Talk:cent

Why was the Arabic changed? www.ajeeb.net gives "سّنت" which is only a more detailed form of "سنت". There may well be several meanings for "سنت" differing only in vowels, sukun, and shadda. To me it seems like a better idea to add detail to the Arabic words as we improve, and not to take it away. — Hippietrail 09:24, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It can be changed if you think it's right, but searching for "سّنت" (ssnt) in Google turns up nothing at all, except this page. Ajeeb gave me "سِنْت" (sint) which makes sense for an Arabic word with vowel markings; Maktoob gives me "سنت" (snt) which makes sense for an Arabic word without vowel markings. As far as I can tell "سّنت" (ssnt) is supposed to represent "سنت" (snt) after (or with) the definite article, which would assimilate to it, but this shouldnt probably be given as the dictionary form. In any case, since Arabic words are not normally marked with vowels, disambiguation between various vowelled forms of the word should probably occur on the page سنت (snt) when it is written, similar to how capitalized and non-capitalized English words share the same pages. —Muke Tever 16:43, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi Muke. I think I know just enough about Arabic to get myself into trouble. Ajeeb was giving me "alssnt" for "the cent" but my Arabic dictionary gives "snt" with a sukun on the n but with no other vowel marks. I'm guessing then that since it would be pronounced "as-snt" that this pronunciation affects the orthography with the article but not without it.

Arabic spelling variations as well as Hebrew and probably Greek are not quite the same as capitalization since the system can handle capitalization automatically. For languages with optional vowels or diacritics we should strive to have the most complete form in the entry with redirect or disambiguation pages for the less complete forms. We should also have the most complete forms in the translation entries but this is a little less important. People using the translations will then be able to choose to leave out vowels and diacritics if they like. Good print dictionaries have full forms everywhere. — Hippietrail 03:52, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, by capitalization I meant a kind of thing that doesn't show in the title but can be displayed separately. Kind of like the macrons in Latin which are another kind of mater lectionis (see, e.g. how it is handled in materia)—optional, not part of the standard orthography, but dictionary material. It's only my opinion, but I think that a person shouldn't need to know the dictionary material "first" to find a word he sees in the wild. I think it may be more helpful to a user who wants to look up سنت (snt) to get a page of definitions and information than to make him disambiguate (and thus have to visit several—possibly many—different pages to find information about a word he does not know). Perhaps I'm just biased in preferring to see redirects instead of disambig pages. —Muke Tever 15:18, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Dollars and euros

I have separated the translation tables for dollar cents and euro cents as these are different in some languages (French and modern Greek, at least). Some languages have chosen to introduce a separate word for the euro cent so as not to confuse it with the dollar cent. I think it makes sense to keep these senses and their translations separate to reflect this distinction. — Paul G 10:54, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)