Category talk:Colloquialisms by language

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search

RFM discussion: July 2021–January 2022[edit]

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

For the life of me, I have no idea what the difference between a "colloquial" and an "informal" term is. (Which category you get depends on whether you use the informal or colloquial label.) I suspect actual informal/colloquial terms are randomly distributed across the two categories. The category definitions are of no help:

For Category:English colloquialisms: "English terms that are likely to be used primarily in casual conversation rather than in more formal written works, speeches, and discourse."
For Category:English informal terms: "English terms whose use is typically restricted to casual, non‐ceremonious conversations."

I would recommend the combined category be called "LANG informal terms" because "informal" is shorter and easier to spell than "colloquial", and "foo terms" is more standard in category names than "foo-isms", but I have no strong opinion about this. Benwing2 (talk) 20:19, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, we have this issue since qway back:
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2007/December § Colloquial vs. informal
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2010/June § Labels (informal, colloquial and ...)
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2016/March § colloquial and informal labels
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2017/October § Colloquial vs. informal
Apparently it is a conspiracy. There is a distinction but it cannot be outlined, so it is not useful to distinguish it that fundamentally. We should at least categorize all together, while displaying whatever an editor wrote there. Fay Freak (talk) 21:48, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, merge and categorize them together. I'm not sure whether to merge the labels or not; I think colloquial may imply that it's a spoken form whereas there could also be informal spellings that exist only in writing...? But the descriptions of the categories don't suggest/support that, ha! (Reminds me of "pejorative" vs "derogatory", where some people perceive a distinction but no-one agrees what it is — some people see one as milder, some people see the other as milder — so it was best to merge.) - -sche (discuss) 21:58, 8 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I support merging. Ultimateria (talk) 21:06, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yea, merge. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 10:43, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support merging as any difference is so subtle as to make it very difficult to decide which is the appropriate category and label. I would express a preference for “informal” since it may be more easily understood than “colloquial”, and it contrasts nicely with the “formal” label that we already use. — SGconlaw (talk) 11:41, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
And “colloquial” contrasts very nicely with “literary”. By the way, what about languages with diglossia, where there is an explicitly literary/written and another, spoken/colloquial variety? It feels wrong to label a word informal just because it has a counterpart in a literary form. So, I would say, let's not generalize and keep both labels, and then you can decide on moving all English colloquialisms to informalisms if you deem it appropriate, and delete the category English colloquialisms.
Oh, I see that someone went ahead and merged everything under informal. Oh well. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 08:55, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure in English one can say that the word colloquial only refers to speech and informal refers to writing, which thus means that trying to draw such a distinction is problematic. — SGconlaw (talk) 14:00, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Welsh is a language with a big difference between the literary register and the colloquial register. The distinction doesn't apply only to terms; literary Welsh is a pro-drop language, while colloquial Welsh isn't; literary Welsh has verb tenses formed analytically that are periphrastic in colloquial Welsh; there are different verb endings in the two registers, and so on. Labeling cysgiff an "informal term" seems slightly wrong – it's not that the term itself is informal, rather the ending -iff belongs to the colloquial register. But that's sort of beside the point of the current thread I guess, because putting it in CAT:Welsh colloquialisms feels just as not-quite-right as putting it in CAT:Welsh informal terms. But I don't know what else to do with it. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:13, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mahagaja, Allahverdi Verdizade It feels to me like the issue of "colloquial" Welsh and such is a different issue from this one. That's really about the spoken vs. literary language; I feel like we need a different term for languages with diglossia, maybe "spoken" or "vernacular"? Benwing2 (talk) 02:27, 24 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. I don't think "colloquial" conveys what is meant here. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:04, 24 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure that "colloquial" and "literary" are the terms most often used in the literature when discussing this kind of diglossia though. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:20, 24 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Finnish sources make a clear distinction between arkikieli (“informal language”) and puhekieli (“spoken language, colloquial language”), thus I oppose merging at least for Finnish. — surjection ⟨??⟩ 15:31, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Svartava2 Blindly merging the two in all languages is a mistake. As Surjection opined last year, Finnish sources and entries make a clear distinction between the two, as Finnish is a language with two very distinct registers. This is a massive amount nuance that has been decimated for no gain. I will continue to distinguish between the two in my editing, hoping that the front-end versions of the entries will one day again provide the reader with the necessary semantics. brittletheories (talk) 12:08, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Brittletheories I did not merge this, it was by Benwing2 mainly, who merged the categories, I just declared the result here merged the labels (i.e. make both appear the same, as pejorative vs derogatory). If the difference is there for one single language that language could be made an exception and have separate categories. Majority of the editors have shown their support for merging, hence this was implemented. —Svārtava [t•c•u•r] 12:43, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Even in English there is a distinction between usage only in conversation (whether or not formal in register) ("colloquial") and usage in any informal setting, including, for example, much of journalism. This seems like an ill-advised decision and even less-well-advised action. It seems to me that the discussion should have taken place at BP to get sufficient attention. I hope that the manner of the action was such that it can be conveniently reversed. DCDuring (talk) 15:29, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @DCDuring Yes, it can quite easily be reverted. But this change had been done by Benwing2 in July itself, and no one seems to have objected since then. —Svārtava [t•c•u•r] 15:34, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In my reading of the earlier discussions, it does not seem to me that there was any consensus to remove the distinction entirely, though the inconsistency of application of the labels was noted. Having the discussion take place here instead of BP has the aroma of forum shopping. Of course it is even worse if the action occurs without discussion leading to consensus. DCDuring (talk) 15:39, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]


Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category_talk:Colloquialisms_by_language&oldid=65440534"