Appendix talk:List of similar words with the same meaning in English and French

Deletion debate
Well meaning but I'm not at all sure that this is the best title, or the best design. Do we already have anything similar? SemperBlotto 09:49, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * p.s. Appendix:List of similar words with the same meaning in French and Italian has just been created as I typed. SemperBlotto 09:51, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, User_talk:Gilward_Kukel, Mutante 09:55, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

delete I can't see any use in such a list. At least in the case of English and French the list would be very large (possibly too large), and it's definitely not usable for etymology purposes or any other useful purposes other than useless trivia, not to mention that "similar" is a subjective criterion. I don't want 49 million lists like that spring up. -- Prince Kassad 10:07, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Keep It's interesting and maybe useful for learning languages, and I think we don't have anything similar. --Gilward Kukel 10:22, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Delete per PK. I see no real use for this list to benefit the Wiktionary, so therefore, I don't think it should be kept around. Cheers, Razorflame 20:08, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * My first instinct was keep and clean up, but how? Prince Kassad has got this right, how do we define similar? Delete if and only if it's not possible to clean it up and 'neutralize' it Mglovesfun (talk) 11:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Delete per Mglovesfun. &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 17:33, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Note the six members of Category:Lists of similar words in different languages which should probably follow suit if this does get deleted. On reflection, you'd have to rename the appendices and change the entire content, so delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:57, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Keepish, interesting to some people; it would make a nice contrast to the appendices on false friends (maybe we should concentrate on those first though). Conrad.Irwin 12:07, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I too can see reasons to keep it, but not how! Mglovesfun (talk) 18:12, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

"How do we define similar?" can be answered technically if you want: "Levenshtein — Calculate Levenshtein distance between two strings - The Levenshtein distance is defined as the minimal number of characters you have to replace, insert or delete to transform str1 into str2 ." PHP function levenshtein Mutante 19:12, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete per Prince Kassad. Pharamp 19:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. This would be way too massive. Imagine if we had, for example, Appendix:List of similar words with the same meaning in Spanish and Portuguese. —Internoob (Disc.•Cont.) 00:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

If we define similarity, it's not subjective anymore. If we define a set of important words and only allow these to be added to the list, the list won't become too big. --Gilward Kukel 13:04, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, "our" definition would be subjective. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:11, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. I see no problems with the precision of the definition that selects the pairs to be included, from the first glance into the lists. The pairs could be called "true friends" or "genuine friends", in an analogy to "false friends". In this selection, "similar words" means "words that have a close morphological appearance"; this definition is the same as used in "false friend". The only difference between these "true friends" and "false friends" is that the meaning is the same in the former case, while it differs in the later case. There is no set-theoretic formal definition of "synonym" available for the lexicographical purposes, yet we do not give up finding synonyms, and contributors do vary in detail in what they consider a synonym and what not.
 * It is an appendix, and a particular report on the Wiktionary database. If it can be shown how this report can be assembled using scripting or other tools without the need of having a dedicated wiki page for the result, then I would have no problem with the proposed deletion. The lists are lexicographical material, fitting better as an appendix to Wiktionary than to Wikipedia or Wikibooks.
 * The largeness of the list does not seem to be an issue: there is enough storage space in the wiki.
 * To return to the title: A proposal: "Appendix:True friends in English and French".
 * An alternative to this selection would be to show a list of all friends, true and false, and then indicate for each pair of friends whether they are true or false.
 * On a personal note: I find these lists fascinating, and would be looking forward to seeing more of them, for more language pairs. --Dan Polansky 12:45, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Fails, albeit pretty narrowly. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:59, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Following discussion
It was wrong to delete it. Put it back please. --Gilward Kukel 14:46, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not me alone that decided. Six people wanted to delete it, only three to keep it. It was deleted. No controversy I'm afraid. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:47, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not okay to take it away from the people who find it interesting, even if they are a minority. --Gilward Kukel 14:56, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Go start your own project then! Mglovesfun (talk) 15:04, 30 April 2010 (UTC)}}

The last version of the article had several sections, of which all but one had objective rules for similarity, for instance identical words and words where only one letter is different. So the complaints about subjectivity were not valid any more.

Here is a list of identical words in English and French: http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/vraisamis-a.htm Do you think it's good that about.com has that but Wiktionary does not? I don't think so. Shouldn't we make Wiktionary more informative than everything else?

Here is more proof that people are interested in similar words with the same meaning in different languages:
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090908085121AAHBdM1
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071207001020AAcmeAc
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091022111758AA5ZZgM
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006052709642
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090103174829AA9J3Wq
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081214193125AAAYDNq
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070826150753AACKAH9
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091122145418AAMrN5F
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090114133920AAdXnBa
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070304105718AAxo96R
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090620031819AA4KzDt
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060730135220AAr2TI2
 * http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070313060339AADYXce

--Gilward Kukel 18:17, 2 May 2010 (UTC)