Template talk:hyperforeign

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The word "hyperforeign" is too uncommon and neologistic to be part of a dictionary entry that is supposed to be understood by normal people. DCDuring TALK 16:03, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

In all fairness, I think that it’s readily understandable as “too foreign” (or rather, trying to be too foreign); I’m not sure if it’s necessary alongside {{hypercorrect}}, though. Therefore, delete, but not for the reasons you gave (cf. protologism, circumfix, translingual). † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:19, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it is likely to be misunderstood as simply meaning "too foreign". "Hypercorrect" wouldn't be a template whose use I would favor, but the term has at least some use (>10x "hyperforeign" on b.g.c., but only once in COCA). DCDuring TALK 17:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Keep It's a special-case hyponym of hypercorrect which provides more information. Although it is specialized, so is hypercorrect, and this is a 75-year-old “neologism,” with no suitable alternatives. The glossary link solves the reader's problems through the magic of linking and reading. —Michael Z. 2009-05-30 19:00 z

A surprising number of users do not have good "link-click-fu". The magic of linking is known to overwhelm a number of users who fail to click through, say, an "alternative spelling" link to get the definitions they need. The deficiency seems highly erratic since the occasionally manage to click through to Feedback, Information Desk, and Tea Room to make requests for the definition that is only one click away.

Because the meaning "too foreign" is available to them, they may take that simplistic reading as adequate and choose not to click through to our fuller explanation. Is "too foreign" an acceptable approximation to the meaning we would like them to take away? I think not.

This is in contrast to "hypercorrect", where the sense "too correct" seems acceptably close to any more specialized or precise meaning. DCDuring TALK 19:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

You're saying that since some people won't read an explanation, then we shouldn't use the label. If we embraced this principal, then we wouldn't be making a dictionary.

Hardly. My main principle to avoid the excesses of self-indulgence (although I find others' self-indulgences much easier to see than my own). I simply want this to be a dictionary for more than the most educated 0.1% of the species. We don't even take the trouble to have a defining vocabulary of simple words or to rate our definitions for their ease of being understood. A great of the material we add seems the pursuit of various intellectual whims. Whimsy could be a valuable motivator, but not at the sacrifice of the purpose that legitimizes our effort. DCDuring TALK 23:44, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

But “too foreign” is not a bad plain-language summary. Coo de graw (“stroke of fat”) is an example of hyperforeignness, where the speaker is trying to sound more French than he is able to—“too French,” indeed. —Michael Z. 2009-05-30 21:33 z

You could be right, but I'd love to see some evidence that supported the likelihood of its being correctly understood. I don't know how to test this definitively. The facts I can point to are:

1. A few dictionaries have "hypercorrect", none have "hyper-foreign" or "hyperforeign"
2. "Hyper-foreign"/"hyperforeign" is less than one-tenth as common on b.g.c. as "hypercorrect", one-twentieth on News, one-fiftieth on Scholar, and less than one-hundreth as common on Groups and the Web.
3. "Hypercorrect" itself often occurs in quotes with a definition when used in popular writings (News).

— This unsigned comment was added by DCDuring (talk • contribs) at 23:44, 30 May 2009 (UTC).

Perhaps "hyperforeign" and "too foreign" can sometimes describe the same things, but they're hardly equivalent. There are lots of odd language mannerisms that might be described as "too foreign" — for example, the pretentious use of foreign words when English ones will serve as well — but "hyperforeign" has a very specific meaning, that of "hypercorrect due to overly aggressive application of a foreign-language rule". —Ruakh_TALK 00:04, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes. A user's expectation of the appropriate interpretation of "correct" in a dictionary context would probably tend to lead to a more helpful guess at the meaning of "hypercorrect" if the word itself were unfamiliar. (Assuming that the user had good idea about "hyper-" or even just a vague sense that it added a negative valence to "correct".) DCDuring TALK 01:21, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

There are some separate problems here:

1. The term is rare and specialized, unfamiliar to most readers. A solution could be to use a more familiar synonym, but there is none. The solution is to document it as well as possible. One click right on it gives an explanation. Resolved. (It would be nice if we could add a better tooltip.)
2. Some proportion of readers don't want to look up the unfamiliar label. We can't make them. Okay, fine. Is this a problem?
3. Some smaller proportion of readers won't look up the term they haven't seen before, and they will fabricate an incorrect meaning. If we're so worried about people who don't look up words they don't understand, then why are we building a dictionary? And how does removing information solve this problem?

This is all theory. Is this really a problem?—we can only determine that by testing. We can implement the template and see what feedback we get, or we can choose to delete lexicographical information from the dictionary just in case a small number of readers can't handle it. —Michael Z. 2009-05-31 04:12 z

Everybody has theories. Some are explicit about them.

Our so-called "practical test" would consist of using it and having only our own data-free opinions as to whether it worked or not, possibly influenced by one person who, against type, complained about something instead of avoiding it. I'd just as soon have the data-free discussion now. I am picky about defining vocabulary and infrastructure terms. If this is just going to be an elitist playground, we ought to tell WMF and its donors. A lot of prior data suggests that:

1. folks don't understand things,
2. they think they understand what they don't,
3. they don't like what they know they don't understand,
4. they avoid what they don't don't like , and
5. they don't spend a lot of time trying to understand unless they are fairly sure there is a benefit to them.

We have already run one practical test and found that nobody (me included) cares enough to analyze the Feedback. If you would like to ignore the results of that test, and run another one that is clearly doomed to be inconclusive, I cannot single-handedly prevent you. ::::::My principal excuse is the general dismissiveness toward serious consideration of users. This may well be due to the absence of a good theoretical framework to use for grasping the information. We have used the feedback to repair faulty entries, but have made no other use of it. When we do get precious general feedback about our entries being too confusing, including too many non-English words, or we get questions that clearly indicate that our entries are not delivering the goods to users, we are all too ready to dismiss or even blame the users, whom I thought were more or less the customers. DCDuring TALK 05:25, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that your concerns may be well-founded. Nota, for example, the confusion brought about by the label {{hypercorrect}} here; if {{hypercorrect}} is misunderstood, then what will happen to {{hyperforeign}}? † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 22:23, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

All right then, let's start with the theoretical scope. How many actual English entries are likely to have this label on one or more senses? How many on pronunciations? Do we know of any foreign-language entries which could use it?

Theoretical implementation? I've made up one example of this template at coup de grâce#English. What would the alternative look like? (I don't like the previous version because it had pronunciation notes in the Etymology section.) —Michael Z. 2009-05-31 06:00 z

Delete this is a bizarre subset of "affected" - I think for (coup de grâce or claret you could use "affected French", just as fucketh uses "affected archaic"). This has the dual advantage of 1) being more precise, 2) being more commonly understood [although the two seperate meanings of affected aren't great], 3) being able to give greater consistency across the dictionary. Conrad.Irwin 18:39, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The language is simpler, but the meaning is far less precise—ambiguous and potentially misleading, in fact. The label in fucketh is misleading because it looks like this is an archaic usage which is affected in some way, but I gather it really means a modern affected usage, putting on archaic qualities. Its meaning certainly isn't self-evident, and I'm not even sure which sense of affected is being applied, and I don't see this in WT:GLOSS. What is an affected context? Is this label used in any professional dictionaries? At least hyperforeign has a single, unambiguous meaning. —Michael Z. 2009-05-31 21:46 z

Delete. We'd be better served by some sort of {{see usage notes}}, together with some sort of usage notes. Tempting as it might be to stick on a vague label that's likely to be misunderstood, our readership and our reliability are surely better served by usage notes backed up by referenced. —Ruakh_TALK 21:09, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm mainly descriptionist, so I think a hyperforeign pronunciation should remain with the others others. But I am hesitant to take something which is mainly considered incorrect usage, and remove its warning from it.

But wouldn't (hyperforeign—see usage notes) be better than just “see usage notes?” —Michael Z. 2009-05-31 21:46 z

I'm beginning to suspect that hyperforeignness is a factor in a term's etymology, and perhaps not a usage. (This may be yet another occasion where confusion would have been avoided early on if we used conventional terminology: “usage label” instead of our odd and slightly misapplied “context”.) —Michael Z. 2009-05-31 21:59 z

Strong keep. If a person doesn't understand what hyperforeign means, they can follow the link that the tag gives and learn. Hell, even I didn't know what it meant before I found hyperforeign stuff here. I'd rather we keep links that might help people get smarter than dumb everything down for the... "normal" people DC mentions. — [ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 12:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

• The dumb users are those that are the principal justification for the financial and volunteer support that Wiktionary gets. Otherwise this is strictly autoerotic. Please remember that we are falling farther and farther behind our principal competitor in on-line dictionaries, despite our privileged connection with one of the very most successful websites. DCDuring TALK 14:47, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Kept, 7 months of no consensus. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:22, 17 December 2009 (UTC)