Wiktionary:Information desk/2021/July

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Not sure if this is the best place to bring something to the attention of the admins, but in 'Recent changes' I've noticed an IP adding translations to a huge variety of languages. I guess the translations of the place name may have been from WikiData, but I don't know about the others. Kritixilithos (talk) 13:30, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is probably Atitarev. PUC – 13:46, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any rule as to which citation form to use when citing a borrowing in an etymology? For example, apart from the a-declension (the commonest!), loanwords into Thai ultimately from Pali, generally use not the stem, the common citation form on Wiktionary, but the nominative singular, the usual citation form in South East Asia. In such cases, should {{bor}} link to the stem or to the nominative singular (masculine)? I am slowly implementing the recommendation that the nominative singular (masculine) of Pali nouns (and adjectives) should have an entry in Wiktionary, a recommendation made to address the problem of different citation forms. --RichardW57 (talk) 04:54, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's always the option of linking to the lemma with the third parameter, but displaying the other form using the fourth parameter. I don't know any Pali, so here's an example in a language I do know:

• From {{bor|en|la|teneo|tenet|t=he/she holds}}

giving:

• From Latin tenet (“he/she holds”).

Chuck Entz (talk) 06:10, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'll give it a whirl. The first case is the etymology of Thai เสรี (sěe-rii). --RichardW57 (talk) 21:06, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it acceptable to delete entries without leaving a reason? SodhakSH has been deleting Bengali script Sanskrit entries that I created. --RichardW57 (talk) 21:08, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(Notifying @Kutchkutch, Inqilābī, JohnC5, AryamanA) @RichardW57: It was discussed that a Sanskrit alternative script entry will be created only if it is attested. Can you bring references/quotations for these terms to be added again? 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 06:31, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@SodhakSH Where? Some semi-private discussion area? Then raise a request for verification. However, obvious existence is also permitted. Remind me how to stub out links from invocations of {{sa-alt}} so that it doesn't, for example, link to a Pali term. — This unsigned comment was added by RichardW57 (talk • contribs) at 06:44, 9 July 2021 (UTC).[reply]

@RichardW57: Sorry, I couldn't find any discussion on this. But at diff, @Inqilābī said about the attestation thing and I agreed. {{sa-alt}} linking to any other language's entry doesn't seem a problem. 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 08:27, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We really need quotations for a lot of entries. Sometimes getting lawfully usable adequate translations is a lot of work. Inqilābī's diktats are not law - his signature is an aspiration, not an achievement. Besides, he spoke of turning red into blue. What these additions did was to turn fake blue into true blue. If fake blue were orange by default (see Red_link_that_isn't) rather than visually indistinguishable from true blue, we wouldn't have a problem. But I see a blue link leading to the wrong place as an error. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@SodhakSH: You're also overlooking the page deletion process at Wiktionary:Page_deletion_guidelines, which I will admit needs further overhaul for the deltion of entries. Note that this is a complaint about the lack of due process. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• I was thinking of raising this issue (of creating alternative-script entries at will) someday. There is not yet consensus to delete them; however I personally agree that these should not be created unless we can source the attestation in the script. Currently this thing is being done for Pali and Sanskrit (by RichardW57), and for Prakrit (by SodhakSH). Since a discussion on this has already been started here, I hereby propose that we can have only canonical-script entries for these languages, unless we can verify the attestation of the alternative-script form. If there is some sa-alt problem, there could be some other good solution, but there is no consensus for making red links blue just like that. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 11:37, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  @Inqilābī: This really needs no consensus to delete; a word without attestation and google hits should be speedied. As for my Prakrit entries in Devanagari script, they are all attested (mostly by {{R:pra:Sheth}}, sometimes by quotations, etc.). 🔥शब्दशोधक🔥 12:05, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  Do you mean 'or' or 'and'? Many of the Lanna script Pali words that I have supplied quotations for had no google hits when I added them, and I suspect Wiktionary and clones will still be the only source of google hits for many of them. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:34, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  On what basis do you claim that {{R:pra:Sheth}} provides an 'attestation'? It's only a dictionary! --RichardW57m (talk) 12:42, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  For the most part, you already have a solution to hand. Just start raising RfV against the entries you don't like. Now, if we can change the colour coding on links so that a non-existing segment is colour differently to that for an extant segment, then the argument for satisfying the links largely goes away. I had taken the view that a blue link effectively pointing to the wrong place was a defect in Wiktionary, and therefore fixed it. I've just discovered that via a Wiktionary account, one can get these missing segment links coloured orange. If only that were the default! I had assumed that checking the existence of all the fragments referenced was too much effort for the servers. Please also remember that inflection tables take some effort - irregularities are not held centrally. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  There is, however, a downside. If you remove one Burmese script masculine Pali noun because no-one has yet got round to finding an attestation (unless you have a very low bar, not the same as verification), that's 16 words that can no longer be looked up in Wiktionary, unless one starts adding entries for all the inflected forms in the canonical script. Even so, the citation form will still be hidden by the homograph in another language. Of course, this only matters if you think that Wiktionary should be useful. --RichardW57m (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC there is a template that says something like "Can we add an example to this entry?" Does anyone know what it is called?

Human-potato hybrid (talk) 01:04, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

{{rfex}} — surjection ⟨??⟩ 02:00, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but why is it called rfex of all things? I suppose it's "request for example" but it would be nice if it had a long form so it's at least searchable in the template index... Human-potato hybrid (talk) 02:09, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is indeed an abbreviation of "request for" + "example". The request templates tend to have abbreviated names and start specifically with "rf" ("request for"). Category:Request templates appears to have an index of request templates. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 13:51, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some examples:

• Danish and Norwegian brille: From German Low German brille

  platt-wb.de has Brill, Brille

• Danish fartøj: from German Low German fartüg

  Same has Fahrtüüg

• Russian кран (kran): from Low German kran

  Same has Kraan (and Waterkraan)

• Swedish frakt: From German Low German fracht

  Same has Fracht

• Livonian boŗ: from Low German bōr

  The etymology mentions borer, drill which is Bohrer, the translation gives worm which is Wurm

• Polish fagas: from Low German fagás

  ?

Questions:

• Do the uncapitalised forms exist?
  • Even if they do, shouldn't the more normal forms with capitals be linked?
• Do ō, á occur in Low German?
  • Even if they do, aren't there more normal spellings like with oo or oh for ō, and shouldn't they be linked?

--Macopre (talk) 21:43, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalized nouns should be the default for GLG, to the extent that we're separating it from nds-nl (and hence separating nds); the lowercase forms may just be carried over from references in those other languages. - -sche (discuss) 19:50, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't German dialects separate languages at Wiktionary?
There are for example:

• Central German
  • West Central German
    • Central Franconian (gmw-cfr)
      • Luxemburgish (lb)
    • Rhine Franconian (gmw-rfr)
  • East Central German (gmw-ecg)
• Upper German
  • Alemannic (gsw)
  • Swabian (swg)
  • Bavarian (bar)

So what's inside Category:German dialectal terms?

• Zaine: "Upper German dialects"

  That is, it's Alemannic, Swabian and/or Bavarian? Or is it not dialectal, but proper Standard High German used regionally, in this case in the south (Swabia, Swiss, Bavaria, Austria)?

• uff: "dialectal" and "Now used in most Central German dialects"

  That is, this part is Central Franconian (gmw-cfr) instead of dialectal German (de)?

• vertobaken: "Northern Germany dialects"
  1. It's "Northern German dialects" and not "Northern Germany dialects"
  2. Northern German dialects are Low German (nds). So is it only regional Standard High German, in this case northern?
• Lichting, lichtingsch: "Prussia dialect", or from source code: "East Prussian dialect".
  1. Why does "East Prussian dialect" turn into "Prussia dialect"? Westphalia and West Prussia were part of Prussia too. So "Prussia" is much less specific and clear.
  2. Is this Low Prussian, and hence Low German, or High Prussian, and hence East Central German? Or non-dialectal but regional Standard High German?

--Macopre (talk) 18:09, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lichting probably doesn't meet CFI (in the dialectal sense; the surname does); I must've assumed, after being reminded of it by some book years ago, that it existed in enough other books to meet CFI, but it doesn't seem to. Uff OTOH is certainly encountered in modern dialectal de, though the fact that it's also used in older de makes for a lot of chaff when searching; Cindy aus Marzahn's Nicht jeder Prinz kommt uff'm Pferd is an example (which in turn gets quoted in books, including one by Bessin herself, bypassing the question of whether the song was released in a durably archived format). - -sche (discuss) 19:45, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that Cindy example regiolectal? Wikipedia states Cindy is a fictional Berlinian, and at youtube one can see and hear more Berlinian features ([1] with ick, jut, wat, [2] with überjewicht, Beene).
It's the same as in the Ruhrpott with words like Ker, Pütt, pöhlen, Mottek, pitschen (all having the label "regional"): The original Low German dialect (mostly) died out, and was replaced by a Low German influenced German (de) regiolect. Surely, there also was foreign influence, like in the Ruhrpott with Mottek from Polish młotek. --Macopre (talk) 21:31, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Your comment and diff lead me to wonder if you think "dialect" can only mean "separate language" and can't mean (regional) "variety of the standard language"...? That's not how "dialect" is used in English. It's confusing, not just for Germany's lects but for other languages as well, that we have both "dialectal" and "regional" categories when they overlap, but "dialect" isn't limited to separate languages; there's both a dialect of en spoken in Scotland and also a separate language sco; there can be both North German dialectal de and Low German. I'm not against imposing a (German) distinction and saying de terms should only be labelled "regional"/"regiolectal" and not "dialectal", but new users will doubtless continue using "dialectal", so it'd require perennial vigilance to maintain. - -sche (discuss) 00:12, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dialects are separate languages. But not everything that is dialect is already a separate language. Terms contained in Category:German dialectal terms are particularly likely to occur in sentences that have to be considered Standard German, though with “non-standard” elements (not saying that regionalisms can’t be standard).

Also if you deal with texts from the 16th–17th centuries you are ever unsure if something is dialect or Standard German, by reason that Standard German was not that standardized yet.

With “dialectal” instead of “regional” editors also try to say that terms are not only regional but also more vernacular than is considered standard, or “vulgar”. Fay Freak (talk) 20:22, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How do I display Wikipedia and Wiktionary at the same time but in separate windows?

I cannot currently do this. I am given the choice of one or the other in one window.

Lyle Dean

What platform (OS and browser) are you using to access Wikipedia and Wiktionary? Can you have separate windows on different sites (e.g. Google Search and YouTube) simultaneously open at all?  --Lambiam 22:17, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone want to work out what "eyespeak respelling", as a description of the Polish translation of ACAB (diff), means? I'm guessing the French should also be uncapitalized. - -sche (discuss) 20:56, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia calls CHWDP an “acronym or initialism” of the phrase chuj w dupę policji. HWDP arises as an initialism using an alternative spelling – which may be considered a phonetic respelling – of the first word of the full phrase.  --Lambiam 17:28, 24 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is the pronunciation of this symbol always the same? It makes sense that it would be [tss] in the infinitives of reflexive verbs, but in other words like "отцы" and "-надцать" is it the same or is it [tts] or [tːs] ? Dngweh2s (talk) 19:05, 27 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How I can fix or rather request a fix of the tree data for Proto-Austronesian (map-pro)? I have seen that the node Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (poz-pro) has dozens of languages as primary branches which are actually all nested in one of the several subgroups. E.g. Alor (aol) is directly under (poz-pro), but actually should be under Proto-Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian (poz-cet-pro). I guess being just an EC-user, I cannot edit the data myself, but I can prepare a list for all necessary adjustments. All are uncontroversial, and can be based on standard sources such as Comparative Austronesian Dictionary (Tryon 1995), The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar (Adelaar & Himmelmann 2005), and also Ethnologue, Glottolog, and the WP classification (which is all-in-all ok). NB this is not about spurious Sunda-Sulawesi, I've given up about this matter for the time being. –Austronesier (talk) 14:50, 29 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]