Wiktionary:Information desk/2021/April

What does "overindex" mean here?
From the article: "Huffman also stated that Reddit would review its relevant internal processes and attributed user suspensions to over-indexing on anti-harassment measures." Equinox ◑ 09:12, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The statement by the CEO of reddit said, “We’ve put significant effort into improving how we handle doxxing and harassment, and this employee was the subject of both. In this case, we over-indexed on protection, which had serious consequences in terms of enforcement actions.” I can’t speak for the author, but one guess is that to index here means to assign a level of importance, and that the over- prefix means that they now think they went over the top (and, as a consequence, overreacted). But perhaps it means something like to instate measures in reddit corporate jargon, who knows. --Lambiam 16:08, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Quotations
I have a question about quotations. Is it better to have quotations in all entries or are they not necessary in common words? I understand that in not-so-demonstrable words the quotations are very useful, but in everyday words, should I try to add any quotations at all? If so, could I grab a random novel in Spanish from my shelves and add quotes from there or are there some resources that should or should not be used? --Pablussky (talk) 11:28, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Theoretically, all senses of all terms should have quotes to show usage, with many of them on the citations page so the main entry doesn't get overloaded. This is a descriptive dictionary based on usage, so it's helpful to see the terms as they exist in the wild in their natural setting.
 * For plants or animals, we often include an image so people can see what one looks like. The best quotes are the verbal equivalent. A usex is like a drawing or painting: it can be composed to show the essence of the thing more clearly and succinctly. A quote is like a photo: it shows an example of the real thing, including details that an artist might not think to portray.
 * Just as you don't want to use an image that shows an animal as a tiny dot in a huge landscape, it's usually a good idea to crop out unnecessary verbiage so the reader doesn't have to wade through an ocean of text to find the critter. You also want to avoid choosing quotes that that make it seem like the dictionary is promoting a certain point of view- that would be like showing only images of animals mating or in cutesy fake poses. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:26, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Your everyday words are someone else's treasured words. – Jberkel 14:40, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * As for adding quotes for everyday words, you certainly may do so, but I'd question whether it's the best use of your time. Obviously it's your time and you can spend it however you like – we're all volunteers here – but if you focused on rarer words as well as things like idiomatic expressions, it would probably help the dictionary more than adding quotations illustrating el, una, y, pero or the primary meanings of padre, perro, cielo, fuego, agua and so on. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:45, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I disagree. I think most people aren't going to want to spend their time adding examples to basic words, but ideally we should have them, so we should be more than happy to having a willing volunteer. Plus these examples can be helpful to language learners, especially if they're well selected. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 03:23, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Andrew Sheedy. It would be very useful to include quotes for the basic Spanish words, you could learn words that collocate with or are connected with fuego (escombro, llama, incendio, encender, calcinar etc.) or how the word agua reacts with different prepositions (al agua, en agua, de agua etc.) So, Pablus, in short, I think we'd be delighted with quotations for pretty much any Spanish words or phrases, and if you add an English translation, incluso mejor (translating quotations is something that Wonderfool doesn't do enough). In fact, I'm sure there's a category somewhere of untranslted Spanish quotations - we can have fun working on that. Yellow is the colour (talk) 14:07, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Category:Requests for translations of Spanish usage examples contains (contrary to its name) not only usage examples but also quotations that are lacking a translation. There are almost 7500 entries in there. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:04, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

where do the word etymologies come from and can we depend on it?
I was wondering how etymology is finalized - I mean the entire sequence of word formation?
 * There are a lot of ways linguists create such etymologies. One such way is the Comparative method. Also, yes, you can fully depend on them.


 * Many etymologies are tentative, and new findings (or investigations) can result in improvements – sometimes subtle, sometimes drastic. So yes, you can fully depend on the assumption that there is room for improvement. --Lambiam 13:44, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

Does the Glyph Origin Header exist?
Example page ॥ ☼ সূর্যমান ☽ ॥ 10:14, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Obviously, as shown by your link. This heading was sanctioned per Votes/2017-02/Glyph origin. It is mainly used for Han characters (e.g. ) or their radical forms (e.g. ), but occasionally for other symbols such as punctuation marks (e.g. ). Elsewhere the heading "Etymology" is used (e.g. and ). (With our representation of section links, this looks weird: ). IMO "Glyph origin" would better fit the content in these cases, but these "Etymology" headings were already there when "Glyph origin" was formally approved.  --Lambiam 10:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

What the f?
I tried creating nobody is perfect as follows (without the nowiki markup, of course):

Apparently you guys have an edit filter which prevents this (and I can't even add the full example here...)? Hence my puzzled reaction... Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk) 21:00, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * A working redirect starts with a # sign and doesn't have any other content. DTLHS (talk) 21:01, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * "and I can't even add the full example here..." I know how redirects works (see my edits on WP). Can't add the # because of edit filter... RandomCanadian (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * An counts as "any other content". &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 23:25, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Is that me misreading the instructions and thinking that was equivalent to something like w:Template:r from alternative spelling or did I miss something? In any case, does it really require an edit filter set to disallow? Warn maybe (with a clearer indication of what the error is, not just "bad redirect"), but disallows edit filters are generally for vandalism (at least on English WP, don't know if this is a whole other planet or not). RandomCanadian (talk) 00:20, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The edit filter is to keep vandals from rendering a page unusable by adding a redirect at the top. There's another that keeps them from removing certain large chunks of text (I'm being vague to keep from telling how to defeat the filter), so someone got the bright idea of just making everything go away without deleting anything. Vandals like to swoop in and do as much damage as they can before they're blocked, so the filters ignore accounts that have more than a certain number of edits. It won't be long before you won't have to worry about them.
 * We don't put content on pages with hard redirects, because most readers won't see it. We try to avoid hard redirects in general: we include sections for every term in every language that shares the same spelling, and there can be overlap where you wouldn't expect it. For instance, air in Malay and several related languages means "water", beach is Irish for "bee", coin means "corner" in French and "hounds" in Irish, far can mean father or lighthouse, depending on the language, while fart means "speed" in several Scandinavian languages. Instead we have a bare-bones entry that links to the main entry or lemma, which is where most of the content is. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:01, 8 April 2021 (UTC)


 * As you seem to have come to suspect, is different from w:Template:r from alternative spelling; Wikipedia uses w:Template:r from alternative spelling directly on the hard redirect page to categorize what type of redirect it is (as you know), whereas on Wiktionary  (as seen by what it displays/renders as) is inherently a "soft-redirect" template which shouldn't be used on the same page as a hard #REDIRECT. Wiktionary doesn't normally add any other content to a page which is a hard redirect. An example of how  is used is aboveboard or re-save, basically it replaces the definition in an entry which otherwise has the same language header and part of speech header content as a "full" entry, "softly redirecting" readers to where the content is (while still presenting the inflected forms associated with that particular spelling and allowing them to be speedily created, etc.). - -sche (discuss) 01:17, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

General American pronunciation
Can I confirm that the General American pronunciation of air is /ɛɹ/ [ɛ˞] Dngweh2s (talk) 23:36, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
 * is right for the phonemic representation, but I wouldn't transcribe the surface pronunciation as, because the vowel isn't rhotacized throughout. Depending on how narrow you want the surface representation to be, I'd say something along the lines of ~  ~  would be closer. However, different people in America realize coda r differently, and a narrow phonetic transcription isn't usually helpful in a dictionary anyway. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:42, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Is Mary pronounced the same by people with and without the merry-Mary merger? Dngweh2s (talk) 14:04, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I'd say it's merry that distinguishers pronounce the same way as mergers pronounce all three. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:07, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
 * : Because many (probably most) Americans with the Mary-marry-merry merger merge all of the sounds to /ɛɹi/ (which is what "merry" [/ˈmɛɹi/] has when distinct), but others with the merger instead merge all of the sounds to /ɛəɹi/ / /eəɹi/ (which is what "Mary" [/ˈmɛəɹi/] has when distinct), it cannot be said that "Mary" is inherently pronounced the same by people with and without the Mary-marry-merry merger. But, as such, that is true for merry as well. If all three are merged to /ˈmɛɹi/, then all three would sound like the non-merged "merry". But if all three are merged to /ˈmɛəɹi/ / /ˈmeəɹi/, then all three would sound like the non-merged "Mary".


 * In the case of audio pronunciations here, Dvortygirl's merged pronunciation for all three happens to be [ˈmɛəɹi]. Although she has the merger, [ˈmɛəɹi] is the non-merged pronunciation of Mary, so our audio pronunciation for "Mary" is just fine as it is.
 * Does that answer your question? Tharthan (talk) 16:34, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I have created a word or two
Hello, I have created two words, I would like to share. And have it used. can I become a millionaire by creating words? I doubt it but I just want to know.


 * We only include words that have entered general usage (e.g. in print), not newly invented words. Inventing words is a bit too easy to make you rich! Equinox ◑ 15:31, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Old Persian
What should I do to display Old Persian lemmas (Chrome, Windows 8)? ПростаРечь (talk) 19:09, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * : You have to download a font that covers it. Here are some. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:14, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

thanks a heap! ПростаРечь (talk) 06:58, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Accessing Categories
I'm not sure where things like the list of categories for an article are hiding in the MinervaNeue theme. They don't appear to be at the bottom of the page like they are in the normal theme.

New word addition, seeking guidance from experts
I have created a word to describe what I do. I have searched and this word does not appear either on Wiktionary or any other online dictionaries or in general searches.

I have shared this word on various social media platforms, where I have people who follow me, numbers being between 5 and 10k.

The feedback of the word and description of it, has been extremely positive and someone suggested that I should add it to Wiktionary. The reason that they suggested it, is that because I am currently writing a book, in which I will use the word, it is likely to become more commonly known and used.

As adding content to Wiktionary is new to me, I am looking for some guidance as to whether adding a new word, based on what I have explained above, is appropriate and if so, does not break any rules.

Many thanks in anticipation of assistance.
 * Wiktionary is not the place for adding creative inventions. Words must meet the criteria for inclusion. &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 11:36, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your guidance, much appreciated.

boatswain (Modern English word) wrongly categorised as being an Old English word from Old Norse.
boatswain is (obviously) a Modern English word. And it does derive its latter element ultimately from Old Norse.

Yet it appears in the category Category:Old_English_terms_derived_from_Old_Norse. The Old English word that would actually belong in that category is bātsweġen, which we have no entry for. Tharthan (talk) 00:45, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Just a template issue, fixed. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 12:37, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Help with Akkadian noun entries
Hi! I've been studying Akkadian for a while now and I was thinking of starting to add some Akkadian vocabulary. It looks like the few Akkadian entries on Wiktionary at the moment are quite messy and don't really follow a unified system, so I was thinking of taking some time to try and come up with something more structured.

On doing so, I could really use the help of you Wiktionary experts! The first problem I'm facing regards the fact that all Akkadian nouns used to end in -m in the Old Babylonian time, but in later stages of the language, the final -m got lost, so depending on the document, study, dictionary or textbook, the same word can appear mainly in one of the following 3 formats (I'll use the word bītum, "house", as an example):


 * 1) bītum
 * 2) bītu(m)
 * 3) bītu

I don't like form #2 (even if it's the one that shows both forms at the same time), mainly because if it ever needs to appear between brackets it wouldn't look nice (like this: (bītu(m))), so I guess we'll have to decide whether to use #1 or #3 as Entry Name. Whichever we end up choosing, though, we will need to give the other as well somewhere in the page. So my question would be: what's the best way of doing this?

I thought about Alternative forms, but it's not really an alternative form in the classical sense (it's the same word in different times). I can't add an alternative form by default to ALL Akkadian nouns (can I?), it wouldn't make much sense. Whoever knows Akkadian knows that given one form you can always get the other by adding or taking away the final -m, so it's a quite regular thing.

So what would the best solution be in this case?

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help! Sartma (talk) 20:31, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The thing one does with every language is, one includes it directly in the original script, that would be for Akkadian that you encode it in Unicode. But 6 people without Akkadian expertise were enticed in 2019 to vote against 3 to add Akkadian in Latin script, but so far neither the initiator of that vote nor anybody else found out a defined system for this vague objective, whether it be transliterations of the signs or transcriptions of the supposed sound values, which I predicted in the beginning – I opined that due to the tyranny of entry titles on Wiktionary and architectural preference for original script any Sonderweg would be borderline impossible. I hint that in actuality, there is no Akkadian editor here or anyone else to voice a pennyworth preference.
 * I can well imagine Akkadian in Unicode (though rarely some signs be unencoded): One makes a cuneiform page and then come multiple headers differing by their readings (see Chinese characters for example?), which headers can have alternative spellings as alternative forms headers sorted under the part of speech headings.
 * Latin Akkadian – like Pali? But this doesn’t answer the ambiguities.
 * So I guess if you are earnest you can try something. We are not paid enough to object, or to expect that earnest would amass an impressive amount of dictionary content, or to think anything be effected by objections or suggestions. Dealing with Akkadian must be great but you are left alone with it. Fay Freak (talk) 22:47, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that lemmatising Akkadian words in cuneiform is either feasible nor desirable. There is no "standard" way of writing an Akkadian word, while there is a standard reconstructed normalisation (=standardise transliteration). The main entry must be in the Latin alphabet, and the several ways of spelling the word in cuneiform should be inside the page. I don't think there would be any disagreement on this regard amongst people who actually know the language and how its writing system works. So that's not even a point we should be discussing about. The only issue here is whether to lemmatise Old Babylonian or Middle Babylonian (about that, see my opinion below).


 * Well, we do have, who supports lemmatising at romanisation, and he would say we should do so at bītu. I don't know his reasoning, but that would be what I would favour as well. However, I'm still unsure about whether lemmatising at romanisation (as opposed to cuneiform) is the right approach; we certainly need romanisation entries to be soft redirects if we lemmatise at cuneiform, but in that case both bītu and bītum could be created. The issue there is choosing a cuneiform spelling, and one notes that the CAD lemmatises by romanisation, making it non-obvious for how someone who doesn't know Akkadian (like me) can produce the best cuneiform to lemmatise at. Also —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:47, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * See my reply to Fay Freak above regarding lemmatising Akkadian words. As for whether to use Old Babylonian (bītum) or Middle Babylonian (bītu), I've been thinking about it and all considered, I think I'll go for Old Babylonian (the version with the final -m) in the end. Beside being the Akkadian that was actually written using the version of cuneiform that automatically gets displayed in most modern operating systems (the lapidary form, the one the Hammurabi Code is written in), it's also the oldest standardise literary dialect of Akkadian and in a way it works as a "starting point" for later linguistic developments. All later variations of the language can appear in the main body of the page. Furthermore, the lack of final M's is not the only characteristic of Middle Babylonian, so if we go for forms like bītu, we should also favour verbal forms like qâšu instead of qiāšum, rabâ instead of rabiam and so on, and that wouldn't make sense. All main Akkadian/Old Babylonian textbooks either use the Old Babylonian words with -m, or start with those and drop the -m on later chapters, but to my knowledge no modern textbook only gives the Middle Babylonian forms without -m or the later forms (rabâ, qâšu, etc).
 * My main problem is that I have the linguistic knowledge, but I lack the technical one... I had a look around and Akkadian entries are quiet the mess. It would be nice to establish standard templates and layouts, both for the Translingual entries of the Cuneiform Unicode block and for individual Akkadian lemmata. Are you guys good with creating templates and the like (Wiktionary formatting, etc.)? I could use a bit of help on that front... Sartma (talk) 08:50, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, to make the case for lemmas without mimation. Firstly, the CAD lemmatizes without the final m. Since the CAD is probably our main vocabulary resource, it is simpler if we follow its tradition. Also, there are many words that are never attested with mimation. Either way, every noun and adjective should include a inflection template, which will be in Old Akkadian. — Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 04:07, 24 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I've decided to go for the mimation in the main entry in the end, but also give the form without mimation under Alternative forms. As you say, grammar boxes will be in Old Babylonian anyway. I explained in more details what I'm planning to do here: About Akkadian.
 * On a different note, do you know by any chance, why the Latin font gets all strange when setting the language to akk in pretty much every template? It's really quite annoying. It doesn't happen for Sumerian, and I cannot understand what to do to change it... Sartma (talk) 19:02, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

You asked about entries, but different from what you seem to have reckoned the links do not just follow the entry script: note that even though Akkadian entries be under Latin spellings, cuneiform may be linked. It was devised to be hard-redirected if not the place of entries. I find  swapping the Latin transcription with and the cuneiform to make the cuneiform a part of the tr, where script-specific markup is not applied, bizarre. Likewise you cannot hold the cuneiform in the like now in the entry  when there are multiple cuneiform spellings. Apart from the fact that it is just an abuse of the purpose of the parameters – I mean we all sometimes abuse parameters, but one disagrees with it being done regularly. Further it appears as a standard that Akkadian terms appear cuneiform-first in etymologies. Sometimes, as in the example of, it is even that a reconstruction rests on the signs used. And you yourself on link entries from the signs in the quote; it dovetails if other links also link cuneiform; also possibly by having it in the second numbered parameter of, as an alternative to hard redirects. Fay Freak (talk) 02:00, 26 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi! Cuneiform being linked is not a problem. Each cuneiform sign will have its own entry, on which page you'll find a link to the Akkadian lemmata that can be written using that sign, in a similar way to how Han characters are treated (see for example 生). I've been working on a handful of cuneiform entries, like 𒀭 or 𒂍. You can see there how I structured them at the moment. On my personal page I'm keeping track of all the entries I'm working on. It's just a handful of words at the moment (mainly nouns of different categories and cuneiform signs, but I'll tackle verbs and adjectives soon), to try and understand the best way of structuring them. Once I'm happy with them, I'll start adding more and more vocabulary.
 * is indeed bizarre. I've been trying different layouts in the past days to make the template work with normalised (Latin alphabet) Akkadian entries, and giving the cuneiform in the tr was one of them at some point (indeed immensely abusing the purpose of the parameters). I've now started to just link the Akkadian entry (you can find an example  here). Much cleaner this way. All the info regarding the cuneiform spelling of the word will be found in the corresponding page, so there's no need to randomly show some cuneiform when linking the lemma. Thanks for pointing out the case of  (I'll fix the edit you indicated after posting this reply). The way I'm structuring things at the moment an Akkadian link would just be in the format: "". Additional information regarding the entry will all be found inside the corresponding page, where you'll also find a link to the relevant cuneiform sign (in this case 𒉒).
 * I've also been updating the About Akkadian page with paragraphs on how I've been structuring Akkadian entries. You can find more details there (obviously still work in progress).
 * I know I'm abusing the parameters of, and I'm not happy with that either. I've been familiarising with templates the past days, but I'm in no way near to be able to make my own at the moment. I've asked for help anywhere I could, I hope someone at some point will get in touch (or that I get enough knowledge to create templates myself). Ideally, I'd like to have an Akkadian specific template that includes a "cuneiform" (or "phonetic cuneiform", etc) parameter to show a phonetic spelling of the entry in cuneiform (the only cuneiform writing that makes sense giving next to the actual Akkadian word, being the phonetic cuneiform spelling always a possibility at any historical period). If you can help with that, I'd love to discuss how to structure the new template. Sartma (talk) 09:00, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Plural "Not Attested"
I looked up the word "chivachye" I found in the Canterbury Tales, which is a variant of chevauchee. I found the page for chivachie had a request for a quotation from Chaucer, but, since I had found "chivachye" with a , rather than "chivavie", I created a page for chivachye to add my quotation to. I think this is the first time I've created a new Wiktionary page, and I ran into a problem: I can either type " " which will automatically produce the text "(plural chivachyes)" or I can add "  " which will autamatically produce the text "(plural not attested)". It's true that I've never seen the plural, but it's also true that I haven't looked very hard, and there's no reason why the plural shouldn't be "chivachyes", since that is the rule for pluralizing other forms of the word in both English and French. I don't know what the policy here is or if there's a way to just not comment on the plural.DubleH (talk) 20:17, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
 * You have a much more fundamental problem here: Chaucer wrote in Middle English, which we consider a separate language from English. You can find a reasonably thorough list of attested meanings, spellings, and forms in the Middle English Dictionary . —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:02, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I've now changed the entry to a Middle English entry rather than an English one, and it doesn't automatically demand a statement about the plural the way I did it. I've actually already tried searching that Middle English Dictionary, as well as the Wikisource Canterbury Tales (though I'm not sure if I did that right), and Google, and I didn't get anything for "chivachyes". For some reason the Middle English Dictionary gave me the page for chevauche when I searched for "chivachye", despite the fact that I couldn't actually find "chivachye" anywhere on the page, but it gave me nothing when I searched "chivachyes". Searching for "chivachye" in the Middle English dictionary's quotations gave me "chiuachye" (notably in the exact same source I found "chivachye" in), "chiuachie", and "chyuachie", but searching "chivachyes" gave me nothing, so I think it just automatically tries switching out "y" and "i" and "v" and "u".DubleH (talk) 03:31, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is appropriate, but I've also removed the request for a quotatation from Chaucer on the page for "chivachie", which is still listed as an English word. I also haven't removed the link to my new page on "chivachye" that I added to the page on the modern English word "chevauchee", alongside the other links to archaic forms that were already there.DubleH (talk) 03:57, 30 April 2021 (UTC)


 * The old Webster 1913 dictionary, from which we imported a lot of entries, did not distinguish between Middle and Modern English, so there are a few entries like this that need converting from ModE to ME. Equinox ◑ 09:29, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
 * , you should use . You can also use Google Books to search for forms that exist. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:47, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Qn: To bring a long discussion to a vote?
I would like to ask about proper process to bring a discussion to a conclusion. By right, they have to be brought to a vote at Project:Votes yes?119.56.101.73 17:13, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
 * No, they don't have to be brought to a vote. Also, you don't have an account, so you're not eligible to vote, let alone create a vote. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:50, 30 April 2021 (UTC)