User talk:Widsith/archive9

Category:Old English conjugation templates

These actually seem almost identical, since all the values are specified by hand with no defaults, it seems to be just the title that changes. I've started {{ang-conj}}, right now we don't need more than that, we could use a {{{switch}}} to do the title and the categorization. Obviously for strong and for weak, the difference is clear. For the other two templates, it's unclear what they intend to achieve. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:08, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

• Er...OK, I think the colour-coding is nice but whatever. It would need to show the class as well though (1-3 for weak verbs, I-VII for strong verbs). Ƿidsiþ 15:42, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

• It does actually show the class; it still uses 1= for that, just like the current templates. It no longer labels anomalous and preterite-present verbs, though. (If you like the unified template approach, it can definitely be changed to color-code the expandobar based on the type.) —Ruakh_TALK 17:31, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

• All right, great. Ƿidsiþ 10:07, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

• Well, it looks like Mglovesfun has deleted the old templates and instituted the unified one everywhere — did I miss some discussion? — so I guess now you have to like the unified-template approach. :-P   So, I've gone ahead and added the color-coding. One difference: previously anomalous verbs had a black background with white text for their headers; but since the new template includes links in the header-bar (an appendix-link and a show/hide-link), and since link colors are determined elsewhere and unlikely to be very readable against black, the new template uses the same light-blue header background for anomalous verbs as for verbs of unspecified type. I hope that's all right? —Ruakh_TALK 03:46, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

IE/PIE

This is just a short message to let you know that we're replacing IE with Indo-European and PIE with Proto-Indo-European. It's part of our "plain English campaign" - that is using English words, not abbreviations. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

• Yeah, I saw -- and agree. Ƿidsiþ 12:49, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

More Old English stuff

Old English page titles seem to be a nightmare to standardize. Looking at the Old English Wiktionary they use macrons in page titles, whilst the French Wiktionary does not use macrons (in part because I renamed all the remaining ones) but it does use acute and circumflexes. Do you think there's any way we could get a pan-Wiktionary consensus? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:11, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

• I very much doubt it. The OE Wiktionary is run by a tiny group of fannish types who aren't necessarily taking a very scholarly or standardised approach to anything. Working without diacritics is the only way to do it: the manuscripts didn't use any, and as you've seen, there is huge variation in published version over whether to use acute accents (which was common till about 20 years ago) or macrons (which is preferred by current editors). Circumflexes for long vowels is something I've rarely seen, but it's common for French editors to do that with lots of ancient languages. Ƿidsiþ 09:17, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Category:Old English nouns lacking gender is getting quite full. Most of them seem to be Drago entries (but in fairness, some are not). If you did have time in between doing other usefu stuff to add some genders, that would be nice. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Inflection-line tables

Recently in the BP you were for inflection-line tables, saying they "clearly mark out the POS line on a page". I agree we should highlight our definitions (PoS section) better. I've just found, however, that in addition to the problems mentioned before, our current way makes output look bad for several mobile gateways and apps (even those designed for newer phones). As you can see from viewing house through wapedia and Sevenval, these sites show both the inflection line and the table, which I think we can agree is confusing and ugly. How would you feel if we got rid of the tables but found another way to highlight the inflection line? What about something like:

.infl-inline { background-color: #ADFFD6; }

added to one's skin.css file (we could eventually do this through WT:PREFS)? Or do you have a suggestion for another way we can highlight the appropriate contents? Cheers. --Bequw → τ 20:03, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks for mentioning this to me... what can I say. I really like the tables and I will regret their departure, but clearly in using them at all I am in a minority. Adding highlighting is not a bad alternative choice – although I don't know how the community will feel about it. Ƿidsiþ 20:08, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
  • When using colours, do check that they don't cause problems for people with poor eyesight. Thryduulf (talk) 22:33, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

which word?

is in copyright vio?

Do you mean that I am copying the word or the definition? If it is the definition, I can change them, although I believe they have been reworded sufficiently. If it is the word, I actually had no idea that a word could be copyrighted, unless it is trademarked or something. Please clarify for me - Theornamentalist 15:39, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

A word or expression cannot be copyrighted. (It could be trademarked.) Definitions are copyrightable. A simple word substitution is not good enough to ensure that we are not violating a dictionary's copyright. DCDuring TALK 16:16, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think they are verbatim. Here's what I wrote:

An elder, worn-out, or semi-retired prostitute, who is desired only for fetching pitchers of beer for tavern customers.
and from the copyrighted book:
A worn-out prostitute, only good enough to take pitchers of beer to a taverns' customers.
I will modify a little more in order to avoid any other issue, but I cannot help but feel like it would have been better had I not provided a reference in this case, aren't unreferenced words (which are the majority) more of an evil than this? As far as modification, I cannot change prostitute, I believe pitcher is a good use of a word that was specific to that era. Give me a few minutes and let me know what you think - Theornamentalist 16:27, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

In our experience, footnoted and referenced definitions without usage citations are too often copyright violations. I highly recommend collecting a few citations, especially current ones, to give you a better base for formulating your own wording based on actual usage. We value "attested" entries more than any other kind and even value bare citations more than definitions. Usage citations are apparently "fair use" of copyrighted material, so one can actually copy snippets of text (1-3 sentences, usually one) in which a word is used from sources such as Google Books, Google News, Google Groups, Google Scholar, COCA, and BNC. We have a whole family of templates such as {{quote-book}} for formatting these. DCDuring TALK 16:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Re: "footnoted and referenced definitions without usage citations are too often copyright violations": Really? —Ruakh_TALK 17:37, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't give statistics, but it is my impression, if not done by a veteran contributor. DCDuring TALK 18:00, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

deal

I am frustrated a bit by this entry's division of noun senses by etymology. To some extent, it is artificial to split by etymology at all as it looks as if the Old English noun and verb are themselves cognates. OTOH, some of the modern senses of the noun seem to be more clearly associated with senses of the verb. Finally, I simply can't get decide which of the existing etymologies is appropriate for big deal and "the real deal". The quantificational noun sense of "deal", the non-obsolete Ety 1 sense, has a different flavor than the others, being more of a function word than a meaning-bearer. In etymology 2, noun, the obsolete sense and some other senses don't seem to fit very well and seem closer to Ety 1.

Would it not be simpler and still consistent with the facts to simply have an etymology for the noun and one for the verb? What am I missing? DCDuring TALK 19:58, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

• Well you say "the noun" and "the verb", but the point is that there are two nouns (well three actually, but for the moment let's confine ourselves to Etymologies 1 and 2). Ety 1 is a noun which we inherited from an OE noun. However, as you rightly point out, "some of the modern senses of the noun seem to be more clearly associated with senses of the verb". Exactly so, which is dealt with by Ety 2. This is a word which was primarily a verb, but under the verb is a noun section which shows all those words which have developed from the verb (and that includes "big deal"). It would not be consistent with the facts to have one etymology for all the noun uses and another for the verb; as for whether it would be simpler or not, well, maybe, but English is unfortunately not very helpful in that respect. Ƿidsiþ 04:55, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I also had ignored Etymology 3. I have often labored to tease apart related etymologies to provide users with intelligible groupings of senses. I don't disagree with the presentation, but I am uncertain about value of separating items derived from the OE noun and its cognate OE verb. I took an extreme position in part because I have read at BP comments from those who would seem to reduce such complexities, presumably in the interests of making it easier for a naive user to find all current senses in a given PoS.

Specifically, the informal senses in Etymology 2, "situation" and big deal, "unspecified object", and "the real deal" don't seem so clearly associated with Etymology 2. I am wondering how I can better understand the logic of this kind of association of meaning with Etymology and, for that matter, sense evolution in general. DCDuring TALK 11:14, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

symmetry poëtic pronunciation

Hi Ƿidsiþ. In re your reversion, I never asserted that the poëtic pronunciation is "supported by the OED"; if you reread my edit summary, you'll notice that only the /ˈsɪmɪtɹɪ/ pronunciation cites the OED as an authority, whereas the /ˈsɪmɪtɹaɪ/ pronunciation cites William Blake’s “The Tyger”. It is still a current practice (albeit an uncommon one) to alter the pronunciation of words ending in (deprecated template usage) -y to terminate in /aɪ/, rather than the standard /ɪ/, in poëtry to form rhymes. I regret that I can't think of a more recent example of this done to the word (deprecated template usage) symmetry than that 1794 work, but surely the principle still applies, wouldn't you say? You said that "[symmetry]'s not pronounced like that any more", but AFAIK that was never its ordinary pronunciation. I'd like to readd that information; would any qualification thereof or alteration of its presentation make its inclusion more agreeable to you?  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 13:34, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know, I'm reminded of the line from Rape of the Lock which goes "Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, / Dost sometimes counsel take -- and sometimes tea." Pronunciations change and poetry fossilises them. I suppose some people might say "tay" when reading this aloud just as you apparently say "symmetrye" when you read Blake, but I don't think this is something a pronunciation section should record unless it's a) common and b) current and I reckon this is neither. Ƿidsiþ 13:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. The OED frequently makes notes about old spellings, old pronunciations, and quirks of etymology in other languages in the form of reduced-point, different-colour notes after its etymology sections. What do you say we do the same, and relegate the poëtic pronunciation to the References section, with only a superscript link thereto in the Pronunciation section?  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 14:41, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I suppose so. I still don't see why the same argument couldn't be used on a million other words which no longer rhyme in modern English. Ƿidsiþ 15:08, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Made it so. FWIW, I think it would be a great if we included more stuff about regional, historical, and specialist pronunciation; don't you?  — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 17:40, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Tea room#berber

Dunno if you saw this … —Ruakh_TALK 13:27, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I did. The more pressing problem here is that we still aren't agreed over what the L2 language header should be. Ƿidsiþ 13:33, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

wæron

A few years ago you created ƿæron as an alternative form of wæron... which we don't have. I'd imagine it's a verb form, however. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:19, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

ƿunedon, same thing. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:21, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Old English for unite

Hi Ƿidsiþ. Can you suggest an Old English translation of unite? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 09:58, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Or united? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 20:59, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the translations. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 11:48, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Tremas for Old French

It seems to me the trema is always optional in Old French - marier vs. marïer. It seems to have as much to do with the transcription of the original text as it does the actual spelling - should we get rid of these or not? My instinct is to keep them as they are actually used (in modern 'Unicode' versions, at least). Mglovesfun (talk) 11:07, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

forlorn hope

Hello. Why did you revert my edits to forlorn hope? — lexicógrafo | háblame — 12:02, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

• Because you removed the original definition. I thought perhaps you didn't know if it was real or not, which is why I added some citations. Ƿidsiþ 13:47, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

the cake is a lie

Why did you delete this entry without so much as a notice on my talkpage regarding its deletion? I provided a reference to support the definition, so I saw no reason why it could not be recreated. Can you give me an explanation? TeleComNasSprVen 18:41, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Restored and sent to RFV. --Yair rand (talk) 04:46, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Template talk:fr-noun#fr-noun templates

Please have a look. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:45, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

facetime

Instead of simply bolding the headword line, can you please use {{en-noun}} for English nouns, to assure their proper categorization as well? Thanks. --Daniel. 12:39, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

All right. Ƿidsiþ 12:44, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Stuff found while making categories

Hey. I know it *might* be hard since it's Old English we're talking about here but could you create entries for stǣl and -wierþe? While looking for categories to make I found that there were two English (modern) entries that were allegedly suffixed with the aforementioned suffix, which of course is not true. 50 Xylophone Players talk 12:06, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Oops...didn't know we had an entry for the suffix lol. 50 Xylophone Players talk 12:06, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

translations as quotes

Hello, your comment at Talk:make a clean breast caught my attention again. Do you have any recommendations on the best way to format translated citations? I'd like to add some more Jules Verne quotations to the website, but am not sure of the way to format them. I'd appreciate some tips. --SixTwo 17:18, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

• Well, see (deprecated template usage) madeleine for one example. There are plenty out there. Ƿidsiþ 17:32, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
• Or see the 2002 quotation at yellowishly. I have gotten into the habit (following User:Ruakh) of naming the translator first, since the quotation really contains his/her English. -- Ghost of WikiPedant 05:02, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

of: This page really is freaking amazing

Hello Widsith -- Yes it is ! Felicitations, congratulations, and kudos. -- Ghost of WikiPedant 04:54, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

• Haha, thanks! It took three days though, not sure when I'll take on a page like that again. Ƿidsiþ 06:23, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any thoughts on how to decompose the work on grammaticized words into chunks that less linguistically sophisticated type can do? The idea would be to make it easier for someone like you to finish off the entry. I imagine that simply finding contemporary that a contributor 'thinks' might match each sense would give later contributors something to chew on. Does restoring missing senses from Webster 1913 help? DCDuring TALK 14:48, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Dude, sorry, but I don't quite understand the question! Ƿidsiþ 17:25, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

You indicated above that you won't tackle such an entry again soon. We certainly need you and others to tackle such entries. From looking at the great work on hard entries that you and Visviva have done and my own painful experience on less hard entries, it seems that there is a lot of painful focused work required to improve the entries for the most common English words, especially grammaticized ones like prepositions, auxiliary verbs, determiners, basic (non -ly) adverbs, etc. Splitting and recombining senses and identifying missing senses of such words is perhaps the hardest defining work that I have attempted. Such concentrated work by volunteers is not a great fit with human nature (at least in my experience).

What could other people do to make it easier for you to do the final work to complete such entries? I am thinking that we could make some of the work a bit more like cleanup, which seems to fit the level of attention, effort, and skill most usually available from our contributors. DCDuring TALK 18:11, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh I see, sorry! Er – that's quite hard, I don't know. I like to start with a lot of citations and work up – if you just pick ten uses of a common word you often find we are missing the right definitions to describe how it's used. For something massive like (deprecated template usage) of, I also roughly modelled the primary sense break-down on the OED entry. But apart from increasing the citation pool, there's not that much to do except tackle the grammar and if you don't feel comfortable doing it, then don't worry about it. Eventually you will find citations that don't fit the page, and that's when entries get improved. But if there's a particular entry you have in mind, raise it at the Tea Room or just let me know. And thanks! Ƿidsiþ 20:52, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you find the MW 1913 definitions useful?

I suspect that we could take almost any one-morpheme preposition and find it deficient. DCDuring TALK 23:02, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe – if they're not already covered then yes. Problem is they're always so badly written. Ƿidsiþ 06:57, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we could include them all as an (invisible) comment in each entry, then delete or mark those that seem to be covered by senses included. Once that process is complete the remaining senses, preferably with modernized wording (at least) and citations could be rendered visible. The citations for the kind of grammatical terms that most need this are difficult to sieve from Google. The BYU corpora give one a better chance, though they seem likely to limit us to non-researcher access. The process of citing the older senses ought to help in identifying any newer usage.

As I write this, I have a sense of dread about the process for a word like "of" or "in". I am reasonably sure that the users of entries for grammaticized terms will not be normal folks, but rather other contributors. DCDuring TALK 15:13, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Egyptian

Can you recommend a good font for Egyptian? I just downloaded one, and I no longer see boxes with numbers in, but what I do see is very faint grey lines that appear almost white. ty, Mglovesfun (talk) 13:55, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

• I am using Aegyptus, seems to work pretty well. Ƿidsiþ 14:03, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Seems to be the only one, also the one I'm using. I can now read Sumerian script as well. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:10, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• Always useful. Ƿidsiþ 14:15, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • BTw do you 'know' these words, or are you working from a source? Mglovesfun (talk) 15:21, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• Don't know them at all, am working from sources – just trying to get a feel for it really. Ƿidsiþ 15:33, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Would it be possible to move the existing Egyptian entries in Latin script to hieroglyphs? -- Prince Kassad 15:46, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
• I've done a couple. I will move any I'm confident of. Ƿidsiþ 15:46, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

RP / UK

I thought that "RP" would be more appropriate, as not everyone in the UK has the trap-bath split. --Dezzie 16:08, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Acrophobia

I'm only learning such etymology myself, but it seems silly that i can't put the information on the page it is relevant to.ChrisSleeps 11:21, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Serments de Strasbourg

On my French user talk, Diligent asked about the Oaths of Strasbourg. I know there seems to be a bit of debate whether this is Old French or Gallo-Romance. To complicate things on en.wikt. {{roa-gal}} already exists so if we were to use it as a separate language, we'd need a more inventive template name. Perhaps the best thing would be to call these Old French, but use usage notes/context labels to show that they are very early Old French. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:25, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• That seems a reasonable solution. Ƿidsiþ 06:58, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Your recent edit to Prince Charming

Please don't merge these two definitions of "Prince Charming" as you did in this edit. The first is a common fictional character who is simultaneously a prince and a hero. The second is a romantic subject, which may or may not be a prince, or a hero, and may or may not be chosen by a real woman. --Daniel. 02:34, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

• In my opinion, the first is encyclopaedic and only the second is suitable for a dictionary. That is why I viewed it as a single definition (I didn't "merge" them; I created the entry with a single definition and you, or someone, split it into two). Ƿidsiþ 03:55, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
  • There would be effectively no difference between using the words "merge" or "unsplit" in my message above. In my opinion, all or most stock characters are very much worthy of being defined here. As a result, I personally endorse the existence of other definitions that fit into this group, such as superhero, mermaid and fairy godmother. --Daniel. 04:07, 25 December 2010 (UTC)