Thrissel

Hi Thrissel. You have been commended at the Village Pump for your fine work on the Scottish Gaelic proverbs article. I hope you will find the time to make more contributions to Wikiquote, because that was really good work. ~ Ningauble 16:52, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Hey thanks, that was very kind of you guys. I'm afraid that despite being a WikiSloth in my heart I'm already too involved in en-wiki, gd-wiki and en-wikt to have time enough for appearing here but rather rarely, but as the proverb has it, never say never ;-). Hmm... perhaps if you restored to my userspace the deleted Czech proverbs I might have a look if I can treat them similarly - no guarantees, unlike the Scottish Gaelic page I haven't seen the Czech one before, and I wouldn't try and source something as long as the Czech counterpart, even though (the more so as?) glancing over that list I saw few that aren't quite common. --Thrissel 20:49, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for the good work on the Scottish Gaelic proverbs page. I've restored the Czech proverbs to the Talk page for you (or others) to work on. If you are able to find sources, feel free to recreate the Czech proverbs page. Thanks! ~ UDScott 21:18, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Had a look and there are more than I hoped for but less than I was afraid of. Okay, I'll start nibbling at them every now and then and moving those I'll be able to source onto to page itself. Cheerio, --Thrissel 22:54, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Czech proverbs

I have temporatily reverted your edit at Czech proverbs. You claim that the Concise Dictionary of European Proverbs is not a reliable source. This seems a strange claim for a book from such a respected publisher as Routledge. Can you please produce a reliable source to prove that it is not reliable?--Collingwood (talk) 21:19, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I've had enough. I don't have time for looking up a source proving that somebody writing pflis instead of příliš, lepsy instead of lepší, kostre instead of koště &c&c is totally unreliable. If you so insist on having that rubbish here, because "it's from Routledge so it's be a good source unless reviewed unfavourably somewhere", so be it. I wish you a good night. --Thrissel (talk) 22:51, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

I too am growing skeptical of the source being used here, or the contributor's interpretation of that source, but I have not had a chance to research it yet. It is on my ever-increasing "to do" list. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:44, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

I probably found the source, it seems to be this, in which case the problem is with the contributor's interpretation. I had a quick glimpse at their contributions to Polish proverbs and it's the same story: the source does use the correct letters, the editor only uses the English alphabet. Consepuentlg, the contributions looh lihe a hgpothetical page "English prouerbs" in a Gaelic Wihipuote onlg using the Gaelic alphabet lihe in this esample sentence. Yes, that bad. Add to this a typo every now and then, attaching an English translation to an absolutely different (though neighbouring in the book) proverb, repeatedly adding proverbs from one language to the page for another... I have a strong suspicion that if all the edits by the user in question were reverted wholesale, the project would gain, rather then lose.

As regards the proverbs' meanings, rather than orthography, consider the latest addition to Czech proverbs: V praci a vedeni je nase spaseni (which should be V práci a vědění je naše spasení) given the meaning Learning about a subject such as psychology will increase your overall competence. Now Google Books don't show me the particular page, but I doubt very much that Strauss gives such a clumsy and unprecise explanation. The sentence literally means Our salvation is in work and knowledge and its only idiomacity is in its use of the word "salvation" in a figurative sense. --Thrissel (talk) 22:41, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Scottish Gaelic proverbs‎

Hello! I do not understand this sentence: "RV lies - source says no such thing, ascribing it to sco rather than gd." Could you please explain what you mean? --Spannerjam (talk) 07:58, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

It naturally means that when Strauss says "Scots", he means Scots. A Germanic language closely related to English, unlike Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language closely related to Irish. --Thrissel (talk) 12:19, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't consider myself competent to discuss Czech provebs, but Thrissel is certainly correct here.--Collingwood (talk) 17:45, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

You don't need to know Czech to understand the importance of diacritical marks - German has its umlaut, Spanish its tilde, French its circumflex and so on and, surprise, surprise, all these have a function, they're not there just to make life harder for English editors - they change the pronunciation and consequently sometimes even the sense of a word. Just like French mole /mol/ and môle /mɔl/ mean different things, so do Czech tvar /tvar/ and tvář /tvaːr̝̊/. --Thrissel (talk) 18:28, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

What admittedly you can't spot are the typos, among the latest for example this edit which is obviously sourced from this page - turning "zajíce" into "sajize" is beyond diacritics. --Thrissel (talk) 18:55, 18 September 2012 (UTC)