Topic on User talk:Loominade

Hello Loominade,

As you changed the model that Denny and I used for Kyiv/Kiev (respectively Kyiv (L646189) / Kiev (L501167) and Kyiv (L646273) / Kiev (L578412)), without discussion, nor notifying us, I reverted you.

Cheers,

Given that the two words have different etymologies (one stemming from the autonym, the other from the Russian exonym) it seems that those are two lexemes?

well I can't realistically ask everyone for permission before doing any changes 😅

I thought those are spelling variants and that's what forms are for (?). But I'm neither an expert nor passionate about the subject. I'm sorry for causing trouble.

You're not at all! Thanks for the edits, just wanted to check if indeed you have a strong opinion on it, that we would need to discuss more to find consensus. All good!

so at least in German, there are different spelling variants for the same word, usually for loan words which in professional dictionaries are considered to be part of the same lexeme. For instance Geo­gra­fie, Geo­gra­phie (see Duden or DWDS)

In this case everything except the spelling is identical and we would avoid a lot of redundancy by having a single lexeme with double the amount of forms. Usually one of the forms is chosen to be the canonical one which is then used as it's lemma.

I checked the English and French Wiktionary which state that indeed Kyiv is a Variante de Kiev and Kyjiv is an Alternative form of Kyiv. I don't know if the same logic applies on all these languages or on this particular word.

One could argue that Geo­gra­fie is derived from an earlier transliterated form Geo­gra­phie but I doubt that is always the case.

Anyway, it would be nice if the same logic could be applied to all lexemes when possible. Whatever that logic might be. 🤓

I'm not asking you to ask for permission for every change. But when you see that the same model is used on several lexemes / languages, it may be for a reason, and it may be better to discuss it before or while changing it. It's what we're doing here, so it's fine for me. Thanks for your help! 😉

As explained by Denny, in these cases, the difference is not only spelling, but also etymology: one word is derived from Ukrainian and the other one from Russian.

👌