User talk:Spiros71

at first blush

I haven't reverted your reversion of my edit for this phrase immediately - perhaps we can discuss it? There are no doubt many synonyms in most languages - it seemed/s more useful to me to leave the most common (or the best - and this could argued about) and treat the rest in the way that I did. I have been doing this as standard practice for Greek entries for a number of years.   — Saltmarsh^{συζήτηση-talk} 05:49, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

• Thank you for your message. As a native speaker and translator I believe all synonyms are valid and they constitute linguistic wealth. Some of them are more formal (εκ πρώτης όψεως), some more colloquial (με μια πρώτη ματιά). I do not see any valid reason for diminishing linguistic wealth. The user may decide which one is best for them and/or preferred/more popular options can be cited first.--Spiros71 (talk) 06:01, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

You misunderstand me, I wasn't dismissing the translations' validity, just trying to help the reader. A phrase may have ten valid translations - possible with a common phrase - when do you stop adding them to the Translations section, and you certainly can't add the extra notes here as well. I would hope that the user looking up the English phrase would find the most common one or the most accurate, they would follow the link and find:

• εκ πρώτης εντύπωσης (ek prótis entýposis)
• εκ πρώτης όψεως (ek prótis ópseos) (more formal)
• εκ πρώτης εντυπώσεως (ek prótis entypóseos)
• με μια πρώτη ματιά (me mia próti matiá) (more colloquial)

I feel that I have two valid explanations for my view:

1. Helping the end user with one good entry usable in most situations.

2. Providing, in one place, usage information for alternatives (which can't be put in the Translation section). If it's not done in this way the user has to follow each link to find this information (in this case to find out that X is formal, Y is colloquial, Z is possible insulting, etc).

The end user is 'king', can you tell me how your preferred method might help him/her more.

  — Saltmarsh^{συζήτηση-talk} 11:56, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

• The user may want to use a different synonym for stylistic purposes (for example when the user is a native Greek speaker, looking up English, which is, I believe, the commonest scenario; the user may be searching the Greek synonym phrase and thus find the English "original". :)--Spiros71 (talk) 12:29, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't understand. You seem to be complaining about the "word-linked" phrases - this was a temporary measure before any necessary phrase entry, although I feel that some of the alternatives in this case are sums of parts and don't qualify for their own entry.
Most users of the English Wiktionary will be English speakers, a choice of Greek translations in the Translations section doesn't help them since unlike a native speaker they cannot differentiate styles without help. My preferred method puts all the alternatives in one place with any necessary usage notes.   — Saltmarsh^{συζήτηση-talk} 05:10, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

And can I add that I think that my method keeps both camps happy?   — Saltmarsh^{συζήτηση-talk} 05:14, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

ΤΠ

"τεχνολογία της πληροφορίας" / "τεχνολογία πληροφοριών" — would you judge one of these to be more grammatically correct, or is there a difference in meaning. Google seems to think that both are equally common. Thanks  — Saltmarsh^{συζήτηση-talk} 15:36, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

diff

Hi. You added Türkiye as a synonym, but since it’s merely an alternative spelling of English Turkiye, I have removed it. The main entry (sans diacritic) is already given as a synonym. Cheers. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 12:38, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Interesting, so alternative spelling does not count as synonym? You see, this may be quite important, since Turkey changed its official international name to the version with the diacritic. Spiros71 (talk) 13:37, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Generally it is redundant to add all alternative spellings as synonyms, derived terms, etc. Anyway, in English, which of the two spellings is more common? ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 14:20, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I am not sure whether a useful alternative version which is meant to be the official name of country should be redundant. Is this mentioned in a style guide here somewhere? The common spelling is of course the one without diacritics since Anglophones do not routinely add foreign language diacritics. Spiros71 (talk) 15:34, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Ancient Greek translations

Hi - I'm a bit confused by this edit, where you removed the prosody mark from an Ancient Greek translation: [1]. It's pretty normal to include headword marks like this in links and translations, and I'm not sure that there's any benefit to removing information. Is there really a need to actively remove this kind of thing? Theknightwho (talk) 02:52, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, there is a logic to it. When there are prosody marks in translation, the translation word becomes a red link, so it is not linked properly to the main entry of the Greek form, despite the fact that it often exists (which is the one that should have—and usually does have—the prosody marks). Prosody marks anywhere apart from the main entry are superfluous, impractical and an overkill. So, my suggestion would be to add any missing prosody marks to main entries only. Spiros71 (talk) 05:37, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

@Spiros71 That shouldn't be happening, because marks like that should be removed automatically, in the same way Latin macrons are. Could you let me know all the prosody marks?

Irrespective of whether they go in translations, it's important that this is corrected anyway, because this shouldn't be something which ever needs to be corrected. Theknightwho (talk) 05:48, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Edit: I've just checked, and λεξῐκόν (lexikón) works fine. Theknightwho (talk) 05:49, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

IMHO, in order to avoid confusion, discrepancies and extra work, the best policy is to add and fix prosody marks in main entries only (there is a number of them missing prosody marks). At least this is what I see logical (and this is the standard practice in contemporary Ancient dictionaries like Brill). Also, adding them in every instance is not exactly the easiest think for editors.

Yes, I just checked myself "λεξῐκόν" does work, thanks for the correction. Not sure if that would work for all prosody mark combinations—and there are far too many. Spiros71 (talk) 06:16, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

@Spiros71 I'm not saying they should be mandatory, but I don't really see the point in removing them, either. There's no need to worry about combinations of prosody marks, by the way - that's already accounted for, because otherwise it would be totally impractical. So long as the module knows to remove the right marks, it doesn't matter how many you put on a letter.

@Benwing2 @Erutuon Do you know if we have all of the prosody marks set up for Ancient Greek? I suspect we do, but it wouldn't be hard to add any we don't have. Theknightwho (talk) 06:20, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

"I'm not saying they should be mandatory"—agreed on that. But still I believe that if they exist only on main entry it is a much cleaner and consistent approach avoiding different prosody mark versions depending on editor skills and ability to use them. The operative words here would be consistency and simplicity. And the easiest way to achieve both is by having a policy that we all agree to and stick to. Feel free to invite any other AG contributors to this discussion. Spiros71 (talk) 06:25, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

If that's how you want to do things, that's fine by me - your reasoning makes sense, and I don't edit Ancient Greek. Theknightwho (talk) 06:30, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Well, the idea is what seems more practicable and what appears to be standard practice in contemporary AG lexicography. Not everybody has the skills nor knowledge to handle prosody marks. Consistency is important in lexicography and terminography. And the only way to ensure that is by having a single point where the most complex representation occurs. Imagine having for every English word translation in non-English language Wiktionaries some sort of IPA or other phonetic representation that would require special knowledge and insertion skills, i.e. stress marks—it would be an overkill. I would personally recommend people with prosody mark knowledge to focus their efforts if they so desire on main entries. In that way, they maximize the usefulness of their specialist knowledge. Spiros71 (talk) 06:48, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by having them set up. We try to use both macrons and breves to mark the length of non-diphthongal α, ι, υ as completely as possible in Ancient Greek entries rather than using macrons and not breves as is often done by the Ancient Greek grammars and textbooks that I have seen. Marking all ambiguous-length vowels eliminates the question of whether an unmarked vowel is short or nobody has gotten around to marking it long. (This unfortunately results in combinations of diacritics like ᾱ̓ and ᾱ̓́ that are only rendered correctly by one font that I know of, SBL Greek, and partially by New Athena Unicode.) But I guess there's not any harm done removing a breve in a translation when it's in the entry. Outside of entries I think using macrons and not breves is more legible because both the macrons and breves reduce legibility when they are combined with other diacritics (particularly if the reader doesn't have SBL Greek installed as a font and their browser chooses a font that mangles the sequence of diacritics) and short vowels are probably more common, so eliminating it would improve legibility the most. That makes me okay with Spiro71's edit changing λεξῐκόν to λεξικόν, though I wouldn't bother to do that kind of edit myself. I'm less fond of removing macrons (αἰσχῡ́νη → αἰσχύνη), particularly when they are combined with other diacritics, but at the moment not really interested in arguing about it. — Eru·tuon 05:30, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry - by having them set up I mean having them entered into Module:languages/data/2 so that they get removed from entry names. Theknightwho (talk) 07:49, 20 April 2023 (UTC)