User talk:Samatics

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Latest comment: 1 year ago by Samatics in topic Format and plurals
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Enjoy your stay at Wiktionary! Acolyte of Ice (talk) 09:30, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Gungbe language[edit]

Please learn to use wiki templates for things such as headwords and definitions. Also, what is this "Gungbe" language? We don't seem to have a category for it yet, what is its ISO language code? Acolyte of Ice (talk) 09:31, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi @Acolyte of Ice, the Gungbe (or Gun) language has the ISO language code "guw". Thanks.-- Samatics (talk) 09:41, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
I see. Well, it turns out we already have some entries for this language, but we are using the name "Gun" instead. Please update the entries you have made. Also, for examples of using the various templates required you can look at the Gun section of the agasa entry. Acolyte of Ice (talk) 09:54, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Is it possible to use "Gungbe" instead of "Gun"? Samatics (talk) 10:00, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Pinging @Egbingíga to see if they have thoughts on the language name, as they are the one who appears to have created some of our preexisting Gun/Gungbe entries. Acolyte of Ice (talk) 10:07, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
The language uses "Gungbe" on the language page links on all Wikipedia. It now has an existing wikis i.e guwwiki and guwwiktionary. For uniformity, it's easier for locals to identify with the local name of the language which is "Gungbe". Thanks.-- Samatics (talk) 10:13, 12 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Really, I have no problem with either name, you may see it incorrectly written as Goun, Ogu, Egun, and Ogugbe as many speakers aren't educated with the proper orthography of the language, in addition to spoken varition between Gungbe speaking communities. However, Gungbe is the name for the language (Gun being the Gun culture/people/etc. and gbe meaning language). Related languages such as Fongbe and Evegbe are written as such on here, so maybe Gungbe could follow that nomenclature? Egbingíga (talk) 22:23, 15 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Tones for Gungbe[edit]

Hey @Samatics 👋🏿 I didn't even notice all of the pages you've been creating for Gungbe, thanks for adding them!!! I'm not Gun myself, I'm Yorùbá, but I've been studying Gungbe for a while now for fun and one thing I've noticed with Gungbe, much like with Yorùbá, is the incorrect usage of tones on words, or more so lack thereof. For the pages that I've created thus far much of the knowledge in terms of vocabulary has come from academic papers by Aboh Enoch and Hounkpati Capo to ensure the language is written properly, sometimes when I'm not sure of tone I check the Fongbe dictionary to be able to write with tones. I've been taking a look at your pages and I've noticed you write with the Yorùbá-based orthography for Gungbe which is fine, but I was wondering if you'd be able to add tone to the words in order for them to complete. Egbingíga (talk) 07:01, 17 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks @Egbingíga for your efforts in Gungbe. You have done wonderfully well. You are right about writing with the Yoruba-based orthography of Gungbe. Unlike Yoruba, our first vowel sound of a word is always flat. e.g azán /ā.zã́/(day). Gungbe is not as heavily toned as Yoruba. Some words may be completely flat. Where tone is necessary, it will be added to the words. Thanks.-- Samatics (talk) 07:45, 17 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Gungbe is quite heavily toned from the academic articles and videos, I've seen of the language. I'll link some papers below.
Due to the fact that the written lexicon of Gungbe is heavily influenced from the 1923 Bible that codified incorrect spelling en masse, as a result of a lack of tones, in addition to the Yorùbá-orthography for Gungbe (which fails to transcribe sounds in Gungbe), most resources online for the language fail to adequately transcribe the language.
  1. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED420209.pdf
  2. https://www.academia.edu/7150774/Bare_noun_phrases_in_Haitian_Creole_and_Gungbe
  3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296701658_Functional_verbs_in_Gungbe_the_case_of_inherent_complement_verbs
  4. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Topics_in_Kwa_Syntax/Eiycx0xz6w8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=gungbe&pg=PA23&printsec=frontcover
Egbingíga (talk) 21:48, 17 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the pointers @Egbingíga. Here is what I mean from the three words below:
  1. Owhè....sun
  2. Owhé....house
  3. Owhe...year
Notice that all three words are not toned on the starting vowel sounds. That's how all gungbe words are. I see from the links shared that the Fongbe orthography is closely used. I mainly use the orthography that is closely related to the Yoruba orthography.
Samatics (talk) 22:06, 17 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
They are according to the sources that I sent and many others, but what we could do here is write the non-toned affix (o vs. ò) version as an "alternative form". The orthography used for Gungbe in Benin is actually the orthography used for all languages in Benin created by the government of Benin. Yorùbá uses the same orthography as well in Benin.
As for those words:
  1. Òhwè/Òwhè/Hwè/Whè - Sun
  2. Òxwé/Òwhé/Xwé/Whé - House
  3. Òxwè/Òwhè/Xwè/Whè - Year
I can add ohwè/owhè, oxwé/owhé, and oxwè/owhè as per your suggestion.
Also, just to make the orthography differences between Benin and Nigeria clear:
Benin - Nigeria
a - a
b - b
c - ṣ
d - d
ɖ - d
e - e
ɛ - ẹ
f - f
g - g
gb - gb
h - h
hw - wh
i - i
j - j
k - k
kp - p
l - l
m - m
n - n
ny - y_n
o - o
ɔ - ọ
r - r
s - s
t - t
u - u
v - v
w - w
x - h
xw - wh/wl
y - y
z - z Egbingíga (talk) 00:24, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the orthography listing @Egbingíga. You could get from the list of words you shared that even when the leading vowel sound (Ò) is lost in the last two words in each example, the meaning of the words remain the same in both orthographies. It so happens when speaking and it's common to most words. That partly explains why we don't tone the leading vowel sound. Thanks. Samatics (talk) 04:16, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for that clarification! Here is the "whe" page and the variations listed under "alternative forms": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whe#Gun Egbingíga (talk) 07:36, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Thanks @Egbingíga, I'll make correction to the alternative form for "owhe" (year) in the link shared. The word remains flat (no tone). That's the distinction from "sun". Thank you so much! Samatics (talk) 07:55, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
Um, I'm pretty sure it's correct. The difference is in the xw vs. hw which isn't present in the Yorùbá based orthography as both are represented as wh even though they are different sounds.
Sun - ɣʷè - whè/hwè
Year - xʷè - whè/xwè Egbingíga (talk) 08:12, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply
@Egbingíga please Check: whè (Sun) and whè (Year) in the example above, you will notice you are pointing to the same word, "Sun". Notice the presence of "è" in both words you shared. In spoken form, it's actually "whè (owhè)" for "sun" and "whe (owhe)" for "year". I'm laying emphasis on the tone of the vowel sound ("e"). Samatics (talk) 08:36, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

I think the mix-up here is due to the Yorùbá-based orthography. It doesn't represent sounds correctly. In Benin, it's xwè vs. hwè, that adequately represents the sounds of the language. In Nigeria, both of those different sounds are written the same way as "wh". The tone on the vowel is the same. Egbingíga (talk) 19:59, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Even Hounkpati Capo's paper on orthography addresses the inadequacy of the Yorùbá-based orthography. Egbingíga (talk) 20:02, 18 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Format and plurals[edit]

Hello! Please see the change I made to adadoji and other pages: diff. "Noun form" is only for plurals and other inflections, but something defined as "toilet" is definitely a noun. I'll take care of any Gun pages with the wrong format.

Also, because the plural marker for (I'm guessing most or all) Gun nouns is a separate word, I believe pages like "abò lẹ" shouldn't be created. I'm not 100% sure about that, so I'd appreciate comments from speakers of related languages on how they handle this issue. Ultimateria (talk) 04:29, 22 September 2022 (UTC)Reply

Thanks @Ultimateria, you are right from your explanation about the use of "noun form" and "noun".
1. adadoji (toilet)
2. adadoji lẹ or adadoji-lẹ or adadojilẹ (toilets)
3. adadoji yọyọ lẹ (new toilets)
All the three forms in example 2 are correct. But in Gun, the plural marker (lẹ) can be separated to add a qualifier to the noun (example 3). In fact, you won't notice a separation in the plural form when spoken (example 2 sounds similar). That explains why I created separate entries for the singular ("noun") and the plural ("noun form") of an entry.
-- Samatics (talk) 05:59, 22 September 2022 (UTC)Reply