User talk:Carolina wren

I've created the Latin entry for this word. Does Catalan include a descendant? --EncycloPetey 04:03, 5 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes, maleir, which I just added as a redlink to maledico. I'm in no hurry to make it a bluelink as the current conjugation templates can't handle it easily. As usual for Catalan, the etymologies I have cite the present infinitive maledicere (one as male dicere). No explanation of why the d got dropped so that it didn't end up *maledir — Carolina wren discussió 04:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I understand entirely. You may notice that Galician (deprecated template usage) maledicir is also a red link for now. I still have a lot of work to do for the conjugation templates of -ir verbs in Galician. Many are notoriously irregular or have other odd spelling and orthography changes that -ar and -er verbs do not have. --EncycloPetey 21:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Oh, sorry for the lap (it's long ago since I last visited en.wikt :( ). Please, do all you find good with the template. Thanks! -Aleator 18:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the cleanup. The entry started due to a deletion discussion on Wikipedia; it was noted that the article there was a dictionary definition. I'd dug up some sources using the term but not giving enough discussion for an encyclopedia entry, so I thought I'd have a go at starting my first Wiktionary entry. Apologies that it wasn't quite right. Should I also begin hate fuck? That's also got sources to attest to its usage as a noun and verb, and I should have a better idea now on what to do. Fences and windows 01:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Sorry for not replying sooner. Anyway, are they really considered proper nouns? If so, by who? By English speakers, or Catalan speakers, or both? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:10, 10 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

They're proper nouns because they name a specific thing and aren't normally used in the plural. Rarely does anyone speak of two Englishes (dos anglesos en català). If we classified these words as Catalan does, as noms gentilicis, we'd be using Gentilic (i.e. Demonym) as an L3 header, altho Catalan dictionaries separate out the senses into the usual adjective / noun division. Then again dictionaries in any language generally don't separate proper nouns from nouns like we do either, possibly since proper nouns are sometimes used in ways that don't fit the strict definition of a proper noun. For example, to reuse my earlier example, if one were to write about the Englishes of Shakespeare and Hemingway, is English acting like a proper noun or a common noun in that context? Still with with the L3 headers currently in use, languages should be considered proper nouns.

In any case, languages certainly aren't invariant in Catalan. In those exceptional cases where a plural would be used, they form standard plurals in both English and Catalan, and the standard plural of anglès is anglesos, not anglès. — Carolina wren discussió 00:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I was essentially making the assumption than French and Catalan use the same grammatical rules for languages, knowing full well that someone could (hopefully would) correct them later, with pronunciation and whatnot. Your logic seems correct, I totally agree, but do Catalan dictionaries class languages as proper nouns? In fact, I might be able to check tomorrow on Thursday as our local library has a lot of language dictionaries. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:55, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

In fairness the online dictionary you gave me gives anglès as a common noun, not a proper noun.

Mglovesfun (talk) 14:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Which one are you referring to? The three I have links to on my user page, and DACCO which I don't bother with a link as it is currently a work in progress, don't differntiate between proper and common nouns. As far as what they report, both proper nouns and common nouns are simply nouns. — Carolina wren discussió 18:29, 15 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Good point, yes, I can reply more fully when I get home in about 4 hours (ish). Mglovesfun (talk) 13:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

I checked, my local library doesn't have a Catalan dictionary. As much as I totally agree with your logic, I think you might be going against the grain on this one. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:06, 21 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Your msg: The edit history on a Transwiki has to be preserved under our terms of use, so cut and paste followed by a deletion of the Transwiki is not considered acceptable. — Carolina wren discussió 17:10, 11 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Done. I note that Transwiki:Mirliton starts with a capital "M" but it seems that the final page should be lowercase "m".--Livingrm 23:04, 13 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Like Welsh. WTF is that all about? Mglovesfun (talk) 22:32, 29 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

The ela geminada is what that is all about. With the interpunct the two eles is pronounced IPA^(key): /l l/ with a syllable break between them. Without it (ela palatal), it's pronounced IPA^(key): /ʎ/. — Carolina wren discussió 22:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

- What is this, you too succumbing under Ullmann's domain? Or you started learning Serbo-Croatian and thereby express genuine interest in asborbing knowledge from those "deleted sections" ? --Ivan Štambuk 05:03, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

And at least one of your "restorations of deleted sections" contained a rectified error, so it would be very much appreciated if you stick to the languages you happen to be familiar with. --Ivan Štambuk 05:07, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

- Again - if you want to add entries from these fantasy-languages, it is not enough to simply copy/paste old revisions from the page history. In this edit of yours you introduced vocative singular of brače which doesn't exist because brak does not refer to animate being, and which was fixed in the ==Serbo-Croatian== section. You also introduced ethnic imbalance by restoring only "Croatian", and not also "Serbian" and "Bosnian". Your edit was ultimately more harmful than useful, as per "separate treatment" rationale some innocent ignorant user would 1) acquire factually wrong information 2) be likely mislead into thinking that this word is not used in Bosnian and Serbian standard of Serbo-Croatian, and that is Croatian-only, which is not the case. We must aim for NPOV coverage of all modern Serbo-Croatian standard. If you don't know the language you shouldn't be doing these kind of edits, because this way you burden SC contributors like me to watch and clean up after you, in a completely pointless task wasting time that could be otherwise spent in a much more useful manner. --Ivan Štambuk 05:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

- and here someone would be mislead into thinking that there is an additional non-legal sense sense in Serbo-Croatian which is not present in "Croatian"..... *SIGH*
Carolina, you may perceive that what you are doing is something truly beneficial for the users, but in reality it's not, and is in effect simply expanding my cleanup-list. Why don't you simply get back to your usual Catalan words and leave Serbo-Croatian language(s) to knowledgeable folks like me, eh? :) --Ivan Štambuk 15:25, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

No, all that could be reasonably be concluded is that Wiktionary does not have a Serbian or Bosnian entry on the word which may or may not exist in those languages/dialects. The Iberian languages I spend most of my time on often have the same situation. Indeed, I often end up adding Catalan sections to entries that have existing Spanish, Portuguese, Asturian, Galician, and/or Occitan entries covering the same senses. Until Wiktionary is far more complete than it currently is, absence of an entry cannot be taken as absence of a word in a given language/dialect. — Carolina wren discussió 15:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Against what policy? There is no language-inclusion policy on Wiktionary, only word-inclusion criteria (WT:CFI). And common Serbo-Croatian treatment passes that as we are not forbidding any word. We define our notion of "language" on how we see it fit to fulfill the goals of the project, and in this case, it's more than appropriate. --Ivan Štambuk 15:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

From the CFI itself:

Natural languages

All natural languages are acceptable. However, it is important to note that the question of whether a proposed language is considered a living language, or a dialect of or alternate name for another language is inherently subjective in some cases, and either designation may have political overtones.

The issue of whether Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, are languages of their own or different standards of a single pluricentric Serbo-Croatian is exactly the sort of political issue that section addresses. Until such time as consensus is established to obliterate the B/C/S sections in favor of S-C, as far as the CFI is concerned you are deleting entries in those languages. — Carolina wren discussió 15:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Note that there are many hundreds languages with ISO codes that we do not add: several constructed languages which we agreed not to add, and many hundreds (possibly thousands) languages without literary tradition, which we cannot add as they are not attested, but only described in scholarly works (thus cannot pass CFI) in scientific transcription. Note also that we defined several "languages" of our own (in terms of L2 headers) on Wiktionary:Language codes. We are neither bound by an external authority or some "policy" as what is language (and note also that that policy does not define what is language), but instead do it as we think it's the most appropriate to meet our goals.

Serbo-Croatian is linguistically one language by 99% of world's Slavist. It's taught as one language on every single university in France, UK, Netherlands, Germany and Russia (which have the best programs in Slavic Studies), as well as almost all (98%) of USA and Canadian collages (unless they're sponsored by nationalist diaspora, as we've been informed by an insider).

But than again, as I've repeated many times, that question on whether they are "different languages" or not, while it seems to be the most pertinent, is in fact the most irrelevant: The only thing we should be having in mind is: Are we doing a service to the users (and contributors, to some extent), by common treatment or not. And in that terms, the separation seems to be sheer waste of time and space. And so does your restoration of "deleted sections", with factually wrong and incomplete information, bad formatting etc. --Ivan Štambuk 16:00, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

If we deleted entries for being incomplete, badly formatted, and/or with errors, we'd likely have less than 100,000 entries not more than 1,000,000. :) Maybe even less than 10,000 depending on what standard of completion one insists upon. — Carolina wren discussió 16:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

- I veraciously admire your donquixotic endeavours. --Ivan Štambuk 19:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

If I were truly quixotic, I'd go back to your pre-November deletions, but I'm not that ambitious. — Carolina wren discussió 19:30, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

And If I were verily equally quixotic as I were yesteryear, I'd rage against your abusive locutions such as delete,, meddling in topics beyond your ken, and the inane futility of your "restorations", but hopefully I'm now just another disenchanted pragmatist ^_^ *SIGH* Watch out, many a new (possibly assimilatory) SC entry soon arriving at a waxing rate! :) --Ivan Štambuk 21:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

If I didn't consider them deletions under the Wiktionary's current lack of consensus, I wouldn't be bothering to restore them, so I wouldn't say the locution is abusive, Panza. The boundary between language and dialect is not as bright as you like to state, tho your belief that it is bright is quixotic on your part. Incidentally, are you taking any steps for preparing for the Montenegrin standard when it finally gets released (and likely gets its own ISO 639 codes)? They seem to be deliberately taking steps to diverge from the unified Serbo-Croatian standard with their addition of two letters and using an Old Shtokavian basis instead of a Neo-Shtokavian basis as the other three national standards do. — Carolina wren discussió 23:26, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

It is abusive Carolina because it casts me as a some kind of a "vandal", who "deletes stuff" :) It's classical Ullmanian "ISO codes = language headers = languages" chop-logic that constantly gets reiterated...

"The boundary between language and dialect is not as bright as you like to state, " - How many times do I have to repeat, Modern standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are all based on the same dialect, they are the same dialect, there are no "language" that these are dialects of. Period. And Montenegrin too - Not Old Štokavian as you've been misinformed but Neoštokavian, and it would painlessly integrate into our common SC treatment, as I've already elaborated here. These two new letters are used by some 0.01% of Montenegrins (try googling words with them from Index:Montenegrin if you don't believe me :), and the necessity of their introduction (which breaks the 2-centuries old phonological orthography of Serbo-Croatian) has been almost unanimously scoffed at by the venerable ex-yu Slavists (I can give you links to some papers if you're interested :) One language! --Ivan Štambuk 23:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I said the forthcoming Motenegrin standard, not necessarily the language as presently generally used by Montenegrins. Considering that the decision to include the two letters in the official alphabet was finalized only this summer I'm not at all surprised that there is little usage of them on the Internet at present. Also, unless the Wikipedia article is hopelessly wrong isn't the Zeta dialect Old Shtokovian? As I said, it's quite clear that Montenegro is engaging in political decisions to maximize the differences between their upcoming standard and the other three national standards. It remains to see if those differences stick or not. At least they resisted the proposal to include 'З' in the official Montenegrin Latin alphabet. 'Ś' and 'Ź' are already present in Unicode as Latin letters and in ISO 8859-2. If the additions stick they won't cause any mixed script problems. — Carolina wren discussió 01:59, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

No, it's Neoštokavian, don't trust Wikipedia on contentious issues such as this, as facts gets distorted by bigoted nationalist PoV partisans. (As we already saw on the SC merger vote, where several Croats and Serbs blatantly lied on the differences among the modern day Serbo-Croatian standards, comparing them to that of Czech and Slovak, or Scandinavian languages). The new "Montenegrin standard will be", in the words Milenko Perović, one of the writers of the Montenegrin orthography that I commented upon - Crnogorski jezik je sastavni deo novoštokavskog jezičkog sistema - "a constituent part of the Neoštokavian language system", who also explained that linguistically "they'll both be correct" (će biti u pravu), those who "up until today created a culture of Ijekavian Serbo-Croatian, and those who obeyed by the rules of the new orthography" (do sada izgradili kulturu ijekavskog srpsko-hrvatskog jezika i oni koji koji budu govorili i pisali po novom pravopisu). They're not inventing some "new standard" but merely recodifying the old one under a new name :) And, FYI, the principal difference between Old and Neo-Shtokavian is in accents - the Neoštokavian speeches exhibited the so-called "Neoštokavian retraction" (whence the name), where the accents retracted from the (chiefly) word-final syllable yielding new rising tone. And since the accents are not written in the usual orthography, in practice it would be no difference at all :) (there are also some other characteristically Neoštokavian features in morphology, but more or less all old Štokavian speeches are Neoštokavianized by today as the latter one has been the only literary standard for the last 2 centuries, taught in schools, used by the media etc. OŠ is en route to extinction ^_^) Carolina, I sympathize with your efforts to try to reason the "differences" between these Serb-Croatian regional varieties, but rest assured that they're 100% a result of a typical Balkanic identity-crisis, and 0% a linguistic necessity, reflective of actual language usage. The time of the "new languages" was early 19th century, what has been done has been done, now it's too late to change anything. Increasing cultural interaction, $$$-driven businesses and daily migration keeps ironing out the differences across the region much more today than it was ever the case in Yugoslavia, it's just that most ordinary people are too blind to see it :) --Ivan Štambuk 02:49, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Maybe/maybe not. Most minority languages/dialects are fading, but others are resurging. A minority that is bloody-minded enough can resist assimilation to a wider standard, and if there is anything the 20th century made clear it's that the Balkans can be awfully bloody. — Carolina wren discussió 04:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

If I may intrude, having spoken at considerable length with Amgine, a central misunderstanding seems to be that a lack of a "==Bosnian==" implies lack of an entry describing Bosnian. To me it seems clear that anyone wanting to do reliable look-up of "Scots" on Wiktionary would look at "Scots", at "English" and at "Translingual", in a similar way for "Bosnian" at "Bosnian", "Serbo-Croatian" and "Translingual". There is absolutely no advantage to having a Bosnian section that simply repeats that which is written in the Serbo-Croatian section, anyone who (and indeed any automaton that) is serious about looking up information will be in no way benefitted. Note that this line of reasoning makes no claims as to whether they are "the same language" or "different languages" such a politically controversial distinction is not relevant, and what I have said stands in both cases. The only way to make progress in this area is for those who speak the languages to improve upon the entries there, be it by creating their own more-specific sections, or simply adding to the unified section - simply repeating what is already there achieves nothing, and can only lead to the inevitable human error causing further problems. I don't mind if you continue, and certainly aren't asking you to stop; but, if you have a minute, I would appreciate some reasoning as to why you think the edits are beneficial. Conrad.Irwin 00:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

If the deletions stand then, we'd be ignoring a willful ignoring of the lack of consensus as whether to consider B, C, and S as languages or dialects for our purposes. Taking such a position is definitely POV and should not be made without consensus. My position comes primarily from a desire to defend what little process we do have, though I will admit to being an inclusionist when it comes to these languages, because I happen to agree with the proposition that living languages are defined not only by pure academics but also by politics. (Incidentally, that's why I consider Montengrin getting ISO codes of its own only likely and not certain. The Montenegrin government despite backing an effort to make their standard considerably different from the other three has not yet been willing to unambiguously claim that their language is a different language from the other yugoslavic languages. Isn't sausage making messy? :) If the Montenegrin government and their language standard body don't back the proposal for a code, the ISO, which definitely considers politics more than academics in this sort of situation, will probably not grant a code. It's the same reasoning that was used to reject a proposal made a year or two ago to recognize Catalan as a macrolanguage with Valencian and Catalan as its constituents.) — Carolina wren discussió 01:59, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Alright. I do not see these actions as deletions, as nothing is in anyway being deleted; modulo perhaps the explicit "==Bosnian==" - but that is merely subsumed by the implicit "==Bosnian==" that exists everywhere there is a "==Serbo-Croatian==" (irregardless of whether they are the same or separate languages - while treating them as multiple sections almost definitely implies that they are multiple languages; treating them in one section does not definitely imply they are the same, merely that it is a helpful abstraction to treat them in the same manner). Thanks for the reply, I understand your point of view. Conrad.Irwin 13:17, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Use correct symbols, si (o si no) et plau. — opiaterein — 01:49, 7 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hi, just because they have nothing in them doesn't mean the should be deleted (provided that there are equivalent categories for other languages). Compare some of the definitions at (deprecated template usage) dégueulasse to what I'm saying. 50 Xylophone Players talk 22:14, 13 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

It's easy enough to recreate them when they do have content, plus that category was using the deprecated {{nav}} which I'm trying to depopulate. If you insist on restoring it again, please use {{topic cat}} instead, or even better, do that and add a Lobjan entry which would cause it to be populated. — Carolina wren discussió 23:18, 13 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Your "solution" reminds me of an old lady who swallowed a fly. — Carolina wren discussió 23:50, 14 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I don't think this is kosher

And the entry is imho nonsense. Jcwf 04:25, 19 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Ov courze you donot hafe mutsh rezpekt four us Dutsj I realisze that, but the Dutsh and Flemmish and Surinamese peoples and governements hafe joindly and demokratically disaided to adopt a regulated zpelling vor our langwidge It is lelietje-van-dalen.

So stop screwing up our spelling. I could very well do that to yours too as you can see.

Offendedly yours Jcwf 05:59, 19 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

We're a descriptive not a prescriptive dictionary. If it's not an approved spelling, there are several ways to indicate that such as using {{misspelling of|lang=nl}}, {{nonstandard|lang=nl}}, or {{proscribed|lang=nl}} depending on how strong the official disapproval is. — Carolina wren discussió 06:20, 19 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Please, what does vostès mean? --Rising Sun 22:23, 19 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

It's a polite form of y'all used as a stressed pronoun. Pronoun use in Catalan is still something I'm weak at, which is why I left such a blatant redlink unfilled till now. Peculiarly, despite being a second person plural pronoun, it is used with the third person plural forms of verbs. — Carolina wren discussió 23:35, 19 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hi there. Would you like some help updating the categories? I would be willing to help you if you'd like. Let me know if you'd like me to. Cheers, Razorflame 22:57, 20 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I appreciate the offer, but I have gotten it down to a system, tho thats not always apparent from the order of edits, and it doesn't involve simply checking what links here for {{nav}}, as some categories haven't been using even that. I'd probably end up doublechecking what you do anyway, which while wouldn't be bad, wouldn't be saving me that much time. So I'll bounce the ball back in your court. — Carolina wren discussió 23:05, 20 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Ok, no problems. I respect your opinion and I agree that I'd probably just make more work for you. Let me know if you need any help in the future, Razorflame 23:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

I don't think you would add more work for me, but there would be some duplication between us. — Carolina wren discussió 23:09, 20 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

'Tis fine. I'll let you do it yourself. I still got tons of Esperanto entries to write, so I'll leave you to your own devices. Let me know if you ever need anything done in the future, and I'll see what I can do. Cheers, Razorflame 23:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Hey Carolina; just saw your note. I haven't been active on Wiktionary for quite some time, so I'm not sure how things have evolved since I last looked at this. Last time I looked at it, I recall the topic* templates being relatively feature-complete, but someone who's been involved more recently would have to look into it. Hope that helps. Mike Dillon 22:37, 23 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I thought to myself that it might be a conlang, but unusually there's nothing to be found on the Web (would someone really come to Wiktionary first when documenting one?) and the example sentence did have a slightly Portuguesey look to it. Hopefully he will reply and explain things! Equinox ◑ 16:22, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

- you just can't stand annoying me, can you? --Ivan Štambuk 20:30, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

It's not a priority with me, and it's not done with the intent of annoying you, but yes. — Carolina wren discussió 20:32, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Your "restorations" are worthless multiplication of content. There is absolutely no reason why you'd do this other than annoy me and other Serbo-Croatian contributors. I have serious suspicion that this pointless activity of yours that you periodically demonstrate is being instigated by Robert Ullmann. The moment you make a single mistake in your "restorations", I'll block you. --Ivan Štambuk 20:37, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

That suspicion you can lay to rest. Robert has had nothing to do with influencing me to do what I do. — Carolina wren discussió 20:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Of course not. It's your righteous sense of responsibility for pseudo-languages. --Ivan Štambuk 20:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Please add any context labels that you think belong here. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

SIL just retired the language code for "Caló" . They split it into "Erromintxela" ("Basque Romany") and made a new "Caló" identifier. Would you be able to update your edits involving Caló (caló and Caló) to one of these new identifiers (probably )? Thanks. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 22:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

I urge you to vote. (I don't know which way you'll vote, but I want more voices, especially English Wiktionarians' voices, heard in this vote.) If you've voted already, or stated that you won't, and I missed it, I apologize.​—msh210℠ 17:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Thank you for all your work about my natal language, that is, Catalan. I know, my words arribe 3 years later, probably because at the begining all that was too much for me, and later I don't think more. Then sorry for be to later and congrats for your great work. --Maltrobat 18:24, 25 October 2011 (UTC)Reply

A long time ago, you posted that {{cardinalbox}} couldn't handle the optional forms of the ordinals for certain numbers (see Template talk:cardinalbox). I just added three new parameters, opt, optx, and optalt, which solve that problem. If you still want to fix the entries, Template:cardinalbox/doc has an explanation on how to use them. Thanks --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)Reply