User talk:Womtelo/Archive 1

HELP US MAKING THE PROJECT OF ANCIENT GREEK WIKIPEDIA
We are the promoters of the Wikipedia in Ancient Greek. we need your help, specially for write NEW ARTICLES and the TRANSLATION OF THE MEDIAWIKI INTERFACE FOR ANCIENT GREEK, for demonstrating, to the language subcommittee, the value of our project.

Thanks a lot for your help. Ἡ Οὐικιπαιδεία needs you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.40.197.5 (talk) 19:55, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Redirecting to another wiki
Just to let you know, you can't redirect to another language's wiki. If you would like an article on a subject that doesn't appear here, but appears on another wiki then feel free to start the article yourself instead of just making a redirection. --TheKoG (talk|contribs) 17:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Efate
I've never seen an English or Bislama speaker put accents on Efate, and many Francophones call it Vat&eacute; anyway. Is it straightforward to move an article back when it's already a redirect? And can this be done without formality, or should there be a call for votes first? Ringbark 21:59, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Some bugs to be worked out
I've fixed the Arab people problem... but there's another problem that needs to be worked out and it's an actual bug in the MediWiki system. Unfortunately references that are in templates are not produced correctly on the main article page. To better understand why the spirit of this change is good please read this. Due to the bug problem I invite you to go ahead and revert my changes for now. (→ Netscott ) 23:58, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Re:McNate09
Unfortunately, I cannot block the user indefinitely as a vandalism-only account because he has only made 3 total edits on Wikipedia. One was to his user page, and two others were vandalism. If the user vandalizes again, I will block him indefinitely. Thanks for letting me know, by the way. =)  Nish kid 64  21:58, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Health Initiative International
Our mission is to work with Vanuatu communities and health care organizers to improve education, awareness, infrastructure, and medical supply availability in areas that lack health resources. Our ultimate goals are to improve the living conditions of communities in Vanuatu, to foster positive international relations and cultural exchange between volunteers and the people of Vanuatu, and to communicate the living conditions in Vanuatu to Americans.

From wanem yu no likem website blong mifalla? Mifalla wantem helpem ol man ples, be mifalla needum fullap man i save problem ia. Mo hemi wan goodfalla samting sapos mifalla putem hemia i go long lukem aout Vanuatu. Mi save traem bakegan blong putem samting ia?

Fren blong ol man ples, Kristie

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Christine.armstrong (talk • contribs) 01:00, 5 December 2006

Noahide Laws
I see you are a linguist. Would you be interested in translating a small amount of the above article? Your input would be very much appreciated, there is allot of google traffic to that article. FrummerThanThou 06:39, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Generations template
Rather than go into a senseless revert war I would rather explain toy ou how you are incorrect with your judgement, YES they are more commonly associated to American culture, however how do you explain the exact same phenomenons occurring in countries of the Western World such as Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada who each experienced in one form or another the same attributed listed by those generations, i.e. when the Beats were going on in the U.S. it had a drastic impact on other countries who followed suit in their own Beat movement worldwide - this has even been documented by Ginsberg in several articles of his relating to the phenomenon. Also the Boomers are a distinct catalyst to all of the above mentioned countries who possessed the same trademarks, being the children of WW2. Therefore it is wrong to simply state these generations are only shared by the American when in fact they are shared by the majority of the Western World, albeit perhaps more so the Ango-American side, but even now other countries are looking back and noticing several paralells with the notable generations listed. I think the best thing to do is allow it to remain as "Generations" simply, and not try to brand it to any particular country or culture so as to refrain causing further aggro. Thanks. Piecraft 06:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank Q
A very good contribution to the def of Arab, that is the word that i was looking for an it is the word that 100% sums it up homogeneous. --HalaTruth(ሀላካሕ) 21:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You're welcome -- Womtelo 22:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Lingua Franca
Please stop undoing my edits on this page without discussing it. If you have problems with that section, first talk about it on it's discussion page. --Nate3000 21:20, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Survey Invitation
Hi there, I am a research student from the National University of Singapore and I wish to invite you to do an online survey about Wikipedia. To compensate you for your time, I am offering a reward of USD$10, either to you or as a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation. For more information, please go to the research home page. Thank you. --WikiInquirer 01:53, 17 March 2007 (UTC)talk to me

Adiu!
Ai vist dins ta pagina personala que parlas occitan! Sul projècte occitan, avèm besonh d'ajuda! Sabi pas s'èras al corrent de l'existéncia de la "Wikipèdia". Esites pas a nos rendre visita, ès benvengut! A lèu! Wikipèdia Cedric31 21:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Taiwanese aborigines
Hi,

I'm gonna ask a question, but will put it on the Talk of Taiwanese aborigines. Thanks! Ling.Nut 12:09, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

sending pdf files
I had probs with your email address; it appears your name is spelled incorrectly in the "rply to" field. I hope you rec'v the articles I send... but the issue is far from resolved :-( Ling.Nut 22:09, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Malajalama vs. Marŝala
I fixed it on the page for la Marŝala (by replacing the template), and fixed the same problem on a couple of other pages. But the former template still returns the error. Hopefully, Arno can find the source. Until we find the source, the problem will probably tend to return.

I have a related problem: Esperanto WP seems to be using two forms of the name Malayalam:  Malajalama and Malajala. I don't know which way to make corrections. Other WP's use versions of the longer form, but perhaps the "m" is a suffix (redundent for the current purpose) in Malayalam? O'RyanW (☺ ₪) 02:37, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Bonan tagon Bill. Dankon for your work on Marŝala lingvo. As for Malayalam, I'm not a specialist of Dravidian languages, but it looks like the final /m/ is sometimes dropped: see "Malayali" or "Malayal". However spontaneously I would recommend it should be called Malajalam-a (with the adjective suffix -a of Esperanto)… But maybe there is already an Esperanto tradition to call that language? Mi ne scias. Womtelo 08:00, 14 May 2007 (UTC).

Vanuatu Scouting
Can you help render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Bislama? Thanks! Chris 06:04, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Gaua Map
Hi Womtelo, you write that the map of Gaua is not good, and that there are no good online or PD map sources. Would you be able to mail me a scan of an offline source? I could try to create a better map for Wikipedia from the information on such a map. And, given your local knowledge, would you mind looking over my recent additions to the articles Gaua, Lake Letas and Siri Waterfall? Greetings, --Ratzer (talk) 08:55, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database
Please, enlighten me, what do you mean when you say this research "isn't solid enough"? --JorisvS (talk) 23:21, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Intentional disambig linking.
Any intentional link from article space to a disambiguation page must be through a "foo (disambiguation)" redirect, per policy at WP:MOSDAB and WP:INTDABLINK, in order to remove the page from the list of pages requiring repair. Removing that link will only result in an endless string of disambiguators coming to repair the error. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Alright BD2412, thanks for the tip! Womtelo (talk) 22:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Vanuatu
J'ai respondu au page de:Benutzer Diskussion:Matthiasb. Salut. --Matthiasb (talk) 18:31, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Danke schön! Ich auch habe dir geantwortet. -- Womtelo (talk) 23:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Vanuatu
If you are a specialist in the languages of Vanuatu, some of those renamed article names should actually be renamed. North and Central Vanuatu should either be jettisoned or the article should be renamed. It's best to avoid fake article renamings, don't you think? And I'm sure you have the articles to support such moves.  Ogress  smash! 17:27, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your suggestion. I've just done that. Womtelo (talk) 23:06, 1 September 2011 (UTC).

Coral Sea
Dear friend, long time no write (you'll remember I'm more active on de-WP). Right there is an undecided debate about how far east the Coral Sea reaches. Some argue that all islands of Vanuatu (including the Banks and Torres Islands) and New Caledonia are included, others (including me) contend that the western shores of the western islands of those island groups form the eastern limits of the Coral Sea, but are no more part of that sea (there is agreement of course that the Chesterfield Islands, west of New Caledonia but politically part of it, are within the Coral Sea). I would be curious about your position. P.S. I do hope that you will release a few photographs of your recent trip to the Banks and Torres Islands to Wikipedia (Wikimedia commons). Best regards,--Ratzer (talk) 21:55, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Ratzer. I have no idea about that Coral Sea debate, sorry.  As for my trip's last photos, I'm afraid that is time-consuming and I am too busy to do this.  I'm not sure it would be so essential for Wikipedia anyway.  Regards, Womtelo (talk) 00:57, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Womtelo, I do understand that you are consumed by your research. In case you do find a minute sometime in the future, please consider that the Hiw Island article does not feature any photograph, nor does any other Torres Islands article. Regards,--Ratzer (talk) 11:24, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

List of endangered languages in Oceania

 * I'm working on the oceania list... Ling.Nut3 (talk) 08:15, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * If you want to divide List of endangered languages in Oceania up, retaining only the Oceanic languages, renaming the page to List of endangered Oceanic languages, and moving all languages from other linguistic subgroups to another page, that would be fine... It would be a little work. It all depends on how strongly you feel about presenting a particular organizational scheme. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 01:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi LingNut. No that's alright, I have nothing against that page; and by the way my edit of today was not a follow-up to my other problem yesterday with the table "Oceania".  Simply, I thought it would be useful to warn readers about the potential confusion between "Languages in Oceania" and "Oceanic languages", which are two very different things.  Perhaps the whole entry could be renamed "Endangered languages of the Pacific", as it is more usually the term preferred; but I'm not pushing this so hard that I'd do the change myself (or should I?). You've done tremendous work on the page (congrats!), so it's up to you to decide. Womtelo (talk) 01:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the kind words. As I said, it honestly is a matter of perspective. I suppose the two virtues of breaking it up would be 1) categorial purity, and 2) it would be a back-door way to a free lesson about language families. But the price of the task would be that you have to check each language (or many of them anyhow, saving time since many are closely related) to see whether it was Oceanic or not, then you'd have to find a home (or make one?) for the languages that don't make the cut. It could be quite time-consuming. As for "Endangered languages of the Pacific", then you'd have to go get all the Polynesian languages and add them.... and Australia is right out; they have their own list that is watched by its dedicated editors. Any way you look at it, pushing for purity would involve a nontrivial amount of time and trouble. The question, i suppose, is this: would any other scheme present a better learning experience for the reader? i have no idea. I also don't have the time to do anything major such as all the things I've described above. Publish or perish, you know. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 01:31, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Publish or perish indeed, that's also my problem at the moment :-) As you guessed, I don't have enough time to do all that; and anyway I'm not sure it would make much sense to have two pages on endangered languages from the Pacific, one just for "Oceanic lgs" and the other one for "non-Oceanic lgs". However, I do have a problem with the fact that Polynesian languages are not in the page. When did Polynesia cease to be part of Oceania? Endangered Polynesian languages should be featured here! at least those which are endangered. This may be just a link to another page, as was done with Australian lgs. To sum up: Page should be renamed "E.L. of the Pacific", and Polynesian lgs should be added. I might do it myself today. Womtelo (talk) 03:26, 1 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I moved the page. The UNESCO site seems to be down... I might get a start on the Polynesian language info by getting it elsewhere... UNESCO has 3 categories of "endangered" languages. That might be a useful column to add to all tables. Later Ling.Nut3 (talk) 05:22, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Alright, good luck with that. Womtelo (talk) 05:40, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I started it. It currently uglifies the page; needs a lot of help. Cheers. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 09:49, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I just had a look, and it looks fine to me. It will be perfected by future users (either me or you, or others). Simply, what was your criterion for deciding which languages are endangered? What I see is mostly a list of Polynesian outliers, which are not all endangered, are they? and what about Tahitian, Māori, Hawaiian…: are they all safe? Womtelo (talk) 10:09, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Some of the ones on that page are not probably endangered. I need to look for verification from a WP:RS. I sometimes just add languages that seem to have far less than 5,000 speakers, but that is not always a reliable method. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 13:02, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed, number of speakers is clearly not an ideal measure of endangerment. I work on 20 languages which are all spoken by less than 2000, sometimes less than 500 speakers, and most of them are still safe from extinction. In fact most of the Polynesian outliers are probably in that category: thus Vaeakau-Taumako, with its 1,140 speakers, is probably much safer than Tahitian which claims 124,000. It's a matter of intergenerational transmission, etc. — see the UNESCO criteria. I see the UNESCO site is back; for example Hawaiian language is listed there as "critically endangered"; you've got several in the "severely end'd" zone, etc. Good luck if you go for it. — Womtelo (talk) 23:08, 1 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Of course I know that count isn't reliable; it's just good enough for an eventualist perspective. I've added some stuff to New Caledonia; if you wanna add the ISO codes, number of speakers, status, etc., that would be good. I'm gonna drop all this for a while. (I suppose that the bad news is that the list hadn't really changed much since I first made it and left it unfinished back in 2006 & 2008). Ling.Nut3 (talk) 03:55, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I didn't know about eventualism, I've learned something. I see you've added NCal languages, which in principle is good. However there is still the need to assess which of these languages are really endangered; and for that we'll need external assessment cuz definitions of endangerment vary a lot. I wish I had the time to add info on those Kanak languages, but right now I'm busy, just like you as I understand. No worries; that's life. I'll just add a caution note about the table for future readers (as i did for Polynesian) and then it will be up to other wikipedians to add their own input if we can't. Congrats on all the work you've done already. Womtelo (talk) 05:11, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Phone/phoneme
Per this edit summary (and others like it), it is important to distinguish between merging and blanking as the latter can be construed as vandalism. It is also inaccurate to say "absolutely no reason" given for my edit when I clearly gave one in my edit summaries as you felt compelled to respond to it.

I recommend you take the issue to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics where the community can weigh in. I don't plan on reverting your restorations without community response, though systematically restoring my merges or even creating new phone articles might be a waste of your time. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 23:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks Aeusoes, I have followed your advice and sent a query. Let's see what they say. Sorry I have to go, Womtelo (talk) 00:04, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

several new lists, but much left to do

 * I'm at a stopping point, but much is left to do. I made new lists and updtaed others, but stopped before fixing Pacific, any of the Americas, etc. (see my contribs). A lot of useful info was lost when I removed the PNG table from the list of endangered langs of the pacific and made a new list. You can recover that info from the article history, or I will (much) later. I could email you many tables I generated programmatically, if you wanna post them to Wikipedia. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 08:17, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

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2012-08 Oceanic languages
What is your opinion about [ this change]? Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 20:12, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Vfp, I'm not an expert about WP usage in Category assignment, but I understand that the move is somewhat counterproductive (i.e. silly), considering that Western Oceanic lgs are a subset of Oceanic lgs. I also see that you're currently doing the exact opposite kind of move on French WP. I think I prefer your approach (i.e. creating more specific categories). The only condition should be that lower categories should be visible in their higher node (i.e. all "Southern Oceanic lgs" should be accessible from the Category "Oceanic lgs", etc.);  I understand that is technically possible, using 'subcategories'. best, Womtelo (talk) 01:07, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 20:56, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

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 * Languages of Vanuatu (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
 * added links pointing to Lamen, Epi, Aniwa, Labo language, Hiw and Ura language

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Content forks
Hi. It's really not a good idea to have content forks on WP, and actually goes against our guidelines. Forks tend to get out of sync, and so require extra maintenance which they seldom get. Also, there's no particular reason to have the ISO codes in the language list. They're accessible from the language articles. — kwami (talk) 18:48, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Stop the BS. You know the wording is wrong, but won't let me correct it, so you're stuck with the tag. Or you could fix it. As for it being all known languages, you need a ref for that, or it's just OR. — kwami (talk) 23:39, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Infobox on Vanuatu maps
Hi Womtelo, thanks for your message regarding the Vanuatu maps. I agree that it would be more convenient to just use one standard infobox for the different islands, i.e. the "infobox settlement" as you suggest because of the pushpin, but I am afraid it is not the way they should be used due to the existence of the "infobox islands". Then, I also do not know how to change the templates, unfortunately. - Gruesome Gary (talk) 6 January 2014

Comparative method
Hi,

Your recent edits got caught up in my revert of some earlier POV-pushing. Since part of your edit addressed the same thing, I didn't try to disentangle what to save. — kwami (talk) 00:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * hi Kwami, Thanks for your message. I've fixed it. — Womtelo (talk) 11:45, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

pron. Nuxalk
I just noticed that..../æ/ isn't right; that's the first vowel in "Canada", right? Nuxalk is more like "hall" or "hawk" maybe, whatever IPA that is. i.e. in English that's how it's said. Seems like an American put that /æ/ there, that's not the way it's said in BC. If I'm not mistaken using that would come out "Nuhack", which is very not-right.Skookum1 (talk) 16:19, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The pretense of a certain editor who shall remain nameless (because I'm tired of his name...) is that such names are not English, hence why he didn't tag it as an English name, which it is.Skookum1 (talk) 16:21, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * hi Skookum, thanks for that. I believe you here, and have edited the pronunciation accordingly to /ˈnuːhɒlk/. Note that I was not the one to transcribe the pronunciation initially, I just tagged it as being "English". I have edited more than one entries like this, when an apparently foreign word had its pronunciation indicated and I knew this was actually its pronunciation in English rather than in the local language as it might have seemed. (ex1, ex2, ex3…). Without being aware of the controversy, I agree with you that these are English words - simply, these are proper names which, just like any other proper names, have been adapted to English phonology; as such, they belong the repertoire of English speakers rather than any other language. Best, Womtelo (talk) 16:43, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, well, "some people" don't think so; I went through arduous and totally unnecessary RMs on St'at'imc and other titles because some people are very hostile to names they don't recognize as English, and invoke WP:UE without even realizing that, especially in Canada, such names are now the norm; "Bella Coola" in its old linguistic/ethno meaning, even though the articles are now at "Nuxalk", was fielded in a recent RM about Bella Coola, British Columbia, which is the PRIMARYTOPIC of that name now, and is what is used by the Nuxalk who live there for the town/area themselves; but that wasn't good enough for Wikipedians who've never heard of the place, and some who maintained its small size meant it wasn't notable (even though it's the largest thing for a good 200 miles). On St'at'imc and Ktunaxa and others I "had" to go prove that there were English pronunciations, and even that wasn't good enough; the reality that these are the most common names in sources now is what swayed the day; and Canadian-only sources aren't good enough, "global usage" was invoked to override Canadian English (actually per ENGVAR you can't do that, but they did anyway) in re the Bella Coola RM (in WPCANADA dab practices, unique town names take no disambiguation; others of the same kind are Chemainus, Sechelt, Lillooet......don't get me started on Squamish..... anyways thanks for fixing that; I just removed superfluous Unicode templates placed by the same editor on Comox language, where they were applied to spellings that just don't have special characters that would ever need Unicode; it was placed because of the bias from said editor that such names are "not English".  Not his English, perhaps.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:52, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry to hear that. I'm not totally surprised, as I've had my share of edit wars and endless controversies over totally pointless discussions… The ones who win are not always those who are right! but you need to stand your ground (as long as it doesn't affect you too much). Good luck for your future edits, Womtelo (talk) 16:59, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Re this one, Lillooet as given is indeed a local English pronunciation, including as used by the St'at'imc people like all other residents; the language is properly called St'at'imcets and that used to be the title of "Lillooet language" until the undiscussed moves that included St'at'imc->Lillooet people, since reversed by RM. Similarly Thompson language, Shuswap language, Kutenai language, Chilcotin language were changed at the same time; I'm just too weary of the individual in question, and of the pontificatory input at RMs the uninformed who only refer to Wikipedia guidelines and not real-world current usage, to bother having tried to move them yet; as it is just taking the unnecessary disambiguation of Halkomelem as Halkomelem language, which I moved to the standalone title, was met with a "move war" by the same editor, though it has now stayed at Halkomelem.Skookum1 (talk) 02:06, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The St'at'imcets name that "Lillooet" comes from is Lil'wat, which is the name of the community and subgroup located at Mount Currie, British Columbia, about 60 miles away from the town of Lillooet.Skookum1 (talk) 02:08, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

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Nasvang etc.
Wasn't sure what the best classification would be. Sources I've seen seem to be uncertain. — kwami (talk) 19:43, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure, I hadn't paid attention. To be sincere, I don't really believe in discrete subgroups in dialect continua such as Malekula (or the rest of Vanuatu for that matter). That said, thanks for adding what are current perceptions of subgrouping in the area. Cheers, – Womtelo (talk) 20:15, 6 December 2014 (UTC).

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Population update project
Hi. The 18th edition of Ethnologue just came out, and if we divide up our language articles among us, it won't take long to update them. I would appreciate it if you could help out, even if it's just a few articles (5,000 articles is a lot for just me), but I won't be insulted if you delete this request.

A largely complete list of articles to be updated is at Category:Language articles citing Ethnologue 17. The priority articles are in Category:Language articles with old Ethnologue 17 speaker data. These are the 10% that have population figures at least 25 years old.

Probably 90% of the time, Ethnologue has not changed their figures between the 17th and 18th editions, so all we need to do is change "e17" to "e18" in the reference (ref) field of the language info box. That will change the citation for the artcle to the current edition. Please put the data in the proper fields, or the info box will flag it as needing editorial review. The other relevant fields are "speakers" (the number of native speakers in all countries), "date" (the date of the reference or census that Ethnologue uses, not the date of Ethnologue!), and sometimes "speakers2". Our convention has been to enter e.g. "1990 census" when a census is used, as other data can be much older than the publication date. Sometimes a citation elsewhere in the article depends on the e17 entry, in which case you will need to change "name=e17" to "name=e18" in the reference tag (assuming the 18th edition still supports the cited claim).

Remember, we want the *total* number of native speakers, which is often not the first figure given by Ethnologue. Sometimes the data is too incompatible to add together (e.g. a figure from the 1950s for one country, and a figure from 2006 for another), in which case it should be presented that way. That's one use for the "speakers2" field. If you're not sure, just ask, or skip that article.

Data should not be displayed with more than two, or at most three, significant figures. Sometimes it should be rounded off to just one significant figure, e.g. when some of the component data used by Ethnologue has been approximated with one figure (200,000, 3 million, etc.) and the other data has greater precision. For example, a figure of 200,000 for one country and 4,230 for another is really just 200,000 in total, as the 4,230 is within the margin of rounding off in the 200,000. If you want to retain the spurious precision of the number in Ethnologue, you might want to use the sigfig template. (First parameter in this template is for the data, second is for the number of figures to round it off to.)

Dates will often need to be a range of all the country data in the Ethnologue article. When entering the date range, I often ignore dates from countries that have only a few percent of the population, as often 10% or so of the population isn't even separately listed by Ethnologue and so is undated anyway.

If Ethnologue does not provide a date for the bulk of the population, just enter "no date" in the date field. But if the population figure is undated, and hasn't changed between the 17th & 18th editions of Ethnologue, please leave the ref field set to "e17", and maybe add a comment to keep it so that other editors don't change it. In cases like this, the edition of Ethnologue that the data first appeared in may be our only indication of how old it is. We still cite the 14th edition in a couple dozen articles, so our readers can see that the data is getting old.

The articles in the categories linked above are over 90% of the job. There are probably also articles that do not currently cite Ethnologue, but which we might want to update with the 18th edition. I'll need to generate another category to capture those, probably after most of the Ethnologue 17 citations are taken care of.

Jump in at the WP:LANG talk page if you have any comments or concerns. Thanks for any help you can give!

— kwami (talk) 02:11, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Bislama
Hi! I've seen in your user page that you speak Bislama. Would it possible for you to help in that Wikipedia adding basic information, please? --Katxis100 (talk) 20:38, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi, I wish I had the time to help with the Bislama project. Unfortunately, I am too busy IRL to really contribute.  Tankyu tumas long kwesjen blong yu, mo gudlak long projek ia. -- Mi nomo, Womtelo (talk) 21:02, 1 April 2015 (UTC).

Disambiguation link notification for April 19
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Temotu map
Hi Womtelo! Thank you very much for your appreciation and for your comments. I'm not sure where I got the spellings from, I think from something by Brenda Boerger, but I'll check and I'll make the proper changes on the names or on the description of the map citing the sources (I wanted to do this, but didn't have time to do it while uploading the file). As for Äiwoo, I intentionally left it, because the map was just about some of the Temotu languages, as the title shows (the map was for a fellow linguist and she needed only those languages 😉). I'll make another map with other languages (hopefully) soon so we can substitute the one I used with the new one! Happy wiki-editing! 😊 --SynConlanger (talk) 21:28, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

EDIT: I was checking both Boerger and Wurm, but I'm afraid that "Endewo" was just my plain typo! I've corrected already the spelling and uploaded the new version on Commons, which will be reflected in Temotu languages. Thanks! I'll work on the map for all the languages. 😊 --SynConlanger (talk) 21:50, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Papua New Guinea
Please help find complete translation of "Independent State of Papua New Guinea" in Hiri Motu on the page!--Sιgε &#124;д･) 18:10, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
 * hi Sigehelmus, please provide direct link here. Also, what is the relationship with "Pisinese"?? -- Womtelo (talk) 18:14, 11 October 2015 (UTC).
 * I added that because I have a book in my school I cannot take home written at the same date roughly as the other books so I assumed those books would aslo refer to the language as Pisinese. I admit that was a bit of a stretch I apologize and that was really the only time I've tried such a thing. Anyway yeah the article is Papua New Guinea and I added a clarify tag to the incomplete Hiri Motu translation. Please help--Sιgε &#124;д･) 18:36, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
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Ἡ Βικιπαιδεία ἑλληνιστί
Hi there, I am contacting you here as this seems to be the wiki you are most active in. There is currently an ongoing proposal with regards to having an ancient Greek Wikipedia, accompanied by an active incubator wiki that has plenty of articles already. I thought I would let you know as you have an interest and knowledge of ancient Greek, so you're more than welcome to participate if you find it worthwhile. Gts-tg (talk) 10:33, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Language vs variants
Even if a language has variants, it still has a name. "Hindustani" technically was more used until the politicization of the language. Hindi and Urdu also do not constitute the Hindustani language since there is also Caribbean Hindustani and Fijian Hindustani as well. And if people don't know, then the link exists for a reason, so they can figure it out for themselves rather than live in ignorance. Urdu is technically the continuation of Hindustani while Hindi is the Sanskritized version.--NadirAli نادر علی (talk) 21:11, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

North Efate
Hi Womtelo, The reason I had the Kwara'ae phonology chart on the article, was because I was doing a source editing project. I have fixed it all up right now. Fdomanico51997 (talk) 20:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. No worries. Womtelo (talk) 21:22, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

June 2018
Hi, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you tried to give Cheshirization a different title by copying its content and pasting either the same content, or an edited version of it, into Transphonologization. This is known as a "cut-and-paste move", and it is undesirable because it splits the page history, which is legally required for attribution. Instead, the software used by Wikipedia has a feature that allows pages to be moved to a new title together with their edit history.

In most cases, once your account is four days old and has ten edits, you should be able to move an article yourself using the "Move" tab at the top of the page (the tab may be hidden in a dropdown menu for you). This both preserves the page history intact and automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new. If you cannot perform a particular page move yourself this way (e.g. because a page already exists at the target title), please follow the instructions at requested moves to have it moved by someone else. Also, if there are any other pages that you moved by copying and pasting, even if it was a long time ago, please list them at Requests for history merge. Thank you. Nardog (talk) 18:12, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
 * hello Nardog, thanks for your explanations. Indeed, I had tried to move the page, but the process was blocked because I had created the target page (Transphonologization) a few hours earlier as a redirect. I thought it'd be simpler to cut-and-paste the contents, but indeed I forgot about the issue of preserving the history of changes. It's good that the feature "Requests for history merge" exists, I'll try this. Best, Womtelo (talk) 19:08, 16 June 2018 (UTC).

Solomon Island
Womtelo, I note that you reverted my edits to Temotu. This introduces a redirect. Please read the articles on Solomon Islands and the discussion regarding its name and discuss first before changing back. Thanks E x nihil (talk) : Ex nihil (talk) 12:51, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
 * hi, Actually I was aiming at a different section in the page, and the bit you're mentioning (article "the") got caught up in my reversal. I've fixed it. best,  Womtelo (talk) 13:24, 22 August 2018 (UTC).

Koro-Olrat?
Hi Womtelo,

According to Alexandre François, who you cite, Olrat is mutually intelligible with Koro. Glottolog therefore merges Koro-Olrat under a single language code. Since you've put a lot of work into the Olrat article, I wanted to ask you before doing anything. What do you think about merging the Wikipedia articles to match? And if we do, what name would be appropriate? (Glottolog names are made up for database purposes, so there's no particular reason for us to use them.)

Please ping me if you answer. — kwami (talk) 00:38, 2 January 2019 (UTC)


 * hi kwami, Thanks for your question. Well, I have some experience with Oceanic languages myself, and I reckon they really constitute a long dialect continuum; or rather, (and the nuance is important here) a chain of distinct languages forming a linkage, in which adjacent members tend to retain some degree of intelligibility. (Compare Portuguese - Galician - Asturian...) So the fact that Olrat and Koro remain largely intelligible to each other should not be too surprising; but if I remember well my readings, Olrat shares also some features with Lakon which Koro doesn't have. In fact, Kalyan & François (2018: 79) even showed that Olrat shares more historical innovations with Lakon than it does with Koro! (with respectively 89% of 'cohesiveness' for the Lakon-Olrat pair vs. 82% for Olrat-Koro).
 * Note that I'm not advocating for merging the Olrat page with Lakon either! Rather, my conclusion is that each language / communalect could & should remain distinct rather than be lumped with another one, otherwise we'd make it quite complicated to render the fine-grained differences that exist between each node in the linkage. Also, the more we know on all these languages, the more they appear to be different in their phonologies, morphologies, lexicons etc. For the same reason, I believe that Mwesen and Vurës should really be considered two separate languages (and entries): in spite of some degree of mutual intelligibility, they clearly constitute separate systems.
 * best (and Happy new year), Womtelo (talk) 01:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC).

Well, English (and French) dialects have differences "in their vowel systems, in their noun articles, in their pronoun paradigms" too, so that's hardly the definition of a language, but I take your point. I'll leave them separate.

FYI, this: Koro-Olrat language is how I'm (provisionally) handling such discrepancies between Glottolog and WP, so that ppl trying to follow up on a glottocode don't get lost. — kwami (talk) 01:40, 2 January 2019 (UTC)


 * oh, interesting. As long as the entries are kept separate, I'm fine with it. I might disagree with Glottolog in lumping these two languages under a single "language" node, which I don't think is warranted (also, a language "Olrat-Lakon" would be more legit). But I understand they had to make decisions somehow, and your solution looks smart. — Womtelo (talk) 01:52, 2 January 2019 (UTC).

Mostly I'm doing this where we have well-developed articles for both, or the sources don't seem to support the merger. That's why I'm calling them 'Glottolog classifications' -- no judgement as to whether they're valid.

BTW, what do you think of Bwenelang/Mbwenelang? Glotto lists it as a 'new' language, but the sources aren't new (e.g. Charpentier 1982), so I'm wondering why it hasn't shown up before. Could be from Franc,ois et al. 2015. Looks like it's in Malekula, on the main river inland from the coast opposite the west cape of Ambryn. — kwami (talk) 06:30, 2 January 2019 (UTC)


 * hi, I have no opinion on Bwenelang. But by experience, I can say it is no surprise that a "new" language should be discovered in Vanuatu, particularly in Malekula — i.e. a language that had slipped under the radar before. So if some linguists listed Bwenelang as a language of its own, I guess we could trust them (I don't have access to data on Bwenelang right now, to make my own opinion on the matter). — Womtelo (talk) 11:14, 2 January 2019 (UTC)