Wiktionary:Information desk/2021/September

Subsense policy and layout
I can't seem to find a help page describing layout or policy on subsenses. I did find a relevant discussion at Beer parlour/2015/May. However, that discussion was primarily about a specific proposal for a change to what was previously, and apparently continues to be, an unclear policy situation.

For example, I'm looking at endorse, where "" seems to be clearly a subsense of "". Daask (talk) 17:07, 2 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Eureka! encourages subsenses, but still doesn't explain how to format them. Daask (talk) 17:11, 2 September 2021 (UTC)


 * An instance can be seen at sense 4 of the English noun mischief. --Lambiam 14:18, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thanks! I went ahead and created page at Subsenses where further discussion, documentation, and policy development can take place. Daask (talk) 15:21, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Are those real words?
I am concerned about the entries for Earthan and Earthican. I was recently working on w:Earth in science fiction, which also included a look at w:Earthling, which in turn brought me to Thesaurus:Earthling here. I have the Brave new words: the Oxford dictionary of science fiction by Jeff Prucher, which I used to compile a list of synonyms of Earthling. It doesn't list either of those weird words, nor can I see them used anywhere (except indeed the latter may be a term used in Futurama, but nowhere else as I can tell: https://theinfosphere.org/Earthican_people ). Not sure if a word used a few times in a single TV show should be on Wiktionary, but Earthan is even more dubious. I am not sure what is the procedure of bringing such topics to the community's attention here - I hope this helps. --Piotrus (talk) 12:10, 4 September 2021 (UTC)


 * For Wiktionary, words become “real” words if a sufficient number of people use them with essentially the same meaning. If there are serious doubts whether an existing entry meets that requirement, the usual procedure is to list it at Requests for verification – for these words, Requests for verification/English. --Lambiam 14:01, 4 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I imagine these exist. They are glossed as "rare, nonstandard" so people aren't going to find them in Wiktionary and think these are normal everyday words (frankly how often do we talk about our planet of origin anyway?). If you have really done your homework and are convinced that these words are not in use, even rarely by sci-fi authors, then you can use the WT:RFV process to challenge them. Equinox ◑ 13:41, 9 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Thank you both. I didn't notice both articles have quotations. As the words are not invented (hoaxes), but just very rare (arguably limited to a single work), I accept your argument that they are fine to remain here. Thank you! --Piotrus (talk) 03:01, 10 September 2021 (UTC)


 * These terms would fail our inclusion criterion if they were limited to a single work, or even only used in reference to the same fictional universe. But they are not. Attesting for the use of Earthan: . For Earthican: . --Lambiam 05:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Anyone know what this person is talking about?
For the article on the word "falsehood", I reverted this edit made by user Rodgaskins because I could not make sense of it. He left this long remark on my talk page and I again don't understand what he's talking about. I'd like to know is if anyone else can make sense of it or if it's just me having trouble understanding. Thanks. Mgkrupa (talk) 04:04, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes can someone please help her understand me. I'm tying to make the world a better place by using language to break down misunderstandings and for some reason my edit seems to defy logic when it seems quite logical to me ;) <-like that semi-colen there is a winking smiley face. Rodgaskins (talk) 04:13, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi Mgkrupa. I wouldn't worry about it; you can feel free to remove the comments from your talk page if you wish., it seems that this project is not a good match for you. If you continue adding disruptive content to entries, you will be blocked. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:17, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * . Well, you seem to be seriously confused. You added an essay to a dictionary entry detailing meanings of the word that seem to have come entirely from your imagination. This included a badly mangled interpretation of Isaiah 44:13- a verse that isn't particularly relevant to what you were saying nor to the entry.
 * When reverted, you posted a tangled mess of nonsequiturs on the talk page of the person who reverted you, including bizarre things like 'Let us consider what "hood" implies by examining its historical and biblical Hebrew context.' For the record: there is no "biblical Hebrew context". The stuff you said about the book of Job is completely irrelevant, since it was written in Hebrew before any form of English even existed. The King James Version is only a translation, and it uses words that were already in use and had their meanings- independant of the Bible- before the translators even started their work. You also added an irrelevant discussion of the dragon mentioned in a quote that neither your edit nor the revert changed at all, talking like it was written by the person who reverted you.
 * "Trying to make the world a better place by using language to break down misunderstandings" isn't the job of a dictionary, and your efforts would have done more harm than good toward that end even if it were. The fact that "it seems quite logical" to you is actually pretty scary. Wiktionary doesn't need that kind of "logic". Chuck Entz (talk) 06:35, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That may be true Chuck but how and why your argument doesn't help the argument or the effort to address the loss of meaning in the transliteration of the word "falsehood" in the Wiktionary definition. The Wiktionary definitions used in the entry for "falsehood" are synonymous with definitions used in synonyms not an adequate definition separating the word from its' synonyms and capturing the context of the word in it's historical case usage which I attempted to chronicle. Keep in mind language is not only defined in a historical context but also the context of current usage. When I use falsehood none of the three definitions in Wiktionary apply the word in the context I intend for its' use so two wrongs don't make a right and I would argue the definition entry is worse off without some context which touches on both parts of the compound word as the words etymology outlines ;) Rodgaskins (talk) 16:11, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what you are talking about. The Wiktionary definition of contains no transliteration. The sense in which the term is used in the KVJ is adequately covered by sense 3: “mendacity, deceitfulness”.  --Lambiam 15:18, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

and not. The problem is that if you re-convert  to Devanagari, it becomes रङ्गीला (which is very very very rare) and doesn't give the desired spelling (रंगीला) back. For this reason, I'm opposed to changing the transliteration of the Sinhalese anusvara as  before h and whatever (or any other change based on its position). But I changing it to. Svārtava2 • 10:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I am only speaking about the Sinhalese language. yes, pronunciation of letters like this could be little unclear. but I am very sure, it is not a "m" sound. The Pali in my country (Sri Lanka), it didn't had own characters/letters. they all were written in Sinhalese. we never had any problems with pronouncing them. I am not asking to change the all languages, just the Sinhalese. this is a huge thing as to my point of view.
 * example: "I am from Sri Lanka, I speak Sinhala", the word "Sri Lanka (ශ්‍රි ලංකා)" and "Sinhala (සිංහල)" become "Sri Lamka (ශ්‍රි ලම්කා)" and "Simhala (සිම්හල)". How would you think if I said "I am from Emgland, I speak Emglish" !?
 * This is a very important letter in my country and my language. I am asking you to fix this. --IC9999 (talk) 15:06, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Currently, we aren't transliterating U+0D82 anusvara as "m", but as "ṁ" for Sinhalese and as "ṃ" for Pali and Sanskrit. Similarly, "ṅ" isn't "n", and "ṭ" isn't "t".  If it is such an important letter, why do you want us to not tell those who can't read the Sinhalese script (which isn't easy to read if you don't recognise the words) whether a word is written with anusvara or the velar nasal?  (Perhaps I am being a bit unfair - anusvara is actually one of the easiest characters to recognise.)  Perhaps you should point us to a currently-used system for a mixed transliteration or transcription for Sinhalese that you would be happy with.  It probably won't resemble the academic IAST-like transliteration that we currently have, and we'll just have to move translation pages a little bit closer to failing because they run out of memory.  We aren't going to change how we transliterate Pali and Sanskrit in Sinhala script, but we may change how we transliterate Sinhalese.  (For comparison, how we transliterate Pali and Sanskrit in the Thai and Lao scripts bears little relationship to how we transliterate Thai and Lao themselves.) --RichardW57m (talk) 16:10, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * like I said before. I am only speaking about the Sinhalese language. anusvara could be common in many languages but I am not talking about other languages. I can see that "ṅ" isn't "n" and "ṭ" isn't "t" and I'm not telling you that anusvara is "n". I don't know what is the real pronunciation of the anusvara as to this pronunciation language use in wiktionary. I don't know anything about this pronunciation language or IPA but, I think using similar letters means they are similar sounds. I guess most of people that use wiktionary doesn't fully understand what this letters saying but they get the basic idea how they should pronounce it. I am sure when normal person saw this "siṁhala" he will think this is "simhala (සිම්හල)" instead of "sinhala (සිංහල)". --IC9999 (talk) 21:27, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't this normal person also fail to notice the difference between "n" and "ṅ"? People studying Pali seem not to immediately notice that the Pali Text Society Dictionary uses "n" instead of "ṅ".  (It uses "ŋ" for anusvara.)  Someone who is aware of the difference between "t" and "ṭ" is likely to suspect that "c" isn't as in English. --RichardW57m (talk) 13:24, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * just fine, there is no problem. don't fix this. and how many times i need to tell you that I am talking about a Sinhala character (U+0D82, Sinhala (Unicode_block)); It is not Pali, not Hindi, not Thai. if you visit to Anusvara you can see there are lots of other languages too, but I am not talking about them. as to my knowledge the fix, won't affect any other languages. (I said about this problem here because, My primary language is Sinhala and I have speak Pali since I were 4yr. it is kinda annoying to prove this problem to smart person like you and I give up) --IC9999 (talk) 20:19, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
 * This is where you confuse me, for you surely know that U+0D82 is a Sinhalese, Pali and Sanskrit character. --RichardW57 (talk) 02:35, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I never heard about the Sanskrit. The Pali language that I knew didn't had a character system, only speaking. so they use Sinhala to write Pali. I don't know if this false or not because, for example sinhala: "" should be same as the pali: "" but "cētaṁ" is not "cētaṃ". but wiktionary is doubtful when it comes to Sinhala characters because it pronounce like "cetan", the end should be some kind of a "n". You can confirm what I said by find videos on internet that use pali words like, , , (these are very common words that I know, and non of them is a sinhala word) and heard by yourself. --IC9999 (talk) 18:47, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * you can clearly see that the sinhala: "" should be same as the pali: "" but "cētaṁ" is not "cētaṃ" because they use separated language modules. that is why I said that the fix won't affect any other languages. --IC9999 (talk) 18:47, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

You can find examples of Sanskrit in the Sinhala script in Proposal to encode the CANDRABINDU for Sinhala; it is slightly unusual in that it uses candrabindu for a particular choice of word sandhi, which is reportedly an unusual choice in Sri Lanka. --RichardW57 (talk) 23:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC) There is a writing system for Pali in the Sinhala script, which is mostly followed by the BJT edition of the Tipitaka. It mostly uses positional nasal letters rather than anusvara or saññaka letters for nasals before stop consonants, and uses 'touching letters' rather than visible U+0DCA SINHALA SIGN AL-LAKUNA. The apparent preference in the BJT for writing rather than  is exceptional. Rather than writing, it writes with touching letters. The standard font set for Windows 10 has dropped support for touching letters, so my example might not render properly for you. Given these features, I would say that Pali has a character system that works using the Sinhala script. I wasn't aware of a Pali writing system that writes ; is that just a spelling mistake for, or is that yet another Pali writing system for me to learn about?

Wiktionary currently uses the same module transliterating the Sinhala script for Sinhalese, Pali, Sanskrit, namely Module:si-translit. The exported function, tr, is passed the language of the text to transliterate, and adjusts the transliteration accordingly. All the modern documented public transliteration schemes for the Sinhala script use 'ṃ' (as in modern IAST) or 'ṁ' (as in ISO 15919), and that works if one takes the trouble to learn the pronunciation rules for Sinhalese. SLS 1134:2011 Section 3.3 Note 1 says that the phonetic notation of anusvara is 'ṃ'. Apparently an official system of 1866 prescribed n̊ for anusvara, contrasting with 'ṅ'.

Presumably the other two changes you want is to transliterate ච and ඡ as 'ch' and 'chh' rather than 'c' and 'ch'. Again, I don't like this notation, but it could be accommodated within the same module.

Unfortunately, I don't think we have enough people involved in the discussion to establish a new consensus. --RichardW57 (talk) 23:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
 * you finally give me an acceptable comment. The ISO 15919 did this because they were the same letters. The problem is even they are same letters, the pronounce is different. I am not a expert about languages and history, I think you are talking about the "old Sinhala" character system; I don't know much about them. the old characters were converted to the current sinhala system. that's why cannot render in new computers. those characters are already dead; there are new characters for them. as to this current character system the old:  and current:  are the same thing. no one use that old system these days. I think these letters were died before I born, schools didn't even talk about them. I didn't mistake about the, you can see the conversion in මහා මංගල සුත්‍රය. I never heard or see any Sanskrit before and I think that "Chandrabindu" isn't one of "old sinhala". you also right about the ච and ඡ; I want to change them too and I still see this as a problem that need to be fixed. but as I said before, I don't care anymore. I'm just a normal person, I think someone who have higher rights, should take a look about this problem; but I wonder how would this language messed up this much if someone did ever looked about this. Thank you very much for your support. --IC9999 (talk) 01:11, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * There is a free-of-charge font, LKLUG_T, that can render touching letters on modern computers (Windows 10, iOS, HarfBuzz). The BJT was published in 2006, and uses touching letters. Your statement, "The problem is even they are same letters, the pronounce is different." makes no sense.  The pronunciation of anusvara depends on the region and the language. --RichardW57 (talk) 01:59, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I thought that they assumed the anusvara of sinhala should be ṁ (a "m" sound) because of other languages. This is so wrong but I don't care about this anymore. these transliterations systems have so many problems. for example: when I studied the Japanese in English, I pronounce the た as "ta" because that how it shows everywhere and the "ta" will be ටා in Sinhalese. but I accidentally saw that this is wrong and た should be තා. the ටා and තා is completely different in Sinhalese. I felt so dumb to do such a mistake. you could think I am complaining about another language too; this is not my main language so I don't care about it. but when I saw this mistake in my main language I wanted to fix this. and here I am now, unable to do so. my point is "た" = "ta" and "ta" = "ටා" but "た" is "තා". as same as one of anusvara is "ṁ" so they assumed sinhala also the same pronounce. anyway... Hope you understand that I don't care about this problem anymore since this isn't gonna fix. so we both (specially me) don't have to waste our time in here arguing these problems. I am so sorry for wasting your valuable time and thank you very much for your help. --IC9999 (talk) 03:07, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * There is some merit in establishing what you want in case enough editors of Sinhala entries show up at this discussion. The three changes you've mentioned so far could be accommodated in a common module with Pali and Sanskrit.  (I'm not sure whether to allow for the possibility of ච්හ occurring.  I did wonder whether you would suggest that ට (IAST ṭ) and ත (IAST t) should be transliterated as 't' and 'th' rather than 'ṭ' and 't'.  It does depend on what you do with ථ (IAST th); various sources leave me confused as to whether a pronunciation guide should treat it differently to ත.  Also, a lot of the pronunciation issues would be solved if Sinhalese entries also showed pronunciation.  It seems that the distinction between  and  needs to be shown somehow.  It seems that  planned to show this distinction, but he seems to have been around for only a few days. --RichardW57 (talk) 10:40, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * we use "thank" as "තෑන්ක්ස්", "Thailand" as "තායිලන්ඩ්" but "tank" is "ටෑන්ක්" and "tower" is "ටවර්" (Japanese don't have ට pronounce, only ත)
 * we use "cool (kool)" as "කූල්" and "choco (choko)" as "චොකො"
 * I didn't check the every character, maybe there could be more problems. because I am 90% sure this isn't gonna fix here; so why would I waste my time. I wish I could bring some expert to fix this problem; but it would be very meaningless; and can't do anything because the country is currently on fire because of covid-19. --IC9999 (talk) 17:42, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
 * @IC9999 Are you such an idiot? Romanization doesn't work the way you want it to work. There is a universal standard and that should be maintained at all costs. Just because you don't like 'c' or 'ṭ' that doesn't mean the world should change. They were created by linguistic experts. SenathB (talk) 03:16, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
 * @SenathB,
 * even if it's the universal standard, it could have mistakes. I just only showed few mistakes as an native speaker. who knows, maybe this will be fixed in the future because universal standard also could get updates.
 * I am not a "smart" person and I do not have any qualifications to take any actions, I am just a single "idiot" native speaker. I were not "smart" as you to understand that foreign linguistic experts cannot do mistakes and they will be always right than us who know this language since we were kids.
 * please could you just not to summon a user who hasn't been active for more than a year, just because you want to say "idiot" to him.
 * I did not made any progress here, no one took any actions. no one broke your precious universal standard so why do you even bother to reply here after this long?
 * please be reasonable next time if you want to insult someone; and thank you very much for your reply sir. -- IC9999 (talk) 18:51, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I did not made any progress here, no one took any actions. no one broke your precious universal standard so why do you even bother to reply here after this long?
 * please be reasonable next time if you want to insult someone; and thank you very much for your reply sir. -- IC9999 (talk) 18:51, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Doubtful words as translations
Is there a preferred way of handling red-linked words offered as translations (t or t+) in translation sections? The method I've been using for words that look wrong but might actually be correct is to create an entry for the alleged word and raise an RfV against it. Is this overkill? If so, what should I be doing instead? For words that seem correct, the obvious response is to create the entry if I can. --RichardW57m (talk) 09:19, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
 * You can use t-check for dubious translations, if that's what you mean. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:38, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * This question is for words whose existence (e.g. spelling) is doubted, or, if I am disruptively minded, merely seem not to meet the CFI. I had a separate issue with translations that are SoP (such as literal 'female horse' for 'mare'), but the solution there is to enclose the parts in double square brackets.  That then provides links to the constituent parts. --RichardW57m (talk) 08:35, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * It sounds to me like t-check would suit your purposes here. It flags a translation for review (putting it into a maintenance category). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:16, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * That feels more like an invitation to an edit war. One's best hope of a review log is the change comments. --RichardW57 (talk) 07:22, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Tagalog "kumain ng kanin"
A course I am taking online to learn the Tagalog language (which has said a few things apparently wrong or dubious before, according to some Filipino friends) said that "kumain ng kanin", which literally means "to eat rice", also is used as an idiom, to mean "to eat a meal [in general]"; the reasoning it gave was that rice is eaten with most or all meals in the Philippines. The claim was made by in 2010. Everyone I've known from the Philippines has said this is untrue and that the phrase is not used in this way.

I wonder if Pimsleur has spread a bit of misinformation, or if there is some dialect of Tagalog which uses that phrase, and the lecturer was just told this by someone who speaks that rare dialect. Is this possible? If that were the case it would seem odd, since the lectures focus a lot on the city of Manila, which is where some of the Filipino people who doubted this were from. I see no evidence online that "kumain ng kanin" is used as an idiom from what I can gather, but this intrigues me so I had to ask. Pinging a few people who are active and speak Tagalog natively: PseudoSkull (talk) 06:36, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know of any Tagalog dialect that uses an idiom like that. If you tell me "kumain ng kanin", I would immediately assume you're literally eating rice. The word "kumain" is enough to express the idea of "to eat a meal in general" --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 06:49, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your response. It is unfortunate that Pimsleur's lecture set has given untrue information to presumably thousands of Tagalog learners in the United States. PseudoSkull (talk) 07:09, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps they mixed it up with Chinese: in Mandarin, at least, literally means cooked rice, but  (with ) refers to eating in general, especially to having a meal. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:33, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

The label ‘dialect’
At Module:labels/data, the the label ‘dialect’ is kept separated from the label ‘dialectal’ with the following justification: ‘so e.g. "obsolete|outside|the|_|dialect|of..." displays right’. Is this really necessary? There are lots of misuses of this label, e.g., here. ·~  dictátor · mundꟾ  15:10, 21 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't know if I'd regard "Britain, dialect" as a misuse; it reads like an ellipsis of "in dialect". But the general question of whether to change a distinction because not everyone maintains it, or fix misuses, is a good one. I was initially going to say I'd (for my part) rather we try to fix misuses, since being able to word labels with "dialect" seemed helpful, and we already need to review entries regardless of any combination of the labels — I see things like "UK|_|dialectal" displaying "Britain dialectal" where just putting "UK|dialectal" to display "Britain, dialectal" seems more fluent, and/or people just put "label|en|dialect" with no indication of what dialects (Northern Ireland? Western Australia? Midwest US? India? help a reader out!). But searching a database dump just now I see only 40 pages that use "|_|dialect|", some of which aren't the intended type of use (like backside), and I guess someone could just say "obsolete outside Scotland", so I guess the argument for keeping it separate is weak. - -sche (discuss) 18:16, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

About FWOTD
I've added a new request in FWOTD nominations: Special:diff/64041677, but I'm not sure if I did things right. The blue check mark at the left side of words seems to have confirmed by other users, but is it ok for me to add this new word without confirmations or discussions? --Uconhe (talk) 13:10, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Order of descendants
Should descendants be ordered alphabetically according to language name in English or in alphabetically in order of language code? I am seeing examples of both and I don't know which to follow. Kaixinguo~enwiktionary (talk) 22:48, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I would say name. The average user isn't going to know all the codes and it just looks better to have what actually appears visually to be alphabetical. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:24, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! 😉 Kaixinguo~enwiktionary (talk) 21:06, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

AWB
Hello, I need AWB access so that I can quickly add the audio files I recorded with Lingua Libre here. But I couldn't find the request page. The "Request approval" link on AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage leads to Wikipedia. Can anyone help me? Thanks. ToprakM (talk) 18:58, 27 September 2021 (UTC)