User talk:Echtio

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Use {{obsolete}} for senses that are obsolete. In this case, add the lang= parameter to indicate it's for French. JamesjiaoTC 23:36, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for that useful instruction --Echtio (talk) 23:47, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


What does this mean? —CodeCat 23:04, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

When I say for example the verb "écrier" or "ébattre" is a pronominal verb it means it can't be used without a reflexive pronoun. You can't say "°j'écrie", "°j'ébats"; you can only say "je m'écrie", "je m'ébats" or "après s'être écrié ce n'est pas moi ! il est sorti [=after having cried it's not me (who did that)! he went out"]. The thing is, the meaning of the pronoun "m" in "je m'écrie" is not reflexive : it doesn't mean °I cry myself" but simply "I cry" (or "I shout"); that's why I prefer to use in such a case the expression "pronominal verb" rather than "reflexive verb"; in French we use the expression "verbe essentiellement pronominal"; we speak then of the verb "s'écrier" but in the dictionaries we find the verb under the letter "e" and not under the letter "s". A minority of verbs is "essentiellement pronominal" but a lot of verbs like "laver" (=wash) can be used pronominally (for some of their senses). Then the meaning can be reflexive like in "je me lave" (=I'm washing myself), but often the meaning is not reflexive like in "je ne me suis pas aperçu de son absence" (=I didn't notice he wasn't there), it doesn't mean "I didn't see myself" although the transitive verb "apercevoir" means "to see"... The conjugation of ébattre has to be corrected : je m'ébats, tu t'ébats... s'être ébattu etc. --Echtio (talk) 00:30, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

I think "reflexive" is the normal term used on Wiktionary for such verbs, though. If you want to use something else, you may want to discuss it first. —CodeCat 00:34, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
I saw some entries where the term "pronominal" was used, sometimes with the "reflexive" pronoun and the verb close by, but I will follow your opinion. What matters is to indicate if or when the verb is used with a reflexive pronoun, but the conjugation of ébattre has still to be corrected. --Echtio (talk) 01:08, 13 May 2013 (UTC)


Do you actually speak this language/dialect? Where are you getting this orthography from (it seems very unlikely that people actually write like this instead of using Swahili orthography)? —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:31, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I've been learning systematically Shingazidja, the language or dialect spoken in Ngazidja, for about 2 years. My wife is a Comorian woman from that isle. I'm being given Shingazidja lessons by a cousin of my spouse who naturally has also this language as mother tongue, and studied it at university. I hear it every day at home and often also when invited. Now I can understand texts and say simple sentences or get them by hearing.

There is no official orthography for this language. I've adopted the system used by Michel Lafon who wrote about 22 years ago the only modern existing dictionary Shingazidja - French. Sacleux wrote a Comorian-French and French-Comorian Dictionary in the first half of the past century (with a lot of swahilisms in it), but no one nowadays uses his spelling. However contrary to Lafon I make a distinction between b and ɓ, and d and ɗ, as Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga does in his dictionnaire français-comorien (dialect Shindzuani). Thus the spelling I've adopted is similar to the one you can find on following page : There is meanwhile an important difference. When Lafon and I write a word with “mpb” at the beginning, it begins with “mb” on the linked page.

There are some differences between Swahili and Shingazidja orthography : The sound [ʧ] is written “tsh” and not “ch”. The letter “j” is pronounced [ʒ] like in French “jupe, Jean, jardin etc. and not [ɗʒ]. Consequently the sound [ʤ] is written “dj”. “pv” = [ß], a sound that does not exist in Kiswahili... --Echtio (talk) 06:26, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, at least you seem to have a good source. I'm a beginner learning Swahili, so some of your translations look questionable to me; for example fundi for "teacher" (Swahili has it as meaning "craftsman", and uses the Bantuised Arabism mwalimu for "teacher"). Otherwise it looks very similar to Swahili and pretty readily interpretable, at least in terms of my limited vocabulary.
There was a discussion recently to merge all the Comorian dialects on Wiktionary and treat them with a single code; what do you think of this proposal? —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 14:51, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't learn Swahili but I am also interested in it. Comorian dialects are not Swahili dialects but they are both Bantu dialects. That signifies they have a lot of common roots and there are many similarities in grammar (class systems). But for hundreds of years (1000 ?) Swahili and Comorian have developed separately. That's why the words have a different history in Africa and in the Comoros. So the word “fundi” means in Comorian not only "craftsman" but also “teacher”. Formerly one could address a university professor by using the title “mwalim” but now it's outdated.

I think it would be an error to merge the dialects of the four Comorian isles and treat them with a single code, for several reasons. An inhabitant of a village on Ngazidja who never went to the other isles and had only few contacts with their inhabitants can't understand well Shindzuani or Shimaore. There are a lot of important differences both in grammar and vocabulary between Shingazidja, Shimwali, Shindzuani and Shimaore. If we keep only one code for the Comorian languages spoken on the Comoros, then we have also to suppress, for example, the codes for Sicilian, Sardinian, Venetian... and to keep only the code for Italian. —This unsigned comment was added by Echtio (talkcontribs).

  • OK, you are more knowledgeable than me on this issue, so I will withdraw the proposal to merge them. By the way, a lot of pages have an 'About' page, like WT:About Latin or WT:About Swahili. It's not necessary to put that much information, but if you could record what orthographic norms you're using or what written resources one could rely on, it would be very useful. It could just be something short like WT:About Rapa Nui. Just a suggestion. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 04:11, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Noun classes[edit]

For Comorian words you can use noun classes in the same way as genders in other languages. The classes begin with "c" followed by the number. So for class 1 it's "c1" and so on. If you want to show two classes (singular and plural) then give them as two separate genders. So in the translation for "ball" you would write: {{t|zdj|mpira|c3|c4}}. Different templates have different ways for showing genders ({{head}} uses g=, g2=) but it's the same idea. —CodeCat 00:36, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Vielen Dank für Deine Hilfe, I appreciate very much. --Echtio (talk) 00:45, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Comorian adjectives (and maybe verbs)[edit]

I'm not sure what the practice is for Swahili, but for Zulu (a more distantly related Bantu language), we add the hyphen at the beginning like you seem to be doing. However, the hyphen is only displayed, it's not actually included in the entry name. Look at khulu for example, where the word is displayed as "-khulu" but the page name is "khulu". Links to the word are created as {{l|zu|khulu|-khulu}} or {{term|khulu|-khulu|lang=zu}}. I think this practice may be good to adopt for Comorian as well.

A related point is that Zulu has two different types of adjective. One is just "adjectives" but they are limited and no new ones are created, while "relatives" are more common and new ones are formed as well. I don't know if there is such a distinction in Comorian but it may be worth taking into account. —CodeCat 00:05, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

We have the same practice with the hyphens for Swahili as in Zulu (display but not link to), so Comorian should as well. Swahili does not have this odd relative-adjective distinction, so I doubt Comorian does either. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:26, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
I did some searching and relatives also occur in other languages of southern Africa, but it's hard to find much information about them as the Wikipedia articles are usually not well developed. There is some information about what relatives are on WT:AZU. Basically, they're a distinct class of modifier that takes relative clause (verbal) concord prefixes rather than adjectival (nominal) ones. So grammatically they behave like mini relative clauses. —CodeCat 00:39, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
Here is a paper that discusses them some. They are limited only to the southern languages apparently. —CodeCat 00:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
I will adopt the same practice with the hyphens for the Comorian dialects, I'll follow the Swahili practice for the verbs. It'll be an improvement. Again, thank you for your help! --Echtio (talk) 17:27, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Comorian translations[edit]

The pages bee, Comorian, water just use "Comorian" with the code swb. Could you clarify which dialects these translations fall under? DTLHS (talk) 00:40, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

You're right, the code swb should be used only for Maore Comorian. I've modified the pages bee, Comorian and water. --Echtio (talk) 18:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

{{l}} and {{t}}[edit]

Please use {{t}} in translation tables instead of {{l}}. If you want to display an alternate text in a translation, use alt=. For example, {{t|zdj|vundza|alt=uvundza}}. It will link to vundza but display uvundza. Ultimateria (talk) 19:32, 31 August 2013 (UTC)


Hi Echtio,

Metaknowledge told me you are making additions to Ngazidja Comorian. That's really exciting!

I want to welcome you to Wiktionary. As you probably know, we have places to ask questions (WT:CP) and guidelines for creating entries (WT:ELE, WT:CFI)).

I see you have been making contributions since 2010, so my welcome is really late, but if I can help you in any way, please let me know.

Best regards. BB12 (talk) 19:36, 8 September 2013 (UTC)


{{}} is obsolete now, because {{t}} and {{t-}} no longer link to the relevant Wiktionary anyway. So we still use {{t+}} when the language has a Wiktionary and the Wiktionary has an entry, but for all other purposes we can just use {{t}}. ({{t-}} and {{}} still exist, for the benefit of editors who are used to them, but they just redirect to {{t}}, and a bot runs every so often that replaces them with {{t}}. And for that matter, the same bot converts between {{t}} and {{t+}}, so if you want, you can just use {{t}} everywhere and let the bot sort it out.) —RuakhTALK 07:40, 10 January 2014 (UTC)