Talk:arrastão

RFV discussion: December 2018–February 2019

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arrastão

I don't believe this to be an English term, rather than a Portuguese term used in running text in English. Per utramque cavernam 12:38, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Shouldn’t this go straight to RFD since RFV requests quotations and it is quoted? Sooner or latter we will need collapsible “code-switching” templates like the quotation templates so all can be kept in the respective language switched to, or perhaps a a kind of language section design that refers a reader to the language switched to for definitions (even though in English text the other Portuguese meanings have not been used this does not make it English and it cannot be excluded that arrastão suddenly means a fishing-technique or a dragnet, and even if people using this Portuguese term in English do not know Portuguese code-switching is not excluded: If a journalist who known no Portuguese reports what he hears from informants transmitting Portuguese words he thinks it as giving up English as a tribute to exacticude). Or should we rather give up rationalize and let anarchy reign, in that some create English sections for Portuguese words, others use a (yet-to-be-created) language section design referring to the Portuguese, others just give the English quotes in a code-switching template in the Portuguese section? What does the word need for you to be English, and can this be agreed upon? Fay Freak (talk) 13:30, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: "Shouldn’t this go straight to RFD since RFV requests quotations and it is quoted?" : I think this issue hasn't been clearly resolved yet, but I use RFV when I want quotations showing non-italicised uses, and people do not seem to mind.

"What does the word need for you to be English?": assuming we're specifically talking about words of foreign origin: 1) it has to be written without italicisation, and 2) it has to be used in contexts independent of the place of origin of the word. For example a word of Portuguese origin cannot, in my view, only be used in books talking about Lusophone countries, or realities specific to Lusophone countries; otherwise it's still simply a Portuguese word (maybe that's a bit too stringent and has to be refined, but do you see what I mean?). In other words I'm looking for proof that a word has "taken off". I think a good example of what I have in mind is candelabrum: it still looks Latin, but nobody is thinking about Ancient Rome or Latin when they're reading random literature such as this.

At the same time italics have various uses or can be considered unnecessary for code-switched terms, as the writer wants (plus italics do not exist in every script, they don’t in Arabic script, nor in audio records, this is to show that they are just one, weak indicium), and foreign words can be used in any context as it pleases. I have heard people be like “Da ist eine соба́ка” and I think I can attest шлю́ха (šljúxa) with German -s plural ending from German rappers in German sentences referring to German contexts if I really want too (I remember this from Olexesh), and I can attest zébi from raps in German, obviously not referring to something foreign unless the origin of the bearer of the relatum counts. That criterion assigns some kind of area (country) to a language which is not the reality. I have written other criteria in Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2018/December § Wiktionary lemmas written in a nonnative script but so far it seems like a contest of rhetorics determines if a word has passed. I don’t want to create these German entries, but sadly so far the rational criteria to delete the entries are not found (not to create them rather yes, it is “we don’t need these words as German”); what I’d like to avoid too for obvious reasons is phonetic analysis with computer graphs “whether this words sounds more German or more French”, though this be possible.

Maybe after all ignore the considerations once the article is created, these considerations being private to every editor? It would however slant the “borrowed from” and “derived from“ categories – but they will always be slanted, as it seems, for other reasons (like right now personal names and place names not being distinguished from non-proper nouns) too.

Or can there be the criterion: This entry is useless, so we do not want to host it even after the useless effort has been made? French hnouch and French jdid is useful, German zébi and German шлюха is useless, better fitting in a code-switching template under French and Russian? Maybe as a middle ground {{spelling of}} (or a new template if this cannot be changed) should also be able to direct to other languages, so French jdid would be the “French spelling of Arabic جَدِيد (jadīd)” – but also where to stop, English jihad would be the “English spelling of Arabic جِهَاد (jihād, “holy war”)”, German Dschihad would be the “German spelling of Arabic جِهَاد (jihād)”. Fay Freak (talk) 15:39, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: Maybe italicisation and context-restriction are a sufficient condition for considering a word to be code-switched, but not a necessary one (meaning there are more instances of codeswitching than those covered by these criteria)?

I think the usefulness criterion is a dangerous one: people always come up with reasons why an entry could be useful, some of which seem very obscure and improbable to me, but what can you respond to that. Per utramque cavernam 21:58, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Words borrowed from other languages are words that aren't generally in the experience of the users of the borrowing languages. A quinceañera is a thing for Mexican girls; there's no reason to use it in a work that's not about Hispanic culture. That does not make it any less the English word for that celebration.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:20, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

I disagree with that. "Words borrowed from other languages are words that aren't generally in the experience of the users of the borrowing languages." That's not true; it's perfectly possible to borrow a word describing a reality that is part of the experience of the borrowers (all right, you hedged it with "generally", though I'm curious how you came to that conclusion). But for words denoting an outside reality, I'm arguing that we ought to ask ourselves the question whether we're really dealing with an English word. "That does not make it any less the English word for that celebration": well, maybe it does. I'm not talking specifically about quinceañera, though there too I'm not convinced an English section is warranted; but if English speakers are speaking about about a Russian celebration, maybe they aren't using the English word for that celebration, because there isn't any; they might just be using the Russian word.

To speak of something I'm more familiar with: a Russian word doesn't instantly become a French word when used in a French sentence. "Les habitants d'un ostrog ne sont pas taxés selon leur nombre mais selon la surface de l'ostrog" ([1]) is nothing alike "Les peintres en conviendront lorsqu'ils cesseront d'être intimidés par les ukases de tenants farouches de la peinture pure" ([2]). I'm against the mindless approach of going by attestation alone. Per utramque cavernam 23:42, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Logic time: it is possible to do something that is not generally done. Making an "it's possible" claim as a retort to a "it is generally" is not a reasoned or helpful response.

Why would a language not already have a word for everything within its user's worlds? Only when something is introduced from the outside does one need a new word to describe something. There's rare cases where one language has a specific word for a more general human experience, like schadenfreude or umami, but I suspect it's overwhelmed by the ostrogs and kiwis and kimonos.

Things aren't always improved by making them the result of argument then providing a simple rule; frequently a simple rule will save a lot of time and offer a more consistent approach. You're against the "mindless approach" here, I suspect, not because it's mindless, but because you object to treating such words as being borrowed. As I've said before, I believe we need an entry for ostrog, whether it be as transliterated Russian or French, instead of forcing people to figure out that despite the fact they were reading French or English or German, they need to look up острог (and then figure out how to type that into the computer.) That's more important to me than the philosophical question of whether that word is really French.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:52, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

A consistent approach can be good, but it's not the end goal. I don't see the point of having a consistent approach if it leads to silly results and absurd situations, such as the one we can observe at Schultüte (I'm sorry, but I really can't fathom how someone could think it's a good idea to add an English section there, and not be disturbed the least bit by the result).

"we need an entry for ostrog, whether it be as transliterated Russian or French, instead of forcing people to figure out that despite the fact they were reading French or English or German, they need to look up острог. That's more important to me than the philosophical question of whether that word is really French". Well, we obviously have diametrically opposed views and priorities. I consider it of paramount importance not to present as French words that aren't French. On the other hand, it seems extremely improbable to me that someone reading a book titled Récit d'un voyage à pied à travers la Russie et la Sibérie tartare would be incapable of figuring out by themselves that what they are looking for is a Russian word, which simply happens to be written in another alphabet.

Truth be told, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea of having romanisation entries for Cyrillic, but I don't see that as a necessity or a priority; the search engine should be quite sufficient. Per utramque cavernam 01:10, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

What are French words? I think that that is mistaking human categorization for objective reality. There is no objective way to measure whether a word is French or not, and differences in categorization do not differences in fact make. If an author writing in French uses a word in his French writing, that is a French word. But that is in my opinion, and certainly the Académie française would disagree with me.

Actual entries have the advantage that they match spellings in actual use, which even if they are actual romanizations by some standard, may not be the romanization we use.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:53, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

RFV-failed. Only one of the quotes looks like the author treated it as an English word. Kiwima (talk) 22:38, 2 February 2019 (UTC)