User:Epingchris

I am Shihchuan (石川 in traditional character Mandarin), often known as epingchris on the Internet. I'm from Hualien, a town located at the east coast of Taiwan. I'm currently a first-year master's student in ecology at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, after graduating from National Taiwan University in Taipei, majoring in biology.

I seldom make major contribution, however I try my best to continue improving Wikipedia. Be welcome to leave any comments, suggestions and criticisms that you wish to let me know on my talk page!

Attitudes
I try to pick out and correct spelling, punctuation or grammar errors whenever I spot them. I am not yet completely familiar with the methods of citing sources, but I'm learning, and I so please forgive me for any mistakes I make along the way and don't hesitate to put up all those little "citation needed" tag if my edits seem dubious. I myself will also help maintaining the quality of the articles by adding various tags.

I prefer IPA and metric system (or SI) to other ways of transcription systems and measuring quantities.

I support LGBT rights and the teaching of evolution in school (even though I'd be glad to hear about opposing views on these subjects, I haven't convincing so far. I have a general aversion to cynicism, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories.

Science
My main interest in science is in the field of biology, an interest that started in high school. I continued my study in biology in university. I am especially interested in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. I hold certain interests in other fields of science as well, such as astronomy, chemistry, physics, geology and cognitive science.

Language and Linguistics
I have a keen interest in various fields of linguistics: I have primarily edited articles about phonology, but syntax, writing systems, etymology, semantics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics are also my interest.

I also enjoy learning foreign languages. In addition to the languages that I've already started studying as indicated by the Userbox, I would next like to learn Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Polish|, Czech]...the list goes on. I am deeply interested in [[constructed languages as well.

Prescriptivism?
I'm not necessarily overly critical of "mistakes" one make in their native language. It's something everyone, including me, does at times, and I'm also of the belief that language is constantly under change, and that prescriptivists have no place in the field of linguistics. For me, established, consistent usages, such as singular they, split infinitives, dangling preposition, conjunctions that start a sentence, non-nominative who, should be tolerated and even accepted instead of being condemned by archaic, artificial "rules". If any, these mostly have to do with style rather than "accuracy", "logical", "clarity". Nevertheless, I maintain a clear distinction between than and then, its and it's, etc.: I do not think it is unimportant to be careful about grammar, punctuation and such, it's just that I believe we should lend more respect to common, conventional language usages.

Music
I am an music aficionado - more precisely, a music junkie. I like a variety of music genre, including Rock and roll, folk music, electronic music, classical music, musicals,, new age music, etc. I especially like various rock bands in Japan, USA or Europe, and French pop musicians. I have learned piano and recorder before, but unfortunately now I remember little if any of it. I have to learned to play guitar in the past: even though I haven't played in a while, I'd very much like to continue. I also enjoy singing and dancing in my own style, not claiming at all to be a professional.

Reading and Writing
I like reading a lot, including fiction and non-fiction. I enjoy contemporary literature, French literature and some ancient Chinese literature: I enjoy especially poetry and fictions. My favorite writers include Jostein Gaarder, Haruki Murakami (村上春樹), Patrick Süskind, Milan Kundera, Octavio Paz, Walt Whitman, Rabindranath Tagore, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 鄭愁予 and Xi Murong (席慕蓉).

Traveling
I have lived in the United States for one year, residing in Bloomington, Indiana, and during that year I have traveled to some major cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, New York City, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, and states such as Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, with my family.

I have lived in Paris, France for one year, and I am currently also living in France, in Toulouse. During my stay in France, I have visited places such as Rennes, Saint-Malo, Nantes, Reims, Bordeaux, Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg. I have also took the opportunities to visit other European countries, such as England, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.

I have participated in an international competition in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and afterwards I visited several national parks in the Canadian Rockies, as well as Victoria, British Columbia. I have also traveled to Bali, Singapore, and Japan. (Kansai region and Kyushu)

I love to travel, encounter different people, and experience different ways of living and culture. I have yet to make any significant edits on subjects of world geography, but I am inclined to edit pages related to Taiwan, because as a Taiwan native, I have a lot of hands-on experience on this topic and access to many necessary information. Of course, I will try to obey the NPOV rules as much as possible when editing some sensitive subjects.

Others
My favorite sports include table tennis, hiking, badminton, cycling and swimming. I am interested in trying triathlon or scuba diving in the future.

I enjoy card games such as Big Two, Bridge, and Uno. I also enjoy photography.

Copy and Paste
''' Stub-sorting. You can help! '''

Templates:
 *   - for unreferenced pages
 *   - for pages that have citations but not sufficient or adequate enough
 *   - for factually disputed pages
 *   - for factually disputed sections
 *   - for neutrality disputed pages
 *   - for articles that are somewhat messy
 *   - for articles that are too short
 *   - for sections that are too short
 *     - for statements that need citations

Special characters in hanyu pinyin:
 * Ǖ ǖ Ǘ ǘ Ǚ ǚ Ǜ ǜ

IPA vowels and tone symbols:
 * ɑ ɒ / a ɶ
 * ɐ / æ
 * ʌ ɔ / ɜ ɞ / ɝ / ɛ œ
 * ə / ɚ
 * ɤ o / ɘ ɵ / e ø
 * ʊ / ɪ ʏ
 * ɯ u / ɨ ʉ / i y
 * ː / ˈ

IPA consonants:
 * Bilabials: p b / φ β / ʙ / ʍ w
 * Labiodentals: f v / ɱ / ʋ
 * Dentals: t d / θ ð / ʃ ʒ / ɕ / ɾ / ɹ / ɬ ɮ / ɺ / l ɫ
 * Retroflexes: ʈ ɖ / ʂ ʐ / ɳ / ɽ / ɻ / ɬ̢ / ɭ
 * Palatals: c ɟ / ç ʝ / ɲ / j / ʎ
 * Velars: k g / x ɣ / ŋ / ɰ / ʟ
 * Uvulars: q ɢ / χ ʁ / ɴ / ʀ
 * Laryngeals / pharyngeals: ħ ʕ / ʡ / ʜ ʢ / ʔ / h ɦ

To Do List

 * Improve List of forms of word play
 * Constrained writing? - lipogram, -anglish - univocalic
 * Language games? -ubbi dubbi  -pig latin
 * Figure of speech?
 * Name formation?
 * Different forms of rhyme?
 * Ambigrams?
 * Expand & cleanup Samoan language
 * Expand Hualien
 * Reorganize Spore
 * Add citation to Large_number_systems; it's true
 * Add more citations to Lara Fabian
 * Add Mandarin instances of Spoonerism
 * Create Language death (book)
 * /yʊŋ/ should be /iɤŋ/.
 * Addition of Taiwanese phonemes that are not in the concerned pages yet.
 * Expansion of Taiwanese Mandarin 's phonology section with references I now have in hand.
 * Verify if Mandarin "h" is really velar, and if Mandarin "d, t, n, l" is alveolar.
 * Stub-sorting biochemistry stubs starting from D.
 * Add function of tocopherol.
 * Create separate section for function of vitamin D.
 * Translate loads of pages into Mandarin!!!!

Pages I Started

 * List of forms of word play
 * Sodagreen

Interesting Pages

 * Typography
 * Cranberry morpheme
 * Resonance (chemistry)
 * Bouba/kiki effect
 * List of English words with disputed usage

Interesting Projects

 * WikiProject Phonetics
 * WikiProject Stub sorting