Hello!!
I would like to ask you to be so kind as to switch off
the first letter capitalization in the Hungarian (hu)
Croatian (hr) and the kishwahili / Swahlil (sw)
wiktionaries.
thanks in advance
Dubaduba
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com
Hoi,
FYI there are two new wiktionaries being worked on; they are
fa:wiktionary and sa:wiktionary. Both have no first character
capitalisation.
The Persian wiktionary is started because there is a language training
in wikibooks for Farsi. It is currently teaching the characters in the
alphabet, some words and their pronunciation. A teacher of Farsi I know
is experimenting with using skype with her pupils and, finding if/how it
stimulates kids to have a resource on the internet.
Thanks,
GerardM
Hi, I just cannot reach any wiktionary - are they all down?
Ciao, Sabine
--
Sabine Cretella
s.cretella(a)wordsandmore.it
Phone: +39-340-18098278
Skype: callto://sabinecretella
Meetingplace for translators
www.wesolveitnet.com
Hoi,
Brion was so good to change the ja:wiktionary off first character
capitalisation. This means that all new articles will be in their
correct case and, that the current articles with the wrong case need to
be changed..
Thanks,
GerardM
Hoi,
I have problems identifying words in two languages. On the en:wiktionary
these are called Ruanda and Sotho.
Ruanda is not known by a ISO 639 code but it should be known by another
name. Sotho is known but with two names; Southern and Northern Sotho. So
what is it ??
Saturday is the word that brought this problem again to my attention. So
far I just removed these entries and that is not nice so I am asking for
assistence.
Thanks,
GerardM
Proposal:
I propose we change policy on en.Wiktionary user-created words
(so-called "protologisms") to exclude them entirely.
(Hereafter, when I say Wiktionary, I mean the English one).
Reasons to do so:
*It goes against what I believe (and I think generally believed) to be
the purpose of a dictionary (particularly Wiki ones): not to judge or
make rules for a language, but to objectively describe language.
Pretend words are, of course at their heart, POV. In Wikipedia marking
an article as POV is a cause for alarm, in Wiktionary it has become a
classification.
*[[hu]] is a good example of how pretend words can become encyclopedic
pretty quickly. It is necessary to create the context that is
obviously not otherwise present, as well as make arguments for the
words very necessity.
*The rules for inclusion of a pretend word could be considered one of
Wiktionary's more arbitrary set of rules: whether folks believe the
word to be viable, fulfill a need, follow naming some convention etc.
are not the sort of decisions that sysops should have to make if it
can be avoided.
*Even if identified as pretend, they lessen the credibility of
Wiktionary and Wikimedia as a whole.
*Pretend words might happen to be real ones already. (ex. [[hu]] was
apparently a god in an esoteric New Age religion already).
*The previous point brings up the scary possibility of folks deciding
an existing word should have an additional meaning in their POV. Scary
because it would be very easy to miss.
**There seems to be currently a division between the rules of pretend
word (make up your definition) and the rest (describe accurately real
words), which is inconsistent and thus confusing for new users.
*Wiktionary is still young and such changes are still possible without
much hassle.
*Recent beer parlor discussions have showed a lack of support for
pretend words. Folks differ on how exactly they should be dealt with,
but its seems to be generally felt that they do not add to the quality
of Wiktionary.
Implementation:
Just to make things clear, Wiktionary should allow and encourage the
inclusion of new words that actually exist in the wild. Words should
more or less be given the benefit of the doubt, especially if the
author is willing to take even a jab at defending it. So far the words
of [[Category:Protologism]] are all quite obvious as to what they are,
even if they hadn't been marked. Except ironically for "protologism"
itself which should probably hang on as a wiktionary jargon.
If the proposal was implemented, pages which direct users on creating
new pretend words could be removed and/or edited. I know for a fact
that some of the pretend words being created are in response to such
documentation.
I'd be interested to know what the other Wiktionaries have as their policy.
Thank you,
[[user:eean | Ian Monroe]]
Hoi,
In a recent post I wrote the ISO-639 codes for Nyanja and Tswana. The
information although correct was not complete; they have both two and
three character codes within ISO-639.
Nyanja or chiChewa has ny and nya
Tswana has ts and tsn
For use within Wikimedia projects we always use the two character codes.
Thanks,
GerardM
Mamma Mia wrote:
>Thanks to you all for the comments/suggestions/questions.
>
>I'll try to address most of the queries/questions and maybe give a little bit more information.
>
>The 2 million estimate is most definitely out of date and/or based only on those people that live in Tumbuka speaking regions. Tumbuka is the lingua franca of the North of Malawi, a region of almost 3 million people of whom over two thirds speak the language. My estimate is that at least a million people in Zambia speak the language and at least half a million of people from these areas residing elsewhere speak the language. So 3.5 million would be a very conservative estimate. There should be at the very least 5 thousand Tumbuka speakers in the US alone and am sure at least 10 of these would contribute something to the site.
>
>In Tumbuka water is maji. Tumbuka, like most Banthu languages, is a phonetic language so ma is pronounced as in man and ji as in Jeep. In another Malawian language, chiChewa, it's madzi (dzi pronounced as in AIDS!) and in a language spoken in South Africa and Botswana, seTswana, it's Metsi ('tsi' as in Nazi - please forgive my choice of word here, I don't know any other word that has 'tsi' sound that I could have used).
>
>Merry Charismas and Happy New Year is: Christmas yiweme na chaka chipya chiweme; there's no word for Christmas in Tumbuka so we use the English one but normally spell it differently (phonetically) but I prefer spelling 'borrowed' words the original way.
>
>My estimate is that around 75% of the speakers of this language can read and write of which at the very least 10 thousand have internet access.
>
>I have written a few friends of mine and I hope they will be interested in the project. By my estimate, at least five should join the group within the next 24 hours (I'm some optimist!)! I didn't actually know that there's an entry for Tumbuka (in English) on Wikipedia until I saw it on GerardM's email. Thanks for that. I'll definitely add a few items to that this coming weekend.
>
>Once again, thanks to you all for your contributions.
>
>Dinnette
>
>
Hoi,
Thanks for this wonderfull answer. I have added Tumbuka as a language to
the Italian and the Dutch wiktionary.
Is seTswana the same as Tswana ?? If so, the ISO-639 code is tsn
chiChewa is also known as Nyanja ?? If so, the ISO-639 code is nya
I have added "Christmas yiweme na chaka chipya chiweme" for you to the
Italian wiktionary Christmas project.
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21
I have added maji on the Dutch wiktionary.
http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/water