Category talk:Fundamental

Words might be sorted along multiple schemes including those as detailed as in WordNet (e.g., entity, object, animate, etc.).

Do we really want such a pathetic page linked from Main Page? --Connel MacKenzie 16:52, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

This page isn't doing any work. Let's scrap it. Lucidish 01:48, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

It is a pity...
...that the structure of the categories on en.wikt is such, that CatScan and other such tools can extract all pages from e.g. Category:sv:Mathematics with subcategories and get a list of Swedish words used in either mathematical discipline, while it is not possible to get a list of English mathematical words irrespective of discipline, without either get words in other languages as well, or going through the category tree one category at the time, for a.t.m. some 37 different (sub)categories... \Mike 12:00, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Ease of Use
This whole subject seems very badly organised. Firstly, the term ‘borrowed words/terms’ is nonsense. Things which are borrowed have to be given back. A better term is ‘adopted words/terms’ Secondly, a foreign language’s list mostly includes proper names (places, people, languages, etc.) directly quoting or transliterating. These are not English, they are foreign, and include all the cities of the world. They should not be included here. Thirdly, once one gets to the foreign language, one is given a list of words without English translations. Clicking on one of them can lead to another page without translations. Clicking on that can lead to many similar words from various languages and it’s difficult to find the right one. If you find the right one, it’s maybe listed as a variant of something else, so you have to click on that one to find what your original word meant. This is all a complete waste of time.

My suggestion: For each foreign language make two tables, one for proper names (Placenames could include the latitude and longitude), and one for genuine adoptions where the explanation of the word is given in a column alongside the word. That would save one hell of a lot of clicking. If it is necessary to distinguish between the various categories, e.g. ‘phono-semantic matchings’, ‘semi-learned borrowings’ and ‘calques’ these could be indicated by way of a reference number in another column alongside the word. Any other useful information could be given in a fourth column, and the whole table could be sortable by any column.