Wiktionary:Votes/2025-02/Retiring the English verb conjugation table

Voting on: Retiring the English verb conjugation table {{en-conj}} (example here) from general use, and replacing it with a feature to show archaic, obsolete and other verb forms not in standard modern use that cannot (or cannot desirably) be incorporated in the headword. {{en-conj}} may be retained for the very small number of verbs, notably the "be" verb, that have standard forms not accommodated (or accommodatable) in the headword.

This vote is on the principle that the presentation to the user will be that of a display of archaic, obsolete and other non-standard forms, not a general-purpose conjugation table, and the exact design and layout can be decided if there is support in principle. However, to give a general idea of what is proposed, in the case of clarify:

This proposal does not affect languages other than English.

The standard modern forms of almost all English verbs can be accommodated in the headword. However, the conjugation table gives the impression that the situation is more complicated than this, and that English verbs may standardly have more parts and forms – for example, an irregular subjunctive or imperative, or a past tense varying by number or person. In practice, the table seems to be used mainly as a way to link to obsolete/archaic forms, as the documentation at {{en-conj}} encourages, but this is not clear to ordinary dictionary users.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
• Vote created: Mihia (talk) 18:52, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Discussion(s):

• Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2025/February#English_verb_conjugation_tables

1. Support Seems like it would improve clarity. John Cross (talk) 21:27, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
2. Strong support 🌙🐇 ^{⠀talk⠀ ⠀contribs⠀} 22:24, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
3. Support Chihunglu83 (talk) 22:25, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
4. Support – about time. LunaEatsTuna (talk) 02:16, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
5. Support mildly: I previously expressed the view that to call this "retiring" the template is a bit misleading as it sounds like we are doing away with it entirely, but since the proposal is "replacing it with a feature to show archaic, obsolete and other verb forms not in standard modern use that cannot (or cannot desirably) be incorporated in the headword", I don't have a strong objection to it. (I am also fine with maintaining the status quo.) We aren't discussing the format of any new template to replace the old one yet, but I would just say that it would be better if the new template puts the archaic forms side-by-side with the modern forms for comparison. Users unfamiliar with grammar may find a term like "2nd-person singular present tense" mystifying, but if the archaic form clarifiest is placed alongside the modern form clarify this would be helpful. — Sgconlaw (talk) 11:10, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
6. Support. Imetsia (talk (more)) 12:48, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
7. Support Pvanp7 (talk) 12:19, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

   Support Pixelpito (talk) 17:58, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

   Not eligible (need 50 edits prior to the start of the vote), vote stricken. AG202 (talk) 04:12, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

8. Strong support, if not for entirely retiring the table then definitely prohibiting it with regular verbs that don't have any archaic forms. This is already the status quo and I presume it won't change if this vote doesn't pass. Benwing2 (talk) 08:33, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

1. Oppose. To me the standard "conjugation table" format is a more natural and less verbose way to present this information in comparison to using lots of words, even if the table leads to some redundancy.
   • I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement. The |old=1 parameter needs to be removed, and the template should only be used on verbs where "old" forms are attested. Unnecessary parts, like the imperative and (probably) the subjunctive, can be removed too.
   • The argument is made that "the conjugation table gives the impression that the situation is more complicated than this, and that English verbs may standardly have more parts and forms" - I would counter this by saying that, in general, Wiktionary's inflection tables assume that the reader has some level of grammatical knowledge of the language in question. A link to the relevant appendix can be included if felt necessary.
   • No other language uses the proposed "ersatz text-based collapsible box" approach to present verb forms. The {{en-conj}} style of conjugation table is used by English's closest relatives Middle English and West Frisian. Yes, English's verb is even simpler by comparison, but nothing beats a clear table for showing the forms.

     This, that and the other (talk) 04:21, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

2. Oppose per the above. I don't really see the harm with having the conjugation table, and contrary to the vote's description, the headword line does not contain all the standardly used conjugations in Modern English. The subjunctive is still used quite often especially in American English, so unless we make that clear elsewhere, I don't see why we should remove that. The conjugation table also puts the information in a clear and succinct way, as to be quite honest, I do not like the wordiness that (third-person singular simple present , present participle , simple past and past participle ) has on the headword line. It looks cumbersome. If the issue is the archaic forms, then we can hide those or change them to a parameter. AG202 (talk) 05:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   Isn't the subjunctive always identical to the infinitive? I'm not sure what value there is in having it in the template at all. This fact should simply be made clear at Appendix:English verbs imo. (Of course, you could make the same argument for turfing out the 1st person singular – and I think Mihia would – but then, without that, the template only has some of the persons and starts to look incomplete. I'd rather keep that in.) This, that and the other (talk) 12:07, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   As far as American English is concerned, Simon and Garfunkel did sing “I wish I was homeward bound” rather than using the subjunctive “I wish I were homeward bound” and in that case the subjunctive would be identical to the past tense not the infinitive. As for the main issue that we’re voting on here, I have no strong feelings one way or the other. Overlordnat1 (talk) 15:00, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   "I wish I were" is past subjunctive, which is never identical to the infinitive. The present subjunctive, "She ordered that he be ready", is identical to the infinitive. — Eru·tuon 16:42, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   If it be/is the case that the present subjunctive is used more in American English than British English then perhaps we could mention it somewhere here on Wiktionary. I would’ve thought that people on both sides of the pond are equally likely to avoid any subjunctives outside of a few set phrases but your example of ”She ordered that he be ready” is a good one as I would always rephrase it as “She ordered him to be ready” instead. Perhaps the subjunctive is more common in phrases following the word ‘that’ Stateside? Overlordnat1 (talk) 09:27, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

3. Oppose Per the aforementioned points. Besides, at least the Vietnamese Edition of Wiktionary has and uses a similar template, if I recall well. --Apisite (talk) 10:13, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
4. Oppose per above and per my comments on talk (and in various past discussions of this); I find it weird that the English Wiktionary has big tables of all the (rare, obsolete, etc) forms of other languages' words, but is reluctant to acknowledge them for English... and this is a collapsed table that takes up one line unless someone wants to see it and clicks to expand it; I don't see how the undefined possible replacement could be any more compact, and such a replacement seems certain to be less quickly intelligible than a table. - -sche (discuss) 17:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
5. Oppose I agree with TTO that this is a better way to give the information—especially for phrasal verbs. I don't think the headword setup on absorb oneself in, for example, is good at all. I would, however, support removing the subjunctive from all tables except be. Vergencescattered (talk) 19:45, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
6. Oppose Awdhi (talk) 03:41, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
7. Oppose Unnecessary deletion Purplebackpack89 12:51, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
8. Strong oppose I agree with -sche. MedK1 (talk) 16:22, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
9. Oppose I agree with This, that and the other. The template should just display the archaic forms by default. It actually used to work like that until Theknightwho changed it in September 2022 (see here). He then manually added the now-necessary |old=1 parameter to many pages but forgot about 80 of them. In November 2023, I removed the conjugation section of these forgotten pages, mistakingly believing that these verbs didn't have any archaic forms since I didn't see them displayed by the template. Furthermore, when you look at the amount of existing archaic forms (2nd present, 3rd present, 2nd past), you can see that there are at least 2000 verbs with an archaic form, but {{en-conj}} is only used on about 400 pages. Maybe we can create a bot that automatically adds a conjugation table to the pages missing one. Tc14Hd (aka Marc) (talk) 13:46, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
10. Oppose. It’s not clear to me why one would need a special alternative to a standard inflection table for English. In addition, the subjunctive issue (mentioned aboved) involves verbs in general, not just the copula. One need only search for a phrase like ‘recommends that he’ to find examples with a following ‘go’, ‘take’, ‘drink’, etc. Nicodene (talk) 05:06, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
11. Strong oppose per above. --Davi6596 (talk) 17:24, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
12. Oppose — It seems seldom acknowledged that a dictionary of all words in all languages, past and present, should faithfully describe those words in those languages in all their historical forms, too. For current languages (as opposed to historical languages), the present forms often occlude the historical forms. Whilst it is necessary and helpful to use labels to mark historical usages (obsolete, now rare, archaic, etc.) in current languages, it is neither necessary nor helpful to act as if those historical forms do not exist. In the case of English and {{en-conj}}, rather than “retiring” the template, it should rather be rolled out more widely, probably to most if not all English entries that are members simultaneously of Category:English verbs and of Category:English terms inherited from Middle English and/or Category:English terms inherited from Old English. 0DF (talk) 23:55, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

1. Abstain It is essential to have entries for archaic and obsolete forms for users' decoding purposes. I have some trouble seeing the use case for coding archaic and obsolete forms. Accordingly, I'd be happy with no coverage whatsoever at the lemma entry for archaic and obsolete forms. DCDuring (talk) 12:27, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   @DCDuring: I feel strongly there should be some way to link archaic and obsolete inflected forms of verbs to the lemma. Since such forms are not (for good reasons) placed in the headword, a conjugation table seems a good way to do so. — Sgconlaw (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   What's the use case? DCDuring (talk) 16:59, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   @DCDuring: in the absence of the conjugation table, there would currently be no way for users viewing the lemma to know what the archaic or obsolete inflected forms are unless they are already aware of how such words are formed. It's akin to how I, as someone who knows no Latin, can look up a conjugation table to discover the present active participial form of a Latin word. Of course we could come up with some other way to display these words (put them under "Derived terms"??—not that I think this is a good idea), but since other languages have conjugation tables it seems fine to me to just use that. — Sgconlaw (talk) 17:47, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   But what is their query besides "I want to know what the archaic forms of X are?" If they are decoding, the entry for the form exists. Are we trying to help people encode into archaic/obsolete speech? Why should we have entry clutter for other users to support that. There are fairly simple ways to search for archaic/obsolete forms of a given lemma. Or have we we made that hard? DCDuring (talk) 21:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

   I could imagine someone composing text in Elizabethan English in a religious or theatrical context. But we don't apply that criterion for most languages when deciding whether the lemma entry ought to link to its inflected forms. Ancient Greek entries sometimes have tables for obscure dialects. For instance, ὑμεῖς (humeîs) has tables for the Doric and Aeolic dialects. Should we remove those tables because the vast majority of people are only learning Koine or Attic Greek (or remove all tables because almost nobody probably writes in Ancient Greek anymore)? — Eru·tuon 03:32, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

2. Abstain I was going to oppose on the basis of be and similar but it looks like the vote specifically addresses this. So the vote name is really misleading, since nothing is being retired. Ioaxxere (talk) 14:54, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Failed, 8-12-2. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 07:20, 13 April 2025 (UTC)