User talk:219.69.81.128

misplaced edits
Please do not bombard the general feedback page with random comments about specific words. The proper place to request new entries is at Wiktionary:Requested entries:English, not on the page for general feedback about the entire site. The page to ask about definitions of words that you have uncertainty about is the Tea Room. --EncycloPetey 07:48, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Good, remark taken [ if that means I'm understanding and agreeing with you]. Could you, me being a newbie,please tell me how to perhaps move those pertaining sections to the proper area of wictionary talk?  [Though working now with a speech recognition program, it seems it considers most input masks as "non-standard", so I still have to manually edit through pain,  for which I beg understanding, if you please.
 * If you know the kind of entries you'd like to create, it's possible to create a custom interface that allows typing certain common headers and formatting with the click of a single button. It will take some regaining of trust for this, and your early edits were very disruptive both here and on Wikipedia, with no added value to our content, and with ugly comments made.  But, as I say, there are ways to make certain kinds of formatted data entry much easier.  I use some of these tools myself for common coding.  I can, for example, enter *  with the click of a single button, and this allows me to speed up linking to pages about rhymes.  The same could be done to allow the entry of common section headers, etc. --EncycloPetey 08:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * okay, first of all Thank  You for the "opening" [if that's the right word, even for a proficient non-native speaker that   is sometimes hard to tell] offered.  Some thoughts perhaps, rather in random fashion:

Could you please make me see in which way my edits were perceived as such? I mean, they were meant in good faith; sure, after the initial block and reverts  [order of importance is the other way around]  without any communication  ensuing, I overreacted, sure, which may be a personal fault in this stage of my life, on the other hand and to my defense,  I tried to make clear the Why behind things spanning the gamut from my shorthand to criticisms submitted, which I hold for a rather constructive approach, and gradually plowing through various wiki media guidelines and policies, thus seems to be the recommended thing to do. Hence my incomprehension at the reaction received. This is not meant in any inflammatory, argumentative or flogging- a- dead- horse way, but rather is a sincere reflection of question marks I had about the happenings.

I'm the first one to admit that submitting criticisms is easier than doing the actual work, on the other hand, having learnt six languages mainly on by and on my own devices, having had to struggle through bad teachers [IC a teacher as somebody who helps someone else, "the student" reaching his/her goals], bad books and perhaps well meant, but counterproductive "help" from native speakers, being an  MA in education, apart from my doctorate in science, I hold myself for a qualified person to utter an opinion  [not that I think other people wouldn't be], and since a while  I actually have been playing with the idea of contributing to a "better" dictionary, and then I stumbled upon the various wiki media projects.

On another note, I know that I submitted criticism about Rhimes; what I meant was that that information would be contained in the IpA. And I was baffled to find that some entries have the Rhimes section [which as such I don't mind] with no IpA one. I wonder if this has to do with especially North American native speaker hesitance [I want to stress this is not meant as a racial/ethnic slur, but rather as something I noticed for example in American dictionaries which often have "easier" phonetic notations, which just, at least in my case, drive one crazy] to embrace what I see as a revolutionary phonetic tool, in the very same way I see wictionary  as such  [ I'm not being sarcastic, that is my true conviction]. For instance, most native speaker English teachers here in Taiwan, North American accent preferred [that is just a preference of local schools, I just intend to reflect the facts] don't know IpA, mystifying me in their ignorance, the more one earns twice the money here of local people, actually refusing TO learn the basics of one's trade [phonetic  can help a lot older students, like me, who have lost, at least to an extent, the natural ability of very young kids to imitate and assimilate sounds]. I realize I'm now straying from the original topic [though in my view, it's very related, associative me], though I hope it serves to provide more  background behind some of my remarks. Furthermore, I hope for comprehension and look forward to hopefully receive your reply! Thank you in advance Sven 70--219.69.81.128 09:51, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I can move those sections for you, now that I know you've received my message. --EncycloPetey 08:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Please do so, appreciated. Me from my side, I will try to keep track of how and where they moved so I know for the future, thanks.--219.69.81.128 08:42, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The requests themselves that you posted were above par for what we normally receive. Many people request a word with no context at all, which makes it difficult to determine the validity of the request in some cases.  A word with an example sentence (especially a real quote from some source) provides extra context that makes a request easier to add and more likely to be attended to. --EncycloPetey 08:50, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

On another note, would you mind having a look at what I posted at Atelaes' talk page?
 * I see nothing there that you posted. --EncycloPetey 08:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC).

Err, he asked me to use is wikiPedia one. Perhaps I should have mentioned that, sorry.

on Etymology as a section
There have been discussions in the past about the placement of the Etymology section. The key problem with placing it after the definitions is that, quite often, a word will have multiples parts of speech that share the same etymology. If the Etymology is subsumed under the section for that POS (part of speech), then the whole section must be repeated in its entirety after each POS section with that etymology. Compounding the problem is that a single "word" (that is spelling) may have more than one etymology to present. It is much cleaner and more logical to then group all definitions from a particular etymology under that etymology, rather than the other way round. Otherwise, we might have multiple noun sections on a page with the explanation for those sections buried in subsections, rather than as a higher-order section header that provides the explanation immediately on seeing the table of contents. It's a bit wordy for an explanation, but if you read through it while looking at the page for cant:, and imagine what the page would look like if the Etymology section were subsections of the POS secions, you may understand what I mean. Notice that cant has four etymologies, but only three parts of speech! --EncycloPetey 08:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

By the way, are you aware of the compact edition of Verdam's MiddelNederlandsch Handwoordenboek? I acquired a copy some years ago, at it has proven invaluable. With that book, Franck's etymological dictionary of Dutch, and an 1890 edition of Calisch's English-Dutch/Dutch-English dictionry, I can usually trace the etymology of a common Dutch word when I need to. --EncycloPetey 08:39, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * None of these three books, I was  aware of -- my background is a working-class family, nuclear as well as extended, so even be considered rather smart as a child, nobody really could give me a handwith that.  also in Flanders, there are  two main systems of education, the Catholic-influenced one, which is more traditional, and the co-ed  "humaniora", which was more progressive and I attended. In the latter, etymology was never really considered in languages  taught, though I received a sound foundation a Latin [the only etymology  I received is the one for my name, which I tried to submit on the feedback page in shorthand].

I do like the -CH-, like in, for example. " BoomsCHe metal Works", the  caps, referring to the spelling overhaul which must have predated mmyself. Still, on the above factory's façade, one could still see the old spelling, even been painted over ineffectively, and as such constituting a fond childhood memory of mine.smiley

If you can read Dutch, you might still see the old spelling in books of for example Walschap, which are hilarious, Flemish and considered high literature, what can one ask more! LOL.

This leads to another point I was trying to convey in my shorthand before: I don't mind traditional stuff, only when I think it has exceeded its "do not use after"-date,  I'd prefer putting it in books, or wiki media for that matter, as I think modern people aren't scribes anymore and can only devote so much time on writing so I feel they, me included, shouldn't be bothered with outdated spelling; in the case of English, as apparently most European languages, it seemed to have been meant as a phonetic rendering of I reckon the spoken form. For some reason, somewhere down the track, it stopped changing with the actual pronunciation, which I do not hold for a good thing -- so in my shorthand, admittedly a bit stubborn, I would write -SHEN for  -tion, to an extent obfuscating the matters, it's, myea, when I have a point to make...

For that matter, if it is deemed helpful in learning from the happenings, I can now without problem provide transcripts for my previous shorthand, given the speech recognition and the fact I kept those messages as short as possible. [Stubborn perhaps yes, but I try to fall short of perverseness! Smiley] Only, most of these messages of mine seemed to have been already archived or reverted, it is just I stumbled over those messages to you when going to the top of the feedback page to look another word up. Actually, could a search mask also be provided at the bottom, as that would save the clicking to get to the top of the page.

To end on a constructive note,, if you or other people have some Dutch, especially Brabantian, to translate into English, I will be likely readily able to help out!


 * By the way, would it be an idea to unblock my account Sven 70? Atelaes suggested such, I thought, and it  would also enable you experienced people to easier  keep tabs on me so to speak! Me, I cherish the time and effort people put into replying to me and it would be easier to keep track off the exchange [I now copy and paste things such as here at hand into my e-mail box, also because me myself,  I also spend a substantial amount of time in providing an as  legible and clear reply as feasible in the circumstances given.--219.69.81.128 16:17, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay I'll start here as this paragraph really made me smile and also perhaps because it's something I feel like saying some things about! Smiley Etymology -wise, to me, I went the roundabout way of learning other languages to kind of figure out for and on myself what cognates, that word actually means. Very latein my life, like some years ago only, I found it in a dictionary [somehow was never in my dictionaries, another example being subliminal-- My ex-Spanish girlfriend used that one, and it took me years to find it eventually in some dictionary.See why I think wictionary is so important?]

Talking about cognates. I just checked it in wictionary --if you look at the entry, you will see what I think of as an example of an overly technical entry [though it's a good that at least that one is there, better something than nothing, I think]. Okay, now I opened that can of worms.

Please let me go back to the time  I was preparing my teaching-English stint in Australia. Having a vocab foible and having discovered an online English- English dictionary, I spent many an hour, read days, browsing around, often rather in a random way. Looking back, I am now very aware that that dictionary didn't give explanations but synonyms. One case, I remember well, envolved flippant [I should check Wiktionary too now, later then]. After clicking on synonyms for 10 times I closed what I referred to before in my "short handed" [pun intended] remarks as an "empty circle." I came back to, you guessed already, flippant, so had still no idea what it meant in the context provided.

That's why I do like the Longman dictionary. I got my hands on it in China, near Macau, a couple of years ago, spending an afternoon in recommended bookshops trying to get my Chinese learning reference material complete [forget about a one -tier pinyin organized dictionary though, well-meaning, but ignorant, local people, read the sales clerks, will keep telling you that Chinese dictionaries are organized the traditional user unfriendly two tier way-- see again why I think wictionary would be such a marvel to have,  completed?].

Good, my long man: It's an English English Chinese version, if you know what I mean, [it's English translation, well,  explanation, followed by a Chinese translation. The examples are given in English followed by a Chinese translation. This dictionary provided me the following explanation for flippant: considered being too lighthearted about things other people feel serious about. They might have used levity in their explanation, which I hold for a hard words for learners of English. hang on, let me check, it says "not being serious about something that other people think you should be serious about, so that they think you do not care. Even so I feel twice "serious" could be avoided, I felt grateful reading that explanation, because after  years,  I finally realized what native speakers meant when they called me being flippant.  [Yes, I think humor is very important  though it might be misconstrued as flippancy].

I realize now this long man-entry has no synonyms provided, though they  do spell out the related words flippantly and flippancy, as well as the example "a hospital is hardly the place for such flippant remarks". You know, when I read that I felt actually grateful for basically this dictionary doing  its job!

Perhaps this doesn't play so much for native speakers, me, even though being advanced, synonyms instead of explanations can still throw me. Having given that some thought, I guess it's because a synonym is not exact;  it means something similar, though slightly different. So give me 10 synonyms, the differences I guess add up and I will end up confused, process which may apply to other people too.

in the case of the definition "cognate" [not that I looked who submitted, and it's not personal anyway, though I came across similar things from the person who reverted and blocked me on that note] that definition in my view could be made better by either including between brackets after "reflex"  what it means to laypeople, or, as I suggested before, going more for an explanation, like  said definition  in long man. [Being fair,, I am impeled me to say that the examples make clear what cognates are about and actually mean. Once again, my feedback isn't meant to mean that everything would be bad]

Mentioning the Longman dictionary, which seems to hail from Britain, not all is perfect in that book either. For example, American pronunciation is given in nonstandard IPa, which I reckon is courtesy to the American public, but confusing to me trying to figure out if the American pronunciation differs from the British one. Also, at least my version of the Longman dictionary is uneven in words included, for example very hard words I personally have never heard of are included,  but rather common phrasal verbs are omitted, phrasal verbs being very hard to look up additionally as  grouped by meaning under each respective Main verb. Okay, I guess I better get editing my writing. Thanks for bearing with me and your very fast, helpful and nice replies!!--219.69.81.128 11:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

As for the fact that your text does not wrap arounf the TOC (table of contents): It is possible with an account to set preferences that either (1) never show the contents, or (2) have the TOC float in the upper right corner, which then permits text to wrap. I don't use either feature, so I can't describe the specifics on how to enact them, but there are people here who can, and the information desk is a good place to ask. Also, each TOC has a "Hide" button, that on clicking will collapse the box, so you don't have to scroll. You can do this now, without waiting for an explanation of the customizations I mentioned. --EncycloPetey 08:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)