User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 24

Attempting to decipher this passage in The Expulsion of the Déisi

So this passage has stumped Kuno Meyer when he attempted to translate this Old Irish text, to the point that he skipped over it. "In the present state of our knowledge of Old Irish it is impossible to understand more than an occasional word or phrase in these rhapsodical compositions. A comparison of the two versions shows how little they were understood by the scribes themselves." There are two versions of the passage in Recension A.

• c. 750-800 Tairired na nDessi from Rawlinson B 502, published in "The Expulsion of the Dessi", Y Cymmrodor (1901, Society of Cymmrodorion), edited and with translations by Kuno Meyer, vol. 14, pp. 104-135, paragraph 9

  Ni o Temair dochumlaid ticid ticid dothaide gluind mara cotobcatha crethit cetnaanad tuidecht do mac Daurthecht deirethe Eogan sceo echta scen macco Echach Airiman Artt ero Corp coitual cel cichsit datfiannae im Findchad mac Niod atroinne noifidir ruthit min mairfitit coicthe rann Dil diairithe Lethe Laidcind ilar lenthus diacoi crochae marfit Dil nad flathius gaile genithar gaibthiut co firu Fochlae ifaitse dosclich doarnid arus mac Meschuirb mogithar dalsus condesil fidgella forderga ord araserb slas ninde mac nDega diagraif arrigthius rige os cach ros codidiandesingar ar Ros mac Feochair feig falnathar cotafodlaib fergair cain iarnitha mac Riath rascthius itreichnimi conoid ni. Ni [lacuna here]

  (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• c. 750-800 Torche na nDessi from Laud 610, published in "The Expulsion of the Déssi", Ériu 3 (1907), edited by Kuno Meyer, pp. 135-142, line 68

  Nitho Themuir dochumlith ticith dofaitech gluind mair conib cath crechtnigther aratuitet da mac Durthacht dercthus echen sceo echde sceo mac mair-Echach ere maine ard erc corba maccu delchidech sit dodaireim Findchath mac Níathait no endi rofitir ruithfid find marfithid coderaind Dil dia ratus Lithi Ladcend hilar lentus dia Chondochtæ norbe dal nadla thugaile gainethur gaibidith co firo foichle hifoidse dosfeth tus ar ditharus mac Meschuirp mogeth ardalsus condessel ditafind gola folt forderga ord æra serbsi as indin indinn. dega grisas rigthus rigib oscechrus condirannais ingair arus mac maic Fechuir fech fellnatar contofodli fergair conar nith mac Níath naiscthus hitrena hitriach none conoethus nithu Ni o Themuir dochumlit.

  (please add an English translation of this quotation)

It's been over a century since Meyer wrote that note. Has anybody else managed to translate this section in the meanwhile, or is it up to us to make work out of it? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 14:25, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I haven't the faintest idea. If Kuno Meyer didn't know what it meant, I'm not even going to try! —Mahāgaja · talk 15:58, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I could make out:

• Ni o Temair is "Not from Tara". Meyer only managed to get this far before calling it quits.
• dochumlaid could be 2pl of do·cumlai (“set out”)
• ticid seems to be from do·icc (“to come”)
• gaibthiut co firu fochlae i faitse stays consistent. "(insert meaning of gaibid here) you to the men, north into the south"?
• mairfitit (which I read as "they will kill him") stays consistent.

I wonder if the the common source of both the Recension A copies were near-illegible at this section even at the time, causing the scribes to attempt to fill in the blanks. "crochae marfit Dil" in Rawlinson vs. "Chondochtæ norbe dal", noifidir vs. ro·fitir, etc. I'll probably make a user page myself where I could attempt to make out more phrases. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:21, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

ad·comla etymology

Virtually everyone derives this verb from *layeti (cf. perfect forms of fo·ceird), not *ɸalnati. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 05:56, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

OK, you can change it. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:18, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Irish help

Can you take a look at tarlaithe / tarluinte and ceannaire / cinnire? I converted tarluinte and cinnire into alt forms but I wasn't sure. Ultimateria (talk) 17:02, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Hello!

Hello there! I am glad you liked the page I created - महागज. I am writing this just as a hello from me and I want to ask that how much of Sanskrit etymologies from PIE do you know (I see that you deal with PIE reconstruction as in your contributions), so that maybe you can help me with that as I create a lot of Sanskrit entries and I just have to leave {{rfe|sa}} in its etymology (unless it is a derivative of a root or a compound). And maybe, can I leave a ping for you on an edit summary? Also, how much Sanskrit do you know (seeing your username is in Sanskrit)? Anyways, nice to meet you, शान्तनुः^{(मया सह वदतु•मम योगदानानि)} 11:24, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't know a whole lot about Sanskrit etymologies, just the most obvious things. I don't have access to a Sanskrit etymological dictionary, so I can't really be of much help, I'm afraid. Just keep using {{rfe}}! I took some classes in Sanskrit in the U.S. in the late '80s and early '90s, but I wouldn't say I know it well. I certainly couldn't read a text written in Sanskrit. My username is more reflective of my love for elephants than my knowledge of Sanskrit! —Mahāgaja · talk 11:32, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: Oh! Sorry for such a late response as I didn’t get a ping. Sorry for bothering you for संवैधानिक page as it wasn’t in any dictionary but yeah on Google there are many results from that word. So I just tagged it with {{lb|hi|neologism}} and it is done. Apologies, शान्तनुः^{(मया सह वदतु•मम योगदानानि)} 09:33, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

And I like your username! Even I am currently learning Sanskrit as you can see on my babel box it is just sa-1 which I will be changing to sa-2 after my six monthly course or षाण्मासिकः पाठ्यक्रमः (as in Sanskrit) will be completed (3 months done, 3 remaining, halfway there!). शान्तनुः^{(मया सह वदतु•मम योगदानानि)} 09:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Gender of mathgamain

Evidence of this word being neuter is not apparent to me. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 22:00, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Possible Latin term (Augustine): libīdō dominandī ?

Hi, Mahagaja. Pursuant to your commentary in the request for deletion of the Latin capellus filtreus page, I am seeking your guidance on the rectitude of creating a Latin section on the libido dominandi page. There is an English listing as a (compound) noun. Specifically, I am wondering if this might be considered a S.O.P. term within Latin, the language of origin. The words lubido dominandi (there in the accusative: lubidinem dominandi) were (one supposes first) used together by Sallust in his famous account of the Catiline Conspiracy, the Bellum Catilinae paragraph 2, sentence 2), see here: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sallust/sallust.pdf. We may, indeed should, assume that Sallust did not intend this as a single term, but rather as a descriptive noun-phrase. Augustine of Hippo (one assumes that he was familiar with the writings of Sallust), utilized these same two words to relate an identical meaning in his De civitate Dei, which was published in 426. Since Augustine, by any measure a specialist thinker, seems to have taken this phrase from Sallust, also a specialist thinker, to describe a hitherto unnamed (in Latin) phenomenon, I think that with Augustine, we should consider the noun phrase to have become a specialist collocation. If we may so do, libīdō dominandī (or, as an alternate form, dominandī libīdō as a collocation, would be a Late Latin term. Much later, in the 20th century, the political philosopher Eric Voegelin utilized the same collocation to signify a meaning identical, for all intents and purposes, as did Sallust and Augustine. With this repeated usage by a much more recent specialist thinker, libido dominandi became accepted, not as a collocation, but as a phrasal noun in English. As an English term, libido dominandi describes somewhat more than the sum of its Latin parts; though it translates as "desire for mastery" or "lust for dominion", it is roughly equivalent to Nietzsche's "Will to Power", which I think might mean something more...more of an inherent/instinctual human trait than a learned or developed desire (perhaps I am overthinking the matter?). I would tend to think that post-Augustine, it might have done so in Latin as well, as seems to have been determined by Augustine himself, but I would like to have some feedback on that idea. You will find Augustine's Latin text here: https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/augustine/civ1.shtml, and an English translation here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45304/45304-h/45304-h.htm My argument rests upon the fact that, while capellus filtreus, and the other noun phrases like it included by Aerthrise which were similarly recommended for deletion by J3133, refer to concrete classes of things, libīdō dominandī refers instead to a specific abstraction (as opposed to a class of abstractions). For instance, a capellus filtreus can refer to any type of felt hat: a felt beret, a felt carriage cap, a felt fedora, etc., the term libīdō dominandī refers rather to a specific thing, not to many things which can form a class of things, and to nothing else. Obviously, this is an effect of the fact that that which is referred to by libīdō dominandī is an abstraction, and the phrase has been used to refer only to that abstract concept. Please read Sallust's and Augustine's texts, digest them, and then give me your thoughts about whether libīdō dominandī should be considered a S.O.P. term in Late Latin, or whether I might include it in Wiktionary as a Late Latin noun, a Late Latin collocation or a Late Latin phrasal noun. I hope for your advice with respect to this, as I am loath to create any Wiktionary entries which someone else feels compelled to delete or rfd later on. Thank you in advance!

Old Japanese subs

Heya, re: diff, we've been specifically using <sub> + 1 or 2 instead of the precomposed glyphs ₁ and ₂, due to legibility concerns. The tiny ₁ in particular is really hard to read, whereas ₁ is much clearer visually.

What was your reason for the change? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:32, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr: primarily to change {{IPAchar}} to {{IPAfont}} in order to clear the page out of CAT:IPA pronunciations with invalid IPA characters and CAT:IPA pronunciations with paired HTML tags. The change to the precomposed glyphs was incidental; I work a fair amount on Proto-Indo-European which uses h₁ h₂ h₃ with precomposed glyphs so I'm used to them. You can change them back to subscripts, but instead of <sub> you can also use {{sub}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:59, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

χερούβ

Hi, I've been suggested to turn to you with this question; The noun χερούβ (kheroúb, “cherub”) is very poorly attested, an thus lacks a known declension. I have now listed all the forms I could find in the headword, but this seems far from ideal. Is there a way to move them to another section of the entry?

Note that although the noun seems (and is often labelled) undeclinable, Exodus 25 gives the forms χερουβεὶμ (kheroubeìm) as nominative/accusative plural and χερουβείν (kheroubeín) as genitive plural, suggesting there was a declension.

Thanks in advance. Thadh (talk) 10:16, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I've edited the page. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

toward

Would you mind including a citation for the pronunciation information? Specifically, with regard to /tɔɹd/ being historically the only pronunciation used in the United States. It seems that /təˈwɔːd/ and /twɔːd/ exist alongside /tɔːd/ in the U.K (at least today), so I wonder if at least /twɔɹd/ / /twɔːd/ existed alongside /tɔɹd/ historically.

/tɔɹd/ has always been the most common pronunciation that I've been familiar with, but if it actually was the only pronunciation used until relatively recently, then was it a victim of the same shift that impacted sword, two, and who? If so, was its pronunciation prior to the shift "/twɔɹd/"? Tharthan (talk) 23:04, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if I have a source that states it directly enough to be worthy of inclusion in the entry, but both Kenyon & Knott and Webster's Third list /tɔɹd/, or rather /toɹd/ since it's apparently a force word, as the first/preferred pronunciation. K&K don't even mention /twɔɹd ~ twoɹd/, and W3 provides it (alongside /təˈwɔɹd/) only after the label also: indicating a less common/less preferred pronunciation. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:05, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

erchót gender problem

I have a hard time believing DIL's claims that erchót, verbal noun of ar·coat, is neuter. They admit to it being blatantly masculine in Ml. 61c8, but they dismiss it as an aberration. But I can't find any other evidence that it is neuter; neither DIL's quotations nor did me searching Milan gloss attestations with Aaron Griffith's database cough up anything. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 22:14, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Other than Thurneysen's assertion that *-om is a verbal noun ending (and implication that *-os isn't one), I don't know either. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:24, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Even more interestingly, the word became feminine in Middle Irish, and in the Old Irish Turin glosses of the Second Epistle of Peter, an accusative singular airchoid shows up. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 22:53, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

g (U+67) vs. ɡ (U+261)

Just a quick comment: in 1993 the IPA made official both the regular g (in its various shapes) and the shape Unicode registers as ɡ (U+261). Mentioning it just in case since people are often unaware (you probably already know this). I like how phonetician Kevin Russell's puts it: the specific look of ɡ "adds that extra touch of class" (source: a site he has). I'd you don't have to correct it, but please do so if you feel like it. :) --Ser be etre shi (talk) 21:12, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

I know, but for consistency's sake, Wiktionary uses ɡ (U+0261) everywhere. If you use g (U+0067), the entry appears in CAT:IPA pronunciations with invalid IPA characters, which I try to keep cleaned up. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:15, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

I see! Thanks for telling me about the convention and that page.--Ser be etre shi (talk) 20:09, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

IMO, it's a bit silly to be doing that manually. The template should just convert it automatically. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:21, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Ser be etre shi, Metaknowledge: If you type {{subst:x2IPA|...}} instead of {{IPA|...}} it does convert it manually. It also converts the normal colon to the IPA colon, and basically everything in X-SAMPA into IPA. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:05, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Good to know. Also, I just went on a spree fixing everything in the page you linked to. The only pages that remain are those that use superscript Chao tone numbers (a common thing among linguists of East Asian languages).--Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 21:22, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Ser be etre shi: Yeah, the Chao numbers 1–5 are accepted, but there are entries using 6 or 8 and those trigger an error. Oh and one tip on {{x2IPA}}: people often use the normal straight apostrophe ( ' ) instead of the IPA stress mark ( ˈ ), but in X-SAMPA (and thus when converted by {{x2IPA}}) the apostrophe converts to the palatalization mark ( ʲ ), while you have to use the quotation mark ( " ) to generate the stress mark. In other words, if you want to produce /ˈanʲa/ you have to type {{subst:x2IPA|xyz|/"an'a/}}. The other templates that convert out of X-SAMPA are {{x2ipachar}} and {{x2rhymes}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:23, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

fulsome

...can probably unprotected without too much paperwork Kilo Lima Mike (talk) 15:42, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

@Kilo Lima Mike: I removed the edit protection, but not the move protection. There's no reason the page should ever be moved. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:45, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Mahagaja!

I hope that 2021 is a great year for you! Tharthan (talk) 17:29, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Help with importing

Hi. I was working on importing some templates to ku.wikt. But one of them has been deleted here before I could import it. If you have time, could you please copy the deleted contents of Template:categoryboiler to User:Balyozxane/categoryboiler? Thank you!--Balyozxane (talk) 18:42, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

@Balyozxane: Done! —Mahāgaja · talk 18:49, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so much!--Balyozxane (talk) 18:51, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

es-IPA on multi-word terms

You added {{es-IPA}} to caja de herramientas and caja de instrumento to fix my IPA errors but this template runs together all of the words into a long string (e.g. /kaxadeeraˈmjentas/, [kaxaðeeraˈmjẽn̪t̪as] rather than /kaxa de eraˈmjentas/, [kaxa ðe eraˈmjẽn̪t̪as]). Do you know of a fix for this? Are you just leaving it as-is until someone fixes the module to allow for spaces between words? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:09, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I guess I wasn't really thinking about it one way or the other. I'll ask at Module talk:es-pronunc for the template to put spaces into multi-word terms. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:23, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Replacing unidiomatic translations from Thes. Pal. etc.

Some translations of Old Irish texts (especially those made around the turn of the 20th century) have become unidiomatic or obscure in the 21st century. For example, take Wb. 17d3:

• c. 800, Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 499–712, Wb. 17^d3

  sainchenelæ srogill imbí .xl. loman

  a special kind of scourge wherein are forty thongs.

where scourge (“whip”) and especially thong (“strip of leather”) are used in senses not obvious to native English speakers today. Should we replace unidiomatic translations with more idiomatic equivalents if encountered? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 16:27, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

I usually have been adapting S&S's translations into contemporary English. Among other things, I've been changing "thou"/"thee" and "ye" to "you {{g|s}}" and "you {{g|p}}". —Mahāgaja · talk 17:54, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: I am German and I find the example translation idiomatic and lucid, immediately understood, so I suggest you shouldn’t, especially considering that the author of such glosses probably knew better why he used certain words as opposed to others you would replace with. Fay Freak (talk) 18:55, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

lestar ('vessel')

This noun has a bit of a problem. It is traditionally assumed as a Brythonic borrowing, but the neuter gender comes out of nowhere. But assuming an inheritance leads to the unexpected /st/ being kept when it should have became just /s/. Do other Brythonic nouns being borrowed as neuters exist? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:46, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@Mellohi!: I don't know, but maybe it was borrowed at an early date before Proto-Brythonic lost the neuter. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:53, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

dúbail etymology

Borrowed from Middle English, isn't it? — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 01:50, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Or directly from Old French. The upper classes of the Anglo-Normans who invaded Ireland in the 12th century spoke French, not English. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:44, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I said Middle English, because the cites in eDIL don't look old enough to be directly from Old French. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:47, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Rhymes:German/ɪç

Hi Mahāgaja, could you please remove the links to Rhymes:German/ɪç, too? I cleaned up the page, and it's occured to me only now that all the terms I've removed have the rhyme template in their entries. Of course, some of the links are good, but I would readd them after the removal (if you don't have the means to do this more efficiently, perhaps?). --Akletos (talk) 12:20, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't have a bot or anything, so I would be removing them by hand one at a time. Obviously it's easier for me then to remove only the faulty ones, rather than all of them. Also, it's just as easy for you to do it as for me. There seem to be a lot of links; I'm willing to help but would be glad if you also did some. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:26, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I thought you ran a bot, as I saw how fast you proceeded... Don't bother yourself with this, I'll do it myself. But thanks anyway for your offer. --Akletos (talk) 12:57, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Importing 2

Hi, It's me again with a request to import a deleted module :). If you have time could you please, move Module:category tree/affix cat to Module:User:Balyozxane? --Balyozxane (talk) 20:11, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

@Balyozxane: Done. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:34, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic

Hi, just so I can be sure I'm on the right track, could you quickly review my recent cleanup of Scottish Gaelic entries? As of now, I've templatised or improved the templatisation of the articles ({{gd-decl-article}}), prepositions ({{gd-prep}}) the prepositional pronouns ({{gd-prep-infl}}), the possessive prepositions ({{gd-prep-poss}}), possessives ({{gd-possessive pronouns}}) and personal pronouns ({{gd-personal pronouns}}). Most of my changes can be seen at an. I've removed quite a few usage notes and replaced them with in-template information; I would really appreciate if you could go through these changes and see if I haven't misunderstood some grammar or removed a useful usage note. Thanks in advance. Thadh (talk) 12:03, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

They look fine as far as I can tell, but my knowledge of Scottish Gaelic grammar is quite limited. @Droigheann, ThaesOfereode, can you guys help at all? One thing that I'm a bit bothered by (and this has nothing to do with the templates) is the entries for things like an t- and na h-. As far as I'm concerned those are just an and na followed by a mutation. At any rate, it's very inconsistent of us to treat Irish an t-athair as [[an]] + [[t-athair]] but Scottish Gaelic an t-athair as [[an t-]][[athair]]. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:55, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Good point. The entries an t- and na h- preceded me, so I went with the flow, but I would be okay with changing this if the other Goidelic editors agree. Thanks for changing the blends to univerbations, I was very unsure what template to use there. Thadh (talk) 13:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I gotta admit, I'm not completely clear on the difference between a univerbation and a contraction. But blends (in my opinion at least) are consciously coined words like brunch rather than strings of function words that get fused into a single word. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:17, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

So in the original table I made, I believe I used the superscript to indicate lenition and prosthesis (t- and h-), which I think would be a better strategy to indicate the effects for people unfamiliar; it's the way a lot of teaching resources do it currently and it would solve the inconsistency between Irish and Scottish Gaelic you all were talking about. Relatedly, I don't know how to make tables and the like, but it appears you all do, so is there any way we can develop one for the declension patterns? If there's anything I can do to help, let me know. ThaesOfereode (talk) 15:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@ThaesOfereode: of course there is. Probably the easiest thing to do is to adapt some of the Irish noun inflection-table templates to Scottish Gaelic. I don't really know how SG nouns get declined, though. (Is there ever a distinct dative singular? Is there a difference between strong plurals and weak plurals like there is in Irish? Does the dative plural exist in the modern language?) —Mahāgaja · talk 16:21, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Thadh: one thing I notice is that {{gd-possessive pronouns}} is misnamed, as those are possessive determiners, not pronouns. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Aren't they both? I originally thought they were determiners as well, but then it seemed that they could also be used independendly, and so I renamed it again. And @ThaesOfereode: I replaced the ^+L with ¹⁾ because I thought that would be less distracting, but if you think it will help to give the full letters, I can easily change it back. Also, perhaps making a more native template (basing it on the existing {{gd-decl-noun-def}}) may be a good idea visually (even though I would merge the definite with the indefinite). Thadh (talk) 16:31, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think any of the forms listed in {{gd-possessive pronouns}} can be used independently, can they? As I understand it, in SG (unlike Irish), even in conjunction with a noun they aren't that common anymore. Isn't 'my house' more likely to be an taigh agam than mo thaigh? And surely "the house is mine" cannot ever be *tha an taigh mo, can it?? —Mahāgaja · talk 16:40, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Hm, I don't know where I picked it up from... seems that I misunderstood something (good thing I asked you for help :P). I'll go remove the pronoun entries in that case. Also, as soon as we figure out whether to count protheses as mutations or variations of the determiner, we can add {{gd-prep-poss}} to ag/aig and a. Thadh (talk) 16:52, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Thadh: Yep! Here's a good guide on the declension patters: http://www.akerbeltz.org/index.php?title=The_Case_System_or_What_the_heck_is_a_vocative%3F. Note that there are two styles of declension: the traditional and the colloquial. It might be a good idea to make declension templates for both. As for the other comments made here, mo thaigh and an taigh agam are both attested; the latter is more "correct" and used more by older speakers. The same goes for things like mo char vs an car agam. Not 100% sure what the predicative form is, but I would estimate Tha an taigh agam. is probably best for The house is mine. As for whether to put the L or 1 in superscript, I highly, highly recommend the former; it's used basically universally from what I've seen and it's easier to reference when doing linguistic work. I would also stress the importance of noting the prostheses for t- and h- the same way. Feel free to reach out again if you need something. ThaesOfereode (talk) 21:17, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@ThaesOfereode: In Irish, the predicative is formed with the copula + a form of le (which corresponds to both le and ri in SG): Is liomsa an teach. I don't know whether Is leamsa an taigh or Is riumsa an taigh is acceptable SG, though. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:22, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@Mahagaja: A cursory search yields 'S ann leamsa a tha an taigh seo. and Chan ann leamsa a tha an taigh seo. for "This house is mine" and "This house isn't mine", respectively. Other examples suggest 'S ann leamsa a... is the correct translation for "...is mine". ThaesOfereode (talk) 21:32, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

So to sum up, what needs to be done is to change superscript numbers to letters, remove the prothetic determiners' entries altogether, create an automatic template for declension. Am I missing something? Thadh (talk) 22:13, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

And rename {{gd-possessive pronouns}} to {{gd-possessive determiners}}, and make sure all the corresponding entries are labeled ===Determiner=== rather than ===Pronoun===. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:23, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@ThaesOfereode I miss some declensions, since Akerbletz only gives one inflectional paradigm for masculine and one for feminine. They don't explain nouns like lagh or mìle. I personally have Gillies' Elements of Gaelic grammar, but I'm not sure they are up-to-date for the modern language. Do you have another source I could use for the inflection tables? Thanks in advance. Thadh (talk) 18:13, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

w:User:Akerbeltz is active at Wikipedia, maybe he can help. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:34, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

@Thadh: I mean, those would be irregular, no? That said, I don't have another better source right now. I'll see if I can find something better soon though. ThaesOfereode (talk) 20:00, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Re: an t-: I'm extremely hesistant to call this a real mutation, since it is essentially just Old Irish int getting split across a syllable boundary. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Historically yes, but synchronically I strongly suspect it's felt as a mutation. If it comes to that, na h- is historically also just Proto-Celtic *sindūs getting split across a syllable boundary. And genitive plural nan is a re-re-analysis of *sindōm, which became Old Irish inna + eclipsis, and then the n- of the eclipsis got reattached to the article in Scottish Gaelic once eclipsis was lost as a productive mutation. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:14, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi guys, sorry I'm late. A few points:

1. The note at {{gd-personal pronouns}} saying "To mark a direct object, the derivatives of gam are used." is rather imprecise, gam &c are only used before a verbal noun, eg bha mi ga phutadh ("I was pushing him"), otherwise you use the basic form, eg put e! ("push him!"), phut mi e ("I pushed him"), putaidh mi e ("I'll push him") &c.
2. Whether you use the possessive determiner (mo &c) or the structure "article + noun + prepositional pronoun" depends on whether it's an "inalienable" or an "alienable" possession. A very short and simplistic way of putting it: your mother is your mother forever so she's do mhàthair, but you can sell your car tomorrow so it's an càr agad. A more detailed explanation can be found here. (You can also use derivatives of le where in English you would have "mine" rather than "my" &c, so is leamsa an taigh / is ann leamsa a tha an taigh mentioned above is all right, but I've never seen derivatives of ri used in this way.)
3. I'd rather we kept an t- &c as articles, because that's how they're viewed by Gaelic linguists, cf eg note 3. here. Similarly for na h- on the same page under the declension for oiteag. (Frankly, saying that an initial vowel somehow "mutates" into one preceded by /h-/ goes against everything I've ever read about lenition.)
4. I'm not template-savvy enough to look at one and see what it does, but I went to some entries linking to those mentioned here and as for {{gd-prep-poss}}, {{gd-decl-article}} - as I've hinted above, I don't think there's any "prothesis" or "eclipsis" at work here, and I doubt that any beginner in Scottish Gaelic with no knowledge of Irish would be able to make head or tail of these tables, I only understand them because I knew beforehand what they're meant to say.
5. The others seem all right except the declensions at bàrd and ràmh, which look completely bonkers. As for lagh, it simply doesn't lenite, because broad "l" never does, the genitive singular is created by adding "-a" instead of slenderisation, but then there must be dozens of words which do exactly this, and otherwise it follows the usual pattern; while mìle ends in a vowel so it obviously can't slenderise, but otherwise I can see nothing irregular about it. --Droigheann (talk) 17:26, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I definitely agree we shouldn't use the term Eclipsis in the context of Scottish Gaelic, which simply doesn't have that mutation. As for t-prothesis, I do think it's more helpful to learners to present things like an t-athair as [[an]] [[t-athair]] rather than as [[an t-]][[athair]], but since this is the only context for t-prothesis, the latter could work as well. But with h-prothesis it's different if (as I believe) it doesn't happen only after na; it happens after gu (“-ly”) and a (“her”) as well. I feel like saying these three have allomorphs na h-, gu h-, a h- before vowels is missing a generalization that could be helpful to learners. And saying it's a mutation doesn't imply it's lenition (which of course it isn't). —Mahāgaja · talk 18:07, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

P.S. bàrd and ràmh definitely have errors in them, with vocatives being labeled indefinite genitives. I'm not thrilled with labeling the two tables "indefinite" and "definite" though, because nouns can be definite without having the definite article before them. Màthair is definite in do mhàthair and in màthair a' ghille. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:14, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Even the singular datives are wrong, you don't slenderise masculine nouns in the dative, only feminine ones. And in do mhàthair the lenition isn't even triggered by definiteness, but by the possessive do, which always lenites: "our mother" would be unlenited ar màthair, maybe it would be more precise to call the tables "without article - with article" than "indefinite - definite". --Droigheann (talk) 22:34, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

P.P.S. I only mentioned ri in the context of "the house is mine" because Irish le corresponds to both le and ri in SG, and I wasn't sure which of them SG used. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:18, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

To answer some questions: 1) Would "to mark a direct object of a verbal noun ..." be a good alternative? 2) Scottish Gaelic does have eclipsis, even if it isn't written (see the discussion at Template talk:gd-prep-poss). For the inflection, I have contacted Akerbeltz, I'm awaiting his assessment of my overview of inflection paradigms. For the protheses, I agree with Mahagaja that they aren't of much help, but I'm not an active Goidelic editor, and as such I believe the ones that are more active should come to a decision. Thadh (talk) 19:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Re 1) Yes, I think so. 2) To be honest, I've been learning Gaelic since 2003 and only today I've come across the word 'eclipsis'. You guys can't imagine how little I care whether something gleaned out of 19th-century grammar books, which as you say "isn't written nor always spoken", exists or not. I'll leave that to academics, for me as an ordinary user it's enough to know when to lenite, when to slenderise and which form of the article to use; to me these words like mutation, prosthesis, eclipsis and what not (one of your sources even calls the <h-> 'antilenition') obscure more than they lucidate. It's so much easier to learn that in certain situations the article is na h- than that it's the good old na but triggering something called H-prothesis or antilenition or something. (And don't even start me on those templates (not 'yours') like the one under the 3rd etymology at bàrd, with its two forms, "radical mutation" (whatever that is) bàrd and lenition bhàrd, proudly informing the reader that "Some of these forms may be hypothetical.") But that's a general problem of this project, we try to be everything for everybody, learned enough for academics and user-friendly enough for amateurs, both at the same time ... --Droigheann (talk) 22:34, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Droigheann: {{gd-mut-cons}} practically is my template, because it was copied directly from {{ga-mut-cons}}, which I created. I'm the one who wrote "some of these forms may be hypothetical", and I wrote it because some parts of speech simply never undergo some mutations. For example, adjectives that always follow the noun – i.e. most adjectives – never undergo eclipsis in Irish; and only masculine singular nouns undergo t-prothesis, so it's kind of silly to show the t-prothesis form of a feminine noun or a plural noun or anything at all that isn't a noun (in fact, {{ga-mut}} now only shows t-prothesis if we explicitly tell it to, so that's not an issue anymore, but when I first made {{gd-mut-vowel}}, it was an issue). "Radical" isn't a mutation, it's the name for the basic, unmutated form of a word. —Mahāgaja · talk 22:50, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I see. Well that may be true for Irish, but there are only very few words in Gaelic which can't be lenited despite having lenitable initial consonanant. Of course, you run into trouble when you insist on applying the Irish prosthetis & elipsis system, I can't imagine a context where I would use h-airgead or n-uabhasach / t-uabhasach, but that poses the question whether we need to apply this template to the entries at all - I mean, we tell a reader that uabhasach may or may not turn into n-uabhasach, t-uabhasach and/or h-uabhasach - what good does it do them? If they knows what this means they's sure to have known it before we told them. (Not to mention that I dread the day when somebody creates a bot to start making entries for these theoretical forms. I can just imagine it: "Scotttish Gaelic / Adjective / t-uabhasach - T-prothetic form of uabhasach / Note: This word form may or may not actualy exist"). --Droigheann (talk) 11:38, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I do think it's important for learners to know that eclipsis exists and how to use it. We aren't only building a dictionary for people wanting to understand the language, but also for those who want to speak it with various levels of fluency. If you say "Me be from __" you will be understood by any English speaker, but it won't be proper language. For the same reason we include pronunciations, inflections and usage notes/examples, to give an idea of how the words are natively found in the language they're from. In most Gaelic dialects, eclipsis seems to exist and is an important part of proper speach. This is why it's only natural to document this and provide it to learners. Thadh (talk) 23:22, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

This is not exactly true. To speak good Gaelic I need to know when to put <t-> in front of a word and when to put <n-> there, I don't need to know whether the first is called prosthetis and the other eclipsis, just like I need to know when to use mo rather than agam, but I don't need to know whether it's properly called a possessive pronoun or a possessive determiner, and just like in Eglish I need to know that instead of "I gave he a letter" or "I saw he yesterday" I should say "I gave him a letter" and "I saw him yesterday", but I don't need to know (indeed I don't know) whether I should call the first him a dative and the second one an accusative or whether I should call them both an object pronoun or something.

In other words, I don't say that we shouldn't tell a reader that if he uses nur before a vowel-initial word he should preced it by <n->, I say that telling him that nur triggers eclipsis doesn't tell him this, even if he looks the word up here or in Wikipedia. --Droigheann (talk) 11:38, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@Droigheann: But to take that approach to its logical conclusion would mean not mentioning lenition by name either, and listing allomorphs of all lenition-triggering elements, along the lines of mo _h (for mo mhàthair), bho _h (for bho Shasainn) and so on. As I said above, it's missing a generalization that is helpful to learners, and I don't think it's asking too much of learners that they learn a couple of technical terms along the way. If I'm going to learn how to fix cars, I can reasonably expect to learn what the parts of a car are called, and if I'm going to learn a language, I can reasonably expect to learn what the names of the various grammatical phenomena are. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:51, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but the difference is that a learner will hardly be able not to encounter the word "lenition" time and again, while they'll only come across "prosthetis" & "eclipsis" here (unless perhaps they go on to study Gaelic at university, by which time they'll no doubt have better sources than us). What you promote isn't adding a missing generalisation, but substituting another for a well-established one. --Droigheann (talk) 13:06, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@Droigheann: And what we are talking about is about the change in pronunciation (like /pʰ/ > /p/ or /p/ > /m/) as a result of being preceded by e.g. ur. The labels that are used ("eclipsis" or "lenition") are just an easy and short description of what the effect of these mutations is, so that a user with the knowledge that these exist can easily recognise a word triggers them. It's the same thing as giving +dative or +genitive after prepositions - we don't explain what the cases are historically or anything like that, we simply give the information, so that the reader can then infer that the correct way to say "in a badger" is an broc, not an bruic. Thadh (talk) 11:56, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

I've never heard about ur turning /p/ into /m/ (peathraichean -> ur meathraichean?) and "in a badger" is (ann) am broc. I'm giving in. You've won. It's all yours. --Droigheann (talk) 13:06, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

@Droigheann: It's not about winning - you are a more active editor of Scottish Gaelic and no doubt know more about the language than I ever will (as seen by your correction of my grammar just now), but it's about finding some way to not miss out for the readers of this dictionary. If you can make a case why we shouldn't include the information of eclipsis and protheses, I will be the first to delete this information from the mainspace, but right now, it seems neither Mahagaja nor myself are impressed by your reasoning. What is the harm of giving people the help with speaking properly? And if there isn't, what is the point of not giving it? That's the only thing I am asking you to explain. And if you haven't read the documents that I added in the discussion about the phenomenon, it's not about peathraichean being written meathraichean, it's about it being read as if spelled beathraichean Thadh (talk) 13:21, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

The more I think about it, the more I see no reason not to do both. We can have entries for both an t- and t-athair (etc.), can't we? We can give an t- as an alternative form of an that appears before masculine nominative singular nouns beginning with a vowel and before masculine genitive singular and feminine nominative singular nouns starting with lenitable s and also give t-athair and t-sròn as the t-prothesis forms of athair and sròn. And likewise for àr n- and n-athair and for a h- and h-athair, and so forth. —Mahāgaja · talk 16:18, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

But we're only a dictionary (at least in the main namespace), not a reference grammar or a textbook. We can use Appendices to elucidate some points of grammar and phonology, but we can't take the place of w:Scottish Gaelic grammar or b:Scottish Gaelic, because that's not what we're here for. —Mahāgaja · talk 23:35, 29 March 2021 (UTC)