# Talk:Wede

The article contained this sentence: "From German's alphabet, Baumann removed the letters ⟨v⟩, ⟨c⟩, ⟨j⟩, and substituted the multigraphs ⟨ph⟩, ⟨qu⟩, ⟨ch⟩, ⟨sch⟩, and ⟨pf⟩ for ⟨f⟩, ⟨kw⟩, ⟨k⟩, ⟨f⟩, and ⟨sh⟩." This looks backward to me – e.g., it's already sch and not sh in standard German. (Possibly just a misuse of the word "substitute".) But User:Frzzl has reverted my change, so I'd be glad to know if there's something I've missed here. Thanks! Alkari (?), 14 July 2023, 20:33 UTC

Hi, very sorry for reverting your edit since yeah, looks like I have blockheaded-ly misused the word “substitute” and didn’t realise the interpretation it gave was inverted - “for” should probably be “in place of”, or just swap it round. I’ll fix it now, thank you very much for pointing it out.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  20:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Glad we're on the same page after all – thanks very much! Alkari (?), 15 July 2023, 00:16 UTC

A fascinating article. Good work! However:

"the similarity of the interrogatives in Esperanto" // Similarity to what? (To the declaratives?)
"a reminiscent caricature" // In my idiolect, reminiscent requires a PP complement headed by of, so "a reminiscent caricature" is actually ungrammatical. But grammar aside, I don't understand this NP.
"genitive construction can be formed as compound words" // Another mystery. One problem may be some people's loose (and I think wrong-headed) use of "genitive" to cover uses of von (de) or of (en): so I don't know how to interpret "genitive" here: narrowly or loosely. And "compound word" also has a degree of polysemy.
"demarcated with a vowel change" // "distinguished via ablaut", perhaps?
"An example of the orthography of Weltdeutsch, from Baumann's 1916 book. The reintroduction of umlauts, as well as various consonant changes remaining from Wede." // This is a caption, and I think it violates the conventions of captions, whereby either one or more sentences or a single NP is OK; but not one NP, full stop, another NP, full stop.
"The language was a posteriori" // "The languages were a posteriori", perhaps?
-- Hoary (talk) 11:53, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your comments! Here are the changes I've made, please split them up if you disagree with them:
"similarity of" => "similarity between"
"reminiscent caricature of" => "caricature reminiscent of"
Baumann is interpreting the genitive in a loose manner, so I've added some more information about the case system, and specified that we're using closed compounds.
done
removed the second NP
done
 Frzzl  talk; contribs  20:18, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
All but the first are good, Frzzl. As for the first, very likely I'm misunderstanding something, but wouldn't the similarity between/among interrogatives in Esperanto make the Esperanto interrogative easier to acquire? Admittedly I know nothing about the Esperanto interrogative, and if I did then I might understand. Well, turning to English, I could talk of the similarity among perfect clauses: each has a matrix clause headed by auxiliary verb haveand a subjectless subordinate clause headed by a past participle. Let's imagine for a moment that have were limited to imperfective meanings (I have tried to get him to understand [but haven't yet succeeded]) whereas perfective required be (I am tried to get him to understand [but now am through with the attempt]): less similarity; rather more for the L2 student to master. -- Hoary (talk) 22:54, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Baumann's criticism is that they're all really similar, so they're harder to learn: "wer vermag ferner ohne die größte muehe und ohne umständliches Ueberlegen im Flusse des Sprechens folgende klanglich nur wenig unterschiede Furworter zu merken" = "Who, without great effort and complicated deliberation, can differentiate the following pronouns, with only a few tonal differences, in the flow of speaking", then listing the Esperanto pronouns (kio, kie, kia, kiu, kiam, cxio, cxie, cxia, cxiu etc). Rereading it, Baumann's not only criticising the interrogatives, but the whole correlative system of the language. I've updated the sentence to reflect this, hopefully it's now more comprehensible.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  13:48, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Ah, better now, Frzzl. (Incidentally, Correlative is a very dodgy article. But there are only so many hours in the day.) -- Hoary (talk) 22:48, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

It's unfortunate that the single verb whose paradigm is tabulated is described as corresponding to English hit. That's because the inflection of hit shows an unusual degree of syncretism. It would be better to choose a verb corresponding to, say, English take, whose plain present, past (preterite) and past participle are each distinctive (take, took, taken). Such a revision would of course be a major chore (even if the information needed were available). However, a great improvement should be pretty straightforward. I can't come up with any synonym for hit whose forms have as little syncretism as do those of take, but I suggest strike. No, don't use strike, struck, stricken (as stricken just isn't used in this way); but even strike, struck, struck would be more helpful than hit, hit, hit.
Alternatively, beat, with beat, beat, beaten. -- Hoary (talk) 22:54, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

I've replaced "hit" with "strike"; if preferable, we could add "strucken" or "striked" (obsolete, nonstandard) as PPs (in parentheses) to better illustrate it - what do you think? Multifarious Ailurophile (talk) 10:56, 12 September 2023 (UTC) (alt of Frzzl)
Here's how I was about to "improve" the table:

But I didn't click "Publish", because I could find nowhere to stick the contrary note ("Stucken would never have been possible here", or something to that effect). I mean, there's nothing described as corresponding to the English preterite (went, took, came, etc).
Yet the language is described as having two tenses, present and past. Has the simple past tense simply been forgotten in the table? Or does "past" mean perfect? Something seems wrong. I'm not sure that it is wrong, but it's disconcerting at best. Some sort of explanation would help.
Incidentally: (i) Even before I splattered the table with footnotes, it had a footnote. Is it helpful to have both footnotes and a "Notes" column? (ii) Asking readers to look "above" could be made more specific. (Template:Anchor can be helpful.) -- Hoary (talk) 23:21, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Will fix both issues mentioned - when it comes to the specification of tense, I think Baumann specified that it was the Preterite, so I can add that detail in.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  18:35, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

Frzzl, "participal" was an obvious mistake for (noun) "participle", so I corrected it, twice.
But it now occurs to me that oops, no, the word may well have been intended as an adjective. Quick googling informs me that "participal" is used in this way, but also suggests that "participial" (which I'm familiar with) is much more widely used. (Adding the "i" also makes the result look less like a typo for "participle".) 
Over to you. -- Hoary (talk) 23:11, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, this was a mistake on my part - I was moving those rows per comments by Arctic, and typed it again, repeating the typo. Will fix, thank you for pointing that out.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  10:10, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I quote (sort of):

Baumann's languages [viz Wede, Weltdeutsch, Weltpitshn, and Oiropa'pitshn] received a largely negative reception, being mocked by members of the Esperanto and Ido communities; none ________  implemented in any official manner.
How do you fill the blank? I fill it with "was". Our idiolects may differ. -- Hoary (talk) 23:13, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

To me, as we’re referring to multiple languages, it’s “were” -   Frzzl  talk; contribs  06:50, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
I’mm writing in British English, so using singular “was” for “none” in a plural context is considered pretty dialectal - we could swap for “none of them”?  Frzzl  talk; contribs  06:52, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
I'm surprised, Frzzl. I'd thought that in British English as well, one has both options in, say: "Dozens of angry demonstrators surrounded the courthouse, but none was/were armed", and that neither option would be dialectal or sound affected. Here, though, we're talking about a total of just four languages. I'd be mildly surprised to learn two or more among the four had been implemented in any official manner, so although both options are still grammatical and acceptable, were sounds slightly odd to me. Well, languages change over time, and my English could well be old-fashioned. (Example: A pattern that Geoff Pullum described as strange 19 years ago still seems strange to me now, when it's very common in Wikipedia.) Anyway, if you're happy with were, let it remain were. -- Hoary (talk) 23:07, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
Piling onto Hoary's remarks, consider I knocked on seven doors and none of them was yours.  Were here would be strange because no more than one of the doors could be yours.  In the sentence in question, selection of two or more is not impossible but I would say it is more than independently unlikely.  —Tamfang (talk) 02:44, 3 October 2023 (UTC)