User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 1

Dieresises

Careful when adding a dieresis to a celestial body's name. Wikipedia goes by the IAU official names. 52872 Okyrhoe and Saturn's moon Mundilfari are umlaut-less, even though their namesakes may not be.

Urhixidur 14:13, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

Pronunciation guides

Hello. I just came across the articles you're creating for the pronunciation of asteroid names. Are you planning on adding more information about the asteroids to these articles? I'm not really sure the pronunciation of an asteroid name is sufficient information to justify an article. I had tagged one of them for Speedy Deletion (justification: no context), then noticed you had created a LOT of these articles. I removed the Speedy tag until I could discuss this with you. Please leave me a note on my talk page. Thank you. SWAdair | Talk 08:18, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Ah, I see. Hmm... useful information, good to have, but it might be best to create one article for the moment, listing the pronunciations of all the ones you have on-hand. Other people are already tagging some of those for speedy deletion. As a matter of fact, the one that I tagged, then untagged -- well, it's gone. Someone else found it. One of the Candidates for Speedy Deletion is lack of context. When someone comes across a page that simply tells how to pronounce the article title, they are likely to list it for Speedy Deletion. Unless more information about the asteroids is added, it is just a matter of time before they are all Speedied. Especially if you have dependable data, this is stuff we could certainly use. I'm glad you're contributing it. Due to the way things work around here, it might be more efficient (and safer) for you to include this information in one article. That way, the context would be obvious and it wouldn't be speedily deleted. Oh, and in case I haven't made it clear -- Thank You! When the experts get this stuff wrong, it's great to have dependable info added. SWAdair | Talk 08:45, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure the English pronunciation guides belong in the asteroid list tables; I'd rather see them in the individual articles, or maybe in a separate list. As the lists stand, they are essentially language-neutral, which is no longer true if pronunciation guides are added. The problem is also, in part, that those lists are maintained through spreadsheets, and should a massive update be required (an unlikely event at this point), keeping the guides from being overwritten would require a big integration effort.

Urhixidur 03:57, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)

Hi!

Nice to see someone else into linguistics on Wikipedia. Have you done any comparative work? - Mustafaa 02:47, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's pretty much my position too - I mean, Afro-Asiatic is a manifestly valid family, yet both Ehret's and Orel & Stolbova's reconstructions are terribly unreliable, and I'm still not totally convinced that Nilo-Saharan is correctly formulated (though Nicolai's Songhai-Berber hypothesis is ridiculous, and is argued in a way that makes Greenberg look masterfully rigorous.) That said, I'm more favorable to Greenberg than most; despite his many errors, I continue to suspect he got the basic three-way division of Native American languages right, and his Eurasiatic makes more sense to me than Nostratic (and corresponds pretty much to Starostin's newer Nostratic.) If you want to see a reconstruction of Proto-Andamanese, I could put you in touch with a friend who has done one... I'll have a look at the star names, though I'm no expert on Arabic astronomical terminology! - Mustafaa 19:10, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hallo, Kwamikagami! It is wonderful to see the great contributions that you're making to Wikipedia. Keep up the good work! I'm in a bit of a Wiki-lull at the moment: I need a bit of a task after getting Aramaic language featured. What information are you looking for regarding the Arabic names of stars? I've got a few old books on Middle-Eastern astronomy, mostly Babylonian stuff, but I think I remember there was some Arabic too. Gareth Hughes 23:45, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just noticed your reply. User:Timothy Usher is the guy I was referring to; try emailing him. - Mustafaa 18:35, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Moon names in Greek

Kwami, no offence, but why add the names of moons in the Greek alphabet? I know the names are Greek, but the Greek alphabet isn't used by the scientific community, only by students of classical mythology. It seems to me that the Greek letters belong on the pages of the mythological namesakes, not of the moons. Just a thought... The Singing Badger 17:26, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi - I think the Greek could prove handy in the astronomical pages. Much of the disagreement about how to pronounce astronomical bodies is whether to use an English literary pronunciation or to try to recapture the original Latin or Greek. For example, the entry for asteroid 25 Phocaea had the pronunciation "fo KAY ee a" (actually, it'd be closer to IPA [fo.kaj.a]) before I changed it to foh-see'-a. There are a number of people who feel that pronunciations of proper names should be as "authentic" as possible, and others that feel just as strongly that they should be as completely assimilated into English as possible - just look at the arguments over place names on this planet. So I thought it might be prudent to include both the English and the Greek pronunciations. Since the classical Greek script is straightforward (most people interested in the sciences already know it) and nearly phonemic (it's just missing indications of vowel length for a, i, u), and since English transliterations usually leave something important out (if you use ê for eta, what do you use for eta with stress?), I thought the best way to indicate the Greek pronunciation would be to use the Greek script. If someone wants to do this for the mythological entries too, great; that just isn't my interest. And there aren't pages yet for some of the figures the moons are named after - Thelxinoe, for instance. --kwami 23:33, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see, that makes sense - I didn't know Greek is phonemic. Interesting... The Singing Badger 00:44, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Logogram

In reference to your latest edit to Alphabet, can you please tell me why you reverted my edit and insist that a logogram represents a word? There are certainly logograms in Chinese, for instance, that represent whole words, but that does not mean that all logograms represent words. At best, logograms represent morphemes, which contain meaning, but often may not be able to standalone as individual words. Many words require more than one logogram to compose. Please see Chinese language#Morphology for more details. --Umofomia 01:13, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You're right, morpheme is correct. My bad. However, you said that a logogram represents an idea, which is completely wrong. As far as I know, there are no fully developed ideographic scripts anywhere in the world; the closest are perhaps some of the picture writing systems of Siberia, but they're of limited use. All other scripts are language dependent. The idea that scripts like Egyptian were ideographic is a holdover from the Middle Ages. kwami

Actually if you take a look at my edit, I didn't use the word idea. Idea was in the original version of the article, and I agree with you that it is wrong. I replaced it with the word meaning, which is what a morpheme is a unit of (see [1]). --Umofomia 07:26, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay, but meaning isn't much different from idea, and I'd change it either way. "Meaning" would still suggest that logographs represent semantics, or that morphemes are semantic rather than lexical units. Then you start reinforcing the mystical Egyptians-wrote-pure-thought idea. I went ahead and changed it to morpheme, linked in case the reader has any questions. I'd better check the morpheme article, however, to make sure it doesn't say morphemes are units of meaning. kwami

BTW, the definition of morpheme is a unit of meaning. Morphemes are semantic units. You can't change the definition of a word that has been established by the linguistic community. Logograms don't directly represent semantics, but there is a correspondence between logograms and morphemes because each morpheme is represented by a logogram. The form of the logogram itself does not necessarily have to do anything with the meaning though, so this is not the same as saying that it represents pure thought. It's a really tough distinction to make, but I don't know how else you can word that. --Umofomia 08:03, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The morpheme is the basic morphological unit. That is the accepted use of the word. Bloomfield's definition of "smallest meaningful unit" cited in the morpheme article is an attempt to convey that; it's not the same as saying "smallest unit of meaning". The examples make it clear that the unit in question is morphological (or lexical), not semantic. An example: the English plural of word is words (two morphemes); that of mouse is mice (arguably either one morpheme or two). However, even if you take the vowel of mice to be a plural morpheme, it is not the same morpheme as the s of words, even though it means the same thing. One meaning, "plural", is conveyed by several different morphemes (lexical/morphological units). The morpheme has everything to do with the actual words being used, and nothing (directly) to do with the meaning behind those words. kwami

Glyph doctors

Hi. I noticed you deleted "Glyph doctors" for being commercial. Is this a general policy? I hold no brief for those guys, but the information sounds useful. There is only one other program I know of for laymen to learn hieroglpyhs. Seems like useful information to me. It's not like commercial links under "Cialis" or something. Lectiodifficilior 20:12, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I think it is. It's one thing for us to add a clearly marked commercial link, but another for a commercial site to come in and advertise themselves, especially when they're being dishonest. (Free ... online courses – except you have to pay.) Don't know if it would be useful or not, but if you want it in, it should clearly be marked under "commercial links", and placed below the straightforward reference links. Our readers shouldn't have to question the integrity of Wikipedia. kwami 20:20, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

cheers!

excellent job with the "proto-alphabet" articles! I suppose I should look around for a suitable award to present you... regards, dab (ᛏ) 11:21, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

thanks!

usonian?

The most common adjective for USA is "american" - i don't think it is correct but that is the reality --Xorkl000 12:02, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Oops, I meant a word specifically for the US. There's an article Alternative words for American that discusses some of the possibilities. Usonian is the only one I've ever heard, though. kwami 18:44, 2005 May 21 (UTC)

the most common adjective for the united states is "American", i think it is an incorrect usage, and it really should be "Usonian", however to turn the old philosopher on his head no "ought" implies an "is". The fact is that "American" is the most common adjective for the United States of America. --Xorkl000 02:10, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I do know what I'm doing! The previous pronunciations were ghastly, if used making them sound like a terminally ill asthmatic with bad bronchitis, with all those 'h' sounds at the ends of the syllables. And yes, Europa does rhyme with papa - MPF 22:32, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

(This end of the conversation moved to MPF's talk page.)

Okay, MPF, Badger's fine with it. Take a look at the Saturn page's moon list and see what you think, before we redo all the moons individually. kwami 01:40, 2005 May 23 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks good now! - MPF 11:08, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Image:Ba`alat.jpg

Image deletion warning

The image Image:Ba`alat.jpg has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images. If the image's copyright status cannot be verified, it will be deleted. If you have any information on the source or licensing of this image, please go there to provide the necessary information.

Burgundavia (✈ take a flight?) 00:13, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

• That would make the image non-free for Wikipedia, as we are now going to be removing non-commercial images. Burgundavia (✈ take a flight?) 02:11, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Okay. I've replaced the image in the article with a hand drawing. kwami 07:14, 2005 May 27 (UTC)

Sino-Tibetan hypothesis

What makes you think that Sino-Tibetan is a language family, and not just more than a theory. Do you know of any regular sound correspondences like Grimm's law, or Verner's law for Sino-Tibetan languages. Because if you do you should really publish your findings. Until then I don't see how Sino-Tibetan can remain anything except a theory. --Nathan hill 10:09, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Of course it's a theory. Every language family is a theory, including Romance and Germanic. You'd said it was a hypothesis, which implies that there's been no further supporting evidence after the initial proposal. And if not as well supported as the Indoeuropean theory, ST is a lot better supported than many of the other families out there. Very few families of any time depth have had enough work done to show regular sound correspondances. Of the traditional Old World families with a greater time depth than a single branch of IE, probably just IE, Uralic, and Austronesian are "families" by your definition. Unless you want to break each of the other families down to their individual branches (or subbranches), I don't see any reason to single out ST. kwami 10:39, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

English dialect phonemes

You mention English dialects having seperate phoneme sets at talk:Europa (moon) and I didn't want to burden the talk page with more talk unrelated to astronomy. I am however curious to know which English dialects you are refering to. Some source would, of cours, be very appropriate. No need to reply on my talkpage if you don't want to, btw.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:44, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

For me, the first two vowels in the moon Autonoe are the same. I just don't have that phonemic distinction, whereas for most Brits they are distinct. With the IPA, you can distinguish them, and alienate most Usonians, or merge them, and alienate most Brits. That's because people take the IPA to be both phonetic and to have a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound. But with a spelling pronunciation, you can define aw to be the vowel in caught, and o the vowel in cot, and transcribe the moon as aw-ton'-oe-ee, and satisfy both. Someone like me would simply take aw and o to be variant spellings for the same sound. That isn't a problem, because I don't expect English spelling to be one-to-one. This is also a much much more approachable system for a native speaker who isn't familiar with the IPA, which is probably the great majority. Of course, we'd want the IPA too, as you've said.

I don't have a good ref on hand, but you should be able to dig up some details at List of dialects of the English language. kwami 05:16, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

So how does this answer my question about English dialects with different phonemes?

Peter ^Isotalo 21:01, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Some English dialects have three low back vowels. I only have one. So a one-to-one phonemic transcription for one would not work for the other. If you use three symbols to represent my one phoneme, the system will appear arbitrary to me, specifying sounds that don't exist; and if you use the symbol for my one vowel for all three in the other dialect, you will underspecify phonemic distinctions. Also, the 3-vowel dialects often drop their ars, which I don't, so here the problem is reversed. A good system would represent everything, but there might not be any one dialect that makes all of the distinctions. That is, the transcription system might not correspond to any actual English dialect. kwami 21:26, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

Could you give examples? Perhaps some minimal pairs? And which dialects?

Peter ^Isotalo 03:42, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I'll give you what the OED has for RP, compared to my own pronunciation, which is pretty close to the Usonian TV-newscaster standard.

RP distinguishes what are homonyms to me:

cot, UK [kɒt]

caught, UK [kɔːt]

For me, and most of the US, these are both [kɑt].

Distinct for me, homonyms for the OED:

father, US [ˈfɑ.ðɹ]

farther, US [ˈfɑɹ.ðɹ]

In the OED, these are both [ˈfɑː.ðə]. (There's that third lower-back vowel. I couldn't think of a minimal triplet, as I don't control those vowels.)

Neither of us has homonyms, but the phonemic distinction differs:

caw, US [kɑ], UK [kɔː]

car, US [kɑɹ], UK [kɑː]

There are other distinctions, such as UK do [duː] vs. dew [djuː], which for most of the US are both [duː]; also UK for [fɔː] vs. four [fɔə], which for me are both [fɔɹ]. (I'm not as familiar with distinctions I might make that RP would collapse.)

(Just for fun, because I don't think it requires special attention, is writer and rider. In RP those are straightforward, but in the US they differ in their vowels: [ˈɹʷɐiɾ.ɹ̩], [ˈɹʷɑiɾ.ɹ̩].)

Anyway, I can't imagine trying to represent even these few words in the IPA without giving separate pronunciations for the US and the UK. But then the Ozzies and Irish would chime in that it doesn't reflect their pronunciation, people in New York or Atlanta will say that the "American" pronunciation doesn't take them into account, etc. etc. But with spelling pronunciations like kot, kawt, faadher, farther, kaw, kar, all native speakers seems happy (at least so far). kwami 06:08, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

an interesting question

hi. someone asked an interesting question about the articulation of raspberries & Donald Duck voice on Talk:Phonetics#Unusual_sounds. i gave my initial impressions. maybe you have some better thoughts that you could post there?

(also, your work on making articulatory descriptions more accurate is, i think, making wikipedia much more valuable.)

peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 18:02, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

Your descriptions look good, tho since I don't do the DD sound, I'm not sure either. I'll add a few comments. kwami 20:39, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

Talk:Chinese character#Unclear phrasing

I have replied your question. You might want to check it out. Also, if you are still interested in the Chinese names of stars you can ask me. -- G.S.K.Lee 17:07, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cushitic branches

Hi. I was thinking you might be able to weigh in on a question being discussed at Talk:Cushitic languages? Thanks - Mustafaa 04:07, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Changes to List_of_languages_by_total_speakers

Hi,

You've changed List_of_languages_by_total_speakers and you have split up eastern and western Punjabi. You also claim that Western Punjabi is closer to Sindhi - is there even one source you have got to back this up? Eastern & Western Punjabi are a hell of a lot closer than Urdu and Hindi (Hindustani) and should be listed together.

Unless you have any objections, I'll go ahead and rectify this mistake. Sukh 28 June 2005 17:15 (UTC)

I'm going by Ethnologue, which is what most of the language data is based on. If we want to base "language" on social criteria, we could go on forever about what is and is not a "language". Mutual intelligibility, while not perfect, can at least in theory be applied equally to all languages. Right now only Chinese and Arabic are not languages in the linguistic sense; all other major languages are based on Ethnologue standards.

Do you know Punjabi? I don't know why they are split up, but Hindi and Urdu are the same language by mutual intelligibility tests, and evidently the linguists Ethnologue is relying on feel that Punjabi is not.

Per the classification in Ethnologue, Gurmukhi (E. Punjabi) is a Central Indic language, while Lahnda (W. Punjabi) is a Northwestern Indic language. That is, Gurmukhi is in a group that includes Gujarati, Rajasthani, Romani (Gypsy), and Western Hindi (of which Hindustani is one branch). Lahnda, on the other hand, is in another group that includes Kashmiri and Sindhi. This classification has been stable since the 14th edition. While Ethnologue is not always reliable for obscure languages, there are enough Indicists out there that any mistake in the status of Punjabi would have been corrected in the 5 years between the 14th and 15th editions. kwami 2005 June 28 23:55 (UTC)

Yes I am a Punjabi speaker. Eastern and Western Punjabi are closer than Urdu and Hindi - the main difference is the script used. Check out [2]:

There is a continuum of varieties between Eastern and Western Panjabi, and with Western Hindi and Urdu. 'Lahnda' is a name given earlier for Western Panjabi; an attempt to cover the dialect continuum between Hindko, Pahari-Potwari, and Western Panjabi in the north and Sindhi in the south. Grierson said Majhi is the purest form of Panjabi. Several dozen dialects. The Balmiki (Valmiki) sweeper caste in Attock District speak a dialect of Panjabi. Perso-Arabic script used, but not often written in Pakistan. Radio programs, films, TV. Mainly Muslim; Christian. NT 1819-1952.

Nowhere can I find Western Punjabi being closer to Sindhi. And Ethnologue specifically states it is a continuum of varieties of Punjabi. Gurmukhi is *specifically* the script used for Eastern Punjabi and is not synonymous with Eastern Punjabi.

Sukh 29 June 2005 06:52 (UTC)

The classification is here: [3]. Yes, there are a continuum of lects between most Indic languages. Ethnologue also specifically states that there is a continuum of lects between Punjabi and Hindi, which by your argument makes Punjabi a dialect of Hindi. I accept your verdict that Eastern and Western Punjabi can communicate, but I've also been told the same about Punjabi and Hindi (by a native Punjabi speaker), which again would mean that Punjabi isn't a separate language. (As for the name 'Gurmukhi', it may be a misnomer, but is given as an alternate name in Ethnologue.) The situation is rather like the Romance and Slavic languages. Are Spanish and Italian languages, or dialects of Latin? Are Russian and Czech languages, or dialects of Slavonic? After all, if you know Spanish, you can communicate with someone speaking Italian, and if you speak Czech, you can communicate with someone speaking Russian, but it's not easy to follow native speakers speaking rapidly, which is enough to get them split off to language status. As I said, I don't know why the decision was made to split up Punjabi. kwami 2005 June 29 07:25 (UTC)

If I may butt in, I really wouldn't want to rely on the Ethnologue for any sort of language/dialect line-drawing, except in the very few cases where they've actually conducted mutual intelligibility tests (as for Songhai). And I would never rely on the "alternate names" section of Ethnologue at all; it's only intended as a convenience for looking things up in the index. However, in this case one possible solution that comes to mind is to do it both ways: have a Hindi, an Urdu, and a Hindi-Urdu entry, and likewise have an Eastern Punjabi, Lahnda, and Punjabi entry. With appropriate explanatory text, that would be a handy way to do it. - Mustafaa 29 June 2005 07:42 (UTC)

A good speaker of Punjabi/Hindi should be able to understand one another reasonably well (especially living in India where you are subjected to Hindi constantly). However the grammar system may be very similiar but some of the basic words are very different. Some people do hold that Punjabi is a dialect of Hindi but this is generally not accepted. As someone whose Punjabi is far from perfect, I find it difficult to understand Hindi. I have to listen intently and even then I don't always understand it. So there is difficulty in communication (at a guess, I would say they differ more than Scandinavian languages do).

'Gurmukhi' may be listed as an alternative name because that's what people might be using to search for Eastern Punjabi. There is no doubt that Gurmukhi refers to the script specifically. Sukh 29 June 2005 20:12 (UTC)

P.S. Here's a discussion from Cambridge of some of the issues in deciding whether to consider Punjabi a language of its own, or a dialect of Hindi: [4]. E.g., calling one's language 'Panjabi' or 'Hindi' is a political decision, etc. However, reference is made to it being East Punjabi that's being discussed here. I imagine many of the same issues would come up in a discussion of E/W Punjabi. I also have to wonder if what you're calling Western Punjabi is the same lect as what Ethnologue calls by that name.

Oops, just corrected the link to the classification.

Mustafaa, that's probably good advice. I know there are plenty of occasions where I don't find Ethnologue credible. But there is a larger claim here: not just the degree of mutual intelligibility, but a classification that shows that the two Punjabi lects are closer to other languages than they are to each other, that they're in two separate branches of Indic. Otherwise I never would have broken up the listing in the first place. How can they be lumped together, without including all of Indic as a single language? Of course, the classification could easily be flawed. What I'd like to see is a credible referenced classification of the Indic languages. Then if E/W Punjabi were particularly close, I wouldn't have any objection to lumping them together. kwami 2005 June 29 08:03 (UTC)

Here's another source: Not terribly reliable either, but all I've got right now. That's Ruhlen's Guide to the World's Languages. In it, Lahnda is classified as Western Indic, along with Sindhi, while Punjabi is classified as Central Indic, along with Hindi. kwami 2005 June 29 08:29 (UTC)

Linguasphere has both Panjabi and Lahnda in the Panjabi subgroup of Central Indic (59-AAF-e), together with Dogri and Siraiki but not Sindhi. Dunno about reliability - I'd probably trust them little firther than I'd trust Ethnologue - but it's something. - Mustafaa 29 June 2005 18:05 (UTC)

I think we're gonna hafta contact an Indic studies dept somewhere. Most have people who specialize in Punjabi. kwami 2005 June 29 19:14 (UTC)

Ethnologue isn't particularly reliable in my experience. Have a look at [5]. It lists Punjabi and all it's dialects including Punjabi proper and Lahnda, Mirpuri etc. Both Eastern and Western Punjabi are mutually intelligible - more so than Hindi and Urdu proper. If you can get in touch with someone from an Indic Studies dept. that would be useful, although Ethnologue is extremely unreliable in its facts and figures (sometimes unbelievably so - the number of Western Punjabi speakers appears to have nearly doubled from 1995). Unless you still object, I wish to change it back to one entry with a note (and notes with Hindustani, Chinese, Arabic etcetera may be required). Sukh 29 June 2005 20:05 (UTC)

I don't know what to think. We have two sources that place Panjabi and Lahnda in different sections of Indic (though different sections of a dialect continuum that can't be divided up with any certainty), and one that lists them as variants of the same language. None of the sources are reliable. (I agree about Ethnologue; I rewrote the Khoisan article because it was based on Ethnologue and was just atrocious. Ruhlen's pretty bad too.) Put them back together if you like, preferably with a note that this includes Lahnda, which 'may be a separate language (decision pending)', or some such disclaimer. I'd like to get some confirmation from someone who really knows what they're talking about. Meanwhile I'll split up Chinese. Can't think of any reason to keep it together.

Mustafaa, would you like to attempt something similar with Arabic? It's certainly not a single language anymore, but I have no idea if it's really the 35 listed in Ethnologue. kwami 2005 June 29 20:32 (UTC)

(ref for revising Portuguese data upward from Ethnologue figures) plain simple: see the 2005 population of Brazil, Portugal, Angola (60% of it) some bits and there and others there you'll get the number. An old estimative: [6] but they count bilinguals. The added number is the 2005 because there are a number of local data (each country) and not gross estimatives like the rest of the language. In fact, Portuguese number is maybe one of the few credible numbers. Go to the article of Portuguese language and see why the number is that. -Pedro 29 June 2005 01:19 (UTC)

The Angola bit seems rather confusing: Were 60% of Angolans really raised speaking Portuguese in the home? Ethnologue has 58 thousand native speakers as of 1993, though that might be an ethnic designation for all I know. From the Portuguese article, it appears that the 60% figure is actually one of daily use, not of native speakers. We could inflate the figures for many of the languages this way, but that's not the criterion used for French or English or Mandarin, for example. The article does give a figure of 30% monolingual in Portuguese, but there's no ref. Can you give me a reference that shows what percentage of the Angolan population are native speakers in the sense of being raised with it used in the home? kwami 2005 June 29 03:31 (UTC)

"wasn't the Ethnologue figure" (Arabic language) - are you sure you included all the Arabic dialects, including Shuwa? I got that figure by adding up all the Ethnologue languages... - Mustafaa 5 July 2005 19:03 (UTC)

I went by E's own total, which is at Standard Arabic, where it says '206,000,000 first-language speakers of all Arabic varieties (1999 WA)'. Their list does include Shuwa. (I imagine it might not really include Maltese, but that's not significant.) The problem with adding up all the individual languages is that they aren't always well defined, and people end up getting counted twice. In some cases (I don't know about Arabic), a "language" may be tallied, and then a decade or so later one of its "dialects" may be split off as a separate language and tallied, without the first being updated, so a whole population gets counted twice. kwami 2005 July 5 19:24 (UTC)

"You have not supplied the data to make this ordering work." What? Lapsed Pacifist 21:29, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

If you're going to order the languages by their total (1st + 2nd language) number of speakers, then you need to have the total number of speakers. Simply renaming the number of native speakers "total" won't do it. (The list is by 'total number of native speakers'.) You will need to research each one of those languages, determine the number of second-language speakers, add it to the existing data for the number of native speakers, and order the list according to the new numbers. Then be prepared to defend yourself against people who cry you're not being fair, are exagerating or underestimating the importance of their favorite language as a lingua franca. Personally, not something I'd want to get tangled up in! At least with native speakers, we have censuses to rely on for our data. kwami 23:19, 2005 July 9 (UTC)

There already are sources for second-language speakers. They're right there in the article. Lapsed Pacifist 23:32, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Then put the data in the article itself. They don't do us much good in the article's sources. And order all the languages by their total number of speakers, not some by total, and some by native, as you had done. kwami 23:44, 2005 July 9 (UTC)

[from LP's talk page] Please either order the languages by their total number of speakers, or by their number of native speakers, but not by a little of both. If you haven't noticed, most of the languages in List of languages by total speakers only have data for the number of native speakers. I'm the one who added data for the number of second-language speakers to some of the more populous languages, but only to some of them. Please finish the job before you rearrange the list. kwami 00:04, 2005 July 10 (UTC)

You should have said that more clearly. I'll revert. Lapsed Pacifist 00:09, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't make it clear the first time! kwami 00:18, 2005 July 10 (UTC)

Deneb Algedi

Ah, thank you. That makes a lot more sense - I somehow didn't perceive the fourness the first several times I read that article. The clarification of the distinction between double star and binary star is much appreciated. DS 16:27, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Voiced alveolar plosive

Hi,

About your revert of an edit of mine in Voiced alveolar plosive. I believe that the cross-linguistical frequency of this phoneme should be mentioned in the article. Either the way it was (a couple of edits earlier), or the way i put it there (my preference, but it's not very important). Anyway, your revert to something just in between made the reference dissapear. Also it left an orphan reference at the bottom of the text.

Kind regards, --Lenthe 23:18, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi, you were talking about how frequent [s] is in the article on [d]. I wasn't sure if you were talking about [s] (you made the same comment in that article), or if it was a mistake for [d]. However, there are a great many languages without voiced plosives, so while your comment about frequency was appropriate for [s], I wasn't sure it was appropriate for [d]. ([t] I could see!) If you were talking about [s], then the shift in topic needed to be indicated, as well as how it's relevant. Anyway, I have no objection to what you were doing, I just had no idea how to fix it myself, without knowing your intentions. Sorry, I should've said something on your talk page and left the article alone, but I was rushed, standing half out of my seat, and figured a simple (if sloppy) deletion would get your attention, and you'd fix it up. kwami 23:59, 2005 July 10 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. I really must have been sleeping while putting that comment about s there. I'll check the source argain (I believe it was one of the twenty most common sounds in a 500+ language survey conducted in the 80s) and fix the text (and while at it put a similar reference to the other 19 common sounds). --Lenthe 07:24, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

splitters & lumpers in N.Amer

hi. maybe you have something to offer here: Talk:Native_American_languages#lumpers_vs._splitters? peace – ishwar  (speak) 00:48, 2005 July 13 (UTC)

Korean Language

Let the reader decide if those connexions are valid. There is plenty of evidence that contradicts your statements, then again there is plenty of evidence for it. --User:Bezant

Then let's say that. Same goes for the statements you've made. For the reader to decide, they need both points of view. Why don't you present some of that evidence that the points I present aren't convincing, rather than simply deleting them? And leave my comments as to why your points aren't convincing, rather than just deleting them? Then the reader will have something to base their decision on. Arguing for a Korean-Dravidian connection by presenting a whole slough of morphological similarities, without noting that these similarities correlate with each other and therefore are not independent variables, and moreover are shared by half the languages of the world, is quite misleading for someone not acquainted with linguistic typology. kwami 20:00, 2005 July 15 (UTC)

Population

First of all can you tell me how these numbers are supported??? According to the most of the Turkologs the number is right as I mentioned. And you're definitely wrong if you say Turkic languages are no more intelligible than the Slavic, Romance, or Indic languages! Because Turks living in areas where these languages are spoken still keep their native languages and speak Turkish. They are very intelligible. What you call Azeri, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Kazakh or some other are only similar dialects of Turkish. So we can unify them. But we must also keep them in the table because they are official languages in some countries. The sum of these languages according to the table is 165M. And when you add the Turkish speakers all around the world especially in Eurasia it exceeds that number.

The numbers in the article are from Ethnologue unless stated otherwise. As for the number 165M, you yourself say that it's wrong. Why should we put an incorrect number in the article? Second, I doubt the Turkic languages are more intelligible than Slavic, at least not by much. I've listened to Osmanli Turks speaking to Uzbeks, and Serbians speaking to Czechs, and they seem to do about equally well. (Granted, that's a very naive observation on my part.) Third, we do not have "Turkic" as a language for the same reason that we do not have "Slavic" as a language. The Turkic languages may be closer to each other than the Chinese "dialects" are, but the Chinese people consider their "dialects" to be a single language. If you can provide good evidence that the Azeris, Uzbeks, Yakuts, and Uighurs consider their speech to be a single Turkish language, I'd be happy to include Pan-Turkish as a language. kwami 03:07, 2005 July 18 (UTC)

Re: Ritual Decalogue

You question how the "obvious differences in the commandments of Ex. 20 and 34" can be reconciled with the belief that the two sets of tablets were actually of the same content. I cannot attest to anything stated by the Conservatives, Reformers, Reconstructionists, Samaritans or any group other than mainstream Orthodoxy, as the above mentioned groups may very well be Jews, but according to Orthodoxy, they don't practice Judaism. If one adds water to wine in a barrel, at what point does the contents of the barrel become water? We in Orthodoxy believe that Christianity is a similar group, whose earliest beginnings started with Jesus, a devout Orthodox Jew who decided to splinter off and make up new rules and take away old ones. Anyway, the point of all I have said so far is just to let you know that most everything in the article Ritual Decalogue is, to put it lightly, "baloney," which was the response I received when I questioned one rabbi. Looking at Ex. 34, I am assuming that the so called "Ritual Decalogue" that this article speaks of and that you are so interested in consists of verses 11 to 26. I cannot tell you how this is split into 10 commandments, as we feel that it is not. These are merely a listing of a number of commandments that G-d told over to Moses to tell to the people. Quoting from the commentary on the bottom of page 222 in the Stone Edition of the Tanach by Artscroll (ISBN: 1-57819-112-2): "G-d tells Moses what sins are particularly threatening and what commandments are especially propitious for safeguarding Israel's spiritual greatness." On a somewhat related matter, I think it is important to note that the Non-Jewish view, and even the non-religious-Jewish view of Judaism at large and the Bible in specific is somewhat skewed because of the lack of proper understanding of how Judaism views the Bible. Although we have a written Bible (Five Books of Moses, and then the Prophets and Writings, totalling 24 books in all), we also have an Oral Bible (comprised of the Mishna and the Talmud and all of their commentaries). And although the Written Bible is never to be viewed as putting forth something that cannot be seen in the actual verses themselves, it is the backbone of Jewish faith that the Written Bible cannot and should ever be attempted to be explained straight out of the words in the verses. The Oral Bible is there to explain and interpret exactly what the Written Bible means. On the bottom of page 225 of the Stone Tanach, I quote: "The Torah (written) can be understood only as it is interpreted by the Oral Law, which G-d taught Moses, and which he transmitted to the nation. (For example, )The Oral Law makes clear that only the creation of fire and such use of it as cooking and baking are forbidden, but there is no prohibition against enjoying its light and heat. Deviant sects that denied the teachings of the Sages misinterpreted this passage, so they would sit in the dark throughout the Sabbath, just as they sat in spiritual darkness all their lives."

Now you also ask if I know why the ritual commandments were abandoned for the ethical ones. If you are asking in terms of Judaism, the answer is that nothing was abandoned and everything is still kept. There are thousands of Biblical commandments that are incumbant upon every Jewish person, and we try our utmost to fulfill our mission. If you are asking in terms of Christianity, there are two answers to that. Firstly, in terms of Jesus, he left the chosen path, much like the Reform sect of Judaism, and decided to create a new religion, much like the Reform sect of Judaism. Why he decided to keep X and trash Y, no one can say for sure. If tomorrow, I were to water down Judaism and come out with a new sect, I can't say exactly which laws I'd keep and which I'd throw away. I suppose it was merely whatever he felt was important after he lost his piety. Secondly, in terms of Christians today, or the Catholic Church's teachings, the only thing I have to respond to that is that it doesn't really matter what the Ten Commandments say anyway, because non-Jews are not bidden to abide by the Ten Commandments, but rather by the seven Noachide Laws: Idolatry, Blessing of the Divine Name, Murder, Sexual Transgressions, Theft + Civil Law, Court Systems and the Eating of a Limb Torn from a Living Animal. Other than those 7, non-Jews are not required to follow any Divine rules or regulations (Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a and Maimonidies, Mishna Torah, Melachim 9:1).

If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to ask. ~D.R. user talk:DRosenbach

Template:Consonants

Obsoletes Template:SOWL. Whaddaya think?  Denelson83  23:18, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

It looks good. Should be useful for navigation, and it's not cumbersome like I'd feared. (By the way, your wikified vowel chart is really nice for navigating.)

However, I like your initial version better. I really don't think you need the [c'], since it's not common enough for the IPA to bother with, and there are no illustrations on its page. The original setup looked neater, and was easier to follow. (The lateral affricates are more common, if you're looking to split up the double-wide rightmost column at the bottom; maybe the dark el could go there.)

A more substantial criticism of the new version: By creating a separate column for the dentals, you give people the impression that coronal [t, d, n] are exclusively (post)alveolar, which could cause misunderstandings. I don't know if you want to go to all the effort, but a similar template for diacritics might be the place for the dentals. Otherwise I think it would be best for people to navigate to them through the coronals. (Okay, 'coronal' isn't the best name for them, but you know what I mean.) kwami 23:43, 2005 July 27 (UTC)

Well, I had to insert in that template all of the consonants that had articles with the SOWL template in them, to make sure that the SOWL template was no longer required. The thing is, there are no direct links to the articles for the dental pulmonic consonants from those for the alveolar pulmonic consonants.

But you're right. I have since implemented all of your suggestions into the template.  Denelson83  01:57, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I've linked your template to the unrecognized consonants indicated by asterisk placeholders in the IPA table. The articles are pretty much stubs, but have examples. Don't know if they're worth adding to the template for navigation. kwami 07:31, 2005 July 28 (UTC)

Re: Ritual Decalogue, take 2

You say that I didn't answer your first question, which is how is it reconciled that the two are different yet the same. Actually, I came across the commentary of the Netziv in his work HaEmeik Davar (he is a famous biblical commentator) who says that there was a difference in the original tablets versus the second set that ultimately made it into the Holy Ark, and that is that the first one had the words in Exodus 20 while the second had the words in Deuteronomy 5.

The answer to your question is, as you have probably already anticipated, that there really is no question in the first place: Orthodox Judaism does not see Exodus 34 as saying anything to counter the principle that the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 remained the 10 Commandments. Exodus 34 merely mentions another bunch of other religious regulations, but does not assert that these regulations are presented to replace anything. Thus, we do not believe they are the same any more than we believe the 10 Commandments are the same as the first ten commandments in Leviticus, or the last ten commandments in Leviticus, or the first ten commandments in Numbers, etc. The only thing suggested, according to the Netziv, is that Moses retelling of the 10 Commandments in Deuteronomy was not a paraphrasing or reworking of the original 10 Commanments, but was rather another edition (a simultaneous edition, not to replace) of the ones on the first tablets, both of which together sum up the essence of what G-d desired when he commanded them in the first place. ~Dale

Re: Ritual Decalogue, take 3

First, let me just say something that I meant to include in my last response in respect to the difference between terms used to describe the 10 Commandments (too long...from now on, 10C for short). The terms Aseres HaDibros and Aseres HaDvarim are synonymous with each other. In Deuteronomy 5:19, the 1OC are in fact referred to as Dvarim HaEileh, these words. So too in Exodus 20:1, does it state Es Kol HaDvarim HaEileh, all of these words/statements. The Hebrew translation for the term 10C would be Aseres HaMitzvos (mitzvah is a commandment, from the word tzivoi, the infinitive to command) and this actually never appears, because the words used to describe the 10C are either dibros (words) or devarim (words). They both mean the same thing and should not be taken to refer to two existentially different entities. It is a common finding that the Torah refers to the same thing in two different ways in two different places. The Talmud will quite often hinge halachic (religious law) rulings on such differences in wording or phrasing, learning in the sense: "The Torah could have/should have said it this way...but since it said it another way, it must mean XYZ." A good example is as follows: there is a Biblical commandment that Jews may not wear garments manufactured from both wool and linen. Mixtures of wool and linen are termed sha'atneiz and although we may weave them together and even benefit by their combination (such as via selling them to non-Jews,) we may not wear them ourselves. The two versus delineating these rules are Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11. The two verses are very different from each other. Whereas the latter says "Don't wear sha'atneiz, wool and linen together," the former states a garment of sha'atneiz should not come/rise upon you." The Talmud teaches us that we derive an additional ruling from the strange phrasing in the Leviticus phrase, and that is we may not sit on something, such as a thick, fluffy mattress, that will curl up around and envelop to some extent the sitter, if the mattress is made of sha'atneiz. Because non-Jews do not know the Talmud, they err in the understanding of the verses of the Written Bible as it was explained to Moses on Mount Sinai.

OK...sorry for that intro, but it'll tie in right now with the answer to your question. In Exodus 34:27, when G-d instructs Moses to "write these words, because it is with these words that I sealed a covenant with you and Israel," it uses the words Es HaDvarim HaEilaeh, and Orthodox belief is that this refers to the original 10C of Exodus 20/Deuteronomy 5. The fact that there are slight differences in those two texts (E20/D5) is not a problem for us, because we believe that they are actually one set of rules (and they are, with some sentence/phrase/word differences) that we A-believe are actually part of the same commandments, just showing different facets and B-both given over to Moses by G-d simultaneously on Mt. Sinai (G-d uttered both Shamor (safeguard) and Zachor (keep) at one instance, and this is the source for the first stanza in the Friday night prayer Lecha Dodi (http://www.kabbalaonline.org/Meditations/shabbatprayers/Lecha_Dodi_new_translation.asp). and C-the Talmud uses the differences to learn things out from the verses much like in the sha'atneiz example above.

Therefor, Orthodoxy posits that the verses Ex 34:11-26 are not even being referred to by the term Aseres HaDvarim, as this is referring back to Ex20/Deutero5. And he put "them" in the Ark thus also refers to Ex20/D5.

I think this takes care of the problem. What do you say? ~Dale

Disappointment over Ritual Decalogue Explanation

Kwami~

There is no reason whatsoever to be disappointed. If something doesn't exist but one still believes in it, it is often quite difficult for one to resolve the non-existance of said "thing" with the steadfast belief that it had always existed. But from the point of view of those who never believed that the non-existing thing ever existed, everything fits neatly. There are so many hidden things in the Torah that it is with great amusement and ridicule that we in Orthodoxy look upon non-believers who attempt to comment on, explain and interpret the vast profundities of the Written Torah by merely looking at the words in the verses. While Tanach may consist of 24 volumes, Jewish religious law is derived only from the Five Books of Moses. Yet there are 39 volumes of the Talmud, and the Talmud is not the only portion of the Oral Law that is looked at as absolute in terms of decision-making in Jewish law. How could anyone begin to comprehend the FBoM without the Oral Law?? According to us, one cannot. According to the bible scholars and anyone else listed as a source in the Ritual Decalogue article, anyone can say whatever they want as long as it can withstand the edit wars that proceed throughout Time.

How are you so interested in this topic? Please tell me a little bout yourself. Your user page is a bit scarce of real info in exchange for info about asteroids and Korean. ~Dale

User language boxes for sign language

Hello :)

I just created user language boxes for sign language, similar to the ones that exist for spoken languages. You were the only contributor to pages on sign languages i could find who is already using user language boxes, so I would really appreciate any input.

Cheers, ntennis 09:20, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi,

Glad to help. I'll put my comments on the talk page. kwami 18:45, 2005 July 29 (UTC)

Re: "cluck click"

This is a sound that I've been able to make for practically the majority of my life. My tongue starts out touching the roof of my mouth in a retroflex position, with my lips open as they would be when making the [ʌ] sound. I close off the back of my mouth with a silent velar stop, like [ŋ], then pop my tongue forward from its initial retroflex position, producing the first click, which is a [!]. The tip of my tongue then rushes past my open lips (throwing a few drops of saliva out of my mouth in the process), and then the bottom of my tongue hits the bottom of my mouth, producing the second click. The two clicks occur just a hundredth of a second apart. That should help you out.

BTW, by varying the roundedness of my lips as I make this sound, I can change its dominant frequency, and make music with it!

-- Denelson83  04:07, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

The second "click" sound can indeed be called "sublaminal", as it is the blade of the underside of the tongue striking the floor of my mouth (also known as the "mandibular mucosa") and contributing to this noise. And after the sound is made, the tip of my tongue is touching my lower alveolar ridge.

And as for the symbol I used to transcribe it, [ǃ¡], I got that symbol from here.

-- Denelson83  09:12, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

So it's a "postalveolar click" followed by a "subalveolar flap". Is the subalveolar flap part transcribed with the symbol [ɾ̞], or the alveolar flap symbol with the lowering diacritic?  Denelson83  10:08, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I guess for now we'll have to transcribe this sound as [ŋ̚ǃ*], where the * indicates a sound for which there is no IPA symbol. Also, perhaps I should send this sound sample to Peter Ladefoged, and see what he might refer to it as.  Denelson83  15:24, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Update: I heard back from Peter Ladefoged, and he calls the sound a "flapped alveolar click."  Denelson83  21:27, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Which sound, the one you make, or the ExtIPA [ǃ¡] ? kwami 21:32, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

The sound I made, which I have chosen to transcribe as [ǃ*]. I sent that same sound sample to him, and let him name it.  Denelson83  01:21, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Nice work

presented in recognition of your comprehensive and always balanced contributions to articles on writing systems and languages. Top stuff! cjllw05:45, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

Kwami, by way of recognition for your recent sterling updates to articles and lists relating to writing systems, your hard work in updating the map, and continuing industrious attentions to language-related articles in general, I think it appropriate you be awarded this barnstar, to place where you will. Your edits not only substantially clarify many of the finer points, but are consistently good-humoured to boot. Nice work!.--cjllw | TALK 05:45, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

Thanks! I guess I copy the whole thing over? kwami 06:05, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

Piron on Esperanto:"...easier to think clearly"

Dear Kwamikagami

IMHO is "to think clearly" a rather vague concept. You only resumed the text? Nevertheless I'm interested in the following questions: Is this the original wording of Piron? Whats your understandig of thinking clearly? (If you can't or don't like to answer, I beg your pardon.)

Amike Titbit 11:40, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

By all means change the wording if you like, Titbit. For me, it's only a lead-in to the nice quote from Piron you added, which explains what was meant by "thinking clearly". Without Piron's original context, it isn't otherwise obvious what the point of the quote is. We've had complaints in the past (I think legitimate complaints) that the article was only accessible to Esperantists. I'm trying to keep it straightforward enough that it can be understood in a single reading by someone who knows little of Esperanto, linguistics, or language learning. Ĝis la, kwami 18:27, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

Mi komprenas. Ideala estus teksto facile digestebla por ĉiu kaj samtempe solide serioza en la okuloj de sciencistoj. Kaj ĉar idealon oni neniam atingas nur eblas alproksimiĝi al ĝi. Mi nun nenion ŝanĝas, provos eltrovi kion Piron skribis. Ĉiukaze interesa temo...--Titbit 12:48, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Christian understanding

I don't think there necessarily has to be a clear Christian understanding of the Bible. It's kinda funny, because the Jewish view is that Biblical law has no bearing on Christians and never has, whereas the Christian view is that the Biblical laws, in this day and age, no longer exert their power or influence, and are looked at as mere relics of a ritualistic past. A Christian therefor, really according to either view, has no real reason to fully comprehend the commandments expressed by the verses, as they are superfluous. There are many things that the Christians can't explain, but they explain them anyway, because they have no basis upon which to know what is correct and what is incorrect, whereas Jews must derive the laws of the Oral Tradition from the verses. In actuality, I think the entire ritual decalogue article is at least only a point of view of those who can't understand it any better and at most just a reason to split hairs.

So that's why pharyngeal trills and taps are not shaded in the official IPA chart...

...because the IPA apparently merges epiglottal and pharyngeal trills and taps together. Knowing that, I will revert the change I made to that table.  Denelson83  01:22, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Ritual Decalogue

On the talk page it is elaborated that there are no sources for the originator of this term. Additionaly this seems to be a new perspective on this which isn't based upon any published material. Besides for those the entire article doesn't seem to be in a good format explaining various religions beliefs regarding this, which that needs to be added. --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 03:21, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Vote for Deletion

Hi, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ritual Decalogue. Thank you. IZAK 09:30, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Japanese Braille

Happy to see some of my seeds in the Japanese Braille article were polished in such a fine way. Thanks for your work on the article, I might add more when I see fit, but for now you did a great job flushing out more info. Cheers! Nesnad 16:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Me again: One question though, playing with your edits I see you took out the hyphen marks from my version, why? Also, your version is very big, stretched out. Why? Just some questions for you. For now I'll stick to your style but I would like to know why you made these changes. Nesnad 17:19, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I thought it was more legible this way. In real Braille, there are no hyphens to indicate the absence of a dot. Also, I hope the dots line up better than they did. (A hyphen-dot did not take up the same amount of space as two dots.) And as long as they line up correctly, there's no need for hyphens, and we can have give a more accurate impression of what Braille is like. Also, I stretched it out a bit so that (at least on my browser) the width/height ratio is closer to real Braille. On a different browser it might not look so good. What I'd really like to do is replace the html graphics with the images from the Latin Braille article, but I haven't yet gotten around to extending that with the extra blocks it will need.

One question I have for you. (It's been so long since I've seen Japanese Braille that I can't remember): On syllables like gya, does the dakuten + yo'on sign go before the ki (as I assume), or between the ki and the ya? kwami 20:14, 2005 August 10 (UTC)

Adjectival forms of moons

Kwami, I think your points about adjectival forms, e.g. Tethyan, are useful and could go in the main articles in the 'Name' sections. No sense in leaving them on the talk page. I'll start moving them if you like. (See Tethys (moon) for an example. The Singing Badger 02:39, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I've had an edit war over Mimantean for Mimas. Although it's clearly the expected form, as supported by the Classics reference librarian at UC San Diego, one editor has deleted all uses of the word in Wikipedia since it isn't attested anywhere (that I can find) in the English language, and is therefore a neologism/original research. (I'm not sure that a new adjectival form for an existing word qualifies as a neologism, but that was his position.) He wanted to go to the rather ridiculous extreme that we shouldn't use any vocabulary not found in the astonomical literature, such as long-standing Atlantean for Atlas (who ever needs an adjective for the moon Atlas?), but didn't push it. I settled on just listing the Latin and Greek genitive forms after the pronunciation of Mimas, so that others could reconstruct the demonym if they wished.

I think what triggered the revert was the Herschel article; this had bounced around through several titles as people tried finding a suitable adjective for Mimas, and (I believe) Urhixidur put Mimantean in the title after I suggested it. Other than this case, which was specifically asked for on a talk page, I've tried adding adjectival forms to the articles themselves when the words are attested, but have left them in the talk page when they are merely my expectations based on the Greek.

Anyway, knock yourself out. I'd be delighted to see these forms take root, if they haven't already. Just use your judgement on how acceptable my sources are. kwami 04:16, 2005 August 12 (UTC)

Interesting; I read the discussion and I think Wordtraveller was right to query the use of the word in Wikipedia, but wrong to imply that it shouldn't even be mentioned at all. Hopefully this is a good compromise. The Singing Badger 20:52, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Languages

Hi! :-)

As regards "idiom", I just thought that from the linguistic point of view, the term "dialect" might be inappropriate in some cases. For example, I wouldn't call Serbian and Croatian "dialects". The word "dialects" makes me think about diverse vernaculars. During the Yugoslavia period Serbian and Croatian were rather two variants of the standardized Serbo-Croatian language. In the 19th century Croats and Serbs wanted to create one common standard language. They succeeded (both Croats and Serbs dropped their previously used literary languages), but they failed to remove some minor differences between literary Serbian and literary Croatian. This is the primary source of the differences between standard Croatian and standard Serbian. Actual vernaculars have little to do with this distinction. I wanted to change "dialect" to a broader term "idiolect". But I thought "idiolect" would sound too scientific and I inserted "idiom". I'm not a native speaker and I don't really feel subtleties such as archaic use. Please insert the word you find the best.

Gajica is the version of the Latin alphabet currently used in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian. It was invented by Ljudevit Gaj in the middle of the 19th century. As a curiosity, in the original alphabet of Gaj, there was no đ letter. It was introduced later and replaced the digraph gj. Presently, it is often replaced with the digraph dj (especially on the Internet).

Before the Polish ortography was fixed in the 16th and 17th century, many writing systems were used. Czech letters were used too. But in the modern Polish alphabet only the letter ż is taken from Czech (the dot is an earlier version of hacek).

Take it easy! :-) Boraczek 10:41, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Reverts

Next time you're going to revert a whole paragraph, at least fix the spelling and grammar in it. – Timwi 08:10, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Oware

Thanks for your nice additions to the Oware page. Wizzy…☎ 19:43, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Sure. My ad blocking software had blocked the photo of the cool board variant you added, so I'll reword a bit to accommodate it. kwami 20:03, 2005 August 16 (UTC)

English Ranking

I have changed the article several times- it is said in most textbooks, websites, ect that english is the SECOND MOST WIDLEY SPOKEN LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD! It is a fact that there are between 400-480 million speakers of the language. Spanish and Hinid have less speakers- that is a fact and you must accept it! English is #2. I am changing it again- and if you decide to change it then I will report you to someone of higher authority. It is in every textbook, website, and other information in the world that English is the #2 language in native speakers, and is disputed being the number one language in overall speakers. So stop changing it's ranking! User:69.150.147.138

English Ranking #2

First off, you do not have the right to just go and change English's ranking. I can give you any sources if you want... just go to google and do a search for language rankings. You name one source you have that English is not number two! It is a non-disputed fact that English is number two behind Chineese. Hindi and Spanish are in no way higher up in native speakers than english. If you think this is not true, give me your data and souces. Tell me them my username is enorton08. If you go to google and type in Language rankings, you will see English as number two everywhere. SO STOP CHANGING IT! Next time I will report you to a higher wikipedia authority and solve this issue once and for all. User:Enorton08

Thanks for that, at least. Now I know not to take you seriously. kwami 06:35, 2005 August 20 (UTC)

Bungee

Have you ever heard of this before: Bungee language? – ishwar  (speak) 21:21, 2005 August 19 (UTC)

Thanks! No I hadn't. I wonder if it's mixed the same way Michif is. Is it really official, though? kwami 22:23, 2005 August 19 (UTC)

i dont know. it isnt listed in several books on n. america. maybe it appears in stuff on contact languages? i am just skeptical that it is really a mixed language. peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:38, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

It isn't listed in the language index of Thomason & Kaufman Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics 1991, which spends 5 pages on Michif. kwami 19:46, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

n. amer map

if you have any comments, etc. on this map: Image:Langs N.Amer.png I am all ears. – ishwar  (speak) 19:43, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

A few comments on the talk page. kwami 20:04, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

Khoisan overhaul

Salve! I've noticed that you've been making some major changes to articles relating to the Khoisan languages lately; thanks for your hard work. I created some of the language articles based on last year's Ethnologue information. Would I be wrong to assume that they've made some major updates to their classification of the Khoisan group? --Merovingian (t) (c) 07:38, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

No, they haven't, though they're long overdue. But I have been in contact with some of the people Ethnologue would rely on for the overhaul. Besides that, I'm mainly relying on Heine & Nurse, African Languages (CUP 2000). One thing I'm uncertain about is "Maligo"; it's obviously a variety of Ju (and very possibly a local name rather than an actual dialect), but I'm only guessing that it's !Kung rather than, say, ‡Kx’au‖’ein, because it's spoken in Angola [oh, and because I keep coming across the phrase "known as the !Xu-Angola or Maligo" online]. (Heine & Nurse list one of the Ju lects as "(!O)!Xũũ", so at least !Kung and !O!ung are clear.) Also, I've redirected 'Akhoe to ‡Kx’au‖’ein, but there's also a suspiciously similarly named dialect of Nama, and it's also an alternate name for !Kung. Many of these names have been based on geographic location rather than language for so many centuries that making any sense out of them is a real headache, and if we went by the whole literature, we'd have hundreds of faux dialects like the ones we see in Ethnologue.

If you can find a total population estimate for the Khoisan languages of Angola, that would be wonderful. As it is, I'm afraid that Ethnologue may have double counted, and adding up the various Ju "languages" may give us an inflated estimate. (I get 45,000 for Ju.)

Thanks! Any phoneme inventory stuff, especially for ‡Hõã or the Tshu-khwe languages, would be most welcome. (I'll get to Hadza and Sandawe myself eventually.) kwami 08:24, 2005 September 2 (UTC)

Well, I don't have much to add beyond what you've changed; I was just appreciative of your updates. Anyway, I would agree that many times languages are classified according to geography, which is a bit more vague as opposed to actual language content and relationships. Happy editing, --Merovingian (t) (c) 09:35, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Shogi variants articles

Hey, pal. I guess you sure got into those variants. I only did up the Chu Shogi one, but I see you did the rest. Just wanted to say nice! Taikyoku Shogi would be fun if you wanted to be playing a game for the rest of your life. I also wanted to say thanks for the clarity regarding the Chu Shogi game ending with regards to the Crown Prince and the physical capturing required. --Sivak 18:06, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I worked on the shogi variants for two months on and off. I wanted them to be as complete as possible before posting. My sources for piece movement and promotion seem reliable. Most of the kanji came from the large variants; I noticed too late that the kanji for tori shogi was different, thanks for fixing it. My main problem is in the romanji. I have two sources, one uses traditional names but is limited in content, the other uses modern names but may be off the mark. I am also worried that some articles may be too big for wiki (taikuoku). I have ways of making them smaller but I don’t want to unless I have to. The large games have powerful pieces that cam make for a shorter game. Tenjiku shogi can be played in 5 or 10 minutes if you’re good, the fire demons can rip through pieces like a cannon ball. --JTTyler 21:52, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I am planning on posting disagreements on Japanese Wikipedia to see what we get. I swapped the location of two pieces on the Tai Shogi board and didn't leave a footnote, so that needs to be done. I would expect that Japanese shogiists might have an easier time with medieval documents than whoever translated them into English, but of course there's pure sloppiness to contend with, and either way we're playing telephone with the originals. The biggest difference is the enormous number of Tai pieces that demote to gold according to the Japanese site that are unaffected in your sources. Could you list them in a refereces section?

BTW, I gave you credit for the articles when I answered Sivak above. I probably would never have written more than a Tenjiku article if I had to do it myself!

As for the articles being too big, I wouldn't worry about it. That's more a guideline to prevent text articles from being too long to read comfortably, not for lists or tables. (Though there's also the issue of download time.) If you ever added a section on Taikyoku tactics, then that should go in a separate article, but I wouldn't take out useful content, or split up a coherent article, with something like this.

Thanks! kwami 22:13, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

You've given me a lot of usefull material. I'll take advantage of this. Thanks! I have another problem however; my efforts to translate ko shogi from the Japanese wiki have been less than stellar. Most of it is OK, but I had difficulty with the piece names.--JTTyler 04:55, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I'll take a look. kwami 05:05, 2005 September 10 (UTC)

Unfortunately that page has no pronunciation guides for the pieces. There is simply no way to know how Japanese kanji compounds are pronounced without a listing in a glossary, since each character has a couple common Sino-Japanese pronunciations, and when you start getting into Buddhist monkery, like we are here, additional pronunciations show up. If we create expected pronunciations, I think we should at least add a warning that they are only a possibility. Or are you asking about the translations?

I'm heading out of town for a week, and while only have intermitant internet access, so it might take a while. kwami 07:46, 2005 September 10 (UTC)

Caron

According to User:Sturmde, "caron" is indeed in the OED. I don't have an online subscription myself, so I can't verify this. Google stats indicate that usage of "caron" (in context of discussion of diacritics) exceeds usage of "hacek" by a factor of between 10 and 100. -- Curps 08:23, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

The OED word entries go from caromel to carony bark. I just did a full text search, and caron is not anywhere in the dictionary (except of course for proper names, Old English inflections of the verb care, etc). As for its use on the internet, I presume that's due to its adoption by the Unicode consortium, which in turn was probably motivated by a desire to remain ethnically neutral. I have no problem with the word. However, while I have heard hacek in conversation, I don't even know how to pronounce caron. (I can only assume it's like Karen.) Anyone who knows the word caron will also know hacek, but I seriously doubt the reverse is true. kwami 08:36, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

Are you using the online version of the OED or an old paper edition? It may be that "caron" is a recent coinage (possibly to be neutral, since "hacek" is Czech and the Slovaks have a different word for it, and perhaps that suddenly became much more of an issue after the Dissolution of Czechoslovakia), but nevertheless it's in very, very widespread use today. Any dictionary that doesn't include it is incomplete or out of date.

Consider these Google searches:

• hacek + breve: 4,570 hits
• caron + breve: 60,900 hits

• hacek + breve - caron: 642 hits
• caron + breve - hacek: 58,200 hits

We search on a combination of hacek+breve or caron+breve to ensure that the context is diacritics (and not some other use of "Caron" as a surname or trademark, etc). Caron wins by more than a factor of ten.

Even more tellingly, we exclude cases where both hacek and caron occur on the same page, to avoid cases where one is merely mentioned incidentally as a synomym for the other. In this case, caron wins by a factor of almost 100.

In the face of this overwhelming modern usage, it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that "caron" isn't a word.

Also, the Unicode Consortium's usage is not only authoritative but normative. They are after all the official organization in charge of naming every possible symbol that can be written, and for whatever reason, they've called it a "caron", and other organizations have followed suit. -- Curps 09:33, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

It's a bit disingenuous to accuse me of pretending that caron isn't a word. I generally use it myself, and have no problems with it. If people feel it is the word to use, then fine. My point was that it's rare outside of Unicode usage, or trickle down from Unicode usage. And yes, I am using the online OED, so it's as up to date as possible. And no, the Unicode Consortium is neither normative nor authoritative, any more than any bureaucracy is. They didn't name the caron, it already had a name - several names. They merely chose the one that they felt best suited their needs. If you read their site, they even make the disclaimer that their names are in no way authoritative, but are merely internal jargon for their own convenience. If you're dealing in Unicode, then yes, their terms are the ones to use. But these articles aren't about Unicode. I don't think that appealing to authority is appropriate here; rather, we should use the wording that best reaches our audience. If that turns out to be caron instead of hacek, fine with me; but I generally try to avoid words I wouldn't use in conversation. (Not that I always do a very good job at it.) kwami 09:52, 2005 September 5 (UTC)

Perhaps it's the Unicode Consortium who are being disingenuous if they have that disclaimer that says their names are merely internal jargon. Inevitably those names are highly influential and are adopted by other organizations such as Microsoft and W3C. It's a bit like the Internet TCP/IP standards being called RFCs (Request for Comments) when in fact they're mandatory standards.

I found this FAQ at their site which explains things... sort of. Apparently the term originated in the 1980s.

In the case of another symbol with multiple names, namely '#', our article for it is at Unicode's preferred term: Number sign. -- Curps 10:54, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

How's your Japanese?

Hi Kwami, I notice you speak a bit of Japanese. If you have time, could you look at the question I posted at Wikipedia talk:Copyrights/Can I use...#Anybody read Japanese? and see if you can help? Cheers! The Singing Badger 14:53, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Sure, Badge. Japanese legalese is a bit beyond me, but I'll give it a shot. Offhand it looks like the typical disclaimer: okay to use for educational purposes if credit is given, but not for commercial use. I believe that such copyrighted images are not acceptable in Wikipedia: you can see above that I had to replace one. Also, photos of people require their individual consent, beyond JAXA's copyright protection. kwami 23:47, 2005 September 6 (UTC)

Thanks kwami, that's helpful, if disappointing. I'll copy your comments onto the page I asked the question on, and see if anyone else reads it differently. The Singing Badger 00:14, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Error on map

I noticed a (very) small error on your map of writing systems. The strike-through represents the extra word: "The unlabeled scripts of circling India..." Chuck 19:26, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Chuck. The whole map is being reorganized, but it might be a couple weeks. kwami 20:07, 2005 September 7 (UTC)

No problem, just thought you'd like to know. Chuck 20:19, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Russian fricatives

You added two additional fricative phonemes in Russian language#Consonants. I'm leaning towards this notation for these sounds, but I want it confirmed by a proper source. A proper citing for the phoneme is needed too.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:37, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

The Russian fricatives are described in many places (sorry, no refs at hand) as palatalized postalveolars, which for Ladefeged at least is the definition of the alveolo-palatals. (The voiced one has no letter, but see the Russian phonology article for examples.) The more difficult question is the nature of the other two postalveolars, as you queried on the Russian talk page. I've left a comment there; not a whole lot of help, I'm afraid, but if we can find a reputable source that claims the Russian and Polish sibs are the same or nearly so, we can use Ladefoged's analysis of Polish as evidence. kwami 05:28, 2005 September 12 (UTC)

Japanese Braille

About your question (sorry for the late reply, busy as always) regarding the sound "ぎゃ" written in tenji. There is almost no English information (why I made the page in the first place) to back up my small bad knowledge, and I am not a native speaker, but I belive that it should be written like this, if I'm not mistaken:

○●　●○ ○●　○○ ○○　○●

cheers! hope this helps, you're doing a lot of help to that humble page. I'll help more if I can. Nesnad 17:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Romanian /o/ and /e/, both mid vowels

Hi, Kagami-san. Thanks for welcoming me in such a frank way. I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just acknowledging my mistakes. I wasn't aware that mid /e/ had a special section in the close-mid /e/ entry (I hadn't scrolled down enough) so I supposed they were treated as being the same vowel. You were right to revert my edit, and if you don't mind I will reinsert the Romanian example, this time in the right place. About /o/, you were right again to leave it as I added it. Anyway, keep an eye on me. Cheers! --AdiJapan 12:18, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Esperanto

I like what you did with the template! It looks good. I alphabetized some of it, and added the other e-o symbol, for balance. I wonder if you have gotten a chance to look at the Esperanto WikiPortal I started. What do you think? I am looking for some people to help maintain it, and thought maybe you could help, if you want. Two heads are better than one. As much as I love Esperanto, I am the classic eterna komencanto and my knowledge in some areas is limited, so help would be appreciated. [[User:JonMoore|— —JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 00:05, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

The Portal looks very nice. I just saw it for the first time today, in fact. Thanks for considering me for collaboration, but I think I'll decline. I put a lot of time into the Esperanto articles, and have pretty much exhausted myself with them and moved on to other things (like illustrating all the manual alphabets). I never did get to the main criticism article, which was next on my list. (I've had it as a home page for months, and haven't touched it.) And I won't have access to the internet for much longer (I won't have access to electricity for much longer!), so I won't be able to be any help in the long term. Sorry! kwami 00:46, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Esperanto template

Dear Kwamikagami:

I suggest a new article entitled Esperanto vs. Ido in the same light as the one about Esperanto vs. Interlingua. Either that or have Esperanto added to the Ido template and see how that goes over on the Esperanto page. A similar argument could be made for that. 211.37.78.63 00:33, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

That potential article is currently a section in the main Ido article, and I just moved the Esperanto template specifically to that section. kwami 00:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I can see having Esperanto added to the Ido template, it is, after all, Ido's progenator. BUT, Ido (as implied by its name) is descended from Esperanto, not the other way around. I don't understand why Idists get so uptight about these things. [[User:JonMoore|— —JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 00:52, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Not uptight; the template is just inaccurate, like putting Eritrea on a template for Ethiopia for example and then following up by placing the Ethiopian template on the page for Eritrea. Were the Ido movement to have died out then it would have become an interesting footnote on the history of Esperanto but that hasn't happened. A separate article comparing the two would be just fine. 211.240.138.197 10:25, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Be my guest! kwami 10:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. In the spirit of fulfilling the Ido-related section of the template, I'll start the article today. 211.240.138.197 10:49, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Here's the article. This'll be fun. 211.240.138.197 11:13, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Few other Shogi questions

Hey, Kwami. I just had some other questions: In the Shogi article, I'm curious if you could add an entry for how one says "check" and "checkmate" in Japanese, as I don't know myself and am curious.

'check!' is 王手 ōte, and 'to check' is ōte wo kakeru. 'Checkmate' is 詰め tsume (lit. 'to stuff') or 王手詰め ōtedzume; for the verb add -ru.

For Chu, I like the new additions. Do you by chance know of anywhere that sells actual Chu Shogi sets? Or anywhere that sells inexpensive regular Shogi boards? I don't think I'd buy A Chu set (No one to play), but I'd be interested to see if such sets are made today. Thanks!

We could find chu sets in Kyoto, and probably in Tokyo, but other than that your best bet might be in contacting a shogi association. Regular shogi sets can be found in specialty chess shops, but I'm sure you can also find them in Japanese markets in the US. (I got my go set at a mom & pop corner Korean grocery store, so I'm sure shogi's available in the larger Japanese markets; the set I use I made myself.) I see stuff online, but it looks pretty crappy and costs a fortune. kwami 04:23, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Alveolar trill

You said this:

"Malayalam speakers who trill both of that languages otherwise alveolar ars contrast a prealveolar (~ dental) and postalveolar trill: [r̟] vs. [r̠]."

That statement has faulty grammar in it, making me unable to understand what it is trying to say. Could you please improve it?  Denelson83  05:02, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Wichita confirmation

hi. i was able to get some stuff on Wichita. it really is a bit weird. so, to answer: yes, does have Wichita vertical 3 vowels which have 3 length contrasts. The analysis is by Rood who seems to the major fieldworker. what I have found is the first paper on phonetics/phonology in IJAL by Garvin, a paper by Rood which is based on a greater body of fieldwork than Garvin and compares/corrects Garvin's account, an article in Language that gives a phonological description & discusses theoretical issues, and the phonological chapter in Rood's grammar. incidentally, Rood does posit an abstract underlying |u| that is not present in the surface phonology (which he argues for in the Language article). i i may put some more stuff up later. and in case you want to add to your electronic library, i do have all of these works in PDF formant which i could email you if interested. thanks for dangling this interesting one in front of me.

Yes, please do!

Are they really /i e a/, though, and not central vowels with front allophones?

/i, e/ are basically front. /a/ is back with centralized (and also raised) allophones. so, it's not really like other vertical systems (like Marshallese) and Rood mentions this in 2 of the papers. send me an email to ish_ishwar (at) yahoo.com.sg & i will send you the pdfs – ishwar  (speak) 21:58, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

by the way, i have been expanding Japanese phonology a little, which you may be interested in looking at. peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:14, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I have a couple things to add. Not sure the r is lateral, for example: it might simply be non-central (that is, ambiguous; it's not consistantly lateral, at any rate). And the symbol used for w is velar. I think Japanese w is velar, but it's also labial. It's not like Spanish v, though. I'll look it over more thoroughly when I get a chance. kwami 00:50, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Tamil ranking

Hi. I see that you've changed the ranking of Tamil language from 18 to 13-17. Can you add a reference for the same? And if you have the latest numbers for the speaker population, please update that too as the current numbers are as of 1999. Thanks. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 03:59, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm using Ethnologue/World Almanac figures, which aren't terribly reliable. They're referenced at the article linked at 'rank'. I'll let you decide if you think they're better than what you have.

The reason I listed "13-17" was because those five languages spanned a difference of only 3 million, which at < 5% of the language populations is way too close for any confidence in their relative ranking. kwami 04:25, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, Kwami. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 04:38, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Hungarian language

I'm sorry, I forgot my question and to follow up your possible answer. I've replied here: Talk:Hungarian language#Case again. Adam78 18:50, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Wanna be an admin?

Hey, Kwami, as far as I can tell you're not an Admin yet. Want me to nominate you? It's worth it, if only for the one-button reverting. The Singing Badger 15:23, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that would be nice. I appreciate this. kwami 19:22, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Alright mate, you're nominated. It's a week-long process that takes place here: Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship. You need to answer some questions there, and indicate acceptance of the nomination.

There are some very pedantic editors out there, who may oppose you for various reasons. But take a look at my successful application if you want assurance that it's relatively painless in the end. G'luck! The Singing Badger 20:44, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Singular they

Okay since you seem to be a language specialist I'm going to ask you to explain what I'm missing here:

Let's look at the four examples:

I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly. "They" is understood to refer to "everybody", thus the statement I would have everybody marry if one can do it properly also makes sense and is correct.

A person cannot help their birth. "They" is understood to refer to "a person", thus the statement A person cannot help his birth would also make sense and be correct.

Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear the speech. "They" is understood to refer to "a mother", thus the statement Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes her partial, should o’erhear the speech would also make sense and be correct.

However, with No man goes to battle to be killed. — But they do get killed, "they" shouldn't be understood to refer to "no man", because the statement No man goes to battle to be killed. - But he does get killed does not make sense. Rather, it makes sense to understand But they do get killed as But men do get killed. Thus the use of "they" in this example is plural, not singular.

Please let me know what I am missing here.

Regards, Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 05:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, you're right, in a way, which I think is what makes this such a good example. It's highly ambiguous. Prescriptive grammarians would tell you that the "correct" form is 'but he does get killed', because "one" is grammatically singular, and therefore no one is grammatically singular (just as everybody in the first example is grammatically singular). I think this illustrates very nicely how slippery the distinction between singular and plural can be. Semantically, of course, you're right: it's men who get killed. But then, semantically, it's also mothers who are partial, and people who cannot help their birth. (There used to be a few more examples like this, but someone whittled them down.) Anyway, I suspect that this is precisely how singular they got started: people couldn't figure out whether 'everyone', 'anyone', 'no one' were singular or plural, and the plural/generic meaning overrode the singular form. Which is why a definite 'the mother' can never be referred to as 'they', while a generic 'a mother' can: the usage is spreading outward from these ambiguous forms. Your 'no one' example was probably one of the first types to switch over, but 50 years ago your English teacher would still have marked it incorrect if you wrote that way. kwami 05:59, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I think I understand, but when you say "semantically, it's also mothers who are partial, and people who cannot help their birth", I disagree that there is no difference between those examples and the "No man goes to battle" example. This is for the simple reason that "since nature makes her partial" makes sense to me, in context, and "but he does get killed" does not. I can't explain it any better. Anyway, if you want to revert again, I won't fight back. Thanks for your time. And I apologize for the condescending edit summary. It's late at night. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 06:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe I should check out an English grammar from 1900. I thought it was the least convincing example, which is why I put it last in the list, but other editors seemed to be okay with it. I think if I decide to put it back in, it will be as part of an explanation for how singular they arose, rather than as a straightforward example. kwami 06:22, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I think in the sentence about war and men getting killed, the understanding of the sentence should involve the recognition of a subject change midway through - no man goes to get killed, but men do indeed get killed, and hence by extension and implication the singular man who goes to war gets killed. As for the sentence about getting married, perhaps the understanding should go along the lines of everybody being singular, but they referring instead to individual people marrying their indiidual spouses separately and hence the use of they? cheers, --Denihilonihil 14:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

With the getting killed example, I read it just as you do. The punctuation is consistant with a change of subject. Maybe that would have been acceptable to proscriptivist grammarians of the 19th century? But the getting married example is not like that. I have read grammar books from the late 20th century that specifically taught children to use 'he' when the subject was 'everyone', 'anyone', or 'no one', because 'one' was singular, and therefore required a singular pronoun to agree with it. Same with 'everybody', 'everything', etc. Many of the examples they gave were analogous to the getting married example here. Of course, perhaps the mechanism that produces this effect is a semantic change of subject that later grammaticalizes into a new singular pronoun? But regardless, it would have been marked incorrect by many English teachers. kwami 19:01, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Hyperion (moon)

Thanks for your last edit of Hyperion (moon); I don't know how I managed to edit an old version without realising it. – Whitepaw 19:54, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

With that image, who care?! :-)

Inclusive we

Yeah, that will work. I guess I was trying to be unnecessarily wordy. ;-) --Chris S. 05:31, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations

Congratulations, you're and admin! Please read the advice. The Uninvited Co., Inc.

Congrats! Welcome to the club! [[User:JonMoore|— —JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 23:30, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Well done, Kwami, and well deserved...--cjllw | TALK 23:41, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you all! Now, if I can just figure out how this block button works before you change your minds ...

管理者になっておめでとうございます！自分の投票は「賛成」じゃなくて残念でしたけど、クワミ鏡さんは上手な管理者になると思います。-- ホーリ 03:20, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

いいよ。かまえへん。kwami 10:08, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I completely agree with that (or not, as the case may) - anyway congrats! Dlyons493 Talk 22:32, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Popups tool

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American sign language and chimps

I am surprised you would revert without checking the accuracy of the change. Bonobos are chimpanzees (genus Pan) and thus the sentence "chimpanzees and bonobos" was inaccurate. The two extant species of Pan are the common chimpanzee and bonobo. I want to systematically eliminate this error. Marskell 16:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't mean to make the article inconsistant with the rest of Wikipedia. However, it does seem to be normal usage in the literature for 'chimpanzee' to refer specifically to troglodytes rather than Pan. In fact, one reason I've seen given for the use of the name 'bonobo' in English is to avoid the implication that it's a chimp. At least in the linguistic anthropology lit - I thought it was also the norm in Science and Nature magazines, but I may be misremembering. kwami 19:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Trogoldytes is a part of Pan in the same way that Sapiens is a part of Homo. The term chimpanzee is indeed often used as synonomous with the common chimpanzee alone but the Bonobo (Pan paniscus) is a chimp as well. Marskell 21:24, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

By whose definition? kwami 21:31, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to be overly prescriptive in the bonobo def. A search will actually turn up the two contradictory defintions, but I haven't personally encountered a primatologist who didactically seperates the two. For instance, Robin Dunbar: "…all four great apes (the two chimpanzees—the common and the bonobo—the gorilla and the orangutan) shared a common quadrupedal locomotion…, The Human Story, pg. 15." Or Jared Diamond: "...the most similar DNAs are those of common chimpanzees and pygmy chimpanzees which are 99.3..., The Third Chimpanzee, pg. 22."

This has as much to with convention as actual taxonomy (in which sense, it's Pan trogoldytes and Pan Paniscus and you can call them Sam and Joe beyond that for all it matters). Perhaps we should consult the sage Uther... --Marskell 22:49, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at the primatology dept. at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (EVA) here. For these researchers, there are bonobos, and there are chimps: "Bonobos (Pan paniscus) are close relatives of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)", etc, and the 'chimpanzees' link connects only to troglodytes. Perhaps it's just that I'm more familiar with the work of Tomasello et al., but there seems to be an effort afoot to use the word 'chimp' unambiguously at the species level. When people are addressing a lay audience, of course, they need to take account of the fact that 'pygmy chimp' is a term people are familiar with. Perhaps this explains the wording in Dunbar and Diamond. Regardless, I think that your suggestion of "the bonobo and the common chimpanzee" is a good compromise, covering both uses, while "the two species of chimpanzee" is perhaps overly prescriptive. kwami 00:21, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, I'll go back and change to "the bonobo and common chimpanzee" where I can find it when I get the chance. Certainly, we don't want "chimpanzee and bonobo" with the former linking to the genus which includes the latter.

General comments:

When people are addressing a lay audience... Chimpanzee, bonobo, common chimpanzee, pigmy chimpanzee and bonobo chimpanzee are all effectively lay terms, which was essentially the point of my second paragraph. Insofar as the distinctions are meant to emphasize that the bonobo chimp is not a sub-species of the common chimp, fair enough (it's Pan paniscus not Pan trogoldytes panicus, granted—similar argument with the Neanderthals, eh?). But rendering chimpanzee and bonobo mutually exclusive seems to me wrong.

To make a comparison: If Canis latrans had initially been called the Lean Wolf instead of the Coyote no one, including scientists, would have batted an eye. The Red Wolf is conventionally viewed as a wolf based on its lay name, and while the Coyote may be farther away genetically from the Grey Wolf, I see it is having no less claim to the title "Wolf" than the other two species. Or (to use an admittedly tangential example) English is no less or more a Germanic language than is German... The common chimp "got there first" antropologically—that's all. Such is convention. Marskell 01:24, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

It is seems to me you are an ingnorant!!! ROMANIAN LANGUAGE IS SPOKEN MORE THAN 35 millions people

Hello, I am sure it was not just a mistake of you that you placed romanian language under 24 millions, indeed there are more than 35 millions who speaks romanian, for this I will present you the following arguments: 1. The population of Romania is 23,000,000 milions 2. in the country Moldova who was part of romania until 1945 there are more than 4 milions romanians 3. in France, Italy and Spain lives more than 1,500,000 romanians 4. in USA and Canada more than 1,500,000 romanians 5 in Australia more than 500,000 romanians 6. Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece Hungary more than 2,000,000 romanians 7 Ukraine 500,000 romanians 8. Germany 400-500,000 romanians 9. the rest of the world 1,000,000 in total more than 34,000,000 people [anonymous]

No, it was not a mistake. But it would be nice if you read the article so that you knew what you were editing. It says quite clearly at the top that any unsubstantiated edits will be reverted, and shouting doesn't count as evidence. I'm reverting you a second time, because you have not discussed this on the talk page, and you have given no evidence for your claim.

First of all, we are interested in first-language speakers. A Romanian is not the same thing as a Romanian speaker. There are many Rrom (gypsies) in Romania who are native Romanian speakers, and there are many Romanians in other countries who do not speak Romanian. So the number of Romanians is not directly relevant.

Here are my figures, with sources to support them:

• Romania: 19,741,356 (2002 census)
• Moldova: 2,664,000 (1979 census) - yes, these are old figures, but Moldova is not growing quickly
• Ukraine: 250,000 (2004 Ethnologue) (approximate)
• Israel: 250,000 (1993 Statistical Abstract of Israel) (an old estimate, probably less today, since Romanian children speak Hebrew)
• Vojvodina & Timoc Valley: 200,000-300,000 (1995 Iosif Bena)
• Hungary: 100,000 (1995 Iosif Bena)

Other countries: data from Ethnologue 15

• France, Italy and Spain: no data
• Canada: 16,356
• USA: 56,590
• Australia: present, but no figures
• Germany: no data

Ethnologue 15 world total estimate: 23,498,367

Macedo Romanian (Aromanian):

• Greece: 200,000 (Greek Monitor of Human and Minority Rights 1.3 Dec. 1995)
• Albania: 50,000 (1995 T. J. Winnifrith)
• Romania: 28,000 (official)
• Serbia: 15,000 (Society of Aromanians)
• Macedonia: 8,467 (1994 official figures)
• Bulgaria: 4,770 (2000 WCD)

= approx. 300,000 total

Istrian Romanian:

• Croatia: 555 to 1,500 (1994)

Megleno Romanian:

• Greece: 3,000 (2002 Nicholas)
• Macedonia: 2,000 (2002 Nicholas)

Total all varieties of Romanian: 23.8 million

kwami 00:02, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Kwami, as far as the figures for Romanians in Australia goes, according to Dept. Immigration figures [[www.dimia.gov.au/statistics/ stat_info/comm_summ/romania.pdf here (pdf)], The 2001 Census recorded only 12,950 Romania-born persons, of whom only 61% primarlily spoke Romanian at home; however some 85% of these spoke English well or very well. A far cry from the claimed 500,000 speakers in Oz. claimed by the indignant anon, above.--cjllw | TALK 00:29, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks

Good edits at Urdu language. It's always a pleasure -- really -- to have my prose copyedited by someone who actually improves the material. Zora 02:35, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Sure thing, Zora. I've just revised it some more, in the hope of encouraging further cooperation on the Justice/Harprit side. I suppose I should clean up the Hindi article too, but this just isn't my area of interest. kwami 01:34, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Alphabet Touchups

Hi, I have left a message for you and about one of your change. I would appreciate if you stop by and read it at: Talk:Alphabet#Touchups. Thanks. --Cacuija 02:50, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: My RfA

That's okay. Thank you anyway. :)  Denelson83  03:18, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Urdu

So far as I can tell, JusticeLaw wants to remove the mention of Hindi in the disputed passage. I do think that Harprit and JusticeLaw are the same person, and I don't have any interest in dealing with someone who uses socks, anonIPs, and threatens me. I could be wrong -- I often am. But editing style and obsession speak of identity to me.

I don't understand why this person is still editing! He's broken rules right and left and we're still making nice-nice. Kinda reminds me of a Green party meeting where a mentally-ill man wandered into the hall, interrupted proceedings, and spent many minutes telling us how he was the rightful emperor of China ... and the moderator let him speak, because we didn't want to censor anyone. I think that I usually do fairly well at resolving matters with people who can outline their concerns on talk pages and make compromises when necessary. Dealing with people who break the rules, make threats, and refuse to discuss ... that pisses me off. Yes, perhaps I am too pissed off.

If you can communicate with this character and broker a compromise, I'd appreciate it. Just as long as he doesn't succeed in removing Hindi from the Urdu article. Zora 07:21, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh pffft! Now he's following me around and reverting my edits. An anon turned Islam and clothing into a pious Salafi tract, I reverted, and Harprit reverted to the anon's version. Despite not having ever participated in the article previously. Aargh! Zora 07:26, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

And four other articles. And vandalizing my userpage. Oh shit. Zora 07:28, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I've already warned Harprit that another instance of vandalism and I'll block him. I'll be only too happy to. (I've seen a bit of the BS he's done with your user page; he even has a convenient link to track you with!) As for Justice, he's deleted the idea of standard Hindi being a dialect of Urdu, but that's an opinion I'm sure many people hold, so it doesn't tell us much. He hasn't removed all mention of Hindi from the Urdu article, and doesn't seem to be heading in that direction. A history of how Urdu = Hindustani until Partition, and how standard Hindi is also based on Hindustani, would support the version you prefer, if you want to add that in. I've neglected other pages for this edit war, and I really don't want to spend more time on it. But let me know if Harprit continues to be a pain. kwami 07:50, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

De-syllabicized Hangul and Morse code

You added a very interesting tidbit to the Hangul article (ca. 2005-05-21), stating that

people raised reading Chinese or Korean often report that reading the strings of letters in an alphabet like English is like trying to read Morse code.

I am wondering if there is a reference for this, or if the claim is anecdotal. It touches upon the subject of reading psychology, and for me, was what first suggested that Hangul might be better-designed as a writing system than the Latin alphabet. (So far as I've seen, cross-cultural appraisals of this nature are difficult to find documented, and this one all but invites further inquiry.)

Anecdotal, sorry. There's always the hope that someone may be able to support it. I've heard it rather often from Chinese but only rarely from Koreans, which might be expected since, although more syllabo-/logo-graphic than Latin, hangul falls far short of a true logographic system like hanzi. Of course, it's also at least partially going to be due to second script acquisition; but coming from the other direction, I find hanzi much more reader-friendly than an alphabet like cyrillic or thai. I've never gotten to the point of sight-reading hangul, so I can't compare, but it doesn't have the immediate reward of a logographic script. In fact, it's harder than a linear alphabet, because when I read hangul letter by letter, my eyes don't follow a straight line. It's not obvious that hangul would be more easily read logographically than the latin alphabet, but perhaps it's comparable to a syllabary once the reader is fluent. Sorry, don't know where that gets us. The comment might be better in the talk page than in the article. kwami 08:15, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I would suspect that Hangul does look more like a syllabary to an experienced reader (and, conversely, more like an alphabet to a novice :-), so perhaps the claim is more appropriately made of syllabaries in general. I believe the crucial points are (1) that the syllables are of uniform length, that you can tell with a glance how many are in a given word (whereas alphabets require one to scan through the word, to recognize dipthongs, consonant clusters, etc.); and (2) that the eye can thereby scan the text in a steadier, less haphazard way.

Unfortunate, that the "Morse code" claim isn't [yet] backed by formal research. It really got me thinking, and put the Latin alphabet under a light I hadn't seen before.

Scuse me for butting in, but there IS a book, on writing systems, by John DeFrancis, that evaluates various orthographies with regard to their consistency, ease of use, and faithfulness to the actual sound of the language. He puts Chinese and English at the bottom of the list, for their sheer perversity and unpredictability, and Korean at the top. I also found this bibliography for a course on writing systems: [7] Zora 01:56, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Kwami are you serious?

Kwami, After reading what you wrote on the Hindustani languages page I'm really beginning to doubt your knowledge about the subject. It seems like you are regurgitating information and mixing it up. You say something to the effect of Hindustani being the language of the Muslim invadors. What??? You might want to read the history; I mean wikipedians alter and abuse facts alot, but not to this extent. The Mughals spoke persian, then out of it slowly evolved Urdu (which was almost persian with the grammer of natives) in the beginning. There is no language called Hindustani, but is the term used to refer to the mix of languages that is used today. That article is old, I don't belive making changes like that helps it.--JusticeLaw 01:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Please share with us where you're getting your information. I think the OED is a fair reference for how the term "Hindustani" has been used in English these past couple centuries, and Ethnologue is a fair secondary source. kwami 05:01, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

please explain where OED is, and show me the source where you got "hindustani was the language of the muslim moghul rulers" from.--JusticeLaw 05:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

See OED. Any half-way decent library will have it, and with a library or university proxy you can access it online. The OED and Ethnologue quotes are on the Hindustani talk page. kwami 05:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Some people enjoy Wikipedia arguments

... and I'm not sure that I'm not one of them. Alas. I'm going to try to watch for any such behavior and nip it in the bud. I have noticed that certain people seem to adopt contrarian positions and then take evident delight in "fighting back" against those who disagree with them. I'm starting to think that the point is the fight and not the position. That's my 2 AM in Honolulu thought. Zora 12:15, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Either that or they don't realize when they're contradicting themselves. Either way it makes Wikipedia look rather foolish. kwami 18:21, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Alveolar fricative and Scouse

I was trying to improve the description of consonant lenition in the Scouse article, and I found a paper, http://www.englang.ed.ac.uk/people/livlen.pdf , on the subject, which calls one of the allophones of /t/ an "alveolar slit fricative", and uses a doubly underlined theta as the symbol (p237 of the article). My assumption was that this was the same as the "voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative" on the voiceless alveolar fricative page, so I used the [θ̠] symbol from there. Can you check that I got this right? (I'm asking you because you seem to have added the non-sibilant fricative to voiceless alveolar fricative in the first place.)

(I'd also welcome any improvements to the phonology section of the Scouse article that make it more readable while keeping the technical details. It's not easy to describe some of the sounds in question to speakers of other English dialects.)

--JHJ 17:43, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you got it right. You used the retraction diacritic, which means that the articulation is somewhere behind dental. The normal assumption would be that you mean alveolar, but it could also mean denti-alveolar or even postalveolar. The article decided to be more precise by specifying that it's alveolar, using the alveolar diacritic from the Extended IPA. (This can be found in the IPA article, if you're interested.) kwami 19:27, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Do you know of any other languages in which this sound occurs?--JHJ 19:26, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, they're not common sounds, but somehow I doubt they're all that rare either. Most linguists aren't familiar with them, and most phonetic descriptions are rather naive, so they're only likely to show up in well studied languages (such as European ones), or in languages where the investigating phonologist just happens to recognize what they are. That's my guess, anyway. I think I remember something like this ([ɹ̝]) being claimed for Mapuche, and maybe for Malagasy as well. But Ladefoged describes the Icelandic th sounds this way, for example [θ̠akið̠] roof. The θ̠ is laminal, and the ð̠ usually apical, and both are 'definitely alveolar non-sibilant fricatives'. Danish d used to be similar (laminal in this case), according to descriptions from the late nineteenth century, but presently is usually an approximant, though a fricative pronunciation is still used on the stage of the Royal Theater. kwami 23:50, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

It IS sockpuppetry

I recently cleaned out my watchlist, so I can put a few more articles on there. Is handled. Zora 04:58, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I have 891 pages on my watch list, so I know what you mean - fortunately most of them only get edited 3 or 4 times a year! kwami 06:18, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey Kwami, see my talk page. I tried offering evidence, but thanks to Zora's mentioning of my name with Harprit everywhere some people seem to be doing revenge editing. Talk later--JusticeLaw 21:48, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: Yiddish in the Netherlands, English in Israel

Ok, while I've got a fair amount of edits by now, I still don't know how to reply to personal messages (don't think you'll check my user page again), so I'll just do it here.

Basically, I think 'official' language should not be confused with 'national' or 'widely spoken'. For instance, the CIA World Factbook says this:

Hebrew (official), Arabic used officially for Arab minority, English most commonly used foreign language

which of course means that English is widely used but not official. My nearest World Atlas (Russian) also does not list English as an official language in Israel. Moreover, English was recently removed from the Wikipedia article on Israel, it seems to be unofficial according to the general consensus there too. The only argument I can find to support English as an official language of Israel is that all Israeli students must pass an English exam to receive a matriculation certificate, but this does not necessarily mean it's an official language.

I think Yiddish and the Netherlands is pretty self-explanatory, even doing a simple Google test reveals that it's neither official nor widely used there. I honestly don't know where your source got the information from. But if you feel that it's a reliable source, maybe Netherlands should be added as a notable community (IMO). The CIA World Factbook of course does not mention Yiddish in the Netherlands article.

-- Ynhockey 01:14, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Three ways people do messages that I'm aware of: on both pages like this, on one page (the other person of course has to add it to their watch list, or check it frequently), and by email.

It appears from the Netherlands list that established minority communities (indigenous Germanic dialects as well as long-time residents such as Gypsies and Jews) are officially recognized, perhaps at a regional rather than national level. If there's any country I might expect to officially recognize Yiddish or Romani, the Netherlands is it! kwami 01:28, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Need help with Harprit

He's checking my edits and engaging in revert wars in almost every article I touch. Need help at Bollywood, Salafi, Islam and clothing, Muhammad ... aw heck, it's hard to keep track. Zora 08:15, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, several of his changes to Bollywood strike me as improvements, though he is still hung up on Hindustani, and opinion is unanimous against him. (If you're reading this, Harprit, it would serve you well to participate in discussions, rather than trying to force your opinions on others. I think you could justify several of your claims.) The Islam and clothing edit seems to be a case of plagiarism, and very unencyclopedic, so you're certainly justified there, regardless of who's stalking who. And the Salafi edit is simply incoherent -- I'd revert it regardless of who's right just because it's embarassing to see. kwami 11:35, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

If you could detail which changes seem desirable in Talk:Bollywood we could perhaps discuss them there. I don't see anything useful in Harprit's version, but then I am indeed angry at being harassed, and might not be capable of being even-handed at this point. Zora 13:07, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject to support any particular claim, though I did think his translation of the dialogue was better English. Other than that, if Harprit actually cares about the article itself rather than just enjoying a fight, he can justify his edits himself. If he doesn't engage in dialogue, then I'll take his reverts to be in bad faith. kwami 20:16, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppet

Is user:Frederick24 a sockpuppet? If he/she is then there should me a more permanent way to keep the sockpuppet tag on his/her page. --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 01:54, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppet. I suppose we could protect the page, but that seems a bit harsh. There are several logged in users, as well as numerous anonymous IP's, that have been engaged almost exclusively in blind reverts to the same set of Urdu-related articles, along with a refusal to join in discussion. It may be a case of astroturfing, at least in some cases (I've gotten one user to join in extremely minimal discussion), and I don't have the admin power to verify that any of them are actually sockpuppets. kwami 02:04, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Elamite? Old European?

You may be interested in my edit. While I know OES is controversial, all sources I have show that Proto-Elamitic is definetly about a 1000 years younger from Summerian cuneiforms/Egyptians hierogliphs (3k BC vs 4k BC). What is that the claim that Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright make in their 'The world's writing systems' book? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 04:47, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll add something aO both on the Writing system talk page. kwami 06:38, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Kim Jong Il

there is now a poll at Talk:Kim Jong-il on "leader"/"ruler" for the Kim Jong Il article. maybe this will finally put the silly, protracted debate to rest. thanks in advance for taking the time. whatever your view, i think the article just needs a bit more attention of outside parties.Appleby 21:10, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

Hello Kwami, If you get a chance please take a look at the Hindustani page and see the changes I made. I also added a note in the talk page if you would like to read that. Trying to bring this edit war to an end.--JusticeLaw 20:11, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

French diaresis

Diaresis in French means that there are no diphtong, better, "that the second of a pair of vowels is to be pronounced as a separate vowel rather than being treated as silent or as part of a diphthong". Naive, without diaresis, would be pronounced "Nai-ve" (or nève). Naïve, in the other hand, is pronounced Na-ï-ve. In the same way, Citroën is pronounced without diphtong - Ci-tro-ën. Without the diaresis it would be Ci-troen, or /s i t r õe/, I think. José San Martin 23:16, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, sloppy wording, perhaps. But I still wonder how Ci-tro-ën is pronounced. kwami

Citro-ën is pronounced like an or en, in avant. "en" is always pronouced like "an"... José San Martin 23:42, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

The final "s" is not pronounced in "Saint Saëns". So... /saɑ~/. I don't think it is so strange. Strange are the nasal diphtongs we have in Portuguese. José San Martin 00:01, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, our nasals are oddish, since they are unique. But it doesn't matter. Saëns is an exception, therefore. Like "fils". We have some, like "transamazônica" should be pronouced /transama.../. Yet, it is normally pronounced /tranzama.../. There are very worst exceptions in English, I shall say.

Yeah, I guess the Portuguese nasals do stand out when compared to the world's languages. And yes, English seems purposefully designed to combat literacy. Oh well. It seems that Citroën may also be an exception, but it was originally a Dutch name, so it's not a fair question. I'm trying to figure out how to pronounce nasalized vowels with diaresis in French, but maybe normal French words don't have nasalized vowels with diareses. kwami 01:40, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Oksapmin relations

Kwami, I'm curious to know the source for your recent (27/10/2005) addition to 'Papuan Languages' re Oksapmin being thought to be related to the Left May languages, or to Karkar-Yuri. I haven't heard of either of these proposals and am curious to know where they come from. Cheers, Dougg 07:08, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Ugh. I have classification notes, but not sources. (They were made for my own use, and I never thought I'd do anything with them.) One of the connections was from Würm's Papuan tome, in the text, and the other from I can't remember where. Revert if you like, since I no longer have access to the books to justify this. BTW, I am in the middle of adding a note that some of the languages in and around Flores may not be Austronesian, also from Würm. The language with the largest amount of non-AN core vocab is Savu, though the words hadn't been connected to any known family when Würm wrote. It may be that subsequent research has debunked this, but there isn't much work being done on these languages. kwami 07:20, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I might leave the Oksapmin stuff for the moment. There's been some recent work on its classification that I'll try to put up soon.

I don't think anyone who's worked in Flores (I know at least two people who are currently working on Flores languages, so there is work happening) thinks the languages there aren't AN. There are some odd things there that may well be due to Papuan language substrate effects, but this is still pretty speculative. The nearest confirmed non-AN languages are on Pantar, but there's been no depth work on any of the languages on the several small islands between Flores and Pantar, so who knows what may be there. Of course it may just be another Reefs/Santa Cruz type situation where they are AN languages that have simply done some odd innovating.

Wurm's tome is considered pretty out of date these days, though of course it was a major contribution in its day. Cheers, Dougg 09:43, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, he described it as a substrate-type phenomenon, rather than saying they aren't AN per se, but when the substrate's in the core vocabulary, it affects the classification. I don't recall how strong the effect was in the main Flores languages; the most divergent was Savu, which is pretty isolated geographically.

Are the Reef/Santa Cruz languages no longer considered non-AN then?

It would be great if you had more up-to-date classifications. Ethnologue of course pretty much follows Wurm. kwami 10:58, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, it only affects the classification if you're using lexicostatistics, and that's one of the reasons why lexicostats isn't considered very useful.

I'll ask my friends who are working on Flores languages and see what they say about a lexical substrate. The effect that I have heard them mention is more like metatypy (contact-induced typological change). In the case of Flores languages it's word order and position on the isolating/synthetic continuum.

Re the Reefs/Santa Cruz languages (Aiwo, Santa Cruz and Nanggu): from the data (such as it is) it looks like these are Oceanic AN languages that have undergone some complex changes. (Wurm had them in his East Papuan phylum but recent research has broken this phylum into five families and three isolates.).

There are some publications due out soon which should spell out some of this research. Once they're out I'll get the info into Wikipedia.

Dougg 03:35, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that would be quite interesting. kwami 19:37, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Japanese pitch accent

Thanks for tidying up that table. It looks much better. --DannyWilde 02:46, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikiproject

Hi, I wondered if you might be interested in joining a long term Wikiproject

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Biblical Criticism

Its goal is to increase the amount of information originating from academia in biblical articles, as it is noticably lacking at the moment, this includes

• Textual criticism
• Critical theories
• Mention, and summary, of historical commentaries (i.e. commentaries interpreting the subject from people thousands of years ago)
• Information concerning change in interpretation, over tim
• Interpretations from historic groups cast as heretics by the mainstream, including esoteric traditions (such as from groups like those responsible for the Book of Enoch)
• Interpretations from historic groups who were once the mainstream, but where the interpretation is no longer supported by the mainstream.
• Apologetics (from academic sources, rather than local religious people)

This also includes transferring the information present in the public domain Jewish Encyclopedia, which is not present in Wikipedia. This work is over 100 years old, and so the information needs updating once copied over, e.g. by taking account of subsequent scholarship (e.g. Martin Noth, Richard Friedman, Israel Finkelstein).

--francis 15:26, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer, francis, but I think that's a bit out of my league. Also, I'm starting to wind down my Wikipedia involvement, as I will be (hopefully) be overseas soon. kwami 19:35, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

request

I've left a similar request to another user and then I 've remembered Talk:Arvanites#language_vs._dialect.

I am not a linguist. Could you possibly check and parse the following:

• link1

Arvanitika is a member of the Tosk group of dialects, which together with Gheg constitute Albanian. It appears from this that A is linguistically a dialect, whatever the ethnic conception may be. It has both conservative elements that have disappeared from standard Albanian, and elements assimilated from Greek.

• link2

"Arvanitika, the variety of Tosk Albanian". Perhaps they're dodging the dialect/language dispute altogether. As I said elsewhere, choosing one or the other word isn't always a useful exercise.

• link3

"Arvanitika is to be considered a dialect of Albanian, part of the sub-group of Albanian dialects known as the "Tosk" dielcts [sic]". Pretty clear.

• link4

The book A Linguistic Anthropology of Praxis and Language Shift: Arvanitika (Albanian) and Greek in Contact received good reviews in the anthro lit, suggesting that no one took umbrage. However, "Arvanitika (Albanian)" very possibly is intended to clarify an unfamiliar name by classifying it. It doesn't specifically mean that Arvanitika is an Albanian dialect any more than "English (Germanic)" (for people who are unfamiliar with what English is) would mean that English is a Germanic dialect.

""Arvanitika" most technically refers to a dialect of Albanian [...], or more accurately a cluster of dialects". Pretty clear.

"... the tricky thing about labelling two speech varieties as "dialects" or separate "languages" is that there are other factors that play a role besides just some measure (which often cannot be quantified in any reasonable way anyway) of "sameness", factors of a social, political, economic, etc. nature. Thus, to take an example close to Greece, Serbian and Croatian are quite similar in most respects to the extent that they pass the mutual intelligibility test for being dialects of the same language, but for political reasons now, they are largely being promoted as separate languages. [...] And there are speech forms that are generally considered dialects of the same language that are not really mutually intelligible, e.g. Yorkshire English and Texan English! Thus Arvanitika is considered a dialect of Albanian [...] because it is roughly mutually intelligible with other varieties of Albanian. [...] Linguists are fond of saying that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" [...], a way of emphasizing that external factors play a large role in how speech forms are classified."

What he's saying here is that, looking just at a grammar of the language and a dictionary, or watching two people communicate, we would consider Arvanitika to be a Tosk dialect. However, languages are social phenomena and badges of identity, not grammar books or phrase books, and which varieties actually get called dialects vs. languages is a subjective judgement call that has no single answer.

for Arvanitika? I hope you can help. Thanks!

+MATIA ☎ 11:23, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

How about pages 3 and 4 of the 1999comp.pdf? The parts about ancient Arvanitika (or ancient Albanian depending on how you look at it) and about brother not child? +MATIA ☎ 22:49, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Arvanitika and Standard Albanian are sister dialects of Tosk. That is, neither is a language independent of the other; they are both Tosk dialects. (Whether Tosk is a language or a dialect of Albanian is another question, of course, but it's generally considered to be a dialect.)

Ancient Arvanitika/Albanian per se is not mentioned in the article, so I don't know what you're referring to there.

To paraphrase, Arvanitika is not an endangered language, but an endangered dialect of Albanian. It's clear that this author considers A to be one of many dialects of Albanian, and not a separate language. kwami 00:54, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks again. Please take the trouble and share your thoughts on Talk:Arvanitic language. Take care. +MATIA ☎ 20:57, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Pluto's moons

I'll admit that the AstroBio source is not absolutely authoritative but they're so dependable and complete I defer to them. Actually, I've looked previously and its hard to pin down the "where" and the "who" but I see the page as no more or less respectable than BadAstronomy. Perhaps the best idea is to leave no diameter suggestion until NASA or a university pronounces something. Marskell 22:55, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I looked at the NASA and hubble links and searched it myself and can't actually find a direct diameter reference. My general thought is yes use these sources as a bedrock--there is no "true" diameter until the "players" say so. SpaceCom, AstroBio, BadAstronomy are all wonderful "secondary" sources. But they aren't actually secondary--their tertiary. Academic does X, NASA, ESA etc. report (as secondary) Y, and these websites report (as tertiary) Z. Then, of course, we cite those websites in making an article. So Wiki is what?--"quartiary"? Fourth level of hearsay? I don't know--maybe there is a word. I'm guilty of it myself and it's a difficult thing to avoid. "It's true" and I need a quick link. But we should avoid it. So ya, if the source I think you are referring to is this, then refer to it and avoid third-source conjecture. Marskell 00:03, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Ack! Yes, I'd looked at that and it seemed like the flip side of the coin. Too primary, if that makes any sense. I've agonized over this elsewhere, particularly the idea of linking directly to a PDF. My thought is, if you can list it in a references section as you would in a normal bibliography ("Smith and Smith, 2004) with the link as an ancillary go-to point because wiki is on-line, then good. Anyhow, it's late for me (actually early-but-still-awake) so I'll follow up as best I can tomorrow. Eid mubarak! Marskell 00:30, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

It's been changed again with a very broad range now so I think it acceptable for the time being. Marskell 10:49, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

The wider, 3-fold size range makes sense with the 10-fold albedo range, so I think you're probably right.

Also, there are lots of links to PDFs. Why would that bother you? Easier access than interlibrary loan! kwami 10:55, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Move of Margaret (moon)

Can you please ensure that if you wish to move a page to a new location you do it properly, moving the whole page history over rather than just cutting and pasting the move? I have reverted the above article so that the history and the article are in the same place: if you wish the page to be moved you will have to contact an admin to do it for you. -- Francs2000 23:22, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I've moved it over with its history. (Hope you don't mind me deleting [Margaret (moon)]'s page history to do so!) kwami 23:40, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

No problem, thanks for doing that. -- Francs2000 00:09, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

What wikipedia is not

There is no mediation cabal

--User talk:FDuffy 09:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Latin in Russia

Hi! The Latin alphabet is currently used in Russia in two republics: Tatarstan (which is marked, but needs to be marked some closer to west :) ) and Karelia (which is'nt marked, Karelia is situated near the Finland's border) . The Jewish script also is used for Yiddish in Jewish AO, near the border with China. --Untifler 17:21, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! Also in Chechnya, correct?

Karelia: used by a rather small minority, correct? But with official recognition?

Karelian is'nt an official language, but it officially ( and in fact ) uses Latin. Some Karelian minorities, as Veps also uses Latin. Chechen Latin is officially prohibited, and I'mnot sure, but it isn't in real use. Tatar widely uses both , Cyrillic and Latin.--Untifler 18:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

As for the Jewish AO, are there even many Jews left there? Is Yiddish at all widely used?

Only among elder generation, but is is a place where Yiddish is still spoken. Yiddish gazette is published.--Untifler 18:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

kwami 22:15, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

So, have you any plans to create the historical map of writing systems? some like Abur should be marked! --Untifler 18:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

actually

I've copied (exactly as it was) the etymology, from an etymology dictionary, and those symbols meant that the adj. Arvanitika derives from the noun Arvanitis, keeping the theme Arvanit- and adding the (adj.) extension -ika. Do you think I shouldn't write it with "<" etc symbols?

That means that Arvanitic in greek is masculine Arvanitikos, feminine Arvanitiki and neutral Arvanitiko. In the plurar the neutral is Arvanitika - which is also the name that some linguists use to refer to the language. In greek we could say that they speak Arvanitika, but the fem. is also used: they speak Arvanitiki glossa.

the "according to a theory" paragraph is a different thing: an edit from another user (see Talk:Arvanitic_language#Arvanitic_language:_name_origin). The greek consonant "β" is (and always was) pronounsed as veeta. That user wrote "related to the fact that Modern Greek language does not have the consonant "b" (Greek 'β' denotes the consonant 'v')" but if we want to write in Greek, bravo then will use the diphthong "μπ" μπράβο. I'm planing on expanding these with dates for each terms. I've added few things at User:Matia.gr/Arvanites sources - you may want to check them and use them to expand the linguistic parts at Arvanitic language (you already have made some comments that are not included in the wiki). +MATIA ☎ 00:38, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

The paragraph was rather messy and difficult to read. We shouldn't have idiosyncratic abbreviations from other sources. We also don't need this much detail; just something to say that arvanit- is the root is enough.

Sorry, but you're wrong about β. It was originally [b], and if I remember right only became [v] in the Byzantine period. β γ δ were all originally stops [b g d]. The use of μπ etc for [b] etc is a later development. The point is that, if it entered the Greek language early enough, alban- would have become alvan- through the development of the Greek language. The only discrepancy is [l] → [r], which is a very common change, and in fact both were used in medieval Greek when referring to Albania.

The OED has this etymology for 'Albania':

Albania is the med.L. and general mod. name of the country, which is called Shqipnija by the inhabitants, who call themselves Shqipetars; in med.Gr. Ἀλβανία, with variants Ἀλβανητία, Ἀρβαητία, the inhabitants being called Ἀλβάνοι, Ἀλ-, Ἀρβανῆτες (in Turkish ARNAUT).

kwami 01:32, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Kwami, there has been a lot of hard work going on at Albanian language. Could you please check it and tell me if you like it. Im asking you because you know a lot about languages and linguistics and you opinion carries a lot of weight (there is no edit war or conflict, don’t worry about that, just a lot of additions). Rex^(talk) 21:15, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Kwami, It's me again. I'm having a Wikipedia:Peer review of the article Albanian language. I've implemented you proposals. If you have time, please comment. The PR is at Wikipedia:Peer review/Albanian language/archive1. Rex^(talk) 22:06, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Indefinite blocks of anonymous users

Howdy. I'm following up on this report at WP:AN/I. I noticed that you blocked 70.177.166.200 (talk · contribs), 128.164.212.8 (talk · contribs), and 128.164.214.71 (talk · contribs) indefinitely. While long blocks for anonymous users are certainly in order for serial vandals like 70.177.166.200, the other two were not even given an explanation on their talk pages, and each had made five or fewer edits. I'm sure you've got a good reason for wanting to stop edits from these IPs, but the blocking policy offers up a maximum block of a month for problem IPs; two of these deserved 24-hour blocks at most. Indefinite blocks of IP addresses are out of the question except in extreme cases, and certainly not without discussion. I'm going to unblock 128.164.212.8 and 128.164.214.71 and reduce the other's block to 24 hours. If you could explain the situation at WP:AN/I it would be much appreciated. android79 01:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Genetive in Albanian

(moving discussion to Albanian language) kwami 19:40, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

about Arvanites again

(discussion moved to Talk:Arvanites) kwami 19:38, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Rajput

I have created the document from a list of 61 books which are mentioned in the references section. Authors have done extensive research in the field of history and then published these books. Muslims and some users like zora/gothean are accusing me of hindutva POV/anti muslim and I have repeatedly asked these muslims and self proclaimed moderators,on the talk page, to point out historically incorrect statements in the article. No one has come forth. Yet they revert my edits. When I ask them for citations they remain quiet.

Why are you siding with muslim POV pushers?

Also it seems providing references is meaningless here. What seems to be working is how many people one has on there side. i.e what matters on wikipedia is outshouting the other.

Now they are accusing me of impersonating others and no admin is paying attention. Is it ok to make false accusations against others?

Shivraj Singh 03:25, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I was trying to add user:zora as 3rr violation and mysteriously I messed up. Reason I posted on your talk page under rajput above is because what you labeled as vandalism is not. This page is about rajputs and surprisingly muslims are trying to define hindu rajput history. The user whose comment you labelled is actually a hindu rajput whose comment on the talk page was edited by muslims and he was trying to revert it back.

Shivraj Singh 05:51, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

This isn't vandalism? Wisesabre writes,

can any one explain me whats going on ? - Wisesabre

and the person you're defending changes this to,

can any one explain me whats going on ? My IQ is unfortunately very low as I am mongrel race paki. -Wisesabre

Raja writes,

I'm editing the above comment as it states some typical racist, prejudiced bias that we've come to expect from the sock puppets. Great points, but Shiv hasn't answered the questions I posed to him over a month ago, how will he answer your's Khurram,lol! Evasive Shiv. - Raja

and our friend changes it to,

I'm editing the above comment because my claim that shivraj is alone from the hindu side has been exposed as a HUGE lie. I am really ashamed of being routed by this guy sisodia. since I can not win by fair means I will use foul means, that is to say I will edit OTHER PEOPLE's comment rather than just admit that I have been proven wrong. - Raja

Does this three times, actually, after others revert the vandalism. S/he then removes the NPOV tag from the Rajput article with the comment,

No dispute on this page whatsoever. All the disputes are in pakis heads.

I reverted all this as vandalism. I left two comments, one of which was,

Shivraj you are not alone

I find the claim by mohammedans that Shivraj is using multiple pseudonyms to strengthen his postion totally distasteful. But it also shows that these mohammedans are now at their wits end. They do not have any logical arguments left so they are down to levelling level foul charges. Shame on all these pakis!!! Keep the flag flying Shiv.

Sisodia

I guess that's supposed to be insulting or something, but it just sounds stupid. Anyway, I left it since s/he wasn't vandalizing anyone's comments.

Is this the quality of 'contribution' you wish for Wikipedia, Shiv? kwami 06:19, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

No Kwami. I will explain the context. The root of the problem is muslim editors on rajput page are editing without providing any citations or refernces. I created the article and these guys were reverting the hell out of it and no refernces were cited. Now in last few weeks some other rajputs started showing up and mentioned words of encouragement for me. Muslims like Taaoo/Wisesabre/Supersaiyan and moderator Zora started saying it is me posing as others. This enraged one of the users Sisodia and he posted the mesg on the talk page. [User:Supersaiyan] edited some part of Sisodia's remark which he did not like and then he edited Supersaiyan's message. If someone has to be blamed it has to Supersaiyan.

Shivraj Singh 11:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

No, both should be blamed. The rules apply to everyone. You don't get an exception just because you're angry.

Please show me where Supersaiyan vandalized Sisodia's comments. kwami 19:26, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Turkish language

Hi, at Turkish language, I understand your rearranging of the English versions of Turkish words under "The language in daily life", so as to bring the normal English forms forward. However, affedersiniz for example does literally mean "you make a forgiving". It is a second-person plural aorist formed from et- "make" and (I think) the Arabic verbal noun af "forgiving". It is not an imperative form, so it is not literally "forgive [me]". It seems desirable to me to retain the strictly literal translations, parenthetically. David Pierce 14:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You're right, I didn't look at them all very closely. But parenthetically - the main translation should be in normal English. kwami 23:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

ablaut, apophony, & IE

hi. i am wondering if you can give your opinion at Talk:Ablaut.

Done. Personally, I think vowel gradation should be the main article, as the meaning of that phrase is more transparent in English. But it doesn't much matter. Regardless, the specific topic of IE gradation should be its own article. kwami 20:33, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

User:Doric Loon claims that the term ablaut refers to primarily only Indo-European langs and that the term apophony refers to base alternation generallly including non-IE langs.

I claim that ablaut is a more general term that refers to alternation in any language (not solely IE langs) and is therefore synonymous with apophony (for the most part).

Doric Loon wants Ablaut to redirect to Indo-European ablaut. I think it would make more sense to redirect to Apophony (but perhaps Ablaut should be a separate article?).

Doric Loon is unhappy that I moved the information in Indo-European ablaut from its original location at Ablaut (which is now a redirect). User:teb728 agrees with Doric Loon & disagrees with me.

Thank you. – ishwar  (speak) 15:31, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Ancient Greek phonetics

Please take a look at the ridiculously long Talk page on this subject. I think we've been far too patient with a crank POV-pusher, but your opinion and advice would be valued. In particular, see if you want to express an opinion at the end. Thanks, --Macrakis 23:39, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I doubt that Hatzidakis and Bambiniotis support that "Greek is the origin of IE languages". I am asking people to add info at the list Talk:Ancient_Greek_phonetics#articles_that_we_need_to_check. For example Vox Graeca is good, do we know if there's a better book about the reconstructed system? So far only Andreas and I have added some bits there. Thanks! +MATIA ☎ 13:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Unblocking

Just thought you would like to know... to unblock a user [8], you go to Special:Ipblocklist and you look for the user's name, then you click on the Unblock link. :) Titoxd^(?!?) 02:56, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! That's probably a lot less confusing for people reviewing it later on than overriding the block with an additional block for 1 minute! kwami 02:59, 30 November 2005 (UTC)