Category talk:German English

RFDO discussion: February 2016
A category for "German English: terms or senses in English as spoken in Germany"! It's the result of (mis)use of in English entries as if that label indicated that the sense described a German institution ("Germany" in fact categorizes as a dialect label, and the Germanness of an institution should be noted in the definition): GDR, for example, is not limited to "English as spoken in Germany", it's simply a term for a German state. I'm surprised to see that a veteran editor created the category. (I edited the category's 14 former members.) - -sche (discuss) 02:05, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Category:Chilean English (contents: college) is also suspect. - -sche (discuss) 02:51, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was trying to get rid of red links in Special:WantedCategories and didn't check the pages that used them closely enough. It seems to me at least vaguely plausible that there could be English words specific to the dialect of Germany, e.g. there are plenty of expats living in Germany, some for years on end (soldiers etc.). Benwing2 (talk) 05:48, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm an American who's been living in Germany for 19 years, and although I would say we do an awful lot of code switching (including using pseudoanglicisms like when speaking English), I wouldn't say there are any English words that are specific to the expat community in Germany. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:01, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, you could argue that "handy" meaning "cell phone" is a regional German English term, I suppose, depending on how anglicized it becomes. Benwing2 (talk) 07:18, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see. Thanks for trying to clear Special:WantedCategories out. Part of the problem here is that this category was "wanted" in the first place — that people (not you) used "German(y)" inside in the belief that  was for indicating the topic a definition pertained to, which is not quite the case. (That same kind of use of "Iran" is to blame for the category below having been "wanted" by an entry.) The suggestion made by Chuck at the end of Grease pit/2015/October, and by others elsewhere, is worth entertaining:,  etc were recently created as more specific templates alongside the existing ; in the same way, perhaps we could keep  but create another template for topical labels. Downsides (perhaps I should move this comment to the BP) are that it might look dumb to have two kinds of label next to each other, and (especially when there was only one kind present) people might mistake one kind of label for another, and think a term tagged as having the topic "grammar" or "Germany" was limited to grammarians' jargon or German speech. - -sche (discuss) 08:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * We've always used labels for topics in two different ways: to specify the context in which a term is used, and to indicate that the term is related to the topic without being restricted in usage. A location label is normally used in the former way, but it's no surprise that people use it the latter way too. We have never set a rule for how labels should be used. Part of the issue is also that other dictionaries generally don't make this distinction, or use labels in the second way. If a user sees "anat. eye" in a definition for in a Dutch-English dictionary, they may well do the same thing on Wiktionary. —CodeCat 18:58, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Speedy delete this and Category:Iranian English as empty categories. If there are any English words specific to German, add them to the category and then it's not empty and should be restored. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:14, 4 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Deleted. - -sche (discuss) 06:50, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Category:Iranian English
As above. It may be a good idea to check the regional categories thoroughly to see how many of these were created. - -sche (discuss) 02:08, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Check Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:dialectboiler. There are about 40 pages, almost all of them created by me. You probably have a better understanding than I do of which pages are likely to be suspect. Benwing2 (talk) 07:21, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * ought to do the trick. Renard Migrant (talk) 17:45, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * That only works if there are no other labels that categorize. —CodeCat 00:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Category:Labrador English is a pretty blatant example, as dogs can't talk. Renard Migrant (talk) 18:08, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Ha! And then there's Category:British Translingual, as distinguished from Category:Brazilian Translingual... - -sche (discuss) 06:57, 15 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Deleted. - -sche (discuss) 06:50, 15 February 2016 (UTC)