Wiktionary talk:Main Page/Archive 8

Help

Danish wiktionary do now have more than 10.000 entries. Can, you put a link in the sidebar entry?--Trade (talk) 11:49, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

 Done. --Yair rand (talk) 12:03, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata

Wikidata is the 12. wikimediaproject. Could you make a link to it like wikipedia in the bottom of the page. --Trade (talk) 20:54, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Isn’t it already there? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 21:27, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Protocol-relative link

Please change the "All Wiktionaries" link from [http://www.wiktionary.org/ All Wiktionaries] to [//www.wiktionary.org/ All Wiktionaries], so that it links to HTTPS if you use HTTPS, but HTTP on HTTP. Thank you in advance. PiRSquared17 (talk) 12:28, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Done, thank you. —CodeCat 12:33, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Bold Chinese script?

I think that the word 中文 in the 'Wiktionaries in other languages' section would be clearer if made bold. Does anyone have an objection? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:08, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't find it very unclear, other than not being able to read Chinese. —CodeCat 22:16, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it's the nature of the characters or my bad eyes, but it seems oddly faint as compared to the other scripts I can read. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:17, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

It could also be your computer's font rendering. —CodeCat 22:18, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

FrOm En.WiKtIoNaRy

At the bottom of the main page is this:

''From'' ''e''<i>n</i>.''w''<i>i</i>''k''<i>t</i>''i''<i>o</i>''n''<i>a</i>''r''<i>y</i>.''o''<i>r</i>''g'', ''[[wmf:Terms of Use|Terms of Use]]''

Does the camelcase wiki markup vs HTMl markup italicisation have any purpose other than suppressing the link? there are easier ways of suppressing the link! - -sche (discuss) 01:07, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I've re-formatted the line. - -sche (discuss) 18:23, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

I imagine the purpose was not to suppress the link, but rather to prevent mirrors from accidentally replacing the location of our site with the location of theirs. (In general, a mirror would want to translate any links of the form http://en.wiktionary.org/... to links of the form http://example.com/..., but this is one case where the link should always point to en.wikt.) —Ruakh_TALK 23:39, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah! Well, hopefully this will help accomplish that. - -sche (discuss) 17:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Logo

The top line of the logo is partially cut off for me - only the bottom 60% of "a multilingual free" is visible. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 11:50, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

That's correct. It's supposed to look like a fragment of a page of a paper dictionary. Equinox ◑ 11:57, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Link to wiktionary.org

The image for the box Wiktionaries in other languages links to //wiktionary.org, but the actual page is located at //www.wiktionary.org. This is particularly bad, since https://wiktionary.org redirects to the HTTP version (see bug). Skalman (talk) 20:08, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I've fixed the link. Thank you for letting us know. —CodeCat 20:17, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

American-English

Since the present Wiktionary's primary language is American English, I propose that the opening statement be revised to "Welcome to the American-English-language Wiktionary..." This would transparently acknowledge that we have adopted the 1828 Webster dictionary as our basis, rather than the outmoded language of Milton, Dryden, Dickens, etc.

As an example of our regular practice, the pre-existing and current English spelling centre, is treated as a variant of the Webster-chosen spelling center, without including in the etymology the English centre which has for longer been standard in the literature and usage of most of the English-speaking world. Obviously, the alternative remedy of re-editing all such Webster-oriented entries would be far more arduous and less reliable than simply stamping the primary language as "American-English". Bjenks (talk) 07:07, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

It’s not. Some entries have the American spelling as lemma and others have the British. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 12:23, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree Nrkmohan (talk) 03:06, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this would seem to be the intention, but the compromise sometimes badly misses the mark. For instance, I found the US (and math.) spelling "onto" listed a quite different set of definitions to those for the approved UK-Commonwealth spelling of it as two words ("on to" - having the identical meaning in everyday language). I have endeavoured to make good the deficiency, and stand to be corrected if I have done so with a wrong technique. Incidentally, my old English master in the UK taught me that an "onto" was probably an American albino pony, a relative of the pinto! :) Bjenks (talk) 09:38, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

(I was referred to this discussion in a message at w:User talk:Wavelength#"Onto".)

According to Google Ngram Viewer, the preposition onto was used in English as early as 1800. Its use in American English is very similar, also found as early as 1800. Its use in British English is also very similar, found as early as 1800.

According to the British National Corpus, it is common in British English. (Please note that a search for on to as two separate words would not distinguish cases where on is an adverb and to introduces a verb infinitive, as in "went on to build a bridge".)

According to OneLook Dictionary Search, the preposition onto is found in 37 general dictionaries (including some British dictionaries, at least some of which accept both onto and on to), and 10 specialized dictionaries.

My Google News Search for onto site:.uk reported about 28,500 results, including the following.

• Zomato zooms onto the Edinburgh food scene : The Edinburgh Reporter (November 8, 2013)
• Man who leapt onto tracks to save woman nominated for Merton Civic Award (From This Is Local London) (November 6, 2013)
• Images beamed onto the white cliffs of Dover by animal exports protesters - Mirror Online (November 7, 2013)
• iPhone app Hudway projects sat-nav directions onto your car windscreen - Mirror Online (November 5, 2013)
• Twitter explodes onto the stock exchange valued at $31bn - IT News from V3.co.uk (November 7, 2013)
• Cat Hangs Onto a Van Travelling 70 mph Down the M1 (October 23, 2013)

My search for onto (with spaces) in the website of the Encyclopædia Britannica reported 1354 results, including the following.

• mountain (landform) :: The Himalayan chain -- Encyclopedia Britannica (2 instances)
• drawing (art) :: Brush, pen, and dyestuffs -- Encyclopedia Britannica (1 instance)
• fresco painting -- Encyclopedia Britannica (3 instances)
• Henan (province, China) :: Drainage -- Encyclopedia Britannica (4 instances)
• geometry (mathematics) :: Linear perspective -- Encyclopedia Britannica (1 instance)
• eyeball (anatomy) -- Encyclopedia Britannica (1 instance)

The Wikipedia article "Comparison of American and British English" (version of 12:41, 6 November 2013) does not mention onto.

w:Wikipedia:Manual of style#National varieties of English (version of 18:11, 4 November 2013) has a subsection "Opportunities for commonality", which says the following.

Wikipedia tries to find words that are common to all varieties of English. Insisting on a single term or a single usage as the only correct option does not serve the purposes of an international encyclopedia.

From my research, it appears to me that the form onto is common to all varieties of English, and is accepted by British dictionaries that accept both forms.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:47, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

• There can be no disagreement that such variant spelling usage is common in UK print media, especially newspapers. Such evidence does not, however, vindicate the treatment of "onto" as the only correct form for Wikipedia purposes, regardless of context, as the previous contributor has attempted to assert. Use of Wiktionary as a source for that view was found, at the time, to be oddly justified, because I found herein an absurdly restricted definition of "on to" which I immediately remediated. I cannot accept that Wiktionary has yet acquired a status which places it above the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors as a lexicon for professional usage of written English. At page 268, the DWE simply states: "on to (US & Math. onto)". I approve and commend that authority, which in no way deters the masses from customary freedom to adopt vernacular variations. Bjenks (talk) 02:00, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I think you're mistaken. Wiktionary has no authority, doesn't claim to have any, and doesn't strive to have any either. Authority would mean that it could serve as an arbitrator, but what is there to arbitrate in the way language is used? Other dictionaries don't really have any authority either. The only authority they have is whatever people give to them, but that's kind of silly because dictionaries use the people and their usage of language as authority, so it is kind of circular then. —CodeCat 02:16, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I can agree with most of that. For 'authority' we should maybe read 'arbitrarily adjudged standard', like a metre or gram, eh? No-one has to agree, but the idea is quite helpful when equitable measure is sought by folk of different cultures. It was certainly not I who cited Wiktionary as a source. Are you saying I'm mistaken in accepting "onto" in American and mathematical contexts while also accepting (and preferring) the "on to" usage in standard English? Bjenks (talk) 12:31, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Afrikaans link

The Afrikaans entry (under 10,000+) is tagged as Arabic, which means the direction gets intermingled with the actual Arabic that follows. ('ar' is used instead of 'af'.) GPHemsley (talk) 14:22, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. --WikiTiki89 14:30, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Automatic Transliterations

Can there be an automatic transliteration for Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam scripts? They are very straightforward. I can do them myself, but I don't know how. DerekWinters (talk) 22:00, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

You can take a look at Module:si-translit for Sinhalese (working) or Module:hi-translit for Hindi. The Hindi module requires some work to drop the inherent vowel "a" in some positions but the Sinhalese one is already in use. There may be similar challenges for the scripts you mentioned. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 07:14, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips, but I'm not exactly sure how it works. I cannot tell how the Sinhalese one is working while the Hindi one is not. However, I know that the ones I mentioned originally are very straightforward; no need to worry about dropping the inherent "a". I would love to help, but this is a tad confusing. DerekWinters (talk) 02:21, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I have made a Telugu module Module:te-translit, but I cannot seem to make it activated automatically. Could you please tell me how, or take care of it yourself? Thanks. DerekWinters (talk) 04:14, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I will try later to make it work. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:18, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

It needs to be enabled in Module:languages/data2. But it would be better if you first made a test page to make sure everything works fine. --WikiTiki89 04:19, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Hindi is not working only in the sense that it ignores the rule to drop inherent vowels, see Module:hi-translit/testcases. करना (karnā) is spelled "karanā" but should be transliterated as "karnā", "a" is dropped here between two syllables if next one is long or at the end of a word. Telugu: something is wrong with handing diacritics, see Module:te-translit/testcases. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:42, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Where to seach for a string filter?

Hello!

I am searching for a template that can filter a given set of characters from another string. It should be of the kind {{filter|<text to be filtered>|<filter character(s)>}}. Where is the right place to ask?--Sae1962 (talk) 10:09, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

The right place to ask would have been the WT:GP, but why do you need this? --WikiTiki89 18:52, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Error on Main Page

From the main page:

Wiktionary is a wiki, which means that you can edit it, and all the content is dual-licensed under both the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License as well as the GNU Free Documentation License.

There are two conjunctions doing the same thing, "as well as" and "both". If I understand correctly, "as well as" should be replaced with "and", or "both" should be removed. If the main page were a wiki, we wouldn't have this issue ;) -- Surfer43 (talk) 22:49, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

 Done Equinox ◑ 22:51, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

In what language is the 26 March 2015 Foreign Word of the Day? ☺ Dick Kimball (talk) 11:58, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Quechua. You can’t see it? — Ungoliant ^(falai) 14:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Include prepositions

Often it's hard to know which preposition to use. Including that would help. Palosirkka (talk) 14:06, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Welsh link

I was just wondering why the link to Wiciadur, the Welsh Wikipedia is near the bottom of the list of languages, despite beginning with "C". If there's a reason for this, fair enough, it just makes it harder to find. cwbr77 (talk) 18:07, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Wiciadur is the Welsh Wiktionary. And — the languages in each group are evidently ordered by the English name of the language, in this case Welsh. (I'm not sure if that makes the most sense, since that's not how we order our interwikis, but I think it's straightforward enough.) —Ruakh_TALK 18:15, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we can't list them in alphabetical order as they use different alphabets, and in some cases, different writing systems. SemperBlotto (talk) 18:29, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, that's what I meant (the Welsh Wiki is obviously Wicipedia). That's fair enough, then. I only asked because Greek/Ελληνικά comes under 'E', but I assume that's because the English 'E' and Greek Epsilon use the same character. cwbr77 (talk) 10:40, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, that's inconsistent. Frankly, this whole line is weird: "Deutsch (German) [apparently sorted by native name as 'D...'] • Ελληνικά (Greek) [apparently sorted by transliterated native name as 'El...'] • Español (Spanish) [apparently sorted by native name as 'Esp...'] • Eesti (Estonian) [apparently sorted by English name as 'Est...'] • Magyar (Hungarian) [sorted by ... English name? but by someone who forgot that 'i' comes before 'u'?] • हिन्दी (Hindi) [sorted by English name, but by the same person who missorted Hungarian]"... WTF. We should either sort these the way we sort interwikis, or sort them alphabetically by canonical English name, but not some of each...! - -sche (discuss) 18:56, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

That's what I mean, it seems to need a bit of tidying up. I'm sure someone will take a look at it at some point. cwbr77 (talk) 20:15, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Unicode Support For Lua

I was creating a module for the Gujarati Wiktionary, which uses the Gujarati script, and I'm not able to use the script within the Module itself to designate local arguments or anything really. I was trying to make the wiktionary independent of the roman script for those in Gujarat that are only fluent with their own, and so I wanted to replace the names of modules and templates with Gujarati names, including their arguments (e.g. lang, sc, tr, term, etc.). Is there any possible solution? DerekWinters (talk) 20:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

You should avoid using non-ASCII characters for variable names in any programming language, including Lua. Gujarati script should be limited to strings. --WikiTiki89 20:18, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. DerekWinters (talk) 20:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

sh wikt update

It has more than 800k entries now. The main page should reflect this in the appropriate section (suppose 100k+ section) and thru a separate iw. --biblbroks_{дискашн} 23:53, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. —Stephen ^(Talk) 12:21, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

or wikt update

Oriya Wiktionary has more than 10,000 entries now. Please update the same at main page--Mrutyunjaya Kar (talk) 03:35, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:53, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Malagasy

Is the main page honestly claiming that Malagasy Wiktionary has over 1 million entries? Varlaam (talk) 02:43, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

They do. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 03:08, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Updates on other Wiktionaries' page counts

Can anyone promote/demote entries in the "Wiktionaries in other languages" section as follows?

• Promote Japanese from 10,000+ to 100,000+. (ja:Special:Statistics).
• Promote Romanian from 10,000+ to 100,000+. (ro:Special:Statistics).
• Demote Hindi from 100,000+ to 10,000+. (hi:Special:Statistics).
• Promote Walloon from 1,000+ to 10,000+. (wa:Special:Statistics).
• Demote Nepali from 1,000+ to 100+. (ne:Special:Statistics).
• Promote Uyghur from 100+ to 1,000+. (ug:Special:Statistics).
• Promote Tajik from 100+ to 1,000+. (tg:Special:Statistics).
• Promote Somali from 100+ to 1,000+. (so:Special:Statistics).

Thanks, Whym (talk) 11:54, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Done. —Stephen ^(Talk) 12:11, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Wiktionary is a dictionary, thesaurus, and phrasebook

Perhaps this could be added to the Main Page? I had no idea that the latter 2 were true.Two kinds of pork (talk) 06:14, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

The second paragraph of the descriptive blurb does say "Wiktionary has grown beyond a standard dictionary and now includes a thesaurus, a rhyme guide, phrase books, language statistics and extensive appendices", and the blue header contains a series of links to "Appendices • Abbreviations • Thesaurus • Rhymes • Frequency lists • Phrasebooks". Cheers, - -sche (discuss) 06:56, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Lëtzebuergesch

Very minor thing, in the 'Wiktionaries in other languages' box, all other wiktionaries are given an English gloss except Lëtzebuergesch (Luxembourgish) Moogsi (talk) 14:12, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

I've made the change. Thank you for reporting it. —CodeCat 14:26, 16 August 2014 (UTC)