User talk:Ivan Štambuk/Archive 4

kaldırım
Hello. I am interested in the etymology of kaldırım. I don't speak Turkish but I wonder what are the sources for its relation to "καλός δρόμος". Thank you in advance. --flyax 08:55, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I found it in this Croatian encyclopedic dictionary, which is I presume outside your reach.. Searching on b.g.c. yields some supportive results:, . Also supported by this online Turkish etymological dictionary (saying it's from earlier *kalodrómos). --Ivan Štambuk 09:38, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

яйце
I see that you are interested in the Bulgarian language, since you recently created яйце and I wanted to point out two things: 1) The transliteration should be conforming to Bulgarian transliteration (international standard adopted by the ), 2) whenever you have doubts about the stress, you may summon me. Regards. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Quoting king Darius
Hi. I want to create articles for Armenia and Armenian in Old Persian. Since you have created articles in Old Persian cuneiform, I was wondering whether you could help me decipher cuneiform Armina and Arminiya from Darius’ Behistun inscription into Unicode? The respective passages are here, here and here. What say you? --Vahagn Petrosyan 17:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC)


 * armina means "Armenia", masculine nominative sg. noun, other attested forms are acc. sg. arminam and loc. sg. arminaiy.
 * arminiya is actually an adjective (masculine gender) used as a substantive, meaning 1) "Armenian" 2) "Armenia". Attested forms are nom. sg. arminiya and loc. sg. arminiyaiy.
 * Spellings of lemma forms in OP cuneiform as attested are (a-ar-mi-i-na) and  (a-ar-mi-i-ni-ya). --Ivan Štambuk 07:16, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Cool, thanks! I created the articles. Could you please look at and see if I wrote anything stupid? Particularly, if I cut the quote at the right places. And one minor unrelated question: how were 𐎨, 𐎩, 𐏂 (ca, ji, ça) pronounced in Old Persian (IPA)? --Vahagn Petrosyan 07:49, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems to look fine at first sight. OP c is [ʧ], j is [dʒ], and ç is probably [s] (pronunciation is not certain, possibly even [sr]). --Ivan Štambuk 08:07, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

ići
Hello, could you fix the future form in the conjugation? Am I right when supposing that it does not differ when the infinitive ends in -ći? Otherwise for -ti it is -t ću in the Western tradition and just -ću in the Eastern, right? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 21:08, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you're correct, template needs to be fixed to support -ći verbs first (I am focusing on nouns for now, with verbs being much trickier I thought of leaving them from the end, until I obtain some comprehensive modern Serbian grammar). --Ivan Štambuk 07:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * For -ći verbs, from now on use the infinitive for both  and  . --Ivan Štambuk 07:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Unattested roots
I suspect you may know: what do we do with roots which are not used independently? I mean roots like *. Should I move it to Appendix namespace, make something like Appendix:Proto-Germanic *wulfaz? Proto-Armenian? I know we can mention such roots in etymologies of derived words without wikilinking, but there are some roots which left tens of derived words, that’s why I want to create separate articles for them. --Vahagn Petrosyan 13:43, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that the article in the appendix namespace would be the most appropriate solution, esp. for those roots which are preserved in many derived words. If it's not attested, it cannot pass CFI hence it must not appear in the main namespace (unless it's special category such as affixes or lexical roots in Semitic languages where attestation of usage doesn't make much sense). --Ivan Štambuk 17:29, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

𒀭𒈹, 𒀭𒌋𒁯
I am curious why the entries for Sumerian DINGIR INANNA and Akkadian diš8tar2 share the same image? The first consists of two cuneiform signs, the second of three, ergo they must look different... The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the image for the second one seems wrong, I took it from the WP article where it was put by Dbachmann who I believe has quite a bit more knowledge on the Ancient Near East cuneiform stuff than me..dunno! Feel free to remove it. --Ivan Štambuk 22:41, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I would gladly replace the images, but from commons:Category:Cuneiform signs I need B183vellst.png and B661vellst.png, but the second one does not exist, it has never been uploaded. commons:User:Mstudt, who uploaded the cuneiform signs, stopped somewhere between B400 and B500, so we can illustrate only the DINGIR and tar2 part (on the right)... The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:31, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ivan, I found something: I appear to be the second one who spotted the discrepancy - in your first archive here Conrad Irwin appears to have remarked the discrepancy between the signs from the font and the images 13 months ago. I could not distinguish the signs (they appear as meaningless boxes on my screen), but descried the uniformity of the images for two different words instead... The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Please help me, if you have the fonts installed - does the picture on the right resemble the third cuneifont sign from the font? So I could determine whether I came across the correct image. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry to interrupt, but which script is that? It's just coming up with squares; obviously I need to download a new font, but which one? Cheers, Mglovesfun 08:05, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * So do I. That is why I am asking Ivan to verify whether the image resembles the letter from the font. This is a cuneiform font, but I have no idea where one can download it (and whether it is worth it - I had already headaches trying to make the Gothic font work, so I am not going to waste more time with this one). The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 08:12, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * see Template_talk:Xsux. Different fonts must be used to represent the same cuneiform symbols as they changed over time, but are all mapped to the same Unicode points. Unfortunately no font supports all the signs in all periods AFAIK :/ --Ivan Štambuk 11:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, but you still did not answer whether the picture I picked up resembles this cuneiform sign, which I cannot discern - 𒁯? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 13:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * They don't really look similar to me.. --Ivan Štambuk 15:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This is strange - 𒁯 is B183 in List_of_cuneiform_signs and the picture includes B183 in its title... 𒌋 should look like one Winkelhaken, right? If not, then something is amiss. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:29, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Dunno, perhaps the B183 picture is the proper one, but the sign evolved unrecognizably in the Neo-Assyrian times. 𒌋 does look like Winkelhaken. --Ivan Štambuk 09:30, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ivan, can you determine whether in 𒇻 LU-LIM is spelt aright as 𒇻𒅆? I asked Dbachmann too. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 16:30, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you also ascertain whether the image I added to EME cprresponds to the sign (𒅴)? And also on 𒁺? If somewhere the picture differs from the sign, you may tell me or just remove it. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Both are correct. Dbachmann does not contribute actively on Wiktionary anymore unfortunately. Also, what do you think of idea of adding the signs Margaret uploaded to Commons to List of cuneiform signs, in a separate column (to the extent that they're covered) ? --Ivan Štambuk 07:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ja ne uređujem englesku Vikipediju, tek nemačku, francusku i dansku, to ne me zanima. Ako želiš, dodaj. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 10:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ivan, ja sam video na stranice rasprave Mstudt da je ona dodala neke iz ostalih slika (B470-B582), ali one nisu bile koristene i su bile izbrisane. Ako zaht(ij)eš (is this the correct form from zahteti? - require) tamo od nekog administratora vratiti slike i gi uključiš u spisku, one ću moći biti koristene tamo. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 11:34, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I permit you to alter my comments in Serbo-Croatian, because I want to improve my knowledge. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 16:52, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Eblaite - dialect?
Given that we already began musing upon cuneiforms, what do you thing of the expression Eblaite dialect of the Akkadian language? In German Wikipedia the Eblaite language is treated as an Akkadian dialect (Eblaitische Sprache: Eblaitisch ist ein Dialekt der ausgestorbenen ostsemitischen Sprache Akkadisch) and Germany is the main research centre for Altorientalistik. Do you think we could adopt an approach similar to Serbo-Croatian and list the Eblaite nouns with an Akkadian header and (Eblaite) note similar to Ijekavian/Ekavian? I have not yet learnt Akkadian, I am learning some Sumerian now, so I would rather not express mine opinion. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 10:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No, Eblaite is a separate language of the East Semitic group, with it's own ISO code and monuments.. I can imageine Old Semitic dialects were quite similar in the 3rd millennium BC, but there is little sense in treating Eblaite as a dialect of "Akkadian" (which itself is kind of "collection of dialects"). --Ivan Štambuk 11:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

From the Semitic languages - outline of a comparative grammar, by Lipiński, p. 52, paragraph on Eblaite ("Palaeosyrian") : "It is impossible to consider the texts from different sites as written in one language spoken by a single people in the whole area extending from North Syria to Babylonia. However, the spoken languages may differ to various extents from a written koinè and, in any case, there are common features in the writing system, in phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary. Further research and more discoveries are needed to establish how many written Semitic languages or dialects of the mid-third millennium should be distinguished in the ara under consideration."

So, the field itself still researches how many languages/dialects were really there, and which was a dialect of what. In the meantime, I suggest we simply follow SIL's classification scheme.. --Ivan Štambuk 11:30, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

мак
Hello, can you check the OCS cognate of vallmo, it is from ODS. Would you add the verified spelling at The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 11:27, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Not OCS, but later Church Slavonic макъ was attested. Strange word, of non-IE substratum origin, seems to have been borrowed in various directions. --Ivan Štambuk 11:42, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ivan, at which two directions do you hint? To me this is just another example of the Slavic-Germanic kinship which modern linguistics tend to underæstimate, do you agree? Well, there is Ancient Greek too, but besides that, naught. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 12:10, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Here is Derksen's comment for the corresponding Proto-Slavic lemma from Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon : "The Germanic forms show grammatischer Wechsel as well as an alternation *ā : *a. The vocalism, which could reflect PIE *eh₁ : *h₁, does not match the ā of the Greek and the Slavic forms, which leads us to assume that the vowel alternation arose when at a comparatively late stage the root māk- was borrowed into Germanic (cf. Kluge-Seebold: 565). The Lithuanian and Latvian forms are usually considered borrowings from Germanic, whereas OPr. may have been borrowed from Polish. The Estonian and Livonian  forms must be borrowings from Baltic, probably Latvian. It is generally agreed upon that ultimately we are dealing with a word of non-Indo-European (Mediterranean?) origin."

All sources mention Hellenic, Slavic and Germanic terms as somehow related, but the loaning is the most likely scenario, rather than common inheritance, due to the absence of the term in other IE branches, and the lack of formal correspondence between the attested and reconstructed terms. --Ivan Štambuk 13:13, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * :( I see there is a rise in all kind of recently promulgated theories which aim at contesting the Indo-European origin of many words (this one and μακεδνός, do you remember?) and this is highly deplorable. Howbeit, I am defenseless for the moment. I shall consult Vasmer. But according to Skok Prema tome bi bio mak grčko-germ.-slav. leksička paralela. Uzimlje se pred-ie. ili mediteransko podrijetlo, so this sounds concordant with the above source and seems veracious. But as for μακεδνός, I still adhere firmly to Chantraine and H. Frisk. Regards The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 13:41, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

գագաթն
Isn't there anything like gaggadu or gagadu in Babylonian Akkadian? My dictionary lists Akkadian qaqqa-du, Hebrew qādqōd and Šumerian gaggud, then goes on to say that Babylonian gagadu mentioned in something called M''uss-Arnolt, Ass. engl. Handwb. page 924a'', suits best for Armenian. --Vahagn Petrosyan 15:45, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ivan created the entry - 𒊕𒁺. There is also Ugaritic 𐎖𐎄𐎖𐎄 (qdqd) with the same meaning. Here is the proto-Semitic root, but since I am not familiar with roots of proto-languages, I would rather ask Ivan to verify it and if it is spelt aright, to add it. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 16:06, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, there is qaqqadu (with q not g) which I did add to the etymology (in all variant spellings). The word is apparently ultimately Common Semitic (*qadqad- as referenced above, tho the vowels are not that certain..), and I'm thus not quite sure about Sumerian word (perhaps it was a borrowing from Semitic?). The work you're referring to is A Concise Dictionary of the Assyrian Languages written by 19th century Assyrologist William Muss-Arnolt, and you can read the page 924 on the Internet Archive which has the book scanned . gagadu is perhaps a later form of qaqqadu, but I'm not really familiar with historical phonology of Late Akkadian dialects to know for sure.. --Ivan Štambuk 16:13, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Anyhow, here's what Edward Lipiński says in his Semitic languages, which could (partially) explain the form gagadu : --Ivan Štambuk 16:56, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

"18.3. The syllabic cuneiform writing system is, as usual, inadequate to indicate the distinction between k, g, q. Throughout the whole course of cuneiform writing no attempt was ever made to indicate the exact character of a final plosive: AG serves as ag, ak or aq, IG is used for ig, ik or iq, etc. For the initial plosives, a certain distinction is introduced from the Old Babylonian period on, e.g. between GA, KA, and even QA in certain regions like Mari and Eshnunna, but the emphatic velar plosive q s generally indicated by signs  with the 'voiced' or 'voiceless' consonant, e.g. KI serves for ki and qi, KU for ku and qú, but GAB is used for gab and qab, and GIM for gim, kim and qim. The occasional orthographic interchanges  GA/QA, GI/KI, GU/KU may reflect a dialectal voiced articulation of q in some areas, but cannot prove the existence of two phonemes /k/ and /g/ in Assyro-Babylonian.

18.4. In Neo-Assyrian [g] and [k] seem to be positional variants  of the same phoneme. The voiced pronunciation is attested in intervocalic position by Aramaic and Hebrew transcriptions, e.g. mngsr for Mannu-ki-šarri, as against tkltšr for Tuklat-lštar."

Then I think it is worth mentioning gagadu in the etymology along with qaqqadu. By the way, thanks for adding such stuff to Armenian entries! --Vahagn Petrosyan 05:22, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Template:seeCites & co.
Thanks for taking the initiative to make that change! When you've testes it out and are happy, please let us know in the Beer Parlour. We need to start restructuring the Citations pages to include Language sections. --EncycloPetey 20:46, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

PIE terminology
Will you have a look at դուռն, please? I was translating literally "lower ablaut" from Armenian into English and was wondering what's the correct English term. I guess "something"-grade? Also, how should I translate "middle ablaut" and "upper ablaut"? E.g. *dʰwor is called middle ablaut of *dʰwer, and *dʰur - a lower one. Vahagn Petrosyan 10:27, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * lower ablaut = zero-grade, middle ablaut = o-grade. *[u] is a but a syllabic allophone of */w/ in interconsonantal position, hence the *dʰur- form. --Ivan Štambuk

Kosovo
Ne, to je nesto sto se zove NPOV. Znas ono, neki tvrde ovako a neki onako. Nikola Smolenski 20:31, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Vecina zemalja sveta nije priznala Kosovo, ukljucujuci npr. Kinu ili Indiju kao zemlje sa velikim brojem govornika engleskog, i u njima se taj izraz koristi za deo Srbije. Razdvajanje na dva znacenja mi nije bas... jer neki ljudi koriste "Kosovo" ne zeleci da impliciraju odredjeni politicki status, ili i ne znajuci kakav je itd. A jasno je da svi govore o istoj teritoriji. Nikola Smolenski 20:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Pa opet, to nije nesto sto treba da stoji u recniku. Zamisli da imamo stranu Hashim Thaçi, pa znacenja:
 * Premijer Kosova
 * Samozvani premijer lazne drzave Kosova
 * Osudjeni terorista
 * Covek je jedan, i treba da ima jednu definiciju. Ako ti se bas ne svidja makar da definisemo kao "teritorija na koordinatama tim i tim". Nikola Smolenski 16:37, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

πεντακισχίλιοι - reverting
Hallo Ivan! At first thank you for welcoming me. On the other side: I'm very astonished, that you are correcting right information to wrong one. I have learned Old Greek four years at school with success. But if you don't believe me, look at πέντε or quintillion, where the word „πεντάκις“ is correctly presented. A look to an old greek dictionary will show you the same result. So i'm going to correct the entry again. Greetings Alexander Gamauf 09:49, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi! Sorry for that, I think I accidentally clicked the "rollback" button. Thanks for your corrections. --Ivan Štambuk 10:11, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

PIE dictionaries
Do you know a comprehensive PIE dictionary other than Pokorny that is available on-line legally or at "funny places"? I know American Heritage Dictionary Of Indo-European Roots, but it's not available even in the funniest of places. I'm tired of using my 1920s/30s dictionary for Armenian etymologies (yes, nothing newer has been published). --Vahagn Petrosyan 18:37, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, there's the LIV at uz-translations, and that's pretty much it. You simply have to combine different sources on etymologies of different branches.. New etymological dictionary of Armenian by Martirosyan has been published recently within IEED project scope, so I guess you'll have to wait until it gets scanned and uploaded to gigapedia or uz-translations by someone, or to ieed.nl pages (they promise to upload the newer versions of the databases by the end of this year), or until 13-Feb-2010 when the full text of Martirosyan's thesis will be available online .. Unless, of course, you're willing to throw some 200 euros ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 18:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Good! Will wait for this Martirosyan's thesis. How about de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin (and the other Italic Languages). Is this available online yet? --Vahagn Petrosyan 20:42, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, AFAIK. But you have Sihler's New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin on uz-translations which is just as good for Latin (the preferred searching of it is via b.g.c). Of recently made available material, there's another awesome thesis: - Kloekhorst's The Hittite inherited lexicon (also published as a book in IEED series), PDF of which you can search for the abbreviation Arm. which would list Armenian cognate next to Hittite and PIE reconstruction. --Ivan Štambuk 22:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * At uztranslations was also the invaluable Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine of Antoine Meillet and Alfred Ernout, but the link is currently broken. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 08:40, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

translations
Why do you conſider the translations ſection at the proper ſpelling pointleſs? 1) There are favour and favor, whence one is to infer that there is no rule here prohibiting translations on articles of alternative ſpellings. 2) Compare the translations you eraſed with the ones in naive and you will ſee that I not only copied the transaltions, but added Bulgarian, Daniſh, Latin and Serbo-Croatian translations which are not præſent at naive (I refuſe to move them there). So if you do not permit duplication of translations (baſed on which rule?), pleaſe readd the four translations accompliſhed by me to naïve, which is the place where I would like them to abide. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 21:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The words and  are regional variants, not versions with and without diacriticals.  Regional variants can have different shades of meaning.  Typographical variants do not. --EncycloPetey 22:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * That is not necessarily true; cf. with . †  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 14:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Bogorom, was made for that exact purpose - to minimize duplication among typographical variants, esp. between British and American English (-our/-or, -ise/-ize etc.). I know that you very much prefer words with diacritics and other weird spellings, but we should keep in mind that the general reader is not. I agree that ideally they should be present at both entries (perhaps by using section transclusion like we're doing in WT:ES to transparently add them?), but we haven't worked out a mechanism to accomplish that now. I'll add your translations back to, sorry for being sloppy in noticing them in the first place. --Ivan Štambuk 07:19, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * But who is entitled to decide where the redirecting template ought to be placed and where the full-ſcale translations? You ſimply trensferred my contribution to the place where I definitely did not want it to go, to a ſimplifacitive misſpelling, which I find aggrieving. Conſidering all the drawbacks this template may cauſe by giving præference to one ſpelling at the expenſe of another one and thus inevitably affronting the adhærents of the belittled ſpelling, I would rather ſee this template deleted ſo that contributors may reliſh the inviolable liberty to place their translations ad libitum. In the current ſituation the disappointment for the proponents of one valid and correct ſpelling is ineluctable. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:55, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that ideally they should be present at both entries - well, this ſentence of your ſhews at least that we have reached ſome concord. So how do you propoſe to work out this mechaniſm in order for ſaid inviolable liberty to be enſured? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:58, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You already may have remarked that Doremítzwr and I conſider naive to be the proper place for transcluding the trans-see template and naïve the place for the full-ſcale translations. And ï is not weird, it is a current ſign in the French language, there are much weirder ones (in far leſs propagated languages). The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 08:02, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The logic is very simple: the spelling which has overwhelmingly more usage (naive, in this case) is the primary one, and orthographic variants should soft-redirect to it. 99%+ English speakers on the Internet don't know how to type <ï> - why make it more difficult for them? --Ivan Štambuk 09:02, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Ivan, you said that has an “order of magnitude less usage” (i.e. is ten times less common) than . Whence did you get that statistic? Nota  (7,760) vs.  (19,284); i.e., according to Google Book Search,  is under two-and-a-half times more common than . There is a further complicating factor: GBS is pretty lousy at picking up diacritics, especially in English; of the first fifty hits yielded for "naive", amidst many “phantom” hits, the following eight are scannos of, the diæresis having been missed: , , , , , , , and  — even if we assume that there are no scannos amongst the “phantom” hits and that we count them as part of the tally for , that’s still a scanno rate of about ⅙. One-sixth of 19,284 is 3,214; to adjust the statistics to take account of the ⅙ scanno rate, that sum should properly be deducted from "naive" (16,070) and added to "naïve" (10,974), bringing the ratio to <1·5:1. Hardly an order of magnitude. There are probably other factors to take account of which make this analysis less than foolproof (such as the inclusion in the results batch for "naive" of multiple copies of the German text “Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung” &c. and the inclusion in the results batch for "naïve" of French-language hits, which factors and others require further and finer adjustments both ways), but it nevertheless serves to highlight some of the problems with relying upon such search engines for gleaning frequency rates of different spellings, especially those distinguished by the use of diacritics only. On-line corpora, such as COCA (The Corpus of Contemporary American English) have the same problem, but to a greater degree. Then, besides arguments about relative frequencies of usage, there is also the far less mechanical (and, IMO, far more significant) consideration of standard usage (see t’OED, 2nd Ed.) and professionalism; the inclusion of the diæresis upon the <ï> in  is still considered mandatory by many, and not just by ligature-obsessed whack-jobs like me and Bogorm. ;-) (Actually, in the case of , the diæresis is not a case of mere adornment — it’s a pronunciation aid.) Anyway, the whole dispute is kinda moot given the transcluded translations section; this is just FYI. †  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 14:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Quite, so just for the record: while the above 1989 OED version had the entry under "naïve", the current draft revision one has it under naive, with "naïve" mentioned as an alternative spelling (on the other hand there is an entry for naïveté with diæresis all right). --Duncan 14:45, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It was an educated guess. I have no doubts that any corpus of English publications published in the last e.g. 20 years would confirm at least an order of magnitude less usage of any of the alternative spellings with a diaeresis on vowels. That kind of orthography is ancient and nowadays non-standard, in both British and American English. As Duncan confirms above, the standard adjective is naive . --Ivan Štambuk 16:01, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * b.g.c.: "naive", pub. Jul. 1989 – Jul. 2009 = 11,100
 * <tt>b.g.c.: "naïve"</tt>, pub. Jul. 1989 – Jul. 2009 = 2,330
 * Of the first fifty hits for <tt>"naive"</tt>, one uses it as part of that German writ’s title I mentioned, five are scannos of (,, , , and ), one uses both spellings — the diacriticked and the undiacriticked — on the same page; there are also a number of phantoms, which I ignored. Adjusting for scannos (and just scannos) again:
 * <tt>b.g.c.: "naive"</tt>, pub. Jul. 1989 – Jul. 2009 = 9,990
 * <tt>b.g.c.: "naïve"</tt>, pub. Jul. 1989 – Jul. 2009 = 3,662
 * So, the naive:naïve ratio for works published in the last twenty years is <2¾:1 — still far short of an order-of-magnitude difference.
 * The reference to the OED [2nd Ed.] was intended to show that as recently as 1989, was considered the standard, primary spelling by an authoritative non-prescriptive dictionary. The use of the diæresis thereon is hardly non-standard (whatever bizarre “half- GALLICISM ” The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style wishes to prescribe), and it is absurd to call a current orthographical feature merely “ancient”.
 * In case you’re not convinced of the value of the diæresis as a pronunciation aid, nota that the entry for “naive, adj.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [ Draft revision ; June 2008] states that “All editions of D. Jones Eng. Pronouncing Dict. s.v. naïve mark stress on the second syllable, until 1947 giving alternative pronunciations with stress on the first. Editions until 1982 give the form naive as a separate headword, with the monosyllabic pronunciation .”
 * <font style="color:darkred">†  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:11, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, 3:1 is still twice as much as 1.5:1 you gave above, and the growth rate with time is obvious. I suspect if less "prestigious" writings were to be taken into account, i.e. not the edited type of works such as the books scanned by b.g.c, i.e. terabytes of self-published text written by the common people on the Web, USENET and elsewhere, the ratio would be quite closer to 10:1.
 * BTW, I am aware of the diaeresis as a pronunciation aid, but in English the pronunciation of basically every single word has to be verified by a learner somewhere just to be sure, so IMHO diaeresis makes much more sense in languages such as Latin where the pronunciation is generally settled by a prescribed set of rules, to mark a limited group of well-known exceptions. --Ivan Štambuk 18:39, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Diæresis in Latin, was this facetious? Latin is the single Europæan language which does not allow any diacritics soever (at least in its classical writing) and it is the last which ought to be diacriticked. Macrons and breves are a late invention of post-mediæval linguists. And I am not aware of exceptions in the pronunciation rules in Classical Latin. In Ecclesiastical there are some, as they began to pronounce c in ce/ci and t in ti before a vowel... as ts. As for the terabytes of diletant concoctions on the Web - Ivan, I sincerely hope that I am not the only one who does not consider popularity a conditio sine qua non for veracity. The truth is in most cases highly unpopular and the vulgar concord may seldom be an indication of academical value and stringency, as the prævalence of the naive spelling amongst common-or-garden botchworks on the web in comparison with the traditional, academical, orthodox and respecting the pronunciation naïve spelling shews. A person which is not familiar with etymology would pronounce naive as [neiv], as Doremítzwr already mentioned. And it is such kind of simplifications which lead the inexperienced (especially foreign) reader into misconceptions and faults and are susceptive to mispronunciations. And thence the importance of diacritics is not to be underæstimated as a help in pronouncing the word, where the simplification is rather an obstacle. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:14, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Excuse me, but how exactly would you know how to pronounce aeris or poeta in proper "Classical Latin" were it not for the diacritics?
 * Popularity of a particular spelling as used by the "botchworks" is a very important criterion, or at least as much as the popularity of the alternative spelling amongst the "traditionalists". When language such as English does not have a formal national body guiding its "development", the actual usage is what determines the "standard language". Granted, there are various literary styles reflecting various views on language "properness" - from one side we have what you call the "traditional, academical, orthodox", and on the other side the common people who just want to get things done (i.e. transmit the message), and don't have the faintest desire to waste time looking up on the keyboard where the hell are those letters with 2 dots above. Unfortunately for the first group, the latter one is much more numerous, and will eventually prove itself to be more influential in defining the "standard English", as we can already see in the shift of recommended spelling of naive/naïve in OED two decades ago and now. --Ivan Štambuk 20:38, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Try it now: naïve. Ideally this would be put in some templates, but as far as I have experimented with labeled section transclusion, their wiki markup does not work with templates, so you need to write it manually every time. This would, I imagine, induce a great deal of grievance among bot-owners and Wiktionary dump analysts, who don't like sections being inserted by templates or wiki markup. --Ivan Štambuk 09:09, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Your signature
Your signature variously contains a whole bunch of characters throughout what I've seen recently that display as boxes. Can you set your signature to please use Latin charactersets so as to be more friendly to those of us without obscure and possibly difficult to obtain fonts on our computers? Appreciated. It becomes especially important when you have NO other identifying information in your signature except when the link is hovered over, but even just having part of the signature rendering as a string of boxes is not good practise. I appreciate the help on this. --Neskaya kanetsv  03:58, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Again, I really do appreciate your changing it. --Neskaya kanetsv  05:29, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I changed it...It was a stupid idea to put Glagolitic letters in it ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 07:27, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

SC entries
I recently created SC entries at догађај, дифузија, грејпфрут, гргеч, обоа, хомоморфизам, фагот, рика, тромбон, and труба. These need declension and some of them need pitch accent/vowel length as well (this goes for the Roman equivalents as well). Perhaps you could help me out? – Krun 01:03, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, no problem. For the entries you create, and that need further expansion or checking, just tag them with ! --Ivan Štambuk 01:05, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the section titled "Serbo-Croatian"
Greetings back to you, too. Naturally you may ask me what my proficiency is in it. Why it's natural of course. :-) How in the world could I expect you to obey my ban, (if I ever had been so reckless and had made such a ban), a ban which would forbid you to ask me such a question. :-) As far as the very proficiency is concerned, it is stated on the user page of my Wikipedia account. Concisely I will put it so: sr-native, sh-native. In this order, ATM (Yours is analogue if sh is being concerned ).

Thank you a lot for the link provided, and even more for the gesture of being so thoughtful to consider my potential interest in the ongoing discussions and especially votes. I look forward to contribute my thoughts, ideas and suggestions to the issue. And if necessary, as it appears it is, to vote also.

I am aware of the fact of equal validity, and even more of the fact of the officialness of equal validness, of both terms. My awareness of this fact is hopefully apparent enough from the babel template itself). But... (there's always a but). I've thought that I was explanatory enough when summarizing my edits - unfortunately perhaps it is not so. I will try once more in more aggressive tone - for which I apologize in advance. I may be wrong about this, but nonetheless my summary of |this contribution wasn't taken into account as it seems to me. In order to achieve more I will also attack your arguments regarding the preference of "forementioned" terms for the sh language. You state that it was preferred differently by different individuals (which might be considered as of different ethnicities or even of different nationalities), but according to hr.WP it appears that you haven't investigated well enough and I question your unprovided statistics thoroughly. Therefore I disregard your arguments on this issue of preference and popularity of preference. I honestly believe you can reconsider my point of view when reading the title of the article at hr.WP (jezik). I haven't read the rest of the article, but I suppose that the term used in the title (Srpskohrvatski) of it could be interpreted as pertinent enough as an argument. As for the "deliberativeness" ( of some act, I have no information on this issue - neither deliberativeness nor the act of making the components of language "not_giving_overdue_prominence". And even mostly on the presumption who made this act. But I don't deny that I would be interested in knowing more about this issue. Whether it was overdue or it was as one of the consequences of Вук Стефановић Караџић's work AND/OR Vienna Literary Agreement, I don't know - but I could presume. For the sake of the discussion and my good intentions, I will refrain myself of yielding to such inconstructive assumptions. I might agree with you that the term Yugoslav could have been more appropriate at the time, but then I would negate the known (known to me) historical facts of genesis of my native language. I am very glad though that I have found a spirit-mate (analogous to soul-mate) in perceiving the messiness of today's situation with "different languages" as you refer to them. Even more when this spirit-mate is still somewhat more polarized (as I am too) when putting hr before sh in his babel template. All the best, --Biblbroks 04:14, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

removing hr, bs, sr from entries
I must insist that you (and any others) stop this while your vote is pending. Continuing is unacceptable. Robert Ullmann 10:27, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Would you be satisfied if I simply commented them out by <tt> </tt>, so that they can presumably be terminated by a bot if the vote passes, or restored back in if it fails? --Ivan Štambuk 10:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No. The requirement is not to take any of the actions proposed while the vote is pending. (There is a technical problem with commenting out blocks of entries that contain headers and a few other things, but that is not the issue.) Robert Ullmann 12:59, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * OK. I'll simply be creating entries for missing SC words then in the meantime then, or merging the existing entries to a textfile on my computer. --Ivan Štambuk 13:03, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

A Serbo-Croatian translation
Hi,

Please take a look at I don't speak English - Serbo-Croatian translation. Is this how you view (format) translations with "sh" codes? Anatoli 02:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah - just like that. The same way it was used for Serbian previously, except now with possible context labels such as (Bosnian) or (Croatian) when the term is confined to a certain region only. --Ivan Štambuk 02:30, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * хвала/hvala ;) Anatoli 02:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Sрбијанац
Is it just my fonts or have you used mixed scripts here, Sрбијанац? --Dijan 05:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Whoops, sorry, a bug in a conversion program I wrote. Will fix it. --Ivan Štambuk 09:45, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Delete history
Hello, please can you delete the rude image from the history pages on my Talk Page - I don't want to see it again. --Rising Sun 12:35, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. --Ivan Štambuk 12:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

kirsnas
You seem to have placed a tilde on the r (kir̃snas). Shouldn't it be kĩrsnas, with the tone mark on the vowel i? – Krun 11:56, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've copied the accentuation from LKZ. I'm note sure, but I think that the circumflex tone (i.e. rising tone in standard Aukštaitian) in diphthongs with a sonorant coda is usually marked on the second element. Opiaterein might know more on the notation for Lithuanian pitch accent system. --Ivan Štambuk 12:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a little late but yeah, in Lithuanian there are several consonants that can be marked with the circumflex - l, m, n and r. Their syllable has the long pitch of the circumflex, but the vowel is still short. — <font face="Lucida console">[&#32;R·I·C&#32;] opiaterein — 02:09, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I learned that too in the meantime (and expanded Lithuanian_language) ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 02:46, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Latin etymologies
Ivan, there are a few Latin etymology requests that I'm particularly keen to see with etymologies, namely, , , and. If you can help out with any of these, it would be much appreciated by many users, as these are the sort of basic Latin words one learns early in a Latin course. --EncycloPetey 22:42, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Except that I didn't connect in the etymologies of /, as I'm not that sure that that verb reflects PIE *dʰeh₁y- "to suck(le)" as its etymology currently suggests, (LIV doesn't mention it as a reflex, and neither does any dictionary of the IEED series on ieed.nl website, so I guess we'll have to wait until the Leiden folks upload the database for de Vaan's dictionary). --Ivan Štambuk 00:38, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --EncycloPetey 00:42, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Germanic
Unfortunately when the old templates like Template:Ger. get deleted, in the explanatory line no link to the new one is provided. Could you please use Template:etyl with the due parameter for Germanic derivations in marge, since I was forced to add the category explicitly, being unfamiliar with some of the parameters for the etyl template (esp. those of language families)? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:40, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Sorry about that Bogorm.  Ruakh suggested listing the new format in the deletion comment, but only after I was about two thirds of the way through deleting them.  For future reference, the Wikipedia article on whatever language family generally gives the ISO code for the language family (which is "gem" in this case), which is entered just like a regular language code.  Again, sorry about the confusion.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:07, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Understood; I shall refer to the Wikipedia articles for the codes. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 09:45, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

тескере
Hello, I noticed your comment on the Appendix about the origin of the word, so I suppose yours is more precise, because in the digitalised version of Skok's dictionary there are some misspellings due to digitalisation. Feel free to change it. After all, my knowledge in Arabic is next to nothing. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 16:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, so is mine :) The dude who dude the OCR-ing of Skok's dictionary did a terrible job. Anyhow, it will be funny if turns out to be connected with the Common Semitic word for "penis" ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 16:15, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Hey man
Can you recommend a good online English/Srpskohrvatski dictionary? I need something for my translation-table spurts :) — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 18:39, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Absolutely every single one of them I saw is a piece of shit. Not because they are wrong, but because they simply list too many divergent meanings, which means that unless you're a native speaker who can filter out garbage, they're useless :) The best ones IMHO are krstarica (for Ekavian Serbian) and rjecnik.net (for Ijekavian Croatian). By far the best en-sh dictionary that can be installed on a computer would be Morton-Benson (also can be found on torrentz). But for specific words with only one meaning such as pornograf or ejakulacija any one of them would suffice :P --Ivan Štambuk 19:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey, somebody has to add those naughty words :D There are a lot of languages, y'know. I should've mentioned that installing dictionaries are fine :) I have a good one for Lithuanian. Thanks :) — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 19:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

jezici u apendiksu
Ivan, ja bi te zahvalio, ako ne stavljaš takozvani makedonski. Ivan, veoma je mučno za srbina (možda osim Č. Jovanovića) slišati za crnogorski jezik, pa isto tako i za bugarina - za makedonski... Nadam se da razumeš. Znam da nisi dužan, zato samo molba. Molim da pomisliš - rječnik Skoka je od 1971 g., jezikom je objavljen 1944, ali Skok nigde ne ga spomena (nadgledaj statije za turcizme - tamo ima bg., ro, el., aromanski, arb., nema više (iz evropskih jezika)), on je umen, on zna, što piše; nije slučajno, nali? Pozdrav. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 12:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hehe..ma razuměm ;) Ali, stvar je u tomu što su se neke stvari proměnile od 1945 - Horce G. Lunt je objavio prvu slovnicu (gramatiku) književnog makedonskog, on je u potpunosti kodificiran, učen u školama, ima svoj ISO kôd... S druge strane, takozvani "crnogorski jezik" će zauvěk ostati puka fikcija nekolicine zanesenjaka, bez svoje slovnice, rěčnika itd. koji bi ga ozbiljnije razlikovali od srpskohrvatskog. Sve do prě par godina u ustavu Crne Gore je službeni (zvanični) jezik bio "srpski ijekavskog izgovora", pa su to samo proměnili u "crnogorski jezik" bez da se u praksi išta proměnilo. Stvari su malo složenije nego što se dâ na prvi pogled pomisliti.. --Ivan Štambuk 12:07, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Usput, ako ne razuměš koju rěč, samo reci (možeš je wikificirati pa ću ja stvoriti članak za nju). Što se tiče tvog stila evo par primjedbi (bio si tražio da ti ukazujem na greške u tvom srpskohrvatskm, pa evo):
 * ja bi te zahvalio - pravilno bi bilo: ja bih te zamolio. Obrati pažnju na -h koje se u izgovoru često izostavlja ali u književnom se jeziku mora pisati. bih/bi/bi/bismo/biste/bi. zahvaliti znači "to thank", zamoliti "to politely ask for".
 * Srbin se piše velikim početnim slovom :P Netko bi se mogao uvrěditi, pa samo napominjem..
 * slišati za > slušati o + lokativ, dakle slušati o crnogorskom(e/u) jeziku.
 * pomisliti znači "to think about something suddenly for a brief period" or "to remember something". Tebi treba glagol 
 * nigde ne ga spomena - nigdě ga ne spominje
 * umen - ne znam na što točno misliš, ali valjda bi upućen, obrazovan "conversant, knowledgeable" odgovaralo
 * nali - > zar ne "isn't that so", ovdě "isn't he"? --Ivan Štambuk 12:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hvala za pojašnjenje greške. umen je bugarska riječ, умен, nisam tražio srpskohrvatsku. Znam za zahvaliti/zamoliti, hteo sam reći naime bih te zahvalio, ako, ne bih te zamolio + inf., molba je dole. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 18:42, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I know it's not my business...
But I've taken a look at your block log and seen that you've blocked several accounts with the reason 'stupidity'. So, I'm just curious that in what conditions would you block accounts for stupidity?
 * If you were referring to the recent several blocks, they had abusive nicknames (containing names of the other editors) and/or they vandalized user talkpages with insultive comments. There is generally very low tolerance around here for such behavior. If those blocked users wish to productively contribute to the Wiktionary, they can always apologize on the talkpage, send an e-mail to the user who blocked them, and have their block lifted very soon if they demonstrate good faith. --Ivan Štambuk 13:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

An olive branch
Hello Ivan, it's more then clear that we've both made some mean-spirited remarks at each other on the Serbo-Croatian page. Our bickering was likely caused by some sort of misunderstanding. I've decided to abstain from debate at the vote, though I am more than happy to continue open and friendly discussion here. In the pursuit of peace, I've struck out my comment on the vote page. –blurpeace (talk) 01:12, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Your new comment on the opposing vote is "Until I can see a clear consensus, with almost everyone in agreement, and everything is planned out accordingly, I can not, in right mind, support this." So you're basically casting an oppose only because there are others opposing (for whatever reason), not because you have something against the proposed policy the vote is about per se? --Ivan Štambuk 01:16, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, as you've stated, votes are meant to formalize an existing consensus with specific terminology. I have yet to see any wide preexisting consensus, therefore I believe the foundation of the vote is in error. After reviewing both arguments, my personal choice is to abstain, or weak oppose, but my views may change over time. –blurpeace (talk) 01:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The consensus exists among all of the SC contributors, all the SC speakers (native and non-native), and almost all of our Slavic-language contributors (Polansky is just being mean :p). Half of those opposers haven't even read the proposed WT:ASH policy that is being voted on. The most vocal ones completely ignore the undisputed benefits the merger proposal brings (to both sides, contributors and the Wiktionary users), and are more intent to see some imaginary Serb nationalist agenda, imaginary NPOV (how on earth can there be NPOV when we treat all the standards equally?) or imaginary could-be contributors. It's really hard to reason with such folks, when they're being so irrationally against something that absolutely doesn't touch them at all, as they won't be the ones wasting countless hours maintaining the entries in those "different languages" with the identical content but spread on some 4-6 different sections (I would also add "won't be the ones learning Serbo-Croatian thru such wastefully spread duplicative content", but that's obvious :P). Basically, I couldn't care less what such people think, as I'm firmly believe that their conviction (but then again, I even doubt that there is a conviction, it's more like "let's be evil to Ivan" MMORPG) is ultimately of infinitesimal value with regards to the Right Thing this proposal is all about. Majority of the community hopefully realizes that. This vote was brought up only to formalize that latter consensus, which was reached on various talkpages and applied without no problems for more then 3 months (entries were being merged, new SC entries were being created), and then Ullmann (and he was noticed of the merger right from the start) brought up that BP discussion and it suddenly became "controversial", he claimed that the merger was "non-negotiable" (as if he has a veto or something), and several contributors advised me to simply bring it up to a vote, which I did. It's important to have a diachronic perspective in mind, not drawing conclusions solely from the comments on the vote (talk)page itself. Now I regret that I haven't maintained a subpage with complete history of the SC business, because after Lmaltier's notices on some sister projects too many a stranger became interested in this. --Ivan Štambuk 01:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you provide evidence in the form of diffs for the first statement? If there is such a consensus, I'd like to review it. Also, can you please retract your insult on the Serbo-Croatian vote? It bothers me that I have retracted my own mean-spirited remarks, but you have not done so. –blurpeace (talk) 01:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Just look at the voters and their language proficiency: Dijan and me authored 99.9% of current SC entries on Wiktionary (and both of us are long-time users, contributing to plethora of languages), others contributing only occasionally while learning words, e.g. Bogorm, Krun, Francis Tyers. Dčabrilo is also a native speaker but stopped contributing a few years back. Other native and non-native speakers with some proficiency according to their babel boxen that have voted for the merger are Vukotic and Local hero. Also, you should note that all Slavic languages are really close (they were the last IE branch to disintegrate, 1000-1100 years ago still de facto one language), and that a native speaker of other South Slavic languages (Slovenian, Bulgarian and Macedonian) can understand a great deal of Serbo-Croatian, so I presume that e.g. user B-rat (native Slovenian) should have at least sh-1/2 proficiency, and speakers of East Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian..) with some basic linguistic knowledge should also have at least sh-1 reading proficiency (that would also add Stephen, Mzajac and Bogdan).
 * The consensus in practice started to operate with this edit, when I started working on the proposed policy on how to treat all the SC varieties commonly (primarily the issue of 2 scripts, 3 jat reflexes, all mapped to 3 standards, none of which encompasses all the possibilities), which was slowly expanded and elaborated on with details as it was used in merging the existing entries (so far quite thoroughly, Category:Serbo-Croatian nouns has ATM ~ 3600 entries, more than Category:Serbian nouns and Category:Bosnian nouns combined, which have ~ 3100 together ATM). All of these would've been merged long time ago but I was busy with some local activism at the period so it only gained speed rather recently. BP notice was posted soon-after, and remarkably, all of the now-vocal opposers were quite silent ^_^ (and they did see the message as they all watch BP and respond there). Carolina.Wren was the only one who expressed disagreement on the basis of SIL/ISO classification scheme (i.e. nothing against he proposed unification scheme itself), but I eventually persuaded her on the talkpage. Polansky also wondered on how it would function in practice (i.e. are the differences "small enough" so that they can be treated collectively). As you can see, people are more likely to believe some erroneous external source, than a knowledgeable native speaker that can provide them with details no Google search can yield. Then it was silence until RU posted that other BP notice on "severe damage done to the entries" (regardless of the fact that almost all of the merged entries were in fact enhanced by pronunciations, inflection, etymogies etc.) and after that the "fun" began ^_^. That should be more-or-less complete chronological perspective.
 * OK, I'll strike it.. --Ivan Štambuk 02:08, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

. conjugation of tući
Hello. Can you please add it, since in this sentence: tvoje srce // koje sada očajalo tuče tuče seems to be the 3rd person sg. from this verb, is it not? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC) Also, are izdna (iz + dno) and udno (u + dno) accepted spellings in modern Serbo-Croatian or they are spelt separetely.The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:12, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It is indeed from tući. Those are not valid spellings, and they are always separated per orthography. However, phonetically they are one word (the usual binding of proclitic..) --Ivan Štambuk 20:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hvala. Then did the Wikisource misquote Šimić or he used them intentionally? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 20:41, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently not :) ùdno is fossilized as a full-blown preposition meaning, obviously, "at the bottom/lowest part of".
 * As for the izdna, apparently it's some kind of archaicism; I've found it only in ARj, where it's listed as an adverb (composed of iz + dna), variant spelling of izadna, meaning "from the bottom of", figuratively "from the basis/fundamentals of".
 * While there are some hits for udno, both old and modern, izdna appears to be totally obscure. --Ivan Štambuk 20:58, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Here, line 9. Is in this sentence: Blijedi dan je odsjev blijeda neba // U mrtvom vrtu zimsko sunce seta seta the noun sorrow, melancholy? The pallis day is a reflex of the pallid sky // In the dead garden the winter sun (is) sorrow? Or is it some verb form? I already created an entry for and am going to add the quotation, if this is the nominative of this noun and not a verb form. Laku noć, ovde je već kasno, ponoć. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 21:18, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it's for šȇtā - the 3rd person singular from šetati "to walk", the diacritic sign was missing :) I've fixed it.
 * sjȅta / sȅta is also a valid noun, meaning "melancholy". It's of Common Slavic origin (< *sěta), the basic meaning was something like "the state of sorrow", and has been preserved as such in e.g. OCS and Russian сетовать.
 * Laku noć, i ovdje je skoro ponoć ali ja jako malo spavam :P --Ivan Štambuk 21:31, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, шетам is præsent in Bulgarian as well, but has the meaning to stride to and fro preoccupied, I am not sure if there is a corresponding English word. That's why I dislike strongly the omission of diacritics in Serbo-Croatian (especially on talk pages on Serbian Wikipedia) in Latin script, this may easily mislead a foreign speaker as me. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 07:18, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * In most cases omitting the diacritics doesn't really introduce that much trouble, and can be intuitively understood by most of the native speakers, but in concise poetic writings such as these, where there are lots of archaic words and words used in weird metaphoric constructs, you never know. Even I had to google this one to be sure. That Bulgarian word is cognate to SC šetati.. --Ivan Štambuk 11:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

lebdjelica
Ova reč je zbilja maškoga roda? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 09:48, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ne, to je grěška. Sad ću to ispraviti. --Ivan Štambuk 11:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

dublj?
Here: Davna, vječna pramajka // iskrsnula iz dubIj ina vremena Is this again a digitalisation error or is my dictionary too small? I can't find (or build from the extant ones) this word... I found dubina, but iz requires genitive, so it is perhaps genitive plural (from the depths?) ? I wanted to consult you as a non-native speaker, but I would rather not edit Wikisource (I have no contributions there and I am sufficiently involved here and on some Wikipedias - de, fr, sl, da ...). I appreciate highly your assistance. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 14:28, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * An error, there is no word that ends in -blj cluster in SC. Should be dubljina; I've fixed it. These seem to be scannos. I suggest that upon encountering more of these you google the poem on other places, e.g. search on "vječna pramajka" yields 3 results, the first one having correct spelling. --Ivan Štambuk 14:35, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * dubljina itself - yes, it's genitive plural (with long final vowel -ā, as opposed to the short nom. sg. ending -a). The usual word is, again different, dubìna (g. pl. dubínā), and dubljina seems to be some poetic/archaic rendering, formed from the comparative stem of the adjective dubok (comparative: dublji). Perhaps if dubina is "depth", dubljina should be "more depth" ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 14:35, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Found it in ARj (Akademijin rječnik, ARj is the usual abbreviation), where it confirms that it is a remake of dubina by analogy to comparative form.. ARj uses the scholarly notation of <ļ> for what is in modern orthography written as <lj>, and <ņ> for <nj>, so don't be confused by the spelling.. --Ivan Štambuk 14:44, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

tica = ptica?
In Podne i bolesnik: bolesnik mre // Kraj njega ćuti crna tica. Is tica an alternative spelling of ptica? This supposition emerged, as I found Човек није тица, which is translated in French Wikipedia as L'homme n'est pas un oiseau. So, near the sick person a black bird is silent (schweigt/se tait, no English word for this verb)? If you feel overwhelmed by my inquiries, tell me and I shall address Dijan, but I have no other person to ask and I came to like Antun Branko Šimić' œuvre. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 19:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, and colloquially it is quite often spoken as [tica], as the <pt> cluster isn't easy to pronounce :) I'm not bothered by your request, au contraire! BTW, I started writing Serbo-Croatian grammar, feel free to comment on it if you find sth confusing/interesting! --Ivan Štambuk 19:43, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I just have a particularly active imagination
But I think everyone's favorite wingnut Mr. Ullmann is getting random acquaintances to vote against the SC consolidation. Have you noticed the couple of people who haven't left comments with their votes, but have Swahili of varying levels in their Babels? — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 17:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * You mean votes cast by e.g. Rose Waswa and DianaKhanjila? :> The first one is apparently his personal acquintance, and the same thing can prob. assumed for the other one :) Interestingly, judging by both of their contributions, both of them appeared to have started editing Wiktionary only after the vote was initiated (Rose the very next day), and suddenly stopped doing so after casting the oppose vote :)
 * Do you think that the issue of canvassing bad-faith opposing votes should be raised on the talkpage? Lmaltier also canvassed some on the French Wiktionary's central discussion board, but his request was apparently (as far as I can make out of it) mostly either ignored, some objected that it would be very awkward for French Wiktionary contributors to affect the policies of other Wiktionaries. The user Béotien lambda apparently even quoted from the article on Bosnian language on French Wikipedia that the "Bosnian language" is "merely a sociolinuistic (=political) construct, and that linguistically B/C/S/M are all one language", on which Lmaltier responded: Mais là n'est pas la question. Ce n'est pas aux wiktionnaires d'interdire des langues reconnues internationalement comme langues ("But that is not the issue . This is to prohibit Wiktionary languages recognized internationally as languages..") ^_^ Pure FUD spreading on Lmaltier's part; what else can I say after writing some 100 kilobytes of text on various places (rationale, proposal and vote talkpages, BP..) elaborating the benefits of the merger..
 * I cannot really resent Rose, Diana or Urhixidur whose only knowledge on Serbo-Croatian is based on a blind belief to persons they have firm trust in, and who apparently think that the sole purpose of a vote is to "commit linguistic genocide", or "forbid internationally recognized languages" :) All of them would change their mind after 5 minutes of discussion with me, but what can I do..
 * At any case, they're a minority and that's what's important :) Furthermore, each opposing vote seems to attract more support votes from knowledgeable Slavic languages contributors which makes me very happy! --Ivan Štambuk 18:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't like when people try to know things without looking into them :( I have noticed that almost all of our contributors who have any knowledge of any Slavic languages have voted in oppose, it makes me smile :] I should start working on Slovenian more...
 * Which reminds me of something... what do you think about the Slovene vs Slovenian issue? I personally prefer Slovenian... But at some point it got changed here. — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 18:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I am agnostic to the naming, bot are valid English, though Slovenian seems to have slightly more usage. Slovene nationalists prefer Slovene to Slovenian simply because Slovene is more like "of ethnic Slovene" and Slovenian is more like "of Slovenia" (cf. :,  :  ..) Balkan business, as usual ^_^ For Slovenian I assume you are aware of SSKJ where you can look up accents and inflection quirks..  --Ivan Štambuk 19:03, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I actually did find that rather recently. I was tired of not having a good dictionary so I decided to try to find a monolingual one and came up with that, and a neat medical dictionary :) — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 20:47, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I have noticed that almost all of our contributors who have any knowledge of any Slavic languages - why do you think so? Apart from the native speakers: Maro is Polish, Anatoli and Vahagn are native speakers of Russian, Karelklic is Czech, I am Bulgarian, Local hero is also of South Slavic, non-native origin and we all have indorsed the proposal... so how did you reach this conclusion? In mine opinion, the major Slavic contributors have managed to recognise the præcedence of the linguistic arguments before the political. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 17:29, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that Opiaterein meant "in support" instead of "in oppose"... I haven't even noticed that, you have really keen eyesight and concentration :D --Ivan Štambuk 17:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Condescending remarks
You wrote: "Hi Luka, your English has improved significantly since the last time I was speaking to you (I wonder who wrote the comment you signed :) How are things going on Croatian Wiktionary, still infinitesimal growth rate since I left? :)". This condescending remark makes me angry. Please refrain from further insulting remarks towards other wiki-editors. --Dan Polansky 10:39, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm very sorry that you found it insluting. Croatian Wiktionary project is dead by all imaginable criteria, and that is merely a fact :) Let's just say I've had lots of bad experiences with Krstulović on hr.wikt, and that my implied superiority has a firm grounding in some background details that are not particularly important right now... If you saw what Krstulović and his friends wrote to me and some of my friends there, you'd puke your guts out of disgust. I highly doubt that he is more literate in English than in his mother tongue (he is sth like 16-17 years old IIRC). --Ivan Štambuk 14:41, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Sumerian
Hello, Dbachmann has created recently 𒂊, 𒄷, 𒉎, 𒋼, but the romanisation of Akkadian is given in brackets. While this has some advantages, I am keen to add the etymology for some of the Akkadian words, but Arabic, Aramaic and Ugaritis do not look well in an entry which is entitled Sumerian. Do you consider splitting them? Besides, does resemble 𒄷? I have no fonts and cannot determine it on my own. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 17:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, they should be separated into different L2 sections and given different transcriptions, like it's been done on other entries sharing the same cuneiform sign. That image indeed looks like that cuneiform symbol. --Ivan Štambuk 18:04, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Private life and wikihounding
Second, how come that you've appeared (00:41, 6 August 2009 ) on my talkpage minutes after I've logged (00:16, 6 August 2009) ? Do you have a private life? Do you have to appear on every page I appear? Do you have to go everywhere behind me? Please, don't disturb me and don't annoy me with your messages. You've been warned on that on English Wikipedia, and specially because of your behaviour few years ago on Wikipedia in Croatian it was specially pointed out the wiki-rule of wikihounding as forbidden behaviour ("wikiuhođenje"), because you've been disrupting the work on Wikipedia in Croatian few years ago. And recently you've been blocked because of inflammatory behaviour and insulting of other users. See your block log (personal attacks, obstruction of Wikipedia) Further, Ivan, write in English. Don't do things like this. You're on wiktionary in English, so write the messages in English, so all interested readers can see what you've written. In your message here, you've written "Nadam se samo da se nećeš pozivati na "eminentne hrvatske jezikoslovce" za koje ostatak svijet nije nikad čuo :-)" (translation of your message: "I hope you wont't refer to "eminent Croatian linguists" for which the rest of the world hasn't heard about). If your sarcastic remark ("noone heard about them") is pointed towards HAZU Academists Stjepan Babić, Dalibor Brozović, Radoslav Katičić (that I often cite), than you're having a problem. How can you speak about things that you don't know anything about? You want to say that I'm citing false sources or "unimportant scientists". Do you remember what a Serb language speaker has told you on Wikipedia in English, on the article about Serbian kinship? Especially 211.27.10.126, 08:23, 28 May 2009 ( 211.27.10.31...). The guy's right in many things. Kubura 01:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Kuburo I noticed you created your userpage on the recent changes. I'm and admin here and patrol the recent changes, and I couldn't have missed you :D So why not give a worm message to an old acquaintance, aye? ;)
 * Please cut the self-victimization nonsense, I've had enough of it at Wikipedia.
 * Yes it's directed towards Babić et al. The "great Slavists" :) Their "proofs" on the "parallel development" that Serbian and Croatian allegedly had, and yet they still happen to have 99% identical grammar...what are the odds for that!
 * OK, I'll hereinafter address thee in English.
 * How can you speak about things that you don't know anything about? :-) I'm probably 100 more competent in SC than you Kuburo..
 * That Serb you are mentioning has also been visiting us at Wiktionary for the past 3 years. He is a brain-damaged bigot who vandalized hundreds of articles over the years, replacing the real etymologies of Turkish borrowings into SC with his imaginary "explanations", like this. He also added hundreds non-existing words to translation tables. I've blocked him countless times. I'm not surprised that you find him attractive, there is lot of behavioral similarity between you two.. --Ivan Štambuk 01:30, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

All right, put it this way: Stjepan Babić www.hazu.hr/Akademici/SBabic_Bibl.html, Dalibor Brozović www.hazu.hr/Akademici/DBrozovic-Bibl.html and Radoslav Katičić www.hazu.hr/Akademici/RKaticic_bibl.html are national Academy members. They've proven their status with their long-time work. You don't get into Academy of Sciences and Arts just like that. Regarding you comment about them ("Their "proofs" on the "parallel development" that Serbian and Croatian allegedly had, and yet they still happen to have 99% identical grammar...what are the odds for that"). Are you meritory expert? Are you the Academy member? Have your works been published in eminent, cited Linguist magazines? If so, please give us links. You cannot say that you're much more competent for certain scientific area just because you've said so. Further, you've insulted that Serb user. See your message above. You are not allowed to use such terms. You've called him "brain-damaged bigot". As I've seen on that talkpage on en.wiki, (Serbian kinship), he gave good remarks in many things. On the other hand, you haven't given the sources for your claims. Sogdian borrowings? ... And you said that he's "brain damaged bigot" and few lines after you've said that me and him "have behavioural similarity". Do you imply that I'm "brain damaged bigot". Interesting way of expressing for an admin. Calm down, Ivan. Remember the rules WP:No personal attacks, WP:ETIQ, WP:Harassment... Kubura 03:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Kuburo, please study Argument from authority. Just because somebody says so doesn't mean it is so. I could list you eminent Western Slavist that treat SC as one language, that are much more credible than those three, and so what? :) We're back at the A moj tata je jači od tvoga tate.. type of "arguments".
 * B/C/S have 99% identical inflection, and that's all the grammar we're interested in. The same inflection for nouns, adjectives and verbs. izvor - izvora - izvoru - izvore - izvorom... it's all the same :) mislim -misliš - misli - mislimo - mislite - misle ... I mean really, who are we kidding? :) I personally added inflection for some 5 000 SC nouns here, and for several hundred verbs, and everything worked fine. If you have some corner-cases in mind that could possible break the common inflection treatment, feel free to bring them up here or at the WT:ASH page, so we can work something out. I'll be really interested to know!
 * That "Serb user" is a brain-damaged bigot who cost me many hours of painstaking reverting, and deserves no tolerance. 90% of what he did here was damage, sometimes very cunningly camouflaged one.. That those "Serbian kinship" term such as askurđela are not native Slavic words is obvious to anybody who knows anything on Slavic languages. Really Kubura, open your biggest Serbo-Croatian dictionary and try looking up native Slavic words starting with a. How many can you count? I suspect not many, since just about all of them received prothetic word-inital j- in the Common Slavic period :D But try telling that to that idiot..he forged hundreds of folk etymologies on Wiktionary; for him the etymology is a game of combining similarly-sounding words until you get the result in sync with your ideological beliefs.
 * When I meant "behavioral similarities" I was referring to the tendencies of both of you attacking me in person (ad hominem), instead of my arguments. No I don't have a Ph.D. in linguistics, and my interests in this is purely amateurish in character, but how exactly does that invalidate everything I wrote? :) Non quis, sed quid! --Ivan Štambuk 03:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Just wanted to say that "That "Serb user" is a brain-damaged bigot who cost me many hours of painstaking reverting, and deserves no tolerance." is an attitude that is perhaps in core the reason this discussion takes place. Be a man and forgive. :S User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 09:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * ^_^ I've tried reasoning with that person many times, but always without success. After I've figured out that his translations with imaginary words end-up being copy-pasted to other sister projects, I got totally angry: Who's gonna chase that cr** all around dozens of Wiktionaries? E.g. on Hebrew Wiktionary he:רמזור they still have the neologism "svetlokaz" he added to English Wiktionary and which got propagated. He is a large-scale vandal of the worst kind. I really have no tolerance for him left. When I notice him the next time, I'll perhaps notify you? :P BTW: human is to err, to forgive is divine ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 11:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I understood what you were saying by him being a pain in the ass. I would like to help you out, but I really don't know a lot about etymologies myself. I always look them up or when it's an easy compound. In the latter case it's only Dutch I know them :( it's a good thing though that you at least acknowledge that you have erred :) Have a nice weekend ;) Ciao User:Mallerd (Zeg et es meisje) 16:10, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

hola
I made the entry pornografski and was trying to find a sample declension of an HSB word that ends in -ski... but couldn't find any =( Do we have any inflection/declension templates for HSB adjectives yet? — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 02:29, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, unfortunately, there are some quirks with SC adjectival inflection that I haven't really given much thought about.. I promise to cogitate on it in the near future and let you know once I come up with sth useful! ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk 02:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Alright, I'll be looking forward to it =) — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 14:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

SH templates
Would you mind if I change the coding to
 * 1) Make it look scary so assholes will be less likely to try to mess it up, and
 * 2) make it harder to mess up the usage? :) Look at  or  to see what I mean for the languages with multiple scripts. I basically want to do something like that. ( is newer, so it's probably better and more like what I'll be doing for these) — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 22:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Feel free, just make sure it's backwards-compatible. Also, please no plurals for nouns in the inflection line, I'm against introducing it for languages which have cases! --Ivan Štambuk 22:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I wasn't planning on adding the plural, since it's not in the current templates :) — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 22:47, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Dude
The vote is corrupted. Even if they get 589 more of their lackeys to vote oppose, I simply won't allow the outcome to be anything other than 'vote fubar, results meaningless'. Just go on with what you've been doing and let RU's panties twist themselves into a knot where his jaja should be. What does he have to contribute to SH besides tosh tbot entries? — <font face="Lucida console">[ R·I·C ] opiaterein — 13:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Their votes are in practice worthless, but let them be, if they've convinced that it means sth. If we're lucky, they'll induce negative effect on the regulars who voted for oppose ^_^ After that despicable bacstabbing attempt to defame me at the Wikimedia Board, and by sending e-mails to all of the users who voted for the merger, Ullmann has lost any credibility in this issue he had left. I don't see who actually can do anything to stop what has been painlessly going on for the last 4 months :P Look, Category:Serbo-Croatian nouns surpassed 4k entries yesterday! :D --Ivan Štambuk 13:34, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Do you...
...Speak BCSMCG ? And English ? --Maria Sieglinda von Nudeldorf 15:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * LOL :D I already saw the first one...it's legendary :) I also find the uncyclopedia's take on Croatian language hilarious. --Ivan Štambuk 15:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

что делать?
Zdravo, Ivan. Na koncu [http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2009-06/Unified_Serbo-Croatian&oldid=7093602 5. avgusta] bili su 35 za, 17 protiv, ali kada si produžio rok, stalo je 40-39 (danas, veoma mučno)... Šta će se raditi sada? Hoćeš li početi glasanje praga korisničkih priloza (ja nisam pravio glasanja..., možem pogrešiti), da nemamo drugi pat svi nacionalisti srpskoj i hrvatskoj Wikipedije protiv korisnika Vikirečnika, kao se desio sada? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 15:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * We have to wait that the vote expires, and then absolutely nothing happens :) After that, I'll rewrite the WT:ASH policy per some of the recent discussions, we'll make some local votes on e.g. whether to use ==Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian== or ==Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian==, whether to use or <sh> language code, and similar trice i kučine; we'll vote on the vote acceptance rules (X edits 7 days before the vote starts), and then restart the BCSM vote (but this time only for a week or so), but with time limit of July 1st so that votes of meat-puppetted, canvassed and other users don't count (only of the "strict community"). See my analysis here - we have to convince some 3-4 of those who voted for oppose to switch sides, which I'm firmly convinced that we'll succeed (the bigotry of these nationalists is really helpful, "languages are not determined by linguistics" ROFL :), and then we get back to the dictionary business as usual. --Ivan Štambuk 15:18, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I seriously don't see the problem with using "Serbo-Croatian". It's what generations of my family have called and still call the language. I'm getting really annoyed with the discussions, especially with postings by nationalists/lunatics and people who know nothing about the Serbo-Croatian language. Even after you explained time after time, comment after comment, that the name is not what the vote is about, people are still voting against the merge because the name is causing (due to nationalistic brainwashing) some internal bleeding and genocide inside these people.  Even if we opt for BCSM, these people will not be satisfied, and I feel that it is a waste of time to even try to appeal to them.  The name is not offensive nor derogatory in English, despite what some people might say and as such, this is the English Wiktionary and the name shoud be acceptable. --Dijan 16:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright. You can always address me in Serbo-Croatian and rectify my comments in it, as I am keen on familiarising myself with the languages of the fellow South Slavic people. Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian is in this very form long and if persons like M. Đukanović succeed in fabricating and imposing one more, then Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin would become considerbaly longer, consequæntly I agree with Dijan. As for starting new votes, I think that voting the proposed threshold would not be unnecessary, especially as users whose præsence here is limited to voting on your SC proposal would belike continue observing votes here. But Ivan, who do you think is the best person to propose it? I am afraid that my slightly archaic style would discourage supporting users. Well, if there is lack of volunteers, I shall commence it soon and on finalising it entreat its grammatical rectification of a native speaker before announcing the vote. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 16:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree 100% with Dijan. "Serbo-Croatian" is infinitely better than "Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian" or any of the 16 possible order variations of those four. And even if we were to pick something other than Serbo-Croatian, why should we be trying to please these people who consider the politics more important than the linguistics? Catering to the nationalists isn't the answer. The name Serbo-Croatian is fine and should only be offensive to uninformed bigots of one sort or another. — <font face="Lucida console">[&#32;R·I·C&#32;] opiaterein — 16:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree too. I've provided irrefutable evidence of the name Serbo-Croatian still abundantly used by top scholars in the field, including the most important publication in Slavic studies in a decade, the latest and shiniest Rick Derksen's Etymological dictionary of the Slavic inherited lexicon which uses it consistently throughout, even for subliterary dialects such as Čakavian. It's used by SIL/ISO itself, no less, as a macrolanguage identifier. Of those opposing the name, no one has actually provided a single piece of evidence according to which that term is "insulting", other than their own testimonies and imagination.
 * Personally, I don't care of neither Ullmann and his minions, nor of these nationalist bigots. All of them together have not created a single B/C/S/M/SC entry here, and they never will. I cannot be bound by their opinions, at least not until they can discuss some kind of reasonable compromise. What does unargumented "no" vote mean to me? Nothing. In the meantime, we'll just continue to use the term Serbo-Croatian and see how deep does the rabbit hole go :D
 * Bogorm, I'll propose the voting threshold vote. --Ivan Štambuk 16:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * On a point you brought up earlier, I do think it would be a good idea to use instead of, since it's the official code as opposed to the wiki...thing. :D — <font face="Lucida console">[&#32;R·I·C&#32;] opiaterein — 17:19, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that should be pretty much non-controversial, and trivially done by bots. --Ivan Štambuk 17:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Option: don't feed the trolls
I have been told that one of the useful strategies for dealing with trolls is ignoring them. And I do admit that some of the voters are or appear to be trolls. Not responding to them, ignoring them, is an option. -Dan Polansky 12:01, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
 * OK Polansky. Today is the day when 100 000 Croats will think of me as a national traitor, and I feel simply delighted! --Ivan Štambuk 12:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Removing hr (bs, sr) from entries
Hi. I've noticed you've been removing Croatian (and Bosnian and Serbian) words and replacing them with Serbo-Croatian. Could you please refrain from doing this and restore the deleted entries? If you'd like to add Serbo-Croatian, please add it in the appropriate place, don't delete or remove things. Thank you. --Elephantus 19:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see much of a problem with duplication. I'd expect that a large proportion of those using Wiktionary to look up Croatian words would be those with a link to Croatian language (not B, S, M...), Croatia and its culture (e.g. children of emmigrants, potential and real tourists etc.). They are not overly concerned with Serbo-Croatian, history, Cyrillic, Bosnia, Serbia, Yugoslavia, war, peace or similar things. "Merging" would add a layer of complication and uncertainty for those users. The header "Croatian" is a sure marker that what they're getting is proper Croatian meaning, usage, etc, regardless of whether there is a same or similar word in other languages. The same holds true for Bosnian, Serbian, etc. I personally don't see much need for Serbo-Croatian (for almost all practical intents and purposes it's a dead language), but apparently there are still people who like the name, and if that is so, then it wouldn't add too much to the volume of Wiktionary to add that entry. You seem to think that all users of Wiktionary are linguists or linguistic buffs. But in fact, they are not, and they want simplicity and certainty, not long-winded stories of times past. --Elephantus 20:34, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The outcome of the vote forbids that, if you didn't knew, so you could theoretically get blocked for that. -- Prince Kassad 20:36, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Forbids what? --Ivan Štambuk 20:39, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Nothing. The outcome of the vote was no consensus. Not the "fails" Kassad asserted. — <font face="Lucida console">[&#32;R·I·C&#32;] opiaterein — 20:41, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The vote was about whether BCS should be replaced by SC. Since that vote ended in no consensus, the status quo remained, which is that Serbo-Croatian entries may not replace existing Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian entries (you may still add them in addition to the existing ones). (FYI, failed would mean that Serbo-Croatian was completely banned from Wiktionary) -- Prince Kassad 20:44, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Quit making this shit up as you go. A failed vote would not mean that Serbo-Croatian would be banned, it would mean that you can't remove the BS/HR and SR sections. However, since no consensus was reached, the consolidation of these sections is still up to editors. — <font face="Lucida console">[&#32;R·I·C&#32;] opiaterein — 20:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * If an IP removes an entry, it's vandalism and will be reverted. I don't understand why Ivan gets an exception here. -- Prince Kassad 21:04, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * IPs are suspicious. You may think of Ivan as suspicious, but his knowledge of the subject is undoubtably far superior to yours. — <font face="Lucida console">[&#32;R·I·C&#32;] opiaterein — 21:10, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually Kassad, the status quo was to merge them, and that has been painlessly going on for 3 months until the early-June (when Ullmann started to make big fuss about it). We (the SC contributors) created 99% of the cloned separate B/C/S entries, and are simply optimizing them within the proposed policy. The "failure" of the vote is also quite subjective of interpretation - ~65% of the community (if we agree to some normal vote eligibility rules) voted for the proposal, and of those who voted against only 2 had any kind of proficiency in Slavic languages. So from my perspective, the relevant community consensus is pretty much achieved. --Ivan Štambuk 21:18, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * By your logic, the vote was effectively useless, as no matter what the outcome is, you can keep removing entries. -- Prince Kassad 21:25, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The vote effectively was useless, given all the canvassing and non-users. And obviously, the outcome would have affected the editing. (unindenting)


 * Pass = always consolidate
 * No consensus = consolidate if you want to (as they had been doing) or add HR/BS/SR/HBS if you want to.
 * Fail = never consolidate, only add HBS if you want to. — <font face="Lucida console">[&#32;R·I·C&#32;] opiaterein — 21:32, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Exactly. The failure of the vote prohibits nothing. If the vote passes (any vote), whatever it describes it becomes the official policy. If it doesn't pass, it remains a draft without consensus (the word "consensus" being a rather arbitrary and dubious term at the moment, with the abundant misuse of the current absence of the voting eligibility policy). Of course, we must have in every specific case a bigger picture in mind. In this specific case, it would be perfectly acceptable to both merge the existing entries, at has been the current practice in March, and also create new ones, as the newcomers from Croatian Wikipedia that suddenly found interest in this project have expressed their interest in. I just hope that they'll sooner or later realize how pointless is to have both of them simultaneously, and join the "BCS" side :) (at least until we manage to finally push the BCS section unification formally)  --Ivan Štambuk 21:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi again. You seem to be perplexed by the fact that languages with so many similarities can be three different languages. You should take a look at the following two paragraphs, one taken from the Danish Wikipedia, the other from the Norwegian (bokmal) Wikipedia, both from the respective articles on Bokmal:
 * Danish:
 * Officielt bruges navnet bokmål bare om skriftsproget og det skriftbundne sprog i medierne, på teaterscenen og lignende, men i virkeligheden har det et levende talemålsgrundlag. Der findes ikke noget alment accepteret fællesnavn for skrevet og talt bokmål, men denne artikkel omhandler også talemålet. Der er ikke undersøgt hvor mange, der har bokmål som stt modersmål, men Kjell Venås har anslået at der kan være mere end 20% af befolkningen, det vil omkring én million mennesker.
 * Norwegian Bokmal:
 * Offisielt brukes navnet bokmål bare om skriftspråket og det skriftbundne språket i mediene, på teaterscenen og lignende, men i realiteten har det et levende talemålsgrunnlag. Det finnes ikke noe allment akseptert fellesnavn på skrevet og talt bokmål, men denne artikkelen omhandler også talemålet. Det er ikke undersøkt hvor mange som har bokmål som sitt morsmål, men Kjell Venås har løslig anslått at det kan være mer enn 20% av befolkningen, det vil si rundt én million mennesker.
 * Now I'd say they are in fact the same dialect, with a few differences in spelling, some Germanisms (what a curious parallel to another well-known situation :-)) in Danish and finer grammar points that don't impede mutual intelligibility. Why would two venerable European nations, the Norwegians and the Danes, perpetrate such a scam on the rest of us? --Elephantus 05:34, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Elephantus, you seem to have no knowledge of the huge phonetical differences between Danish and Norwegian bokmål - in Danish there is w:Stød or Stoßlaut, whereas it is absent in Norway. Even in Norwegian Wikipedia it is explained that prior to the reform of 1907 in Norway the official language was a dialect of Danish (Skriftlig riksmål var inntil rettskrivningsreformen i 1907 en variant av dansk), more precisely, of what was then Dano-Norwegian (this term can only be applied to the written form due to said phonological discrepancies) before the secession from Denmark in 1814. The huge difference between the situation in Norway and Denmark in the 19th century and in Croatia and Serbia in the 1990s is that the pronunciation of the written norm in Norway deviates significantly from this in Denmark, whilst, as Ivan already explained, Ijekavian pronunciation is the same in the whole SC region. Therefore, if you insist on a comparison with Scandinavia, then the situation of SC to-day is to be compared with the Old Norse period from the reign of Knut den Store. A juxtaposition with current Norwegian and Danish is far-fetched, to put it mildly. The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 09:33, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm well aware of the phonological differences between standard East Norwegian and Danish, and I wouldn't really call them huge. But that wasn't my point here, really. What I was saying is that the key criteria is what the langugage communities themselves consider their language to be. So if the Norwegians decide to have a language with two quite different written standards, the dominant one being basically a couple of spelling reforms away from Danish, and several spoken standards, with the high-prestige ones also pretty close to the speech of their neighbours, who are we to second-guess them and force things down people's throats? Of course that commercial paper-based dictionary publishers might want to devise ways to save space and reach the largest possible audiences by combining the languages, and university courses might group Central South Slavic languages (as they might rightfully group East Scandinavian languages) together, but in the Wiktionary environment where space isn't really a concern and the motives are decidedly non-commercial it makes very little sense to do so. This wouldn't be unprecedented, too, as the leading German bilingual-dictionary publishing company Langenscheidt now publishes separate Croatian and Serbian dictionaries, and e.g. the Swedish language council has separate Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian dictionaries. --Elephantus 16:00, 15 August 2009 (UTC)