Auxilium:Categoriae

Latine

Species categoriarum sunt quattuor:

• Radices ubi dictiones per etymologiam collocantur. Summa categoria radicalis Radices.
• Linguae ubi dictiones per linguam collocantur. Summa categoria Linguae.
• Per thema ubi dictiones per thema collocantur; Per thema.
• Taxinomia ubi nomina animalium per taxin familiae (vel superiorem taxin, si nomen generalius sit) collocantur. Vide Taxinomia.

Anglice

Discussion of the use of categories in the Victionarium.

Roots

We already have established many categories by root, of the following forms:

• Latin roots

  Like Category:Radice formīc: using macrons for vowel length, and maybe old diphthongs if recorded...

• Greek roots

  Like Category:Radice hᾱϝελι: In Greek script; use digamma, and h instead of breathing accents; use macrons, but not acute or circumflex (stress not being part of the root)

• Roots from other languages

  Titled like [[Category:Radice ''lingua'' ''radix'']], e.g. Category:Radice Anglica niht.

Every by-root category should be in a supercategory for roots of the language, for example Category:Radices Anglicae. This category should in turn be a subcategory of Category:Radices.

The choice of which form of a root with multiple forms, such as ablaut or varying spellings, to stand as a category may be somewhat arbitrary, but it may be best to choose one that can be seen in most of its derivatives, or is the most straightforward reflex of its reconstructed protoform... For Semitic languages probably the original triliteral root is the best way to go.

Reconstructed roots are volatile, and I have been placing infoboxes linking them to their proposed reflexes, in preference to giving them their own categories.

Sometimes a root from a proto-language suggests a form that is shorter than any form found in a daughter language: for a poor example, Radice fīl, whichever root it belongs to, its protoroot is only fī-, and the -l- is an addition. For these purposes it might be easier to name it the form found in the language (and in a case such as this where the shorter form may be ascribed to one or another root, cross-reference the other roots it may be a submember of).

Languages

I propose a category of languages, like the language indices on en:, where a category would list all the words in a language (and perhaps miscellaneous articles on it, such as the ones in en:Wiktionary:Latin index. For this we could use a modified version of the {{-xx-}} codes used on nl:. (For an example I put in Category:Lingua Aragonica, though there's not really anything in it yet.)

At the moment the category interface doesn't appear to handle large amounts of data well, but I expect it will improve before it becomes a problem at our rate of growth.

Topic

Some words categorize by topic better than others, and every topic should probably categorize by its own logic. Stuff I am putting forward so far:

• Topic categories shouldnt be subcategorized by language (e.g. Aegyptus and Egypt both go in Category:Nationes)

  If this isn't a good idea then maybe just a twofold division, like Category:Nationes and Category:Nationes in aliis linguis.

• Countries: All in Category:Nationes.

• Cities: subcategorized by country, like Category:Urbes in Italia.

  Would smaller subdivisions be more desirable?

  (Some countries might not have a good Latin name for them, and maybe a template to automatically categorize them might be in order, so it can all be changed at once if a better name is found.)

• Living things: I suggest they be subcategorized by family. Family-level seems to be a decent compromise between too-specific (and possibly quickly going out of date) and too-general (and thus too broad to be useful).

• Others?