User talk:Ian Burnet

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Templates

Hi there. There is no need to include the "Template:" term. The twiddly brackets automatically get the content from the Template address space - see mentar. SemperBlotto 15:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I wish I knew that earlier, but I'll do that from now on. Ian Burnet 15:17, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:es-conj-ir (i-í)

I saw your edit. Looks mostly fine, but I was wondering why you changed the Categorization to reunir at the bottomw with: <noinclude>[[Category:Spanish conjugation templates|ir (reunir)]]</noinclude>? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:16, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

As I said in my comment, I started over using the page Template:es-conj-ir (u-ú), because the original page was made only for ibir. I tried to make the new page resemble the old one in all other respects, but that change you noticed was an accidental artifact of the other page. I have now restored the old categorization, though I'm not sure exactly why it is there anyway. Is that just the name for the model verb? Ian Burnet 18:26, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. It's the "sort key" so that the template in its category (not the pages that use the template and their categories) is sorted appropriately. Just a question, do you know of any verbs that would use this template that don't end in -ibir? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 15:23, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, ok. And no, I don't. I did it for the sake of standardization. I was working on verbs ending in iar that had a dilemma involving that problem (only for the ar page with the stem change). I was planning on borrowing some of the code until I saw that its structure didn't match the title, so I just figured I might as well update it. The old format worked just fine when the title specifically referred to ibir, but since the title was changed, the template should be able to do what its title implies. It may not end up being used another way, but I can't be sure, since there are many odd verbs that haven't been added yet. If not, the code might still be useful. Anyway, thanks for the correction. Ian Burnet 15:48, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Spanish noun template

You may not have noticed that many of the Spanish nouns that you have entered display an incorrect plural. The Spanish noun templates only add an -s and make no other change. If the plural requires an -es, or a change in accentuation, or has multiple words, then you have to specify the correct plural in the template, like this: abstención: {{es-noun-f|pl=abstensiones}}; accidente de tráfico: {{es-noun-m|pl=accidentes de tráfico}}; habilidad: {{es-noun-f|pl=habilidades}}. Probably about half of all noun entries will need to have the plural specified this way.

Also, nouns that have both genders, such as most of those that end in -ista, take the argument mf: egoísta: {{es-noun-mf}}.

I have tried to go back and correct the ones that you have entered. I may have missed a few. —Stephen 19:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was aware of this. Pluralization was not one of my priorities. I would have preferred that none be displayed, but I did want the gender info so I left it as is. Ian Burnet 20:34, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

piar

I see in piar that one of the negatives carries two accent marks. Also, I’m pretty certain that the RAE no long allows accent marks on single syllable verb forms such as pió and fió. —Stephen 22:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. The former was a typo. However, neither pió (pee-YO) nor fió (fee-YO) are single syllables, neither are any other of the conjugations of piar. Even if this were the case, it would be a problem inherent of all templates since they work merely by outputting phrases, regardless of how many syllables ares present (of course, a feature to support it could be added, but it would be a large change on conjugation template use). Ian Burnet 23:43, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

The forms fío ('feeyo) and pío ('peeyo) are bisyllabic, but fió (fyo) and pió (pyo) are single syllables. Spanish does not have the sound eeyó. The vowels a-e-o are strong vowels, and i-u are weak vowels. Two weak vowels together are iu (yoo) or ui (wee), or, in two syllables, íu (éeoo) or úi (úuee). There is no difference whatsoever in the pronunciation of iú and iu (yoo), or in uí and ui (wee). The accented spellings of the monosyllables iú and uí are only allowed in polysyllabic words where the accented syllable is irregular.

This isn’t a problem inherent to all templates, but only those that are being used for monosyllabic words (such as fiar) as well as polysyllabic (confiar). There are only a very few of these, and they either need a separate template for the monosyllable word (fiar, piar), or they need additional code in the template to handle this. I would add the code myself, but I am a linguist, not a programmer. I know what it’s supposed to do but not how to make it work. —Stephen 00:50, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I see. I was not aware of this. In light of this, such a feature would be beneficial. However, when I said it was inherent to all templates, I meant it from the programming standpoint and not the linguistic. Obviously it is not an issue with most conjugations, but no templates are designed with a way to correct it (that I know of) because the number of syllables is never conveyed to any conjugation template. It could be implemented by having yet another set of templates for single syllable verbs, but the quantity of templates is fairly unmanageable already, so it would be better to have an optional argument to signal this issue. However, I see this issue as fairly slight and not worth the great effort it would take to fix. If you would like to suggest that such a development be implemented, I suggest you post it at Wiktionary talk:About Spanish rather than my talk page as it is neither a result of my actions nor an action I currently have the technical knowledge to rectify. Ian Burnet 01:12, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

No, I’ve been aware of the problem here for several years. The only solutions that I have been able to figure out are (1) to make a separate template for the few monosyllabic verbs (each template would be used only one time), or (2) to simply put the table right in the respective page. I suppose that a single-use template would be preferrable, because otherwise a table in the page would eventually be replaced by someone with the wrong template. —Stephen 02:40, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Like I said, we have way too many templates already and others (myself included) are in the process of (on planning to be) updating them to be more inclusive, which will be far more time consuming with the existence of unnecessary duplicates. Putting the entire conjugation table on a page is an equally unacceptable solution, as it becomes the dominant feature of the code and becomes more likely to be edited unintentionally. What you are talking about can be implemented on existing templates- it simply will take extra programming (as I explained above, it will require new arguments to be accepted for these cases). The problem will be dealt with eventually, but in the mean time please do not implement the above solutions as they create more problems than they fix. But as I said already, if you are interested in getting this problem fixed, and especially if you have been for several years, you should be discussing it with the community. Ian Burnet 11:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I just added an optional parameter to {{es-conj-ar (i-í)}} so that it conjugates those correctly. Just add mono=y to the calls. I updated those I could find that were using the template. It was quite easy to add. Which other templates should be changed as well? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 17:38, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Another one is reír, where "rió" should read "rio". —Stephen 04:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Template changed in the same manner (fixed freír as well as). --Bequw → ¢ • τ 18:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)