text:
slope

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1) An area of ground that tends evenly upward or downward.
 * 2) The degree to which a surface tends upward or downward.
 * 3)  The ratio of the vertical and horizontal distances between two points lying on the line.
 * 4)  The slope of the line tangent to the curve at the given point.
 * 5) The angle a roof surface makes with the horizontal, expressed as a ratio of the units of vertical rise to the units of horizontal length (sometimes referred to as run).
 * 6)  A person of Chinese or other East Asian descent.
 * 1)  The slope of the line tangent to the curve at the given point.
 * 2) The angle a roof surface makes with the horizontal, expressed as a ratio of the units of vertical rise to the units of horizontal length (sometimes referred to as run).
 * 3)  A person of Chinese or other East Asian descent.
 * 1) The angle a roof surface makes with the horizontal, expressed as a ratio of the units of vertical rise to the units of horizontal length (sometimes referred to as run).
 * 2)  A person of Chinese or other East Asian descent.
 * 1)  A person of Chinese or other East Asian descent.

Usage notes

 * In mathematical contexts, lines that are vertical (with respect to a given coordinate system) are said to either have infinite slope, or to have their slope undefined.
 * While common in pre-university level mathematics and in introductory calculus, the use of slope to refer to the slope of a tangent line of a curve is proscribed in higher mathematics, where application is restricted to lines.

Translations

 * Arabic: مُنْحَدَر
 * Hijazi Arabic: دحديرة, نزلة, مُنْحدر
 * Azerbaijani:
 * Basque: malda
 * Bulgarian: ,
 * Catalan:
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin: ,
 * Czech:
 * Danish:
 * Dutch:
 * Eastern Bontoc: tichang, neng-tatangilig
 * Esperanto: deklivo
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * Galician:, , pendilleira, engrido, quella, barga, buenza, barronca, talude
 * German:, ,
 * Greek:
 * Ancient: κλίμα, κλειτύς
 * Hungarian: ,
 * Icelandic: ,
 * Ilocano: bakras
 * Indonesian:
 * Ingrian: penger, paltti, veeru, rinta, kallas, palle
 * Irish: fána, caitheamh le fána , sléim , ardú
 * Italian:
 * Japanese:, , , ,
 * Kabuverdianu: ladera
 * Kyrgyz:
 * Latin: clīvus
 * Lubuagan Kalinga: challug
 * Malay: lereng,
 * Maori: panaunga, tahataha, tāwhatinga, aupaki, harapaki, pīnakitanga , taiheke , takaripa , tāwhati, tūpaki, rapaki, pānaunau
 * Marathi: उतार
 * Middle English: hange
 * Norwegian:, , oppoverbakke, nedoverbakke
 * Occitan:, , ,
 * Polish:, ,
 * Portuguese:, , ,
 * Romanian:
 * Russian:, ,
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: о̀бронак, падина, нагиб
 * Roman:, ,
 * Slovak: svah
 * Slovene: klanec, pobočje
 * Southern Kalinga: songarab
 * Spanish: ,
 * Swahili:
 * Swedish:, , ,
 * Tagalog: dalisdis, libis, gulod
 * Telugu:
 * Turkish:
 * Ukrainian: схил, на́хил
 * Uyghur: قاپتال, يوتا, باغىر
 * Welsh: rhiw
 * Zazaki: sud
 * ǃXóõ: ǃāho

 * Arabic: مَيْل
 * Hijazi Arabic: ميل
 * Azerbaijani: əydəm
 * Bulgarian:
 * Catalan: desnivell, ,
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin: ,
 * Czech: stoupání
 * Dutch:, ,
 * Finnish: ,
 * French: ,
 * Galician: ,
 * German: ,
 * Hungarian:, ,
 * Icelandic: halli
 * Indonesian:
 * Irish: céim fhána
 * Italian:
 * Japanese: 傾斜角, ,
 * Malay:
 * Norwegian: stigning, helling
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese:
 * Romanian:
 * Russian: ,
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: падина
 * Roman:
 * Slovak: sklon, stúpanie
 * Slovene: naklon, strmina
 * Spanish: ,
 * Swedish:
 * Tagalog: hilig
 * Zazaki: meyıl, sebcêre

 * Bulgarian:
 * Catalan:
 * Chinese:
 * Mandarin:
 * Czech:
 * Danish: hældning
 * Dutch: richtingscoëfficiënt,
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * Galician:
 * German:
 * Greek:, συντελεστής διεύθυνσης
 * Hungarian:
 * Italian:
 * Japanese: 傾斜率, ,
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese: ,
 * Romanian:
 * Russian:
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: косѝна
 * Roman:
 * Slovak: sklon
 * Slovene: strmina
 * Spanish:
 * Swedish:
 * Tagalog: hilig
 * Zazaki:

 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * German:, ,
 * Indonesian:
 * Malay:
 * Portuguese: ,
 * Romanian:
 * Spanish:
 * Tagalog: hilig

 * Bulgarian:
 * Finnish:
 * German:
 * Portuguese:
 * Spanish:

 * Dutch:
 * Estonian: kili
 * Finnish:
 * German:, Schlitzi
 * Hungarian: ferde szemű
 * Indonesian: ,
 * Italian: muso giallo
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese:, olho puxado
 * Russian: ,
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: косооки
 * Roman:
 * Spanish: ojo chueco, chuequito

Verb

 * 1)  To tend steadily upward or downward.
 * 2)  To form with a slope; to give an oblique or slanting direction to; to incline or slant.
 * 3)  To try to move surreptitiously.
 * 4)  To hold a rifle at a slope with forearm perpendicular to the body in front holding the butt, the rifle resting on the shoulder.
 * 1)  To form with a slope; to give an oblique or slanting direction to; to incline or slant.
 * 2)  To try to move surreptitiously.
 * 3)  To hold a rifle at a slope with forearm perpendicular to the body in front holding the butt, the rifle resting on the shoulder.
 * 1)  To hold a rifle at a slope with forearm perpendicular to the body in front holding the butt, the rifle resting on the shoulder.
 * 1)  To hold a rifle at a slope with forearm perpendicular to the body in front holding the butt, the rifle resting on the shoulder.
 * 1)  To hold a rifle at a slope with forearm perpendicular to the body in front holding the butt, the rifle resting on the shoulder.

Translations

 * Bulgarian: наклонявам се
 * Danish: skråne
 * Dutch:
 * Finnish:
 * Hungarian: ,
 * Icelandic: halla
 * Icelandic: halla
 * Italian:,  , ,
 * Maori: kotautau, pīnaki, auroro, kōtautau, (w)hirinaki
 * Portuguese:
 * Swedish:, ,
 * Tuwali Ifugao: tigging

 * Bulgarian: скосявам
 * Catalan:
 * Czech: sklonit, zešikmit, zkosit
 * Finnish:, tehdä kallistus
 * German: ausschrägen
 * Hungarian:, lejtőssé tesz, lejtősen alakít ki
 * Maori: whakataiheke

 * Bulgarian:
 * Dutch:
 * Finnish: ,
 * Hungarian:, , , , ,
 * Italian:
 * Kyrgyz:

 * Bulgarian: държа "на рамо"
 * Finnish: pitää olalla

Adjective

 * 1)  Sloping.

Adverb

 * 1)  slopingly

title: slope


text:
Talk:slope

Pejorative
I almost didn't include the pejorative sense. It seems to be (thankfully) falling from use, except on lists of ethnic slurs that everyone knows but few use. Personally, I had never been exactly sure whom it was aimed at and had no great desire to find out.

However, since it turns up from time to time, it seems best to go ahead and document it. I doubt many people will be trolling through Wiktionary looking for new ways to offend people, and if someone is, I'm not sure we can help them.

On the other hand, it was nice to try to capture the usage as in "Fat Charlie the archangel sloped into the room." I hope I've come close. -dmh 04:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Mathematics
It's been a while since high school. The primary usage of slope in math classes refers to the slope of a line, as in "slope-intercept form." It is also extended to mean the slope of the tangent to a curve. This is the informal notion that formalized by the derivative, but it was incorrect to define slope as first derivative. Slope is an intuitive notion regarding graphs of functions, while derivative is a formally defined concpet about functions themselves. It's common for introductory calculus courses to use slope as a lead-in to derivative. After a bit of googling to confirm usage, I've fixed the definitions to reflect this distinction. -dmh 18:22, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Capote: a sloping face
i´m not quite sure in which way truman capote uses the term 'sloping' to refer to the face of the character joe bell (breakfast at tiffany´s).

To decamp, disappear
Chambers 1908 has an intransitive verb sense "(slang) to decamp, disappear"; perhaps just confusion over "slope off", "slope in" etc. which we already cover with "try to move surreptitiously". Equinox ◑ 23:50, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

transitive : take something up or down
Transitive :  to make something rise or descend gradually We had a landscaper slope the path through our yard. --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:23, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:slope


text:
fuckspeak

Alternative forms

 * Fuckspeak

Noun

 * 1)  An aggressive manner of speech making frequent use of the word fuck and its derivatives.
 * Bond traders are notorious for their use of fuckspeak.

title: fuckspeak


text:
vend

Etymology 1
From, from , from , from +.

Verb

 * , now especially to sell through a vending machine.
 * 1)  To provide or export functionality, especially from an API.
 * 1)  To provide or export functionality, especially from an API.
 * 1)  To provide or export functionality, especially from an API.

Noun

 * 1) The act of vending or selling; a sale.
 * 2)  The total sales of coal from a colliery.

Translations

 * Bulgarian:
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * Georgian: გაყიდვა
 * German:
 * Spanish:
 * Turkish:

Etymology 2
. Compare.

Noun

 * 1) The letter Ꝩ/ꝩ, used in Old Norse, related to the rune wynn (ᚹ, whence also Latin-script Ƿ/ƿ) but with the bowl open at the top, like a y.

Etymology
From, from earlier. A gerund formation from. Has been compared to the Illyrian-derived toponyms and  (compare ).

Noun

 * 1) place
 * 2) location
 * 3) (plot of) land

Etymology
Possibly an irregular variant of, influenced by Swedish.

Noun

 * 1) brother
 * 2)  guy, dude, fellow, chap

Etymology
From.

Adjective

 * 1) Wendish, Sorbian

Noun

 * 1)  Slovene, Slovenian (person)
 * 2) Wend, Sorb (person)
 * 3)  Wendish, Sorbian (language)

Etymology
Akin to 🇨🇬, from Latin.

Verb

 * 1) to sell

Etymology 1
Of the verb.

Noun

 * 1) a turnaround, switch
 * 2)  a stanza, or the tune of one
 * 3)  outside of a woven fabric
 * 4)  a diagonal line in a woven fabric

title: vend


text:
avril

Etymology
.

Noun

 * 1) April

Etymology
, from.

Noun

 * 1) April, the fourth month of the Gregorian calendar, having 30 days

Descendants

 * South Azerbaijani:
 * South Azerbaijani:
 * South Azerbaijani:
 * South Azerbaijani:

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1) April

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1) April

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1) April

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1) April month

Etymology
From. Compare 🇨🇬.

Noun

 * 1) April

title: avril


text:
poisson d'avril

Etymology
lit. 'April fish'. Compare 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬. From the practical joke played on, of pinning a fish to the back of a person.

Noun

 * 1) April fool an April Fool's Day joke
 * 2) * 1843, Théodore de Jolimont, "Monologie du mois d'avril", in L'Art en Provence, vol. 7, section IV (unnumbered page).
 * "fr"

- Ces poissons d'avril qui font grincer les dents, maugréer et maudire, et que dame Justice n'épargne guère aux incorrigibles plaideurs;

 * 1) April fool a person subjected to an April Fool's Day joke
 * 2) paper fish pinned to someone's back as a traditional April Fool's Day joke

title: poisson d'avril


text:
ἄγω

Etymology
, from, from the root. Cognate with 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬.

Verb

 * 1)  to lead, fetch, bring along (a living creature), take with
 * 2)  to carry off as captives or booty
 * 3)  to guide, command (an army, a ship); to march in war
 * 4)  to draw out (a line, wall, and so on)
 * 5)  to draw (a line) or describe (a plane)
 * 6)  to hold (an event); to celebrate or observe (festival)
 * 7)  to weigh down a scale by a certain amount, to have a certain weight
 * 8)  to take for oneself

title: ἄγω


text:
ἀλλά

Etymology
Originally the neuter accusative plural of with shifted accent in an adverbial sense, from. Cognates include 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, and 🇨🇬 (🇨🇬).

Conjunction

 * 1) but

title: ἀλλά


text:
βασίλεια

Etymology
From ; see also. Intervocalic developed from a sonorant cluster, which assimilated to , then became the second element in the diphthong. The formation is thus >  >.

Noun

 * 1) princess, queen, noble woman

title: βασίλεια


text:
γῆ

Etymology
From a pre-Indo-European /. The names and  also 🇨🇬 point to an alternative form.

Noun

 * 1) land, earth
 * 2) country
 * 3) soil

title: γῆ


text:
δίνη

Etymology
In view of the lack of a good etymology, Beekes considers the possibility of a origin.

Noun

 * 1) whirlpool, eddy

Noun

 * 1) vortex, whirlpool

title: δίνη


text:
διότι

Etymology
of, form of , and.

Conjunction

 * 1) because

Etymology
Borrowed from.

Conjunction

 * 1) because, for

title: διότι


text:
εἰ

Etymology
Probably from, a locative form of. See its sense, “that”, in and compare the history of Latin.

Conjunction

 * 1) if

title: εἰ


text:
κόρη

Etymology
From, whence also 🇨🇬. In this word, shifted to  in Attic and Ionic (see Attic–Ionic vowel shift on Wikipedia) because of the preceding. In words like, ρ prevented ᾱ from shifting to η, because there was no intervening.

Probably related to. From, related to.

Noun

 * 1) girl, young woman, maiden
 * 2) bride, young wife
 * 3) doll, puppet
 * 4) pupil (of the eye)
 * 5) A long sleeve reaching over the hand.
 * 6) The Attic drachma.

Etymology
.

Noun

 * 1) daughter
 * 2) maiden, girl
 * 3) kore (the modern term for an ancient Greek statue of a young woman)
 * 4) pupil (of the eye)

Coordinate terms

 * see: Appendix:Greek vocabulary/Family

title: κόρη


text:
心臓

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1)  a heart

Derived terms

 * : heart trouble
 * : central part
 * , : cardioplegia
 * : heart transplantation
 * : heart attack
 * : heart surgery
 * : enlargement of the heart
 * : heart valve
 * : valvular disease of the heart
 * : heart massage
 * : artificial heart
 * : athlete's heart

title: 心臓


text:
ἄγγελος

Etymology
Cognate with 🇨🇬, with further origin. Probably a loanword, likely related to (whence 🇨🇬), which is perhaps from an Asian language. Klein suggests a origin; note  and. Compare also 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬 and 🇨🇬.

The religious sense is a.

Noun

 * 1) a messenger
 * 2) one that announces
 * 3)  angel, heavenly spirit

Descendants

 * (ˀnglyˀ)
 * (ˀnglyˀ)
 * (ˀnglyˀ)

title: ἄγγελος


text:
foamy

Etymology
From, from , , from , , equivalent to.

Adjective

 * 1) Full of foam.

Synonyms

 * , ; see also Thesaurus:effervescent

Translations

 * Bulgarian: ,
 * Catalan: escumós
 * Esperanto: ŝaŭma
 * Finnish: vaahtoinen
 * French:
 * Galician: escumoso
 * German:, ,
 * Greek:
 * Latin: spūmeus
 * Occitan: escumós
 * Plautdietsch: schumich
 * Polish: pienisty
 * Romanian:
 * Russian: ,
 * Spanish: (material),  (liquid)
 * Turkish:
 * Yiddish: שוימיק

title: foamy


text:
Category:English abstract nouns

An abstract noun denotes an idea, emotion, feeling, quality or other abstract or intangible concept. Examples of this are thought, love, and excitement. It is not simply something that is hard to understand.

title: Category:English abstract nouns


text:
ἄνευ

Etymology
grc. Unlikely to be related to and  because of the leading. Maybe from Proto-Indo-European or, which could be derived from a more primary particle  or the locative of some (hard to identify) noun. Likely related to 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬.

Preposition

 * 1) without

title: ἄνευ


text:
barik

Postposition

 * 1)   without
 * 2)   instead of
 * 1)   instead of
 * 1)   instead of

Etymology
From, probably from.

Noun

 * 1) vein: a stripe or streak of a different colour or composition.

Noun

 * 1) act of drinking an alcoholic beverage
 * 2) drink of an alcoholic beverage
 * 1) drink of an alcoholic beverage

Adjective

 * 1) drunk; intoxicated; inebriated

title: barik


text:
ἄνθρωπος

Etymology
First attested in Hellenic as 🇨🇬, of uncertain origin. Scholars used to consider it to be a compound from and : thus, "he who looks like a man". However, a would be expected to develop by, as in the genitive , yielding. Rosén defends this etymology, positing that the original laryngeal in the root for  (from ) changed the δ to its aspirated counterpart θ even across the intervening ρ.

Beekes argues that since no convincing Indo-European etymology has been found, the word is probably of origin; he connects the word with the word. According to Beekes (2009:xxix), "Shift of aspiration is found in some cases: θριγκός / τριγχός, ἀθραγένη / ἀνδράχνη".

Garnier proposes a derivation from (from  + ), hence "earthly, human", for this compare with  whence, ,.

The word is treated in Plato's Cratylus.

Noun

 * 1) human being, person ; man, woman
 * 2)  man, humanity
 * 3)  all human beings, mankind
 * 4)  female slave

title: ἄνθρωπος


text:
accomodate

Verb

 * 1)  accommodated

title: accomodate


text:
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2002/December

Combining diacritical marks: Unicode range x0300-x036F
While working in Wiktionary I tried to combine the IPA character (593) ɑ with the combining tilde (771)  ̃ but this gives me  ɑ̃ where the tilde does not go over top of the other character. What am I doing wrong? Eclecticology

 * Behavior of combining diacritics seems to be highly dependent on the output system. I can't get them to combine on Linux (tried Mozilla 1.0.1, 1.3 alpha and Opera 6.1), but on Win98 it works like a charm in Mozilla; the IPA character doesn't show up in IE6, but there is a tilde on top of the little box. ;) I would recommend against trying to use these unless you really have to, it's just not widely supported. --Brion 02:32 Dec 17, 2002 (UTC)

 * OK and thanks. I guess I'll just have to live with it, and the ugly overhanging tilde when I try to represent the French nasalized vowels. BTW the problem does not seem to be there when I don't need to use a UTF code for the underlying letter thus x̃ and ÿ̃ seem to work fine. Eclecticology 07:27 Dec 17, 2002 (UTC)

 * By the way ɑ̃ shows a+~ over it in opera 7.23 under linux. ɑ̃ does it as well, entering utf-8 characters without embeds (that's the nice thing about a wiki being in utf8). --Grin 16:15, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

title: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2002/December


text:
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2003/January-March

Compound nouns : one or two articles
I have just created an article about the translations of crude oil. I have put it under crude. I wonder if it is better to create a seperate article (crude oil) or if it is better to put all under crude -- Youssefsan 21:10, 14 Jan 2003 (UTC)

crude oil should eb on a seprate page. -fonzy 22:28, 14 Jan 2003 (UTC)

 * I think it should be in a seperate article --Imran 22:28, 14 Jan 2003 (UTC)

We need Namespaces, Clear Syntax and Automation, or do we?
I've seen the definition for Wiktionary: A Dictionary and a Thesaurus in  every  language. The goal is great, but the current infrastructure and free-form syntax means that there will be an enormous amount of redundant manual editing, that could be done automatically if we just had a clear syntax and some software. I'm not saying that it would be easy, I'm just saying it could be feasible.

e.g. To achieve the goal for one meaning of one word in n languages we have to make n(n-1)=n^2-n entries will frustrate a lot of people, who think something like: "If we just XML'd this and this and so forth..."

At least in nouns there are a lot of unambiguous words in most languages.

I'm sure that here are lots of people who have thought of this kind of scheme of automation through clearly defined syntax, namespaces for languages and classes of words (noun, verb...) and evolving the underlying software. Please see My page on what I've managed to scribble down on this matter

I'll iterate on the subject with your help. Cheers.

- Juho 13:26 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
 * IT WON'T WORK! Language is not that well behaved, and I shudder at the thought of bot generated translations.

 * Please consider the following POVs:

 * Automatical entries could go to a special namespace and therefor have a different colour before they are checked by a human to be sane and truthful

 * The dependency-data from the automatical translation would be very useful for detecting, stopping and reversing vandalism.

 * Let me illustrate this point.

 * In Wikipedia when I make a change to an article it takes me some time, lots of concentration, Googleing, backtracking my subscribed RSS-feeds and consulting books which makes it very likely that I will put it on my Watchlist to see if someone axes my edits or what further info people input on the subject. I believe most people go about this Watchlist matter in the same way, which results in numerous eyeballs ready to catch vandalism, minor puns, POVs and so on.

 * In Wiktionary the contribution of adding a translation usually takes 10-30 seconds and when you get into the flow, you'll do these for half an hours straight and I have no interest to watch these articles (most likely thing to catch would be someone adding a translation in a language I don't have a clue about). Therefore it is much simpler to vandalise Wiktionary e.g. just change some translation to an obcenity and mark something else in the summary.

 * When utilising Wikipedia to get information, one can use common sense to filter out possibly unreliable information.

 * When utilising Wiktionary to get a translation, I'm really vunerable to practical jokes, puns and obcenities whether human or bot created

 * This vulnerability (and the redundant manual work I've mentioned before) increases the chances that some people who feel almost religiously about the future of XML will fork a separate project from the Wiktionary to illustrate the power of meta-data and alleviate some headaches and frustrations

 * Comments and further thinking are very welcome.
 * I'll write more on this subject in my own space. I'll post a link here when I've elaborated and argued my view more precisely

 * - Juho 11:24 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

 * Sure there are some words that can easily be mapped on a one-to-one basis between languages, but these are the exception. This mapping works best with modern technical terms.  The further one gets from these technical terms, the more connotational baggage a word picks up, and that baggage will not be the same in every language.  Distinctions may be made in one language but not in another.  Distinguishing between ser and estar is a problem for a new speaker of Spanish.  The use of the is a problem for slavs wanting to learn English.  Do we treat each item of a Finnish declension as a separate word?

 * Regrettably automation gives us the situation where a letter addressed to the Widget Company will begin with the salutation, "Dear Mr. Company".

 * Sorry, I just had to put this here (I'm not trying to provoke a fork into "xmltionary") Juho

 * I do believe that a fairly uniform format for articles would be an asset, but putting articles in that form will be still need to be mostly done by humans who will be in a position to exercise judgment when exceptions arise.

 * In my view the vision of a multilingual Wiktionary involves separate Wiktionaries for each participating language. Each of these would be written with the speakers of that language in mind.  Even the foreign words on each Wiktionary would be described in a way to benefit the speakers of the base language.
 * -- Eclecticology 01:50 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC

International Wiktionary
This is meant to be the ENGLISH wiktionary isn't it? Can we PLEASE have more english explanations added to all of these non-english entries that are springing up left, right and centre. It is very hard for a person who only speaks English to make head or tail of them... KJ

 * Hey, Karen,
 * I believe it's a multilingual dictionary. But more info on each term sounds helpful, thanks for pointing it out and I'll try to pull my share from time to time to add to the English definitions too. Since, Jay B.

 * The more or less official decision is that this section of Wiktionary (the only one yet online) is English-language. That means that it covers words in all languages, but the entries are themselves written for an English-speaking audience. Words in other languages are to be translated primarily into English, explanations of etymology and usage are in English, etc. Other language sections will be set up, but so far I haven't had a chance to implement the new multilanguage features that I have planned. (The system currently on Wikipedia is very fragile and difficult to manage, with multiple separate wikis tenuously linked together. For Wiktionary, and later for conversion on Wikipedia, I'd prefer a combined one-database system which allows better, more seamless transitions between language sections; better handling of linking, etc. See Thoughts on language integration.) --Brion 04:58 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

These "Interlinga index" entries are bloody awful. Our contributor would have done better to wait until the Interlingua Wiktionary was on line. In the English Wiktionary the Interlingua entries should be limited to showing what Interlingua words mean in English. I've particularly looked at the French on a sampling of these index pages (since it's a language that I understand well) only to find that a significant portion are grammatically wrong, and often not even French. If the words beginning with A to O are going to be like this, don't bother! Eclecticology 08:18 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

Should they be deleted? They obvioulsy dont belong here. -fonzy
 * Probably, but diplomatically. I like to avoid edit wars if possible. Eclecticology

 * I think this is another reason why it might be nice to have different namespaces for languages. I don't think these indexes are such bad start (for an InterLingua wiktionary). They are just somewhat misplaced (beginning with that no one knows that it is Interlingua) Henryk911 00:14 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

Different language will have their own subdomain, thats where they are meant for. -fonzy
 * How hard would it be to give the interlingua articles their own namespace like the Webster 1913 stuff? I have no comment on their value as I have never heard of 'interlingua' before this week, but they certainly muddy the waters of the wiktionary at present as they have no identifying marks to tell you what the hell they're meant to be there for! KJ

 * (to fonzy) AFAIK the subdomains will characterize the defining-language (so far only English) while I would like to see namesspaces for the source languages. (e.g. German words explained in English, English grammar-notes etc...) Henryk911 16:54 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

The Webster 1913 material namespace is provisional. It was begun because people quite understandably when this was botted in to regular articles for the words without human intervention. Ideally when people have had a chance to review the material and make it conform to the standards we are developing, that namespace will cease to exist. Eclecticology 22:05 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

(no title)
Is there a template for a 'standard entry' giving the correct order and style so that entries can be uniform. ATM I'm trying to standardise entries semi-methodically one way, using Wiki coding for the layout, and User:ILVI has started trying to do it semi-methodically in a totally different way using html. We could easily spend our lives redoing each other's entries, but that doesn't serve any purpose. If there isn't a standard layout we need to get a discussion going to establish one - this sort of problem isn't going to get any smaller as the entry count grows! KJ 06:40 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)
 * A while ago I undertook hopefully (not too dictatorially) to do just that at    User:Eclecticology/Vision.  Since then I've worked to make articles fit that approach.  Since then I have gained experience from doing that, and my vision is in serious need of upgrading based on that experience.  Among the ideas which my experience has tended to confirm is the use of "H2" headings to separate the languages in which the term is recognized as a word, and the general order in which the topics should appear.  Still undetermined in my own mind for those topics which come after the definition in that order is how best to distinguish when a translationor other entry applies broadly to all the definitions, or just to some of the definitions.

 * I don't agree with the extensive use of HTML when easily used Wiki code is available. That view has long prevailed in Wikipedia, and there seems to be no reason to deviate from that on Wiktionary.

 * In converting the Websterbot material, their transfer has been more than a simple act of copying from one place to the other, With each article that I transfer, I fully revise the format based on the model that I have been using, expand abbreviations, convert to wiki code, and sometimes even try to identify the illustrative quotes with a little more detail. Unfortunately, in that last feature the very useful site at concordance.com appears to have ceased to function shortly after I found it.  Identifying these quotes can be a significant value-added to the project.  Once I've made these changes, or checked somebody else's changes, I can feel confident enough to delete the Websterbot version.  I hope this helps.  Eclecticology 08:00 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

I wish ILVI, would slow down, he seems just to be doing his own thing at the moment. I also wish he would stop using HTML. -fonzy

 * I have the same feeling as Karen. Uniforming entries should rid us of all those different styles. I do agree with Eclecticology about the use of HTML. I find it very uninviting to edit (most of the time I just don't bother to add something when it's in HTML). On the other hand, I find Eclecticology's format much nicer and easy to edit. My feeling is that it can be used as a good base to further enhance the format. Although I haven't written much on the subject, I'm willing to join a discussion about a proper format. (You never know, I might even have an idea or two worth considering! :-)
 * There is one other question I have. It concerns the use of capital letters. I don't know any traditional dictionary in which the first letter of a headword is capitalised as a rule. Headwords are only capitalised when needed (nouns in German, proper nouns in a number of languages, a number of abbreviations, etc). Here it's different: the first letter is always capitalised. I don't really like that and strictly speaking it's not correct. I'm aware that changing that means changing the software. But there might be other possibilities...
 * I'll try to get my thoughts organised about these things. D.D. 08:53 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

 * I support the need to have a Wiktionary-wide template ASAP and to stop capitalization of the first letters as well. Youandme 09:23 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

I'm gratified that my approach has some following; keeping it easy to edit has been a consideration all along. I look forward to the opinions of others, and hope that some detailed consensus will grow out of this.

I agree with Dhum Dhum about beginning article titles with capitals. In Wikipedia the number of items where the distinction is important is significantly smaller than it is here. Brion has expressed his disagreement with our view, and he's the one who has recently been the most active in our software development. I don't know enough about the software to be able to properly respond to his objections.

I have a question for anyone regarding what to use as a "language name" for those terms (mostly abbreviations of one sort or another) that transcend any individual language. These can be language and country codes, chemical element symbols, and others that must necessarily be the same for all languages. I started with "general usage" and have currently drifted to meta-usage, but there's nothing there that really feels satisfactory. Any ideas? Eclecticology 09:38 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

 * What about "multilingual" or "multilingual usage"? One of my dictionaries defines multilingual as "in or using several languages". That's exactly what it is, isn't it? D.D. 21:31 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)
 * I can live with that, but will wait for other ideas before implementing. Eclecticology

 * My humble suggestion for language links: use Ethnologue langauge codes as names of articles (capitalized or not) with some non-letter characters, maybe for example like this: (ENG), (JPN) for English and Japanese respectively. Youandme 10:22 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of the site and find that list more comprehensive than the 3-letter ISO 639-2 codes, but that wasn't the question. As Dhum Dhum correctly responded, it was more a matter of looking for what single term can be used instead of a language name when we are talking about things that are the same for all languages.  Eclecticology 00:16 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)

An idea i had for wikipedia which i have nto state yet is to have a title masking tag. Page Name this would be use for pages like Alexander of Greece(King) as I don't like those (...). The tag would hide it and show Alexander of Greece but the URL would still be http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander of Greece(King). This could be used in wiktionary, for first letters, it will also help with abbrevaitions like etc. -fonzy

 * There was a recent discussion on the mailing lists about the "pipe trick" which would do what you suggest. Using the format Alexander of Greece (king) would have the effect that you want. !!!

Subpages
I wonder if we should think about using subpages in certain cases. I know that Wikipedia decided against it after a lot of discussion. But I'm getting more and more convinced that Wiktionary is something very different, with a content that needs much more structuring and hierarchy. And probably a number of changes in the software too. Multilingual pages risk to become much too wide for practical use. It could be useful to create different subpages with English as the base language and groups of related languages. Let's say a page with English - Afrikaans - Dutch - Frisian - German. Another with English - French - Italian - Romanian - Spanish. Etc... Possible candidates to have this structure would be the Swadesh list and Wiktionary Appendix:Elements. D.D. 20:30 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

I'm starting to think we need subprojects, 3 differnt ones; (language)dictionary, (language) thesaurus and (language) translator. So the url coudl look like:

 * http://wiktionary.en/ <--'''Main Page(English) directing too:
 * http://wiktionary.en/Dictionary/word <-defenitions of ALL words
 * http://wiktionary.en/Thesaurus/word <-thesaurus for ALL words
 * http://wiktionary.en/Translator/word <--gives translations of ALL words, and problems with translating etc

Now I think about it, I think it will be easier to run Wiktionary like this.

-fonzy

 * Fonzy, when you say definitions and thesaurus for ALL words, do you mean all words in English or all words in every language (as it is now). I'm still wondering about the use of having a word in, say Icelandic, explained in English.
 * And when you say translations of ALL words, I suppose that means all words in English translated into all other languages and vice versa? D.D. 20:39 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

All worlds in all languages, and the trnaslation all english words into others and visa versa. The french wiktionary would look like:

 * http://wiktionary.fr/
 * http://wiktionary.fr/Dictionary/word
 * http://wiktionary.fr/Thesaurus/word
 * http://wiktionary.fr/Translator/word

(of course those sub domains would be translated. -fonzy

The concern that I see in this has to do with the high risk of fragmentation. Some people involved with other language Wikipedias believe that Wikipedia and Wiktionary should be combined into a single project. I don't agree with them, but, on the other end of the spectrum I don't think we're ready for a lot of sub-pages either. Most of our articles are still too small to make sub-paging necessary, but I do accept that it will eventually be needed as more languages are merged into the project.

When it comes to dealing with these issues and indexes much of our work is still at an experimental stage; the test for these approaches is how easily the newbie adapts to the environment. In the dictionary/thesaurus/translator divisions we still need to come to an agreement on a philosophical level about the relationship between these elements. The interlanguage links will be a challenge, but these have to stay incomplete until someone starts Wiktionaries in other languages. To me the need for having an Icelandic word explained in English links with the question of unidentified texts. If you have a text in an unknown language, how do you determine its language? Ideally, by showing on a single page how a word appears in all languages that have it, you develop the means not only of interpreting the word, but of identifying the language.

The case for separate thesaurus pages is even weaker. We would do much better putting these on the main page for a word, and including explanations of how one possible synonym would differ from another.

The top items on my software change wish list are 1. being able to have articles begin with a lower case letter and 2. determining an acceptable sort algorithm for a wide range of Unicode letters. Eclecticology 23:08 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

 * The way you presented it, explaining a non-English word in English does probably have its use. I suspect that it lies somewhere between defining and translating the word. For now I can't yet see its relation to those two elements, but it might develop into something interesting.

 * Could you explain why you see fragmentation as a risk? I don't agree at all with those people who believe that Wikipedia and Wiktionary should be combined into one project. But even if Wiktionary is a separate project, I don't think we should put everything there is to say about a word in one place. In Dutch (my mother tongue) there are separate definition dictionaries, translation dictionaries, etymological dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms, of proverbs, and of idioms. (for an example see - click on "Nederlands" in the upper left corner - I'm sorry but the page is in Dutch). Of course the borders between them are not that strict (e.g. a definition dictionary does contain proverbs, but on a more limited scale than the actual dictionary of proverbs). The fact that I'm used to using them probably explains why I don't "fear" a certain amount of fragmentation.

 * I'm not saying that Wiktionary should follow this example. The definition dictionary and thesaurus can probably be combined, because we're still talking about one language. But I don't really see how centrally combining those elements with a translation dictionary can work. Theoretically Wiktionary is about all words in every language. Take only a single word. That word can exist in a number of languages, and within each one of them it can have different meanings. How are you going to translate all those different meanings into every other language with very little fragmentation? Moreover, translating a word is not something on a one-to-one basis.

 * I'm convinced that we should find a way of dealing with that. I agree that we don't encounter too many problems yet. But sooner or later we will. And we should try to prepare ourselves by exchanging views and ideas, by doing certain tests, etc.. My greatest fear is that otherwise it will get out of hand. D.D. 10:27 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

We probably have more disagreement than disagreement. My concern about fragmentation is quite similar to the fear in your last sentence. I can easily imagine people becoming caught-up in different interlanguage linking projects before there is even any contents to link. Our indexes to or from Esperanto and Volapük are all very nice, but as I see it these are little more than wish lists of words needing articles. It's a lot of skeletons without any meat on the bones. The different types of dictionaries that you mention could be a good way to go at some future time, but we're far from there now. If we get too far ahead of ourselves in deciding upon our structures, we may find that the structure is not compatible with empirical data. Of course a lot of empirical data without structure is also a problem, but it's not an immediate one. Any word is best explained in its own language. That's why I believe that it is crucial to encourage the beginning of Wiktionaries in other languages for speakers of that language. Eclecticology 08:04 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

 * I hope you meant We probably have more agreement than disagreement :-)
 * I'm also waiting for the set-up of Wiktionaries in other languages. I'm more than willing to participate in a Dutch language Wiktionary when it starts. Any idea when that will happen? D.D. 09:58 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)
 * Ooops, you're right! I think faster than I type. Where are neural interfaces when you need them?
 * Regretably, I'm not one of the technical gurus. Bring it to Brion's attention, and he may be able to do something, but from seeing the mailing list traffic about the slow-down of Wikipedia, he probably already has a long list of things to do.  Eclecticology 17:31 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)


text:
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2004/January-March

Remove unnecessary links
In order to make Wiktionary work faster, we need to get rid of all the unnecessary links. So, I suggest that we do NOT add links to languages, when there is no translation. If someone decides to translate something, then he will add a link to the language.

I'll give you an example. If you look at Multicolor, Multi-billion or Multicultural, you'll notice that there're 103 links, and only 7 translations. Very unpleasant, isn't it? :/ Webkid 08:55, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Webkid, you're right. It isn't necessary to prepare languages for which one doesn't know the translations. I did it myself when I first got started, to make it easier for others to fill them in, but I realize now it doesn't make sense. They will remain empty for months, which looks a bit silly. Feel free to remove them, when you encounter them. Polyglot 09:14, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * This may be a stupid question, but why do we link to the languages of the translations at all? What is the purpose of (potentially) linking from every single English word to every word that represents a language? - Sandman 10:15, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * In fact it's a very good remark. We got into the habit of doing it that way, but lately I don't see the sense of it anymore either. At first it seemed like a good idea, but it is probably part of the 'common' vocabulary of the Wiktionary. Let's try to get some consensus and then, maybe, we can start taking those links out, as well. Polyglot 11:36, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * If you want to learn a few words in some language, you can just go to this page, for example. I can't think of any other advantages at the moment. Webkid 13:05, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree with Polyglot. It is generally considered bad Wiktionary policy to wikify the headings Noun, etc, so I think the same ought to apply to language names in translations. I have started removing them in pages that I edit. Unfortunately, most pages have them, and this leads translators to wikify language names for any translations that they add. My view is that the policy on wikification of words in entries should be restricted to words in definitions that the user might not be familiar with (based on the assumption that they do not know the word that is being defined), and links to other entries (in translations, synonyms, antonyms and the like). -- Paul G 13:14, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm in general agreement, I think, with everyone. It doesn't seem to serve any very useful purpose to link to all the languages, and I think it's mainly just habit.  (My fingers are well trained in typing " *German: " by this time. :-)  I'd also thought of the "What links here" trick that Webkid suggested, but really that's what the index pages are for.  (Of course, the index pages probably aren't up to date, but that's another subject.) -- Ortonmc 05:13, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * OK, if nobody shows disagreement with the unlinking of the languages within 7 days, I suggest that we start removing links then... Webkid 09:19, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * I've already started unlinking just the common language. I'm leaving the languages linked which are not national languages and which most typical users would not know of. Hippietrail 04:14, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * For consistency I think it would be better to unlink all of them. All or nothing... Polyglot 08:57, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * In this case I think "consistency" is a very subjective term. Sure it would be graphically consistent but is it consistent with the idea of a hyperinked dictionary of every word in every language? I think having uncommon words easily investigate by clicking on them when they are seen is a huge benefit and having some words in a list being a different colour than others is a miniscule defecit. Indeed I've learned about a couple of languages I didn't already precisely by clicking on the links I found right here! Hippietrail 20:05, 25 Jan 2004 (PST)

 * The problem then becomes: which languages are interesting enough to be linked and which aren't? Very subjective and not a decision I want to make (over and over again, for each article). Polyglot 23:14, 25 Jan 2004 (PST)

 * We can link only dialects, for example: Flemish, Frisian, Catalan, Corsican, Cantonese, Galician, Ibo, Occitan, Basque, Sardinian, Breton, Kannada as well as the auxilary languages - Volapük, Esperanto, Interlingua, Ekspreso. Webkid 23:46, 25 Jan 2004 (PST)

 * I think everybody should be free to link everything he (she) wants User:Sergio1956 26jan2004 13h

 * Yes, in an ideal world. See the original poster's comment.  We need to remove some links in order to reduce the load on the server. -- Paul G 05:14, 26 Jan 2004 (PST)

 * What is the impact on the load on the server if we remove language links,

0.01% faster, 0.1 %, 10%, 100%, 1000%. Is it right assuming wikipedia and wiktionary use the same server ? The exponential growth of wikipedia and wiktionary is fine, but may be it is the real reason for performance problems. In german it is called Teufelskreis (fr:cercle vicieux): faster server -> more traffic -> more articles -> more users -> slower wiki -> more donations :-) -> faster server -> more traffic -> and so on... Thats why it may be interesting to know the impact on the load removing the linksUser:Sergio1956 26jan2004 21h

 * I don't see the point in having those language links. And in the same way as visitors to wikipdia has to learn the 2- or 3-letter code to the languages they understand, we could actually do something similar. I.e. replace all *German:.... with de: or even de: \Mike 22:59, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * We chose early on to mark them with the full language names in English. We get a lot of languages here and it is not realistic to expect people to memorize more than 300 language codes. So let's stay with the full language names. Polyglot 23:17, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm somewhat surprised there should be a performance problem with multiple links. I'm particularly surprised that Wikipedia's growth hasn't forced a fix.

 * Someone mentioned somewhere that each link on a page requires a separate database lookup to determine whether to color the link red or blue. This should be fixable by making the rendering/editing smarter:

 * Maintain a table of (link source, link destination). This is also needed to support "what links here" (so I suspect it must already exist?).  This table should contain all links, whether tentative or not (otherwise adding a new entry requires finding all pointers to it, without the benefit of a table).
 * When rendering, do one lookup to retrieve the set of all extant pages the given page links to (by joining the link table against the table of extant pages). If the tables are properly tuned, this should be fast.  Cache this set locally -- even if every word is wikified, there will only be one entry per unique word on the page.
 * When rendering a particular link, check to see whether the destination is in the cached set.
 * When checking in a page, update the link table accordingly. Again, this should be a single database operation.

 * Unless I'm missing something major, this should eliminate the existing performance bottleneck. The single select with local lookups should be much faster than multiple selects with no local lookups.  It also gives more atomic semantics -- as it stands, two links to the same page could conceivably get different colors if that page is checked in while the linking page is being rendered.

 * No, I'm not volunteering to implement this. -dmh 06:29, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A few questions
1) Look at New Caledonia, for example. You can see a See also at the bottom of the page. My question is: should I use See also or ===See also=== ?

 * I would tend to change it to a heading. Polyglot 11:21, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

2) Look again at New Caledonia. The translations are: #:*Breton: Kaledonia Nevez, #:*Danish: Ny Kaledonien, #:*Dutch: Nieuw-Caledonië etc. Should I change it to *Danish, *Breton, *Dutch or should it stay as #:*Danish, #:*Dutch, #:*Breton?

 * There seem to be two different styles of adding translations. The more common style seems to be to group all the noun definitions together, and then put the translations under them (with *Danish ), with numbers to indicate which definitions the translations belong with.  The other style is to add translations under each definition (with #*Danish ).  New Caledonia looks like an anomaly, and I'd be inclined to change it.

 * The advantage of the second style is you don't have to worry about renumbering the translations if definitions get moved around in the list. The disadvantage is the pages get much longer, and there may be duplication of translations.  -- Ortonmc 16:38, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

3) I can see that most of the people place the word/phrase on top. Why? Wiki automatically adds this information at the top. Webkid 08:36, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * I have the habit of repeating the word under the Part of speech heading. (Not on top) This way it is immediately clear whether the word needs to be capitalized or not. For other languages, I also tend to put plural forms and diminutives behind that. For English only the irregular verbs and sometimes the adjectives get something added between parentheses. Polyglot 11:21, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Merging consequent changes
It happens quite often to me, that I edit a page and save it, but shortly after that I realize that I did some minior mistake. Although I try to force myself to use the preview it might in general be interessting to merge the consequent changes of the same user to one entry into one single change. (At least show it that way in Special:Recentchanges like for example MoinMoin does). Henryk911 00:46, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * This is a problem if the changes are conceptually different. For example, if I revert some vandalism, and at the same time notice a few other errors, I always do the revert on its own, and then fix the errors as a separate edit, so people can see what has happened (and so a revert is a revert, not an edit).  Collapsing these into one edit would not be useful. --HappyDog 02:37, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Is Wiktionary being plagiarised?
See http://dictionary.new-frontier.info/w/Appendices/Place_Names - the comment at the top of the page is the one I added to the equivalent Wikipedia page. Is this a legitimate mirror? If not, and given that the contents of Wiktionary are free, what is the position here?

 * I found this at the bottom of the page:
 * Some content falls under GNU FDL, and is provided in part by Wikipedia.

 * I believe they can do that, but I'm not an expert. It should be made clear to them they can not forbid us to also use the modifications they add on their site. Polyglot 22:50, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Zeeshan_M:
 * I'm the owner of http://dictionary.new-frontier.info, I was recently informed of his Wiki page by Henryk911 through a recent e-mail enquiry regarding the license of the information presented on my Web site.

 * If I may post the e-mail transaction between us to help resolve this confusion:

 * Hi Zeeshan,

 * thanks for your fast answer. Maybe you want to tell the comunity yourself,
 * what your project is about.
 * Maybe here: http://wiktionary.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wiktionary:Beer_parlour
 * Under the topic "Is Wiktionary being plagiarised?"

 * All in all it's an honorable effort to read-only mirror wiktionary. :-)

 * Regards,

 * Henryk

 * >Hi Henryk,
 * >Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate user input. Regarding your
 * >first question, the intention of my Web sites are to repackage GNU FDL
 * >and Creative Common licensed information and present it to end users
 * >who are looking for it.
 * >I do not wish to 'challenge' or 'split forces', as you worded, the
 * >Wikimedia Foundation, but the GNU FDL allows for commercial usage of
 * >information as long as sources are stated, I have clearly marked this
 * >in all of the Web page's footers.
 * >The site was developed as an alternative means of gaining information
 * >when Wikimedia servers were severely lagged or offline, which they were
 * >constantly prior to the donation requests and Slashdot community
 * >efforts.
 * >Regarding your second informational question, the copyright notice has
 * >been worded to be minimal in an effort to focus users attention to the
 * >actual page content. Of those who are interested in the license status,
 * >such as yourself, of the information provided by
 * >dictionary.new-frontier.info' a link is provided to the GNU FDL.
 * >I have stated 'Some content falls under GNU FDL, and is provided in
 * >part by Wikipedia' so that users are aware that I reserve copyright
 * >ownership on some of the Web pages (bookmark help pages, link-to pages,
 * >recommendation pages, etc.). The copyright also reflects my ownership
 * >status of how the GNU FDL information has been repackaged and
 * >presented, such as the underlining Perl code, outputted' HTML, and CSS
 * >code.
 * >I hope this has been of help to you, if you have any additional
 * >questions, please contact me at SNIPPED.EMAIL.ADDR. Thank you.
 * >Regards,
 * >Zeeshan M.
 * >-Original Message-
 * >Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2004 3:55 PM
 * >Fullname: Henryk911
 * >Email Address: SNIPPED.EMAIL.ADDR
 * >Message: Hi Zeeshan,
 * >1. I wonder, what's the intend of you dictionary-site? It seems like a
 * >1-1 copy of wiktionary.org (except for the layout). But why split
 * >forces?
 * >2. I'm not sure if I like your "license". Because you state, that some
 * >content falls under the GNU FDL, you imply that other does not. So
 * >what's the license of the "other" stuff (if there is any). I think, you
 * >should at least mark the wiktionary-pages as such, so it is clear they
 * >fall under the FDL.
 * >Yours,
 * > Henryk
 * >1-1 copy of wiktionary.org (except for the layout). But why split
 * >forces?
 * >2. I'm not sure if I like your "license". Because you state, that some
 * >content falls under the GNU FDL, you imply that other does not. So
 * >what's the license of the "other" stuff (if there is any). I think, you
 * >should at least mark the wiktionary-pages as such, so it is clear they
 * >fall under the FDL.
 * >Yours,
 * > Henryk
 * >Yours,
 * > Henryk
 * > Henryk

 * All in all, I mean no malicious intent, and do not block re-distribution of the edits I have applied to the Wiktionary pages, after all, this is why I stated the information inherits GNU FDL (in the footers of produced Web page, in the form of a link to GNU FDL).

 * Note: I have trimmed e-mail addresses from the enquiry to prevent spam and other annoyances, if you wish to contact me, please use http://dictionary.new-frontier.info/contact/ - If you wish to contact Henryk911, please send me a message (via the above stated URL) and I will ask him if it is okay to inform you of his e-mail address so that you may contact him directly. Henryk, if you're reading this, you may remove this statement if you don't want me to do this or you wish to state your contact details here.

 * - Zeeshan M.

Swadesh List 2
What is Swadesh List 2? It looks like a copy of Swadesh list, but with different introduction. It's also an orphan. Eric119 01:44, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Also most of the work on it was done by one person quite some time ago. It's likely that the material is duplicated on other pages.  That should be checked, and if so it should simply be deleted as duplication.  Eclecticology 07:27, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Inter-wiktionary links
Hello. I'm a french Wiktionary contributor. fr: and pl: have just been setup, and still are building basic things from the ground :) (though some are taken from here, i guess). The main question, which brion asked, and concerns every Wiktionary, is: what should inter-wiktionary links point to? If, in a Wiktionary, someone write Français, where should it point? Basically, to solutions:
 * 1) point to fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Français
 * 2) point to fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Français

From my understanding of the project, Français here is right away equivalent to Français on fr: and pl:. So inter-wiktionary links are pretty obvious, we won't have issues like on Wikipedia :) Consequently, I'd favor linking to Wikipedia, but making clear it's a Wikipedia article we're pointing to, not a Wiktionary one.

Note that we don't need to do the same thing on different Wiktionary, but it'd be easier nontheless :)

I asked this question also on fr:'s talk page, and i'll try to provide feedback from both sides.

Ryo 11:53, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi,

 * I'm kind of contributing to the Wiktionnaire and to Wiktionary. I don't understand Polish, so I can't follow what they are doing. I try to tell them how we do things over here and why. I hope it's not considered too intrusive.

 * For the links I would like that fleur and flower point to entries in the Wiktionnaire, where as Corsica continues to point to Wikipedia. That would mean things aren't consistent anymore though and I think it is important that a link in no matter which language of Wikipedia or Wiktionary always means the same thing. (Otherwise we get in trouble when copy/pasting, etc...)
 * So, I propose to prepend a w, i.e. (wfr:fleur and wfr:flower) point to the French Wiktionnaire, whereas fleur and flower point to the French Wikipedia and this no matter where; in Wiktionary or Wikipedia; the link is written.
 * Of course it might be that another letter than w would be more appropriate, but I wouldn't know which other than maybe d (for dictionary) would be a candidate then.
 * I'm glad this problem is going to be resolved. And I'm glad our opinion is asked in the matter. Don't mind me if this proposal doesn't make sense. (I had been thinking about this problem before it was raised though. The only thing I cannot do is to think beyond Wikipedia and Wiktionary. The project has grown larger than those two now, so every solution that is implemented needs to be thought out well) Polyglot 17:38, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Numeration of meanings
While trying to add Estonian counterparts to the article Paper I found a problem. The meaning of the entry words are listed by means of the symbol #, so they change when someone inserts a meaning or changes their order. So the meaning numbers cease to identify the meaning correctly, as it did happen, for instance, to the Dutch translations. Of course, whoever who inserts a meaning should modify the numbers in the translations too. But how can I know the numbers have been changed. I think this is a serious reliability risk. Andres 14:41, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * There are two options: 1) watching a page (or its history) to see when/if senses are added and whether renumbering is done, or 2) making it standard to only add definitions to the end of the list. Unlike in many other dictionaries, sense numbering in Wiktionary doesn't appear to have significant value.  —Muke Tever 17:10, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I did come across some guidelines as to the order, but if the community still don't think they are that important then I would opt for the second option, as this requires just a collective effort: while watching tecent changes, don't let new meanings in otherwise than in the end. Of course, then also easily could be checked if the numbers in the translations are confused. Of course, the best way would be that anyone who inserts meanings would check the translations, but probably this is too utopic. Andres 22:26, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * The # gives us soft numbers, while the numbering that some have used in the translations assumed that they are hard numbers. The people who work on the English part of the dictionary often pay no attention at all to translations.  There was an inconclusive discussion very early on about the ordering of definitions.  It would have resulted in meanings being grouped by related senses, or ordered chronologically to reflect when the use became a part of the language.  Adding meanings at the end as and when they are found would result in a product that would be unhelpful to the user.

 * A solution in the translations that avoids hard numbering would be preferable. I don't know if the software can be made to link to a particular definition instead of its position.  What I tend to do when I encounter this problem is to put all the translations that apply to a particular meaning in an appropriately indent level under that meaning.  The indent level can vary if other extensions are also related to the meaning. Eclecticology 23:11, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * Please give an example how you do this. Andres 14:09, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Look at Laurel for an example of my idea. Eclecticology 09:10, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The indentation was getting a bit thick, so I dropped it. This is another problem that I noticed in my first few days. I hope there's not huge discussion about this elsewhere, I saw a link a couple of days ago about numbering translations that I skipped. :-) Solutions with pros and cons as I see them:

Only add definitions at the end of the list
 * Pro: It's simple, and it requires few changes.
 * Con: The definition order is supposed to have some relation to the frequency of use.
 * Con: New users may not know to do this, and destroy the translations as a result.
 * I find this solution unacceptable personally. I think it will lead to completely incorrect data as a result of the new contributor problem.

Group translations under the definition (as suggested by Eclecticology)
 * Pro: I think it has a better chance of working.
 * Pro: Isn't this what was decided for quotations?
 * Con: It's going to accelerate the need for being able to conditionally display parts of the entry, so that readers aren't overhwhelmed by lots of repetive translation data.

Perhaps thinking about the problem this way will help... We have a N-dimensional matrix of data. The N's are language, sense, pronunciation, etymology, translation into language X, etc. The problem will quickly become intractable if N is large and it's a full matrix. So the refined problem appears to be: Which hierarchy is: the most intuitive, and will result in the least duplication of data?

Language is a good candidate for the top of the list (as we appear to have done already). I propose that "sense" or "definition" should be the very next level because it's the level that resolves the most ambiguities. This would cause a lot of translation data to be duplicated, but I think that might be correct anyway. Another advantage is that sense has a lot of things that can go immediately under it, without conflicting with other things at the same level. e.g. quotations, pronunciations, translations, alternative spellings etc. are not likely to "conflict" in my mind.

I'm fairly sure we'll be able to find examples that contradict this ordering, but my impression so far is that the "sense" has not received a sufficently high level in the hierarchy so far. In short -- I like Eclecticology's solution. I hope that's not too rough on the translators out there.

-- CoryCohen 04:19, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've since found some more of the translation discussion and seen the tables grouped by sense. This is fine solution in my mind, esecially if it buys something for the translation oriented folks. But I still can't help shake the feeling that the following structure would produce the most reliable data (and also a good bit of duplication).

 * Word (implicit spelling)
 * Language
 * Sense (Definition)
 * Part of Speech
 * Etymology
 * Pronunciation
 * Quotes
 * Translations
 * Alternate spellings
 * See also
 * Derived words

If sections were collapsable, this would be quite attractive, intuitive, and suitable for a lot of different uses. Without collapsable sections, it'll probably be a bit bulky. :-( As for the duplication of data, it'll be cut and paste mostly, and I think there's a chance we'll be able to "upgrade" it to some sort of normalized form by detecting identical content later on down the road.  E.g. write a script that compares all translations across senses to see which group, or process all quotations looking for duplicates.  Obviously, I'll go with the crowd on this issue, but have we really thought hard about this issue yet?  The recent discussion about translations makes me suspect that we have not.

-- CoryCohen 04:46, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Capitalization in headings
Should headings be capitalized or not? I see both and haven't been modifying them but for new articles I capitalize them all. Hippietrail 04:14, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * They should be capitalized. Please change them when you see uncapitalized ones. The reason they were not capitalized is that they were links and we should only capitalize words in links when it is necessary to do so in that language. (German nouns, months in English, etc.) So from looking at the link, one can know whether this word needs capitalization or not. Polyglot 08:57, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * The wikipedia standard is to capitalize the first word, but not the rest of the heading. I've been following that practice in cases where the heading is more than one word. -- Ortonmc 15:28, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * That's exactly our problem. Capitalization is something where a dictionary is very different from an encyclopedia. In a dictionary it matters whether a word is capitalized or not. It's a bit unfortunate that the software will always capitalize the first letter in links, but I guess we'll have to learn to live with it.

 * So we should use ===Proper Noun===, not ===Proper noun=== ? Either way suits me. -- Ortonmc 16:34, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * I tend to write Proper noun. I don't think it's necessary to capitalize both of them. Then again, I don't know what the usual way of doing this is, in English. Polyglot 11:21, 23 Jan 2004 (UTC)

(Biting bullet so as not to overdo the indenting - and because of long interval.) I'm with Polyglot (and so is the publisher I work for, and so is Wikipedia) - headings in "sentence case", because otherwise they look far too dominant on the page. Robin Patterson 11:43, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Downloading Entire Dictionary
Is there any way to download the entire content, e.g. perhaps a zip file with all XML? I can't see any link to such a thing. I would like to work on a standalone application using the dictionary content, which is presumably okay as long as the program itself is GPL'd.

—AppDeving 13:51, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * See http://download.wikimedia.org/ --Brion 09:32, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Geographical names
I've just noticed that there is a geographical index (Appendix:Geographical_index) in addition to the place names index accessible from the front page. These contain a lot of duplication, with the former being much less developed. For the past few months I've been transferring place names from the place names appendix to appendices subdivided by country and region. I think these two indices might benefit from being merged or at least made to have the same content. (There could be a place for both, as the former is ordered alphabetically and the latter geographically.) -- Paul G 16:47, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC) (oops, forgot to sign this first time round)
 * The link that you mention doesn't lead anywhere, but that does not diminish the very valid point that you have raised.

 * Of all the Wikimedia family projects none is so heavily indexed as Wiktionary. Many of the 1500+ indexes are fragmentary, and there is no systematic way to keep these up-to-date.  (except perhaps a lot of highly disciplined work. :-)  To make matters worse some of these indexes are characterized as appendices.  Furthermore, a lot of the indexes are now a part of the Wiktionary: namespace, and that can make it difficult to find a lot of more general information about how Wiktionary works.

 * I've raised the idea of an Index: namespace with a couple people, and at least they did not shoot down the preliminary idea. What would people think about such a move?  Can we agree to something before anybody starts moving anything.  In the same vein, what distinctions are being made between "index" and "appendix", or are we just using them as two different names for the same thing? Eclecticology 21:33, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * The Index: namespace sounds good to me.

 * Regarding the difference between index and appendix, my opinion is anything that's merely a list of words is an index; an appendix conveys additional information (e.g. the relationships between the words). Currently there doesn't seem to be such a clear distinction.  The First names and Surnames, for instance, would be among the indices by this standard.  Ortonmc 21:58, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I wrote this comment before I saw Ortonmc's - my view is much the same: in my experience the appendices of a dictionary usually contain encyclopaedic material, such as diagrams showing how the British court system works, maps, geneaological trees of Royal families, lists of presidents, lists of countries with their populations and capital cities, a guide to English grammar, a guide to punctuation, and so on. In virtually all cases, these should probably be in Wikipedia rather than Wiktionary. If our indexes consist of lists of words organized by topic, or beginning with a particular letter or belonging to a particular language, I think "indexes" is the best word. Amatlexico 22:00, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * The Index: namspace sounds good to me too. -- Paul G 13:20, 5 May 2004 (UTC)


text:
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2003/April-June

June 20, 2003

 * The existence of the Wikimedia Foundation has been officially announced by Jimbo Wales. This is a nonprofit corporation organized under the laws of Florida, United States which is now the parent organization of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, the Sep11wiki, and the soon to be created (and yet unnamed) TextbookWiki project (see Talk:Science Hypertextbook project and . It will, however, be some time before the Foundation will be fully operational and able to accept donations and grants.

As the owner of the Wiktionary.org domain I hereby transfer ownership and control over this domain to the Wikimedia Foundation. -- mav 22:00 Jun 20, 2003 (UTC)

title: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2003/April-June


text:
Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2003/October-December

Greek text?
I know enough Greek to supply some translations and etymologies. In the interest of not generating a trail of unreadable characters or unusable links, how should I enter Greek text for maximum compatibility? May I cut and paste out of my word processor, a process which appears to create accurate text: (όνομα), should I create the whole business with the painfully slow ampersand-codename-semicolon route (óνομα), or some other process? Have I missed the document explaining all this somewhere? (I am new to the world of Wiki as of a couple of days ago. I have so far slogged through the editing pages and enough convoluted discussions of multi-language issues to know that debates still rage.  What I want is simply a functional answer so I can contribute with confidence.)  Thanks! Dvortygirl 06:53, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Cut and paste should be fine. In your ampersand example the oacute is not technically correct.  The proper entry should be ό (numeric 972) or an equivalent ό (numeric 8057).  A number of other choices are available for different accentuations on the omicron.

Eclecticology 08:22, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Tamil display
Lastely I have put some Tamil words in Wiktionary but there is some problem with their proper display in Wikipedia. You can check it with this example: if you take the word for ant, எறும்பு and cut it and paste it in Google, you'll get several Tamil pages containing it but if you go into them and search for the word with the Find tool, you can see that the display is different. It happens with every vowel containing e, o, u, ai, au and with some containing i. I don't think is great problem so far but it would be useful to fix it if possible as Tamil is an important language and likely to join Wikipedia sooner or later. - Piolinfax 20:41, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * Is this a Wiktionary problem or a Google problem? The Find tool can also be browser dependant.  While you're at it please consider entering these words at Tamil index.

OK. I'll do that. - Piolinfax 14:06, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC) Anyway, I don't think there is any problem in google. The proper display is the one shown in the Tamil pages it collects (you have to get into the page). The display in wiki is just additive, it doesn't "melts" the information into a proper display. - Piolinfax 14:17, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Wikification?
The word for ring finger in Bulgarian is "среден пръст". Do I have to wikify it as среден пръст or as среден пръст ? Webkid 04:57, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * For what it's worth, I would do this: среден пръстPolyglot 08:38, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * It depends on whether you feel that a separate article will be needed for the two word expression. Eclecticology 09:17, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * OK, another question about wikification. Should "noun", "translations", "personal pronoun", "synonyms" etc be wikified and if yes - why? Webkid 21:23, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * No. These are part of Wiktionary's own operating meta-vocabulary, so no real purpose is served by linking them so frequently. Eclecticology 09:17, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * OK, then I'll start unwikifying the adjectives, nouns etc. Webkid 12:33, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Capitals again
In cases where there is an acronym that doubles as a regular word, should the two share one entry, or should they be separate? The example that popped up is VAT. (There is currently no definition for the noun vat; a search for it takes you to the acronym.) -- Ortonmc 00:49, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * This is a continuing problem which can only get worse. The policies on this issue, which worked quite well in Wikipedia, are a big problem here.  vat in the current system is forced to become Vat.  In our multilingual environment the forced change is not applied consistently.  It is only used for latin letters without diacritics.  The forced change does not apply to accented characters; "é" is not automatically changed to "É".  It is not applied to other scripts that have capitals in their language, Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian, Georgian.

 * I've thought of developing a style rule to the effect that all entries are presumed to be lower case unless otherwise indicated, but I don't find that to be an entirely satisfactory solution. It has been argued that the present software avoids the problem of what to do when an otherwise lowercased word begins a sentence.  I think that there are other ways of doing that.  One can accept having a sentence begin with a lowercase latter, one can use piping when a word begins a sentence (i.e. Vat, or one can develop some kind of markup that forces the first letter to be represented as a capital when we want that.  The latter solution could also be varied to apply to the first two letters to deal with some situations where a word could begin with a digraph, but that's a secondary problem.

 * As things stand making the change now while we have a mere 26,000+ articles will have a disruptive effect, but the problem will just be twice as big if we wait until the article count exceeds 52,000. Brion already knows how I feel about this issue, and I fully respect the amount of work he has done on the overall technical side.  He has also been very good in answering the questions that people ask of him.  What this may require is that more of us let our feelings be known, both here and on the Wikitech mailing list.

 * I suppose I could suggest a vote on the simple question, "Wiktionary should abandon the practice of forcing the first letter of an article title to be a capital letter," but I wouldn't want the voting process to be anything more than a survey.  I still think that consensus decision making is the best for all of us. Eclecticology 18:41, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

 * For better or worse, here's how we handled VAT: Create a new article Vat for the noun, and include the acronym in it.  Then change the VAT article to a redirect.  I suspect that if the original VAT article weren't there, the redirect would be unnecessary. -- Ortonmc 03:23, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I see that the capitals are still in place on Sep 8th, 2004. Aren't there languages where capitalization is significant? e.g. German? I'm still a new user, but every message I've seen on this issue is supportive of a change. Is there a place where the opposing view has been recorded? It seems like a fairly obvious positive change... Without pointing fingers or causing problems, who's objecting? Is it a technology problem? -- CoryCohen 03:20, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Oops. I finally found the bulk of this discussion at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/case-sensitivity_vote. See what happens when you're a new user and you can't find something? :-) You step in it. :-) I have a better understanding now, and will rightly abstain from something that's this politically charged until I know what I'm talking about. -- CoryCohen 07:11, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Word forms (genders, plurals etc)
If a language has genders (for example Bulgarian has three), do I have to write all the genders of a word? I mean, is it enough to write only the masculine gender of a word or is it necessary to write the masculine, feminine, neuter AND plural form of the word? I guess most of you will agree that this is important for the nouns, but what about the adjectives? They've got genders as well. Webkid

 * I think it's a good idea to show the forms for all parts of speech that are inflected. What I'm not so sure of is whether each form of the word needs to have a separate entry in Wiktionary.  (I would prefer not to, except perhaps in the case of irregular inflections.) Ortonmc 04:36, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * So you suggest that I write all the inflected forms, right? Does this include the plural form? And one more question: can you see properly the cyrillic characters using a browser with default settings? Webkid 13:07, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)
 * Showing the gender variation is probably more important for adjectives than for nouns. Case endings are also important. My tendency is not to show all these forms when the word follows a regular pattern, but to be more elaborate if it has an irregular formation.  This is all much easier for English. :-) Eclecticology 09:17, 17 Dec 2003 (UTC)

So, for the swedish word penna (= pen or pencil), I might write a table with the swedish equivalents of

and add that this word is c (common, the swedish 4:th genus). And a similar table for adjectives. Did I understand you correctly, Eclecticology? \Mike 22:53, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * I would like to see all the inflected forms as links to other entries. Regular or not. Plurals, diminutives, comparatives, superlatives, alternate forms/spellings, conjugations, flexions, etc. Preferably in a way that is standardized and that makes it clear what form it is. Either by means of a label or set up in a table. Polyglot 23:17, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * We should decide a standard now. I started adding plural/past participle/past tense/comparative/superlative to articles since I saw you were doing it but now I've just noticed at least one of mine being deleted on the grounds of being regular. I don't mind which way we decide but I don't want to waste my time on stuff that's going to be deleted shortly after. Actually I think we should show all forms - including 3rd person singular present and present participle - but that we should mark the irregular forms in some way, perhaps an asterisk or bold. Hippietrail 10:58, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)