User talk:Meno25/Archive 1

Arabic moves
The pages you've moved all had interwiki links to other Wiktionaries. By moving the pages, you have broken all those links. Are you saying that the spelling is wrong on the Arabic Wiktionary too? --EncycloPetey 02:28, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * What page are we talking about exactly? --Meno25 02:29, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * and yes all the pages I moved were incorrectly spelled in Arabic. They should be moved in other Wiktionaries too. --Meno25 02:31, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * So the Arabic Wiktionary also had the wrong spelling for all these words? --EncycloPetey 02:32, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Again I say, Could you give me a specific example so I can reply more accurately? I a native speaker of Arabic, EncycloPetey, and an admin on Arabic Wikipedia, so, you don't need to worry about revising my edits. --Meno25 02:38, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia and Wiktionary are very different projects. We have many native English speakers come from Wikipedia whose edits have to be revised, so please do not be offended.  If an English speaker can make serious mistakes in the English Wiktionary, then double-checking your edits should not be a surprise.  Knowing a language and writing for an encyclopedia are not the same skills used in writing a dictionary.


 * While I pull together some examples, you might have a look at About Arabic, which describes some community guidelines for Arabic entries here. --EncycloPetey 02:42, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Here are some entries where the Arabic (or Farsi) Wiktionary uses a different page name than the one you moved to:
 * أهلا وسهلا, compare اهلا وسهلا
 * إيران, compare ايران
 * أمل, compare fa:امل
 * ألمانيا, compare المانيا
 * Perhaps these are all redirects? --EncycloPetey 02:48, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply.

I am not sure about Wiktionary policies in the case of common spelling mistakes like these. Should I create a new page with the correct spelling rather than moving entries? --Meno25 03:03, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * أهلا وسهلا is a redirect to أهْلا وسَهْلا which is the same title I moved the page to but uses تشكيل.
 * إيران is a redirect to إيرَان which is the same title I moved the page to but uses تشكيل.
 * أمل: I don't know Persian but امل is a common spelling mistake in Arabic. The correct spelling is "أمل".
 * ألمانيا is a redirect to أَلْمَانِيَا which is the same title I moved the page to but uses تشكيل.


 * If you are not sure of the policies, then look for the policies and talk with people that are familiar with this. More importantly, if you are not sure of Persian, Urdu or any other language that uses Arabic script (or any other language for that matter), then you should not move those entries along with Arabic. --Dijan 18:41, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * If they are true mistakes, then they do need to be corrected by moving them. I can only recognize a few Arabic letters, which is why I have asked so many questions to be sure we understand each other.  On Wiktionary, we don't usually want to have redirects.  However, if the mispelling is a very common one, then we create a "false" entry for the misspelling, rather than a redirect.  For example, embarass: is a very common misspelling of embarrass:, so we have a pseudo-entry for the misspelling.  I say "false" or "pseudo-" because it doesn't consist of anything more than the language name, part of speech, and a note pointing to the correct spelling.  We use this instead of a redirect because it is possible that "embarass" could be a word in another language.  If we rely on a redirect, then that would be lost if we should ever have to write an entry under that spelling.  That is why Wiktionary does not like to have redirects. --EncycloPetey 03:11, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It is not an unrecognized error. These entries were created as they were for a reason.  As far as I can remember, we have decided to keep hamzas out of titles (unless they are final or carried on a medial yā').  Before moving any entries, you should have looked through our policies and consulted with members that do deal with Arabic on frequent occasions, such as Stephen.  I'm not sure exactly what our current policy is on this, as I tend to no longer contribute to Arabic.  Please consult with Stephen before you go further with this. --Dijan 18:41, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Fine, won't move pages pending conversation with Stephen. I searched for local policies regarding Arabic language but didn't find "we have decided to keep hamzas out of titles". All I found was this: "Title misspelled: Move the article to the correct title. If there is already an article at the correct title merge any useful material on there". --Meno25 19:08, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * As for the hamza, take a look at the talk page of About Arabic and look under Guidelines. I'm not sure if that's been solved yet, or not, but the policy is not official, as far as I know.  That said, please contact User Beru7 as well regarding that as he/she is working on that as well.  Thanks. --Dijan 22:57, 21 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Meno25 ! Dijan is right, it was decided, for the moment to keep strong hamzas (همزة قطع) out of page titles when in initial position. If you think this is not acceptable, your opinion would be very welcome on Wiktionary_talk:About_Arabic. However, all hamzas should definitely be written on every word within every page. The same goes for diacritics. Beru7 23:35, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Beru7. Thanks for your comment. Fine by me. Do you recommend that I revert the moves? --Meno25 03:30, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

About Arabic
As a newish contributor to Wiktionary (though not new to Media wiki), your input could greatly improve the About Arabic page for other editors. If you would, please keep a list somewhere of issues you found confusing and for which you would have liked written help. You can compare with pages like About Greek, About Hungarian, and About Latin, which are more fully developed style pages. --EncycloPetey 03:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Initial hamza
Meno25, these are not typos or errors. Initial hamzas are usually not written in texts, except for a few minor exceptions (such as أو). In dictionaries and encyclopedias intended for use by native Arabs, the hamzas are written because it is the strict spelling, and native speakers know how and when to add them when they want to look up a word. This is English Wiktionary, and our Arabic entries are intended for native English speakers, very few of whom know how or when to add these hamzas. Most of the Arabic words an English speaker will want to look up will be words he finds in regular texts which will usually not have the hamza. We have decided therefore that for our purposes, we will use the common spellings without initial hamza, and add a redirect from the spelling with hamza. We may allow you to move these to the strict spellings, but (1) do not insult those who have added these normal spellings which are perfectly correct; (2) be sure that you always have redirects from the spelling without hamzas so that those who do not know Arabic well can find words; and be sure that you check "What links here" for each of the words that you move and fix all of the pages that link to the spelling without initial hamza. I say may, because this isn’t certain. What you are doing is inconvenient and bound to cause problems. We may have to move everything back again. And above all, be sure you check each page to make sure there was no Persian or other language on it, and to make sure that all of the Arabic on the page belongs to the strict spelling that you are moving to. —Stephen 09:12, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Stephen, I think we have made the wrong decision about initial hamzas. See Wiktionary talk:About Arabic for more about my findings and opinion about this topic. Beru7 19:38, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, the situation seems to be in flux and it is possible that normal Arabic orthography will undergo a change and become more fixed. A similar phenomenon has occurred with some other languages, all due to the fact that suddenly it is so easy to type these languages with keyboards and fonts that are appealing. Before the Internet, almost nobody could type Arabic and most people’s handwriting looked better without diacritics. As recently as the 1980’s, some major newspapers and magazines in languages such as Arabic, Urdu and Vietnamese were still largely handwritten (or completely handwritten in the case of Urdu), and people didn’t think computer fonts would ever become good enough for these tasks. So it seems that Arabic texts now contain a lot more of these diacritics. —Stephen 21:42, 22 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the explanation, things are much clearer to me now. Beru7 17:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Arabic typographers have traditionally been taught not to put initial hamzas or any other nonmandatory diacritics (shaddas, fathas, etc.), except where they are necessary for clear understanding. If you read high-end Arabic magazines or books printed during the 20th century, this is the way they were set. It was not this way because of any difficulty the typographers had with these marks, the reason was that text flowed better, looked better, and was easier and more relaxing to read if it did not have those marks. If a word needed a single damma or perhaps a shadda for clarity, that’s all it got (never more than over a single letter in the word). But during the past approximately ten years, Arabs around the world have obtained computers, Internet, Arabic keyboards and fonts, and they are typing Arabic as they think it should be done, with academic accuracy, and it makes the language look rather odd if you’ve been reading the traditional way for some time.
 * However, I don’t think it makes any difference for us. Even if it is typographically better without these marks, if people are putting them, then that is what matters. Similar changes are happening to Persian. In Persian, two letters that must be joined together in Arabic are often not joined: ویکی‌پدیا. Until ten years ago, Persians wrote everything by hand, so this was not a problem. Now that Persians are typing it, many do not know how to keep the two letters from joining, so instead they write either ویکیپدیا or ویکی پدیا. Soon these new spellings may have to be recognized. —Stephen 02:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

مرحبًا
أهلاً وسهلاً! أنا أناتولي. أنا أحب اللغة العربية --Anatoli 00:26, 28 January 2010 (UTC)