Template talk:Lang

Foreign-language article titles

archived to Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Text_formatting/Archive_7#Foreign-language_article_titles

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Foreign-language article titles

31 August 2021 (UTC)

Forced prefixing of *

I've just noticed that use of codes for protolanguages, as in {{lang|cel-x-proto|...}}, forces a prepended * (indicating a construction unattested in surviving materials). This is undesirable, since in the vast majority of cases what we're going to be doing is replacing existing in-article strings with bare italics and no lang markup, like *''kal-'', with templated replacements, e.g. *{{lang|cel-x-proto|kal-}}, but this produces a double ** which has to be manually fixed. And there are apt to be tabular-data cases (interlinear glosses, etc.) in which an entire row of cells is prefixed with * and specific words or morphemes in particular cells follow this and should not each individually have * but should still have language markup. At bare minimum we need a way to suppress this "auto-*" behavior, but ideally it would be off by default and turned on only by a parameter switch, since it is unexpected, inconsistent, completely undocumented, and almost always editorially unhelpful. PS: If this does get changed, please ping me, since I will need to go fix Caledonians#Etymology and some other things to have non-templated * again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:35, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Two thoughts: there is some value to the asterisk symbol as unattested (especially if we tooltip the first occurrence à la {{c.}}), so could we use {{asterisk}}, or perhaps (new) {{unattested}} and have that resolve to {{asterisk}}? Alternatively, what about just using one of the many star-shaped thingies that look like asterisk, but aren't, e.g.,

❋ (U+274B HEAVY EIGHT TEARDROP-SPOKED PROPELLER ASTERISK) (my favorite, but several more hidden in the wikicode).

Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 11:17, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Already exists but, alas, not documented:

{{lang|cel-x-proto|kal-}} → *kal-

{{lang|cel-x-proto|kal-|proto=no}} → kal-

{{lang-cel-x-proto|kal-}} → Proto-Celtic: *kal-

{{lang-cel-x-proto|kal-|proto=no}} → Proto-Celtic: kal-

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Testing bullet-asterisk interaction with proto asterisk:

• one asterisk, to make a bullet item
• *kal- one asterisk, followed immediately by {{lang|cel-x-proto|kal-}}
• one asterisk to make another bullet item

Looks good. We should document Module code starting at line 791 of the Module in a new, level-4 subsection 'Proto' at Template:Lang, probably to live under section § Formatting. Mathglot (talk) 20:05, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

But wait—you said in sentence 2, but this produces a double ** which has to be manually fixed, so what was your example that produced a double asterisk? It seems to be the identical code that works just above. Can you reproduce your error case below? Mathglot (talk) 20:14, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Code for Anatolian languages

@Trappist the monk: I need a private-use language tag for Anatolian languages. Antiquistik (talk) 20:32, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Propose one. You know the rules for making a private-use tag.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:45, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Does anat work? Or is it already assigned? Antiquistik (talk) 21:51, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

and the rest of it?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:01, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I have no idea. I will need your help for that. Antiquistik (talk) 00:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm just the coder. Perhaps you can consult with WP:Languages or WP:Linguistics or some other such wikiproject.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:07, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Would ine-x-anatolia work? Antiquistik (talk) 17:59, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

{{lang|ine-x-anatolia|text}} → text

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:20, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Thanks! Antiquistik (talk) 19:00, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Changes

Has something changed with this? I don't know the ins and outs of the module/template but the way it displays at 2022 Comhairle nan Eilean Siar election has changed and I'm not sure what I'd need to alter so it displays correctly. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 13:35, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Nothing has changed in the module. Here is the history of that template in 2022 Comhairle nan Eilean Siar election:

• at this edit, you added the template {{lang-for||Scottish Gaelic|Council of the Western Isles}}
• at this edit, using AWB, I changed it to {{lang-for|gd||Council of the Western Isles}}
• at this edit, I changed it to {{lang-for|gd|'''[[Comhairle nan Eilean Siar]]'''|Council of the Western Isles}}
• at this edit, Editor Pedia9jb6l changed it to {{lang-for|gd|[[Comhairle nan Eilean Siar]]|Council of the Western Isles}}

On 10 April 2024, this edit by Editor PK2 changed {{lang-for}} from a redirect to {{Language with name/for}} to a {{lang-??}} template. That change broke the template on 2022 Comhairle nan Eilean Siar election. The editor did not explain why that change was made. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Lang-for indicates that there may be more articles that were broken by this edit.

I have reverted the edit at {{lang-for}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:14, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks very much for looking into this and for fixing it. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 09:00, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Create {{lang-isv}} and other relevant templates for Interslavic

Interslavic has recently received an ISO 639-3 code: isv. Latin and Cyrillic are equal in status in Interslavic, just like in Serbo-Croatian. –Vipz (talk) 09:34, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

isv not listed in the current (2024-03-07) version of the IANA language-subtag-registry file so nothing to be done yet.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:42, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Quoting multiple alternative translations

How does one correctly quote multiple translations using this template? I am trying to fix an issue on German Air Force, which includes in its lede the problematic lang-de template

German: Luftwaffe, lit. 'air weapon or air arm'

from the source code

{{lang-de|'''Luftwaffe'''|lit=air weapon or air arm}}

which is not quoted correctly. I can fix this by doing

{{lang-de|'''Luftwaffe'''|lit=air weapon' or 'air arm}}

leading to

German: Luftwaffe, lit. 'air weapon' or 'air arm'

but this is a rather inelegant hack. Is there a better way to quote multiple lit values?

I have searched the talk archives here but couldn't find anything if this had been asked before. Thanks, Ainlina(box)? 15:30, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

In context, it would seem to me that |lit=air force is a better choice for the lead. If you wish to delve into the etymology of the word, perhaps a footnote linking the Wiktionary German entry for Luftwaffe is appropriate.

Recently, there has been discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history § Luftwaffe, lang template/italics or not? that you might find interesting.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:51, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, unfortunately I have very little subject matter knowledge, and was just browsing and encountered some bad formatting. Is there a correct way to do this if two translations are both needed due to ambiguity? Thanks, Ainlina(box)? 17:05, 29 April 2024 (UTC)