User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 11

Variable
Your edit "cleaning up" the pronunciations removed them entirely. WTF. --Cyber cobra (talk) 09:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, because that's a simple word that can be found in any dictionary, and isn't counterintuitive. Under WP:not, "WP is not a dictionary", such things are discouraged. We can generally get away with it with personal names, place names, or technical jargon that's unlikely to be found in a dictionary, and it seems to be accepted in cases where the typical reader might pronounce it wrong as well, but not words like this. — kwami (talk) 18:21, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:OUT
Does this outing justify a block? (Taivo (talk) 22:17, 2 May 2010 (UTC))
 * I requested a checkuser from User:Alison because of the similarity in editing to User:Markiyan, who runs this website and has been banned from Wikipedia for soliciting meat puppets. (Taivo (talk) 22:48, 2 May 2010 (UTC))
 * I've deleted those edits from the page history. (Try clicking on the link now.) — kwami (talk) 00:35, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks :))) (Taivo (talk) 00:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC))
 * Indefinitely blocked. Can appeal, but I'll refer the incident to the powers that be for review. — kwami (talk) 00:47, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Template:Zh
As you'd pointed out, simplified characters shouldn't come first by default as a result of this template. Would you want to share your views and ideas at Template talk:Zh? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.237.153.52 (talk) 01:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They've already had sufficient discussion about that. I'll bring it up again if I see it as a problem. If there's a discussion about changing the prefs, drop me a line and I'll weigh in on the side of traditional characters. — kwami (talk) 01:59, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. As far as I read the discussion was almost entirely focussed on the technical side. There was little discussion on whether it was acceptable to set simplified characters as the default preference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.237.153.52 (talk) 11:20, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

IPA
i just can't pronounce this. are you sure it's right?--camr nag 17:01, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, I'm not. I asked at Wikipedia talk:IPA for Spanish what I should do with that one before changing it. Do you have any refs that it's pronounced differently? — kwami (talk) 17:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Geddo

 * Excuse me, I object on that edit, because the pronunciation was written phonemically, not phonetically. In Egyptian Arabic, some people might pronounce as, also,  might be pronounced as . The template you put there replaced // with  []. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 01:18, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I should've used the Arabic IPA template. We use phonetic notation because English speakers cannot be assumed to know Arabic phonology, and without such an understanding, nothing between slashes can be reliably interpreted. Yes, there's dialectical variation, but of course one could argue that your phonemic transcription should be . IMO, we should pick a standard and stick with it, unless we specifically note that we're not following it. (Say, by marking it 'Egyptian Arabic', 'local', or the like.)


 * Anyway, if you wish to change our conventions, it would be best to do that on the IPA page rather than article by article. — kwami (talk) 01:33, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

chaozhouhua=purgd o/en.wt![cwikt:朋友
--pl.note:i&#39;v&#91;&#91;RSI&#93;&#93;&gt;typin=v.v.hard4me!&gt;contactme thruMSNpl.if unclear&#91;sven70=alias (talk) 05:24, 5 May 2010 (UTC) ps wel,stil there[c history pl],i blokd'gen4wot,si


 * You mean where Bequw merged it into Minnan? I think that's s.t. you should take up on the talk page or the wt. forums.
 * Sorry, I don't use MSN. — kwami (talk) 06:34, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * his'merg'=deltn
 * my bp-post=rv'd
 * skyp:sven0921--pl.note:i&#39;v&#91;&#91;RSI&#93;&#93;&gt;typin=v.v.hard4me!&gt;contactme thruMSNpl.if unclear&#91;sven70=alias (talk) 07:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, you could add your text back in under Minnan. But really, this is an issue for Wiktionary. I'm an admin here, but not there. — kwami (talk) 18:55, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Vatnajökull
this page has an IPA issue that someone put in a template, and it's throwing off the layout; I was just about to de-watchlist it in fact, when I noticed this; apparently the IPA has a vowel in it that's just not used in Icelandic (the second 'a') and so, to me, shouldn't be used in English either, given the exotic nature of this name.Skookum1 (talk) 18:58, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I moved the comment to the talk page and notified the editor who wrote it. Take the remaining tag off if it's still an issue; the talk page should cover it. — kwami (talk) 19:34, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Lakh
Congratulations mate, well done! My own contributions are pretty low key these days, but I'm glad people like you are doing your bit to make Wikipedia one of the Wonders of the Internet Age. -- Ngio (talk) 19:09, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks! — kwami (talk) 19:36, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Tags from articles
The tags that you added to that article were completely unnecessary, and are not in most articles, please stop adding them. The pronunciation of the town name is correct. Please stop changing this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcusHookPa (talk • contribs) 00:09, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The pronunciation most certainly is not correct, or if it is, it's unusual enough to require an explanation. If you know what it is, please fix it. But don't just delete tags without resolving the reason for them being there. — kwami (talk) 00:37, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

It is pronounced as it is spelled Chi (with a long I) Chester —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcusHookPa (talk • contribs) 00:45, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

It is not pronounced the same way as it is in England it is spelled the same way, but not pronounced the same way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcusHookPa (talk • contribs) 00:46, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * But where is the stress? Is it really pronounced as if it were two words rather than one? — kwami (talk) 00:50, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The stress is on the first syllable, CHI-ches-ter Please never do this again, you are incorrect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcusHookPa (talk • contribs) 00:48, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, you never do this again. Tags are for questioning questionable things, and this was questionable. Therefore we discuss it. And you've just shown that what you were promoting was incorrect. — kwami (talk) 00:50, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Please stop acting inappropriately. I know how this town name is pronounced and every time you change it, it is different. Every time I change it, I revert it back to the same pronunciation. Please don't go around changing things unless you are absolutely sure that they are true. You also messed up the formatting. I have never seen an article where citation was needed. Please stop this. MarcusHookPa (talk) 00:57, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * where citation was needed for pronunciation. MarcusHookPa (talk) 00:58, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, I did not change it until just now. I asked for confirmation, because I thought it was probably wrong. Now you also say it was wrong. Anyway, if you have a prob w something, take it to the talk page. That's what talk pages are for.


 * You're right. I shouldn't change things unless I know they are true. I only have your word for the current pronunciation. Since you just reverted to a pronunciation you say is wrong, I'll explain what it means, and restore the 'dubious' tag. — kwami (talk) 01:03, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

This is not dubious, nor will it ever be. Words are pronounced differently in the United States than they are in England This town name has the American Pronunciation, not the English Pronunciation —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcusHookPa (talk • contribs) 01:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, you apparently don't understand how a dictionary transcribes the pronunciation of a word. No-one is talking about US vs UK. — kwami (talk) 02:59, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, i am becoming extremely impatient with your actions. I know how the town name is pronounced, please stop doing this —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcusHookPa (talk • contribs) 03:19, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sure you do. But you don't know how to transcribe it. That's the problem here. — kwami (talk) 03:23, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

/ˈtʃaɪ ˈtʃɛs.tər/ is the correct pronunciation I am going to revert it back to that now, thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarcusHookPa (talk • contribs) 03:21, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Then I will ask to have you blocked for disruption. — kwami (talk) 03:23, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

both syllables are stressed, the first and the second, that is the way it is pronounced, the first is just stressed more than the second. I hope never to discuss further on this issue. Please never edit the pronunciation of this town's article again. Thank You MarcusHookPa (talk) 03:23, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Again, that is not what you transcribed. — kwami (talk) 03:25, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Just so that you know, you were the subject of a discussion at my talk page. Best, Knepflerle (talk) 14:44, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for my actions, but my pronunciation is correct. I do not appreciate threats from Wikipedia users who are not involved in this issue. The Pronunciation has stress on the first two syllables. I would kindly ask that you change it back to the original pronunciation. I do not wish to continue in this edit war. Thank You MarcusHookPa (talk) 18:54, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Then don't continue it: Take it to the talk page. At issue is not whether your pronunciation is correct, but what your pronunciation is. You've contradicted yourself, and so have confused us. Is the primary stress on the 1st syllable, or on the 2nd? It's highly dubious that it's on both, as if it were chai chester, and IMO such a bizarre (almost un-English) pronunciation would need a citation. — kwami (talk) 19:02, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I was confused by what you were saying. BOTH the first and second syllables are stressed. I am sorry for confusing you, please revert the pronunciation back to the way it was originally ˈtʃaɪˈtʃɛs.tər or CHI-CHES-ter I am sorry for confusing you and contradicting myself, but there was no need to report me over this small issue. Please change it back. The pronunciation that I put was correct. I apologize, but yours was incorrect. MarcusHookPa (talk) 20:17, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not reporting you, since you've stopped the reverts. I also have no doubt that you pronounce it correctly. But I am very doubtful that the two stresses you write accurately reflect the way you pronounce it, so if we revert it, the 'dubious' tags will go back until we can settle this to everyone's satisfaction.


 * My earlier impression was that Chichester has the same stress pattern as step-sister, which we would transcribe with a stress mark on the first syllable only. If that's not correct, can you give me a word in English that has that same double stress as you have on Chichester?


 * Here are the possible stress patters for two full vowels and a schwa (which isn't disputed):
 * Stress on first syllable, as in step-sister and trifecta (and di-ester, if you're into chemistry).
 * Stress on second syllable, as in digester (if you pronounce the i as "eye") and diaster.
 * 2ary stress on first and 1ary on second, as in north-wester and good dresser (that is, like two words). — kwami (talk) 21:24, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Removal of syllable separators
[I've restored this thread from last month's archive so I could continue it]

Why did you remove the syllable separators from /ˈwɛlɪŋtən/ yesterday? You forgot to leave an explanation in the edit summary. Ben Arnold (talk) 08:29, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Please follow the link. The convention is to only mark them when there might be some confusion. — kwami (talk) 14:27, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That makes sense, but what link are you talking about? The link in your edit summary took me to a page about the tool you used to do the editing. It didn't seem to mention a practice about syllable separators. Ben Arnold (talk) 01:07, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry. I meant the link in the transcription itself. That takes you to WP:IPA for English, which explains our conventions. It was decided early to avoid marking syllables unnecessarily, as there have been heated debates over where they should go. We didn't want that sparking edit wars, as it already had. For instance, with Wellington: although I agree that it is syllabified, I had some very unfriendly debates with an otherwise good editor who would have insisted that it's , as he believes that English is phonemically 'CV.CV, not 'CVC.V. And while you and I would probably syllabify mattress as , John Wells proposes that it's actually — kwami (talk) 01:18, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Mattr-ess? That's just weird. But yeah I can see how syllablification could spark edit wars in a lot of more marginal cases. Thanks for the background. Ben Arnold (talk) 00:39, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * His argument is basically that /tr/ and /dr/ behave as affricates, and therefore that in a CVC.V pattern they form the syllable coda. They strike me as more ambiguous than that. But he does make a good case against ambisyllabicity. — kwami (talk) 02:03, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't it then be ? :-) --Curtis Clark (talk) 14:08, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, when a consonant falls between vowels, and the preceding vowel is stressed, it becomes a coda to the preceding syllable. (I forget what happens w unstressed syllables.) You can read about it here. — kwami (talk) 19:28, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Dieterich Buxtehude
You cared about the pronounciation of the German-Danish composer. To my knowledge the vowel in Bux is a clear "u" in German as in Danish - I don't know the one shown now. Hard to write about, speaking would be easier ... --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:29, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. It would help if you could give a German word with the same u sound. I am asking people to review my edits, as my German is atrocious non-existent, but they may not know this name as well as you do. — kwami (talk) 22:31, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The vowel in the syllable Bux is the same as the vowel in "Buckel" or "Kuss", which we transcribe . +Angr 23:10, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Battle of Gettysburg
Hi. On April 26, you modified the IPA for Gettysburg and I am having difficulty understanding the third IPA character you used. It looks like the "Flapped R" character, but that portion of the word should have a T sound. Can you clarify? Thanks. Hal Jespersen (talk) 15:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That was my impression of what the "" (instead of a [t]) was supposed to be for the local pronunciation. And the sound file has a flap, which is normal for much of the US. There's no [t] in the sound file, but we can make it more standard/international if you like. — kwami (talk) 15:55, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry to say that you have me completely confused. Most Americans would pronounce it GET-ease-burg (like "at ease"), but the sound file (recorded by me) is attempting to show that the local pronunciation is GETTIS-burg (like lettuce). Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:24, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * "Lettuce" doesn't have a [t] sound in it as pronounced by most Americans. Instead, there's a flap, which a lot people hear as a [d]. "Latter" and "ladder" sound the same for most Americans, for example. If you use a [t], you sound British. How bout we transcribe it to rhyme with "lettuce-berg", but use the normal English IPA conventions? (locally, with an ss sound) — kwami (talk) 16:40, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

This shows how American-centric I am. :-) I'm not sure the "with an ss sound" you added is needed, but I think it's OK now. Thanks, Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:52, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I find a lot of errors where people use /s/ because of how a word is spelled, when they should have /z/, and this clarifies that it's intended here. More importantly, it's IMO the most salient unexpected bit, and since probably the majority of Usonians can't read IPA, this helps them out. — kwami (talk) 16:56, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

moribund
Ping User_talk:Rursus. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 19:28, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Moin
What's the base of this edit? The word rhymes with the English word coin, so why the ʏ? --:Slomox:: &gt;&lt; 21:15, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * German doesn't have an [ɔɪ]. Or at least the way we're transcribing it is [ɔʏ] (there's not a lot of difference), and that's the only transcription explained by the IPA key we've linked it to. Best to stick to a single convention for all the articles. You can suggest we change on the IPA-for-German talk page if you like, and from there we could change all the articles to match. — kwami (talk) 21:18, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * de:wikt:Freude tells me German has [ɔɪ]. And I have never heard a German word that has [ɔʏ]. [ʏ] is ü as in Müll and oü does not occur in German. --:Slomox:: &gt;&lt; 21:31, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary is using a different convention. The dictionary I have uses <ɔʏ>. It doesn't really matter which we use, as long as we stick to one; currently, every single article on Wikipedia that links to the IPA key uses <ɔʏ>. That's why I changed Moin. If you think that <ɔɪ> would be better (it's certainly more familiar to English speakers), you could suggest it on the talk page. — kwami (talk) 21:39, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Joe the Plumber
You reverted my editing of the pronunciation key in that article. However, the English R sounds nothing like an alveolar trill (according to that article, it's only present in the Scottish accent). The English R is most frequently an approximant. Missionary (talk) 05:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the phoneme is generally not the sound, though as you note that depends on the dialect of the speaker. For the phoneme, we can choose any symbol that we want, and "r" is customary for English. (This is a distinction of /slashes/ vs [brackets].) On Wikipedia, we have defined  to be the sound that the reader has in "rye, try, very", which for most of us is an approximant. No trill is implied. Please read the key linked from the transcription. — kwami (talk) 06:04, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks for the explanation. You probably get asked this multiple times... I think the coincidence may puzzle some users (those most familiar with the IPA), but it truly is more convenient for the editor and the average reader. best regards, Missionary (talk) 02:56, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, same thing again a couple threads down. There are good arguments on both sides; for me the issue is mostly what is most legible to the reader. — kwami (talk) 04:29, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Swedish accent types
I was wrong, there are 5 Swedish typologies, and there is a fat book in my bookshelf containing it, More about the stress/tone in the Swedish accent: Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 06:59, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * the original typology document I belive cannot be found on the net, but it is: "Toward a Prosodic Typology for Swedish Dialects", Eva Gårding, University of Lund, 1973, published in the research collection "The Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics 2", edited by Karl-Hampus Dahlstedt, ISBN 91-22 0003 8
 * http://speechprosody2010.illinois.edu/papers/100050.pdf, (first page exhibits the "five" types)
 * http://www.lub.lu.se/luft/diss/hum_232/hum_232.pdf, (page 19)
 * I'm using 2B, mom 2A. Norwegian Bokmål seem to use pattern 2B. Rursus dixit.
 * And while I'm at it: with this grand tone variation, the tone cannot be primary for determining accent in Swedish, as said before it is a stress accented language, otherwise Swedes wouldn't be unhindered to take part of the international music culture. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 07:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll look at them, but I don't get the connection between stress and music. — kwami (talk) 08:34, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * None. Tone and music. Rursus dixit. ( m bork3 !) 11:48, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Munich
Kingjeff (talk) 15:18, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Kinyarwanda
I see how you are using the format of "X language" for language articles and seeing as the (i)ki- prefix is a language marker in Kinyarwanda, you are simply calling it Rwanda language, but i would like to point out that this is inconsistent with the article on Lingala. In Lingala, the li- serves the same purpose as (i)ki- in Kinyarwanda, and so if you follow your standard model, it should be moved to Ngala language. I personally am not in favour of this model, however, as the Kinyarwanda language is almost never referred to as "Rwanda language", but almost universally Kinyarwanda and sometimes Ikinyarwanda. Incidentally, in Kinyarwanda, one can say ururimi rw'ikinyarwanda, which means 'language of ikinyarwanda'. 128.220.6.42 (talk) 23:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have never seen Lingala called 'Ngala' in English. 'Lingala' would seem to be ubiquitous. I think most people are simply unaware that the Li is a prefix, and calling it "Ngala language" would make a familiar language unrecognizable. 'Rwanda', on the other hand, is fairly common - in the 'Rwanda-Rundi languages', for example, and by itself - and in addition is homonymous with the country name, making it even more recognizable. Ethnologue has made the same decision, 'Rwanda' but 'Lingala'. Generally the consensus with language names on WP is to go with the translated form if both are used, and only use the native form if there is some overriding reason, as in Ki/Tshi-Luba and Ki/U-Mbundu. There was a huge debate over 'Swahili' vs 'Kiswahili', and the 'Swahili' form won out. — kwami (talk) 23:25, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * My experience has shown that the title "Rwanda language" is totally unheard of among Rwandans or anybody who focuses on Rwanda in particular, these people invariably opting for Kinyarwanda. The use of "Rwanda language" seems strictly limited to researchers who look at Bantu languages as a larger group but do not specialise in Kinyarwanda.  Furthermore, the Rwandan government has always used in every official capacity the name Kinyarwanda for the language in texts of English and French alike.  In newspapers, and in popular language, it also exists almost exclusively as Kinyarwanda, much unlike Kiswahili which is really variable.  Nonetheless, i find it highly unbalanced to list Lingala with its prefix while not listing others in this way.  The name 'Ngala language' seems only as much a perversion as does 'Rwanda language'.  Is it really any less well known that li- in Lingala is a prefix than that tshi- in Tshiluba is a prefix ? 67.249.151.148 (talk) 22:13, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have a feeling that a lot of the NW langs retain their prefixes. But we have the following pairs: Lingala-Bangala (the latter the lingua franca, not the people), Kiluba-Tshiluba, Umbundu-Kimbundu. One could argue against the prefixes even there, but since they're performing a function, I left them alone. — kwami (talk) 22:38, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

IPA

 * {{Audio IPA too and some interwikis include IPA characters . I am looking at the following list:
 * ɐɑɒɓɔɕɖɗɘəɚɛɜɝɞɟɠɡɢɣɤɥɦɧɨɩɪɫɬɭɮɯɰɱɲɳɴɵɶɷɸɹɺɻɼɽɾɿʀʁʂʃʄʅʆʇʈʉʊʋʌʍʎʏʐʑʒʓʔʕʖʗʘʙʚʛʜʝʞʟʠʡʢʣʤʥʦʧʨʩʪʫʬʭʮ
 * Rich Farmbrough, 08:24, 14 May 2010 (UTC).
 * Preliminary list User:Rich Farmbrough/temp14 will remove all with references to "Azer".  Based on dump form 12 March. Rich Farmbrough, 09:00, 14 May 2010 (UTC).
 * Incidentally Azeri text should be enclosed in {{Lang|az|... Rich Farmbrough, 09:03, 14 May 2010 (UTC).

Yes, work on that then we can look at something smarter if they get database dumps working again. Rich Farmbrough, 10:45, 14 May 2010 (UTC).

Zotero
Good catch on the diphthongs, but I've seen inconsistency about syllable separation in previous entries so I decided to not separate it at all. What gives about [r]? I know that it's done for convenience, but I think we really think we should stick to [r] as the transcription for alveolar trill and not use it not alveolar approximant. Tenza (talk) 22:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It was decided years ago to stick with . Partially because it's more common than <ɹ>, but also because that's one fewer odd symbol that readers need to memorize. (For similar reasons, we decided on /oʊ/ for that diphthong, as more easily associated with English spelling than /əʊ/.)
 * Yes, we normally don't mark syllable boundaries, largely because people get into arguments as to where they are, unless leaving them out would make e.g. a vowel sequence difficult to read. — kwami (talk) 22:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Jembana, Celtomania and Palaeo-Iberian Languages
At first I assumed good faith on the part of this Jembana character because he's new to Wikipedia. But now it looks as if he's a totally obsessed J T Koch/Atlantic Celt fanboy who can't quite get his head round the notion of NPOV. Koch's theories on Tartessian being Celtic came to light a couple of years ago, and although he's reasonably well respected as a Celticist, the theory of origins in Spain and Portugal rather than with the Hallstatt culture and classification of Tartessian as Celtic, would be classified as fringe. While the idea of Lusitanian being Celtic isn't popular now, I'm less sure if it's fair to call that fringe... I've just had to revert a load of changes Jembana has made to the Lusitanian language page, which turned it into pure advocacy of his pet theory. Would if be fair to add this to the Fringe Theories list in your opinion? Paul S (talk) 20:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not qualified to judge. If it hasn't received any attention, then we can remove it per our WP:RS policies. Anything directly from Koch can be removed, for example, if it hasn't been peer reviewed. If it has received attention, then we can report on that; if everyone pans it as ridiculous, then we can just remove it per WP:Undue. But yeah, meanwhile balance is important: the generally accepted positions first, and alternates clearly presented as alternates.


 * Oh, and their ref for one of those (Luc. or Tar., I forget which) denies that the other is Celtic. — kwami (talk) 22:23, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Sarawak pronounced with a glottal stop is no mistake, Kwami
I am a Malaysian Wikipedian participating in WikiProject Malaysia.

Recently I noticed you made an IPA cleanup using AWB to Sarawak. I would like to point out that in the Malay language, all words ending with a 'K' are pronounced with a glottal stop. So changing the IPA consonant from ʔ to k clearly states that you don't speak Malay.

I have reverted your edit. In future, please do consult a native speaker of a certain language before making IPA changes (you can check from the history or talk page). Making IPA changes without knowledge of that language is an irresponsible and disrespectful act. Thank You. --CoolCityCat (talk) 09:05, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, I do speak Malay. Or at least I used to. But that wasn't Malay, it was English. Or at least it was formatted and labeled as English.
 * If you check the IPA template you used, you'll see that it was designed for English, is labeled for English, and links to a key for English. AFAIK we do not yet have a similar key for Malay, but you can use {{IPA-all for that. But please label your transcription as 'Malay', because the expectation on English WP is that pronunciations are given in English.
 * Also, you might want to check Malay language and follow the IPA conventions used there, because neither of your transcriptions (which disagreed with each other) matched the Malay language very well. At least not the standard language, which for example does not have long vowels. — kwami (talk) 09:20, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Egyptian Arabic

 * Hi Kwamikagami! Thanks for the cleaning. I wanted to notify you that Egyptian Arabic is different from Modern Standard Arabic. That's why it is not correct to redirect the IPA notation of Egyptian Arabic to the page of Modern Standard Arabic, thanks. I'll redirect the IPA notations to the general IPA page. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 16:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right, my bad! — kwami (talk) 19:58, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

can you check one please? :)
Hi, sorry to bother you - someone added a non-standard one to Mandurah, Western Australia so I changed it to IPA. Can you check that I've got it right? This Youtube video (a government one) has it pronounced - there's a very subtle ə after the "j" sound in the correct pronunciation, which is skipped entirely by less educated speakers. Orderinchaos 11:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, my ear is not that attuned to Strine! I wouldn't be able to distinguish that from . I'll take your word for the vowels. However, I'm philosophically opposed to the concept of 'correct' pronunciations. If locals pronounce it as two syllables, then in my book that's 'correct', so I would transcribe both. (I'd only call it incorrect, or at least foreign, if locals don't say it that way.) Also, the last syllable isn't stressed; the 2ary stress mark seen on final syllables in some dictionaries is just their way of indicating that the vowel isn't reduced.


 * As for whether it's or, can you think of any word that it rhymes with? — kwami (talk) 22:24, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * To answer this (as I didn't know myself) I consulted with a bunch of my Perth friends, and we found we agreed on some things and disagreed on others - it's not the same consonant sound as "Manildra", "children" or "tundra", its definitely a dʒ and sounds exactly the same as the start of another town, Manjimup - but what exactly comes after the consonant varies by speaker. Someone checked and our "This train goes from Perth to Mandurah" overhead train announcement clearly says "dʒʊrɑː" (almost rhyming with our pronunciation of "conjuror", but with a definite "a" at the end) so if there is an official pronunciation, that's probably it. But no-one I know pronounces it so precisely - it can be any of "dʒrə" (-jruh), "dʒrɑː" (-jrah) or "dʒərɑː" (-j-rah). I realise I'm probably murdering IPA with these estimations but it should give you some idea :) (I should note it is a general perception held by many Australians that us WA people with our beachside/barbecue outdoor culture talk a bit slack, which is probably the culprit here.) Orderinchaos 21:03, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'll add the two ends of the range. Hopefully that will be enough to cover it.
 * Your IPA is fine. The only diff is that we have a specific symbol for that sometimes-u, sometimes-schwa sound. — kwami (talk) 00:54, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks once again! :) Orderinchaos 01:22, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

While you are checking pronunciation of Australian towns, someone has added a non-standard transcription of Breadalbane, New South Wales. Could you be so kind as to take a look at it please. -- Mattinbgn\talk 09:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Language families (Ethnologue) listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Language families (Ethnologue). Since you had some involvement with the Language families (Ethnologue) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion (if you have not already done so). Bridgeplayer (talk) 14:20, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks! — kwami (talk) 17:32, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

New Orleans
Actually, the pronunciation /nju:/ is practically unheard in North America, including in New Orleans (viz., e.g., this), ... but I digress... :-p Tomertalk 18:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Which is why we transcribe the local pronunciation . — kwami (talk) 18:11, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Basque pronunciations: Bidasoa
Hi Kwamikagami, I see you're doing fixes to pronunciation in Basque culture and geography related articles, which are most welcome. As it turns out, after your amendments some letters don't show properly in my computer at least (e.g. Donostia/San Sebastián article). Other IPA related issues include the way typical Basque sounds are given in IPA for articles in English (English IPA?), e.g. the d, b, g between vowels, and sibilants (s, z, x, ts, tz, ts). Regards! Iñaki LL (talk) 12:05, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi again, so this time was about your tags in the article Bidasoa (dubious..., citation needed). What is it about exactly? Iñaki LL (talk) 12:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Responded at Bidasoa. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:29, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you serious???
Are you serious ? Man, have you ever been living in Croatia? You think that that's not an insult for Croats and that that name doesn't carry negative conotations for Croats? Maybe you or your family wasn't persecuted and imprisoned for opposing to so-called Serbo-Croatian. Permanent reverting is not the solution. We have to seriously discuss and solve this. Budući da se smatraš autoritetom za područje hrvatskog jezika, onda moraš znati govoriti i pisati taj jezik, njegovu povijest te političke progone i pokušaje zatiranja hrvatskog jezika, pa možeš razgovarati sa mnom na hrvatskom jeziku. Kad si već toliki stručnjak za hrvatski, moraš ga i znati. Znaš li kad se prvi put spominje ime hrvatskog jezika i u kojem obliku? Tko je otac hrvatske književnosti? Kako se hrvatski jezik zvao kroz povijest? Znaš li na kojem su jeziku pisali AVNOJ-eve dokumente? Koje se jezike izričito navelo da se na njima mora pisati AVNOJ-eve dokumente? Znaš li zašto su hrvatski kulturni djelatnici donijeli Deklaraciju o Deklaracija o nazivu i položaju hrvatskog književnog jezika? Znaš li kakvim su pritiscima bili izloženi ti ljudi od strane vlastiju? Je li ti poznato hrvatsko jezikoslovno nazivlje? Znaš li kad je i zašto je uvedena nagrada dr Ivan Šreter i zašto ta nagrada nosi to ime? Kubura (talk) 03:06, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry if your family was persecuted over some state-sponsored idiocy. But that's irrelevant to an encyclopedia. The name is not controversial in English, and does not carry negative connotations for linguists, so your edit is factually incorrect. We can't cater to the sensitivities of Macedonians, Greeks, Turks, Croats, Albanians, Israelis, Palestinians, Taiwanese, Tibetans, Chinese, or anyone else, because there's no end to it. — kwami (talk) 05:47, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Kwami, I hope we're getting somewhere. Can you give me the answer on the questions I gave you above? Thank you in advance, Kubura (talk) 03:29, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No, I don't know the answers to most of them. And I'm certainly not going to answer you in Croatian! (You'll notice from my user page it's not one of the languages I speak.) But they're sociolinguistic questions, and have no bearing on the matter at hand. Also, your argument that only experts in Croatian can contribute is what we call a "walled garden", and that's not how things are done. Of course, expertise it best, but it's clear from the very amateur state of the article that it was not written by experts. We need citations from reliable sources. Your claim that Croatian is not dialectologically a subset of SC is so ridiculous on the face of it that you would need quite a bit of linguistic support to convince me. Forget the socio-linguistics: no one is arguing that; we all know that sociolinguistically SC is all but extinct. Convince me with dialectological linguistics that Croatian and Serbian are as different from each other as they are from Slovenian, that they bear no special relationship apart from Slovenian. So far no-one has presented those arguments. — kwami (talk) 04:08, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Need help
Hey, I need a help here, it seems a member that have argued for a move in Gan Chinese have been randomly changing all the Jiangxi related articles without any or reliable sources. He kept on reverting my reverts, such as, ,  --LLTimes (talk) 23:15, 26 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Mr LLTimes did the same to me.
 * As for the message you left on my talk page, I've already accepted the advice of LLTimes that I should write more articles before transforming Template:Jiangxi. So I won't touch it for some time though it really has an extremely similar template.
 * Then I beg you to point out what exactly "bad" links I offered since the beginning. To the contrary, that guy reverted my contributions for 6 times till now without giving any legitimate reasons, I ought to be the person who shall complain at first. And I don't know why the paragraph about Jiangxi's history has been holden back and the map was changed to China Jiangxi.svg instead of a global vision of Jiangxi's location. -- Symane  TALK  00:01, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * LLTimes, I don't see where Symane has been "randomly changing all the Jiangxi related articles". I only see changes to Jiangxi itself and to the Jiangxi template. Either you're referring to edits he made over a week ago, or it would seem you're exaggerating.
 * Symane, by a "bad" link I mean one that doesn't go anywhere: a red link is nonfunctional, and therefore bad in the sense that it's broken: it doesn't do what a link is supposed to do.
 * As for the map, I rather like yours. But that's a matter of opinion, not of fact. As for the history paragraph, I haven't read it, and I don't know Jiangxi history to judge in any case. As for the templates, I wouldn't think we'd want templates that duplicate each other, and that they would normally either be merged, or have duplicated material deleted from one of them. But if they're never used on the same page, it might not matter too much. Anyway, this is a discussion for the article's talk page, not mine. — kwami (talk) 00:07, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm totally aware that it's your talk page here, however, I think I should rather talk to you directly since you're the administrator who protected Jiangxi and reverted some of my edits.
 * As for the article, I insist changing the map back to File:Kongse location.png because File:China Jiangxi.svg is completely duplicated with File:Location of Nanchang within Jiangxi.jpg where Jiangxi's location in China is already explicit. Yet File:Kongse location.png with a global vision, enables everyone to locate Jiangxi straightly at the first sight if he might not know much about China.
 * There're mainly two parts of my edits that are reverted. One is the description of Ganzhou and the local Hakka people whose major population inhabit in Jiangxi. The other one is the history part, which presents multi-cultural features of Jiangxi. Thus I consider these two paragraphs extremely relevant to the head page of Jiangxi, I demand to restore them as soon as possible.
 * Then I proposed a version of Template:Jiangxi as the one on my user page. I approve there're many red links, but if we take a look at some templates such as Template:Driving licences in Africa, we'll see red links are also abundant. So I still wish keep back my version since the current Template:Jiangxi is also a duplicated one with Template:County-level divisions of Jiangxi. Regards. Symane   TALK  08:40, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to make these decisions. You need to come to an agreement on the talk page. You can request outside opinions if you like. (WP:third) Also, I didn't revert anything, I only protected the article under dispute.
 * Words like "insist" and "demand" are counter-productive. Nobody cares what you "demand", and are likely to oppose you for sounding arrogant. All they're going to care about is you providing convincing evidence for your claims. The question on the culture paragraph is not whether it's relevant, but whether it's accurate. You have not convinced people that it is. — kwami (talk) 09:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for correcting me the choice of words, I'll keep it in mind. Then I'll turn to talk page to look for an agreement. Thanks. -- Symane  TALK  09:51, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's easy to give the wrong impression on talk pages. I wonder how many arguments are sparked by misunderstandings like that, and would never happen if the people were face to face?
 * If you aren't getting anywhere, ask me again and I'll see what I can do. However, my impression of LLTimes is that he's a good editor. If he thinks that your references are not up to par, or that a paragraph is unbalanced, there's a good chance that other editors will agree with him. Of course, in matters of opinion, such as which map is better, or whether a template is redundant, there is no one 'right' answer; one should, however, consider whether other articles use similar maps, and if they do, whether the scope of the discussion might better be the entire category of articles (all Chinese provinces, etc.) rather than just the one being debated. — kwami (talk) 10:01, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi, me again. After days-long exhausting discussion, I think most debates that could be resolved are resolved. I don't think evil of anyone here, but LLTimes is probably a China-unificationist in my impression. So I turn to you once again to confirm whether or not some kind of dictatorial format is really imposed on all so-called "similar" pages on English Wikipedia. Personally, this kind of format only serves to give an example, an advice for articles to my knowledge. Thanks.-- Symane  TALK  07:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * In my personal opinion, they should be, and therefore a change in the map should be done for all Chinese provinces. It just looks more professional, and makes it easier to compare one province with another. That's even though I would prefer a global-scale map. But if you want to request a third opinion, please feel free; there are other suggestions on where you can take this at WP:Dispute. You can also bring it up at WikiProject_China; depending on how active that group is, you might get some good feedback. — kwami (talk) 07:46, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I made a request here, as I sincerely think every article works independently. And it's the same case for Gan language, I'm not engaged in modifying all Chinese articles which are also out of my concern, I just try to correct Jiangxi-related pages while I'm often asked to spread my point into a broader scale. -- Symane  TALK  09:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Sint Eustatius
You have twice now removed information from this article, once before it was sourced, and once after I provided a source, with the comment that you didn't care if it was sourced or not, it was wrong. Please be aware that removal of sourced information is not allowed, unless you have an alternate and better source to support your claim. If your claim is based on your own experiences, that is original research and is not allowed. (As an editor with almost 100,000 edits, you certainly know all this.) The source in this case is a book by an established historian, Barbara W. Ruchman, First Salute, which takes as its starting point the "First Salute" given to an American ship by the governor of Sint Eustatius during the American revolution. This is an impeccably reliably source. Please no not revert this information again unless you have a better source to offer. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:21, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * First of all, I removed nothing. I tagged a dubious claim as dubious, and you removed the tag without discussion. Your behaviour is inappropriate.
 * Secondly, I seriously doubt that the name "Statius" is pronounced as if it were spelled "Eustus". I would appreciate an actual quote from the source supporting that remarkable claim. — kwami (talk) 05:13, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Your comment on my behavior is bullshit, and you know it. You tagged it as dubious, and I provided a source, and you deleted again nonetheless. Here is the actual quote from the source (p.14): "His [de Graff's] domain -- little Eustatius, or Statia, as it was familarially called in the region...'" If you revert again, I will report you for a 3rr violation.  It's your choice. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:27, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, it looks as if Kww has cut to the core of the matter - is it the IPA pronunciation you're objecting to? I totally ignored it, I don't "read" IPA and I don't therefore pay attention to it.  I trust this settles the matter? Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:36, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It's the pronunciation that I tagged as 'dubious', and it's the pronunciation that I said was dubious on this page and on the talk page. I'm curious as to what it is you think I deleted, since I only added material -- do you even read the stuff you edit? — kwami (talk) 05:40, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps, my dear friend, you should be more specific about what it is you find "dubious", through -- let's say -- a comment on the article talk page, rather then waiting to explain after two reversion cycles?  Despite our mututal dedication to the project, I cannot (unfortunately) read your mind, so I rely on you to explain your meaning in a way that's transparent to all, including ignorant peons such as myself, who can't read IPA and, frankly, don't give a shit about it.  Your "dubous" tag appeared to me, non-IPA-reading ignoramus that I am, to be calling into question the nickname "Statia", which is why I reverted.  If I was wrong, as appears to be the case, then I apologize. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:52, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. (And as for ignorance, I'm completely ignorant of St. Eustatius.) What I was responding to, though, were accusations that I was "deleting" material. You didn't object to the tag. — kwami (talk) 06:06, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Frankly, if I said "deletion", it was a mistake. It was the tag that was the problem, in that I thought it was referring to the nickname.  I'm glad to offer my hand in apology, if you will accept it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:09, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course. I was reading you too literally, and it was unclear what I was tagging. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I could've simply deleted the IPA, but I was hoping that by tagging it someone would correct it. — kwami (talk) 06:13, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. May I say, as an aside, that this is hardly the first time in my 25+ years online that I've been tripped up by the relative lack of sophistication of online intercourse for really establishing communications between two people? It's so easy to misunderstand (especially, I find, here on Wikipedia, where many editors are new, and more ethusiastic than they are transparent), and so hard to establish exactly what it is one means to say. Scholars really should examaine online conversations for clues to determining in what ways words (absent facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice) are deficient in establishing meaning. In any case, I hope this incident is over, and we can meet again, if we do, as compatriots. Beyond My Ken (talk) 06:25, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

List of adjectivals and demonyms of astronomical bodies
I appreciate your work on List of adjectivals and demonyms of astronomical bodies. Congratulations! -- Wavelength (talk) 19:31, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * If you know of any more, or have refs from astronomical sources, please join in! — kwami (talk) 21:43, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * We could add generic words such as "planet" and "planetary"; "star" and "stellar"; "galaxy" and "galactic"; "universe" and "cosmic"; "comet" and "cometary"; "nebula" and "nebular"; "quasar" and "?"; "pulsar" and "?"; "asteroid" and "?" (I heard the word "cometary" a few days ago on the radio). Generic entries could be together in a separate section, or individually at the beginning of their respective sections.
 * For specific galaxies, the most likely candidate seems to be "Andromeda", which is also the name of a constellation. In both cases, the adjective might be "Andromedan".  The adjective for "Magellanic cloud" might be simply "Magellanic" in a new section called "Miscellaneous bodies".  For specific stars, galaxies, comets, and asteroids, I have not found any examples with adjectives.  Unfortunately, I do not have references at this time.
 * You might be able to find help from editors at WikiProject Astronomy. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:23, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Here are some links which might be helpful.
 * http://www.academicinfo.net/table.html (10 "Astronomy ..." listings)
 * http://www.awesomelibrary.org/Classroom/Science/Astronomy/Astronomy.html::
 * http://www.deweybrowse.org/astronomy.htm
 * http://www.ipl.org/IPLBrowse/GetSubject?vid=13&cid=1&tid=7116&parent=7115
 * http://www.intute.ac.uk/astronomy/
 * http://www.virtuallrc.com/astronomy.html
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 22:55, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I'll take a look. — kwami (talk) 23:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have added two categories, but by transclusion they appear also on List of adjectival and demonymic forms of place names.
 * Is there a solution that does not involve removing them? -- Wavelength (talk) 02:52, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, you can separate them with an 'include only' tag or something. I forget exactly. Commonly used in templates. I'll have to look it up. — kwami (talk) 02:59, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have left a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy, inviting contributions. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:13, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks! — kwami (talk) 05:49, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Here is a link to a website which needs improvement: Google Sets. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:41, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * [I am inserting the underlined words to make my 20:41 comment accurate. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:33, 3 June 2010 (UTC)]

List of languages by name: A and so forth
I find value in the articles List of languages by name: A and so forth. If you click on "history" and then on "Page view statistics", you can see how many times they have been visited in May 2010. Please check before the month ends; otherwise, you can edit the date in the address bar. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:31, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * What in the world do you use them for? But you're right, they do appear to be fairly frequently viewed. Can we set out some criteria for them though? All langs with an ISO3 code, maybe? And on the main page ISO2-code langs? — kwami (talk) 21:47, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I find value in them, in that I could search through the list systematically from A to Z. Although I have not yet done that with those particular pages, I have searched through other lists systematically.  Also, there is the added advantage that they are annotated with language-family information, something not available in a category.  One criterion which I propose is that we include any language which Ethnologue includes.  The list can be made into a sortable wikitable, with columns for "Language", "Language code(s)", "Language family", "Script", "Script code", "Major countries", and "Number of speakers". -- Wavelength (talk) 22:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Duplicating the entirety of Ethnologue, in list format, seems to me to be a fruitless effort, not to mention a violation of a couple of sections of WP:NOT (at least, in spirit, and IMO). Ethnologue allows you to search by language family, doesn't it? And we're already going to be having a list of ISO codes. I'm not sure there's any added benefit to having such a long list like that on Wikipedia. (Of course, if I wind up being in the minority on that, then I concur with Kwami's criteria for inclusion.) &mdash;Gordon P. Hemsley&rarr; &#x2709;


 * The pattern for inclusion could follow the example of the following set of four lists.
 * Vital articles/Level/1 (10 articles)
 * Vital articles/Level/2 (100 articles)
 * Vital articles (1000 articles)
 * Vital articles/Expanded (potentially 10,000 articles)
 * Thus, we might have the following set of four lists.
 * List of languages by name (level 1) (10 languages)
 * List of languages by name (level 2) (100 languages)
 * List of languages by name (level 3) (1000 languages)
 * List of languages by name (level 4) (potentially 10,000 languages and dialects)
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 20:41, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

You helped once before..
Would you take a look at the Pat Metheny article, and see if you can put in the IPA pronunciation for his name? Also, I believe Jaco Pastorius may also need help of the same kind. (It never ends, does it?) Thanks. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 15:32, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * First done. 2nd I don't know. Maybe you could add a respelling to it?
 * Yup, it never ends. You can tag these things with need-IPA, and they'll be added to a watched list. As long as they're not too obscure (like Buryat or something), someone should be along fairly soon to fix them up. — kwami (talk) 18:19, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Ethnic groups
Hello, I've left you a response at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ethnic_groups. Thanks -- Gyrofrog (talk) 14:52, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism
Stop vandalism articles about the Croatian language, and do not threaten me. --Sokac121 (talk) 16:11, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I will threaten to have you blocked before I actually have you blocked. That's only fair. — kwami (talk) 20:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Block warning
First at all, where did you ask for citation? Did you know for template Citation needed? Instead reverting my edits, you should use that template. Secondly, did you read something of stuff provided on talk page? And please don't threat me with blocks, please read Blocking policy, and please assume my good faith.--Ex13 (talk) 20:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * My apologies if your edits were not intentional, but due to not having seen the page history. Because there's been so much bad faith demonstrated on that article, I assumed that of anyone pushing that side, and that was wrong of me.
 * Yes, I added 'cn' tags to the paragraph. The paragraph was later deleted. When it was restored, it was restored without the 'cn' tags, and also without any references. That was inappropriate. I'm not taking sides on whether the paragraph should be there or not, which is why I tagged it for citations rather than deleting it. But if the tags are deleted without citations being provided, I will revert that edit; also, if the paragraph is restored with the tags deleted, I will revert that edit. Otherwise I'll let the discussion run its course.
 * Yes, I have read the talk page. Have you? I wrote a few paragraphs about that sentence, including reasons why I find it problematic, and the kinds of citations I would like to see. So far there's been no response. — kwami (talk) 21:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

白话
I am more than happy to discuss whether or not the comments on 白话 should stay in the Yue Chinese article, and sure we can reach agreement. My change was in fact primarily to illustrate that linking to wiktionary is at times better than giving an in text English gloss of a Chinese word. Johnkn63 (talk) 08:06, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, that's fine. 白话 is a the name of the language, and the term doesn't appear elsewhere in the article, so I'm not clear on what it's explaining to the reader, but no biggie. — kwami (talk) 08:32, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The uses are various, in Guangxi 白话 can mean the Guangzhou dialect, and it is also used to used to distinguish Chinese Yue from other Chinese dialects spoken in Guangxi such as Hakka or Pinghua. The paragraph is on Chinese names for Chinese Yue and this is one that is in common use, albeit with some semantic shift in that it does not include all of the Guangdong Yue lects, something I will try to correct in the article in the next few days Johnkn63 (talk) 12:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Moves
Hello. I noticed you've been moving a number of articles such as Hutu, Tutsi and Twa with an edit summary "MOS". These moves are unnecessary disambiguation in my opinion (see WP:PRECISION), and I'm not sure what part of the MOS recommends this. But the most important thing is that you haven't been moving the associated talk pages. It looks like the new titles have no talk page, and once a new talk page is created and these old ones are left behind at the redirect, the discussions there may be virtually impossible to find again. Station1 (talk) 09:40, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, those articles are fairly obvious (and s.o.'s already reverted Twa), but others are quite obscure.
 * 'MOS' is more for the language articles. It's a generic tag. I've asked for input at WP:ethnic groups, but have had only one response.
 * I do need to move the talk pages; article moves are on hold for now. With AWB, that's more difficult than the main pages. I've asked for help to speed things up, but haven't had a response yet. If a new talk page is started before I get to it, I can merge the histories. — kwami (talk) 12:06, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * With the articles on Old English dialects, you keep adding the disambiguating parenthetical "(Old English)" even where it isn't necessary. There is no other Mercian dialect or Northumbrian dialect besides the Old English ones, so the parenthetical shouldn't be there. (It is necessary on Kentish dialect (Old English), though.) +Angr 05:28, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I hadn't realized I moved them more than once. — kwami (talk) 06:13, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

kwami, Thanks for moving the talk pages. I've responded to your post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethnic groups. Station1 (talk) 05:35, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There are more to go, but I needed a break. — kwami (talk) 06:13, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi, would you be so kind as to give us support!
Hello, I hope you're doing fine and I sincerely apologize for this intrusion. I've just read your profile and you seemed a very learned person and interested in (small) languages so maybe I am not bothering you and you will help us... By the way your picture is great! I'm part of an association "Amical de la Viquipèdia" which is trying to get some recognition as a Catalan Chapter but this hasn't been approved up to that moment. We would appreciate your support, visible if you stick this on your first page: Wikimedia CAT. Thanks again, wishing you a great summer, take care! Capsot (talk) 07:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

France 24
Bonjour, Je ne comprends pas ce diff qui altère la prononciation de vingt-quatre en supprimant le t sonore. Le chiffre 20 est prononcé /vɛ̃/ mais le t final devient sonore devant une voyelle ou devant les nombres de 21 à 29 : /vɛ̃t dø/ par exemple. Voir http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/vingt. Mro (talk) 20:02, 7 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, pardon. J'ai toujours dit "vin-quatre". Mon bad. — kwami (talk) 21:56, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Nahuatl
Why did you move Nahuatl? Nahuatl is only the name of the language so there is no ambiguity and hence no need to include "language". ·Maunus· ƛ · 08:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The naming page suggests that 'X language' is useful for distinguishing from 'X grammar', 'X literature', etc., which apply to Nahuatl as well. But move it back if you want, or I will if there's a problem. — kwami (talk) 08:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The main issue that made me react is that it was moved to Nahuatl from Nahuatl language in March 2007 after a move proposal. I think that means that a new move should at least be discussed first.·Maunus· ƛ · 08:24, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll move it back. It's not important enough to me to make a proposal. — kwami (talk) 08:26, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Adinkra symbols
Not sure it's a "writing system" in any very meaningful sense of the phrase... AnonMoos (talk) 10:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * True, but neither are the Nsibidi symbols, and people insist on calling them writing. I'd be happy to have both removed from the cat. (go ahead if you like), but IMO it should be both or neither. Or is there s.t. I'm missing about Nsibidi? — kwami (talk) 10:21, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't know anything about the Nsibidi symbols, and the article does nothing to clarify their structural characteristics, but with the Adinkra symbols, each symbol is associated with a proverb or explanation, whose phrasing is apparently not fixed. In other words, the Adinkra symbols don't directly write language at all (as opposed to say, Chinese characters). AnonMoos (talk) 10:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I understand. They're only "writing" in the sense that emoticons are writing. I don't object to removing them from the cat (prob'ly best; god knows how many similar systems there are); I'll go ahead and do both. — kwami (talk) 10:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Created a new cat 'proto-writing', which has needed doing for some time. Moved both to that, along with some other 'writing' articles that weren't really writing. — kwami (talk) 12:14, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

procedural note
WP:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2010-06-06/Jiangxi. {&#123; Sonia &#124;ping&#124;enlist}&#125; 11:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Torlakian dialects
Greetings, kwami. I would like to note to you that the Torlakian dialects article and its talk page have different locations, I can't fix that. And, I'm curious, could you tell me your reasons for moving it to Torlakian dialects and not to Torlakian dialect? --JorisvS (talk) 11:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Odd, the talk page should have moved with the article. I'll fix it.
 * Only because it's a 'dialect' of Bulgarian etc. as well as Serbian. Should we count it as a single dialect? I'll go with your opinion on that. — kwami (talk) 11:47, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The talk page did, technically speaking, move, but it was already in a different place before the move.
 * Well, I'd say that if the dialect (group) is considered by some Serbian and by others Bulgarian that that makes no difference for it being a single dialect (group). I think the plural should be used when there are, linguistically, several dialect groups that all go by the same name. I should note that the article does state that there are big differences between its subdialects, with mutual intelligibility sometimes suffering(!). So, I can't really tell which is more appropriate. --JorisvS (talk) 11:54, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Pending a citation that they really are distinct dialects, I think the sg. is probably best. — kwami (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Works for me. You'd like to note that the talk page is still in a different place than the main. --JorisvS (talk) 12:05, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Should've been no problem the 2nd time; I didn't bother to check. Oh well! — kwami (talk) 12:08, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Dialect moves
Hi Kwami, are you sure you have consensus for all those moves from "X" to "X dialect"? Personally, I'm not quite happy with such a systematicity. In the case of "X language", it has AFAIK always been the consensus that the qualified form should only be used if "X" alone is ambiguous (which for language names is often, but not always the case). With dialects, there are cases like "Arvanitika", which is quite unambiguous. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:40, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Partially it's just a matter of accessibility: most of these names are utterly obscure. It's difficult even to maintain categories and link orphans without some dab'ing. I'll move Arvanitika back. — kwami (talk) 12:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Where and when was the discussion about the moving of Jèrriais and other recognised regional languages of the British Isles, please? Man vyi (talk) 14:23, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Nowhere. Just trying to apply a consistent format. Will move them back if you like. — kwami (talk) 14:29, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm somewhat ambivalant myself but I can see your point. If you are moving them all, could I ask you though to do it consistently to all the Para-Romani variants? You moved some but not others which is just a bit messy. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Please move back, and then, if you think appropriate, initiate a discussion on proposed moves. Thanks. Man vyi (talk) 18:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Done.
 * Akerbeltz, which specifically are you talking about? I was going off the categories, which may have been inconsistent. I don't see that I've moved any of the articles linked for Para-Romani to 'dialect'. — kwami (talk) 00:55, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, that was me being not so clear... you moved Finnish Kalo, Kalderash Romani and Welsh Romani (and I sort of see the sense in that) but there is Bohemian Romani and a number of Para-Romanis which you didn't move. It's difficult though to distuinguish which are considered languages and which are dialects. I think Kalderash was probably safe to move but one the Romani page most varieties are currently listed as dialects rather than languages but I think the debate on that topic hasn't even started yet. I would say all the Para-Romani varieties are safe to move because of them being contact induced and thus mostly incomprehensible to other groups but I wouldn't move any of the others on the Romani language page without debate. Akerbeltz (talk) 08:36, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Bohemian Romani is described as a 'dialect' of Romani and color coded as a simple IE language, unlike the others, so I didn't want to mess with it. It looks like it might be a borderline case. If you want to format it like the others, I'll move it. I also left the Romani-proper lects alone as I couldn't judge. — kwami (talk) 08:55, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Gronings
Hi, I reverted your move of Gronings to Gronings dialect, partly because it isn't unambiguously "only" a dialect (it has its own ISO 639-3 code) and partly because I'm not convinced that "X dialect" is really the de facto standard for naming dialect articles at Wikipedia. I think a requested comment or requested move may be required to decide whether we want to call it Gronings (skirting the issue of language or dialect, and unambiguous since there's no distinct ethnicity of Gronings people to worry about), Gronings dialect, Gronings Low Saxon, or Gronings language. +Angr 15:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I see you moved the other varieties of Dutch Low Saxon to "X dialect" too. (Gronings is the only one on my watchlist, so it's the only one I noticed at first.) I won't move them all back, but I do think that's going to be controversial. +Angr 15:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

In fact, looking at your messages above, I think a lot of moves to "X dialect" are proving to be controversial. Maybe you should simply make redirects from "X dialect" to the existing name rather than moving the pages. That way, the articles are still findable under the consistent name, and people are less likely to get pissed off about moves made without discussion. +Angr 15:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There are hundreds of these articles under all sorts of bizarre names, some orphaned or duplicated, so I've tried to make things a bit more consistent. There won't be any discussion for most of them. If anyone objects to s.t., I'll move it back, as at least that shows that the article is being cared for. — kwami (talk) 00:59, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Eskaya people
I don't understand why all these ARBITRARY UNNECESSARY moves? I don't see that they are necessary and there are no rationales provided in the corresponding talk pages so a discussion or healthy exchange can take place prior to the moves...Perhaps, if u can write it in the talk page/s, i can be convinced, as the case, i don;t see any merit for these moves at this time...please help me understand. Pinay (talk•email) 15:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Please restore both articles to their original not as redirects etc, post your intent in the talk page/s and we will have a healthy discussion on the matter.  For the mean time, let us have a status quo...Pinay  (talk•email) 16:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure thing. Sorry, that was a silly error on my part with the language bit; perhaps I remember a time when the article was more about the script than the langauge. — kwami (talk) 01:45, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Moving language articles
Hi Kwami, I kindly ask you to restore the articles "Shanghainese" and "Taishanese", which were recently moved by you without any consensus to "Shanghainese dialect" and "Taishanese dialect". These names are awkward, unwieldy, not in common use, nor conformative to any existing WP standards. No attempts at discussion were made. Given your history in the Chinese linguistics scene (and even if that is notwithstanding), this is most certainly an inappropriate action, if not on procedural grounds alone. Please revert it at your first opportunity. Thanks. Colipon+ (Talk) 00:05, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure thing. I moved them because the primary meaning of the words are the people, not the dialects. — kwami (talk) 00:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You might be aware then, that we had previous discussed this at Talk:Shanghainese, and that "Shanghainese" was a consensus decision by you and I. Colipon+ (Talk) 00:48, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Completely forgot. In most cases either the people are given primacy, or the people and language get equal billing. — kwami (talk) 01:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * My suggestion to you is to consult other users before doing such page moves, or at least check the discussion page to see if there was prior discussion. You are a veteran administrator, sir. You should not need a lowly regular user like myself to come and tell you these very simple procedures. Colipon+ (Talk) 02:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There are a couple thousand pages to move. Waiting for input on articles which aren't going to get any would be a colossal waste of time, and I doubt more than a few percent will be challenged. If they are, I'll move them back, and if I think it's worth my time for a particular article, I'll start a discussion on getting it moved as you suggest. — kwami (talk) 05:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Howdy! I have a similar concern about your move of the Kwak'wala article to Kwak'wala language. My understanding was that "X language" should generally be used when the same word can refer to the language or its speakers. However, this is not the case with Kwak'wala. There is no such thing as the Kwak'wala people; the speakers of Kwak'wala are the Kwakwaka'wakw. So I would suggest reverting that change, unless you had another reason for moving that article? Jiashudiwanjin (talk) 03:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I was basically just aiming for an "X language" vs. "X people" unless there is some reason for not following that convention. (I would argue for following WP:English and having "Kwakiutl language" vs. "Kwakiutl people", just as we don't call German "Deutsch", but that's a more involved argument.) — kwami (talk) 05:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Berti / Berti Language
Hi,

you recently changed something in an article from 2006 about Berti Language on wiki.

I need to get in contact with someone who has knowledge about the Berti extinct language.

Can you help?

When did the Berti loose their language, and start using Arab with an accent?

Some places I read centuries ago, but in this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berti_language it mentions 1990 ? I think thats very strange.

Do you have information? And out of what sources? Do you know someone who has studied on these matters?

Thanks! Kind regards,Monike —Preceding unsigned comment added by MonikeMMPA (talk • contribs) 15:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Try contacting the author of this paper, she published on a closely related language and may be able to help. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Akerbeltz. Monike, that's a better lead than I have. — kwami (talk) 20:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the tip! Will try to get in touch with her.- Monike —Preceding unsigned comment added by MonikeMMPA (talk • contribs) 12:39, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

IPA questions

 * Just for further reference, what IPA template should I use for English phonetic (rather than phonemic) transcriptions, or is this simply never used for Wikipedia pronunciations in any situation? What I mean to say is, if a certain notable person pronounces their own name a certain way, I would assume to use brackets to designate that pronunciation, but which template would I employ? Wolfdog (talk) 21:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I've been using IPA2 (now IPA-all). I believe that's mentioned somewhere in the MOS. We haven't developed a special template, because there's no key that would cover all the dialectical variation of English other than the main key. — kwami (talk) 21:14, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

[w] versus [u̯]
Got a question. I don't recall anything in the IPA that distinguishes between [w] and [u] with a non-syllabic mark. [w] is a non-syllabic [u] after all and as far as I've ever read the two are interchangeable. At Kiev and Lviv there is an anon IP who is pushing the latter. The former is the accepted IPA transcription by all other editors. But has the teaching of phonetics changed to the point that [w] is no longer considered a nonsyllabic [u]? --Taivo (talk) 14:41, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As I recall, the non-syllabic mark is only used when the vowel itself is not [i] or [u]. Otherwise, [j] and [w] are used.  --Taivo (talk) 16:08, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've sometimes seen [w] as distinct from [u̯], say [w] as an onset and [u̯] as the falling end of a diphthong: consonant [wa] vs. vowel [au̯] (generally written [au], w the diacritic implied).
 * Looking at L&M, SOWL, I can't find an explicit distinction between [w] and [u̯]. However, there is an implicit one. They transcribe typical diphthongs as [au] and [ai], not [aw] and [aj], and describe them as vowels with two separate targets. Semivowels, however, they describe as "vowel-like consonants" and "vowel-like segments that function as consonants". They say the characterization of them as "glides", as "a quick movement from a high vowel position to a lower vowel" is "inappropriate; as with other consonants they can occur geminated". (They do not define how gemination is different from a long vowel.)
 * Wait, here we go: based on a x-ling survey of Amharic, Yoruba, & Zuni, "the semivowels differ from the corresponding vowels in that they are produced with narrower constrictions of the vocal tract." They do not state that [ai̯], [au̯] are not produced with such a constriction, but it seems implied. After all, the description of [w], [j] which they said was 'inappropriate' is essentially identical to their description of diphthongs, as "vowels that have two separate targets", suggesting that *[aw], *[aj] would be inappropriate transcriptions. I've got to ask, then, if there's any meaningful phonetic difference between [wa] as CV and [u̯a] as VV. Of course, such a distinction would only be possible for high vowels, so it wouldn't matter that there's no choice of transcription for mid vowels.
 * I don't think such a minute distinction would be important for transcribing conventions for Ukrainian, however. — kwami (talk) 18:37, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I also examined the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association for any discussion and on pp. 42-43 there are clear examples of transcriptions with [w] and [j] as offglides in diphthongs. There's always someone who can find 2 microns difference between sounds, but I'm wondering how much of that really makes a linguistic difference--either productively or perceptually.  I had read the SOWL, too, but, like you said, they don't mention any difference.  If Ladefoged and Maddieson don't think there's a difference....  Thanks for looking at this.  --Taivo (talk) 19:14, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, there seems to be a theoretical difference, where [w, j] are defined as consonants but diphthongs are defined as vowels, but there may be little or no practical difference. (At least for most languages!) — kwami (talk) 19:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Montenegrin language
Why you have deleted hole section? Based on what? can You please let me know what is your relation to Serbian chapter? Thank you. --76.114.213.50 (talk) 21:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I deleted nothing. I protected an article which was involved in an edit war because you refuse to work with other people. I did that rather than block you.
 * I don't know what you mean by my "relation to Serbian chapter".
 * As for the problems with the section, other editors have made that clear enough: spurious claims and unintelligible English. I suggest you post it on the talk page, and people can edit it until everyone is satisfied that it is correct and appropriate. Then we can restore it to the article. Evidently you've been working on this for some time, and I think it would be resolved more quickly through cooperation than by continuing an edit war. — kwami (talk) 21:35, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * But you have threatened me with block even me doing nothing to you? What kind of Administration is that? You want to scare me to let it off? Why? Serbian chapter have big interest to keep all information biased on Wikipedia related to Montenegro and you seems support them? Why? You protected page right when BokicaK deleted hole section. --76.114.213.50 (talk) 21:42, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This isn't about me, it's about you. The purpose of an administrator is to administer, not to fight with people because they "do" something to him. Why in the world would you think you would only be corrected for inappropriate behaviour by people you do something to? Will the police only arrest you if you attack the police? I think you need to read up on the basics of Wikipedia, so you understand how things work around here. A good place to start is Five pillars. — kwami (talk) 21:58, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand that, but you sent me message and threatened me to block me but I didnt saw you did same with BokicaK who deleted article. I know BokicaK is in Serbian chapter and I asked you did you do personal favor for someone as you didnt do same thing to other person who was deleting (I was just reverting article) and you took side in this dispute. --76.114.213.50 (talk) 22:02, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I took sides based on behaviour, not on content. You have repeatedly reverted to your version, which is unsubstantiated by references, against the consensus of multiple other editors, and it is you who have run up against 3RR, so I warned you rather than them. Perhaps they are in a conspiracy against you, but I see no evidence of that. You may also have valid points, but that is what a discussion page is for. I suggest you present the points you think should be added, and people can discuss them one by one. That should at least correct the obvious errors. If you feel a conspiracy is blocking progress on your valid points, there is the dispute resolution process I linked to for you. Since you've been fighting for this for two years and never got anywhere, it's obvious that your current approach is not working. Time for a change of tactic. — kwami (talk) 22:11, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I just wanted to see if anyone asked you for favor to threaten me rather then them. I have called all of participants to discuss not to delete, but you have supported them and abused your position in this case. People who know you may know better what is relation of you with other participants from Serbian Chapter, but what you did don't have any sense as you admit that you don't know story here and you "quickly" made decision to protect page right after BokicaK deleted section and threaten me to block me without any proof of me provoking anything that would require suck measure. I have been writing all day on discussion page trying to call others to participate. BokicaK didn't even bother but you still threaten to block me. So please advise me what I should do next? You admitted you took side even you should not do that. --76.114.213.50 (talk) 22:25, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That's how things work around here. You still don't seem to realize that your behaviour is inappropriate. Please read the 'welcome' material I placed on your talk page. Also, please continue this discussion on your talk page or on the article talk page; based on the style of discussion you have demonstrated so far (that you are right and everyone else is against you), I imagine that this could go on for page after page without accomplishing anything, and I don't want to have to archive my talk page again because of it. — kwami (talk) 22:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Who is everyone? I see only you and BokicaK involved in this. But you like to talk as there is many of you. Interesting. I got enough info to proceed with this on mailing list where I will call you out on this decision you made. Thank you --76.114.213.50 (talk) 22:34, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, you got me. All the other editors who have told you your material is nonsense are really just BokicaK and me. Actually, BokicaK is me--they're all me--I'm in a secret plot to control the world by putting fluoride in the internets. Be as paranoid as you like. But please don't return to your edit war; I will block you. — kwami (talk) 22:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I happened to notice what has been happening at User_talk:76.114.213.50. I read Talk:Montenegrin_language and I support what you have done in response.  Blue Rasberry  00:08, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm sympathetic to the possibility we might be dealing with an anti-Montenegrin walled-garden cabal, but I think he's demonstrated he's not to be taken seriously. — kwami (talk) 00:19, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

veluws
ynotcal'm aLECTS?-----Please note, I have &#91;&#91;Repetitive Strain Injury&#93;&#93; and find typing very hard. I use a form of shorthand, which may be difficult to understand. I can be contacted through MSN (sven70) or Skype (sven0921) if my meaning is unclear. (talk) 02:12, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Minor planet adjectives
I notice a whole bunch of these pages on my watchlist have suddenly sprouted adjectives. I tend to think these are a bad idea because such terms, while technically correct for the classical forms of the names, are almost never in use by people in the field. Finding citations for them will be a body-by-body battle. Rare exceptions are where the bodies are heavily studied. These edits are duplicating and extending the list of such adjectival forms that used to be at planetary science, which I pruned out for exactly this reason. Iridia (talk) 14:25, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I now see you're moving these across from a list of such things. Sorry, still not convinced. Iridia (talk) 14:36, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Discussion about your Period (periodic table) merger
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements. DMacks (talk) 15:50, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

talkback
I guess you have a message here. Tb hotch Ta lk C. 00:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

WT:IIPA
Left you a note. Thanks, -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 01:34, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

List of Latin digraphs
Hello. It is not my intention to engage in an edit war on the page, however there are a few things you need to realise before you insist upon one particular revision. My original edit was merely presentational in that it wasn't only Macedonian that was using the digraph in its Romanised form but Serbian also; previously it was constructed as if to classify Serbian along with Croatian as Roman alphabet only languages and that is not the case. The Roman alphabet is so popular in Serbian that its speakers (or writers) take it for granted and treat the language as if the Cyrillic is not there. That was the reason I played with the syntax. Now although you did not technically revert my contribution, you did shake the foundation of the entire passage. The term Serbo-Croat does exist and there is indeed a time that its usage is wholly adequate. I too also am for the language and not against it as my editing may suggest to you. There are two things you must realise however: firstly, Macedonian (which you deleted) is not and never has been within the scope of SC. During the time of Communist Yugoslavia, Macedonian stood alongside Serbo-Croat and Slovene (also outside of SC) as official languages, so that if anything warrants its return to the section; we can't sideline Macedonian and welcome other language with open arms when the detail applies to every one equally; secondly, insisting upon the term SC can be seen as POV-pushing, impolite and unrealistic to the millions of individuals who call their language by the name of their own demonym (eg. Bosnian, Serbian, etc.) and it does not end there, you have Croatian, Bunjev and now even Montenegrin. Now you may feel that a full list of languages here on what is purely a reference page more than a subject article is overkill and painful for the eyes and people's concentration. If this is so, we can work out a plan and circumvent Serbo-Croat at the same time, such as by displaying "the Slavic languages of the former Yugoslavia"; or you could mention SC by stating, "languages formerly within the SC category/SC's successors, etc.". The risk of leaving it in its present form is that it will in time provoke certain editors and they will try to recreate a revision similar to the version unfavourable to you. I suggest an amendment to the current format. Evlekis (Евлекис) 01:47, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Unlike Serbian, Macedonian doesn't use the Latin alphabet, and when it does, AFAIK there are several ways to do it. Various romanizations are way too much detail IMO, unless it's one which has a life of its own, such as pinyin, which is used as a secondary script in China. I mean, we could do this for Russian too, but we don't. Correct me if I'm wrong about standard Macedonian orthography there; I'm only assuming it's Cyrillic.
 * As for Serbian, do we really need to say that it's also written in Cyrillic? Really? If so, we can always say the Latin orthographies of SC.
 * Assuming the Macedonian example is trivia, what we have left is SC. Just SC, not South Slavic or even West SS. Therefore we should say SC. All this tortured text to avoid the term SC only makes sense in Croatian. In English, it's just the name of the language. There's nothing offensive about it, except for whatever baggage Croatians bring from their own language, and that baggage is largely irrelevant for our purposes. If we mention either Serbian or Croatian, then we need to mention the other one. If we mention both, well, now we're slighting Bosnian. And don't forget Montenegrin, which isn't even a standard language yet, but which has its proponents. So we end up with "in Croatian and Serbian (when written in the Latin alphabet) and Bosnian (also when in the Latin alphabet) and Montenegrin" when we could just say "in Serbo-Croatian". Are we really going to repeat all that verbiage for every SC digraph? Calling it by its English name makes no difference in content, just concise editing. — kwami (talk) 01:59, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * That's just it. SC is not even the English name any more. From the beginning, yes Macedonian is a Cyrillic script language, and so is Serbian. They both use the Roman alphabet too. With Serbian, it is (my estimate) about 40%-60% Cyrillic-Latinic and Macedonian is about 70%-30% Cyrillic-Latinic but the key issue is that outside of official publication (Cyrillic in both cases), citizens are free to use whichever they choose and can chop and change as they wish, as both languages are considered standard in either alphabet. Macedonian doesn't publish newspapers in Latinic but you do get music CD sleeves, private bus tickets, websites, billboard adverts, other publications etc. that deploy Latinic. Back to SC: of the 26 letters of the alphabet, they use 22, plus eight more signs in the form of letters with diacritics, digraphs, or both. Asides Lj and Nj that both feature on the article we are discussing, you have the diacritic based characters, č, ć, ž, š, đ, dž. If you examine them, you'll see they all list everything separately; so what you call "verbiage" is clearly necessary because as you know, Bosnian and Croatian are separate registers as are Norwegian and Danish despite the latter two having the same alphabet characters, in turn stemming from the whole of Norway long forming a part of Denmark. It is not just Croats that will dispute SC; there are infact a great number of Croats who accept the languages of Serbs and Croats to be one; likewise, a great many Serbs believe the differences in the two standards are good enough to be classed as separate languages. The story of SC dates back to the mid 19th century, it was a rocky and uneasy existence at various times until finally SFR Yugoslavia dissolved (leaving Croatia and Bosnia to declare eponymous languages) while the name SC would continue for a while longer in the newly formed Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; in 1997, SC was replaced by Serbian (stretching to Montengro too) and SC has never resurfaced in any official context. That's all I can say with regards to us using it as though it were German or French. Evlekis (Евлекис) 02:27, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I didn't know that about Macedonian. Thanks. But the Macedonian article currently lists only Cyrillic; if it's not important enough to be included there, it certainly isn't important enough to include here, where we're only giving a few examples of language which use each digraph. I've asked on the Mac. talk page about expanding to biscriptal coverage.
 * In your revert, you left SC, so this isn't even about that, it's only about the one digraph. But SC clearly is still the name in English; in fact, it's the only name in English, apart from ad hoc things like BCS and BCMS. The US government diplomats learn SC, universities have courses in SC, the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2006) uses the term SC (though "BCS language complex" in the main article) and doesn't even have separate articles on Croatian or Serbian, etc etc. It's also not a matter of SC standards being different enough to be called separate languages. After all, where you say "South Slavic languages", you aren't claiming that they're not separate languages; SS is just a cover term for a group of related languages. Likewise, SC is a cover term for an ever closer group. Regardless of whether we consider them separate languages, they're still Serbo-Croatian languages. — kwami (talk) 04:03, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As I said, I agree about it being a single language (now with four or five standard variations as opposed to one). You've made a few fair points this time, I'll grant you that. I didn't realise, for example, that SC did still have some international standing and was the main linguistic route into the whole region for diplomats. It certainly makes sense; when learning SC, one can familiarise oneself with all of the variables and preferences for both comprehending and communicating with persons across four countries. As Professor David Crystal (when discussing English) often states, one needs to be clear which English, and only a descriptive approach can educate one what is Australian, what is Canadian, what is Scots and so on. To that end, I'm happier with your version on that side of things. If anyone now attempts to remove SC for its disagreeable overtone, you have the impetus to restore it as long as it maintains the status you know it to have. In the meantime, I hope you don't mind if I put back Macedonian. Makedonska latinica (Macedonian Latinic), while not being as widely used as Serbian, is still a more intergral feature of Macedonian literature that the transliterations of most other non-Latinic script languages. Would you be all right with that? Evlekis (Евлекис) 04:22, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, when I use the term SC, I try to say "SC languages" (plural), "SC standards", or the like, to emphasize that we're not talking about the old Yugoslav standard (or pseudo-standard, if you will). I quite agree that we shouldn't claim a single SC standard. I even suggested splitting the SC article at one point, with 'Standard SC' for the old Yugoslav standard and the language politics that went with it, and 'SC' reserved for a linguistic description of the language itself, but no-one took me up on it.
 * If I was short with you, my apologies; I've dealt with enough POV warriors on this topic that my first reaction to you was 'not this again!'.
 * I have no objections to including Macedonian Latin. That said, I think it's far more important for it to be included at Macedonian alphabet and Macedonian language than here; if it turns out not to be acceptable there, there's something wrong. — kwami (talk) 04:49, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Heard back at Macedonian. They've never heard of a Macedonian Latin script; said Latin is only used when Cyrillic is not available, which happens in Russian, Greek, and Arabic too. I think it would be unwise to list Macedonian in the Latin digraph article when according to our our Macedonian article, it doesn't exist. — kwami (talk) 07:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Take a look at Romanization of Macedonian. I don't think this kind of thing is appropriate in the digraph article. It is variable and pretty much just copies neighboring orthographies. — kwami (talk) 09:24, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm back just for a short while so this may be my only contribution for this session. I appreciate your research though you can take it from me that Macedonian Latinic is used somewhat more than just when Cyrillic is not available. I mean, we live in the 21st century, where and how can Cyrillic not be available and even when it is not, how do they come to produce the irregular characters such as those with diacritics. I contend that now, Cyrillic is wholly available. As Macedonia is my own background, I know that roadsigns generally contain two scripts, (eg. "exit" on motorways is /Излез/ on the top line, and /Izlez/ on the bottom). Some of the idiots in the country will say that it is for foreigners to be able to read, but you and I know that if a foreigner will take the trouble to learn to speak a language, he will learn to read and write it also; and how exactly does the Gaj alphabet help when the outsider still has to first learn the orthography of the Romanised form itself. Anyhow, here is one example (www.latinica.co.cc/) of Macedonian being used in Latinic, and this music page is not only drafted in Latinic but also providing examples of album sleeves where Latinic is used; these are two among thousands of instances. Note also, that Macedonia's chapter within Yugoslavia meant that the Gaj script would form the basis for Macedonian Latinic but it is not entirely based on Gaj. For one, Macedonian has 31 phonemes compared to SC's 30, the outstanding letter being /Ѕ/ (identical to /S/) which represents a /dz/ sound (like and Italian /z/ when sandwiched between two vowels). Incidently, it is transliterated as /dz/ (eg. dzvezda, star), also, for the example on the link, you see the /ќ/ which is used where Gaj's script uses /ć/. All right, they don't refer to it much as Macedonian Latinic and it is nowhere near as widespread as Serbian Latinic but there is no way that it can be overlooked and bagged into an emergency first aid box along with Romanised Arabic, Bulgarian Cyrillic and Greek. It has more life to it than that! In actual fact, even the examples I gave you have a bit more life to them than simply being "substitutes", in Greece I see its transliteration more and more ubiquitous every time I go there. People use their freedom! Just one more thing, on a less serious note, there was nothing more "pseudo" about SC standard than any other language. All standards are stylised and somewhat disenfranchising for the wider communities, so they are all a touch false. The trouble with SC was that opposing parties constantly bickered over how that standard should be, and that was settled by (without being funny) using a double-standard! Two scripts, two accents (e, ije), two everthing! Evlekis (Евлекис) 00:15, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's what I meant by a "pseudo" standard: not really a single standard at all.
 * Well, you certainly know more about Macedonian than I, so as I said, I won't oppose mentioning it in the digraphs article. But considering how many languages we don't mention, even for their primary script, I don't see any need to include it, either. It won't actually inform the reader of anything, because when they come across it, there will be nothing on WP to explain it to them. Personally, I think it might be time well spent if you were to add what you've told me to the Macedonian orthography or romanization articles. — kwami (talk) 00:31, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, you're here! I never expected such a quick response! I'm inclined to agree; put simply, the three digraphs in question that Macedonian shares with SC (lj, nj, dž) are all Ljudevit Gaj products even if some of the remaining graphemes are not. So SC/Gaj covers everything. I'll leave it at that for now, and may look at the Macedonian articles when I return. Thanks. Evlekis (Евлекис) 00:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Fering dialect
Hello. I noticed that you moved this page to "Fering dialect" per MOS, as you said in the edit summary. I wonder though if that is really necessary. The only related policy I could find is Naming conventions (languages) where it says that unique names normally go without a suffix. Also I've never seen the use of "Fering dialect" as a general referrer, only Fering or maybe Foehr Frisian, so I'd really be willing to move the title back. The same goes for Öömrang and Sölring. De728631 (talk) 18:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay. Just for clarity to the reader who's never heard of them before, would you be willing to go with an "X Frisian" format, along the lines of Wood/Clay Frisian? If so, what would the preferred terms for the other two? — kwami (talk) 18:58, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, if it's only about the clarity of the ignorant reader, why doesn't Urdu have a language suffix, or Esperanto?  Frisian is also not a good choice because afaik the terms used most often in linguistics are in fact Fering, Öömrang, Wood Frisian, Clay Frisian, etc. and not XYZ dialect. That said, I'd also advocate moving back Wood and Clay. De728631 (talk) 19:33, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd add 'language' to Urdu and Esperanto. (The words do have other meanings, after all.) But you've got to admit that they're far more familiar to people than obscure Frisian dialects! I mean, the articles even italicize Fering, Öömrang, and Sölring, illustrating that they are not assimilated into English.


 * I don't mind "Wood Frisian" and "Clay Frisian". That's like "Honduran Spanish". But per our convention of using English for article titles, the other three are iffy. Would it be okay to suffix a dab like (Frisian dialect) to them? — kwami (talk) 20:42, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * As I was recently told, the convention is to use the term that most often occurs in reliable English language sources, so when I simply google for "Fering dialect" I get 74 hits, 208 for "Fering Frisian" and over 52,000 for simply "Fering" together with language as an optional parameter, including sites from Aarhus University and Cambridge, plus several sources that even call it a proper language. So I think we should just leave it at Fering. And also I really don't like the idea of moving articles when these pages have existed unchallenged for years. I say there is no need for dabs here because the terms are generic and not ambiguous. Dabs are only needed to differ between two equally named topics, not to explain the name already in the title. De728631 (talk) 21:33, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for moving them back, I appreciate it. De728631 (talk) 17:58, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit notice on talk:AAH?
I'm really f**king sick of having to repeat myself on talk:AAH. Can you put up an edit notice indicating this is not the place to discuss the AAH, we should only use source that are explicit about it? I know we've got the talkheader up, but no-one reads it and a bright friggin' red box while editing might dissuade people more.

I feel like I'm editing talk:creationism or something. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 12:45, 17 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, I'll look into it. Gimme a minute. — kwami (talk) 17:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Vowels
Wow, you are right. You know, I speak it and learnt since I was a kid that Portuguese had 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u). God, was I wrong. Thanks for letting me know. Pikolas (talk) 20:46, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

The Name of the Herschel (Mimantean crater) Article
I have been making comments about the change of the name of Herschel (Mimantean crater) from Herschel (crater on Mimas) on the talk page. There has been no response. No response is a reasonable response, but I want to make sure that no response is not the simple result of not noticing the discussion. I do not add all of the pages I edit to my watch list. --Fartherred (talk) 23:52, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads up.
 * IMO we should follow the terminology of the field as it evolves. — kwami (talk) 02:14, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

More moves
Hi, you moved Paisaci to Paisaci language with just the edit summary "MOS". I've moved it back since in this case there are no articles on "Paisaci people" or "Paisaci grammar" or "Paisaci literature" (and for a near-mythical language there aren't going to be), so there's no reason for such a move. Shreevatsa (talk) 19:25, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Templates consonants
Hi, I continued the Talk on the template layout at Template talk:CSS IPA consonant chart. I'd like you to take a look. -DePiep (talk) 13:58, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Mexico
I've added an audio file to the article, but am not certain how to combine the contents of the IPA template that I added with the other IPA template that was already present. Can you help sort this out? It will give me a model I can use when any future such occasions arise. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, give me a minute. (Server's slow.) Also, if you follow IPA-en and IPAc-en, they should give you the details; if that's inadequate, please say s.t. on the talk page and we'll try to rectify it. — kwami (talk) 05:45, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The IPAc-xx templates, which only exist for a few languages, take the parameters and sound file before the segmented IPA. The IPA-xx templates take them after the IPA. — kwami (talk) 05:54, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It's not a problem of documentation for any individual template. The problem is that the MOS on IPA doesn't provide any guidance (that I could find) towards a list or such of the available templates, nor indeed information on some of the Wikipedia conventions for IPA rendering (such as /r/ versus the inverted version).  I've had to guess a bit, and usually end up copying syntax from another article when I link an audio file here.  It would help to have the MOS on IPA updated and expanded. --EncycloPetey (talk) 06:06, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that would be helpful, wouldn't it? I'll see what I can do. — kwami (talk) 06:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I wrote a new section for the MOS page and asked others to edit it as needed. Hopefully that should do it. Let me know if I forgot anything. — kwami (talk) 06:03, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Adjectivals and demonyms for countries and nations
Adjectivals and demonyms for countries and nations is about to be copied to Wiktionary, but apparently not List of adjectival and demonymic forms of place names and not List of adjectivals and demonyms of astronomical bodies. There is transclusion involved in the Wikipedia articles, and I do not know how that would/will be affected by such a change. This message is to advise you of the situation.—Wavelength (talk) 06:01, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the heads up. By "copied", do you mean "moved"? — kwami (talk) 06:05, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I used the word "copied" because that is the word used in the message which was added to that page by User:BD2412. The wikicode says "", but the displayed text says "This page will be copied to Wiktionary using the automated transwiki process."  I am not absolutely sure which is meant, but I suspect that the intention is to move it.  I believe that the wikicode should agree with the displayed text.—Wavelength (talk) 06:43, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * If it's moved, it will destroy the transclusion. But then, I suspect the idea is to move it off WP altogether, in which case that section of the transcluding article should probably redirect the reader to WT. At least, I assume that's the intent. — kwami (talk) 06:46, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Um HI!
I'm new here... do you have any advice? ~ Nao Ichibana (talk) 06:00, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Well thanks for the warm welcome! I shall now get started with being a Wikipedian. ~ Nao (talk) 06:04, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

File:Female heads of state and govt.png
Hi, I just noticed you changed Australia to light orange following Julia Gillard's appointment as PM. Unless I'm mistaken, it should actually be yellow as with the UK and NZ because while Australia now has both a female head of state and government, the Queen as a monarch is excluded per the article – orange should only be used for republics which have had both female Presidents and Prime Ministers such as Finland. Canada should also be yellow by my reasoning, unless I'm missing something. 84.92.117.93 (talk) 16:48, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Quentin Bryce is Governor-General. Same with Michaëlle Jean of Canada. I think that counts as head of state: at least, that's how our article presents it. — kwami (talk) 20:39, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh right, I forgot the article considers Governor-Generals to be heads of state, my mistake. 84.92.117.93 (talk) 22:19, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Ten Commandments
Kwamikagami, you've reverted the article 3 times today, so WP:3RR is becoming an issue. Rather than edit-warring on this, let's work it out on the article's Talk: page, ok? Jayjg (talk) 02:41, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * But you're the one edit warring! If a change is contested and reverted, you take it to the talk page then. You don't insist on your change by reverting the reversion: that's the essence of edit warring! So yes, let's take it to the talk page. Meanwhile, leave the 18-month consensus version up, without edit warring, until, and if, a new consensus emerges. — kwami (talk) 07:32, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Belated!
I've been going through my old talk page and I realized I never gave you a proper thank you for the the help you gave at the top of the year during my block debacle. So consider this that thank you and an apology for taking so long to do so! Therequiembellishere (talk) 10:44, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That was still faster than I would usually get around to it! Glad it worked out. — kwami (talk) 17:22, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

SignWriting Collation
Hi Kwamikagami, I removed an inaccurate statement from the SignWriting page and moved it to the SignWriting talk page. You just added the information back. I was not trying to scrub the article, just improve it. I will be adding a more detailed section on collation later.

The first sentence...
 * The lack of overt phonemic structure or standardized orthography makes alphabetization difficult.

SignWriting has had computerized collation since 1998. The idea that SignWriting collation is difficult is simply untrue.

The second sentence...
 * For example, the hand used to sign a word makes no difference to its meaning, but it does change the spelling in SignWriting.

From a SignWriting perspective, different hands make for different signs. Different signs with the same meaning are synonyms. This makes for a interesting correlation that every sign has an automatic mirrored synonym. This isn't difficult. For sorting, write from a common right-handed or left-handed perspective, or tell the sorting routine to ignore handed-ness when sorting (like sorting without regards to capitalization).

Regards, Slevinski (talk) 22:19, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, but we should retain a note that SW is not phonemic, since what are different signs for SW are the same sign for ASL. — kwami (talk) 22:34, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Slovak source
dude, the word IS Slovak and it DOES mean field. Don't be lazy and google it for yourself if you don't believe it. You're just doing this because this is an anonymous account. Ridiculous. The source stated that roľa has a synonym "pole". You know what, I just googled it for you :S I have no idea why I did it for you, just look at this source and then go think about your behavior against people with good intentions. 81.68.255.36 (talk) 22:49, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * That's not why it was marked for citation. The article is about ; at issue is whether Slovak actually has, or if it instead has a palatalized el, . If you could find a source for that, that would be most helpful. — kwami (talk) 23:44, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Do you realize just how lazy you are making me do simple searches that you could have done just as easily? That is so annoying. Google can really help you out. Just type: "roľa pronunciation" or "veľký" or "moľa" :D and there you go! And besides, other google searches show many more mentions of wikipedia and wiktionary showing it is not a palatalized el. Perhaps it IS the palatal lateral approximant that it claims to be in that article :D anyway, perhaps you have a wrong font, and see it as the l + '. In transliteration from (Russian that I know of) Cyrillic that is often used to show the Ь. However, I noticed you editing more in linguistic articles, so I suppose you already know that. Once again, why are you just being lazy when it was so easy? :S a great way to keep people with good intentions away from editing :) 81.68.255.36 (talk) 10:51, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * First, we can't use ourselves as a source, if we're trying to demonstrate that we got it right! Secondly, Omniglot isn't reliable either. They're about as credible as we are.
 * It is rather common for palatalized alveolar and  to be transcribed as plain palatal  and . That doesn't mean they are those sounds. Hindi, for example, is often transcribed as having, but we can't actually use it as an example of , because what's transcribed  is actually . Someone raised similar doubts about Slovak ľ actually being  and therefore an inappropriate example for the  article. That's what the citation request is for. If it were easy to cite, it would have been done already.
 * If you're Slovak, you might be able to tell: is the tip of your tongue free to move when you pronounce those sounds, say to behind your lower teeth, or do you need to keep it touching behind your upper teeth/gums to maintain a native accent? — kwami (talk) 17:17, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The UCLA Phonetics Lab in its narrow transcription of Slovak has  although there seems to be some allophonic variation. Akerbeltz (talk) 17:58, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * That works! Thanks. — kwami (talk) 18:00, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * You're welcome! Akerbeltz (talk) 18:13, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Finally, I should have thought of UCLA..they are masters. About the tongue, it is the same as Italian "gl" in "gli" for example. That's the only other language I know that uses it as well. It's where you have the tip of your tongue behind the lower teeth. Ciao e grazie, zbohom i vďaka Akerbeltz. 81.68.255.36 (talk) 18:41, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * That sounds palatal to me!
 * In the Slovak article, we currently list the palatals as having palatalized alveolar allophones, e.g. ť = . Is this a eastern vs. western dialect thing for all of those sounds? — kwami (talk) 18:56, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay wait, regarding your earlier post: I think I get it now. It sounds more like "ль" in Russian, rather than the Italian. Making it a what..palatal and nothing more L? Also, the capital of Slovenia is written with the hacek L and I noticed the Italians don't write the same capital with gli. That's when I thought of Russian, they write it like Любляна. So, it can be removed I suppose from the article. Sorry for the inconvenience hehe, I thought I was being picked on and didn´t work correctly. Also, as you might have guessed± I´m not a native speaker of English. Please be gentle on my grammar etc. Bye §§§§ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.68.255.36 (talk) 21:22, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, AFAIK Russian is a palatalized, whereas Italian is actually palatal. From what I've read (since this discussion started), Slovak was historically , like Italian, and the government insists that that is still correct Slovak, but in Bratislava it is currently , and people think that sounds old fashioned or rural or hypercorrect. It's probably not the best example of , then. — kwami (talk) 01:17, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Ten Commandments


I think this revert was very unwise. CIreland (talk) 00:25, 3 July 2010 (UTC)


 * That's the consensus version, as it's existed stably for a year and a half. Why should we follow an edit warrior who refuses to discuss a change before making it? — kwami (talk) 00:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Reverting 27 mins after the 24 hours that would have made it a 3RR violation is bad. However, editing through full protection to revert to your preferred version is much worse. CIreland (talk) 00:49, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Then the protecting editor should have done it. All three lists of TC's have sat side-by-side for 18 months; that's the consensus we're starting with. One of the other editors even pointed out WP:BRD as the guideline to follow, and following that would leave the article as it is now. Since when do guidelines not apply to editors who make a fuss? — kwami (talk) 00:57, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * You should have asked the protecting administrator to make such a revert; you still could undo your edit and ask Xavexgoem to consider a reversion, if you choose. It is, I think, almost always unethical for us to utilise our privileged access in content disputes in which we are a party. If another adminstrator chose to block you for edit-warring, I think it would be upheld. If another editor made a complaint at, for example, AN/I, I think your actions would be condemned. I will do neither because I am trying to offer you advice to prevent these things. If you do not wish to take this advice then I'll say nothing further on the matter, here or elsewhere. CIreland (talk) 01:20, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Administrators should never wield their powers to edit full-prot articles, except on reasonable request (typos, wikisyntax screw-ups, etc). Period. I protected on the WP:Wrong Version. In the future, please do not revert back to another wrong version. This is completely against administrator norms, regardless of how long the consensus was. WP:Consensus can change, and the battle to change that consensus in the interim often causes edit wars and therefore prots, and administrators should never (never ever never noven nuven) use their powers to change a content dispute. Ever. Never. Forever. Until the end of time. Please regard this for the future. Xavexgoem (talk) 01:31, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll take your advice for today, and revert myself.
 * Xavexgoem, if you would consider reverting to the 18-month consensus, I would appreciate it. — kwami (talk) 01:39, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
 * No, because that's another wrong version (wikizen, oooom). I understand this particular frustration (I'd be angry), but for the moment you folks have 3 days to talk this through. Were I to revert to your version, the other side would say I myself have a bias, or that I'm too suggestible. Were I to stay on the version I protected on... I would still get some flak, but I am doing my job (that is, protecting right on the version you see when you first see the page). If this bothers you tremendously, you could take it to AN or AN/I. Xavexgoem (talk) 01:47, 3 July 2010 (UTC) Err...and sorry
 * Naw, I can wait a few days. I usually revert to prior to the edit war, but that can cause problems too. — kwami (talk) 01:52, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Plead
Please do NOT insult. If you follow procedure, and nobody objects to merging of some articles, that does not mean merging is justified, that only means nobody objected.

Please respect facts, and tend to regard other users with respect. I didn't write that you are nationalist, so please do not use such qualification if you do not have arguments. It is foul play. SpeedyGonsales (talk) 13:38, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry if I offended you, but I have no idea what you are talking about. Where did I insult you?
 * Yes, please respect the facts: Croatian and Serbian are grammatically a single language, and accepted as such in any number of linguistic treatments. — kwami (talk) 14:41, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Meänkieli
I think Meänkieli dialects should be changed back to 'Meänkieli' or 'Meänkieli language' because Swedish language legislation treats Meänkieli as a language. Meänkieli (lit. 'our language') is solely name of the language, so I think that the shorter article name 'Meänkieli' can be used.

More about Meänkieli and other minor Finno-Ugric languages in Europe: ELDIA project - Meankieli

More about the language legislation of Sweden: Language for All

Maksamakkara (talk) 15:50, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, they're subdialects of western Finnish, so it would be odd to call them a separate language. I'll just move them to Meänkieli. — kwami (talk) 16:03, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. You're absolutely right; linguistically Meänkieli is a dialect of Finnish, but I just think it's more politically correct and polite to say it's a language. Same goes with Kven in Norway. Maksamakkara (talk) 18:53, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Ten Commandments
Hi, I will not revert you, but I do not think your response was appropriate. It seems clear to me from the talk that Wellhausen's theory is too tangential. I agree that this does not mean it should be deleted entirely from the article. But I do not think that the introduction is the place to bring it up. The introduction should introduce all significant contents of the article, not a tangent. My understanding of the discussion is that there should be a section in the article - I would think at the end - saying that Wellhausen proposed that these verses be considered an "ethical decalogue" by the E author, which he contrasted to the Ritual decalogue authored by J. This is one theory by one scholar, and as everyone in the discussion has pointed out, is not referring to what the article is about, namely the "ten commandments." In fact, I personally think just having a link to the article on the "ritual decalogue" under "see also" is enough. But the discussion consensus seems to be for a section and I see no reason why it should be a major part of the article. It is a misrepresentation of Wellhausen to say that this is another version of the ten commandments; he is saying it is another important text written by a different author and edited into the larger narrative. In any event it remains a tangent and should not be mentioned in the introduction as if it were a significant part of the discussion on "the ten commandments." It isn't. That is not what Wellhausen is saying. Or do you interpret Wellhausen differently? Slrubenstein  |  Talk 17:37, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * But I'm not talking about Wellhausen, I'm talking about the RD. Wellhausen has one well known hypothesis (I wouldn't call it a theory) about the RD, and I agree that if that's all there were, it would be too tangential. But it's more to it than that: Whether or not they've ever heard of Wellhausen or the term "RD", people have wondered why Ex34 rather than the Ex20 should be called the "Ten Commandments". The Talmud goes to some lengths to explain the discrepancy. The annotated NRSV discusses it. They don't propound Wellhausen's interpretation of it, they just discuss how Ex34 is called the TCs but is very different from the traditional TCs. Certainly that is relevant for an article on the TCs. — kwami (talk) 01:12, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war&#32; according to the reverts you have made on Ten Commandments. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. If the edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:29, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The editor in question said he agreed with the edit I wanted, so I added it back in. — kwami (talk) 09:31, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Template:Vowels and Template:Consonants
Re: Vowels and IPA vowel chart, Consonants and IPA consonant chart. Hi, I´m developing these four templates, as you might have seen. ([|here]). Since today they are a set. It all could go via some Talk:page. -DePiep (talk) 23:57, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you take a look at them, as say if you don't like something?
 * Also, could take a loook at questions like here?


 * Sure, I answered your questions on that talk page. As for the other templates,
 * vowels: There's no reason for the footnotes on ɪ̈, ʊ̈. They're perfectly good IPA.
 * consonants: I would restrict the footnotes to non-IPA symbols or bullets where there is no IPA symbol, and use the IPA where there is. That is, if you can get there with a diacritic, just use the diacritic, as you did for the labiodental plosives.
 * — kwami (talk) 01:29, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

File:Lutetia closest approach (Rosetta).jpg listed for deletion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Lutetia closest approach (Rosetta).jpg, has been listed at Files for deletion. Please see the to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Kam Solusar (talk) 15:48, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Template:IPA vowel chart, Near-close central vowels
Your editsummary here says they "are defined" in IPA, but the charts [[Media:IPA_vowel_chart_2005.png]] and [[Media:Extended IPA chart 2005.png]] show different (show them not or in grey). To me this looks like a contradiction, or is it more complicated? I am not an IPA-scholar, but this is a first thing I ran into. -DePiep (talk) 09:44, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * You can create thousands of IPA transcriptions by adding various diacritics. That's all kosher; they only depend on whether you want to link those articles from a navigation template. The images, which don't link and aren't used for navigation, typically only have the base letters, no diacritics, because the diacritics are covered in a separate table. What isn't IPA are letters not found in the IPA chart. So, ɢ̆ is IPA (both ɢ and ̆ are legitimate IPA, and they make sense together), but ᴙ is not. — kwami (talk) 10:05, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I get it. It's "the (basic) symbol is not defined in/by IPA", and not "the character does not appear on the IPA chart".
 * Then a sequence question about using the template-switch "shownonIPA=yes/no": in Consonants you dropped the *-footnote from this one: . So the symbol is IPA, but why keep using the switch then still? That would create (some) confusion: it is not marked with a *-footnote, but it does disappear in an pure IPA-article (editor will set the switch to "=no"). The way I understand your description above, it is irrelevant if a character appears on the chart or not. My intention & suggestion with the switch is to give it one meaning only, so as to help the editors. Given your answer and the various(!) IPA-2005-charts, I'd suggest to drop the "not on the IPA-chart"-meaning completely. (More surprises for me: there are multiple versions around of the "(c) IPA 2005" consonant chart, like at the official IPA-site. Even the sequence of the rows is not stable. How can anyone work with that? ;-)) -DePiep (talk) 07:55, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Create whichever switches you think are useful. For a nav template, I'd think we'd want links to all articles, but maybe not. Regardless, though, we don't need a footnote to tell people that something has a diacritic in it. IMO, footnotes should really be kept to a minimum in s.t. like this, e.g. for "illegal" characters sometimes seen in the lit but not rec'd by the IPA.
 * The order of the rows is rather arbitrary. The columns are sorted by place of articulation, and so are iconic; the rows, however, form no natural series: the obstruents, nasals, trills, flaps, and laterals are independent of stop, fricative, and approximant. Only the latter form a natural (lenition) series. So there are various ways you can arrange them. You might put central and lateral frics together, or frics and approximants together for each. However, since the same dorsal IPA symbols are used for both central voiced fricative and central approximant, IMO it's clearer to put them next to each other. Similarly, we could add a labiovelar column for [w], or a row for ejectives, etc, depending on what we're trying to illustrate, but IMO for an abstract table that adds a layer of complication without clarifying anything. (E.g., if you add labiovelars, and maybe labiopalatals?, the order of the columns starts becoming arbitrary.) — kwami (talk) 09:29, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand about (preventing) the footnotes. But my question was about the opposite situation: why put the "legal" epiglottal flap ʡ̯ within the switch-option? If an article/editor needs to hide the non-IPA-symbols for good reason, this correct IPA-symbol is hidden too. Yet I understand that the chart is not decisive.
 * So the row-sequence is not logically fixed, but I'd expect for a 100 yr old scheme that there would be a settled-down habit. I imagine every phonetic scholar has this schema on hir wall. To me it would introduce an extra mental step to use a different view each time. But hey, I'm just a guest in this thing.
 * Since you say adding an extra row column for e.g. labiovelars would introduce extra complication, I won't go there. I thought it would be more into some completeness.
 * Do I understand this complication is also about adding a row "Lateral flap", as in [[Media:IPA_consonants_2005.png]]?
 * -DePiep (talk) 10:22, 13 July 2010 (UTC) Added "Lateral flap" question -DePiep (talk) 10:29, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't pay much attention to the switches. Do what you think is best.
 * The official IPA chart has two serious deficiencies for lay readers: (1) Fricatives are separated from approximants, so in order to be complete ʁ and ʕ would need to be listed twice, rather than merging their cells; and (2) the ordinary consonants ʡ, ʜ, ʢ, and ɺ have been moved to 'other', leading naive readers to think that they are somehow not ordinary consonants. The way we have it, every pulmonic consonant that can be described in terms of simple articulation + simple manner is included in the main chart, and no consonant needs to be listed twice. — kwami (talk) 10:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll leave the "other symbols" where they are then. Thx, over & out. -DePiep (talk) 11:07, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, in the nav template, we moved ɺ to 'other' as well, in the interest of saving space. — kwami (talk) 20:04, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * ? Is what I was writing about. - "Space" is no good reason to drop structure, and Lateral flaps could be into a 9th row from that unspecific "other". Anyway, this happened afterwards. See you there. -DePiep (talk) 20:41, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, if you move the two lateral flaps to a ninth row, you can move t͡ɬ, d͡ɮ to 'other laterals'. That will allow you to align the affricate row with the rows above it. You might even expand the lateral affricates with k͡ʟ̝̊ and c͡ʎ̥˔. Though there are a lot of other affricates, so that might not be justified. — kwami (talk) 21:07, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

A nice plan to take step by step. Any objections to the proposed Template:IPA consonant chart/sandbox first? Can only sandbox one step at a time. -DePiep (talk) 21:22, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I just made some suggested changes in the sandbox, if those look okay to you. (Alignment in the affricates needs to be touched up.)
 * Another possibility: ɫ is a coarticulated approximant, and so could be moved to the cell with ɥ (with a border line between). That way you could expand 'other laterals' into an additional line for affricates like [kx], which doesn't have an article yet but which probably should. — kwami (talk) 21:28, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I saw the edit, good shot. I suggest you push the sandbox into the real thing asap (there are some original lines to keep, top and bottom). I won't touch it for now. -DePiep (talk) 21:38, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * At Template:IPA consonant chart/sandbox: do you like the idea? Now each table can be tuned to its specialties. And extra rows available! Needs some more layout, but alas. -DePiep (talk) 22:14, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I put the recent Consonants-sandbox into production: IPA consonant chart. 11 more characters (affricates), spliced table. Are there any row/columnheaders we could add?
 * Then, should we improve spacing & layout etc. from this suggestion template:IPA consonant chart/sandbox, or do you want to keep all in one row? -DePiep (talk) 16:55, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The forced 100% width is really ugly on my screen. I prefer a single row (though grouping the 'other' charts together); if people's screens are too narrow for that, it will double up anyway.
 * I made a couple changes to the main chart. One was to delete the tie bars in the affricates; they just made them difficult to read. — kwami (talk) 22:03, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * RE delete the tie bars in the affricates: Aren't you proving I have a point: cramming & squeezing is bad for the output? As a 'technician' I'd say: great, fonts do look good & better. But as an IPA-men, I'd say: "NO! No compromises to the technicians! Let's take more space, and show the symbols as we expect them to be. Why not do two rows per affricate? (there's space) Everyone can understand." I will revert.
 * RE forced 100%- eh, 100% is regular. Only this table: squeezes fonts to an unreadable 67%, crams two tables in a row for 'space', and has no freedom to serve other settings. Anyway, I do not agree in this because I think that there should not be a "only this setting works"-rule (the template itself says in comments (!), like: if not browserzoom to 100%, this will not look good" - hey,what are we here for. I propose to take your "looks ugly"-limit to a layout-specialist (who knows about browsers, browsersettings, and wiki-standards in this). To be clear: I do not think that a private (or special) browser-setting & hardware situation should determine the layout of a page/template. -DePiep (talk) 23:10, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't agree with either point. No matter how much space you give the affricates, the tie bars screw them up. It's not a matter of space, but of font formatting, which we have no control over. That's why we generally avoid tie bars in WP transcriptions. As for the table width, just the opposite: tables should reflect user prefs. You're the one forcing a width that does not fit the text; by deleting the pre-set widths, the table fits the text automatically. The letters look really bad spread out with an inch of space between each of them, or with little tables stuck to either side of the screen and a big blank space in between. — kwami (talk) 23:42, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * You are antisequencing the talk here. As I wrote below: discussion continues elsewhere -DePiep (talk) 23:47, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * But you've linked here, to an undefined discussion. — kwami (talk) 23:54, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Oops, you're right, I linked to this very same page -- not very smart. Which does not explain antisequencing. Well, I changed the link. So, I want this talk to be on a more to-the-point talkpage. Already a more special section is created. See you there. -DePiep (talk) 00:10, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion continues here from now -DePiep (talk) 23:26, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Arnaiz
Sorry, this weekend I did not log and did not see your message. If you wish I can afford you references on the case in newspapers (there are several references). The section as it stands now, looks acceptable, even if somewhat confusing. Maybe it could be interereting to show that the main problem arose when a countable inspection found unexplained expenses (some sources claimed that 3,91 million € "En el primer año investigado, las presuntas irregularidades ascienden a 860.000 euros, y, en el total del periodo sometido a inspección, el desfase, según estas fuentes, podría llegar a los 3,91 millones."; some bit more that the 300.000 € in false bills) in the section of the hospital that Arnaiz directed, and that he was also accused for working behaviour (probably there is a much better way to call it). Dumu Eduba (talk) 10:49, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure. Or just add any reliably sourced material to the talk page. — kwami (talk) 11:22, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Reminding you of this, if you could be kind to create it. I want to first wikify all the terms and create them on wiktionary if they don't exist. Thanks. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:02, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Is the kind of thing you want? Or are you looking for a mouseover too?


 * Should we get rid of the underline?
 * I could add a second parameter, so that the link takes you directly to the appropriate language's entry. — kwami (talk) 23:27, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, like that but with mouseover too, with gloss as the third unnamed parameter. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, same problem as before: the link popup overrides the gloss popup, so all you see is "wiktionary:(word)", no gloss. (Or if other browsers display a gloss, I can't see it, so I can't tell if I've got it right.) I have no idea how to work around this. I think I asked somewhere at one point, but couldn't get any help. — kwami (talk) 22:20, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you please undelete the template, so that I can try to fix it? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Navboxes don't print
A true Navbox is never send to a "print this page". So if any article is to show the tables in-line (as part of the text, and possibly so into print), it needs to be the bare table (Consonants and Vowels alike). That is why I added the bare tables to Consonants. Having noted this, I won't contest your rv. -DePiep (talk) 23:18, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I never thought of that. Go ahead and put it back then. But then do we need the nav box? — kwami (talk) 23:21, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd say both here. Since the IPA-chart is both good for navigation and for describing, we use one wherever needed. Navbox has some extra links. I hope navboxes get the option of Allow Printing soon, which is where the real problem started.
 * Related: the Vowels template is used with all Vowel-articles - in the Navbox-form. I am thinking of replacing these with the bare trapezium-table. As an extra info-box: place in the chart. -DePiep (talk) 23:45, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Ritual Decalogue
Hello,

I noticed that you undid my update to the page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_Decalogue

I am not sure why my update was undid. I replaced it back on that page.

If there was some particular reason why you did (for example, if I did not provide appropriate reference for my contribution), I would be happy to hear your reasons.

If you disagree with the statement, feel free to add something afterwards saying that you disagree with it. But, as far as I'm aware, I am using established source material to quote a substantiated claim. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.221.207 (talk) 07:48, 15 July 2010 (UTC)


 * It's an apology for a view contrary to the entire article, out of left field, without any development, and so is completely out of place. It's a bit like ending the article on the periodic table with the line "yet a number of scholars still maintain that there are only four elements, earth, air, water, and fire", like saying "nuh-uh!" in answer to an argument. Or, in the article on the TCs, if Jesus wasn't mentioned until the very end, where you said "But the Ten Commandments are now obsolete because Jesus replaced them with two better ones". That can be sourced as well, but would still be out of place. — kwami (talk) 09:33, 15 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm glad that you agree that the statement is appropriately sourced. I agree with you that the arrangement of the statement is not ideal.  Perhaps my statement can be better incorporated in the article as a whole so as not to appear out of place or coming out of left field.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.221.207 (talk) 15:46, 15 July 2010 (UTC)


 * It's pretty much understood, since the topic is part of biblical criticism. Everyone knows that some people take these things literally, but we don't normally feel the need to say it. — kwami (talk) 17:05, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Latest stable version is OK.
Please stop rv-warring on a developing thing. I'm spending too much time on restoring good versions now. Re IPA consonant chart, that version from a few days ago is stable, and has a lot of edits that are useful (e.g. more affricates). For sure, the edits (like the split into 3 tables) is exactly within the preferred view you pointed out. Also, noone, including you, has pointed to any disturbance of pages with that version. If you have problems with individual edits - go ahead. That there is an older stable version would mean we cannot improve? Is wikipedia finished? For sure, our current joint development in the sandbox & talk is based on that recent stable version, and goes ahead from that version. There's no need or reason to throw away all those earlier in between edits. -DePiep (talk) 11:19, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I retract: Kwami send a printscreen 1000px that showed tables badly ordered (allthough improvable). (the tables were not out of the canvas, which would be disturbing=unacceptable). We will improve at templates sandboxes sandbox and Template Talk:IPA consonant chart. -DePiep (talk) 11:58, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Uralic languages
Hi kwami, I think you might be interested in what's going on at Uralic languages. --JorisvS (talk) 09:58, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that info can go in the respective articles.
 * Does anyone still believe in Ural-Altaic? — kwami (talk) 10:25, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Precisely. I don't really know how much support it still has, though I'm told that in general it is not considered very credible, after a very long time of UA research without much progress.
 * This guy kept reinserting the same piece of info over and over without even addressing my concerns, I think he won't stop just yet. And I'll be leaving for vacation tomorrow, so I thought you might want to keep an eye on it. --JorisvS (talk) 10:37, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * You caught me right before I signed off, so I didn't follow up on it. I'll take another look today. — kwami (talk) 19:03, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Country data templates
I wonder if its possible to unprotect Template:Country data Yugoslavia & Template:Country data Serbia and Montenegro for 24 hours or so? The templates are very crude with respect to the numerous Yugoslav and Serbia-Montenegrin flags, and I want to get some work done there expanding them. I admit, though, that I'm not very familiar with the "procedure" regarding editing the perpetually full-protected country data templates. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 22:38, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Unprotected. (Actually, semi-protected.) Maybe we can leave them that way? — kwami (talk) 23:05, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. For my part I can think of no reason why they're always full-protected, but it seems they all seem to be. Must be a guideline or convention of some kind. -- DIREKTOR  ( TALK ) 23:08, 18 July 2010 (UTC)


 * No, I think it was just because they're visible from several articles that attract edit wars. We can leave them unprotected and see how they fare. — kwami (talk) 23:11, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

RE: Urdu
If you research you'll find out that until late 1990's many countries (especially in West) used to include Urdu speaking population under Hindi, so when they seperated two languages officially there is a but-obvious boom in number of speakers of Urdu. I'm providing one such link, i.e. Tower Of Babel. -- Sayed Mohammad Faiz Haider t c s 11:38, 19 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Still not a very good source. Urdu may have been grossly undercounted, but I'm afraid we need something better than that to counter the smaller figure in so many otherwise reliable sources. — kwami (talk) 13:11, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Ovambo
Why did you move the Ovambo people's article? What sources told you the Ambo people is more common in English? A simple google search provides many examples where Ovambo is used in English. This move is also frustrating because you moved it with no discussion whatsoever. I ask you to take the necessary measures to have it moved back.--TM 09:53, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Not to mention Ovamboland, Ovamboland People's Organization, Ovambo language and the Ovambo Sparrowhawk as other common examples on Wikipedia.--TM 09:56, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll move it back. I was following the conventions of the journal Africa, which specifically gives "Ambo (not Ovambo)" as an example in their style guide for submitting articles.
 * There are, BTW, thousands of such articles. It's simply impractical to discuss them all ahead of time. (Thus the "bold" in the WP editing guidelines.) — kwami (talk) 10:24, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Appreciate your quick response and willingness to revert yourself.--TM 10:30, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Finn Diesel
Hello, I just noticed you blocked for, among other things, block evasion. Did you mean the edits from ? If that's what you meant, I actually believe these were not really F.D., but unrelated banned troll piggy-backing. He often does these kinds of things, just to create confusion, and it was his known IP range. Or were there other edits that I missed? No objections against other block reasons, such as general disruptive editing and edit-warring, of course. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:12, 21 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, that was my assumption. I owe Finn Diesel an apology if I was wrong, but he hasn't said anything about not having edited during his block. — kwami (talk) 10:28, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

CROATIAN GRAMMAR
Sources for Croatian Grammar:
 * Bartol Kašić: Institutionum linguae Illyricae libri duo. Authore Bartholomaeo Cassio, Romae : Apud Aloysium Zanettum, 1604.

Bartol Kašić is Croatian cleric, name in Latin language is Cassius, Cassio. Born: Pag 15. VIII. 1575. - † Roma 28. XII. 1650.

see: --Dmitar Zvonimir (talk) 12:11, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Bartol Kašić
 * Gramatika hrvatskoga jezika
 * Pravopis hrvatskoga jezika
 * Hrvatski jezik
 * Ivan Broz
 * Ljudevit Jonke
 * Dalibor Brozović
 * Bogoslav Šulek...


 * Yes, I've referenced Kašić in the article. — kwami (talk) 13:50, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Rohonc Codex
I know you're interested in scripts - I went to look up something and came across the Rohonc Codex whihc looks a bit like it's turned into someones sandbox for fanciful deciperments; I'm not that grand on scripts so thought you might want to take a look. Akerbeltz (talk) 10:04, 22 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, it's pretty clear from the article that the decipherments are fanciful, so I wouldn't worry to much about it. No-one's making grand claims about revealing the secret history of the whoever. There are actually a fair number of medieval cryptomanuscripts, some perhaps remnants of lost literatures, but most presumably either personal projects or products of secret societies. And of course a good sprinkling of hoaxes. For most, we probably never will be sure what they are. — kwami (talk) 10:26, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Types of vandalism
Kwamikagami: "Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia. Vandalism cannot and will not be tolerated. Common types of vandalism are the addition of obscenities or crude humor, page blanking, and the insertion of nonsense into articles."... "Committing vandalism violates Wikipedia policy. If you find that another user has vandalized Wikipedia you should revert these changes; you may also warn the user (see below for specific instructions). Users who vandalize Wikipedia repeatedly, despite warnings to stop, should be reported to Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism, and administrators may block them." Sorry, but this is a vandalism. And please, do not attack me (No personal attacks). Have a Nice Day --Roberta F. (talk) 15:28, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Um, perhaps you didn't review what you were doing? You're accusing me of attacking you because I asked you not to place personal attacks on talk pages? — kwami (talk) 15:38, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Kwamikagami, what are you talking about? Where do you see that I wrote something about "psychotic"? --Roberta F. (talk) 14:15, 25 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I reverted edits which contained personal attacks, from an editor with a history of such edits; you restored them and accused me of vandalism. I didn't mean that you wrote it, but you did put it back on the page. — kwami (talk) 15:26, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Ten Commandments
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war&#32; according to the reverts you have made on Ten Commandments. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. If the edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Tb hotch Ta lk C. 17:59, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Odd that you didn't warn the other editors engaged in the edit war. Why is that?

The edit war has no moved on to deleting an NPOV tag. As vandalism, reverting that is not subject to 3RR. — kwami (talk) 18:02, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Because you have reverted 4 times within a day also, remove templates is not vandalism, do not use WP:3RR as shield. Tb hotch Ta lk C.  18:04, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * My impression is that deleting POV or CN tags merely because one disagrees with them is considered vandalism, and that reverting such deletions is not counted as edit warring. — kwami (talk) 18:19, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

troll POV-warrior
Posting POV tags because you disagree with the consensus, and throwing around cries of "censorship" because your low level of scholarship and unwillingness to edit in a collaborative spirit, will not be tollerated. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 18:04, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * You either do not understand what the word WP:troll means, or you are yourself being a troll. "Collaborative" is perhaps also a word you should look up. There is no consensus, obviously, and there is a NPOV dispute, also obviously, so the tag is appropriate. — kwami (talk) 18:07, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

You are right, you are a POV warrior and not a troll. As to consensus, there was a discussion for over two weeks and all editors who regularly work on the article, indeed everyone but you, is in agreement. But when you are asked to make sense of your edits, you claim I am asking too high a standard of you. Well, if Wikipedia is going to be the first-use encyclopedia for the world, it should have the highest standards. I am not even holding you to the highest standards of our best articles, just to basic standards. You cannot even do that. You subvert the integrity of the project. And when someone asks for integrity, you protest you are being censored. Hah. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 18:12, 23 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I have made sense of my edits. I've referred you to multiple RS's to support them. Somehow following RS's is "subversion"? This is a perverted understanding of an encyclopedia, and I really fail to see where you're coming from. (Though I do think I understand the opposition of another editor or two, which is POV, I don't get the impression that's what motivates you.) — kwami (talk) 18:18, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:RFPP
TFOWR 18:16, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Your move of Jamtlandic to Jamtlandic dialect.
Dialect should be in plural in that article, so please chance it to "Jamtlandic dialects". Jamtlandic is a group of dialects not one dialect.

Pilisbo (talk) 17:16, 25 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Done. — kwami (talk) 22:03, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Luis Alberto Lacalle pronunciation
Regarding your edit, since the pronunciation given is phonetic and not phonemic, the original postalveolar fricative [ʒ] should stand. There's no [ʎ] in River Plate Spanish, as the wikipedia article clearly states. The subject himself pronounces his own name with [ʒ], as can be heard here (50 seconds into the clip).Martin Hausen (talk) 04:56, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The consensus is that it should be phonetic, but using Castillian Spanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Translation_into_English/Spanish#International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_Spanishish. (A consensus that I am not entirely sure I agree with.) Local pronunciations are also acceptable, but should be so marked. — kwami (talk) 05:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I disagree. The consensus seems to be to use Castilian for certain "international items", but to respect local use regarding the two principal mergers. Perhaps we can agree on using [ʝ]. Martin Hausen (talk) 22:11, 31 July 2010 (UTC)


 * That link doesn't address the issue at all. Typo? — kwami (talk) 00:52, 1 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, it should have been this link .Martin Hausen (talk) 02:42, 1 August 2010 (UTC)


 * That's not a consensus. Read back further, and you'll see that this is continually brought up, and that the conclusion has always been that if we start adjusting to local dialects, there's an interminable number of possible adjustments to make. At the link you just made, Aeusoes proposes restricting this to the two mergers, θ and ʎ, but a proposal is not a consensus. There hasn't even been any discussion of it. You might want to make a more formal proposal for this on the talk page. — kwami (talk) 04:44, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Help me understand admin noticeboard.
Someone has posted a complaint about me on the admin noticeboard, and accused you of abusing admin powers. Still not sure how the whole thing works, so can you tell me if I'm at fault? (Watching this talk page if you want to reply here) Chipmunkdavis (talk) 19:56, 28 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't worry too much about it. Croq has been cooperative recently, so there's hope this will be resolved civilly. However, you can get in trouble for an edit war, if you break WP:3RR, even if you think you're on the side of consensus. Generally the best recourse for someone edit warring to push some nonsense is to ask to have them blocked on the 3RR page.
 * Kubura, OTOH, has been completely unreasonable, and it's hard to even assume good faith. I think that will show up in his history of conflict with other editors and the bizarre claims he makes. — kwami (talk) 21:39, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Behaviour TEmplate:IPA consonant chart
Hi, here User:Aeusoes1 reports undesired behaviour of the Consonant template(s) in IE. I put up a solution in the sandboxes. Could you take a checking look, i.e. whether behavior indeed would improve? Talk in the report-thread I suggest. -DePiep (talk) 13:47, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, I tried to point to a earlier subsection there, called Further changes (sidenote), which is about browser effects (Should make my text above less silly). Thanx for your reply anyhow, usefull to me. -DePiep (talk) 15:02, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Plea for help
Hello! Could You look over this discussion and express Your opinion of that problem? Thank You very much! --Iaroslavvs (talk) 21:58, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Move req
Hi kwami, maybe you could move Andi (people) and Inari Sami (people) to "X people" (without the parentheses) for naming consistency? --JorisvS (talk) 16:04, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Etruscan language
Please, could you take a look at the page Etruscan language, there is someone making absurd comparisons and every time I undo them, there come again. (S)he adds no explanation and no source (looking as original "research") in spite of the fact that I had added comments and even the explanation in the talk page. Regards. Dumu Eduba (talk) 14:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Auvergnat dialects
Hi kwami, I see you moved Auvergnat (dialect) to Auvergnat dialects. I'm curious, did you have a specific reason to use the plural instead of the singular? --JorisvS (talk) 15:21, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I can't read. — kwami (talk) 15:22, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Cz reversion
I believe you; I never had the impression you assumed bad faith. You did nothing that violated any policy or guideline. It was just that, like any other well-intended editor here, I would like my fellow editors to consider the possibility that I may have used my brain before I edited. (At least when an edit is as carefully worded as that one; I've contributed my fair share of stupid errors, too.)

For some time now I have been trying to act that way here. Maybe we could call it "RRE" - respect the reason for an edit. I've learned this the hard way, as a mediator in ethnic conflicts (e.g. here), but I also found it useful in less emotionally charged situations. Granted, this consideration takes a couple of minutes, but it has several advantages: (1) It shows respect to the other editor. This contributes to a welcoming mood, which is necessary in a volunteer project like ours. (2) You can improve Wikipedia. Sometimes an editor is trying to solve a problem with an article, but just doesn't do it right, because she doesn't know any better. In those cases, you can help everyone to focus on the underlying problem, instead of on the wrong solution. This is the most direct way to reach an outcome that is better than both versions. (3) It's fun. In a case like this, where it touches your hobby, it's fun to think about it from a new angle, isn't it? I at least thought it was fun to think about words containing "cz". &mdash; Sebastian 01:11, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Ovambo
Hi, I see you've converted Ovambo into a disambig. Per WP:FIXDABLINKS, could you help fix the links that now point to a disambig? Thanks, -- Ja Ga  talk 11:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Admiralty Islands languages
Hi kwami, I see you've moved this back saying "grammar fix". I'd dispute that, as the Admiralties are a group of islands not a single island, after which the family is named and hence the plural. Correct me if I don't see something. --JorisvS (talk) 13:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The phrase "Admiralty Islands" is attributive, which makes it singular, like a 1000-foot mountain, not a *1000-feet mountain. Where not used attributively, it of course reverts to the plural.
 * (Maybe I shouldn't call it "singular", but it's identical in form to the singular.) — kwami (talk) 13:29, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I still don't quite get it yet. 1000-foot cannot actually mean anything singular (thanks to the numeral), whereas in the Admiralties case it can (and may suggest such). Do you have a more similar example? --JorisvS (talk) 13:42, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * All nouns become singular when attributive, unless they're lexicalized plurals. But even s.t. like "trouser press" (press for trousers), "scissor kick", and "eyeglass wipes" famously become singular.
 * I see ads for "Hawaiian Island cruises" all the time, and they don't mean just to Hawaii, but generally to several islands. Sometimes it will alternate w "Hawaiian Islands cruises", but that sounds ungrammatical to me, and not appropriate for formal writing.
 * Since we say they're the languages of the Admiralty Islands, there should be enough context. — kwami (talk) 13:52, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I couldn't wrap my head around my objection, but there it is: "lexicalized plurals", combined with my urge to minimize inherent ambiguities. Given this Hawaiian Island cruises thing, I'll just have to learn to live with that, though:P. I thought it would've been a quasi-ambiguity anyway, though I just found the Alaskan Admiralty Island (singular). Gee... and Admiralty Island (Nunavut), and there seems to be The Admiralty Islands (Ontario), too, haha. --JorisvS (talk) 14:57, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the plural attributives are nouns which change meaning in the plural, such as "arms race", not nouns that are just normally in the plural, like "scissors" or "pants" (eg. "pant leg"). — kwami (talk) 04:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Well... now it happens that Admiralty Island is very different from Admiralty Islands. --JorisvS (talk) 14:37, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, kwami, I have to disagree with you here. The article should reflect scholarly usage, no matter what your grammar training says.  For example:
 * William Bright, 1992, "Admiralty Islands Languages," International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Volume 1, page 29.
 * Patricia J. Hamel, 1994, A Grammar and Lexicon of Loniu, Papua New Guinea (the only published full grammar of an Admiralty Islands language), page 1, "Capell (1971) provides short word lists from several Admiralty Islands languages..." (also uses "Admiralty Islands languages" on pg 3).
 * Robert Blust, 2008, "A Reanalysis of Wuvulu Phonology," Oceanic Linguistics 47:275, "Together with the Aua dialect...it forms part of the Western Islands branch..." (using "Islands" as a proper noun in one of the Admiralties subnodes. Although he uses "Admiralty subgroup", this singular form is in contrast to the thoroughly plural form "Admiralties languages" found in The Oceanic Languages cited below.)
 * The name "Admiralty Islands" as a linguistic term naming a subgroup is not "Admiralty + Islands", but is a unit as a proper name "Admiralty Islands", and, as such, should not be modified to "Admiralty Island Languages". It is not analogous to "Hawaiian Islands" because that is a geographical name composed of "Hawaiian + Islands".  If "Hawaiian Islands" had become a unitary linguistic term, then it would not be shortened to "Hawaiian Island Languages".  But we say "Hawaiian Island languages" because "Hawaiian Islands" is not a linguistic proper name, but a geographical one used in a linguistic context.  "Admiralty Islands", however, is a very common linguistic proper name for a node on the Austronesian family tree.  It should not be shortened to "Admiralty Island" because the proper name is "Admiralty Islands".  Compare this:
 * Malcom Ross, "Kele," The Oceanic Languages, page 123, "Kele...is a member of the Eastern Admiralties family."
 * Hamel, op. cit., page 1, "Z'graggen (1975) provides extensive word lists from 20 Admiralties languages..."
 * By your reasoning, that should have been "Eastern Admiralty family" since the plural "Admiralties" should have been reduced to singular form as an attributive adjective. But it remains "Admiralties" because (in that volume) they use "Admiralties" as the proper name for that linguistic node.  Thus, we have the only specialist to have published a grammar using "Admiralty Islands languages", and two major reference works using a pluralized form as an attributive before the word "languages".  This article needs to be moved back to "Admiralty Islands languages".  --Taivo (talk) 16:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "Admiralties" is a bit like "arms race". So you've got Bright and Hamel. Against that, "Admiralty Island languages" is found in Current Trends in Linguistics, in Nature, and in Margaret Mead, Z'graggen, Loving. There is variation in such forms, just as there is with common nouns. — kwami (talk) 02:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * (I also have Blust.) Margaret Mead doesn't count since she wasn't a linguist and Nature as a linguistic journal? (Ahem).  The only specialist in this language group that actually has published anything is Hamel.  She's the expert and her usage carries more weight than non-Admiralties summarists.  You can add onto my list Stephen Wurm (most recently 1994).  So Z'graggen and Current Trends are from the '60s and '70s.  I'm not familiar with what Loving source you're referring to.  So I have the one published expert (from the '90s), plus two other references from the '90s and one from '08.  So my more recent references, one from the only published specialist, trump your old references and especially your non-linguistic references. (I just love a little debate among friends.)  --Taivo (talk) 04:12, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You've given two refs, one indeed from a specialist. But common English usage, not just of specialists but of other fields, and length of use are also relevant to recognition of a term. And it's not like this is a difference in terminology; it's merely a difference in grammar. If Hamel used or didn't use contractions, we wouldn't need to follow her example when writing about Admiralties languages. Indeed, when a specialist has idiosyncratic usage, we normally go with the common usage and note that so-and-so words it a different way. — kwami (talk) 04:34, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Let's review the refs I've given: 1) Hamel, the Admiralties specialist, from the '90s; 2) Bright, in the Encyclopedia, from the '90s; 3) Wurm, from the Routledge Atlas, from 1994; 4) Blust, an article on one of the Admiralties languages, from '08. All show the usage "X Islands group" or "X Islands languages". Hamel, Wurm, and Blust are all Admiralties or Austronesian specialists. And your comment about considering history doesn't seem to apply to "Burushaski", which you changed to "Burusho" (wherever that came from), despite the overwhelming English usage of "Burushaski". --Taivo (talk) 05:34, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Oops. I see you moved Burushaski back to where it was before I wrote the above comment. --Taivo (talk) 05:39, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Blust contradicts himself. He seems to be confused about the grammar. As are a lot of people. It's a grammar issue, not a difference in terminology. I'm not much of one for prescriptivist grammar, but it does have one use: making spoken or written material seem respectable. (As the saying goes, if you ax for a job, you probably won't get it.) That's why I think that journals such as Nature are relevant here: they are concerned about appearances of grammatical correctness. — kwami (talk) 06:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I disagree with it being a grammar issue. It's an issue of proper names.  And while Blust may use "Admiralty languages", he is consistent in using the form "X Islands languages".  Indeed, the use of "Admiralty" is directly related to the name of the islands in question--"Admiralty Islands".  I would much rather rely on specialists' usage than on generalists'.  When I was a technical editor in my youth, I edited technical chemical reports for the rocket propulsion industry.  I'll never forget the first time I "corrected" the grammar of attributive adjective usage in a report and it completely changed the meaning of the conclusions.  I was lucky and the chemist noted it before it reached print, but it was a clear place where specialists control their own terminology and not generalists.  And, for the purposes of disambiguation, as JorisvS points out above, there is an Admiralty Island.  Without using the plural form of Admiralty Islands, it is impossible to distinguish between Admiralty Island languages (languages spoken on Admiralty Island) and Admiralty Islands languages (the Admiralty Islands subgroup of Oceanic).  --Taivo (talk) 07:53, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Linguistics doesn't have the kind of precision that the physical sciences do. Even with technical terms like 'topic' or 'focus' we often have to diverge from the specialist we use as a source, because they define the terms differently than other specialists we also use as sources. It's hard to find two linguists who use the same terminology with the same meanings, whereas chemistry and physics are highly standardized.
 * In this particular case, the plural could also mean the Admiralties in the St Lawrence, so how can we know this isn't a branch of Iroquois? The same way we know it's AN in the singular: This is the only language group so named. Likewise, "Oceanic" doesn't mean the Atlantic, and "Atlantic" isn't Tupian. Both singular and plural attributive forms have been used by linguists (Admiralty and Admiralties; Island and Islands); we have the grammatical choice of some linguists against that of others, as well as against the conventions of formal writing. This is more like the question of whether we use Je, Ge, or Gê, but with one of the forms misspelled. — kwami (talk) 18:32, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Hey! I provided plenty of contemporary linguistic evidence that Admiralty Islands languages was the usage prevalent in the specialist literature. You should not have moved those articles back without actually providing evidence to the contrary. JorisvS and I agree that these should be at Admiralty Islands languages. You have moved them against the evidence and against consensus based only on your view of English grammar. The contemporary, recent evidence is conclusive. Your evidence is 40 years old. Please move them back. --Taivo (talk) 21:09, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Even Blust used both. Some follow formal English conventions, and some don't. Here we do. It isn't a difference of terminology, just of grammar. And it isn't my view of grammar: I'm not consistent about this in my own writing, and on WP I don't use other informal grammatical constructions I use in informal situations, such as double modals. — kwami (talk) 21:18, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Where did Blust use "Admiralty Island languages"? In the works I have he always uses a plural "Islands" as an attributive in front of a nominal.  It's not about "English grammar", it's about scholarly, specialist usage.  That must always prevail over pretty grammar niceties.  If a single, isolated scholar was the only reference in opposition to everyone else, then, of course, the individual usage must bow to the corporate usage.  But in this case, all the contemporary specialists use the plural.  The only sources with singular are 40 years old.  --Taivo (talk) 21:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Where did he ever use "Admiralty Islands languages"? I point him out because he contradicts Ross, from which you're also trying to extrapolate accepted usage. With Blust, you're apparently only talking about his choice of grammar, yet claim that we're not talking about grammar. If it's only a matter of whether Blust uses plural adjuncts in general, then he's irrelevant as a ref for actual terminology here.
 * If you want the debate to be about terminology rather than grammar, then you need cites for terminology rather than grammar. You've provided two that I see who use the phrase: Hamel (1994) and Bright (1992). Yet you have not provided any evidence that this is actually a terminological choice rather than simply an informal grammatical choice. If you want counter-evidence from that time period (which you justify as "contemporary", despite it not being terribly contemporary), there's Geraghty (1990) "Proto-Eastern Oceanic R and its reflexes", which uses the singular. Again, this appears to be a simple grammatical issue, not a terminological one. You've provided zero evidence for that. — kwami (talk) 22:01, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So what's a relevant quote from Geraghty? I've provided direct quotes above in sufficient number to show the "X Islands" usage as an attributive adjective from Hamel and Bright.  Here are direct quotes from Wurm and Blust concerning "X Islands" in respect to the Admiralty Islands node of Oceanic:
 * Stephen Wurm, 1994, "Australasia and the Pacific," Atlas of the World's Languages, page 102, "North-West Islands subfamily", "South-East Islands subfamily"
 * Robert Blust, 2008, "A Reanalysis of Wuvulu Phonology," Oceanic Linguistics, 47:275, "Together with the Aua dialect...it forms part of the Western Islands branch..."
 * It's not necessary to find a quote that says, "I use the plural form of 'islands' despite the dictates of English grammar". The fact that these contemporary linguistic specialists all use the construction "X Islands" as an attributive adjective in referring to the Admiralty Islands node and its subnodes is sufficient evidence to show that as the preferred construction.  Since no one but linguists talk about the Admiralty Islands node of Oceanic, then these references satisfy the requirements of common English usage.  Others may talk about the Admiralty Islands, but we're not concerned with pottery or fauna or flora here, where there are probably not proper names referring to specific types of pottery, etc.  We are talking here about a named node of a linguistic family tree.  The name of that node is "Admiralty Islands", not "Admiralty Island".  The attributive adjective form for that named node is, as quite adequately demonstrated among contemporary specialists in that language family, "Admiralty Islands" or "Admiralties" (as found in John Lynch, Malcolm Ross, and Terry Crowley, 2002, The Oceanic Languages).  Whether you want to name these articles "Admiralty Islands languages" or "Admiralties languages", the evidence from scholarly sources is quite clear--the attributive form of the node name is plural.  --Taivo (talk) 22:51, 12 August 2010 (UTC)


 * You are again not arguing from terminology, but from grammar. Wurm and Blust do not use the phrase, therefore you can only extrapolate from their choice of grammar. That in itself would be WP:OR, but in addition you claim that we are not debating grammar. Therefore Wurm and Blust are irrelevant. Your evidence is not at all clear, and when presented with counter-evidence that other scholars use the more formal form, you place restrictions on dates and academic fields. If you want to do that, let's restrict ourselves to linguistics from this century, shall we?
 * Of course the name of the node is "Admiralty Islands", which is why I have repeatedly used the phrase "Admiralty Islands". Except, of course, when used attributively, since we are an encyclopedia here.
 * Scholars will differ in their choice of orthography, formality, and dialect. We don't need to imitate them unless there is a meaningful difference in such usage. A difference between British and American spelling might be critical in some technical field, but that requires demonstration. You have provided zero evidence for such a meaningful difference. — kwami (talk) 23:02, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I have shown you multiple examples of how scholars from the last two decades consistently use the plural form of "Islands" when naming a node of Oceanic attributively. You have presented zero evidence from the last two decades.  You mention Geraghty in passing, but you don't provide a quote to show his usage of "X Islands" attributively.  You're not arguing from usage, but just from some hyper-formal grammar of English.  Usage dictates grammar and grammar rules.  As a linguist, you should know that.  Scholarly usage here is crystal clear--you're only obfuscating it to make your grammar point, which is irrelevant.  Usage is key and usage by scholars is fundamental.  This isn't WP:OR on my part since I've provided enough quotes from reliable sources to demonstrate usage.  Indeed, your point is actually the WP:OR because you are applying obscure and somewhat archaic English grammar rules to a proper name.  You argue for "encyclopedic" usage, but then ignore Bright whose usage was "encyclopedic".  --Taivo (talk) 00:07, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So now it's not a matter of the name of this one node, but rather the grammatical convention of linguists discussing Oceanic languages in general. Are we to have different grammatical conventions when discussing different fields? I'm sorry, but that strikes me as rather odd.
 * If we're going to consider grammar among scholars discussing Oceanic languages, rather than any particular term, then we should consider other nodes of Oceanic. Is Tryon & Hackman (1983) Solomon Island Languages: An Internal Classification too far past your arbitrary deadline? How about Bradshaw, Rehg, Bender (2001) Issues in Austronesian morphology, p 214: "Human agents are not allowed with passive verbs in the Southeast Solomon languages". Or Senft (1997) Referring to space: studies in Austronesian and Papuan languages, sect. 4.2.2.2 "The Loyalty Island Languages". Or König & Gast (2008) Reciprocals and reflexives, p 124: "In some Polynesian and Loyalty Island languages, ...". Or Hodvhaugen & Mosel (1999) Negation in Oceanic languages: "... give a survey on negation systems in the New Caledonian and Loyalty Island languages" (p. vii); "Note that the Loyalty Island languages have the same negatives for assertive predicates and imperatives" (p 9).
 * As was obvious before, there is variance in usage. When the proper noun is removed, for example, as in Wurm, "Islands" takes the plural to emphasize the plurality, an allowance made in non-proper attributive nouns that doesn't directly address the issue here. You're cherry-picking one usage in an OR attempt to morph a grammatical choice into ad hoc technical terminology. You have provided no evidence that this grammatical convention makes any technical difference. Repeating that it is "crystal clear" does not make it so: It is crystal clear to me that the difference is technically meaningless. — kwami (talk) 01:06, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I have never claimed this for Oceanic languages in general, it is specific to Admiralty Islands languages and the usages I have cited have all only specifically been tied to Admiralty Islands languages. What I have shown you is crystal clear usage among Austronesian specialists on how they treat the word "Islands" among the Admiralty Islands languages. You are ignoring WP:NCON and pushing your own grammatical usage despite the common usage among Austronesianists which I have clearly demonstrated. There's no "cherry-picking" going on. There are four solid linguistic sources that show that in contemporary usage among the Admiralty Islands language nodes specialists use the plural "islands" in attributive position. You have offered no contemporary counterevidence, just your own WP:OR opinions about English grammar. --Taivo (talk) 03:41, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
 * And you expect anyone to believe that there are special grammatical conventions for discussing the Admiralties which don't apply to the Loyalties or Solomons? Come on. There's nothing crystal clear in what you presented: you have four scholars who happen to use the same grammatical convention, which you're trying to twist into technical jargon. Other scholars have used other conventions. It's as if you came across a group of languages which only Usonian linguists have written about in the last 20 years, and insist that therefore British linguists must use American spelling when writing about these languages. It's completely irrational. — kwami (talk) 05:22, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Admiralty Islands languages
A request for move has been initiated at Admiralty Island languages. --Taivo (talk) 13:11, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanx
I was already twice on short hollidays, so that is why I haven´t noteced your responce to a question I posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Serbia. I apologise for not having noteced it and thank you for your input. I beleave you and Timbouctou understood perfectly the issue I exposed there. :) Best regards, FkpCascais (talk) 04:40, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure. Sorry I wasn't able to clean up more of them. Got sidetracked on other issues closer to my interests. — kwami (talk) 06:58, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Don´t warry, you don´t need to loose time with it. The most important thing was that the discussion is possibly/probably going to be read by other editors, and the ones that revert "Serbian Cyrillic" to "Serbian" can now see why was that wrong, and hopefully stop doing it. FkpCascais (talk) 07:20, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Field templates at Code-switching and Code-mixing
User:Stevertigo has offered a great deal of advice on my talk page regarding the pages Code-switching and Code-mixing. The editor appears to have a great deal of interest, but not a great deal of academic background in linguistics or sociolinguistics. I have suggested that the discussion move to the articles' talk pages. Any comments you might make at Talk:Code-switching would be appreciated. Cnilep (talk) 15:11, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Tangale languages


The article Tangale languages has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * This article has no encyclopedic value with very little content and no references.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing  will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Inniverse (talk) 14:09, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Proto-Canaanite alphabet
Your repeated conversion of Proto-Canaanite alphabet into a redirect is little better than vandalism. If you disagree with the article, seek consensus on its talk page in the first instance. &mdash; RHaworth 17:09, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * No, the issue was discussed. You need to discuss before recreating it. There is no consensus as to what the "proto-Canaanite" script even was: for some it's the proto-Sinaitic script when found in Canaan; for others it's the Phoenician script before some arbitrary date. The article has never been encyclopedic, and the relevant information, what little there is, is found at proto-Sinaitic and at Phoenician alphabet. — kwami (talk) 17:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I thank you for the edits on Tahash: Proto-Canaanite→Phoenician, et cetera. I have enjoyed reading your talk page, and I am refreshed by your expertise, your passion for accuracy and your scholastic/academic/professorial integrity. Pax. Hermitstudy (talk) 19:14, 21 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. One point, though, which I didn't take the time to clarify: in the earliest texts, it's next to impossible to say what the language is (Hebrew and Phoenician being just dialects of Canaanite at the time), which is why "Proto-Canaanite" has been used for them. However, there is no distinction between that and Phoenician, apart from a temporal one, and AFAIK the texts are from coastal areas associated w Phoenicia. — kwami (talk) 19:22, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Velar ejective affricate
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 * That's not even a valid link. There's no copy vio. — kwami (talk) 19:32, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Croatian language
Problems are still continuing at Croatian language - any suggestions? According to User:Sandstein, poor behaviour at this article comes under the ArbCom sanctions of WP:ARBMAC, and I think this may be the best route in the long term. Knepflerle (talk) 22:09, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not familiar with that decision, but asked there what would be appropriate. — kwami (talk) 02:05, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Tachelhit Language

 * newer::I responded to your message (talk:Tachelhit Language) (Adrar (talk) 20:21, 23 August 2010 (UTC))

Croatian language
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war&#32; according to the reverts you have made on Croatian language. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. If the edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. Tb hotch Ta lk C. 19:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)


 * There is already consensus on this article. Page protection was just ramped up to PC2 because of chronic nationalist edits. — kwami (talk) 19:59, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Why not warn User:Croq, the natinoalist editor who's heading toward sanctions under WP:ARBMAC, and who is the one edit warring against consensus? — kwami (talk) 20:02, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Because after this revert I see no others, he maybe is waiting his 24 hrs time —or logging out for continue. I would recomend you wait the same time before revert again. Tb hotch Ta lk C.  20:06, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, in that last edit I mistakenly re-reverted after the article had already been reverted to the consensus version, restoring the nationalist censorship. But you caught it, so we're back where we should be. — kwami (talk) 22:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I have just protected this page for 3 days as the reverts are continuing. (Unfortunately the protection also "accepted" the last IP revert at the same time so I have reverted that). Fainites barley scribs 23:22, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. There will probably be no end to this, unless the EU refuses to accept Croatian and Serbian as separate languages and Croatia accepts that decision as part of admission. In the meantime, PC2 should probably be sufficient for the long term. — kwami (talk) 00:13, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Sent you an e-mail, won't waste space with a new header. Courcelles 02:03, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit warring
I may be, new. But your reedits of Berber languages and renaming the articles do not have any support of (citations, footnotes, sources and references). as you already know the the Wikipedia roles. leave the accurate and most used names as they are. and just use the discussion form for your preferences.

I restate, again a message in (Talk: Tachelhit Language) info (Uchronicle (talk) 09:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC))


 * You have provided no evidence and no sources. I have, enough to convince knowledgeable editors who initially disagreed with me. You're also edit warring against more than just me--you need to convince us. — kwami (talk) 09:52, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Aorist
See Talk:Aorist. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 22:50, 27 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Note that I've placed two comments/quotes there. --Taivo (talk) 01:33, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks! (My response after the first quote didn't get saved.) — kwami (talk) 05:38, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It's like Radagast heard absolutely nothing we were saying. I took the radical revert option.  As an admin, I'm sure that you can do a better job of selective reverting than I can.  But the version laying there when I came home looked like it did before we ever showed up.  "Tense" everywhere :p  --Taivo (talk) 01:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Can you help me?
The article for Susan Tedeschi needs an IPA rendering of her name rather than the pronounciation which is there: Susan Tedeschi (pronounced te-DES-ki). It would be great if you can help with this. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 03:06, 29 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Nicely done! Thank you for assisting here!! --Leahtwosaints (talk) 16:15, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Chinese naming conventions
Hi, Kwamikagami, I was just visiting the Naming conventions (Chinese) talk page, where the discussion of renaming or not Standard Mandarin is going on, and I see that there have been previous discussions about whether or not to rename Hokkien. Hokkien comes up because that is tagged for copyediting during September's Copyediting Backlog Elimination Drive, and I thought I would try to work on that article. You have been on Wikipedia longer than I have, and I wonder what you think about various approaches to naming various Sinitic languages. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 01:18, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Hokkien is a tough call, because it literally means "Fujianese", but in English has a narrower scope than Fujian dialects. Actually, it seems that "Fujianese" itself is narrower than Min, even narrower than Min Nan, not a synonym as one might expect. But anyone aware of the etymology may feel it should be a synonym.


 * The OED, which isn't a good guide to linguistics but does help establish common usage, identifies Hokkien as "a dialect of Southern Min". They say that "the northern and southern varieties of Hokkien together with Amoy form the subdialect Xiamen", but also include a quote about "the grammar of a Southern Min or Hokkien dialect", which suggests the two are on par. Is previous discussions we concluded that we should stick to Hokkien with this definition, because that is established English usage.


 * Ethnologue says that the Xiamen dialect of Min Nan "has subdialects Amoy, Fujian (Fukien, Hokkian, Taiwanese)". It does seem odd to say that "Fujian" is a subdialect of Xiamen!


 * Sorry if I'm not much help. It isn't an easy thing to answer. — kwami (talk) 01:36, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Consonants
Template:Consonants has been nominated for merging with Template:IPA navigation. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Actually, a redirect is proposed. See also: IPA consonant chart. Discussion is here. DePiep (talk) 12:21, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Vowels
Template:Vowels has been nominated for merging with Template:IPA navigation. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Actually, a redirect is proposed. See also: IPA vowel chart. Discussion is here. DePiep (talk) 12:21, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Name change
Hello! May I ask what's the reasoning behind name changes like Uropi > Uropi (artificial language), and what does the somewhat enigmatic addition "per others" mean? Cheers, &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  13:36, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Per other obscure artificial languages. But I see that the tag is 'constructed language', so I'll move to that. — kwami (talk) 21:31, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * "Constructed language" is better indeed. But say, isn't "obscure" a bit of an arbitrary criterium? I mean, what is obscure for one person is common knowledge for the other, and the average person on the street has never heard of Interlingua either. IMO it's a dangerous kind of thing to do, and adding tags should be done only if otherwise misunderstandings might arise. One objective criterium would be the question whether there are other articles with the same title. To take Uropi as an example, if there is, say, an Italian village or a Greek island with that name, then a tag would be justified. That is the policy on the Dutch wikipedia, and that is for example why Ido is one of the very few constructed languages with a tag: because it also exists as a first name in Dutch. But the name of a subject being a redirect to the same subject with tag somehow doesn't make sense to me. Regards, &mdash;IJzeren Jan <sub style="color:green;">Uszkiełtu?  00:25, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll move it back if you like. I don't see it as a big deal. — kwami (talk) 00:45, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It's not a big deal for me either, I was just curious if there was some kind of policy behind it. Cheers, &mdash;IJzeren Jan <sub style="color:green;">Uszkiełtu?  13:15, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The guidelines are as you suggested. There's some leewaay, and I've used that for some articles as I've come across them or edited them for other things (not systematically going through them), so I've reverted such moves if people object. — kwami (talk) 19:50, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Cro lang
kwami do you know that what happens here in en.wikipedia is gradually becoming a serious political problem in Croatia? Do you know that now we have headlines in newspapers about this anti Croatian special war? Do you know that what I.Š. and few others are doing is nothing but special war against Croatia and Croatian culture and people? Do you know that what they are doing (and you support them) is something that Serbian nationalists are trying to do for decencies? Are you sure you want to be a part of that? 78.3.120.82 (talk) 12:29, 3 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I can't help it if Croatian nationalists and bigots get in a huff because we refuse to regurgitate their propaganda. If they think that reality has an anti-Croatian bias, they're going to be very frustrated people.
 * We make our editorial decisions based on WP:Reliable sources, not on blogs, especially when problematic per WP:ARBMAC.
 * BTW, our edits and mergers have been just as "anti-Serb" and "anti-Bosniak" as "anti-Croat", yet it's almost only Croats who go berserk over it. — kwami (talk) 19:46, 3 September 2010 (UTC)


 * kwami, I think that the reason Croats are most likely to whine about it is because of a sort of pervasive national insecurity as exemplified on Wikipedia by Mir Harven, RobertaF, SpeedyGonsales and Kubura to name a few. Thankfully this insecurity is noticeably absent in people such as Director or Štambuk and to a good degree in GregorB. Many Croats seem to have an inferiority complex as they try to emphasize their "Western" connections by having converted Catholicism long ago and being under the thumb of Italians/Venetians, Austrians or Hungarians (in addition to Turks and Serbs). Their national consciousness often only begrudgingly accepts or sometimes even totally rejects the eastern (i.e. Balkan) connections to the point of intellectual dishonesty. Many Croats today take offense at being called "Balkan" or even southeastern European, preferring to be labelled "Central European" on the same level as the "civilized" Austrians or Germans in particular. As we see with language, the Croats feel the need to somehow reconcile the fact that their language is based on something "eastern" yet their national consciousness realizes that Croats aren't Bosnian or Serbian. Many Croatian academics, politicians and some other intellectuals seem unwilling or incapable of realizing that there can be different ethnic groups/cultures that use the same language. It's comically ironic that the Austrians and Germans whom nationalist Croats often wish to be associated with on an abstract "civilizational"/cultural level get along just fine as different groups using variants of High German. The Bosnians probably don't whine as much as the Croats since what Bosnians speak can be seen from many angles as something transitional between standard Croatian and standard Serbian, even though there now is standard Bosnian. Every day they see that self-identified Bosnian Croats, self-identified Bosniaks and self-identified Bosnian Serbs often use identical articulation, realization of "yat", and grammatical tendencies, no matter what cabals of prescriptivists at language academies in far-away Zagreb or Belgrade imagine. Serbs probably don't care too much either because their standard language comes in two sub-variants: ijekavian and ekavian, and contrary to Croatian opinion, using the infinitive (a nominally primary distinction between Croatian and Serbian) is not "grammatically incorrect" for Serbs. Its use is actually quite noticeable in Serbs who live in Bosnia or Croatia. Torlakian is seen as something very much "out there" and irrelevant to discussions about standard language. The fact that what's going on Wikipedia with the redirect of "Croatian Grammar" to "Serbo-Croatian Grammar" making it into a newspaper story should also be evidence of the national insecurity that I speak of. Vput (talk) 22:50, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm hopeful for the future because of people like Štambuk and Director, and the 'Yugosphere' (even if that name isn't popular in Croatia). My impression is that the younger generation isn't so obsessed by all of this. I'm also amazed at how much Serbia has changed, from someplace that was so nasty just a few years ago to a quite civilized country, restrained even in the face of Kosovo. That attitude maybe hasn't penetrated the Bosnian Serb republic, but it's still remarkable. I just hope all are able to get into the EU together. — kwami (talk) 23:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd like to think that the younger generation is less nationalistic but I have my doubts speaking from experience (notwithstanding the few Balkan editors here who've had a more Western approach, or shall we say a less Balkan one). A couple of my Croatian friends who are well-educated and in their early 30s are actually quite insistent that Croatian is a different language from Serbian and that Croatia is not part of the Balkans, but Central European. Their very education may be the problem and the means of ensuring that even young educated people there unhesitatingly cling to half-truths or too many simplistic ideas from the 19th century. Many Wikipedia editors by definition are generally youngish people (lots of undergrads or grad students here I note), so certainly a noticeable portion of the nationalist Croatian editors here are also part of the younger generation. Another thing is that the younger generation (say younger than 35) in Croatia came of age during the Civil War of Yugoslavia and subsequent Balkan wars and thus were part of a heavily nationalist curriculum (if they could go to school at all while dodging shells). Apparently even the misery caused by the recent Balkan wars and the attendant nationalism is not connected in their minds because Croatia was on the winning side. As far as they're concerned, they were on the winning side, and so they gloss over or ignore how nationalism was part of the problem in the first place. Yet another thing that keeps the nationalist thinking going on Wikipedia is that some of the Balkan editors are members of the diaspora who often carry idealized images of their homeland thanks to their grandparents or parents and are thus willing to excuse any nationalist bunk in the name of "being true to their roots". Štambuk can tell you of his arguments with Pepsi Lite on Wiktionary who appears to be a member of the Serbian diaspora and big on the sanctity of a separate Serbian language. Vput (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:52, 7 September 2010 (UTC).

Map shooters
Pick your brains? We're having a recurring problem on Spain, but in particular Basque related pages that contain maps with drive by map reverters. The consensus on these pages is to use the original green maps for clarity (which indicentally were widely used until some crusaders from the Spanish wiki spilled over and changed them wholesale) but we're having a real problem with IP editors who drift by regularly and revert to the non-consensus maps. Given it's affecting 4 pages in our case (Basque Country (autonomous community)‎, Gipuzkoa, Álava and Biscay) is there a standard way of getting IP editors blocked from changing the maps or do we have to take it somehwere for each map individually? Thanks. Akerbeltz (talk) 15:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah someone else beat you/me to semiprotecting the pages so problem sorted for now! One thing less on your list - thanks. Akerbeltz (talk) 17:24, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Aorist bis
I'm going to put together a prototype Aorist article at User talk:Taivo/Aorist. Any comments you might have would be most welcome. --Taivo (talk) 00:54, 4 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Imagine if this level of passion were dedicated to the basic articles that these concepts depend upon! — kwami (talk) 00:56, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Urdu
The page has, apparently added by you. It is incomplete and causing a cite error. Could you add the full reference? ClamDip (talk) 10:16, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Some untasteful comments
Hi, Kwamikagami. I apologize for intrusion on your talk page, but this concerns you. While reading Village pump comment on Croatian language wikipedia, I found some very bad comments about you and Mr. Stambuk here: made by user Mir Harven. You can use Google translator to check the meaning. I will just say it mentions pigs, sick people, mafia, manipulators and vandals. It appears that his open insults are simply ignored by administrators. --Mike1975 (talk) 23:10, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That's typical behaviour for Mir. He's upset that his nationalistic take on reality is not accepted by other editors, even by other Croats such as Štambuk. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, but I don't attach any importance to his opinion. If you wish to mention it at ANI, there aren't many of us who would mind; I might get around to it eventually if I think it's worth the bother. I think that's why his edits are ignored: he's simply too ridiculous to take seriously enough to get upset about.
 * However, if you feel that such things should not be allowed to slide, even for demonstrable nutcases like Mir, and don't want to do it yourself, I'll take it up with ANI. I'm not familiar with the process for addressing inter-wiki issues. — kwami (talk) 23:17, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. Later, another comment was added by (admin) Kubura: in which he goes further to say that “nice words and reason don't help with ill-manered and restless kids. The worse they become, the worse for them... They won't last forever. Every force in its time...” end of partial quote. --Mike1975 (talk) 22:20, 6 September 2010 (UTC)


 * While personal insults are not uncommon on wikipedia during heated discussions, I find it incredible that one administrator would not only allow ad hominem attacks, but join with his vitriolic comments. This turns a wikipedia into nationalistic forum, where more moderate editors are simply cowed into silence by persons totally uncommitted to basic wikipedian principles. Their agendas are much different. Admin Kubura was stripped off his rights already once this year, due to chauvinistic excesses. Incredibly, he was elected into the adminship again... I would not personally start any process regarding this entire issue, due to privacy concerns (and my lowly user status :), but I'm willing to lend you a hand if you need additional translations. They are easy enough to find on crowiki Village pump, where almost constant battle against the serbo-croatian language, and anyone who thinks different is taking place. At the end, if you decide not to pursue this matter any more, I understand fully. I just wanted to inform you because I would like others to do the same for me if I was a target. --Mike1975 (talk) 22:20, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. If you become a target here on WP-en, I'll do what I can, but I don't feel like wading into WP-hr's internal politics. Kubura's shown himself to be just as ridiculous as Mir before, so I'd actually be surprised if he didn't behave that way; and if he's made admin not just once but twice, that says something about the lack of standards at WP-hr. But those comments may come in handy as a historical record if they try pushing their propaganda on WP-en again, so it's good to have the links you provided. — kwami (talk) 22:31, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Climate change exaggeration
Hi there, could you point me to the discussion that took place prior to your protecting this page? Cheers. Weakopedia (talk) 07:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I was going by the topic probation. It's another POV fork, and had already been reverted once when redirected. If you don't think edit warring will be a problem, I can unprotect it. — kwami (talk) 07:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Can you name me an article in this sphere that isn't likely to end in an edit war? Seriously though, the deleted article had a lot more content than what it is being redirected to, so isn't there scope for a discussion about merging or something? The deleted text did contain a lot of references that may be useful. And I think a problem is that ScienceApologist should have discussed first, rather than deleting with no edit summary. My main worry is just that a lot of sourced text has disappeared in favour of a shorter, less sourced article, and maybe we are losing something without discussion! Weakopedia (talk) 07:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I was going to post a link on the talk page for salvage. We can tag it for merging. It's an orphan anyway. — kwami (talk) 07:44, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Cheers - by the way, the matter is being commented on here if you are interested. Anything to do with Climate Change is fair game for hysteria at the moment. Weakopedia (talk) 07:46, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for unprotecting the article. The proper way to handle situations like this is to put a proposed merge tag at the top and then talk it out on the talk page.  Even if consensus is to redirect after discussion, some to much of its content may be viable for move to the other article. Cla68 (talk) 07:49, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Considering the author is a single-purpose account, I took it as part of the hysteria. But you're right, there might be something of value in it. — kwami (talk) 07:54, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Why are you saying my account is single purpose? Have you even bothered to look at my contribution history or the articles i have created? Please redact your accusation mark nutley (talk) 08:14, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I checked several. Every single one was about denying climate change. That certainly strikes me as single purpose. (Though it might have simply been the luck of the draw.) And I must say, your prickliness does fit it too. — kwami (talk) 08:17, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * That`s incorrect. 13 out of 32 articles created have nought to do with CC. of my last 50 edits less than half deal with CC. You did not look at anything at all, just assumed. I know what to expect from you in the future mark nutley (talk) 08:24, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Uh, if 60% of your articles are on CC, wouldn't you think there's a good chance that random articles I look at would be about CC? Yet from that you are able to conclude that I lied when I said that I looked at several of your articles. Is that the level of logic you use when writing your articles? Yes, I'm getting a fair idea of what to expect from you too. — kwami (talk) 08:29, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Really, a random look? Why not just look at articles created? I never said you lied, i said you were incorrect, as it wrong. But what`s the point, you have already made your mind up and your bias is obvious for all to see, goodbye mark nutley (talk) 08:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I did exactly that: I took a random look at the articles you created, which you display on your user page.
 * You certainly did say I lied. I said I looked, you said I did not look: "You did not look at anything at all, just assumed." That's calling me a liar. — kwami (talk) 08:38, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you for undoing your protection. It was probably improper of you to place it since you'd expressed a view (by making the article a redirect) and then protected to your preferred version, so it's really good that you undid it without fuss. ++Lar: t/c 12:23, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

IPA-xx
Thanks for the appreciation! The remaining ones were beyond my powers...

Now, a request: try as I might, I cannot get IPA-xx to include the remaining tagged pages in CAT:NSP. I tried a simple, then plagiarizing what seemed to me like relevant code from Cleanup-IPA—to no avail. Do you have what it takes? This would keep these pages front-and-center, at least for someone like me who compulsively checks that cat...

Thanks for whatever you can do. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 10:06, 7 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, that's beyond me. I don't understand the syntax. You'd be better off asking on one of the help boards. — kwami (talk) 10:49, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Malay
As you seem to know your linguistics quite well, I was wondering if you any good sources or information about the Malay language? A page for two standardizations have been created, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia. If you could provide help with these it may be useful. Thanks. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 06:11, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I wonder if Bahasa Malaysia (which is now called simply "Malay") shouldn't be largely merged with Malay language. Currently much of the article is duplicated. I think an approach of Malay, Malaysian, Indonesian might be appropriate, paralleling Serbo-Croatian, Croatian, Serbian and Hindustani, Urdu, Hindi and English, GA, RP, with the first article in each set covering the language as a whole and the next two covering the standard registers, but it's probably a good idea to create a discussion section on one of the talk pages (probably at talk:Malay language) and post a notice at Wikiproject Languages, so that we get some consensus as to what belongs in each article. Otherwise I worry that there might be a lot of work that ends up getting merged or deleted.


 * My sources on this are all a bit dated.


 * Also, "over 80% cognate"? Way, way over! The 'languages' are practically identical. There is no problem with communication at all, and you'd expect some serious difficulty with only an 80% cognate rate. — kwami (talk) 06:24, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, before Bahasa Malaysia was created, there was a Malay language article, and the Indonesian language article, which always seemed a bit weird. The Serbocroatian approach sounds like a good way to deal with it. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 07:03, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I think things have gone back and forth on that, esp. when Malaysia changed the name of its standard from 'Malaysian' to 'Malay'. (There is also Brunei Malay to consider.) This whole area is very poorly developed. — kwami (talk) 07:06, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, according to the other editors, and a quick google search, the government has recently pushed back to naming it "Bahasa Malaysian" instead of "Bahasa Melayu". Also, another user said that "Malaysian" was the english name for the language. Personally, I've never heard this. A quick google search of "Malaysian language" ends up with hits for "Malay" and "Bahasa Melayu", with the only reference to the term Malaysian language was in phrases that use that term to describe it as the language of Malaysia, not as the name. Your sources say anything? Being slightly outdated shouldn't affect this issue. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 07:14, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The ELL2 calls them that, and this while Malaysia still called its standard 'Malay':
 * "The existence of two standard varieties of Malay, namely Malaysian (called ‘Bahasa Melayu’ in Malaysia) and Indonesian (‘Bahasa Indonesia’), is mainly the result of ... the influential Riau-Johore variant of Malay ... Malaysian and Indonesian remained closely related ... There are a considerable number of cases in which Malaysian borrowed an English word and Indonesian a Dutch word ..."
 * — kwami (talk) 07:25, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * ELL2? Sounds official! But alright, I guess Malaysian will have to do for now. That last sentence could be useful somewhere or other, in a differences section. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 07:45, 9 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition.
 * I'm not sure I understand your comment. I thought that was the usage you were using: 'Malay' for the language, 'Malaysian' for the standard. — kwami (talk) 07:53, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, I was asking for the name of the standard, which you provided. Maybe on your merge proposal you should explain a possible layout of the three articles (Title and main sections for each). Additionally, is there a separate Brunei or Singaporean malay standard? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 08:29, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, Singapore just uses Malaysian, but I'm not sure about Brunei. They have always called their lang 'Malay', at least until fairly recently; I don't know if a different name means a slightly different standard or not. — kwami (talk) 20:18, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Los Altos
Please stop changing the first vowel. --Trovatore (talk) 05:35, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Why? How is it incorrect?
 * Also, please use the IPA if you're going to format it as the IPA. — kwami (talk) 05:41, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It's pronounced like the word loss, with the caught (not cot) vowel. --Trovatore (talk) 05:43, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * But loss has the cot vowel. (Actually, it could have either.) Is the Los in Los Altos different from the Los in, say, Los Angeles, which per the OED has the cot vowel? If the OED is wrong, could you provide a RS? This would affect quite a few articles. — kwami (talk) 05:46, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The OED is clearly wrong. Los in Los Angeles has the caught vowel, for those Californians who don't have the merger (probably the majority of them have the merger). --Trovatore (talk) 05:47, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I wonder if it's a difference of California & other places. Would you happen to know how New Yorkers say it, or Londoners?
 * Also, a ref to this effect would be most helpful. — kwami (talk) 05:59, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't really know how they say it. But I think local pronunciations should be favored. --Trovatore (talk) 06:00, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Webster's and Random House back you up. I'll start changing other like articles. — kwami (talk) 06:10, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, as far as I know all varieties of British English do have the LOT vowel for "Los Angeles" (I'm afraid most of us have never heard of Los Altos). "Loss" is normally LOT too, but for older, very RP speakers it's often THOUGHT .  The American vowel for LOT sounds to us more like TRAP or PALM.


 * In the case of Los Altos, I too am in favour of local pronunciations. However, are the local people saying  as their LOT vowel or their THOUGHT vowel?  The IPA given on WP is normally phonemic, so if it is their LOT vowel we should surely be giving the phonemic IPA for the lexical set.  Alternatively if we do want to give the local pronunciation phonetically we should render it as  – but if we did that, how would a British, Australian or Indian reader know how to say it in their accent?


 * Incidentally, I notice that this source (which seems quite authoritative) gives the "Los" of "Los Angeles" as a LOT vowel. Richard New Forest (talk) 09:38, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * For those who don't have the merger, it's the "thought" vowel. --Trovatore (talk) 09:43, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * By the way, I don't see that in the ref you cited. It gives the vowel as ô, which in my understanding usually means .  The vowel in lot for us is not really any sort of o but rather some sort of a (I can sort of see how you might stretch palm to fit, but not trap, which for me has the cat vowel). --Trovatore (talk) 09:53, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh I see, that is indeed what it says (wasn't concentrating, sorry). Is that really in the THOUGHT lexical set?  It's certainly LOT in the British pronunciation: .  (I'm not intending to stretch the American PALM or TRAP, but comparing with the British pronunciation of those sets: I think American TRAP is nearer standard British DRESS .)  Richard New Forest (talk) 14:02, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the American tradition is o for LOT and ô for THOUGHT. No-one in the Western US distinguishes FATHER and BOTHER; only a few distinguish THOUGHT, but yes, evidently Los is distinct from Las for those people. I wonder if it would be worth adding "" to the entry? Maybe as a footnote? — kwami (talk) 18:52, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Might be reasonable. That pronunciation always gets Arlo Guthrie playing in my head.  Comin' into Los Angeleez / Bringin' in a coupla keys / Don't check my bags if you please / Mr. Customs Man.... --Trovatore (talk) 18:56, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Chamois
Hi Kwami. I noticed that you reverted the change again on the pronunciation of this word. Did you not see my comment at Talk:Chamois? From the sources I've been able to find, it seems our disagreement is from a difference between American and British English, and that neither of us was fully correct. Please see my suggested wording. Regards, Richard New Forest (talk) 09:38, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, didn't see it. Will respond there. — kwami (talk) 18:54, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Mister Kwamikagami, wat, this a not really ?????????
Mister Kwamikagami, thisis a not really ?????????

[numerous links to Croatian grammars deleted as clutter] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.168.102.48 (talk) 20:15, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, we all know there are books on Croatian grammar. So what? It's practically identical to Serbian grammar, and from that POV the two are a single language. This was the consensus on Wikipedia, as well as all non-Croatian (and many Croatian) sources. — kwami (talk) 20:42, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Serbian chauvinist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ivan_%C5%A0tambuk —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.168.102.48 (talk) 21:27, 10 September 2010 (UTC)


 * He's a Croat. I find it revealing that you think that anyone who disagrees with you must not be. — kwami (talk) 21:34, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

September 2010
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war&#32; according to the reverts you have made on Aorist. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. If the edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. - F ASTILY  (T ALK ) 23:10, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Pyrostegia
Do you mind if I delete Pyrostegia? It's evidently a genus of its own, so redirecting to the dab page flame tree isn't very useful. Ucucha 00:39, 11 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know what you mean by "a genus of its own".
 * It would seem more useful to create a stub using the info at the redirect. — kwami (talk) 01:20, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Banat Bulgarian: language vs dialect
Hello Kwamikagami! I was read the page of Banat Bulgarians: 1. The author father Jáni Vasilčin wrote, that the Banat Bulgarians also known as his tongue, that language. In the Bulgarian wikipedia also the thing is, that the Banat Bulgarian second standard Bulgarian norm. Bulgaria and Romania also warrant the Banat Bulgarian in the schools. In Austria the Burgeland Croatian also language. In our midst not yet the Prekmurian, but few authority have in idea that the Prekmurian also regional language, not simply dialect. Doncsecztalk 08:13, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The article itself described Banat as a 'dialect'. Ethnologue assigns it the same iso code as Bulgarian proper. There is no clear distinction between 'language' and 'dialect' in many of these cases, so we generally follow our sources. — kwami (talk) 09:06, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Aorist
Kwami, when you moved "Aorist (linguistics)" to Aorist, the Talk page stayed stranded at Talk:Aorist (linguistics). :) --Taivo (talk) 04:03, 14 September 2010 (UTC)


 * That seems to happen a lot. I have no idea why. — kwami (talk) 05:35, 14 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I assume you are ticking the box that says "move associated talk page", or is that too obvious...? Richard New Forest (talk) 10:02, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking back at it, I think that someone had inadvertently placed a comment on the Aorist talk page before the move, so that while the move from Aorist (linguistics) to Aorist was successful, the associated talk page moved was blocked by the comment on the dab page. Just a guess.  --Taivo (talk) 14:10, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You have just closed a move request after 24 hours, rather than the recommended five days, in a page in which you are deeply involved. Both are bad practice. Please stop it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:45, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The move request was initiated because of your edit warring against consensus, PMAnderson, and so the move back to its original place was justified. You are the one who should have initiated a move request for your original move rather than edit warring over it.  --Taivo (talk) 17:19, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * As you already know, Sep, I reverted your move warring before even seeing the request. You've been here long enough to know that your attempts at ownership of the articles is inappropriate. — kwami (talk) 18:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You have abused your admin powers in an article on which you have repeatedly revert warred. You deserve no confidence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:02, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * He has not abused admin powers - he reverted a disruptive move - you have some nerve lecturing others about due process while obviously purposefully disregarding it yourself. Blatant hypocrisy that anyone will see through in a second. Unless you adopt a more colaborative spirit fast I don't think you'll be lasting long around here. Give goodfaith and you may get it. ·Maunus· ƛ · 19:43, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sep has been here 6 yrs and has 55,000 edits. He knows exactly what he is doing. — kwami (talk) 00:01, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I do. I've met abusive admins before -although few are so self-righteous as to revert-war on the same article and the same day they abuse their powers.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:13, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I find your use of "abusive", "self-righteous", and "revert-war" in reference to someone else absolutely hilarious, PMAnderson. Your use of such terms referring to others is the ultimate in hypocrisy.  --Taivo (talk) 04:25, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

note
Your edits are mentioned here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Aorist - Off2riorob (talk) 18:59, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Phonetics
Hi, you recently removed the pronounciation of the word "Hilal-i-Ju'rat". I want to let you know that I know it's not English or Urdu. It's about how you say the word, ie how you say the name of the medal phonectically. NarSakSasLee (talk) 22:27, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, but that's not how you say it in either English or Urdu. If it's supposed to be English, we can work on how to clean it up; if it's supposed to be Urdu, I can't help as much, and we shouldn't format it as English. — kwami (talk) 22:32, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It's how you pronounce the word in English from the Urdu translation. I've answered on the talk page. And yes I would like help on picking the phonetics. NarSakSasLee (talk) 22:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Let's see what happens
You may defend your revert warring at WP:AN3. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:58, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Opinion and a thank you
Can I ask what state you consider the article to be in? Whether it looks good enough to become a good article or even featured? NarSakSasLee (talk) 01:20, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it's pretty good. I'm not sure if it would qualify as GA as is, but it should without too much additional work. (I had a ridiculous time getting my articles up to FA, but I think that's unusual, and it's not normally so difficult.) The scope seems appropriate and it reads well; I feel like I understand the topic after reading the article. It does need some copy editing (wording, flow, etc.), but nothing major. I don't have the background to edit it myself, but you could probably find a couple interested editors to go over it, perhaps when you propose it for GA. Other than that, it would seem to meet all of the GA criteria, with the possible exception of MOS, which I'm not up to speed on. I'd want to check the refs to make sure there are no unsourced statements. As with any Indo-Pakistani topic, I'd ask over at WP:WikiProject India if they think there's anything biased about it; I don't see anything, but then I'm not very aware of subcontinental sensitivities.
 * I'd also ask over at the GA page if they think there's anything egregious that needs to be taken care of before nomination. — kwami (talk) 02:39, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the feedback. I've spotted some errors in the article which I'm going to fix. Plus the list of recipients isn't completely sourced. I think I need to work on the table properly for it to be completely ready. NarSakSasLee (talk) 04:11, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Anyone called a "hero" should be reliably sourced as a national hero, since that can be such a meaningless word. (It's good to see it doesn't appear often.) Also, per Indian input, my point was that you should be able to convincingly defend anything they might dispute, not that you need to water down the article until it offends no-one. (If it offends anyone. Hopefully it won't.) — kwami (talk) 04:19, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with the hero part. I'll put that in inverted commas to show that its a quote along with a source. I agree that that's not neutral. NarSakSasLee (talk) 04:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Ownership of articles
Revision history of Serbo-Croatian language. No comment. --Roberta F. (talk) 01:46, 17 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Of course I will revert errors, such as implying that Serbian is not a South Slavic language, which is just silly. — kwami (talk) 01:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Aspects making people tense?
OK, I did. Happy trails, -- ArielGlenn (talk) 16:17, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Romani moves
No, not yours ;) Someone unilaterally moved Romano-Greek language to Hellenoromani language and Romano-Serbian language to Serbian Romani language citing "remove confusion" in the move summary. I've asked him (User_talk:Nergaal) to revert for two reasons (1) it wasn't debated, 2) the second name in particular is invented and adds to the confusion as it suggests a Romani derived language rather than a Serbian based language with Romani admix) but (s)he isn't responsive to arguments at all. I'm not averse to debating a move on either but not in the way Nergaal did it. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:35, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The first one is called "Serbian Romani language" in the lede, so that should be changed. I agree that it's a misleading name, but FAIK that was the principal reason for the move.
 * Is "Hellenoromani" at all common in English?
 * Maybe you could rephrase the articles to what you think would be the least confusing and most representative wording, and if Nergaal doesn't respond, I'll move them to match the bold name in the lede. — kwami (talk) 11:43, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It originally was Romano-Serbian (as Ethnologue has it). I'll rephrase and we'll take it from there.
 * Hellenoromani/Romano-Greek is one where, as I said, I could be swayed either way. It's hard to say. A search on Google scholar gets me 2 results for "Hellenoromani gypsy" 8 for "Romano-Greek gypsy" (to filter out stuff to do with Romano-Greek in the sense of Romans and Greeks). Hellenoromani would be slightly clearer but my main concern for this page was the unilateral move; for some reason Nergaal seems to have set his mind to changing quite a lot of the naming of Romani related pages. We could leave that one where it is for now as both names are attested. Dunno, what do you feel? Akerbeltz (talk) 12:29, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * IMO it's nice to have the parallel Romano-X. — kwami (talk) 13:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Then for now I'd go with the two original names. If there's a proper debate and the agreement is to move, then fine. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Still no response from Nergaal. Moved back. — kwami (talk) 20:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Hopefully in future he'll debate before he moves! Akerbeltz (talk) 21:33, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

move req
Hi kwami, could you move Seri (disambiguation) to Seri? I recently moved Seri to Seri people for the same reason you moved Tongva to Tongva people. However, I can't move the disambig page that already exists. --JorisvS (talk) 21:44, 21 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, done. — kwami (talk) 22:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Ain't and amn't
I'd prefer this title to Ain't and related contractions because amn't is a good deal older than ain't, and has had independent existence all the while ain't and its friends were fluctuating.... -- Evertype·✆ 09:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm not planning on voting in the debate, and don't even have the page on my watch list. I was just throwing out a suggestion on the off chance it might be of some help. — kwami (talk) 16:41, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Traditional/simplified character order in Template:Zh: a new proposal
You are receiving this message because you participated in discussions about Template:zh.

As you probably know, currently if you want traditional characters to display before simplified characters when using this template, you have to write t every time you use the template, which can be a pain in long articles, and which raises complaints about political and practical problems with making simplified characters the "default".

So I am trying to write up a version of the template in which you set a traditional/simplified choice setting just once (specifically, on a subpage of the article where you're using the template), and then every instance of the template on that article uses the ordering you set. Further details about the new setup are here; if you have a moment I would very much appreciate your input, specifically about any potential problems you can imagine or any ways this can be made better.

Thank you, <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 01:24, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I made a comment at zh-full, but don't have anything to say right now for this. — kwami (talk) 06:05, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Semitic transcription?
Some of your recent changes have to been to Native American tribes and places, was wondering what they have to dow ith changing the IPA to a Semitic transcription?  He  iro 00:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I forgot to change the edit summary. I'm changing non-IPA transcriptions to non-IPA letters; AFAIK the IPA letter isn't used in the orthographies of any of these languages, but please let me know if I've made an error. — kwami (talk) 00:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Cool, no problems, was just wondering, edit summary had me confused.  He  iro 00:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Rollback abuse
I'd hope this was an accident, but if it was intentional this is misuse of rollback. At best, it is extremely discourteous. Please see the discussion at Talk:IPA_chart_for_English_dialects instead. Cheers, Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 02:49, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm simply tired of this stupid edit war. It shouldn't even be an issue. You don't delete tags for sourcing just because you don't like their format. That is the inappropriate behaviour. If you make a spelling error, I should correct the error, not delete the words. If you want to change the tag format, then change it. If you can't be bothered, then confine yourself to the talk page. — kwami (talk) 04:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Given that you've just come along and started edit-warring yourself (presumably because you thought your friend "needs help"), it's hard to believe you are "tired". You need to read the discussion. If cn tags are actually needed, fine ... put them where they are needed, not somewhere else. There is no room for argument here. Your friend's position (which he even has abandoned) is completely wrong. Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 11:58, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but you carry no authority here. Just because you've decided that you're right does not mean I need to obey. Those transcriptions are not referenced, and they should be. Therefore the cn tags remain. If you wish to move the tags to someplace more appropriate, fine. But it is unacceptable to simply delete them, and if you continue I will take you to ANI for disrupting WP.
 * Ah, I see it's been resolved on the talk page. That's what you should have done to begin with. — kwami (talk) 20:05, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Listen, Kwamikagami, you are a lucky I didn't bring this to AN/I myself ... you don't have a leg to stand on, placing tags in the wrong place and abusing rollback. Your approach to this has been so bad, and your display of observational abilities and knowledge of wiki practice so poor, that you have earned nothing from me but contempt. This is not a platform to be preaching from. I suggest you do some growing up and learn to treat fellow-wikipedians with more respect. Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 22:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The feeling is mutual, and you're the one preaching. Disruption will not be tolerated, no matter how righteous you present yourself to be. If you disrupt an article like this again, I will take you to ANI, or if I'm not involved, I'll block you myself. — kwami (talk) 22:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You are keen on receiving AN/I feedback. I believe your behaviour and particularly your block threat there require some feedback, and have opened a thread there.Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 22:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Since you're keen on proper procedure, you should follow it by providing a link to the ANI. — kwami (talk) 23:27, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

ANI
Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 02:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Malay language?
Hi Kwamikagami, I don't really know if you are the right person to ask, but I wonder if you known enough Malay to be able to let us at Project Gastropods know if the words "siput gonggong", which seem to mean howling or barking snail, really sort-of mean "dog snail"? It's for the article Dog conch which we are trying to get up to GA. Thanks so much. If on the other hand you have no idea about this, maybe you know someone on the 'pedia who speaks Malay and English? Many thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 20:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You mean, is it metonymically "dog snail" rather than literally "barking snail"? Sorry, that's well beyond me.
 * I'd check for editors linked from malay-4 or indonesian-4 on their user pages. I don't know of anyone offhand. — kwami (talk) 21:11, 30 September 2010 (UTC)