Wiktionary:Grease pit/Etymology templates

Etymology templates

From BP

I see ever fewer instances of these. How come? Does everybody endorse them or are they not really accepted? Note: I'm only talking about the "derivations" templates, like {{LL.}} and such. I think they're very useful for etymologies. — Vildricianus 12:27, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Personally I hate them. The main reason is that I don't like wikified language names, especially in Etymology sections. It makes everything looks very messy and cluttered and basically hard to scan; when only the etymons are wikified, they stand out much better. On the other hand the good thing about the templates is that they add the Category:Words of x Language Origin, but I just tend to add that bit by hand. Widsith 15:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, actually, that's what I meant. The languages shouldn't be wikified, it's the categories which are their main advantage. — Vildricianus 15:03, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

What we really need is a standardized format for etymologies. Once it's standardized it can be personalized. Personally I really dislike language-name-templates because it requires memorozing a long list of abbreviations to use them. But a standardized format would be best if all language names were in one certain style, all foreign forms were in a second certain style, and all glosses of foreign forms into English were in a third certain style. — Hippietrail 18:40, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand. Why use the Webster abbreviation instead of the language code, maybe followed by a dot or something? Which one is easier to remember? Or just use the full language name, or some combination (using redirects for the templates). ∂ανίΠα 19:04, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Is there a code for Late Latin? — Vildricianus 19:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... strange shortcoming. Adding a dot suffix for late, middle, etc. doesn't seem like it would simplify anything. Oh well. 59.112.50.163 21:55, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I would prefer to use the full names of the languages as template names. Each template can include some CSS that can allow setting to bold or italics or whatever depending on where it is used and can be personalized. For languages with multiple names, those can all redirect to one template per language. This way article editors can use whichever language name or spelling they are used to, and everybody will see the same thing. It would even be easy for people to choose say Burmese or Myanmar, Byelorussian or Belarusan for each language. — Hippietrail 20:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. Sounds very flexible. Sounds also quite easy to apply to existing etymology sections (just enclosing in brackets). — Vildricianus 20:30, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Having them in place, means that Webster imports are not stymied. If such strong objections exist, then the templates use can be "subst:"'ed. But the notion of prohibiting them (as some are implying) is a very non-wiki philosophy. On the other hand, having them in place as templates means they still can be "corrected" without too much fuss. Every few months or so, the decision seems to waffle between linking internally vs. linking to Wikipedia; then back again, some time later. Having them as templates lets those changes occur without too much database interaction. Whereas if they were all subst'ed, a bot would have to run each time the wind changed. Template redirects seem reasonable at first glance. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Why should they be subst:'ed? — Vildricianus 16:45, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

They shouldn't be; I was suggesting that as a kind of potential compromise. --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:19, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I guess they need some grease pitting and brainstorming after today's business (mainly inflection templates) is settled. Topic deferred. — Vildricianus 18:59, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Grease pitting

An idea of mine: how about creating 1 template which takes a parameter. Something like {{etym|par}}, or perhaps even shorter. A finite set of parameter checking could then determine which category to add. ISO codes as parameters would be OK for me, but do Late Latin, Middle English, Old French etc. have codes? I'd prefer the current abbreviations which are easy and memorable, to be used as parameters. — Vildricianus 20:19, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Rod just made {{etymon}}. Combining the above and this one creates a template taking two parameters: 1/ language, 2/ etymon. As such it could become quite useful. Any ideas? — Vildricianus 20:19, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Template:etymon

(or, "More templates than you can shake a stick at")

As discussed at User talk:Rodasmith#Infl, we have not yet standardized the style for etymons. Candidate styles include the use of quote marks, italics, emboldening, wikilinking, and combinations thereof. Recent conversations have highlighted some editors' distaste for and some legibility problems with using italics in general. Fully aware that the current template palette for Wiktionary's "perfect entry" includes more templates than you can shake a stick at, I introduce {{etymon}}.

Before proposing adoption of {{etymon}} on WT:BP, I would like feedback here to ensure that the proposal is appropriately flexible and technologically consistent with Wiktionary's collective vision.

Similar to {{en-noun}} and {{plural of}}, {{etymon}} should address the following needs:

• Wiktionary should display etymons consistently.
• The community can choose and change the default style of rendering all etymons.
• Readers can choose their preferred display style for etymons.

Because it may be desirable to display non-Latin script etymons with a different style from Latin script etymons, I seek feedback on whether we should use any of the following language-specific or script-specific extensions of {{etymon}}:

1. Add the ISO language code as a required first parameter, e.g. on "artel":

   From {{etymon|ru|артель}}.

2. Add the ISO language code as an optional second parameter, e.g. on "artel":

   From {{etymon|артель|ru}}.

3. Add the ISO code for the script as an optional parameter, e.g. on "artel":

   {{etymon|артель|cyrl}}

Option 1 above is a direct implementation of the "From BP" proposal above, but is perhaps problematic for etymons whose languages lack ISO language codes. Options 2 and 3 allow the language-neutral/script-neutral uses of the template to show a default style.

Options 1 and 2 allow the template to show the name of the language, to categorize words according to their language derivations, and to wikilink to the language section appropriate for the etymon, e.g. "{{etymon|артель|ru}}" can wikilink to [[артель#Russian|артель]].

From Russian "артель".

Options 1 and 2 also allow us to specify a language code of "-" to indicate that the etymon is hypothetical and should not be linked, e.g. on "word":

From Proto-Germanic {{etymon|*wurða-|-}}.

From Proto-Germanic "*wurða-".

Your feedback is much appreciated. Rod (A. Smith) 23:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Very neat, but needs some more functionality. The language parameter should be required, so we'll need templates for Late Latin etc. The template should also include Category:Xyz derivations, but this won't with the language template structure. Perhaps you'll need to incorporate a parameter-checking infrastructure, adding categories depending on the parameter. — Vildricianus 14:11, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

OK. Uses of the template read best if the language code is the first parameter anyway. (I.e. "From {{etymon|ru|артель}}." and "From {{etymon|proto-de|*wurða-}}." seen to read naturally.) Is there an extension of ISO language codes that includes abbreviations for Middle English, Late Latin, Proto-Germanic, and Proto-Indo-European? Does Wiktionary accept entries, language headers, and "Category:Xyz derivations" for each? Rod (A. Smith) 16:28, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

From Wiktionary talk:Index to templates/languages

The following text from Wiktionary:Index to templates/languages does not appear to be true:

These link to the extended Wikipedia articles, so that finer points of congjugation, etc. can be referenced without too much hastle.

Were links to Wikipedia entries an old convention or am I missing something? Rod (A. Smith) 17:14, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a bad place to post things. I usually spot these edits, but in general these will go unnoticed.

On topic: these templates are bad. They're the old convention to use in =Translations= sections instead of the plain language names. Recently we got rid of them through downright subst'ing everything. They're still being kept for the reason that people will post translations using them, in which case have to be tracked and subst'ed again.

We could still use them as our own method for getting {{#language:}} but with local names. Where they link to was a matter of where we linked to in translations sections. — Vildricianus 17:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. (I will move this to BP or GP if you think the increased visibility would be helpful.) Per your GP post, I plan to modify {{etymon}} to determine whether an etymon is a valid Wiktionary link target. It already expands the language code argument using these templates, but an additional option is to determine whether the etymon is a valid link target based on whether its language argument is the name of one of these templates.

Anyway, I wanted a complete list of these templates for reference. I thought categorizing them as something like "Category:Language names" might help. It seems I don't need to do so, though, since this template listing page appears to be complete (despite its confusing note about Wikipedia links). Rod (A. Smith) 18:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)