the new version of langprefix

Actually, I see now that you changed {{t}} et al. to bypass {{Xyzy}} anyway. I think that was a mistake, but whatever. *shrug*

Yes, I did that for performance reasons. Xyzy is a slow template, so bypassing it makes pages a whole lot faster. I used it on a lot of "high-profile" templates like {{t}} and {{l}} that do not benefit from the italics for English terms (the only reason why one would use Xyzy over that). And I see that you reverted it, in the case of l.

I doubt that.

I could well imagine that [[water]] is made faster by micro-optimizations like this, but it's not representative, and we shouldn't make Wiktionary-wide design decisions based on it.

(If need be, we can just take a DUDES ALREADY KNOW ABOUT CHICKENS approach to that entry.)

The alternative would be specifying sc=Latn over and over on large pages. (Yes, this actually reduces server load considerably!) I don't think that is what you want, is it?

I don't think that is "the alternative".

Rather, it will be?

Er, let me rephrase:

I don't think that is the alternative.