Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
> Could you add a date and ref for the speaker numbers at Tangam and Milang?
+ Wish I could. Any numbers I give are from my own field notes.
> Also, feel free to quote your own publications on the importance of the language, but such subjective commentary should not be in Wikipedia's voice.
+ Point taken!
> Also, are the Padam a tribe, or a tribal people?
+ Depends on definitions. Padam are basically a cluster of clan groups that speak a particular way, primarily as defined by the speech of Damroh, the primary "Padam" virkwpollage. Linguistically, Padam can be considered a dialect of Adi, or a particular range within the Eastern Tani dialect chain.
Q: Is there a reason for the "()" after "Tangam language"?
User:markwpost (talk)
It's a temporary measure. We generally add "language" to our language articles, as that helps distinguish them from the ethnic articles and helps prevent duplicates. In this case, we already had a Tangam language page, which was a redirect linked from the Tani languages article. I couldn't overwrite it, so I moved your articles to a dummy name. Eventually it should get fixed. — kwami (talk) 00:59, 1 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Might I suggest the same applies to your recent edits to olinguito. Please explain your edits clearly in edit summaries and establish consensus on a Talk page before edit warring. Bondegezou (talk) 14:40, 3 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Because what you think is "correcting nonsense" is not necessarily what others think is correcting nonsense (as in this case). That is why we have approaches like WP:BRD. Please follow that and WP:AGF. Bondegezou (talk) 14:55, 3 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Kwamikagami,
I have seen that you have been policing/editing articles about the Dardic languages. I have been adding citations and information over the last couple days to the languages in that category. Time and again, I have run into vandalism/self-promotion by this guy under various accounts in most of the non-stub Dardic language pages. As a frequent contributor, is there any way you can help out? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.62.165.84 (talk) 23:07, 5 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I notice that you're still using IPA-en to answer Pronunciation-needed requests. If you've created an automated process to do this, can we include a IPAc-en conversion? --deflective (talk) 17:26, 6 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Fair enough. I'll continue to use my automated conversion after you're done.
I will mention that I made a greasemonkey script that puts a IPAc-en button in the Wikipedia Toolbox on the left side of the screen. Once you've typed the IPA-en you can just click the button and it should convert all incidents of IPA-en on the page into IPAc-en. --deflective (talk) 05:19, 7 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Good to know. I have used IPAc-en sometimes, when I thought the auto-conversion might get it wrong; seeing it in action would be good too. — kwami (talk) 06:55, 7 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi Halibutt. This is probably something you should discuss at the Polish IPA key. There can be concerns with presenting the pronunciation of a foreign language as if it were English: It's not acceptable to use the English respelling key for other languages, for example, so it would probably be a good idea to get the okay of the people there before investing more time in it. If it's help with the coding you want, then yes, I can fudge my way through it, but basically by copying from the existing code as you would, so I'm not sure how much help I would be. I'll be happy to do what I can if people decide this would be a good addition to the template. — kwami (talk) 06:53, 7 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Following your suggestion, I started a discussion on the mouseover question at Help talk:IPA for Polish#Mouseover tooltips for IPA template. I don't expect many people to join, but let's give them a chance. I'm not a big fan of approximation of sounds of one language in another language the lay way, but such tooltips would certainly be of much use to those of us less fluent in IPA script. Which means 99% of Wikipedia users. Anyway, I'll keep you informed. //Halibutt07:45, 7 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion
Hi Kwamigami. I'm glad you are updating language articles to use Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013). The "infobox language" template with generate this with "ref = e17". But it generates a named reference that is usually used in other parts of a language article too. So look for <ref name=e16 /> and change them to e17. Otherwise we get the bright red "Cite error: The named reference e16 was invoked but never defined (see the help page)" messages. I'm fixing these as they turn up on the broken reference list. Thanks StarryGrandma (talk) 19:18, 7 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
It was too big a job to fix all the broken links as well, because they have to be verified to still be valid in E17. I figured others would clean it up. — kwami (talk) 16:46, 8 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
The best thing to do in that case would be to replace the named e16 reference with the full reference to e16 instead of leaving it broken. I'll do that to the one's I fix. But it's not a good idea to update an article and leave it with problems. Better to have it slightly out of date than have a reference that is not reachable. "First do no harm." StarryGrandma (talk) 00:07, 9 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, but no. Anyone who wants to help is welcome to, but I tried to get a group together to update all the articles and no-one was interested, so I took care of all 7,000 myself. It would be best to update to E17; no sense having refs to two editions when they don't differ, and rather silly to have a claim in one place that's contradicted in another. — kwami (talk) 02:03, 9 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
(talk page stalker) Can we find a middle ground? On one hand, it is true that editors should manually review whether the e17 supports the referenced statement. On the other, that will take quite some time, and in the meantime, having broken, red-glaring references in the article without a clear cause is decisively uncool. Could we, instead, provide a default reference in the infobox for e16, and gracefully mark it as outdated and needs checking. Along the lines of:
We could semi-automate the conversions w AWB. The problem w doing it in the box, besides the fact that it says e17 in the box and not e16, is that there are about 40 legitimate links to e16 (and a smaller number to e15) from the box. There are also some intentional refs to e16 from the text, but those aren't generating errors. So, in articles that are generating errors, we could change the first cross-ref to a simple {{e16}} ref. — kwami (talk) 14:24, 9 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I like that solution, replacing the first cross-reference. I fix broken references in general and have no way to know that specialized templates like {{e16}} exist. (Though I do keep a collection of very weird reference templates I run across.) Named references that are generated by templates are a particular problem. This isn't the first one I've run into. When a template generates a named reference, the documentation should say more than that it just generates a reference. It should give the wiki markup for the generated reference for cases like this when the template changes. StarryGrandma (talk) 17:38, 9 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Are you familiar w AWB? It's a huge help when you have many similar changes. In this case, just find and replace <ref name="e16" /> with <ref name="e16">{{e16|...}}</ref> (you'll need to fill in the ISO code manually), and double click on all but the first change in the edit box to cancel them, so they still cross-ref the first. — kwami (talk) 17:45, 9 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Light flashes and I see it :) Meanwhile, you're not moving the article to the unaccented version because you can't or you don't want to. If the former, I can do it for you. If the latter, then .... Sad to see that you and maunus can no longer do these things yourselves. --regentspark (comment) 17:10, 10 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Go ahead. I put a delete tag on the target article, but half the time the admin moving the article breaks the links, so I'm reluctant to request deletions. — kwami (talk) 17:14, 10 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago17 comments2 people in discussion
hi Kwami, You seem to have gone on a personal crusade against Ethnologue. I see no good reason for that. Your term of "content fork" is just an excuse: why should these links be harder to maintain than all the thousands of extra links added every day on WP? I don't see your point. Ethnolinks were created for a reason. Note that I have nothing with SIL, actually I don't like the Ethnologue particularly, it's just a reference among others, where some people can find some info. Please refrain from removing massive amounts of data from pages without asking first on Talk pages; you know better.
Womtelo (talk) 19:13, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ethnologue is not the problem. Having parallel links on multiple pages is a problem. ISO codes change, and while we update the language articles, editors aren't going to know if there are other articles which repeat the outdated codes. There's no reason to repeat the codes as long as we link to the language article. That's what links are for! Read WP:CFORK. The links to OLAC, however, are not a cfork, since they are not found in the language articles. Also, there isn't any good reason to have two columns with the same codes in them in the same table.
Contentforks are not that of a problem; and someone who wants to scan through Vanuatu languages may want to have direct access to Ethnolinks without having to open 112 different entries. Ethnologue codes seldom change (I know it for a fact after having had ISO change 2 of them): when it happens it is a slow and rare process, one that Wikipedians can totally maintain with zero difficulty. Also, while the 3-letter codes in the two columns look repetitious, the links are not: so removing them means remove some easy access to potentially useful information, on a page where it makes sense to have it. I am fine with what you just did now, namely add a "cfork" banner rather than do massive deletions yourself.
Also, stop saying that "this is not a list of all known languages". You don't seem to know much about Vanuatu languages, do you? This list was established collectively by the group of all academic experts on Vanuatu languages, and no other language has been reported. (certainly not "dozens"!!! LOL) Rather than adding "dubious" tags, why don't you show off your knowledge about Vanuatu languages and actually add the dozens of missing languages to the table? Otherwise you're just speaking for nothing.
That's certainly not dozens! So why don't you just add them to the table, just like I did for Nisvai? That would be smart of you. As for ISO code pages, they are empty of any valuable information; Ethnologue pages contain substantial claims, which may be right or wrong (often wrong!) but no more than any other links to academic papers or news articles that are added daily on WP. No reason to exclude Ethnologue from potential links. Womtelo (talk) 19:58, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
There are others, such as the varieties of Avava, that are sometimes counted as separate languages, and it appears that your Nisvai is counted as a dialect of Port Sandwich. Regardless of how many, it's a lie to say they are all known languages when we know that they are not all known languages. It's also ridiculous to say there are 112 languages when any count is necessarily subjective. — kwami (talk) 20:07, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
What is "ridiculous" (to use your word) is your claim that there are "dozens" more languages than 112 when you can hardly cite a couple more which are actually separate languages (probably just dialects of already listed languages). You know better. Womtelo (talk) 20:11, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
So, if I exaggerated on a talk page, it's acceptable for you to lie to our readers. Lovely. It's good to know our editors have such integrity. — kwami (talk) 20:14, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Where did I lie? Show me. Be honest. 112 languages have been counted. If you go do fieldwork and discover more (I personally discovered 4 such languages of Vanuatu which had never been documented before) then you may edit this number; otherwise, just trust the people who know. And by the way, here's what Crowley says about varieties of Avava: "these differences are certainly not of an order that impairs mutual intelligibility". So these do not even count as new languages. You're welcome. Womtelo (talk) 20:20, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
You accept additional languages, yet you maintain that the number of languages does not change. That's either a lie or a symptom of psychosis — or perhaps truth doesn't matter in an argument, which goes by a less polite term. Anyway, given that in another publication Lynch and Crowley list the Avava lects as separate languages, can you really maintain that there are exactly 112 languages? If you wanted to say "Crowley counts 112 languages", then that would be factually correct. But a blanket statement that there are 112 languages is wrong. — kwami (talk) 20:29, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Crowley (2006) supersedes, and explicitly contradicts, Lynch & Crowley (2001). As you probably know, truth in science is defined by the latest consensus. I never maintained that "the number of languages does not change"! since precisely languages have been newly discovered (by Crowley, myself and others) which were not previously counted, thereby modifying the figure. But changing the figure is not to be done based on blanket statements or on your whim: in science, as you probably know, facts are established using evidence. Womtelo (talk) 20:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
You're confusing the count with the number. The number of languages does not change when a language is discovered, because the language existed before it was discovered. Only the count changes. The number does change when a language goes extinct, but the count does not. Also, when the count varies not just with discovery but according to the opinion of the linguist, or depending on whether a dialectological or sociolinguistic definition of "language" is used, then a raw number like 112 is essentially meaningless.
BTW, facts are not established using evidence. Facts are evidence. The number of languages is not a fact: It's a conclusion based on the facts, and that conclusion may vary depending on who is evaluating the evidence. — kwami (talk) 21:04, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
So you're an asshole, so what. You don't need to brag about it. Are you going to continue to obstruct improvement of the article, or can I remove the bullshit? — kwami (talk) 21:26, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Insults? no. I've been sticking to facts. Just facts. OK, enough now, I've got better things to do. Was good chatting with you. I believe we're ready for consensual edits now on the Vanuatu page. Hope you agree with my latest edit, it was inspired from your comments (you've been preaching to the choir regarding language counts, but it's probably good to make these issues clearer on the page for the reader).
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
The Original Barnstar
Hello! i admire your so many contributions to Wikipedia. And i am awed that you were born on Saturday, because in Greece we have a tradition that people born on Saturday have a superior power, and if they curse, their curse is effective. My father was born on Saturday, too.
I m interested to know if you r African, and what your blood group is. (If you ask about me, i have a rare type, A rhesus negative).
As to my article "Free Greek Language", i wrote it with capital L in the sense that all 3 words "Free Greek Language" are the name of that auxiliary language. If you permit me, i will make it capital again.
I find many things interesting in your writings, if i have the time for it i wish to keep communicating with you.
thank you. 888gowinda (talk) 20:38, 12 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi. Yes, if it's a proper name, like American Sign Language, then the L should be capitalized. I have no idea. However, there's the more important question of notability: If it's not covered outside its own publications, then we shouldn't have an article on it. People are constantly adding articles on conlangs, and most of them get deleted. We just deleted Kotava, which has a large literature and even has an ISO code! — kwami (talk) 22:59, 12 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello. I just want to make a comment on this edit. 'Item' can be syllabified either as 'i·tem' or as 'it·em.' This is why I suggested the word 'iodine' instead; it is always syllabified as i·o·dine. However, you were correct in reverting my other edit. --Omnipaedista (talk) 12:02, 13 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I was actually reverting because of the 2nd, but the way our convention works, "item" would be eye-tem, not yt-em, so it's a perfectly good example. — kwami (talk) 12:51, 13 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I wanted to query your edit [1] to Guatemalan Sign Language which removed the citation to Ethnologue as a source. If the contention is that it is not an RS for language articles please direct me to the discussion that so determined. If not it should certainly be included since I did, in fact, use it as a source when I first wrote the article. Eluchil404 (talk) 03:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
We still have a link to Ethnologue: It's right there in the info box. What I am removing from our articles are hundreds of gratuitous links, most of them outdated or no longer working. I'm doing this after adding or updating thousands of functional links to Ethnologue. In the case of GSL, the link (17th ed.) did not match the citation (16th ed.), and in any case it's redundant from the link in the box and has nothing substantial to say about the language. There really isn't anything much you could have gotten from it, or that a reader would get from it.
If there were a claim in the article that depended on Ethnologue, then it should be ref'd directly, but there is not.
As for Ethn. not being a RS, there have been several discussions of this point at WP:LANG, though we continue to use it because it's so convenient and because it's often all we have. Where we have better, and you found for GSL, we should really concentrate on that. — kwami (talk) 04:15, 16 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
No problem. It was actually such a challenge most especially the higher language nodes since I have to fix the range relative to other nearby groups and preexisting maps. Took me more than 2 hours for most of them, but for the sake of information!
--Pansitkanton (talk) 14:15, 23 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion
Why have you taken it upon yourself to reclassify Emilian and Romagnol as dialects of one unified language? There is a clear distinction, obvious to speakers of either. mgSH09:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I haven't. Our sources classify them as dialects of one language. Native speakers on the talk page even see them as dialects of one language. — kwami (talk) 11:02, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Where exactly is this? Further, do you have a source for this? As a native speaker myself, I find your assertion surprising. In 2009, SIL reclassified Emilian and Romagnol as separate languages in the tradition that residents of the region have always understood. You do seem quite the expert on this subject for someone who probably didn't know the language existed a week ago. mgSH18:23, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Native speakers there refer to it as a dialect of Emiliano-Romagnol. They also mention the politics of the guy who got the ISO code split, and how he's not a linguistic source. Our ref in the lead of Romance languages, distinguishing languages on the basis of mutual intelligibility, also has Emiliano-Romagnol. — kwami (talk) 18:32, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Dialetto in Italian does not have the same meaning as English's dialect. Cognates are not always as simple as direct translation, unfortunately. The word dialetto is applied to Emilian and Parmesan (which I'd agree is a true dialect), just as it is to Tuscan. None of the three references in the lead of Romance languages mentions Emilian, Romagnol or its parent language group, as far as I can see. I still can't see the claim that a native has suggested Emilian is a dialect either. Again, please help me out by being specific on any of these points. mgSH18:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ah, you're right, Dalby considers Emiliano-Romagnol as a whole to be a dialect.
Several of the commenters there speak excellent English, so I don't know if we can chalk it up to mistranslation. Certainly "So he invented that Romagnol and Emilian are different languages, not dialects of the same language, and he pushed his claim to ISO", while not perfect English, is pretty clear.
My Routledge volumes speak of both Emiliano and Romagnol as being dialects, though not necessarily of an Emiliano-Romagnol language.
Before the split, Ethnologue cited Agard (1984) A course in Romance linguistics, a diachronic view (Georgetown UP) as saying that Emiliano-Romagnolo is "a structurally separate language from Italian". — kwami (talk) 18:55, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Several of the commenters where speak excellent English? Is this on this talk page you're yet to link to? In the absence of any credible evidence, I still don't know understand why you've made this re-classification, especially given your plainly obvious lack of knowledge of the region's linguistic make-up. mgSH20:01, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
It looks like that's what they were originally going for: classical KBO's, but the wording's not clear and Haumea's no longer considered to be one. — kwami (talk) 17:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Cite error: A list-defined reference named "FOOTNOTEZimmermann_2012" is not used in the content Can you take a look and work out what you were trying to do? Thanks --Frze (talk·contribs) 08:32, 22 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I have been engaged in a dispute at Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias for some time now that could be of relevance to the many pronunciations of non-English names throughout WP. It's a former featured article, and one of the contributors who got it to FA status objects to the pronunciation of the name Caxias being indicated, for a rotating set of reasons. Any input there would be appreciated, as we don't seem to be resolving it ourselves and hardly anyone else is watching the page. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 00:26, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Kwami,
You told me I need to fix links before retargeting IPA for English. But what links? I look at what links to IPA for English, and I see zero articles, and the only Wikipedia pages are archives (which you wouldn't normally retarget) and the Redirect for Discussion pages, which you obviously wouldn't retarget. What needs to be retargeted first? Ego White Tray (talk) 06:17, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
There are talk pages, some of them archived, a wikiproject how-to page, some archived MOS and ref-desk pages, etc. I don't see why we can't fix the archives. I've never had a problem. It's the same thing we do when we change or retire a template so that the archives don't become illegible. I've even cleaned up people's talk pages and their archives, and never had a complaint, though I wouldn't worry much about that here. As for what to do first, I don't know that it matters. The whole thing would only take a couple minutes with AWB. — kwami (talk) 06:47, 25 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Does Indus script has a linguistic structure (edited)
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I have noticed that you have undid the edit that i have done in the page ' Indus scrip'. I would like to know why the content was deleted when it was published in a highly reputed journal like 'science'? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anoopc23 (talk • contribs) 06:41, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
That's where I am too. The problem with an admin doing it is that half the time they break all the incoming links. I'll tag it to be moved, though. — kwami (talk) 02:11, 30 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't see how that contradicts the map. If majority meant covering the largest area, then Australia would have a greater population than Vietnam. Anyway, if you want to update it, why don't you update it, rather than just deleting it. Or you could just say "traditionally" or "as of 19xx" or "excluding recent immigration" or whatever works. — kwami (talk) 03:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Also, you are on the verge of violating 3RR. If you continue edit warring rather than discussion, I will ask to have you blocked or to have the article protected from you. — kwami (talk) 04:33, 26 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I guess posting this isn't really necessary, since I see we now have notifications, but it's what I know. A lot has changed since I got out of my recent six-month retirement! Steel1943 (talk) 08:14, 30 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Same-sex marriage. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.
It's unfortunate that "by" is such a difficult word that our readers couldn't possibly understand that "by a date" means "on that date or before", and it's a shame that you're unable to come up with anything better. Maybe we should request a bot to delete all clauses on WP with "by" in them. — kwami (talk) 16:45, 31 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Given your long history of problems with dealing with the cooperative aspects of Wikipedia, and given that it clearly continues (as you're running into edit-warring concerns on several articles simultaneously), may I suggest that you take some time to consider whether a cooperative venture like Wikipedia is really the most effective use of your energies, or whether they might be better used in informing the world in other ways. If you do choose to stay with Wikipedia, I suggest that you find it within yourself to act in a more cooperative fashion, and to gain a better understanding of and a greater willingness to follow some of the procedures here. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:37, 31 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm happy to cooperate when people make good-faith, rational arguments. Arguing that listing "by Oct" under 2013 doesn't mean "by Oct 2013", and that there's no possible way to fix it, is neither. — kwami (talk) 17:48, 31 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I understand. You're willing to cooperate as long as everyone sees things your way. Again, I suggest that Wikipedia may not be the place to you, and that your energies may be better used in ways that do not waste the time of other editors. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm not willing to cater to people who misrepresent others, as you do, even when they agree with me. As I said, good-faith, rational arguments. Yours are not. — kwami (talk) 18:10, 31 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
You've now made an invalid CSD request that's been declined by two admins. If you're dead set on deleting the redirect, take it to WP:RFD. Further disruption is just going to result in escalation. WilyD07:59, 31 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
But unfortunately typical. Another example of why I often leave articles at ridiculous names. At least on the third try we got an admin who understands how to move a page. — kwami (talk) 16:39, 31 October 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Kindly do NOT change the IPA in Miodrag_Kojadinović to a wrong format any more. There is no sandhi rule with names, as first name and second name are pronounced distinctly in most languages and not as a sentence, and Serbian does not make final consonant voiceless outside of sandhi like Russian/German/Dutch etc.
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I can't thank you enough for all the pronunciations you're providing for the Classicist pronunciations of Greco-Roman names! What's your favorite reference for such things? When I can, I muddle through OED 2e, and the current Merriam-Webster online. But muddle is indeed the word, especially with non-IPA notations (slog slog slog ugh), and that's not to mention when neither have an entry for something. —Sburke (talk) 04:48, 6 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
I've noticed your changes to Gay Adoption Map Europe.svg. However, Austria needs to be in (there is a good link in LGBT rights in Austria, and if you wish, here is a link in German to an Austrian government site confirming that stepchild adoption for same-sex couples is now legal[5]), and Portugal needs to be out, as the relevant bill has only been adopted in first reading, the second reading being postponed again and again, lastly due to a call for a referendum (The parliamentary page I have linked to in the article[6] has the last entry on 25.10.2013 and it says that the motion to have a vote in the plenary was rejected). Sigur (talk) 15:13, 9 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Changed Port. on the world map too. You might want to comment on that talk page if you see anything missing – I removed quite a few states we had no refs for. — kwami (talk) 07:45, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I just gave Greenland a reference, alas in Danish but at least it's the official text of the Act on the Government of Greenland website. Stepchild adoption is authorised by § 4 1st subsect. 2nd sentence: "Dog kan en registreret partner adoptere den anden partners barn, medmindre der er tale om et adoptivbarn fra et andet land." ("However, a registered partner may adopt the other partner's child, unless it is an adoptive child from another country.) Sigur (talk) 14:17, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Groundless revert of an edit to tweak the content in the article's infobox". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by 16 November 2013.
(I know you were part of the discussions, but don't remember where, so I'll recap everything.)
We've been making a distinction between a script, such as Latin and Burmese, and an alphabet as an instantiation of a segmental script, like the English alphabet (Latin script) or the Karen alphabet (Burmese script). So the "Burmese alphabet" is the thing used to write Burmese, whereas "Burmese script" would be that set of symbols used for any language. Cf. Latin script and Latin alphabet. So, yeah, we could move it to "Burmese script", but then we'd want to broaden the scope to include all alphabets based on the Burmese script, and the article currently covers just the one.
In the broad sense, an alphabet (as a type of writing system) is a segmental script, whether an abugida, adjad, or 'true' alphabet. Certainly Hebrew is most commonly labeled an "alphabet"; the narrow sense only tends to come into popular use with claims that the Greeks invented the alphabet. So I think we're fine. In any case, this rationale would affect the naming of quite a few articles, and the wording of even more, so we'd want to think seriously before moving it. — kwami (talk) 01:47, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Of course I know about the distinction, but I wasn't sure if we treat abugidas as alphabets in the broader sense too for the purpose of naming articles. I was just wondering because other articles about abugidas are found under "script", for example Telugu script, even though it is only used for Telugu. I'm also confused because Pallava alphabet and Burmese alphabet start out with "The Pallava script" and "The Burmese script", and because Pallava was clearly used for more than one language (not to mention Burmese derivatives used for various other languages in Burma). Similarly, Bhattiprolu alphabet starts with "The Bhattiprolu script", but at least in this case the script was used only for Prakrit so can be argued to have been in use for a single language only, justifying the title "alphabet" in preference of "script". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:40, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't think we can draw the line at abugidas. Telugu should be 'alphabet' per the others, and maybe Pallava to 'script'; some may have been moved but the wording not updated. The Burmese article called everything a 'script'. For Pallava I have no idea if there were different alphabets for the different languages. Prakrit wasn't one language either, but in the case of Bhattiprolu maybe only one was written in it? — kwami (talk) 14:46, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Hi Kwami. Somebody helped me with templates long ago, I think it was you, so I'm asking for your expertise again. Template:Lang-lo is not showing the Lao language. For example when I type
Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Classifying the Oromo langauge(s) is always an interesting challenge. No label will be satisfactory to all concerned, that is clear. The Ethnologue, a published source, has used the label "macrolanguage" to describe Oromo. What publications have used the term "sociolinguistic language" to label Oromo? I think using both labels in the article allows readers to sense the complexity of the situation, and the diversity of opinion (both scholarly and popular opinion) on this subject. The article would not be saying it definitely is one category or the other, but simply reporting that both labels have been used for this situation. What do you think? Pete unseth (talk) 22:02, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
"Sociolinguistic" struck me as a bit odd to, but I was going by a consensus from a while back not to go around calling things "macrolanguages" just because they have that label at SIL. People thought it was inappropriate because it's more a bureaucratic term than a linguistic one, created to address the ambiguities inherent in assigning ISO codes, and not s.t. that's relevant to us unless we're specifically discussing SIL or Ethnologue. (I even went through with AWB to remove the word from WP, and don't remember any objections.) — kwami (talk) 22:25, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Since Wikipedia values published sources, I think retaining the use of "macrolanguage" in relation to Oromo is very legitimate. The category may not be appreciated by all, but it is used by non-trivial sources. On the other hand, I fail to find any non-derived sources that use "sociolinguistic language" in relation to Oromo. I will edit it to use both.Pete unseth (talk) 13:40, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
But "macrolanguage" is defined in terms of ISO coding. It only makes sense in that context. I have no attachment to the other term either. — kwami (talk) 13:48, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Your unexplained edits changing the name of Maharashtrian Konkani
Latest comment: 11 years ago13 comments2 people in discussion
Hello Kwamikagami, please could you explain the rationale behind your changing the name of the sublanguage dialect group Maharashtrian Konkani in multiple articles?The Discoverer (talk) 01:02, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
RS's say it's a dialect of Marathi, so I'm following them. All we have for it being one of the Konkani lects is Ethnologue, which is not a RS for classification. We also have a content fork between Marathi language#Dialects and Konkani languages that we need to work out. Do you have any advice or sources? That was on my to-do list for this evening. — kwami (talk) 06:32, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
On the Konkan coast (part of the west coast of India), the language spoken in the north is Marathi and the language spoken at the south is Konkani (ISO:gom). As you move along the coast, the dialects gradually change from Marathi to Konkani in such a way that it is not possible to determine exactly where Konkani ends and Marathi begins. A group of some of these dialects that are midway between Marathi and Konkani is called by ISO and Ethnologue as 'Maharashtrian Konkani' (ISO:knn). As a result, you will find Marathi sources that claim (ISO:knn) as a part of Marathi, and Konkani sources that claim them as part of Konkani. My opinion is that we can consider them to be a subset of both (as shown in the Venn diagram).
What I am concerned about is your use of a new term 'Konkani Marathi'. Has this term been used in any sources? The fact is that both ISO:gom and ISO:knn are referred to simply as 'Konkani'. 'Maharshtrian Konkani' and 'Goan Konkani' are just terms used by ISO and Ethnologue to differentiate between the language (gom) and the dialect group (knn). I know you have good intentions, but I'm afraid that this term may be WP:OR, and secondly as per WP:COMMONNAME, we must use the most commonly used name (which in this case would be Maharashtrian Konkani). As you are aware, the coverage of Konkani on the English Wikipedia is quite a mess already; even though you have a good knowledge of linguistics, I kindly request you not to increase the confusion by introducing new terms. The Discoverer (talk) 07:38, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
A different name may be appropriate. Is 'Maharshtrian Konkani' used by RS's? IMO we need to include ISO names in the lead of an article, but we don't need to use them as the name of the article if our sources have s.t. else.
One obvious solution to the classification problem would be to move 'Konkani languages' to s.t. like 'Konkani–Marathi languages'. Then we could just list the varieties according to whichever order makes sense, and not worry about which language they belong to. — kwami (talk) 08:45, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your understanding, Kwamikagami. The names Maharashtrian Konkani and Goan Konkani chosen by Ehnologue are effectively what we would have disambiguated in Wikipedia as Konkani (Maharashtrian) and Konkani (Goan), so 'Konkani (Maharashtrian)' could be one alternative. I haven't come across any other alternative names in literature. Marathi sources generally handle each constituent of knn as an individual dialect. I will try to find out with my friend who is a Konkani major how Konkani lit. refers to them.
mr, knn and gom could possibly be grouped into a Konkani-Marathi family, but I'm not sure whether other constituents of the Konkani family (Kukna, Katkari, etc) can be put in the same family as mr. And vice versa, can other dialects of mr (Varhadi, Khandesi, etc) be grouped with Konkani (Goan). The Venn diagram will help you understand this.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a complex and touchy area, and we have to be careful with what we include in which language. For example, Samvedi and Vadvali, which are listed as independent languages in the Konkani family are also listed as dialects of mr. One may even find sources that state that Konkani language (gom) is a dialect of mr. The Discoverer (talk) 14:37, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
That's why I thought it would be good to unite the two lists. If s.t. is both a dialect of Marathi and a Konkani lang, then it seems more straightforward to list it under Konkani–Marathi than to list it twice.
Or perhaps we could choose a RS that does not have a dog in the fight, such as Masica. He lists Marathi, Konkani, and Bhili, with the Marathi dialects of Konkan distinct, and Konkani from Savantvadi south, with Khandeshi as transitional between Marathi and Gujarathi. — kwami (talk) 00:26, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn't merge them unless this is backed by solid sources. As Masica says, Khandeshi is between Marathi and Gujarati; based on the premise for merging Marathi and Konkani, I think we can't group Khandeshi in a family that doesn't include Gujarati as well.
Does Masica list two or three types of Konkani? Is his classification available online?
I agree with you that it's best to chose an RS that is uninvolved, but I would also like a source that is accessible online, for verifiability (this was the advantage of Ethnologue). IMO, instead of taking sides, it could be a better idea to mention the different classifications in the sources and let the reader decide for himself. The Discoverer (talk) 04:23, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ethnologue should not be used for classification unless we have nothing better. It's simply too full of errors, and we have no idea who they're basing themselves on.
Accessibility is nice, but quality is far more important. Masica is widely available in libraries.
Any lect of Marathi or Konkani would be appropriate for Konkani–Marathi, just as any lect of Indic or IE European would be appropriate for Indo-European. They don't have to fall under both.
For Konkani, Masica says,
These [the Konkan dialects of Marathi] are to be distinguished further from Konkali proper, centered on Goa, but extending slightly to the north (Savantvadi) as well as to the south (coastal North Kanara District of Karnataka State), with an important outlier in South Kanara, centering on Mangalore, and another in Kerala, around Cochin. (For a documented discussion of the "Konkani–Marathi controversy", see Pereira 1971.)
Another such Griersonian language construct was "Lahnda", discussed in section 2.1.13 above. Elsewhere, "normal" taxonomic problems exist, sometimes complicated by politics, on a scale appropriate to the subcontinent: is Konkani a separate language or a dialect of Marathi? Is Halbi a mixture of Oriya and Marathi, a dialect of Marathi, or a separate language? Is Khandeshi a dialect of Marathi or of Gujarati, or a separate language?
A retroflex flapped lateral /ḷ/, contrasting with ordinary /l/, is a prominent feature of Oriya, Marathi–Konkani, Gujarati, most varieties of Rajasthani and Bhili, Punjabi, [etc]
The historical difficulty can perhaps be laid to rest by remembering that Gujarati, like many languages, has mixed antecedents as well as diverse dialects: it has connections with Konkani as well as with Rajasthani.
Thus the erstwhile Marathi–Konkani *tsh has become a pure [s] and (losing also its aspiration) has merged with the original /s/ phoneme.
Chatterji set up a classification with Marathi and Konkani forming a group of their own, so that Southern Indic had two subbranches, Marathi (Marathi–Konkani) and Sinhalese (Sinhala–Maldivian).
In Masica's bibliography,
Southworth, Franklin C. lg76. The verb in Marathi–Konkani. IJDL 5.2: 298–326
Masica's appendix on NIA languages,
(KONKANI)-1 – S-most contiguous NIA lg., main 1g. of Goa (and of Savantvadi area immediately to N), and important lg. of the polyglot N and S Kanara Dts of coastal Karnataka to the S; also spoken by large emigrant colonies in Bombay and Kerala; literary cultivation of so-called Standard Konkani in sixteenth–seventeenth centuries seems to have been mainly of foreign inspiration (grammars, dictionaries, catechisms, translations); of an alleged earlier literature, supposedly destroyed by the Inquisition, no trace has been found; considerable literary cultivation of several modern dialects, however (see bardhexi, manglluri, antruzi, karwari, saxtti); efforts underway to develop unified modern literary lg.; now commonly written (and printed) in Devanagari, Kannada, Roman, and occasionally) Malayalam script; 1,522,684 in 1971.
konkani-2 – also konkan standard; form of MARATHI spoken in coastal Maharashtra (= the Konkan), i.e. in Thana, Kolaba, Janjira, and N. Ratnagiri Dts; many local names acc. to caste; not to be confused with KONKANI-1.
konkani-3 →
koknā, also kokni, kukna - a Bhili dial. of N Konkan, Sur at , and Dadar-Nagarhaveli; 152,987 in 1971; same (?) as LS1's konkani-3.
My comments in blue:
Any lect of Marathi or Konkani would be appropriate for Konkani–Marathi, just as any lect of Indic or IE European would be appropriate for Indo-European. They don't have to fall under both. In that case we are not compelled to merge Konkani and Marathi, we can just list the lects under Konkani langauges
These [the Konkan dialects of Marathi] (knn) are to be distinguished further from Konkali proper (gom), centered on Goa, but extending slightly to the north (Savantvadi) as well as to the south (coastal North Kanara District of Karnataka State), with an important outlier in South Kanara, centering on Mangalore, and another in Kerala, around Cochin. (For a documented discussion of the "Konkani–Marathi controversy", see Pereira 1971.)
... is Konkani a separate language or a dialect of Marathi? ...This has been settled once and for all:Konkani is an independent language
(KONKANI)-1 – S-most contiguous NIA lg., main 1g. of Goa (and of Savantvadi area immediately to N), and important lg. of the polyglot N and S Kanara Dts of coastal Karnataka to the S; also spoken by large emigrant colonies in Bombay and Kerala; literary cultivation of so-called Standard Konkani in sixteenth–seventeenth centuries seems to have been mainly of foreign inspiration (grammars, dictionaries, catechisms, translations); of an alleged earlier literature, supposedly destroyed by the Inquisition, no trace has been found; considerable literary cultivation of several modern dialects, however (see bardhexi, manglluri, antruzi, karwari, saxtti); efforts underway to develop unified modern literary lg.; now commonly written (and printed) in Devanagari, Kannada, Roman, and occasionally) Malayalam script; 1,522,684 in 1971. This is gom
konkani-2 – also konkan standard; form of MARATHI spoken in coastal Maharashtra (= the Konkan), i.e. in Thana, Kolaba, Janjira, and N. Ratnagiri Dts; many local names acc. to caste; not to be confused with KONKANI-1.This is knn
koknā, also kokni, kukna - a Bhili dial. of N Konkan, Sur at , and Dadar-Nagarhaveli; 152,987 in 1971; same (?) as LS1's konkani-3.This iskex
I see that there is some merit in the argument for considering Marathi and Konkani to be a single family, but I think this should be done only after clearly outlining and considering the positions of different sources to ensure we take a well founded decision.The Discoverer (talk) 06:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
As for your first point, that we could just list Marathi as another Konkani language, the lit seems to do the opposite, listing Konkani as a Marathi language. Doesn't matter to me either way, but I haven't seen any source classifying Marathi as Konkani. — kwami (talk) 06:12, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I did not mean that Marathi should be listed under Konkani, what I meant was to keep Marathi separate, and list the other dialects under Konkani languages. Classifying Marathi as Konkani or Konkani as Marathi would both be wrong. The Discoverer (talk) 06:53, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
That's not what I meant. No-one ever said anything about merging Marathi and Konkani. I'm talking about the article for lects related to Marathi and Konkani. If a lect is arguably either Marathi or Konkani, then it would be NPV to list it as only one. Listing all Marathi dialects said to be Konkani as Konkani would likewise be one-sided. But if we list all Marathi–Konkani lects as Marathi–Konkani, then AFAICT the POV issues would disappear. — kwami (talk) 07:07, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think it makes sense to consider it as a single Konkani-Marathi language family. Another reason is that both Konkani and Marathi appear to share a common ancestor: Maharashtri. Instead of making the change outright, I suggest we open a discussion on the Konkani Languages talkpage and place invitations for comment on the Konkani language and Marathi language talkpages, so that we can discuss all issues before we actually make the changes. The Discoverer (talk) 17:16, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
From the editor who brought us Free Greek language
Latest comment: 11 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
What is your explanation for undoing my edits? The information I presented is more accurate. I can source my information here "The language that was used for mutual interaction between the native population and the foreigners was variously labeled Rekhta ('mixed'), Urdu ('camp'), and Hindi, Hindavi, or Hindustani ('Indian')." Furthermore, the definition of Hindustani provided by the linguistic scholar George Grierson is and was the most popular definition of Hindustani: "Hindostani is primarily the language of the Upper Gangetic Doab, and is also the lingua franca of India, capable of being written in both Persian and Deva-Nagari characters, and without purism, avoiding alike the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. The name Urdu can then be confined to that special variety of Hindostani in which Persian words are of frequent occurrence. . . . and similarly, Hindi can be confined to the form of Hindostani in which Sanskrit words abound." So if there's going to a link to the Wiki article on Urdu at the very top of the page, there should also be one for Hindi. --Foreverknowledge (talk) 20:20, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
That's not the point of a hat note. A hat note is designed to help people find the article they're looking for. Since we have two articles on things called "Urdu", it's good to link them together. As far as I can see, we have no similar need with the other names for the language.
As for your philosophical point, you may have a point, though I suspect a good solution would be less wordy than what you wrote. Try the talk page?
If you believe that there are two articles on things called "Urdu" then there are also two articles on things called "Hindi," since Hindustani has been known by the terms Hindi and Urdu as the quote above shows, which is why I believe both Hindi and Urdu should have a link at the top (or alternatively, neither should, since Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu are mentioned in the first paragraph of the article). Many people simply consider Hindustani to be Colloquial Hindi while others consider it to be Colloquial Urdu, so in either case there is the potential for confusion if there aren't hat notes for both.
Are you referring to the wordiness of the hat note? If so, I agree about making it less wordy. I will think of rewording it.
Let's take it to talk, in case others have an opinion. AFAICT, we rarely call medieval Hindustani "Hindi", whereas we commonly call it "Urdu". — kwami (talk) 03:05, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, Kwamikagami. You have new messages at Talk:Hindi. Message added 00:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Latest comment: 11 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion
Hi Kwamikagami. In 2008 you adding some info to ŋ on en.wiktionary.org about the ŋ first being a ligature nn ng in medieval Icelandic. Where can I find a reference on the topic? Right now Ŋ indicates Alexander Gill or Benjamin Franklin as first uses. Thanks. --Moyogo/ (talk)18:29, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
It was an n–g ligature, not n–n. That was years ago, I think in a book on typography. I'd be hard-pressed to locate it now. — kwami (talk) 18:36, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi Kwamikagami, I posted the following at Ivan Štambuk's page, but I think that you, Taivo and JorisvS could find this useful too when countering Balkan nationalists defecating on the talk pages and articles involving BCS.
---
"Hi Ivan, I was directed to a paper describing an experiment done a few years ago by an American linguist, John Bailyn, concerning Croatian and Serbian. He basically had Croats translate several Serbian texts and found that the results support the single-language hypothesis on analysis of grammar alone because of the lack of modification done to the texts. No doubt this is another blow to the nationalist braintrust on Croatian Wikipedia that continually resorts to ad hominems and non-linguistic argumentation to preserve the image of Croatian and Serbian being different languages like Dutch and German or Danish and Swedish. The study is at https://linguistics.stonybrook.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/u5/publications/JSLBCS2.pdf"
---
Hi, there. I fixed the font (use Siyam Rupali font which is standard bengali font & this font used in bengali wikipedia as a default font)--Aftab1995 (talk) 18:02, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Those fonts are just ugly. They look like they were drawn with a pencil. The original font wasn't great, but it did make the page more attractive, and it was more in line with how Bengali typically looks in print. Usually when we add text at huge font sizes, we try for something that looks good up close. — kwami (talk) 18:14, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, a new article was just created recently by Kanguole titled Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca). Since you are a long time contributor on the Mandarin Chinese article, you might want to take a look at it. I think the new article could easily be merged into the main Mandarin Chinese article, given the timeline and information in the new article isn't all that different and many aspects are already covered in Mandarin Chinese. Thanks.--TheLeopard (talk) 11:22, 15 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I just saw that. Personally, I like having specialized topics like this spun off, so I'm fine with it as it is. More accessible, IMO. We could always reduce some of the info in the main article if there's too much overlap.
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Can You Please contribute and build the wikipeia pages of Tamil Language and Tamil Language Generic ? Please It will be highly hlpful . Thank You — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.218.50.104 (talk) 02:16, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion
Hi, I just saw you were rolling out that new {{Angle bracket}}. For me, the math-coded brackets look rather tall and disrupt the line spacing. Do you think that could be improved? I recognize using normal directly inserted unicode characters may meet with some difficulties owing to font coverage. I remember we had a discussion about them some time ago on Talk:Greek alphabet/archive 2. Fut.Perf.☼10:52, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
The nice thing about the template is that we can change all the articles at once. I'm not sure how much a problem direct input actually is: We have tons of angle brackets at Greek alphabet, which is a high-traffic article, but I don't recall any complaints. It's not a matter of font coverage: All 22 of our test fonts display them just fine. The problem is Microsoft OS's such as XP, which are, well, Microsoft.
Sure, we can play around with line height if we can figure out what's causing the problem. What would be nice would be to test for the reader's OS and only generate sub characters if it's XP or Vista, but I doubt we can do that. — kwami (talk) 11:09, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. I obviously quite agree with the idea of using a template for this. I've added a comparison of possible solutions at Template talk:Angle bracket. If we aren't actually aware with any concrete display problem with directly inserted Unicode characters, shouldn't we just go for those instead of the math code? Fut.Perf.☼13:05, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sure. And if it's just one person, we can't be expected to customize WP to him. Also, if we decide against this, we can always revert it w a bot. — kwami (talk) 13:37, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ah, so the talk was going on. Anyway, as long as the changes are not fleshed out into something stable (at the right talkpage), the template should not go in article space. AND & OR, changing back to the original (bad) brackets makes this template and its background sort of a useless addition (except maybe for the minor single-point-change argument, which is asking for flip-flop conclusions). -DePiep (talk) 17:33, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
We'll get more feedback if it's in some high-traffic pages. What works for the people who have problems now might not work for others. — kwami (talk) 22:18, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I wasn't calling him an ass for having a problem, I was calling him an ass for accusing people of bad faith and conspiring to conceal his problem. — kwami (talk) 04:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
As I read it, the user didn't actually accuse you of bad faith or dishonesty. S/He did make the argument somewhat personal ('but you don't see it, so does it mean it doesn't exist??') but also allowed that the problem might be his/hers ('What OS are you using?? I'm using Win XP.') The IP's behavior was somewhat inappropriate, but there was no need to escalate. Cnilep (talk) 04:48, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
With all due respect, generally at WP:DINO we try to form consensus before removing an image from articles, so the removal of Dinoguy's T.rex with only the explanation "del. image as OR. Sure, it had feathered relatives, and may have had feathered young, but large animals tend to not have thick coats unless they live in the Arctic. Any RS that T. rex had anything like this?" is jarring, considering most images deemed questionable go through [review on this page] before being removed from articles. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 14:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Generally in the biological sciences, phylogenetic bracketing isn't considered OR, though, and WP:DINO follows that mindset as a rule of thumb. OR, in WP:DINO terms, is like saying "Dilophosaurus posessed venom because of the notch in it's jaws" rather then putting up a single image of a feathered tyrannosaur and saying it's supported by phylogenetic bracketing. And the artist, Matt Martyniuk, is a well-respected prehistoric bird expert, as well as the fact the image recieved little biologically sensible complaints (and the fact me, Funk and Matt himself all agreed it better to put in then the image originally there), it already had consensus when it was posted into the article, which was a positive one, with only three complaints, two of those being IP users and Rob, who's only gripe was it looked like a bad photoshop job and not the integument itself. You also dredged up a month-old conversation just because you didn't like the image and didn't even consult anyone on the Dinosaur WikiProject about it; just up and removed it. I know you're a former admin but you still need to develop a consensus on matters like this before removing images. Excuse me if I sound a little agressive, I've had a little trouble sleeping as of late and thus I've been a little grouchy. Dromaeosaurus is best dinosaur (talk) 15:13, 20 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
You don't sound aggressive or grouchy.
I assume T. rex had feathers of some kind. That would be supported by bracketing and I doubt is very controversial. But there's a big difference between drawing an elephant and a wooly mammoth, though they both have hair. The OR is not in supposing that it had feathers, somewhere or at some age, but that it had such a thick coat as an adult, and that's where I suspect most paleontologists would take issue. There's a general principle that massive animals have sparse insulation to prevent overheating, except in cold climates. If "feathers" means anything goes, we might as well attach a peacock's tail. — kwami (talk) 15:22, 20 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The request for formal mediation concerning Groundless revert of an edit to tweak the content in the article's infobox, to which you were listed as a party, has been declined. To read an explanation by the Mediation Committee for the rejection of this request, see the mediation request page, which will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time. Please direct questions relating to this request to the Chairman of the Committee, or to the mailing list. For more information on forms of dispute resolution, other than formal mediation, that are available, see Wikipedia:Dispute resolution.
Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Reacquaint yourself with it. You're not only the one edit warring at Help:IPA for English; you've actually violated it. In the future, go to the talk page (or check the actual OED, which gives the pronunciation I am using).
When I revert your unhelpful edit tomorrow (WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM), do not revert them three times without having established a consensus or I'll have to take it up with the 3RR board, including today's violation. If you can find other examples in actual common English use, I'm fine with using those instead. — LlywelynII08:18, 26 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps you should read the intro to the OED so you understand what it says. Also, you're the one changing the key, so you are the one who needs to come up with consensus. Come on, this is kindergarten stuff. — kwami (talk) 08:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
As a side note, I still can't find any footnote there that is actually on point. I assume you had one in mind: what was it? (And, in the future, in your edit note or on the other editor's talk page, it's probably good to be more specific when a page has as many notes as that one does.) — LlywelynII08:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I have reverted your close. The fact that the RM was started by a banned user is not a sufficient reason for a close if editors in good standing have commented (see Wikipedia:Speedy keep for a similar situation). It's doubly inappropriate for someone involved in the discussion to be doing it. Kanguole01:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello, why did you take out the maps, that are exact ? Most specialists of Romance languages say nowadays there are only 2 Gallo-Romance languages. Occitano-Romance and Gallo-Italic are transitional languages between Ibero-Romance and Italo-Romance. Concerning Dalby, he is not a specialist of the Romance languages. Better sources have to be foundNortmannus (talk) 06:48, 27 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Discussed at Talk. I reverted several changes that made the article incoherent, such as removing French, until we get this sorted out & coordinated with other articles. Meanwhile the article shouldn't contradict itself. — kwami (talk) 06:50, 27 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
Hi Kwami, I just saw your edit to Megalai Ehoiai. I haven't added a lot of IPA, so I probably formatted it incorrectly, but your AWB edit added a tag that read "tone was wrong", and I don't understand that since when I look at Help:IPA for Greek it appears that what was in the article previously matches the guidelines. So, what do think needs to be addressed here? Thanks a bunch for any help you can give, davidiad{ t }18:35, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi Davidiad. (Hey, you might be a good person to ask, given your user name. Are you familiar with how the feminine name "Davida" is pronounced in English, incl. which syllable has the stress?)
The problem was that you had the tone on a consonant, and if I remember right, just used the Greek symbol. I'll check it out later, but I've gotta go. — kwami (talk) 20:26, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks, Kwami. So I was probably mistaken in treating the IPA notation too much like a transliteration since the iota in diphthongs will get the circumflex in our texts, but the /j/ in IPA should be regarded as a discrete glide? It would be great if you could set me straight on the representation of diphthongs with tone accents. I put the tone on /j/ twice in Catalogue of Women, so I'll need to fix those, too. They're Ehoiai (Ἠοῖαι, Greek pronunciation:[ɛː.hoĵ.aj]) and ē' hoiē (ἠ' οἵη, Greek pronunciation:[ɛːhoȷ́.ɛː]).
Re Davida: I'm a David, so I can only offer secondhand info. I've spoken with two women by that name, and they pronounced it differently, with different vowel quantities and stresses. In New Jersey I knew a duhVEEduh—stress and vowels like the surname Devita (though the second vowel in this Davida is touch further back because of the voiced dental that follows). In Arkansas I spoke to a DAViduh—stress and vowels like taffeta. My hunch would be that the New Jersey pronunciation is more common because Arkansans invert a lot of vowels from the broader practice, but I spent the past 30 years in the Northeast, so I'm probably biased. davidiad{ t }21:21, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. Reason I'm asking is that I've had trouble figuring out how the asteroid 511 Davida should be pronounced. Even found it as "divide-a".
Adjusted the IPA per Ancient Greek phonology. The second vowel letter of a diphthong always takes the diacritics, but the circumflex indicates that the first vowel sound bears the tone, so ⟨οῖ⟩ is equivalent to ⟨όὶ⟩. I don't see where the /h/ comes in in Greek script.
Thanks for looking into this. The /h/ isn't represented in the Greek because modern editorial practice does not represent word internal aspirations like the one in this portmanteau. The title derived from the common use of ἠ' οἵη, ē' hoiē, "or such as she", to introduce sections of the poem. Is your (h) in the IPA the way to represent an aspiration that can't be read on the page but is part of the pronunciation? davidiad{ t }02:29, 29 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ok, sorry. The term "Eurasia" has often been associated with Eastern Ukraine, Kazakhstan, etc. That's the reason why I reverted. I didn'y know that. Sorry. Kind regards.
[[9]] but according to that map, Japan, Mongolia...not represent as Eurasian. Therefore, the distrubutions of Ural-Altaics must include the Far East, East Asia and so on.
I have no idea what that is. Eurasia is Europe + Asia. From the OED, the best English dictionary: "Eurasia, i.e. Europe and Asia considered as forming in reality one continent." — kwami (talk) 03:20, 30 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago10 comments3 people in discussion
Please cease from reverting the edits of the Eskimo-Aleut article. The area in question is a part of the Russian Far East. Calling it Siberia is an anachronism, the modern definition of Siberia doesn't fit that area. It's like suggesting New York City is in British North America or New Amsterdam, or that Winnipeg is in Rupert's Land. 99.236.215.170 (talk) 07:50, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
It's normal usage. If you don't like it, take it to talk and see if you can convince other people. That's how things work around here. — kwami (talk) 08:06, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, but "the word on the street" is not the way wikipedia is sourced. Within the wikipedia itself, Siberia and the Russian Far East are defined, its verifiable. Just look at my analogy of England in German. They do refer to all of the UK, or at least GB, as England in common parlance (so do many Americans) but this doesn't mean it's correct. Frankly, I think you are a little upset that you are wrong.... but I'll let others decide since apparently you won't stop childishly reverting the page. 99.236.215.170 (talk) 08:18, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'll stop if you prove you point, but you haven't. Siberia may refer either to the geographical region of Siberia or to the district of Siberia, and common English usage is the former. Your argument is like saying we can't use "America" for the US because it "really" means the continent. We go by common usage, and yours isn't it. — kwami (talk) 08:33, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think you'll find the article for the USA is titled USA, and America refers to the continent. Where the article has already been established as being about the USA, because of its title, then perhaps a slightly more colloquial term could be acceptable, this isn't the case for the mentions of the region in the Eskimo-Aleut page, as it's not the main topic. The fact that Siberia is (maybe) common usage is beyond the fact, refer to the article on Siberia: There are strict definitions of the geographical (non political) region of siberia which have to do with watersheds (being the borders) which exclude the area in question. It's not my job to read for you, go take a look yourself. Furthermore, if you had an article on a random subject and used the term "america" it would be rather confusing unless you established that you were talking about the USA first. It's the same as saying England, even though it's common for people from the USA to refer to all of Britain as England, if one were talking about the (scottish) highlands in an article on a different subject (such as climactic zones) you wouldn't write something such as 'the zone is also found in the highlands region of England" even if you think England is an appropriate way to refer to it.99.236.215.170 (talk) 08:40, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
This is tiresome. Repeating yourself doesn't make you right. Convince people on the talk page, and you'll have your change. — kwami (talk) 08:43, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I doubt this is a contentious issue for most on that talk page, but as you see I haven't made any changes (despite your awful spread of misinformation). I am not repeating myself, as I've offered you yet more information relating to the definition of the geographical region of Siberia in relation to how it is defined and demarcated using watersheds. Your only source of reference is "well, people say this" which doesn't really meet Wikipedia's standards. Maybe you need to readdress your knowledge of Far Eastern Russian Geography, but I can't do this for you. 99.236.215.170 (talk) 08:48, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, I didn't realize someone had hijacked your account and made those changes in your name. You should probably change your password.
You might want to read the article you referred me to. It clearly supports the current use of the name in the EA article.
Your recent editing history at Eskimo–Aleut languages shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.
Kwami, what sins have you made in this life, or maybe a previous one, to get persistently dragged in daft disputes like this one? No amount of reasoning and appeal to common sense could convince someone who is able to author an abomination such as "east Russian Far East" into absurdness of their position. Confess, my son, and you'll be forgiven; God is merciful. Your faithful groupie, No such user (talk) 22:09, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
Dear Kwamikagami,
I see you changing the ">" symbol to "→" (referring to historical sound change) in a number of articles, and I wonder what might be the reasoning for that. I know that the symbol ">" has a different meaning in mathematics ("is greater than"). But I am also aware that ">" ("shaftless arrowhead") has been traditionally used in historical linguistics for many decades, to mean "becomes" or "is replaced by". In fact, I am aware that, for some linguists, the symbols ">" and "→" have contrasting meanings: ">" for historical sound change, and "→" for symbol replacement in a (synchronic) phrase-structure grammar. Can you cite some precedent for the use of "→" as a symbol for historical change?
Respectfully,
Kotabatubara (talk) 16:52, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
My impression was that, in general, ">" is just an ASCII substitution for "→". There are a fair number of conventions that are specific to the various manifestations of formal linguistics and ignored outside it. I don't know if the arrow distinction is relevant outside phrase-structure grammar. So far you're the only one who's had an objection. But correct me if I'm wrong. — kwami (talk) 20:23, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I was wondering about this too. I've never seen "→" used in place of ">" is this sense before, even in works that use extensive arrays of symbols for other purposes. Kanguole22:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm rather certain that the use of ">" and "<" in historical linguistics is a well-established convention long predating any issue of computer fonts and "ASCII substitution". It's certainly been used in pretty much all mainstream technical literature in print for decades. Fut.Perf.☼09:44, 29 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I will, at least for some of them. I'm finding a distinction between ⟨→⟩ for replacement vs ⟨>⟩ for phonological development. So, for example,
*-h2ei → *-mh2ei > -mai
for the evolution of the middle voice in Greek, where the arrow in the first step indicates grammatical derivation, while the > in the second indicates sound change. So a minority of the changes were appropriate. I'll revert the rest, though it will take a while. — kwami (talk) 08:34, 1 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
In the hope of speeding up the repair, I've placed a list of the AWB edits that made this change at User:Kanguole/arrows. 01:40, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Latest comment: 11 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, Kwamikagami. I see you've disambiguated the American "The Bridge" TV series. What is the other American 2013 TV series you referred to in your page move edit summary? Thanks. -- Wikipedical (talk) 17:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago23 comments2 people in discussion
Hi Kwamikagami. I reverted [10] because you replaced ı (U+0131 dotless i) by ɪ (U+026A small capital i). ɪ (U+026A) is really a small capital i with serif or crossbars. If you’re seeing it without crossbars, it’s a bug in the font that is displaying it, depending on what you have on your system: Arial ɪ, Helvetica ɪ, Verdana ɪ, DejaVu Sans ɪ, Liberation Sans ɪ, Noto Sans ɪ. Although quite frankly, I’m not sure ı (U+0131 dotless i) is the best either, i’d rather use ǀ ǁ ǀ́ ǃ or something like that. -Moyogo/ (talk)01:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I originally used ı because it looked right in sans-serif font. I replaced it today because it looks wrong in serif font. I suppose we can use the former and format it as sans-serif. The pipe is incorrect, as it has both an ascender and a descender which do not occur in the Lepsius letter. Could you do that? I don't know here to find the style options for our coding. — kwami (talk) 01:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
The characters ǀ ǁ ǃ ǀ́ (ǂ) only exists because of Lepsius’ alphabet (of course after people used them and the IPA adopted them). The fact that their current glyph is not exactly like what is printed in one book doesn’t change the fact that their identity is correct. Arguing they are incorrect because they are too high or too low is wrong and is like arguing that Carolingian a or g cannot be represented with the characters a or g because their glyphs in some document are not exactly the same as what your font is showing. The click characters have always represented Lepsius’ characters — a note can describe the difference between today’s and past glyphs for clarification. --Moyogo/ (talk)01:23, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
As you sort-of admitted, ǂ is incorrect. Also, it's not easy to add an acute accent to ǀ, and ǃ looks like an exclamation mark. They're as different from the IPA as print g is from IPA g. If the IPA used Lepsius's letter forms, we wouldn't have many of the problems that cause linguistic publishers to instruct linguists not to use IPA conventions in their manuscripts (though there would presumably be other problems). — kwami (talk) 01:30, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
ǂ is not incorrect, it didn’t exist in 1853, it hadn’t been invented yet. They others were invented by Lepsius. Do you have any evidence they are different, besides glyphic variation — which doesn’t prove they are incorrect? FYI the IPA doesn’t care which g people use [11][12], the IPA g is overzealous encoding misinterpretting glyphic variation for semantic difference. --Moyogo/ (talk)01:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
No, just the glyphic variation, but as you note, ǂ didn't exist (which means it's incorrect as a Lepsius letter). I meant incorrect for letter form, not for encoding. Though, agreed, the graphic variant in g should be made in the language specification, not in Unicode. — kwami (talk) 01:44, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Who’s talking about putting ǂ in that article? I’m not, you’re not, we agree we shouldn’t put there. Done. For the others I see them alright (the acute is right on top of ǀ, and you should use ǃ instead of ǀ̣ for the reasons I already gave. --Moyogo/ (talk)02:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Again, ǃ is like an exclamation mark in your font, because that is a glyph variant of what Lepsius had (bar with dot below vs. somewhat different bar with dot below), not because it’s a character some people invented later (which is the case for ǂ). Where is it said the letter ǃ wasn’t invented by Lepsius? --Moyogo/ (talk)02:35, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
! is an exclamation mark. It was substituted for Lepsius's letter. Look at any font: None of them treat it as a pipe with a diacritic. — kwami (talk) 02:38, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
OK, you saying "exclamation mark" and me saying "glyph variation" isn’t going anywhere at this rate. Can you please provide a reference saying ! is not a letter from Lepsius’ alphabet? Because all I can find [13], [14], [15], [16] disagrees with your claim. --Moyogo/ (talk)03:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Interestingly enough Lepsius discusses the alternates to ǃ (or ǀ̣ if you prefer) and ǀ́ proposed at an 1856 Rhenish Missionaries conference, in the footnote on page 81 of Standard Alphabet 1863 [17]: ⟊ (I used an approximate character, or ǀ̵ if you want the letter ǀ with combining short stroke overlay) and ǂ. Given the dot represents the cerebral I understand one might prefer ǀ̣ over ǃ, but ǃ’s identity is still from Lepsius’ alphabet. If we need a consensus, we can have both in the articles (Standard Alphabet by Lepsius and Click letters) with a clarification explaining the history of the letter, it’s original cerebral dot construction, its current glyphic representation and Unicode character. The more information to the reader the better. --Moyogo/ (talk)03:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Lepsius: He just reported s.t. Bleek had said. We already know Bleek used a modified version Lepsius's alphabet; it looks like he adopted one of the proposed letters from that conference. But that doesn't mean his ! is the same as Lepsius's.
Laver: Not accessible in GBooks, and I dont' have a copy.
Barnard: Doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. He calls ǀ́ a "broken vertical line", and says that the Bleek system is that of the RMS. Even so, he doesn't say that ! is the Lepsius letter.
Koerner & Ashler: they say the IPA "adopted Lepsius's click symbols (slightly modified)". They don't specify what the modifications were.
Brugman says ! "originated" with Lepsius, but she also says that Khoikhoi/Bleek use the RMS system.
Either Lepsius's version of Bleek's account is wrong, or Barnard and Brugman are, or there is more than one RMS system. Either way, you have one footnote in a PhD dissertation, which might have gotten its history wrong, that suggests the Bleek letter might be the same as the Lepsius letter.
On the other hand, the IPA Handbook calls the letters pipe, double-barred pipe, double pipe, and exclamation point, not pipe with under-dot.
Similarly, Pullum in his Phonetic Symbol Guide calls it an exclamation point and the others pipes. He identifies the click letter ! with Boas's diacritic for ejectives and with the ! for downstep. Neither can be identified with Lepsius's pipe-sub-dot.
Whether the two versions of ! should be seen as equivalent for coding purposes I don't know. (Similarly, should Beach's palatal-click letter be seen as the same as Bleek's?) Pullum distinguishes the "pipes" ǀ ǁ ǂ used by some sources from the "slashes" / // ≠ used by others, and certainly this is as great a difference as there is between Lepsius's and Bleek's !. (There's also no parallel distinction between vertical and diagonal ! – there's just the one, equated with a punctuation mark.) — kwami (talk) 04:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
There are plenty of other parallels in the IPA. The ɤ used to be a turned, small-cap A. Should it therefore be formally equated with a small ∀? Similarly, ʊ and ɛ could be claimed to be equivalent to ᴜ and ᴇ – they are, after all, graphic variants, and it wouldn't be a problem to sub one for the other if you didn't have IPA font support. But I don't think we'd want to say they are the same letters, nor that ɣ is the same letter as γ, even though it's nothing more than an assimilation of γ into the Latin script. — kwami (talk) 04:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
OK, so basically nobody is saying what you are, you’re just inferring it based on parallels or what people are not explicitly saying or based on the shape. You can see how this is POV or reading things in what you’re trying to prove, right? Anyway, like I said: "[if] we need a consensus, we can have both [! and ǀ̣] in the articles (Standard Alphabet by Lepsius and Click letters) with a clarification explaining the history of the letter, it’s original cerebral dot construction, its current glyphic representation and Unicode character. The more information to the reader the better." --Moyogo/ (talk)08:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
But basically nobody is saying what you are either; claiming it's the same letter would also be OR. We've had a few glyphic replacements: Pipe with virgule, pipe-sub-dot with exclamation point, and double-barred pipe with the unequal sign. I'm fine with saying Lepsius had the sub-dot and that it's now written as an exclamation point, but not with saying that Lepsius used the exclamation point. — kwami (talk) 09:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Lepsius says if more people want to use the symbols ǀ̵ or ǂ that can happen, but notes ǀ̵ is too much like t.
I just gave you references that say those symbols are from Lepsius alphabet. What kind of OR is this if other people have said it? Nobody has said what you are saying so far!
[18] ... "with the symbols [ʘ, ǀ, ǃ, ǁ, ǂ] originally devised for transcribing clicks by Lepsius (185), and traditionally used by Africanists." [ʘ is really Bleek’s]
[19] "The Lepsius-RMS-Bleek system (hereafter, the Standard Khoisan system) is the one I use."
[20] "Interestingly, the 1989 revision of the IPA alphabet adopted Lepsius’s click symbols (slightly modified)." [I understand "slightly modified" as possibly referring to the descriptive change retroflex click vs alveolar click, but could refer to glyphic variation]
[21] "Strictly speaking, however, only the dental (ǀ), lateral (ǁ) and alveolar (ǃ) click symbols actually originated with Lepsius."
You gave references that say something only about glyphic variation (sometimes straight, sometimes slanted) or other uses of similar symbols (also used by someone else for something else) but don’t say any of those letters are not from Lepsius’ alphabet. Going back to the other letters, I just found Johann Georg Krönlein (1889), Wortschatz der Khoi-khoin(namaqua-hottentotten) which uses a font where the click bars are taller than x-height in Lepsius’ Alphabet, considering Beach (1938) says Krönlein created the letters according to Click letters, this is interesting. --Moyogo/ (talk)10:52, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Glad you found Krönlein; I haven't seen that for a while.
None of your sources say the ! is the same as the Lepsius letter. Sure, it's from Lepsius, but A is from Phoenician. That doesn't mean the Latin A is considered the same letter as the Phoenician A. We know that Lepsius has a pipe with a subscript dot. We know that the IPA has an exclamation point. Whether those two are the "same", we don't know.
Interesting thing about Kroenlein: In Bleek, the pipe letters are upright when roman, inclined when italic. In Kroenlein, they're inclined either way. And yes, they have the ascender height of a t, just a skosh under a d or b or capital letter. They're a lot more like /, //, and ≠. (Though this is the Nama orthography, not AFAICT the original Kroenlein script.) The sub-dot is still clear, though. In fact, there's clear distinction between the letter ! and the punctuation mark ! in the Nama text. (Look under sawé, for example, for them both inclined, and in the entries, where the letter ! is still inclined, just like the other pipe letters.) So it's clear that graphically, at least, there's a distinction between pipe-sub-dot and exclamation point, and evidently the distinction was important enough to cast special type for the letter !. In the IPA, the distinction has been lost. In Unicode, the codes are distinct, but that has to do with the different treatment of letters and punctuation. There is no graphic distinction in any application of Unicode that I've seen. — kwami (talk) 11:57, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Phoenician, seriously? We’re talking about Lepsius’ alphabet, Khoisan tradition and IPA here, all recent Latin systems. "None of your sources say the ! is the same as the Lepsius letter." Seriously "originally devised for transcribing clicks by Lepsius", "Lepsius’s click symbols", "[...] alveolar (ǃ) click symbols actually originated with Lepsius". How do you want them to say it? Seriously, what statement do you want me to find? No sources say they are different! If the fonts you have don’t have the letter ǃ with the shape you want, that’s a font issue and can be fixed. In any case, let’s revert back to ǀ, ǁ, ǂ in those articles and for ǃ, a note about ǀ̣ is fine (or vice-versa if you want, I’m getting tired of this). --Moyogo/ (talk)14:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Read your sources more carefully. The same source that says ! was originally devised by Lepsius also says that ǂ and ʘ were originally devised by Lepsius, but we know that's wrong. (Actually, I believe ! was originally devised by Kroenlein.) The same source that calls ! "Lepsius’s click symbol" also calls ǂ and ʘ his click symbols – again, wrong, and if "slightly modified" can mean adding an entirely new character, it can certainly mean slightly modifying one. Yes, ! originated with Lepsius – oops, I mean Kroenlein, they got that wrong, and even if they were right, it hardly means it was never modified. Yes, ʘ ǀ ǃ ǁ ǂ are called the Lepsius letters, just as 1 2 3 are called the Arabic numerals, but neither name is entirely accurate. Meanwhile, common sense is against you, for the letter ! is clearly *not* an exclamation mark in Lepsius and Kroenlein. Find a source that says that pipe-sub-dot is the same character as exclamation point, and we can include it in the articles. — kwami (talk) 14:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thank you for reverting to ǀ ǁ ǂ. Please find a source the says ! is not Lepsius’ bar with dot below and I won’t include it in the articles. --Moyogo/ (talk)15:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi. Sorry, my internet connection went out last night before I could respond. Today when I got to the talk page it was TLDR. I mentioned a couple other concerns about the article, though. — kwami (talk) 23:10, 5 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Do you know where some of the TSA interpretations came from? (e.g. fire demon move, chariot soldier move, lion hawk move, jumping generals rules) Because I can't find any way to interpret the relevant passages in the Shogi zushiki so that their moves make any sense (left some comments on Talk:Tenjiku shogi). What do the other Edo-period sources say? Double sharp (talk) 06:13, 5 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, it's been years since I've looked at that. I never did figure out where the TSA came from. I'm not even sure where I saw the original. Might've been excepts at WP-ja, or in their external links? I was never able to find very much of the original, though, or I would've quoted the entire thing at Wikisource. And I'm moving again, so I can't afford the time to get back into it. — kwami (talk) 06:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Oh, It's OK. I'll search around on relevant Japanese sites then (relying on blind luck and what limited help knowledge of Chinese gives with kanji to figure out what is going on!). The TSA rules for tenjiku cause the game to be severely unbalanced; maybe the effectiveness of 1.P-9k! (which wins a Free King outright) is not as severe with these other rules? Have to do some OR analysis off-wiki for this (no I am not going to put it into the article, I'm just wondering if it's playable with Japanese sources' interpretation). Double sharp (talk) 07:31, 5 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
TSA doesn't seem very reliable, from what I remember, so Japanese sources are probably best. Let me know if you find anything you need help with. You can probably read long stretches of Sino-Japanese better than I can, but I might be able to help with the rest. — kwami (talk) 23:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
First, I'd recommend moving to Göktürks. That's the common name in English. It's the only one I'm familiar with, for example. Ottoman "corruption" or not, it's the WP:COMMONNAME. "(kök)" is a bad disambiguator, because it's meaningless in English.
Second, we can't use images that are copyrighted. Unless the magazine provides their images for free use, someone will notice it and delete it. — kwami (talk) 18:54, 6 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Hi Kwamikagami, I discussed the correct form of the tribe's name with the creators of this article who are all native Otjiherero speakers. They told me it is Ovambanderu, not just Mbanderu. Whenever referring to the tribe as such, it must be in the plural (Ova) form. Shortening it to Mbanderu is only possible in the singular form, so Omumbanderu might be shortened to Mbanderu. The title is now not even grammatically correct, as one person cannot form a people. How is Ovambanderu people redundant? --Pgallert (talk) 13:11, 6 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
That would be correct if we were writing in Herero. The Bantu prefix ova- already means that it's people. In English, we generally use the root + "people", so we could either say Ovambanderu or "Mbanderu people". It's analogous with Herero language and Otjiherero, but not redundant "Otjiheroro language". It's the same with Swahili people or Waswahili, Chopi people, etc. Generally, on Wikipedia we prefer to use the root for both the people and the language. It's more accessible that way for English-speakers who are not familiar with Bantu grammar. There are a few exceptions: Lingala is much more commonly used with the language prefix li- than without, and the word Bantu itself *always* appears with the people prefix ba-, but all things being equal we use the bare root. — kwami (talk) 18:49, 6 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
You seriously put what we always do over what is correct? *shrugs shoulders* As said, "Mbanderu people" is grammatically impossible. Mbanderu is not an English word, and there is no English word for that tribe, so it does not matter whether this is the English or the Otjiherero Wikipedia. I know that is no proof but if you Google it you'll find "Ovambanderu people" leading 2:1 over "Mbanderu people". BTW, 'Otji' does not mean "language" but "something". So yes, correctly it is Otjiherero language. --Pgallert (talk) 20:05, 6 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
The redundancy in both cases is "people" and "language", respectively. Ovaherero can be nothing else but people, Otjiherero can be nothing else but a language. The prefixes are not redundant. --Pgallert (talk) 20:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
It is grammatically possible, because Herero plurals are not part of English grammar. The fact that "Mbandero people" commonly occurs in English should tell you that it's acceptable in English. Otji- is grammatical agreement with a class of nouns that includes language, not "something". In English it is only used for the language. — kwami (talk) 20:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Herero singulars are likewise not part of the English language (The singular of Ovambanderu is Omumbanderu), but luckily the ellipses of the Otjiherero singulars seem to be. I learn something new every day, also how many native Otjiherero speakers there are. --Pgallert (talk) 20:17, 6 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 11 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests#Serbo-Croatian infobox dispute and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—
Most people think a cherub is a winged baby. They likely won't understand that they're at the wrong article with a simple dab hat note. — kwami (talk) 07:37, 8 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
The arbitration request naming you as a party has been [22] declined by the Committee. The comments at the request may be useful in moving forward. For the Arbitration Committee, Rschen775422:21, 11 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi Kwamikagami
I see that u contribute to French grammar article. well, in language bar there r Arabic and egyptian languages who r not linked to the proper link in arabic wikipedia bcs there is no article called french grammar in arabic there. I tried to remove them but they r removed from wikimedia but the strange thing is that they r still there in the article. can u fix that and remove them?????? thx Wafaashohdy (talk) 06:57, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
They were in the article itself, the way we used to do it before Wikimedia. Should be cleared out. If they come back, delete them from the very end of the article, and also from whichever-language Wikipedia is linking back to the English. — kwami (talk) 08:37, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago10 comments2 people in discussion
Either [23] or [24] is questionable. Doing the one is inconsistent with doing the other: If the relationship of Itelmen with CK is not questionable, then saying "related to Itelmen" 1-on-1 means "related to the rest of CK". --JorisvS (talk) 19:48, 9 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
We can't ascribe beliefs to scholars just because we happen to believe them to be true. We need a ref that he believes it to be true. — kwami (talk) 20:13, 9 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Does Fortescue (1998) say anything specific about Itelmen? And what about keeping the sentence as it is, but noting that Itelmen is (currently?) accepted as a CK language? --JorisvS (talk) 09:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't know, but I assume we wouldn't say it's specifically Itelmen if he didn't, like people who connect Sumerian to Semitic rather than to Afroasiatic. We could say Itelmen is CK, but that info is already at the link, and he gives a couple languages as possibilities rather than making a specific proposal, so it doesn't strike me as particularly relevant. A comment to that effect would imply that he rejected CK, but I don't know that he did. — kwami (talk) 10:21, 11 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
The source isn't available online? I might have time to look this evening. There are all sorts of reasons he might have connected specifically to Itelmen, so IMO best to be safe. — kwami (talk) 21:18, 11 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Found it, though w/o a page number it's hard to check. The relevant passages might be on p. 211. It looks like Fortescue posits a substratum affecting Itelmen and perhaps all of CK, that Haida or a language like Haida is a possible source of that substratum, but that it's more likely to be Nivkh than Haida. I can't find where he posits an actual relationship (he calls Nivkh an isolate), so I'm deleting the claim for failing verification. See also Uralo-Siberian languages, which does not include Haida (or Na-Dene, which Fortescue seems to think might include Haida). — kwami (talk) 00:37, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Whitehouse generally talks about rather fringey long-rangers like Ruhlen that hardly anyone takes seriously. I'd just delete the claim since we have no reason to think those proposals are notable. — kwami (talk) 09:17, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
I saw your edit in which you changed "script styles" to "Calligraphic hands" in the article on Nastaʿlīq script. I don't agree with your edit, but rather than simply reverting it, I thought I'd discuss it with you. "Calligraphic hands" links to "Calligraphy", and the first sentence of that article makes it clear that it was a decorative art "related to writing". That is not the same as a distinct style of script, or writing, that was, and still is, used by millions of Persians. It is my understanding that, although Nastaʿlīq can be used for decorative purposes, it is really a handwriting style and is what distinguishes the handwriting of Persians from the handwriting of, say, Arabs and Pakistanis. I think "script styles" is more correct.CorinneSD (talk) 18:05, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
The script is arguably Arabic, depending on how you use the word "script". Nastaliq is a "hand", but out of context that may be misunderstood, so I added "calligraphic" to clarify. We don't have a separate article on the topic, but instead redirect to calligraphy. That doesn't mean the word is wrong, just that Wikipedia doesn't have a good redirect. Wiktionary doesn't have a good definition either, but that could be remedied easily enough. The OED defines a "hand" (def. 16) as a style of writing; esp. as belonging to a particular person, country, period, profession, etc. There's cursive hand, book hand, italic hand, etc. Or we could just leave it unlinked, or use some other wording. Perhaps "style of writing" would be clearer, but it seems an awfully ambiguous phrase. There are, after all, different styles of nastaliq.
This damaged metrical record in Persian, executed in Nastaliq hand (Indian Archeology, 2000); She was also capable of writing different kinds of Persian hand like nastaliq, maskh and shikaste (Royal Mughal Ladies and Their Contributions, 2001), [Aurangzeb soon] became an adept at the writing of the naksha hand. (Mughal Empire in India, 2, 1999), nastaliq ... became the principal hand for copying secular manuscripts in Persian (Medieval Islamic Civilization, 2006), It was written by Neamatullah ... in good Nastaliq hand. I also see nastaliq "character", but that would be really confusing. English just doesn't seem to have good vocab for these things; all the words seem to be ambiguous. — kwami (talk) 18:47, 12 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
Thank you for the jocular phonetic alphabet! A coworker and I often use exotic words when using phonetic letters. Now I'll have some more interesting ones to throw at him! Dismas|(talk)04:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sure thing. It's not really mine, though I changed some of the words. ("I" was originally ithyphallic. That and bdellium should get you the site I got them from.) — kwami (talk) 07:17, 19 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I've been thinking about making all the 8-dot patterns and thought of an idea that I wanted to run by you. What do you think about having, for example, braille patterns 137, 138, and 1378 as a trailing section of braille pattern dots-13? This would put the Luxembourgish and Gardner-Salinas capitals, as well as the GS greeks on the same page as the regular 6-dot alphabetic characters. If you have any concerns that I haven't thought of, please let me know. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs05:53, 19 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, maybe "Eight-dot extensions" or some such. That's the logical place to put them, IMO. I remember Wiktionary doing the same thing. — kwami (talk) 07:16, 19 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ok, I've gone through and added them, although I've only got GS8 patterns cited for Greek letters and Latin capitals. I also have the Luxembourgish capitals as well. If you want to go through and record all the GS8 symbols, please feel free, otherwise I'll probably get to it on Friday. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs11:34, 19 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
In Tartessian you changed the HTML superscript used to transcribe Tartessian inscriptions, which has no proble, by a Unicode font which makes the text unreadable, as it makes the superscript characters display as empty boxes "[]". Plase notice this has *nothing* to do with special charcaters used in IE reconstructions such as underdotted consonants and so on. Talskubilos (talk) 10:57, 20 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Two problems: Your version is not copy safe, and you remove the templating, so even the characters you leave behind are illegible on some browsers. — kwami (talk) 11:21, 20 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hi kwami! I have a few questions I was hoping you could answer. I've often seen in articles that transliteration, phonetic transcription and phonemic transcription are mixed in examples for words. Is there some standard to follow? In Comrie and Corbett they always list native script and transliteration side-by-side, e.g. Ukrainian бéрег/béreh. However, often phonetic transcription is necessary to illustrate some points when there is lots of allophony (such as in Ukrainian), or when there is lots of difference between transliteration and actual pronunciation (such as with vowels in Russian). I think that the pair original script/transliteration should always be present, because those examples where only phonetic transcription is given make it unclear what word we're dealing with. Also with meanings - sometimes they are put in quotation marks, and sometimes as tooltips. It would be great if all this mess would be templated somehow, parametrized with language code, e.g. {{example|uk|бéрег|béreh|[bˈɛreɦ]|shore}} , with appropriate templates ({{IPA}}, {{Script}}) auto-selected for provided arguments, and customizable layout. Combination of {{Lang}} and {{transl}} could be used for the first two parameters, but prounciation and gloss are still missing and a unified treatment would surely be preferable.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:24, 21 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
The template sounds like a nice idea. There isn't any standard, AFAIK. The appropriate transcription will vary from article to article, depending on context. I'm not sure where the best place to discuss this would be, but you'd probably want to give notice at least at the language and writing-system project talk pages. You might also want to check the template that we use for Japanese transcription, which is sometimes convenient but often a pain in the ass when it doesn't accommodate what we want to transcribe, but people insist on using it anyway because it's now considered the WP standard. — kwami (talk) 21:38, 21 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've created the template, here is its documentation. What do you think about the second and third bullet points in the Suggested improvements section? They seem helpful but if the template would be used on many words/phrases in a single article, such articles could get very "colorful" with too many wikilinks, so I'm hesitant to add support for that.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 01:04, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
A couple comments: I think the transcription should be the default, not the IPA. That is, an unspecified parameter would be tr, and for IPA you'd need ipa=. Also, the bracket of the IPA could be automated, and it should be formatted as {{IPA}} for better browser support. As for links, that could get quite distracting in an article with much Ukrainian in it. I'd do it manually: trlink=, ipalink=, wikt=, etc., so that the editor can decide whether and when to have links. — kwami (talk) 01:13, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hi. Is there a reliable source for the phrase "primary language family" (as used, for example, in Template:Language families and Kartvelian languages)? When I saw the word "primary" used to describe the Kartvelian language family, I was skeptical because I assumed (apparently incorrectly) that it meant Kartvelian was one of the largest or historically most important language families — neither of which would be a correct thing to say. But as I investigated further (looking at the heading in the template and its revision history), it became evident that this phrase may be more widely used (and not simply hyperbole from fans of Georgian), and that it evidently refers to a language family not known to be descended from any other. If there is in fact a good source backing up the use of this term, I think it would be desirable to cite it in the Kartvelian languages article. (The Andrew Dalby book cited in that article — currently footnote #4 — appears to have been cited in error, BTW; I looked up the book in Google Books, and it doesn't appear to discuss Georgian or Kartvelian at all, either on page 38 or anywhere else.) — Richwales(no relation to Jimbo)22:28, 21 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
The use at the top of the nav box especially does strike me as rather unclear. Perhaps you can think of some other wording that would be clearer? The use in the info box is several years old. It was the best wording we could come up with to describe the linguistic classification of s.t. like Kartvelian. (It would be a mistake to call the families "independent", as it's generally assumed they are not, just that their nearest relatives are too distant to be traced. And it would be imprecise to simply call them "families", as Germanic is also a family.) For the nav box I'd like to see "established" as part of it. Doesn't matter if the phrase is used in the lit, as it's merely descriptive, but it would probably be a good idea to have the same phrasing in the lead of the language-family article. — kwami (talk) 22:46, 21 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'll give this some thought, and if I can manage to think of an alternative phrasing, I'll get back to you. — Richwales(no relation to Jimbo)07:42, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi Kwami. I think here in this template Kartvelian languages family should be seperate from so called "Ibero-Caucasian" as those languages are not related at all with the Northern Caucasian languages and it makes no sense at all being united with those in the template. I suggest making the Kartvelian and Northern Caucasian languages seperate in this template. What do you think? Jaqeli (talk) 13:17, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
It makes as much sense as many of the other colors. They're just a rough indication of where you are, not a claim of relationship. — kwami (talk) 18:01, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I changed the name and link to just "Caucasian". The table isn't a place for specific hypotheses like Chikobava's Ibero-Caucasian, so thanks for pointing it out. — kwami (talk) 18:50, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Excuse me,
I put "any type of" instead of "a" in the Serbo-Croatian article for one very good reason: the state was *officially* called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes before the name Yugoslav was conceived. The first official incarnation of the name "Yugoslav," as in the "Kingdom of Yugoslavia," came thereafter. This is the rationale behind "any type of" versus "a" as it is actually indisputably more accurate.
Latest comment: 10 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion
Why you have deleted the link to my site where sighted people can learning braille. Tell me an another site for the same way. On my site you can learn and practise, writing with the slate simulator and braillewriter simulator direclty online and for free. Fakoo (talk) 10:12, 23 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Actually, I don't mind Fakoo linking to his own site. Sometimes "spam" is more useful than what we already have. But Fakoo, I tested your grade-2 conversion with the sample text at the bottom of our braille article, and it proved inaccurate. I reverted so that we would not mislead our readers. (Or at least it disagreed, but if you're correct, we'll need to rewrite our article, and it's up to you to prove that.) — kwami (talk) 19:49, 23 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago11 comments2 people in discussion
I'm making one of those huge tables at User:Double sharp/Maka dai dai shogi: any suggestions about the layout? (My idea was to go approximately by their initial position in the starting setup, splitting them into the groups "promotes to something that isn't a gold general" and "promotes to gold general".)
I don't know. I think I arranged some of mine by power/value, but startup position is probably as good a way as any. If they promote into each other, then I would suggest arranging them so that each piece promotes into the one directly below it (except for gold, of course). — kwami (talk) 07:34, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
That situation doesn't occur, so no problem. (I.e. you don't get long promotion chains like in tenjiku.) For now I however seem to have done it so that each piece promotes into the one directly above it...ah well, that's how the dai-dai one does it, so OK. Double sharp (talk) 11:18, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
wait, does ja.wp really state that the furious fiend in maka-dai-dai is lion + lion dog? because that's not the same as the furious fiend from dai dai and if I'm not mistaken every other piece that's from both games moves the same way in each. Double sharp (talk) 13:11, 22 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
OK, it's like that in tai as well. Weird. I did the cell-splitting for alternatives, then.
On WP-ja, for Dai Dai, Maka Dai Dai, Tai, and Taikyoku, the only games which have the piece, it is a promoted lion with the same powers. So, do we have a mistake in Dai Dai, maybe? The diagram matches yours for "English sources" (the top one). The verbal description is,
獅子の動きに加え、全ての方向に3マスまで動くことも出来る。このとき飛び越えては行けない。
"In addition to moving as a lion, it can move up to three spaces in any direction. When it does this, it cannot jump."
"In the Shōgi Zusiki and Shoshōgi Zusiki, it 'adds the move of the White Dog to the Lion'. There is no piece called the White Dog, but there's a piece written similarly, the Lion Dog, which moves up to three spaces in any direction."
That agrees with your English-source move for the Lion Dog, but not with the WP-ja article for Maka Dai Dai. So it appears WP-ja is inconsistent for the Lion Dog.
Yeah, the diagram for the Emperor is misleading. It looks like it jumps up to three spaces away. I'd use a single ring of infinity signs maybe. — kwami (talk) 08:58, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
The problem with the limited-range interpretation for the Lion Dog is that it makes the description of the Teaching King redundant. It makes sense with the ja.wp interpretation, but they're not consistent on it. This is about when I start wanting to see the original sources. Well, now my regard for the English sources is rising, for it seems that the only variant they totally misinterpreted was Tenjiku Shogi!
("Moves up to 3 spaces in any direction" could, at a stretch, mean the ja.wp interpretation in the article; after all they did not say whether this move was Lion Move or Limited Range! But that's a stretch.)
Jess Rudolph's Shogi – the Chess of Japan: its History and Variants says that my English-source move for the Teaching King (Free King + 3 square Lion Move) was mentioned (but not advocated) by TSA. I wonder where this came from? (Could plausibly be a misinterpretation of the ja.wp Lion Dog.)
Emperor diagram has been fixed according to your suggestion (a single ring of infinity signs. I chose a cyan background as that colour wasn't used yet.) Double sharp (talk) 09:34, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ideally, every piece would have a footnote for the original text plus a (or our) translation. But that might not answer many questions. I suspect that most of our problems are due to the original being so terse that even modern Japanese sources can't be very definitive. If the info just isn't there, or is obviously mistaken, then there's not much we can do. — kwami (talk) 06:45, 26 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago12 comments3 people in discussion
At the risk of causing my question above (how should I do a diagram for the emperor move in maka-dai-dai and tai?) to not be noticed, I'm slightly disappointed by "yttrium" – I dunno if it's just me, but I find its conventional pronunciation to be much more transparent from the spelling than most of the other ones. Maybe it's because "y" is acting as a vowel here in an uncommon position for English, but then it cannot be anything other than a vowel here with English phonotactics...
"Yttrium" is one of the original proposals, which I've kept for lack of anything better. Not counterintuitive, but not the kind of word you'd expect in an ABC book either. I suppose we could have Ypres pronounced "Wipers". Any better ideas?
I'm not familiar with the name Przybylski. I suspect the horse is better known, unless that's just egoism. But both are too alien to be good choices IMO. — kwami (talk) 09:05, 24 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ypres seems good (unless you insist on the French pronunciation).
I have that with wheki. Not sure which would be more accessible. Unless you're in NZ, I suspect Maori isn't much better than Polish. — kwami (talk) 06:40, 26 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
For y, how about ych a fi (Welsh pronunciation:[əχaˈvi]), which is apparently not in the OED yet, but does pop up in English-language literature from time to time? garik (talk) 16:01, 25 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, the <fl> in Fluellen has the same origin as the <fl> in Floyd. But I think there's a very blurry line in Henry V between trying to represent the English pronunciation of Llywelyn and attempting to represent [ɬəˈwɛlɪn] using English orthography. But yeah, most people say [fləˈwɜlən], so it's not quite right for your purposes. I'm not sure what would be though. garik (talk) 22:23, 25 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion
Why do you neglect the fact, reference, source and act on your agenda? Discuss at the talk page of Tamil-Brahmi. I have made question and you didn’t answer yet. But, you often revert the edit of other users, and claim as edit war. Come to the talk page and give your reason. Don’t do the same edit war again and again. We create ‘encyclopedia’, not our encyclopedia. --Anton·٠•●♥Talk♥●•٠·17:57, 26 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I have given my reasons over and over and over, and you refuse to hear. WP:I didn't hear that is not a legitimate argument. But once again: We have secondary sources saying the script dates to the 2nd–3rd c. BCE. You have primary sources saying it might date to the 5th c. BCE. WP prefers 2ary sources, yet you only report the date from primary sources. — kwami (talk) 18:02, 26 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I did answer your question. However, you refuse to justify the citation. I conclude from that that the citation is invalid. Answer there, if you're able to. — kwami (talk) 18:26, 26 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
How many times do I have to repeat myself? Can't you just read my question again? The supporting material is supposedly on p. 8. I don't see it. I would like you to quote it, or quote part of it, so that I can see what you're talking about. — kwami (talk) 18:33, 26 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion
Dear Kwami,
Exactly. We, therefore, should use the correct symbols that are actually used in the articles (the low falling tone diacritic is being used in Lao related article). Given that the purpose of the help page is to explain IPA symbols, correct IPA symbols must be used. I will undo your latest undo on the help page.
Best,
--Alif Silpachai (talk) 06:59, 28 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
No. It's a *key*. It's not a tutorial of the IPA. A key that doesn't explain the transcription is useless. If you want to change the key, raise it on the talk page, and if people agree, then change all the articles that link to it, and *then* change the key. — kwami (talk) 07:10, 28 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thank you. In that case then, if you would be so kind, can you list the pages that use the diacritic? I agree with you that "a key that doesn't explain the transcription is useless." How then does the current key explain the transcription when currently the Lao transcription on the articles seldom use the symbol? What is the point of having an outdated key?
I don't know how rare it is. A couple years ago we had quite a few articles that used it. The same convention is used for Yueh. Part of the problem is poor font support for the rarer tone diacritics. Even with proper font support, they're not very visually distinctive; you'll notice maybe that not many phoneticians like them much either. Anyway, you need to search the articles that link to the key, and substitute the proper symbol. (For some vowels the diacritic may be hard-coded rather than a separate Unicode entity.) AWB is probably the best way to go about that; you can have it scan all translusions of the Thai/Lao IPA template for the diacritic and vowel+diacritic characters, and automatically replace them with the new diacritic, assuming that's okay with the others who work on the template and articles. — kwami (talk) 07:31, 28 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thank you once again. Based on my experience as a student of phonetics (PhD) and who has worked on some tone languages, I have never seen the symbol (the current one on the help page) in the tone literature before. That being said, I will stop reverting the edits, and see what the others will say. To the best of my knowledge, there is currently no standard IPA transcription for Lao. So some people will disagree on which symbol to use.
Answered on the talk page there. The double-grave is not a bad idea; I've used it sometimes for low-falling. The subscript grave was used in the IPA until 1989, so that's another possibility. As for an official transcription, that doesn't exist even for English, one of the original languages the IPA was designed for. — kwami (talk) 08:11, 28 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sure, they say it's the ICAO alphabet, but their pronunciation differs from ICAO. The pronunciation we give is from the army, so we credit it to the army. If we had a ref that all branches used the same pronunciation, we could note that; if we had sources that all branches use the same transcription, so they're not read differently, then we could change the header. — kwami (talk) 19:12, 29 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
After 5.5 years I can't really believe that's ever going to happen! They are not the sort of image people are going to be able to find, let alone 'free' versions suitable for commons - and if you had any then surely you would have already done it! KylieTastic (talk) 19:46, 29 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Possibly, depends on the source and who owns the copyright I guess. Also not sure if images of high enough resolution to be helpful would be allowed by current Non-free content rules. I tried to have a look to see if they were images I could find by had no luck. Firstly one of the ref site on the articles rongorongo.org no longer exists (redirects to osterinsel.de and my German is a bit limited) - and a google about failed to help. Too much of an expert area my my skill set. Cheers — KylieTastic (talk) 19:02, 31 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
I do have a doubt, though. The article text says that the vowel signs are derived from things in the Arabic script; do you know if the sources say so? If they do, I guess one could say that Thaana inherited the consonants from the various numerals and the vowels (and direction, if they say so) from Arabic... and would thus be able to sanely put Arabic as one of the parents in the infobox, but I don't know what the criteria for these things are.
Yeah, the vowels (or at least a, e, i, and sukun) are obviously from Arabic, and I believe we have sources that say as much (it's been years since I've read them), but since they're diacritics I wouldn't consider that the parentage of the script. And if taana was once a cryptic alphabet, it would make sense that it was purposefully not derived from Arabic. — kwami (talk) 06:53, 30 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago8 comments2 people in discussion
Hi,
I see you have reverted the commits I had made to the above page. Could you provide a reason as to why? The words are incorrectly provided there. The character 'त' is not pronounced as the 't' in stable? In fact, the 't' in stable is pronounced as the character 'ट'
Reference: Hindi is my mother tongue and I have also studied it for fourteen years. Also, any of a billion people in India can justify what I said. In addition, my name has 'त' in it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guptasanket (talk • contribs) 05:38, 31 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
You said it's like th without the h, but there's no such thing: Th is a single sound, so you cannot remove the h. The other option is to say the sound of त does not occur in English. — kwami (talk) 05:41, 31 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Problem is, if you change that one, you'll also need to change the other seven approximations for those two series of consonants. Best to discuss it on the talk page first. — kwami (talk) 05:49, 31 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yea, I was changing all of them right now. I can discuss on the talk page first. On whose talk page though? And with whom? Here? Sorry, I just created a wikipedia account to correct that entry and am unaware of how things work with this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guptasanket (talk • contribs) 05:57, 31 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Alright I have changed them for once. I would rather have some say that the sound does not exist than to provide people with misinformation. Feel free to revert it back if you want though. Also, looking at it carefully, there are many more mistakes here and there in that page. If there are dedicated people editing Asian languages, you could probably forward it to them for inspection. Most of them are very obvious things and anyone knowing the language will be able to fix them. Thanks! I am off. Guptasanket (talk) 06:04, 31 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
In the article of West Trans–New Guinea languages, it is suggested that the languages of East Timor (and Kisar Island) are only a geographical group, following Malcolm Ross (2005). But a recent paper of Mandala et al (2011) has appeared showing a phylogenetic relationship among these languages. I have added a red-link for Fataluku-Makasai languages, and I have removed the label "isolate" for the three branches of Ross. I have created in addition es:Lenguas fataluku-makasae that can be used for a new article in English Wikipedia. The reference for the work of Mandala is:
You can check it. I have tried to create the new article, but I do not know the reasons I can not to create it, for this reason I am contacting you, --Davius (talk) 00:29, 1 January 2014 (UTC)Reply
Okay. Started. But it's not true that Ross thought it was a geographic group: He reconstructed pronouns for proto–East Timor. The languages are 'isolates' in the terminology of Wurm, meaning they are not transparently related. I don't see where Mandala et al. reconstruct the numerals. That's not good evidence for establishing a relationship anyway.
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.μηδείς (talk) 23:25, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
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