Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2022/November

We have Category:Adjective feminine forms by language and Category:Adjective plural forms by language for certain languages, esp. Romance languages. Do we really need these categories? Do they add anything useful? In general we don't categorize non-lemma forms according to their inflectional properties, so I'm not sure why we're doing it here. Benwing2 (talk) 05:32, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do we really need categories by etymology? --10:59, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

The information can be useful for the collection of oddities. For example, cat:Welsh adjective plural forms collects plurals that are distinct from the masculine singular, very much a minority of Welsh adjectives. Now, the current method of collection leaves a great deal to be desired. One needs to know that plural forms should be categorised as 'adjective plural form' rather than 'adjective form' via the PoS headline, which is not mentioned in WT:About Welsh. Consequently, the category is much shorter than it should be, omitting for instance gwynion.

In this case, better coverage would be obtained by generating a category 'Welsh adjectives with distinct plural', though there may be some awkward corner cases. A specific 'form of' template would also work, though there is the problem of training editors to choose the right template.

Category:Hebrew adjective feminine forms could likewise be useful, if one can restrict the display to feminines ending in taw. RichardW57m (talk) 10:59, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If we want to categorize irregular / unexpected forms, it would be better to add something like "irregular" to the category names (and update the contents); as it is, Category:Portuguese adjective feminine forms, with its combination of regular singular and plural form-of soft redirects, which swamp any irregular forms that may be in there, seems kinda useless. Probably we should also rename the Welsh category something like "...irregular plural forms" or "...distinct plural forms" instead of just "...plural forms" for consistency, although if regular plural forms are identical to the singular and wouldn't be categorized at all (since we seem to in general not put "inflected form of itself" sense lines on pages), the need is less pressing. - -sche (discuss) 16:35, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I say delete them. @Embryomystic may want to weigh in. Ultimateria (talk) 02:35, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with User:-sche here; categories like this are only useful if they track only irregular forms (and have the appropriate name). Tracking all forms (the vast majority of which will be regular) isn't terribly helpful. Benwing2 (talk) 02:39, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

notifying @Benwing2, Erutuon. It is me again, about borrowed terms. Example: under Category:Greek terms borrowed from French, the members of subcategories Category:Greek learned borrowings from French, the Cat:unadapted & the Cat:obor, etc are duplicated. They appear twice, in the 2 categories. So, we cannot tell, which ones have the template {{bor}}. The terms under calques and semantic loans are OK, they do not appear twice. Same happens at e.g. Category:English terms borrowed from French, and so on. For Greek languages, perhaps others too, the {{bor}} template is very significant and distinct from the other templates. It would be great if this duplication could be avoided? Thank you. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 07:58, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Sarri.greek I guess you're requesting that template {{lbor}} does not categorize into 'DEST terms borrowed from SOURCE' but only 'DEST learned borrowings from SOURCE'? My original logic for categorizing into both is that a learned borrowing is still a borrowing, and if you remove them from the parent category, it would be easy for a new Wiktionary user to miss the fact that they also have to look in all child subcategories to find all borrowings. Also there was a vote in favor of including 'DEST terms borrowed from SOURCE' also in 'DEST terms derived from SOURCE', and this is in the spirit of that vote. OTOH I suppose this same argument could potentially be made for including all terms in all subcategories in all their parent categories, which might be undesirable. Benwing2 (talk) 02:48, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No, this time I do not request any template (! I changed my mind, since en.wikt, thinks differently.)@Benwing2. As is have seen here and there, there are 2 kins of Categories:

1) The index-like-cateogires (all the members of all subcategories can be viewed there) (Probably they should have a different name too: Index:C....)

2) and the 'non-index' ones which are

• 2a) either empty, and only subcategories can be seen
• or 2b) subcategories have their hyponyms, +we view in the general Cat the words which have no characteristic of a hyponym.

The above e.g. Category:Greek learned borrowings from French and the similar are a bit sloppy in the sense that there is no way to spot the {bor} = the ones that are NOT hyponyms (I have understaood, that in Eng.Dictionaries, the {bor} is a general word and means no specific kind of borrowing. So, The structure 1. or 2b (I would love to have the 2b, because it serves other languages too, which need to separated {bor} from {lobr} {ubor} ... I am sorry, that I cannot express myself a bit better from the linguisitcs side of things. Thank you, for your attention. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 03:00, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

For purposes of classification what's the difference between them meant to be exactly on WT? The definitions currently on the category pages are (Ecclesiastical Latin) "a form of Latin initially developed to discuss Christian thought and later used as a lingua franca by the Medieval and Early Modern upper class of Europe"; (New Latin) "a revival in the use of Latin in original, scholarly, and scientific works since c. 1375/1500"; (Medieval Latin) "a primarily written form of Latin used across Europe in the Middle Ages". The definition of Ecclesiastical Latin is the sticking point here since it makes it synonymous with, or a collective term for, Medieval and New Latin, or weirdly implies that the latter are basilects (not "upper class").

My own thought, which seems to better reflect the terms that are actually in the category and how I've used it as a label myself, is that Ecclesiastical Latin should be limited to terms with a specifically liturgical or theological bearing, especially ones that have been current in the Catholic Church up to the contemporary era (apart from the liturgy, many Catholic specialist journals were still written in Latin up to the mid-20th century). The "lingua franca" stuff should be dropped from the description—Ecclesiastical Latin is Latin used by the Church, not just "the upper class" and not specifically in medieval or early modern times. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 12:03, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do we need a category for Ecclesiastical at all? As you mention, it spans multiple periods in history. It almost amounts to a topic label, such as 'food' or 'types of potato'. Nicodene (talk) 14:07, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree actually, it would make more sense to just have straightforward chronological categories and use Category:la:Theology, Category:la:Bible, Category:la:Christianity etc. where appropriate, and maybe treat existing "Ecclesiastical Latin" labels as meaning "post-Classical". I was thinking about this when I made dēcrētum horribile, which is very much a theological term but a Protestant one (the term is Calvin's and both of my Latin citations are from Lutherans)—is there "Protestant Ecclesiastical Latin", or should it just be listed as New Latin? Might be easier to avoid the question and just use Medieval/Renaissance/New with topics as appropriate. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 14:14, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How much does in cost us to maintain these labels and categories? If all we get is a bit of tidiness, it doesn't seem worthwhile to suppress the information reflected in the labels and categories. Not all of our category groups are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, nor should they have to be. DCDuring (talk) 15:05, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@DCDuring: The problem isn't tidiness, it's that it isn't clear what the label is actually intended to mean, and the description of the category (which is also the intro of the Wikipedia page the label links to) contradicts how it's used in practice. I don't mind if it's kept with an explanation, e.g. along the lines of my suggestion above (Latin as used by the Church, up to the contemporary age). But I am sympathetic to Nicodene's point to the extent that getting rid of the term would not actually suppress any information, since as actually used it doesn't seem to contribute anything that wouldn't be covered by a chronological + topical combination like "New Latin, theology" and the like. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 16:44, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. The meaning isn't tidy.

It certainly doesn't contribute anything to someone not interested in what it might mean. Is it really true that all Ecclesiastical Latin is about academic theology, rather than, say, maintenance of churches, canon law, or the conduct of rituals. Has anyone knowledgeable taken a good look at how the labels are actually used? What was the source of the labels? How did the source apply them? Is "Ecclesiastical Latin" actually used only for terms used in theological discourse? Do we have anyone who respects the subject(s) enough to make an improvement on the current labels and categories? Ecclesiastical Latin seems to have had more uniformity than, say, scientific, literary, legal or medical Latins. Doesn't that add to the value of the existing label? DCDuring (talk) 22:55, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of it relates to law, and it's not entirely appropriate to put the word "ecclesiastical" on that. Yes, much of it obviously was used in that way by the church, but certainly not exclusively. Theknightwho (talk) 22:57, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@DCDuring: I think I get your point a little better, but I'm not concerned about e.g. the use of "Ecclesiastical Latin" in etymology sections and the like, imported from dictionaries, although those could be more precise in some cases. I am myself a specialist and I add terms that I come across in primary sources. It isn't clear to me when "Ecclesiastical Latin" should be applied to a term that is being added, or, conversely, what it means when someone else adds one, because our definition of the term is poor. I imagine for a non-specialist it would be even less helpful. So, I think it would probably be good to clarify how we are using it. If you're asking for someone knowledgeable to take a look, well, I am here and taking a look at it, hence this thread. "Ecclesiastical Latin" of course does not only apply to academic theology, hence my point above about theological or liturgical bearing and my suggestion to describe it expansively as language used in relation to Church matters and especially terms that are not obviously circumscribed by era.

I do disagree, as a point of fact, that "Ecclesiastical Latin seems to have had more uniformity than, say, scientific, literary, legal or medical Latins": I think FWIW that in practice precisely the opposite is true. Law Latin developed over a much shorter period, is entirely technical and constituted more of a pan-European argot because the study of law was dominated by a small number of institutions (Orléans, Bologna) from the time of the reintroduction of the Corpus Iuris Civilis. By contrast, liturgy in the Middle Ages was not developed by technicians and, before the advent of printing, Trent, and Quo primum, the language of clergy reflected a much more diverse set of local practices, often developed diocese by diocese. Anyway, all this is just to say that I think we should decide on an in-house definition of Ecclesiastical Latin that can be applied with reasonable consistency and can be explained to non-specialist readers, rather than just point to or copy what's on the Wikipedia page, which is fine as it is but wasn't written with a dictionary in mind. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 00:30, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It may be relevant to this discussion to note that there is an official Vatican body responsible for (among other things) creating a dictionary of neologisms for modern concepts, which are likely often not used, but are probably incorporated into the official Latin translations of Vatican documents. Most of these are not ecclesiastical terms per se, but I would think they are primarily used in ecclesiastical contexts (papal encyclicals and the like). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 04:20, 2 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Modern literature on Mongolic languages tends to make a distinction between Proto-Mongolic (the direct ancestor to Middle Mongolian, spoken between the 10th/11th and 13th centuries) and Pre-Proto-Mongolic, the ancestor to that language, tracing back to approximately the 5th century. Although Proto-Mongolic and Pre-Proto-Mongolic are both unattested, the distinction does still matter, as they're reconstructed by very different means: Proto-Mongolic is primarily reconstructed from extant (and attested) languages within the Mongolic family (though obviously with Turkic, Tungusic and Sino-Tibetan influence where appropriate). On the other hand, Pre-Proto-Mongolic is only possible to reconstruct externally (i.e. indirectly), from what we can infer from known/suspected contact with other language families at the time, and then cross-comparing to what we know about Proto-Mongolic + later developments.

Obviously the number of Pre-Proto-Mongolic lemmas is inevitably going to be quite small for a very long time, but I think the difference between the two is significant enough that it warrants creating a separate L2. For comparison, Pre-Proto-Mongolic would be (near-)contemporary with Old Turkic. Theknightwho (talk) 16:53, 1 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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