User talk:Shai

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גזבר

I'm glad to see we have another Hebrew contributor. Our Hebrew sections is currently rather embarrassing. A question about גזבר. Is it supposed to be categorized under Jewish Aramaic derivations and Syriac derivations? From what the etymology says, it's just a cognate with the JA and Syriac words, not descended from them. Other than that, the article looks beautiful. We don't have much precedent for inflections on Hebrew nouns, so it's kind of exciting to see. Atelaes 03:21, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. You're right of course, and I've changed it. Shai 03:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I've linked the cognates and their languages, as I think they're obscure enough to warrant a link. Unfortunately, the etymon can't be linked, as it's just a Romanization. Also, I put a language qualifier in the OP template, as Category:Old Persian derivations is reserved just for English words, with all others going into language subsections. Take a look and see if you think everything's ok. Atelaes 03:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. I wish I knew how to write Old Persian in the original script (some sort of cuneiform I understand), but I don't.
To be honest, I prefer the term "Jewish Aramaic" over "Judeo-Aramaic", since it's more frequent in scientific literature, but it's not that important. Thanks again, Shai 01:02, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Oops, that was my mistake. The Wikipedia article is titled Judeo-Aramaic, and so that was supposed to be the target, not the display. It has been fixed. If you're interested you could take a look at Category:Old Persian language. It's pretty puny, but it's better than nothing. Atelaes 01:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

No problem :-) I hope to contribute to this category in the future, in Hebrew there are some 20-30 words borrowed from Old Persian. Thanks, Shai 03:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

ψαλτήριον

Thanks for my red ψαλτήριον blue :-) Shai 06:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. If you come upon any more Ancient Greek entries that need to be blued, just drop a note here, and I'll happily create them. Atelaes 06:46, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, if you need any Old Persian entries, feel free to drop them on my talk page. I can't guarantee that I'll find them, but it's a language I'm trying to learn, and I'll happily search for them. Atelaes 06:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll do that, thanks. Shai 01:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hebrew

Sadly, on a wiki you are always constrained by the tyranny of the majority, and so I would say there is little you can do. The only thing I can think of is to try and find out if there are others like you who feel the same way, and see if you can stage a revolt of sorts. However, it is my impression that, for whatever reason, this is a community agreed-upon standard of the Hebrew Wiktionary. I am curious what their reasons are for such a rigid approach. If you would enlighten me, if for no other reason than to satiate my curiousity, I would appreciate it (my Hebrew is far too poor to understand such a conversation). Atelaes 00:01, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I too am astonished by this. I take it they have a good reason, otherwise it borders on the despotic. It seems misguided to me.

I note that they only have a few thousand entries so far, according to wiktionary.org. I wonder if they want to restrict themselves to Hebrew words first to avoid these being swamped by non-Hebrew content? — Paul G 09:39, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The main reason is that they see he.witkt as a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary only. I've translated the core two paragraphs of the Bureaucrat's position in the most elaborate discussion on this matter held in October 2006:

My opponents will ask, justly, “who does it bother [that someone will write foreign entries]?”. It bothers [me] when users who can contribute to Hebrew entries don’t do that because they invest time in foreign entries... I just want that we will decide what languages we deal with. Whoever wants to write foreign entries - let him do that in WiktionaryZ.

Let me ask you: when you write an entry, what do you think of? What are you aspiring for? I always aspired for us to make together a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary, and I think it is a very feasible aspiration. But aspiring to build a multilingual dictionary, here, in the Hebrew wiktionary, (we exist more than two years and we don’t even have 4,000 entries!) - is no more than a fantasy.

The irony is that the reason why there are never poeple to contribute foreign entries, is because whenever somebody tries, the Bureaucrat orders them to stop, so they leave...

I don't want to fight him, he's a friend of mine, but I'm frustrated by not being able to contribute English and other foreign words to a Hebrew speaking public. Shai 14:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Boker tov (is that right?), Shai, and thanks for the explanation. It's a disappointing state of affairs, and a minority position, since, as far as I am aware, every other wiktionary is multilingual. It's also a shame that it seems to be that everyone has to do what the bureaucrat says. I am a bureaucrat on here and one of the longest-standing contributors, and my opinion is not valued any more than any other contributor's; I also bow to other people's better judgement all the time.

I'm sorry to say that the Hebrew wiktionary's stance sounds like dictatorship to me. It is also counter to the principles of a wiki, which is democratic by its very nature.

Oh well (or perhaps "oy vey" might be appropriate), good luck to them in achieving 4000 entries in the next two years... — Paul G 15:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I've responded on my talk page. Atelaes 19:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

יש אנשים כמוני, שיש לנו מספיק עברית כדיי לעזור בלהוסיף אנפורמציה על מילים אנגלים, אבל פחות מדי בשביל לעזור עם עברית באמת. אצוב שלא מותר.

אים תכלית לעשות staging של revolt, כמו ש-Atelaes אומר, אני מוכן לנסות לעזור.

—Ruakh_TALK 00:40, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

תודה רבה, Ruakh, I really appriciate it! (and the HTML code for writing Hebrew with English; I always wondered how to do that...)

I'm now trying to see if I can stage a revolt (you guys here are corrupting me :)). It might just be possible, I've already contacted some people. Thanks again, Shai 17:42, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

boker tov

Thanks for the discussion on the Hebrew wiktionary. Can you tell me how "boker tov" is pronounced, please? I got this from the page on good morning. Can it mean "good day" as well?

I'd like to know because I have an Israeli colleague, and I wouldn't like to just say it to him one morning and have him raise his eyebrows in shock and tell me that I just called him a schmuck :) Thanks. — Paul G 15:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Redirects

Please do not creaste redirects from capitalized to uncapitalized pages. This is against community policy. --EncycloPetey 00:08, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

This is one of those policies that may never have been written down. The reasoning behind it is that the capitalized form is othen a word in another language (such as German), or is a word with another meaning. Consider that we have entries for both Ton (German for "clay") and ton (a measurement). If we started relying on redirects based on capitalization, then they would be broken if the capitalized form became an entry. The decision therefore was that we shouldn't make these redirects. Aagin, I'm not sure whether this particular policy was even put into a policy page or not. We've tended to have a very few users doing most of the work of adding entries and cleaning up additions, so policies aren't always set down clearly. In any case, the software automatically does a redirect for capitalization if the target page does not exist, so such redirects are unnecessary. --EncycloPetey 03:01, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

WT:REDIR, FWIW. --Connel MacKenzie 21:40, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Redirects from "Wikipedia style" capitalization to lower case "Wiktionary style" first-letter-uncapitalized aren't "prohibited" but they are viewed as errors. The redirect can always be replaced with a stub entry (with a {{see}} line at the very top) but it is better, generally, not to have those redirects at all. Many newcomers complain that they can't find the "redirected-from" entry to edit; indeed, it is counter-intuitive. No sysop has been bold enough to simply delete all the non-idiom redirects yet. One day, I imaging a sysop will get that bored, so we can then update the policy. In the meantime, such redirects are simply discouraged. --Connel MacKenzie 00:32, 25 May 2007 (UTC)