Talk:Vocabulary

Layout

This is excellent! But before you get too much further, I'm a little worried about using tables for everything. They frankly a pain in the butt to work with, and it's easy for even experienced Wiki editors to have trouble with them. Templates can take arguments... perhaps we could agree on some layout here, and then use that in the main dictionary (unless of course everyone else adores tables)? Wm.annis 20:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad, that you like it. About the tables: I'm not a very experienced Wiki-editor, so I choosed tables, because I thought they would do it. If there are other ways to produce alike results, I'm keen on learning about them. So, if you have got some advice or suggestions about better ways for the layout, Id like to hear them. Na'rìghawnu 08:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC) 22:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, I suggest removing the tables and doing the vocabulary as plain text, like the following example. Any comments? Na'rìghawnu 08:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

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'ekong [Ɂɛkoŋ] (N). beat (rhythmic), e. g. heart~. ► ekong telanä - the beat of the hearts (ASG, Weaving Song).

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That looks awesome. Wm.annis 15:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

It might be good to put the translations in quotes, so we can plain, unquoted text to make quick comments about the grammar of a word, etc. Also, do we really want to enter plurals as separate entries? Wm.annis 15:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree - it looks awesome. I also agree that the translations of the sourced examples should be in quotation marks; I don't think the English definitions of the entries themselves should be, though (I'm not sure if that's what you meant or not, Wm.) -- Erimeyz 16:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Right, I mean in the examples, not the definition. Wm.annis 16:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok. I will do this. Na'rìghawnu 16:30, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

My next question — why use red to indicate the accent, when Frommer has already given us a way to do that, which is just as fussy in wiki markup as making the font red?

Because underling often causes problems, e. g. to separate "y" and "v" (as it did in frommers message text too). I see the red color as a much better way not to interfere with the letters. Na'rìghawnu 16:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah! That makes sense. Can we choose a less alarming color, though? ;) Actually, we could write a very simple template to wrap a stressed syllable in, so if we don't like the look, we can easily change all of them by updating the template. Wm.annis 16:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Very well! Since I'm not very expercienced in writing templates, I would appreciate any help. (If you could write such a template, I'd surely use it. Na'rìghawnu 16:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Done. Take a look at the T section for examples. Wm.annis 16:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Fine! Thanks. But how about a bit darker green? (Maybe it's just my monitor, but letters seem to be a bit too light.)

How about purple? Wm.annis 17:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

 :-) Perfect! Na'rìghawnu 08:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Na'rìghawnu 16:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC) And about the separate plurals ... well, I thought it would be helpfull (exspecially for beginners), because it's not so easy to guess, that the word is "koren", when in the text, where you found the word, it is "horen" for instance. I allways liked e. g. my Greek dictionary, which gave me a hint, when I tried to find irregular verbs or so. Of course, the plurals are not absolutely necessary, but do they cause problems? Na'rìghawnu 16:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense, too, I guess. I'd make them simpler entries, I guess, just give the word they're a plural of and maybe a brief definition, but no citation data or examples. Does that make sense? Wm.annis 16:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds OK to me. Will change it after dinner. ;-) Na'rìghawnu 16:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Outstanding work y'all are doing here, guys. It really looks great, and contains exactly the information we'd want in a lexicon (and no more!). I love the format. Keep up the good work! -- Erimeyz 03:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

You are very welcome, Erimeyz. Let's make this a useful tool for the Na'vi community. If there are further suggestions or comments don't hesitate to speak about it. Na'rìghawnu 07:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Division of Labor

Ma Na'rìghawnu, if you want to point out sections in need of work, please feel free to make a list. I'm happy to fill in parts of the dictionary, but I don't want to accidentally start an edit in the same sections you might be working on. Wm.annis 20:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Ma William, thanks for the support. Well, it's a bit difficult for me to point out sections, because I don't do the list alphabetically or so. The way I do it is, that (1.) I have done a complete analysis of all the corpus-texts we have (without Jake's script for now), (2.) I go through the analized corpus texts/sentences step by step and add new vocabulary into the wiki as they appear in the texts/sentences (intentionally omitting words, where I'm still not sure how to handle them). Using this method I until now added the vocabs of all the interviews and the complete Weaving Song. Now I'm working on the Hunt Song. Next will be A Message From Paul. I hope, that I can complete this until today's evening (well, German evening). When this is done, there is surely still left work and things to discuss:

1. Will we also add the vocabs from the ASG-dictionary (even without having any sentences, where these words are used)? Na'rìghawnu 07:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

2. How to discuss vocabs, which seem problematic (at least to me)? Do we do this here or do we start a thread in the forum? Na'rìghawnu 07:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

3. I didn't deal with the stressed syllables very much until now. (This is a thing you may add at any time, since I'm surely not working on it in the next days.) Was the underlining in AMFP done by Frommer himself or did other people do it according what they heard in the spoken message? Na'rìghawnu 07:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I suggest using the forums for discussion. The wiki talk pages are okay for short exchanges about wiki pages themselves (like this!), but language analysis will often need more extensive conversations, and the forum has better mechanisms to support that. Also, by talking on the forum, more people will be likely to see it, which leads to a better discussion (and greater awareness of the wiki's existence, but that's a separate matter).

The stress marking in AMFP was provided by Frommer, according to Prrton. -- Erimeyz 14:26, 25 January 2010 (UTC)