User talk:Benjaminb

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Pig Latin
Hey, I started the Template:User pig thing, but I don't mind if you do whatever you want on the templates. I think that having it split up is the right thing to do; however, I'll admit that the whole thing is kind of a joke, so feel free to do whatever you want. (Whatever you do/don't do, please keep the Template:User_pig-0, as there does need to be one for those who don't speak Pig Latin.) Oh-ay, and-ay elcomew-ay to-ay ikipediaw-ay. Matt Yeager 00:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi Matt, thanks for the note. I think I'll leave it just like it is (keeping the changes I made on Template:User pig), so I'll keep all the others, including Template:User pig-0.  Also, I think I'll try putting a link to it on the Babel page, we'll see if anyone deletes it.  Did you ever try putting it on there?  Avehay ayay eatgray ayday.  –Benjamin  ( talk )  23:19, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Aha! I see you a'r'dy put it on there. Anksthay Attmay.  –Benjamin  ( talk )  23:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Since there's links to all the Pig Latin templates on the Babel page, I'm going to go ahead and redo the others too, to make them more aesthetically pleasing. –Benjamin  ( talk )  16:22, 21 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Hey, thanks for the help. (Oh, and by the way--when someone sends you a message and you reply to that, you usually want to respond on that person's talk page, so that they'll easily see your response.) Gain-ay... ank-thay uo-yay. Matt Yeager 01:42, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Category:Texas mountains
Hi Benjaminb. I am recommending the new Category:Texas mountains for deletion. The existing category, Category:Mountains of Texas follows the naming conventions of WikiProject Mountains, so there is no need for your redirect. The other categories named "State mountains" need to be renamed. Mike Dillon 01:37, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Image:Quercus stellata.jpg
Hi Benjamin - nice pic you added at Post oak, but I'm not convinced it is that species (compare e.g. ), I suspect from the very irregular leaf shape it may be a hybrid (possibly between Post oak and Texas live oak). - MPF 00:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi Ben - thanks for the note; being deciduous doesn't necessarily rule out an evergreen oak as one parent, though it does make it rather less likely. The reason I'm thinking it is a hybrid is the mixture of slightly lobed leaves, leaves with lobes on one side but not the other, etc; this sort of "split personality" is more frequent in hybrids (I've seen it happen in other known-parentage hybrid oaks). Another hybrid option is with Chinkapin oak (Quercus muhlenbergii, which is mapped as being in your area of Texas). Have a go at pushing it through this oak identification key at Flora of North America and see where it comes out. I gave it a go from the photo, but couldn't get a definite answer as some questions need a magnifying glass to look at hairs on the underside of the leaves! - MPF 18:59, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

About Koine vs Modern Greek
You asked me:

Can most speakers of Modern Greek understand Koine Greek, and if so, how different are the two dialects?

First, let me say this. By Koine, most people mean the Greek found in Greek texts (by non-atticizing authors) from around 300 BC to around 300AD. Now, that's six centuries during which Greek was undergoing major rapid changes in phonology, lexicon and syntax.

So we need to be a bit careful when we compare Modern Greek to texts from that period. I believe that 95% of Greeks understand around 90% of any text of the New Testament or LXX Koine.

On the other hand, maybe there is around 75% mutual intelligibility between modern Greek and the early hellenistic texts (hellenistic philosophers like Epicurus, Epictetos etc.).

Most of the modern features of the language where already starting to take place in Koine Greek: a) Disapearance of the dual number; b) Reduced use of infinitival and participial phrase constructions (Modern Greek has no infinitives and a small number of participles per verb) c) Phasing out of the perfect tense (Modern Greek reinvented a new one using the auxiliary verb έχω). d) Phasing out of the optative mood (no longer exists in Modern Greek)

Yes I'd say that gospel koine is for Greeks as Shakespear is for native speakers of English. Maybe, attic greek (4th - 5th century BC) compares best with Chaucer's English (you need more training to understand it). Homeric Greek (7th-8th Century BC) is a harder nut to crack for the untrained native speaker of Greek, but still easier than, say, Beowulf is to the native speaker of English.

So it seems that Greek has changed less in 28 centuries than English has in 10. This is because in Greek, there was always a "proper" way of writing and talking (=the old way) and literacy was more widespread. So there was a lot of conservatism and resistance to change.

I hope this helps.Yannos 05:04, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Koine Greek pronunciation
Χαίρε, In learning Koine Greek, I am trying to pronounce it as authentically as possible for that time period. There is one word which I am unsure of its pronunciation, being υἱός. I am guessing that it would be pronounced [yˈʝos], seeing that the modern word is γιός, but I am unsure about the pronunciation of υι. Also, the system I am using for pronouncing Greek is outlined in this document: (PDF). Does this system seem to be overall accurate? I read in the Koine Greek article that Η had already merged with Ι by the Koine period, but this system pronounces it as [e], distinct from Ι and Υ. Thanks for your help, –Benjamin  ( talk )  17:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I like the system of pronunciation that you use for koine. It looks like a good compromise between accuracy and practicality. I readily understand it when I hear it. As for υι, this diphthong is different than all the others in two ways: 1) It is the only greek diphthong that isn't closing, and 2) It is rarer and only occurs before vowels as in υιός,μυία and notably in the perfect participle (feminine) of active voice verbs such as λελυκυία. I suspect that its second element must have included a glide. As for υιός the alternative spelling υός is found in some texts. It could have been pronounced like IPA [hyijos] in attic and [yijos] in koine. As for Η, the convergence towards Ι was probably very gradual and could not have been completed earlier than 200 AD in my humble opinion. The raising of EI towards I could have started around 350 BC (especially in pre-consonantal position) and this phenomenon left room for H to raise to where EI had been (around 1 AD?). From there, H went all the way up to I. Again, the Koine spans at least 6 centuries from 300 BC to 300 AD and was spoken all around the eastern mediteranean, so there must have been a continuum of possible pronunciations in space and timeYannos 03:32, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Texas Counties map
I saw your request on WP:Maps/Requested maps for a blank map showing the counties of Texas. I whipped up an Texas counties blank map.png using the colour scheme you mentioned. I hope this helps with your articles. --NormanEinstein 21:26, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Help with Translation
Hi, my name is Ricardo Ramírez, I'm from Colombia and I'm working in the article of Cúcuta. Can you help me to translate it from the Spanish Wikipedia?


 * Cúcuta - Spanish Wikipedia - Click
 * Cúcuta - English Wikipedia - Click

Thanks...

Ricardoramirezj ✍ 15:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Untagged image
An image you uploaded, Image:Parkercountyseal.png, was tagged with the coatofarms copyright tag. This tag was deleted because it does not actually specify the copyright status of the image. The image may need a more accurate copyright tag, or it may need to be deleted. If the image portrays a seal or emblem, it should be tagged as seal. If you have any questions, ask them at Media copyright questions. -- 13:51, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Etymology of "Texas"
Hi Benjaminb. A long time ago, you added the Caddoan word táyshaʔ to the List of U.S. state name etymologies page. I've found a reference that gives the word as taysha, and I'm sure you're right that the Caddoan word does indeed have a final glottal stop...but I've been trying to add references to the article lately. Do you happen to know where you got that word from? Any reference would be great, if possible. Thanks, and take care, --Miskwito 20:31, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Parkercountyseal.png
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AfD nomination of Gibberish (language game)
An editor has nominated Gibberish (language game), an article on which you have worked or that you created, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

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Language-population update project
Hi. The 18th edition of Ethnologue just came out, and if we divide up our language articles among us, it won't take long to update them. I would appreciate it if you could help out, even if it's just a few articles (5,000 articles is a lot for just me), but I won't be insulted if you delete this request.

A largely complete list of articles to be updated is at Category:Language articles citing Ethnologue 17. The priority articles are in Category:Language articles with old Ethnologue 17 speaker data. These are the 10% that have population figures at least 25 years old.

Probably 90% of the time, Ethnologue has not changed their figures between the 17th and 18th editions, so all we need to do is change "e17" to "e18" in the reference (ref) field of the language info box. That will change the citation for the artcle to the current edition. Please put the data in the proper fields, or the info box will flag it as needing editorial review. The other relevant fields are "speakers" (the number of native speakers in all countries), "date" (the date of the reference or census that Ethnologue uses, not the date of Ethnologue!), and sometimes "speakers2". Our convention has been to enter e.g. "1990 census" when a census is used, as other data can be much older than the publication date. Sometimes a citation elsewhere in the article depends on the e17 entry, in which case you will need to change "name=e17" to "name=e18" in the reference tag (assuming the 18th edition still supports the cited claim).

Remember, we want the *total* number of native speakers, which is often not the first figure given by Ethnologue. Sometimes the data is too incompatible to add together (e.g. a figure from the 1950s for one country, and a figure from 2006 for another), in which case it should be presented that way. That's one use for the "speakers2" field. If you're not sure, just ask, or skip that article.

Data should not be displayed with more than two, or at most three, significant figures. Sometimes it should be rounded off to just one significant figure, e.g. when some of the component data used by Ethnologue has been approximated with one figure (200,000, 3 million, etc.) and the other data has greater precision. For example, a figure of 200,000 for one country and 4,230 for another is really just 200,000 in total, as the 4,230 is within the margin of rounding off in the 200,000. If you want to retain the spurious precision of the number in Ethnologue, you might want to use the sigfig template. (First parameter in this template is for the data, second is for the number of figures to round it off to.)

Dates will often need to be a range of all the country data in the Ethnologue article. When entering the date range, I often ignore dates from countries that have only a few percent of the population, as often 10% or so of the population isn't even separately listed by Ethnologue and so is undated anyway.

If Ethnologue does not provide a date for the bulk of the population, just enter "no date" in the date field. But if the population figure is undated, and hasn't changed between the 17th & 18th editions of Ethnologue, please leave the ref field set to "e17", and maybe add a comment to keep it so that other editors don't change it. In cases like this, the edition of Ethnologue that the data first appeared in may be our only indication of how old it is. We still cite the 14th edition in a couple dozen articles, so our readers can see that the data is getting old.

The articles in the categories linked above are over 90% of the job. There are probably also articles that do not currently cite Ethnologue, but which we might want to update with the 18th edition. I'll need to generate another category to capture those, probably after most of the Ethnologue 17 citations are taken care of.

Jump in at the WP:LANG talk page if you have any comments or concerns. Thanks for any help you can give!

— kwami (talk) 02:46, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/The 50,000 Challenge
--MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:37, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

2019 US Banknote Contest
Sent by ZLEA at 23:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk)