User talk:Atelaes/2007

Archived discussions are here.

re User talk:Saltmarsh#Ἄρτεμις - Hi I am easy about all of this - what you suggest is good and I would welcome discussion about a standard at any time. I fact I am (slowly) trying to create an "About Greek" page similar to Wiktionary:About Latin - may I ask your opinion when I have got further with it? —Saltmarsh 06:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Certainly combining modern and classical guidance make sense - I have some reservations about pages which need regular maintenance (I remember departmental webs still advertising the Christmas part in June!) and personally I am liable to suspend wiktionary activity for weeks on end at times. I have temporarily put my jottings at User:Saltmarsh/articles &ndash my progress is spasmodic. —Saltmarsh 07:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

See also User:Saltmarsh/About Greek - both in development, please feel free to add or discuss! Saltmarsh 15:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

hello Cerealkiller -- I appreciate that "Ancient Greek" and "Modern Greek" are different projects on wiktionary, but for the purposes of the user, these are wiktionary internals and as such irrelevant. Both "Ancient Greek" and "Modern Greek" are equally "Greek", and categorization should reflect that. thus Category:Greek nouns should be for nouns of unspecified era of attestation, while Category:Modern Greek nouns and Category:Ancient Greek nouns should be subcategories to that. Also, for the alphabetization of language entries, it is entirely pointless to list Modern Greek under "M" and Ancient Greek under "A" (and Mycenaean under "M"?) -- they should, rather, be alphabetized as "Greek (Modern)", "Greek (Ancient/Attic/Koine/Homeric/Epic/etc.)" and "Greek (Mycenaean/Linear B)", that is, all under "G". Dbachmann 10:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

hm, yes, I think you misunderstood, slightly. I was referring only to categorization (and alphabetization). I am not proposing to merge any categories; I suppose I am suggesting that what is now at Category:Greek nouns should really be at Category:Modern Greek nouns (I for one, when I say "Greek", mean "Classical Greek" by default; others mean "Modern Greek", the fact is that the term is ambiguous, or more precisely, overly broad). Category:Greek nouns should really just be the supercategory for all sorts of sub-cats (Modern, Katharevousa, Koine, Attic, Epic, Homeric, Doric, Boiotic, what have you), and entries in Category:Greek nouns will really be "to be sorted", that is, they have not yet been identified as belonging to a particular era. regards, Dbachmann 11:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

you know, I am a tad discouraged with all the uninformed vigilantism I have met on wiktionary (see my talkpage). I am a professional historical linguist, and I do have expertise that is so far lacking on wiktionary, but I cannot be bothered to fight to be allowed to contribute. So, I am glad to come across you as a fellow editor interested in old languages. I do not propose any sudden sweeping changes. I think it would be best to do a clean Wiktionary:About Greek first (compare Wiktionary:About Sanskrit) and lay out all options for people to consider. Dbachmann 12:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

First of all, Saltmarsh is actually working on such a page, here are some links to his current progress: User:Saltmarsh/articles & User:Saltmarsh/About Greek. However, I think that, if you are simply proposing a switch in the naming policy, no discussion is really needed. All we'd have to do is create a Category:Modern Greek language (and ask Saltmarsh to start using it), and then switch the cat's on Mycenaean and Ancient from Category:All languages to Category:Greek language. That would also fix the alphabetical order issue, as a user would simply see Greek on the listing of languages, and would then be presented with the options of which Greek. Done. If you're talking about switching the naming scheme in the headings, that seems like something major enough to merit a larger discussion, which would probably be best put on the Beer Parlour, to allow everyone the option of commenting on it. Cerealkiller13 12:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I will try to be brief, which might make it sound abrupt! I would be totally against classifying Greek as she is currently spoken as Modern Greek within Wiktionary, the equivalent would be to have Modern German and Modern English. Of course classicists may want to differentiate by using the word Modern - but I believe this should be amongst themselves! —Saltmarsh 12:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Fair enough. Do you have any ideas on how we can bring the languages together, so that Ancient, Modern, and Mycenaean are not on opposite corners of Category:All languages? Also, can you think of a solution to the issue of newer contributors writing Ancient Greek entries and listing them as Greek? I think it would be nice to have an efficient process for tracking these down. Cerealkiller13 12:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I should look at the division between English and Old English but don't have time just now. May be "super" categories called something like Greek nouns with sub-cats pg Greek .., Ancient Greek.. etc ? Saltmarsh 13:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

That sounds like an excellent idea. I also am lacking in time, as I really should get to bed before the sun comes up. I'll do some more research on the issue tomorrow, and we'll see where we can go. My apologies to both of you for being unable to respond to any further messages tonight. I shall give them my highest priority tomorrow. Cerealkiller13 13:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I am adding cuneiform glyphs to a branched version of Free Serif. It will not feature all codepoints in the near future, I am concentrating on those needed to represent Hittite, and also shaping the glyphs in Hittite/Old Assyrian ductus in particular. I'm almost done with that, I'll add a link to w:cuneiform soon. Dbachmann 10:32, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

on another note, why did you remove eight out of ten meanings from μῦθος? including references to authors attesting the various usages? (see also here). Dbachmann 12:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

well, I do get your point, it appears I got started on the wrong foot here. But let me emphasize that I only began reacting curtly and aggressively after severe and uncalled-for bullying on the part of Mr. Ullmann. I do not blame the entire project for the attitude of a single editor, but while on Wikipedia, I would have been sure to get the support from more clueful individuals, being bullied and even blocked by someone with clearly neither interest in nor knowledge of the topic at hand didn't seem very much out-of-process here on wikitonary (note in spite of my pains to clarify). Let me point out that I have several years' experience of rather hairy disputes on Wikipedia, and that I am rather familiar with wiki process and etiquette. Be that as it may, the issues were not so much "proper formatting", they were "content" and "CFI" related. See also . Dbachmann 13:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

regarding WT:ELE, there is, shall we say, room for improvement. We absolutely need language-specific guidelines. WT:ELE was optimized for English, which is fair enough, but it is perfectly Procrustean for some other languages. The insistence on using the "correct script" is madness, I expect Mr. Ullmann expects us to treat Mycenaean Greek entries in Linear B and Akkadian ones in cuneiform just because these scripts happen to have Unicode encodings. In, for example, Arabic, take حسن: We do not want to include Harakat in entries, this will drive us insane. The present organization into verbal stems is perfectly suited for Arabic, and there is no reason why Arabic entries should not be organized so as to make sense for the nature of the language/orthography. Regarding the irrational fear of redirects, there is no reason whatsoever why θεοῦ shouldn't redirect to θεός, where the full declination is given. These are all points that could be discussed in friendship and good faith on Wiktionary:About $LANGUAGE pages, but the clueless vigilantism I experienced seems to be so far from a bona fide wiki consensus procedure that any such discussion appears to be hopeless. Dbachmann 13:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

If you haven't read Lewis Carroll's books recently, I suggest you do so. There is much content like that in there, intended for critically thinking adults. The edition anotated by Martin Gardner is particularly useful for exploring the logical and mathematical implications and ideas peppered through his work. --EncycloPetey 02:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

The two volumes are a quick, light read and I've never seen an adaptation that did justice to the language in which they were written. They are two of the few books that I've chosen to read more than once (along with Tolkien, some Shakespeare, and very few other books). --EncycloPetey 02:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've just "finished" my cuneiform font, see here (.otf, Apple .dfont). It's no masterpiece, but at least there is some Unicode cuneiform font available now. It only encodes some 370 characters out of 980 codepoints: these are the glyphs in acutal use in Hittite orthography, the ductus is also that of Old Assyrian / Hittite. Most of the remaining 600 or so characters do not appear in Old Assyrian and are peculiar to Sumerian (and mostly very rare even there). There are a few characters that would be needed but are missing from the encoding, see w:Unicode_cuneiform#Missing_signs, notably UL and US. Dbachmann 15:31, 12 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

the font is w:GFDLd -- being derived from the FreeSerif font it has to be. I just discovered another sixteen glyphs I omitted, I'll add them today. If you're interested, per w:Unicode_cuneiform#Missing_signs, codepoints for the UL and US signs are missing -- this is apparently an oversight on the part of the Unicode people, although I find it hard to believe, without these, we cannot even present a proper syllabary. I think I'll have to add UL and US glyphs at some idiosyncratic codepoint. Dbachmann 14:27, 14 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think that ] might do what you are trying to do? But it might be better to use sort= instead of 6, the number of parameters gets confusing...

Do you have any idea why this template wants the pagename passed as the first parameter? I haven't seen any cases where the headword repeater is a different form from the pagename, so it seems to me '''{{{polytonic|{{PAGENAME}}}}}''' would be much better? Not so simple to fix at this point, have to change all the pages. Robert Ullmann 20:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's orange, on my displays, by the way.  :-)   --Connel MacKenzie 01:42, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I fully agree that words like Cretan and Irishman are nouns and not proper nouns. I raised this question on Scotsman (where I changed the header to Noun) and Robert Ullmann answered me that these words should be called proper nouns... If you disagree, ask him. 84.197.181.104 19:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well put. I agree. Jonathan Webley 19:25, 20 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

1. Your Descendant heads for Ancient words seems most sensible (to me!). Would the corresponding entry in Modern words be under Etymology?
2. Were you talking about the list at User:Saltmarsh/Sandbox3 ? I have been going through this list at irregular intervals deleting (from the list) as I go. I can move -if you like - Ancient words like Βαραββᾶς as shown. Unfortunately in producing the list I have lost Ancient letters with diacritics as shown by Βαραββ?ς further down. Is this what you mean? —Saltmarsh 06:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I came to Greek late in life and only in the modern form. If I find Greek words with diacritics other than the modern single stress I will happily add them to an Ancient categories. —Saltmarsh 07:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the heads up about other language categories.

Bearingbreaker92 15:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Created this, save some typing or pasting when adding the references. Will also save us a lot of work if we want to change the site we refer to, or add a new site (it could generate more than one line), or if the site changes their URL format. Tell me what you think. Robert Ullmann 15:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have just picked up (apologies) your point about the About Greek page - and placed the answers there. Saltmarsh 09:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Do you think there's any point in rfv for cromulent & embiggen? Do they have so much usage due to the Simpsons that they'd survive? RJFJR 23:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

To be honest, I have no idea how much either of the words have entered mainstream usage. I don't have time to check them right now, but I might be able to later today. In any case, I'm rather ambivalent about whether they get kept or chucked on Wiktionary. They're fun words, but certainly not necessary for our project. And inasmuch as I admit that keeping them (if they don't actually meet CFI) provides us with a slippery slope, I wouldn't be opposed to keeping them as notable and interesting neologisms. My primary point was that we should at least consider them when making any decision about crisitunity, as they have good and proper entries which aren't currently debated and it's similar to them (although perhaps not identical). Cerealkiller13 23:24, 25 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Would be very interesting to find cites not directly from the iconoclastic Lisa ... cromulent has a perfectly good one in a 2006 cryptography text. For embiggen, there is a book cite from 1884 ... (sorry Mr. Collier ;-) Robert Ullmann 23:44, 25 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Cromulent has 282,000 googles. (Which means people may need to look it up to so they can understand what they are reading online). Embiggen only has 39,100 googles (with 14,100 for embiggened). RJFJR 14:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Excellent. We'll have to find some durably archived quotes and add them to the pages. Cerealkiller13 18:50, 26 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey, I got your message and it makes scene. I'm glad to know their are true anarchists functioning on wiktionary. My only concern is that the only indication is "in a loose scene" perhaps it should say "in a stereotypical scene" in all actuality their is no indication of this scene being stereotypical. I may or may not continue with my objection to this scene, but if I do, however, i will take a different approach. Randy6767 01:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

My apologies their is a small indication of the use being stereotypical, no matter, I will regard it later. Randy6767 01:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Whoa. Why did you just change the entry against the results of WT:TR#anarchy? --Connel MacKenzie 07:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

My sincerest apologies, I did not realize there already was a Tea Room discussion about the word (in fact, I had just suggested bringing the word to the Tea Room on the discussion page). Feel free to revert it, or I will, once I catch myself up, it's a long discussion. Cerealkiller13 07:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ummmm. Wait a second, the tea room discussion didn't even touch on anarchist, just anarchy (although, with a little thought, I suppose there just may be a small connection between the two words). However, having read the Tea Room discussion, I don't think my edits were unjustified, nor contrary to community consensus after all. If you haven't been keeping up, you may want to check out anarchist's history and talk page. If you still feel I was acting out of order, by all means revert. Cerealkiller13 08:15, 29 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

OK, to clear the air: I tried actually sleeping one night last week and caught grief for it. So I probably won't do that again this year.  :-)

The TR discussion was for a different form; true. In fact, a different (very closely related) term. So, thank you for reading up on it.

The main concern of that discussion was wanton "splitting" for the sake of splitting. Keeping definitions together is, yes, beneficial to organizing the entry (syns/ants/rel term/trans, etc.) But the truly important reason is that combined definitions make more sense to a reader. Seeing minute distinctions, listed as completely separate definitions is misleading. If the senses are closely related and can be combined with a clever use of the word "or", then they should be. Otherwise we end up with seven separate (essentially identical) definitions.

No, I'm not about to roll back your change. Thank you for the explanation. I do hope you'll consider reviewing it, bearing what I said in mind, and see for yourself which definition style is likely to make more sense, to a reader.

OK, off to bed now. Good night. --Connel MacKenzie 09:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I assure you, I have every intention of reviewing the definitions, and probably rewriting the entry, but I think I'll wait until some night when I'm not up til 4AM working on a physics lab. Perhaps tomorrow night. Cerealkiller13 09:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi - I hate to say this :) — I've noticed that some of the Ancient Greek words I am going through have different heading levels to the standard. Inflections, Descendants etc should be one level in from the part-of-speech headings. —Saltmarsh 07:59, 27 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Good call. I'll fix βίβλος and try to keep that straight from now on. Thanks for the heads up. Feel free to let me know of anything else you see in the future. Cerealkiller13 09:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks - I will correct these when I come across them —Saltmarsh 11:15, 27 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Also - You asked a while ago if I could Categorise ancient greek words:

1. I dont know any AG - but could create a category "Ancient Greek words lacking definition" (or similar) - what do you think?
2. I might make mistakes so some may be wrong! —Saltmarsh 11:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi,

Why did you remove my list about Spanish Maria names? I am not pleased about that. I had lots of work to create this list and it is unique in its kind. I never saw it anywhere else and it is pretty complete.

Expecting an answer and wishing you all the best.

Alasdair

Looks good - I have put a link at User:Saltmarsh/About Greek it can be changed later and will make it easier for me to get there. The link under viewing Polytonic Greek is useful - but I could spend hours moving around the pages there! I think that I can see all the AG diacritics _ shall have to investigate being able to view Linear B (I read Ventris & Chadwick - Decipherment of Linear B - 30y ago, before I made any contact with Greek. A facinating story).

Could we agree on a way of representing the pronunciation of words. I tend towards writing βόδι (vóthi) and Ιθάκι (Itháki) avoiding non-western alphabetic characters - this may not be correct (within Wiktionary) or what you use, please say - it has the benefit of, while not being absolutely correct, making life easier for the casual reader, maybe?

There are other areas where it would be 'nice' to have a uniform appearance between AG and G. —Saltmarsh 12:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

User:Saltmarsh/About Greek now moved to Wiktionary:About Greek—Saltmarsh 04:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

You said: What other areas would you like to see unified between Greek and Ancient Greek? Some suggestions:

• Headings - see About (both greeks)
• and terminology - any or each of the following

1. Romanisation
2. Pronunciation
3. the word sometimes placed in brackets after a Greek word - what is this supposed to be - I have, to date, been putting an ad hoc Romanisation which I had hoped provided a guide to pronunciation as well. But I have seen IPA here and other stuff.

• Inflection tables

1. Layout - should we try to unify their layout or draw some points together?
2. Links - should each inflected form be linked?

• Inflection line (Below POS heading)

Certainly IMHO these should look similar - I will look at some other languages, and then come back here

 

There must be more!   —Saltmarsh 06:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Headings Sorry I was obtuse - it meant have a look at Wiktionary talk:About Ancient Greek and Wiktionary:About Greek - for discussion. And - there is Descendants, which is not standard. Romanisation Do I understand you right - we should put these in the "Inflection line"? and not have a separate heading - I would be most happy with this. Saltmarsh 07:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Inflection line (if that is the correct term) I am not trying "impose" uniformity, just use it if we think that is good! Berg, chenille, cappello, dog all have the form - followed (possibly) by ours:

cappello m (plural cappelli)

ἵππος (genitive ἵππου); m, second declension; (hippos)

γίδια (ghíthia) f Lua error: Parameter 1 is required. sg

I have been leaving inflections out - because they will be in the table (eventually) - do you think perhaps we should inlude these - BUT which ones? —Saltmarsh 07:29, 30 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Your answer cut across mine :)

You said __word (Genitive:genform); gender (declension) (Romanization)__ Why genitive, rather than plural ? —Saltmarsh 07:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

I understand - another difference is that modern Greek grammars often differ in the names of declensions etc - cheers —Saltmarsh 07:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

While I understand the difficulties with these, I'd open a Beer Parlour discussion before removing avy (all) of them. I've thought about them a number of times, and have even tried some fixes, but haven't come up eith a satisfying solution. They do connect together "the" books of the Bible and link the Wikisource KJV text (one of the few full English translations up on Wikisource). I'm inclined to have something rather than nothing, even if it is flawed. --EncycloPetey 03:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think that you'll make a great admin, thus I have nominated you for the sysop-bit. Please go here to accept the nomination so that voting may commence.. :) --Versageek 09:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Could you come on IRC for a minute and we'll coordinate this? Thanks. --Dvortygirl 03:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Or Modern Greek nouns :). Have a look at w:Modern Greek grammar, the names given to these "Groups" differ between the 'grammars' I have, I had rather given up on simple categorisation. Maybe I should have looked (or will have to look) a bit longer to see some underlying order! (I like the new name, does it have an etymology?) —Saltmarsh 12:06, 5 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

ἀτελής. And yeah, that's a tough one, but probably worth researching. You'll regret it later if you don't and then find out half a year later that there is a standard naming system and someone has to go through a thousand Greek words and switch them. Atelaes 17:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Congrats! You have been promoted. Here are some basic instructions about the new tools. Some of the info is outdated, but the basics are ok. If you have any questions feel free to ask other admins (including myself), we will happily assist.. --Versageek 04:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Why did you revert my edits? The trans-templates are accepted by vote, so no need to mention the old layout in other pages. Furthermore, gender information should also use the templates, which is also on WT:ELE. henne 13:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

As an editor who apparently has some knowledge of Ancient Greek, I'm just making sure you're aware of the Wiktionary:About Ancient Greek page, and that any contributions you'd like to make would be most welcome. If you've already looked and have nothing to add (or simply don't feel like looking), please accept my apologies for this nuisance. Atelaes 00:18, 15 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've been watching it, but I'm not an expert so have little to add. The only comment I have is that I feel Mycaenean forms should be marked as cognates rather than alternative spellings. Widsith 08:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

This word needs the AGr. root in its etymology. Where is the best place to note such words for you? --EncycloPetey 03:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I've added ῥητορικός to Wiktionary:Requested articles:Ancient Greek, so I do know about the page and will use it when I have an Ancient Greek word I would like to see. The problem is that laconic isn't a Greek word, so technically it shouldn't be added to the Greek request page. We don't really have a mechanism for requesting articles when you know the language and translation, but not the word itself. --EncycloPetey 05:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think it's a very nice work-around. --EncycloPetey 05:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yeap, that's right ;) I am doing "quite" a work with the inflection, but e.g. with the Finnish adjectives ending with -nen, there's a tiny detail wrong: in the comitative plural, the nouns get the possessive suffix (-ni, -si, -nsa/-nsä, -mme, -nne) for which there's the hyphen (nainen -> naisine- + suffix --> naisineni, naisinesi, naisinensa etc.), whereas the suffixes are not appended to adjectives – this hasn't been considered there and, in most templates for adjectives ending with -nen, there's still the hyphen. So I've written one table with only the case endings and left the hyphen out. Born perfectionist, can't help it :D --Frous 02:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

On Stephen's talk page, you mentioned that we're using 1st person PAI as the lemma instead of the infinitive in Greek.

How come? Widsith 12:59, 28 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'd like some advice, on this philosophy of social freedom and minute government control called anarchism that we both believe in. I can assume you are older than me and more experienced. please IM me at Rokim596. Randy6767 00:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've been cleaning up some etymologies lately, as a lot of our etymologies are kind of....embarrassing (I'm sure you remember Kassios). One thing that I wanted to talk to you about is the distinction between Category:Greek derivations and Category:Ancient Greek derivations. I've been switching a lot words which claim to be Greek derivations to Ancient Greek, but I noticed that you had put a few as Greek derivations which were rather clearly from Ancient Greek. Now, you seem to be kind of the etymology master of Wiktionary, and so I certainly don't presume to lecture you about this (you were actually the one who corrected my very first attempt at an etymology on plutocracy). But I was wondering what your thoughts were on the matter. I guess I think that if we are going to retain the distinction between the two as languages, our etymologies should reflect that. Your thoughts? Atelaes 06:07, 7 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes, this is totally me being a bit behind the times. I have always made the distinction between "Greek" and "Modern Greek" (probably because this is what most etymological dictionaries do), but I have noticed recently that most people here do it the other way, distinguishing between "Ancient Greek" and "Greek". I will happily start using "Ancient Greek" if that will cause you fewer problems. Widsith 16:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hello there, I've noticed you a bit of an Etymology buff, but your formatting whilst neat and tidy is out of kilter with Wiktionary:Etymology. This is only a draft policy and would like to get some constructive input into it. Myself and Widsith recently decided to go with making links to other articles mainly italic, whereas you tend to make them bold. I'm not saying either one is better but do think we need consensus. I'm happy to start a vote but we'll need to put our heads together with other experienced editors like Widsith for example to come up with some decent proposals to put forward for a vote.--Williamsayers79 22:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

While I prefer bold myself, I do agree that it is more important to be standardized, and I can accept italics if that's what everyone else wants. I'll take a look at that page when I get a little more free time (perhaps not today, but certainly within the next few days). I'll try and slow down my etymologies until I get the time to work this out. I guess I didn't even realize there was such a page, and I'll try to contribute some reasonable discussion to it, if I am able. Thanks for the tip. Atelaes 22:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi,

Thank you very much for your welcome and helpful links. When I created the entries I used this as a template:

where I just had to add the title of the page in the link and maybe adjust the wording to fit the definition better. Also, I got my sources from dictionary.com. Thank you very much. Tim Q. Wells 06:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

You aren't? I would have thought so. For some reason I am rare (at least in talking about me), but I haven't chased down exactly why yet ... ? Robert Ullmann 19:51, 12 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

What does "pleasure-struck" mean? I think this word needs more of a definition if this is the best literal translation available. I don't understand the sense of the definition. --EncycloPetey 12:17, 15 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's true that not many Greek words begin with eta, but there's no stipulation that an entry's noun be nominative... ;) --EncycloPetey 21:54, 15 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sorry I took so long to get back to this. You could make it like this:

אִ

And the first character can be a template parameter, and the second part of the template syntax ...

{{{1}}}ִ with the parameter א

Eh?

(it is 3 AM in Nairobi, I am going to bed!) Robert Ullmann 00:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Brilliant. Thank you very much. Of course you realize that since you took so long to figure it out, I am justified in taking at least as much time in putting it to use.....or something like that. Atelaes 01:09, 17 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Will do :). --334a 15:04, 17 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you very much for your message about criticism from other users. I will now see the criticism as a compliment because of your explanation on how some users deal with inept editors. Also, I'm glad you appreciate my work on Wiktionary. Thanks again, Tim Q. Wells 22:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've done a partial revert to your edit of concurs. The word called as a parameter should be linked. If it isn't, then the page is regarded by the server as "not wikified" and doesn't count toward our total number of entries. --EncycloPetey 01:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yeah. Templates don't count as links. --EncycloPetey 01:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hmm... I don't know, but suspect that it wouldn't. --EncycloPetey 02:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I did check out the Wiktionary:About Greek page earlier, though there is so much in it I will have to look at it again many times. I was thinking of getting at least one template for verb conjugation in place, as a next step. And btw I am also useless for Ancient Greek, so between us we have the market covered :-) ArielGlenn 07:53, 21 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have added the hide feature to the template as per your suggestion. Thanks! You should know that most of the work on this template was done for me because it came from the Greek Wiktionary. I think the templates should mirror the ones there as much as it is practical. As far as flexibility of templates goes, there are (I am counting now) it looks like 29 separate categories a verb can fall in, as far as conjugation, according to the description of the verb system I put a link to over at Saltmarsh's page. So we will just have to suck it up and deal with having a number of these templates. Having five arguments is already complicated enough that I don't want to try to combine several categories into one template. At least, that's my thoughts about it right now. Good luck with the Ancient Greek ones. ArielGlenn 02:51, 22 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Question: Shouldn't the Persian part of the etymology be in cuneiform? It was taken during the time of Old Persian. Atelaes 05:55, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I would agree. However, I'm not capable of typing in cuneiform. I will try to fix it best to my abilities.  :) --Dijan 06:04, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

If I can type it in cuneiform, can you double-check it? Atelaes 06:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sure. I'll do my best. --Dijan 06:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hmmm....I can't seem to find an inscription with that word. You don't by chance know which inscription this word is found on, do you? Atelaes 06:28, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I believe I've got it. It's 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠. I found it on . There, on a piece of text (and many others throughout the website) it shows his name and underneath is the transcription Xshayaarshaa. I was able to copy the cuneiform letters from Wikipedia article on Old Persian.  :) --Dijan 07:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, I'm not sure about that. The Wikipedia article says that Xšayârša is his name, but that the Greek derives from Khshayârsha, which is a title meaning "Ruler of heroes". Do you know anything about this? Also, I noticed that 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 usually ends in an 𐎶 (m). Do you have any idea if this is an object declension or something? Atelaes 07:12, 26 March 2007 (UTC) I couldn't find that title (Khshayârsha) anywhere on Livius (and I checked a lot of pages). Atelaes 07:13, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm not familiar with Old Persian declension. The best that I could come up with to explain the "m" is that it might be either the genitive or the accusative suffix (and in those translations, I believe it is translated or understood as "who, whom" or "of"). Anyway, line 12 (on the stone from Hamadan) on the link that I gave you earlier, is where his name is also mentioned in the text: 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 (Xšayâršâ) < this time without the "-m". There's also another inscription (from Lake Van) on Livius.org; again 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 (Xšayâršâ) (line 9). There are more royal inscriptions on . All of them show 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 (Xšayâršâ). The article on Wikipedia, I believe, is again mixing Old Persian and Modern Persian (neither shows the actual transliterations correctly). --Dijan 07:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Awesome! Thank you very much. I created the page 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠. What do you think, is that going too far? I just thought it'd be freakin sweet to have a live link for that word. Also, perhaps I should have said this rather earlier and saved you a bunch of work, but you can feel free to just respond here. Not to creep you out, but I'm watching you :-). Atelaes 07:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

LOL! No prob. --Dijan 19:31, 27 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi,

I will fix the entries I created and I'm sorry you had to fix them.
Also, from curiosity, I have seen edit summaries like (Reverted edits by 138.163.0.42 (Talk); changed back to last version by RobotGMwikt) that all seem very similar and must be automatic. How do users do this? Thanks, Tim Q. Wells 23:11, 26 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Just wondering, did you make any other changes to my edits?100110100 of Wikipedia70.74.35.252 05:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh, haha, yes, you did give me synoymns for maintain. Thanks, btw. You remeber me much better than I remeber you.100110100 of Wikipedia70.74.35.252 05:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I meant any edits sentence wise, or like any edits that were specifically done by me. I noticed a lot or your edits to the articles I edited where original, I meant edits by the edits that I changed..100110100 of Wikipedia70.74.35.252 06:00, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you so much for granting me such a one-day break that I absolutely needed indeed.

Recently I have edited a few Etymology sections, all related to a common Finno-Ugric root *walke, whence especially Finnish valkea, clearly suggesting possible ("arbeit unlikely" as you said) cognates with Korean 밝다 "to be bright" and 박쥐 "bat," from the Ural-Altaic perspective. Elsewhere I have seldom edited such sections to claim such cognates between European and Korean, but surely offered comparative data to serve for pure curiosity rather than cognate claim. I am far from being convinced why such pure, goodwill information, especially without any clear etymological claim, should be blamed for being "absurd." You can blame me as far as you remain reasonable; otherwise you are to blame. May I refer you to the meaning of absurd as follows:

• "ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous"
• "having no rational or orderly relationship to human life"

Surely I am personally interested in restoring the possible ("arbeit unlikely" as you said) Eurasian, especially Euro-Korean, connection that, perhaps together with paganism, may have been unfortunately disconnected self-deceptively by Roman Christianity. India is a highly convincing link that yielded both Indo-Europeanism and Bhuddism that has much affected Korea almost two millenia. No one could sanely deny some possibility of Euro-Korean cognates. The current total denial is thus most absurd and ridiculous, likely meddling with w:Christianity, w:Eurocentrism and the like, suppressing the opposing views by all means. This may be called, and due to, the Western premium, I am afraid.

The theory of single linguistic ancestry originated from the Bible. It is quite mystic but still influential. The idea of Proto-Indo-European and the like simply looks like a narrowed version. The worst seems to be self-contained, self-sufficient, self-sustaining, self-deceiving, and even self-defeating. How would it be possible for Indo-European to remain unaffected by the external forces, including Semitic Abrahamism. I wish PIE not to contribute to such a myth as pure IE. Instead, languages need be compared both within and without a family, say, beyond PIE! Simply I like to get such a missing job done. Nonetheless, I would like to remain cool and refrain from hurriedly claiming any congnates. My job is just to offer comparative data, while cognate judgment belongs to scholors. The tag or the like would be enough for readers to know that my data are not warranted by scholars.

The balance between action and reaction in the widest sense, or w:Yin and Yang, is indeed a cosmic nature in autonomy. Blocking or the like would serve as a shift, right or wrong. Most theses or theories are to be counter-balanced by anti-theses or anti-theories, hence "Conjectures and Refutations" (1963) in w:Karl Popper's terms, and the similar philosophy such as found in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962) by w:Thomas Kuhn, and "Against Method" (1975) or "Anything goes" by w:Paul Feyerabend. All these mainstream philosophers of science, especially Feyerabend, ask justice to be done to the minority theses. Most theories begin to emerge and evolve from such a minor state.

May I seriously ask here if Wiktionary would deny to do justice to the minority views so as to promote the majority only in view of its neutrality and respect? Then it would look like sort of totalitarianism that is so awkward in the free world now, I fear. And I would definitely like to fight against such an ahistoric monster. Even paganism is coming back, fortunate or not, from which Wikipedia would be the last to face away. It was regarded as such a monster and destroyed. Still it remains such, suffering minority.

Please leave the Wiktionary neutrality to the autonomy of pros and cons of editors, rather than the dictative blocking of any side. My edits, however problematic, is always subject to counter-edits. I cannot avoid. This is the royal road how Wik keeps neutral or balanced, and how it makes itself best of all, I guess. On the other hand, administrators may be so dictative as to be compared to the problematic traditional system of referees, as usual in academic journals, probably doing harm to the Wiktionary spirit and respect. Academics may be so familiar and happy with such a screen, designed to protect their own interest rather than readers' freedom of information. Wikipedia was born the very opposite, I guess.

Wiktionary is supposed to adopt the w:Revised Romanization of Hangul, and have much difficulty in suppressing the other systems. This would be because of the Wiktionary justice to the minority on the one hand and the editorial autonomy on the other. However, my own system, if any but not published, for example cannot be used here. Since Stephen, I have accepted his way and added it next to mine, which is not really mine but also derived from a special provision or requirement at the end of the RR, supplemented and inevitably contrasted to the general that he solely insists. My way is not without reasons, but to let Romanized roots always remain as such, that is, unchanged in actual uses as far as possibe. By doing so, I could do justice to those who ignore Hangul and read Roman letters only. Should I stop, or be blamed for, being kinder, serving more information of potential use than other editors?

Lastly, personally I do wish for a far better system for Korean Romanization. And I am sure it should be possible, depending on the needs in mind. The traditional systems paid too much attention to phonetics that most foreigners can pronounce Korean words closest. This objective is not so bad but tends to ignore orthography. Within Wiktionary, this could be better achieved by the phonetic signs than Romanization. On the other hand, Romanized orthography may be needed in addition to Hangul, however excellent and lovable it may be. Suppose such is a reasonable objective that we have to design a new system. I myself drafted one. And I would like to bring it to Beer Parlor, should Wiktionary be really interested in having a better system for its own sake.

--KYPark 09:38, 28 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Are you an admin? I need some help. Muqaabil 01:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry if my actions seemed like some kind of a "war". I am just trying to make a ‎point. The usage of the word Hindustani is extremely controversial as it is considered an ‎almost ancient language which has become obsolete. If you examine the history of Urdu, ‎you will find that the usage of word Urdu for a language began years before the word ‎Hindi, in a sense making Urdu a parent language of Hindi. However, I have checked ‎many major dictionaries and none of them make any reference to so-called Hindustani. ‎Even at Wikipedia, the usage of Hindustani has caused fierce debates. I think Hindustani ‎is more of a political term than neutral. The pronunciation of Jungle is different in Urdu ‎and Hindi. I have tried to use a standard character ("n" with a dot above it; see Hindi pronunciation at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/jungle) which marks ‎the difference; however, I have failed to do so far. I stress that a distinction should be kept ‎between Urdu and Hindi and they should not be merged into the political terminology of ‎Hindustani. I would also suggest that you see the entry for "jungle" in Franklin Merriam-Webster's Colligiate Dictionary which I am using as my major source. Secondly, I would like to make some major changes to the template for Urdu ‎word. It uses an awkward font which blows the size of the character out of proportions. ‎Can we stop using this template if modification is impossible? Thank you! Muqaabil 19:05, 30 March 2007 (UTC)‎Reply

Don't worry about the "warring", as it's rather common practice at Wiktionary. Good debate produces better results. Would you mind if I reposted your comments at User talk:Dijan and User talk:Stephen G. Brown? They are really the resident experts on these subjects. I largely got involved by chance. Also, you might want to take a look at Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Dictionary.com and perhaps add your thoughts on the matter. Thanks for your thoughtful response. Atelaes 20:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

In response to Muqaabil:

Sorry to just butt in, but, I have to intervene and defend Hindustani on several grounds. Starting from Hindustani being a "political" term: the exact same can be said of modern Urdu and Hindi. Hindi does not exist in Pakistan. Why? Political reasons? Maybe because it is associated with India. Now, Urdu (same thing), is only associated with Muslims, especially in India. Political reasons? I would say so. Now, about the dictionaries that you use as your sources. I agree. They do not use terms like "Hindustani". Why? Because they want to be "politically" correct. Oftentimes, we see in such dictionaries ONLY "Urdu" or ONLY "Hindi". Why? Because the writers of such dictionaries have political views and maybe not linguistic views on the language in question. Or maybe because the question of Urdu and Hindi is a very controversial one that most people out of simplicity and political reasons choose to label certain words (ex: words pertaining to Sanskrit and Hinduism; words pertaining to Arabic, Persian and Islam) as Hindi and Urdu, respectively. Secondly, since you're throwing dictionary.com around here as your main source, I'll use Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia's articles on Hindi and Urdu, the term Hindi (or Hindavi) was in use long before the term Urdu. Urdu did not come into use until 1600s. (This is all from Wikipedia.) Thirdly, yes, the term Hindustani has caused many debates on Wikipedia. Why? Because we have people who support the term Urdu and people who support the term Hindi. Belief in extreme linguistical separation of the two languages in question will cause such debates. Like I told Atelaes, same is going on for Serbo-Croatian (which is my native language). You should read a little bit on that and see the similarities between Urdu/Hindi (Hindustani) debate and Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin and Serbo-Croatian debate. Fourthly, pronunciation that you are talking about (nasalized "n") is common in both Urdu and Hindi. It is not only a Hindi feature. In Urdu, ja.ngal is spoken exactly as it is in Hindi. Now, why does Hindi have a dot? Because the Devanagari script is able to show nasalization by use of the "bindi" or "chandrabindi". Urdu, its script NOT native to it, does not show nasalization (because it was not designed to do so). I'm not saying that Urdu does not ever display nasalization, because it does, through the undotted "n" ں. But, this "n" is only used in certain words and ONLY at the end of those words. If the nasalization occurs in the middle of words, due to the nature of computerized ں, it is automatically converted to ن. Same goes for written texts so as to not cause any confusion. Same goes for ے. In type, this form occurs ONLY at the end of words. In the middle, the character is converted (same is true for writing) to ی. And lastly, the Urdu template is fine as it is. Granted, it is not in Nastaliq, which would be ideal for Urdu (although many here can read Naskh, but not Nastaliq). However, it is not too disproportional as you claim. Maybe on your computer it appears as such. Most users here cannot read Arabic script if left at 100%. It appears too small. If you wish, you may appeal to the community for such a change, although, I doubt that they will agree to it, seeing that Arabic, Persian, Sindhi, and Pashto all use similar templates for the same reason. خدا حافظ. --Dijan 23:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Atelaes, sorry for taking up your space. :) --Dijan 23:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey! Thanks for the reverts on pukka and jungle.  :)

I reverted for two reasons. One, the new guy removed some other stuff like categories and translations, and I didn't have the patience to reinstate them. Secondly, I trust your judgment more, having built a fair bit of Wikt street cred, if you get my drift. However, may I ask why Hindustani is preferred over Hindi and Urdu? I read a bit about them on the 'pedia, and they seem to be highly similar. So, obviously, there is little difference between saying Hindi and Urdu, or simply Hindustani. Then, what's the benefit? Just in case the guy starts asking me why I'm killing his edits. Thanks. Atelaes 03:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I understand. I was expecting you to reply with those questions. Understanding that you've read some of the info on pedia, here is the short reply. Hindustani is the neutral form of Hindi and Urdu. It is considered somewhat of a bridge between the extremes of the two standardized forms. As the middle, Hindustani contains vocabulary from Persian, Arabic (given preference in Urdu) and from Sanskrit (given preference in Hindi). (This is extremely important for scholars who claim that Hindi and Urdu are the same languages, with minor dilectical differences.) It is hard to determine (I would say impossible) whether a word has come from Hindi or Urdu (or even some localized form of either) into English. Therefore, it is safe to assume that a word has come from Hindustani rather than individual parts. Same applies to Serbo-Croatian. One cannot simply say that a word came from Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, or even Montenegrin (unless of course a word is strictly localized). It is however safe to assume and claim that the word came from Serbo-Croatian (the middle, or in this case until 1992, the standardized form of the four languages). Although here on Wiktionary we no longer list Hindustani and Serbo-Croatian as languages under the second level heading, in order to localize words and meanings, we do use it in Etymological cases. If you need more specifics, just ask! :) --Dijan 03:46, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

That answers my question completely and makes a great deal of sense. Thanks very much. Atelaes 03:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

Any time!  :) --Dijan 03:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

I am feeling a kind of contempt for Wikipedia in your post. I do not trust Wikipedia, ‎‎especially on controversial topics such as Hindustani etc. Such topics are in control of ‎‎powerful political groups; hence, the material is extremely biased and questionable. I ‎‎stress on the usage of Urdu and Hindi because, when Jungle was introduced in English, ‎‎Hindustani did not exist but Urdu and Hindi did. The usage of Hindustani is a ‎‎provocative reference to pre-1947 India which is wrong in every way.‎ We should not create our ‎own rules and should follow the established rules of established dictionaries. I do not ‎think dictionary.com should be rejected with such force. It always cites highly credible ‎sources and combines them on one page.‎

By the way, I find your analysis of Urdu and its script a little bit flawed. I can read ‎‎Arabic very well, although I do not understand all of it. In Arabic, nasal n never occurs at ‎‎the end of a word; however, it often occurs inside words where a "jazam" (diacritic) is ‎‎used (not necessary to write, although its existence is always understood). Urdu script ‎follows the same tradition.‎ Muqaabil 09:13, 31 March 2007 (UTC)‎Reply

I'm still mulling over how I want to handle pronouns. For Greek in particular, I think some sort of subcategories would be helpful for handling the large number of inflectional forms, but I haven't quite decided how I think it ought to be done.

For Numbers, my recommendation would be incomplete, but at least I can offer some examples. Look at Category:Old English numerals to see how I would set the system up for categories and basic format of entries. The core problems are:

1. The community is strongly divided as to whether to call the part of speech Numeral or Number, though there seems to be reasonable consensus that "Cardinal" and "Ordinal" should not appear in the POS header. I prefer Numeral, in part because of the current contents of Category:Numbers, which is a mish-mash primarily of numerical coding systems (e.g. the "Arabic numerals", "Oriya numbers", "Roman numerals", and the like). Putting numbers as a part of speech in with the coding systems seems wrong to me. The alternative is Category:Numerals by language, which is what I tend to use.
2. The term "cardinal number" describes both a grammatical function and a topical definition. There are cardinal numbers, such as aleph-null, that are defined as a "cardinal number" mathematically but do not function as a grammatical number/numeral. So, I've treated "Cardinal number" and "Ordinal number" as topical categories, but placed them as subcategories of a grammatical category. For example, the Quechuan cardinal numbers are in Category:qu:Cardinal numbers, but that is a subcategory of Category:Quechua numerals. This format satisfies both the need for a topical and a grammatical category.
3. Since the POS header is "Number" or "Numeral", how to we identify what sort it is? I use {{cardinal}} and {{ordinal}}, which also categories the entry automatically if you include a lang=xxx with the ISO code. Again, you can see examples in both Old English and Quechua noted above.
4. How do we indicate the preceding and following numbers, as well as the associated cardinal/ordinal? This is less settled. I made an attempt at one method of solving this at Category:tr:Cardinal numbers or Category:tt:Cardinal_numbers. I'm not happy with this solution and think each language will need an appendix with a basic list, notation, names, and usage notes. I also think it would be nice to have a general template such as is used on the Books of the Bible or the Zodiac to allow users to move to the previous or next number, or to find the associated cardinal/ordinal.

Hope this helps,--EncycloPetey 00:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Latin also has this problem. there are Cardinal numbers, Ordinal numbers, and Adverbial numbers (Romanian also has Fractional, Indefinities, and Distributives). I'm leaning towards including each of these as a "Number". There is no reason, though, why Adverbial numbers can't have its own category that is included within both Category:Ancient Greek numbers and Category:Ancient Greek adverbs. For the base part of speech, I prefer "Number" in part because that's what the Latin grammarians (and the Romanian grammarians) are doing. --EncycloPetey 00:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for pointing this out to me - I have no strong feelings. Saltmarsh 14:50, 4 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

And ref your talk with EncycloPetey about numbers/pronouns - please keep me informed of any decisions so that I can reflect these in Wiktionary:About Greek - I am (not as frequently) delving in other areas of the garden at present. Saltmarsh 14:58, 4 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Just a quick note: I'm not sure that cognate is the word you want to use in explaining "Related terms". Most people learn "cognate" as a word in another language that shares a common origin, and it often carried that connotation of being interlingual. I can't say that I have a better word as an option, just that "cognate" might be avoided since it confuses the very idea you're trying to express with your rewrite. --EncycloPetey 04:04, 6 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Since nobody is responding in the BP anymore, I figure we can settle this between us (maybe ask Stephen for some input, too).

In particular, I think it is not nice if the template occurs more than once on the page. All other things you propose I can live with. What do you think? H. (talk) 14:08, 10 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

You might also check in with User:BD2412, who has been setting up pages listing various forms of "letters", focussing on Latin letters and variants. See Category:Variations_of_letters. I'd be interested to help actively as well, but fear I am stretched pretty thin as it is right now. --EncycloPetey 17:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I’ll try to summarise how I’d like it (see β/test#H.):

• a {{see}} which refers to an appendix for related symbols (e.g. Appendix:Variations of ‘a’, and I would propose some appendix for CJK symbols which are built of the same radicals or something of that sort, see {WT:BP#Components of Chinese characters)
• for ordered alphabets, a template that gives some information, such as next/previous letter in different alphabets/abjads/whatever, an image of the symbol etc. (see Template:greek letter-temp, which accomodates more than one previous/next letter). This should be placed on the top of the page, to the right of the TOC (i.e. on the line below {{see}}. A wikipedia link is included in the template)
• ==Symbol== as l2 header
• An etymology section, explaining where the symbol comes from. I.e. lower case refers to upper case, middle forms refer to lone-standing forms, ligatures to their parts, diacritics to their history etc.
• A pronunciation section, if appropriate (i.e. for letters, but not for diacritics), with an unnumbered list of how the letter is pronounced in various languages that use it.
• ===X alphabet=== or another meaningful description as l3 header
• A definition list, as usual.
• Usage notes and other sections, if appropriate.
• ====Derived terms====, listing only symbols that are derived of it, with perhaps a reference to the spelled out name for more derived terms (e.g. see also beta). It is also a bit unclear how to handle this (e.g. is b derived from β, or from B? should secondary derived terms be listed etc.)
• A section which contains the name of the symbol in various languages, similar to a translation section for a word. I am unsure of the proper header for this.

I know not enough about CJK and other scripts to decide whether more information is necessary. Of course there can be additional ==Language== sections if the symbol in itself is also a word in the language (such as a, о, ...). H. (talk) 11:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I like some of these ideas, but offer a slightly different point of view on some of this.

• Point (2) Ordered alphabets - I don't think this is feasible. Order of letters varies too much between languages. The order of the Estonian and Hungarian alphabets differ significantly from the order of the Spanish and Frnech alphabets, even though all the languages use Latin letters. A similar problem happens among languages which use Cyrillic script; the Russian and Serbian alphabets contain different characters, so that the "next" letter in one language's alphabet might not even exist in the other language's.

I agree. I prefer the way I did it for the Cyrillic letters, where the "previous" and "next" is located in the individual definition lines according to the language that uses the letters (see г). I also prefer the way I did the pronunciations for Cyrillic letters, since both pronunciation and transliteration can vary by language. —Stephen 05:39, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

• Point (5) Pronunciation - this is problematic, since the symbol will have a different IPA form in each language in many cases. A single symbol might even have a whole range of values within a single language. English a, for example, can take æ, ɑ, ɒ, ə on a regular basis. The problem isn't limited to vowels either, since there are four distinct pronunciations for English t; most people are simply unaware that they're using all four. This issue would almost require a full Appendix page for each basic letter, with links to pages like Wiktionary:About Swedish/Pronunciation throughout.
• Point (6) - ===X alphabet===. I think a closer approximation to parallel what we usually do at this level would be ===Consonant===, ===Vowel===, and the like. This charatceristic is preserved better between alphabets.

--EncycloPetey 15:25, 11 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I feel that if the name of the script (Cyrillic, Roman, Cuneiform, Thai, etc.) is not the very first header (L2) for a given letter, then it surely should be the second (L3). I don’t think it’s very useful to have "consonant" or "vowel" in any header. For one thing, in some languages the distinction is blurred. In the Semitic abjads, every letter is a consonant, although some of them are often or usually transliterated as vowels. Most of the worlds scripts are syllabaries, where almost all the glyphs represent a consonant with an inherent vowel, and also some special "independent" vowels for the beginning of words. Some languages have digraphs, trigraphs, or tetragraphs as letters ... for instance, the Kabardian letter кхъу, called "qwuh" and representing the sound q^w.

I have no problem with an L2 header of ==Symbol==, but it will have to do duty for di- and trigraphs as well. Or we could use the name of the script as the L2 header, as in г.

I may not be able to participate further in this discussion for a few days, because I’m having a lens implant for my eye in the morning and my other eye is much too farsighted for reading, even with glasses. Hopefully I’ll be able to see again in a couple of days. —Stephen 05:39, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

So I apologize for the delay on this. I've considered the situation and here are the conclusions I've reached. First of all, I feel quite strongly that graphemes absolutely must have language sections. There is simply too much variation within languages on how they treat letters to avoid it. It may work for Greek letters to have all the information to be lumped under one header, but only because there is only one language which uses that script (Greek). Secondly, at least some of the information in your template needs to be within the language sections, as order changes from language to language. Also, I think it would be good to have the particular language's name for the character under the language header. However, I also think that there should be a primary header (I prefer translingual, but that's another issue), with information that transcends specific languages. A few things that should be in this "primary" header: Etymology, definitely. I agree that we should also have characters which come from this character (however, I think it should be "descendants" instead of "derived terms"). IPA would also do well in this term, as well as any unicode specifications. In addition, I think that the names for this character in various languages should also be here, in addition to the specific name being included in the specific language section. However, I think that the picture of the character in every language is redundant (not to mention messy). So, perhaps that part should be taken out of the template, and simply included within the primary header. I prefere the translingual header, if for no other reason than it will arouse less conflict, as a pre-existing header. I think that the L3 header symbol works well under the L2 header "language". I had a few other thoughts, but I'm a bit drunk right now, so I'll leave it at that. Your thoughts? Atelaes 06:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

@Atelaes: I propose we have the discussion here, or suggest another place if it annoys you.

Atelaes has made some useful suggestions on my talk page. (I've since copied the text here. Atelaes 15:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC) It made me come to the conclusion that {{greek letter}} as it is now is useless. It should be at least split up, thus probably satisfying both his and my preferences: I‘d have one template which contains only the images (I think we should keep them since for more exotic scripts, users often will not have the font) and the Wikipedia link, and maybe the English name, since we are English wiktionary, after all. Then another template {{X letter-local}} should be made, which can be included in each definition line, and contains information about previous and next letter name and pronunciation in the specific alphabet-language pair we are talking about. Maybe the template shouldn’t even contain any css/html, just a line like it can be seen in г. I.e. I think of something like {{cyrillic letter-def|fourth|Russian|гэ|g|в|д}}, which would produce something likeReply

The fourth letter of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. Its name is гэ and it has the sound of /g/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g). It is preceded by В and followed by Д.

I slimmed the line a bit down, since I don’t like the example giving (mentioning IPA should suffice).

Then there should be {{cyrillic letter-disp|Cyrillic_lc_ge.svg|40px|Cyrillic_uc_ge.svg|40px|Г|ge}}, which would produce the table that floats around here somewhere, and is to be put at the top of the page.

and add the page to the relevant categories (i.e. Category:Symbols and Category:Cyrillic letters). Of course both should be adapted to fit various scripts (i.e. the Arabic display template can contain the various forms etc.).

That solves issues 2 and 5. I also don’t like the ===Vowel=== idea, for the reasons Stephen mentioned. I am unsure why you want digraphs to be handled the same way. I don’t even see why they would deserve their own page. That is something which is to be handled in a (pronunciation) appendix. H. (talk) 10:09, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Nearly everything you've said sounds perfect. And I agree that the ===Vowel=== idea is bad, and think that ===Symbol=== or ===Character=== or something along those lines is the way to go. I don't know quite where I gave the impression that I want digraphs handled in this manner (I don't, I agree with appendices at most for digraphs), but wherever it was, it was a mistake and I apologize for it. I'm cautious about putting the pronunciation in the template. While I know you don't like the expanded pronunciation section, I think it is necessary for some letters in some languages. Take the letter g in the English language for example, it makes both the /g/ sound as well as the /dʒ/ sound in orange, as well as variations in digraphs such as rough and nigh. Bear in mind that most of the time, a simple one-sound IPA will be sufficient. One final thought, the standard ordering in ELE prescribes English always being the first L2 header. But I think that for letters, the primary header (whatever we decide on that) should perhaps come before English. What do you think of that? Atelaes 15:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

You didn’t really get my intension.

• My proposal was to use ==Symbol== as L2 header. But Robert seems to have serious trouble with that. Robert: Some people are not satisfied with ==Translingual==, since some of the stuff that is to go under it is not really something that occurs in multiple languages. My proposal is to either rename it, or have one more non-language L2 header, i.e. ==Symbol==. Is that too much of a burden on the bot writers?
• It was Stephen who wants to treat di-, tri- and tetragraphs similarly. I wouldn’t do that.
• There is still some room to change the inline-template, if we want to use one at all. I’ll start off with the Greek letters once again now, and we can evaluate it in a few weeks perhaps. Those interested can put them on their watchlist. I can imagine well that for some letters a template would not be appropriate, simply because some more information is to be given. That is no problem, as long as it looks consistent.
• They should definitely not come under the ==English== header. H. (talk) 10:35, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

PLEASE don't use some non-language L2 header. Every one of the 400,000+ entries we have uses a language or "Translingual", except for the 86 Cyrillic and Arabic alphabet things, which have to be constantly treated as exceptions by every single bot reading the en.wikt. Please use "Translingual", which does sort before English. This is what all the present entries for graphemes use, except for the aformentioned #$*^$(^@# crap. (If you don't like "translingual" as the standard header for "something that applies to more than one language" then propose something different, and we can change all 24,387 entries that use it ;-) Otherwise, this is good, use the "type of thing" as the L3 header. We have "Katakana character" and the like already, seems to be fine. And if you can fix those #&%&@# entries that would be great. Robert Ullmann 16:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Let me a bit clearer; first note that there are a LOT of bots that read the en.wikt; at least several hundred. When they look at L3 headers, they typically have a table of what they know/are interested in; anything else is invalid or unknown and treated as invalid POS or POS-like thing. But with L2 headers, it isn't reasonable to have a table; there are 300 odd languages used out of 7000+ names defined, with both being open-ended; anything other than "Translingual" must be a language name. There just isn't any other way to parse it consistently. Another open-ended set of headers at L2 cannot be handled: the bot can't tell whether something it doesn't know is an unknown grapheme-type or an unknown language. Robert Ullmann 17:44, 12 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Well, my vote remains for "Translingual" as the "primary" L2 header. Perhaps we can use "Such and Such Alphabet" as an L3 header somewhere. But, in fairness, most of the stuff I want to put there actually is true outside of the context of any specific language, such as the etymology, the IPA, descendants, etc. Ultimately, most of the info will probably be inside the language L2 headers. Hopefully we can incite a change of mind in Stephen. Yes, the template still needs some work. I advise getting some input from Stephen on that. He will be the best person to advise on the needs of characters across a broad spectrum. And yes, I think it would be best to have the translingual as the first L2 header, with English following (when applicable) and all other languages falling in alphabetical order. We may have to wait for a while on this until Stephen gets back into action. Atelaes 20:43, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I usually have the next month up in full by the middle of the previous month (around the 15th). I should have the May selections up by the end of this week.

On a peripherally related note (also some Etymology stuff), I've slowly begun adding or expanding entries for Biblical figures of note (Abraham, Enoch, and Methusaleh, but not Ephron, Hezron, or Shuni). I'm trying to pick a choice KJV quote to get an English date of at least 1611 for each name and putting in the Spanish equivalent (from the 1602 Spanish equivalent of the KJV) and an entry and quote for the Spanish. Where I need some help is that I really don't want to go hunting in the Septuagint as well to get the Greek. So, if you like, you can keep an eye on Category:Biblical characters for addiitons and add the Ancient Greek translations (and appropriate etymological info as well). --EncycloPetey 05:02, 11 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

How does one major in "ex-theology"? ;) Seriously, I already knew that about you, which is why I asked. FYI, I've decided to work through in (Protestant) order of the books. I've done characters from Genesis up through chapter 17 (including Sarai, but not Sarah yet). And I've selected quotes for the remaining Genesis persons. It may take longer to do the sons of Jacob though, since those words are also tribes of Israel and some have other senses (esp. Judah). But don't be afraid to work ahead of me. I'd cope. --EncycloPetey 05:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yes...see the discussion about Mered in RfV. --EncycloPetey 06:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

FYI, I've updated the WOTD for May -15 already. Of particular interest to you are kaleidoscopic, sophistry, and bring owls to Athens. I can go ahead and tell you that sigmoid, dynamic, and xenobiology will also be entries next month since I have all 31 words picked out; I just haven't entered them all yet. --EncycloPetey 01:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

OK, they're all in now. --EncycloPetey 15:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

How abot spacing between lines? For example, should there be a line between "Persian" and the next bit? Thanks. Pistachio 22:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for my red ψαλτήριον blue :-) Shai 06:31, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

votes that are stagnating! --Connel MacKenzie 07:07, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I was wondering if you'd care to comment on Wiktionary talk:Etymology#Bold vs. Italics. Also, I saw your new word, and added ἀμφίσβαινα, thought it might interest you. Thanks. Atelaes 02:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Great, I love it when links in an Etymology section go blue! I've commented at the discussion; thanks. Widsith 08:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Parts of speech are not always easy to assign. This looks like a noun to me; the way you've structured the entry puts "owls" as the head of the phrase so any inflectional table will follow a noun declension I expect. However, I'd have to see a few examples quoted in context to be sure of that. If it doesn't follow a standard POS structure (for example, if it's not inflected in any known examples), then it might be better to give the POS as Idiom. --EncycloPetey 15:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've marked bring owls to Athens as a "Descendant". What do you think about allowing literal translations of strange idioms to be included under this subheader? Normally, only morphologically related descendants would be included, but I sort of think idioms that are translated into a new language fall under the same concept. --EncycloPetey 00:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Then you might wish to amend Wiktionary:About Ancient Greek while the idea is still fresh. :) I'll add the same information to my notes for Wiktionary:About Latin. --EncycloPetey 02:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Are you wanting ῥ to be r or rh? I'm not quite sure from your About Ancient Greek page. Also, I see on your chart that υ -> u always, but sometimes I see it has been left as y. Is u correct? (Before I muck about with any more of these...) Thanks, ArielGlenn 08:34, 25 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Excellent. In that case I have a (probably working correctly) perl script to do transliteration from AGr, although I am trying to work out how I can post it in my namespace (wikimedia eats some characters from the Gr extended code block in unicode and turns them into characters in the MGr code block). Anyways, if this would be of use to you I'll figure out how to make it available. ArielGlenn 15:19, 25 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hello Atelaes -- Thanks for expanding the etymology of metaphysics. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely comfortable that all of what you said is accurate, or at least uncontroversial. You wrote that Aristotle's Metaphysics is so "titled because Aristotle believed that ontological philosophy should come after natural philosophy (φυσικά)" and added "contrary to common belief, the μετά in this case simply means 'after' and not 'beyond'."

I am not an authority on Aristotle. However, I'm pretty sure that scholars do not agree on precisely what significance to give to the selection of the name Metaphysics for this work, but that there is one fairly common school of thought that the name indicates no more than that this work came after the works on physics in the system which ancient librarians used to organize them. (This bit of Aristotle lore is recounted here, in Wikipedia.) I'm particularly uncomfortable with your statement that "Aristotle believed...". Do you have any sources which show, beyond reasonable disputability, that Aristotle expressed such a belief? Respectfully -- WikiPedant 13:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Atelaes, I'm no expert on this branch of science but I've had a look into the word. First of all this whole discussion may be in the wrong place, since the English word metaphysics came directly from metaphysic, which is perhaps where this argument should be. That aside, it doesn't seem to me that you and WikiPedant disagree on much. The OED, who have researched this rather more thoroughly than I have, comment as follows:

Post-classical Latin metaphysica is first attested in 6th cent. in Boethius De Interpretatione Aristotelis (where it is emended by Meiser to μετὰ τὰ φυσικά), and is common from about 12th cent. The earliest evidence for Byzantine Greek μεταφυσικά is also from the 6th cent. In both Latin and Greek it is used as the title of a work by Aristotle. In the 6th cent. it appears also as μετὰ τὰ φυσικά. It is probable that in early copies of the 6th cent. Greek sources there was little or no word division or accentuation, so μεταφυσικά as a work title, originally two words, came to be treated as one word. Asclepius in his commentary on the Metaphysics says that Aristotle thought that ontological philosophy should be taught after natural philosophy, and that this explains why the work is entitled μετὰ τὰ φυσικά ‘After the Physics’. Asclepius does not say who first gave the work that title; modern scholars sometimes assume that the title goes back to Eudemus of Rhodes (later 4th cent. B.C.), who, according to Asclepius, produced an edition of the work. The explanation which Asclepius offers for the title of the work receives support from the fact that, as Porphyry (3rd cent., in In Aristotelis Categorias Expositio) and some later writers make clear, Aristotle's Categories was sometimes called πρὸ τῶν τοπικῶν or πρὸ τῶν τόπων ‘Before the Topics’.

As a work title μετὰ (τὰ) φυσικά can be found in apposition to either a feminine singular article, or to a neuter plural article. Olympiodorus (6th cent.) uses the title with both neuter plural and feminine singular articles within a few lines of each other, and in both cases treats μεταφυσικά as indeclinable. Simplicius (6th cent.) provides the first clear case where the title is treated as a declinable feminine singular noun (τῆς μετφυσικῆς), and metaphysica is usually treated as a declinable feminine singular noun in post-classical Latin.

The title came to be used as the name for the branch of study treated in these books, and hence came to be interpreted as meaning ‘the science of things transcending what is physical or natural’. This interpretation is first recorded in (?Pseudo-)Basil of Caesarea Enarratio in Prophetam Isiam 5.162 τὰ τῆς φυσιολογίας ἀνώτερα π ροκόψσας, τά καλούμενα παρά τισι μεταφυσικά. In scholastic Latin writers this interpretation was general (being reinforced, perhaps, by the known equivalence of the prefixes meta- and trans- in various compounds: see META-); and in English its influence is seen in the custom, frequent down to the 17th cent., of explaining metaphysical by words like ‘supernatural’, ‘transnatural’, etc. Cf. METAPHYSICS n. 3, and METAPHYSICAL a. II.

Only the singular form appears in English before the 16th cent., prob. because post-classical Latin metaphysica was usually treated, as far as can be discerned, as a feminine singular noun (see above). In the 17th and 18th cent. it was largely superseded by METAPHYSICS n. (as was PHYSIC n. by PHYSICS n.), although in the 19th cent. the singular again began to be preferred by many philosophical writers (prob. after German Metaphysik).

In summary, I agree with you that meta here means simply ‘after’; but I agree with WikiPedant that we should be careful about saying what Aristotle himself may or may not have believed. This whole discussion should probably go to the relevant talk page too. Widsith 19:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I can verify that Lewis & Short has āclys / āclis (genitive āclydis) as a third declension feminine noun with the definition of "a small javelin with a strap". I don't have an etymology for the word, but the letter y in Latin exists solely for the transcription of Greek words. I would therefore assume that some Greek word was its source. Is there not a Greek root from which ankylo- derives? I couldn't find one in Liddel & Scott (and looked under a variety of possible spellings), but conventionally that is the root given for Ankylosaurus (a genus of armored dinosaur). This is noted in some of my biological root dictionaries, but none of them gives a Greek spelling of the root. --EncycloPetey 04:31, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Lewis & Short do give κορώνη as the origin of Latin corona. Liddel & Scott gives "a kind of crown" as one of the definitions (II. 6), so it looks plausible to me. --EncycloPetey 04:40, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

And Lewis & Short say that Latin mūlus = Greek μύκλος, though they do not gloss the meaning of the Greek. Liddel & Scott have an entry under μύκλα, but it seems to be an adjective if I'm reading the definitions correctly. It is not clear to me whether the Romans borrowed this word from the Greeks or vice-versa. --EncycloPetey 04:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Remember that for Latin verbs we now are using the first person singular present active indicative as the lemma form, just as for Ancient Greek. --EncycloPetey 19:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sure. I'm not sure whether there is a Latin requests page... Yep, there's a Wiktionary:Requested articles:Latin, so you can note them there. (I need to put that page on my Watchlist.) --EncycloPetey 04:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

I can find this in Liddell & Scott (psittakos), but either the Edittools is lacking the appropriate alpha-with-diacritcal, or I'm not seeing it (or there's an alternative that we use). In any case, could you add the translation to the table for parrot (and maybe the entry too)? Thanks; "parrot" has become one of my "model pages" articles, so I'm trying to get it and its linked pages as fleshed out as possible. ...But still doing research on the etymology, which turns out not to be straightforward. --EncycloPetey 04:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

The Ancient Greek inflection table for the entry doesn't seem right. All the forms have an accent on the first iota, though there shouldn't be one in the nominative at least. --EncycloPetey 15:30, 30 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Can you move this somewhere else, perhaps? It probably doesn't belong in the main namespace, right? --Connel MacKenzie 17:15, 30 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the warning. I have only added a few of these entries, then I decided to stop and wait until I knew which system of Romanisation to go with. The reasons I feel it would be useful are that some people might not have access to an Arabic keyboard. For example, when I was at University the network administrator did not want to install it so we didn't have it. Also, it means we can make see similarities with languages such as Kurdish (see yek). I never would have known that it was the same word in Romanian if I had not have created that entry. I noticed that there are romanised entries for Japanese and Chinese. Does that mean that they might be deleted later? In any case I will create a discussion about it. Pistachio 23:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the comments and the suggestions. As you san see I'm still fresh here, I hope I'll go with the rules soon. Unorthografair 21:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

...actually Latin caleō derives from the Doric form κάλεoς of the Ionic κήλεος (burning). Unorthografair 22:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, unfortunately almost all of the “standard” dictionaries stop their etymologies at Latin, even if the word can be traced further back in Greek. Where do you want me to add it? Unorthografair 22:21, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Did it, but I have my doubts on calma < caleō. I’ll check it out and come back tomorrow. Unorthografair 22:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hello again. I noticed (surprisingly...) that a very important category about Latin words from Greek is missing. Shouldn’t there be one? How can one create a new category? Unorthografair 05:14, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Totally, thanks. Unorthografair 05:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi, shall I bold the etyma as you do on your cleanups? Unorthografair 17:29, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think I will bold them too since as etyma it’ll be good to stand up more. We can perhaps use italics on the pronunciation as I did in navis. Unorthografair 17:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Actually, you used italics on the transcription; we only give pronunciations in pronunciation sections, not following mentions of words. My preference is against using italics there, since the parentheses already indicate that we are giving a transcriptional gloss. --EncycloPetey 21:53, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Lol, you are not alone there! Unorthografair 19:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! :-) —Ruakh_TALK 05:44, 9 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have two questions, if you don't mind:

1. Help:Sysop tools and Help:Patrolled edits say that sysops should adjust their editing preferences to mark their own edits patrolled by default; but I don't see such a preference, and it seems like my edits are getting marked patrolled anyway. Are these pages just out-of-date, or is there something I'm missing?
2. When I'm patrolling recent edits, and come across a silly/vandalistic/test edit has since been undone, should I mark that edit patrolled so it disappears from the list? (That would seem natural, but Help:Patrolled edits seems to imply otherwise.)

Thanks again!

—Ruakh_TALK 20:25, 9 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

In this edit, you added an extra (extraneous) Etymology section for English in front of the two properly formatted sections already there? Presumably you meant to modify Etymology 2? Robert Ullmann 23:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The pronunciation applies to both etymologies, which is why it preceded the first etymology section. I have moved it back, since the way you altered the entry meant that the second etymology had no pronunciation. --EncycloPetey 02:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I find your support of the tea room trolls to be misplaced. People with a pro-nazi agenda going around editing out citations from nazi-realated terms isn't suspicious to you, at all? --Connel MacKenzie 05:21, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

What do you mean by "Sorry"?

Perhaps you mean, that because you find one single word possibly questionable in the primary sense, you think the primary sense of the term should be removed, in favor of definitions that actually are no more than obsolete etymological information?

Or perhaps you mean something else?

I think they still won't get it, despite my wording in the tea room. Casting it in the light of a personal insult, they (note, not "he") still wish to push their pro-nazi agenda. Fine. They can go back to Wikipedia, where they're already winning that disinformation campaign. --Connel MacKenzie 05:38, 10 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey, congratulations on being the most level-headed one of us all :) ... all this talk about the entry and none of us noticed that there was no Devangari! Yes, yes, that wasn't the thrust of the discussion or the most important part of the entry, but still... — Beobach972 00:21, 11 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for the welcome! I doubt there will be many (if any) corrections to make; everything I've seen thus far looks excellent. I was very excited to see that the dual had been added to templates as well. Congrats on having become an admin! Medellia 15:26, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hey, could I ask how you did that? My first instinct is to check the box which says "Delete this page to make room for the move?", but I'm worried that that would delete the whole history in the process (as deletes normally do). Help me out? Atelaes 18:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The process I eventually figured out:

1. Delete the entry at the target location.
2. Move the misplaced entry to the tagret location.
3. Delete the moved entry (and its redirect).
4. Restore the target location entry, which brings back and merges all prior history.
5. Edit the back to restore information from the first deleted page.

It's not a pretty process, but it works. --EncycloPetey 19:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

See User talk:Rodasmith#Template question. A (newly returned!) Medellia and I have already been discussing what to do about inflected forms of Latin adjectives. Part of the discussion led me to ask Rod to set up an inflectional template. See the prototype in action at alba (Latin section). Note that the template is still in the testing stages, so it should be used for now only on a limited number of pages for testing. --EncycloPetey 05:58, 13 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hello Atelaes -- Following our earlier discussion and Widsith's comments, I have revisited the metaphysics page and excised the portion of the etymology which continues to make me uncomfortable. I have a PhD in Philosophy (although not a specialty in ancient philosophy) and I'm sure that this part of the etymology overreached what is known with reasonable certainty about the origin of this term. I have also moved our previous discussion to the article's talk page. Respectfully -- WikiPedant 13:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please see my talk page for my response to your reply. Thanks -- WikiPedant 14:06, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

How important is the oldest attested record of a word for Wiktionary? I’m asking that because for example in the case of equus the etymology goes straight to the hypothetical PIE form by skipping the attested Aeolic Greek ίκκος (ikkos) “a horse” < Mycenaen Greek (transcripted, unfortunately not Linear B font) ikkFoi “horses”. Unorthografair 15:17, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

If I may... I would suggest adding the Mycenaen form (if you can't find sources, I can check... I'll probably have something somewhere.) as "compare with x" in the etymology, as is often done for modern Romance language terms. I'll be going to the library later tonight and can take a look at the big Latin etymological dictionary and the TLL. I would doubt, however, that the two are more than cognates... but I could be wrong. Medellia 00:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I haven't seen any scholarship that claims equus is anything but a native Latin word. If a source can be cited that shows a Myceanean origin for the word, then we should cite that source and add the Mycenean root to the etymology. Without such a source, we should not do so as that would constitute the kind of original speculation we try to avoid on Wikimedia projects. As Medellia notes, though, we could include a note of comparison that would leave the question open. --EncycloPetey 01:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Don’t take me wrong, I’m not claiming that equus derives from ίκκος < ίκκFος , unless of course if a source can be cited, as EncycloPetey comments and I hope Medellia comes up with something interesting on that. However, it is well known that the Archaic Latin borrowed some endings and diphthongs from Greek, for example the nominative singular -OS, the accusative singular -OM, and the dative singular –OI, which in classical Latin became respectively -US, –UM, -O. (See the Fibula Praenestina, Duenos Vase and Ficoroni cista inscriptions, as well as the Carmen Arvale and Carmen Saliare prayers and the bibliography on their grammar.) For example, such Old Latin words as volgus, servos, equos, cervos, were not changed to the more familiar classical Latin forms vulgus, servus, equus, cervus until the Augustan period.

Nevertheless, in a good etymology section, a word should be traced back to the earliest language in which it is attested, and if this is an Indo-European language, selected cognates in other Indo-European languages (especially Old High German, Latin, and Greek) should be given. Unorthografair 19:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC), happy to be back after a good vacation.  :)Reply

I got your point; as I already mentioned before, most of the dictionaries stop their etymologies at Latin, even if the word can be traced further back in Greek and it’s rather the mother and not the sister of the Latin word. Oh, well, I guess I have to stick to the generally accepted etymologies, but I’ll try to include the cognates in my edits. Unorthografair 19:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Atelaes, I want to ask you somethig. I would very much like to contribute entries for English words to the Hebrew witktionary. Unfortunately, there is a strict prohibition on entring any non-Hebrew entries there. In the past, users who tried to contribute entries for German and English words were ordered to stop, and their contributions were deleted.
Yesterday I intiated a discussion, trying to convince my fellow users to change the policy. Unsuprisingly, the idea was rejected. However, I still want to contribute foreign words to a Hebrew dictionary. Can you think of any way I can do that without setting up a local wiktionary? Thanks, Shai 16:06, 14 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

The main reason is that they see he.witkt as a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary only. I've translated the core two paragraphs of the Bureaucrat's position in the most elaborate discussion on this matter held in October 2006:

My opponents will ask, justly, “who does it bother ?”. It bothers when users who can contribute to Hebrew entries don’t do that because they invest time in foreign entries... I just want that we will decide what languages we deal with. Whoever wants to write foreign entries - let him do that in WiktionaryZ.

Let me ask you: when you write an entry, what do you think of? What are you aspiring for? I always aspired for us to make together a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary, and I think it is a very feasible aspiration. But aspiring to build a multilingual dictionary, here, in the Hebrew wiktionary, (we exist more than two years and we don’t even have 4,000 entries!) - is no more than a fantasy.

The irony is that the reason why there are never poeple to contribute foreign entries, is because whenever somebody tries, the Bureaucrat orders them to stop, so they leave...

I don't want to fight him, he's a friend of mine, but I'm frustrated by not being able to contribute English and other foreign words to a Hebrew speaking public. Shai 14:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It is an extraordinarily serious problem: the architecture of the various wikts calls for the Hebrew definitions of English, etc. words to go in the he.wikt, just as the English definition of a Hebrew word goes in the en.wikt. The original explanation was, IIRC, that they didn't have enough contributors to do more than Hebrew/Hebrew, as reflected in the quote above. This is—as you observe—self defeating. The people who want to work just on Hebrew should not be getting in the way of people working on other languages; there is no conflict. At some point the WM foundation (meta, stewards etc.) will need to simply over-ride this "policy". Robert Ullmann 15:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I should also point out that the Bureaucrat's position as a bureaucrat is way out of line, and you might mention that to him; being a bureaucrat does not entitle one to dictate policy; like sysop, it carries no more authority than any other community member; it is simply that the user is trusted to set sysop and bot flags according to policy. Robert Ullmann 15:03, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Yet more ;-) point out that the primary reason that they have only 4000 entries for Hebrew after 2 years is that they are driving people away. If people could add FL words, they would want the definition lines to have blue links? Ya think? Robert Ullmann 15:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Come to think of it, I do believe the only English words I've ever created were to bluify definition links on Ancient Greek entries. It isn't terribly often, as I think we have pretty good coverage of the English language (numerically at least, there are certainly still a number of stub entries). Shai, I don't envy the position you're in. What you can do is figure out how many people are specifically backing this policy. If you can find more people who would like to have foreign words (they probably aren't on the Hebrew Wikt anymore, they're probably floating around somewhere else in MW, perhaps on the Hebrew 'pedia), you could stage a vote to include foreign words. If the 'crat didn't comply with that, then you could get the stewards involved. Although, at the same time, that sets a nasty precedent, the foundation interfering with local matters.......*sigh* And if the 'crat's your friend, well that just complicates the matter further. Again, I don't envy the position you're in. Atelaes 19:36, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You're absolutely right, and I'm already contacting some old users who were driven away by this policy. It might just be possible to make a velvet revolution. Thanks! Shai 17:49, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think it's you who has added pronunciations for ἱστορία. Can you check the IPA for the classical pronunciation? I believe that classical Greek used rising intonation rather than the syllabic stress used in the modern language - is /í/ the correct way to render this in IPA? — Paul G 09:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi, thanks for the reply. I was originally going to send you a message saying "no, you're doing it wrong", but then I remembered something I had read about the pronunciation of Ancient Greek and then read up on suprasegmentals in IPA. Good work - keep it up.

Do you speak Modern Greek, by the way? — Paul G 08:48, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

It's a shame that you don't - I thought from your Babel entry that you wouldn't. I'm brushing up my Greek and it might have been fun to have someone to practise with. Δεν πειράζει (never mind).

While cleaning up languages templates, I noticed you'd recently created {{sux}}. Just a heads-up that current policy is to link these internally instead of to Wikipedia because they get subst'ed in Language headers and translation tables. There are still a lot of older 3-letter ISO templates lying around that haven't been fixed, so if you come across any, please reduce them to a simple internal link. I have already done so for {{sux}}. --EncycloPetey 03:30, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

You got it chief. Will do. Atelaes 03:46, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

BTW, Medellia and I have a current and on-going discussion at Wiktionary talk:About Latin concerning the formatting and categorization of Latin adjectives and their various forms. It would be helpful if you (and anyone you know interested in Ancient Greek) would drop in and participate, since the same issues will undoubtedly plague the AGr. editors as well (and because you ay be working to help import Lewis & Short). Are you planning to import it into Wikisource as well? --EncycloPetey 03:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Anything Plato is pretty standard, though I doubt if it's an appropriate first text. (All the philosophical mumbo-jumbo can be a bit strange to translate.) One of the first texts I read was Lysias' On the Murder of Eratosthenes, which I enjoyed if for no other reason that the matter at hand was rather interesting. It seems that Harvard (which I seem to remember as being ranked first in the US for Classics) begins with Attic prose as well... though I'd imagine some schools start with Homer as that would be beginning at the beginning. (Berkeley does its best to keep Latin and Greek parallel, thus prose is read in G/L 100, epic in 101, and some type of poetry in 102.) Medellia 17:12, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Since you're interested in assisting with the etymology on these, I've entered about a dozen more, including Laban, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, Zilpah, and all the sons of Jacob except for Benjamin (ran out of energy last night and don't have my concordance right now to get a good quote supporting the tribe name). This means I've also entered all the Israelite tribe names except Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh (since their names appear later and I'm working through by chapters). I've attempted to enter Hebrew roots, but did so by copy/paste from Wikipedia and the Hebrew Wikipedia. I might have made a mistake, as I was also juggling quotations and Spanish translations at the time. --EncycloPetey 17:32, 18 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Atelaes,
Thank you for your helpful comments on my talk page. Now that I have looked over the nomination I can also see that it didn't have a snowball's chance. I plan on becoming more active in GP, BP, RFC, RFV, and RFD. Thank you, Tim Q. Wells 16:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ah, you've noticed some June words are up. Be forewarned then: I haven't updated the recycled pages yet after June 9th, although I've picked out the remaining WOTD selections for June. The remainder should be put up in the next couple of days. --EncycloPetey 04:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Update: All the words for June are in except for the 10th and the 30th. I've still got to decide with of several options to use...yes, I'm probably overthinking this, but certain words and certain dates actually matter more to me for the selection. (Like last month when Linnaean was WOTD on the 23rd because it was Linnaeus' 300th birthday.) --EncycloPetey 07:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure how you're naming templates at this point, so if you'd like to lift the comparative templates from here, I would appreciate that! In regards to a comment I made somewhere (About Latin, perhaps?) regarding the length of the α in the comparative: I completely disregarded the fact that the preceding letter is a ρ - thus trumping the η assimilation. In short, the α is long and Smyth is right. Medellia 20:10, 25 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

For clarity's sake: I've since completed the superlative templates as well. A template for weird third declension stems may be in order, but I'll have to refresh my memory on those before I get anything together. Thanks much! Medellia 03:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Can you help with this one? There has been an RFV on αετός since December - the only remaining query is on the existance of the word αλιάετος. Part of the osprey's (sea eagle's) Latin name is haliaetus which seems to be formed from αλιεία + αετός (= fishing + eagle). Google has few non-Wiktionary entries:

• an entry/etymology for stocar (? German/Croat ?)
• A word from the Greek bible ?

If the RFV is not to remain for ever I am tempted to move this word to the discussion page. What would you do? thanks —Saltmarsh 07:47, 27 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I've replied on my talk page. --Connel MacKenzie 14:51, 31 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

They couldn't go under =Related terms=, since that header is only for words in the same language as the entry. See also is typically used for same language words that have a related concept, but are not etymologically or morphologically related, and which can't be classified as a synonym or antonym. Descendants is really the logical location for such words.

I don't see that it's as important for us to distinguish between descendants that evolve within a language from those that are borrowed wholsale. Borrowings change too, especially in terms of inflections. That said, English is the one language where I really feel we should include descendants that have "jumped" the boundaries of language families. This is the English wiktionary, and it is very useful for users to be able to relate English words using those roots. --EncycloPetey 17:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree with EncycloPetey on this one. Regardless of whether a word arrives in a language via normal language evolution or via borrowing, it still traces its descent back to the etymon, and should thus be listed as a descendent. However, what we could do to make the distinction clear is add a qualifier that could possibly look something like this (I can't think of proper terminology here, but I imagine my idea is conveyed nonetheless):

• palabra (Linear descendant)
• parabola (Borrowed from Latin)

Atelaes 19:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

Believe me, it is important to make the distinction. Etymological dictionaries do not even include borrowings, because they are extremely confusing when you're tryiong to make comparisons between the way a word has evolved in different languages. But as long as some kind of distinction is made that would be fine. I suggest just something simpler like:

• palabra
• parabola (borrowing)

...or maybe putting borrowings in brackets? Widsith 14:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I agree about the links, but not until the page is a bit settled (and written!). One of my long-term goals is to see that each major section header (except maybe for POS headers) has a page explaining in-depth with examples how to do that section for English, and linking to languages with major variations. There are some of these in existence already, but many of them are under-written and neglected.

Once each of these pages is in good shape, it would be possible to revise the ELE to match. It's easier in my mind to do it that way than to try to revise the ELE wholesale (it covers too much and not in detail). --EncycloPetey 20:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)Reply

I set up the vote that way because it is as close to current practice as I can get. Any discussion has to be on a specific list or set, otherwise it goes all of the place. So tell me what your issues are? (Very disappointing that EP just throws mud at three points, all not correct ...) Robert Ullmann 18:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

My primary objection is such a sweeping vote seems to have sprung out of no where. Where was the discussion on this? In general, I am very hesitant about votes which do not follow a solid discussion, and this one was simply too big and far-reaching. Also, I dislike package deals. Had you broken it down somewhat, there would have been a higher chance of garnerning some support from me. If you're asking for specific elements within the vote itself, here are a few. First, I dislike the "Alternative forms" header, and remain to be convinced of its utility. Second, I'm not a huge fan of all the 'nyms which were thrown in after antonyms. It should also be noted that I have not observed the preceding two to be current practice. Third, I dislike "Translations to be checked" as a header. While it certainly is common practice to use it, I think it much nicer to simply give them the final trans-top. Fourth, Dictionary notes, Anagrams, and Trivia are news to me. Fifth, it had always been my impression that References was an L4 header. L3 does make a lot more sense, and I would support having it there, but.... Let me say very emphatically that I strongly agree with and support the standardization you are trying to impose onto Wiktionary. I simply think that such a sweeping change must, at the absolute least, follow a whole lot of discussion. Sorry. Atelaes 05:52, 4 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

done. (modern entry only; do we even have a template for marking medieval greek? Actually I want that for etymology sometimes and I don't recall one last time I checked.) ArielGlenn 23:35, 7 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Wiktionary:Requested articles:Greek lists the above word which ArielGlenn tells me:

ἐγέννησε is, as you said, AGr third person sing aorist (past perfective) from γεννάω (beget, give birth) and with that augment hanging off the front only in a religious context would you see it that way today.

Would you be willing to sort it?

Talking of which, what are we doing about Katheravousa? Is it eventually going to appear as a pukka language, or as a flavour of AGr, or what? —Saltmarsh 11:14, 8 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

It was καρβονικόν and καρβονικό which re-raised the subject in my mind, I'm not sure that this is a _final_ say of doing things, but putting Katheravousa forms intoa Cat is a good start and will help do more when we know what! cheers —Saltmarsh 05:43, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I fear I may have messed up certain features of Category:Ancient Greek declension templates. I humbly request your assist. I have posted details at Category talk:Ancient Greek declension templates. - Gilgamesh 11:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I replied to the detail question on my talk page; sorry for the delay ;-) Robert Ullmann 13:43, 16 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your message. I’ve replied to you on my talk page. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 21:38, 9 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi mate, can you have a look at the Greek word mentioned in the etymology. The form in which I saw it used some weird diacritics and I want to make sure it's OK. Widsith 20:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Checked, formatted (present active infinitive > present active indicative, 1st sing.), blued. Atelaes 21:06, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Ta. I'll get used to the whole 1st singular thing one day... (Swigian is such an awesome word...why did it die out?? We don't have any way to say it in modern English..) Widsith 21:09, 14 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

I assume this came from a Greek word (presumably Ἀμαζωνομαχια...? but I'm not sure where the stress would go) rather than being created in English. Also cf -machy which you may want to link up. Widsith 07:47, 16 June 2007 (UTC) Sorry this took me so long. Atelaes 22:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Also, concerning -machy: The etymology looks fine to me, but is this really a productive English suffix? Because, I guess it seems to me that it should only get an entry if it is. Atelaes 22:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

I think so. sciamachy and theomachy are two that come instantly to mind, and certain writers coin words based on this suffix quite a lot - Will Self for example. Widsith 09:33, 8 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

I added a lot to the pronunciation and notes of Wiktionary:About Ancient Greek. I was hoping you could give it a quick glance and make sure I didn't overcomplicate it, seeing as I have no social common sense to speak of. In the digraph additions for Koine and Byzantine, I added most conceivable consonant combinations as many can be encountered in Septuagint and in the New Testament, but I may have gone overkill with some like ξξ and ψψ. Feel free to remove entries from that table that can be reasonably judged to be unprecedented in the ancient period up through Late Antiquity (which ended 600 CE and included three centuries of Byzantine development). - Gilgamesh 09:02, 16 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

This may sound like a stupid question, but... Do you happen to know the complete inflection for nouns that end with -ώ whose genitive forms are -οῦς? Associated names include Σαπφώ, Σαρδώ, etc. - Gilgamesh 23:39, 19 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

FYI, the July WOTD selections are now up. There are some wonderful Greek derivatives in there, like agnostic, calliope, phlegmatic, and Pyrrhic victory. --EncycloPetey 04:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Welcome back!  :) --EncycloPetey 21:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Sorry about my recent absence. I'll try and get back to work. Thanks for the welcome. Atelaes 21:58, 7 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

The only thing I might add is that it's worth skimming through the WT:VOTE page, as there have been a number of votes started recently, and a few will be closing shortly. --EncycloPetey 22:01, 7 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have been talking about this archaised form of modern Greek with ArielGlenn at Wiktionary talk:About Greek#Katharevousa. How do you treat Koine in Ancient Greek and is this a parallel situation? You may have some thoughts on the subject, your contributions would be welcome! —Saltmarsh 11:21, 29 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

I have started going through entries tagged with *Greek, Modern and changing them to Greek. (This helps some processing I do with the monthly XML dump.) Some entries though look like this:

• Greek:

  Ancient: εἰσακούω

  Modern: ακούω (akoúo) (akoúo)

I had been restructuring them to say

• Greek, Ancient: (...)
• Greek: (...)

thinking that was right. Is it? Since they are different languages it seems right. But I couldn't find it written anywhere. I'll cross-post this at User:Saltmarsh too. Sorry for the nitpickiness of the question... ArielGlenn 12:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Language names should appear uniformly the same, as of last community discussion, so it should say "Anient Greek", rather than "Greek, Ancient". (just as we say "Old English" rather than "English, Old"). With the increased use of bots, it is even more important for language names to be standardized to a single spelling uniformly. --EncycloPetey 16:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

My question was actually more basic than that; should I be restructuring these at all? Or is the subtable listing the preferred format after all? I agree that we need the standardaization one way or another, and yesterday! ArielGlenn 21:33, 31 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

Would you please clear these out now? http://en.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/Special:Prefixindex/Genesis/ TIA,

--Connel MacKenzie 23:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hi Atelaes! I have a question, the other day I saw a word here on Wiktionary, it somewhat was an atonym of Hellas or Hellenistic, since it was referring to the "Greek" period/inhabitants before the flourishing of modern-day Greek mainland. Do you understand what I mean? So mainland is Hellas, and they had a term for the Cycladic and Minoan (Mycean) cultures. I can't find the word back, I though I had seen the word in the la:Greek derivations category, but it doesn't show there. It started with a P, of that I am sure. Can you help me please? Greetings Mallerd 21:37, 17 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

Hello, no :( that word covers the entire Greek world. It was specifically meant to designate the offshore cultures I believe, it was as far as I know a Latin word derived from Greek, or just Greek I can't remember but I can't find it. So 100% a word of Greek origin. Thanks for your help Mallerd 13:38, 18 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh that's OK, maybe I don't explain it well enough, but I will not hold you from your academic work then :P Greetings Mallerd 21:05, 18 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

I now know why I couldn't find the word. It was on Wikipedia :P Sorry to have bothered you. My desciption was not entirely accurate I see now. Mallerd 14:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)Reply

Could you please add an entry for this Ancient Greek word?  – Krun 09:43, 12 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

Oh, never mind, it seems that User:Flyax has already created it. – Krun 11:15, 12 October 2007 (UTC)Reply