Talk:Definition pattern/Nationality

From OmegaWiki

What is the general principle of refining the definitions? On the one hand, refining might generate so many definitions that they cannot be handled; on the other hand, without refining there would be too few exact correspondences.

For example, from the Estonian point of view it is important to keep apart nationality and ethnic origin. From German point of view it would good to distinguish beteen genders. Andres 11:55, 27 October 2006 (CEST)

In Kölsch, I found instances of people being referred to using a specific nationality because:

• Persian - a previous owner of the shop he is running now, was of Iranian origin.
• Italian - a person of a family spending all their hollidays in Italy. He is the driving power behind that custom.
• Italian - runs a pizzeria. (Similar with Yugoslavian, Indian, Spaniard, Portuguese, Brasilian, Mexican, Russian, Vietnamese, etc.)
• Belgian - owns a shop selling sweets imported from Belium. Has relatives in Belgium.
• Huns, Indians, Africans - persons being in clubs admiring said cultures and/or disguising themselves as Huns, Indians, or Africans during carnival.

etc. So most generally, any relation to a nation will do, but not any relation will be used in any instance.

Even many more words of everydays speech can be used, and are used, on people, most usually decriptional, e.g. by behaviour, physical features, etc. This borders to nicknaming, but is different since it does not only apply to specific persons, but rather classes of persons. So saying "here comes a harring" may be saying there is slim person entering, may be he sells fish, may be he is "cold as fish" or seen as a "fishy" person, may be any or all of that. Or talking of "a pretzel" may mean a real pretzel, a person offering or making preztels, a human butt, or even a person having a remarkable ass. etc.

Kölsch is specifically rich of double bound meanings, which is one of unusual strengths of the language. While I believe it is necessary, and worth making, these fine distinctions describing figurative uses, etc., I also believe much of that should be handled by word/expression classes rather than (now) being typed individually. The notion of an expression being 'applicable to humans' (at a certain probability of affinity) together with belonging to one or another domain of speech will make up a good base for selecting an appropriate group of figurative meanings, which can be semiautomatically derived from a base meaning, e.g. as in '(dat) fesh' -> 'a (female) person resembling fish somehow'.

I think so many defintions that 'cannot be handled' is not a real problem usually - they need to be selected and narrowed down if need be, but omitting some for the sake of having tidy lists cannot be a goal of OmegaWiki. Missing definitions imho is far worse than having to deal with too many rare ones. --Purodha Blissenbach 08:10, 2 January 2007 (EST)