Talk:houer

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

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.


rfd-sense: obsolete spelling of hover. I'd call this a typographical variant where u and v are visually the same. Note we make this distinction in Wiktionary:About Latin, where v is use for /w/ and u is used for /u/. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:56, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The u and v aren't visually the same; the v is used initially and the u elsewhere. In any case, this is true for all words with u and v, and the spelling can be predicted from the modern spelling, so keeping them around is unnecessary.--Prosfilaes 12:13, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Correct, basically. Doesn't just apply to English either. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:34, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have mixed feelings about these...it was a typographical variant at the time, but now they are seen as different letters, which makes it awkward. I mean, they're prima facie easily attestable. It's worth noting also that the OED has, since it began updates for the new edition a few years ago, starting regarding these as separate spelling forms and listing them accordingly under the "Spellings" header of its entries. Ƿidsiþ 12:41, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another way to think about it is, "will someone want to look it up?" I'd say the answer's yes. Consider the fact that some forms looked very different from how they look now. One I enetred recently was yuie. Took me quite a few seconds to work that one out when I came across it in a book, and it seems like something Wiktionary can help with. Ƿidsiþ 12:45, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • One of my concerns is that 8% of the words in /usr/share/dict/words need alternate forms because of this. Shakespeare used some 32,000 words in his works, and it's estimated he knew around 67,000. Are we ever going to achieve something that would require adding 2,500 words for Shakesepare's corpus alone, assuming all early texts of Shakespeare spelled the words consistently? That's not even starting on the fact this extends to all medieval European languages. Wouldn't it be better to offer a search extension or script that took a word and offered all variants of the u/v with pages?--Prosfilaes 18:31, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      You're right of course, but that doesn't seem a good reason to delete it. There are lots of aims we'll never practically achieve but we try anyway. My solution in these cases is that I consider it not very useful to add these words (unless I find them particularly awkward, like the example above), but nor would I want to delete them if someone else adds them. Ƿidsiþ 07:36, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      Any aim we'll never achieve in a practical manner is pointless. And pursuing one way discourages others; we could set up that search extension or script and file things like [[yuie]] under yvie, which would achieve a much higher rate of figuring out words with old-school u/v.--Prosfilaes 23:51, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(deprecated template usage) wiues (obsolete wives) should be treated the same as this. Equinox 16:21, 6 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Tagged (by coincidence actually, I only came here to post that I'd tagged it and found your comment). Mglovesfun (talk) 16:45, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
...and I should note that Shakespeare's play is officially titled The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet on the title page of that play in the First Folio edition. So we'll need an entry for Ivliet since people will want to look it up, right? Note also that this is not the only weird variant of that name in the First Folio. --EncycloPetey 00:29, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If they meet CFI, then yes, we will. Ƿidsiþ 08:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I still maintain the difference is typographical norms, not spelling. So I still prefer the delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:45, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

deleted. Oh c'mon, what's next, including spellings with ɑ rather than a? This is nothing more than a font difference, not a spelling one. -- Prince Kassad 18:53, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's certainly not a font difference, given that I've never seen a font that can change starting u's to v's and middle v's to u's. No do I agree that a person who used this spelling would accept hover as the real underlying spelling.--Prosfilaes 19:12, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I could make you such a font in no time if you wanted, it's really easy. -- Prince Kassad 19:28, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And you could make me a font that changes color to colour, -ize spellings to -ise, etc., using the right advanced font technology. But that doesn't make them font differences.--Prosfilaes 20:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Widsith (12:45, 30 September 2010 (UTC)).​—msh210 (talk) 19:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Restore this page for consistency[edit]

WT:BP#U, V (March 2012 archive when archived) was favorable to include spellings such as these. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:26, 7 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]