Wiktionary:Information desk/2021/June

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← May 2021 · June 2021 · July 2021 → · (current)

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Translingual translations to emoji

I was looking around and saw that rainbow flag had a translingual translation for 🏳️‍🌈. I was wondering if I'd be allowed to do this for other nouns? And would the emoji need to have a page? AntisocialRyan (talk) 16:37, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Is this not about as inappropriate as giving ○ as a translingual translation of circle?  --Lambiam 21:43, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

But ○ does not have the definition of "circle", at least translingually. The emojis on here do have the definition of what they represent, and also at least one other thing typically. I think it makes sense but I still want to make sure it's ok. AntisocialRyan (talk) 04:42, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I've seen people do this with various nouns, e.g. ice cream, they might add the cone emoji. I remove these when I see them. Emoji are not "words in a language". Equinox ◑ 05:02, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Are they not words, though? That is debatable. AntisocialRyan (talk) 15:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Not really. No one speaks "emoji", they use emojis to add a dimension to written communication in actual languages. For the same reason, taxonomic names also don't belong in translation tables. This is different from sign languages, which we do include in translation tables. IMO, the only place to include them in an English entry is as a "See also" section. The other option would be something like a dedicated subheader for emojis, but that would require consensus to include it in our standard format. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:54, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

They don't exist in a grammar. Equinox ◑ 20:58, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Specifically for this case, rainbow flag is a noun. 🏳️‍🌈 is not a noun. It is a symbol depicting a rainbow flag, but it is used to express support of what that flag stands for. The use of the English term “rainbow flag” does not imply such support.  --Lambiam 17:58, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

I broadly agree with Equinox and Lambiam and Chuck Entz. Yet some people do actually send messages consisting entirely of such symbols. Are they considered to be pictograms?

But is there a clear Wiktionary policy on such matters? (If not, there should be.) I was surprised to see that so many symbols already have 'dictionary' entries, as per my comments at Talk:(_)#Punctuation/Symbols. And several of those symbols will not appear in any "text" communication: for instance "▒".

—DIV (1.129.106.0 04:59, 17 June 2021 (UTC))

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{{Babel|emoji-4}} – Jberkel 09:15, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Emojis are part of current language though. Just like exclamation marks and full stops are part of language. However, the debate is ongoing on whether they are words. Could just be a matter of semantics. Being a word or a non-word had not stopped any entry from not being an entry.

To know what language is, just have a look at the animals communicating to one another. 119.56.104.80 13:16, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

They still ain't words in a grammar. Nobody is denying that they exist. My cat communicates by rubbing his cheek on stuff, to leave a scent mark. That may be "communication" (broadly construed). But what is the cheek-rub? A noun, a verb, an adverb? Nothing, because it ain't actual language, no grammar; it's merely communication. Same for emoji. Equinox ◑ 22:27, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

The best example is the heart ❤️ (although regarding Unicode we can argue this one seven ways to hell because there are multiple versions of it), but long before emoji this was a recognisable sign, standing in for the verb "loves" or "love": you could buy a gift-shop sticker or badge saying "I ❤️ Skye" (I love Skye, Isle of Skye, a popular pun) or whatever. I'd probably be happy to accept that one given its age and prevalence, but accepting every random picture of broccoli, no! Equinox ◑ 22:29, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

This makes as much sense as saying © is a translingual “translation” of English copyright; words and symbols are not the same. J3133 (talk) 15:34, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I would go as far as to say that would make sense as well. Someone should start a debate in the appropriate place, and link it here. AntisocialRyan (talk) 15:00, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

J3133's point about the copyright sign is interesting. Maybe we could say that the copyright sign is a rendering of the concept of copyright but it isn't a word. Haha, bring on the lexical stylesheets. (I'm not saying we shouldn't have the copyright sign. Again, this is a special long-lived one that even has legal meaning, I believe. But a broccoli emoji ain't quite the same.) Equinox ◑ 22:43, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Over this time I've had some ideas: Many emoji may be just pictures used to represent concepts, and not words, but some are definitely used for communication. For example, gestures (👍, 👌, 🖕, etc.). Pretty much all emojis could be used in place of words also, but that probably doesn't count. AntisocialRyan (talk) 00:08, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

@J3133, Equinox: I don’t see any point, for where is the evidence that ©, ℗, ™, 🄯 are translingual? I don’t know any language besides English “using” it. © was put as English like “Copyright year by …” was put into books to be copyrighted in the United States which required it until half a century ago. Precisely they are logographs used in English, part of speech “phrase”, and in any other language of Europe any of them is so unusual that it may not count as borrowed—I mean why would a German or even Ukrainian recognize what “™” stands for? only the internet slants the picture with United States publishing pouring in upon all discourse, so of course some Germans, and much fewer Ukrainians, adopted that badge, like those disclaimers none of their users read, you may call it code-switching or ignorant use or something else excluding its passing the language barrier—, it is even that Wiktionary and Wikipedia beg the question how native it be in the United Kingdom and Ireland. So not merely it should have an English entry instead of a Translingual one, it should be labelled “US” or “chiefly US”. Fay Freak (talk) 01:11, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

The copyright symbol is recognised throughout the EU (and beyond!), even in countries where the word for copyright doesn't begin with a C. I would say this makes the symbol "translingual". Importantly, however, this doesn't make it a "translation" for the word copyright (which is a noun or a verb): this is only a symbol. It doesn't belong in translation tables. Equinox ◑ 01:48, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Equinox: It is unusual, dodgy though that you define a lexeme as belonging to a language only by passive language skills, not to say that it is precisely not how an individual language is defined. With all that emphasis of use of language this only confirms its absence in the language, as it needs to appear out of the language community and not just be perceived there. Don’t you remember examples where many people believe a word exists and it is frequently made an entry for but it doesn’t exist? Like those phobias which are more often listed as known than practically employed.

I cannot help but see that I do not exaggerate: If I restrict searches of "🄯" to .eu domains, it is not found on any site, also with added year or about the specific topic copyright. It’s extraneous, an exceedingly rare xenism, and a ghost word, you can well own. Fay Freak (talk) 03:36, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

You speak complete garbage and I will talk to you when you learn English. lol... "xenism" and "you can well own". Equinox ◑ 05:10, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

dive bar

What's a dive bar? 212.224.225.251 08:38, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

It's a bar (“business licensed to sell alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises”) that is a dive (“seedy bar, nightclub, etc.”). —Mahāgaja · talk 09:16, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Search pages by ending

I know I can look for pages that start with a certain string of letters but when I try to search by ending it doesn't do anything, am I doing something wrong? — This unsigned comment was added by The cool numel (talk • contribs) at 09:21, 5 June 2021 (UTC).

You can use the recently repaired tool at https://dixtosa.toolforge.org/, although that will only search within specific categories, not the dictionary as a whole. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Doesn’t work for me. Regardless of the category and suffix I enter, it will return English adjectives ending on -uctible.  --Lambiam 09:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Well, that's new! @Dixtosa, Erutuon:, any idea what's going on? —Mahāgaja · talk 09:53, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@Mahagaja, Lambiam: Ugh, sorry, that's embarrassing! I forgot to remove my temporary debugging code. Now it works again. — Eru·tuon 21:01, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

You can put an asterisk * immediately in front of the search term. It works reasonably well. SemperBlotto (talk) 10:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Where should one enter the *-prefixed search term?  --Lambiam 09:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Babelbox on my Userpage

Hello, it seems like I am making some mistake in adding Babelbox on my Userpage. How to correct it? Lightbluerain❄ (Talk | contribs) 07:00, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

You didn't make mistake. Template:User gu-2 and Template:User mr-1 are not created yet. You can make them by mimicking other templates. --Octahedron80 (talk) 07:17, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Alright. Lightbluerain❄ (Talk | contribs) 07:25, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Correcting a Translation Entry

I have little confidence that I am following the correct procedure for correcting translations. I've found a number of errors in the Pali translations - wrong form, weird choice of script, and dubious choice of lexeme. For example, I have just corrected the translation of father from {m|pi|janako}} (nom. s., infrequent synonym) with additionally a citation of the Devanagari script form to pitar (stem, usual word) with an additional citation in the alphabetic* Thai writing system, which is the Pali writing system with the greatest online presence. --RichardW57 (talk) 07:59, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

• That is, in this case, an alphasyllabary which is also an alphabet, like modern Lao in the Lao script.

My question is, was it right for me to just dive in and change this translation, or should I have fixed it in another way? --RichardW57m (talk) 11:03, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't know much about Pali, but seems fine to me. There's no particular procedure, but only make changes when you're confident. If you question something but don't know enough to remove it outright, you can wrap it in the template {{t-check}} or do a bit more research. Obvious mistakes can be fixed on sight. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:05, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Russian voicing assimilation

Would a voiced word-final obstruent devoice if the next word began with a sonorant/sonorant consonant? Dngweh2s (talk) 02:13, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

@Dngweh2s Word-final obstruents are voiced before voiced stops, unvoiced before resonants including l r m n v. Benwing2 (talk) 01:16, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

How do we correct Declension template errors?

Hello, I noticed the Declension template for Hindi entries shows some wrong outputs. How to correct them? Lightbluerain❄ (Talk | contribs) 06:19, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@Benwing2. Are these systematic errors (similar words have similarly wrong forms)? Please give some examples. The code generating the declension tables is written in Lua and located at Module:hi-noun. Unless you are familiar with Lua and understand that code, it is probably better not to meddle with it. The reason for errors may also be that the template {{hi-ndecl}} has not been supplied with the correct parameter.  --Lambiam 21:51, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam, Lightbluerain These are probably due to incorrect params given to {{hi-ndecl}}, but I need to know the specific entries and what you think are wrong about them. Benwing2 (talk) 01:17, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

@Benwing2:, in the निर्धनता entry in declension there are 3 plural words like निर्धनताओं, which I never heard. I think they're wrong. Lightbluerain❄ (Talk | contribs) 12:43, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

@Lightbluerain, do you mean that word does not have a plural? In that case, you can see that it uses the template {{hi-ndecl|<F>}}, whose template page Template:hi-ndecl gives its documentation. The section Template:hi-ndecl#Singular-only,_plural-only explains how to specify to the template that the word is singular-only, so you would end up with something like {{hi-ndecl|<F.sg>}}. (I haven't made any edits to that entry yet). Kritixilithos (talk) 13:45, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

@Kritixilithos:, I think, yes. It doesn't have plurals. Hardly can there be any case for the use of these plurals. But, I think I better, first, consult with other Hindi speakers who know literary Hindi more than me. Thanks for the link. I will now edit the entry per those Hindi speakers' consultations. Thanks a lot. Lightbluerain❄ (Talk | contribs) 15:31, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Philadelphia nonstandard vowel reduction

Does anyone know exactly what the rules are that yield such pronunciations as /ˈbjudifʊɫ/ and /ˈsʌbstitut/ ? Does it apply after /d/ either normal as in "indicate" or tapped, as in "Baltimore"? 108.2.74.234 03:22, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Good moting

How are you today I am having a problem getting on my page every time I try to log in it is the wrong password and name I have two factor password on my I pad so It is not incorrect even right after I create a page. I am not vandalism the page the page is directing me to create a page to use the page but I believe I will stay of.sorry for the inconvenience can you please help and fix the situation I will very much appreciate it.

Thank you sincerely much appreciated — This unsigned comment was added by 69.119.214.122 (talk) at 12:32, 16 June 2021 (UTC).

Do you have a Wikimedia account with two-factor authentication? If your password does not work, you can ask for a temporary password to be sent to your (registered) email address.  --Lambiam 20:43, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Minor mistake in the "te" word (Latin) but I don't know how to change it

Talking about this: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/te#Latin

The "zeta" in the "coordinate terms" (Latin) of "te" takes you to "#Latin", so you stay on the same page. It should go to "wiki/zeta#Latin", all the other letters do go to their own page, just not zeta.

I don't know how to change because it's in a list and not on the page itself but it should be changed DjaroD (talk)

@DjaroD: Fixed at {{list:Latin script letter names/la/simple}}. Thanks for reporting it! —Mahāgaja · talk 12:21, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

TV shows for my corpus

Hi.

I am building a corpus of English that will have over 200 million tokens when it is finished. One of my subcorpora contains the transcripts from English-language TV shows. I currently have over 24m words of TV shows and have the corpora of 52 different shows (24; 30 Rock; American Dad; American Horror Story; Atypical; Beverly Hills 90210; Big Bang Theory; Blackadder; Breaking Bad; Charmed; Dad’s Army; Daria; Dawson’s Creek; Degrassi: The Next Generation; Ed, Edd ’n’ Eddy; Family Guy; Fawlty Towers; Friends; Futurama; The Gilmore Girls; Glee; Home Improvement; House; How I Met Your Mother; The Jeffersons; Kids in the Hall; Lost; Malcolm in the Middle; Married with Children; Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir; Modern Family; Northern Exposure; The Office; Once Upon a Time; Orange Is the New Black; Pretty Little Liars; Red Dwarf; Rugrats; Scandal; Seinfeld; The Simpsons; Sons of Anarchy; South Park; SpongeBob SquarePants; Stargate; That ’70s Show; Top Gear; The Vampire Diaries; The West Wing; The Wire; The X-files; and Yes, Prime Minister).

If you could suggest 2 more TV shows to add to my TV subcorpus, which two shows would you recommend? Ritchie Collins (talk) 02:17, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I remember reading recently that Buffy (the Vampire slayer) was quite influential w.r.t vocabulary/slang etc. – Jberkel 10:50, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion. And yeah, that's a pretty iconic show. Ritchie Collins (talk) 21:13, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I think Avatar: The Last Airbender should be here maybe AntisocialRyan (talk) 22:32, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

There is an (understandable) slant towards US shows. Perhaps, for a British soap with a sprinkling of Mancunian idiom, Coronation Street, the world’s longest-running television soap?  --Lambiam 11:58, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Ooh, I really like that suggestion! I was hoping for more British shows than the six I already had, and I don't have many soaps (...although some count 90210 as a soap). Ritchie Collins (talk) 23:43, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Hmmm...Subslikescripts doesn't have Coronation Street, nor could I find episode transcripts by googling "coronation street" transcripts. There's even a fandom.com wiki devoted to the show, and although it has guides to every episode, it doesn't include transcripts for the individual episodes. Does anyone know where I can find the transcripts/scripts online? Ritchie Collins (talk) 05:11, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

So far I have a whole bunch of American shows, six British shows, two Canadian shows, and one dubbed French show. What are some TV shows that are big in Australia and New Zealand...besides Ship to Shore? Ritchie Collins (talk) 09:49, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Quotation

I think it'd be really less cumbersome if the quotations are shown simply as ▼ instead of "quotation ▼".

Thank you.

Shubhrajit Sadhukhan (talk) 13:24, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Do you expect that the casual user will understand that “▼” means, “show quotations”?  --Lambiam 11:49, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Language 2 letter codes?

Could someone lead me to the page?

Example rwandan ??? Thanks

--Yunggunnar (talk) 23:27, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

WT:LOL, with more information at WT:LANGTREAT Chuck Entz (talk) 23:39, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

"expandtemplates" API, expand without styling?

I want to display Wiktionary data in my own way (independent of how the Wiktionary web site looks) with the raw data. For most things, I could do it, but some "templates" do not have actual data in the raw data. For example, I cannot extract any actual data from the string "{{fr-conj-auto}}" itself. For that, I think I can call the "expandtemplates" API, but the value contains HTML with lots of formatting stuff.

So, what I wonder is if I could get only the actual data of the expanded result without or with minimum formatting/HTML stuff. Sin Jeong-hun (talk) 09:13, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

You should modify the module to output something easy for you to read, such as JSON. DTLHS (talk) 20:36, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I am not talking about the format of the response, which I have already set to JSON with "format=json"; I am talking about the expanded template which looks like the following. It cannot be simplified more, and I have deal with it?

{ "expandtemplates": { "wikitext": "<div class=\"NavFrame\" style=\"clear:both\">\n<div class=\"NavHead\" align=left>Conjugation of ''dire'' <span style=\"font-size:90%;\">(see also [[Appendix:French verbs]])</span></div>\n<div class=\"NavContent\" align=center>\n{| style=\"background:#F0F0F0;width:100%;border-collapse:separate;border-spacing:2px\" class=\"inflection-table\"\n|-\n! colspan=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\" style=\"background:#e2e4c0\" | .....

Sin Jeong-hun (talk) 11:02, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Wrong level. Modify the template, here, so that if you give it the parameter "format=json", or something similar to that, it outputs JSON instead of HTML. Your would then call expandtemplates on "{{fr-conj-auto|format=json}}". You could also create your own dedicated template that does the same thing. DTLHS (talk) 14:39, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, but that does not seem to work either. Did I understand you incorrectly? The URL I used is http://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?action=expandtemplates&title=dire&text=%7B%7Bfr-conj-auto%7Cformat%3Djson%7D%7D&format=json. (%7B%7Bfr-conj-auto%7Cformat%3Djson%7D%7D is the URL-encoded version of {{fr-conj-auto|format=json}}.) The returned value still seems HTML with formatting.

"expandtemplates": { "*": "<div class=\"NavFrame\" style=\"clear:both\">\n<div class=\"NavHead\" align=left>Conjugation of ''dire'' <span style=\"font-size:90%;\">(see also [[Appendix:French verbs]])</span></div>\n<div class=\"NavContent\" align=center>\n{| style=\"background:#F0F0F0;width:100%;border-collapse:separate;border-spacing:2px\" class=\"inflection-table\"\n|-\n! colspan=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\" style=\"background:#e2e4c0\" | <span

Sin Jeong-hun (talk) 08:58, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I didn't say it was implemented. The module would need to be edited to support that output format. DTLHS (talk) 15:59, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

bar

Is being *licensed* to sell alcoholic beverages really part of the definition of a bar? Is a place that sells drinks illegally not a bar? JulieKahan (talk) 12:24, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article Speakeasy refers to ‘saloon owner Kate Hester, who ran an unlicensed bar in the 1880s in McKeesport’. Substituting the current definition results in the oxymoronic ‘... who ran an unlicensed business licensed to sell alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises ...’. Similarly, Bar (establishment) contains the sentence, ‘In the United States, illegal bars during Prohibition were called "speakeasies", "blind pigs", and "blind tigers".’ It’s not just Wikipedia; this 1910 source explains speakeasy as “an unlicensed bar”.  --Lambiam 00:55, 30 June 2021 (UTC)