User talk:Gailtb

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

Here are some tips to help you get started:


 * To sign your posts (on talk pages, for example) use the '~' symbol. To insert just your name, type &#126;&#126;&#126; (3 tildes), or, to insert your name and timestamp, use &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; (4 tildes).
 * Try the Tutorial, and feel free to experiment in the test area.
 * If you need help, post a question at the Help Desk
 * Follow the Simplified Ruleset
 * Eventually, you might want to read the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines.
 * Remember Neutral point of view
 * Explore, be bold in editing pages, and, most importantly, have fun!

Good luck!

Meelar (talk) 06:21, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Hungarian grammar in Hungarian language
What would you think about inserting a link to Hungarian grammar into the article Hungarian language, instead of inserting its whole content into it? I think it would be much more preferable, since Hungarian language is quite long, and several sections cannot be edited (appear as empty), only if you open it directly from Hungarian grammar. By the way, a similar solution was applied in the case of Hungarian phonology. -- Adam78 21:15, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Somali
Gail, I brought a flower for your fine additions to Somali language. I see you're quite new; welcome, feel free to contact me if you have any questions, and keep up the good work! Kind regards, &mdash; mark &#9998; 09:40, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

That or Which
English English seems to be more permissive about using "which" when "that" is clearly called for in American English -- in fact, they seem to be basically interchangeable to even expert English authors such as Evelyn Waugh. American English, however, at least the correct kind, makes a clear distinction between what is called "restrictive phrases" and "non-restrictive phrases."

"This is the book that I threw at the teacher" is restrictive because the "that I threw etc" part is essential to the meaning of the sentence. "That" should be used here, without a comma. "The yellow book, which I threw at the teacher, is now lying on the floor." This is a non-restrictive phrase, is set off by commas, and should use the word "which".

A common mistake that writers makes, especially English ones, is in an attempt to add variety to their longer sentences that have phrases in them. So they come up with a sentence like this (and I've fallen into the same trap myself): "He took the book that had been given to him by his beloved old grandmother and which he had cherished for many years, and threw it into the fireplace." The "which" should be "that".

The easy rule of thumb for this usage is: If it needs commas to set it off, it should be "which". If no comma is used it should be "that".

The one exception is when you say something like: "Here is that book which you lent me yesterday."

Hope this helps. I have a grammar book at home in which the woman who was writing the paragraph about the difference between "that" and "which" mistakenly used "which" in one of her sentences in that very paragraph! Hayford Peirce 04:25, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

The difference between American and English usages of "which" and "that" is well known. The writer above seems to know that there is a difference but then condemns English English writers who follow their native usage. I find the string of words: " A common mistake that writers makes, especially English ones, is in an attempt to add variety to their longer sentences that have phrases in them."

rather odd, "writers makes" and no object for "is". The example given for the singular exception to whatever the rule may in no way clarifies matters. Hypercritically one might pounce on that pundit's "likes".--SilasW 19:22, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Productivity
Hi, yes it's true articles shouldn't be in both a lower cat and its parent cat. And I'm glad you're sorting through the articles in, because it's definitely overfilled. However, it isn't clear at all what qualifies for inclusion in as opposed to  or. The blurb at the top of says it covers both morphology and syntax, but linguists use the term "grammar" to include at least phonology as well, and maybe phonetics and semantics too. I think most people looking through the categories for Productivity would not expect to find it in. As it's currently written, Productivity makes most sense in, but that's just because as of yet no one's written about productivity in phonology or syntax yet. Maybe it would be best to have it in for now, and then  and  can be added as the article expands. What do you think? --Angr (t·c) 11:31, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The point is, I don't see the use of at all if it's just going to mirror the content of  and, nor do I think it would be useful to have it as a supercategory with just those two as subcategories. If anything,  could be used for discussions of rules of prescriptive grammar (Split infinitive, Dangling modifier, Double negative and the like), while topics in linguistic theory can be in  and/or , as appropriate. I'd definitely get rid of . You can follow the instructions at WP:CFD for how to nominate a category for renaming or deleting. Also, remember that while you're not supposed to have an article in both a daughter category its parent category, there's no rule against having an article listed in two sister categories. --Angr (t·c) 21:40, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Hungarian grammar, oblique nouns' chart
Why do you mention the three singular possessive forms and the 2nd person plural possessive among the examples for the oblique noun stem, when this stem also appears in hetünk, hetük (1st and 3rd person plural) as well as in heteim, heteid, ... heteik (multiple possessions) and in all their declined forms? I think it's rather misleading for the reader, since it looks as if only these four forms used the oblique stem out of the possessive forms.

(PS: if you have any other ideas or questions about the article, let's continue the discussion on the talk page.)

Adam78 21:19, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Splitting Hungarian grammar
I'd like to ask for your advice again about this article.

Do you happen to have an idea how the above article could be split? It's more than three times as long as it is recommended – and it'll grow further on – so the split is unevitable beyond doubt. Do you have any better idea than the following break-up:
 * Overview
 * Nouns
 * Verbs
 * Other?

Maybe postpositions and/or pronouns would deserve a separate section, too; I don't know.

I wish you a Happy New Year!

Adam78 19:23, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on EAL et al
Hi Gail. You have done a lot of good work on English as an additional language and related articles. Thanks for that, especially for correcting my Trinity mistakes. I will do the merging Thursday or Friday, when I should have more time. HAve you seen language education? An anonymous user stripped the whole article! I treid to revert it, but got tangled in the headings. I don't have time to do it properly today; if you do, I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one who is grateful. BrainyBabe 14:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, the merger of TESL and EAL has been done, after a couple of tries, and I've renamed EAL to all those acronyms we discussed, and then someone came along and changed the order of the acronyms! Whatever (as the teenagers say). Please let me know what you think, and particularly if there are any problems that need sorting out. Apparently double redirects are frowned on, although the ones I have checked do click through to our page quickly. (eg ESL --> EAL --> EFL/ESL/ESOL.) BrainyBabe 18:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Tigre
I see you're starting to work some on Eritrea (and since you include Tigrinya and Somali, by extension Ethiopia and Somalian) articles. Welcome. You may want to check out the Africa-related regional notice board. I hope you can add some more info to these lacking articles.

Yom 03:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

sf
What other words in common use in English have syllable-initial /sf/ besides sphere and Sphinx? Angr (talk • contribs) 18:52, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not claiming that others are common, but my Concise Oxford (ie not a particularly large dictionary) has about 11 words which are unrelated to sphinx or sphere. I thought this would justify /sf/ being in the main list, but if it should be in the notes, it should be removed from the main list, ie not in both places. Gailtb 20:33, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Blin /Bilen /Bilin
Hi Yom. I've not out for an argument on this, but just want to make sure we get the best page title. I've been wondering which spelling to choose for several months! When I do a google test with quotes, I get 224 (33 actually displayed) for "bilen language", 442 (63 actually displayed) for "blin language" and 564 (42 actually displayed) for "bilin language". Without quotes I get 335k for bilen language, but not all of these are relevant, for example on the first page there is one which turns up because "bilen" is a word in Danish, and the same happens with other languages on later pages. As for the searches with quotation marks, I'm not sure the numbers are large enough to be conclusive. The preferences of a few individuals could be skewing the results.

I've no idea how representative or complete this bibliography is, but it would seem to indicate that Blin or Bilin is best. What do you think? Gailtb 09:39, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I got contrary results a week ago when you first posted this...but now it seems you are correct. I will move the page back. I get 30k+ hits for bilen and Eritrea vs. ~1k for Blin and Eritrea, though (for the ethnic group)...
 * Yom 21:44, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * What do you think should be done? How is the name spelled in Ge'ez, do you know? Is it ብልን? Yom 21:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmm...this study I was reading says (pg. 11 at very end) that Blin/Bilen is pronounced "bilän." This subject is very confusing... Perhaps there are different dialects who call themselves slightly differently (though this would be odd, considering they all live in a concise general area without any group being separated from the rest).


 * Yom 22:42, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

A question
Hello Gail,

I'm looking for online materials about teaching English as a mother-tongue (such as improving composition and comprehension skills) for children between the age of 10 and 18. I was wondering if there is something that you (as someone working in a similar field) could recommend in this topic.

Thank you so much if you do, even if it's a single link. You can also reply by email.

Best wishes,

Adam78 21:06, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Somali writing systems
Hi Gailtb you make good points many parts need rewriting and i wanted to break it down bit by bit myself but due to working on multiple articles it has been difficult and i could rewrite the wadaad's writing letter myself and then use it as an example but regarding the Borama writing script i have no idea how?

could it be used under fair use? to illustrate how it looks? since there is nothing free existing that could replace it RoboRanks 23:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough i will take them down (how?), and write something else but with the borama script it will be scribble comparable to..

kfhfhdfhdfdfdsfdsfdsforeirejd in english lol  RoboRanks 15:19, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Somali clan
Sorry about that; I misunderstood the situation. I've uncommented the section, and placed the citation at the end. I hope that that's OK. --Mel Etitis ( Talk ) 00:39, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * 1) Citations are required for changes &mdash; you may well be right, but you need to provide verifiable sources.
 * 2) The so-called serial or Oxford comma is a separate issue from the British/U.S.-English issue; as the MoS points out, it is deprecated and recommended by both British and U.S. authorities (though the genuine authorities, as opposed to newspaper MoSs, are probably balanced in favour of it). As a philosopher/logician I prefer it because it almost always (except in what are for the most part very contrived counter-examples) increases clarity. --Mel Etitis  ( Talk ) 10:20, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I see that you taught EFL; so did for many years, primarily as a vacation job when I was a graduate student, but also to keep me alive during term sometimes. Where did you teach? I never made it out of this country &mdash; or, indeed, Oxford. I suspect that our experiences were different, if only because all my teaching, for a couple of schools, was in the form of one-to-one lessons. I've often wondered how I'd have coped with larger classes; not very well, I suspect. --Mel Etitis ( Talk ) 10:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I was confusing this with an earlier edit. The problems here (aside from the comma &mdash; and I agree that it should be used consistently) were minor: incorrect capitalisation in a section heading, spaces flanking a forward slash, removal of "p." in a journal reference, insertion of a space after a section heading... If there was anything more significant then I missed it, for which I apologise. --Mel Etitis  ( Talk ) 11:00, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. It might not have been your intention, but your recent contribution removed content from. Please be more careful when editing articles and do not remove content from Wikipedia without a good reason, which should be specified in the edit summary. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. If you would like to experiment again, please use the sandbox. A link to the edit I have reverted can be found here: link. If you believe this edit should not have been reverted, please contact me. Jmlk17 08:03, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Kurów
Could you please write a stub http://kurow-wiki.openhosting.pl/wiki/byn:ኩሩቭ – just a few sentences based on http://kurow-wiki.openhosting.pl/wiki/en:Kurow ? Only 5-10 sentences enough. Please.

PS. Article about Kurów is already on 242 languages and dialects. If your village/town/city isn't yet on PL wiki, I can do article about it. (I'm first author of requests) Pietras1988 TALK 08:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Somali language article
Hi, thanks for the pointers on the style template. I've basically just been translating across from the article on the German wikipedia, but I'll reorganise the layout to match the template.

If you know some Somali speakers, it'd be good if you could get them to proof read it too!

AaronRichard (talk) 05:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

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) 02:42, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Bilen language autonym spelling
Hi,

What is the Ge'ez spelling of the name of the Bilen language?

In 2006 you wrote "ብሊና", but I see "ብሊን" in some other places. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:51, 1 June 2017 (UTC)