User talk:76.125.192.226

Cognates

Cognates are already shown in much more detail on the pages of Proto-Germanic and other ancestral languages, so it is redundant and unnecessary to add them to the etymology of each descendant. A user only has to click one link to see all the cognates they ever want to know, and it keeps the etymologies short and readable. —Rua (mew) 18:34, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Oh! I'm sorry, thank you for bringing this to my attention. I was aware that the Proto-Germanic and PIE pages list cognates extensively, but in my humble opinion, not very accessibly. It can be difficult to find desired cognates in a large list that may not always account for "sideways" changes such as restrictions in meaning or re-arrangement. In addition, some cognate relationships are not as direct, and can't be found by exploring the PG pages. I understand "keeping etymologies short and readable", but I felt that the entries would benefit from a direct, hyperlinked and easily accessible comparison with words that may be more "transparent" and helpful for a student of Germanic languages. Nonetheless, thank you for informing me of this, even though I am sad to see so many of my edits reverted. Please let me know if there is a better way in which I can contribute. 76.125.192.226 18:08, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

I generally interpret "cognate" rather narrowly, as representing words descended from a common ancestral form. Given two strict cognates A and B, I would not consider a term that's etymologically related to A a cognate of B. For example, Dutch verhelpen would not be a cognate of English help because they don't descend from a common form. I would also not consider cognates two terms that were formed from the same elements, but individually in each language without common descent. This is often the case with words in Dutch, Low German and standard German; a word in one might influence the parallel creation of a similar word in another. Seen strictly, these are calques and not cognates, as the word did not exist in the common ancestor of these languages (continental Proto-West Germanic).

Wiktionary's descendant lists follow this definition as well, and consider a term descended only if it evolved naturally from the earlier form to the later. When some change in morphology occurs, {{der|der=1}} is used to indicate that the term is a derivation and not a direct descendant.

Regarding material for students of Germanic languages, you have to consider that a student of German (for example) is not going to be looking up Dutch words in order to learn German. They're going to be looking up German words, and Dutch cognates aren't interesting for them. Someone studying the wider Germanic languages and the relationships between them are going to be much better served with the descendants lists of ancestral languages. These lists are always going to have more terms than lists of cognates in etymologies. You can imagine it's absolutely not doable to list every cognate of every language in every etymology, there's just way too many. So I figure, rather than picking and choosing certain privileged languages to appear in etymologies, it makes more sense to have none and rely on the much more complete lists we have elsewhere. —Rua (mew) 18:29, 13 December 2020 (UTC)