Associative Wiktionary

The goal of the Associative Wiktionary proposal is to convert Wictionary to associative one.
It means that we add multilingual associations to every word entry of Wiktionary.
Multilingual association - beautiful sensible sparkling phrase or sentence which combines words of several languages.

Examples of multilingual associations:

listen (English) леса сон /lesa son/ (dream of forest, Russian)
dog polite (English) не лает /ne laet/ (does not bark, Russian)
fair фея /feya/ (fay, Russian), фея yafeyfiya (beautiful, Hebrew)
know how say (English) ni2 hao3 (hello, Chinese)
zusammen (together, German) на экзамен (to exam, Russian)
xue2 sheng (student, Chinese) - sure handshake (English)
Ohayoo Gozaimasu (good morning, Japanese), go (English) йогой (yoga) заниматься (to make, Russian)
каждому (to everybody) скажите (say, Russian) - Hajimemashite (nice to meet you, Japanese)
malheureuse (unhappy, French) - мало роз (has not enough roses, Russian)
было мало (was not enough, Russian), но (but) molto bello (very good, Italian)
tout a coup (suddenly, French) cop (English) тут как тут /tut kak tut/ (here, Russian)
zloi(unkind, Russian) lawyer, ready for (English) redifa (chase, Hebrew)

Reasons to do the Wictionary an associative

At present the languages coexist almost independently. Amount of links between words of different languages is much less than amount of connections inside a language. Each language as though exists in its own plane presenting its own reflection of the world.

Creation of numerous links between languages will convert the structure of many parallel language planes to 3-dimensional structure which will be much richer than any individual language.

Associative dictionary helps to learn languages fast.
Common language helps different people to understand each other.
Gives new opportunities for creative work. This is like poetry using not one but many languages. It also can be considered as a multilingual game.
Will help to save weak languages connecting them to stronger ones.

wikigs

Moved from w:Wikipedia:Village pump. Poccil 16:44, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Association in the way that you describe varies with the individual. It's an added dimension to the pun in a single language. To work, puns depend on their user having a good grasp of the language. He must be fully aware of the correct meaning as well as the correct wrong meaning and the image that will be projected by that wrong meaning. He must also be able to judge his audience. A pun is wasted if nobody can understand it. Doing this across languages is so much more difficult because it presumes some understanding of those languages. I acknowledge that the kind of association that is envisioned goes well beyond puns.

Perhaps he choice of the word "convert" in your first sentence is an unfortunate one that might be made by a person whose first language is not English. It implies a complete changeover of the Wiktionary. I seriously doubt that there would be much support for that when there are some members who would like to see definitions and translations that are far more clear and unambiguous. A balance somewhere between their more technical and your more poetic approach seems to be the way to go.

That being said, I do not support the "conversion" of Wiktionary to an associative project. That would likely be the foundation of a whole new project. On the other hand, I would not object to having a "===Multilingual associations===" section in the latter part of some articles. It could perhaps deal with the hesitancy that some English speakers encounter when they must talk in French about "seals in the harbour". Eclecticology 17:39, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That's right, word "convert" is too strong, it's enough to have association session at the end of articles.

From one side translingual associations are just puns. From another side they can be seen as a skeleton for future multilinguizm, as a try to use several languages simultaneously. Probably, in several years (or tens of years) multilingual translators will become cheap and be built in regular cell-phones. So people will be able to play with words relatively easy, it will not be so hard as today.

Like elementary particle a word gets its meaning due to interaction with other words. We distinguish between so called "bare word" - just a symbol - and "dressed word" - word with all its connections and associations. So the establishing of new links between words of different languages creates a new environment and new aspects of word sense.

wikigs 11 Oct 2004

some similar ideas are being put together in meta:Wiki Language School, focusing only on the learning aspect of it. The end thing, however, might still look like an associative dictionary.

At least I know have some idea where the mlinks thing keeps coming from. Perhaps what you are attempting would be better addressed in the phrasebook entries? For now, I'll stop reverting anything that I see that says "mlinks" so you have a chance to convert them over to category:Phrasebook entries. --Connel MacKenzie 05:49, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)