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Wiktionary:Information desk/2021/January

Category requests
Where is the most appropriate place to post requests for categories? I've been looking through the first couple pages of Special:WantedCategories and saw some I thought I could create with, but the nuts and bolts that would properly create the categories in the background aren't set up yet so I don't currently have the knowledge to create said categories. User: The Ice Mage talk to meh 13:46, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I would guess either the Tea Room or the Grease Pit, depending on how technical the request is. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  11:47, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

please help a newbie, basic navigation
My needs are simple; I am English studying the Italian language. I would like to use the dictionary to insert a word, usually English or Italian, wanting the output definition to be given in either or both languages. Obviously your word analyses give masses of other information, and I just keep getting lost in the pages/menus with too much info. I hope you can give me advice on how I can use the system simply.Sue1207 (talk) 11:50, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If you're looking for a way to type in an English word and be given just the Italian translation without a bunch of other info, I don't think Wiktionary is the right tool for you. You'd probably be better off using Google Translate or Linguee for that. We're aiming to be a comprehensive dictionary of all words in all languages, with translations of English entries into as many languages as possible, so while you will usually be able to find an Italian translation for most English words, you do have to scroll down to the Translations section, find the box corresponding to the specific meaning of the word you're looking up, open the translation box, and find the Italian alongside any other languages. Finding the English gloss when you look up an Italian word is faster, but you may still be confronted with the etymology and pronunciation of the Italian before you get to the meaning. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:18, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Solutions like this can be done with scripts and bots that can take our info and output something like you're asking for but it's pretty complicated. There are similar lexical data on Wikidata and making a tool to extract that information is generally easier but still not something for a complete newbie. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:54, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Matthias Buchmeier has a lot of bilingual dictionaries that are compiled from English translation tables and foreign-language sections. These are the ones for Italian: User:Matthias_Buchmeier, User:Matthias_Buchmeier They might still contain more information that you'd like, but they massively cut down on extra information. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  10:02, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Durably archived? (Cp. WT:CFI)
Is  The Ojibwe People's Dictionary (http://ojibwe.lib.umn.edu)   in gichi-mookomaan-aki durably archived?

Possible follow-up question: If not, is this term really attested?

BTW: After a few quick google searches, it seems that more translations might be spurious (from Wikipedia?), just like the old Gothic translation (cp.): Navajo, Plains Cree, Norman. -2003:DE:373F:4016:B1B8:6DED:604C:447A 21:09, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * There's a print version (for instance, here, but I don't know how complete it is. I have a paperback copy around here somewhere, but it would take me a while to dig it up. As for that particular term: given that the language is spoken by people who live in Minnesota (note the present tense), which is in the United States, this is thoroughly plausible.

 * This is definitely not a case of a language that died out more than a millennium before the founding of the USA, like Gothic. American Indians in the US are not some historical curiosity: they live all over the US, they went to school, they know about current events, etc. You may even have dealt with some of them online. Sure, there are lots of their languages that are no longer spoken, but although Ojibwe may be endangered, it's still around. The same goes for Plains Cree and Navajo.

 * Of course, it's also entirely possible that Ojibwe speakers switch to English when talking about such things- but I wouldn't know. The main point is that this is an LDL and there's nothing to indicate that the above is an unreliable source.Chuck Entz (talk) 23:11, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

 * I should also add that Norman is a modern language, spoken today in Normandy and on the Channel Islands. You may be thinking of the Norman dialect that was spoken a thousand years ago in both France and the British Isles, but we treat that as a dialect of Old French. Like the Saxon lects that made their way into England as well, merely having a similar name doesn't mean they're the same thing. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:23, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Why are there so many given names of non-French origin included in the French given names categories?
I am specifically talking about the names that come up in Category: French female given names, which include a very high proportion of Japanese names, e.g. Hiroko. The Japanese-origin names also regularly appear in the Spanish and Portuguese categories as well. What reasoning is there to categorize Japanese names into apparently any and every language, when the only distinction is that they are symbolized in non-Japanese-script? It's not like French has some well-sourced Francophone descendant of Keiko like it does for عَائِشَة (Aïcha); it's just the standard romaji representation of けいこ. This system implies the "female given names" category for every single Latin-script language should be added to Keiko, which is ridiculous. 173.3.152.194 06:44, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The name Hiroko was automatically placed in that category because it also has an L2 of French, next to English, Portuguese and Tagalog. IMO assigning these L2s is not helpful. I suspect that in almost all countries there have been a few cases of (non-Japanese) parents naming a daughter Hiroko; conversely, you can find names stemming from virtually all languages and ethnicities being given in the United States. --Lambiam 12:41, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't these name lists reflect popular or famous sourceable names rather than every potential name? Those Japanese names aren't even in the top 1000 for France at any point in history; even if non-Japanese Francophone people are giving them to their kids ("French origin"), the usage is still so low they shouldn't be included. For the sake of consistency (where are all the Chinese or Cyrillic names?) and feasibility (the category fields would have thousands of items if this was applied evenly for every name) I think all those L2s should be removed. 173.3.152.194 17:47, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think those are worthless, but there is no consensus on the issue. See Votes/pl-2019-11/CFI_policy_for_foreign_given_names_and_surnames. PUC – 18:48, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It appears that the main reason for the proposal failing was the unworkability of the criterion. We still have the standard CFI, though, where I assume that we can agree that an occurrence in an English text of a name identifying a Japanese name bearer (as seen e.g. here: “his Japanese model muse Hiroko Matsumoto”) does not attest to it being an English term, just like an occurrence of the term chawanmushi in an English text don’t make it an English word. --Lambiam 17:10, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Even that criterion can be hard to pin down. lived for many decades in France; I don't know the story of her citizenship, but what if she took French citizenship and relinquished her Japanese citizenship? At that point, she is legally French, not Japanese. Does that mean the name Hiroko has become a French name too? I don't think so, but how do we draw the line? Or the two boys I once knew who were of white Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry but whose parents had become interested in Indian religions and so named them Krishna and Gopal? Are those now English names just because two English-speaking Americans with no South Asian ancestry bear them? I would say no, but where to draw the line? —Mahāgaja · talk 17:45, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * To add to the confusion, perhaps, I find myself wondering: what if someone sees a name originating from a language that ordinarily uses a non-Latin script, but in a Western context and in romanized form, and is wondering about the original form and e.g. its etymology and comes to Wiktionary for answers? For Japanese that is not a problem due to romanization entries, but the same does not hold for many other languages (e.g. Hindi, Greek, etc.). — Mnemosientje (t · c) 17:51, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * That's a good point too. Although I just said above that I don't consider Gopal an English name, I do actually want an entry for Gopal and not just for गोपाल, and it has be labeled as some language, so unless we call it Translingual, I suppose English is as good as anything. —Mahāgaja · talk 19:23, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think this is a poor example, as English is widely spoken in India and there are several generations of native speakers (or speakers who have a different mother tongue and learned this at a very early age alongside that). —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:16, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

 * The issue behind this is a longstanding, complicated issue; it'd be fantastic to find a workable solution. Some previous, (partly) related discussions: Category talk:en:Names and Information desk/Archive_2013/July-December.) Perhaps we could redefine transliterations of Japanese names of Japanese people (etc) so that they're no longer categorized with given name but instead as "Transliteration of..." or "Rendering of the Japanese given name Foo". That might also work for cases like English Yazdegerd (name of multiple non-English individuals), which could be recategorized not in "English male given names" but in e.g. "English renderings of Middle Persian male given names". That'd work for cases where the only bearers of the name are non-English. But to discount 3+ English-speaking parents naming their kid (raised English-speaking) Krishna or Gopal or Kali (etc) as "not really English", or French-speaking parents naming kids Ahmed (etc) as still "not really French", is something I'd be wary of. (There are many productive processes that lead to something being an English name, French name, etc, like variation of an existing name, like Ashlie; conversion of a common noun, like Karma, like earlier Joy; conversion of a place-name like Mecca, earlier America; use of a name from fiction, like Daenerys, Alivia, or Undine. Borrowing from a foreign language can likewise make something English/French/etc IMO.) - -sche (discuss) 09:16, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

 * Related category: Category:Terms transliterated from other languages by language. J3133 (talk) 10:30, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Ooh, yeah, that could be a good model. "Names transliterated from other languages by language", "Names transliterated from Japanese", etc...? - -sche (discuss) 17:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Also Category:Transliteration of personal names. J3133 (talk) 18:59, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

 * I think it's very reasonable to include "Frenchified" names that descend from other languages (e.g. Aïcha) if they are common or have notable nontrivial use. There are probably linguistic methods for distinguishing "Frenchification" from mere transliteration, too. My quibble is with all the names that have no connection to languages under which they're categorized, and the obvious inconsistency and untenability that brings. J3133 brought up those transliteration categories, which seem promising. I think I'll start populating those, and maybe see if I encounter any pushback from removing at least the Japanese "French" names from the French category. 173.3.152.194 03:28, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * (Logged in now). Actually, the issue still remains with overcategorization, since it would be including the for every single name transliterated for every single language. A much better alternative would be transliterations into writing systems, e.g.  or  . Then we could delete the useless and inaccurate "borrowed from" and " given names" and " lemmas" and " proper nouns" categories and entry sections while still allowing the Latin (or whatever) version to be searchable on en.wiktionary. Is this a thing that has been discussed anywhere? JoelleJay (talk) 04:08, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

 * I think the way we do this for Chinese is best practice. E.g. for the name 約翰 (John), we categorize it simply as zh:English male given names, zh:Biblical characters, and zh:English surnames. There is nothing absurd like "Chinese male given names" for names that are not native to the language. ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:57, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * That doesn't seem like best practice to me. According to that entry, the Chinese name is borrowed from Latin, and the pronunciation certainly suggests that it is not borrowed from English. So why on earth should it be categorized as an English name? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 23:02, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

on the left hand
Quoted at : "Billingsgate is the market where the fishwomen assemble to purchase fish; and where, in their dealings and disputes they are somewhat apt to leave decency and good manners a little on the left hand" (Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1811). What does this mean exactly? Perhaps we should have an entry. Equinox ◑ 12:21, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * This seems analogous to Dutch (lit. "to leave [smth] lying on the left"), which means "to ignore" or "to abandon". I wasn't aware it exists in English. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 17:45, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Haha, interesting coincidence! PUC – 17:56, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Wait, you didn't create the discussion at Talk:links after seeing this somehow? Some black magic shit going on here... — Mnemosientje (t · c) 17:58, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * No, I didn't; I was working on my Dutch and encountered the Dutch expression in a dialogue! PUC – 18:42, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

 * Searching for various inflected forms of "leave (it) on the left hand" I found literal / directional uses but no more figurative ones: "when we had discovered Cyprus [while sailing], we left it on the left hand", "going up toward the church [near Marne] skirt it and leave it on the left-hand", "along the watercourse to the ditch on the opposite side, then again short to the right, and by the ditch, leaving it on the left hand to the turnpike road", "The Capitol we pass, leaving it on the left hand, & enter Pennsylvania Avenue". - -sche (discuss) 22:09, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Old Francoprovençal
,. Do we have or want a code for this, and if not, what (if anything) should it be treated as? frp? - -sche (discuss) 21:56, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Chinese text appearing in a film

In this newspaper, what are the symbols directly below the portrait of the police officer? And what would they be translated to in English? or anyone else. PseudoSkull (talk) 05:39, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

 * I can only make out a few characters. The first column from the left is 命, the third is 讚臣, and the top character of the fifth is 命. It seems to be cut off at the bottom, so there isn't enough context to make out what it's saying. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 06:25, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * : Everything else on the page seems to be oriented horizontally. Would it make any more sense if read left-to-right? Chuck Entz (talk) 07:06, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Or maybe right-to-left? Chuck Entz (talk) 07:08, 7 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It should be top-to-bottom and right-to-left, especially with the 命 on the left taking up so much space. — justin(r)leung { (t...) 07:10, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Template:ws
What does the acronym ws mean? --Vivaelcelta (talk) 11:20, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Wikisaurus, a name for the Wiktionary Thesaurus that we no longer use. I certainly wouldn't object to moving the template to thes or something. The link should probably also be changed to  or the like. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:27, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Descriptive word?
It is clear what descriptive means, but what is a word that's called descriptive in a dictionary? I've noticed it is often word that is of no noticeable etymologic history, but what resembles an onomatopoiea in that the word structure consists of an audibly interesting pattern, without quite being one. Descriptive words can be young words etymologically speaking, but sometimes the tag is glued to words that clearly do have a history of thousands of years.

Googling this didn't work for me. Can somebody help with a link to an authorative answer? Also I'd value if this kind of help on this is available in Wiktionary, is it? It is not in the Appendix:Glossary --91.153.156.132 20:21, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

 * (Since you linked it, I'll point out that the word is spelled .) I don't understand what you're asking for, unless you are talking about phonaesthesia. Can you give examples? Equinox ◑ 23:21, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * (While transliterating the Ancient Greek etymon results in onomatopoiía. --Lambiam 12:10, 9 January 2021 (UTC))
 * is called a “descriptive term” – or perhaps this refers to the word . It could mean the term is onomatopoeic, but whether this is truly the intention is not clear. --Lambiam 12:10, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

 * The definition of the Finnish term is “descriptive word”, which is glossed as “(word which uses phonetic elements descriptively, e.g. "scribble", "bubble", "lickety-split")”. It appears that all (or almost all) entries that are said to be descriptive words are Finnish terms, so apparently this qualification was calqued from Finnish.  --Lambiam 12:19, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

 * Wow. Thanks. The etymology of Finnish (Suomen Sanojen Alkuperä, vol 1, 1992) tells abbreviation "deskr." used there is short for "deskriptiivinen" (descriptive) without any explanation. Should I remove link to "onomatopoiea"? --91.153.156.132 19:44, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Create conjugation table and noun-inflection table templates
Hello.

I would like to create 2 tables (conjugation table and noun-inflection table) for the Ossetian language and to use it in nouns (e.g. here ) and verbs (e.g. here ). But I can't find any information on how to do it. Could you, please, help me?

Best regards, Artur Gudiev Arturgudiev93 (talk) 23:20, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Happy to have you around to work on Ossetian. I am completely unfamiliar with it, so I can't speak from any experience. Can you tell me if conjugations and inflections are very regular and follow a pattern? E.g. in English, plural inflections for nouns are almost "add to the word" and then "sometimes, add  if it ends in certain letters", with a handful of exceptions to that as well. If Ossetian is very simple like this, it will be fairly easy to create these tables. If they are easy, then I can probably help you by reverse engineering an existing template. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the answer, . In Ossetian, there are 9 grammatical cases for the nouns. 8 main cases are

and one additional local internal case (inside the object) which coincides with the genitive. Considering singular and plural forms, the noun-inflection table looks like this one for the word сæр (a head) I will answer you about verbs table later. Arturgudiev93 (talk) 09:18, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) Nominative
 * 2) Genitive
 * 3) Dative
 * 4) Directional case (shows a movement direction, a time direction, and an aim )
 * 5) Ablative
 * 6) Local external case (on top of the thing)
 * 7) Likeness case (like another person or thing ),
 * 8) Joint case (with another person or thing)
 * Grammatical terms used for the last four cases are:
 * Local external case: Superessive
 * Likeness case: Equative
 * Joint case: Sociative
 * Local internal case: Inessive
 * There is a template os-decl-noun that uses this terminology, except for “comitative” instead of “sociative”. It is used on the entry . Is that not good enough? --Lambiam 15:06, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

 * , yes, thank you! But it looks different than some other word's pages from other languages. For example, the table here is shown on the right and it's very nice.
 * Is it possible to create such tables in Ossetian words pages? --Arturgudiev93 (talk) 17:23, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It is technically possible, but we don’t do that for other languages, so I think we should need an argument why to make an exception for Ossetian. --Lambiam 14:26, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think, it will bring consistency. Ossetian nouns will look like nouns from other languages (e.g. Russian). (Arturgudiev93 (talk) 15:18, 13 January 2021 (UTC))
 * The consistency should be with other entries in English Wiktionary, not Witkionaries for other languages. So the style we should follow for Ossetian should be the same as what we do for other similar languages here. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 21:57, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Unlike the English language, the Ossetian language has a lot of cases, as well the Russian and the German languages. Inflection tables are presented in this way there. Therefore, it seems to me that the tables in the Ossetian language should look like the ones in those languages. (Arturgudiev93 (talk) 15:18, 13 January 2021 (UTC))
 * They should look like the tables here, on the English Wiktionary, for other languages, which are collapsible. Look how those for Russian are done:
 * --Lambiam 15:41, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, that's a point. I just wanted to fill those nouns both for the English wiktionary and for the Russian one. So I should ask it in Russian wiktionary, right? (Arturgudiev93 (talk) 18:22, 13 January 2021 (UTC))
 * Ok, that's a point. I just wanted to fill those nouns both for the English wiktionary and for the Russian one. So I should ask it in Russian wiktionary, right? (Arturgudiev93 (talk) 18:22, 13 January 2021 (UTC))

If you want inflection tables for Осетинский язык at the Russian Wiktionary, I expect that they’d want them to have the same format as is usual there; if you need help with that, that is also the first place to ask. --Lambiam 18:52, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Swing
What does "swing" mean in the lyric "It don't mean a thing/If it ain't got that swing"? I looked at all the noun definitions at swing and couldn't find it. 2601:644:100:9F20:EDF9:A4B9:2850:4053 11:54, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The one quotation at the noun, curiously not ascribed to any of the 14 listed senses, uses the noun in the same sense: “All God’s chillun got swing.” For music, I interpret to have swing as being synonymous with to swing, which implies a lively, non-robotic rhythm. This can be metaphorically transferred to other entities, like God’s chillun. Would this do as a def: “A lively rhythm, as in swing music”? --Lambiam 14:47, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Help!.. Its all gone wrong!
I really don't know how this site works..! I know that I need to get a definition removed. I tried to correct an incorrect entry that is causing my company legal issues, but I got blocked from a work account. I have emailed the person who blocked me 4 times with no reply. Please can somebody help me get an incorrect definition deleted. Thanks Jo
 * You don't appear to have made any previous edits, so we don't know what you are talking about. What definition are you referring to? SemperBlotto (talk) 12:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I have responded to their concerns on OTRS. They are technically committing block evasion, as their prior account is User:LabcoLimitedExetainer, so if they return to make promotional edits, this account should be permabanned as well. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:10, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I can upload my pronunciation of Polish words
Hi. I don't know where I can write about it but if someone would like me to record a certain Polish word that does not have the pronunciation file yet, you can write to me on my discussion page. Tashi (talk) 20:42, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you! You can start with Category:Requests for audio pronunciation in Polish entries, which is our category for requests. You can record and upload audio however you want, but you may be interested at the tools offered by LinguaLibre. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:46, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * And please upload the audio files to Commons, not locally here at English Wiktionary. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:56, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Of course, I'll do it on Commons! Thank you for the link! Tashi (talk) 22:41, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You can try Lingua Libre, which is connected to Wikicommons. I know many usernames who have used it for uploading lots of audios - it's really simple, and takes less than 5 minutes to set up Alexfromiowa (talk) 22:15, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , thanks. has already mentioned it above :) Tashi (talk) 22:29, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If that doesn't work, try Lingua Libre Alexfromiowa (talk) 18:51, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Visual editor for appendices
Why doesn't visual editor work for the appendices? It works on regular entries, but appendices are much longer in nature and would benefit from having a way to speed up the editing process. Is there any reason for this? Starbeam2 (talk) 00:33, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Latin Language Redirection Question
How can I find the list of languages that redirect to a differently named language? Sometimes a template in an etymology will use a language, such as "Late Latin", but the redirection takes you to the "Latin" page. For instance, in the etymology of "peach", it references "Late Latin persica", but the linked page is "Latin persica". I understand that "Latin" is a blanket term that includes "Late Latin", "Vulgar Latin", etc. But how can I find all such examples of this? i.e. all the language names/codes that would direct to "Latin" and other examples of this phenomenon.

Thank you so much for any reply and for your help making such a wonderful resource!
 * To start with, try our list of etymology-only languages. For explanations, try our language treatment page, and its talk page (when we decide to change the treatment of a language, we archive the discussions there). Chuck Entz (talk) 15:42, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Grammar question: which infinitive after first?
At 🇨🇬, one can read the following sentence: "The origin is unknown. Lastivertcʿi, who is the first author to use the word, calls it Turkic, but nothing similar is known in Turkic languages."

I wonder whether that usage is correct? Spontaneously I would have written "who is the first author to have used the word [...]".

But maybe that's not right either, given that ? What about "who was the first author to use the word [...]" or "who was the first author to have used the word [...]"?

So, native speakers, what would be your preferred wording?

PUC – 11:25, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

 * IMO, "he was the first author to use the word": "was" because it (the word usage) happened in the past, and it's needlessly wordy to say "have used" when the past time has already been indicated. Equinox ◑ 11:30, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

"Fill in if you know"
Is there any template that tells the user to edit the current section if they can?

I am not talking about whole articles (stubs), just sections.

Thanks! BrightSunMan (talk) 19:59, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know of any. Seems superfluous anyway; it's a wiki, so editing a section if one can is standard behavior around here. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:51, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It depends on the section. For Etymology, we have rfe, for Pronunciation, we have rfp and rfap, and we also have things like rfdef and rfinfl. Those are all requests for adding specific types of content. That doesn't necessarily coincide with specific sections- but it's the closest thing we have. See Category:Request templates for more examples. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:09, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

 * Please don't use rfp, rfe etc. on every entry without discrimination, since they clutter the page. Use them where you are genuinely interested or the information is unusual or hard to find. Equinox ◑ 23:59, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Mary-marry-merry merger
Are the distinct pronunciations in American English [ɛ˞], [æɹ], and [ɛɹ] respectively?
 * That depends on which variety of American English you're looking at. In distinguishing accents of the South, Mary is often with little or no r-coloring of the vowel, while in NYC and New England it's more of a centering diphthong,  ~ . Marry and merry are  and  pretty much everywhere that has a three-way distinction. However, there are also a lot of speakers with a two-way distinction, for whom Mary and merry are homophones as  but marry is distinct as . —Mahāgaja · talk 09:41, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Copying from Wikipedia
Another question - Can you directly copy information from Wikipedia onto Wiktionary? (In my case I am borrowing (my own) information from Wikipedia into an Appendix)

Thanks! BrightSunMan (talk) 09:01, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, but... We have the same license as Wikipedia, so that's no problem. That license, however, requires attribution. If you're borrowing from Wikipedia, simply mentioning that (including which specific article) in an edit summary should be enough. With that information, it should be possible to figure out from the revision history of the Wikipedia article who contributed the content. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:08, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Different types of antonyms
On 18 January, I added to the section of antonyms at Thesaurus:happy; however, evidently,, which is also listed as an antonym, is not a synonym of nonhappy; i.e., it does not mean “not happy” (one can be not happy and not sad). Do they belong to different categories of antonyms? J3133 (talk) 17:27, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * See also: Beer_parlour/2021/January. I'm not sure that this is exactly the correct test for an antonym, as you can't be happy and angry at the same time. Nor can you be orange and an abstraction at the same time. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:27, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * An antonym is more than "not" something, it's the opposite. Think of it as the ends of the scale, with a whole lot of area in between that's not the opposite of either end. "Hot" and "cold" are antonyms. "Hot" and "lukewarm" aren't. The only time that "not" something is the same as its antonym is in binary contexts such as "true" and "false"."Not white" is the antonym of "white" only where there can be no gray. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:43, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Do you mean nonhappy is not an antonym of happy? J3133 (talk) 07:50, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * In a universe of only "happy" and "nonhappy", they're antonyms. In a universe of "happy", "nonhappy" "sad", etc., they probably aren't. In the temperature example, "hot" is the opposite of "nonhot" only if you don't have "lukewarm" and "cool" as things that are nonhot, but not cold. It's trickier with happiness, though, because you have "unhappy", which is morphologically "not+happy", but semantically is "sad". That and there's a tendency to avoid talking about negative emotions by means of euphemism or understating, so the negative starts encroaching on the in-between. "Okay" should be neutral, but being not happy is not "okay". Chuck Entz (talk) 08:26, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * What are they, if not antonyms? J3133 (talk) 08:28, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Who says they're anything? We have terms for either being in the same place ("synonyms") or on opposite ends ("antonyms"), but I can't think of a term for being on the same semantic continuum, but not being completely synonyms or antonyms. What's the name for the semantic relationship between "warm" and "cool"? Chuck Entz (talk) 08:43, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Related terms or coordinate terms. Additionally, see, e.g. table:colors. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:01, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * This is what I was saying: did you mean to respond to J3133? —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:30, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It was more an elaboration on what you said, rather than a reply to it. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:43, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thumbs up emoji. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:01, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Following this discussion, I have removed nonhappy from Thesaurus:happy. J3133 (talk) 15:41, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't know if that's quite right though... In traditional logic, there are different kinds of opposites: contraries and contradictories. A contrary is the sort of antonym that is on opposite ends of a spectrum, within the same category, like hot and cold or black and white. A contradictory is the opposite of a word in a different way, like happy and nonhappy. I think there's room to keep both kinds of opposites, since they are just opposites in different ways. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 18:05, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Pinging for further discussion. J3133 (talk)
 * I agree that something that has a clear semantic meaning like non-[foo] or un-[foo] or anti-[foo] should at least be mentioned in a thesaurus entry or the definition even if they aren't strictly antonyms. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:48, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Can you read the last few cursive words?

This is a letter from the movie The Squaw Man (1914), appearing at timestamp 10:48. Here is my transcription of everything in the letter up to the point of illegibility: "Please cash the enclosed check for my savings and bring the money to me aboard the Ella Jane at (illegible text)."

Can you read the last two words? My best guess was "Trippe whasl", which makes no sense. PseudoSkull (talk) 18:42, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Not sure about the first of those, but the "whasl" looks rather like "wharf" to me. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 19:08, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It could be "Tripps wharf". —Mahāgaja · talk 21:19, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Comparison of the shapes with other occurrences of the letters ⟨s⟩, ⟨r⟩ and ⟨f⟩ leaves little doubt that "Tripps wharf" is the correct reading. The Ella Jane is a boat, so "wharf" makes sense. --Lambiam 05:26, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
 * A quick Google search shows that there is, or at least used to be, a Tripps wharf in Boston. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:39, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think the confusion between "r" and "s" in "Wharf" is due to the descender from the "J" in "Jane" crossing the "r" right where the line forming the bottom of an "s" would be. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:49, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Help with my inflection tables
I am making inflection table but the word border consumes the synonym content of the words

Can someone please help PashtoPromoter (talk) 14:09, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I added another  . J3133 (talk) 14:12, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * where ? PashtoPromoter (talk) 14:25, 22 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Template:ps-verb-firstconjugation-twostem-a.initial&action=history. J3133 (talk) 14:27, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks
thanks got it removed the link since coming in the category table PashtoPromoter (talk) 14:32, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

What's the deal with Navajo having a special font?
When you mark something as Navajo it's smaller and has a slightly different font, like or. What's up with that? Just curious.__Gamren (talk) 02:19, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * At Module:languages/data2, the script for Navajo is set to "nv-Latn" instead of just "Latn". I don't know why, or what the benefit of that is supposed to be. I strongly suspect this was Stephen G. Brown's idea, but unfortunately he seems to have left the project. I'm tempted to just switch the script setting to "Latn" and see if anything bad happens. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:46, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Apparently, at some point, "regular Latin fonts" didn't display diacritics properly. An i with an acute accent and an ogonek isn't specific to American languages though, it also occurs in e.g. 🇨🇬. So, I doubt that's still an issue.__Gamren (talk) 18:02, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Old Norse also has words like which seem to display correctly, across a variety of browsers and whether I'm logged in or not, so I'm going ahead and making Navajo's script ordinary "Latn" now. If that breaks something, any admin can revert. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:34, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

 * It's possible the different script was intended to help with the different display of e.g. the ogonek, which is (quoth ) "a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American languages". However, when I preview ąąʼ using the old version of Module:languages/data2 using the "Preview page with this template" function, not only does the ogonek still appear under the right side of the letter rather than the center, the word also appears smaller and less legible, so even if that is what the different specification was intended to address, it does not appear that it worked. :/ Anyway, pinging User:Eirikr who might know the intent behind the different font/script specification... - -sche (discuss) 16:23, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * That sounds like something that one ought to resolve by encoding European ogonek and American ogonek as two separate combining forms. But yes, ą on my end looks like the the hook is a continuation of the vertical line of the a rather than added to the curved "underbelly".__Gamren (talk) 17:42, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The Unicode people would never do that unless it could be shown that there are texts using both kinds of ogoneks contrastively. Otherwise they'd say it's a font issue and that fonts intended for use with North American languages should render their ogonek letters differently from fonts intended for use with European languages, much as Unicode doesn't have different encodings for the two different shapes of capital eng. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:09, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I mean... surely there's at least one book about e.g. Navajo written in Polish. Like, at least a travel glossary, or an off-hand mention of a word in an anthropological study, or something.__Gamren (talk) 20:17, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
 * No doubt, but I just checked my Navajo Bible, my Polish Bible, and my Lithuanian New Testament, and they all put ogoneks in the same place: under the little tittle on the lower right-hand corner of lower-case "a" (all of them use a Times Roman–like serif typeface), but centered below "e", "i", and "o" (Lithuanian is the only language of the three that uses ⟨ų⟩ so there's no basis of comparison). And I'm pretty sure all three books were published the old-fashioned way, not with Unicode computer fonts, so none of those printers seem to care about the "rule" that ogoneks are on the right in European languages and centered in American languages. And that makes it seem particularly unlikely that a Polish-language book about Navajo would distinguish ogonek placement for the two languages. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:17, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

 * , unfortunately I don't know the details about that font decision.
 * Quick sanity check -- Navajo does have ogonek + acute on all four of its vowels, some of which I don't think are used in European languages. Navajo generally doesn't use the "u", but I'll include it here just to see how the fonts differ.
 * With :
 * ą́ ę́ į́ ǫ́ ų́ -- in italics:  ą́ ę́ į́ ǫ́ ų́  -- bigger: ą́ ę́ į́ ǫ́ ų́ -- bigger italics:  ą́ ę́ į́ ǫ́ ų́
 * With just :
 * ą́ ę́ į́ ǫ́ ų́ -- in italics:  ą́ ę́ į́ ǫ́ ų́  -- bigger: ą́ ę́ į́ ǫ́ ų́ -- bigger italics:  ą́ ę́ į́ ǫ́ ų́
 * I guess the main positive visual difference I see here is that the  variant has a longer acute accent stroke, making that easier to distinguish from the tittle over regular "i".  The ogonek under the "e" is more central in the   variant, which is (subjectively) more aesthetically pleasing.  The difference in the "a" glyphs for the italics forms is a bit odd, not really sure if I care much whether it's the "hook-a" or the "no-hook-ɑ".
 * The smaller starting default size for  is a detriment, I think.
 * I'm with Mahāgaja -- let's keep our eyes open for any breakage, but otherwise I think this change is fine. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 01:40, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * the switch to the regular sc"Latn" for Navajo. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 05:12, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Don't forget about MediaWiki:Common.css: CTRL-F "nv-Latn". —Suzukaze-c (talk) 01:43, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It doesn't do any harm to keep it there, does it? That way it's there if we decide to go back to using it. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:46, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

 * Wikipedia has one example of central placement of ogoneks, in File:NavajoSigns.png, and Young and Morgan's The Navaho Language: The Elements of Navaho Grammar (1972) does centre them, but otherwise every text I could find, including modern linguistics texts, and one other dictionary of Navajo, put the ogonek on the right, not in the centre. (Even if some modern linguistics texts about multiple languages did centre Navajo ogoneks and then also mention Polish words with ogoneks on the right, I'm sceptical Unicode would grant separate code points, since Unicode has ...particular... ideas about how things should be handled, and does not seem overly interested in making sure minority languages display correctly.) Perhaps we should just make a note (or include an image) in the Navajo sections of the individual vowels mentioning the issue. - -sche (discuss) 03:15, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

בלנית
Anyone know how old the term בלנית (Mikva attendant) is? Even-Shoshan only has the masculine בלן. JulieKahan (talk) 11:10, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

German phrase for eating just before bedtime
Apparently there is a German phrase for eating just before bedtime that means something like "putting it in front of the bed". What's that phrase and do we have an entry? Equinox ◑ 18:59, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The normal way of saying this is “essen vor dem Schlafen” or “essen vor dem Schlafengehen”, but if you want to mention the bed instead of the sleeping, you can also say “essen vor dem zu Bett gehen“, literally “eating before the going to bed”. One also writes “vor dem ins Bett gehen”, or the somewhat elliptic version “vor dem Bett gehen”, or even written as one word “vor dem Bettgehen”. Just like, is used both to specify temporal ordering (“prior to“) and spatial ordering (“in front of”), so “in front of the bed” can result from an inappropriate translation. I have no idea what German phrase the “putting it” may correspond to, other than someone putting a nighttime snack on a table in front of the bed of a patient, in which case one would use “vor das Bett”.  --Lambiam 20:26, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I don’t have know all regulations and their names in order to just show you which it could be, but I don’t think you may not write such expression as one word. Such a spelling is reckoned misleading, actually, it must be “vor dem Insbettgehen”, “vor dem Bettgehen”. The books you cite are of course extremely old; and even if one wrote it not as one word then at least the verb would have to be capitalized because of being used as a noun, so it is wrong twice to write so. In today’s formalized language one writes, , and so on. Fay Freak (talk) 11:53, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I only know of the . – Jberkel 20:42, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

 * Yeah, I now think I misunderstood what the German was telling me: he probably meant "a literal translation of before bed into German would mean in front of the bed", rather than that German has such an expression. Equinox ◑ 11:09, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Even that isn't a good way of putting it. I'd just say that can be both spatial and temporal, so it can mean either "in front of" in space or "before" in time (even in English, before can be spatial as well). Nevertheless, I'm not sure that vor dem Bett can have the temporal meaning that English before bed does, but that's because I'm not sure that Bett can be used to mean "bedtime, going to bed" the way English bed can. It sounds wrong to my nonnative-speaker ears. If I wanted to say "I had a snack before bed" in German, I'd probably say something like "Ich habe ein Häppchen vorm Schlafengehen gegessen." If someone else said "Ich habe ein Häppchen vorm Bett gegessen" I'd probably interpret it spatially and assume they meant they ate it while standing in front of the bed. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:54, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

How to format usage changes with decade/century information
Hello folks. How do I indicate a term has been until the end of the 20th century, but is now used worldwide [thanks to the internet]? Or that a term is considered since the 21st century? Is there any particular style, a template? As far as I understand ante/post and others are for senses as an complete unit. Is this kind of information even welcome? I haven’t found any statement saying Wiktionary was a contemporary dictionary; we do have, for example, Latin entries here, so… Kai Burghardt (talk) 19:15, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You haven’t found any statement saying Wiktionary is a contemporary dictionary because it is a historical dictionary; like many such dictionaries also sometimes lagging behind and being outdated, as by employing such labels that have become untrue. You can indicate that a label applies to a particular era by writing the timespan, e.g. until the end of the 20th century, to the label. Contrary to what many might think there is no numerus clausus for the contents of . If the situation is complicated enough to render the label too long, you can also deploy a usage notes section. Fay Freak (talk) 11:43, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
 * One vaguely related question: Sometimes a common word becomes uncommon, and then has literary or poetic connotations due to being "archaic". But sometimes the word was already literary. I also remember encountering a word (can't remember which) that was formerly used in a poetic context, but is no longer used at all. One could mark it "poetic, obsolete", but that could also be interpreted as "obsolete, except in a poetic context". I think I labeled it "obsolete and poetic" or something like that.__Gamren (talk) 01:59, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I usually interpret the comma as "or". Sometimes it helps to spell it out more clearly. And I agree with Fay Freak. We should provide as much information as there is that is relevant to a historical dictionary catering to a contemporary audience. Once a label is getting as long as a typical definition, a usage note is definitely the way to go in most cases. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 02:21, 21 February 2021 (UTC)


text:
Wiktionary:Information desk/2021/February

Where to explain the development of non-obvious figurative meanings?
I'm thinking of some slang terms where the meaning derives figuratively (but non-obviously - perhaps via metalepsis) from a more basic/concrete sense of the same term. For example:

 * beat can refer to a face of makeup. Why? Via beat one's face.
 * bicycle can refer to a promiscuous woman ("usually in compounds specifying a context"). Why? Via wordplay on double meaning of "ride".
 * bacon can refer to the police. Why? By analogy with pig.
 * lettuce can refer to money? Why? OED says "Probably with allusion to the green colour of U.S. banknotes."

In each case, we record the slang sense, but the part after the "Why?" is not recorded anywhere in our entries, even though it seems like useful and interesting information. And it's not clear to me whether there's an agreed upon proper place for it. I can think of three options:

 * 1) Create a whole separate level-3 section with a separate etymology
 * 2) Add a line or two at the end of the existing etymology section talking about the development of the figurative sense
 * 3) Add a brief note to the definition itself. For example, for lettuce maybe this would look something like: "3.  United States paper currency; dollars. (Probably with allusion to the green colour of U.S. banknotes.)" (except not plagiarized from OED). For bacon, maybe it would be enough to just append (Compare pig.) to the definition?

1 seems pretty heavyweight/disruptive. 2 and 3 both seem okay to me. I would lean towards 3 if the development can be explained in just a few words, and 2 otherwise. But I don't think I've seen examples of this being done anywhere, so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

(I tried searching discussion archives but didn't find much. This thread talks a bit about the "etymologies within etymologies" problem in the context of surnames. Etymology says "In some cases where the semantic development is not obvious, some explanatory comments may be useful. The more concise and efficient, the better.", though apparently that page is not an official guideline.) Colin M (talk) 08:14, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I lean toward 3 and if it's more complicated, use usage notes. Actually, I think 2 is correct: if you are looking for etymology, find it in the etymology section. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:34, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This is certainly valuable information, and I want us to have it. I agree that 1 is heavyweight. 2 sounds good. I don't like 3. PUC – 09:07, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

 * I add it to the etymology using the sense template, e.g. From the green colour of banknotes . Equinox ◑ 11:17, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I would use option two. In some cases I feel understanding the association will help the reader appreciate the connotations, in which case option three. Definitely not option 1.__Gamren (talk) 01:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks all for the input. I've attempted to add notes on the development of the 4 examples I listed at the top, and will be mindful of other opportunities to do so in the future. Colin M (talk) 01:49, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

 * FWIW I agree with what's been said above, option 2 unless there's a reason to prefer 3, like that it's very short or makes more sense. I have seen both 2 and 3 in use, as in (2) and  (3); revert does something like 3 except using a context label (perhaps it should be moved to the end as a q, though). - -sche (discuss) 05:28, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Is a semantic loan from Arabic?__Gamren (talk) 20:40, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Strange, without even knowing the English usage, I would reckong it just, which means the opposite – or is it a contranym? Now the gloss “to revert” at is suspect, . Fay Freak (talk) 20:58, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It really hangs on the "state" to which one is said to "revert".
 * is a usual unaccusative of the transitive, similarly to . The unaccusative thus occasionally means "to bounce back" (as of a ball), "to rush back" (as of someone in a hurry), "to pull back" (as a synonym of the unaccusative , whose semantic extension parallels that of "pull back"). The religious sense, however, implies treachery, hence , hence apostatizing, in the sense of "to revert to a previous false belief before Islam", perhaps by contrast with , which is often used of Islam to refer to how converting (not reverting) to Islam "slices off" and "roots out" (that is, eradicates, hence purifies) all of one's misdeeds (similarly to repentance), and so "reverting" here would mean degeneration into what was once forgiven, not just "change". This connection also occurs in the Qur'an itself, as in اِرْتَدُّوا عَلَى أَدْبَارِهِم (translatable as "turned their backs"), similarly to نَكَصَ عَلَى عَقِبَيْه (translatable as "to run back or flee [from battle, hence from religious duty, hence from the religion itself] on one's heels") and يَنقَلِبُ عَلَى عَقِبَيْهِ (translatable as "switching [sides] on his heels), and also in مَن يَرْتَدَّ مِنكُمْ عَن دِينِهِ فَسَوْفَ يَأْتِي اللَّهُ بِقَوْمٍ يُحِبُّهُمْ وَيُحِبُّونَهُ ("Whoever drifts away from his religion, Allah shall bring another people whom He loves and who love Him [in his stead]"), which is likely how the negative association was reinforced.
 * I do not personally recall any verb overlapping with "reversion" that is commonly employed in Arabic to refer to conversion to Islam. The typical intransitive word is, whereas the transitive is usually . , like the synonymous , suggests an apostate's return (or reverting) to Islam.
 * I imagine that this use of "revert" when referring to new converts merely familiarizes anglophone converts with the religious doctrine of the essentiality of Islam (or its being the religion of "human nature" ) possibly akin to the broader use of . Still, the gloss "to revert" consists overall with the scope of the word's use, but it obviously needs to be distinguished from the other positive uses of "revert" in relation to Islam, which conflict with the condemnatoriness of . Roger.M.Williams (talk) 23:07, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Same, option 2 has often been the the choice because being least intrusive and least loaded, and option 3 three for the same reason that we have introduced the  family, that a reader does not have to look around and connect puzzle pieces, and even option two would be too loaded. Examples from me for 3:, . Reads well, I think this is the way to go for figurative uses, to tell where the figure is. Fay Freak (talk) 20:41, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In мизгирь, I think it would be better to have the actual definition, "a spider in general", come first. So, something like "a spider in general (due to the Russian tarantula being so pestilent where it exists)".__Gamren (talk) 01:54, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * An example of option 1: . J3133 (talk) 18:57, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm going to raise pineapple at WT:ES because I don't think it merits a separate etymology section; grenades (baseballs, etc) can also be called apples but this is handled with a sense of ety 1 of apple just fine. - -sche (discuss) 04:35, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

What does "express" (noun) mean here?
In a cocktail recipe: "Garnish with a lime wheel and a grapefruit express." We have no suitable noun sense, though there is the verb sense of expressing juice out of a fruit. Equinox ◑ 15:55, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A "squeezing" of the fruit juice. (I wouldn't bother) SemperBlotto (talk) 15:56, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Lookup by transliteration
I feel sure that this must have been discussed, but I can't find anything. If I have a romanised form of a word in a language that uses a different script, is there a method provided for looking it up in Wiktionary? I half expected to find redirects from romanised forms, but I realise that would increase the size of the project, especially considering that in some cases there are multiple romanisations available. Having found there wasn't, I wondered if there was a tool to do it, but I don't know where to look (I tried WT:Romanization). --ColinFine (talk) 18:39, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
 * We do have romanization entries for some languages (see CAT:Romanizations by language), but not others. For some language/script combinations you can use chars to convert transliteration into the non-Roman script, but of course you have to be sure the transliteration is exactly the one used by Module:typing-aids, otherwise the native script won't be rendered correctly. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:58, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . That's a great piece of work, but presumably I can only use it on a page, not in the search field? So in order to use it to search for an entry that doesn't have a romanisation, I would have to edit the sandbox or somewhere, and Show preview, and then copy and paste out of that? Or is there something I'm missing?
 * Is there any reason why I shouldn't add romanization entries as I go, or do these have to be done in some organised fashion? Obviously I'd copy the structure and template use of existing entries. --ColinFine (talk) 13:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * . It wouldn't have to be the sandbox; as long as you only hit "Show preview" and not "Publish changes" you could do it on any page at all, just be sure to hit "Cancel" afterwards. I wouldn't add romanizations for languages that don't already have them; in the past we have voted on adding Sanskrit romanizations and the proposal was voted down. So there has to be consensus for romanizations for any language. If you're searching for a specific word in a non-Latin script, and you already know what it should look like, it might just be easier to browse the relevant language's Lemmas category. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:42, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Looking up a lemma where I don't know the script
(This started as a reply to Mahagaja above, but it's turned into a bit of a rant, and it's really not directed at Mahagaja, so I've separated out as a new topic).

Mahagaja's suggestion (above) works for a script that I can work out: I got to (which I've asked about at WT:ES) that way. But what about when I can't read the script? Suppose I'm looking at Ungnad's Akkadian Grammar, which contains not a single cuneiform sign, and I want to look up a word from it? I find šarrum, and want to look at the entry. The only way I can think of to find it is to go to king/translations, and yes, happens to be there, so I can find the entry.

But now I notice that Ungnad says that batussu is a Late Assyrian form of batultu ("virgin"), and I wonder if that form is recorded in our entry. Have we an entry for the word? I can't tell. There is no Akkadian translation listed for. (There's a Hittite one, but that seems to be written phonetically, so it's no help). I can look at Category:Akkadian lemmas, and even drill down to Category:Akkadian feminine nouns, and yes, there are only a dozen entries there for me to go and look at to see if one of them is batultu. This doesn't seem helpful or satisfactory to me. --ColinFine (talk) 21:46, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree that's unsatisfactory. AFAIK, Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite are all usually written in transliteration rather than in cuneiform in reference works, so I would definitely support adding romanizations for those three at least. (We do already have a fair number of Hittite romanizations, but none for Sumerian and Akkadian.) —Mahāgaja · talk 23:19, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So, can I just go ahead and add some, or does this need to be discussed? Obviously, I'll base the entries on existing romanisations, and use the appropriate templates. --ColinFine (talk) 00:00, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I support this, for cuneiform and honestly probably for pretty much every dead language that uses a now-obsolete script which is mostly encountered in romanized form in e.g. standard dictionaries and other academic publications (which is why I think it's good we have Gothic romanizations but Coptic romanizations seem less necessary). — Mnemosientje (t · c) 11:19, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * (For the record, I do prefer these romanizations to be soft redirects to the original-script lemma entry, as opposed to having the lemmas at the romanized entries.) — Mnemosientje (t · c) 11:38, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I would discuss it a bit more. There seems to be a lot of opposition to the idea of creating romanization entries (Votes/pl-2018-12/Allowing attested romanizations of Sanskrit, ; I think we had a vote for Hittite and Akkadian as well - put forward by User:Tom 144 - but I can't find it). PUC – 11:32, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah, here's the vote I had in mind: Votes/2019-05/Lemmatizing Akkadian words in their transliteration. PUC – 11:37, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There's definitely opposition to adding romanizations of Sanskrit, and there's some opposition to making romanizations the main lemma forms for Akkadian, but there doesn't seem to be any particular opposition to adding romanizations of Akkadian that have no more content than "Romanization of XYZ" the way Gothic romanization entries do. But we could hold a vote if people think it's really necessary. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:11, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * So, where do we go from here? Can I add some Akkadian Romanisations (in the same way as the Gothic ones)? Or can't I? Or does it need a vote? (I looked at the conditions the other day, and I'm not entitled to vote in any case). --ColinFine (talk) 12:39, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

"budge the needle"
Hi! Tourist from enwiki here. I think budge the needle should point to move the needle. Would that be a good idea? (Where could I find someone to tell me if that's a good idea?) If so, how would I go about doing that? I assume, per WT:REDIR, that this shouldn't be an actual redirect. Thanks! Enterprisey (talk) 09:36, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Correct: we generally don't use the redirect function in MediaWiki, including for alternative forms. Take a look at (e.g.) every rose has its thorn, where immediately at the beginning of the entry, the alternative form every rose has a thorn is given. At the latter, the definition just states that it's an alternative form, linking back to the more common wording. I'm happy to help you create the new entry for budge the needle but do you want to give it a crack yourself and see if you can make the entry yourself? Let me know if you need help. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:54, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Template help
Hi, I want to add the alternate forms babylonos (genitive) and babylona (accusative) to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Babylon#Declension but it uses la-ndecl and I'm not sure how to? NPalgan2 (talk) 17:15, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * — There are more examples where we need alternate forms; e.g., also has, next to Greek-style Dēlon, an alternative Latin-style accusative Dēlum. The template has an undocumented notion of “alternants” seen at work in the ablative singular of the declension of pars; I could not figure out how to use this for this task.  --Lambiam 14:55, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Request to change another user's username due to bad faith
Hi there. I've noticed this user: User:Razorflame 129893 RFAs has registered on this site and I would like to request that the username be changed to something else, as the account was clearly made in bad faith and was done in a demeaning and insulting way. In terms of where I was going to put this, I was not exactly sure which discussion room this fit under, but I decided on this one since it is a specific request for assistance. Thank you in advance, Razorflame 18:46, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That account is globally blocked and has not been registered or edited here. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:58, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I didn't notice that or know that. Might have to go over the Meta to ask for a global rename then. Razorflame 19:00, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Latin r allophones
I am just curious, I noticed there is now a tap allophone. What is its distribution? Dngweh2s (talk) 19:25, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Wow, this is crazy. This guy is doing it again
https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9&oldid=prev&diff=61816614

Can you explain this to me? He just reverts my stuff. I show where the word "Russian" is used in a non-colloquial sense, and he just reverts it? Is he a troll? A power trip? What's going on?

 * The entry itself explains it all. User:Tetromino did a good job of providing the information. We present here a neutral point of view, which covers both the nationalistic, colloquial on one side and politically correct on the other side. No-one stops you from using the word in the sense you want but don't spread your nationalistic bullshit into dictionaries. If you want to try your luck, go to the Russian Wiktionary, see what happens. If you persist on doing what you did before, you will be blocked. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 03:46, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Nationalistic bullshit? My position is anti-nationalistic. What does it have to do with my usage of the word. This word is used in non-colloquial sense. Moyprofile (talk) 03:48, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The fuck is going on here? Did he call me a nationalist? The Russian Geographic Society uses this word. Moyprofile (talk) 03:50, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * To use this word in nationalistic sense is to imply that this word refers only to Slavic people but it's used in a larger sense and in non-colloquial sense. My position is anti-nationalistic if you want to go there. Moyprofile (talk) 03:54, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm genuinely confused how this threatening asshole is allowed to be a moderator here. I'm not sure how Wikipedia works. Can you explain? — Moyprofile (talk) 07:06, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The above user is blocked for one month but I am not sure it's sufficient. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:13, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I will not undo your block, as is my policy, but I find this inappropriately long. Moyprofile has not really edit-warred (only reversed you once), so the personal attack above is really the only valid cause for a block. In fact, they justified their position with evidence (in edit summaries), which you have simply ignored. Furthermore, as the involved administrator, you should avoid any semblance of abuse by not making long blocks to solve your own content conflicts. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 07:19, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The edit-warring and pushing the point of view started in May 2020. Moyprofile has come back to continue what he did then.
 * In modern Russian, there is a clear-cut difference between (using adjectives only for simplicity of the discussion) and, even though they both are translated as "Russian" into English. And the current entry makes it explicit and explains that in detail. There is no controversy. Some people, even organisations may deliberately choose "русский" when they refer to the whole Russian state, rather than to use "российский". I have even incorporated some of their examples into the entry. Our dictionary should not mislead people into believing that it's OK to use "русский" in cases when it's not appropriate, that's why the use of labels is appropriate.
 * It's not an attack only, it's multiple insults an insult. Yes, I am involved and I blocked Moyprofile for Unacceptable conduct, even though it's not the only reason.
 * I can answer questions regarding proper labelling and use of examples but I am not going to reduce the block and I don't think he will come back reformed. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 07:33, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It is appropriate to block a user for insults and personal attacks, but I question if it is wise if the blocking admin is the recipient of the attack; it can easily be perceived as a retaliation. Also, “your nationalistic bullshit” sounds to me as an insult/personal attack as well. --Lambiam 15:42, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * “your nationalistic bullshit” is an assessment of their actions, not a personal attack. "troll", "power trip", "threatening asshole" are insults. The extended block is the continuation of the initial one-week block after insistent edit-warring and pushing controversial contents. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 00:22, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I mean, "power trip" is also an assessment of your actions. It's a negative assessment, with a reasonable likelihood to cause insult. But so is "your nationalistic bullshit". Not seeing a difference in kind. This does seem like a really sketchy series of blocks. I don't have the necessary context to judge the content issue here, but just looking at the edit history, it seems like Atitarev jumped immediately to an assumption of bad faith, banned Moyprofile without warning for 'edit warring' after they performed a single revert, and repeatedly reverted Moyprofile's edits without explanation. Not a good look. Colin M (talk) 04:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think it's worth noting that Atitarev seemingly did something very similar just a month ago. They blocked a jp editor for "vandalism" for edits which were obviously in good faith and which other jp editors seemed to generally approve of. In the latter beer parlour thread, we again see other admins describing the ban as excessive, and inappropriate given that it was over a content dispute in which Atitarev was personally involved. The user involved hasn't made any edits since their ban expired. It's concerning to think that a productive contributor may have been driven away from the project because of this. Colin M (talk) 20:09, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

 * I don't have any background knowledge to determine which of you is right, but all I see is two editors in disagreement; Moyprofile seems to have acted, as far as I've seen, in good faith, and provided quotations in an attempt to support their claim. The block seems inappropriate, and I've lifted it. As far as I can understand, Atitarev claims that the term is only used colloquially in the sense "citizen of Russia", while Moyprofile claims that it is also used in a non-colloquial context. Are all the quotes that Moyprofile supplied colloquial? Is it possible that there are certain circles that take the distinction more seriously than general society, so that something may seem overly "lax" without being intended to?__Gamren (talk) 01:42, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * : So, you think it's OK to unilaterally undo fellow administrators blocks? The block was justified, even if the "block does not seem well-justified" to you in your unblock summary. It's about the proper labelling, not the quotations. The quotations are included by me and User:Tetromino. I recommned you to restore the block. The reasoning for the block was:
 * Pushing the original controversial opinion, which is nationlistic, even if the user claims he is not. He refused to discuss and reverted. That's why the original one-week block.
 * He came back to continue the same, reverted my edit with the explanation, knowing very well his edit was controversial. Instead of discussing, he started insulting me.
 * The issue is sensitive and should not be handled lightly by outside parties without any background on the topic. You, @Gamren, apparently, don't have that background. FYI, Yeltsin when he became the president, was ridiculed just for using the term to address ALL citizens of Russia. It was a nationlistic point of view that everybody should be called  regardless of ethnicity, which can and is offensive to Russian minorities, even if not all minorities think that way.
 * Controversial edits should be discussed first, not pushed by edit-warring and insulting. Me and Tetromino have made it as neutral as possible and using instead of  in modern non-colloquial Russian is not neutral and innocent, it requires careful consideration. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:08, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In the absense of anyone openly supporting it or agreeing with it, yes, I think lifting a block is no less acceptable than placing it. Taking action earlier does not grant you primacy.
 * You dismiss their claim as a controversial opinion, but a controversy, by definition, has more than one side. Thus, you're probably also "pushing" a controversial opinion, although you may feel as though you're not.
 * You also state that they refused to discuss, but my impression is that you are the one who refused to discuss, by dismissing their claim as being in bad faith. Insults aren't grounds for blocking.
 * You are right that I don't know anything about Russian. I wrote so myself.
 * I'll write a section on BP to get some more opinions on this.__Gamren (talk) 13:54, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * What is stating about the labeling is correct. Using "русский" instead of "российский" isn't neutral, and may even be condescending, as it basically replaces the country (Russia) by the people (Russians), even though Russia consists of a plurality of other peoples. I cannot judge whether the block was appropriate or not, since I'm not very familiar with the customs related to this, but I agree that such topic should be discussed with care. Thadh (talk) 14:29, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I think that the colloquial or historical label are correct, but the ban was not. The nineteenth-century was the peak of nationalism and saying that something was Russian (like the Russian Geographic Society given in the example) or French or English was an attempt at statemaking through the process of erasure of vast intranational differences. However, the purpose of this dictionary is not to pass judgement on words or their usages, but to accurate describe their meaning. At minimum, this should have been brought to RFV. I don't think that Anatoli T. acted appropriately and that we need a policy to prevent administrators from banning users when they are involved in content disputes without community consensus. Administrator who violate this policy should have their admin privileges temporarily or permanently revoked based on the circumstances and past history. Languageseeker (talk) 14:56, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Since no-one has mentioned it yet, I'd like to point out that Atitarev reinstated the block about an hour after Gamren lifted it. On Wikipedia, this would be called and is considered unacceptable ("With very few exceptions, once an administrative action has been reverted, it should not be restored without consensus.") I don't know if a similar rule is codified here, but it seems like it should be common sense. Colin M (talk) 21:39, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think administrators should be handing out long term blocks over content disputes they are involved in. Have an uninvolved administrator look at the case if you think the block should last more than a couple days, or raise the issue in the Tea Room to get a community decision on how a word should be defined.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:16, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * My take on this is that the user in question made the edits knowing that they would probably be reverted if anyone noticed. Also knowing that the distinction isn't obvious to those who aren't familiar with the language, they tried as hard as they could to feign surprise that anyone would disagree with them, and to complain about being persecuted as publicly as possible, following the principle "if you can't beat 'em, get 'em in trouble". They definitely deserved to be blocked.
 * That said, the length of the block and the discussion surrounding it are a textbook example of what not to do in a content dispute. let his irritation get the better of him, and thereby made the accuser seem far more credible than they would have if he had handled it better.
 * Anatoli may not be aware of it, but it's now possible to block an account only from editing certain entries, or certain namespaces. Blocking the accuser from editing the entry or from mainspace, or limiting the block to a few days, then responding with the kind of clear, neutral explanation that gave would have put the focus on the edits, rather than on Anatoli. It would have gone a long way toward showing the accuser's actions for what they were.
 * I would recommend a shorter full block- perhaps short enough to have expired by now- followed by a narrower block on editing the entry in question or at most mainspace. That will give us time to discuss rationally whether a longer or permanent sitewide block is in order. But first I would like there to be consensus on the block so we don't have things seesawing back and forth. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:44, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

This is very weird that he continues to abuse me with the nationalism allegations. How can I interpret it in a normal way? Is it a sort of a 'small talk' from an administrator? I feel very bad. If he doesn't troll me than what is it? I think he knows that I'm a minority.

I've read multiple times that Russian nationalists disagree that all people can use the word "Russian" to refer to themselves. How can he not know that if he's interested in this topic? Thank you for supporting words,. Guys, I have just two questions, I read Russian every day and of course I see non-colloquial, non-historic usage of the adjective "Russian" as a reference to the Russian state, it's ubiquitous. For example, I youtube searched the word 'Pythagorean' in Russian and found the lecture by a PhD, a professor and a dean of, an officially accredited higher education institution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXKCY31I_rc The usage is not historic because it was founded in 1989.

1. Am I allowed to add this information to wiktionary? I don't want anything to do with this guy. Every time he abuses me I feel bad, I feel stressed, I sweat at armpits.

2. What would it mean that 'Rossiyskaya' instead of 'Russkaya' would be a 'more precise' synonym here? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't sound like a scientific descriptive language either.

I think we should build dictionaries on lexical definitons. 'Lexical' as in describing the way people use their words en masse. — Moyprofile (talk) 04:46, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If you simply google русский или российский ("russian or russian") you'll find numerous sites that explain the difference in both Russian and English. The fact that the user chose to ignore this does not favour them. Calling it nationalistic is simply wrong, since it's the opposite.
 * Now, as I said before, the labelling is correct (since there is no "inappropriate" as a label); The sense as given by may be used colloquially or even nationalistically, but it's both incorrect and borderline offensive. The fact the user keeps digging up some vague quotes (for example, the last one - "Russian christian humanitarian academy" is an academy whose - I'm quoting ru.Wikipedia on this - "educational concept's characteristic lies in the recognition of the history and basics of christianity as the essential part of humanitarian education"; the word "русская" is probably used like in ) gives me the impression they are a native speaker, since I couldn't otherwise explain the motivation behind explicitly wanting the term to be used inappropriately. Thadh (talk) 06:59, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If the term is used with an inappropriate sense in a sufficient number of instances in permanently recorded media, we should record this sense. A usage note may then be a better vehicle than a label for signalling the issue, allowing us to expound it and explain the contrast with . --Lambiam 17:49, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The reverted edits didn't add anything, they just removed all the labels to make it look like the usage in question is standard. This should be explained better, but the reverted edits were exactly the wrong way to address that. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:12, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I note that the Russian Geographical Society (In the Soviet Union, it was called the All-Union Geographical Society) was created in the Russian Empire. Then only the ruling class could call itself Russian. The majority of the population of the Russian Empire had an archaic semi-feudal consciousness, that is, these are peasants who were not involved in capitalist life, and their national self-identification tended to zero. They did not have a Russian national consciousness. Even the propaganda of wars in the Russian Empire did not use nationalist slogans for the peasants. For example, instead of a war against the French (Napoleon), the propaganda of the Russian Empire used a war against Satan. For the peasant, there was no difference between a Frenchman and a non-Frenchman or Russianman — the peasants had no linguistic difference. This applied to all the peasants of the Russian Empire.

You must have heard this expression from the peasants in the First World War: We are Tambov people, a German will not reach us. It is for this period that the semantics must be refined… Already under the Bolsheviks, in the 1920s, a national consciousness began to form among the peasants of various outskirts of the Soviet Union. For example, it was the Bolsheviks who released 31.5 million volumes of Pushkin's works in the years 36-37 alone. Thanks to such measures, consciousness of the peasants begins and forms. In other Soviet Republics it happened faster. However, you forget about other nationalities of the bourgeois Russian Federation, which by the 90s had already taken shape in the Russian SFSR.

That is why, in my opinion, it is necessary to distinguish between these phenomena in two special words: All-Russian people < Tatar people, Russian people, etc. and Russian people. However, it is worth distinguishing between the upper (ruling) class and the lower (oppressed) class. Other actions will simplify the real and complex picture. So 's remarks are good. Gnosandes (talk) 18:08, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

De and het nouns in Dutch
Hello, I'm currently learning Dutch and I started checking Wiktionary for it and, correct me if I'm wrong, there's no information on noun pages whether a noun uses definite articles de or het. If that's the case, could that be discussed and eventually added to pages? Thank you very much! – Ricci  «T | C» 23:07, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * You are wrong; all Dutch noun entries are marked for gender, just like in every other gendered language. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:13, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hm, I always hear genders are not really a thing for Dutch nouns, from Dutch themselves, and academy books in general tend to not mention them at all since and "you should memorise de/het usage" instead. But anyways, I'll inform myself better. And great to see you're still around, we used to chat some years ago. :) – Ricci  «T | C» 23:19, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm always around, feel free to send me a message! As for Dutch, their gender system is falling apart, so that probably makes sense from a paedagogic perspective, but the language does still have three genders... at least when Belgians speak it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:35, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

 * To be more explicit, the articles follow from the gender and number. If the gender is given as n (neuter gender), the article used for the singular form is . In all other cases (masculine, feminine, common, plural) the article is de. The distinction extends to demonstrative pronouns (e.g. versus ), and can be seen in the inflection of adjectives following indeterminate determiners (e.g. “ het aandeel” → “een groot aandeel” versus “ de aandacht” → “een grote aandacht”). The erosion of the m–f distinction is also seen in Belgian Dutch: “Elke regeling [officially a feminine word] heeft zijn voor- en nadelen.” The distinction is more tenacious in regional lects, also in some southern parts of the Netherlands.  --Lambiam 00:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

 * It's overall more of a Southern vs. Northern distinction than a BE/NL distinction, but even in the northern parts of the Netherlands there are formal registers where the distinction between feminine and masculine is relevant. And three-way gender is still preserved in a large number of fossilised expressions. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk)  19:39, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

allerergst
Should words such as allerergst (Dutch superlative with an emphasizing aller- in front) be marked simply as a superlative (like it is now), or should it be marked like an intensified superlative (for example allerbesten)? If the latter, what's the best way to do it using the nl-adj template? Rectangular potential (talk) 17:06, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

 * Classifying allerergst as a superlative raises the immediate question: a superlative of what? What is its positive degree? There is no such adjective as *allererg. Conclusion, a tentative analysis as is an incorrect rebracketing of .  --Lambiam 14:18, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

 * I think we're in agreement about the etymology of the word: ergst is the superlative of erg. My understanding of aller- is that it adds emphasis to superlatives. So when I suggest calling allerergst a superlative, I'm suggesting that it's a superlative of erg with aller- as an added emphasis. Is your point that it should be regarded as not a superlative but entirely its own word? Rectangular potential (talk) 15:26, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

 * Yes. A superlative, in the grammatical sense of a degree of comparison, is the superlative of some adjective. Since there is no adjective whose superlative is allerergst, it is not a superlative. --Lambiam 15:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

 * Sounds good. I updated the entry for allerergst to hopefully reflect this better. Rectangular potential (talk) 16:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

 * We probably want to use a template for this (rather than glossing individual aller- words "absolute Xst", "very Xst", etc), since there are many such words. I see German allerbest uses de + a gloss, which works. - -sche (discuss) 01:02, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It looks like the exact equivalent of : "the best of all", "the worst of all", etc. English uses a prepositional phrase due to loss of genitive endings and adds it at the end, but otherwise it's the same. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:46, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * As I experience the sense, is really merely an intensifier of what is already a (usually hyperbolic) superlative. A better English equivalent may be, as used in “you are the sweetest boy in the world”, which (to me) invites less of a comparison with the items in some actual collection than the intensifying qualifier of all.  --Lambiam 17:37, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Is linking terms to Wikidata prohibited ? ("Postcolonialism")
A newbie question. On wikidata I linked to wiktionary on "Postcolonialism", after reading a Wiktionary discussion on December 2020 where somebody asked about linking Lexeme. I suppose we are not prohibited/warned against linking terms to wikidata. Or are we? Which page would you point me to understand how far a wiktionary entry be linked to wikidata please? --Omotecho (talk) 05:35, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 * There is and  but they aren't used much at the moment. There is also some (indirect) linking via some uses of . – Jberkel 09:36, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Difference of and
From time to time I use either of these two, and I do not remember which one I used. Isn't derived the same as borrowed?

In this way, my entries are getting split into two categories, one from which there are borrowed terms, and one from which there are derived terms. Is this okay, or should I convert all of the borrowed terms into derived terms or vice versa?

Thanks! BrightSunMan (talk) 11:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

 * See Template:borrowed for some notes about the difference. Equinox ◑ 12:07, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A borrowing should be contrasted with an inherited word. For example, English is the descendant of Middle English, so Middle English words that survive into modern times are considered inherited. A word that falls out of use and is subsequently reintroduced, like, are considered borrowings. "Derived" includes both of these cases.
 * Also, is only used for the most immediate case of borrowing. So, for example, 🇨🇬 is borrowed from Danish, and derived (not borrowed!) from Spanish. Likewise, the Danish word is borrowed from Spanish, and derived from Nahuatl.__Gamren (talk) 14:11, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

 * Perhaps, rather than deleting WT:Etymology, that page could be updated and extended with a clear exposition of when to use which of the more common etymology templates, illustrated with explanatory examples. --Lambiam 16:59, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Trient / Trient- / Triene / Triene-
Thanks to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeral_prefix, we know that the prefix for one-third (1/3) is "trient".

1.) Is it "trient" or "trient-"? 2.) Is it "trientmeter, trient-meter, trientemeter, trient-emeter, trientimeter, trient-imeter, trienemeter or triene-meter, when referencing one-third (1/3) of a meter?

Personally, I like: 1.) "trient" because the hyphen does not change the search results when searching online. 2.) trientimeter because it is the best parallel to centimeter, sounds legit when you speak it outloud, and is easier to pronounce than the other options.

Does the world agree that my personal preference is correct? If I am not correct, what is correct?

Thank you in advance!

 * It does make sense, being the stem of, yet I’ve never seen any actual use of trient- as a prefix, and I bet this was dredged up from a list in some obscure source. In this context I do not know what it means for a personal preference to be correct. My personal preference is to have my tea without milk; is my preference correct? --Lambiam 17:27, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

 * To say much the same thing as Lambiam, a prefix trient(V)- looks formally valid but appears to be very rare; the only use I have spotted of trient-, trienti-, triente- or trienta- as a prefix is in Henry John Roby's old (1800s) Grammar of the Latin Language from Plautus to Suetonius, which takes trientabulum (an attested word, although we don't have an entry for it yet) to be a confix using trienti-. Thomas Hewitt Key's 1800s Latin Grammar also mentions the prefix trienti-. For combining with meter I too would expect trienti- on the model of the other prefix that has a stem ending in -nt(v)-, centi, as you say. - -sche (discuss) 10:27, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

 * Since trientabulum is an attested word in Latin, if attested as English it is a loan, so we would not analyze it as being formed with an English prefix. As a Latin term, I think a more likely analysis is as . --Lambiam 15:55, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

 * Yes, sorry, that's what I mean; Roby and Key take it to be a prefix in Latin. I would infer that the prefix, if used in English, would have the same stem (not dropping the t as in OP's last two examples in the header). (Roby strangely uses "-bulo" as the lemma form of the suffix, but it's surely -bulum, the form we lemmatize.) - -sche (discuss) 10:26, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

My userpage
I'm a rather active user on Wikipedia. Many times I've tried to create a local user page here, but I am always stopped by an edit filter. I am sure it is in good faith – it is to prevent link spammers – but all I want to do is provide a link to my Wikipedia user page. Can an admin please do it for me? Chicdat (talk) 12:02, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Use an interwiki link, like <tt> link text here </tt>. — surjection ⟨<tt>??</tt>⟩ 14:23, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Chicdat (talk) 11:26, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

My illustrations removed. I need official guidance.
I believed I was doing relevant images to illustrate the words. 6 edits were removed by Jberkel. Contrary to what he suggests, I wasn't just taking image caption and adding it to all words. I used two different captions, and only added it to the most relevant words. Below is the gallery of removed illustrations with captions (boldened word is the Wiktionary entry I used it for).

The only one that may have been overkill was lifetime. Maaaybe active is not 100% perfect as well, but I made sure to put it to #5 definition, which seemed to apply here. Do you believe that the images don't depict tourism, recreation, adventure and horseback?

I'm a beginner in Wiktionary (with experience in two Wikipedias, and Commons), so I'm asking for guidance. Should I, or should I not add images illustrating words?

--Tupungato (talk) 12:36, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Unofficially, I would tell you based on my experience that it is hard to say exactly when images are an appropriate part of Wiktionary. It's just not clearly defined and its hard to make the rules for images. I would suggest that the most important thing is to do your best and not worry about it too much if images get deleted, because it's a grey area. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:44, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd say horseback is the only article where such images make sense, but even there I'd prefer a photo that's zoomed in closer, so that horse and rider can be seen even in the thumbnail. The image already at horseback is much better. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:58, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I know that it's difficult to illustrate active and recreation, but it's these words that (in my opinion) actually need an illustration most. Of course, looking at a photo of a horse riding group, it's not obvious what's going on. But I hoped that with caption supplementing the context, it served the illustration purpose. It's easy to illustrate a duck, but it's not necessarily the illustration actually needed by potential language learner. --Tupungato (talk) 13:44, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * These images are poor illustrations of those words, which are abstract enough that they probably don't need illustrations at all. Remember: English Wiktionary is written in English, and therefore is not intended for use by basic English learners. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:19, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with what others have said. If you really want to improve entries by adding pictures, I think it would be more effective to start from the word and seek out the best image for it (from all that's available on Commons), rather than starting from one of your own photos and seeking out entries that you can add it to. For example, I see you added one of your horseback photos to tour. But Commons has a whole Tours category (with further subcategories like "Guided tours"). Are you sure that out of the hundreds of images there, there isn't one that would be an even clearer, more archetypal depiction of a tour? What about this? Or this (perhaps with a bit of cropping)? Or this? Colin M (talk) 06:17, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

 * For "active" and "lifetime" I think the image has hardly any relevance at all. Equinox ◑ 13:18, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

 * If I saw images and context like this, I might easily mistake you for one of several types of image vandals:
 * Spammers. I could see how an Icelandic tour operator would try to sneak a picture of one of their tours into any entry they could find an excuse for. All they have to do is take a sentence or two from one of their ads and they have a list of words they can add images to: Enjoy scenic grandeur in the Icelandic countryside. Fun for people of all ages.
 * Fetishists: we've had vandals who got off on surprising people with images of things like dusty ceiling fans and dead bodies. This isn't the kind of topic I'd associate with that, but then I wouldn't have predicted the ceiling-fan fixation, either.
 * Signature vandals: these folks just want to show off their vandalism skills. They choose some sort of detail as a calling card, and incorporate it into every edit so you know they were there- sort of like a dog peeing on things to mark its territory.
 * Self-promoters: before Instagram, there used to be people who would invite unsuspecting friends, family, and random strangers over to bore them with hours of slides showing every minute detail of their latest vacation. Then there are those who want everyone to see what a great photographer they allegedly are. There was one person that insisted on inserting what seemed like near-life-size dog pictures they had taken, even galleries of several- you really had to scroll around to find the entry. I'm not sure if they were showing off their pets or their photography skills, but it got old real fast.
 * You do not want me to mistake you for one of those, because the first three get reverted, blocked, and everything in the revision histories gets hidden. The last generally get a chance to explain themselves after the first revert, and it only goes further if they persist against consensus or refuse to communicate. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:10, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Removing requests pages
This requests page is now cleared up. Should I request to delete it or leave it as is? Thanks! BrightSunMan (talk) 13:15, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Just leave it. Bots will periodically delete empty request categories and recreate them as needed, but no human time need be wasted on that. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:35, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

"English possessive determiners"
add "yourn"?
 * Do you have a citation? I don't know this word. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:43, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's a dialectal form of yours. We already have an entry for it at yourn; it just wasn't in the category CAT:English possessive pronouns until I added it just now. (CAT:English possessive determiners is for forms equivalent to your, not forms equivalent to yours.) —Mahāgaja · talk 07:29, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

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