User talk:Kapulakone

Welcome!!
Thanks also for showing an interest in Finnic languages here on Wiktionary, we desperately need more contributors in this field. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask me, I'd be more than happy to help :) Do see some of the changes I've done on your edits though (esp. regarding referencing, a template is much more efficient than a whole lap of text), but it seems you're quite familiar with everything already. Thadh (talk) 15:18, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello, thank you for the information, I am aware that the citations I have added have been a bit "clunky", I made them in the way as the site managers had requested. That being said I did not exactly know the proper way to format the citations either.
 * I do also have one question regarding Finnish dialectal terms. A lot of them, like kolome are pronunciation spellings, but are definitely used in speech (I am familiar with the Savonian dialects, for example).
 * So essentially, if a dialectal pronunciation is commonly used, but finding a written citation for it is hard (because Finnish dialects do not have written forms), can a term like that still be included? There is a whole array of English pronunciation spellings, to give an example. Kapulakone (talk) 11:42, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, you could always add such a term as just a pronunciation on the written form's entry, and mark it as being dialectal or (even better) belonging to a specific dialect group. All pronunciation spellings do have to be attestable (although I'm not sure how Finnish does it, I know there's some debate on whether you need one or three citation for dialectal forms).
 * Let me ping a few Finnish editors, since they're more qualified to answer questions on Finnish specifically, so.
 * On another note, I wanted to ask you regarding Karelian, I don't think adding terms in UPA (as they seem to be recorded in KKS) is a good idea, so have you thought about picking a standard to lemmatise on? I've also been thinking, what if we were to split Tver, Suvi and Viena Karelian, since Tver and Viena have their own literary tradition, what do you think of that? Thadh (talk) 14:02, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I think I only added the usage examples with the KKS spellings (I don't think that's UPA though? I remember UPA using letters like ü, c and č). Either way I have been a bit biased towards South Karelian (suvikarjala) because heritage reasons, but I don't exactly know about the whole lemmatisation issue all that well. Also I think I replaced all instances of tš with č. Kapulakone (talk) 16:55, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Though I feel like something similar to Izhorian entries could be used for Karelian. See https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/keeli as an example (just prioritising the actual spellings over IPA transcription?) Or a split of some other kind. Again, I don't know all that much about all possibilities

Also, are Valdai, Novgorod and Tihvin dialects considered "Tver Karelian" too? Kapulakone (talk) 16:57, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh, right, I must've misremembered, it's not UPA after all, but it's not an orthography that's really in use with the people themselves either, more of a working transliteration (especially the whole -n‿e- thingy).
 * Ingrian can work this way because there's only one literary tradition (although it's sadly out of use now), which combines features of both main dialects (Ala-Laukaa and Soikkola). Karelian doesn't have that (any more), and using the '30s Tver literary language seems unfair to the currently widely used Viena standard, which is very different.
 * So basically, we could split the three dialects, we could keep them together but do something similar to what Serbo-Croatian does (cf. ), or we could decide on one literary language to prioritise and give all others as alternative spellings.
 * RE: Valdai, Novgorod, Tihvin: The question, like with most languages, is which literary language the speakers use when writing, if it's Tver then it would make sense to include it as Tver, if not maybe another of the three major groups of Karelian Proper would be more fitting. I'm more knowledgeable about Ingrian myself, not so much in Karelian dialectology, but I could look into it if we decide on splitting. Thadh (talk) 17:23, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I feel like the "Serbo-Croatian option" makes more sense as there is no universal standard being used.

Also Valdai, Novgorod, Tihvin:I'm not sure if those dialects are even written, (will need to check) but they along with Tver are technically classified as southern dialects, so including them there might be the best option. Kapulakone (talk) 17:30, 22 May 2022 (UTC)


 * I'll try creating a discussion on this in a few days, pinging some other people who may know something about Karelian and ask them what they think. Thadh (talk) 18:50, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Doing it like Serbo-Croatian feels like the best option, since having separate articles for "šorša, šorža, sorza" is not really different from separate "mleko, mlijeko, mliko" and there is no need to prioritise one dialect. Kapulakone (talk) 11:32, 23 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The problem is that we'd need to copy every single entry three times, which doesn't sound ideal. However, I do see the benefit of this (less cross-language duplication). I'm not sure myself what the best course of action is... Thadh (talk) 12:00, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Orthography and some other things
Hey, so, jos for instance is not orthographic - in North Karelian (Viena), it's written još, while in Tver Karelian uses different words, like kuin. As such, we would lemmatise at još and label it North Karelian.

Second of all, make note of the recent changes I've done on Karelian handling: cf. jalka/jalga and ativo/adivo. Make sure to also take a look at WT:AKRL.

Finally, copying usage examples from KKS is not a good idea: they're likely copyrighted and as such should be quoted, if given at all. Please don't do that. Thadh (talk) 19:25, 25 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Okay,
 * 1: that one was an honest mistake. Jos can still be listed as an alternative form of još, however. There is an example for both Vuokkiniemi (north) and Suistamo (Suistama, south) for jos over još.
 * 2: Why is Tver Karelian the standard for all of south Karelian? How do I mark terms used in actual South Karelia, but not the Tver area?
 * 3: Okay, sorry for doing that. I'm not sure whether they're copyrighted or not (the collectors may mostly be dead by now, I don't know) but you're right, I've removed them to be sure. Kapulakone (talk) 11:04, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Re. Tver: it's the only Suvi lect that has a literary standard. A Suvi term not used in this standard would be marked South Karelian dialectal.
 * Re. s-š, I would just normalise everything to the š spelling, since you could argue that the lects with "jos" have a phonetic feature š>s. Forms containing -s- can still be used as soft redirects with the obsolete spelling of template (since up to the 2000s, using "s" in Viena was standard. Thadh (talk) 14:17, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
 * "since you could argue that the lects with "jos" have a phonetic feature š>s"
 * How? Isn't the original sibilant there "s", which developed into a š in most northern dialects in those positions? And what about the southern dialects which have s where northern dialects use š? Kapulakone (talk) 17:08, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
 * AFAIK the dialects that have jos do not have "š" at all, so while etymologically you may be right that it represents an archaic stage of the language, synchronically it's simply an allophone of the same phoneme. Also, it's not just northern dialects that did this, Tver Karelian also went through the same consonant shift of -s- > -š- unless directly preceded by an -i-. Thadh (talk) 17:31, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, would "dialectal pronunciation spelling" work as a compromise then? Kapulakone (talk) 16:53, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure, you could go for obsolete spelling of in one line and krl pronunciation spelling of in the other. Thadh (talk) 18:34, 27 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, so revisiting this. KKS is not an orthographical dictionary, it doesn't reflect how the people write, only how they speak, and doesn't do a great job at that, either. There are lots of great dictionaries published in Russia (and some also in Finland) that do reflect the standard orthography, which is actually used by Karelian speakers if they want to write in Karelian:
 * For Viena, a great one is Venäjä-Viena šanakirja (Zaykov 2015)
 * For Tver, Miun harpaukšet Karielan kieleh: Tverinkarielan algukursa (Novak & Komissarova, 2019) includes a small wordlist, but the main dictionary would probably be Словарь карельского языка (Punzhina 1994), although it's unorthographical - you'll need to remove some palatalisation markers before front vowels and replace the "ü"s by "y"s
 * For Livvi, Suuri Karjal-Venʹalaine Sanakniigu (livvin murreh) (Boiko 2019) is a great one, and Sanakirja Karjala-Suomi (Pyöli 2021) is also quite good.
 * To give you an idea of the orthography:
 * "wheel" is rataš in Viena, rataš in Tver, and ratas in Livvi.
 * "beer mug" is tuoppi in Viena, and doesn't exist in Tver or Livvi.
 * Also, don't forget to use krl-regional on ALL Karelian entries. Preferably also IPA and inflection, if possible. On another note, maybe it's not a great idea to add Inari and Kildin following only Álgu, or Votic following only VKS. For Kildin I can refer you to, who knows a great deal more about it and its sources than I do, for Inari I honestly have no clue what the best sources would be, and for VKS you really have to settle on a dialect to lemmatise under before diving into this mess of a language. I hope this is clear, and please do approach me with any questions. It's better to ask and then act than to act and then get a frustrated me scanning any dictionary I can find trying to find out if that is how you spell kruuška. Thadh (talk) 21:32, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
 * At this point it's best for me to just stop editing altogether.
 * "it doesn't reflect how the people write"
 * -So they can't be marked as "dialectal" either? I guess all of the thousands of English colloquial and dialectal spelling pronunciations will need to be removed too because they're nonstandard.
 * "On another note, maybe it's not a great idea to add Inari and Kildin following only Álgu, or Votic following only VKS."
 * -I only added some three words. In a similar way as previous edits were done. In that same simple way. Speaking of Votic, that's not really written either, now is it? Kapulakone (talk) 05:35, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, you're not marking them as dialectal, are you? And English colloquial and dialectal spelling pronunciations still need to be attested in running text, not just figured out on a whim. The fact is, we don't need 'simple' entries, we need correct ones and we need consistency. If you're willing to adhere to that, you're fine.
 * As for Votic, this is why it's quite a difficult task to document endangered languages. Votic is written, but not consistently, so we should make sure to standardise it in a way that makes our dictionary usable: Figure out whether to represent vowel reduction, whether to write semivoicing...
 * Throwing a fit doesn't help. If you want to edit here, you need to follow the local customs, be consistent, be precise. It's okay to make mistakes, but you should own up to them and make sure you don't make them again. Thadh (talk) 07:44, 9 October 2022 (UTC)