Talk:Main Page/Archive2
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Are 'complement' and 'emphasis' big words? :) :)
- Yes! Feel free to edit. Angela 20:54 11 August 2003 (UTC)
- Have I managed to sound way too condenscending with my recent change? That was probably an utter waste of time. There's hardly anything here!!!
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- FWIW, I think it's much better now. Angela 03:31 13 August 2003 (UTC)
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Simple English Users
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The name for the Pump
Discussion moved to Simple Talk/Talk
What is known as The Village Pump at English is now called Simple Talk here. Please use that page to ask any questions.
Do not tell each other what to do
(不告诉自己什么做) What does "So, please do not try to tell each other what to do." mean? It sounds really dictatorial. What's wrong with giving each other advice? Newbies needs advices.
Or is that sentence saying that in articles, we shouldn't use that tone? --Menchi, August 20, 2003
- I have no idea what that's about. Please rewrite! Angela.
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- Changed a bit. --Menchi, August 20, 2003
Simple English word lists
That top 1000 words is quite misleading and feels restrictive. Because it doesn't contain common words like "worry", "die" and "true", but has "therefore" (=so), "industrial" (=of industry), "legal" (=of law), and "certainly" (= surely). It really sounds like that list is ... out-of-sync with reality. I mean, as a ESL adult, I can tell you that half of the words I learned first aren't on the list, and half of the words on the list I didn't learn until much...much later.
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- There are lists of the top 2000 words that are more appropriate perhaps. For instance, Longman's American Idioms uses only the most common senses of these 2000 words, to define 4000 idioms - it lists the 2000 words in the back along with prefixes, suffixes, etc., that they use. So with these 2000 Longman's believes they can explain all the quirks and culture of all American Idioms. Presumably they could explain all British, Australian, Canadian Idioms also with the same 2000 words. I think also they use only direct verbs, present tense wherever possible. So that may be a more logical vocabulary to use here than 1000. Or at last, we can make a rule to deliberately edit down to 2000, but, to generally prefer the top 1000. What's not a good idea is writing only child-level articles to stick within 1000 words.
So, should we even put such an inappropriate link there? I think we all inheritently have a basic idea what are easy words and what are not. And if we don't, we'll become en.Wikipedia.org without the scientific articles one day or another anyway. *joking* --Menchi, August 20, 2003
- I agree, I have a problem with trying to stick to those words. It's unrealistic to expect people to check against the list every time they write something anyway. Perhaps some more info on what Simple English actually is would be enough for people to use their own judgement on which words to use. Angela
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- Um, well yeah. Theres Concordancing software (see WP) but this is a hassle maybe. I dunno. I think such a tool might be useful, but as Angela, you mention, there are silly caveats. But consider that each of those 1K words has a separate tense. If its a noun - death - it also has a verb - to die, dying- etc. Same vice versae. To say something like "He death april 15, 1980" - might be preferable than going into all the fancy tenses. He [died on]... etc. Not superfancy, but maybe too fancy for words. Simple words :) I think we should talk simple here. All the time. Maybe this is good for practice. Also it makes a precedent. -Stevertigo
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- If we are going to follow the 1000 word rule at all, then separate tenses should only be used if they are regular changes. For example, to add -ed for past tense would be allowed, but irregular changes (go--> went) would not be allowed unless 'went' was also on the list. I agree with the idea of trying to use simple language on talk pages as well, although I think I do anyway - I'm too used to writing for 7 year olds! Angela
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- Then you should not stop here. First rule is: "no put-together-words" Second rule chose big words for take-apart-ablility. Third rule is: no two-piece sentences. Use a lot of -. Use lots of ,.:;"' and on... -Stevertigo
- Too many rules. It's meant to be simple. :)
- Yeesh! OK. Stevertigo
- I was only joking. They should be written up on a rules page somewhere - maybe the How To Write Simple English Articles page? Angela, 23 August.
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- Can we at least agree that what we call Simple English is somewhere between the 1000 words and the defining vocabulary of 2000 words? Also we should decide whether to use E Prime and thus ban to be. Just to say that we are aiming for an eventual vocab between 1000 and 2000 words is good for now. And note that even when there is a defining vocabulary some words get explained in context, or as footnotes in the idiom dictionary.
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Let's move all this to Simple English or its talk file. We need to keep all this in one place.
New Software
See MediaWiki/Talk
Simple English Wikipedia Policy
See Simple English Wikipedia Policy/Talk
