User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 2

Playing on a VfD
You might be interested in what I said, or at least in how I said it, at Votes_for_deletion/European_English. Méibí yu l bí éibäl tä ríd it betär qän eníwan els qéir... Tomer TALK 06:23, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Talk
Your Korean talk "syllable" is questionable...I think either &#53441; or &#53665; would be better or maybe even &#46049; to better approximate, although I'd probably go for &#46050; myself, in a feeble attempt to better approximate an unreleased final /k/. :-p -t
 * Úps! Sáinigh máisèlf!  Tomer TALK  04:41, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

What!? After all that work I went through finding you alternatives!? Of all the...! :-) Tomer TALK  07:01, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

podcast list
Why did you merge that (admittedly stupid) list of podcasts back into the Podcasting page? If you'll check the Talk, you'll see it was pulled out of that article fairly recently because it was swamping the main article. Please don't make big changes like that without discussing it on talk - I plan to pull it back out into a separate article again. (You're right: Wikipedia isn't a list of lists, and I suspect that the list will be VFD'd eventually, but separating it out was the first step to that) - DavidWBrooks 15:14, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

High German consonant shift
Hey Angr, if you have a moment, would you have a look at the new article on the High German consonant shift? Wiglaf is possibly making a map for it, but otherwise it is now as finished as I can make it, and some feedback would be good.

BTW, a while back you provided a couple of Gaelic etymologies for me, when I asked for them. Do you have a reference book for that sort of thing? I am especially interested in PIE&rarr;Old Irish and OI&rarr;modern Scottish Gaelic. It would be great if you can point me in the direction! --Doric Loon 11:42, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the book tip. I will see if I can get a copy. And thanks for the edits on HGCS. I am a bit puzzled about lexical diffusion; if that is not how it happened, then what are the alternatives? I notice you started the article on lexical diffusion. Perhaps you could extend it to answer that? --Doric Loon 21:22, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Languages
Sorry, I didn't really think of it that way. That's a justification I accept. I didn't really want to add language anyway, but I figured that it would be diplomatic to propose such a solution.--naryathegreat | (talk) 00:55, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Votes for deletion/Polish Wikipedians' notice board/Black Book
Thanks! I appreciate your support. It's nice to be defended instead of having to defend myself and come off as defensive or hysterical. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and Wikipedia will soon be freed of this embarassing bout of wound-licking. Nohat 07:13, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

W. Mark Felt
Salve! I nominated W. Mark Felt as a WP:FAC. As you commented on the article's talk page, I'd appreciate your comments at Featured article candidates/W. Mark Felt/archive1. PedanticallySpeaking 14:56, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)

ga.wikipedia
Hi Angr - there's been some discussion going on at Requests_for_permissions and at ga: as regards adminship. We would really appreciate your comments on the matter. I hope you will pop your head back in to ga! --Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo 00:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

English words that arose in America
Do you know the history of the word downtown to describe a city's CBD? I heard long ago somewhence that this usage arise in NYC and spread thence throughout the US. I'm not sure if it's used, at least widely, elsewhere. Comments? Tomer TALK 00:53, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Conlangers to Wiki-Hell
Absolutely - anyone who tries to clog up the works with b.s. gets a one-way ticket. Anyway, aren't conlagers really neologists writ large? -- BD2412 talk 09:17, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)


 * If you decide to do it, I'll volunteer to be the Grand Inquisitor and burn them Ad Majorem Gloriam Jimbo...There's nothing like an auto de fe in the morning! -- Essjay ·  Talk 09:36, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * Sheesh! "Lets face it...You can't Torquemada out of anything!" -- BD2412 talk 09:39, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)
 * What a day, what a day for an auto da fe! --Angr/undefined 11:14, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Auto da fe'? What's an auto da fe'? It's what you oughtn't to do, but you do anyway! -- BD2412 talk 16:53, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)

Lochán
Hello, I've looked in Scottish and Irish dictionaries again and still can't find lochan with an acute a, however I'll bow to the majority.

Regards Gillean666 11:17, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hello Angr, I looked at the Gramadach Lexicon (Online) but couldn't find the Irish spelling, but I'm no longer disputing it. Thanks for your input. Gillean666 22:50, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't know where this discussion started, so I've no context. The suffix -án can be added to most (masculine?) nouns and forms a diminutive. The vowel was long in Old Ir. In the southern half of Ireland this long vowel attracted the stress accent and so remained long. Elsewhere, i.e. Northern half of Ireland, Mann and Scotland the stress stayed on the first syllable and the vowel in the suffix was shortened but NOT obscured. So Scots Gaelic lochan is /Loxan/ a small lake, a pool, distinct from /Lox@n/ which is the plural lochs. The word is listed in my copies of Dinneen (p. 669) and Dwelly (p. 594). In Cregeen's Manx Dictionary it can be found on p. 119 as loghan.

For on-line dictionaries see, especially lochán

Mongvras 23:53, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Consonant mutation
In one of your changes, you replace "In all languages, the 3rd person possessive pronouns for 'his', 'her', and 'their' are homophonous and distinguished from each other only on the basis of which mutation they trigger" by "In most languages, the possessive pronouns trigger various mutations".

This is less precise. If you did that change because of the breton samples i added, i can ensure you that the first sentence was true for breton too ("his" and "her" are very close, "their" is somewhat less close but ho ("your" plural) is very close to o ("their").

So we can keep the first variant : "In all languages, the 3rd person possessive pronouns for 'his', 'her', and 'their' are homophonous and distinguished from each other only on the basis of which mutation they trigger". ThierryVignaud 29 June 2005 20:41 (UTC)

HTML entities
In this change you state:there is no way in which entities are "safer" than characters. They just take up more memory. FYI this is, unfortunately, not completely true. Some browsers are unable to understand the characters to such an extent that, instead of simply preserving them during an edit operation, they replace them with gibberish; this is why HTML entities, which are entirely written in ASCII, are preferable in may if not cases. HTH in case you see this happening and wonder what is going on. HAND --Phil | Talk June 30, 2005 15:08 (UTC)


 * Also re there is no way in which entities are "safer" than characters. They just take up more memory:
 * I'm no techie -- far, far from it -- but I've also learned the hard way that not using HTML entities in the English-language Wikipedia in particular often means asking for trouble! Unless this "new, improved" software which has recently been parachuted upon us solves that problem -- though as far as I can see so far it's buggered things up here to such an extent that I now spend most of my Wikitime in other-language W'pedias. -- Picapica 30 June 2005 20:05 (UTC)