User talk:Suitcaseshoes

Getting started

Name of language

Latest comment: 4 months ago10 comments2 people in discussion

Hi!

Thank you very much for your translations into Creole (acf)!

Into which creole variety are you translating exactly? Is this the one of Saint Lucia? Or perhaps Martinique, or Guadeloupe, or something else? Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 16:20, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hey Amir,

This is the version of Creole spoken in St Lucia, and also partly in Dominica.

Guadeloupean Creole, gcf, (also spoken in Martinique) seems to have quite a bit of translation done here already.

Thanks much,

Suitcaseshoes (talk) 17:31, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Great, thank you.

How similar is it to the Martinican Creole? Ethnologue and English Wikipedia say that they are practically the same, but it's always nice to hear more opinions from people who actually know the language. (If you can recommend any books or articles about it, I'd love to read them.) Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:39, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sure thing,

"acf" and "gcf" are mutually intelligible, but one being spoken in English speaking countries and the other being spoken in French departments creates a number of differences.

- We use loanwords from English, and there are cases where "converting" a French word into Creole would be understood by Martinicans, but not St Lucians since we aren't exposed to "pure" French on a daily basis. This is especially true with technology- and internet-related words. For example, «ordinateur» in French becomes "òdinatè" in gcf, while acf takes the English word "computer" to be «konpyouta».

- St Lucian Creole tends to transplant Creole words into English grammar structures. For example, the phrase "You have to do it" is «Tu dois le faire» in French, but while gcf converts the verb for "must", «dois» into "dwè" (Ou dwè fè'y), St Lucian Creole says "Ou ni pou fè'y", which literally uses the verb "to have" like in English.

- The most prevalent difference in written Creole is that we rarely use the letter "r" in St Lucia, and we use the "w" sound instead (This difference is even in the name of the language — Kréyòl vs Kwéyòl).

- It's also worth noting that while (arguably) more St Lucians speak Creole on a daily basis than Marticicans, their education system has been teaching them to write Creole for a while whereas St Lucia's Creole literacy education only began a couple of years ago. The local Folk Research Centre launched a website this year and more literacy initiatives are being carried out in St Lucia, so projects like Wikipedia in the language could definitely become more useful in that dialect.

I hope I've been able to explain some differences well enough, since I haven't been able to find a document that directly compared the dialects online, but the introduction to the Saint Lucia Creole Dictionary and Saint Lucia's National Language Policy have some more information on Saint Lucia Creole.

Suitcaseshoes (talk) 18:51, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Fantastic, thank you! So does it mean that Martinican has a different orthography, but the same language code "acf"? Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 19:31, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Martinicans and Guadeloupean Creole are the same type, so they'd both belong under the "gcf" label, even though that's just named for Guadeloupe. "acf" is labelled "Saint Lucian Creole French" (even though it really stands for Antillean Creole French), which is the same as the type spoken in Dominica.

In my opinion, "Antillean" refers to the whole Caribbean and should be like a blanket term for the Creole dialects in the region, including Haitian and Guiana Creoles, but the code says refers to the variety spoken by just two islands. I don't think the names for gcf and acf are entirely accurate, but those are the two categories of Creole that exist in the Lesser Antilles.

Suitcaseshoes (talk) 20:47, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Very curious!

Now another question. In this website's configuration, "kwéyòl" is defined as the language's label. It's correct according to the dictionary to which you've linked, but there's nevertheless a little issue with it: This label often appears in a list of languages from which a user has to select one item. Since there are several languages that have some variation of the word "Creole" in their names, this raises the chance for ambiguity and wrong choice.

So we have

ht: Kreyòl ayisyen
gcf: kréyòl Gwadloup
gcr: kriyòl gwiyannen
rcf: Kreol Réyoné

However, "acf" is just "kwéyòl". ("acf" was added to the configuration of this website more than ten years ago, before we noticed this issue of possible ambiguity, but actual translation activity for this language began only now thanks to you!)

The "w" (and not "r") helps remove this ambiguity a bit, but I'd nevertheless love to make it as unambiguous as possible. Could you perhaps suggest a different, unambiguous name? Something like *"kwéyòl Sent Lisi" or *"kwéyòl Sent Lisyen"? Those are just guesses and I'm sorry if it's wrong. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 21:21, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Both could work! They're equally accurate, but "Kwéyòl Sent Lisi" is used more often. Note as well that the K and country name are always capitalised (another difference with other French Creoles).

Is there anything I'd need to do to help with removing ambiguity?

Suitcaseshoes (talk) 22:11, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

No, that's it! I'll update the configuration files.

I really appreciate your quick and insightful responses! And of course, thanks again for the translations! Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 22:23, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

My pleasure, and thank you!

Suitcaseshoes (talk) 23:07, 5 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Namespaces

Latest comment: 3 months ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Hi!

Thanks to your translation work here, your language is getting close to the possibility of being used as a user-interface language.

As part of doing that, it would be nice to configure the namespace names. You can see the list of necessary namespace names here: Translating:MediaWiki#Translating namespace names.

Their translations cannot be sent through the usual translation interface. Can you please give me the translations as a response to this message?

(Also, if there are different words for "user" in masculine and feminine gender, I'd love to know them. There is a difference in French: "Utilisateur/Utilisatrice", "Discussion utilisateur / Discussion utilisatrice". If there's no difference, it's OK.)

Thanks! Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:49, 25 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi Amir, sure thing.

In the order they appear on the table:

Médya

Èspèsyal

Diskasyon

Itilizatè

Diskasyon itilizatè

Diskasyon Wikipédya

Fichyé

Diskasyon fichyé

MediaWiki

Diskasyon MediaWiki

Mòdèl

Diskasyon mòdèl

Édé

Diskasyon édé

Katégwi

Diskasyon katégwi

--

Module

Diskasyon module

Paj

Diskasyon paj

Index

Diskasyon index

No grammatical genders in Kwéyòl to worry about.

Thanks again!

Suitcaseshoes (talk) 05:21, 26 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! Just to check: are you sure about "Module"? If I understand the spelling correctly, the e in the end wouldn't be pronounced. But I don't want to get too deeply into giving recommendations about a language I don't really know :)

(I do know a tiny bit of Haitian Creole, for what it's a worth...) Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:29, 26 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'd decided to just keep the English word for that one without modifying the spelling, since it isn't a word I've heard spoken in Kwéyòl before and it might cause confusion, especially since it looks similar to 'mòdèl' for template, which is already not something you hear often. Same went for index, which could be 'andèks' but the loanword would be better understood.

Suitcaseshoes (talk) 13:24, 26 July 2024 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks :) Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:18, 26 July 2024 (UTC)Reply