Some suggestions regarding la.wikipedia.org

CalRis25: How shall we procede/decide? Do you think that it's okay if we three agree on what's to be done, or should we wait until more users take part in this discussion? My opinion is that we should at least decide the non-controversial stuff on our own. I also believe that points that we've agreed on should be marked as such. The original points in this paper could then be removed and replaced by a short summary. Who should do these removals and summaries? Perhaps you, Adam. As sysop you seem to be the Dominus while I'm only a simple cliens ;-). Adam, if you create an article for the English-version guide we could make a first rough draft with links to guides of the various Wikipedias.

Local Style-/Editing-Guides: English please!

Even though this is a web-site in Latin, I believe it would be advisable not to write the operating manual, i.e. the style guides etc., in Latin. These guides require far too many modern words. Such a guide in Latin is too difficult to read, and also makes it more difficult to write and maintain. That IS bad because that saps both time and energy, time and energy that is better spent on real articles.
Generally I think that we should mostly refer to the guides of the English edition and just point out the peculiarities of la.Wikipedia.

I agree that the guides should be available in English, especially at first. However, this should be for reasons of accessibilty and usability, not because of the necessary "modern words" -- likely most or all of the concepts covered by these words could be expressed in Latin.

In fact, I'm in favor of quickly establishing the guides in English versions, and then eventually making a Latin translation available. I think a good long-term goal would be to have the guides in a sound and complete bilingual version. - Sashal

Presumably someone editing in Latin will be using another language Wikipedia as well, so they could read the guides there. Not everyone editing here speaks English, at least not natively, so it might not be fair to have instructions only in English...but then, they could also be welcomed to translate them into their own languages as well. Adam Episcopus

CalRis25: I don't want to rule out a Latin guide at all. But I think that the English version should be the main one. All the other language versions (Latin and perhaps other versions as Adam suggests) should be translations of the English one. With every language added, maintaining these guides gets more time consuming, so I think it would be wise to make it clear that there are only two official (i.e. regularly maintained) ones: English + Latin Of course we should provide links to the editing guides of most of the other Wikipedia-versions. In OUR guide we would only detail those things that are specific to la.Wikipedia (no ligatures, no j, u+v etc.).

I agree that it would be unfair to make English the working language at la.wikipedia.org. Not fair at all. Provide links to the other languages' own guides. As for the la.wikipedia specific things, may I suggest a brief introduction to those parts in as many languages as necessary (I'm thinking along the lines of the Esperanto About this page MediaWiki message)? Gabriel Beecham 16:58 apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

CalRis25 17:22 apr 12, 2004 (UTC): I'm afraid that there's no way around choosing an official language. Otherwise confusion would be the inevitable result. Take the Catholic Church for example. Its official language is Latin. This is especially true for official documents and sources of faith. All translations of the Bible etc. come down from the Latin version (if not even from Greek or earlier versions), not from English, French, German or anything. Latin as the official language would be the logical choice for la.Wikipedia. However, considering that most users (me included!) are not yet good enough to use Latin for this too, we need a second official language. And English is the logical choice. It's the language of science, of commerce. Plus: it's relatively simple. My own mother tongue is German. I am also able to read in English, Spanish and French. Believe me. English easiest. As far as constructed languages like Esperanto are concerned, ahem, let's be serious ;-)

I simply disagree with you on this entirely:

There is no way that it can be fair to use English as a working language for this Wiki when there are many, many people who know some Latin but don't know English. On MetaWiki and wikipedia-l there is no offical language - people may talk in whatever language they wish, and can translate what they say into other languages (or other people can translate for them). I don't see this as being confusion - wouldn't it, in fact, allow more people to understand what is being said?

You say that English is an easy language - well sir, you are very wrong. English is one of the hardest European languages to learn, what with irregular spelling and prononciation rules and grammatical idiosyncracies, a huge lexicon consisting largely of duplicated Germanic and Romance words, and . Perhaps you find English easier than Spanish or French because you think in German, and English is overall a Germanic language - the other two are Romance.

I don't quite understand at all the comment you made at the end about Esperanto - I can only suppose that you didn't look properly at the link I gave above, or misunderstood what I meant. What I was suggesting is introductions and information on the Wikipedia in as many languages as you like. We already have something of an editors' guide in English and Latin - if there's a latinophonic French Wikipedia out there, shouldn't they be able to write a French version? Information would be given to the user in a number of national languages, with Latin serving as a frame to all. This system would seem to be ideally suited to a project like a Latin Wikipedia, where no users are native speakers. I'll overlook the snide and, I'll bet, totally uninformed comment on Esperanto not being a language in itself.

So in summation, I wanted to say that English is unsuitable as an "official language" for communication between people from different language backgrounds on this Wikipedia, and I have suggested a solution that would work for as many languages as one wished. Any comments would be most welcome. -- Gabriel Beecham 21:04 iun 25, 2004 (UTC)

Carolus 19:00 apr 15, 2004 (CDT): One thing that would ease a transition to everything in Latin (as well as possibly in another tongue, be it English or Spanish or some tongue I cannot read) would be a lexicon of modern Latin words as a part of the Vicipedia. I have been making a Latin version of the Universal Language Dictionary in my spare time, but that alone would be inadequate. We could have the word Latine (with appropriate principal parts, and a link to inflectional oddities), Anglice, Italice, and so on, with those who know the appropriate tongues filling the gaps. Latin needs to be the lingua franca at some point, but CalRis25 (how would one inflect that? :) is right -- we need to make sure everyone, ourselves included, can make that transition. Having key documentation also available in English (which, by and large, it already is) is needed until we have a central repository of modern Latin words. And, FWIW, even Zamenhof was not fluent in Esperanto right away ...

--Iustinus 00:24 apr 16, 2004 (UTC) Carolus' comment reminds me of some other things I've been thinking of. As far as modern words go, there are several very good sources, and they often disagre with each other. Since Modern Latin is nowhere near ready to have uniformity imposed on it, especially in a Wiki, we really need to accept all the alternatives. Sooner or later someone needs to make a list of common variations, e.g. praeses vs. praesidens, Civitates Foederatae vs. Civitates Unitae and so on. Another thing that would be helpful (and a lot easier) would be a list of tips on composing in Latin. I see the same mistakes being made over and over, and it would be helpfull if there were a document somewhere that listed things like: de does not mean "of", persona does not mean "person", not all Latin words for metric units end in -us and so on.

CalRis25 19:16 mai 27, 2004 (UTC): Hello Iustinus! Sorry, but persona DOES mean "person", at least according to the dictionary of modern Latin I own (edited by the libraria editoria vaticana). The Bantam New College Latin & English Dictionary also lists it in the English-Latin section (beside homo).

CalRis25: Salve Carole! A dictionary of Neo-Latin within la.Wikipedia would be nice, that's true. But don't you think that that's a bit utopian? My Neo-Latin dictionary has more than four hundred pages and still does not nearly feature all I would like to know. It's true also that Neo-Latin is still not very consistent. I've just started reading Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis (don't laugh, it's a nice exercise), and I can't help noticing the differences between the translator's Neo-Latin words and those of my dictionary. Still, a selection of the most common Neo-Latin words would be welcome. Any idea where to put it? Right now, only Auxilium comes to my mind, but it featuers only Latin computer vocabulary. Perhaps a set of sub-pages? What about a Request-a-word in the Taberna?

Carolus: 21:00 aug 4, 2004 (CDT): Salve et tu! My spreadsheet is on the computer in the shop, so it sits about 3/4ths finished. One thing would be to list off the different sources. I am going off the ones available to me, primarily Traupman's books (Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency and the aforementioned Bantam dictionary, which is about the only place where I have found a tabella tributaria). We'd probably want to do the same for the Vatican source, or at least check against its terms. (And yes, I too find some of the nova verba in Harrio Pottero to be a little odd ... and worse yet, I have yet to read the book in English.)

Another possible word list, in addition to the Universal Language Dictionary, is the Longman Defining Vocabulary, which has the 2000 most common words in written and spoken English (about 2270 words after overlap). A bit Utopian, perhaps, but for our purposes, needed. (What would be really Utopian is the same principles that drove that dictionary to a Latin version.) There's nothing wrong with multiple words for the same thing, BTW -- redundancy in vocabulary is a sign of importance.

CalRis25 08:04 aug 5, 2004 (UTC): Ave Carole! I'm not really sure what you mean with "list off the different sources". Perhaps the index-pages under discussion in the Wikipedia:Taberna could serve as a sort of "dictionary" or at least index of important Neo-Latin words. Have a look at here how such a thing could look like. Such lists of definitions (also acting as index for the articles proper) would be ideal in my opinion to provide the Neo-Latin words as well because sorting these by subject matter makes these lists far more usable.

Article names: allow letter u/U

Certain articles have names that use the letter v/V instead of the modern letter u/U, e.g. Aqvila. While that is correct in citing ancient Roman inscriptions (e.g. DIS DEABVSQVE), I suggest that we allow usage of the modern letters u/U because it makes names less ambiguous. At the same time we should ban conversion of u/U into v/VV in article names.

As I have learned Latin, we've used both U and V, apparently with U's after consonants and V's after vowels. I don't know if that is just a convention of the text book (Wheelock), or something more widespread...I'm not sure it really matters, we probably all know they were the same letter in Latin. In any case, I don't think we should use VV for U, that's just ugly :) Adam Episcopus

CalRis25 12:08 mar 11, 2004 (UTC): Of course I meant conversion ... into v/V, not v/VV. Anyway, I'm pro u/U as well.

U and V are quite different sounds, as different as I and J if i'm not mistaken. U is the normal vowel, whereas V is like English W - a short version used in dipththongs. Same with I and J respectively - I don't think they need to be changed. -- Gabriel Beecham 22:04 apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

CalRis25 17:22 apr 12, 2004 (UTC): Well, the reason this item was added, that there once was an article (aqvila, if I remember rigth), that did not use u, so I wanted to make sure that this is clear.

Carolus 21:00 aug 4, 2004 (CDT): IIRC, the correct way to use the letters combined is "V" for the uppercase and "u" for the lowercase. The letter is the Latine "V" pronounced "ooh." As such, the "qvae aqvila" fellow is wrong, period, as well as looking really funny ... no matter, however, as most of us nowadays make a differentiation. Especially we English speakers, where the letter "V" is a labial-dental fricative, not just a labial one, as in the Romance languages, and thus REALLY different.

I would vote for separation of u/U and v/V, although using V for the vowel in an all-caps context would be O.K. Mpolo 09:26 aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

Concurrence. I am used to seeing 'Quīntus rogāvit' and so on. Nicolus 23:09 oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

The Romans used the same letter to spell two different phonemes and this was a deficiency of their spelling. They didn't even know about lowercase; so if the goal is to stay "faithful" to Roman-time Latin, to start with this wikipedia should be all-caps and lowercase should be banned altogether (and all vocabulary from New Latin as well). But this wikipedia is being written not by Ancient Romans but by modern people in the 21st century, and just like the Greek alphabet evolved to include useful diacritics that notate relevant phonological features of Classical Greek that were left out of the spelling of the ancient era, the historical evolution of the Latin alphabet made possible to distinguish between the Latin phonemes /u/ and /w/, so I think we should take advantage of that; and the same goes for the phonemes /i/ and /j/. Another very useful thing is to include macrons (and the occasional breve on the penultimate syllable to make things even clearer), because syllable length was not only phonemical, but the one fundamental feature of Latin prosody around which Latin (and Greek) spoken rhythm and literary scansion revolved. Between the old-style spelling QVINTVS ROGAVIT (or Quintus rogauit for that matter, which is even worse because pairing V with u makes it very inconvenient for word-processing in modern computers) and the modernized spelling Quīntus rogāvit, I'd definitely go for the latter; it's far more useful, and it's straightforward to convert from it into the others while it is not so to do viceversa. Uaxuctum 09:42, 27 Novembris 2006 (UTC)

Article names: ban letter j/J

Some writers of Latin use the modern letter j/J while others don't. I suggest that we ban that letter in the article names (and only there) to make the article names less ambiguous. Of course, there would be the possibility of creating redirect- articles with the alternative spelling, e.g. Plinius Major redirecting to Plinius Maior. In order to lessen the workload, however, I would prefer simply banning j/J in article names.

There should be a Wiki-wide standard of either i or j — preferably i — which will apply to both the title and the body of an article. Of course (as with u and v) this would apply only to original content, not to direct quotes. - Sashal

This sounds good. Adam Episcopus

I also support the non-j approach. CalRis25

Use of j for consonantal i is primarily medieval. Even the Vatican has backed off of it. I think we should use i alone. Mpolo 09:26 aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

The edit page has "Adjutatum ad recensere" on it. j should be removed. Nicolus 23:09 oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Ligatures æ/ae, œ/oe: yes or no?

What is the official stance of la.Wikipedia on the subject of the ligatures æ/ae, œ/oe? Should we encourage or discourage their use? My view: we should rather do without them, but I admit that that's only a matter of taste.

Unless an official standard has already been set, we should do without ligatures. I'm personally rather fond of the damn things, but they could make it ~~difficult~~ inconvenient to edit the encyclopedia — especially for newbies. - Sashal

I would also prefer not to use them (it's just easier to type two separate letters). Adam Episcopus

I've no idea what OS & keyboard layout you're using, but for me it's no harder to type œ than oe, ﬂ instead of fl etc. That said I think ligatures should be avoided. It up to the user to decide if he wants to turn on automatic ligatures for xml:lang="la" in his browser, and even doing so will allow a regex search for o* stems. Nicolus 23:09 oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Me, I like them. The Esperanto wiki has a system for typing in its accented letters, so that cx becomes cˆ, gx becomes gˆ, and so on. Perhaps we could have here a system where axex becomes æ, or some other nicer-looking system. What do you think? --Gabriel Beecham
- I think that would be pointless. Learn how to use your keyboard correctly instead :-P Nicolus

CalRis25 17:22 apr 12, 2004 (UTC): I'm against ligatures. They only make things more complicated. Ever seen the URL of an article with a ligature in it? Ugly! Also, full text search isn't as easy: "tabula*" would find "tabula" and "tabulae", but NOT "tabulæ. Plus: if we don't use ligatures one doesn't have to remember any sort of special combination of letters.

- This isn't a real reason. I'll bet that the German "ß" doesn't look "too nice" in a browser either. That doesn't mean it should be done away with. Anyway, appearance is a matter of taste - give facts. And are you seriously suggesting that it would be too hard to remember that aex (or something that looks like that) becomes æ? It would be quite useful for quotes etc. -Gabriel Beecham 20:48 iun 25, 2004 (UTC)
  - I think any computer system which can render outline fonts should have wonderful-looking ß'en. Nicolus

my last latin lessons are some years ago, but the first use of ligatures in latin i have seen were in the la.wikipedia... --Listener 15:33 mai 20, 2004 (UTC)

The ligatures are primarily medieval, but still used in modern liturgical Latin. I don't object to leaving them out. There are a (very) few cases where the ligature gives extra information that isn't obvious from the spelling, for instance aer without ligature clearly shows that it is a two-syllable word derived from greek αηρ Mpolo 09:26 aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

I'm a latin student at the moment and we don't use this character at all. Also I don't know how to use it with my keyboard, so I think we shouldn't use ligatures.

I think we all know the most famous medieval ligature: the @ (ad). Nobody would write an e-mail using two characters (at).

What to do with not-even-a-stub articles?

I especially think of those articles containing merely an abbreviation or a Roman number, e.g.

Perhaps one needn't even delete them but rather convert them to redirects to larger articles (e.g. IX pointing to Numerus). That way we could get "rid" of those (at least to me) annoying articles containing only abbreviations and still provide the information inside of them. See below for more thoughts about use of Redirects

They're not all that bad. en.wikipedia has numbers articles, eg 9; the IHS is just a disambig page; most of the others could become good articles. But yeah, that Mercatus_Et_Cena_Shopping_Dining and Verba_principalia_Saxonice look like (and probably are) parts of a textbook. --Gabriel Beecham

CalRis25 17:22 apr 12, 2004 (UTC): Hello, Gabriel. Look at Jasser_Arafat, Juvenalis, Lacerta. I believe that la.Wikipedia is better off without this stuff. We should less articles, but those should be better (and larger as well).

I think there are FAR too many stubs in la:. I mean, click "pagina fortuita" a few times and most of the articles you will come across are less than five lines of content. All of the year/decade/century articles are worthless, just linking to the previous year and the next year etc, with no actual content. Hello! What's the point? It makes la: look like a joke! No-one who comes here is monolingual. Everyone who authors here (not me, i just read and do maintenance) can translate enough latin to do a good job and not have to start every article from scratch. Most of the stubs here are unnecessary. Nicolus 23:09 oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Systematic use of Redirects

I believe that a systematic and widespread use of redirecting pages would greatly improve the usability of la.Wikipedia. For general information read this article. In my opinion there are two major uses for Redirects.

Redirect from former not-even-stub to a summary-article
Article names: create redirect from English article name.

One problem with finding articles in a Latin Version of Wikipedia seems to me to be that one often doesn't have the faintest idea what the correct Latin title might be. Having a redirecting article with an English article name (ideally identical to the ones used in en.wikipedia.org) would simplify this a lot, e.g.

Portugal would point to Lusitania, and
New York would point to Novum Eboracum.

I keep having to remind people, but Portugal ≠ Lusitania.

I strongly agree that English-named redirects should be created. This, more than anything else (except deleting sub-stubs and source material), would increase the usability and attractiveness of the Wikipedia. - Sashal
And not necessarily just English. Perhaps redirects by the regional name, or that name's Latin alphabet transcription if in another alphabet, would be a better system. -- Gabriel Beecham 17:14 apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
CalRis25 17:22 apr 12, 2004 (UTC): redirects by regional name: basically right, but with every new language the number of redirects is getting bigger and bigger and... We shouldn't overdo things at first. We are not enough users to do everything at once. Let's concentrate a bit. Again, English is most widely-used (and easiest) language.
I don't see how the number of redirect would be too big - just the regional name to the Latin name. One per place. The number does not increase exponentially. And, again, no, English is by no means whatsoever the "most widely-used and (easiest) language". Just the opposite. -- Gabriel Beecham 21:04 iun 25, 2004 (UTC)

Remove articles containing only source material

An encyclopedia doesn't contain source material. The articles with texts from the Bible are an example for this, e.g.

Genesis_1: perhaps a redirect [Genesis]->[Biblia]
Gesta_Hammaburgensis_Pontificum_Liber_I_Cap._1-17

By the way, again the problem with the underscore '_'.

Right, those could be moved to Wikisource (there is a whole section for original Latin works). Those have been here forever, I guess they are some of the original articles, so I never deleted them.

I agree, Wikisource is the perfect place for these. -- Gabriel Beecham 17:15 apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Create a Things-to-do-box in the Taberna

Tu quoque adiuvare potes

Review country template (see Beninum)
Mark stubs with boilerplate {{msg:stipula}}

Novus apud Vikipaediam?

General Wikipedia-Infos
How to start a page. How to edit a page. Even more How-tos.

Latin Wikipedia-Specifics
n/a right now

Pagina prima: Errors?

Menu point Nova apud Vicipaediam -> Specialis:Recentchanges
Menu point wikipedia in cunctis linguis is misleading
Width of page doesn't seem to adapt properly to width of desktop

There may be many defective links at the moment, due to the change from Interlingua to Latin. I try to fix them as I find them, so let me know if you find any more.

Make it easier for beginners

Writing a whole article may seem an overwhelming task to most new users of la.Wikipedia. That's probably a major reason for the frustrating existence of all these not-even-a-stub articles. I suggest the creation of some summary-articles, that provide a general view of a subject. A timeline, perhaps one article per century, could be ideal for beginners. They can add an event by writing a sentence or two. That's already enough. If they realize that they want to write more, than branch off to an article of itself (the entry in the summary-article would remain).

Such summary articles probably already exist. We should create (or improve) their structure/formatting, however, so that newcomers only have to add the text. What about some timeline-articles for example. A template might look like this.

**Annales historiae Imperii Romani ab 24 a.C.n.**
Annus	Casus
Annus 1	Casus 1
Annus 2	Casus 2

Of course we would have to discuss and develop this template in depth before actually using it.

Boilerplates are a good idea. There are some at en.wikipedia and fr.wikipedia. -- Gabriel Beecham 17:16 apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
I translated the timeline of en.Wikipedia. Have a look at it in Annales Romae antiquae. I don't really like the way it looks, though. Any suggestions?

Encourage formatting to make articles more legible

Create a Hub for articles about Ancient Rome

As la.Wikipedia's main focus should lie on Ancient Rome but articles about modern stuff shouldn't be banned, I believe that it would be advisable to create a series of general articles or index-articles that string together those articles that specifically deal with Ancient Rome. These articles should be more closely watched, too.

I agree. However, I think a similar index-set should exist for mediaeval topics, either united with the Ancient Roman hub or — more logically — independent of it. - Sashal

CalRis25: You're right there, Sashal! There should be a corresponding index set for every major culture/epoch we add. I believe that we should start out with Ancient Rome and Medieval European history (see en.Wikipedia's article about history). However, we should carefully choose the Latin article names for the articles of the index as they provide a framework for most of the rest. So we shouldn't make any blunder there.

Such a central article or central index should contain:

A brief introduction to the subject delimiting its scope (which period of time, which geographic area)
A main index of articles. This index wouldn't list ALL articles because after a while such a list would get too long, instead it would be just a top-level list.

Such an index/article-hierarchy might look like this:

Level 1: central index pointing to sub-indices covering various topics like notable persons, settlements, provinces, politics, culture
Level 2:
- Index of notable persons of Ancient Rome
- Index of settlements of Ancient Rome (I'm working on this one)
- Index of provinces of Ancient Rome
- Index of events concerning/involving Ancient Rome (see sample template above)
- Indices of articles regarding specific areas, e.g. politics, technology, art etc.
Level 3:
- Articles for individual Romans, e.g. Gaius_Iulius_Caesar
- Articles for individual Roman settlements, e.g. Roma
- Other articles about specific areas that cannot or shouldn't be further sub-divided

Many questions/tasks remain, however. Some examples:

Article naming for biographical articles: Caesar, Iulius Caesar, Gaius Iulius Caesar or...?
Articles about settlements that already existed during the Roman era: should they be merged with articles about the present-day settlement (e.g. just one article titled Roma), or should these be kept seperate (in the latter case: how should the article names show the difference)?.
What should be the name of the central index? My suggestion: Roma Antiqua
What should be the names of sub-indices? Some of them might be:
- Index personae clarae Romae Antiquae
- Annales Romae Antiquae (if it gets too big it could be divided into century-sized articles)
- Index Artium Romae Antiquae (literature, music, theatre etc.)
- Index ...

Problems with this approach:

Where do places/persons etc. fit in of whom the Romans were aware of but not actively involved with?

There is an "Ancient Rome directory" on the English Wikipedia, perhaps we can borrow some of the ideas there. Adam Episcopus

A proper and official name for la.wikipedia.org?

How should we call this site in order to distinguish it from other Wikipedias?

la.Wikipedia?
Vicipoedia?
Vicipaedia?
Vicipedia?
Wikipaedia?
Wicipaedia?
etc.

iirc there are no Ws and ks in latin, so Vici (from veni,vidi,vici) does fit.

is there a translation for encyclopedia? I would prefer the second part from that word for the second part of Vici... --Listener 15:27 mai 20, 2004 (UTC)

Please think about trademark issues when deciding on the official name. If Wikimedia decide to register its trademark, which I hope it will, it will be a lot easier, and cheaper, to do this if we have as few names to register as possible. Does Wikipedia have to be discounted just because it isn't a real Latin word? It's not a real English word either remember. Angela 23:57 mai 24, 2004 (UTC)

CalRis25 18:55 mai 27, 2004 (UTC): Personally I wouldn't mind switching to Wikipedia as the official name as long as we can agree on ONE name. (I've no problem with using the letter "w" for modern names anyway. I don't like at all what happens to names like Washington when forcibly latinized). Personally I think that we should use Wikipedia for the WHOLE project and la.Wikipedia for the Latin version. Still, until now there seems to have existed a consensus that Vicipaedia is the name of the game, and perhaps we shouldn't bother changing anything until Wikipedia really becomes a trademark. Should that happen, it would be best to change all instances of Vicipaed* into Wikiped* using some script or other.

Sir, I hope you don't mind me saying how eager you seem to advance English throughout this Wiki and the entire project. I live in the real world too, but why should English be a bulldozer over all languages? -- Gabriel Beecham 21:04 iun 25, 2004 (UTC)

CalRis25 13:22 iun 28, 2004 (UTC): Well, I don't think that we'll be able to agree on the question of English as an official language. But perhaps the problem itself is of a rather academic kind since most users when communicating with others seem to use English. My ahem regarding Esperanto was about the rather severe lack of followers of that language, not about an inherent inferiority (I'm not a linguist and don't feel able to be judge in that matter). But facts are facts. English is the language of science and commerce, and more and more also that of diplomacy. In Europe English is taught almost in every country to almost every pupil, something that's not true for other languages like French. The main point seem to me to be this: The problem is that every language-support one adds increases the workload. It's not enough to only once write an e.g. French translation of the style-guide. These translations have to be maintained, too. Are you willing to do that? Personally, I wish to concentrate on the encyclopedic side of la.Wikipedia, not on translating maintenance stuff into dozens of languages (which I couldn't do anyway). Due to the rather small number of la.Wikipedians we have to avoid generating unnecessary work. To me, en.Wikipedia is some sort of hub, and so I favour the English language too as some sort of hub. Okay, I make the following suggestion, Gabriel. Make a list of all articles/guides that you believe are absolutely necessary to be translated into other languages, and put it into the Taberna so anyone sees it. There it will have to face Darwin. Either the users will do something or the won't. That should decide matters. By the way, you're probably right about redirects for geographic articles from the respective local languages (and English!!!). Any idea how the proper local article names work, especially regarding accents like the French aigu, grave and cedille or the German Umlaute (&auml, &ouml, &uuml)?

The official Latin word for link

Right now there doesn't seem to be an official word for an internet link. We need one, however, for recommending sections like the Latin translation of ==External Links== Looking it up in several web-sites I encountered four different words:

coniunctio, -ionis f (combination, union; association, connection; friendship, intimacy; marrage, relationship by blood; sympathy, affinity; gram. conjunction)
ligamen, -inis n (string, tie; bandage)
nexus, -us m (bond; tie of kindship etc.; legal obligation; grip in wrestling; embrace; combination)
nodus, -i m (knot in wood; node in stem of grass or plant; bond, tie; obligation; knotty point, problem, difficulty; coil of serpent; check, restraint)

The first two words I found in this web-site, while the last two words appeared only in la.Wikipedia.

CalRis25: I would suggest that we declare official (via the style guide) the word nexus. To me it seems to have the closest link to what a link is. I don't like Nodus because it seems to suggest spatial extent. By the way, the above mentioned web-site uses nodus to translate the word (Internet) node. The word coniunctio is a close second, but I still prefer nexus.

I like ligamen or nexus. Gabriel Beecham

Traupman gives conexus, -us (m) for link. He also gives it for connection ... Carolus

I prefer coniuctio and nexus. My best is nexus, because coniuctio sounds stringly a matter of grammar. It's not good to use a word associating with anything stronger than the reffered matter. KIZU 23:48 mai 19, 2004 (UTC)

I was always a fan of Vinculum, myself. --Tbook 21:04 aug 14, 2005 (UTC)

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