User talk:Nicodene

Hi. I just wanted to check in with the rewrite of the "Latin phonology and orthography" article, since you said on Talk:Latin phonology and orthography that you'd have a read through Cser 2020^[1] and make an appropriate summary of the content. Since it's been a bit over two months since you lasted posted that message on the talk page (and you don't seem to have edited Latin phonology and orthography, as far as I can tell), I'd just like to ask how the summary is coming along. If you've been busy/not so great IRL and haven't really had the time to work on the summary, just let me know in vague terms – I can wait :)

Cheers — MeasureWell (talk) 05:45, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

@MeasureWell I'm more available these days. Anyway, here is a summary of what Cser says:

Whether Latin ⟨qu⟩ and ⟨gu⟩ represented /kʷ/, /ɡʷ/ or simply /kw/, /ɡw/ remains controversial. The relevant facts are as follows. ⟨qu⟩ enjoyed a wide lexical distribution, while ⟨gu(V)⟩ was limited to a dozen or so words, where it was always preceded by /n/. The grammarian Velius Longus commented that the ⟨u⟩ of ⟨qu⟩ was in some way different from /w/ in general. No geminate *⟨ququ⟩ is attested, while all (other) Latin stops are also found as geminates. (Other) sequences of obstruent + glide are rare in Classical Latin. In poetry, whenever (other) sequences of stop + glide occur in medial position, the scansion reveals that they are split across syllables, but this is never the case for ⟨qu⟩. Neither ⟨qu⟩ nor ⟨gu⟩ are ever followed by a consonant, unlike any (other) Latin stop, nor can they occur word-finally. The voicing contrast between ⟨nqu⟩ and ⟨ngu⟩ is not found in any (other) sequence of three consonants. Assimilation of the prefix ad- to a following ⟨qu⟩ is relatively rare, as it is whenever ad- is followed by a consonant cluster. The Proto-Indo-European predecessor of Latin ⟨qu⟩ is, in many cases, reconstructed as a single consonant */kʷ/, notably distinct from sequences of */kw/. Occasionally Latin /w/ scans as a vowel in poetry, when preceded by /s/ or /l/, but this is never the case for the ⟨u⟩ in ⟨qu⟩. On the whole, however, Cser judges that the evidence slightly favours /kw/, /ɡw/ over /kʷ/, /ɡʷ/.^[2]

Nicodene (talk) 02:37, 11 June 2022 (UTC) Nicodene (talk) 02:37, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Please revert your recent unilateral changes to transcriptions of Georgian. As Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation#Other languages says, if the language you're transcribing has such an IPA key, use the conventions of that key. If you wish to change those conventions, bring it up for discussion on the key's talk page. Creating transcriptions unsupported by the key or changing the key so that it no longer conforms to existing transcriptions will confuse readers. 18:22, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Nardog: [ɛ, ɑ, ɔ] is quite inaccurate, first of all, and I am not going to reinstate any such transcription. Second, your idea of a broad transcription for Georgian appears to be simply phonemic. In that case, we should make it unambiguously phonemic and use /e, a, o/ per the principle of having 'simple' Latin characters for broad or phonemic transcription. Nicodene (talk) 18:41, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

It's not "my idea". Our keys for German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Turkish, and lots more use broad transcriptions that would be "quite inaccurate" by your measure. You seem to harbor the idea that a phonetic transcription is necessarily narrow and a broad transcription is necessarily phonemic, which anyone who's read the Handbook of the IPA (especially pp. 28–30) knows not to be true. All our transcriptions linking to keys under "Help:IPA/..." except the one for English are enclosed by brackets because they are meant to be intelligible to anybody who's familiar with the IPA but not necessarily with the phonology of the language in question. Narrowness is a continuum, and we do away with diacritics as long as there's no contrast within the language, and use established conventions wherever possible. And Shosted & Chikovani suggest ⟨ɑ, ɛ, ɔ⟩ are indeed established, and ⟨ɑ⟩ is even closer to the realization than ⟨a⟩.

As WP:BRD explains, whenever a unilateral change is contested, the expected course of action is to restore the status quo and initiate a discussion. I once again ask you to do the former. Help talk:IPA/Georgian is the place to do the latter. Nardog (talk) 19:33, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nardog No, I am aware that phonetic transcriptions lie on a continuum of broad to narrow. What I am telling you is that the transcriptions that you support for Georgian are quite literally phonemic ones placed in square brackets. If Wiki policy really is to use transcriptions that are (at least ostensibly) phonetic for all non-English languages, then so be it.

I have read Shosted & Chikovani, so I am aware of the following:

- It is based on a sample size of exactly one speaker (who, incidentally, shows marked regional features in his pronunciation; cf. [ɡɑjɛɾɑ] for gaiara, with /a/ > "[ɛ]" in hiatus with other vowels a clear Imeretism).

- The transcriptions were made by a native English speaker who doesn't speak Georgian. His ⟨ɛ, ɑ, ɔ⟩ is consistent with thinking in an 'English mould'.

In Georgian language#Vowels you can see, for example, four cited sources that show Georgian ე and ო as mid (not low-mid). Of them, Canepari (2007) indicates the position of the vowels far more specifically than any other source that I am aware of. I can add more sources if needed, but suffice it to say that what Shosted says does not represent the view of some established majority whatsoever. His article simply happened to be cited early on in the history of the English Wikipedia page and had escaped any challenge until now due to the paucity of editors simultaneously knowledgeable in linguistics and Georgian. Nicodene (talk) 21:27, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Why are you saying this to me? If you really want different vowel symbols on Help:IPA/Georgian, then propose them on its talk page. If you can show with sources that ⟨ɑ, ɛ, ɔ⟩ aren't established symbols for these vowels (the qualities aren't that relevant unless they're too far off), you will likely succeed. Nardog (talk) 22:22, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Until a few days ago, Proto-Romance words were shown with an IPA-derived which showed the lax/tense vowel distinction, stress position, palatalized consonants and more. However, you recently replaced these with a script that's based on the Latin spellings of these words. I suspect the reason you made this change was to make the derivation of each Proto-Romance word from its Latin counterpart more obvious, however, it removes distinctions that are important for the examples.

For example, the word "soror (nom.)/sororem (acc.)" is given as an example of the way stress mobile between cases in some words. However, when they're written like this, it's not obvious at all where the stress is in each form, especially for those with less familiarity with Latin. The previous script, "sɔ́ror (nom.)/soróre (acc.)" makes this distinction obvious.

More importantly, I feel that this IPA-derived script actually tells you how the words were pronounced. While a reader could theoretically look at each Latin-script Proto-Rom word, and derive the reconstructed pronunciation by running thru the phonology section, I think that this is unrealistic.

I do however understand the utility of making the Latin form explicit, so I propose a compromise: Use the IPA derived script, but show the Latin ancestor too, with a link to Wiktionary, so that the full, "original" Latin inflection can be seen. Here's an example of what I'm imagining (the exact format could be changed; the Latin lemma might be better at the top?)

I think this a nice solution that best shows both the Proto-Romance pronunciation and the Latin words that they're derived from, without introducing too much clutter. 2001:8003:B049:DD01:870:6391:2949:91A1 (talk) 08:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

I wrote the article, both the original version with IPA script in the morphology tables and the current version that switches to Latin orthography. That is to say that I am aware of the former’s benefits. The problem is simply that it is Original Research (which is against Wikipedia policy): the cited sources do not provide the transcriptions in question. I had made them myself by running Latin words through the expected sound-changes.

I hope this clarifies matters. Nicodene (talk) 08:58, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Fair, it's sad to see them go. I'm at least glad to know there was a good reason for the switch, even if the outcome is unfortunate. 2001:8003:B049:DD01:11D2:BAEC:629B:EBBE (talk) 13:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi Nicodene. Thank you for your work on Vens. Another editor, MPGuy2824, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

not mentioned at target page

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|MPGuy2824}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

-MPGuy2824 (talk) 13:31, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@MPGuy2824 Vens is one of the peripheral hamlets, as mentioned on the French version of the article. Nicodene (talk) 08:29, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

If there is a good source for that, then please add it to the English version as well. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 08:30, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Does it need a source? It’s right there. Nicodene (talk) 08:32, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Sadly, google maps has some user-generated content is therefore not considered to be a fully-reliable source. Anyway, I'm not the verifiability police. :-) Feel free to use your judgement. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 08:50, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Nicodene. Thank you for your work on Revereulaz. Another editor, MPGuy2824, has reviewed it as part of new pages patrol and left the following comment:

These two terms do seems related. Please mention this in the target page, with a good reference.

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|MPGuy2824}}. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

-MPGuy2824 (talk) 15:52, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello Nicodemu, I am the one who edited the article on the Oath of Strasbourg. My work is based on a theory currently upheld by the linguist Cafiero from UBA and also supported by common sense. It is evident that the portion in Romance is anomalous, not only in the expected word order for both a proto-Romance language and Vulgar Latin reconstructions but also in its lack of necessary articles (illo, ile, illa, etc.). The Romance portion, to be correct, should read: "Pro ille amur de Deo et ille poblo christiano et nostro commun saluamento." However, "Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun saluament" is not only incorrect but also a literal word-for-word translation of the Germanic portion. --186.18.47.72 (talk) 00:25, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Just read any random text from e.g. Cicero and you will run into those word-orders, along with their opposites. It’s quite simply factually incorrect to claim they’re rare.

Where does Cafiero make this claim? Nicodene (talk) 04:02, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Well, I am not familiar with Cicero's works verbatim; however, I doubt he wrote any in Vulgar Latin or Proto-Romance. The reconstructed word order for both (and demonstrated in inscriptions as well) makes the use of articles mandatory and places adjectives after nouns. --186.18.44.247 (talk) 11:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

1) Again, where does Cafiero make the claim you mention?

2) Again, no. Those word orders are normal in Latin. Cicero, Caesar, Ovid, you name it.

3) There are exactly zero Roman inscriptions demonstrating a "mandatory use of articles".

Nicodene (talk) 04:22, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I say again, this inscription is not in Latin but in Proto-Romance. In all Proto-Romance inscriptions, the use of articles is mandatory due to the lack of grammatical cases, and the word order is clearly Germanic rather than Romance. It is literally a word-for-word translation of the Germanic inscription, which makes sense since the ruling elite was of Germanic origin. --2803:9800:9034:B113:6408:B725:7E92:F3C9 (talk) 20:59, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

I could explain the various misconceptions here, but I will simply leave it at this:

Cite your sources. Nicodene (talk) 09:42, 8 February 2025 (UTC)