Disputatio:Metalla post-transitionis

This is probably not the best name. Pantocrator 03:42, 9 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seems ungrammatical to me; must be wrong--Rafaelgarcia 12:50, 9 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What do you find ungrammatical? You're welcome to fix it - just don't delete it, this is a page we need. Pantocrator 13:55, 9 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Two problems:

"non transitionis habitur" doesn't seem to make sense: the sentence has no subject and the verb form "habitur" isn't Latin. So, what is it intended to mean?
"Metalla post-transitionis" doesn't seem to make sense: "transitionis" is a noun in the genitive case, meaning "of transition". So, how does that genitive relate to the other two words?

I'm no chemist. But we have at least two classical Latin adjectives available, "transitans" and "transitorius". I could suggest "metalla transitoria" and (for the present page) "metalla post-transitoria"; but then I'm not sure "post-" is precisely right, because it really means "after" whereas the sense wanted here is "beyond". So finally I suggest (hesitantly) "metalla transitoria" and "metalla ultra-transitoria". And we certainly in any case need to explain what we mean in the introduction; to the average reader it isn't obvious! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:54, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

First, non transitionis habitur was intended to mean if they are not held to be transition [metals]. I don't remember where I got habitur; I think the form I was going for is habeantur.

Does not transitorius refer only to motion or time? These elements aren't going anywhere. I figured 'transition metals'='metals of transition' and the 'post-' was simply borrowing from English. As I said, it probably isn't perfect. Pantocrator 13:32, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we could borrow the adjective transitivus from the Roman grammarians? In transitive verbs, the "motion" is purely conceptual in character. --Neander 17:57, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just a comment, when someone is attempting to translate something (without a source for the term) then he should make it obvious in the wording in the sentence where the term is introduced, so that people coming after will know it isn't from an attested source but only the author's attempt at translating. (Not directly applicable here but bears mentioning:Also please keep in mind VP:NF: ie. don't simply make up words when you are trying to translate things.)--Rafaelgarcia 15:04, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Among the wikis, the only name translatable by simple concepts is provided by the french page: Métal pauvre=metallum miserum, where I'm assuming pauperum is not as applicable to a thing.--Rafaelgarcia 13:17, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Swedish page has sv:Övrig metall 'ceterum metallum' (though in Latin, the plural form cetera metalla would be almost obligatory). --Neander 15:44, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the interwikis are messed up a little. The transition metals (subject of this page) are all the elements between columns 3-12 of the periodic table (excluding Lanthanoids and Actinoids) the comprise the "transition" between columns 2 and 13. But there are other defintions. These include both good metals (: eg gold , copper, iron, etc..,) and bad metals and some non metals but explicitly excludes the Other Metals, etc: see en:Periodic_table#Structure of the periodic table--Rafaelgarcia 18:16, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Metalla, metallum[fontem recensere]

Lemmata are usually singular, as in en:Post-transition metal (which, by the way, is British orthography for en:Posttransition metal). IacobusAmor 13:11, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Good point! So Metallum ultra-transitorium? Please improve on this! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:13, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I made it plural to match the element categories we already had. If you make this singular, you should also change all the others. Pantocrator 13:18, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The only large body of nouns whose lemmata are regularly plural may be the biological ones above the level of genus, e.g., starting with familiae and going up the clade: Lutjanidae, Perciformes, Actinopterygii, Osteichthyes, Gnathostomata, Vertebrata, Chordata. I suppose that's because they're usually plural in the literature. We can speak of a single vertebratum, but we seldom do. IacobusAmor 13:51, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Curiously, the largest body of category-names that are singular may be those of biological genera. IacobusAmor 13:55, 10 Februarii 2010 (UTC)[reply]