User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 5

rollback button
hi Angr -- I don't know if you've rejected this before, but I just noted that you have accumulated >7000 edits, and it would be high time somebody nominated you for adminship. If you're interested, I'd be glad to. regards, dab (&#5839;) 14:23, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
 * i have, now (you're supposed to state your acceptance and answer the generic questions now) dab (&#5839;) 14:42, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Your edit at Attalus I
Hi Angr. I'm not completely content with your edit at Attalus I, I think it interrupts the flow there, and I'm not sure what information it is trying to convey. Is it trying to imply that calling the Galatians "Gauls" is a misnomer? My understanding is that the Galatians were Celtic speaking immigrant Gauls from Thrace, who were part of the great Celtic/Gualish Eastward migration. Am I wrong about this? Paul August &#9742; 19:07, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

Angr: Thanks for your cogent explanation. I now think I understand and agree with the point you are making. I think the best way to handle this might be, as you suggest, to remove the explanation of the distinction from the lead and into the section "Defeat of the Gauls" (renaming it the "Defeat of the Galatians"). I would propose replacing the first sentence there with something like this:


 * According to Pausanias "the greatest of his achievements" was the defeat of the "Gauls". Pausanias was referring to the Galatians, immigrant Celts from Thrace, who had recently settled in Galatia in central Asia Minor, and whom the Romans and Greeks called Gauls, associating them with the Celts of what is now France, Switzerland, and northern Italy.

What do you think? I think that the slight confusion that might be created by the mention of the "Dying Gaul" in the lead, doesn't really warrant an explanation there. Paul August &#9742; 19:53, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm. Having been prompted by your mention, to look at the original Greek, I'm now wondering if the translation of "Galatas" as "Gauls" is really correct in the first place? And what does it really mean to say that the Greeks called the Galatians Gauls? Paul August &#9742; 20:34, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

Ok I will go ahead and make the above changes, adding in the Greek word, as you suggested. Paul August &#9742; 21:01, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

By the way I'm going to renconstruct and copy this discussion to Talk:Attalus I. Paul August &#9742; 21:05, September 4, 2005 (UTC)

thanq
Thank you for the welcome. Main Page 22:29, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Mountain goat
Hello. Why was the mountain goat page moved? There is no need to have every word in the title in upper case, and "Mountain goat" appears to be the more common name. Jonathunder 20:45, 2005 September 4 (UTC)


 * If you look at "what links here" on that article, "Mountain goat" is most common by quite a bit. There is no rule that I know of that the common name of an animal is in upper case. That would violate ordinary English usage as well as the common practice on Wikipedia article titles. I think the article should be at Mountain goat. Jonathunder 20:55, 2005 September 4 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the naming conventions link. Per that guideline, "Some claim the name of an individual bird or mammal species is usually capitalised, but this is disputed. Various ornithological societies have made a strong case in favour of this convention for naming birds. The case is weaker for mammals."


 * I've listed this on requested moves. As I said there, I think we should go with the most common name and capitalize normally to facilitate inline linking. Once we get the article location sorted out, I'll be happy to help make sure every redirect points to the right place. Jonathunder 21:07, 2005 September 4 (UTC)

Re: Even more disambiguation
Hi Angr. I'll be happy to assist.

I think the first thing that needs to happen is that the content from Celtic (disambiguation) needs moving to Celtic. Celtic should be the actual dab page and Celtic (disambiguation) should be a redirect to it. Links that do need to go to the dab page then should be pointed to Celtic (disambiguation) (so they end up at the correct page but do not look accidental). That's the normal pattern I believe, and it would tie in with the fact that there are only a couple of pages that link to Celtic (disambiguation) right now, while 460-odd link to Celtic.

Once that's done, it's happy dab'ing! I'm at work right now and I haven't checked the available dabs... are you happy with the current list? I usually end up adding two or three entries to a dab when I first attack a page that hasn't been touched in a while.

I'll have a more detailed look at home later! Thanks for the invite ~ Veledan • Talk + new 13:32, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Proto-Celtic language
Hi Angr,

I have a hunch you may be responsible for a great deal of what's on this excellent page, although, who knows, I may be wrong, as I didn't bother to check its history all the way back. Anyway, my question for you is this: What is the wisdom of indicating the outcome of PIE *p as Proto-Celtic *φ? Since the change of PIE *p to zero is Common Celtic, it is only logical to set it up as Proto-Celtic. Last time I checked, that is standard procedure in Historical Linguistics. While *φ may have been an intermediate stage BETWEEN Proto-Indo-European AND Proto-Celtic (and even that is not required), it makes no sense to assign that phoneme to the Celtic proto-language. If the only evidence is Latin silva Hercynia, then that's no evidence at all. The ancient Romans frequently placed an orthographic h before vowel-initial foreign names. The examples are in the dozens, if not the hundreds (Heruli, Hermunduri, Helvetii, Histri, etc.). But even if some of these actually had an /h/ sound at the beginning of the word, how does that warrant Proto-Celtic *φ? At most, one can set up a Proto-Celtic *h/0, or *(h) with a big question mark next to it. Pasquale 19:15, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Angr,

Thanks for your exhaustive reply. Yes, it all rings a bell, as I actually studied all that stuff. I actually even studied Welsh at some point. Well, yes, in the main, that whole reasoning is quite persuasive. Here are a few points of detail that don't really affect the overall argument: (1) the initial *sφ- reflected by the Insular Celtic outcomes may actually even be *sf-; (2) the Celtic clusters [xt] and [xs] may be from earlier [φt] and [φs], but also from [ft] and [fs], and -- I don't see why not -- from [ht] and [hs] (I think they are all legitimate intermediate stages, with parallels from other languages); (3) if Lusitanian PORCOM had represented [φorkom], it would probably have been written **FORCOM (I'm confident you can find other examples of F being used to represent [φ], but not P); (4) personally, I am favorably inclined to consider Lusitanian as an Indo-European language close but different from Celtic, since I am convinced there existed a large group of Indo-European languages in Western Europe -- ranging from Portugal to Austria and from Denmark to Central Italy -- that preceded Celtic (e.g. Ligurian, etc.); (5) personally, I don't believe in the existence of a Proto-Insular Celtic, but that does not affect your argument. In any case, I don't question the substance of your explanation. But here's another question: What is the evidence for PIE *gwh still being *gw in Proto-Celtic? Pasquale 20:22, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Angr,

Thanks again. Yes, of course, PORCOM need not mean porkom, since we obviously know next to nothing about Lusitanian. Furthermore, I really couldn't say what options the Iberian syllabary had to offer a Celtic or, in any case, Indo-European language of the Iberian peninsula. Thanks also for clarifying Proto-Celtic *gw. I have one more question for you. Since you explained so clearly the Insular Celtic outcomes of the PIE cluster *sp, can you tell me what the outcomes of that cluster are in Gaulish, word-initially and medially? I can't think of any examples off hand. Pasquale 00:56, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Angr,

Thanks for your reply. I did suspect there was no evidence of *sp- in Gaulish. Personally -- since I do not believe your Insular vs. Continental Celtic split is anything but the result of late convergence and shared innovations -- I would expect in Gaulish something similar to the Brythonic outcomes. Interestingly, there are a few instances of initial f- in Gaulish, but they are usually interpreted as *w-. Pokorny, for example, analyzes the Gaulish place name Fernodubrum as 'Erlenwasser' (i.e. "alder-water") from the lemma *wer-(e)na: 'alder, poplar'. Another such instance I have come across is the Vindelician tribal name Focunates, which some have compared to Vocontii. Perhaps one might want to look instead for a possible *sp- in these.

Your quote from McCone makes little sense to me and further erodes whatever respect I might have had for McCone's opinions. If the initial cluster *sp- had been reanalyzed as phonemically /s/ + /b/, then its outcome should have been that of -s#b-, not of -s#p- ! I am familiar with the Aspiration Mutation (in fact, I have some ideas of my own about it), but clearly it applies to word-initial fortis phonemes only (which were most probably not just voiceless but voiceless aspirated in Insular Celtic) and certainly not to word-initial lenis phonemes (even if they were phonetically voiceless). So, I submit McCone is simply wrong (once again) and you have to go back to positing Proto-Celtic *sp- > *φ- or *f- to explain the known outcomes, i.e. (to quote from your first reply to my inquiry about Proto-Celtic *φ): "in Brythonic as [f] (Welsh ffêr "ankle" < *speret-) and in Old Irish as [s] in unlenited and [f] in lenited position (seir "heel" vs. dí pheirid "two heels")."

Your point that "the PC reflex of PIE *p must have been labial (not [h]) because it went to [w] between a back vowel and n in OIr. súan, MW hun "sleep" < *sōnos < *suwnos < *suφnos < *supnos and OIr. cúan "harbor" < *kōnos < *kawnos < *kaφnos < *kapnos" is very well taken. This point surely lends stronger support for positing Proto-Celtic *φ or *f (rather than *h) than any other consideration. (In particular, there would be no a priori reason to think that a [φ] can more easily turn to [x] than an [h] in clusters such as *pt and *ps. For an example of [h] > [x] in clusters, simply consider your own example, Welsh chwaer < *swesor- 'sister', where [s] most likely went through [h] before becoming [x].)

Finally, a small argument in favor of the primacy of a Q-Celtic vs. P-Celtic (rather than Insular vs. Continental) dialect split. Since PIE *gwh- shows up as w- in Gaulish, and since both PIE *gwh- and PIE *w- show up as gw- in Brythonic, you should conclude that PIE *gwh- became *w- in Brythonic as well as Gaulish (i.e. P-Celtic) and only later did *w- become gw- in Brythonic (more or less at the same time as the very same w- > gw- sound change took place in most -- though not all -- Romance dialects, most of the examples of course being provided by Germanic loanwords in Romance). It is the Irish reflex (g- + vowel rounding) that is divergent. Pasquale 18:49, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Angr,

For some reason, I only now noticed your reply of 12 September 2005. You point out that the fact that PC *gw and *w stay distinct in word-internal intervocalic position in Brythonic (PC *w remains [w], but PC *gw becomes [v] in Welsh deifio "burn" < PC *degw- < PIE *dhegwh- and nyf "snow" < PC *snigw- < PIE *snigwh-) presents a problem with positing a "Gallo-Brittonic" sound change *gw > *w followed by a Brythonic *w > *gw in word-intial position.

But let's see. As far as Welsh deifio is concerned, Pokorny says it shows [v] from *w before semivocalic i (citing Thurneysen KZ. 61, 253, Loth RC. 42, 58; see Pokorny, root *da:u- 317, but cross-referenced under *dhegwh- 380). And the same may be true for nyf "snow", cf. nyfio "to snow". So, the evidence for the assertion that PC *gw and *w were still distinct, at least word-internally, in Proto-Brythonic is not very strong.

Furthermore, assuming for a moment that we can accept this evidence as good, do you know what the word-internal reflex of PC *gw is in Gaulish? If Welsh indeed has [v], that would point to a labialized word-internal *-b- < *-gw-. Now, do we know that Gaulish had **dew- and **niw- in these roots, as opposed to **deb- and **nib-? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe any of these are attested. Or is there other evidence?

Given how meager the evidence for different word-internal treatments of PC *gw between Gaulish and Brythonic is, I would stick to my analysis for word-initial PIE *gwh- > PC *gw > P-Celtic *w- > Later Brythonic gw- as the most probable sequence of sound changes. Pasquale 17:52, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Chuukese language
Thanks for rewriting this article so that it made sense. I have changed my vote accordingly at afd. Capitalistroadster 06:59, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Good re-write! I'll be changing to Keep, then. I'm glad I bothered to Google for it and remove the speedy tag now. Tonywalton | Talk 14:36, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Frisbetarian
Hi. The low return of Google hits for Frisbetarian is a result of the author's spelling error, not lack of notability. "Frisbeetarianism" gets 17,100 Google hits. Cheers! -- BD2412 talk 12:53, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Gogodala
Ever heard of a language called Gogodala, spoken in Papua New Guinea? And what does "ISO/DIS 639-3: ggw" mean, anyway? Cheers! -- BD2412 talk 19:53, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your swift and informative response. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar! -- BD2412 talk 20:45, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Chuukese language
I had changed my vote, and thanks for the notice. : ). I, V. Molotov, hereby give you this Working Man's Barnstar for diligent and meritorious work on Wikipedia.



Take care, Molotov (talk)  20:41, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for Anuschka
Thanks for the work on the translation on Anuschka Tischer. Doidimais Brasil 01:16, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations!
I'm pleased to inform you that you are now an administrator. Please consider reading all the material on the administrators' reading list before testing out your new privileges. Though everything you do, excluding image deletions and page history merges, is reversible, you should nevertheless be very careful with your sysop capabilities. For instructions, please see the administrators' how-to guide. Good luck! &mdash; Dan | Talk 14:48, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations for your adminship from me too! I've only recently been promoted to admin, and am only learning things by now. &mdash; J I P | Talk 15:28, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Advice req on dab'ing Celtic
Hi again Angr and gratz on a unanimous promotion :-)

I want your opinion on how to dab sentences such as A Fuath (pronounced foo-ah) (Fuathan pl.)is a malignate, Celtic water spirit., or phrases like Celtic folklore (from Feeorin)

Obviously they are referring to Celtic mythology but in neither case does the Celtic mythology article touch on the subject, and a reader would probably find it less confusing to be directed to the more general information at Celts. I dab'd Feeorin to myth. but I'm leaving Fuath alone for now.

Cheers, ~ Veledan • Talk + new 21:35, 10 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your advice, I'll feel more confident doing it now :-) Oops, well spotted, I think malignant was the word the author was groping for !! ~ Veledan • Talk + new 22:15, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Oops, and I only just noticed your reply now too, and I have no such good excuse. Agreed though, I've gone and made that word good old (English) evil :-) ~ Veledan • Talk + new 11:22, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Popups tool
Lupin|talk|popups 23:19, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Re;RFA
No problem, i have allways been impressed with you body of work, andi hope that you become a good admin. --Boothy443 | comhrÚ 23:34, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I got it out of a dictionary somewhere, i didn't think it was right at the time but i never followed up on it, figured that use something different for the talk page link, so i just kinda picked something that lkinks to my heratage, i just hope i got the right word. Thanks for picking it out though, i gonna go and change it. --Boothy443 | comhrá 23:49, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you so much for supporting my RfA. In the midst of so much animosity, it was a breath of fresh air to read the comment by an editor like you that took the time to explore my edits before voting. There is hope...! --ZappaZ 01:46, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Speedy?
I was just about to take Civics Lesson Plan to AfD since I don't see the speedy. Who do you think it is an attempt to communicate with? -Splash 20:22, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Ok. It looks more like a recommendation for a syllabus/lesson plan or something. Anyway, it's such a mess it's not worth restoring. Carry on, and congrats on the admincy! -Splash 20:30, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

mazal tov!
Hey Angr, I hadn't noticed you'd been nominated for RfA. Mazal tov on making it through the hazing even without my support! :-) Tomer TALK  21:12, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

opalescence
I noticed that you redirected opalescence to opal. I was doing some searching and I think it should either point to Critical opalescence or be moved to Wiktionary. Opalescence from Opalescence at Answers.com means something different to Opal. CambridgeBayWeather 00:14, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I didn't read enough through the opal article. 216.126.246.78 00:58, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that somehow I managed to log out befor I replied to you. CambridgeBayWeather 01:01, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

My signature
Please don't alter my signature, not even for something as minor as switching from IPA to SAMPA. Thank you. --Angr/undefined 07:39, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
 * sorry if that happened it was anm accident can you please supply me with a link tho this is news to me Yuckfoo 07:46, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
 * thank you for the link it must have been my browser because that was not a change made voluntarily sorry again Yuckfoo 08:00, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

RfA
Thank you for your support on my RfA... from admin to admin ;)...I'll try to be good...btw, have you ever been to one of the monthly Berlin meetings of the German wikipedians ? Lectonar 11:04, 12 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I haven't been there either, so I dont know.. I was just interested...and: I had my little problems with the German Wikipedia, as they are, let's say mildly, even more biased.... (or whats the word for hochnäsig?) Lectonar 11:12, 12 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I was positive that biased wasn't the word for hochnäsig (but I thought it caught the gist of my meaning better than arrogant, and as always with German words, I think there are more implications to the word hochnäsig than a mere arrogant...as for the meeting, how many are they (the only other active user I know of (besides you) is Angela) that you know of? Lectonar 07:06, 13 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The monthly Berlin meetings are really good, and I can assure you, we are not hochnäsig, trust me ;) There ist a meeting today in the evening, you are welcome, today or any other time. Greetings, Berlin-Attorney 22:16, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Alleged causes of Hurricane Katrina
I realize that there were strong feelings on both sides with respect to the outcome of the AfD for this article, now located at Alternative theories regarding Hurricane Katrina. I would like to assure those who expressed concerns about the content, tone, and potential for degradation of this article that I intend for it to continue to exist only as long as is necessary to draw the contributions of fringe theorists away from the more substantial Hurricane Katrina articles. Once interest in this topic dies down, I'll quietly trim and merge this information into the appropriate general-topic articles. In the interim, I will carefully watch this page to prevent it from being abused, and I will continue to work towards making this article NPOV, properly sourced, and useful to those seeking an accurate record of the hysterics that so often follows catastrophe. Cheers. -- BD2412 talk 00:57, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Please delete an article for me
Hi Angr. Would you mind doing me a favour by deleting article Nunzilla and related Image:Nunzillalg.jpg for me? It was the first experiment created by my boyfriend on wikipedia (unsupervised by me at the time!) and it's not exactly encyclopedic. I've shown him how to tag it with a CSD, so by the time you read this it may already have gone, but if not I'd rather it was deleted on the sly by a friendly soul who won't lecture him on the article or on not using copyrighted images :-) Cheers, ~ Veledan • Talk + new 23:01, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for your diligent attention to matters concerning my RfA, which I have formally withdrawn. The full text of my withdrawal and statement of appreciation is on the RfA page. Sincerely, Leonard G. 03:57, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

You made an edit at User:DirkvdM/British Isles - Clarification of Terms. However, this has now been moved to British Isles (terminology). I've added a link to the former 'article' to avoid further confusion. DirkvdM 09:04, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your vote.
Thank you for your support in my successful RfA. I hope I can live up to expectations. - Trevor MacInnis (Talk | Contribs) 00:11, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Category:Hellenic languages and dialects
you are right to be somehow confused and surely these categories do need attention but I realy dont think one of them have to be deleted.

The problem: we usually want by "greek language" to mean "modern greek language" and "ancient greek language". as every live hellenic language is derived from ancient greek language you are right to be confused. (the difference between ancient and modern is lesser than the difference between latin and italian but there are wikipedias that are recognized as different languages in spite of the fact that they have even smaller difference). As I see people put in category Hellenic languages and dialects the articles that have to do direct with the hellenic languages and dialects while the category for greek language is generally associated whith greek language. a better deffinition has to be made but I see that delete is not the right choise. --Lucinos 09:13, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I have done a little work in these categories. please tell me how you find them now. Are they any clearer? --Lucinos 09:02, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

See what I wrote as explanation --Lucinos 16:26, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

RfA
Thanks for contributing to the discussion on my recent RfA. Your comments are appreciated and I'll endeavour to use these new powers wisely and productively....dave souza 17:03, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Obesity
Angr, my deepfelt admiration for your willingness to grace the obesity article with your likeness. Would you have any objections if the picture moved up to replace the mice at the top? Many editors have felt that this mouse image does not adequately illustrate the article. JFW | T@lk  17:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * It sure is more illustrative. JFW | T@lk  17:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

en-4 template
I have left a message for you on the template talk page. --Janke | Talk 07:27, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome!
I'm so overwhelmed with opportunity, but I guess most people work the coal mine they know best.

BusterD 17:49, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Oops!

"How to pronounce 'Wriothesley'" on the Ref desk
Angr, please do not be so defensive. As a relative newbie, I tend to approach things from a newbie point of view, and prefer to see a slightly more user-friendly response. I have a real hate for people being flippant or rude to newbies. Please don't bite the newbies, and all that. If all you could be bothered doing was printing a few characters of gibberish, then it may have been better to not bother answering. And I know IPA unicode is not gibberish, but if you are unfamiliar with it, it really does appear to be. Please bear in mind the slight possiblity that a person asking a question may not always be a wicked smart linguistic genius such as yourself. Proto t c 14:18, 25 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for clearing all that up. And yes, I am serious about the 'had had's.  Pluperfect tense is indeed an important part of the English language (as well as all the others), but when it is used to have two identically spelled words in sequence (such as 'had had'), there isn't a single sentence in the English language that cannot be rewritten to avoid this ugly occurance. Proto t c 09:40, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

half-birthday
The reason I changed "late-November" to "mid-November" is that, because Thanksgiving in the US is in late November, people might read this to assume that the example discusses a birthday that actually falls on Thanksgiving. (Adding that we're talking about U.S. is a good idea.) It's not a big deal, of course. - DavidWBrooks 16:28, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Bahnaric Languages
Thanks for the comments and info. I keep an eye on the language pages. You are right most are red, so when there is on that becomes blue, I will be sure to take a look. I am also going to work on the Mon-Khmer main page. I think there needs to be more information and actual branches. Imperial78/User_talk:Imperial78