User talk:Houses39

Etymology
Please note that edits that add unsourced, unlikely content that is probably also original research, like this, this and this, are not tolerated in mainspace. S URJECTION ·talk·contr·log· 21:30, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Please stop adding highly dubious and speculative etymologies to entries. —Rua (mew) 20:37, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Again, heed the warnings above. Why would an Uralic word be related to a Polynesian word??? &mdash; surjection &lang;?&rang; 14:39, 3 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Maybe it's just that ancient? Houses39 (talk) 14:42, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
 * That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. &mdash; surjection &lang;?&rang; 14:42, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

This is the final warning - if you have no idea how etymology or comparative linguistics works, stop editing etymology sections. &mdash; surjection &lang;?&rang; 20:53, 3 August 2019 (UTC)


 * The issue is that while the Etymology Scriptorium is a step-up from straight up inserting extremely dubious etymological information into entries, it's not a massive step-up if you flood it with all sorts of theories. &mdash; surjection &lang;?&rang; 16:01, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * (To other parties viewing this, the editor in question has chosen to contact me via e-mail). Comparative linguistics and etymology are best learned with books rather than online websites, but I don't have any kind of specific recommendations to give. My only stipulation for an unblock is that you don't waste our time any further with etymological theories unless you have well-researched and trustworthy sources for them. &mdash; surjection &lang;?&rang; 16:05, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
 * OK. Houses39 (talk) 16:07, 5 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Relatedly, please at least read the etymologies we already have before adding your own theories. For instance, your ideas about katana are wholly unfounded -- if you check the lemma (i.e. "main") entry at 刀, you'll see in the etymology there that katana is from kata (“one side”) + na (“blade, edge”), and thus the initial kat- cannot possibly related to “cut”.  Good luck, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 22:45, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * What did I tell you about putting your theories on the mainspace? &mdash; surjection &lang;?&rang; 18:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Um I was pretty sure they were correct.
 * Doesn't matter how much you believe in your theories - an explicit condition of your unblock is that you do not waste our time by littering the etymology sections in the mainspace. &mdash; surjection &lang;?&rang; 18:21, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
 * OK Sorry I would need a source right?
 * That's one of the basics when editing etymology entries. It appears that you're too young, uninformed, or have little knowledge about how to edit in Wiktionary, am I wrong? ～ POKéTalker（═◉═） 00:34, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Maohi
"native, indigenous, real, genuine" are adjectives, not nouns. Can you fix the entry please? Equinox ◑ 19:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Likewise for [[maoli]]. This has numerous problems:
 * Missing horizontal rule between language sections
 * Add  22:58, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

OK- Houses39 (talk) 23:28, 12 September 2019 (UTC)


 * FWIW, both Starostin and Dolgopolsky have been found to be quite lacking in rigor when deriving their purported etymologies. They cast their nets so widely, across so many languages, that they don't understand what they are seeing in the sea of words that they fish.
 * I picked apart some of this a while back; you might benefit from reading this section of a discussion thread, and indeed reading through the whole thread from the top might also be informative for you.
 * I suspect you might also find value in this older article from the Zompist blog: "How likely are chance resemblances between languages?" The main thrust is that, statistically speaking, it is surprisingly easy to find a bunch of words in a bunch of languages that just accidentally happen to sound kinda sorta similar and have kinda sorta similar meanings.  But when you dig into the derivations and histories of the terms themselves, you've actually got a whole lot of not much, disparate pieces that aren't actually related at all.
 * My favorite example of this is 🇨🇬 and 🇨🇬, both of which can be loosely glossed as "outsider, not one of us". Some have tried to use this correspondence as "evidence" that the Japanese and Hebrew languages are somehow related.  But digging deeper than the mere surface, we find that the Hebrew term is actually derived from  + plural suffix, while the Japanese term is actually a borrowing from Chinese and not originally Japanese anyway, and is derived from  + .  So the suggested ancient Hebrew-Japanese cognacy argument falls apart really quickly.
 * If you're really interested in how languages work, and how they interrelate, you'd be well served to learn more about phonology, phonetics, sound change through time, word formation, and etymology. Simply flipping through dictionaries to find words that kinda sorta sound alike and kinda sorta mean the same thing won't get you very far.  ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:10, 13 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Although it may get you into mainstream newspapers saying you've cracked the Voynich manuscript. SMH. Equinox ◑ 00:21, 13 September 2019 (UTC)