User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 20

Word of the jour:

• comb-shaped people

Previous words:

• awkwardnessful
• anti-zombie-fungus fungus

---

ASL

Hi,

I wanted to ask you about a couple of edits you recently made to the American Sign Language article:

You removed the statement that "ASL is sometimes written using English orthography." I'm a bit puzzled by this -- ASL is commonly glossed with all-caps English words, and in fact this seems to be the most common way to write ASL. Perhaps the statement should be reworded?

You removed some stuff from the phonology section, saying that "debatable as to whether these are phonemes". I was under the impression that the general linguistic consensus is that these are phonemes -- is there still serious debate about this?

Thanks! Mo-Al (talk) 07:15, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Glossing isn't writing. You can gloss Japanese using English words too, but no-one would call that written Japanese. It is true that ASL is glossed far more often than it is actually written, but that has to do with the fact that written ASL is so poorly developed.

Van der Hulst & Channon (2010), one of the refs used in the article, claim that handshapes etc. are sub-phonemic features, not individual phonemes. They say it's still debatable whether SLs have segments the way oral languages do. I don't buy all their claims, but I don't know there's any consensus on the matter either. — kwami (talk) 07:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

I see. I'll try to make the ASL article more accurate in these regards. I do think it's worth mentioning the practice of glossing since it's so ubiquitous, but I'll avoid calling it a true "writing system". Mo-Al (talk) 08:02, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we should note that. Maybe a link to gloss would help. — kwami (talk) 08:11, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Akan

A part of Ghana is slowly disappearing from articles and being renamed Akanland. See the edits by MarkMysoe (talk · contribs) and the discussion at WP:BLPN#Nana Akufo-Addo. I've raised the issue at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa#Ghana. I see you've been interested in this before which is why I'm informing you. Dougweller (talk) 17:45, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

There is no other part of Ghana. As Mark has pointed out, the only real people in Ghana are the Akan. All the others are illegal immigrants and criminals. Perhaps we should invest in a barbed-wire export business. — kwami (talk) 17:50, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Lol. At the BLPN discussion they are planning to raise an ANI report. I hadn't noticed the earlier discussion at Wikiproject Africa. Dougweller (talk) 18:27, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Kwamigami. I am sure it was not your intention, but this edit placed the 115 articles that transclude this template into Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. The template does not meet any of the speedy deletion criterion ("the creator of this template is a fraud" not being a speedy deletion criterion). You will have to nominate the template for deletion using the Wikipedia:Templates for discussion process. I am removing the speedy deletion tag on this basis. -- Dianna (talk) 19:28, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for all the rescue work you've done today on assorted Ghana-related articles! PamD 00:22, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

WP Linguistics in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Linguistics for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. –Mabeenot (talk) 18:38, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Tarkwa

However disruptive MarkMysoe (talk · contribs) may be, I cannot see how that could possibly justify moving Tarkwa to Tarkwa, Ghana. - with a dot at the end. I leave you to reset the article to a state that you find acceptable. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 21:36, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Look again, and you'll see that was an error that has now been deleted. — kwami (talk) 21:38, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

What "was an error that has now been deleted"? What other Tarkwas are there in there world? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 23:31, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

With a dot at the end. Which you deleted. — kwami (talk) 23:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Jeju language

I don't get what you did to that page, and something smells fishy in Jeju language. What's going on?--Seonookim (talk) 01:23, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

What are you asking? (You wanted the page moved, this had been rejected in the past, so I put it up for discussion, and after a month with no objections, I moved it.) — kwami (talk) 06:08, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

MOS and non-article pages

Only articles have to follow MOS on fine points like this (e.g. we do not use contractions in articles, but use them by the thousands in non-articles). The construction "and/or" is frequently helpful in projectpages including guidelines, so the edit summary on this wasn't really appropriate. By coincidence, the edit was a good one – it didn't actually need "and/or" there. But it's not the kind of edit that can be made categorically just to get rid of "and/or", as it will change meaning in negatively impacting ways in too many places. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 01:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

That was from a decision on the MOS talk page that the MOS shouldn't violate its own recommendations. There were about a dozen points like that that needed cleaning up. — kwami (talk) 02:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Resilient Barnstar
	For your WP rules following Saraikistan (talk) 18:41, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you? — kwami (talk) 18:49, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Stop removing properly placed templates

I refer to your removal twice of the template 'Unreferenced' from the article Papora-Hoanya language. The article contains no references. In order to help improve the encyclopedia, such pages are usually templated so that interested editors can help find and add sources. Please do not removal properly placed templates, as it is disruptive to the goal of creating a better encyclopedia. FurrySings (talk) 14:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The article refs Ethnologue. If you feel that is inadequate, there is a separate template for insufficient refs. (The ref isn't obvious, but there are thousands of articles like this, and making the refs obvious is too controversial a change to do by bot.) — kwami (talk) 19:33, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

by saying the article reffed Ethnologue (before I added an explicit ref to the page text) did you mean the ppu link to sil.org, from which one can click through to the ethnologue page for ppu? (The indirection certainly makes that nonobvious as a ref - and I couldn't see anything else, though I might be being stupid.) Dsp13 (talk) 08:04, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that's it. I was once hoping to get all 5,000 or so lang articles overtly ref'd, but it never happened. — kwami (talk) 08:30, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

OK. I've gone through W-Z in Category:Austronesian language stubs, adding refs to Ethnologue where it seemed appropriate - using Template:Ethnologue16 where Ethnologue seemed a sufficient reference for the template, or ref=e16 in the infobox if at least the number of speakers was in Ethnologue. Does this feel along the right lines to you? (I added a refsneeded template to a couple of pages about language groups, since I wasn't so sure what to do with those.) Dsp13 (talk) 13:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Perfect, as long as you confirmed that those actually are the E16 numbers. (A lot of languages have been exaggerated, though maybe not so many of these.) Great if you can verify (or add) the date as well, as it looks like you have been, so the reader has some idea if the numbers are dated. Though in a case like this[1] IMO it would be best to go the ref=e16 route, as that way we have auto-trackers in place for articles which need to be updated. (If you cross-ref in the text, you can use name=e16.)

With the {{Ethnologue}} template, I worry that some day it will be updated to E17, and all those articles will then look like they're sourced to E17 when they aren't. Maybe best to specifically use {{Ethnologue16}}, though I suppose the call all be switched over when we make the change.

For language groups, if there is an equivalent in E16, you can add sil= to the infobox. (You can add 3 of these in cases where E16 has messed up and the group is broken up, as often happens since they're automated.) Don't know what we'll do for E17 with this; hopefully the SIL code itself will dab. — kwami (talk) 20:55, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Indian cities

Please discuss on talk page, and do not delete sourced content. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:05, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I have restored deleted content, added a couple more sources on Mandi and Nellore, and pasted your delete edit comment onto Talk page and answered it. Everyone would welcome sourced additions to the article. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:16, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

You have no source that "local languages" means English, or that Madras was only changed to Chennai in Indian English and not, say, in American English, etc. — kwami (talk) 10:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

You are edit warring. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:35, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

No, you are edit warring. Read WP:BOLD. If your changes are contested, it's up to you to bring them to discussion. As I said, I have no problem with many of them, just with the unsourced claims that I find dubious. — kwami (talk) 20:51, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The person whose edit is on top is edit warring. And WP:BOLD does not cover either the 2x block deletes, and you were invited to discuss. You still haven't raised an issue which is more than you having not read what you deleted. As it is your deletes have simply jammed up the article preventing further source adding. Please raise a tangible issue on Talk. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:12, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, that's not how things work on Wikipedia. Your changes, your responsibility to justify them. — kwami (talk) 00:13, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Which is why there is a lengthy reply to your questions. Will you now allow more sources to be added? In ictu oculi (talk) 00:24, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

A lengthy reply which doesn't actually answer anything. Responded there. — kwami (talk) 00:31, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Answered again, there. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Answered again. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:26, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

See Talk. I'm quiet amenable to adding that, and was in the processing of doing so, and sourcing. Will you let work on the article continue now? In ictu oculi (talk) 02:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Please See Talk. I'm also quiet amenable to changing wording. Will you please restore the article now? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:50, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for having restored the page. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:58, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:CAPS

Your edits have just trigged a dozen pages on my watchlist. It is my understanding that WP:CAPS and consensus on religion articles is for items which claim uniqueness that capital G for God is used. Where is there discussion and agreement on this fairly radical change across so many religion articles? In ictu oculi (talk) 15:58, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry, I have located some discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#the_God_of_Israel_or_the_god_of_Israel, see comment there. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:12, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

BTW, the AWB script I used was written last May, scanning all of WP with no complaints; I just haven't used it for a while. — kwami (talk) 21:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

With regards to Books of Kings, that was my mistake - I misread the edit history. Of course, I didn't start the edit war - the initial change was made by an IP editor here, and it was reverted by Dougweller. So I'm happy to leave that particular article as it is until the discussion is resolved, but I would suggest that you self-revert on the numerous other changes you've made. StAnselm (talk) 21:12, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Fine, easy mistake to make. However, neither making an edit nor reverting it is considered edit warring; that starts with that third edit, restoring the contested material.

This is an established consensus, and I've done AWB sweeps for it before without problem. It's like when s.o. starts edit warring over "Odisha" and I realize I haven't scanned for that for a while; I'll then break out AWB to fix the instances of it that have cropped up across WP since the last time. I will continue to take this as consensus too unless the consensus changes. — kwami (talk) 21:16, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

January 2013

Your recent editing history at Books of Kings shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

To avoid being blocked, instead of reverting please consider using the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. See BRD for how this is done. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

There is no such thing as a "stable article", that's just a lame excuse for edit warring. Yes, I'm guilty too. But it's time to stop reverting discuss. ► Belchfire-TALK 04:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Of course there is. The article was stable for a year and a half. Until the discussion is concluded, that's how it should remain. Read WP:BOLD. — kwami (talk) 04:58, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Volga-Finnic languages

I think your move of the redirect Volga-Finnic languages to Volga–Finnic languages with a dash is in error. The term is not to be analysed as "Volgaic + (... +) Finnic" or "from the Volga to Finnic" or the like. In this term, "Finnic" does not refer to the Finnic languages (in the narrow sense "Baltic Finnic"), which do not form part of the group at all, but to the Finno-Volgaic languages, of which the Volga-Finnic group comprises the sub-group situated at the Volga, the languages of the so-called Volga Finns. In fact, "Volga Finnic" would be clearer, though still confusing because of the ambiguity of "Finnic". The terminology is awful, I know. But it is important not to confuse Volga-Finnic (which does not include Baltic Finnic) with Finno-Volgaic (which does). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:32, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay. I suppose we can delete it, if you like, since it's an unlikely typo. Just three links to fix. — kwami (talk) 18:55, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, to the dustbin with it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Korean /s/ and denasalization

On the subject of Korean /s/, I've added a source at Talk:Ulsan that deals with the debate. Word-initially at least, I think the aspiration must indeed be an important cue.

I must admit I had never noticed any synchronic denasalization in Korean, so I found the following blog post fascinating: John Wells's phonetic blog: denasalized nasals

Kim Young Shin's dissertation referred to in the post goes into more detail, including a summary of the treatment of the topic, but I haven't had time to read it carefully.

As a native Korean speaker, it's something you just simply don't notice until someone points it out to you since it's entirely allophonic and it doesn't really occur to you to consider whether the pronunciation of simple word-initial nasals could be different. — Iceager (talk) 15:20, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I am now reminded of when I first heard the song "Dom andra" by Kent. I thought I wasn't quite hearing a /d/ in the chorus but an /n/, "Vi blev som dom andra", and asked my Swedish friends about this pronunciation, but they didn't really understand what I was talking about. I didn't know about denasalization in Korean at the time, but now I realize it could have been because I was unconsciously mapping the soft /d/ to /n/ because of how I was trained to hear Korean /n/. — Iceager (talk) 15:48, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, those are very helpful links. This distinction is often subtle, but sometimes it's quite obvious if you're not used to denasalization. — kwami (talk) 01:47, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

RfC at TITLE

Kwami, due to the awkward process of starting up the RFC at WT:TITLE#RfC on COMMONSTYLE proposal, your expression of support for the proposal was left outside of the RFC section. I expect you'll want to correct that. Dicklyon (talk) 06:30, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Regarding your requested move...

...posted at Talk:Hindustani. I reverted it because it was malformed. Hindustani language redirects to Hindi-Urdu. It's not clear to me what you want to do. Please read the instructions at WP:RM, in particular WP:RM#Requesting controversial and potentially controversial moves, and consider {{subst:move-multi}} request if you want to move more than one page. Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 11:02, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I wanted it to be a rd to Hindi-Urdu, as the primary topic. I'll then add a hatnote for the dab page. — kwami (talk) 19:30, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit summary!

Please write edit summary --Tito Dutta (talk) 04:40, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Notice 12 January 2013

Please do not remove content or templates from pages on Wikipedia, as you did to Languages of Pakistan, without giving a valid reason for the removal in the edit summary. Your content removal does not appear constructive, and has been reverted. Please make use of the sandbox if you'd like to experiment with test edits. Thank you. Jaredfan (talk) 07:20, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:Content fork is a valid reason. I will continue to remove cruft from the article. — kwami (talk) 09:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

January 2013

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. Please make sure to include an edit summary. Please provide one before saving your changes to an article, as the summaries are quite helpful to people browsing an article's history. Thanks! Tito Dutta (talk) 08:11, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Han subgroups moves

Re: your moves of "Xiang-speaking peoples" to "Xiang Chinese people", etc.[2][3][4] I think (and I am not the only one; look at their talk pages) that Wikipedia is creating neologisms for concepts that do not exist, by analogy to "Cantonese people", which is a pretty unique case. What was "Gan-speaking people" until your move was originally "Jiangxi people", which is a regional and not ethnolinguistic identity, as provinces in China are pretty disconnected from linguistic regions. These articles are not well-sourced for the concepts that they claim to describe. So while the "Xiang-speaking peoples" concept is pretty dubious but somewhat descriptive, the move to "Xiang Chinese people" is even less descriptive and more dubious. The moves not represent progress towards sourceable articles; would you please revert them? Shrigley (talk) 03:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

In what sense are they "peoples"? That's what seemed weirdest to me: If they're not ethnicities, they're certainly not multiple ethnicities! What about "X-Chinese speakers"? — kwami (talk) 23:35, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

That's probably the best interim title, although it still could falsely imply that "Gan-Chinese speakers" are some cohesive population or group with an ethnic consciousness, like Swedish-speaking population of Finland. I think it would be best to merge Gan-speaking peoples into Gan Chinese, and whatever information that article has about "Jiangxi people" into Jiangxi. However, I think the articles are mostly synthesis and wishful thinking. Similarly, the article Han Chinese subgroups should be axed and rebuilt on the basis of reliable ethnographic sources, and not language cladistics. Perhaps this question should be brought to WikiProject China. Anyway, I highly doubt that Wang Anshi and Ang Lee—listed as exemplars in the infobox—identify as "Gan Chinese people". Shrigley (talk) 02:00, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, reifying linguistic groupings, as if there were an "Altaic people", is a pet peeve of mine. I'll move to those titles, and support you in merging the articles. — kwami (talk) 02:05, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I've tagged them for merger, and several more besides. I don't have them on my watch list, however. — kwami (talk) 02:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

The articles I left alone are now listed at {{Han subgroups}}. Do you have trouble with any of those? — kwami (talk) 02:25, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm suspicious of "Ningbo people" (and Wenzhou people for the same reason), since the article seems to be descriptively about people who came from the city of Ningbo or who have an ancestral home there. Also, there are no references for either article. The former could be easily renamed to "List of people from Ningbo", à la List of people from Delhi. The current scope of the article Fuzhou people is clearly "people from the city of Fuzhou", since it lists She and Manchu residents as subgroups. The sources are suspect, actually referring to "Min Dong-speaking people" (Hokchew or Hokchiu are names for the language). I could entertain the idea that there was some ethnogenesis because of migration to Malaysia and other places (which indisputably created the Hokkiens), but the current sources don't prove it. Maybe an AfD is necessary to clarify the concept. Overall, you've done a good job. Shrigley (talk) 05:30, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Deleted one, renamed the other. (Didn't bother to clean up the lead.) — kwami (talk) 05:37, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Serbian speakers

Could you provide the url to where you found this: [5]? --JorisvS (talk) 23:40, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

That's the url. I checked entries for all countries listed at srp, apart from Albania, which contradicts ELL2. (Turkey & Libya maybe should be discounted too, since Muslims no longer tend to self-ID as Serbs, but that wouldn't change the rounded-off value.) — kwami (talk) 23:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The main site of Ethnologue ([6]) obviously doesn't say anything about the half a million Serbian speakers abroad and I couldn't find it in their entry ([7]). --JorisvS (talk) 00:13, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

In this edit you made an unexplained change of text in the source (quote from Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics) by deleting "and perhaps a million in the diaspora". Can you explain this and your other edits? Cheers.--В и к и T 10:28, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

There was no source for that claim. I subbed with a sourced figure. You're welcome to find better! — kwami (talk) 19:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

That's not my point. I only want to see what you've seen, but I can't find it because the url is not specific. That's why I asked you to provide the specific url to the page where they said that. --JorisvS (talk) 10:50, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

As I said above, I checked the entries for all countries listed at [srp]. There is no single page that I know of. — kwami (talk) 04:48, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Northern Zhuang vs All Zhuang

The Zhuang Languages article is about both Southern and Northern Zhuang, therefore the number of native speakers should reflect both Southern and Northern populations. Presently the Zhuang languages article gives a figure whilst sourced which is just for the spwakers of Northern Zhuang. Johnkn63 (talk) 14:55, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes? If you have a ref, please fix it. But you shouldn't replace ref'd info w unref'd info. — kwami (talk) 20:55, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Luo

I think it would be beneficial to the development of the article if you didn't refer to my edits as vandalism. Thank you. Ezeu (talk) 04:28, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

I didn't refer to them as vandalism. I reverted them as unhelpful to the development of the article, as discussed on the talk page. — kwami (talk) 04:46, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Removing Speedy at Tidong language

Hi Kwamikagami, you recently removed a deletion tag from Tidong language. Because Wikipedia policy does not allow the creator of the page to remove speedy deletion tags, an automated program has replaced the tag. Although the deletion proposal may be incorrect, removing the tag is not the correct way for you to contest the deletion, even if you are more experienced than the nominator. Instead, please use the talk page to explain why the page should not be deleted. Remember to be patient, there is no harm in waiting for another experienced user to review the deletion and judge what the right course of action is. As you are involved, and therefore potentially biased, you should refrain from doing this yourself. Thank you, - SDPatrolBot (talk) 10:25, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

() pages

I believe I have spoken to you before about these "… ()" pages. There is absolutely no point. In the most recent case, why was it not possible for you to simply place {{db-move|Judeo-Aramaic languages|singular is standard}} on Judeo-Aramaic language and wait for it to happen? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 12:33, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

That may have worked in that particular case, but in most cases there's too much drama for such an approach to be effective. — kwami (talk) 21:28, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Please explain yourself - what on earth do you mean by "too much drama"? In any case here is a much more potent reason for you to give up this silly practice. Please see these edits where I have rescued all these pages (many of which you created in the first place) from speedy deletion. First one bot had changed them to point to a () page, then another bot tagged them for deletion because they were redirects to a deleted page. If it happens again, I shall not be so kind, I shall delete them, especially ones created by you. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 00:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

No-one's asking you to do it. If you don't want to, then don't. But if you start vandalizing WP in order to make some silly WP:POINT, creating more work for s.o. else who has to undo your damage, then I will request that your privileges be revoked. We don't need prima donnas on WP. — kwami (talk) 00:41, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Now you are being simply ridiculous. Please specify which of my edits you consider vandalism. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 00:58, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

You threatened to delete the articles, "especially ones created by me", if I moved them in ways that you didn't like. Not only would that by pointy, but it would be vandalism in order to be pointy. If I got desysopped for enforcing a closed move request that a disgruntled opponent reverted, I certainly think you should lose your privileges for nonsense like that. — kwami (talk) 01:03, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Again, you are being ridiculous, I did not threaten to delete any actual articles created by you. I only threatened to delete redirects. And in practice, I probably not do so - I would simply leave them to see if other admins would detect the situation or simply trust the Legobot (talk · contribs) - which usually gets it right - and simply delete. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 01:29, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

That's not being ridiculous, that's a misunderstanding. You linked to examples of things you would delete, and those were articles and rd's linked from other articles. I assumed that you had chosen a representative example of things you would delete. I don't mind if you delete rd's that aren't being used and aren't likely to be entered in the search window. — kwami (talk) 01:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

All my links were to redirects. But can we stop this bickering please? Perhaps you could actually try and explain (with examples) why you create these () pages. I am a bear of very little brain and "too much drama" gives me absolutely no clue as to why you do it. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 01:42, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I have found, through repeated bad experiences with regular move requests, that it can take weeks or months to go through. It will be denied and the move-request template deleted by someone who doesn't understand why it should be moved, and would rather delete than leave it for someone who knows what they're doing. It will be reposted for comment, because no-one bothered to comment the first time. I might need Google results to prove that it's the common name. It becomes a huge production, wasting a lot of time. That's what I mean by 'drama'. If instead I move it to the intended name with the addition of those silly parentheses, and then request that the rd at the target name be deleted, someone will often come by and move it within a day or two. Maybe one time out of fifty, if that, someone will object to the new name. In that case, I move it back, and no harm done. Moving the occasional name back (which I can do myself) is a lot easier than arguing about fifty moves that no-one actually objects to. So, basically, I add the parentheses because they have a proven track record of getting the job done. — kwami (talk) 02:24, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

I did ask for examples. I am unconvinced. I have never seen any "drama" except in cases which would be controversial by any route, eg. moving Islamic view of Moses to Musa. But remember - if you create Foo () then it is your responsibility to check special:WhatLinksHere/Foo () and fix any links which may appear. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 12:07, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Washo

Hey Kwamikagami, I've noticed your recent additions to the Washo language page and saw that you edited the consonant section. In that you added the consonants Ŋ, M, L, W. In my experience with learning the language, all letters are written in lowercase form, even though <http://washo.uchicago.edu/consonants.php> shows the letters above as uppercase as well. Also, in listening to the sound files on the uchigaco.edu site, it's hard to hear a difference between the lower and uppercase letters, but it sounds as if there's a minimal huff associated with the uppercase form. I was curious if you had any knowledge of of this and if so what the difference is. Blackbird5555 (talk) 01:24, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I really don't know about the orthography, and wasn't happy with my sources. It may be that these sounds don't have separate letters apart from idiosyncratic linguistic transcriptions. Please revert me on anything I got wrong.

BTW, we don't cap section titles, the Washo Tribe is not a linguistic source, we use English in our articles, etc. — kwami (talk) 01:27, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I should think the Washo Tribe is a linguistic source on its own language.

There are dialects, though they are not distinct such as the huŋalelti lisp.

Wašiw is English. It's in reference to the language of the Washo people.

t' is said in combination with a slight glottal stop where as ć, ḱ, ṕ have different sounds altogether. Other letters followed by an apostrophe are not said in combination with a slight glottal stop but instead one after the other.

If you know nothing of the Wašiw language, why are you making changes to it? Blackbird5555 (talk) 08:40, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the orthography. But then, apparently, neither do you. Otherwise I'm following sources; if you have better, please cite.

Of course the Washo Tribe is not a linguistic source. It's a political entity. If the Tribe has conducted research on the genetic affiliations of their language, we can cite their publications. Otherwise, no: linguistic claims require linguistic sources. See WP:Reliable sources.

Your description of t' contradicts the IPA. Perhaps there's an error somewhere? Do you have a source for this?

The name in English is "Washo". Wašiw is fine in italics as a foreign name. — kwami (talk) 19:49, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

User:Blackbird5555 doesn't really know what he's talking about. I listed all kinds of references at Talk:Washo language. (Since my languages of specialization are Washo's neighbors, I do know something about Washo and Blackbird5555 is, well, incorrect.) --Taivo (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

The refs all talk about phonology. Blackbird is making a claim about orthography. (He doesn't seem to distinguish the two, but the actual edit war is over orthography; he's leaving the IPA alone.) Do we know if the Tribe has a preferred orthography? The only ones I've seen are rather crude ad hoc systems used in the non-Washo lit. — kwami (talk) 19:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Then you, Taivo, should know that the neighbors of the Washo have no linguistic connection to them whatsoever. Therefor, the pronunciation of Wašiw words do not match those of its neighbors. Having been involved with the Washo community for years, I do know what I'm talking about. Now just because you list references doesn't make them right. Yes, Jacobsen is referred to a lot when it comes to the Wašiw language, but even the Washo will tell you that he was not 100% correct. The writing system he used is not what is used today as to distinguish the difference between glottal stops and different letters altogether. Blackbird5555 (talk) 00:23, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

All we ask for is a decent ref. — kwami (talk) 00:44, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Republic of The Gambia (with an uppercase T)

What useful purpose do you hope to serve by causing a bot to change The Gambia into the Gambia in a large number of articles here?
Is it not true that the officials of the Gambian government refer to their own nation as The Gambia (with an uppercase T)?
Thanks. Doc. DocRushing (talk) 02:26, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Consistency. We use "the" in all the article names on WP. — kwami (talk) 03:02, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

We probably shouldn't, though. The "The" appears to be part of the proper name, which means it should be uppercase, as with The Hague. --Trovatore (talk) 03:13, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

"The" is normally lower case when part of a proper name. 50 years ago it would be cap'd, but that's getting increasingly rare. "The Hague" is one of the few exceptions, probably because the "the" can't be dropped as it can from Gambia. — kwami (talk) 03:16, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

"Consistency" is no excuse for sloppiness, inaccuracy, or careless inattention to detail.

When the word the is a part of the official name of an entity – as, for example, in The Hague, The Gambia, and The Greyhound Corporation – then we have a duty and responsibility to show honor to the entities and the people involved by printing the names in question in the form which those groups and those people prefer.

To omit the uppercase T – or to change it – is erroneous and presumptuous.

If such uppercase Ts appear less frequently than before – which may or may not be true – that's because of the ignorance, carelessness, or stubbornness of those who make that mistake.

If you wish for your own written work to bear a mark of one who is ignorant, ill-informed, or careless, that's OK.

But it's not OK for you to tamper with the work of others by imposing on it your error and your misguided personal preference.

Please stop messing up the work of others, and please stop using a bot to mess up the work of others.

Thanks. Doc. DocRushing (talk) 04:40, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

If it's an error, it's not mine. This was established in 2010 when all the Gambia articles were moved to "the". If you want to change that, make a request to move them all back. Until then, I will continue to make these edits.

You also might want to read the warning at the top of the edit window: whatever you write will be changed by others. If you don't like that, you shouldn't edit WP. — kwami (talk) 05:59, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

And perhaps scan through the country's offical official website, and the website of this university in the Gambia. No stylistic consistency, though the latter strongly prefers lower case. See also this UN-connected page; and UNICEF calls it simply "Gambia". On Wikipedia we have a manual of style to sort out unreliable style in "reliable sources". Choices in styling a name are made by publishers that reproduce the name, not necessarily by the bearer of the name. For example, no one can say "it is integral to my name that it be printed in italics," or " 'Dr' in front of my name has a full stop." So in this case also. OUP chooses "Gambia" or "the Gambia", but "The Hague" (see New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, 2008). M-W Collegiate, deferred to by The Chicago Manual of Style, agrees exactly. Noetica^Tea? 07:50, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Your complaint at AN3

Hello Kwami. About WP:AN3#Languages of Pakistan reported by User:Kwamikagami (Result: ). Who do you think is a sock? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 05:29, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Thought the last IP might be. — kwami (talk) 05:56, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Hm Nai

Hm Nai is mutually unintelligible with Pa-Hng, although it's closely related. Mao Zongwu (1997) covers this in detail. — Stevey7788 (talk) 02:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Younuo is definitely not intelligible with either Pa-Hng or Hm Nai. Mao Zongwu (2007) argues that it should form a branch with Pa-Hng, though it would be the most divergent one. — Stevey7788 (talk) 03:13, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Bača subdialect

Hi Kwami, you recently moved the page Bača subdialect to Bača dialect. Note that Slovene distinguishes between narečja 'dialects' and govori 'subdialects, local dialects, etc.' I have no objection in principle against renaming the page to Bača dialect (although subdialect is a legitimate term), but then every page for Slovene subdialects should be moved, all the article texts should also be updated, and a good solution should be found for phrasing such as "the dialect ... is divided into three subdialects." There are about 60 such pages; I think it would probably be best to move the page back to Bača subdialect and propose a systematic change for discussion at WikiProject Slovenia. Doremo (talk) 12:09, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Agreed they should be consistent.

You know more about this than I do, so I'll defer to your judgement. AFAIK, there is no absolute definition of "subdialect", which is why I generally move subdialect, subbranch, subfamily, etc., unless they're in a defining context for this to make sense. Also, does the term here mean accent rather than dialect? An accent is a more minor distinction, typically with differences in pronunciation but little difference in grammar. With larger e.g. national languages, that's usually what the term "dialect" is intended to mean when it's used for the speech of such a small geographic area as Bača. (I see that the Slovene article that interwikis to WP-en 'accent' is naglas, but that's a different definition of accent, as in stress/pitch accent, and should be fixed.) Without knowing the language, it would seem to me that Rovte is the dialect, Tolmin perhaps a subdialect, and Bača an accent. ELL2 would seem to support that, with Rovte being one of seven traditional dialects, each with further diversification (48 'local speech varieties'), of which I take it Tolmin would be one. Sussex & Cubberley (CUP) review the lit and give the reported number of Sloven dialects as between 7 and 50. They speak of the Rovte dialects, plural, thus calling both the Rovte and Tolmin levels 'dialects' depending on analysis; they even omit Rovte from their table of dialectical reflexes of proto-Slavic as insufficiently distinctive to warrant a separate column. There's no discussion in either source about 'dialects' at the Bača level. We get the same thing with English, where local 'dialects' are often better called 'accents'.

Thus, unless you know differently, it would seem to me that I should have moved these articles to Bača accent etc, and the other Slovene 'subdialects' should be the same. — kwami (talk) 20:41, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I would avoid the term accent here; the govori exhibit not only distinctive phonological features, but also often include distinctive morphological, word-formational, syntactic, and lexical patterns. The Slovene term podnarečje (literally, pod 'sub' + narečje 'dialect') is also a synonym for govor. They are, of course, "local dialects," but this would be more cumbersome as an article title than "subdialect," which is a legitimate term. Doremo (talk) 04:27, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Okay, whatever you think is best. Most articles with names like this are clearly wrong, so I tend to change them without doing a lot of research first. — kwami (talk) 09:26, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I've moved it back again. Doremo (talk) 09:57, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Escuse me

Hi Kwamikagami and escuse me for revert your edition in Acento prosódico, I thought that those were the correct interwikis. Thanks. JaviP96 08:28, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem. I'm having a problem at WP-hr, but after that, the bots should fix things up.

And if you think stress (linguistics) is a better WP-en IW than accent (phonetics), please go ahead and change it. — kwami (talk) 08:52, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Re: help

You did this and you don't see why others felt it was a bad change?! :) How about you do what you would do on en:, and actually bother to explain to people what happened with en:Accent (linguistics), rather than edit-war? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:36, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I see now you posted on the talk page there after the 3RR violation. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:37, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

There was no 3RR violation. I also explained the reason on each person's talk page before reverting them, just as I did with Galician in the thread above. The last response was that I shouldn't do the edit because I don't speak Croatian, not because there was anything wrong with it. — kwami (talk) 20:23, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Austro-Asiatic -> Austroasiatic

Please see Talk:Austro-Asiatic languages#Requested move and your e-mail. — Stevey7788 (talk) 22:27, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Assistance required (continued harassment from anonymous editor)

Hoping you can assist here, as an admin. If you could, please review this[8] anonymous user's Talk page (you may not remember, but you took part in a discussion some months ago, concerning his harassment towards me on his actual Talk page).

His latest strategy is cloning my username (save for the extra "s" at the end) and even proclaiming his intent to cause mischief. You can find his page here: [9]. The account created is "Apple2gss", note the extra "s" tacked onto the end.--Apple2gs (talk) 03:38, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:INTDABLINK is policy.

Greetings! WP:INTDABLINK is policy. If you are unable to conform your conduct to the policies of this project, please let me know and I'll be glad to address the situation appropriately. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:48, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

You'll have to explain what you mean.

Oh, I see. Forgot about that detail. — kwami (talk) 04:55, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

No worries. If you dislike the appearance you can replace the hatnote with {{Other uses|Accent (disambiguation){{!}}Accent}}, and it will hide the parenthetical. However, it may be useful for readers to know that a link is taking them to a disambiguation page. Cheers again! bd2412 T 16:39, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Using AWB

I am disappointed you have run your script again to change capitalization of "God" in certain articles. The discussion is still ongoing. The rules at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser clearly state "Do not make controversial edits with it" and "The Wikipedia tenet "be bold" is not a justification for mass editing lacking demonstrable consensus." You have been warned. StAnselm (talk) 09:39, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

We've had the consensus for years: We capitalize titles, not deities of favored religions. That AWB script is years old. The current discussion is on whether we should change it. — kwami (talk) 10:23, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I think StAnselm has it right here - please stop making these controversial changes without consensus. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Let me be clear: you're not going to edit-war these changes into Wikipedia. Please try building consensus instead. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:58, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

LTR

Can you please check my edit here and fix if necessary? -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:01, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Looks like the words were in the wrong order. Should be fixed now. — kwami (talk) 20:26, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Please edit Donghak Peasant Revolution! Seonookim (talk) 00:54, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

See comment in Talk:Sibilant

I wrote a response to a very old comment of yours, along with a long commentary about an issue that still confuses me. Could you take a look? Benwing (talk) 01:27, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, Ben. I am not familiar with these sounds. I've heard them, but not enough to be able to answer questions like that. As for which diacritics would be best, maybe we could check if the IPA has published anything. They do cover quite a few languages in their journal, though the quality is not consistent. — kwami (talk) 05:32, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Nahuatl dialects

Please move the Nahuatl dialects back to where they were and start a discussion proposal for movement. They appear as dialects in the literature, not separate languages. The division between central, eastern etc. is a dialectological division. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:31, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Basically I think we can bypass the dialect/langauge issue by just having them all located at Central Nahuatl, Eastern Nahuatl etc. Since Nahuatl is only the name for the language not the ethnic group. A discussion seems in order. For example on the main Nahuatl page?·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:40, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Peripheral is already like that. Currently 'Central Nahuatl' is a rd. to Tlaxcala–Puebla Nahuatl, as that's the E16 name. — kwami (talk) 04:42, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a wrong redirect - Morelos Nahuatl, State of Mexico Nahuatl and Northern Puebla Nahuatl are also Central dialects. The official usage in Mexico now is to call Nahuatl a "linguistic group" and then talk about individual local "varieties".·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:59, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Central dialects, yes, but not Central Nahuatl in ISO. I put in a request to delete and move, but we can keep Central Nahuatl language as a rd. to Tlaxcala–Puebla for the ISO links. — kwami (talk) 05:22, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Parentheses in language article titles

Hi Kwamikagami. You've recently moved a couple of language pages to titles containing empty parentheses (specifically Gujari language () and Southern Luo language ()) - I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for this format (I'm assuming it's some etymological convention that I'm not aware of) but try as I might, I haven't found it yet. Rather than spend half-a-day trawling through MOS and language projects, I thought I'd just ask you to educate me - so I am: what's the deal with the empty brackets? Cheers, Yunshui 雲‍水 13:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Can't move to the proper name, so I've tagged them for deletion and for these to be moved. Much, much more efficient. — kwami (talk) 19:38, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

You have renamed lots of articles on languages and dialects. Was this discussed? Where?

While I generally like consistent naming schemes, I think in the case of articles such as Riograndenser Hunsrückisch this is slightly problematic because of the ambiguous status as a language or dialect. In other cases it might be a matter of political POV. Hans Adler 22:23, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Riograndenser Hunsrückisch is presented as a dialect of a dialect. I don't see anything, such as being established as a standard language, that might override its identity as a dialect. If I'm wrong, feel free to reverse me. — kwami (talk) 00:13, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

According to this article (in German), what obviously started as a local dialect of German now has its own Portuguese-based orthography and is taught at schools. Its speakers appear to have lost exposure to Standard German, and to no longer understand it. (I only found out about this right now, as I was looking for it.) On the other hand it would be quite a stretch to refer to it as a dialect of (Brazilian) Portuguese, as it appears to be far from mutually comprehensible with it.

This seems to be the natural development for minority languages of this kind. Something similar has happened to Pennsylvania German, which started as another German dialect (Pfälzisch, which is extremely close to the original Hunsrück dialect) and for some reason is now referred to as a language even though some of its highly religious speakers still use bibles in a form of Standard German that is only slightly antiquated and speak with an approximation to it in certain situations.

So, I wouldn't go so far as to say that you are wrong. But I don't think you are right either. I am just uneasy about this. I see no need to get closure about such an arbitrary distinction. I guess the speakers will have a tradition of referring to their variation as a dialect, so they are unlikely to protest. But still it doesn't seem completely right. Hans Adler 10:30, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

After some further research I am now going to implement the old merger proposal, see Talk:Brazilian German#Merger proposal. (I think it even came from you?) It appears that Brazilian German is essentially a synonym for Riograndenser Hunsrückisch in the wide sense (as an emerging language), of which Riograndenser Hunsrückisch in the narrow sense is a dialect family spoken in Rio Grande do Sul. That makes the title problem disappear. Hans Adler 11:31, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Oops. After yet further research, there are some areas of Brazil where a language variant based on Pommersch, a dialect from the other end of Germany (now mostly Polish) dominates and is official. [Edit: "official" was overstating it, according to better sources.] With that information, the merger really doesn't seem appropriate. Hans Adler 11:44, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. How's Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German? — kwami (talk) 19:38, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I've found some pretty good sources and learned a lot about this Brazilian German. Apparently there are Hunsrückisch speaking and Pommersch speaking municipalities very close to each other, though most of the Hunsrückisch speakers live further in the south than most of the Pommersch speakers. In any case they seem to communicate with each other in their own version(s) of Standard German. I think this is a strong reason against merging, and your proposed title sounds reasonable. But it is a (non-obviously) descriptive title where the English name of the language/dialect could have stood simply on its own. Hans Adler 20:58, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Old Southwestern Chinese

Where did you get this info? This proposal certainly is quite intriguing, and surprising. We might want to ask David Bradley himself about this.

I tried searching these books, but didn't find any mention of Old Southwestern Chinese at all.

• http://books.google.com/books?id=6LoNl7ZRO70C
• http://books.google.com/books?id=COkLoi-EQjEC

— Stevey7788 (talk) 05:58, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

WP:PRON

Can you take another look at my proposal. It has changed significantly since you last voted to oppose. Consider changing your vote. I would like to have a few more votes before adding it to the infoboxes and modifying MOS:PRON. Consensus, I believe, is quickly building but your earlier Oppose vote still remains.— አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 04:59, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Still think this is a matter for MOS:LEAD. — kwami (talk) 07:36, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Hindustani grammar

Hello! Remember me? How are you doing? I came across the Hindustani grammar article which I worked on a while back and found that a huge amount of information was removed, especially the Hindi-Urdu. Could you take a look at the issue? Khuda hafiz, Anupam^Talk 07:34, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Can you give an example? — kwami (talk) 07:35, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Dear User:Kwamikagami, yes, if you compare the two revisions, all the scripts and former examples have been removed. The original article was drafted by User:Magicalsaumy, with the scripts being added by User:Kitabparast. These however, are all gone. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 09:04, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

That was over six years ago! The article has been substantially rewritten since then, largely by Tuncrypt, it would seem. Hindustani script has been removed, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing: for many readers it simply made the article look cluttered. You can certainly start a discussion on the talk page on whether it should be restored; if there isn't enough traffic there, you might try at Wikiproject languages. (Serbo-Croatian grammar has similar issues, but there each item has two transcriptions rather than the three we had at Hindustani.) As for examples being removed, you'll have to specify. A lot's been changed. — kwami (talk) 19:28, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Austroasiatic languages

Hey Kwami, Austro-Asiatic languages has just been renamed to Austroasiatic languages. Would you mind changing all the "Austro-Asiatic"'s on Wikipedia to "Austroasiatic" using AWB? Thanks. — Stevey7788 (talk) 21:11, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I've got a lot to do today, but I can take care of any odd redirects. There are 400 links to Austro-Asiatic languages, however. If you want to try AWB, it's rather easy to do simple things like this. At the bottom-left of the screen, choose "what links here" under 'source', enter "Austro-Asiatic languages" in the 'what links to' window, and hit 'make list'. Choose the 'options' tab to the right of that, click 'normal settings', and enter "Austro-Asiatic" and "Austroasiatic" in the 'find' and 'replace' windows. (Don't make it case sensitive, or you won't catch l.c. entries.) Then go to the 'start' tab, add a default edit summary in the window, and click 'start'. You'll need to sign in to your WP account. When an article pops up, double-click on a paragraph in the top display window to cancel the bot changes to that paragraph, or make any additional manual changes that you like in the bottom edit window. Then click 'Save'. If AWB skips articles in the list, that's probably because the link is in a template, not in the article itself. You can also go to 'Options' at the top of the window, click on 'pre-parse mode', hit 'Start', and leave; AWB will go through and remove all articles from the list that don't have the search item in them. — kwami (talk) 21:32, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! — Stevey7788 (talk) 07:31, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I let it run in the background while I was doing other stuff. 3 articles remain, which I left for various reasons. — kwami (talk) 13:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Could we have more informative edit summaries in future for this and particularly your "BS" ones, please? (Did you forget to change the summary? Also, some of your edits didn't actually do anything other than genfixes, which tends to annoy people.) Thanks, - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 20:43, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Example? I think there was one article w massive gen fixes, which I'll allow some times.

There were no automated "BS" fixes. After deleting the same literal bullshit pasted into four articles, I tend to abbreviate the summary. — kwami (talk) 21:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Clearly the wrong edit summary; and then a few where removing a hyphen was deemed to be "removing bs" rather than the better (but still somewhat cryptic) "rd": [10]; [11]; [12]; [13]. If you're going to do a batch of very similar edits, it really doesn't take very long to change the edit summary to something far more informative. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 23:40, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Oops! I've made mistakes like that before, and thought I was being more careful this time. Sorry. — kwami (talk) 00:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem. I can't say it bothers me greatly, but some people sget o agitated about this kind of thing, and no-one really wants that kind of fuss. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 00:19, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

IPA for...Inuit?

A while ago, User:Guillermo2149 created a few IPA for X pages (specifically for Kazakh, Cherokee, Malayalam, Inupiak, and Inuktitut). I've redirected the Cherokee and Inupiak to Help:IPA and adjusted the relevant IPA templates for the others, but I'm not sure if I've handled the Inuit languages correctly. Should Help:IPA for Inupiak instead redirect to Help:IPA for Inuktitut? Should both be redirected to a more encompassing Help:IPA for Inuit languages as {{IPA-iu}} sort of suggests? What do you think? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 04:33, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

We shouldn't need to expand the table much to cover both, so that's what I'd do. But you'd need to make sure you do cover Inupiak. — kwami (talk) 04:44, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Not sure how to cover it, since our article on it isn't very clear about the differences. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 20:53, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe best to leave it as is, then. Would any of the current transclusions not be covered? Other than maybe [j] vs [dʒ], I don't know that there'd be much difference. — kwami (talk) 21:25, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

The Gambia

Dear Kwamikagami, I am just a bit puzzled to understand why you changed "The Gambia" to "the Gambia" in John Samuel Budgett since the article itself is called "The Gambia"? Can you help me to understand? Thanks. Budhen (talk) 16:01, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

The article begins with a capital letter "The" because all titles do, it should not be capitalized within a sentence.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:10, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. The Gambia, like The Hague, is a proper noun, including the The. If you're not going to capitalize the The then you shouldn't use it at all (just plain Gambia is an acceptable, though no longer official, name for the country). --Trovatore (talk) 21:19, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Then you should request that those dozens of articles be moved back. Sources do not appear to be on your side, however. — kwami (talk) 21:28, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

That's not my preference. I think we should capitalize the The. --Trovatore (talk) 21:29, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

That's what I just suggested. It would be odd to have it l.c. in the title and cap'd in the text. — kwami (talk) 21:32, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Their government website [14] does seem to suggest that they prefer "The Gambia".  — Amakuru (talk) 11:54, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

They're inconsistent. It's obviously just a style issue to them. — kwami (talk) 12:00, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

On this point Kwami continues to demand that everything at the Wikipedia must conform to his personal belief or preference despite the preference of the people of The Gambia.

Although there is some inconsistency even in the official materials of The Republic of The Gambia, an uppercase T in The Gambia nonetheless appears to be the predominant usage in their work.

The slight inconsistency seems to result at least in part from the inaccuracies introduced by the IT functionaries, who generally are notorious for their careless inattention to the details in the editorial content.

Kwami and his bot have uprooted and changed at the Wikipedia every instance of the uppercase T in The Gambia to the lowercase, and now he points to his own changes as the "proof" of his position!

How's that for academic disingenuity or intellectual dishonesty?

Best wishes to all,

Doc.

DocRushing (talk) 18:32, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

*Sigh* Again, if you wish to move those dozens of articles (I count 89) back to "The", make a move request. The move to "the" was done back in 2010 with no input from me; recently I've just regularized our usage. Unless, of course, the people who did the moves back then were all my sock-puppets. Maybe you should run a sock check? — kwami (talk) 21:22, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Your repeated violations of WP:Prune and WP:TPO

Your wholesale deletion (twice) of user contributions to the Swahili language discussion page is in clear violation of both WP:Prune and WP:TPO, especially considering that an editor has objected to them. You should revert yourself immediately. The deletions are here and here. The editor's objection is here. AfricaTanz (talk) 10:24, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Those are not contributions. Talk pages are for discussions on improving the article, not for your personal collection of web links. You have your own pages for stuff like that, and if there's something you're working on, you have your own sandbox. Not in public, please. — kwami (talk) 10:27, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Your insinuation that the editor in question is me is wrong. I am a neutral third party who objects to your repeated reversions of that editor's talk page post in flagrant disregard of Wikipedia practices and procedures. You should revert yourself immediately, per the links I have already cited, lest this problem be escalated. AfricaTanz (talk) 19:07, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you are not familiar with the colloquial "general you." That is what Kwami was using when he said "your personal collection of web links."

I stand behind Kwami's choice. The talk page is not the place for an indiscriminate collection of weblinks. It's tantamount to spamming. WP:TPO does say that gibberish can be removed. I'd suggest a more elaborate edit summary or post at the user's talk page, since they're fairly new. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 20:32, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

e.g. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 20:52, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that this former administrator, who lost the bits at Arbcom, can speak for himself or herself about what was meant by "you". A failure to self-revert will lead to escalation is all I'll say. AfricaTanz (talk) 21:16, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, a tangential dig will really get people on your side. I guess you're out of honey. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 21:27, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't have a "side", "honey". This is soley about what's allowed on Wikipedia. AfricaTanz (talk) 22:01, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Might be best for you to just be quiet, and drop this matter. You don't sound like an editor, just a problem-creator.HammerFilmFan (talk) 13:49, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Saying you don't have a side doesn't make any sense. You have a position that Kwami's behavior is not appropriate. He and I disagree with your position, we thus have different sides on the matter.

I've already invited the other editor to either contextualize their list of links or put them somewhere else, so the ball is now in their court. Sticking around here with unctuousness and threats of "escalation" is a waste of everybody's time. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 22:13, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

interesting note

http://www.wral.com/polish-is-2nd-most-spoken-language-in-england/12041561/ HammerFilmFan (talk) 13:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Somehow I thought Britain was a bit more diverse than that already. I guess w the Asian population divided by language, it makes sense.

Ah, poor Welsh. — kwami (talk) 19:55, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Notice of Edit warring noticeboard discussion

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you.--Bbb23 (talk) 09:49, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Nomination of Devanagari ka for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Devanagari ka is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Devanagari ka until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. GSMR (talk) 17:55, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Foo ()

Malcolmxl5 (talk · contribs) has deleted redirects which you created at Bhaca dialect and IsiBhaca. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 20:42, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that! — kwami (talk) 21:01, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Base map

What base map did you create File:World marriage-equality laws.svg from? There are some odd territory issues I want to look at. Thanks, CMD (talk) 12:38, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

From the old map. Yeah, if you could verify the islands on both, that would be helpful. — kwami (talk) 13:03, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

The old map seems far more up to date. Islands seem to have disappeared in the creation of the new one, and some islands that are there are not the ones in the original, as their ids have gone a bit funny. I don't see how that could've happened, as we're not even talking about new areas in many cases. I'm thinking it may be easiest to recreate World marriage-equality laws from the old map again. What both could use that they currently lack is separate objects for England+Wales and Scotland, in the same way as some American, Brazilian, and Mexican states have their own objects. Are you able to do that? (I could do it, but only crudely by eyeballing a map and manually adjusting the object shapes.) CMD (talk) 20:08, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd say just copy over any missing islands. I may have thinned out the Antilles a bit. I didn't know they came with IDs. UK: I'd have to eyeball it too, since any map with them would likely be a different projection. — kwami (talk) 21:04, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

As much as I sympathise with thinning out the Antilles, as we're showing the number of places of something, the individual circles do help with numbers, if not specific countries. I'll give separating the legal areas of the UK a go then, if that makes sense to you. CMD (talk) 02:26, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I thinned them out because I couldn't identify them. I placed new dots based on a labeled map.

Yes, separating the UK may be a good idea, unless the leg all comes through at once. — kwami (talk) 02:28, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Lawu

http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/2012-067_lwu.pdf

Well, no, it's a completely new language that was discovered recently. There's Lavu language (see also Lisoish languages), but that one has over 10,000 speakers. Lawu, as described by Cathryn Yang, has only 50 speakers.

Great find. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:20, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, Yang mentioned in the ISO code change request that it's a Central Loloish ( = Lisoish) language. We can go ahead and create a stub anyways. — Stevey7788 (talk) 21:31, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	For your linguistic contributions. We will carry on this professional discussion later because I will be off now. Regards Maria0333 (talk) 07:59, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good. We really do need RS's, though. Hopefully the new research will clarify things. — kwami (talk) 22:09, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Mezzogiorno

Hi Kwami-- I was looking at Mezzogiorno and was very surprised by both the pronunciation and the IPA given - and then found that you had corrected it a year ago on 26/1/12, changing "med͡zːo'd͡ʒɔːrno" to "meddzoˈdʒɔːrno". I don't speak Italian, and don't know IPA. But I've always heard, and said, "mĕt'sōjôr`nō" (from Columbia Encyclopedia), with the "zz" pronounced as it would be in German, as "ts", not "dz". Or perhaps the "dz" sound is Southern Italian? Milkunderwood (talk) 05:27, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, never mind. I've finally thought to look at Mezzo: "It is pronounced /ˈmɛtso/ in English, but /ˈmɛddzo/ in Italian." Milkunderwood (talk) 05:54, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I figured it might be s.t. like that. People forget the Italian script is defective. — kwami (talk) 06:03, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't really buy the geminated d's (especially the one in the giorno part), unless it's specifically a Southern Italy thing, which I wouldn't know about. By the way, I raised a similar point at Venice, which claimed (implausibly to me) that the t sound in Venezia is geminated. --Trovatore (talk) 06:08, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It's spelled geminated, so why wouldn't it be pronounced that way? I don't know about Venezia. — kwami (talk) 06:13, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I've been out of the country for a long time, but I just don't hear it that way. I think it's the same z sound as in orzo, which I would never have thought of as geminated. Let's see, what words are there with a geminated d? Not too many that I can think of — Buddha probably, but that's not a native word, and addio and addirittura. I don't know, to me it's just not intuitive to report it as geminated. --Trovatore (talk) 06:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

You could be right. There are Italian pronunciation dictionaries we could check, but that might be different from what people actually say. — kwami (talk) 06:24, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

What about the "e" shown in "med", as opposed to "mɛd"? Milkunderwood (talk) 06:37, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Could be. I didn't know enough to fix the pronunciation, only the transcription. — kwami (talk) 06:45, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah - that makes sense. Maybe Trovatore will come back and see this. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:52, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Il Nuovo DOP has an open e – at least, that's what I assume ⟨ę⟩ is, and what I hear.[15] I'll correct the article. — kwami (talk) 07:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Consonants are geminate in both mezzogiorno and Venezia according to the dict. — kwami (talk) 07:11, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, check out garzantilinguistica.it (requires free registration). It doesn't have IPA, but it gives veneziano as [ve-ne-zià-no]. To see how it treats gemination, note that it gives addio as [ad-dì-o]. --Trovatore (talk) 08:04, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I had always just assumed that Italian sounds as it's spelled. Milkunderwood (talk) 07:29, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, a lot of people do. Excepting foreign words, which of course might be odd, Italian lacks letters for /dz, ɛ, ɔ/, and so doubles up with /ts, e, o/. — kwami (talk) 07:34, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

I would be a little cautious about identifying "open e" with [ɛ]. It's true that it's a decent phonetic rendering, but in many parts of the country there's no real phonemic distinction. A minimal pair is pèsca ("peach") vs pésca ("fishing"), but in most of Italy (maybe everywhere but Tuscany) people will be hard-pressed to tell you which is which. --Trovatore (talk) 08:38, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

They distinguish them in Sicily, too. But we transcribe standard Italian unless we note otherwise, so we make the distinction. — kwami (talk) 08:41, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, but I'm not sure that [ɛ] is necessarily a good representation for everyone who does make the distinction. --Trovatore (talk) 21:29, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, the place to take that up would be Help:IPA for Italian. — kwami (talk) 21:33, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Local copy

Hi! I was wondering why you would want local copies of those images to be kept here. Couldn't think of any reason. Can you please explain? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 07:03, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, so that in a year or two from now, when they're deleted from Commons, we won't need to resurrect them. — kwami (talk) 07:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Why would they be deleted from Commons? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 07:06, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Because it's Commons. Sooner or later someone may think of some reason why they need to be deleted. Safer to keep them local. — kwami (talk) 07:09, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

That same reason of deletion would apply here as well. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 07:16, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure, the same reasons apply, but reason itself is not such a problem here on WP. Commons is a real pain in the ass. It can take weeks to jump through all the hoops. That's why I never upload anything there. — kwami (talk) 07:19, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Not a good reason at all! So should we keep duplicates of all files on all Wikipedias? What's the purpose of Commons then? §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 07:25, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'd keep local duplicates of everything apart from alterations of basic Commons maps, where there is no question that the image is free. Let's suppose I take a useful photo, upload it to Commons as a free release, and embed it in several articles where it is needed. I leave WP. Then someone challenges the photo, because there's no proof that I took it and therefore had the right to release it. Since I'm no longer here to fill out the paperwork, the photo is deleted, and those articles suffer. If I'm still here, I could at least upload a copy locally, and screw Commons, but if I'm not, WP suffers. — kwami (talk) 07:31, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Still not buying it. I will put those images for deletion and then you may sell your ideas to admins. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 08:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you willing to keep the articles that use them on your watchlist, and recover them when they get deleted? — kwami (talk) 20:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

What's that name?

I saw that you were recently seen around the Hungarian language page, and that someone here had positive things to say about you linguistically.  :-) So I ask...

I was reading in article Uralic languages and came across a mention of a person, "Gy. Laszlo". I thought "Gregory", maybe "Guy"? Finally I looked around on Google and looked at some likely hits in Google books. From side-by-side mentions of both "Gy. Laszlo" and "Gyula Laszlo" I have to think "Gy." must be "Gyula". Hye, the article Gyula Laszlo even mentions Hungarian.

Can you think who to ask about this? It would be good to add this to Gyula (name) and of course fix Uralic languages to say "Gyula Laszlo". Oh, and add to Gy! Maybe even a mention at Gyula Laszlo?

Who do you go to when things bother you?   :-)   Shenme (talk) 04:45, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

"Gy" is a letter of the Hungarian alphabet, so the initials for "Laszlo Gyula" are "L. Gy." Ref #7 at Hungarian language gives a quote by Laszlo Gyula that might be from the same book.

As for who I go to, usually someone who's had something intelligent to say in a related article. — kwami (talk) 05:05, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Putoh

Hi Kwami,

I'm not well verse in Linguistics and not sure what defines a language vs a dialect, nevertheless, will give you my opinion based on my findings. Putuk, according to Ethnologue, is an alternate name of Putoh. In Kalimantan, Putuk and Lundayeh is used interchangeably. In Brunei and Sarawak, Lun Bawang and Lundayeh are similar enough to be considered as dialect of each other. By extension, Putuk and Lun Bawang are of the same stock, or the least is a dialect of each other.

Having said that, I'd rather you refer to a linguistics study to ascertain that, instead of taking my word for it since I'm not a professional lunguist :) --Danazach (talk) 04:50, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry can't be of much help. I can confirm on the similarity between Lun Bawang and Lundayeh (since I'm of Lun Bawang descent living in a majority Lundayeh community), but can't say the same about Putoh/Putok/Putuk. --Danazach (talk) 05:38, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Words "grammarian" and "grammatician"

At this moment, Category:Grammarians of English contains the article "Norman Lewis (grammatician)". Is there a reason to distinguish "grammarian" from "grammatician" on Wikipedia? For convenience, here are links to definitions.

• wikt:grammarian
• wikt:grammatician
• http://www.onelook.com/?w=grammarian&ls=a
• http://www.onelook.com/?w=grammatician&ls=a

—Wavelength (talk) 00:54, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

"Grammatician" isn't even listed in the OED (at least not in the 2nd edition), so I'd say go with "grammarian". — kwami (talk) 01:05, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I have moved the article to "Norman Lewis (grammarian)". (I am curious about Wiktionary's source[s].)

—Wavelength (talk) 03:46, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

It sounds right, somehow. Analogy w mathematician? — kwami (talk) 03:51, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

A non-Wiktionarian may have coined the word without being aware that the other word already existed.

—Wavelength (talk) 04:12, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

So you're a Wikipedarian. (Looks like the def would imply a non-admin.) — kwami (talk) 04:30, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

File:Paman languages.png listed for deletion

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Paman languages.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion 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. Thank you. §§Dharmadhyaksha§§ {T/C} 05:07, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Thalochi

Thanks for your great contributions to Wikipedia Language Articles. You being a true professional referring Mascica. But there is an aspect we should give due consideration is what the locals feel about their dialect because the are better Judge of how much their dialect approximates with any Language. So please check various district local web sites and give them as a reference on those articles. That will be a graet help. Please tell me your email because I will send you some important Microsoft excel data. sheets if u like. Maria0333 (talk) 07:06, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure.

How locals feel about their language is only relevant to sociolinguistics. I had a friend, a native speaker of English, who insisted that English was a Romance language, and that I was ridiculous for thinking it was Germanic. Just because someone speaks a language doesn't mean they know anything about its classification.

I am concerned about Jangvi, as Masica doesn't go into detail. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

You are talking about one individual (Your Friend) but I am talking about Million of locals. Can we ignor them. You are reverting and trying to engage me an edit war but I will not revert them now. But I expect that you will realize and will do some research on Local web sites. Linguistic books present new theory after every few years but we need to check ground realities through local resources. You are a professional so I respect you.Maria0333 (talk) 07:23, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Local opinion is only a source for local opinion. For a linguistic claim we need a linguistic source. That's just how an encyclopedia works. People can be extraordinarily ignorant about their language, and millions of people just means millions who can be ignorant. Similarly, we wouldn't use local opinion for the nutritional value of the food they eat, nor about the mineral composition of the soil they till: what they believe may be very different from what is demonstrable. (In the US, for a long time people thought the soil in the Midwest was poor, when it's actually quite rich.) The basics our our sourcing policy is at WP:RS.

Also, what you're calling "edit warring" is me reverting you when you say the same thing twice, or moving minor detail out of the first sentence. — kwami (talk) 07:37, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with basics of sourcing policy at WP:RS thats why i am asking you to please help these articles by adding local reliable sources. People could be confused about Food/ Soil contents but when a local can visit Lahore or Multan he can easily assess about the mutual intangibility of his dialect with language spoken in those cities because it is not a rocket science. Hope you will buy my point. Maria0333 (talk) 07:49, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Maria, I hope you understand that "local" and "reliable source" are actually contradictory for almost any linguistic topid under WP:RS guidelines. To take your example at face value, I could drive to the airport, catch a couple planes, and end up in Scotland tomorrow, where I can find individuals who are completely incomprehensible to me, even though they are speaking the English language. In that case, my subjective assessment that the Scotsman is speaking another language is completely erroneous, we just speak such vastly divergent dialects that we can't understand each other, even though there are many dialects with which both of us would be able to communicate with absolutely no reduced comprehension. Locals are, in fact, incredibly stupid about their language, largely because a person's experience of their language is so prejudiced towards their local dialect. An example of the last would be for me, as a speaker of Pacific Northwest English, I would say that /t/ is not allowed in the coda, even though this is demonstrably false in almost every other English dialect. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 08:50, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually fault lies with us (linguistics) because we ignore the difference of definition of Language and definition of a dialect...Language means a totally incomprehensible for example English and Urdu. Although Urdu is actually a mix of many languages including English and lexical similarity is nearly 25% but it is of no use because there is no mutual intelligibility that why URDU is a different language from English. But when Geirision or Masica try to classify Chateesgarhi as a separate language then local people like us use to laugh because these are 80% comprehensible to us (Urdu/Hindi Speakers) and in fact a dialect with around 65% lexical similarity. Similarly Northern most Punjabi dialect Dogri is mutually intangible and comprehensible with southern most Derawali dialect of Punjabi. But out of blue moon in 1920 here comes Sir Geirison in India Pakistan and conduct a survey and divide Hindi/Urdu in to ten languages and Punjabi in to 2 languages one Eastern Punjabi other western Punjabi for which he just for seek of his self connivance uses the Punjabi word 'LAHNDA' which means Western. At the sudden LAHNDA emerges as a Language ignoring the fact that people of eastern and western dialects have no problem of calling them selves Punjabi and can easily communicate with each other. They failed to convince others what they are doing out of 200 words comparisons that's why every other person is not accepting these fake classifications. Examples Dhani, Pothohari, Shahpuri, Jhangvi, Jaangli, Chenavari, Thalochi People never accept these research and claim themselves as punjabi. Few exceptions are Southern dialects Multani Dera wali and Riasti (Bahawalpuri) who in 1964 after reading these researches under an political agenda (The wish to DEGRADE lahore The Capital Of Punjab against MULTAN because its older city then Lahore). So agenda was a separate identity creation with the name of Saraiki (Suddenly emerged in 1964) and to create a separate province (which could not be made till date). So Saraiki is claimed as a separate language not on the basis of Mutual intangibility but a matter of SOCIO POLITICO GAME. Similarly Hindko is extremly close to Punjabi of Lahore. But again the socio political game (Hindko is spoken in a Punjab's rival province KPK where Pashto speakers are in majority who call hindko as Punjabi and ask them to leave KPK, that's why Hindko people Claim and say NO NO we are not Punjabi we speak a separate language and they put forward Geirison research forward. So Hinko and Saraiki people today agree with these research but all other Punjabi Urdu/Hindi dialect people do not accept fake classifications. I call it fake because in Gerison research he says LAHNDA as separate language on the basis of 3 grounds. Number 1. Phonology. Punjabi 'B' 'D' with breath going out LAHNDA 'B' and 'D' breath going in. 'Bh', 'Gh' (Lahnda) = 'P', 'K' (Punjabi). QUESTION ARISES ARE THESE MAJOR DIFFERENCES? Number 2. Future and Past Tense. In Punjabi all the structure of Future is same as LAHNDA, only difference is the 'GA' in the end is replaced by 'S' in the middle. example KHA AN GAA= KHA S AN. In the past tense 'S' in the start is replaced by 'H' in the end example Mea Saan= Mea Haan. QUESTION AGAIN ARISES ARE THESE MAJOR DIFFRENCES? Number three: 5% Verbs/vocabulary minor borrowings from neighboring languages (Punjabi from Urdu and Lahanda from Sindhi) which is a natural practice by every language different dialects i.e. . Examples To Go= Vnj in sindhi and lahnda= Ja in Urdu and Punjabi. So we (Linguists) fail because we ignore the basic concepts of what is a language and what is a dialect. we are more calculators rather then real world ground reality analyzers. Thats why Govt of india recently rejected gierison work as not reliable one and has announced a fresh Language Research. U can search it on internet for ready reference. HOPE 2 CONVINCE YOU BECAUSE I HAVE SOUND GROUNDS FOR ALL THIS Maria0333 (talk) 17:56, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The lang/dialect question is a problem all over the world, not just in India. When that research is out, we can cite it as well.

BTW, Ethnologue divides up Indian dialects into an ever larger number of languages. Where I have linguistic sources that merge them, I've been doing that, which is why we sometimes get a dozen ISO codes for a single language. On the other hand, in many cases we have a single ISO code for a dozen languages which people insist are the same, despite not being able to understand one another. It' very difficult to apply the same criterion to all the languages of the world, because no one source evaluates them all.

Masica notes that no-one has ever enumerated Indian languages on the basis on mutual intelligibility. People have tried, but there are three problems: There are few dividing lines in a dialect continuum like Indic (but I doubt most people would accept that Sindhi and Bengali are the same language); there is a lot of unidirectional intelligibility; and there are a lot of cases where people insist they can understand each other, but that's only because of passive bilingualism. These problems have defeated past attempts at determining languages based on true mutual intelligibility. — kwami (talk) 21:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

You are very right. I am a young professor in NUML (National University of Modern Languages). I dont say any one wrong or correct but in my humble opinion whenever a situation like Indo Pak arises we should follow a two step approach. Step 1. Determine lexical similarity of Morphological, and syntactical similar dialects on the basis of larger vocabulary (800-1000 Words ) comparison and if it is above 65% then Step 2. Conduct a survey of nearly 300-500 less mobile rural people with a definite question CAN YOU COMMUNICATE WITH LAHORIS (FOR EXAMPLE) IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE? If Survey result is more then 50 % as YES then those dialects are not separate languages. And you trust me Hindko and Punjabi are nearly 95% same because when i see a hindko drama on TV I try to locate the differences and I end up with nearly nothing. People of Hindko area watch APNA a punjabi channel as their first choice over other channels. For Saraiki its also nearly 90% to Punjabi. I am telling u because I am a local and In my opinion being a linguist and local I am the best person to Judge these things which a foreign Linguist or A local Lay man can not Judge. Potowari-Pahari is how ever is the most divergent Punjabi dialect as compare to two above because it involves Dardic (Kashmiri Vocabulary injections but still it is easily mutually intangible with Majhi. Interestingly foreign Linguistics classify URDU and HINDI as different languages on the basis that there writing system is different and Hindi has SANSKRIT VOCABULARY and URDU has PERSIAN and ARABIC vocabulary. But THEY ignore the same rule for BENGALI (INDIA vs BANGLA DESH) and Punjabi (INDIA vs PAKISTAN). For Dhani Shahpuri,Jandali,Riasti Jaangli, Jhangvi, Thalochi very very important aspect which is being ignored. Gerison came before IRRIGATION SYSTEM was set so the area was known as Jungle baar or Thal/Choolistan desert with sparse population but in 1930's land was converted to cultivated area by Majhi settlers so demography changed so the dialects got to a closer and adjusted to a hybrid form. 1947 Post partition of indo Pak. Hindu and Sikh locals (Jhangvi/Jaangli/Thalochi...) shifted to India and they were replaced by Muslim Standard Punjabi settlers so demography again changed and further hybridization took place. Thats why these dialect people are now very close to Majhi and consider them self as Punjabi. Even today the land in Thal and Choolistan deserts are being allotted to Majhi farmers. So slowly the things are even further closing down. Another fact is that it is a modern era of mass transportation so as the mobility between LAHORE the capital and Locals is increasing the language through out Pakistani Punjab is in a process of uniformity. Last but not the least Punjabi is derived from Name Punjab. The name "Punjab" means "five waters" in Persian (punjab) and refers to Indus River and its tributaries. So Had Only Majhi been the Punjabi then shouldnt it be called DOabi because Majhi is restricted to 2 rivers. Today the ground reality is that Punjabi has two Major groups; 1. Eastern Punjabi dialects (Malwi, Powadi , Doabi etc) spoken in India with different culture, religion, writing system and Sansikrat and Hindi vocablary. 2. Western HYBRIDIZED Punjabi which comprise of modern Majhi (which has injections of old LAHNDA dialects) and Modern Hybrid Lahnda dialects (Potowari, Dhani, Shahpuri, Multani, Riasti, Derawali, Jhangvi, Jaangli etc) spoken in old Lahnda areas. All these dialects are spoken in Pakistani Punjab area and have common culture, religion, writing system and Persian and Arabic vocabulary. Today all Pakistani Punjab is as close as never in terms of mutual understandably. A very fresh survey will show this fact i am dead sure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maria0333 (talk • contribs) 17:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that the official language of India is Urdu. They just don't like calling it that. And we do have a single article on Hindustani language. The problem with accepting the opinions of local editors, however, is that tomorrow we may get someone who insists just the opposite. It would be great if you could locate some support for this, and not just for Punjabi lects, but for Bhili, Sindhi, Gujarati, Hindi, Bihari, Oriya, Bangla-Assamese, etc. I'd have no objection to merging their dialects into the main articles, but I'd want to be sure we don't just end up splitting them up again in a year.

You speak of mutual intelligibility of Siraiki and Majhi, but wouldn't the same be true of Siraiki and Sindhi? Of Sindhi and Gujarati? There are intermediate dialects between all the major languages, so yes, you can take a Panjabi-centric view, but if you took a Sindhi-centered view you'd end up with different "languages", with no good way to decide between the two results. — kwami (talk) 20:47, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing such useful thoughts. Actually I can speak almost all Pakistani Major Languages i,e, Urdu, Punjabi (All dialects including So called languages Hindko Saraiki and Pothohari), Sindhi, Pashto (North and south dialects), Brahvi (A Dravidian language spoken in Baluchistan), Little bit Balochi and Persion. I am good in English and in child hood i have hobby of learning languages so i learnt little bit Arabic, French, German and few others . I have a collection of more then 50 different language's learning books in my library. Because I know Sindhi very well so let me tell u that Saraiki is actually the word of sindhi which means Head side dialect. Throughout history the northern 10 District of Sindh Province were called Saraiki. which was in fact Sindhi Saraiki. THe punjab's saraiki emerged in 1964. Punjab's Saraiki is very different from Sindhi. Although it have some vocabulary sharing with sindhi. If you see the map u will be clear why i am saying this because First major Sindhi settlement in North is Ghotki on east side of indus river and Last major settlement of Riasti Saraiki/punjabi had been Rahim yaar khan (Before new settlement of Majhi Punjabi people in saqidabad near Sindh border). The distance between Ghotki and Rahim yar khan is 120 KM with very less population because of Desert around. So historically the space between Riasti and Sindhi Saraiki never allowed a common transitional dialect. But on west side of River Indus Dera wali of Rajan pur is bit more closer to sindhi saraiki. Dera wali is spoken in three districts (Rajan pur,D G Khan and Muzzafargarh) NOTE this division is the only division where Majhi settlers (15%) are least in population and ethnically Balouch tribes are living. So Derawali is not hybridized much. Thalochi and Riasti are so much hybridized with Majhi due to new settlements and cultivation of Thal and Choolistan that Riasti and Thalochi people has rejected to be part of Proposed new Saraiki Province. Multani the standard dialect of Saraiki is in fact closest by distance and in terms of closeness to majhi and Multan division has in fact Majhi majority as per 1998 Census. Ratio between Punjabi,Saraiki and Haryanvi in Multan division is 51:36:13 Respectively. So very obviously hybridization taking effect on multani. You are right Hindustani is Urdu but typical Indian ego. U marked Jhangvi/Jaangli/Chenavari/Rachnavi as unclassified dialect but actually it is the source of punjabi heritage for example it is credited with the creation of the famous epic Punjabi romance stories of Heer Ranjha and Mirza Sahiba. As i told u about the continuous hybridization These dialects in 2013 are very much close to Majhi as compare to 1920's and these are going to get more closer because of the fact that most of people of these dialect work in factories of Lahore and Faisalabad. Inter provincial transfers has also changed the demography that's why Sahiwal Okara and Pak Pattan district people opted out of Multan Division in to a new Division. when ever saraiki nationalist try to claim the areas above multan as saraikistan they are out rightly rejected by Khanewal Vehari Jhang Toba Tek singh Chaniot Sahiwal Okara Pakpattan Sargodha Khaushab Chakwal and Mianwali's people. Their language was niether part of Southren Lahnda (Saraiki) but the standard Lahnda and today's Hybridized forms of Standard Lahnda (Jhangvi/Jaangli/Chenavari/Rachnavi/Shahpuri) are even more divergent from so called Saraiki Language. You know when ever Majhi vocabulary is different from Lahnda dialects. it is basically due to urdu borrowings. Today Urdu is effecting all Pakistani local Languages so that process is also converting Lahnda dialects vocabulary in to Urdu so ultimately more closer to Majhi. IN MY OPINION clear cut indo aryan languages are Bangali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujrati, Marhati,Hindi/Urdu, Oriya, Nepali, Kashmiri and Assamees. Other minors and dialects claimed as languages are neither recognized officially in india nor in Pakistan.Maria0333 (talk) 18:58, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

As a linguist, I could care less what's official. That's simply political fashion. Officially, Urdu and Manak Hindi are different languages. What I'd be interested in is which of these minor unofficial varieties are unintelligible to others. You could have a village of 100 people who insist their variety is a mere dialect of something else, but if you're a speaker of that something and move to that village and after a couple weeks of osmosis still can't understand it, then it's a different language no matter what people say. There's also the matter of history: two languages may have separated long ago, but due to mutual influence are now seen as being quite similar. Yet to the historical linguist their differences may be substantial. Anyway, it would be nice to get some better research on this. Ethnologue tends to go overboard, but relying on official status is also inadequate. — kwami (talk) 21:55, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

I actually said that in my opinion after comparing and listening to various indo aryan dialects i can easily judge that Actual Language Level could be given to above mentioned list.Dravidian and others not included by me because i am not in a position to compare and understand them. Bhilli however could also be in this list but not bahari. As far as Punjabi and relevant dialect articles are concerned I am very clear about it and it should be grouped as I am making edits on relevant pages. Please Check them and we can discuss and readjust them.Maria0333 (talk) 03:32, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with that, since you appear to be relying on objective criteria. However, there's a potential problem: We have lots of language activists at the Indo-Pakistani articles, so how do we defend your changes when they start edit warring with you, insisting that Siraiki (or whatever) is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LANGUAGE ITS NOT RELATED TO PANJABI AT ALL STOP CULTURAL GENOCIDE OF THE SIRAIKI PEOPLE!!!!!!!!! Okay, maybe a milder version of that that isn't so obviously whacko. How do we justify treating Siraiki as a dialect of Panjabi, to editors or admins who know nothing of the topic, when people insist that it's a separate language, and use references to Ethnologue or Masica to support their argument? — kwami (talk) 03:40, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for treating me objective. I actually understand the Nationalist and Socio political editors so i will do it in a way in which It will present two way picture for example Saraiki is a language as per this this and this however it is also considered as Punjabi dialect as per this this and this. So that all the contrasting views could be covered effectively. Please give me 24 hours so that i can work out appropriate and objective edits. Then you review them because your professional guidance is very important for me. I believe in true professionalism which I could only achieve with a stronger coordination with professionals like you. Maria0333 (talk) 04:14, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I don't know the languages, and I don't know the lit, so I'll trust your judgement. I've been trying to get at least schematic coverage of all the world's languages on WP, but had kept away from Indic because there were such obvious problems. Finally this past week I came back; Lahnda was the last real mess within Indic to clean up since I tackled Bhili a couple months ago. (Now, AFAICT, the only family that still needs an overhaul is Austronesian.) But I'm operating largely out of ignorance (I don't know much about Indo-European), so your knowledge is invaluable. I'll try to leave the articles alone unless you need my input on something. — kwami (talk) 04:25, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for trusting my local knowledge. Unfortunately I was suffering with fever for one and half day so I was not able to make valuable editing to the related articles, but i have tried a bit. Hope to make more useful inputs. Your efforts for world languages are incredible and your critical reviews are very important and valuable for me. BEST REGARDS Maria0333 (talk) 18:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Pro-Wailing Wall Committee

This is a proper name and should appear in its original spelling. We can't change it just because we think it is wrong. The guidance of the MOS is for ordinary English phrases, not proper names. Zero^talk 13:41, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

That is the original spelling. We don't need to retain the original styling. Different accounts style it differently, according to their own house styles. "You Gotta Have Balls" uses a dash, for example. — kwami (talk) 23:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what organization "You Gotta Have Balls" is referring to, but it isn't the organization our article is about, nor is it a reliable source (see historical errors on the same page). I have many highly-reliable sources that use a hyphen. Zero^talk 10:04, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

How is that relevant? I bet nearly all of your sources use a serif font. Does that mean that non-serif is wrong because it's not the "original spelling"? Should we override user preferences and force the article to display in a serif font, with the argument that "we can't change the name just because"? — kwami (talk) 10:08, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Your analogy doesn't work. The claimed rationale for the dash is semantic, not stylistic. Zero^talk 13:04, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

And if you pronounced it with a hyphen, as the (pro-wailing) wall committee, people would think you're being a smart-ass. Are you really going to tell me it's OR to claim that the name contains the phrase "Wailing Wall"? A little common sense, please. — kwami (talk) 13:08, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

It isn't our business to change proper names if we think they are wrong. Of course it meant "pro-(Wailing Wall)" and not "(pro-Wailing) Wall", but the practice of using a dash instead of a hyphen to distinguish those cases is an Americanism. Contemporary sources, like the Royal Commission that reported on it extensively, used a hyphen. So did contemporary British newspapers (remember this was a British Mandate). I checked scans of quite a few. Zero^talk 14:14, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

You don't seem to understand what a "name" is. We're not changing the name. It's also not an americanism, and even if it were, it'd be one we've chosen for wikipedia. Unless I'm missing something about the styling of proper names, but we fit book titles and other things to the MOS. — kwami (talk) 15:09, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Recent major revisions of article content

Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian are not merely characterized as standard languages of the 21st century, but also represent historical literary entities which at large developed independently and, moreover, predate the formation of 'Serbo-Croatian'. Appropriating 'Bosnian', 'Croatian', and 'Serbian' linguistic history to a classification coined only in the 19th century and officially embraced in the 20th century, is quite frankly out of order, as is this PoV edit [16] which clearly downplays the historical prevalence of the name 'Bosnian'. Praxis Icosahedron (talk) 15:37, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Removing more than 5000 characters (!!!) from a seemingly stable article on a rather controversial subject, and without providing any proper motivation nor reason is, well what should I say, rich [17]. I have restored certain parts (19th century and on which deal with the status of the Bosnian language) and left out the "early development" you transferred to Serbo-Croatian. Though, should you wish to again invoke "historical names" of Serbo-Croatian, make sure to include Bosnian. Moreover, any historical usage of "Serbian", "Croatian" and "Bosnian" would predate "Serbo-Croatian" only domestically, as "Serbo-Croatian" would definitely enter English in parallel with (and not supposedly after) Serbian, Croatian, or Bosnian (the OED for example records the first reference to "Serbian language" in 1867). As such, do you really think Bosniaks/Bosnians (whatever) referred to their language as "Serbian", "Croatian" or "Illyrian" during the 400 years or so of the Sanjak of Bosnia and the Eyalet of Bosnia? Not to mention that a citation describing this is already included into the article: Prior to the 19th century, they were collectively called "Illyric", "Slavic", "Slavonian", "Bosnian", "Dalmatian", "Serbian" or "Croatian". Out of these, should we then, let's say, cherry-pick Serbian, Croatian and Illyrian? Yes that sounds like a splendid idea. Praxis Icosahedron (talk) 17:52, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

If we need to add names, then add the names rather than complaining about them. We've talked about this on the talk page, and no-one has demonstrated that they were distinct languages until recently. If they were a single language, then that part of the history belongs in the article on the single language. Anything else would distort history. That, at least, has been the conclusion on the talk page. — kwami (talk) 21:15, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Acknowledged, I only opt for the final result to be a neutral and objective piece of written material, which I believe will require a proper amount of attention reserved for the description of historical regionalisms (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, etc.) within the article on S-C. Currently, the merge is a mess without any convenient way of telling which unit of literary heritage belongs to what medieval state. I guess what I'm hinting at is the use of a certain number of subsections dealing with the historical heritage of S-C in the medieval Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian states separately (after all these were distinct geopolitical entities very early on; distinctions which, at least indirectly, led to the formation of contemporary separate standards for what is one and the same language). In light of that, I do agree it is best to focus the individual articles on the standardization processes, although, also providing - at least briefly - a historic background of Serbo-Croatian in respective region during the middle ages as this is relevant for obtaining a deeper insight into why separate standards are so fiercely pushed today. It would be utterly complacent to maintain that such attitudes are exclusively the result of recent socio-political events. I do also receive the impression that any criticism of "Serbo-Croatian" as a term is strictly suppressed by the editorship; rather more the criticism of S-C itself is criticized in the article by referring to it as "prejudice". However, in reality, it is obvious why (perhaps above all) Bosniaks/Bosnians would find this term insufficient in the context; an objection I would hardly consider "prejudiced" but rather justified, albeit somewhat self-inflicted given the Bosniaks own linguistic negligence in the 19th century. Praxis Icosahedron (talk) 22:58, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds entirely reasonable. I realize that the article is a bit of a mess. It does need expert review; it would be wonderful if you could provide that.

As for name "prejudice", that's mostly a hardline response to those who claim that the language was invented by Tito, that Serbian and Croatian are no more related to each other than they are to Russian, and that to suggest otherwise is cultural genocide. I don't really care what we call the language, but "Serbo-Croatian" is the WP:COMMONNAME in English. I'd be just as happy to call it "Shtokavian" and to treat Chakavian and Kajkavian as separate languages, but those are extremely obscure terms in English, and would be gibberish to most of our readers. Or for that matter, I'd be happy to call the entire language "Croatian" because that's where the dialect diversity is, or "Serbian" because that's where the population is, or "Bosnian" because that's where all three standards co-exist. Any of those would be logical, but obviously impractical. Calling it Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian or Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian is tiresome, and calling it BCS or BCMS is jargony. Anyway, if we can separate what to call the language from claims that it doesn't exist, as purely a decision over nomenclature, we might have a more productive discussion. (I'm not implying anything negative about you with that comment, just observing that much of the debate has been motivated by a political POV rather than by an attempt to actually improve the article.) — kwami (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Your wierd () creations

Well done for this edit. I shall expect to see the same on any future occasions - but without creating a double redirect. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 22:55, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Re-move Morelos Nahuatl back to Tetelcingo Nahuatl

Hey, Kwami, just letting you know I moved the Tetelcingo Nahuatl page back to its own name. It (nhg) is not the same thing as Morelos Nahuatl (nhm). – User:Lavintzin

Okay. Fixed up the populations. I've been trying to get stub coverage for all the world's languages, so sometimes I consolidate to make the job easier. No problem w splitting things up later. — kwami (talk) 18:14, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

language or dialect

Hello Kwamikagami

With your great lingual knowledge, I assume you are most familiar with the old phrase "A language is a dialect with an army and navy"?

About your recent change to the Kalix language article. There is a lot to learn about stigmatized minority cultures and their struggle against opposing state officials, who claim that all similar languages are dialects of their national standard, thus denying their official status. It is usually much better to read what linguists says, than laws made by politicians.

I assume you haven't realized that your change of the article in january is a very offensive act against the local Kalix language community, who have discussed the "language or dialect" question for many years, and thus chosen the word "language". I made this wikipedia user to be able to write to you, but can you contact us on the kalix language website? We would like to know your involvement.

The spelling of Kalix / Calis / KöLis is a long story: The retroflex flap l or L or rl, the vocal a or ö, the ending s or x, the initial k or c. You can read about it in the local history books. Just as Kiruna road signs recently changed to 'Giron' when Saami language has (unwillingly) been accpeted by swedish authority, you must be aware of that spelling can be a very crucial thing for local identities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inuegouvah (talk • contribs) 07:36, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Any linguistic material you have would be of interest. I can easily believe that "northern Swedish" is a separate language. However, it would seem that Kalix is still a dialect of that language: by your own admission, it is mutually intelligible with other dialects in the area. When a bunch of varieties are all mutually intelligible, they constitute dialects of one language. Maybe we could say that Kalix is a dialect of Bothnian, and Bothnian is a separate language from Swedish? Anyway, linguistic references supporting your POV would be helpful.

As for being offended, it's not our job to make people feel good about themselves. Croats get offended that we deny that Serbian and Croatian are separate languages (except as official standards), and Hindus get offended that we deny that Hindi and Urdu are separate languages. But it's pretty clear from the literature that they are not. Show us the literature, and we'll be happy to make Kalix or Bothnian or whatever a "language".

As for spelling, we go by the common name in English, which would be "Kalix" (or maybe "Calis"?), just as it is "Swedish".

Since you're signed up, you should be able to respond here, or better yet on the Kalix page. — kwami (talk) 18:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

External links in language articles

Hi,

I've noticed you're deleting a lot of external links to Ethnologue and Linguistlist like you did here.

Can I ask you why, there is no comment in the edit summary and it looks to be useful content? Alex Sims (talk) 10:16, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

There are already links to Ethnologue in those articles, so they were redundant. Linglist is not a RS, and seldom has useful info; it's a source of last resort when Ethn. has no entry (and ideally even Ethnologue would be used primarily for ISO stuff). I deleted other sites that were off-line, had no useful content, or weren't about the language in the article. I left anything substantial, such as recordings or bibliographies. — kwami (talk) 11:06, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Anchors in section headings

I have the same concerns and problems as those raised by numerous other editors. Would it be possible to write the anchor code so that a pipelink doesn't scroll all the way down to the anchor but stops, say, two rows above? That way we could inser the anchor just past the section heading and it would still link in the desired way. Cheers,  Mr.choppers | ✎  19:26, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

That's a good idea. I assume it's possible, but I have no idea how to do it. We'd probably want two types of anchor, because sometimes an anchor is placed in running text or a link, and then you want to go to it directly. For those in the section headings, we could have a bot convert them to the new anchor. But you'll need to discuss this with the people who do the programming. — kwami (talk) 19:29, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Paman languages.png at files for deletion.

I did my best to stand up for your right to tag these files as {{Keep local}}, but I think that letting them know here why you don't want to have to deal with commons would go a way to getting them to respect the tag that was applied as instructed at WP:WHYCOMMONS. I'm a bit dismayed at how eager they are to just ignore the wishes of editors who want to keep local copies of files, so I think it would be good to get your experience and perspective. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 22:12, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Hadn't been following that. Responded there. — kwami (talk) 23:09, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

move Proto-Slavic to History of the Slavic languages?

I suggested renaming as indicated above as part of the process of splitting up Proto-Slavic into two articles, one on Proto-Slavic per se and the other on the History of the Slavic languages. The renaming is because most of the text will go into the latter article and I'd like to preserve as much history as possible. I can't do the move myself because it needs to be moved over a redirect. Aeusoes entered a move request 7 days ago into the talk page of Proto-Slavic; so far, no objections from any of the people working on the Proto-Slavic article. Can you go ahead and move this? Thx. Benwing (talk) 03:55, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Nope, not any more. That's why I've been moving to all the silly names with "()" at the end. But since you're the one to move the history article around, maybe just add a {{delete}} template to it, and give as the reason moving the article back to where you found it. Anything that doesn't involve other people usually gets done pretty fast. — kwami (talk) 04:49, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

The Gambia

Explain why you have reverted my change. They have a letter from the country's own government instructing the use and capitalization of "The". Fry1989 ^eh? 20:43, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I didn't see that, only that you said the BBC styles it that way. The letter would make a good ref if it's available. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I didn't say "the BBC says/styles...", I gave the link saying it says The is capitalized. In any case, the BBC is a reputable and reliable source. Even without the letter, is there reason to not consider the article valid? Fry1989 ^eh? 20:50, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

They also have The Thames with a capital 'The', but we don't do that either. Yes, they do have a letter from the PM from 1964. But if you look at the Gambian statehouse site linked from our country article, you'll see that even the Gambian government is inconsistent about the 'The' these days. They tend to capitalize in headers but not in running text. — kwami (talk) 20:59, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, the full phrase generally does seem to be capitalized on the govt website. But the BBC, in that very article discussing the article, does not capitalize it in the long form of "the Republic of the Gambia". I reverted myself on this and then reverted myself again. — kwami (talk) 21:06, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't care about inconsistencies, if that letter exists, it's clearly the policy of the government of that country. I'll go fishing for the letter if I have to, but I don't see why it's necessary. Are you disputing the BBC's reliability regarding the existence of that letter? Fry1989 ^eh? 21:21, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

A 1964 letter instructing people to use the article so that they don't confuse Gambia with Zambia is not the most pertinent source for us half a century later. More relevant is current govt usage, and the usage of publishers who concern themselves with such details, and there we have no agreement. The govt of the Gambia flatly contradicts the 1964 letter by not capitalizing the short form of the name, which was the only form cited from that letter. For all we know the letter reflected the opinion of the then PM, not official govt policy. Even if it was official policy, it either is no longer, or is not followed by the govt, and so has effectively lapsed. — kwami (talk) 21:06, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

That's ridiculous conjecture. That's like saying just because somebody doesn't spell a word properly (and there's a lot of people who can't spell), that lapses the official spelling of the word! I guess I will have to go fishing for that letter, because it overrides either of our opinions. If it exists, and I can get it, you're going to have to prove that it is no longer in effect. Fry1989 ^eh? 21:39, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

The proof is in the Gambian government's own usage. You're saying that the Gambian govt press office doesn't know how to spell the name of their own country? On a website where thousands of people could have pointed out the error? That the BBC doesn't know how to spell the name of a country in an article where they're discussing how to spell the name? The citation of the letter also never mentions the long form of the name, which is what you're using it for.

If you can find the letter, it would be interesting to see if they actually specify that the 'the' must be capitalized, or if they merely capitalized it because that's what people did in those days, (edit conflict) and if they specify that it is (or was) actually official (which means it's legislated somewhere), or if the PM was merely expressing his preference when queried by the UK govt. — kwami (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

The proof is in the Government's policy, not whether or not some website designer properly followed it out. There's a big difference between not spelling the name of the country right, and not properly capitalising one of the letters, however the principle of the example I gave you remains. If I receive the letter, I expect some form of proof it is no longer official policy or in effect, not the assumption that because people don't do it right, that means the policy has lapsed. I agree that the letter itself will be interesting. Fry1989 ^eh? 21:52, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Images

Can i use images instead of PUA characters in articles about lateral fricatives, affricates, and retroflex lateral flap, etc.??? ???‽‽‽!!!?‽!?‽!?‽!? 17:47, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

We could use them in addition. (In fact, we already do.) One problem is that they don't match the style or the size of the displayed font, and having some characters at 28pt and these at 12pt looks odd and is difficult to read. (That's the main reason I reverted your edit.) Also, while not universal, the PUA codes are supported by all SIL fonts, which are widely used and specified by our CSS styling for IPA. — kwami (talk) 21:28, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

If you have SIL fonts, I want know price of Doulos SIL. ???‽‽‽!!!?‽!?‽!?‽!? 13:08, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

SIL fonts are free. That's one reason they're so widely used. Gentium is nicer than Doulos, though. Download links are at Gentium. (Or here.) There's also Doulos SIL and Charis SIL if you want them. — kwami (talk) 13:30, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Checking_language_links

Hi, saw your bot request linked above. To clarify, you want a list of all links from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Languages/Primary_language_names_in_Ethnologue_16_by_ISO_code where neither the iso3 or any of the lcn parameters in the article are the same as the link label on the list page? In the case of the lcn parameters, the corresponding ldn title doesn't matter(variant spellings screw this up), yes? Also what are you referring to by circular links? User:Mutley1989

Hi Mutley,

Correct and correct. I merely wish to confirm that we have appropriate WP articles for the all the ISO codes/names. (Except of course in the case of red links.)

At [primary language names in Ethnologue 16 by ISO code], we list the official ISO names associated with the ISO codes. Very often we'll choose a different language name for the WP article, and often conflate several codes into one article (SIL is a bit over-zealous sometimes in splitting up languages sometimes), but that doesn't matter: I just want to be sure that there isn't a copy error, and that when a reader enters the ISO name in the search window, they get taken to the appropriate article. As you point out, matching names would make this task very difficult. All I'm looking for is matching the ISO codes.

By circular links, I mean cases where we have a WP article on a language family that includes links to all the languages in that family. However, sometimes some of the language links merely link back to the family article. Because those links are blue, I don't always notice them when reviewing our language coverage. I suspect that we may have a hundred or so links which really should be red, so that editors see that the articles still need to be created. This bot request should catch that. I'll either create stubs for them myself, or request that the links be deleted and list them under 'articles to be created' at Wikiproject Languages.

In other cases, we may have an article on the language, but the ISO name still links to the language family or some other inappropriate location. — kwami (talk) 02:15, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Just started running this now. How about links like this (linked from abs)?: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ambonese_Malay_language&redirect=no My script caught this becuase I didn't account for multiple language infoboxes on one page. Also some of the links go to disambiguation pages, I presume you want those included? Mutley1989 (talk) 03:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Wonderful!

That Malay page is an outlier. There won't be many like that, so it won't matter much if you return them. If it's easy for you to search multiple boxes, even better, but no biggie if you don't.

Yes, dab pages can be returned. Probably easier for the bot than following to all the destination articles. However, if the dab pages can be listed separately, that would be useful. (If that's not convenient, I can sort them myself easily enough by doing an AWB run.) — kwami (talk) 03:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Separating the disambiguation pages is trivial as the code to catch them is seperate. I'm not sure about the ones with multiple infoboxes, I'm not sure how consistent the naming and formatting is. Mutley1989 (talk) 03:55, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry about it, then. Better to be safe and for me to review them manually. — kwami (talk) 03:58, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

That script has finished, let me know if you want these formatting differently, or anything else doing with it:

Bot results

Wrong or missing ISO codes, or unusually structured pages (157 pages)

[*wrong article, no hat note. Crossed out: fixed.]

Need to fix: *amb, *bct, *cuw, *dpp, *etb, *@hoy, *ney, *nji (check if dup's dialect), *nkd (??), *nld (= Dutch; mix up Flemish w/ Vlaams/West Flemish; also pop.), *sgj (add lc2?), *uan, *@url, *vgr (mix up on parent pages too),

aha, aqm, ast (ok), atm (ok), bbk, bdj (ok), bik (rd'd), bkk, buw (ok), bxs, bya (rd'd), ckh, cma (ok), csz (ok), daf (split), dbw, def, dep, djl (split), doh (ok), duq, elu (ok), ers (ok), fil (ok), frs (ok), gac (ok), gba (no good link), gdn, ggr (retired), gla (ok), gmb, grj (ok), grn (ok), hei (ok), hmn (ok), hmn (ok), hre, ikt (ok), iku (ok), ilw, izi (retired), kdx (ok), keo (ok), kfl (ok), kiz (ok), kjf, kko (ok), krs (no 1-to-1 correspondence), ksp (ok), ktv, kwb (ok), kyl (ok), lab, lav (retired), lax (ok), lbn, ldd (rd'd), lgk, man (ok), mec (ok), meg, mld (retired), mnt (retired), mwd (retired), myi (no box), myq (retired), nbx (retired), nge (rd'd), nhm, nlr (retired), nqn (ok), nsc (no box, footnote), onx (no box, footnote), pcr (retired), pku (rd'd), plk, ppr, ppt (ok), rji, rjs, rmm (ok), sbe (rd'd), sdg, smd (ok), smp, soh (ok), soo (ok), syr (no single article), taw (rd'd), tbc, tge, tgq, tmh (ok), tpr, tsi (ok), tuh, twn, unx (ok), uur, vas, vki (add to no-article list), vra (ok), wgo, wit (retired), wrv, xep (ok), xia (retired), ych (ok), yha, yif (ok), yiy (retired), ymh (ok), ymt (duplicate), yos (retired), yrk, yug (duplicate), yyz (ok), zkd (ok)

Disambiguation pages (66 pages):

aac, ado, amy, aol, bao, bbd, bnp, bod, bsh, byf, (*)byy, cua, dij, dok, dzd, (*)ekl, giu, gnq, grg, haa, hmj, ikk, juu, knd, koh, kue, kuq, lij, llb, lmi, loj, mcs, mem, mgt, mkl, mla, moz, mqz, mvh, nbn, nco, ndn, niq, nlx, nrz, nuj, pby, pdu, pep, pie, pmm, prs, rem, sbm, (*)sgo, slt, smq, sre, svr, tob, tou, vmg, wgb, wkd, zkb, (*)zkh

bqp, daq, hbo, *kgm, kls, lir, llu, mwi, pal, rop, tbw, tcm, wpc, (*)ylm, zpb

[* no article]

Pages that caused an error or my infobox parser to fail, these are mostly disambiguation pages after a redirect (I should have followed the redirects before testing if they were disambiguation pages), pages without infoboxes or possibly just other bugs in my script (32 pages):

bmy, brw, ime, mmj, okm, prd, prp, rer, ron, tbb

[no info boxes]

Mutley1989 (talk) 08:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I fixed or verified most, & moved a dozen to the project page for further attention. — kwami (talk) 13:49, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Happy to see you still active

Hello Kwamikagami, good to see you still banging around here! I went on extended IRL-work-induced hiatus for about half a year, and am just recently back to editing, so far all at Wiktionary. Anyway, I accidentally hit my Watchlist link for WP instead of WT and saw your name on the list of changes. Good to see you still editing. Illegitimi non carborundum, what?  :) Kind regards, -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 02:18, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, and good to have you back. — kwami (talk) 12:39, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Thompson River Salish people wrong move....

If anything it should have been "Thompson people".......that longer name may be used by few ethnologists, but it's not common usage at all.....I hope you didn't move Sto:lo to Fraser River Salish people or Nuxalk to Bella Coola people. Very controversial from the BC end of things...the norm and accepted reality in BC now is to use the native names, in some cases very necessary, e.g. Kwakwa'kawakw is NOT acceptable as "Kwakiutl people" nor is "Nuu-chah-nulth" acceptable as "Nootka people". Likewise Gitxsan is NOT "Interior Tsimshian" as they were once referred to. Just noticed this after puzzling over Danezaa people, the normal but out-of-date English name is Beaver people.......OldManRivers is gone now but between him and the NorthAmNative project and myself we had reason to use the native names rather than those of the colonizing culture; St'at'imc I hope isn't Lillooet people now.......Syilx yes could be moved to Okanagan people but the Thompson move is inappropriate unless to Thompson people; Nlaka'pamux is a very established term in BC now, and "Thompson River Salish people" confuses the matter because most of them live long the Fraser or in the Nicola, not on the Thompson.Skookum1 (talk) 04:30, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Moved.

The point of names is to refer to something, and that doesn't work if the reader doesn't recognize them. Most of these endonyms are both obscure and inaccessible, whereas the exonyms are reasonably familiar. Arguing for native forms when writing in English is like arguing that "Chinese" should be moved to Hànrén, or that "Georgians" should be moved to Kartvelebi – or perhaps those should be 漢人 and ქართველები to be even more authentic? — kwami (talk) 04:52, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I know, it's my problem with St'at'imc vs even Stl'atl'imx or the older Stlatliumh (which is closer to the actual pronunciation). The /t'/ is from their own adaptation of the Roman alphabet and is deliberately non-English in derivation (Van Wijk).....and the category name includes diacriticals on it, as well. Within Canada the native names are now the preferred norm, but that's not global; I see Skwxwu7mesh has been normalized to Squamish people though OldManRivers fought for a long time to even use the special characters there, e.g. underscore-W, superscript x etc.......thorny subject; "Sto:lo" is really the name of the Fraser River; at one time they were just the Fraser River Salish, in olden times the name Cowichan (Cowidgin in older documents) because they spoke the same language, though a different dialect, than the Cowichan peoples. Wuikyala is the name used for the Rivers Inlet people's language; still known by the latter in global ethnology....."only in Canada" usages beg the question - "Canadian English on Canadian articles"...so the current usage in Canada, by that logic, should prevail...Skookum1 (talk) 05:15, 19 February 2013 (UTC).

I see Okanagan people has been moved, but the lede doesn't even have "Syilx" in it now....it has this: "ʔukʷnaʔqínx, they are part of the cat clan Interior Salish ethnological and linguistic groupings" not sure where that cat claim came from, they have more than one clan.....Skookum1 (talk) 05:17, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

From the responses I've gotten at ENGVAR, that policy does not mean we preferentially use obscure local terms instead of universal or international terms. Rather, it means that we use Canadian spelling in Canadian articles. But I've had a hard time getting this made explicit, because people keep saying it's so obvious it doesn't need to be said – except of course that it's not and it does. — kwami (talk) 05:22, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

"obscure local terms" is a non sequitur when the major papers use the proper names now, without diacriticals of course.....standard Canadian usage, e.g. Mi'kmaq vs Micmac....not sure what's become of Peigan and Blood and such...Dene gets confusing because it's simultaneously all Athabaskans, including the Dineh, and they're all mutually comprehensible and identify as a common "nation" continent-wide, like the Cree, but it's in "exclusive" use as band names in the NWT......nb on all thgeir names, Tahltan, Chilcotin, etc, the -tan ending is "people" same as -mc, -mx etc on Interior Salishan names, so "St'at'imc people" is redundant (means "people of Sat'", which is the name for the central fishing ground on the Fraser just north of the town of Lillooet.Skookum1 (talk) 07:07, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The Norwegians name for themselves is normanna = North-men......ditto Greek people can't be Hellenika nor Basque people as Euskara. Thing in Canada is the use of "settler" or "colonizer" names is a political football.....Skookum1 (talk) 07:10, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Possibly unfree File:4179 Toutatis (Chang'e 2).jpg

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:4179 Toutatis (Chang'e 2).jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 09:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Possibly unfree File:Cia-Cia road sign.jpg

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Cia-Cia road sign.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 11:33, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Punjabi

Thanks for feedback so ultimately helping to improve the article.Maria0333 (talk) 11:02, 18 February 2013 (UTC) NONE OF YOUR INSERTED TAGS ARE REMOVED BY ME. I Dont know about PK5ABI. so dont mess me with others acts. I believe in professionalism and mature behavior of giving respect and earning respect. Best Regards Maria0333 (talk) 05:40, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Possibly unfree File:Mountbatten Brailler.jpg

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Mountbatten Brailler.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 00:09, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Montfortian dialect

Thank you for your updates. I kind of forgot about it :) There is one addition however that isn't entirely truthful. You added in the infobox that Montfortian is an Eastern Limburgish dialect. Even though this map might tell that, the situation is not that uniform. Within the area where Eastern Limburgish is spoken (typical for Eastern Limburgish is sjt-, sjl-, sjm- etc.), several towns, including Montfort, have st-, sl-, sm-. Therefore, Montfortian is a Central Limburgish instead of an Eastern Limburgish dialect :) For more information about this isoglos, see: [18] second paragraph (if you don't speak Dutch, Google Translate works pretty well with this one). --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 18:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks. I linked from Limburgish (as an eastern dialect) so it wouldn't be an orphan. Corrected both.

You wouldn't believe the number of half-finished language articles scattered around in user space. It seems I find them a couple weeks after creating a stub on the same language, so it ends up looking like I did all the work. — kwami (talk) 21:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :) Well, anyone checking the page history would know you didn't start them :) --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 07:26, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Decalogue

I'm confused by your edit summary, where you reverted my edit per me at talk. I haven't said anything at talk. --JFH (talk) 04:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

You proposed deleting it, then deleted the proposal, saying maybe you could be convinced. That didn't seem compatible with simply deleting the dab w/o discussion. Also, it's a dab for more than just the biblical decalogues. — kwami (talk) 04:23, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

K, at first I thought the Ten Commandments was the primary topic, but then when I looked further it seemed decalogue never means the other option in he dab, making it superfluous altogether. I'll take it you disagree and start a conversation. --JFH (talk) 04:56, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

On third thought, there were other items in he dab, so I'm back to just thinking the ten 10 Comms is primary. --JFH (talk) 05:00, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Not sure I follow where you're headed. (is otion "notion"?) — kwami (talk) 05:01, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure you noticed that Ethical Decalogue redirects to Ten Commandments. Would you please respond at Talk:Decalogue? --JFH (talk) 22:26, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Mail

kwami, you got mail. --regentspark (comment) 02:08, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Saraiki

kwami, could you comment here. Thanks. --regentspark (comment) 13:11, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Flemish

Please explain why you have moved Flemish and Flemish:talk to Belgian Dutch dialects. Are you aware of the historic differences beteen Belgium and the Netherlands (Holland)? The existense of the word "Flemish" has undergone a slow and pernicious eridification. Please undo your move at once. It is neither valid nor beneficial to Our Reader. ```Buster Seven Talk 19:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I am still working on the articles. The existing setup was schizophrenic. The lead was a dab, not the lead to a proper article. We now have two articles: Belgian Dutch (Flemish in the colloquial sense), and Flemish/Vlaams (Flemish in the linguistic sense). This is proper for an encyclopedia, and is beneficial to our readers. — kwami (talk) 19:59, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay, finished. Now the multiple linguistic article which refer to "Flemish" in the linguistic sense connect to the correct article. The hatnotes disambiguate the linguistic article 'Flemish' from the socio-political article 'Belgian Dutch'. 'Flemish' is technically incorrect for the latter, and this avoids starting an article as if it were a disambiguation page.

I'm cleaning up the ISO language redirects, so that people searching for the ISO name of a language will end up at the proper article. Of the 5,000 or so language articles on Wikipedia, a dozen failed. "Flemish" was one of them. According to the ISO, "Flemish" should be a redirect to "Dutch", and "Vlaams" should direct to East/West Flemish. That won't work for our purposes, where "Flemish" generally means "Vlaams". I think the current setup should take care of it.

If your objection is labeling the more general article "Dutch", then maybe we could move it to "Belgian Flemish/Dutch" or something similar. (Not all Flemish is Belgian, after all.) — kwami (talk) 20:22, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the bluster. As a Vlaams speaker, I was afraid my "taal" was losing another rung on the ladder of existence. I'm glad to see it was in good hands. ```Buster Seven Talk 02:17, 20 February 2013 (UTC) Extended thought ...in good hands includes User:Fram and any other editor that makes an earnest (and Honest) attempt to rectify this long staanding editorial "carbuncle". ```Buster Seven Talk 17:15, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Good. I'm glad we're okay. Could you share your conception of what Flemish is? Is it just Dutch spoken south of the border, even if indistinguishable from what's north of the border (that is, do we have another Serbian/Croatian or Hindi/Urdu situation here), or is it something that is objectively distinct? If the latter, which dialects does it include? I always thought it was East & West Flemish (+ Zealandic etc.), and that Belgian Brabantian etc. was Dutch, but one of my refs claims that East Flemish is a subdialect of Brabantian, which would imply that it's not Flemish ... I don't know how justified that assessment is. — kwami (talk) 03:46, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I really don't know about all that. During the intervening time I have read the eight years of discussions above [and elsewhere] and realize that we are right back where we started. With User:Fram's re-move, a page now exists @ Wikipedia called Flemish. IMHO, that is as it should be. In my experience (as a Flemish speaker of the "pure" Antwerp regional dialect/taal) how I speak is quite different from the Dutch spoken just across the border in Holland. I am of Flemish heritage, not Dutch. I speak and think Flemish, not Dutch. It may be POV, but so be it. As long as the result is an article called Flemish, I'll let you scholars work out the details. ```Buster Seven Talk 09:36, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

The Ethnologue entry has become confused over the years, but it does look like they mean Flemish proper (as a separate language) to be West Flemish specifically. You can see that in their map, and in several of the descriptions. That's just gotten conflated with Flemish as Belgian Dutch, as in the population figures, but since 'Flemish' is also an alternative name for Dutch, I think we're pretty safe in saying ISO "Vlaams" is West Flemish. Not that we need to follow Ethnologue, of course, but it's so commonly used as a reference that I think we need to account for it. A couple of my other refs use "Flemish" for the language of Flanders as well. — kwami (talk) 21:42, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I know you have good intentions with maintaining the linguistic articles. However I do not like you (not familiar with the actual situation) screwed up the articles without prior discussion. A kind of dab in the lead section is not ideal, but it was a relatively good solution since the term "Flemish" is ambiguous but requires more explanation than just a dab. Also the Ethnologue entry is very ambiguous so the best way was to redirect ISO 639:vls to the article Flemish where the various meaning were explained. It is a very difficult term since we should explain the actual linguistic situation as well as the usage of particular terms as well as the "official" uses of terms. So in my opinion you should not have moved and created pages without any prior discussion. I care about articles related to Flemish but I am tired of this recurring re-structuring each several months/years. Thanks, SPQRobin (talk) 19:24, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

An unencyclopedic dab section for the lead is not necessary, and [vls] is not Flemish but specifically West Flemish. — kwami (talk) 20:37, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

What is "unencyclopedic" about that? And Ethnologue mentions 6 million people for [vls], the population of the Flemish Region. It even mentions that the dialects are Westvlaams, Oostvlaams, Antwerps, Limburgs, Brabants. The map on the other hand only shows West Flanders as "Vlaams". SPQRobin (talk) 01:19, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Read our article guidelines.

That was a mistake. They just corrected it today: 1.2 million in both Belgium and Netherlands. — kwami (talk) 01:26, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Deletion request

Hi Kwamikagami. Please see my edit summary here about your request regarding Belgian Dutch. Cheers SmartSE (talk) 20:58, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks. — kwami (talk) 21:47, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Kwamikagami. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 23:41, 25 February 2013 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

-- Cheers, Riley 23:41, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good! — kwami (talk) 23:45, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Possibly unfree File:500 lira coin with braille.jpg

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:500 lira coin with braille.jpg, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 14:12, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Possibly unfree File:Arabic braille converter.png

A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Arabic braille converter.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files because its copyright status is unclear or disputed. If the file's copyright status cannot be verified, it may be deleted. You may find more information on the file description page. You are welcome to add comments to its entry at the discussion if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 14:33, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Image source problem with File:Australian language families.png

Image Copyright problem

Thank you for uploading File:Australian language families.png.

This image is a derivative work, containing an "image within an image". Examples of such images would include a photograph of a sculpture, a scan of a magazine cover, or a screenshot of a computer game or movie. In each of these cases, the rights of the creator of the original image must be considered, as well as those of the creator of the derivative work.

While the description page states who made this derivative work, it currently doesn't specify who created the original work, so the overall copyright status is unclear. If you did not create the original work depicted in this image, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright.

If you have uploaded other derivative works, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 14:35, 26 February 2013 (UTC). If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 14:35, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

saraiki language

saraiki dialect is redundant with the Riasti dialect, Shah puri dialect,Multani dialect, Multani language, Thalochi dialect, Thalochi ,Derawali dialect articles. I suggest merging these articles , as the all these are same. And also be Redirected to Saraiki language. Also Jhangvi dialect is dialect of Saraiki. Kindly See these External Links

• http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=skr
• http://globalrecordings.net/en/language/16338 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.186.40.254 (talk) 16:16, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

We have plenty of coverage of both a language and its dialects, so there's nothing wrong with that in principle. As for Jhangvi, talk to Maria about that. They're overhauling the Punjabi stuff right now. — kwami (talk) 16:58, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

another mistake in Rongorongo articles

Hi Kwami, there is one more mistake with illustrations of rongorongo articles. Poike tablet is illustrated with this image. The description states that those are surface glyphs of the Poike tablet. As a source this site of Lorena Bettocchi is given: link. The page discusses the Poike tablet and then the image in question appears. But afterwords there is a description that this photo is of another unrelated ta'u tablet from a different museum in Santiago. So it is not the Poike. Cheers --xRiffRaffx (talk) 22:02, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for catching that! — kwami (talk) 01:27, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Asturian language

Hi Kwamikagami, (I undid the last edition without login me. I didn't remember my pass XD ) I'm an Asturian speaker. Please, reconsider your opinion. Asturian is not a dialect. It's a language. The fact of being in the Asturleonese family hasn't got enough sense to say that is a "dialect". It's the same error that if I write a article named "English dialect". Of course, it's a dialect of Anglic, but nobody speaks anglic, or Anglo-frisian, or West-Germanic because that's impossible. Asturleonese is not a language. Nobody speaks "Asturleonese". Asturleonese is an older name for the language spoken many times ago. It's only a subgroup. Please, reconsider your opinion. Would you change Catalan language, or Galician language to Catalan dialect or Galician dialect? No. This is the same case. --Astur (talk) 22:52, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Asturian and Leonese are mutually intelligible. That makes them dialects of one language according to the most common definition of "dialect". You can bring it up on the talk page if you like, but copy-paste moves are reverted as a matter of course. — kwami (talk) 22:54, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Then, English UK and English USA are dialects. Are you going to rename it's articles? --Astur (talk) 23:06, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, of course they're dialects. No-one would dispute that. — kwami (talk) 23:12, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Then, I would like to see you moving English language to English dialect. Are you going to use the same rule? All languages are dialects, and all dialects are languages. The difference to catalogue in a group or the other is a fine line. If you are trying to describe a language and you need to explain about the "family", you can of course, use This language is a dialect of X... That's correct. But it's not correct in an encyclopedia use that adjective in the title because it needs a fuller explanation and it sounds derogative. The text is clear: "Asturian (Asturian: Asturianu or Bable) is a Romance language of the West Iberian group, Astur-Leonese Subgroup, spoken in the Spanish province of Asturias by the Asturian people" You can add and describe all the features of the language within the body of the article. And, of course, why it's considerated a dialect. No problem in that. But the title of the article has not changed since 2006 and I see no reason to change it now.

• For your info, you should consult how others wikipedias titled this article: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portugués, and Greek... etc (100%) "LLINGUA ASTURIANA - ASTURIAN LANGUAGE" or simply: Asturian.
• Academia.edu

Regards --Astur (talk) 13:57, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Asturian, Leonese and Asturleonese are not different dialects, are different names for the same language so I porposed to merge the 3 Articles, in the ISO code lists "EN" is the code for English (the language, no the dialects), "AST" is the code for Asturian, Bable, Leonese and Asturleonese (differents names for the same language) http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php --Mikel (talk) 23:50, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Then we can merge them into a single language article, presumably under the name Asturian. Or we can make Asturian the umbrella article, and Leonese specific to that dialect. Doesn't matter much to me; probably best to discuss it on the talk page.

BTW, Ethnologue says the dialects of Asturian (or whatever) are Bable, Eastern, Leonese, Montañes, and Western. Assuming they are correct, they are not different names for the same thing. — kwami (talk) 00:11, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Move article to Asturian language

Hi Kwamikagami,

I've worked in wrong called Asturian dialect only to show you with trusted references that asturian is not a dialect. As you said above:

«Asturian and Leonese are mutually intelligible. That makes them dialects of one language according to the most common definition of "dialect". You can bring it up on the talk page if you like, but copy-paste moves are reverted as a matter of course. — kwami (talk) 22:54, 28 February 2013 (UTC)»

This "one language" is Latin. Nowadays, nobody speaks latin. The dialects derived from Latin, today, are languages​​. And, as you can see in the art 4: "Asturian language will enjoy protection [...] whilst its local dialects and voluntary apprenticeship will always be respected." That means that 1, Asturian is a language with local dialects. 2, Asturian was a dialect of Latin 1000 years ago. 3, Asturian language and Leonese language are the same language: you only cross a line between provincies, but it's the same language. The fact of two names for the same language is due a political reasons. The same happens with Castilian: in Spain is called 'Spanish', 'Argentinian' in Argentina...etc.

I hope you understand now that article's title must be changed to the previous title. I volunteer to change and improve it. I'm administrator in Asturian Wikipedia. Regards --Astur (talk) 17:57, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Punjabi Page

Hey Kwamikagami

You seem to have deleted/undid my section on the Punjab page could you give me a bit of perspective to why you did so? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jujhar.pannu (talk • contribs) 04:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it was a non-sequitur. If the subject of Gurmukhi comes up later, we might explain the etymology (though that would be better on the Gurmukhi article), but there's no reason to give it when we aren't even talking about Gurmukhi. — kwami (talk) 04:46, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

That is incorrect I listed the meaning of Shahmucki and Devagani the other two forms of Punjabi alongside Gurmukhi. There are three ways of writing Punjabi Gurumucki, Shahmuki, and Devagani (and also the writing for blind people but that doesn't count) I was explaining the etymology of all the three types of Punjabi which you may see now. I will re-add it if you see no further problems.

To save you time I attached below what I originally posted.

"The word Gurmukhi translates into 'Guru's mouth'[3], Shahmukhi means 'from the King's mouth'[4] and Devanagari means 'The container of divine light.'[5]" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jujhar.pannu (talk • contribs) 23:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. It's still a non-sequitur. I could give the etymology of "shampoo", but it wouldn't belong either. Besides, if you think "Devanagari" means "container of divine light", then I suspect your other etymologies might be wrong too. — kwami (talk) 07:13, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Punjabi is a beautiful language it’s a shame you don’t speak it. In Punjabi etymology is very important and in this aspect it is very different than other languages.. In Punjabi almost each word is a compound of two words and if you understand those two words than you know what the that word means.. For example the word Jaanvar means jaan-life/force and var – inside together Jaanvar means animal. Punjabi is a very poetic language, the entire Sri Guru Granth Sahib is written in Rhyme at Genius-level Poetic Measures not to mention the actual content.

Spelling comes very easy to writers as it is written exactly the same way it is spoken it in fact when reading Gurmukhi and Devanagari you open your mouth the same way each letter is twisting your tongue to the shape of the letter.

Devanagari – Deva means light but Deva (Deity spelled weird in English it actually sounds like Devaty) also refers to the Divine Gods this is because the Deities guide you towards the truth that is why they are metaphorized as Light/Deva. Nagari – means boundary from where one place begins. The other two, Gur-mukhi and Shah-Mukhi are common words and everyone knows what they mean. In Sikhism to further illustrate the picture so you can comprehend what these words mean in regards to contrast, GurMukh has been compared with MunMukh many many many many times. MunMukh means one who is egotistical / under the spell of the 5 evils/thieves that take you away from God/Guru. kwami (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:02, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi

Hope you will be fine. Friend Thanks for your advise. Yes you are very right if we dont move and instead redirect an article we loose the history. I will ensure the compliance to this principal. Thanks for guidance and BEST wishes Maria0333 (talk) 04:56, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Kwamikagami, Please respond on the talk the page for the article Adjectival phrase. --Tjo3ya (talk) 18:43, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

SaypU (universal alphabet)

Some people are proposing that SaypU (Spell As You Pronounce Universal) be used as a universal alphabet.

• BBC News - Could a new phonetic alphabet promote world peace? (19 February 2013)
• SaypU: Home page - Spell As you Pronounce

—Wavelength (talk) 18:02, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Universala skribo (unueca ortografio)

The book Universala skribo, by Manuel Halvelik, is about a universal alphabet for all languages. I have a copy.

• UEA.ORG: Katalogo - Universala skribo

—Wavelength (talk) 18:02, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Hi Wavelength. Busy right now, will try to get back to you in a few days. — kwami (talk) 21:41, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Naro examples

Long overdue, but now done: Click examples for Naro language from Visser's dictionary that I got through ILL. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! That helps a lot. — kwami (talk) 21:40, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Asturian

Where are you trying to move this article? Things seem to have gotten a bit mixed up. Rmhermen (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Asturian language. People seem to agree for the most part that that article should refer to the language as a whole. Fixing it up a bit so that it has that scope. — kwami (talk) 23:42, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect Zhuang Language links

Yongbei Zhuang, ISO 639-3, ybz and Standard Zhuang are two different things, there should not be a redirect from Yongbei Zhuang to Standard Zhuang, by means write an article on Yongbei Zhuang, this is something that someone should do. The redirection of Yongbei Zhuang to Standard Zhuang is something that needs to be corrected (if it was a spmething that could be corrected by clicking undo I would have done so already) it really can not be left as it is. The redirect from Wuming Language to standard Zhuang is also less than ideal, though there are some contexts where people do use the phrase Wuming Zhuang to refere to Standard Zhuang.Johnkn63 (talk) 14:35, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay, please fix as appropriate. Which ISO-3 code would be appropriate for Standard Zhuang? We do say, "Its pronunciation is based on that of the Yongbei Zhuang dialect of Shuangqiao in Wuming County". Or should we mark it as 'none'?

simply put ISO-3 does not have a code for standard Zhuang as such, the ISO-3 codes are based on the results of various survey's of Zhuang, so none would be the best. Whilst phonemes of standard Zhuang come from Shuangqiao in Wuming County the spelling of inividual words is not based on the Shuangqiao pronunciation, hence the example of head for which a Shuangqiao speaker would say ɣau˥, but standard Zhuang is kʲau˥ because the standard spelling is gyaeuj. Remove the whole Yongbei Zhuang dialect redirect page would be a solution, otherwise writing a Yongbei Zhuang article.Johnkn63 (talk) 15:48, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

I have changed the Yongbei Zhuang redirect from a redirect to the start of an article, this is an entry in ethnologue and the should be a wikipedia article on it. By comparison IMHO the redirect Wuming Dialect should be deleted.Johnkn63 (talk) 12:54, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

There is also a redirect Wuming language to Standard Zhuang which is confusing to say the least as the Standard Zhuang article has a section on the differences between Standard and Wuming Zhuang. Are you able to delete the Wuming dialect and Wuming language redirects? To minimise the intermediate damage I have changed the Wuming Dialect link so it links to Wuming Language. Johnkn63 (talk) 11:34, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I redirected the following to Yongbei Zhuang: ISO 639:zyb, Yongbei Zhuang language, Wuming Zhuang, Wuming Zhuang language, Wuming dialect, Wuming language, Wu-ming language. — kwami (talk) 22:55, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, do you have any idea what happened to Qianjiang and Yongchun Zhuang in E12, if they were merged into something else or found spurious? — kwami (talk) 20:24, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't have an immediate answer to this question, though I may be able to confirm the answer at least for one of these. The "Hongshui He Zhuang dialect intelligibility survey" may answer the question regarding Qianjiang Zhuang, in that North and South of the river where placed in Liuqian Zhuang zlq and Eastern Hongshuihe Zhuang zeh. Johnkn63 (talk) 16:43, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

It's south of the river, so I'm assuming Eastern Hongshuihe Zhuang [zeh]. — kwami (talk) 23:26, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Yongchun is to the best of my knowledge now part of zzj, Zuojiang Zhuang. Johnkn63 (talk) 12:23, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Stevey7788 says he thinks it's Dai Zhuang. I'll alert him to this. — kwami (talk) 21:20, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Lewis Strauss

Is it /ˈstrɔːs/, just like the famous Levi? Cheers!--Carnby (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't know. But according to the CS Monitor,[19] it's "oddly, Straws", which I would presume would be /ˈstrɔːz/, though you can't be sure what intended. You get the same thing in his bio here,[20] though of course one may have copied off the other.

New Scientist Apr 18, 1963, p. 141, says "pronounced Straws by request".[21] Red Cloud at Dawn p. 42 also says "pronounced 'Straws'." But again, we have to guess what they mean. Did it really end in a /z/? You might want to check "The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer" on American Experience (PBS); I would assume they would have checked with the family. (There's a 1.4GB torrent available, if it's worth the download.) — kwami (talk) 20:35, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Attraction of Lewi/z/ Strau/z/?--Carnby (talk) 19:58, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Nora language

The Nora language (it's recently been changed from Norra) is actually most similar to the Khamyang language (maybe a dialect of it), and both are Tai languages. Nora is now extinct. See http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/2012-034.pdf

Lama is actually not related, since it's Tibeto-Burman rather than Tai. — Stevey7788 (talk) 23:59, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Merged per Bradley. — kwami (talk) 00:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

For sure, you're very welcome. Thanks for all your hard work too. — Stevey7788 (talk) 22:18, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Phonetic transcription of Xhosa name

Dear Kwami

I see that you are in charge of the phonological section in the Xhosa article. Could you help me with a transcription of this Xhosa name: Nakhane Mahlakahlaka? He is a South African artist; I have an article about him in preparation: User:SkaraB/Nakhane_Touré_draft

Many thanks

SkaraB 13:49, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the script is defective so the orthography is not enough info to go on. It doesn't show tone and vowel length, for example. The consonants are no problem, though: [nakʰanɛ maɬakaɬaka]. Do you have a recording of him saying his name in Xhosa? — kwami (talk) 18:01, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Defaka language

Hi. I ve translated the article of Defaka language to catalan wikipedia. I ve seen the references are't into the article. I don't know if you can arrange it. If you do it, i ll be gratefull if you tell me for arrange the catalan version also. Excuse my intromission and my english. Thanks you.--Pitxiquin (talk) 15:14, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The last three refs listed are the main ones. — kwami (talk) 16:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for advising but missing your support on my map on Wiki commons because you appear to be most rational editor whom I have communicated on Wiki pedia Maria0333 (talk) 15:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I might have time to check up on this are comment later, but it would take some research, and right now I have too many other projects. — kwami (talk) 00:26, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

NA cat re Nootka Jargon?

Re Category:Native American-based pidgins and creoles that's misnamed if it's meant to include Canadian aboriginal pidgins and creoles.......Category:Pidgins and creoles of the indigenous peoples of North America would be the proper form......Skookum1 (talk) 12:31, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Ya, just saw it on Chinook Jargon too and noting the Inuit pidgin French and the Algonquian-Basque pidgin it definitely needs to NOT be named "Native American"........not snitting at you, but you should know better, Kwami, that's not an acceptable word on this side of the border and is very jarring when we encounter it; First Nations people don't like it one bit; they'll go with "Native North American" but definitely NOT "Native American".Skookum1 (talk) 12:34, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Didn't even think of that. Is that because they take "American" to mean "US"? Oddly, it doesn't have that connotation south of the border.

Just put in a category redirect, and create the desired category, and bots will take care of the rest. — kwami (talk) 16:40, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

BTW you want mot du jour, "du jour" just means "today's".....soup du jour is "today's soup".Skookum1 (talk) 12:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

(Yes, I actually know what jour means. I'm being facetious, as there's no way I'm going to change it every day: it's month-old soup du jour. — kwami (talk))

Skookum, I've gone ahead and moved it to Category:North America Native-based pidgins and creoles, for parity with other subcategories of Category:Pidgins and creoles? VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:03, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

And yes, I know that some of them are Category:South America Native-based pidgins and creoles. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:16, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The capital-N Native is problematic for various reasons; the preferred usage is "indigenous people(s)"....also "North America" should be "North American" ditto South America(n)....in that construction, that is - "indigenous peoples of North America" is {{NorthAmNative}} standard form now.Skookum1 (talk) 05:57, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good. — kwami (talk) 19:00, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Can that be a Speedy? Since you created it, seems easiest for your to nominate it. NB there are other Native American-named categories, e.g. Category:Native American mythology, if it hasn't been renamed by now, that should get the similar treatment. Maybe a bulk CfD?Skookum1 (talk) 05:39, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Asturian language

As you know, after our agreement on languages ​​(Asturian language), I started working on the article on the Asturian language to improve it. But the user Jotamar disagrees, and is deleting and reverting data that you had written. Link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Asturian_language#Deletion_of_official_data I'd wish that we can all talk. Thank you --Astur (talk) 18:02, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Saraiki language

Dear,

Saraiki is a language, it is not a dialect. Riasti dialect, Shah puri dialect,Multani dialect, Multani language, Thalochi dialect, Thalochi ,Derawali dialect articles. I suggest merging these articles , as the all these are same. And also be Redirected to Saraiki language. Also Jhangvi dialect is dialect of Saraiki. Kindly See these External Links http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=skr http://globalrecordings.net/en/language/16338

• Department of Saraiki, Islamia University, Bahawalpur was established in 1989 and Department of Saraiki, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan was established in 2006. Saraiki is taught as subject in schools and colleges at higher secondary, intermediate and degree level.

Allama Iqbal open university Islamabad, and Al-Khair university Bhimbir have their Pakistani Linguistics Departments. They are offering M.Phil. and Ph.D in Saraiki. Five T V channels and Ten Radio Stations are Serving Saraiki language — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.186.110.14 (talk) 15:28, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

That's fine. As long as you have good sources to back up your claims. I don't care if the dialects are merged or not, but one of the problems is that a Saraiki speaker will claim that X is a dialect of Saraiki, while a Punjabi will claim that it's a dialect of Punjabi, and then they will start fighting and be an annoyance to the rest of us. — kwami (talk) 18:59, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Dear thanks. Kindly Saraiki language page recovered. you may see in box that all dialects of saraiki are written.182.186.13.81 (talk) 10:43, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Bhojpuri language

About this edit, Bhojpuri language claims that it is part of Eastern Hindi, so I think something needs some cleanup. --JorisvS (talk) 11:04, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

User:Mywikieditbh made that change. We'd probably want a ref. — kwami (talk) 21:01, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm just looking for consistency between our articles and within them. The lead still calls it part of Eastern Hindi. --JorisvS (talk) 22:13, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Notice of Neutral point of view noticeboard discussion

Hello, Kwamikagami. This message is being sent to inform you that there currently is a discussion at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Are there neutrality issues at this article?. Thank you. --Mr T^{(Talk?) (New thread?)} 05:38, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Potatobot ISO

Hello, Kwamikagami. You have new messages at Anypodetos's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Mixtec dialects etc.

Hello, Kwamikagami. You have new messages at Taivo's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Great Lakes

Why [22]? I missed that source [23]. Do you mean these data are preliminary and thus unreliable? Materialscientist (talk) 05:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

For one thing, it sounds like the dates may be off: Toronto in 2012 vs Chicago in 2011. But even so it admits that there are several million more people in Chicago. — kwami (talk) 07:00, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

It admits there are several million more people in the surrounding area; not in the city of Chicago.--Asher196 (talk) 12:31, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

No, it admits there are several million more in Chicago. In an article like this people are interested in how many people there are, not in municipal boundaries. — kwami (talk) 19:21, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Great Lakes

Please stop your WP:edit warring. WP:3RR. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

That's not the status quo, which is why s.o. else just reverted you too. — kwami (talk) 00:21, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Verification request

Please verify the new additions/removals to theses articles. It seems that incorrect info are inserted and reliable info was removed:

• Bactrian language
• Azerbaijani language

Thanks. Zheek (talk) 10:19, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

For Azeri, they just don't seem to understand what a hat note is for.

Can't evaluate Bactrian, but you can always ask for refs! "Greek script" is an improvement, though: The Greek alphabet was for Greek. — kwami (talk) 10:24, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

OK. I will ask other editors about the new changes to the Bactrian language article. Thanks again. Zheek (talk) 12:59, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Yiddish Sign Language

Kwami, you may be right in saying that it does not exist. But as long as it has an ISO code, it's difficult to demand it be removed. I suggest you submit a request for the ISO to retire the code: Change Requests for the 2013 cycle are now being accepted. Submit Change Request forms by email to the Registration Authority at iso639-3@sil.org . I enjoy seeing your edits on so many pages I also edit. Pete unseth (talk) 21:22, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not asking for it to be removed. I'm only tagging it as needing references, which it does. — kwami (talk) 21:24, 29 March 2013 (UTC)