Wiktionary:Information desk/2017/September

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← August 2017 · September 2017 · October 2017 → · (current)

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'hac' script

Administrators please change 'hac' script from Arab to ku-Arab. Hawrami and Central Kurdish have same alphabet. The current script (Arab) doesn't display the specific letters well. For example, {{m|hac|شێر|tr=lion}} produces شێر (lion) with disjointed ێ, unlike the desired form of شێر. Thanks.--Calak (talk) 13:02, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Done --Z 07:59, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I would like to propose the following change to the .Arab font stack MediaWiki:Common.css, following my suggestion from last month: font-family: Iranian Sans, Segoe UI, Tahoma, Microsoft Sans Serif, Traditional Arabic, sans-serif;. (Code2000 is shit too.) —suzukaze (t・c) 08:08, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Interested to add words from Odia Language

I am interested in adding many Odia words to the English Wiktionary. I know how to use bot and I operate bot too. Do I have to request for bot access? If yes then I want to have bot access. Please give your feed back or support if you agree. Do I have to perform any other task before that? Please suggest. Currently I have the word formats like this.

Odia word

English meaning or/and translation

--Jnanaranjan sahu (talk) 09:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

@Jnanaranjan sahu: ଧନ୍ୟବାଦ୍. You will need to request bot access per the process at Wiktionary:Bots. I would recommend that you take a look at a few of the entries that we already have in Odia first. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:43, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

@Jnanaranjan sahu: Yes, you'll need to get permission in order to run a bot. Before you even ask, though, I would recommend working on entries without a bot for a while so we can see that you know how to do entries that meet Wiktionary standards (see, for instance our Entry layout page). Chuck Entz (talk) 22:20, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your insights. I will be soon analyzing and updating words with the proper layout.--Jnanaranjan sahu (talk) 05:31, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Category:Terms with historical senses by language vs. Category:Historical terms by language

What's the difference between these? And why does the latter mostly consist of empty categories -- should it be kept at all? — Kleio (t · c) 16:13, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

It's part of an effort to split categories between things that apply to entire words, and things that merely apply to one sense of a word. We have a separate {{tlb}} for term-wide labels. It never really got off the ground though. —Rua (mew) 16:44, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Oh, TIL about {{tlb}}, I suppose that distinction does make sense. Not sure how I feel about putting it in the headword line tho, some languages have quite some info in the headword line already and pasting the template there only adds to the clutter. — Kleio (t · c) 17:58, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm personally not a fan of putting lots of inflection on the headword line. English, Danish and Norwegian are big culprits. I'd rather put it in an inflection table unless it's literally just one form like in the case of the English plural. —Rua (mew) 18:19, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

@CodeCat So you mean that we should create a simple template to organize verb forms in those languages? Anti-Gamz Dust (There's Hillcrest!) 02:01, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Lombardic terms

Are the at Lombardic terms bizzo, furh, panch, pretil, skura, stapho (Category:Lombardic) really properly attested, and not reconstructed from Italian words or the like?
Some remarks:

• With google books some of these terms can be found in secondary literature without an asterisk as e.g. "logb. "bredil", "predil", "pretil" = sgabello", and with an asterisk as e.g. "*bredil/*predil/*pretil 'sgabello'", while sometimes it's a bit ambigious as e.g. "long *bredel/pretil 'Brett; Schemel'" or "Long. *bredil/predil/pretil 'sgabello'". (Does *A/B mean *A/B [reconstructed A, or (non-reconstructed, properly attested) B] or is it short for *A/*B [reconstructed A or reconstructed B = reconstructed: A or B]?)
  From the google books results I see, I get the impression that at least bredil/predil/pretil is reconstructed and that some people don't use * or a bit sloppy.
• Carl Meyer (Sprache und Sprachdenkmäler der Langobarden. Quellen, Grammatik, Glossar, Paderborn, 1877) doesn't have these terms. -84.161.43.111 08:08, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Since we consider Lombardic a dialect of Old High German, it should be sufficient for these spellings to be attested somewhere in OHG, although if they're not attested in Lombardic they shouldn't be tagged {{lb|goh|Lombardic}}. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:34, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Indeed.

AWB has bizzo, furh and panch (under banc, and not bank which wiktionary has) but for now it doesn't have pretil, skura, stapho.

• bizzo: I don't know if any of the references is lombardic, but I would have some doubts. Possibly the label "Lombardic" is too narrow or wrong and should be "also Lombardic" or removed.
• furh: This doesn't seem to mention wiktionary's lombardic sense.
  What if the general OHG meaning is properly attested, and the lombardic meaning is (re)constructed from italian forra? In other words, what if there is only OHG furh meaning 'furrow' and lombardic *furh meaning 'ravine, gorge'? If that's the case, then there shouldn't be the lombardic sense in furh, but there rather should be two entries OHG furh and lombardic - that is an OHG entry with label lombardic - *furh. The alternative of having only furh with both senses but a label like "Lombardic, reconstruced" doesn't seem to be a good idea.
• panch: The given references are these: "panch: nom. sg. Gl 3,631,20. 640,9. 659,26. 698,5". Die althochdeutschen Glossen, 3rd vol. from 1895 has it (it's volume which can be omitted, page, number). Sources of the glosses, although I doubt that it is much helpful: "Clm. 14689 f. 47^a" (for p. 631 and 698), "Codex Florent. XVI, 5 f. 140^b", "Codex Vindobonensis 804 f. 187^b". Are the glosses lombardic? I'd rather assume it's general OHG. Thus there could be OHG panch, and lombardic *panch (hence panca). So again the label "Lombardic" might be to narrow or wrong and might be "also Lombardic" or removed.
  

BTW: As of WT:CFI#Number of citations and WT:About Old High German (not having any "list of materials [...]") the glosses can't attest anything for OHG as they're only mentionings and not usages (which is why Wiktionary talk:About Old High German#Mentionings was created).

-84.161.34.196 02:16, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

The "list of materials" may not have been drawn up yet, but there is no doubt that OHG is an LDL and that words attested only in glosses are eligible for inclusion. We certainly have gloss-only entries for Old Irish, and plenty of Ancient Greek words that appear only in Hesychius's glossary. I don't think anyone here wants to exclude any attested term in an ancient language with a limited corpus. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:42, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Malaysian Sign Language

Hello. I'm actually not sure where to ask about it but nevermind. Well, I've been learning Malaysian Sign Language lately and would like to add Malaysian Sign Language entries here. I see that there's already ASL entries here. How do I add a sign language entry here? I don't really understand much how the ASL entries work. Can anyone that know sign language help me? --Malaysiaboy (talk) 14:46, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

What exactly is your doubt? In the technical sense, you add SL entries the same way you add oral language entries: you create the page and add the sections as required by WT:EL; the main difference is that you use ===Production=== instead of ===Pronunciation===.

By far the greatest issue is knowing how to spell individual sign language words, since they rarely have well-established writing systems. In the case of Brazilian Sign Language, which I know a little, the usual way to write words is using the Portuguese translation in upper case (subject to certain considerations); there is some use of Sign Writing, but not much. In this sense, it seems similar to the use of Kanji.

You just have to find out how textbooks and dictionaries spell Malaysian Sign Language words and cite them. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 15:04, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I think you should think very carefully about what technical resources such a language would need, and how entries would be searched for and presented to users. I never got the feeling our ASL entries were at all successful or user friendly, so these are unsolved problems. DTLHS (talk) 01:40, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Like how do I name the entry of the SL. For example, hello in ASL is this B@Sfhead-PalmForward B@FromSfhead-PalmForward. Just like what @DTLHS said I'm not sure if anyone refer Wiktionary to find ASL signs. For me, it's kinda hard to understand to read the ASL entries here. I will consider contributing it when I'm ready. Thanks anyway. --Malaysiaboy (talk) 08:04, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Joel

How do you pronounce that name in English? --2A02:2788:A4:F44:8183:7545:1215:7AAE 22:24, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

In IPA, something like /ˈdʒoʊəl/. You can hear an American pronunciation at the start of this video. — Kleio (t · c) 22:32, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I'd pronounce it in one syllable, /dʒoʊl/, to rhyme with bowl and coal and dole and foal and goal and hole and mole and pole and sole/soul and toll and vole. And I'd pronounce Noel (as a first name, e.g. Noel Coward) to rhyme with the same set. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 08:37, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to you both. I've added the second pronunciation you suggested. --2A02:2788:A4:F44:6DA2:F960:CC8F:16D4 19:10, 1 October 2017 (UTC)