అడ్డదారి: WT:RFM

This page is designed to discuss moves (renaming pages) mergers and splits. Its aim is to take the burden away from the beer parlour and requests for deletion where these issues were previously listed. Please note that uncontroversial page moves to correct typos, missing characters etc. should not be listed here, but moved directly using the move function.

Appropriate: Renaming categories, templates, Wiktionary pages, appendices, rhymes and occasionally entries. Merging or splitting temp categories, templates, Wiktionary pages, appendices, rhymes.
Out of scope: Merging entries which are alternative forms or spellings or synonyms such as color/colour or traveled/travelled. Unlike Wikipedia, we don't redirect in these sort of situations. Each spelling gets its own page, often employing the templates {{alternative spelling of}} or {{alternative form of}}.
Tagging pages: To tag a page, you can use the general template {{rfm}}, as well as one of the more specific templates {{move}}, {{merge}} and {{split}}.

Unresolved requests from before October 2011

October 2011

Category:cmn:Beginning Mandarin

I'm pretty sure that Category:cmn:Beginning Mandarin, Category:zh:Beginning Mandarin, Category:zh-tw:Beginning Mandarin and Category:zh-cn:Beginning Mandarin should all just be Category:Beginning Mandarin. Clearly a language code isn't needed, a bit like we wouldn't have Category:en:English slang. The same would go for Category:cmn:Intermediate Mandarin, Category:zh:Intermediate Mandarin, Category:zh-tw:Intermediate Mandarin and Category:zh-cn:Intermediate Mandarin; Category:cmn:Advanced Mandarin, Category:zh:Advanced Mandarin, Category:zh-tw:Advanced Mandarin and Category:zh-cn:Advanced Mandarin. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:22, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Sure, but how are we going to sort and differentiate between simplified and traditional entries? ---> Tooironic 21:16, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Do we want to? If so Category:Beginning Mandarin in simplified script, I believe we already use this convention elsewhere. --Mglovesfun (talk) 10:18, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this convention passed, and I do approve it, but for some reason not all categories were converted, so at the moment there are many Mandarin entries which use both the new and old categories, leaving them a total mess. ---> Tooironic 23:46, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Per our previous discussion, Category:cmn:Beginning Mandarin, Category:cmn:Beginning Mandarin in traditional script and Category:cmn:Beginning Mandarin in simplified script are meant to replace Category:zh:Beginning Mandarin, Category:zh-tw:Beginning Mandarin and Category:zh-cn:Beginning Mandarin respectively. I have no objection to removing the cmn from the categories (other categories leave off the cmn, see: 備說), provided that someone modifies the relevant templates accordingly. See 機會/机会 and 回去 for examples of entries that use these templates. I offer both examples so you can see how the template is being filled out for cases where a simplified version exists and for cases where no simplified version exists. -- A-cai 00:47, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I agree with Tooironic. The categories are currently a mess and somebody should do a mass conversion to the newly agreed upon format. I have been converting things over by hand for the last number of weeks (so there should be plenty examples of the new format), but converting everything by hand would probably take me several years to complete. -- A-cai 00:47, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

But why leave in the cmn:? Mglovesfun (talk) 06:39, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Category:en:US States

to Category:en:US states please --Rockpilot 23:45, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

If only there were someplace to move it that didn't suffer from PNS syndrome. - -sche (discuss) 02:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think it's more common to capitalize the 'S' of 'States'. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:41, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Because a 'US State' is a proper noun, so all words of it are capitalized. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:00, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

A proper noun? Not AFAICT. State is often capitalized in official works of the federal government (such as the Constitution and IIRC even modern Supreme Court opinions), but in my experience it's lowercase in everyday use. Perhaps cites will be useful here.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:48, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, why did I write that? Mglovesfun (talk) 16:46, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I am neutral on this, but if I would note that Category:US States has quite a lot of subcats now, to the degree that a move would be more difficult than just replacing this specific category. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:45, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm allergic to nuts

I'd like to move this to I'm allergic to and redirect (and hence merge) I'm allergic to aspirin, I'm allergic to penicillin, and I'm allergic to pollen. The reason is to be more inclusive. It would be possible to link to nut#Translations and any other noun where there are common allergies. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:41, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree, and I think we should do the same for the 'I need' phrases. But we should indicate how to use the proper grammar, because some languages may need a special case form, and the translation may be less straightforward than just the translation of 'I'm allergic to' along with the translation of 'nut'. Finnish for example would translate 'to nuts' with the allative plural case of pähkinä ‎(“nut”), while Icelandic translates 'nuts' in the dative plural of hneta, and French uses aux to translate 'to' before plural words. —CodeCa t 11:56, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Phrasebook entries more or less only exist to have translations, so putting lots of grammatical detail in translation tables shouldn't be a problem. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:59, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Most phrasebooks are just bilingual, making things much simpler. DCDuring TALK 15:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't endorse the idea of merging the entries. But, if people decide to have only one English sentence, as only one entry, under the subject in question, then I'm allergic to pollen would be a much better title than just I'm allergic.

The reason is: we absolutely don't need incomplete sums of parts. They just aren't more helpful than the words alone. If a reader is able to find I'm allergic to + aspirin, and recognize how to make sentences by joining the pieces and applying the grammar of the target language... Then, she might as well do the same thing by joining I'm + allergic + to + aspirin. --Daniel 12:12, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the issue is that sentences like this are an open class. As long as there are new nouns to put at the end, you can keep creating new sentences. —CodeCa t 12:18, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It's easier to join the parts I'm allergic to pollen - pollen + aspirin than it is joining the parts I'm allergic to + aspirin. The entry "I'm allergic to pollen" would show complete translations fully adapted to the grammar of other languages, while the entry "I'm allergic to" would show only a piece (an unfinished sentence) translated into pieces (unfinished sentences) in other languages. --Daniel 14:04, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone have any facts to support these assertions about what is or is not easier for the class of users of an on-line phrasebook? What are some typical profiles of such users? What proportion of users fit each profile?

If we don't know these things what model of a successful phrasebook (on-line or otherwise, translating or not) would we follow? DCDuring TALK 15:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I maintain we should have one such entry and hard-redirect the rest. I would think it should be I'm allergic to, but perhaps Daniel's right that it should be I'm allergic to pollen (or some other): I don't know.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

If we go with Daniel's method (keep the one entry at I'm allergic to pollen or the like), then I think the headword and translations should all include pollen (and its translations) in parentheses or the like, much as we do with the headword at keep somebody posted.—msh210℠ (talk) 17:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:aviation - Template:aeronautics

Wikipedia says: (w:Aeronautics):

Aviation is a term sometimes used interchangeably with aeronautics

Even our definitions of aviation and aeronautics look very similar, I can see how they intersect. Despite there being a technical difference, I do not think we should keep them both, it just creates confusion. -- Liliana • 18:54, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Our topic categories are distinct, aeronautics being a "science" subcategory (not that that one could rely on our category structure for much). The real-world usage contexts are different, aeronautics referring to aeronautical engineering, which is not really part of the everyday world of flying and airlines. I don't know of better words for the distinction, whatever the jumble in the topic categories. DCDuring TALK 19:18, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

December 2011

Category:Definitionless terms

Merge with Category:Definitions needed. A lot of the ones in here are not really definitionless, just missing senses. —Internoob 04:11, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I think the idea is that Category:Definitions needed is by language, while Category:Definitionless terms lumps 'em all together, better for navigation if you want to see all definitionless terms. A few issues, the names of the two categories most definitely. Plus they can potentially be merged. Further more Category:Definitionless terms only contains entries using {{rfdef}} not {{defn}}, albeit merging the two would lead to tens of thousands of entries in one category. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:38, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Category:Etymology

I think this should be merged with Category:Etymologies by language, which would mean deleting the subcategories like Category:fr:Etymology and moving the subcategories without language prefixes to Category:Etymologies by language. It doesn't seem topical; the only main namespace entry I can find directly in the topical categories is in Category:ro:Etymology, which is etimologie! It seems very much counter-productive to have two categories doing the same job, with respect to finding subcategories but also for interwiki linking, which is what I was updating when I found this category. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:04, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

In fact that category only exists because of subcategories like Category:Biblical derivations, which aren't languages but nevertheless deserve treatment. -- Liliana • 19:06, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

If this category is to stay unmerged it should at least be renamed - perhaps to Category:Etymologies. --BiblbroX дискашн 21:51, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

@Liliana-60 I'm aware of that, but my points still stand, counter-productive to have this separate into two categories, one topical, one not. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:13, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Inflection-table subcategories

For a long time, we've only distinguished the categories Category:Gothic conjugation-table templates and Category:Gothic declension-table templates. The former is used for verbs, the latter is used for everything else. I don't think this really makes much sense, because in most languages adjectives need different templates from nouns. That's why I created Category:Gothic noun declension-table templates and Category:Gothic adjective declension-table templates. For a while those two categories were still added to the main declension-table category, but as that category came to be left empty I decided to change it so that noun declension-tables goes directly in Category:Gothic inflection-table templates, and deleted the now-empty category. The examples about Gothic here apply to many languages, too. So I would like to propose renaming and restructuring these categories:

Category:Gothic inflection-table templates -> Category:Gothic inflection templates
- Category:Gothic adjective declension-table templates -> Category:Gothic adjective inflection templates
- Category:Gothic noun declension-table templates -> Category:Gothic noun inflection templates
- Category:Gothic conjugation-table templates -> Category:Gothic verb inflection templates
- Category:Finnish declension-table templates -> Category:Finnish nominal inflection templates (for languages where nouns and adjectives inflect identically and use the same templates)

The reason I propose to name the new categories 'inflection templates' is because they could eventually contain headword-line templates as well. I realise this goes back to the situation we had long ago, where Category:English headword-line templates used to be called Category:English inflection templates, but this new category is supposed to be for anything inflection-related, headword-line, table or otherwise. A template such as {{got-adj}} could be categorised in both headword-line templates and inflection templates in the new situation. —CodeCa t 17:35, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Unless someone has any objections I'll go ahead with this soon... —CodeCa t 12:37, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Hang on (for a bit), I think the addition of 'table' was to make it clear that only tables go in these categories, like {{fro-decl-noun}} but NOT headword-line templates like {{fro-noun}}. So you're effectively proposing to annul that change. Having said that... why not? It's another way of splitting the templates up, by part of speech instead of by the type of template. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose. Merging inflection-table and headword-/inflection-line categories is counterproductive, in my opinion. --Yair rand 20:13, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not proposing to merge them. Headword-line templates will still have their own category like they do now. The only change to them is that they would also be added to the corresponding inflection template category. This makes sense because it keeps all the inflection-related things together, and makes it easier to see all templates that are concerned with noun inflection at a glance, for example. I like the idea of looking in Category:Catalan verb inflection templates and seeing both {{ca-verb}} and {{ca-conj-ar}} there. On the other hand, {{ca-verb}} would also be located in Category:Catalan headword-line templates as it is now. —CodeCa t 20:25, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I oppose the change from "inflection-table" to "inflection", since headword-line and inflection-table templates are very different types of template that are already sometimes difficult to distinguish by name. (Imagine you encounter {{he-prep-inflection}} in a category called Category:Hebrew inflection templates. Which type of "inflection template" do you expect it to be?) And headword-line templates don't always have inflection information, anyway. But I'd definitely be on board with "see also" links between headword-line and inflection-table template categories. I am neutral toward any change in the POS-wise subcategorization of (e.g.) Category:Gothic inflection-table templates; I think it makes sense for each language to handle that differently, and I have no dog in Gothic. —Ruakh_TALK 20:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose, mostly per Ruakh. Let us keep headword-line templates separated from those templates that belong to any of "Inflection", "Declension" and "Conjugation" sections, which turn out to be templates that show tables. If "Category:Gothic noun declension-table templates" gets renamed to "Category:Gothic noun inflection templates", the resulting name nowhere suggests that the category cannot contain headword-line templates. --Dan Polansky 13:09, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

For the record, I used Category:Lithuanian noun declension-table templates because of the sheer number of them. Eventually, I'll have another for adjectives, but that'll be a huge undertaking, considering the number of forms per table, the 4 stress patterns, numerous declension patterns, optional comparatives and superlatives, etc. I think splitting the categories is a very smart idea for languages like Russian and Lithuanian, who have such concerns. — [Ric Laurent] — 16:15, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I oppose the cross-language recategorization, per Ruakh.—msh210℠ (talk) 22:23, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm confused. What exactly do you oppose? The proposition renaming the categories or the proposition of adding headword-line templates to those categories? —CodeCa t 23:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Adding headword-line templates to the same categories as the inflection tables. I assumed the renaming was only to be done if that was to be done (i.e., that this was one proposal not two).—msh210℠ (talk) 01:27, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

No, even if that doesn't go through, the renaming could still be done, or with 'inflection-table' instead of 'inflection'. —CodeCa t 01:30, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand. When you started this discussion, you said that you had already implemented the "inflection-table" renaming for Gothic, and you didn't ask for any input about that; so that seems to imply that this discussion is inherently not about renaming categories to "inflection-table". (And no one seems to be objecting to the "inflection-table" part, anyway.) Furthermore, in that same discussion-starting comment, you also wrote, "The reason I propose to name the new categories 'inflection templates' is because they could eventually contain headword-line templates as well"; which seems to imply that you are not proposing that rename except for that purpose. Have you changed your mind? That's fine, if so, but in that case I think you should start a new discussion with your new proposal(s), or else it's just hopelessly confusing! —Ruakh_TALK 02:02, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh... maybe I wasn't that clear then... I was proposing to rename the categories, and I was saying we could drop 'table' from the name, so that in the future we could possibly also add headword-line templates to those categories. I haven't made any changes to Gothic yet, as you can see from the red links above. Sorry for the confusion. —CodeCa t 02:04, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Please vote for one or more of these options:

Keep the current inflection-table category names

Oppose generally: let each language decide for itself.—msh210℠ (talk) 02:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Rename to (POS) inflection-table templates

Support —CodeCa t 01:35, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Oppose generally: let each language decide for itself.—msh210℠ (talk) 02:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Rename to (POS) inflection templates

Support —CodeCa t 01:35, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Oppose generally: let each language decide for itself.—msh210℠ (talk) 02:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Rename to (POS) inflection templates and also add headword-line templates to them when applicable

Support —CodeCa t 01:35, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Oppose altogether.—msh210℠ (talk) 02:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

March 2012

Category:Komi language

move to Category:Komi-Zyrian language, to differentiate from Category:Komi-Permyak language -- Liliana • 12:37, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Good call. FWIW, both "Komi-Permyak" and "Komi-Zyrian" meet CFI with over seven and one thousand Google Books hits, respectively (unlike some differentiatory names we use), so I support the move. I presume the L2 headers will also change. - -sche (discuss) 19:11, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Done, I think. Double-check to be sure I haven't missed anything. - -sche (discuss) 08:34, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

మూస:look

Oh, translations... hopefully someone with a bot will fix those. - -sche (discuss) 08:35, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

See also WT:RFDO#Template:kpv. - -sche (discuss) 18:38, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

玩耍

Can someone please move this to a new title? I cannot read hanzi, but I know they are nonstandard for writing Hmong. According to a Hmong dictionary, the words for to play are lib and da2. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:36, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

April 2012

Happy Easter

I'm not quite sure why this and several other phrasebook terms are capitalised. There are some situations where it may not be capitalised, such as when saying 'I wish you all a happy Easter'. (And the phrase is no less formulaic when it's used that way... compare 'I wish you all a merry Christmas') So should it and other similar phrases be moved to begin with a lowercase letter? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 19:32, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Probably just because we're used to seeing it that way in greeting cards etc. where it tends to be a sentence on its own. I would favour the proposed move. Equinox ◑ 19:42, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Especially since typing "Happy Easter" would take the searcher to [[happy Easter]]. DCDuring TALK 22:27, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year seems particularly redundant. Equinox ◑ 22:37, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Template:ast-noun-mf

Into {{ast-noun}} by adding optional parameters, such as {{fr-noun}}, {{es-noun}}, {{it-noun}} (etc etc etc) have. Bit of a no-brainer, have only really listed it because I don't have time to do it until at least tomorrow. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:21, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Ana Tinga Dogon

(The content of) {{dti}} should possibly be renamed: the current name seems to be an amalgam of two variant names for the language, Ana Dogon and Ana Tinga/Ana Tiŋa. However, not one of those names is attested in Google Books, so I don't know what to suggest. - -sche (discuss) 00:48, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Struck. No action taken at this time. - -sche (discuss) 23:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:bxr

All uses should be {{bua}} per WT:LANGTREAT -- Liliana • 17:52, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

or we should update LANGTREAT. I have no preference at the moment. I've raised the issue in the BP. - -sche (discuss) 19:47, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

merged -- Liliana • 17:47, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

So that this section is findable by a search for "Buryat", I'm dropping that word into it. - -sche (discuss) 01:20, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:wob

Is this distinct from both krw and kqo? If so, should it (wob) be renamed Wobé? If not, let's combine them. (See w:Wee languages, w:Krahn language, w:Wobé language.) - -sche (discuss) 00:23, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

It seems to contrast with {{gxx}} and {{wec}}. -- Liliana • 05:00, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Struck. No action taken at this time. - -sche (discuss) 23:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:btx

I suggest we rename this from "Batak Karo", which is AFAICT unattested as a language name, to "Karo Batak", which is attested. - -sche (discuss) 06:29, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

This should be kept in line with the other Batak languages. One language shouldn't deviate from the others, so if at all, all these languages would need to be changed. -- Liliana • 09:42, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Alright, I've done Google Books searches on all the names,

మూస:b.g.c. gets 614 Google Books hits, మూస:b.g.c. gets 1 valid hit
మూస:b.g.c. is far more common than మూస:b.g.c.
మూస:b.g.c. (మూస:b.g.c.) is more common than మూస:b.g.c. (మూస:b.g.c.)
మూస:b.g.c. (మూస:b.g.c.) is more common than మూస:b.g.c. (మూస:b.g.c.)
మూస:b.g.c. is more common than మూస:b.g.c.
మూస:b.g.c. is four times more common than మూస:b.g.c.
neither మూస:b.g.c. nor మూస:b.g.c. gets any uses, AFAICT (although "Batak Alas-Kluet" does seem to be slightly more commonly mentioned as the language's name)

I wonder why the Batak-first names were originally chosen, here and on Wikipedia. Indonesian grammar? - -sche (discuss) 18:58, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Update:

మూస:b.g.c. gets 8 Google Books hits, మూస:b.g.c. gets 3 hits
మూస:b.g.c. gets 14 hits, మూస:b.g.c. gets 9 hits
మూస:b.g.c. gets 4 hits, మూస:b.g.c. gets no hits
మూస:b.g.c. gets 5 hits, మూస:b.g.c. gets no hits
మూస:b.g.c. gets 2 hits, మూస:b.g.c. gets none
మూస:b.g.c. gets 7 hits, మూస:b.g.c. gets none
neither మూస:b.g.c. nor మూస:b.g.c. gets any hits, AFAICT

Whenever Module:languages settles down (i.e. we all decide where to host its contents), I plan to rename these languages. - -sche (discuss) 23:49, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

మూస:done. - -sche (discuss) 06:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

May 2012

Category:Telugu years

Looking at these entries, Year isn't a part of speech, they are as the editor puts it, 'names of years'. Any chance of putting in the entries what years these refer to? 365 days years, or another norm? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:07, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I was wondering if they were like Chinese years (year of the dragon etc). But does anyone know? 21:38, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Tutorial (External links)

To Help:External links. Reason is this is a good help page, but we need a WT: page to cover what is and what is not valid as an external link, using WT:ELE as a starting point. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:05, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

On reflection, it's the redirect Wiktionary:External links that I'm interested in, on reflection I could just create that page over the redirect and leave this where it is. Still I won't close this request, as the page still reads like a help page, so maybe someone will agree with me. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:53, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

June 2012

Category:cmn:Elementary Mandarin

To Category:Elementary Mandarin. Surely the word 'Mandarin' means we don't also needs cmn. Also I don't think categories like Category:en:Elementary Mandarin would be valid. The others to be moved can be found in Category:Chinese by difficulty level. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:03, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Support వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 19:12, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:Reference templates

To Category:English reference templates, whilst obviously removing all the non-English ones. We already have Category:Reference templates by language, but English is not in that category! The switch over to ...by language has gone well so far, why buck the trend whilst it's working? Mglovesfun (talk) 19:54, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

But when is a reference 'English'? Some could be used for other languages as well, especially etymological dictionaries. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 20:06, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, categorization isn't intended to (and won't) stop user using reference templates whenever they are useful. Nor does categorization have to be limited to only one language. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:16, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I support creating Category:English reference templates. I am neutral on deleting Category:Reference templates. (Note that currently, a lot of reference templates belong both to Category:Reference templates and to a language-specific category. I don't know whether that's useful or not.) —Ruakh_TALK 12:54, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

let something slide

Currently lists "let slide" as an alternative form, but that's not true; they're actually the same form, just lemmatized differently. One should redirect to the other. —Ruakh_TALK 03:05, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

One can let either a person or a thing slide, so let slide would seem to be the best main entry with two redirects thereto, this and let someone slide. DCDuring TALK 03:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Merge into let slide, it could use the headword let (something) slide. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:59, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

running on empty

This is listed as a verb. It should probably be run on empty in that case. Astral (talk) 04:38, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Move, though maybe even on empty. Only maybe. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:21, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

On empty seems better, but empty might be better yet. For example "running on the smell of an oily rag" is a near synonym, which suggests that there is/should be an applicable sense of on. DCDuring TALK 12:39, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

The trouble with the way smell of an oily rag has been defined, as a noun rather than an adverb, is that it suggests usages like "I used a smell of an oily rag of salt in the sauce" are acceptable. I foresee the same issue with empty, so on empty strikes me as preferable. Astral (talk) 17:19, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

We already have "12. Indicating a means of subsistence. : They lived on ten dollars a week; The dog survived three weeks on rainwater".—msh210℠ (talk) 17:36, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

@Astral: how's this? Of course, it's silly to define 'smell of an oily rag as 'in the phrase "on smell of an oily rag"...'. If no other preposition can precede it, I'd favor a move to run on the smell of an oily rag or on the smell of an oily rag (and I'd prefer run on empty or on empty to empty). Yes, "on" "indicates a means of subsistence", and run on means "operate with a particular energy source", but the idiomaticity still seems to be in the phrase "run on empty" rather than in "empty". - -sche (discuss) 18:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Smell... probably could use a usage note, but the usage example should do it.

Run on empty has a literal and at least one figurative sense. Both literal and figurative senses seem to either use an ellipsis (empty for empty tank of fuel) or a reference to empty as "reading on a fuel gauge". These are normal linguistic processes. Because they are normal and the meaning is transparent, no reference at run on empty at OneLook Dictionary Search has this. The metaphor may allow the substitution of other words for empty as well, certainly fumes. Should we just look to have usage examples?

This is not really a linguistic phenomenon as much as it is a conceptual one. We could exhaust ourselves looking for all the attestable forms of the "person/enterprise-as-fueled-vehicle" metaphor. For dead metaphors there is something lexical and not conceptual. For live ones, I don't think so. If I were explaining the expression to someone, I'd say something like "It's as if he/it were a car", rather than define it. DCDuring TALK 18:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Update: running on empty at OneLook Dictionary Search shows that AHDIdioms has it at this form.

@-sche: What about running on fumes, which is certainly attestable? DCDuring TALK 18:17, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Apparently on can live on/off the smell of an oily rag. I'll add some more variety at [[smell of an oily rag#Noun]]. DCDuring TALK 18:40, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

@Msh210: Yes, we have sense 12 of on, but that doesn't mean on the smell of an oily rag is SoP. If "smell of an oily rag" were used to mean "small amount"/"bare minimum", it would arguably be, but since people apparently don't say things like, "I've got to order more parts soon — we've only got the smell of an oily rag left in stock," the preposition is integral to conveying the idiom's meaning. I understand wanting to trim the fat off entry titles, but not at the expense of creating the implication that something is used in a way it isn't. I support moving this to on the smell of an oily rag, and also creating off the smell of an oily rag, since that seems attestable, too. Astral (talk) 19:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree completely that the existence of that sense of on doesn't mean on the smell of an oily rag is SOP, and didn't mean to imply that it does. (Existence of live off the smell of an oily rag (which DCDuring points to above) might, though.)—msh210℠ (talk) 21:36, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

July 2012

Template:deftempboiler into Template:form of

There doesn't seem to be a crucial difference between these two templates, and they are both used for the same things. So I think merging them would be better, while adding the missing functionality of one to the other. See WT:GP#Singulative help for prior discussion. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:41, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Any merge must be effected carefully so that transcluded instances are not affected. (Or at least so that transcluded instances of {{deftempboiler}} aren't affected. Preferably also {{form of}}, but it's been edited in a way that affects transcluded instances without those pages ever thereafter being checked for still-accuracy, so further bad edits wouldn't be the end of the world.) If that's done, I support.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:55, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Split Appendix:City suffixes by language and rename to '(language) toponyms'

Splitting because the page could become unmanageably large if more languages are added (which we must assume they will, eventually). And renaming to make it more generic, as it applies to place names in general, not just larger ones. I also believe that prefixes should be able to be added when appropriate. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 12:53, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Support, but keep the page and transclude all of them so it doesn't actually look any different to viewers. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 12:22, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

klausītājies

An anonymous user added a rfm template to this word, claiming it doesn't exist. I think it does, however, for the following reasons:

I found it in a reputable source (Fennell, T.G, & H. Gelsen. 1980. A Grammar of Modern Latvian. Paris, New York, The Hague: Mouton Publishers. ISBN 90 279 7936 7), where it is not only mentioned, but given as the basic example of a set of words with irregular defective declension (the full defective paradigm of klausītājies is given on p. 1070).
A google search reveals several occurrences (59) of the word, including several folk songs, and also a Latvijas Radio programme for 02-11-2011 (last word in the green text at 10:10 and at 23:10).

The total number of occurrences, however, is low, even taking into account the relatively small number of Internet pages in Latvian, and this word has a more regular counterpart klausītājs (which is where the anonymous user wants to move klausītājies to). This rarity, together with the existence of the more regular counterpart, is probably what motivates the anonymous user's impression that the word doesn't exist. I suggest that this word be kept, perhaps with an added context tag like 'rare' or 'old fashioned'. --Pereru (talk) 02:57, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Create the regular form and make this an alternative form iff you can actually cite it (I believe Latvian still requires 3 citations). This doesn't really belong at RFM. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 12:20, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

The Google search I mentioned above yielded 59 results, many legitimate. Do these count as citations? Should they go on the citation page? (I haven't done anything with citations thus far. There probably is a page here at Wiktionary about how to handle citations, right? Could you direct me to it?) Well, I'll create the regular page, link klausītājies to it as an alternate form (but keeping the declension, which is different and irregular), and remove the RFM tag. --Pereru (talk) 17:08, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Crash course on citations: citations must be durably archived (so, not off a Google search). Effectively, citations must be from Google Books, Google Groups, or a physical book/magazine/newspaper. Citations must be uses, not mentions (see w:use-mention distinction), so dictionaries don't count except for example sentences. For Latvian, every sense needs three citations to pass RFV. Citations must be formatted according to WT:". Does that cover it sufficiently? --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:39, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

mind one's p's and q's

I agree with the comment on the talk page that two of the apostrophes should be taken out: [[mind one's Ps and Qs]]. Should the apotrophic form be a soft redirect, or a hard one? Or do you like the apostrophes and oppose a move? - -sche (discuss) 17:43, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

Soft. I.e., both, if attested, should exist, and the less common should be defined as a form-of.—msh210℠ (talk) 21:39, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Template:reference-book

I keep seeing this used as a reference template, which is annoying, since the formatting is totally wrong for that. Presumably the problem is with the name. Renaming it to something more transparent, like {{quote-book-2}} or {{quote-book-again}}, should help. (Or, better yet, merging it into {{quote-book}}. Or, best yet, getting rid of all quotation templates. They cause more problems than they solve.) —Ruakh_TALK 19:35, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, move it somewhere else. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:47, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Move or delete. Re: "I keep seeing this used as a reference template, which is annoying, since the formatting is totally wrong for that": Exactly. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:19, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Category:Arabic numerals

This name is misleading. Based on how our categories are named, you would expect this to contain terms in the Arabic language, but it doesn't. It should probably be named something like Category:Hindu-Arabic numerals, or something else than 'numerals'. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:19, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:43, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, Hindu-Arabic isn't ideal, but it's a whole lot better. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:37, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I noticed we also have Category:Roman numerals. These categories have no indication of language, presumably because they are translingual. But I'm not sure if Category:Translingual Hindi-Arabic numerals sounds any better. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 15:49, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

If it's translingual, would it include १,२,३,४,५,६,७,८,९,० or ١,٢,٣,٤,٥,٦,٧,٨,٩,٠? Chuck Entz (talk) 13:21, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I support, it’s a more correct name. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 16:23, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

August 2012

Я in Old Church Slavonic

There are quite a few terms in OCS on Wiktionary that use the letter Я for 'ja'. However, as far as I know, that letter didn't actually exist at the time OCS was written. w:Ya (Cyrillic) explains that it developed as a scribal variant of Ѧ, which stood for a nasal vowel 'ę' which later developed into 'ja' in many Slavic languages. So it is a bit like distinguishing i/v and j/u in Latin. There is a big difference though: Ѧ itself is still used in OCS in its original form and sound 'ę', while the letter Ꙗ was used in OCS to represent the sound 'ja' and Ѩ stood for 'ję'. So using Я in those words seems like an anachronism. Should our OCS terms be moved to their OCS-era spellings, or are the spellings with Я actually attested in the original manuscripts? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 15:42, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I think we should be using ꙗ whenever the OCS sound was [ja], ѧ whenever it was [ę] (i.e. [ɛ̃]) and ѩ whenever it was [ję] (i.e. [jɛ̃]). I'm not sure to what extent these get confused in the manuscripts, and a certain number of {{alternative spelling of}}s may be necessary, but I think the main lemma should reflect the historically correct letter, meaning я shouldn't be used for OCS at all. —An gr 22:06, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

OCS spelling apparently followed a rule that any front vowel not preceded by a consonant had a j- inserted before it automatically (apparently there were no vowel-initial words?). So that would have eliminated most use cases for ѩ, and I'm not sure how widely it was used. OCS spelling was far from consistent and may often reflect dialectal pronunciation rather than normalised 'reconstructed' pronunciation. I am quite sure that я did not occur in OCS as it was just a variant of ѧ, but it's possible that words later spelled with ѧ/я etymologically should have ѧ, ꙗ or ѣ, which were or became [ja] in various dialects (but differently in each). So we would need to find out the etymological origin of our current words with я before we can move them. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 22:54, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

ѩзꙑкъ is an example of a word spelled with ѩ. How many OCS words do we have spelled with я? It shouldn't be hard to find or figure out which letter is the right one. Looking through Category:Old Church Slavonic nouns it seems most entries with я were created by Ivan Štambuk. Maybe he could be prevailed upon to help put them right. —An gr 16:36, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

have had one's Weetabix today

I propose that this be moved to either have one's Weetabix or have had one's Weetabix, either way the today is SOP. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 12:13, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

The today adjunct is often replaced by other adjuncts or omitted.

Have had one's Weetabix is a present perfect form, not normally a lemma. There were not enough cites found for that form, but the RfV was closed without being deleted.

I'd advocate have one's Weetabix where it could be united with Citations:have one's Weetabix. DCDuring TALK 15:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Click characters in language names and 2x !Kung

I have modified the three languages which previously used exclamation marks (!) in their names to represent clicks, so that they now use click characters (ǃ) like the other click languages use and like entries for words in all those languages use. In doing so, I noticed that we have two codes, both marked as "regular language"s (rather than one being a family or such) called "ǃKung": {{khi-kun}} and {{knw}}. It was decided that the two codes should be kept: but I want to know if it is a problem that they display the same name, and if one should be renamed. - -sche (discuss) 21:31, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

That could be a problem, yes. Our category structure requires a unique name for each language. {{langrev}} also depends on it. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 21:41, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I wonder, should English entries such as [[!Kung]] use the exclamation point or the click character? Since technically the click character is not a letter in English, but neither is the exclamation point. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

{{knw}} could display "Ekoka !Kung", as at Wikipedia. To Wikitiki's point, we should use the click character because it won't get confused with the exclamation point by the software. The difference between ! and ǃ is relevant only to software, since to humans they look identical. —An gr 21:52, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

There's also one more difference you're forgetting: You can't type the click character with an English keyboard. Personally, I think it would be better if [[!Kung]] were moved to [[Kung]] (for English) and the !/ǃ added only on the page itself, but that seems like too radical of a change. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 22:07, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

That's hardly important; the click character is in the "IPA" section of the character insertion box below the text field. And as the cited quotation shows, the language is called ǃKung in English. —An gr 22:33, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, we wouldn't move Москва to Moсквa (or any other such variant) — even if the only citations of the word were in books rather than online, and thus it were philosophically impossible to tell whether о or o were the character used: we would find the character in Cyrillic text and so use the Cyrillic codepoint. Here, we find a click, and so should use the click codepoint. (Although if !Kung is attested, with the exclamation mark sic, on Usenet, then we should definitely have it as an alt-spelling.) - -sche (discuss) 22:37, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Currently the spelling with the click character, [[ǃKung]], redirects to the spelling with the exclamation mark, [[!Kung]]. I think this is exactly the sort of case where redirects are the right solution, but I do think the redirect should go the other way. The entry should use the click character, and the spelling with the exclamation point should be the redirect. —An gr 23:00, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I've started relocating such entries. I especially fixed [[ǃxóɲa ǂàã]]! - -sche (discuss) 00:11, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

~~Someone with a bot could change all instances of "!Kung" to "ǃKung" now. - -sche (discuss) 01:19, 23 August 2012 (UTC)~~ (Perhaps best to wait until the names are sorted out. - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC))

But, whenever a name is chosen, the things in this red category and others such should changed (by bot or by bored hand): Category:!Kung verbs. - -sche (discuss) 02:40, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I've started a separate discussion about whether we actually need both languages, anyway: Wiktionary:Requests_for_moves,_mergers_and_splits#Template:khi-kun_and_Template:knw. I think we should revisit and resolve that question before proceeding with a rename (as it may remove the need for a rename). - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Struck. This was resolved long ago. This discussion can be archived to Wiktionary talk:About ǃKung. - -sche (discuss) 23:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:nmn

To avoid one click character (/exclamation mark), we could rename this language from "ǃXóõ" to "Taa", the name Wikipedia gives it. It's very difficult to search for terms spelt with either click character or exclamation marks, but I found about 19 Google Books with "ǃXóõ language" in them, while "Taa language" gets about 50 Google Books hits, about 25 of which are scannos or references to unrelated things. Still, that means the two terms seem about as common. So, shall we rename to "Taa"? - -sche (discuss) 00:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Note: there remain a number of entries which contain "!Xóõ" (with exclamation mark). A robot should update these to either "ǃXóõ" (click) or "Taa" depending upon the outcome of this discussion. - -sche (discuss) 00:57, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't know if it helps but all books I have seen used !Xóõ. -- Liliana • 16:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Maro 19:16, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Template:khi-kun and Template:knw

The brief discussion of these templates last year was closed, without resolving the issue at hand, after only three comments — the nominator's suggestion of deletion, PK's noting but also questioning the distinction between them, and Daniel's closing comment. I propose that we should either only use the macro-language code {{khi-kun}} for entries in all three dialects, or we should keep the dialects separate and thus disuse {{khi-kun}}... but we shouldn't use both. Using both creates problems for our category structure and for {{langrev}} (as both are called ǃKung) and while there are ways of getting around this (rename one "ǃXun" or the other "Ekoka ǃKung" or such), it doesn't seem necessary to have the problem in the first place. - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I've merged mwj, knw and oun into khi-kun. - -sche (discuss) 09:26, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

September 2012

I. umbraticola

to Ipomoea umbraticola. Such taxonomic abbreviations are almost always used only in context, after the genus name has been introduced. Covering such abbreviations to help folks with out-of-context snippets would require that we have a sense for each genus beginning with "I" that has a species that uses the species epithet. We are far, far away from that capability. DCDuring TALK 23:25, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

It would be potentially misleading to keep the redirect in this proposed move. DCDuring TALK 23:28, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

While we're at it, how about moving it to Ipomoea splendor-sylvae, which seems to be the correct name, per [1] and [2] (methinks Wikispecies is out of date).

This is the problem with having entries for scientific names: they imply knowledge of taxonomy that we don't have, for the most part. It's not something we can rfv for, since neither or both may be attested according to CFI. I know enough about botany of vascular plants and about some parts of zoology to find authoritative sources, but cladistics and molecular biology are radically rearranging taxonomy almost constantly these days, so what was true a year ago may be totally wrong next year.

As for the forms with the generic name represented by an initial: there a lots of genera that start with "I" (it's one of the rarer first initials, too), and there's nothing to say that they couldn't all have a species with the exact same epithet. It's not much of a problem with this species, but with common adjectives like alba, you could have a long list of senses, indeed- we should kill all such abbreviations before they multiply. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:16, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

We have a better chance focusing on the component words, especially the genera, and the vernacular names, but we already have 1-2,000 binomials and some thousands of names of tribes, subtribes, parvorders, phylla, etc. I am seeing the instability of the taxonomic structure as I work on these entries. I try to limit my new entries in this area to genera and vernacular names. But we should perform the service of tracking all the names, including the ones that don't fit into current thinking. Obsolete names are more stable! DCDuring TALK 03:40, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

@Chuck: I don't disagree with anything that you have said. The fundamental problem is that we define (have to define ?) each taxonomic name in terms of the taxonomic hierarchy, which is a bit less firm than I had realized. Our best contributions might be in etymology, synonymy, and in vernacular names. We might be able to collect vernacular names for the genera, species, and subspecies in the languages prevalent in the range of the species. But that compels us to work at the bushy end of the tree, at least for those genera that people can relate to at some level. DCDuring TALK 04:48, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

మూస:done DCDuring TALK 20:20, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I. umbellifera

to Inga umbellifera. As above. DCDuring TALK 23:27, 2 September 2012 (UTC)`

Yes, never been voted on as far as I know, but there are precedents. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:15, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

See RfD discussion of B. splendens. DCDuring TALK 14:09, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

As there are no objections, moved with redirect retained, but I wouldn't mind if it were deleted. DCDuring TALK 14:59, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/seh₂wel-

should be merged with Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/sóh₂wl̥. The last is more complete. --Fsojic (talk) 11:59, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes I agree. Can you do the merge? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 12:20, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Redirect or I suppose {{alternative form of}}. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:56, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Redirect --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:38, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

beon-wesan

I think bēon-wesan should be split into bēon and wesan. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 06:46, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Indeed; the usage notes say that they are separate words, if that's true, why do we link them together with a hyphen as a single entry? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:03, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I assume because it was added in 2005 before the rules were clearly established and no one has questioned it since. There is also sēon apparently, which seems to be mixed into the conjugation just as much. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 10:59, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Sēon isn't really a separate verb as far as I can tell, but a regularisation of the infinitive based on the present tense forms. German and Dutch have a similar verb, but in those languages the attestations clearly show that it's a later invention, not inherited. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:17, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article gives sindon rather than seon. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 11:42, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Is there an attestation of beon-wesan in an Old English text? If not, that would rather seal the deal. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:19, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

There is a general consensus that lemmas do not have to be attested words, if their inflected forms are. We have languages for which the lemmas are bare stems, and also languages for which only the inflected forms have any attestations. So I don't see a problem with this entry on that principle alone. I do support splitting it because they are two distinct verbs, though. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 16:54, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I meant the exact word 'beon-wesan'. I mean, what sort of inflected form would lead back to 'beon-wesan' anyway? Are any of them attested? Mglovesfun (talk) 18:37, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

No, there is no attestation for it. The entry was created with the intention of having a single page for both bēon and wesan. Widsith (who created the page) knows Old English well enough to know there's no compound bēon-wesan. Any information not currently at the two entries needs to be moved there, and then this page deleted. —An gr 19:06, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

To Mglovesfun: I know. What I meant to say is that even though 'beon-wesan' as a word isn't attested, that in itself doesn't mean it can't be used as the lemma form of some term, because we have many other lemmas that are not attested words either. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 19:15, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

It gets tricky at that point! Back-forming infinitives from verb forms may be a scientific process, but it's not infallible either. I've done it for loads of Old French verbs, but I can think of at least one I've avoided, soloir, where soloit is attested but the infinitive doesn't have to be soloir as a result. So it's a question of what the reconstructed infinitive should be, not overall inclusion. Beon-wesan doesn't sound like a reconstruction we want to me! Mglovesfun (talk) 19:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

That is definitely true. In such a case we would probably include both and add a notice saying that there are other possible reconstructions. We've already done that for some Gothic words I think. But in any case, for Bantu languages like Swahili and Zulu, we have verbs and adjectives listed as bare stems, which are never encountered as words on their own. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 19:53, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Just to add to this discussion, it's somewhat conventional to group these words together in modern guides. It's definitely lemmatised as beon-wesan in the standard Cambridge Old English Reader, and I believe that the Mitchell/Robinson grammar does the same thing, although I don't actually have a copy of that in front of me to check. Ƿidsiþ 05:44, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

In modern English this is a single suppletive verb (along with sēon). No doubt the roots were originally separate, but the fact that it's suppletive in German, too, leads me to think the transition from the completely independent stage predates Old English. In the present tense and the infinitive, they're indeed separate, but what about all the parts of the paradigm where only there's only one root? In a way, this is like Siamese twins- splitting is major surgery, which requires some thought as to how to deal with the parts that are shared.

Perhaps we should have a common beon-sēon-wesan entry, but follow the example of sēon in having separate entries for all three roots, too. It's complicated, but the reality that we're trying to represent is complicated, too. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:48, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

The conjugation of this verb is unique; it merits its own template. Why not create a dedicated template (which contains the information already, rather than taking parameters), and in that template, use superscript numbers (I would have suggested colours, but as Neskaya would point out, that isn't accessible to everyone) to indicate which form derives from which verb? Then put the table on the pages of all three verbs. - -sche (discuss) 19:54, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

From a Germanic perspective there are two paradigms: *beuną with present *biumi and past *was, and *wesaną with present *immi and past *was. So they share the same past tense but have distinct present tenses. From what I can see, this is still pretty much the situation in Old English. This isn't actually the only verb to have this situation... flēon and flēogan also share a past tense, and so do the Germanic verbs *stāną/*standaną and *gāną/*ganganą. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 20:10, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

I've been trying to figure out the distribution of the different roots in the paradigm, but there's a lot of ambiguous overlap. Here's my best guess as to which forms belong to which root:

Infinitive
	sēon	wesan	bēon
Present Indicative
1st S	eom	eom	bēo/bēom
2nd S	eart	eart	bist
3rd S	is	is	biþ
P	sind,sindon, sint, earon	sind ,sindon, sint	bēoþ, earon
Present Subjunctive
S	sīe	sīe	bēo
P	sīen	sīen	bēon
Imperative
S	sī, sēo	wes	bēo
P	*	wesaþ	bēoþ
Present Participle
	wesende	wesende	wesende
Preterite Indicative
1st S	waes	waes	waes
2nd S	wǣre	wǣre	wǣre
3rd S	wæs	wæs	wæs
P	wǣron	wǣron	wǣron
Preterite Subjunctive
S	wǣre	wǣre	wǣre
P	wǣren	wǣren	wǣren

* Not attested

While working on this, I noticed that our entries for the above forms are a bit spotty and inconsistent with each other. I've collected the definition lines to give an overall picture of our coverage:

bēo	first-person singular active of bēon
bēo	first-person singular subjunctive of bēon
bēo	second-person singular subjunctive of bēon
bēo	third-person singular subjunctive of bēon
bēo	singular imperative of bēon
bēom	first-person singular form of bēon-wesan
bēon	to be
bēoþ	(no entry)
bist	(no entry)
biþ	third-person singular present of bēon-wesan
earon	third-person plural simple present tense of bēon-wesan
eart	second-person singular present indicative of bēon-wesan
eom	first-person singular present indicative of bēon
is	(no entry)
sēo	(no entry)
sēon	to be, used primarily in reference to God
sī	(no entry)
sīe	(no entry)
sīen	(no entry)
sind	(no entry)-
sindon	(no entry)
sint	(no entry)
wǣre	second-person preterite form of of bēon-wesan
wǣre	subjunctive preterite singular form of of bēon-wesan
wǣren	(no entry)
wǣron	preterite plural form of beon-wesan
wes	(no entry)
wesaþ	(no entry)
wesan	to be, exist
wesende	present participle of bēon-wesan

I apologize if I've overloaded the discussion with tables, but I thought it would be good to see what we have now so we can better decide how to change it. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:13, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

మూస:look

Template:duh, Template:noi

{{duh}} and {{noi}} are varieties of the Bhilori language, but Bhilori does not have its own code. (The situation is analogous to that of Nahuatl, which does not have a single, unified code in ISO 639-3. Nahuatl had the ISO 639-2 code {{nah}}, however.) I suggest we merge the two, using one of the codes. (Failing that, {{duh}}-proper goes by several names other than "Dungra Bhil", and a rename may be in order.) - -sche (discuss) 05:46, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Darn! that spoils any chance to have a template for sarcastically commenting on content. After a long session of patrolling, that option sometimes starts to look almost obligatory...Chuck Entz (talk) 13:59, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

There's always {{wtf}} (and for good things, {{yay}}). :b No {{ugh}} yet, though. - -sche (discuss) 22:35, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Struck. No action taken at this time. - -sche (discuss) 23:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

leger line

[[leger line]] should me merged with [[ledger line]] or vice versa. Not sure which is better. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:36, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia has w:Ledger line. The {{wikipedia}} template's link at leger line goes to a redirect. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:52, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Lemming test: AHD has only [[ledger line]] and no mention of [[leger line]]; COD has the main entry at [[leger line]] and a cross-reference thereto at [[ledger line]]. Google gives marginally more hits for "ledger line" than "leger line" at .uk sites (4760 vs. 3040) and considerably more (1370 vs. 276) at .edu sites (which I assume are all American). Unrestricted for site locations, I get 84,100 hits with the "d" and 46,500 without it, so maybe it would be safest to make [[leger line]] an {{alternative spelling of}} [[ledger line]]. —An gr 14:11, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I didn't remember this, but apparently I looked into these two spellings five years ago at w:Talk:Ledger line#Leger, ledger and discovered that "ledger" is the etymological spelling; the lines are so called because they were written in a ledger, not because they are light, slender, slim, or trivial. —An gr 14:42, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

మూస:done. Thanks for doing the legwork / research, Angr! - -sche (discuss) 00:08, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Appendix:English words of Korean origin

...should be Appendix:English terms of Korean origin. (Alternatively, Appendix:English terms of Persian origin should be Appendix:English words of Persian origin.) - -sche (discuss) 23:24, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Move to "terms". --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:44, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Template:proscribed

We're not a proscriptive dictionary, right? So why are we labeling senses as (proscribed)? I suggest that we merge this with the more descriptive {{nonstandard}}. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:39, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

We don't proscribe. {{proscribed}} indicates that many people proscribe it not that we do. Nonstandard is not the same thing as proscribed. In English, for example, there is no standard so it makes no sense to label things as nonstandard but there are words that are proscribed. In other languages, there can be words that differ from the standard but are not proscribed. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 06:30, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

That's mostly right. We do label things as "nonstandard" in English (e.g. hoi polloi's second sense). But "proscribed" is different in that it means, as you note, that some other authority (not us) actually proscribes the usage. On good days, we even specify which authority in usage notes. - -sche (discuss) 07:11, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

In English, from a descriptive perspective, "nonstandard" and "proscribed" are potentially useful. It is objectively true that some people view certain grammar, spelling, and pronunciation as "bad English", which we soften to "nonstandard" or "proscribed". In some ways, "proscribed" is better because it more readily causes a user to ask "by whom". This forces us to get outside of our own idiolects and find some support for the tag. On what authority do we label things as "nonstandard"? Where is the standard? We have a lot of trouble even doing something as simple as labeling something a common misspelling, rather than an alternative spelling, but there are plenty who view some spellings as simply wrong.

Moreover, I am reasonably sure that many users want such information. It is one of those areas that leads users to put comments on talk pages, Feedback, Info desk, and TR.

Empirically, I think we would find that "proscribed" seems mostly to be used for matters of grammar and style on which we can find authorities to opine and "nonstandard" seems to mean we are relying on our own unsupported community opinion. DCDuring TALK 10:03, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

We should describe usage as well as definition, so things like formal, colloquial, slang (etc.) should be noted. I do struggle a bit with this. I never use it, and use nonstandard. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:32, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The problem with labeling a sense as "proscribed" is that, as Metaknowledge implies, it makes it sound like we are proscribing it. I prefer to write "sometimes proscribed" or "often proscribed", which I think makes it a bit clearer that we're talking about other people's proscriptions. And probably "condemned" or "criticized" would be better than "proscribed". —Ruakh_TALK 19:42, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I am adding {{loosely}} to capture one class of "proscribed" or "disputed" usage. See WT:TR#dilemma. DCDuring TALK 15:47, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

K This is useful. Proscribed is stronger than nonstandard, and implies some different qualities. (Loosely is quite different, implying that a given definition is being applied less strictly.)

Nonstandard is omitted from standards, while proscribed is prohibited by them.
Nonstandard may be casual but correct, while proscribed is considered wrong.
Nonstandard may be acceptably used to reflect regionalism, dialect, or jargon, while proscribed reflects broken language.

As with other labels, qualifiers sometimes, often – or more often rarely or chiefly – convey the frequency of the usage. It’s incorrect to try to use them only to assign blame elsewhere. If someone wants to know exactly what the label means, the glossary is a click away.

It’s lexicography, not physics. Word usage is a series of greys, not black and white, and the dictionary benefits from editors’ opinions, moderated by the wiki process. —Michael Z. 2013-04-02 16:21 z

But we apparently don't have enough English contributors, at least ones who care about this, to actually keep this from being used improperly. About a third of the applications in English seem wrong by my lights. If we can't maintain it, should we permit it? DCDuring TALK 17:29, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

information velocity

I think all three definitions can be merged. If not, then at least the third can merge with the second. The definitions are:

(physics) The speed at which information is transmitted through a particular medium
(marketing) The speed of information flow about a product in a market
(financial markets) The rate at which information that influences the price of securities in informationally efficient markets moves through the market.

--WikiTiki89 (talk) 15:14, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Either merge, or delete (as sum of parts). SemperBlotto (talk) 15:21, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
We've typically handled contentious merging of senses at WT:RFD, leaving this page for merging of pages. Anyway, delete the entry AFAICT.—msh210℠ (talk) 16:13, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not really sure if the first definition can be considered the same thing as the others. It seems doubtful that a physicist and someone in marketing would use it with the same meaning, considering the vast difference between the two fields and the way in which physicists have specific definitions for things. In particular, a physicist would not talk about information flow from person to person, but through a medium such as a vacuum or air. The other two definitions can be merged, though. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 20:04, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

פעלד

[[פעלד]] should be moved back to [[פֿעלד]]. Can someone do this in a way that preserves the history as I don't have the right permissions? --WikiTiki89 (talk) 10:53, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Done. —An gr 11:29, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 08:45, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Template:iu, Template:ikt

WP's page on Inuvialuk seems to suggest that these codes refer to the same language, but I gather the first may actually designate a macrolanguage that encompasses both {{ikt}} and {{ike}}. Is this correct? If so, is this desirable? - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

My understanding of this is that {{ikt}} and {{ike}} should be deprecated in favor of {{iu}}. However, I don't have much experience with these languages, so I can't judge very well. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:11, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I would lean towards retiring the macro-code in favour of the specific codes, but I, too, know little of the languages. WP has separate pages for Eastern Canadian Inuktitut and Western Canadian Inuktitut, but gives the same ISO 639-1 and -2 codes for them. There are spelling differences (angatkuq and angakkuq derive letter-for-letter from the two lects), but it's hard to guess if they would be better handled by {{qualifier}}s than by separate headers. Anyone know if inflection is different? - -sche (discuss) 05:28, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

According to WT:LANGTREAT, only the macrolanguage is treated as a language. - -sche (discuss) 23:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Category:tr:Repeating terms

Should be moved to a more linguistic form, like Category:tr:Reduplicated terms. --Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:35, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Standard title would be Category:Turkish reduplications, no? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:59, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

nineteen eighty-four

should use caps -- Liliana • 17:14, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes it's cited as such. I think I'd've just moved it with no prior discussion. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:57, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Template:kek

Should be renamed from "Kekchí" to "Kekchi" (which is the most common name of the language, when old reference works are considered) or to "Q'eqchi'" (which is also markedly more common than "Kekchí", and may equal or surpass "Kekchi" in commonality in newer — post-1995 — reference works). - -sche (discuss) 00:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Rename to Q'eqchi. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

మూస:done. - -sche (discuss) 18:57, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Category:English lexicons to Category:English terms by usage

This seems more clear than the rather vague 'lexicon' which the average user will probably not understand. We should probably rename Category:English etymologies to Category:English terms by etymology too, and Category:English parts of speech to Category:English terms by part of speech while we're at it. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 17:20, 20 September 2012 (UTC) (Note: It's implied that the categories for other languages will be renamed, too) వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 17:21, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

don't cry over spilt milk

I think this should be moved to cry over spilt milk as a base lemma form. For extensions of the phrase with various verbs and the like, see మూస:google. At least, cry over spilt milk should not be a redirect, IMHO. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:59, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Support move, with don't cry over spilt milk being left as a redirect. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:16, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

klatch and klatsch

One should presumably be merged into the other. —Ruakh_TALK 19:40, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

మూస:done - -sche (discuss) 16:25, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

cleptocracy

Hi, this entry, cleptocracy, has some invisible characters between the final "c" and "y" (as shown by the %C2%AD characters in the browser URL bar when viewing the entry), can someone move it to a clean title? Thanks. /Ch1902 (talk) 11:12, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

మూస:done. There seem to have been a bunch of soft hyphens in it for some reason. —An gr 11:29, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

take it easy

I think [[take it easy]] and [[have it easy]] should be respectively moved to [[take it]] and [[have it]] since they can both be used with other adjectives (or are they adjectives being used as adverbs?). For example: take it slow, have it bad, etc. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:22, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Two of the three senses at [[take it easy]] relates to the conventional use of the imperative, which conventional uses are idioms, as some idiom dictionaries show.

As to the other sense, there is nothing special about "it" in this case. Many nominals can occupy its slot: "I take this kind of request personally.", "He took her deciding to leave hard". I think we already have the right sense of take#Verb. I would replace the definition with {{&lit|take|easy}}. DCDuring TALK 14:30, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I can concede that sense #3 is idiomatic. But sense #2 is really just a particular use for sense #1. Also, "I'm gonna stay home and take it easy." and "I was criticized but did not take it personally." do not use the same sense of "take it". --WikiTiki89 (talk) 14:45, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

But it is conventionalized.

I can't find applicable definitions of take it at Collins or RHU, the only two credible OneLook dictionaries that cover it among the five references that have entries. Do you mean of take#Verb? I think they do. Something like "receive or accept". DCDuring TALK 15:08, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Since when do we do things exactly like other dictionaries? --WikiTiki89 (talk) 15:21, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

have it easy

There are certainly fewer nominals that seem to fit the "it" slot, but "life" and various periods of time ("the rest of the day") do. If you allow for other adjectivals (eg, ready, available, pending, full, outstanding, interested, comparable[+complement], like[+complement], similar[+complement]), it doesn't seem very special at all. DCDuring TALK 14:50, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

If I say "He has it ready." without context, you will wonder what "it" is. If I say "He has it easy." or "He has it bad.", you unambiguously know that I am referring to his quality of life. It may seem that "it" simply refers to "life", but you can't say "He has life easy." It's the same sort of abstract "it" as in "It is raining." You can try say that "it" refers to the sky but that doesn't really work either. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 15:19, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Category:en:Onomatopoeia to Category:English onomatopoeias

Whether something is an onomatopoeia or not is not so much a topic as it is an etymology: the word was coined for its imitative sound. So it really belongs as a subcategory of Category:English etymologies. (The categories for all other languages would be renamed analogically.) వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 00:41, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Move per nom. DCDuring TALK 03:52, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Move all per CodeCat. —An gr 12:41, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Support, I seem to think I brought this up once on the Tea Room, but never followed up on it. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:52, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Moved. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 20:06, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

October 2012

tail between one's legs

Per talk page, isn't with one's tail between one's legs more grammatical? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:46, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Couldn't you say: "He has his tail between his legs."? --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:01, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

(ec) The problem is, it can also be used as the object of have or have got: "to have one's tail between one's legs", "he's got his tail between his legs", etc., so with isn't an indispensable part of the idiom. —An gr 13:02, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps one's tail between one's legs? Mglovesfun (talk) 13:04, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

(one's) tail between one's legs is used as a modifer, both between commas and attributively with hyphens. There's also have one's tail between one's legs. Less common are other verbs like tuck, keep, put, and stick. Redirects and usage examples with the varied embodiments of the metaphor seem appropriate, not moving it. DCDuring TALK 13:12, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

[[one's tail between one's legs]] sounds good. Also, the definition is inadequate. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:16, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Browsing through the b.g.c. hits, I also find "his tail between his legs" used in an absolute construction ("He went home, his tail between his legs, to face his family"), but with other verbs like tuck, keep, put, and stick, as well as in the phrase "his tail was between his legs", I'm only finding it being used literally of a dog, not in the figurative sense applied to a tailless bipedal primate. —An gr 13:25, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't that mean that "His tail between is between his legs." (or with any other form of to be) also exists? I can't seem to find anything on Google Books though. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:26, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Note, I had not seen Angr's edit when I wrote that. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 13:30, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

The entry says the PoS is an Adverb. It is a nominal that can be used in various ways. It might be best to call it a phrase. I have added a redirect from with one's tail between one's legs and an alt form entry at tail-between-one's legs. My feelings won't be hurt if they are deleted because the discussion leads to a resolution incompatible with them. DCDuring TALK 14:16, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

who are you and what have you done with someone

Move to who are you and what have you done with? 'Someone' isn't literally part of the phrase, is it? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 00:06, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

No, usually a complement that falls outside the more set part of a phrase is omitted unless it conveys information such as reflexivity. The sole value of someone is to convey the idea that it relates to a person, but that is adequately accomplished by you, IMO. DCDuring TALK 02:57, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Isn't this just a snowclone? Chuck Entz (talk) 05:00, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but there is no per se reason to exclude them, provided we can come up with a meaningful headword. The biggest problem with most snowclones is that many of them have two or more slots that have some particular semantic relationship. We have not found a way of representing such snowclones that seemed likely to help normal user. DCDuring TALK 05:46, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

blond, blonde

One of these should use trans-see so the translations aren't duplicated, even if the senses are. - -sche (discuss) 07:08, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Done. - -sche (discuss) 03:20, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Appendix:Palindromic words

మూస:movedfrom I wasn't the person who added the cleanup template, but it doesn't seem to be here so I'll add it. I'd suggest separate annexes for each language. Appendix:English Palindromes or Palindromes in English. Mglovesfun 10:07, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think mixing all the languages into one appendix is a good idea either. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:26, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Some languages have only a handful of terms. Perhaps we should separate out those languages with large numbers (English, Swedish, Korean, etc.). bd2412 T 19:02, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Relisted. - -sche (discuss) 07:11, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

's#English

This should be moved to -'s, which is currently a redirect, for all senses. It's not expressed on its own, so as a clitic or suffix or whatever, it needs to be lemmatised with the hyphen. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:08, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Support for the genitive; not sure for the contractions. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 00:26, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

The contractions are only used as clitics and never on their own (except maybe in some obscure dialects). --WikiTiki89 (talk) 06:41, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Move. (There may remain an English section at [['s]], because I'm reasonably sure that some senses of standalone 's meet the CFI as eye dialect — here's one use on b.g.c. — but the main entry belongs at [[-'s]].) —Ruakh_TALK 20:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Also the following: [['ve]], [['m]], [['re]], [['d]], [['ll]], and maybe others I'm missing. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 08:28, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Support 's, oppose the others as they are clitic forms separate words. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:25, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

But don't we usually use hyphens for clitics? The hyphen merely shows that clitic should be attached to something and these "words" are very rarely found on their own. Like Ruakh said, the ones that are attestable on their own should remain but all the clitic forms should have their own entries with hyphens. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 11:32, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

For the record: move all of Wikitiki's as well. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:27, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

's#Dutch

The second part of 's#Dutch (not stuff like 's winters, but the senses with examples like Anna's or taxi's) ought to be moved to -'s, for the same reasons as #'s#English. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:08, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

honor, honour

The definitions need to be synced up or merged, and the translations of honor#Verb should be moved to honour#Verb (simply because that's where most of the translations already are). - -sche (discuss) 17:37, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Slavic/(j)ęzykъ

I suggest this be moved to [[Appendix:Proto-Slavic/językъ]] or [[Appendix:Proto-Slavic/ęzykъ]]. If we choose the latter, then [THIS WORD IS CENSORED DUE TO ITS EXTREME VULGARITY], which also starts with an optional /j/, should also be moved to [THIS WORD IS CENSORED DUE TO ITS EXTREME VULGARITY]. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 12:12, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Could we avoid the censorship, please? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:51, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

It was mostly a joke. But if you're too lazy to mouse over the links then here you go: Appendix:Proto-Slavic/jebati to Appendix:Proto-Slavic/ebati only if "ęzykъ" is chosen over "językъ". --WikiTiki89 (talk) 06:26, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Was in fact thinking of WT:NOT. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:23, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Category:English dated terms

Move to Category:English terms with dated senses. I doubt words like and are dated. -- Liliana • 19:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Right. The result of sense level tags being presumed to apply to an entire language section. Needs to be adjusted in this way case by case. DCDuring TALK 22:04, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

To clarify: Each context-based categorization needs to be evaluated individually. The same really should apply to topical categorization.

A good new category might be "[Language] terms without current usage". Terms with only definitions with "obsolete" tags would be the first to be placed in it, possibly by bot. Entries using {{defdate}} might be lacking appropriate "obsolete" tags and some terms, especially alternative forms with digraphs and diaereses might need review for such categorization. I wonder how many English entries would fall in that category. I would expect that some users of our dumps might like to be able to remove some of those entries from their application databases. DCDuring TALK 17:08, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Agree. Move per nom. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:29, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Disagree. As per discussion in Beer Parlor, it seems better to keep categories like Category:English dated terms as such, for terms which are entirely dated (rather than for terms with a few dated senses, which should get their own category, or none at all). --Pereru (talk) 20:52, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Happy New Year

Is there any reason the 'H' is capital? I think it should be moved to happy New Year, which currently redirects to it. --Wiki Tiki 89 12:28, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Move per nomination. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:18, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

godforsaken

god-forsaken

These entries should be merged in some way. --Wiki Tiki 89 15:35, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

In the absence of attestation the less common sense should just be an alternative form. COCA and BNC are the tools for choice for such determinations for modern English. The more common form should contain all the actual definitions. Attestation could show that one or more of the senses is more commonly attested in the overall-less-common form and/or that one form was more common during some period (COHA and Google N-gram can help with the historical usage. DCDuring TALK 16:52, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Tribus

There is no reason I know for this to be capitalized. It is the translingual term for the taxonomic level known in English as tribe. DCDuring TALK 02:54, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm honestly not sure why the entry exists. Move or delete. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:30, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Deletion is not an option here. tribus is just another taxonomic level, between genus#Translingual and familia#Translingual, where it coexists with supergenus#Translingual, subtribus#Translingual, subfamilia#Translingual, etc. There are quote a number more of these than one might think and new ones seem to be invented from time to time. DCDuring TALK 20:42, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

November 2012

Members of Category:Ankave nouns

Currently, every single one of the entries in this category (we only have nouns in Ankave, so every Ankave entry) happens to have at least one glottal stop. Ptcamn (talk • contribs) who entered them used the apostrophe ( ' ) for the glottal stops, but the only modern authoritative treatments I can find on Ankave (example) use the hanging acute instead ( ´ ). For example, our abia' mɨ'xɨrɨ' is rendered as abia´ mɨ´xɨrɨ´ in these documents. I suggest that we move all of these to the latter spelling (leaving redirects, because it's highly unlikely another language will interfere given the orthography). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:21, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Strongly agree (assuming SIL is a highly reliable source). Mglovesfun (talk) 23:24, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

like taking candy from a baby

I think this should be moved to candy from a baby. --Wiki Tiki 89 13:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Why? Mglovesfun (talk) 23:21, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Because I think "candy from a baby" can be attested outside of the whole phrase and the "like taking" part is pretty SOP. --Wiki Tiki 89 18:44, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't remove the verb. Take is much, much more common than steal or alternatives. I'm not sure whether this should be at [[take candy from a baby]] or [[taking candy from a baby]]. The inflected forms other than taking are not very common and seem to me more of a conceptual metaphor than and set phrase. The existence of taking-candy-from-a-baby and [be] taking candy from a baby suggests that the like is not essential, though like taking candy from a baby is by far the most common form and deserves a redirect and a usage example, IMO. DCDuring TALK 20:00, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Keep as-is due to lack of supporting evidence for any move. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:32, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requested entries (Chinese) to Wiktionary:Requested entries (Mandarin)

We no longer treat Chinese as a language on Wiktionary, so this should probably be moved. I don't know if everything on the page is Mandarin, though, so it should be checked. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 18:57, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, move then check. I can see three entries which explicitly say 'Cantonese', the rest are either explicitly Mandarin, or implicitly Mandarin. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:21, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

But many of them have overlap. It might be more productive just to keep them all on one page. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:00, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Is overlap such a bad thing? The idea of having request pages is to show what needs to be done for that language. Most people who edit Chinese dialects will know only Mandarin, so if they add Mandarin and remove the link, what happens to someone who comes along and wants to add Cantonese entries? If we mix the languages up then that picture is no longer as clear. Imagine if we had one page for both English and Scots! వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 02:05, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

There are cases where the requester doesn't know the dialect, having found it referenced in a book or movie somewhere, or in a menu at a restaurant, so there should be a category for such requests. Also, there may be requests for a specific Han character, so there should be a category for those. Don't forget that most people outside of Asia and Asian communities abroad aren't well-versed in the distinctions between the different dialects. Being rigorous about such distinctions in entries and translation tables is absolutely appropriate, but request categories should be looser to accommodate those who don't know the right question to ask. I would favor merging as proposed, but also adding one category for Chinese (unknown dialect), and one for Han character (if we don't already have those already). Chuck Entz (talk) 02:36, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

It's also possible that someone finds a word in any other language but don't know which language it is in. If I came across something written in Devanagari, I wouldn't know whether to add the request to Sanskrit, Hindi or something else. So Chinese is not special at all in that regard. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 02:57, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

What makes Chinese different is that they have a language name that they have every reason to believe is correct based on common usage. I wouldn't mind having vague categories like "Languages of India" or "Middle Eastern Languages", especially for requests in transliteration. I might cringe a bit if I ran across a request to translate a word like "wee-wish" from "Indian", though. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:56, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, we don't have Wiktionary:Requested entries (West Germanic) or Wiktionary:Requested entries (Iberian). Mglovesfun (talk) 10:45, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

pedagogic

I request that "pedagogical" is made the main entry, while "pedagogic" a secondary entry, per Google Ngram Viewer. Google Ngram Viewer shows "pedagogical" as more common in English, in British English, and in Americam English.

Thus, the translations should be hosted at pedagogical. To do that, one can proceed thus: 1) delete "pedagogical"; 2) move "pedagogic" to "pedagogical" (which includes translations), 3) create "pedagogic". --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:02, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Support —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:04, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Move etc per nom. DCDuring TALK 08:35, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Does this require a formal process as no content is being actually removed, only some edit history? DCDuring TALK 08:38, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I wouldn't delete either entry, I would just copy and paste the translates with an edit summary saying "import translations from pedagogic; see that entry for edit history". - -sche (discuss) 09:09, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Yep, editing entries is still ok. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Appendix:Proto-Western Malayo-Polynesian (subpages)

The templates and categories for this alleged language family and its proto-language have been nominated for deletion, and these should go, too, for the same reason: this is pretty much a geographical classification defined by the lack of the innovations that characterize branches that have split off in the move eastward. In most cases, there's no difference from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian.

These subpages should be either merged with their Proto-Malayo-Polynesian counterparts, or converted to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian forms and moved to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian in the cases where we have no entries for the counterparts. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:15, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

(language) diminutives / (language) noun diminutive forms to (language) diminutive nouns

And the same for augmentatives, too. 'Diminutives' is too vague, as there can be different parts of speech that are diminutive and I don't think we'd want to lump them all together. On the other hand, a diminutive isn't really a form in the sense that we use. A diminutive isn't an inflection of a noun and doesn't belong to a paradigm, rather it's generally a noun all in its own right and may have a meaning that is not predictable from its base. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 16:43, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Support move. We just have to edit {{diminutive of}} and delete the old cats, right? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:00, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes. I suppose for consistency we should rename the categories for other parts of speech too, but I didn't think to include them and they are not as common. (Dutch has a productive way to form diminutive adverbs, though) వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 22:02, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Moved. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 13:59, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:fuf, Template:fuc, and Template:ff

These beguilingly named, closely related West African lects (one is called "Pular", one is "Pulaar") seem to quite possibly just be dialects of {{ff}} (Fula). It also seems possible that Fula is pluricentric and really a sort of macrolanguage that needs to be split up. Pulaar has a bunch of entries, Fula has a couple, and Pular has none. However, entries like Haalpulaar suggest that {{fuf}} and {{fuc}}, at least, are even considered to be the same language by Pula(a)r speakers themselves. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:58, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Merge all to {{ff}} -- Liliana • 22:07, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

~~Merge into {{ff}}.~~ Also consider: Template:ffm, Template:fue, Template:fuh, Template:fuq, Template:fuv, Template:fub, Template:fui. - -sche (discuss) 22:32, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Definitely merge the Fulfuldes, I have no doubts about that. Should we use {{context}} tags to distinguish entries currently marked as Pulaar? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:38, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Whenever we know or suspect that a form is restricted to any of these dialects, or any of the dialects Ethnologue declined to code, we should indicate that, yes. We should be careful not to mark general forms as dialect-specific, of course. Our Serbo-Croatian editors can tell of how nationalists often mark a {{sh}} form as natiolect-specific when they're really used by all the languages. (Disclaimer: alternatively, if you subscribe to the philosophy some expressed in a recent RFDO discussion, it's not misleading to mark a general word as being restricted to a narrow context.) If we ever find native speakers to really expand our {{ff}} entries, verbs will need multiple conjugation tables to show the different endings used in different dialects, but that is not an argument against a merger: several Germanic languages have verbs with multiple tables because the verbs sometimes conjugate strongly, sometimes weakly. - -sche (discuss) 22:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Abstain. I do not oppose a merge, but I feel I should abstain because it is not clear to me that the differences are smaller than those between {{sco}} and {{en}}, or {{lb}} and {{ksh}} (and {{de}}). - -sche (discuss) 02:03, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

December 2012

Category:Human

This should be renamed Category:Humans. Compare Category:People, Category:Social sciences, Category:Given names. - -sche (discuss) 05:29, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Or Category:Humanity. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:26, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Support Humanity (lol) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:28, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Wait, what's the different between this and Category:People? Is there one? Should there be one? - -sche (discuss) 07:37, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, cats like 'Emotions', 'Age', and 'Thinking' seem better placed in 'Humanity' than in 'People' IMO. So I think we oughn't to delete it, just rename it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:41, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Category:English archaic terms

Move to Category:English terms with archaic senses, because words like "absorb" are not archaic. Compare WT:RFM#Category:English_dated_terms. - -sche (discuss) 01:12, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Move —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:07, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Move. I am not aware of any complaints about Category:English terms with obsolete senses, which is the current category of the items formerly in Category:English obsolete terms.

In principle, a bot could populate this category by inspecting each English L2 section to make sure that a given section has only archaic senses. There is the question of how to handle homonyms, one having only archaic senses, the other not. Also there would be questions of how to handle terms that had both archaic and obsolete terms and no current senses etc. DCDuring TALK 22:43, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Do NOT move. I am strongly against a conflation of "words with X sense" and "X terms" categories. Either these are to be kept distinct, or then the "terms with X senses" category should disappear, and the "X terms" should remain, but only for those words that are fully X (i.e., fully obsolete, archaic, dated, etc.), not simply have archaic (obsolete, dated) senses. As was said in the discussion at the Beer Parlor, I'm in favor of new templates {{obsolete term}}, {{archaic term}} etc. that categorize the whole world, while {{archaic}}, {{obsolete}} either remain as they are now, or then become uncategorizing labels. Main reason: a category like Category:English terms with obsolete senses has a confusing name, especially to the casual reader, who will probably think that all words in it are fully obsolete, or then that none of them are fully obsolete. Yes, logically speaking the name is correct, but most people don't think in terms of formal logics or boolean algebra.--Pereru (talk) 21:00, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Subpages of WT:Grease pit archive to WT:Grease pit, WT:Beer parlour archive to WT:Beer parlour

Can we move the "old" archives to match the new naming format of these pages? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 03:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Category:Czech male surnames

And Category:Czech female surnames, to Category:Czech masculine surnames. This is grammatically gender first and foremost, right? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:09, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I think the categories should be deleted (with their contents moved up to Category:Czech surnames) since feminine surnames are not considered a separate surname from the masculine, just a feminine inflected form. --Wiki Tiki 89 08:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

And there I was trying to visualize Category:Czech male surnames and Category:Czech female surnames getting together and having a bunch of cute little baby surnames- spoilsport! ;p Chuck Entz (talk) 08:41, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

@Wikitiki: Quite right. I would actually much prefer that solution. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:59, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose the move. Related although not strictly applying votes are Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-01/Renaming given name appendixes and Wiktionary:Votes/2009-12/Masculine and feminine given names. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Re: "... feminine surnames are not considered a separate surname from the masculine, just a feminine inflected form": Unlikely; any references? Nor is "Martina" an inflected form of "Martin". --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
So you are saying that a Czech brother has a different last name from his sister? Surnames should not be considered in the same way as given names. --Wiki Tiki 89 20:12, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:kud

As part of my ongoing effort to ensure Wiktionary calls each language by its most common distinct English name, I have discovered that Auhelawa is about three times more common as the name of this language than 'Auhelawa. I propose renaming it accordingly (i.e. dropping the apostrophe). - -sche (discuss) 02:49, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

~~Oppose~~. I would also like to know your methodology for determining relative commonness, because I suspect that most search engines would not necessarily show the apostrophe in their results. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:48, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Search engines' OCR softwares do not always notice apostrophes and reproduce them in the snippets displayed on the search engine page, but it is possible to check the sources directly and confirm the spelling used in them. In this case, searching Google Books for "Auhelawa", "'Auhelawa" and a large number of possible scannos and OCR misreadings ("Nuhelawa" "Wuhelawa", "Ruhelawa", etc) finds 36 books; 18 have no preview available and/or are different copies of the same book; 4 are printed copies of Wikipedia. Of the usable books,

Eleven English works spell the name Auhelawa:
- 1992, publication of Library of Congress subject headings — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 2506
- 1992, in Culture change, language change: case studies from Melanesia (edited by Thomas Edward Dutton) — uses no apostrophe
- 1993, Loinane miyamiyanane: Old Testament stories and extracts in the Auhelawa language, published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics — uses no apostrophe
- 1995, Darrell T. Tryon, Shigeru Tsuchida, Comparative Austronesian Dictionary — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 131: "AUHELAWA Alt. KURADA, NUAKATA, URADA. Class. OC, WOC, Papuan Tip, Nuclear PT, Suauic."
- 1998, in Papers in Austronesian linguistics, volume 5 (edited by H. Steinhauer and Malcolm Ross) — uses no apostrophe
- 2003, Shelley Mallett, Conceiving cultures: reproducing people & places on Nuakata, Papua New Guinea — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 50 "Daphne Lithgow informed us that the language of Nuakata, Alina Nu'ata, is a dialect of Auhelawa, ..."
- 2006, G. W. Trompf, Religions of Melanesia: A Bibliographic Survey — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 646
- 2009, Roger Averill, Boy He Cry: An Island Odyssey — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 289 "'I was hoping to have a look at some of your transcriptions, to expand our Auhelawa dictionary, for the Bible translation.'"
- ~~2009, Aparecida Vilaça, Robin Wright, Native Christians~~ (the language name occurs only once, without an apostrophe, but in the bibliography, in the title of an article by Schram)
- ~~2010, Michael R. Leming, George E. Dickinson, Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement~~ (the language name occurs only once, without an apostrophe, but in the bibliography, in the title of an article by Schram)
- 2011, Ryan Schram, Feast of Water: Christianity and the Economic Transformation of a Melanesian Society — has no preview, but the blurb uses no apostrophe, and Lindhardt (who refers to Schram) uses no apostrophe (see below)
- 2011, Martin Lindhardt, Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 303: "Schram's 2007 discussion of the opposition of “Christian” feasting with previous modes of feast in Auhelawa (Normanby Island, Papua New Guinea) presents a similar kind of purification ..."
- 2012, Christopher Moseley, Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages — apparently uses no apostrophe (but is odd, for which reason I'm willing to discount it)
  ~~2010, Nuclear Papuan Tip Languages~~ (copy of WP)
  
  ~~2010, Austronesian Language Introduction~~ (copy of WP)
  
  ~~2011, Articles on Milne Bay Province~~ (copy of WP)
  ~~2011, Austronesialaiset Kielet~~ (copy of fi.WP!)
Only one English work apparently spells the name 'Auhelawa:
- 1990, David Lithgow, Daphne Lithgow, 'Auhelawa New Reader, book 1 — has no preview, but the blurb does use an apostrophe
One work, written in Auhelawa(!), spells the name Auhelawa:
- 1986, Elisa Ephraim, Talauvahili ʻAlina Auhelawa (which means "We read Auhelawa") — uses no apostrophe
No works written in Auhelawa spell the name 'Auhelawa.
One work written in German spells the name Auhelawa:
- 2002, Harald Haarmann, Sprachenalmanach: Zahlen und Fakten zu allen Sprachen der Welt — uses no apostrophe

Earlier, I looked at all of the sources first, and then commented here, and so posted my general impression that the spelling without the apostrophe was "about three times more common" than the spelling with it. Now that I have taken more detailed notes, I see that my estimate was over-generous, and I recognise that one work I had previously though independent is another WP copy; the spelling without the apostrophe is used by the only available published work in the language, and (with as far as I can see only one exception) by all researchers studying the language and all reference works treating it at a distance; the spelling with an apostrophe doesn't even meet CFI.

Addendum: searching WorldCat finds a few of these books, and no other books. It does find a few "computer files"; five of the first six "computer files" use no apostrophe, one uses an apostrophe; all the other "computer file" hits don't use the term in their accessible portions. - -sche (discuss) 23:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

OK, striking my opposition above. I still suspect that the apostrophe is more correct, but clearly there is no attestation to back that up. (If you're wondering why I'm so suspicious in this case, it's because Latin script orthographies have maddeningly kept to a long-standing practice of ignoring glottal stops in Pacific languages (sometimes only when they would be obvious and unambiguous to speakers, like what de Feu does, and sometimes wholesale), which I assume this represents, even though they are critical to the languages.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:00, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:alc

This language is more commonly called "Kawésqar" (even our entries treat "Kawésqar" as the lemma; compare Qawasqar, Kawésqar). - -sche (discuss) 02:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Support —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:49, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

మూస:done. - -sche (discuss) 06:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:hmd

Although I would love to rename this language "Large Flowery Miao", that phrase gets only 2 Google Books hits—though that's two more than our current name for it, "A-hmaos". By far the most common name for the language is "A-Hmao" (or "A Hmao", but I prefer the hyphen, myself). I propose we rename it. - -sche (discuss) 02:59, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Support —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:49, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Wait, your comments on User:-sche/missing codes have led me to wonder: should this code even exist, or should it be subsumed into {{hmn}}? - -sche (discuss) 22:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Meh, kept for now. (This issue can always be re-examined later.) - -sche (discuss) 06:51, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Btw, "Big Flowery Miao" gets 23 hits (that's still less common than "A-Hmao"). - -sche (discuss) 02:12, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

మూస:done. - -sche (discuss) 06:51, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:mij

This should probably be renamed "Mungbam" for the reasons Good gives here. - -sche (discuss) 18:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

I suppose... but Good admits that Mungbam is currently unciteable by our standards, and unless something has changed in the meantime, it would be crystal-ballsy to change it based on expectation that it will become standard. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:26, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, Good says "This name [Mungbam] has now been used in several publications, two of which are given in the bibliography. మూస:... Lovegren is presently working on a grammar of the [mij] varieties and will use the name Mungbam in that grammar, at which point it can be fully expected to become the standard reference name in academic works, though we should stress that the name has already been used in peer-reviewed publications." And he says "both [of these] publications use the name Mungbam:"

2011, Good, Lovegren, Mve, Nganguep Tchiemouo, Voll, and Di Carlo, The languages of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon: Grammatical overview, in Africana Linguistica 17, pages 101–164
2011, Di Carlo, Lower Fungom linguistic diversity and its historical development: Proposals from a multidisciplinary perspective, in Africana Linguistica 17, pages 53–100

OTOH, those two publications and Lovegren's dictionary only make two citations (once published, Lovegren's dictionary and Di Carlo's Lower Fungom... can both count, but The languages of the Lower Fungom can't, because it was co-written by both). As you say, it may be best to wait and revisit this in time. - -sche (discuss) 23:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Update: I am still unable to find, via Google Books, any uses of "Abar" (the name we currently call this lect by) as a name for this lect. Via Google Scholar, I can track down several more uses of "Mungbam", including:

2012, Jesse Lovegren, Stem-initial prominence in Mungbam, in the Selected Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of African Linguistics
2012, Pierpaolo Di Carlo, Jeff Good, What are we trying to preserve? Diversity, change, and ideology at the edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields: Mungbam, the Ji group, Fang, Koshin, and Ajumbu are only known to be spoken within Lower Fungom and have no established close relatives outside of the area.

- -sche (discuss) 07:14, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:os

The Digor and Iron dialects of Ossetian seem quite different, and already many (most?) of our entries distinguish which is meant. It seems to me that there is a fair chance that the two are separate enough to deserve being called different languages here. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I've seen them referred to as separate languages before, but there's still some debate over that. Doesn't matter to me. But would there still be plain Ossetian language entries or would all be sorted into the new languages? There are some that aren't labelled as either Iron or Digor.Word dewd544 (talk) 17:58, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Iron is by far the more common dialect, and the literary Ossetian language is based on Iron. However, Digor is different enough that it could be considered a separate language. The main things against it here are the relatively small number of speakers and that it does not yet have a written standard, as far as I know. But there is now a Digor dictionary out there, and it’s probably just a matter of time before Digor develops a literary standard of its own. I think it’s unlikely that we will get enough Digor contributions to make a difference, but it is always possible that someone will start entering words from a Digor dictionary. The Digor language code is oss-dig. We could use os for Ossetian proper (and Iron), and oss-dig for Digor. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:20, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

In that case, I support. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 03:40, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

A standard language based on one widely-spoken dialect, and another lect sometimes considered a dialect and sometimes considered its own language? This reminds me of Tosk vs Gheg Albanian: some references say they're mutually unintelligible separate languages, speakers say their differences present no impediment to communication. Unfortunately, we lack speakers of the Ossestian lects, and the dictionary of Digor is said to waffle, the author calling it a language and the editor calling it a dialect. Stephen is probably right that it's just a matter of time before Digor develops its own standard (and merits separation as much as Luxembourgish and Limburgish do from each other and from German); OTOH, Wiktionary, like Wikipedia, is not a crystal ball. My preference would be to wait and not split them for now. If we do split them, I agree with using {{os}} for Iron (compare {{lt}} and {{sgs}}), and we should devise an exceptional code for Digor that fits our usual naming scheme (ira-odg or ira-dig), rather than using Linguist List's ersatz "oss-dig". - -sche (discuss) 03:42, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Category:English terms with obsolete senses

As per the discussion in the Beer Parlor, I suggest that this category be reserved only for words that are not fully obsolete (i.e., that contain at least one current sense), and that all words that have only obsolete senses (i.e., fully obsolete words) be moved back to Category:English obsolete terms. (I think it would be better to, as CodeCat suggested, simply leave non-fully obsolete words uncategorized, which would imply eventually deleeting Category:English terms with obsolete senses, but I'm OK with leaving it there for partially obsolete words if others want that.) --Pereru (talk) 08:33, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Support వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 02:26, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to support it, but not if there is no implementation scheduled. I would not be happy if this was our policy and two months from now most of the terms that were supposed to be in it were not. We need a dump run to identity the L2 sections that need the categorization. And maintaining it really should be part of an AF-type bot. I do hope that this is intended to be applied to all living languages. Are all obsolete tags not in English marked with lang= tags? DCDuring TALK 13:01, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I would also support requiring lang=en for these tags, because people constantly forget those tags and put entries in the English categories. In fact the whole "English as default" thing doesn't work too well... I've lost count of how many instances of {{term}} without a language I've had to fix... వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 13:38, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

How can implementation be scheduled? How are such actions decided? (I've just created a {{obsolete term}} for fully obsolete terms, and I plan to slowly add it to all Latvian words for which it is appropriate, so as to slowly fill Category:Latvian obsolete terms; but how about English and all the other languages?) --Pereru (talk) 02:01, 22 December 2012 (UTC) I've just transfered abstrude and a few other similar terms to Category:English obsolete terms by changing the tag from {{obsolete}} to {{obsolete term}}. Is that part of what should be happening? --Pereru (talk) 02:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Should {{obsolete}} be used for obsolete senses or obsolete terms? Using it for obsolete terms has one advantage: anyone can skim the list of obsolete terms and immediately spot a word they know is still in use. Trying to spot a completely-obsolete term among a list of terms with obsolete senses would be much harder. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 02:20, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

On the other hand, people are more likely to use the shorter, generic name {{obsolete}} where it doesn't belong than to use the longer, explicit name {{obsolete term}} where it doesn't belong, so I think using {{obsolete}} only for obsolete terms and not for senses would be counter-intuitive and a bad idea. My preference would be to use {{obsolete}} for senses... but perhaps we should insist upon two explicitly named templates, {{obsolete term}} and {{obsolete sense}} (both with the display text "obsolete"?). Using two explicitly dedicated templates would make separate categorisation of entirely obsolete terms and of terms with obsolete senses practical, too. Btw, the "obsolete terms" category could be a subcategory of the "terms with obsolete senses" category, like "proper nouns" are a subcategory of "nouns". And we could keep {{obsolete}} (because new users and visitors from other projects may call it directly or in creative ways, like {{context|UK|obsolete|_|outside of|_|dialects}}), but treat its Whatlinkshere as a standing, self-updating cleanup list. - -sche (discuss) 04:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I tend to agree with -sche above; {{obsolete sense}} would make, well, sense. But now there's one thing bugging me: shouldn't fully obsolete terms have the "obsolete" tag somewhere in their inflection line? Or else we'd have to add an {{obsolete term}} tag to every single sense, or else we imply that one of the obsolete senses is actually current... --Pereru (talk) 03:48, 23 December 2012 (UTC) By the way, in principle everything applies mutatis mutandis to the other Period labels archaic and {{dated}}, right? --Pereru (talk) 03:50, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

So you are saying that obsoleteness of a term is not a context? I suppose that is true, but we don't have any system currently in place for indicating term-wide contexts. This has been a problem in the past too... for example {{cardinal}} or {{personal}} shouldn't really be usage labels either. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 03:55, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

We indicate obsolescence on the sense line when only one of several senses is obsolete, so I think obsolescence should also be indicated on the sense line when all senses are obsolete: indicating obsolescence on each sense line in all cases adds clarity. Meanwhile, we indicate on the inflection/headline line when certain inflected forms are obsolete (or dialectal, etc; see [[learn]], [[work#verb]], etc): so indicating the obsolescence of senses on the inflection line, when the inflected forms are not any more obsolete (or {{dated}}!) than the word itself, would be confusing. I expect some people wouldn't notice the tag on the inflection line, and would thus think that no sense was obsolete (not what you want), or would notice the tag but think (logically) than it applied to the inflections and again that the senses were not obsolete (again, not what you want)... I think it's better to indicate the obsolescence of the senses on the sense line. (How many highly polysemous obsolete words are there, anyway?) - -sche (discuss) 05:09, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

We don't do this for any other register or dialect: We don't have separate categories for US-only terms and for those with US-only senses, nor separate categories for math-specific terms and for those with math-specific senses. Why should obsolete be different?—msh210℠ (talk) 06:06, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

For one thing, it would give us a list of terms which a bot could use to identify terms that should probably not be used in definitions. The same would be true in varying degrees for {{archaic}}, {{dated}}, {{rare}}, and possibly others. DCDuring TALK 10:27, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:arc and Template:syc

The same language in two different scripts with two different literary standards, and yet each quite similar to each other. I think I see a pattern. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:49, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

"Arc" should only be used for "Imperial Aramaic" (aka "Official Aramaic"), ideally written in the Old Aramaic script rather than Hebrew. Current usage does not reflect that though and there are a whole mix of dialects intertwined within the "arc" code, so that one at least should be split. "Syc" should stay as it is. --334a (talk) 08:04, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I think SIL has done a really bad job with the classification of Aramaic languages. ARC was an umbrella code that was used to describe all later Aramaic varieties in ISO-639-2 in ISO 639-3 they introduced SYC for classical Syriac, by far the most widespread form of literary Aramaic.--Rafy (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

frs to gmw-fre

I propose to create {{gmw-fre}} as an unambiguous code for the "East Frisian" variety of Frisian, and switch all remaining transclusions of "frs" to "gmw-fre". Currently, we use {{frs}} for the that variety of Frisian, but {{frs}} is ambiguous: it appears to have been intended by the ISO to designate either "Saterland Frisian" (the last surviving variety of East Frisian, which has the code {{stq}}) or "Eastern Frisian" (a variety of Low German which, like other German varieties, has been subsumed into {{nds-de}}). (In the first of two previous discussions of {{frs}}, all participants assumed that {{frs}} and {{stq}} referred to Frisian and therefore debated merging them. The second discussion investigated whether {{frs}} referred to a Frisian lect or a Low German one: ultimately, it seems it's unknowable, since Ethnologue hasn't responded to requests for clarification.) - -sche (discuss) 18:56, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I personally don't see the point. There is an existing, valid code which may (or may not) have ben intended for this language. Even when we follow ISO standards, we do tend to, for example, redefine the spatial or temporal extent of that code in a different way than Ethnologue might. This seems to be the same thing to me. If {{frs}} is ever officially demystified, and it's not in line with our coverage, then we can revisit the matter. For now, I advocate against moving it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:16, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

All we want to avoid is people making entries in East Frisian. We could just turn it into an etymology code and move it to {{etyl:frs}}? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 20:24, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I think allowing/barring East Frisian entries is a separate question. Saterland Frisian is the last living dialect of East Frisian, but at least some terms from other East Frisian dialects are attested, and I can see how some people might prefer to have ==East Frisian== entries for those terms, or simply to have East Frisian terms like we have Middle High German terms. I don't think the question of whether to allow or ban that should be rolled into the question of what code to use.

I oppose "{{etyl:frs}}". Ethnologue calls "frs" a "Low German" (not "Frisian") language, claims it's spoken by only 2000 people (the Frisian lect is dead, but Saterland Frisian is spoken by 6000; the Low German lect is spoken by 230 000), and says it's not mutually intelligible with Saterland Frisian (which is true of the Low German lect, untrue of the Frisian lect). Randomly guessing which one of those lects to use the ambiguous code for is one thing... but designing a brand-new code that is intentionally ambiguous (like {{etyl:frs}})?

Given Ethnologue's ambiguity and the fact both lects go by "East Frisian" (though the Low German one also uses "Eastern Frisian", and the Frisian one might, too), I suspect that some of the {{frs}} words I've seen in etymologies and haven't been able to find {{stq}} cognates/descendents of are indeed the product of people using "frs" to mean "Low German". (I haven't been able to confirm any yet because East Frisian and Eastern Frisian are both relatively obscure.) - -sche (discuss) 22:51, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Template:cpe-pit, Template:cpe-nor, and Template:pih

These are English-based creoles spoken in the remote Pitcairn and Norfolk islands, which are extremely similar to each other. {{cpe-pit}} is labeled as Pitkern and has no entries, {{cpe-nor}} is labeled as Norfuk and has a few entries, and {{pih}} is labeled as Pitcairn-Norfolk and has a couple entries. The lects seem massively similar to me, with the same sound shifts and vocabulary for the most part, and I propose that we merge them as {{pih}}, either called Pitcairn-Norfolk or Pitkern-Norfuk (i.e. English names of the islands on which they are spoken or the creole names of the islands). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Support. In one short previous discussion, Liliana agreed that the split was silly and supported a merger, too. The differences seem no greater than those between the kind of English that's spoken in Hawai'i and the kind that's spoken in Ireland: yeah, there are differences in pronunciation and orthography, and there are even differences in grammar and vocabulary, but they're not different languages. - -sche (discuss) 06:05, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Funny you should bring up the English spoken in Hawaiʻi. Luckily, we don't (AFAIK) have a code for Hiberno-English, but we seem to be treating Hawaiian English slang as a separate language. See WT:RFDO#Template:hwc. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:41, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Support. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 06:15, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I have unsplit cpe-pit and cpe-nor from pih. - -sche (discuss) 22:25, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Concordance:2000 AD

This should be in an appendix, right? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:49, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Yup, I'd just get on with it to be honest. Nothing much to discuss. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:50, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Done. Striking. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

January 2013

Template:pml

Currently called Lingua Franca which is a very unclear name. I would greatly prefer that it be called Sabir, which seems to be what speakers called it, or if you really don't like that, 'Mediterranean Lingua Franca' which is what Wikipedia calls, and at least distinguishes it other languages considered lingue franche in various times and various locales. PS: If you agree, it would be nice to "speedy" this process (it only requires editing the template) so that I can create entries without it becoming an annoyance to whomever it falls to to close the RFM (deleting and recreating categories, etc). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

"Lingua Franca"! Wow, that is a bad name. I often note that I try to "ensure Wiktionary calls each language by its most common distinct English name", and that's not distinct—nor, AFAICT, all too commonly used as the name of that language in English (as opposed to mentioned as what the name of that language was in various Mediterranean tongues).

Numbers and pros and cons, as I see them:

I gave up the search strings "Lingua Franca" and "Lingua Franca language" because they turned up too many irrelevant things, but మూస:b.g.c. gets 18 hits, of which 5 refer to this language (though none capitalise "lingua"); 3 just happen to contain those words in that order, 1 is unclear, 1 uses it as the name of a sci-fi language, 1 is "Lingua Franca Creek" and 7 show no preview or are duplicates. Of the 25 variously-capitalised hits for "spoke Lingua Franca", almost all refer to this language.
"Mediterranean Lingua Franca" gets ~70 hits with previews. Some are of "Mediterranean lingua franca", but because every name this language has shows up uncapitalised half the time, it isn't clear if those hits mean any lingua franca of the Med or still refer to this language. "Mediterranean Lingua Franca" does seem to be the most common name of the language, but it's still somewhat ambiguous... English is a language people in Tunis and Rome can use to communicate, is it the Mediterranean Lingua Franca?
"spoke Sabir" gets five hits ("speak Sabir" gets nothing relevant AFAICT), "Sabir language" gets ~10 hits—but one is a reference to a Turkic language. Other search strings could probably show it to be about as common as LF if not MLF. And no-one is quite sure who the Sabirs were, or what their language was (it might have been Khazar or Common Turkic; otherwise, it doesn't have a code), so it's possible to put off worrying about a naming conflict with Turkic Sabir until such a time as it has a code and actually conflicts.

Support renaming to whichever name you think best. - -sche (discuss) 08:40, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Collocations like మూస:BGC give way more relevant hits than మూస:BGC. The former name has been used to the refer to the language since at least the mid-19th century. So I think "Sabir" remains the best option. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:59, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Support renaming. “Mediterranean Lingua Franca” sounds much better, but you know best. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 23:05, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

The only reason why that might be better is that it isn't associated with Molière as much. As for euphony... somewhat. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:21, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Category:Requested entries and Category:Requested entries by language

I think these are the same thing? They should be merged, but which name should the merged category have? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 00:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Category:Requested entries contains User:Brian0918/Hotlist, that seems to be the only difference. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:04, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

never-never land

Tagged {{rft}} with the comment "redirect to, alternate form of, or synonym of neverland?" But the Tea rooms discussions apparently petered out ages ago. - -sche (discuss) 05:44, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Shouldn't be redirected or soft-redirected (made an alt form), IMO. Are the terms really synonymous? If so, one could be defiend as the other + {{gloss}}. - -sche (discuss) 05:46, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

~~Appendix:Appendix:Proto-Sino-Tibetan/b-r-gjat ~ b-g-rjat~~

Incorrectly tagged with {{delete}} by 129.78.32.22 (talk), who wants it moved. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:39, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

మూస:done -- Liliana • 02:41, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:nbr

It can get no worse than this. We evidently call a language Numana-Nunku-Gbantu-Numbu. The name is formed by hyphenating the four major dialects. I propose that we instead call it Sanga, listed as an alternative by Ethnologue. Although it appears to have just as many uses as Numana-Nunku-Gbantu-Numbu on BGC for the meaning "a language of Nigeria", it does appear to be citable as the name of the ethnic group which speaks it, which I think is a damn sight better than the current condition. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 08:11, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

You think that's bad? Look at Template:gel (Kag-Fer-Jiir-Koor-Ror-Us-Zuksun). The horror, the horror. - -sche (discuss) 08:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

The name WP suggests, "Gbantu", does get one GBC hit... in an specifically unpublished paper cited in Zwischen Bantu und Burkina; "Gwantu" gets nothing relevant. ~~I like your suggestion of "Sanga" (I even managed to dig up one or two citations of it as a language name). Support renaming.~~ - -sche (discuss) 09:17, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Be careful. It looks like you're confusing it with Sango ({{sg}}). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 09:22, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, you're right. That's... ugh. As silly as its current name is, giving it a name that's only attested in reference to some other language would obviously be undesirable... and calling it by the name of only one of its dialects (Gbantu) isn't exactly ideal, either (compare {{mij}}), although I'd go along with it for lack of a better option. It may be that, as with {{gel}}, the least odious (or at least, least confusing) thing to do is leave it as-is. :/ - -sche (discuss) 23:18, 14 January 2013 (UTC) - -sche (discuss) 02:06, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, can you figure out what the first cite refers to? That might help. And as I mentioned, it still may be a more logical choice, considering that మూస:BGC isn't too sparse. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:14, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:dud

A less extreme example of the "string all the dialects' names together" phenomenon, "Hun-Saare" is unattested. Somewhat surprisingly, "Saare" is also unattested. "Duka", however — the name WP uses — is just barely attested. - -sche (discuss) 08:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Support —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 09:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Category:Wiktionary:Language considerations

Why fake the Wiktionary namespace in a category name? Seems a bit illogical to me. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:08, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I think it is useful for making clear that it is a category for Wiktionary-related things rather than lexical things. It's also common practice on Wikipedia I think. But we don't apply it very consistently right now. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:17, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

If we were to follow Wikipedia's practice, we would call it Category:Wiktionary language considerations rather than making it look like a namespace within a namespace. —An gr 15:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Category:Wiktionary language considerations is better. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 14:38, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds better to me too. ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 02:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:myx

Masaba, the name that Wikipedia uses, is definitely more common than our unciteable Masaaba. (User:-sche is on wikibreak, so somebody else needs to comment on this one.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:18, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

From what I gathered that’s correct. Support. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 06:01, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Also note that muntu is the only entry we have, so just a few categories to deal with. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:27, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Support ("Masaaba" does seem to be attested, e.g. Godfrey Mwakikagile uses it in two books, Derek Nurse and Gerard Philippson use it and David William Cohen seems to use it, but "Masaba" is more common). Curiously, the spelling with one A seems to be the original spelling, and the modern spelling, while the spelling with two As seems to have been a fad of the 1970s that dropped off after the 90s. - -sche (discuss) 19:46, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:wikipedia

I propose that we merge this template with {{slim-wikipedia}} (by redirecting it there, or deleting it and moving {{slim-wikipedia}} to {{wikipedia}}). I believe this will help reduce entry clutter without affecting usability because, unlike the “In other projects” box, {{slim-wikipedia}} can still be easily seen, and because {{wikipedia}}’s bigger logo, longer text and greater waste of vertical space are useless. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 21:48, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I haven't noticed the larger size being that much of a problem, though. And Wikipedia has an identical-looking set of templates I think, so it helps with cross-project consistency. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 21:57, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Strong oppose. I think that without this template, few would notice the Wikipedia links. Sorry, Ungoliant. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:50, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Tend to support but hesitantly. Put me down as an abstain. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. {{wikipedia}} wastes a lot of space. --Yair rand (talk) 08:32, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Support if {{slim-wikipedia}} has all the features {{wikipedia}} does (linking to more than one article, linking to foreign-languages Wikipedias, etc.). (I haven't checked.)—msh210℠ (talk) 16:52, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose per Metaknowledge. - -sche (discuss) 19:35, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Support merging the two; Oppose making it smaller. How is space on web pages being wasted, particularly by a box that floats to the right of the content? Is scrollbar an endangered resource? —Michael Z. 2013-02-03 00:26 z

Keep. In entries where there are multiple L2s, each with their own language-specific wikipedia links, not to mention their own images, it's not unheard of for the wikipedia box from one language to end up at least partially across from the entry for the neighboring language- so space is, indeed, sometimes a problem. That said, I don't agree with eliminating the option of ever using a full-size wikipedia box even in the majority of cases where space isn't an issue. Like Μετάknowledge says, it's good to have it highly visible sometimes. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:58, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

{{slim-wikipedia}} was originally intended to be the only interproject link template that could appear above the first L2 header. It was intended to send folks to WP in cases where there might be a proper Wiktionary entry, but WP had an entry or a disambiguation page that had material not in and not appropriate for Wiktionary. The principal situation would have been for English proper noun entries for which there might be many proper noun that did not meet our prevailing criteria for inclusion or had not yet been entered. The rationale for the placement was that this was the encyclopedic equivalent of {{also}}. It was made small to take up less vertical screen space.

Oppose. If this project link box is to be smaller, then all should be. If the original rationale for {{slim-wikipedia}} as a special box for above-first-L2 placement is considered currently valid then the rationale for small size also remains. DCDuring TALK 01:38, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

cœn-

Also

And its 6 members:

Also involved are unligatured twins of most of these

These are all fine entries, but the rare ligatured forms shouldn't be the lemmas. Right now, there are alt-form entries for each of these with the preferred unligatured spellings. What I would like to do is to swap the ligatured with the unligatured entries: move the ligatured entry to a temporary name, move the unligatured entry into its place, and move the ligatured entry to where the unligatured entry was. After that, it should be a simple matter of switching ligatures for diphthongs and vice-versa in the texts of the entries. This should preserve the edit histories and keep the content intact.

I realize there are probably many other cases like this, but this one is small and contained enough to be easily accomplished without much fuss. I almost just went ahead and did it myself, but figured it was better to give it due process.

Please note that I'm not talking about the pondian difference of oe vs e- just the characters used to represent the UK spelling. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:37, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Support. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 06:00, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

It's predictably down to Doremítzwr (talk • contribs), someone I would consider a POV pusher with respect to using archaic spellings when contemporary spellings are available. Support. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Support వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:08, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

To be pedantic, Category:English words prefixed with cœn- won't change. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:57, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:ko-freq and subpages of Appendix:Korean frequentatives

KYPark (talk • contribs)'s latest pseudoscientific pet project, which ought to be moved to the subpages of User:KYPark. I have moved a couple things, as previous editors have moved his off-topic musings, rants, etc to his userspace, but I just wanted to ensure that there is consensus for this. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:34, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Teetotalism

Since we don't have an entry for Teetotal, shouldn't this just be deleted? Note, there are no incoming links from the main namespace, but if there were they should be changed to teetotal. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:09, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, delete rather than merge, since we don't normally keep redirects from capitalized forms to lowercase forms. —An gr 18:02, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:nhn

Currently called 'Central Nahuatl'. I think it is actually a dialect of {{nah}} (Nahuatl) but I am not completely sure. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Template:ltc

I've moved Eirikr (talk • contribs)'s comments from the GP below. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:54, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

{{ltc}} currently describes itself as "Late Middle Chinese", which fits the abbreviation ltc rather nicely. However:

We don't have any lang code specified for "Early Middle Chinese", and as best I can tell, no such ISO code even exists.
SIL International's page lists {{ltc}} as "Late Middle Chinese", but without much detail, whereas MultiTree's page lists {{ltc}} as just "Middle Chinese", with a bit more detail in the "Brief Description" field towards the bottom of the page, giving a range of the 6th through 10th centuries.
The w:Historical_Chinese_phonology#Periodization_of_Chinese section suggests that "Early Middle Chinese" would be around 600-1000 CE, and "Late Middle Chinese" would be around 1000-1300 CE.
The WP article on the ISO lang codes that lists {{ltc}}, at w:ISO_639:l, links through to w:Middle_Chinese.
The Category:Late_Middle_Chinese_language links to w:Late_Middle_Chinese_language, but that redirects to w:Middle_Chinese.

Would anyone object to renaming Category:Late_Middle_Chinese_language to just Category:Middle_Chinese_language?

-- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:47, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

No I'd support it. It seems like madness to have Late Middle Chinese but not Early Middle Chinese or Middle Chinese. I think we discussed this before and we decided it was yet another ISO 639 error, but apparently nobody did anything about it. Support. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:55, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Support removing "Late". —An gr 17:21, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Support for accuracy's sake. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:44, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

~~{{done}}, someone else fix the categories, or I might do it tomorrow if no one else volunteers. -- Liliana • 23:06, 9 February 2013 (UTC)~~

Not done. There is {{zhx-mid}} which also says Middle Chinese. They need to be merged. -- Liliana • 09:00, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Which way should these be merged -- so that we keep {{zhx-mid}}, or so that we keep {{ltc}}? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:45, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Keeping an established and official code is probably preferred, even if we treat it slightly differently. So I support deleting {{zhx-mid}} and replacing it with {{ltc}}. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 23:47, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

(link)

I'm not sure what the exact situation is when it comes to combining diacritics. But I'm having trouble clicking on links to this entry, so is there something we can do to fix that? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 20:14, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

We can use a dotted circle (◌̏), or its name (double grave accent). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 20:35, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

On the French Wiktionary, ̏ redirects to the version with the dotted circle, presumably for this reason. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:26, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I would support doing that here too. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:46, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

But the dotted circle is only used in computing and nowhere else. I am not really happy with this. -- Liliana • 14:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Nor I. A redirect the other way would make more sense IMO: it would allow users to click (by displaying the redirecting form as a link), would ease things for editors (by linking directly to the redirecting form), and would not show the wrong character sequence in the L1 header.—msh210℠ (talk) 15:35, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

It is only a header, though. It is only for display. The page titles are what people will actually be looking up. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 17:45, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

February 2013

Appendix:Tausug adverbs

Judging by their definitions, most of these words aren't actually adverbs. It's a short, low-quality wordlist, but I think the best place for it is at Index:Tausug. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:42, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Category:zh-tw:Variant Pronunciations

This category has a bad name that refers to an obsolete code, but the content is good. It should be merged into Category:Taiwanese Mandarin and then it can be deleted. Same goes for Category:zh-cn:Variant Pronunciations and Category:Chinese Mandarin. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

"Chinese Mandarin" is very unclear as a name, though. It doesn't actually tell me what it really is, and only from what you said can I figure out that it is somehow distinct from "Taiwanese Mandarin". Many people would probably understand it to be a synonym of "Mandarin" or "Mandarin Chinese". వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 22:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Category:Nautical

It is rather unusual for us to use a bare adjective as a category name. I can't really think of anything substantially better, but if someone has an idea, I'd be glad to hear it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:30, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Category:Sailing is already taken as a subcat (though I don't know what the difference is supposed to be), so perhaps Category:Nautical terminology? —An gr 13:45, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I believe Category:Sailing has to do specifically with sailboats: you can set sail in a submarine, but the verb "surface" isn't a sailing term (unless you're doing a really bad job of it)... Chuck Entz (talk) 14:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

What about Category:Boating? That's what Wikipedia's Sailing category is a subcat of. —An gr 15:03, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

I like your previous suggestion, Nautical terminology. If you take a look, a lot of it is sailors' slang. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:50, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

¼ d

Should this be moved to 1/4 d? Talk:⁹⁄₁₀ths was a similar, but not identical, case: this uses one precomposed fraction character, ⁹⁄₁₀ was constructed from ⁹ + ⁄ + ₁ + ₀. My preference is to redirect ¼ d to 1/4 d, though I'm open to doing things the other way around. - -sche (discuss) 04:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, surely the singular and plural should not differ with regard to whether there is a space between the fraction and the "d"... - -sche (discuss) 04:59, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Category:Zhuang characters

Move to Category:Zhuang sawndip. Should probably also be a member of Category:Han characters -- Liliana • 23:00, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Category:Coordinate term templates

This category (and the templates in it) seem to fulfill the same purpose as list templates (Category:English list templates). So they should probably be merged, and the templates themselves converted. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Support. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 16:11, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

ISO 639-3 Change Requests Series 2012

Template:aus-wwg

to {{wyi}} (new ISO code) -- Liliana • 20:21, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Aha! I thought, when I added {{wyi}}, that we already had a code for that language. Support, obv. - -sche (discuss) 20:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I've started switching the entries which use aus-wwg, since this is non-controversial. - -sche (discuss) 22:02, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Done. - -sche (discuss) 22:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:aus-syd, Template:xdk

Now that Dharuk/Sydney has an ISO code ({{xdk}}), we can convert our entries to use it, rather than the exceptional code {{aus-syd}}. The only obstacle is the name: we currently call the lect Sydney; the ISO calls it (and until 2008/9 we (sometimes?) called it? see the deletion of Category:Dharuk language) Dharuk. The best name, however, seems to be Dharug: if this ngram is accurate, it was (with Sydney) among the original names and has remained in use since then, even as Sydney became less common and Dharuk came into use in the modern era of renewed interest in the lect (post-1970). I propose we rename {{xdk}} Dharug (the name WP prefers as well) and switch our {{aus-syd}} to it. - -sche (discuss) 20:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Support both the move to the code and the rename to Dharug. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I've switched some of the aus-syd entries to xdk, others remain. - -sche (discuss) 22:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

All done, including entries, cats, translations, etymologies, and templates. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:41, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:mnt

{{mnt}} was the ISO code for "Maykulan", a small, now-extinct language. The SIL/ISO recently retired the code, updating the name of the principal lect to "Mayi-Kulan" (which does see slightly more use), recoding it as {{xyk}}, and adding codes for Wunumara {{wnn}}, Mayi-Thakurti {{xyt}} and Mayi-Yapi {{xyj}}, which had previously been considered dialects of Mayi-Kulan. What little literature I can find on the lects suggests there is little difference between the dialects. I therefore suggest that we retain {{mnt}} and not follow the ISO in splitting it into {{xyk}}, {{wnn}}, {{xyt}} and {{xyj}} at this time. We could also rename it from "Maykulan" to "Mayi-Kulan", or it could be at the second is not so much more common enough than the first to merit the bother of a rename (and keeping "Maykulan" might make it more obvious we weren't following the SIL into splitting the dialects). - -sche (discuss) 07:23, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:wth

The ISO calls this Wathawurrung; Wathaurong seems to be about twice as common. - -sche (discuss) 20:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:frc→Template:etyl:frc

This should be moved to the etyl: subspace, to discourage/prevent the creation of ==Cajun French== {{head|frc|noun}} entries: Cajun French words are entered as ==French==; this is only used in the etymologies of words which came specifically from Cajun rather than European French. (See also Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2012/April#Category:Cajun_French_language, in which everyone supported considering Cajun French ==French==, and the only editor who was ambivalent about moving {{frc}} to {{etyl:frc}} misunderstood the code-naming sytem, IMO.) - -sche (discuss) 02:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Move per nomination. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:44, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Move. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

మూస:done - -sche (discuss) 20:24, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Template:gkm→Template:etyl:gkm

As above, although I don't feel as strongly about this as about Template:frc. - -sche (discuss) 02:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Isn't Byzantine Greek different enough from Classical Greek to consider it a separate language? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 03:43, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but here at Wiktionary we lump it in with Ancient Greek for practical reasons: no one with the expertise, time, and motivation to figure out the boundaries, set up the framework and template infrastructure, and create/convert the entries. Most of the editors working on Greek have background/interest in Classical and/or Biblical Greek or in Modern Greek- but not in Byzantine/Medieval Greek. The resources available are also much scarcer. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:22, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that really makes such a difference, though. Whether we consider it part of Ancient Greek, or as its own language, Byzantine Greek is still being neglected. Splitting it would just make that neglect more visible, which could have positive effects as well. As for boundaries, Wikipedia says it begins at 600, when Greek replaced Latin as the sole administrative language in the empire; and ends at 1453, with the Ottoman conquest. I'd say that's a fairly good definition. Of course we have to deal with the reality that the Greeks still spelled according to the classical norms at that time, but that isn't a problem nor is it a good motivation, because the polytonic spelling wasn't abandoned until the 20th century (it would be absurd to consider Greek from 1900 "ancient"!). వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:47, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Move to etyl:. We also need to delete the cat and recat Category:Terms derived from Byzantine Greek. Ancient Greek entries already cover Byzantine Greek pronunciations and I believe some vocabulary as well. Splitting it off would result in much more pointless duplication if anyone would even get around to it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I have no objection to treating Byzantine Greek as a separate language — nor do I object to our current arrangement, if our Greek editors are content with it. I made this RFM only because I knew it was current practice not to separate Byzantine Greek. Count me as withdrawing my support for the move and abstaining (but because some people have expressed support for the move, I'm not going to ‘withdraw’ the RFM in the sense of striking it and taking it off the page; I think that would be...undemocratic). - -sche (discuss) 04:10, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

jemandem etwas in die Schuhe schieben

...and jemanden über den Löffel barbieren, jemandem über den Weg laufen, jemanden hinters Licht führen, and other German verb phrases containing "jemand*" and "etwas": should some of all of them drop "jemand*"? I note that our English entries sometimes but not always omit "someone"s and "something"s, e.g. we have [[lay at the feet of]] (which, when said that way, sounds like what a dog does) rather than [[lay something at the feet of]], but then we have [[cross someone's path]]. (Actually, "lay at the feet of" needs a placeholder, IMO; see my post just below this one.) - -sche (discuss) 21:13, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

My gut instinct is to remove accusative jemanden but keep dative jemandem, but I'm not sure I can articulate exactly why. Direct objects just feel somehow more removable from idiomatic verb phrases than indirect objects. —An gr 21:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Move all. I would remove such placeholders generally. The necessary complements (no matter if accusative or dative) can be specified next to the definition. The reason we have a placeholder in cross someone's path probably is that it has the genitive-'s and thus can't be removed (other than by replacing it with "X's" or something like that). Longtrend (talk) 18:22, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

lay at the feet of

This should be moved to lay something at the feet of, IMO. "Something" is a placeholder you can obviously substitute specific things for, just like you can "cross a friend's path" rather than only ever "crossing someone's path" — and as in the entry "cross someone's path", a placeholder is necessary here, because without one, "lay at the feet of" sounds intransitive: yet "the dog liked to lay at the feet of his master" isn't what the entry is about. - -sche (discuss) 21:13, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

We are not consistent in including something/someone as a placeholder. If we had a rule, we would want a placeholder for something like this where there is potential for confusion, but I don't think the rule should just be "avoid confusion" in a massive enterprise like this.

Move per nom. DCDuring TALK 00:24, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think a potentially confusing title should be reason enough to include a placeholder. We can (and should) clarify its use with {{transitive}} next to the definition (which is already done in this case). Longtrend (talk) 18:16, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Category:English diminutives of male given names

Category:English diminutives of female given names

I think these need to be split as not all of the names are diminutives. Some are non-diminutive nicknames. Alternatively it could be renamed Category:English nicknames of male given names. Or it could be Category:English male nicknames.

I think that nickname and diminutive are overlapping categories. Aren't Francine and Mariella diminutives of Frances and Maria, respectively? But they are not nicknames. Similarly, Jake is a nickname for Jacob/Jacques, but not a diminutive.

I don't know whether the categories and their application are correct with respect to other languages, but the application of {{given name}} has lead to a bad result for English. DCDuring TALK 00:17, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean that a diminutive has something added (Franc+ine, John+ny) and a nickname has something subtracted (Jake-(c)ob, Rob-ert)? Or what is the difference? Is this a meaningful way to split a category? Francine is defined as a formal given name in French and English. It derives from an ancient diminutive, but that's etymology. The diminutive definitions and categories are based on the way a name is used, not on its grammatical form. Diminutives and formal given names often overlap, and what's a diminutive in one language may be a formal given name in another: Tommy for example. So use of Template:given name seems reasonable.

I agree that "diminutive" is not the perfect category name, but are the alternatives any better? "Nickname" applies to words like Shorty, Dubya, Shug that are not linguistically related to a person's real given name. "Pet name" sounds too colloquial to me, and "hypocorism" is the opposite of a "pejorative" with Russian names. Changing the name would take a lot of manual work. Not all the entries use the template. --Makaokalani (talk) 14:45, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

What makes you think that "'nickname' applies to words... that are not linguistically related to a person's real given name"? I would certainly say Tom is a nickname for Thomas, Bill is a nickname for William, Liz is a nickname for Elizabeth, etc. Those aren't the only kind of nicknames, but they are nicknames. —An gr 15:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but terms like Shorty should not be listed in the same category with Tom, Bill and Liz. You can create a separate category for them. I meant "the word nickname also applies to..."--Makaokalani (talk) 15:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Whatever else, the current name is applicable only to a subset of those now in the category. It is mostly populated by {{given name}} when the parameter 'diminutive' is applied. If there were other possibilities for other kinds of derivations, then the template would not create the erroneous results it does. A category of derived names for which diminutives would be a subcategory would be fine with me.

The template did not specify 'diminutive' until January 2010. I'd be happy with a rollback to the edit before that, but there have been later changes that may have some value. DCDuring TALK 00:34, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

The members of the categories are called hypocorisms or pet names, judging from online dictionaries. The current name is wrong, IMHO, or misleading anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:34, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd meant to look up hypocorism. It is not really suitable for use as part of a category name if we intend the category for use by normal users, rather than us or language professionals. I probably would be OK to group nicknames, diminutives, and other similar types of names, if there are others to include. DCDuring TALK 23:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Just to make clear that we are discussing the same thing: I oppose splitting the diminutive categories. It would be confusing, and impossible to do in many languages (e.g. Finnish). Tom and Bill certainly belong to the same category as Tommy and Billy. Terms like Dubya and Shorty are now uncategorized and need some other category ("Nicknames?"). Terms like Francine are not diminutives in English or French. (I can see some old entries have confusing definitions like "A male given name, diminutive of X" , the diminutive part properly belonging to the etymology.) I oppose removing the diminutive= parameter from Template:given name. Changing it to something else, and changing the names of all diminutive categories (21 male, 16 female) would not bother me provided someone else does it all, including the tiresome manual work. Webster's 2003 definition of diminutive includes: "used of affixes (as -ette, -kin, -ling) and of words formed with them (--), of clipped forms (as Jim), and of altered forms (as Peggy)", so the present category name is not completely wrong. Our definition of diminutive includes endearments.--Makaokalani (talk) 09:42, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Is this category supposed to be directed at normal users or linguists or is it intended as some kind of maintenance category? Diminutive for normal users implies "small" and may connote "belittling".
In English, the categorization based on affixes alone cannot be semantic, it is etymological. The word "diminutive" does not seem appropriate for display on the definition line in cases where "diminutive" in the normal user sense is not accurate, though the etymological sense applies. Perhaps we need to create a special template for use in the etymology section of names to categorize into diminutives. I am aware that diminutives seem to be virtually inflectional in some languages, at least in the opinion of, say, some of our Dutch contributors. But I don't think that an approach based on that model is appropriate for English.
It seems to me that we have can have almost nothing to say about the meaning of names, rather than their derivation. At best we can provide a non-gloss definition. I doubt that we have a fact base to use to check the correctness of such assertions as often used as a pet name/term of endearment. DCDuring TALK 13:17, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Another candidate term: familiar form: try మూస:b.g.c.; there, Dictionary of First Names by Iseabail C. MacLeod, Terry Freedman, 1995 uses the term. In spite of Merriam-Webster's "diminutive" entry siding with Makaokalani, I still disfavor "diminutive". --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:16, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

That might work. But I'm not sure that a person whose birth certificate says his given name is Jim views the name as a "familiar form" or a "pet name" or a "diminutive".

If we don't consign the relationship to other names to Etymology, the only place it belongs IMO, then for display we need something other than "diminutive" for those cases where that is in appropriate, eg, Jimbo. It is obviously related to James, but is decidedly NOT a diminutive. DCDuring TALK 16:48, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

March 2013

Documentation subpages to /documentation

The current name, /doc, conflicts with the language code {{doc}}, which was deleted (it wasn't in use) because of this conflict. But to really solve this, we need to move the documentation subpages to a name that won't conflict with anything. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:48, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

As suggested in the Grease Pit, the subpages should really be moved to /documentation, to avoid conflict with script codes (which are four letters long). - -sche (discuss) 16:03, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

That could work too, but script codes begin with capital letters so there shouldn't be any conflict. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 16:24, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe not in the software, but probably in people's minds. If we wanted to abbreviate some word or other as "cyrl", and some page or template or something had one subpage called "/cyrl" for that word, and another called "/Cyrl" to indicate the Cyrillic alphabet, I for one would find it confusing and would probably be constantly mixing them up. —An gr 20:11, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok, then "documentation" is fine. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 20:20, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Fine by me, I don't type the names in anyway, to get to {{fr-noun/doc}} I would first go to fr-noun then click on the documentation link, to adding an extra 10 characters wouldn't affect the way I browse. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:11, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I've changed the {{documentation}} template so that it supports both names. The category Category:Templates with /doc subpage contains all the templates that currently still have a subpage named /doc. Those pages should be moved to /documentation, but I'm not sure what the best way is to do that. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 17:44, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Merge Category:Belgian Dutch and Category:Flemish Dutch

I don't think there is any difference between these two names, so they should probably be merged. However, "Flemish" is ambiguous because it can refer either to historical Flanders (the modern provinces of East Flanders and West Flanders) or to all of the Flemish community (all the Dutch-speaking areas) of Belgium. So the name Category:Belgian Dutch would probably be clearer. I would like {{Flemish}} to explicitly display "East and West Flanders" for this reason, too. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 19:41, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

User:Dixtosa/ka-postpositional-of

This is called from several main-namespace entries. It should be moved into the Template: namespace and those entries which call it should be updated. - -sche (discuss) 03:38, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I subst:ed the only remaining transclusion. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:52, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I haven't the foggiest

Shouldn't this be at not have the foggiest (now a redirect) or perhaps better at have the foggiest. Certainly this doesn't only occur in the first person singular.

I think there is always a negative associated with this idiom, but the following kinds of usage are not rare:

I don't think he had the foggiest about selecting the best lemma entry.

I wonder whether he has the foggiest about what he's doing.

This is what favors the non-negative as lemma with redirects from the most common forms, including those with -n't. DCDuring TALK 01:11, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

This is a canonical negative polarity item in English, found only in negatives (including negation of the main clause when the NPI occurs in a subordinate clause) and questions (including indirect questions like "I wonder whether..."), just like any in "John does not have any potatoes", "I don't think John has any potatoes", "Does John have any potatoes?", "I wonder whether John has any potatoes" but *"John has any potatoes". I'd say move to have the foggiest or even the foggiest since I think "have got the foggiest" is also used. —An gr 11:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Should any (explicit-verb-containing) negative polarity item contain "not" in the headword? I think not, though there may turn out to be exceptions. Of course, redirects from the most common negative containing forms might be helpful. DCDuring TALK 16:50, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Move to have the foggiest, retain the redirect (would not be an ambiguous redirect). Mglovesfun (talk) 17:56, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I think "idea" is an essential part of undIerstanding the phrase, even though it's dropped in some forms. Suggest we first create foggiest idea (idiom) and then either redirect other terms there or to have the foggiest idea (have the foggiest could be an alt. form). Facts707 (talk) 22:17, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Having said that, I see "foggiest clue", "foggiest notion", etc. are not uncommon. I also updated foggiest with a second sense. It seems to make foggiest idea and have the foggiest idea less useful. Also, "get the foggiest..." is also popular.Facts707 (talk) 22:41, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Category:Chinese Provinces

Should be Category:Provinces of China, since that's the format all the other categories (except Category:German States, which I am about to change, and Category:US States) use. I can make the change using AWB. - -sche (discuss) 03:32, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Category:English words with different meanings in different locations

This was originally nominated at WT:RFDO as this page didn't exist yet. I feel uneasy about the title. There's clearly some merit to it, like pissed meaning drink in the UK and angry in the US, but I hate the title 'English words with different meanings in different locations'. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:53, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

April 2013

Template:zdj, Template:wni, Template:swb, Template:wlc

I had a look, and these four are just dialects of Swahili. I don't think they have any entries, but any that may exist should be {{sw}}. Oh, and don't forget to delete the script subpages. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:59, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Is the nomination to redirect these to {{sw}}? I thought we usually deleted things like this, in which case the discussion should be at WT:RFD/O, shouldn't it? —An gr 10:49, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Technically it's a deletion of a page, but it's a merger of the languages. So... it does kind of belong here. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:10, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Re "discussion should be at WT:RFD/O": when Metaknowledge posted Template:tnv in WT:RFDO, msh210 said the discussion "should be in the BP, not here". LOL, seems you just can't win, Meta! :b

Anyway, (@Angr) see WT:RFDO#tnv, WT:RFDO#pld, and WT:BP#Notice of language-merger discussion at RFM. I suggested in the tnv discussion that a dedicated WT:Requests to change the treatment of lects page might be useful, because when I want to merge lects+codes+templates, I post on WT:RFM (the page for merging things)—and the majority of discussions are on WT:RFM, in part because I am the most prolific starter of them—but other people sometimes post in RFDO or even, very rarely, in the BP. In the WT:BP#Notice discussion, the idea of posting lect mergers on a separate page was opposed, however... so we've ended up back at WT:RFM, where we (or at least, the majority of discussions) started. :) - -sche (discuss) 20:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I support merging zdj, wni and wlc into swb, but tentatively keeping swb separate from sw. (I note swb is properly the code of Maore Comorian, but we currently call it plain Comorian, and it's useful to continue to.) Quoth John Mugane (The Linguistic Typology and Representation of African Languages, 2003): “The various dialects of Comorian were traditionally seen as being dialects of Swahili, although there is not consistent mutual intelligibility between Comorian speakers and Swahili speakers. మూస:... Around [1970], more discussion arose of the possibility that Comorian should be considered a separate language from Swahili. Ottenheimer & Ottenheimer (1976) provides a discussion of the place of Comorian among Bantu languages. The contribution of Asian, African and European languages, as well as Malagasy, to the lexicon and grammar of Comorian is acknowledged. A history of Comorian linguistics is given, along with the remark that linguists took a long time to accept that the Comorian dialects are not simply dialects of Swahili, but rather are different enough from Swahili to be considered a different language. Other linguists soon followed suit, beginning with Sibertin-Blanc (1980), who మూస:... posits that the Swahili-Comorian split was one of the more recent Swahili dialect separations.”

There are some differences between Comorian dialects, and some are more similar to Swahili than others (Nurse & Hinnebusch write that Swahili and N[d]zwani+Maore feature a future based on -caka, while Ngazi[d]ja+Mwali do not), but in general the IEL writes that "all [Comorian] dialects [are] sufficiently distinct from mainland Swahili to warrant separate translation".

I can create a few words in Comorian, if we decide to keep it. - -sche (discuss) 21:37, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Comorian looks about as close to modern Zanzibari Swahili as 17th century Swahili does. However, I don't think anyone is advocating for 'Old Swahili'. Moreover, Swahili is a very pluricentric language, as will often happen with languages that arise at a linguistic interface. Taken as a whole, I don't see much deviation in vocabulary, although I cannot speak for grammar/inflection. I can accept keeping Swahili and Comorian Swahili separate, but I would prefer to see wordlist comparisons if you have them. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't have any substantial wordlists at hand. Eh, I don't mind merging Comorian and Swahili; we can always use context tags and split them again later if it becomes apparent that's merited. 'Tis a wiki, after all. - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I am striking this. Echtio (talk • contribs) actually is learning Comorian, and has extensive comparative wordlists at their disposal, and recommends we keep all the lects separate and consider swb to be Maore Comorian as we originally did, a change which I have thus effected. Looking at the words Echtio is entering and the orthography used, I have switched my opinion on the issue, TBH, and in any case I trust them more than us. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:57, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

NB WT:RFC#Shikomor. - -sche (discuss) 08:04, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Template:han tu form of

Two editors on 𫋙 and Talk:𫋙 (no I can't see those links either) have objected to the name han tu, saying it should be chu nom. I have no opinion on the matter. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:55, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

There is no need to move or rename this. It's just that using this template in 𫋙 and 𪜚 (which are chữ Nôm) is wrong. There is no problem using it in Sino-Vietnamese words; all pages linking to it are using it correctly except for those two. Wyang (talk) 12:02, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Since that was me who made those two edits, what's the difference? Mglovesfun (talk) 14:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Kauffner (talk • contribs) moved it unilaterally; I moved it back. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:14, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

"Hán" means Classical Chinese. "Nôm" is Vietnamese written with Chinese-style characters. The template says it is for "Vietnamese written in Chinese characters", so it should be called "Nom form of". Tự (words) and chữ (characters) are just descriptors and should not be treated as part of the name. See Vietnamese Nôm Preservation Foundation. Vdict defines hán tự as "Chinese literature", and chữ nôm as "demotic script (Ancient Vietnamese script)." I note that the phrase "unilateral" is being misused above, as there was in fact another editor who agreed to the move. Update: I looked at some of the links. They are mostly Vietnamese readings for modern Chinese characters. This is properly called "Han-Viet" or "Sino-Vietnamese reading". Every Chinese character has a reading of this kind; It's the Vietnamese equivalent to pinyin or Wade-Giles. You can get such readings from this site. Kauffner (talk) 04:45, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Weirdly, that editor is the one that commented here and doesn't agree with it. Don't ask me why that is. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:38, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps we can create another template for Nôm? In Vietnamese dictionaries, the Hán reading is labeled "H" or "Hv." (for Hán Việt). The Nôm reading is labeled "N". There is none of this Hán tự stuff. Update Here is a Vietnamese dictionary that uses the label "Hv" for Han readings. Type "nom" or some other syllable into the search function. Kauffner (talk) 16:11, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

endeavour

endeavor

These no longer say the same thing. Is there really no way we can merge them, using {{alternative form of}}? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:23, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Of course we can, the question is whether there is a willingness to do so, and if so, which form gets labeled the {{alternative form of}} the other. FWIW, endeavor is older by 9 minutes. —An gr 21:45, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

I wish we could resolve this kind of redundant entry somehow. It’s a problem in choosing which senses apply, and can become unresolvaby confusing when variations represent regional differences, but also common and proper nouns and “proper” adjectives, and varying number. Even more confusing when some of the senses are plural of or alternative form of the other. E.g., aboriginal/Aboriginal, labour/Labour/labor/Labor, First Nation/First Nations.

Our lemmas aren’t really lemmas, so sometimes the reader may have to jump between two or three entries to actually read a comprehensive definition of a term.. —Michael Z. 2013-04-17 22:27 z

flashbang

I propose to move this to flash-bang. Primary usage seems to hyphenated, followed by usage with a space (flash bang), and as a single word (flashbang).”. bd2412 T 01:11, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Module:zh to Module:cmn-common and Module:Hani-common

I suggested moving this on the talk page, and User:Wyang threatened to stop editing if we moved this. I don't think such a threat is really appropriate, so I am bringing it up here. My reasoning is that we don't treat zh as a language, and this module contains things that are specific to Mandarin that are not used for other Chinese languages. Therefore, I think that this should be split into a Mandarin-specific module (which would contain Pinyin transliteration) and a module for general handling of Han script (which would work for all languages that use it, presumably Japanese too). వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 12:43, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I am not aware of all the background, but it seems to me that separating language- and script-specific processing functions is a different thing from how we organize our Chinese-language entries (which I see Wyang is concerned about). Anyway, Wyang should come up with any justification at all if he expects us to take his argument seriously. —Michael Z. 2013-04-20 17:30 z

I feel like Wyang is holding us hostage... I don't care where we put it, so I guess oppose if that's what it takes. Not a proud oppose, mind you, but a coerced oppose. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:48, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

What's in the name? It seems User:Wyang is too sensitive about the issue. Well, the Chinese Wikipedia and Wiktionary uses "zh", even if they are in standard Mandarin. For many Chinese Mandarin = "Standard Chinese". User:Wyang is a smart editor, with great linguistic and coding skills, very productive and responsive too. I don't know. I second Metaknowledge, oppose as well but it's not very good to hold us hostage. It's much better to try and explain your position. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:34, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

S Wyang seems to have left en.Wiktionary, without actually saying why he opposes the split. Was he opposed to the existence of the language code cmn, or its use, or the idea of a Mandarin language? —Michael Z. 2013-04-24 16:05 z

Judging from his user page, it seems that he felt that all Sinitic languages were one language, and treated the way we split them as a personal attack on him for some reason. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 16:26, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Merge Wikisaurus:idiot and Wikisaurus:fool?

I realize that idiot and fool can carry different shades of meaning (idiot implies low intelligence, whereas fool implies poor judgment, which doesn't necessarily preclude intelligence), but given the amount of overlap between Wikisaurus:idiot and Wikisaurus:fool, I'm wondering if a merge of the two pages might be warranted. Astral (talk) 00:51, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Well I dunno, while Wikisaurus probably doesn't have as much content as a real thesaurus at all, y'know thesauruses do tend to have entries for both say, word X and word Y, where word Y is a listed synonym for word word X. User: PalkiaX50 ^{talk to meh} 02:17, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree with such a merger. I think we have an opportunity here to create a better thesaurus, one that provides a more informative communication of nuance. Just about every set of synonyms has subtle shades of meaning, formality, and so forth, that can best be compared on a single thesaurus page. bd2412 T 19:58, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

The template {{ws}}, used to add words to Wikisaurus pages, allows for the inclusion of a definition that appears upon mouse-over. I think this feature is sufficient to communicate subtle nuances of meaning. But the placement of many terms on Wikisaurus:idiot and Wikisaurus:fool strikes me as somewhat arbitrary. I mean, what makes dimwit a synonym of idiot, but not of fool? A single, consolidated Wikisaurus page would be easier to manage, and would make it easier for readers to find synonyms, as right now some dictionary entries link to Wikisaurus:fool while others link to Wikisaurus:idiot. Astral (talk) 22:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Mandarin topical categories

It was discussed and agreed here: Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/April#Some_small_changes_to_Mandarin_.28also_Cantonese.2C_Min_Nan.29_entry_structure_and_about_topic_categories_-_suggestion that Mandarin topical categories are to be similar to other languages with no distinction between traditional and simplified (no affect on parts of speech, only topical categories).

Simple renaming of categories to remove "_in_simplified_script" and "_in_traditional_script" is not a good idea before entries are corrected.

1. Could all Mandarin entries be edited by a bot to remove " in simplified script" and " in traditional script" in them? I.e. they should belong to Category:cmn:Family, not Category:cmn:Family in traditional script or Category:cmn:Family in simplified script?

That's the first step.

2. We also agreed that sorting order should be the same for trad./simpl., so that entries are sorted like simplified - by numbered pinyin, e.g. "jie3jie", not "女05姐姐" (see 姐姐). This is harder. It's OK if just the 1st part is done.

That entry instead of

[[Category:cmn:Beginning Mandarin in simplified script|jie3jie]]
[[Category:cmn:Family in simplified script|jie3jie]]
[[Category:cmn:Beginning Mandarin in traditional script|女05姐姐]]
[[Category:cmn:Family in traditional script|女05姐姐]]

Should have:

[[Category:cmn:Beginning Mandarin|jie3jie]]
[[Category:cmn:Family|jie3jie]]

The above entry is both simplified and traditional, if it's only one, then the category name should just be shortened.

3. When all entries are fixed, categories with "_in_simplified_script" and "_in_traditional_script" should be removed to without the suffix, or, if the shorter names exists, just deleted but not before the first step is done.

Is that possible? Can someone take it on? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:22, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

May 2013

address with the polite V-form

Does English really not have a better term for this? I imagine that even if English doesn't have this phenomenon itself, it would still have a word to describe it in other languages. Also, what is its antonym? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 13:21, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

The antonym is thou, though it may be obsolete. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 17:31, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I think English really doesn't have a word for this, even when talking about other languages. When I want to talk about it, I use the verb found in whatever language I'm discussing, so if I'm talking about French, I'll say vouvoyer and if I'm talking about German I'll say siezen. As in "When I was in Paris, I vouvoyered my host parents until they asked me to tutoyer them, but when I was in Vienna, I duzened my host parents right away." (Actually, this brings up an interesting phenomenon I've noticed among English-speaking expats living in Germany: when we adopt German verbs when speaking English, some of us leave the infinitive -en on and say "I siezened him, I duzened her", while others of us drop the -en and say "I siezed /ziːtst/ him, I duzed /duːtst/ her".) —An gr 18:37, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Yep, the non-Romance words don't even start with V, which I find problematic. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:44, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

The formal pronoun is called V-form and the informal T-form regardless of language. Thus, this could be moved to address with the V-form (and address with the informal T-form to address with the T-form). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 21:09, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Rock Paper Scissors

Tagged but not listed. Also Scissors Paper Stone, Paper Scissors Stone. Should not have any capital letters, perhaps this is uncontroversial enough to just move them. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:20, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

S. —Michael Z. 2013-05-18 18:42 z

Are we supposed to know what that means? —An gr 20:32, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

My best guess is 'support', but it is a guess. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:43, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

brier

Should be merged into [[briar]], which has better structure, but not all of the content of [[brier]]. DCDuring TALK 14:39, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

June 2013

Appendix:Japanese Swadesh list

This page is quite a dog's breakfast. The list includes numerous terms that don't belong in a Swadesh list; see the list's Talk page for details.

Glancing over the list, I thought some of the content looked different from how I remembered it. Poking around in the history of the Appendix:Japanese Swadesh list page and the Wiktionary:Japanese Swadesh list page, I realized why -- apparently Croquant (talk • contribs) and I had had the same idea at nearly the same time back in 2006, and he launched the Appendix: page, while I launched the Wiktionary: page four days later.

Comparing the two pages, the Appendix page has gotten a lot more editing traffic, but sadly appears to be less usable -- more Chinese-derived terms, more compounds, and more inflected forms (all inappropriate for a Swadesh list), and less useful information given (no Notes or Usage, for instance). Add to that the fact that the wikicode is harder to work with (as each column is given in a single huge list, but it's each row instead that the editor must work with).

With all that in mind, I'd like to propose that we merge the Appendix:Japanese Swadesh list page with the Wiktionary:Japanese Swadesh list page, with a bias towards keeping the wikicode from the Wiktionary: page and merging in any preferred data from the Appendix: page. If no one objects, I may set to that task in a week or two. Once done, my sense is that we should delete Wiktionary:Japanese Swadesh list, or at least turn it into a redirect to Appendix:Japanese Swadesh list. If anyone feels otherwise, please chime in. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:47, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

This sounds more like a subject for WT:RFM Chuck Entz (talk) 19:57, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Ah, yes, somehow I'd gotten it into the back of my head that RFM was only for moves, not for mergers. Moving there. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 01:14, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

~~Anatoli's~~ Angr's post here copied from Appendix talk:Japanese Swadesh list:

I don't think anyone has taken lexicostatistics seriously in forty years. All Swadesh lists are useless for determining the genetic relatedness of languages, regardless of whether they're filled with native words or loanwords, because the methodology has proven to be flawed. The only point in having Swadesh list appendices at Wiktionary is to provide a list of basic words that we need to have entries for. —An gr 20:44, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Is lexicostatistics as a whole discredited, or just Swadesh's approach? Is there any value in keeping these pages, then? Should we just remove them, if they're not to be maintained? We have plenty of other, more highly-trafficked lists that help us keep track of what terms we're missing and might want to add. Curious, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 23:27, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Both. Lexicostatistics makes the assumption that language change is a homogenous, continuous process that can be reduced to mathematical models. In the real world, there are things like regional and social variation, and things like sociopolitical and economic forces (not to mention blind luck) that often determine which form survives. Swadesh lists are interesting, and provide a rough view of variation between languages, so they're probably worth keeping in the appendices. I wouldn't base anything on them as evidence, though. Lexicostatistics is usually a lot better than flipping a coin, but there are too many ways for it to go wrong, since it depends on unverifiable past events. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:09, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Considering the amount of work I've put in on the Burmese and Irish Swadesh lists and the amount of work I'm planning to put in on the Lower Sorbian, Old Irish, and Welsh Swadesh lists, I'd be opposed to deleting them. I don't know of any other lists of terms we need for those languages. —An gr 12:58, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

మూస:outdent @Chuck, thank you for the detail. I'm clearly behind in my reading. :)

@Angr, understood. I'm fine with keeping them.

That said, if we are to keep them, I feel rather strongly that the lists should be cleaned up -- despite Angr's comment, known-borrowed words have no place in any such list, even if the methodology has been entirely discredited. At the bare minimum, drilling down to root forms for these concepts would itself give us a list of terms needed for etymological purposes. I'm working through JA terms to add etymologies, which is how I wound up coming back to this list in the first place. :)

Also, if we are to keep them, presumably we should only keep one per language, yes? And presumably in the Appendix: namespace?

Cheers, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 15:34, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't see any reason to exclude loanwords if a loanword is the most common term for a particular concept. The English Swadesh list itself has a large number of loanwords, including they, husband, animal, forest, fruit, flower, skin, egg, vomit, give, count, sky, mountain, and correct. One per language, yes, though there's nothing wrong with keeping some language-family lists too, though these need to be kept within reason. Some currently existing ones run off the right edge of the screen because they contain so many languages. AFAICT all Swadesh lists are already in Appendix: mainspace, which seems like the best place for them to me. —An gr 16:05, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Re: namespaces, my original comment in this thread concerns a duplication, with one such JA Swadesh list in Appendix:, and one in Wiktionary:.
Re: loanwords, my understanding was that the whole point of Swadesh lists was for historico-comparative research? If so, known loanwords would be irrelevant. I'm not opposed to keeping a list of modern terms for Swadesh concepts, but that wouldn't be a Swadesh list then, no? Would an acceptable compromise be to add a column with a header such as Modern equivalent? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:14, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

If anything, I'd rather have a separate column for native words that are now obsolete/archaic or that now have different meanings. To stick with the English examples, the native words deer, blossom, hide, spew, and reckon are all modern English too, so it would be odd to exclude them from the "Modern equivalent" column. They just don't mean "animal", "flower", "skin", "vomit", and "count" anymore, or are at least not the most common way of expressing those ideas. But they could be in a column to show that they are the modern English descendants of the Old English words that did have those meanings. —An gr 16:39, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking about something along the lines of the format at Wiktionary:Japanese Swadesh list. This includes some JA-specific headings, but the Usage and Notes columns could conceivably be used to convey this kind of information -- like for deer, to describe how it is used now and how that differs from the older meanings. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:47, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Template:plural only - Template:plurale tantum

One is English, the other is Latin. Take your pick. -- Liliana • 18:32, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Um, English then. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:52, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, English. —Michael Z. 2013-06-23 17:55 z

What about Category:English pluralia tantum? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 18:58, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

The category is not part of this discussion. -- Liliana • 19:42, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I have no real preference. I suppose the English name would be clearer to more people, though an argument could be made in the other direction, that the Latin name is clearer because it's more precise. - -sche (discuss) 19:55, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Neither transparently communicates what users probably would want to know, which is whether pronouns and verbs that are supposed to agree with the noun are to be singular or plural. If we aren't going to communicate transparently what users probably want, then pluralia tantum is superior because it is less of false friend than plural only. DCDuring TALK 20:35, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I think “used in plural only” and “grammatically as singular” (?) might be two different things. Whatever label or labels we choose would benefit from linking to a well-written glossary entry explaining what they indicate in one of our dictionary entries, rather than just a dictionary entry defining the term. —Michael Z. 2013-06-27 00:21 z

Wiktionary:Sample entry

This was created as an example of how Simple Wiktionary (simple:Wiktionary:Main Page) formats entries. I started to update it to en.Wikt format... but it's redundant to Wiktionary:Entry layout explained#Additional_headings. Should we merge the two pages by deleting WT:SE, or merge them by moving the sample entry off WT:ELE and putting it on WT:SE? - -sche (discuss) 18:08, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Houm Päĳtsh

This contains the single composed character ĳ. We should probably move it to the version with separate ij, but what about the Wikipedia link? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 15:46, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Even better, delete it as a protologism. I sent it to RFV. -- Liliana • 16:23, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

No worries about the Wikipedia link, ksh-wp has already deleted it (both the page using ĳ and the page using ij). —An gr 17:11, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

"xx nouns lacking gender" to "xx terms with incomplete gender"

Sometimes we want things other than nouns to have genders, but I doubt we want another category for that. "terms" is better than "entries" because we also include genders in translations, which are not entries. There is also a difference between lacking a gender altogether and simply having an incomplete gender. For example, Slovene nouns divide masculine nouns into animate and inanimate, and this is normally specified as part of the gender (m-an, m-in). So if you specify just "m" for a Slovene noun, it's not a complete gender, but it's not lacking a gender either. So "incomplete" is more inclusive. The same applies to Dutch, where users may specify "c" as the gender but this should really be "m" or "f". వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 17:31, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Category:Combining diacritics‎ - Category:Combining characters

This seems redundant to me. -- Liliana • 19:18, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

sleep on it

Can we merge this into sleep on? I don't see why they should be separate since they have the same meaning. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:54, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Sure. But this should remain as a redirect to sleep on. I think that many folks only come across the expression with it and may look it up that way. The same principle probably applies to many expressions. I suspect that many of the entries we have containing a verb and it merit similar treatment, though each would need to be inspected to confirm that. DCDuring TALK 17:12, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

A. E. F.

B. E. F.

C. E. F.

Into A.E.F./B.E.F/C.E.F. Surely spaces alone aren't a good enough reason to have these as alternative form, could even merge the whole lot into the dotless forms AEF/BEF/CEF. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:25, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Vulgar Latin reconstructions

Since the instances of {{recons|lang=VL.}} were changed to {{recons|lang=la}}, the pages themselves need to be moved. My question is: should the current names be kept as redirects? — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 10:07, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably not? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 10:57, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Obviously it is inconsistent with the extirpation of all language-like codes inconsistent with the ponderous system we have. Accordingly, it will take a great deal of vigilance and stubbornness to preserve the information reflected in the noncompliant language-like codes. Why not keep the redirects? DCDuring TALK 11:11, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

All moved without redirects. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 20:46, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Template:polytonic to Template:grc-Grek or to Template:Grek-polyton

The first option brings it in line with other script codes like Template:fa-Arab and Template:nv-Latn. The language code in the name doesn't have any meaning in itself, it's just to give a meaningful distinction.

The second makes it more compliant with the official language subtag registry, which recognises "polyton" as a subtag to indicate polytonic Greek (not as a script code in itself!). See [3]. This option is probably the more "correct" of the two. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 13:06, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Grek-polyton is preferable because not all Greek written in polytonic is Ancient Greek. Modern Greek is officially defined as starting in 1453 and it was written in polytonic for over 500 years after that. —An gr 09:12, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Like I said, the language code doesn't mean it's used only for Ancient Greek, it just means "the Ancient Greek script variety" or "the variety of the script associated with Ancient Greek". In the same way, "fa-Arab" is used by many other languages beside Persian. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:14, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Template:cpi

Chinese Pidgin English is or was a real pidgin, but like pld and hwc, written records don't seem to support calling it an independent language. Even the name 'Chinese Pidgin English' suggests that. I think all our existing entries have or should have English sections independent of the result of this RFM. Moreover, the dialogue quoted in Bauer (1974) doesn't seem too far from a Chinese-accented GA slang with noticeable lexical borrowing. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Gah, I forgot to mention that we'll need an etyl: code, because some English entries have this in the etymology. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:48, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Appendix:Portuguese verbs in -or

Move to Appendix:Portuguese verbs ending in -or, so it sounds less strange. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 12:01, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Not sure this needs a debate though. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:02, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit request at User talk:Conrad.Irwin/feedback.js

I was unable to find where I could request edits to protected pages.

Please create MediaWiki:customjsprotected, MediaWiki:protectedinterface, MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext with a meaningful message.
Please fulfill the edit request at User talk:Conrad.Irwin/feedback.js#h5 -> h3
Thank you.

-- Rillke (talk) 09:00, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Category:Hereafter

Hereafter is stilted to say the least, and incomprehensible to many native English speakers. I propose that we use something like Category:Afterlife. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:46, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Yup. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:56, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree. —An gr 13:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Support. - -sche (discuss) 08:46, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:CGK to Template:oko-Kore or Template:okm-Kore

To make it fit with the naming scheme used by our other script codes. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:58, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Though it would fit with {{okm}} more ({{oko}} is from the period of time before Hangul was invented), I'd actually prefer it to be kept as is, because it's occasionally used outside Korean (Category:Cia-Cia language comes to my mind). -- Liliana • 14:05, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

The language code doesn't really have any significance as far as I can tell. For comparison, "fa-Arab" is used by a lot more languages than just Persian, look in Module:languages for all occurrences of "fa-Arab". We could (and maybe should) come up with a better naming scheme for scripts like these. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 15:21, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

August 2013

Category:Regionalisms - Category:Regional terms by language

A big mess with lots of overlap and miscategorization. -- Liliana • 23:30, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

I think there was a similar proposal a while ago, I just don't remember where it went. Also there's Category:Dialectal terms by language to make it more interesting. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 23:35, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

the Malagasy lects

Liliana deleted {{mlg}} for being redundant to {{mg}}. So are the many other dialects: {{xmv}}, {{bhr}}, {{msh}}, {{bmm}}, {{plt}}, {{skg}}, {{tdx}}, {{txy}}, {{xmw}}. There are two more, {{bzc}} and {{tkg}}, which don't currently exist and should be specifically disallowed with the rest of these at WT:LANGTREAT. They should all be removed from Module:languages, and if they have categories, those should be deleted. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:37, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Support. The consensus of scholarship does seem to be that Malagasy is one language, not many. E.g. Leonard Fox wrote (in Hainteny: The Traditional Poetry of Madagascar, 1990, ISBN 083875175X, page 17) that "Madagascar, although it is the world's fourth largest island, is characterized by a remarkable degree of linguistic homogeneity. Dialectal differences certainly exist, but the Malagasy language exhibits greater uniformity than many languages spoken over a much smaller area...". Øyvind Dahl concurred (in Meanings in Madagascar: Cases of Intercultural Communication, 1999, ISBN 0897896424) "all Malagasy speak the same language, with only dialectal differences, which is an exceptional fact in an African context and a consequence of the relative late immigration from South-East Asia." Ann Kumar wrote (in Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, 2012, ISBN 9814311960, page 107) that "Grammar is remarkably uniform, and no dialectical differences are very great." - -sche (discuss) 08:54, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

మూస:done. None of the codes were used, AFAICT, so I simply removed them from Module:languages. As a side note, if the OP hadn't overtly linked to the templates, I wouldn't have thought to delete them, too... which highlights how untenable it is that we haven't deleted all the language code templates en masse yet. The template side of things hasn't been updated to reflect most if any of the past several months' renames, mergers, and additions of new codes. If there's any infrastructure that still calls templates rather than Module:languages, that's a problem. - -sche (discuss) 05:19, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

"Muslim Tat"

Currently {{ttt}} is called "Muslim Tat"; I propose that (like Wikipedia) we simply call this lect "Tat". The name was probably chosen because Tat is in fact a macrolanguage, with two sublects traditionally spoken by the separate communities of Muslims and Jews (we call the latter lect "Judeo-Tat"). In any case, common practice is to use Judeo- for the Jewish versions of standard languages, and leave it off for the non-Jewish version. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Support. Even many of the BGC hits for "Muslim Tat" for which Google provides snippets also refer to the language as plain "Tat", and only use the qualifier in phrases like "Jewish and Muslim Tat", or in parentheses as "(Muslim) Tat". (One hit is referring to a person—a Tat whose religion is Islam—rather than to the language.) PS, it's possible that Ethnologue included "Muslim" to disambiguate it not just from Judeo-Tat but also from this language / group of languages, but it can be distinguished as "Tati" if we want to include it as a single language. (At the moment, we include all of its subvarieties instead; none of them have names similar to "Tat".)
AFAICT, the only entries which need to be updated (because they include Tat words) are tree, dog, year, ear and eye. - -sche (discuss) 04:47, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

That's a lot of entries. Who's gonna do all that work? --Wiki Tiki 89 04:49, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

In the time it took you to make that comment, I had already done it. :b - -sche (discuss) 05:03, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't doubt that the time it took for me to change Module:languages was more than it took you edit those entries, just from sheer page loading time. Something really needs to be done about the size of that module. --Wiki Tiki 89 05:08, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Btw, WP considers this a dialect of Persian. See w:Persian language, w:Tat language (Caucasus). - -sche (discuss) 04:33, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

do you speak something

Good idea, crappy title, badly executed. Maybe do you speak... would be better. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:13, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I disagree that this is badly executed, I don't think it's more than a little bit worse than anything else. How about do you speak (something) or do you speak (language)? Mglovesfun (talk) 11:17, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Originally this was named do you speak...?. Of course, the question mark is not needed and should not be used there. —Stephen ^(Talk) 11:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

"Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic"

As the name suggests, a dialect of gd. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 01:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

No it isn't. It's a name Ethnologue made up for the language called Classical Gaelic in Scotland and Early Modern Irish or Classical Irish in the rest of the world. —An gr 10:47, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, I thought the name referred to something else. In that case, instead of merging it we need to rename it to something more accurate, I suppose. 'Classical Irish' might be best, although it seems crazy the number of Irishes we have over time (Primitive Irish, Old Irish, Middle Irish, Irish and now this Classical Irish). What do you prefer? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:37, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd prefer not using this label or the ghc at all. There's no reason 17th-century Irish can't be simply ga, with words no longer in use labeled "archaic" or "obsolete", and any words that occur in texts from Scotland can be gd and similarly labeled. Speakers of Modern Irish have no more difficulty reading Geoffrey Keating than speakers of Modern English have reading Shakespeare. —An gr 09:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Merged into ga. - -sche (discuss) 08:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Category:en:Skeleton

I think it should be moved to Category:en:Bones. --ElisaVan (talk) 08:59, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Support, but let's call it "List of bones". There are a lot of categories like this that could benefit from less ambiguous names. DTLHS (talk) 23:43, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

No preference; it's not exactly ambiguous what either skeleton or bones refers to. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:07, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

bee's knees

Suggest merging the bee's knees into bee's knees. Per redirect at the the cat's pyjamas. I'm not sure of Wiktionary SOP, so noting here. HTH. Quiddity (talk) 23:10, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest, instead. merging the other way: is bee's knees ever used in any other combination than with "the", as in the bee's knees? Chuck Entz (talk) 00:34, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I too would suggest unifying them as the bee's knees. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:44, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

September 2013

Category:Greenlandic Eskimo Pidgin language

I propose renaming the language Greenlandic Eskimo Pidgin to Greenlandic Pidgin. మూస:g.b.c. doesn’t even pass CFI, while మూస:g.b.c. does. Another possibility is West Greenlandic Pidgin, which is what Wikipedia calls it.

The language’s only entry originally had the heading “Greenlandic Pidgin”, which was then changed by Daniel Carrero apparently without due process, so that’s an argument for speedy-renaming it back to the original name. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 14:35, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic

I am proposing that entries such as *reťi (and *moťь, *noťь, *dъťi and others) and *meďa (and *svěťa, etc.) be renamed to *rekti (*moktь, *noktь, *dъkti) and *medja (*světja), respectively; i.e. as they usually spelled in academic works. Another inconsistency is that some entries have the intrusive *l, while others do not (compare *čaplja : *zemja). --220.253.179.121 10:45, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I support using -kt-/-tj-/-dj- in these cases. WT:ASLA already specifies that epenthetic l's should be included, so Appendix:Proto-Slavic/zemja needs to be moved to Appendix:Proto-Slavic/zemlja. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:50, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

There is no difference between -kt- and -tj-, the distinction is purely etymological. So I don't support making it. And WT:ASLA did not originally specify that the l should be included, Ivan unilaterally rewrote most of that page and it does not represent consensus. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:21, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

If the difference is purely etymological, then surely the etymology section of an entry is the place to make it. I don't see any objections being raised to the inclusion of the -l-, and in consensus-building silence implies consent. Personally I'd prefer to exclude it because we should be giving the oldest reconstructable form (hence -kt-) and the -l- is "unetymological". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:49, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Surely if we want the oldest reconstructable form, we should be reconstructing PIE and not Proto-Slavic? Reconstructions should concern themselves with the latest common ancestor, not the earliest. There is no descernable difference between -kt- and -tj- in Slavic, both have the exact same outcome in all languages. So the comparative method that linguists use to make reconstructions will give one phoneme, which has been labelled as *ť on Wiktionary and Wikipedia. To reconstruct the difference between -kt- and -tj- requires "outside information", which is not always available. It would be a bit like reconstructing the distinction between short a and o for Proto-Germanic depending on their origin, even though these clearly merged. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:55, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

And concerning -j- or -lj-, there is no clear linguistic consensus on whether -lj- is original or -j-, so we just picked one to standardise on. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 11:57, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Internal reconstruction within the protolanguage and comparison with sister languages and protolanguages is also part of historical linguistics, and distinguishing tj < *kt from tj < *tj provides useful information. We don't have to put blinders on and look only at what's reconstructable from the daughter languages, especially since the majority of published sources don't either, and do distinguish the two types of tj. If we didn't allow internal reconstruction within the proto-language, we'd never reconstruct any PIE laryngeals at all except in words directly attested in Anatolian (and even then we would never reconstruct h₁ at any rate). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:11, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I think you're mistaken. While some linguists are in the habit of reconstructing laryngeals to account for any occurrence of *a or a long vowel, there are many who don't and disagree with this practice. Ringe for example explicitly argues that not all cases of *a should be reconstructed as *h₂e just for the sake of it. But there are many cases where the descendants rule out *a and require *h₂e, so then it can be reconstructed. This doesn't apply to Slavic *ť though. There are no examples of any discernable difference between *kt and *tj in any Slavic language, so trying to distinguish them is always going to be an irregular and incomplete process. And there's also a more esthetic argument: Proto-Slavic didn't allow syllables to end in an obstruent, and we don't have reconstructions with obstruent-final syllables anywhere. Yet *noktь has such a syllable, so it would be internally inconsistent if we used this representation, unless we somehow "decide" that *kt is actually a single phoneme. And if you get to that point then you might as well just respell that phoneme as *ť... వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 12:53, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

What cases are there where non-Anatolian descendants "rule out *a and require *h₂e"? Reconstructing kt in Proto-Slavic is no different than reconstructing ɸ in Proto-Celtic (or, as I said, h₁ in PIE—or for that matter e-vocalism next to h₂ and h₃); if we know from other evidence that it was there, there's no reason to exclude it, and certainly no reason for reconstructions to "concern themselves with the latest common ancestor, not the earliest". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Well actually, the Proto-Slavic we reconstruct here is not actually the latest common ancestor, it's later. As far as I can tell, we have certain sound changes applied to our reconstructions, even though they can be demonstrated to have occurred after certain other changes that we don't apply. For example, the liquid diphthongs were changed in a dialect-specific way before the vowels *o and *a differed in quality (because *or is lengthened to *ra in South Slavic). But the quality distinctions must have arisen before a whole lot of accent changes that happened in late Common Slavic, such as the creation of accent class B (which we reconstruct). But in all of these cases we represent "archiphonemes" that can be reconstructed for all Slavic languages based on comparative evidence. *or is an archiphoneme that should be understood as meaning different things in different Slavic dialects. The same should be done for *ť, for which comparative evidence gives only a single phoneme rather than two, so there is nothing beyond that to reconstruct. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:39, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Eupodotis rueppelii

Typo in name. Should be Eupodotis rueppellii, according to Wikipedia, Wikispecies and ITIS. — Pingku^dimmi 10:03, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

And Eduard Rüppell would appreciate it. Move. DCDuring TALK 12:46, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Move. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:44, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Moved. --Bigbossfarin (talk) 13:43, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

October

Category:Swiss German

This lists Helveticisms in the German language and should be at Category:Swiss Standard German. "Swiss German" is the name for the High German language that we call Category:Alemannic German language. (See Swiss Standard German, Swiss German.) Ƿidsiþ 06:35, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Which would entail a move of Category:German language to Category:Standard German language, which I don't think many people will support. Swiss German follows our nomenclature for regional categories, being defined as German terms used only in Switzerland. Is the degree of confusion with the German dialect really that high? -- Liliana • 10:59, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Widsith here. "Swiss German" is commonly understood to mean the variety of Alemannic spoken in Switzerland, just as Schweizerdeutsch and Schwyzerdüütsch are understood to mean. Wikipedia understands this too: compare Swiss German and Swiss Standard German. And yes, the degree of confusion with the dialect is pretty high, and importance of clearly distinguishing the two lects is great. Is it then impossible to program our templates in such a way that {{context|Switzerland|lang=de}} assigns terms to Category:Swiss Standard German without completely moving Category:German language to Category:Standard German language, and while ensuring that {{context|Switzerland|lang=fr}} and {{context|Switzerland|lang=it}} continue to categorize terms into Category:Swiss French and Category:Swiss Italian without the word "Standard"? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:11, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

We used to be able to do this before context labels were migrated to Lua, but now it's impossible. -- Liliana • 12:27, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why it requires doing anything to Category:German language. The word "standard" is only used in the Swiss case because it's necessary to distinguish it from "Swiss German", which is a different language (code gsw). Anyway at the moment the labelling is plain wrong, so something needs to be done. Ƿidsiþ 12:14, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Oppose of course. I don't feel the need to give a rationale, it's obvious enough. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

It's "obvious enough" that you prefer a misleading—nay, downright false—category name? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:39, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Can I request a rationale? Swiss German has the language code gsw, but we are filling Category:Swiss German with de words. Why do you think this is OK? Ƿidsiþ 07:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we call gsw Alemannic German which is a distinct name from Swiss German, and Swiss Standard German isn't any clearer. Quite the opposite, seeing Swiss Standard German makes me want to change it to Swiss German to make it clearer. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:43, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Apologies, but this is an aurgument from ignorance. You may not know what the language is called, but in linguistic terms "Swiss German" means something, and it does not mean "the form of standard German used in Switzerland". To quote Wikipedia: "The dialects of Swiss German must not be confused with Swiss Standard German, the variety of Standard German used in Switzerland." Exactly the mistake our current categorisation has fallen into. Ƿidsiþ 13:09, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

That's sort of the point; in all my years of studying languages I've never come across this, so you can't expect readers to know this sort of thing. It'll solve a problem for a small minority and screw everyone else over. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

There's a lot of things I don't expect casual users to know, but I still expect us to get them right. You seem to be arguing that since this is a language you don't know much about, it doesn't matter if it's wrong. This is a very weird attitude to take, given some of the far more obscure languages we all work on here. I also just don't see how correcting a mistake will "screw everyone else over". Surely it can't be that complicated to change the name of the category created in these cases? Ƿidsiþ 14:10, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree; it's the current system that's screwing people over. Specifically, we're lying to our users. Unfortunately, from Liliana's comment above, it seems we can no longer get {{context}} to file entries marked {{context|Switzerland|lang=de}} in anything other than Category:Swiss German unless we change the name of German to Standard German everywhere, which is also not a desirable result (for one thing, it would result in such paradoxes as Category:Standard German nonstandard terms). But keeping these terms in a misnamed category is absolutely unacceptable. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:07, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

We could create a label “Swiss-de” that categorises the entry as “Swiss Standard”. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 10:34, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's good. I wonder if there are other country/language combinations where this is a problem. {{context|Egypt|lang=ar}}, which could be applied to Standard Arabic (ar) words as used in Egpyt, doesn't seem to categorize pages at all; but if it did, Category:Egyptian Arabic would be a bad name for it as that would imply Category:Egyptian Arabic language (arz). But for now, as long as no Standard Arabic words are being categorized into Category:Egyptian Arabic, it's only a hypothetical problem, not a real one. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:41, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we should consider changing the naming scheme altogether? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 14:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

"You seem to be arguing that since this is a language you don't know much about, it doesn't matter if it's wrong." No I assume either you're not being serious (least funny joke ever) or you just didn't bother to read my comment. Right and wrong is a POV thing anyway, we call it Alemannic German which by the way has a separate Wikipedia page to Swiss German, but both list gsw as the ISO 639-3 code. What you seem to be arguing is that people should not use the adjective Swiss to qualify the word German when they mean the German language as used in Switzerland. Whether you think that and whether I agree with you, that's irrelevant, as people do use it that way. Angr's got this completely right about Egyptian Arabic too. Whether you agree with people using the word 'Egyptian' to qualify the Arabic language as used in Egypt is irrelevant; people do use it that way. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:49, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Just because some people do things wrong doesn't mean we have to follow them. Swiss German refers to a specific lect, which is not the lect that Category:Swiss German is being filled with. Maybe people who don't know better do refer to Standard German as used in Switzerland as "Swiss German", but we're a dictionary trying to be as high-quality as possible, and we do know better, so we shouldn't misuse a term in our category structure just because a subset of our readership won't know the difference. You say, "Whether you think that and whether I agree with you, that's irrelevant, as people do use it that way", which sounds more like an argument about what our entry for Swiss German should say than an argument about what our category Category:Swiss German should contain. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:19, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I've already answered this two paragraphs up from this one. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:20, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I was being serious and I did read your comment. You said, ‘I've never come across this, so you can't expect readers to know this sort of thing.’ Hence my conclusion that you thought it didn't matter for our readers since you didn't know about it. If you look at the Wikipedia page for Alemannic German, you will see that it covers three separate ISO codes, only one of which is gsw (which by the way stands for "German, Swiss"). I don't care if we call gsw "Alemannic German" (although it's unusual, almost all the literature refers to it as Swiss German), but I do mind our labelling standard German words as Swiss German because it's wrong. Ƿidsiþ 17:32, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

That your conclusion is bad. I'll leave to figure out where you went wrong. What I'm saying is, you think you're making a correction, I'm saying your taking something misleading and trying to make it more widespread. These aren't two different things but two opposing viewpoints on the same thing. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Well it could hardly be more misleading than the current situation, which perpetuates something that's flat-out wrong. Ƿidsiþ 17:44, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

You've already said that. I've already said, that's not your decision to make. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:47, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

You're right. It's not our decision. It's the decision of common English-language usage. And common English-language usage is that the term "Swiss German" refers only to the (primarily spoken, only occasionally written) Alemannic dialect of Switzerland, identified by the ISO code gsw, and not to the (primarily written, only occasionally spoken) variety of Standard German used in Switzerland, identified by the ISO code de; the latter is known as Swiss Standard German. Neither Widsith nor I nor Wikipedia made that decision; that is the existing, longstanding, widespread practice in English-language discourse about the varieties of German used in Switzerland. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:14, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Martin, I still don't really understand your objection. I am not making any unilateral decision. In the real world, ‘Swiss German’ refers to a specific language. Ethnologue. SIL. Wikipedia. Omniglot. I get why you think it's confusing, but these are the facts. I am moving to Switzerland and currently studying the language, so I have been reading endless books and websites on it; all of them call it the same thing. There are several ‘learn Swiss German’ books and websites, and none of them are talking about code "de". Are you suggesting that we, alone, should use the phrase ‘Swiss German’ to mean standard German? Surely ‘Swiss standard German’ is obviously clearer for those cases? Basically, I don't really get what the objection is, I mean I can see that it's technically challenging, but I don't understand why you would be opposed to the change in principle. Ƿidsiþ 19:41, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Um I don't think I can simplify my argument any more, if anything I think you might be looking for something complicated where it's actually very simple. Trying asking someone else. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

You're right, it's very simple. The name of the category does not match with the words inside it. The terms listed in Category:Swiss German aren't Swiss German. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:16, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you should read this discussion. Actually don't bother, if you haven't understood yet, give up and do something else. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:13, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

This might come across as sarcastic, but both of you stop trying to understand; it's not going happen. Give up. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:19, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't seem sarcastic so much as rude. This page is for discussion and reaching consensus. If you're unwilling to help us understand your position, which obviously you are, then don't post. Telling other editors to "give up and do something else" is not helpful. Ƿidsiþ 14:57, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I interpret Mglovesfun's comment as a concession of defeat, couched in rudeness in order to save face. Now, how do we technically go about getting Lua to understand that {{context|Switzerland|lang=de}} is to categorize terms in Category:Swiss Standard German rather than Category:Swiss German, without renaming Category:German language and without renaming Category:Swiss French and Category:Swiss Italian? Once that's done we should put {{movecat|Alemannic German language}} on Category:Swiss German. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:06, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm hopeless with the technical side, especially post-Lua. Maybe this should be raised at the Grease Pit. Ƿidsiþ 15:08, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Not at all. Lest you will face the wrath of User:CodeCat, who will do some of the worst possible things to you. -- Liliana • 17:18, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I was hoping for an intelligent debate on the subject where each side would learn from the other by arguing their case. Clearly, I couldn't've been more wrong. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:11, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I was hoping for that too. However, since you never argued your case, it was impossible to do so. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:04, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

No I did, just apparently nobody understands my argument. But like I said, if you haven't got it by now you never will, so go do something else. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:53, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Is your argument something beyond "'Swiss German' is simpler than 'Swiss Standard German'"? Because that's the closest thing to an argument I can find from you in this thread. If that's the extent of your argument, then your argument has failed, because simplicity cannot take precedence over accuracy. It would be as if someone suggested moving Category:Brazilian Sign Language to Category:Brazilian on the grounds that it's simpler—it is simpler indeed, but it's wrong, because the language isn't called that. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:20, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I think people are missing the point here: it's not that using "Swiss German" for non-Alemannic German is incorrect, it's that "Swiss German" used for anything is hopelessly ambiguous: the contexts that separate the Alemannic sense from the Standard German sense are very similar, and overlap (then there's the matter of Alemannic dialects in Germany and Lichtenstein, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms). We simply can't expect the average user- who is unlikely to have even heard of Alemannic German- to figure out what it means without careful explanation- which, of course, they probably won't read.

The problem is that the logic in Module:Labels for processing the regional labels is separate from the part for selecting the language names, and we really need to have it recognize a specific combination of the two. The obvious solution would be adding code substituting "Swiss Standard" for "Swiss" if the language code is "de". If it's put in the right place, it would only spend the execution time on checking when it's already determined that it's a regional label. The problem with that is that adding ad-hoc tests for individual exceptions is a bad habit to get into, especially if there are potentially other exceptions that might come up later. Perhaps there might be some way to add a field to Module:Labels/data that would show whether a particular label had alternative forms, or even one field with the language code that would necessitate substitution and another with the alternative form itself. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's my point. We don't only cater for linguists (a small minority of the population, I'm sure we agree) but for everyone. That's why I say it doesn't improve the situation, it just changes the nature of the problem. I'm not keen on just changing from one problem to another. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

No one's proposing that we move Category:Alemannic German language to Category:Swiss German or indeed that we allow Category:Swiss German to hold any entries at all. The point is that a category containing Swiss Standard German terms shouldn't be called Category:Swiss German--it doesn't matter whether you believe "Swiss German" to refer to something specific that this category doesn't contain or whether you believe "Swiss German" to be ambiguous in its referent. Either way, the current name for this set of entries has to go. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

As a data point: I'm no professional linguist, hardly any kind of linguist. I'd heard of Swiss German and know it to be distinct from Standard German and the variety of Standard German used in Switzerland. Alemannic was news to me when I came to Wiktionary, though I have relatives from the vicinity. Swiss Standard German, as I understand it, is not really a dialect, any more than "Canadian English".

Move per Widsith and Angr. Is there some kind of kludge that can force the right result out of the defective current label system? Can {{context}} be made to work as well as it used to in pre-Lua days? If neither, a substitute, ad hoc template should be developed and applied to achieve the result with requiring hardcoding categories. DCDuring TALK 14:16, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Don't move to the proposed title; the proposed title is no less misleading than the current title. Swiss German is the variety of New High German that is found in Switzerland. Swiss Standard German is the variety of New High German that is official / standard in Switzerland; not all words found in Swiss German are standard.
I feel the current category name is clear enough to be kept: not only does Wiktionary call the language which has the code gsw "Alemannic German", Wiktionary also distinguishes languages from regional varieties by using "language" in the category names of the former, and making the latter subcategories of "language" categories. Thus, it's clear (within our system) that Category:Alemannic German language and Category:Swiss German are different things.
There may be people outside Wiktionary who do not notice how we use the terms, and do not notice how we structure category names, and who therefore confuse "Category:Swiss German" and "Category:Alemannic German language". We could, to address the confusion, rename Category:Swiss German to Category:Switzerland German. Using a noun rather than an adjective is clunkier, but there is precedent; we have, for example, Category:Louisiana French and Category:Quebec French rather than *Category:Louisianan French and *Category:Quebecois French. It would also be simple to bring about; unless I've missed something, we'd just change the line labels["Switzerland"] = { regional_categories = {"Swiss"} } in Module:labels/data to labels["Switzerland"] = { regional_categories = {"Switzerland"} }. We would also need to move Category:Swiss Italian, etc.
As "confusing names" go, "Swiss German" is small change, though. It's much more confusing that, for example, (1) Wiktionary currently calls one language "Aja" and another "Adja" even though both go by both names; (2) there are six or seven languages and one regional variety of a language all most commonly known "Kara", and Wiktionary currently calls two of them "Kara" and calls the rest by other (sometimes less common, but more distinct) names, and some of those substitute names are also polysemous; (3) etc, etc. (IOW: our system already results in confusion, and there's no easy way of fixing it. I've already made several efforts, and in some cases the confusing status quo is the result of my efforts: some messes were even more confusing before I started.) - -sche (discuss) 03:45, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
I disagree. "Swiss Standard German" refers to the variety of "Standard German" that is found in Switzerland. It does not imply that all words found in Swiss Standard German are standard, as the word "Standard" in this case either refers to the fact that it is the standard language of Switzerland. "Switzerland German" would have been a good solution, except that "Swiss Standard German" is the most commonly used term for this variety and there is therefore no need to invent a name. --Wiki Tiki 89 04:15, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

"Switzerland German" would be fine for me. Even better if the change is easy to make. To be honest it doesn't matter what we call the category, as long as it isn't "Swiss German", which is wrong. Ƿidsiþ 12:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Seeing no agreement about "Swiss Standard German", but seeing agreement that "Switzerland German" was acceptable, I've updated Module:labels/data. This has automatically moved all of the entries out of Category:Swiss German, Category:Swiss French and Category:Swiss Italian into Category:Switzerland German, etc. I've deleted the empty Category:Swiss German and left the empty French and Italian categories for someone else to delete. - -sche (discuss) 06:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you -sche! Ƿidsiþ 07:13, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Since no-one else was going to do it, I've also deleted the empty French and Italian categories with a note directing users to the new category names. Thus, this is మూస:done. - -sche (discuss) 18:27, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

конденсат Бозе — Эйнштейна

To конденсат Бозе - Эйнштейна. I think the common practice is to use plain hyphens in page names? వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 20:26, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Not universally. Hebrew, at least , uses U+05BE. I can't speak for конденсат Бозе — Эйнштейна.—msh210℠ (talk) 18:31, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

WT:Entry titles does actually say to use the hyphen minus not any of the dashes. What does WT:ARU say? WT:Entry titles is quite new and therefore does not necessarily reflect a strong consensus. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Not an easy one but I'd say keep as is. The form "Бозе-Эйнштейн" (with a plain hyphen) would imply that it is a name of one person, "—" is implying that there were two people. Cf. names of people "Склодо́вская-Кюри́" (Skłodowska-Curie), "Бонч-Бруе́вич" (Bonch-Bruyevich) (these are hyphenated names). If something was named after Skłodowska-Curie and another person, the only would be to use "—". Not sure about transliteration of "—", which also has grammatical usage in Russian. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 22:56, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I found the applicable rule about "тире ‎(tirɛ́)" (—): тире (I should have known it!). "...ме́жду имена́ми со́бственными, совоку́пностью кото́рых называ́ется уче́ние, явле́ние и т. п. (уравне́ние Менделе́ева — Клапейро́на; матч Каспа́ров — Ка́рпов)" - "("—" is used) ...between proper names, whose combination is used to name a teaching (doctrine), a phenomenon, etc. (e.g. Mendeleyev - Clapeyron equation, Kasparov - Karpov match). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:10, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Keep as is, then.—msh210℠ (talk) 05:54, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Are we using typewriting or typesetting conventions for our main entries? Shouldn’t we be consistent in this?

Good English-language typography would use an en dash or real apostrophe in certain places (e.g., Bose–Einstein condensate, don’t) instead of a hyphen or neutered typewriter apostrophe (Bose-Einstein condensate, don't). I don’t know about Russian type-writing conventions, but in English usage the em dash is typically typed as a double hyphen (as конденсат Бозе--Эйнштейна), or perhaps a spaced hyphen (конденсат Бозе - Эйнштейна).

Anatoli, is the long dash always spaced in Russian typesetting? —Michael Z. 2013-11-18 02:55 z

మూస:b.g.c. shows both spaced and unspaced m-dashes (and some of the spaced dashes are short enough to be n-dashes, but that could just be the strange font. --Wiki Tiki 89 03:10, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

After taking a closer look at more of the results, it seems that every combination of {n-dash, m-dash, hyphen} × {spaced, unspaced} exists. --Wiki Tiki 89 03:12, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Missed the questions, sorry. The prescribed method is to space the long dash but this rule is not always followed, apparently. Re "Are we using typewriting or typesetting conventions for our main entries?". It's both typographical and correct web version. The long dash is often replaced with a short dash in informal writing but the long dash and spaces around are standard in this case. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:15, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:en-conj

This is an unused template that contains only a schoolboy exercise of the conjugation of do, mostly perphrastic, of course, and incomplete as a table of all periphrastic equivalents of all tenses and aspects that can be expressed in English. Thus it is misnamed and misleading. If anything it ought to be in the creator's user space, renamed as {{en-conj-do}}. DCDuring TALK 14:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

If you plug in other terms, it outputs the forms of the verb you've plugged in. Observe: {{en-conj|love|loved||loving}} yields:

మూస:en-conj

That doesn't mean we really need it, of course, but it does do more than you thought it did. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:24, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I was so annoyed that it didn't work as it used to, as the inflection-line template (or redirect thereto) for English conjugations, that I didn't bother to look. That it has no documentation makes that particularly easy. It needs the "principal parts" (3, 4?) in order to generate the periphrases that it covers.

Were it deployed in English L2s I think it would be a great way to ensure that we get fewer native speakers to use Wiktionary, to continue phase one of the linguistic cleansing process. DCDuring TALK 16:54, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean the inflection-line template for English conjunctions? That's now at {{en-con}}. Anyway, I have no objection to deleting this (it's unused anyway) since we already provide the principle parts on the headword line and everything is derivable from those parts, especially if we have an Appendix:English verbs for the benefit of learners. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:29, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Besides, it needs fixing: buried deep in the paradigm are "he will has" and "he would has". Chuck Entz (talk) 02:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I created a documentation that there are no more confusions and thus I think this discussion is finished, Keep as is. --Bigbossfarin (talk) 13:49, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so. There is so little value to English conjugation tables that it doesn't seem to me that it merits taking a name that should be used for English conjunctions. Mindless uniformity across languages might be fine for other languages, but not for English on English Wiktionary. Why not rename it as {{en-conjugation}}? DCDuring TALK 14:00, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm split. The template is too well made to delete, but on the other hand it is entirely useless since we don't conjugate English verbs in entries (and I would be opposed to doing so). I guess I would support moving it to {{en-conjugate}}. But I definitely oppose moving {{en-con}} to {{en-conj}} and would also oppose redirecting {{en-conj}} to {{en-con}}. If {{en-conj}} doesn't contain a conjugation table, then it most certainly should not contain a conjunction template. This is not mindless uniformity, this is to avoid confusion. --Wiki Tiki 89 14:20, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Another way to avoid confusion would be to rename "xx-conj" templates to "xx-conjg". We know have confusion among contraction, conjunction , and conjugation templates, which could be avoided by other shortcuts "xx-contr", "xx-conjct", and "xx-conjg". This template name has the most potential for confusion. DCDuring TALK 15:49, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Maybe you're right, but using different abbreviations for each language is much more confusing than having ambiguous abbreviations. --Wiki Tiki 89 15:58, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

A discussion about the name of the templates you can already find here: Template talk:en-con. Since this discussion names of some templates for conjunctions were changed to "xx-con", see: {{eo-con}}, {{nl-con}}, {{arc-con}}, {{cmn-con}}, {{lo-con}}, {{nan-con}}, {{hy-con}}, {{ka-con}}, {{xcl-con}}, {{sh-con}}, and {{ur-con}}. So everyone who wants to use {{en-conj}} for header of conjunctions is wrong, and if you look at Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:en-conj there is not one content page which uses this template as header. I don't think that we have to move anything because it would be a big effort to change the lemma of all the listed templates. Greetings Bigbossfarin (talk) 12:35, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Could we rename -decl and -conj to -infl instead? Then the problem would be sidestepped. And "infl" is more general, because it can apply to things that aren't conjugation or declension, like Dutch pronominal adverbs or Irish prepositions. Declension and conjugation are primarily Indo-European-biased terms and don't fit well in many other cases, nor is it even clear what should be done when they're mixed together. వాడుకరి:CodeCat/signature 16:19, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

November 2013

Merge Buryat, Mari languages

As per Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2013/September#Merging_Mari_and_Buryat_varieties. As for Buryat, there was an agreement. Three Mari varieties can be merged into two. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:58, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I've deleted bxm and bxu. A number of entires use bxr; they should be switched to bua before bxr is deleted. Then WT:LANGTREAT can be updated. See also WT:RFM#Template:bxr. - -sche (discuss) 01:18, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. bxr (WhatLinksHere) is only used in the talk pages or have I missed anything? --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:28, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

The code is used in about 60 entries, which I'm going through now in AWB. They don't show up in WhatLinksHere because they use Module:languages, not Template:bxr. (That's one of the only drawbacks to the switch to the module: it's harder to find which pages use a given language code.) - -sche (discuss) 01:37, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for addressing this! --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

By the way, renaming "Russian Buryat" to "Buryat" breaks the alphabetical order in translations, as in మూస:revision. Also, the overwhelming majority of Buryats, especially those who speak the language live in Russia, so "Russian Buryat" is an unnecessary qualifier. The language also has automatic transliteration. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:07, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

As indicated in my edit summaries, I'm under the impression that Autoformat/Kassadbot will sort languages into alphabetical order next time it runs. As for transliteration and qualification: OK, I'll drop both. :) - -sche (discuss) 02:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I think I've switched all instances of bxr to bua, but we could wait a day or two to be sure. - -sche (discuss) 05:14, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

For Mari, which code should be deleted, chm or mhr? Both are in use at present. Whichever code is deleted, "Eastern Mari" (="Standard Mari", but we avoid using "Standard" in language names) should continue to be called that, not only to distinguish it from "Western Mari", but to distinguish it from the several other languages called "Mari" — some of which, e.g. mbx, hob, have not been added to Module:languages yet. - -sche (discuss) 05:14, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

My preference is to keep "chm" with the name "Mari" (without "standard") and delete "mhr" ("Eastern Mari", "Meadow Mari"), which is identical with "chm". Don't know if "mrj" ("Western Mari", "Hill Mari") is used. The transliteration module Module:chm-translit handles all three codes and letters, which are only used in the Hill Mari - Ӓ, ӓ and Ӹ, ӹ. I haven't considered mbx or hob. Eastern Mari (Meadow Mari) and standard Mari are the same language. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:38, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Great job on the transliteration module!
Calling the language plain "Mari" isn't an option, since it does need to be distinguished from the Sepik language that's also called "Mari", and the Austronesian "Mari" (which could be renamed "Hop" if necessary), both of which I just added to Module:languages. (Those two are currently distinguished from one another as "Mari (Sepik)" and "Mari (Austronesian)".) Given that the name "Eastern Mari" seems to be noticeably more common than "Meadow Mari", and given that we use "Western Mari" as the primary name for the other variety, I think we can go with "Eastern Mari". - -sche (discuss) 08:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Nah, not a great job, I copied the logic from other modules and done so for a few other. OK with "Eastern Mari". Thanks for the efforts. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 00:02, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I've changed all uses of 'mhr' to 'chm' and updated the name of the lect in those instances. Whenever it's decided where the contents of Module:languages will be hosted, 'mhr' can be removed from that module. In the other places where 'chm' occurs (the pre-existing occurrences of 'chm'), the language's name still needs to be updated. I will try to find time to do that in AWB. Then this will be finished. - -sche (discuss) 05:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I've updated the module and about half of the ~140 entries that referenced chm; the other half, and the categories, remain to be updated. - -sche (discuss) 09:00, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

మూస:done, I think. - -sche (discuss) 03:33, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

rename Amarag → Amurdag

Currently, we call amg "Amarag". That's the name a number of general linguistic encyclopedias (International Encyclopedia of Linguistis, etc) use. However, I propose we switch to "Amurdag", since that name is more common both in specialist sources (including Handelsmann's dictionary of the language) and in non-specialist sources. (The fact that non-specialist literature mentions the language at all is astounding, but see e.g. International Sport Management, ISBN 0736082735.) PS: no one has created Category:Amarag language yet, so one could argue that this is not quite a "request for [a] move"... nonetheless, this page has established itself as the place where language renames are discussed. - -sche (discuss) 23:57, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

rename Kenuzi-Dongola → Dongolawi

I propose we rename the lect kzh from "Kenuzi-Dongola" to "Dongolawi", which seems more common.
Some literature uses "Dongolawi" as the name of one of the lect's two dialects, namely dgl (the dialect also known as "Andaandi"); but because we've merged that dialect and xnz (Kenzi / Mattoki) and consider kzh to be a single language, I don't see any prolem with that.
- -sche (discuss) 18:35, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging khk and mvf into mn (Mongolian)

Currently, Module:languages contains three codes for Mongolian: mn for Mongolian proper, khk for Khalkha Mongolian, and mvf for Peripheral Mongolian. Scholars agree that Khalkha is Mongolian, so it is redundant to have khk as a separate code. Scholars disagree on what else is or isn't Mongolian (see w:Mongolian language#Classification_and_dialects), but 'Peripheral Mongolian' is too vague a term to be useful — scholarly disagreement is over concrete lects, like Buryat (which, NB, we consider a separate language). I propose we delete khk and mvf. (WT:LANGTREAT already calls for this, but using language that I think should be reworded for clarity given the scholarly disputes: rather than say "only the macrolanguage is treated as an individual language", I'd like to spell out that "Only the code mn is used; khk is redundant to it and mvf is too vague to be usable.") - -sche (discuss) 19:15, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Support. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:34, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Support as well. The language of Inner Mongolians has more difference to Outer Mongolian but it's still "mn". --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

various places where WT:LANGTREAT and Module:languages are inconsistent

Module:languages includes codes from the individual members of several language/dialect groups which WT:LANGTREAT says, without citing any discussion, should be merged. Something needs to change: either WT:LANGTREAT should be updated to note that the individual varieties are allowed, or their codes should be removed from the module. The following language/dialect groups are affected:
(Note 1: whenever the merging of a particular dialect group had been discussed and that discussion was cited by LANGTREAT, I simply updated the module.)
(Note 2: Haida, Cree and Kalenjin face the same issue; I expect to write about them later.)
- -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

the Azeri lects

WT:LANGTREAT says only Azeri (az) is treated as a language, but azb (South Azerbaijani) and azj (North Azerbaijani) are currently encoded in Module:languages / its new subpages. What should be updated, the module or LANGTREAT? WP says "[the] dialects of Azerbaijani do not differ substantially. Speakers of various dialects normally do not have problems understanding each other." - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The only reason to differentiate them would be due to the different writing systems used (Cyrillic/Arabic), but we can handle that with script codes, so {{azb}} and {{azj}} should most certainly go. -- Liliana • 17:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, even if we split azb and azj, the latter would still have entries in two scripts, because it (like Romanian) has been written in both Cyrillic and Latin at different points in history, so the use of Arabic script for azb shouldn't be an impediment to incorporating its entries under the single header ==Azeri==. (And we do handle e.g. both Latin- and Arabic-script Afrikaans under one header.) - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, it is worth mentioning the existence of Qashqai (qxq), another Oghuz lect spoken in Iran and written in the Arabic script. It is so close to Azeri that it is sometimes considered just another dialect of it. Gilles Authier, in New strategies for relative clauses in Azeri and Apsheron Tat, in Clause Linkage in Cross-Linguistic Perspective (2012, ISBN 3110280698), says "There is an almost perfect mutual intelligibility between Azeri and Kashkai speakers. I tested this personally by submitting recordings to both audiences." - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

the Aymara lects

I suggest we delete ayc and ayr, the codes for Aymara's dialects. The International Handbook of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (1998, ISBN 0313244847) says "the dialectal differences in Aymara are not so great that they create problems of mutual intelligibility (Briggs, 1976)." James Stuart Olson (in The Indians of Central and South America, 1991, ISBN 0313263876) and other scholars concur. - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

No opposition -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

the Baluchi lects

Baluchi (bal) has at least six dialects. Ethnologue has encoded three, namely bcc (Southern Baluchi/Balochi), bgp (Eastern Baluchi/Balochi) and bgn (Western Baluchi/Balochi).

Various editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica say that "Despite the vast area over which Balochi is spoken, its numerous dialects are all mutually intelligible." / "Despite the vast area over which [Balochi] is spoken, its six dialects (Rakhshani, Sarawani, Kechi, Lotuni, the Eastern Hill dialects, and the coastal dialects) are all believed to be mutually intelligible." Alan S. Kaye, in Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus) (ISBN 1575060191), on page 762, is slightly more cautious: the "Balochi dialects [...] are six in number, and with one exception they are all mutually intelligible." (Emphasis mine.) He writes that Eastern Hill is among the mutually intelligible dialects, but Google hides enough of his book that I can't see which one he considers unintelligible.

What should be updated, the module (to remove the dialects) or LANGTREAT (to legitimize them)? - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there is a difference. These should most certainly be merged. -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

the Bikol lects

What little information I can find regarding the mutual (un)intelligibility of the dialects of Bikol (bik) — agk, agz, atl, bcl, bln, bto, cts, fbl, lbl, rbl and ubl — suggests that LANGTREAT should perhaps be updated to legitimize their existence as separate lects. Fenella Cannell, in Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines (1999, ISBN 0521646227) says: "The Philippines is rich in languages, and the Bicol language is itself rich in dialects, including mutually incomprehensible dialects." But that's not much to go on. Anyone have more information?

Cf. Central Bikol language. Seems like a clear case where we want separate codes for the dialects. {{bik}} could possibly stay as a language family code, I dunno. -- Liliana • 17:29, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

the Gondi lects

Stephen Tyler (not the singer), in his oft-cited works on Gondi, states "Though I have no real evidence, the general pattern seems to be for geographically adjacent Koya and Gondi populations to speak different, but mutually intelligible Gondi dialects. Where these populations are geographically non-contiguous, the dialects are not mutually intelligible. This same pattern probably prevails among all Gondi dialects." WP says "The more important dialects are Dorla, Koya, Maria, Muria, and Raj Gond." Ethnologue, meanwhile, as encoded only two varieties, ggo (Southern Gondi) and gno (Northern Gondi). Should we deprecate those two codes? Or deprecate the macro-code gon and recognise those dialects? Or allow all three? - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

the Kanuri lects

LANGTREAT says Kanuri (kr) should be treated as one language, and scholars (e.g. Norbert Cyffer, who wrote A sketch of Kanuri and other works) agree on that point. Ethnologue, for whatever reason, gave codes to several of the dialects, which I suggest we delete: bms, kau (AFAICT this one has already been removed), kbl, kby, knc, krt. - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

No opposition -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

the Kongo lects

Same kind of question as in previous sections: is Kongo (kg) one language, or several (kng, kwy, ldi, yom)? (That last one, Yombe, is not mentioned in LANGTREAT.) - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

One; get rid of the others. We even deleted Category:Koongo language previously. -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

the Oromo lects

LANGTREAT recognises only Oromo (om) as a language. The codes of its varieties (gax, gaz, hae and orc) are, however, included in Module:languages. WP asserts that "not all varieties are mutually intelligible", but scholars disagree:

Alan S. Kaye, Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus) (ISBN 1575060191), page 493: "On the subject of dialect differentiation, Oromo scholars agree on the mutual intelligibility between them".
Robert L. Cooper, Language Planning and Social Change (1989, ISBN 0521336414), page 22: "The largest of these conquered groups is the Oromo. [...] They are divided into numerous clans. But they are united by a single language, whose many dialects are mutally intelligible."
David H. Shinn and Thomas P. Ofcansky, Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia (2013, ISBN 0810874571), page 319: "Although there are numerous dialects, they are mutually intelligible. Over the years, the language has been written in the Latin, Sabaean, and Arabic scripts. The Bible was first translated into Afan Oromo well over 100 years ago..."

Hence, my inclination is to merge the dialects into om. - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Merge 'em -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Persian, Dari, etc

Although LANGTREAT notes that they should be subsumed into fa, the following codes still exist in Module:languages:

pes, for "Western Persian", the most common variety of Persian. We should merge it into fa because it *is* fa.
prs, Eastern Persian / Dari, the variety of Persian spoken in Iran. Its status as a separate language, and its very name 'Dari', were products of Afghanistani politics. Not even Afghani speakers of the language call it 'Dari' or consider it separate from Persian; we shouldn't consider it separate, either.
aiq, Aimaq, a variety spoken by nomads in Afghanistan and Iran. It is sometimes considered specifically a variety of Dari (which is itself little more than another name for Persian, as explained). It differs from standard Persian mainly in matters of pronunciation, something we usually handle with {{a}} rather than separate L2s.
haz, Hazaragi, another Afghan variety. WP summarizes scholarly opinion (with citations, for which look here): "The primary differences between Standard Persian and Hazaragi are the accent and Hazaragi's greater array of Mongolic loanwords. Despite these differences, Hazaragi is mutually intelligible with other regional Persian dialects."
deh and phv, Dehwari and Pahlavani, which it is hard to find information on because even WP simply redirects the words to "Persian".

As indicated above, my opinion is that we should merge all of those codes into fa.
Incidentally, LANGTREAT originally also banned Tajik (tg), but this was not supported by scholarship or by our own practice (we had hundreds of Tajik entries), so after two discussions, I updated the page to note that Tajik is allowed. LANGTREAT made no mention of Judeo-Persian (jpr), Bukhari (bhh), Judeo-Tat (jdt) or Tat (ttt), and past discussions of them have assumed they were separate languages, so I also updated the page to reflect that. - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The Persian lects are an interesting issue; they are on the whole pretty similar, but Persian and Tajik have separate literary and cultural traditions, and I believe Dari does too. I think it is best to keep them separate. The Jewish varieties are often written in the Hebrew script and have a separate cultural tradition, so I think it would probably be handy to keep them separate as well. All the rest probably ought to be merged into their macrolanguages, unless there are script conflicts I'm unaware of (it is, of course, easier to keep with one script per language). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:23, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The difference between Dari and Persian is not great AFAIK, there are some references on Wikipedia. Tajik should stay separate, not just because it's in Cyrillic. It's very different from Persian and has many Russian and Turkic loanwords. There is also a significant difference in phonology (vowels). Persian e, o and â are usually i, u and o in Tajik. ZxxZxxZ (talk • contribs) may be able to say a bit more. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 05:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

the Uzbek lects

Uzbek (uz), Northern Uzbek (uzn) and Southern Uzbek (uzs). Which, if any, should go? - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

The latter... -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Quoth Asya Pereltsvaig in Languages of the World: An Introduction (2012, ISBN 1107002788), page 102: "Sometimes Standard Uzbek is also referred to as Northern Uzbek, to distinguish it from a related language, Southern Uzbek, spoken by 1,400,000 speakers in northern areas of Afghanistan." (The Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, 2010, adds that "Southern Uzbek includes the dominant urban dialects of Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand, etc.") So, uzn should definitely go. uzb should probably go, too, in part because it doesn't seem to be a single, unified thing with firm differences from uz / uzn; instead, it's the other part of the continuum that starts with northern/standard Uzbek and gets progressively more "Iranized" / influenced by Persian, e.g. in in the pronunciation of vowels (per the Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World and the works of Settar Cabbar). - -sche (discuss) 21:30, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:lv-pron

-pron is used for pronoun headword lines. This should be renamed to something like {{lv-pronunc}}, {{lv-pronunciation}} or {{lv-ipa-rows}} (as {{grc-ipa-rows}}). — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 13:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

pill, the pill

[[the pill]] was just created. We already had "(informal, definite and uncountable) Contraceptive medication, usually in the form of a pill" at [[pill]]. Which should be the lemma? (Note also [[on the pill]], which has a definition that can't actually be plugged into its usex.) - -sche (discuss) 03:09, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

[[pill]] clearly seems to be the lemma, but we need to help users find the right definition.

Can't we make the pill a redirect to the sense you indicate pill#English-contraceptive? Let's make {{senseid}} earn its keep.

on#English-a drug has the definition: "Regularly taking (a drug)", which makes on the pill SoP. But that is not a useful target for any redirect, so on the pill can only be redirected to the senseid'ed definition of pill, which should have "on the pill" in a usex, I suppose. DCDuring TALK 04:12, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

go on the pill might also be a good redirect to the same destination. DCDuring TALK 04:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Not really sure if this needs discussing, yes redirect (redirect is unambiguous so can be kept) and use {{context|used with "the"|lang=en}}. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

మూస:done - -sche (discuss) 00:42, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Category:Irregular inflections

And its subcategories (the first three). These seem to refer to parts of speech in particular languages, hence should be మూస:... by language. So Irregular plurals by language. Thoughts? Mglovesfun (talk) 17:41, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

It should also be moved out of the topical category tree (i. e. Category:Grammar). It's not a topic. -- Prince Kassad 12:13, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I've moved this thread out of the archive of unresolved discussions that went stale in 2010 in the hope that we can finally resolve it. - -sche (discuss) 06:33, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Category:English words with consonant pseudo-digraphs

Should be Category:English terms with consonant pseudo-digraphs. Ditto for Category:English words with vowel pseudo-digraphs. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I've moved this thread out of the archive of unresolved discussions that went stale in 2010 in the hope that we can finally resolve it. - -sche (discuss) 06:35, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

run by, run something by

Seemingly the only main namespace entries tagged with {{merge}}, which needs a little more updating whenever I get up tomorrow. Well, goodnight! Mglovesfun (talk) 23:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

IMHO, they should be "merged" by deleting the run by entry. DCDuring TALK 23:39, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I've moved this thread out of the archive of unresolved discussions that went stale in 2010 in the hope that we can finally resolve it. - -sche (discuss) 06:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I think we disfavor "something" these days, as evidence by e.g. do something with mirrors redirecting to do with mirrors. I've redirected run something by accordingly, and also swapped run past and run something past. Revert if you think the pages should be merged in the other direction. - -sche (discuss) 06:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

మూస:done. - -sche (discuss) 17:31, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Category:Pontian dialect of Greek

Maybe to Category:Pontian Greek, although that could be confusing, since we already have Category:Pontic Greek language. Also, the one entry in this needs to be dealt with if we move the cat. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 15:00, 27 November 2013 (UTC)