User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 21

Word of the jour:

• comb-shaped people

Previous words:

• awkwardnessful
• anti-zombie-fungus fungus

---

to do

S.Twa also indigenous, like Kwisi etc. (Inskepe). Kwisi may have once had cattle?

Akrafena and Akofena - Merger Tag

Kwamikagami,

Articles: Akrafena and Akofena - Merger Tag.

You have placed a merger tag on the above articles in January 2013. Since then there has been no discussion about a merger and I have asked in #Wikipedia-en-help about the merger tags and what should be done. In response to their advice they asked me if I should write to you. If no replies concerning the merger tag, it maybe a good idea that it is either be submitted for an Feedback Request Service or the merger tag removed. Adamdaley (talk) 03:27, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Feedback may be good. They are both problematic articles, part of a POV edit war by a user who was blocked indefinitely for it. That doesn't mean there is nothing worthwhile in the articles, but I don't have the background or the desire to edit them properly. — kwami (talk) 03:32, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Would you like to submit the Akrafena for Feedback Request Service? Since I have no knowledge of either article, maybe someone on Wikipedia has sufficient knowledge to improve the articles. Adamdaley (talk) 03:48, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Feel free. — kwami (talk) 04:51, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Please comment

Hi. Please comment: Scythians: Consensus for the lead section: Iranian people or Iranian-speaking people. Thanks. Zheek (talk) 10:29, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Index of synthesis

Yoruba language#Grammar (version of 17:14, 10 March 2013), uses the expression "index of synthesis", whose meaning is not clear to me. I suggest that Wikipedia have an article "Index of synthesis", and that that reference be wikified to link to that article.
—Wavelength (talk) 18:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

It's just a scale of isolating (probably 1.0) to synthetic or maybe polysynthetic. The scale might even be specific to that paper, or to that school. Easier just to delete and say "highly isolating" unless the editor making the claim wants to create an article on it. — kwami (talk) 22:03, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply.—Wavelength (talk) 23:06, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of proposed move of Fouta Djallon to Futa Jalon/Jallon

An article that you have been involved in editing, Fouta Djallon, has been proposed to be moved to either Futa Jalon or Futa Jallon. If you are interested in this discussion, please participate by going to the disussion page and adding your comments. Thank you.--A12n (talk) 04:00, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

pronunciation of "Shuswap" for IPA if you've got a moment

Please see Talk:Shuswap_Country.Skookum1 (talk) 13:00, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll take your word for it. Were you asking for IPA? Not sure what the 'a' is. The OED has /ˈʃʊswɒp/.— kwami (talk) 22:06, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Hm....what else uses [ɒ]? It's not quite like "wop" or "mop", more like "waw".....plus the p.Skookum1 (talk) 03:49, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Whatever that vowel should be, OED has the second consonant wrong; it should be /ˈʃʊʃwɒp/ as the primary.Skookum1 (talk) 03:50, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll always remember Quebecois travellers puzzling over placenames in BC e.g. Co-keet-lam instead of Co-quit-lam and "Nana-eemo" instead of "Nanaymo" (where "ay" is more like "buy")Skookum1 (talk) 03:52, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right with the vowel. /ˈʃʊʃwɑːp/ or /ˈʃuːʃwɑːp/, then. Are you asking because of the Shuswap pages which already have IPA? — kwami (talk) 05:41, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Didn't realize they did unless you mean Shuswap people.....formerly titled Secwepemc.....it's the Shuswap Country page that prompted me to come to you.Skookum1 (talk) 06:42, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

The people article has /ˈʃuːʃwɑːp/, and that accords with what you're describing. I assume the county is pronounced the same way? Shouldn't be any problem in copying over the IPA for the people. — kwami (talk) 06:46, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

"country" not "county"....counties in BC are court districts only. "Country" is a traditional appelation for many regions, in the sense "up in that country" and not referring to nationhood. And yeah I just added it to the Country, the Lake and the River articles.....not sure if Shuswap is a dab page, probably should be if not.Skookum1 (talk) 06:49, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Here are some related links.

• Pronunciation Guide to First Nations in British Columbia: "Shoe-swap"
• Pronunciation of Shuswap - Oxford Dictionaries (British & World English): "SHo͞oˌswäp"
• Pronunciation of Shuswap - Oxford Dictionaries (US English): "SHo͞oˌswäp"
• Shuswap Pronunciation: audio
• Shuswap - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary: "\ˈshüˌswäp\"
• Guide to B.C. First Nations’ Traditional Territories: "Shu-swap"
• Waterway Houseboats on Shuswap Lake, BC - RTOWN TV - YouTube (4:23): The first utterance of the word "Shuswap" is at about 0:20.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Those are not local sources, one's URL even says "American English"...and the wording of the federal sites seems drawn from the oxford and merriam-webster, which are British and American.......and the Canadian Oxford is in Eastern Canada. The video is a professional model working from a script and is not a local. The sibilant "s" sounds stilted; and the media industry is Vancouver-based and often from the East. Vancouver media mostly get it right.......the cites you give, government of Canada or not, are not authentic sources to me. They're foreign; you might as well use a New Yorker to pronounce it, the way Americans say "Frazhier" instead of "Fraser".Skookum1 (talk) 16:24, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Can't give a definitive answer on this, though local pronunciation does tend towards the "shwa" on the second syllable. One of the local Indian bands uses "shawp", though this may be a typo: Little Shuswap Indian Band. Helen Akrigg is an expert on things Shuswap, here's what she says: From Suxwa'pmux, the name of the Interior Salish band which inhabit the area. Their name was spelt in a variety of ways by the early fur-traders: "She Whaps," "Shewhoppes," "Shoo-Schwawps" [note: the preferred modern spelling is Secwepemc, pronounced seWEP-mek].... Unfortunately we have no indication of the origin of the name Shuswap. Source: Akrigg, Helen B. and Akrigg, G.P.V; 1001 British Columbia Place Names; Discovery Press, Vancouver 1969, 1970, 1973. (Jim Cooperman is the other local expert) As this is pretty much a recently invented word, it may be that a dominant pronunciation has not coalesced yet. But definitely in the Kamloops/Salmon Arm region, the folks use "Shoe - shwap".The Interior (Talk) 16:58, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Rhyming with "map", or with the 'a' sound of "bra"? — kwami (talk) 17:33, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Definitely "bra". The Interior (Talk) 17:38, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Then assuming it's truly "shoe" and not the way some people say "shush" ("shoosh"), as the OED had it, then the current IPA should be correct. — kwami (talk) 17:41, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

• According to the texts cited in Dave Robertson's doctoral thesis, the spelling used by native speakers using the phonemic Chinook writing (Duployan shorthand) in the 1890s and early 1900s is evenly split between ʃusw͡ap and ʃuʃw͡ap. It sounds to me like this is six of one, half a dozen of another, and indicates an intermediate articulation. What do we think about a retracted s, /s̱/ ? VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 17:50, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

It's an English transcription, so we need to use an English sound. We can list both. — kwami (talk) 17:55, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Native English in BC generally doesn't have a "s" sound, it's a bit of a cliche but "Shamon Arm" for "Salmon Arm" would be typical. But as The Interior observed, and I checked with a friend from the Okanagan how he'd say it, he says "shwap".....and yes, this is about it as it is used in English, not by FN people........Dave Robertson I know "professionally", he's from Washington and only interested in things aboriginal though did his doc and postdoc at UVic.......he's fond of insisting on saying "KUM-loopsh" for Kamloops in a very stilted artificial IPA-linguistics-pronunciation.....but not even Kamloops Indian Band members say that....SHWAP is the primary pronunciation, and if you say Shoe-swap over and over you'll see that it's natural for the 's' sound of the "stilted pronunciation" very quickly beomes "shwap"......"bar" isn't quite the right vowel, as observed before it's like the derogative "wop" though "mop" is also the same.Skookum1 (talk) 02:15, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Just noting re the Salmon/Shamon Arm observation, that BC English in general is very "lazy", especially in the Interior, and things are slurred a lot....trying to think of other examples....focusing that sibilant 's' is not in the style.....I think User:The Interior knows what I mean......and in areas with lots of natives, native English influences non-native English quite a bit, such as this s/sh thing.....the Shuswap is well-known on the Coast as what imported Ontarians call a "cottage area" (we call them "places" or "cabins"....cottages are little rose-gardened houses in Victoria or Penticton) and so always features in weather forecasts and a lot of media people have places there.... I"m sure if we looked up a Vancouver weathercast we'd hear "Shoeshwap" is what I'm saying........Skookum1 (talk) 02:23, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

BC English and its regional variations have never really been studied by linguists, which means that from-BC good citations for stuff like this just don't exist...sometimes BC Names has a pronunciation given...they don't for Shuswap, I looked though not at all entries. There's definitely some place-specific accents or were before media/migration homogenization.....one I"m familiar with, and used to think was a personality trait, is the way Vernonites sort of talk from the side of their mouths, a certain style of talking......and lots of the Interior (meaning the region, not the user ;-)) has a decided "twang" heritage from cowboy and mining culture, which has close ties with similar south of the line....such accent differences are subtle, often seemingly just tone of voice or "style".....Victorians do talk different than Lower Mainlanders, though, including younger ones....definitely a field for study though dismissed by Central Canadian-based academia which maintains that WEstern Canadian English is homogenous; despite the noticeable difference between Albertans and even BC Interior people....though in the Okanagan, Shuswap and Columbia/East Kootenay regions there's lots of Calgarians now....Skookum1 (talk) 02:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Us interiorites are definitely a bit sloppy in our speech, probably a combination of isolation, American infiltration, cheap beer, and marijuana. We've probably picked up some of the "mushy" sounds of the original shuswappers, and there's a bit of "twang". A fun thing to watch is a long-time Kamloops resident saying "Kamloops". It turns into something like "counts". My native (indian) friends go the other way, where it becomes "kaaahmloops". The Interior (Talk) 05:14, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Roberton's version from the original Secwemptsin is "t'KUM-loops" and sounds weird, that long aaaaa that you describe he over-affects (I've heard him do it live).....if I was any good at IPA dictation and had an academic thing to work on, documenting regional/personal/cultural variations in BC English would be kinda fun......and probably involve a lot of beer and dope LOL.Skookum1 (talk) 05:46, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

If "wop" is how it's pronounced, then the OED vowel is correct after all. Not sure if the two are distinguished in that area. — kwami (talk) 02:33, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

An Administrative Discussion Involving You

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Altaic_languages_Warring

Ethnologue links

Hi, thanks for the info. Does that work for any language with a language box?Dapiks (talk) 19:48, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

English in Guyana

You may want to participate in the discussion at Talk:English language#Map problem. A poster there says that English is spoken by a majority of the people of Guyana; so that it should be colored dark blue on the map. I notice it was you who changed it to light blue. —teb728 t c 03:06, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Origin of word Dravida

I understand you do not agree with my recent edits on Dravidian Languages article. But while reverting the edits you did not give any reasons. It has been documented that one of the earliest reference to world Dravida is by Adi Shankara when he called himself Dravida Shishu. There was also an earlier scholar(pre-Shankara) with the name Dravidacharya from whose name the term may have derived. I have not yet been able to find a source which confirms whether it was he was referring to Dravidacharya so I go by the theory that Dravida means a place where three oceans meet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Indoscope (talk • contribs) 06:42, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your edit mangled the existing text.

Also, since dravida just means 'southern', is there any reason to suppose that he was naming himself for the language family? — kwami (talk) 08:17, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Sirah (rapper)

As the creator and primary editor of International Phonetic Alphabet, I need your help. I have no idea how to enter 'sigh-rah' into an article. Please assist.--Launchballer 21:34, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure. Done. I assume "rah" is supposed to be the same sound as at the end of "Sara", and not really meant to be like "rah-rah". — kwami (talk) 22:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Rgyalrongic

I don't understand why you insist on using the spelling "Jiarongic" and "Jiarong", which are not used by any specialist of these languages, and which look offensive and quite Chinese-imperialistic. Also, by reverting back you deleted some of my corrections. I really don't appreciate.

Rgyalrongskad (talk) 21:50, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not insisting. As I explained on your talk page, I simply expect good editing. You've messed up the links and the edit history of a couple articles, so I reverted you and explained to you how you can do it better. And if you're going to change to such an unintuitive spelling, I think some discussion would be in order. — kwami (talk) 21:56, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Ethnologue uses "Jiarong" and "rGyalrongic". Thurgood & LaPolla as well as ELL2 use "rGyalrong". Van Driem notes that "rGya-rong", "rGyal-rong", and "Jiarong" are all found in the lit. "Gyalrong" or "Gyarung" might be a good compromise, as that r- is going to be confusing to most people. — kwami (talk) 22:28, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I confess that I may not know how to edit and redirect a page, and if you know a proper way to do it please do, but in the process please revert back to the previous version where I added some material (please have a look at the corrected version before reverting it).

I have worked on these languages for more than ten years, and all the people who do research on these languages, including Jackson Sun, Lin Youjing, myself and a few others, all use "Rgyalrong" or "rGyalrong". Ethnologue is not a reliable source. Actually, in the previous version that you deleted, I added a short paragraph explaining the pronunciation of this name.

I insist that "Rgyalrongic" (or "rGyalrongic") is the correct spelling.

The speakers of Rgyalrongic languages preserve complex clusters, and the "r-" is really pronunced. Nobody would insist to simplify the name Rzhev to "Zhev", so why in this particular case insist on using a spelling that nobody uses? Wikipedia, as I understand it, should represent the scholarly consensus, not impose anything new.

Rgyalrongskad (talk) 22:40, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Interesting that the R is still pronounced.

I moved the articles to a Gy- spelling, which I hope is an improvement. No R-, because the Rgy- names were already occupied by redirects, and I did not have authorization to delete them. You can make a request to move to your preference at WP:Requested moves.

As for restoring your content, I would prefer that you did that yourself, so that you get proper credit in the page history, and so that if people have questions in the future, they'll know that you're the person to talk to. (Otherwise it will look like I'm the author, and I'm not going to be able to answer their questions!) Just please don't delete one article and then create a duplicate elsewhere – the appropriate way to change the name of an article is by moving it. (If the target does not exist, then you can do that yourself. The problem arises when an article already exists at the desired location.)

Also, when you change a link (stuff between double brackets in the edit window, [[like this]]), you should check that it still works. Several of the blue links you edited changed to red, meaning you broke them. (You can check your changes with "show preview".) If you just want to change the name that is displayed, not the target article, you can do this with a pipe, like this: [[target article|displayed name]]. — kwami (talk) 02:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for redirecting to "Rgyalrong languages"! It seems that I don't have the function to redirectmyself, so could you do the same with "Gyalrongic > Rgyalrongic"? Thank you in advance. Rgyalrong is a subgroup of Rgyalrongic in Sun's classification (Rgyalrongic minus Lavrung and Horpa), which I suggest to follow here. A last thing, is it possible to suppress redirection of Japhug, Zbu etc to "Rgyalrong languages"? At some stage when I have time I will write an article for each of these languages.

Rgyalrongskad (talk) 06:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

WP:EWN

I'm disappointed but not surprised that you've again chosen violating 3RR over advocating for your preferred changes through discussion. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 05:55, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

No, Roscelese, I'm rejecting the biased changes you keep insisting on despite their near universal rejection by other editors. Rejecting your blind pushing of your own POV is not equivalent to pushing my own. — kwami (talk) 06:20, 11 April 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) 23:27, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Kotava

Hi!

If you want to know why few sources of information in English about Kotava are founded, watch this article (even by an approximative automatical translating owing to Google). http://fr.scribd.com/doc/130318117/PVM-Dakteks-Klaba-FR-Le-paradoxe-des-langues-artificielles-dans-la-communication-moderne

Kotava counts a real community of speakers, like only eight or ten other constructed languages. Many original texts and main translations exist, lexicons with some languages (Zulu, Lingala, Swahili, etc.). This group on Facebook can get you a survey. https://www.facebook.com/groups/441199765956571/

Regards. YuraniA (talk) 09:32, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Some of the claims are factually wrong: Romanova also has an ISO code but no WP article.

So, the reason there isn't any material on Kotava available in English is ... (drum roll) a grand conspiracy against a conlang that isn't based on English! Of course, just like they won't tell us where the real UFOs are.

Can you give me an example of a Kotava word, phrase, or clause that can't be readily translated into French? (I can think of things in Esperanto that can't be readily translated into English; just wondering if Kotava is really international.)

If you can provide RS's that Kotava has a notable community, I doubt there would be any problem with recreating the article. It's just that there are hundreds of personal language projects, and hardly any are notable enough to write about. — kwami (talk) 06:18, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

No, the main purpose of the quoted text is that the Kotava-speakers very little communicate in English, unlike most other fans of auxiliary languages​​, to be coherent with the fundamental aim of such languages​​, arguing that communicate in English does only weaken them. But one consequence of this, among other things, is that Kotava received little response. The same way as in science communication, a publication that does not publish in English is considered unattractive and ignored by the little sphere of international researchers. And as Kotava is an aprioristic language (very different to ​​"western" ones like Esperanto or Interlingua), it's difficult to discover it by a simple pecking flying over.

It is not a matter of conspiracy, just a lack of curiosity. Nevertheless, there are objective facts. Among them, there are hundreds of original texts, hundreds of important translations (see for instance this site: http://www.europalingua.eu/wikikrenteem/Emudexo, fully Kotava). There is also an Kotava encyclopaedia (http://www.kotava.be/xadola/pmwiki.php, 2174 articles), etc.

For specific words or phrases, difficult to translate into several languages, maybe:

- kuré = religious wedding (mariage religieux en français)

- yerumá = civil marriage; civil union, civil partnership; free union (mariage civil en français; union libre reconnue; PACS)

Regards. YuraniA (talk) 12:04, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, you translated those easily enough. There are things in Esperanto I can't say in English except to give an approximation, and Esperanto is culturally Western.

The encyclopedia certainly makes it look as though it's being used. Sources don't need to be in English. The Toki Pona article has been up for deletion four times, and each time people voted to keep it because there are independent references to it, and not just in English. Are there similar references to Kotava in the French press? — kwami (talk) 05:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

() pages

Further to this discussion, I hope you noticed that I actually did this edit for you. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 12:30, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! — kwami (talk) 18:47, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Tłı̨chǫ

I notice that you removed the pronunciation here. That was sourced from the website of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. Do you not think they would know how to pronounce it? But, if you are certain it is incorrect then you presumably know the correct pronunciation, in which case would you mind adding it? Thanks, 86.171.43.180 (talk) 13:11, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure, in Tłı̨chǫ, but not in English. Look at their website: do you really think that Monfwi Gogha De Niitlee is English? — kwami (talk) 18:52, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

That argument depends on their being a distinct English pronunciation, which is different from the nearest English-language approximation to the native pronunciation. If you know that is the case then you must know what it is, so please add it, preferably with a source. Otherwise I will restore the previous sourced and apparently reliable pronunciation guide. 86.171.43.180 (talk) 23:50, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Saying it's pronounced "approximately" that way would be okay, but to add a pronunciation that is neither Tłı̨chǫ nor English while implying that it is the English pronunciation is not. On the website it's obvious that they're not giving English pronunciations, but in copying it out of context on WP we loose that context. — kwami (talk) 00:30, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

What seems "obvious" to me is that the website is explaining to English speakers how they should pronounce those words. I don't see any other possible purpose of that phonetic guide. 86.171.43.180 (talk) 01:02, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Rather it is a suggestion for how English speakers without phonetic knowledge may produce an approximation of the the correct pronunciation.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:08, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, as long as we're clear about that, there's no problem. The problem is in implying that that is the established English pronunciation. You see things like this for half-assed pronunciation of Chinese or Arabic or other languages. That doesn't mean the words actually have English pronunciations. (It's also not clear what the approximation is supposed to mean: Does chon rhyme with 'gone', or with 'cone'?) — kwami (talk) 05:19, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

Secular Islam Summit

I've blocked you for 72 hours for continuing to edit war on Secular Islam Summit after I declined the case and asked for discussion. The fact that you went in there and reverted again not even an hour after I took this action is unfortunate. Please reflect on whether this is the best way to improve Wikipedia and interact with your fellow editors. --Spike Wilbury (talk) 15:10, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, at least you blocked the POV warrior too. — kwami (talk) 18:49, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Revert needed

For anyone watching this page, here are some unsupported edits that showed up on my watch list and need to be reverted:

[1] (E17 reports one self-declared speaker but also declares it extinct; it was reported extinct in the 90s) (fixed)

[2] (edit war on template; now reverted)

The one at Yugh language is supported by Ethnologue; I reverted Wakawaka and Shina, as vandalism. Not sure what's going on on the Template:Language families, so I'd leave that to you. No such user (talk) 07:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

The one at Yugh is also contradicted by Ethnologue, which reports that it's extinct under its other ISO code. — kwami (talk) 07:19, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

[3] (fixed)

Articles for the Rgyalrong languages.

I understand your wanting to help keep up the encyclopedia, but what you're asking here could be considered a form of block evasion - proxy editing on behalf of a blocked user isn't generally allowed. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 07:12, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see. You might have pointed out the complaint at ANI so you didn't look like you were threats. Still, you appear to think the other admins here are morons. I can hardly worry about that. — kwami (talk) 08:40, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

fix Sandawe medial !s

fix Eastern ǂHoan phonolg

ANI

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. 82.132.229.195 (talk) 06:38, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, accusing me of the grievous sin of keeping track of idiotic edits that need fixing. I think the response there was on point. — kwami (talk) 08:45, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Etymology and translations

In chemical elements, we now have the option to add the etymology to the infobox (see for example infobox gold). Could you advise on which phrasing pattern(s) to use? We better do it right first time. Discussion is here. -DePiep (talk) 10:55, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion you might be interested

Talk:Porajmos#Spelling. I will now fix the IPA of the article as far as I can. Lguipontes (talk) 07:49, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Another discussion you might be interested in

There's a discussion about hyphenating long-period variable go on. --JorisvS (talk) 08:09, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Re: User talk:BDD#Please stop

Hello, Kwamikagami. You have new messages at BDD's talk page.
Message added 21:49, 17 April 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Urdu

As for your edits here, Info regarding Urdu as the register of "Hindustani" is found in the following sections already, please don't move it again to lead. Being a Regster of Hindustani was a history, now Urdu is a "South Asian language in the Indo-Aryan branch in the Indo-Euro pean family of languages"! For more, do discuss it at the articles's talk, Thanks. Faizan -Let's talk! 08:23, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

It's been discussed many times. We generally oppose nationalist attempts to deny history. — kwami (talk) 08:26, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello there! This is Wamiq, a user who edited the article Urdu and whose edit you reverted completely. Can you please justify it? Faizan was right when he said that that article was concerned only with Urdu, but that did not mean you remove everything relating to Urdu from before 1900, labelling it as Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu. What you consider Urdu (as being born in 1900) existed much before that (I suppose you already know this, but still?)... So all what you say to be in the realm of Hindustani also comes in the sphere of Urdu (these were synonyms then, Urdu being the official name of the language whereas Hindustani used sometimes in colloquial speech; again I suppose you know this already). Hindi was non-existent before 1867, so calling the language before that as Hindi-Urdu would be an injustice with Urdu. How about replacing that introduction back (after modifications, if you consider appropriate)? Another reservation I have, is regarding your opinion of disregarding Urdu as a seperate language. Urdu should be the broad name of the Hindustani languge as it used to be in the past. This makes Urdu the actual language name as opposed to Hindi and Hindustani. Urdu is not a prejudicial name for a pre-existent language as is Hindi. So it is neither subordinate to Hindustani (in reality being equal to it), nor is equal to Hindi (rather being superordinate to it), which makes it a language in its own right. I hope this is clear now... So would you please review and reconsider your revert? I would be very grateful if you comply with this. Regards.

— Syɛd Шαмiq Aнмɛd Hαsнмi (тαlк) 16:13, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

The article for Urdu/Hindi/Hindustani before the standards split is under the name Hindustani language. That is Urdu. The article we call "Urdu" is for the modern standard language after the split, since people now claim that Hindi and Urdu are separate languages. For most of their history, they were the same language. Since there are three conceptions, we have three articles. The Hindi article too should be about only modern history, even though Hindu activists might want to claim it's 2,000 years old.

When you talk about Urdu before ca. 1900, you're really talking about what we're calling Hindustani. It's rather odd to make the lead to the Modern Standard Urdu article about Hindustani rather than about Modern Standard Urdu. — kwami (talk) 19:41, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks a lot for making that clear to me! Well, can I ask you one thing? You do not seem to be the native speaker of either Hindi or Urdu. Where are you from and how do you know so much about languages which do not seem to be yours? You have put up nothing on your page and your name is so odd, that one could not make a guess regarding you. Please do tell me. Regards!

— Syɛd Шαмiq Aнмɛd Hαsнмi (тαlк) 21:36, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

You're right, I don't speak any language from the Subcontinent. I do have a pretty good understanding of linguistics, though, so if you can make a good linguistic argument with good sources you're likely to convince me. I've learned a lot talking to people here, and hardly think I know everything (though evidently more than some do). My user name Kwami is Ghanaian (Akan) for a man born on Saturday, while Kagami is a Japanese joke on my family name. It's not meant to be transparent!

We have a long history of dispute over these articles, going back years, just as we have in other cases where nationalism creeps in, like Serbo-Croatian, Tagalog vs Filipino, Malay vs Malaysian vs Indonesian, Turkish vs Turkic, and minority languages and dialects all over the world. We've also had a difficult time choosing appropriate titles that people can agree on. Personally, I'd like them to be at Hindustani, Modern Standard Hindi, and Modern Standard Urdu. ("Hindi" is an even more difficult name than Urdu, because there is even greater variation as to what people count as Hindi, as you can see in the language section of the Indian census.) I conceive of Modern Standard Hindi as a variety of Urdu, which is the same as Hindustani, but Hindutva activists would go berserk over that just as Serbian nationalists would go berserk if I were to say Serbian is a variety of Croatian (which I think is a fair statement), and just as Indonesians don't like it when I talk to them in Malay and call the language "Malay", though of course that's what it is. And of course Urdu is in turn a Hindi language, but many Pakistanis would throw a fit about that. Though I have met plenty of Hindi and Urdu speakers, as well as Serbs and Croats, who are perfectly willing to accept that they speak the same language as the other. — kwami (talk) 22:36, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, I have understood the classification of Urdu language into three articles here, but many of my friends haven’t, so they keep on reverting your edit. If you would like to keep it as it is, then no problem, but if you want to fix it back, then what do you think about pasting our conversation over the talk page of Urdu, since many people want to discuss this issue? I think this is the only way of stopping this edit war. Another thing done could be renaming the articles Hindi and Urdu to Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu. This would be more appropriate in my opinion as it would remove misconceptions in the minds of people from both sides. What do you think?

— Syɛd Шαмiq Aнмɛd Hαsнмi (тαlк) 14:29, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I did move Hindi to MSH, but there was a vote to move it back on the basis of COMMONNAME. — kwami (talk) 19:02, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Further discussion to be carried out at Talk:Urdu. Faizan -Let's talk! 15:54, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Bhojpuri language

Editing and writing something in a specified manner as par wikipedia's instruction requires really hard work, i don't know whether you know it or not (because i think you just believe in reverting other's contribution). I contributed much to Bhojpuri language page for several months, because Bhojpuri is my mother tongue. And for yes sake, i can't provide much sources from different sites because it's not what you can get on every site. There's no official site for this language and often clubbed with Eastern Hindi language under Hindi language. It's still not an official/scheduled language. It's considered a dialect of Hindi. It's never been officially stated as a Bihari language because it's chiefly spoken in more districts (perhaps 20) in Uttar Pradesh and 5 or 6 districts in Nepal, whereas it is spoken in just 7 districts of Bihar. And however, it is not an eastern indo aryan language because it is more similar to hindi than bengali. It's quite different from Bihari languages like magadhi or maithili, as they are more similar to bengali. And about the sample texts, you can get it approved it by any bhojpuri speaker. And i'm sure, you'll get almost same translation as i did of the text as Article1 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You know it, it's quite impossible to provide a citation. But you can get it approved somewhere by any bhojpuri speaker. You can trust me. I'm not here to vandalise the page. I'm here just to promote my mother tongue because it's the only open platform on whole cyber world where i can contribute "something" to my language. For the nastaliq script, first of all let me introduce myself to youI'm Samir from Ballia dist. UP. And we speak Bhojpuri the same way other peoples speak but we write bhojpuri in nastaliq script whereas many people uses Devanagari. PS: Forgive my english and please try to understand, what did i want to say. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mywikieditbh (talk • contribs) 05:47, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but we base Wikipedia articles on reliable sources. Our current sources say Bhojpuri is a Bihari rather than Hindi language. That may be wrong, but you'll need to demonstrate it. It's not something that's obvious just because you're a native speaker, and certainly has nothing to do with where it's spoken: There are more English speakers in America than in Europe, but that doesn't mean it's a Native American language! It would also affect more than this one article, because we classify it elsewhere as a Bihari language. (Though I'm not sure what the difference is: core Indic seems like one big dialect continuum.) — kwami (talk) 05:53, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Which reliable source proves it a Bihari language? Can you show me? (I'm askin' the same way you asked me to provide a source.) I didn't mean what you said. Of course, English is spoken (as a mother tongue) by more peoles in Americas than in England but it's not the same case here. It's quite different. English was brought to Americas (US/Canada) by English peoples whereas Bhojpuri was not brought in UP from Bihar. Actually it is native to a region known as Purvanchal which lies mainly in easter Uttar Pradesh (east of Awadh) and few districts of Bihar, as i mentioned earlier. About Sample texts, why did you delete that? Was that wrong? If you think so, you can ask as many bhojpuri speakers as you want. You'll get the same answer. I can show you, how Bhojpuri is not a Bihari language, In Bhojpuri, if we ask "What is your name"? We'd say, "Tahaar naam kaa ha", in magadhi, "Tor naam ki helthi", in Maithili, "Ahaanke naam ki che", in Bengali, "Aapnar naam ki ochhe", whereas in Awadhi, it is "Tahaar naam kaa hai" and in Hindi, it'll be "Tumhara naam kyaa hai". Now, please you decide, where we should put Bhojpuri? In Hindi variant or eastern variant. Please, get me notified when you are done. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mywikieditbh (talk • contribs) 06:17, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

You can trust me. I'm not here to vandalise any page. What could be a more reliable source for a language other that a person who is the native speaker of that language. It's impossible to provide citation for each and every line. How could you expect someone to do so. I'm tellin' you, if i write something with spending lot of time and hard work over it, then it'll not be wrong. Because you've nothing to do with this language. And if something it is, it'll matter to me and it's speakers. Think, if i delete every line of a particular page that really matters to you and ask for a source for each and every line. Could you be able to provide? Please be more liberal and not that much logical because sometime, it is needed. So again, i'm saying, you can rely on me. I can be a reliable source for you because i'm here represent my community. It's completely correct, whatever i had written. You can get it approved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mywikieditbh (talk • contribs) 06:50, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not accusing you of being a vandal. But one native speaker may say one thing, and another just the opposite, so then what do we do? We need published sources. Our sources for classification are Masica (1991) and Kausen (2006). They can be found in the refs at Indic languages.

I don't object to the texts. I reverted you for unsubstantiated changes to the classification; since you were edit warring over it, I didn't pay attention to what else you were adding. — kwami (talk) 07:29, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for showing me the basis of your source but it's still unclear whether Bhojpuri is an Eastern indo aryan language. There's no officially published article proving the same fact. Sorry, i don't agree with yer words "one native speaker may say one thing, and another just the opposite", let me prove yer words in the way it means to me. I'd say "Tum has rahe ho" if i've to say "You're laughing" in Hindi, then other speaker would say, "Main ro raha hoon." Didn't you mean it or did you? Well, i know you didn't mean that but how much one could be different from other? A bit deviation but not "just opposite". If someone (a bhojpuri speaker) objects my written words then i'll be able to manage that by having a conversation with him/her. But you do not speak bhojpuri (after talking this much, i came to this conclusion, sorry if i am wrong) then how can you prove me wrong and delete those sample texts.

And about classification, it is mistakenly considered and written by the first writer (on wikipedia) as a Bihari language because it is spoken natively in a few western part of Bihar. And since then it is written every page of wikipedia and from wikipedia to several blogspots as a Bihari language. I've already showed you that it is not similar to other bihari languages. Pls let me contribute something unobjected and without conflict to this page, because it'll not affect you nor any person. Mywikieditbh (talk) 08:44, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

I have rewritten sample texts but didn't revert yer changes on classification. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mywikieditbh (talk • contribs) 09:01, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

We use sources. Our sources say Bhojpuri is a Bihari language. You can counter that by providing sources to the contrary, and letting people evaluate them on the talk page. — kwami (talk) 19:38, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

Sure. I'll do my best and find out some reliable source to prove you my point. Thanks for discussing. Mywikieditbh (talk) 03:59, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Kwamikagami. You have new messages at Talk:Urdu.
Message added 07:54, 21 April 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Faizan -Let's talk! 07:54, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Layout of vowel articles

Hi Kwami. I noticed that the layout of our vowel articles is just awful. For example, Near-close near-back vowel has a huge blank portion right in the middle, followed by the 100% wide table. I think the main culprit is {{IPA chart vowels}}, which is placed above the tables. However, it is completely redundant -- all articles have {{IPA navigation}} at the botom, which already embeds the former. Since you're an experienced AWB user, would you please make a run of it and remove the offending template from all the vowel articles? No such user (talk) 07:40, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

No time right now. Maybe I'll get to it before this gets archived? — kwami (talk) 09:03, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Kiix?in (Keeshan) needs IPA

See talkpage at either link, not sure I've spelled that first one right. The second one will redirect to the first one, or the intended first one.Skookum1 (talk) 07:45, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Don't think I can help with that one. Is the question mark supposed to be a glottal stop? — kwami (talk) 08:23, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yup, or it is normally in BC anyways; usually you see "7" in most orthographies, I'm not familiar with Nuu-chah-nulth-ese.....("Nootka" is a misnomer like Kwakiutl is for Kwak'wala). I'll ask User:OldManRivers, who's Squamish and Nimpkish and teaches Squamish, he may know...the anglicized vowels don't match what you'd think the indigenous spelling indicates huh? That's kinda normal I guess, same with Squamish vs Skwxwu7mesh or however it's spelled.Skookum1 (talk) 08:53, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, a misnomer just like half the other proper names in English, such as German, Greek, Chinese, Indian (of both hemispheres), and American. I'll keep using it.

I haven't looked at Nootka for years, and the consonants don't match very well either. Assuming Kiix?in is correct, the conversion to IPA is trivial. — kwami (talk) 09:02, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of PC-ness, but if you read up on the subject, and talk to OldManRivers, who's half-'Namgis himself, it's extremely rude to call someone from another Kwakwaka'wakw group a Kwakiutl....particular groups anyway, as the Lekwiltok readily translate themselves as Southern Kwakiutl....on the other hand they have their origins near Prince Rupert and are closely related to the Kwagyulh there....on the Kwakwaka'wakw social ladder, they're near the bottom of the social rankings of the various people; calling someone from e.g. the Tanakteuk or 'Namgis or another group, aside from the social derogation that they feel from it, would be like calling Quebecois "Acadians"....the infobox should at least have "(misnomer)" next to that, and within BC anyway "Kwak'wala" is now standard usage for "Kwakiutl language. Every bit as inappropriate as calling the Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv (Owekeeno -> Rivers Inlet people) "Northern Kwakiutl. Same as with "Nootka language".....there's a Nootka dialect, certainly, of the Nuu-chah-nulth language (which SFAIK doesn't have its own name within that language) but "the Nootka language" while it's common English is again very incorrect.....long ago "Aht" was used for all the Southern Wakashan, other than the Kwakwaka'wakw that is, and including Makah....but also the Sto:lo and Musqueam and their neighbours were called "Cowidgin" (Cowichan) because of the same language, albeit different dialects...."Cowidgin Indian by Fraser River near Hope", for example, you'll see on old some old photos. Terminology is a political hot potato in BC, as we've all painfully learned ;-).Skookum1 (talk) 08:52, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

re this, I'm not the one passing judgment, the Kwak'wala-speaking community are the ones who judged and deemed it unsuitable. I'll wait for OldManRivers to weigh in, I think some of this is footnoted/referenced on the Kwakiutl page.Skookum1 (talk) 09:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

What do we do for other cases like this, such as German? "Misnomer" might be okay, but "inappropriate" is opinion, not fact. — kwami (talk) 09:20, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Edits

Hey dude! As you are one of the forty most active Wikipedians, I just wanted to get some tips on how I can also catch up with you? Faizan -Let's talk! 08:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

First, do you have a life? If you do, you need to do something about that. Moving your pantry next to your computer and your computer into the bathroom should help.

Second, making small corrections or additions to many articles with AWB racks up the edits. For example, you could check all 30,000 (or whatever) transclusions of the English IPA template for common errors, such as letter sequences which are not supported by the English IPA chart that the template links to. Once you get the search program written, you can make thousands of edits fairly quickly. Or, since WP decided to go with the name "Burma" rather than "Myanmar", you could search for the 5,000 (or whatever) remaining links to or inappropriate uses of "Myanmar" and change them to "Burma". Gripping stuff, I know: You'll have stories for your grandchildren. I'm sure they'll be suitably impressed.

Two of the things I did that resulted in large edit numbers were to correct and normalize the IPA transcriptions in most of the languages we supported at the time, while formating them with the correct IPA template; and creating stubs on the several thousand languages with ISO codes that we didn't have yet. That stage is pretty much done, but you could check all 7,000 ISO language articles against the 17th edition of Ethnologue, verify that the number of speakers is correct, add the date of the Ethnologue figure (that is, the date of their source), and generate an auto link to Ethnologue to support it. That could add maybe 5,000 edits to your total. (If you decide to do something like that, let me know: There are some conventions we've been using that aren't necessarily obvious, and Ethnologue has data problems that need to be considered rather than blindly copying them.) If you're into biology, then there are literally millions of articles you could create. Pick a genus or family and create a stub for each species. That should keep you busy for a few lifetimes. — kwami (talk) 08:41, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this help! I will need more time, obviously I cannot speed up without proper backup. Just a last question, can we only fix or replace Typos mainly with AWB? I mean to say we can do nothing else which can increase edit count? Faizan -Let's talk! 09:13, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Hey, see #Layout of vowel articles above. That'll give you a few, and would be good training for AWB if you haven't used it.

If you're into programing, you can create bots that run on autopilot. However, they can be quite disruptive if they run out of control, so you need to pass an audit for each run. Once people know you're reliable and approve you quickly, you'll find there's often a backlog of bot requests; sometimes they can involve tens of thousands of articles. AFAICT, the users with the highest numbers of edits are mostly bot accounts. — kwami (talk) 09:08, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I will start now, do I have to remove {{IPA chart vowels}}? Faizan -Let's talk! 09:18, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I think that's what NoSuchUser wanted, but you'll want to play around with the first one to see what the effects are. Also, if there's been no discussion on the article talk pages, there's always the possibility that someone will object and want to to revert yourself. Charts like that are often useful for navigation, but the consonant articles only have one hidden at the bottom, so doing the same for the vowels wouldn't be out of line. But take a look at Close-mid central rounded vowel: is the chart really doing any harm? Is it doing more good by being visible?

If you get approval for AWB, something like this is trivial, and should get you comfortable with its layout. — kwami (talk) 09:25, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

He's already AWB approved, and I've fiddled around with it, and the position= parameter doesn't ever help. I think the excising the thing is probably the best course of action. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 09:29, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

There's a {{clear}} below it in that article. I think we should keep it; it's convenient. — Lfdder (talk) 09:43, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure about that. Without the {{IPA chart vowels}} template, the "Occurrences" table seems to fit just fine. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 09:49, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Faizan, what I would do is set up my AWB list with What transcludes page: template:IPA navigation, then use the normal find and replace to replace {{IPA chart vowels}} with nothing. Just remember to actually check all the edits, because AWB does a lot of automatic cleanup stuff, and it isn't always perfect. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 09:33, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

OK, I got it, I am AWB Approved. Thanks Kwami and Isaac! Faizan -Let's talk! 09:39, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Request further discussion about SignWriting in Unicode

Hi! I appreciate your edits on the paragraph explaining the layout issues for SignWriting in Unicode. It's clearer now. I was, however, puzzled why you deleted the next two paragraphs that I had added. Could you leave some further explanation on the talk page? Thanks. AlbertBickford (talk) 13:26, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Uyghur language

Hi kwami, I left a note at Talk:Uyghur language#Pronunciation. Best, rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:21, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Wondering about your Christopher Ehret edits

Hi Kwami, I was a bit surprised by your edits and thought it worth slowing things down and asking for some opinion. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Christopher_Ehret_as_a_source_for_Afroasiatic_subjects . I am not going to loose sleep about it, but I find it odd because it seems to me this is a very highly cited author in this area and your sweep of articles mentioning him seems entirely based on his academic titling?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

He may not be the best historical linguist, but it's quite clear that he can, indeed, be considered a linguist. He is widely cited in linguistic literature and he has a clear following in linguistic circles. While he may teach in a history department that doesn't mean anything in terms of linguistics. I teach in an English department, but I'm still a linguist. I think that in this case, kwami's elimination of Ehret's citations just because kwami doesn't think he's a linguist is unjustified and Ehret should be returned to his place. As I start with, he may not be the best historical linguist in certain respects, but we all can't be the best. --Taivo (talk) 21:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

What following? Linguists do not take him seriously. His work is shoddy, he doesn't bother to consider the work that others have done before him, and he hasn't been invited to relevant conferences for years. From what I understand, his reputation among archeologists is similar. Perhaps Afroasiatic is an exception, but his Nilo-Saharan and Khoisan work is ignored unless an author feels the need to overtly dismiss it. He's like Greenberg with Amerindian, though at least Greenberg is respected as a pioneering typologist. Talk to specialists in these fields, and if you bring up a claim that Ehret has made, the response is, well, that's just Ehret, no need to bother with it. — kwami (talk) 23:02, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

(Continued at WP:RSN#Christopher_Ehret_as_a_source_for_Afroasiatic_subjects.)

Shabo language

Hi Kwami. I don't want to get into an edit war over this. But I am really unhappy that you don't honor my request to discuss things on the talk page before reverting again. People might even be divided on the question whether Ehret is a linguist or not. He may not have the formal training, but neither had Bender nor (as far as I know) Blench nor lots of other good and worthy researchers that you don't mind to cite when you happen to agree with their works - therefore you yourself don't take your slogan "let's stick to linguists for linguistic claims" very serious. Fact is that not all linguists, as you claim, reject Ehret, and more to the point, his works have been published in peer-reviewed linguistic books, so they fulfill all the criteria for works to be cited on Wikipedia, alongside with all other duly published works on the matter. I noticed that you are trying to purge all of Wikipedia of the works of Ehret, and that without engaging in any discussion on the matter. This is POV-pushing behavior that is not encouraged on Wikipedia. I'm going to revert your edit one more time. If you then revert again without beginning a discussion first on the page, I will be forced to call in the help of an unbiased admin. Just as an aside: I don't agree with Ehret myself, but I do believe that it is not right to remove duly published sources from Wikipedia entries, just because one doesn't like them. And this is precisely what you are doing right now. Landroving Linguist (talk) 19:28, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone else cite him for Shabo? This was published in a colloquium proceedings - I could get published as a RS on Shabo if that's all it took!

If it has been published, go ahead, put it in there. Landroving Linguist (talk) 11:40, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

This is not a matter of me not liking Ehret. It's a matter of experts in the field saying he's not a reliable source. There are good sources out there we can use; we don't need to resort to substandard ones. — kwami (talk) 19:43, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

I just checked Schnoebelen's article. He cites Ehret, without any disparaging remarks. Landroving Linguist (talk) 19:55, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

He was a student! We're taking students in linguistic programs as experts in the evaluation of whether presentations at conferences are RS's? Why don't we just go to wherever Ehret got his data from (assuming he bothers to cite it), or better yet see what's been published in the 20 years since? — kwami (talk) 20:02, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, then who is an expert on the field of Shabo linguistics? Except for Schnoebelen no-one has ever written anything on Shabo since Ehret's paper. Except for Schnoebelen no-one could have cited him. And Schnoebelen knew quite well what he was writing about. Landroving Linguist (talk) 20:25, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Are you saying that Ehret is only mentioned in our article because of Schnoebelen? — kwami (talk) 20:28, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Ehret is mentioned because he published an article on Shabo in a refereed conference proceedings volume, a reliable secondary source according to Wikipedia's standards. BTW, I can accept your adding of RS tags in the article. Better than deleting the information. Landroving Linguist (talk) 11:40, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Quick question on Gender-neutral pronoun

Hello,

I just had a quick question, did you mean to remove the Chinese, and Malay/Indonisian sections? Those two were well sourced from what I can see. I may be missing what the issue was with those two. If it is something glaringly obvious that I missed feel free to trout me. Thanks! --Cameron11598 (Converse) 22:30, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind on the Chinese part I see it is also included further down on the page. My apologies! Feel free to ignore my question! --Cameron11598 (Converse) 22:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

As for the other languages, we note in the lead that maybe 5,000 languages have gender-neutral pronouns. I even added a map. There really isn't any point in listing them all and stating over and over again that their pronouns don't have gender, when the purpose of the article is how people handle gender-neutral situations within the constraints of the gendered pronouns of English. Parallel strategies in other gendered languages would be relevant, but not the thousands of languages where there isn't a problem. — kwami (talk) 22:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

That makes sense to me! Thanks for the explanation. --Cameron11598 (Converse) 02:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Just a side comment. In David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus he uses "ae" for the gender-neutral characters, "aer" for the possessive, for example.........as for the real world, lots of languages have the neuter gender; in Norwegian the masculine and feminine are now the common gender, there's still the neuter.....I think Nynorsk may still distinguish the feminine, but Bokmal doesn't.Skookum1 (talk) 02:25, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Both would be worth including, if we can source the diff tween Nynorsk & Bokmal. — kwami (talk) 02:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

It's probably on the Nynorsk page somewhere, i.e. the separate feminine and masculine genders vs. the common gender in Bokmal....the creation of the common gender is probably described in the Bokmal article.....another literary item comes to mind, also, in Clive Barker's Imajica there's a race of hermaphrodites, I think he coins a term there too....maybe it's "ae" there and something else in Arcturus, been a long time since I read either one.Skookum1 (talk) 04:23, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, we probably have enough hokey proposals from the real world that it would be trivia to start adding stuff from sci-fi. But Norwegian would definitely be of interest, even if it's really just a dialectical difference. — kwami (talk) 04:50, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Arcturus is not really sci-fi, it was written in 1917 and is in a class by itself, quite indescribable, really. This section on that page doesn't mention the neutral pronoun but it does mention jale and ulfire and sorbing..... real fascinating read, if you've got the time and the flexible imagination to survive reading it....Skookum1 (talk) 07:32, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

[undent] re "dialectical difference" re Nynorsk/Bokmal, I believe they're not considered dialects but separate languages; Nynorsk was formed by combining 5 (or 7?) regional dialects into a new language, and I think it's written up that way in Norwegian legislation.Skookum1 (talk) 07:33, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I thought they had a different dialectical basis. My point was that this was not actually a reform to the pronouns, but simply a dialectical difference in the pronominal system. While interesting and relevant, it is perhaps not a good parallel to the problems of gender neutrality in English. — kwami (talk) 21:24, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Bokmal is based on Danish and was formerly known, and slightly different, as Dano-Norwegian; I had my grandfather's "Learn Norwegian" books, or I guess they were my father's bought for him by his father; very different looking than modern Bokmal......gender neutrality I think is a linguistic discussion there still, and there might be conventions in Nynorsk for non-gendered pronouns for people; the "De" formal is neutral in gender, also. As far as English goes, "they" for the plural gender-neutral is obvious anyway; around here when not knowing an editors' gender I tend to use "he/she"......Skookum1 (talk) 01:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Sorbian

How do the templates mess up formatting? The formatting looks fine to me with the templates, and aren't we supposed to let the HTML know when we're writing non-English words? Angr (talk) 07:53, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

For me, the words are all bold and twice the size of the rest of the text, making the page look rather ridiculous. I suppose the templates need to be corrected, or reverted back to what they were originally. I'll bring it up on the template page. — kwami (talk) 21:20, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

OK. For me, the words are just in italics and otherwise just like the surrounding text. Maybe it's something in your CSS? Angr (talk) 19:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

I asked on the TT page, and s.o. w the same prob figured it out: In FF, you need to make sure your regional Latin-family font prefs (Baltic, Greek, etc.) are all the same. Mine weren't. We should probly h s.t. on the template instruction page about this. — kwami (talk) 19:25, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yeah. That happened to me too. I asked about it at Wiktionary's Grease pit last year and got the same answer. Angr (talk) 21:00, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

new page Sinixt language

Per my request of her, User:Kootenayvolcano has created Sinixt language as what she describes as a stub but which is already a lot more; but it needs the usual infobox, ISO code (if any?), etc. I referred her to you for help making this look like other language pages, but decided to give you a heads-up anyway.Skookum1 (talk) 03:34, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

The Sinixt are one of the Okanagan peoples. Their language may be a distinct Okanagan dialect. — kwami (talk) 05:45, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

LOL I just saw that change....this should be interesting.... ;-)..........in Dawson, Teit and Boas they speak of "Shuswap" as including Okanagan, Sinixt, and the now-Colville languages as all being part and parcel of the same, likewise Thompson language and even Lillooet....Skookum1 (talk) 05:53, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

WP:Minefield should be a WP section somewhere ;-).Skookum1 (talk) 05:54, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

The Sinixt people article and the Okanagan language article both already say this, and that's not a problem, so I don't see why it should be a minefield. — kwami (talk) 05:57, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

You haven't "met" Sinkalip yet. See User talk:Sinkalip....and review his edits this last while.Skookum1 (talk) 07:43, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

when I hear "cultural sensitivities" invoked as a reason for biased edits, I have to walk away, all that I can do, really. Other indigenous editors listen to reason; but some only want to listen to their reasons.Skookum1 (talk) 07:47, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Colville cite

I had a look through it last night; it doesn't say anything about the Ktunaxa now; it did once upon a time, as I recall; that page (the Colville one) is edited/monitored by people from the Colville Rez, might be worth asking on that talkpage.Skookum1 (talk) 09:12, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Strecker amino-acid synthesis

Hi there

Last year, you moved this article from Strecker amino acid synthesis to Strecker amino-acid synthesis. Could you tell me why? Thanks! --Rifleman 82 (talk) 14:24, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes. "Amino acid" is one word, so it takes a hyphen when modifying another. Otherwise it would mean something like the Strecker acid synthesis of aminos. For anyone familiar with the field the correct reading is so obvious they wouldn't possibly mis-parse it, and the hyphen can be safely dropped (like high school student for high-school student – no-one's going to read the former as school students who are high). But we're a general encyclopedia, so our audience is mostly people who aren't familiar with such things, and full punctuation is clearer. — kwami (talk) 19:21, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! --Rifleman 82 (talk) 20:25, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Dravidian languages / Your revert

Why did you revert my rewrite attempt? Those edits were perfectly sourced, stylistically relevant and improved the overall quality of the article, especially relating to understanding Proto-Dravidian. You obviously intentionally interrupt my work for some reason. Kindly explain your behaviour or this will become very very ugly as I've put much time in it.-- Dravidian  Hero  20:42, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Since you remain mum in this case, I will discuss it on ANI. I want a neutral public opinion, maybe I'll get you warned or something similar. I know you are a hell of a senior, but such kind of sabotage must be considered disruptive enough.-- Dravidian  Hero  22:04, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.-- Dravidian  Hero  22:06, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Try the talk page. Some of your changes may have been for the better, but I reverted because many of them were not. — kwami (talk) 05:25, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of File:Sex-based and non-sex-based gender sytems.jpg

A tag has been placed on File:Sex-based and non-sex-based gender sytems.jpg requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section F3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is an image licensed as "for non-commercial use only," "non-derivative use" or "used with permission," it has not been shown to comply with the limited standards for the use of non-free content. [4], and it was either uploaded on or after 2005-05-19, or is not used in any articles. If you agree with the deletion, there is no need to do anything. If, however, you believe that this image may be retained on Wikipedia under one of the permitted conditions then:

• state clearly the source of the image. If it has been copied from elsewhere on the web you should provide links to: the image itself, the page which uses it and the page which contains the license conditions.
• add the relevant copyright tag.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. ALH (talk) 11:22, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

I took a look at [5] and indeed, its license is not suitable for Wikipedia. Not every CC license is; it has to be CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. But this image is CC-BY-NC-ND, which by excluding commercial use and derivative works is not free enough for Wikipedia. Also, the base map is taken straight from Google Maps, whose terms on reuse are also anything but free. So unfortunately the image really did have to be deleted. Angr (talk) 19:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Alveolo-palatals

Back when you created Alveolo-palatal lateral approximant and Alveolo-palatal nasal, why did you include certain languages, but not others, even though several were not directly sourced? Maybe you could add your input to User talk:Lfdder#Alveolo-palatals. --JorisvS (talk) 14:29, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

"Templates to auto-respell IPA format"

"Templates to auto-respell IPA format" are discussed at User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 132#Templates to auto-respell IPA format (version of 23:37, 2 May 2013).
—Wavelength (talk) 00:03, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

CfRs on Nuxalk, Sto:lo and St'at'imc categories

I know I'm not supposed to poll but this is ethnolinguistics related and you've done a lot for tribe names and general linguistic corrections for FN and NA articles, of course, so it seemed natural to let you know about it. NB the St'at'imc one can't be "Lillooet" as a cat name, despite the article name (which was changed recently when you (?) moved e.g. St'at'imcets to Lillooet language). The tribal council goes by both Lillooet Tribal Council and St'at'imc Nation; the disadvantage the latter name has is that unless you've been taught you have know way to know that's really pronounced more or less "Slatliumh" like you see in the old maps and histories ("Nlaka'pamux" shows up as Haukamaugh); so though Lillooet people exists as an ethnography article and Lillooet language as a linguistics one, the self-identifier of the main organization of the whole grouping is St'at'imc Nation....though the vintage '70s spelling is still used by the Lower Stl'atl'imx and also the Nequatque Band (D'Arcy). The main thrust of these CfRs is to make them easy to type; not to harmonize them with their main articles, and re the fact that the common usages in media and local publications, unless pointedly ethnographic in nature, don't have the diacriticals (other than the colon in Sto:lo). Wanted to add Sto:lo category several times today to IR redirects but didn't want to spend all that time copy-pasting, which adds up when you're doing dozens of entries...I'll throw this by {{NorthAmNative}} too; CfD is a kinda quiet place lately.....not that I'm looking for action/opposition LOL. Oh here is the Sto:lo CfR, the other two are immediately above it.Skookum1 (talk) 16:57, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with ease-of-editing arguments for article names, but category names are a case where I think they're justified.

BTW, I've argued against using en dashes in cat names for the same reason, even though I'm one of the ones pushing them in article names; after a bot came through and changed a bunch of cat names to dashes and I complained about it, a solution was found where you could type a hyphen and it would auto-correct to a dash. The same kind of solution should be available to Sto:lo if people insist on the diacritics, or if there's a bot which keeps adding them. — kwami (talk) 19:11, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

The diacritical are only advocated/used by member bands of one of the two tribal councils, not sure what the non-TC ones use......as a general usage "Sto:lo" without other diacriticals is now commonplace and the most widely used.Skookum1 (talk) 05:06, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Please note BrownHairedGirl's comment on the Nuxalk CfR re the main article title.....I'm going to have to make Nuxalk people separate from the government article, as is standard, but worried it will become Bella Coola people; see my comments in reply to GoodOlfactory on the St'atimc section too.Skookum1 (talk) 05:04, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

the negative responses coming from the CfD are from people who insist that the main articles and cat names should match.....but since you went and changed all the main articles to "X people" from their ethnonyms, that's resulting in unpalatable results, e.g. the insistence now the Category:Squamish people is viable as an alternative; it's not. See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_May_4#Category:Squamish.Skookum1 (talk) 12:54, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

British county names

Just pointing out that this hasn't gone unnoticed: [6]. I'm not sure of your reasoning, but it may awake discussions from three years ago. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:07, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

We should use the same IPA conventions for all English counties unless we give the local pronunciations – and those need to be clearly marked as such. The majority were in keeping with the British–American–Australian consensus at WP:PRON, but a few have diverged from our standards since I last checked them. — kwami (talk) 02:35, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

[7] The local pronunciation does not may have have a rhotic R. Please provide proof that it does - I am from Worcestershire. I would assume that an encyclopediac entry should use standard British pronunciation and not some very local argot.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:53, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

PS: There are three very distinct accents covering the county, from Birmingham to Hereford. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:56, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but if you want to add the local pronunciation, I'm afraid you'll have to do the research. (Especially since you're from there!) Or perhaps you could make a request on some project's talk page?

PS. A British encyclopedia would use standard British pronunciation. But we're not a British encyclopedia. We write for all nationalities, or at least we try to. — kwami (talk) 03:16, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

ANI

Hello. There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. -- Dravidian  Hero  05:55, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Fix "pronounced as": François Villon, Khawaja Nazimuddin, Chipewyan people, Oerth, Apparatchik, Pencoed

Khmu people

Khmu people have only you with a registered account, so I ask your advice as to what I should do with the following:

• Murdoch, John B. (1974). "The 1901-1902 Holy Man's Rebellion" (free). Journal of the Siam Society. JSS Vol.62.1 (digital). Siam Heritage Trust: image 2. Retrieved April 2, 2013. Footnote 8) 'Kha' is the common, though somewhat pejorative, term used for the Austroasiatic tribal people of Northeast Thailand, Laos, and Viet-nam. I use it here because it is common parlance in the literature and for lack of a better term. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |nopp= (help)
• Lan_Xang#McCarthy.27s_account_of_1894: "He waited a few days and then pierced another, when a black man issued forth, who became the progenitor of all the Ka Che, or Kamu."
• ข่า khaa definition 2. noun, colloquial: a tribe of Mon-Cambodian descent residing on mountains

Royal Institute of Thailand#1999_edition online has a similar def. 2.

I implore your advice before making any changes to the existing article. Addition of the term would entail changing Kha from a redirect to a disambiguation, which would then need numerous additions for similar-sounding Thai words with the same transliteration, but a different Thai spellings and meanings. It would also call for an addition to Racial_slurs#K.

With that out of the way, I could attempt using the single source for the Holy Man's Rebellion (1901-1902).

As to that, I puzzled as to why Charles Keyes would refer to such as "Millenialism," "Millennialism" or "Millenarianism," when it seems to me a clear cut case of Messianism, given that this particular Holy Man was putting himself forward as the Buddhist Maitreya.

Hold on: I just looked up his tribal affiliation and found these three articles.

• Ong Keo
• Ong Kommandam
• Alas! and Alak people

Should I just go hide my head?

(I'm vopying this to my talk page; if you reply there, I'll get an email notfication.) —Pawyilee (talk) 12:39, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Uranus'(s)

Hi, Kwamikagami. "Uranus" ends in an "s," and I was always taught to put only an apostrophe to form the possessive when singular words end in "s." However, when I Googled to find something to support my case, the first three links say that it is now common to include another "s." I wonder if this is a difference between American (me) and British English, or if this is now the case everywhere, but this is the first time I'm hearing about this. Interesting! For reference, this is the fourth most popular link (first one that agrees with me!): http://www.meredith.edu/grammar/plural.htm JustAMuggle (talk) 03:20, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

You don't add another ess to plurals that already take an ess, but I'm used to seeing an ess if you would pronounce it. AFAIK it's not a US/UK thing; for example, John C. Wells at University College London (editor of the Longman Pronouncing Dictionary) uses Wells's (pronounced as two syllables) for his own name. (See "John Wells's phonetic blog",[8] which is quite British.)

D'oh! Okay, you are American. If anything, I would think a second ess is more common in the US than in the UK. Let's see: the Chicago Manual of Style says to add apostrophe-ess even when the noun ends in an ess, ex, or zee (Dickens's, Dow Jones's; unless of course it's a plural), but further down notes that it's "acceptable" to add only an apostrophe, especially in journalism. Garner's Modern American Usage say basically the same thing; they even go through the history of the AP Stylebook gradually scaling back on the rule against it, though many journal editors use apostrophe-ess despite AP guidelines. Garner's says there is an exception for biblical and classical names which end in /zəs/ or /iːz/, where you only add an apostrophe: Aristophanes', Jesus', Moses', Xerxes', and also an exception for a word ending in /s/ or /z/ before the word "sake" (for appearance' sake). So no, it doesn't look like it's American either, just an old rule that's gradually being abandoned, as more and more people write as they speak. — kwami (talk) 03:28, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Indic letter articles

So we got absolutely no feedback on Indic/Devanagari articles at writing systems, and it even got so stale it archived, so it looks like it's up to us on this one. I've done a mock up of the first quarter of an Indic letter article at Ka (Indic), with a template {{Indic glyph}}, based on {{Phoenician glyph}}, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on whether this looks like a good place to proceed from, and also see what you would add in to this guy. I'm currently looking to get feedback on uploading Tocharian letter images, and I've commented out a whole bunch of scripts that would just be continuations of the same sort of content. I watchlist your talk page, the article, and template talk pages, so comment, add stuff, remove stuff, and we'll see if we can start to build this content up. If we can get this one article up to a really full content, it may also give us a good feel on how it compares to the Semitic letter articles, and whether we should actually be doing content forks of some of the script families, like the Devanagari ka article. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 05:13, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to best go about this; it is redundant to have both a consolidated Indic article and separate Nagari, Bengali, etc. articles. — kwami (talk) 16:46, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

What I'm really trying to do is explore what content we want to fork, and which we want to keep in one place - like a nice table of genetic relationship between characters. I also think the best defense against AfDs like Devanagari ka is to establish that an article with all of these characters is far too unwieldy. I think it's worth the time to explore forking off (I don't know all the proper indic script family names) as much as articles on the eastern Nagari letters, the western Nagari, the Sharada family, the Grantha family, Indonesian scripts, Tai scripts, Philippine scripts, and then have the X (Indic) as a catch-all for all the miscellaneous, ie Brahmi, Tocharian, Kharoshthi, Kalinga, Kannada, Telugu, etc. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Vanisaac, I prefer that Wikipedia have a separate article on each Indic character shown at http://www.ukindia.com/zalph.htm.

—Wavelength (talk) 17:03, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh, almost certainly, each of those would at least be the locus of a separate article. Ka (Indic), as it is currently, is kind of designed as a proof by contradiction so that we can justify forks for the Devanagari, Bengali, Punjabi, etc. But we also need a place where all of those characters are at least briefly discussed, their genetic relationship explained, and all the individual articles can be linked together. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:11, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Origin of Urdu words

Hi, Kwami! Just wanted to discuss with YOU the origin of Urdu as discussed at Talk:Urdu. I am totally confused. I do not have the time to research right now (just 10 days to go for my first exam), that is why I am better asking you. I have always read and we are always told that Urdu formed through mixing of different languages in the Mughal Army. Later on, it gained popularity in the Mughal reign. In the British period, it replaced Persian as official language, at which Hindus resented and Sanskritised Urdu, renaming it Hindi and advocated the replacement of foreign Urdu with the native Hindi. After Independence, Pakistan standradised Urdu and made it its official language and India made standradised Hindi, its national language. And that is the reason for a small number of Urdu speakers, because it was not a natural language associated with any ethnic group. It was just progressed by Muslims and so it came to be labelled as the common language of all Muslims. There must be something in Taivo’s explanation, but it doesn’t fit into this picture. Our textbooks and dictionaries along with our teachers endorse the idea. To quote an example from our Urdu textbook for class nine (relating to spelling conventions): When a word ends in a long ā sound, there are two ways of writing it down, one is -ā and the other is -ah. For words of Arabic or Persian (which I classify as Western) origin, most words having long ā sound at the end are written -ah, whereas words of Hindi (this is ironical, words in Urdu cannot be derived from Hindi, but think the author(s) meant words of Hindu, i.e., Sanskrit/Prakrit origin, which I classify as Eastern) origin are transcribed with -ā instead of -ah in most cases. Now see, this clearly gives the notion that most words belong to these two categories (my teacher actually said this while telling us the rule, besides dictionaries also list those Urdu words also used in Hindi as being borrowed from Hindi) and this process of eliminating words to each language, leaves few words which do not fit anywhere and could be classified as being a native Urdu innovation. That was my point over there. I hope you have understood my view. What do you think about this? Thanks in advance. Regards.

—Syɛd Шαмiq Aнмɛd Hαsнмi (тαlк) 05:51, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Urdu is Hindustani. It is mixed the same way that English is mixed. Most of the basic vocabulary is Hindi (Indic) in the same way that most basic English vocabulary is Germanic. "Hindi" here doesn't mean Modern Standard Hindi, which is just a version of Urdu that didn't even exist at the time and should really be given a less ambiguous name, but rather one of the Hindi languages, specifically the Khari Boli dialect of Delhi (or, before that, whichever dialect further west that Urdu/Hindustani was originally based on, before the court moved to Delhi). A lot of Persian vocabulary was adopted by Hindustani/Urdu speakers (that is, by local Indians) from the Persian-speaking Moghul court in Delhi, just as a lot of French vocabulary was adopted by English speakers from the Norman French court in London. A lot of Arabic vocab was adopted due to the Muslim religion, just as a lot of Latin vocabulary was adopted by English speakers due to the Christian religion. Each language even had a third influence: Chagatai Turkish in Urdu due to the Chagatai elements in the army, and Danish/Scandinavian in English due to the Danelaw. But Urdu wasn't "invented" from above any more than English was "invented"; you can't remove the "Hindi" (Indic) vocabulary from Urdu any more than you can remove the Germanic vocabulary from English, because at its core it *is* Indic. And whatever the history of Urdu, that is also the history of (Modern Standard) Hindi, because, as you noted, Hindi is Urdu.

BTW, not all of the Sanskrit influence in Urdu is due to Hindu nationalists in the period leading up to independence: All during the Moghul Empire, the majority of the population was Hindu, so even Muslims of that time used Sanskrit words, just as Hindus used Persian and Arabic words.

The problem you're having with the word "Hindi" is that it doesn't mean just one thing. Hindi can be any dialect of the Hindi Belt, such as Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Chhattisgarhi, or Hindustani/Khari Boli/Dehlavi. So when someone says word X in Urdu comes from "Hindi", you need to ask what they mean by "Hindi", because it obviously isn't the modern official language of India. (Maybe some Hindu nationalists really do mean it that way, but if they do, they're ignorant of their own history.) What they usually mean when they say a word is "Hindi" is that it is one of the original words, before the addition of Persian and Arabic. A few words probably came from other Hindi languages after the main era of Persian and Arabic borrowings, just as English adopted Dutch, Swedish, German, and other Germanic words after the main era of French and Latin borrowings, but I suspect there aren't all that many of them.

There are a couple ways that a new language can be created: As an artificial language project, like Esperanto, or as a creole. Urdu is neither: It's simply the local Indic language that was adopted by the Moghul army and court (that's why it was called "Hindustani": it was the existing local language of Hindustan), and it subsequently underwent strong influences from the other languages spoken by the army and court. But the additions are almost entirely vocabulary. Basic vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar remain Indic, not some kind of artificial mixture, just as the basic vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar of English remains Germanic. (Yes, there are a few Persian influences in Urdu pronunciation and grammar, just as there are a few French influences in English pronunciation and grammar, but they are minor compared to the massive inheritance from the Indic origin of the language.)

You have used the spurious invented-language argument to explain the relatively small number of native Urdu speakers, but that's an artificial definition of Urdu. Urdu is really just Hindustani as spoken by Muslims, and there are probably something like 250–300 million Hindustani speakers. The number of "Urdu" speakers is just the fraction of Hindustani speakers who are Muslims; the others call their language "Hindi" even though it's really the same language. There are fewer "Urdu" than "Hindi" speakers because there are fewer Muslims than Hindus in India, and also because the definition of "Hindi" is often expanded to include other languages such as Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Chhattisgarhi, which together add hundreds of millions of additional speakers. If you ignore religion and look just at language, then there are more native speakers Urdu/Hindustani than there are native speakers of Punjabi; in fact, Urdu is one of the largest languages in the world. — kwami (talk) 17:19, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I’ve understood and got it completely into my bones. There is a serious flaw in the popular understanding of Urdu history. The accepted facts here are just rumours. Thank you once again for helping me differentiate between the actual fact and the accepted fiction. I am highly obliged to you. But just one more thing. When and how did it come into existence (before the Mughal army)? and how come it be so popular in the northern part of the subcontinent (being the lingua franca)? I had read the history of English earlier, but it never struck my mind that the history of my own language would be so similar to English. Well, thanks once again. Regards.

—Syɛd Шαмiq Aнмɛd Hαsнмi (тαlк) 19:02, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, don't take my word for everything! If you have good linguistic sources that contradict me, I may very well be wrong. The above is merely my understanding of the history based on my memory of the sources I have access to.

As for popular misunderstanding, I think the same kind of thing happens in popular descriptions of English and other languages. Urdu, however, has the additional complication of nationalistic and religious motivations for telling the history a particular way, so it might be more difficult to disentangle the two. That is, in those aspects it might be closer to, say, Croatian than to English. (Of course, no analogy is going to be exact.)

Before the Mughal invasion/conquest (or whatever the acceptable term is), there was (and still is) a a series of interrelated dialects across northern India. Along the Ganges and other major rivers, where the ground was flat and travel was easy, there was a lot of mixing of populations, so the neighbouring dialects stayed all pretty close to one another. Wherever the Mughals set up court, there was contact with the local population. I think Urdu got its start at the capital before Delhi, but I'm fuzzy on the history. When the court moved to Delhi, this incipient Urdu was brought along, and affected the learning of the Dehlavi dialect, so that Urdu shifted bases to Dehlavi but retained traces of that earlier Hindi dialect. (Whatever it was, it was similar to Dehlavi. When dialects are closely related, it's often difficult to tell centuries later which one contributed which elements to the literary language that emerged from them.) So Hindustani isn't exactly Khari Boli. Or at least that's my understanding. A fairly minor detail, however: whichever dialects influenced the emerging standard, they were all "Hindi", just like whichever English dialects went into standard English (and there was a lot of dialect mixing in the history of English too), they were still all closely related, and clearly distinct from Danish, French, Welsh, etc. You see the same thing in other imperial languages: Modern Standard Chinese is based on Beijing dialect, but strongly influenced by the many other dialects of Mandarin that people brought to the captital; Modern Standard German has been influenced by various German dialects; even Koranic Arabic has sources both in the dialects of Mecca/Medina, the new capital, and of eastern Arabia, which was the language of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. If I remember correctly, that's one reason the usage of the letter alif is so irregular: They were trying to capture two dialects with one orthography.

And I'm sorry: The Mughals were originally Chagatai and only later became Persianized. I got it backwards.

As for why it's popular in the north, I think Urdu is strongest where Mughal influence was the strongest, but also where it was closest to the local dialect. I believe the Moghuls first set up court in Peshawar, but Hindistani/Urdu is of little use there today, and I don't think Mughal power was ever all that dominant in Afghanistan, in the south of India, or in Bengal (though maybe I'm wrong about that being a reason). As for why Urdu rather than Persian, easy: Urdu was easier for the local people to learn, because it was so similar to what they already spoke. Braj Bhasa, for example, was one of the main Hindu literary standards in the north, and it's very close to Hindustani/Urdu; you might say it's even a dialect of the same language. Both Persian and Urdu spread with the Mughal administration, but Persian was a quite foreign language to the local population, and so not as good a contact language / lingua franca as Urdu. By the time you got to Bengal, however, the local language was different enough that even Urdu was no longer all that easy to learn, and certainly in the Dravidian south it was a very foreign language, so Urdu never took hold there the way it did in the north. Even today many people speaking Awadhi, Chhattisgarhi, Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, etc. will tell you their language is "Hindi", because it's not all that different from Dehlavi. I imagine people had much the same notion in the Mughal era: If their speech was close to that of the court in Delhi, which was the elite language and so the one that many people aspired to, they would say it was a dialect of Hindustani/Urdu; only where it was obviously distinct, or where it had a separate literary history, as in Bengal, would people think they spoke a different language. But I don't know the details of any of this. — kwami (talk) 22:35, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot all the more! I am more informed now, nonetheless.

—Syɛd Шαмiq Aнмɛd Hαsнмi (тαlк) 23:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Kwami has done a good job of explaining the linguistic history underlying Urdu. --Taivo (talk) 01:40, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Nsibidi J. K. Macgregor

What are you reasons for removing the Macgregor claim in the origin section of the nsibidi article? Ukabia - talk 18:16, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

My reason is in the edit summary: that source is over a hundred years old. Picking a source that old because it's the only one you agree with is cherrypicking. We can do better. — kwami (talk) 18:41, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Much of the article still relies on Macgregors and Dayrells works (so I didn't 'pick' the source, it was already there), and other sources reference them as well. The part about baboons teaching the symbols is widely quoted and an important part of the origin tales of nsibidi. Also I wasn't aware there was a rule on wikipedia for the age of a source, especially when it has been challenged with a recent source, and when much of the research is based on these same sources. Ukabia - talk 19:08, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

There isn't. I'll take another look. — kwami (talk) 19:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

ǃKung people

Hi Kwami. I was wondering if you could take a look at ǃKung people? The lead needs some work. At present, it says that "The ǃKung, also spelled ǃXun, are a Bushman people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola. They speak the ǃKung language, noted for using click consonants, generally classified as part of the Khoisan language family." This is a problem in that Khoisan is no longer accepted. I know enough to see that the article isn't right, but not enough to fix it, which is why I'm asking you. 203.118.187.218 (talk) 04:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Sure. Thanks. — kwami (talk) 04:38, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Ghana edits

I agree some of it is factually wrong but have you read all the edits. a lot of it is correct and the newest and most up to date information. I think rather than delete what seems to have taken hours if not days to do(finding new images, videos and content) try to integrate what he/she has done with what was there previously. Medicineman84 (talk)

You're welcome to restore the improvements, but purposefully adding false statements is disruptive. I reverted to the last version without the false statements. I have already spent many hours cleaning garbage out of that article, and don't wish to spend more. — kwami (talk) 22:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Why are you writing your post as if I made the edit? The edits were not made by me. I too have written a lot of this Ghana page. It seems the new person is energetic and has found 2013 quality information for example why report the life expectancy at 60 if it is 68 now! Ghana has vastly changed even within the last 2 years due to several factors including oil production etc etc. I think that is what the person who wrote this article tried to reflect.

Medicineman84 (talk)

Fine. And you're welcome to restore the factual information. — kwami (talk) 01:57, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't have the time !! Maybe you can coordinate something! I just found it rude that someone put in what looked like hours of work with one click without fully reading all of it you deleted it all without even starting a discussion. Admittedly the person did the same thing to the work that was there before but still...

Medicineman84 (talk)

You don't have the time, so I'm supposed to do it? All the work is still there in the page history. Anyone who wants to separate the wheat from the chaff is able to do so. I would rather delete good info than allow the posting of falsehoods, and I'm not going to sift through it myself.

It's true that I didn't read through everything. If an editor cannot understand a newspaper article, there's a good chance they cannot understand the other sources they used either. Discussing edits with people who don't understand their own sources is generally a huge waste of time. I have come across a few who are able to discuss such things intelligently and adjust their editing to meet our standards, but that doesn't happen very often. Maybe this editor is one of them, but I'm not willing to put in the hours needed to find out. — kwami (talk) 02:15, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Articles moved contrary to RMs

Hi, subject that has come up before re India place names, can't recall exact article(s). I'm not sure how many of these there are Talk:Kutenai people, but I've commented there and suggest you should locate all articles you have moved contrary to RM results before others do. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:03, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

aboriginal names in Canada

your argument that aboriginal names are not part of English Wikipedia and "can't be pronounced" falls flat on its face just by a glance at List of place names in Canada of aboriginal origin. Without looking at the articles, tell me how "Cheam" and "Botanie Mountain" are pronounced, or the name of the place I'm from, Shalalth. And re the many ch-names, many are pronounced with "sh", not "ch", and "everyone" knows that. i.e. Chemainus vs. Chezacut, respectively. Then there's Cheakamus, Tsawwassen and Gingolx. Your pretension about all this, like your presumptive dismissal of Kwakwaka'wakw dislike of the term "Kwakiutl", is getting more than tiresome and chauvinistic, it's obstructive and, frankly, more than a bit racist, intentional or not, and will lead to Wikipedia being held in disregard by the peoples whose articles you think you have a right to rename according to how non-natives in other countries THINK is their correct name.Skookum1 (talk) 11:16, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Ucluelet and many others in BC, Sheshatshiu, where a friend comes from in Labrador, and Shubenacadie in NS all come to mind......damn it's a long list of names that are acceptable in Canadian English and that have articles and that aren't "obvious pronunciations". If I got into smaller places, it's an even longer list. And there's non-native words/names too, Craigellachie as mentioned elsewhere, and how would you suppose to pronounce Agassiz? or Quesnel?Skookum1 (talk) 11:35, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm racist because you are incapable of providing English pronunciations for these names? All I ask is that you demonstrate that they've been assimilated into English. I've never argued that a pronunciation should be "obvious", only that an English pronunciation should exist. Yet you keep reverting to this straw man: Are you unable to make a rational arguement? Others have made the same point. I suppose they're racist too? What I'm hearing is that you know best, that you are unable to support your POV, but we should accept it anyway because "racism". I suppose if you don't pronounce Vietnamese place names with their correct tone that makes you a racist too? — kwami (talk) 22:24, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Extended content

You're sounding like a racist because you say what these people want to call themselves doesn't matter to you, or anyone, and that Wikipedia can decide what they should be called because you say so. The point that these endonyms were advanced and adopted into Canadian English because of the legacy of language-repression (violent and inhuman language repression) is something that seems to escape you, and that you seem to think doesn't matter and it's what "other people call them" that counts. And your claim that "it doesn't have an English pronunciation" is hogwash, that's been provided to you by myself and montanabw; the other names I've provided also aren't English by origin and, like Ktunaxa, need to be heard in order to know how to pronounce properly......you're the one making the straw man argument, and refuse to listen to the facts about native-name usage and the cultural politics that underlie all these names (not just Ktunaxa). Your refusal to acknowledge that there are articles with non-English names, and not just for towns and peoples, is really getting tiresome, as is your nitpicking about pronunciations you demand but then say don't matter. What you did was clearly a controversial change, and was without consultation either with any Ktunaxa or anyone in the indigenous people's wikiproject, or in the region in question. These are accepted terms in Canadian English and CANADIAN ENGLISH MATTERS. International academic English which uses out-of-date and discredited terms (e.g. your stated support for the use of "Kwakiutl" is noted), doesn't. Your insensitivity to native cultural preferences is why you're sounding like a racist, and yes, you sound just like many right-wing and anti-native elements in BC who are opposed not just to the names of native peoples, but also to their existence and history and collective legal and constitutional rights. This is the company you keep with the kind of talk you have been making, and it's not a pretty sight.Skookum1 (talk) 01:00, 13 May 2013 (UTC) As for this " I'm racist because you are incapable of providing English pronunciations for these names? All I ask is that you demonstrate that they've been assimilated into English." All those names HAVE been assimilated into English (and French). I was pointing them out to you, and challenging them to pronounce them "obviously". Sheshatshiu especially ain't obvious, and is very much a real word/name in Newfoundland and Labrador. So is "Mi'kmaq" which is common throughout Atlantic Canada.Skookum1 (talk) 01:03, 13 May 2013 (UTC) Skookum, you wont get far by accusing other editors of racism. Trust me I've tried it. This is a question of naming policy which is quite clear that naming depends on our ability to show by sources that one name is more common than another, not more correct, not more ethical, just more common. That is the line along which arguments about naming proceeds. Ive also had arguments with Kwami about whether to locate indigenous groups at the endonym or the exonym. I've been succesful when Ive been able to show that recent sources tend to adopt the endonym which they often do. Go for the ball, follow the rules and use arguments. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:07, 13 May 2013 (UTC) This thread sounds familiar. I, and others, have contended over the years that Kwami unilaterally decides also on the pronunciation of British place names. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC) Really? What does he give for "Featherstone-Haugh" and "St. John Smith"?Skookum1 (talk) 01:26, 13 May 2013 (UTC) All my very valid arguments have been dismissed by him and he keeps on making non sequitur demands without acknowledging the posted google results which do not favour his "more people use this" claims. And the fact of the matter is that his line that "these are not English words and should not be used in English" DOES sound like anti-native racism as is still common in BC and Canada, nearly verbatim other than mentioning Wikipedia. In the case of the Nlaka'pamux, his change to "Thompson people" (which is now in disuse and rarely seen in Canada), is also very pointedly imperialist in flavour (David Thompson, who the Thompson River was named for, and so these people, was the NWC explorer whose activities underlay British claims to the region). WP:Indigenous peoples of North America exists to make sure indigenous language preferences have their place in Wikipedia and that native content is represented fairly and accurately. Insisting on archaic and discredited or disused names "because they exist in English" and allegedly "more people" know them (without being able to cite that) is not showing any sensitivity to the existing framework of indigenous articles already out there. That these were all done by speedy and without consultation or discussion, and without giving a shit about the little bit in the "move" dialogue about taking care to consider impacts on categories and other articles, was improper and high-handed and highly insensitive to the native reality; as it also is to current norms in Canadian English. He didn't even revise the ledes on these articles to match his new titles, he just shotgunned a bunch and sits back and maintains a false line of argument about what he thinks is English, without caring that Canadian English does embrace these terms, or caring at all about how they want to be named and referred to. In the Thompson people case, once all the little bots and peeps that go around picking up after messes like this start changing all mention of "Nlaka'pamux" to "Thompson people", and some other eager rule-biter tries a CfD or even a speedy (as happened with Category:Squamish, now at CfD as a result of that very bad choice), then Category:Nlaka'pamux is going to wind up as Category:Thompson people and that's just not modern English, nor is it "cultural acceptable". If he doesn't want to sound like a racist, he should stop sounding/talking like one. He's effectively, if unwittingly, siding with anti-native propaganda/attitudes and as an academic, he's part of the parochial attitude prevalent in ethnolinguistics and anthropology that native peoples hold in no small disregard (e.g. their opinions of Boas or Levi-Strauss; Teit at least lived among them and married one and got a pretty good batting average on cultural sensitivity and accuracy. Main point: for an "outside person" to tell these people that their name is not welcome in English Wikipedia is not going to play very well as far as encouraging the credibility of Wikipedia in indigenous circles, that's obvious.Skookum1 (talk) 01:26, 13 May 2013 (UTC) Skookum, we also dont locate reench people at "Peuple Francaise" even though they prefer that name. It is not the job of wikipedia to encourage credibility in indigenous circles but to provide the current state of usage and knowledge in the, largely Western centric, Academy. Sometimes you may find yourself ahead of the game when dealing with a slow-moving academic field, and that is something wikipedia cannot really do anything about - encyclopedias should be slightly behind the curve. Now I will ask you one more time to quit calling people racist because you dont agree with them. It is a personal attack, and in this case clearly unjustified, and it will likely get you blocked if you continue.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:42, 13 May 2013 (UTC) Oh really, so *I* get blocked for pointing out that the line being touted to prevent reversions to their correct endonyms sounds like the usual anti-native rhetoric advanced by those holding very racist attitudes towards natives in Canada and/or elsewhere? And Kwami doesn't get blocked for doing a series of speedy moves that he knows were controversial, and which he's now resisting reverting by coming up with one evasion and misdirection after another. Here's the facts: "academia" in Canada HAS EMBRACED these terms and a glance at cites given, googles found, and papers from the Museum of Civilization and the Royal BC Museum and places like the UBC Museum of Anthropology and many others all use these terms. I'm not calling Kwami a racist, I'm telling him he's sounding like one, big difference. The cites and sources are there, as is CANENGL and the ENGVAR section, and the precedent of countless other endonyms and aboriginal-name articles of all kinds, so the premise that "it's not an English word" is entirely picayune as well as FALSE. That Kwami's attitude and behaviour makes him seem like a racist is something he should become aware of and more educated about. Is calling his attitude "parochial" (which it is) also a "personal attack"...well, the whole of Wikipedia will be denounced by native cultural and political leaders if his attitude were to prevail...or an editor who's worked on hundreds of indigenous history and political articles and categories and more gets blocked for trying to make sure indigenous realities/sensitivities are respected in Wikipedia? We need more participation from indigenous contributors....not article titles that will cause them to turn up their noses and not take part because of some guy in another country who doesn't care about what they want or feel nor that their names ARE now accepted and in-use in Canada and are part of Canadian English. Not just by law and in some cases treaty (e.g. Gingolx instead of Kincolith re the Nisga'a Treaty), but in common use. Claiming as he does that the opposite is the case, without providing any cites for that (and he won't be able to) is touting supposition and original research claims against citable FACTS. WP:DUCK applies about "sounding like a racist" for saying "it's not an English word and doesn't belong in English Wikipedia"; in the Canadian polity that would quickly, especially by First Nations people, be branded as "racist", and it won't be just Kwami who gets that condemnation. His obstructionism thus far, on top of his high-handed and controversial "shotgun changes", are what deserves an ANI, not dressing me down for calling him on it, or pointing out that, unwittingly or not, he DOES sound like an anti-native type who holds them in disregard and has decided it's OK to tell them what they should be called in English. That just ain't gonna wash.Skookum1 (talk) 02:10, 13 May 2013 (UTC) Present the sources, argue your case on the issue, and if you have problems with Kwamis behavior or undiscussed moves you can start and rfcu. But you dont decide what will or will not wash. The community of editors do and generally they are swayed by arguments not by boisterous rhetorics.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:33, 13 May 2013 (UTC) I would suggest the following. Start RfCs on the language names where sources can be presented for the different names, and a decision about the location of the articles can be made based on wider community input.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:45, 13 May 2013 (UTC) The community input that matters here is the indigenous community on the one hand, and Canadians familiar with Canadian English on the others. Input from others is secondary, especially if they are dismissive of "what nstives want" and refuse to acknowledge the separate existence and standards of Canadian English; in the Ktunaxa case it's more complicated somewhat because of the cross-border nature of the content; but again, there, it's the consensus of the indigenous people themselves that matters; in the other cases to open the field to people who don't know the field or who don't read Canadian sources is quite irrelevant and another red-herring to defray the proper attempt to restore these articles to where they had been for a long time and should NEVER have been moved unilaterally BY ANYONE without proper consultation, and without regard for indigenous sensitivities and realities. Doing so violates a core principle of the Indigenous peoples WikiProject's aims. An RfC will invite input from people in other countries without any real knowledge of these people, and most likely with little concern for what they prefer, and would parlay into condemnations of Wikipedia for being "culturally imperialist" and highly parochial. MOSFOLLOW is pretty straightforward, and the sources don't agree with Kwami.Skookum1 (talk) 01:54, 13 May 2013 (UTC) You are entirely wrong. And you also seem not to understand how wikipedia works. Wikipedia gives no preference to indigenous communities or the national usage in these cases. Those communities can create wikipedias in their own languages where their preferred usage will prevail. Your disregard for the editor community as a source of consensus is particularly problematic.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 02:02, 13 May 2013 (UTC) MY disregard?? I'm not the one who unilaterally moved these without discussion and without consulting the full scope of indigenous articles out there, or the related WikiProjects (IPNA, BC/Canada etc). This is NOT about creating indigenous-language Wikipedias, it is about the appropriate and modern usage of terms for native peoples, the same way that we don't normally use "Indian" instead of "First Nations" or "Native American" applies, and it's not like WP:Indigenous peoples of North America doesn't exist, or that there weren't long discussions (which Kwami ignored, notably in the Ktunaxa case) about what was appropriate to use; the community of IPNA editors was who arrived at the convention that government/org articles be named one way (per their official names) while to distinguish them, when possible, by 'respecting the increasing and in-Canada-normal use of the endonyms in English and not claiming that they are NOT English or that what they or Canadian English want doesn't matter. Such changes as kwami have made have big repercussions whether in category names or in content in other articles, where "bypass redirect" while wind up seeing his archaic usages replace modern and accepted ones such as Nlaka'pamux vs. Thompson. What I'm on about is respecting modern sensibilities as well as indigenous sensitivities.....if Wikipedia's "editor community" can't deal with emergent realities and wants to ignore someone for allegedly "bomastic rhetoric" (which is not bombastic, but pointed and explicit, and it's not rhetoric as it's about facts). It's Kwami who's the one using rhetoric, NOT ME. And as for the sources, go ahead, look at the cites I provided on any of the RMs in question, and note KootenayVolcano's comment on her talkpage about she hears Ktunaxa all the time (she lives in Nelson, British Columbia which is in the area) and note montanabw's parallel criticisms to my own about the attitudes that using "imperialist" and "colonialist" terms to supplant modern/emergent norms. Kwami's job is NOT to police the English language, but to reflect its changing use. And use of these endonyms in Canada is now at least twenty years old, in some cases thirty or more. Nuu-cha-nulth isn't English either, but there's no alternative ("Nootka" is not acceptable); same with Mi'kmaq and a host of others that "aren't English and have no English pronunciations". It's not me you should be chastising here, and as for cites I've already provided them. Kwami hasn't, yet keeps on demanding citations to evade answering any of the challenges I've posed to him. Aboriginal words and names are a fact of life in Canada now, they're also a fact of life in Wikipedia if you bother to look around........Skookum1 (talk) 03:31, 13 May 2013 (UTC) I've heard this "Wikipedia knows best" attitude before, and also "if you don't tone down your criticisms you will be punished" invective lots before; in a very notable case, to me, the ridiculous imposition of the endash replacing hyphens on legal names in BC was finally overturned by citations from the enabling legislation for Regional districts in British Columbia, though the MOSite fanatics were snotting their collective noses at the real world, saying effectively "Wikipedia knows best, and WE are Wikipedia". I'm Wikipedia too, and I'm bringing forward facts that are apparently uncomfortable and people don't like hearing them (because it makes them look bad, but that's their fault, not mine) isn't "bombastic rhetoric". Arrogant unilateralism of the kind that brought on all these very-necessary CfDs, backed up now be evasion and denial and a refusal to look at the cites provided, or to admit they are relevant, is what's questionable here, not my style or the extent to which I can quote examples of aboriginal and other names in Wikipedia and around Canada that "are not English and nobody knows how to pronounce them". If I sound heated, it's because I'm getting frustrated with the nonsensical denials and evasions and that way all evidence in support of using these endonyms, which are normal in Canadian English, is just dismissed out of hand by someone whose only line has been "more people worldwide", when that is demonstrably not the case, and when "worldwide" doesn't apply to Canadian English usage. Britons call indigenous peoples "Red Indians" too, that doesn't mean that that should be taken into account when writing Wikipedia, now, does it? Your further diversion about "they should start their own Wikipedias if they want to use their languages" is just so much more evasion; it's also parochial and flies in the face of the very real reality of Canadian usage and practice; Wikipedia's editor community should learn to respect other communities, namely those of indigenous peoples and those who understand their concerns/sensitivities and do not dismiss them as irrelevant "because this is English Wikipedia". because I'm long-winded and detailed doesn't make me "bombastic"....what was bombastic was Kwami's single-minded application of his own feelings to these article names without any discussion or consultation. None of this is "rhetoric" in the sense of "empty words", it's all cogent argument, albeit increasingly frustrated and necessariliy repetitive and more detailed because Kwami refuses to admit to the validity of the cites OR to provide his own for his many personal claims.....and the inane challenge for me to provide an IPA for the English pronunciation of Ktunaxa; that's even IN one of the articles, for pity's sake. It's not my behaviour that should be the issue for the "community of editors", it's Kwami's. And it's the credibility of Wikipedia at large on indigenous topics that's also at stake; if a single editor with archaic, "foreign" views and labels, is allowed to change such stuff with impunity, and the results stand, the need for people from these nations to help expand their coverage and articles will be shut out, as they will view this place as the playground of white people telling t hem what they are and how to speak about themselves. You DO know what "parochial" means, right??Skookum1 (talk) 03:51, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

For those who are interested, the proposed moves are at:

Talk:Lillooet people#Requested move

Talk:Kutenai people#Requested move 2

Talk:Thompson people#Requested move

Talk:Shuswap people#Requested move

Talk:Chilcotin people#Requested move

For all I know, all of the proposed names are assimilated into English and have established English pronunciations. But Skookum has not provided any evidence of that. Using a foreign name in print is not uncommon, nor is code switching for people who know the language, but I suspect that does not make it accessible to many of our readers. IMO "authenticity" takes a back seat to accessibility, commonality, etc., but maybe that's not the consensus on WP. — kwami (talk) 07:50, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Kwami, Skookum1 has presented you with multiple sources and all you can do is go WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. You, my friend, are acting like a troll, and this is inappropriate. Montanabw^(talk) 17:15, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

If he did, they were lost in all the "outrage" (TLDRT). He said that he knew of some people who should know, and that I should do the research to support his claims. No. If he makes the claims, he should be the one to find supporting evidence. He may very well be right, but other editors have said the same as me. The links of his I did follow did not say what he claimed they did, so he doesn't have much credibility. — kwami (talk) 20:33, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Skookum now claims to know the English pronunciations of these names, but refuses to share them with the rest of us. Quite a bizarre way to present an argument. — kwami (talk) 10:50, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• I would support a final request for Kwami to stop moving ethnic group and language articles without prior discussion. It is a longstanding problem that he makes these kinds of moves in bulk without trying to gauge consensus first. MOves like these are always sensitive and complex because there are justifiable rationales both for and against, and the consensus in the literature is never straightforward to establish. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:32, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Nomination of European Esperanto Union for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article European Esperanto Union 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/European Esperanto Union 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 notice from the top of the article. pbp 16:30, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks

I really was going to drop the "actually" and I was pretty sure that I had done it. Thanks for catching it for me. ~Adjwilley (talk) 04:38, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I figured you hit 'save' and your connection dropped or something. Mine's been flaky recently. — kwami (talk) 05:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

May 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to List of languages by number of native speakers may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "<>"s. If you have, don't worry, just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 05:56, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Arbitration link — you're not being warned

You may notice that I've linked your username at WP:ARCA, but don't worry that I'm trying to drag you into something. I'm simply quoting something you wrote in 2010 as part of my request for clarification, since you appeared to be as confused then as I am now. Feel free to ignore it unless you want to chime in. Nyttend (talk) 18:13, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

An award for you, in recognition of your service to the world's Endangered Languages ...

	The Endangered Language Immersion School Bus Pass
	You've earned a free pass on the Endangered Language Immersion Schoolbus of your choice-- this one is Montana Salish-- for all your work on language articles! Djembayz (talk) 01:36, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Salish works for me! — kwami (talk) 02:07, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Old Southwestern Chinese

I've tagged Old Southwestern Chinese and raised a query on the talk page, as I was unable to find it in the reference given. Kanguole 12:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

List of linguists

Hi Kwami. Just to let you know that I've started a new section about your removal of Christopher Ehret from List of linguists at Talk:List of linguists#Christopher Ehret. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:54, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Filipino language

I've responded on the talk page.

I take it seriously when someone accuses me of censorship. I consider your choice of phrasing incredibly loaded, and non-NPOV. I didn't remove the phrase to censor the content, but to remove something that wasn't neutral. Let's discuss this more civilly on the Talk page without resorting to such outlandish statements. Dan0 00 (talk) 01:12, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

We have discussed this, and it does seem to reflect the lit. "Neutral" doesn't mean anodyne, just not our own POV. I don't see any section on the talk page to respond to. — kwami (talk) 01:56, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Final {{IPA-en}} conversions

It's been a while, but I'm making a push to convert the remaining {{IPA-en}} transclusions to {{IPAc-en}}. Please keep an eye on Ill-formatted IPAc-en transclusions for a while since I'm not always able to fix improper IPA.

On a related note, I like the idea of using hovering tooltips for pronunciation & etymological information (eg, Ouroboros). Do you have an opinion on this, or know where it should be brought up?

--deflective (talk) 22:36, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay.

Not sure what you're referring to with Ouroboros. — kwami (talk) 00:06, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

All the pronunciation & etymological information for Ouroboros can be seen by hovering the mouse over the superscript [a] after the name. It's a tidy way to make the information available without cluttering up the main page. --deflective (talk) 04:23, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

That would be very handy, except that the font is so small on my browser that it's illegible. But it's cool that the mouse-over has mouse-overs. — kwami (talk) 04:55, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The text appears to have the 'small' tag effect. Can you read other small text? How about if you mouseover the [1] at the bottom of the second paragraph?

There may also be a way to increase the size of the text in a tooltip. --deflective (talk) 05:32, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I can read English orthography, but IPA is too detailed to be legible at that scale. — kwami (talk) 05:45, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The font appears to be the same size as {{IPAc-en}}'s mouseovers. In general, if someone finds the mouseovers useful then the tooltip should work for them as well. Your point about detailed alphabets is well made tho. If etymology is included in a tooltip then languages with intricate characters would be in there as well.

Note though, you can always click the [a] to see it all in full size. --deflective (talk) 06:52, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

It's half the size of the IPAc mouseovers. — kwami (talk) 06:56, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Experimenting, it seems to depend on the size settings of the browser (ctrl+, ctrl-, ctrl0). --deflective (talk) 07:12, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I have implemented a version of the tooltip with a big font at Ouroboros. Note that the text in the notes section is also affected (click the [a]). Any thoughts? --deflective (talk) 22:23, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

It's still barely legible on my browser, but it's a good idea regardless, and other readers will probably have better luck. — kwami (talk) 03:42, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The conversions are now finished. All transclusions of {{IPA-en}} in articles (including portals) now use {{IPAc-en}}, the remaining occurrences are in user & talk spaces. Thanks for your help with this.

Once or twice a month from now on, I'll convert newly introduced {{IPA-en}} transclusions. --deflective (talk) 19:13, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

U+34fe

I noticed that you reverted my edit on the grounds that your computer did not at the time have a font with the glyph concerned, even though the character which is found in the Kangxi Dictionary, and has been in Unicode for about two decades (see http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=%E3%93%BE ). Replacing well established characters with images, gives the misleading impression that there is non easy way to use a character, however articles should embody good practice, following ISO 10646 is well established in wikipedia. The reference given for the same character also uses U+34FE 㓾 ⿰犀刂 (see http://hakka.dict.edu.tw/hakkadict/result_detail.jsp?n_no=1118&soundtype=0&sample=%E3%93%BE ). The correct solution in such a case is to install a font with complete ExtA in it, see List_of_CJK_fonts which has for example http://fonts.jp/hanazono/ download link http://sourceforge.jp/projects/hanazono-font/releases/ . Please by all means add a footnote telling people how to resolve such a problem by downloading a font. Johnkn63 (talk) 23:44, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I have a dozen or so Chinese fonts, including several professional ones. Since normal fonts do not have that character, how would the reader know which font to download? — kwami (talk) 02:00, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Alan Wood has a fair introduction to Ext A http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/cjk_unified_ideographs_extension_a.html where he lists a dozen or so fonts which have this character and suugestions on how to check. Problems can be two folder either no installed font with a certain character or even though a suitable font installed it does not show up in a particular application such as the browser. There are currently 75 thousand Chinese characters in Unicode, which is more than the number of characters that can held be a single font file, therefore only Chinese fonts that have two ttf font files could have. What operating system are you using, and what browser?Johnkn63 (talk) 10:49, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

PC & FF. — kwami (talk) 00:18, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Firefox usually pretty good for such things. I presume by PC you mean some version of windows Windows in which case Andrew West's freeware Babelpad is a good way to check what different fonts have, webpage http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html . Johnkn63 (talk) 01:55, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Italian

I read the reference. The Italian language is spoken by 55 million of people (natives) and 61 million of people (Total) Italian (Ethnologue) . According to Ethnologue Venetian Venetian (Ethnologue), Lombard Lombard (Ethnologue) and Neapolitan Neapolitan (Ethnologue) have less speakers than what the article says. Therefore please pay attention to changes you revert. --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 17:35, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Read it again. It says 61 million, not 55, and the 55 includes L2 speakers. — kwami (talk) 20:25, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Answer my questions. How many speakers Venetian, Lombard and Neapolitan have according to Ethnologue? Why Italian is in the "30 to 50 million native speakers chart" although it has more than 60 million of speakers? --Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

We go by native speakers, not L2 speakers. — kwami (talk) 23:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Northern Ndebele language

Paragraph 2 of the article "Southern Ndebele language" (version of 13:01, 14 May 2013) says "The Zimbabwean and South African Ndebele dialect is closer to Zulu than other Nguni dialects". Does that mean "Northern Ndebele is closer to Zulu than it [Northern Ndebele] is to other Nguni dialects" or does it mean "Northern Ndebele is closer to Zulu than other Nguni dialects are to Zulu"?
—Wavelength (talk) 22:13, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Not sure, but they'd be equivalent, wouldn't they? N. Ndebele might be considered a variety of Zulu. — kwami (talk) 05:15, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

In the English alphabet, A is closer to Y than Z (A is closer to Y than A is to Z; A is not closer to Y than Z is to Y). I have studied parts of related articles, including "Nguni languages" (version of 21:48, 29 March 2013), whose section "Language classification" says that "Nguni languages might better be construed as a dialect continuum than as a cluster of separate languages." I still have not resolved the ambiguity, so I have decided to leave the matter for now, without spending more time on it.

—Wavelength (talk) 18:45, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Good Articles Recruitment Centre

Hello! Now, some of you might have already received a similar message a little while ago regarding the Recruitment Centre, so if you have, there is no need to read the rest of this. This message is directed to users who have reviewed over 15 Good article nominations and are not part of WikiProject Good articles (the first message I sent out went to only WikiProject members). So for those who haven't heard about the Recruitment Centre yet, you may be wondering why there is a Good article icon with a bunch of stars around it (to the right). The answer? WikiProject Good articles will be launching a Recruitment Centre very soon! The centre will allow all users to be taught how to review Good article nominations by experts just like you! However, in order for the Recruitment Centre to open in the first place, we need some volunteers: Recruiters: The main task of a recruiter is to teach users that have never reviewed a Good article nomination how to review one. To become a recruiter, all you have to do is meet this criteria. If we don't get at least 5-10 recruiters to start off with (at the time this message was sent out, 2 recruiters have volunteered), the Recruitment Centre will not open. If interested, make sure you meet the criteria, read the process and add your name to the list of recruiters. (One of the great things about being a recruiter is that there is no set requirement of what must be taught and when. Instead, all the content found in the process section is a guideline of the main points that should be addressed during a recruitment session...you can also take an entire different approach if you wish!) If you think you will not have the time to recruit any users at this time but are still interested in becoming a recruiter, you can still add your name to the list of recruiters but just fill in the "Status" parameter with "Not Available". Co-Director: The current Director for the centre is me (Dom497). Another user that would be willing to help with some of the tasks would be helpful. Tasks include making sure recruiters are doing what they should be (teaching!), making sure all recruitments are archived correctly, updating pages as needed, answering any questions, and distributing the feedback form. If interested, please contact me (Dom497). Nominators, please read this: If you are not interested in becoming a recruiter, you can still help. In some cases a nominator may have an issue with an "inexperienced" editor (the recruitee) reviewing one of their nominations. To minimize the chances of this happening, if you are fine with a recruitee reviewing one of your nominations under the supervision of the recruiter, please add your name to the list at the bottom of this page. By adding your name to this list, chances are that your nomination will be reviewed more quickly as the recruitee will be asked to choose a nomination from the list of nominators that are OK with them reviewing the article. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to seeing this program bring new reviewers to the Good article community and all the positive things it will bring along. A message will be sent out to all recruiters regarding the date when the Recruitment Centre will open when it is determined. The message will also contain some further details to clarify things that may be a bit confusing.--Dom497 (talk) This message was sent out by --EdwardsBot (talk) 14:47, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Eurasiatic languages

Hello Kwami. If you can find the time, could you look at Eurasiatic languages? There are some details there that need attention, as noted in edit summaries. Thanks. 203.118.187.94 (talk) 00:07, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Moving articles counter RM results, again

Hello Kwamikagami, you should have seen a red notification square twice already when your name was linked, but just in case, there is a discussion about your latest moves counter RM results at Talk:Ji-Lu Mandarin. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:14, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

On Burushaski

Greetings, Kwamikagami! I wanted to ask you about your recent reverting of my edits on the language isolates page. To be honest, I could seriously care less about you deleting the mention of the Indo-European proposal, as that's obviously a fringe theory put forth by a quite nationalistic linguist. However, why don't you consider Bengtson a reliable source? He's a renowned American linguist, and I was simply quoting a proposal that he happened to put forward. I know that you might not accept the Dene-Caucasian proposal (I don't either, just putting that out there), but I know that a number of linguists do, and many of them consider this to be a valid hypothesis. Wikipedia is supposed to be an all-encompassing, non-biased encyclopedia, and it should include a broad range of opinions and speculations. --Lisztrachmaninovfan (talk) 20:33, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Mostly the IE stuff, per the edit summary. I also deleted Karasuk, which I had originally added, as no-one has followed up on it. As for the other, you didn't have DC, you had Yeniseian-Caucasic, and AFAIK no-one proposes that. — kwami (talk) 02:14, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

() pages

All the redirects listed in this page are in danger of being deleted because of your practice of creating () pages. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 00:48, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Then fix them, or let me know when I can fix them. — kwami (talk) 02:32, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

"Let me know when I can fix them". What a strange question - a quick check of Lahnda language () would have told you that they required immediate fixing. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 11:45, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

What is this like, a lesson for him? If there's a point you want to make, you should be straight about it. — Lfdder (talk) 14:47, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Gronings

Hi, I saw that you changed the page name of Gronings into Gronings dialect. I think that Groningen dialect or Groningen Low Saxon is a better name. In English no one would ever say the word Gronings, but rather "Groningen dialect"/"Groningen language"/"Groningen (Low) Saxon", referring to the name of the province, similar to "Yorkshire dialect", rather than "Yorkshirian dialect" or something. I prefer the name Groningen Low Saxon, since the word dialect has a negative connotation and to reiterate that Gronings is not a dialect of Dutch, but a variety of Low Saxon. Grönneger 1 (talk) 14:30, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Either of those would be fine.

We call dialects "dialects" regardless of whether people like the word, and we don't title our article "Yorkshire English". However, if you added "Low Saxon" to Groningen, I doubt anyone would notice. — kwami (talk) 21:47, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

changes in dravidian

hey thanks for reverting the dravidian language section but the thing here is to give the reader authenticated version of the topic may i know where are you from ?? and tell me the reasons to change to the previous versions — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alurujaya (talk • contribs) 08:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC) User:Alurujaya (talk) 14:22, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I found you falsifying references, and so started reverting changes of yours that seemed dubious. I reverted the Drav lang article further because other editors had also made dubious changes; sorry if legit changes got caught up. — kwami (talk) 14:28, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Activated debates

Hi Kwami. I invite you to feedback on my views in Talk:List of names in English with counterintuitive pronunciations, I'm encouraging all involved since January to do so. Adam37 (talk) 10:31, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Kotava

Hi! Some of your removings of links are mistaken.

The Kotava encyclopaedia counts 2176 real articles, for example:

The Nok culture: [9]

The geography of Tanzania: [10]

Congo: [11]

And the Wikikrenteem website, dedicated to the literature, original texts and translations in Kotava is a rich and very interesting resource. Examples:

The Diary of a Chairmaid: [12]

The french writer Octave Mirbeau: [13]

The famous novel by Sholokhov: [14]

I'm sorry but these links are not fakes! - Wikimistusik (talk) 21:53, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

The ones I checked didn't go anywhere. I didn't check them all. — kwami (talk) 22:50, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Iranic vs. Iranian

Hi,

• Iranian means "belonging to, or coming from, Iran or people of Iran".
• Iranic is a technical name of a class of peoples or languages that do not necessarily come from geographic Iran.

Even though the the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, Tajik and Dari are correctly called Iranic languages rather than "Iranian" languages. See here: [15].

The original author was correct in using Iranic in the article.

By analogy, Burmese, Thai and Lao alphabets are Indic scripts but not "Indian" scripts. See e.g. here: Help:Multilingual support (Indic).

Regards, kashmiri ^TALK 18:14, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

That is not a common distinction. "Iranian" is the usual technical term for what you refer to; "Iranic" is so rare as to be almost negligible. I can see why some authors prefer it, but it's been around for a long time without ever really catching on. If you want to substitute a rare term for a common technical term, I suggest you take it to Wikiproject Languages. If people agree with you that in the interests of clarity we should ignore common linguistic usage, then there shouldn't be any problem in substituting "Iranic" for "Iranian" across the board. But since linguistic usage is against you, you'll have find it hard going without some sort of local consensus. — kwami (talk) 22:02, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Same Sex Marriage and Doma

The doma ruling is complicated that's why it was put as recognized by federal law only. A couple married in Massachusetts moving to Alabama would still have most of the federal benefits and would still have federal recognition of their marriage. Here's Lyle from SCOTUS Blog

"With the demise of the Defense of Marriage Act’s benefits ban in Section 3, for legally married gays and lesbians, the Court immediately — even if inadvertently — gave rise to a situation in which couples living in states that will not allow them to marry because they are homosexuals will still be able to qualify for federal benefits, many of which are handed out or managed by state governments"

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/opinions-recap-giant-step-for-gay-marriage/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Predictor92 (talk • contribs) 19:07, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but that's not really the question. We don't list Denmark, which has a similar situation. I raised the point for discussion on the template talk page. — kwami (talk) 19:10, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Denmark's situation is different than this situation. The courts ruling makes the ruling more similar to the current situation in Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten at a certain level with the exception of no state registration(again we are talking about federal level here)

But state recognition is the whole point! But we should discuss there. — kwami (talk) 19:22, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

But state law doesn't trumpet over federal law. The US Constitution states that federal law trumpets over state law. States would still have to grant some federal benefits to gay couples married. Also gay couples from overseas countries are no longer being deported. I think there should be strips for the USA, with grey and teal stripped because of the situation of gay marriage being recognized by federal law, but not state law.Gay conservative (talk) 23:26, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

The details have not been clarified, but regardless, Arkansas does not recognize or perform SSM, so any suggestion that they do would be inappropriate. Should we add stripes to Greenland because Denmark doesn't deport SSM couples? The legal states should have been striped while DOMA was in effect, as SSM was not fully recognized there. Now that DOMA has been repealed, the striping should become solid blue, but that's what we already have. The repeal of DOMA means that the map is no longer inaccurate. No changes are needed. — kwami (talk) 00:14, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Again I never said state law recognizes or performs SSM. Here's what I said. Ok so if I get married in Maryland and move to Tennessee than may marriage is still recognized by the US federal government and would get some federal benefits. As for Greenland it has civil unions and colored blue so can't do anything about that. Again why isn't there a disclaimer at least so people who do browse the map know that at least the federal US government recognizes same-sex unions? People are still gonna think DOMA is in law and gay couples can be deported, which is not the case anymore. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gay conservative (talk • contribs) 09:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

The click consonant representation in IPA

Please, see that conversation Talk:Mfecane#The click consonant representation in IPA. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 00:31, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

MOS:BOLDTITLE

HI. You participated in a recent discussion that was referenced in another recent discussion. That current discussion is at WT:LEAD#MOS:BOLDTITLE and its application to specific situations, further concerning that general policy application. You may be interested in the new discussion, as it directly applies to your previous issue for which there was insufficient input for consensus. – 2001:db8:: (rfc | diff) 12:52 am, Today (UTC−4)

using the same spelling as the article title

I am disappointed by your latest edits in Jilu Mandarin and Jiaoliao Mandarin. In the MOS talk page, one of the few things in which all people agreed was that the article text should use the same spelling as the article title. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:54, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

But it does. Same spelling doesn't mean that alt spellings can't be listed. — kwami (talk) 21:00, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Did I miss something? The alternative spelling is already mentioned. In one article it's in the first sentence, in the other it's at the end of the first paragraph. In both cases it's bolded. Do you want to mention it also in the infobox? {{Infobox_language}} has an "altname" parameter. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:20, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I did. I saw a reduction from two names to one; I didn't rv. Ji-Lu once the 2nd was added. — kwami (talk) 16:57, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Your changes

I know you are very eager to bump up your edit count by any means. However I do think you should go a little slower and check results. I have already corrected three language pages tonight. fyi {{e17}} generates a reference. As you inserted into Samarokena language, Sumeri language and South Bolivian Quechua. John of Cromer (talk) mytime= Sat 21:55, wikitime= 20:55, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

No need. A bot will take care of it within a couple hours. — kwami (talk) 21:44, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Vietnamese language

When did you decide that Mon-Khmer is another name for Austro-Asiatic? Are you a linguist? Ethnologue.com has constructed the Vietnamese family tree. If Austro-Asiatic and Mon-khmer are the same, then Ethnologue.com would have put either one in the family tree. http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/vietnamese

Sonic99 (talk) 00:12, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Ethnologue is not a very reliable source, and anyway the classification used here on WP treats them as essentially synonyms. And yes, I am a linguist. — kwami (talk) 00:50, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

IPA for Australian languages

Hi Kwami, why did you revert my changes to the example English words? They are closer to the target sounds than the original examples, after all. Dougg (talk) 01:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

They don't work for Australian English. — kwami (talk) 01:54, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

That's true, but wrt to indicating a retroflex pronunciation, nothing works for Australian English, certainly not 'strudle' and 'drew'! But Australian's are familiar enough with US English to get it through reference to it, which is why I added the footnote as well. Dougg (talk) 05:55, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

It might work, then. Maybe see what people think at one of the English templates? — kwami (talk) 06:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't know what these 'English templates' are, or how to find them (so many of WP's tools are hard to find). Can you be a bit more explicit about what you're suggestion, thanks? Dougg (talk) 12:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I searched and found 'Template:Australian English', if that's what you were referring to. That got me to the manual of style section on pronunciation and respellings. I then lost interest. It seems self-evident to me that 'strudle' and 'drew' are very misleading ways of indicating how to pronounce a retroflex stop, whereas referring to the US pronunciation of words such as 'card, partner' gets us as close as we can get with English, and is very familiar to all Australians. Many learner's guides to Australian languages use this kind of comparison, for example 'card, girl, burn', to get people on the road to a decent pronunciation. Dougg (talk) 13:14, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Besides the template of the chart itself, you might want to try Help:IPA for English or IPA chart for English dialects. — kwami (talk) 17:11, 30 June 2013 (UTC)