User talk:Doccolinni

SH accents
Serbo-Croatian is not written with accents. The accents should only appear in inflection lines or pronunciation sections. --EncycloPetey 22:30, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * There is a About Serbo-Croatian style guide that might help. It is incomplete, but can often provide examples or guidance for editing style.  Its talk page is also a good place to ask questions, if you ever have any. --EncycloPetey 22:45, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

-luk
Actually, including examples of word formation from a suffix can be helpful. Although Wiktionary has no agreed upon format for that, see for an example page of how I've included examples. --EncycloPetey 19:59, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Also note: "Serbo-Croatian" should come before "Turkish", since we alphabetize our language sections on each page (with Translingual and English coming first). --EncycloPetey 20:01, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

SC stress templates
I was wondering, is there a formal system of stress patterns in Serbo-Croatian? Lithuanian has 4 main classes, and I was able to make an (admittedly somewhat complex) system of templates for them, and we also have similar templates for Russian. I don't think Ivan thinks that such a system could be devised for SC templates (or just doesn't think it'd be worth it) but I'm a rebel, and just psychologically unstable enough to enjoy such crazy template projects :) What do you think?

Also before I forget to ask, could you add a to your user page? It helps other users know what languages they can come to you with questions about. —  [Ric Laurent] — 15:59, 27 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately I am not a professor of (Serbo-)Croatian (I'm just a native speaker with quite a bit of lexical and grammatical knowledge) so I don't know if there are "template-able" declension stress patterns in SC off the top of my head. I'll look into it though and get back to you on that later today or tomorrow.


 * I will also add and some other info to my user page (later as well), thanks for bringing that to my attention. --Doccolinni 16:24, 27 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, mate. Oh, you can reply here, I have your talk page in my watch list now :) —  [Ric Laurent] — 16:47, 27 July 2011 (UTC)


 * So I've looked into it and the noun declension system is incredibly complex. First of all, nouns are separated into three groups: a-nouns, e-nouns and i-nouns (depending on the suffix used to form the genitive singular form of that word). So far I have only gone through a-nouns, so:


 * a-nouns cover most masculine nouns and all neuter nouns. Their general suffix pattern is this:


 * However, for this group alone there are fourteen different patterns of how exactly these suffixes affect the noun root in terms of accent displacement, elongation, fleeting a, palatalization, etc. This has only led me to conclude that my native language is a terrible disaster that should have died out centuries ago.


 * Anyway, studying this in detail may take me a couple of days but I plan to compile it all in a PDF for you to download and use to make the templates (although so far I have no idea how you would go about doing that exactly). --Doccolinni 22:23, 27 July 2011 (UTC)


 * But keep in mind that all the information above is for first declension, and there are two more declensions as well as irregular nouns. I agree with Ivan that trying to make an automatic template would result in something so complex that most people couldn't figure it out. --EncycloPetey 22:13, 27 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree with that now as well. So should I stop studying this and not gather and compile all the data about noun declensions in S-C? I can still do it, but it does seem pointless. Three templates for three declensions is ok, but those templates would have to be incredibly complex in that they should be capable of recognising which of the dozen varieties the specific noun falls into based on its root and modify the roots in the appropriate cases appropriately, etc. And on top of all that, they would have to take care of the accents as well. It seems to me that it's easier to just manually type out the fourteen (seven cases × two numbers) forms of the word... --Doccolinni 22:24, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Ultimately, the decision of whether you go to all that effort will rest with you. If you decide that the help offered in creating templates could pay off, then you should proceed.  I'm merely pointing out that the patterns are so complicated for just the endings, that I don't see how anyone coming here would be able to make use of templates that are likely to be either so numerous or so complex, assuming they can even be written.


 * However, you might be able to make use of such research anyway by writing Appendix:Serbo-Croatian nouns, where you can explain and present the declension patterns, ending formation, stem changes, etc. That way, templates could be made based on the data, but the data will exist in a usable format even if the templates are never created. --EncycloPetey 22:28, 27 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, another thing is that the subdivision inside the three main noun groups seems to be based solely on the form of the noun's root (whether the final sound is a consonant or a vowel, if it's a consonant whether it's palatal or not and which vowel is preceding it, etc.), so a crazy idea is that there could only be three templates (for the three main noun groups), but each would receive the root of the noun and "judge" which variation of the declension to apply to it based on the root. That sounds so ridonkulously complex that those three would surely have to be the most complex templates on Wiktionary... --Doccolinni 22:39, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. However, you have had an offer from someone who's willing to give it a shot.  If you want to help, then writing the Appendix I've suggested would be the best way to organize the data, since it will help users even if the templates turn out not to be a good idea, but it also provides a basis for creating templates if they turn out to be feasible. --EncycloPetey 22:44, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Then by God I'll do it! :P Also, it seems that a) only the a-noun group is this complex and the other two are significantly simpler and b) the irregular nouns are covered in these fourteen patterns because one of the patterns is named "The noun pattern". How ingeniously brilliant.


 * It might be a difficult task that requires a lot of templates, but we did it for Russian and a good chunk of Lithuanian nouns. In fact there are so many templates for Lithuanian nouns, I had to make a separate category for them. But if enough nouns can be one automatically, I think it's worth making them. We can always start with the easy ones. —  [Ric Laurent] — 23:27, 27 July 2011 (UTC)


 * First I need to correct myself, because after all it turns out that not all cases are covered by those fourteen patterns of a-nouns. Noun should, according to the pattern rules, be "kapetanu" in vocative singular, but the proper form is actually "kapetane". That's most likely because of its (relatively recent) foreign origin. But that is the only exception I managed to find anyway, plus there's a possibility that I've misunderstood something. --Doccolinni 23:58, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Cognates
Hi, normally in the Etymology section of a modern English word, we only include cognates in other living languages (apart from its immediate predecessors in proto-Germanic etc.). Proto-Slavic cognates should be added to the relevant Proto-Germanic pages. Hope that makes sense. Ƿidsiþ 11:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)