Talk:Lists of English words by country or language of origin

message: *I don't understand the rationale behind the posted notice at the top.  These lists are not dictionary entries.  The definitions of these words are not the purpose of the articles.  The compilation of the lists, the ability to see all these words in their own catagory is the main purpose of the article.  I followed the links to the wiki dictionaries.  These dictionaries do not show these words as loan words in the English language, over there, these words are just drown among all other words in each language.  The individual dictionary entries do not replace the function of the lists.  Kowloonese 00:44, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)
**These lists are not dictionary entries. — Indeed the lists are not dictionary entries.  The items on the lists are.  Every single one of these lists is either a list of translations of words, a translation dictionary, or a list of etymologies, an etymological dictionary.  Wikipedia is not a dictionary.  Wiktionary is.  And its specific remit is to list translations and etymologies of words.  If you want to see what happens to lists of words, notice the overwhelming delete consensus at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of English words of Latin origin and the subsequent wholesale deletion of the article.  I've turned the tide on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of English words of Greek origin only by doing to that article what I'm now doing and have done to the others here, namely removing the dictionaries from the encyclopaedia and putting them in the dictionary where they belong, leaving room for encyclopaedia articles to grow in their place.  Had I done nothing, pretty much all of these articles would be on their way to deletion by now. Uncle G 03:11, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
**the ability to see all these words in their own catagory is the main purpose of the article. — Then the article is not encyclopaedic, and should be deleted.  Again: Wikipedia is not a dictionary. If you want to see all of the words in a category all together in a list, go to Wiktionary. Uncle G 03:11, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
**These dictionaries do not show these words as loan words in the English language —  Correct.  They show the words as loanwords to all languages.  It's parochial in the extreme to think that English is the only language to which words have been loaned.  As was pointed out in the VFD discussion, many of the words from Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and so forth have been loaned to a lot of languages.  Indeed, in many cases, such as words of Nahuatl origin, it isn't even English that the words are loaned to.  The whole idea of looking at this as "words loaned to English" is wrong.  One should consider this in terms of the language that the words are loaned from.  Not only are all of these articles incorrectly titled as "list of words", they are incorrectly titled for being "list of English words". Uncle G 03:11, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
**And this article should never have existed.  First: With the existence of categories, there's almost never a reason to have a lists of lists, especially one such as this where there was nothing in the article beyond the hyperlinks themselves.  (The article as it stood was only a hair off being a speedy deletion candidate.)  Second: The title is incorrect, both for the reasons given above relating to "list of English words" and for the additional reason that "international" is highly misleading, given that in several cases the loaning has been done within the same country (such as words of Bengali origin being loaned to Indian English). Uncle G 03:11, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
**over there, these words are just drown among all other words in each language — Incorrect.  There are separate categories for the language words and for the loaned words.  Given that only a couple of the derived words categories even extend over more than one page-worth (200 words) at present, with several not even having as many as 10 words in them as yet, I have to ask which categories you actually looked at to come to the conclusion that anything was "drowned". Uncle G 03:11, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
**The individual dictionary entries do not replace the function of the lists. — But the categories of directory entries, which are clearly pointed to here, do, and do so completely.  A list of words in Wikipedia is a category of words in Wiktionary. Uncle G 03:11, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)
*The problem here is that whole lists have been deleted, but much of the etymological information wasn't copied to Wiktionary. For example, a previous version of Words of Dutch origin had the word ahoy on it, with an indication that that it comes from the Dutch word hoi, which means hello. Unfortunately, the Wiktionary entry for ahoy does not contain this information, and unless someone digs through the history of Words of Dutch origin, it might be lost to Wikipedia/Wiktionary forever. Further, the category method on Wiktionary makes browsing these lists difficult. To find the etymology of a word you have click on the word in the category list and then read the etymology. When all the words and etymologies were on one page, then the etymologies could be easily compared. This move to Wiktionary has demonstrably weakened Wikipedia .
*I am dubious about what essentially amounts to the removal of these articles from Wikipedia because I think it isn't supported by precedent. It should be noted that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" does not mean "Wikipedia articles should not contain information that you might find in a dictionary". It has the very narrow meaning that Wikipedia articles themselves shouldn't be just definitions. No other interpretation of this policy has any kind of consensus. These lists were not just definitions—in fact many of them didn't have definitions, as they only had etymologies. There is no consensus that lists of lexical information do not belong on Wikipedia. The only consensus is that articles that consist only of a simple definition do not belong on Wikipedia. No dictionary that I've ever seen lists words by language of origin, so it would seem that "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" policy does not apply here on its face. There is no solid policy that you can point to that indicates that these lists of etymologies do not belong on Wikipedia. The Latin origin words article was deleted because its scope was too large, not because it doesn't belong on Wikipedia. In fact, several of the delete comments specifically note that they support the inclusion of such lists where the size of the list is relatively small. I move that all these lists be restored. Nohat 04:01, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you're so convinced that the policy obviously applies to these articles, then why don't you try editing WP:WIN to be more explicit that these articles are to be excluded? If it's an obvious application of the policy, then no one will contest the change. Nohat 18:01, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  List != dictionary 

message: Consolidate the lists for languages which have provided very few loan words to English.  Example: there are very few loan words from ancient Egyptian.  You would have guessed that, probably, but its of some interest to know that the word "bark" (as in a type of sailing ship) may be derived from the ancient egyptian word for boat (via Greek writers), and the name "Susannah" is said to be of ancient Egyptian origin.---CH  (talk) 23:42, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion for you linguists

message: Hello all,
I've put up List of English words of Romanian origin for deletion, and I thought people here might be interested. The deletion debate here Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_English_words_of_Romanian_origin. --Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 01:36, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just came across that article. There are only a few English words of Romanian origin as far as I know, not counting toponyms, anthroponyms, and so on, which would be long. I would rather have the list redirected, and a link in this page (Lists of English words of international origin) can direct to Lexicon:English words of Romanian origin which I plan on starting, just as there is for example :Wiktionary:Wiktionary:Dutch index, :Wiktionary:Appendix:1000 basic Dutch words. Alexander 007 20:55, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  AfD - Romanian loanwords 

message: In the RfC for List of English words of Latin origin (the article was subsequently deleted), some dude from Brazil (User:JoaoRicardo) said "I think all such lists should be removed from Wikipedia" (to paraphrase). I tend to agree. The only argument against this that I deemed acceptable was that in Wiktionary, it would be done by categories, rather than a list on a page, permitting text. But that's not the only option. These are such long accepted pages as :Wiktionary:Wiktionary:Dutch index which lists words on one page and can allow text, though text would belong more in a lexicon, not an index. My proposal (not necessarily in this order): move Lists of English words of international origin to English words of international origin, and rather than link Wikipedia lists, it will link Wiktionary glossaries (as yet uncreated), and the lists will be redirected (not even deleted) to English words of international origin. Disadvantages: no significant disadvantage; because the glossary pages will be able to have everything that the Wikipedia pages have, including links to Wikipedia articles. Advantages: everything can be linked in Wiktionary, including words and phrases which would be perpetual red links in Wikipedia (unless you make an inter-Wiktionary link); also, Wiktionary tends to attract people more fluent with lexicons and languages, and less stray poorly informed individuals, generally speaking. It's rare to have a nationalist in Wiktionary sticking words on a list just to inflate it, as often happens in Wikipedia (see List of English words of Persian origin's edit history, for example). These lists are barely fit for an encyclopedia anyway. What remains is for the Wiktionary Lexicons to be approved in Wiktionary, and for Wikipedians to agree (consensus/majority) with allowing Wiktionary to do it, if Wiktionary accepts. Alexander 007 20:55, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In Wiktionary, I made the proposal at Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Lexicons: A Proposal. The response so far is positive. No one has objected. So it will probably fall to a few Wikipedians to let go of ultra-inclusionist tendencies and realize that this will be better for the word-lists themselves, since having them in Wiktionary will lead to them being more reliable, since Wiktionary has far less contributors per hour; and by percentage, more that are competent with lexicons. Think about it. The word-lists here in Wikipedia often look like piles of shit, full of errors. Alexander 007 01:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

text: To rephrase: would you rather have shitty lists in Wikipedia that are barely reliable (thus, barely fulfilling their purpose to inform us of the actual words deriving from a certain language), or let go of them and simply go to Wiktionary (via upcoming links in this article) to Lexicons which will be more reliable and will not have any drawbacks to them whatsoever? Alexander 007 01:26, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of English words of Italian origin. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:25, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal

message: Here is a look, just started. It will have everything the Wiki article has (except for the errors) and more:Lexicon:English terms of Persian origin. Alexander 007 02:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: How it looks in Wiktionary

message: We still need a list of words with Danish origin. There are quite a few of them. --Sangild 13:41, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead and start it! 惑乱 分からん 16:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Danish 

message: Please, let me first start with don't panic.  I am about to suggest something; if you read it hurriedly you could panic, but if you read it carefully I think you will see that I mean no harm.  I came across both this article (Lists of English words of international origin) and also :Category:Lists of English words of foreign origin.  There is a great deal of overlap here and it appears that there is very little/no annotation with the article, primarily only the header.  This article is, for all intents and purposes, "just" a list of lists.  As such, I think that this purpose is better served by the category instead of an article.  To be clear, I am not suggesting that any of the lists be deleted and I am not suggesting that anything is not encyclopedic.  I am suggesting that the header text be copied to the category header and that all of the lists that are in this article that are not currently in the category be added to it.  After that, this article could either be deleted or redirect to the Category.  Note, I know that some of these articles have been "attacked" in the past and I am not taking any unilateral action here; I'm just (hopefully) starting a conversation. --After Midnight 0001 19:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  List --> Category 

message: I just noticed a quote before the lead in the article. Is this standard article procedure? GlobeGores (talk page | user page) 06:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quote? 

message: Is there one of these, or should there be one? Count Truthstein (talk) 22:13, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I have checked and a category already exists on Wiktionary, so now I don't think there should be. Count Truthstein (talk) 19:10, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of English words of Anglo-Saxon origin? 

message: Comment (from the Discussion about the deletion). I have no opinion on the merits of this particular article, but am wondering why it is the only one AfD'd from the whole Category:Lists of English words of foreign origin?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); August 12, 2011; 16:17 (UTC)
*I've taken a look at a handful. Quite a few I tagged as potentially not notable, needing references or needing more references. I encourage you to do the same. Stuartyeates (talk) 19:32, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It was a pretty stupid of them to delete that article.  I voted to Keep it, but alas, common sense doesn't always win the day, it all up to the opinions of whatever random group shows up to comment in AFDs and any personal bias of the closing administrator.  You can take this to deletion review if you want.  That administrator had other decisions of his reversed at deletion review, and I think they might've taken away his administrative powers.  Not sure.  He hasn't edited Wikipedia in a year.  Dream Focus 17:47, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Why only the "Italian List" has been erased?