User talk:Metaknowledge/2013

This page shows conversations on my talkpage from 2013.

Ogham
Thank you for that! I was rather confused as to why it was showing up in Ogham—not just one the headword lines, but in the categories, too. I find it curious that the software has the ability to mask Latin-letter input as Ogham... - -sche (discuss) 02:21, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it may be your browser or font. I see Latin letters in the entry, just with a different font/size. 02:23, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Hm, maybe. For me, the masked-as-Ogham Latin letters also show up larger and more legible than the actual Ogham characters in ᚅᚓᚆᚆᚈᚑᚅᚅ, which show up tiny and barely legible. How are they for the two of you? - -sche (discuss) 02:24, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I set the lang/script while you were working on it, with the default as Ogam. Not sure what you mean by it categorising it as Ogham. Anyway, the Ogham is just as legible to me, but the masking is typical. Incidentally, I'm not so sure that non-canonical translit (using v) should get an entry. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:27, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you think romanizations of Ogham should be treated as they are in Gothic? 02:37, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, except without language-specific template support. That's what I've been doing with Primitive Irish, which is the only other language I think we have Ogham entries in, unless I'm forgetting something. See maqqi:, for example. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I was thinking like . Gothic romanization entries explicitly do not contain any grammatical information, not even parts of speech. That is done because presumably, the romanization will be the same regardless of POS and if a single word has several PsOS then that would just lead to several redundant definitions all saying "romanization of (same term)". 02:44, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I misunderstood... no no no. And the only other person who cares about is Angr, and if he wants that I think he would have implemented it by now. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:47, 1 January 2013 (UTC)


 * (replying to pre-Gothic comments) By "in the categories", I meant that the pages for nehhtonn etc showed up in the categories sorted under N etc but masked in Ogham script. As for hccvvevv: the point of romanised entries is to help people find the Ogham entries, as a lot of scholarly work on Pictish (as on Gothic) uses romanisations only. Perhaps because it's uncertain whether Pictish "ᚃ" was /w/ like Primitive Irish "ᚃ" or /f/ like Old Irish "ᚃ", hccvvevv is the romanisation used by most scholars, and thus the romanisation people are most likely to encounter. - -sche (discuss) 02:53, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks
Thank you Nathanael Everton (talk) 06:28, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Any time. Just ask. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

help
my editing was tooken away for trolling i didn't know it was bad and it was on my user page semperblotto never gave me a warning what should i do, signed venomxx on his 2nd accountVenomfail (talk) 20:16, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I dunno, I don't think you're a troll but you also don't contribute, which can be annoying. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:04, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Specific-epithet-wanted categories
See Category:Species entry using missing specific epithet and its subcategories. The subcategories contain my current best guess at whether they might best be treated as Latin or Translingual. The top category is even less certain, but more likely to be Translingual. Let me know how this fits with your tastes. DCDuring TALK 00:45, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, your two Latin guesses, gularis: and minullus:, were excellent, and I think those are the only real Latin ones out of all the Accipiters. I created the first one, but I couldn't find any cites for the second one that weren't in italicized specific epithets buried in otherwise English texts. I suspect that the fault is mainly due to OCR, because it seems like a very reasonable diminutive to me. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:04, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello
Do you know a way that I can contribute more? I want to be able to be something of value to Wiktionary. Oh, and yes i'm back, thanks to vanischenu [from Wikipedia] who requested that I was unblocked from editing due to me having no second chance. [ please leave answer on my talk. ] Venomxx (talk) 19:29, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again
I asked the desk and I am waiting for a response. Thanks again for your help. p.s. i put a turtle on my user page. Venomxx (talk) 22:17, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

patria
Soi, you think we shouldn't list any related terms at all? Not even ? And surely some of those were term derived from patria, and should therefore be listed. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I skimmed the list, and it all looked like stuff ultimately from pater. If there were any from patria (I doubt it), they were misplaced - those go in 'Derived terms'. Patria is not even descended directly from pater, and the list does not seem helpful to me, just clutter. There is a real need to list terms derived from pater, but by the DRY principle, that list should go in the entry [[pater]]. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * So, again, you think we shouldn't even list as related? --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:40, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It isn't. It's an etymon. I believe etyma go in the etymology, derived terms in the derived terms (or descendants if they enter another language), and related terms in related terms if they add value to the entry (i.e. some semantic connexion). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:44, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * So then, you think the words for "father" and "fatherland" have no semantic connection? --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:47, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * They do. The semantic connexion is immaterial. 'Related terms' is for terms with a genetic connexion (but in this case, the specific connexion is that of an etymon to its derived term, so it belongs in the etymology). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:53, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I disagree about not listing terms in "Related terms" simply because they're related in this way. Entries can grow very large over time, so that sections become far separated from each other by masses of content, and related terms placed in etymology sections can be swamped out by mountains of arcane proto-language information and myriad cognates.  If there are related terms, they should be listed at "Related terms", and not omitted simply because they also happen to appear elsewhere in the entry. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:57, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry to butt in, but I think it is perfectly OK for patria to have pater as a related term. All the other ones, however, are just overkill and belong as derived terms of pater. --WikiTiki89 02:00, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * By contrast, I see the repeated related terms as being the parts that are swamping the entries. I understand when the etymology is more than a couple sentences, or when cognates from other languages are listed, but isn't it ridiculous at corvinus:? Wikitiki's solution is acceptable. (PS: Thanks for improving the definition for me.) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:01, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I believe that should list  as a related term.  (How does the one word "swamp" the entry?)  Otherwise, we run into a logical absurdity in situations where many words derive from a common source.  At, for example, would we list as "related" only the other words derived from , but not list iūdicō itself?  That would be absurd.  Personallly, I find our having related terms to be of tremendous help, as it allows me to quickly learn a class of words from a common source and to see morphological relations.  I find it to be one of the most useful things we do that other dictionaries do not.  I'd be very surprised if I were alone in that. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:08, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, but you see, your argument makes no sense at corvinus either. You can see corvus at a glance, so why would it help to repeat it, alone, lower down? Is it worth breaking DRY and ensuring that at least some lists will fall out of sync? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * No, it makes perfect sense. You can see corvus at a glance if you know where to look, and because we do not yet have a set of quotations, nor usage notes, nor other information that may separate these sections. It would be silly to say to editors: "Don't put this information in until the entry becomes long." I do not believe that DRY applies in this situation, and I don't think that there will be anything to worry about synching. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:15, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * You only can see the related terms at a glance if you equally well know where to look. So that's meaningless. I think I'll stop reverting you because it's honestly a waste of our time, but I will keep removing excessively long lists like my edit at patria. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * "Related terms" shows up in the table of contents, so that people can find it quickly. People can quickly see that header and know what to expect, which is not the case if we force them to use the "Etymology" to find related terms. Removing usable and legitimate content from Wiktionary is poor editing.  I will continue adding lists of such terms as I have been doing to entries, although I do concede your point about the particular instance of patria.  --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:29, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, glad we've reached a tentative truce. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I've started a BP discussion on this issue, in the hopes that we can craft some sort of written guideline(s). We're not likely to be the last editors to debate this issue, and having some guidelines somewhere could forstall future time wastage. To stimulate the most discussion, and hopefully locate the extremes of the community's viewpoints, I have chosen the most inflammatory possible quotation I could get from our discussion. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:42, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * To be blunt, I think that was an awful way to try to gain consensus :) I added a bit. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:50, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't want to start with consensus; I want to explore the breadth of opinions, to see what's out there. Then we'll know where the middle ground actually lies. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

corvinus quote
Could you have a look at my translation of the quote on the entry? It may be right, but I don't feel entirely happy with it, and I'm not sure whether my uncertainty results from my translation or from the medieval Latin I'm translating from. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:10, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well... you need a fair bit more Latin practice before you go translating quotes for entries. I have translated it, and it makes a lot more sense now. I can give you a play-by-play reasoning for each point of grammar and vocab if you want it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I have a relatively easy time understanding reasoning behind translations after the fact, but have always had a harder time with original direct translation in the absence of clear context.  It's why I usually prefer to work from Latin sources available in translation or for which I know the context. That said, there are translations that I've found to be singularly bad, such as the one I own of Petronius (which is so "free" as to be almost worthless), and just about every translation I've seen of Pliny's Natural History.  (You can't effectively translate a work on natural history if you don't know anything about natural history, and I swear there's not been a translator of Pliny yet who knew anything on that subject.)  In those situations I usually have to heavily rework the translations, but at least I've got a starting point from the published translation.  I'm much better myself working with individual words, morphology, phonology, and the like. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:46, 5 January 2013 (UTC)


 * BTW, I've kept gravid: in the translation, since egg-laying animals can be termed "gravid" but not "pregnant". --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Google Translate for Latin is awful (I never use it), but if you're really stuck it will definitely get the general meaning across. IMO, Pliny didn't know much about Natural History either, but obviously I'm biased. Perhaps he was a better at botany than in the subfields that my interests lie in. Putting gravid in is missing the point, because the Latin word used specifically has connotations of being swelled, and is already vaguely inaccurate. As for phonology, I've been meaning to ask: why do we have entries with /kw/ and /kʷ/? I say the former, but I'm not actually sure which is more correct for the Classical dialect. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:55, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Historically, English gravid is equally vague, but the modern sense of "pregnant" just can't fit here. Pliny wasn't always right, and he had many strange ideas, but the translations I've seen are often waaay off the mark, as can be seen by anyone who has done field work of any kind.  I'm talking about individual names of things being badly translated, on top of grammatical problems.  My last foray into such translations found a list of trees where half the tree names had been mistranslated.


 * English speakers are more likely to say /kw/ since we don't have a separate phoneme for that letter. Scholars usually give /kʷ/ as the sound in Etruscan and Latin. The article on Latin spelling and pronunciation is actually very good, in part because of a few skilled and dedicated researchers.  The only caveat is that you will find some misrepresentation of "short vowels" in places, e.g. the footnotes in the Consonants section has [ˈkʷɪŋkʷɛ] despite the fact that the vowel section has /i/ and /e/, because the article has undergone piecemeal revision over a long time, and thus there will be some resultant inconsistencies. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's an inconsistency. It's like writing /p/ in English phonology but transcribing [pʰɪn]. The distinction in vowel height between [ɛ] and [e] was not phonemic in Latin (at least not until [eː] shortened) just like the distinction in aspiration between [pʰ] and [p] is not phonemic in English. 16:32, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe it is an inconsistency, as I was part of the discussion that revised vowel length information in that article. There is still some academic debate about whether Classical Latin had both [ɛ] and [e], and how widespread the two sounds might have been, but it's not certain that the sound separation (apart from the distinction of phonemes) existed prior to the period of Late Latin outside of Vulgate dialects.  English scholars tend to favor the idea that there was a difference in both quality and duration (length) of such vowels, while Continental scholars believe the difference was merely one of duration with no difference in the quality. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Mauritian Creole.
I saw this blog post, and thought it might interest you. —Ruakh TALK 16:23, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I've never looked at an Indian Ocean creole before. It's very unusual, and in some ways less of a creole than most I've seen. I don't think a single Pacific creole, for example, declines its pronouns, has irregular non-auxiliary verbs, preserves T-V distinction, or have much more than 2000 vocabulary words in actual use, yet Mauritian Creole has all of these attributes. Category:Mauritian Creole language looks depressingly sparse, so I think I will attack this one sometime. I really appreciate the thought, by the way. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:40, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

umm...
User:SemperBlotto is always putting me down. when I went to the WT:Information desk he said I see that you can't even spell two. Can you talk to him? He also said something about me capitalizing I all the time.Venomxx (talk) 19:23, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Well... he's unfortunately right. We're writing a dictionary, so that kind of thing matters immensely. He was referring to the last line of your userpage. Try to use correct vocabulary and grammar. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:42, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I fixed my user page, but what about him always putting me down? If I made mistakes why does only semperblotto correct them? Does he have the critic position?Venomxx (talk) 21:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * He does a lot of work around here, and you haven't done any, so it's natural that he might feel annoyed. He's giving you a second chance. Use it well. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:09, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Am i just ticking user:semperblotto and everyone else off by my questions? Should i wait till I'm older to edit Wiktionary? Venomxx (talk) 22:14, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Somewhat; I have an odd patient streak. I think you should try the suggestions you were given at the Information Desk and see if you can add photos, for example. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:16, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

i did it!
My pictures are onAbramis brama Venomxx (talk) 18:06, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * See these changes. Just one photo is good, and use the format Imagename.xxx (but replace the part Imagename.xxx with whatever the image is called, like Paris.svg or Day_1_Parade.png etc. Does that make sense? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

umm kinda, i think i know what your talking about, and yes i will try that. Venomxx (talk) 19:33, 6 January 2013 (UTC)i tryed it and i din't get it, before i was copy and pasting.Venomxx (talk) 19:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Blocking
I'm having some trouble with one user Dijan ,who is administrator too, and is insulting me,threating me with blocking,and calling me names like racist,ultra-nationalist,disrupting etc.And just because I was trying to fix some mistakes he made or to remove some unverified informations.Can you please talk to him?See http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:%C4%8Duka Zabadu (talk)
 * I can't understand Serbo-Croatian and I don't know anything about this situation, so I don't feel qualified to do anything. If you want, you can ask another administrator or raise the topic in the main discussion forum. If you do either, I recommend that you translate the conversation and you provide links. Sorry. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:03, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Why can't we have separate Croatian and Serbian languages?You know Serbo-Croatian doesn't exist anymore?It is usually edited by Croats,some are biased,and language now seems more Croatocentric than it is.Serbia and Croatia are independant countries now as they were hundred of years in the past.Macedonian and Bulgarian are also very similar but are listed separate here.

Zabadu (talk)


 * The US and the UK have been separate countries for quite a while. That does not mean that US English and UK English are separate languages. --WikiTiki89 18:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It's funny that the Croats say the Serbs are the ones "supporting" the existence of Serbo-Croatian. It seems that the mentality of "our people are better than that, so assume the other ones are to blame" still hasn't gone away since the war. What a shame. 18:05, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

We tried living in one state,Yugoslavia and it twice failed (WW2 and 90's),war broke out and it ended very bad,very deadly.

Difference is even larger than US and UK English or Macedonian and Bulgarian.British Americans adn British are one nation,while Serbs and Croats are not.I can't help editing entries who are exclusively Croatian.There are hundreds of such words and I have no idea what they mean and I never heard of them.

Zabadu (talk)
 * Americans and British one nation? You're kidding right? They had a war just like you did and hated each other for decades afterwards. If you come across words you don't know, just leave them or RFV them. That is the normal procedure on Wiktionary. 18:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Java
You removed my removal of JavaScript from Java. Please see How is JavaScript different from Java? by the makers of java. --Guerillero (talk) 02:02, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Please, don't be haughty about it. I know the difference. What you don't understand is that we're descriptive, not proscriptive, and if people use a term, we include it. For more, see WT:WFW. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:06, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Why did you revert my work on the definition of pride?
The existing definition is completely inadequate to the way the word is used today (and has been for many decades.) It was apparently lifted from the old dictionary and written by a 19th-century schoolmarm who didn't get out much. So maybe my new entry was not formatted in the approved way, but it was a vast improvement, something actually usable for someone who wants to look up the word on wiktionary.
 * Your definition was a mass of rambling personal opinion, and other material inappropriate for a dictionary definition. It also had nonstandard formatting. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 14:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Mass I agree with, in the sense that it was much longer than what existed. Printed dictionaries had to be obsessively concise because of the practical limitations of producing fat heavy books.  Imposing the same constraint on an internet dictionary would be nuts.  (Look up the definition of pride in the complete OED, which aspires to be complete despite the print format.  I bet it's huge.)
 * Rambling personal opinion, no. It was a well-considered attempt to say what the word means in various contexts.  It wasn't perfect, but in a wiki, someone gets the ball rolling, and others improve it over time.  Alas, it seems that Wikimedia properties are increasingly not wikis, but prikis (n. website with the outward form of a wiki, but operated as a private club.)  Perhaps that's an inevitable bad-drives-out-the-good phenomenon.  But Wikipedia got to be good as a wiki before starting the priki evolution.  Wiktionary seems to be a priki already, before it's any good.
 * The current definiton of pride is terrible, and a betrayal of anyone who comes here to look it up. You seem to be presiding over a dusty hundred-year-old dictionary whose main virtue was being free of copyright.  I dare say it wasn't a brilliant dictionary even when new, and it's certainly been left behind by 100 years of our living language.  I thought I would check to see if it was possible to bring it to life.  No.  I won't waste any more time, of which I am sure you are glad.
 * Just in case, I reread it. And I stand by my opinion. But I smell sour grapes. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 07:51, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't find the OED's entry on pride to be particularly huge, but it is more complete than the current Wiktionary entry and written in a concise manner despite being online. I think there is room for improvement, but I have trouble understanding where 27.122.78.38 got the contexts from. What centuries does oldest traditions come from and where is the evidence for the assertion behind it? Does "older traditions" refer to people older than 40, 50, 60 or 70, and where does that assertion come from? Do all Americans believe that pride is good (I seriously doubt it) and where are the other individualist cultures (and more importantly, where is the evidence for this assertion)? Where is the proof that there is a definition derived from modern psychological theories (and what is the period of time that modern refers to)? It is probably not possible to document most of this information, so it will not be possible to include it. It may be useful to read Help:Writing_definitions and WT:CFI when considering what qualifies for inclusion and how to format.
 * It's also recommendable to create a user account with a name. See also Help:Talk_pages for further information. --BB12 (talk) 19:32, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Hey BB. Long time no see write. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:49, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

GhalyBot

 * I just noticed that you blocked GhalyBot and went to bot policy and saw where the problem is . GhalyBot has started working on this wiktionary only on the same day you blocked it. I will revise my user config file and remove enwiktionary from it and will not use this bot again on this wiktionry, would you mind lifting the block ,please. I am very sorry for the inconvenience this might cause you. Kind regards. --Ghaly (talk) 10:18, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I have now changed the configurations and GhalyBot is not going to work on enwiktionary any more. Once again, I am very sorry. --Ghaly (talk) 10:24, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If you are not planning to use GhalyBot at en.wiktionary, why do you want it unblocked? If you want, you can create a bot vote at WT:V (if you satisfy the requirements in WT:BOTS). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

From rollback in side Robert
Hey! Why did you revert my edits? What I have thought, name ロベルタ (Roberuta) is right.--Sentree (talk) 16:10, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Usually, wasei-eigo terms use u or o (in Rōmaji) for a final non-nasal consonant. The fact that this uses a suggests that it instead means Roberta:. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Aung San Suu Kyi and The Equality Mantra in Latin
Since I got "non potestas sed timor corrumpit" as an answer (I even made it a DeviantART comment sig and tagline), how about "Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."? Then there's a quote from a FaceBook community page called The Equality Mantra: "Love is a terrible thing to hate." And then there's "Please use your liberty to promote ours." and "To be forgotten. The French say that to part is to die a little. To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity." (Am I typing too much?) --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 14:49, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The practice is good for me. In order of appearance:
 * Timor potestatem amittendi eos qui eam utuntur et timor potestatis flagelli eos qui eae serviunt corrumpit.
 * Mantra Aequalitatis: Amorem odisse terribile est.
 * Si placet tuam utimini ut libertatem nostram promoveatis.
 * In memoria non esse. Franci exire mortem parvam esse inquiunt. Etiam in memoria non esse mortem parvam mori est. Est pauca nexa quae nos humanitati reliquae connectunt amittere.
 * Not perfect, especially with the workarounds for deponent verbs. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:30, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

ASSK: "Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day." --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 19:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Systemate neganti existentiam jurum simplicium hominum timor saepe diei mandatum est. I have translated "order of the day" literally, but if it is idiomatic it ought to be translated otherwise, perhaps as lex suprema ("highest law"). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:53, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Telugu etymology template
Sir, Can you help me in making the Etymology template to work in Telugu wiktionary. There are about 80,000 pages in there. Some of the Telugu words are derived many other Indian and foreign languages. I would like to link those words to these languages. Thanking you in advance.Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 11:59, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I am sorry to say that I do not think I have the technical capabilities. Please post your question at WT:GP, where you will hopefully get a useful answer or assistance. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Requests_for_moves,_mergers_and_splits
Thanks for moving this! Sometimes I get confused about where best to open a thread. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Eh, sure. Welcome back 'n' all that. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:34, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
 * By the way, I actually thought I was being a bit rude by moving it, so I'm glad you're not offended or anything. Quite the opposite, evidently. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:36, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
 * So long as the thread gets eyeballs and replies on the way to resolving the issue, I don't mind where it gets moved to. (Provided I can find it, of course. :) )
 * And man, but I can spend a lot of time faffing about on here. :D  Good to be back, though.  -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 06:36, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
 * As long as you clean out WT:RE:ja it's all cool with me ;) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:48, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Chinese cabbage related entries
I am a bit confused about our entries and the underlying facts. From pedia it looks like there are two subspecies or possibly varieties of Brassica rapa, one of the most varied plant species. At least some of the Chinese terms seem to have more bearing on the part of the plant than the precise subspecies. I would love to clean up our coverage of food-related taxa, especially the relationship between the taxa and the English food terms, whatever the originating language. Brassica rapa is particularly challenging. DCDuring TALK 01:26, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh god, I hate Brassica. Not the plant (most varieties are actually quite delicious in my estimation), but the taxonomy. I really am not sure myself how to sort things, I only interfered because I knew the characters for caixin. A starting point might be to figure out how complete/accurate the entry Chinese cabbage is; I'll see what I can do in that region. (BTW, if you feel up to a real challenge, try dealing with the entries for various species and varieties of Cucurbita; I seem to remember great disagreement on what to do with a lot of Asian gourds.) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:32, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

That damn icon thing
"For the record, I am unabashedly siding with the majority to try to ensure that the current setup in which one favicon is the comfortable victor is not changed in the next two days." Haha. RESPECT, as most of my friends (who are all popular rappers) would say. If it doesn't work, we will have to invent some kind of plug-in to make browsers fake an icon per domain. Equinox ◑ 02:51, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Check the percentages. Before I voted, I believe #1 was no consensus in the low 60s and #2 was passing in the low 70s, so assuming slight movement on both fronts, the vote should be stabilised. As you may have noticed, the logo itself is my next goal, but I can't expect that to go as smoothly. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:57, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I already have a plug-in thingy: User:Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV/monobook.js. I still shows the old logo before uncached pages finish loading. — Ungoliant (Falai) 06:02, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

FWOTD is running out again!
Needs more words... 15:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Do bear in mind that I am a naturally unreliable person :) I have in fact been monumentally overbusied, and catching up with neglected aspects of my life will take a mite of work as well. I hope that we are safe enough for now. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:22, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Θρίαμβος
Hello, Latin triumphus derives from Greek Θρίαμβος, so this is the etymon.
 * Generally, that would produce *thriambus/triambus in Latin. Are you sure that they are not just cognates? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:52, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

It's via Etruscan, see triumphus page.
 * OK, I'll add it in. Pleasde note the correct format and the fact that we distinguish Ancient Greek from (Modern) Greek here. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:04, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, ok, thanks.

not enough?
I am worrying that I am doing some thing wrong with the pictures I am adding. Here is a normal example of what i am doing; Accipiter ventralis. Also am I even putting the picture in the right spot? Venomxx (talk) 04:54, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Here are my tips: Don't use gallery, and make sure to remove the or  template. See the changes I made there. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:59, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

marea
Desafortunadamente, it is. I was trying to see if there was a more proper term for marea alta and marea baja and did not find it here, went to Google translate and discovered pleamar and confirmed at with rae and then added them all for posterity and easy future reference. Oh and some advice from my part, if you ever want to embarass someone arrogantly claiming to speak a language ask them how do you say "28", "40th", or "shark" as someone with no experience is unlikely to know. BUST-ED every time.Valienteycaliente (talk) 06:10, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Um, um, easy: en español "28", "40a", and "eshark"! Actually, I happen to know all three in Spanish even though I'm not really es-1 yet, still looking up muchas palabras en toda página. I have to learn before I go to Ecuador. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:14, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Intrigirati
Intrigirati is both Serbian and Croatian word.There is no word intrigovati.Please don't tell me you thougth all verbs that end in -irati are Croatian and -ovati are Serbian.Because that is not a rule.You don't know much about Serbo-Croatian I guess.

24.135.79.175 18:42, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Don't be a language nationalist. Look at and . Obviously this is a real word. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:45, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * No, I am not a Slavicist and I know very little about Serbo-Croatian. You, however, are spouting nonsense when you say a real word does not exist. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:47, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh my God.You really believe such word exists.No there is no such word both Serbs and Croats say intrigirati.Trust me.These are wrong translations to Serbo-Croatian you are showing me.

24.135.79.175 18:50, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Did you even bother to look at the links I provided? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:51, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

In any case intrigirati is not only Croatian verb Serbs say intrigirati too.What gives you the right to undo my changes,you don't know nothing about SH, you are so stup*d you think I am a nationalist.

24.135.79.175 18:53, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh my God you are so du*mb, how come you haven't realized that? I wasn't even trying to hide it. Anyway blocking me is really unnecessary because you can change an address whenever you want to. I have plenty of time and I am bored so I will continue editing. You can block me again of course but that won't really do anything.

Also 85 % of my edits is correct and factual you can not deny that.

But maybe I should also stop using insults,really rude.

24.135.80.69 18:12, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * WT:Range blocks. I've never used it before, but I assume it works. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:20, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

You are blocking innocent people.Wrong move.Let's see now how can you block an user(me) without a proof and without a reason.

24.135.84.89 21:28, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Re: "without a reason". Obviously untrue. But really, why must I block you? Why can't you realize that you are simply unwanted? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:33, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: bamboo curtain
Can't believe you deleted the page as misspelling and then recreate it as your own. Do you know the "move" button? You're welcome. Bennylin (talk) 19:41, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Your page had a lot of formatting errors, so it was easier for me to rewrite it. Take a look at WT:ELE and WT:CFI. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:48, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * No need. Your arrogance showed it all. And you have a typo there too. Should you delete that mess? *sarcasmalert* Bennylin (talk) 20:11, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * For future reference, insulting editors will not help in making them more cooperative. If you find a typo, please fix it (for a content page) or tell me (for a policy page). Anyway, maybe WT:WFW would be helpful for you? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:15, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Inline citations
The purpose of inline citations isn't to cite every single fact like on Wikipedia, and the request template wasn't there to contest any of the content. It's so you can determine more easily which parts of the entry are actually in that source and which are not. I think it is important to be able to see that. 22:07, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * There was hardly any information on the page anyway, so the only thing I can imagine the source was citing was the assumed existence of the PIE word in that specific form. The descendants are obviously related, so that's the only part left. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:09, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

WOTD
I can no longer manage WOTD due to time constraints. I'm also taking a wikibreak from the project as a whole due because I need it. In my absence, could you guide whoever expresses an interest in taking over to where/who they can find the information they need to learn the ropes of managing WOTD? Thanks. Astral (talk) 03:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I noticed... but hopefully -sche will do that. I've never run enWOTD, and I never was able to help much. Of course, we need a volunteer for me to help, even if I can help (I'll certainly try). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:02, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay. Well, thanks for your support, and for your interesting WOTD noms. :) Astral (talk) 04:19, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I know, my response is probably not exactly what you were hoping for... at least you left a buffer :) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I've made a habit of trying to set at least a week's worth of words in advance, if there's enough of a pool from which to draw. It's easier that way. But it's still a very intensive process, and unfortunately I just don't have the time or energy to commit to it right now. Astral (talk) 04:31, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

morr rollback
Hi, rolling back my edit for Alb morr doesn't make any sense since there's no point in listing 2 Germanic comparandae; certainly 1 will do. Obviously, the whole point of listing any is just for comparison, not to make an ad nauseum list. Torvalu4 (talk) 21:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * There's generally no point in removing content that isn't causing a problem and is accurate. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:16, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Hindia
Hi

Kindly google for hindia and you will agree my definition of Hindia. Its the region of India whose mother tongue or main language is Hindi. This comes to North India or India except South India. Kindly allow my edit

Also Hindia has nothing to do with Hindu as India itself is derived from Indus valley civilization which is present day hindu culture.
 * As far as I can tell, you are incorrect. Look at and ; there are precious few cites, but those that exist do appear to support the Hindu nationalist definition. I cannot find any that undoubtably support your definition. Good day, sir. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:48, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Patriot
I mist respectfully disagree, on the following grounds:

Certainly, every American I think of as being excellently so, had loved this definition, and what you are describing is how it it has been abused and degraded since.

The version I use would be the one descended from those sources in other languages that, at the time and to this date, would have been as familiar to them, European-descended and educated as they were. It fits, and my efforts in discussion show this.

Further, it is vision or themselves that ca now apply to any country, regardless of flavour, while separating the Patriots (like Teddy Roosevelt) from the Zealots and chanters (I leave to your personal interpretation thereof because they are not truly embracing the values of their country las laid out in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Respctfully, I suggest it is time to change course, and if nothing else help me set up a new entry for True Patriot(s)?

Roslyn (talk) 10:57, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * That may be your idiolectal view of the word, but that is simply one subset of how it is used in general discourse. If we were to separate the first current definition into two, one with your meaning and one with my meaning (I dislike patriotism very much, and use patriot pejoratively), the two meanings would still be overlapping so much on who is a patriot, and so redundant to our current sense, that they would almost certainly be deleted. Also, you seem to assume that patriots can only be American, considering your third paragraph. That, too, is quite simply not the case. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:06, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Roslyn (talk) 06:32, 4 March 2013 (UTC)Abdolutely not. I am in fact, by making that particular adjustment and assertion, that I only showed the respect inherent in the possibility of ending up starting arguments where none were intended. Also, patriotism is generally considered a positive trait, it is when confused with jingoism or such that meanings my rub together if the reader/speakers are not alert. As to your stated bias, it demonstrates the result an an ideal being misunderstood and then wished to force the rest to do so? I am perplexed as to where this belongs in a dictionary?

פורים
Can you help out with the rfquote, by any chance? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 15:59, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't speak Hebrew, and my reading comprehension is extremely low. If I were to look for a quote, I'd look for a children's book explaining the meaning of the holiday in Hebrew. It might say something like, "The holiday is called Purim because of the purim that Haman used " or whatever. But I'm afraid that I'm not a good person to ask, because I don't have access to those sorts of books. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Setting a few FWOTDs
Can you set some FWOTDs tomorrow? I will be away. (Note: I’ll also ask CodeCat, in case you don’t see this message in time). Thanks. — Ungoliant (Falai) 01:05, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * What a terrible FWOTDer I've been. I'll get on it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:17, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Latin 4th declension in -ubus
On the Tea Room, I discussed the sonus medius. It seems rather likely that the variation between -ubus and -ibus isn't actually a matter of different nouns, but of different usage over time. In other words, -ubus is simply an older alternative form of -ibus. Does that make sense? If so, the template probably shouldn't exist... 02:03, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * There may be a temporal component, and pre-classical Latin is not very well known to me. But within standard Classical texts, and all classicistic texts, one finds use of -ubus as a specific quality that certain nouns have. In many cases, like, the functional similarity to -abus in the 1st declension seems to be the cause, but in others it is obscure. At Wiktionary, we have non-classical words when attested, but the infrastructure is made for the standard register of the only truly surviving lect, which is all in imitation of literature in the Golden Age. I always have trouble finding things in Latin grammars, but I'll see what I can dig up. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:12, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, historically and etymologically the ending contains -u-. The ending is -ubos in Old Latin, with the -u being a part of the stem as inherited from PIE and therefore invariant. That means that there are only two ways it could have become the -i- of classical Latin. We know that it must have changed naturally through sound change, since we know this did happen to other words in just this phonetic environment: it would developed into sonus medius, spelled i or u before the labial -b-. A second process would be analogy from the 3rd declension, where it originated from Old Latin -e- instead and therefore never had sonus medius. So there are two things at work: one process we know must have happened, and a second that could have happened, and would have produced -i- as the result in both cases. From that, I would conclude that the -u- is indeed sonus medius, but that, like in many other words such as, it was eventually replaced by -i-. Analogical pressure from the 3rd declension would have surely helped as well, but the reality can also be accounted for without it. So that means, really, that all the 4th declension nouns with -ubus are archaisms, and have just become grammaticalised in that form, much in the same way that English has retained even though it has replaced all other plurals with -s.  02:33, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Assuming that you're wholly correct about Old Latin (hard to see how one could be sure, with all the variant spellings, but it seems likely enough), then your conclusions follow well. But the thing is, you seem to be leading up to an argument for deleting, which still makes no sense to me. If that's not your goal, then what is the point of this conversation (except, perhaps, to educate me a bit on Old Latin)? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:50, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm actually still arguing for something like that. Because we deal with all Latin on Wiktionary, not just the semi-standardised classical variety. And surely, there are other 4th declension nouns with -ubus than just the few that have become "fossilised"? 04:05, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * The thing is, we don't cover that much truly old Old Latin here; my understanding is that the scribal process tended to erase older forms anyway. Do you also propose that we put in declension tables for Old Latin forms as well? There is, if not consensus, tacit understanding to treat standard Classical Latin as a prestige default dialect and everything else as Old Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin, etc (with associated templates and categories). The template is useful to help readers know the correct form in the dialect they are most likely to be researching Wiktionary for, the dialect of Cicero and Caesar. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess that is true. But some part of me just protests... 04:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Ancient Greek Quotations πατάσσω
Thanks for fixing up my formatting. I am wondering, though, why the citation template displays the transliteration, but not the translation. Is it meant to be that way? Furius (talk) 06:29, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Any time. We have such quotation templates for every good Ancient Greek writer. I just made a typo; it does display translation. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I just ran across "bangstry" and wanted to know what it meant
Wow that was so quick, I thought I screwed up the submit. From your first link: A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means.

Which is exactly what happened to me just now as I was watching the police/murder procedural CSI and the episode that aired this past week (as you might have gleaned from the included quotation). I'm not exactly sure what its audience share is, but even after 13 seasons, it is watched by millions of Americans. If you don't believe me, the episode is here and the usage is around the 15:30 mark.

As for your second link, it can't possibly be a protologism as it was included in a 1912 dictionary, as you should have been able to see from my reference.

Let me know what gives, please. -- Kendrick7 (talk) 02:37, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that, my mistake. Note that dictionaries are not actually admissible as citations to prove a word exists (for more on that see WT:ATTEST), but I was wrong to delete it because it does seem to be attestable per a search at Google Books. I've undeleted it and fixed your formatting. Thanks! —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:43, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I wasn't about to merge an entire slang dictionary onto here anyway, but indeed that policy does make sense. Thanks for the welcome, and good work keeping an eye on things! -- Kendrick7 (talk) 23:55, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

praecanto inflection
Hey, I was wondering if you help me on the inflection for this.

I got the definition from Lewis & Short, but their lexical description is somewhat confusing. From what I can gather, this verb is at least in some sense deponent (ātum), however it also appears to me that this verb has no infinitive. What do you think? - Znex (talk) 05:55, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, Lewis & Short was written for people who already speak good enough Latin that they only need the minimum of information. It is by no means deponent or infinitiveless or anything else weird, just another 1st conj regular. I recommend that you use Elementary Lewis, which often gives slightly clearer information in that regard (also fully digitised on Perseus Hopper), and maybe get a Latin textbook as well. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:27, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Category:Arabic script characters
Why did you empty this category? -- Liliana • 20:15, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I can't fathom its purpose. The few entries I found in it were placed in Category:Arabic letters, Category:Urdu letters, etc. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:17, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It's for all letters written in Arabic script, as opposed to the other, language-specific categories. We also have Category:Latin script characters, Category:Cyrillic script characters, Category:Hebrew script characters et cetera. -- Liliana • 20:24, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, feel free to create it as long as you're going to fill it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Bashkir transliteration
Hi Metaknowledge, I've noticed that transliteration has changed in the Bashkir entries. Interestingly, the new transliteration overrides the old one that I have provided manually. I guess this is related to your recent transliteration activity. Is this true?Borovi4ok (talk) 08:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

In particular, I have a problem with the way Bashkir ш is now transliterated. Do you think this is still open to discussion? Borovi4ok (talk) 08:54, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I apologize for not consulting with you first. The transliteration that I'm using is the official one described at WT:BA TR, but if you want to change anything, I will respect your wishes.


 * The transliteration itself is actually controlled by Module:ba-translit, which is in Lua (see WT:LUA for more). So all we have to do is edit the page and the module to change something. What would you prefer for ш? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 13:52, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I would prefer Šš for Шш, Ïï for Ыы, I for И (capital), Čč for Чч, šč for щ.
 * Also, Uu for уу and Üü for Үү look terribly awkward in cases where they actually represent a consonant sound, as in сиркәү, айыу, ауыҙ and рәүеш. My preference in such cases would be Ww for both consonant sounds. We can work together to formulate the transliteration rules for such cases. Borovi4ok (talk) 14:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, that's inconsistent with our other Turkic languages, but if you think that's best I guess we can go along with it, as you are our only local Bashkir speaker. The w's will take a bit of effort, I'll see what I can do, probably later today. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:32, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * To clarify, you only want them to be transliterated as w when they follow a vowel and are the last letter of a word, or when they are between two vowels (I'm counting ы as a vowel for these purposes.) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:00, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, ы is a legitimate vowel, no reservations.
 * I've spent some time looking at a hefty lists of Bashkir words with у/ү.
 * The rule would be: ALL у/ү's after vowels (regardless of their position within the word) should be transliterated as w. This would also cover the VwV cases.Borovi4ok (talk) 08:52, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Is there any way we can keep the possibility to manually enter transliterations for irregular cases? Some Russian loanwords may be "odd" in terms of transliteration. Borovi4ok (talk) 08:52, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I have invited another Wiki participant into this discussion. His username is Comp1089, he speaks fairly good Bashkir, I thought his opinion might help. Borovi4ok (talk) 08:57, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I will add the rule (remind me if I forget). As for overrides, how would you like a parameter in all the templates called override=? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:26, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * OK with "override" parameter. Thanx for helping! Borovi4ok (talk) 09:28, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
 * In бөжәк, ж is automatically tranliterated as c.
 * In my view, that's absolutedly wrong. Can you please change that to ž.Borovi4ok (talk) 12:46, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * ж fixed, I also added the rule for transliterating ү as w if it is after [АаЕеЭэЮюЯяӘәИиҮүУуӨөЫы], is it OK? --Z 13:00, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for ж and ү, looks great.
 * What about tranliterating у? We also needs it as w after all vowels. Borovi4ok (talk) 13:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Added у. --Z 13:20, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanx! Looks perfect now.
 * Last one for today (hopefully). Here's one case (just one for now) where we need to use the "override" parameter.
 * хайуан - needs to be transliterated as xaywan. CAn you please show how to use this parameter in this article to get the desired result? Borovi4ok (talk) 13:25, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I've added й to that list of vowels, so ү/у would be transliterated as w after й as well, isn't it correct? --Z 13:29, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, ZxxZxxZ,
 * That yields the desired result in this specific case,
 * However, I'm not sure this is the correct formula. Looks like this is a rare case. I need to spend a bit of time looking at lists of Bashkir words, so I can figure out the rule. Will write back a bit later. Borovi4ok (talk) 13:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like no rules can be formulated for this -wV- cluster :(
 * On the one hand, in ғинуар and каруан (and several other cases), the transliteration should be resp. ğinwar and karwan.
 * On the other hand, there are dozens of Russian loanwords in Bashkir, like эвакуация and ситуация, where we need to keep -ua- in the transliteration.
 * Since no formal rule can be established, we have to use the "orderride" option, so we can manually set the proper tranliteration in specific cases.
 * Z, ideally we need to remove the й rule you have introduced (to keep the rules straightforward and understandable for newcomers), and use the "manual tranliteration override" option. Is that feasible? Borovi4ok (talk) 14:04, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok then, I removed й. I've already added the override parameter to Template:ba-noun, you can use it as follows:  --Z 14:26, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanx, it works! Borovi4ok (talk) 14:49, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you, ZxxZxxZ. I am glad that you are evidently more responsible than I am (and hopefully somewhat more knoweldgeable about Lua) because I'm hoping for Module:fa-translit sometime soon :) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:57, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, np. For fa, it's a complicated situation: even having a fully vocalized word in Perso-Arabic script won't help, because unlike fully vocalized Arabic words, it still won't contain some information -- ی y may be [eː], beside [iː], and و w may be [oː], beside [uː], and it's not possible to represent it in Arabic script. However, this won't happen if we are going to only include transliteration in Iranian Persian (which is what we users have done so far, but it's not a good practice), which doesn't have [eː] and [oː]. On the other hand, I'm working on a module to generate phonetic pronunciations in different accents of Persian, and it only works by entering the transliteration in Classic Persian. So, at the end of the day we still need to enter transliteration in each entry. --Z 14:51, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Could you move the documentation subpages back please?
WT:Grease pit/2013/March. Thank you. 16:26, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Um, I moved it because /documentation doesn't work AFAICT. Assuming you're right, what am I doing wrong? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:49, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * At the time you made the move, it didn't work. But it didn't work because of an error which I just corrected. Now it's the /doc page that no longer works. Maybe you should have discussed it first? 18:51, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, discussion didn't seem to get anywhere; I thought it would be better to impose order on the chaos and then people could move it around the way they want later. I guess I'll "move" it all back (i.e. copy-paste, delete, create). Please note that if you want to help, you can't just undelete the old /doc pages because I added module categories. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:55, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I can help out if you like. It's not possible to move modules to non-module pages, but if I temporarily undo the change to the subpage name, then those pages you created will "become" non-module pages again. That will allow you to move them freely, although you'll need to move them to another place first, then re-do the name change, and then move them to their final name. Do you think having to move each page twice is more productive than what you suggested? 19:03, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Probably, but what would I move them to temporarily? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:08, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It it's just temporary, does it really matter? :) 19:10, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Just making sure I understand, it would have to go to a different namespace in the first move, and then back to Module: as /documentation, right? I mean, I really don't want to fuck more than I have to. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:13, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. You could move Module:nl-verb/doc to User:Metaknowledge/nl-verb or whatever. Then, once you've moved them all, the subpage's name is changed over to /documentation and that will allow you to move them to the correct location. 19:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Let's go! —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:35, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I've temporarily changed the name to /doc again and I've moved some of the pages. 19:58, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Um... I'm still waiting? I need to know when to change it back... 23:59, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry; I had to actually attend to real life. Unfortunately or not, I can't quite spend my whole day in front of a computer screen pretending work whilst editing Wiktionary. I'll finish up the move. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:20, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Your real life involves adding transliteration code to templates? :p 00:22, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Lol, that's true, I probably should've done this first... I am impulsive and unreliable, get used to it :) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, I just had an idea. We can't move pages from module to non-module and vice versa. But what if I change the doc page name to something else like asdf? Then both the old and the new names will be "modules" and the move may work. Let's see... 00:29, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it works! You can move the pages directly now! 00:30, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Finally ✅ —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:51, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! 14:00, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Armenian transliteration
Can you write Module:hy-translit based on WT:HY TR? I don't understand Lua. --Vahag (talk) 08:36, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I would be glad to. Unfortunately, I can't read Armenian yet, but it looks easy. I'll do it after I finish templatising the ones I've already done. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:44, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll wait. You can also use the Armenian section in User talk:Conrad.Irwin/Transliterator.php. --Vahag (talk) 16:07, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't feel like I can fully trust the page (it is pretty old, and ignores some important things like vowel stress in Ukrainian transcriptions, etc), but if you say it is all correct for Armenian, I'll make the module from it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:10, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * It's correct for Armenian. I wrote it. --Vahag (talk) 16:14, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * It looks easy if it's one to one. I've done one for Georgian here: Module:ka-translit. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:42, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I've done for Armenian as well, please check: Module:hy-translit


 * Testing a Wikipedia article: --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:55, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Nice, I'm glad I'm not the only one transliterating. My only criticism is that you need to create the documentation subpages so that they get categorised correctly. You can use Module:hy-translit/documentation as an example of the format. Can you make modules for the Arabic script languages? I still can't read it, and that might take more work to get right than a one-to-one alphabet. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:47, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * It's one to one, except for digraph, which should be transliterated as u, not ow. How do we do that? --Vahag (talk) 08:01, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it does already, see the result of passing ու into the module: --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 09:53, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * @Metaknowledge. It's not possible to produce accurate transliteration for unvocalised Arabic and Hebrew. Fully vocalised Arabic with strict spelling is possible to transliterate but it will take some efforts, not sure this will be successful. I know the rules of Arabic reading but I don't have Lua skills and would need some help. Of course, there's a question if this is going to be useful, since Arabs don't put short vowels signs, same with Persian and Urdu. Uyghur is fully phonetic but I don't know the rules well. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 23:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I know that, but we already use the head= parameter for vocalised Arabic, so it should be possible. You can learn some Lua at lua-users.org or wherever else you find helpful documentation, and there are a bunch of people around here who you can ask. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:12, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Transliteration of Russian inflected forms
Hi,

Is it possible to add automatic transliteration of Russian inflected forms? Did you do something like that for other languages? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 10:16, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Depends, could you show me an example of what a typically formatted Russian inflected form entry looks like? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:44, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Noun: очертание, adjective: честный, verb: делать. They use various templates, though. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 22:32, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Maybe there's a misunderstanding — you said you want inflected forms, right? These are all lemmata. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:57, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I meant, is it possible to add the transliteration to the inflection tables. What is required? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 23:24, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Oh, I see. Definitely possible, I can do it after I've finished the languages I'm still working on. Ignatus might want to do it, but I suppose there's no need to bother him right now if there's no rush. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:28, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Dante
You don't happen to have a list of Inferni red links do you? It would speed up the addition process if I didn't have to generate it myself. SemperBlotto (talk) 17:10, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * If I had it I've give it to you, but I don't even know the best way to generate it. All I've got (besides my physical copies) is Commedia (Buti)/Inferno, which you already know about. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:15, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * No prob - we have the technology. SemperBlotto (talk) 17:16, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Cool. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:17, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I shall use Divina Commedia/Inferno as my source - but it will be a while before I start as I already have several competing projects on the go. SemperBlotto (talk) 17:30, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Which languages/corpora/whatevers are coming up next? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:32, 24 March 2013 (UTC)


 * German: I'm working through the German Wikipedia entries for each chemical element (arsenic is next).
 * Italian: the same (but much faster as there are far fewer missing words)
 * Portuguese: This is just a maybe - I can more-or-less read it, but can't speak a word. I'm assuming it is "just another Romance language" and should be easy to learn. I haven't even looked at our pt templates yet. (This project might get postponed- but see the current sandbox for words missing from pt Wikipedia article on hydrogen). SemperBlotto (talk) 17:40, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * See, as a first rough draught, User:SemperBlotto/inferno - 1,740 words to be considered. (I've already added some A--- proper nouns) SemperBlotto (talk) 12:16, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * A lot of the valid redlinks are medieval spelling variants, but there's also a fair amount of stuff that's just totally unfamiliar to me (hey, my Italian's not so good and getting worse by the minute as I replace it with Spanish). Thanks! —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)


 * What do you recommend that I do with such words as elezïone:. Is this just a typographical variant that we normally ignore? SemperBlotto (talk) 15:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * We really should have something in WT:AIT about it. However, I'm pretty that this can be a job for, but I can make a custom template if you'd prefer. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:47, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * OK - that seems to work. We need a category creating though. SemperBlotto (talk) 15:57, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:03, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

translit modules
Hi,

The number of translit modules has grown in quantity. I've add other Slavic languages, Arabic, Persian. User:ZxxZxxZ has done some great work on Arabic, may be will work on Persian but it can't be fully transliterated, Persians use diacritics even less than Arabs. Will have to address Korean at some stage.

Can you do basic Hebrew, Yiddish? Is it possible to transliterate more or less accurately fully vocalised Hebrew? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:14, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Hebrew probably won't happen. There are some regular stress patterns for certain inflections (like plural forms) and it would probably be more than 90% accurate for those if fed with the vocalised Hebrew, but that would be a job for Ruakh if (and only if) he thinks it's a good idea.
 * Yiddish is mostly possible, but there are so-called 'etymological spellings' that preserve the (unvocalized) Hebrew spelling, and those cannot be transliterated automatically. I'm thinking of rewriting the Yiddish inflection templates somewhat, which might be a good time to work in as much automatic translit as we can.
 * I'm also planning on doing more languages, but I feel like the most important part is using the ones we have — that is, incorporating them into templates. For example, has that been done with the Georgian templates yet? If not, I can do that.
 * PS: Apologies for the late reply. I've been on holiday in the mountains with very little access to the internet. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:27, 31 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I haven't started using the templates anywhere. As for Hebrew, like Russian, manual edit should override all automatic transliteration. Stresses are mostly unpredictable and important and Russian as well but if there is no manual added stress, then automatic will do. I would welcome a Hebrew module, also for my own benefit. I can't read Hebrew but we have too many translations without translit., many of them have full vocalisation. Some Hebrew dictionaries give full romanisation but no Roman spelling. I believe over time we could do Thai, Lao, Khmer and Burmese modules as well. Wyang has some skills and interest. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 22:21, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
 * But vocalised Hebrew is still not fully reliable... if you want to be able to read it, I advise you learn the alphabet (it's pretty easy). I still think that it may not even be worth it; if Ruakh thinks it could be, I assume he would have done it.
 * Thai and Lao are definitely doable, although getting the tones right will be beyond my ability. I will have to ask for help with that. I can't read Khmer or Burmese, but I think that the Khmer and the two non-phonetic transcriptions of Burmese we use here should be possible.
 * I really hope Wyang will get into this, because if he can port his lang-to-IPA templates into Lua, we can have bot-added pronunciation for most entries in the languages he works in. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:50, 31 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I've already learned half-heartedly a few languages like Korean, Persian, Hindi and Thai, which is sad. My Arabic studies are reduced to the minimum. I still have gaps in understanding Hindi and Thai scripts at times. Hebrew, Lao and Burmese scripts are on my to do list but there's just not enough time in the day. It makes little sense to learn the script without learning the language but I know I won't have time for many languages. Japanese and Chinese are too time-consuming.
 * I reckon if we start Hebrew, Ruakh may join and see what's possible, what's not. It may remain an editor's tool just to see what letters are actually used. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 23:22, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

stratigraphic periods
That's good to know; in my search for river-adjectives, I found at least half a dozen terms about which I could work out nothing beyond their etymologies and that they were possibly the names of geologic periods. I'll see if I can find where I wrote them down. - -sche (discuss) 23:12, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, there's Vistulian and Plenivistulian and Weichselian, the distinctions between which are unclear to me. Also, there are a raft of terms like Lower Permian and Lower Carboniferous which I'm guessing should be included à la Late Middle Ages—but what do you think? Are they SOP or idiomatic? - -sche (discuss) 23:12, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If you're ever really bored, there are even more here (but don't feel any rush/pressure to get around to them). - -sche (discuss) 23:52, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't really care enough to add geological periods because a) I think it's a bot job and b) who would think to search Wiktionary for this stuff?
 * I'm not actually a genius who's memorised every time period (although I know a hell of a lot of them, and all the big ones), so I use stratigraphy.org. It might not be comprehensible to a layperson, but it's my primary source, so if you want to circumvent me, that's where to go.
 * The Vistulian (Weichselian is an exact synonym) is not a geological time period, but a paleoclimatic one, technically the Northern Poland Glaciation event. Glaciations are named (interglacial are usually referred to by the surrounding glacial events, although I've seen exceptions) locally as a rule, and this is equivalent to the Würm in the Alps and the Wisconsinan in North America, both of which are familiar to me (my source on that identification was this). The only Wiktionary entry I could easily find for a glaciation is, so I reckon you can model your formatting off of that.
 * The Plenivistulian would presumably refer to a subperiod of the Vistulian during the glacial maximum, but it's hard to find papers about it that are both clear and not in Polish.
 * Whether Upper/Lowers should be included is a deep question. On the surface, they are SOP; there is a geological sense at and  to cover it. There is the truth, though, that sites like stratigraphy.org give exact values for these regularly named subdivisions. The problem is really that there is a double meaning. in the field, I might wave at a formation and say it's Lower Cretaceous based on its relative position, but in a paper, I'd have to check with radiocarbon dating or index fossils and I'd have to use the internationally recognised delimitation of the Lower Cretaceous. Lower Carboniferous is an odd one. Everyone I know calls it the Mississippian, but maybe that's an American thing.
 * Hope that helped —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:23, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Kvitch and kvetch
Hi, I see you reverted my edits from kvitch. Just for you to know, they came from Rosten's Joys of Yiddish (pp.227-8 of the French edition)and he insists on not confusing kvitch and kvetch ! Yours friendly--&#39;Inyan (talk) 04:00, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I have the English edition somewhere, I'll take a look if you can find a page number. Rosten is not really a scholarly source, though, and if you look at how people actually use the word (see ) I think our current definition is accurate. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:23, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don’t know about the nuances of kvetch & kvitch in English, but in Yiddish there is a difference between the two. To confirm, I’ve just checked in Harkavy’s & Weinreich’s Yiddish dictionaries: קװיטש (kvitch) is a shrill, a squeak (Harkavy), a shriek, a scream (Weinreich). קװעטש (kvetch) comes from קװעטשען (kvetchen) which is to squeeze, to press, or to pinch (Harkavy & Weinreich). Kvitch & kvetch in Yinglish might have become one in the same as people forgot the actual meanings and both became terms for a complainer, but this is simply conjecture on my part as I’m no expert in the art of “Yinglish”.Sgold84 (talk) 20:39, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. I'm not really sure how to present that information in the entries; if you want to try, that would be great. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:48, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

your revert of my edit on hightail it
Hello. I noticed you've reverted my edit on hightail it. I figured you must have had a reason for keeping the self-redirect (which I've made into a full article now), but it would have been nice if you had left an explanation with the revert. Just my two cents. --Ixfd64 (talk) 06:59, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Unlinking something, even if it's a redlink or a self-redirect, rarely serves any purpose. Creating the entry instead was the right decision and I thank you for it. As for edit summaries, there is a lot of vandalism to revert and edits to fix, and adding detailed edit summaries simply takes too long. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:21, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I figured it was better to make the redirect into a new article. I was initially concerned that a reader could become confused if he or she clicked a link that took them back to the same article.
 * I'm not that familiar with the guidelines here, but at least on the English Wikipedia, users are discouraged from using to rollback button to revert edits that are not obvious vandalism. I was afraid I had done something wrong and was going to get blocked for it. LOL. --Ixfd64 (talk) 03:03, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't one of those be defined as "alternative spelling of"? Duplicating the information on both entries doesn't seem like a good idea. 03:05, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * @Ixfd: Sorry, Wiktionary culture is somewhat different. Please see WT:WFW for more on that.
 * @CC: Yeah, you're right. I just don't have time to fix it right now. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:59, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Reconstructed FWOTDs
Let’s ask the community if it’s OK to have ’em? — Ungoliant (Falai) 02:36, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I hardly deserve to be consulted first. Of course we ought to, though. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:54, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Hakka reading for 服
There you go! Enjoy! :-) Bumm13 (talk) 05:35, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * You're so awesome. We've needed someone to do hanzi work for a long time, but I never expected it to actually happen. Thanks! —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 13:44, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Code nds at English Wiktionary
There is no language nds-de and so I would not do so. My consequences: I do not further any translation to the englisch Wiktionary. You have the freedom, to do stupid thinks, I have the freedom, to do not so. (All wiktonaries used nds, not nds-de: To do something like this I cannot understand, but I must not understand it, so, do what you will, at time, we worked hard, to make a good wiktionary and than all people, who want something know about Plattdüütsch or Nedersaksisch, that are only to names for the same language, can used our wiktionary. - And by the way: Englisch is nothing else than Plattdüütsch with many french Words! = nds-en, the correct code for Englisch, change it in your Englisch Wiktionary also) --Joachim Mos (talk) 14:06, 16 April 2013 (UTC) PS: You named .ang Oldenglisch, the correct name is Angelsaks'sch and it's nothing else as an old Low Saxon dialect, which was spoken in east Holstein (Angeln) and England (from Platt: Angelland; means: Land of the Angeln), bevor William has conquered England; I speak modern Neddersaks'sch or Plattdüütsch or Low German or how the language is also called, but I can also understand the most of the Angelsaks'sch, can you do also? And Angelsaks'sch is nothing else then Old Plattdüütsch, a dialect, of course, but old Plattdüütsch. When I search for the older forms of a word, I can find them in the ang.wiktionary.org (When it is in it, they have not many articels). The main differences between Plattdüütsch in Dutchland and in Germany is, that the Dutch write for example "z" instead of "s" like in Germany, when they write something on Plattdüütsch. What is going on in your wiktionary is Dutch nationalism à la Wilders and Co., in the Europe of the 21 centery simply an anacronism and has nothing to do with science, only with nationalism: Deal with it.

For myself: I would like, when all people, who write in Plattdüütsch, would do it after the spelling-rules from the old Hanse-times; than we had in our wiktionary much less problems; only in Germany there are many forms, how words are written, one write (engl. east) Ost, the other Oost, the same by west (West - Weest) (in Dutchland they write only Oost and West, what's also not logical, because o and e in east and west would be speek long in all dialects; so there is no sence in the difference spellings, it' only a form of spelling anarchy) And so it makes no sencs, to name nds als nds-de, 'cause that is only the form, in which write the most Plattsnackers, as we called ourself.

And last but not least: Plattdüütsch is spoken also in Denmark: Will you also create a nds-da? --Joachim Mos (talk) 15:22, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * At first, I thought you were in favour of merging nds-de and nds-nl, but your "English is nds-en" and "ang is nds" straw men constitute quite an argument in favour of keeping nds-de and nds-nl separate (since English, Old English, and Low German are quite clearly separate languages). And "Dutch nationalism"? LOL. - -sche (discuss) 18:59, 16 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Joachim, you do not appear to be interested in reasonable debate, but whether you are or not does not concern me. I know almost nothing about Low German. Talk to User:-sche and User:CodeCat if you want to discuss our policy. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:43, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Tajiki
Hi. Could you please fix Module:tg-translit? First, Ц / ц is not used in Tajiki. Could you remove it? Second, there is a problem with transliteration of vowels. When е, и, and ӣ are preceded by another vowel, they are transliterated as "ye", "yi" and "yī", respectively. Thanks. --Dijan (talk) 20:42, 17 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I've tried to fix, seems to be OK now. See Module talk:tg-translit. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 23:49, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Anatoli, looks good now. Sorry, Dijan, I don't actually know any Tajiki so I'm just relying on others familiar with the language to check. Thanks for noticing. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:35, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

namespace check isn't really necessary
See the bottom of User:Maro/headword templates/2. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:34, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
 * For some reason I couldn't get it to work, so I just removed it. I'll try again. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:01, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Can FWOTD feature two words?
I thought it might be nice to have a focus week for antonyms. Each day would feature a word that has near-opposite meanings in two languages. For example, I came across which has opposite meanings in Maori and Esperanto. Would this be possible to do? 03:23, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * We'd have to rewrite somewhat, or maybe create another template. I like the idea, but I'm having trouble thinking of more, because that's not really how my brain works... I always had a little mental trouble with Mandarin  and Spanish, the former of which has x de y mean "y of x" and the latter which has x de y mean "x of y". But that doesn't really come close to the elegance of akiri:. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:13, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Could a single FWOTD-page not just contain two FWOTD-templates? 02:25, 21 April 2013 (UTC)


 * We could add two s to WT:Foreign Word of the Day/YEAR/MONTH/DAY. But, to be honest, we’re already having a hard enough time featuring one word per day :-( — Ungoliant (Falai) 02:27, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

ga-verb
It looks like the same typo that was causing problems with ga-noun is doing likewise with ga-verb. Could you have a look and sort it out, please? embryomystic (talk) 11:14, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, make that ga-proper noun as well. embryomystic (talk) 11:35, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't have time now, so I just reverted myself. That means that currently they still need sort=, but at least they aren't broken. I shouldn't have been editing templates on a PC in the first place. Thanks for checking —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 13:38, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * displays an ugly error in Gaeilge. JackPotte (talk) 11:47, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Template:term
If you disagree with some part of the code, remove that part. Don't just blindly revert all of it, because there are other parts that are not controversial. And it also breaks a bot that is currently running. 02:05, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I'm a little frustrated at you right now. You didn't use edit summaries and I don't know the template that well, so I'd rather not check each of your diffs and quite possibly make a mistake trying to remove it when you have made a controversial change with just 22% support in the BP without even having a community-wide discussion first, as I noted in my comment there. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:09, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't have a problem with removing it until there is a consensus to put it back in. I only disagree with undoing all the other changes. And it seems that you found it easy enough... ironically part of my earlier edits was to make the template code easier to understand so you could find things. :) 02:16, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That helped. I just don't trust myself that much; I mean, look at the previous thread on my talkpage. Honestly, I'm still not quite sure why is malfunctioning. In short, I'm no template genius. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:19, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Bimbette etmyology
The term was used for Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It's confirmed on the Platimum Edition DVD. Angie Y. (talk) 03:10, 21 April 2013 (UTC)
 * So? That information doesn't belong in the etymology. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:44, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Derived terms v related terms
How do we distinguish between the two? Thmazing (talk) 18:18, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Btw, you erased more than just my edits. Thmazing (talk) 18:34, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Derived terms come from a word. Related terms both come from the same word. For more on this topic, see WT:ELE. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:24, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I can't find what else I erased, because I'm not even sure which page you're talking about, but apologies if I made a mistake. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:27, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Reverted addition of "Derived terms" on the platy- page
Hi Metaknowledge,

I added a "Derived terms" section today on the platy- page, which you've reverted. Pondering what could be objectionable in my edit, I suppose it must be that two of the terms (plate and plateau) are cognate to platy- rather than derived from it. That's it, right? So would you be happy with either of
 * 1) removing only those two, but leaving a "Derived terms" section with platykurtic and platypus, or
 * 2) retaining the list of four words but relabelling it "Related terms"?

Also, what is the benefit of having this discussion on your user page, rather than on platy-'s Discussion page where it would be easier for others interested in platy- to find?

Cheers

Davidwbulger (talk) 10:43, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
 * To answer your concerns in the order given:
 * Yes, I reverted because some of your derived terms were not derived. That said, you needn't add a manual list in any case, because we have a technical solution for this kind of problem, in which any page that uses (click on the link for documentation) and says the prefix is "platy-" will add itself automatically. I have added this to platy-.
 * The benefit of having the discussion here is that I will see it and respond. If you posted at Talk:platy-, I would have never noticed and you would be speaking to a wall. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:00, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Well that sounds reasonable. I'm in favour of doing things the right way & automating where possible. I'm still a little in the dark, though. "Platykurtosis" is unedited this year and gives the etymology "," and yet doesn't now appear on platy-'s page; will this be done automatically by some indexing bot, now that you've altered platy-? Also, won't platypus still need manual addition to platy-'s "Derived terms" section, both because "pus" isn't an English word and because platypus's current etymology section contains lots of detailed info we wouldn't want to replace with just that template? Davidwbulger (talk) 00:58, 25 April 2013 (UTC)


 * platypus should not be listed under the derived terms section of platy- because it does not come from platypus. The word comes preformed from the classical languages; we did not create it from the English prefix.  Only words which were created in English, based on the existence of this prefix, should be listed there.  -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 01:05, 25 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Re platykurtosis: This is not done by robots. The exact technical issue in this case was that the page was in a category before that category existed, and so the category doesn't know about it. The problem can be solved by editing the page, as I have done — even just adding a single space will solve the problem.
 * Re platypus: Atelaes is quite right. Just like plateau, derived terms must actually be derived. This shows that it is important to research etymology rather than making blind guesses. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:20, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Alright, I'm satisfied with that. Re platypus, in my defence, the first Europeans to see a platypus were English-speakers, and they clearly did not name it after the beetle. If 2000 years hence, post-English-speakers start calling something a "flatfoot," I think it will be arguable whether they have borrowed "flat" and "foot" or "flatfoot" from English. But I'll drop it; platykurtosis is only one I really need there.
 * I'm pretty sure you've misunderstood that etymology, but it is somewhat poorly written, and peripheral to this discussion. Cheers! —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:03, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

ديوي
Care to explain why you rolled back my edit on the Malay entry for ديوي? The entry for its romanized counterpart "dewi" already lists the correct meaning of "goddess" last I checked, and unless I'm horribly mistaken, the word specifically and absolutely means "goddess," not "god." Goldenbrook (talk) 07:53, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I was just being precautionary, because it seems the page was created by a native Malay speaker. If you are completely sure, feel free to add it back in. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

SoP
In MediaWiki's search, typing 'bodypolitic' brings up body politic. Removing the space or a using a hyphen does not, in my opinion, alter the condition of being a sum of parts. There are 6 texts found in GB using 'catshits', half of the number by a single author, another a proper noun, and one of the others a typo or scanning artifact. Clearly you have a different opinion so I'll just avoid the risk of being corrected by you in the future.

Oh, and you might scan through the deletion log: there are single word entries marked as SoP. - Amgine/t&middot;e 15:44, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Your opinion runs contrary to Wiktionary's goal of "all words in all languages", and appears to be a minority opinion, but that may not be true. That's why I suggested you bring the topic up in a community-wide forum to see what others think.
 * If catshits is unattestable, that's a wholly different matter, and one I was unaware of. You only said "sum of parts", so in no way could I have deduced that.
 * Can you give specific examples instead of pointing me to the deletion log? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Looks good. Two questions, which maybe you can help with...


 * What L3 header to use? If the word can be noun or verb then there's not much point having both - is 'transcription' allowed?
 * Exactly which 'alternative transliterations' should we cover? Currently I've just used it for BG - do we really want it to cover all possible transliterations? This will make Category:Egyptian alternative forms very messy - we could have 6 entries just for s3 ( combinations of [s, z] and [3, ȝ, A]). But then, many non-BG forms may be worth having, especially the notorious i or j. What do you think?

Hyarmendacil (talk) 06:21, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Currently we need to use L3 headers that have already been approved or a bot will mark them as nonstandard. You can always use 'Romanization', which is on the approved list.
 * I could make it categorise separately based on what system you type in as the  (see the documentation if you haven't been using this). Then it wouldn't look that messy. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:28, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, on thinking about it, don't bother to categorise by transliteration type; nobody is going to trawl through the category looking for transliterations anyway. One thing I've just noticed, though: colonises  for alternative transliterations - what about real 'alternative forms' (I've just created ddw as a case in point)? Is it worth splitting the two cases? Hyarmendacil (talk) 08:45, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Good point. I'm not sure what the best decision is, but if you think it's better to split them, I'll do that for you. Just tell me what you want. :) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:30, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it would be good to split. Would it be possible to create, and make categorise into it? Thanks, Hyarmendacil (talk) 07:18, 17 May 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. There may some lag in terms of stuff categorising. Tell me if you have any problems, questions, or concerns. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

vukopis
I was not vandalising vukopis, I only removed Štambak's Yugoslav propaganda, because there is no place for propaganda in encyclopædic content. Élyus (talk) 01:19, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Macedonian entries
Moved to User_talk:Bjankuloski06en --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 10:27, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Template:VL-decl
Would you like to create more Vulgar Latin templates, if it pleases you? --Æ&#38;Œ (talk) 08:04, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I would. The problem is that there is nobody here who appears to be significantly more knowledgeable that I in reconstruction, and we (by "we" I mean people like CodeCat) simply cannot agree even on how many cases to put in. Were I to make the templates, my own biases would shine through, and I would simply be creating some sort of midpoint between Old Italian and Old French. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 12:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * We could go by what Vulgar Latin says, which mentions that the genitive fell out of use in the 3rd century. Also this: "Towards the end of the imperial period, the accusative came to be used more and more as a general oblique case." So in the 5th century the ablative was also mostly gone, but we have to keep in mind that the ablative survived for the formation of adverbs with -mente. The dative probably survived longer, and it definitely survived in pronouns. Another problem we have with Vulgar Latin is the application of sound changes, in particular the vowels. The problem isn't so much that we can't tell when they happened, but where. The major subgroups of today's Romance languages were already being crystallised out at that time. For example, the group that led to Sardinian had already split off from the dialect continuum in the 2nd century, because the merger of short i and long ē in the remaining dialects is dated to the 3rd (Sardinian merged short i and long ī instead). Romanian split off only a century later, merging short u with long ū, with the remaining dialects merging short u with long ō. It's also significant that Romanian retains the genitive. So, the further forward we go, the more dialectal it already becomes and the less unified the language really is. If we really want to treat Vulgar Latin as "Proto-Romance", then the 2nd century is about the latest we can go. If we're willing to do "Proto-Romance-minus-Sardinian" then we can go to the 3rd, and if we can live with excluding Romanian as well, the 4th. That in turn should help us decide which cases there are. Romanian is obviously the main point of contention because of its case system, and it seems that the Romanian genitive-dative plural derives from the Latin genitive, but the singular from the dative, so if we decide to include Romanian, both cases must be included. 13:19, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Why not just add * disclaimers to the cases, saying when they fell out of usage? If we include declined noun forms that were supposedly never used, I dun see the problem: this is hypothesising anyway, how bad could the potential consequences be?


 * Also, our verb conjugations for Old French will include alternative forms in the same spaces. Why not for Vulgar Latin as well…? --Æ&#38;Œ (talk) 13:32, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Asterisk footnotes sound like a good solution. There’s no need to pretend Vulgar Latin was a standardised, centralised language. — Ungoliant (Falai) 13:40, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * We could also show different forms for different dialects. For example:
 * nominative *montanja, *montanjè
 * genitive *montanjè, *montanjaru (Eastern, Sardinian) *montanjaró (Italo-Western)
 * dative *montanjè, *montanjis
 * accusative *montanja, *montanjas
 * ablative *montanja, montanjis
 * That kind of brings up another point. How do we spell it? Writing vowels with macrons doesn't seem particularly appropriate because length distinctions were being lost. I think it would make more sense to denote the two different heights for e and o with accents è ò and é ó, like Catalan and (I think) Occitan do. I also used "j" to spell /j/ to clearly show that it was consonantal and not vocalic like in classical Latin. 14:07, 6 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Shall we create a WT:About Vulgar Latin? — Ungoliant (Falai) 14:11, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, that would be a good idea. We can continue on its talk page. 14:18, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Luckily you guys do seem to know more than I recalled you did; I know very little about Sardinian or Romanian, so my reconstructions go Proto-Italo-Western, I guess. There's just too much time and space, though... we could go conservative and call the acc sing montaniã or go farther and call it montaɲa, and both would be some kind of legitimate Vulgar Latin as I understand it. The graves and acutes are a bit confusing, as they make me think of stress or pitch more than vowel quality itself. I reckon we have to tie things down a bit more or else the footnotes'll swamp the whole bloody thing. Ungoliant, if we don't pretend, how can we present things in a neat way? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:14, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * We could also use an underdot to indicate the mid-high vowels, like Slovene does. It's not intrusive and it allows us to use acute accents for stress, which is closer to what Romance speakers expect it to mean (well, except for French, which does actually them it the way I did). We should probably continue this on Wiktionary talk:About Vulgar Latin. 02:25, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Let's all migrate over. I've started a vowel differentiation thread. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I don’t think two footnotes will swamp it. — Ungoliant (Falai) 02:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Category:Infrastructure modules
I am wondering if a module I want to create belongs in this category. What did you have in mind exactly when you created it? 18:08, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Modules which are not meant to be invoked by a specific template or set of templates, but instead represent some fundamental part of how Wiktionary stores data or logic meant to be used sitewide.
 * The truth is, though, that the only reason I designed our module categorisation system was because nobody else did it first. My choices don't have to be how we actually categorise; if you prefer a different system or a different use for each category, feel free to do as you please. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:36, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I created Module:language utilities. Do you think that would belong there? 00:37, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd put it in Category:Utility modules. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

WP:CAPTION?
Are you refering to this edit? It is a sentence fragment is it not, and should it not use a period? I hope my change is correct and could you provide me the correct policy, or guideline, for it?108.173.62.174 21:40, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Your edit was fine, but the only issue is that your rationale for it was a Wikipedia policy. We don't have policies about captions, because for the most part, we don't use them as much. More on this topic at WT:WFW. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:35, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Information desk
Hi, Metaknowledge, I think your rollback was in error: I think User:Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV wanted to ':'-indent their answer (not just the 1st line, but also the bulleted points). --80.114.178.7 03:47, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

It's not a big deal. If other people have answered, it's better to not edit their comments. --80.114.178.7 03:47, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It doesn't really matter. I just reverted on the principle that others' posts are their domain. If you had written IFYPFY and signed, I would have left it alone. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:15, 19 May 2013 (UTC)
 * If I would have written IFYPFY, User:Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV/User:-sche/User:CodeCat would have blocked me for not showing respect to "heroes with nicknames" (see http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&user=&page=User:129.125.102.126). --80.114.178.7 23:09, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I have no idea where you're getting that idea from, but more importantly I don't want to discuss it with you. You clearly have your own agendas and sensitivities, and that's not my problem. You can discuss it with the editors you named if you so wish. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:58, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Comparative reconstruction
Hi, I'm not sure how comfortable you are with comparative linguistics, but here's my question: If you have two related languages sharing a cognate morpheme which, in one language, functions as a future tense marker, and which, in the other language, functions as both a future tense marker as well as a gnomic/general aspect/tense marker, what would you say you could derive about the protomorpheme's function/meaning? For example:


 * Lang1: (FUT)
 * Lang2: (FUT, GNO)
 * Proto: (?)

Thanks, Jackwolfroven (talk) 20:46, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know. With only two daughter langs and no more info, it would be hell to predict unless there's a cross-lingual trend I'm unaware of. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:41, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

tingo
Since you’re the only one with some knowledge of Rapa Nui around here, can you, before you leave, check whether the dictionary used to cite tingo (download link at Talk:tingo) is appropriate or not, and add it to WT:About Rapa Nui if so. (It might also be a good idea to add a section specifically declaring non-linguistic books like The Meaning of Tingo to be inappropriate for citations.) — Ungoliant (Falai) 14:37, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. That dictionary is really great, and the scholarship isn't out of date, either. I skimmed through, and the only thing I take issue with is their orthography, but I'm beginning to suspect that I would be wise to leave off my strictness in that regard; I'll do some more research once I've Yiddished myself out. Feel free to edit what I wrote. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 14:57, 3 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Enjoy your trip. — Ungoliant (Falai) 15:05, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

De lingua Latina
Salve domine linguae Latinae peritissime,

If you don't mind, I would like to ask you a few questions.
 * how would you say "if you don't mind"?
 * how would you say "once a week"?
 * how would you say "what a pity, what a shame"?
 * do you think sodete as a plural for exist?
 * what do you think of what I wrote on the talk page of ? --Fsojic (talk) 15:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Firstly, I am not so skilled as you may think I am; trusting me will often work, but not always.
 * "if you don't mind" = si tibi non molestum
 * "once a week" = semel in hebdomade (there is probably a better way to say this)
 * "what a pity, what a shame" = tam misericors, tam ignominiosum
 * If sodete exists, I doubt it, for I have never seen it.
 * I agree, but the whole sentence feels wrong; I have substituted a better one. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you! And I have a few questions back :-)
 * For semel in hebdomade, don't you think it could mean "once in this week" (like "I'll do it this week, I don't know which day but I promise you it'll be done")? Shouldn't we add to highlight the idea of repetition?
 * For "what a pity", I was rather thinking of the meaning of . As in "You can't come to the party? Too bad."
 * For sodete, I haven't found it in dictionaries indeed. So it seems sodes can be used even when addressing several people? (don't hesitate to point out the English mistakes, they sure are legion) --Fsojic (talk) 10:06, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, adding quisque is a good idea. I can't really imagine how a Roman would be coerced into saying "too bad"; maybe you want to say tam infelix or something like that. And yes, sodes is an adverb, so it isn't really used for address (which would explain why it is invariable). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:08, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * You might be interested: I found for this. Displicet quod nimis multae sunt reliquiae nec otium est nobis singulatim eas videndi. (Desessard's Assimil, Lectio Nonagesima sexta). --Fsojic (talk) 18:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Welcome back
I hope that you had a good trip. :) -Cloudcuckoolander (formerly Astral) (talk) 05:31, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you, it was excellent. The wikibreak may have been a good thing as well, although as you can see from my contribs, I miss editing Wiktionary. While traveling I carried a notebook in my pocket to record any words in Spanish that I found that I hadn't seen or heard before, and now I'm adding them all. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:35, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I've got the same habit. I absorb interesting and unfamiliar words that I encounter, and file them away in my brain or jot them down on whatever's conveniently available. -Cloudcuckoolander (formerly Astral) (talk) 20:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

פֿאַראייניקט
Does that really make a difference? I figured was preferable for cases like this. 20:16, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * We use for all the Yiddish conjugated forms, in part because the excessive parameters are annoying (like specifying that it is indicative - in Yiddish, this is assumed). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:22, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh but you can remove those easily. Of course if it's normal to use then that's ok, but what about something more like, where the different "parts" are customised for Yiddish usage?  20:25, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Doesn't particularly need customisation, but if you want, we can. My only request is that if you make a template, that you apply it to the existing entries. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:35, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Template:mul-proper noun
If you are interested, see Template_talk:mul-proper_noun. DCDuring TALK 00:09, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Foreign Word of the Day
Do you still want to actively work with FWOTD? You seem to have kind of given up. — Ungoliant (Falai) 23:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The answer is mixed. It's true that I've been beyond negligent, and the only way I made myself feel better about forcing all the work on you was that you seem so suited to the job. I will admit that I edit Wiktionary more for the preservation of my own state of mind than out of true altruism, which explains my irregular editing patterns. I don't find FWOTD as rewarding, but I also think I should help to make up for a tiny bit of the labor I foisted upon you. But I think it's undeniable that you're the dictator of the FWOTD cabal (if you want to step down, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish to deal with). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:14, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I don’t plan on abandoning it, but I’ve been doing a horrible job. I really need someone else to help; would you be too angered if I asked for someone else to join as the third official co-FWOTD-setter? — Ungoliant (Falai) 02:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't get angered by statements of fact. CodeCat has expressed interest before, but she may very well be too busy; Angr would be a great choice as well if he is interested. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:41, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Reply
Oh, by the way, I replied to the post you made on my talk page. Cheers, Razorfl<b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 21:49, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I know; I just had nothing to say. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:50, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I was kinda wanting you to reply since I still don't know why you brought it up. Sure, I know that I might be stepping out of my boundaries in terms of the languages I'm editing, but I'm only doing so after extensive research.  I know that I have been careless and reckless in the past, and I mean to make up for it by being more careful now more than ever.  I'm pretty much teetering on the brink of an indef ban at this point in time, and I don't want to ruin my ability to edit here simply because I was too careless or reckless.  That's why the edits I make after extensive research only account for 2-3% of the edits that I'm going to make in the future in languages that I'm learning, and I will only do so after extensive research and validation to make sure that it is absolutely 100% before I even submit it.  The only 97-98% of my future edits will be in Esperanto, Ido, Spanish, Kannada, and a little Italian.  I hope to eventually be able to get proficient enough at Finnish to be able to make entries in that language here, but I know that I'm a ways off from being able to do so.  I will be eliciting the help of a certain Finnish-speaking user here on the English Wiktionary for more help in getting used to the language, and in a few months time, I hope to be adding entries in Finnish :)  Anyways, sorry for this rambling post, as this is going to be part of a message that I will be leaving the entire English Wiktionary community tomorrow, and I don't want people to jump to conclusions about my intentions like they have in the past.  Anyways, thanks for reading this and cheers, <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 21:56, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it should be obvious why I brought it up. You made an oath, and you broke it. Normally, that would be your own business, but in this case it may compromise the quality of Wiktionary entries, which makes it my business. The only conclusions I jump to are the ones suggested by your own history, much of it as detailed on your talkpage archives. By the way, I don't know anything about Kannada, but I can muster up some conversational ability in Esperanto, Ido, or Spanish if you want to talk in any of those languages. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:02, 18 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I did make that oath, however, that oath was broken way in the past. Three years in the past, to be exact.  Therefore, as I stated above, I'm making amends for what I've done in the past.  The second I believe I'm harming this project is the day that I will stop editing in this project. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 22:07, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Regarding "ab ovo [usque] ad mala"
May I ask why you reverted my addition of "usque" to ab ovo ad mala? — Singlestone
 * The saying in its standard form is without usque and the headword line on that page should reflect the page title. Perhaps ab ovo usque ad mala should be created as an alternative form, but it can just as easily be made a redirect in my opinion. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * What makes you say that the form without usque is the standard form? Horace uses it with usque in Satires book I, 1.3. I can't find a Latin citation of the other form. — Singlestone
 * I went searching around, you're right. Oddly enough, both forms with and without usque are cited to Horace, but the only copy I have handy uses it. I'll move it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:33, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

SC history
I don't want to continue a thread others have wisely decided to drop, so I'm posting this here rather than on Ivan's talk page, but I want to note that the vote to unify Serbo-Croatian actually didn't pass. It reached an insufficient level of consensus because of a lot of sock- and meat-puppeting and voting by non-members of en.Wikt, and histrionic comparisons of the merger to genocide (by respected veteran Wiktionarians!). It was only in later discussions that consensus was reached to merge BCSM. That absolutely does not invalidate the merger—most dialects which en.Wikt has merged have been merged following discussion rather than a formal vote—and I share your and Ivan's opposition to splitting them. But I want the history to be clear. - -sche (discuss) 21:36, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Why are we whispering? But in any case, you're right. I guess my retroactive application of Wiktionary policy is merely wishful thinking. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Ha! I thought I was the only one who knew this. — Ungoliant (Falai) 03:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Pywikipediabot
I've configured it, but still unable to get the hang of it... I suppose I'll learn. What syntax should I use to replace with  (via replace.py)? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:15, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't normally use the pre-made scripts, I write my own in Python itself. If you don't know Python then that may take a little time to learn, but I learned Python more or less by making MewBot, so it's not that hard I think. Here is what I would write, based on the description you gave:


 * The above is probably not the fastest or most ideal way to do it, but it works. 11:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It's throwing an error report that mentions line 25 as the culprit; I tried fixing it but couldn't actually get it to work right. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 14:53, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * [moved to your talk page] Which line is 25 in your file? 16:30, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:27, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see why. Try changing "title" to "page.title"? 01:39, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I forgot to tell you that it all works. I think I'm going to use regexes instead though, as it's nearer my comfort zone. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:05, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Odd, though. I still can't get a simple (non-regex) text replacement to work; when I put in <tt>python replace.py -cat:Swahili_nouns summary:Template_update  -ns:0</tt> it responded:

-bash: noun}}: command not found -bash: sw: command not found And then precedes to scan the category's contents and tell me that there are no replacements to make, which is untrue. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:19, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The pipe character has a special meaning in bash, so you should use double quotation mark. --Z 07:13, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I tried that already, putting the text to replace and text to be replaced in double quotes, but then I get a different error message:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "replace.py", line 967, in    main File "replace.py", line 755, in main raise pywikibot.Error, 'require even number of replacements.' pywikibot.exceptions.Error: require even number of replacements. So I was trying to avoid that as well. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 07:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Well this error is a progress actually, the previous error message was from bash which means the code could not be run at first place. The problem was that you didn't put a hyphen before "summary". --Z 08:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow, my errors are so exceptionally stupid... Thank you, all is well now. In any case, I'm doing it semi-manually, so there won't be faulty edits. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:22, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I thought that regexes would be easier, but when I tried searching for Swahili nouns beginning with <tt>Ki</tt> by using <tt>-titleregex:'^(?=Ki).+'</tt> it ignored the regex. I learned regexes long enough ago that I wouldn't be surprised if I've forgotten things, but I don't see it. Or should it just be <tt>'^Ki.+'</tt> perhaps? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:37, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * What is the ?= for? I think just ^Ki should be enough. 11:43, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It's quite frustrating... in case anything else is obviously wrong, here's the whole line I'm inputting:  —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:02, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Regular expressions are case sensitive, so maybe you need a lowercase k? 16:57, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I actually want an uppercase K. It doesn't particularly matter anymore, since I've found most of the offenders, but I'd still like to be able to use regexes. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:59, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, since you agreed to try, here is the first request. I had created for Armenian and Old Armenian usage examples before we had. Now I want to delete and switch to. Can you replace all instances of <tt> </tt> (tr= is optional and usually is not provided; in rare cases 2 is also absent) with <tt>  </tt> or <tt>  </tt>. The bot will have to determine the L3 header, either ===Armenian=== or ===Old Armenian===, and use <tt>lang=hy</tt> or <tt>lang=xcl</tt>, as appropriate. I realize this is not trivial and won't be sad if you are unable to help. --Vahag (talk) 09:10, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The answer is "maybe but not now". I think that sounds like an AWBish job anyway, but I might be able to do it, I don't know. However, I'm currently using the bot to delete thousands of deprecated templates, which will take many hours more (and it only runs when I'm online). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:40, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, no problem! --Vahag (talk) 06:55, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Didelphis gender
From Mammal Species of the World:
 * Didelphys Schreber, 1778, is an invalid emendation of Didelphis Linnaeus, and Leucodidelphys Krumbiegel, 1941, is an invalid emendation of Leucodidelphis Ihering, 1914. Didelphus Lapham, 1853, is an incorrect subsequent spelling of Didelphis Linnaeus.

I wonder if the spelling confusion contributed to gender confusion. I really don't see much gender confusion that is not eventually resolved. OTOH, there are cases where I can't tell what the gender might be because neither specific epithet not Etymology resolves it unambiguously, AFAICT. DCDuring TALK 17:56, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, the spelling problems are likely because in Anglo-Latin (and I think in German Latin as well) all those spellings are pronounced identically. The gender confusion is more because 3rd decl -is nouns can easily belong to either gender; see versus . But anyway, you know my opinion on gender and Translingual. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:22, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what you have based your opinion on, so it's hard for me to share it. ~99% of the genera I have seen have genders that can be inferred from specific epithets or etymology.  Of the balance some have no such evidence and a very few seem to have conflicting evidence, which might be resolvable if one knew more taxonomic history. DCDuring TALK  20:38, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * On some level, I don't think we should have taxa at all. I often wish we could just export it all to Wikipedia, whose content we're duplicating anyway, or hell, Wikispecies, which is designed for this purpose. But in the end, I'm willing to accept it, I guess, but only in that it leaves Latin alone — true Latin, the Latin of running text. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:08, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * If they had all of etymologies, translations, interproject links, and vernacular names, then I'd be in favor of removal too. WP and WS don't seem to like each other and have no links between them.  WP doesn't have much by way of translations/vernacular names and WS is quite spotty. Neither bother much with etymologies.
 * But I was interested in your statement about there being many genus names for which multiple genders were used. I just don't haven't seen all that much of it.  Where would I look to find it?  DCDuring TALK  22:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * What you've said is just false. Have you ever read Wikipedia? WP entries have etymologies and vernacular names more often than we do, and they link to WS as a rule. If they agreed to take us up on the offer of exporting it (and it wouldn't be hard to convince them, I think), they'd be doing pretty well with the combined info.
 * I don't know, nobody makes lists of these sorts of things IME. I was always just taught the correct scientific names (or, to be more exact, what was considered correct at the time), and gender discrepancies are just one of those things you start to notice if you read old comparative vertebrate anatomy books for fun. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:36, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * You're mighty quick with accusations. WP rarely has morphological etymologies and is spotty on the others.  Considering the neglect of our entries over the years, I'm amazed by what we have.  WP has hardly any vernacular name coverage for taxonomic names, though WS does.  You are right about the links in WP to WS.  It is the other direction that is mostly absent. DCDuring TALK  23:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that was pretty rude. I have a habit of writing what I want to say, and then deleting it because it's too rude, but sometimes it slips out. What the heck is a morphological etymology? I'd still contest the bit about WP and vernacular names, but WS is enough to cover it, in any case. But I think you want to keep it all at WT and improve it, if I understand your position correctly. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:35, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * OK. I get pretty nasty sometimes, so a little rudeness reminds me of how it might feel for others.
 * I have since narrowed my middle-term focus for adding taxonomic entries to:
 * those for which we already have uses in enwikt, especially in non-Translingual entries.
 * those that have vernacular names in Wikispecies
 * those I find in my readings
 * Obsolete names, especially supergeneric, are neglected in the world at large AFAICT and confusing when found in older works. There is value to be added though the task may be beyond what Wiktionary can do. [[Saurornithes]] is a possible example of the revival of an obsolete term.
 * Together with bringing existing entries up to a standard, these items will take quite some time.
 * As this effort progresses either the lexicographic value will prove itself or taxonomic names will revert to the shunned backwater it was. DCDuring TALK 17:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Changes to Template:reconstructed
What are they for? 19:00, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Formerly, if WT:About Proto-Algonquian didn't exist, there'd be an ugly redlink at the top that's not likely to get created anytime soon. Now it only links iff that page exists. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That's the point of red links though, to show that something needs to be created. Trying to hide them defeats the whole point. If you just don't like the red, use CSS styling to make it black or something. 19:21, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I disagree, because I don't really think that the creation of protolanguage About pages is especially important. There are some exceptions, like your WT:AGEM, which is useful because there are a few different contributors regularly editing and creating PGmc pages, but for most protolanguages, only one person is going to be dealing with them for the foreseeable future. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:32, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Flood flag removal
You really should remember to remove the flood flag after you're done with it. This is the second time I've seen you do other things with it on other than what you were going to do with it on...you should get in the habit of removing it right after you are done with it, even if you still have more stuff with it left to do. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 04:50, 5 August 2013 (UTC)


 * This is why I de-flagged you the other day, btw: I noticed you weren't making any more mass edits, and didn't notice that you were still making mass deletions (sorry!).
 * Don't feel bad, I've forgotten to de-flag myself quite a few times... - -sche (discuss) 05:04, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * @Both of you: Yeah, I make some edits while I'm flood-flagging, although a lot (most?) of it is vandalism reversion, or edits on discussion pages. Hopefully, after the Luacisation period we'll never have to delete thousands of templates on Wiktionary ever again, which is the only reason I'm using my main account for this job.
 * @Razorflame: You don't seem to understand quite how it works, but more to the point I feel like you're writing this message as an oblique response to my last message to you. Yes, I'm not perfect either, but in light of your editing history, I feel like you have even less of a right to be patronising to me than I do to you. (Not that I should be patronising at all, but I'm frustrated.)
 * @-sche: It doesn't really matter much; you can de-flag me if you notice I'm done before I do. This category should be the last for now. At a rate of 6 deletions per minute, though, RC stands no chance of being useful at all if you de-flag me prematurely. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:18, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Nope, I wasn't writing this in response to what you wrote on my talk page. Furthermore, I have every right to patronise someone if I see they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing with the flag.  I think you are forgetting that I've actually been an administrator on another project in the past, and in addition to that, I also know everything there is to know about the flood flag.  I know it should only be used if you are going to be flooding the recent changes, and I know that that's the only reason it should be used for.  If I were in your situation, I would've deflagged myself before talking on other people's talk pages and then reflagged myself to finish what I was doing.  So your comment isn't that valid.  Furthermore, just because someone has a bad edit history does not mean that they have any less right to be critical of someone else. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 23:31, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If you were in my situation, you wouldn't be running a bot, because you have a history of questionable editing and your bot is blocked AFAIK. So yeah, I think we should all stop being patronising based on the principle that being an asshole is bad, but right now I'm really annoyed at you, so I'm having trouble convincing myself of that precept. I should think that if you started following the rules I wouldn't have any problem with you lecturing people, including myself, now and then. At the current time, however, I'll gladly see you spend your time tagging the entries you added in error for deletion rather than telling me exactly how to do my work. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I wasn't referring to that. I was saying if you and I had switched places and we had inherited each others' reputations and everything, that's what I wouldn't have done.  Furthermore, I'm not telling you how to do your work.  I'm giving you a suggestion.  As for the entries, I'll get to marking the ones that I can't find any sources for for deletion tomorrow. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 04:43, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If it's really a suggestion, then you ought to learn how to phrase it thus. It sounds like a polite command, really. In any case, I await your long-promised weeding. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:33, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * True, I don't have a good way with words. Anyways, I wanted to clean up my Kannada entries and mark those for deletion today, so I'll start on the Ido entries tomorrow. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 04:43, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That's ironic to say the least, considering your lexicographic aspirations. You can't keep putting off the Ido protologisms forever. More than a week ago you told me you'd hope to have it done in a "few days", and you keep saying "tomorrow". You are still not engendering trust. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 08:12, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * True, however I should have it done within a fairly decent period of time. I'll start working on them today and will have them done in a few days.  The reason why I'm putting them off for so long is because I'm trying to find sources for some of the entries that I've made, and that is taking up a good portion of my time.  I'm trying to do the right thing here. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 02:51, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Razorflame's Ido entries
I've done as you asked and marked the entries that I could not find any sources for deletion. All other entries have at least one other source or reference. In case you ask what my sources are, you can find them on my userpage, underneath the "Ido" section. Thanks, <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 04:10, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, thank you. However, dictionaries are not acceptable as sources to cite a word unless they actually use it in an example sentence (see ). If I look at Ido entries that you have created recently, will all of them have three uses somewhere in durably archived media? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No. Most of them will only have one or two durably archived uses.  Ido is not a language that has a lot of readily available resources, which is what makes it so difficult for me to validate a lot of the words that I'm adding.  I know they're real words in Ido; the problem is that hardly any of them are readily documented elsewhere on the Internet.  I will continue to look for more sources for the entries that I've made, and if I cannot find any within a couple of days, I'll start marking them for deletion.


 * Furthermore, most of the Ido language is only found in dictionaries, and to disclude them from the English Wiktionary just because of that aspect of the language seems a bit unfair to me. I mean, if I can find sources for each word, even if they are dictionaries, they should be allowed to stay because it shows that they are found elsewhere, and are not protologisms.  The main issue with constructed and artificial languages is that most of the words are going to either be protologisms or words that don't have enough resources to allow them to be added to the English Wiktionary.  I'm trying my best to find sources for all of the words that I've added, but the issue is is that there are very, very few resources from which I can draw from. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 21:24, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That's the exact definition of a protologism. A word that has sources, but is not actually used. We don't allow those kinds of words in English, and I don't think we should allow them for Ido. Idists have compiled long wordlists of terms that they think others might like to use, but that doesn't mean they are in fact used; some may never be. Wiktionary's job is to describe existing use of language, not to list words that could be used (that's one of the purposes of the Appendix, where such material could be accepted). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The fact of the matter is that these "wordlists" are used in the official web site of the Ido language, and are very well-known throughout the entire Internet. They are words that are used every single day (most of them), but actual references in "books" are very few because most of the time, they are found in Internet chat, word lists, and other such things.  Your stance is kind of like saying Ido itself is a protologism since the majority of the words in the Ido language falls under this category.  Ido hasn't been around as long as Esperanto, and therefore, hasn't had the time to accumulate the book references that Esperanto has yet.  I'm willing to give the language a chance if others are.  <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 03:43, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If they were truly well known and used, you'd think they'd come up in books and Usenet posts, no? A lot of your words are not realistically going to be used "every single day", like alotropo, and that was never the purpose of the official wordlists. I believe that Ido itself is not a protologism, just that many of its words are. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:09, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I kind of get where you're coming from now. I don't think that very many of the words that I've made here are protologisms at this point in time.  Though they do lack resources, I don't think that they are fundamentally going to be protologisms. The one word I will mark for deletion is desferizar.  After much thought, I don't see it being used very much. <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 20:33, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I still don't think you get it. ferizar is just as much a problem as desferizar. It doesn't matter whether you think the word will be used much. What matters is whether the word actually is used enough. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:36, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, I do get it...I guess I just fail at wording a lot D: Yeah, since I marked desferizar for deletion, I'll go ahead and mark ferizar as well.  It matters whether the word is actually used.  You are right XD <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 20:38, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * But it still feels like I'm not getting across. It's not that you should mark for deletion the entries which I point out. You should, as you promised, actively look through your contributions to ensure that they are CFI-compliant. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:41, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, every entry that I've made since this discussion has started are definitely CFI-compliant. I'll actively go back through my thousands of entries and mark the ones for deletion that need to be marked.  It will take some time, but there will possibly be some marked for deletion every day from now until I'm done. I'm not going to do it all at once, but over a period of time.  <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 20:43, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

why
You're basically approving his behavior with what you did. Was this really necessary? -- Liliana • 22:39, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I think preventing him from posting on his talkpage is needless assholism, especially since we all know he can keep using proxies if he wants to. And it's not as if I reverted your removal of the whole tumor from his talkpage, which seems questionable enough to me on its own. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:42, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not like I'm giving him the finger on purpose, I just want to prevent any further damage to be done to Wiktionary. The climate here is already intoxicated due to this RF/Dan conflict thing, I don't want it to get even worse. -- Liliana • 22:44, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, the block is a purely symbolic move, so it does at least superficially resemble giving the finger. I personally have had negative interactions with both of them, so I probably wouldn't block either unless they do something egregious. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:50, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Too bad we don't have something like an interaction ban. That would be the best option by far. -- Liliana • 23:03, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * They do something like that on some Wikipedias, I think. It's pretty stupid, and it reeks of ArbCommunism. If en.wikt ever got like that, I think I'd leave. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:06, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * edit: By "that" I mean how en.wiki is now. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:07, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not talking of Arbcom. We should never have stuff like that. Wikipedia is not communism, it is an oligarchy and should stay that way. But the idea by itself could work out if it were actually enforced. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon. -- Liliana • 23:10, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Don't get me wrong, I'm a socialist myself. Wikipedia just reminds me of the government in Laos, which btw is called "communism" even though it isn't. I just think that the enforcement of topic bans, interaction bans, etc lends itself to that kind of power structure. Hell, the admin discretion policy out here is like the Wild West, so if you want to try it, more power to you. But if it goes horribly wrong I'll never forgive you. ;) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:14, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, you know more about politics than I do. You win. -- Liliana • 23:16, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I doubt it, but ok then... —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:28, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Afrikaans adjectives
I am looking at an Afrikaans grammar book and I think that the current template is really insufficient. Although it lost the distinction between genders and definiteness, Afrikaans appears to have retained all the inflections more generally. So it has the predicative, attributive and partitive forms, and the comparative also has a partitive form, while the superlative has only one form. So that gives 6 forms altogether. I don't think that would fit on the headword line, so we probably need to make a small inflection table for it? 22:47, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I don't have access to any complete Afrikaans grammars. Do you know of a good one I can read in full online?
 * In any case, I'm afraid I don't know all the forms. The only ones I think are needed on the headword-line are: headword, inflected form, comparative, superlative. Are there others that are both distinct and not just, say, the inflected comparative form (which does not need to be on the headword-line)? By the way if you have a specific question, I do have a native Afrikaans-speaking acquaintance to whom I can shoot an email. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * PS: Verbs that end in -eer almost always seem to have two past participles, one with ge- and one identical to the headword. Is it safe enough to make that default behavior, you think? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:06, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it would be easier to generalise once we have a lot more verbs covering a lot more cases. After all, the best statistics are in our own entries. :) Once we have like 1000 verb entries, we can configure Module:af-headword to categorise entries based on their endings and such, much in the same way that sort keys are currently categorised. We can then see what proportion of verbs follows the rules you propose, and which don't. That will then give us an idea of how sensible it would be to add new rules to the module for specific cases, and for how many it would not work.
 * For there are at least the following forms: predicative, attributive , partitive , comparative pred/attr. , comparative partitive , superlative . Those same six forms are also found in Dutch with the same meaning, except that in Dutch the comparative has its own attributive form  which Afrikaans lacks. See the table at . The source for this is "A Grammar of Afrikaans" by Donaldson, which is partially available on Google Books (I haven't found a full version). I was actually surprised that the partitive survived into Afrikaans, as it's not really a very frequently used form in Dutch either. In Dutch, it's only used after indefinite pronouns, like in iets groots "something big", weinig leuks "not much (that is) fun". Afrikaans also uses it this way, although the book mentions that it's starting to fall out of use in colloquial speech, but not in standard Afrikaans.
 * The approach we currently use for Dutch is to put only the comparative and superlative in the headword line, but I'm now wondering if it would not be better to put the inflected and partitive forms there instead. After all, those are the forms that would be more immediately useful, and the comparative can be derived from the inflected form by adding -r in most (but not all) cases. In any case, shows all the forms, so presumably we need a  as well.  12:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I fixed some entries you created:, . has the past participle  and not  which you put there. That's a separate verb altogether (like in Dutch).  12:42, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't know if trusting our own entries is really the best method. I for one am relying on Google Books heavily to make sure that the forms I put in exist, but I often have trouble with present participles, as they aren't used much and I haven't had great luck filtering out Dutch.
 * I must have seen the partitive forms before, but if I have I never thought about it. They are certainly used in Afrikaans, not with frequency, but will at least be attestable for common adjectives. I chafe at Afrikaans inflection tables, but I suppose I don't see a way around it. That said, I hope we don't just copy the Dutch ones, because I've always found those to be much too big for the few forms they contain.
 * Thank you for the corrections. The one at was just a thinko. I wanted to put that in Related terms, and mixed the two. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:44, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In a way it's like the etymological work I already do with Germanic and such, except that I speak the ancestor language. :) Figuring out Afrikaans versions of many words just kind of comes naturally to me, in most cases it's the same as the Dutch and there are sometimes just a few small predictable differences. So intuition helps me a lot. The hard part for me is more in knowing which grammatical forms have been retained and which have been lost, but those that have been retained will normally have more or less the same meaning and usage. I can read Afrikaans without much trouble at all even though I never studied it.
 * Knowing Dutch helps especially with the present participle. In Dutch, the present participle is probably the most regular form of all because it's just the infinitive with -d. But because while the Afrikaans infinitive is derived from the Dutch present singular, they're much more different. However, the present participle resembles the Dutch one much more closely, and is usually more or less identical, so knowing the Dutch one lets you figure out the Afrikaans one as well. 17:16, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Diminutive for pl-noun
I wish there's a parameter for diminutive and/or augmentative forms of Polish nouns, like the one for Lower Sorbian nouns. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 03:41, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. I updated the documentation accordingly. Check that it works as you would like. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * TY. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 04:55, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You could take a look at grusza, which has an augmentative form, I think. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 06:42, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Fixed, but make sure other stuff doesn't pop up. Try one with both a diminutive and augmentative. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:16, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

,, etc.
Hi,

I saw your post. Are you able to run a bot to fix Russian nouns, verbs (and possibly other PoS) that don't use templates, please? Even identifying them would be helpful. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:10, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Certainly, although it will be a little while until it's done with Polish. I would need to know exactly what the format of the headword-lines looks like when it uses, and how it should look once fixed. For example, can I just change all   to   or will things like   and inflection information confuse the template? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:15, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Perhaps splitting by situations would be easier. Most often nouns have no template at all, just bolded like this: TERM (TRANSLITERATION), the gender is added at the back , the transliteration is given in the brackets. I don't know what's possible. Practice with Polish first, please let me know when you can do it. Nouns should look like this: .  should be converted to . --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:32, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * OK. Going case-by-case is a lot slower, but it may be necessary. When I do Russian nouns, I will post here so you can scan the bot's contribs and make sure that everything is going as you wish. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:36, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, sounds good to me. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It's very, very slow but MetaBot is indeed now working through Russian nouns. Please peek through the contribs; I haven't seen anything go wrong yet but I'd like to have a native speaker be scanning over the changes. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. It's looking good mostly but I found a problem with noun forms like бега. is updated to non-existent {[temp|ru-noun form}}. So, "noun form" should not be updated, unless I missed something. Is the bot only updating cases with ? Will it work with entries with no templates? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:19, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * 1. I didn't think of that, so for now I made a temporary and I'll remove all uses of it when I'm done with this run, then I'll delete it. Thank you for noticing! Please be on the look out for stuff like that.
 * 2. I'm just doing the ones with head first, because they're easier, but I intend to do them all. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:26, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I'm not sure, perhaps could be used if it's working. I have reverted changes for "noun forms" but perhaps it was better with the template. Need to check with other languages. Yes, I'll be on the lookout. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:33, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No need to revert, the bot will do it. The template is just a temporary filler, if you like it then we'll need to add more capabilities. If you want to improve it then I can proliferate it with the bot. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:42, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep . I think it's useful, I've made a small change. Please let me know when you start checking for other problems. I can't find a noun problem but here's a verb, which uses no PoS templates: [[баять]]. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 04:42, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, it'll need transliteration and the rest, maybe gender support too? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:48, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I'm trying to find examples like you mentioned but I'm having trouble. Are you any good at regexes by any chance? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:01, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I never worked with the DB dump. What sort of regex do you need? Awk? Not sure I may help. I need to learn to work with DB dump. You can test on verbs if nouns can't be found. Yes, ideally gender and transliteration should be supported but only if, , , are provided and the transliteration is given in brackets. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 05:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not working on the DB dump, I'm doing it directly. For example, looking for rogue Russian nouns I tried  but I think I made a mistake. And when I mentioned gender etc I was talking about . —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No, no need to support gender in . I'm curious, where do you apply this regex? In the search window? How do you use ?--Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 05:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Take a look at mw:Manual:Pywikipediabot. I'm using Terminal on my Mac. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:29, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you but it seems a bit too complicated. Sorry, I couldn't help. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:53, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

broederbond
Are you sure that this doesn't mean "brotherly bond" or "fraternity" or similar? Brotherhood is. 23:33, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I noticed that, actually. FWIW, says "brotherhood", and I trusted that. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:38, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * But "brotherhood" has multiple senses. One refers to the abstract concept of being brothers (like parenthood, friendship), while the other is an actual group of people. 23:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I assume -bond is countable senses and -skap uncountable. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:44, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The Dutch senses of might clarify things.  23:49, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * How's my gloss? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:52, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That looks better yes. 00:13, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

gewese
I noticed you were unsure so I added an etymology there. Does that help? 13:03, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That does help, but I more or less knew the etymology (well, I knew it came from zijn). The part I'm most unsure of is the inflection. By the way, I see that you've been looking over and editing my entries, and I appreciate that. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:04, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In Dutch, adjectives ending in -en that originate as past participles or "material made from" don't get an -e in the inflected form, unlike all other adjectives. Afrikaans lost all past participles in -en unless they were converted into adjectives, but it also lost the -n so these would now all end in -e in both the predicative and attributive forms. At least that seems like the most likely outcome. So I think the inflection is correct. Also, I've noticed that most verbs that end in -we tend to have an alternative form ending in -f in Afrikaans. That might be something to check when you add such verbs. 20:28, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, good to know. I've noticed the -we/-f alternation, and I've been making alt-forms, although I'm never quite sure which should be the lemma and which the alt. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Quotation translation reply

 * I've gone ahead and taken a look at the translation, and for the most part, it was correct. I just needed to make two changes to two words: proxime and pruvas. pruvas is the present tense of the very pruvar, which is to prove, and proxime is best translated as approximately, or closely.  Nearly and closely are fairly close translations, so I substituted in closely there.  There are two other notes that I need to make: bonstando is not an Ido word as far as I can tell...if it was, it would be a compound of bona and stando.  Stando does mean situation, but in a permanent condition.  I have no idea why the quotation made bonstando an Ido word when I've never heard of it, nor is it in the Ido Wiktionary.  Pro-porcionale is the other word.  This is the alternative form of proporcionale, which as you correctly translated, does mean proportionally.  Cheers, <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 22:01, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you, it was good to get a little Ido practice. Are you sure about proxime though? The sentence makes a bit less sense with "closely", maybe your suggestion of 'approximately' would be the best choice after all. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I put closely over approximately because with approximately, it didn't make as much sense as with closely, but if you think approximately works better, feel free to change it :) <b style="color:#00C">Raz</b><b style="color:#009">or</b><b style="color:#006">fl</b><b style="color:#003">am</b><b style="color:#000">e</b> 03:50, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Latin translation at aeruginosus
Could I ask for your opinion on something? There's a Latin cite at aeruginosus which I'm trying to translate; in it Seneca is referencing the colloquialisms of the other orators, and I'm struggling to work out exactly what they mean. Could you have a look? Thanks, Hyarmendacil (talk) 06:33, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I fixed the quote. It's a terrible choice, though, because obviously 'rusty' is being used as a sexual euphemism. I'm not sure, but my best guess is that Bassus Julius is alluding to the way that the virginal purity of her hand has metaphorically rusted as she uses her hand for sexual purposes. It's better to get a quote that actually supports the definition in question, and if you can find a scholar who has decided exactly what this use means, you can create a new definition line to put this under. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:12, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Managed to get another quote. I can't find any info on the euphemistic sense; I'll leave that quote up until somebody can. Hyarmendacil (talk) 05:53, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

usuarius
Would this be a candidate for ? 18:16, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, I was wrong — the sense of usuarius that you're thinking of is a WMF protologism, but there is another sense attested in relation to the finer points of Roman law. I'll add the entry. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:23, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I found a source that mentions the user of "usuarius" by William of Ockham, to mean "user". It's also not just a WMF protologism in the modern sense, there are also plenty of results on Usenet, although I don't know how many of them are actual uses. Still, I do suppose that this is at least in some minimal use under a banner...?  19:31, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
 * What I was really thinking of was, which doesn't seem to have been used before la.wp took it up (see WT:RFV). But I'll take a look on Usenet and if I can find two uses of it there I'll add the sense to the entry. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:34, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

swb = Maore Comorian ≠ Comorian
See http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=swb So when one uses swb in the Wiktionary,
 * Maore Comorian: should appear, and not * Comorian: . Code changed in 2009. Water = madji [maji] in Ngazidja Comorian and maji [maʒi] in Maore Comorian. I'll try to create an 'About' page soon, after some reflection on it. --Echtio (talk) 22:04, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Gah, I'll change it and hope it doesn't break something. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:51, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Welcoming users
Hi Meta! I'm glad to see you're still active on Wiktionary. Things have calmed down and I can contribute again a little, and was wondering about our project where we welcomed people who made additions to rare languages. Would you be interested in alerting me when you run across newbies like that? I think that would be a way I could contribute without too much of a time commitment. BB12 (talk) 05:36, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, nice to see you again, so to speak. I've less time on Wiktionary nowadays, as can be seen from how little I've edited this last week. The only user I can think of off the top of my head is (see previous section on my talkpage), who's working with Ngazidja Comorian, which is pretty exciting. It might not be hard to change some of the Swahili templates I've written to work for the Comorian lects. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:35, 7 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Very cool, thanks. Keep me in mind if you run across others. BB12 (talk) 19:37, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Classical Nahuatl needs your help again
Hey! I'm back-ish (I don't know if you remember me). I was working on some Classical Nahuatl entries again and noticed some of the changes that were made to simplify the use of some templates, like not having to provide macroned and non-macroned versions of words when using. Was that you? (it's such a blessing)… That aside, I'm here to bother you in that regard again; it'd be pretty useful if there were a way of indicating when a noun functions as a locative (as I have done manually in, for example (much in the say way we can indicate animate and inanimate nouns now). I noticed you're really busy… like really, but I hope you can give it a try sometime soon. Hi again, and thanks in advance for all your help. —Косзмонавт (talk) 22:53, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi. Of course I remember you, and if I didn't I would pretend. I'm busy to be sure, but hopefully not "really busy".
 * First of all, I didn't have anything to do with the macron thing, that was part of a big improvements to our linking capabilities that other users have been working on. Glad it's helpful.
 * In response to the locative thing, do you want it to categorise locatives a certain way? If so, what would the name of the category be?
 * Oh, and a minor thing, but templates like will probably deleted someday, as their capabilities have been usurped by Module:languages, so in discussions if you don't want to write out the full name you should probably put  instead.
 * Cheers! —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:04, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm way behind an all the updates thanks for the heads-up. Yeah, it would be great if it would. Category:Classical Nahuatl locatives as a category name, maybe? (On the pattern of Category:English locatives), even though locatives in both languages don't really serve the same purposes or work the same way, I don't think it would be a problem. What do you think? —Косзмонавт (talk) 00:40, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I added the feature and created the category, and looks good, so I think locatives are set. Feel free to give me any more requests, as long as you bear in mind that I may take a while to get to them. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:30, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Nice. Now I'll get to replacing locatives I indicated manually. I did have some other stuff in mind, like possessives, but I want to be sure I understand them myself before burdening you with a confusing request. As always, thanks a lot! —Косзмонавт (talk) 22:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I lied, I'm back. Something like would be useful in general. (I would point out that some proper nouns are also locatives (, for example) and  I know of at least one that's a plural . Maybe there's a way to incorporate some of the same features that  has?)
 * I've also been adding entries to Category:Classical Nahuatl reduplicated forms manually and it occurs to me now that maybe there's a way to shortcut the process. Tell me what you think. —Косзмонавт (talk) 23:13, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
 * PS: I'm not so sure about anymore, maybe it's a regular plurale tantum… I'll see to clearing that up for myself later, but the locative thing is definitely a must. —Косзмонавт (talk) 23:21, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
 * So are macra, locatives, and plurals the only things I have to account for with ?
 * As for reduplicated forms... I can't think of how to automate that off the top of my head. A good place to ask that (indeed, a good place to go for any technical needs you have that I am too slow or inept to deal with myself) would be the Grease Pit. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:04, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

(moving this thing left) Yeahhhh… I think that's it, at least nothing else came to mind from looking at the proper noun entries for Classical Nahuatl that we have around right now. I'll see what the grease pit people can do for me in regard to the reduplication (I've never been a big forum type person, but anything for the sake of extinct languages, I guess), thanks. —Косзмонавт (talk) 05:55, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I made, and now I'm converting existing entries to use it (by hand, so I can fix bad formatting at the same time). I find it funny that you have an aversion to the fora, considering that it's mostly people like me who are active there anyway... —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:52, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
 * You're the bessst. Thanks! —Косзмонавт (talk) 18:57, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Some help please
You have straightened me out in the past, so perhaps you might be so kind as to explain the reasoning behind this edit, which reverted an addition I felt was helpful and useful? As you'll see, all I did was to add a link to the Wikipedia article and a link to the Wiktionary adjective page with a brief usage note. There is a link from the adjective to the noun, so why not a link from the noun to the adjective? Is there a policy or guideline against what I did? –  Paine Ellsworth   <font size="1" color="blue">C LIMAX ! 19:48, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It had several problems and ignored rather a lot of local formatting rules. A couple users have since cleaned it up; you would do well to check out the edit history of the page. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:23, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

chemist?
Hi there. Are you a chemist? -WF
 * What I wanted to ask is if chemistry is an area of expertise. While I'm here, what other areas are you good at? Knowing this, I can persistently bug you on certain topics, without having to do the hard work researching for myself -WF
 * Hell no. I do have a lot of experience in science, though — mainly stuff like geology, biology, and oceanography. I am pretty interdisciplinary, especially within the natural sciences, and I know a little about a wide range of things scientific and otherwise. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:26, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Woohoo, you're my new science go-to-guy -WF
 * SB would still be better for chemistry and physics. Msh210 is best for maths, and Chuck Entz for botany. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:32, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I took a couple of courses in college, and it's an interest of mine, but I have a vague recollection that EncycloPetey is actually a botanist in real life. Probably my main area of near-expertise is ethnobiology: the study of the relationships between plants and animals and human culture. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:24, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
 * He's a teacher, although I don't know of which subject. The problem is that he's not that active. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:58, 23 September 2013 (UTC)


 * My job in RL is English teacher. I can´t claim expertise in much, however. I just have lots of free time and creativity. -WF
 * Kinda handy that, as it means nobody asks me for any favours. -WF

geology
The geological term hinge point came up in my search. Reckon it's worth an entry? -WF
 * Probably not. We usually talk about the "hinge line", actually; the "hinge point" is a kind of stupid thing for those 2-D diagrams (I mean, you could argue that the hinge line is composed of infinite hinge points, but whatever). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:18, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Module:yi-translit
As you can see, I have created a Yiddish transliterator. Before we start using it though, can you double check my test page to make sure the transliterations are accurate (ignoring Hebrew spellings), especially with regard to yudn and vovn. Thanks --WikiTiki89 17:29, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
 * And by the way, before I Luacize create the Yiddish conjugation templates, do you think we really need to fully conjugate the past tense, or is it enough to just give the past participle and auxiliary verb? --WikiTiki89 21:09, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
 * A sheyne dank! However, there are some problems with the transliterator:
 * Geresh, gershayim, and Hebrew hyphen should become apostrophe, double apostrophe, and Latin hyphen respectively.
 * For some reason, ניו־יאָרק doesn't transliterate right. All the rest looked good.
 * Instead of attempting to transliterate Hebraic words, it should reject them where possible (so anything with e.g. a tav in it should cause the output to be nothing).
 * I agree that the past tense is unnecessary; you can do as you like with it (keep it or remove it). When I dealt with the Yiddish inflectotemplates, I didn't really touch appearance much, just copied it from other editors' preferences. Feel free to change the aesthetics while you're at it if you feel so inclined. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:32, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I fixed the first two things. As far as transliterating Hebraic words, since it is not always possible to tell it would be inconsistent to sometimes transliterate it and sometimes not. Any template that will use this transliterator will be able to override the transliterations anyway and the transliteration that it does give is, in my opinion, better than nothing. Thanks for finding the bugs! --WikiTiki89 02:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Another question about the verb conjugator, I'm basing it off of CodeCat's Dutch conjugator and I noticed that it handles the case of separable verbs (see for an example). Should we do this for Yiddish separable verbs also (such as )? --WikiTiki89 03:45, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, we definitely need separable verbs! I haven't made any entries for them because of this problem (although to be honest I'm always worried I'll mess up the conjugation).
 * Re Hebraic words: I disagree with that. There's already an inconsistency between words that can be transliterated and those that can't. I don't want people to think that not giving transliteration for Hebraic words is ever OK.
 * Have you a plan for handling irregular verbs? (Our current attempts are somewhat sad-looking.) I think that the two conjugations of veln, with all the odd and missing forms, could be a problem. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Like I said, I'm basing code off of CodeCat's dutch conjugator and Dutch is similar enough to Yiddish so I can just follow it for the separable and irregular verbs. The way it works is the forms of the most common and most irregular verbs are hard-coded in the conjugator and their derived forms can just add prefixes or separable prepositions.
 * Regarding Hebraic words, since it is not always possible to tell I don't see the advantage of sometimes detecting them and sometimes not. --WikiTiki89 15:00, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, but you can't hardcode veln, because from the pagename alone you can't predict which of the two conjugations it will take. Those will need special special-casing.
 * Well, I suppose we just have different philosophies regarding Hebraic words. I figure we might as well do it your way unless another editor has an opinion, since you did all the work. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, who else here is interested in Yiddish? What happened to that User:Sgold84 guy? --WikiTiki89 02:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I invited Angr to join the conversation. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:41, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't really have much to add to the discussion except to say I thought Yiddish didn't have past-tense verbs. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:35, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It has auxiliary + past participle, which is why we don't need it on the conjugation tables. But it would be great it you can add your opinion about Hebraic transliterations. --WikiTiki89 13:01, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, what's to say? Hebraic transliterations have to be added manually since they're not predictable from the orthography. But unless a term includes one of the Hebraic-only letters, I don't know how to get the template to tell the difference between words like גוי and גוף (where the automatic transliteration will work) from words like ברוך and דוד (where the template shouldn't produce any transliteration at all if none has been added manually). I see what you mean about past-tense verbs now. I kind of like how the French conjugation tables handle periphrastic forms: there's a note saying "Use the present tense of avoir followed by the past participle" etc. and a link to Appendix:French verbs where the details are given. Yiddish conjugation tables could do something similar, with the only the synthetic forms listed in the table, and the details of how to form the past, pluperfect, future, etc., tenses in Appendix:Yiddish verbs. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)


 * (not on this specific topic, but on the subject of Yiddish): could one of you take a look at WT:RFV#שמידערן? Thanks! - -sche (discuss) 19:53, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Vowel length in Greek
I am a linguist with extensive knowledge of historical linguistics, including of Ancient Greek. All linguistic works that discuss Ancient Greek include vowel length consistently. I am aware of the fact that Classicist editions of Homer and other Greek works often do not notate length. However, Wiktionary is a linguistic work, not a Classicist work, and length must be included. Length is consistently notated in Wiktionary in Latin, Old English, Serbo-Croatian, etc. etc. and Greek should be no different. If somehow it spoils some sense of aesthetics to include vowel length in Greek script, it still needs to be included in the transcription.

BTW where does this supposed consensus not to include length come form? I don't see any discussion whatsoever on the relevant page. Benwing (talk) 02:19, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Personally, I don't mind too much either way; I rarely see vowel length marked, but then again most of the time Ancient Greek comes up for me, it's in the context of Latin. However, this information may be better suited to the IPA transcriptions.
 * That's not the point, though. The point is that it's rude and misleading to edit the page without bringing the issue up to the community at large first, as Ungoliant already advised. I'm not exceptionally knowledgeable in matters Greek, so take it to the WT:BP. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:28, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, apologies for not taking it up there. I didn't actually know about that, and because there was no discussion whatsoever on the page itself, and the text appears to go back several years without change, I assumed it was simply put in by someone who didn't really know what they were doing and never discussed. I'm used to Wikipedia rather than Wiktionary conventions, and in Wikipedia you're more likely to see the discussion either on the talk page itself or an obvious reference to it on the talk page. In this case although what I did may have been "rude" it at least got the relevant people talking to me -- and I'm not really sure how I could have figured this out otherwise. Benwing (talk) 09:13, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Tolkienian Terms in Latin
I am sorry for my mistake. I am new to Wiktionary, and I should have read more on what is acceptable, and what is not, before I started editing. I have created 12 pages of Latin Tolkienian terms; is there any way I can delete them? Your help would be much appreciated. Thank you for pointing out my ignorance; if you have any more guidance regarding anything in general, I would be grateful. -66.225.113.34 01:15, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I just checked for the pages I made, and I found you fixed the situation for me. Thank you. However, just in case I make another mistake, will you please tell me how to delete a page? Or even better, where a 'how-to' page is located? Once again, thank you for your help. -66.225.113.34 01:26, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow, you're the most polite anon I've seen in a long time. Thank you for apologising. One marks a page for imminent deletion by putting the template on it, and as for how-to pages, the best way is to ask questions and copy existing format, but I've posted the standard welcome message on your talkpage to give you some helpful links. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:45, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the post on my talk page; I will look thoroughly through the criteria for inclusion, especially. As for me being 'polite,' it was my parents who raised me; I wasn't living my way, thankfully. My post would be different then.


 * I am translating the Lord of the Rings into Latin. I am studying Latin, and I needed something to help me learn the grammar (I am not going to publish it, of course. That would be rediculous.). I enjoy languages, and started studying Old Norse two years ago; but I wanted a more useful language, and so I now study the language of Rome. As you seem pretty proficient at it, would you be okay with me asking you for help occasionally, or asking you about Latin words cited in other locations (namely Latdict), but are not in Wiktionary? Don't feel oblidged to say yes.


 * About a Wiktionary account: would you recommend it? I looked at the create account page, and it says that your email address is not necessary. Are there any benefits in submitting one? If not, I do not see why I would give them mine.
 * --66.225.113.34 02:25, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * There are all kinds of special settings and gadgets available to logged-in users that aren't available to IPs. Your identity, user page and talk page are the same even if you change your internet connection: I often do Wiktionary business after hours at work. There's also more anonymity in an account: it's quite easy to tell your approximate physical location from your IP address, and advanced techies may be able to learn more. Such information for accounts is only accessible to admins with checkuser privileges, and there are extremely strict restrictions on when and why and how they can use that access. As for an email address, the main benefit is the ability to recover your password if you forget it. As long as you're careful to disable email notifications, etc. in your user settings, you shouldn't be contacted at all. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:51, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Chuck is quite right, and I'd be more than willing to help you with Latin. I think that LOTR is a really challenging work to translate, though, because each toponym and name has so much thought put into it to place Middle Earth into an allegorical, real-world setting. Latin is identified with Quenya (Tolkien does in fact call it "Elf-Latin"), but Westron is identified with English. If you're going to replace Westron with Latin, the other languages need to be rethought as well. For example, the Rohirrim speak Old English, but perhaps they would need to speak an Old Italic lect and their songs would need to be rewritten in Saturnian verse to replace the style of mediaeval heroic poetry that Tolkien uses for Rohirric verse. So I think just borrowing vocabulary like Elf, Elvis doesn't do it justice; better to identify the way Hobbits look up to the Elves (which LOTR contextualises as Englishmen looking up the Romans) with how the Romans looked up to the Homeric Greeks, and find an appropriate Ancient Greek term to borrow into Latin. But I'm a diehard purist, so asking me for LOTR-related advice is always a bad idea. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * In case you guys weren't aware, a published Latin translation of The Hobbit exists (amazon link). I'm sure they would have already thought through all those details (or not) and you could probably use it as a reference for translating some of the terminology. --WikiTiki89 03:21, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I did not know that, thank you. (Although I am already much put off by the vile Hobbitus, which seems excessively forced — not to mention the fact that it would conflict with the etymology given by Théoden King. There may not be much one can do, however; caucola is too transparent, and it sidesteps the witty folk etymology Tolkien employs.) And there are other transferences one might use, like naming the Dwarves as the, that could be fruitful but that this author already ignored. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:39, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not as huge a Tolkien geek as you clearly, but I was put off by the "ph" in Gandalphus. --WikiTiki89 03:43, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you, Chuck. I will probably get an account soon. As for what you had to say, Metaknowledge, I totally agree with you, and I think that this is way beyond me, or truly, anyone. Tolkien put way too much thought into the languages for anyone to translate them without really thinking it through. However, I was thinking that I would keep the other languages the same, and I would just translate the English (Westron) portions of the text. I do think that Elvis looks ridiculous for LOTR; I will probably make my own words for such words, instead of adopting their English forms.
 * Hobbitus Ille, excellent! I will definately look into this; perhaps it can help.
 * Thank you for all of your help; I will most likely become a user before long, and now I know where I can look for help regarding languages. | 66.225.113.34 03:47, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, now I am Scio. Thank you for getting me started. | Scio (talk) 17:45, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Dominus Anulorum
I have translated five and a half pages of LOTR so far... but now I come across a Wikipedia article saying there is word order in Latin! I have always thought otherwise. Anyway, I changed the arrangement of the first sentence, and I was wondering if you would take a look at it. I would like the translation as near as possible to the meaning of the original text, but I also would like it to conform as near to the rules of Latin grammar as possible. Here it is-


 * English- This book is largely concerned with Hobbits, and from its pages a reader may discover much of their character and a little of their history.


 * Latin- Hic liber Hobbites pertinens maxime, et ex paginis lector characteris multus eorum et historiae aliquod eorum cognoscat. | Scio (talk) 18:56, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I was also wondering if there was a better word for 'ring.' Would anulus translate to ring as well as little ring? It would sit in my mind better if I could avoid the title translating to The Lord of the Anuses. | Scio (talk) 20:02, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Would you also check this? It is the rest of the first paragraph, which is likely filled with grammatical errors-
 * Informatio plus in electione a Libro Rubro Westmarce qui proditur iam cognoscetur, cum titulo Hobbit. Qui narratus a capitula priora Libri Rubri derivatus est, a Bilbo ipse scribitur, primus Hobbit in mundo toto celeber factus est, et a Bilbo Illac et Huc Iterum appellatur, quoniam de via eius orienti et reversionem dixerunt: qui postmodo Hobbites omnes in magnos res aetatis complexus est quae huc dicuntur.
 * That may be too poor of a Latin translation for anyone to read; will you please tell me how to write more clearly? Also, can you teach me how to make my Latin read like it was written more at ease? That would be nice; however, you don't have to if you don't want to. By the way, if you need the English for that passage, I would be happy to give you it. | Scio (talk) 20:56, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I think anulus is closer to the kind of ring you are writing about. DCDuring TALK 01:50, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I believe what has thrown me off is the definition in en.wikt- a (small) ring. | Scio (talk) 02:05, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * You might want to take a look at this online Latin dictionary. DCDuring TALK 02:13, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks excellent, and very expansive. I will be using this. I have to admit it was a shock to the eyes when I clicked on that link.... I especially like how it cites its sources, as it gives me the word in context. Thank you. I will also be changing the title to Dominus Anulorum. | Scio (talk) 02:35, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, first of all DCDuring is right, anulus is a better choice (at least to my ears). I saw it and immediately thought about the Hispanophone joke confusing "mi papá tiene 46 años" (my father is 46 years old) and "mi papa tiene 46 anos" (my potato has 46 anuses). There are indeed errors in your translation (e.g. pertineo should be an active verb, not a participle), and some things that I am unsure of but that feel wrong (e.g. I would think pertineo should take the dative here but to be honest I would have to check the classical authors first). I honestly don't have the time at the present to edit this as much as I think the original deserves, and realistically speaking I probably won't in the near future, at least the rest of November. However, it is a project that interests me greatly, and I hope to be of more help in the future (in which case the best method might be to email me (although sometimes I forget about email threads with disastrous consequences)). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't expect to finish this project in a week, obviously (or even a number of years)- and I wasn't planning on piling all my questions on one person... that would just be inconsiderate. I do realise that you must be busy, and so, if it is okay with you, I can post questions concerning what you think of Latin forms of Tolkienian terms here, and you could guide me to other helpful users that are familiar with Latin. It seems that you would be the one to talk to regarding the names, looking at your posts in the previous section; and if you are too busy right now to work on the grammar, perhaps it would be best to refer me to someone you know on wiktionary whom is good with Latin. Later (when you're freer) I could send the translation to you, and you could show me how well (or not) I did. What do you think? I would rather not work with email right now. | Scio (talk) 03:04, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * There is one member I found, Timotheus1, but I can't read Latin (mind you, I only started studying two months ago), but perhaps you would know if he would be good, as you communicated with him almost entirely in Latin about a year ago. | Scio (talk) 03:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I know one person who would be perfect to ask, but he is not on Wiktionary, and I wouldn't want to bother him too much. However, it might be worth passing some issues by him, as he is not only better at Latin than me but also the most intense LOTR fan I am acquainted with. I am very likely the most LOTR-obsessed and the most fluent Latin speaker among active editors, however. Out of inactive users, and  have a similar level to mine, as I remember;  might be helpful and has a lot of resources but has a significantly lower level. I suspect that if you wanted to make this a serious project, you could create a mailing list or Facebook group and it would be possible to drum up a lot of interest. However, you might well prefer to have this be a personal thing, and in any case I don't feel like I can commit to anything at the moment. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:26, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't expect you to jump right in. As I said before, I won't be working with email, but I don't have a Facebook, which makes things more difficult. I will have to work here, on wiktionary. As for the seriousness of the project, it (as of yet) is just a way for me to become familiar with Latin. It may become something more, but that will probably be much farther along the line.


 * In refering to Timotheus1 and Robert.Baruch as inactive, what do you mean? Please forgive my ignorance, as you know, I am new here. If you have any suggestions regarding Tolkienian terms for this project, can you post them at my talk page, User_talk:Scio?
 * By "inactive", I mean that they have not edited Latin entries on Wiktionary since 2012. Hmm... I still feel like LOTR is too epic and too British, or at least Germanic, to make a straightforward Latin translation. I suppose it's not a book I would start on, but of course it's your choice, and it would certainly be the kind of book with which you could get people to rally to the cause. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:49, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * It would be the mark of a great translator who can turn something British/Germanic/Celtic into something that truly feels Roman. --WikiTiki89 03:53, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, a great translator... that certainly is not me; not yet, anyway. I would like to become fluent at Latin, and perhaps with other people's help (such as yours) I can make a 'Roman' LOTR. I would incorporate your (Metaknowledge's) ideas on Tokienian Languages (The Hobbits looking up to the Elves, as the Romans looked up to the Greeks, as you said). Well, it feels like it's getting a bit late where I am. Please forgive me, but I will need to sign off soon... | Scio (talk) 04:05, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Esperanto sort_key
I noticed your edit here and I am curious, is Esperanto really sorted like that, with diacritics being equivalent to a digraph with ĉ? --WikiTiki89 21:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hehe. No. It's just that the diacritics sort after their parent letters (according to Esperanto) and ĉ sorts after the last letter of the Esperanto alphabet, z (according to MW). So ĉ should sort right after cz. I used the same approach for the Swahili sort key; I think it's very kludgy, but I don't know a better approach. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:20, 24 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it would be better to use a letter that is not used in Esperanto at all. The choice depends on how sorting works. If words are sorted by Unicode code-point, then just choose something after "z" but before ĉ. --WikiTiki89 22:25, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanksgivukkah
Hi Meta, I have nominated as FWOTD for. My Yiddish grammar sucks so can I ask you to fix my translation? Specifically, I had trouble with the words שעפּט and שאָד and with grammar in general. Thanks! --WikiTiki89 21:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I figured out שאָד, but still need help with the rest. --WikiTiki89 21:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, I think I figured it out (shamefully with the help of Google Translate). But it would still help if you checked it. --WikiTiki89 01:37, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I checked, and it looks pretty good to me, although I think our levels of Yiddish are fairly similar, no? I did fix your use of gebn, it's more like in Spanish by my understanding. The only really unfamiliar word was קראַסאַוויעץ, which Googling didn't particularly help, so I'm trusting you on that (looks rather Slavic, so your guess is better than mine). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:58, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's a direct borrowing of Russian, and I don't doubt that Yiddish speakers would consider it "a Russian word" rather than "a Yiddish word that comes from Russian". If you can think of an English word for "a beauty" that sounds loanwordy (especially Slavic), that might fit better. --WikiTiki89 21:27, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

vesre
I think it's bad form to use vesre in the etymology of vesre. I believe it's the same as French where the syllables are swapped (when there are two) and it's then written phonetically. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:13, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's pretty much the same as verlan — actually, I think that's where I stole the formatting from. Edit it as you wish. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:19, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

proscribed (picker-upper)
I'm not arguing about this - but please tell me why! Colloquial implies that the word wouldn't be used formally - and you wouldn't deprecate words used informally. And who does the proscription? (I ask just out of interest!) &mdash; Saltmarshαπάντηση 19:10, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree, it's not proscribed, just very informal. --WikiTiki89 19:25, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm, can't cite a source, but my understanding is that repetition of an agentive suffix, as well as application of said suffix to an adverb, are pretty nonstandard per the considerations of prescriptivists — yet this word, and not too many others, have become standard lexical items in colloquial discourse. I'm fine with removing it, even though I still disagree. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:06, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think we generally use the word proscribed when it at least seems to be formal or standard. Since anyone would agree that "picker-upper" is not formal or standard, there is no need to call it proscribed. --WikiTiki89 20:11, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * For the record, I think a term can be both "colloquial" and "proscribed", particularly if it's the sense rather than just the form of the word that is proscribed. In most cases, though, I think it's better to use "nonstandard" if "colloquial" has been used. Would a "nonstandard" label fit picker-upper? We could also have a usage note: "Some authorities, such as ..., proscribe the repetition of agentive suffixes." The usage note could be a template so that we could transclude it onto other similarly repetitive entries. Btw, the following other entries are also described as or : brang, brung and taked (where I just changed "proscribed" to "nonstandard"), triannually, unexceeded, and your guys's. (I may improve my code to catch cases where another context label intervenes between those labels later.) - -sche (discuss) 22:00, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that the difference there is that brang, brung, and taked are proscribed even in colloquial speech, among relatively educated speakers. If you use those words even in a colloquial setting, you will probably be called out on it. However, picker-upper is acceptable in colloquial speech. I can't imagine anyone giving anyone a hard time for saying "picker-upper". --WikiTiki89 22:05, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Among educated speakers, yes, but I could imagine uneducated speakers of dialects wouldn't proscribe brung... yet seems like a strange context. (I don't know about brang or taked; I've only heard the latter in lolcat speech and I've never heard the former.) If you do change "nonstandard" back to proscribed in those entries, you should (presumably) also change maked. PS, I'm compiling lists of entries where "proscribed" is used with other contexts (like "dialectal" and "informal") here: User:-sche/proscribed-and. - -sche (discuss) 22:18, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Do we need both "nonstandard" and "proscribed"? If I had my druthers, we'd have neither, but "nonstandard" doesn't get my hackles up as much. "Proscribed" makes it seem as if we are not accepting responsibility for what we are saying and it begs the question of who is doing the proscription. Personally, I'd like to proscribe "proscribed" just as many folks would like to proscribe some uses of I and whom. DCDuring TALK 23:42, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think we should use proscribed whenever people would get called out, unsolicited, for using the word. --WikiTiki89 00:01, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Then it doesn't belong at beg the question. DCDuring TALK 00:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I would agree. --WikiTiki89 00:28, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

balabos, בעל־הבית
I'm having trouble expressing the full range of meanings of this term without using a million definition lines. Maybe you could help? --WikiTiki89 00:48, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not familiar with the last definition, and I've actually rarely, if ever, used this word myself. I generally equate the term with, which you might consider using as a definition. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:03, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You'll understand it if you read the definition given here and look at some of the results at, where you can see that some parenthesized glosses are given such as "important men", "trustees", "bourgeoisie", and on the other hand "lay householder", which I guess are not mutually exclusive. --WikiTiki89 01:14, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

goodbye
i am busy now and will no longer be helpiung

Merry day-of-the-year-randomly-chosen-to-wish-you-a-merry-day
— Ungoliant (falai) 03:01, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You really are too kind; I'd forgotten to wish you the same, and it's actually your holiday! Incidentally, I'll be inactive for the next week, but my life in the long term (by which I mean next few months) will be more relaxed, so I hope to be editing more. Be that as it may,
 * ¡Feliz Vanidad!
 * —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:08, 25 December 2013 (UTC)