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Anok:
Ⲛⲟϥⲣⲓ,

I think that it is good that we include dialectical variations. However the words in the index seem to be listed according to Sahidic spelling. Is this just because it is how Crum lists them?

I am not so sure that we should organize our new resources based on Crum. It is a primarily academic work, and since most texts are in Sahidic, it makes sense that Crum would have Sahidic ordering. However, we are part of a revival effort, and Sahidic is dead while Bohairic is still alive (if only barely).

Also, having all the dialects be equal causes problems like ⲛⲑⲟϥ (B) = ⲛⲧⲟϥ (S) "he," but ⲛⲧⲟϥ (B) means "below..." Eventually these little details will require a huge amount of variance and redirect-page work. I am not sure that this is worth it, when only Bohairic is truly alive still. In this case it would be best to have the ⲛⲧⲟϥ page mean primarily

So I think that we should organize the wiki by Bohairic, and order the dialects by Bohairic > Sahidic > other dialects. If a word only exists in a non-Bohairic dialect, then that is fine, and it can be added into the index - if Coptic is revived it can then use re-borrow that word into Bohairic.

If I am missing something important, let me know. I actually know more Sahidic than Bohairic, but am trying to learn Bohairic because, as I have said, it is still alive.

Thoughts?

Admin:
I wouldn't agree that Bohairic is alive. just because people pray with it in church without understanding what they are saying doesn't make it alive.
its like saying latin is alive.
There are no native Coptic speaker anymore Bohairic or Sahidic.
There is only one family that claims they speak Coptic at home but that's only because the grandfather of this family decided to learn Coptic and talk in it at home. although children learned Coptic there are only as good as their grandparent not a native speakers in anyway. the grandchildren are abandoning Coptic again.

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About using Bohairic as the word index. I like Bohairic more than Sahidic but Sahidic has a much richer vocab. than Bohairic.
Trying to use Bohairic as main index will result an index half in Bohairic and half in Sahidic - because really so many words in Sahdic not in Bohairic -

Also if we follow Crum we avoid duplication of entries. I can tell people to use Crum as reference for the word entry.
if I adopt mixed Bohairic/Sahidic index we will have no reference and probably end up with lots of duplications.

for end user the index is not at all important because he will just use the search feature to find the word he is looking for.

What do you think?

Anok:
I think that is reasonable. I would also like to see Coptic revived... I understand that there are fewer Bohairic words though, so what you are saying is reasonable. If anything, if a revival effort does succeed,  it will likely be generally Bohairic due to the influence of the Church, but borrow heavily from the richer vocabulary of Sahidic.

I will change the main entries to Sahidic. If, however, there are not contradictions, I will keep the redirect pages for Bohairic words, so that if people that speak Bohairic (most people, right?) want to search that way, they can. If there are contradictions (which there should not be too many of) I can make a disambiguation page.

I think that your point is correct, but I am not sure we can ignore that most people interested in Coptic are more familiar with Bohairic.

How about that?

Admin:
Index names is not important to the user at all, its like page names.
a user either have Coptic word he wants to know its meaning or has English word and want to know its Coptic meaning.
in either case the user will not look in any indexes, he will do a search and he will find his word through search.

using Crum index names is to ensure two people will not write two different pages for the same word.

ophadece:
I still disagree.. Coptic is not dead and hence Bohairic used in the church. Yes it's ignorantly used and probably no one knows the correct original dialect anymore, although I doubt that, but that doesn't make it a dead language..
Oujai

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