Wiktionary:Information desk/Archive 2012/January-June

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January 2012

mosey

All sorts of useless information except what the WORD MEANS and the HISTORY of the word! If you don't know how to do a proper dictionary,then DON'T.MJ

Not our fault if you can't find the definitions. We cannot come into your house and point your eyes at the screen. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Go down to where you see the part of speech (Verb), and just below it you will find two numbered definitions. The numbered definitions say what the word means. —Stephen (Talk) 10:00, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
... and the history of the word is unknown. There are various theories, as mentioned in the entry. Information is seldom useless, but some people find it difficult to understand. Dbfirs 21:32, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Old South Arabian section of Wiktionary

Is it my imagination or does Wiktionary currently lack a section for the Old South Arabian vocabulary ?

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Unicode/Old_South_Arabian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Arabian_alphabet

If that is the case then how would we go about creating one ?

Caphthor 17:09, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia article doesn't say what languages used the writing system! It is a writing system, like Cyrillic, as opposed to a language, like Russian. Also, we already have {{Sarb}}. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:21, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That said, there isn't a language template for South Arabian. w:Old South Arabian says there were four dialects. Do we need a unified code? -- Liliana • 05:01, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Liliana,
The unified code - Sarb - seems appropriate and practical and most of the sources I use tend to present their vocabulary generically as Old South Arabic without specifying whether they are Sabaean, Minaean, Qatabanian or Hadramautic.
The Old South Arabian script was used to write all four of these Old South Arabic languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_South_Arabic
Could you guide me through the process of setting up the correct category pages so that the entries written in South Arabian script may be added to Wiktionary ?
I have already attempted to add the Old South Arabic word for "well".
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%90%A9%B2%F0%90%A9%BA%F0%90%A9%AC
Please let me know if the format I am using is correct.
Thank you for your help in this.
Caphthor 05:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind - {{Sarb}} is a code for a script, it doesn't directly specify the language. For now I've created a {{sem-srb}} which can be used as the language code, it may be subject to change later but for the next few days it should be okay to use. -- Liliana • 05:18, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Liliana : Thank you for your kindness ! That was extraordinarily nice of you to take the time to do this. Should I use the phrase "South Arabic" for the entries which are written in the "South Arabian" script or label them as "South Arabian" instead ? Please advise. Caphthor 05:26, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, the name doesn't matter too much, but it should be kept in synchronization with the language template. (As well, a name change requires a change of categories, this isn't too hard however.) Currently the template says "Old South Arabian", if you want to change this you should edit the template. -- Liliana • 05:29, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Psychodynamic Approach

to whom it may concern, i am a sophmore at college and im starting out with psychology, i just dont understand why 'psychodynamic approach' by sigmund freud is a wikipedia term

You might want to ask on Wikipedia. This is Wiktionary, which is a different project. --EncycloPetey 05:32, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What page are you referring to? English Wikipedia does not have an article on "Psychodynamic approach". Where did you see it? —Stephen (Talk) 14:41, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Blocking

Could somebody please permanently block me ? I thank you. --Pilcrow 13:48, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I like your work here, but, since you've requested it, I've blocked you. I've left your editing your own usertalkpage open to you, so you can request an unblock at any time, and perhaps an administrator will accede to such a request.​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:04, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The /r/-problem

I am concerned about the nature of the broad transcription in Wiktionary. And I am fairly sure there must have been a vote on a topic like "bring the broad transcription closer to the narrow transcription" or "write /ɹ/ instead of /r/". (I think I read about "the r-flamewar" somewhere.) Could someone point me to that?Dakhart 17:55, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Search for "r" flamewar at First quarter 2006 US vs. UK flamewar. —Stephen (Talk) 18:00, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So there hasn't been a vote about such a topic yet? (The topic being not a certain pronunciation or the add of narrow transc. but the way of writing broad transc.)Dakhart 18:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary:Votes/2008-01/IPA for English r. In general, for old votes see Wt:Votes/timeline.​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This means that entries like this are violating policy, doesn't it?Dakhart 20:57, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, the vote says "Voting on: For the pronunciation of English terms, agreement to use the specific IPA character /ɹ/ instead of /r/ for the r phoneme in words like red, green and orange." It doesn't define what a word "like red, green and orange" is, and certainly implies that /ɹ/ is NOT always correct. In practice, I think you can only apply this vote to red, green and orange, and not anything else. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:22, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think, Martin, that voters in that vote understood it as referring to any English word with rhotic 'r', and applying it to three words only is an error or disingenuous. Yes, Dakhart, it means farm is in violation of policy.​—msh210℠ (talk) 08:03, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It might be disingenuous for you, but not for me. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:13, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is something worth mentioning here too. The Wiktionary logo on the top right hand corner has IPA underneath in in square brackets, which indicate phonetic transcription, NOT phonemic. It therefore should use accurate IPA symbols, but it uses [r] which would be the trill. I don't think this is phonetically realized anywhere. I don't think [ˈwɪkʃənrɪ] would be used anywhere, but rather [ˈwɪkʃənɹɪ] in the UK and [ˈwɪkʃənɛɹi] in the US. As for the phonemic transcriptions between slashes, I think /r/ is perfectly fine. It's not just a Wiktionary invention and gets used often outside of it. – Jmolina116 (talk) 22:28, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Latin

please i need help what is the correct translation of "do not let the bastards grind you down" Or do not let people grind you down

Noli spuriis permittere te terere. —Stephen (Talk) 12:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Illegitimi non carborundum Dbfirs 09:04, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Macedonian word taa (таа (taa))

Is it cognate to Bulgarian тя (tja) or тая (taja)? FokkerTISM 08:48, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. That's correct. --Anatoli (обсудить) 22:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Chaldean language

The entries in Wikipedia and Wiktionary make no reference to Chaldean as a language. Was it a language of its own?

The Chaldean people speak various languages, especially Syriac and the Neo-Aramaic languages and dialects, but also Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The only language of the Chaldean people that includes the name Chaldean is Chaldean Neo-Aramaic. Other Neo-Aramaic languages of the Chaldeans include Sureth, Turoyo, and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic. The ancient Chaldeans spoke the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, and later Aramaic. —Stephen (Talk) 12:20, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is worth noting that prior to the printed word, and in the absence of some strong central authority proscribing meaning and usage, languages had much greater internal variation, both geographically and over time. It is very likely that the languages spoken by Chaldeans in any given time and place involved many localisms, and reflected the influence of the trading partners in the region. bd2412 T 17:15, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen "Chaldee" in reference works from the 19th century with the meaning of Aramaic- most commonly w:Biblical Aramaic. Here are a number of examples at the Internet Archive [1]. I still see the Gesenius work in bookstores, so some people might still use the term even though scholars mostly consider it obsolete. Chuck Entz 06:48, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A good and reliable source of information.

Dear Sirs, Misses, and Madams

It is a testament to the quality of your service and dedication that you remain the foremost repository of human knowledge and media on the Internet. As I am desperately poor and unemployed, it is currently beyond my means to contribute to your continued success monetarily. I shall, therefore, convey my gratitude by offering a hearty "Thank you!" followed by a heartfelt wish of many more successful years filled with many, many more entries. With much gratitude, 

                                                                                      Dennis C. Sheldon
This should have probably been posted on WT:FB, but we do appreciate your sentiment. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 04:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

lollapalooza

what are the meanings of lollapallooza — This comment was unsigned.

Look it up. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 04:01, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Try looking at (deprecated template usage) lollapalooza. SemperBlotto 08:21, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rhymes:English:-ɜː(r)k

These words are supposedly rhymes, but they don't actually all rhyme when I say them. 'work' rhymes with 'lurk' and 'murk' to me but not with 'erk' or 'jerk'. Would there be a way to fix that somehow? —CodeCat 23:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They all rhyme to me. Maybe your pronunciation is just a bit misguided? -- Liliana • 00:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No... w:Hiberno-English#Leinster and Greater Dublin:
/ɜɹ/ as in nurse. In local Dublin, this phoneme is split, either pronounced as [ɛː] or [ʊː]. In this accent, words written as "-ur" are always pronounced as [ʊː], while words written as either "-er" or "-ir" are pronounced as [ɛː], unless "-er" or "-ir" follows a labial consonant (e.g. bird or first), when this sound has the [ʊː] realization.
—CodeCat 00:15, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've heard this split, though I don't use it. I do find, though, that other claimed rhymes in Wiktionary are not so in my native dialect. I suppose a dictionary has to stick with majority pronunciations, and cannot include all regional variations. Dbfirs 09:34, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

allus

Something went wrong with a template here... Metaknowledge 20:42, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It was due to some recent changes that messed up {{context labelcat}}, now fixed I think. Thanks!​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:27, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question on inclusion of lyrics as sources

If a phrase is referenced in a song lyric, does that warrant mention in that phrase's wiktionary page?

Example:

The Phrase if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail is mentioned in a Phish song, Bittersweet Motel.

Lyrics:

When the only tool you have is a hammer/ Everything looks like a nail/ And you're living, at the Bittersweet Motel/ Halfway between Erie and Pittsburgh/ You're puttin' me through hell/ On the highway, to the Bittersweet Motel

Obviously it's not the origin, but is this the sort of thing Wiktionary includes, or is this deemed trivia and not something to include?

Thanks

-- Chupon 17:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We would call that a "use" (good for attestation), not a "mention" (doesn't normally count for attestation). Nothing that illustrates meaning and usage is trivial. We prefer usage examples for attestation that are relatively easy to find and require them to be durably archived, which favors print sources. The easy-to-find preference leads us to Google Books and Scholar, the entries from Google News that are from print sources and Usenet as found via Google Groups.
I have not found it easy to locate contemporary song lyrics in durably archived sources.
The example above illustrates contemporary usage, but does not illustrate meaning particularly well. DCDuring TALK 22:24, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is a lyric durably archived if printed on the sleeve notes? (I'm talking vinyl of course; I don't know if mp3 files have sleeve notes!) SemperBlotto 22:29, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You both make it sound like Wiktionary has a definition of durably archived; we don't. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:31, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it wouldn't meet CFI - sum of parts. SemperBlotto 22:34, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wahey! NB I meant in the Wiktionary namespace, on the off chance you weren't joking. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Definition? Definition??? We don't need no definition!!! We just need to make decisions about what sources we accept. Definitions are not identical to meaning. DCDuring TALK 00:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, regardless of whether or not this particular lyric / phrase is acceptable: we certainly allow song lyrics as example sentences in the general case. As long as we can verify that a particular lyric is used in a particular song (e.g. via Youtube), it doesn't even matter if the lyric is "durably archived" (in a book or on Usenet): once a term has three durably-archived citations, it doesn't matter whether the fourth citation is durably-archived or not, as long as it illustrates the usage of the term. (Davilla pointed this out to me.) If you wanted to add the above lyric to [[hammer]], for example, you could. - -sche (discuss) 02:08, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
One thing to be careful about is spelling (especially of recent slang terms, e.g. in rap). The recording doesn't offer any information about how a word is written, which we require. Equinox ◑ 02:10, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes: and bear in mind Fontana's law.​—msh210℠ (talk) 07:10, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

morior

I don't know how to fix it, but the future participle on this template-generated chart needs to be changed to moriturus, -a, -um. Thanks. Metaknowledge 06:23, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Amharic/Ge'ez letters

Do we want entries for the individual Amharic/Ge'ez "letters", like ሂ? I say yes, because we have entries for the different Hangul glyphs. Then again, what's our practice with regard to Sanskrit letters? - -sche (discuss) 21:05, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say all letters of all scripts are okay. -- Liliana • 21:33, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like we do Sanskrit like this: अ. —Stephen (Talk) 20:29, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've started creating the Ge'ez glyphs. Ge'ez is a syllabary with a large number of possible signs, which is why I asked about Sanskrit. - -sche (discuss) 03:20, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Sanskrit spellings

What is the purpose of this? - -sche (discuss) 21:05, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No idea. Category:Spellings by language consists of 134 empty categories! Can they be deleted? -- Liliana • 21:34, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, I can see what Category:German spellings is being used for, and I can see how it would be very useful to distinguish Sanskrit words based on script, but is that what this category is supposed to be used for? Or do we or should we distinguish Devanagari-Sanskrit from Brahmi-Sanskrit like Hindi from Urdu? - -sche (discuss) 23:13, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure. Sanskrit is kind of weird in how it is written in quite a lot of scripts, and honestly I have no idea how to handle this case properly. -- Liliana • 23:14, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

costotransverse

What went wrong here? Metaknowledge 02:10, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

better now? -- Liliana • 02:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I just realized what went wrong, but I saw that you had already fixed it. Metaknowledge 02:21, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Userbox template

The template that allows creating info boxes on a user page does exist on Wikipedia but not on Wiktionary. Why? -- LucasEasedUp 12:45, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean {{babel}} ? —CodeCat 13:05, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Userbox -- LucasEasedUp 13:06, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Because it's formally banned: WT:UBV. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

achronicity

Is there any additional meaning for the word “achronic” besides the astronomic one? Also, is “achronicity” a word? 68.55.112.31 18:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Achronic means timeless. Achronicity means timelessness. —Stephen (Talk) 18:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My edit stats

Is there anywhere else to view my edit stats (total number of edits, number of new pages created.. etc) other than using soxred93's tools on toolserver.org (his account just expired a few days ago)?

Maybe you would like to place this on your user page:

Number 60.

You might also like this:
Statistics:
No. of articles 8,231,295
Total pages 9,835,370
No. of users 4,231,256
No. of admins 75

—Stephen (Talk) 02:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Stephen. That helped quite a bit. I wonder if it's possible to list all the pages of which I am the creator with AWB or another tool? Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 22:55, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is the term used for increasing the alkalinity of a chemical?

To increase acidity of a chemical we acidify but what is the term used when we increase the alkalinity of something?

Cms

what would this mean if you were looking at a date site for a woman's weight

centimetres? Can you give the whole sentence? Equinox ◑ 15:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Linnaean Binomials

I notice that a lot of the Latin request entries are really parts of scientific names. I know that the normal language category for these is Translingual, since they aren't specific to any one language. The question I have is: what are the criteria for inclusion? I'm sure we don't want to compete with wikispecies by including every combination of genus and species, but are we trying to include all the component individual names such as generic names and specific epithets, or are we limiting it to ones in use by non-specialists? Do we weight it differently when terms are actual Latin such as alba or viridipes vs latinized constructs such as Sinowilsonia (named after Ernest Henry "Chinese" Wilson) or Muilla (an anagram of Allium)? What kind of attestation is required? Chuck Entz 10:25, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DUI

Is DUI a felony, misdemeanor, or a violation ?68.104.247.196 19:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See Drunk_driving_law_by_country#United_States. Equinox ◑ 19:26, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DUI driving under influence (boose or drugs prescribed or not)also realize some places its also sitting behind wheel of a vech running or not with keys accessable for ignition . so lock it in trunk and have only trunk key in pocket if you wait it out !! yea pretty redicculious but that helps prove your intent in court when cops roll up to see whats doin,, stories i've heard.. as to charges seriousness even i think that could vary by juristiction also. davidainmaryland1 4/9/201`2 9:55 est usa

Newbie looking for help

Can someone check a page I have created and suggest what is wrong, what is right, and what is missing. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/plasmogamy#Noun. I am not sure why my pronunciation is listed as a template as I did not try to create one. Also I am not sure where these came from and what they mean. id:plasmogamy ta:plasmogamy vi:plasmogamy zh:plasmogamy I am having some serious issues and if I am unable to resolve them I think I may need to leave Wiktionary even though I really want to contribute. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks.Boundlesslearning 21:45, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have tidied it up a bit. Those things you didn't recognise are interwiki links, automatically added by a bot to indicate which other-language Wiktionaries have got an entry for this word. Equinox ◑ 21:52, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much, that looks better. I am having a problem with things disappearing after I enter them too. I put in the plural for of plasmogamy, which is plasmogamies, from Merriam-Webster and it is gone. Would it be automatically deleted from the system? Boundlesslearning 22:02, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the plural because it does not actually seem to be used in English. Everything I can see on a Web search or in Google Books only has plasmogamies as a French word. Equinox ◑ 22:06, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is actually in the medical tab on Merriam-Webster but if you think it is not the right fit I will concur. Thanks again. Boundlesslearning 22:14, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

háček and other self-using symbols

The term "háček" uses the symbol which is its referent. In contrast, "umlaut" is not spelt with an umlaut. In many languages, the names of many letters also use the letters they describe ("z" is called "zed" or "zee"). Are there other letters, diacritics or symbols which use themselves in their names? (I'm hoping for examples like "háček", not like "the @ sign" as a name for "@".) - -sche (discuss) 05:24, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What languages are you looking for? The Arabic word for shadda, شَدَّة (šadda), actually uses a shadda. -- Liliana • 05:36, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah! That's a perfect example! - -sche (discuss) 20:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The ångstrom (Å) is written with an ångstrom. Aitch is written with an h, but not with the sound of an h. —Stephen (Talk) 06:58, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
But I say haitch, see w:H#Name in English (and to me 'a HTML file' seems more natural for that reason). —CodeCat 14:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've often wondered why (deprecated template usage) cedilla doesn't. SemperBlotto 08:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"c" followed by a front vowel doesn't need a cedilla in Spanish (the source of the word), which is used in that language only for those instances where the sound exists in environments where it normally wouldn't.Chuck Entz 13:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In Turkish it's called çe. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 14:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Every Hebrew letter's or vowel's name uses it. Dagesh and dagesh lene, too. (Not dagesh forte, though.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
הַדָּגֵשׁ הֶחָזָק :-P   —RuakhTALK 18:21, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose en space and em space potentially contain their referent. Equinox ◑ 22:07, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! That would be interesting. Hm, one could even write "non-breaking space", "soft hy­phen" and "non‑breaking hyphen"... - -sche (discuss) 20:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also "en quad", "em quad", "three-per-em space", "four-per-em space", "six-per-em space", "figure space", "punctuation space", "thin space", "hair space", "narrow no-break space", "medium mathematical space", and "ideographic　space". (Thank you, Jukka Korpela.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 23:52, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, everyone! This is fascinating. Although I didn't understand Ruakh's bit... ;) - -sche (discuss) 20:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
He wrote (in Hebrew) "the dagesh forte": unlike the Hebrew for "dagesh forte", the Hebrew for "the dagesh forte" has a dagesh forte.​—msh210℠ (talk) 23:45, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

creating a dictionary in a Brazilian native language

Hello, My name is Rodrigo Cotrim. I'm a linguistic professor in Brazil and I've been working with indigenous languages spoken nowadays in Brazil (13 Brazilian languages from 180 existing ones). I would like to make a request to create a dictionary for at list one of those languages I'm working with. It would help me and my indigenous students to make a lexicon list/glossary/vocabulary/dictionary/thesaurus of their mother tongue (L1) (and of their second language (L2), Brazilian Portuguese). This dictionary would help to expand the scientific knowledge upon an endangered language spoken in Brazil. It would also help my indigenous students (many of whom are also indigenous teachers at their villages) in their schools, since the Brazilian government has been implanted computers and INTERNET at public schools located in indigenous villages. Could someone help us? My students and I will be really thankful and we are really looking for an answer and help. Sincerely, Rodrigo Cotrim Professor at Federal University of Goiás, Brazil.

Wiktionary is freely editable, so this means that if you or your students want to help out, they can just by editing the pages and creating new ones as needed. But in your case, maybe the Portuguese language Wiktionary would be more suitable? —CodeCat 02:35, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have a question about red links in a word combination. (hox genes) is showing a red link for the word hox, which I understand because it is not defined in Wiktionary, but hox is not a stand alone term so it cannot be defined without the accompanying word gene. Not sure what to do, does the red link after I save the page? If it stays is that ok? Or should I not define hox genes, even though it is a well defined term? Haven't saved anything yet http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=hox_gene&action=submit. Thanks.Boundlesslearning 13:46, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I missed that. I will delete my entry, thanks.Boundlesslearning 14:06, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

February 2012

scrilla

How is it supposed to be pronounced? I say it in my head as "skreeya" like the way "ll" in Spanish makes the "y" sound in English, but I feel that's wrong. Anyone know? I need to brush up my memory on slang. SoCal 212 21:38, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not like "skreeya", it rhymes with villa. —Stephen (Talk) 23:44, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oh okay. Thanks. SoCal 212 04:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it's like vainilla. Uhmm yummy 190.60.93.218 14:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Request

Hi, uhmm there are request for creation? I wanted to create a page, but suddenly realized that, I really didn't know how to.. write an entry. (or even if it deserves an entry) The terms are "Slow in" and "slow out" it was used in animation before "ease in" and "ease out" wich means accelerating and deaccelerating. so it deserves an entry? or it goes with slow page? 190.60.93.218 14:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To find out if it deserves an entry, read this: WT:CFI. To find out how to create one, read this: WT:ELE. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 14:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have taken the liberty of creating (deprecated template usage) slow in and (deprecated template usage) slow out. Feel free to create other animation terms that we do not yet have. SemperBlotto 15:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wow nice, but they are switched, I mean slow in is slow out and slow out is slow in. I think, maybe it's time for my first edit. 190.60.93.218 13:09, 17 February 2012 (UTC) (PS:I also found out that Wiktionary doesn't have ease in/out, which are more common animation terms. (I mean, slow in/out was used in 1940 animation or so, now they use ease, just google it. Most animators now don't really know what is "slow in" and "slow out" in the first place, that's why I asked this here ^.^)) 190.60.93.218 13:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

ascendere

I'm trying to find an audio sample of the Latin pronunciation of ascendere. Any ideas?— This unsigned comment was added by 107.2.152.180 (talk).

Someone will have to record one. Would you volunteer? Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 20:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New Categories

There seems to be a gap in the categories that I'd like to fill. We have Category:Scents and we have Category:Herbs, but not fragrance. There are several overlapping possibilities for categories: perfume, which is the best-known commercial application, but misses use in other products, as well as more traditional uses such as sachets and potpourri. Then there areessential oils, used in both food and fragrance, and then there are constituents, such as linalool. I think Category:Fragrance would be the most useful. Although much of it fits under Category:Herbs, there are also animal-based fragrances such as musk. It might fit under Category:Scents, but it seems better as an independent topic.

Category:Essential oils might be nice, too. It might also be nice to have a category that would include flavor constituents like sinigrin and capsaicin, but I'm not sure what to call it. Chuck Entz 17:36, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification: I'd like to know where one requests such things, or how to do it myself. Chuck Entz 18:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Scents would seem to be synonymous with Fragrance. (Well, one is plural and the other singular.) What difference are you seeing?​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:08, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, there's overlap, but fragrance means having a desirable scent, and many plants are grown just for their fragrance. Chuck Entz 19:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
google books:"terrible|horrible|nauseous fragrance"​—msh210℠ (talk) 19:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Finding the rare contrary example has little bearing on a category name, which should be based on the commonly-understood meaning (see fragrance). My point is that this is the term associated with a common and widely-accepted way of categorizing herbs (among other things) by use. "Scent" isn't. Chuck Entz 21:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's more important that a category name is unambiguous. People might otherwise wonder 'is this a fragrance or not' and if people disagree, people will start removing entries and adding them and it will cause an edit war. —CodeCat 21:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
True- to a point. I don't see any edit wars over whether dogfood belongs under Category:Foods or petunia belongs under Category:Herbs, because no one really cares about exploiting those ambiguities. It's true that personality conflicts can lead to edit wars over just about anything, but this is definitely one of the quieter backwaters in the category/topic universe. It's an area I have some background in, maybe even expertise, but I'm just not the edit-warring type, and I don't see anyone else who's interested enough in it to cause concern. Chuck Entz 22:49, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Going back to the original discussion: Category:Scents is plural because it focuses on the scents themselves, rather than on scent as a trait or quality. Look at the items in the category. Although musk is definitely something that would go in Category:Fragrance, nidor and petrichor don't seem to fit well with words for fragrant substances. One wouldn't expect lemongrass, lemon verbena, lemon, etc. in such a category, rather it would be the lemon scent that they all share (assuming there were an actual term for it that would meet CFI).Chuck Entz 23:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

aabod

How can I prevent non-English words from falling into an English-only category when marked with {{context|obsolete|lang=und}}? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 18:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

From the documentation at Template:obsolete:"To categorize for other languages, please use {{obsolete|lang=language code}}, a list of these codes is available at WT:Languages. " Chuck Entz 18:55, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

entries in "languages of" categories

Are entries (rather than categories) supposed to be in categories like Category:Languages of South Africa and Category:Languages of Europe? There are several at the moment (Gayle, Romany). - -sche (discuss) 21:25, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, they aren't. These are not topical categories. -- Liliana • 21:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I'll start removing the ones I've found. - -sche (discuss) 21:39, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What about Index:Afrikaans? what category should it be in? - -sche (discuss) 21:54, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Language indexes and Category:Afrikaans language, I'd say. -- Liliana • 21:56, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
...which it appears to have been in for some time now. I'm not sure why I thought it was in a "language of" category; I guess I got mixed up and started looking one layer too deep in the category tree (Afrikaans language, not just Languages of South Africa). AFAICT, the only other possibly miscategorised pages are Transwiki:Multilingual list of Indian plants trees and flowers and Appendix:Swadesh lists for Austronesian languages. - -sche (discuss) 22:08, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Antonyms of panic

Please say some antonyms of panic (the noun). --Daniel 18:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

calm, composure, equanimity, serenity? Equinox ◑ 19:04, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. --Daniel 02:56, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

cytoplasmic streaming

Er, how do I correctly mark this as uncountable? (Oh, how I love languages without plural forms...) --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 07:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

patpatia a khatri caste/ sub caste

Can someone give some details. Why is'nt it included in the list of Khatri castes.

You are probably interested in encyclopedic information. See w:Khatri. I think Patpatia is a surname, never heard of it as a caste. —Stephen (Talk) 14:41, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Remove invalid words such as "dices," the plural of dice

"Dices" is not a valid word as plural for noun dice. Can one have a plural of a plural? die dice dices chair chairs chairses tooth teeth teeths foot feet feets man men mens datum data datas sheep sheep sheeps Where does it end?

  • I share your dislike of the plural and would never use it, but it is a logical consequence of the decision of certain school examination boards in England to descend, in their use of English, to the level of their pupils, and to refer to "a dice" in their question papers. We fight a losing battle on this particular plural. The examination boards have not (yet) started using "dices", but come back in 50 years and it might well be a standard plural included in more prescriptive dictionaries. Language changes. I'd like to stop it but I'm powerless to do so! Dbfirs 21:47, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed that translations link to a page in the source language, rather than to the page of the word in the target language. Would it not be better if words linked across dictionaries? Thanks in advance. — This comment was unsigned.

  • I think that what you are saying is that (as an example) the Italian entry in the translation table of (deprecated template usage) cat links to the term gatto in this Wiktionary, and also to the term "gatto" in the Italian version of Wiktionary (via the suffix). Yes, that's what it is supposed to do. However, if you look to the far left of the screen you will see a list headed "in other languages" - selecting the "Italiano" link will take you to the "cat" entry in the Italian Wiktionary. Is that what you wanted? SemperBlotto 10:58, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • What I meant was what you call the suffix link actually. It is perfect but given the size, as a newby to the wiktionary, I had not noticed it or on an initial page I looked at it linked wrongly. I Actually had to go to the Beer Parlour and read the discussion around interwiki links to get it. Perfect. Just what I need. — This comment was unsigned.

Congregant

why isn't "congregant" listed as a derivatrive on the page "congregation" yet has it's own page ?24.4.170.165 19:56, 24 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

pronounciation guide?

Hi, feeling like I must be going blind or experiencing early dimentia, I have tried several searches and looked in all the spots I can think of to find a guide to use the pronounciation symbols Wiktionary provides! Example: Look at the word Wiktionary that shows on my left margin. Following the word Wiktionary is a bracketed set of symbols that explains how to pronounce the word Wiktionary. Where is that list of symbols hidden (or kept!) and could that list be made much easier to find? I looked under "Pronounciation Guide" "Linguistic symbols" "English pronounciation" and a long list of other more obscure titles to no avail. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

When you see /example/ or Template:X-SAMPA, just click on the blue IPA or SAMPA link to find a table that should help you. —Stephen (Talk) 14:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've created Wiktionary:Pronunciation guide and Wiktionary:English pronunciation now, to redirect to Wiktionary:English pronunciation key, where we keep some information. Wiktionary:Pronunciation also has some information, as does WT:IPA. In fact, we should investigate whether or not it is possible to consolidate some of the information. - -sche (discuss) 17:47, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I created a nomination at WT:RFM now. —CodeCat 17:52, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

lowing

Is "lowing" the sound of a contented cow, or a dis-contented cow?

Bill Sorensen

A good question. Cows moo for various reasons, not necessarily discontent, but I would suggest that cows just quietly chew their cud when they are at their most contented. Dbfirs 17:30, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

March 2012

Stroke Order

Can anyone tell me how to input the stroke order diagrams on hànzì and kanji? There are many of them missing it and it would be nice to have it for as many as possible, but I don't know how to put it in myself. – Jmolina116 (talk) 14:51, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

long ſ

The citations page for parrot (Citations:parrot) uses the long "ſ" symbol, such as the 1689 citation: "ſince I think I may be confident, that, whoever ſhould ſee a Creature of his own Shape and Make..." I have converted that symbol to "s" when writing citations. Is there a preference? I find the long "ſ" symbol to be distracting when trying to read a citation. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 13:50, 4 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The citations can serve to demonstrate various aspects of usage, so I've always tried to reproduce the original alternative characters, spellings, and style. —Michael Z. 2012-03-14 21:20 z
It's a matter of personal preference. Some users choose to reproduce the long s, others use a regular s. The long s cannot be used unless it's used in the original work being cited, but there's no requirement that it be reproduced when the original work does use it. That's my understanding of the matter, from various discussions over the years. - -sche (discuss) 21:35, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both for the feedback. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 20:52, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is Welsh Rhodri cognate to English Rory?

Is the Welsh masculine given name Rhodri cognate to Irish Ruaidrí / Ruairi and Scottish Ruairidh / Ruaraidh, anglicised as Rory? --JaS (talk) 18:25, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t know about the Welsh, but Rory is the anglicized form of Irish Ruaidhrí and Scottish Ruairidh / Ruaraidh. Also anglicized as Roderick. —Stephen (Talk) 01:16, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary:Main Page: Update "Wiktionaries in other languages"

(Wiktionary talk:Main Page is protected):

Update "Wiktionaries in other languages": Malagasy Wiktionary has reached 1,000,000 entries in January 2012. -- 77.184.32.149 19:51, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Updated. —Stephen (Talk) 20:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

languages with fewer than 10 entries

[[Wiktionary:Statistics]] lists "Of the 839 languages on Wiktionary, only the 453 with 10 or more entries". Is there a list somewhere of the languages with 9 or fewer entries? I suppose there's Category:All languages, which has all of the languages. - -sche (discuss) 21:32, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are also lists:

You can order the list of languages, if you click on the header of the tables. But I cannot guarantee that these lists contain all languages. -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 09:27, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Alamodality

On the definition of alamodality, it asks for a quote. I found this word in "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson. The sentence where it occurred is "Gwendolyn Hackworth hadn't packed a parasol, but she was untroubled; she'd always had a kind of natural, unconscious alamodality." I'm reading this on the kindle, so I don't know the exact page number, but it's around 30 I believe. — This comment was unsigned.

legeslegértéktelenebb

Why is there a hanging <noinclude>? Some sort of error in template:hu-exaggerated of, perhaps? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:09, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I hope I fixed it. There was a noinclude closing tag in template:hu-exaggerated of without an opening one. I also had to reset legeslegértéktelenebb's cache. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 00:33, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

campana

I am uncomfortable with inflection tables - could somebody please add one for this Latin entry? Thanks. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 22:15, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gabon

How is Gabon pronounced? It rhymes with bonbon, right, and not with bone? - -sche (discuss) 21:03, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bitte is my name.

My name is really Bitte and I like to know where this form comes from (its origin). All I so far discovered is that it is a fairly common name in Denmark (I´m from Sweden) Can it have something to do with "Birgitta"?

This page might help: [2] Equinox ◑ 10:55, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've added Bitte now. :) —CodeCat 14:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Two questions

Not sure if this is where this goes I'm a "newbie" only to the extent that I don't show up here often, even though I've been registered for seven years... I wanted to add a category of the sort Category:1996 coinages to cromulent and embiggen--is there a scheme like this on Wiktionary? For most terms, it would be impossible to find a precise year of coinage, of course, but for several there are. Also, as a secondary question, what are "my new messages"? I see this exists on Wikinews as well, but I'm simply an ignorant Wikipedian. Sorry. Thanks for everyone's input. koavf (talk) 08:37, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Embiggen is attested in 1884  —Michael Z. 2012-03-21 13:21 z
Too true But still... koavf (talk) 06:20, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"My new messages" is for liquid threads. We have been experimenting with it, but not many of us are using it now. You can just ignore it. Someone else can field your question about new categories. —Stephen (Talk) 21:06, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Long TOCs

I find pages with long TOCs, such as bar, rather uninviting. How do people feel about putting the TOC down the right-hand side, like this? 86.177.106.238 03:33, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is an option for that in preferences, under gadgets. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 03:55, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Registered users get to have that option selected for them whenever they use Wiktionary while logged in. I've never understood why the right-hand side Table of Contents isn't the default. DCDuring TALK 12:33, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See Wiktionary:Votes/2010-01/Setting ToCs to be on the right hand side by default. --Yair rand (talk) 12:39, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
IOW, a bare majority of voters don't care about the anon's expressed concern. Perhaps the anon should register and propose another vote. DCDuring TALK 13:34, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Words collected from Wikisource PSM project

Greetings. I am proofreading The Popular Science Monthly volumes on Wikisource and collected a sizable number of English words used in the 19th and early 20th century academic, technical and scientific world. Now, I came to realize that it's impossible to learn Wiktionary rules, formatting and research, and keep contributing meaningfully to the PSM project on Wikisource, to which I am committed.

If it's of interest to anyone, please help yourselves and add these words. I will be updating the list periodically. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me here, or on Wikisource. Ineuw (talk) 06:53, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Phrases with large numbers of alternative forms

I've created a page for the expression everyone and their mother. The trouble is that it has a ridiculous number of alternative forms - "everyone" can be "everybody", "their" can be "his" ("her" seems to be used a bit as well, to emphasise when "everyone" is mostly female, eg "When Beyoncé credited the Master Cleanse with her weight loss for the movie Dreamgirls a few years ago, everyone and her mother (and at least one guy I know) jumped onboard") and "mother" can be "mothers", "mom", "moms", "mum", "mums", "mamma", "mammas", "momma", "momma", "mama", "mamas", "mam", "mams", "ma" and "mas", all of which have some presence on Google. What should I do about this? Is having all the possible variants redirect to everyone and their mother a good idea? After all, some examples are hypothetically possible, but unlikely to have ever been used ("everybody and her mam" for instance has no Google hits). Having a list of all possible variants on the page? A usage notes section explaining the variants? Smurrayinchester (talk) 10:16, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are also entries which list all of the many attested forms, but in a collapsed table so that they don't take up so much space at first. I'll see if I can find an example. - -sche (discuss) 18:32, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
May be, one the most popular form, and other are redirected to it? Infovarius (talk) 04:33, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Category of all forms

Why don't you collect all subcategories for forms of words in separate category like Category:All forms of words, may be with subcategories for "Verb forms" and similar? --Infovarius (talk) 11:22, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It wouldn't be a bad idea I suppose... but the question is what is a form and what isn't. Is a comparative a separate lemma (like in Latin) or is it a form? —CodeCat 13:25, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Why it can be a lemma? It is a comparative form of adjective, isn't it? Infovarius (talk) 18:03, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, Category:Verb forms was deleted twice. --Infovarius (talk) 03:53, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It should probably be called Category:Verb forms by language or (in each language) Category:en:Verb forms. But I'm not sure... - -sche (discuss) 04:01, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Finally, I've created tree for [[Category:Inflections]]. It is quite consistent, I believe. Infovarius (talk) 04:59, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

cmn-proverb template

Hi I need help with the cmn-proverb template with regards to 青出於藍 I think I've filled in the fields right, yet I have traditional Hanzi appearing where the simplified should. Can anyone help?--KTo288 (talk) 23:13, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it okay now? I think you had trad. Hanzi instead of simp. Hanzi in the {{Hani-forms}} template. —Stephen (Talk) 03:41, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes its okay now-thanks. Me and templates don't really get along.--KTo288 (talk) 10:37, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

assholocracy and wall humping

(posted here as this page is for "specific requests for information or assistance") DCDuring, Cirt and I have discussed back and forth whether or not the citations of assholocracy, arseholeocracy, assholeocracy and wall humping are durably archived, and thus whether the terms meet WT:CFI#ATTEST. In some cases, books and Usenet posts have been cited; those meet CFI/ATTEST. In some cases, newspapers have been cited with page numbers; those were presumably printed and so meet CFI/ATTEST. In other cases, news websites have been cited, and it isn't as clear whether or not the stories also appeared in durably-archived print. (I note that Cirt's interpretation of Wikipedia's sourcing rules also seems to differ from the community's.) I'd like it if fresh eyes could look at those four entries and their citations pages, and close the RFVs accordingly (to whether or not sufficiently many of the citations are durable). - -sche (discuss) 23:26, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the de facto policy was to ignore what durably archived actually means, and interpret it as 'published books and Usenet' no matter how much sense this does or doesn't make (just sayin'). Mglovesfun (talk) 23:29, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
lol, close...published journals, magazines and newspapers also count. The question here is: can we check that the newspaper websites’ stories were also published? If so, some of the entries above pass RFV; if not (if we can't check, or we check and the stories weren't published), they fail. - -sche (discuss) 23:31, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not strictly helpful, but Euro-wasp passed, including the citation from Euro wasp with two citations from bbc.co.uk. I happen to know that to save money they axed a load of web pages, which makes me think bbc.co.uk isn't durably archived, so Euro-wasp would need to be re-rfv'd. Outright deletion would be unfair, as the consensus at the time was that the entry was cited, so no need to look for further citations. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:35, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, Euro wasp would meet CFI thanks to Usenet posts. - -sche (discuss) 03:50, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Newspaper archives such as LexisNexis, Westlaw, and NewsBank may not always include page numbers in their citations of newspaper articles, but rest assured they are citations of printed newspaper articles. ;) -- Cirt (talk) 05:35, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: Please note that I'm still in the process of additional research on these topics. I'd appreciate a bit more patience. Let's not move too hasty on this. There's no rush. It's not an emergency. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 03:24, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    It isn't an emergency if we delete the entries, either: there's still all the time in the world to find citations, at which point we can bring the entries back (with their full prior histories and all). - -sche (discuss) 03:48, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, but it's not such an emergency that it's needed to delete anything. The entries certainly at the very least have plenty of citations that do justify at keeping the pages. And I'm working on more research, right now! -- Cirt (talk) 03:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary, like Wikipedia, does its users a disservice to keep content we've actively looked for and haven't found sufficient citations of. That we've actively looked for citations of these words, and haven't found enough to satisfy our CFI, suggests that they are protologisms — relatively newly created words which have not yet gained acceptance — which are suitable for our List of protologisms, but not yet for the main namespace. You've edited these entries in good faith, and worked to grasp our criteria for inclusion, but the entries still don't meet our criteria for inclusion, with regard to attestability. Deletion of these articles would not be an emergency deletion (we have {{speedy}} for that), it would be following our policy of deleting words which fail RFV. - -sche (discuss) 04:02, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Multiple users respectfully disagreed with your assessment at RFV. -- Cirt (talk) 04:05, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Untrue. Several users commented in the discussion of assholocracy, arseholeocracy and assholeocracy that they weren't sufficiently cited or citeable; other users speculated that they might be citeable, but weren't borne out; only Equinox expressed the tentative view that one of the three (assholocracy) met CFI. In the discussion of wall humping, you and I are the only people who've commented after DCDuring's initial request for verification of the word. - -sche (discuss) 04:14, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Incomplete summary. There's only one comment after my research started on this and I improved the page, which was for Keep. Thanks. -- Cirt (talk) 04:16, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Viewing scripts

There are a bunch of scripts that I cannot view on my computer: Khmer, Lao, Ge'ez, Kannada, etc. I use Safari on a Macintosh. How do I make it render more scripts? Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 20:25, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think you need to track down the fonts for displaying them. Any Unicode-compliant OS (which is most [all?] of the big ones these days) will be able to handle text in such scripts, but might not come with the fonts for displaying them. For Khmer, for instance, a quick Google search lead me to http://www.cambodia.org/fonts/ . Poke around, see what you can find and what looks good to your eyes. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 20:54, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it's quite a bit more difficult for the Mac, since it can't cope with complex scripts very well. Windows fonts usually are not compatible with the Mac. -- Liliana • 21:02, 27 March 2012 (UTC) (addendum: maybe w:Wikipedia:INDIC#Mac_OS_X is of any help?)[reply]
It's not that bad. I have fonts for pretty much everything (with a few minor exceptions) on my Mac, and I only paid for one font- it had things like Linear-B and Hieroglyphics (to name just a few) that don't have much of a constituency. Just about any script for a living language with more than a handful of computer-literate speakers has free fonts for most of the platforms to encourage communication between them. If you add the words "free fonts Mac" to a search for a language, something usually turns up. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:42, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, everybody! --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:46, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

April 2012

What is a honeybadger

What is honeybadger — This comment was unsigned.

Does honey badger help? There is a Wikpedia link there, too. BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 23:27, 2 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I changed the definition- "primarily carnivorous monotypic mustelid" is hardly recognizable as English, and monotypic doesn't make sense in this context. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:26, 3 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

convayes to me a honey do list from a wife whom repeatedly reminds you to do some item on the list .. a honey badger ...get it ? honey do this.. honey do that... maybe you just need to be married a few to 38 yrs and have a sence of humor .. davidainmaryland1 on 4/9/2012

Stigmatism

I hope you can help solve an argument. My friend says stigmatism is something to do with the eye but I say that is astigmatism. Stigmatism, as I am led to believe is a bleeding mark on the hand or feet as in the marks caused by the crucifixion. Can you clarify which is right please? — This comment was unsigned.

Category:Krio language

Well, I messed this one up royally. Can anybody fix it (and explain to me what to do with all those params I can't seem to fill)? Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, family information is controlled by the language template {{kri}}, not the category (it's unintuitive to the uninitiated, I admit). In this case, Template:kri/family should be set to "crp" (a code which is also probably unintuitive to the uninitiated). Note that I've cascading-protected all of the templates like that, because most of the times non-admins create them, they create them with content like "poop dookie"... this cascading protection does have the negative effect that helpful users like you can't create them with proper content, but if you ever need family information added to a language, let us know here, or contact User:Liliana-60 or me. - -sche (discuss) 02:13, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
PS I have tried to persuade someone to code the category templates such that they fail as gracefully when no family info is set as they do when no script is available... - -sche (discuss) 02:14, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
PPS, I have changed the script from "None" to "Latn". If I shouldn't have done that (Yair or anyone else knowledgeable), let me know why... - -sche (discuss) 02:17, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Latin is correct. This makes sense to me now, but it's really annoying that if I want to do this again, I have to ask an admin. However, I see the logic in protecting those. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:55, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I wondered (in the GP) when I protected those pages if I should block non-admins, or only new users. At the time, it wasn't considered likely that non-admins would care to flesh out family info... I'm glad to be wrong about that! :) Because the cascading protection is applied to all script-info and all family-info pages from only two pages, it could easily be reduced to "block new users only". If I can find an easy way to make a list of all the pages in a format that interested vandalism-reverters can copy into their watchlists, I'll reduce the protection level in a moment. - -sche (discuss) 04:11, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, huh. It turns out that protection can only cascade at the "admins-only" level; I can't reduce cascading protection to "established users only"; it has to be "admins-only" or no protection at all, so I've left the pages locked. - -sche (discuss) 04:55, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New word?

I would like to submit a new word for your consideration. PANANUS: From the Greek (Pana),turn(Nus)mind. The moment in decision making, during which new connections are made in your brain. You are sitting at a nice restaurant. Your date asks, what are you having? At that moment you become stressed, your brain releases hormones and you make a decision. The same basic process occurs in what we would consider high stress situations. There is a millisecond when your brain has to make new connections between your synapses and your neurons release hormones into your system. It’s the moment some call the fight or flight response.

It’s these new connections that allow a perfectly sane person to run into a burning building. To allow a police officer to pull his gun in deadly force. You may remember a video in Alabama where two officers pulled over a tan Suburban. The two young men got out and opened fire on the two officers. After quickly taking cover the officers returned fire. Over twenty rounds were exchanged and no one hit anything. Highly trained officers didn’t even hit the Suburban. I don’t recall where I heard this saying, “He who hesitates is lost” but I’m sure the person was referring to that moment in time. That moment when an officers brain could not allow him to hit a target six feet tall two feet wide and less than twenty feet away.

After searching, I could not find a word for that millisecond that moment that occurs in each of us hundreds of times a day. That moment that changes our mind, our way of thinking or behavior from that point on.

So I purpose we give this moment a name “PANANUS”. From two Greek words (pana) Turn and (nus) mind.

We are in the business of documenting existing words, not inventing new ones, but you could add your new word at WT:LOP. Equinox ◑ 22:41, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The word would have an entirely different meaning if you moved the split between the roots one letter to the left. — lexicógrafa | háblame — 02:59, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Douma

Dear reader,

Think that in your site the name Douma deserves another source mentioned and that is the name Douma in Frisian Dutch. Name already appears in publucations in 931 AC and is an old Frisian name. Frisian is also not a dialect but an official language. Name originate from Douwe which is a surname Douma means son of Douwe. There use to be a place in Friesland called Douwama state. Name Douma is also related to Donia , Grutte Pier.

Brgds Nanno Douma

Thank you for your comments. We do treat Frisian as a separate language, as it's the common agreement among linguists that it is a separate language and has been for well over a millennium. On Wiktionary, we call it 'West Frisian' though, to distinguish it from other kinds of Frisian spoken in Germany (North Frisian, and also Saterland Frisian which is the only remnant of East Frisian). You can see the words we have so far here: Category:West Frisian language. Unfortunately we don't yet have all words, but this is mostly because we are still lacking in people like yourself who are knowledgeable in that area, who can add new words. If you would like to help us improve our coverage of West Frisian words, we would be very grateful! —CodeCat 12:01, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is "goat-touting" appropriate for an entry?

Would "goat-touting" be an appropriate entry for Wiktionary? I'm a complete newbie; if this isn't the appropriate forum for this question I'd appreciate guidance as to where to ask.

The term comes from a Margery Allingham mystery short story from 1936. Here is the relevant passage.

`Goat-touting?' Shelia nodded earnestly. `Yes. Lots of society women do it. You must have seen the little ads in the personal columns: "Lady of title will chaperone young girl or arrange parties for an older woman". Or "Lady X would entertain suitable guest for the London season". In other words, Lady X will tout around any socially ambitious goat in exchange for a nice large, fat fee.'

Margery Allingham, The Case of the Man with the Sack, first published in The Strand, 1936. I have the version found in the Crime Classics collection My Friend Mr Campion and other mysteries, 2011.

I'm not able to find any other use after a few quick googles. Thoughts? Garamond Lethe (talk) 09:30, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it's used in one book and no others, probably not. What does it mean? Mglovesfun (talk) 16:40, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See here: WT:CFI. This policy requires three citations spanning over a year. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 17:02, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly what I needed. Thanks! Garamond Lethe (talk) 17:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Main page miscellanea

Could somebody please make the following minor changes to the main page: fix the redlink that says 'Phrasebooks' so it goes to [[Category:All phrasebooks]] and change the 'Guidelines' link at the bottom of the 'Behind the scenes' box so it goes to CFI instead of that hopeless old policy page. Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 19:09, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

LiquidThreads

As (yes, still) a relative newbie, I have a question: what happened to LiquidThreads? If someone can explain to me why they have worked so well in my experience yet we still do not use them for pages like this, I will be much indebted to you. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:35, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Because not everyone likes shiny newfangled things... and possibly some other reasons, but probably mostly that. (I, for one, despite my like of shiny newfangled things, prefer the current way of displaying major discussion fora like this to LT.) - -sche (discuss) 01:48, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm... was there ever a vote? Or was it so unpopular that nobody bothered? (And by the way, why do you prefer the present method?) --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:07, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there has been a vote, but it might be a great idea to start a straw poll here, hopefully after some more users give their input. One reason not to switch to LT has to do with the system of notifying users of new sections/threads. When we've discussed splitting large discussion fora like this into subpages, the same concern has come up: if we split pages into subpages (and especially if we split them into LT), it'd be harder to watchlist all the discussions, and it'd be necessary to continually watchlist new places (subpages, threads). And a user who watchlisted a LT-version of WT:TR, WT:RFV or WT:RFD in order to be informed of each new thread on the page would promptly have their "My new messages" section flooded with all the new entries that get listed on those pages... though I understand it's debatable whether that's any worse or better than having to look at the &action=history of the pages as they are now to see what's changed since a previous visit. - -sche (discuss) 03:27, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We had a vote to install it; see Wiktionary:Votes/2010-02/Installing LiquidThreads. Several voters there made clear that they would not support using it on the large discussion pages, though that has never (to my knowledge) been voted on directly. —RuakhTALK 04:09, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I guess that means we've never decided. Straw poll time! --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:51, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nasty! SemperBlotto (talk) 06:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

audio difficulty

why can't the audio play when I hit play.

There are several possibilities. (1) Can your computer handle Java script? (2) Can your computer handle .ogg files? (3) Is your volume turned up? (4) Did you wait long enough? The first time you activate a sound file when you visit, the script takes a while to load. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:09, 9 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

new but this is a run down so far.. please advise

hello .

i tryed to share info to all here 2 times on words not even in the record and give definitions in good faith ..... with in minets a very prolific opp edited all contents to zip with out explinatiom there site said way to buzy to answer such stuff as to why .. they had many similer complaints the speed the items were canned indicates they use a bot ie artificial un intelligence to shread your input ... so i'd have to recomend do not waist your time with bone heads who trash your input. untill some one can get these guys rained in its kinda pointless.

i'm truly sorry to have to report this kinda stuff to all but thats what happened and is true,

its also true i did not spends hrs or days learning there submission procedures so in fairness take that into consideration too.. i'm no word smith pro but i felt i had something to share even so had they edited it to ask a question or fix errors well then i'd have felt a part of the team but thats not how it really flew, ..deleteing the whole entry is like saying hey you wtf you vandelizing stuff here for get the hech out... now this opp did not seem to me to be WANTING to be mean based on his profile good chance his bluntness was just being rushed if he even saw it cuz i'd bet he ran a bot to do his dirty deed. figting bots is like talking to the wall i vote we shit can them all till proven to have some good old common sence.. good luck on that huh.

Actually, your edit history shows no contributions at all except for this complaint. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:46, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]


well that was before signing on with my screen name my good fellow.. just in case you thought i lied. davidainmaryland1 4/9/2012 

as i said all the  content submitted was fully deleted best i can tell. davidainmaryland19:17 est usa

still requesting advise please had time to read more will resubmit the items i had to this post get more comments on it all . Theres alot more to this stuff then meets the eye and i'd like to thank the moderaters for all there work and help they do here with the request to add and rarely delete stuff out right. davidainmaryland1 4/10/2012 10:28 am est usa

Was this Semperblotto by any chance? —CodeCat 21:08, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Can anybody make sense of all this nonsense "English"? I can see no articles added by User:davidainmaryland1 and there are no deleted articles in the log. SemperBlotto (talk) 21:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand David correctly, he attempted to add something twice while editing as an IP user. I just checked the various logs to see if I could divine his IP address prior to logging in, in order to check for contribs from that IP address, but either there is no such feature, or I'm not clever enough to find it. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:40, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Hello. You want advice, here's mine:

  1. If you wish to get a substantial response to your complaint you must be specific about the details: Which articles were supposedly trashed without reason? From which account or IP did you send them? Which reason was given in the deletion log? You see, we get a lot of trash entries and we have very few admins (compared to Wikipedia, for example), so you deletion procedures may be somewhat summarily at times.
  2. If you want your report to be taken seriously by everyone you should write it in orthographically correct English, using punctuation and capitalization where appropriate. The reasons should be pretty obvious; this website is about writing a dictionary, after all.
  3. Read WT:CFI and WT:ELE carefully before you create new entries and follow the instructions given there.

I'm afraid there is little more to tell you at this point. -- Gauss (talk) 21:55, 10 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The function of sc

Here's a stupid question: what's the point of putting in the param "sc" (yes, I know it takes a four-letter code for a script as its argument, but I don't get the point of it). Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:29, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It helps browsers display the script correctly. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 23:35, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK... I haven't been adding it. Will that be a problem, or is it one of those things that only crops up in old versions of IE? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:41, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve had problems with it before. When I installed this OS (Fedora 16), Germanic runes appeared as boxes unless the script was specified. Later I installed a font which made it always display correctly. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 23:54, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've had problems with Gothic only displaying when sc=Goth is used. A lot of templates (the most common of which are {{head}}, {{term}} and {{l}}) now add a script parameter based on a language. Some of the time it's just a prettiness issue, e.g. which looks better, משה or משה? Mglovesfun (talk) 23:59, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So no crisis for common scripts. I guess I'll add it for Ogham entries, though, just in case. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 07:20, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The default script for any language is set using the template /script that is a subtemplate for the language template. So for example, the default script for Gothic is in the {{got/script}} template, and for Old Irish it is {{sga/script}}. You only need to specify the script if it differs from the default script... which is rare. —CodeCat 11:49, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does "to rate" have a meaning describing a spatial relationship?

From Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: "Right now, Harry was in a shop whose storefront rated the twisting main street of Diagon Alley." I do not think any of the meanings given at rate match this use. Is something missing? (I could not find a fitting definition in either Merriam-Webster or Oxford.) --Cyhawk (talk) 12:11, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No. Since that's fan fiction, it hasn't been professionally edited. Perhaps they meant "faced"? Equinox ◑ 12:15, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Are you sure that it is a spatial sense, rather than the "deserve" sense? DCDuring TALK 14:23, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Calvinism, Lutheranism

One is given as a proper noun, the other as a noun, but I think they're both one or the other. Which header should I standardise on? - -sche (discuss) 21:38, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And if Calvinism and Lutheranism are proper nouns, are Catholicism and Protestantism also proper nouns, or are they mere nouns, because they're broader? - -sche (discuss) 21:40, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I can image saying someone is a Calvinist, but not a Lutheranist. Isn't the latter a reference to the denomination rather than the person? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:44, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Would we consider Marxism a proper noun? Calvinism should be analogous to that. Lutheranism seems more like Catholicism and Protestantism, presuming it isn't really about Luther himself. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:48, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, Lutheranist, though rare, is attested. - -sche (discuss) 21:52, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It should really be 'Lutherist' though. —CodeCat 22:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Lutherist is also rare but attested. Anyway, I fail to see the relation of the existence of nonexistence of Lutheranist/Lutherist to the noun-ness or proper-noun-ness of the religion of Lutheranism... I'm probably being dense. - -sche (discuss) 22:15, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Abstract nouns representing philosophical ideas are usually considered to be common nouns by modern grammarians. Whether they are proper or common depends on where you draw the line between the two. The distinction is fuzzier than most people realize.

Some such nouns used to be capitalized, but now are not (e.g., Capitalism, Socialism), but the modern capitalization of these words is determined by their etymology rather than their grammar. Those that derive from a proper noun are typically capitalized, while those that derive from a common noun or adjective are not capitalized. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:03, 15 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Myvyrian

Myvyrian gets just over 35 000 Google books hits, very many of which are referencing or alluding to the specific book Myvyrian Archaiology [sic], but sufficiently many of which seem independent for the word to merit inclusion... but I can't work out what it means. Any ideas? "Myvyr" is supposedly Welsh for "musing; study"... and might also just be the author's Welsh name or hometown, making "Myvyrian" something analogous to "Copernican" or "Bostonian". I can't tell. PS, "Myvyrians" gets four hits. - -sche (discuss) 02:57, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Uploading entries

Is there a way to upload entries?

I have someone who has offered to write up a wordlist with words and their English equivalents to use on Wiktionary. He's asked me what format I would like. My thought is that an Excel/Google spreadsheet would be best because then I could easily wikify using the Wikipedia tools.

But is there a way to then upload the file so that each word becomes an entry? Any other advice on how to tackle this? --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 04:03, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One way would be to use a bot. It is possible to create a formatted file at your end, and have the bot upload the individual entries. However, it might be just as easy to temporarily create a template on Wiktionary that accepts key values, and enter those words from a linked list. That is, create a page in your user space that links each word to be created as an entry, then when you're in the edit window, insert a call to a specially created template into which you've specified the part of speech and definition in English. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:28, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the response. I'm not much good at programming, but the template idea might work. I have no idea what your explanation means, though. Are there some pages like that that I can look at or a guidance page for doing that? --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 04:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It honestly depends on the language and its complexity. For Rapa Nui, where only one word (tangata) and its derivatives have plural forms, I just copy-paste the code of a typical Rapa Nui entry and change the stuff like definition and etymology. If this language, say, declines, or is written in hanzi (and thus needs something like a "kanji in this term" box), or tends to have variant forms, that could be a pain. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 14:02, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to start out with a test of some sort, perhaps some English terms. But I don't understand what "key values," "entering from a linked list" or "inserting a call" means. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 16:04, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(EncycloPetey, correct me if I get anything wrong) I think that the key values are the variable parts written in between the pipes (i.e. "|") of a template, entering from a linked list is simply creating a list where each item in the list has double brackets around it, so you can see what links are still red (and by clicking on them, you automatically create them), and I assume Petey is referring to using a template as calling it (just like how we would call a variable in programming). I would be willing to help with the template and implementation if the terms are on an Excel spreadsheet or in a similarly useful form, and if I feel comfortable enough with the language. My technical skills are relatively weak, but I'm pretty sure this is within my motley skill set. :)--Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:07, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Μετάknowledge. My intention is to make this a test for endangered languages if the LDL vote or a successor passes. A researcher said he would be happy to write up a list of words for Zarma in the middle of May and he asked me what format would be best. According to Wikipedia, Zarma verbs do not conjugate, but the nouns have six forms indicating number and definitiveness/demonstrativeness(?) with one variable form. Those conditions seem reasonably favorable—neither too complex nor too simple—for a test, and I think the researcher would be willing to review the work to ensure it is accurate. It sounds like what would be best is to create a Google docs spreadsheet with the noun forms laid out (using string concatenation for the regular forms) and start a half-dozen items to start with. Do you think that would work? --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 01:05, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, I've set up User:-sche/Zarma... you can use it as-is, improve on it, or ignore it, I don't mind. If you type {{subst:User:-sche/Zarma|Noun|noun|definition}} into a page, it will produce what shows up here (yes, I deleted the page after finishing the test, but you can see the entire former contents in the deletion summary) and here. One of our template-savvy editors could probably even make it so you only had to enter the part-of-speech once, and the template would automatically capitalize the header and leave the {{head}}-parameter uncapitalised. Alternatively, you could use a template like User:-sche/Zarma3, just type the part of speech once (uncapitalised, so: {{subst:User:-sche/Zarma|noun|definition}}; notice that you're only setting two parameters now), and let AutoFormat-KassadBot fix the header capitalisation. - -sche (discuss) 02:02, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And for the inflected forms: you could fill out {{subst:User:-sche/Zarma4}} like this (except with subst:!), producing this/this. - -sche (discuss) 02:14, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Solely from the WP page, I think that everything looks easy except for nouns. Unfortunately, the definite singular form seems to vary. If I had a guide to when -ǒ is used as opposed to -ǎ, I could figure something out. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:23, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@sche: with six noun forms, a table would look a lot neater than the list in Zarma4. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:25, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@sche: Wow, that is so wonderful, thank you! I was planning on learning about templates next week; I had no idea they would be connected to this.
@Μετάknowledge: I'm actually hoping there ins't a regular pattern to that one form so that I can learn how to deal with it. (Well, yes, I do hope there is a regular pattern....) And for tables, then I assume you add table structure to the template and then it all comes out. Very exciting! --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 02:31, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is fun! I made a bunch of templates and the result is shown here: User:Metaknowledge/scratch, for the word súsúbày. Everything is just the way it would be in real life, except it would say "súsúbày" where it currently says "Metaknowledge/scratch". One template works for any Zarma word (@sche: I used #ifeq to solve the capitalization problem), and then for nouns you add a second template. If you like how it looks, I'll move the templates into the main namespace (and improve the names!), add a few more things so it's fully functional, and I'll write up a thing so that anyone (even those without prior experience) can use it. Feedback? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:54, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah, and I assumed for that funky form that it's irregular. You have to specify when you add the word. If it has some sort of rules governing it, I'd be glad to work it in. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:56, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I made a guide to using my template. See here: User_talk:Metaknowledge/scratch#Guide. Benjamin, please make sure that your researcher gives you all the info you need to fill out these parameters. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:28, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Please note: the templates used are User:Metaknowledge/Zarma, User:Metaknowledge/dje-noun, User:Metaknowledge/dje-noun!, and User:Metaknowledge/dje-verb. Any feedback can go here: User talk:Metaknowledge/scratch#Comments section. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:53, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wiktionary:Etymology/language templates

Discussion moved to Wiktionary:Grease_pit#Wiktionary:Etymology.2Flanguage_templates.

Searching on templates

Is it possible to search for all entries that use a particular template? I'm particularly interested in searching on inflection templates. I suspect that the answer is "no", but I'd be interested if anybody has tried and found a way of doing this. Argoscuon (talk) 09:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bot creation for dummies

Throwing caution to the wind, I have decided to create a bot (I don't have much for it to do as of now, but still). I have Python, Subversion, and Pywikipediabot, but I don't know what to do now. Among the questions I have are:

  • What is the nightly file and how do I deal with it?
  • How do I edit user-config.py?
  • For now, I just want to use replace.py; how should I modify that file?

Thank you in advance for any help, as well as for putting up with my ignorance. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  1. You shouldn't have to worry about the nightly file, assuming your download of pywikipediabot works.
  2. When you run the bot you should be prompted for information (site, language, bot username) and user-config.py will be updated automatically.
  3. I don't know what operating system you're using, but here's how I would do it through the command prompt on windows:
chdir C:\
chdir \"Python27\pywikipedia"
login.py
(log in)
Then use the syntax defined on Manual:Pywikipediabot/replace.py (don't modify replace.py directly)
Nadando (talk) 15:47, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I forgot to specify my OS - I use a Mac. Should I put that code into Terminal, or is it different for OSX? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 18:54, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also: should I make a bot account beforehand, or should that be done after I figure out how to run it? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 18:57, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't know about Macs. Alternatively you can just use something like this script to get and edit pages:
import wikipedia
import config

def get_page(page_name):
   
    site = wikipedia.getSite("en", "wiktionary")
    page = wikipedia.Page(site = site, title = page_name)
    config.notify_unflagged_bot = False
    site.forceLogin(sysop = False)

    return page.get()

def edit_page(page_name, page_content, edit_comment):
    
    site = wikipedia.getSite("en", "wiktionary")
    config.notify_unflagged_bot = False
    site.forceLogin(sysop = False)

    edit_page = wikipedia.Page(site, page_name)
    edit_page.put(page_content, comment=edit_comment)
You might have to edit your paths to find the correct directory for the wikipedia module.
Hmmm. I found a useful page, mw:Manual:Pywikipediabot/Mac, but it expressly says "Running bots on Wiktionary is more complicated than on the other projects, and is not recommended for beginners. This will not be described further in this guide." What are they referring to? I used cd (equivalent to chdir), but I keep getting messages like -bash: user-config.py: command not found when I type in user-config.py. Please explain to me my stupid mistakes... --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 15:03, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You need to create a file called user-config.py on your PC in the same folder as your python program. You can edit it using the python editor or even a simple text editor. It should look something like the following SemperBlotto (talk) 15:12, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
mylang='en'
family='wiktionary'
usernames['wiktionary']['en']='SemperBlottoBot' <==== your bot username here
console_encoding = 'utf-8'

Curiously when reading this, my first thought was "why do we need bots to create dummies?". Mglovesfun (talk) 15:14, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Good Lord, no! Judging by the IP Recent Changes, we have a truly bountiful supply without resorting to artificial means- though I'm sure we get far fewer of those than most sites. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Your simple explanations are perfect for the dummy in question. Now I have a new question: should I add the line to user-config.py about API (use_api_login = True)? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:51, 22 April 2012 (UTC) Also: how do I specify in replace.py that foo should only be changed to bar if the page that foo is on is in Category:Certaincategory, and only when foo is under the L2 heading for a certain language? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 19:56, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unexplained reverts

I am an occasional contributor here. On a number of occasions, another user, SemperBlotto, has reverted my obviously good-faith edits without even having the common decency to explain why. (Latest example [3], unfortunately I have not kept records of all the others.) I have complained to him/her before, but to no avail. He/she persists in this behaviour, which I find rude and ignorant, and which sours my whole experience of trying to contribute to this project. What can be done to persuade this user to change their ways? 86.160.218.68 00:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't what sort of complaining you did in the past, but this time the extent of your "complaint" was simply to revert his edit — not very persuasive IMHO. If you want to know why he reverted a given edit, why not ask him? Unlike at Wikipedia, we allow admins to use the rollback feature on good-faith edits, as long as the entry is better without the edits than it was with them, so you shouldn't take it personally: he's not being rude, he's just being efficient. (Think of us as the New York City of WMF: friendly, but impatient.) —RuakhTALK 00:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I could request an explanation, but I should not have to. The explanation should be summarised in the edit summary. It is this whole attitude of arrogant reversion without any explanation that really gets on my nerves. 86.160.218.68 00:48, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Words you've used so far: "rude"; "ignorant"; "attitude"; "arrogant". All because he clicked the "rollback" link that's provided by the software. This would be understandable if there were a cultural norm of avoiding that link; but there's no such norm here, so I think that all of your imputations are baseless. The cultural norm here is, if you want a discussion, you start one. Why should we give an explanation for every single rollback, when a fly-by editor is unlikely ever to return to the page to see that their edit was reverted, let alone know to look at the history page to see what reason was given? Why should we use an edit-summary as a discussion forum, so that the only way to reply is to re-edit the page? —RuakhTALK 00:58, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If it happened once, then sure, but this is this editor's normal pattern of behaviour -- just to arrogantly (yes) undo people's good faith contributions without bothering to give a reason. Do you not understand how that might be incredibly annoying? 86.160.218.68 01:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I am guessing, but perhaps he reverted it because (deprecated template usage) egg alone, without a qualifying adjective, is not used to refer to a person. (But compare (deprecated template usage) customer.) Equinox ◑ 00:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine, but how much effort does it really take to explain that in the edit summary? 86.160.218.68 00:48, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Semper does a sizable chunk of the patrolling on this site, so if he does a few dozen or even a hundred rollbacks in a day (which is quite plausible on some days), even the smallest amount of commenting adds up to a lot of work on his part, to little effect. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:04, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I see no one thinks this is a problem. I am so pi**ed off by this that I am not sure I will bother to make any more contributions. I believe I said that before, though. 86.160.218.68 01:18, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is a problem, but there is also a huge problem of vandalism and bad-faith edits. And frankly, it's great to know that you have passion for the edits you've made. A good way to reduce this is to create an account, and put something on your user page (even just one sentence) to demonstrate you are interested in making on-going contributions. An edit by someone without a user ID is often an indication that there isn't substance behind the edit. --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 01:24, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, I do not have any problem with obvious bad faith edits and vandalism being reverted without comment. 86.160.218.68 01:30, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that SB, like most editors, has a more optimistic attitude toward contributors who are registered. Would it be convenient for you to register? DCDuring TALK 02:03, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My participation in the past (over a number of years) has been so sporadic that it has not been worthwhile, but in the past several weeks I have been slightly more active, so, yes, maybe I should register, when my intense irritation over this particular issue has abated and I feel like resuming. Thank you for your encouragement. 86.160.218.68 02:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I had a rather rough beginning here, being blocked for an alleged copyright violation. One advantage I may have had over you is that I was basically wrong and could not harbor much resentment for very long. DCDuring TALK 02:36, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
He deleted a page I had just created. I explained on his talk page why he was mistaken, and he restored the page. Strange things do happen... Chuck Entz (talk) 03:00, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"That's fine, but how much effort does it really take to explain that in the edit summary?" A lot. You try patrolling thousands of edits every single day. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:54, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Admins make mistakes when reverting changes. I admit. I've made mistakes before and I reassess them if they are brought to me attention. You are overly victimizing yourself for a possibly ill-considered revert out of thousands of good ones Semper does on a regular basis. We are not in kindergarten anymore; complaints to a certain degree are tolerable in the adult world, but we need to concentrate on the issue at hand constructively without whining incessantly like a 7-year-old. Otherwise nothing gets done and we will just have a bunch of pissed-off and misunderstood people at the end of the day. I am sure other admins have already made it clear on the amount of work that patrolling requires, so I am not going to repeat it. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 21:41, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

æ in anagrams

What's our policy on 'æ' with regard to anagrams? See [4], [5]. - -sche (discuss) 02:41, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe to treat it as 'ae'. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:49, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Category:English proper adjectives

Do we categorise proper adjectives? I see no harm in it. - -sche (discuss) 02:51, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd rather we didn't, surely it's not an "adjective with an initial capital letter", is it? See also w:Proper adjective. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:51, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I think that bit is wrong (it could be lowercase, and some uppercase adjectives might be improper), but there is such a part of speech, isn't there? - -sche (discuss) 10:00, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia says "The term is used informally only; it is not used by grammarians or linguists". And this also matches my personal experience. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

pater familias

I wasn't sure how to manage the inflection template (Template:la-decl-3rd) for this situation, so I just substed it. If possible, can someone please fix this (ideally so that inflected forms can be populated by bot)? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:40, 25 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Chameleon pronunciation.

I am really skeptical about this "alternative pronunciation." Syrak (talk) 15:05, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm familiar with it; I'll see if I can find a reference. I've formatted it, at least. - -sche (discuss) 17:43, 28 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

May 2012

copacetic#Etymology

Why won't the Hebrew word סדר wikify here? (I suspect it's one of those right-to-left issues.) Thanks --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:38, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

(Oh yeah, and since it's a redlink, can a Hebrew user please add an entry for it? Warning: if you don't, I will, and then I'll need to ask you to clean it up, because my Hebrew is awful.) Thanks! --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 03:40, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It’s a little tricky trying to do right-to-left inside a left-to-right paragraph. What appeared to be two left brackets [[ and two right brackets ]] were in fact four left brackets [[[[, but two of them looked the opposite because those two were in right-to-left mode. It helps, in something like this, to put your brackets first, like [[]] [[]], then separate them with a Roman letter, like [[]] X [[]]. That way, you know you have beginning and ending brackets. When finished, remove the Roman letter from between. —Stephen (Talk) 09:59, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:02, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How to denote words that only occur in (set) phrases

I wanted to add the Dutch word pisang (a loanword from Indonesian) but realised that it only occurs in the verb phrase 'de pisang zijn'. It's quite likely that someone who sees this phrase will want to look up 'pisang', so there would need to be some kind of entry there to direct users to the proper entry. How would I write this? —CodeCat 22:54, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One thing would be to have the Dutch phrase appear under Descendants in the Indonesian section. But this wouldn't help if someone only looked at Dutch sections or tabs. I don't remember this coming up before. We might need a BP conversation. DCDuring TALK 23:13, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's actually fairly common because it would be the same for reflexive verbs with no non-reflexive counterpart, which occur in several languages. I've run into this problem before with them. —CodeCat 23:18, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could add something like {{context|usually in de pisang zijn}}. But if pisang only has attested meaning in the phrase, or especially if its meaning isn't obvious or SOP, then I think it should be acceptable to have an entry for de pisang zijn. —Michael Z. 2012-05-04 00:32 z

I was intending to create an entry for the phrase (it means 'to be duped, to be in trouble'), but the question is how to get a user to de pisang zijn if they look up pisang (which has no meaning by itself in Dutch). The same happens which de pineut zijn which means the same, and where pineut also means nothing by itself. —CodeCat 02:35, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A soft redirect on (deprecated template usage) pisang to the set phrase seems best in this situation. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:05, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There's parce in French too, which has no meaning on its own. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:19, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've created {{only used in}} for such cases now. —CodeCat 12:44, 4 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sense dependent grammatical notes

I just finished creating ὠνέομαι (ōnéomai), and I came up with a solution to a problem, but I'm not entirely happy with it. The LSJ includes a number of grammatical notes, such as what a dative noun means when following this verb. I formatted these grammatical notes as subdefs (specifically, 1.1.1-5). However, they're not really subdefs, they're grammatical notes. I considered using the "Usage notes" header, but such a thing really lacks the structure and sense specificity that I need. Ultimately, I don't think it a terrible solution, as I suspect the thoughtful reader will realize what they are, and not confuse them with subdefs, but I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on a better way to convey this information. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:12, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why didn't you treat subsenses 2-4 as senses and the subsenses as senses? The nomenclature doesn't really matter if different words are being used to communicate the semantics on different sense lines. I know that LSJ and Lewis & Short have the structure consistent with what you show at [[ὠνέομαι]], but I don't think that following it so closely is helpful for those who use en.wikt for other languages besides Latin and Ancient Greek and any other languages that have this structure as customary in dictionaries. DCDuring TALK 11:31, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For starters, I think that the LSJ authors have very good reasons for using the sense/subsense scheme that they use, and I tend to think that they know a lot more about making an Ancient Greek dictionary than I do. That aside, their organization method generally feels right to me, and I usually have no desire to change it (rest assured that I when I do, I do change it). I think that one of Wiktionary's gravest flaws is not consistently organizing senses into subsenses and supersenses. I feel like I can pack a lot of definitions into my Ancient Greek entries and keep them intelligible where a similar English entry with no such organization is just a fucking mess. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 20:24, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
English dictionaries like MW and AHD agree with you though many others don't. I have forgotten what OED does. I wonder whether an elaborated and attractive (our current format is not, IMO) sense/subsense structure would discourage the addition of low-quality definitions. I wonder whether we can sustain high-quality definitions without having copyright-free sources to copy. DCDuring TALK 22:06, 5 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it would discourage the addition of low-quality definitions, but it would probably help point out redundancies, which are, in my opinion, ubiquitous in our larger entries. More importantly, it would help a user perceive the major thrusts of a word, without getting bogged down in minutia. I think it eminently feasible to adopt such a structure here. I think our more advanced editors are quite capable of recognizing the groupings inherent within senses. I also think the fact that we're a translation dictionary opens the possibility of, if not quite automation, at least computerized assistance. I strongly suspect that when translations correlate, it's a good indicator of belonging to the same sense. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:15, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've used subsenses a fair number of times for differences in syntax and construction, having been inspired by Widsith (talk • contribs)'s work on [[die#English]], though the formatting that I use is different from his. (You can see examples of my approach at [[Mid-Atlantic#English]], [[אין#Hebrew]], and [[to do with#English]].) Granted, [[ὠνέομαι#Ancient Greek]] seems to be different, in that presumably multiple of these subsubsenses can be "activated" at the same time: one could imagine a sentence that uses the verb in the imperfect with a noun in the dative, or that uses the verb with both a noun in the genitive and one in the dative. (Right?) So they're even less subsense-y. But even so, I think the general approach is fine, even if some of the details are maybe a bit confusing. (One confusion: I assume that the actual thing being bought would appear in the accusative, but the entry doesn't mention that. Another confusion: subsense 1.1 has no text at all, so it serves to group but not to explicate. Actually, I think that subsenses 1.1–4 should be promoted to separate senses, and subsubsenses 1.1.1–5 should be promoted to subsenses of the new sense 1. I think this is what DCDuring means above. Another confusion: subsubsense 1.1.5 is not really for the verb, but rather for an inflected form that functions as a noun. I'm not categorically opposed to defining it at [[ὠνέομαι#Ancient Greek]], but that's not something we normally do, and if we're going to do it here then we need to set it off better.) —RuakhTALK 00:31, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one convinced of the utility of sense grouping. I suspect that your assumption about the thing being bought taking the accusative is correct. It would probably be possible to verify that by checking the cited texts, though I'm kind of working on a few different things at the moment, and don't intend to take the time to do so. Sorry. The blank grouping sense is something that I encounter from time to time. I should be quite clear that I'm not creating these groupings, but rather I'm simply following my LSJ. However, nine times out of ten, however bizarre or jarring, their grouping policy makes sense to me upon reflection. In this case, you have the primary thrust of the word, "to purchase, buy". Everything else is subsidiary to that, and thus it's only reasonable to have it as the supersense. Senses 1.2-1.4 are extended senses of the word. Sense 1.2 is a little odd to me, but 1.3 and 1.4 exist in English, and so are fairly intuitive. I think that 1.1.1 isn't really a different sense per se, but rather it's simply that the "orthodox" sense of "buy" takes on a slightly different flavor in the present and imperfect, just as the word "buy" in English sort of implies all the little processes involved in buying (e.g. taking out one's wallet, waiting for the card to clear, etc.) when used in the imperfective aspect (i.e. buying), but doesn't really in the perfective aspect. Thus, it coheres well with 1.1.2-1.1.4, in that it's more or less grammatical commentary on the primary sense. Sense 1.1.5 is admittedly sticky. I really, really wish I could explain why I think it really ought to remain where it is, but for the life of me I can't (for another example of someone making the same assertion and receiving the same impotent response from me, see Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Implied nouns). In any case, thanks for your thoughts on the matter. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:04, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Re: "In this case, you have the primary thrust of the word, 'to purchase, buy'. Everything else is subsidiary to that, and thus it's only reasonable to have it as the supersense. Senses 1.2-1.4 are extended senses of the word.": If there were multiple such "primary thrusts", then I might see the benefit of using subsenses to group the various extended senses under them, but in this case, where there's only one, it seems like the best solution is to list the primary thrust as the first sense, and all extended senses as their own senses. I think our readers are smart enough to see the development of related senses that are ordered properly, and if they're not as smart as I think, then I doubt that a nesting scheme will really change that. (By the way, do you also think that all the verb senses at [[buy#English]] should be nested under sense #1? If so, then that might be easier to discuss than the Ancient Greek case; and if not, then can you explain the difference?) —RuakhTALK 02:15, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think the situation at buy is very similar to that of ὠνέομαι (ōnéomai), and I think it would be quite reasonable to put senses 2-7 as subsenses of 1. I think you may well be right about our readers being able to sniff out sense 1 as the primary sense, though I'm hesitant to say for certain. The general population sometimes astounds me with their average intelligence (I'll just go ahead and put on my obnoxious, self-righteous white tower dweller hat). And even if they are, all of them, we're still forcing them to take the second, or two......or more, to figure that out. If we make a habit of signifying the more important senses via indentation, we save them those precious moments. In any case, I fail to see what gain we're receiving in return for making our readers do that minuscule (or not) amount of mental leaping. Is the Wikimedia foundation running out of hash marks for their servers? Also, while I think that making our entries more clear to our readers is one very important gain from proper sense organization, it's most certainly not the only one. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:36, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the sense grouping logic. Not only LSJ and L&S, but also MWOnline often (not always) group subsenses without having corresponding senses. It is often impossible to produce a sense definition that spans the subsenses. It is almost guaranteed if the grammar (eg, complements) is different and one wishes the definitions to be substitutable.
I only wish that our format was not so ugly. DCDuring TALK 03:35, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Telugu-English dictionary

I have been using this below reference for Telugu words and their English translations. It was originally published in 1903 but updated in January 2004. It is under the category of Creative Commons License. Can I quote it in the English wikipedia. Kindly clarify. The reference is : http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/brown/ Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 10:52, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your question asks about the English Wikipedia, but this here is the English Wiktionary. If you want to know about the English Wikipedia, ask there, not here. The answer will depend on their policies regarding fair use.
If you meant the English Wiktionary, and are asking whether you can take definitions and translations from that dictionary, then — according to their license, the answer is "no". It is a Creative Commons license, but one that does not allow others to "alter, transform, or build upon this work". So, they imply that you would be violating their license if you incorporated part of that dictionary into the English Wiktionary.
That said, if you track down the original 1903 edition, that edition is presumably in the public domain and therefore legally free to take. In that case:
  • You must attribute content to its source. (This is not a legal requirement, but an ethical one; to take the content without attribution would be plagiarism.)
  • You must be confident of the accuracy and up-to-date–ness of the content you are adding. (Again, not a legal requirement, but it's basically vandalism to add content without knowing if it's correct.)
What's more, I strongly suspect that even the current content of that reference is in the public domain — I think the 2004 date just has to do with the digitization and online presentation, and does not affect the copyright status of the content — but you would have to contact the site operators to confirm that. (We need to err on the side of avoiding copyright violation; if something looks free, but we're not certain, then we need to check.)
—RuakhTALK 12:34, 9 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I meant for English wiktionary only. So I understand we can not refer it in the wiktionary pages. Thank you very much.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 06:20, 10 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

LAN = "Local Area Network" or "local area network"?

What is the correct spelling? Same question for WAN = "Wide Area Network" or "wide area network"? See the Oxford Advanced American Dicitonary for LAN and WAN. --Panda10 (talk) 10:40, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The correct spelling is wide area network. The capitals are only used by some people as a way of highlighting the abbreviation. It should not be capitalized. —Stephen (Talk) 11:30, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. --Panda10 (talk) 13:34, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Or, more grammatically, wide-area network and local-area network, so one needn't ask what is an “area network.” —Michael Z. 2012-05-11 15:23 z
Yes, it is very confusing. I checked several dictionaries, online and printed and they are not consistent. Not to mention the English Wikipedia and other FL wiktionaries. If you know a reliable online source I can use to verify similar expressions that are normally used as acronyms, that would be very helpful. --Panda10 (talk) 16:03, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sometimes capitalization isn't lexical -- it might depend on the preferred style of the organization writing the material. Sony, for instance, insists on spelling the company name SONY as corporate policy, but few other writers do this because it looks like shouting. I suspect at least some of the inconsistency you might find in capitalization for any expanded acronym could be a similar phenomenon of stylistic preference. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:51, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
-- to clarify: there might not be any such "reliable online source [for] verify[ing] similar expressions that are normally used as acronyms". -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:53, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So what should a wiki contributor do? What is our policy in the English Wiktionary regarding these words? There are a lot of them. --Panda10 (talk) 18:17, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should follow the practice of the best dictionaries and use lower case. Dbfirs 18:38, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Per our guidelines, we should document the verifiable forms. If good writers and style guides indicate a certain form, or technical and corporate documentation prefers another, we should mention those facts. —Michael Z. 2012-06-19 19:54 z

Glitch with derivatives of sum (to be in Latin)

Hello, in Latin the present and past participles of the verb to be do not really exist (the future participle is futurus though) as the verb to stand/remain (sto) was used instead (and still is in many romance languages). However, the present participle sens, -tis is found in derivative words such as absum (to be absent) and praesum (to preside): their existence is clear as "absent" and "present" are found in English. (Ens, -tis is a different kettle of fish) Can the template be modified to accommodate this? I'd fix it myself but it the code is too complicated for me. --122.62.144.13 14:46, 16 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

definitions of plurals

When defining a word that is actually a plural, how about giving the definition of the singular form instead of just stating that, for instance "spicules is the plural of spicule" and leaving it at that. It's annoying to constantly do a second lookup because the word I entered was the plural of something. If one wants the definition of the plural, one certainly wants the definition of the singular. 76.90.231.136 01:43, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why not look up the singular to begin with? It is not straightforward to maintain two complete sets of near-duplicate definitions in a wiki. Consider an entry like that for (deprecated template usage) head. DCDuring TALK 03:32, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

greek pronounciation

I saw this : "Audio file (US)" for the pronounciation of "talking" and I thought (but dont know how to do it) that this would be helpful for the pronounciation of greek words. Can somebody tell me (simply enough because I am 55 and dont know much about computers) wich programme to use and record greek words either for the english wiktionary or for the greek one?Greekolga (talk) 05:14, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Use w:Vorbis (Ogg container format). —Stephen (Talk) 05:24, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The program doesn't matter, if it can save audio recordings in the ogg-vorbis format, described above. --MaEr (talk) 12:38, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
w:Audacity is free to use, you could try that. —CodeCat 12:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I ll give it (to all of them) a try.GreekOLga88.218.164.168 19:12, 21 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ludicrous/Ludacris

A lot of people think "ludicrous" is spelled "ludacris", like the rapper. Searching "ludacris" isn't very helpful though; Wiktionary suggests, "Did you mean: lunaris". I'm not sure how disambiguation or redirection works, but I thought I'd recommend it in case something can be done to help. - 207.237.190.24 03:32, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We have a "common mis-spelling" template to use if this mistake is common, but I've never seen the error. Can you cite some examples of the mis-spelling? Dbfirs 16:31, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it's not the kind of error a well-educated person would make, but a friend had made the mistake the day I posted this. Here's one example from a quick Google search: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061201032942AAwMkWx 207.237.198.31 01:32, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
We do require citations from durably archived sources (usually books, magazines, or Usenet). --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:29, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Simple Dutch word maintenance task

Hello, I created the page fascismes as the plural of French word fascisme; however, I notice on the latter page that there's an identical Dutch word with the same plural. Since I know nothing about Dutch, I prefer not to try and add some possibly wrong Dutch plural to the page fascismes -- but my new page makes it look like the Dutch plural is already covered (blue link) when it is actually not.

So I thought about telling someone about it: since "Wiktionary:Community Portal" doesn't have anything looking like a Dutch Project, I'm posting here (feel free to move my post to a more relevant place, thanks). 62.147.26.192 23:32, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's ok. This is normal on Wiktionary. But the plural is correct so I've added it. —CodeCat 23:47, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aramaic transliterations

I am working with an editor on Wikipedia who knows aramaic. I suggested that he assist here with aramaic words. He cannot type in aramaic, instead he can only use transliterations. Would it be a benefit to the project if he did that, or is there anything he can do? I'll probably forget about this so it would be great if you could leave me a message at my wikipedia talk page.Ryan Vesey (talk) 04:09, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

He could add {{rfscript|Aramaic}} next to the transliterations. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 04:26, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think we have but one or two editors who are capable of fixing the transliterations, and they are rarely around. Even when they show up, I don’t think they check for Aramaic requests such as rfscript. These transliterations might never get fixed. —Stephen (Talk) 10:47, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's still better than not to mark these entries for fixing. —CodeCat 11:22, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Of course. But I was suggesting that he not add transliterated Aramaic at all, since he can’t provide the Aramaic script. —Stephen (Talk) 11:28, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
One thing that he can probably help with is this: we have a lot of Aramaic entries, such as לבש#Aramaic, that don't include transliterations of the headword. If he can add them, that would be wonderful.
Also, when you say "he cannot type in aramaic", do you mean that he's not fully literate in Aramaic? Or only that he has some sort of technical difficulty in typing it on a computer? If the latter, then we might be able to figure out a way around the difficulty.
—RuakhTALK 16:02, 27 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I believe he was taught a transliterated Aramaic. He's busy, so I'll try to talk to him next time I see him on.Ryan Vesey (talk) 01:50, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

einander#German

The Wiktionary page says it is "the contraction of einer dem/den anderen". I don't really understand what it means. When do I meet "einer dem" and "den anderen" ? How are these two expressions constructed ? Could it be "einer der Zwei" and "der andere" ? — This unsigned comment was added by 83.202.167.226 (talk) at 20:52, 30 May 2012 (UTC).[reply]

I think that "einer dem/den anderen" is supposed to be read as "einer dem anderen or einer den anderen". That is, it's not two two-word phrases, but rather, it's one three-word phrase with two options for the second word. —RuakhTALK 20:57, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you ! And what does "einer dem anderen" mean ? "dem" is in the Dativ form, so I don't really see...
I don't know German, which uses the dative somewhat oddly in my opinion, but it seems to mean "to one [and] to the other". Thus "they love each other" is really "they [individually] have love to one [and] to the other". Can a German speaker verify this? --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:52, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine it is more like 'one to the other'. —CodeCat 00:09, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Then why is (deprecated template usage) einer in the dative? (Or maybe it's in the genitive, but that doesn't make sense to me.) --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:47, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A little more research, and now I've realized how stupid I've been to butt in on this. I'm not sure how they can tell it's a compound from (deprecated template usage) einer and not just from (deprecated template usage) eine, but assuming that to be true, I don't really get it. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:56, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It can be any gender, as the case may be...(deprecated template usage) einer, (deprecated template usage) eine, (deprecated template usage) eines. The article may be in the dative or accusative, according to the need. "They kissed one another" is accusative; "they spoke to/with one another" is dative. Also, anderer may take the form of any gender, either dative or accusative as required. —Stephen (Talk) 04:29, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The einer is in the nominative, and indicates masculine.
  • The dem indicates a singular masculine or neuter in the dative. Alternately, the den indicates a plural of any gender in the dative.
  • The anderen is an adjective in the dative and preceded by an article, so it takes the -en / -n ending.
So, all together, we have "einer (“one”, masculine nominative) dem (“to the, from the”, singular masculine or neuter dative) anderen (“other”, dative)", or "einer (“one”, masculine nominative) den (“to the, from the”, plural dative) anderen (“others”, dative)".
The original contributing editor was User:Timwi, self-identified as German, but I confess I'm curious about this etymology as given; I'd learned it simply as the German version of "one another". The word can also be used in accusative constructions (wir haben einander gestern gesehen ["we saw one another yesterday"], sie hörten einander durch die Wände ["they heard each other through the walls"]), where the dative in the etymology doesn't fit. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 05:14, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It can be any of the three genders of einer, eine, eines; plus any of the three genders in the dative of dem anderen, der anderen, dem anderen; or the three genders in the accusative of den anderen, die andere, das andere. The dative might be though of as "one to another", and the accusative could be thought of as "one another". The article dem is the masculine or neuter dative singular, and den is the masculine accusative singular. However, the subject and object can also be feminine, as in Frau, or neuter as in Mädchen. But all the elements are in the singular. —Stephen (Talk) 06:51, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you're right, den anderen could be singular accusative as well. I don't think there's anything ruling out the plural dative, though -- sie alle sprechen einander an ("they all talk to one other"). (I realize now I was responding to the anon's "einer dem/den anderen", and had not considered the other gender and case forms given on the [[einander]] page.) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 07:29, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The thing that rules out the plural is the phrase itself: one another is like everybody, it is singular in spite of the fact that it can be used in a plural-like way. Both parts of one another are singular, the one and the other. Although the independent term den anderen can also be plural, the version that produced einander was only singular. —Stephen (Talk) 08:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yet, one another and everybody are English. Meanwhile, einer den anderen could just as well be parsed as "one to the others" rather than "one another".
I'm not sure what you mean by "the version that produced einander"; do you have additional etymological information? The word can be used in plural dative contexts, and could be replaced with the expanded version as a plural dative phrase. As a better example that's clearly dative (my above example using ansprechen is face-palmingly accusative), google books:"gab einander die Hand" and google books:"gab einer den anderen die Hand" both generate valid examples of usage, albeit not many, with the latter grammatically the plural dative for "den anderen". -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:47, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
By "the version that produced einander", I mean the singular den anderen, not the plural den anderen, because only the singular den anderen forms part of einander. The plural version of den anderen is not the ander of einander.
I only used English one another because it was easiest. einander works just as well, as would Russian друг друга, Hungarian egymás, Italian l'un l'altro, Macedonian еден на друг, Portuguese um ao outro, or Romanian unul pe altul. In each case, there are two terms, and both are singular only, although the phrases can be used in plural-like contexts.
The word CANNOT be used in plural dative contexts if, by that, you mean something like "mit einander sprechen" where einander would have one or both terms (eine, andere) in the plural. Both terms are always in the singular, whether dative or accusative. There is no single word that means "some to others" (some being the plural of one, and others the plural of another), nor of "one to others". If you really want to make one of the terms plural, then you can’t use "one another" (or einander), you have to use more words and say something like "they were speaking each to all the others", or "they were speaking each to some of the others".
In discussing einander and the longer phrase that it comes from, "einer den/dem anderen", I am ONLY talking about the forms of "einer den/dem anderen" that became einander. I am not at any point talking about "einer den anderen" where anderen is a plural, because the phrase with a plural term did not become einander and it is not part of my discussion. I am only talking about einander and the longer form of it from which it came, which have two terms that are singular only. If you have to make one of the terms plural, then you have to use a form of einer den anderen, not einander, which, like one another, друг друга, egymás, l'un l'altro, еден на друг, um ao outro, and unul pe altul, contains only singular terms.
Again, I am not talking about a form of einer den anderen that includes a plural, because that is not like einander and is not part of the etymology of einander.
Now, I have explained this to the very best of my ability. If you still disagree, then it will be your lot to live with that. I’m not going to elucidate any further. I thought the first explanation I made above, beginning with "It can be any gender, as the case may be", was perfectly clear, and if you still don’t see what I mean, then it means we simply cannot communicate well enough, for whatever reason, for me to be able to pass along this information in an understandable fashion, so I am not going to try. —Stephen (Talk) 05:03, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize for your apparent frustration on my account; that was certainly not my intent. I am interested in the German word as German, hence my questions about the etymology and the grammatical structure, and my disinterest in analogous constructions in other languages. I'm not seeking an argument here, I'm seeking understanding.
From what you say here, you do have additional etymological information, which you provide in your third paragraph. Thank you for that.
Rereading the thread, I realize I should have clarified and restated my core concern about the current state of the [[einander]] entry, which your statement about "singular only" also touches upon -- the etymology in the entry does not appear to be accurate. If einander were purely a contraction of the full phrase with article, it could apply to plural dative contexts. However, this is not the case. Checking the entry at de:einander backs this up: there should be no article between the ein and the ander, so the ein essentially modifies the ander -- there is only ever ein (one) ander (other), and thus this word can only ever be used in singular contexts.
As such, the etymology currently at [[einander]] would appear to be in error. Perhaps we could simply translate the etymology from the DE WT entry? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:32, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much ! 83.202.167.226 00:01, 2 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I've updated the etymology at [[einander]], translating and adapting the etymology given at [[de:einander]]. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:17, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

June 2012

Question about a Name (f)

I need your help!!! My daughter asked me today, "Dad, why are there two little dots over the "e" in my name?" - ie, WHY is there an umlaut over the "e" in the correct version of Zoë? Any linguistic or language specialists, please help! — This unsigned comment was added by 219.88.165.198 (talk) at 21:35, 8 June 2012(UTC).

I'm not really a specialist but I do know the answer. In this case, it's actually a (deprecated template usage) diaeresis, it is typographically identical to the umlaut but serves a different function. It indicates that the vowel under it is to be pronounced separately from the one before it. So that "Zoë" is said "Zow-ee" and not "Zow". 50 Xylophone Players talk 21:41, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In theory, that diacritic is called a trema. Diaeresis and umlaut are its function in certain languages (in this case diaeresis, as Palkia noted). In practice, people use the words diaeresis and umlaut to refer to the diacritic even when it’s being used for a different purpose. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 22:00, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This accent is very common in French words, where it indicates that the vowel is to be pronounced differently from the way that you would ordinarily think...as in Citroën or maïs. —Stephen (Talk) 03:38, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The cause, etymologically speaking, is in this case due to the fact that Greek has a different character set, and the letter eta (η), which forms the last letter in Ζωή, would be changed to an e and misinterpreted as a digraph in both Latin and English unless marked.--Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:51, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

machine readable download

Is it possible to download the wiktionary in machine readable form ? — This comment was unsigned.

Revert

Am i allowed to revert an admin if i feel (s)he made a wrongful revert and I can provide multiple google books references for a definition? Pass a Method (talk) 11:43, 10 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Simple answer is 'yes you can'. The better answer is to avoid edit wars, use their talk pages, use talk pages also, WT:TR to discuss individual entries, WT:RFC for cases where clean up is needed. Get other users involved, one vs. one conflicts only really end when one party gets bored and gives up. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:52, 10 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is the plural form of "honey" ?

What is the plural form of "honey" ? — This unsigned comment was added by 67.160.255.70 (talk) at 08:39, 11 June 2012 (UTC).[reply]

It seems fine to me. Any object that has varieties can be made plural to mean "type of": corns, wheats, teas, coffees, etc. Here are three citations over the past century:
"The physical properties of the different honeys, color, granulation, aroma, flavor, etc., are indicated in the table only in a very general way." [6] (1908)
" If two of the California honeys, western hyssop and fleabane, having a positive polarization at 200 C. are disregarded, then the remaining..." [7] (1949)
"Eucalyptus honeys could be characterized based on seven volatile compounds, whereas lavender honeys had only five..." [8] (2011)
--BB12 (talk) 08:51, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that you may have misunderstood what "this" referred to in SemperBlotto's comment. If I may paraphrase his comment slightly:
I know that looking at our entry for (deprecated template usage) honey is a bit off-the-wall, and nobody would really ever do such a thing, but did you ever consider it? If you did such an outlandish thing, you would have seen that it is (deprecated template usage) honeys.
—RuakhTALK 21:05, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I took the bullet point to be that SemperBlotto was expanding on her/his own rhetorical question. Thank you for pointing that out. I'll scrutinize bullet points more carefully from now on! --BB12 (talk) 21:35, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why is Latvian jumts 'roof' in Category:Latvian terms needing attention?

I can't see anything wrong with that entry, so I'm wondering if I didn't do anything to insert jumts into that category when I created the word. Could it be? (How can a word be removed from that category, by the way? And how do we know why a word was placed there in the first place? There weren't any comments in the couple of talk pages I looked at.) --Pereru (talk) 12:26, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

{{lv-noun}} needed to have its declension (first, second, etc.) as its second parameter. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 13:23, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've just done this in the entry: novembris. Is this what you mean? If so -- I would be very thankful if someone who has a bot could add the necessary second parameter (1st, 2nd, or 4th) to all Latvian nouns in Category:Latvian first declension nouns, Category:Latvian second declension nouns, and Category:Latvian fourth declension nouns. Thanks in advance! --Pereru (talk) 16:39, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If you have a decent browser, you can add
.attentionseeking:before { content: "\A0 attention needed here"; font-size: .8em; color: orange; }
to Special:MyPage/common.css. Then you'll see something that looks like attention needed here wherever {{attention}} appears on the page. What's more, if the attention-seeker included a message, as in {{attention|lv|lacks declension pattern}} (which is what {{lv-noun}} does when that parameter is missing or blank), then you can hover over the attention needed here to see what that message was. —RuakhTALK 21:22, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Now, how do I remove a word from the "attention needed" category after I've corrected it? I don't see the template {{attention}} when I edit a page. --Pereru (talk) 08:11, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
jumts is no longer listed in the "attention needed" category, so whatever you did must have fixed it. —Stephen (Talk) 09:43, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If {{attention}} was added directly to the page, then you will see it when you edit. But in the case of [[jumts]], the {{attention}} was actually being called by {{lv-noun}}, because {{lv-noun}}'s second parameter was missing or blank. (See Template:lv-noun?action=edit; specifically, see the {{#if:{{{2|}}}|, ''{{{2}}} declension''|{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}||{{attention|lv|lacks declension pattern}}}}}} part.) —RuakhTALK 12:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why do we have transliterations in translation template?

The discussion was started here. In short, I think that transliterations should not be duplicated in translation tables as it leads to duplication of information. --One half 3544 (talk) 14:14, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but a very useful duplication of information. To someone who doesn't know a particular script, the word is just a string of meaningless characters. Transliterations make it easier to see patterns across languages when looking at the table as a whole. If it took up huge amounts of space, that would be one thing, but it only takes up a bit more than the word itself. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:41, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Chuck. Duplication in and of itself is not necessarily harmful, especially when the duplicated information is actually useful. Wiktionary is intended for a broad audience -- the only assumptions we can validly make are that users of EN WT 1) can read the Latin script, and 2) can read and understand (at least some) English. Transliterations in translation tables increase usability by allowing users to see, at a glance, what various words in different scripts might sound like, without having to click through to each individual page. I strongly recommend that we add transliterations to translation tables as a matter of basic policy. (Or maybe it already is policy?) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:50, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is ethnopedology?

What is ethnopedology?

IPA r sound

Ok, I think this may already have a topic on here, but I am uncertain. I have noticed that on the pages for words such as troll and roll the IPA symbols shown use an /r/ for the normal "r" sound, even though this symbol in fact represents a rolled r. The proper symbol for a normal r is a /ɹ/ according to the 2005 IPA chart, and I cannot find a more recent chart. Is there a reason behind this?

DR. Tourny (talk) 19:28, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Many English entries previously used /r/ for the sake of laziness/simplicity, but for the sake of accuracy, we are in the process of correcting them all to use /ɹ/. If you see some that still use /r/ that should use /ɹ/, please do change them. :) - -sche (discuss) 20:46, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Will do. DR. Tourny (talk) 19:14, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes, help definitely desirable! Mglovesfun (talk) 19:15, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A quick question on {{term}} and {{l}}

Why is it a good idea to use these templates, rather than simply to link to words with [[ ]], when you're doing sections like 'See also' or 'Synonyms' or 'Etymology' or 'Related terms'? What's the advantage? --Pereru (talk) 23:33, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They link directly to the language section, and are faster to type than [[FOO#lang name|FOO]]. They have a sc parameter which makes it easier to define the word’s script (making it more likely that the characters will display correctly).
The fact that they are templates helps with maintenance. For example, if we decide that the language Romanian should be called Daco-Romanian, we can edit {{ro}} and all the {{term}} and {{l}} will link correctly to the new language name. If we didn’t use them, we would need to change every [[FOO#Romanian|FOO]] into [[FOO#Daco-Romanian|FOO]]. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 23:47, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also, templates help bots and scripts recognize certain pieces of text that they otherwise would be unable to distinguish. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 01:07, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Is there any reason then not to use these templates every time we want to link to a specific word -- say, in the definition, or in Usage notes, or when referring to inflected forms, etc.? Even to words in English? --Pereru (talk) 13:39, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Even when linking to English it's desirable to link to the English section of a page. English doesn't always appear at the top of the page, and with the Tabbed Languages extension a link without a language could end up linking to the wrong language altogether. The custom seems to be to not use linking templates when linking to English entries in a Wikipedia-style fashion to explain the meaning of an English term in running text, for example in a definition of another word or in a usage note. But I would support using some form of linking template for that too, if it came up in the future. —CodeCat 13:45, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Would you also use it when referring to the PAGENAME word? (E.g., when talking about Latvian suffix -nieks, I had to refer to itself in the description of its meaning, as well as to a variant form -inieks of the same suffix. Should I refer to them with {{term}}, i.e. as {{term|-nieks|lang=lv}} and {{term|-nieks|-inieks|lang=lv}}, rather than simply italicizing them as ''-nieks'', ''-inieks''? --Pereru (talk) 16:44, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The first parameter of {{term}} is optional: you can leave it blank if you're mentioning a term but don't want to link to its entry. In this case, you can (and should) write {{term||-nieks|lang=lv}} and {{term||-inieks|lang=lv}}. —RuakhTALK 17:05, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Same question about {{etyl}}

And now, what is the advantage of using {{etyl}} for a source language in the Etymology section? Is it only the formatting, plus the right script code, or is there something else? Is it the case that one should always used {{etyl}} when using an ethnic adjective like English, German, Italian etc., followed by a word from the respective language (English dog, German Erde, French laïcité) even outside the Etymology section? --Pereru (talk) 17:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

{{etyl}} also categorises the page in the proper derivation category. {{etyl|de|en}} produces Category:English terms derived from German for example. Some people also seem to like to use it without the category, by suppressing it ({{etyl|de|-}} produces the text 'German' but no category), but I see no point in doing that at all; it's basically the same as just writing {{de}}. —CodeCat 17:43, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Until quite recently, when Liliana went through all the language templates and de-linkified them (see discussion here), {{etyl|mus|-}} (for example) would not only display "Creek", but also link to w:Creek language. Liliana's edits broke that feature in the general case, but it still works for readers who have the "Always linkify language-names in etymologies" preference enabled at WT:PREFS, as well as for languages/families/whatnot with custom etymology templates (for example, {{etyl|hbo|-}} still links to w:Classical Hebrew). We should probably set about re-fixing it for the general case . . . actually, does anyone object to just always linkifying language-names in etymologies? —RuakhTALK 18:06, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not me, no! Mglovesfun (talk) 18:15, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would not object in principle but I would prefer it if a different template would be used for languages that are not part of the etymology, so that there is no danger of confusion and wrong categorisation as a result. —CodeCat 18:55, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Some metions are not the etymological source language, but a cognate from a related language (e.g., I wrote 'Compare to Lithuanian XXXX' when writing about a Latvian suffix because they are related, but I don't have data on the original Proto-Balto-Slatic or Proto-Indo-European source of the suffix; so the suffix is not a 'Latvian term derived from Lithuanian', but a 'Latvian term with a Lithuanian cognate (both derived from Proto-Balto-Slavic / Proto-Indo-European'). I suppose in this case it is not a good idea to use {{etyl}}? --Pereru (talk) 19:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As mentioned above, this is where you would use {{etyl|lt|-}}, with the parameter for the destination language replaced by - . Chuck Entz (talk) 19:41, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
OK. Thanks! --Pereru (talk) 20:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another question, on phrases

Is there a general policy here about two-word non-idiomatic phrases that are still sufficiently frequent to deserve a mention? With Latvian darbības vārds 'verb' (lit. 'action word'), I linked to every word (via the head= parameter in {{head}}) -- is this the standard practice? Also, it is still categorized as a noun, which strikes me as a little odd, since it is not a simple noun but a phrase. Should it be categorized differently, say, as a phrase? (I note that, for example, sex organ is categorized as a simple English noun, not as a two-noun phrase; is this the standard policy?) --Pereru (talk) 19:38, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, noun phrases are just nouns and are categorized as nouns. Phrasal verbs are just verbs, and prepositional phrases are just prepositions. I think it is a good idea to link each word like {{l|lv|darbība|darbības}}. —Stephen (Talk) 21:50, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Done Done. Thanks for the tip, Stephen. --Pereru (talk) 23:50, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Alphabetic order

I hear there's some way of getting the right alphabetic order for words in category lists, etc. Currently Latvian words are sorted so that letters with diacritics (ā, š, ķ, etc.) are at the end of the alphabet. Is there some way of changing that? --Pereru (talk) 20:26, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Some languages have templates that support ordering "as if" the current word were some similarly-spelled word, e.g. {{fr-noun|m|sort=cybercafe}} at cybercafé. This does not seem adequate or scalable but it's all I know about. Perhaps someone else knows a better mechanism...? Equinox ◑ 20:30, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It’s extra trouble, but you can add a parameter to your PoS lines such as {{head|lv|noun|head={{l|lv|vārds}}|sort=vards}}. I don’t know all the programming tricks, so there might be a better way. —Stephen (Talk) 21:55, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I looked to see what we did on the Navajo Wikipedia where we use a different alphabetic order. We made this file: w:nv:MediaWiki:Vector.js. Maybe something like that could be done here that would only affect Latvian? —Stephen (Talk) 22:07, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Can you do a .js file that only affects one language? I thought it would be used for the whole wiki... Anyway: I tried adding the sort= parameter to the {{lv-noun}} template, and then using it in āpsis 'badger' (with sort=apsis), but for some reason it doesn't work: āpsis is still at the end in, say, Category:lv:Mammals. Maybe one of you can help me figure out why? --Pereru (talk) 00:04, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That happens because the template that categorises into Category:lv:Mammals is not {{lv-noun}}. Unfortunately all this messing with sort keys is very complicated... I wish there was a way to specify per category how to sort it! —CodeCat 00:22, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah! So there is no quick way to make all templates categorize a certain word (e.g. āpsis) in a certain way (as apsis)? One has to do the changes in every occurrence of every categorizing template? That does seem like a lot of work!... sigh. I suppose I'll simply let Latvian words be listed in an un-Latvian way. --Pereru (talk) 00:59, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly is "DEFAULTSORT"? doesn't it have to do with something along those lines? Chuck Entz (talk) 01:59, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, {{DEFAULTSORT:apsis}}. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:13, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That indeed worked, Mglovesfun, thanks for the tip! Now--it works 100% for the vowels with diacritics, since those are treated as variants of the simple vowels for alphabetizing purposes. But the consonants with diacritics are supposed to be independent letters, ordered after the simple consonant (č after c, ķ after k, ļ after l, etc.). I can get them in the right order by replacing them with consonant+z in the default sort order: e.g., for četri, I do {{DEFAULTSORT:czetri}}, and četri is listed after all the c's. But četri will still appear under the big C column in the category list. Is there a way of making četri come under a big Č, after all the c's? --Pereru (talk) 13:03, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorting keys don't actually change the order of the letters, that's fixed. Instead, they make a page appear in the sorting as if it had a different name. So no that isn't possible unless you use a special scheme to sort them, such as by replacing č with c~. Also, be careful with DEFAULTSORT, it applies to all languages on the page, so it can only be used as long as there is only one language on that page. —CodeCat 14:21, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, that is going to be a problem; many Latvian words are in pages with other languages already. This makes me think that it's not worth the trouble to get the right alphabetic order for the Latvian words. I'll let things stay as they are now. --Pereru (talk) 14:34, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note that a lot of our templates don't support DEFAULTSORT: DEFAULTSORT only applies if you write something like [[Category:Foo]], with no sort key at all, but a lot of our templates always specify a sort-key, using a sort= parameter if it's provided and PAGENAME otherwise. A template will only work with DEFAULTSORT if either (1) it never specifies a sort-key (because it doesn't offer a sort= parameter anyway) or (2) it was intentionally written in such a way that no sort-key is specified unless the sort= parameter is present, e.g. by writing {{#if:{{{sort|}}}|[[Category:Foo|{{{sort}}} {{PAGENAME}}]]|[[Category:Foo]]}}. —RuakhTALK 12:06, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Someone with a bot (or extraordinary patience) could collect all Latvian entries, and sort them according to any desired order, for placement in the [[Index:Latvian]], with separate C and Č headers, etc. - -sche (discuss) 16:54, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How about {{list}}?

Is it much diffeerent from simply listing the words in the same line (say, under 'See also') with linking templates? Also, I see there is some discussion about whether it is a good template or not (it was nominated for deletion). Should I avoid it? --Pereru (talk) 08:41, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a lot less simple than just linking to terms. You have to create a template to use it, {{list:days of the week/lv}} for example, {{list|lv|days of the week}} does nothing without it. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:16, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A question on non-existing categories

I've just created a category Category:lv:Gases (for gaseous substances like oxygen, argon, methane, etc.). As I created it, I noticed it didn't have a topic cat parent category; in fact, it doesn't even have an English counterpart (no Category:en:Gases). Is this bad? Should I delete the category? Or should I, on the contrary, click on the red links and create the equivalent English and general categories (and place them somewhere within the category hierarchy, say, under Category:Chemistry)? --Pereru (talk) 11:53, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, create Category:Gases instead. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:56, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Done Done. Shouldn't something be done to {{topic cat}} so that it finds its rightful position within the category hierarchy? Or should I simply categorize it manually under, say, Category:Chemistry? --Pereru (talk) 12:42, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Again, it's a complicated one, you have to click on the [edit parents] tab. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

sanskrit words

many sanskrit words ends in visarga. but in wiktionary few sanskrit words ends thus. please do correction. it will be better to use a bot for that. i had corrected अग्निः for example.

  1. declensions are given with a bot for sanskrit words in english wiktionary. can you give this facility in sanskrit wiktionary (sa.wiktionary.org) it will be a great help if you give it there. --Dvellakat (talk) 13:32, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, we use templates. Those would take some work to set up at Sanskrit Wiktionary, because they use other templates and subtemplates, which would have to be set up there as well (I'm not well-versed in the technical issues involved). Chuck Entz (talk) 14:36, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Without addressing the issue of visarga in Sanskrit, I have to point out that moving an entry to make a spelling correction is not the way it's done here. To start with, I'm not sure if the Hindi, Nepali, etc. terms on the same page should be spelled with the visarga. Also, we generally try to have pages for both spellings, with {{alternate spelling of}} or {{misspelling of}}, and {{also}} to point to the main spelling- not a redirect. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:58, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Visarga is but a sandhi (word-final) form of an underlying /s/ (the old Indo-European nominative singular ending). It surfaces as other sounds in other sandhi environments. Sanskrit nouns are usually lemmatized as bare stems, hence no final visarga in page names. However, it is added in the respective declension table. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:43, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Using {{context}} to identify a mammal?

I've just used {{context|mammal|lang=lv}} to identify āpsis as 'badger (mammal)', but I'm not sure if this is the right way to use this template. In general, I'm a bit insecure about whether certain specific information that belongs in parenthesis should be written as plain text, or as some version of {{context}}; for instance, Latvian naids tends to mean 'hate' in the singular but 'strife', 'conflict' in the plural; I added two {{context}}'s to these definitions, but I'm not sure that is the best way to distinguish them. How do you decide in general when some parenthetical information is best placed as plain text, or with {{context}}? --Pereru (talk) 11:56, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

{{mammal}} failed the deletion process for not being a context. It's the same reason why we don't use {{person}} for butcher, baker, teacher, sailor and so on. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:58, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
But does that mean that I should use {{context}} to write '(mammal)', or should I use plain text? Does it make a difference? What about longish information details, like in e.g. augs 'plant'? Or the 'lit.' comment in augļu dārzs 'orchard'? Or details like the male and female sheep parenthetical comments in auns and avs? --Pereru (talk) 12:16, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe gloss, something like # [[mole]] {{gloss|mammal}} works ok because mole has a lot of meanings. For something like # [[tiger shark]] {{gloss|fish}} is a bit pointless because tiger shark only means one thing. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:26, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Normally, {{context}} is used before the definition, and {{gloss}} is used after it. —CodeCat 15:28, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
More accurately, the so-called “context” is a label that represents the lexical usage or a grammatical role of the term, and appears before the definition. A gloss is part of the definition, serving to disambiguate in terse translations and expansions of abbreviations. —Michael Z. 2012-06-19 19:46 z
Hm, I didn't know about {{gloss}}; but it does solve the problem. Thanks for the tip! --Pereru (talk) 01:01, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is vietnieks all right? I've just used {{gloss}} the way you guys suggested, I just wanted to confirm. (Also, I added a few example phrases -- do they follow the usual format here? Are there templates for them, too?). Also, what do you think about vieta -- is the use of {{gloss}} there OK? (Also, is there a policy here on the ordering of senses? Vieta has 5 of them; are they ordered as they should?) --Pereru (talk) 02:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Re: examples at vietnieks: I've formatted them for you. Re: order of definitions: no specific order is mandated. You should use an order that makes sense; either by date of first attestation (earliest senses first), or by frequency (most common senses first), or by sense development (most literal senses first; most similar senses adjacent), or by a combination of these, or by something else that makes sense. Re: {{gloss}}: No comment. I always give actual definitions, rather than glossed translations, so I don't have to worry about that template. :-P   —RuakhTALK 02:24, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the formatting; the examples do look neater. As for actual definitions vs. glossed translations: wouldn't this imply sometimes repeating the definition of the English translation, already present in Wiktionary? I thought about this when I was doing konjunkcija, which has as one of its senses that of a conjunction of celestial bodies (like a planetary conjunction). The English word conjunction also has this meaning. So I could in principle simply copy and paste the English definition -- which would apply perfectly to it -- or then translate it as 'conjunction' with some gloss that makes clear which sense of English 'conjunction' is meant (and the reader can find these senses by simply clicking on 'conjunction'). Which one would you do? --Pereru (talk) 02:34, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't speak Latvian, but if the senses of konjunkcija really have the exact same extent as the corresponding senses of conjunction, then yes, I'd largely or entirely duplicate the English def. I'd probably write something like:
  1. (grammar) A conjunction: a word that coordinates two phrases or clauses, or that subordinates one clause to another.
  2. (astronomy) A conjunction, an alignment: the alignment of two bodies in the solar system.
—RuakhTALK 03:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed they do have the exact same extension (which is not surprising: words like konjunkcija belong to that largish set of words in European languages that were actually the result of general European cultural/scientific development, and which therefore did not arise independently in Latvian. The word itself was clearly borrowed so that Latvians would have some way of expressing those meanings, i.e., the meanings came before the word.)
I feel very much like imitating your practice. But here's a caveat: won't there be a lot of duplication then in situations in which a simple reference to the English word would in principle do the job? I'm thinking of, for instance, animal names. Latvian ūdrs means 'otter' (as far as I can tell, the words are co-extensive); I simply defined it as such. Now, should I have copied the whole "Any aquatic or marine carnivorous mammal, member of the family Mustelidae, which also includes weasels, polecats, badgers, and others", when it is available with a click from otter? This would feel to me a little like copying all the definitions of a word in each of its form-of pages. --Pereru (talk) 03:28, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the def at the Latvian entry needs to give quite as much information as the one at the English entry; for ūdrs I'd probably write, “An otter: any member of subfamily Lutrinae.” Someone who wants more information about what exactly that means should click through to the English. —RuakhTALK 11:53, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Let me also ask your opinion about this related matter: would you think it OK to have the feminine counterpart of a masculine word (as vietniece is to vietnieks) simply have all the same definitions, with a modifier like '(female)' added at the beginning? Or would you refer the feminine form back to the masculine one (with, say, 'feminine form of vietnieks') -- but still keeping the other headings, since the declension of the feminine form is different from that of the masculine form)? --Pereru (talk) 03:34, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's a very difficult question. Fortunately, it's also language-specific, so since I don't know Latvian, I don't have to even try to answer it. :-P   One thing to look at: suppose you're talking about a group of elected representatives that includes both men and women. Can you refer to the whole group as vietnieki? Can you refer to the whole group as vietnieki un vietnieces? (In some languages only one of these is possible — vietnieki alone might only mean "male deputies", or conversely, vietnieki un vietnieces might sound bizarrely redundant — while some languages allow both possibilities.) —RuakhTALK 11:53, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Here, Latvian (as far as I can tell from their news sources) follows the French tradition and uses the masculine as a neutral term for mixed groups of both genders, but will also use the feminine form together with the masculine for 'politness' (like 'ladies and gentlemen'; a speaker of the Latvian parlament might, I assume, say something like "tautas vietneces un vietniki!"... but I'm not a native speaker, so I don't want to make the claim). --Pereru (talk) 11:23, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You may need to modify the PoS line template a bit. For Russian words such as цыган (cygan), I use this: {{ru-noun|head=цыган|tr=cygán|g=m|f=цыганка}}. It adds the feminine counterpart, цыганка (cyganka) (female gypsy). On the цыганка (cyganka) page, it adds the masculine counterpart. —Stephen (Talk) 01:00, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's an interesting suggestion. I've been placing the feminine/masculine counterparts after the declenion, in the ====See also section, but it seems better to have them in the inflection line. I'll have a look at the Russian template when I have a chance. Thanks for the tip! --Pereru (talk) 11:23, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Durably archived

I'm sure this has been discussed before but I could not find the answer in the policy pages. Does durably archived include online archives such as The Internet Archive and WebCite? If the answer is yes, does that mean one could make an otherwise unacceptable source acceptable by submitting it to an archive? SpinningSpark 23:35, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, The Internet Archive (and presumably WebCite) is not durably archived, because domain owners can request that content be removed (even if that content dates from an era when another party owned the domain). - -sche (discuss) 00:03, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reason that Usenet (Internet newsgroups) "should" be durably archived is that they are a non-centralised network basically controlled by nerdy sysadmins who share the latest collections of posted messages with each other. People think Usenet is "Google Groups", but it's not: that is just the modern way to access it through the Web. Google still deletes stuff on demand (if you swear that you were the author and you want it gone). I dunno how long this will last. Equinox ◑ 00:07, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Durably archived" means, mainly, printed books and usenet groups. —Stephen (Talk) 01:12, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
To me this does not quite add up and it may be worth re-opening the discussion for WebCite at least, which does not seem to have been previously discussed. I will make a case at the Beer Parlour which appears to be a more suitable venue. SpinningSpark 13:17, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
WebCite also has a removal policy. See [9]. --BB12 (talk) 17:04, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Too many templates?

I have a question: after playing around a little, I notice there are some very specific text/context templates like {{context}}, {{sense}}, {{italbrac}}, {{qualifier}}, {{gloss}} et alii. Seeing them, I noticed that some things I added to Latvian pages with {{context}} or {{gloss}} probably should have been added with {{sense}} or even {{qualifier}}; and I'm wondering if it's worth it to go through my definitions and glosses and make the changes. Is it worth it? With so many 'add-something-to-a-definition' templates, doesn't it happen often enough that one uses the 'wrong' one (and does that defeat the intention of these templates, which is to identify specific places/circumstances for future eventual style changes? if many things are added with the 'wrong' template, they won't change if a new style is adopted...). Do you often have robots change a 'wrong' template into a 'right' one (in the cases when it's obvious)? --Pereru (talk) 11:29, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They kinda all have different functions. Except {{italbrac}} which I've proposed to merge into {{qualifier}}. {{sense}} is just qualifier with a colon; I'd happily just use {{qualifier|economics}}: instead of {{sense|economics}}. {{gloss}} displays differently from qualifier; {{context}} displays the same, well most of the time, as {{qualifier}} but also categorizes. It also uses redirects, so {{context|math}} displays (mathematics) not (math). Mglovesfun (talk) 16:36, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but because they're so similar in effect, doesn't it often happen that people use the 'wrong' template? And if that happens often enough (how would one know how often this happens?), doesn't it sorta defeat the purpose for their existence? I mean, if people mix them, then Wiktionary loses stylistic consistency, right? Is this a problem? (Is this enough of a problem that I should go through the Latvian pages with these templates to make sure they're the 'right' ones?)--Pereru (talk) 17:17, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with both of you that there are too many templates, and eliminating {{italbrac}} and possibly {{sense}} is a good move. Rule of thumb: {{context}} goes before a definition, {{qualifier}} goes after it or in most other places, {{sense}} (to the extent it is used) goes in Synonyms and Antonyms sections (not definitions!) and clarifies which sense of the headword a particular word is a synonym of. {{italbrac}}... don't use italbrac. (For a laugh, see [10].) - -sche (discuss) 18:36, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I always change qualifier to gloss if after a definition, and qualifier to context if before a definition. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:37, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ooh, {{gloss}}, that's a new one (to me). Wonder if we couldn't combine it with {{qualifier}}... - -sche (discuss) 18:39, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I use {{qualifier}} to, well, qualify a definition. Have a look at 母艦 for an example. The definition / gloss is mother ship, but the definition on the [[mother ship]] page covers both air and water craft, which is broader than the more-specific Japanese term 母艦. So I put {{qualifier}} after the def to qualify that the Japanese term is just for water craft.
I see now in the template documentation for each that the two are intended for different places within a definition. However, they seem to do exactly the same thing -- add an italicized and parenthesized comment. That's it.
FWIW, I never thought to use {{gloss}} simply because of its name -- I'd assumed this was for adding a gloss (i.e. a short def). -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:54, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I used qualifier outside of definitions, pronunciation, synonyms, antonyms and so on. Gloss is kinda redundant to just using standard brackets (). Dan Polansky maintains that it might be useful for data analysis e.g. Wiktionary:Statistics, but that's a pretty weak argument in my view. Any time you can achieve something quicker without using a template, the template must be pretty suspect. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:38, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
With all those considerations, I draw the conclusion that people have indeed been using these templates with less than 100% consistency, and that so it isn't really worthwhile for me to check and change their use in the Latvian pages where they occur. But I still wonder: if people can sometimes use {{gloss}}, sometimes {{qualifier}}, sometimes {{sense}}, sometimes simple formatted text without templates, then the original purpose of the templates is not being served, right? So if one wanted to change, say, {{qualifier}} to show a different format, then lots of places which should change won't because some other template was used...--Pereru (talk) 16:24, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is consolidate?

What does it mean basically , and how do you use it in a sentence?

See consolidate. Equinox ◑ 12:47, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Accelearation?

I've just found out about WT:ACCEL, which sounds like something I would like to add to my form-of templates (like {{lv-inflection of}}. How do I do that? WT:ACCEL only tells me how to modify my settings so that I can see the green links, but not what my template has to have in order to automatically create form-of entries. --Pereru (talk) 14:43, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you should bother really. :) Personally, I think acceleration for full, relatively large declension tables (even say, 10 or so forms) is a bit much. I think I'll take some more formal steps to set up my bot and get it approved sometime soon...I still have more work to do for Icelandic nouns (probably more than I'd like lol) but once I get that sorted, I'd be glad to write code to allow my bot to automatically generate Latvian noun forms too. :) 50 Xylophone Players talk 00:11, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Accelerated links are ok for headword lines, but for inflection tables it's a bit too much. A bot would probably be better. —CodeCat 00:14, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Glagolitic and Gothic

For some reason, even though I have the MPH 2B Damase font installed (which covers Gothic, Glagolitic, and other ancient scripts), I can't see Wiktionary words written in the Gothic and Glagolitic scripts. Does anyone have an idea why? (I use Google Chrome). --Pereru (talk) 03:22, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have a similar problem with Malayalam and Kannada on FireFox: I have to copy text to Word to see the correct scripts (This is on a Mac). Chuck Entz (talk) 04:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For Glagolithic, the font that we call for is Dilyana. For Gothic, it is Code2001. See MediaWiki:Common.css. I do not know if this will make a difference for you or not. —Stephen (Talk) 05:23, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That indeed helped, Stephen -- thank you! Now I can see Glagolitic characters in the page text. Curiously, though, Glagolitic pagenames still don't display correctly: when I click on a Glagolitic link, the respective page has a title that consists only of a sequence of vertical lines. Don't page titles call the same font as page text? --Pereru (talk) 13:35, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, different fonts are used. I’m not certain but I think it has to do with your browser, at least in part. You probably see one font in the text window, a different font in the editing window, and a different font for pagenames and big headlines. In English texts, for example, I see something like Ariel in the text window, but Courier when I’m in an editing window. I’m not sure how much is controlled by the browser and how much is from the site. —Stephen (Talk) 14:06, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Too many example sentences?

Is there an accpeted limit? Because I had several sources, all of which had many examples (plus an online corpus), I ended up adding more and more example sentences to Latvian tīkls 'net, network, web'. I actually like the result, but I wonder if it goes against any Wiktionary policies. --Pereru (talk) 16:39, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There's no fixed limit, no. The main consideration is usefulness; if you think that a given sense needs five separate examples to really make clear its grammar and semantic scope, then go for it. But if that's the case, then it may be worth considering other approaches, such as splitting senses more finely and/or using subsenses. —RuakhTALK 01:05, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also, are any of the phrases in your usage examples idioms in Latvian? Perhaps tīkla acis? If so, they would be worth a separate entry, and would appear also appear under a Derived terms header at tīkls. DCDuring TALK 01:53, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good point. I'll do it later today. --Pereru (talk) 10:59, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

avontuur and avonduur

The Dutch words avontuur and avonduur are pronounced (almost) the same way. How can I add this information to both pages? Mathonius (talk) 08:29, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Probably by adding a ===Pronunciation=== section to both of them. According to WT:ELE, one of the subsections is "Homophones", where the (near) homophony between avonduur and avontuur could be mentioned. (In my experience, the difference is that the [d] in avonduur doesn't syllabify the same way with the following vowel -- there's some slight difference in the transition there... also, the stress is a little different. Or am I wrong?) --Pereru (talk) 11:05, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot for your help! That's correct, there are two differences. Avonduur syllabifies as avond·uur and avontuur as avon·tuur. Also, when pronouncing these words, you emphasize the "a" in "avonduur" and the "uur" in "avontuur". :) Mathonius (talk) 11:27, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Those two words are not homophones. I've added IPA to the entries now. —CodeCat 11:42, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think I've ever heard avonduur pronounced with a real [d] instead of a [t] (but then again, I'm not a native speaker); do you have a source for that IPA transcription (or are you a native speaker of Dutch)? I think the basic difference here is really the stress (plus the different syllabification, reflecting the status of avonduur as a compound). --Pereru (talk) 21:39, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I am a native speaker, it's on my user page. :) The voicing of consonants at word and word-part boundaries is a little tricky because it depends on the speaker. In careful speech the pronunciation has a voiceless [t], but some speakers especially where I live (eastern Brabant) have a tendency to voice consonants in such places. It even happens between words... for example it's not at all unusual to hear kwart over elf pronounced in rapid speech as [ˌkβ̞ɑʀdəvəˈrɛləf] around this area. —CodeCat 23:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And since I live in Zuid-Holland, I'm not so much in contact with those Brabants speakers :)... Thanks for the info and the details, and sorry for not having looked at your user page before asking!... --Pereru (talk) 13:24, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another question on context templates

Why are some of them linked to a word in Wiktionary (like {{anatomy}}), while others aren't (like {{agriculture}})? --Pereru (talk) 11:05, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, no solid reason. We link them as we see fit. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:13, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So if I changed {{agriculture}} to link to agriculture, I wouldn't be breaking any rules, right? And would anyone be against that, in the case of this template? Should one always ask here before linking? --Pereru (talk) 21:36, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Request for translations

I would like to name a photograph in any of the Khoi or San languages and request for translations of the following words: FUSION; UNION; CHANGE and SYNTHESISE

I would appreciate any assistance

I know a few common words in Khoekhoe, like some animals, colors, relatives, numbers, and so on, but no words like those you are looking for. —Stephen (Talk) 15:22, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Such complicated words are usually not present in languages of non-technical, unsophysticated peoples. (I work with certain groups in the Brazilian Amazon area, and there would be no native words for any of these things; though they might have words that translate roughly as 'joining', 'being together', 'become different', and again 'join' or 'become one', which sort of approach the concepts you're aiming at.) --Pereru (talk) 21:43, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikicodes

What are Wikicodes and where can I find them?

Where did you hear about them? Give us a link. Equinox ◑ 20:43, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

pithiatic

Deriving from Pythia and referring to hysterical speech, pithiatic, is absent from Wiktionary. Seeing no comment section in Requested entries, I am commenting here. Please advise me if there is a more traditional/acceptable route. This is my first contribution. Vasel2

jaw-dropping, eye-opening, skin crawl, etc

Is there a word for the linguistic/rhetorical use of body responses to refer to the emotion expressed? We have a few of these listed as idioms in the form "make someone's X [do something]". Does (deprecated template usage) metonymy cover it? Is there a more specific term? DCDuring TALK 17:29, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

doeg

Could someone help me with my recent addition to doeg? Please see Talk:doeg#Etymology. Mathonius (talk) 16:35, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If there are more derivations you could create a template like those at Category:Etymology-only language code templates. — Ungoliant (Falai) 17:49, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
But Zaans is considered a dialect of Dutch by linguists, not a separate language. It would be similar to a term that originates from American English which then spreads to the other dialects. —CodeCat 17:54, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That’s the purpose of those codes. — Ungoliant (Falai) 16:36, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I understand but what would the codes actually be used for? There can't be a category 'Dutch terms derived from Zaans' because Zaans is Dutch. So it would only really be useful for generating the text, and we might as well just write the text then. —CodeCat 17:38, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There are two English entries which link to English terms derived from American English: bogart and conniption. I don’t see anything wrong with a category for terms in a language which derived from a specific dialect in that language. — Ungoliant (Falai) 17:55, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is conceptually strange. Considering that American English is a part of English, it essentially means that we list two American English terms derived from American English. Which is just... stupid? —CodeCat 18:05, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What do you suggest? Something like “English terms which appeared first in American English”? — Ungoliant (Falai) 18:35, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest having no category. All new terms start off with one or just a few users. So in a way, those few people form a 'dialect' of speakers from which the term then spreads. It's no different from what happened here. This is completely normal in the process of word formation and doesn't really warrant a special category for all possible places within a language area where the term was first used. If this really needs a category, I will be creating Category:English terms derived from Internet English soon. :) —CodeCat 19:57, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maru

What's the English pronunciation of Maru, as in Maru the cat. I guess it's either /mæɹuː/ or /mɑːɹuː/. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:50, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The viral video "The Internet is Made of Cats" pronounces his name twice around the 2:30 mark, once as /ˈmeəɹˌuː/~/ˈmɛəɹˌuː/ (like "mare" + /u/) and the second time as /ˌməˈɹuː/. - -sche (discuss) 18:47, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Misspelt Inflexions.

I noticed that our entries for misspellings usually have no common templates as {{en-noun}} or {{en-adj}}, which I see not the point of. May I have permission to include these templates in typos regardless ? --Æ&Œ (talk) 21:05, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me like a bad idea. Those templates categorize into POS categories, and the POS categories should only have the lemma form. Otherwise, those categories would get extremely cluttered. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:14, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I wish that someone warned me about this sooner. In any case, I have adjusted my misspelt entries accordingly. --Æ&Œ (talk) 21:39, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Help:Misspellings says not to. Admittedly I wrote that bit. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:11, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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