Hi, I am trying to add common taxa names in a language that has significant dialectal differences in some areas (Lushootseed). Is there a way to ‘stack’ alternative common names by dialect other than creating a new place, or do I need to create a new place to represent each new dialect?
Can you explain what you mean by stack? What outcome are you hoping to achieve?
I want to list taxa names in a language, but I would like to create alternative names so that I can list words in different dialects.
For example, the word for black bear is “sčətxʷəd”, but in the southern dialect it is “spaʔc”. I want to be able to make it so that both names show up for the same animal but are listed as seperate dialects. Ideally without making new “places”, because there are so many observations in the region I am trying to make the place in
Like how in Polish the wild turkey is listed as both indyk dziki and indyk zwyczajny
A couple notes - it isn’t required to assign a place to a common name. And each language can have as many common names listed as exist for the taxon. Does that answer your question?
It would be interesting to create a sort of map about reagional names for each country.
This was done manually some years ago for Taraxacum sp. in Switzerland:
(Source: Infoflora Plus, 2014) Regions with same coulour use the same dialect name.
I cannot read the letters used by @salal_enjoyer here (sorry for that), but could imagine, that this map would look quite interesting too and would animate people of his country to understand each other better when talking about those species.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/2168-Eumomota-superciliosa
This bird is called “torogoz” in El Salvador and “guardabarranco” in Nicaragua. You can see this at the bottom of the taxonomy tab. Is that what you’re talking about? For Lushootseed you’d have to list counties, I think.
Responding to the map showing the common names of Taraxacum sp. in Switzerland specifically.
As you can see the bright yellow-orange areas of Switzerland are using the word “Sunnewirbel” for Taraxacum sp.
By pure chance i know some elderly folks near Switzerland in South-Western Germany and am able to confirm that the very same word “Sunnewirbel” and it’s diminutive “Sunnewirbele” are used in the dialect of the later area for a different species, namely corn salad Valerianella locusta
I agree with OP that maps like this are highly interesting and make for a nice graphic in an iNat journal post or - even better - in a wikipedia article.
I personally think that creating new areas in iNat, in an attempt to code such dialect maps into the iNat database is barely justified, as dialect names seem to be even less usefull than ‘regular’ common names. I would like to encourage OP to contribute such maps as picture files to Wikimedia Commons. Once uploaded there and implemented in the species/genus article of the relevant language version of wikipedia, these maps can also be enjoyed by iNaturalist users, within the information/wikipedia tap on the iNat taxon page.
It does, thank you!
Thanks!