Category talk:English countable proper nouns
Latest comment: 8 years ago by -sche in topic RFC discussion: August 2014–January 2016
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- Previous discussion: Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2014/July#Proper nouns
{{en-proper noun}} now puts entries here whenever they have a plural. Per the discussion, many of these are probably actually common nouns that have been miscategorised. —CodeCat 13:17, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
- I am going through them in AWB. About 50 were acronyms with {{en-proper noun|undefined}} as their headword line — strange. Others are common nouns. Others are personal names which are OK as-is. - -sche (discuss) 19:13, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
- I'd forgotten that we have lots of abbreviations of individual entities and that we had decided to show them with parts of speech. The plurals really seem unnatural, but not necessarily, eg, "Today I looked at the websites for the YMCAs in my county.". So maybe we do need to control the display of proper noun at the level of individual entries. Sigh. DCDuring TALK 19:59, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
- Are we the only dictionary that bothers including regular plurals? Most of them only list a plural if it's something unpredictable like "mice" or "stadia" or "appendices". As usual, everyone is wasting time on rubbish when they could be adding actual words we are missing. Equinox ◑ 09:03, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- It's one of the advantages to not being paper. We also list the inflected forms of words in inflecting languages like Latin, which most if not all other dictionaries don't. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- I can't find an on-line dictionary that uses computer power to show plurals either, including those that have no print counterpart. Perhaps the OED or beginning language learner dictionaries? Does anyone know of one? DCDuring TALK 13:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- It is curious (and unhelpful) that the common online dictionaries don't list plurals. When I look at Merriam-Webster Online and Dictionary.com, the lack of plurals makes it impossible to tell there's a difference in terms of countability / pluralization between cat (countable) and anger (usually uncountable). - -sche (discuss) 15:39, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- Cambridge Advanced Learners' Dictionary (online) says "A good learner’s dictionary will tell you how to make the plural of any noun." on a special page, which can be accessed from the entry for plural, but it does not actually show the plural for -s plurals in entries. So either there is dissension in the ranks or they believe that the special page suffices. Most good dictionaries cover uncountability by marking the word and/or its senses, as we do. I suppose they are trying to reduce screen clutter a bit by excluding plurals, probably believing that regular plural formation is one of the very first things that language learners pick up.
- Learners dictionaries also don't confuse learners by including all the special cases that we include, eg, rare uncountability, rare and obsolete spelling, including digraphs. Even having multiple languages seems to confuse some potential users. Simple is an effort to address the needs of learners who are put off by such complications. I firmly believe that one of the things that we cannot be is an introductory English learners dictionary. DCDuring TALK 16:13, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- It is curious (and unhelpful) that the common online dictionaries don't list plurals. When I look at Merriam-Webster Online and Dictionary.com, the lack of plurals makes it impossible to tell there's a difference in terms of countability / pluralization between cat (countable) and anger (usually uncountable). - -sche (discuss) 15:39, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- I can't find an on-line dictionary that uses computer power to show plurals either, including those that have no print counterpart. Perhaps the OED or beginning language learner dictionaries? Does anyone know of one? DCDuring TALK 13:31, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- It's a fallacy to think that people would be adding words if they weren't adding plurals, or indeed to think that they should be adding words rather than plurals. Language learners are one of Wiktionary's audiences, and knowing how cat and Cat pluralize is helpful to them.
- -sche (discuss) 15:39, 5 August 2014 (UTC)- Are there any facts that say who make up our usership, especially repeat passive users?
- Has our slogan been further extended further into the absurdly impractical: "All senses of all collocations in all spellings in all languages for all users (except don't bother inserting translation tables for most entries)"? DCDuring TALK 17:28, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
- It's one of the advantages to not being paper. We also list the inflected forms of words in inflecting languages like Latin, which most if not all other dictionaries don't. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:48, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- Are we the only dictionary that bothers including regular plurals? Most of them only list a plural if it's something unpredictable like "mice" or "stadia" or "appendices". As usual, everyone is wasting time on rubbish when they could be adding actual words we are missing. Equinox ◑ 09:03, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
- I went through these again. Most were OK, like Ryan. Several dozen were words that had both proper and common noun senses which had been lumped together under "proper noun", like Paiwan. A couple dozen were common nouns that were mislabelled, and a handful were cases where someone used the first unnamed parameter as if it were head=. - -sche (discuss) 08:48, 27 January 2016 (UTC)