Talk:duûm

RFD discussion: May 2015

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Undeletion request: duûm

As at [1] & User talk:SemperBlotto#duûm:

• The form is attestable
• The entry was correct
• Instead of deletion he [= the one who deleted it] might have asked for "request for verification"
• "probably means duu" -- no, it's "duûm", where ^ is the so called "signum contractionis", literally "sign of contraction", i.e. a sign that indicates contraction.

Example:

1. 1670, F. Davidis Lenfant, Biblia Augustiniana, sive collectio et explicatio omnium locorum sacrae scripturae, quae sparsim reperiuntur in omnibus S. Augustini operibus: ordine biblico., Lutetia Parisiorum (~ Paris), p.774:

   In medio duûm animalium cognosceris.

(google book search says there are around 1360 results, and even when excluding grammar books and wrong ORC there are enough possible quotes.) -91.63.230.4 09:12, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Given google books:"duûm", undeleted. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 10:12, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @91.63.230.4 Would you care to create an entry for signum contractionis? — I.S.M.E.T.A. 10:17, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure about the language and whether or not it's "SoP":

• It might be Latin, but it might also be Latin embedded in German, which some might label German. (I'd label it Latin, as some "embeddings" imply that it's not viewed as German, like: using antiqua instead of fraktur, writing it italics, only mentioning it in brackets after a German word, writing it without capital letters as "signum contractionis" instead of "Signum Contractionis")
• signum means mark/sign (as in: signum interrogationis, signum interrogandi = ? ; signum exclamationis, signum exclamandi, signum admirationis = !), contractio (gen. sg. contractionis) means contraction. So it's simply "sign of contraction" (more like a literal translation) or "contraction mark" (similar to "signum exclamationis" and exclamation mark).

"signum contractionis" simply refers to "^" when it indicates a contraction, as "duûm" for "duorum" (duo) and "deûm" for "deorum" (deus). The character itself (but not it's name) is even used in this Latin-German dictionary from the 20th century: [zeno.org/Georges-1913/A/duo], "Seltener Genet. duûm" = "rare genitive duûm".

Also: google book search for "signum contractionis" doesn't bring up the grammar book in which I found the term (incorrect OCR), but has 18 mostly (New) Latin results, though including duplicate results. I didn't check the results, but 2 seem to have said meaning or at least a similar one.

(Thanks for undeleting it; and to those who want it to be deleted: please use Wiktionary:Requests for verification first.)

-91.63.230.4 11:52, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

RFD discussion: May–August 2015

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This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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duûm

Wiktionary:About Latin specifically says "Do not use diacritical marks in page names". That, surely, includes the use of a circumflex. SemperBlotto (talk) 13:34, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I can't quickly find any discussion about Latin and the use of circumflex. WT:ALA is a think tank. The key question is, do editors of Latin really want to forbid circumflex despite its attestation, and why. Furthermore, Wiktionary:About_Latin#Do_not_use_diacritical_marks_in_page_names does explicitly discuss macron and breve, but not circumflex; could the author accidentally forget about circumlex? --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:40, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

@SemperBlotto, Dan Polansky: As an editor primarily of Latin, I don't "want to forbid [the] circumflex despite its attestation". I agree with WT:ALA's general principles for lemmatisation (except for the J-ban) only. These diacriticked variants should be soft redirects, but they should definitely exist. Thus, keep.
Also WT:ALA is long overdue for rewriting. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 14:21, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. And I agree with you about J-words - I create then as "alternative forms" of the corresponding I-word. SemperBlotto (talk) 14:28, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think EncycloPetey would allow any edits to WT:ALA, now he's quit it gives us the opportunity to update it. J-forms have been used for years now, if WT:ALA still says they aren't allow then it's literally years out of date. Renard Migrant (talk) 15:36, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, some of WT:ALA's proscriptions against using macrons in quotes and diaereses elsewhere are ridiculous and should be removed. —JohnC5 15:44, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I say go for it; mark clearly in your edit summaries what you're changing and if anything gets reverted, go to Wiktionary talk:About Latin to try and thrash out a consensus. Renard Migrant (talk) 16:45, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @SemperBlotto, Renard Migrant, JohnC5: I shall devote tomorrow to rewriting WT:ALA. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 17:58, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

My 2c: lemmatize the diacritic-less spellings, but soft redirects for the diacritical spellings are OK. I suggest using either {{alternative typography of}} or a to-be-created dedicated template like Yiddish's {{yi-unpointed form of}} for them, though, rather than just using the general {{alternative form of}}/{{alternative spelling of}}. "Alternative form/spelling of" sounds like authorial preference, IMO — it sounds like maybe Caesar wrote his works with macrons and Cicero didn't — when it's my understanding that it's actually a matter of editorial preference (some editions of works add macrons, some omit them). - -sche (discuss) 18:37, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

• To whomever archives this discussion: given the general topics it discusses, I suggest putting it not only on Talk:duûm but also WT:T:ALA. - -sche (discuss) 18:40, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

  I expanded WT:ALA with a little note about circumflex (WT:ALA#Circumflex), and with a link to Talk:duûm. That should cover it. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:35, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

See also: Wiktionary:Requests for deletion#onomatopoeïa & onomatopoeïa -- and also poëticus (created by SemperBlotto who wants onomatopoeïa and duûm to be deleted), deûm and most likely other entries.

• There is a difference between macrons/breves and circumflexes/tremas (&c.): Macrons/breves are often used in Grammar books, but never or rarely in Latin texts, while circumflexes/tremas (&c.) do occur in (New) Latin texts.
• "duum" (without circumflex) might also exist. So how should two forms (duum, duûm) be included in one header?
  • Maybe related question: What's when a word's vowel has different lengths or when linguists aren't sure about its length? Example (maybe not the best one): stella here is "stēlla" (long e), while Lewis & Short (which might be outdated or wrongly OCRed) have it as "stella" (short e). Even when the other form is mentioned in a usage note, only having one form in the header might be arbitrary. (It's justified to put one form into a usage note, if it is poetic or if only a few linguists think that it's the correct form while many think that the other is correct.)
• Given that they are attestable, would English "poëtic" or German "poëtisch" be excluded, even though they would exist? (In German tremas weren't uncommon and at least some words with tremas should be attestable, even though they might be obsolete/dated.) I doubt that they would be excluded, so why should Latin words be excluded? Because they might be New Latin and not Antique Latin? That's no good reason. (That's also no good reason as Antique Latin usually isn't mentioned here in wiktionary, but some New Latin or maybe post-Latin/un-Latin forms, e.g. it's "adverbium" [New Latin] and not "ADVERBIVM" [Antique Latin] and like "interiection" [maybe New Latin, maybe just some post-Latin/un-Latin invention] (besides "interjection" [New Latin]) and not "INTERIECTION" [Antique Latin].)
• Also does the inclusion of circumflexes/tremas hurt anyone? It's hard to input tremas (as it isn't present on most keyboards), but the same is true for e.g. æ as in præ- or German umlauts ä, ö, ü in case of non-Germans users.
  • The inclusion of macrons/breves would hurt: Latin texts are usually without them, so one wouldn't know what one has to search for. E.g. when reading "stella" somewhere, one would have check the variants "stella, stēlla, stellā, stēllā" only to find out that "stēlla" is the correct basic form.

-91.63.230.4 09:16, 31 May 2015 (UTC) & 09:29, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Most people are going to try the plain version first, because it's easier to remember and to type. It's only the ones who copypaste the actual text from the page who might run into problems, and even then the circumflex version is going to be near the top of the search results. Besides, the copypasters are going to have their own problems with scannos on most Google Books documents- they might find themselves accidentally searching for du0m or something along those lines. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't think anyone actually proposed putting them into pagenames of the actual entry. Korn [kʰʊ̃ːæ̯̃n] (talk) 17:09, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually, the nominated page has the circumflex in the page name- which is why it's nominated. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:08, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Regarding Chuck Entz's comment:

• Maybe Korn was refering to putting macrons/breves in the header?
• I doubt that "Most people are going to try the plain version first" is true resp. I doubt that it is an argument.
  • In case of macrons/beves it's most likely true that one would use the plain version - macrons/breves usually aren't present in real Latin text anyway -, also it's most likely true for tremas as one can't input them easily. But some diacritical marks can be entered easily. So in case of e.g. circumflexes it's not unlikely that one would input them. Reasons why circumflexes &c. might be used: 1. "duum" and "duûm" could be different words, or one could think that they're different words. 2. Most people most likely input the word they found in some text - at least when they can input it (&c.).
  • In case of "æ" one most likely would type "ae" (or "e") too, but prae- and præ- are different entries (though their content is pretty much the same). Also in English one would most likely omit tremas, but still there's naïve besides naive. So, if "duum" does exist (a short google books search for it shows that it does), there should be no problem in having both entries.

Regarding the entry header if there should only be one entry:

"duum" (without circumflex) mightdoes also exist. So how should two forms (duum, duûm) be included in one header? (Putting one form in a usage note obviously is (usually) an arbitrary discrimination of one form.)

-80.133.111.227 16:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 13:31, 14 August 2015 (UTC)