User talk:Ivan Štambuk/Archive 1

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Proto-Indo-European (PIE) notation as qualified linguists themselves recognize it
You're obviously confused between phonetics as found in the study of, say, modern languages and the proper representation of sounds in protolanguages. PIE notation is not necessarily representative of actual pronunciation and PIEists are clear to make that point in many many primers on the topic. Try for example Indo-European Language and Culture by Fortson. Notice how on page 51 which I kindly linked for you in this text, there is absolutely no use of your imaginary notation. So get off your egotistical know-it-all high horse, read a book and bite the bullet that you're just plain ignorant of basic comparative linguistics, which is all too typical on the children-maintained Wikipedia. Thanks for your inevitable cooperation in advance. May you have more interest in learning than fruitless editing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.78.208.183 (talk) 19:48, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks like he's trolling. Anyway, he's blocked now. Let me know if he starts up again when the block expires, or comes back under a different IP, as I'm not watching all these pages. kwami (talk) 20:42, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Yavapai
Hey, can you tell me where the photos in the Croatian Yavapai article came from, so I could use them in the English article? Cheers! Murderbike 18:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip! Does that user speak English? My Croatian level is set at zero. Murderbike 22:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Bosniaks and Slavic peoples
Hello Ivan. Just so you know, that 77.78 guy is a disruptive troll and sockpuppeteer. Discussion with him will provide no results, only more of the same crap that he has been filling the talk pages of Slavic peoples and Bosniaks with. Regards,  Balkan Fever  12:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh I see. Thanks for the notice. Now it appears to me that they would be most satisfied if evidence pointed to Bosniaks as direct descendants of Ottoman Turks, or even better - Arabs themselves. It's very sad to see how much religion an war can distort one's reasoning. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Čakavian
Ivan, I am very sorry. I appear to have made a mistake on my own behalf regarding Chakavian. At the precise second of writing, it stands as I last reverted it; I don't know if you are in the process of reverting it back but don't worry, as I had planned to rewrite my own revision anyhow. What is important is that I communicate the message which I'd originally wished to emphasise.

When I stated that Chakavian is only spoken by Croats, I was only referring to that what a number of Croatian editors have themselves said in the past. I never tagged their statements demanding a citation and I know that one would be hard pressed to find one anyhow as its nature is "proving the negative." I simply took their word for it as a gentleman. Now you seem to know more about it than I do; I'm more inclined to believe you when you state that there are non-Croat exponents of the dialect. Any why not? With a minor percentage of Croatia's population declaring regional affiliation as ethnic identity (most notable, a notable population within Istria); there are bound to be speakers from other named ethnicities.

But I notice that in addition to my statement, it did state further down the paragraph that Chakavian speakers are all recorded as ethnic Croat. It isn't really the point I was trying to get across.

Firstly, I realise now that neither Croatian Kajkavian nor Chakavian are confined to Croatia, as both dialects are spoken by populations who migrated to remote areas, and in turn developed separately in territories where the surrounding population has either spoken a non-Savic language, or a distantly related Slavic language (thus not threatning its distinct identity).

The reason I take issue with "Chakavian is a dialect of Croatian" is for another technical reason: standard languages (in this case, Croatian) are themselves only dialects, or stylised compilations of variant forms which were in existence long before the concept of a standard language ever emerged. So to state that "X is a dialect of Y" is to say that one dialect is a dialect of another dialect. Dialects by nature pertain to regional variations (ie. non-standard) except when addressing the standard form, but even then, its standard status is not what is being taken into consideration given that it is being referred to as a dialect.

Sadly, the ugly face of politics pretrudes everywhere. I only wish to reduce it or minimalise it all together. For instance, take Greek. There is possibly as much variation among the speakers of Greek as there is from one South Slavic extreme (eg. Slovene) to the other (eg. Bulgarian, depending which way you go). Because speakers of all related dialects identity soley as Greek, just about any Hellenic dialect can be said to be a dialect of Greek even though the dialects of Greek Macedonia are completely unintelligible to the dialects of Cyprus, and the islands such as Crete. Cyprus is another country but its Hellenic population identifies as Greek and standard Greek is its national language.

With the South Slavic people and languages, it is more complicated. Our situation closer resembles Central and Western Europe whereby Germanic and Romance dialects and populations smoothly run into each other and along the fringes, there is perpetual disagreement among local nationalists as to whether ones region belongs to the country it is in (eg. Piedmont as viewed by Italians), another bordering region (eg. Piedmont as viewed by the French), or should it and adjacent areas stand independent of all predatory countries who surround it? (eg. Piedmont as traditionally viewed from within).

Never the less, here is what I wish to state about Chakavian (this is what we already know and do not dispute). The same may be said of Kajkavian, but I'll focus on Chakavian here:


 * 1. The hub of Chakavian is contained within Croatia (ie. Chakavian's position in relation to adjacent dialects) though it has been carried out of Croatia and continues to be spoken in remote countries.
 * 2. As Croatian is treated as a language in its own right distinct from the Bosnian and Serbian even though all were based on Shtokavian when it came to standardising Serbo-Croat, it must also be realised that any non-Shtokavian form must also be treated as a different language rather than dialect. Otherwise, it misleads unfamiliar observers into thinking that the Chakavian is closer to Standard Croatian than Standard Bosnian and Serbian, which it definitely is not. Then along the same lines, one will certainly take Kajkavian to be closer to Croatian than it is to Slovenian which is even more absurd given Slovenia's small size and own Kajkavian basis. The suggestion that Kajkavian is closer to the vernacular of Dubrovnik than Ljubljana is not held by anyone.
 * 3. Perhaps a note should be made that the Chakavian dialect is also the speech form for other ethnic communities who declare their language as they do their ethnic group. Given the dialect chain, this is acceptable. Likewise it works two ways, ethnic Croats may call their local dialect Croatian everywhere they live. This in turn encompasses the local dialects of Croats in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Vojvodina and Kosovo, as well as Romania (ie. for the last two, I refer to the Torlak dialect).

You see, Ivan, in multi-ethnic scenarios where-by various nationalities are used by individuals of the same linguistic background, it is inconsiderate and disenfranchising to speak of a dialect as being the property of one language named after a distinct ethnic group. I know it is complicated, but all I ask you is: how do we go about rewriting the passage to explain everything I mentioned and everything else that needs to be mentioned? (such as where I may be in part mistaken). I'll be glad to hear your views and for us to construct the passage together with one mind rather than two opponents. Evlekis (talk) 16:23, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Several points:
 * It's absurd to claim that Chakavian is "Croatian-only" in a sense "spoken and has been spoken/written only by people who declare(d) themselves as ethnically/culturally Croats". Ethnolinguistic grouping makes sense for isolated tribes of Papua New Guinea and Amazonia, not for Slavic languages who all both 1) form one big dialect continuum at their regionally confined areas and 2) have been over the centuries subject to major population exchanges, unfavourable political regimes that have forbidden or manipulated language names' for various purposes, or nationalist awakening movements during which people in their lifetime changed their political affiliations, sometimes even several times (I've read about one old Macedonian who had surnames in -ski, -čki and -ovski ^_^). Most of the material of what is nowadays classified as medieval literary Chakavian is never called "Chakavian" by it's authors (regional names were prevalent, which are nowadays of course completely anachronistic).
 * The partitioning to standard/nonstandard language (the former being a particular dialect with proscribed orthography/orthoepy/grammar/lexis) is completely orthonal to the partitioning to dialects. Hence, the word Croatian can mean two things 1) codified Western Neo-Shtokavian as a basis of Croatian standard language 2) in it's broader sense, the common "speech" of people who declare themselves as Croats in all it's glorious regional varieties. This latter form of speech is then dialectally decomposed, and there's where you get to the division point of Croatian with three major dialects of Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian. Hence no confusion, no self-defying illogical statements that "X is a dialect of a dialect". The same is valid for Greek dialects (all of New and Ancient Greek), as long you keep the division strict.
 * I imagine that, what Croats that you mention had in mind when they said that "Chakavian is Croatian-only dialect", is that, given the dispute on "ethnic affiliation" that usually surrounds Neo-Shtokavian, there's no such on Chakavian; it has always been and is in it's absolute predominance used by Croats, both spoken as a vernacular or in it's written form as a literary language. At the same time, it exclusively belongs to the Croatian cultural heritage, and is in it's contemporary forms predominantly used by Croats and inhabitants of Croatia.
 * it must also be realised that any non-Shtokavian form must also be treated as a different language rather than dialect. Otherwise, it misleads unfamiliar observers into thinking that the Chakavian is closer to Standard Croatian than Standard Bosnian and Serbian, which it definitely is not. - No, it's absurd to treat Chakavian and Kajkavian as "different languages" which they are certainly not. They're dialects in both the dialectology sense (where everything is a dialect) and standardological sense (where every dialect/regional variety is substandard). What's their position to standard Bosniak/Serbian is largely irrelevent, because they bare no affiliation to them (neither linguistic/genetic, nor regional). Again, I fail to see how some innocent reader might get confused that the Chakavian is closer to Standard Croatian than Standard Bosnian and Serbian, as the differences/similarities amongst those three have been abundantly explained in both separate articles (Differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian) and the introductory paragraph of articles dedicated to individual languages. Chakavian and Kajkavian have not been recognized as "separate languages" by any of the world's Slavic dialectal handbook that I know of, or by relevant standard-language-granting institutions (namely SIL/ISO 639-3). It would be misleading to both treat them as such, and to separate them from Shtokavian literary heritage, as all three dialects where "standard" in certain points of time, and equally contribute to Croatian literary heritage (there are even lots of instances of medieval works where all three dialects freely permeate each other, for the writer's purpose of trying to extend it's readership as far as possible).
 * I agree on the third point as long as it's substantiated with citations, and it's made clear that it's just the name that those groups use. And may I remind you that the Croatian standard language is the official minority language in all countries that you mention (except for Bosnian and Herzegovina, where Bosniak/Croatian/Serbian are all equal by the constitution), and not some Slavic dialect that just happens to be called Croatian because their speakers happen to be ethnic Croats. The difference is subtle but important. Languages are indeed mostly named after ethnic groups (except for godly creations like Sanskrit ^_^), but that doesn't mean that ethnic groups own that language or the particular dialect in question. I can see the problem that the statement that "Chakavian is a Croatian-only dialect" can be interpreted as a nationalist claim, but would rather see the "Croatian" component refined in the connotations of it's historical significance and national literary heritage, which is much more important, than to see it cut down to "it's only Croatian in the sense of geographical distribution". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * You raise some very interesting points. First let me start by reminding you that since you had probably logged off the other evening when we first exchanged messages, I took the liberty of making an ammendment to my own edit which is how Chakavian stands at the minute. On principle however, given the points you made, and the message which I am trying to get across, it is fair to say that the introduction could be expanded to cover all the information. This is an encyclopaedia after all, and it is our duty to inform on this occasion. I agree with you that it requires far more than just a geographical association with Croatia, though it doesn't hurt to remind readers that as it is a link along a wider continuum that it is wholly within Croatia's borders, so long as we also explain its cultural significance with the name of a Croatian entity (people and territory); particularly when referring to the old dialect once used as a standard. Now you stated that nobody has ever considered it a separate language. Indeed they have not. Then again, nobody to analyse Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian classes them as separate languages in what they decrie to constitute "language". The only exception is those with politically based aspirations, and even they would sooner or later have to consider the position of Kajkavian and Chakavian, because it is more than just the word for "what" which is different in their domains. With Kajkavian, you can really see how the grammar and traditional vocabulary, as well as phonetical habits slowly "Slovenian-ise" to coin the term. But then again, as Slovene, Croatian and Serbian are all Western South-Slavic languages, you may find that some may scientifically see Slovene as forming a part of the same language. Personally, I don't, but then my conception of language (a term which at the best of times is not rigidly defined) doesn't always square with that of others. I'm just saying that for a speaker of Kajkavian to consider his own speech closer to the Neo-Shtokavian standard than Slovene is ridiculous. If all he does is use the word "kaj" in place of "što" but uses the rest of the vocabulary of Standard Croatian, then he is not truely speaking Kajkavian, and as you know, the Croatian neologisms (ie. those coined fro 1967 onwards) cannot truely apply to dialectal forms. Anyhow, it is not right to state that Chakavian, whilst having its importance in the Croatian cultural word, does (in your own words): bare no affiliation to them (neither linguistic/genetic, nor regional). "Them" being Serbs and Bosniaks. Well that is wrong for a start. Even extinct languages of Poland bare linguistic and genetic affiliation to modern-day Serbs and Croats simply for being Slavic. As for "regional", well, Chakavian territory is not in Serbia, I'll grant you that; but it is within a patch where Serbs live, and have lived for generations, and where they too are modern-day exponents of the speech form. But you already knew. If Serbian or Bosnian extremists had wanted to consider Chakavian territory as their unredeemed land as every nation does to some other region, it's their choice. Now if I can turn your attention to the Croats from outside Croatia; as you rightly say, they use Standard Croatian as an official language where possible. Indeed. But they also consider their own speech forms to be a "form of Croatian", even in Burgenland where it has developed independently for centuries. And why not? If they identify as "Croat" and have never switched language, only altered their own language (and language changes with time by nature), surely it is all right for them to call it Croatian; as with Greek (not Ancient, but Modern), many variations exist but only one Greek nation, not split into the tribal groups who fought against each other some millennia back; it means that there may linguistcly be five or six different Hellenic languages, but all forms of Greek. And ethnic Croats also consider their spoken language Croatian when they speak Torlakian, in Kosovo and in Caras-Severin of Romania. All that, even though Torlakian is closer to Bulgarian than Standard Croatian; but it is his language, as he is an exponent, and forms a part of its matrix: without him and his Croatian brethern, the language wouldn't be as it was and that would have a knock-on effect on other local Slavic people. And if that works one way, it works the other for other Slavic users of Chakavian. This is why the article needs to state the following (exemplary): Chakavian is a dialect of the Croatian language; the old dialect is an instrumental feature of traditional Croatian identity for XXX reasons. Although Chakavian is spoken entirely on present-day Croatian territory, it still forms a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum, and as such, other Slavic nations live there and are native speakers of Chakavian bla-bla-blah. Of course, if we look from a Pro-Serbian viewpoint; its writers too will say (as on Swedish Wikipedia) that "Serbian is spoken in all former Yugosla republics, and has three dialects (totally discarding that these might also be someone elses dialects), which are Shto-Kaj-and Cha-kavian bla bla blah." But you know that their own internal variations (eg. Vojvodina, Sandzak, Presevo Valley) are also the speech forms for Bosniaks, Croats, Bulgarians and others. So to say on the "Croatian language" page that Chakavian is Croatian is fine, but on the "Chakavian" page; whilst Croatian has the right to dominate, we need to mention its significance to other language groups. Evlekis (talk) 20:59, 11 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi Evlekis, thanks for your comments :) I think that you're still confusing language as a "standard language", and language as a "collection of dialects" (which could be quite extremely divergent in phonetics/accentology/lexis, as they are along the territory of Croatia or Slovenia). As I said, Croatian or Serbian in phrases Croatian dialects and Serbian dialects almost always refer to geographical designations, not ethnic (then they'd probably be worded as Croat dialects and Serb dialects). Again, beside geography, an important ingredient is the cultural/literary significance, as is the case with Chakavian/Kajkavian which are not incorporated into Serbian/Bosniak literary heritage (not even by the most hardline nationalists ^_^). I highly doubt that Torlakian-speaking Croats would, when speaking of their language as Croatian, refer nto something other than literary Croatian they should be exposed to in schooling/media. Unless there are dialectology books that corroborate the classification of Torlakian as Croatian or Chakvian as Serbian (real books, not some pan-Serbian nationalist pamphlets such as Slovo o srpskom jeziku ;), I don't think it should be pushed in the text as it would be clearly misleading.
 * Kajkavian (sub)dialects (in Croatian they're narječje, and their subdialects are dijalekti = "dialects" ^_^) do indeed share many similarities with Slovenian dialects, but it would be wrong and misleading to emphasize or insinuate in any way that the centuries of fine literature written in Kajkavian, from Habdelić to Krleža, are somehow "less Croatian" just because they're not Neo-Shtokavian (the basis of standard Croatian today).
 * I'm not sure I understand what you mean by neologisms coined from 1967 onwards (they're for the most part coined and actively used prior to Yugoslavias, but later where banned by commies/Serbs under the mask of being too "Ustasha"). Croatian linguists have centuries-long tradition of language purism, and many of their Slavic-roots coinages or native Croatian words have been adopted in Serbian/Bosniak (sažetak, posuda, prevoj (< prijevoj) etc.). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:18, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hello again. I'll answer everything in reverse. About 1967, yes there was indeed a reintroduction of traditonal vocabulary entering the Croatian linguistic scene; many were in turn incorporated into the Croato-Serbian dictionaries as well: so much so that even "I" often, whilst talking with Serbs, choose some of those words as I prefer them for their Slavic roots. At the same time, certain words were coined. I refer to those for concepts which did not exist before the mid-ninteenth century when standard languages were emerging and plans were in place to unite Croats and Serbs as a Pan-Slavic linguistic entity. I doubt that you'll find texts containing Zrakoplov, Zračna Luka, Brzoglas, or others before the 1960's; then, I may be wrong, but there were definitely some terms which were coined from fresh. Historically, Serbs and other Slavs too have a history of not only using Slavic-root words, but the very same words as all other Slavic nations. Take the word nation, and you'll find a common form of narod (on birth) in all Slavic tongues, yet the concept of a nation dates back to about the 12th century, long after our ancestors settled where they are. Some centuries later, international came to mean among nations, and all Slavic peoples adopted međunarodno or its nearest equivalent (eg. Polish: Międzynarodowe, Ukranian Latinic: Mizhnarodne etc). This is clear evidence of both some form of mutual cooperation, and a yearning to "keep things Slavic" even though the related words had shifted phonologically. Then again, there is a centuries long tradition to borrow and hundreds of common Slavic words were not Slavic to begin: we borrowed from Iranian and from Old German, not to mention later in history when we'd come to take words from those who subjugated us: Venetians, Austrians, Hungarians, Ottomans etc. One common example is book (Knjiga) said to have been from Turkish, Older Turkish, reflecting a time that the Ancient Slavs crossed paths with Turkic tribes. Many years later, as Serbs would borrow books from a biblioteka, the Croatian equivalent knjižnica would take this non-Slavic root as its Pan-Slavic alternative. Such is life. Meanwhile, even modern Serbian (not Serbo-Croat) dictionaries list many of these pre-1967 Croatian words for much the same reason. If one had them, so did the other. These include glazba (still used as an adjective in glazbena agencija on the backs of Serbian folk CDs), plus zemljopis, sveučilište, and others. The names of the months of the year bare the same Serbian names when referring to their place in the Orthodox calendar. It is said that the Orthodox nations adopted januar, februar etc. when switching back to the common calendar. I know that Macedonian calendars still double-list the names, giving the tenth month as "oktomvri", but around the 14th, it is the 1st of listopad. The only Catholic exception is Slovene (which uses the conventional names), and the Orthodox exceptions are Belarussian and Ukranian (which use Slavic names). That's enough information for you here because I've gone way off-topic. I'm just saying that whilst usage may be different, many of our words exist in some form in all our modern languages. You can find a good corpus when entering these words into search engines. The ban on Ustasha suspected words was the work of a Communist assembly with some influence by doubtful Serbs. Not fair to class Serbs and Commies as two partners in crime! Anyhow, back to our original point. I've thought. I am now more inclined to agree with you than I had been previously. I believe that most Serbs from Croatia class their language "Croatian" and it probably works the same the other way. I see what you mean about "Croatian dialects" being geographical and "Dialects of the Croats" as being more ethnic. So fair enough, we'll present it exactly as it had been. If I may request one concession. Do you agree that it needs to be mentioned on the page that Chakavian & Kajkavian are also used as natural dialects for all Slavic ethnicities living on the lands? We'll otehrwise totally agree on their Croatian relevance. Evlekis (talk) 21:17, 13 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes I agree, the dialect spoken by Croats and all the other ethnicities living on the territory where Chakavian is spoken. It would be interesting to find the real numbers of speakers by ethnicity, but I presume that information would be extremely difficult to dig out.
 * zračna luka and zračno pristanište - enforced after the 90s, dunno when they were coined. Some people colloquially use zračna luka synonymously with aerodrom, but technically they mean different things. It was calqued out of well-established internationalisms (airport, aéroport, Flughafen etc.). But than again, in Yugoslavia you always had JAT's airplanes labeled with "jugoslovenski aerotransport" and never jugoslavenski aertoransport, so this is where this "separatism" probably originates ^_^.
 * Unsuccessful neologism brzoglas was coined sometime in the first decade of 20th century by Croatian linguist in the very same paper in which the modern word brzojav was coined, this latter one today being much more common than internationalism telegram. How one came to be successful and the other one not - that's the matter of sociolinguistics (or politics). zrakoplov was coined sometime in the 1880s judging from the earliest records in books.google.com and corpora search.
 * Common Slavic *narodъ originally meant "people" and "related people, of the same kin" (kin = *rodъ). In OCS it still meant "tribe, crowd, multitude, people". It was quite natural to overload it with the 19th century conception of the nation once the nationalist movements arose in Slavic lands. In Yugoslavia there was this distinction between narod and narodnost (=euphemism for ethnic minorities), but today, narod usually has ethnical connotations, esp. in phrases hrvatski narod and srpski narod. The modern concept of a "nation" is very different in multicultural West and the Balkans, otherwise we wouldn't have the subtle distinctions such as Serb and Serbian, Croat and Croatian. Elsewhere they just speak of being "American", "French", "German", whatever the ethnic origins ^_^. As for the međunarodni and similar calques - this are the result of centuries of the dominance of Latin in higher cultural life. Take for example the word utjecaj < calque of Late Latin influentia (whence also English influence). Calquing has been for centuries the most natural activity to coin new words based on Slavic roots. Slavic languages are mostly compatible in nominal morphology, so words would either spread unchanged or adapted, or the calques would be modeled after the calques in other Slavic languages. It was more like a "diffusion" than a "mutual coordination".
 * knjiga < CS *kъniga is not from Turkish but from an unknown Turkic source *kūinig, whence it amazingly came from Old Chinese küen (“‘scroll’”), kuin (“‘to roll up; a scroll; a book’”), where it was borrowed from some steppe language, originally tracing to Summero-Akkadian source kunukku "seal, tablet, certificate". There was no cuneiform (Latin cuneus 'wedge' itself also probably from the same source) writing in China, so the semantics of "book" arise. The same word spread all across Eurasia (Korean, Armenian, Uyghur etc.), so it's probably one of the most important words in the history of writing, and it would be insane to dump it just because it was mediated by Turkic tribe 1500+ years ago ^_^. Germanic borrowings are also numerous (from Gothic and OHG) in culturally significant spheres, and to some lesser extent also Iranian borrowings (early Slavic studies did terrible mistakes by assigning every CS word with /x/ (voiceless velar fricative) to some "unknown Iranian source", but we know today at least 2-3 different ways by which /x/ could arise phonologically predictable so these are much less present than people used to think. Indeed, the same "Iranian prejudice" is still present today in Slavists such Gołąb).
 * Serbian dictionaries can list zemljopis, sveučilište, glazba and other predominantly-Croatian words as "Serbian", no one can forbid them to do so. Serbian lexicographical tradition has from Karadžić's time the tradition of "all-inclusion" of everything actually used, while the Croatian is more inclined towards norming what should be used. For example, Anić's big Croatian dictionary has been severely criticized for including some Turkisms/Serbianisms that are both today marked as substandard, and haven't been in active use for a very long time. As for the native Slavic month names - they are really beautiful words and the Slavic nations that dumped them in favour of Latin ones under the influence of Orthodox Church did a terrible thing IMHO. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

en-2
Your English is much better than en-2. Even if your proffesion is linguist ;) Zenanarh (talk) 08:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps ;) But I understand Babel boxen more like a "I tend to converse in intermediate English, and would prefer you to do the same". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:12, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * What does abbreviation fc. mean? Zenanarh (talk) 12:04, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I have no idea...perhaps it's a misspelling of cf. ? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You got it. I think it could be cf. per context. Thanx. Zenanarh (talk) 22:14, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Dalmatian language
How well are you familiar with it? Do you have some literacy about it? Is it well classified in Wiki (Western Romance?). I had a little conversation with Evlekis. Take a look please. I think its classification is a little bit bias (Italo-Dalmatian?). Zenanarh (talk) 13:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Unfortunatelly very little. General IE linguistics doesn't care much about Vulgar Latin progeny, since their common ancestor is so well documented. Moreover, I'm on holidays ATM and have no access to relevantly citable scholarly literature, for at least a month since now. I can promise you more help in the autumn however.
 * As for the classification, from my experience 99.9% of those WP language infoboxes simply mirror Ethnologue hierarchy, which itself does classify Dalmatian inside "Italo-Dalmatian" group . If some notable scholars have voiced the opinion of Dalmatian more related to some other Romance branches, it should be noted in the article though. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:10, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Karadzic's "trial"
Karadzic comes from an anti-communist background. The regime would hardly give him a fair trial, and it doesn't matter how many authors regurgitate this so-called "evidence". --81.77.120.190 (talk) 14:37, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Petar Skok
Hi, I noticed that you removed the notability tag from the Petar Skok article earlier without really fixing the problem. While saying that he wrote the first real dictionary of Croatian etymology is an assertion of notability (and thus enough to save it from speedy deletion, you need to prove his notability as an academic in reliable sources. I understand that there is or was once a Petar Skok etymological conference- perhaps information relating to those conferences would be useful in doing this. I hope this can be of help! &mdash;/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 21:23, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks for detailing the purpose of that template ^_^ Actually there were 6 of those conferences held so far in his honour (last one in 2006) - I'll seek to expand the article more so that it becomes a bit more obvious that he is not "just another linguist" ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:57, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Glad to be of help! &mdash;/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 22:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

South Slavic languages
Zdravo Ivan. You asked on the talk page for translations of the subdialectal terms, and I have done most of them. Would you be able to do the rest? You just need to convert the adjectives into nouns (i.e. place names); I couldn't find the names of the ones that I left out. Also, could you please cite some sources for the classification section? As I said, your explanation made sense, but I believe references are needed for passages containing "never" or "could have". Regards,  Balkan Fever not a fan? say so! 11:05, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I'll look into it. What I added can all be found in the Matasović's book I added to to references section. He cites several works published in the 70s and 80s that proposed Proto-South-Slavic and Proto-Serbo-Croatian isoglosses, and lists some later research that proved all of them false. I'll look to expand it into separate section but it might get a bit "technical". I'd be very surprised to see that today someone still advocates South Slavic forming a "genetic node" (as opposed to being a geographical grouping), or draws some clear-cut lines among its dialect on some arbitrary "ethno-cultural" grounds.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:26, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, fair enough. Basically you can just copy Matasović's citations and add them after the passage they support, or even just use him as the inline reference. And technical should be fine :).  Balkan Fever not a fan? say so! 11:44, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Re:See alsoes
"Flooding" articles with See also sections?! The articles didn't have a See also section so I added them, and I may add it was a lot of work. All the wikilinks are relevant and are certainly linked to the person in question. I've undertaken the task of standardizing the Ragusans articles and added the correct WikiProjects. I may have made many edits, but that's because I worked on a lot of articles. I must say I do not like your tone, please point out where I breached policy.-- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 13:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Um... NO
These writers are Ragusan/Croatian, ergo Dalmatian, and the article History of Dalmatia provides a perspective as to the wider context of these people's lives. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 16:17, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Asim Peco
Ivan, Thank you for your edits on this article. There's a lot written about Dr. Peco but it's in Serbian or Croatian, and my translation skills are poor. Any assistance in expanding the page is appreciated. Cheers, --Rosiestep (talk) 22:51, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Silesian language
Dear Ivan, You accused me User:84.205.177.180 of Vandalism in the topics related to Silesia. Please read my own corrections to these articles and the ones of LUCPOL. While he made much more contributions and is much more value to the site than I am, in this case he is only seeking implementing his own arbitrary views as official wikipedia doctrine. And this, not my attempts at stopping him, should be stopped. My corrections in general were not to banish the mention of Silesian as a separate language from wikipedia, but to assure that the fact that (Upper) Silesian language is considered a polish dialect will be mentioned as well. Thus my corrections were "a language, usually considered a polish dialect", "a language or dialect" etc. LUCPOL, on the other hand, is banning almost any mentions of Silesian being considered a polish dialect. Both stances should be represented in wikipedia, not just one. But LUCPOL does not accept that, for obvious reasons: he wants Silesian independance (check his page), and, thus, wants to ban any mention of links between Poles and Silesians. It's not me who should be warned, but him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.205.177.180 (talk) 18:59, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Answer: . The most important arguments are in point 2 and 3. LUCPOL (talk) 19:32, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Insults in edit sumaries, POV
Please mind WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA and WP:AGF. I am not a troll nor a banned user. Please do not push your POV using ad homminem attacks against other editors! 78.30.150.253 (talk) 12:42, 16 September 2008 (UTC)


 * No, you're just one of the billion clones of User:PaxEquilibrium. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:44, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I am not PaxEquilibrium. You are wrong. 78.30.150.253 (talk) 12:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Zadar article
I have explained my main problems about the section "recent history". I feel that the article is one sided, and needs to be reviewed/discussed. I will ask other editors to participate too. 78.30.150.253 (talk) 13:12, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Nasalism
Hi again Ivan. I wanted to ask you: what is the best way to represent nasalism in Slavic? Apparently the Solun-Voden dialect retains OCS nasal vowels, but I'm not sure how to express this other than with н or м in brackets: ръ(н)ка, че(н)до, but that doesn't seem "correct".  Balkan Fever  11:06, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no (semi-)official orthography for writing those, or people are just using Bulgarian/Macedonian spellings but pronounce them differently? Is just back nasal vowel preserved (ѫ, ǫ), or also front nasal ѧ (ę) (I can't see this latter one anywhere)? Maybe it would be best to just transcribe them in Latin (dǫga, sǫbota..), or just use OCS symbol ѫ for illustrative purposes (even if people don't use it anymore).. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:19, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think both are (it's in the history of the article, it was recently removed) but I don't know if the choice of orthography "ръ(н)ка" (hand) is meant to show that it is pronounced like rǫka. It may just be that the schwa (ъ) is nasalised, while the original back nasal was lost. This dialect is apparently the closest to that of Cyril and Methodius (assuming there is anyone left that speaks it) so it probably retains the ǫ.  Balkan Fever  11:46, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've read that nasal vowels have been retained in some Bulgarian, Macedonian and Slovenian dialects, so this is probably it. Nasalization article claims that tilde is used to indicate nasalisation, so it might be good to use combining tilde < ̃> just like <ʲ> is used for to indicate palatalization.. If there is no (semi-)official orthography, one needs to improvize --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:59, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That's great, thanks!  Balkan Fever  12:10, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Sveta Gera
Sveta Gera/Trdinov vrh is new name of that article according to the international court consisting of the judges: User:Eleassar, User:Prevalis and User:Yerpo. See "False renaming" section. Zenanarh (talk) 12:43, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Silesian
Hi! I just want to know, why you say my edit is POV? I give sources in the article. Do you know anything about this issue with the Silesian? I give sources which are neutral in German language (my nativ language) and not in Polish. It can't be more neutral than in a different language.--85.233.18.149 (talk) 09:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * "Polish" in the Infobox? Of course, but in brackets, to be neutral! Why I substituting "Silesian language" with "Silesian" throughout the article or putting quotation marks on "Silesian language"? Because you can't call it neither language nor dialect when you want to be neutral. "The whole issue with Poles considering the Silesian Polish dialect..." - Wait a moment! Not Poles consider it as a dialect! Vast majority of linguists consider it as a dialect, the EU consider it as a dialect (No Silesian in the list of the languages in the EU), the encyclopedia Britannica consider it as a dialect.
 * And the sentence "It is used for a long time, because the Silesians in Poland are taught in Polish schools and they know only the Polish way of writing." is wrong (or have you a neutral source for it?) The reason why Silesian is used by the vast majority of the speakers with the Polish alphabet, is because there never have been a standard Silesian alphabet. All this discussions about language or dialect are new. In the past nobody (even not the speakers) think that Silesian is something different than a dialect (today it's different) (or have you old sources where it is something else written?). Just a minority consider Silesian as a language. About the sources: Der Spiegel you can buy or wait till next year (the articles from the beginning to 2007 are online). Because of the German legal basis, the articles from this year could not be online. I think I can write a few sentences without having problems, but they are in German language.--84.142.115.77 (talk) 14:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm replying you here cause you seem to be changing IP addresses.
 * What brackets? You've put Silesian genetically under Polish, which is nonsense. Dialect used for Silesian did not "descend" from the dialect used for standard Polish. They're both equally "old", and their last common ancestor would be some proto-Leichitic dialect.
 * I'm tending to agree with you with using just Silesian throughout the article, as it seems the most NPOV formulation.
 * Whether "vast majority of linguists" considers it a dialect is disputable. It has ISO 639-3 code alphabet, and has been endorsed as a separate language by several notable institution. Linguists don't really decide where's the border between the language and a dialect. Multiple standard languages can be based on essentially the same dialect (cf. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian; Hindi & Urdu), and multiple gentically diverse dialect can belong to the "same" language (usually on territorial basis, and the national consciousness of its speakers). I've read in some comparative Slavic books how some, esp. Polish linguists, often consider Kashubian or Slovincian "Polish dialects", which they're certainly not. That EU lists hardly proves anything, e.g. it doesn't list Basque which is certinly not a "Spanish dialect", not even Indo-European language. Britannica's opinion is the opinion of the person they hired to write the article.
 * That sentence certainly represents a fact, that can be interpreted in two ways: either as a pro or contra Silesian (to what extent is standard Polish alphabet deficient for writing Silesian? or the Silesian alphabet is just "invented" to make Silesian and Polish appear differently?). Neutral formulation should be made.
 * I can read some German. Could you please cite that few sentences from Der Spiegel on the silesian article talk page, where this discussion should actually be made? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

udara
Hi,

Wondering if you could help me. Is there a Croatian word something like udara, meaning something like "to strike"? The closest I can find is ùdarati "to beat".

Thanks, kwami (talk) 20:49, 5 October 2008 (UTC)


 * ȕdār m - "hit, strike, impact etc.", gen. sg. ȕdāra, gen. pl. ȕdārā. ùdariti/ùdarati (perfective/imperfective) "to strike, hit, beat, attack etc.". If you need help lemmatizing Croatian words, or are looking for inflected forms, you can use free Croatian Morphological Lexicon online, just login with proba/proba. Output format is a bit retarded, but what what can one do.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:22, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

3RR
You should know I have reported your WP:3RR violation at Administrators' noticeboard/3RR. You may wish to go there and make your case. +Hexagon1 (t) 14:31, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Fun fun, let's see how for WP's collective intelligence (or stupidity? it's all relative) goes. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:10, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

October 2008
You have been blocked from editing for in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for violating the three-revert rule. Please be more careful to discuss controversial changes or seek dispute resolution rather than engaging in an edit war. If you believe this block is unjustified, you may contest the block by adding the text below.


 * I have reset your block back to 24 hours for your blatant block evasion by editing without being logged in from 161.53.74.66. The IP address has also been blocked for 24 hours.  Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 13:25, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * That was very generous of you. I probably would have extended it to a week, myself.  :) -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 13:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

So basically according this absolute and all-binding rule, anyone can make any kind of edits, regardless of how wrong or controversial they are, and even though they have been refuted, disputed and considered contentious on the talk page discussions, the changes can still stand committed, and any action of reverting them even though the discussion is still pending can be subject to 3RR which could then get the disputor blocked by simply reverting to the original state of affairs until the consensus is reached. Consequently, single editor, no matter how correct and veracious his points are, can't possibly stand ground in that situation, against >2 editors or even a single editor that is "reverting" by means of re-editing. Unbelievable.

Sysops, instead of protecting the mechanism of consensus-reaching, then act like robots, following literally the absolute Policy, regardless how pointless its application appears. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess you haven't read WP:3RR or WP:DISPUTE yet? They answer all of those questions, and explain how to cope with unpleasant disputes in useful ways.  Edit-warring is useless, of course, because the other person can keep reverting just as long as you can.  That's why it's against the rules for everyone.  -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 16:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It probably wouldn't hurt to read over Tag team and its related essays, such as Civil POV pushing either. Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 16:18, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I've read it, and it basically supports everything I said on policy being defect. I was just reverting to the original state of affairs before the contentious changes were made [and are being made right now, a Bulgarian nationalist having joined the bandwagon claiming that Macedonian is a Bulgarian spin-off, and Serbo-Croatian, a term invented in the middle 19th century, being extended to the 10th century C.E. Even the Vienna Literary Agreement that "knowledgable" Russian is blabing about in its 2 pages didn't have a single mention of the name of the "common language", and was non-binding to any signing side. And I've just raid in George Shevelov's article in "Slavonic languages" monography that emigre Transcarpathian Rusyn is genetically Slovak dialect with Ukrainian cultural adstratum, so his claim "genetically Rusyn lang it's absolutly East slavic language, but with big west influence," looks even more funny]. So again, I revert those new additions, they re-add it, and I still get blocked? That policy is flawed, or at least it's interpretation in scenarios such as this.
 * Are you insinuating that I am the one doing "civil POV pushing" of OR or "tag teaming"? I can cite handbooks on comparative linguistics of IE and Slavic languages that refute 5-6 major problems of the scheme these dudes are imaginatively creating. I don't see anyone of you objecting to their "hive mind". They've just opened a bottle of champaigne on the talk page, celebrating their newly-reached "consensus". Why don't you ask some sysop linguist that has some knowledge of IE linguistics, what does he think on OESl. being dated to <10th century, on Old Novgorod dialect "descending" from it, on the existence of "Knaanic language" or "Serbo-Croatian" being spoken in the 10th century? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:38, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I am not trying to say that you are tag teaming or civilly POV pushing. I linked to those essays because they have some good advice on how to deal with those sorts of situations, which seem very similar to the one you are in, as you describe it.  I'd like you to notice, though, nowhere in those essays does it say that an acceptable course of action is to break WP:3RR and then edit anonymously when you are blocked for it.  Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 16:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I "broke" the sacred rule by using the undo button [instead of succesively re-editing the article and by it reverting it to the old scheme, like User:Hexagon1 and his fellow have been doing], and then "abused" the block by leaving constructive comments on the talk pages. I barely have time and interest to "fight" against some gang of POV partisans who abuse defective policies while disinterested sysops stand still in the background, blindly following the rules and noticing that something "could" be wrong, or even leave ridiculing comments on the talk pages [like the one on the "generous" 24 hour re-block of yours.]. Hopefully, there are other wikiprojects where free time&energy can be wasted more constructively ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It was generous. You were blocked for 3RR, then turned right around and used your IP address to circumvent the block. That usually warrants a lengthier block than 24 hours, but I am hoping that you'll learn from this and become a more constructive editor who can use dispute resolution in the future. seicer  &#x007C;  talk  &#x007C;  contribs  17:19, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) It seems that you don't really have a grasp of the three-revert rule, since you displayed a misunderstanding of information contained in the first paragraph of the policy. I'll try to paraphrase it for you; reverts are not defined by the mechanism by which they were performed:
 * "A revert is any action...whether or not the edits involve the same material...that reverses the actions of other editors, in whole or in part."
 * It also says quite clearly in the policy that editors can be blocked for edit warring even when no 3RR violation has occurred, if an administrator deems it necessary:
 * "Administrators may still block disruptive editors for edit warring who do not violate the rule."
 * If someone else has broken 3RR or engaged in edit warring, report it to WP:AN3 or WP:ANI rather than taking matters into your own hands. Ioeth (talk contribs friendly) 17:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


 * A lengthier block for using IP address to add constructive comments? I can't believe what you're saying. IP trolls that leave highly-insultive comments get shorter than that for 3 continuous reportings [at least the one I reported did]. If you guys indeed fail to see problems in the correspondence of 's edit history vs. the discussion as it goes on chronologically on the talk page, we have nothing to discuss about. User:Hexagon1 did just 3 controversial (IMHO) edits, and User:Tat1642 did 2, in the same 24-hour interval, I reverted all of them [as there was still discussion ongoing, but both of them think that they're absolutely right and ignore everything what had written to object, as being "original research" or simply "wrong"]. I got reported and then blocked for "edit-warring". Can you comprehend that line of thought? Two editors can make less then the number of edits required to violate 3RR, one editor cannot; ergo, he gets blocked even though he was just enforcing the non-disputed version. Having a policy that is detrimental to any outnumbered editor is a one-way ticket to banish the minority (i.e. experts, which are always a minority as opposed to POV pushers and "experts") from this project, and highly demotivating once he comes to see their existence in action. I have no attention of rejoining the collective champaigne celebration on "consesus" on the talk page, only to see the same collective ... reoccurring. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You have read the relevant policies, right? They explain very clearly why edit-warring is disruptive, and what to do instead of edit-warring to avoid having inappropriate edits become part of the encyclopedia.  One reason that edit-warring is so strongly against the rules is because it doesn't work.  There are things that do work.  We do those things instead.  The problems you point out have already been solved.  We have linked you to pages that clearly explain the solution.  But we can't make you read those pages; that's up to you. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 20:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I feel like talking to a machine. If you see my reversal of contentious changes, made by editors whose knowledge on the subject and ultimate motivation is very suspicious, before consensus is reached and disputed newly-proclaimed genetic nodes are elaborated on the talk-page as "edit-warring", and their's not, than you're seriously deluded. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:28, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I feel like I'm talking to a machine, too. The content of your edits isn't relevant; all that's relevant is what you do to get them into the article.  I've given you all the information you need to get your desired edits into the article.  But if you won't even look at it, then how else can I help?  I guess I can't.  Good luck to you. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 11:45, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Come back
Difficulties appear with sometimes but do not surrender. Conflicts in Wikipedia one should treat calmly (relax). Come back, please :) LUCPOL (talk) 08:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * With so much ignorant nationalists around, it becomes very hard to engage in a constructive discussion that will end in a consensus reflecting the scholarly communis opinio. If you couple it with actions conducted by the local sheriffs, slavishingly literal interpretators of the Policy who apparently care more on the procedural anomalies than on the veracity of the end-result of the discussion that takes place, you'll see how it becomes immensely difficult for any sane and reasonable person to "push" the POV that is the actual state of affairs [i.e. maintained by most of the scholars], and which dispels the very myths that are in the heart of narrow-minded worldview conceived by the disruptors. You should take care of the adding it to watchlist, as I presume that it is just a matter of time before some Polish nationalist implants another "genetic node" in the hierarchy, implying that your beloved Silesian has "branched" from the Polish some X years ago ^_^ BTW, did you know that in lots of the Slavic historical handbooks the claims of Polish linguists of Proto-Slavic Urheimat being in the "Polish lands", or all Leichitic dialects being "dialects of Polish", including Polabian or Slovincian [that have some 1000 years old isoglosses that separate them from the dialect ancestral to modern Polish, like the preservation of weak jers or free Proto-Slavic accent] are often ridiculed? :-) But not on WP, here the mob rules, and the mob are the usual ppl who have some insane POV to push. Of course, any sane person upon clicking in the aforementioned template on the e.g. "Old East Slavic" which the scheme dates <9th century (i.e. still in Late Proto-Slavic period :) will be redirected to the article saying "Old East Slavic...was a vernacular literary language used from the 10th to the 14th centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus'...", which would then get him thinking that there is something seriously wrong with it, possibly lots of other things to, esp. seeing that the person who put in that scheme OESl dating it to <=9th century was a Russian and that the article on OESl. claims that the term "Old Russian" for OESl. is highly contentious anachronism (modern books avoid it completely), and according to this imaginative scheme the division 10th-14th century was onto "Ruthenian" and OESl, which is ridiculous :) Not to mention Old Novogord dialect being more archaic than the one it "descends" from :) Same goes for the Macedonian "branching" from Bulgarian, and Croatian and Serbian "branching" from some alleged "Serbo-Croatian" in the 19th century (Bartol Kašić, when he wrote the first grammar of Croatian in 1604, apparently had no idea that his mother tongue dialect Čakavian and Štokavian he was describing were the "same language", but according to the "expert" of South Slavic dialectology, User:Hexagon1, claiming otherwise would be "nationalism", "politics" or "original research" :). These three appear mutually supportive for their silly theories to the extent that no-one defies other one's preposterous claims, so I can imagine that Polish POV partisan putting Silesian "node" in the 20th century would be open-handedly welcomed as long as he tries not to mess their own inventions. So you better watch out ;) --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:06, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The most important to does not surrender. Let's do not leave vandals' editions in Wikipedia. Act further for good Wikipedia. This time - calmly, relax. You automatically deletes vandals' editions. You do not worry. We should fight, but calmly. Relax :) LUCPOL (talk) 14:36, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Email
I sent you an email; did you get it?  Balkan Fever  10:06, 14 October 2008 (UTC)


 * It appears that I haven't. Try sending it directly.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Could you check your spam folder first? I'm a bit tired right now :)  Balkan Fever  10:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Sent it directly just in case you couldn't find it.  Balkan Fever  11:05, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

PIE phonology
I posted a question about your last edit to Proto-Indo-European phonology on the article's talk page. Would you mind leaving a comment there? Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:51, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

yugoslav wars
Thanks for the references. I have read through "heavenly serbia", at least I think I was reading something about yugoslavia wars with "heavenly" in title. Szopen (talk) 14:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

PIE phonology
Basically, I think that the section on vowels is most problematic, specially the 2 vowels/4 vowels speculation. That table with 4 vowels (i,u,e,o), considering e as front and o as back, particularly strikes me as typologically impossible, and I doubt a peer-reviewed linguistic work would really propose that. Something more likely would involve a Proto-Austronesian-like system with i,u,ə(PIE o),a(PIE e), which is consistent with the 2-vowel hypothesis presented earlier in the text. But where are all those theories on vowels coming from, anyway? There are no specific references.201.21.230.88 (talk) 18:20, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Two things: first, the website you mentioned explicitly includes a central *a, which does make the system typologically possible. Secondly, the article you mentioned does not attempt to identify the phonetic details of *e and *o other than the fact that they are front and back. If, say, *e stands for ɛ and *o stands for ɑ or ɒ, voilà, there you have a vowel system that is typologically attested. Remember, it is easy to reconstruct anything if you don't care much about factual details (in this case, vowel quality). I stand by what I said: a system with i,u,e(front) and o(back), unless *o represents a low vowel, IS indeed typologically impossible. If you have any doubt, try finding a single living, actually spoken language with such a vowel system. But wait, you won't be able to, since there are no such languages in the real word!^_^201.21.230.88 (talk) 19:02, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

An opposition of two front and two back vowels is not enough to establish a typologically possible vowel system, unless one of the vowels is fully open. There is no human language without at least one low vowel. It may be that *e was actually /a/ or /æ/, or that *o was /ɑ/ or /ɒ/, but either of them HAD to be low, otherwise a phonemic *a would have to be posited for PIE anyway.201.21.230.88 (talk) 22:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for reverting me here. I completely misjudged the whole situation and replaced a good consensus version. I'll pay more attention in the future, sorry for the touble. Cheers JdeJ (talk) 19:14, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * No problem ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:09, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Ha ha
I thoroughly enjoyed your exhange on the South Slavs page with Deucalionite. I do think that he holds sources which agree with his own views with absolute conviction, whilst summarily rejecting others. In actual fact, Curta (who decalionite refers to frequently) does not deny Slavic presence in Greece, at all. He only quesitons the dating of artefacts, and suggests that the artefacts do not match those of Slavic settlements in contemporary Romania (where he places the Slavic homeland), but rather connects them to the cultures in Pannonia (ie 'Avaria'). It is well known that Slavs formed the majority of the Avar khanate, and Curta even suggests that Slavic was the lingua franca within the khanate. Moreover, he theorises that the spread of Slavic langauge was accomodated by a change in the 'economy' of the Balkans - the ruralization and urban contraction led to an abandonement of Latin language and Roman culture Hxseek (talk) 10:33, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it was a stupendous debate. One for the record books. However, you and Mr. Štambuk also hold sources that directly coincide with your Slavic viewpoints while summarily labelling others as "denialists" or harbingers of "anti-Slavic Greek nationalist POV". Even though all users have biases, that does not excuse them from providing hard proof to substantiate their academic standpoints. As for Curta, he challenges the Slavic presence in Greece by questioning the dating of artifacts, and the types of archaeological classifications implemented by previous scholars. The spread of a so-called "Slavic language" may have been accommodated by economic alterations in the Balkans. However, the extent of its spread is still questionable. Curta does not establish generalizations whereby he equates ruralization of every Byzantine territory with Slavicization. Roman political culture was sustained in some areas, reformulated in other places (i.e. early Byzantium), and abandoned altogether in other territories. It all depends on the region in question.


 * By the way Ivan, I think you did a wonderful job enhancing the direct quote from Ante Milošević. I cannot thank you enough. Take care and no hard feelings. You want a beer? I've got some KEO. Deucalionite (talk) 13:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey. RE: the spread of proto-Slavic. Linguistics really isn't my field, sorry friend. Hxseek (talk) 04:00, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

List of Slavic toponyms in Greece
I saw your comment on South Slavs. You may not know that we have Slavic toponyms for Greek places, although that's probably not exactly what you had in mind. It's based on the work of a Macedonian author and some of them are just Slavic variants of Greek/Turkish/Vlach toponyms, but it may be of some use. Cheers,  Balkan Fever  11:36, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That looks very interesting, thanks. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:25, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

24.86.116.250
Hi,

Please try to remain calm and abstain from using emotionally charged words and phrases in your discussions (lies, trolling etc.) - a calm argumentation that points to good sources is the best method in discussions.

Take care, Kpjas (talk) 23:37, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Name calling and compromise
Calling someone a fascist is generally an insult but in this case I'd wait and see hoping that the culprit is going to stay away from WP for a while. Putting insults away, does s/he have a point ? It'll probably be impossible to work out some common version so a non-involved knowledgeable person should look at sources, make a judgement and steer towards a compromise. What do you think ? Kpjas (talk) 12:11, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, he doesn't have a point, as it has been explained to him abundantly numerous times on various talk pages. The modus operandi of this dude is just repeatedly come back every few weeks or so, leaving a graffiti calling others "propaganda nationalists" and declare a "well-hidden secret" by selectively misquoting the sources and ignoring replies of others. Any kind of discussion with him has proven to be a waste of time.
 * Feel free to find any non-involved knowledgeable linguist here on WP, as he'll just agree with what I've said. The only issue is in the minds of these ex-Yugoslav diaspora folks who had lost touch with reality, thinking that there is some kind of "nationalist conspiracy" going on. What really strikes me is how illiterate these folks really are when they write in their mother tongue, hehe.
 * There are several pages on WP that deal with this "Serbo-Croatian" and need rewrite, being written by sometimes even well-intentioned but unfortunately largely ignorant editors. The issue is complex from various viewpoints (historical, linguistics, cultural and political) and very often people imagine that their particular POV is/has been shared by millions of others, that it's particularly "truthful", or that it's most "important". It's very hard for people who grew up in a Communist state and have been indoctrinated from their childhood to bear with cognitive dissonance resulting from the fact that today professional linguists and historians publish books that defy their conception of reality. No more censorship and imprisonment, and Serb JNA officers putting to jail anyone who dares to put sum dirt on "brotherhood and unity" dogma. Very sad, but what can one do but educate them. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:36, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Ivan, your only advantage in all this is that your English is a little better than mine, and you can convince easier someone who doesn't know much about ex-yugoslavian issues. That's ok, but I am not sure any non-involved knowledgeable linguist will agree with what you've said. None of the Serbocroatian pages needs rewriting, they are well written. As for someone being 'illiterate' when writing in Serbocroatian, I think that it most likely applies to you and your 'clique', whose artificial 'standard' language changes forth and back on a daily basis. I would discuss all this in any of the variants of Serbocroatian, even some other South Slavic languages, but I really think that discussion will be just a waste of time, as it's been proven so far. Bye.24.86.116.250 (talk) 17:26, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, I'm pretty sure they'd agree with whatever I say, unless they have some serious bias which makes them filter common sense, and pro-Serb anti-Croat reality distortion shield activated. The point is, dude, that you have zero (0) sources that corroborate your claim. Even your dear Pranjković expressly says na standardološkoj razini.. "on standardological level". End of story.
 * You'd be surprised how many garbage can be found on current WP articles. Just the other day I removed some nonsense among which was the claim that said something like: "Cyrillic letter jat was the origin of different phonetic renderings of /ie/, /i/ and /e/". Unbelievable.
 * As for "artifical" modern Croatian orthographic conventions and word which were banned by Serbocommunists, both having centuries of tradition - well you have a right to opinion of them being "detrimental" for your artifical "SC" quasi-language.
 * It's really pathetic to see you calling a discussion [with me] "a waste of time", as you are the one that has been numerous times replied with arguments on talk pages, which were of course ignored by you but you haven't failed responding with accusations of interlocutors being "chauvinistic nationalists", "fascists" who spread "pathetic lies". Sapienti sat. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:49, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I never said directly to you that you're a fascist, etc. What I was pointing out was that as a 'guy with strong national feelings', i.e. croatian nationalist, you're most likely to support those ones who glorify NDH, etc. And about the new invented words in the Croatian variant of the Central South Slavic language (system), don't be offended, but the fact is that those words, such as 'zrakoplov', brzojav' i sl. are new invented (or invented in NDH-era) for well known purposes, but Thanks God they are not and they were never in use in the language of ordinary croatian citizens. If you can put your scientific focus a little bit to the wider concept, instead of the national issue, including all the positive things and connections that have happened and are happening between our South Slavic nations, you'd be much more appreciated conversatonal partner and editor as well. Also, please see my long message that I left for you on my talk page. Cheers.24.86.116.250 (talk) 05:55, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No, you didn't call me directly, you explicitly called me and a some other editors collectively, together with "NDH supporters" and "Hitler sympathizers" attributes. You don't remember? Don't try to whitewash yourself now.
 * Lexeme zrakoplov is attested since at least 1880s, and lexeme brzojav was coined in the early 20th century (the first decade), in the same paper in which the world brzoglas (unsuccessful neologism for telefon); I can't find now where and by whom exactly, but I can give it some research if you wish. One of them caught on (brzojav is today the prevalent term), the other didn't and was even ridiculed as some 1990s "invention", when in fact it was just one of those "reactivated" words banned by the Communists (sacred "internationalisms" where more favourable). Now, you do know about the policy of word-banning in Yugoslavia? :) darežljiv, darežljivost, krstitke, imetak, podoban, poplun, priuštiti, propuh, strop, tjedan &c., all those innocent (and nowadays standard) words that were dropped from the dictionaries written by Croatian Vukovians, the only sin of them being Čakavisms and Kajkavisms. And Šulek's coinages [great deal of which, regardless of censorship, still "survived" and made its way into standard language]? Not a chance.. If you think that zrakoplov and brzojav are "not in the language of ordinary Croatian citizens", then you have no clue what you're talking about. Come to Zagreb and talk to people :) Order a parče hleba in the bakery and observe the expression of the salesman's face :)
 * This systematic demonisation and ignoring of anything Croat-only, even though it was legitimized by centuries of literary tradition, was the greatest damage done by the Communists when it comes to language business. Gundulić, Marulić and Kačić knew what is zatočnik, doslije, or prirok, great many Croats today don't, the only reason being so is that those words were labeled as "Ustashisms" by some deranged communist. For you it might be "good", koinezation being done at the expense of Croatian literature and identity, for others not really so. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:16, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Many of those words you've mentioned are synonims with other words used in the Serbian variant of Central South Slavic language, and if it wasn't for the nationalists, it's wouldn't have a big deal if someone uses one or the other synonim. German and Italian languages also have a lot of synonims used in their 'variants', so what? They're not crying for 'separate standard languages' like it's a case with it on the BALKANS. Sapienti sat. 24.86.116.250 (talk) 02:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There is no such thing as "Central South Slavic language" except in your brainwashed head. There is no such thing as "variants" in linguistics, that concept was invented by politics, and in Communist Yugoslavia was imposed onto Croats to merge glorious Croatian and miserable Serbian literary heritage into one linguistic-cultural matrix. Those words that I mentioned are exclusive Croatian [from Croatian-only dialects]; some of them also borrowed into Serbian, Bosniak etc., just like thousands of others words for many modern appliances and abstract concepts, which were just absorbed (i.e. c/p by V.S.K. and his followers) as they were completely lacking in the avarage čoban's vocabulary, since there was no higher cultural life operating in Belgrade pashaluk before the 19th century. Even some that are nowadays perceived as exclusive "Serbianisms" like pozorište or otadžbina (as opposed to Croatian kazalište and domovina) are borrowed from Croatian. Good luck trying to find Serbian etymological dictionary that will tell you that the first one was calqued from Latin spectaculum by Bartol Kašić when he translated the Bible into Croatian 4 centuries ago. Having calqued a few hundred neologisms for his Bible, Bartol Kašić must have been a predecessor of Ustasha-sympathising future nationalists, wishing to "distance" themselves from the Serbs, right? ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 03:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Serbian Genocide
What's your problem for telling me to stick the genocide up my ass? That genocide info should be back. The croatian leadership during world war two had genocidal means with dealing the serbs - converting a third, expelling a third, and killing a third. This is the elimination of the serbian people in whole or in part, the definition of genocide. At the holocaust museum we can see much about Jasenovac. (LAz17 (talk) 14:21, 4 November 2008 (UTC)).
 * There was a genocide during 1941-45 period, but the way it was used insinuated that it was a continual practice during the 70-year period the article covered. Population of people that identified themselves as Serbs was continually decreasing during the whole period in the territory of what "Croatia" encompassed. I'm not denying Jasenovac, it's just that extrapolating the NDH regime out of context would be highly misleading. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:31, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Well then the genocide should be brought back. The wording could be improved to make the readers know that this was between 41-45, not 70+ years. Pozdrav. (LAz17 (talk) 19:01, 4 November 2008 (UTC)).

Sanskrit
Hi, sorry for using the word ignoramus, was not intended for you. Could you please give a citation for saMskRt"A" vAk? I am sure you know things, but it would be helpful to have a citation from somewhere for that.

Thanks. ­ Kris (talk) 16:11, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Template:Indo-European studies
Hi Ivan! Would you care to take a look at my suggestion at Template talk:Indo-European studies? Thanks. And yes I am aware that I haven't reacted to your last entry here, but I hope I'll get around to reading your additions and maybe some copyediting. Cheers --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 17:50, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Two-four eight-six
Hi Ivan, I thought I'd alert you to this post by our favourite IP friend. I concur with his wish to replace the Image:Slavic languages 2000s.png map with Image:Slavic languages.png, but not for the same reasons. The second map shows a far greater attention to detail (for example take a peek at Kosovo, southern Moldova and southern Slovakia) than the first and is a far better image to use. I thought I'd alert you so that you may separate the South Slavic languages on the second map similarly to the way they are separated on the first. If you have the time I thought it may also be great if you made a bit more legible legend for all the languages, using Myriad Pro or Calibri. I'd do it myself but unfortunately I'm on my non-Photoshop equipped computer right now, and I thought you'd be able to represent the South Slavic situation better. Good luck, I'm going to go to bed soon, hoping the IP doesn't come and kill me while I sleep... +Hexagon1 (t) 10:07, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey, I'm not that comfortable with image-editing programs to make such changes (I edit all my images in MS Paint ^_^). But the other map is also problematic, combining Serbian and Bosniak. It appears that the author tried to simply separate Croatian from the previous version of the map. Map like this would be much more better (it takes care of Una-Sana Canton and Sandžak area for Bosniak pockets, but unfortunatelly introduces Montenegrin which should be ignored as Montengerin still lacks ISO recognition, grammar/orthography books, and the dialects of Monenegro are still treated as a part of the "Ijekavian Serbian", and lots of Montenegrins consider themselves proud Serbs..). Also the 'Turkey' label is not completely erased on the second map. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * What do you think? I've uploaded these two images. +Hexagon1 (t) 06:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC) PS: You have to be pretty persistent in forcing the image to update, browser cache has a strong survival instinct. :) +Hexagon1 (t) 06:47, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Glad you like them! I did wonder why you didn't reply but I thought you may be busy, so I let it be. +Hexagon1 (t) 07:34, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll get on it as soon as my regular computer is back up, which should be anywhere between a few hours and a few days. Interesting article, never even knew about their existence. +Hexagon1 (t) 04:56, 8 December 2008 (UTC) Done! +Hexagon1 (t) 08:49, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Republic evidence
Ivan, i see old ragusan archive from the Republic, births, married, death, and all the archive were in romance language, some in 1909, change the official language to serbo-croatian, the city change the official name too, like Vlaho Bukovac, born Biagio Faggioni, he slavized your name, Medo Pucic too, he born Orsato Pozza, but the ragusan always spoke bilingual, is different the croatian from Zagreb to the croatian from Dubrovnik and Zadar, ahh! the Istria region speak bilingual italian/croatian official.


 * Ragusino, "officially" Istria is bilingual, but not really - almost nobody speaks Italian primarily. I don't know if you can understand me, but the people of Ragusa did NOT "change their names" to Shtokavian form, they acquired the Slavic names centuries ago as 95% of Ragusans spoke Shtokavian (Croatian), while some even created their Italianized names by conversion from their original Croatian (like Bosdari and Slatarich). The Slavic names were the ones they were commonly known by in Ragusa, therefore they all knew them and used them for centuries, as Ragusa was one of the more Slavic cities in Dalmatia (unlike Zadar/Zara, for instance). I don't think anyone needs your lecture on their own country's languages and history (which, of course, includes Dubrovnik). -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 14:20, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Just to jump in for a detail. DIR you're wrong. Zadar is wrongly perceived by many people as not too "Slavic" city in Dalmatia mainly because of Italianization of it during 19th century. In fact it was opposite. Until 19th century, Zadar was probably the most Croatian city together with Dubrovnik. Don't forget that 1st Croatian university was established there in 14th century. 1st novel written in Croatian was written and published there. 1st newspapers... Ie in 13th and 14th century almost all Zadar citizens had Croatian origin names in the documents. In the same time Trogir or Split were much more Romance speaking than Zadar. Zadar noblemen were all domestic people until 16th century. In Zadar nobility register the very 1st foreigner was recorded in 16th century. Or one simple fact, the huge majority (~90% I think) of all Glagolithic inscriptions were found in Croatia (angular Glagolitsa - Croatian characteristic). Around 1/3 of all angular Glagolithic writings were found in Zadar or in its surrounding. Situation was changed in 19th century because of the Austrian politics, but not earlier. You seem to accept Italian propaganda too easily. Pitty when I remember how much I was writting about it a year ago and you were there. Zenanarh (talk) 18:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes Raguino, all those writers signed their Croatian works in their Slavic name! Since that was their mother tongue, they presumably used it colloquially too [at least with common folks which were not trained in Italian]. I've been adding lots of Old Dubrovnik writers' works to Croatian Wikisource and reading it while adding, and whenever there was e.g. dedication or epistole to a nobleman, or his name/surname mentioned in the text, it's regularly in Slavic, and Romance names are extremely rare and sporadic. Here's a dedication from Ivan Gundulić's Pjesni pokorne kralja Davida:

PJESNI POKORNE KRALJA DAVIDA Gospodina Dživa Frana Gundulića vlastelina dubrovačkoga. MNOGO SVITLOMU GOSPODINU MARU MARA BUNIĆA VLASTELINU DUBROVAČKOMU DŽIVO FRANA GUNDULIĆA P. I. P.


 * Interestingly they also never use "Ragusa" and always call the city "Dubrovnik" ^_^ Since this is centuries before 1909, it has absolutely nothing to do with Tito or Pan-Slavism. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Are you wrong!, the dedication of the monument to Ivan Gundulic is from 1893!, if you see the official register of the city, testaments from the times of the Republic and the austrian rules, the names are in romance style, the dialect always was in slavonic/croatian language, always spoke the slavonian/croatian but the names were dualist, but the official names were in Romance. In 1893 the austrian policy was againts the italian, for the three independence italian wars, the austrian rules want clean the italian movement in the Empire, in the same way Tito exile more than 500.000 italians from the Dalmatia region. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.21.84.149 (talk) 11:02, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * What monument? This is from the first page (posveta, "dedication") from the Pjesni pokorne kralja Davida printed in Rome in 1621. All of their Croatian works (and Palmotić, Gundulić and co. are primarily notable as writers and poets, not some "nobles") are regularly signed in their Slavic name, and use Slavic names throughout. Romance names were used in Latin and Italian texts, and presumably in some legislative documents. They were certainly not "official" otherwise their works published in Venice, Rome and other Romance cultural centres wouldn't have been in Slavic! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Proto-Indo-European noun
Hi Ivan! Thanks for the cooperation with Proto-Indo-European noun. I like your accent classes table, putting the ablaut vowels into it made it much clearer than Fortson's :-) And thank you for correcting my translation of, I clearly wasn't paying attention! However, a few issues: Cheers --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 08:39, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Vowel plus glide is usually written as a diphthong ( instead of ) on WP. I too think the second transcription is better, but we should keep it consistent. We should either change back to  or change all the other examples in the PIE articles.
 * 2) Would you mind if I replace with ? It shows the R+S+E structure better, and thorn clusters are already discussed here (but it wouldn't hurt to expand that section a bit).
 * I left a questiion on PIE phonology talk page for the notation regarding the nonsyllabic glide. Using 'i' and 'u' but without the diacritic below is misleading IMHO, and should be changed.
 * As for the replacement of - I agree, it's confusing not only because of the thorn cluster, but because one oughts to reconstruct oblique stem  to account for Latin humus and Ancient Greek χαμαί (or just reconstruct a secondary root noun without initial *dʰ). As for the *pént-oh₂-s - well, According to Beekes and Lubotsky, the o-vocalism in the root is primary and the laryngeal in the suffix must be, so it should be , but then the suffix of amphikentic type should also be 'e' which is not what I see in Fortson..hmmm. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:23, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, hmmm. I fear we'll have a hard time finding a typical amphikinetic noun which all relevant PIEists reconstuct the same way. I've replaced it for now, at least we can source it since it's in Fortson. Please replace it if you find something better. I will respond to the y/i issue at Talk:Proto-Indo-European phonology. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 14:40, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I've found stated as amphikinetic, but the abovementioned Beekes/Lubotsky reconstruction is supported by several other authors, and classified as hysterodynamic h₁-stem. Of Wiktionary Appendix pages that can be linked to, there are examples of amphikinetic collectives  and apparently the same is valid for all acrostatic heteroclitic r/n-stems whose collectives become amphikinetic by means of internal derivation (like the collective word for water . Some list amphikinetic agentive nouns in -ter like  claiming that that accent/ablaut alternations have been confused in the daughters, but most classify them as hysterokinetic. Sihler lists word for sheep  but I have no idea where he gets this as that word is usually reconstructed as ablauting acrostatic (more likely as ). The word for dawn  that Fortson lists as amphikinetic is elsewhere reconstructed as oxytone, but it looks fairly reliable to me. Mayrhofer also lists word for "stone" as amphikinetic  Evidence for polysyllabic amphinetic athematic nouns looks really thin indeed. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I hope you don't mind my constant copy-editing your edits. Anyway, thanks for the inclusion of ''prim./sec. derivations''! Do you know any good examples we could include? Especially to illustrate the difference between an ordinary R+S+E noun and a root noun with sec. suffixation? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:33, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Hey, no problem! I'll add a lot more content to the article on PIE nouns soon for you to c/e ^_^. I can't think of any provably PIE secondary noun (and not an adjective that was nominalized in the daughters..) right now that is not reduplicated or a compound, I'll have to look it up somewhere. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:30, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

vuk
Zdravo.

Ajdemo onda prijaviti izvornu stranu (na kojoj je sad redirect) u brzo brisanje. Mogu to uciniti kasnije danas ako je u redu.--VKokielov (talk) 18:33, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Mnijah do to već poodavno učinih za sve preusmjerbe onoga bisera, ali izgleda da zaboravih upariti vitičaste zagrade ! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Sve je vraceno. Hvala ti!  :) --VKokielov (talk) 20:30, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Silesian Dictionary
HI! I've notice your questions about this vocabulary on the LUCPOL's talk page. For me it is the best Silesian dictionary, better even than commercial editions available in the shops. It uses the Steuer's way of writing and can be used in the English Wiktionary without changing (there's no official Silesian alphabet, but this one used in the vocalbulary is promoted by the Society of Promoting and Cultivating the Silesian Speech Pro Loquela Silesiana and there is a plan to switch the Silesian Wikipedia orthography into this one). Timpul my talk 14:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hey, thanks for your comment, it's much appreciated :) --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:45, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Stjepan Horvat
Thanks for saving my crummy first version of Stjepan Horvat from deletion. :) --Thewanderer (talk) 14:57, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No problem ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Palaeo-Balkan substrate in South Slavic
Hi Ivan. Is there an agreement amongst linguists that there is Illyrian, Thracian, etc substrate in modern South Slavic langauges ? Hxseek (talk) 02:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There is undoubtedly some—but in terms of size still very small (e.g. several orders of magnitude less than Romance substratum in Slavicized Dalmatia). There are some South-Slavic only words (i.e. not of Common Slavic lexical stock) that can be found in Romanian and Albanian, e.g. Cr. vatra "fire" : Alb. vatër, Rom. vatră "fireplace", Cr. balega "cattle dung" : Abl. bajgë, balëgë, Rom. baligă, Cr. kelava "type of salted cheese" : Alb. ? [etymon not listed in my dictionary], Cr. kopile "bastard" : Alb. kopil etc.
 * There are many more Romanian-Albanian-only substratum words: Alb. mal "mountain" : Rom. mal "shore", Alb. bukur "nice" : Rom. bucura "become glad", Rom. mălai : Alb. miell "flour", Rom. cătun : Alb. katund "small village", Rom. ţarc : Alb. cark "corral", Rom. ţap : Alb. cjap "buck, he-goat", Rom. şopârlă "lizard" : Alb. shapi, Rom. zgardă "dog collar" : Alb. zgerdhë, Rom. zară : Alb. dhallë "buttermilk", Rom. viezure : Alb. vjedhull "badger", Rom. urdă "type of salted cheese" : Alb. urlë, Rom. sâmbure "fruit pit" : Alb. sumbull', Rom. stână "shepherd hut" : Alb. 'stan, Rom. scrum "ash, slag" : Alb. shkrumb, Rom. rânză "tripe" : Alb. rrënd, Rom. raţă : Alb. rosë "duck", Rom. păstaie : Alb. bishtajë "pod", Rom pupăză : Alb. pupëzë "hoopoe", Rom. oare : Alb. vallë "well", Rom năpârcă : Alb. nepërkë "viper", Rom mânz "colt" : Alb. mëz "foal", Rom. murg : Alb. murgash "dark-coloured", Rom. mugur : Alb. mugull "bud", Rom. mazăre "peas" : Alb. modhull, Rom. laie "black" : Alb. laja, Rom. hămesi "to starve" : Alb. hamës "gluttonous", Rom. grumaz "neck; nape" : Alb. gurmaz "esophagus", Rom. groapă "hole, pit, grave" : Alb. pit, Rom. gresie : Alb. grihë "wheatstone", Rom. grapă "harrow" : Alb. grep "hook", Rom. ghiuj "old man" : Alb. gjysh "grandfather", Rom. ghionoaie "woodpecker" : Alb. gjon "small owl", Rom. ghimpe : Alb. gjemb "thorn", Rom. gheară : Alb. kthetër "claw", Rom. fărâmă : Alb. thërrime "crumb", Rom. fluier : Alb. flojere "flute" !!, Rom. căciulă "fur cap" : Alb. kësulë "hood", Rom. cursă : Alb. kurth "trap", Rom. copac "tree" : Alb. kopaç "tree trunk", Rom. ciută : Alb. sutë "female deer; young girl", Rom. ciut : Alb. shyt "hornless", Rom. cioc : Alb. çukë "beak", Rom. cioară : Alb. sorrë "crow", Rom. caraban "stag-beetle" : Alb. karabishte, Rom. bârsă "part of the plow" : Alb. vërz, Rom. bunget "thicket" : Alb. bunk, Rom. bulz "unboiled lump of cankered cereals" : Alb. bulez, Rom. buc : Alb. byk "chaff", Rom. brâu "girdle; belt"; : Alb. brez "belt", Rom. brad : Alb. bredh "fir", Rom. barză "stork" : Alb. bardhë "white", Rom. abur "steam, vapour" : Alb. avull.
 * There are also at least a dozen words that are borrowings in Romanian and Albanian from Proto-Slavic, but are provably not a substratum words in Slavic, being inherited from PIE/PBSl. or Slavic innovations. There are no certain "Illyrian", "Dacian" etc. borrowings into Proto-Slavic AFAIK; most of them postulated (e.g. by Oleg Trubačev to support his pre-expansion Illyrian-Slavic contact fantasies) are criticised for being far-fetched with ad-hoc explanations and not based on systematic sound correspondences. Same is valid for some alleged Celtic and Iranian borrowings into Proto-Slavic which are mostly a result of someone's imagination to explain doubtful etymons, and are far from being methodologically acceptable to gain wider support amongst linguists.
 * So IMHO it's certain that Slavic has caused dissipation of some Slavic (or indigenous Paleobalkan terms borrowed into Slavic) across Balkans, but was at the same time quite conservative when it comes to adopting the terms for shepherding, animal and nature-related (possibly because it already had them), which is not valid for Romanian and Albanian who appear to be significantly more abundant in them. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:59, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. So you're saying that only a few south Slavic words may have palaeo-Balkan words, although many more afre found in ROmanian and Albanians, although we cannot ascertain whether they entered via Albanian or Romanian. There is obvious support from the influence of Dalmatian on Chakaivian ?

AS far as Germanic loanwords are concerned, the article here on wiki suggests that there has been a long period of loan words from as early as the pre-proto-Slavic period until after 600s, but for some reason no early Germanic borrowings into proto-Baltic ? Why is that ?

User talk:Hxseek|talk]]) 10:14, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Right - there is some evidence for Paleo-Balkan substratum found in South Slavic, that is also shared with Albanian and Romanian, but that layer of substratum words is much bigger in Albanian and Romanian then in South Slavic. The reason for that is perhaps because Slavic already had words for that concepts (mostly shepherding and nature terms as one can see from the above list), or because the Slavic expansion on Balkans happened really fast so no substantial borrowing could've happened.
 * Influence of Dalmatian (there are in fact at least several Dalmatian "languages" discernible) on local Čakavian speeches is really enormous, at least couple of thousand terms can be found in the dictionaries (Ž. Muljačić, V. Vinja etc.). There are specialized dictionaries that deal only with that topic. Only a dozen or so of these terms have entered the Croatian standard language (tunj, jarbol, gira etc.), but local Čakavian speeches are much more abundant in them. My guess is that some day they're likely to enter standard language because there are no other words in Croatian for the specialized concepts they describe. The difference between the adoption of Dalmatian and other Romance words into Čakavian speeches and Paleo-Balkan words into South Slavic is in the fact that Romance and Slavic cultures have co-existed for at least 5-6 centuries after the Slavicization of the littoral that happened in the 6-8th century. That co-existence can be evident from earliest attested written monuments such as Plomin tablet and Valun tablet (more of these soon coming! ^_^), where Slavic and Romance element intermix both in language and religious spheres. OTOH, Illyricum was apparently Slavicized very fast, with no evidence of gradual adaptive aculturation, at least judging from the linguistics evidence (which can be misleading, as the lack of evidence proves nothing). The only abundant linguistic testimony of Illyrian presence on nowadays Slavic area are the toponyms, some of which even have clear Indo-European etymologies (e.g. it has been noted that Slavs usually adopted aboriginal names of rivers that are longer > 50km, otherwise coined their own).
 * Yes, the influence of Germanic (proto-Germanic, Gothic, OHG) is wide and mostly deals with some higher cultural spheres Slavs presumably new nothing of in their homeland outside the reach of written history of the period. "Proto-Baltic" language is not easily reconstructible by methods historical linguistics, most linguistis guess that it never existed (East and West Baltic branches differ very much, and there seems to be no significant isoglosses that connect East and West Baltic languages and that leave Slavic aside; "Proto-Baltic" is thus usually used as a term diachronically synonymous to Proto-Balto-Slavic when e.g. discussing etymons which are attested in Baltic languages but not in Slavic). The absence of Germanic loanwords into Proto-Balto-Slavic is an important indicator because it tells us that during the period of Balto-Slavic dialect continuum there were no contacts with Germanic tribes, hence Proto-Germanic and Proto-Balto-Slavic Urheimat were geographically clearly separated. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

.. but by the time that proto-Slavic had seperated from proto-Balto-Slavic, Germanic loans started occurring ? Hxseek (talk) 03:20, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Separation of a Balto-Slavic dialect ancestral to Proto-Slavic is usually estimated to 1500-1000 BCE. Germanic loanwords make their first appearance in early historical period, say no sooner than 4th century C.E. What is the most amazing thing about Slavic, is that Proto-Slavic has changed 10 times more extensively in the period of 5th-9th century, than it has from 1500 BCE - 500 CE, which still puzzles experts today. All interesting changes (palatalization, monophthongization, accent laws, borrowings) start to occur only when Slavs make their first historical appearance; before that, Proto-Slavic was as archaic as say Lithunian in phonology (Lithuanian is commonly cited as the most archaic living Indo-European language, though there are lots of specific instances when Slavic languages are in fact more archaic, but not in phonology). If you take a closer look at that (incomplete) list of Geramanic LWs into Proto-Slavic at Proto-Slavic borrowings article, you can easily deduce at least a dozen sound laws. Early Proto-Slavic loanwords into Finnic languages (which are incredibly archaic) are still being actively inspected to resolve the exact nature and extent of Proto-Slavic original homeland and spread; most of this problems deal with invalidating the dogmas inherited all the way from 19th century and reinterpreting them in a new framework more satisfactorily. If you have time, take a look at e.g. tone of this paper, from a recent conference dealing with the contacts of Proto-Slavs and Finnic peoples, where author explicitly states frustration with some commonly held "dogmas", as well as with inability of some researchers to change them just because it would radically change some historical accepted "facts". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that Genetic paper. Quite interesting. Should come in useful for Slavic origins section Hxseek (talk) 06:31, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

As for the converse of tha initial discussion. I read that very little of slavic loan words into Romanian, for example, comes from proto-Slavic. But rather it comes from bulgarian and serbo-croatian. Curta sees this as evidence of a later linguistic spread of slavic into the Balkans. Eg 800 AD. What do you reckon ? Hxseek (talk) 04:28, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * There are indeed post-Common-Slavic borrowings in Romanian, but there are also those that look like Common Slavic (Late Proto-Slavic) to me. When there is continuous >1000 years long contact between two separate linguistic zones, like Romance Romanian and neighbouring Slavic dialects, borrowings enter continuously in layers reflecting various stages of the development of the language. I remember reading somewhere that the ancestors of nowadays Romanians lived in the hills and only subsequently settled in the Slavicized valleys pushing back Slavs (and others)—maybe that explains the late arrival of Slavic borrowings? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 04:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Not me changed so much...
...but lucpol. Anyway, his changes were very strange, e.g. he changed the opinion of Gerd Hentschel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.233.19.28 (talk) 01:15, 26 November 2008 (UTC) Just look again. I just removed the extrem change made by lucpol. The version I did is neutral, the version made by lucpol is silesian-pov, with faults (as I said with Gerd Hentschel). First the old version have to be there, and if lucpol will explain his changes, than its okay. but for now, he just made faults (look the source for Gerd Hentschel, which lucpol removed)--85.233.19.28 (talk) 01:26, 26 November 2008 (UTC) What you want to know?? O_o —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.233.19.28 (talk) 10:46, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Removal of votes
Sorry, the bots screwed up. We're ignoring what they come up with now, we think that their Unicode is just screwed. &mdash; neuro(talk) 07:04, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Excuse me, but what exactly are you talking about? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:05, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh I see...nevermind :D --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:06, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Rag. Historian
Ivan, we both apparently got the wrong idea on Rag. Historian. Not only is he perfectly NPOV, I'm also convinced he really is a "Historian". -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 11:52, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Sretan Božić!
LOL thanks! :D --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:21, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

You better watch your language.
Calling someone 'cetnik' (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Serbo-Croatian_language&action=history)

just proves how desparate is your fragile mental state. You'd better watch your primitive language, because you're the one who causes all the problems on wikipedia, placing your marinated nationalistic lies. You constantly argue with many other users on wikipedia, trying to sell your 'theories', that are not supported by anyone normal in the scientific world. With that kind of balkanic attitude, you and your fellows cro-nationalists are just proving how big BALKANIANS you are. Slovenia is right to block your way to Europe, ha, ha, may it do it forever, because you belong to Balkans, not to Europe. Serbia is now much closer to Europe, and will probably enter it before you:)), that's another possible reality, which is killing you. Until you accept the truth and stop spreading your miserable nationalistic propaganda of hatred, separation, marinated lies and evil, the things won't change for you, and you'll push your country's reputation more and more down to the bottom and to further isolation. Think about it on this Christmas season, because there's always a way to correct yourself and your evil past, and accept the right way. Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.86.116.250 (talk) 21:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * LOL, and just before that you called me "Ustasha nationalist" you derranged hypocrite. You have a long (> year) history of placing insultive (beside being just generally plainly retarded) comments on various talk pages, where you call people that dispel your commie Serbophilic myths as "retards", "liers", "spreaders of hatred" etc., of which I've personally removed whole bulk of.
 * Dude, I've told you I don't care what you think either of Croatia's political situation (when it comes to EU, I'm personally 100% against entering that corporative fuckfest, and the Slovenians are just doing us a favour, but the politians are just too stupid to realise that), or of complex issues pervading South Slavic historical linguistics and comparative dialectology your brain is simply incapable of cogitating, being branwashed by Yugo-propaganda. Go write a blog kid, and stay away from my userpage. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:43, 24 December 2008 (UTC)