Disputatio:Vitaminum

De lemmate

Mihi videtur opportunum declinationem mutare. Vitamina erit verbum primæ declinationis. [Scripsit 186.195.44.2 hora 13:58 die 14 Maii 2014‎.]

Habesne fontem? Nam Traupman "vitaminum" dat. Lesgles (disputatio) 22:06, 15 Maii 2014 (UTC)

Vitaminum etiam hic praebetur: (1) Christian Helfer, Lexicon auxiliare. Saarbrücken: Societas Latina, 1991, p. 595; (2) Lexicon recentis Latinitatis, Bonn: Lampertz, 1998, p. 406; (3) Nuntii Latini, 17.1.2008 (Radiophonia Finnica Generalis). Neander (disputatio) 03:45, 16 Maii 2014 (UTC)

Iterum de lemmate

Haec disputatio, in pagina mea incepta, melius hic accommodatur. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:44, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

Pars accepta a: Disputatio Usoris:Andrew Dalby § Vitaminum Vitamina

Hi Andrew,

Sometimes I have the feeling that Traupman ignores that Latin has been spoken by science for centuries, and so not everything is a new word, some words are just hidden in specialistic books. Vitamina altimately comes from vita + ammonia (> ammina). There is no justification to make it change declension, especially since it has already been used as vitamina (i.e. as a Latin word). When you have time look at the bibliography that I have attached to the page. For me the page should be renamed to vitamina ASAP. --Grufo (disputatio) 21:27, 11 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

"There is no justification to make it change declension."—Stearn (Botanical Latin) and Traupman (Latin and English Dictionary) must have had some justification, even if they didn't have room enough to tell us what it was. Several other reputable sources, too, accept vitaminum (see those found by @Neander: above). Maybe modern scientists have reached a consensus in which certain chemicals are to be neuter despite what seems to be their "natural" gender (see proteinum, not proteina), or maybe the neuter um suffix is especially attractive to them (see acidum, carbohydratum, cholesterolum, ethanolum, lipidum). Or maybe (some of) these words should be understood as adjectives modifying some unstated neuter noun (compositum? elementum? minerale?), much as continens is feminine because it modifies an unstated feminine noun (terra). See also ammonium, a cation formed by the protonation of ammonia. More investigation is needed before wholesale changes are instituted. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:23, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster's dictionary (of English) derives vitamin from Latin vita + ISV (International Scientific Vocabulary) amine. If that's true, the question might be how amine is rendered in Latin. Maybe @Andreas Raether: will have a source. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 21:49, 11 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

I did not find "vitamina" and "insulina" (f.) in any Latin book, these are too new words. Insulinum is not parva insula, it is a substance that is found in insula. Demetrius Talpa (disputatio) 22:02, 11 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

You will find something in the three sources that I put in the page – I didn't search well enough yet, but I am pretty sure that these were all words that were invented in Latin before being translated into modern Languages:

• The first comes from Shihira, Ikuko; Krauss, Robert W. (1965). Chlorella: Physiology and Taxonomy of Forty-one Isolates. College Park, Maryland: University of Maryland. p. 13 :

  Wille (1909) subdivided the genus into 4 subgenera based ...

  Subgenus Chlorella subgenus nov.

  Id subgenus generis Chlorellae cuius natura talis est ut absoluta vitaminarum necessitate careat; cellulae auctus in luce in mediis omnino inorganicis capaces; cellulae aut capaces aut incapaces auctus in quibusdam fontibus carbonei organicis in tenebris; cellulae in fontibus carbonei organicis in luce viriditatem plerumque retinentes; cellulae aut NO₃, aut NH₃, fontibus nitrogenii utentes; cellulae sphericae ad ellipsoideas; chromatophori formam amiculi, aut disci, aut cinguli, aut calicis, aut retis praebentes, aut granulares.

  Subgenus Auxenochlorella subgenus nov.

  Id subgenus generis Chlorellae cuius natura talis est ut necessitatem vitaminarum absolutam habeat; cellulae quosdam carbonei organici fontes ad optime crescendum requirentes, sed carboneo organico suppeditato flavescentes; cellulae acidis aminosis et quibusdam carbonei organici fontibus suppeditatis viriditate opaca viridescentes; cellulae in tenebris et acetate cultae virides sunt; cellulae NO₃, fonte nitrogenii utendi incapaces; cellulae sphericae; chromatophori formam manubrii gymnastici praebentes.

• The second one instead – although not completely clear to me – is “ad vitaminarum D resistens (E83.3)” in Institute of Public Health of Serbia “Dr Milan Jovanović Batut” (2013). Međunarodna statistička klasifikacija bolesti i srodnih zdravstvenih problema. Belgradi Serbiae: World Health Organization. p. 282 .
• As for the third one, it is just the word “vitamina” in a dictionary of botanical Latin – Eckel, Patricia M. (2010-2022). Vitamin. . A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin .

As for insulina, here is what the Italian Treccani says about it. In Italian:

der. del lat. scient. insula (che è dal lat. class. insŭla «isola») con allusione alle isole di Langerhans da cui è secreta.

English translation:

From scientific Latin insula (which is itself from the classical insula, island), alluding to the Langerhans islands from which it is secreted.

Note that insulina can never be a native Italian word, it can only be Latin (the Italian diminutive of “isola” would be “isoletta”). We must absolutely avoid at all costs that scientific words that were invented and pronounced in Latin – and only afterwards entered into modern Languages – get translated back into Latin; that's were we will get bizarre things like vitaminum... --Grufo (disputatio) 23:41, 11 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

…Few minutes later… And here you have already a source for insulina (1963, first page):

Diabetica canis chetosis causam habet in insulinae defectu et in ...

--Grufo (disputatio) 00:12, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

About “vitamina”, cfr. “factores nutritionis, ut apparet post bella (deficientia) aut ex inverso in populis divitibus (crescentia); vel etiam ex dietetica (v. g. asbentia vitaminarum, calcii)” in Cruchon, G. (1966). Psychologia paedagogica pueri et adolescentis. Fuori Collana Series. Pontificia Univ. Gregoriana. p. 88. ISBN 9788876522673 . See also “Tabellae Hexavitaminarum” (verbatim) in "First U.S.P. Bound Supplement". The Carolina journal of pharmacy (North Carolina Pharmaceutical Association) 25: 130. Aprili 1944 . P.S. If you see a lot of genitive plurals (vitaminarum) it is because of the search keywords that I chose. --Grufo (disputatio) 00:58, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

About the English suffix -ine that we find in “amine” (and hence “vitamin”) here we have the final answer (emphasis mine):

-ine (2)

word-forming element in chemistry, often interchangeable with -in (2), though modern use distinguishes them; early 19c., from French -ine, the suffix commonly used to form words for derived substances, hence its extended use in chemistry. It was applied unsystematically at first (as in aniline), but now has more restricted use.

The French suffix is from Latin -ina, fem. form of -inus, suffix used to form adjectives from nouns, and thus is identical with -ine (1).

I mean, this is biology, it is literally the last field that dropped the use of Latin in favour of national languages. They still produced papers in Latin until fifty years ago; we don't need to invent our neo-Latin, they already did. --Grufo (disputatio) 01:12, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

I hadn't thought about this till now. I was interested in Casimirus Funk, and as a spin-off added some references to the Vitaminum page. He invented the term (in English, in 1912): it was re-spelt by Drummond (in English, in 1920). That's all I know.

I don't have Traupman, but I would never trust an elementary bilingual dictionary on any technical term. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:42, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

Not even Stearn's Botanical Latin, which also goes with vitaminum? Clearly this issue is complicated and shouldn't be resolved with bull-in-a-china-shop alacrity! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:06, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

On Traupman we may differ -- I'm not sure, Iacobe -- but on Stearn we are as one. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:35, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

I suppose my opinion must be wanted, or this wouldn't have appeared on my disputatio page! Really, the proper place is Disputatio:Vitaminum, isn't it? And of all current active contributors the first to ask would be Andreas Raether, as Iacobus says. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:42, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

I will add one point, possibly tangential: I haven't seen the text where Funk himself explains how he devised his new word vitamine, though it is certainly true that he thought these were "vital amines". As it turned out, they are vital but they are not necessarily amines: it was partly for this reason that Drummond, in 1920, proposed the spelling vitamin, retaining the name but de-emphasizing the connection with "amines". Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:53, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

The Latin text of the ICD is cited above via a Serbian author or institute. But there is another (later?) version of the ICD in Latin, which should always be checked before determining a Latin name for a disease. Medics are now not the best Latinists in the world, but their decisions are always worth noting. Here it is. Under the equivalent reference number, E-83.3, it gives "Osteomalatia ad vitaminum D resistens". "Vitaminum" occurs 2 more times in the same document. So that's in favour of "vitaminum".

For similar sources that may be useful in other cases, don't overlook our page Vicipaedia:Fontes nominum Latinorum -- and please add to it if another useful source of scientific terminology is found. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:27, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

The Serbian source I think is lower authority (concerning Latin) compared to papers written in Latin about biology – that correction might even show that they were not sure and they simply checked Traupman to find out. It is a big issue, because what we will decide here will apply to all the words of the same class (-in/-ine in English). See also the sources that I added yesterday to Adrenalina. There is another – even more tangential – point about the Latin translation of “amine”, and it is to understand whether (independently of the declension) it has two or one “m” (it is ammina in Italian – where the origin from “ammonia” is still visible; in this case the other Romance languages don't count because they don't keep double consonants in general, but Latin does). --Grufo (disputatio) 14:38, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

«Medics are now not the best Latinists in the world, but their decisions are always worth noting.» The medical book from the Vatican (in Latin) that I had posted earlier might have a big say on this (“asbentia vitaminarum”, p. 88). --Grufo (disputatio) 14:50, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

By the way, this medical book also has hormona, -arum. Somethng to think about, considering the somewhat challenging declinability of hormon. Neander (disputatio) 17:40, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

We won't ever know, but I doubt that the Latinists who work on the ICD use Traupman any more than I do :) Where they are I don't know, but perhaps in eastern Europe. In that area of multiple national languages Latin often occurs currently in glosses in scientific articles: a Latin term in parentheses is placed alongside one in Serbian, Czech, Polish etc., no doubt to help readers who are dealing with a text in a language not fully familiar to them. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:06, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

• Check also modern Greek for vitamin: el:βιταμίνη. --Grufo (disputatio) 17:11, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)
  • Same applies to gasoline: Greek el:βενζίνη, Italian it:Benzina benzina (the Spanish use another word in this case, gasolina). --Grufo (disputatio) 17:15, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

Benzinum here (teste Traupman). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 17:25, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

I know, I saw that, and it was the first time I realized something was wrong with Traupman and chemistry. These words with -ina have a long neo-Latin history. --Grufo (disputatio) 17:30, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

• If I got it right there is also a bacterium called Nocardia paraffinae. --Grufo (disputatio) 17:34, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we see that there are sources for both -inum and -ina. But I'm still not sure that this is enough for the mass renaming of the same type of names of substances. Demetrius Talpa (disputatio) 17:45, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

The point is that I don't see the sources for -inum applied (i.e. used in the field) as massively as the sources for -ina. Also the official name of a bacterium (Nocardia paraffinae) should make us think. --Grufo (disputatio) 17:51, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

• Another bacterium is called “micrococcus paraffinae” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC440899/pdf/bactrev00176-0004.pdf p. 9) --Grufo (disputatio) 17:59, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)
  • Here (p. 366) there is a chapter about “Proactinomyces paraffinae” – which, to be honest, I have no idea what it is. --Grufo (disputatio) 18:02, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

According to Stearn, myces implies that it's a fungus; maybe our very own @Mycēs: will tell us. Also, some genera whose names end in myces appear to be bacteria. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:15, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

It'll be good if your ping recalls him:t Myces has not contributed to the Wikipedias for several years now. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:25, 13 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

• It is very clearly stated "Extracta ex opio materies morphina dicta" in Faculté de médecine de Paris (1818). Codex Medicamentarius sive Pharmacopoea Gallica. Lutetiae: Hacquart. p. 385 . --Grufo (disputatio) 22:45, 12 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

My impression so far is that as a general rule, in the case of groups of chemicals, "-ina" (f.) is much more used by Latinist chemists, "-inum" (n.) is often chosen by other Latinists, who sometimes are simply unaware that there is an existing usage by chemists. But we have a problem if "other Latinists" includes medical scientists or botanists, and I think sometimes it does.

Example: this happened with Insulina. Helveticus created it as "Insulina": if he had the Italian and French names in his mind, they did not lead him astray. Neander soon afterwards moved to "Insulinum", saying that this was medical usage. He didn't cite any -- we didn't footnote much in 2007 -- and I think that usage exists -- but the Web in 2023 gives us a wider perspective. There being no source cited, Grufo was correctly able to move to "Insulina" with a source, but it would be better if we add the alternative lemma "Insulinum" and cite a scientific source for that, assuming we find some.

If I'm right so far, what is our general rule to be? For pages about chemical compounds we can decide to favour the chemical Latinists in pagenames and text, but we have to be honest: if there are sources that contradict our choice, we give the alternative and cite sources. For the reader's sake, once we have a rule-of-thumb, let's avoid excessive footnoting. More than one source can be put in one footnote, or additional evidence can be listed on the talk page. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:25, 13 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, but let's add the speculation that human psychology may be in play here, especially in the minds of those whose first language doesn't have or at least emphasize grammatical gender: the perception that all chemicals, being inanimate, deserve the neuter gender, marked with the suffix -um. (Even modern Latin recognizes inanimacy, and so, for a motor, we have motrum, not motor.) Often, the earliest reliable sources provide the most favored lemmata, but it's not impossible that some authoritative scientific body has formally overruled prior use, and if so, its decisions need to be respected. Also, NOTHING about this should have been done in the mainspace until @Andreas Raether:, seemingly the local medical expert, had been heard from, if indeed he's still with us. Likewise (because of the example of vitaminum cited above) @Neander:. ¶ Typographical note: and why is it desirable for an obligatory colon to appear after pinged names? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 10:31, 13 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

I will come back on the main topic later (I am on a hurry now), but in the meanwhile, concerning {{Ping}}, @IacobusAmor, there is the |p= parameter for choosing a custom punctuation (or removing it, like I just did). I also never liked the default colon of {{Ping}} btw (maybe we can make our own {{Voco}} template without any punctuation by default…). --Grufo (disputatio) 12:20, 13 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Andrew and Iacobus. I've often wondered, how to put 'insulin' , 'vitamin', &c in Latin: insulina or insulinum, vitamina or vitaminum, &c. Sources readily available to me tend to favour the -um variant, so I've picked the -um variant, no questions asked. So, I moved the title to insulinum in my early days as a Vicipaedian, because my source indicated that insulinum is medical Latin. But now I'm fully sympathetic with Grufo's move. (Indeed, he has uncovered a nice little problem area in our enterprise.) Re 'vitamin', Vilborg's lexicon gives both vitamina and vitaminum as feasible variants. Anyhow, both are attested in reliable enough sources. From the point of view of Sprachpflege, a situation like this may be problematic, because it's not always clear, whether vitamina is to be understood as 'vitamin' or 'vitamins'. Neander (disputatio) 14:01, 13 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)

Although I often seem very convinced, I am not always so. For example I am still not 100% sure that planetulus is better than planetula (see Disputatio:Planetulus § After many years), but I am persuaded that it is. The only argument against it was given by Diaphanus, and yet it seems to me that most of the examples where a first-declension masculine kept the same declension for the diminutive sound somehow sarcastic to me (scurrula, tatula, vernula, Scaevola), a bit like -y in English in some cases. All this without considering all the sources that I found in favor of planetulus. Now, going back to the main topic, if I can have some doubts about planetulus, I have basically zero doubts about chemistry – at least concerning declensions – given that many names were given here by scientists after literally opening a Latin or Greek dictionary, peeking some random words and borrowing their endings. There are also some basic principles of philology to apply: if you see an irregular landscape on one side (-ina, -one, -oides, etc.), and a regular landscape on the other side (everything is -um), the regular one is a later invention. Although it might seem relatively insignificant, the old landscape is the one that left traces in most modern languages (which is why vitamin is feminine in basically every language that has genders except the Germanic ones, or why in Italian they say alcaloide but not alcaloido). --Grufo (disputatio) 14:53, 13 Aprilis 2023 (UTC)