Talk:Wōdanaz

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[edit] title

please move it back to Wodanaz. We don't want the asterisk in the title (it will confuse people too much), and the ō doesn't display right for some Microsoft users. dab (ᛏ) 19:17, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I approve of the change to *Wōdanaz (as we've discussed before) though I don't feel very strongly about it. Haukur 18:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

um, ok. I suppose this calls for more general discussion, we should try to put it down in MoS somewhere, because it follows that Dyeus, Hausos, Perkunos and friends should also be titled with an asterisk. This is just a pragmatic question of what is more user-friendly, and I don't feel too strongly about it either. dab (ᛏ) 19:18, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, we should treat all reconstructed words the same. It's not a big deal either way, I just feel it's a bit more professional to have the asterisk. Haukur 19:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Using "ō" in place of "o" where appropriate is Wikipedia style. But what's with the asterisk? It's not explained anywhere in the article how to pronounce it, whether it indicates a reconstruction that may not be accurate, or what. This needs to be explained, or else have a prominent link in the intro paragraph (or else be removed entirely). I've added a {{technical}} template to the article for this reason. --Quuxplusone 17:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

as you can see above, nobody feels very strongly about the asterisk in the title, so I suppose you can move it to an asterisk-less form. However, to discuss the meaning of the asterisk everytime we quote a reconstructed form anywhere on Wikipedia would be horrible clutter, imho, but if you do feel strongly about that, I suggest you insert a footnote somewhere. dab (ᛏ) 18:41, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I would, if I could. But as you can see from my comments above, I don't know what the asterisk means — it's not explained anywhere in the article. If you can fix it, please do. --Quuxplusone 06:58, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The asterisk is a standard way in linguistics to denote a hypothetical reconstructed word for which there is no direct evidence. We can't go talking about "Wodanaz" because we have no actual record of such a name ever having been used, but we do understand (or believe we understand) the way Germanic languages have evolved from Proto-Germanic, and "Wodanaz" is the logical ancestor of the various forms observed later in the Germanic languages. One can also talk about *kuningaz, the precursor to king, König, etc.

That said, I don't think the asterisk needs to be in the title. It's a technical detail best left to the article. --Saforrest 16:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I was bold and removed it. --Saforrest 16:24, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Aha, now I see the debate at Talk:Odin#attempted_restructuring. Well, I'm still content with having removed the asterisk. --Saforrest 16:34, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Asterisk link

As there's been some talk about bringing this matter to MoS, maybe I should mention one change I'd like to see, which is to link asterisks for the edification of those who aren't familiar with their use in historical linguistics. In the same way that (to pick a random example) Galileo positioning system says its cost "is estimated at €1.1 billion", this article could begin "*Wōđanaz or *Wōđinaz is the reconstructed name...". We might even start an article for the purpose: asterisk in historical linguistics. This way we can just link there every now and then, and we don't need to clutter up every article with a historical reconstruction with explanations. (Another possibility would be to use a template with a span markup: "*Wōđanaz is"...) QuartierLatin1968 15:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

good idea (I prefer the *). dab (ᛏ) 17:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Newsflash! I've talked to the good folks at {{*}}, and we can use their template to produce something like this: *. This gives us the roll-over option, links to asterisk, and forces unicode-friendly fonts. You just type {{*|Wōđanaz}} and voilà. QuartierLatin1968 17:02, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

that's not that great, since ideally you'd want a mouseover for the form itself, too, such as {{PIE}} ({{*}}{{PIE|Vatinos}})... dab (ᛏ) 17:24, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh; I didn't know about the {{PIE}} template. Shouldn't that template really include the asterisk anyway? It's not as though any PIE forms are directly attested. And leaving PIE aside, I don't think there should be separate templates for every possible proto-language, because that just reduplicates effort. We could add a new parameter to {{*}} toggling the span title if necessary. Would it seem more annoying to have to enter two templates à la {{*}}{{PGmc|Wōđanaz}} or one {{*|Wōđanaz|Proto-Germanic}}? QuartierLatin1968 20:43, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

no, the asterisk should be added manually. of course PIE is all reconstructed, but imagine a declination table for example: you'd not put an asterisk in each table cell, after all. I was intending to do a {{PGmc}} for some time: these are for language markup, much like {{lang}}, {{semxlit}}, {{ArabDIN}} and others. The problem of the asterisk is separate. You don't want it to give a "THIS IS RECONSTRUCTED" explanation every time, just the first time it appears in an article, so there should be a separate {{*}} for that. dab (ᛏ) 09:41, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Yup, you've convinced me. And after all we can always just use {{Unicode}} wherever there isn't already a proto-language template. I'll make the necessary change to {{*}} and we can start using it. I think I may take the liberty of copying this exchange over to template talk:* for future reference. QuartierLatin1968 15:03, 18 September 2006 (UTC)