User talk:Fido

Hi Fido,

If you use Belgien in a sentence like ... des Belgiens ... or a better example where you force an article or an adjective to accord with it Das neue Belgien, Wouldn't you say that it has the neutral gender? http://www.google.be/search?hl=nl&q=%22das+neue+Belgien%22&btnG=Zoeken&meta= Polyglot 16:46, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes definately. However this is not due the gender. In your example it is necessary to use an article. In those cases the neutral form is used. (...in der Hinsicht ist diese neue Kanzlei auch symbolisch für das neue Belgien). If you don't use neue in this sentence than the article is not used, resulting in ...symbolisch fuer Belgien.

To back my argument up compare the Belgien entry of leo [1] with the entry for Ukraine[2]. While the german wiktionary does not specify no article for Belgien [3] it does so explicitly for Deutschland. [4]. The Duden (the main german dictonary) defines Belgien as: "Belgien;-s: Staat in Westeuropa" not mentioning anything about a gender. Whereas it defines Ukraine as: "Ukraine, die; Staat im Suedwesten Osteuropas;"

If a country does not have a gender in german, than the neutral form is used. Fido 17:44, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It breaks the trick that I use to determine the gender of a word... So I'm not very happy with it. But I guess I'll have to learn to live with it. The problem is that this means I cannot forego a dictionary to know for sure about the gender of a word. That's problematic as it turns something that should have been simple into a very time intensive chore. Polyglot 22:13, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well at least it's only for proper nouns. But I can see your problem. Fido 13:23, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Template:Fr

Hi there. May I inquire as to why you changed this template? --Connel MacKenzie 16:12, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

AFAIK this template is used for the translation tables. AFAIK the current policy of Wiktionary is the following: "As a broad rule, the names of languages that are named after the country where they are spoken should not be wikified." [5] Further the Template_talk:Fr page has an unanswered comment by Paul G referring to this policy, dating back to November 2004. For those reasons I assumed that the last edit(s) where made in error, thus reverting to the old version by Paul G. If I am in error, I'm very sorry and hope that you still understand my reasoning. Fido 16:25, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Fido, your reasoning is sound. Thank you for informing me. Although I've been recently bequeathed with the sysop privs, I really am still relatively new. I am very glad I did not revert your reversion, but instead asked. That is an easily comprehensible rule; I am embarrassed that I missed it - thank you for pointing it out. Yes, that template is used for translation tables. --Connel MacKenzie 06:04, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)