Wiktionnaire:Actualités/025-avril-2017/en

Wiktionnaire:Actualités is a monthly periodical about French Wiktionary, dictionaries and words, published online since April 2015. Everyone is welcome to contribute to it. You can sign in to be noticed of future issues, read old issues and participate to the draft of the next edition. You can also have a look at Regards sur l’actualité de la Wikimedia. If you have any comments, critics or suggestions, our talk page is open!

Actualités - Numéro 25 - avril 2017

• April 8th: an official list was published by the French Government with 19 translations for tech-related words usually said in English. There are more than five hundred of those words in Wiktionary now. For example, for first person shooter (FPS), they suggested jeu de tir en vue subjective (JTS).

• In an article in Médiapart newspaper, L’Épistoléro is amused by the definition of macroniste he reads in "Wikipedia" (meaning Wiktionary, of course). He doubts if the anagrams (cremations and micro-santé ) reflect writers' political ideas.

• An interactive dictionary of sign languages is on track with the goal of facilitating the understanding between deaf people around the world. An interesting project, maybe inspiring for Wiktionaries.

• linguistic insecurity is a psychological phenomenon increasingly being studied. Nahed Mourad, Ottawa University, explains for Radio Canada mechanism and impact of this phenomenon on individuals.

Picture of a northern masked weaver took by Charlesjsharp, valued picture of Commons in April 2017.

From mid-March to mid-April (from 03/20/2017 to 04/20/2017)

• French entries increased by 1,955. There are now 350,475 lemmas, 516,388 definitions and 320,509 quotations or examples.
• The three other languages which progressed the most are Sami (+ 5,328 entries), Russian (+ 3,943 entries) and Italian (+ 3,206 entries).
• Three new languages in the project (French names): bon goula (+1), okpe (+1) and yuyu (+1).
• In April 16,408 entries were created for 82 languages!

Last month's words

Statistics pages give some insight of the evolution of the project:

• Pages the most improved
• Pages the most viewed
• Pages modified by the most people

New lexicon

• Starting lexicon of triathlon in French!

Miscellanous

• There are 31.490 illustrations (pictures and videos) in Wiktionary entries: 225 added since last month.
• April 30th, French Wiktionary offers 267 thesauri in French. That's four more than last month, related to the following: astrology, library, sowing and vase
• The page Wiktionnaire:Questions sur les mots received 148 questions in April, compared to 208 in March, 221 in February, and 230 in January.

Pierre Rézeau, Dictionnaire des régionalismes de France, De Boeck/Duculot, 2001, 1140 pages.

"Knowledge of the golden age of lexicography in the late nineteenth century was fully absorbed but more, on several aspects (from the way examples were treated to the writing of the historical notice and bibliography) and in the best parts, these three dictionaries (Dictionnaire de Suisse Romand - Thibault, 1997 ; Dictionnaire Historique du Français Québécois - Poirier ; Dictionnaire des régionalismes de France ) seem to have surpassed their models, and themselves become examples to follow." One must never think they have reached the limit of what can be done. I had imagined the current format of French Wiktionary allowed one to add any data it was possible to collect about a word and SURPRISE! I discover the Dictionnaire des régionalismes de France .

A brand new field of lexicography just open in front of me: new analyses, glossarial compilation, maps and inquiries...The Wiktionary, vague lexicographic thing, able to do the better or the worst, may earn a lot by the study and the use of this dictionary. This project was initiate by former writers of the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisée and of the Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (FEW, described in March 2016 in Actualités). It is based on a compilation of classical scarce resources and improved by investigations led by the writers all over France. The better aspect of this dictionary come from this duality between investigation and compilation that create a step back on data. The precision, method and exhaustiveness are way higher than any other existing dictionary. This can be an incitation for Wiktionaries to clarify their rules and description, and to add new data such as maps and graphs. I let you here with some readings to illustration how crucial is this book in dictionaries literature. — Lyokoï — poorly translated by Noé

• Michaela Heinz, Le Dictionnaire des Régionalismes de France : analyse macro- et microstructurelle
• Jean-Pierre Chambon, Après le Dictionnaire des régionalismes de France : bilan et perspectives

LexiSession on book and library

Picture of a red-crowned woodpecker took by Charlesjsharp, valued picture of Commons in April 2017.

Powered by the Tremendous Wiktionary User Group, the LexiSessions aim to suggest monthly themes to put all Wiktionaries on the same page. This time, the operation went beyond the contributor circle, thanks to the social networks and especially with the help of BibliSmart (a librarian teacher) on Facebook and Twitter, then retweet by Montréal libraries.

This dynamic made a beautiful new thesaurus of library and spread the Wiktionary. Futures LexiSession may be more tied with professional activities or associations to have a relay on the field. It can be discuss collectively on Meta!

May lexiSession will be about flowers!

Wiktionary is still a not-so-known tool, but also a not-so-well describe thing. To progress in this domain, it is important to include curious people, not only expert on lexicography. There was a first attempt to initiate public talk on lexicography made in 2016 during Nuit Debout, and the Actualités report it. The Journées du logiciel libre in Lyon were a new opportunity to talk about the social issues of writing a dictionary. One hour was not enough to arise all the topic coined by Noé but a following is plan in the Wikiversity, a sister project dedicate to the collaborative research. You can already find some notes and participate to this question!

Video This rubric reviews videos about linguistics and French published during the month. Regional French for Science: The blog Le français de nos régions is regularly mentioned in the highlights of the Actualités for the quality of his works. Well, this is a video made by Strasbourg University to discover who is behind this website and how those linguists work. Code Mu: he made a short video on the French difference between sous empire and sous emprise. Elles comme Linguistes: this month a short video on # and instagram and another one on the pleonasm. Linguisticae: he is still on politician and rethorical figures, this time with anaphora (Benoît Hamon) and punchline of small candidates. He also made a video on functional illiteracy. Lyokoï (yes our Lyokoï) give us some news of his projects in a coruscant video. Games Bouche cousue, monthly results! Bouche cousue is a fantastic game with words in French. There is two modes: random word and word of the month. In both, words are to be guessed with several attempts of words. For each try, the game give how many letters are correct and placed but not which ones. Have a try! April word was cécité ! Here are the best performances! 1st Miruts (12 attempts) 2nd (19 attempts) 3rd Lyokoï (20 attempts) 4th Noé (23 attempts) Picture of a greater sage-grouse took by Bob Wick of Bureau of Land Management, valued picture of Commons in April 2017.

Fun fact French language have a long tail for rhymes. A large part of French corpora ends with commons endings such as -ier, -ir, -ment, etc. Diversity goes with rarity and this month we will look at the point of the tail. There is some words that does not have rhymes, words with very unique sounds at the end. Using the computer nature of Wiktionary, it was easy to interrogate the database and to check the historical list of rhymeless words, also called orphan rhymes in French (rimes orphelines). And the discovery was enormous, as famous orphans found a bro (or sista)! triomphe and gomphe → -ɔ̃f muscle and juscle → -yskl quatorze and sforze → -ɔʁz dioptre and blépharoptre → -ɔptʁ camphre and fanfre → -ɑ̃fʁ ersatz and engatse → -ats Agde and smaragde → -aɡd monstre and démonstre → -ɔ̃stʁ Others were confirmed and some discovered! abrupt → -ypt belge → -ɛlʒ chanvre → -ɑ̃vʁ Charybde → -ibd cuistre → -ɥistʁ drachme → -akm fichtre → -iʃtʁ goinfre → -ɛ̃fʁ humble → -œ̃bl huître → -ɥitʁ hydne → -idn ménechme → -ɛkm meurtre → -œʁtʁ pauvre → -ovʁ pampre → -ɑ̃pʁ puisque → -ɥisk sceptre → -ɛptʁ sépulcre → -ylkʁ stagne → -aɡn stupre → -ypʁ tertre → -ɛʁtʁ zinfle → -ɛ̃fl Those lists may expand. Wiktionary is nowadays the only tool to provide such and exhaustiveness in several languages. But those lists are still handmade and may be improved by an automatization in the future, through a tool based on pronunciation, if someone start to develop such a tool.