Wikipedia:WikiProject Linguistics/Etymology

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Shortcuts WP:ETYWP:ETY WP:ETYMOLOGYWP:ETYMOLOGY

Welcome to the Etymology Task Force! This task force is a part of WikiProject Linguistics, and is aimed at improving Wikipedia's coverage of etymology. The scope of this task force includes articles about etymology itself and related topics (e.g. etymology, loanword), articles about the origins of particular words (e.g. List of U.S. state name etymologies, names of the Greeks), and etymology sections within articles on other topics (e.g. Ginkgo biloba#Etymology).

Participants

If you wish to participate in WikiProject Etymology, please add your name to the list below. You can do so by adding the Wikitext *{{subst:me too}} (or *{{subst:me too|optional comment}} if you would like to insert a comment about who you are or your areas of expertise) to the end of this section. You can also add {{User Etymology}} to your user page, and your name will automatically appear in the Etymology Task Force participants category.

• Protegmatic (talk · contribs)
• ManO'Knowledge (talk · contribs) - Native Hebrew Speaker; Loves Germanic Languages And Especially Latin
• Francoisalex2 (talk · contribs)
• Ptcamn (talk · contribs)
• Dbachmann (talk · contribs)
• Miskwito (talk · contribs)
• Mrg3105 (talk · contribs)
• Calypygian (talk · contribs)
• Pmod (talk · contribs)
• Victar (talk · contribs)
• syifaerr (talk · contribs)
• Cbrick77 (talk · contribs)
• Angr (talk · contribs)
• Codrinb (talk · contribs) 17:19, 28 January 2012 (UTC) - Native Romanian speaker; interested especially in ancient Dacian and Thracian etymologies
• Benjaminjkim (talk · contribs)
• Vong Nguyen M.D.lexicographer (talk · contribs)
• AnthonyW90 (talk · contribs)
• Chell0wFTW (talk · contribs)
• Omnipaedista (talk · contribs)
• Piotr_Gasiorowski (talk · contribs)
• Erutuon (talk · contribs) — I know a lot about Ancient and Koine Greek, and Classical Latin, and a little about old Germanic languages (Old English, Old Norse, Gothic). Pester me with questions if you have any.
• Daniel Case (talk · contribs)
• Johanna-Hypatia (talk · contribs) – Deeply into Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Uralic, Altaic, and Algonquian among others, proto languages in general. I have a habit of inserting etymologies, or improving them, wherever I see a chance to.
• LingNerd007 (talk · contribs) - Currently a BA. Ling., for all intents and purposes a hobbyest for anonymity's sake, interested in comparative/socio-historical and theoretical+typological+computational linguistics.
• Megustalastrufas (talk · contribs) - PhD, MArch
• LocalPunk (talk · contribs) - fluent in English, advanced in French, learning Korean, knows some German, Spanish and Swedish. Creating my own conlangs.
• Dyḗwsuh₃nus (talk · contribs) - Indo-Europeanist, lifelong etymologist.
• JungleEntity (talk · contribs)
• Gaelicbow (talk · contribs) - Celtic languages
• Greydomovoy7 (talk · contribs)
• EdhyRa (talk · contribs) - Native Bahasa Indonesia speaker
• Hamid Hassani (talk · contribs) – Iranian languages, Arabic, English
• Brusquedandelion (talk · contribs) – primarily interested in improving coverage of etymologies of English and Dravidian language words on Wikipedia.

Open tasks

• Put {{WP Linguistics|etymology=yes}} on the talk pages of articles within the scope of the project.
• article improvement
  • Add etymologies to the articles in Category:Articles with missing etymologies, or improve those in Category:Articles with incomplete etymologies; tend to Category:Stub-Class etymology articles and check Category:Suffixes for missing etymologies.
  • help clean up and reference our many frayed lists of etymologies. Help organizing the category structure and the "etymological dictionary" part of Wikipedia into an accessible format.
• accessibility and standardization
  • help maintaining Portal:Linguistics contributing etymological material.
  • develop standard guidelines for etymology sections for WP:MoS (Wikipedia:Guide to layout).
• collaboration with wiktionary: Wiktionary has wikt:Category:Etymology and contains extensive material in the wikt:Appendix: namespace, such as wikt:Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots. Wikipedia needs a portal or navigation aid to facilitate access to this material as well as that on Wikipedia itself.
  • Add {{wiktionary}} on articles dealing with specific etymologies. Conversely, link to these articles from wikisource using wikt:Template:Wikipedia.

Articles

Templates

Categories

Articles about a particular word's etymology should be placed in Category:Etymologies or one of its subcategories.

Articles dealing with the field of etymology itself belong in Category:Etymology

Resources

• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition (2000) is available online at education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/^{[dead link]}; Indo-European roots at ahdictionary.com.
• Julius Pokorny's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959) and other Indo-European etymological resources are available online at www.indoeuropean.nl. The availability of the website is unreliable; it's very often down.
• Online Etymology Dictionary
• Dictionary.com, whose entries are based on the 2006 edition of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, has etymologies for most English words.
• The Tower of Babel has a number of etymological databases compiled by Sergei Starostin and others, but note that many are not widely accepted.

External links

• Wikiproject Watchlist - WikiProject Etymology