Topic on Extension talk:Babel

Hello all- Newbie here, not sure if I'm in the right place to post this. On Wikidata, the wording in the Babel box for French level 0 (fr-0) has a slight error--a kind of slang, conversational departure from grammar rules. It currently reads "Cet utilisateur a aucune connaissance..." See here. In correct French, it should read "...n'a aucune..." I have looked all over and cannot find where to edit this. Another user suggested I might look here. Thanks in advance for any help.

"n'a aucune" is good.

More of that, in the discussion page of  here. I have signalled that the textual graduation 1 2 3 .. in the french text of window Category:User fr should be reversed. Nobody replies. (...)

Hello, please ask meta:User:Wladek92 why he changed "n'a" to "a" some time ago.

ok - I have reverted to "n'a aucune"

Hi all

This is a question of practice and you must process using similar cases to understand the difference. I say "J'ai besoin de cette traduction" because it has a sens positive (I need this translation). At contrario, I will say "Je n'ai aucune remarque à faire" or "Je n'ai rien à dire" or "Je n'ai pas à dire merci".

"J'ai aucune connaissance en anglais" shows a contradiction: you introduce a positive action (I have) but you cannot propose something.

"rien" is similiar to "pas" and you always use "ne" with "pas".

More of that "Ne rien" reinforces the negative affirmation.

Hope it helps.

Christian W.

Hi Christian-

Thanks for your input. I still see the usage without "ne" as slang or conversational, and technically incorrect. I haven't found a source that states this definitively, but here are a few sources that do not indicate the omission of "ne" in the usage we are discussing:

LaRousse difficultés, Dictionnaire Cordial, aidenet, Logilangue

You're a native speaker, I'm not. I think you may simply have become accustomed to conversational usage that omits the "ne". But I suspect your teachers would not call this usage correct.

We could use the wording that Commons employs, or we might take the ultimately more logical approach that en wiki does, which is to eliminate the 0 level altogether: See here, the first paragraph after the list.

With "Cet utilisateur ne comprend pas le français (ou le comprend avec très grande difficulté)" and "These users do not speak French", we are speaking of 3 different situations :

- 1. this user does not understand french: it is clear he has no knowledge and cannot speak

- 2. this user does not speak french: but he may have some knowledge and he may understand

- 3. this user has no knowledge: obviously he cannot speak and understand

Case3 is our conflictual.

Case 2 is not enough selective

Case 1 (from Commons) for which i am favorable is is direct and everyone understands.

Bonjour Christian-

Thanks for your edit and your input. I was away from the computer for a few days.

Given the existence of the xx-0 level, users who employ the Babel box might logically feel compelled to announce themselves as level zero in every language that they don't speak, which would produce quite a cumbersome tower of Babel-box...poor, I know, but I couldn't resist... ;)

So I would suggest we eliminate it if it ever came to a vote.

Ok keep the graduation and remove entry 0 ( nobody should use it) which is coherent with what you say.

Level 0 is not going to be removed. People use it for example to indicate they don't speak the main language of the wiki, or in Wikidata to have the language appear in item pages even though they do not speak it.

Ok I guess it can be used as an internal/default value but is there a way to have it NOT displayed in GUI as a value users could see explicitely ?

As my personal opinion, I find it unlikely that such a change would be implemented.