Thread:User talk:CodeCat/*źambas, *zǫbъ/reply (6)

And I don't dispute your idea here. It's just that, if this is your idea, then it should be sourced to you, not to Derksen, who had *źombos. Even if the difference is purely notational, we can't change what the source says. It would be like respelling a quote in American spelling despite the fact that it comes from a British source and uses British spelling.

Maybe this is a general question, even outside of reconstructed forms. In general, it seems Wiktionary practice is to respect the original form, no matter what. I see, for instance, that Serbian words are given both in Cyrilic and Latin scripts -- even though they are clearly notational variants of each other, Wiktionary doesn't just pick one of them and avoids the other (since both are in use). I see also pages for languages in the original script (say, Gothic, or Japanese), as well as pages with the same words in Romanized form. So I'd imagine that if there is variation (*źombos vs. *źambas in different reconstructions) or of opionion (he has *źombos but my knowledge of the literature / my personal opinion leads me to think that *źambas is better) could be treated similarly. And only *źombos would be sourced to Dirksen, while *źambas would be, say, to you.

My point here is to avoid confusion. Precisely because there apparently already is confusion in the literature (different theories, different notations, different reconstructions, etc.), a new Wiktionary page about a reconstructed protoform should make an effort to justify its existence with this particular spelling / notation (rather than a variant); or else, we're adding an extra bit of confusion to what is already out there. Don't you think?