User talk:Embryomystic

Welsh "bron"

Hello, I just wanted to thank you for your excellent example sentence on bron#Welsh. It is a moving sentence, and indeed - she does have an incredible pair.

Timeroot (talk) 09:08, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I had honestly forgotten about doing that, and laughed and laughed and laughed when I got your message. You're very welcome. I think the entry needed it. embryomystic (talk) 23:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

worse

How do you say ‘worse’ in Norman? --Romanophile (talk) 23:14, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Did you forget about this topic? --Romanophile (talk) 08:26, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, yes and no, but I haven't been able to find an answer for you. Are you looking for a cognate of pire? embryomystic (talk) 08:30, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Sure, that might be adequate. --Romanophile (talk) 08:58, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I would expect it to look like *pithe, but I haven't been able to find any evidence of it just yet. embryomystic (talk) 09:01, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

@Romanophile pière/piere in Guernésiais and continental Norman, piethe (?) in Jèrriais. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 17:23, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, there you go. That looks right. embryomystic (talk) 17:29, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

in

How do you say in in Normand? Is it en? --Romanophile (talk) 18:09, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, and also dans, in similar distribution to French. embryomystic (talk) 00:46, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

asúkuar

De ande esta este biervo? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 19:20, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

çmos

What do you think of the latest anon edit to this Albanian word? (I don't want to get into a revert war) SemperBlotto (talk) 11:13, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Portuguese inherited terms

Hi Embryomystic. I’ve added roa-opt’s ancestor data, so now {{inh}} works for Latin et al. in Portuguese, Galician and Fala entries. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 18:56, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Excellent. Thank you. embryomystic (talk) 18:58, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Template:inh on roots

As detailed in its documentation, the template {{inh}} should only be used when the form derives from an exact ancestral form. It should not, ever, be used to indicate derivation from a root, since roots by definition are not fully formed words. The more generic template {{der}} should be used for non-inherited derivations. Can you please fix entries that you have mistakenly placed in Category:Terms inherited from Proto-Indo-European? Thank you. —CodeCat 14:57, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely. Sorry about that. I'd been trying to keep an eye on that, but my fingers do sometimes get away from me. embryomystic (talk) 02:52, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Yiddish etymologies

Please stop marking Yiddish terms derived from Hebrew as "borrowed". Some of them are, but most of them are actually inherited. --WikiTiki89 17:06, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Inherited from where? If they were already loaned into the Romance language that was spoken by speakers of Yiddish before they adopted the High German variety that would become Yiddish, then they were still borrowed from that language into said High German variety. If you're making a distinction between Yiddish when it could be more accurately considered a dialect of Middle High German and when it became more distinct as a language, then are you proposing that we mark them as inherited from Middle High German, regardless of the fact that other MHG varieties didn't have them? embryomystic (talk) 17:10, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Inherited from Hebrew. Even if it was first inherited into Judeo-Aramaic, then into Judeo-Greek, then into some Judeo-romance language, and then into Hebrew. It's not a borrowing since these words remained in use by the same group of people, even as they went through stages of speaking different languages. This is not the same as one group of people borrowing a word from another group that speaks a different language. --WikiTiki89 18:25, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that really counts as inheriting, though I understand the distinction you're making. Is there some kind of precedent for what you're suggesting? I guess it's possible to at least take a neutral position, and just tag them as derived every time. embryomystic (talk) 18:28, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I take inheritance to mean the passing of a word from one native speaker to another. The question then is what is Yiddish? It is the language that grew out of Jews, who spoke one language (probably some Judeo-romance language), adopting some version of High German (actually probably several different versions that later came together), but keeping many elements of their former language. The former language itself had been formed in the same way from its own predecessor, and so on back to Hebrew. So really, the High German dialects and Hebrew are both ancestors of Yiddish. But I would be ok with the compromise of simply using {{der}}. --WikiTiki89 18:48, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Yiddish is a Germanic language (though it probably is the koineified product of several Germanic varieties, as you note). Vocabulary that is not Germanic in origin is not inherited, any more than the vocabulary of Gaelic origin in Irish and Scottish varieties of English and Scots is; it's the leftovers following language shift, and in the case of Yiddish and its Semitic vocabulary, the continued use of Hebrew and Aramaic as prestige languages by fluent speakers, though obviously not native ones. As it doesn't seem likely that we'll change our respective minds, in the absence of a vote on the subject, we might as well compromise. embryomystic (talk) 18:57, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

You say that "Yiddish is a Germanic language"; while I don't disagree with that statement, it is a huge oversimplification. The situation is more complicated that the way you describe it. It is not only vocabulary that made it into Yiddish from Hebrew (and Aramaic), but also other various grammatical constructs that are deeply rooted into the language. There are some theories even that the Jews continued speaking their former language for several generations after coming to Germany, and throughout that time the surrounding High German language was slowly absorbed in the language of these Jews, until eventually it came to make up the majority of their grammar and vocabulary. Whether you subscribe to that theory or not, you must admit that this situation different from most other examples of language shift. As far as Gaelic words in Irish and Scottish varieties of English, I would say that with regard to those varieties of English themselves, these words are inherited, but with regard to English as a whole, they are borrowed (if they make it that far). Thus, if these Hebrew (and Aramaic) words had spread from Yiddish into other varieties of High German, in those varieties, and in High German as a whole, they would be borrowings, but within Yiddish, they are inherited. --WikiTiki89 19:14, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Just for completeness I will add one more argument for anyone reading this in the future. The most important difference between ordinary borrowings and words from the Hebrew component of Yiddish is that an ordinary borrowing becomes immediately adapted phonologically to the language it is borrowed into, while the Hebrew words in Yiddish never went through any such process. The speakers kept pronouncing them according to their dialect of Hebrew. Over time, the phonologies of the Hebrew and German components of Yiddish converged, but there is not point in time at which you can say anything was borrowed. By contrast, when a Spanish word is borrowed into English, as soon as the English speaker starts using it in English sentences with English phonology, that is the point in time at which you can say it was borrowed. --WikiTiki89 18:24, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

While I still disagree, that is indeed a compelling argument, and is something quite interesting about Yiddish. embryomystic (talk) 18:26, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

• Firstly, I agree with Wikitiki89 with respect to Yiddish etymologies. Secondly, I think you should take note of the fact that various people have been dropping by to tell you to stop messing with their entries' etymologies because you are unqualified to do so, and not look at this as a problem of you stepping on people's toes (this is a wiki, after all), but of you repeatedly making edits that are incorrect or questionable. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:04, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

• Well, you're certainly welcome to your opinion on Yiddish etymologies. I continue to hold my own opinion. And as for your second point, that's certainly one way of looking at this. I'm happy to leave well enough alone if my edits were unwelcome, and I'm not about to argue the point or get into some kind of revert war over it. There's a relatively short list of languages that I'm willing to engage in debate over (Yiddish is one, but at the same time, I can recognise when someone else knows enough about the language to defend their position, even if I don't agree with it, and ideally we can come to a compromise, as Wikitiki89 and I have). embryomystic (talk) 23:13, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Yiddish plurals

I've noticed you make this mistake many times. If a Hebrew-derived noun ends in the letter ה, this letter is almost always dropped before adding a Hebrew-derived suffix, such as the plural suffixes ־ות (-es) and ־ים (-em). This does not apply when adding a Germanic suffix (e.g. שעהן (shoen)). --WikiTiki89 20:44, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to keep an eye out in future. My grasp of Yiddish is much more oral than written, and I admit that I find the spelling of Semitic words rather challenging. embryomystic (talk) 21:12, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

You can't really learn Yiddish without learning some basic Hebrew grammar. You should try it. --WikiTiki89 21:22, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Converting controversial etymologies to use "der"

There are times when templates should not be used. When you convert an etymology that mentions that someone claims a derivation of term in language xyz from a term in language xzy to one with {{der|xyz|xzy}}, you're changing the etymology to one that asserts that the claim is true.

For instance, the Altaic hypothesis has been rejected by most mainstream linguists as unproven by the evidence and possibly unprovable given the loss of information to random changes over time. There are, however, a minority who accept it and work with it, so we allow mentioning of Proto-Altaic forms, as long as it's made clear that it's not a mainstream theory. There's a contributor who goes by the name of Hirabutor who is constantly trying to sell the idea that everything originated with the Turks, and interprets the Altaic hypothesis as evidence of that. Hirabutor has been adding Proto-Altaic etymologies as alternatives all over the place. These generally aren't- and shouldn't be- provided with {{etyl}} templates, because they're just mentioning a controversial theory without claiming it's true (Hirabutor knows that claiming they're true results in the claim getting removed).

I found a redlink to Category:Korean terms derived from Proto-Altaic in Special:WantedCategories, with four entries in it due to your putting {{der|ko|tut-pro}} in the etymologies. in one case, Hirabutor's side-note said "Starostin derived this word from Proto-Altaic *bĭ̀, with irregular loss of initial b-". This is just name-dropping, because if you take the consonant out, there's nothing left that would survive the sound changes. It's like ordering an "elephant and meatball sandwich- hold the elephant". Changing that to "Starostin derived this word from {{der|ko|tut-pro|*bĭ̀}}, with irregular loss of initial b-" made it categorize as if we were accepting the assertion as fact.

I apologize for going to such length, but it takes some background to see how a seemingly minor change to the wikitext like this can have serious implications- Hirabutor might very well have been blocked for doing what you did by accident.

The executive summary: don't use {{der}} to add categorization unless you know why it was uncategorized in the first place. Be more careful. Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 22:38, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Understood. I'll admit that was a series of edits that I didn't spend enough time investigating or thinking about. I'll be more careful about that in the future. embryomystic (talk) 18:33, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

cuidheal

Hi, do you remember where you found this word? It isn't in any of the usual dictionaries (DIL, Dinneen, and Ó Dónaill), though a feminine noun cuidhil (“spinning-wheel”) is listed in both Holmer's On Some Relics of the Irish Dialect Spoken in the Glens of Antrim and his The Irish Language in Rathlin Island, County Antrim. As for the etymology of this, SG cuidheall, and Manx queeyl, for purely phonological reasons I think it's more likely that the immediate source of the borrowing is Scots quhel, quheil (“wheel”) (listed in the Concise Scots Dictionary) rather than its English cognate, don't you? English /hw/ usually shows up in Irish at least as /fˠ/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:05, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't remember just now, alas. I imagine I must have run across it in my investigation of the Scottish Gaelic and Manx cognates. I suspect you might be right about the connection to Scots, though on reflection, it was probably borrowed into Antrim Irish from Scottish Gaelic, which got it from Scots. Unless, that is, there is/was a dialect of English proper that kept wh as /xw/ or something like it. embryomystic (talk) 03:50, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Antrim Irish, especially the variety spoken on Rathlin, was essentially a transitional dialect between Irish and Scottish Gaelic anyway. It had a lot of grammatical features as well as vocabulary words in common with Scottish and distinct from all other varieties of Irish (even Ulster Irish), but also a lot of grammatical features in common with the rest of Irish and distinct from Scottish (so it also cannot be simply called a dialect of Scottish Gaelic that was spoken in Ireland). My point is that I'd be reluctant to call it a borrowing from Scottish Gaelic; it's probably just one of several words that Antrim has in common with ScG that the rest of Irish doesn't have. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

That's a fair point, though I guess the point I was making was that if the word was a loanword from Scots, it would have to have come from varieties with more direct contact with Scots itself. I imagine it could have been borrowed post-Plantation, though. embryomystic (talk) 13:31, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, it could also come from Ulster Scots, though I don't know whether those quh- things occurred in Ulster Scots. I don't think that /hw/ → /kw/ change happened everywhere in Scots. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:41, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, quh- is actually a grapheme for /xw/, which from what I can tell is just an older pronunciation used in Scots, or possibly even just some dialects. I'm sure it's particularly appealing because it means that interrogatives resemble their Latin and Romance cognates, but from what I can tell (as a heritage speaker of Scots), quh- wasn't at any point pronounced as /kw/. It's just that, parallel to how /hw/ was borrowed into Irish as /fˠ/ because of its resemblance to that phoneme's lenited pronunciation, /xw/ (or /hw/, or something similar) was interpreted as a broad, lenited c, and the apparent lenition was then reversed. embryomystic (talk) 13:49, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

The lenited pronunciation of /fˠ/ is zero; /hw/ became /fˠ/ because before there was extensive contact with English, Irish f was bilabial, and there's not a whole lot of difference between /ʍ/ and /ɸˠ/. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:58, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Oh, true. I'm not sure why I was thinking that lenited /f/ used to be pronounced. Anyway, my point about quh- stands. embryomystic (talk) 14:00, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

You were probably thinking of cases where /w/ was borrowed as /bˠ/ because it was interpreted as the lenited form, e.g. balla from Middle English wall. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:15, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Ah, probably, yes. embryomystic (talk) 14:16, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Norman first group verbs

Can we sort Norman verbs into three groups like we do with French verbs? I assume so, but I don't want to do it without any evidence beforehand. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:02, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Possibly, but it's a slightly bigger task than French, I should think, given that there are multiple standard varieties. Jèrriais verbs look very similar to French ones, though, and the groups should resemble the French ones (-er, -ir, irregular). embryomystic (talk) 12:08, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Attesting Norman

@Renard Migrant, either of you guys have a resources to cite souôt'nîn and the six or so other Norman entries that DP posted? I'm sorry to see them all go, but if you can't produce anything I'll be deleting them. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:01, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Souôt'nîn¹, ², ³, ⁴. Bécachinne. Gâche-à-panne. À la perchôine. Chotchant. Affaithêment¹, ², ³. Affanmêment. I know there's some repetition, and some language-learning materials, but we're not talking about the strongest language varieties. They're minoritised languages that are under strong threat from one major world language, while being closely related to (and resembling) another major world language. They don't get a lot of exposure on the internet. embryomystic (talk) 14:35, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not clear on what the blogposts are sourcing from; it looks like old newspaper articles, in which case you should be able to find them more directly, right? I suppose that stamps are durably archived, in any case, although I doubt they've been used at RFV before. The point is, I'm really trying to give you a chance here, so at least come up with something that meets our rather lax requirements on you. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:31, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know how to cite the George d'la Forge quotation, but that's probably the most legitimate of all, given that he's the most prolific writer in Jersey Norman. In any event, I've had a more thorough look, and I'm not sure what I can provide that's going to meet your standards, however lax you might consider them to be. All the same, these words do exist, regardless of the lack of durably archived examples. As I said before, varieties of Norman don't get a lot of exposure on the internet, and I don't have access to any offline materials, at least at the moment. I can put my feelers out to the Jèrriais-speaking community, but how long do I have to find something? embryomystic (talk) 21:45, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

I consider it lax because you literally need nothing more than to tell me a dictionary that they're listed in, or something similar. Are you saying that nobody's ever digitised George d'la Forge's work? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:48, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Other than L'Office du Jèrriais? Not that I know of. But I do understand why you consider it to be lax, and I agree that it could be a lot worse. embryomystic (talk) 23:03, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

göu

I noticed that you are adding multiple words into a single linking template. I would ask you not to do this, as it changes the semantics of our content. Before, there were two separate words "gouwi" and "gawi", but after your change, there is a single multi-word phrase "gouwi, gawi", which is not the same thing. The comma is not part of the term, it separates two terms. —CodeCat 01:01, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Fixed. embryomystic (talk) 01:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I must say I do that all the time for alternative versions of a single word I'm mentioning in an etymology section or the like. It saves a lot of space in the edit box, and the only cost is that the comma gets interpreted as being in the same language as the words linked to rather than in English. What's the harm? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:35, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

inherited

Stop using the {{inh}} template with terms that are not inherited. central is a borrowing. --Fsojic (talk) 11:24, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Oh? What is it that indicates that? I don't see anything about the shape of it that would have been changed by in-language processes. Feel free to change {{inh}} to {{der}} if you disagree. I won't get into a revert war over it or anything. Citations proving that a word has been borrowed from an ancestral language as opposed to just inherited would be ideal before using, say, {{bor}}, though. embryomystic (talk) 22:56, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

If you click on the link to TLFi, you will find, under "Étymol. et Hist.": "empr. au lat. class. centralis « placé au centre », lui-même dér. de centrum « centre »". That's what indicates that. You should only be using {{inh}} when you know it's inherited, not whenever it doesn't say otherwise in the etymology itself and it seems like a reasonable guess. The same goes for {{bor}}, of course. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:54, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough. embryomystic (talk) 01:56, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Borrowings are not necessarily indicated by the "shape" of the word. They are indicated by the actual history of the word. It's what actually happened that matters, not what could have happened. --WikiTiki89 16:30, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, dear, I realise that. Some borrowings from Latin into modern or medieval Romance languages are obvious, though, even without inherited doublets. I was asking because that particular one surprised me. embryomystic (talk) 00:37, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

But still, if it had been inherited, the final vowel would be different (cf. charnel from carnālis). --Fsojic (talk) 11:57, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Good point. That occurred to me randomly this afternoon. embryomystic (talk) 23:03, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

A better question, which we seem to often ignore, is when was it borrowed? --WikiTiki89 16:26, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

fidel

Can you verify that fidel is used in Romansch? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 21:24, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

In Puter and Vallader, yeah. Check myPledari if you're interested. embryomystic (talk) 22:03, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Comment dit‐on « oui » en normand ? --Romanophile ♞ (contributions) 13:26, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

It's the same in Guernésiais (see the Norman section of the Wiktionary entry), and probably Jèrriais as well, though I don't know off the top of my head. embryomystic (talk) 19:09, 1 March 2016 (UTC)