Wiktionary:Information desk/2014/September

discussion rooms: Tea room • Etym. scr. • Info desk • Beer parlour • Grease pit ← August 2014 · September 2014 · October 2014 → · (current)

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Limits to etymology

Is there a limit to how much etymology one should employ in an entry? --Æ&Œ (talk) 03:54, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

There doesn't seem, for example, much point in giving the entire history of tea and pot under teapot, when an interested reader just needs to understand that it's a compound, and can visit the component parts for more. Equinox ◑ 06:43, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Is vowel length phonemic in Icelandic?

I've been organising the rhymes and I noticed that short and long vowels seem to be in complementary distribution. Short vowels appear when two or more consonants follow, long vowels otherwise. Is vowel length allophonic or phonemic in Icelandic? If it's allophonic, then we should probably remove the length marks from vowels, at least in rhymes pages. —CodeCat 14:45, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It's allophonic, but the rules are complicated. Long vowels occur before certain consonant clusters (basically, the ones that can form a syllable onset) and short before others (those that can't or don't form an onset). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:48, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Scientific name of The Regent Honeyeater, Xanthomyza phrygia or Anthochaera Phrygia?

On the wikipedia page for The Regent Honeyeater it states that the scientific name for the bird is Anthochaera phrygia. On the Wikipedia page for the genus Anthochaera it does not include the Regent Honeyeater, though it does mention it. I have searched for papers showing that Xanthomyza Phrygia is no longer a part of Xanthomyza, and there are none which I can discover using my university's journal databases (University of New England, NSW Australia) and Google scholar. One paper, 'Phylogeny and evolution of the Australo-Papuan honeyeaters (Passeriformes, Meliphagidae), by Amy C. Driskell, and Les Christidis' suggest they are "nestled within the genus Anthochaera", which they proved through DNA sequensing, though most papers still name the bird Xanthomyza, suggesting that the bird has kept it's name despite the study undertaken by Driskell and Chrisidis. The Australian Government page states that the scientific name is Xanthomyza (http://www.environment.gov.au/resource/regent-honeyeater-xanthomyza-phrygia, and this page has been updated after the 2003 study. The action plan for Australian birds 2010 (Garnett, S., Szabo, J., & Dutson, G. (2011). The action plan for Australian birds 2010 (1st ed.). Collingwood, Vic.: CSIRO Pub) also names the bird as Xanthomyza Phrygia, rather than Anthochaera Phrygia. Some experts, such as D. J. Geering (http://www.absa.asn.au/Corella/CVol34/C34353.pdf), have started to call the bird Anthochaera. I am not sure if it has officially been changed by whomever has the authority to change it, and that is the reason for me writing this post.

Maybe you should ask this at Wikipedia- this is Wiktionary. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:37, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Audio pronunciations

I've recently started contributing Australian English audio pronunciations. For words without significant pronunciation differences between US/UK/AU, am I ok to contribute audio pronunciations? Should I mark these as AU? Or should I stick to words with a particular AU pronunciation? Screw0dog (talk) 06:00, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd say you can add whatever words you like, but they should always be marked as AU, even in cases where there's no significant pronunciation difference between the various dialects. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:02, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

search for polish words

I want to read the English Wiktionary, but only get Polish words. How can I search for only the Polish words in the English version of Wiktionary?

Special:Search/incategory:"Polish lemmas" granica? — Keφr 05:37, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

phonemic and phonetic, slashes and brackets

I found a conversation from 2008, but I didn't see anything resolved. I just now put in a proposal to change the editing guide to say phonemic instead of phonetic for pronunciation in slashes. The IPA article on wikipedia says slashes are for phonemic pronunciation. I think we need both. In polish the ó is not pronounced the same in komórka and komórkowa, and I need to know that. Particularly when there is a audio clip there should be a phonetic transcription of that in addition to whatever "official" or phonemic pronunciation we want to put on. Gbleem (talk) 21:15, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

block me

I guess that maybe it’s just because I’ve been taking my antidepressants inconsistently again, but I’m getting the feeling that I’m unwanted here (at least by one person). Most of the work that I do here is crap; I’m parasitic. People think that I’m a troll. I also can’t undo any mistakes from my past, so I have to be reminded of them over and over again. Block me. I don’t care how long. —Æ&Œ (talk) 13:14, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

You could at least reply with a snarky one‐liner. --Æ&Œ (talk) 22:37, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

• Done. SemperBlotto (talk) 15:33, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

desktop link

Hi I am a newbie to this site and I know it should be easy to do, but I can't work out how I can create a shortcut on my desktop to this site?! Please help!

Hello. Please remember to sign what you write by ending with four tildes. In regards to creating a shortcut to the English Wiktionary on your desktop, it all depends on what operating system you are using. Because you haven't clarified which one you are using, I will just assume that you are using Microsoft Windows 7. If that is the case, then simply navigate to your desktop, right click onto a blank spot within it, go to "New" from the dropdown menu, and click on the "Shortcut" option. After you do this, a new window should pop up with the header "Create Shortcut". Copy and paste this URL into the editable field within that window:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page

After doing so, click "Next". Then put "Wiktionary" into the next editable field that you see, and then click "Finish". Tharthan (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Finding a word using your "Search" engine if you don't know the correct spelling

I was typing a response to a book reviewer's comments at Amazon.com, and the site's spell-checking program underlined the word with a wavy red line - thus indicating that I had spelled it incorrectly. I tried all the various permutations of the word's spelling that came to mind, but none of them were adjudged to be correct by the aforementioned spell-checking program.

Frustrated, I then came to Wiktionary to alleviate that emotion by learning the elusive, correct spelling of the word. That was when I determined that Wiktionary presented the same problem as the Amazon.com spell-checking program: if one doesn't know the correct spelling of a word, one cannot obtain its correct spelling. Instead, each time I entered a permutation of the word I was informed that no such "page," or "article," exists on the Wiktionary site, and that "if you would like to add such a page or article..."

At that point I gave up, arose from my chair, went downstairs to my library, found my twenty-pound, unabridged dictionary, and looked up the word in the old-fashioned manner. I thought that there had to be a better or more efficacious way of dealing with this - surely, oft recurring - problem. First on the list of solutions was for Wiktionary to do the same thing that most other online dictionaries (both free and paid subscription) incorporate. It's the same program that Amazon.com, IMDb.com, Youtube.com and many other websites use: an algorithm that, after each letter you type, makes "informed" guesses about what product, topic, subject, film title, song, band etc. being sought, then displays its guesses. (I won't give an example - I'm sure you know what I am describing.) Then, the thought hit me: how about creating a section on the Wiktionary site that is devoted entirely to housing a standard (physical) print dictionary for the many instances that this problem - not knowing the spelling of a word - occurs. Sure, it would be slower to "flip" through the "pages" of the online dictionary than it would be to type the word in the Search field/box...but that is true ONLY IF you KNOW the correct spelling of the word being sought. On the flip-side, however, it WOULD definitely be quicker than going downstairs and looking for it in the exact same fashion as would be utilized when consulting a print dictionary - flipping through the pages. I can see two things that would happen if you ultimately decided to make this suggestion a reality: 1) you will be (I'm fairly certain) the only website that has a standard "book"-form version of a dictionary on the internet and, 2) you will make your visitors/contributors (such as myself) very happy about not having to make repeated excursions away from their computers to pull out the dusty, old-fashioned physical repository of words. (just a thought...) Anyway, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. :-)

Finally, if you have time, let me know what you think. And, if you determine the implementation of this idea is too monumental, exhaustive or tedious an endeavor for the resources at your disposal (i.e. too large of an investment for too little potential return), please let me know that, as well. (Have no fear. Even if you don't/can't make my suggestion a reality, I'll still love the site, and all the great people who contribute to it's continued existence. All of you whom do so have my gratitude and admiration for your efforts in this noble endeavor.)

Regards,

Michael Glover

p.s. The word that caused all the problems - lackadaisical. I kept trying to put an "S" after the hard "C"/"K" in the first syllable (i.e. "lacksadaisical," "lacksidaisical," "lacsadaisical," "lacsidaisical," "lacksidasical," "lacsidasical" etc., etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum. p.p.s. I encountered the same problem with another word while in the process of typing this story - algorithm. I tried "algorythim," "algorithym," "algorithim," "algorythym" etc. and, in the end, made yet another trip to the library, downstairs.

It would be good if we could improve our search function to suggest possible words in such cases. It does do that sometimes, but not often enough. Until we manage to strengthen our search function, I would suggest trying Google. When I typed in lacksadaisical the first thing it said was "Did you mean lackadaisical?" and when I typed in algorythim the first thing it said was "Showing results for algorithm", so in both cases Google was good at figuring out what you were trying to say. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:25, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

P.S. If you go to Category:English lemmas you'll find a list of all English headwords here; it's a bit like seeing just the headwords in a paper dictionary. So that might help too, rather than trudging downstairs for your paper dictionary. Now, it is true that if you scroll through that category 200 entries at a time, it might take you a long time to get to the section you're looking for, but if you type https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category:English_lemmas&from=alg into your browser's URL bar, you'll find all the headwords starting with "alg-", and https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category:English_lemmas&from=lack will get you all headwords starting with "lack-". I concede this is rather esoteric knowledge we can't expect new users to figure out intuitively. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:35, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

See Index:English/l - you would have found it in seconds. SemperBlotto (talk) 08:40, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Clarification re Sandbox

How often is my sandbox cleared? I am enrolled in LIB2002 Reference 1 at Algonquin College,Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I will be posting my assignment 1 today. The next assignment posted during the term but I need to have access to assignment 1 to complete assignment 2. please advise.

Emma3171

This is Wiktionary. Your sandbox is over at Wikipedia, at w:User:Emma3171/sandbox. It doesn't get cleared automatically. Anything you have written there will stay there until you clear it yourself. And even after it's been cleared, you can still find its previous contents in the page history. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:07, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

New Word

I propose a new word. a noun describing a female postal route mail carrier is "POSTMA'AM"

STEVEN MALONE AT <e-mail redacted>

I'M A NEWBIE

We don’t accept words people have recently invented; the requirement for English words is that they have at least three independent uses spanning at least one year. See WT:CFI for more detail. — Ungoliant ^(falai) 01:17, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

A reason is an idea that works to explain reality and reasoning is discovering ideas that work to explain reality.

A reason is an idea that works to explain reality.For Example Gravity is a force of attraction created by a mass.This idea works in every situation where we find gravity.For Example the orbits of the planets,the tide,the seasons.Reasoning is discovering ideas that work by applying the Rules of Reason to ideas about reality.1.Reason is an idea that works to explain reality.2.An idea either works to explain reality or it doesn't work.3.An idea either works to explain reality or it doesn't work to explain reality.It can't be something in between. The only legitimate purpose of language is to explain reality.Reality is reasons and reasons are ideas that work in reality.Reasons that work in reality are reasons in language.This is the reasoned representative language of humanity.

Is there a reason your explanation is so devoid of reality? Language exists so people can communicate and express themselves. Explaining reality is only a small part of it. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:03, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

How to indicate syllable breaks with long consonants in IPA?

In most languages that have them, long consonants occur across syllable boundaries, meaning that they both end the preceding syllable and begin the next one. But in IPA, long consonants are indicated with a single symbol followed by a length sign. So it's not really obvious how to split that between two syllables. Does anyone know what the common practice is in IPA? —CodeCat 21:35, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't one just use /Vː./? Tharthan (talk) 23:13, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

But that isn't really correct. —CodeCat 23:14, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Huh. I dunno then. As such, I too would be interested in the answer to this question. Tharthan (talk) 23:55, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Long consonants are very often indicated by gemination in IPA, probably more often than with the long sign, so you can put the syllable break boundary between them, thus: /pet.to/. To be honest, though, I've never understood Wiktionary's obsession with showing syllable breaks; they're usually either completely predictable or (as in English) totally ambiguous. Showing a syllable break at an ambisyllabic consonant is easy when the consonant is also long, as in the /pet.to/ example above, but how do you show that the /p/ in happy is ambisyllabic while not being long? Neither /hæ.pi/ nor /hæp.i/ nor /hæp.pi/ is unambiguously correct. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:15, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

We can't avoid showing syllable breaks, because we still need to put the stress mark between syllables. —CodeCat 12:38, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

But then we only have to show the break before the stressed syllable, not the other ones. So /ˈhæpi/ would be unproblematic, though /ɛkˈspɛns ~ ɛksˈpɛns/ still wouldn't be. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:54, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

In the end, it still means that sometimes you have to put a stress marker "on top" of a long consonant. On addūcō or assertor this is a problem for example. —CodeCat 14:20, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, but as long as you use /dd/ and /ss/ rather than /dː/ and /sː/ it isn't really a problem. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC)