slow because of my job. I would be happy to help.

Organic compounds prefixed with Greek letters.

Hi Paul. I've been wondering what to do with things like α-carotene / alpha carotene. We currently have α-naphthol (not very good entry), alpha-hydroxy acid, omega-3 fatty acid and omega-6 fatty acid. Within E160a I have put the prefix outside of the wikification for now.

These prefixes are very widely used, but for the most part just differentiate very similar isomers. I was thinking that maybe we should just have the unprefixed version for most compounds, and have prefixed versions for those that are more well-known (like beta carotene). Usage seems to be mixed, with scientific use tending to use the Greek character and common use spelling it out.

What do you think would be the way to go (or should each one be treated on its own merits)? I asume that I am not allowed to redirect one to the other. Jeff SemperBlotto 15:01, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

p.s. I'm also not really sure what to do about compounds with nasty nomenclature (see inside E160e)

Eek, I have no idea. You are the chemistry expert here. The chemical stuff I put in comes from linguistic research rather than any knowledge of chemistry, which I gave up at the age of 14.

For myself, I avoid what I think is probably the more modern way of writing compounds using Roman numerals (eg, "cobalt(II) chloride" for "cobalt dichloride" or "cobaltous chloride"), but maybe these should be in as well. My feeling is that people wouldn't look these terms up in this form, but I could be wrong.

I think we probably need the terms with the Greek letters, even if it is unlikely that anyone would actually type them in, as they look like they are synonyms (or variants) of forms that spell the Greek letters out in full. But I have no idea whether these are really part of the term or just prefixes, as you say.

So I'm going to have to leave this to you, I'm afraid - sorry. Perhaps you could try looking in a large dictionary of chemical terminology to see how they deal with it.

Incidentally, is the "apo" in "β-apo-8'-carotenal" also Greek? In (Modern) Greek, από (apo) means "from" and "off", among other things. — Paul G 08:55, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll play it by ear. Just after adding the above carotenoid, I also added apo- because I didn't know what it meant. I also can't remember what the apostrophe after -8 means. I must do a bit of research. SemperBlotto 09:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

rhymes

It looks like you were very active in Wiktionary's rhyme lists at one point. I've just posted a couple of questions about the project to the Beer Parlour. —Scs 20:18, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, you might want to check rhymes:English:-ɛə(r)d to make sure I didn't botch anything. —Scs 01:21, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I still am active there - it's just on hold at the moment. There is a great deal more content to add in due course. Thanks for the pointers. What you've done is good (all the new words look like adjectives to me, so that's fine). — Paul G 10:23, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

...ah, but I'd only looked at "flared", etc. "Underwear" does not belong on the page for "air" rhymes because it is stressed on the first syllable. — Paul G 11:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Oops! Right. Thanks. —Scs 20:42, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

My promotion today

I was temp sysop'd today Anthere (steward) mostly due to the fact that we had a repeat repeat vandal and nobody else was around to do it. Noting the fact that Stewards shouldn't override bcrats on projects that have bcrats I requested the steward provided promotion be removed pending you doing it. Not sure if you want to wait a little longer, I started on the open proxy list and I'm halfway through it and it is possible that a similar situation might come up again and constantly changing permissions might tick off the stewards -- Tawker 01:17, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Actually what I need is for you or Ec to hit the promote button, I didn't want to make the steward promotion pernament so I asked for a desysop pending a 'crat to make it pernament. Cheers! -- Tawker 00:23, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, push the "promote" button on Tawker. U've not used your bureacrathood powers yet, it's about time, so give Tawker the nod. --Expurgator t(c) 20:03, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I've now made Tawker a sysop and let him(/her?) know. — Paul G 07:38, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

My apologies if I've been hesitant on this one. I always feel concerned when an applicant is more interested in vandal-fighting than ordinary edits. Anyway, I think he means well, so there's no harm done; I should have raised my concerns with you earlier. Because of work I'll be around less than usual during April, but will at least try to stay up to date with adminships. Eclecticology 02:26, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

uncle

Thank you for your message. I have checked the translations of uncle. If you would like to break up the translation table of aunt and cousin, please just do so. In case you wonder why English-to-Chinese translations of uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, and niece are so complex, it is because Chinese people have divided the relative nouns much more deeply than in English and French in ancient time. Since your language Babel sugests that you can use advanced French (fr-3), I would like to welcome your message in French if you wish.--Jusjih 09:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

"I notice you use "zh-t" and "zh-s". Do these mean "Taiwanese" and something else?" No, I intend to mean traditional and simplified Chinese. I have reformatted the Chinese translations of aunt and cousin. They should be easier to read now. Due to very complex Chinese relative nouns, putting them together without dividing into rows looks very awkward and hard to read.--Jusjih 12:37, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Putting them in rows is fine. Traditional and simplified Chinese should have separate entries, like this:

• Chinese, Simplified: ...
• Chinese, Traditional: ...

— Paul G 14:08, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

After checking your last edit at aunt, the Chinese translations are still fine, though I just added a pair of Chinese translation (simplified and traditional) for father's younger brother's wife.--Jusjih 15:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, that's great. Good job. Thanks. — Paul G 09:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Canadianisms

Well, seeing how Canadian english and British english seem to be a lot closer than either and US English a few crosses are bound to happen, I should see what I can find on some of the words on the list, massive backlog of transwiki's to clear out, that shall consume my time for a little while :) -- Tawker 08:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Canadianisms

Thanks for your comments about supply teacher. The list is misleading. The term icing sugar is also British according The Joy of Cooking; powdered sugar is a Western US term while the East uses confectioners' sugar. Calling it "powdered sugar" is a little misleading since it ignores the fact that it is not pure sugar, but has a little corn starch mixed with it. Molson muscle and Nanaimo bar are clearly canadianisms. Eclecticology 08:10, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

roba

Could you check roba please. I'm not now sure if it is singular or plural. Cheers. SemperBlotto 15:31, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

It's singular. I've changed it accordingly. — Paul G 13:47, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

French reflexive verb

Hello Paul, could you look at User talk:SemperBlotto#oneself, zich, se , sich etc. - question asked by User:152.1.193,141. I'm not at all sure of the answer. SemperBlotto 21:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

AWB

I reverted changes to those articles as noted on my talk page.

Thank you for the feedback. --That Guy, From That Show! 11:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

PLEASE do not roll these back! --Connel MacKenzie T C 14:28, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, I understand what is going on now. I'm not going to touch them. — Paul G 14:36, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

TOW

I understand that the TOW is/was sort of monitored by you? Well, this is to say I volunteered for dishwashing this one, so I'll be revamping this project and keep it running on a weekly basis. Cheers. — Vildricianus 20:38, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

No, not really... I just dip into TOW from time to time and add stuff. I sometimes notice things that I think could do with being changed, but I wouldn't say I am really monitoring it.

Are you saying you aren't going to be maintaining TOW any more now you are working on dishwashing? — Paul G 08:52, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, there wasn't a change in TOW for nearly eight weeks, before two weeks ago I think that was. Apparently no one was really volunteering for it, so that's me now who's doing that. Cheers. — Vildricianus 09:02, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

== Moved "Flame War" to Draft Policy and elsewhere. ==

copied from Beer Parlour

---

First quarter 2006 US vs. UK flamewar Draft Policy
I've been brave enough / arrogant enough / stupid enough to propose a DRAFT POLICY. Wiktionary:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy
I have moved the discussion to the Wiktionary talk:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy.
--Richardb 08:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I've also set up a Wiktionary:Project - Keeping Translations Common and Synchronised Across Different Spellings to carry on the work specific to that area. I'm going to move the relevant discussion to that page and associated discussion page(s).--Richardb 09:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Moved a large chunk of discussion to Wiktionary talk:Spelling Variants in Entry Names - Draft Policy/BP April 2006

Moved a large chunk of discussion to Wiktionary talk:Project - Keeping Translations Common and Synchronised Across Different Spellings/BP April2006 --Richardb 09:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

---

Sorry to cut across what you are doing, but equally well I'm committed to trying to get some policies roganised, and to get you lot thinking a bit more organised. before Beer PArlour becomes completely unmanageable.--Richardb 09:50, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

sysoptionary

Oh I realize full well that it can and will be deleted from article pages until it is attested to but when you start deleting it from discussion pages then you will absolutely prove the point.

Pce3@ij.net 15:46, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry - we don't operate that kind of censorship here. If you have a grievance, though, there are more effective ways of having it dealt with than making up words. — Paul G 09:34, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

trustafarian

I am the first one who added this word. I assure you that this word does exist in modern American colloquial speech. Oft used in the Northwest, as far as I know. The second definition is more rarely, and arguably less accurately used but does find it's way into conversation. I've removed the smiley face link that someone left.

mathematics

I notice that you have spotted partial differential equation etc. Although my maths is at about A-level standard, I don't really feel happy adding maths stuff, so I'm not blueifying any more red links. Also, I think that some people have other categories for such things (analysis, I have seen). I'll let you make whatever adjustments you feel right. Jeff SemperBlotto 10:36, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. My degree is in mathematics, and I have two mathematics dictionaries at home. I created the mathematics subcategories, so I might move DE and PDE at some point to one of these.

Some time back I was adding lots of mathematical content. When I've finished with other projects I'll go back to that. — Paul G 14:20, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

hydrogen

Of the remaining derived terms, I think that the two binary salts maybe should be moved to lead and sodium (as there are very many of these). hydrogen gas seems to be just the sum of its parts - unless you can think of an idiomatic use. hydrogenneted I assume is a typo. hydrogeniferous I'm not sure exists. Jeff SemperBlotto 10:41, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the remaining terms should come under both "hydrogen" and "lead"/"sodium", going by the principle that any term of the form "X Y" should be listed under the derived terms for both X and Y, where X and Y are not extremely common words like "the" or "of".

Most of the terms on the page for "hydrogen" are in the OED. I would imagine "hydrogen gas" is "hydrogen in gaseous form, as opposed to liquid hydrogen" but I don't know for sure. You'll find "hydrogenetted" and "hydrogeniferous" there too. — Paul G 14:25, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You're doing a damn fine job here, by the way. Will "helium" be next? That one won't take nearly as long :) — Paul G 14:25, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

stupidly large numbers

Hi there. In Appendix:Numbers there are some silly large numbers (past googol). I'm sure that they are either fictitious, or never actually used. Do you have any feelings on the subject? SemperBlotto 07:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I do. I think that whoever has taken the trouble to enter them should be asked to provide print citations. It's possible that they do exist, of course, but numbers above "quadrillion" are rarely used (with the exception of "googol") - as you well know, we scientists use scientific notation for numbers that large. — Paul G 06:43, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I've rfv'd the page. Thanks for pointing it out. — Paul G 06:53, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

User:Drago

Hello Paul, could you help me in keeping an eye on User:Drago's Italian contributions. They never have gender or plurals, and are sometimes oversimplistic in definition. I try, but am bound to miss some of them. SemperBlotto 08:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll keep an eye out. Thanks for letting me know. — Paul G 08:40, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

gallate

Hello Paul. I thought at first that Wikipedia was totally wrong about gallate, as the common use is as a salt or ester of gallic acid (the stuff that tannin is made of). However, after a little poking about, it seems that gallate can also be used for salts such as Na₃GaO₃ although the corresponding free acid is not known. I shall have to update -pedia. SemperBlotto 13:27, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I was surprised too, because I know that Xates tend to be salts of Xic acid. I took the Wikipedia article as gospel, even though it is a stub. Thanks for fixing the Wiktionary article, Jeff. — Paul G 14:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

No prob. I've also fixed the -pedia article. SemperBlotto 14:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Administrators

Hi Paul, I'm sure you're aware of the backlog, if you can call it that, of Admin requests. Maybe now is a good time to use your promote button for some (or all) of the users. Ec has been away for a couple of weeks, so maybe you should take the initative. If this sounded a bit patronising, as it does to me after reading it, it wasn't meant to. There's no objections to any of the candidates after all. --Dangherous 15:19, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I wasn't aware. Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look. — Paul G 15:25, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for making me an admin! Kipmaster 15:52, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome! Have fun :) — Paul G 15:55, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Paul, I think something went wrong for Jusjih -- his sysophood is not noted on Special:Listusers/sysop, nor on Special:Log/rights. —Vildricianus 17:13, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Now fixed. Thanks for letting me know. I think I must have updated the sysop requests page without actually making him a sysop. — Paul G 08:39, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for appointing me as a new admin. I will exercise my privileges wisely as I do at 6 other Wikis sites where I am also an admin. Since you can contribute advanced French, I would like to welcome your comments in French as you wish. I cannot contribute French beyond basic level, but I can read some without a translator.--Jusjih 14:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

strawmato

Another portmanteau for you in yesterday's Guardian - strawmato - not an actual cross between a strawberry and tomato, but a very sweet tomato. SemperBlotto 09:45, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you - I saw that in the Metro, but forgot about it. I'll check it out. — Paul G 09:54, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Request for comments

Paul,

You too are somewhat involved in this activity. Could you please express your opinion at User talk: Connel MacKenzie/Normalization of articles, before it is opened up as a topic on WT:BP? Thanks in advance,

--Connel MacKenzie T C 16:17, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for you comments. Please check back when you feel like it. --Connel MacKenzie T C 07:46, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

&c

When you have some time, could you have a look at etcetera, et cetera, &c etc. I'm not convinced that they are correct (adverb?). Jeff SemperBlotto 14:07, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I'm not sure either. The OED has all of these forms, but does not give a part of speech for the main sense of the term. (There are secondary senses with noun and verb as part of speech, but none for the sense "and the rest".) It just says "As phrase:" at the beginning of its definition. Unfortunately, "etcetera" is not a phrase, and so really demands a part of speech, but it does stand for a phrase. Chambers also omits a part of speech for the main sense.

I think, therefore, that so should we. However, we are not allowed to do that. So perhaps the vague "Expression" is the way to go. — Paul G 06:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Interjection? —Vildricianus | t | 17:39, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Checking Dutch translations

Been on a rather long hiatus, so I only saw your request now. Will start working on that list, thanks for pointing me at it.

(I'd sign, but the tilde seems to be absent from iMac keyboards. Rather annoying. Anyway, this is Paul Willocx.)

Good, thanks for letting me know. — Paul G 06:53, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Translations to be checked (French)

Ok for checking. -- Sajasaze 18:43, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Great, thank you. — Paul G 06:53, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

E-mail

Hi Paul. Could you specify an e-mail address please? As an admin, you should be contactable for people who have been blocked. Cheers. —Vildricianus 15:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll do that. — Paul G 06:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry Paul, I still get an error message. Have you confirmed the email? Have you checked the box Enable e-mail from other users? —Vildricianus 10:34, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I had confirmed my email some time back but not checked the box. Thanks for pointing this out. — Paul G 15:46, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, it works now. Thank you! —Vildricianus 22:15, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Chebychev theorem

Can you fix this Paul? Jeff. SemperBlotto 11:42, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Not without doing more research - I'm not familiar with it, Wikipedia doesn't quite have the same thing and neither does my small maths dictionary. — Paul G 07:35, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Bureaucracy

Hi Paul. I'm sorry to be bugging you once again (and I hope you don't mind), but some of the people at WT:A have been waiting for more than a month already. Could you perhaps take a look? Cheers. —Vildricianus 19:25, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Gosh, I didn't realise. Thanks for letting me know. — Paul G 07:09, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

All done. — Paul G 07:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thank you! That was quick - less than 24 hours?!?

As to your request, I have fulfilled it. :). Once again, thank you. --Celestianpower ^háblame 10:50, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I've also replied on this. —Vildricianus 12:47, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

platinization

Hi Paul, are you sure this is the proper format? I really don't like the way that the definition doesn't immediately follow the headword. Jeff SemperBlotto 14:10, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

With the forms and variants after between the headword and the definition, you mean? Hm, I always thought it was, for some reason, but WT:ELE has "Alternative spellings" right at the top. I'll fix "platinization" and adopt that from now on. — Paul G 14:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

camel case

Hi Paul. Should this be merged with CamelCase? SemperBlotto 10:29, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I wasn't aware of that. I suppose it should. The Wikipedia article gives all sorts of spellings and synonyms. — Paul G 15:44, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Errant wikilink on your user page

The wikilink to the SI Units Appendix on your user page is pointing to the Appendix of suffixes. I'd fix it for you, but your user page isn't editable. Appendix of SI Units RockinRob 13:02, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually I was able to fix it. I could only get "view source" before. Didn't mean to be rude by editing your user page< I figured I was hear and could fix it. RockinRob 13:06, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, thank you for spotting that and fixing it for me. — Paul G 15:43, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

ossidasi

This is feminine singular. What do you think would be the plural? My guess is the same. SemperBlotto 14:41, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Yep, I would think so - compare tesi (thesis). I think these Italian words tend to come from feminine Greek words (ending in η, I would think, which is a feminine ending) and correspond to words ending in -is in English (although I see this one is "oxidase" in English).

Italian nouns (+ ramblings)

Thanks Paul, I'll try to remember to use those templates.

Do you approve of the order of the derived terms in lampada? They are ordered by the second significant part of the word, ignoring di, allo etc.

I tend to include all words in considering alphabetical order of derived terms, except leading definite and indefinite articles. I know that my Italian-English dictionary does what you have done, but there is an argument for listing by strict alphabetical order as the user might not know that "allo" and the like are minor words. I would say go with what you think is more useful to the user.

You may have noticed that I am dipping my toe into Italian chemistry. They seem to use two (and sometimes three) different formats for the names of compounds - the equivalent of "nitrous oxide", "oxide of nitrogen" and "monoxide of dinitrogen" as an example. I will do some research before entering one as the main entry and the others either as "alternative spelling" of the main Italian, or just a simple translation to the English. I'm trying to remember to add a Translation to the English entry for each Italian that I add.

Interesting.

My Zingarelli Minore has got some chemistry terms, Italian Wiktionary is useless (really, very few Italian words at all), but Italian Wikipedia is very good (that's where I found most of those those Lampada derivatives). Cheers Jeff SemperBlotto 13:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the Wikipedias are generally excellent sources for translations. — Paul G 13:38, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Difficult Italian translation

Hi Paul. In sodio there is a red link to sodare. This is what Zingarelli says - v. tr. Rassodare un tessuto con la gualchiera. And this for Gualchiera s.f. Macchina mossa da una ruota idraulica con magli per battere la stoffa a conferirle l consistenza del feltro.

So, it seems to be something to do with the felt-making process, but I can't think of a simple English translation for either word. (It doesn't seem to be related to sodium either). Any ideas? Perhaps I should do some research into the felt industry! Jeff. SemperBlotto 09:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Hm, those definitions translate as "To firm up a fabric with a [whatever gualchiera translates as]", and "Machine moved by a hydraulic wheel [whatever that is] with power hammers to beat material to give it the consistency of felt" (which you've probably worked out by now, but I'm writing this out more for my own reference).

Wikipedia doesn't say anything about using such a machine. Doing a Wiktionary search, however, I came across the verb "waulk", an obsolete (according to the OED) form of "walk", which is a different verb from the one meaning "perambulate", and means "to subject (woollen cloth) to the operation of beating or pressing [...] in order to cause felting of the fibres [...]; = FULL"

"Full" is defined in the OED as "to tread or beat (cloth) for the purpose of cleansing and thickening it", so the sense is slightly different but it might still count as a synonym.

So we have "sodare" = to full, to walk (but please add glosses to clarify the intended meaning of "walk", and, if you like, add an entry under a separate etymology for walk). Like you say, nothing to do with sodium.

Note that the OED says that "walk" is only dialect and historical, so perhaps "full" is the better translation.

Note also that, according to the OED, a "walker" is a person who walks cloth, not a machine, but the OED's etymology is similar to the one above, and suggests that "gualchiere" is the Italian translation of the person, although it gives the translation "fuller". "Walking-machine" exists but relates to perambulation, not walking cloth, but "walking machine" or perhaps "machine for walking" might still be good enough translations, again with a gloss for clarity.

According to this link (which could prove to be another useful resource) and the OED, "walker" and "gualchiera" come from the same Teutonic root. This is not too surprising, as words beginning in gua- in Italian often translate to words beginning in wa- in English (eg, "guardaroba", wardrobe). — Paul G 10:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Paul. All very interesting (with my genealogist's hat on, I can add that I have come across this form of the verb "to walk" before (I think it's from Lancashire) - it is the source of the surname Walker). I'll try to put together a couple of entries. SemperBlotto 11:14, 4 June 2006 (UTC) p.s. I had translated ruota idraulica as waterwheel

Definitions added (also waulk). Feel free to improve. SemperBlotto 16:07, 4 June 2006 (UTC) p.s. See [4] for a picture (here used as part of the process to make paper).

If you fancy adding etymologies to walk, you might like to disentangle this from www.etymonline.com (without actually copyvioing) - O.E. wealcan "to toss, roll," and wealcian "to roll up, curl, muffle up," from P.Gmc. *welk- (cf. O.N. valka "to drag about," Dan. valke "to full," M.Du. walken "to knead, press, full," O.H.G. walchan "to knead," Ger. walken "to full"), perhaps ult. from PIE base *wel- "to turn, bend, twist, roll" (see vulva). Meaning shifted in early M.E., perhaps from colloquial use of the O.E. word. "Rarely is there so specific a word as NE walk, clearly distinguished from both go and run" [Buck]. Meaning "to go away" is recorded from c.1460. Trans. meaning "to exercise a dog (or horse)" is from 1470. Walk-up in ref. to an apartment not accessible by elevator is attested from 1919 as an adj., 1925 as a noun. The surname Walker probably preserves the cloth-fulling sense. SemperBlotto 09:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

autofunzione

I added autofunzione. The template gives the plural as ending in -e. I'm pretty sure that it should end in -i. Do all or only some feminine words ending in -e take -i in the plural? If all, we can add an "if" statement to the template. Jeff SemperBlotto 10:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that's because {{it-noun-reg-f}} is intended for use with feminine nouns ending in -a. I'll written one for nouns (masculine or feminine) ending in -e that can be used for autofunzione. — Paul G 12:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I've written a new one: {{it-noun-reg-f-e}} for use with feminine nouns ending in e. It's not for masculine nouns ending in e as {{it-noun-reg-m}} already covers them. — Paul G 13:05, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

All these lemmas

I have rfved myrialemma etc. I would value your opinion. SemperBlotto 21:19, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, dilemma and trilemma do exist. I'm not aware of any "higher" ones; "tetralemma" is not in the OED, for example. Time to apply Occam's razor, I think. — Paul G 05:36, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Changing username

I left all Wiki projects. Could you change me to Leitorsc12. Leitorsc12 10:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Please, to prevent impersonation, Could you block permanently this account. Thank you. Leitorsc12 15:46, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Leitorsc12 12:10, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

---

Greetings! I'm an admin on the 'Pedia, and have recently changed my username there to counter the trend of disruptors digging for personal info on admins. I'd like to make the same change here - can you change me to User:BD2412? Cheers! bd2412 T 21:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! bd2412 T 20:23, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Any chance that an old-timer like me can get renamed? If so, change my name to User:Thewayforward. That would be cool. I think people are trying to dig for info on me too, and I'd rather they dig for longer. --Newnoise (Shout louder) 21:33, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

In any way, I'd like to propose a ruling for Wonderfool: one name change only. So, make sure you choose the right one. I'm not kidding, though, name changes are a load on the database. It's not a game. — Vildricianus 21:47, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Also note that, after making this request, WF created a lowercase version of his current userpage. He needs to make up his mind. SemperBlotto 21:54, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll rephrase that question if I may: I'd like the Wo******ol account to have a name change, because the Wo*****ool name has a somewhat besmirched reputation, and I'd like to distance myself with the Wo******ol moniker, due in part to outside influences, specifically other online "Wo******ol"s which are nothing to do with me, and also partly due to a potential clashing of my online and offline existences (which I've always wanted to keep seperate). But also, I'd like to shed this diruptive WF persona. The "Newnoise" name hasn't got any negativity attached to it, so there's no need to do anything to this one. And I'm not asking for an immediate change, but whenever is comvenient. If you, or Ec, have any questions about this, then by all means, ask me them. I'm in no hurry for the name change. All the best. --Newnoise (Shout louder) 09:11, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

It will still be associated with you though, won't it? Changing the name of the account won't make the reputation that some of your contributions have acquired go away. Ec and I are considering your request. — Paul G 09:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to start a policy page for this. We should discourage invalid requests, like the first one in this section. Accounts with less than n edits should not request it. This has nothing to do with WF, though. — Vildricianus 17:26, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

calcio

Hi Paul. I split calcio into two etymologies, even though the two meanings come from the same Latin word (with two meanings). Is that reasonable? Jeff SemperBlotto 16:55, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me - like you say, they both come from calx, but with different meanings. Well spotted. — Paul G 17:01, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

paranoia

I have noticed the same thing many times in the past. You improve my entries while leaving alone worse ones from other people. I'm sure there must be a good reason! Jeff SemperBlotto 11:18, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Nope, I'm just going through the B's in the requested entries page, which it looks as though you were working on at some point too. So I'm not scrutinising your work, don't worry! — Paul G 11:20, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Look at it another way... there is usually very little work that your entries need, so it's simple to modify them. On the other hand, most other people's are a complete mess, so a lot of the time I just don't bother :) — Paul G 11:21, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

OK - I forget plurals sometimes, and I don't add white space (It doesn't seem to make any difference in my eyes, and there's nothing about it in the "how to format" sections)

True, there isn't, but there is a proposal to make it standard to do it that way, and it does make it easier to read for anyone who subsequently edits the page (like me). — Paul G 14:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll wait and see if you notice the latest edit to sustainability. SemperBlotto 09:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

castiglione

There is an English request for this word. I have been to a couple of places called Castiglione ... in Italy, and they all seem to have (or have had) imposing fortresses. The word is not in my Zingarelli or in it.wiktionary. it.wikipedia gives a list of people and places. Can you think of a better definition (Italian, lowercase) than "castle or fortified town - see also castello" SemperBlotto 11:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Hm... it's not in my It-En dictionary, nor in the OED (2nd ed.). Onelook has Count Baldassare Castiglione, and Wikipedia has lots of surnames and placenames, but no common noun... so I don't know what this means in Italian, but it does look like it should mean "big castle", like a fortress. So I don't have much to offer here - sorry. — Paul G 18:51, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Further, there are hardly any Google hits for "un castiglione" that aren't proper nouns. — Paul G 18:53, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the request from English and added one (Capitalized) to Italian. I might do some more research some time. SemperBlotto 09:53, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Italian template for adjectives

Hi Paul. I don't think that we have any templates to generate the feminine and plural forms of Italian adjectives. Would you like to create one (or more)? I haven't added plurals to magnetico as I often get them wrong! SemperBlotto 09:52, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Hm, the ones ending in "-co" are tricky... there seems to be no really rule which become "-chi" and which "-ci", and I have to look them up half the time.

I'll create some for plain ordinary "-o" adjectives, with a warning about "-co" endings. — Paul G 10:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Done. I haven't done a "-co" one as I think sometimes you have -ci/-ce, sometimes -chi/-ce and sometimes -chi/-che, so those inflections are probably best entered manually. — Paul G 10:14, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

ape

Hi Paul. I notice that the Italian entry doesn't have the meaning of one of those three-wheeled vehicles rather like pickup trucks that you see all over the place driven by farmers and tradesmen. Would it be ape or Ape? (There's no entry for it in my Zingarelli). I read in the Guardian a few weeks ago that you now need a license to drive one - so all the old codgers are in uproar. SemperBlotto 10:40, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

That's an Ape, by analogy with a Vespa, both of which are made by Piaggio. Read all about them at this link. (Incidentally, I wonder if they get their names from the sound they make? That would make for some interesting etymologies. The article agrees with me.) — Paul G 10:50, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

OK. I've added an entry for Ape - and also for vespa / Vespa as the existing blue links were for Latin. (p.s. my sister used to have a Lambretta, but I was a BSA Bantam person.) p.p.s Wikipedia disagrees on the etymology for Vespa (from the shape) - I think they are wrong SemperBlotto 12:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

A nudge

Greetings, friendly neighborhood 'crat - got a follow who was nominated for adminship ten days ago and his since accumulated a minor wellspring of unmitigated support. Is this sufficient for a decision? bd2412 T 17:42, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Kappa and Davilla now done - I take it was one of these two you were referring to. Thanks for the nudge. — Paul G 20:04, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - I was referencing Kappa, indeed. bd2412 T 20:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Username changes

With the latest few activities in that field, perhaps it's best to set up a page or a section somewhere where people can formally request username changes. Unless you've already done so, you should take a moment to thoroughly read w:Wikipedia:Changing username, because the process is not something that's entirely free from complications. I daresay that, as a bureaucrat, you should be aware of all possibilities and impossibilities. Moreover, I don't think your talk page is the best place for people to request it, even though I don't expect that there would be very much activity on a specific page for it. But given the privacy issues, a user talk page is not the best location. On the other hand, we should not encourage users to have their name changed unless there's a good reason for it. This then we could explain on that page, setting up some basic rules and policy. What do you think? — Vildricianus 16:00, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that we should only allow name changes for very good reason. It would also be a good idea to have a page describing our policy on name changes (once we've formulated one) and for people to request them.

Could you raise your idea in the Beer parlour or Grease pit, please? — Paul G 06:53, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Done. Actually, there was already a page for it, but no one seemed to know. — Vildricianus 11:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, please watch the page, so that no one has to nudge you again ;-). — Vildricianus 16:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - now being watched. — Paul G 16:45, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks like there's work to do :-). — Vildricianus 20:58, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

As you can read on the page, someone made a good-faith mistake. Here's what you can do to solve it: rename User:DAVilla to something random, it doesn't matter what. Then you can rename User:∂ανίΠα to User:DAVilla. I think this should work. — Vildricianus 17:44, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, true - I had that done once at Commons, when I lost my password for that account. bd2412 T 17:50, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Paul, could you perhaps do this when you're back here? — Vildricianus 21:01, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

1st

This entry (but not 2nd et seq) has some Italian translations. Are they correct? I can't remember if they should be 1^mo, 2^do etc or 1^o, 2^o etc. SemperBlotto 22:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The latter, I think. I've never seen the former.

By the way, there are symbols for superscript o and a (º, ª) known as the masculine and feminine ordinal indicators in Windows Character Map, with Unicode U+00BA and U+00AA respectively. — Paul G 06:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

OK. I've added 1º and 1ª and linked to them from primo and prima. I won't do any more until you have corrected my formatting. I hadn't used the Windows Character Map since I upgraded from 98 to XP - it's much better now. SemperBlotto 11:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

p.s. I also added primi, but I can't remember if they use it in the singular as a starter for a meal. SemperBlotto 11:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is used in the singular, and it's a first course rather than a starter (which is, of course, an antipasto). I'll make the necessary changes. — Paul G 06:32, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Template:blend

Hi Paul. In this edit, you restored the explicit emboldening of the arguments to {{blend}}. Please let me know whether, when you made that change, you were aware of the Category:Form of templates and the way they consistently display their arguments while allowing readers to customize that display. Rod (A. Smith) 00:15, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I missed that discussion. I note that "blend" does not fit the required pattern, anyhow. Has this been made official policy? If so, what do I need to do? — Paul G 06:31, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry. It's far from official. It really just applies (for now) to how the "CheatBot" creates plural entries. I just wondered whether you'd known about them. No worries, since it can be changed at any later date. Anyway, I see your point about "blend" not fitting the pattern of the Category:Form of templates, so perhaps there's no benefit to allowing each reader to customize how he or she sees the "blend" etymologies anyway. Rod (A. Smith) 07:31, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the feedback, Rodasmith. I have one objection to these new templates, in that they allow for the format "x of y", which, if in print rather than wikified, would look like "x of y", leaving the "y" as if it is being used rather than referred to. The "y" must be marked in some way to show it is being referred to rather than used.

I've raised this in the appropriate discussion page, which hadn't been posted to for a couple of weeks, so I hope it is not too late to raise this important (in my view) point. — Paul G 08:26, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

OK. BTW, if it makes a difference, using Category:Form of templates (and "{{blend}}" as it stood before your edit) actually helps with the concern you raise. The templates allow us easily to produce a formatting optimized for print-media, using whatever orthography best differentiates use from mention in that media (e.g. with mention in single or double quote marks, bold, italics, or any combination thereof). Rod (A. Smith) 08:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, now that's good. Thanks for pointing that out. I would just not like to see the plain version as one of the permissible options. That would then help eliminate it from all entries that use it and enforce a "good" format. — Paul G 08:52, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Template:form of

It's never too late. The discussion was here, which explains it better than I could. The point of these templates is that they allow for personal customization, to make sure everyone sees what they like to see, be it bolded, italicized or normal text.

And yes, the Special:Mypage link was an old joke :-). I've got rid of it. — Vildricianus 09:45, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, you may be interested in commenting here, saying which style you'd prefer to be default. Alternatively, you can change your monobook.css file to see your personal preference on it. (View WT:CUSTOM or ask any techie for assistance.) — Vildricianus 19:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

apartheid

See corrected date! Discussion on the Beer Parlour. (I haven't told the OUP yet). SemperBlotto 15:40, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Apparent duplicates in rhymes pages

Duplicates: understood; I eventually figured that out, and stopped. (But you're going to have to explain more clearly why you want two fletchers!)

Foreign words: agree. I've added the English sense of lex I had in mind.

—scs 12:42, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Steve. "Fletcher" is a surname; "fletcher" is a person who makes arrows. Two words, two separate entries in Wiktionary (although the surname comes from the profession). — Paul G 06:04, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I understand that, but the page I'm looking at -- Rhymes:English:-ɛtʃə(r) -- has one Fletcher and two fletchers.

The entry for the surname wasn't there - I've added it. — Paul G 06:18, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

You must be looking at a different page, then! The one I edited (and that you reverted) had had Fletcher all along. —scs 14:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see: you mean you added the Fletcher page, that -ɛtʃə(r) can now link to. —scs 14:11, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah, and now I see too... the page had "fletcher | Fletcher | fletcher". Now fixed. Thanks. — Paul G 09:09, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

rhyme pronunciation: ɡ vs. g

Many of the rhyme pages use a funky Unicode "looptail" ɡ instead of the ordinary ASCII ("open-tail") g. I don't get the impression that IPA distinguishes between these characters, and I do get the impression that the plain g is preferred (i.e. that the looptail ɡ is obsolete). I discovered this when I noticed that we have duplicate pages Rhymes:English:-æɡən and Rhymes:English:-ægən. Do you have a preference for the ɡ? —scs 15:43, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

The funky g is more accurate for English, but we aren't distinguishing these things usually. Same as the /r/ story. — Vildricianus 16:49, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Is it? What's the distinction? I understand the r vs. ɹ distinction, but I've never heard of one between g and ɡ! —scs 21:44, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

In the same vein, we've also got:

Rhymes:English:-aɪdəl vs. Rhymes:English:-aɪd(ə)l

Rhymes:English:-ɛtəl vs. Rhymes:English:-ɛt(ə)l

Rhymes:English:-ɑː(r)l vs. Rhymes:English:-aː(r)l

—scs 16:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, some explanations:

/ɡ/ is used in IPA as opposed to plain ordinary "g" because it ensures that you get a "g" of the right shape. In many fonts (eg, Times New Roman), "g" has a different shape (looking a bit like an "8"), and this is not the right IPA symbol.

Really and truly, IPA pronunciations should be enclosed in the IPA template {{IPA}} which ensures that an appropriate font is used.

As for the rhymes, some of these pages are wrong... thanks for pointing them out. I'll fix them. — Paul G 06:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations. Now, don't take this personally, I'm not trying to shoot the messenger, this is not your fault, I see essentially the same explanation at w:Voiced velar plosive, but: this g vs. ɡ thing is just nonsense!

Worrying that the "wrong" kind of g might be displayed would be an issue only if the looptail and open-tail g's had different interpretations in IPA -- but they do not. There's no harm done in displaying a looptail g for the voiced velar plosive, it's an acceptable alternative, the open-tail and looptail g's are listed as "equivalent" in my 1999 copy of the IPA handbook.

Finally, and while this won't be a compelling argument (because it's arguably a bug), I find it highly ironic that after all this fuss on various people's parts trying to ensure that by using "ɡ" I'll reliably see an open-tail g regardless of font -- in this browser I'm using (Firefox under Mac OS X) "ɡ" displays a loop-tail g! (Needless to say this has compounded my confusion, and accounts for some nonsensical-seeming comments of mine earlier in this thread.) scs 22:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Now fixed. The correct forms are /ɑː/ for the "long" vowel sound in "father" and the unbracketed schwa (my convention; this could equally have been bracketed or omitted). — Paul G 06:15, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

more on rhymes

I was at Rhymes:English:-əʊni and I was thinking that words like hegemony and ceremony should be there. Then I realized their primary stress is on the first syllable. They've got a secondary stress on the penultimate syllable, and to my ear that makes them sound adequately rhyming, but I'm afraid they may not meet our strict standard. What do you think? —scs 04:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Steve.

They don't belong there for two reasons: first, the rhymes are organised by primary stress only, and second, the rhymes are based on UK pronunciations, and these two words end in /-əni/ in UK pronunciation (with no secondary stress), as opposed to the /-əʊni/ of US pronunciation.

Unfortunately not all words have rhymes, so a lot of words won't be listed. It is possible that at some point I will add an "others" section for words that would rhyme if they were stressed on a syllable further on in the word, as not everyone requires exact rhymes.

Thanks for asking. — Paul G 06:03, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Something like ====Near rhymes==== underneath ===Rhymes===? --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:45, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, something like that. For example, "import" and "export" (as nouns) don't have exact rhymes (as far as I am aware), but are near rhymes for each other and for some other words ending in "-port". But these can only really be entered once it has been determined that no rhymes do exist. — Paul G 19:49, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

estate agent

Hi,

I don't think there is any point adding etymologies to compounds like this one as they are self-evident. In any case, "+" is generally used in etymologies to mean concatenation, and "estate" and "agent" are not concatenated in this compound. — Paul G 09:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Point well taken - will try not to repeat :) Saltmarsh 09:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

pasta / sauce combinations

Hello Paul. I have made a start on Appendix:Menus and the Italian subpage. I am undecided about what to do about pasta / sauce combinations. There are some combinations that you meet all the time, such as spaghetti bolognese, and these probably merit a separate entry, but others can come in all sorts of combination, and can be seen with and without alla etc between the two parts. Is it best to list a selection in the menu article, but wikify only the separate parts e.g. - penne all'arrabiata? Could you also check my spelling, and add anything obvious that I have missed. (I haven't mentioned wine - I think that deserves a separate Appendix:Wines of the World) Cheers Jeff. SemperBlotto 09:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jeff.

Yes, as you say, some sauces are often used with some pastas, but in many cases, it's pick 'n' mix.

My view would be to wikify the pasta and the phrase including the "prepositional article", as "arrabbiata" (double b, note - I'm definitely going to have to keep an eye on those spellings for you :) ) just means "angry" and "angry woman" in Italian and, in itself, has nothing to do with pasta. "All'arrabbiata", on the other hand, describes how the pasta is prepared (compare "au poivre", "à la carte", etc, in French).

I'll add the page to my watchlist to check on the spellings.

And yes, let's have a separate wine list, just as they do in restaurants :) — Paul G 09:30, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

If we include this...

Hi Vildricianus,

I've noticed you using the slippery-slope argument a few times on the Requests for deletion page... you might not have seen this section in the Criteria for inclusion. — Paul G 07:46, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Be sure, I've read every single paragraph of WT:CFI. I don't think the slippery slope is something that can be applied in the case of the OED. Could you point me to any other instances where I used it? — Vildricianus 11:10, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I was sure there were some more, but I don't see them now. Maybe they were earlier ones that have since dropped off the page. — Paul G 07:42, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

another rhyme question: ʊ

I'm trying to nail down the pronunciation of the words boor, moor, poor and tour, which in my (American) accent are pretty good rhymes for each other. I'm led to the page rhymes:English:-ʊə(r), which is clearly on the right track, but there are difficulties. Most of the words on this page, to my ear, have a y sound before the vowel (epitomized by pure) that makes them rhyme with each other but not with poor or tour. Most of the words on this page also have the notation "in some accents" as if they're also listed on another page in their other accent, but it's not clear what that other page might be.

I can find boor and moor on rhymes:English:-ɔː(r), but this (again, to my ear) is a very different vowel. To me, boor does not rhyme with bore, but it doesn't rhyme with pure, either. Nor does moor rhyme with more or Muir. And here again, boor (though not moor)is listed with the notation "in some accents", but it's not clear where the other is.

I notice that in the RP chart at Rhymes:English, poor and pure are listed in the same cell, but with different pronunciations /ʊə/ and /jʊə/, but which both link to rhymes:English:-ʊə(r), without the /j/. This seems to be the crux of the matter. Are poor and pure homophones in British English? What about moor and Muir?

Perhaps the page I'm looking for is Rhymes:English:-ʊrə, which is linked to from Rhymes:English:Stressed on /ʊ/ but does not exist yet. That is, perhaps this is the page where boor, moor, poor, and tour should all be listed, all with "in some accents", for Amurricunz (and boors? :-) ) like me. But I'm not sure. —scs 15:05, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Are "poor" and "pure" the same for you, except for the /j/ sound in "pure"? If not, then perhaps you have the pure-poor split http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_r#Pure-poor_split Ligo 01:52, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I might; I'm not sure. Thanks for that pointer. As I mention below, the /j/ in pure does seem to color the vowel for me. (I also discover from this discussion that I may have been pronouncing moor wrong my entire life, because to me it is never a rhyme for more or door or floor or store, but rather tour.) —scs 14:31, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

There are multiple answers here. First of all, it's important to stress that the rhymes are based on UK English pronunciations as given in standard British dictionaries.

US English doesn't have /U@/, using /Ur/ instead. (Actually, the table on the rhymes page for US English says the vowel in "pure" is /ur/.)

The /j/ is a consonant, and since rhymes depend only on the stressed vowel and what follows it, the /j/ preceding /U@/ doesn't count. Hence "poor" and "pure", which differ only by a /j/ before the stressed vowel, are rhymes. (Source: OED) (Note also that some US accents drop the /j/ sound in some words, but this makes no difference to whether or not they are rhymes when the /j/ comes before the stressed vowel.)

Now, that said, /pU@/ is a somewhat dated pronunciation of "poor", most UK speakers (with non-rhotic accents) using /pO:/ these days.

The OED says that "boor" is pronounced /bU@/ and hence is a rhyme for "poor" (in its older pronunciation).

"Moor" is pronounced /mO:/ (non-rhotic accent), which rhymes with "more". Now, the OED gives /mO@/ for both of these (showing that they are rhymes) but most dictionaries (including Wiktionary) do not distinguish between /O:(r)/ and /O@(r)/.

Hence "boor", "moor", "poor" and "pure" are indeed rhymes, but "moor" and "poor" have alternative (and, these days, more common) pronunciations making them rhymes for "door" and "for".

Rhymes:English:-ʊrə will be for words ending in with something like "-urah". I haven't put anything there yet, and it's not clear whether there will even be anything to go there.

Well, /usr/share/dict/web2 lists surah and gandurah. How 'bout using those as a start? :-) (Just kidding; I don't even know what they mean.) Hurrah and sirrah also spring to mind, but of course they've got other problems. And then there's sura.... —scs 13:53, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Still other possibilities (though depending on dialect the vowels in some of these will be wrong) are angostura, bravura, dura (as in dura mater), and de jure. —scs 14:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

The General American section on the entry page to the rhymes describes how to use the rhymes page for US English, but this is only a broad guide, and, like you say, it will not work for all words.

Obviously we can't represent all accents in the rhymes or else they would become impossible to manage. I have therefore stuck to the standard pronunciations given in UK dictionaries (which is not too far from my own accent). I do give some US pronunciations (eg, /d{t@/ ("datta") for "data") where the words end up on a different page. It's a tricky business sometimes, but existing dictionaries have to be the guide, and, as I am British and have access to and am familiar with British sources, that is the form of English I have used.

There is a disclaimer on the entry page that says "Because of regional variations in pronunciation, some indices will inevitably contain words that some speakers do not consider to be rhymes." It is under the General American section, though, so I think I will move it further up the page to show the point you have made. — Paul G 07:46, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all that. I do understand that the rhyme categorizations are based on British pronunciations, and I wasn't trying to contest that point.

The question in my mind that started all that was, "what's the punctuation of contour?", and I think the answer is, /ˈkɒn tʊə(r)/. I got sidetracked by cure and Muir and pure and immure on the rhymes:English:-ʊə(r) page, afraid that if I used /ʊə(r)/ I'd be implying an additional /j/ sound. But no, that would be /ˈkɒn tjʊə(r)/.

I think my problem (and this is just by way of explanation, not to ask a further question or suggest a change to the -ʊə(r) page) is that for me the /j/ in cure and pure does color the vowel somewhat, such that pure and poor are not perfect rhymes. As you pointed out, poor can be pronounced either to rhyme with pure or more (in which latter case I guess it's a homophone for pore and maybe pour). But I think that the vowel in my pronunciation of boor, moor, poor, and tour is intermediate between that of pure and pore, which is why I was searching for some third page (other than -ʊə(r) and -ɔː(r)) to put contour on. (But I'm not sure about that intermediateness, because of course it's always hard to hear yourself accurately, and I'm not a trained linguist.)

Of course, the other answer is, "there are lots of variations in pronunciation, and we can't possibly capture them all, so some of the rhymes we list will be, at least for some listeners, slightly approximate, and it will be up to each reader to verify whether our candidate rhymes are precise enough for his particular poetic or other use." So rhymes:English:-ʊə(r) is close enough to put boor, moor, poor, tour, and contour on, and I won't worry about the difference I imagine I hear between the vowels in poor and pure, just as I'm not worrying about the even fainter difference I might imagine between poor and tour.

[P.S. But don't worry, I won't actually put contour on rhymes:English:-ʊə(r), because of course the stress is wrong. —scs 14:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC)]

What will help hugely here -- and I'm more than happy to assist in the work, but I'll have to ask questions like this one from time to time to make sure I don't botch anything up too badly -- is to get more of the "in some accents" notations on the rhymes pages explicitly cross-referenced to the other accent for that word. That will make it much easier for a reader who finds "poor" on the "wrong" page, and says "yeah, I know some people pronounce poor like pore, but I pronounce it like pure", to find the other.

—scs 14:25, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you're imagining the difference between the vowels in "poor" and "pure". I certainly have a difference between the vowels in "poor" and "pure" in my speech as I have the pure-poor split. Do "pure" and "fir" rhyme for you? "pure" and "fir" rhyme for me, as I have the cure-fir merger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_r#Cure-fir_merger. "poor" and "pour" are homonyms for me as I have the pour-poor merger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_r#Pour-poor_merger

I would thus transcribe these words in my speech as:

• poor - /pOr/
• pour - /pOr/
• pure - /pj3`/
• fir - /f3`/

I don't have /ʊə(r)/ or /ʊr/ in my speech. I've started a page about rhymes for "fir" at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rhymes:English:-3%28%60%29.

Ligo 16:25, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, Ligo, that has to go. We can't be including duplicated pages for multiple accents, or else no one will be able to find anything. In any case "3(`)" is not IPA. — Paul G 07:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Too many questions! :-)

I've probably got some version of the poor/pure split, but if so, it's the North American one, not the New Zealand one.

Some times I'm not even sure how I say things. Sometimes poor sounds like tour; sometimes it sounds more like pore. (Same with pour.)

When I was 17 I moved from Southern California to Massachusetts to go to school, and the one thing I got teased about was how I said roof. But now I can't even remember whether I said it like foot and the Northeasterners said it should be like boot, or vice versa. (I'm totally schizo now. Same with route, which either rhymes with root or out. On alternate days, that is. :-) )

Pure and fir are definitely different for me. Pure definitely has a longer /oo/, like spoor or manure or boor. Fir for me is probably /əɹ/, and that's an interesting case, because I think I say it more like the colloquial pronunciation of for that's phonetically spelled "fer". And, in fact, I was already thinking that we need to list for and your on the rhymes:English:-ɜː(r) page for that reason (or, perhaps, on your new -3(`) page). It's not how I say 'em, but imagine the carnival barker: "Step right up! Get yer hot apple pies here! Two fer a dollar!"

"fer" and "yer" are indeed in some dictionaries as representations of the unstressed forms of "for" and "your" respectively, but the vowel (in the pronunciation scheme being used for the rhymes) is /ə/ rather than /ɜː/ (although these vowels are similar or identical in some accents).

Unfortunately there are no rhymes pages for /ə/ as this only features in unstressed vowels, and so it does not make sense to say that words can be stressed on the syllable containing this vowel. Perhaps, however, a special case can be made for words like "fer" and "yer". Poets could of course write: "My apples I sell for two fer / a dollar" I said to a roofer (excuse the imperfect meter). Here the rhyme relies on both "fer" and the word before it ("two") rather than "fer" alone. So there is still no case for a special page for "fer" and "yer". — Paul G 07:31, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Upon reflection, my vowel in fir is identical to the one in bird, i.e the one you call /ɜː(r)/. So now I'm thinking it'd be the -ɜː(r) page that for and your could alternatively be added to. (And where does "fir" go? Last I checked, it wasn't on any of the rhymes pages at all!)

On the subject of unstressed /er/: you probably knew this, but I was just noticing on w:IPA chart for English and w:Pronunciation respelling for English that this tends to be treated separately, with the canonical example being butter or winner, and that it's got its own IPA symbol, /ɚ/, which I guess is sort of an r-colored schwa. —scs 13:44, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to have to spend a lot of time studying w:English-language vowel changes before historic r, and then maybe I can figure some of this stuff out.

—scs 17:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

You're saying that your "pour" sometimes rhymes with "tour"? I'm from Northern England and, while I distinguish between "pore" and "poor" as /po@r/ and /pU@r/, my "pour" always rhymes with "pore", never "poor". Jooge 19:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

All of this is interesting but academic with regard to the rhymes, unless someone is thinking of starting rhymes pages for their own accent. It just goes to show that there is no universally applicable way of pronouncing any word. — Paul G 20:21, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

caprese

In insalata caprese, caprese seems to be plural - did it ought to be capresa? Zingarelli gives capresi (the noun) for inhabitants of Capri (it only ever gives the masculine plural for these terms) SemperBlotto 13:46, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

• Hello Paul. Have you had any thoughts on the proper noun and adjective from Capri yet? Jeff SemperBlotto 09:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• The singular ending is "-ese", not "-eso": compare "inglese"... there is no "inglesa" (that's Spanish) - "inglese" is both masculine and feminine singular. Thus it is with "caprese" (my Collins Italian-English dictionary has "masculine/feminine noun"), so "insalta caprese" would seem to be correct. — Paul G 19:45, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

rhyme xrefs

I don't really bother adding the "See also <this other pronunciation>" links any more, as anyone seeking rhymes wants words on the current page rather than any other pages. The various pronunciations should (in theory) be on the page for the words themselves in any case. But there's nothing to stop you adding these if you want to. — Paul G 13:27, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not planning on ading lots, and it'd be on a case-by-case basis. And if you don't mind "extra" punctuations on "the current page", that's great (though it seems that in some cases those could really get out of hand...)

OK, that's fine. By the way, I don't think the links should be italicised as it could make them a bit difficult to read. So I think (see also <non-italicised link here>) is better.

I'm thinking that what would be really nice is a comprehensive, truly phonemic pronunciation database. I wonder if there are any of them out there? —scs 14:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, it would be great to find one. I'm going by those in print and online dictionaries. dictionary.com has some, but it isn't a database by any means. — Paul G 19:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

AOL user

Paul, I don't recall anything about the user or the article in question. If it isn't outright spam, and the user has managed to give you an article title, it ought to be possible for anyone with admin rights to retrieve the contents of something that was deleted, unless it was overwritten and protected (though if that was the case, it was probably for cause). Failing that, I'd remind the user that Wiktionary is not a blog site or web hosting service and it's his tough luck for trying to use it that way. --Dvortygirl 05:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Basing rhymes on UK pronunciation

Saying that rhymes must be based on UK pronunciation is totally wrong this wiktionary, as it's en.wiktionary not uk.wiktionary. This wiktionary should include rhymes for US pronunciations as well with (in some varieties of English) or (in US pronunciation) after then. Ligo 01:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you are quite right, we are not uk.wiktionary, and it would be great to include rhymes for all varieties of English. However, note that I do not say that they must be for UK pronunciations only, simply that they are. They are for UK pronunciation because I speak British English and I have entered almost all of them myself. This is a huge and fairly thankless job.

If you want US English rhymes, please feel free to enter them, taking care to mark them as US pronunciations. Note that there is a concession to US pronunciation in terms of the table for "General American Pronunciation" on the rhymes front page. — Paul G 09:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I, for one, appreciate those lists and thank you for the work that has obviously gone into them. Ligo, I'm an American, and I too would like to find ways to reduce the UK bias of the current rhyme lists and make sure they're equally useful to US readers. I've just created (from scratch) my own table of one-syllable rhymes, based on my own (Southern California) pronunciation, and I'm going to study its differences with Paul's lists as a first step in maybe figuring out a clean way to systematically weave in a parallel US pronunciation thread within the Wiktionary rhyme lists. (First step: make sure I fully understand the cot/caught split/merger, and the relationship of the vowel in cot/caught to the first vowel in father/bother. But before anyone points me at it, yes, I know about w:Phonological history of English low back vowels, and I'm studying it.) —scs 13:10, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Sysop name change please

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Changing_username#.E2.88.82.CE.B1.CE.BD.CE.AF.CE.A0.CE.B1

— Vildricianus 09:14, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks - done. — Paul G 09:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! — Vildricianus 09:17, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

follare

Someone has added this Italian verb - as to squeeze. Does it really mean to full? or maybe to mangle clothes? SemperBlotto 14:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I have an old Italian-English dictionary that I picked up in a second-hand book shop and that formed part of a "teach yourself Italian" course. Despite being small, it contains many less common words that are not in my larger Collins Italian-English dictionary. "Follare" is in the smaller dictionary of the two only and is given as "to full (cloth); to press (grapes)", so you are right, and "squeeze" looks like an insufficient translation. — Paul G 16:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. I've just updated it and saw the Latin etymology. My Latin dictionary gives "cloth-fuller" for the word quoted. SemperBlotto 16:40, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, good research. Careful, though - "follare" is transitive, so the objects ("cloth" and "grapes") are not part of the translations. I've updated the entry accordingly. — Paul G 16:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

And it's about time this Wiki had a spell-checker for people who type too fast and don't look at what they are typing! SemperBlotto 16:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree! Want to propose it in the Beer parlour and see if there is a developer who is prepared to take it on? Of course, it would probably need to include all the words in Wiktionary as well as in a standard spellchecker's word-list. — Paul G 17:04, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The simpler solution is for me to be more careful. Anyway, Connel runs a regular script to look for bad things in ===...=== entries and that finds most of them. Our users are also good at fixing spelling mistakes. SemperBlotto 17:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

That seems like the right approach to me. — Paul G 17:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. Please help out at User:Connel MacKenzie/typos. I still need to re-import the latest corrections to our list of common typos/spelling errors, and re-run it against the July 4th XML dump. But the version that is there has had only the first dozen or two entries, and the last dozen or two entries corrected/checked, so far. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

phosphorus

Hi. I've made a start on red links here. Where did you find Montalbano's phosphorus? It has defeated me (I've delved into ancient chemistry for similar ones). 10:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow, only one Google hit, and that's my doing :)

It comes from the OED: "Bononian phosphorus, Montalbano's phosphorus: barium sulphide or heavy spar from Monte Paterno, which becomes phosphorescent by calcination; its property was discovered in 1602 by Casciolorus, a shoemaker of Bologna". So not too obscure, then ;) — Paul G 19:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, looking at what you have done already, it looks like it's another synonym for Bolognian phosphorus. — Paul G 19:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

OK. By the way, I had never come across "bononian" before but have just watched a program on BBC4 about castratti and there was the word on a tomb inscription! SemperBlotto 21:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, would you believe it? It's funny how that happens, isn't it? You hear a new word, and then you see it being used all over the place. — Paul G 06:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Next on the list - phosphorgummite. There are two hits on Google books, but both are to the index pages of mineralogy books. I have made a guess (until I can get to the library). I have been wondering what access you have to the OED - are you a Countdown champion and have the books, or do you have online access? Jeff SemperBlotto 13:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Also struggling with phosphorus liver (citations have comma between words), phosphorist, phosphure (French for phosphide)

From the OED:

• phosphorgummite: (from German, from the German for "phosphorus", so related to "phosphorus" rather than derived directly from it) "A gummite or hydrate of uranium containing phosphorus"
• 1899: "The typical phosphorus-liver leads to alimentary glycosuria." (no definition, just a citation from James Cagney's [sic] translation of "R. von Jaksch's Clinical Diagnosis"
• phosphorist: (from Swedish, from the Swedish for "phosphorus", so related to "phosphorus" rather than derived directly from it) "One of a school of poetic, idealistic, and romantic Swedish writers at the beginning of the 19th century."
• phosphure: (obsolete) (from French) = phosphide ["phosphure" still being the French for "phosphide"]

I have the second edition (in compact form - a single large volume with micrographically reduced pages (9 to a page)). The online edition has an annual subscription of about £100, which I am not prepared to shell out. — Paul G 07:15, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Paul (I've been on holiday for a week) SemperBlotto 15:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

bot bits

Could you add the bot bit to User:ScsRhymeBot and User:ScsHdrRewrBot, per these discussions at WT:BP? Thanks. —scs 19:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

See m:MakeBot in case you're surprised that Bureaucrats can do that now as well. It should go via Special:Makebot. — Vildricianus 07:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

If you're not able to do this, please let me know, and I'll try pestering the folks at meta again. —scs 04:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how to do this. Please ask the meta people about it. Thanks. — Paul G 07:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Special:Makebot. Jon Harald Søby 09:42, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

The meta people won't do it while we have active bureaucrats. — Vildricianus 12:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Notifying you about the new crats

Lest you think I'm acting behind your back, I'm notifying you here of the fact that I have asked both Dvortygirl and Hippietrail whether they'd accept a nomination for bureaucratship. A third bureaucrat may relieve some of the pressure that's upon you right now, during Ec's long-term absence. Cheers, — Vildricianus 18:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for that. I have not been on Wiktionary very much at all for a week or so.

I thought we were considering SemperBlotto for bureaucratship. Anyhow I'd be happy to see either of these two users promoted to bureaucrat. — Paul G 07:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

New crat

I daresay we have a successful nomination. Could you set the rights? — Vildricianus 09:04, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Any chance you could do this? — Vildricianus 19:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for nudging me. It should be done now, but the feedback I get from pushing the button isn't clear. I'll ask Dvortygirl to test it out. — Paul G 19:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Special:Listusers/bureaucrat looks pretty clear. — Vildricianus 19:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Bots - "can't" rather than "won't"

How so? Special:Makebot works in much the same manner as the Makesysop page... — Vildricianus 20:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, now I know how to. I hadn't seen that page. Thank you. — Paul G 18:55, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

If that isn't being listed at the bottom of Special:Specialpages, you should let someone (like Brion) know, perhaps file a quick bugzilla.org bug report. --Connel MacKenzie 18:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

No, it's there. Thanks. I just didn't know about it. Looks like Dvortygirl's already done the rhymes one. The others look like they are less clear-cut. Perhaps Dvorty and I should get our heads together and come to a decision. — Paul G 19:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

-astro

Hello Paul. Can you add any further examples to this Italian suffix? Jeff SemperBlotto 10:09, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jeff. I've added those that I could find in my dictionaries and supplemented the list with others that have lots of Google hits. I've also revised the "pejorative" translation (which wasn't enough on its own). — Paul G 19:14, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Translations to be checked (French)

I've retranslated this page, because some sentences weren't even french ;-)) -- Sajasaze 13:37, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

cavarsela

Hello Paul. What type of verb is cavarsela? (derived from cavare) Would it be conjugated rather like andarsene? Jeff SemperBlotto 11:10, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jeff. It's intransitive. I don't know if there is a special term for these Italian verbs; at least, a quick look on the Internet doesn't reveal any. Yes, it works in the same way as andarsene: "me la cavo", "te la cavi", etc. There is also farcela, of course ("to manage", "to cope"), which is "ce la faccio", etc. — Paul G 06:40, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

And I've just noticed that andarsene is red-linked! I'll have ago at that tomorrow! (and maybe starsene . . .) SemperBlotto 16:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I have made a stab at andarsene - could you correct and expand it please? Jeff SemperBlotto 09:04, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hm, tricky... two things that come to mind:

"Se" is the form used when attached to the verb and followed by another pronoun. Otherwise it is "si". Hence I believe it should be "essersi" and "essendosi". With the "ne" I think these should be "essersene andato" and "essendosene andato".

Ah, doing a web search I've found this, which should help, and confirms my thinking.

Another thing - why is "essere" capitalised in the conjugations? Surely it should be lower case, and italicised to show it is a foreign word (as it is being used in an English sentence)?

I can't work on this now - I'll leave it to you to make the necessary changes. — Paul G 09:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

nahcolite

I thought you would be interested in this one. I can't think of another instance of a substance being named after its chemical formula. SemperBlotto 10:37, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, interesting indeed, thank you. Usually minerals are named after their discoverers or the place of their discovery, of course.

Hm, not a rhyme for "acolyte", though, I notice: it's pronounced NAH-kuh-lite or nah-KOH-lite, according to the OED. Next time you get to look at the OED, have a look at "chyazic" for a similarly formed word. — Paul G 09:42, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

cabbage?

Verification for sense 3 (cabbage = brain damaged person)? I would think most any vegetable could be substituted... Cheers! bd2412 T 00:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

"Cabbage" does indeed have this sense. No other vegetable can be substituted for "cabbage" as this is a specific meaning of the word. — Paul G 10:57, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I'll take your word on it. Get it? Your word! Heh heh. Ahem. Well, I thought it was funny. bd2412 T 13:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

to delete or not to delete ?

Do you think I should ask to delete the Category:Translations to be checked (French) as I've cleared it or not ? Is there gonna be new french ttbc ? -- Sajasaze 10:20, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, well done! No, please leave the category as new TTBC's come up all the time. — Paul G 08:42, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Unusual Greek letters

¡Thanx! :)--Piolinfax 14:50, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Mathematics

Hi Paul. If you ever get back into mathematical mode - there are lots of red links in the Derived terms section of space and function. I am only doing the easy ones. SemperBlotto 10:20, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, Jeff, thanks for letting me know. — Paul G 10:23, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

patrolled edits

Hiya Paul, could you turn on the ‘mark my edits as patrolled’ button in your user preferences please. We trust you! Widsith 11:04, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, done - thanks. — Paul G 11:05, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

meff

Hello Paul, I've tidied up the entry meff (also moved due to incorrect spelling!) and actually found some references for it. In found some of the research a arduous and wondered if you know any good site to use for researching slang and colloquialisms such as meff etc. ?--Williamsayers79 15:43, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi William,

Not really - there are plenty of slang dictionaries online, but slang being what it is, many of these are of dubious veracity (such as urbandictionary, a kind of anything-goes Wiktionary). You are probably better off looking at the various print dictionaries of slang published in the UK, which are likely to be more reliable than online sources. — Paul G 05:50, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Ideally, you would need to quote printed usages of slang words as used in novels, newspapers, magazines, etc. — Paul G 05:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Block Wurmz!

Please block Wurmz, he is a vandal. Dart evader 08:52, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for alerting me to this vandalism. — Paul G 08:55, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

IPA for wiktionary and wiktionaryz

Hello

Mr Connel told me to talk with you about IPA. I would like to convert this file: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Moby/mpron.tar.Z into IPA and add the IPA entries for English words into wiktionary/wiktionaryz . Would you please help me with IPA? I know only few about IPA. Right now I have: HARMONY HH AA1 R M AH0 N IY0 and need to define rules to convert onto: harmony<tab>ˈhɑrməni

I have found several IPA files and would like you to take a look at them.
ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/project/fgdata/dict/cmudict.0.6.gz
http://wiki.webz.cz/files/ipa.txt.gz
http://slovnik.zcu.cz/files/vyslovnost.tar.gz
http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Moby/mpron.tar.Z

Could you please tell me which file is best for wiktionary and for wiktionaryz? If you will help me convert the files into UTF-8 I would help to put them online as soon as possible. I am sure users will like IPA!

-Arael

I think the best thing would be to look at the pronunciation key, which explains how sounds are transcribed in English (and other languages). — Paul G 12:06, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank You!

I wanted to thank you for the pointer as well as the encouragement; both are highly appreciated. Medellia 08:22, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Lest you think I disregarded your note on my talk page, I just realized my capitalization has been incorrect. Editing while in a bit of an autopilot mode wasn't the smartest move on my part. I will go back and edit as time allows. Thanks again! Medellia 09:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

green monkey

Take a look at this. Please remember not to nest these incorrectly. --Connel MacKenzie 08:32, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

latteo

Could you have a quick look at this Paul. I'm not sure of the plurals (Zingarelli no help) SemperBlotto 12:26, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you've done it correctly. I've made the definition into a gloss and added a derived term. — Paul G 06:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

4th of July

If it were anyone else, they'd probably be blocked an hour for blanking. I assume you have some reason for that POV edit? Care to explain? Or is this something larger, where you wish to assert that for English terms, none of the mandatory redundancy started by the de-capitalization should remain? --Connel MacKenzie 20:26, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Connel, calm down! There is nothing sinister going on here. "Fourth of July" already exists. This is the usual spelling. "4th of July" contained exactly the same content, so I merely made it a cross-reference. Make any changes you feel are needed. — Paul G 20:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear my initial reaction was unwarranted. But... isn't this pretty much the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish? Having people chase links is not a good thing; the only time we really want to encourage that sort of thing is for translation sections, (where foreign contributors have a difficult time finding the correct placement) right? Sorry for coming across as over-excited (I guess that was a bit over the top.) --Connel MacKenzie 20:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

No problem, apology accepted. The issue for me is not so much link-chasing but unnecessary duplication. Someone (I don't remember who) has a law or principle that says that duplication inevitably leads to divergence. I made a few tweaks to the "Fourth of July" entry, such as adding a cedilla to "curaçao" and removing the "US" tag (the Fourth of July is indeed a US holiday, but "Fourth of July" is not used solely in the US). I would have had to update "4th of July" accordingly, and a less observant user might not have done so. Some words have several variant spellings and I think we need to be careful not to have multiple near-identical entries that end up becoming inconsistent with one another.

In any case, at least for regional variations in spelling, I though we had a policy that whichever entry was created first was the one that all other variants redirected to. This is of course POV but, I think, more helpful to the user than having two or more entries with originally identical content that ends up being different or, heaven forbid, contradictory. I know there are occasions when one or other spelling might have senses that the others do not, but this can be covered easily on the respective pages. I don't want to re-open the "colo(u)r" debate (and I'm not even going to look at those pages, or else I might be tempted to make changes) but maybe our policy on duplicate content needs to discussed in the Beer parlour and firmed up. — Paul G 08:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, there is a solution that avoids the possibility of inconsistency by duplication and is NPOV. The content of the pages is put in a template - this template can then be used on the page for each variant spelling. For pages that have slight variations, parameters could be used. I'll suggest this in the Grease pit. — Paul G 08:41, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

foot-pound-second formatting

Thank you for the advice. :-) Sanguinity 20:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Template:given name

Ah! I just now noticed your changes to Template:given name. I thank you for simplifying the template, but have to question whether that's positive in this case or not. I designed the template to be a tag, because simply defining a name as 'a male given name' is not very useful to people, as SemperBlotto pointed out to me not too long ago. The way the template is now, it's impossible (or at least awkward) to include any additional information (see Abbe, for example). Would you consider turning it back into a tag template? Beobach972 01:56, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I think the template is more useful. Any additional information (as at Abbe) can be added as ordinary text after the content. I did see how the tag was useful.

Defining a name as "a male given name" does not give very much information, but an article can be expanded with other information such as the "meaning" of the name (as opposed to the definition of the word), such as "little" for "Paul". — Paul G 07:30, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

My two cents: It is better without the parenthesis and italics. However, Paul's changes seem to have introduced an extra <CR>, which does very bad things if combined with other templates on the same line. --Connel MacKenzie 07:37, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, the templates around here are territorial, aren't they? Seems like we had similar problems trying to use en-noun if it wasn't put straight under a POS header and all that. What do we need to do to fix the <CR> bit? Beobach972 04:28, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Extra <CR> fixed. --Connel MacKenzie 04:34, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I avoid multi-sentence definitions where possible, but if you think it's better this way, I have no particularly strong objections to it. (We will, of course, need to clean up the pages that use it to remove the duplicity, eg Alexander.) Beobach972 04:28, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

-are, -ere and -ire

Hello Paul, could you have a look at these and see if there are any errors or if I have left any out. Cheers Jeff SemperBlotto 12:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

p.s. Third person singular, passato remoto of dovere (and other similar verbs) - I was taught dovè, but [5] has dové. Which do you prefer? SemperBlotto 14:54, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll check out the verb lists against those my grammar.

Hm, Logos and my Italian-English dictionary both have "dovette" only. I suspect that "dové" (or "dovè") are archaic or regional, like "fo" for "faccio". I've never seen either "dové" or "dovè", so I can't really comment on those. I would suggest sticking with "dovette" alone. — Paul G 09:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

OK. By the way, at some time in the future I am going to request a bot to add all the conjugations of the regular -are verbs (as was done for all those Spanish ones). But I have lots of infinitives to add first. I am adding irregular verb conjugations manually, a few at a time. SemperBlotto 09:55, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Good stuff. That's not to say "dové" and "dovè" should be excluded from Wiktionary altogether, of course - it's just that I don't think it's helpful to include them in the conjugation as being on a par with "dovette". I think they ought be included there, but with a suitable label (archaic? regional? dialect?) once we know what a suitable label would be.

I'm adding to the verb lists now (-ire done). I like the new trans-* templates for hidable content. — Paul G 10:05, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Checking translations

Hi Paul, thanks for your message and sorry for not replying to you earlier, i haven't been much around lately (work & family). In reply to your question, if you are still looking for help proofreading translations into a particular language i will be glad to give a hand. By the way, on it:wikipedia we are making a Glossario dei falsi amici della lingua inglese. A False Friends dictionary, en-it 1500 entries, 3,000 definitions - it could be further expanded to Wiktionary or Wikibooks when finished on Wikipedia. To have an idea of what we are doing please check it out here. I'll be back on the English Wiktionary soon. --Wikipedius 21:05, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

That sounds interesting - thanks for the information. — Paul G 07:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. We're looking for experienced English-Italian speakers:-) What i think we need most at this point is to provide at least one example in English for each definition (and we're just two people working on it now). Linking to Wiktionary is certainly a good idea.--Wikipedius 11:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to help with this if I can.

Are you and the other person working on the examples Italian or English? I notice one or two errors ("plummer" for "plumber", for example). Maybe I'll start by proof-reading the English examples you have already provided. — Paul G 20:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to the Italian Wikipedia Paul! Yes, the evil man who doctored the spelling was me ^_^, so thanks so much for proofreading the examples, sometimes i write things the way i hear them (neibor, plummer for neighbo(u)r plumber, especially after a long day's work). However, when dealing with ass, i think it's difficult not to come across with some usage which is not idiomatic, as in "i saved you ass/arse" since this is a colloquial/slang word, don't you think. What could be a non-idiomatic usage? What perplexed me when going farther up the history column is why you replaced the phrase to have a way of doing something, quoted in Collins Cobuild's Advanced Learners' Dictionary (way, sense 28,1) as correct, giving it just the meaning of "habit". Did you base your choice on register (colloquial, informal etc) or on British/Canadian English? Ciao. Mauro / --Wikipedius 23:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Ciao Mauro - What word are you referring to when you say "to have a way of doing something"? — Paul G 12:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Consume -> please look at talk page

Hi,

I saw you just re-added the definitions of consume I deleted. I put this on the talk page, with a motivation. Could you please have a look there, and tell respond to it or tell me why you restored them, or do something else appropriate? In general, it might be a good idea to have a look at the talk page before doing edits. I also do not understand why you removed the derived terms. Cheers, henne 18:15, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it is useful to have the "eat" and "burn" senses. I don't think "use up" is clear in the senses of a bird consuming its weight in food or a fire consuming a forest - "eat" and "burn" spell out the senses more clearly.

"Consumer" is a derived term ("consume" + "-er") but "consumption" and "consumptive" are not - they derived from the Latin, not from the English word "consume". These belong under "Related terms" (check WT:ELE). I'll make these changes.

I wanted to add some other comments: you seem to make edits which are not conforming to WT:ELE, such as removing capitals from the first word in a definition. Also: is it customary to have etymologies be like puzzles now, or do we want them to be sentences? You add signs such as > and +, I do prefer the spelled-out form. We might continue this discussion in the Beer Parlour, if you want. henne 18:21, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

WT:ELE says that "each sentence may begin with a capital letter" (my italics). I take this to mean that it need not. Many definitions in Wiktionary have been given in lower case with no final full stop.

I do not add ">" to etymologies; I do remove "<" however, as this is unclear (I always respell it as "from"). "+" is quite clear; "and" just looks wrong, IMO.

I hope this clarifies what I am doing. — Paul G 07:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

bagel

Hi Paul,

I was just looking at bagel and saw a curious "Alternative spellings" entry...beigel. A quick google search turned up some proper names, so I removed it (and deleted the stub entry it pointed to) as it obviously was nonsense.

A few minutes later, I went back to see who had added it. I was rather shocked to see it has been here a couple years. Did you add it as a joke or something, or did I miss a salient reference somewhere? Was this from a one-time typo on a menu or something?

--Connel MacKenzie 21:52, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This is bugging me now. One books.google.com hit for beigel (and 46 for Surnames.) Is it real? Should it be restored? --Connel MacKenzie 22:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think so. It's in print dictionaries. If the OED has citations for it, then it's for real, although it might be an older spelling. — Paul G 09:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Online dictionaries giving this spelling (other than Wiktionary) the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, dictionary.com and Wikipedia (see here). — Paul G 09:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

ripper

Hi Paul, do you think that the "murderer" definition of ripper should be expanded? It seems to have come to mean a serial killer of women in the UK even when no mutilation has taken place. And should it be capitalised in that meaning? SemperBlotto 10:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

If we do, then it should be labelled "loosely", as a ripper rips with a knife. You might have heard that there have been comments made on the media's misuse of the term.

The capitalised sense can be marked as a nickname for serial killers of women, perhaps, often used with a name (as in "Jack the Ripper"), but not as the general sense, IMO. — Paul G 10:46, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Definitionless articles.

Hi Paul. Without wanting to piss you off, I was wondering why you enter words with no definitions. I have had a quick look at today's batch and have quickly found definitions for them easily on the web. (I haven't added them yet) SemperBlotto 12:04, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jeff,

Ah, I think I've been taking you too much for granted. I have been adding them just so that I can add derived terms. Often I have a lot of entries to add and don't add definitions if I don't find Wiktionary articles. But it's not really fair of me to expect someone (usually you, as I know you check the definitionless articles regularly) to have to tidy up after me.

I'll make a point of looking a bit more thoroughly for definitions in future to cut down on the the amount of work I leave for other people to do. Sorry, I hope I haven't annoyed you by doing this.

I'll have a bash at the ones I left definitionless today. — Paul G 16:36, 28 December 2006 (UTC)