Wiktionary:Information desk/2019/December

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Hieroglyphics hain't HTML

After dinner discussions, you know?

Starting from Category:English terms derived from Egyptian I kept encountering glitches on mobile views of etymologies. Strange vertical spacing and missing content, with examples

• sphinx is okay, then mobile view is borken
• uraeus is okay, then mobile view

But then something else from the list like ammonia is fine on mobile because it doesn't attempt hieroglyphics.

sphinx has <hiero>Szp:p-A53-anx-n:x</hiero> and uraeus has <hiero>i-a:r:*t-I12</hiero>, whereas ammonia lacks any use of <hiero>. If you experiment, you find <hiero>boo</hiero> produces unfortunate effects under mobile.

So, <hiero> is broken on mobile. Where to report this?

And... <hiero> is documented - where? This isn't a template - why? How is this any different from other language templates?

Is there a list of the magical HTML-like non-templates around here? (I can't find anything for <hiero>!)

I mean, talk about your ancient mysteries and undecipherable inscriptions... Shenme (talk) 03:33, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

For the documentation, see mw:Extension:WikiHiero. The Hieroglyph coding manual referred but not linked to apparently covers the same system as described in the Manuel de Codage.  --Lambiam 16:38, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Vorziblix Canonicalization (talk) 17:05, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, hieroglyphs are currently handled by WikiHiero, an extension to MediaWiki, as Lambiam linked above. WikiHiero is well past its prime and for the past several years no one has been maintaining it, so it’s not surprising that things around it are broken. In short, the entire thing has been in need of replacement for a long time, but for various reasons previous attempts to do that have failed. It could be replaced with an ordinary template using Lua these days (and in fact I’ve reimplemented much of it in Lua over here in the course of playing around with code), but I imagine that would make our Lua memory problems worse. (And it would probably load pretty slowly.)

As far as mobile is concerned, I must confess I never use Wiktionary on mobile and don’t really have any idea how the mobile view works. Could this just be a CSS issue with an easy fix? (I’m guessing mobile ignores the ordinary Wiktionary CSS entirely.) I might look into it further eventually but I don’t have much time these days, unfortunately, so if anyone else has worked with the mobile view and already knows more about it, feel free to chime in. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 01:59, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

To add to this, after a quick glance, it looks like the mobile view is for whatever reason only lazy loading the hieroglyph images and giving them all a width of 0, so that they never show up. Not sure why, though. (There’s another issue — that they’re not inline and are otherwise badly aligned — but that’s definitely a quick CSS fix.) — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 02:12, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Aside: I found list meta:Help:XML-style_tags has 'all' the tags like hiero and big.

Err, um, how might Unicode for hieroglyphics affect the situation? Peeking at my first example <hiero>Szp:p-A53-anx-n:x</hiero> : , I can find the wavy line as "U+13216: EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH N035" and the lined circle as "U+1340D: EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH AA001" aka &#x13216; &#x1340D; , and thus:

𓈖 𓐍

At least these appear under Chrome on a Win10 box. Perhaps part of the review of hiero revamp could be whether general support has advanced enough that hieroglyphic display can depend (rely is not the right word) on OS-hosted Unicode fonts? Thus hosting own images could be done away with?

Though in comparing mw:Extension:WikiHiero/Syntax#Gardiner's_sign_list with wikipedia:Egyptian_Hieroglyphs_(Unicode_block)#Block I am seeing extras under Unicode but then possible missing items seen in the extension's list. It may be that scholarship has advanced beyond the point that produced the older list used by the extension? (whoa, 2004?) I'd tend towards assuming the Unicode list was agreed upon only after some rigor. (2009) And continued development in Unicode (2016) (More Unicode Egyptian Hieroglyph Format Controls (2019) )

Oh blech. I suppose fixing what we've got is first. Finding out if better implementations are possible is later. Shenme (talk) 06:10, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Pronunciation of μαγειρική

The pronunciation of Modern Greek μαγειρική (mageirikí) is given as [maʝe̞iɾici], added by a native Greek speaker. But shouldn’t that be [maʝiɾiˈci]? BTW, I’m not a big fan of giving narrow transcriptions unless there is a specific reason, such as to distinguish dialects or to draw attention to an irregular phenomenon.  --Lambiam 22:52, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

mapuchizar conjugation

Can anyone help me fix the conjugation for this one? I discovered this nugget my español-Mapudungun dictionary.Ndołkah (talk) 11:01, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

@Ndołkah: What did you have in mind? I'm pretty decent at Spanish but I've never encountered this verb before: it seems pretty straightforward and correct as a regular verb. I do see it used on a quick Internet search but it's not in the RAE's dictionary. Are you requesting that someone help you make entries for all the conjugations? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:45, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

I think it means “to ‘mapuchify’ ”, that is, “to make Mapuche”, a neologism that may be regional – almost all hits are from Chilean sources.  --Lambiam 00:33, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Not necessarily for all the conjugations, that's not essential for a Spanish dictionary if you know what the endings mean, I meant the blow out chart of the conjugations oh and I didn't put in a definition but someone was bold and came out with a great one how grandNdołkah (talk) 00:19, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Purpose and usage of the "Descendants" section

First, a bit of context. Having encountered the word turophile, I promptly came to Wiktionary. Then from a bit of surfing around here I discovered that both it and butter trace back to Ancient Greek τυρός (turós, “cheese”), the latter by way of βούτῡρον (boútūron). Doubting that I am the only person on Earth who would find these relationships interesting, I thought about how to document them.

The good news is that the descendancy of butter from βούτῡρον is already documented in the latter's entry. But I feel that when users are reading about τυρός itself, they would likely be interested in its being an ancestor—though indirect—of butter. After all, exactly that connection, in the temporally reversed direction, shows up under the etymology of butter, and I don't see that the retrospective (pedigree) explanation is any more important or interesting than the prospective (progeny) presentation of that exact same information.

Of course, everything I've said about τυρός with respect to butter applies equally to βοῦς (boûs, “ox, cow”). And that brings me to my next question: is it considered kosher in Wiktionary to list among a word's descendants not only simple words, but also compounds? Because what I'd like to do is highlight the relationship to butter in the entries for βοῦς and τυρός, and the relationship to turophile at least in the entry for τυρός (it's already documented in Category:English_words_suffixed_with_-phile). And, apart from my previous question about the intermediate word βούτῡρον, those relationships are perfectly analogous to the relationship to polymer that is currently reported in the entry for Ancient Greek μέρος (méros, “part, component”).

How to proceed? Or, stated differently, Mother may I?—PaulTanenbaum (talk)

No, it isn’t kosher. If one were to tolerate it, soon it would be with any derived term and we would have Amharic ኮምፒዩተር (kompiyutär) as descendant under the Latin prefix con-, or something similar. Fay Freak (talk) 21:10, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Well, I guess your reply does get to my question about butter. But not to my proposed pointer from τυρός to turophile, unless you think someone should police up what would have to be the faux pas over at μέρος. And by the way, is there anything in a style guide or the like that captures your sense of the treyf (from Yiddish טרייף (treyf) :-) )? I never did find it, which is why I posted here.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 22:31, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

It hurts my sensibilities; the term should be tyrophile, which is how Oxford Reference spells it, just like tyremesis, tyromancy and tyrotoxism.  --Lambiam 01:07, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Using † to signify Jouyou kanji in ja-readings template

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Tea room/2019/December#Using † to signify Jouyou kanji in ja-readings template.

north Andean deer

How do I make it singular and plural?Ndołkah (talk) 00:17, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

 Done. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:58, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

For future reference: just enter the plural of the term as the first (and only) parameter of {{en-noun}}. In this case it is identical to the term.  --Lambiam 02:02, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Translingual derived or descended?

Would a translingual scientific name be considered a derived or descended term of the New Latin components? For example, see araucanus. I wasn't sure which section title to use. -Mike (talk) 00:33, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Derived terms are supposed to be terms in the same language that are morphological derivatives, so this is not applicable in this context. Descendants are terms in other languages that have borrowed or inherited the term. If D is listed as a descendant of E, then the etymology of D should show E as a (possibly partial) ancestor.  --Lambiam 01:53, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

To be clear, "derived terms" is not consistently used throughout Wiktionary. You're right if you're talking about the L3 section (and therefore for Mike's question), but not if you're talking about the use of {{der}}. Which reminds me that we could use a new template for that... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:56, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Hiding languages on Wiktionary pages

Is there a way of hiding certain languages or at least collapse them for better overview? Even better, is there a way to hide/collapse all but some selected languages? It would make navigation a lot easier. Sometimes even the navigation toolbox is utterly cluttered and it takes some time to get to the right language. --Fytcha (talk) 16:45, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Request for edit to protected page Wiktionary:Entry_layout

Hi, I would like to request that the line:

See also: Style_guide

be added to the top of the section Wiktionary:Entry_layout#Definitions. Mihia (talk) 17:48, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

For hábeas corpus

How do I make it so it shows that it is singular only?Ndołkah (talk) 07:31, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

According to the RAE the plural is the same as the singular, which is different from being singular only. I do find uses of los hábeas corpus and los habeas corpus without accent – according to the Spanish Wikipedia the spelling with an accent was used until 2010, but I don’t know what this statement is based on and have not further investigated it.  --Lambiam 08:22, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Arabic Script for Esperanto (Araba Skripto/ارابا سکریپٹو)

Hey can we work upon an Arabic script for Esperanto — This unsigned comment was added by Al-khataei (talk • contribs).

We can if Esperanto is written with that script already, which I think it's not. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:45, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

This would be an undertaking outside the purview of Wiktionary. Perhaps some people who see this here may be interested, in which case they should by all means contact you to see what can be done, but it will not be a Wiktionary effort.  --Lambiam 00:15, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Links to Hebrew Wikipedia

Hey all- I'm very familiar with how to use Template:wikipedia and Template:zh-wp to link to English and various Chinese Wikipedias. But how should I link to Hebrew Wikipedia? I used Template:wikipedia to link אלוהים &יהוה to Hebrew Wikipedia, but it looks really wonky. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 02:13, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

 Fixed. Try checking the template documentation next time. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:27, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

How to create a list of synonyms (or antonyms)

Hi, guys. Merry Xmas.

I'd like to know how could I create a list of a synonyms vertically or horizontally with that formatting

#: {{syn|ja|青毛|tr=aoge}}

so that it looks like

Synonyms:

         1. x (trad)
         2. y (trad)
         3. z (trad)

or

Synonyms: x (trad); y (trad); z (trad)

I tried a lot of ways and couldn't achieve that. In the vertical form, I got something but always with "synonym" in each line, which seems rather polluted. As for horizontal, I got nothing, with a lot of errors... Is it possible to do that with such specific formatting? Thanks in advance.

Cpt.Guapo (talk) 20:04, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

{{syn|ja|x|tr1=trad|y|tr2=trad|z|tr3=trad}} gives Synonyms: x (trad), y (trad), z (trad). — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 17:22, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, my friend! That one did the trick! I wonder if there is a vertical version too... Cpt.Guapo (talk) 05:13, 27 December 2019 (UTC)