Appendix talk:Spanish alphabet

Move debate

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Appendix:English letters

Appendix:Spanish letters

These should really be moved to Appendix:English alphabet and Appendix:Spanish alphabet, as seems to be the norm for these types of appendices. --Yair rand 05:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Oppose moving. There is far more information to be conveyed about letters than how they are alphabetically ordered. --Daniel. 05:59, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and changing the title to "alphabet" doesn't change what content should be in it. It's still about the letters that are used in the language. All other similar appendices are named Appendix:Language alphabet (Appendix:Hebrew alphabet, Appendix:Tamil alphabet, Appendix:Russian alphabet, Appendix:Mapudungun alphabet, Appendix:Ukrainian alphabet, Appendix:Romanian alphabet, Appendix:Thai alphabet, Appendix:Macedonian alphabet, Appendix:Greek alphabet, Appendix:Arabic alphabet, Appendix:Polish alphabet, Appendix:Avestan alphabet, Appendix:Gothic alphabet, Appendix:Lycian alphabet, Appendix:Lydian alphabet, Appendix:Carian alphabet, and probably quite a few others). --Yair rand 06:23, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

If, as you said, an alphabet appendix is "still about letters", I simply conclude that title and contents are misleading from each other. I wouldn't like to include letter names, pronunciations and letter usage to these appendices because I feel that these concepts would distract from the supposed goal of providing an alphabet. --Daniel. 06:49, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Wha? An alphabet is a collection of letters, correct? An appendix on an alphabet would then provide information on the letters, right? And an appendix on a collection of letters would provide the same thing, wouldn't it? Which part am I not understanding here? --Yair rand 07:08, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Support move. What Daniel. is saying is a bit like saying you couldn't include conjugation in an Appendix:Portuguese verbs because conjugation isn't in the page title. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually this is not my point, Mglovesfun. In fact, I think that conjugations may be added to an Appendix:Portuguese verbs but a long explanation on other, considerably unrelated aspects of Portuguese verbs should not be added to an Appendix:Portuguese conjugation. Similarly, I was thinking in the word "alphabet" defined in a strict manner, like "a set of letters in the alphabetical order"; in this case, additional information such as letter names and letter pronunciations should not be at an alphabet appendix. In addition, Spanish and Portuguese would have more than one alphabet due to ortographical reforms and Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, etc. would have more than one alphabet due to use of Latin and Cyrillic scripts so the title Serbo-Croatian alphabet would be ambiguous or inexact. If we define alphabet as "a set of all letters used in a language", then my vote is to support moving these appendices to new naming scheme that includes "alphabet". However, in this case I also think that English letters should be renamed to English alphabet (and Spanish letters to Spanish alphabet, etc.) for consistency. --Daniel. 16:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't think moving the categories is really an option, as entries are placed in the categories by {{infl}}, which is ordinarily supposed to have the parameter match the PoS header. --Yair rand 01:21, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

If categories should match POS headers, why appendices would exceptionally not match both categories and POS headers? --Daniel. 01:30, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Easier this way, I guess. Entries are added to categories by standard templates, which are done as simply as possible, and now the parameter on {{infl}} always matches the PoS header, so that no one has to memorize anything else. Also, categories are usually named by what the individual things are, rather than what the entries are as a group. (This is just my assumption of why it's done like this, I'm not specifically supportive of or opposed to renaming the categories.)

On a side note, would the templates that add the "Main appendix: X letters" thing to the categories not be able to work if the category doesn't share the same name as the appendix? --Yair rand 01:55, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the automatic link to Appendix:Spanish letters at Category:Spanish letters would have to be reprogrammed, removed or manually readded. In addition, appendices whose names match category names are naturally more findable for consistency. --Daniel. 02:28, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Moved. --Yair rand (talk) 20:46, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

RFM discussion: April 2010

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Letters and alphabet

Please choose between these options as the naming system to be used in all related Wiktionary pages:

1. Both categories and appendices named with "alphabet".

   Example: Category:Spanish alphabet and Appendix:Spanish alphabet.

2. Both categories and appendices named with "letters".

   Example: Category:Spanish letters and Appendix:Spanish letters.

3. Categories with "letters" and appendices with "alphabet".

   Example: Category:Spanish letters and Appendix:Spanish alphabet.

Currently, the third option is the most used, which is inconsistent. If we can reach a consensus to rename categories or appendices as explained above, I'll volunteer myself to rename them all. I'd personally choose the second option, because it is consistent with other categories and appendices like "Appendix:Ancient Greek nouns" and "Category:Italian adjectives" since these names are all formed by a language name followed by a simple word in plural form. Thoughts? --Daniel. 18:03, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I like the third. An appendix should discuss an alphabet. A category, which contains a number of distinct objects, should have the letters.​—msh210℠ 23:49, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Can you please explain how the distinct objects of a category of "letters" would differ from the concept of an "alphabet"? --Daniel. 13:01, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

The same way that real numbers differ from the real-number line: much the same way that members of the U.S. Army differ from the U.S. Army. One is a bunch of items, the other is the ordered set of those items. The appendix is discussing the alphabet, the set of letters (and in most (all?) alphabets the ordered set), whereas the category has individual letters in it and not an alphabet.​—msh210℠ 15:24, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm... By emphasizing the ordered set, are you possibly suggesting that Appendix:English alphabet should not provide information about the characters é and Æ? --Daniel. 15:36, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

It should mention that they're used although they're not considered to be in the alphabet. I do not think that that page should have the extensive list of words containing those characters that it does now: that's (a) why we have the category and (b) irrelevant on a page devoted to the alphabet. (More relevant — but currently absent — would be the etymology of the alphabet: where we got it from, including its order. History of individual letters can go in the etymology sections of their respective entries.) Incidentally, because the category of letters is for, well, letters, and these are largely the same across many languages, I wonder whether we should perhaps have a single category for Latin letters, including [[LL], [[Ý]], etc., instead of all the categories we now have.​—msh210℠ 16:23, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree: The "alphabet" or "letters" appendix should not contain extense lists as the English one contains now; and etymology of the alphabet is a very good idea to be included at each appendix. And I don't see a reason for the mere usage of é to merit a mention at "Appendix:English alphabet", because I understood from your argument that the appendix should be strictly used to discuss an ordered set (and each of its members). Based on the current members of the category Latin script characters, it is likely to include Ý and LL as well. --Daniel. 16:59, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, so we do have a Latin letter category. Do we need individual languages' also, then?​—msh210℠ 17:01, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we need. The current Category:Portuguese letters with only seven members is a shame, so I know this is a place to clean up. An appendix would show various blue links regardless of whether Portuguese sections exist in the entries listed. In addition, if letter categories of a given language don't need to be cleaned up due to complete and accurate coverage, then the categoy serves the useful purpose of simply displaying the set of letters, rather than discussing them. --Daniel. 17:13, 16 April 2010 (UTC)