*"To be, or not to be"*
A phrase from Shakespeare's *Hamlet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet *is "To be, or not to be, that is the question"*.*
Chris Koerner from WMF Discovery published some interesting information about the verb "to be", and how on-wiki search deals with it, in this issue https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/discovery/2018-April/001652.html of the *Discovery Weekly Update*:
"The English verb "to be" is kind of weird—the infinitive "be" and participles "being, been" start with "b-", while the preterite forms "was, were" start with "w-", and the present forms "am, is, are" start with vowels. The conjugations originally come from three or four different verbs! Why "three or four"? Wiktionary disagrees with itself a bit, listing four on the etymology of "is" [5] and three on the etymology of "be". [6] The conflation goes back at least to Proto-Germanic, [7] so German is similarly weird. [8] Dutch has a greatly simplified paradigm, but still shows some trace of the multiple sources. [9] Other languages, including ASL, Arabic, Bengali, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian at least partly avoid this mess by having a zero copula. [10] For search on-wiki, we deal with this problem in part with stemming [11] and stop words. [12]
"[5] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/is#Etymology_1 [6] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/be#Etymology [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Germanic_language [8] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sein#Conjugation [9] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zijn#Inflection [10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_copula [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stemming [12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_words"
*Legal case ends well for Greek Wikipedia administrator*From the Wikimedia Blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/04/18/greece-legal-case-ended/
*Photos from the 2018 Wikimedia Conference in Germany* Some photos of the 2018 Wikimedia Conference are available on Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Conference_2018. Here are a few:
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_ Conference_2018,_Group_photo.jpg * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_ Conference_2018_by_ZUFAr_01.jpg * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMCON18_Sweets_Table_1.jpg * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMCON18_by_Rehman_-_Posters_(2).jpg * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Conference_2018_%E2%80%93_...
What's making you happy this week? You are welcome to comment in any language.
Aside from the actual content (it's nice to see the legal case in Greece ending), seeing the subject in Greek was one more reason I became happy. But I think a small correction is in place. A more appropriate way of saying "What's making you happy this week?" would be "Τι σας κάνει ευτυχείς αυτήν την εβδομάδα;", where "ευτυχείς" (an adjective) would be the plural form of happy, which is used both when addressing groups of people and when being polite. Alternatively "ευτυχισμένους", could be used, with exact same meaning, just using the participle form (and in the appropriate conjugation) instead of the adjective. "Xαρούμενους" (again a participle, just of a different verb) would also be valid with the same meaning for most people, although if one wants to be pedantic, "χαρά" is closer to "joy" than "happiness".
Regards,
Thank you for that information, Alexandros. :) I rely extensively on machine translation, and online resources like Wiktionary, when I do translations for these weekly threads in most languages. There will probably be more linguistic errors in the future. Comments regarding translations would be appreciated.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 2:57 AM, Alexandros Kosiaris < akosiaris@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Aside from the actual content (it's nice to see the legal case in Greece ending), seeing the subject in Greek was one more reason I became happy. But I think a small correction is in place. A more appropriate way of saying "What's making you happy this week?" would be "Τι σας κάνει ευτυχείς αυτήν την εβδομάδα;", where "ευτυχείς" (an adjective) would be the plural form of happy, which is used both when addressing groups of people and when being polite. Alternatively "ευτυχισμένους", could be used, with exact same meaning, just using the participle form (and in the appropriate conjugation) instead of the adjective. "Xαρούμενους" (again a participle, just of a different verb) would also be valid with the same meaning for most people, although if one wants to be pedantic, "χαρά" is closer to "joy" than "happiness".
Regards,
-- Alexandros Kosiaris akosiaris@wikimedia.org
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Or you could’ve just give a link somewhere with those messages to a page where someone could drop you a translation in their language ;-)
Oleg
On 30/04/2018 21:05, Pine W wrote:
Thank you for that information, Alexandros. :) I rely extensively on machine translation, and online resources like Wiktionary, when I do translations for these weekly threads in most languages. There will probably be more linguistic errors in the future. Comments regarding translations would be appreciated.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 2:57 AM, Alexandros Kosiaris < akosiaris@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Aside from the actual content (it's nice to see the legal case in Greece ending), seeing the subject in Greek was one more reason I became happy. But I think a small correction is in place. A more appropriate way of saying "What's making you happy this week?" would be "Τι σας κάνει ευτυχείς αυτήν την εβδομάδα;", where "ευτυχείς" (an adjective) would be the plural form of happy, which is used both when addressing groups of people and when being polite. Alternatively "ευτυχισμένους", could be used, with exact same meaning, just using the participle form (and in the appropriate conjugation) instead of the adjective. "Xαρούμενους" (again a participle, just of a different verb) would also be valid with the same meaning for most people, although if one wants to be pedantic, "χαρά" is closer to "joy" than "happiness".
Regards,
-- Alexandros Kosiaris akosiaris@wikimedia.org
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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Hi Oleg.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have considered requesting that Wikimedia volunteers translate "What's making you happy this week?" into their languages. However, because this initiative appears to have a relatively modest level of community support, and because volunteer translators' time is so valuable, I am reluctant to request translators' time. If I continue to be involved with this initiative for a few more months, or if I make a particularly bad mistake in translation, then I may change my mind. (:
Regards,
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 11:36 AM, Saint Johann ole.yves@gmail.com wrote:
Or you could’ve just give a link somewhere with those messages to a page where someone could drop you a translation in their language ;-)
Oleg
On 30/04/2018 21:05, Pine W wrote:
Thank you for that information, Alexandros. :) I rely extensively on machine translation, and online resources like Wiktionary, when I do translations for these weekly threads in most languages. There will probably be more linguistic errors in the future. Comments regarding translations would be appreciated.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 2:57 AM, Alexandros Kosiaris < akosiaris@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Aside from the actual content (it's nice to see the legal case in
Greece ending), seeing the subject in Greek was one more reason I became happy. But I think a small correction is in place. A more appropriate way of saying "What's making you happy this week?" would be "Τι σας κάνει ευτυχείς αυτήν την εβδομάδα;", where "ευτυχείς" (an adjective) would be the plural form of happy, which is used both when addressing groups of people and when being polite. Alternatively "ευτυχισμένους", could be used, with exact same meaning, just using the participle form (and in the appropriate conjugation) instead of the adjective. "Xαρούμενους" (again a participle, just of a different verb) would also be valid with the same meaning for most people, although if one wants to be pedantic, "χαρά" is closer to "joy" than "happiness".
Regards,
-- Alexandros Kosiaris akosiaris@wikimedia.org
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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