On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 02:37:24 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
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).
I would recommend that this be adopted as a blanket policy for all of wiktionary. The specific means of judging which words are "pretend" will likely vary by language, of course, but the general principle is universal.
I would be interested to hear any counter-arguments, but I doubt very much if there are any. Made up words, original words, are quite beside the point of a dictionary.
A minority language may find it necessary to resort to neologisms, either by calque or by borrowing, when defining modern concepts ("blog", "fluoxetine"), culturally remote concepts ("khan", "senator"), the best gender or declension to put a foreign place name in (is "Shikoku" neuter or feminine?), or the best way to spell foreign names in a non-Latin script ("Xhosa" in Cherokee, or "Pirahã" in Mkhedruli).
This practice should probably be (strongly) differentiated from making up words at random, as with [[hu]].
(For a language as "fixed" as English, we take for granted one of the earlier purposes of dictionaries, which was to suggest usage as well: note the innovations made in spelling by some of the earlier lexicographers, some of which took hold and some of which didn't. For a project as rambling as the English wiktionary, this effect is probably impossible, but if a language took its wiktionary as seriously as, say, English takes its Wikipedia, it could well be influential, if not an actual authority.)
*Muke!