User talk:Mahagaja

• /Archive 1 (January 2007 to January 2012)
• /Archive 2 (February 2012 to May 2012)
• /Archive 3 (June 2012 to May 2013)
• /Archive 4 (June to August 2013)
• /Archive 5 (September 2013 to February 2014)
• /Archive 6 (March to July 2014)
• /Archive 7 (August to September 2014)
• /Archive 8 (October 2014 to April 2015)
• /Archive 9 (May to November 2015)
• /Archive 10 (December 2015 to March 2016)
• /Archive 11 (April to August 2016)
• /Archive 12 (September 2016)
• /Archive 13 (October to November 2016)
• /Archive 14 (December 2016)
• /Archive 15 (January to April 2017)
• /Archive 16 (May to September 2017)
• /Archive 17 (October to December 2017)
• /Archive 18 (January to March 2018)
• /Archive 19 (April 2018 to February 2019)
• /Archive 20 (March to December 2019)
• /Archive 21 (January to February 2020)
• /Archive 22 (March to July 2020)
• /Archive 23 (August to September 2020)
• /Archive 24 (October 2020 to March 2021)
• /Archive 25 (April 2021 to January 2022)
• /Archive 26 (February 2022 to January 2023)
• /Archive 27 (February to November 2023)
• /Archive 28 (December 2023 to February 2024)
• /Archive 29 (March to November 2024)
• /Archive 30 (December 2024 to December 2025)

A little help restoring deleted info

Hello, So I had added some thoroughly cited information to a few language pages while editing admittedly as a sock, and now I am currently blocked. And as a result a couple users had hounded my account and edits, and sadly removed all of the info that I added to the following pages. Could you possibly restore the info I added to the pages at least? I truly want to display this cited info for the public, at least. I am doing this for the viewers, and the readers, and especially indigenous peoples trying to learn their forgotten tongue. I also deeply care about the rights of indigenous peoples across the world, and this is why that info was added. The following pages and their revisions are listed here to undo.

Warrwa lanugage; Ngadjuri language; Arutani language; Gkuthaarn language; Mbara-Yanga language; Yanda language; Yalarnnga language

If you could undo all of these deletions, that would be incredibly helpful. Thanks Fdom5997 (talk) 03:02, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

please see #Blocked for sockpuppetry. Thanks, LuniZunie (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

@LuniZunie Stop hounding me, or this won't go well. Fdom5997 (talk) 03:08, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Block evasion

Please extend the blocking time of AleksiB 1945's alt IPs like ~2026-10187-71 ~2026-10187-71 (talk) 09:06, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Old Irish quotations

I've been wondering why you're moving them to separate pages. Are you moving all of them or just some? What's your rationale? —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 00:44, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

@Caoimhin ceallach: A while back there was a vote abolishing ====Quotations==== as a subheader, so all quotations have to be either inline directly under the definition or else on a separate page. Since putting quotations inline directly under the definition effectively renders them invisible to most users, putting them on a separate page is the only way people will know they exist. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:05, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree that you're making them more visible that way. (My first thought was that you're moving quotations you considered less relevant to the entry.) All you had to do was click on the quotations button and you could see all the information you wanted to see together on one page. Now the quotations are isolated on a separate page. —Caoimhin ceallach (talk) 10:09, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

As long as the {{see citations}} tag is there, people will know where to find them. Experienced users know how to reveal quotations with the quotations button, but newbies don't. And sometimes Javascript doesn't work properly, and then all collapsed info on the page (not just the quotations) is completely invisible. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:20, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Redirects from varia

Hello :) hope you are fine. My health is not good, but I would like to edit more. But since Medieval Greek was turned down twice and thrice, I got so sad at en.wikt. Just curious, seeing this redirect from 2021 Did you make it on purpose? Were more like this intended? Thank you. ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 14:56, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

@Sarri.greek: I'm sorry you haven't been well. I used to make redirects from forms with the grave accent to forms with the acute on a regular basis, but they're no longer necessary, because now linking a form labeled "grc" with the grave accent automatically takes you to the form with the acute accent. So while a bare link like [[αὐτὼ]] still takes advantage of the redirect, a form using a template, like {{l|grc|αὐτὼ}} takes you there directly without going through the redirect: αὐτὼ (autṑ). —Mahāgaja · talk 15:01, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

I see. At el.wikt we cannot have this automatic feature. But is not the number of these infinite? What we do with one page, must we not do with all? I was about to scorn an editor for creating one such wikt:el:αὐτὼ, and then, I saw your name at History of the English page. Of course, I cannot delete his page now... :) ‑‑Sarri.greek ^♫ I 15:21, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Not literally infinite, but certainly very large. Doing it automatically is definitely preferable. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:52, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

time-night

Hello Mahagaja,

Any idea what the word "time-night" means or even if it means anything? Are you able to come up with any cites on your end?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Citations:time-night

It was originally inputted under the "derived terms" section of time many moons ago. Also, it appears on a list of red-links of the page of the late Robert Ullman: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Robert_Ullmann/Oldest_redlinks#time-ball.

Thank you. box16 (talk) 20:49, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, I've never heard the expression. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:52, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the prompt response. box16 (talk) 20:52, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Box16: see the RFD nomination of type shit. It looks to me like [...] time + nights. Looking at the cites: " for some time nights" could be paraphrased as "for some time, working the night shift". Likewise, "during which you spent your time nights when here at Blomstrom's house" could be paraphrased as: "you spent your time in the evenings at Blomstrom's house when you were here". Again: "I don't know if he spent any of his time nights culturing coffee" could be "I don't know if he spent any of his time at night on culturing coffee". Finally: "I had questioned him where he was spending his time nights when he would be away" could be "I had questioned him where he was spending his time when he would be away in the evening". A whole lot of nothing... Chuck Entz (talk) 21:22, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the follow up. The only reason I keep revisiting this term is because it was listed in the redlinks of the late, great Robert Ullmann. He seemed like a very erudite and knowledgeable fellow. Did you by chance ever interact with him? box16 (talk) 05:12, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Quick question about hʼer

I made this entry to fill out a variation of her, and now I'm wondering if the form of apostrophe is obligate. Should this be at h'er? Should that title redirect here? Would it be an alternative spelling of hʼer? bd2412 T 04:32, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

@BD2412: I wondered that too, but I don't know anything about Megleno-Romanian, nor could I find anything at Wikipedia. Basically, if it's functioning as a letter, it should be the modifier letter ʼ (which is what it currently is), but if it's functioning as punctuation (e.g. indicating elision of a letter) it should be the straight apostrophe '. I think the general practice at Wiktionary is to use only those two, and not use the curly apostrophe ’ in page names at all. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:50, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

I will leave it as is, then, and eventually someone more expert than ourselves will either fix or verify it. bd2412 T 20:49, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Ó Searcaigh's R vs r

I may very well be wrong but, from my interpretation of pages 97-99, it looks like he’s using r for a weak tap and R for a strong trill?

I was looking for different uses of /rˠ/ and /rʲ/ (as they are usually typos) using this insource search, since I remember seeing an /rʲ/ sourced with Ó Searcaigh pop up in the maintenance category a bit ago and forgot to check it out. From that search, the words with this source which I was going to change are dord, dornán, and fear foirne (all p10) as they are transcribed with r which looked like /ɾˠ/ to me. I haven’t read the whole book so idk if I’m missing something. Saighneánach (talk) 17:34, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

@Saighneánach: Oh, you're right, sorry! He does indeed use "r" meaning /ɾˠ/ in those words. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:45, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

No problem. I was going to say I'd correct them now but you beat me to it, thank you. Saighneánach (talk) 18:04, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Portuguese/Spanish terms from Vandalic

I have a question about a change that you did a while ago replacing some Gothic derived words in Hispanic languages to Vandalic (adrede, álamo etc.), namely how did you come to that conclusion that these words are borrowed from Vandalic? All of the resources dealing with Spanish or Portuguese (like Coromines, Machado or Nascentes) don't claim any Vandalic origin and I find it hard how a group of people, who only stayed in Iberia for, at most 20 years, could leave such an impact on a language, especially since the Goths had a 250+ year reign in Iberia and contributed heavily to the languages in Iberia. Xwefeld (talk) 20:19, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

I honestly don't remember making those changes, let alone the reason why I did. Feel free to change it back. —Mahāgaja · talk 20:32, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Bilingual references as English reference templates

Howdy! I do not believe we have had any prior correspondence; so, pleased to meet you! Now to business: Should bilingual references (that feature English) be listed under English references, as seen in Template:R:yi:Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary? I've skimmed through the list of transclusions and did not observe any English terms. Additionally, although a bilingual dictionary may provide additional insight into a term's meaning (or other features), the category's purpose would be seemingly defeated if we applied this reasoning to all bilingual dictionaries that include English. TranqyPoo [💬 | ✏️] 02:42, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

I used {{refcat}} so it isn't in there anymore. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:06, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Irish declension missing t-prothesis "an tSeapáinis"

Dia duit! I found a problem in the Irish Declension table for Seapáinis which is missing the initial t mutation after the article. An tSeapáinis https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Seap%C3%A1inis

It is using the following template

Declension of Seapáinis (second declension, no plural)

bare forms singular nominative Seapáinis vocative a Seapáinis genitive Seapáinise dative Seapáinis forms with the definite article singular nominative an Seapáinis genitive na Seapáinise dative leis an Seapáinis don Seapáinis

Here is the correct delension on teanglann.ie https://www.teanglann.ie/en/gram/Seap%c3%a1inis

There is more information about the t-prothesis mutation on

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Irish_mutations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_initial_mutations

Can you help correct this problem? Go raibh maith agat! Christopher2026 (talk) 10:58, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

@Christopher2026: Fixed. The declension template was using its parameters incorrectly. —Mahāgaja · talk 11:40, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Ok, great! Thanks for your quick fix and reply. Christopher2026 (talk) 11:46, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Poor Entry for -εδών

Hello! We haven't corresponded before, so I would like to thank you for introducing me to Wiktionary. Now let's get to the matter at hand.

When elaborating on the suffix for κοτυληδών, I surmised that it must be -δών, or a similar suffix (e.g., -εδών) with a vowel augment, comparing it to Latin -tudo. In the P.I.E. entry for *-h₃onh₂-, under Ancient Greek, it is written that it evolved into the form -εδών (-edṓn) / -ηδών (-ēdṓn) (e.g. τηκεδών (tēkedṓn, “melting away, consumption”), ἀλγηδών (algēdṓn, “pain, suffering”)). However, the use of the suffix in κοτυληδών does not match the definition "Derives adjectives, nouns indicating possession, denoting burden, authority," nor the examples provided for Ancient Greek, which seems to imply that Greek kept the "burden" use. Therefore, my problems are with κοτυληδών: Is the suffix from -εδών after a vowel contraction (η + ε), and if so, does this usage imply that the suffix can also form nouns? In other words, the etymology of κοτυληδών needs verification, and the page of -εδών needs more citations and a lot of clean-up. Thank you for helping me verify information. It-is-Truly-Meet (talk) 06:51, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

It's common enough for adjectives to be substantivized and become nouns, but usually the word in question is also attested in its adjectival use, which doesn't seem to be the case for κοτυληδών (kotulēdṓn). On the other hand, not one of the words listed at -εδών#Derived terms is an adjective, so what evidence is there that such an adjective-forming suffix even exists? —Mahāgaja · talk 07:25, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

1. Since all of the derived terms under -εδών seem to be from a pre-Greek substrate, including κοτυληδών (i.e., -εδών was present in the pre-Greek word), it would be logical to conclude that the suffix is pre-Greek and not derived from *-h₃onh₂-. Instead, -εδών might function similarly to -υλη. However, I would need a citation from Beekes to testify this.
2. I am currently uncertain as to whether there were adjectival forms of the derived terms in the said pre-Greek substrate; -εδών as a pre-Greek adjective-forming suffix might be plausible, and the terms borrowed in Greek were likely substantivized.

What are your thoughts? It-is-Truly-Meet (talk) 17:51, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

Not all of them are from a pre-Greek substrate, some of them are place names outside Greece, like Σιδών (Sidṓn)}}. You're the one who created the entry for this suffix, where did you get the suggestion that it comes from *-h₃onh₂-? —Mahāgaja · talk 17:57, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

I got the suggestion from -tudo#Etymology: "Compare Ancient Greek -σῠ́νη (-sŭ́nē) and -δών (-dṓn)." It-is-Truly-Meet (talk) 18:31, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

I also assume that place names (e.g., Σιδών) are not derived from the suffix. It-is-Truly-Meet (talk) 18:42, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

Re: edit on "samhradh"

The reason I spliced the two South Argyll pronunciations of samhradh together is that they are phonemic and phonetic transcriptions of the same thing. /ə/ in Islay/Colonsay etc in that context is analysed by modern dialectologists (Jones, Scouller, pretty sure Grannd as well though I can't immediately check) as [ɪ̈]. Complementary phonemic and phonetic transcriptions are regularly not separated by a pipe on wiktionary. SaoiDunNeachdain (talk) 08:10, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

I think it's only very recently that {{IPA|xx|/.../ [...]}} doesn't throw an error though. It certainly used to. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:30, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

It was fixed as of a year or two ago, I think. Benwing2 (talk) 21:20, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

addition of checkparams to Template:sga-conj-table-simple

That didn't go well. It led to ~595 errors. It seems that Module:sga-verbs examines the template table code to determine the valid params, and the addition of checkparams broke this. 21:15, 6 July 2026 (UTC) Benwing2 (talk) 21:15, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I haven't quite figured out when checkparams work and when they don't. —Mahāgaja · talk 21:16, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

It appears from the code in Module:sga-verbs that it implements its own equivalent of checkparams, so it shouldn't be necessary to add it here. Was there a specific issue you ran into that prompted you to add this? Benwing2 (talk) 21:19, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

Not directly. I was working on cromb and wanted to add it to {{sga-adj}}; then I thought, "Why not add it to all the Old Irish headword-line and inflection templates?" And now I have my answer to "why not". —Mahāgaja · talk 21:26, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

FWOTD Lower Sorbian Nominations

Thank you for making those handful of terms feature-ready! TranqyPoo [💬 | ✏️] 15:12, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

You're welcome! —Mahāgaja · talk 15:15, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Ancient Greek vowel length marks

Hi - could you please stop adding explicit breves to vowels with unknown length in {{grc-IPA}}? I know it's to stop entries from piling up in Category:Ancient Greek terms with incomplete pronunciation, but it causes a couple of (big) issues:

1. I've encountered quite a few entries where a naive editor has extrapolated those lengths out to the whole entry, and often they turn out to be wrong (i.e. I was able to verify that one of them was either long or truly unknowable). Obviously the fault lies with them for spreading bad info, but it's easily avoidable by not giving them the opportunity in the first place.
2. You are basically just taking the batteries out of the smoke alarm: the problem of unknown lengths doesn't go away just because you suppressed the warning about it. Instead, we now have the (much bigger) problem of having no way to systematically keep track of which entries don't yet have vowel length filled out, and because of point number 1, we also now have a load of false positives that means we have a much harder job of determining what's reliable and what's not. Since you've been doing this for the better part of a decade, many of these false lengths have even been carried over to other entries by naive editors (e.g. in derivations), too.

Thanks. Pinging @Benwing2 @Mellohi! @Chuck Entz Theknightwho (talk) 04:36, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

@Mahagaja Have you really been marking unknown lengths with breves for most of a decade now? If it weren't @Theknightwho making this allegation I wouldn't believe it because it's such an obviously wrong thing to do and you are known as a careful editor who wouldn't make such mistakes. If in fact you've been doing this I'm completely dumbfounded. Benwing2 (talk) 05:14, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

@Theknightwho, Benwing2: I do try to verify the length of vowels before marking them, or else set them to a time period (koi1 or later) when vowel length has become irrelevant if it looks like the word isn't attested earlier than Koine, but I'm sure there are times I've made mistakes. If a word's vowel length is known to be unknown, just don't use {{grc-IPA}} on it. Another option would be to allow {{grc-IPA}} to accept input like |ᾱ̆ and display "if the alpha is long, /aː/; if the alpha is short, /a/" or even just /a(ː)/. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:07, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you want to keep track of Ancient Greek words with a vowel of undetermined or indeterminable length, cat:Ancient Greek terms with incomplete pronunciation is a terrible place to do it. There should be some way of tagging such words that will put them in a category like cat:Ancient Greek terms with uncertain vowel length, which would be an etymological property category, not a cleanup category. —Mahāgaja · talk 09:05, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

I would think the macron-breve combination ᾱ̆ should properly indicate a vowel that can be either long or short. It wouldn't seem right to use it to mean "we don't know the vowel length".

In any case, @Theknightwho can you point to cases where @Mahagaja has wrongly added breves without apparently checking the vowel length or doing it in cases where the length is unknown? Benwing2 (talk) 17:44, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

@Benwing2 I encounter them fairly regularly, but you appreciate that this affects about 60,000 entries, right? 20,000 of which are lemmas. Almost every ancient Greek entry has {{grc-IPA}}. Theknightwho (talk) 17:49, 12 September 2026 (UTC)

@Theknightwho Yes I'm aware of this. You have said that Mahagaja is marking unknown lengths with breves just to get things out of a tracking category. This is an absolute rookie type of mistake that causes massive damage to the dictionary, and Mahagaja AFAICT is denying having done this, so I'm asking for examples where they have done this. If it's true that they have a pattern of doing this, this needs to be brought to the Beer parlour because it's a huge issue, but I need to see proof before acting further. Benwing2 (talk) 18:03, 12 September 2026 (UTC)