Template talk:mutation of

To be used with forms showing initial consonant mutations, for example in Celtic languages.

RFD discussion: March 2019

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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Template:mutation of

This template was used on seven Galician pages (corresponding to what are more aptly termed "alternative forms" in Portuguese) and two Cornish pages (for irregular mutations of two variant words meaning "day"), and that's it. I replaced all of them with {{alternative form of}}, with appropriate usage notes. There are more specific templates such as {{aspirate mutation of}}, {{soft mutation of}}, {{lenition of}}, {{eclipsis of}}, etc. that should be used in all cases. Benwing2 (talk) 17:22, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Mutations are not alternative forms, so what should the Cornish entries be? —Rua (mew) 17:50, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

The forms in question are jÿdh and jëdh, which appear instead of dÿdh and dëdh after the definite article an. I don't know enough Cornish to be 100% certain, but I strongly suspect that these are not a typical initial consonant mutation (which would not be expected after the masculine singular definite article, at least not in the Celtic languages I'm familiar with) but rather some sort of sandhi form, that probably really can fairly be called an {{alternative form of}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:59, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Irish has t-prothesis, which occurs with exactly that same form, see t-. So it's possibly cognate. —Rua (mew) 23:21, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Interesting. But t-prothesis only occurs with vowel-initial words. In any case I don't think we should keep around a template like this for a questionable analysis of two words, so I'm going to delete it unless someone objects. Benwing2 (talk) 05:19, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

We should still use {{form of}} to give a more specific description of the form, if we don't want to make a template for it. {{alternative form of}} has a specific meaning on Wiktionary and this doesn't fit it. If it did, then jÿdh and dÿdh would be completely interchangeable, which they clearly aren't. —Rua (mew) 16:17, 21 March 2019 (UTC)