User talk:Stephen G. Brown/2012

Template internationalization

Based on your suggestion at the Grease Pit, I've internationalized all the Vietnamese Wiktionary's header templates (except for language headers), plus quite a few common inline templates, into English and Spanish. Check it out: "bó" (en), "人" (es). I'll add more languages as time permits. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 12:42, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I looked at that. It’s terrific! Thanks. —Stephen ^(Talk) 12:45, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Username:Moises

Thank you for your help. --Moises 16:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Arabic participles

The Sakhr dictionary (for all its flaws) is the only dictionary I know that lists the part of speech of Arabic words, and participles (regardless of their meanings) are always listed as صفة, though I believe the Arabic names of the participles are اسم فاعل and اسم مفعول. I wonder what you can say about this, or if it's possible we should just use Arabic-specific headers (like Ism, Sifa, Masdar) like Lojban does. — [Ric Laurent] — 16:23, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh I forgot to mention, in case you hadn't seen, that I've made a few more conjugation templates for Arabic. I haven't really been doing them in any particular order, though, so there's still... many many many that have yet to be done. But the ones we have got can be found, of course, in Category:Arabic conjugation-table templates and at some point I'll have to make an appendix with a list of them (for there will indubitably be tons of them). I check them while I'm making them and doublecheck before I move them from my subpages where I work on them, but I've been known to miss little things, so Anatoli's offered to help check after and suggested I tell you about them, too. — [Ric Laurent] — 16:29, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I don’t think it’s a good idea to use Arabic-specific headers. Then only advanced students and fluent speakers would be able to get anything out of it. Those PoS names are fine for native speakers of Arabic, but not for Americans and Brits, who usually are beginners or just have a casual interest in a term or two. —Stephen ^(Talk) 16:34, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

If we did use Arabic-specific headers, we could have them link to an appendix describing the Arabic parts of speech and their Indo-European equivalents. — [Ric Laurent] — 16:42, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I think it will make the Arabic entries unusable to all but fluent speakers. It would be better to link English SoP names to an appendix of Arabic equivalents, like we do with verb forms. —Stephen ^(Talk) 16:48, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I've seen the verb-form stuff to which you refer... or maybe I have and just didn't realize it. Anyway, I just remembered I started the table for verbs like تنبأ that needs to be finished before I forget again :D — [Ric Laurent] — 17:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

For example, in the verb كاتب, the template {{ar-verb|form=3| makes the link "Verb form III" to Appendix:Arabic_verbs#Form_III. —Stephen ^(Talk) 17:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh oh oh, ok, I confused Arabic verb forms with other languages' conjugated forms, like with that {{conjugation of}} thing... Needless to say, Arabic is going to need a lot of appendices describing the myriad intricacies of its grammar, morphology, etc... — [Ric Laurent] — 17:32, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Done with that template I mentioned if you'd like to check out its use at تنبأ and تهيأ (which so far are our only form-5 verbs with hamza as the third radical) — [Ric Laurent] — 18:05, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

بئس

Hi,

Steve, you suggested a hamzated verb on my talk page - بئس (báʾisa) - to be sad, miserable. I can't find it in Hans Wehr, only بؤس (báʾusa). Is it from the same root letters? What's the verbal noun? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:13, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I got it now, it's بُؤْس. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 22:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that’s it. It only has the active tenses...no passive tenses. The active participle is: بَائِسٌ —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:30, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Greek transliteration - again

Stephen - our discussion was left in the air - please tell me which transliterations you are unhappy with. There is the medial 'μπ' ? Saltmarsh^{απάντηση} 16:54, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, I was simply not going to do anymore Modern Greek transliterations. But the main culprits are μπ and ντ (in all positions). I don’t see any reason to transliterate υ as ‘y’ rather than as ‘i’, and would rather transliterate the various vowel combinations as they are pronounced, like οι as i...however, this doesn’t seem like such a big deal. So, μπ and ντ are the two that really bother me. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:51, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

NV conj

putting the conjugation tables @ 3rd person sg flies in the face of every expectation. Navajo verbs' dictionary base forms are 1st person sg. Seb az86556 07:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you. I’ve already argued about that at Talk:nahatʼeʼii with User:Eirikr and with others on other pages that I don’t remember anymore. They seem to have the idea that, since Arabic and Hebrew used the 3rd person as the citation form, there is an inherent (but unexplainable) logic for choosing the 3rd person. I think I pointed out that many language use the 1st person for the citation form, including Greek, Latin, and Bulgarian. I always added etymologies with the 1st-person in mind, but when User:Eirikr and others started adding verbs, they went with the 3rd person in spite of my objections. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah well. I'm just pointing that out. They might as well want to spell German with a macron if suits their fancy. Seb az86556 16:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Work has kept me too busy to do much here at WT of late, but I've got a few moments and saw that Stephen had kindly included me in this discussion over on my own Talk page.

@Seb --

There has been little agreement among the Navajo dictionaries and other materials that I've seen with regard to how to introduce a verb. A quick list of the sources I can get a look at at the moment, and how verbs are presented:

• Conversational Navajo Dictionary, Garth A. Wilson -- EN -> NV, full paradigms
• A Navajo/English bilingual dictionary: áłchíní bi naaltsoostsoh, Alyse Neundorf -- NV -> EN, fourth person
• Colloquial Navaho, Young and Morgan -- EN -> NV, varied but mostly first person
• Navajo-English Dictionary, Leon Wall and William Morgan -- NV -> EN, completely scattershot, but with third person apparently more common

While not dictionaries, the following two books discuss the Navajo verb system in some detail:

• The Navajo Verb System: An Overview, Robert W. Young. This is organized by parts of verbs to elucidate how various structures work, but when verbs are presented, the book gives full paradigms.
• The Navajo Verb: A Grammar for Students and Scholars, Leonard M. Faltz. This introduces verbs using the imperfective third-person singular, and then gives full paradigms for verbs. The author also makes a strong case for using the imperfective third-person singular as the main form of a verb, as this is the only form that consistently shows the verb classifier. Faltz discusses at some length about how the first-person form obscures the classifier.

I am fully aware that my experience is limited, but so far as I've seen, I cannot agree with your statements that "putting the conjugation tables @ 3rd person sg flies in the face of every expectation", or that "Navajo verbs' dictionary base forms are 1st person sg." I struggle to find any strong convention at all among the NV-EN dictionaries and other learning material that I'm familiar with, and the only explicit argument one way or the other has been in favor of the imperfective third-person singular.

Are there other dictionaries in addition to Colloquial Navajo that use the first-person singular as the lemma form? And do any of them present lexicographic arguments as to why they chose this form?

@Stephen --

Neither Arabic nor Hebrew has any bearing on my actions with regard to Navajo; I am almost wholly ignorant of the details of any Semitic language anyway.

My own understanding of your comments on Talk:nahatʼeʼii was that which person to use was very much up in the air, and that your own use of first-person forms was more of a preference; I recall no stated position otherwise, nor do I recall any objections on your part. Perhaps those were on other pages, directed at other editors?

Lastly, Faltz has informed my own personal preference for using the imperfective third-person form as the lemma for Navajo verbs, precisely because this form makes the verb classifier explicit, whereas the first-person form hides the classifier.

I hope this clarifies my own actions and positions. If either of you have arguments for why Wiktionary should use first-person singular (or some other form) for Navajo verb lemmata, I'd be interested in hearing them. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I’m just passing on the comments and complaints about it. Like Latin and Greek, the lemma form for Navajo verbs is the 1st person. It doesn’t make much difference to me which way you go with it since I don’t use Wiktionary as one of my reference dictionaries, but I don’t want people thinking that I personally had anything to do with the decision to use the 3rd person. —Stephen ^(Talk) 20:59, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. Two questions come to mind:

1. What is your basis for stating that "the lemma form for Navajo verbs is the 1st person"? You mention this as if it's established fact, but as I noted above, numerous dictionaries and other materials seem to contravene this assertion. Why would the first-person form be the preferable verb form for Navajo lemmata?
2. Stating that "I don’t want people thinking that I personally had anything to do with the decision to use the 3rd person" implies a value judgment that using the third-person form is somehow wrong. What is your basis for this value judgment? What is wrong with using the third-person form of the verb?

To be clear about tone and intent, I'm honestly curious about your reasoning. If this is just a preference and how you want things to be, that's fine; please just say as much. If there is a strong convention at work here and the sources I mentioned above just happen to be the main exceptions, that's fine too; please point me to the titles that use the first person so I can try to find out their reasoning.

As I noted above, Faltz presents a clear argument for using the third person. So far, all I've heard here is that first person "should" be the form used for lemmata, but I haven't heard any clear reasons why.

-- Kind regards, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:34, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I’ve only seen the 1st-person being used as the lemma (although many 3rd-person forms are also defined separately in dictionaries, due to the fact that it is not easy for Europeans to recognize many different forms as being parts of a certain verb). Since I only see the 1st-person being used for that, it is the only standard that I am aware of. Besides it being the common usage, it also makes perfect sense to me that the 1st-person usually displays a prominent landmark that identifies the term as a 1st-person verb form, while the 3rd-person lacks the landmarks. This is not to say that I want to get into reasons for doing it one way or another, I think the established way is the best way regardless of all reasons to do it differently. I think it’s a mistake to decide to use a different person for this, especially without having fluency and a lot of experience in the language, and I expect that there will be complaints and remarks (like the one that I copied to your page). I agree with them and I don’t wish to argue with them or try to defend the decision to use 3rd-persons. That’s why I copied it to your page, so that you can argue with them. As you pointed out, I don’t even understand why you made that choice, so I couldn’t defend it even if I wanted to. I don’t want anybody thinking that I had anything to do with selecting the 3rd person, because if they think I was responsible for it, they would want an explanation from me. The only explanation that I could think of was that you thought it should be like Arabic and Hebrew...but you say that has nothing to do with it. Whatever the reasons were, I don’t know them and don’t agree with them, so I copy the complaints to your page so that you can argue with them yourself. Maybe you can make believers of them. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:24, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Georgian letters

Hi there. Thank you for adding the occasional Georgian letter. Is there any chance of adding the terms (deprecated template usage) Asomtavruli and (deprecated template usage) Mkhedruli? SemperBlotto 22:35, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:19, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

English to Latin for tattoo please

" There is always a light"

Thank you in advanced for you time

Est lux semper. —Stephen ^(Talk) 20:04, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Wow...

I often see you helping out people who ask for translations, and in lots of different languages. How do you know so many?? —CodeCat 20:54, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I got my degrees in linguistics and several languages many years ago, and had a lot of language training in the Army Security Agency, then I owned several translation companies and I did a lot of translation work over 45 years, and a lot of proofreading in languages that I was less proficient in, so it gradually soaks in. Like osmosis. Now that I’m retired, it’s a struggle not to lose it, but no matter how hard you try, it slowly evaporates when you don’t do the work anymore. It amazes me what I’ve forgotten in the last ten years. —Stephen ^(Talk) 21:33, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

hidrografo

thanks for fixing that for me, i kept fuckin it up! =) Lucifer 06:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

aula (Aula)

Hello! Thank you, Stephen G. Brown, for your help. I propably need help for the portuguese aulas, because I didn't find Portuguese examples (I copied the template from Spanish under my edit). Can you tell what these codes mean, and where we find them, please?

Do you know why I ca'nt log in, for some technical reasons (we live in a barge, but the ship is moored)?

Sincerely,

--Air Miss

Which codes do you mean? pt = Portuguese, g = gender, f = feminine, p = plural, lang = language.

What happens when you try to log in? I think it asks for your username and a password. Do you already have an account under a username? If so, maybe you are mistyping the password. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:45, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

cephalin

Hi there. Could you also add pronunciation to this entry please. Some people say Kephalin (probably correct) and some say Sephalin. Cheers. SemperBlotto (talk) 09:51, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:56, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Spanish letter name plurals

Hi Stephen. I was wondering why it appears that you made the plurals of Spanish letter names the same as the singular (e.g. a and ce) rather than having distinct plurals. Cheers. --Bequw → τ 22:41, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

I was probably thinking of a periphrastic like las letras a or something like that. I think what really caught my eye was "as", as in "las as", which is incorrect by any account. The plurals of the letters in Spanish seem to be rarely used, and usually phrasing is used that avoids the plurals of letters. Some of the plurals are easy enough to understand, and some of those plurals are common (jotas, iotas), but some others can cause confusion (las es). —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:01, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for adding them. --Bequw → τ 02:05, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Iithiyópya

I didn't think Navajo had a /θ/ sound, or any /th/ digraph? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 02:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

It doesn’t, and they don’t have it as a digraph, but this is how it is written. It is borrowed from English. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:17, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

So how is the "th" pronounced, /t.h/? /t/? - -sche (discuss) 02:24, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

The -thi- is pronounced /txi/, the same as if it were spelled without an h. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:28, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

• I just had a go at adding a pronunciation guide. I'm not sure if the "P" should go at the end of the yó or at the beginning of the ya; I guessed at the end of the yó given that I haven't seen other py- combinations. -- Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 05:15, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it’s good. Modern Navajo doesn’t have the letter p anyway. —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:22, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking of adding an etyl for completeness, but after reading the NV WP page w:nv:Iithiyópya, I'm not sure if this term comes to Navajo direct from Amharic, or via English? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:41, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I would think it would have to be through English (which Stephen said, above), given that the romanisation of the Amharic doesn't have an 'h'. - -sche (discuss) 07:36, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it came from English during the translation of the Bible into Navajo. The Bible was translated in the early 1900’s, and in the earlier days they were still trying to represent the Navajo [tx] sound with a th, which nicely fit in with the English th spelling in Ethiopia. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:05, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Stephen. And as -sche pointed out, you'd already said "English". Apologies. I really should set aside WT editing when it's late. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't be there /-ja-/ instead of /-ya-/ in the pronunciation? Maro 23:11, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Thanks for pointing it out. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:26, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Voltaic vs Gur languages

Liliana and I have been discussing on WT:RFM#Gur-Voltaic what Wiktionary should call a particular subfamily of the Niger-Congo languages: the "Gur languages", or the "Voltaic languages". Well... Liliana weakly prefers Voltaic and I weakly prefer Gur, but we're both largely indifferent, and it seems no-one else has an opinion on the matter at all. Do you have a preference for one name or the other? - -sche (discuss) 02:42, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Voltaic (from the French) is the older name, but it is superseded by Gur. Gur languages is the modern name of this subfamily. Even the French have dropped the old name for w:fr:langues gur. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:08, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

inh: Azerbaijan

Hi Stephen,

It's hard to find Ingush words on the web but I found "Пирсаьн" or "Пирсьний" (related to Persia) in the meaning of both Azerbaijan and (maybe) Iran. "пирсаьний" looks like an adjective (e.g. "Пирсаьний Мохк" - Republic of Azerbaijan) or the Azerbaijani language ("пирсаьний мотт"?) but I'm not sure. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 04:23, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I know they use пирсаьний, and I think that пирсаьний мотт is good, too, but I’m not sure. Searching on Google, I can find пирсаьний, but not пирсаьний мотт. However, there is so little Ingush on the Internet that this isn’t significant. —Stephen ^(Talk) 04:28, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I've changed to upper case, at least "Пирсаьний Мохк" does exist. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 05:08, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

execución,

execución and execucion have been ignored on RFV since December, so I think it's safe to say no-one intends to cite them as modern Spanish words. Should the entries be deleted now, or would it be better to recategorise them as ==Middle Spanish== or ==Old Spanish==? - -sche (discuss) 03:59, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, they have never been cited and they should be deleted. They can’t be recategorized as belonging to a certain era of Spanish without first finding proper cites and the dates on which they were written. As you said, nobody is going to do it, and they are not Modern Spanish. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you very much for improving the Telugu language words, particularly adding IPA pronunciation. Can you help me in adding the audio files of these words. Thinking you once again.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:57, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

You are welcome. I don’t have any experience with audio files, but I know that the audio files use a format called Ogg (see w:Wikipedia:Media help (Ogg)). If you ask for some help with audio at WT:GP, somebody there will know about audio files. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:33, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

tv ipa

Just curious, is teh-ooh-veh attestable? I've never heard of it, have you?Lucifer (talk) 20:42, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I don’t know how you would attest it, but I’ve certainly heard it. "Ooh-veh" (uve) is a common pronunciation of the letter v. My business partner was from Pamplona, Spain, and that’s how he pronounced it, and that’s how I say it when I’m in Spain. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:29, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Requiring entries to use e.g. {{context|medicine}} instead of e.g. {{medicine}}

Hi Stephen,

I know you've often been annoyed by these sorts of changes, so I wanted to make sure you had a chance to see this proposal, weigh in on it, etc. The substance of the proposal is that we would no longer put things like {{rare}} or {{medicine}} directly in entries, but rather, we would always use {{context|rare}} or {{context|medicine}}.

(And while I'm here, let me call your attention as well to the related Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Renaming “context labels”. Together, the effect of the two proposals would be that {{rare}} and {{medicine}} would become {{label|rare}} and {{label|medicine}}.)

—Ruakh_TALK 00:02, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. It would be much more useful, and more user friendly, if, rather than deleting templates such as {{rare}}, they were modified to display {{context|rare}}, so that either method would have the same effect (or else, modify it to display the same as {{label|rare}}, as the case may be). When I was young, I has an elastic memory that could handle such silliness, but now I can’t. At my age, it takes me too long to forget one and learn another in its place.

There is no point to my weighing in on it, it would not make an iota of difference. Because so many of these have already been changed like that, I never know which label templates work and which don’t, so I generally avoid all of them. For the same reason, I now try not to add any categories other than what is added automatically by the PoS template. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:24, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Re: "if, rather than deleting templates such as {{rare}}, they were modified to display {{context|rare}}, so that either method would have the same effect": Well, that is the current behavior. This proposal is actually specifically about removing that behavior. So you're saying it would be more useful if, rather than making this change, we didn't make the change. :-)   I don't see why you wouldn't want to weigh in to say that.

Re: "so many of these have already been changed like that": I could be wrong, but — I really don't think so. Rather, the problem is that many templates like {{obstetrics}} have never been created. And there's no way to fix that, since there are infinitely many possible sense-labels, and we can never create all of them. But you don't need to avoid anything: you can always write {{context|rare}} or what-have-you. The current system is that {{insert-context-label-here}} sometimes works and {{context|insert-context-label-here}} always works. The proposed system is that {{insert-context-label-here}} never works and {{context|insert-context-label-here}} always works. Hopefully this would prevent other editors from ever experiencing exactly the same confusion that you've experienced.

—Ruakh_TALK 13:31, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I’ve already attempted to explain the proposition in a previous year after a bunch were deleted, to no avail. I normally drop a matter after one attempt and just stop doing that kind of edit. —Stephen ^(Talk) 14:55, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand why you want to stop making this kind of edit. You've already said that you can't keep track of which sense-labels have their own templates (e.g. {{US}}, {{fiction}}) and which ones have to be called via {{context}} (e.g. {{context|Texas}}, {{context|hypothetical}}); and I can't, either. (This is one of the reasons for the proposed change: the status quo is confusing, and no one can keep track of it.) But as far as I can tell, this isn't really a problem, since you can always use {{context|US}} and {{context|fiction}} and so on even when the template does exist. Do you dislike having to type context|? Do you have an eidetic memory for which templates have ever existed, but no way to remember that there's a possibility that one has been deleted? I just don't understand. :-/   —Ruakh_TALK 15:44, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

These are tools used to craft the dictionary, completely different from the words that go into the dictionary, and different people use different tools. If it is decided that we don’t like one, for instance {{rare}}, to add a certain category or have a certain look, then we can make something new that does something else, and we can also keep {{rare}} and make it do the same thing. Someone who doesn’t use {{rare}} much, or ever, won’t care one way or the other, but if I use {{rare}} all the time, and if this is just one of a large proportion of such templates that I use, so that some of them still work and others are replaced with something else, then it becomes too difficult to keep track of it all.

Really it is very difficult to try to explain without real examples, and it has been too long ago that so many of the tools I used were deleted (all of which could easily have been redesigned to display different things in a different manner), so I stopped adding categories and the like. You were around then, I don’t know how you missed it. Maybe you just forgot.

The tools we use are a different matter from the words we enter. Different people need and use different tools, for different reasons. These tools do not have to be deleted, only modified. Anyway, it was too long ago, so I can’t recall real examples now.

What I dislike is trying to type, for example, {{bird}}, only to discover that it no longer works, then trying {{birds}}, which still doesn’t work, then {{orn}} to see if that works, but no, then {{ornith}}, still no, then {{ornithology}}, still nothing, and then going down to the bottom and entering manually Category:lang:Birds, then if that doesn’t work, keep trying other permutations. After a half hour or so I discover one that works, move on the the next page, and start the whole procedure over again with some other template. I need the tools I use, they only have to be modified, not deleted. Since the tools are deleted (because other editors don’t use them anyway), it increases the difficulty of the work I do by orders of magnitude, so I just don’t do those kinds of edits anymore. I’ve already explained all of this. —Stephen ^(Talk) 16:22, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh! I know what you're referring to; we used to have a template {{bird}} for tagging senses that denoted types of birds, but then it was deleted on the grounds that it's not a usage context. (And it's not alone.) I agree that those sorts of deletions are unpredictable; and I've had the same problem that you've had, of not knowing how to find a category that I assume must exist. But I don't see the connection between that change and this one. This change should only increase consistency and predictability, no? It won't solve the problem you describe — you would then try {{context|bird}}, then {{context|birds}}, and so on before giving up — but it also wouldn't cause any new problem. :-P   —Ruakh_TALK 17:21, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2012-04/User:Metaknowledge for admin

Poke. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:49, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Telugu letters

Hi there. I notice that each of these is just defined as "A Telugu letter." Is there an alphabetical sequence that would allow them to be defined something like "The nth letter of the Telugu alphabet."? SemperBlotto (talk) 10:07, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes and no. There are about 560 Telugu letters in the Telugu syllabary, which includes 16 vowels and 35 consonants. The 16 vowels have an order, and the 35 consonants have an order, but the many letters that are made up of a consonant + a vowel aren’t really subject to this kind of order. Taking the letter తో (tō) as an example, the consonant that forms its beginning (త) is the 16th consonant in the syllabary; the vowel that finishes it (ఓ) is the 13th vowel of the syllabary. It is customary to make a grid to hold the letters, with the base consonants running down the left margin, and the base vowels running across the top (or vice versa), similar to the Tamil table at Index:Tamil.

So I guess the best answer to your question is, no, alphabetical sequences are probably not appropriate for Telugu letters (other than the base consonants and base vowels, although these base consonants and vowels are separate elements of the syllabary and are not sequenced all together the way English consonants and vowels are).

A similar situation to Japanese hiragana, where a letter might be described this way:

The hiragana syllable か (ka) is the sixth syllable of the gojūon order, and its position in gojūon tables is “row KA, section A”. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:41, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. That explains why there are several letters in each alphabetical section of the category listing. SemperBlotto (talk) 10:43, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

It is nice and helpful discussion about the many Telugu letters. I will complete preparing the pages for each of the Telugu letter. Can someone prepare a template including all the letters both vowels and consonants and their variations.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 14:07, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

See Template:Telugu letters. —Stephen ^(Talk) 01:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much Stephen sir. It is nice to see all variations of Telugu letters in one template. Can you adjust the size of some horizontal and vertical columns so that each box is of same size and occupies the letter in in a single line. Sorry for asking another favour.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I made the letters smaller so that they will fit better. I makes it harder to read, I thing. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:05, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for making this template. Can you suggest me where to keep it for the maximum access for Telugu editors.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

According to the articles in English wikipedia ex. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_ligature and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_script any combination of two letters of any type should be considered as a Ligature. Thereby all the variations of Telugu letters should be directed to Ligatures category.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:27, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I’m not sure what you mean. All of the two-letter combinations in Template:Telugu letters are ligatures. Do you mean that there should be a special category just for ligatures? I don’t think it is needed. All Telugu letters, including ligatures, should be directed to Category:Telugu letters. But if you think it is important, then the ligatures could also be directed to Category:Telugu ligatures.

I’m not sure about the best place to put Template:Telugu letters. Right now we have Template:index/Telugu, which is an index of letters to the lists where all Telugu words are to be found. I’m not sure if we should keep it the way it is or replace it with Template:Telugu letters. What do you think, would it be better to alphabetize Telugu words according to Template:index/Telugu or to Template:Telugu letters? Besides that, we could keep it at Appendix:Telugu script characters. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:36, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

If the two-letter combinations are ligatures, I will separate them from the basic letters and recategorise them in Ligatures. The Index template linking them to the basic letters should be retained as it is. As the index of words expands, we can think about further classifying them. Can we index the existing Telugu words using some software programme. Can you help in this area and show how to add new word in the future. Thank you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:51, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

The only letters in Template:Telugu letters that are not ligatures are the 16 independent vowels in the left margin (like అ), and the 2nd row of 35 consonants across the top (like క and ఖ). All the rest are ligatures.

I have not tried to put words in the index before. I think that it can be done by the bot called Conrad.Bot, which is operated by Conrad.Irwin. Conrad.Irwin will probably know how to do it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:06, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I have requested Conrad.Irvin and waiting for his response regarding Telugu indexing. Meanwhile, I have started entering the words similar to English indexing. I hope it wont be a problem to covert to Bot indexing. Please advise me.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 12:48, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

I don’t think that will be a problem. I made a small adjustment under Index:Telugu/అ, Index:Telugu/ఆ, and Index:Telugu/క. For example, I changed ===అ=== to ===ఆ / ā=== (adding the transcription). If you don’t think it’s a good idea, we can change it back. —Stephen ^(Talk) 00:16, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the support. It is really good idea. You have added the index to Index:Telugu/క letter. It would have taken long time for me doing that. Have you used some shortcut method. I would be happy if you can do that to other letters with large number of words.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:16, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

It isn’t difficult. If you add at least three headers, like ===క / ka===, etc., it creates an index automatically. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:30, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I have added the template for ga and ca index pages. But who will add the pages or how to get all the pages if we have to add them manually.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 07:17, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I suppose that Conrad.Irwin will add the pages using Conrad.Bot. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:26, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Dear sir, I have requested Conrad.Irwin for help. He is not responding; may be busy with the commitments. He is doing nice indexing for Index:Hindi and also other languages. Can you also make a request to him. Manually to do this Indexing is taking long time and also probably may not be complete. Will there be anyone else, who can help me. Kindly help me.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:34, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

He seems to be busy on another project somewhere. He has not made an edit here since May 2, 2012, about one and a half months ago. I looked at his Wikipedia page, and he has been absent from there since February. I don’t know where to find him, but I suppose that he will come soon to check his messages. At least, I hope so. If there is an automatic way to do Indexing, someone should know about it on WT:GP. That is where the programmers and software experts go to solve technical problems. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:44, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

ال

Please see my talk page. I replied. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 12:18, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

memini

I can't think of any other verbs that act like this, so I think it needs a unique conjugation template. Are you able to make one? Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:56, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

My template know-how is rather primitive. I think either User:SemperBlotto or User:EncycloPetey has been doing these templates for the Latin verbs. —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:02, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I was just basing this off of seeing your name in related template edit histories. I will try them. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 14:31, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Proto-Polynesian

I've been working on Proto-Polynesian, which is usually pretty straightforward, but it's getting harder. Would you mind taking a look at User:Metaknowledge/Proto-Polynesian personal pronouns? The fact that no extant Polynesian language that I'm aware of still has the trial made this a little hard, because the old trial forms replaced the plurals, and thus the plurals are basically guesswork. Thanks! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:38, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I don’t have my books on PPN around anymore, so I’m not sure. I think the 1st person singular is also divided into inclusive and exclusive. I think there were already different dialects of PPN after it separated from PAN, and I’m not sure about the range of possibilities in pronouns. I would think the 1st-person singular inclusive would be at least *aku, if not *i-aku; and that the 1st-person singular exclusive would be *ta or *ita. I’m pretty sure these have been reconstructed, but I don’t have the resources to see. —Stephen ^(Talk) 04:38, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Wow! About *aku, I considered that, but here's the catch: the oldest Tongic languages, Tongan and Niuean, both have (deprecated template usage) au. Same thing with the most linguistically conservative Nuclear Polynesian languages, Maori and Rapa Nui. Do glottal stops and hard plosives like k tend to fall out of extremely common words in Polynesian languages?

Also, I don't really understand how the inclusive/exclusive distinguishment works in 1st person sg. How can you exclude or include entities when there is only one entity (the speaker)?

Finally, what do you think of my reconstructions for the plurals? I'm rather suspicious of them, because for a couple I can't find any evidence.

Thank you so much! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:49, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

It is common in the Polynesian languages for k to become a glottal stop, and eventually to fall out altogether, depending on the language. The plurals don’t seem right to me, either. —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:14, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm still having trouble verifying my guesses, and I can't find any scholarly work on the subject that I can access. I would be honored if you would edit my subpage to what you think is most reasonable, so I have better assumptions than mine to work off of. Thank you --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:01, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

There is an interesting source here (A New View of the Proto-Oceanic Pronominal System), but it isn’t free. I think they want to charge $14 for access.

Just a bit earlier than Proto-Polynesian is Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. In Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, 1st-sg. = *i-aku; 2nd-sg. = *i-kahu; 3rd-sg. = *si-ia; 1st-pl. (inclusive) = *i-(k)ita; 1st-pl. (exclusive) = *i-(k)ami; 2nd-pl. = *i-kamu; 3rd-pl. = *si-ida. (This is just a partial list for comparison.)

While *i-aku is very close to Samoan a‘u, and even though other bits look familiar as well, nevertheless there is a considerable difference between Proto-Malayo-Polynesian pronouns and those of the Modern Polynesian languages. I think it is problematic to think of a single Proto-Polynesian language, and I think there were already dialects as I said before. It may be necessary to narrow it down to Proto-Eastern Oceanic in order to arrive at a good table. Anything that we posit as a Proto-Polynesian form is just going to be guesswork, and I think it will be necessary to look at some sources such as the one above at www.jstor.org. —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:00, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I guess I can't come up with as unified a reconstruction as I had hoped. At least this has been quite educational. Thank you --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:30, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

села

Hi. Could you check села? It didn't look like an alternative spelling. I also changed the transliteration. If something is wrong please revert. Maro 22:48, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Cześć, Maro. In a running Russian texts, if you know letter "ё" is simply spelled as "е" without any affect on pronunciation, causing problems for foreign learners, children and even adult native speakers. So, "города и села" may be read as both "го́рода и села́" (genitive singular - miasta i wsi) or "города́ и сёла" (nominative/accusative plural - miasta i wsie). So, села is indeed, also an alternative form of сёла where "ё" is implied and pronounced "sjóla". BTW, could you use the assisted method to add Polish translations, please? I've been converting translations in the format [[słowo]] {{n}} to {{t|pl|słowo|n}}. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 23:39, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know about that. Are such spellings (е instead of ё) correct? Where can they be found? In newspapers? Or on the Internet only?

On the Polish Internet, spelling without Polish diacritics (aeszl instead of ąęśżł) is very common. It is understandable for native speakers, but it's not correct and I woudn't say that, for example "zolw" is an alternative spelling of "żółw". How about Russian е/ё?

PS. Is accusative plural for боксёр, for dog and person, the same or different? Maro 23:15, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

"Е" instead of "ё" is not considered incorrect. It is written in books, newspapers and commonly by people. Ё is always used in dictionaries, textbooks for children and foreigners and when there is some ambiguity. It's not the same as Polish, compare café/cafe or façade/facade in English and Arabic hamza. Note that и is never replaced with й and using "е" instead of "ё" is not true for Belarusian, only Russian. There was an attempt to make writing "ё" mandatory but it failed and this feature continues to cause issues with pronunciation. It is mandatory to use "ё" in the Russian Wikipedia. See [1], [2] (in Russian).

The accusative plural for боксёр is the same for dog and person, as both are animate. If "боксёры" were used as "бо́ксеры", incorrect for "boxers", type of clothing, accusative plural would be equal to nominative (inanimate). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 23:31, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Latvian ala: declension

Technically, ala is a feminine word ending in a, and the first feminine declension in Latvian is usually called the fourth declension (the first three being almost all masculine nouns), if I'm not mistaken.

Are there general guidelines for the outlook of Latvian entries? I see they often differ in form from each other, or use different templates. I decided to not mention the declension class next to the headword (so, just ala f, not fourth declension) because the declension table following it should make the declension class clear. But other entries follow a different format. I wonder if I should try to regularize everything -- or should I discuss that with others who edit the Latvian words here beforehand? --Pereru (talk) 20:03, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I don’t do Latvian entries, I mostly do Russian. I agree, there is no good reason to mention which declension if there is going to be a declension table provided. The template should be changed so that it is not necessary to do that anymore (but templates are often difficult to figure out and change).

I don’t think we have anyone at the moment who is doing Latvian entries, so if you can regularize everything, that would be wonderful. Do it.

For one thing, you might consider making a page for Latvian similar to Wiktionary:About German. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:50, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Votes/bt-2012-06/User:タチコマ robot

Could I bring this to your attention? While there is a full hour for vote to close, I am eager to run the script. :)

I'd like to ask the restoration of User:WOPR which was the former userpage (and user talk page) of my bot. This should generate two double redirect for the bot to fix. This isn't critical but I would like it if it is OK.

-- Cat ^chi? 22:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:59, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Awww, it seems you fixed the existing double redirects. :) Could I ask the undeletion of the bots talk page too? -- Cat ^chi? 23:05, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. Done as well. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:10, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually I assumed above that the vote would be closed immediately after the designated time, is there a post-bot vote process? Do I need to do anything? -- Cat ^chi? 23:53, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

BTW, bot needs to be unblocked too. It was blocked for not being authorized in 2008 (wasn't really necessary IMHO but that isn't important). -- Cat ^chi? 00:52, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Unblocked. —Stephen ^(Talk) 00:57, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

'Okina standardization

Please see User talk:Chuck Entz#'Okina standardization. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:37, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Something about fonts

Hello. Random question, but I was reading a little about font design lately, and I am curious about your work in "font development" (term taken your user page). Could you tell me what it is that you do in that area: is it the actual graphic design, or more like typographical advice from your knowledge of various languages? Have you worked on any of the everyday (Mac, Windows...) fonts that everyone recognises? Equinox ◑ 22:12, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I haven’t done it in a while, but it was the actual graphic design, as well as digitizing and adding data such as kerning pairs. I had to use different methods, tools, and systems at different times, as the technology changed. I stopped around 2003 when everybody started to switch to Open-Source Unicode fonts. At that time I was using Fontographer on the Macintosh, which would generate Truetype and Postscript fonts for either Mac or PC. The new Open-Source fonts required much more data, such as font hinting, and so an array of complicated software programs were needed at various stages to produce each font.

I designed the first Cambodian fonts for PC, and I created fonts for Russian, Arabic, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Hebrew, and so on. I think the last large order that I did was for the Boy Scouts of America, who needed fonts for outreach materials in numerous languages. And I made a large Chinese font for the U.S. Government that included a bunch of obscure and obsolete characters that are only used in some ancient placenames. I made foreign-language screen fonts for Juno Systems that they used in their Automated Driver's License Test computers so that people in California and other states could take the test in their own languages. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:51, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. Who commissioned those early Cambodian fonts? (The other day someone drew my attention to the "pile of poo" glyph in Unicode [3] (and there are now loads of other "iconic" emoji). As important as it might be to have a cross-platform representation of symbols like these, I have a hard time accepting them as part of a character set, even a huge one. We used to do it with UDGs. heh heh.) Equinox ◑ 22:52, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

The Cambodian job started out with MLS (Multi-Lingual Software), part of Gamma Productions in Santa Monico, CA. Soon we began working with the Unicode Consortium. Designing the glyphs was not a big problem...the real difficulties were selecting what glyphs to include, and what the alphabetic order would be. Biggest of all was how to make it accessible on a keyboard so that most Cambodians would be able to type it. We first did this for all the Indic languages, which is where we came up with the idea of a phonetic approach instead of the old, cumbersome analogue method. That’s why, in the Indic languages, now you type consonants and vowels in the order in which they are spoken, which is frequently the opposite of the order in which they appear in the word, like "bi" (बि), where the vowel is written before the consonant but pronounced after it. That and the problem of accessing the many conjunct consonant clusters was solved by using a phonetic approach. It was a lot harder to make this work for Cambodian, but we finally figured out a way to make Cambodian fairly easy to type by making the usp10.dll shaping engine do most of the work automatically. Before this, only a small handful of dedicated Cambodian masters could type or typeset Cambodian, and it was completely out of reach to the man in the street. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi :)

HI there Stephen :) Nice to see you're still active here :) I'd like to thank you for what you went through the last time I was active on this project and hopefully be able to work with you again in a few weeks to months when I get back into transliteration of Kannadian terms again :) Hopefully, you would be willing to do that :) Thanks, Razorflame 23:33, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

No problem. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:45, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks :) I'll let you know if and when I start again :)

Kannada userspace page

Can you double-check the transliterations of these Kannada terms on User:Razorflame/Kannada/KNTL/OH, please? Thanks, Razorflame 03:19, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

They’re correct. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:33, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, I'll go ahead and add them now :) Razorflame 03:34, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to start working on transliterations of Kannadian words once again, they can be found on User:Razorflame/Kannada/KNTL. I'll let you know when words on that page need to be checked over :) Thanks again for your help :) One thing I'd like to ask, though, where can I find a table for transliteration of Kannada words because I haven't worked on transliterating Kannada words in a long time and could use a refresher as well as a helpful guide :) Razorflame 03:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Appendix:Kannada letters. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:44, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi Stephen, has this one become obsolete - WT:KN TR? The page you mentioned looks more like a transliteration table, rather than an index, perhaps they should be merged or the small page deleted and replaced with the large one. I don't do Kannada, just adding occasionally very basic translations. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 04:08, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I’m not sure. WT:KN TR might be useful as an index page, like the Telugu index at Template:index/Telugu. WT:KN TR might also be used to make Template:kn-categoryTOC (now done). The Index:Kannada is probably more useful as a transliteration table. —Stephen ^(Talk) 16:29, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks again for the help :) I'll start working on new transliterations now :) Razorflame 03:45, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Moved Index:Kannada to Appendix:Kannada letters. Created new Index:Kannada. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:06, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

halchin

Since I'm not sure if what this user is adding is correct, could you double-check it, since you know a little nv? Thanks, Razorflame 22:40, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

It’s good. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:44, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I wasn't sure because I've never seen you add conjugation or declension tables to Navajo terms before... Razorflame 22:47, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Navajo has complex conjugations, but no declensions. Many words have inflections, such as bee. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:50, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thanks :) By the way, the place where I will place the Kannada transliterations for you to check will be at User:Razorflame/Kannada/KNTL/TBC. You can check them whenever you want. Just add (correct) in the same manner as the others you've seen when you've checked them :) Thanks, Razorflame 22:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Enquiry about Spanish Cases

¶ Hullo, and I thank you for altering my Title. I desir’d to ask you if Cases on common Nouns were ever used in (Old) Spanish, as in Old French or Romanian. --Æ&Œ (talk) 21:36, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

No, I think that Old French had a double-case system, but Old Italian and Spanish started out with a single-case system. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:09, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

On citation in "Сожитие"

• 1876, князь Владимир Петрович Мещерский, Речи консерватора

  Разъ — дворянство, подъ предлогомъ, что оно было живымъ существомъ только вслѣдствие крѣпостнаго права, а не в силу своего органическаго сожитія съ народомъ, было удалено отъ вліянія на реформы […] явился уже не дѣствительный, а фиктивный міръ русскаго народа и русскаго государства […]

I'm afraid the translation is a bit untrue here. I believe it runs something like this:

• Once — nobility, under the pretext that it was a living thing only because of serfdom, and not because of its organic cohabitation with the people, was removed from the influence of reform […] there emerged a world of the Russian people and Russian state that was no longer valid one but a fictitious one.

Явился means "it came about" and "a" after the comma means "but". "Уже не.. а.." = "no longer (the valid world) but (false one)."

Cheers, --CopperKettle (talk) 11:28, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

You just need to fix it. This is a wiki. —Stephen ^(Talk) 20:08, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't sure, tried to find the original text but couldn't. But OK, I'll fix it. Cheers, --CopperKettle (talk) 03:31, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Template:artfl

I noted this template in reviewing uncategorized templates.

It would need an updating: for links, for the abbreviations to be brought into conformity with current practice, etc. Do you still use it? To a large extent its functionality has been replaced by browser tabs. I don't feel compelled to RFD it, though such an RFD might lead to someone using it, adopting it, and updating it. DCDuring TALK 16:34, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I’d forgotten that it even existed. I haven’t used it in years. I don’t even remember where I used it. At first glance, it looks interesting, but I am not a programmer and wouldn’t know anything about updating it or whether it is rendered obsolete by browser functionality. —Stephen ^(Talk) 20:57, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not a programmer either, but the tabs available in modern browsers can keep many reference sites open to facilitate work in entries. And one can make one's own reference sheets and keep them in a browser tab or some text program. I'll make use of the links that are still good and put it into RfD. If it is adopted, it will be kept. It may be kept anyway. DCDuring TALK 22:06, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Hm... this is actually a clever idea, a template designed to help an editor by displaying useful information on preview. would it help you if there were a template like this that contained, for example, topically sorted collapsible lists of all the templates we use? So if you were editing [[contour feather]], you could put the template on the page, hit preview, and it would show several collapsible lists like "grammar and linguistics" and "animals and animal sciences", and you could click the latter and it would show a list of all our animal science templates ({{ornithology}}, {{biology}}, etc), so you could see whether the template for "(ornithology)" was {{birds}} or {{ornithology}}? - -sche (discuss) 22:17, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Grease pit#template-guide_to_be_used_on_preview :) - -sche (discuss) 22:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Category:Hawaiian adjectives resurrect

Hi, just to warn you I had recreate this category. I couldn't see the reasons of deletion so I let you know if they were legitimes (maybe grammar error, or title). Thanks. V!v£ l@ Rosière ^/Murmur…/ 02:53, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

разблюто

Your most recent edit to разблюто has been reverted as vandalism, spam or for being unacceptable for any of various other reasons. Please desist, or else you may be blocked. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:02, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

You’re an ass. My "recent" edit was in 2006, you prat. It wasn’t vandalism, we had a detailed discussion about it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 04:50, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Latin or Roman script

Hi! I noticed that you replaced the term Latin with the term Roman for the script in the translation section of BTW here. Previously I went and tried to unify anywhere I found the term Roman to be be under the term Latin instead. It's not just because of personal affinity (since in Serbo-Croatian the term Latinica is used and I'm kind of accustomed to it), but also because I found out that the term "Latin script" is used as the first option at several places I find quite trustworthy: on wikipedia (w:Latin script) as well as in wiktionary (Category:Latin script etc.). Do you have any particular reason why instead of the term Latin the term Roman should stand? Best regards, --BiblbroX дискашн 20:57, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Butting in. If you add translations to Serbo-Croatian via the JavaScript then you're able to nest Cyrillic and Roman automatically using Serbo-Croatian/Cyrillic and Serbo-Croatian/Roman text in the Nesting section. It's just a convention. Latin and Roman are synonymous in English. Also, Latin is a language for which there may be translations, so it may be a bit easier just using "Roman". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 23:20, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Years ago when User:Dijan first began adding SH in Cyrillic and Roman scripts, he labeled the entries Cyrillic and Latin. This was somewhat confusing since Latin is a language. After some discussion and consideration we decided to use Cyrillic and Roman instead, since Roman script is just as good as Latin, but is not confused with the Latin language. So we spent quite a long time changing all of his Latin labels to Roman.

BTW, we have had a similar issue with Aramaic, where the scripts are labeled Syriac and Hebrew. Since Hebrew is also a language, it often happens that someone gets confused and moves the Aramaic Hebrew entry from its position under Aramaic to a new position under Hebrew. Once this is done, it is very difficult to detect the error and rectify it. Hebrew speakers just think it’s a mistake and they delete it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:19, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

I add Latin translations and have come to dread seeing Serbo-Croatian when I do so. Clearly there are many more instances of 'Latin' that need to be cleared out. If you guys have an automated way to do it, I would be most glad. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:32, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

When I occasionally add Hebrew translations via the tool, I have similar problems when a nested Syriac translation exists in Hebrew. Interestingly, the preview shows the right thing but when the translation is saved, the Hebrew translation goes into Syriac. If you don't refresh the page, you won't notice. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 02:53, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

K, Roman seems reasonable to me. Anyway I also noticed that when I add translations thru Javascript, it sometimes messes up the entries. So I'll try and use Roman from now on. --BiblbroX дискашн 16:56, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

baapaashkizige-giizhigad

I don't really understand this entry; if you could clean it up, it would be much appreciated. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:42, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Most Ojibwe words are verbs. —Stephen ^(Talk) 12:10, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

That's really intriguing; I've never studied an Amerinidian language, so I had never seen anything like that. The etymology helps. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:35, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

sc=Cyrl

I noticed you added some Slavic terms to Template:termx. You don't actually need to add sc= for most languages (except languages like Serbo-Croatian that have multiple scripts) since the script code is automatically deduced from the language code. —CodeCat 16:41, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I copied the Slavic section from another page and just changed the data. I usually don’t add sc= anywhere. As far as I can tell, it rarely makes a difference anymore, at least on my computer. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:35, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Font specifications

Terms in Navajo and Ojibwe are appearing in a different font size and style than they should for me. I believe this is because Template:nv/script has nv-Latn and Template:oj/script has Cans. Is there a reason that these two shouldn't just be Latn? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:02, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

It’s partly due to the fonts that you have installed, and partly to MediaWiki:Common.css. Navajo needs certain fonts; regular Latin fonts do not work correctly. Ojibwe can be written either in Latin script or in Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. Ojibwe-speakers in the U.S. use Latin script; in Canada, they use syllabics. In MediaWiki:Common.css, User:Mglovesfun set the Navajo fontsize to 130%, because the font that he has installed looks very small. I use a different font which is large, so 130% is huge for me. —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:44, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't Ojibwe be modeled after Template:sh/script, then? And why do regular Latin fonts not work for Navajo? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:54, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I don’t know anything about Template:sh/script. Regular Latin fonts do not place the accents correctly. For instance, a word like selį́į́ʼ should have one acute accent over each of the two i’s. Regular Latin fonts usually place the first one directly on the L, and the second one collides with the dot over the first i. It is illegible to anyone who can otherwise read Navajo. If you have a Navajo font installed, such as Aboriginal Sans Serif, then Template:nv-Latn will display the letters correctly: each accent is above its i, and the i’s have no dots. There are other bad problems with regular Latin fonts as well, but this is a good example. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:11, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

The way that sh/script works is that it allows the user to decide the script, with sc= (and thus the reader the fonts). That way, it can comfortably function with two scripts. If Ojibwe did this, I think it would be a great advantage, especially if one script was chosen as default. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

I don’t know how the SH users select the script or set one as default, but it should not matter much at the moment. When I was creating Ojibwe pages, I always used Latin script, but when Canadians such as User:CJLippert did it, they use syllabics or both at once. But User:Mglovesfun made a dog’s dinner of a number of Ojibwe pages, so the Ojibwe effort has been halted. Nobody wants to add any Ojibwe if User:Mglovesfun is just going to wreck them. So if you want to do something with the Ojibwe fonts, that should be fine as far as I am concerned. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

That's a real pity. I won't change it, because I'm not clear on all of the implications, which might include needing to fix a lot of uses of {{term}}, {{l}}, etc. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:34, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Tbot entry

Hey, I was wondering if you could expand the Bulgarian Tbot entry at газ (gaz)? I just thought it'd be nice, since it's the only Tbot entry in the never created Category:Tbot entries August 2011 User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 12:18, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, on an unrelated note, could you give some input here in relation to the dialects of Slavey? User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 13:55, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!

I would like to thank you for starting my user page on Wiktionary.
Actually, my user page in Wikipedia has a lot of information about me: MuhdNurHidayat
And I prefer to be called or wrote as Hidayat because Muhammad is actually name of prophet, otherwise call me or write in full given name form Muhammad Nur Hidayat.
(My name is actually Muhammad Nur Hidayat Bin Saharudin)
Anyway, I really want to thank you for creating my user page! :)
-- 빛다얕 / Muhammad Nur Hidayat ^{(Talk to me!)} 14:43, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

You’re welcome. —Stephen ^(Talk) 18:38, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

‘el español’

Mister Brown, do you know if there is a significantly different meaning between ‘hablo el español’ versus just ‘hablo español’? Is one less correct than the other? Ciao. --Æ&Œ (talk) 00:07, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Usually it would be incorrect to say "hablo el español". Although the definite article commonly accompanies the names of languages, usually you do not use a definite article after the verbs hablar and aprender. One might say "domino el español" (I’m totally fluent in Spanish), but "hablo español" or "aprendo español". Sometimes you might need to use the definite article if the language is further modified, as in "hablo el español mexicano" (I speak Mexican Spanish). In that case, the definite article contrasts Mexican Spanish with the other possible dialects. —Stephen ^(Talk) 01:25, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Platon Karatayev

Hello Stephen,

I was wondering if you could tell me how to pronounce Platon Karatayev, thanks in advance. 81.68.255.36 16:44, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Плато́н Карата́ев = IPA^(key): /pləˈton.kə.rɐˈta.jɪf/ —Stephen ^(Talk) 16:51, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much :) 81.68.255.36 19:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Yiddish gender

Just curious, where are you getting your Yiddish gender information (so I can fill it in myself without relying on you)? --WikiTiki89 (talk) 10:18, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

From http://www.yiddishdictionaryonline.com/ ... it doesn’t have an extensive list. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:21, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

:o

People have said it before, but yet once again: wow. I am genuinely impressed with your language skills, how much you know about the (to me) most obscure languages and scripts. Anyway, I want to wish you all the best! :) Thayts (talk) 19:17, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. —Stephen ^(Talk) 19:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary talk:About Navajo#Font size

FYI. —Ruakh_TALK 20:20, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Extinct language proposal

Hi, I'd like to let you know that we have a proposal up to allow words from extinct languages based on a mention, provided a warning is included. I hope you will vote! Wiktionary:Votes/2012-08/Extinct_Languages_-_Criteria_for_Inclusion --BB12 (talk) 01:25, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

bééshbiiʼkǫǫʼítsoh

I s'pose... This only makes sense when it's coal-powered; you should add a usage-note or something. atsiniltłʼish bá hooghan is the general term. Seb az86556 (talk) 07:52, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:01, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Adyghe palochka

You are, if I recall correctly, our expert on the palochka. Could you advise us in the discussion at User_talk:Adamsa123#Palotchka whether our current practice (if we have one) is to use the palochka character or "1" in Adyghe entries? - -sche (discuss) 19:55, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

Dear Stephen G. Brown, Thank you for helping in the improvement of the Telugu language pages. I have started working in English wiktionary after attending the Wikimania 2012 at Washington D.C. There is a lot to be done. It would be possible only with the help of people like you. The work of any language ideally started with an Indexing. Our earlier efforts to get help from the wiktionarians have failed. Can we attempt once again to index the Telugu words which are about some thousands. Thanking you once again.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:33, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

It looks like Conrad is very busy elsewhere, he has not been around here for some time. You might ask at WT:GP to see if anyone has any good ideas about indexing. The only other thing that I can suggest is to go here and copy the words manually. It would take only a few minutes, I think. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:27, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

It is great. Of course I understand Conrad might be busy otherwise. The list shown by you is enough. After adding them to the Telugu index, we can plan how to upgrade on a periodical basis. Thank you once again.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:36, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for visiting Telugu wiktionary and Telugu wikipedia. I am simultaneously working in these two areas also. If you have any suggestions or problems, please share with me; so that I would communicate with the Telugu community.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 05:57, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

You’re welcome. The problem with పశ్చిమ was an invisible character, called a "zero-width non-joiner". It is used in some languages such as Persian to keep two letters from joining together: ویکی‌پدیا has the non-joiner, but ویکیپدیا does not have it. I don’t know how it got inserted into పశ్చిమ. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:26, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Can you prepare two templates for Telugu wiktionary. One for plurals and other for alternative forms. We are redirecting them to the main page. These English wiktionary templates probably won't work there. Thanking you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 11:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I am not really good with templates. I have created te:మూస:plural of. Try it and see what you think. If it is okay, you probably will want to rename it. Right now it is named "plural of", so you can use it like this: te:బాక్సులను {{plural of|బాక్స్}}. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:09, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I have seen the template. It is working. All these words should be categorized under వర్గం:తెలుగు బహువచనాలు. I have tested with {{plural of|ఏనుగు}}. Can you correct the template.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:10, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Done. How is it now? For "alternative forms", try te:మూస:alternative form of. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:59, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I have tried with some words. You can see for once. The interwiki link would be automatically added by the bots, I presume. Is there any need to add the Telugu language head and noun as we use in English wiktionary.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 14:25, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, bots will create the interwikis. And yes, I think you need to add the Telugu language head and the part of speech (noun, verb, etc.) like we do here. It does not have to be exactly the same. I like the way the Russian Wiktionary does it (ru:человек). Instead of various part-of-speech headers such as Noun or Verb, the Russians use a single general header that just says (1) Morphological and syntactic properties (under that, they can discuss whether a word is a noun, a perfective verb, etc., and if it is masculine, feminine, etc.), (2) Pronunciation, (3) Semantic properties (here is where they put noun declension or verb conjugation), (4) Meaning (definitions and examples), (5) Synonyms, (6) Antonyms, (7) Hypernyms, (8) Hyponyms, (9) Related terms, (10) Etymology, (11) Idioms and phrases, and (12) Translations. Personally, I prefer the way the Russians have done it, but it is up to you how you want to make the pages in Telugu. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:34, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh, did you mean just for these "plural of" and "alternative form of" entries? In that case, I don’t think it matters very much about the headers. You could put Telugu language and Noun like we do here, but I think it might be just as good if you don’t put that. I looked at a couple of the entries, and I think they are okay the way they are. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:46, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

You got what I meant. These redirecting pages need not be as elaborate at the main pages. But they should have # symbol for the numbering of different explanations. It is not accepting the symbol now. Can you make it work there. Thank you very much for the kindness.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:18, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

I have fixed it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:38, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Can you help {{poscatboiler|te|nouns}} template work in the Telugu plural list. This would help people to access them by the letter. Thanking you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:33, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

You mean as in Category:Telugu plurals? —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:28, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes sir. I mean the same. Can you do it please. Thanks.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:14, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I did it at Category:Telugu plurals. Where else did you mean? —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:17, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Will this template work in other Categories also. We can use in all the categories containing more than 200 pages. Thanks.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 11:16, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, any category. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:20, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I have been using the etymology template for Telugu words derived from Sanskrit and other world languages. [[(deprecated template usage) [etyl] Sanskrit]] Can it be made to work in Telugu wiktionary. I do not know whether it will work for all the wiki languages. I would like to link the Telugu wiktionary words to English wiktionary words; once this template is working.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:28, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

{{etyl}} is too complex because it uses a number of other scripts and templates. Somebody at WT:GP might be able to make it work on Telugu wiktionary, because they know a lot about programming, but it is too complex for me. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:20, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry for trouble you with complicated themes. Can you make Noun template to be used in all the nouns in Telugu wiktionary. There are many thousands of nouns there. I would like to classify them later.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I made this one: te:మూస:te-noun. You use it like this: {{te-noun}}. If you prefer, I could change it so that you would type {{te-నామవాచకము}} or something else. Note: I am not very good with templates, so this is a simple template. If you want a more complex template, someone else will have to help, because I don’t know how to make the complex ones. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:00, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Telugu

Thank you sir. {{te-నామవాచకము}} is better. The category should be వర్గం:తెలుగు నామవాచకాలు. Unlike in English wiktionary, the display at the template place should be నామవాచకము, not the head. I think I am clear.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:53, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I see that there is already one named te:మూస:te-నామవాచకము. It probably needs a little work, but it has already been used in several pages. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

It is fine. I do not know about the technicalities. If you can change PAGENAME to నామవాచకము, probably it will show in the concerned page.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:27, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I don’t think that will work. If you do that, then on the page te:శిరోజము, the 3rd line where it now says శిరోజము will be changed to నామవాచకము. Every time you use the template, instead of putting the word, it will put నామవాచకము. —Stephen ^(Talk) 12:06, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

We will continue the standard way of English wiktionary. Now there are some Telugu nouns; that are always plural. How to use the present te-noun template in that situation. See: కందులు.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 07:23, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

We could make a template for that, like {{te-plural noun}}. It puts "(plural only)" after the entry and adds the category Category:Telugu pluralia tantum, which means always plural. I made a simple form of {{te-plural noun}}, but it needs a lot of work to make it more like {{te-noun}}. I do not have the skill to do that. —Stephen ^(Talk) 13:13, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

It is good. I have added some Telugu words in that category. I now learned about pluralia tantum. If you can make transcription to work, that is sufficient.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:54, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

I have added it (I don’t know how I did it, but I did it). —Stephen ^(Talk) 13:17, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Similarly there are some only singular nouns; that does not have plural form. Is there any Singular only template. Can you do it for me.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:34, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Done. Just add |pl=- (example: {{te-noun|tr=karrī|pl=-}}). —Stephen ^(Talk) 20:25, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I have started using them in the Telugu metals. Thank you very much. I have been classifying the Telugu words in Telugu wiktionary and started with nouns. There are about 1,500 nouns added using the noun template. Can you check whether there are similar templates made for verbs (తెలుగు క్రియలు) and adjectives (తెలుగు విశేషణాలు) there. If not available, can you prepare them so that I would classify them at one go. Thanking you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:09, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I don’t understand what you mean. You want te:మూస:te-క్రియ and te:మూస:te-విశేషణం on the Telugu wikipedia? —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:32, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes sir. These three are the basic Telugu words. Can you make them for me please.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:50, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:14, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much sir. I am now linking the English and Telugu wikipedia verbs and adjectives.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 11:41, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I have classified about 100 Telugu verbs. Please check them. Mr. Prasad is interested to add Telugu surnames and Male and Female given names in Telugu wiktionary. I wanted them to be classified similar to English wiktionary using the templates like Template:surnames and Template:given names accepting the female and males difference. Can you make these templates for me. There are many thousands of such words to be added in these categories.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 18:06, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

I created te:మూస:ఇంటిపేరు, see if it works. I have not done any surname pages and I don’t know anything about {{surname}}, so I don’t know what it is supposed to do. —Stephen ^(Talk) 01:28, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

It is fine. I have linked to the English wiktionary. Please check.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:55, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

So I created te:మూస:ఇవ్వబడిన పేరు. I wasn’t sure if it should be ఇవ్వబడిన పేరు or ముందుపేరు. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:14, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

But for this we need to add sex of the given name to work. Male names should be categorized as తెలుగు పురుషుల పేర్లు and Female names as తెలుగు మహిళల పేర్లు. I have started grouping under this category. After you added this features, I would further classify them. Thank you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:43, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I did the best I could. You can enter {{ఇవ్వబడిన పేరు|g=m}} or {{ఇవ్వబడిన పేరు|g=f}}. I hope it will work. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:22, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I have started using them. Those with male or female links, the category should be only one. తెలుగు ఇవ్వబడిన పేర్లు should not come. After you have added the male or female gender, the words are classified under that gender only. The gender name is now shown in brackets after the పేరు; in stead it should be shown as పురుషుల or మహిళల and displayed before the పేరు. Then in the template place it shows ఒక మహిళల పేరు or ఒక పురుషుల పేరు. You may omit ఇవ్వబడిన after gender specification. No brackets are needed. It should work similar to English template. Thanks and sorry for troubling you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:01, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I changed it according to my best understanding. I have never edited personal names, so I am not familiar with how the English template works or what it does. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:29, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

You are doing great help to Telugu wikipedia. Now the templates are working satisfactorily. See the names కావేరి and నటరాజు pages. Thanking you whole heartedly.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:36, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I see that there is a problem. Now that the template has changed, you will need to type {{ఇవ్వబడిన పేరు|g=-}} if the name has no gender. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:14, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

There are many compound words in Telugu language. I have added some of them. There are two types: One group is Sandhi (సంధి) and other group Samasam (సమాసము). But In English wiktionary there is only one template. If you can create one "compound word template" for Telugu wiktionary, I would link both of them. Is there any limit on number of words that makes a compound word.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:24, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I don’t think there is a limit on the number of words that make a compound. I know that some editors use a compound template for some English words, but I don’t know how it works. I have never used a template like that. What I use is this: {{term|}} + {{term|}} + {{term|}}. But even this template is very complicated, since it take language parameters, transliterations, and definitions. I don’t think a Telugu template would need any of that, but I don’t know what a Telugu template would need to do. If it needs to be a complicated template, then maybe somebody at WT:GP can make it if you can explain what you need it to do. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:08, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your elaborate explanation. I am creating these compound words as a stop gap before really fixing them in one or the other category. After your advise, I have started using prefix template. But it is creating another prefix word adding "-" after that. What is the difference between them. Please advise me.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:57, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I don’t know, I have never used the prefix template. I imagine that it is for prefixes such as pre-, pro-, per-, en-, re-, de-, con-, ex-, be-, e-, and so on. The "-" that you are seeing is probably the one that you see in pre-, pro-, etc. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:45, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I see that you were using {{compound}} before on the English Wiktionary. What was wrong with that? Why change to {{prefix}}? —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:42, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I have started using the prefix and suffix templates and created some related pages. Hope they are working well.

Now I am working on idioms and prepared about 50 common Telugu idioms in English wiktionary. Can you make one idioms template for Telugu wiktionary, so that I can link them to these English idioms.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:44, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I have created te:మూస:ఇడియమ్. To use it, put {{ఇడియమ్}} in the document. See if this is what you wanted. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:11, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

It is already there in "te:మూస:జాతీయము". I am sorry to trouble you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:22, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I have created many Telugu verbs in English wiktionary. Can you make a verb template that work for Telugu language words in English wiktionary. I want to make further modification of a verb for the indication of time (tense). Is it possible.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 05:17, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Do you mean a template for a conjugation table? It is possible, but there are different ways to do it. If the verb is unpredictable, then we can make a table where you enter each form. If the verb forms are predictable and regular, then a template could conjugate the verbs automatically. I know very little about Telugu verbs. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:08, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I think Telugu verbs are predictable and regular. A template that conjugate them automatically is good enough for my work. Thanking you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:48, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Then tell me the endings for the present tense: 1st singular, 2nd singular, 3rd masculine singular, 3rd feminine singular; and 1st plural, 2nd plural, 3rd masculine plural, 3rd feminine plural. After that, we can work on the past, future, etc. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:09, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

It appears to be very complicated and needs a linguist. Can we use a simple template without the complications to classify the Telugu verbs.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 12:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Try {{te-verbtable}}. First, put the tense (example: |DURATIVE). Then put the 1st person singular, 1st person plural, 2nd person singular, 2nd person plural, and so on, like this: {{te-verbtable|DURATIVE|పని|పని| | | | | | }} —Stephen ^(Talk) 12:53, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I have tried with Telugu words కట్టు, తిను. See whether they are correct. Do we need to create separate pages for each of these verb forms. How to link these verb forms with the main page.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 05:47, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, just place as many tables as you need, each directly under the other. The verb forms can link to the main page like this: కట్టాను. I don’t think this has to be done manually...I think somebody can do it automatically with a bot. I have never written or used a bot, so I am not an expert on it. Somebody at WT:GP should be able to help after a lot of verb tables have been finished. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:33, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I also made {{te-participles}}. See తిను. Let me know if anything needs to be changed. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:08, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I have started working on the simple durative table consisting of 8 verb forms for each Telugu verb. I am doing this with the help of some friends. After working sometime, I will go to the more complicated things. Thank you for the service to the Telugu language. The English verb pages have sample sentences for the verb forms. That would make people understand the different verb forms easier. Should we make it for Telugu verbs also.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 14:24, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Telugu 2

Yes, examples of usage are a big help. A good way to do it is like this:

1. మేము దాన్ని గురించి ఏకీభవించము.

   mēmu dānni gurin̄ci ēkībhavin̄camu.

   We disagree about it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:01, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

This is very fine. I will try my best. Should I add these sets of 3 sentences in the Verb pages or the pages created for each of the verb forms.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 07:11, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Put them all on the main Verb page. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:54, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I have started adding the Telugu sentences for the main verbs. Please let me know if there are any contradictions between the Telugu and English languages. Kindly make verbtable for the future tense also.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 15:28, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Just use the same template, but start it with FUTURE TENSE. —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:31, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I am very sorry to inform about a mistake. The verb forms entered as Durative forms are in fact past tense forms. I have corrected most of them. If you find anything wrong, please correct them. Now the sentences written by are corresponding to the English sentences. I do not understand the affirmative and negative forms of the verbs. Can you explain to me.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 12:34, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Affirmative present participle, example = while falling.

Affirmative past participle, example = having fallen.

Negative participle, example = without falling.

Negative relative participle, example = which does not fall.

I think అమ్ముతున్నాను is the durative and means "I am selling". I think తినకుండా means "without eating" (negative participle); చెప్పక = without saying; చెప్పని = which does not say. Present affirmative participle అమ్ముతూ = selling/while selling. Past affirmative participle అమ్మి = having sold.

I probably have a lot of mistakes here, but it should give the idea. —Stephen ^(Talk) 13:41, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

It is difficult for me to understand the participles. Let me start with the simple verb forms and their examples. Is it not better to use te-verb template than head|te|verb template. Can you make required modifications in the template. Thank you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:20, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I made {{te-verb}}. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:12, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Will this template works for verb forms also. Or does it need a separate template. I am going to expand them. If not available. Please make one for me.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 05:50, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

No, it would not work for verb forms. If you used it for verb forms, it would place them in Category:Telugu verbs, not Category:Telugu verb forms. I can make a separate one for {{te-verb form}}. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:39, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

It should be separate template for verb forms. Thank you for the continued support.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 11:46, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I have to come know about the discussion on plural forms of nouns. I could not understand about it then. Should we consider them as Noun declensions and classify accordingly. What are these declensions. We have large number of Nouns already entered into the wiktionary. Should we reclassify them. Please clarify. My entire wiktionary work is at stake.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 12:11, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I’m not sure what you mean. But in general, most nouns have a singular and a plural. In some languages, there is also a dual (2). Some languages, such as English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, the plural is very regular, and the {{en-noun}} template creates the plural automatically. In some other languages, such as Japanese and Chinese, there is no separate plural form. In still other languages such as Arabic, the plural is very irregular, and in the {{ar-noun}} template, we write both the singular form and the plural form.

Languages such as Russian, Latin, and Telugu also have noun declensions. Telugu has the following noun cases: nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, vocative. We need to make declension tables for these. See, for example, the Latin declension at mens.

If declension tables are added, the table shows the plural forms, so it is not necessary to show the plural separately in the header. —Stephen ^(Talk) 12:25, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

To start understanding about these declensions, I have made the page for noun case in Telugu language called విభక్తి. Can you see whether they are correctly linked to their 8 English forms. There are only singular and plural. There is no duel in Telugu.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:11, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

That looks correct to me. —Stephen ^(Talk) 17:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. Now I am trying write the letters or words used in these eight noun cases. Later on we will try to make one sample noun declensions.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 11:56, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I have created pages for the letters or words used in these eight cases. Can you create one standard noun declension page, so that we can check for the Telugu language.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:03, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I have made {{te-noun-decl}}. Use it like this:

====Declension====

{{te-noun-decl|బాయ్|బాయ్స్

||

||

||

||

||

||

||}}

The declension order is the usual one, shown here: Template:te-noun-decl/doc. —Stephen ^(Talk) 04:35, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Can I create these declensions for any Noun, including Proper nouns and of any gender. I would like to start with plurals, for which the pages are already existing. I am contacting some Telugu scholars to help in the creation of all the declensions.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 05:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, any noun. For nouns that are plural only, leave the first position empty:

{{te-noun-decl||బాయ్స్ —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:45, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I have made one page రాముడు. Please check.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 11:56, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

It looks good to me. —Stephen ^(Talk) 12:01, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Like verbforms template, can you add the Telugu name for the eight declensions. Suppose if I add only the nominative case, can you make the other cases non-visible. Because to add all the declensions for thousands of Telugu nouns is an very big task. Luckily, I could get a Telugu pundit to help me. Like verbforms, please make one template for nounforms also. Thank you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 07:11, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Telugu 3

I don’t understand what you mean. You can see the Telugu names at Template:te-noun-decl/doc. The verbforms template has the tense, person, etc., in English. If you only put the nominative, it won’t be useful, because the page name is already in the nominative. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:49, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

In verbtable template the first column shows in addition to the English Telugu also. Similarly the first column of te-noun-decl table should show nominative and ప్రథమా విభక్తి. In the same way all the other seven. I think that I am clear. Similar to verb forms I would like to create pages for some of the noun forms also. For that we need noun forms template.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:43, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I have added Telugu terms for the noun cases. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

How to add the masculine, feminine or neuter form in the declensions separately. The Telugu plural nouns already existing should be changed to noun forms. How to change them to noun forms. Can you prepare one plural noun form page for me to learn and follow. Thank you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 14:02, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I don’t understand. Are there some nouns that are identical in the nominative, but that have different genders and different declensions? Or are you talking about adjectives that have different forms for each gender?

One way to change plural nouns to noun forms is this: (1) move the plural to the singular form, then edit and correct it. This leaves a "redirect" page at the original plural. (2) Open the redirect and make it like అంగములు. —Stephen ^(Talk) 14:20, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

See this page कृष्ण. The heading says "Masculine a-stem declension of कृष्ण". In Telugu language, the nouns have masculine, feminine and neuter genders. Do we need to show this gender in the noun declension table as the heading like in this page. Or is it not necessary.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 04:10, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, कृष्ण (kṛṣṇa) is an adjective. If you say "wicked man", कृष्ण (kṛṣṇa) is masculine and has the masculine declension. If you say "wicked woman", कृष्ण (kṛṣṇa) is feminine and has the feminine declension. But "man" is a noun, not an adjective, and it is masculine only. "Woman" is a noun, not an adjective, and it is feminine only. So adjectives have different genders, depending on which noun it modifies, but nouns usually have only one gender. Probably there are some nouns that have different genders for different meanings (प्रतीक (pratīka) is masculine if it means symbol, but neuter if it means token), and there might be a few nouns that have different genders because some people say it’s masculine while others say it’s feminine (सौमन (saumana) can be either masculine or feminine; सुमनक (sumanaka) can be either masculine or neuter).

कृष्ण (kṛṣṇa) is also a noun, but as a noun, it has only one gender: masculine.

When you say that a Telugu noun has all three genders, can you give me an example of a Telugu noun with three genders, and show how it is used with the three genders? —Stephen ^(Talk) 19:47, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

I have to discuss with the Telugu language pundits regarding this matter. Meanwhile, can you make te-noun form template. I would like to classify the plurals and other noun forms into this. How to add these 8x2 declensions into the individual cases. Can you show me an example.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 12:45, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

When you say, "classify the plurals and other noun forms into this", what do you mean? As it is now, the plurals are already classified under Category:Telugu plurals and Category:Telugu noun forms. What other classification do you mean? When you make the line "{{plural of|...|lang=te}}", it is automatically classified under Category:Telugu plurals. And when you make the heading "{{heading|te|noun form}}", it is automatically classified under Category:Telugu noun forms.

What do you mean, "How to add these 8x2 declensions into the individual cases?" Do you mean, how to make the 15 noun-form pages that link back to that page? If so, they would be made like రాముని. —Stephen ^(Talk) 13:08, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I have linked some 100 and above Telugu words with Sanskrit language; which we consider as our mother. I am entering the etymology of these words adding the root and the first case of nominative declension liked du, mu, vu, lu. The root word there by left as red link. Should I leave the root as it is or can I create a page for them; If yes how. Please advise.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 07:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

What red link? Do you mean that some Sanskrit words are missing? If so, yes, enter the Sanskrit words. Some examples of Sanskrit entries are अंशक and आकाश. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:55, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

See this example: వృకము etymologically broken as వృక+ము the first part denotes the root; the second one the first case ending. What to do with the root word వృక. I hope you have understood my point.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:34, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

That would be वृक (vṛka) (vṛka). వృక is not a word, is it? If వృక is a word, then you could make an entry for it. If it is only the transliteration of वृक (vṛka), then we only need an entry for वृक (vṛka). If వృక- is really a Telugu prefix, then an entry could be made for వృక- (like we make for post-). To me, it looks like you should write it this way: * From (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Sanskrit वृक (vṛka) + Telugu ము (mu). —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:49, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much sir.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:14, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I am entering and widening the Telugu numeral and ordinal pages. Can you check whether the template is showing all the details. How to link this page to Telugu wikipedia. Should I make pages for 3rd, 4th abbreviations also. How to classify them.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 07:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I added to పది (padi) the following: {{wikipedia|lang=te}} {{cardinalbox|te|౯|౧౦|౧౧|తొమ్మిది|పదకొండు|ord=పదవది}}. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:53, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I have completed fifty numbers in Telugu language. Can you make the two templates on Cardinal numbers and Ordinal numbers work in Telugu wiktionary. I would like to expand these numbers there also. I am very thankful for you helping this work.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:14, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I tried to make to template for it at te:మూస:cardinalbox‎, but it is too complex for me. I don’t know how to make it work correctly. Somebody at WT:GP might be able to fix it. If not, I think we have to delete it, because it doesn’t work correctly. I am a linguist, but I do not know much about templates or computer programming. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:05, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to trouble you. I have created pages for Category:Telugu abbreviations using Arabic numbers and Telugu letters. I think, we must use same language numbers here. Can you correct them.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:28, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I am creating pages for the months according to Hindu lunar calendar in Telugu, Sanskrit and English languages. Can you help me linking the pages and their translations.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 07:30, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

I think most of these English and Sanskrit months have not been entered yet. The English names are: Chaitra (चैत्र), Vaisakha (वैशाख), Jyeshta (ज्येष्ठ), Aashaadha (आषाढ), Shraavana (श्रावण), Bhadrapada (Bhaadra, Prosthapada) (भाद्रपद, भाद्र, प्रोष्ठपद), Ashvin (Aswayuja) (आश्विन, अश्वयुज), Kartika (कार्तिक), Agrahayana (Margashirsha) (मार्गशीर्ष, अग्रहायण), Pausha (पौष), Magha (माघ), Phalguna (फाल्गुन). —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:11, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Can I create the Sanskrit pages for these 12 months of Hindu calendar. I would like to create pages some similar calendar related terms like tithi. Can you show me some good source for Sanskit dictionary.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 18:47, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you can do the Sanskrit pages. The tithi names in English are Prathama, Dwitiya, Tritiya, Chaturthi, Panchami, Shashti, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami, Dashami, Ekadashi, Dwadashi, Thrayodashi, Chaturdashi, Purnima/Amavasya. ఒక సంస్కృత నిఘంటువు ఇక్కడ ఉంది. —Stephen ^(Talk) 00:37, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I am not able to use the Sanskrit dictionary. I have done the entry for the 15 tithi pages. Can you create one page in Sanskrit and give the reference. I would like to use it for the related Telugu and English words. Thank you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:44, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I created द्वितीय and also added the definition to प्रथम. —Stephen ^(Talk) 13:07, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

I would like to create pages for 72 melakarta ragas in Indian classical music. They are enormously popular in India, particularly in South India. Can you help and suggest the best format. They have elaborate articles in English wikipedia about them. I have created Kanakangi and Ratnangi pages. My first doubt is whether they are nouns or proper nouns. Can I scale template of 7 svaras in each page, which gives their details. Thanks.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 15:04, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

My feeling is that they are like our word jazz, which is a style of music but not a proper noun.

When you say scale of 7 svaras, I suppose you mean the image like Kanakangi_scale.svg. Yes, those images are helpful.

We will also need pages for words such as melakarta, shadjam, and Carnatic. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:11, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

I have prepared about 12 pages about the melakarta ragas and the etymological information and translations. How are they. Are there Swadesh list for Telugu language. I want to start pages for those basic words. Can show me where is that list. If not can you prepare one table for Telugu language. Thank you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

See Appendix:Swadesh lists for Dravidian languages. Dhenuka, Gayakapriya, Hanumatodi, Kanakangi, Kokilapriya, Manavati, Natakapriya, Ratnangi, Rupavati, Senavati, Tanarupi, Vakulabharanam, Vanaspati all look good to me. —Stephen ^(Talk) 14:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I have some serious question about the Telugu pages. Can some of the wiktionary pages be deleted for some reason. If so what are the common reasons.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:19, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Russian

Hi Stephen, very sad to hear that you gave up on Russian as you said here! What's the reason? I hope you reconsider. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:32, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Some idiot deleted розовая слизь (guess who). I’m not going to waste my efforts only to have a dimwit vandalize it. It’s the same reason I stopped doing Arabic (after the same editor began deleting Arabic plurals), Ojibwe, and other languages. I used to do a lot of different languages here, but now there are only a few that I am willing to work on. Sooner or later, there will be none at all. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:04, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I am upset about many things here but there are still many interesting and important things to do. I do save entries, which I think were unfairly deleted under my user page (e.g. User:Atitarev/розовая слизь. You're great at entries and declension/conjugation and the Russian space will miss you greatly. There are so many even basic (!) verbs that are still missing. I get more discouraged by what is still missing and needs to be done. Please come back! --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:13, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Deleted pages are stored in the history so if the rules change those things will be recoverable. I suppose in the future it will be far easier to search and undelete these things automatically according to certain criteria, if people decide it's worth doing. Equinox ◑ 03:15, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Equinox but the problem is not technical here. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:23, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Pages stored ni histories are only helpful if you are aware which pages were deleted or vandalized. There are only a few that I actually know about. How many other pages have been deleted or vandalized that have escaped my notice? There is little chance that the pages will ever be brought back to their original glory. It’s the same reason that User:Dick Laurent has mostly quit. Nobody wants to waste their time doing a good job only to have an imbecile like User:Mglovesfun screw it all up. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:28, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary has suffered a loss if you won't be editing in Russian.

Quitting because an entry you formatted was deleted—especially as it was deleted, after due process, for violating one of our site's fundamental policies—seems to me an overreaction . . . but the warning at the bottom of every edit-window is "If you do not want your writing to be edited […] do not submit it here", so that always remains your prerogative.

Looking at Special:DeletedContributions/-sche, I count 20+ English terms I've edited that have been deleted this year, and there are plenty of German terms like [[de:massolieren]] that meet de.Wikt's standards but which I haven't even added here because they fail the same part of en:WT:CFI as [[розовая слизь]]. On de.Wikt, my nuanced edits to entries are sometimes undone as unnecessary. I've been unhappy with the outcome of several RFDs, and I disagree with some community policies on both en.Wikt and de.Wikt... but I don't take the enforcement of community policy personally, and I don't let the fact that I can't have everything my way stop me from editing. There's a lot of good work you have done and could continue to do in Russian besides formatting calques of English neologisms. I hope you'll decide to edit Russian again someday. - -sche (discuss) 00:36, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I second this. Yes, looking at Special:DeletedContributions/Stephen G. Brown, you can always check what entries have been deleted, so you don't have to remember them. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I doubt that there was due process. I seem to remember that Anatoli answered the question about whether розовая слизь was a valid Russian term. There have been plenty of changes to my edits that did not bother me at all, but the deletion of good entries, and the deletion of important, pertinent, and hard-to-come-by information such as Arabic plurals is unacceptable. Regarding German entries, de:massolieren is certainly a word that we should have, even if the German Wiktionary did not have it. It matters not that the English translation of massolieren is not an includable verb. But in any case, the choice to keep a German word should be up to those who know German, and it should not be the business of wiktionarians who do not know it.

I saw lots of bad editing and bad decisions over the years with respect to the Arabic entries and I could take all that in stride. When the Arabic entries began to suffer what I can only describe as outright vandalism because they were being edited detrimentally by an admin who knows nothing of Arabic, that was intolerable, so I quit editing Arabic altogether. When an admin who knows nothing whatsoever of abjads, abugidas, or Malayalam began systematically deleting the transliterations of Malayalam noun declensions, that was intolerable, so I wrote Malayalam off as a lost cause. Ojibwe suffered under the ignorant fumblings of more than one admin, and the latest assault on Ojibwe was a step too far, so I wrote Ojibwe off. Same thing for Swahili. For similar reasons, I have written Spanish and Portuguese off. Now I am writing Russian off. I still do some Russian editing on the Russian wiktionary, and edit on some other wiktionaries and wikipedias, but just not here, because good entries here are not reasonably protected from the ignorant. There are still a couple of languages that I am willing to work on, but even then I don’t bother much with the more difficult terms and aspects, because they are not safe either. For several years I toyed with the idea of adding entries and tables for Yup'ik, but Yup'ik, like Ojibwe, is exotic and I don’t trust that the entries would survive under the scrutiny of the ignorant. Likewise Navajo...I have thought about putting a lot of verb information here, since Navajo is a language of very complex verbs, but I know that the same idiot who deleted розовая слизь could also delete the complex, difficult and exotic parts of Navajo verbs, so I have not had the heart to give it a go.

In the case of розовая слизь, if someone wanted a citation, they should have added a citation. I don’t do citations, although I am happy to translate citations into English if they are in a language that I can read. Of course, I don’t translate citations anymore from Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, or any of the other languages that I have stopped doing. This is not a big personal problem for me, because I only have so much time. I used to spend an enormous amount of time here on en.wikt working on entries in a variety of languages, and now I can use that time to work on other wikis such as the Navajo wikipedia. It’s just a matter of redirecting my energies to projects that are not going to be a wasted effort. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:56, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

знамя

Why do you write "Old Church Slavonic" here, while the whole group (8°c declension, 10 non-derivative words: бремя, время, вымя, знамя, имя, пламя, племя, семя, стремя, темя) (burden,time,udder,banner,name,flame,tribe,seed,stirrup, crown of the head) is of Indo-European roots.

As you can see, even in English, 2 of those has the same origin and meaning, so what specifically churchy has you found here? And the other meanings, does anybody need to borrow those?

Can you remove the churchy mess ?Longbowman (talk) 16:04, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

[4]Longbowman (talk) 16:15, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

First, I have no idea what you are trying to say. Second, it has nothing to do with churches. It is about the irregular -n- in the declension of these few words. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:55, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps, then you have an idea about what you wrote? If so, the idea is totally wrong. Or (1) you do not see difference between Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic, or (2) you think that the declension is of Old Church Slavonic origin. Both are wrong. And the letter does nothing with it. So (1) or (2)? If none, why did you drag in OCS? And at any case, why did you drag in the letter? What the letter does with etymology?Longbowman (talk) 03:48, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Certainly I have an idea about what I wrote. Do you have attested declensions in Old East Slavic? If not, then why bring it up? What I said does not imply that the declension is of OCS origin. The letter absolutely has something to do with it, because the letter was the whole point. The letter is pertinent to etymology because English-speaking students of Russian ask about it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 04:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Of 10 words you attribute to OCS, only 2 (время, бремя) has such origin. And Russian forms were беремя, веремя, with the same -мя (or you suppose that there russian вере and OCS -мя?). So what OCS does in the rest 8 etymologies you wrote.

"of this and nine other similar neuter nouns stems from the fact that the word-final -я was the nasal vowel Ѧ, ѧ (little yus) in Old Church Slavonic" is totally wrong. Neither the declension has only OCS origin, nor 8 words of 10. Nor the wovel has 2 variants (Ѧ, ѧ), only letter.Longbowman (talk) 04:18, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I did not say that the words came precisely from OCS. It is a common practice to use OCS for the sake of convenience and attestablity even though the Russian words come from Old East Slavic, because of the very close relationship to OCS in the 9th century. None of this matters because I no longer edit Russian entries. If you want to argue about Russian etymology, you should try User talk:Ivan Štambuk, or someone else who is still editing Russian. —Stephen ^(Talk) 04:32, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll do so.Longbowman (talk) 04:40, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

machicote

Hi, Stephen! Could you check the spelling of the Ojibwe words in machicote's etymology? I spelled majigoodenh the way the umn.edu Ojibwe dictionary spells it, but machikooteen' was entered years ago and I wonder if it shouldn't be majigood-(something). I couldn't find it in the umn.edu dictionary — unless it is the same word as majigoodenh (which seems possible). - -sche (discuss) 20:28, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

It’s majigoodenh. The modern spelling, called the Fiero Double Vowel system, is pretty new. They used to spell the consonants b/d/g/j as p/t/k/ch, and the nasalization -nh used to be spelled -n' (Ojibwe and Chippewa are two spellings of the same word). This is the only change I made, but I also question the information about diminutive suffix. The diminutive suffix is -oons, -ens, -ans, -aans, -wiins, -iins, -ins, -ons, -waans. I think the -enh suffix is contemptive ((e.g., odaabaan (“car”), odaabaanenh (“just some old car”)). Probably should change "diminutive suffix" to "contemptive suffix". —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:58, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Fascinating! I've noted when New England and Virginian/Carolinan Algonquian words were spelt by English speakers, consonants were routinely written as voiceless (b/t/k), and of course epenthetic schwas disappear and (re)appear in various places... I figured that might be at work here, too, in "machikooteen". Thanks for sorting it out. - -sche (discuss) 19:40, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Russian plurals

Hi. Can we delete Category:Russian plurals? Please look here: WT:Requests for deletion/Others#Category:Russian plurals. Maro 14:38, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I thought it was being used, but I see that it is empty. Since it’s empty, there is no need to keep it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 14:41, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

dallak

Hi, Stephen. I'm looking for the correct Arabic spelling of dallak, which means 1. bath attendant 2. barber. Could you help me out? It's the source of Turkish tellak, Armenian դալլաք (dallakʻ), Georgian დალაქი (dalaki), etc. --Vahag (talk) 17:39, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, حلاق (ħallāq) means barber, but I don’t think that’s the word you want. دلك (dálaka) means to rub, to stroke, and I think that’s probably the root of your word. However, I don’t know of a form exactly like "dallak". There is دلوك (dalūk) which means liniment, and دلك (dalk) means rubbing, تدليك (tadlīk) is massage, and مدلك (mudállik) means masseur. My guess is that مدلك (mudállik) is the word you’re looking for. (It is possible that *دلاك (dallāk) exists in some dialect, but I don’t know about it.) —Stephen ^(Talk) 19:59, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

tellak ▽ 1533Filippo Argenti, Regola del Parlare Turco [1533], ed. Milan Adamovic, Göttingen 2001. tellak ▽ 1680Franciscus Meninski, Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium [1680], tıpkıbasım(mean:exact press) Simurg 2000. dellāḳ ~ Ar dallāḳ دلّاق [#dlḳ mesl.] su dökücü (mean:water pourer) < Ar dalḳ دلق [msd.] su dökme (mean: water pouring) 20.06.2011 source: http://www.nisanyansozluk.com/?k=tellak In Turkey we mostly use word "keseci" for practicer originating from Persian word "kese" means rubbing agent or money purse, which can be transliterated as "bath glove", instead of so referred virtually obselete arabic word root dalk (water pouring).

Answering feedback

Should we start answering feedback on the feedbackers’ talk page? I doubt more than 10% of them ever look open WT:FB again. (I mean we as the Wiktionary community as a whole, but I’m asking you because you are the most helpful at answering feedback). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 20:55, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Could be a good idea, especially if they sign the comment. On the other hand, other people can see the answers if they are on the feedback page. I really not sure which is the better way. Maybe we need a message that could be substed on their talk page indicating that there is an answer on the feedback page. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:22, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

To make a useful decision, I think we would need to measure how many people ever come back and look at the responses to their feedback (and if it's almost none, to find out why they don't bother coming back). Implementation left as an exercise for the reader. Equinox ◑ 22:24, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

We could leave a comment like “Feedback answered at User talk:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.” or “Discussion continued at User talk:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.” I prefer this over linking from the user’s talk page and having the discussion in WT:FB because: 1) the user would know whenever each of his comments has been answered; 2) WT:FB takes ages to load.

As for measuring how many come back, I doubt it can be accurately measured, and even if it shows that more than 10% come back (which I am confident is not the case) it would still be advantageous answering the feedback in the feedbacker’s talk page. FWIW, those who choose to do this should hold themselves to a high standard of courteousness, and only constructive feedback should be answered in talk pages. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 22:45, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

A few thoughts: (i) a lot of feedback is haphazard ramblings (or abuse) from people who might have stumbled on the site by accident, and don't even really know about the ongoing-discussion facilities of a wiki; (ii) without a user account and watchlist, it's hard to come back and find "your" discussion; (iii) I bet people would prefer to communicate with us through third-party proprietary "social" systems like Facebook and Twitter, which they regularly check. Equinox ◑ 22:49, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

(i) Those shouldn’t be answered in the feedbacker’s talk page. (ii) Don’t IPs get the You have a new message banner? Even if not, how would they find the Feedback page? It’s not easily linked to anywhere (in a way that it can be viewed without leaving feedback). (iii) I don’t think we should associate ourselves closely with any personal information harvesting network social network. Especially not with something as sensitive as feedback. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 23:00, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

(ii) They only get the banner if they come back :) I mean they don't get e-mail, or a "tweet", or any push notification. (iii) I really hate social networks but I'm just saying: most people would rather deal with them than keep coming and checking up on us. Equinox ◑ 23:03, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Lots of IPs these days are assigned a new IP address every few minutes. I’m not certain, but I think it probably depends on the provider. It seems like most British and European IPs have this arrangement. When this is the case, they can’t get messages on their talk page. Also, many IP addresses belong to institutions, such as schools, so that each person in the institution who uses the computer gets the same IP address. So I don’t think answering on the talk page would be practical unless the user has a registered username. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:24, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm that’s true. We’ve had discussions in IP talk pages before though ([5]). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 23:56, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, depending on one’s provider, some IPs are still stable. We have some that have been contributing for years with the same address. You know that on Wikipedia, they have the 3RR rule, which used to be a very good rule. But nowadays, if an IP writes some nonsense and you, as a rollbacker, revert it, the IP will usually quickly revert you (using a different IP address this time), and in a few minutes you’ve reached the 3RR limit and can’t do anything with the page for at least 24 hours...but the 3RR rules no longer stops the IPs, since they change addresses every time they edit. —Stephen ^(Talk) 00:05, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

That’s a convincing argument. Let’s have the talk pages link back to WT:FB then. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 00:09, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I only get a new IP if I manually reset the router, and I've never heard of mid-session IP changes: wouldn't that break all kinds of Web sites and sessions? Equinox ◑ 00:13, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I don’t know that the change occurs midsession. Maybe the IP leaves Wikipedia and comes back again in a few minutes. I don’t know how it works, but I know it has become a big problem on Wikipedia because of the 3RR rule. Now the rollbackers have to put in a request to have the page semiprotected for a period. My own IP address is still stable, probably because my provider is AT&T.

I have never used this template before, but it might work to use {{talkback}}. If that template can’t be made to direct a user back to WT:FB, then a special template would need to be written. —Stephen ^(Talk) 00:23, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Munique

Привет Стивен,

Что ты думаешь по поводу родо́в в португальском языке? Может ли иностранное слово не иметь вообще рода? Присоединяйся к обсуждению Wiktionary:Tea_room#Munique. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:07, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Спасибо, Анатолий. Я думаю, что дискуссия в Wiktionary:Tea_room#Munique была завершена. Я считаю, что все португальские существительные имеют род, но иногда род не может быть надежно известно. Я знаю, что в отношении некоторых русских существительных множественного числа, люди говорят, что никто не знает рода. Но я знаю (ржет). —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:19, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Спасибо, у меня всё ещё сомнения, так как никто не предъявил доказательств наличия рода, но пора двигаться дальше. :) Род существительных множественного числа действительно определить трудно на 100%, даже если известна форма родительного числа и словари их тоже не помечают. Для меня представляют трудности некоторые понятия, которые редко сочетаются с прилагательными, типа "инь" или "ян" (из китайской философии). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 11:09, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

WT:About Yiddish

Hi! I recently created this page, which is meant to have a centrally located repository of information about the standardized treatment of Yiddish on Wiktionary. I'm giving you this message because you have shown interest in Yiddish, and we need your help! The page especially needs better coverage of the many undocumented headword-line and conjugation templates, but any assistance is welcomed. Please feel free to edit the page, and to raise any issues for discussion at Wiktionary talk:About Yiddish. Thanks so much! --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:56, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

אוי וויי, I keep forgetting to put in the transliteration. Thank you for that. It's good to know that someone is checking my work :) --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:00, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Do you recognize this language?

File is [6]. The part I'm interested in starts at around 2:07. We were thinking it might be Inuktitut or a related language- do you have any ideas? DTLHS (talk) 20:05, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I could barely hear it even with my audio turned all the way up. I couldn’t hear enough to make anything out of it. Sorry. —Stephen ^(Talk) 21:00, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

coraçon#Old_Spanish

I saw this entry today, and I noticed that the English translation has articles (definite & indefinite), but the Old Spanish text does not. Interesting. Can you explain why? Were articles not in use at that time? --Æ&Œ (talk) 22:08, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

That seems to be a figurative use of heart, so it’s not referring to a specific blood pumping organ. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 22:12, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, articles were in use at the time, but Spanish and English do not always use definite and indefinite articles in the same place or the same way. There is no rule to explain it, you just have to do a lot of reading and listening until you get a feel for when you should or should not use them. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:14, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I see. I have one curiosity, though: were there any Romance languages that had no indefinite or definite articles? (That is probably oxymoronic.) --Æ&Œ (talk) 23:34, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Latin didn’t, but all of the daughter languages have developed articles. The vast majority have articles that precede the noun, but Romanian and Moldovan, like Bulgarian, have them as enclitics. However, there is at least one creole that does not have definite articles: Cape Verdean Creole (Portuguese-based)...has indefinite articles but no definite ones. But most Romance-based creoles also have articles. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:00, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

to gray

Hullo. Do y’know what the Spanish term for ‘to grey’ is? --Æ&Œ (talk) 04:25, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

encanecer, ponerse cano. —Stephen ^(Talk) 04:57, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Telugu; articles

Are you removing (indefinite) articles from Telugu entries because Telugu does not possess articles? --Æ&Œ (talk) 11:12, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

No, because dictionaries do not normally put indefinite articles, especially if the part of speech is already made clear. The only thing that the indefinite article does is signal that the term is a noun: a ball. If it is already indicated that the term is a noun, then the article is redundant: ball. Furthermore, when reading a text in the language, a given word might appear without any article, with the indefinite article, or with the definite article: ball, a ball, the ball. So the article is not usual in dictionary entries. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:17, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I have some serious question about the Telugu pages. Can some of the wiktionary pages be deleted for some reason. If so what are the common reasons.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:42, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Common reasons for deletion are if they are misspelled, if there is no useful content, if they are encyclopedic in nature (wiktionary is a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. wikipedia is the encyclopedia.), if the content is incorrect, if they contain copyright violations, if they contain slander or libel against someone, if they contain promotional material (such as advertising for some company), if they are not notable (concerning something that is not publicly important), if they contain spam. Why do you ask? Have some pages been deleted? —Stephen ^(Talk) 21:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much sir. Can you give me the link or method to check the number of Telugu pages in English wiktionary. I would to like to check periodically; to know my progress.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 09:22, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

You can go to అ. Each full page = 351 entries. —Stephen ^(Talk) 23:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the best way to see how many Telugu entries there are is to go to Special:Statistics and search for Telugu. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:39, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

But they are of 2004 and latest 2010; I have started working in Telugu only from middle of last year. Is there any to get statistics upto 2012. Sorry to trouble you.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:34, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

The date of the statistics at Special:Statistics is 2013-01-10, which is this year. I don’t know where you saw 2004 or 2010. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:40, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you sir; I have mistaken.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 02:30, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Omegawiki

I have heard about Wiktionary from some senior wikipedian; that it is going to be merged with Omegawiki. You may not be the right person to answer this. I have spent lot of time on this project. Is it correct information. In that case, the information would be merged with Omegawiki or left to loose. Can you tell please. I am under pressure.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 12:51, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I don’t think "merged" is the right term. It appears that Omegawiki will become another project of the Wikimedia Foundation, just like we are, and Omegawiki and all the various Wiktionaries will exist side-by-side. It is proposed that there could be a way to connect or unify the Translation tables (see, for example, the table of Translations at Mumbai). I do not think it will affect individual pages such as ముంబై, but only the tables of Translations that are found on each English page. For more information about Omegawiki, see meta:OmegaWiki. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:19, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the detailed clarification about Omegawiki. My work has been delayed mentally. Now I can concentrate on the expansion of Telugu wiktionary work. Please continue giving your good helping hand in my work. Thanks once again.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 08:38, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Spanish contractions

Hullo again. You wouldn’t happen to know why contractions are so scarce in Spanish (compared to, say, French or Italian), would you? --Æ&Œ (talk) 10:19, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

They aren’t needed in Spanish because of the Spanish phonology. For example, a sequence of two identical vowels are pronounced as though they were a single vowel: la abuela = /laˈβwela/. So there is no need to make a special spelling, since the regular phonology takes care of the problem. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:31, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

warning or threat

Hullo again. Do you know what the differences are between warnings and threats? Because I honestly have no idea. --Æ&Œ (talk) 20:01, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

A warning is a friendly or neutral heads-up that conveys important information that might be needed to avoid or deal with a problematic situation. Warnings may come from friends, neighbors, the man in the street, the authorities, or from an adversary. A threat is an antagonistic statement from an adversary that, unless his demands or wishes are met, he will take some action to your detriment. Warnings urge you to consider various options, which are usually reasonable. Threats force you to choose between two or more options, all of which are very difficult, expensive, illegal, or dangerous, and all of which are unreasonable. —Stephen ^(Talk) 20:49, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

age

This is personal sounding, so you dun have to answer this one, but do you mind if I know your age? Curious. --Æ&Œ (talk) 00:02, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

67. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:22, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Stephen: If I learn half as many languages half as well as you have by the time I reach that age, I will consider myself a success :) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:28, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

пара вопросов

Привет, Стив. У меня к тебе пара вопросов, если не возражаешь.

Что ты думаешь по поводу роста запросов на переводы в последнее время? Они оправданы? Не слишком ли их много и не думаешь ли ты, что кое-кто немного злоупотребляет эту функцию. Стоит ли запрашивать языки для которых у нас активных редакторов? Спасибо за переводы на кхмерский раньше, теперь, когда запросов стало слишком много, наверное мотивация упала?

Второй вопрос. Я хотел бы поднять тему о возобновлении создания статей на основе переводов, как это делал Tbot. Возможно только для избранных нескольких языков, конечно, включая русский. Потом придется проверять, добавлять шаблоны спряжения и склонения. Нас теперь мало работающих с русским языком, так что прошу о помощи, если это удастся возобновить бот, пожалуйста.

Можешь ответить по-английски, если торопишься, или предпочитаешь, надеюсь ты ещё не забыл для понимания. :) --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Я не уверен о увеличении запросов на переводы. Я не думаю, что количество или выборы оправданы. Нет никаких редакторов для многих этих языков, и, вероятно, не могут быть завершены в течение долгого времени. Как ты уже указал, мотивация падает, потому что кажется невозможным, чтобы дойти до конца.

На мой взгляд, деятельность Tbot была хорошая идея. Тем не менее, его запустил Robert Ullmann, который уже не здесь. Я не знаю, как Tbot может быть вновь активирован. Если он возобновляется, я полагаю, что я могу помочь с основными словами. Я не хочу ввязываться в более сложных выражений, которые могут быть впоследствии удалены. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:08, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Как всегда поражаюсь твоими познаниями в языках. :)

Спасибо. Да, я имел в виду простые слова, они в безопасности насчёт удаления. У нас такая уйма красных ссылок в переводах, создавать все эти статьи вручную - непосильный труд, но всё же, надо будет этим заниматься. Программисты ботов у нас есть, только их надо разбудить и заинтересовать. Думаю начать обсуждение и "лоббирование" в ближайшее время. Кстати, один из твоих "противников", наверное мог бы это сделать, но есть и другие.

Кстати, фразу "который уже не здесь" я бы перефразировал в более идиоматичную, "которого уже нет с нами" (то есть, он умер).

Ещё, наверное лучше сказать: "кажется невозможным/невозможно дойти до конца". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:39, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Жаль, что Wonderfool является персоной нон грата. Он был очень искусен с ботами. —Stephen ^(Talk) 03:04, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

{{list:states of India/bn}}; ভারতের অঙ্গরাজ্য

I only want the singular form of the Bengali hypernym. Why the plural form? --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 06:27, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

It’s not a plural. রাজ্যের is the plural. অঙ্গরাজ্য means part of the state. The state refers to India, and a province is a part of the state (of India). It’s hard to explain in English. —Stephen ^(Talk) 06:41, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Now I'm curious about how good your knowledge is about the Bengali language. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 06:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Not very good, but it is similar to some other languages in the area. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:06, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Emoticons

Stephen, you keep reverting my emoticon additions, but I see some emoticons with their own articles. What is the scope of Wiktionary, and is there a definite policy prohibiting the submission of emoticon and ideographic glyphs/symbols? - M0rphzone (talk) 07:55, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I think we have kept some very common ones, but people can get very creative with them and produce an infinite number of them. In any case, they are not words and I don’t believe we should treat them as words. Adding Descendant sections seems unreasonable. For the commonly used ones indicating the meanings and usages, with the parts linked so that anyone interested can see what the parts are. There is no need to add them to any sections under Telugu letters, etc. If you think there is a greater need for them, you might try to make a case at WT:BP. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:08, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Technically, if they are "ideographic glyph combinations" (for lack of a better phrase), then they can be considered as "words". Are Chinese characters not "words"? Many characters represent an idea/meaning; don't emoticons do the same as well? - M0rphzone (talk) 08:22, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

No, I don’t think emoticons are comparable to Chinese hanzi or to words. I can’t think of any that represent an idea like a word can represent it, and they are more like a dog’s tail wagging. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:36, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Alright, fair enough. So they're kept based on the amount of common usage. - M0rphzone (talk) 09:00, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

And I think some standardization figures into it. Some people make them in all sorts of ways, like :) vs. (: vs. :-) vs. 8-) and probably very many other ways. They really are a better fit for an encyclopedia article than a dictionary. Dictionaries require a certain amount of standardized orthography. Emoticons are more like artwork. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:07, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, a linguist like yourself should recognize ways of communication. These emoticons are not necessarily artwork, but more like images or pictures that represent the faces or emotion (body language) that one would express if one were talking in person. I know the scope of this project is limited to dictionary definitions of words, glyphs, characters, and phrases, but something like these emoticons and explanations for them would never gain enough professional and serious attribution for inclusion in Wikipedia unless someone conducts an academic study/analysis on them. I guess you're old enough (and have professional knowledge about linguistics/languages) to think that such neologisms are immature and unattested. We'll probably have to wait 50 more years to see how it all develops. Anyways, just wanted to comment on this. - M0rphzone (talk) 22:33, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

We also don’t have smoke signals here, which is a way of communication. Or drum signals. We have been trying to devise a way to include American Sign Language, but it is extraordinarily difficult to make that medium of communication accessible and usable in a written medium like this. As for neologisms, we generally do not include them here until they are no longer neologisms. And as for inclusion in Wikipedia, you’re mistaken...see w:Emoticon. —Stephen ^(Talk) 10:14, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Angr#Rhymes:Italian:-ui

Your expert opinion is hereby requested. Thanks —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:47, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

WT:RFM#Template:os

Your input is kindly requested here. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:11, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Name change

Is it possible to change my name from "Spidey665" to "QueenZeppelin"? Spidey665 (talk) 05:13, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

You have made very few edits. Why don’t you just stop using Spidey665 and start using QueenZeppelin? If you really want to make a change, place a notice confirming it on your name page on your home wiki, then make the request at Wiktionary:Changing username with a link to your homepage so we can be sure it is a valid request. —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:28, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

آلهات

Hi. You have made edits to the entry, would you please take a look at Talk:آلهات? --Z 16:33, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

A Romanian template

Hullo again. May I have a review of this template if it pleases you? It is based on Wikționar’s noun declension template. I am asking because I doubt that these are good, complete templates now. An example of its usage. --Æ&Œ (talk) 19:34, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

You could try looking at the Romanian noun templates here, which are complete. — [Ric Laurent] — 21:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Uh, first, I didn’t ask for your opinion, and second, I don’t trust you or anything you make. --Æ&Œ (talk) 21:11, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

That actually came pretty close to making me laugh lol. Feel free to compare my Romanian templates to any on the Romanian Wiktionary. — [Ric Laurent] — 21:45, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

No, that would not be adequate. I think the vocative is nice to have, but you also need:

singular / plural

nominativo / acusativo

articulación indefinida

articulación definida

genitivo / dativo

articulación indefinida

articulación definida

The way you have it is okay for native speakers of Romanian, but it is not suitable for foreigners. Under the indefinite articulations, you should also include the indefinite articles to make the usage clear for foreign learners. The definite articulations already include the definite article:

un câine (or o if feminine) / niște câini

unui câine (or unei if feminine)/ unor câini —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:34, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

How about this? --Æ&Œ (talk) 01:00, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me. —Stephen ^(Talk) 07:32, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

๕๕๕

Would you be able to find a cite for this? I'd like to feature it as Foreign Word of the Day. Thanks! —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:00, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

In this, the video is named ชีวิตสัตว์โลก ๕๕๕ (cheewít sàtlôhk hâa-hâa-hâa = all living creatures go ha-ha-ha). A commenter replies with ๕๕๕ พวกผม (hâa-hâa-hâa pûak pŏm = ha-ha-ha all of us). —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:50, 29 December 2012 (UTC)