Template talk:Latin script

English alphabet

This should be called the English alphabet. It is neither Latin in the restricted sense that it was used to write the Latin language, nor Latin in the general sense that it is the full Roman script used by many languages. --Ptcamn 02:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

IMHO this template should be called “Template:Basic Latin”. Then restores the original “Template:Latin alphabet”. --Hello World! 14:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Latin alphabet of the Roman Empire

Using the "history of the Latin alphabet" I have removed all the letters not in the "classical" Latin alphabet otherwise there is an inherent POV that the English alphabet is the Latin alphabet and all the other Latin derived alphabets are somehow a subset or a superset of the English alphabet. --Philip Baird Shearer 20:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

That's ridiculous, the Latin alphabet of the modern day is and has always been recognized as ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, even in nations with variants, those letters are recognized as today's standard. That's common sense. I don't see any need to be reverting to ancient variants to preserve neutrality, this is an encyclopaedia, and people reading it will 99.9% of the time be looking for the Latin alphabet of today, not one of 2 millennia ago. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

How do ou know that "people reading it will 99.9% of the time be looking for the Latin alphabet of today"? There is no such thing as one Latin alhpabet.

If however you mean the "Modern basic latin alphabet" as defined in ISO/IEC 646 based on ASCII which was based on the 26 letters of the English alphabet and previous telecommunication standards, then that is another matter. But to state that the Latin Alphabet is the English alphabet is IMHO just wrong. --Philip Baird Shearer 11:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

BTW Hexagon1 how do you explin the link to numerals if this a about the "Modern basic latin alphabet"? --Philip Baird Shearer 11:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

That's why it's a link, not an inclusion, it is a concept closely tied with the alphabet by any means. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 01:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

It's kind of hard to say what is the Latin alphabet really. It's not like it has always been stable and then started getting additions. If we admit the so called "classical Latin alphabet" is the real Latin alphabet, the what's the alphabet right before it became "classical"? Why can't the alphabet that is currently considered "modern Latin alphabet" be considered the real alphabet? The matter is Hexagon is partly right. The Latin alphabet with 26 letters is generally considered as the modern Latin alphabet, with a few local exceptions. Just look at all the different Wikipedias and their articles on the Latin alphabet. Claiming the "classical Latin alphabet" is the only real Latin alphabet is more POV than claiming the "modern Latin alphabet" is. --moyogo 12:05, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I persume that you do no dispute that the alphabet used by the Roman's was a Latin alphabet. As the Roman Empire is seen by most to be typically Roman ... then that would seem to be the alphabet to use.

If we are going to defined the English alphabet, an alphabet derived from the Latin, as THE Latin alphabet then it needs to be qualified that this is only one Latin derived alphabet which happens to be promoted by the OSI for historical compatbility with a pre-defined English alphabet used in ASCII. To claim that the English alphabet is THE Latin alphabet is in my opinion a highly NPOV. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that this template should either be moved to "English alphabet" or a qualification needs to be added, that it is the "basic OSI Latin alphabet". --Philip Baird Shearer 18:40, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Where does this English alphabet stuff come from? I don't remember mentioning that. The one you are referring to as the English alphabet is the modern Latin alphabet. Even in for example the Czech language, the internationally-recognized Latin alphabet is still understood as being the 26-letter one, even though the Czech one is a 27-letter one (or a 42-letter one if you look at it with diacritics). In any case, the modern Latin alphabet is IMHO the one readers will be looking for, which is why I agree with the current OSI template. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 01:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The OSI basic Latin alphabet is base on the English alphabet. If during the 1960s Italy had dominated the computer and telecommunications industries then the OSI basic Latin alphabet would probably have had less letters. But Italy did not, the USA did, so the basic OSI alphabet is the English alphabet, not the Italian alphabet. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Like I said before, we need to agree on what Latin alphabet we should use. This template is not supposed to be about Classical Latin. If it is about the current state of the Latin alphabet then maybe it should include all the Latin characters currently in use. Arguing the OSI alphabet is not the real Latin alphabet but the Classical alphabet is, is like arguing the Original Latin alphabet is or the 16th century Latin alphabet is. --moyogo 14:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to agree, if this template should remain as it is content-wise then it should be renamed "Modern Basic Latin Alphabet" or something like that. —Nightstallion (?) 20:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

There's no need, a common person will think of the "Latin alphabet" as opposed to the "classical Latin alphabet" or the "Roman alphabet". They will not think of a "Modern Basic Latin Alphabet" as opposed to the "Archaic Latin Alphabet" or some other such definition. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 08:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Hexagon1 I think you are looking at this with the systemic bias of a person who installs software on a PC and is familar with that paradigm, (as are many who contribute to Wikipedia). I would suggest that for those who are not so familar with computer software, think "English alphabet" (the alphabet song), French alphabet when leaning French, Spanish alphabet when learning Spanish [...]. The Latin alphabet from that perspective must be what is use when learning Latin. --Philip Baird Shearer 11:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

However in contemporary times, the Latin alphabet is simply understood to be the one we use in the template now. Calling the template the English alphabet would be biased, as that is not just the English alphabet of Anglophone nations, that is the Latin alphabet of the World at large. It would be an exception from your Language alphabets. We need to think, hey, what would a user type in looking for this? I doubt they'd type something like "OSI basic Latin alphabet". Oh, and I myself am also a native Czech speaker (a standard alphabet of 27 graphemes and an extended one of 42) so I am familiar with languages that use different alphabets. PS: I didn't quite catch your reference to me installing software. Does that somehow preclude me from having an opinion? +Hexagon1 ^(t) 23:50, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Like me you should express you opinion because that is how differences in points of view are explained and resolved. But as someone familar with installing software you may have a bias as to what you think the Latin alphabet is (see the link I gave above which explains it better than I can: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias). If the modern Latin alphabet is only the 26 letters used in the English alphabet, then for example it changes the meaning of WP:UE, this is a position that many people who have contributed to the page name debate would take issue with (See WP:UE Disputed issues, and the reams in the archives of the talk page to that guideline). --Philip Baird Shearer 22:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I still don't quite catch you, I fail to see how installing software would instil a bias, and why does the fact that the basic modern Latin alphabet is equivalent to the English alphabet counter any points in WP:UE? Foreign languages are free to use variants of the alphabet, however the most common Latin alphabet of today is simply the 26-letter one. Pardon my ignorance, but please elaborate. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:37, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

nonsense, the 26 letters are the "basic" set not only in English, but in many languages. In terms of standards, it is the "basic" set in ISO. In terms of evolution, it is the Latin alphabet as it was around 1750, as modern orthographies began to emerge. National variants are just that, variants, mostly expressed by diacritics, of the "basic" Early Modern set. dab (𒁳) 14:36, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Modern orthographies began to emerge long before 1750.

National "variants" did not evolve from this set. Some languages have had a written history for longer than this set has existed, and never used "w", for example, at any point.

Many diacritics are much older than this set is. Even Modern English was using tildes before v and u had become distinct letters.

Ptcamn 00:04, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

OSI/ISO naming

I was asked to change the naming of the header from OSI to ISO by a request at WP:REQT. Since it linked to ISO anyway and other alphabet templates did too, this seemed reasonable. If the correct title of the template is "OSI", then perhaps someone should explain to me what OSI is, and/or change the link in the header to some article on whatever OSI is. If OSI is just a precursor or alternate name for the ISO, then I think the title should reflect the dominant modern usage, as an etymology of the name of the ISO/OSI Latin alphabet is probably too esoteric to be handled in a simple template header. —Dgies^t c 02:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Done --Philip Baird Shearer 00:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Um... it wasn't a request. Someone asked at WP:REQT. I made the change. User:Hexagon1 reverted me saying "refer talk". I saw no explanation here so I'm asking for some clarification. —Dgies^t c 02:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The reason I reverted was that that was the name we painstakingly decided upon here, so I was weary of any change that would reignite this debate. I think it refers to the Open Systems Interconnection standards, but I see nothing wrong with ISO (or the specific standard name) if it links to it. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 04:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see a discussion thread where you reached consensus on "OSI". Is it archived somewhere? In older revisions of the talk page? Also, OSI defines networking standards, not character sets, right? —Dgies^t c 05:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I meant the name in all, not just the OSI part. OSI indeed defines networking standards, however deep in the bowels of OSI must be some alphabetic standard too... apparently... somewhere... I'm all for ISO here. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 07:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ph

The link to the Ph digraph goes to pH not Ph like it should. Is there anything that can be done about that? Jake the Editor Man _(talk) 18:24, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

It now goes to the Ph (disambiguation) page. The template is Template:AZsubnav and there is no easy way to fix specific combinations apart from disambiguation pages. twilsonb (talk) 00:06, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Forced font

At the bottom, the section of links: "history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646" is forced to a sans-serif font even when I do not want to see it. Is this necessary? --Rumping (talk) 16:22, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

missing diacritic?

I don't see O͘ listed as an O diacritic. Shouldn't it be there, or am I missing something? --JaGa^talk 10:30, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Navbox

Isn't this a navbox? -DePiep (talk) 18:35, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

No underlines

In the diacritics parts ("C with diacritics" and "cedilla") , could we drop the underline to show the markings (more clear)? It would look like: Çç --> Çç. For the eye, we should hode them everywhere, even when the mark is not below. See also: {{IPA navigation}} -DePiep (talk) 19:53, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Restructured

I just restructured the whole template (including subtemplates). The produced content is the same.

What has changed

• Only one table is used. All blocks are added as extra rows to that table. That table is build in subtemplate /main.
• Separate determination of which letter and which diacritic is used (prevent double meaning of 2nd unnamed parameter). See subtemplates /determine diacritic and /determine letter.
• Also option to force showing of a diacritic manually (by entering "show diacritic = hook"). Also option to force no-show at all. See input options:

show letter=
show diacritic=
show pairs=

• Using same structure for each row (26 columns). See subtemplate /row26col.
• Separating several lists, so that editing is more easy. See all subtemplates.
• Two external templates are not used any more (nor here nor elsewhere).

As said, the resulting content is unchanged. Behaviour might slightly improve when zooming in the browser.

• A lot of repeated code has been removed into a single presence.
• Subtamplates are used.

Todo

• Updating the /doc basically done.
• Later on we can add and refine separate parts of this template. E.g. extra diacritics may be added, or individual letters. The structure is such that is is less tricky.

-DePiep (talk) 16:25, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

List markup

This template displays list of letters; please can someone who understands its workings apply class=hlist and wiki-list markup, per WP:HLIST? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:34, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I did this single edit (do revert when result is wrong). I only changed this dotted list, the bottom row, because other subtemplates (subtables) are not a dotseparated flatlist so not a "hlist" (they are 26-column rows). -DePiep (talk) 23:55, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, but I think you misunderstand me I refer to the line which begins, or example, "Aa Bb Cc…" which is currently made up of table cells, but which should be a list. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Indeed I misunderstood. But changing the 26-column rows is not what I'd do. As they show now, they are equally spread over the width (good), with equal space for Mm and Ii (good), and since there are no tablelines (good) most pixels are used to show details of the letter, often with diacritic (good). Changing into (left-aligned? centered maybe over two?) dot-separated rows would not improve the result. Please keep in mind that they are plain individual letters here (like symbols), not readable text, and the table layout supports looking columnwise eg per letter "P" - where applicable.

On a one step higher level. The template is a mix of wikitable and css to reach the effect. The basic 26 column row is an incomplete wikitable(-row), and so requires an environment in every situation. This may sound complicated (it is), but if I remember where it came from this is a logical heaven (e.g. the options were inconsistent, implicit, and interfering with each other, lettercontent lists were mixed with templatecode, and any overview was missing).

That said, there could be a better structure for sure. But again, creating a regular hlist for the sake of hlist is not an improvement imo. -DePiep (talk) 17:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not "for the sake of an hlist", it's for the sake of web standards, semantic richness and accessibility. We certainly shouldn't be using tables for layout; we already caution against that in the MoS. However, it should be possible to achieve regular spacing with CSS. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:54, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Tables are a valid form of organizing information, especially with multi-axis infomation. I don't think this template is ripe for horizontal lists; that would certainly require a complete rewrite. — Edokter (talk) — 22:29, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Where's the multi-axis information in this template? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:00, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Letterpairs and Letters using diacritic x should be vertical aligned with the base alphabet (earlier I mentioned the eg letter "P" for this). So, new, the diacritic can be improved (add letter vertical lining). -DePiep (talk) 00:02, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense, thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:55, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Latin iota

ɩ belongs under i. Could someone add it? I don't want to risk messing up the template. — kwami (talk) 10:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Adding a letter

Could somebody please add x̂ to the template? thanks Reedman72 (talk) 21:57, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

ʼn

Does ʼn belong here? Please add if so. This template is a little bit more involved than I want to mess with. ⇔ ChristTrekker 17:23, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes it does but it has still not been added. 1.127.108.215 (talk) 16:08, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd say no, it doesn't belong here. Per the article, "The code point (U+0149) is currently deprecated, and the Unicode standard recommends that a sequence of an apostrophe followed by n be used instead." Unicode can't "delete" a code point but deprecating it is essentially the same. So I'd recommend NOT adding it here. DRMcCreedy (talk) 19:12, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Why can't adding a letter be simple?

Guys, I'm sure this template is a technical masterpiece. But it's not editor friendly.

I want to add G̃ (G with tilde) to the "G with diacritics" section of the G box (as displayed at the bottom of the article G), but when I click edit on the box, I just get a load of code. I used to be a programmer, so sometimes code is fine, but I don't want to pick my way through your code just to uncover the path to edit the G box.

Maybe it's explained somewhere in the documentation, but guys, I shouldn't have to start reading some other page in order to make my simple edit.

The documentation should be in the code, or the edit button should take me directly to a page I can edit to make my change instead of dumping me in this overview page of code (this may involve having two or three separate edit buttons in the letters box, one for the code of the container, one for the "G with diacritics" section, etc).

I give up. I'm not making the edit. Gronky (talk) 10:09, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation default for WP:INTDABLINK links.

An intentional link to a disambiguation page is supposed to be piped through the appropriate "Foo (disambiguation)" redirect so that it does not show up as an error needing to be fixed. Can someone add a parameter to this template to default to piping through such a link if the target page is a disambiguation page? An example would be the code found in Template:SpeciesAbbreviationItem:

{{#ifexist:{{{letter}}}. {{{term}}} (disambiguation)
|* [[{{{letter}}}. {{{term}}} (disambiguation)|''{{{letter}}}. {{{term}}}'' (disambiguation)]]
<!-- -->|{{#ifexist:{{{letter}}}. {{{term|foo}}}
|* ''[[{{{letter}}}. {{{term}}}]]''
<!-- -->}}<!--
   -->}}

As it stands, where this template is used on a page like Ṅ, it causes the page to register as having a large number of disambiguation links, which in turn causes bots patrolling for pages with too many disambiguation links to throw a maintenance template on the page asking for the links to be fixed. Therefore, the sooner this is addressed, the better. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:58, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Good point, BD2412. It looks like R'n'B fixed the warning about too many dablinks on the Ṅ page (Special:History/Ṅ) by adding the parameter show pairs=no. So the problem seems to come from the pairwise combinations.

Implementing #ifexist logic 124 times in Template:Latin alphabet/AZ09 pairs is likely to be error-prone and hard to maintain, so it would need to be done on a separate sub-template. Or perhaps better, somebody could create a generic {{IfDab}} template. The effect on the AZ09 code would still be messy, but maybe not insurmountable?

As alternatives, would it be a good idea to add some kind of no-robots code to the "two-letter combinations" section of the template? Or change "show pairs" to default-no?

Pelagic (talk) 03:50, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

This is still happening. In reversed half H, User:DPL bot added Template:Dablinks because of this template. --Error (talk) 08:45, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

AE

I added an entry for AE, perhaps it belongs in an "Extended Latin alphabet" version of this template. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:18, 8 August 2015 (UTC).

Bolding s-comma

I noticed on the S-comma page that the entry under "letters using comma sign" automatically showed Șș in boldface, but that under "letter S with diacritics" did not, probably due to a previous page-move.

I'm not sure how I would easily sandbox-test a complicated template like this, so I have boldly (recklessly?) edited Template:Latin alphabet/letter with all diacritics, changing Ș{{!}}Șș to S-comma{{!}}Șș.

It preview-tests okay in a couple of pages, so I'm reasonably confident that I haven't broken anything. Please be gentle with me; this is my first ever template edit.

Pelagic (talk) 01:59, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Open E

I noticed Open O is listed under O. Should Open E be added under E? DRMcCreedy (talk) 21:31, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

That makes sense. --Moyogo/ (talk) 19:37, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation link issue.

This template is calling a link to the disambiguation page, Macron in several articles - Ā , Ȳ, Overline, and Macron below. Can someone with the wiki-fu fix it so that it properly calls Macron (diacritic)? Cheers! bd2412 T 21:06, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Update K with stroke and diagonal stroke

Ꝅ has been moved to K with stroke and diagonal stroke so the entry in the template should be piped to that so that it appears in black, rather than blue, when the template is used in that article - but I can't work out how to do so. Could someone please fix this? Thanks. PamD 15:05, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

I've updated Template:Latin alphabet/diacritic with all letters and Template:Latin alphabet/letter with all diacritics to fix the link. Please let me know if any others should be fixed. DRMcCreedy (talk) 16:34, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 April 2018

change the list of keyboard layouts for the latin alphabet from "qwerty, qwertz, and azerty" to "qwerty, qwertz, azerty, dvorak (simplified/programmer), and colemak" MindOfMetalandWheels (talk) 21:07, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

 Done L293D (☎ • ✎) 02:27, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Should show all diacritics by default

The template should show all the content in all articles. Instead, it is hiding things by default depending on the article. For example, it currently shows "Letters using caron sign" in Ľ and "Letters using bar or stroke sign" in Ł, but it should show both sections in both articles. The purpose of a nav template is to help find related articles. If the template ends up taking too much space, inner collapsible sections can be used, so that the user can hide/show them with the mouse, like it works for other nav templates. --62.98.108.232 (talk) 07:30, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Letter N with diacritics

Doesn't seem to work on N. Also hi GCPGrey! kiepier (talk) 08:45, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

I've updated "Template:Latin script/letter with all diacritics" to fix the problem. I accidentally deleted a pipe (|) on my previous edit. Thanks for catching that. DRMcCreedy (talk) 14:58, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Numerous Missing Letters

There are a substantial number of missing Latin script letters which already have Wikipedia pages about them, e.g. þ, ȝ, ð, æ, ʼn, ƿ, ỻ, œ, ſ, ñ. As letters such as w were not part of the historic alphabet used to write the Latin language, it is no more logical to include that letter than it is to exclude any of these. Therefore, those letters should all be added. 1.127.108.215 (talk) 16:07, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Digraphs, Trigraphs, Tetragraphs, Pentagraphs

The set of links to various combinations of letters is incomplete, and should probably never be complete within the template (it would be too large). Wouldn't it be better to link to the list articles themselves, instead of having a random selection of such links in the template? - Anonimski (talk) 16:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)