User talk:EncycloPetey

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Maltese

Hi, Petey, I need your wisdom on this.

I was looking over the word xorob, and I noticed that Dick Laurent had placed the etymology before the pronunciation. When I made the change, and placed the pronunciation before etymology, per the guidelines, he undid them. This is his reasoning[1]:

"‎ m (255 bytes) (etymology goes before pronunciation, and I don't like to use Fusha transliterations of Arabic verbs for Maltese etymology, prefer a Maghrebi version)"

I pointed to the guidelines and undid his change. Since he is watching the pages, he reverted the page back.

There is a second issue, implicit in his quote. Etymology for Maltese is properly cited to Arabic proper. Citing to a Maghrebi (Moroccan) variant is akin to taking a word in English (e.g., "beam") and tracing it back to German "Baum". Maghrebi Arabic dialects are on an equal footing with Maltese, and all derive from an Arabic parent.

The issue continues as to which transcription should be used. In the entry for kiteb, Ric leaves the following[2]:

"(→Maltese: I'm uncomfortable using the MSA forms of Arabic verbs in Maltese etymologies)"

I'm willing to yield on this, but only if the guidelines call for it. Would you consult with Martin and see what his take on this is as well?

Thank you.

Reidca 02:25, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not familiar enough with Arabic or Maltese to comment on the choice of dialect, but User:Stephen G. Brown might be. As far as the placement of Etymology section, yes the Etymology should always come before the Pronunciation section. That is a site-wide standard with only a few allowed exceptions (such as when there is a single pronunciation but multiple etymology sections). In general, Etymology should precede Pronunciation in every entry. Our primary layout document WT:ELE says this. If there is a document somewhere that says otherwise, it needs to be corrected. --EncycloPetey 02:34, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I did recheck the ELE, and I was in error. I will point to كتاب, and say that there might be confusion: the pronunciation is before the etymology, amongst other issues. There might be other places where this has occurred. Thanks, Petey! Reidca 02:46, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I find it kind of baffling that you defer to Pete and Martin on Arabic and Maltese... They're both great editors, but neither of them are really familiar with either language, to my knowledge. — [Ric Laurent] — 03:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Questions

1. What is your opinion on this discussion I started in the BP quite a while ago, [3]?

   I beleive that there will (and should) be duplication between the sections. People will not look for Related terms in the Etymology section, so it's silly not to list them.

2. What do you think of this RFV discussion, which is now archived [4]? Caladon 18:22, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

   Since it never occurs as an independent word, I'd move it to -ficio. But that's a gut reaction without a long period of thought. I might have a different opinon if I researched the issue and mulled it over (or I might come to the same conclusion). --EncycloPetey 01:20, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Request for username usurpation

Hi there, I would like to usurp the username Entropy so that I can include it in my unified login. ([5]) The current user with this username has not made any contributions. Thanks! Nklose 05:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Apologies, I just found the page Wiktionary:Changing_username and have filed a request there. Nklose 06:30, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

millia

Hi there. I modified mille to cope with millia which I found several times in Latin texts. e.g. "Passus tricies et semel, mille millia et quingentos pedes", "Et misit cum eis quadraginta millia peditum, et septem millia equitum, ut venirent in terram Juda ..." - these look like plural usages of the noun mille to me. Or are they usages of a different word - the origin of miglio in Italian, and mile in English. SemperBlotto 08:51, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

• p.s. The OED, in its etymology of "mile" says "all ultimately < classical Latin mīlia , mīllia , plural of mīle , mīlle a mile, spec. use (short for mīlle passūs or mīlle passuum a thousand paces)" (my bold). SemperBlotto 09:38, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

German

Hi,

Please note my changes to the German translations of Canis Major, Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, Canis Minor you did a long time ago. I changed the gender in one and endings in the other.

Please note the following. Bär is a masculine noun, not feminine and the paradigm for endings in the nominative case is as follows:

(ein) Kleiner Bär but der Kleine Bär.

(ein) Kleiner Hund but der Kleine Hund. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 04:42, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. You might check the German Wikipedia articles then, since that was the source of the translations. They may still be errors on my part, but at the time I went by what the German Wikipedia had. --EncycloPetey 04:15, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you misunderstand me. :) Well, "Kleiner Bär", the correct translation you made, is a masculine, the ending -er is an indication. "Kleiner Hund" was also a correct translation but it should be without the article "der". As soon as you add "der", the adjective ending changes to -e. I don't think the German Wikipedia had this kind of error - native speakers don't write like this. The ending of the adjective is determined not only by the gender but by what precedes it. Anyway, in the past I've seen quite a few mistranslations into German here, which I've been fixing, it's a typical mistake. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить)} 11:12, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Original research

Hi EncycloPetey!

Over on Wikiversity I have been performing original research on the technical term dominant group.

When I was updating my links here and checking out other matters I ran across the following:

"On Wiktionary we ask "do we think it is the case?". This also means that whereas Wikipedia discourages original research and relies on the research of others, Wiktionary users themselves actively research terms and their meanings."

Although the term "dominant group" is proving to be an extensive research effort, I am hoping to get a few pointers from the term research that is going on here. Do you know which Wiktionary users are actively researching terms and their meanings and where these efforts may be viewed?

Wiktionary appears not to have any actual research pages so I am wondering if this is done off-line or in some special parlor, chat room, or user space.

Any help or comments you can provide are much appreciated. Marshallsumter 22:11, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Discussions on the finer points of meanings of terms normally take place in the Tea Room. However, WT:RFD and WT:RFV are both discussion areas for whether terms merit inclusion on Wiktionary, and so some discussion of meanings will happen there as well. --EncycloPetey 22:36, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

correus vocative

Hi EP. {{la-decl-2nd|corre}} generates *corree as the vocative singular of correus, but that doesn't look right. Wouldn't it be *corrē or *corrī or something? And if so, how would I show that in the table? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 16:24, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any special rules for situations like that. For second-declension nouns, the pattern is standard to have -e for the vocative, with the only exception being for nouns ending in -ius, which correus does not. Neither do I find anything in my grammars to suggest otherwise. --EncycloPetey 18:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, then; I'll leave it in there, but hold off on creating a noun-form entry for it. Looking at b.g.c., it would be extremely tedious to try to make an exhaustive search for its existence. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 22:25, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirect policy

Hello, you seem to think that my redirect usage is incorrect. I don't know Wiktionary policy, so I'd like to be enlightened on this subject.

I have been creating redirects because a Swadesh list that includes Rapa Nui utilizes a different orthography from standard, so I'm creating redirects so that links on the Swadesh list go to the actual words when I create pages for them. Is this acceptable? Metaknowledge 19:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Metaknowledge 20:15, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Adjectives

Could it be left for snow-covered for Spanish, since there is no page to show the different forms? --Britannic124 05:24, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Tabbed Languages

Back at the beginning of the tabbed languages trial, you wrote in the Beer parlour that TL was "horizontally compress[ing] all the content". Unless I'm misunderstanding what you meant by "compressing", this sounds like the Tabbed Languages stylesheets were failing to load. The stylesheets failing to load would have caused the "tabs" to be displayed as simple unstyled links, and the edit section buttons and other right-floated content to be pushed away from the right side of the screen. Is this in fact what was happening? --Yair rand 00:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. What's happening (it still is) is that the language names are huge and take up nearly a quarter or more of the horizontal display space. The page content is therefore all shoved into a smaller region and is horizontally compressed as a result. --EncycloPetey 16:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

How to create project pages?

How do I create a project page, particularly a page of requested entries such as Wiktionary:Requested entries (Azeri)? I placed an Azeri language request (kişmiş) in the unknown language Latin script section. --Lo Ximiendo 01:26, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't deal with those pages much, but I assume you could simply copy and modify the contents of an exsiting page of the same sort. It is generally only useful to do this if we have someone working in that language, and if there are a large number of requests for that language. --EncycloPetey 03:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I created it just in case a request comes a knocking. --Lo Ximiendo 04:55, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Now how do I make the shortcut? --Lo Ximiendo 05:07, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like you already figured that out. --EncycloPetey 16:53, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

sabal

I noticed that you reverted my edits to sabal, sable, and Rhymes:English:-eɪbəl.

The pronunciation of sabal that you added with this edit is not correct. The -bal part of sabal is not pronounced like the bal- of balance, which is pronounced /bæl/ in U.S. English. The -bal part of sabal is pronounced /bəl/, like -ble of stable.

Dtrebbien 22:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

AFAIK Dtrebbien is right; I heard sabal in conversation and was really suprised it was pronounced /seɪbəl/, but apparently it is. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:10, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not pronounced that way in the Southeastern US, nor in California, nor by any botanist I've worked with (nor by me). Nor is it given that pronunciation in Webster's 3rd ed. The pronunciation I added matches both my experience as a botanist in two parts of the US and matches Webster's. If there is another pronunciation (which is possible) then I've never heard it used. --EncycloPetey 02:12, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I am in the Southeastern U.S. and I heard it pronounced /ˈseɪbəl/ by an ISA Board Certified Master Arborist and by the arborists who volunteer at my county's cooperative extension office. I also went through the Project Gutenberg edition of Webster's 1913 looking for all similar pronunciations to the given Sa"bal, just to make sure that I got it right. The Webster's 1913 pronunciation Sa"bal is consistent with /ˈseɪbəl/. Dtrebbien 14:51, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Does that mean that Webster's completely restructured their pronunciation system for the 3rd edition then? The pronunciation they give is /ˈsāˌbal/, which uses a for the second syllable, as you found in the 1913 edition. But according to their pronunciation key, that symbol is the sound in "map", which is IPA /æ/ (the sound I had). --EncycloPetey 02:59, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure, as I do not have access to Webster's 3rd. I have a copy of the Barnes & Noble edition of an adaptation of Webster's 2nd, but it does not have an entry for sabal.

Here are some similar pronunciations from the Project Gutenberg edition of Webster's 1913:

• A lot of words ending with -al. E.g.: coastal Coast"al and verbal Ver"bal
• herald Her"ald
• scarab Scar"ab

What is the pronunciation of verbal in Webster's 3rd?

It seems that vowel sounds /eɪ/ and /æ/ are represented by *a in Webster's 1913. E.g. hereafter Here*aft"er. Then again, there isn't a consistent distinction between "a and *a.

Dtrebbien 15:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, the information you're looking at is the stress in the headword form, not the pronunciation. It appears that the Gutenberg copy does not include the pronunciation information, possibly because of the special characters that cannot be repoduced in standard text. --EncycloPetey 04:38, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Two parts of speech

Hello! I consider your edit here as vandalism [6]. It's clearly not two parts of speech. If you'd like to gainsay me on that, please take it to the talkpage and do not engage in any edit warring. Thank you 173.0.254.229 17:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand your objection. Your say that it's NOT two parts of speech, but you object to consolidating the two sections. That makes no sense to me. --EncycloPetey 02:35, 8 February 2012 (UTC)