Well, I think the elitist 19th-century dictionaries serve as a poor
example of what Wiktionary should be about.
Then English Wiktionary has a Sanskrit entry for [[surfboard]] ,
[[तरंगफलक]], and as you noted in the discussion of it, it does create
a problem because its really hard to say whether someone just decided
thats how surfboard would be spelt or if there's some Hindu cleric who
has been praying for तरंगफलक's for years. I don't think its
appropriate for contributors to Wiktionary to translate words into
languages that don't have a word for it already, thats not our place
IMO. Granted, Wikipedia might have to from time to time, but they have
different goals.
On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 10:37:01 -0700, Muke Tever <muke(a)frath.net> wrote:
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 02:37:24 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales(a)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!