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 Welcome to the Information desk! This room is where both newcomers and seasoned veterans can ask minor, one-off questions, request assistance or post miscellaneous ideas that don’t fit in any of the other rooms. Start a new topic (by clicking on the “+” tab), and someone will attempt to answer your questions. Please keep in mind the rules of discussion: remain civil, don’t make personal attacks, don’t change other people’s posts, and sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~), code which produces your signature (as specified in “my preferences”), followed by a UTC timestamp.

Archives

[edit] January 2009

[edit] How do I track changes made to an entry?

I edited the etymology of "abet" and found my edit deleted within a day. How may I track the change and, ultimately, contact the person(s) who deleted the change so we can discuss that change? Thanks. craigsalvay

Just click on the "history" tab at the top of the entry and the changes will appear, together with (linked) information who made them. --Duncan 18:54, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Since you have an account, you can just click the tab at the top that says "watch". However, in this case I'm inclined to agree with the reversion; a direct derivation from Hebrew is an extraordinary claim which would require extraordinary evidence. -- Visviva 04:13, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
I completely agree with Visviva. When one is claiming a non-evident etymological connection between distant languages, such as English and any non-Germanic or non-Romance language, one is supposed to show evidence/reliable sources/ in order to achieve cogency and persuasion. Evidently this is not the case in abet. Bogorm 12:46, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Contacting the person is not exigent, editing Talk:abet should suffice, that is its purpose. Bogorm 12:48, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Locking User Pages

I don't know how to lock pages (or if it is even possible by a non-administator) and I would request to have my User Page;User:Dictionman locked from editting from any other user (exept me and the administrators) from editting my profile, as an anonymous user continues to vandalize my User page. --Dictionman 01:15, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Page protection is a sysop only function. Since there has only been one instance of vandalism, I suggest you leave it unless if becomes a trend. There is no way (that I'm aware of, anyway) to allow exceptions, so if I were to protect your page, you wouldn't be able to edit it, which would obviously be a hassle. However, if you have further problems, by all means contact any admin, and they can protect it for you. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 02:14, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Hang on a sec Atelaes, if this happens again can't you get a indefinite edit block for the page (for unregistered users only)? 50 Xylophone Players talk 15:47, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Diacritics and pronunciation for Spanish and Tagalog?

Is there an existing appendix explaining how the diacritics on Sp and Phil. language words work? I've searched around; if there is, it does a good job at eluding me. :P

What I plan is to have diacritic versions of a Philippine word to serve as its pronunciation. An entry would look like this (prospective pronunciation for bayanihan):

===Pronunciation===

  • IPA: /ba.ya'ni.han/

* bayaníhan

There are two other diacritics, which makes them á, à, and â. Basically, these three are all that's needed to pronounce Tagalog words; other pronunciation info could be looked into at an upcoming Wiktionary:About Tagalog. Spanish words here don't do this, so I don't know if it's a good idea. I'm hoping for:

===Pronunciation===

  • IPA: /ba.ya'ni.han/

* { { Tagalog diacritic } } bayaníhan -- new tag!

The IPA is to still be universal, while the latter is specifically for Tagalog and Spanish.

Amicably, Icqgirl 11:03, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Three things:
  1. You've used an apostrophe instead of a stress mark. A primary stress mark in IPA is added using ˈ, which is a character available under the "IPA" section of the Edittools, which is visible below any edit window. It has a drop-down menu allowing you to select from several scripts and character sets. You can probably find the various diacritical characters you're looking for there under Latin/Roman.
  2. Are you sure the IPA is correct that you've given? The [y] in IPA is a vowel. Based on the Tagalog article at Wikipedia, I'm assuming that the letter y is pronounced /j/ in Tagalog.
  3. For Tagalog, I assume you're intending to add a version marked with a diacritical to serve as a simplified pronunciation for people who already know the basic phonemes. Our Italian entries are now doing this, because that's how Italian dictionaries mark the stress. It should not require a template, unless you mean creating a template that simply identifies that this is what the diacritical version represents, which would be a good idea. However, I'm really not sure what it is you're proposing to add for the Spanish words. The Spanish words have their accents in the standard written forms anyway, so there would be no reason to duplicate this..
--EncycloPetey 18:58, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for the IPA entries; I'm still learning the ropes. I'll correct them. Thanks for pointing my mistakes out. It does sound like /j/ is the character.
You hit the mark. Tagalog dictionaries provide the simplest way to note stress, and I want to copy that here as it seems to be most suitable for the language, and easier to read for those who have a grasp of its pronunciation. A template is called for, to serve as a link explaining how the marks work, for identification, and organization (listing down "marked" words in a category somewhere). What do you think would be a suitable name? Is tl-pron fine?
Right, Spanish words do use the stress marks already. Silly me.
Thanks again, EP.

Icqgirl 17:41, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

The name {tl-pron} is the expected name for a template used to make the inflection line of a Tagalog pronoun. I recommend {tl-stress} instead, since that is (after all) what the template is really designed to show. --EncycloPetey 19:57, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey EP, I found your entry on buwan. Below the ==Noun== code there's the word with a diacritic. It seems more convenient to do such to all Tagalog words instead than having to try start and implement a new template (tl stress) for it. What do you think? It would just have to be noted that diacritics are not used in everyday writing. Icqgirl 10:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It's been decided that ===Alternate forms=== be used. --Icqgirl 07:40, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Words of the year ... .some random data

The transparent hoax that is the "Global Language Monitor" was making the rounds of news shows a little while back with the words of the year for 2008. It's a great concept, somewhat weakened in the execution by the fact that the words in question were obviously cherry-picked to entertain the media. (I defy anyone to come up with a plausible algorithm and data set that yields "greenwashing" as a keyword for 2008.)

Anyway, just for fun I ran Antconc over the last two years of the New York Times to find the words that were most distinctively frequent in that publication in 2008 as opposed to 2007. I thought folks might be interested in the results; at least they show what words have been salient in the (US) public discourse lately. The lowercase word forms with a log-likelihood keyness exceeding 1000 were:

  1. crisis
  2. bailout
  3. economy
  4. financial
  5. campaign
  6. banks
  7. recession
  8. economic
  9. voters
  10. stimulus
  11. prices
  12. election

(in that order). No surprises there... The top 10 uppercase words were Obama, McCain, Palin, Barack, Clinton, Paterson, Olympic, Favre, Olympics and Beijing. No scientific validity is claimed for any of this, though I do note that this list is at least based on, you know, data, rather than some guy in Texas spinning around in his chair.

BTW, I'm extremely impressed with Antconc's performance here -- tasked with processing two corpora of more than 25 million words each, it did not hiccup or crash, though it did take about an hour to complete the task. Definitely the best free desktop concordancer you're likely to find. -- Visviva 07:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Is there a SUL Box template as in en.wiki?

Is there something like w:en:Template:SUL Box here in english wiktionary? --Wallach2008 20:38, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't think so, just put {{wikipedia}} on your userpage. Conrad.Irwin 20:56, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
The SUL Box looks like a particularly useful template. We ought to consider having it here. --EncycloPetey 21:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
See WT:UBV.—msh210℠ 21:14, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] {{g}}

Is there something like this for declension? 50 Xylophone Players talk 15:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

You mean, like a "Category:Language_name words lacking inflection information"? I don't think so, no. Inflection information is a lot less standard across languages than gender; I think we'd only want this sort of category for languages where we have the infrastructure for editors to add that inflection information (fairly) easily. —RuakhTALK 19:44, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
You can use {{attention|XX|can you add declension?}}, where XX is the language code. It works well with Russian, possibly also with Armenian, Finnish and Hungarian (but I’m only sure of the case with Russian). —Stephen 19:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
Okay, thanks Stephen. 50 Xylophone Players talk 19:52, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
That (what Ruakh said) said, you can, if you foresee lots of use for it, invent a language-specific category for the language of your choosing, e.g. Category:Hebrew requests for verb conjugation table, categorize that category into Category:Requests (Hebrew) (e.g.), and add the category to entries (manually or, if there's some need for it, via a template). But {{attention}} exists, its categories are watched, and it should do the trick. Note incidentally the existence of {{inflreq}}, but that's meant for requesting a specific form, not a whole table.—msh210℠ 20:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Extra chars in editTools

Is it possible to add a custom menu item in the editTools drop-down menu, like on WP. I tried "window.charinsertCustom" in monobook.js without success. Some words in Old Norse has a "ǫ", and I always forget where I used it last time. So i would like to add an item for Old Norse to the list. – Leo Laursen – (talk · contribs) 17:29, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

You can create a custom list of items by creating a User:Your Name/edittools file. You can look at mine as an example. You also have to adjust your monobook, but I don't recall pecisely how. However, User:Conrad.Irwin should know, since he set up this feature. --EncycloPetey 02:12, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Abrasion/Attrition in geographic erosion - what is the difference?

How would you describe the distinction between Abrasion/Attrition in geographic erosion? —This unsigned comment was added by 213.36.237.27 (talk • contribs).

I think this example using a river sums it up: With abrasion the river uses its load to wear away its beds and banks (through friction), making itself deeper and wider. With attrition, however, the load is wearing itself away. 50 Xylophone Players talk 01:34, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Editing with a slow connection

I am editing with a slow connection at the moment, is there a way I can stop all the characters and templates of various languages from loading each time I edit a page? It is terribly slow for me on this connection, and annoying to wait whilst one line of useless random letters after another unfolds. Kaixinguo 23:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no. I have had the same problem from some computers, and agree that it has become a problem. However, there has been a tendency over the past few years to add everything that anyone would ever want to insert into the Edittools. The Grease Pit would be a better place to raise this issue, since it is a technical one. --EncycloPetey 02:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Spiral Walkway

I really need to know what a spiral walk way is called usually used at sporting stadiums to let alot of people leave quickly. I thought it was called a vomitron but clearly not. Can someone please help me?? —This comment was unsigned.

I imagine you're thinking of the word vomitorium, which does fit, but is liable to be misunderstood. —RuakhTALK 02:29, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] IPA?

At the wikipedia article w:Knowth I'd like to add the IPA pronounciation. I'm told the pronounciation is "Like the Engish word "now" with a 'th' on the end, more or less." Could someone put that in IPA for me, please? RJFJR 16:14, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

spelling for 'challis' ? or , as in 'cup of Christ"

See chalice. —Stephen 18:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] License question: including wiktionary entries in a shareware product

I would like to include wiktionary entries in a shareware product but was wondering about the licensing issues.

Is this the best forum to discuss this? If so I will expand my queries anon. If not could someone please point me to the best place?

See Wiktionary:Copyrights#Users.27_rights_and_obligations. In principle there should be no problem, but any derivative work must also be GFDL-licensed (this is some seriously retarded legalistic crap IMO). So it probably depends on exactly how you want to use the entries -- just a verbatim inclusion with the GFDL attached should be no problem, but if you're going to reformat or rewrite them in some way, that would also need to be released under the GFDL. Anyway, IANAL. -- Visviva 06:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. As I want to display it in desktop software I want to convert it (to RTF so I can use a RichEdit control), and probably edit it down. So I think rather than chase whoever up for definitive legal judgement I'll just do it (and credit Wiktionary and provide the RTF (under the GFDL as you say) on the web somewhere as I interpret the GFDL).

[edit] founder/floundering

excellent usage note, great help with something/a topic that genuinely has been confusing to me for the longest time, thank you so much!!

[See ? If I have something positive to say per any observation of mine, I will do so too! Winking smiley

[Though I still not understand why instead of providing a clear and concise and conscript explanation so many definitions opt for an assembly of synonyms instead, isn't the synonym section intended for that ? Would this be something that would be worth while to be discussed in the beer parlor?I definitely think it is something that defines in its own right the accessibility and usability of the English wictionary say for non-native speakers; English bein' the like de facto world language, thus I'd foresee that the English version will become the most extensive and exhaustiv one among the wictionaries, already sheerly by the volume of possible contributors [say 3,000,000,000 or so], and to be fair to that part of the users and contributors, it should also take into account this very majority constituted by non-native users, among the population able to use English, in its [Wiktionary's] construction and set up!

[am I mistaken, or is it easier for educated native speakers to glean the meaning of a definition from a group of synonyms? This is a sincere question, I would assume that say, a teenager in a steep learning curve in matters acquiring new vocabulary would also benefit from an explanation- style definition, as in my experience non-native speakers do, but how that looks for native speakers with an already well established and expensive vocabulary, I just don't know for sure, perhaps synonyms for such users are a convenient shortcut, on the other hand, even when in the beginning asking for some adaption time, I would assume that the latter population of users might be as well served by explanation- style definitions as by synonym- based ones; as there isnt anybody serious and engaged enough available in my direct physical surroundings to ask, thank you so much in advance for your invaluable feedback Wiktionarian community!!

Yes, this is da [please allow me that liberty with the definite article for just once in this essay smiley] part of me that holds an educational degree speaking, and as such, users and contributors with such a background should only be considered and constitute an enrichment for the wictionary community in my view! [but read about W. M. f. and you will find very similar things being said like that with every new surge of new users and contributors, in their experience the various projects only benefit and progress, and to me such makes sense, apart from that they presented this as a fact, which they mentioned in my impression to convince the "oldbies" about the advantages of new blood coming in, despite the initial perceived disturbances and training/guiding/help effort required]

Thank you so much for reading till here!!!--史凡 17:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New entry blues

I found the new entry templates hard to comprehend, and the tutorials and "help" to be of very little such. Anyway, I managed to create a new entry for a verb. The word is crackelate.

1)I don't agree with the automatically generated "present participle" and "simple past and past participle". How can I edit/modify these forms?

2)My main entry seems to have auto generated past tenses, which are covered in my main entry, but is now listed in the auto generated section, as non existing entries. How can I make these "not yet written" tenses/entries point at my original posting?

Rkov 20:42, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I’m assuming {{en-verb}} gave you something like:
to crackelate (third-person singular simple present crackelates, present participle crackelateing, simple past and past participle crackelateed)
This can be solved by explicitly stating the verb’s entire conjugation, expressed in wikicode thus:
{{en-verb|crackelates|crackelating|crackelated}}
Which renders:
to crackelate (third-person singular simple present crackelates, present participle crackelating, simple past and past participle crackelated)
I don’t really understand your second quæstion / point. Nota WT:ELE and that most of the information about a word is given at its lemma; the inflexions are also given entries, but they tend to be stubs with purely grammatical definitions. The non-infinitive forms of crackelate would be defined as:
  1. crackelates — “Third-person singular simple present indicative form of crackelate.”
  2. crackelating — “Present participle of crackelate.”
  3. crackelated — “Simple past tense and past participle of crackelate.”
Unfortunately, your original entry was deleted as a præsumed protologism. (All the words that Wiktionary includes, at least in principle, need to satisfy our criteria for inclusion — which crackelate, admittedly, prima facie does not do.) I have since looked for some citations to back up this word. It’s pretty rare, but I managed to find about four; I say about four because only two are clearly of a verb use, whilst one seems to be of an adjective which only looks like a verb form (crackelated), and another is of a plural nominalisation (crackelations). I’m not sure whether so little evidence would be enough to satisfy the criteria for inclusion; give it a shot — maybe the closely-related adjective and noun will be accepted in pursuance of the term’s verification. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:38, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Question

What is it called when you swop the first letter of two words. —This comment was unsigned.

A spoonerism. -- Visviva 08:35, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Changing the "Category" of a word

I added a Spanish noun, but the "category" had defaulted to "English" and I don't know how to change it...

What Spanish noun are you speaking of? We have to see how you did it before we can tell you what’s happening. —Stephen 16:17, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
The words were diablura and travesura. The problem was that you used the English noun template, instead of one of the Spanish noun templates. The prefix (en- or es-) names the language of the template you are using. For Spanish nouns, we currently use the templates {{es-noun-m}} and {{es-noun-f}}. --EncycloPetey 16:24, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Way to fetch just the source text of a page

I'm using Wiktionary as part of a dictionary program, but I'm hesitant that fetching an entire HTML page for every search is wasteful. Is then any way (like a PHP title=title&action=getSource) to fetch only the plaintext source of an article? Thanks --Estemi 23:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?action=raw&title=something . However, if you are doing anything serious, it's recommend that you download the XML dumps so that you don't hammer our servers. You may also be interested in the API if you are doing more than just the entry text. Conrad.Irwin 00:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Thank you. Estemi 00:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


[edit] hungarian wiktionary

The Hungarian wiktionary are 100000 articles. I ask one of the admistrators to transfer it in the 10000+ the Hungarian wiktionary at the wiktionary.org. Thank you! Hi, Einstein2 from the Hungarian wiktionary.

[edit] WOTD by e-mail

Hi all. Do we yet have a function that automatically sends Wiktionary’s Words of the Day to subscribers’ e-mail accounts? If we don’t, how feasible would it be to create one? † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:58, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Retitle?

Is retitle a real English word? There is an entry, but I think that it is a mistranslation from another language. I did not find the word in The OED, Miriam Webster, or Chambers.

Hi Bob & Tom. Teri here. First-time caller. .... Wait .. uh ..

[edit] Religion in the Middle East

I'd love some help with what I am trying to do. I am currently reading a book titled "The Final Move Beyond Iraq" (The Final solutions while the world sleeps) by Mike Evans.

What I want to do is create a chart mapping who is who in this book. ie

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - president of Iran -Isser Harel - founder of Mossad, Isreal's intelligence agency Moshe Ya'alon - - retired Lt. General Isreal Defence Forces

I want to create a chart document which shows & tells me which religeous group inhabits which areas in the middle east, who the respective leaders are.... I need something to use a learning aid that is visual ... maybe even color coded, to learn and remember who all the 'players' are. I can't pronounce the names of the people and towns yet along remember them, so I'm trying to create a learning board for me. I'd want to see current boundaries, past boundaries, proposed etc. I guess I need an "ABC's" of the middle east et al. Can anyone help? It should probably resemble a family tree in some ways. I just gotta have a visual aid or I'll never keep all this data in my brain cells that are loosing connective pathways at a rapid speed.

Molto gracia!

See w:Religion in the Middle East. —Stephen 21:10, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] slumlord

the word slumlord. i feel it is not right. i believe a slumlord is someone who rents out bad broken down or poor condition housing. but slumlord stats bad too. but why does it mean he is a bad landlord?

i know a good slumlord. he gets screwed on his rent all the time and never kicks out his tenants always makes excuses for them how they are down on there luck. so why should he be generlized as a bad landlord or slum lord. what if i owned a big beautiful house and never did anything for my tenants? am i a slumlord or a bad landlord?

We just describe how people use words, which certainly can be unfair. DCDuring TALK 17:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 'Parthian shots' and 'parting shots'

Parthian shots - were made off horseback, using arrows, over the hindquarters, at the enemy, from which they were making distance between. Parting shots - in conversation is a usually aggressive comment made at the 'enemy' when leaving them or the subject at hand, of which there was some disagreement.

What's the difference? Are they related somehow?

P.S. Sorry about my definitions. But I didn't have an effective dictionary close handy.

parting shot probably derives from Parthian shot and they have similar meanings. A parting shot is a figure of speech for the heated last word in a testy argument; a Parthian shot is used literally to refer to the tactics of Parthian mounted archers, who would fire a salvo of arrows at the enemy, then move quickly out of range. —Stephen 17:36, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Which dump contains the actual words and definitions?

This is my first post so forgive me if I am not doing this correctly. I am a newbie working with a developer to assemble a list of plural forms for a database we're building. We downloaded a dump only to find that the words and definitions were not contained in the tables. Which dump has the words, definitions, synonyms etc...?

Is it one of the dumps on this page? http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/20081214/

More recent is one of the ones on http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/20090203/, and he one that's every entry, including definitions, is pages-articles (I think).—msh210℠ 17:59, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Non-English definitions

In geled, I gave the definition rank and specified the sense (The lines or rows of people in an organization). An editor changed the text to (A line or row of people, mostly about soldiers). That makes it less clear what sense is referenced, but may be better as a definition. What is the best practice for specifying senses in foreign language entries? – Leo Laursen – (talk · contribs) 10:48, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

If the modification is correct, and this word is used mostly in reference to soldiers, I would personally lean toward one of these:
  1. (military) ranks (the lines or rows of people in an organization)
  2. The ranks of an organization, especially a military one
If the word is distinct enough in meaning that an English gloss or glosses are not sufficient, then there isn't really any getting around having a real definition IMO.
Complicating the matter, I have no idea why that sense is at rank rather than ranks; it's even defined as plural. Does the same situation apply to the Danish word, or is geled normally used in the singular? -- Visviva 11:35, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
I prefer something slightly more gloss-y:
  1. (military) ranks (rows of people)
  2. ranks (of an organisation, hierarchy etc.)
But this probably just demonstrates that we don't have a clear consensus on this sort of thing yet :) Ƿidsiþ 11:40, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
"Geled" is usually translated as rank, but the basic meaning is a disciplined line of people, as in a military formation. Conversely rank is usually translated to rang. The definition from sproget.da is:
  • two or more persons, often soldiers, standing side by side, shoulder by shoulder
    • things placed side by side in a row
In the sense, rising in ranks (Danish: stige i geledderne) it is usually used in plural, but basically the connotation is formation rather than ranking. – Leo Laursen – (talk · contribs) 12:29, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] twisted chromesones

could you please explain whast this is and the treatments ,. thank you

[edit] alcohol

I have tried to add "alcohol" to the etymology scriptorium but I cant seem to make it work. could someone help?J8079s 23:38, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. That is a little tricky. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:48, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] query by an anon

is there a site that can help me with in better american grammar —This unsigned comment was added by 24.126.168.60 (talk • contribs) 18:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC.

[edit] I am so unhappy.

I am very sad. I joined Wiktionary in the hope of finding some meaning and significance in my life. Sadly, this has not happened. No matter how many entries I make, I am still unhappy. I just want to be loved :-(

I knew I had a twin somewhere. Equinox ◑ 23:36, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to find a template to enter a "missing" work in the dictionary. Can someone tell me how to do thiss?

[edit] verify word Abroholos?

There is a WP article w:Abroholos that says it is a Brazilian word meaning squall (but it isn't clear to me if this is the plural). I tried to check the Portugese wiktionary (which is hard because I don't speak any Portugese but I'm assuming that was the search button I clicked). Any suggestions on how I'd go about proving or disproving this as a name? (And determining if this is the Plural since it ends in S.) It might be a local term, the WP article isn't great which is why I'd like to clean it up. Thank you. RJFJR 15:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Abroholos squall, more properly the Abrolhos squall. Abrolhos in Portuguese is a plural, from the archipelago of that name which was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci, who is said to have commented upon seeing the islands: "abre os olhos" (keep your eyes open). In Portuguese, when it means squall (uma borrasca), it’s lowercased: os abrolhos. —Stephen 14:18, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Thank you. RJFJR 20:48, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Inflection data / algorithm

I'm trying to put together a list of English nouns and their plurals. I thought Wiktionary's data would be a good place to start with this. However, after browsing through the single, almost-a-gigabyte (!) XML file, I've found that most nouns just use the 'en-noun' template and their plural is not in the article. I'm guessing it is either in a table outside of the article space, or it is calculated by a rule/regex-based algorithm. Is this table or algorithm available?

Thanks! Duckwizard 17:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Edit: I see now that nouns of various pluralization forms have the form indicated in the template definition. I think I can use this to construct my 'master noun list' (although if such a list already exists, that would sure be nice...) Duckwizard 17:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Some caution is required. Many uses of the en-noun template with the argument "-", meaning uncountable, are not correct. Many exceptional cases exist (non-English plurals eg octopus, mass nouns, plural-only, singular-only, dual eyeglasses). If your algorithm is supposed to be as good as a dictionary, it will need a fairly big look-up table. Most humans are not nearly as good as a dictionary. DCDuring TALK 18:27, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] the word loont

I am extracting information from a record dated 1823 it is a proprietor and next to the last name is the word loont, what does this word mean? These are Great Britain records. Thank You for your help.

hedgefund explanation

[edit] Why do you use British spellings?

Could I ask why you use British spellings (e.g., "realisation" and "Beer Parlour")? Just by sheer numbers, most users are probably in the US.

  • Actually the main entry is at realization. I think the reason ‘beer parlour’ was used is that the thing was thought to be more of a British phenomenon. But in general we have no bias in either direction, and don't forget that there are also many forms of English besides those of just the US and the UK. Ƿidsiþ 09:58, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Whoever adds a definition uses the spelling that he/she finds most natural. We seem to have more editors that use British rather than US English. It is considered bad form to change the original spelling. SemperBlotto 10:01, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
In fact, by the actual numbers, only 17-34% of the users of the English Wiktionary are in the US. (Figures from Alexa, they don't give the cross-tabs. Users in the US account for 17% of all traffic, and 50% of the traffic is to English. 17% assumes that the proportion of users in the US going to English is the same as for other wikts, 34% assumes that users in the US only use the en.wikt. So a good guess for usage of the en.wikt might be about 1/4 in the US, 3/4 from elsewhere. In any case, US users of the English wiktionary do not exceed 34% ;-) If one was to go by the user base, UK/Commonwealth spellings would be preferred. Robert Ullmann 11:51, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Dude, you are so cheating. :-P   According to that page, most of the user-base is from non-English-speaking countries. There are probably more users from the U.S. than from all other English-speaking countries put together. (I say "probably" because 13% of the user-base is from "other", which makes it hard to be totally sure.) And that's even counting India and Canada as English-speaking countries with U.K. spellings, which is only partly true; if we leave them out (treating them as neutral parties), the U.S. probably outstrips U.K.-spelling countries by a factor of about 3 to 1. —RuakhTALK 15:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • You've left out Australia & New Zealand. :p --Tyranny Sue 05:05, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Why not ? --Elkaar 12:06, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] why does the pronunciation not play automatically?

Why can't the pronunciation play automatically on wikitionary as on awww.answers.com when we click the sound (Blowhorn) icon. Why is it in ogg format and why does it ask us to save the file first... (saving is ok but should be optional)? Am I asking this at the right place?

69.14.222.205 01:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Hello. This depends on your Web browser configuration. Your browser probably isn't set up to play ogg files, so it considers them to be "unknown" data files and tries to save them to disk instead. Have a look at your browser's documentation; you can probably configure it to play them automatically. Equinox ◑ 01:40, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
The free, open Ogg format was chosen to avoid limits on the availability of software to play the sound files. Such software is rarely included in commercial operating systems like Mac OS and Windows. You need an Ogg plugin, or an Ogg codec for Quicktime or for WiMP. Click the “help” link next to the speaker icon for directions. —Michael Z. 2009-04-06 16:02 z
I think that what he is saying is that, even with the right plugins, you don't just get the sound of the word. A new mediaplayer window opens (after a short pause), the sound plays, and you are left with the window to deal with. I never use the system. SemperBlotto 16:06, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
It shouldn't open a new window if you have an appropriate browser plugin. In Safari/Mac, with the XiphQT codec installed, the player fills the browser window, but then the browser's back button restores the entry view. Although it would be slicker if it just played the sound, this works quite smoothly and gives you a controller bar. But I never use it either. —Michael Z. 2009-04-07 05:33 z

[edit] The prepositions/adpositions must be given with each verb or noun

I want to get the adposition used with verbs e.g. attentive to their needs, separately from its neighbors and as used with nouns a thirst for revenge, an amendment to the constitution. But many verb definitions and noun definitions does not include this information. This is very important for people with English as a foreign/second language. Is there a page on wiki projects which has this information?69.14.222.205 02:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree, this is very important, but it has not yet received much attention, whether in English or any of the other languages. —Stephen 03:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Stephen, do you know any admin or editor so that we can request them to create a robot or make a rule about entering this all the time. another example is worthy 'of' praise.. Just telling the meaning of worthy does not let a person know about what is the adposition to use with it ('of' in this case). 207.148.219.146 13:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree that this is vital to foreign learners of English, but not only of English. One should also mention at neugierig that this adjective is used only with auf, sich erinnern with genitive or an and so on. In Wikiwörterbuch the editors have not bothered to include it either... The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 16:15, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

What's the best way to present this to the reader? It's essentially usage information. But I think it could be presented either as a separate usage note, or by providing an example quotation, or as a phrase in the definition, or in a structured label in the definition. Is there any reason to structure this with templates, or collect it in categories? —Michael Z. 2009-04-06 16:25 z

  • We seem to be having this conversation already in the Beer Parlour, but see die, verb sense 1. This was how I tried it last time the issue came up, using subsenses. I quite like it but not everyone does. Ƿidsiþ 16:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
    That's not bad, but they aren't dictionary subsenses. (But since we don't officially condone subsenses, this may be an acceptable use for sub-lists – perhaps they should be bulleted instead of numbered). Adding bulleted examples under Usage notes might fit our framework better. —Michael Z. 2009-04-06 18:17 z

[edit] Is there a robot for this?

Is there a robot which can collect noun definitions where the plural of a word is not mentioned. I hate entries of nouns where the plural is not given.69.14.222.205 02:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Adding a category

The category: 'English words suffixed with -age' should (I think) be added to

  • shortage
  • foliage

I'd be happy to be taught how to do this. Thanks. :) --Tyranny Sue 05:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

We already have Category:English words suffixed with -age. All you have to do is add [[Category:English words suffixed with -age]] at the bottom of a page such as shortage. —Stephen 12:16, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Or you can do it like this - but it only applies here, what Stephen showed you works generally. --Duncan 16:36, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Category for backformations or innovations?

I'm currently working on the word shat (past tense of 'shit') and am wondering do we have a category for backformations or innovations or otherwise non-etymological verb tenses? Or perhaps even a category for forms that first appeared, say for example, in the early 18c? Any of these would be useful. Thanks very much :) --Tyranny Sue 06:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I think if you wanted to make a project of determining backformations, then a Category:Backformations might be reasonable. —Stephen 12:11, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Widespread (& accepted by many) (mis)pronunciations of commonly used non-English words (e.g. 'paella', 'chorizo')

Just wondering if it's part of the Wiktionary project to document widespread pronunciations no matter what. As in, say a non-English word is being widely used (I'm thinking specifically at the moment of 'paella' and 'chorizo') and also widely mispronounced (in the English-speaking world, perhaps less so in the USA). Would it not be worth noting that mispronunciation down? (For 2 reasons:

  • 1. To show, e.g. Spanish-speakers, what the hell these English-speakers are trying to mean?

and

  • 2. To try to show non-native speakers how it shouldn't be pronounced. (Or would that be regarded as overly prescriptive?)

Thanks--Tyranny Sue 09:53, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

We're mainly a documentary dictionary. If paella is pronounced a certain way in the USA, then that is the US pronunciation, even if it would be a vulgar mispronunciation in Spanish. If you want to know how it's pronounced in Spanish, then see paella#Spanish. —Michael Z. 2009-04-07 10:17 z
On the other hand, with the English (mis)pronunciation is documented, I would want to know if that anglicized version is a different, vulgar word when head by a native speaker. Maybe in usage notes? DAVilla 01:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Dubious. Why shouldn't every English word which sounds like a vulgarity in another language be so noted, or every word in every language crossed with every other language? Just vulgarities, or insults too? The majority of English words have been borrowed within the last 2,000 years – so even if we restricted this to direct borrowings, where would we draw the cutoff? We aren't a multilingual pronunciation dictionary which indexes terms by their pronunciation (is there such a thing?), so it's not in our mandate to do this as a rule.
So is there something you're trying to say about the way paella is pronounced in North America? I've only ever heard /pa'jeja/, /tʃo'rizoʊ/ in Canada. Did I shock my server in that Cuban restaurant? —Michael Z. 2009-04-14 05:14 z

[edit] using Template:t with multiple scripts

I was trying to combine the translations of aunt for Mandarin and Serbian but the documentation at {{t}} doesn't say how to do so. I got as far as this:

The Serbian is okay because it only uses links, but the Mandarin using {{t}} obviously doesn't look right. Could someone show me how to correct it?

Also, is it correct to use {{sense}} in this manner? The documentation seems to indicate that {{italbrac}} is more appropriate, but that doesn't look ideal either. DAVilla 01:53, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

There must be other methods but since I didn't find or didn't understand, I created new ones:
{{zh-tsp|中國|中国|Zhōngguó}} produces: trad. 中國, simpl. 中国 (pinyin: Zhōngguó)
{{zh-zh-p|北京|Běijīng}} produces: trad. and simpl. 北京 (pinyin: Běijīng)
Anatoli 02:28, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
Sigh. You are making it so hard on yourself. Just don't try to put "/" in anywhere, use the template one at a time. ("/" doesn't mean anything; having any meaning requires tagging things somehow)
Don't bother with xs=. That is placed (and removed) by Tbot as an optimization.
(why do you have everything tagged for simplified script? trad should be Hant, t/s should be Hani)
Like this: (removing a lot of stuff where you are simply trying way too hard)
(some of those still need Hans->Hani, and it might be better to leave off the tr= for the tra in tra/sim pairs; did that) I did create {{zh-tra}} and {{zh-sim}} to abstract those abbreviations (they need a bit of CSS too), as used in {{zh-ts}}. They probably should follow the {t} template, but we can look at that later.
Please remove the other templates that you created and tag them with {delete}, as they don't generate the links to zh.wikt and aren't compatible with several other things.
And note the way Cyrillic and Roman script are handled in other entries. (There is an example in WT:ELE; and there has been some discussion of improving it, but for now, this is the way it is.) Robert Ullmann 12:35, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
You're right, it's pretty hard to do when you're not sure how. I don't see any documentation about this at either Wiktionary:About Mandarin (which doesn't exist) or Wiktionary:About Chinese. Thanks for clarifying because it is pretty simple after all. I wasn't trying to add xs=Mandarin by the way. I'd simply left those in when merging the two lines.
In contrast to {{zh-tra}} and {{zh-sim}} which you created, I thought Acai had been using slashes as in:
I sure would like to see that Serbian example in ELE changed some day. For now I think it's best to have it removed. DAVilla 21:48, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Reference Tags

Hi, how can i use the ref, /ref tags and the reflist template? When i used the above (as is done in wikipedia), i get an error message that says that references/ does not exist. How are references/ and reflist related? Psoup 08:10, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

You can use the ref and /ref tags, but there is no "reflist" template. Under the References section, one line should read <references/> (which is what the pedia template does, with cruft wrapped around it). Please only use rerf tags in running text (e.g. etymologies), and keep in mind that simply putting a reference in the References section as a bullet point is the preferred style. Robert Ullmann 11:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Diacritical?

What is the word for the little marks under the n and d in maṇḍala?

The general term is just "dot" or "underdot" (I think the Unicode standard uses "dot under"). However, in the case of Indic languages, this dot transcribes a mark of the original scripts called the anusvara. Circeus 22:35, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] threat

When I look at this page i get the following error: [ object HTMLInputElement ] is there something wrong? 128.232.247.55 00:56, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see that error, but I'm probably using a different web browser from yours. What browser are you using? —Rod (A. Smith) 02:13, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] My vandalism

I came here a while ago when I should have been studying and vandalised two pages. I've thought about it and now regret doing that, so I've reverted myself. Sorry, and if it means I get blocked then fair enough. 86.166.68.63 19:00, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] formatting for Chinese entries

Hi everyone. I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I'm a complete newbie to wiktionary, so please excuse my ignorance. I've been editing/creating a few different Chinese-English definitions and noticed there seems to be varying ways of formatting things like simp/trad, mandarin/other dialects, pinyin, etc. Is there any agreed convention on this? Also, could someone direct me to a page which shows me the best way to create a new page for a Chinese word? I've made a few in the past but I'm afraid they might not be up to standard. Thank you. Tooironic 22:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi again. 你好
You get different answers on translations and entries, I look at existing entries for comparison:
I haven't created many entries but I've been adding translations.
Check these:
See hotel with the examples of both. I don't know many active Chinese editors here, perhaps we should get them from chinese-forums :)
(aka atitarev) Anatoli 01:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply, Atitarev. Small world, eh? Two Melburnians who both happen to frequent the same Chinese forum also happen to be editing Wiktionary at the exact same time! Your templates are very helpful, thanks, but what is to be done if there is more than one dialect being defined? Also, I can't help but wonder if wiki could possibly develop some kind of standard format. It would certainly save a lot of hassle in the long run, wouldn't it. I only recently discovered this place, and am already addicted. Cheers, Tooironic 04:55, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
A couple of thoughts, with the provision that east Asian languages have always rather mystified me, so I might be off a bit off on some of this. First, WT:AZH should contain our highest concentration of formatting polices for Chinese. Secondly, User:A-cai is our best Chinese editor, so his thoughts should certainly be requested. Finally, I think it's been fairly well established that we're not treating Chinese as a language, but rather as a language family, with its component languages being Mandarin, Min Nan, etc. Both the L2 headers and translations should reflect this, although it is probably best to group them all under "Chinese." -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:40, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
The language family concept is not followed and I am not the first to break it. Mandarin = Standard Chinese and most dialects don't have a written form. The Min Nan users just add their pronunciation, in Cantonese (Hong Kong style), they write the traditional characters + translations. Chinese dialects are presented very poorly in Wictionary, Cantonese entries often have no pronunciation, might as well be flagged as Chinese. Min Nan just shows the pronunciation, no hanzi.
IMHO, this is sufficient:
Translations
...
....
The characters are identical in 99% forms, at least for standard written Chinese.
I agree Chinese dialects have a lot of differences but as far as the written entries go, it make sense to group them together. Provide Mandarin entry first (implied) and dialects. A similar practice is used for Arabic, where dialects go underneath the main Arabic translation entry. As an alternative, "Mandarin" could appear under "Chinese" but then you will have a blank unused line:
Translations
...
....
Small world, huh? :) Anatoli 06:07, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm not going to argue this, as my knowledge of Chinese is zilch, but this does need to be done consistently. I suggest opening a BP thread, get A-cai involved, and settle this one way or the other. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:10, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, thanks. I have just described the de facto standard, which I just continued to use. The actual entries are separate for Mandarin, though, as the talk about pronunciation, have audio links, etc. Perhaps someone will join here to discuss. If the suggestion doesn't work then there's a lot of work to do to change all translations!. I seldom see "Mandarin" in translations. Anatoli 06:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

By the way, these are not pronunciations in brackets, they are transliterations or romanizations. See also Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Recurring problem with Chinese vs. Mandarin 72.177.113.91 04:58, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] DEFAULTSORT on entries

Do we do this? if so, for which languages/scripts?—msh210℠ 17:03, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

It would seem to be appropriate when you can definitively claim that the sorting information is correct for all languages that could have that term. As that is highly unlikely, I'd think we'd be against this. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:28, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
Well, it's just a default sort; it can be overridden in individual language sections if need be. I believe that without it, MediaWiki defaults to ASCIIbetical order (or whatever you call it when you've the full Unicode repertoire to collate, and use their numeric codings), so that Category:English_nouns?from=Z contains English nouns that start with uppercase Z followed by the first hundredsome English nouns that start with lowercase a. It's ridiculous. I for one would be quite happy if someone would automatedly {{DEFAULTSORT:something more reasonable}} almost every entry containing /[^a-z]/, even if it's not perfect. (Alternatively, maybe this is something that can be done using a MediaWiki extension or the like? Non-default default sorting?) —RuakhTALK 00:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Ruakh; it is surely better to list Übermensch and übermensch just before uberty than it is to have the former listed after zwitterion but before åkermanite with the latter appearing much later amongst the other ‘ü’-initial words, for example. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 01:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh, yes, please!
We need one default mixed-language sorting scheme for general categories. Unicode actually has a collation scheme, but for starters we just need basic dictionary sorting: all lowercase, remove diacritics, collapse spaces, apostrophes, and hyphens, etc. I don't think it's possible to make diacritical letters sort after plain ones this way, but c'est la vie.
Phase 2 would be to add a sort field to inflection templates, and use language-specific rules there, so, e.g., Category:Swedish nouns uses Swedish sorting. —Michael Z. 2009-04-22 01:30 z
How many languages include sort fields in the POS heading templates? French does. Circeus 04:30, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Can't edit 'sexy'

I'm a complete newbie. Can someone please explain to me why I can't edit sexy? I'd like to add a Chinese definition. —This unsigned comment was added by Tooironic (talk • contribs) 09:45, 22 April 2009.

It’s protected because so many people try to vandalize this page. If you tell me what Chinese you’d like to add, I will add it for you. Or you may edit it yourself if you register under a user name and log in. —Stephen 13:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, you may tell the definition here or on Talk:sexy. But, Stephen, the user has an account here, he is no anon, why can he not edit? How can he be made autoconfirmed in order to edit the entry? He has good intention. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 13:07, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
Just a little bit too new. Give it another 20 minutes (;-). Robert Ullmann 13:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the help guys :) I've added the new definition Eng->Chi (can't believe no one had done it before), as well as Chi->Eng (性感). Love this site - so addictive :) Now we just need to standardise all the Chinese templates... Tooironic 23:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
There's still a lot of entries/translations missing for Chinese and not only Chinese, Tooironic. Please continue the good work! I've been adding translations too. The entries are a bit to complicated and one has to do them twice, thanks to jiantizi/fantizi problem. The translations are problematic as well, there are a few similar templates. I can't use assisted translations, since there is no accommodation for simp./trad., if they are different. Anatoli 00:28, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] penis

Tooironic has requæsted the addition of the Chinese translation at Talk:penis#Chinese definition. The entry is protected (which I support, because the plural form was vandalised), so could any administrator add the Chinese translation from Talk:penis#Chinese definition? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 09:19, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ÖDA

To Whom It May Concern:

Your meaning of ÖDA is:

    1. waste, to spend in vain, often used about time

Other places found on the web ÖDA means:

    Swedish form of  Old Norse  Auðr, meaning "deeply rich." http://www.20000-names.com/female_o_names.htm

Which one is correct?

Thanks.

Baki holland

The Modern Swedish verb öda is correct. Names can be quite different from regular words and difficult to trace. I believe the name you’re referring to is related to Otto and has a different origin, and it means rich. So both are correct. —Stephen 19:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] sounds like memesis

I heard a word that I thought was 'memesis' (I thought it sounded like mem-ee-siss), seemed to mean something like an ideal example. Can anyone take a guess about what word I really heard? RJFJR 14:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps mimesis (“‘immitation", "representation’”)? DCDuring TALK 15:50, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds possible. Thank you. RJFJR 15:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] May 2009

[edit] Languages on "no page title matches"

When I search for a word and find no page, Wiktionary returns a page asking which part of speech and which language the word belongs to, in case I'd like to write a new article. The four languages that I can choose from are English, American sign language, Spanish and Swedish. Except for the sign language, those are exactly those languages that I speak and understand. Is this just a coincidence, or have I set this somewhere in my preferences? --Joti 14:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

We all see the same ones. (Spanish adjective and noun give me empty edit boxes, in case anyone can fix this). —Michael Z. 2009-05-02 15:52 z
I see. Thanks.--Joti 17:19, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Where am I supposed to enter translations of derived terms?

I made an entry for put in place and would like to add German translations. Am I supposed to make an entry under the headword put or the derived term itself? -- CvL11c 8:43, 5 May 2009 (MESZ)

  • You should put corresponding translations in either of the three sections of put in place - these should really be translations that have the same form e.g. not all the translations of "allocate" etc. SemperBlotto 07:41, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! CvL11c 15:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] synonym in context

If a word is a synonym of another but only in a specific context, would we call that a synonym, or a hypernym/hyponym pair, or what? For example: A mathematician might use the word volume to refer to the area of a figure in the plane. In that limited context, volume and area are complete synonyms. The relevant sense of volume though (which we don't have) is "{{context|measure theory}} A measure of any subset of Euclidean space" (or something that; don't copy that to the entry, as it's not a good definition), and doesn't mention the plane at all. So the relevant context is "in the plane": in that context, volume and area are synonyms. —msh210℠ 18:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

In the general case it would be a qualified synonym for the closest sense, I think. In the instant case, I would treat it that way, too, because most other nyms are already pushing the limits of normal users' vocabulary. Qualifications might be a bridge too far for other nyms. DCDuring TALK 20:29, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Words that are blends

I would like to know how you know if a word is a blend. Then whether it is a blend from the beginning or the end of the word.

Some words are fly, dry, kind, straw, stop, crow, lift, ask, and, brown, last,

A blend is identified by the merger of (most often) two multisyllabic, and a definition that is transparent. Almost always, the word could be expressed as an attributive of preposition construction: anecdotal data -> anecdata, informative/ion entertainment -> infotainment etc. The words you list have nothing to do with blends or portmanteaus. Circeus 04:57, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Or do you mean a consonant blend? (We should have that sense s.v. blend, I think. It's pretty common, I think, in elementary education. But I haven't checked, so before adding it someone should check for cites.) An explanation of consonant blends is in Wikipedia s.v. consonant blend; see there for the answer to your question.—msh210℠ 15:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] need help

im doing a poem and dont remember a third person pronoun would anybody like to help me. thanks

He, she, it, they; him, her, it, them. —Stephen 19:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Translation section in non-English words' articles

Hello! I'm pretty new to Wiktionary (but a member and an administrator on Wikipedia in Macedonian for about 4 years now), and I was wondering why the translation section in articles for non-English words should be omitted. I know we're supposed to just provide a link to the corresponding translation in English, and not write a definition, but what happens if there is no article (article or entry, what's it called on Wiktionary?) on the word (the corresponding translation), or even no equivalent of the word being translated in English? For example I want to write an article about инает/инат, but there is no way that that word could be translated in English (not using just one word at least), so what do I do now? guitardemon 21:50, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

All words have to be defined, not only English words. In my opinion, a translation in English is a definition (but it usually requires a gloss: a single word is ambiguous in most cases). When no translation is available, of course, a normal definition should be given. Lmaltier 16:36, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
Just define it in English using whatever words are necessary. Then link important terms in the definition, even if there are no articles yet in existance. If the definition requires some words that don’t go together as a single term in English, that’s all right. —Stephen 22:50, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
The question still remains, that if there is a word a in language A, whose translation in English does not correspond to any single word Wiktionary entry, but to a phrase, say "b c", in English, then if a translates to d in language D, then this translation cannot be filed either under b or under c, because neither of these words entries, by itself, means the same as a. So wouldn't a have to have a Translations section under which to file d? —AugPi 21:08, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I guess that the answer would be that the translation d would be filed under entry a in the A-Wiktionary, i.e. the Wiktionary for language A, not the English Wiktionary. —AugPi 21:17, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
An example fwiw is de rien = de nada = על לא דבר, for which there isn't really an idiomatic English equivalent.​—msh210℠ 22:56, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
No, sorry, this is not what I really meant. All three entries above translate/define to the single entry you're_welcome in English, so all three can be filed under you're_welcome, which is actually the case. I struck through and rephrased my previous writing in order to clarify. —AugPi 03:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
An example: "allerlei" in Dutch means English "all kinds of" which has no single entry, but it also means Ido "omnaspeca". —AugPi 02:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Another answer would be to create a single entry b_c, which is possible (by CFI) as long as b_c is more of a set phrase than a sum of parts. Then both a and d can be filed as translations under b_c. —AugPi 03:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Otherwise add a translation section for the given foreign word, e.g. see aardoppervlak. —AugPi 02:37, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
No, our primary policy document (WT:ELE) says in regard to Translations sections: "Translations are to be given for English words only." That's pretty clear. --EncycloPetey 03:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
The more direct definitions should be in the other wiktionaries (and if they're not, add them there!). On the entry in this wikt you can point them to the other pages using {{trans-see-flw}}. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 23:54, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Niche Glossaries

Hi everybody, I have a question about whether this is right for Wiktionary: I need to put together a glossary of fairly specialist technical terms, Acronyms and organisations for an online project. I'd like that glossary to live somewhere with more general access, the option to contribute to and shape definitions and a longer guaranteed lifespan than a private website. My question is whether Wiktionary would be the right dictionary for this. (Mediatoad)

What is the subject matter? We have some of there already, but mostly they are moved here from Wikipedia or arise from the need to have a home for things that do not warrant real entries. See category:Glossaries for examples of what we have. DCDuring TALK 16:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for those examples. Actually that is exactly what I am trying to do. The subject matter is British Prison, Probation and post-release support services. (Mediatoad)
Once material is here you are not guaranteed that it will remain. The GNU Free Documentation License, under which any material must be submitted to any Wikimedia Foundation wiki, allows anyone else to use it and modify it. See Wiktionary:Copyrights for an explanation and more links. There may also be other wikis that would afford your material a home under different terms. DCDuring TALK 11:42, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks DCDuring, the reason why I wanted to put this glossary on Wiktionary in the first place was so that other people could use, add and edit it. I suppose I wouldn't be happy if it was all deleted, but according to the guidelines and copyright link that wouldn't happen without a valid reason. Unless it's vandalism.
I suppose what I was worried about was what I know as notability from wikipedia, because it's a niche subject matter. Of what I saw that doesn't seem to be an issue in my case. However if anybody knows a better or more appropriate wiki project to set this glossary up, maybe you can let me know.(Mediatoad)

[edit] Definitions of transitive verbs

While browsing Wiktionary I sometimes come across definitions of transitive verbs that seem to me to be logically flawed. The following, a definition of "to catch", is typical:

"To seize a moving object, with the hands or otherwise."

I'm always tempted to change these to:

"To seize (a moving object), with the hands or otherwise."

But then I wonder if this is being too fussy. What do you think? 86.146.47.184 22:26, 14 May 2009 (UTC).

No, that is not too fussy, IMO. There is a great deal of inconsistency in how we handle these, including outright error. No-parentheses versions can lead to outright error in the case of verbs that take two direct objects. What you suggest (parentheses) is the best way I know to handle cases where the restrictions on the range of objects of the verb needs to be specified. I prefer it to the option of using "context" labels. I would love to hear a better idea if there is one. DCDuring TALK 23:13, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Using Tea room

Where can I find about how to use the Tea room? Things unclear about it to me include:

  • Should the heading of an issue be striked-through upon closing the issue?
  • Is there some minimum time for which an issue should be left open?
  • What are the steps upon closing an issue? I would estimate that these are (a) striking-through the heading of the issue, and (b) removing {{rft}} from the discussed article. Is this correct or should this be extended?

Thanks. --Dan Polansky 10:01, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

One additional helpful thing would be to move the material to the Talk page for the associated entry. I haven't given any thought to this though and don't know procedure. It is less fraught with risk than an RfD or RfV. I can't imagine anyone objecting to closing a discussion after, say, three months of no further discussion, especially if the material remains at a Talk page. DCDuring TALK 11:52, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
The alternative of inserting in the talk page a (section) link to the archived material would be satisfactory though it increases the risk that someone would add to the dead discussion despite the warnings. DCDuring TALK 12:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How to get all edits?

I have made some edits on this computer but they don't show up on my profile, how do you get them to appear? —This unsigned comment was added by Lizhoumaster (talk • contribs) 08:34, 16 May 2009.

Well, according to Special:Contributions/Lizhoumaster you have made only the edit on this page, but if you have another account, try to edit only from one, several accounts for one single contributor (except for bot purposes) are not welcome. If you were not logged in, then insert the IP wherefrom you have edited after the slash at [[Special:Contributions/]] and they will be visible. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 11:44, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Can I delete a user?

I am new to Wiktionary and accidentally created a new user whereas I had already had a user from Wikipedia that I had shared over to Wiktionary. Is there any way to delete this accidental user? Thanks! --Spellingfreak 19:17, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

What username are you talking about? —Stephen 19:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
(I just changed users) I was using the new one. Spellingfreak is the user I would like to delete. --Logomaniac 19:28, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
If Spellingfreak were an existing user page, I could delete it for you, but it isn’t. There is no page for Spellingfreak, so just ignore it. —Stephen 22:23, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
OK ... thanks!! --Logomaniac 23:37, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] force and velocity

What is the fastest speed a bullet can be projected? What form or other force can reject the the velocity of a bullet?

A bullet fired on a planet in a galaxy at the edge of the known universe will be moving at almost the speed of light in relation to Earth. A bullet’s velocity can be affected by gravity or the electromagnetic force, as well as any matter that it encounters or passes through, such as water, stone, or air. —Stephen 17:21, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] When to use brackets and parentheses for the IPA

I've noticed that when the IPA for a word is included it's always written in between either parentheses or brackets, is there a difference?--Megaman en m 11:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Slashes /.../ for a broad w:phonemic representation for a particular language, which is usually most suitable for a dictionary pronunciation. Square brackets [...] for a narrow w:phonetic representation, a detailed breakdown of the precise sounds that most people don't pay attention to. More at w:IPA#Usage. Round brackets are either incorrect, or just parentheses. —Michael Z. 2009-06-05 12:34 z
Thanks, for some reason I wrote parentheses instead of slashes.--Megaman en m 13:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Definition

What is the definition of Insurance Enterprises?

[edit] Russian pronunciation question!

I have heard that Russian is not a 'phonetic language', meaning it isn't always pronounced as it is written. The Russian entries here on Wiktionary include pronunciation guides. Here's my question: Do these guides indicate the way the word is actually spoken in Russian?, or,

Are they strictly phonetic (i.e. just telling how the word SHOULD be pronounced according to a basic understanding of the Cyrillic alphabet)?

Thanks.

but they don't know, cause they don't have to, and i'll admit, it feels a little strange 16:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Our transliterations are essentially phonemic, as opposed to phonetic. After you learn the rules of Russian pronunciation, you can deduce the phonetic pronunciation from the phonemic transliteration. For example, Russian unstressed а and о are pronounced alike. They are only differentiated when stressed. Or the letter щ, which is transliterated as šč (which is the traditional way), yet it is pronounced ɕɕ, a light sh sound with no ch at all. The letter е is usually transliterated as e, but when you learn the pronunciation, you know that it also serves to palatalize the preceding consonant. Or the letters я, ё, ю (ja, jo, ju) really do not have the y sound as suggested by ja/jo/ju, but instead they palatalize the preceding consonant. —Stephen 21:33, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Out of curiosity: Why do we transliterate е as "e" (not "je") if ё is "jo"? And why do we use j's, not y's, in transliteration on English Wikt?​—msh210℠ 21:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
It’s because there are so many e’s. All of the j’s (or y’s) are a distraction. The letters я/ё/ю are not all that common, their hard counterparts being the common ones. With e, it’s its hard counterpart, э, that is uncommon. When Americans students of Russian first begin trying to transliterate it (without having studied a system for doing it), they always begin putting y’s everywhere that there is a soft vowel or palatalization. Almost immediately, they see the folly of that and drop ye in favor of e, treating Roman e as though it were the Cyrillic e.
As for j versus y, I have asked many times over the past six or so years what system most of us preferred, but not many were interested at all. Of the few answers I got, only User:Eclecticology rooted for the y; the few others interested preferred the scholarly j. —Stephen 22:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Ah, thanks fyi.​—msh210℠ 23:52, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Russian isn't always pronounced as it is written, there are also some exceptions. Common ones when ч should be read as ш in some words (что, чтобы, конечно, etc.), г should be read as в in some endings - кого, его, нового (новый), сегодня, etc. Some consonants can be dropped in clusters or merged (солнце "сонце", грустный ""грусный", счастье "щастье", etc.). Endings -ться, -тся - are pronounced as "-цца". The transliteration shows the spelling, not the pronunciation in all these cases. Anatoli 20:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] lack of common sense

My older son recently watched a program on the Discovery Channel about people with a lack of common sense. I have a younger son who is ASD but is very high functioning, but not asperger's which is a high I.Q. He does however seem to lack common sense --- for instance when I send him to get the clothes out of the dryer if it is still damp he brings it upstairs. Even though he has been with me a lot of times when I have had to reset the dryer to finish drying the clothes. His answer is "Well you told me to go get the clothes out of the dryer." But I would think common sense would dictate that he needed to set the dryer going again since the clothes were not dry. My older son said there was a name for this condition but he could not remember it --- I am hoping someone here can help.

Out of curiosity, what made you look in a dictionary website for an answer to your question? --EncycloPetey 03:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, it's rather rambling a bit, but the question "what is the word for 'lack of common sense'" looks clear to me. Circeus 04:35, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
A "common sense deficit" comes to mind. A severe lack of common sense may be referred to as perplexity. Does that sound like what you were thinking of? —Stephen 22:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] dawkins fleas

i read http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-first-flea.html

i had no idea what a flea was. i found it is a common term at richarddawkins.net and is beginning to be used on blogs and in secular discussion groups as well, being a descriptive and somewhat mean spirited, hence provocative term. 360 entries for compound term at google http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1CHMZ_enUS302US304&ei=SjgxSsi6HOCLtge45ODfBQ&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q="dawkins+fleas"&spell=1

afaik there is nothing else like it except generic terms like rebuttal.

the first use i found is: http://richarddawkins.net/article,634,My-critics-are-wrong-to-call-me-dogmatic,Richard-Dawkins

Sir, Alister McGrath (Faith, Feb 10) has now published two books with my name in the title. If I seem "grumpy", could it be because a professor of theology is building a career riding on my back? It is tempting to quote Yeats ("Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?") and leave it at that. I will, however, dignify his article with a brief reply.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what question you have about Wiktionary. --EncycloPetey 17:23, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
where do i go to discuss creating this entry? it was deleted for being too new.
Ah, you didn't mention that before. You could raise the issue at WT:RFV, although the term would not be accepted if it doesn't meet our criteria for inclusion. --EncycloPetey 17:40, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How long does it take newly added Wiktionary entries to be recognized in "search" boxes?

I added some several hours ago, and they haven't appeared yet. Thanks.
- Soargain 23:38, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

It varies. Which Search box do you mean? The term lightning mapper, which you added about half an hour ago is showing up for my searches. --EncycloPetey 23:41, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I meant such as the box under the word "search" in the column down the left side of this page. Going forward, I'd be interested in knowing about how long to expect it to take, since I'm adding references to them from Wikipedia which of course I would like to work immediately. I'm reasonably expert in web and DB technology, so I'm also interested in knowing what's going on behind the curtains? -- Soargain 03:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the mechanics that make the search function, but as I said, some of them seem to come up quickly and some don't. I'm not sure what you mean by "adding references". Wiktionary is very different from Wikipedia. References (in the Wikipedia sense) are not often valuable. We prefer direct citations demonstrating use in durably archived media. To see what support for a term looks like, look at the pages Citations:parrot and Citations:listen. These are some of the best-supported words we have, at least in terms of the breadth of citations included. For a more modest collection of citations, see a page like horseshoe, where the few citations are included directly in the entry, one below each sense (definition) which is meant in the quote. This is what Wiktionary considers valuable support for a term. We prefer a use of the word in context, rather than listing titles and authors where addiitonal information may be found. That latter kind of listing is useful for an encyclopedia, but not for a dictionary. --EncycloPetey 03:47, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again, particularly for the extra info which I didn't actually intend to ask about but am glad to learn. I discovered the reason for the long delay on one term: I had a buried browser window in which I had entered and Previewed that term but not yet Saved it. Regarding adding references, I meant embedding the terms in doubled square brackets in a Wikipedia article, so that the terms are displayed as a link to their Wiktionary definitions. (Right?)

Only if you specify a Wiktionary link. The double bracket default is to the same project. To link a word in Wikipedia to its Wiktionary article, you must use [[wikt:term|term]]. Such links work immediately once the article on Wiktionary exists. --EncycloPetey 04:34, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] kl

When adding translations, or creating entries for the Greenlandic language, should the term Greenlandic or Kalaallisut be used? I believe I have come across both... surely there should be a uniform decision as to which to use on the English wiktionary?

Many thanks Jakeeveritt 15:22, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

The term "Greenlandic" should be used. --EncycloPetey 15:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting for examples of words used in sentences?

Hello, I'm looking for some guidelines on how examples of words usages (and any citations) should be formatted. I've seen a few different styles (e.g. at you where examples are in italics, and at shat where they're not). Thanks. --Tyranny Sue 20:02, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

In general, made-up examples should be italicized, but direct citations from published sources should not. The two styles you've seen reflect this difference. Direct quotations should preserve the typography of the original source as closely as possible, including italics, underlining, quotes, punctuation, etc. The word of interest should be in bold, and no words in the example or quote should be linked. --EncycloPetey 20:05, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Have a peek at this: Wiktionary:Entry_layout_explained. There are separate sections on example sentences (ones you make up) and actual quotations. Equinox ◑ 20:06, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] possessive of corps: corps' or corps's?

Is the possessive of corps: corps' or corps's? (Does it matter if it the singular or the plural?) RJFJR 20:37, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I’d opt for corps’s in the singular but corps’ in the plural. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 20:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
Smart writers will choose “of a corps,” or the attributive corps (e.g., the corps commander, not the corps' commander)). —Michael Z. 2009-06-15 22:28 z

[edit] Can Wiktionary Be Searchable/Indexed by Pronunciation?

I like the way that the English Wiktionary has a universal index for all languages in all scripts. What might also be useful is if the Wiktionary were searchable or alternatively indexed by pronunciation. This way, if someone heard a word from any language, but didn't know how to spell it in its native script, one could search for it by typing in IPA or SAMPA characters into a search tool. —This unsigned comment was added by WalterZiobro (talk • contribs) 18:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC).

Unfortunately, only a small portion of our entries have pronunciation information at this point. Pronunciaiton is also a bit subjective, and requires considerable skill to encode. Consider the word more. In the UK, the standard pronunciaiton is /mɔː/, but in the US, the standard pronunciation is /mɔɹ/. If you were to hear a local dialect, it might be as [ˈmɔ.ɚ] which would not match the standard pronunciations at all in a search. And that's just a simple monosylable case where the vowel sound is mostly the same. Far more complicated cases exist. So, I'm afraid that even if we had IPA pronunciations on most entries, such a search is currently beyond our technical capabilities. --EncycloPetey 19:00, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Certainly, encoding pronunciation is a challenge for any dictionary maker. Nevertheless, Wiktionary has encouraged posters to provide pronunciation via IPA or SAMPA in their entries. Whether the pronunciations given are comprehensive of all dialectical variations is always problematical, especially as a given language evolves with new, non-native speakers, or acquires new terms from other languages. However, it seems to me that so long as pronunciations are provided in Wiktionary, a search tool can be devised to search whatever is currently available. In time, the vast army Wiktionary posters will certainly expand the entries with more pronouncing variations. -Walter Ziobro

You've missed the second and larger part of my reply. Even if the pronunciations are encoded, how will users know which combination of symbols to search for? The presence or absence of a . can throw off the search. The choice between /dʒ/ as separate symbols and as a joined single charatcer can throw off a search. And there are countless additional such variations that make searching impossible unless you know the exact sequence of characters that were used to encode the pronunciation. Given that, a site specific Google search could be used, but you still have to know the exact sequence of symbols. --EncycloPetey 14:04, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. Moreover, we can hardly expect readers to be able to recognise sounds which don't appear in their native language (or those languages they might be best accustomed to) - I can't imagine anybody but a linguist typing into the search box things like eg /brɯ-iɲ/, /ʎɔ-ər/ or /ɣɔ̃ / (Scottish Gaelic for "speak", "book" an "[to] me". --Duncan 15:00, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] smt

What is the meaning of the prefix "smt" preceding the name of the president of India?

It means "shrimati", and is the Hindi equivalent for Mrs.. --EncycloPetey 15:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] template with blank numbered parameter: inconsistency

Why is that template:done, when presented with a blank first parameter {{done|}} or a space as first parameter {{done| }}, interprets it as I intend, by replacing {{{1}}} with a blank or space, whereas template:arc, when presented with the same, does not, but rather uses the brackets called for by its {{{1|[}}}? Here's the evidence.​—msh210℠ 19:52, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

That's because {{arc}} uses l= (the lowercase L) rather than 1= (the Hindu-Arabic numeral א). (But depending on your font, you may not be able to see the difference.) —RuakhTALK 20:06, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Ah! Thanks much.​—msh210℠ 20:26, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Is It True???

I just watched the Science Channel this morning. The narrator (Wil Lyman) said that YOU CAN NOT wear deoderant while on a nuclear submarine???

Is that TRUE??? I had never heard of such a thing!!!

—This unsigned comment was added by 205.208.227.56 (talk • contribs) 15:09, 24 June 2009 (UTC).

Hi. This is a dictionary. For information on what that means, please see dictionary. —RuakhTALK 16:02, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
But to answer your question, on a sub you can use roll-ons but not aerosols. You don’t really need roll-ons, because the air is permeated with motor oil. —Stephen 03:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How to add a language to the request by language page?

Hi, I'd like to request that the following Setswana words be defined on Wiktionary, but Setswana is not currently amongst the list of languages.

  • Mma (title, like Mrs)
  • Rra (title, like Mr)
  • dumela (greeting)

Thanks!--Tyranny Sue 05:47, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

We use the name Tswana, rather than Setswana. We have an entire Category:Tswana language. --EncycloPetey 05:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, it doesn't show up at Category:Requested_entries_by_language, which is one of the places I looked for it (as well as Setswana). Perhaps a link from Setswana to Category:Tswana language would help people, since there's no Setswana category.--Tyranny Sue 06:21, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
That could be done under a "See also" section. And no, not all of our languages have requests pages. In general, a page is created when requests appear for that language, or when someone takes the initiative to do so. Usually this is also because we have had someone edit here who knew the languagea dn began editing in it. In this case, it looks like all the Tswana entries were added by someone not familiar wth the language, but who had found a short word list. We don't have many people editing in sub-Saharan languages; I can only think of three such peple offhand. --EncycloPetey 14:13, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I put the preamble to Wiktionary:Requested entries:Tswana which links it to the appropriate categories. --Duncan 19:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion: links (like the selfref one at etymology) between relevant terms and Wiktionary formatting guideline pages

[edit] Selfrefs

In order to make it easier for users to quickly find Wiktionary formatting guidelines, it would be great to have a link like the selfref one at etymology on other similar pages (e.g. quote, reference, citation, quotation, format, layout). However, I've just been told that I shouldn't add the selfref template in the namespace (following the example at etymology) to the above pages, but was not told why, or where it could be added, or given any links to anywhere that might explain this. Could someone please tell me why?
Thanks for anything enlightening. --Tyranny Sue 06:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Or another way of doing this might be adding a permanent link to the Wiktionary layout guide page at the top of every Wiktionary page? However, a more targeted link would still be useful. Perhaps at the bottom of entries, so as not to seem like any kind of intrusion into the definition.--Tyranny Sue 06:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

This is a good idea — it’s just the kind of hook one needs when he forgets the name of a policy page in the Wiktionary: namespace. Furthermore, the format used atop etymology seems perfect to me. I don’t see why this ought not to be done. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 11:23, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
This becomes visual clutter in places that one person thinks others might look for assistance. Why would someone look up the definition of "layout" expecting to find help? We have our help pages linked via the main page. We've set up names for our style guides so that they parallel the titles of sections. I could see keeping the {{selfref}} on the entry for etymology, but only because it is exactly the same as a section header we have. Introducing additional style points all over the main namespace is a bad idea, IMHO. --EncycloPetey 14:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
To answer your question above, because it's intuitive. Why not look up 'layout' expecting to find help? I really don't see anything unbelievable about it and am surprised that anyone would.
Second reason: because of the example set by etymology--Tyranny Sue 15:38, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Because our policy page is called Wiktionary:Entry layout explained; mentioning that atop layout (and possibly format) is more intuitive than if it were atop entry or explained. This affects very few pages, and is not obtrusive even for those it does affect. Though I no longer need these hooks to remind myself of policy pages, I know from experience how useful this sort of thing would be for newer editors. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:11, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
If we would like to help new editors while they are editing, then the left hand side (navigation and toolbox areas) would seem logical. Another possibility is a small help window that gave the user fast access to our vast array of high-quality guidelines, policies, and help, or to a list of shortcuts. Of course an experienced regular user can achieve the effect by having a separate browser window open to one's own personal wiki cheat sheet library. DCDuring TALK 15:29, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
A user could do all of those things, as well as referring to the {{welcome}} or {{welcomeip}} message that should’ve been subst:’d onto his talk page. However, I think that the {{selfref}}s will be more intuitive to look up, and their use has virtually no drawbacks. That’s my opinion anyway, and I think it’s supported by the fact that Tyranny Sue suggested this very thing. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:53, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Thinking back on my own initial experience, I was often defeated by the other tools. Although my general appreciation for "modes" meant that it was not the first place I would look for something about Wiktionary and its own use of terms, I sometimes resorted to the searchbox. As I recall the default did not search very much outside principal namespace (???). Accordingly it often did not get me what I needed. I sometimes found what I wanted via a helpful link to something in Wiktionary space, often near the bottom of the page under "See also".
The problem with putting something to help new users using the most prominent space on the screen is that it would be there for everyone all the time. (Making it something that could be eliminated WT:PREFS or the "my preferences" tab is good for hard-core users, but not occasional non-newbie, non contributor users.) I believe that {{also}} and a {{wikipedia}} (to a disambiguation page only, especially for proper nouns) help a larger class of users.
If there are any limits in WT:ELE or our generally accepted practices that keep us from inserting such appendix, glossary, and help links in "See also" (or perhaps more prominently low on the right-hand side), they should be eliminated. I'd favor making sure that all terms in Wiktionary:Glossary got such treatment in the corresponding entry and that they get an "only in" entry if there is no such entry. Would this be worth a BP discussion? DCDuring TALK 16:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Could we not make them only visible to registered users? That would be to the benefit of the clear majority of our users. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't know. But, if we could and we could also allow users to turn them off, then there are only small (?) performance and complications questions. That means the target user is a registered, non-veteran contributor? If that could be implemented, it seems like a winner. Frankly, it seems like a much more useful aspect of presentation to be able to turn on or off than some of the other items in preferences and WT:PREFS.
I suppose what I was thinking about is aimed more at early-stage serious, but non-contributing users. It would be nice to have some information about the non-registered, non-contributing, non-vandal users. WT:Feedback is better than nothing, but it doesn't help very much on usability, at least not without some calibration. DCDuring TALK 19:19, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for new Category

I suggest that 'English words commonly affected by confusion' (or perhaps 'Difficult English words'?) would be useful. (Including, e.g. affect, incredulous, comprise & other such words where one is often mistakenly used in place of the one whose meaning is meant; i.e. affect instead of effect, incredulous instead of incredible, comprise instead of compose).--Tyranny Sue 06:42, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

(She has since created this at Category:English_words_affected_by_confusion — not sure how to link to a category.) Equinox ◑ 10:35, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
With a colon: [[:Category:English words affected by confusion]].​—msh210℠ 20:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't much like the proposed template names. "Difficult English words" would include long technical and scientific ones that are not commonly confused, and "affected by confusion" seems quite broad and nebulous (or maybe that's the point of the unifying category). Equinox ◑ 10:37, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
After posting, I discovered Categories#To_create_a_new_category, which seemed to imply that it was ok to just create the category. Since no-onen had replied to my post, I thought maybe a discussion here wasn't necessary.--Tyranny Sue 03:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
You can link to (rather than categorising into) a category by prefixing it with a colon; e.g.: [[:Category:English words affected by confusion]] = Category:English words affected by confusion.
I propose instead Category:English terms often used catachrestically or Category:Common English catachreses. Whatever the title, I very much support the spirit of such a category. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 11:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Good suggestions, Raifʻhār. I think Category:Common English catachreses would be a better way to go.--Tyranny Sue 03:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Who would use the category? To what question or problem is it the answer? DCDuring TALK 11:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I would and so, I assume, would Tyranny Sue. There are certain terms which people often misuse (if you would permit me such a prescriptive term in description of their oft-proscribed usage); it would be handy to have them all listed in one place so that a user could read the usage notes of all these terms of which he’d like to get a better idea how to use. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:14, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
People interested in characteristics (and examples) of catachresis (in English) would use it.--Tyranny Sue 03:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
If it is to be used only "by insiders", why not make it a hidden category? That means that there need be no normal-user considerations in naming it. All and only those who can use WT:PREFS the preference tab would have visibility. DCDuring TALK 13:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
No, I’d intend this as a category for the man-in-the-street user who wishes to refine his use of oft-misused terms. This sort of thing would be of no use to an editor qua editor, so making the category hidden would entirely defeat the point of it. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
How did you meet this man in the street? Coming out of a bookstore with "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" and "Ad Herennium"? I'm just a wee bit skeptical that the man in the street is going to grasp the utility to him of a category bearing a name from classical rhetoric.
Moreover, someone who knew his Quintilian or his Wikipedia would wonder why we were using the term for affect/effect and incredulous/incredible which don't fit the much more specific meaning of catachresis, which seems to have to do with the use of inappropriate figures of speech rather than words of the wrong meaning. That we follow some lesser dictionaries in selecting the vaguer sense of a polysemic word is understandable. That we would use it where we should be a model of clarity and unambiguity is not understandable. DCDuring TALK 05:17, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
I’ve now referenced the OED. That can hardly be called a “lesser” dictionary, and it has the rhetorical sense tacked on to its single definition almost as an afterthought. Furthermore, the related terms (catachrestic(al)(ly)) seem only to carry the general sense, rather than the specific, {{rhetoric}}al, one. Maybe that isn’t the case in Latin or Ancient Greek, but we run the risk of flooding the category with excessively esoteric logomachies if we engage in such a level of atavism. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 10:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
My concern is for the choice of word as a category name because of:
  1. its ambiguity with respect to the subject matter of the category. The 17 usages at COCA are in the narrower sense. Contrast with another polysemic category name: "Birds", for which there can be little doubt which sense is applicable.
  2. its modest level of usage outside academic writings and consequent low utility for most men in most streets, not to mention others. 15 of the 17 COCA hits were categorized as academic, the other two being in the same article in American Spectator. DCDuring TALK 13:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Seems very POV. Is every English word that has a usage note to be included? Every {{proscribed}} English word? They all are subject to confusion of one sort or another. (Or most are, anyway.)​—msh210℠ 20:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
My choice of word, i.e. "confusion", was perhaps not have ideal. This can be changed. However, the spirit of the category is not 'very POV', as what is meant are words (mainly word pairs - please see category description Category:English_words_affected_by_confusion ) frequently pointed out in external sources (e.g. style guides)(and I've added this proviso to the category description). As far as 'all English words' being 'subject to confusion of one sort or another', these are specific cases. The type of catachresis we're talking about here is chronic, widespread and usually applying to pairs of similar-sounding English words. They constitute, in fact, only a very small fraction of the English words in existence (and use).
The purpose and motivation of this is merely to promote the understanding and effective use of English terms, and (as I said above) for people interested in catachresis itself.--Tyranny Sue 03:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
The word catachresis as it would be used here is merely a [adjective omitted] synonym for "abuse". In Latin rhetoric it was called abusio. The more specific sense does not seem to actually include affect/effect and incredulous/incredible and comprise/compose.
Why is a category the right tool for this job? Alternatives include:
  1. Usage notes, some of which are very explicit in contrasting the terms.
  2. Appendices which can be linked to from Usage notes or See also which can list, say all catachreses and or use other words more intelligible to the other 99.44% of our users.
  3. Homophones to at least identify one subclass of the words.
I can't quite picture how a category alone would help a normal user. Would the user be searching for all possible word pairs that might cause confusion of a certain type? I could see how it might help us find the terms so that we could take the best example of how to present the issue and try to apply it to the other cases. That would seem made to order for a hidden category. DCDuring TALK 04:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
I tend to think that an appendix would be better, since it would be useful to be able to list the word pairs (or triads, or whatever) together, with en dashes — something that cannot be done in a category. (Or can it?) † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 10:39, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
I wonder if our existing appendices are sufficiently linked to from the entries that they reference. It would be simple enough to fix that. DCDuring TALK 13:38, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Entered word missing

After creating an account, I entered a new word/definition (Kimberlin) and clicked 'save'. However, when I went back to the main page and entered the word - not from vanity, but to see whether it had registered! - I found it is still listed as 'no word found'. What am I doing wrong? —This unsigned comment was added by Jhowlett (talk • contribs) 13:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC).

I have no idea what happened. What was your entry’s original content? † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:29, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
FYI, your contributions page shows this post to the Information Desk to be your first and only contribution here. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Alternate spellings

I am new with Wiktionary and I want to fully understand the purpose of "Alternate spellings" in some Witionary's entries. For example, I mean: "What is the use of this field in an entry such as Polack?" Thank you, --Jazzeur 02:47, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

In the case of "Polack", the Alternative spellings just provides different ways of spelling "Polack" which are all supposed to be correct (i.e. not misspellings). In this case, I don't know if the alternative spellings are actually correct, but as you already know, this is currently being discussed in RfV. —AugPi 02:59, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
A more well-established example is "judgment" which can also be correctly spelled as "judgement". —AugPi 03:01, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Sometimes an alternative spelling is due to a difference between American spelling and Commonwealth spelling, for example see "jeweler" and "jeweller". —AugPi 03:04, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
If this is the case then it should be indicated in parentheses. —AugPi 03:05, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for all the quick replies. One further question: "Do all those alternate spellings have to have the same meaning as the entry in question?" --Jazzeur 03:09, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, although some of the alternate spellings might be polysemic which means that they can have other meanings as well. For example, "Pollock" is polysemic: on the one hand, it is an alternative spelling of "Polack", but on the other hand, it means either a surname or a painting by Jackson Pollock. —AugPi 03:19, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
For words borrowed from a foreign language, like "Polack", the spelling used could be based on the writer's transcription from the other language or a phonetic rendering of the pronunciation of the word. "Polack" was probably Shakespeare's version of how to spell it to make it come out of actors' mouths the way he wanted it to. The spellings "Pollock" and "Polock" are spellings some more recent authors use to reflect the pronunciation they may have heard. Alternative spellings are less common or sometimes regional (eg, UK vs. US). We would like someone who came across one of the other spellings to find our main entry. The alternative spelling entries serve that purpose.
What spelling should one use? If capitalized, none of the spellings should cause much confusion. Any of them might be a last name, but the context usually would make that obvious. But to be nice to readers, the most common spelling ("Polack") increases the chances that the reader will either recognize it from previous reading or find the meaning even in a dictionary with fewer alternative spellings than we have. DCDuring TALK 03:29, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Transwiki:Ababil_(disambiguation) - What happens to "transwiki" bot copies from Wikipedia?

I noticed on Wikipedia that a bot had created the page Transwiki:Ababil_(disambiguation) here.

Is there some official process (queue/list) here at Wiktionary that examines these copied pages and determines if an entry in Wiktionary mainspace should be created? Thanks. (PS a ref for ababil (ref: The Young Naturalist's Book of Birds)) Proofreader77 18:47, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

If it satisfies the criteria for inclusion into Wiktionary then anyone can format it according to WT:ELE and move it to the appropriate page (I guess [[ababil]] in this case).​—msh210℠ 22:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
It is likely that it would be converted to the Arabic alphabet, Persian ابابیل (abābīl), “‘swallow’”) or Arabic أبابيل (’abābīl), “‘flock of birds’”), which may be a plural of إبالة (’ibāla), “‘bundle, bale’”). —Stephen 07:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] follow-up: Help:Transwiki

Many thanks. Are there people (some project/group) who regularly look over these transwikied pages, OR is it more of a black hole? :) Proofreader77 23:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

People go through them from time to time. There's someone who's been doing so wholesale, but I don't remember who, and don't know whether he still is. This is a wiki: feel free to contribute.​—msh210℠ 15:12, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Do you mean User:Goldenrowley? —Stephen 04:13, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Many thanks. Yes, User:Goldenrowley ... I'll follow up with them. Proofreader77 20:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How to input special characters

How do I input the Greek letter upper case omega? The help file says, "You will almost certainly find any character you need in the box below the “Save page” button in editing mode."

Using my browser there is no box below the Save Page button in editing mode.

There should be a short pull-down menu below the "Save page" button when you are in the edit window. It may say "Default", or it may say something else, but once you click on it, you can pull down to "Greek (Modern)" or "Greek (Ancient)", where you will find the omega and other Greek letters. --EncycloPetey 02:21, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Am I the only registered user not able to input special characters in the search box? I used to be able to. DCDuring TALK 00:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] 超常 leads me to $1 ???

Hi. I'm trying to add a new entry for 超常, however when I try to do this it comes up with 'Wikipedia may have an article on $1'. Then, strangely, when I try to add a Wiktionary entry it tries to create one for $1! What the---? UPDATE: I've just realised, this $1 thing only comes up when I use the Wiktionary search box on the left OR the search engine add-on in firefox to search for the word. However, if I click on the red link - 超常 - it goes straight to Editing 超常 as normal. Tooironic 10:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC) Tooironic 10:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

By the way, myself and another user have added the definitions for Mandarin and Japanese respectively, so this $1 thing won't appear anymore... Perhaps it was just an enigma anyway... Tooironic 11:08, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Explanation is at WT:GP#Search:_where_did_the_preload_templates_go.3F.​—msh210℠ 17:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
I encountered this (being sent to $1) on es.wikt when I had my user-interface preference set to English. When I switched it to the native wikt language (in this case Spanish) the problem went away. Do you by chance have the interface language preference set to something other than English? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 01:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Nope. At any rate it's not happening anymore which is good. Tooironic 03:51, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Suffix Bunch

Hello. Is there any grammatical name for the words that are formed by adding multiple suffixes at once, so that the between forms are not used (do not exist)? It happens sometimes in Hungarian entries that a word has a suffix at the end but taking it off will produce an unused form, not even worth an entry. It means the word got its suffix in a bunch, not one-at-a-time. Is there a name for this? It is not back-formation but rather a fastforward-formation. But that is not too linugistical. Thanks Qorilla 14:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Many American Indian languages have inalienable nouns, which can only exist with an attached pronoun. For instance, Ojibwe or Navajo -bid is not a word, but you have to say niibid (“‘my tooth’”) in Ojibwe, or shibid (“‘my stomach’”) in Navajo. Sometimes a Navajo dictionary will give abid (“‘someone’s stomach’”) or bibid (“‘his stomach’”) as citation forms. —Stephen 04:25, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Seems to me like a variaton of a bound morpheme. Maybe cranberry morpheme is the word we're looking for? Circeus 13:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
I guess there is no word for this. I try to illustrate: say there is a word "driverlyness" (the state of being like someone who drives; Hungarian uses this kind of suffixes all the time even for the most basic stuff). And say that 'driverly' is never used for some reason (so it shouldn't get an entry) but 'driver' is. So 'lyness' is one group in the entry-sense, but two in reality because everyone knows and feels that it is -ly + -ness. Now what to do in the Etymology section for 'driverlyness'?
  1. say it is 'driverly' (nonexistent, red link) + '-ness';
    • create an entry for 'driverly', only to make the link blue, but without any relevant information, as the word is not used.
    • not linking 'driverly' and leaving it black. Then one cannot know what the suffix is attached to.
  2. say it is 'driver' (existent) + '-lyness' (nonexistent);
    • create an entry '-lyness' stating it is a compound of '-ly' + '-ness', but no relevant information, since the meaning is what you get if you add them up.
  3. say it is 'driver' + '-ly' + '-ness'
    • needs template-editing because most of them only allow one suffix. Qorilla 10:48, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
I would do a handmade {{term|driver|lang=en}} + {{term|-ly|lang=en}} + {{term|-ness|lang=en}}. There are a fairly large number of these, even in English. It would not seem unreasonable to have a template that could handle these (assuming all in the same language, fewer than 10 affixes). In English, I suppose we like the idea of forcing the creation of redlinked "driverly", but, even in English, such forms do not necessarily exist, at least attestably. DCDuring TALK 11:15, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Modify hu-suffix to take more than one suffix (three might be sufficient), hu-affix can take nine. --Panda10 21:52, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] SUL

It appears to be impossible to attach the english wiktionary username PizzaMan to my SUL, yet the user has never made a single edit since registering in 2006. Is there any way i can usurp this account to my SUL account? PizzaManTemporary 14:22, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Prefix template

I have been adding the prefix template to a number of pages, trying to fill out the English words prefixed with xx- pages. What should I do with a stem currently entered like this: term|curo|cūrō|take care ? The prefix template doesn't have slots for both curo and cūrō, so I would lose the diacritics if I wanted it to hyperlink. Brock 01:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

You need to use gloss1= or gloss2= for translations, and alt1= or alt2= for alternative display forms. However, you shouldn't need to use that for English words formed from prefixes. The {{prefix}} template is only meant to link to parts in the same language as the current entry because it categorizes. --EncycloPetey 03:23, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Reading Entries Alphabetically

Is there a way to read Wiktionary as if one was reading a book? That is, one entry after the other in alphabetical order.

Maybe I'm warped, but I'd like to read the entries one after another alphabetically. The Random Entry feature is nice, but not exactly what I was looking for. WonderWheeler 03:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Try Special:PrefixIndex. —Stephen 03:16, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
That's the best we can offer. It won't be in "alphabetical order" because some entries are not written with any alphabet. We have entries in hundreds of different languages, in many different scripts and forms of writing. --EncycloPetey 03:21, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. Not what we were looking for. Guess my mind works alphabetically to some extent, and would have liked to be able to look at words in adjacent alphabetic positions, especially when learning things or checking spelling. Apparently it would be a basic software issue. By the way, I was looking for a word that would include the letters LGBT (or GLBT) in order, similar to the way the initals GMW are in the word GuMWood. WonderWheeler 03:45, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Put a "a" in the Special:PrefixIndex box and it shows all entries beginning with "a" alphabetically. For GLBT, Inglebert. —Stephen 04:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
...or Gilbert. And for LGBT, Longbotham or Longbottom. Doubtless others exist.​—msh210℠ 17:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Try Index:English if you want just English words. (Other languages' indices exist, too, with similar titles.) Note that the indices are not up-to-date.​—msh210℠ 17:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for that, I like GiLBerT; also found: Like GangBusTers, LaG BolT, LarGe BuTT, LauGh BeTTer, LauGhaBiliTy, LiGhning BolT, LinGonBerry Tart, LivinG BeTTer, GLiBiTy, GLoBalisT, GLuaBiliTy, GiLl BoaT, GnarLy BuTT, GLass BoTTom, and some strange ones like LinGuolaBialTy, GLaBrescenT and GeLiphoBiasT. (pardon) WonderWheeler 07:00, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] prescriptivism and prescriptive - label pejorative?

I've noticed these words seem to be mostly used prescriptively, and often also autologically. Would a label or usage note be appropriate?--203.52.130.137 04:54, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

If you are talking about at Wiktionary, of course it is "pejorative" in the sense that prescriptivism represents a departure from the explicit principles of this dictionary and of all the Wikimedia foundation projects. I suppose it might be true more widely, although I'd like to see the evidence. There are many works that seem to revel in their prescriptivism. I don't think would find the term particularly pejorative. It can be descriptively accurate of their intended approach to language. And autology both is fun and may minimize demands on the reader's working memory. DCDuring TALK 06:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
(I started this section from a computer at my local library. I didn't have time to log in.)
Wikimedia politics aside, though, wouldn't you say that 'pejorative' accurately describes the way 'prescriptive' and (especially) 'prescriptivism' are used?--Tyranny Sue 15:51, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
"Prescriptive" has a few meanings. Assuming we are talking about linguistic prescriptivism, I still don't think the term is inherently pejorative, certainly not enough to warrant template {{pejorative}}. To someone with an anti-authority tendency, prescriptivism may seem intrinsically pejorative. But some of the linguistic academies explicitly take a prescriptive role in guiding the development of the language for which they have been assigned responsibilities. The don't seem to view that as negative in their self-descriptions (or translations thereof). Based on usage in COCA, BNC, and OED citations, it seems to more often have a negative tone than a positive one, but not overwhelmingly so. I have some guides like Strunk and White's, Fowler's, Barzun's, and Elbow's (also U of Chicago's guide) which are clearly prescriptive. They are like manuals of good practice to achieve a result: language engineering guides. DCDuring TALK 17:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
OTOH, you are probably not alone in your perceptions and reactions. I just can't imagine covering the range of valences for every hearer/reader and every context even in a usage note let alone a context tag. DCDuring TALK 17:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Quick Question

As I was helping translate words, I stumbled upon this page Merv. There are two definitions; one is the short form of the name Mervyn, and the other is a place in Turkmenistan. The translations listed as needing to be checked are under the first definition, the name. However, I strongly believe that the translations correspond to the second definition, the place. I'm not really sure what to do. Thanks! Ethansmith 20:06, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

There is only one English definition given. The other definition is in a separate Turkish language secion. We don't include translations tables under any non-English entries, so you need not worry about the place in Turkmenistan .--EncycloPetey 20:13, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, I see. But I checked the Wikipedia article for that Turkish definition of the place in Turkmenistan called Merv. The translations that need to be checked under the English definition mean the Turkish definition. Ethansmith 20:34, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Mispelling:

On Community Portal page, Projects list, the last item is spelled " Mulitlingual coordination"

Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed. --EncycloPetey 17:52, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ashes of rose

But she could not stay in the house this evening. Where should she go? She walked slowly down through the orchard, where the evening air was heavy with the smell of wild cotton. The fresh, salty scent of the wild roses had given way before this more powerful perfume of midsummer. Wherever those 'ashes-of-rose balls' hung on their milky stalks, the air about them was saturated with their breath. Paragraph of book "O Pioneers! (1913) Written by Willa Cather" would like to know more about 'ashes-of-rose balls' Nico Coetzee

The term ashes of rose (or ashes-of-rose) is the name of a color, specifically a pinkish gray. W. Cather is describing the color of the wilting roses. --EncycloPetey 18:06, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] rthere categories4[specificlanguage]+IPA?

so ionly get entriescontaining IPA--史凡/ʂɚ˨˩fan˧˥/shi3fan2 (歡迎光臨/Welcome! 請也用/Please also use skype: sven0921為我/since I suffer RSI!) 14:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Try CatScan.​—msh210℠ 15:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

4Min nan,what2fill in pl?--史凡/ʂɚ˨˩fan˧˥/shi3fan2 (歡迎光臨/Welcome! 請也用/Please also use skype: sven0921為我/since I suffer RSI!) 16:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You would be looking for pages that use both {{IPA}} and either contain the text "Min Nan" or a coding such as "lang=nan". You could also compare listings in specific Min Nan parts of speech categories, such as Category:Min Nan nouns --EncycloPetey 17:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Or Category:Min Nan language, with some depth, with the use of {{IPA}}.​—msh210℠ 17:55, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Wiki en.wiktionary.org search in category lang=nanwith depth3 for pages by category with depth for pages by template {{IPA}}inverse (untagged only) for all pages if you supply a template in the field above, tagged articles will be highlited for stubs having less than bytes less than links (main namespace only) for changes in the last hours, hide minor , hide bots , only new articles for all images for all categories Format:

Show category lang=nan as tree . Articles under lang=nan that contain template IPA: {{{1}}}:

no matches!

[edit] [I] can hear a person talking who is eavesdropping.. his companion is silent.. is possible.. [if there uh is one].. however.. though[t].. you should know.. you are not responsible..

[I] want/wish to THANK YOU, for the article[s].. about PAN the DEITY.. as THEOS.. he [is] Malevolent God, [polytheistic].. the PANTHEON.. in France.. is something like.. his TEMPLE.. also it is that of BRAHMA[N].. Evil God [of Creation].. in the INDIAN PANTHEON..

sincerely, Dustin Collings in Seattle area, Washington [USA]

Aum nama Sivaya

[edit] Election Notice

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you may be aware, there is concern that the sitenotices regarding submission of candidacy for the Board of Trustees election were not seen anywhere but Meta after the 11th of this month. Because of the potentially massive consequence of this, and to encourage a full and active election, the election committee has determined that:

- Candidacies will be accepted through July 27th at 23:59 (UTC)

- The period for questioning candidates begins immediately. Candidates that are "late to the party" will, no doubt, be scrutinized by the community. The Committee hopes that the community will work to actively ensure that all candidates receive equivalent questioning.

- The dates of election will not change. The election will begin on 28 July and end on 10 August.


Please know that we recognize the radical nature of altering the schedule in the midst of the election and would not do it if we did not absolutely believe that there was a possibility that others may be interested and qualified and may not have known about the key dates.

For the committee, Philippe 09:18, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Onomatopoeia and what?

In Hungarian we have a name for a similar type of etymology to the onomatopoeia. In Hungarian it is named hangfestő or hangulatfestő, literally mood painting. These words express a feeling or mood about the thing that does not make any sound. Like icipici (pron. it-see pit-see) means tiny. And this word describes being tiny with these i sounds as that is similar to one one feels when showing between the thumb and first finger how small something is. But this is not an onom. because smallness does not make a sound.

Sorry if I'm over explaining, I don't know how known this is. I just can't find a word for it. Qorilla 21:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

We have things like that, such as itsy-bitsy (tiny), but the only label that I have seen applied in dictionaries is "babytalk". I know it really isn’t babytalk, but I that’s what we call it in American dictionaries. Perhaps the British dictionaries have a better candidate. —Stephen 21:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
I've got a feeling I've seen "imitative" in Chambers for words like this, even when it's not imitating a sound. Equinox ◑ 21:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
Ideophone seems like the word you're looking for (or close to it). "Mimesis", and more specific words like phenomime, are also used occasionally. -- Visviva 15:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Thank you! Ideophone is really it! Should we use it in Etymology sections here on Wiktionary? Qorilla 17:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
Seems reasonable to me. Another question is whether we want to have "Category:Xyzy ideophones" and so forth. -- Visviva 17:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] momme - definition

I am new to the Wiktionary system so pardon me if I'm not addressing by the correct process. I came across a word being discussed on my RC Plane forum for which I could find no definition. The word is MOMME which evidently is a measure of silk or fabric weight. One of the forum contributors offered the following explanation:

Momme (pronounced "mommy" and abbreviated "mm") expresses the weight in pounds of a piece of material of size 45 inches by 100 yards. So, for example, a 50 yd. bolt of our 5mm 45" Habotai Silk fabric (#HS545) would weigh 2.5 lbs. (plus the weight of the cardboard tube it is wrapped around, of course). The higher the momme, the heavier and stronger the fabric. Anything above 28 momme is considered heavy-weight and generally used for curtains or heavier outer-garments. Silk under 20 momme is considered lightweight, and generally used for light blouses with a chiffon feel. Medium-weight silk (20 to 28 momme) is excellent for silk scarves, furnishings, wedding dresses and the ultimate luxury of silk sheets.

Does this word qualifying for inclusion in Wiktionary? What is the process? Please note that I am not an expert in the fabric industry nor entomology.

Rick

Yes, it does qualify, but not simply on the basis of what you have said above. Our criteria for inclusion requires three "durably-archived" citations, which usually means references in a published book, periodical, or similar. A quick search at b.g.c. turns up many published uses of "momme", so it meets our criteria.
PS - you don't have to know about bugs to add an entry here; an entomologist studies bugs. --EncycloPetey 15:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Question about Puerto Rico

I work at a call center and my training class was wondering why "suspensión" is bad to say in Puerto Rico?

[edit] conspirator / co-conspirator

What's the difference between a conspirator and a co-conspirator? Is there one? Is it redundant? RJFJR 13:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

A conspirator is a person who agrees with another person to commit a crime. A co-conspirator is the other person with whom he agreed to commit the crime. Each of the perpetrators in agreement is a conspirator, and each of his partners is a co-conspirator. —Stephen 14:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
So if we conspire then I am a conspirator and you are my co-conspirator; equally, you are a conspirator and I am your co-conspirator. Right? RJFJR 16:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Right. —Stephen 17:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Where's the references?

I edit Wikipedia a bit, where I always use references. I've made only one edit to Wiktionary, at the word 'autistic'. I used two references (Yale Economic Review and Dictionary.com). I was swiftly reverted. The editor said on the discussion page that 'autism' and 'autistic' were not the same thing. Sure, they aren't. But I was editing 'autistic', not autism. Admittedly, the Yale article was referring to the French word "autisme". I got no response. I've noticed no Wiktionary pages which reference their sources, and that combined with the response to my references suggests to me that there's a dislike for references. What's the deal with that? ImperfectlyInformed 18:23, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

We tend to use citations instead: uses of the word matching the definition given. Equinox ◑ 18:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
I'm not following - I think the word matching the definition would be a circular citation. ImperfectlyInformed 19:11, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
No, if we define car as a vehicle and then quote a real, published book (independent of wiki projects) that mentions a car in that context ("He drove the car down the road"), that serves to verify the definition. Equinox ◑ 19:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
The etymology you added was not an etymology (from French autistique would have been an etymology, but I have not checked it). And the definition you added was not a definition of autistic, but of autism.
A citation is a reference, as it's a proof that the word exists and is used with the meaning given. Linguistic external links may be added, too, if you consider they are useful, but not inside the definition. Lmaltier 19:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] August 2009

[edit] 好像

Can someone tell me how to disable AutoFormat on this entry? It keeps adding "Mandarin:" to every line in the synonyms section. Tooironic 01:00, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you need to stop using the {{t}} template. That template is only to be used within Translations sections, never in other sections of an entry. --EncycloPetey 03:49, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of "Wiktionary"?

Hi! I tried using Wiktionary for the first time, and I have a question about how to pronounce "Wiktionary". Looking at the logo in the upper left corner of most Wiktionary pages (like http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page) there is a pronunciation guide that, to me, looks like it would result in saying "wik shen ri" rather than "wik shen air i". Is this correct?

Yes, but that is not the only pronunciation of the name. Just as the word dictionary is pronounced differently in various places where English is spoken, so is Wiktionary pronounced differently in various places. --EncycloPetey 03:48, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Beta changes

Hello. Where can I find out more about the "Beta". I'm currently trying it out, and can see some differences. Where can I get more information. Rising Sun 12:48, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] transitive and intransitive verbs

In my experience, pretty much all english language dictionaries, when giving the part of speech of a verb, specify whether the verb is transitive or intransitive, right alongside the part of speech. Usually just write "vi" or "vt" for part of speech, from which I can infer that it is consider equally as important as the part of speech itself. I was disappointed to see that, as far as I can tell, Wiktionary doesn't give this information anywhere, let alone alongside the part of speech. Is this intentional? Or just a gross oversight? Or is it there and I'm just overlooking it? Lethe 21:26, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Our goal is to provide information about the transitivity or intransitivity of a verb at each definition line. See infer for a simple example. Not all of our entries are up to that standard. See disappoint. We'd be happy to get your help in bringing entries up to our standard by inserting {{transitive}} and {{intransitive}} tags where appropriate. DCDuring TALK 10:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Deciding which deletion template to use

Which deletion template do I use for a misspelled page (juduciales) to make room for the right plural?. Ultimateria 17:03, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Fix the bad link on the singular page and then put {{speedy}} on the other one with a short explanation. Equinox ◑ 15:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] resolution of doubts

hey, there are 10 definitions for "resolution" here (in wikitionary), but it doesn't say how and why it gets a different definition in the phrase "resolution of doubts" , then it gets meaning of solving\dissolve, right? 89.139.76.20 14:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually resolve. We do seem to be missing this. Equinox ◑ 15:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Scraping public domain dictionaries

Much of wikitionary is solid, but I find that the definitions of English words can be a bit thin. Have there been any attempts at scraping from a Public Domain dictionary that has substantial definitions?

Wikitionary definitions are equivalent to a high school level dictionary. It could be improved to be quite a bit more substantial. Look in a "collegiate" dictionary for what I mean by "substantial." -L209342 16:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] I don't know where to post this

Hi, I'm not sure where I should be asking this (or even on which project), but is there a way that I could have the username Logomaniac for a WP account? There is already a account there with that name but (s)he only made 5 contributions on the same day in 2006. Is there a way I could "take over" that name? Also if this isn't the right place to put it (which I'm sure it isn't) where should I ask this? thanks (you can reply on my talk page if you want to) L☺g☺maniac chat? 20:31, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

You need to contact the Wikipedia Bureaucrats. See Wikipedia:Changing username for procedural instructions. --EncycloPetey 21:34, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for telling me :) L☺g☺maniac chat? 15:04, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] tailbone

Somehow I stuffed up the end of this entry. Can someone help me fix it? Tooironic 13:33, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I've removed redundant translation section tags. --Tohru 13:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] rete testis

IPA sg/plur pl?[orhow 2requestsuch~trreq?--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 11:31, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Non-English verb entries - why usually grammatical info, not word meaning (for non present actives)?

I'm wondering why, unlike regular English entries, most of the non-English verb entries that aren't present actives (I think) tend to have grammatical information instead of an actual definition (i.e. instead of the word's meaning, in English), e.g. absumere "1. present active infinitive of absūmō", and mates "1. second-person singular present subjunctive of matar".

This goes against what I've been told in the past about it being "considered bad form to define a word with words that are equally or more difficult". Surely most, if not all, non-English words would be considered 'difficult' by people who haven't studied the language in question. (It also looks very inconsistent when compared with other entries, as it presents grammatical information after the "1." as if that is the word's actual meaning. Is it just too much work to translate?) Is there some guideline about this somewhere I need to be directed to? Thanks very much.--Tyranny Sue 15:37, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

First of all, it's not always the present active: it depends on language. Hebrew, for example, uses the third-person masculine singular past tense. Secondly, there's a split among the regular editors: some like to only include stuff like "Second-person masculine singular past tense of לָמַד", while others (myself included) like to include a gloss also: "Second-person masculine singular past tense of לָמַד: you learned". The reason I've seen put forth for not including the gloss is that "you learned" is not a sufficient translation for the word in question, since "you have learned", "you had learned" and other things are also. Listing all of them would be ridiculous (in many cases), so, the argument goes, list none. Perhaps proponents of listing none can explain this better, or other reasons.​—msh210℠ 16:18, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
Oh, and incidentally, it's not only verbs. Adjectives, nouns, and prepositions (at least) also get inflected, and have similar "definition lines".​—msh210℠ 16:21, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
The two different definition types serve different audiences. The English gloss serves readers who know very little of the target language, but it's often nearly unusable on its own to readers of Babel level 1 or greater in the target language. The grammatical definition serves readers of Babel level 1 or greater in the target language, but it's often nearly unusable on its own to readers who know very little of the target language. —Rod (A. Smith) 17:37, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] how to find?

I want to edit for a list of seven letter words related to gambling. Does anyone know how to go about this? —This unsigned comment was added by 74.194.238.250 (talk • contribs).

You can browse through Category:Gambling for seven-letter words. If you know of some gambling words aren't in that category, tag them yourself by adding {{gambling}} to the words' entries, or let us know so we can tag them. —Rod (A. Smith) 15:58, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How to spell the plural of "supply" when talking about supply and return air registers in furnaces & air conditioners.

I cannot find the correct plural of "supply" when speaking of more than one register. I believe I have seen it as "supplys" and not "supplies". To me, the plural of "supplies" should be connected with multiple, variable items as in office supplies. Please respond. Thank you.

Of course the plural of supply is supplies. In formal writing you might use supply registers anyway. I'm guessing that some writers are puzzled by the unconventional (to them) use of supply, so they pluralize it like some write computer mouses. —Michael Z. 2009-08-19 18:12 z

[edit] File size?

How many bytes is the compressed file for Wiktionary?

The BZ2 file for all (and only) current pages is about 165 MB at present. Download here; you want the "latest-pages-meta-current.xml.bz2" file. Or you can save about 50 megs by downloading "latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2", which includes namespace 0 only. -- Visviva 12:59, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Names and their meanings

Why not add names and their meaning to wiktionary ?! Names can be added to wiktionary or something like, Wiktionary:Names_Neme1. I was going through [1] (What Wiktionary is not); nothing against adding names and their meanings to wiktionary. :) --V4vijayakumar 07:24, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

oh, already there ? I should have checked that first. let me add mine. :) --V4vijayakumar 07:32, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Does Chavacano count as a language?

For translations and categories, would Chavacano de Zamboanga be legitimate individually? -Erolos 01:51, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Anything that has an ISO 639-3 language code (as a language), as Chavacano does, is a language for our purposes and is includable here even if we have none of the supporting templates and categories yet. Please include the lang=cbk parameter in any templates you use such as {{infl}}, which should go on the inflection line. See WT:ELE for format details. See Category:Entries_with_translation_table_format_problems for formatting subsidiary languages in translation tables. DCDuring TALK 02:15, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello, i would like to submit a word for recognition if it would be possible, i have been wondering, why is there such a big vocabulary in curse words now adays? So instead of having all of the different curse words why not use Domb (pronunciation Dome) because it would be alot easier, and it is already being used in the town of Boonville, Missouri, and basicly what it is is a combonation of all of the curse words, it includes randomness and is another word to be known so that it can be stopped for future use

[edit] ulterior motive

Why is this word almost always used as "ulterior motive" ? Is there a term that describes this linguistic phenomenon? —This comment was unsigned.

From Talk:ulterior DCDuring TALK 10:55, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Tibetan~English initiative

Hello Wikikin
We are in need of a bilingual dictionary of Tibetan~English within the Wikimedia auspice. I am of the understanding that Wiktionary is now multilingual but am unsure of how we may fulfill each other's requirements. A community in Wikiversity are progressing a Tibetan language learning initiative which will involve translating texts to be uploaded in Source/Commons. As a byproduct is an evergrowing thesaurus that would be best integrated with Wiktionary. We already have associated and attendant resources in Wikipedia and Wikibooks. Tibetan is awkward because researchers or interested parties will search by Wylie and Tibetan script and by a suite of other systems. I consider it appropriate to focus on Tibetan script and Wylie, but am open to other possibilities. I would also hope there is an easy way for a person to add pronunciation. Is there? I have been uploading Tibetan terms on http://forvo.com/ but then considered why am I taking it outside of our Community as we have all the resources available within the Wikimedia auspice. Are there intelligent proformas, templates that can be made for specific languages to assist in standardization and ease of uploading?
I await your advice.
fanX or more formally...
Thanking you in anticipation
B9 hummingbird hovering 12:48, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Not sure of exactly what your needs are, but see Wiktionary:About Tibetan and Category:Tibetan language for the current state of affairs for our Tibetan coverage. We have no active Tibetan specialists, and our existing entries are fairly meager; thus, any contributions would definitely be welcome. You might want to get in touch with User:Prince Kassad, the author of the About Tibetan page.
Pronunciation files have to be uploaded to Commons, but once uploaded they can be linked easily from entries using {{audio}}. See Help:Audio pronunciations. It is unfortunate that Forvo uses an NC license, which is incompatible with the Wikimedia projects. -- Visviva 06:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Visviva, your response was wonderful!
B9 hummingbird hovering 21:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I try. :-) Good luck with your project! -- Visviva 01:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding common misspellings

I don't see it mentioned anywhere in WT:STYLE, but I do recall seeing some Wiktionary entries that have a separate section to list the common misspellings of a word. Is there an allowance for addition of this type of section or is it strictly forbidden to list any common misspellings? Or even redirect from them? -- OlEnglish 23:31, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Misspellings should not normally be included in the entry proper. A section for ===Alternative spellings=== is fine; this would be appropriate when the standard spelling varies from one region or time-period to another, or where several variant spellings coexist. However, if a misspelling is truly common, it is perfectly acceptable to create a "soft redirect" to the correct spelling using {{misspelling of}}; see tilda and accomodation for examples. -- Visviva 06:24, 6 September 2009 (UTC)
Aha! Thank you very much for the reply. The reason I asked is because "memoriam" is very commonly misspelled as "memorium". I created the soft redirect as explained. -- OlEnglish 17:23, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Quotations/examples "desired format"

Just want to express my opinion in regards to the current "desired format" for the formatting of quotations (at WT:") As a dictionary user, when I look up a word and there are examples of its use (quotations), I am interested primarily in reading the actual example/quotation, and not in reading a bunch of information about the example (except perhaps the year). Therefore I find the current "desired format" not very desirable at all. I think the source info should take second place to the quote. (Of course it definitely needs to be there, but not in front of the quotation. I think having the source info further indented and in a smaller font might help, too.) Thanks.--Tyranny Sue 07:00, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Our quotations need so much work. I think what you are talking about could probably be fixed by templating, and then adjusting your PREFS (if someone could make that work). I am still waiting for a good way of collapsing quotations under each sense, so we can really include a proper selection without it obscuring the entry too much. Ƿidsiþ 09:38, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, I have some minor disagreements with that style, too. I agree that most users would not be interested in the publishers and ISBNs of our quotations’ source texts; however, of course, it is vital to serve the higher as much as we do the lower, otherwise we’d have nothing but definitions with ad hoc pronunciatory transcriptions. Take a look at Citations:philerast and then compare the 1924, 1990, and 2005 quotations thereat with those at philerast#Quotations; nota the removal of co-authors, subtitles, publishers, and ISBNs in the main entry, and the greater clarity that brings. This, IMO, is a good example of how Citations: pages allow us to retain information without cluttering the main entries. Does that make it better? † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:14, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
But it wasn't Plato who wrote those words. It was the translator. And a mere book designer or typesetter who selected ligatures and typeface. I think we need to get more complete book production information for citations of ligature terms. Also, why does a citation of a ligatured term count as a valid citation of a non-ligatured headword? The same applies in both directions of course. I am beginning to see the need for a Wikitypography project to do justice to this vital subject before the whole field gets swallowed up by ISO-enforced uniformity. DCDuring TALK 14:28, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
Please don’t hijack this discussion with an only barely connected issue. Firstly, I faithfully replicated that text’s typography; “standardising” that in line with normal, everyday text constitutes vandalism. Secondly, it isn’t necessary for that variant to count toward attestation of the main spelling; FWIW, I would also add citations of the variant philerastes to that quotations section if I found them to be illustrative of the term’s use. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 21:43, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
The point is that what is being shown in an entry is not just the meaning. Tyranny Sue focused on that because many dictionaries limit themselves by focusing on meaning. But we have other issues to encompass. Thus, out citations need to be flexible enough to support that. In the case of unusual typographies, virtually the only relevant information is the rather obscure information of how the physical representation of the work was produced and reproduced. In the case of translations, the translator matters greatly. If all of our citations were in a limited number of citation templates, then the determination of how to present the quotations would be a relatively trivial technical matter.
It would seem to me that our first priority would be to actually get the quotations into templates and to capture as much of the relevant information as possible to allow us to illustrate and attest to whatever feature of the entry was under challenge or of a surprising nature to some population of users. I don't have any good ideas for how to recruit people who would do the work themselves or had the skills to devise bots to do the work in a reasonable time. Any thoughts? DCDuring TALK 01:54, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
God, I dunno. It’s virtually impossible to get the information for magazine articles to fit into templates properly. A lot of our citations could be presented in our templature, but we should not expect ever to get all of them integrated. It’s also not that clear how much we’d gain thereby — the only palpable benefit I can see is that it would permit auto-categorising, but that’s about it, AFAICT, and that seems only marginally useful. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 02:58, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
This isn't the place to be discussing policy changes. The Information Desk is for people looking to ask "minor, one-off questions". A discussion about the pros and cons of current format standards is better suited to the Wiktionary:Beer Parlour. --EncycloPetey 03:06, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] pronounce words

would like to see how to pronounce words I look up - like shagreen. —This unsigned comment was added by 74.245.33.131 (talk • contribs) 12:26, 9 September 2009 (UTC).

Look it up now. BTW, in future, two things:
  1. You can request that pronunciatory transcriptions be added to an entry by including {{rfp}} in that entry, as I did in this exemplifying revision; and,
  2. Please sign your posts on talk pages and in other discussion fora with four tildes (~~~~), which will produce your signature with a timestamp.
† ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:00, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] shaku

(moved from Tea Room) An editor has been adding quotations of random books on the entry shaku to prove a point on Wikipedia (w:Talk:Shaku#Requested_move if you really want to know), which I feel is inappropriate as there are just far too many quotes that do not add any information to the entry. I would remove some of the quotes but I am not a regular editor here on Wiktionary and so I am not familiar with the policies - and that it's 4am and I'm not really in the mood for reading; can someone more experienced please take a look and adjust as you see fit. Also, I have my doubts of it being an English word (it definitely is a Japanese word :)) so I'd appreciate it if someone could also clarify that for me. Thanks. --Antilived 15:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Quotations from random books are encouraged on Wiktionary. Wiktionary attempts to document the grammatical usage and context of all its entries. I see no problem with the listings on Citations:shaku. They meet our requirements for quotations; they illustrate usage of the word; and they are from durably archived sources. This indeed looks like a word that has migrated into English. The only concerns I have are (1) the publication information has been incorrectly moved to the bottom of the page, instead of included with each quote, and (2) there are multiple quotes from single sources, which isn't so useful. --EncycloPetey 03:12, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the validation. Per Wiktionary:Citations, I attempted to follow the example of Citations:mauve. Unfortunately, it did not give very full bibliographic information, so I tried to improvise by adding them to the bottom, which I thought was better than nothing. If you or someone else could provide me with an example to follow, such as fixing one listed there, I will gladly tidy up the rest. Regards, Bendono 03:21, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
Operative policy is still WT:QUOTE, AFAIK. Citations:mauve is not a good example, IMO, since it does not even follow such rudimentary policies as we have (for example, it inserts a dash between the year and the other bibliographic information, for no discernible reason). -- Visviva 03:44, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
The mauve citations page has not been kept up-to-date with formatting standards. The dash after the date is an older format still found on a number of pages here, but not generally in use anymore. The "model" pages listen and parrot have the same dash after the date on their Citations pages, but the format of the quotations there is a bit more up-to-date. --EncycloPetey 03:58, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] intercultutal

{{}}

[edit] mullock or mulloch - to make a mullock of something

We often use this word in the context of spoiling or making a mess of things. 'I made a mullock of it.' It would appear to be an Australian word for a spoil heap, originating possibly from Cornwall. However, it is well-known here in Yorkshire. It would be interesting to how widespread its use is. Any answers? Yorkshirepud 07:16, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Is it possible to modify the seeCites template?

I'd like it to say "For more examples of the usage of this term see the citations page" (instead of "For examples of the usage of this term see the citations page").
(The entry in question is cuckold.)
Thanks very much.--Tyranny Sue 17:42, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

There’s something you could do in specific cases: subst: the template and then edit the plain text that results. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 11:37, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks very much. How exactly does the syntax go please? I had a play with it & couldn't figure out exactly how to do it. --Tyranny Sue 15:28, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
{{subst:seeCites}}
That’s how all templates are subst’d — by prefixing subst: within the template name as presented in the usual double-embraced format. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:09, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
BUT, note that many, many, many (most) templates on Wiktionary are not to be used with subst: --EncycloPetey 04:09, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, AFAIK, only {{unsigned}}, {{unsigned2}}, {{welcome}}, and {{welcomeip}} are routinely substituted. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 10:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
It's possible, but not necessarily advisable. Keep in mind that: (1) Not all entries with a citations page have citations on the entry itself. (2) Even on entries like cuckold that do have citations among the definitions, it is possible for intervening sections of the entry to be long enough to make this fact less than obvious. In such a situation, the text "more examples" would be confusing even though it would be technically correct. --EncycloPetey 18:11, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. I probably used the wrong wording by saying modify the template. I didn't mean a universal modification, just a modification to this one usage. Is that easy to do? (I'm thinking of how, e.g., "en-verb" can be modified to "en-verb|xxx" but pipe sytax didn't work for me with seeCites.)--Tyranny Sue 05:26, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I understood what you meant, but the template would require that an editor add additional information in the template to make that happen on the page. The template can't do that as a matter of its own decision. The result is that we'd have a template whose wording could become inappropriate if other content changed on the page. In any case, this no longer sounds like an Information Desk question, but a Grease Pit question. --EncycloPetey 14:46, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
I had the same thought as Tyranny Sue a while ago and created a separate template, {{seemoreCites}}, which does what Tyranny Sue is looking for. I've used it a bit. It works OK. -- WikiPedant 04:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Woohoo!! This is perfect. Thank you!--Tyranny Sue 13:26, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] INQUIRY

Am battling with this phrase

"Post delivery service support"
I suspect that this is post-delivery (occuring after delivery) service support (help given by a company to customers using the service). Conrad.Irwin 14:50, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] tuck sense 6. To eat food

Is this right? Do people say, e.g., "She tucked her dinner"? Or is it trying to refer to "tuck in"? (I have heard, e.g., "she tucked in to her dinner" but not just "tucked".) (tuck in is included under Derived terms.) Thanks--Tyranny Sue 05:32, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

There is certainly "tuck away" and "tuck into". But tuck[ed] by itself (as in your example)? Sounds wrong. Robert Ullmann 06:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it does, doesn't it? I think it might need to be removed from the defs. I will add "tuck away" to derived terms though.--Tyranny Sue 06:25, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How to make wikipedia template work when wiktionary entry title is not exactly the same as wikipedia entry title?

I want to add it to curacao (and curaçao) but the Pedia article is entitled "Curaçao liqueur" (or w:Cura%C3%A7ao_liqueur). Is there a way to make the template work on these?
Thanks.--Tyranny Sue 16:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes: {{wikipedia|Curaçao liqueur|curacao}} or {{wikipedia|Curaçao liqueur|curaçao}}. You can find that in the documentation on the template's talk page. --EncycloPetey 16:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks very much. How do I find the template's talk page please?--Tyranny Sue 17:07, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Here you are; Template_talk:wikipedia. --Tohru 17:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Thank you!--Tyranny Sue 14:56, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] active contributors?

Just wondering which languages have active contributors at the moment? At the moment it seems it's just me (Chinese) and Finnish, but I'm sure there are others. The reason I ask is that I've been doing a lot of translation requests for other languages, but I don't want to keep doing them if they just keep piling up and there's no possibility of them being filled. Tooironic 13:32, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

You might find this helpful. (and the answer is, probably, more than you would have thought.) -- Visviva 15:22, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
Ooh, thank you, very shiny! Tooironic 07:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

'dbe automated[theaditn-ido dutch&mandrn ifjcfw&u dontbugme[icantnest--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 07:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Where can I discuss the development of the beta version?

I really like the new look on the beta version, and I like the new functionality as well. However, a recent change to the translations view is irritating me, and I'd like to see why the translations have been collapsed and give my two cents on the matter. Where can I discuss the changes in the beta version? EvanKroske 13:01, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi, the development of the beta version is at http://usability.wikimedia.org, but the issues with the translations is probably local to Wiktionary. I recently collapsed the translations boxes, to bring them back in line with the current view of Wiktionary; this is because it "has always been that way" on Wiktionary, for better or worse. If you'd like to override the site default, there should be a button at WT:PREFS "Show the translation sections expanded, instead of having them collapsed." which will leave them always open for you. Conrad.Irwin 21:32, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
I changed my preferences so that I see the full translation sections again, but I think that showing the translation sections should be the site default. First of all, it saves users looking for translations a click or two. Second, it shows people the nice new "Add translation" tool, encouraging them to contribute new translations. Finally, the translations appear to be the only section of articles that are collapsed. Expanding the translation section would make the entries more consistent. (I know that other sections are sometimes collapsed, but that happens infrequently.) Sorry if this opinion is in the wrong place; if there was already a discussion on this issue, point me to it. EvanKroske 13:01, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] [ˈwɪkʃənrɪ]

Who should be contacted about getting the IPA transcription on the logo of Wiktionary corrected? It should be [ˈwɪkʃənˌɛɹi] for US pronunciation or at least [ˈwɪkʃənɹi] for the UK pronunciation (if that's even how people in the UK would pronounce it; I suppose I'm giving the creator of the logo the benefit of the doubt).

Rest assured that you are not the first to notice the....oddness of the current logo. It is indeed valid, but my understanding is that we're presenting the stodgiest British pronunciation possible. In any case, I wouldn't hold your breath for it to be changed. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 22:56, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
You can read more at Wiktionary:FAQ. It's the first item listed there. --EncycloPetey 02:35, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] requests4dutch pronunciation-files[i/entrys

ow2find'em pl?[so2try2upload--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 06:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Almost all requests for additions to Dutch entries can be found in Category:Requests (Dutch) or one of its subcategories. The Dutch pronunciation requests are in Category:Requests for pronunciation (Dutch). --EncycloPetey 01:36, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] testimonial bonus=?

Further details of John Terry's new £160,000 a week deal have emerged - Mr Chelsea himself is set to earn a whopping £2.5m testimonial bonus, should he sell-out Stamford Bridge with a game against Real Madrid at the start of next season (News of the World)."--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 10:59, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] German Fraktur hyphen (looks like =)

Could someone paste hereto the character for the German Fraktur hyphen; it isn’t horizontal (ending lower at the right) and is double-barred, so it kinda looks like the = symbol. I can’t find the elusive little bugger… Thanks in advance. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:58, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Someone may correct me, but I believe that since the Unicode Consortium considers Fraktur to be a font difference only, the Fraktur hyphen would be considered to be covered by plain old "-". It does appear that U+2E17, from the Supplemental Punctuation block, is sometimes used for this purpose, but this would not be strictly correct. -- Visviva 15:27, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
That’s exactly what I was looking for. Thanks very much, Visviva! † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:27, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, it’s just a font change, like this: -. —Stephen 18:37, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
It’s not that simple, since the hyphen is doubled and made oblique. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 19:01, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
In -, it IS doubled and oblique, since it evokes the font Walbaum-Fraktur. If you don’t see it doubled and oblique, it’s only because you do not have Walbaum-Fraktur installed. —Stephen 20:14, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
That may be the case; I have Humboldt-Fraktur installed. It’s useful, IMO, to make proper display non–font-specific. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 20:38, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

The fonts mentioned above depend on a font-specific 8-bit encoding. They only work on non-Unicode text. It's a mistake to start mixing such non-standard text into Wiktionary. This “example text” in the entry Fraktur is not acceptable German, and doesn't demonstrate anything to anyone with any standardized system:

Aber — wenn von Wei}agungen auf den Heiland im A. T. no< ferner die Rede \ehn \oll, i| es mögli<, daß wir die typi\<e An\i<t der alten Zeit über haupt fallen la}en können? Kann wohl etwas lä<er li<er, wenig|ens unnatür li<er \ehn, als ein vier bis fünf Stellen des A. T. für wei}agend zu halten, die, wahre Dii ex machina, in die pro\ai\<e, bedeutungs lo\e Reihe der rein ver gangenen alten Zeit, aller Analogie entgegen, \i< ein ge \‍<li <en haben \ollen? Keinen Unparteii\<en wird der Einwand ungläubiger Theologen: wenn es Typen geben \olle, \o mü|e ihre Ab\i<t von den Zeit geno}en \<on erkannt worden \ehn, \onderli< beunruhigen können. Denn was kann den uner\<öpi<en Welt gei| hindern, um eine Harmonie zu begründen, die nur \einem Auge \i< ganz enthüllt, da und dort den Dingen Bedeutung zu geben, die dem men\<li<en Ver|ande im Augen bli>e verborgen bleibt, und in Hiero glyphen zu \<reiben, wovon wir nur den klein|en Theil entziffern können, der größte Theil er| mit der Zeit zur Klarheit gelangt?

A lot of historical text uses forms and styles which we don't use today. That's no excuse to abandon standards and accessibility. —Michael Z. 2009-09-21 04:50 z

[edit] secreted quotations

I substituted a shorter title; please don’t create such long ones in future. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:24, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Quotations under secrete (Vb) perhaps belong under secreted instead

There are 2 quotations but they both use secreted. Don't they therefore belong under that entry?
Thanks--Tyranny Sue 16:37, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, the first is a quotation, whereas the second is an example sentence. Nota that we allow quotations for inflected and conjugated forms to be noted in the main entry for the lemma (but not vice versa). † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:11, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Ah. Thanks. It would be good, though, to see at least one quotation using the lemma.
p.s. I'm also concerned about the fact that the writers of those quotes (the first especially) could have meant 'secret+ed' rather than 'secrete+d'? It seems to me in a case like this (with this much ambiguity) that the lemma should be used in quotations instead. Otherwise it looks like a possibly mistaken assumption is being made about the pronunciation of the written word.--Tyranny Sue 17:26, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
There ya go. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:39, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Wouldn’t the verb secret conjugate secrets, secretting, secretted? † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:43, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Thank you, that quote is much better.
As to the conjugation, not necessarily. See ferret & ferreted, ballot & balloted. I think the 'secreted' quotes should probably be removed from 'secrete', as there's too much ambiguity.--Tyranny Sue 07:03, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
It would be worth noting the double-‘t’ conjugation in the entries, explain its disambiguating effect. As for the quotations, where should they go, then? † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 13:24, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, which entries are you referring to? And I'm not sure what you mean about noting a double 't' conjugation.
About the quotation, I think that unless we somehow find out which heteronym Chris Horrocks was using in the 2nd quotation, it should probably be deleted.--Tyranny Sue 14:33, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Thus. It would be absurd to delete the quotation due to such ambiguity. The OED’s entry for “†ˈsecret, v.” marks it obsolete, with the most recent supporting quotation from ante 1734, and noting “In the inflected forms it is not easy to distinguish between ˈsecret and secrete v.”; conversely, it has three entries for secrete verbs (each from different roots, but the second and third closely related), two of which are pronounced (sɪˈkriːt) whilst the third’s pronunciation is not given (presumably to save space and redundancy). I think it is quite reasonable to infer that Chris Horrocks was using the simple past form of the verb secrete, not †secret. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 15:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
I was aware of the OED's judgement on this but I think we need to remember to try to be descriptive about modern usage on this. Most modern readers are more likely to come across 'secreted' (or 'secreting') in written form, not spoken, and are also unlikely to be aware of (or care about) the OED's judgement on it, interpreting it however makes the most sense to them, which may well be secret+ed. (Unfortunately, I'm not a subscriber to the online OED so I can't follow those links.) So I still think the Horrocks quotation involves a subjective assumption, but I won't delete it since you object.--Tyranny Sue 16:05, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
I notice you added (obsolete), presumably based on the OED. Descriptively, this is incorrect as secret+ed & secret+ing are actually in use and likely to be understood (by me & people I know). Perhaps it's a regional thing, but I do think the (obsolete) tag should be removed, though it probably does belong on 'secretted' and 'secretting'.--Tyranny Sue 16:14, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
It’s not just the OED’s judgment, as I show at WT:TR#secrete, 2nd sense (to conceal; to steal) obsolete? or at least dated?; it’s up to you to make the opposing case. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:24, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Opposing case made (multiple citations now at secret#Verb and Citations:secret). Now back to the original issue, secrete still has only one unambiguous supporting quotation and it's from 1914. Are you able to provide any more contemporary uses of "secrete" in this sense (and of course in the appropriate tense)? At present it looks like there has been a need to resort to using the ambiguous 'secreted' instead.--Tyranny Sue 16:05, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
And accepted. Sure, see secretes#Quotations for one from 1967–1968. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:46, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
secrete (vb 2) still lacks any contemporary (i.e. less than 50 years old), unambiguous (i.e. in the appropriate tense), independent (not made up) cited quotations. If it is really in use there should be no problem finding some. I haven't been able to find any. (Whereas I was able to provide 6 such such quotations for the verb sense of 'secret' and 4 for 'secrets'.)--Tyranny Sue 08:57, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
That is not true. The use of secretes is from 1967–1968 (max. 32 years old) and the (now verified) use of secreted is from 1997 (12 years old). † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:39, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
Actually, it was true because (1) I was - as stated - referring to the entry for secrete (vb 2), not 'secretes', and (2) the 2nd quotation was still unverified & therefore ambiguous when I posted. But it's great that we've got some verification on it now. We are probably now the only dictionary in existence that accurately & dispassionately reflects actual, modern, non-region-specific usage of these words, so we should all probably congratulate ourselves at least a little on that.--Tyranny Sue 14:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
I think we do a good job on occasion, though I wouldn’t say that all other dictionaries lack our (occasional) impartiality. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:00, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] secreted curiosity

I've been wondering if anyone happens to know of any conclusive etymological evidence as to whether secreted (as in "secreted away", i.e. hidden away) is supposed to be pronounced as secret+ed or secrete+d?
Thanks!--Tyranny Sue 16:55, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

From French sécrétion < Latin secretionem (accusative of secretio (“‘separation’”)) < the supine of secerno (“‘to separate’”). The verb with this sense is a back-formation that was first attested in 1707. —Stephen 18:43, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for that. The problem (as I see it) is that 'secret' also comes from sēcernō, and 'secreted', when written, remains ambiguous. I.e. we don't really know how a writer is pronouncing it in her/his head when they write it. The 2nd example under secrete (vb), is:
1997: Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 43 (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)
[...] Families secreted mad uncles and strange cousins in asylums.
How do we know for sure that Chris Horrocks was thinking 'secrete+d' rather than 'secret+ed'? (If we don't know for sure we should remove that quotation, as Horrocks could have been meaning it more in the sense of secret.)--Tyranny Sue 06:59, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, we don’t for sure, but in the absence of contrary evidence, it is most reasonable to assume that the use is the one in line with spelling rules for pronunciation and is of the verb that isn’t everywhere tagged as {{obsolete}}. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps this is simply an error on my part, but I've always thought of it, and pronounced it, as secret + -ed. The "secretted"-spelling argument has no sway on me, since I'm American. But as Chris Horrocks is apparently British, it may well apply to him. —RuakhTALK 21:47, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, everywhere I’ve looked calls it obsolete, so so should we if we lack hard evidence to the contrary. The double-‘t’ argument hinges on the fact that, whilst secret may be conjugated with one only ‘t’, secrete cannot (correctly) be conjugated with two ‘t’s. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 23:09, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, we do have hard evidence that it's not obsolete; check out google books:"secret it away" (as compared to google books:"secrete it away"). The question isn't whether one or the other is obsolete, but whether, how to know which one "owns" a given ambiguous cite. The double-t argument is a bit weak IMHO, since "secret" can't correctly be conjugated with two t's, either, in U.S. spelling. To an American eye, "secretted" rhymes with "fetid" or "pipetted". I'll happily believe you that U.K. spelling allows the double-t (just like how y'all seem to accept "cancelled" and "parrotted" — but not "offerred" or "happenned", for whatever reason), but unless U.K. spelling actually requires the double-t, and we can confirm that this Horrocks person uses U.K. spellings elsewhere in that book, I'm not inclined to lend that point any weight in deciding whether he meant secrete-ed or secret-ed.
Ultimately, I think the best solution is to move that citation to a citations page, with a note that it's unclear whether it's using "secret" or "secrete". Unless someone wants to contact Horrocks and ask him?
—RuakhTALK 01:40, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Right, secretted seems to be from "secrette" (a little secret).
IMO, secret is only a noun or adjective, and the verb is secrete (cf. breath and breathe). When secret is used as a verb, I think it is just a mispronunciation of secrete. However, the mispronunciation is so common that it is acceptable and sometimes even preferrable. —Stephen 03:59, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
We have further hard evidence that it isn't obsolete in that at least two Wiktionarians have now attested that they use it. (This is what being the only truly descriptive dictionary around is all about.)
I don't think it's a case of 'mispronunciation' because people are mindfully interpreting the word in the way that, according to the prevalent modern senses of 'secret' & 'secrete', is the most apt & felicitous. (Since my first post I've gained a better understanding of the history of these words & 'secret' & 'secrete' have been through various trends in their histories, perhaps this is just another. Anyhow, there appears to be a solid etymological precedent for "secret+ed", as this seems to be what was used before 'secrete' came along. Perhaps it's because the 2nd meaning of 'secrete' has pretty much fallen out of use - understandably since 'secret' does the job perfectly anyway.)--Tyranny Sue 06:59, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Ruakh and Stephen, so you guys see secretted as sēkrĕʹtĭd? Huh, funny; I guess I can see that. Good thing there’s no such verb as to secrette, I suppose, given the already abundant confusion surrounding secret(e); there is an adjective spelt thus though — the OED notes it as a variant spelling of secret (which it is) used in the fourteenth century (it was used more widely than that).
Ruakh, yes, google books:"secrets it away" is particularly convincing, IMO. Regarding the Introducing Foucault quotation, I’ve e-mailed him about it and Bcc’d you (since I had your e-address handy); I’ve tried to be as neutral as possible in the way I phrased it, but would you say there’s some bias in it?
Stephen, there’s a good chance that the verb secret was resurrected by back-formation from a mispronounced secreting (sĭkrēʹtĭng) or secreted (sĭkrēʹtĭd), but it’s also reinforced by unmarked verbalisation of the noun secret (which, etymologically, is how the word first came about); as such, it does indeed make sense to the Anglophonic ear, given the current use of secretting and secretted. (That, by all accounts, is more likely than the dictionary-guided resurrection of an obsolete verb as some sort of fad.)
Tyranny Sue, I wouldn’t say there’s anything “mindful” in users’ interpretation of secreted as secret + -ed rather than secrete + -ed, just that it may seem more intuitive to them. I agree now that secret is no longer obsolete; it certainly once was, however. That said, I must take issue with an argument of yours.
  • “We have further hard evidence that it isn’t obsolete in that at least two Wiktionarians have now attested that they use it. (This is what being the only truly descriptive dictionary around is all about.)” — + this
The “hard evidence” is emphatically not “that at least two Wiktionarians […attest] that they use it”, but that the existence of recent CFI-valid sources shows its current use (via Google Book Search). If we allowed the unverified personal experience of any Tom, Dick, or Harry to support entries, that’d make us the Urban Dictionary; if all that were needed were that a couple of editors here testify to using a given term for it to be kosher, then Bogorm and I could go around taking the {{archaic}} and {{obsolete}} tags off all the entries we have for ligated spellings. Wiktionary editors do not — and rightly do not — have any personal academic authority on which to stake their claims, and must back up their assertions in entries with verifiable facts; argumenta ad verecundiam only have (marginal) validity when they are staked upon a person’s academic reputation (thereby providing a strong disincentive for anyone to make claims that he cannot support), which no editor in this wiki medium can have (as an editor — I’m not talking about IRL, of course). Being descriptive has to do with describing accurately that which is the case, be it with usage statistics, etymological theories, or whatever; it has nothing to do with accepting personal testimony as fact. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:13, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
I just received an e-mail response from Chris Horrocks, who clarified that he did indeed use secreted in the sense of “to conceal in a hiding place; cache”. † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 16:34, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit]  ?

Why do you not give examples of how your words of the day ar used in a sentence. For example, how would you use "thalweg" in a sentence?

Because doing so would be pointless: you still wouldn't be able to use the word in conversation (unless you are a geologist or geographer). It's not the word's fault, it's a perfectly good word, it just isn't commonly useful. I'd say it wasn't a great choice for word of the day, but that's just my opinion. RJFJR 15:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
You could say, "We hiked up the thalweg." Sometimes an entry will have quotations or example sentences, but sometimes it won't. It all depends on how much interest the community has in preparing the entry before it's featured. --EncycloPetey 15:35, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] LL.=?

Etymology

amendment ... LL. amendamentum.--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 08:47, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Late Latin. Fixed now. -- Visviva 12:10, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

ta!

No, AFAIK {{etyl}} is just supposed to take ISO 639 codes (languages and macrolanguages). No ISO code exists for late Latin, so we stick to the old-fashioned template. -- Visviva 17:23, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Times have changed. In addition to ISO 639 codes, {{etyl}} can now be made to support arbitrary codes, by creating an appropriate {{etyl:code}}. In this case, we've given Late Latin the code Late Latin (by creating {{etyl:Late Latin}}), so {{etyl|Late Latin}} works as you'd expect. (For those who prefer codes that look like codes, {{etyl:LL}} is a redirect, so {{etyl|LL}} also works.) —RuakhTALK 22:14, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
Gosh darn it, I hate change. ~>:-( But I have to admit this is a more sensible way of doing. I assume {{LL.}} and friends should be considered deprecated, then? -- Visviva 08:15, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
I have no idea. Right now the {{etyl}} approach is used in one entry, whereas the {{LL.}} approach is used in 820; so if someone's deprecated the latter, they sure haven't done a good job.
I think there's probably been some delay in this case, because it's not obvious what the code should be. Should we invent a realistic language code, like ltl or something? Or a realistic but private-use code, like x-ltl? Or should we treat it as a form of Latin — either a private-use form, like la-x-late, or maybe something like la-150 ("Latin as spoken in Europe")? It's hard to say that {{LL.}} is deprecated without saying exactly what it's deprecated in favor of, and I just don't think we've decided yet what that is.
—RuakhTALK 13:38, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
I can say that on Commons, the codes la-cls and la-ecc are being used for Classical Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin, respectively. However, these codes are being used for sound files and therefore represent particular pronunciation patterns more than anything. For etymologies, I don't know what I prefer at this point. Codes like la-x-med could be confusing (not only because of the "x", but because "med" could be "medieval" or "medical"), although that pattern of construction seems to be the choice that ISO recommendations prefer. Perhaps we need a discussion about this at Wiktionary_talk:About Latin. --EncycloPetey 15:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

a-ta:)--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 17:58, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] wat baten kaars en bril als de uil niet zienen wil

'd an admin change 'de' into 'den' pl?[mytypo,4got is oldflemish--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 18:08, 30 September 2009 (UTC) you mean move it to wat baten kaars en bril als den uil niet zienen wil? L☺g☺maniac chat? 18:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

done. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 00:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

y,ta both![+redirct>megacool asuserfriendly!:D ta'gen!--史凡>voice-MSN/skypeme!RSI>typin=hard! 06:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese honorific suffixes

I just checked -san and was surprised to see it indicates friendship. Is there a suffix indicating respect, sort of like adding sir in English? RJFJR 02:33, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

-sama is more respectful than -san and -kun. There is also the prefix o-, as in お友達 (otomodachi). The respect expressed by o- implies that it is your friend or his friend. My own friend would merit only a plain 友達 (tomodachi). —Stephen 12:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] FYI w:Language recognition chart

This might be of interest in making an appendix at Wiktionay... w:Language recognition chart

76.66.197.30 13:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] origin of the word squeegee?

Any one know how the word squeegee got its name? I'm guessing from the squaky sound it makes when used... but mine doesn't squeak. RJFJR 20:50, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

[2] from one of the best sources on the Web. DCDuring TALK 22:59, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

But I found an 1829 source for squill-gee, which is clearly a precursor device and word. DCDuring TALK 23:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
OED says squeegee (1844) might come from squeege (1782), a strengthened form of squeeze. Its entries for squeegee and squilgee (1840) refer to each other, but the latter is of obscure origin. (How do we know squill-gee is clearly a precursor?) —Michael Z. 2009-10-07 02:54 z
Read the quote; inspect a contemporary squeegee at a hardware store. It seems odd that OED doesn't reference the 1829 quote. I would certainly like to know where squill-gee came from. Something nautical could have come from any of several languages originally. Are nautical meanings well documented before 1800? DCDuring TALK 03:55, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Let's write earlier, because it's unclear whether precursor means “earlier” or “etymological ancestor”. Linguists and lexicographers also base etymologies on standard language changes and the like, so we shouldn't speculate that a single earlier attestation means it's the parent word, especially when we would be contradicting the etymological dictionaries. Sailors and even captains of the day don't have a reputation for literacy, so who knows how long either of these terms was used for?
To me the descriptions of squeegees and squillgees do sound like the same thing, and I would speculate outside of dictionary entries that they are variations of the same word. For lack of real evidence, I would go with the references; in this case OED and AHD say perhaps from squeege, while others say “unknown”. —Michael Z. 2009-10-07 04:45 z
I wish I could find a little more support for the existence of "squeege" besides one quote from the Idler (1838) and one from Barry Lyndon, especially given the copious attestation of squeeze. That squill-gee and squeegee both have two syllables is suggestive. Squill-gee seems fully attestable from late 19th century quotations with the same meaning. Various non-authoriative sources have unreferenced assertions that a squeegee-like device used by fishermen existed in "medieval" times. I wonder what that was called. This looks like a case of the modern word deriving from two influences, with the OED giving sole credence to the UK and literary branch and other sources following them. Looking at the OED citations for this group of terms doesn't impress me much with the factual basis to their conclusions. DCDuring TALK 16:07, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect IPA for standard pronunciation of Wiktionary

Just kidding, someone already notised it. I realised I should, myself, type in propper English.

[edit] Extracting word list and brief definitions from Wiktionary

I want a list of all English words + a brief definition of each [1].

I tried downloading enwiktionary-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2, but this is way too much: it includes foreign words, word roots/origins, and a lot more that I don't need. How can I extract just a word list w/ definitions from wiktionary?

I know about mthes and scowl, but wiktionary supercedes these, yes?

[1] I realize this isn't well-defined: I'll settle for an approximation

Kelly.terry.jones 00:16, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I have a tab-separated file of English words, parts of speech and definitions, with most of the wiki markup removed. It's a couple weeks out of date ATM, but you can download it here (8.2 MB zipped). Alternatively, if you don't mind working with Python, download the Pywikipedia framework and do something like this:
import re, xmlreader
dump=xmlreader.XmlDump("enwiktionary-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2")
defs={}
for entry in dump.parse():
   if "==English==" not in entry.text or ":" in entry.title: continue
   text=entry.text.split("==English==")[1]
   text=re.split("\n\=\=[^\=]",text)[0] # ignore any non-English sections following
   finddef=re.search("\n\#([^\*\:].*)",text) # iff you only want the first one...
   if not finddef: continue
   definition=finddef.group(1)
   defs[entry.title]=definition
 
file=open("definitions.txt","w")
for d in defs:
   file.write(d.encode("utf-8","ignore")+"\t"+defs[d].encode("utf-8","ignore")+"\n")
 
file.close()

This should give you exactly 1 definition (maybe not the one you want) per word, if that's what you're looking for. The definition will come with all wiki markup intact, which may be annoying depending on what you're planning to do with it. -- Visviva 06:44, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Given names/surnames

Do transliterations of given names and surnames from other languages into English get their own entries? If so what language header is used? (English, Translingual?) Is there a policy page somewhere showing the guidelines for names? --Yair rand 00:56, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Transliterations do not get their own entries. --EncycloPetey 02:00, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
They don't? At what point do transliterations no longer count as such and qualify as English? Almost all English names are transliterations or mistransliterations of names from other languages, I think. If simple transliterations don't get entries then two entries I created recently, Yair and Shlomo, will have to be deleted. --Yair rand 03:02, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
There is no consensus. Transliterations with accent marks, like Adólphos, and any transliterated words will certainly be deleted. But we have entries like Vahagn, Kirill, Nikos. "Wiktionary:About given names and surnames" should have been written years ago.--Makaokalani 14:43, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
True, there is no consensus. Which is sad. I'd love to see more given names in Wiktionary, both in local script and transliterated. Particularly interested in etymologies: it has always been hard to find etys of given names and place names anywhere. Wiktionary could have helped here. --Vahagn Petrosyan 15:05, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Soundex search

Has anyone considered adding a soundex search to Wiktionary?

[edit] Plural translations

Is Wiktionary supposed to have translation sections in plurals as are in men and women? --Yair rand 05:28, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Rarely. Normally, the entry for the plural links you to the lemma form (roughly meaning the dictionary form of the word, for English nouns the singular), that would have the translations which are linked to the entry for the words used as translation, which would then define the plural. This requires two extra clicks for this process but we generally don't repeat large blocks of text, like translations, because every time an update was made in one we'd have to remember to, and correctly execute, an update to all the other locations. RJFJR 14:29, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
So should the translation tables in those entries be removed? --Yair rand 16:31, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but not a high priority. Removing them might keep some other translator from wasting time on such translations. DCDuring TALK 16:36, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
They should preferably not be removed until any info in them is moved to [[man]] if appropriate, though that's not completely realistically feasible.​—msh210℠ 16:53, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
It might pay to examine all of the elements of [[women]] and [[men]] to see whether there is any heading that has material that must be there. To me, except for Quotations and Pronunciation, none of it seems essential, though I haven't examined the items carefully. The more is there the more low-/no-value "contributions" the entry will attract. We would like users to focus on the lemma entries which are the richest and have all the context tags and usage notes that are appropriate. I have yet to see an argument for why even irregular plurals should have much material unless they are "plural only" in at least one sense. DCDuring TALK 16:47, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
They should not be removed. Of course we want translations of English lemmas, but if someone wants to translate a plural or a past tense, that is useful, too. In many cases, a lemma in another language is actually a better fit for an English plural or finite verb form. Arabic, for example, has many words that are grammatically singular but semantically plural. They have to add a special singulative suffix to form the singular, which is not a lemma but merely a singulative form, and the lemma is the plural. In any case, translations are added by volunteers, and if somebody wants to translate a plural, it is useful, and for many languages, irregularly formed. —Stephen 20:03, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] hebrew conversation

why isn't there a soundplayer sothat the correct pronounciation and spelling of words in a different language - like hebrew - can be heard?

There is a way to add audio pronunciations but there aren't too many for Hebrew yet. See Help:Audio pronunciations and Wiktionary:Audio for more details. --Yair rand 17:53, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Bots

Two questions:

  1. Is there a page to request a bot to do some task (verb forms etc.)? Is that what WT:BOT/T is for? It's not very clear.
  2. Are rhymes added to rhyme lists by a bot or do they have to be added manually?

--Yair rand 19:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Two answers:
  1. WT:GP should do, or the talkpage of a user who already has a bot that you think can do the task.
  2. Scs's ScsRhymeBot added rhyme-page links to entries, but not vice versa, I don't think. Nor, AFAIK, has any other bot. Should be doable, though, AFAICT.
​—msh210℠ 19:42, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic Wiktionary

Could someone please help me figure out how to create a page on Arabic Witkionary?Cf. WT:GP#Creating_pages_on_ar.wiktionary :)--Thecurran 01:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

You have to explain the problem more clearly. Is it that you can’t type Arabic? —Stephen 09:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I have no trouble creating or editing pages on ar.wikipedia and no trouble editing pages on ar.wiktionary but every time I try to create a new page on ar.wiktionary, I end up downloading some index.php . There are other Arabic Wiktionarians who do not have this problem. I have tried different browsers, computers, and computer systems but I still get the same results. In Arabic, the creation link for ألبانيا is http://ar.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=ألبانيا&action=edit or without diacritics, البانيا is http://ar.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=البانيا&action=edit . In English, Albania- is http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Albania-&action=edit . In Spanish, Albania- is http://es.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Albania-&action=edit . In French, Albanie- is http://fr.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Albanie-&action=edit . In Russian, Албания- is http://ru.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Албания-&action=edit . In Chinese, 阿尔巴尼亚 is http://zh.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=阿尔巴尼亚&action=edit or in Traditional, 阿爾巴尼亞 is http://zh.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=阿爾巴尼亞&action=edit . I thought I would be able to create all of these pages if I was logged in. Of course, I would not create the ones that end in hyphens or nine. In Arabic Wikipedia, ألبانيا9 is http://ar.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ألبانيا9&action=edit . In English, Albania- is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albania-&action=edit . In Spanish, Albania- is http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albania-&action=edit . In French, Albanie- is http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albanie-&action=edit . In Russian, Албания- is http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Албания-&action=edit . In Chinese, 阿尔巴尼亚- is http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=阿尔巴尼亚-&action=edit . Is there anything that bars editors from creating articles in a wiki before doing other types of edits there? :)--Thecurran 01:58, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I’ve just created ar:ألبانيا without incident. I don’t understand why you would consider names ending in 9 or a hyphen. What is the 9 for? Russian would simply be w:ru:Албания, no hyphens or 9s. When you download the index, do you save it on your desktop? Why don’t you copy it and paste it here so that we know what you mean? —Stephen 23:30, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

The names ending in hyphens are there to point to a generic word that has not yet been created and still is almost the same as the word I want. I used the 9 in Arabic because numerals, unlike punctuation, will be in the correct place in a text string when flipping from rightwards to leftwards and it looks sufficiently similar in Arabic numerals. Thank you! :)--Thecurran 01:15, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, is that "/w/index.php?title=" in your addresses what you were talking about when you said you were "downloading an index"? That is simply the editing address. You can ignore it. When you save the entry, "/w/index.php?title=" will become "/wiki/" and you will have a normal entry. —Stephen 01:33, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you but each PC I try to download the index.php on seems to have trouble opening *.php files. I have also tried http://ar.wiktionary.org/wiki/ألبانيا&action=edit , http://ar.wiktionary.org/wiki/index.php?title=ألبانيا&action=edit , and http://ar.wiktionary.org/wiki/ألبانيا&action=create but each downloads an index.php . The newest Chrome and Firefox will not read it and the newest explorer shows me:

[Process]
Type=Edit text
Engine=MediaWiki
Script=http://ar.wiktionary.org/w/index.php
Server=http://ar.wiktionary.org
Path=/w
Special namespace=Special

[File]
Extension=wiki
URL=http://ar.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=index.php&action=edit&internaledit=

Any ideas? :)--Thecurran 02:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

All I can think of is that you seem to be misinterpreting and misunderstanding what you are seeing. You cannot go to http://ar.wiktionary.org/wiki/ألبانيا&action=edit, you have to go to http://ar.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=ألبانيا&action=edit (i.e., not "/wiki/" but "w/index.php?title="). You don’t need to download anything or open anything, you just go to http://ar.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=ألبانيا&action=edit , perform an edit, then save (button at the bottom of the frame). That’s for an existing page. To create a new page, go, for example, to http://ar.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=البانيا&action=edit , edit and save. Once you save, the "w/index.php?title=" will automatically become "/wiki/". —Stephen 03:38, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] One rip

[edit] Requests for Deletion

Hi guys just a quick question, I noticed not all Requests for Deletion are discussed. What happens to the ones that aren't? Do they automatically get deleted after a while or does something else happen? Cheers, Tooironic 09:28, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems to depend on who notices them first. If it’s me, I close them out and remove them from rfd. If Equinox, for example, sees them, they are history. For me, there must be a consensus for deletion, but for some editors, a single vote to delete is enough; also enough: no vote either way. —Stephen 09:37, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh I see. Well I've nominated quite a few Chinese ones recently that, at least to me, seem totally SoP. I would create discussion topics for them but I'm afraid there would just be too many to go through them all. (There are a number of anon IPs who mass create Chinese entires on wiktionary, with seemingly little knowledge of the language or Mandarin entry formatting). I guess I'll just leave it then... Tooironic 10:12, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
It is more difficult to get a quorum for discussion of non-English entry inclusion/exclusion. As a result the standards are likely to be lower. In English at least three unopposed negatives and at least one week of time on RfD seem to be required for deletion. From what I've seen, for non-English entries the time is usually extended greatly and, I think, the unopposed agreement of two who actually know the language seems sufficient. It might be possible to recruit contributors to help at About Chinese. DCDuring TALK 11:30, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese attention tags on Cuniform characters?

Why were 𒂊, 𒉎, 𒄷 and so on marked with Chinese attention tags? They're, um, not Chinese. Tooironic 10:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

AutoFormat adds these tags for some strange reason, as well as sc=Hani.[3] —Stephen 23:20, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
But why? I mean, they have nothing to do with Chinese, do they? Except for the fact that they use Unicode. Tooironic 23:43, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
No, nothing to do with Chinese. AutoFormat seems to think that the Sumerian code sux is Chinese. —Stephen 00:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
And how do we remedy this? Tooironic 01:37, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
You should talk to User:Robert Ullmann. He's the owner/runner of the bot. --Vahagn Petrosyan 08:20, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
I did; still no reply. :( Tooironic 06:40, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for delay. It doesn't think sux is Chinese; it was treating all of plane 1-2 as Han (something left as to-be-fixed a long time ago, now fixed). The only reason it was doing anything was because of the cruft before the {infl} template (a redundant "transliteration" apparently). Robert Ullmann 16:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Google frequency search

Hi this may seem like a random question but does anyone know of any kind of freeware/plugin/etc that can Google search lists of word/idioms and tell you how many hits each one gets? I've been thinking it would be great to run a lot of Chinese idioms through to see which ones are the most common. Cheers, Tooironic 00:03, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] code for Wiktionary inflections

Where can I download code that handles Wiktionary inflections (e.g., tire to tiring)? I tried looking up utilites that perform the general XML to HTML conversion for Wiktionary, but couldn't find anything. However, for my purposes, I just need to expand words into the associated wordforms.

Do you mean the template {{en-verb}} or do you mean the bit of code that allows accelerated creation of form entries? --EncycloPetey 04:04, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am interested in code that expands the templates, such as the following from the entry for 'tire':

   {{en-verb|tir|ing}}

--Tomasohara 07:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

The double curly brackets indicate that it is calling a template. All of these reside in the "Template:" namespace. So, the information you are seeking is located at Template:en-verb. --EncycloPetey 17:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I believe you are misinterpreting what I am looking for. I am not looking for information on how to interpret the templates (as discussed in Template_talk:en-verb). Instead, I am looking for how the template expansions are implemented, such as when the XML lexical entry is converted into HTML. This doesn't seem handled simply through stylesheets, so I imagine there is preprocessing code (e.g., in Python or Perl) that is run prior to the HTML generation proper. Note that I am will be working with a variety of languages, so it would be a major undertaking for me to implement the template expansion based just on the descriptions in the template talk pages. --Tomasohara 00:30, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps Special:ExpandTemplates might be of use to you. For the implementation you'd need the MediaWiki source code.--Ivan Štambuk 07:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, that pointed me in the right direction. It took a while, but I finally figured out that the template expansion definition is actually in the XML source for the template article, which is probably what was being hinted at above. For example, here's a excerpt from the XML for Template:en-verb:
Third person singular<br> {{#if:{{isValidPageName|{{{1|valid}}}}}|'''[[<!-- -->{{en-verb/getPres3rdSg|{{{1|}}}|{{{2|}}}|{{{3|}}}|{{{4|}}}}}<!-- -->]]'''|{{{1|-}}}}}
So the MediaWiki system is acting as an interpreter for this template "code". Tracing through Special:ExpandTemplates invocations was harder than expected, but it seems to boil down to something like the following:
http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?action=expandtemplates&text={{en-verb|tir|ing}}
--Tomasohara 11:19, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] under fire

Hi, I added my very first quotation today @ under fire, could someone please check it to see if I've formatted it correctly? Cheers, Tooironic 11:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks fine to me :) L☺g☺maniac chat? 23:53, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] random entry...

In order to get English-only random results, I must click twice, on two different screens. I'd very much like to just click once to get it done. How can I get a "Random entry - English only" button onto my navigation buttons? Kingturtle 17:10, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I think you can copy what I have in my User:Stephen G. Brown/monobook.js to your own monobook.js, changing Russian and 'ru' to English and 'en'. This instruction gives me a "Random (ru)" link in my navegation bar so that I get Russian-only random entries, and it should work for you, too, with a little adjusting. —Stephen 01:48, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Static HTML dumps

Is there a download site with archives of the static HTML dumps for Wiktionary as with Wikipedia (see http://static.wikipedia.org)? --Tomasohara 23:51, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Might someone be willing to produce an HTML dump for English Wiktionary? I'm guessing it can be done via the DumpHTML extension to MediaWiki [[4]]. I will try to do this myself, but it might take quite a bit of time just to get a local copy of Wiktionary properly installed. --Tomasohara 11:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] delete template

Completely trivial question: When marking entries for imminent deletion, does the template normally go on the top of the page, or the bottom of the page? I'm just asking because a while ago I was in a situation where I added the template to the top not noticing that it had already been added to the bottom half a second earlier. Is there a standard for this? --Yair rand 06:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, the RfD templates usually go at the top of the page, and since {{delete}} is even more imminent, I would imagine that it should go at the top as well. Putting it at the bottom makes it possible for readers to miss it, as your case illustrates. —AugPi (t) 07:10, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Most people put it at the top, but really, don't worry about it. The template should never be there long enough for it to matter where it is. —RuakhTALK 22:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, yes and no. I'd say put it at the top, just in case you're wrong: someone who cares should have as much opportunity as possible to change it to an rfd tag (as instructed by the template, actually).​—msh210℠ 18:10, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Translingual form-of?

I was just looking around WT:STATS when I noticed it said that Wiktionary has 1065 translingual form-of entries. What is a translingual form-of entry? Are these mistakes? --Yair rand 19:09, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

They are, now you point them out, mainly mistakes in the statistics generator's idea of what makes a form-of entry. Specifically it assumes that any completely templated definition is a "form of". This fails for templates that I don't know about - particularly {{taxon}}}, {{mul-kanadef}} etc., however there are some actual "form-of"s, such as ^^. I will try to update the heuristics before next I run the stats. Conrad.Irwin 02:17, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Does that include {{non-gloss definition}}? --EncycloPetey 03:39, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

please add Indian languages-Malayalam(kerala state

[edit] A box of quicksand!

As a newcomer I sought to make an immediate contribution to Wiktionary. But oh my, I very quickly discovered just how easily one may become 'bogged'. The sandbox, rapidly became my very own quicksand box, as I floundered about endeavouring to understand the outcomes of my effort to create a new page.

Would someone please throw me a lifeline! I'd love to contribute, but should it prove any more difficult, I fear I shall 'go under'! Surely there is a way in which the Wiki User Interface (WUI) can be made more user-friendly. I for one cannot afford to spend hours delving into the arcane rituals of "wikification".

Many thanks,

Graeme Moyse

It may help to look at existing entries and copy the format. Anything you get wrong will likely be corrected (especially if you leave {{attention|en}} in it), so come back a day or two later and see, in its history, how it was corrected to see what you could have done better. (Also, see the pages linked to from your talkpage.)​—msh210℠ 17:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I second that advice. The "formatting" on wiktionary, as it were, is not as hard as you may think. And English entries, especially, are a lot easier than Chinese ones for example! Create & update by imitation is definitely the best way to go. Tooironic 19:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Wiktionary:About Esperanto

This page is basically empty, including only a paragraph about "Reta Vortaro" (?) and a note about suffixes. I've been trying to work on a new version, (here), but I'm not sure exactly whether before changes are implemented on About pages there must be consensus for a change, or a discussion in the Beer Parlour, or a vote, or if changes can just be implemented without any sort of process. Could someone explain the process if there is one? --Yair rand 06:34, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

In principle, there ought to be a consensus, but in practice most people don't work in Esperanto and will just chime in if something goes horribly awry. The key things to have are: (1) links to useful aids and checks, (2) information about language-specific tools and templates, (3) sections covering significant differences from how other entries are formatted (especially English ones), and possibly (4) standards, since Esperanto is an artifical language. The "Latin in non-Latin entries" section of WT:ALA is a key one you might copy and adapt, since some of those details are somewhat specific to a particular language. A version of that section also exists on the "About Hungarian" and "About Italian" pages. If you're feeling enthusiastic about revisions, then go for it. I get some of my best ideas browsing the other "About" pages and adapting what I find, so I'd recommend doing that as well.
However, "About Esperanto" can always develop over a long time as a work in progress. I've been working on WT:ALA for more than three years now, and there are still huge chunks of it unfinished. This is true in part because Wiktionary style changes over time, and also because I'm always learning new things and developing new ideas as a result. --EncycloPetey 03:03, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Questions to help with Wikimedia Strategy.

Hi Wiktionarians.

I've come over from strategy.wikimedia.org. We're interested to know two things about how you work here on Wiktionary.

First, do you have any competitions? On en:wp there are quite a few different competitions that seem to help motivate editors to do good work and more of it.

Here's an example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CUP

More can be found at:

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_awards_and_rewards#Contests

Does Wiktionary run anything like that?

Also on en:wp there are a number of WikiProjects which help editors to bond as smaller communities within the larger one.

Here's an example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history

More can be found at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WIKIPROJECT

Can you point to any sort of sub-communities within Wiktionary which help editors bond as a smaller group within the project as a whole?

Answers to these questions will be valuable to us as we work on Wikimedia Strategy. I will be grateful for any information you can provide. --Bodnotbod 18:01, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

For past competitions, see Category:Wiktionary fun stuff. Groups of people work on different languages, and communicate at [[Wiktionary talk:About Language name]]. (There's also some other coordinated work, which is mostly due to various people's following a single person's userspace list of entries needing emendation or creation, such as (just one example) user:Visviva/Tracking, but these don't engender the degree of bonding you seek. There are quite a few such userspace pages, and they really should all be categorized, but most are not.)​—msh210℠ 20:14, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
We have the occasional competition, but these are infrequent and I don’t believe they are popular with most editors. There are no WikiProjects which help editors to bond as smaller communities that I am aware of. —Stephen 09:55, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for those replies. Would you say the community here is small enough that, for the most part, you know each other? Wikimedia stats says that you have 300,000 editors but those stats are often misleading since many of them will not be regular contributors and others will have left the project. Perhaps to ask the question in a more specific way; would you say more than 50% of edits are by names you recognise? --Bodnotbod 15:34, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
For the most part, I'd say yes. When I joined here earlier this year that is one of the things that surprised me was how quickly I could 'get to know' the active editors. L☺g☺maniac chat? 15:40, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How to Create a Basic Chinese Entry

Hi everyone. I just finished writing a new guide for Wiktionary entitled How to Create a Basic Chinese Entry. I hope this might serve as an easy, step-by-step guide for newbies who wish to make a contribution to this project but find the formatting a bit daunting. Questions and comments welcome! Tooironic 01:13, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Looks very well done, we should have pages like that for more languages. (I'm a little confused why "1)" is listed twice, though.) --Yair rand 01:59, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Wooooops. Fixed. Thanks. Tooironic 09:06, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
I would also like to see a model at the bottom of a completed simple entry according to the directions. Such a model would help people like myself know how to patrol new entries in Chinese languages. --EncycloPetey 02:52, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm sorry, what exactly do you mean by a "model"? The complete "model" entry is outlined in "The Template" section if that's what you're getting at. Tooironic 09:06, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
That shows the coding. You don't really see the code when you patrol, so much as the product that the code produces. --EncycloPetey 17:02, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Oh right. Well I would display that but I don't know how to stop it linking into wiktionary like a real entry would. At any rate you can check out the real-life entry: 扳机. Tooironic 07:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
See WT:ALA. The way I provided examples with to have floating boxes with links to model pages. You could use that without causing undesired linking. --EncycloPetey 07:44, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Um... that looks like a lot of stuffing around, and I'm no whiz at HTML. Looks like you have to manually type in all the style formatting. Is anyone willing to give it a go for me? Tooironic 05:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Irish Gaelic

You have my heart but not my life, i will love you forever. - I need to know what this is in irish gaelic.

Try Wiktionary:Translation requests. —Stephen 08:56, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] JESUS CHRIST and God

How true is the saying that say Jesus cChrist was there? God created a human being, but who created God?

Not really relevant here, but Jesus' life is well attested, not only be Christian sources either. He definitely existed, but I won't say more than that. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:09, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] When to add slang.

When should slang words be added to Wiktionary? Apols. if this has been discussed before - I couldn't find such discussion myself, although I'm just an infrequent contributor to the project.

It seems to me that certain slang words are commonly used, and hence appropriate to add to Wiktionary. Conversely, other slang words seem obscure & uncommon, so seem not to merit inclusion. But obviously, this depends on the particular editor's viewpoint. For instance, a mature, well-educated editor in one continent may well have a different view to - say - a less mature or less-educated editor in a different continent. Who's to say what slang is common & worth inclusion?

The word that got me thinking about this is tomato. The current entry lists two slang meanings for the word, neither of which I've heard before, and neither of which I personally would have seen fit to include in Wiktionary. I gather there is an 'UrbanDictionary' website, which personally I feel may be a more appropriate repository for slang.

But what is the consensus among you experienced Wiktionarians? (And if the latter's not the right word, what is, please?). Thank you, Trafford09 01:51, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't be what you would call a veteran Wiktionarian, but my impression is that all words (and expressions) in all languages are included, provided use can be demonstrated in at least a few different real-life texts, and that applies to every word and expression, not just slang. Thus it has nothing to do with different regions or educational backgrounds, but rather if people are actually using it in some way or another. Tooironic 05:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, thank you for your comment. You seem to be saying "anything goes" - depending on how one applies the "demonstrated in at least a few different real-life texts" test. With 'non-slang', it's poss. of course to do google searches on published & available books. Maybe some similar Google search could be used for slang?

My main worry remains, though, as to where one should usefully draw a line between more-common slang and the myriads of (being charitable) local slang. I personally would hate Wiktionary to include all the words in UrbanDictionary, which I find a useful site on occasions, but but one beneath the more serious and more-controlled project that is Wiktionary. If nothing else, if Wiktionary contained all slang words that anybody cared to add, in any language & local region, then the project would risk becoming unwieldy, less respected, and possibly one wouldn't see the wood for the trees. Also, given that UrbanDictionary exists, is reasonably well known & already fills some distinct purpose, one might argue that each project should stick to its own forte, rather than duplicate effort, or even compete.

So the question really might be just where one draws the line. Maybe a tangible guideline would be to include words that had made it into a recognised, published dictionary? I admit that this would mean the project wouldn't be 'leading edge', but it would afford some measurable determinant for us to follow & be seen following.

It would be nice to see a range of views of different editors. I wonder if I should cross-post this onto a discussion area (&, if so, where?). Further views appreciated, Trafford09 10:34, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

If widespread use of a term or a new sense of a pre-existing term can be demonstrated then that would automatically exclude those bizarre creations on UrbanDictionary. Each entry is judged on its own merits and there is no hard or fast rule apart from those guidelines outlined in WT:CFI. Moreover, Wiktionary should not just include words published in dictionaries. I think most contributors here would agree that living, breathing languages go beyond what is merely prescribed in "reputable" dictionaries; one of the great things about Wiktionary is that we can cover those terms and usages which cannot be found through usual modes of research. (This is especially the case for LOTEs which may not have many dictionaries to begin with!) Tooironic 13:41, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] December 2009

[edit] loga

According to Ayyavazhi mythology there are Seven Logas (Seven Upper Worlds). The Sanskrit term for Loga is "loka." Akilam six and Akilam seven of Akilattirattu Ammanai speaks about it. The Seven logas are;

Deiva Loga Yama Loga Swarga Loga Brahma Loga Vaikunda Loga Siva Loga Para Loga

Why is it that this is not included?

I have found the most common use of Loga to be in algebraic problems refering to logarithms

Well, the Sanskrit term for loga is not loka, because Sanskrit does not use the Latin script. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Trying to merge accounts

Hi, I am trying to unify my wiki accounts and I am getting a message that I can't because there is a blocked user on wiktionary with the same username as myself (Mamluk). Since this user is blocked, what could be done to allow me to unify my accounts across the wiki sites? —This comment was unsigned.

  • OK - try again now. SemperBlotto 17:27, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] What are those squiggles called?

Posh documents sometimes have a little squiggle at the end of sections that acts as a divider or space-filler, is there a name for them, or (more importantly) how would I search to find a free image of one? google:embellished lines wasn't helpful Conrad.Irwin 12:30, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Were you perhaps thinking of a colophon or coronis? † ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 12:35, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
I think scroll, not sure if we have the right sense, but http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/object/4468602_scroll_designs.php?id=4468602 is some examples what I was looking for. Conrad.Irwin 12:47, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Cirwin, they are called vignette. See w:Vignette (graphic design) and free images. --Vahagn Petrosyan 13:31, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Perfect! thank you. Conrad.Irwin 14:00, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] firstly

In the Translation section there is the comment "<!-- Do not enter translations of "first" here - only enter translations of the proscribed form.-->". Um... many languages do not differentiate between "first" and "firstly" in this context, so what exactly do they mean and how is such a comment supposed to be useful? Tooironic 12:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The comment wasn't in accord with out entries. I removed it. I hope translators will heed the context tag of "formal". Such comments may have been effective for giving guidance formerly, when translations were added by general editing, but they are are less effective now that we have the assisted-translations tool. DCDuring TALK 16:03, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Great Pronunciation Flood

Searching for an IPA speech synthesizer, I found User:Keffy/Great Pronunciation Flood. Keffy planned to upload speech-synthesized pronunciation files based on a collection of pronunciations he made. He used the Festival software. I looked up Festival but I found no method to synthesize based on IPA. Unfortunately Keffy is not active anymore, so I ask here. Is Festival able to synthesize based on IPA strings? If it is not what method did Keffy use to transform his pronunciations into synthesized speech? Does anybody know? --::Slomox:: >< 14:58, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

User Keffy has not been involved for almost three years. The community has, in the past, agreed that synthesized pronunciations are a bad idea. --EncycloPetey 15:09, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
No, it was no proposal to revive his project. I just want to know: Is Festival able to synthesize based on IPA strings? If it is not what method did Keffy use to transform his pronunciations into synthesized speech? --::Slomox:: >< 13:49, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Guersney French Creole

Have recently met someone from Guernsey in France who speaks this language. Is it ISO 639 recognized, or just classed as "French"? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:24, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Whoops, answered my own question, see Guernésiais. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:25, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] How to Add a Chinese Translation

Just created another guide for newbies on How to Add a Chinese Translation. Comments welcome. Tooironic 23:38, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

It looks good, you should probably put it in the Help: namespace (Help:Chinese Translations or Help:How to add a Chinese translation or both with redirects), and link to it from Wiktionary:Translations and Wiktionary:About Chinese. The only comment I have is that it'd be preferable to use {{qualifier|explanation}} or {{i|explanation}} rather than ''(explanation)'' (these are both normally visually equivalent to (''explanation'') and are easier to interpret when trying to automatically scan the translations). (It also might be less confusing to refer to these italicised qualifiers as qualifiers, the gloss is what's in the grey bar). Conrad.Irwin 23:46, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for that feedback. I've modified it accordingly. :) Tooironic 00:42, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Latin case question

My name is Michael Hamm. I have a piece of paper that reads, in part:

[…] testamur nos ornavisse Michael Hamm perfectis omnibus quae requiruntur probataque eruditione laudabili gradu atque titulo […]

Is my name written right, or should there be some sort of case-marker suffix on it? (Incidentally, we lack all of those words as Latin entries, except nos, omnibus, and atque.)​—msh210℠ 21:10, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

No, we just lack some of the specific forms. We have testor, ornō, perfectus, and requīrō at least.
For the construction you've asked about, your name appears in an indirect statement using a perfect infinitive and so should be in the accusative as Michaelem. The surname may or may not be inflected. In Classical to early Medieval Latin, the final name element would be inflected in some way, but it first would be converted into a Latinized form in some way. The specifics would depend on the meaning and origin or the surname; Hamm (as an English name) originates as a locative byname meaning "meadow", and would probably be explicitly noted as such through the use of dē (“‘of, from’”) if it were a proper name of a town. In Late Medieval and Renaissance Latin, by which time bynames and surnames did not always have a literal meaning, they typically were no longer inflected in Latin records if they were not already Latin (or Latinoid). Instead, they would be recorded in a (somewhat) Latinized spelling intended to preserve the sound of the original surname. As a result, you get some really bizarre-looking Latin records of names in places like Hungary and Poland. --EncycloPetey 23:19, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Thanks much for the info. So it should really say Michaelem Hamm I suppose. (Hamm as my surname apparently comes from w:Hamm, Germany, not any pastoral meaning.)​—msh210℠ 23:25, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] wimps

I would like to get a thorough understanding as to how physicists determine the existence of wimps. I do know that wimps are purported to be responsible for the extreme velocities of the movements of certain galaxies and stars. How does the Standard Model arrive at the conclusion that wimps have to exist? Why does Dark Matter and Dark energy have to exist in order to explain the extreme velocities of certain galaxies and stars? Is it possible that there are unknown fundamental physical laws that operate under extreme conditions, without having to postulate Dark Matter and Dark Matter? Why can't galaxies be held together when these unknown laws come into effect? Why do we have to assume that we can not see 90% of all the mass of the entire universe? These are very fundamental questions that I would very much like to have some one somewhere answer for me.—This unsigned comment was added by Popsjabo (talk • contribs).

This is Wiktionary, a dictionary Web site. Why do you think this is the appropriate place to ask? Try sci.physics or something.​—msh210℠ 22:03, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] "RFV"

What does "RFV" mean? (re: comment in Nominate to Delete: "move to RFV") —This unsigned comment was added by Hermitstudy (talk • contribs) 10:43, December 23, 2009.

That would be an abbreviation for Request For Verification. See WT:RFV. --Ivan Štambuk 09:48, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
My sincere apology for failure to sign the query, and thanks for your answer. Hermitstudy 10:01, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
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