Disputatio Usoris:StevenJ81

Haec est pagina disputationis usoris Vicipaediae Latinae. Non est commentatio enyclopaedica. Si extra Vicipaediam repperisti, situm reflectivum paginamque exanimatam vides cuius auctor nihil cum situ isto habeat. Paginam veram recentissimamque hic perlegere potes: https://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputatio_Usoris:StevenJ81.

Salve, Steven!

Gratus aut grata in Vicipaediam Latinam acciperis! Ob contributa tua gratias agimus speramusque te delectari posse et manere velle.

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In paginis encyclopaedicis mos noster non est nomen dare, sed in paginis disputationis memento editis tuis nomen subscribere, litteris impressis --~~~~, quibus insertis nomen tuum et dies apparebit. Quamquam vero in paginis ipsis nisi lingua Latina uti non licet, in paginis disputationum qualibet lingua scribi solet. Quodsi quid interrogare velis, vel Taberna vel pagina disputationis mea tibi patebit. Ave! Spero te "Vicipaedianum" aut "Vicipaedianam" fieri velle!

-- Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:39, 15 Iulii 2013 (UTC)

To answer your point of doubt, we don't at present have a category GA ourselves and we don't at present display other GA stars. We had just been talking about article quality and, depending on the results of the discussion, might soon begin to do it ... Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:39, 15 Iulii 2013 (UTC)

Makes sense. No harm in leaving the GA template in, I guess.

My big first foray into translation: I tried to translate the first line of the user page template. See my user page for the result. Is that ok, or did I do something wrong with it? Thanks. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 12:18, 15 Iulii 2013 (UTC)

Fine, except that the verb esse is not often placed at the end of the sentence (unlike other verbs) so I moved it. I then continued to translate, but I got bored by all that formatting, which did nothing for me, so I overwrote some of it :) I hope what I did makes sense. By all means go on flexing your Latin muscles here! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:09, 15 Iulii 2013 (UTC)

simple:Shadow

Salve Steven ut vales? Velisne emendare ita rem "Shadow" in simple wikipedia? Auxilium tuum magna numeratur! --Jondel (disputatio) 18:03, 19 Augusti 2013 (UTC)

Sabbatum

I'm really sorry this has taken me so long. Always other things to do. Hope the frustration didn't drive you away. I plan to get on with it, maybe even finish the translation, tomorrow. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:44, Novembris 18, 2013 (UTC)

As for your userpage, I made some changes this morning. If what I said doesn't correspond with your thought, tell me! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:38, 4 Aprilis 2015 (UTC)

@Andrew Dalby, thank you very much! I actually just played with that template a little Friday, but only using machine translation; I'm sure yours was better. I actually copied a little code in from enwiki at Usor:StevenJ81/Wikibreak; if you think the general version of that template is worth having here, then by all means translate it, and then one of us can publish it.

My previous question to you, though, was more about this one (in any of its language editions): simple:User:StevenJ81/User BSD. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 13:17, 6 Aprilis 2015 (UTC)

Calendarium Hebraicum

Nom.:Nisan Iar Sivan Thammuz Ab Elul Tisri Hesuan Casleu Sabat Tebeth Sabat Adar Nisan
Gen.:Nisan Iar Sivan Thammuz Ab Elul Tisri Hesuan Casleu Sabat Tebeth Sabat Adar Nisan
dies Martis, dies Mercurii, dies Iovis, dies Veneris, dies Saturni, dies Solis, dies Lunae

  Hodie  

dies Martis

---

XVI Aprilis
aer. vulg. MMXXIV

---

8 Nisan
AM 5784

Calendarium Hebraicum II

Disputatio Usoris:Iustinus#Calendarium Hebraicum

The forms I gave there are from the Vulgate Bible, so they are official. However, I am starting to have mixed feelings about this, because Jerome is not very careful about orthography—by his time no one really understood the aspirated/plain distinction anymore, and he often gets it wrong. Normally when I use his forms now, I just silently correct this and other similar issues, to be more in line with the usual transliteration of Hebrew in Greek and Latin. That would result in:

• Nisan (Abib)
• Iar
• Sivan
• Thammuz
• Ab
• Elul
• Thisri (Ethanim)
• Marchesuan (Bul)
• Chasleu
• Tebeth
• Sabat
• Adar

Which is really not all that different (differences are in bold). I don't have a strong opinion on what to call the leap-month... I would guess that II Adar would be more common, but that's just speculative. --Iustinus (disputatio) 04:49, 12 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I don't think I've ever seen the month names treated as anything but indeclinable. --Iustinus (disputatio) 04:53, 12 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

@Iustinius: Very interesting reading. Thank you. (I am far more capable of reading than writing. I never really studied Latin, but I've sung it a lot, speak French pretty decently, and do understand the concept of noun declension. So there you go.)

Translitteratio linguae Hebraicae looks very good, except for the part on Dagesh Forte. I certainly have no grounds to question the main transliteration table, and the section on pharyngeals was good, too. (I'm glad you covered that Ayin > G bit. The name "Gaza," as in Gaza Strip, is another example.)

• Only question I have is that I wonder if use of "ch" in Latin for כ is really German and later in origin; it doesn't seem very naturally Latin. (Although modern academics don't prefer it, one sees "ch" quite a lot both for כ and ח in lay transliterations to English. The earliest widespread transliteration schema came to English through Reform Judiasm, which was German in origin, and those spellings stuck.)

Dagesh Forte isn't quite right, though. Or, rather, you're conflating it there with Dagesh Lene ("Light" Dagesh). The things you say about Dagesh Forte are all true: it's a sign of gemination, can therefore be thought of as requiring doubled consonants, can apply to other letters. (Most other letters, anyway; there are a few beside Resh that can't. If one of these few finds itself needing a Dagesh Forte, you get a preceding vowel shift instead. Separate discussion.)

However, a dagesh at the beginning of a word is never a Dagesh Forte, but always a Dagesh Lene. (Caveat: Maybe there's a rare, Masoretic exception to prove me wrong. But I'm aware of no exceptions, anyway.) And the six letters in your table there (BeGeDKeFeT) are unique not so much because of how they act with a Dagesh Forte (though they do change sounds), but rather, because they're the only letters to which Dagesh Lene applies. (Side note: discussion about when a dagesh mid-word is lene and when forte is beyond where I'm going here.)

So with Dagesh Lene, the issue is not gemination at all, but rather whether the sound of the letter is hard or soft (plosive or fricative). The historical reason it exists I don't entirely know. I'm not sure it existed (or existed consistently) when Jerome executed the Vulgate, in fact. But I am also not aware of any sources that would suggest that once the Dagesh Lene came into being, a letter with a Dagesh Lene would ever take the soft sound. So כּ would always be (something like) "k," not "kh," and תּ would always be (something like) "t," not "th" (or Ashkenazi "s").

• Side note 1: How different the former and ק were (or not), and how different the latter and ט were (or not), I truly can't say. In modern pronunciations those sets are pairs of identically-pronounced letters.
• Side note 2: The opposite effect has occurred. For g, d and t, the sound of the rafe (dagesh-free) version has hardened to become the same as the version with a dagesh, at least in most pronunciation sets.

You can get more information on this, if you're interested, at en:Dagesh. Note: I am one of the "very precise readers" described in the first paragraph under Dagesh Hazak [Forte]. Or, at least, I try to be.

So after you put all that together, here's where I would come out:

• For Tisri and Casleu, I'm probably with Jerome, because they are definitely dagesh lene. In modern Hebrew they unquestionably have hard sounds.

• Tammuz loses its "h" for the same reason. Note the double-m, because the mem contains a dagesh forte.
• In principle, all of the "b" sounds above (Ab, Tebeth, Sabat, and even the two in Abib, but excluding Bul) are actually in letters that are without a dagesh entirely, meaning they ought to be fricatives (v, or perhaps here u). But (a) I know there is substantial history to spelling them with "b," (b) it probably gets hard for a lot of people to parse if you spell them with a u rather than a v, and (c) for a whole lot of reasons, which I could tell you some time, I have far less of a problem erring on the side of the hard sound than with erring on the side of the soft sound. So I'm ok leaving these alone.

• For Sabat, you are certainly right. That's a tet, not a tav/thav at all. So I don't know what Jerome might have been thinking.
• For Ethanim, for sure no H. I'm guessing that in Greek that spells with eta and not epsilon, hence the H. But there is certainly no aspiration in any Hebrew pronuncation I'm aware of. The following letter is tav/thav, and I'm pretty sure the dagesh there is forte. So I can easily live with th for that.
• Separately, you have Marchesuan with "ch." The letter there is actually [c]het. You show that in the table as [null sign, h, vide infra], not ch. But in the section on pharyngeals you speak of Mother Rachel, who spells her name with [c]het. So I don't know if you want to change the table to allow for that, or whether you think the explanation "infra" is sufficient.

I'll be curious to hear what you have to say about this little essay. Thanks again. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 16:15, 12 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

I haven't had time to respond, as I've been rather busy. Hopefully I can answer on Sunday, since that is my freest day this week. But in short, I don't think you've fully understood... the traditional Greco-Roman transcription of Hebrew/Aramaic does not represent the spirantization of the בגדכפ״ת at all, just gemination. When this system came into being, the Greeks were still pronouncing their "aspirate" letters as actual aspirates, not fricatives. And apparently the Greeks (and hence the Romans) heard the emphatic/plain distinction as equivalent to their plain/aspirate distinction. It seems that in Ancient Hebrew (as well as pretty much every ancient Afro-Asiatic language we find in the Classical World, including Egyptian actually) the plain voiceless stops had secondary aspiration, and that's what was salient to the Greeks and Romans. --Iustinus (disputatio) 16:32, 13 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

I don't know much about Semitic phonology, but we should note that only some of the month names actually appear in the Bible, and hence in Jerome's translation. The Stuttgart Vulgate has Adar, Bul, Casleu, Elul, Hethanim, Nisan, Siban, Tebeth, Sabath, Zio, and mensis novarum frugum (a translation of Abib). The Clementine Vulgate has the same spellings, except Ethanim instead of Hethanim. Tammuz only appears in the Bible as the name of a god in Ezekiel 8:14, and is translated as Adonis (changed to Thammuz by the modern editors of the New Vulgate). For early Latin versions of Av, Iyyar, Marheshvan, and Tishri, we'd have to turn to other religious writings or glossaries. Lesgles (disputatio) 19:52, 13 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

I guess I didn't fully understand, @Iustinius, and so (a) I apologize for missing that, and (b) I further apologize if I repeated at length something you knew.

I guess I got confused because I don't really think of בג"ד כפ"ת except in the setting of the light dagesh. So does that second table try to illustrate that the classic transliteration of a dagesh forte, in these particular cases, actually tries to render the geminate as a combination of two sounds (c + ch, p + ph, t + th)? Or is it really trying to shorten the presentation of ch + ch, ph + ph, th + th?

Also, was your comment about "the plain voiceless stops had secondary aspiration" to suggest that at least with כפ"ת, in ancient Hebrew the sounds might have been closer to ch/ph/th, even in initial position? And that such might even have been true of ט? I am certainly no expert in ancient Afro-Asiatic languages, so I am prepared to believe you if that's what you're saying. Yet the Vulgate still has Casleu, not Chasleu, so that might not have been accidental, either. I just don't know.

I knew only some months appeared in what Christians call the Old Testament, but I had no idea what month names might appear in the New Testament, which I don't know all that well. Thank you for the clarificaiton, @Lesgles, and thank you for joining us here.

I do want to create this calendar template, and I am trying to avoid WP:original research. Yet, for such a purpose I wonder if we are fully beholden to a transliteration scheme representing a more aspirated vocalization when that is a reflection of 2000+-year-old Hebrew. Can anyone recommend a reliable source that could address this? If there is not one, then I'm personally favoring Nisan, Iar, Siban, Tammuz, Ab, Elul, Tisri, Marcheshuan, Casleu, Tebeth, Sabat, Adar (I Adar/II Adar).

I'll be interested in seeing everyone's further comments. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 03:13, 14 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Just to add more to the Bible discussion: I can't find any month names in the New Testament. The authors of some of the Apocrypha use Macedonian months like Xanthicus, which I suppose would have been used by the New Testament authors as well. I also had a random look at this edition of Josephus where I found Greek Ἀθύρει, Latin Chesaria, and English Thisri (note also Machedonibus nearby)! The Latin seems to be from a 9th century copy of a 6th century original, by which point h may have simply been an attempt to show that the consonant should be pronounced as a "hard" k. Lesgles (disputatio) 16:22, 15 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Also Greek Μαρσουάνῃ, Latin Maraath seu Anmarsuane, English Marchesuan.[1] Lesgles (disputatio) 16:27, 15 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Interesting stuff.

I'm not sure where Josephus came up with Chesaria, however it was spelled. But if it is parallel to the famous Roman city in Israel, then this clearly comes from Caesar, and as you say, the "h" is more about the Latin than about the Hebrew. (And for this purpose it would be irrelevant, anyway, though it is interesting.)

Concerning the second case, the Greek simply seems to leave out a syllable. And while that syllable is the stressed one in modern usage, if it wasn't at the time, you could see where a certain accent or dialect could lose it. That's also what happens in the second version of the Latin name there. The month is colloquially called Heshvan in Hebrew, with Mar- often dropped. "Mar" means "bitter," and there are a number of Midrashic explanations on why this month might be called bitter. But Maraath might well be a version of that word.

Whiston's English (!) clearly comes from somewhere, too.

I looked up Ἀθύρει that you provided, and found Schürer here. He really deprecates that form in favor of θισρί, which is what I put in the table below. But either way you look at it, that letter is theta, not tau.

So I compiled all of the above. Traditional Latin is what is found in Calendarium Hebraicum, and "Emendations" were Iustinius's suggestions just above in this thread. Synthesized Latin is what I took out of putting the findings of the previous columns together; presumptive Latin is my proposal on how to resolve most of the remaining questions.

#	Hebrew	Greek Wikipedia	Schürer	Traditional Latin/Emendation	Synthesized Latin (Classical)	Presumptive Latin (semi-modern)
1	נִיסָן	Νισάν	Νισάν	Nisan	Nisan	Nisan (NO CHANGE)
2	אִייָר	Ιγιάρ	Ίάρ	Iar	Iar	Iar (DONE)
3	סִיוָן	Σιβάν	Σισυάν	Sivan	Sivan	Sivan (NO CHANGE)
4	תַּמּוּז	Ταμμούζ	[Θαμούζ]	Thammuz	T[h]ammuz	Thammuz (DONE)
5	אָב	Άβ	Άβά	Ab	Ab	Ab (DONE)
6	אֱלוּל	Έλουλ	Έλούλ	Elul	Elul	Elul (NO CHANGE)
7	תִּשְׁרֵי	Τισρέι	θισρί	Tisri/Thisri	T[h]isri	Tisri (DONE)
8	חֶשְׁוָן	Χεσβάν	Μαρσουάνῃ	Marchesuan	Mar[che]suan	Marchesuan (but Hesuan) (DONE)
9	כִּסְלֵו	Κισλέφ	Χασελεύ	Casleu/Chasleu	C[h]asleu	Casleu (DONE)
10	טֵבֵת	Τέβετ	Τεβέθος	Tebeth	Tebeth	Tebeth (DONE)
11	שְׁבָט	Σεβάτ	Σαβάτ	Sabath/Sabat	Sabat	Sabat (DONE)
12	אֲדָר	Αντάρ	Άδάρ	Adar	Adar	Adar (NO CHANGE) / Adar I (NO CHANGE)
13	ב אֲדָר	Βε Αντάρ	—	—	—	Adar II (NO CHANGE)

• First, six of the twelve months are undisputed, if you really look at it.
• Second, it seems pretty clear that "Sabat" ought to be acceptable. Even the classical Greek spells with tau, not theta, so it's hard to see where "Sabath" came from. (A sloppy mix-up with Shabbat [Sabbath], perhaps?)
• On Sivan, [Mar]heshvan and the end letter of Kislev (English spellings), the questions are mainly technical:

• Just how does this "u"/"v" distinction really work in modern Latin transcription? What is proper for this purpose? The following bolded letters are the same Hebrew letter: Sivan, Marchesuan, Casleu. Should they all be the same?
• In [Mar]heshvan, how would you handle the chet: by h, or ch? (As I said above, "h" appears in the main table of the article on translation, "ch" in the discussion of Mother Rachel in the following section.)

• That leaves Tammuz, Tishri and [the first letter of] Kislev as subjects for material discussion. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 17:00, 16 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

I am commenting because Steven asked me to, but I know nothing at all about the phonetics/phonology of Hebrew in Jerome's time, and that's what is required here. I will just point out that Latin in most pronunciations never really had a fricative [θ] or [χ], and always distinguished ɸ in Greek loanwords from native Latin [f] (although these two sounds did eventually start being confused). So h was not used to make fricatives at all. So the distinction that someone must have heard, when converting a Hebrew sound to th (etc.) rather than t (etc.) is the same distinction heard between the [tʰ] in English tongue and the [t] in English stung. In my view.

The distinction between u and v is a mere convention. Some publishers and editors of Latin texts, especially the more serious ones, reject it. We, in common with others, accept it. To those who accept it, an initial semiconsonantal u and an intervocalic u are re-spelt v. This gives Sivan and Marchesuan. I don't know what to say for Casleu, which is an uncomfortable word to a Latin reader, for whom a final diphthong eu is very rare and a final semiconsonant v is unknown. For Casleu you just have to decide whether the u is a vowel or a semiconsonant and treat it accordingly. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:35, 17 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth, in ancient times, the phonology of "consonantal vav" (as opposed to mater lectionis vav) was almost certainly closer to [w] than to [v]. Consonant shift /w/>/v/ is later, and driven more by Ashkenazi Jewry, although it is the standard in Israel today. When I hear older Mizrachi Jews pronouncing this sound, especially in final position, I'd describe it as a "v" trying to burst out through a "w" but not quite making it. Very borderline. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 14:57, 17 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

The same development took place in Latin in the first or second centuries CE. But in the classical period it was clearly [w]. I'd go for Casleu, which at least has a parallel in the Latin ceu, eheu, eu, heu, neu, and seu. Lesgles (disputatio) 17:52, 19 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Summary

(This is transcluded from my talk page.) I want to summarize this to make it easy for anyone to comment:

1. There is no dispute on Nisan, Iar, Ab, Elul, Tebeth, Adar. Three of those require correcting at translatewiki, and I have already done that. They are already in the system.
2. There doesn't seem to be a justification for Shevat (English spelling) to be Sabath, with a -th at the end. Andrew Dalby's reasoning about allophones on the phoneme /t/ could play a role, but Schürer (see above) also cites tau, not theta, in ancient Greek. Iustinus already suggested making this Sabat. So absent objections, that's what it will be.
3. Andrew wrote briefly about the convention on "u" vs. "v," and Sivan and [Mar-]chesuan both seem to fit the convention well. The last letter of Casleu is just strange in Latin, any way you cut it, and from Hebrew you could justify either approach. But sources that use the "u" convention in Latin all use it here, so we'll keep that as -u.
4. On the "t"/"th" choice (Tishri/Tammuz), there is evidence to go either way. en:Biblical Hebrew cites Rabbi Saadia Gaon to the effect that even after the establishment of בג"ד כפ"ת spirantization, in initial position both sounds remained allophonic for a long while. That, plus what Iustinus said about Translitteratio linguae Hebraicae not reflecting spirantization anyway, leads me to lean (reluctantly) to Th, especially for Thammuz. (Side note: "mm," as this is geminate.)

   Only question, Iustinus: from where did you get the original "Tisri" in Calendarium Hebraicum? If that's the traditional spelling, notwithstanding the normal transliteration rules, it does appear to be justifiable.

5. For the purpose of my template, I'd likely use Heshvan, not Marheshvan, as name in common practice. For that reason, I'm leaning to sticking with initial "h," not "ch" (Hesuan). "Ch" in Latin denotes a harder sound (toward "k"), and the letter ח at the beginning of Heshvan never goes there. English "h" or even a silent "h" are both closer. But based on traditional usage, I'd stick with Marchesuan when writing it out long. It's inconsistent; sue me.
6. Finally, Casleu: Yes, Greek spells it with chi. But in Latin, "ch" mostly hardens c before "i" and "e," and isn't even necessary here. Iustinus had Casleu as a traditional spelling, and it's justifiable. So I propose we keep that as Casleu.

I hope to close this over the weekend, so thank you for your comments. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 15:04, 19 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good to me! Lesgles (disputatio) 17:52, 19 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Closed. Thanks for all of your help, everyone! StevenJ81 (disputatio) 13:38, 23 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Other desirable changes

What was at the front of my mind -- but I don't know if it belongs to the same area of the software -- is this. At Wikidata, if a precise date is known (e.g. in the properties for birth and death dates) the precise date is correctly shown in Latin to a Latin reader, and therefore appears correctly in Latin in our infobox "Capsa hominis Vicidata". But if only a century is known, the date comes written in a barbarous form, "7. century" etc. For an example see Petrus de Castro Novo and pursue him to d:Q542518 in which, whether you choose English or Latin as your language, the date of birth given is "12. century". In German, for some mad reason, it is given as "12 century" without the dot, although, so far as I know, it is principally the Germans who use this dot to denote an ordinal number. Well, never mind the German or the English, it would be so nice if the Latin said "saeculo XII" (or, in case there are other possible uses for this output in which the ablative isn't suitable, "saeculum XII"). Is this something you might do? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:01, 17 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

I can look into it. I'd need to ask around Wikidata how the localized output is generated, then find out where translatewiki does that. But I don't mind trying. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 16:28, 17 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

(Calling @UV, too): One thing you might do is activate Lua module "Wikidata" here. That apparently gives some additional flexibility. One then uses {{#invoke:Wikidata|formatStatementsE|item=Q542518|property=p569|lang=la}} to get at it.

After that, we would still need to figure out how that kind of statement gets localized properly. In the short run, interestingly enough, the string above returns Saeculum 12, while changing the language to "it" returns XII Sec. Go figure. In order to customize an article like Petrus de Castro Novo, you'd have to subst: the template {{Capsa hominis Vicidata}} and then replace that particular property call with the Lua-driven property call within the article itself.

In the longer term, you'd have the lua module running, update {{Capsa hominis Vicidata}} so that it's making its property calls through the lua module, and then get the outputs of the lua module properly localized. If I had help from someone like UV, I might be able to do some of the legwork. But it's a much bigger job than I can do without a guide to help me. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 17:39, 17 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

"Saeculum 12" would be fine, incidentally.

UV has, I think, not had time to engage with Lua thus far. We'll see what he says :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 19:13, 17 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

In my view, the best solution would be to change the default output "12. century" to "saeculum XII" (or "Saeculum 12", if that is easier), without the need to use Lua. However, I currently do not know where this change would need to be made. Asking at d:Wikidata:Project chat might help.

If this does not work, the second best solution would probably be to activate the Lua module "wikidata" here (before doing that, it would be helpful to know where the autoritative source for this module is/where this module is being actively maintained) and to change the template {{Capsa hominis Vicidata}} accordingly. Greetings, --UV (disputatio) 22:07, 19 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Hi, UV. I'll try to see. But my correspondent at Wikidata seemed to think that the direct output of {{#property:...}} was not currently localizable. That seems odd, as "regular dates" seem to localize fine, so I'll ask again. But I don't know for sure one way or the other.

Re Hebrew months: On the way to completing. Here's a question, though: in leap years, the {{#time:...}} parser function outputs the months (in English) Adar I and Adar II, with month numbers 13 and 14 respectively, rather than the month Adar, with month number 6. That's all fine. But there is no translatewiki entry for translatewiki:MediaWiki:Hebrew-calendar-m13 or translatewiki:MediaWiki:Hebrew-calendar-m14 at all, forget with a /la localization subpage or genitive variant. Do I just go create one? Or is this handled otherwise? StevenJ81 (disputatio) 14:27, 22 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts! I think you might be looking for translatewiki:MediaWiki:Hebrew-calendar-m6a/la, translatewiki:MediaWiki:Hebrew-calendar-m6a-gen/la, translatewiki:MediaWiki:Hebrew-calendar-m6b/la, and translatewiki:MediaWiki:Hebrew-calendar-m6b-gen/la. Greetings, --UV (disputatio) 19:56, 22 Iunii 2015 (UTC)

Incidentally ...

Can you perhaps see the solution to the problem mentioned by Helveticus on my user talk? Essentially, although dates (e.g. birth and death) can appear in Latin on Vicidata, they suddenly now appear in English in our {{Capsa hominis Vicidata}}. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:51, 1 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

I'll try to have a look. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 19:49, 1 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

thanks for your help--Helveticus montanus (disputatio) 18:54, 4 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

A possibly related problem occurs in political parties in our biographies on Americans, e.g., the capsa in Ioannes Kerry links to the non-existent Factio Democratica instead of the correct Factio democratica (Civitates Foederatae). Any ideas on how to fix that? (I noticed because Factio Democratica is apparently now the fifth most desired page.) Lesgles (disputatio) 01:39, 8 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

I'd be interested to see what Steven says. My diagnosis is this: because we don't use a Lua module, we can only put in the box things that appear on the Wikidata page for the subject (Iohannes Kerry). On that page appears the Latin label for the Wikidata page for the US Democratic party, not the current pagename of our page. The label was created automatically by Wikidata bots, which stripped out bracketed disambiguation text. Since we have no redirect from their creation "Factio Democratica" to our current pagename (quite reasonably, because their creation is far from a unique name) we end up with a redlink. I have now changed the label to match our current pagename: I hope, when refreshing occurs, it will correct the problem in this case. It is a damn nuisance that the bots stripped out disambiguation text, as I'm sure their controllers realised too late. The real moral is that we should be using Lua, but I don't currently have time to learn to do that ... Am I right? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:10, 8 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Your diagnosis is correct in essence: Without Lua (or JavaScript), all we get is the Latin label (see d:Help:Label). This label, which intentionally does not contain disambiguation text, may differ from the Vicipaedia page name – without Lua (or JavaScript), we do not get any information on whether a Vicipaedia article exists, let alone its page name. For now, I therefore have no better idea than to suggest to remove the links altogether again that you, Lesgles, added a month ago to our Vicidata infoboxes. ;-( --UV (disputatio) 20:24, 8 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

UV is right about the problem. And I think that Wikidata does not prefer the disambiguation language to be in the label.

I don't necessarily agree that we have to delete all of the links, though. We ought to be able to decide whether "Factio Democratica" ought to be a disambiguation page, or whether the US Democratic Party is the en:WP:PRIMARYTOPIC that deserves the article title "Factio Democratica". Either way, we can put something at that address.

And yes, we will eventually be better off using Lua to manage this. The modules are really all written, but we will need to import them, adapt them, and probably translate some outputs. I'll help as I can, but I'm not a coder, and my Latin isn't strong enough to translate, so others will have to take the lead. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 01:42, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

It's good to know you are ready to help.

Meanwhile, it can happen but it is a relatively rare case for us to have no entry at all, not even a redirect or a disambiguation page, at the form used as Wikidata label. If it happens it is probably better to solve it, case by case, by improving the Wikidata label as I did here.

More common is the case where Wikidata gives two options (or two correct answers) as statements, e.g. two nationalities. Then, if we currently have an edited-in link, the result is always a redlink which we never want to turn blue. But this also happens relatively rarely, because Lesgles chose to link the statements that commonly only have one answer.

UV and Steven are right that Wikidata rules against disambiguation text in labels. But intelligence need not be applied to this rule: a form such as "Cantabrigia Massachusettensium" and "Factio democratica Civitatum Foederatarum" is perfectly acceptable (in fact the former appears as an example if you read the policy on labels with Latin as your language). So I have now changed to "Factio democratica Civitatum Foederatarum": I notice that the Spanish and Greek labels are parallel, though the English and German ones are not. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:53, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

That seems like a good temporary solution; I suppose creating more disambiguation pages wouldn't be terrible either. But it seems that, just like the ancient Romans, we will eventually have to make offerings to Lua. :) Lesgles (disputatio) 21:28, 10 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Navigation boxes

Because I aim to make navboxes that are useful even to those who don't read Latin, I try to add names in other scripts when those are relevant: see for example {{Ministri eruditionis Georgiani}} and the multilingual category to which it belongs. I'd like to be able to do this with Hebrew and Arabic, but I would need to make the second "paragraph" of names flow right to left. I'm sure there must be a Wiki markup way to do this. Do you know? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:05, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Sure, Andrew. Actually, I created a template to simplify it for you. See the following:

{{Usor:StevenJ81/Harenarium/rtl|[[Beniaminus Netanjahu|בנימין נתניהו]] • [[Isaac Rabin|יצחק רבין]] • [[Golda Meir|גולדה מאיר]]}} yields

בנימין נתניהו • יצחק רבין • גולדה מאיר

{{Usor:StevenJ81/Harenarium/rtl| ... same three names ... |align=right}} yields

בנימין נתניהו • יצחק רבין • גולדה מאיר

The markup isn't complicated, but this way you don't need to keep typing it in. The template can be subst:-ed if you prefer.

Before I publish this template to Formula: namespace, I want to ask you two questions.

1. Right now, as you can see above, the template defaults to center-justified (for use in your navboxes), but allows for right-justified text (which is how you would ordinarily do body text in Hebrew). Is it better to leave it that way, or to reverse the behavior to make the right-aligned body text default (but allow for center-justified text in templates)?
2. Note that Hebrew fonts tend to be smaller than their nominally same-sized Latin fonts. Would you like me to add an optional font-size increase?

StevenJ81 (disputatio) 15:38, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

That's very kind of you, Steven (and very quick)! I suggest that it would be better to have "center" as option, not as standard, so that the template could also be used for a block quote in the text of an article. Does that make sense? And, yes, I think a slightly large font would be good. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:49, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

OK. I'll do that. When I publish the template (today or tomorrow) I'll include some brief documentation that you can translate into Latin from English. Is "Formula:Rtl" a reasonable name, or do you want me to Latinize it as something like "Formula:Das"? StevenJ81 (disputatio) 16:15, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

By the way, Andrew: When one inserts a direction-changing <div> (which this does), that functionally adds CRLF when the direction changes. So you won't also need to add <br />. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 16:35, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

I think now that template names are easier to handle when they say something clear, so maybe "Formula:Adextra" from the right? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:03, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Isn't a- "to" and e- "from"? StevenJ81 (disputatio) 17:05, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

(When I said "Formula:Das", I meant "das" as dextero ad sinistrum, or whatever the correct inflections would be.) StevenJ81 (disputatio) 19:11, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

A is "from", E is "out of". "A dextra ad sinistram", from the right side to the left. But das is fine if you prefer: I understood it, yes! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 22:06, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

I think I will use "Adas". On this wiki, that will primarily mean a dextra ad sinistram, of course. But it is also the (Ashkenazi-to-English) transliteration of the Hebrew word עדת, which has as one meaning "community". And I rather like that. (I'll include a redirect at "Adextra", too, because that's a very logical and appropriate name.) StevenJ81 (disputatio) 22:31, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Done, Andrew, at {{Adas}}, with redirect at {{Adextra}}. I will leave the translation of the documentation in your capable hands. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 22:53, 9 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Adas is much better. To the untutored eye, Das suggests some clever way of translating German metaphysical concepts :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:59, 10 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Just tried it at {{Ministri eruditionis Israelis}}. Perfect. Thank you! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:50, 11 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad. I can't really write much here, but I'm delighted to contribute here as much as I can. It's a great commmunity! StevenJ81 (disputatio) 20:04, 11 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

PS: I made one format adjustment, more a matter of personal preference than anything else. If you don't like it, feel free to use rollback to get rid of it. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 20:04, 11 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think more space is better. Thanks!

I usually add a new political navbox when I can make a couple of good links. The link in this case was Isaac Navon who has just died. I guess the two musicals he wrote (see en:Yitzhak Navon#Literary output) are in Hebrew, but I thought I'd check with you -- it struck me they could be in Ladino, or partly in Ladino? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 21:53, 11 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Yitzhak Navon (continued)

I wasn't even aware of those musicals until I saw the obituaries. (Disclaimer: I'm Ashkenazi, you know. I got involved with the Ladino projects partly just because I felt they deserved some housekeeping attention, but since then I've learned much more about the culture and language. We have a vibrant Sefardic synagogue in my town, and that has helped.)

Bustan Sefaradi (he), the second of the two works, is indeed in Ladino. (Second disclaimer: Speakers of the language prefer names that are variants on Judeo-Español rather than Ladino. See en:Judaeo-Spanish#Name.) It has arguably been the most successful musical in Israel's history. I have found less information on the first work, Romancero Sefaradi, in my ten-minute long search this afternoon; I'll look further. But it was built from both sacred and secular songs, so stands to have both Hebrew and Judeo-Spanish in it.

Navon was a fascinating guy, and one of the earliest truly successful Sefardic politicians in Israel. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 22:44, 11 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I had heard of the name issue; I just took the Wikipedia name from the left margin :( Anyway, I'm glad my guess had some truth in it. He is probably our first Judeo-Español author, and I also noticed he doesn't have a biography in that language yet ...

I didn't know your personal background, of course, but knew that you worked on the relevant Wikipedia. Thanks, very interesting! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:41, 12 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

As far as it goes, the language's ISO name and code are Ladino and lad, and that name is widely used. So there's no harm. I'm trying to be sensitive to the feedback I hear from the real JS speakers on the projects. (See how I handled this in creating a userbox on Meta (m:User:StevenJ81).

I am certainly going to encourage someone to write this up on ladwiki soonest. Thank you for your support! StevenJ81 (disputatio) 14:24, 12 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Projected "supplementum" space

Please, Steven, if you have any further ideas or comments -- positive or negative -- chime in at Disputatio Vicipaediae:Spatium supplementorum. Thanks! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:34, 25 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Capsa hominis Vicidata

Dear Steven, you're fully right. Actually the problem is only when there's more than one option: cfr. Henricus Taube --Helveticus montanus (disputatio) 20:28, 30 Novembris 2015 (UTC)

Decimetrum

Hi Steven. See my last comment at Vicipaedia:Taberna#Suggestion! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:44, 11 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

In case you're interested ...

Having realised belatedly how many readers now read pages on handheld devices, I found my way to the mobile site and noticed three interesting things about the page formatting:

1. the effect on the top of each page if we have too many images and boxes in the initial section: note to self for future editing
2. the fact that the Wikidata infoboxes don't autocollapse on those mobile pages (you had already said something about this). Those two things together made me slim down the biographical box immediately: done!
3. the fact that navboxes (at the foot of the page) show only their titles, and cannot be expanded: a disaster, because our short pages (e.g. about politicians and about provinces etc.) are really great for their navboxes, developed by Helveticus, Schulz-Hameln, Ssolbergj and me. We must have them

I then tried to change the collapse behaviour on the navboxes, and found, like you, that I couldn't. So, recalling that various language navboxes are formatted differently, I looked around some more.

1. On English Wikipedia it's worse: the navboxes depend on Lua and can't be seen at all on the mobile pages
2. On the simple English Wikipedia it's the same as us: you see the title of the navboxes but you can't get the text
3. !! On the German Wikipedia it's perfect: the navboxes collapse on the standard page view but appear in full, expanded, on the mobile page

The edit page of the German Navigationsleiste looks so simple you can't believe it's all there, but I copied it across here as Formula:Capsa natationis and it works! For an example, showing all this better than I can say it, see Maia Panjikidze. She has two navboxes, one set up in our standard way using Formula:Capsa navigationis, the other quickly adapted to Formula:Capsa natationis. Both work identically on the standard page view. The second of the two is fully visible on the mobile page view; the first shows only the title.

Why am I telling you this? Because you are willing to work on templates and because you might grasp better than I do why all this works the way it does. If there are no disastrous side-effects I haven't seen, it might be much better for us to use the formula I've called "natationis", with necessary adjustments, as our standard basis for a navbox. Have you any thoughts on this? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:34, 13 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

I'll have a look and get back you a little later. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 17:26, 13 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Andrew, I have made a few changes to Formula:Capsa natationis. Does the template still look good to you now, after my changes? Do you think the new template's content could eventually serve as a replacement for the current content of Formula:Capsa navigationis? If yes, I (or perhaps you, Steven, if you like?) could work on making the remaining navboxes with tables work with the new system as well. Greetings, --UV (disputatio) 23:14, 13 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Marvellous, UV! The template now appears neatly boxed on the mobile page view also (at least on my screen). Better even than the mobile view on similar German pages. Yes, I think we should replace "Navigationis" with what is currently at "Natationis", after doing some testing and adjusting as you suggest. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:19, 14 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

@UV and @Andrew Dalby: I'm happy to work with you on it, UV. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 16:17, 15 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

I think in some of the cases at Categoria:Capsa navigationis with unusual parameters it will be better to reduce the amount of information we try to get in a single box. Two boxes with related information can easily be linked together, after all. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:34, 15 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Done! --UV (disputatio) 21:52, 16 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

De iubilaeo Vicipaedianorum

Annum 2016 prosperum et felicem omnibus amicis Vicipaedianis opto! Apud Tabernam consentivimus annum 2016 (quem iubilaeum nostrum Helveticus nuncupavit) praecipue dedicare ad textum paginarum Vicipaedicarum augendum et meliorandum. Huic proposito consentiens (si tu consentis!) sic pro communi inceptu nostro agere potes:

• Quando paginas novas legibiles, fontibus munitas, et non brevissimas creare vis, crea! Ne timeas!
• Quandocumque paginam aut breviorem aut mendosam aut male confectam reperis, cura! corrige! auge!
• Si paginam novam brevissimam creare in mentem habes, recogita ... An potius textum longiorem scribere oportet? An prius aliam paginam, iam exstantem, augere potes?

Quo dicto, Vicipaediani liberi sumus. Paginae etiam breves, quae inter veras "stipulas" admitti possunt (vide formulam "Non stipula"), accepturae sunt sicut iam antea accipi solent. Scribe igitur sine metu, sicut iam scripsisti! ^[en] Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:42, 4 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

Kansanopolis

Hi, Steven. I hadn't seen that discussion before. The conclusion imposes itself, I thought, so I moved the page. Then I realised that I was in the wrong state. However, since the two cities are side by side, it may be that it's OK to stretch the attested name to both. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:42, 4 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

Coord

Hi, Steven. I saw your question to UV. Following your link, I was disappointed to find that "ladwiki" is not after all a travel guide for young Britons looking for wild parties, interested on the other hand to see your use of property 625 in an infobox, but curious whether you know how to make it link onwards to GeoHack. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:38, 2 Augusti 2016 (UTC)

I think the project you'd be looking for would be ladwikivoyage, no? (smile) (not that such a project exists; it's all we can do to keep a small Wikipedia and a tiny Incubator-based Wiktionary going)

I haven't been able to manage to make that link to GeoHack yet. As you probably know, the series of {{coord}} templates is a fairly complicated group of templates and subtemplates, and I've really only managed to get one of those working properly so far. When I tried to use the property call as the |param= input for {{coord}}, it took the first element of the coordinates only (the latitude degrees), along with a bunch of superfluous text generated by subtemplates. So far, no further luck. I'll keep you posted if I manage.

BTW, what I tend to do about this is to make a more-or-less dummy edit to add the property call to a page. I then make a second edit, copying the results of the property call into (a) the {{coord}} template and (b) the infobox, while (c) then erasing the property call. That's a reasonably efficient way to accomplish what I need to accomplish ... and after all, it's not as if we expect coordinates to change over time (unlike mayors, governors, or populations). StevenJ81 (disputatio) 21:45, 2 Augusti 2016 (UTC)

Calendar templates

Hello! I've seen that you have created the Formula:Dies Hebraicus. Over at the French Wikipédia, they have something like that for the French Republican Calendar (fr:Modèle:DateRépu). Do you think you could adapt that so that it runs here on the Latin Vicipaedia? That would be great for our own page on the calendar (Calendarium republicanum Francicum - where you will also find the terminology, but of course I can take care of the Latin if you can do the rest). Sigur (disputatio) 22:49, 15 Iunii 2019 (UTC)

I'll see. The base template at French Wikipédia depends on calculations from subtemplates there, and I would need to see if I can duplicate those, too. That's not necessary for the Hebrew date; Hebrew date output is included as part of the {{#time: ...}} and {{#timel: ...}}, parser functions, so my template doesn't actually need to calculate the Hebrew date. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 13:19, 17 Iunii 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I already saw that there were numerous sublinks. Thanks for looking into it, in any case. It's just a "nice to have", so if it turns out to be too complicated, no problem. Sigur (disputatio) 20:48, 17 Iunii 2019 (UTC)

@Sigur: We spent quite a bit of time deciding the proper Latinization of the Hebrew months, though. See #Calendarium Hebraicum II, supra. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 21:46, 18 Iunii 2019 (UTC)

Ère commune

@Sigur: By the way, I happened to notice the discussion you brought in Wikipédia on this subject. It would be worth looking through French-language Jewish sources to see if they actually use those abbreviations. I will certainly admit that "av. n. è." et "de n. è." do exactly the same thing, and from my personal perspective they are perfectly respectable alternatives to approaches using J-C by name for use in Judaism articles. But CE and BCE were used widely in the Anglophone Jewish world much earlier than elsewhere, and I could see where EC and AEC might be used in the Francophone Jewish world first. Or maybe they're not; maybe n. è is the accepted approach in the Francophonie. Anyway, my two cents. StevenJ81 (disputatio) 21:19, 18 Iunii 2019 (UTC)