Talk:omata

Removing the usage notes from Finnish "omata", because:

• It is too purist POV (point of view). Wiktionary is supposed to be NPOV (neutral point of view).
• False information. There was no "have" in Proto-Indo-European, so "have" is not an Indo-European feature. Only features with reconstructable common Proto-Indo-European root are Indo-European features. Notice that English "have" is not related to Latin "habere". The Proto-Indo-European equivalent of "have" was possessor in dative or genitive case + third person of "be". Latin: mihi est, Greek: moi esti, Sanskrit: mama asti.
• Words in languages are not created. They just come into existence. Even if you coin a new word, it has to be naturally accepted by the people.

Someone could write a new version of the usage notes, which is NPOV. --85.156.231.30 13:47, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Um... Who said Wiktionary had NPOV? We present grammatical opinions wherever those opinions can be cited. Also, the notes you removed made no mention whatsoever of Proto-Indo-European, nor claimed ancient common etymology. The comparison was made purely by analogy that Finnish was borrowing a grammatical structure found in many modern Indo-European languages. Your final sentence is semantically meaningless; you are arguing form rather than substance.

As I said, if the material can be cited from a grammar or usage manual, it is valid for inclusion. --EncycloPetey 00:29, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

The usage of the word "Indo-European" by itself claims PIE origins. Languages can borrow features from each other regardless of the language family. Languages in Europe have most likely calqued the "have" structure from each other, replacing the "mihi est" structure.. It's just coincidental that most of the languages in Europe happen to be Indo-European, and because of that, it's easy to mistake an areal feature as an Indo-European feature. The usage of articles (a, the) is another example of an areal feature. --88.112.224.31 17:48, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. "Indo-European" can refer to an existing assemblage of languages without discussing them diachronically. That is, it can discuss a group of related languages without referring to etymological or historical connections between those languages. For example, we may know that a word or grammatical construction entered Finnish from an Indo-European language without knowing which language was the contributor. The rest of your response is in agreement with what I would say; I believe the only difference is in our interpretation of the initial portion of the statement in question. --EncycloPetey 18:42, 5 November 2010 (UTC)