User talk:Carolina wren/Archive/2009/September

The Catalan entry was a bit of a hack because I was adding the Occitan anyway... is bèsties the right plural? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes. For feminine nouns and adjectives ending in "a", the plural always ends in "es", tho if the a is preceded by c, ç, g, j, gu, or qu, that will mutate respectively to qu, c, gu, g, gü, or qü to preserve the sound. — Carolina wren discussió 19:53, 6 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

What's the plural of qüestió/qüestiò by the way? This keep up on fr.wikt and nobody could find a source. Mglovesfun (talk) 06:27, 11 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

qüestió → qüestions just as if it were masculine as one would expect it to be from the ending. Besides being confirmned by the words qüestionable, qüestionador, qüestionar, qüestionari, qüestionejar, the online DIEC2 lets you enter non-lemma forms and get the lemma entry. I didn't find a source for qüestiò, so that's likely a misspelling. — Carolina wren discussió 14:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

I saw your Category:ca:Undetermined derivations- did you know about Category:Unknown etymology? Nadando 18:02, 9 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Yes, but as mentioned on Wiktionary talk:Etymology back in March, this way {{etyl|und|ca}} can serve the purpose that {{unk.|ca}} would. One less special purpose etymology template is a good thing. — Carolina wren discussió 18:14, 9 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

In that case, wouldn't it make more sense for {{etyl|und}} to point to Category:Unknown etymology, rather than creating a new category? Nadando 18:24, 9 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Special casing {{etyl}} is a possibility, but given how few entries are actually marked as having an unknown etymology, from a performance standpoint, it would likely be better to duplicate the existing categories and then use a bot to replace {{unk.|foobar}} with {{etyl|und|foobar}}. In any case, mucking with the template code on a high usage template such as {{etyl}} is a bit beyond what I'm willing to get involved with at the moment. — Carolina wren discussió 18:36, 9 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the tip...I have now found the Frankish source mentioned in other references too, and have changed the Etymology accordingly. Ƿidsiþ 13:19, 10 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Only the second sense is countable; the first usually is not. I've looked for plural citations, and the only plural uses are for different varieties of fudge, not for multiple pieces. Its "plural" has the same rarity as that of (deprecated template usage) spinach or (deprecated template usage) popcorn. --EncycloPetey 04:16, 13 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

A piece of fudge is not a fudge, it is a piece of fudge. The sense given refers only to a type of confection, not to individual pieces. The rarity of citations comes from people rarely making or consuming more than one type of fudge at a time, exacerbated by the fact that most fudge is chocolate fudge. I could see a usage note, but not a flat out declaration of uncountability. — Carolina wren discussió 04:22, 13 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

You interpret the defintion differently than I do, then. I interpret it as the substance of fudge, like glass or sand, both of which are uncountable. If I "eat fudge", I am eating a substance. This difference between the meaning as a substance and as a type of that substance is blurred for many, many food words in English and exists for kinds of plants as well. --EncycloPetey 04:30, 13 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

When doing the following search I noticed that back around the turn of the century (19th→20th) fudges is used as meaning multiple pieces in several of the cookbooks. Looks like that sense should be included with a {{dated}} tag. — Carolina wren discussió 05:07, 13 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Okay, Carolina, sounds about right. Can you please do it? I'm slowly learning the editing. I'm a very small contributor. Thanks a lot.

Well, I've gone ahead and done it in any case, you might want to check my work, probably it needs fixing. Thanks Rosswood40 14:56, 20 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. That user has been a thorn in my side (as well as that of others) for some time. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 12:43, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Although I would argue that your second edit is unnecessary. San and quoppa never receive requests, as they're such ridiculously archaic letters that no word known to a non-specialist contains them. They are simply unhelpful clutter. And that request is nonsense. There's no such word. Nemzag likes to request words he thinks should have existed, but never did. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 12:48, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

I'm not qualified to judge the validity of his requests, so I restored his request. I blocked the IP and reverted his changes because there was no reason to change the section headers and even if there were, using the English names of the Greek letters would have been called for. Incidentally, shouldn't sampi come after omega instead of before it? Or is the numeric order different from the alphabetical order in that case? — Carolina wren discussió 12:53, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

I believe so, but am not sure, truth be told. Also, if you have no objection, I would like to undo your second edit, as I do not believe that any part of the anon's edits were productive. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 13:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

If the request is bogus, go ahead and remove it. As for the headers, I can't see any reason for eliminating san and qoppa while keeping digamma and sampi. — Carolina wren discussió 13:10, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Digamma.....has some limited merit. It is an archaic letter, to be sure, but it has much better attestation than the others, and has some specific relevance to PIE cognates, as it's the remnant of PIE "w", which many other languages have retained. I'm going to go ahead and delete the other three. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 14:23, 19 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

I notice that you label some spelling changes in these tables as "mutation". Please note that "mutation" usually refers to a change in pronunciation, which may or may not be reflected by an accompanying spelling change. If the pronunciation is not changing in these verbs, then calling it a "mutation" would be misleading. --EncycloPetey 00:08, 27 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Actually it's the reverse. The spelling is changing to preserve the pronunciation of the stem. I did consider labeling it orthographic mutation to be more specific, but anyone who is familiar with Catalan would be aware of what is meant, as it's the exact same process that happens with feminine nouns and adjectives ending in -a in the singular and -es in the plural. If there's a concise single word term to refer to that, I'll gladly use it. In any case, before these templates I'm working on go into template space, I intend to have a better set of Appendices for Catalan conjugation that will describe in detail what happens and why. — Carolina wren discussió 00:25, 27 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

That's what I expected, given that something similar happens in several Iberian languages. I don't know of a concise description for this kind of spelling change, but in the Spanish entries we usually just call it a "change" or a "stem change". --EncycloPetey 02:27, 27 September 2009 (UTC)Reply