Can Wiktionary be used as a monolingual dictionary?

[pathall]

Random question, though I bet @aryaman could answer it!

I am sometimes overwhelmed (although always entertained) by the amount of information that Wiktionary throws back at a simple search. For instance, if you search for the string casa, you get results in no fewer than 19 languages. casa is not just the way to say ‘house’ in several Romance languages, it’s also the nominative/vocative/dative and strong genitive plural of the Irish word cas, which means ‘twisted’! Or something!

I suppose that’s hardly surprising. The paradigmatic information stored in the guts of Wiktionary is quite amazing — as @aryaman, @Hilaria, and @lgessler have shared with us — but it seems sort of… well, too much to always be searching over the space of all strings in all languages.

Is there a way to search (say) for casa, but only in Spanish?

[Hilaria]

good question, I think @aryaman is much more experienced with Wiktionary than I am. Interesting dilemma though.

[aryaman]

In terms of the user interface, the best solution is enabling the Tabbed Languages gadget at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets (you need an account though I think). It makes navigating so much nicer.

There was a vote (in 2012!!) to make Tabbed Languages the default Wiktionary:Votes/2012-10/Enabling Tabbed Languages - Wiktionary, the free dictionary but it hasn’t been implemented for reasons I have no idea about. I think there are some technical issues with it; it does reduce page load times a bit depending on your computer, but overall I prefer it way over the default.

[Hilaria]

We are happy to announce that the Chatino verbs include sound files, now you can hear them. This is thanks to @aryaman.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:San_Juan_Quiahije_Chatino_terms_with_audio_links

[pathall]

Wow, this is an amazing amount of work @Hilaria and @aryaman.

I’m wondering what the multiple recitations of the words are? Are they principle parts or something like that?

Randomly chosen example:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ntsaqLH#San_Juan_Quiahije_Chatino

Congrats on taking this cool project live.

[Hilaria]

Thank you Pat. If I understand you well the multiple recitations are person number (1SG, 2SG, 3SG) and aspect (completive, progressive, habitual, and potential).