Talk:bééhániih

Plural form

Plural form should be added. 173.89.236.187 01:35, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

bééhániih is the continuous imperfective ("to be remembered"). It needs conjugation tables just like any verb, but we are not doing much with Navajo anymore, or any languages that are polysynthetic, because their vocabularies are virtually infinite and there is no analogue of the OED that includes all the words of the language. That means you have to know a lot about the language before you can make a decision on the validity of a word, but the other editors don’t have that ability and will trust only printed sources such as an all-inclusive dictionary, which does not exist. —Stephen ^(Talk) 05:43, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Who are those editors that keep deleting entries in the Navajo section of Wiktionary? If they know nothing of the language how do they allow themselves to? Julien Daux (talk) 23:37, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

It's most of the active editors and admins here. The idea that someone who does not know a language should feel themselves competent to judge whether an entry in the language is valid and correct is foreign to me, too, but that's where we are. I think it grew out of the early days of Wiktionary (2002 through about 2008), when we were getting a lot of pranksters and vandals who would enter nonsense words and assert that they were real words in an exotic language. The admins had to make decisions about whether new entries were correct or nonsense, so now we have this situation. Since many English-speakers have some experience with one or more European languages (where most word forms are made by adding simple suffixes such as -s, -ing, -ung, -ed, -tion, -ate, -ize, -en, and so on), they feel that they can make good judgments about words of any language. However, Navajo does not follow such a pattern, and these admins are not able to recognize, for example, that azlį́į́ʼ and nídeiidleeh are related forms, or that hólǫ́ and dahólǫ́ǫ are related, or anaasází and bizází. Years ago I used to try to explain these things, but I got tired of arguing and just gave up.

Somewhere around here is a document that sets the requirements for acceptable entries in languages such as Navajo:

Required number of citations

For spoken languages with limited online presence or limited literature, only one use or mention is adequate, subject to the following requirements:

• the community of editors for that language should maintain a list of materials deemed appropriate as the sole source for entries based on a single mention,
• each entry should have its source(s) listed on the entry or citation page, and
• a box explaining that a low number of citations were used should be included on the entry page (such as by using the {{LDL}} template).

In my opinion, this makes most Navajo words unacceptable as entries on Wiktionary, and any editor who does not know Navajo can delete many of our Navajo entries at any time, if he so chooses. Some good Navajo words have already been deleted. That's why I stopped adding new entries. I think it's only a matter of time before someone deletes many pages that we've worked long and hard to put together. —Stephen ^(Talk) 08:28, 22 September 2016 (UTC)