Wiktionary:About Old Dutch
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This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. Specifically it is a policy think tank, working to develop a formal policy. |
| Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES. |
Old Dutch is an extinct Germanic language, formerly spoken in the southern and western Netherlands, northern Belgium and Picardy, and most of the northern Rhineland area of modern Germany. Under this definition, Old Dutch is synonymous with Old Low Franconian, and includes both eastern and western varieties. This page has the aim of informing Wiktionary editors about how Old Dutch words are formatted.
Requirements
For a term to qualify as an Old Dutch entry, it must be attested in a Dutch/Low Franconian text between the 5th and mid-12th centuries AD. Anything from the mid-12th century onwards is considered to be Middle Dutch.
Orthography
Normalisation
Old Dutch texts, grammars and dictionaries, like in other old Germanic languages, often use normalised spelling. This means that variations in spelling and representation are 'evened out' to produce a common standard spelling. There is no single normalised spelling for Old Dutch, however; different sources may apply different rules and schemes, which mostly differ in how many normalisations they apply. The following scheme is suggested for Old Dutch terms on Wiktionary:
| Original | Normalised |
|---|---|
| a | a in the infinitive of strong verbs, e in the infinitive of class 1 weak verbs |
| c, k | k before e or i, c otherwise |
| dh, th | th |
| e, i | i when from Germanic *i or *j, e otherwise |
| i, j (when pronounced /j/ and word-initial) | j |
| o | a in the infinitive of strong verbs, o in the infinitive of class 2 weak verbs |
| qu, kw | qu |
| u, v (when pronounced /v/) | v |
| u, uu, w (when pronounced /w/) | w |
Preferably, the lemma or 'main' entry should be at the normalised spelling. Any other attested spellings may be listed under an ===Alternative forms=== heading at the beginning of the entry. Such entries may be created if they are attested, but to avoid duplication of information, they should link back to the normalised spelling using the {{alternative spelling of}} template.
Vowel length
In common with many other old European languages whose early orthography was based on that of Latin, vowel length was not indicated in Old Dutch texts. As a result, it is not indicated in Wiktionary entry names either. However, whenever a vowel is known to be long, a macron sign is placed above that vowel, like in Latin and many other languages. This macron is to be used only for display, not in entry names, so the additional parameter that is available in many templates should be used to change the displayed form without affecting the link. For example:
{{odt-noun|head=brōt|g=n}}
{{l|odt|brōt}}
{{l|odt|brōt}}
All of these variations display brōt, but in case of a link, they link to brot#Old Dutch without the macron.
