Talk:yearhundred

Re diff[, which I see Equinox has already rightly undone: as I commented when I added the tag, "26 Google Books hits for this vs 385 million for century... yeah, it's unhelpful to non-native speakers to imply anyone will understand this word." It's the very definition of [[nonstandard]] ("not conforming to the language as used by the majority of its speakers"). - -sche (discuss) 16:06, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Why would you suppose "yearhundred" wouldn't be understood? "a one-hundred year period", "a yearhundred"; they aren't too different. Tharthan (talk) 17:15, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yearhundred is rare, and not normally the word one thinks when the concept of '100 years' comes to mind; however, it's an appropriate synonym especially in cases where century is over-used...I suppose one might consider it to be a word which gives richness and variety to our otherwise boring and somewhat predictable language Leasnam (talk) 18:57, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I write my poetry with only: A. Words of Germanic origin or that passed through Proto-Germanic at some stage and B. Words that have existed in the language since Old English. It's quite enjoyable to write with a "native" vocabulary. Tharthan (talk) 19:42, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You're both adept native speakers of English, and you like to use Germanic terms. That's fine. But it's downright harmful to non-native speakers (and probably even to native speakers who don't have as extensive a grasp of vocabulary as you) to pretend that the Germanic terms are standard. I know, because I see the counterpart phenomenon here in Germany: English speakers learning German make us roll our eyes when they say things like "Käseburger" and "Luftsack" because they can't believe or simply don't like that we generally just use the English words "Cheeseburger" and "Airbag". (And even there, it's crucial to note that "Luftsack" is far more common in natively-spoken German than "yearhundred" has ever been in English.) A speaker of German or another language which uses a construction like Jahrhundert, if they see yearhundred here, is liable to think "ah, I'll use that, since it looks like it corresponds exactly" — and they'll make a fool of themselves, because no one actually says "yearhundred" except, as mentioned above, as an Anglish affectation. (I imagine User:DCDuring will agree with me about this, because he tries to extirpate obsolete words from definitions for the same reason of preventing non-native speakers from being misled.) - -sche (discuss) 20:34, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I certainly agree with you 100% ! I do not in any way object to such tags (though I may tend to forget to add them from time to time...or rather, more often than I should :/ ). I would hate to think that ELS only had wiktionary to rely on (not that that's bad), but I imagine perhaps there are some who might; and in such an event, I agree it is best to err on the safe side and forestall any and all confusion. I will be first to admit that I am not always thinking about the language learners when I discover a new term and want to catalogue it, but instances like these help to keep me aware of the matter, and I will be more mindful (or at least try to be) in future :) Leasnam (talk) 21:03, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * To be clear, cataloguing a new (or old) term like this one is no problem; indeed, it's presumably as helpful to language learners as to everyone else who finds the term somewhere and wants to know what it means — they look it up, and if we have an entry, then voilà, they learn what it means. :] The (few) people I know in real life who've heard of Wiktionary have said they use it especially for obscure terms which other free dictionaries don't cover and which other comprehensive dictionaries like the OED hide behind paywalls. I'm just hoping to explain why removing the "nonstandard" tag was no good. Like you, I would hope that no-one would rely on Wiktionary alone (or any other single dictionary) to learn a language or decide what word to use, but the fact that I have heard people say things like "Käseburger" suggests that there are people who think "well I saw this somewhere once, so it must be a perfectly acceptable word even though in the past I've only ever seen a different word" (Cheeseburger or century, respectively). - -sche (discuss) 22:20, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Right. It is also useful to put even obscure terms under the Synonyms heading, next to an appropriate, in the entries for more common synonyms, should there be any. Our Synonyms headers are underused and underpopulated. The places where I'd like to see them eliminated is in definitions and glosses, which should use a defining vocabulary more basic than the terms being defined where possible. (It is not usually possible for the most basic of function words, for example.) I'm not really sure who is helped by using febrile in the definition of rat-bite fever. DCDuring TALK 22:35, 8 March 2015 (UTC)
 * @-sche, well what about cases like the word "sibling" and "wyrm", where a word gets revived due to Anglish (or occasionally Anglish-leaning) writers or the like popularising a native word? Tharthan (talk) 00:32, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Are all uses invocations and/or loan translations of Germanic concepts/locutions?
It seems as if all of these uses are either written by Germanic-language speakers (Dutch) or invoking Germanic (Danish/Norse, etc.) concepts, especially when they're presented as part of what seems to be a deliberate, perhaps even satirical list of neologisms calqued from German(ic) compounds... 108.48.119.231 00:05, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed. DCDuring TALK 02:52, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The Michael Cox quote is actually part of a parody written by M.R. James that deliberately mangles the English language, so it's not a good example. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:06, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You talk about English as if it weren't a Germanic language, anon. Tharthan (talk) 20:43, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I have a feeling this is a calque of some kind, right? Can it be demonstrably descended from Middle and Old English constructions? I'm not sure about the Scots equivalent; that may be more authentic. This almost sounds like something out of "Uncleftish Beholding". Word dewd544 (talk) 19:10, 14 June 2018 (UTC)