text:
Wiktionary:Information desk/2019/May

Merriam-Webster "ȧ"
I don't know where I ought to bring this, but since it is only tangentially related to Wiktionary, I thought that this may be the best place to bring it.

I noticed that our entry for blague does not give any pronunciation for the word. I looked the word up through DuckDuckGo, and Merriam-Webster's entry for it was the first (or one of the first) to come up.

I usually avoid Merriam-Webster like the plague because I strongly dislike it and its general philosophy, but I thought "What's the harm?" and clicked on the link on the search results page.

And then I saw the pronunciation section...

Oh, right. They use their own silly little system for whatever reason rather than using IPA. *sigh* Well, whatever.

The "pronunciation" given is this:

\ ˈbläg, -ȧg\

...

I have been able to decipher it to this extent thus far:

/blɑg, -?g/

The problem lies in what their confusing vowel transcriptions mean. I found this unnecessarily long "pronunciation guide", that ironically uses IPA to explain their own silly transcription system, and even seems to indicate that their choices for how they transcribe things are not always perfectly ideal.

Through that, I was able to determine that the first pronunciation that they gave was actually /blɑg/ (they describe it as "the vowel of bother", which is not exactly accurate, especially because the actual vowel of bother is still used in parts of the very region that I live in).

But even using their guide, /ȧ/--excuse me, "\ȧ\", is not explained (unless I missed it. I don't think that I did).

The reason that this is particularly bothersome in this case is that I assumed that the two pronunciations must have meant

/blæg/ and /bleɪg/

...but I was way off apparently, because, according to their guide, (in their system) /blæg/ would be "\ ˈblag\", and /bleɪg/ would be "\ ˈblāg\".

So I have no idea what "\ ˈblȧg\" is supposed to represent. Does anyone have any clue about this? Tharthan (talk) 22:23, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

 * Wikipedia's entry on says "it is occasionally used as a phonetic symbol for a low central vowel, /ä/." OTOH,  says Merriam-Webster uses both it and \ä\ for /ɑ/, from which (and the explanation at  of the rationale behind them) I gather that the difference may be intended to indicate that some dialects have a particular split or merger which causes this word to be pronounced like other words which use the same symbol (which can be found via, which might help deduce what it is (e.g. via comparison to other dictionaries): maybe it indicates what precise pronunciation it has relative to one of ? Sadly, other dictionaries I looked at only have one pronunciation, corresponding to the first one MW lists. - -sche (discuss) 03:02, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Don't bother with what they say, look for words that rhyme with the pronunciations you think it might have, and see how they're transcribed. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:54, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It's very aggravating that they omit \ȧ\ from the pronunciation key, but the entry for Bostonese, which I found in the Google results, says "the speech of Boston and the immediately surrounding region marked by certain features (such as the use of \ȧ\ for the a in ask) that set it off sharply from most other speech patterns of the U.S." Apparently this only means the specially broadened a, because it doesn't include the a in father; the only transcription they give for that is \ˈfä-t͟hər\. Bother is transcribed \ˈbä-t͟hər\, so I guess they aren't representing the Boston accent that distinguishes father from bother but pronounces cot and caught the same, but another accent that has broadening of a reminiscent of southern English English but still pronounces the vowels of father and bother alike. — Eru·tuon 04:32, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Ohhh, I think that I might have an idea. I am aware that a huge percentage of younger Boston English speakers ditch the Boston Dialect's traditional trap-bath split [that is essentially the same one that is found in Received Pronunciation and other manners of speaking that are based upon the kind of English speech widely associated with Southern England] in favour of a split for those same words that mimics the kind of unsavoury æ-tensing found in dialects in areas of the country that were hit by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (this is not typically found that I know of in Eastern New England. In fact, at least where I live, this is one of the very noticeable distinguishing marks between New York City English and the dialect of New England English spoken in my city [it's a "suburban city", though, understand], along with the difference in how we pronounce aunt as /ɑnt/, whereas in New York City English it is a homophone of ant).
 * So I'm wondering (since you brought up the entry for "Bostonese" in Merriam-Webster, and its possible relevance) if "\ ˈblȧg\" is supposed to represent /blɛəg/.
 * Or... it could be a pedantic symbol to distinguish (in some convoluted and roundabout way) /ɑ/ and /ɒ/ for the sake of the traditional Boston dialect (because the traditional Boston dialect retains both the father-bother distinction and has the trap-bath split [in the traditional sense]). The thing is, that would be very arcane if that is indeed the case, particularly because the problem lies in the fact that they explain \ä\ as the vowel of "bother", rather than as the vowel of "father" or "ha" or something. If they used a different symbol to represent /ɒ/ in their utterly unnecessary system, this problem (if that is indeed what is going on) would not exist. This second explanation would explain what -sche mentioned earlier as well.
 * Tharthan (talk) 07:34, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It does look like \ȧ\ is representing a pronunciation with a trap–bath split (what I meant by "broad a"), together with some non-rhotic pronunciations, as in Carlylism, because of which words have been given that symbol. I also think they are more likely to represent an older pronunciation that has had time to get famous. In any case, they don't seem to be using the symbol very systematically, based on the search results and several entries in the broad a or æ-tensing categories that I visited. Maybe it's a recent innovation that they haven't gotten around to fully using. — Eru·tuon 08:19, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

"(US, rhotic, r-dissimilation)"
(Was debating whether to bring this here or to the Tea Room)

How can this be distinguished from relics of non-rhotic pronunciation amongst younger speakers of historically non-rhotic dialects?

For instance:

/pəˈtɪkjəlɚ/

/səˈpɹaɪz/

/ˈɡʌvənəɹ/

(Incidentally, I have heard /ˈfoʊwɚd/ used for forward by a number of people in my country, but not generally by speakers of my dialect [and I don't use it myself, either]. Our entry for forward gives a similar pronunciation to this, but doesn't give it as being used at all in the United States of America. Perhaps we ought to take another look at that.)

...These are indeed the pronunciations that I, for instance, use. But it isn't because of "r-dissimilation". It's because the local dialect in my area has historically been non-rhotic. My mother's speech is, in rough estimation, 75% rhotic, and my father's speech is, in rough estimation, 85% rhotic.

My speech is, in rough estimation, 95% rhotic. Furthermore, to my mind, the fact that an "r" is in a word is fully evident. The r-dropping in my speech is essentially something that happens in relaxed speech, when I am in a state of passion (in discussion), and when I am drowsy. I don't resist it, because I have no desire to. It is not as if I start speaking in a non-rhotic fashion à la John F. Kennedy. I just will often, in a sentence, pronounce some of the words (not always, but it is quite common) without their final r.

So, again, how does one distinguish between instances of "r-dissimilation" and just vestiges of historical dialectal non-rhoticity? Is it even possible to do that? Tharthan (talk) 21:01, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The pronunciations above are commonly found even among speakers whose dialects are otherwise historically fully rhotic. While it's possible these speakers could be borrowing from non-rhotic dialects, it's telling that this only seems to occur in words with nearby rhotic sounds, suggesting that dissimilation, rather than interdialectal borrowing, is the likely cause. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 13:57, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Southern Ohlone
How can I cite the following for all the css words that I have added?Ndołkah (talk) 10:38, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * My attempt:
 * which produces
 * There is a 1970 reprint by AMS Press, but it is out of print. --Lambiam 19:21, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * There is a 1970 reprint by AMS Press, but it is out of print. --Lambiam 19:21, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * There is a 1970 reprint by AMS Press, but it is out of print. --Lambiam 19:21, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

 * Please note that the orthography used by Arroyo was based on Spanish and may be considered outdated. For example, his spelling for  is rendered in the Mutsun–English English–Mutsun Dictionary published by the University of Hawai’i as kaphan.  --Lambiam 19:43, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

 * Well capjan and kaphan make the same sound the letter j in spanish is /x/ just like the h in howdy or kaphan, I am fluent in both English and Spanish and think I can figure it out. Thank you for the resources.Ndołkah (talk) 20:03, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between the  and the  . The latter phoneme does not occur in Castilian, at least not in the area Arroyo came from (the heart of Castile), so it is not strange that he substituted the closest phoneme known to him. Still, it is not the same.  --Lambiam 21:11, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, changing the topic slightly to orthography and not phonology, spelling the word with a K for a native Spanish reader would trigger the "loanword detector" immediately, and I suspect many native Spanish speakers reading "kaphan" spelled with a K might actually read it out loud as if it were the pseudo-Spanish word "cafán", because the K triggered the "loanword detector" and then the PH becomes a digraph from Greek that sounds like F in Spanish orthography. I suspect Spanish speakers who can read are almost universally aware that PH in loanwords "would usually be F in Spanish". I recall a friend of mine reading the English word "haphazard", and I said "Phaser what? Phaser like in Star Trek?" (He may have simplified the word-final RD consonant cluster to /ɹ/ with no sound for the written letter D, or the /f/ sound may have thrown me too far off track.) "Capjan" for a Spanish audience seems like the safest spelling, albeit imprecise. Fluoborate (talk) 03:13, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
 * But...we're not writing for a Spanish audience. Ideally we should be using whichever spelling system / orthography is most used by the people in question, which may be whichever is most modern. Failing that, a more phonetic system (like kaphan if the word is indeed /kɑphɑn/) seems preferable. - -sche (discuss) 07:43, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

 * I seeNdołkah (talk) 22:08, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Northern Ohlone
Any resources or wordlists available for Northern Ohlone?Ndołkah (talk) 20:28, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

I was given access the a linguistic gem by the University of California Berkeley library, they are Harrington's Chochenyo (Northern Ohlone) field notes with María de los Angeles Colós and José Guzman fluent tribal members of the time, can someone create a citation for me to paste to all the new entries I have been able to make, the notes are largely a Spanish-Northern Ohlone dictionary with some notes in English as well.Ndołkah (talk) 11:53, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean by "create a citation". Do you mean a citation template? —Rua (mew) 11:57, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Something like this @RuaNdołkah (talk) 12:30, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * which produces
 * So you want a template that produces that text? —Rua (mew) 12:34, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I just want to put in a reference to some new entries!Ndołkah (talk) 16:20, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I think you want a template so you don't have to copy and paste the whole reference. Usually reference templates are prefixed with   and sometimes the language code is added . For the reference above, possible titles are  or . — Eru·tuon 04:57, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I just want to put in a reference to some new entries!Ndołkah (talk) 16:20, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I think you want a template so you don't have to copy and paste the whole reference. Usually reference templates are prefixed with   and sometimes the language code is added . For the reference above, possible titles are  or . — Eru·tuon 04:57, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

antivaxxer
the system won't key me create antivaxxer
 * There's a filter for titles with "xx". DTLHS (talk) 05:02, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Created it. — Eru·tuon 05:19, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * ThankiesNdołkah (talk) 08:39, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

My link to "adolescent (ro)" goes nowhere, but the others work
This is quite likely a stupid question, but I read the docs for the template "desc" (descendant) and I can't fix it. I just added two more descendants for the Latin word adolescens (section: Descendants) - it has obvious cognates in Romanian and Catalan that were not listed until I added them. I just pasted the same template with "ca" for Catalan and "ro" for Romanian, and the proper spellings. The Catalan link works. The Romanian link does not. And it is not a redlink. Hyperlinks to Romanian nouns are especially important because Romanian nouns are highly inflected (relative to Spanish or English), and this common Romanian word has the whole declension table on Wiktionary, because Wiktionary is awesome: adolescent (Romanian). It is a bluelink on the Latin "adolescens" page (the first link in this post), but clicking on the bluelink brings you to the English entry for "adolescent", not the Romanian entry. The lemma forms in English and Romanian do share spelling (singular in English, singular-nominative in Romanian). This may contribute to the problem.

Please fix it and then tell me how you did so. Thank you. Fluoborate (talk) 02:54, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Links on English Wiktionary go to entries on English Wiktionary, not Romanian Wiktionary. There's no entry on English Wiktionary for Romanian . — Eru·tuon 02:58, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

how do i format mashkodebizhiki to make it more like ᒪᔥᑯᑌᐱᔑᑭ?
or should they be in one entry? how are entries in other languages with multiple scripts handled before i go ahead and Syllabics to the other Ojibwe entries?Ndołkah (talk) 06:57, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

 * Content should (consistently, across all entries) be at whichever script is more common overall, and entries at the other script form should be soft redirects of some form, using a template to display something like "Latin script form of..." or "Canadian Aboriginal Syllabic form of...". The lemma entry could link to the other entry in its headword, like Serbo-Croatian does. Serbo-Croatian is, incidentally, an exception to the usual practice of lemmatization; full entries are allowed to exist and fall out of sync at multiple script forms. Most reference works I've seen use Latin script, even though some also include syllabic script, FWIW. (Incidentally, Wiktionary needs to apply a "Runic script form of..." template to ᚱᛁᛋᛏᛅ and the few other Runic Old Norse entries... and consider whether to move the Cyrillic spelling of iubi, юби, into the headword line like with Serbo-Croatian... but anyway юби has an example of a language-specific script-form-of template...) - -sche (discuss) 07:54, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I see so could you fix up mashkodebizhiki for me so I have an example of how to do it. And what is a soft redirect exactly, how does it differ from a regular redirect. Basically I am understanding that ᒪᔥᑯᑌᐱᔑᑭ should be on the mashkodebizhiki entry and the ᒪᔥᑯᑌᐱᔑᑭ should redirect to mashkodebizhiki, correct?Ndołkah (talk) 08:25, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
 * A "soft redirect" is an entry with minimal content, just some form of "___ form of" template on the definition line that "redirects" (points) users to the main spelling. As for mashkodebizhiki, my own inclination would be to make it the lemma and have ᒪᔥᑯᑌᐱᔑᑭ soft-redirect to it, because most works I've seen use Latin script and it seems easier to input. But my experience may be limited. User:Stephen G. Brown, do you have any knowledge of whether Ojibwe is more often written in Latin script or in Syllabic script? (Does it differ in the US vs Canada?) - -sche (discuss) 00:49, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

'the cover is a detail'
On the page, we have the sentence: "The cover of the book Orientalism (1978) is a detail from the 19th-century Orientalist painting The Snake Charmer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904)." What does the word detail mean here? I have seen this type of usage before I think. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:41, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

 * "7. A part distinct from the whole." —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 08:45, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

 * "Detail of Mona Lisa (1503–1506) by Leonardo da Vinci, Louvre." —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 08:46, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

 * I find this usage distinct from that definition and from the example given for that definition on the detail page. I'm trying to think of a synonym that could be switched with the 'detail' in both the Mona Lisa and Snake Charmer instances to the same effect. So far I have section and portion, but I don't they they are quite right. Is there a usage like this outside the art world? My initial speculation was that there was a artsy feel to this usage. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 09:29, 12 May 2019 (UTC) (modified)

 * I would say sense 7 as well, but I don't agree with the current citation of sense 7 being where it is. The "details of [WikiLeaks] corruption" are the specifics, as opposed to a broad or general view, whereas the "detail" from a painting is a small portion of it. Equinox ◑ 11:13, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

 * I'm trying to read this art dictionary definition for 'detail' but my head is starting to spin http://www.essentialvermeer.com/glossary/glossary_d_i.html#detail I think that there is a possibility that there is special meaning for the word 'detail' in the art community, specifically for paintings (maybe also for photos? that's just a guess). --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:42, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It is as Equinox says, a small portion of a larger artwork. It is typically something that has a meaning of its own, like a bee, or a brooch, or a bible. Or whatever, as long as someone considered it interesting to examine, for whatever reason. It can also be an enlarged portion of an artwork that serves to demonstrate a technique, such as the brush strokes of a Van Gogh, or the hatching and crosshatching in a Rembrandt drawing. --Lambiam 22:44, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

 * Sorry to bother y'all again, but I just want to confirm that I didn't mess up the detail page. Do you think adding this definition is worthwhile? I think it is, because I can't get from 'A part distinct from the whole.' to 'a selected portion of a painting'. We don't take a car and say, "This is a detail of the steering wheel." like we can say "This is a detail of the Mona Lisa." --Geographyinitiative (talk) 03:57, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, one would. I does not have to be a painting or other work of art: detail of matching gears, |&mediapopup=117028640 detail of rudder, detail of an iron gate, ..., so the sense “a selected portion of a painting” is too restrictive. Oxford Living Dictionaries gives the main definition “An individual feature, fact, or item”, which I think is also not very clear, but it is elaborated upon by giving more detailed subsenses, including “A small part of a picture or other work of art reproduced separately for close study”. While this is indeed a common use, the examples above show the “small part” need not be a part of a work of art. When you combine the Oxford def with our current sense 7, you get: “An individual feature, fact, or item, considered separately from the whole of which it is a part.” Would that be sufficient clarification? This should then be illustrated with well chosen usexes or quotations – the current single quotation at sense 7 is in my opinion not apt; the sense is actually a different one. --Lambiam 09:24, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Two things
1. How do pingbacks work? I have created/started major work on some articles that seriously need input from people more well-versed in the language than me, and apparently you aren't meant to ping them back on the article itself. 2. Thai transliteration. I have created some Thai entries, namely and. When I put the appropriate template there, not all the transliterations show up.

--Corsicanwarrah (talk) 12:32, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

 * When a link to an editor such as  is added to a page, that editor gets an alert (aka notification): “So-and-so mentioned you on page ABC in section XYZ”. Instead of using wiki markup like that, you can use the ping template in the form John Smith. On the page it will look thus: “@ John Smith ”, with a link to the editor’s page. When using ping, you can specify up to nine users to be notified. Since the output is visible with either of the two methods, this should only be used on discussion pages.  --Lambiam 22:05, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
 * One detail that most people get wrong is that pinging only works if the message, the ping/user name, and your signature are in the same edit. If you get the user name wrong or you forget to sign, fixing such things won't make the ping work. Another, fairly new feature is wikilinking to the user name in the edit summary( i.e: "User:Corsicanwarrah, this needs attention from someone who knows the language").

 * Whatever method you use, use discretion: it's like waving your arms and yelling to get someone's attention- it's necessary sometimes, but if you do it all the time, you get on people's nerves. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:10, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Moving/merging misspelt page
The page toodeloo is a misspelling of toodle-oo (note that the latter has actual examples of usage; moreover, "toodeloo", unlike "toodle-oo", is not listed as a word in well-known dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster (1 2) or the OED (1 2)).

The pages should be merged, but I am not exactly sure what merging pages entails. Just cut and paste the content from toodeloo to toodle-oo, and turn the former into a redirect? There is a template , but it lacks documentation and so I am unsure under what circumstances it ought to be used. --Superiority (talk) 19:46, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
 * We don't merge pages on Wiktionary, note the documentation of the template (which is present!) that says "Mergers of dictionary entries are inappropriate since each spelling gets its own page." Instead, if you doubt the existence of a term, you can use the WT:RFV process. —Rua (mew) 20:12, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
 * This spelling is easily attested:, , . Since the etymology is unknown and by itself doesn’t mean anything, it isn’t clear why one should consider toodeloo a misspelling of toodle-oo, rather than the other way around.  --Lambiam 22:50, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The dictionary entries (and lack thereof) in major British and American dictionaries are why one should consider that. The OED has an attestation of "toodle-oo" from 1907. And, notably, the links you give for "toodeloo" are American publications, despite the word being "chiefly British" in usage (and somewhat rare even there); Americans misspelling a word that's not used in American English is not unexpected. --Superiority (talk) 00:33, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Grammar question: correlative comparative constructions
I've found an interesting article about those, but I couldn't find an answer to my question there.

I would like to know whether this sentence is completely grammatical: "the fewer trucks there will be on the roads, the safer they will become".

I'm in doubt because I was told you can't use the future tense in the first part of the comparison, hence you should write instead: "the fewer trucks there are on the roads, the safer they will become" (similarly, not "**the more he will brag, the more people will laugh at him" but "the more he brags , the more people will laugh at him", etc.).

Thoughts? ?

Canonicalization (talk) 23:04, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Aside from the fact that it is incorrect, "the more there will be, the safer they will become" simply sounds unnatural to me in regard to formation. Remember that "to be" means "to exist" (pretty much, and definitely so in the sense used in those examples). What you want to say is "the greater the amount that exist, the safer that they will become" or "the greater the amount that are there, the safer that they will become", hence the reason why the sentence is properly formed with "are" and not "will be", and why "brags" is proper and "will brag" is not in the example that you gave. Tharthan (talk) 23:19, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
 * "The more there will be, the safer they will become," sounds pretty natural to me. Informal, perhaps, but not incorrect. A regional difference, perhaps? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 01:27, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
 * What you were told is correct: it should be "are" and not "will be". However, I would say that the resulting sentence is still slightly unclear. It could be read as implying that each individual truck will be safer if there are fewer trucks, whereas I suppose the intended meaning is actually that each truck will not necessarily be any more safe, but overall safety will be improved simply because there are fewer. Mihia (talk) 01:32, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

 * I don't think it's grammatically incorrect but it is definitely not how a native speaker would say it. It sounds wrong in the same way that "if you will come to England next year, we'll meet up!" sounds wrong (you'd really say "if you come to England..."). I don't really understand the rules here but we don't generally use the "will" / future tense when we are talking about a conditional situation. "If you will" is a set of three words that don't really occur together. Equinox ◑ 02:05, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

 * The more..., the more... is a structure related to the concepts or irrealis and therefore subjunctive mood, as are whenever..., if..., would, as long as... etc --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:54, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

 * But, but... we have an entry for if you will, so the three words really do occur together (I know what you meant to say, but, still...). Chuck Entz (talk) 21:32, 19 May 2019 (UTC)
 * In fact those "will" are not modals....--Backinstadiums (talk) 22:33, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

 * Thanks to everyone for this! Canonicalization (talk) 08:44, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Learning stress and tone
In general, how are new learners of a language supposed to pick up stress and tone? I don't mean in specifically tonal languages like Chinese, but e.g. in English.

An example: tonight somebody on an Internet radio station said he had just noticed you could vote for jingles (the little non-songs that play in between the real songs), and I said "you could always vote for jingles". Aloud, there would be a marked stress on "AL-ways". However, if I were making a suggestion (like "you could always try voting for jingles!") then the stress and pitch would both be quite different -- there would be a terminal rise, for one thing.

I've seen various notation for this, like the stress mark in IPA and the acute/grave accents to show a rise/fall, but it's not something that seems to appear in textbooks or to be taught consistently, outside of specifically tonal languages. Is it? Should it be? Can it be? Equinox ◑ 00:28, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

 * I think this would super hard to indicate outside of multi-word phrases. We could make suprasegmental appendices though, were we could try to explain stuff like this for a certain language, which I think would be helpful. Julia ☺ ☆ 01:12, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

 * Yes, I wasn't exactly asking "how can we do this here?" but rather "in general how, if at all, is this taught?". (I do think we could really use a WikiGrammar, and our clunky phrasebook entries and appendices are sometimes a sort of blind striving towards this.) Equinox ◑ 01:17, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

 * (Rambling a bit more: while reference works like ours can be extremely useful, who ever learned a language from a dictionary? Brief-holiday phrasebookery is the best we can achieve in this format.) I've also just recalled the first time I ever became aware of the semantic importance of stress. It was in 's Who cares about English usage? (1984) and I think I can still remember the examples: "a toy factory" makes them but "a toy factory" is one; "an English teacher" spreads the language but "an English teacher" has the nationality. Equinox ◑ 01:21, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

 * This seems pretty easy to explain (compoundy nouns vs. adjective/attr. noun + noun), but then there's stress that implies stuff which seems hard to deal with: "Pick up the red crayon...now pick up the green [high tone] X"; X is expected to be "crayon"; if it's not, the utterance is ungrammatical IMO. Anyways the easiest way to learn this is just by listening to people talk, which obviously we can't provide. I've never been explicitly taught about tone in my German classes; I just picked it up. Julia ☺ ☆ 02:03, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

 * Some people can easily internalize explicitly stated rules, which typically requires some knowledge of grammatical terminology, such as for the parts of speech and syntactic entities, as well as the ability to apply that knowledge to parse phrases. Other learners have a hard time with that and need to hear examples from which their speech facility extracts the rules. The Wikipedia article has an extensive section on stress in Turkish (called “accent” there – Turkish linguists cannot agree whether this is a stress accent or a pitch accent!). Internalizing these rules from this description so that one can apply it in speech is obviously not an easy thing to do. And, as extensive as this section is, it is not complete; in particular, an exposition of intonation patterns is missing, as well as how they interact in non-trivial ways with the word accent. Also, the division of a sentence into phrase is not always as you might expect from Indo-European languages, and you have to get the phrasing right to get the continuation intonation in the right places. For Japanese you basically have to learn the patterns word by word; also, they depend on the region – for more, see . I have never seen a description of stress in Sranan Tongo, but for compounds it works just the other way around than for English: “A toy factory" makes them but "a toy factory" is one." Or, in Sranan: “Wan pika fabriki e meki den, ma wan pika fabriki na wan.”  --Lambiam 17:24, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

 * According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, " Usually, Compound words / phrases have early/late stress, respectively. Yet, among grammatical compounds pronounced with late stress are those where the first element names the material or ingredient (except for the terms cake, juice, water, so ˈorange juice), so a ˌpork ˈpie, a ˌrubber ˈduck, or a ˌpaper ˈbag (bag made of paper) but ˈpaper bag (bag for newspapers) --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:20, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It may help to look at historical English to explain this. Old English had compound words, but to indicate a material an adjective such as was used. In modern English, it seems that material compounds retain the stress pattern of the original adjective+noun phrase, and may actually still be analysed as such based on the stress pattern alone. —Rua (mew) 14:24, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, there are cases distinguished by phrase intonation alone. Combinations in which the gerund is the first element have early stress if the gerund is the modifier of a compound (i.e. with genitival meaning), and late stress if the second element is the verb's object. Combinations with the present participle as first element always have late stress. This distinguishes e.g. with early stress from  with late stress. —Rua (mew) 22:54, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Is there a way to use the Wizard Template editor for updating templates?
I can use the Wizard Template editor extension to insert a template onto a page and enter the parameters from the editor so that I don't have to type in the syntax by hand. Is there a way to use the Wizard Template editor for updating a template that's already been published?

I added some new tenses to a verb conjugation template and I need to put in the verb inflections for the new tenses. I can type the syntax but I'm dealing with at least 30 more parameters, so I'm looking for what's convenient. Otherwise, I'll just renter the conjugations I already put in. Corbariano (talk) 05:22, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

⿱TX symbol = 元
I have a receipt from Taipei, Taiwan on which it is clear that the word 元 (the currency of Taiwan) is substituted with a symbol "⿱TX", that is to say, a capital T directly above a capital X. The symbol is the same height as the numbers it is printed next to. For instance, "55⿱TX" (which seems to mean "55元"). Has anyone ever seen this? What does this mean? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:52, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

 * I was given an explanation, which I added here: TX --Geographyinitiative (talk) 10:57, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Distinguish
Please assist; in Wikipedia there is a hatnote template, for items that are prone to confusion. There appears not to be the same thing in Wiktionary. Is there a similar facility in Wiktionary, and if not why not and what do we use instead? I am not comfortable with adding cautionary notes to the word definitions, especially when one word has several usages, and one does not want to add the same caution to every entry anyway.

Incidentally, the question arose because I am working on parados and difficulty arose because of confusion with the unrelated word parodos, of totally different etymology, meaning and history, and you can guess the resulting mess, when commonly both words even get confused with paradox!

Thanks for attention. JonRichfield (talk) 14:17, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * You can use ====See also==== to list similarly spelled words that people might be looking for instead of the word where they've landed, and you can use ====Usage notes==== to explain the difference between two words in more detail. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:25, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Error edit
Hello. I have an issue here. i.e. an SLO error appears. What do you mean?. Abuse 83. Khris249 (talk) 13:27, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * This is part of the Special:AbuseFilter system. Filter 83 stops edits for accounts that have fewer than 20 edits from performing certain actions. You didn't necessarily do anything wrong--just continue performing edits here and after 20, you'll be fine. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:19, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Tag PHP suddenly
Suddenly, since the 27th of May, all my edits are marked with the phrase: Tag: PHP7. I don't know why, I don't know what it is... How could I stop it from appearing please? --sarri.greek (talk) 00:16, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * See Beta Features/PHP7. PHP7 is part of the software that the server is using. The page doesn't mention a way to turn off the tags. — Eru·tuon 02:10, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It does say "You can ignore the PHP7 tags". —Mahāgaja · talk 06:03, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. I thought it was my fault. --sarri.greek (talk) 07:21, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * It vanished!! how nice! --sarri.greek (talk) 10:48, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

title: Wiktionary:Information desk/2019/May


text:
Wiktionary:Information desk/2019/June

Template:R:Online Etymology Dictionary
With regard to the template's default message, please remove the excess space before Online. Regards--Hildeoc (talk) 13:43, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I can only see a single space before "Online" in the actual template. — Eru·tuon 00:03, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

What is this called? (type of paper advert)
A sheet of paper with a description at the top, and the bottom has been slit into a number of separate "tabs" that can be torn off, so anybody interested can take a tab with the phone number etc. on it. They may be used for classified ads on notice boards, or requests for survey participants, etc. Equinox ◑ 15:17, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

 * Managed to find some document templates for these, and they were mostly called "tear-off flyers". Equinox ◑ 21:32, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

 * Corroborated by this image search. --Lambiam 00:45, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

RP pronunciation
Is the RP pronunciation of o'er wrong or is RP pronunciation different form the one in the Cambridge dictionary, /əʊə/? --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:30, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Collins and Longman both give both pronunciations: the one that rhymes with and the one that rhymes with . We should too. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:01, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * This is not a BP question...? - -sche (discuss) 16:47, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
 * It was indeed. What defines the label RP in Wiktionary? For example, the RP pronunciation of o'er wrong or is RP pronunciation different form the one in the Cambridge dictionary, /əʊə/. --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:13, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Moved from BP. Canonicalization (talk) 10:41, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Abuse filter "SLO"
Apparently I triggered an abuse filter, while minor editing these lemmas: αβέρτους, αβέρτη, αβέρτο. But a minute later, I made the same edits and they did not trigger an abuse filter. I don't understand what I did wrong?? --Τυχαίος Χρήστης (talk) 11:39, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

 * I think this relates to a new user making many edits in a short time ("SLO" = "slow down"?). Equinox ◑ 11:46, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

 * Ok I'll try to be slower next time. Thanks Equinox! --Τυχαίος Χρήστης (talk) 14:20, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

rain down (intr): To fall from the sky as, or like, rain.
What does "as, or like, rain" exactly mean? Is or inclusive or exclusive? One meaning of "rain down" literally refers to rain, like in pour down --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:31, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * In the context, it is also-ive. The collocation rain down can mean, “to fall from the sky in the form of rain”. It can also mean, “to fall from the sky just like rain does”. --Lambiam 11:50, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * So as is for the meaning pour down? If so I'll add it as a synonym. --Backinstadiums (talk) 12:14, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * can also be used metaphorically, as in “The money came pouring down”. The terms are not truly synonyms: “pour down” implies an intense rainfall, whereas “rain down” can also be mild. --Lambiam 12:46, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Which is why the wording "as, or like, rain" should be substituted by two different senses --Backinstadiums (talk) 13:58, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Take the metaphorical sense of as in “a new wind is blowing”. It is quite common: ; ; ; ; ; . Should we list this as a separate sense? I think it is a rather transparent metaphor, found in many languages: French: un vent nouveau souffle; German: es weht ein neuer Wind; Italian: soffia un nuovo vento; Spanish: un nuevo viento sopló (or, more commonly, the plural nuevos vientos soplan); Turkish: yeni bir rüzgâr esiyor. And so is the metaphor of stuff raining down: French pleuvoir (sur quelqu’un), German: (auf jemanden) niederregnen, and so on; all can also be used metaphorically.  --Lambiam 18:34, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Cambridge
The English audio file seems to be mutilated. At least, I can only hear the first syllable. I am able to hear bɹɪd͡ʒ in bridge, so I hope it´s got nothing to do with my hearing... --77.2.15.114 09:49, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I have added . DCDuring (talk) 13:48, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

scary (colloquial)
scary is certainly not formal language, but the label colloquial is superfluous in the first meaning, isn't it? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:46, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

 * We could replace colloquial by informal. There is a tinge of childishness there. BTW, I see that the Glossary does not indicate a difference in gradation between colloquial and informal; from the descriptions one would not know which one is more informal, only that they are similar. IMO the last sense of is decidedly more colloquial than the other ones.  --Lambiam 18:54, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * What triggers adding a label here? Only the existence of afraid, frightened? The latter do not have any label --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:06, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Those are more standard register words, whereas is more informal.
 * I added "or archaic" to the label of the first definition, since scary is fairly commonly used in archaic literary works. I'm not sure if there's a better way of expressing that. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 22:53, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

my hands are tied
is there an entry for the expression someone's hands are tied? --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:29, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * have one's hands tied. Canonicalization (talk) 11:41, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Even the example in the entry shows have does not form part of the idiom, ''I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do. My hands are tied''. --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:44, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * By the definition of dictionary we are stuck, at least in principal namespace, with entries for words and expressions, not concepts, snowclones, or, in this case, metaphors. So what lemma(s) is(are) needed to cover the expressions involving this metaphor. IMO, tie someone's hands, the active voice, should be the main entry and the target of redirects from probably-more-common passive forms. Have is not part of the metaphor, but it is part of an expression that is not a form of tie someone's hands. Thus, there is a case for an entry for it, IMO. DCDuring (talk) 13:29, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * See rfm. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:43, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

 * Creating one's hands are tied as a redirect would be okay IMO. Equinox ◑ 18:33, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

indeed interjection
Which of the meanings of the interjection indeed applies to my word? --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:29, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * It means, “I totally agree”. --Lambiam 20:56, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. It would be useful to have subscript indicating the meaning which applies --Backinstadiums (talk) 21:42, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Some dictionaries use superscripts for this purpose. While this would indeed be useful to the user, there is a huge problem: this would not be stable. Senses get added, deleted, merged, split, or reshuffled. This poses already a problem now for the translations, but there at least the problem remains confined to a single page. Perhaps something can be devised based on or similar to Wikidata, but I see no immediate solution. --Lambiam 11:21, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
 * yes, ideally moving the cursor over the word would pop up the right meaning intended, like in Wikipedia --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:19, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

drive someone places
Is places an adverb in drive someone places ? --Backinstadiums (talk) 08:48, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd say it's an indirect object. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:59, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Deng Xiaoping "Let some people get rich first."
Hey guys, did he really say these words? We need the original source on this, because it seems VERY suspicious to me that I can't find the Chinese version of this quotation. Same discussion at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Reference_desk --Geographyinitiative (talk) 02:02, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 * There are reliable sources that confirm that he said something of that nature, e.g. here in the World Development Report 2009, although “reportedly” hedges it. Note that this version does not refer to people getting rich, but rather areas. Apparently he said this during his nánxún (, not to be confused with the homophonic city or district 南浔) in 1992. The 2001 book The Nanxun Legacy and China's Development in the Post-Deng Era gives a toneless pinyin version: rang yifuben ren xian fuyu qilai. Assuming that ren stands for, Deng did indeed refer to people, even if perhaps metonymically meaning areas. But why is this something that should be discussed at Wiktionary? --Lambiam 22:58, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The alleged statement is 让一部分人先富起来 (Ràng yībùfèn rén xiān fù qǐlái). This looks like an authoritative source.  --Lambiam 23:24, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Hello again all. It's still not meeting the smell-test for me. The cpc people com source doesn't say when or where he said the exact words "让一部分人先富起来". It may be a summarization of various quotes from Deng, but a summary of quotes does not a quote make. Only a quote is a quote. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

prey on: victimize
I do not know whether the first or second meaning of victimize is the one prey on refers to --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:23, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

 * Sexual predators victimize the people they prey on, that is, they make victims of their prey by exploiting them. --Lambiam 20:30, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Kanar
Kanar is a very old Polish family name. We found a Kanar in the phone books about fifty years ago, he knew the history and was an unknown until then relative. He said there were only about five hundred Kanars in the entire United States at that time. Rebecca Kanar Macallister was the only one we knew, she died several years ago but her daughter, Mary Lou, lives in Tallahassee.

 * As a common noun, can mean ticket collector in Polish, but it is unlikely that we have an occupational surname here, since the occupation of ticket collector is fairly recent. As a proper noun, it is the name of a Polish river, a tribituary of the Stoła, itself a large river in . Another (archaic) sense is an alcoholic drink stemming from the Canary Islands. The surname seems not to be very common in Poland today but does occur: the Polish Wikipedia mentions one  as the guide of a scouting unit.  --Lambiam 21:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

nay conjunction: should I say
Why is there verbal inversion in the definition of the conjunction nay? Is it idiomatic? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:08, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The inversion is because the second part of X, or should I/we say Y is a (rhetorical) question; you will sometimes find a question mark at the end, but in most uses the sentence runs on after this, and then the question mark is often omitted. Here are some examples where the author put explicit question marks:, , . --Lambiam 20:56, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wiktionary:Information desk/2019/June


text:
Wiktionary:Information desk/2019/July

"the town is back that way"
Is here "back" a preposition? otherwise, what meaning of back applies here? --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:27, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Adverb, sense 2. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:44, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Etymology of a spooky Swedish word
Hello world! I know that "mö" is Swedish for "silt" (fine earth deposited by water) but I can't find any online references on this. I found this information working with the Unified Soil Classification System (USCS), in which the letter that describes Silt is "M", from mö. My material even states that "mö" is Silt in Swedish.

Someone can help me?
 * You probably can't find any online references because it doesn't seem to be true. I will guess that you are the same person as 200.131.33.105, who added this word despite its nonexistence. The word you presumably want is, as documented at sv:w:Mo (jordart). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:43, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Schritt
Does anyone think that the usex under no 3 is approbriate and that locker room talk like that is necessary to clarify the meaning? --77.9.102.52 15:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * What example do you propose? I always think that if usage examples are so (😄) that people are impassioned then this help learners memorize. Never had a problem with quoting political texts either. Everyone gets his bashing. Also one should implement the frequent collocation “in den Schritt greifen”, the underlying fact of which is regularly offensive. I also like definitions like in  “someone submitting to unnatural lust” or formerly at  “the negotiation of immoral bargains between the sexes”. If a dictionary entry incites to rethink moral assumptions while still rendering the requested information then its goal is served double and customer ties grow. See also . Fay Freak (talk) 21:08, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * You're an idiot. Come up with something else and stop babbling about censorship. DTLHS (talk) 21:13, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * That usex was definitely not appropriate. If you want to illustrate the collocation “in den Schritt greifen/fassen etc” why not find a suitable quotation? – Jberkel 21:51, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you both, Jberkel and DTLHS. Apart from being inapprobriate and offensive, one could even argue that the sentence wasn´t a good usage example as Schritt in this sense isn´t an obscene term (as FayFreak, perhaps overcompensating his inhibitions under the veil of the pseudonym, seems to think) but rather a term in a register higher than colloquial speech. In the example one would expect vulgarisms like "Fotze" or concealing expressions like "Muschi". --77.4.152.75 11:11, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd say it's euphemistic, in the same way is currently labeled as euphemism for genitalia. – Jberkel 11:31, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course. I think (almost) all terms for genitalia, excretions etc. in higher registers (and not only there) are euphemistic (or at least originated as euphemisms).--77.4.152.75 13:33, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
 * If anyone needs a quotation that will not meet with opprobrium, look here. --Lambiam 12:30, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

a specified weight of shot
Isn't the use following meaning of shot uncountable?

pounder (plural pounders) 1. (in combination) A gun capable of firing a specified weight of shot in pounds --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:36, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

 * No, it is countable. If one gun is a ten-pounder, two of them are ten-pounders. Equinox ◑ 18:06, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * My question was about the noun shot --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:32, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Oh. The text you quote is correct: I think it's "some shot", like "some ammunition". Equinox ◑ 19:51, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

 * The sentence works even if it's countable, though, just like "a specified colour of hat" or "a specified type of car". Equinox ◑ 19:52, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * the entry only offers as plural shots though --Backinstadiums (talk) 20:00, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

 * ✅ See uncountable senses at shot. Equinox ◑ 20:02, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Can definitions from be used from other websites/collections if they are cited?
I know that it is generally disallowed for definitions to be directly copied from other dictionaries because of possible copyright infringement, but I'm unsure if the same applies to not dictionary resources and if providing a citation next to the definition allows for them to be imported. Is the situation different for books for which the copyright has expired? Thanks, The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 21:57, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

 * AFAIK, If something is out of copyright then you can use it freely. Copyright may not expire at the same time in every country, however. Equinox ◑ 22:08, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

 * What is a "not dictionary resource"? Copyright is copyright. If it's copyrighted, then it can't be copied directly regardless of it's referenced or not. If the copyright is expired then yes, they can probably be imported (depending on if the community deems it worthwhile to do so). DTLHS (talk) 22:09, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

 * The resource that I am considering is from 1939, 80 years ago, which is long enough in the U.S. A non dictionary resource would be something like MathWorld. Just to note, I'm not talking about a whole batch of definitions, just a few manually. The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 22:34, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

 * My tip to you is to copy it anyway, but change one or two words. --I learned some phrases (talk) 22:48, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

and his early romanized name "Hu Su"/"Hu Suh"
Hello all. What do you think the romanized forms "Hu Su" and "Hu Suh" mean about 胡適? Where could this romanization have derived from? Hakka? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:56, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

have someone to do something
We had Mother to stay over Christmas. What would be the correct analysis of to? --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:56, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

 * It is the same kind of usage as in "mother came to stay". Equinox ◑ 11:14, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

talk one's way out of
Can talk one's way out of be ditransitive (or bitransitve, if that is the correct term)? I know the verb talk can indeed --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:47, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The technical term is “ambitransitive”. The verb “talk” in the collocation already has an object (“one’s way”) and cannot take another one, but the preposition requires an object. It is not usual to consider that transitivity; you cannot make that object the subject of a passive construction. (“She talked her way out of the speeding ticket” ↛ *”The speeding ticket was talked her way out of by her”.)  --Lambiam 12:59, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about an indirect object as talk has, e.g. talk one's way out of to somebody --Backinstadiums (talk) 13:26, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I see, you did mean “ditransitive”. I do not think that the verb is ditransitive, though. Grammarians do not consider the prepositional phrase “to the officer” in the sentence “She talked to the officer ” an indirect object. It has to be a noun phrase; for example “the officer” is an indirect object in the sentence “She gave the officer a compliment”. Also, I think that a sentence like *“She talked her way out of the speeding ticket to the officer” is ungrammatical.  --Lambiam 15:40, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

two days before yesterday
What is the purpose of the entry two days before yesterday? --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:52, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

 * To me it appears as a redirect page to a translation hub, not an entry by itself. --Lambiam 19:38, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Similarly, two days after tomorrow offers its antonym, three days ago, but says nothing about how to express it in English. Any idea? --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:27, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I don’t understand. Express what in English? To say “two days after tomorrow” in English, use “two days after tomorrow”, or its synonym “the day after the day after tomorrow”. You can also say “three days from now” (which does not have an entry or redirect page). To say “three days ago”, you can use “three days ago”, or, synonymously, “the day before the day before yesterday”. --Lambiam 11:04, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I was asking because that entry does not offer synonyms, unlike two days after tomorrow --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:19, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

 * User:Backinstadiums, you can take a look at Votes/pl-2018-03/Including translation hubs in case you were still confused why two days after tomorrow doesn't have a definition or synonyms. --Habst (talk) 01:07, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I am O.K. with it not having a definition, but I'd definitely add synonyms --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:51, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

grammar in older English texts
Hi all. I have a question. Was grammar a bit different back in 1885 when James Legge published his translation of the ancient Chinese text the Book of Rites? I noticed some strange constructions that do not conform with English grammar, or at least the grammar we use today:

While alive, he, is so styled; and if he die (during that time), he continues to be so designated.

The son of an inferior member of the harem cannot offer the sacrifice (to his grandfather or father); if (for some reason) he have to do so, he must report it to the honoured son, (the head of the family).

If a man observe the rules of propriety, he is in a condition of security; if he do not, he is in one of danger.

If the teacher speak to him, he will answer; if he do not, he will retire with hasty steps.

Hence, in buying a concubine, if he do not know her surname, he must consult the tortoise-shell about it.

When (a youth) is in attendance on an elder at a meal, if the host give anything to him with his own hand. If he do not so give him anything, he should eat without bowing.

Source is [http://www.sacred-texts.com/cfu/liki/liki01.htm. here]. I have checked it against the original paper publication, so these are not scannos. The constructions are "normal" in other parts of the chapter (e.g. "he ascends", "he visits", "he styles himself", "he continues", etc.). ---> Tooironic (talk) 05:50, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Those seem to be all subjunctive forms, and the English subjunctive has almost completely faded out in the past century or so. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:21, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. Thanks! ---> Tooironic (talk) 06:48, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Note that in all examples it is the active verb of an, expressing a possible contingency. --Lambiam 15:21, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

true-life: based on fact
fact is countable, so are any of the following idioms? based on fact, on fact --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:34, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Something can be based on fact or based on facts but there is nothing especially idiomatic about those phrases. *On fact alone is just wrong. There's in fact (different shade of meaning?), but not *in facts. Equinox ◑ 14:51, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
 * fact is countable, so in based on fact it's being used uncountably, which I thought was reason enough for it to be idiomatic. --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:54, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Fact can be uncountable: "what I'm telling you is fact, not fiction". Equinox ◑ 14:58, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

particles and affixes
Hello,

I'm currently working on the Alutor language, but since the language is polysynthetic, should I add every small particle? E.g words like tə- (1.sg in verbs), -la- (plural marker in verbs), -tkə- (imperfective marker in verbs) and so on.

Millerutt (talk) 19:51, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

 * I think that is what we normally do. At least, for Turkish verbs we have some: (future tense suffix) and   (negation), although most are still missing:  (continuous),  (observed past),  (reported past),  (possibility),  (present simple). A problem specific to Turkish is that most have a plethora of alternatives: -di can also assume the forms -dı, -du, -dü, -ti, -tı, -tu and -tü.  --Lambiam 00:10, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Thank you, but I'm also curious, how can I make a headword template for a language? I am currently using the {head} function, but I find it's not that helpful when I'm adding the roots of nouns. - Millerutt (talk) 00:16, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Can’t you use headword templates for other languages as a model? Otherwise you’ll have to be more specific as to what it is you wish to accomplish. --Lambiam 13:13, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

 * I would say that entries for all the particles and affixes is especially important for polysynthetic/agglutinative languages. There's just no way you can cover every possible combination in inflection tables, so you need to give people the tools to analyze the combinations they do encounter and to be able to create the necessary ones. The tricky part is how to deal with how multiple affixes interact with each other and with the word: not just the obvious phonological considerations, but also things like restrictions on ordering, and whether any affixes are incompatible with each other. Not that dictionaries in general are very good at such things, even with morphologically simpler languages such as English. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:15, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

 * What I mean by the headline templates is how do I create them. I would like to make a template for alutor something like {alr-noun|root|XX|dual|XX|plural|XX}, but i'm stuck with the {head|alr|noun|dual|XX|plural|XX} instead. Also, when I'm adding examples of polysynthetic verbs, should I split the words up e.g мытнуткын -> мыт-ну-ткы-н -Millerutt (talk) 18:06, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

 * What would you like the output of to be? What is the first  ? — Eru·tuon 02:22, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Nevermind the templates. When I add examples with polysynthetic verbs for Alutor, should I divide the morphemes with a (-). Lets use тыйылӄатык which means I am sleeping, and I want to highlight the I part of the verbs should I write it as ты-йылӄат-ык then, or тыйылӄатык? -Millerutt (talk) 21:34, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Not knowing any Alutor, I am not sure what the best approach is, but in general we show the entry in its most common orthography, which in this case presumably is тыйылӄатык. To show its composition, an Etymology section can be used. For example, presents its make-up as  – an extreme example; I think it better to leave the  component intact. You can use the templates prefix, suffix, confix, or, neutrally, affix or compound. If the morphemes ты and ык are, respectively, a prefix and a suffix, you want to see  with hyphens; if neither is to be considered an affix,  is preferable. I am not sure why you should need bolding; I think you should assume a basic knowledge of Alutor grammar for readers interested in the composition  of terms.  --Lambiam 15:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

 * I don't think making an etymology section for an example is very useful. What I meant was; when I add an example, let's say the verb йылӄат, and I "conjugate" it in an example. Should I then divide the morphemes with a (-) = ты-йылӄат-ык, highlight the morpheme I'm defining = тыйылӄатык or just leave it as тыйылӄатык? e.g something like т- Millerutt (talk)

 * If Wiktionary were a dictionary of morphemes, I would just embolden the morpheme I was defining. I have a similar issue with Pali, which forms 'compound words' with the same freedom as English forms noun stacks.  I've been treating most of these compound words as sequences of words, so I highlight the relevant component.  I don't introduce punctuation to separate the elements.  Often the final vowel of one element combines with the initial vowel of the next, and renderers often dictate that emboldening has to apply to entire orthographic syllables.  I follow the principle of emboldening all the characters used to represent the lemma, so the emboldening bleeds into adjacent words/morphemes.  This is most obvious when a consonant or vowel is emboldened in the non-Roman text but not in the transliteration.  No-one's complained to me yet.

 * Pali is also heavily inflected, but I treat the inflection as part of the word. -- RichardW57m (talk) 14:13, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

only: conjunction
Can somebody please offer an example for the first meaning of the conjunction but --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:14, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

ingratiate: bring oneself into favour with someone
bring into? bring in does not seem to match the meaning of "bring oneself into favour with someone" --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:58, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * That's because it doesn't use that idiom. It's sense 5 at bring: "to persuade; to induce; to draw; to lead; to guide" with into. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:13, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Could you add such a sentence as an example in the fifth sense? --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:03, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

entrée: smaller dish served before the main course of a meal.
Does here the comparative smaller refer to the main course? --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:14, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

 * In English you can say something like “The beautiful island of Amorgos is one of the lesser known Greek islands” and leave it to the reader’s imagination to what norm the level of notability is being compared. There are so many small Greek islands that actually most of them belong to the “lesser known” ones. Don’t be disappointed if your non-US entrée is a somewhat smallish portion. If you read this as in comparison to the size of the main course you are not off the mark, but the comparative may nevertheless be read as a . --Lambiam 23:17, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Then there are terms like older, meaning elderly, so that one cannot drop their guard. --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:14, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

View Word List?
Is there any way to view a list of words, akin to how one navigates through an ink-and-paper dictionary? Kiwinanday (talk) 17:27, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * See Category:English lemmas and scroll down to the big list, if that helps. (For other languages, replace "English" in the page name with the name of the language you want.) — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 21:00, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * For words in all languages combined, you can use Special:PrefixIndex. --Lambiam 22:56, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

sear: To char, scorch, or burn the surface of (something) with a hot instrument.
Does " with a hot instrument" apply to the whole first meaning (char, scorch included), or just to burn? --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:02, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

your note dated the 17th last (archaic usage)
What is archaic is merely its postpositive usage, am I wrong? --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:41, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I think no one would use, in this sense, “the last 17th”. (I wonder if people back then also thought that “the 1st last” sounds kinda funny.) --Lambiam 21:15, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd use it as "last Monday/month/week" etc, that is meaning "the previous... the ... before" --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:49, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * But ult. is used more often (according to my sister who used to be a shorthand typist). SemperBlotto (talk) 09:55, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Something like "the last Friday the 13th was in July" is possible. "The last 17th" does not sound plausible to me, if only because there are much better-sounding alternatives like "the 17th of this/last month". Equinox ◑ 13:28, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

gro: Shortening of gross, perhaps via grody.
Is such a phrasing technically correct/possible? --Backinstadiums (talk) 09:50, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

 * I would say that doesn't seem to make sense. Equinox ◑ 13:26, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

more/less than
Obama’s Arms-Export Tally More than Doubles Bush’s.

How is "more than (doubles) " analyzed in the above sentence? --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:50, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

'nuff said but not enough said?
Is there any reason for it? --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:09, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

everyway
Can the second meaning, in every direction, be expressed with the word "way" itself, perhaps "(in) every way"? --Backinstadiums (talk) 11:38, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Yes. Equinox ◑ 13:25, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
 * thanks. Is the prep in optional, "(in) every way"? Secondly I think prosody is partly responsible for the creation of everyway --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:53, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

 * It depends on the sentence, really. "I looked every way but saw nothing" is fine, for example, and does not use "in". Equinox ◑ 21:52, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

 * An aside: I am being prescriptive here (and perhaps this is more British than American English), but personally (i) I would never use "everyway" as a single word -- that's not in my vocabulary -- and (ii) I would only use "everyday" as an adjective ("this is an everyday problem that happens all the time") and never as an adverb ("it happens everyday"). I found it quite painful when a local supermarket introduced a big slogan banner along the lines of "better value everyday" (whereas "better everyday value" would be fine, but different in meaning). Equinox ◑ 21:52, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

county office
What does "county office" mean in the second meaning of courthouse? According to wikipedia, "Home to the regional county government", but it doesn't show the equivalent terms in other languages, as it does for the first meaning --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:12, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Is this enough w:New_York_County_Courthouse :) Backinstadiums? Pierpao (talk) 08:06, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

although
He told me not to do it, although I did it. Is such a sentence grammatical for although meaning but, as the usage note insinuates? --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:59, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

 * To me, there's a faintly different suggestion of time. "He told me not to do it, but I did it (anyway)" = FIRST he told me not to, and THEN I did it. "He told me not to do it, although I did it [had done it?]" = possibly more suggestive that I had already done it before I was told. I do not think "he told me not to do it although I did it" is acceptable if you are saying that you did the thing you were previously told not to do. Equinox ◑ 21:48, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I think so too, but wasn't sure whether my native Spanish was interfering --Backinstadiums (talk) 22:54, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

How to get back in Wiktionary's good graces?
I have suffered the ignominy of being barred from contributing, despite the fact that I have made many contributions in the past, and am prepared to make a great many more in the future. Is there any way I can regain "acceptance" status?

Scott MacStravic (SCotch35@gmail.com

 * Follow the rules. Equinox ◑ 03:42, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Request for template code
I know this is the information desk but I do not find a page for requests to administrators. Some sysop could please copy the Template:fa-Arab code in my sandbox beetween nowiki? I need for it wiktionary. And, please copy the history too. Thanks Pierpao (talk) 08:01, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

 * It is not clear where your code is located. Can you provide the precise location? And to where do you want it copied? Is there a reason you cannot do the copying yourself? --Lambiam 09:29, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The code is deleted. I'm talking about the Template:fa-Arab. Only and admin can copy it. A good destination is User:Pierpao/fa-Arab. Thanks a lot. RegardsPierpao (talk) 11:49, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * It's not possible to copy the history without losing the history of the original page, which seems undesirable. Are you ok with just the latest revision? —Rua (mew) 11:55, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes thank Rua. For the "history copy" I mean a plain text copy like this to put in the template talk, for reference, respect to editors and copyright issues (although it is only a template, likely a non creative work) -- Pierpao (talk) 04:09, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I've copied the last revision to your page, and placed a plaintext copy of the history on your sandbox page. —Rua (mew) 09:16, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

 * That is, User:Pierpao/Sandbox 1 . --Lambiam 18:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Stressing the schwa
The language I'm currently working on is Alutor. Many linguists and the wikipedia page claim that the schwa cannot be stressed in the language. This seems reasonable, but there's a problem. Some words are entirely schwa-based e.g rəttərət and wətwət. My question is, where would the stress be in these words if the schwa can never be stressed? -Millerutt (talk) 16:25, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * In Dutch the schwa can be stressed: in when the word (the non-neuter definite article) is stressed – which makes it mean something like “the most eminent” – and in the phrase, in which the schwa in  is stressed. Here on Wiktionary that schwa is indeed denoted as stressed, which appears entirely reasonable to me. I have not met a Dutch speaker who thinks this is a different phoneme, although to my untrained ears it is indistinguishable from a higher  (a centralized ). In any case, I think that the unstressability of the schwa is one of those dogmas that is best ignored when they get in the way.  --Lambiam 22:28, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Slovene also most definitely has stressed schwas, like in . Unlike in Dutch, there is no vowel it could be confused with. —Rua (mew) 09:18, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! I did figure it out in the end, just a bunch of stuff with open and closed syllables _-_Millerutt (talk) 00:21, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

drive places
What does "Drive somebody places" mean? is places here an adverb? --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:58, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, it functions as an adverb. You can interpret this as if the preposition “to” was omitted: “he drives me [to] places”, analogously to how “home” can mean “to home”. You can also “go places”, in the literal sense – this has also an idiomatic, figurative sense: . --Lambiam 22:40, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Latin mistake - nomen gentile
With almost 700 entries, nomen gentile is one of the most wanted page, but it is not correct. The right expression is nomen gentilicium (gentile name) that means name of families. Nomen is nominative, gentilicium is plural genitive. Gentile is dative or ablative, that makes it a non sense and without reference construction. I think we need a bot to correct it. -- Pierpao (talk) 04:28, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
 * ? Of what word is the plural genitive? Nomen gentile is a synonym of nomen gentilicium. Some examples of use:, , .  --Lambiam 08:40, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
 * You are right Lambiam gentilicium is nominative. My wish were only to help, sorry. Moreover I find Nomen gentile a strange construct, I do not understand if gentile is english or latin, maybe we could consider Nomen gentile an english locution. If you have an answer I'll be happy to write a page.--Pierpao (talk) 10:52, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
 * 🇨🇬 is an adjective, so it agrees in case and number with the noun it modifies, . I see no reason why it should be genitive- AFAIK only nouns do that. Chuck Entz (talk) 13:48, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Missing- -'er/-ers
I have long noticed a strange absence of the suffixes "-er" and "-ers" in the usual lists of verbs, whereas the plurals, present and past particles thereof are all but invariably included. If one can "spring" someone or something, and "springs" them often, while being engaged in "springing", and having "springed" (sprung) someone/something, why is there no recognition of that person as a "springer"?

Scott MacStravic (SCotch35@gmail.com)

 * Because springs, springing, sprang, sprung are forms of the verb (used with different persons: I, you, he etc.; or different grammatical tenses). Springer is not a form of the verb. It is a word derived from the verb. It may be included under a Derived terms heading. Equinox ◑ 19:52, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

 * Traditionally there is a distinction between "inflectional" and "derivational" suffixes- only the former are shown in headwords. Some may see this as arbitrary. DTLHS (talk) 19:52, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

 * I don't see why "X-er" (someone who does X) is worthy of the same line as the verb inflections. We know the Latin, French, German etc. verb tables that explain "I eat, you eat, he eats, she eats..." why would "an eater" be there? Any derivational form like "eatable", "eater", "eatworthy?" should never be on that primary verb line because it isn't a verb form. Equinox ◑ 02:48, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

 * The distinction makes sense for most Indo-European languages, but when you get into agglutinative/polysynthetic languages like Finnish, Turkish, Korean, Japanese, and most North American Indian languages it gets really, really, really complicated...Chuck Entz (talk) 02:22, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Templates
So here I am making ( "suffering from" ) Alyutor templates, and everything worked just fine until it suddently started absorbing everything beneath it. My question is how can/do I make a table with a nice little headline (or whatever it's called) with a drop-button. Current template I'm working on Template:alr-decl-pronoun. Signed Millerutt (talk) 23:05, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I think your problem was having  s without corresponding   s. That mean that the   s below the template used by the system to format the page were interpreted by the browser as closing the    blocks opened by the template. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, that was indeed the problem. But another question, how can I fit the table into the "header" without it stretching over the entire screen? Millerutt (talk)
 * You can add something like  to the   tag.  --Lambiam 10:33, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

affix pages
Do pages containing a list of affixes (prefixes/suffixes) exist here on Wikitionary?
 * We have categories by language, such as, for English, Category:English prefixes and Category:English suffixes. --Lambiam 22:14, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Add quotations to main definition or alternative form?
I want to add older quotations to heliocent rism ; however, they're old enough that they use the full form heliocent ricism. To which page should I add quotations that spell it the old way? —Piparsveinn (talk) 16:35, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Add them to heliocentricism. DTLHS (talk) 16:36, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Where to gather recent etymological research?
If the OED lacks etymological information about an English word (says it's "of obscure origins" or similar), I give up looking. But I assume there is ongoing scholarly work in etymology. What sources and search terms can help me find this kind of research?

 * One thing you can do is to go to Google Scholar and search for “etymology” plus the word in question. --Lambiam 20:15, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Quoting a work in an anthology or similar
At a pound to a penny the first quotation is from a short story in an anthology of short stories and poems, and this appears to be the only place it was published. I've used the "chapter" parameter of the template to indicate the title of the story being quoted an the "title" parameter for the name of the anthology. Is this correct? If one work in a larger collection itself has chapters, how would this be noted? Thryduulf (talk) 10:52, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

 * "Chaptered" works within a collection are not very normal, are they? I can't think of an example I've seen. However, the documentation says that the chapter can basically be free text (they give "Introduction" as an example) so you could probably come up with a meaningful schema, calling it "3.2" or "LittleRedRidingHood.2" or something. I doubt that our templates are as rigorous as the likes of APA citations (but they are a good start for the future). Equinox ◑ 10:57, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm sure I've seen it in at least one science fiction anthology, but although I can picture where I was when reading it (and from that deduce it was almost certainly the mid-1990s) I can't remember the specific work. I did also read an e-book that was a collection of H.G. Wells novels, all with chapters - but in that case I'd just cite the individually published novels not the collection. It's not something I need for the entry in question though. Thryduulf (talk) 11:04, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Common term for "Osteolith"
A common generic term (used by most lay people) associated with the word "osteolith(s)" is/are bone spur(s).

 * I think these terms reference different things. --Lambiam 15:16, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Point me the way to go ... talk about list categories?
Accidentally came upon Category:zh:Mathematics. Cool. That led me to Category:zh:List of topics. Very cool. Thus to Category:zh:Computing. 很酷酷的!

But then tried to wander around from Category:List of topics which also allows you to jump off into language-specific lists, e.g. but when I click on zh in the big table, the bottom of the resulting page does not have Category:zh:List of topics. Note that listing starts with 'Z'

Where would Category:zh:List of topics be added, so that one can get to the 'zh' language lists? It's rather confusing trying to see where. Are there instructions or a map for guidance somewhere? Shenme (talk) 03:55, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 * It's far from obvious, but the category is sorted by the names of the languages, not by the language codes: "zh" is between "cic"  and "cpi" . Chuck Entz (talk) 04:19, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

title: Wiktionary:Information desk/2019/July