Wiktionary:Information desk/2023/May

Reporting misplaced link
In https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mnie#Polish : It says "genitive/dative/accusative/locative of ja". If you click the highlighted 'ja' it goes to the Slovak 'ja', not to the Polish 'ja'. 81.110.176.226 09:10, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * It goes to ja. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:18, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I think this is due to the effect of the collapsible table of contents: the browser doesn't account for the page being a different length, so it goes past the actual location on the page. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:25, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Vanished Reply Links
On discussion pages such as this, yesterday there was a '[reply]' link or similar by each signature in a conversation. They've now disappeared! How do I get them back? They were very useful in that they: --RichardW57m (talk) 09:40, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) allowed users to compose replies simultaneously
 * 2) targetted the right paragraph in long discussions
 * 3) allowed tricky wikicode to be tested quickly.


 * They're still here for me. I'm using Monobook skin. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:46, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * It looks as though I was somehow using Internet Explorer. I'm back on Edge now, and functionality has reappeared. --RichardW57m (talk) 13:16, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

папарацци
Does sometimes decline in the plural? I can find some evidence that it does, but I don't know how common it is in practice, or whether it's associated with a particular mode of speech. No doubt this is because is itself a plural form which happens to have a matching ending. Pinging @Atitarev @Nominkhana arslang @Thadh, who are all native speakers. Theknightwho (talk) 22:05, 4 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Never heard it in the plural: один папарацци, два папарацци, etc. Thadh (talk) 22:12, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Theknightwho: No, it's indeclinable. Used in the sg. and the plural. Same as . Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:52, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Atitarev I had a chat with Thadh and Nominkhana arslang on Discord, and it seems exists - likely as a back-formation. That would explain why forms like  or  are attestable. Theknightwho (talk) 22:56, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Theknightwho: There are very few hits on Google books and it's illiterate usage. It happens with various indeclinable words, incorrect declensions, stress patterns do happen. It's good for making fun memes about people who use this type of grammar but not really a dictionary material. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 23:01, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Declined forms of Russian indeclinable words sound exactly like the sort of 'standard' 'non-standard' words Wiktionary should be recording, like English ain't. --RichardW57 (talk) 11:09, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @RichardW57: You missed the first part of my message - very few hits in Google books. It's uncommon. Non-standard but common usage is added and labelled accordingly - non-standard, proscribed, vulgar or "low colloquial" (просторечие). Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 11:26, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Na'vi
Hi! Is it allowed to add translations in Na'vi (the fictional language of the Avatar movies)? 2402:800:61CD:112F:16B:5D5D:6539:8D15 17:45, 6 May 2023 (UTC)


 * No. Equinox ◑ 18:24, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Having trouble with rendering a cite-journal template in a page I recently created
Hi, I recently created the page Nevadaplano (proper noun, a neologism widely used in geological publications and circles in analogy to the 'altiplano' of Bolivia/Peru), and I have quoted several papers in the page, as well as added a citation for the coinage of the term within the etymology section. However, the citation is somehow rendering an extra right angle bracket at the end, and I cannot figure out why it is doing this.

Additionally, the citations for the three quotes provided for the term definition are not showing up in the references section, presumably because of the aforementioned rendering error. Complicating this, one of the quotations is from the same reference as the citation provided in the earlier etymology section, so it should not be duplicated in the references, but I could find no way reading through all of the documentation on how to accomplish this (i.e. use a citation in the etymology, and then provide a quote from the same reference, leaving only a single entry for that reference in the 'references' section).

Any help anyone could provide would be very much appreciated, thanks!

Hermes Thrice Great (talk) 18:21, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

wotd
I want to nominate intergenerational for National Grandparents Day. but page is protected 115.188.152.213 01:18, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Edit request for Module:bn-translit
I've already posted this edit request at Module talk:bn-translit. However, since there is no response, I have reposted it here.


 * Replace all instances of ph with f. This edit will not cause any error.

The main reason for the above edit is that there are several Bengali words with manual transliteration that use f for ফ instead of the orthodox ph. Also, the letter ফ is more often pronounced as /f/ or /ɸ/ than /pʰ/, the latter is found only in careful speech (Suniti Kumar Chatterji, 1921 & 1926; Sameer ud Dowla Khan, 2010). If the edit is done, the number of entries in Category:Terms with manual transliterations different from the automated ones/bn may reduce. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 08:50, 9 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Headword lines with transliteration different to the automatic transliteration are no longer being recorded in Category:Terms with manual transliterations different from the automated ones; I haven't worked out why.  Discussion at Grease_pit/2023/April.  Without that, we are looking at scattered manual transliterations for systematic changes.  Although for transliteration in the strict sense that category should be empty, there are sometimes many cases where that is not so.  Problems start as soon as the phonetics of particular words have to be taken into account, e.g. if transliteration records irregular 'schwa deletion'.
 * Also, the starting place for this change to transliteration should be at Bengali_transliteration, ideally at its talk page or at WT:GP. RichardW57m (talk) 10:14, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with that WT:BP is better than WT:GP. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:00, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @RichardW57m I can’t find anything to suggest head added terms to Category:Terms with manual transliterations different from the automated ones or Category:Terms with redundant transliterations, but it seems like a strange omission. Maybe it did a while back, but certainly not recently.
 * I’ve now enabled both, so they should be filling up now. I imagine this will make the parent categories functionally useless for individual terms due to sheer numbers, so it’s probably worth only adding terms to the language-specific categories, keeping the parents as umbrellas. Theknightwho (talk) 12:31, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the change. Unfortunately, it isn't working for Pali, and I've added a request at Grease_pit/2023/April for a change to Module:headword/data to allow automatic transliteration for Pali headwords. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:22, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * How many days should the filling up take? (You might not know.)  I'm trying to work out whether it is worth purging all the pages of immediate interest to me.  The edit, and also the second part done specifically for Pali, will formally affect almost all pages in main space.  19 hours after the second edit, I'm still waiting for a specific term to be added to one of the categories.  (The category addition shows up on the page itself.)  This might not be a 'bad user experience', but it's a 'bad editor experience' - not that I know any reasonable way of avoiding this experience in this case. --RichardW57m (talk) 11:41, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
 * : the job queue is shared with all Wikimedia projects, so it can vary widely, depending on what else is happening. With a module error in a widely transcluded module, I've seen things popping into CAT:E for upwards of a week. Or it might take hours. The number of steps in the transclusion also have an effect: if it's simply a template directly invoking a module, that's different from a module called from another module invoked by a template expanded by a module invoked by a template, it can take a while for the edit to propagate all the way to the entry. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:27, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
 * And for the record, the two categories are still being loaded for Pali! --RichardW57 (talk) 10:49, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
 * And still! --RichardW57m (talk) 08:42, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * But perhaps the task has got lost - cat:Terms with redundant transliterations/pi seems to have stabilised at 45 entries. --RichardW57m (talk) 08:42, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The test word has now finally been added to cat:Terms with manual transliterations different from the automated ones/pi --RichardW57 (talk) 23:29, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Sbb1413: That’s a language policy change. I don’t see any consensus or even a discussion. You might argue j/z the same way you do about ph/f. The Wikipedia page about the Bengali phonology doesn’t really match with what you’re saying. Even if “f” is more frequent than “ph” (I don’t know if that’s true), is “ph” considered to be more classical or standard? I’d start with a WT:BP discussion, get some attention from fellow Indic editors. Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 10:26, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is true that /pʰ/ is considered standard and correct by the Bengalis and careful speakers will pronounce it with /pʰ/ (Chatterji, 1921 & 1926). However, I've consulted the papers of linguists like Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Sameer ud Dowla Khan and found that /f/ and /ɸ/ are more common than /pʰ/. Of course, I'll put forward the proposal to WT:BP, along with the new rules for inherent vowel deletion. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 15:12, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is true that /pʰ/ is considered standard and correct by the Bengalis and careful speakers will pronounce it with /pʰ/ (Chatterji, 1921 & 1926). However, I've consulted the papers of linguists like Suniti Kumar Chatterji and Sameer ud Dowla Khan and found that /f/ and /ɸ/ are more common than /pʰ/. Of course, I'll put forward the proposal to WT:BP, along with the new rules for inherent vowel deletion. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 15:12, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Usage note for パーセント
I added a usage note to regarding the pronunciation of 10% (じゅっパーセント). What's the recommended way to format this? Qzekrom (talk) 05:58, 11 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @Qzekrom: It's fine like this. Since it's only one sort of unpredictable reading, you don't need to make a full list, as in or  Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 06:16, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
 * This may not be specific to パーセント; for example, 十羽 can be pronounced as . --Lambiam 20:30, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

عرفان
I think there should be two changes to Persian "عرفان" but I am not 100%. First "â" to "ā" for consistency. Second There is no "ʔ" in the Farsi pronunciation of the عرفان. Because of this reason those unfamiliar with the name often spell it as اِرفان. I'll even go further to say Almost all words/names with "ع" in Farsi don't pronounce the "ع" despite wiki stating they do. I have never heard any Farsi speaker pronounce "ع" in any word. CaesarVafadar (talk) 03:02, 18 May 2023 (UTC)


 * On the second point, it seems that:
 * There is no difference between the phoneme represented by ain, hamza and initial alif.
 * The simplest phonological analysis seems to be that there is a phoneme /ʔ/, but the phonetics of it is quite complicated, best summarised as the phoneme being a 'weak' consonant. The register of the utterance also affects whether there is an actual glottal stop.  (It's rather reminiscent of the complexities of the Thai glottal stop, though that is quite audible intervocally within words, apparently unlike the case in Persian.)
 * --RichardW57 (talk) RichardW57 (talk) 01:10, 21 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @CaesarVafadar: #1: What consistency are you talking about? Persian transliteration clearly states that is transliterated as "â" when representing the long vowel. Modern Iranian is currently the default, not the classical Persian.
 * As for #2, Persian phonology states that stands for /ʔ/, Even if the letter represents no sound, it is transliterated as ' (apostrophe).
 * Both points are about the language policy and the pronunciation module Module:fa-IPA, not about individual words. If it's proven should be silent, some changes to Module:fa-IPA can be made over time (nobody works on the module currently). --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:41, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * ع is silent on almost every word, and instead the vowel of is pronounced. Specially if ع is at the start of the word it is never ever pronounced. So, is عراق ærāq, عباس is æbbas, عینک is eynæk, علم is elm,عالم is ālem,علوم is olu, جمع is Jæm, جمعه Jome, سریع is særi. I can go on forever but the only real time a glottal stop is used when there is two vowels after one another and very like معلم but very few people actually will pronounce that and will just say moællem.
 * If you like, searching up on Youtube "Persian Grammar: Persian Character Which Share the Same Sound" the person explains there is no difference.
 * As for the "â", all the books that I have they read uses "ā" instead of "â" so when looking for words etymology "â" is just not used which gets confusing for some new comers (It certainly confused me at the beginning) if you don't know "â"="ā". For example:
 * A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary
 * Dictionary of MMP
 * Pārsīg Language (The so-called Pahlavi)
 * A Reader in Manichaen Middle Persian & Parthian CaesarVafadar (talk) 06:10, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Look to the comment I wrote to Anatoli but the only real time "ع" it is actually pronounced is when there are two vowels after one an other but otherwise it's not. In Khuzestani dialect maybe, but they speak Arabic as a mother tongue so that influences their Farsi speaking. CaesarVafadar (talk) 07:12, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Iffy Reconstructions
What is the process for requesting a review of an iffy reconstruction? I added rfv to the page for which I had extracted from the various references to it, but that got converted to a request for deletion. --RichardW57 (talk) 10:36, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The verification process does not apply to reconstructions, as they are inherently unattested, so can never be verified. Instead, all deletion requests for reconstructions (for whatever reason) are centralised at WT:RFDR. I guess you can also use the tea room for general discussion of a reconstruction entry. This, that and the other (talk) 06:37, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I think converting rfv to rfdis a bit drastic; I'd rather see an error message that it was inappropriate. While reconstructions usually can't be verified (though very occasionally some spadework will do the job), they can be defended. --RichardW57m (talk) 14:21, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * What is the recommended way of linking from an entry to the Tea Room? --RichardW57m (talk) 14:21, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Formatting question
Odd variations on what might be formatting conventions

I just looked at the entryn for "moose" and noticed something that caught my eye. I've noticed that this entry does not follow headings with the link to the edit, viz, "[edit]". Is this some sort of new formatting convention?

Plaasjaapie (talk) 15:25, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I see all of the [edit] links on moose. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:26, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * That's because the page is protected so that anonymous and new editors can't edit it- there's no point in giving you links you can't use. The protection is because there have been repeated attempts to replace the content with jokes along the lines of "the plural of moose is meese/mice, etc.". This has been going on for years, but every one of these idiots thinks they're the first one who ever thought of it.
 * Just keep editing, and soon your account won't be new anymore. After that, you'll see edit links on that page. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:14, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification, Chuck. Makes all kinds of sense now that I'm told.  Best, Forrest.   Plaasjaapie (talk) 18:17, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Roman or Latin? Witch and why?
The Serbo-Croatian text is writing in Cyrillic or Roman/Latin. What is right on enwiktionary and why?

P.S.: Because Special:Permalink/73207071. Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 14:43, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There may be nothing inherently wrong with the way you would prefer things to be, but it's not the way the rest of Wiktionary does it: see About Serbo-Croatian#Translations. The subheader in translation sections is added by the translation-adder gadget and is to be found in thousands and thousands of translation sections. Changing it in one translation section just makes it inconsistent with all the others. Because there are a lot of people contributing from all over the world all the time, following standards is important to keep everything from becoming a disorganized mess. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:39, 27 May 2023 (UTC)


 * The reason we use "Roman" is because it causes technical problems to use "Latin" (which is the name of another language in the table, which humans and scripts therefore tend to mis-interpret and mis-sort). - -sche (discuss) 17:59, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Plus I suspect we're rather lighter on typographers than the Unicode developers are, so 'Roman' is less likely to be mistaken for a style of type rather than a script. --RichardW57m (talk) 14:25, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Meaning of "non-Sino-Vietnamese" in etymology sections
To me, it seems like the usage of "non-Sino-Vietnamese" in Vietnamese entries doesn't line up with its meaning for other loans into the Sino-Xenic vocabularies of other Sinosphere languages. As an example, 聖. Both thiêng and thánh are obviously derived from Chinese languages; thiêng is not a native word. The Japanese kun readings, for example, taking characters as semantic loans for native items, seems the more natural/usual meaning for "non-Sino-Xenic" (here native hijiri vs Sino-Japanese sei). I would appreciate pointers to any Wiktionary policies on this or just an explanation of the reasoning behind the counterinutive use of this term. Thanks. Auvon (talk) 23:57, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * While I can't vouch for its correctness, the Wikipedia article Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary lays out fairly clear criteria that explain how Chinese-derived words could be considered to not belong to Sino-Vietnamese:


 * "Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary (Vietnamese: từ Hán Việt, Chữ Hán: 詞漢越, literally 'Chinese-Vietnamese words') is a layer of about 3,000 monosyllabic morphemes of the Vietnamese language borrowed from Literary Chinese with consistent pronunciations based on "Annamese" Middle Chinese. [...] There is also an Old Sino-Vietnamese layer consisting of a few hundred words borrowed individually from Chinese in earlier periods. These words are treated by speakers as native. More recent loans from southern varieties of Chinese, usually names of foodstuffs such as lạp xưởng 'Chinese sausage', are not treated as Sino-Vietnamese."


 * There is also our own entry on Hán Việt. It reminds me of the more specific terms "go-on", "kan-on" and "tō-on" in Japanese, but I don't know whether Hán Việt is commonly understood by all Vietnamese speakers to have such a specific meaning, or if this is a case of specialized linguistic terminology (which would not make it wrong for us to use it).--Urszag (talk) 01:30, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, the note on Hán Việt about spoken vs literary loans addresses most of my thoughts. Auvon (talk) 09:05, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Jamaican Creole words that originated from English
Recently, I've started to work on Jamaican Creole vocabulary and I'm having problem classifying the etymology of the words correctly. If the word is from English is it inherited or derived? I'd asked on our Discord channel and the answer was inherited (that was also my option) but since I'm not 100% sure I'd like you guys to give your opinion. I'd say it's inherited as Jamaican Creole was created basing on English so the vocabulary is somehow inherited. Am I wrong? Tashi (talk) 21:04, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * : It's tricky. English is the lexifier for Jamaican Creole, but I'm not sure that equates to inheritence. Creoles come from pidgins, which are improvised languages that develop between groups of speakers who don't all share a first language. In English-based pidgins, everybody has some English as at least a second language, but there may be no native English speakers at all. If you have speakers of a dozen different West African languages who use mostly English vocabulary because that's the only language they all understand, have they inherited that vocabulary? Chuck Entz (talk) 23:53, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You think derived would be better? Tashi (talk) 05:04, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
 * For Sranan Tongo, which also has English as its lexifier, we use der, as seen e.g. at (from ). In some cases a term entered later, such as  from, and then we use bor. There is no Category:Sranan Tongo terms inherited from English.  --Lambiam 17:40, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Cheers mate! Tashi (talk) 18:14, 30 May 2023 (UTC)