Wiktionary:Information desk/Archive 2006

May

art

Art. Is it needed? Why?

Unsingned entry - 20:48, May 28, 2006 User:70.24.186.54.

For concrete nouns (e.g. Animals) an image can be very helpful. When placed near entries with multiple senses, the image can help contributors entering translations verify that they are entering the translation for the right word, in the right place. --Connel MacKenzie T C 03:32, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Regional variations

Is there a standard way for noting a particular spelling or definition is restricted to one country or region? (e.g. other dictionaries would note "Chiefly British" for a word used primarily in the UK but not in the USA). Thanks. 85.210.7.123 22:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you can use these templates in front of a definition line, or simply note such information (''in brackets''). See gas for example. —Vildricianus 09:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. 85.210.7.123 13:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

German verbs

In German, it is possible to turn any verb into a noun by capitalising it. For example, spielen is the verb to play, and das Spielen is the noun meaning 'playing'. Is it necessary to make an article for both the verb, and the noun, the latter of which must have an initial capital letter, or should both be included in the same article? --Baryon 12:18, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

For English verbs, we don't make a point (I don't think) of having separate entries for every "-ing" form. (We do have some, and this is perfectly appropriate if the definition of that form has interesting aspects). So I would think that, by analogy, a consistent listing, on one page, of the various inflected forms for a German verb would be fine. (And in terms of helping people find the right entry even though it might be capitalized differently than the form they were searching for, that's obviously a problem that transcends German words, and we're working on general-purpose solutions.) –Scs 14:00, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

So I should, for example, add a 'noun' section to the spielen article? Thanks for your reply. --Baryon 16:41, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a bit of a gray area. If you trust the reader to know enough German to know that every verb can be used as a noun, you don't need to explicitly define every noun sense, anywhere. But if you do define the noun sense explicitly, since the spelling (i.e. capitalization) is different, it should probably go on its own page. (I've seen some older entries that have separate differently-capitalized sections on the same page, but I think the current trend is that if the spelling is different in any way, it shound go on a separate page. Spelling is paramount here on Wiktionary.) –Scs 17:02, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

OK. Thank you. I suppose putting the translation of the -ing form on the English verb, but linking to the infinitive of the verb in German, would be good enough for people to get the gist of the German pattern. --Baryon 18:17, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

June

Creating new account

I am unable to create a new account. At first I had trouble seeing the validation image. I found that the only way to get around that was to disable my firewall. (If I had known what (3rd party?) cookie it was trying to create, I could have enabled that cookie.) After disabling the firewall I saw the validation image, but when I tried to create an account I got the message, “Sorry, you have already created 6 accounts. You can't make any more.”

I haven't created any account. I checked the creation log to verify that I didn't accidentally create one while stumbling around with validation images. --24.127.171.144 (Wikipedia:User:TEB728) 22:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, maybe the reason I get no response is that I didn't actually ask a question; so:

• Is this the right place to ask for technical help? (At Wikipedia I would go to Village pump (technical); at Wiktionary no page seems particularly apt.)
• What makes the system think I have 6 accounts, when in fact I have none.
• How do I work around the problem?

--24.127.171.144 (Wikipedia:User:TEB728) 07:38, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know; perhaps someone else has created accounts from the same computer? Or IP address? Perhaps a cookie problem? Delete your cookies for en.wiktionary.org first and retry then. I suggest you ask this somewhere on Wikipedia, where there are more tech heads. —Vildricianus 14:51, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That is a new error message; I've never encountered any mention of it before. Our equivalent to Village pump (technical) is WT:GP aka the Grease pit.

We may need to ask a steward to determine what is up with your IP. You might try releasing your IP address and power-cycling your cable modem (leave off for about 15 minutes.) Sometimes I am able to get a new comcast address using that method...but most of the time I retain the old address. The last time I tried it was a year and a half ago - Comcast may have changed their policy since then. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I don't know what did it, but I was finally able to create an account. Rebooting my cable modem didn't change my IP address. Maybe I screwed things up by floundering, trying to see the Captcha; anyway success happened 24 hours after that. --teb728 23:12, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Glad you got in. There's probably a bug somewhere which caused each of your unsuccessful attempts (before you got the stupid captcha working) to be incorrectly counted as a "created account". –scs 18:40, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure now the CAPTCHA images keep automated registrations away. — Vildricianus 21:57, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure, that's what they're supposed to do, but I didn't think that was the question here. –scs 23:45, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Assume humour. — Vildricianus 12:09, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Confusing Link on Tea_room page

From the Grease pit. — Vildricianus 22:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

fwiw.. There is a link labeled 'Start a new discussion' at the top of Wiktionary:Tea_room, that starts a new article under Wiktionary:Beer_parlour.. It may be a little confusing for newcomers.

None of the other Discussion room pages have this type of link, so I'm thinking it may be a leftover from an earlier format?

--Versageek 00:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

follow up, I take that last sentance back.. Beer_parlour also has the link at the top..

Thanks. Fixed. --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

My mistake. —Vildricianus 14:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Glomming templates

Could someone get us some Wiktionary-ish copies of the Wikipedia "This user is a sockpuppet" templates? Or do we already have them hiding somewhere? --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

We have them. Are they useful? The impersonator ones weren't either, apparently, and I don't see much difference. If they are we can put some big sadistic {{blockeduser}} template on User:Primetime. — Vildricianus 17:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Wiktator keeps getting removed without reason

I have created this entry 3 times now but each time I come back to Wiktionary later, it's gone without ANY explanation or even a history! Why?? -Eep 23:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Please read WT:CFI. Made-up words are not up for inclusion here. — Vildricianus 11:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Adding a lot of entries at once

I've got a list of words and phrases in the African language Sesotho with the equivalents in English - I've added some entries individually but it takes quite a long time. Is it in any way possible to submit a bulk of terms as separate entries on Wiktionary at once?

Thanks Jak. --82.198.250.67 07:19, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. I've just added a section to WT:FAQ as this question is asked frequently. --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:00, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Underlines?

My links I have set in my preferences to ALWAYS underlink links. They just went away (nothing is underlined right now.) Anyone know why? --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:54, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Purge cache. Or wait. The opposite happens to me sometimes. — Vildricianus 17:00, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

please help me to ans this ques

d some studies and find out what are the lates ram chips and how fast are these new ram chips.give a summary account of the avolution of RAM chip technology and what are the significant difference or improvements along this evolutionary history

Sorry, we're a dictionary. You may want to ask on some hardware forum. — Vildricianus 18:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

But even if he does find the right forum, they'll just tell him to do his own homework. —scs 22:30, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Interwictionary Stuff

How do I point to my English user account from my Bulgarian user account? That is, what's the inter-wiki prefix? I've tried stuff like en:user or wikt:user, etc., but haven't hit on the right combination. Rklawton 13:38, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

From the Bulgarian Wiktionary, en:User:Rklawton should work. From the Bulgarian Wikipedia, both en:wikt: and wikt:en: should. — Vildricianus 15:11, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, [[:bg:User:Rklawton]] is different from [[bg:User:Rklawton]]. The former makes a "visible" link in place, while the latter puts an interwiki link in the left-most column, beneath the Search box and toolbox. The leading colon is a good trick, but I suspect you had the correct combination for an interwiki link, but didn't notice it at the very bottom of the left-most column. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:58, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

"Permanent link"

From WT:GP

What does this toolbox feature actually do? SemperBlotto 13:18, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

It gives a permanent link :-). Try it on an entry, and watch the url. It allows linking to a stable version (whereas the ordinary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/word link would link to a continuously changing page). — Vildricianus 13:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Move to WT:ID? --Connel MacKenzie T C 04:37, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

This feature is important for pages like WT:BP, WT:RFD or w:WP:AN where a month later, the entire section you were linking to probably no longer exists. Using the Permalink feature, you can add the link to your bibliography for a school report, or include the link in an e-mail and not have to worry, if the recipient doesn't check there e-mail frequently. --Connel MacKenzie T C 05:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

NADP

DEAR SIR

I AM NOT CLEAR ABOUT THE ABBREVIATION OF NADP WHERE N=NICOTINAMIDE,A=ADENINE AND REMAINING TWO LETTERS DP=TRINUCLEOTIDE,HOW IT IS? PLEASE EXPLAIN ME SO THAT MY MIND BE CLEAR.

THANKS

JEYANDOSHAIKH_SHAIKH@HOTMAIL.COM

• Click on the nicotinamide adenine trinucleotide link, or go to the Wikipedia article at w:Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide where all is explained.SemperBlotto 22:06, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the question is how the DP stands for trinucleotide, which I still don't really understand myself. The Wikipedia article seems to say that NADP stands for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate. Is that something else? They don't have an article on nicotinamide adenine trinucleotide. Widsith 22:31, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, this is what we in the trade call a cockup. I'll fix it later. SemperBlotto 07:03, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Fixed all links. Thanks for spotting it. SemperBlotto 07:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Can i Download Wikipedia Dictionary

Hi,

I am new to this Wikipedia. I came to know that Wikipedia is an open source dictionary which is downloadable. But I can't find any download link. Can you please help me in this regard.? First of all can i download this dictionary?

Plz let me know..

Regards, Kumar.

here. Note that this is Wiktionary, which is related to, but not the same as Wikipedia. — Vildricianus 10:35, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Entry category

Should I place in an entry "Category:Example language" along with "Category:Example nouns" or is "Category:Example nouns" by itself enough?--Kaasje 09:08, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

The nouns category will do. — Vildricianus 09:15, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Greek Wiktionary

I've noticed that Greek Recentchanges doesn't seem to be linked on the RecentChanges page. Is there a reason for this? Can it be added?--Brandnewuser 00:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any specific reason it was excluded. The list of "recent changes" pages is at MediaWiki:Recentchangestext. I guess we should add a link to el:Ειδικό:Recentchanges titled "Ελληνικά"? Rod (A. Smith) 07:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

How to listen to .ogg files?

I am running IE6, with RealPlayer10 also installed.

When I click on the loudspeaker symbol, I am told .ogg is an unknown file type, and only given the option of saving it.

I'm not sure whether I merely need to associate a program (RealPlayer, I assume) with that file type, or whether I also have a problem with my firewall (McAfee, though IE6 might also be interfering even though the Windows firewall is turned off).

Any ideas? Enginear 13:54, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

WP gives a good explanation. — Vildricianus 15:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

You do have the link Vildricianus indicated, at the question mark, right? Should that be changed to "ogg help" instead of "?" for the WOTD thing? --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

I can't believe I never tried the ! Still, help may make it clearer for dumbos like me. Thanks. Enginear 19:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Minor edit?

If you categorize an uncategorized page would you mark it a a minor edit or leave it? I have unable to find anything addressing this and would like to know. --Yorktown1776

Minor edits will do here. — Vildricianus 18:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Invitation for wikipedians to engage with dictionaries workshop

Dear Wiktionarians,

I am organising a workshop on Dictionary Writing Systems (DWSs) -

to take place in September immediately prior to EURALEX, the conference of the European Association of Lexicography. (Workshop: main conference: )

It would be very interesting for us to hear an account of the wiktionary project, and we would of course hope that the workshop (and indeed the main conference) would be interesting to you.

Is it likely that a wiktionarian (who is well-placed to speak about the project overall) might liek to coem along and speak to us?

The workshop is in Torino, Italy, The workshop will be a modest event, we are not expecting more than thirty people. The main conference is medium-sized, with 200-300. Both events are in Torino, Italy, with the workshop on Tuesday 5th Sept and the conference immediately after, 6th-9th.

Coudl you please respond direct to my email, adam@lexmasterclass.com Thank you

Invitation for wikipedians to engage with dictionaries workshop

Dear Wiktionarians,

I am organising a workshop on Dictionary Writing Systems (DWSs):

    A dictionary writing system (DWS) is a piece of software for 
    writing and producing a dictionary. It might include an editor, 
    a database, a web interface and various management tools (for 
    allocating work etc.) It operates with a dictionary grammar, 
    which specifies the structure of the dictionary.

to take place 5th September, 2006, immediately prior to EURALEX, the conference of the European Association of Lexicography.

   DWS Workshop:               http://nlp.fi.muni.cz/dws06/ 
   EURALEX main conference:    http://www.euralex2006.unito.it

It would be very interesting for us to hear an account of the wiktionary project, and its DWS, and we would of course hope that the workshop (and indeed the main conference) would be interesting to you.

Is it likely that a wiktionarian (who is well-placed to speak about the project overall, and its DWS) might like to come along and speak to us?

The venue is in Torino, Italy. The workshop will be a modest event: we are not expecting more than thirty people. The main conference is medium-sized, with 200-300.

Could you please respond direct to my email, adam@lexmasterclass.com

Thank you very much, and looking forward to hearing from you,

Adam Kilgarriff

Adam Kilgarriff http://kilgarriff.co.uk Lexicography MasterClass http://lexmasterclass.com Lexical Computing Ltd http://sketchengine.co.uk University of Sussex EURALEX Board member

                     mailto:adam@lexmasterclass.com

Rediredts

Hi. Great excitement. We need an entry for Nix capitalised. I tried to put it in, but was redirected to the lower-case word. Would you be able to un-redirect it or give it a separate page? Many Thanks. Andrew massyn 05:29, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Done. For future reference, when you are redirected, there is a small line just below the headword that says, e.g. "Redirected from Nix". If you click on that small link, it adds the "&redirect=no" to the url, so you can edit it just like you would any other normal page. --Connel MacKenzie T C 05:36, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

editing help not clear

I spotted a misspelled word and decided to correct it. (stalagmite - under Noun it is spelled 'stalgmite’)

After clicking 'Edit', then looking through 'Help', I backed away, not understanding and afraid of doing damage. The Wiktionary:Sandbox was of little help.

Are there more graphic, step-by-step instructions?

Thanks.

The Wiktionary:Tutorial might be what you are looking for. (Right now it needs to be revamped to properly cover the inflection templates.) Ignoring that deficiency, it should help answer many questions you may have, at least initially. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:45, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Apart from that, don't forget to be bold! If in doubt, feel free to ask any sysop. — Vildricianus 18:02, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

downloading wikitionary

is it possible to get a downloadable version of wikitionary?

http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/20060528/ — Vildricianus 14:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Is there spell checker if the user can't spell exactly?

Hi I'm new to Wiktionary and I was wondering if function of spell checker like in word processors exist here, example if I didn't know how to spell tomorrow and typed in TOMMOROW in word processor with spell checker would give me choice of possible correct words, so I may choose the correct one. It didn't do that here. Please someone let me know, and if it doesn't exist why not?

thanks Paul Kimm

No it doesn't exist. I don't know why it would have to, as it would only complicate editing. — Vildricianus 14:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

It would be a nice feature though. Other online dictionaries and Google do something similar. I understand they use something like soundex. Jonathan Webley 14:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

You mean a "did you mean..." thing? Yes, that would be nice but nigh impossible to implement with the current system. The closest we could get is displaying a link to Special:Allpages. — Vildricianus 14:47, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, like "did you mean..." in Wikipedia has one I think. If Wikipedia has one, why is it impossibe for wiktionary? Paul Kimm.

I think you mean Wikipedia's disambiguation pages. They are created manually and aren't useful for misspellings. Any software solution is not possible. — Vildricianus 08:19, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I do have plans on implementing something like soundex for English language entries, via categories. The search page would then just transclude the category, such as {{Category:SOUNDEX:M232}} or something. At any rate, several technical challenges remain. Should move this request to WT:GP, I think. --Connel MacKenzie T C 06:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

One sentence translation please...

I am working on a Children's Choir commission for the Oklahoma Centennial and am trying to encorporate some native American text for the middle section of a child's poem that I am setting entitled: I Live in an Ancient Land.

Any translations (in Cherokee or any of the tribes of Oklahoma) would be appreciated. Pronuniciations would also be helpful but not mandatory at this point.

Thanks, Mary Sallee, composer Norman, OK

July

Getting extracts of the dictionary contents

How would I go about getting extract files of Wiktionary for a particular language to load into my personal database?

In case someone's still waiting (and checking back here!) for an answer: see m:Data dumps. (And it works, too. Matter of fact, just yesterday I downloaded the English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish wiktionaries, and they're all sitting right here on my laptop.) —scs 16:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC

Using the dictionary content elsewhere

Some software I'm writing needs a dictionary - what's the GFDL licence position on reusing lists of words obtained from the downloaded dictionary? IANAL and I need guidance. If I make use of the data does my software have to be GFDL too?

Can anyone please point me to a lame newbie's guide on the subject? - Peter Hitchmough 17:53, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I'm digesting the Wikipedia entry on GNU now.

Now I'm coming to an opinion: If I extract a word list from the document and make that a document containing the GFDL then I can use that document as input to my software. Disclaimer: I'm not aiming to construct some horrific love-child of Wiktionary and my program. Please excuse me conversing with myself by the way. - Pete

browbeat

Hello,

Simply love Wikipedia in every way. Thanks to whomever put this site up! :.) Recently, a friend used the phrase " brow beat", and for the life of me, I can't figure where to find it here at the Wikipedia.com site. :.) Can anyone help me with locating words, phrases and so forth? It would be most helpful. Thanks in advance.

a guest

Unsigned entry 14:19, July 4, 2006 User:68.90.11.248

We do have an entry for browbeat (sometimes spelled as two words.) You've found the right place.  :-) Welcome. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:38, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Request for cleanup question

i've been going through random pages looking for obvious problem or mispellings and requesting cleanup on them just to leave the definitions to smarter people then I am (after leaving feedback on what i assumed the problem was)

i've found alot of words in other languages that just say a single word as the definition

if noga means leg in polish and 3 other languages when u type in noga "leg" should either be defined or it should link you to the english definition for leg and be listed underneath it

i only speak english but its easy to tell single word definitions are just translations and should i request them for cleanup Danimal 15:52, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

That's not how it works. Foreign language entries don't get definitions, only translations. Please stop misusing the {{rfc}} template. — Vildricianus 15:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Then why not just link the foreign words to the english definitions??? Danimal 16:02, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

That's what we do !!! — Vildricianus 16:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

no i type in noga i get leg in three different languages when it could just go directly to the definition of leg in english leg isnt a definition of noga its a synonym dictionarys define that is practically a thesaurus if u dont speak english Danimal 16:13, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

No, "leg" is a translation of "noga". But "noga" doesn't mean "leg" in all languages. And the page for "noga" goes many other information, such as declensions, gender etc. — Vildricianus 16:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

lol dude your not getting my point if i type in noga and theres no definition its not a dictionary whats so hard about typing in the definition of leg and the definition of whatever it means in the other languages, you cant use the word your defining in the definition especially when it's the only word your using Danimal 16:25, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, the one not getting the point is you. We don't give definitions for foreign language entries, period. Try making a proposal on the Beer parlour if you want to change that. — Vildricianus 16:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The point is we don't know what language you're searching in. manger for example is an English noun and a French verb. It is also desirable for reasons of grammatical explanations, derived terms, pronunciations, etymologies, etc etc. Widsith 16:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay why wouldnt it work if you just treated every word as an english word someone searches for manger you put a trough which livestock eat from, anf below that put french manger- "To take into the body by the mouth for digestion" instead of just to eat your not defining manger with to eat your just repeating it and your also assuming that foreign words all have direct english translations Danimal 16:40, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In English, "to eat" is an excellent definition of the French term (or in WiktionaryZ jargon, "expression") manger. The approach we are taking here is fortunately consistent with the current WiktionaryZ terminology model.

As the Wiktionary (or WiktionaryZ) entry (WiktZ: "expression") for manger matures, its definitions (WiktZ: "defined meanings") will become more numerous and perhaps more verbose, but the English one for the primary sense ("meaning") of manger will probably include the word "eat".

(For those who care, WiktZ has defined meanings map to expressions with "match quality" values.) The quality of the French:manger->"to eat" map is "good".

There is no reason to exclude the word "eat" from definitions ("meanings"), except arguably in the primary definition ("meaning") for the English term ("expression") "eat". If you want to understand the model better, see http://wiktionaryZ.org or contact me on my talk page. Rod (A. Smith) 08:58, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

i agree with this stuff.

Multilingual Dictionary?

Hello,

I have a series of questions that are not intended to be antagonistic; it is a manifestation of my confusion. Why create a multilingual dictionary for English? Isn't that why we have dictionaries in other languages? There are nearly half a million words in the English Language, requiring a herculean effort to identify and define all of them. Shouldn't the focus primarily be on those words, instead of indiscriminately compiling a list of all known words in all languages. It strikes me that an English language dictionary of all English words is an endeavor that is noble, focused, achieveable and ultimately satisfying while one comprised of all known words in all known languages will lead to linguistic pandemonium and create an ultimately un-browsable dictionary, browsing being a supreme pleasure for logophiles such as myself. Please enlighten me.

Thank you. — This unsigned comment was added by 71.110.18.51 (talk).

As Wiktionary develops, so does its software. Language-limiting features are being added as we go along, for searching, indexing, using, etc. Eventually, all language Wiktionaries will (theoretically) have all the same words, described in their own language. That's the goal - with an infinite number of volunteers, it will probably happen...eventually. --Connel MacKenzie 16:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Documentation links for Finnish noun templates

I think it would be good if Template:Fi01a etc. somehow linked to a list of all such Finnish templates. The most usable list is currently at Wiktionary:Finnish inflection types but I suppose the templates should instead link to Wiktionary:Finnish inflection templates. I can add the links (in noinclude), but should they be just plain links, or should a new category be set up for the templates? 213.216.199.2 23:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Finnish inflection templates already exists but is almost empty. So I'll add the templates there. 213.216.199.2 10:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

(Sorry for the late reply, and I should probably cross-post or move this thread to WT:BP since my reply may result in a policy discussion, but...)

I personally like the idea of documenting each set of inflection templates on the corresponding Category:Inflection templates page, but I don't think that preference has achieved any traction. It's a wiki, though, and if somebody wants to move your docs to a new "Wiktionary:Index to Finnish Inflection Templates", that's always an option, so in the meantime, Be bold! Rod (A. Smith) 09:23, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

japanese kanji stroke order

Many of the kanji pages dont have stroke order. e.g. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%9D%A2

is it possible to put in a link on all the pages that dont have a stroke order? A link to: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdicinf.html#sod_tag

or even to the matching http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwhalsod.cgi?2087_%CC%CC

not sure what solution would work well, but the web seams to have a shortage of stroke order diagrams.

Eddy Parkinson

(Please sign your posts with "~~~~". It helps us more easily see when each post occurred.)

There are ways we can gather such information, and your idea sound good, though perhaps better than the external links would be a project to begin creating such diagrams under the GDFL license. I think there was a (probably defunct) project to do that but I cannot find it now. With the technical component, we should probably start a draft proposal in WT:GP to fing thw best technical approach to getting the list. Then depending on how ambitious this project becomes, it may benefit from additional participants. Rod (A. Smith) 09:43, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

WIK

I was just wondering where the 'WIK' in Wiktionary comes from...What does WIK mean? Barb

I was wondering the same thing! Ella

It's an abbreviation of "wiki". Rod (A. Smith) 05:30, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki deletion request on wikipedia

Is there a template I can use that will hyperlink among the different projects? I have a definition for an obsucre (go figure!) word within Wikipedia and slim-to-no knowledge of the inner workings of this grand clock. 66.69.58.90 02:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

To link to an English Wikipedia article, use the following syntax:

[[w:My English Wikipedia article]]

Usually, you'll also want to hide the "w:", so use the pipe syntax:

[[w:My English Wikipedia article|My English Wikipedia article]]

Does that answer your question? Rod (A. Smith) 04:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Move option

Hi there! I don't seem to be able to use the "Move" option. I get the following message:

Not logged in

From Wiktionary

Jump to: navigation, search

You must be a registered user and logged in to move a page.

Return to Wiktionary:Main Page.

I'm registerred and logged in... could someone please let me know what seems to be the problem? Is it that I'm not allowed, or some mistake with my registration, or something???

--Enboifre 13:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The ability to move pages is restricted to accounts older than 96 hours, to prevent vandalism. I'll update that message to reflect this. — Vildricianus 13:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

How does one create a new template?

Simply that. I have no idea how to do so. Doremítzwr 15:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Depends on what you need to be done. Often it's simpler to add manual stuff instead of a template, but once you start doing repetitive things, you could create one. m:Help:Template and the pages linked from there should help you get started. If you have more specific questions, feel free to ask them, here, or in the Grease pit. — Vildricianus 19:43, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Sepulchre vs Internment

I was looking at the entry for "sepulchre" and noticed that under the synonyms is listed "sepulture" which in turn has listed as a synonym for "the act of sepulchering" "internment".

My understanding of internment is confinement particularly during wartime as in a prisoner of war camp or civilian confinement. The point being that everyone is alive (at least at the time of internment). On the other hand I believe the synonym being sought is "interment" or burial in the ground.

I do not know the process for submitting requests for changes and hope that this is the correct venue for same. Please accept my apologies if I am mistaken.

Corrections from "anyone" are welcome; I agree with your assessment. You should Be Bold and correct it. When I have questions about specific entries, I often leave my questions of the entry's talk page, but this is also a fine venue. --Connel MacKenzie 19:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Where to put maori words in common usage

I started writing an article on a New Zealand Maori church, and words from Maori are used to describe leaders, followers and teaching. I have given English alternatives in the article but a link would also be a good idea. Some Maori words are already given in Wikipedia - but is this or here the best place to put definitions?

Herne nz 06:57, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is the place. --Connel MacKenzie 07:07, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

They should look something like this . .

==Maori==
===Interjection===
kia ora
# hello

Do specific words have specific meanings, or do they not?

I offer my apology in advance; as I'm not certain, whether this is the proper forum to express my opinion on this subject?

I consistently hear people in the media; and the general population use the word presume; when they aught to have used the word assume. A presumption is grounded in some form of sufficient evidence, where as an assumption is not. I take the popular usage of the word "presume" to fall within the category of a misnomer; or perhaps an idiom: a figure of speech; such as "I guess?" "I assume?"

Case in point;

The following is a quote from the Wicktionary on the definition of the word "presume".

" Transitive: 1. To assume something is true in the absence of contrary proof.

   You are presumed to be innocent until found guilty. " 

From my perspective, the use of the word assume in this context is clearly a misnomer; the second statement, does not follow from the first! The transitive example above aught to be deemed offensive to any intelligent human being. "It is always, and everywhere wrong to believe anything, on insufficient evidence."(?) Logically; the phrase "presumed innocent..." must have been adopted by the legal establishment; only because there is sufficient universal evidence to conclude; that "the human character" arises in the 1st place from benign uncorrupted origins. Social law is based upon principles such as prudence; it is for this reason that individuals are afforded the benefit of doubt; it is not an arbitrary assumption. "1." aught to read; 1. A conclusion prudently accepted as true; based upon some measure of intrinsic proof. Thanks for listening!68.49.29.206 20:31, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

This is a good analysis...but I think it belongs in the tea room instead. In general, we try to be descriptive of language, not prescriptive. So I think the conclusion will be to list both meanings separately (or perhaps just separated by "or".) --Connel MacKenzie 08:19, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

How do I add the IPA pronuciation?

Choose IPA from the Templates menu in the edit screen and add symbols as necessary. A guide to what the symbols represent can be found here. By the way, please sign what you write on talk pages and in other discussion fora with four tildes (4×~). Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 15:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Mass Interwiki migration?

Hi. Over at the English Wikipedia we have a charming tradition where an admin does something which turns out to be controversial, people start to discuss how it should really be handled, and to promote greater harmony various admins then do the same thing a dozen more times to show just how 'right' it was in the first place. This is about to become relevant for Wiktionary because the latest jihad (which began here) is a view that articles containing lists of specialized terms and explanations of those terms belong on Wiktionary rather than Wikipedia. There is some merit to that... but how would something like w:List of legal terms best be 'ported' over to fit within the standard practices of you Wiktionarians? There are half a dozen large lists currently being considered for deletion from Wikipedia on these grounds and dozens more if this view is accepted. Would it make sense to do something like [[Category:Legal terms]] for these? A little less user friendly than the list since you have to click back and forth, but does Wiktionary support 'word collections' any other way? --70.111.62.110 22:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. They are called appendices. Look at Special:Allpages in the "Appendix" namespace and you will find many (some better than others). They do not have a common format. SemperBlotto 07:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It looks like you are going to get a lot of appendices soon then. As people will probably want new accounts if/when they move, it might be an idea to have a welcoming committee, together with some pointers to how things work on Wiktionary, with special emphasis on the differences compared to Wikipedia. As you may gather, some people are not happy at the prospect of the move. You might want to contribute to the debate yourselves here. West London Dweller 16:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. It's a pity accounts don't work across wikis - or at least some wikis.West London Dweller

FYI, single login will be implemented in the next few weeks. Expect highly visible announcements soon about when it will begin to be phased in. Rod (A. Smith) 23:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Wonderful! I'll be intrigued to see how a couple of issues have been resolved viz when the same person has two differently named accounts on two wikis now; and when two accounts of the same name are owned by different people. I'm not expecting an answer - I can wait a few weeks and find out then. Regards West London Dweller 07:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

• The latest I've heard is that SUL will not be turned on until the boardvote is over (just in case it were to cause voting complications.)

• The English Wiktionary uses Special:Import to move Wikipedia articles to Wiktionary's Transwiki: namespace. I have partially automated this. So, to mass-import a Wikipedia category is fairly trivial now. Moving it from Transwiki: to somewhere else is not.

• What items or phrases stand out in {{pediawelcome}} that you would like to see enhanced or refined? Or are you suggesting a Wiktionary:Mass import page be created?

• --Connel MacKenzie 07:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

August

Unable to type diacritica

I am trying to teach myself a bit of French, and have found the Wiktionary very useful. There is one problem though, I can't type the French diacritica on this computer. Is there a way to search for words without having to know the right diacritica? For instance I searched for "tete" but I just got a "No page with this exact title exists".

thanks, Rukawa 219.103.175.36 08:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, you can only search exact spellings. Sometimes a 'redirect' will have been set up by someone from a form without diacritics, but I don't believe there is any way to tell the system to default to 'accentless' letters. For cases when you do know the diacritics you can edit any page you get the diacritic marks from the 'symbols drop-down'. Specifically, if you edit this section and then look below the 'Save page' button you should see a drop-down box which defaults to 'Templates'. Click on that and you will get a list of different 'symbol sets' to display. Choose 'French' and a list of appropriate characters should appear to the right. Then just click on one of those to have it appear wherever the cursor is located (or was last located) in the editing window. Once you have spelled out the word you can then cut and paste it into the search box. Alternatively, you could cut and paste the whole list of characters to a text editor and then use that list to compose your words. --CBDunkerson 11:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

At the bottom of edit boxes (when editing a page like this, for example) you can change "Templates" to "Latin/Roman" and enter diacritics that way...then cut-n-paste into a new tab.  :-( Diacritic reduction is a very hot topic right now (especially for zh: and ja:) and several creative ideas are currently being discussed. So, you shouldn't have too much longer to wait. I hope. --Connel MacKenzie 08:15, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Something quite different: you may not be aware of it, but you probably CAN type the accents/diacritics on your computer, you just don't know how. A simple google got me a long list of alt codes which should work (press alt and keep it pressed while entering the numbers). Those alt codes might be different for different computers, so I suggest you search in your computer (if you're using Windows, try searching for "Character Map"), there should be a list somewhere. Although it doesn't seem to work on this iMac. Paul Willocx 17:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

• Also of note: you can turn on a preference in WT:PREF to have a similar box for entering special characters in the search box. --Connel MacKenzie 13:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Korean help

Could a Korean speaker please verify this suspicious looking edit? --Connel MacKenzie 03:32, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

My improvisation/unorthodox solution to such things has always been to Google-Image search them and see what comes up ;) heheh. (In this case, the first one (낙지) returns pictures of octopodes/puses/whatever; the second one returns pictures of various cooked things and also a baby...) Beobach972 05:10, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Wow, what a clever, simple trick. I hope I remember it, the next time I find something like this. --Connel MacKenzie 18:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

This is correct. 낙지 is the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris). 문어 is an octopus in general. --Jeannot12 09:57, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie 18:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

how do I wtite this title...

Throw-a-way Child, Throwaway Child or even TOO MANY MOUTHS TO FEED? it is throw-away child. — This comment was unsigned.

a grammatical witch hunt

You know, I'm writing something, and my grammar-checker has just raised a flag that I thought curious. What do you all think, which is correct : "There are still a wide range of witch hunts going on[...]" or "There is still a wide range of witch hunts going on[...]" The first seems natural to me; the second, to my grammar-checker. Beobach972 05:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Well obviously, grammatically speaking, the latter makes more sense. But given the "witch hunts" immediately after the "range", it makes sense to think of range as plural as well... seems to me that the second cannot be wrong, though, while the first might be, natural as it sounds. Possibly both are correct. Paul Willocx 10:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Your grammar checker is correct, as you are referring to a single range (as denoted by the ‘a’ before “wide range”). Though I imagine that it was helpful enough to offer “There are still wide ranges of witch hunts going on[...]” as an alternative. Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 17:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This is a very commonly asked question. Purist grammarians insist on "there is" because the noun that follows is a singular noun: "a wide range". However, it can be argued that "there is/are" is referring to the witch hunts themselves, in which case, "there are" would be correct.

So one solution that is often put forward is to consider whether you are referring to the items as a whole or individually, and then to use "is" for the whole or "are" for the individual items.

For example, in "My team is an effective force", "is" is correct as "My team" refers to the team as a whole, and so a singular verb applies, but in "I asked the team what they thought", "the team" refers to the individual people in the team, and so "they" (plural) is appropriate. It sounds unnatural to say, "I asked the team what it thought" as that makes the team sound like an inanimate object (and objects cannot have opinions) and that a single opinion is being sought rather than the individual opinions of the team's members.

So the simple solution is to use a singular or plural verb depending on whether the intended sense is the collection as a single entity or the individuals of the collection, respectively. While this goes against the strict grammatical rule, remember that language is intended to communicate, and so does not always fit nicely into the strictures imposed upon it by inflexible grammatical rules. — Paul G 10:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

This is an excellent analysis. Beautiful work, Paul G! --Cromwellt|Talk|Contribs 15:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

help

I'm new around here, can I ask a question? --Chris

• You have done. SemperBlotto 18:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Square characters

I seem to be seeing a lot of squares around here, in place of actually characters I mean. The main characters that are displayed as squares are the IPA and Alchemical or Astro symbols. I'm using IE version 6.0.2900.21.80.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 - if you got all that! Anyway what can I do to see the symbols and fonts properly? Replies here or on my talk if you like!--Williamsayers79 17:52, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Ditch IE and download a better browser. Firefox displays the characters correctly, is free, quick to install. Download it from here. — Paul G 10:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Works a treat - cheers marra! --Williamsayers79 08:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Lufu ond Onraedan

What does this mean? Someone said this is their motto....I would like to know the meaning.

Thank you for any help you can give me.

— This unsigned comment was added by 70.124.141.62 (talk).

Don't know, but lufu has an entry, as does ond. And Old English was really big on "æ" ligatures, so onrædan might be the correct spelling. --Connel MacKenzie 19:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Czech speakers?

Could someone please inform User:Hnidopich what {{ttbc}} is for, in his native language? He seems to be adding definitions as "ttbc" instead of for the various definitions. --Connel MacKenzie 19:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Synonyms in All Languages

I was wondering if there is a way I can look up a word/synonym that will bring up a page that contains all the synonyms for that word in every language. Therefore, an alphabetical list of languages would be present, and next to each language would be a list of synonyms that suit a specific type of meaning.

blessings,

--K

Entries in English Wiktionary aim to do something close to what you seek for English words. For a more comprehensive list of cross-language synonyms, you may be interested in WiktionaryZ. Is there a specific word whose synonyms you seek? Rod (A. Smith) 07:50, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

inclusion of words from other languages

Is the following comment from the top of Category:Scottish_Gaelic_nouns correct?

What an earth are Scottish Gaelic nouns doing in an English dictionary??? This whole lot should be moved over to gd.wiktionary.org

If not, is it OK to delete it? Thanks, Deilbh 15:29, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

• Crud removed. "ALL words in ALL languages" here - as in every Wiktionary except Simple English. SemperBlotto 15:48, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Correct regarding Simple English Wiktionary. There we are working hard to define only English words, using simple English definitions, so that people whose knowledge of English is limited can use it. --Cromwellt|Talk|Contribs 15:49, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary for language learning?

Hello,

Have just stumbled across Wiktionary and my immediate reaction is -- wow! A very important resource and well done so far.

My second reaction: this database of words would be incredibly useful for people learning a language -- would it be possible to set up a page where one could select two or more languages and generate a straight-text list of word pairs common to those languages?

eg:

English Greek Spanish Japanese apple milo manzana  ??? three tria tres san etc etc

This output could then be processed in Excel and used, for example, as a source for language-learning flashcards -- which would be incredibly useful for anybody who has spent hours typing in their own vocabulary lists. Another useful format might just be to output two languages in a format such as:

(EnglishWord) (SpanishWord) (EnglishWord) (SpanishWord) etc.

I'm sure some creative scripting could accomplish this quite quickly, as all the necessary information is just sitting there in the Wiktionary database. If some more technically minded person can figure out how to do this, and can actually implement it, I (and many others I presume) would oh so love to see it --

David Braue wiktionary AT braue.com

Unfortunately, I believe it would be rather difficult to automatically choose the appropriate translation of a word with many meanings... that would almost certainly require someone to pick and choose translation for every word. But I don't know, the Programming Gurus may have some ideas though? \Mike 15:53, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi David,

I'm new here and am also interested in the potential of this site for translation as well as foreign language learning. As far as flashcards are concerned, there are 2 sites that I've seen that make use of them for building foreign language skills:

http://www.flashcardexchange.com

http://www.wordchamp.com

I also have a 5 year old child who is starting Spanish immersion kindergarten in a week. I basically think that your simple idea would be very useful for beginning language learners, but first you would have to come up with a standard taxonomy. For example:

Time: second minute hour day week month year decade century millenium ... that's a fairly easy one, since it's so linear, though you might ask where fortnight, semiannual and biannual fit in, or if they should be included at all

Color: red orange yellow green blue indigo violet ... harder, also linear by angstrom unit but where does puce or chartreuse fit in, or for that matter, black and white?

Another possible means of ordering is by usage frequency with the most commonly used words in the category listed first. But the problem there is that a word that is common in one language rarely maps into a word that has the same commonality in another.

Also, think about pictionaries.

Just some thoughts...

Regards, cdesi

Review of verification process

Hello. I'm coming from the English Wikipedia as a result of a request on w:Talk:Chode. It is claimed that chode can also refer to choad. According to Talk:chode, this went through RFV and you concluded that no such word exist (however, you do have an entry for choad now). I thought that this link and this one are sufficient proof that the word exists. However, I'm not familiar with the procedures here. I hoped that somebody would do the necessary and know how to overturn the RFV, or perhaps conclude that these links are not sufficient evidence.

Thanks for listening to a clueless newbie; it is a humble experience for somebody who quite knows the policies and procedures on English Wikipedia pretty well. -- Jitse Niesen 13:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The way to overturn an RFV here on the English Wiktionary is to provide three quotations that show the word in use (confer Template:nosecondary) from published books spanning a year or more. The RFV was for the bizarre senses of the term, while the citations found supported the two definitions currently listed here. Note that neither of the souces you linked, support the bizarre definitions directly. The en.wiktionary.org community has concluded that the "wider than long" definition is simple recurring vandalism.

Please note that there are two types of RFVs: one for the entire term, one for specific senses/definitions. The RFV process has not yet been expanded to separate the two more clearly.

--Connel MacKenzie 16:26, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I didn't realize that the RFV was specifically for the "wider than long" definition. I'm happy with not mentioning that meaning. All I'm proposing is that chode should mention, in addition to its archaic meaning, that it's an alternative spelling for "choad", just like choad mentions that that word can also be spelt "chode". In fact, since this is not covered by the RFV, I'm was bold and add that to chode. However, I now had a look at the history and see what you mean with "recurring vandalism" (for what it's worth, we're having the same problem at Wikipedia), so I've having some doubts whether this was a good idea. Could you please check my edit and adapt according to your guidelines (I couldn't find how to order both meanings), or revert if necessary? -- Jitse Niesen 03:53, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

fasterners to do carpentry

What is a 'berral nut'?

I think you mean barrel nut SemperBlotto 07:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

What's that word?

I'm looking for a couple of words:

• A word that means: deliberately interpretting an instruction by the literal meaning rather than the spirit of the words. (A form of disobeying without technically disobeying.)

• I saw this word on wikipedia but I can't remember what it was: a term from psychology for the fallacy of assign a motive to action, as assuming that someone did something to deliberately incovenience you rather than they were behaving in an unrelated manner.

Thank you. RJFJR 13:08, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

obstructive; obstructionist; pedantic? Andrew massyn 21:37, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

For the first maybe literalism? Other online dictionaries have an entry for that one. For the second perhaps you mean "intentionalist fallacy"? Though I can't find that in wikipedia anywhere, google has some hits. Speed8ump from 65.188.215.217 07:05, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

On voting and decision-making

Hi, I'm from the pt wiktionary and we're having there a big argument about the policy decision process and about what should be regulated by an official policy. It would help us a lot if we had an idea of how these questions are treated here at the en wiktionary. So if anyone would be so kind to explain it to me, even briefly, or point to a page where this is explained, I would be very thankful. Looking at the Category:Policies_-_Wiktionary_Top_Level and scanning through the Beer Parlour it seems to me that the votings are not very usual nor important (and by that I mean that consensus and discussions play a more important role than votings) and that there are just a few official and semi-official rules, am I correct? My main question is: is there any official or traditionally accepted policy on voting? --Schoenfeld 12:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I personally would not look to en.wikt as the example for refined decision making. I am not sure how things work on all projects, but many decisions are made here through fairly random processes, rather than one set in stone, tried and true method. The best way to go about it, in my opinion, is to figure out what the most people on your project find acceptable and then clearly state that somewhere obvious as a policy. We are more or less impotent when it come to establishing policies, we opperate more on the "trend" level, just try and do it how most other people are doing it and it works out. Causes plenty of debate, but it does work out. - TheDaveRoss 14:55, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Got it, thanks. --Schoenfeld 21:49, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

In WT, how do you make a link to the WP namespace?

If I'm in the WT namespace, and I write [[apple]], it will link to WT:apple. But how do I link to WP:apple? The following does not work: [[WP:apple]] Thanks, Lumbercutter 23:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Pre-empt the link with a "w:" and it will link to en.wikipedia [[w:apple]] yeilds w:apple.

Also of note is the template {{wikipedia}} which yeilds a point such as the one which can be found at Newton. - TheDaveRoss 23:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

TheDaveRoss is da man. Exactly what I needed. Thanks. Lumbercutter 02:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added this to WT:FAQ. --Connel MacKenzie 01:36, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

looking for a word: open-armed

I'm pretty sure there's a word that fills in the blank in this sentence:

English is _______ in adopting words from other languages.

It's the same word one would use of a host whose door is always open to visitors. It's sort of an inverse or contrapositive of "generous": gladly willing to receive. The words "liberal", "congenial", "garrulous", and "promiscuous" all come cloose or share aspects, but none of these words is right. —scs 14:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that if Wikt had a Wikisaurus for unselfish or tolerant you might have some luck with synonyms of those. Neither seem right, but maybe on the list of near-hits you have there. - TheDaveRoss 14:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a synonym of welcoming, accomodating, receptive, accepting, open, or even, when it comes to French, German, etc neighbourly. --Enginear 19:15, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

"not passé" --Connel MacKenzie 15:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I would submit permissive. Lumbercutter 01:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

September

nitpicker

My memory may be faulty, but here I go anyway. I remember my grandmother telling me about her brother supporting himself (at nine years old) by working as a "nit picker" in a textile mill (early 1900s). She said that cotton lint would gather around parts of machinery and that children, because of their small and nimble fingers, were hired to pick the lint from the machinery. I realize she may have said "lint picker" but that is not what I remember. I can find no reference to this definition of "nit picker." Thank you, Katy Brown

I'm surprised we don't have an entry for nitpicker. (It's not like we don't have any of 'em around here! :-) ) My understanding is that it comes from the once-important pastime of picking nits -- lice eggs -- from your friend's or sibling's hair. —scs 12:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Turns out we do have entries on nitpick and nit-picking. See also the Wikipedia article. (But perhaps you knew all that. In answer to your explicit question, I've never heard the textile mill explanation, and I can't find any support for it on the web. It seems quite possible that your grandmother and her brother had heard the term "nitpicking" and, blissfully unaware of its real meaning, invented their own.) —scs 13:32, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Possible, but it seems much more likely to me that there was no misunderstanding or invention on their part, but rather that that's just what that task was called colloquially in that region, or that mill, at that time—analogous to how masons sometimes call mortar "mud". It's a natural process for technical terms (that is, the colloquial ones that the workers use, not the written ones that managers use) to be jocular parallels to other aspects of life. For example, I'd bet that the term "wild weasel" was born among military pilots as a jocular, colloquial usage and only later became the "normal" term for AAA/SAM-radar-baiting. I could easily see such a lint-picking job being called "nit-picking" by the workers. That it never got into a dictionary or the internet and now has disappeared has more to do with its jocular, colloquial, technical, and now-obsolete nature than with its never having existed. Lumbercutter 18:00, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I just looked up "slang" in AHD4, and its two noun senses combined describe exactly the process that I was trying to get at above: "1. A kind of language occurring chiefly in casual and playful speech, made up typically of short-lived coinages and figures of speech that are deliberately used in place of standard terms for added raciness, humor, irreverence, or other effect. 2. Language peculiar to a group; argot or jargon: thieves' slang." Katy, you can be pretty confident that what your grandmother was using was a real, but now-obsolete, textile-mill-slang sense of the word "nit-picker". That would not mean that it was used in all textile mills or for many decades. It could have been much more localized than that. Lumbercutter 18:07, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Technical dictionaries

I see that technical dictionary information can be appropriate for wiktionary (eg. Appendix:Legal terms, Category:Computing) On the automobile wikiproject, we have a few glossary articles like w:Automotive design terminology and w:Car body style. Are some of these appropriate for moving to Wiktionary? Are there any policies that pertain to technical entries specifically (beyond attestation or any of the other criteria for inclusion)? Is technical dictionary information discouraged in any way? --Interiot 15:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I would say, absolutely yes, it's appropriate! Personally, the only thing I like to do specially for words in large, specialized vocabularies is to tag them in some way, e.g.

beltline

1. (automotive design) The line going from the hood which usually follows the bottom edge of the windows and continues to the trunk.

notchback

1. (automotive design) A cross between the smooth fastback and angled sedan look.

And of course obviously the tag should be consistent. Since it's not always obvious what the best tag name is, and since we might want to categorize or otherwise handle specialized vocabularies specially, it's very handy to invent a template to use for the tagging; for example we already have {{mathematics}} (i.e. Template:mathematics) which expands to "(mathematics)". See Category:Label templates for a list of the tags that exist so far. (But I have to warn you that there's a little bit of dissent on the project right now about the aggessive use of templates in this way; see Wiktionary:Beer parlour#category/tag for railroading terms? for part of that discussion, or Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Category:English nouns for a bunch more of it.)

Also, I notice that some of the "specialized" terms in your automotive design glossaries aren't so different from the ways the terms are used in everyday life, so you'll want to be careful that in doing a wholesale import of everything you've got, you don't create too much redundancy or duplication of senses. (For example, we've already got hood, spoiler, and wheelbase, and convertible, limousine, and station wagon.) —scs 16:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Posting a Wiktionary template to Wikipedia

In trying to answer a question on a Wikipedia help desk, I'd love to use this

Euler diagram of choice semantic relations.

Nyms (with category [cat] if any)

Noun (cat)	Sound	Spelling	Meaning	phone/graph
homonym	same	same	different	homophone & homograph
heteronym (cat)	different	same	different	heterophone & homograph
homophone	same	different	different	homophone (cat) & heterograph
alternative pronunciation	different	same	same	heterophone & homograph
synonym	different	different	same	heterophone & heterograph
alternative spelling	same	different	same	homophone & heterograph
identical	same	same	same	homophone & homograph
distinct	different	different	different	heterophone & heterograph

template. Assuming the license allows me to do this, what's the easiest way to do this? Thanks, --217.41.58.235 10:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

If you're only going to use it once or twice, the best and easiest way would be to copy the code from Template:nyms and insert at relevant places. If you'd like to be *very* strict about the license, you could point to that page in you edit comment or wherever, but I don't think most people would bother ;) You may want, however, to change the links as they at wp will refer to pages/categories which presumably does not exist on wikipedia. If you'd like them to point to the wiktionary pages, just add 'wikt:' after each '[['. \Mike 10:43, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Superb. Thank you. --217.41.58.235 10:48, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

How to report impersonation

A new user, Wikiquote NEEDS help (talk • contribs), seems to have registered this provocative name merely to attempt to impersonate Kalki (who is a bureaucrat at en:Wikiquote) by posting a fake anti-vandalism request to BD2412's talk page ([1]). This made me wonder how Wiktionary handles these not-quite-vandalistic pranks, as well as impersonation attempts. Thanks for any info you can provide. ~ Jeff Q 01:30, 9 September 2006 (UTC) (also a Wikiquote sysop)

Your best bet is to go ahead and stick it on VIP, and it will be dealt with. Most of the time impersonation is easy to see, as it is a variation on either a sysops or regular users name, or a recognizable vandal's name, and they can be blocked on sight. - TheDaveRoss 01:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

In a more longterm perspective, after observing & interacting during a number of incidents here over the last few months, I think blocking with as little fan-fare as possible & following the concepts of w:WP:DENY has proven to be most effective. --Versageek 01:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

New language addition

I would like to add another language or two to wiktionary. How do I do this? (There are over 6,000 languages in the world and I know several languages well that are not listed. I would be willing to write the cover page/introduction to these languages and to make the first 100 or so entrees.Bounton 14:12, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

The usual process is to add a request here: m:Requests for new languages, I believe. --Wytukaze 14:51, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Language headings and their part-of-speech subheadings in the target language?

I'd guess other people have asked about this topic somewhere before, but if so, I haven't found the thread yet: Doesn't it make more sense to follow this template…

English

Pronunciation

Noun

Etymology

Español

Pronunciación

Sustantivo

Etimología

…than to follow this one:

English

Pronunciation

Noun

Etymology

Spanish

Pronunciation

Noun

Etymology

Thoughts? Lumbercutter 02:38, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Although English Wiktionary describes words of all languages, its target audience is English speakers, so its "meta-language", if you will, is properly English. Similarly, Spanish Wiktionary (http://es.wiktionary.org) is a dictionary written in Spanish about all words of all languages. In that Wiktionary, part of speech headers and descriptive text is written in Spanish. Does that answer your question? Rod (A. Smith) 02:57, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Perfectly. Thanks so much, Rod. The info desk rules. Lumbercutter 00:42, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikionary AND Wikipedia account

wanting to make a small addition to wikionary i was surprised to learn that my ID/password from wikipedia was not recognized..

wouldn't it be "smart" to let one idenity/pass be usable on/in all wiki areas??

DenverD

If you wait a couple of weeks, Single User Login will be available. — Vildricianus 12:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

In examples, make the word bold or not?

It seems to be about half and half. I some articles, the word is put in boldface within the example sentences, and in some articles it isn't. I like the bold, but if I want to consider adding boldface in the occasional article that I happen to be editing anyway, I'd first want to get some impression of whether there are a bunch of people who are inclined to take the boldface out. Is there any consensus or trend? DanwWiki 20:58, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Quotations does recommend boldface, though it recommends a lot which is not so often followed.... Personally, I try to add it at least when I add examples or quotations myself. \Mike 21:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

<edit conflict>

Yes, Entry layout explained recommends bolding the terms. It is spelled out in greater detail at Wiktionary:Quotations#Between the definitions. --Connel MacKenzie 21:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary Page Organization

Hi, my wiktionary pages recently began to display in my browser differently than they did before, and differently than Wikipedia pages. Prior to several weeks ago, one could always enter the word one is searching for near the top of nearly any Wiktionary or WP page. Now, the WP pages still work that way, but the Wiktionary pages now generally require me to scroll down the browser window multiple screens to find the box to in order to be able to enter a search term.

Was this an intentional change by the Wiktionary comunity? Or does it sound like something on my end? And either way, can anyone tell me where this is this being discussed? Thanks. 207.174.249.2 16:02, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

While I would hazzard a guess that it is your browser's behavior, please note this problem at bug reports and the techie types will see if they can figure out what caused it. Clearing your browsers cache might solve this problem. - TheDaveRoss 16:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Need Recommendations

Hi, I was just wondering what word i should use in order to find more information about the Korean Emporer?? i can't find alot about them. — This comment was unsigned.

Try w:List of monarchs of Korea. --Connel MacKenzie 17:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Minor qualm with the title graphic of the Wiktionary site

The phonetic transcription under the title "Wiktionary" uses the rightside-up "r," which in the International Phonetic Alphabet really refers to an alveolar trill, like in the Spanish word "perro." According to good IPA standards, it really ought to be an upside-down "r" to represent the sound in English, which is an approximant and not a trill. The Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_phonetic_alphabet itself attests to this fact.

See WT:FAQ#The pronunciation of "Wiktionary" in the logo, WT:BP#meta:Wiktionary.2Flogo and m:Wiktionary/logo. --Connel MacKenzie 00:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand that the transcription uses the British rather than the American pronunciation, but no dialect of English uses a trill in place of the alveolar approximant "r" (except Scottish English, which uses it sometimes as an allophone). Somebody really ought to change that, since the logo is the first thing one sees when logging onto the site.

• There is a principle of "romanicness" used in phonemic/broad transcriptions which means that the most "roman looking" characters will be used for the most common phonemes rather than the most accurate. Look in almost any print dictionary which uses IPA and you will see only "r" for English pronunciations. — Hippietrail 23:06, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

mispelled words: "did you mean" suggestions / "redirected from"

I was just looking for the word quotidian, but I was spelling it cotidian. Is there any way to institute a "did you mean" list, as found on google search results?

Or, if that isn't in the cards, is it possible to set up obviously mispelled words like "cotidian" to automatically redirect to their correct spelling ("quotidian")? —This unsigned comment was added by Benbowman (talk • contribs) 2006-09-27T23:50:12.

For common misspellings, we often create a "misspelling of" entry. In your example, if cotidian is a common misspelling of quotidian, we could add an entry at cotidian that says this:

Common misspelling of quotidian.

Nobody has done so for that misspelling, at least not yet. Rod (A. Smith) 14:23, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi

Hi Iam new to wiktionary. It looks like a really awesome website and I could really use it to learn new words and other info. I really hope to learn SO MUCH one here. If I have any questions or concerns I will bw sure to ask the people here.

Hi, I was wondering if anybody new the definition of this two word?

-flota-system

-Puerto unico

Thank you.

Can you give us the context it was used in? (Also, you may want to create an account, it's free, and the sign your posts with ~~~~). RJFJR 21:45, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a nice basic entry on the flota system (fleet system). The phrase "el puerto único" is Spanish for "the only port". Hope these two tips are helpful. Lumbercutter 00:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Wait a sec, "puerto único" also translates as "unique port". It may have both marine and computer senses? Lumbercutter 00:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Wiktionary and Wikipedia - Any connection?

I was wondering if Wikipedia and Wiktionary were affiliated with each other at all? I'm just curious. MythGuyDK 16:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we are closely related, as we are all (Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikicommons, Wiktionary and Wikipedia) projects of the WikiMedia Foundation. - TheDaveRoss 17:42, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

October

New words dissapeared without proper nomination or review?

I was wondering how my latest contributions were deleted without even being nominated for deletion or reviewed or anything. My latest contributions were:

• captain save-a-ho
• flickerati
• illiterati
• lowbrowmanship

All of these are valid modern American colloquialisms, not mere works of fiction on my part. If they had simply been nominated for review, deletion, or otherwise, going through the proper channels as set up by the great wiki minds, this would not bother me. But, instead, they just ceased to exist within minutes of me posting them. How can this be? I thought there was a fair diplomatic system in place here. What is going on? --IndieNate 05:43, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

We don't like vandalism. Questionable material is nominated "through the normal channels" but sysops here are given lots of leeway when it comes to utter nonsense/bad faith submissions. You have been in communication with different sysops, yet you failed to read WT:CFI? Seems like you are trying to prove a point. --Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I did try to contact the sysop who presumably deleted those words, to no avail. Aside from that I have read through a lot of the help pages, including CFI and I still did not see any way these entries could be immediately dismissed as invalid. And, no, I am not trying to prove a point. What possibly could that point be? I'm just trying to further the work of this project because I do beieve in it. But, your disdainful words tell me that this apparently doesn't matter. I was just under the impression that there was a sort of democratic system in place here. Obviously I was wrong.--IndieNate 00:18, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The best way to be sure a new entry remains if it's a little unusual is to provide verifiable citations to show that the word is attested in English (or whatever language the entry is in). --EncycloPetey 00:21, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you EncycloPetey! Now that's helpful.--IndieNate 00:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Is there a Wiktionary logo?

Is there a Wiktionary logo? Banaticus 21:13, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but it may not look much like a logo. Look in teh upper left corner of this page. It has the word "wiktionary" then soemthing that looks like (as close as I can type) "['WIkFenri] n." (it uses IPA symbols I don't want to have to loom up). and then it says "a wiki-based Open Contestn dictionary". That's actually the current logo. There's consideration of changing going on somehwere. RJFJR 00:20, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Logo change? Try the link at the top center of every page (at the moment), which links here. --Cromwellt|Talk|Contribs 16:37, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Links from translations

This general question applies to all the Wiktionries. For example under "screw" I find the German "Schraube". Clicking on that it tries to open "Schraube" in EN.wiktionary.org. Would it not make far more sense to open it in DE.wiktionary.org? At least that's where I always want to go to and so far I always have to do it manually. Is there any good reason for not changing general policy in that way? Axel-berger 16:26, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is a reason. The English Wiktionary is for English readers. The German Wiktionary is for German readers. So the entry should exist in both places. You can help us out by translating the German Wiktionary's entry here!

Some Wiktionaries provide both links. For various reasons, we have not done that, in our translation sections, yet. --Connel MacKenzie 16:29, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

However, on the Schraube page, on the left hand side of the screen, is the usual Wiki box ‘In other languages’, where there is a link to the same word in the de.Wiktionary (among others). Widsith 16:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Renaming a user

I'm not sure if this is the place to ask, but I was wondering if it would be possible to rename User:Shanel, a Wonderfool sock and impersonator of me. I would like an account here, preferrably under the same name I use elsewhere. :) Shanel 06:14, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Wiktionary:Changing username (WT:MV) is the place to request it. --Connel MacKenzie 06:32, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

List of words all Wiktionaries should have

Where can I find that list? I know I saw it around here yesterday. There is a similar list for Wikipedias, but this one was for Wiktionaries. --Cromwellt|Talk|Contribs 16:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the very simple shortcut WT:LOEWAWSH. --Connel MacKenzie 17:19, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

ynz

I hope this is the right spot...if not, sorry. I tried looking up the word yinz or ynz...a pittsburgh slang form of y'all (though supposedly it originally came from a shortening of yous ones) but could not find it. Do you not list geographical variations of words?? If so, do I need to look somewhere else? thanks. Mike —This unsigned comment was added by 24.106.36.35 (talk • contribs) 2006-10-07T12:30:58.

I think you seek the word is "you-uns", though we should probably link it with the alternative spelling "you'ns" and maybe even add "y'uns". Rod (A. Smith) 17:09, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew verb template

I suggest creating a Hebrew verb template. The template should, in my opinion, be a table similar to the russian verb template (template:ru-verb). The contents of the table should be similar to the tables in the wikipedia article on Hebrew verb conjugation. The template should be called template:he-verb. I need your help since I'm not familiar with the methods of making templates. Anyone who can help create this template is welcome to do so and his work will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Dirk gently 23:51, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Its probly young'uns by e wright

Pronunciation of Korean words

I've been studying Korean, on and off, for over 20 years. I've seen dozens of textbooks try to deal with the fact that the Korean alphabet (Hangul) has many sounds with no exact counterpart in English or other European languages. Often these books offer a 'transliteration' which provides a one-to-one mapping between a Korean letter and an "English-looking" romanization.

But this system is not usable for pronunciation. While romanization does allow a native Korean (or advanced Westerner) to reconstruct the original spelling of the word, it does nothing for readers who:

• do not want to learn the Korean alphabet, but
• want to pronounce a particular word correctly

A romanization like seonsaeng can be converted back to Hangul easily: 선생

But a reader trying to pronounce it is more likely to say SEE-AHN-SAH-EHNG (which a Korean would have a hard time interpreting) than SUHN-SAY'NG.

So I propose we either:

1. drop romanization for Korean words, and just supply a pronunciation (either in the style I'm using here or IPA or both);
2. keep romanization but also supply pronunciation

What do others think of this?

All entries should eventually have both romanisation and IPA pronunciation information. See a Chinese / Japanese page like 愛人 for what we're after. Widsith 21:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Plural nouns no longer distinguished?

Did I miss something? When and why are plural nouns no longer ditinguished by separate section headers from singular or mass nouns? Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 19:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

When were they ever distinguished by separate headings? Definition line qualifiers have been the way of notating a specific meaning as {{italbrac|plural only}} or {{uncountable}}, but I don't know that separate headings has ever been recommended. --Connel MacKenzie 19:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Nouns thus:

Noun

and plural nouns thus:

Plural noun

both parts of the “noun” and “plural” templates available on the screen of twelve (?) templates when one creates a new entry. However, the “plural” template’s heading now just reads:

Noun

which is a pretty new thing. Anyone know why this changed? Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 15:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense to me the new way, whether it is singular, plural or plurale tantum it is still a Noun and should still be classified as a noun. - TheDaveRoss 16:21, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I've been mulling over Verb part v Verb recently, and now agree that keeping to Noun, Verb, etc, with no qualifications in the header, works best for English. --Enginear 18:07, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

OK; I concur. However, what about “noun phrase” — is this heading still used, or is it being phased out too? Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 22:46, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I certainly did not put that heading into the preload template that I created for that button. In fact, I do not see it anywhere in the history of {{new en plural}} at all. What are you talking about, exactly? --Connel MacKenzie 08:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

reptile

Looking for a reptile with a name that has 18 letters in the actual spelling.

Please Help me!!!!

I have misplaced my car keys Has anyone seen them? — This comment was unsigned.

Yes, you left them on the kitchen table. --Connel MacKenzie 17:34, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Some lay-out questions from a beginner

Hi all,

I recently discovered Wiktionary and am enthousiastically adding Dutch translations wherever I know them. However, I come across big layout differences between pages. So here are some questions:

• In disambiguating between different meanings, the translations are listed in several {{top}}, {{mid}}, {{bottom}} groups. Often, the meaning is mentioned above it in bold, sometimes it is given as a parameter to {{top}}. Which is preferable?
• Sometimes language names are themselves wikified. Is this desirable?
• In Dutch, a lot of words are both masculin and feminin. Can I make my own {{m/f}} template?

Expect more questions of this sort. Are there more explicit guidelines? henne 15:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The translation sections should be disambiguated by a bold heading at the top of each group. Older entries have numbers, which should be phased out. The new system used in some entries uses a different {{trans-top}}, {{trans-mid}}, {{trans-bottom}} format whereby the heading exists as a parameter to {{trans-top}}. These templates will probably supersede existing layouts. Language names should only be wikified if they are unusual or not generally known – that obviously doesn't apply to Dutch. As for gender, I'm not aware of any m/f template, so I see no reason why you shouldn't create one. There is some more info at WT:ELE and Wiktionary:Translations. Widsith 16:36, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

<EDIT CONFLICT>

1. The use of a parameter in {{top}} is still considered "experimental" at this point. It would be better to follow the bolding convention until the new format has the various kinks worked out.
2. Language names that might be construed as "exotic" are wikified. Basically, if the country name doesn't match the language name, it might be considered "exotic" to an English speaker.
3. Please use {{mf}} for those.

Entry layout explained goes into pretty good detail regarding the current conventions. This is a fine place to ask similar questions. --Connel MacKenzie 16:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks both. {{mf}} is what I was looking for, as is the template index. How can I know where the discussion about the {{top}} or {{trans-top}} templates is leading? henne 10:38, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

There is also {{c}} for "common gender", which I know is standard in Swedish, and I have heard used in reference to Dutch as well. --EncycloPetey 18:20, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, Dutch dictionaries usually avoid the problem in that they only say ‘de’, i.e., the common article for m and f, and if it is explicitly m or f, then they add (m) of (f) after ‘de’. I am not sure what the right thing to do is. You are probably right that c is more appropriate, as they are referred to by masculine pronouns. Addendum: on the Dutch Wiktionary, the discussion is still going on. The problem is that in certain areas words really are percieved as having common gender, whilst in others (where I come from), the gender is still known and used. henne 09:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, one more style question that wasn’t answered by the ELE: When subdividing the translations into groups corresponding to different meanings, a description of the meaning is to be given. Is there a style guide for this? Should it be concise, telegram-style, should it contain articles, should it start with a capital letter?

Not yet, but there's active discussion beginning on Wiktionary:Translations to work out basic policy and standards, which could then be used to update/modify the ELE. --EncycloPetey 18:20, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Is that right? I was under the impression that we have always recommended entering a short gloss, containing enough common words from the definition above to link them unambiguously. --Connel MacKenzie 18:25, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

That's right, but there's still no written style guide. I'm thinking that I may help DAVilla assemble information on the Translation section, including format, style, and content information. He's already assembled a great new page for handling the Translations to be Checked, but we still need more than we currently have on the standard section itself. And what relevant info we have on the ELE is not well organized, in addition to missing some key points. --EncycloPetey 19:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

That is what I try to do, but there is a lot of choice on how short to be. And what about the capital letter?

I make them as short as possible, while still unambiguous. --Connel MacKenzie 19:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Connel, I saw you added spaces after number signs in one of the pages I recently edited, is that recommended? Does it even make a difference? henne 18:49, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

My tired old eyes find the definition lines much easier when they are set apart from the example lines, by having that space. But the space after "#" makes no difference when the page is rendered - it only makes editing more convenient. --Connel MacKenzie 19:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Latin - Ethnicity of Finnish!!

I have just tried in Wikipedia to find a translation page, and will revert to my various search engines supplied from Firefox/Mozilla for the specifics of a Latin phrase.

On the page for Latin, I take great exception to what appeared to be a suggestion that Finnish is a Latin based language.

My information is that Magyar (Hungarian) and Finnish are both outside the domain of INDO-EUROPEAN, thus unrelated to any Latin, except with the infusion of words after the conquest of these regions through religios wars. The languages are based on the nomadic peoples from Asia, and Turkey prior to the Ottomans.

Please have a good look at what you are saying on the history of language as it relates directly to history, the migration of people and accuracy is essential.

I would expect nothing less from Wikipedia than a correction.

Sincerely,

Ian Hunter Brechin (a scot/celt and techno geek extrordinaire)

Hi. Unfortunately I'm sure if I understand your concern as I cannot find any statement on the page Latin (I guess that's the page we are talking about?) about the origins of Finnish. The only thing I can see there which has anything at all to do with Finnish is various translations of different notions connected with the English word "Latin" into the Finnish language. I fail to see how that implies that Finnish should be related to Latin, to any larger degree than Japanese, Chinese or Vietnamese, into which there are also translations, from English, of the word "Latin".

(By the way, as a minor point: we are not the encyclopedia "Wikipedia" but the dictionary "Wiktionary" ;) Regards, \Mike 17:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC) (wiktionary editor from Sweden)

whos that astronaut with the nick name "guy"

whos that astronaut with the nick name "guy" whos that astronaut with the nick name "guy" i need it quick i need it for some homework lol Hurry plz lol o yea hes a black astronaut plz hurry I NEED NOW!!!!

Now, see, the trouble with asking questions in two places is that you have to look for answers in two places. You've got some answers over on... oh, wherever else it was I saw this same question. —scs 01:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

How do you reply to a message?

Someone left me a message.

If I edit it in my talk page will he see the response.

If not, do I edit it in his talk page, and if so do I add part of his message for context?

• It is your choice. However, if someone leaves a message on your talk page they normally check back every so often to see if you have replied. Some people copy the entire conversation to the other person's talk page - just to make sure (if it is important). p.s. I'll get back to you about ghee when I can find the book! SemperBlotto 17:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
• Thanks. Strangely, my copy of MJ's IC has gone walkabout as well. Checked in her "Eastern Vegetarian Cooking" and she says what ghee is, how to make it, how well it stores and what it tastes like but never mentions oil.

arpeggiate - a verb?

what is the action word for an arpeggio? to arpeggiate? what about arptation? —This unsigned comment was added by 72.139.185.68 (talk • contribs) 2006-10-29T21:31:06.

Characters or words?

I had a look at a few Chinese and Japanese words today and I am rather disturbed by the conceptual muddling that seems to be taking place.

I am well aware that in traditional Oriental lexicography each Chinese character gets an entry of its own, followed by a list of 'compound words' in which the character occurs. (This kind of dictionary is called a Kanwa Jiten in Japanese). But this particular conception of Chinese characters clashes with a second, word-based approach to lexicography. For instance:

The word 贵 guì in Chinese means 'expensive, dear'. In Japanese the equivalent word is 高い takai.

The character 贵 guì (traditional form: 貴) is used in all languages that use Chinese characters, but the actual usage of the character differs somewhat according to the language. In Chinese, 貴 is (1) a word meaning expensive; (2) it also occurs in various character compounds with meanings like 'expensive, valuable' (e.g. 贵公司, your esteemed company). In Japanese, on the other hand, 貴 is not used on its own as a word meaning 'dear', although it is used in character compounds with the meaning 'costly' or 'expensive'. (By the way, this does not include 貴公司, which is purely Chinese; the equivalent Japanese word is actually 御社).

I do really feel that the rampant mixing of character and word-based approaches leads to confusion. The two functions need to be kept separate somehow. That is, the Chinese word 贵 needs to be listed at its own entry meaning 'expensive'. And the Chinese character 貴/贵 needs to have its own listing according to the tradition of Oriental lexicography.

A link from the English word 'expensive' or 'dear' should lead to the word 贵 in Chinese and the word 高い in Japanese, etc. In the current situation, 'expensive' leads directly to the character 贵, and there is no independent entry for the Chinese word 贵.

Has any thought been given to this problem in Wikipedia?

30 October 2006: Bathrobe (Wikipedia user name)

Is it possible to use wiktionary as a service?

Wikitionary's content is extremely useful. Can it be accessed via RSS or some other API? I want to build a website that would use Wiktionary's definitions, but I just want to access the entries themselves, not all of the presentation that comes with an entire page. Is that possible?

I agree, a function should be made just to call up definitions in text format.....--68.123.226.197 19:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

November

Error Target Link Missing

Googledork redirects to the page --error: link target missing--. It's an odd error message, so I tried a nonsense word, bhtgr, which brings up the more familiar "Search: No page with this exact title exists; trying to find similar titles. You can create an entry with that title or put up a request for it or browse nearby pages."

Now look at Special:Whatlinkshere/--error: link target missing--.

What's up with this error page? Are they pages that were deleted?

PS: I found it via wikipedia:google search#Google jargon. Gotyear 15:21, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

yes, terms linked to the 'Error Target Link Missing' page have been deleted repeatedly because they do not meet our Criteria for Inclusion. This page is in place to prevent further recreation. --Versageek 15:35, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that explains it. However, I think a more informative message should be there. While I realize now that I click on "Create this entry" that it's locked to prevent editing, the page doesn't explain why, inviting me to "You may Create this entry or add a request for it", even stating "Wiktionary does not have an entry for this exact word yet." Something akin to Wikipedia:Template:Deletedpage instead of the current message on that page would be far more explanatory and contain useful links. Gotyear 19:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

How about now? It's not as fancy as the Wikipedia template, but at least it's a bit more informative and doesn't suggest that you might want to create this page. Dvortygirl 19:45, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Much better! Jonathan Webley 08:33, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

does every treasury contain money?

If i dont figure out by 7:30 pm on November 7, 2006 ,I will get an F in spelling homework.please respond!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A book can be a treasury of poetry, so, no. Hopefully you are learning the difference between vocabulary and spelling in school. --Connel MacKenzie 18:02, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Roach, Roaches, Roach's???

How would this be typed for gifts...(The Roach family is too long in many cases)..would it be "the Roaches"? on all the Xmas things. I really dont want to offend them.

Thanks much — This comment was unsigned.

I'd address "The Roach family" to avoid the ambiguity. I assume the "oa" is aspirated when you pronounce their name; so seeing "Roaches" might be unusual enough that it could be misconstrued. --Connel MacKenzie 18:05, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

"The Roaches" is also correct. In English, nouns that end with ch, s, sh, x, and z form their plural (normally) by adding es. If they don't want to be offended, let them change the spelling to Roche. :) --DBlomgren 07:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

| in a template parameter, or what to use: ’ or '

I have a technical problem here: in Dutch, plurals of words ending in a vowel often contain an apostrophe: tsunami’s. Now I like the UTF-8 ’ much more than the ', it is better suited for this purpose. So I want to make a link [[tsunami's|tsunami’s]], since it seems like the policy is to have ' in page names. However, at the same time I want to use the {{nl-noun}} template. But {{nl-noun|g=m|pl=tsunami’s|tsunami's|dim=tsunamietje}} gives undesired results: {{nl-noun|g=m|pl=tsunami’s|tsunami's|dim=tsunamietje}}. The closest I get is {{nl-noun|g=m|[[tsunami's|tsunami’s]]|tsunamietje}}: {{nl-noun|g=m|[[tsunami's|tsunami’s]]|tsunamietje}}. (Forget about Information desk: the template contains {{PAGENAME}}, which cannot be changed. Unfortunately, this will make this page appear in Category: Dutch nouns too. I read Help:Template, but found no solution: it does not help to surround the pipe by nowiki-tags, since then it isn’t resolved the second time either. This gives rise to two questions:

• Should I forget about ’ and use '? Or just link to tsunami’s and make tsunami's redirect to it, or make tsunami’s redirect to tsunami's?
• How can I pass a pipe in a template parameter, which is to be used as a pipe not in the parameter resolution, but only in the template substitution?

henne 12:20, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

This can be accomplished by adding yet another parameter to the nl-noun template. So you'd have one parameter for "tsunami's" and one (named?) parameter for "tsunami’s". --Connel MacKenzie 19:04, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so I’ll make a request there, I am not sure enough of the syntax, yet. henne 17:02, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll take a shot at this template (knowing nothing, really, about Dutch) in a bit. BTW, the documentation has been getting moved to talk pages, for all Wiktionary templates. This helps quite a bit, when visiting Wikipedians "subst:" templates unwittingly. Cleaning that up is sometimes harder, if the documentation is in the template (for preload templates, especially.) Even though most template subst's get rolled back quickly, the ones that don't (and are followed by subsequent robot interwiki edits) can be quite a pain. So, for consistency, we just keep all template documentation on the talk page, linked in WT:I2T. --Connel MacKenzie 17:27, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Correct wiki-markup?

Hi all. I just wrote the entries vort, vore and vores (Danish forms of 'our'), using the existing entry vor. I'm not sure if I used the correct markup - and whether the See also section should be right after the definition. If someone would just verify I used correct mark up, that would be great :). --213.237.66.155 18:12, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Usually, you would only mention which form it is of which word and let the user click through to that word. Thus I would have done something like

1. Formal singular neutral form of vor.

Without the see also section. (You also made a typo there.) There probably are templates for this sort of thing, and if not, you are welcome to make them. henne 16:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

pronunciation

I found this site today, when looking up the word "amygdala". I am curious as to why this site has the definition, yet not the pronunciation of the word, which is a given in dictionaries, and happens to be on the wikipedia page... I came to this page looking for other possible pronunciations, and found none at all...why not? Maybe this should be an added criteria for publishing on the site, since it is relied upon as a dictionary, and wikis pride themselves on accuracy...

from Dictionary.com Unabridged: Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source a‧myg‧da‧la  /əˈmɪgdələ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-mig-duh-luh] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun, plural -lae /-ˌli/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[-lee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation. Anatomy 1. an almond-shaped part, as a tonsil. 2. a ganglion of the limbic system adjoining the temporal lobe of the brain and involved in emotions of fear and aggression.

---

[Origin: bef. 950; < ML: almond, tonsil, L: almond < Gk amygdálē; r. ME amygdal, OE amigdal almond < L amygdalon < Gk amýgdalon; cf. almond] Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source a·myg·da·la (-mgd-l) Pronunciation Key n. pl. a·myg·da·lae (-l) An almond-shaped mass of gray matter in the anterior portion of the temporal lobe. Also called amygdaloid nucleus. [Latin, almond, from Greek amugdal.] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

You can request a pronunciation for the Wiktionary entry by adding {{rfp}} in the entry, or request an audio pronunciation with {{rfap}}. I don't think we are "done" yet. --Connel MacKenzie 19:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Seeking specific words

Greetings. I'm a moderately-experienced Wikipedia editor, and I hopped over here to answer a question: does "preferential" have an antonym? For example, "I gave him preferential treatment, but I gave her (insert word) treatment." I couldn't find it in any online sources, including this one. I'd still like to know the answer, but my underlying question is: is there a standard procedure for putting something on an entry's talk page requesting that people who know variant forms add them? A template or a category or something?

Thanks to whoever can help me :)

VoiceOfReasonWA 07:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

unfavorable perhaps? "Biased against"?

The larger question: no, there is no particular category for a request for information. This is the most appropriate page to ask such a question, over here. Using the talk page to ask a question is fine, but not as likely to get a timely response. --Connel MacKenzie 17:05, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

It depends on whether you believe that an antonym would mean anti-preferential (eg restraining or deprecational) or non-preferentional (eg egalitarian). I felt like some research to see if there were any antonyms based on the etymological Latin roots. Either way, I cannot find any clear evidence that the words I have found directly related to preferential have ever been used in the sense you want, and if they have, they are now archaic or obsolete anyway. But, for a bit of fun, here they are.

Prefer comes from the Latin prefix prae- meaning in front or forward and fero, a very irregular verb which, in this case, means something like carry. Relate comes from Latin re-, which means backwards, back or again and, once again, fero, through one of its irregular parts latum. One rare, obsolete meaning of relate {according to OED) is to bring back, which is arguably the antonym of prefer in the sense that is usually relevant to preferential, ie to bring forward beyond [someone's] proper place. Just as preferential comes from preference which comes from prefer, so relational comes from relation which comes from relate. It could be argued therefore that relational should have been an antonym of preferential. However, I have not found any evidence of this usage, and the OED has no cites with this meaning either (though in 2004 it did accept the existence of relational databases -- just as well, since presumably it is one).

Dispose comes from the Latin prefix dis, which although originally meaning twice or in two can also mean one by one, and the verb pono, meaning place. One archaic meaning of dispose is put (a number of things) each into the proper place, as opposed to prefer, which is literally to carry [something] forward [to a point in front of its proper place]. From dispose come disposition and dispositional. It could be argued therefore that dispositional should have had a meaning non-preferential. However, I have not found any evidence of this usage, and the OED has no cites which clearly show this meaning either.

So in the strict morphological sense, I believe there is currently no English antonym of preferential, but perhaps the words in Connel's or my first paragraphs might act as starting points for finding a near equivalent. --Enginear 22:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

likes to hear self - philodox?

Someone used the word philodox to mean "someone who likes to hear themselves talk, who enjoys hearing (or iterating) their opinion)". Sounds like a useful word to have, but I can't verify philodox is the word, they may have gotten it from urbandictionary or similar source. Is there an accepted word for this? (Or can someone find enough substantiation to add philoodx?) RJFJR 15:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe ego tripping or self-aggrandizement? --Connel MacKenzie 09:38, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

An egotist? Smurrayinchester 14:45, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Requests for unprotection

Where's the page for making requests for unprotection? Wiktionary:Requested articles hasn't been vandalised for a few months but it's still protected. --121.44.40.152 07:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

This is not Wikipedia. Do you need that page temporarily unprotected to correct something, or did you mistakenly think you could request entries there? Perhaps the warning(s) that requests can only be put on the correct sub-page could somehow be made clearer? --Connel MacKenzie 07:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I had this idea it was a wiki. A centralised place for requesting unprotection could be a good idea. Sorry I asked. 203.122.196.75 01:04, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The page in question is effectively a policy page; it tells you where to add requests. And it isn't on that page. As Connel is asking, is there something that should be fixed on that page itself? This is a fine place to ask for unprotection, and you've got an answer. Robert Ullmann 01:36, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Nah that page is fine. I wasn't aware of how protection is handled on Wiktionary and I'm guessing that page is a "high profile static page" as it says on Wiktionary:Protected page guidelines. It's the "hey I should be able to edit whatever I want" mentality you get when you spend too much time on Wikipedia. Thanks for all the help. --121.44.126.57 13:17, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Requesting pages be copied from Wikipedia

As my little contribution to "the latest jihad", I've nominated the following slang lists for transwikification.

• w:Australian English vocabulary
• w:Old, declining or expired Australian vocabulary
• w:Australian English terms for people
• w:Colloquial Australian English proper nouns
• w:Australian English terms for clothing
• w:Australian English terms for food and drink
• w:Australian rules football slang

Where do I go about requesting that these articles be copied here? Jimp 00:19, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

You can pester me to run the semi-automated import. Or request individual Special:Imports from any other sysop. --Connel MacKenzie 03:27, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Scots Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic

Looking at Wiktionary:Statistics, I see that both Scots Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic have many entries. As Gaelic is not my forte, I must ask -- are those really two different languages? Wikipedia suggests that those are two alternative names for the same language... should they be combined? Beobach972 03:08, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... does anyone know? Beobach972 19:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

They're the same language and are related to Irish (Irish Gaelic), but note that Scots is a different language realted to English. --EncycloPetey 18:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Abreviation entry cleanup

I just added an entry for an abbrevation, and I think it needs various TLC (proper categorzing, and maybe other bits), but I can't figure out where to find out what the proper format is. We need to get Wiktionary:Abbreviation, Talk:abbreviation, Category:Abbreviations, Acronyms and Initialisms, and Category:Abbreviations all well linked to wherever the format for making abbrev entries is written down. Your help appreciated. JesseW 04:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Would that be WT:ELE? That's the proper format for making any entry... but I'm not sure I understand your question. Beobach972 20:25, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Searching

This is my first contact, and not sure if I'm using this correctly. Is there a method of putting in several keywords that are part of a definition (I have something specific in mind), in order to, unltimately after narrowing some choices, get the word, which I cannot remember? Sort of the reverse of asking for a definition. Thanks, footsie

Enter the terms in the search box, then press [Search]. The Lucene search does pretty well, most of the time. --Connel MacKenzie 18:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Dictionary in wrong category?

On the front page of the Wiktionary, you see languages in different categories like 100+ words, 1000+ words, 10,000+ words, and so forth. Interlingua is listed in the 100+ category. However, when you click on "Interlingua", you see Wictionaries with 50,000 and even 80,000 words. Could this be updated so Interlingua goes under "10,000+ words"? Thank you! Matt 02:03, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

It's been a while since that section of the Main Page has been updated. I'll try to update it in the next couple of days. It should be checked for the size of all the other language wiktionaries. --EncycloPetey 02:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I checked, the Interlingua Wiktionary, and they only have 414 articles. I think you were misled by the higher figures given in the tables further down the main page. These higher figures don't list the number of article pages, but rather the number of words appearing on index pages. So, the Interlingua wiktionary is correctly listed at under 1000. --EncycloPetey 02:27, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

British vs American Spelling

Is American spelling used as standard in Wiktionary and Wikipedia? For instance I am British and would spell all words such as "liberalization", "privatization", "civilization" as "liberalisation", "privatisation", "civilisation" etc. and other words such as "programme" and "tumour" I think are spelt differently in America. Why is the American spelling be taken as standard and the British as a variant when the IPA of "Wiktionary" in the logo itself gives the British pronunciation?

Cameronlad 13:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

We attempt to include both spellings, preferably accurately marked. On Wikipedia the standard is that both are correct provided they are consistent in an article. An Article related to one of the countries is written in the language standard for that country; articles not specific to a country can be in either (it's usually whichever the article was started in). Changing the form of English used in a Wikipedia article without a good reason results in friction so it frowned upon. In the Wiktionary it is less a problem since we try to include each form's words. When deciding which form to use in a definition it really depends on the editor. RJFJR 14:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

In Wiktionary (not in Wikipedia) all regional variations should be recorded, with each spelling as a different entry and glosses to show regionality where this is known. Examples of glosses in frequent use are (US) or (UK) and several other variations, some of which are argued over and others more widely accepted.

For reasons explained in a current thread in the Beer Parlour, we do not use redirects, but each page should have either a See also or Alternative spellings heading for other regional spellings. And the text of an article should preferably be written with a consistent regionalisation which is valid for the spelling of the headword.

At the present stage of development, you will see that there are many cases where there is a US spelling only, but also many where there is a UK spelling only. Please feel free to add the missing enrtries.

However, on the specific issue you mention, in spite of the fact that you, I, and many other Brits hate it, the OED claims that the z spelling should be preferred. So the s spelling should be glossed (UK) or (Commonwealth) or some such, but the z spelling is worldwide. There is more current discussion on this in the Beer Parlour. --Enginear 15:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

December

Rss feed

I think what would really be great is an RSS feed, but none yet has been created...whats the deal?

List of idioms in the English language

A propos "Mass Interwiki migration?", the w:List of idioms in the English language was recently split into one article per starting letter - and subsequently, the article dealing with those starting with the letter 'A' have been AfDed with the result of 'Delete'. (The closed debate for A is here [2], and the currently open debate for B (and others) is here [3]). I'm trying to save the content and transwiki it to Wiktionary, so I'll be adding a fair number of idioms when I get the time to do so. Could some kind soul point me at a template where I can include the 'where used' information? Thank-you. West London Dweller 12:41, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome. Category:Regional templates seems to be what you are looking for? I (and others) have a pet project of getting everything currently tagged with {{UK}} subdivided by region appropriately. There is no official policy yet, but for a list of what we're aiming for, see WT:RFDO#Category:British English. Generally, these thats are placed after the "#", often as {{cattag|idiom|Australian}} for example.

Initially, you may not need to worry about that, as the result of the transwiki should probably just be moved to the Appendix: namespace. --Connel MacKenzie 16:58, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank-you for the welcome on my talk page. I've got a lot to learn regarding the correct way of writing an entry, so I'll apologise in advance for any mistakes I make. With regard to the usage of English idioms, some are use pretty much exclusively in the USA, others in USA, Canada and Australia, others in UK, India and New Zealand and yet others possibly 'globally'. This was dealt with in the Wikipedia articles by listing the countries of usage (with occaisional further explanatory text, especially if they were regionalisms). Is there an equivalent field/section for Wiktionary entries or if not, should an entry be categorised into the appropriate countries of use e.g. USA Idiom/UK Idiom/India Idiom/New Zealand Idiom? I don't have any automatic means of copying the information across from my Wikipedia userspace, so I'd like to get it right without generating a lot of re-work. Uncle G seems to think there is already provision in Wiktionary for the recording of usage information - I just don't know how at present. West London Dweller 20:21, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I do have Special:Import, but I haven't tried it on a user sub-page before. Your comment made me visit Wikipedia today (this is happening more and more often...I should probably do something about that.) Anyway, I do not know how long my request for a deletion review of that, will take.

The way I'd label an idiom I knew to be for US, Canada and Australia would be to put "{{cattag|idiom|US|Canada|Australia}}" on the definition line, immediately after the "#". Citations of the term in use are much more helpful than secondary sources. Entry layout explained has more details on the specific format. --Connel MacKenzie 09:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, especially for the Entry layout explained link. The original article on Wikipedia is sorely lacking citations, which is, I suspect, one of the reasons for it being regarded as not of encyclopaedic quality. Is there a 'perfect' idiom Wiktionary entry that I could copy? I'm not experienced enough to evaluate current idiom entries to know which best passes muster. West London Dweller 11:54, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

For no reason I can think of, no one has asked for that before now. BTW, yesterday's transwiki run seems to have captured all 26 lists. Do you have all you need now, to get started? --Connel MacKenzie 22:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Mostly - thank-you very much for transwiki-ing the articles. I'm looking through the category of English idioms to get a feel for how the entry for an idiom should be laid out. I may be unlucky, but so far, none of the idioms I've seen have citations. From reading around, I think I'm correct in saying that you accept a link into Google Groups as an example of usage, so an awful lot of these can rapidly get a citation of usage. A lot of formal writing avoids the use of idioms, so being able effectively to use usenet as a citeable resource (which is a good corpus of informal writing) is very useful. One area I'm unsure of at present is how to handle variants - for example, "champ at the bit" and "chomp at the bit"; and where the same idiom can be listed in more than one way e.g. should "a month of Sundays" be entered under "a month of Sundays"; or "month of Sundays", or even "month" or "Sunday", or all of these options, and is this a case where using a redirect may come in useful? So many questions - sorry. I'm not going to be able to make much progress right now, as my partner has had bad family news, which we are dealing with at present. Family does come before Wiki-projects. West London Dweller 12:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I doubt if they are perfect (eg there is no indication of regionalisation), but two recent entries are throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick and throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick. (BTW, I think that many editors feel that phrases of this length should be deprecated, even if idiomatic, but no one has complained about these particular ones since they were cited.)

There is a consensus that variants should have separate pages which refer, rather than redirect. There is a point of view (I doubt there is a consensus) that each variant page should show only cites which have that precise "spelling", and that the validity of the variant is proved by the ability to find enough cites to meet CFI. Well established idioms are often found in books, eg in reported speech, (books which can be read online are preferred here, in which case cites may be found on books.google.com); but b.g.c hits were lacking in the above cases. --Enginear 21:27, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

English entry link to other language entry?

Hi everyone. I'm new to wiktionary, and I'll be focusing on malay translation of english words. Anyway, my question is that when I add a translation entry in wiktionary, should I link the entry back to English wiktionary, or to Malay wiktionary?

• Link it directly to the English Wiktionary, simply by enclosing the word in double square brackets. Don't worry if this generates a red link - it will be created some time in the future, maybe even by you. SemperBlotto 08:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

English Word Count

How many words are there in the English language dictionary in Wiktionary?

See Wiktionary:Statistics. --Tohru 04:00, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

D'oh! I forgot to add a column for "form of" stubs! Someone please remind me in a day or five, if that isn't fixed, soon. --Connel MacKenzie 07:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

egsaduration/exaduration/eggsaduration

how do you spell this word?164.116.126.141 19:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

exaggeration --Versageek 19:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Thnk you. --164.116.126.141 19:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

what is this

i was wondering why the change ini address and why is it that u get only definitions thats not why i look to wiki for information. — This unsigned comment was added by 165.230.83.102 (talk).

This is a Wiktionary, a dictionary, if you want more info - try Wikipedia, an encyclopedia. --Versageek 02:12, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Are images ever used in Wiktionary?

None of the words that I've looked up ever have had images which illustrate them. Is this ever done here?--70.253.194.20 21:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but not a lot. See nose for an example. You may add images (from Commons) to any word that you think needs one. SemperBlotto 22:16, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Sure, look at leopard, butterfly, flute, castle. We use them whenever they add to the entry, and someone finds a good image, usually something already in the wikipedia, as the images are shared. Robert Ullmann 22:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Concrete nouns should probably all have images at some point. Certainly all animals. Foods, perhaps (be careful not to offend any chefs!) Verbs, I'm not so sure about...very few can be depicted in a way that conveys the action over the person/thing doing the action (if any.) If a picture is on commons, and can add some clarity to a definition, then it should be linked. We leave the copyvio hunting to commons, as the admins there quickly eliminate copyvios (better than we ever could) and disallow "fair use" images, that we could never conceivably use here. (Note: not all images on Wikipedia can be used here!) The upload links on the left column (of this and every page) should bring you to commons directly. To request photos for a particular page, use {{rfphoto}}...if you are interested in adding/linking images, check the tiny Category:Requests for photographs occasionally. --Connel MacKenzie 05:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

List of crossword-related words on Wikipedia

Recently, the article Wikipedia:List of words frequently used in North American crossword puzzles was deleted (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of words frequently used in North American crossword puzzles for the discussion leading to deletion). What I'm wondering is about the suitability of such a list for Wiktionary. Would such a list be suitable for an Appendix (Appendix:Words frequently used in crossword puzzles, broken down by language), for instance, or as a category (Category:Words frequently used in crossword puzzles) or template association (Template:FrequentCrossword). I understand that such a designation changes over time ... crossword puzzles from 50 years ago would likely have shown a different word frequency from those created today (though I don't have hard information on that). Thanks for your input .. I've asked this here because I'm unfamiliar with the nuances of the inclusion policies which would determine suitability of this information for inclusion. Regards --Ceyockey 02:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Some tangential comments in the beer parlour. --Connel MacKenzie 05:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

word identification

can you please help me find a generic term that describes someone who is -

pleasure-seeking; only interested in his/her own enjoyment; indulges his/herself, often to the detriment of others.

I have failed to find anything in WICKEPEDIA.

many thanks,

Pat Spooner

hedonist, debauchee, libertine, profligate, rake, sensualist, sybarite. Jonathan Webley 12:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I want to create an entry...

I would really like to create an entry. I looked at the "How to Create an Entry" entry, and it said that after searching there would be a red link to create an entry if one does not already exist. However, when do a search for the word "faldo", which I would like to add, no red link appears. Is this a problem with my browser, or what? Any ideas?

On my search results page it says "You searched for faldo" with a red link, and also it says "You can create an entry with that title" which you can click on. Anyway you can click on the word "faldo" right here. Kappa 10:36, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Not that it seems to be a word in any language that I know. SemperBlotto 11:11, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

There is the golfer? Jonathan Webley 16:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Permanent link

What does Permanent link do in the toolbax below the search window? — This comment was unsigned.

If you right-click it, (mouse button two), then you can copy the link from your term paper, personal website, blog, e-mail (etc.) and always get that revision no matter what subsequent vandalism or correction is done to the entry. --Connel MacKenzie 06:56, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Age

--Scholarscout 02:10, 27 December 2006 (UTC)Are some definitions age restricted?

No, but you need to be old enough to spell and write at a level acceptable to educated adults. You certainly must avoid making errors such as "i", "Collage" and "cirriculum" as you wrote on your user page. —Stephen 14:43, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I was never good at spelling.scholarscout

IPA aɪ

If aɪ is the sound of the I as in the word I, shouldn't it be ai? I don't know, but to me, "ah ee" sounds a lot more like I than "ah ih". Why is it decided that I should be aɪ and not ai? Thanks! —Soliloquial 22:55, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

We're following the standards agreed upon by the linguists. If you look around, you can find books (especially older ones) that use /ai/ rather than /aɪ/. Think of it this way: I is closer to /aɪ/ while ayee! is closer to /ai/ --EncycloPetey 23:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)