User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 4

Beer parlour

I'm off to bed for now, but I plan to respond to your message sometime this evening. Cheers,   — C M B J   12:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

That thread got a little out of hand, so I'll touch on a few of your points here instead.

• There were indeed multiple issues going on and I agree that much of the disagreement has stemmed from differences in understanding.
• The category wasn't a perfect solution by any means, but my original intention was just to create a starting point for what I hope will one day be a very cool thing—one that the general public expresses interest in but rarely encounters aside word of mouth and isolated publications—and one that apparently isn't always that veracious in certain segments of the press.
• There is some degree of opinion inherently involved in all conclusions (and I touched upon this here a little earlier on) but in principle it's within our project's scope to present information that holds up to a reasonable standard of scientific rigor.
• I recognize that there are shades of gray in this area, but I believe we have the means to approach that problem responsibly. Consensus seems to be that an appendix is the best way of managing the content, and once some straightforward guidelines are laid out, we can begin to refine what is and isn't appropriate. I also think that a title like Appendix:Terms considered difficult or impossible to translate into English may be a good way of communicating to readers that this is an emerging area of research.

All the best,   — C M B J   12:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

New appendix

As a participant in an associated discussion, you are invited to contribute to the list of terms and criteria at Appendix:Terms considered difficult or impossible to translate into English. Cheers,   — C M B J   10:55, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Responded to one of your posts.   — C M B J   14:37, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

address in Burmese

Hi,

Could you add a Burmese translation, please? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:28, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I've added လိပ်စာ /leɪʔsə/ and romanised it as "lipca" (MLCTS). Is this correct? My phrasebook romanised it as "leiqsa". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 13:49, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

It would have to be /leɪʔsà/; /ə/ can never be word-final in Burmese. Wiktionary uses a modified BGN/PCGN romanization for Burmese; for this word it would be "leiksa". I'll have to check my dictionaries later tonight to see whether they confirm your phrasebook. —Angr 14:06, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Old Irish question

I was looking at gillaidecht, and was wondering about its construction. It obviously has the same meaning as [[gillacht], but there's that extra syllable needing to be accounted for. I was wondering if it makes sense as gilla + -id + -acht, where "-id" is in Thurneysen (§267) as forming "nouns of agency", which are usually formed from verbs, but:

Besides nouns of agency, other personal substantives are formed in this manner. Examples: mucc 'pig' : muccid (Mid W. meichat) 'swine-herd'; fuil 'blood' : comfulid 'consanguineus'; recht 'law' : es-rechtaid 'exlex'; litrid 'litteratus'. From an adjective, cotarsnae 'contrary' : cotarsnid 'adversary'.

Occasionally the same formation is employed to denote an instrument, e.g. deregtith 'scalprum' Thes. II. 42, 18. scrissid 'rasorium' Ml. 72b8; or a grammatical case, e.g. togarthith 'vocative', tobarthid 'dative', ainmnid 'nominative', áinsid 'accusative'; similarly forngarthid 'imperative'. Cp. also dairt 'heifer calf' : dartaid 'bull calf'.

There's a case to add -id as an OI suffix, but in the example which inspired me to go looking: it looks right, but I have no idea how to go about interpreting the putative missing step *"gillaid". "Young person"/"Young one"? -- Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 04:42, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Also: the suffix template doesn't seem to handle stacked suffixes. Would there be a recommended method of dealing with that situation? -- Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 05:18, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

To take the easy part of your question first, the way to deal with multiple suffixes is to use {{suffix}} multiple times, leaving its first parameter empty after the first time, thus: {{suffix|gilla|id|lang=sga}} {{suffix||acht|lang=sga}}. However, in this case, gillaidecht is Middle Irish, not Old Irish (the oldest source it appears in, according to DIL, is Acallam na Senórach, from the end of the 12th century; the manuscripts are even younger) and I think we're dealing with a Middle Irish suffix -idecht, which is etymologically -id + -acht, but which came to be felt as a single suffix at some point. Certainly its Modern Irish equivalent -íocht is a single suffix. —Angr 11:40, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally I've moved it to gillaighecht to reflect its best attested Middle Irish spelling. —Angr 11:52, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Irish terms with a definite article

I made a category for terms that use raw links with a parameter of {{head}}, which is at Category:head with raw link. Quite a lot of them are Irish terms, and even more of them are Irish proper nouns that seem to always occur with a definite article. I am wondering if it is really appropriate to show the terms this way. It seems similar to adding "to" to English infinitives, which we also don't do (but we do have the Philippines...). In any case, if we do include the articles, I think that it would make more sense to make the template do this. That way, the template will select the correct article so there is no need to include it yourself (which messes up the linking, hence the category). —CodeCat 21:20, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I do think it's appropriate to include the article in proper nouns (cf. also Netherlands displaying as The Netherlands). But how do we get the template to link the noun in the genitive but not the article? —Angr 21:27, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

We can't do that with the current template. But if the template were remade so that it no longer calls {{head}}, then we could add another parameter which tells the template to add the article, without adding it to the linked text. An alternative of course is to drop the genitive entirely and put it in an inflection table instead. That latter option seems preferable because as far as I know, we already add tables to Irish entries. —CodeCat 22:06, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, usually, but I generally omit declension tables when they don't add any information that {{ga-noun}} doesn't already have. Anyway, this sounds like yet another reason to rewrite the Irish headword templates so they don't call {{head}}. —Angr 22:17, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I've modified {{ga-noun}} and {{ga-proper noun}} now. They still show the same thing, but they work differently internally. Please let me know if there are any problems. —CodeCat 22:56, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Also, these two templates now use Category:ga-noun with raw link as the cleanup category. —CodeCat 23:08, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Old Irish Verbs are hard

I fell down a rabbit hole and followed my nose, and have now added ad·rími from DIL. I haven't done it 100% slavishly (where the VN is given in various places as áram, árem and áirem, I've settled on árem as the attested version, although áirem makes the most etymological sense, for example).

What I've found is that it's Hard (harder than I thought, and I thought it would be pretty hard going in), and I'd be grateful for your experienced eye for a once-over (twice-, thrice-...) to see if I've just made a horrible mess of it.

– Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 03:50, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Saying "Old Irish verbs are hard" is a bit like saying "The center of the sun is warm". I'll take a look later today or on the weekend. —Angr 09:00, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

That extra etymology you added to ga rím is interesting, given how that rabbit role took me from comairem (com+áirem) to áirem (ad-rím) to rím, which comes, apparently, from P.C. rīmā, which looks a lot like P.G. rīmą. Looks very much like direct cognates, no?

Or a borrowing from Proto-Germanic to Proto-Celtic or vice versa (the languages were in contact); but now I've been made insecure by the Online Etymology Dictionary's entry rhyme, which says (contrary to the note I just made at rhyme) that the word is from Latin (< Greek) rhythmus, and that the spelling rime persists "due to popular association with Old English rīm (“number”)". I thought it was the other way around, that rhyme/rime really came from Old English, and all the Romance rima-like words were borrowed from Germanic, and that the spelling rhyme was artificially imposed by Renaissance scholars incorrectly assuming it was from the Latin/Greek word. And it still strikes me as more plausible that a Germanic word would be popularly associated with a Classical word than that a Latinate word would be popularly associated with an Anglo-Saxon one. —Angr 10:14, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Burmese characters

Hi,

I have added some comments using SC Unipad software about individual Burmese characters. It may include some characters, which are used for other languages or in borrowings. Are you able to include the rest of characters into the main table from Appendix talk:Burmese transliteration with your corrections and comments, please? I'd like all individual characters to be searchable as well (including diacritics). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure what you want me to do. Are you asking me to create entries for all the red links of individual letters at Appendix talk:Burmese transliteration? —Angr 07:45, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

moinethar

I created this because I removed some of the etymology from formuinethar that really belonged at this entry. Could you check it and provide a definition? —CodeCat 17:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

There is no *moinethar or *muinethar (by far the better attested spelling; I don't know why DIL went with oi) in Old Irish. It always has a preverb: only ad·muinethar, ar·muinethar, do·muinethar, fo·muinethar, and for·muinethar are attested. —Angr 18:56, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Culdee

That etymology is simply Wrong, isn't it? It's not just me?

It's just... it is so far from "From Old Irish céle dé" that I'm wondering what obvious thing I'm missing.

–Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 05:20, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

And further, DIL has céile, but the attestation form the Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee has céle, gen. céli. Which lemma should I use to add this term?

–Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 05:25, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The etymology as given is lifted straight from the 1913 Webster's. It's better than the etymology in the 1828 Webster's which says its from Latin meaning "worshippers of God" (apparently they were thinking of a phrase like cultus Dei). I'm changing it to "From Old Irish céile Dé." Both "céile" and "céle" are attested in Old Irish; they're completely equivalent. I'd put the main entry at céile and add céle as an {{alternative spelling of}}, since our entries for céilide and céilsine are already spelled with the i and it keeps it on the same page as the modern Irish word. —Angr 17:40, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Romagnolo

Hi, I was going to change the definition to simple "The Romagnol language", but the content suggests it's a dialect and therefore not the same thing as Romagnol. Are they two different things? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:31, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

No, they're the same thing. Emiliano-Romagnolo used to have a single ISO 639 code and so was considered a single language of which Romagnol(o) was one dialect, but now they've split it into two and Romagnol(o) is considered a separate language. —Angr 20:54, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Recording someone else

Hey Angr, is it acceptable to record someone else and upload it to Commons? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 18:57, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know who the copyright holder of such a recording would be. I would say you should be on the safe side and make clear that both the person doing the recording and the person speaking agree that the recording is released under a free license. —Angr 20:53, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Expect some native Venetian pronunciations soon(ish) :-) — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 21:59, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

what is that? in Burmese

Hi,

Sorry, I didn't get back to you on the Burmese script question but I have another one. Are you able to decipher any of these phrases: ဒါကဘာလဲ (daka.bhalai:) (translit?) or just ဘာလဲ (bhalai:) (b(h)a le:)? They are supposed to mean "what's this?" or "what's that?" in Burmese. Can any of these be used as a Burmese translation for what is that? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:53, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, that questions goes beyond my knowledge of Burmese. —Angr 21:12, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, anyway. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:54, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Old Irish -ige

So when looking at cathaige I find two etymologies (I think), from a suffix with two possible etymologies (or at least two distinct uses) itself.

It seems that -ige seems to work as an agentive suffix (thus cathaige = warrior from cath), and also to derive an substantive from an adjective ending in -ach (thus cathaige = warlike spirit from adj. cathach)

Doing a search in DIL for headwords in *ige brings up a wide selection of examples of both the agentive and substantive forms. At least, as far as I can see.

But I wanted to see what you thought before I started getting enthusiastic.

—Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 12:26, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Don't have time to look into this deeper now, but I also suspect there are two distinct suffixes here. —Angr 21:13, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

tech n·óil

Was this really spelled this way, with the mid-dot? How would you write it in modern Irish? —CodeCat 19:17, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

• It should be tech n-óil, to which I shall move it presently. Modern Irish doesn't still have neuter nouns, so it doesn't still have eclipsis after neuter nouns. If this word exists in Modern Irish, it'll be teach óil. —Angr 21:15, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Dictionary cite here, and mention here, so, yes it looks like it's a current usage, as there is also its use in forum conversation such as at the bottom of the page here. –Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 03:02, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

least weasel

The translation section on this page has "Lower Sorbian" with a language code of hsb. Can you resolve this? DTLHS (talk) 19:43, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Initial h- in Old Irish

I noticed that there are a few forms beginning with h- that have alternative forms without it. Is this a regular thing in Old Irish, and what significance does it have? —CodeCat 15:46, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Old Irish scribes often put an h at the beginning of vowel-initial words if the words were very short (e.g. the preposition i which was very often written hi), or if the words had some special importance (sort of like capital letters, e.g. Ériu 'Ireland' was often written Hériu), or sometimes just because they felt like it. It has no phonological significance. Old Irish vowel-initial words could actually be pronounced with initial /h/ under certain morphological conditions related to consonant mutation, but the use of h is independent of that. So while 'his gold' was pronounced /a oːr/ and 'her gold' was pronounced /a hoːr/, both of them could be spelled either a ór or a hór indiscriminately. Because of this, Old Irish lexicons and word-lists usually disregard the h in collation, which is why I sorted hóre as ore. —Angr 17:01, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I will adjust the sort key for Old Irish so that it removes any word-initial h-. Should this also be done for middle and modern Irish? —CodeCat 17:07, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

No. By Middle Irish they were starting to associate h with [h] (at least in loanwords that really started with [h]), and in Modern Irish h always means what it says, and is alphabetized normally. —Angr 20:50, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Irish scribes also used a prosthetic [h] to disambiguate Irish and Latin orthography: in Latin, initial "ua-" was a consonental /wa/, /va/ or /βa/, where in Irish it was a diphthong /uə-/. So they'd (sometimes) spell Irish "ua-" as "hua-" to make it clear. By Middle Irish they weren't using Latin to write Irish words, they had become comfortable with Irish in the Latin script as an orthography in its own right, and weren't restricting themselves to letter combinations found in Latin. This is why you start to see lenition of "m", "d", "b" and "g" as "mh, dh, bh, gh" (whether as a digraph, with superscript "h", or with punctum delens as "ṁ, ḋ, ḃ, ġ") as well as the "th", "ch", "ṡ" and "ḟ" they had been using (and even the latter two were kind of cheating). —Catsidhe ^{(verba, facta)} 21:11, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

δίδωμι

Hello,

here is a topic which might interest you. --Fsojic (talk) 12:39, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

လဲ

Hi,

Do you mind checking this entry - လဲ (lai:)? I don't know where to get all transliterations you normally add to Burmese entries. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:49, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Done. The page with all the transliterations is Appendix:Burmese transliteration. —Angr 09:36, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 13:17, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Fræġn.

Hwǣr eart þū fram, snotor guma? Tharthan (talk) 15:21, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Grew up in the U.S., now live in Germany. —Angr 15:23, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Hwǣt. Hwilc fylċe eart þū fram? Tharthan (talk) 15:40, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Is fylce supposed to mean "state"? I've lived in California, New York, Texas, and Connecticut. —Angr 15:49, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes. And I see... thanks for the context. In regard to the tea room discussion, I should probably point out that Connecticut is the least conservative of the New England states, with their dialect being more influenced by Western New England and TV shows. Tharthan (talk) 15:54, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

That may be so, but spelling has nothing to do with dialect. —Angr 15:56, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Not in the traditional sense, no. However, if a place is very conservative it might use more conservative spellings. When I was younger, I went to a Catholic school. In it, they forced everyone to say "May I please go to the lavatory" if they wished to use the lavatory. In addition, on spelling tests words such as "archaeology" and "travelled" had to be written as such or else they would be marked wrong. My mother, who was born in 1961, was taught to spell these words as such as well. I, now a junior in high school, still find that such words are the spelling insisted on by even my public high school. Tharthan (talk) 16:03, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, perform an experiment. On your next homework assignment, write "traveler" or "canceling" or "labeled" or something and see if it's marked wrong. If it is, get out your dictionary (if it's from an American publisher) and show the teacher that the one-l spelling is permitted and even preferred. Teachers don't know everything, of course; when I was a sophomore in high school my English teacher "corrected" me when I pronounced viscount /ˈvaɪkaʊnt/. She thought it rhymed with discount. —Angr 16:11, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

That's a fair point, though I still must point out the fact that it wasn't just a lone school or a lone teacher doing this. Every school I've been to has insisted on this. While it's certainly the historical spelling, I truly do think that schools are consciously teaching the spelling so as to counteract influence from the spelling used elsewhere in America. Tharthan (talk) 18:12, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

If that's so, it's a very poor decision on the part of the teachers, as any students who go on to do any writing professionally will find their work sent back from the editor or proofreader with all the extraneous l's removed (if the work has been submitted to an American publisher). —Angr 18:36, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps, but I think the writer would have noticed that the single-l-ed spelling was prominent in much of the American literature they'd read. In addition, how can you be so sure that every publisher follows AP style/Webster's Dictionary standard? Tharthan (talk) 19:01, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't think AP style stoops to specific spellings; it probably just tells you to "follow a good dictionary". As for dictionaries, it isn't just Webster's, it's Random House and (the much more conservative) AHD as well. I've worked as an editor and proofreader, I know what these people expect. —Angr 20:43, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. But tell me this: what is so wrong with a certain spelling being more prominent (and even the standard) in one area of the country and not in another? The United States may well be called the United States, but not all states are united under the same logic, dialect, culture, standards and/or attitudes. General American is not like Standard German. It's about as successful as the Mid-Atlantic accent movement. There are still very clear differences between the Northeast, the South and the West. Tharthan (talk) 03:22, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

There's nothing "wrong" with it, but unlike language, dialect, culture, standards, and attitudes, spelling is imposed by an external authority, namely dictionaries and schoolbooks. And I have never heard (and strongly doubt) that there are separate dictionaries and schoolbooks published for use in New England compared to the rest of the U.S. —Angr 12:00, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

You are correct. However, due to the fact that (at least in my experience) we rarely ever used the schoolbooks (save for math class) and our lessons mostly consisted of things made up by the teacher themselves (which is deemed all right as long as they are meeting the curriculum) that never mattered. In addition, I usually saw a 1990s addition of Oxford in most classes. I see American Heritage occasionally nowadays, but mostly Oxford. Tharthan (talk) 17:21, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Then no wonder British spellings look right to you. —Angr 17:29, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

While I personally use Commonwealth spellings for most words, words like "travelling", "travelled", "cancelled", "cancelling" predate such choice. The Oxfords were likely in there just to reinforce what was already present.