User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 26

Happy New Year Kwamikagami!

Happy New Year!

Kwamikagami,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. JorisvS (talk) 16:36, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2015}} to user talk pages.

I supposed you made a typo

Please see [[1]]. Debresser (talk) 20:43, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Language list

Hi. I know the language list page List of languages by number of native speakers was vandalized relentlessly and I'm sorry to learn that, but is there a way we could bring back the lesser-spoken languages? the name of the article doesn't specify "top 100 languages," so can't we at least make a valiant effort to put the other languages by number of native speakers back? --User:Neddy1234

There should be a link at the btm to a list of least-spoken languages. There is no real RS for the ones in between. — kwami (talk) 23:28, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Ethnologue has data from official census. I know you don't love ethnologue because some of their data concerning Language status is manipulated, but it's hard to argue with an official census. --user:Neddy1234

Few entries have census data, and anyway census data is often unreliable. (E.g. India, Australia.) My problem with Ethnologue is not that it's manipulated, but that the older data is unreliable and often unreferenced. I'd love it if Ethn were a RS, and they're working on it, but at their current rate it will take decades. — kwami (talk) 20:49, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Why 'ey' and not 'e' on the french IPA

could you explain why the English approximation for the 'e' IPA letter in French is the 'ey' in hey? you dont pronounce clé as clay, you pronounce it cle, as in hey — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nichirob (talk • contribs) 19:26, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

That wouldn't make any sense to most English speakers, and the ones who would understand it won't need it. — kwami (talk) 20:51, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free image File:HR 8799 planetary system photo.jpg

⚠

Thanks for uploading File:HR 8799 planetary system photo.jpg. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 23:44, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Habla Congo

Hi Kwami,

What exactly contradicts the source in my edit? Omo Obatalá ^(talk) 00:49, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

The source lists it with pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages. If you have a linguistic ref that it is not one of those, please provide it. — kwami (talk) 00:53, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I see; I missed that part. Thanks. Omo Obatalá ^(talk) 01:00, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

That's not clean-up, and it still contradicts the source. And why remove the info?

Also, "region" should be the region within Cuba, not "Americas". Everyone should know where Cuba is. — kwami (talk) 01:06, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

It is a clean up... I'm removing irrelevant/incorrect content; the article is about the language, not the religion. As a practitioner of Kongo tradition, Habla Congo is not just in Cuba as your revision suggests, that is why I put Americas (notably Cuba). We wouldn't want to confuse or give false information to readers. It's not like I added dubious or unsourced content... Omo Obatalá ^(talk) 01:14, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

A liturgical lang should have at least a summary of the religious context. Also, I live in the Americas, but never met a lengua speaker. If you have refs for other locations, we can add them. (Unless you just mean Cuban emigres, which is too obvious to bother with.) — kwami (talk) 01:18, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, a summary is fine. You would meet lengua speakers if you were in the right community; the language is usually reserved for priests, though. Anyways, can we meet in the middle? I'll include a little more of the history in my clean up, but some things do need to be cleaned up for accuracy. Omo Obatalá ^(talk) 01:24, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

What needs to be cleaned up? You say it's a dialect of Kikoongo, which AFAICT is false, that it's spoken in "the Americas", which is at best misleading, and removed the sourced statement that it involves code-switching and is not secret. — kwami (talk) 01:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Wow... So you are denying that Habla Congo is spoken elsewhere than Cuba? Lmfao; please visit Miami some day. What a shame. Omo Obatalá ^(talk) 01:36, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I said no such thing. Pls read the comments you respond to. If you said e.g. "Cuba and Cuban emigre communities", that would at least be clear. — kwami (talk) 01:39, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Stylization of the "common name"

In January 2013 there was a "RfC on COMMONSTYLE proposal" at WT:AT in which you expressed an interest. FYI there is a similar debate taking place at the moment, see Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Stylization of the "common name" -- PBS-AWB (talk) 12:17, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Mandeali language

you may want to check if this is the proper fix for the duplicate args. Frietjes (talk) 15:25, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Oops! Yes, thanks. — kwami (talk) 23:39, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Barranquenho

I expect from you some feedback in this discussion about Barranquenho: Talk:Barranquenho#Ridiculous situation. Thank you. --Jotamar (talk) 22:58, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Universal Esperanto Association

Hello Kwamikagami,

I saw that you moved Universal Esperanto Association to World Esperanto Association. The Esperanto name for the organization (Universala Esperanto-Asocio) literally translates to "Universal Esperanto Association". Additionally, "Universal Esperanto Association" has 5x more results than "World Esperanto Association" in a Google Books search, meaning it is also the appropriate name in accordance with WP:UCRN. Do you have another reason why you moved it? I'm just curious.

Thanks,

Sonĝanto (talk) 14:47, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Restored it. You moved it. And yes: universala is closer to "world" than to "universal", at least according to the organizations themselves and previous discussions on this issue. — kwami (talk) 19:17, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Can you direct me to the talk pages with these discussions? The only comment I see on the talk page is a comment saying that it should be titled Universal Esperanto Association, in accordance with my move. Additionally, if the "Universal" title has 5x more Google Books search results than the "World" title, I think WP:UCRN suggests the title should be "Universal". Also, the organization itself uses the name "Universal Esperanto Association" on its English-language site: < http://www.uea.org/ >. Sonĝanto (talk) 17:29, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't know any more. But the English name at UEA is recent. (Or was it the UK that used "World"?) The fact that the UEA now uses "Universal" in English is indeed a good argument for moving the page. But since the page has been at "World" for years, per long-standing agreement, any move should first be discussed at Wikiproject Esperanto. — kwami (talk) 18:06, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Infoboxes

We really need to deal with the issue of the infobox in Swedish language, and perhaps the structure of the language infobox itself. Having a detailed discussion in the article with multiple figures and sources in the article is completely negated if the infobox looks like it has The Answer. It's like having the lead and the main body of the article contradicting each other.

Infoboxes are not the place to push particular figures or facts or interpretations. If figures vary or are vague, the infobox shouldn't give the illusion of detailed accuracy.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:43, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

If the figures vary, we should reflect that in the info box. I didn't have a problem with your figure, but with the lack of references. We could have a footnote that directs the reader to where the figures are discussed, maybe? — kwami (talk) 23:45, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely not. It's a completely arbitrary requirement in an article that is otherwise sourced. It's no different than the lead or the various other facts in the infobox. This business of adding citations to infoboxes is merely misleading when the issue is more nuanced. It's supposed to give a rough overview, not a definitive answer. Again, like the lead.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:50, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

We have thousands of articles, with editors adding bogus figures to many of them. We need some way of controlling for that. — kwami (talk) 23:58, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

You're tagging random fact statements despite knowing they are supported by refs. And for some reason you have no problems with the exact same figure in the lead. It makes absolutely no sense, so please take this to article talk.

Peter ^Isotalo 00:09, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Merge

Also Kon Keu language has been merged with Hu language. — Stevey7788 (talk) 00:20, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually, Kemie should be redirected to Man Met, and the content moved there. Man Met is the actual name, Kemie is just the Chinese transliteration. A page move request would be helpful. — Stevey7788 (talk) 00:53, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Two questions

1. I've noticed that you've created the redirect Older Runic language and pointed it to Elder Futhark. Wouldn't Proto-Norse language be a more logical goal? "Early Proto-Norse" (Frühurnordisch) is what the oldest attested stage of North Germanic is usually called in the literature.
2. Why did you remove all the Greenberg stuff from Je–Tupi–Carib languages? Ge–Pano–Carib still redirects there, leaving the reader puzzled. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:39, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Several sources have a "Runic language", and that name rd's to 'runes'. You may be right about this case, but the name in used in Glottolog, where it is not Northern Germanic but outside it. I suspect this is because the elder futhark was used for both Northern and Western Germanic languages. But if you think the ref that Glottolog is based on intended a language we have an article on, by all means correct the link.

I removed the Greenbergian stuff as not worthy of inclusion. But the link was an oversight: I'll rd to our coverage of Greenberg. — kwami (talk) 00:44, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Good. An alternative solution for Older Runic language would be to redirect it to Northwest Germanic, but unlike Proto-Norse language, this doesn't treat Antonsen's suggestion that this stage wasn't a differentiated form of North or West Germanic yet, but preceded the split, or was perhaps, according to other suggestions, a sort of runic koiné abstracting over the features of the spoken dialects in writing, which is why distinctive features of either branch are generally absent. After all, Glottolog seems to refer to this theory, considering the Antonsen ref and the classification outside the North and West Germanic branches, although that's admittedly not particularly explicit. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:24, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Page moves mess

Why not just request a move at WP:RM/TR? Alakzi (talk) 19:14, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Because I don't want to spend three months debating what "is" means. — kwami (talk) 19:15, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Alright then. Alakzi (talk) 19:40, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Where should this go? Alakzi (talk) 23:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

The same name as the article. The article was split a while ago, and a couple threads belong w the other, but most are on English accents. — kwami (talk) 23:34, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Would Rhoticity not be a misnomer now? The article appears to be devoted to r-dropping in various languages. Alakzi (talk) 23:54, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

It's rather dubious as an article at all. But that is at least partly addressed by the tag - perhaps we could add more. Or, if you have a better suggestion for a name? It was originally a section of the accent article, giving parallels to English rhoticity in other languages, but many of the supposed parallels are rather dubious. Lots of OR and SYNTH. — kwami (talk) 00:01, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Not sure. On closer inspection, it's an amalgamation of all different processes involving rhotics, from deletion to aspiration, vocalisation and epenthesis, either historic or conditioned. Unless the implied volatility of rhotics has been universally investigated in the literature, I'd say the article stands on very flimsy ground. Alakzi (talk) 00:31, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it could just be merged into rhotic consonant? — kwami (talk) 00:33, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe that'd be better than trashing it. Alakzi (talk) 00:38, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Done. That's probably the best home for it. Clean up/purge if you like. — kwami (talk) 02:40, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Talkback

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

Tones

Hi Kwami,

OK, I know you said we're supposed to use standard IPA on Wiki, but for languages of southern China, EVERYBODY uses Chao tones (tone numbers) these days. A lot of people who read these articles are people who understand, and prefer to use, Chao tone numbers. I would really prefer to see Chao tones on Wiki. I have had people in real life come up to me saying that they'd also prefer Chao tones rather than tone glyphs.

Similarly, there might be non-standard symbols in African linguistics or Amerindian linguistics (they often use APA), and it would be a better idea to just keep those conventions on Wiki. — Stevey7788 (talk) 22:28, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

We're an international encyclopedia, and therefore should use international conventions. A lot of people complain about the metric system too, but we use it regardless, and when we do use Imperial, we convert to metric. It would be fine to use Chao tone numbers, but we would need to convert them to Chao tone letters in parentheses for each instance. It's not just that the numbers are not standard, but that they are ambiguous: 1 is high tone for some people, low tone for others; 3 is mid for some, high for others. At the very least, we would need to explain what the numbers mean.

As for APA etc., that would mean using different letters for the same thing depending on our source. A lot of this stuff is confusing enough even when we're consistent. — kwami (talk) 22:36, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I really believe that we should be as universal, precise, and unambiguous as possible, so I'm not likely to be convinced by people who want to follow confusing in-group conventions just because that's what they're used to. If you really think digits are warranted, it would probably be best to bring it up for discussion at WP:lang. — kwami (talk) 23:54, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Pansy

Hello, Kwami -- If you're not too busy, could you check that this was done correctly and represents an improvement? Thanks. [2] CorinneSD (talk) 00:45, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Sure. Do you have a specific question? Nothing jumps out apart from the capitalization of the genus. — kwami (talk) 23:50, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, besides breaking up a paragraph into two, it took some information from Etymology and made it into a list in a new section, "Name in different languages, countries". Just wondered what you thought of that. CorinneSD (talk) 00:30, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Since they have nothing to do with the word "pansy", I think they're better off in your new sect. But I might delete the claim that it's the "football flower", since that's been unref'd for a year.

My new section? ;) O.K. Thank you for looking at it, Kwami. CorinneSD (talk) 00:57, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I've been wondering for a while now why you have the "I'm taking a short wikibreak" tag at the top of this page, even after you have returned to editing. CorinneSD (talk) 00:58, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm only half back. My editing is sporadic, and I have yet to actually go through my watch list. I suppose I should remove it, though. — kwami (talk) 01:05, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Oriya / Odia

Hi, Oryia became odia, orissa became odisha and orissi became odissi in 2011 by the 113th ammendment bill passed in the Sansad of India in 2011. And people will start referring it as Odia only when they'll know about it for which we have wikipedia. SUBHRAJIT ROUT (talk) 10:00, 6 February 2015 (UTC) Some links for your reference-

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/orissa-now-becomes-odisha-oriya-becomes-odia/199366-3.html
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-09-06/news/30119350_1_odia-amendment-bill-odisha
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Orissa-now-Odisha-Oriya-becomes-Odia/articleshow/5154302.cms
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/orissa-now-becomes-odisha-oriya-becomes-odia/199366-3.html
http://www.outlookindia.com/news/article/Orissa-Becomes-Odisha-Oriya-Becomes-Odia/740431

This has been discussed. Indian law is irrelevant. We go by what people use, and we've found that it now is Odisha for the state (though supposedly pronounced "Udissa", which seems dubious), and Oriya for the people and language. So that's what we use on WP. Your own argument supports the use of "Oriya": you say people wouldn't know about the new spelling without WP, and it's not our job to change usage. (See WP:RECOGNIZABLE.) But I'm glad to see you are not blindly changing "Orissa" to "Odisha", but are retaining it for organizations that still use the old spelling. — kwami (talk) 16:40, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Doteli language

Kwamikagami Excuse me I can not edit English. So that my English is very wrong. I am from Nepal. The Doteli language is difrent language then Nepali language. So that don't redirect them.--R.P.Joshi talk 06:21, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll clean it up a little. — kwami (talk) 16:41, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

About your (non)participation in the January 2012 SOPA vote

Hi. I am Piotr Konieczny (User:Piotrus), you may know me as an active content creator (see my userpage), but I am also a professional researcher of Wikipedia. Recently I published a paper (downloadable here) on reasons editors participated in Wikipedia's biggest vote to date (January 2012 WP:SOPA). I am now developing a supplementary paper, which analyzes why many editors did not take part in that vote. Which is where you come in :) You are a highly active Wikipedian, and you were active back during the January 2012 discussion/voting for the SOPA, yet you did not chose to participate in said vote. I'd appreciate it if you could tell me why was that so? For your convenience, I prepared a short survey at meta, which should not take more than a minute of your time. I would dearly appreciate you taking this minute; not only as a Wikipedia researcher but as a fellow content creator and concerned member of the community (I believe your answers may help us eventually improve our policies and thus, the project's governance). PS. If you chose to reply here (on your userpage), please WP:ECHO me. Thank you! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 15:02, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your time! --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:26, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Same-sex_marriage_in_Alabama#Licenses

Before you make more modifications, please note how I've modified the format here so we don't repeat the word County over and over. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 20:56, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I was going to do the same thing, but you beat me to it.

BTW, the Guardian, in a list posted 2 hrs ago, said Calhourn and Cleburne were not issuing licenses, so I added a "(?)". — kwami (talk) 20:59, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

You also deleted a new ref someone else added. That's not overwriting, that's reverting without looking carefully. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 21:19, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

An IP added counties without a ref. I reverted. Meanwhile someone had added a ref. But the additions did not agree with the ref, so I needed to revert again. — kwami (talk) 21:23, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Carib language

Hello, Kwami -- I was just reading the short article on Carib language, and I came across something that puzzles me. It's this sentence, which appears in the section "Names":

• However, the speakers call themselves Kalina or Karìna [kaɽiɁnʲauɽaŋ], spelled variously, and call their language Karìna auran.

I don't see how the pronunciation guide in square brackets can be the pronunciation of either Kalina or Karina. It's got something like "auran" or "aurang" in there. I could understand if that were the guide to pronouncing "Karina auran", which appears later in that sentence. If I'm misunderstanding something, could you please explain this to me? Thanks. CorinneSD (talk) 00:37, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

No, you've got it. — kwami (talk) 00:38, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Pohnpeic Language

Hi, I see that you merged Trukic-Pohnpeic languages with Pohnpeic languages. Pohnpeic languages should have its own page since it is a distinct subgroup of Trukic-Pohnpeic. The Pohnpeic languages page makes sense since it is useful to make linguistic distinctions between Trukic languages, Pohnpeic languages, and the larger subgroup Trukic-Pohnpeic. Pohnpeic languages have unique innovations that make them distinct from Trukic languages in the Trukic-Ponapeic subgroup. Furthermore, Glottolog also makes this distinction of subgroups as does the Oceanic Languages by Malcom Ross and John Lynch (eds.). Other languages such as English and Swahili have pages for minor subgroups (like Anglic and Sabaki languages). Thanks Rentzb0711 (talk) 03:19, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Having an article is fine, but not duplicating information (apart from summaries). The reason is that this makes WP difficult to maintain; the articles will drift apart until they contradict each other. (See WP:CONTENTFORK.) If you want an article on Pohnpeic languages, please create one for Trukic languages as well, and redirect Trukic-Pohnpeic to Micronesian languages.

Glottolog has determined that the distinction between the ISO Ngatikese language and the Sapwuahfik dialect of Pohnpeian to be spurious. Ngatikese should therefore not be listed as a separate language in the Pohnpeic article, unless you have a source that it is not closer to Pohnpeian than to other Pohnpeic languages.

Do you have personal knowledge of these languages? It would be great if you do. I assume ignorance when an editor contradicts my sources, but if you know better than the compilers of the generic sources you've been using, please let me know. — kwami (talk) 03:28, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I do have personal knowledge of these languages. I do linguistic fieldwork in Pohnpei and Sapwuahfik. I will make pages for Trukic as well then. I want to include eventually the unique innovations of each subgroup. Glottolog is incorrect in its distinction with Ngatikese. I'm trying to work with them to make the distinction again since their decision was based on bad data. See also the endangered languages catalog for info on Ngatikese http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/10424?hl=en Rentzb0711 (talk) 03:34, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay, good to know. Are you saying that Ngatikese is not a dialect of Pohnpeian, or that it's divergent enough to be unintelligible but still closer to Pohnpeian than to related languages? — kwami (talk) 03:40, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Based on my data, Ngatikese is not a dialect of Pohnpeian. It is still closely related to Pohnpeian, as are Pingelapese and Mokilese, though it is much more divergent than the actual dialects of Pohnpeian, such as the Kitti dialect. There is some mutual intelligibility between Ngatikese and Pohnpeian similar to Spanish and Portuguese, though like Spanish and Portuguese, Ngatikese speakers identify as Ngatikese speakers and not as Pohnpeian speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rentzb0711 (talk • contribs) 03:49, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay. Left a bit of a mess with redirects to keep the page histories intact. Someone should clean them up within a day or two. Most of the Ponapeic langs have "Trukic" in their info boxes; you might want to fix that now that it does not redirect to the proper article. I'll clean up what you don't tomorrow, but I need to sign off now. — kwami (talk) 03:59, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your help and understanding! I'll do what I can this evening.Rentzb0711 (talk) 04:21, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

It looks like the Trukic-Ponapeic languages page is now gone. This page should also exist since it provides novel information. Each page is useful. I was going to provide information about Proto-Trukic-Ponapeic phonology that is used in determining that subgroup. There should be 3 pages: Trukic-Ponapeic, Pohnpeic, and ChuukicRentzb0711 (talk) 08:36, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah, that's well motivated, then. We shouldn't repeat the lists of languages, and without those, there was nothing left for the article but a trivial definition. But if we have something substantial like a reconstruction, the page is definitely warranted. I've restored it for you, minus the redundant language lists. Ideally, every family article on WP would have such reconstructions, and every reconstructed clade in the world would have a WP article, but we're a long way from there. Without any substantial info, the family articles make a useless maze that readers need to navigate, so I've been consolidating them when I could. And many of them had no reconstruction or notability, and so were not justified in the first place. (Obviously, that was an error here.)

Tagged one point: "old" and "recent" are meaningless except for historical stages and non-genealogical descent. If we assume monogenesis, all languages are equally old. — kwami (talk) 18:11, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

FYI, underneath your edit window there's a list of 'insert' options. Scroll down to IPA, and the very last entry is {{IPA|}}. We should put that around all IPA transcriptions. (Highlight the IPA, and hit {{IPA|}}.) That's because not all browsers (esp. IE) display IPA correctly. It's best if we can do it for all IPA, even when restricted to the basic Latin alphabet, so that all transcriptions display in the same size and font. Less confusing for readers who might already be confused by IPA. (And it looks better.) Reconstructed forms are another matter, since they often don't use IPA, but when they use IPA diacritics, they need to be formatted as well. — kwami (talk) 18:20, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

There is no studies in English for Punic and Maghrebis

But only in french, you don't need to naturally understand sources, to not make them relevant, translation is easy (google translate for instance or wikipedia). I'm not convinced by your unjustified constant removals, unless your prove otherwise, those researches do affirm a Punic strtatum in Maghrebis languages (that I experience myself) and they are the result of recent official recognized studies. I'm sorry but i'll have to negate your change, you're clearly abusing of your rights. If you want I'd love to discuss the matter furtherly with you, cordially — Preceding unsigned comment added by Exacrion (talk • contribs) 19:31, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Sure, a Punic substratum. But you don't understand what a substratum is. Please read the link that I provided for you. — kwami (talk) 19:38, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Empty

Hello. You left a message on my talk page but it is empty. I suppose you want me to clarify what comes in the article on Henri Wittmann after: "gives the language an exotic, bantu-like look." After refreshing my memory on the subject (I have been away for a while), it seems to me that the "bantu-like look" can only refer to the examples (7a) and (7b) that follow which are indeed examples from Swahili, a Bantu language. I therefore accept your suggestion to insert after "bantu-like look" the words "Compare Swahili:". I made the changes, many thanks. Novalis69 (talk) 16:37, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Valley of Mexico

Hi Kwamikagami. Thanks for cleaning up the mess created by User:Pagesclo. Valley of Mexico ended up at Valley of Mexico (). Any chance you could get rid of the brackets? Many thanks, Simon Burchell (talk) 09:28, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

That's what I was referring to on the talk page. I'm waiting for the target page to be deleted. You could watch and move the article when it becomes possible, as I might not see it. — kwami (talk) 18:19, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Year ranges and YYYY-MM

It seems you've stayed away from WT:MOSNUM lately - I should take it off my watchlist too! Anyway, you might not have noticed that there's been fierce discussion, most recently at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 148#WP:DATERANGE problem... new style of using the last two digits of 4-digit year in ranges is a disaster, which ended with some useful summaries and links to the discussions that achieved consensus, or at least brought us to the current situation. Hope this helps. NebY (talk) 19:47, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Cricket page moves

Hi. There's a reason why they are named International cricket in 2009–10 and not International cricket in 2009/2010, for example. Please do not move any more pages without raising a WP:RM. For more info, visit WT:CRIC. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 20:05, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

@Lugnuts: There's no more info there. You give no reason. Why would you use that misleading punctuation? The article on international cricket in 2009–10 is not about cricket in 2009–10. — kwami (talk) 18:22, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I see. The MOS has changed. Okay, then. — kwami (talk) 22:27, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Liism

Hi Kwamikagami, do you have any sources about Liismo that "Li" can be used for a female noun? I could show evidence that Riists call Zamenhof's usage "Liismo". Thank you, --Salatonbv (talk) 04:41, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

No idea where the source is now, but what riists call it isn't relevant, since we're using standard Eo by default. — kwami (talk) 05:00, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

As we couldn't find the source (for 8 months with the template), the information on Liism can be considered false and removable.--Salatonbv (talk) 05:10, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Though not acceptable as a source for our articles, Esperanto WP also uses "liismo" in this sense. — kwami (talk) 17:02, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Where else does WP use "Liismo"? And any sources? In WP a theory without external sources can be removed.--Salatonbv (talk) 00:23, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I just said that. — kwami (talk) 00:37, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

When will you stop nonsensical reverse? The claim of "Li" used for a feminine noun cannot be justified. Or show evidence, please.--Salatonbv (talk) 02:55, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Deaths in 2015 in India

Hello, thank you for the edits on 2015 in India. Would you like to join a discussion on the Talk page? We are trying to decide a notability criteria for the entries under the deaths section. The section is growing too big compared to the events sections.

Kenfyre (talk) 08:16, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know enough to be of help. — kwami (talk) 18:02, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Paler yellow

You added a new yellow color on the World same-sex marriage map, but a color key hasn't been added to the legend. Also, is Chile dark yellow because a same-sex marriage bill is being introduced or should it be light yellow instead? Prcc27 (talk) 08:06, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

The map is primarily about marriage, so that should take precedence. — kwami (talk) 05:45, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

• I know, but I'm asking you if that's the reason you kept Chile dark yellow.. I'm not sure if there is currently a same-sex marriage bill in the works or not. Unless we are sure Chile is working on legalizing same-sex marriage, it should be light yellow instead. Prcc27 (talk) 08:38, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I thought we were sure: the current govt has announced plans to legalize, and they have the majority needed to do it. Those are the criteria we've used for other countries. — kwami (talk) 18:05, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Ethnologue 18 is out Comment

To @Kwami:: in case you haven't seen it yet, Ethnologue 18 is out, with major updates in Europe and Asia, especially in sign languages. AlbertBickford (talk) 20:06, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 20:11, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Texas ring

Hey, are you going to add a ring for Texas on the world marriage equality map? Prcc27 (talk) 23:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Thought I did. Is that holding, or has it been struck down? — kwami (talk) 23:46, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

• They got married before the stay; but the state is trying to invalidate it. Prcc27 (talk) 23:03, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

(Btw, the ring hasn't been added to the map yet). Prcc27 (talk) 05:40, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Phoenician script right-to-left

Hi Kwamikagami. Do you have any idea how to force a script to a right-to-left direction? I'd like to add this feature to {{Script/Phoenician}}. The only workaround I have so far is to insert a rlm mark between each character, but that is not ideal. Abjiklɐm (tɐlk) 15:19, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, no. You could check the coding of the Hebrew or Arabic templates, or ask on their talk pages. — kwami (talk) 05:44, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

For posterity, the solution is to add the following css style: direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: bidi-override;. Abjiklɐm (tɐlk) 02:20, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Odia

The language is officially spelt as Odia as per Orissa (Alteration of Name) Bill, 2010 and the Constitution (113th Amendment) Bill, 2010. No need to repeatedly revert it. Even the citations used have used the term Odia.

-Kenfyre (talk) 04:37, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Irrelevant. See the several discussions on the topic. — kwami (talk) 04:39, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Oriya may be used on linguistic articles. On general articles, it should be Odia. Oriya was simply the British pronunciation of Odia, Odia is pronounced as it is written in Indian languages. -Kenfyre (talk) 04:45, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Again, irrelevant. There's no reason to use distinct spellings for the language and the ethnicity, or to create a WP:walled garden around certain topics. — kwami (talk) 04:50, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Irrelevant argument. I am not proposing any walled gardens or article moves. I simply using the term Odia which refers to people of Odisha and speakers of Oriya language, and linking to proper articles. Given, the citations used have the term Odia, it is within WP:COMMONNAME guidelines. Odia on Google search shows 2,03,00,000 results and Oriya shows 1,21,00,000. Thus, my decision is correct. -Kenfyre (talk) 05:02, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

If you wish to establish a new consensus, then it is up to you to convince people to change. There is no support in the literature for using different names for the people and their language, or to use different names for the language in demographic and cinematographic articles. — kwami (talk) 17:47, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Doesn't matter. With more Indians coming online every year, more articles will use the Indian spelling Odia compared to the British spelling Oriya. Thus, the Google search result ratio will shift towards Odia. I will apply for the moves and renames in the next 5 years after the ratio reaches say 5:1 for Odia. -Kenfyre (talk) 11:47, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Population update project

(A copy of my junk-mail request, for those watching this page.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jump in at the WP:LANG talk page if you have any comments or concerns.

Thanks for any help you can give!

— kwami (talk) 02:12, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Kwamikagami. I'm wondering if it would make sense to work on WikiData for this. We might want to look into asking Ethnologue to see if there's an API or data they might be willing to share in bulk. --Moyogo/ (talk) 09:25, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

I'll give it a shot. — kwami (talk) 18:33, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Let's talk on article talk page about English language

Let's discuss speaker number statistics and other issues on the talk page for English language. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 23:45, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Languages of Azerbaijan

Hello, Kwami -- Do you think this edit [3] is an improvement to Languages of Azerbaijan? The sentence doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, and I don't understand the removal of what looks like a good language map. CorinneSD (talk) 18:46, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

It's a bit awkward. What it means is that mutual intelligibility is one-way. For example, Swiss German speakers can generally understand Standard German, but not vice versa. Same for Moroccan and Egyptian Arabic. Such cases are generally due to asymmetrical exposure rather than because the languages are inherently intelligible. That is, they aren't actually one language by the criterion of mutual intelligibility. If the source that the editor added supports that claim, then it's an improvement.

The removal of the map is not, however. The 2015 map is ugly, but more accurate. Personally, I would prefer to change the light green to light pink in the old map, and clarify this means an expansion of Armenian after the war and expulsion of Azeris. (Done.) — kwami (talk) 06:11, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

languages of the Kikuyu

Hi Kwami. You might remember quite some time back I added "Portuguese" to the langauages spoken as mother language in Cape Verde besides "Creole" and "Cape Verdean Portuguese". I don't have the diff here now, but I don't think it is required. At any rate, you removed "standard Portuguese" on the grounds that it could not be counted as a native language unless there were sources. My question, is it right to list English as a language spoken by the Kikuyu? Regards, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 18:09, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we normally list L2. For example, we don't list French as a language of Romanians, nor German as a language of Turks, except of course for those growing up in Germany. I don't know whether significant numbers of Kikuyu are raising their children as native speakers of English. If you can find a ref for that, then that would be fine, but of course we'd want to have some balance. Are others raising their children as native speakers of Swahili? etc. — kwami (talk) 06:00, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Kwami. That is exaclty my point - I strongly doubt that Kikuyus are raising their children as native speakers of English. Therefore reference to English should come out. Shall do it. Regs Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 08:08, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

"pattern of jingoist edits" by User:Dash9Z

Hello. I've noticed you reverted a edit from Dash9Z commenting "pattern of jingoist edits" [4][5]. I've noticed that lots of the edits of that user are just about the same thing. I reverted some of his/her edits, but that user just reverted back (without even saying it was a revert). As a revert war is not productive at all, is there something can be made about it or we just must let it be? Greetings, MPA Neto (talk) 01:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Warn them, and if they keep it up, request that they be blocked. It's a pain, but that's the price of open editing. Another possibility is to bring on other editors who are concerned about the article; a POV editor can't revert everyone without violating 3RR, which will get them blocked. — kwami (talk) 01:54, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick reply. I will think about it, but it's tricky. Her/His contributions are in several articles, never adding new content, always making small changes in something that several times is already OK, but for her/him it's just not right. Block one article would have no effect, but I don't think his actions are enough for user blockage (although I think that (s)he is a puppet from another user, but that doesn't actually matter right now). Well, thanks anyway. Let's hope (s)he do good. :) --MPA Neto (talk) 04:38, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Luri language

Kwami, do you think the population could double in eleven years? [6] CorinneSD (talk) 17:03, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

It's not a matter of the population doubling, but of one estimate being twice that of the other. That could easily happen: One estimate might be a miscount, or only consider people living in the traditional area, or count the ethnicity rather than speakers. I sometimes find estimates that differ by a factor of ten. But in this case, the ref hasn't changed. And since it's online, we can check, and it contradicts the edit. It does, however, give an estimate for 2012, which I'll use. — kwami (talk) 17:16, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

O.K. Thanks for the explanation, and for fixing it. CorinneSD (talk) 17:32, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Count of Isan Language Speakers

Kwami, you recently took a look at the number of Isan speakers. The ref given is the 1995 Thai census. FYI, here is a link to an extract from the 2010 census: http://web.nso.go.th/en/census/poph/data/090913_StatisticalTables_10.pdf. In it Table 7 is titled "Population by usual languages spoken at home, sex and area" I can't figure out how to tease Isan speaker numbers from these data. Maybe you can and are inclined to do so. Thanks. Seligne (talk) 01:28, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

It looks like they lump it in with Siamese as "Thai". — kwami (talk) 01:31, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Please don't call me jingoistic.

Please don't call me jingoistic. It's rude, offensive and for someone who knows three languages and cheers for different national sports teams, untrue. American is used to refer to something from of the United States of America unless it has a modifier such as in Latin American to refer to something from Latin America and South American to refer to South America. If someone types American Spanish, they're looking for the Spanish language in the United States just like if they type American English, they're looking for the English language in the United States. I'm putting in the modifier when needed (example: if it's something pertaining mostly to Latin America, use Latin American). Please don't assume it's jingoistic. I even removed the translations so there wouldn't be a conflict over that. Dash9Z (talk) 07:55, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't call you jingoistic, I said your edits were. And I think they were, wherever the jingoism entered in. (Not everyone who thinks Obama was born in Kenya is a racist. Some just believe what they hear on Fox News.) When "American Spanish" is mentioned in the lit, it means the Spanish of America, not the Spanish of the USA. (Certainly redirecting American Spanish (disambiguation) to US Spanish is ridiculous, if not vandalism.) This has been discussed several times, and I have to agree. I live in the US, and this is what "American Spanish" has meant my entire life, including instruction in state schools. For the US, people say US Spanish, or Chicano Spanish, etc. — kwami (talk) 17:08, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

"Some just believe what they hear on Fox News." Sad but true. :v -MPA Neto (talk) 02:00, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Ling.Nut: Language-population update project

Hey. I'm Ling.Nut. I did all that lang stuff using Python to generate tables. Can do again if the task is large enough to warrant the effort. Please email new User id; Ling.Nut is very retired, & I check Wikipedia very seldom... Tks! • Serviceable†Villain 12:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi LingNut! Good to see you're still around. If I can get a DB of the pop figures, I'll let you know. — kwami (talk) 02:06, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Number of speakers of Romani chib

What’s the purpose of maintaining a ridiculous low (and clearly untrue) figure in this important page of the Wikipedia? And, above all, what’s the purpose of deleting mi correction, which, apart from prudent and conservative, is shared by many versions of Wikipedia in other languages (German among them, for instance)? Certainly, there are no reliable data about the actual number of speakers of Romani, either in Europe or in other continents, but the most conservative estimate would suggest that there are upwards of 3.5 million speakers only in Europe. The actual number may be much higher, up to 9.300.000. This makes Romani the largest minority language in the EU since its enlargement in May 2007, after Romania and Bulgaria joined the Union. Some 1.5 to 2.0 million for the rest of the world is also a most reasonable estimate.

Of course, Roma are well used to this kind of neglect, end even, contempt, so I do not wonder very much of being amended in such a quick way, without a single word of explanation.

http://www.romaninet.com/ROMANINET_Linguistic_report.pdf

Pica-soques (talk) 20:41, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

If you have reliable sources for your claims, provide them. (I have no idea where the data in your online source comes from, as it gives no refs. See WP:RS for what we expect of our sources.) Saying something doesn't make it so, and accusing people of conspiracies only makes you sound like a crackpot. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Your impoliteness does not turn your figures right. Moreover, I dislike to be called a crackpot just for writing the truth. But don’t worry, I won’t participate any more in this page of yours. Have a good night. Pica-soques (talk) 21:05, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't call you a crackpot, I said that accusing others of conspiracies to silence the TRUTH makes you sound like a crackpot. And it does. Since you refuse to engage in a real discussion, I will assume you have no reliable sources to back up your claims. — kwami (talk) 21:09, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Here you are a source, if you consider The University of Manchester reliable enough:

http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/whatis/status/numbers.shtml

Pica-soques (talk) 21:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that does look like a reasonable source, though it is not the source of the higher numbers you gave earlier. I'd prefer it if it were published, but this should be good enough for now. — kwami (talk) 21:36, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I will send an email to Professor Yaron Matras (present director of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at The University of Manchester) asking the precise information about the higher numbers I gave, relying on his own published estimates (which I do not find right now). I will send the references to you as soon as I receive them. Pica-soques (talk) 22:20, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Perfect. That's all we could ask. As it was, I'd updated the article with the U. Manchester figure, but it would be nice to give our readers more info.

Reading over your comments, I realize that "if you consider The University of Manchester reliable enough" may have been an honest question. I'd taken it as a snarky implication that, since your previous comment had suggested I'm part of some racist anti-Roma conspiracy, I would pretend that UMan is not reliable. Thus my (now deleted) "chip on your shoulder" comment in response. Sorry, I take that back. — kwami (talk) 22:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

You are welcome. But there was no need to delete anything, since I believe firmly on freedom of expression. With respect to my initial suspicions about a hypothetical anti-Roma bias from you (not as much as racism) are very well based on my own life experience. I did not pretend to hurt, just state a well-known fact (in my country and in the USA as well). Defending Roma and Romani culture is not yet an easy cause. Pica-soques (talk) 22:53, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, hardly anyone in the US knows that the Holocaust targeted the Roma as much as the Jews.

The only time I've met Roma, that I know of, was in Slovakia, while I was waiting with a group of them for an inn to open. They gave me several "gifts", all of which they'd filched from my backpack. Maybe they were just playing with the stereotypes, or maybe I didn't have anything worth stealing, I don't know. The rather uncomfortable experience left me pondering how easy it might be to acquire anti-Roma stereotypes, and the kinds discriminatory interactions that occurred in Slovakia. — kwami (talk) 23:09, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Your moves

It is an extremely bad idea to move those Canadian languages to their traditional English names without discussion. The source you are claiming support from also does not in fact seem to support it[7]. Move them back and start move discussions. I really don't understand why you would do this, after being asked soooo many times not to make controversial moves without discussion. It is bound to cause problems. For you most likely. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:17, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I was going off their pub here.[8] Your ref goes by endonym, including non-Latin letters that most fonts don't cover. They're hardly English. — kwami (talk) 22:18, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

That doesn't by a long shot provide adequate support for these moves that you were bound to know will prove to be controversial. That report does not pretend to provide guidance on language names at all, and in their actual information material they always use the native name first and then supply the traditional name in parenthesis. It is fairly simple: Use the discussion process for this kind of moves.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:22, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

enquête

Hello, I consider this pronunciation is [ˈɑ̃kʲæɪ̯t], do you think so? 138.229.21.81 (talk) 02:05, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Chinese articles

I have been wondering about the various articles about 'Chinese' we have, specifically "Chinese language", which uses singular 'language', but then (correctly) goes on to tell that it is "a group of related but in many cases mutually unintelligible language varieties", and a separate "varieties of Chinese", which correctly notes the same thing about Chinese and also compares the internal diversity to that of Romance (that of Chinese being greater). What would really be the topic of the latter distinct from that of the former? From how I look at it, despite the sociological situation and common view on this topic, the former should really simply be at "Chinese languages". And then the latter is really an oddity, it's not like we have "varieties of Romance", or "varieties of Germanic". But before I would raise this issue there, I'd like to ask your take on this. --JorisvS (talk) 14:38, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Culturally, Chinese is one language. Sinologists often treat it that way, or as ambiguous. And we do have German dialects and varieties of Arabic. As for moving Chinese to "languages", that would require that we provide a list of Chinese languages. We can't do that, because no-one knows what they are: the work has never been done, unlike e.g. Hindi, German, or Arabic. (And if we were to go by mutual intelligibility, Hindi would be a rd to Urdu, Indonesian to Malay, and Serbian to Croatian. But try convincing Indians, Indonesians, and Serbs that their national language is not a language.) Moving the main Chinese article to "languages" would be to promote a specific POV that is not the academic consensus, even if you or I might agree with it. — kwami (talk) 16:46, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, redirects between those different standard varieties is a bit too far, because we can and do have articles about them that handle their subjects. But they do point out that these are standardized varieties of a single language, not distinct languages themselves (as their speaker would often have us believe). But how is the singular "Chinese language" the academic consensus? Does anyone dispute the great differences that significantly impede mutual intelligibility? Whether we know exactly which distinct varieties are and aren't mutually intelligible doesn't make a difference as to what they really are; there are lots of language families where the exact number of languages is unknown due to a lack of data. And this is ignoring that in dialect continua it becomes nearly impossible to give an exact figure. --JorisvS (talk) 11:41, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

German isn't a language, or Italian, or Arabic, as you define it, yet we have articles on all three. There's an editorial decision to be made in how much info to have at Chinese language, Mandarin, written Chinese, and varieties of Chinese, but each of those articles has its use. — kwami (talk) 17:02, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Your disambiguation...

You disambiguated (and thanks for doing so by the way) the "American English" page on the grounds that having United States English at such a page was based on politics rather than linguistics.

But in doing so, you made a blatant political claim regarding General American that is not universally agreed upon by linguists nor general people.

If you don't like my wording, you can use a wording similar to that which we use on our General American page:

"General American (commonly abbreviated as GA or GenAm) is the umbrella term for an American English dialect or accent whose definition, though persistently debated,[1][2] is popularly based upon a perceived lack of any notably regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics.[3] General American has been characterized by an origin and sound system separate from the various dialects of the American South and East Coast, including New York City and New England.[4][5][6]...General American is sometimes, controversially[12] referred to as a de facto standard accent of the United States.[3]"

To be clear, my only issue is with your statement on the disambiguation page about General American. That's all. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 23:24, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

"Prestige variety" might work. It isn't a dialect. But the point is now moot. — kwami (talk) 22:29, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Disruptive page moves.

Due to the disruptive nature of certain of your recent page moves, you are hereby prohibited from moving any pages with incoming links without first obtaining a consensus in accoradance with the procedures set forth at Wikipedia:Requested moves. Please acknowledge that you will conform to this condition, and your block will be lifted immediately. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:43, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

• I have had my brushes with Kwami, and know he can be abrasive and aggressive, but I am surprised to see this block without a link above to a discussion at ANI or the like or an explicit warning that the next such edit would get him blocked. If there has been such a discussion, forgive me for having missed it, but it should at least be linked to here so users like myself wont be surprised when his name shows up as crossed off on my watchlist. μηδείς (talk) 02:26, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
  • My determination was based on the block history of this editor; someone who has been on the receiving end of this many should be taking care to adhere more carefully to procedure. Note, also, that this is not a block for any determined period of time, but only until this editor acknowledges that they will conform to the policies of this project. Wikipedia:Requested moves specifically states: "Use this process if there is any reason to believe a move would be contested". Moving any page with a long history at its current title, or a large number of incoming links, is likely to be contested (particularly if the result is to create disambiguation links, which the page mover is supposed to fix themselves, before making the page move). bd2412 T 02:37, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
    • I have been annoyed by some of his moves myself. If I understand correctly, your block is not based on a prior warning or discussion? I am not necessarily challenging your prerogative, just trying to clarify my understanding. I see a few comments above, but wanted to make sure there is no ANI or other discussion I missed. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 03:49, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

There have been many many previous discussions and sanctions over Kwami's unfortunate habit of moving stuff around without discussion.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 03:50, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

• That basically sums it up. In any case, this is not a block for any set period of time; this is only in place until the editor acknowledges that they must follow the rules. bd2412 T 03:58, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Let's see: No warning. No indication of which "certain" moves were problematic. If they were the ones with the most incoming links, then I did discuss them, if briefly, a few hours ago, and Maunus, who you're agreeing with, is the one who said it was sensible but that he wasn't going to take the time to do it himself!

You're saying I can only move orphaned articles? What about some of the thousands of articles I created, most of which don't have other editors, if I realize that there's a better name for them? Do I hold a discussion with myself? Can I post a picture of masturbation on the talk page to indicate the nature of the discussion? Last year I had someone go to ANI demanding that I be blocked for creating redirects, claiming that was "moving" pages, and several editors supported that idiocy. If I create a redirect, will you block me for that? — kwami (talk) 04:31, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I am flattered by your implication that my statement of agreement with your suggestion constitutes a consensus in itself. However it does not. A move request or a discussion at the talk page does. If you don't feel you have time for waiting for consensus then just don't move. Really I cannot fathom how your otherwise sound judgment can be so incredibly poor when it comes to moves.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 04:44, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

You spoke of moving without discussion. It wasn't much of a discussion, but it did occur. — kwami (talk) 05:59, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requested moves specifically and unequivocally states: "Use this process if there is any reason to believe a move would be contested". Common sense of the level required to competently participate in a collaborative editing project should be sufficient to inform you that moving a page with more than a few dozen incoming links, or more than a handful of editors over a history of several years, may be contested. Common sense should further inform you that the moves at issue are of American English and British English, both pages with thousands of incoming links, and with numerous editors at titles that have been stable for ten years. This is particularly the case where heavily linked articles are being turned into disambiguation pages; the fact that a term potentially has multiple meanings does not mean that the existing meaning is not the primary topic of that title, a matter than must be demonstrated separately from the mere ambiguity of the term. There is no absence of warning here; this is the warning. You have been unblocked, but be patient, and seek collaboration. Cheers! bd2412 T 04:51, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

That is quite reasonable. Your initial demand, that I only move orphans, was not. — kwami (talk) 05:59, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

You are correct. I was less precise than I intended to be with my initial statement, and I apologize for that. However, bear in mind that it is never a bad idea to follow WP:RM procedures. A proposal that succeeds using such procedures bears the weight of the community, and can not easily be reversed. Cheers again! bd2412 T 23:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

And just for the record, among the pages that are definitely going to be controversial to move are: 1. pages on major world languages and their dialects are, 2. pages on Canadian indigenous languages currently located at their natively preferred names, 3. pages on many other indigenous languages currently located at their natively preferred names. Basically the only articles where it is reasonable to move without discussion are those that have not seen any editing activity for the last couple of years and those to which you are yourself the main contributor.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 23:52, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

When to remove IPA?

Over at WT:ELEMENTS, an IPA topic evolved (warning: barbed posts appear too). The question is: when a pronunciation is clear always (no mistakes, unambiguous), like with tin, can we remove the IPA pron from the article? (from its infobox in this case?). Of course then the {{Respell}} must go too.

Already, for mercury I found a don't: mercury (element) and mercury (deity) differ by IPA. So, apart from tin, silver, gold, there are not much candidates. Could you contribute an IPA-based reasoning to remove IPA at WT:ELEMENTS?

Note: an different discussion is running in parallel, this one is hotter: "remove {{respell}} from elements, like from astatine, because it is ugly" (also at astatine FAC). IMO, this is a separate one. -DePiep (talk) 20:54, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Wow, thank you. Eloquent is the word (I learned recently). -DePiep (talk) 21:22, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

"Nation"

The list of nations where languages have official status no longer appears in the published infobox, even if it is manually coded into infobox during editing. What happened? How do we fix this? Neddy1234 (talk) 15:05, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad. Fixed. — kwami (talk) 06:11, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Lujon (musical instrument)

Primary stress is on the first syllable, and secondary stress is on the second. Antarctic96 (talk) 23:46, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Okay. I'm assuming the 'o' is as in 'John'. — kwami (talk) 23:51, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Basum

If we can have access to the following, then perhaps we can write up an article about it. Looks interesting, thanks for the heads up. http://glottolog.org/resource/reference/id/320721

— Stevey7788 (talk) 06:28, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

New entry created at Basum language. The Chinese original says it's a Central Tibetan (U) lect. — Stevey7788 (talk) 06:56, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Dari language

Kwami, do you agree with these edits to Dari language? [9] CorinneSD (talk) 19:58, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

That is a very bad edit that screws up the page. --JorisvS (talk) 20:00, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

It isn't just that the editor has no idea how to edit WP, but that they don't know what "Persian" means. — kwami (talk) 20:03, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Re:Language-population update project

Dear User:Kwamikagami, thank you for your message regarding Ethnologue. I will try to look at the project when I get a chance. I appreciate you updating me. With regards, Anupam^Talk 20:55, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Faetar

Hello,

You seem to have moved Faetar to Faetar dialect (), with an empty set of parentheses.

Espreon (talk) 20:09, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

That will be cleaned up. — kwami (talk) 20:14, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Norwegian vowel chart

Hello. I found a template similar to this one (at the right). I used it to make the Standard Eastern Norwegian vowel chart out of it. I based it on the formant values from Gjert Kristoffersen - The phonology of Norwegian. Could you take a look at the vowel chart I made and see if it's in agreement with the formant values from Kristoffersen (2000)? I'm sure that /øː/ is more or less where it should be, as Kristoffersen himself sometimes uses ⟨ɵː⟩ to transcribe it. The formant values are here and my vowel chart is here (the values at the top are F2-F1.) [I sent the same message to Peter Roach, but it's better to have two points of view, rather than one.] Peter238 (talk) 12:25, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I checked a few, incl. /ø:/, and they look fine. Interesting that /w/ is close to /ʉ/ rather than to /u/. That is worth commenting on, or maybe even including in the chart. — kwami (talk) 17:21, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually, [w] is the second element of the diphthong /æw/ (transcribed /æʉ/ on Wikipedia), as well as a non-phonemic glide inserted between /ʉ(ː)/ and another vowel. In narrow transcription, Kristoffersen transcribes this sound as [w̟], which can easily be interpreted as labio-prevelar. I think it's better to create a separate vowel chart with diphthongs (of which [j, w] are the second elements), which is very easy - their starting points are exactly the same as the corresponding monophthongs. I'll wait for Peter's response though, seems like he'd like to tweak my chart somewhat (which I'm fine with). Peter238 (talk) 17:57, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi

Hello

I am sorry if I have violated any guidelines. Still not sure how this works. I wasn't even aware anyone had reverted any of the modifications I had done. Can you please let me know why the change from Oriya to Odia is not correct when the name has been officially changed by the government. Appreciate any help in getting this clarified. Thanks.

Remoonline (talk) 20:40, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

User:Universal Life/Judaeo-Spanish language

Hi Kwami,

I need the page for adding information onto the one in the main namespace. I don't know what are tracking categories but if I need to change the page's name, that's ok for me. Although I definitely don't want to delete the page. Thank you --Universal Life (talk) 00:18, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Invite

A Barnstar!

Please participate There's a voting going on here. It needs to close, but consensus is not certain. We need more participation. The issues can't remain without a resolution. Please, check it out. Closure of the discussion has started. (refresh) Please, hurry. 78.149.193.255 (talk) 16:20, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi

Please take a look at the articles Let's Dance 2015, Cissi Forss and Kitty Jutbring. Thanks.--BabbaQ (talk) 17:32, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

"Second Warning"

How dare you threaten me with warnings. Why should I have to prove my self with evidence, when you claims are completely unfounded. I asked first for evidence, so don't expect me to provide you with evidence. This has become ridiculous and your arrogance is very un-wikipedian. If you keep up this, I shall report you for harassment.

You set a very bad example for editors. Congratulations!

Uamaol (talk) 04:09, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

If you make an edit that others challenge, you need to support it. Read BOLD – again. You're making the claim, therefore it's up to you to demonstrate it. This has been explained to you before, and is pretty elementary. — kwami (talk) 04:37, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I think you are the one who needs to read BOLD - again, as you broke your own rules continuously. Uamaol (talk) 04:45, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

You've never read it, have you? It's simple: you make the claim, you support the claim. You claim that Newfoundland Irish is a dialect of Irish (and a primary division, on par with Munster etc at that), you need to find a ref that agrees with you. — kwami (talk) 04:51, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Likewise, you still are refusing to give me evidence that the infobox suggests that Newfoundland Irish is a dialect. That is very hypocritical. Uamaol (talk) 04:59, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I didn't understand that's what you were asking for. I thought you were demanding I prove it's not a dialect.

The infobox is for languages and varieties of languages. The middle of the box is the genealogy: IE, Celtic, Goidelic, Irish, Newfoundland Irish. That means that NF Irish is a division of Irish just as Irish is a division of Celtic -- in other words, a dialect. If we had an article on Spanish in Manitoba, we wouldn't use a language box, because Manitoban Spanish isn't a language variety. Same here, as discussed on the talk page.

But even without that, when your edits are reverted, you need to argue for them, no edit-war over them. That's how WP works. — kwami (talk) 05:04, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I questioned your edits. BOLD clearly states not to get upset when someone doesn't agree with you as it is bound to happen at one point or another. You broke the rules of WP civility by calling me an "idiot" and then "idiotic" on the summary pages and have repetitively insulted my intelligence and belittle me, something Wikipedia is not for, on mine and your own talk page. How dare you tell em I'm not following the rules when you are following neither the ones you are trying to get me to follow, and those which are far more important, such as civility!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Civility#Edit_summary_dos_and_don.27ts Uamaol (talk) 05:10, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Lets also not forget the use of profanity on my talk page! Uamaol (talk) 05:12, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

There was no profanity in this warning. There was some mild profanity in response to your reaction to my first warning: "don't be an ass by posting BS on my talk page". But then, you were being an ass by posting BS on my talk page, so you can hardly object. — kwami (talk) 05:17, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

"BS" is technically profanity, which is completely unnecessary. If it was mild then it wouldn't be censored on daytime media. You can't pick and choose rules. If you dispute my claim, why did you not create a section on the talk page instead of being uncivil? Uamaol (talk) 05:31, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't uncivil until you posted bullshit on my talk page, at which point I told you to stop posting bullshit on my talk page. "Bullshit", BTW, is when you're not lying, and not telling the truth: you say what you think will get you what you want without any regard for the truth. — kwami (talk) 05:38, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Using an abbreviation of a vulgarity is one thing, but then using its full for is ridiculous. When did I ever lie? Was it about edit warring? Surely enough you broke that rule first. I have time stamp evidence that proves that you were uncivil before I started writing on your talk page. I don't see why you are trying to make this difficult for yourself. Uamaol (talk) 16:27, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

You still haven't read WP:BOLD, have you? And I didn't say you lied. — kwami (talk) 16:30, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

You're going into technicalities now. You keep asking me if I've read BOLD. You are the one who needs to read it seeming that we would not be having this conversation if you had! Uamaol (talk) 19:00, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Hermes

Kwami, there is something wrong in the first line of the Etymology section of the article on Hermes, at Hermes#Etymology. I wonder if you could fix it. It says "italic text" right in the sentence. CorinneSD (talk) 00:33, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Dawn (spacecraft):

Hello. I saw the table you made at Dawn (spacecraft). I wonder if you could please define HAMO and LAMO. Thanks, Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 22:27, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Eucteniza pronunciation

Hi there. Thanks for checking the phonetics/pronunciation on Eucteniza. You probably know more about phonetics than I do, but I think the emphasis you added may be incorrect. The only pronunciation I've found online (here) states yook-ten-IZ-uh, which also seems more inline with how the root Cteniza would be pronounced, i.e. emphasis on the penultimate syllable. Do you have reason for thinking otherwise? Cheers, --Animalparty-- (talk) 23:39, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

The regular pronunciation would have stress on the ten, because the following i is short in Greek. The genus could be irregular, of course, or maybe I got the length wrong. (It's not always easy to find.) Words with the suffix -izer such as tranquilizer and minimalizer (based on the same Greek suffix -izein found in Eucteniza) have their stress two or three syllables to the left of the iz, suggesting the iz could also be stressed (as in baptizer), so maybe you're right about the stress. But the source you give is confused: it appears to claim not only that the stress is on the iz, but that it's pronounced "is", (almost) rhyming with "scissor". That's almost certainly wrong. There's not a English single word in the OED pronounced like that. — kwami (talk) 00:05, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Well this isn't an English word :) I just consulted my good old copy of Borror's. (pdf) Under Rules for pronunciation of scientific names (p. 4) he writes: "The accent is on the penult syllable in the following cases: ...When the vowel in the penult is followed by x or z. Ex.: Agromyza, Melospiza, Corixa, Lespedèza, Prodàxus." So I think that settles that part. The other issue is the "i". If it's short (as in "big"), as you say , then isn't "iz" as in "fiz" the correct form rather than "ai" as in "pipe"? (I think my "ee" was incorrect as well, too much Spanish influence). I think both long and short vowels are used in Greek-derived names, and I've heard the short i spoken widely in many scientific names: Ichthyology, Ichneumonidae, Porifera, etc. --Animalparty-- (talk) 00:51, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

You're right. I forgot Greek z is [dz].

Long and short in English has nothing to do with long and short in Greek. Length in Greek determines where the stress falls in Latin, and English inherits the Latin stress. Then English length is applied according to where and what kind of syllable the vowel is in. Latin stress is on the penult because the z is two consonants in Greek, but the English vowel is long because z is only one consonant in English. — kwami (talk) 01:00, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Ok, so does yewk-tə-NI-zə, with i as in "big", seem about right? or do you think it's a long i still? I'm at the point where words don't look right let alone sound right in my head anymore :) --Animalparty-- (talk) 03:37, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

List of endangered languages in Asia

hey, some time in the next week or so I'm gonna update that whole List of endangered languages in Asia. Maybe tomorrow, if I have time. I'm totally out of touch with the way people have been doing things, so have questions:

• would you rather see it divided into regions, northeast Asia, southeast Asia etc., or just kept straight alphabetical order?
• How many languages do you think a table should have before it's split off into its own separate list page? [I was kinda thinking "30", but I grabbed that number out of the air.]
• Most of the table headers are Language, Comments, Speakers, Source (how I did it eons ago), but there are so few Speaker cells populated that I'm gonna change it to Language, Status, Comments,ISO 639-3. If I see Speakers data, I'll move it into Comments (though some such data seems undocumented).
• Do you think I should use some sort of iso template for iso data? If so, please tell me which.
• Many tables will have their comments column populated with "Also spoken in:" and a number of countries. Do you think the countries in the Comments column should be wikilinked?
• Looking at List of endangered languages in Europe, for some unknown reason I did that one in a vastly different format (one row for each lang, no separate tables for each country). I suppose I'll make it similar to the style of the Asia list... unless you like the Europe list style better? [I think the Asia list format (country by country) looks much cleaner, but on the other hand, it is true that some languages are spoken in several (sometimes even "many" countries), so those languages would be duplicated across a number of tables.. but if you want to know what languages are spoken in one particular country, the Europe format is difficult to use.]
• I'll get around to changing many of these lists, in time.
• And any other thoughts. Thanks. • Serviceable†Villain 12:08, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, SV. I haven't been using these articles, so I don't have a lot of thoughts on them. I do prefer the division by country, though. It's interesting to see that e.g. there are endangered languages in the UK. As for ISO, just make sure that the language link goes to the WP article with the correct ISO code. I don't think you need anything more than that, since the point of ISO is identification, and a WP link does that too.

I don't see any point in linking to countries. WP:overlinking discourages that, or at least they used to. I suppose one could argue that constituent countries in the Russian Federation, or states of India, might be linked, but even that's of dubious utility, since the link won't provide any further info on the subject of the article, and if you don't know what Rajasthan is, you can always use the search box. Links aren't supposed to be a substitute for the search box; we're not a dictionary. Links are supposed to be selectively chosen by the editor to provide further relevant info for the reader, and if we link every proper noun, the reader won't know which links are actually worth following. What would be useful would be for e.g. "Vietnam" to link to Languages of Vietnam. You have links in headers, and bots sometimes delete those, since they're considered bad formatting. Also, Redbook etc. don't need to be linked hundreds of times.

— kwami (talk) 17:08, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Kazakh language disruption

Hello Kwamikagami. If it was you who sent me the warning I understand the message and I will no longer cause a disruption. I have posted my concern in the talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sabatoj (talk • contribs) 20:17, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

By Jove

Hello, Kwami. Having succeeded in forgetting about Jupiter Trojan, I've just noticed you’ve changed it to Jovian trojan. Of course that's good, I've always supported the lower case version. But 'Jovian' sounds very odd. I suppose you had to change it because the other was a redirect; I notice the name in the article itself remains the same. Will it become Jupiter trojan eventually? Rothorpe (talk) 19:10, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about it too. Yes, that name would be preferable. I'll make the request. — kwami (talk) 20:39, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Rothorpe (talk) 22:13, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

French language L2 speakers

Hey, thank you for getting in touch. As I see it, the problem with the Ethnologue 'source' (here it is again) is that it's just citing a 2007 report by the Francophonie. Notice how after the 87 million figure it says 'Francophonie 2007'. But the Francophonie has released other reports since then, including the 2014 report which puts the total number of French speakers at 274 million. So the question is: why would we cite the Francophonie twice, once in 2007 and another time in 2014? Doesn't it make more sense just to cite the 2014 report? Sources and figures change all the time; it's Wikipedia's responsibility to present the latest ones available.UBER ^(talk) 02:27, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I myself have no idea why the Francophonie L2 figures are so widely divergent (87 million vs. almost 200 million) in the span of just seven years! It's really ridiculous, I agree. But given that we have an example of a reputable source being highly erratic, we should either pick its latest figure or (better yet) just find another source. What do you think of this one here? It's the diplomatic arm of the French Foreign Ministry; they give the total number of speakers at 220 million (native at 77 million).UBER ^(talk) 02:42, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you, yeah, let's just use them for both figures. I'm putting 77 million for native and 140 million for L2.UBER ^(talk) 03:00, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Formants of Norwegian vowels

Hello. I decided to play safe and make 'normal' formant charts instead. A fuller explanation is here. Thanks for the help anyway! Peter238 (talk) 17:41, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm emailing UNESCO/Atlas

• We'll see what we see. • Serviceable†Villain 10:41, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Copyright template restored

I've reverted your removal of the template out of process. Copyright templates are not removed prior to resolution of the issue. If UNESCO grants permission, great. If not, you can make your case for why you think we can copy-paste content from their website on the talk page. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 19:25, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Nastaʿlīq script

Kwami, if you have time, would you review the latest edit to Nastaʿlīq script? [10] Also, while you're there could you look at all the edits made on 7 April 2015 by an IP editor? Does the format of the beginning of the article look right to you? CorinneSD (talk) 23:00, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, will have to be Monday. — kwami (talk) 23:45, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd restore the calligraphy nav box and at least the ref tag. — kwami (talk) 19:38, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

The Multiple Barnstar

		The Multiple Barnstar
		These are just some barnstars for some of the many amazing things you do here on Wikipedia, I don't know what this site would do without you. Abrahamic Faiths (talk) 21:06, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 00:28, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Avestan language

This edit needs review and verification, because I think there a lot of errors in spellings and comparison. Thanks. Regards. --Zyma (talk) 06:28, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

deOrphaning script

Hello everyone! I was just working on responding to a couple bug reports for a script that I worked up as part of a request from this project, and I noticed that only a couple people (who weren't even on this mailing list) are actually using the script. A little history on the script: In March of 2014, Jim Cartar came to my user talk page and said he needed some help in acquiring a script for a backlog drive that he was working on that could keep track of and score deOrphanings for a scored backlog drive. I took that request to the project's talk page (BackLog Drive "DO" (De-Orphaning) script proposal) and there was near unanimous support for this. I thought about the proposal and decided the best way to do it was to build a new script (which is still no where near as comprehensive as Manishearth's OrphanTabs) and build into it a mechanism that will make BLD scoring easy.

What I'm wondering at this point is, since there appears to be only two people using the script, should I continue to develop this script with a goal of using it for scoring BLDs or just debug the existing script and leave it at that. Thanks for any replies or comments.

If you wish to opt-out of future mailings, please remove yourself from the mailing list or alternatively to opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page.

• This message was sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 14:02, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Shetland

Kwami, could you check this edit to Shetland [11] and the edits right before it by the same editor? Thanks. CorinneSD (talk) 22:48, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know Gaelic, but the pronunciation looks reasonable. — kwami (talk) 23:02, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

O.K. Is that a pipe or an "l" just inside the curly brackets? What does that indicate? CorinneSD (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

A pipe. It prevents it from saying it's Scottish Gaelic a second time. — kwami (talk) 23:09, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh. O.K. Thanks! CorinneSD (talk) 23:19, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Aboriginal Australia map

Hi Kwami, thanks for getting in touch about these links.

I think I should first address the description of the Aboriginal Australia map as ethnic, not linguistic, as this assumption is not accurate. The map is a guide to groups defined by nation and language, the two of which are in many instances the same. See Adnyamathanha language for an example of this. At the link I provided the map is also explained as being based on these factors.

I can definitely see what you mean in instances where the language group and the tribal/nation group are not the same name, and the map shows the latter not the former - the map is not going to provide any value in these cases. And in any future linking I would be making a more comprehensive check to make sure I'm not linking to the map when the language is not represented on the map. However, there are a number of articles on languages where the map shows the area in which that language was/is spoken and can add value to the article. The map is actually better navigated using the Wiki article, as the information in the articles re: location help to identify the location on the map.

I've tested the zoomable functionality of the map and haven't found it hard to locate the language, even though I have very little prior knowledge of the languages and their locations. Using Adnyamathanha language as a test case, I found the language area on the map within a few seconds.

Because of this, I have been adding the link in the belief that (in cases where the language is confirmed as included on the map only) it is consistent with the goals of mutual benefit inherent in the Wikipedia:GLAM movement.

Re: the link from an article on a plant, I believe this link was made in error and was removed last week. LizLou (talk) 01:40, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Kwami, the functionality of the map is supposed to zoom in when you hover over the map and scroll up using the wheel on your mouse, or out when you scroll down using the wheel. If this isn't working for you I think it would be really valuable to have this fed back to the designer. If you're happy to, can you tell me what exactly is happening when you do that and what browser you're using? As for the map, I think since these problems exist that are making it inaccessible for some people to actually get the intended value, there is probably no point linking to it from individual languages. I'm going to stick to linking to AIATSIS' language bibliographies in the relevant language articles, as this is a genuinely more valuable resource at that level. LizLou (talk) 03:58, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Mt. Hakone

Do you remember why Mount Hakone redirects to Lake Ashi. As Mt. Hakone looks like it might erupt, I'm thinking of putting this page up as Mout Hakone which seems like a decent stub and will hopefully will be improved in the next few days. But, as I said, I just want to make sure what the reason was behind the redirect. XinJeisan (talk) 12:21, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I only created the redirect because we had incoming links, didn't have an article, and I didn't feel like writing one. Your article looks fine, except that I would start with its usual English name: "Mount Hakone is a volcano that is truncated by ...". You might also want to link to Mount Ashigara.

I made a few edits, including a category and some improvements in formatting. Keep them if you agree with them. — kwami (talk) 18:09, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses

Kwami, I just started to read the article Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses. Don't you think the word "with" appears at least once too often in the second sentence of the lede? The sentence is not particularly clear, either. CorinneSD (talk) 23:03, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

No idea. I can't tell what the author is trying to say. — kwami (talk) 23:16, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

O.K. Thanks. CorinneSD (talk) 23:26, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

A user made movements in the IPA for Kazakh

A user made significant movements in the Help:IPA for Kazakh, for example the sound ɣ doesn't exist in Kazakh: Voiced velar fricative see the difference: it was before: [12], it's now: Help:IPA for Kazakh, the article needs reparations.--Yeyinpe (talk) 01:08, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

The symbols should be whatever we use in our articles. If we use <ʁ> instead of <ɣ>, then just revert the table. — kwami (talk) 01:49, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Can you please stop changing my Tregami article. I'm doing it for a class assignment and I had to add that specific information because my professor asked for it. After May 15th you can "salvage" the article as much as you want. This is for my final project, so I would really appreciate it if you just allowed it to stay up there until the 15th. I'm not trying to start a "wiki war". Minnie Rahimi (talk) 05:14, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Minnie Rahimi, you should read WP:OWN. It is not your article or anyone's article. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 05:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

A class project should've been announced to the Wikipedia languages project, so we'd know what's happening. But your prof told me he'd look at the last edit you made to the article, rather than its current state, so it won't matter if someone reverts you. Or, you could rewrite it in your sandbox and direct him to that. Sorry for the confusion, but we're really not here for class projects, especially when we don't even know there *is* a class project. (You've told me, but what of your 82 classmates, and their interactions with all the other editors on WP?) — kwami (talk) 06:51, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Kumzari language

Hello, Please do not delete the text in this article. Look resources--Meysam (talk) 06:10, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

What text have you added? You claim that Kumzari is a dialect of Kumzari, which in turn is a dialect of the Luri language. You then give Ethnologue as a source. But Ethnologue does not say that, and in any case, you can find much better sources that Ethnologue. We use a different classification in our Iranian languages articles, and use that same classification here. So you're making Wikipedia contradict itself without good reason. The only other change you made was to add a category which does not exist. That is, you haven't done anything to improve the article.

Perhaps you could rewrite the article in your sandbox, and when it's finished, you could copy it over to the actual article. — kwami (talk) 06:43, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Ethnologue in the classified wrote:

Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Western, Southwestern, Luri

You can prove otherwise classified? You do not censorship?!--Meysam (talk) 09:35, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

"Luri" does not mean the Luri language. Look at it: It's a group of languages that includes Luri. Regardless, Glottolog does not follow that classification, nor do we at Western Iranian languages. — kwami (talk) 17:20, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

About Luri language

Hello,

I can't find a trace yet that states that Luri is native to Oman as well, though it is stated there that is is. [13] Iraq and Iran obviously are correct and are easily accessible to see it confirmed per the sources on the article's page.

Any idea about this?

Bests - LouisAragon (talk) 18:55, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

No source, so deleted. Also, the Iraqi population emigrated to Iran decades ago, didn't it? — kwami (talk) 20:55, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Ah, if you classify Kumzari as a Luric language, as Ethnologue does, then Luri in the broad sense is spoken in Oman. But Glottolog and other sources classify it differently. — kwami (talk) 20:59, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

kwami, excuse me for the belated response. Well, Saddam did follow a policy of expelling all Iraqis with Iranian roots back to Iran in the course and prelude to the Iran-Iraq war (he managed to expel about 350,000 - 1 million of them in official numbers, not even mentioning the unofficial numbers..) so I'm sure that indeed a large number of Luri speakers did return.

However, there are Kurds in Iraq of Iranian Kurdish descent, such as the Fayli Kurds, who speak a diacect of Lurish, and they still do live in Iraq even after the forced deportations by Saddam.[14]

So yeah Lurish is still definetely spoken in Iraq.

Hmm if only ethnologue lists is as a Luric language, then lets leave it out. In my opinion, Ethnologue is rather inconsistent about certain facts my personal opinion is after having interacted with them on personal and inpersonal levels in the past about data's they've published before.

- LouisAragon (talk) 21:06, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Sources

Do you have the time to check out Talk:List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers? We could soon be back to the chaos of yesteryears with no source for the ranking, just a load of nationalists cherrypicking sources to suit their POV.Jeppiz (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

If Peter wants to add a second source, he's welcome to do so. We could have a 2nd section for it. The article would be better. I just don't know of one. — kwami (talk) 19:46, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

About Malayo-Polynesian

The File:Malayo-Polynesian-en.svg does not include the map of New Zealand and other territories where Oceanic languages are spoken. Oceanic languages are included in Malayo-Polynesian group of Austronesian language family. Thus, Oceanic is not a separate group from Malayo-Polynesian. Rather, the former is just a sub-group of the latter.

Fcbelmontejr (talk) 00:33, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Oceanic is on the map, just not all of it, because the central area would not be legible if it were. — kwami (talk) 17:14, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Age of Thaana

Template:Alphabet claims that Thaana is attested from the 4th century BC on. WTF? That's clearly bullshit, judging from everything I've found on Wikipedia about the history of Thaana and the Maldives. (I mean, that would mean that Thaana is older than Ashoka's inscriptions. There's only some primitive form of Brahmi from Anuradhapura at the time, according to Coningham et al. 1996, although I remain sceptical because it is unclear to me how reliable that dating is.) I'd change it, but it's all incredibly vague about the early history of the writing system and the region, so I don't know what else to put. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:43, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Of course it's bullshit. Happens all the time: my language is older than yours, the original language of God, etc. All we can do is revert people, unless we want to protect the template. — kwami (talk) 17:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Those older-than-thou dick-measuring contests are only too familiar to me. Even Paleolithic Continuity can be outdone – perhaps modern ethnic groups go back all the way to H. erectus? :P

By the way, awesome quotations up there; the Mikebrown one is gold. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:34, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

May 2015

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Swiss Standard German. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.
Do talk, discuss, communicate instead of behaving like a child! Thx ZH8000 (talk) 20:13, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I am communicating, you refuse to justify your edits, and your edit-war is inappropriate per WP:BOLD. Warning me as tit-for-tat when I warn you is just being petty. You might want to take your own advice. — kwami (talk) 20:16, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

"box inappropriate and false" – why?

You have deleted the language boxes Peter238 added to the articles Austrian German, German Standard German and Swiss Standard German. Your edit summary was a mere "box inappropriate and false". May I ask you what was inappropriate and false about these boxes? --mach 🙈🙉🙊 23:47, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Take Austria. It claims that Austrian Standard German is the native language of practically the entire population of Austria, which is clearly false. It also claims that it's the official language of Austria, which I suspect is also false. I'd have to check, but I'd bet that the official language of Austria is simply German. For example, all national official languages of EU nations are official in the EU as well, and I doubt that Austrian documents submitted to the EU are translated into German Standard German, or vice versa. The box does not summarize any useful factual information, which is its purpose. It does give the pronunciation, but much more than the summary you'd expect in the box, and it would be less distracting in the text. — kwami (talk) 23:52, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Makes sense. I'm fine with the deletion. Peter238 (talk) 00:15, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

But then, deleting the official status lines meets your criticism. Though I am not sure whether your criticism is really justified (see Austrian German#European Union in the article). In any case, the other information in the box is useful and factual. Comparable articles of national varieties have a similar box (e.g. American English or Welsh English). The boxes provide a useful summary, they mark the articles as a language articles, and they give information that is not found in the remainder of the article, such as the pronunciation or – not yet provided – the language codes (de-AT, de-CH, de-DE). I will restore them. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 07:52, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Is that Austrian German that's protected, or Austrian Standard German?

Don't add info you know to be false, like that spurious population.

WP:OTHERSTUFF is not a good rational. I've been deleting useless and misleading boxes like this from many language articles. — kwami (talk) 19:03, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Austrian German is obviously the same as Austrian Standard German (which is also what the article says): the national variety of standard German that is used in Austria, and it is to it that Austrian German#European Union applies. Austrian Standard German is but a redirect to Austrian German. I would advise against putting "Standard" into the article name, because österreichisches Deutsch is the normal designation both in common usage and in Linguistics. There is no common designation for all the dialects of Austria taken together (probably because some belong to Western Upper German while most belong to Eastern Upper German), so there is no danger of misunderstandings.

You are right that speaker numbers should have sources. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 19:36, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

That wasn't a complaint about the name of the article, but a worry that the code may be incorrect. Austrian German can also mean the German spoken in Austria, e.g. Bavarian. If de-AT means German spoken in Austria, then it would be incorrect to use it for the standard language. — kwami (talk) 19:43, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

As for the latest bout of your edit war, you claim that Swiss Standard German is "obviously" not High Franconian. Yet the article states that it is a variety of Standard German (which you also deleted from the box), whose article states is a variety of High Franconian. So, if you are correct, at least one of our articles is wrong. Which is wrong, and do you have a ref to support your claim? — kwami (talk) 19:48, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

No, Austrian German refers to the national variety of the Standard German language that is spoken in Austria. Even the information on the English Wikipedia is remarkably consistent about that fact, see the articles Austrian German, Standard German, or Languages of Austria (not to speak of the sources provided in these articles).

The proof of burden for High Franconian is clearly on your side, because it was you who put that piece of information into the article Standard German (see [15]). I am going to remove it there because you will not find any sources for that claim in reputable sources. Standard German is well known to be an overarching language that combines elements of East Central German (Sächsisch, Thüringisch) and East Upper German (Bavarian). There is a more recent influx of Prussian (which accounts for all these dreadful [ɐ] and [ʁ] on the Wikipedias).

And you seem to be confusing me with User:ZH8000. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 19:59, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorry about that.

Whoever wrote the WP article on Austrian Standard German may have decided to name it "Austrian German", but WP does not define the English language. There are no shortage of sources that refer to the German spoken in Austria as Austrian German. Therefor we need a ref that de-AT refers to the standard language. Anything else would be OR, which is not acceptable for encoding.

If Standard German is not High Franconian, then that article needs to be corrected. — kwami (talk) 20:08, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

I have corrected the article on Standard German. With regard to Austrian, I have moved the discussion to Talk:Austrian German#Infobox, IETF language tag de-AT, so other interested Users might join.

What about other common IETF language tags such as en-US, fr-CA, or pt-BR? I hope you do not reject the whole lot of them? ☺ --mach 🙈🙉🙊 21:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary: I would object to being inconsistent, in, say, adding de-AT but not en-US. My main worry is that our coding assignments be reliable: How do we know any particular code is correct? How to we resolve counter-claims, or the same code being used in multiple articles? — kwami (talk) 21:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

As for removing the classification of Standard German, that is correct according to Glottolog, which is based on Stiles (2013) and Harbart (2007). Has Glottolog misrepresented them, or do you have a RS that they are wrong? There may be other influences in Standard German, but that is true for all languages. The principal editor of Glottolog, AFAIK, is German, and it seems unlikely he would get his own language wrong! — kwami (talk) 21:44, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Glottolog (or other sources such as the SIL) are 1. not very reliable sources for well-researched European languages (they are great for minority languages on other continents where we have no better research) and 2. notoriously oversimplifying language relations by forcing them into a binary tree hierarchy (as does Wikipedia). I have never heard of Stiles and Harbart, so I suspect they are no specialists on the history of the German language, either. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 22:05, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

If WP and Glotto simplify the situation in the same way, then how is Glotto not appropriate as a source for the simplication in WP?

The sources are:

• Stiles, Patrick V. 2013. "The Pan-West Germanic Isoglosses and the Subrelationships of West Germanic to Other Branches." NOWELE - North-Western European Evolution 66. 5-38.
• Harbert, Wayne. 2007. The Germanic Languages. (Cambridge Language Surveys.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Now, they may be wrong, and Glottolog may be wrong, but as long as they're the best sources we have, they're what we should follow. If you have better sources, of course, then knock yourself out! Meanwhile, leaving Standard German half unclassified does a disservice to our readers. — kwami (talk) 22:25, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

That is easy. Take any book that seriously discusses the origin of the modern German written language. At this moment, the best I have is: Werner König (1989): dtv-Atlas zur deutschen Sprache. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, pp. 91–99. Modern Standard German is a mixture based on different High German varieties. Attempts to pinpoint it to one specific variety are futile – see especially o.c., p. 93, where König explains how historically there were attempts to pinpoint it to Prague chancellery German or to Eastern Middle German, but that no such specific attempts are tenable anymore. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 22:53, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough.

What of the spoken language [deu], which we call "Standard German"? Is there reason to reject the classification of that as well? Much less likely that people's native language would be a mixture, though of course it does happen. Or might we want to move it to a less confusing name? — kwami (talk) 22:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Since your edits are consistent with the Standard German article being about the written standard, I've removed info about the native dialect sometimes called "Standard German". Much of the confusion was probably my fault. No ISO code, since that's not specific to the standard. — kwami (talk) 23:06, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Featherwork

Hello. Can you please add in-line references throughout this article you created? Thank you.Zigzig20s (talk) 18:46, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

It was largely a compilation of scattered info in the WP articles it links to, guided by refs found online. I only created the article because I didn't want a red link to 'featherwork'. It would take more time to ref than I'm willing to put in. — kwami (talk) 18:53, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

2015-05 language vitality

Please take a look at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/Term#Endangered languages. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 20:20, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Alabama

Are previous same-sex marriages really being recognized in Alabama? Is there a source? Prcc27 (talk) 02:12, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know, but the claim has gone unchallenged for months, despite several editors updating events. I see nothing in recent events that it's changed. — kwami (talk) 02:15, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

• The same judge that legalized same-sex marriage in Alabama issued a stayed ruling today [16]. Idk if that has any effect on recognition of previous SSMs or not... Prcc27 (talk) 02:19, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

No indication that it has. I think we need to hold off until we have a RS that things have changed, or agree that the claim was never justified to begin with. That needs broader discussion, maybe on the SSM in the US talk page. — kwami (talk) 02:37, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

Amkoe

Hi. I did this. But perhaps I did something wrong? -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:06, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Oops, yeah, I should've use the PUA template. — kwami (talk) 04:40, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

From Nancy Dorian

"In the early years of the study there were more than 200 speakers of the dialect, including one parrot." --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:18, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I think we have a new quote of the day! — kwami (talk) 04:36, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I was amazed that some linguists opposed species-based discrimination already this early. Animal speakers count too! :-) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:24, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Southern Kurdish dialects

Did you notice that there is an open move request discussion taking place at Talk:Southern Kurdish dialects? I suggest taking part in that discussion rather than making a unilateral move of the page without participating in that. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:16, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

And a similar comment applies to Central Kurdish dialects, for which an RM discussion was just held a few days ago. If you want to move that, I suggest filing a new RM proposal. —BarrelProof (talk) 01:22, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Didn't see them. — kwami (talk) 01:58, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

There wasn't for "Central Kurdish dialects". There was an older (roughly a month) RM for it to be moved to Sorani, but says nothing about removing "dialects" from the title. --JorisvS (talk) 07:54, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Whatever the details, these are obviously not uncontroversial moves. Multiple pages related to Kurdish dialects have titles that have been actively discussed currently and in the very recent past. A month is not a long time, and it's been less than a month. Now Kwami has moved Central Kurdish dialects twice (actually four times, but twice today) and has been reverted twice, only one of which was by me, and I hope it should be sufficiently obvious to anyone that the RM discussion process should be used prior to any further moves. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:25, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

The controversy was whether Sorani is a synonym for Central Kurdish. My move was just formatting per our naming conventions and had nothing to do with that. — kwami (talk) 19:30, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

There actually was some discussion about whether "dialects" should be in the title or not in the RM at Talk:Central Kurdish dialects that was closed on 4 May – please see the comment of GregKaye at 09:56, 21 April 2015 (UTC). There is also active discussion of that question at Talk:Kurmanji Kurdish – please see the comment of GregKaye of 08:26, 8 April 2015 (UTC). Anyhow, two reverts today should make it obvious that it is not uncontroversial if it wasn't obvious already. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:36, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Baltic languages

"The Baltic languages are part of ..." is not a (proper) definition.[17] If "group" is no good, what else could we make of it? Something akin to the definition of Tibeto-Burman languages, which has "are the non-Sinitic members of ..."? --JorisvS (talk) 12:29, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

We would be correct to say "the non-Slavic members of Balto-Slavic", but that would be unintelligible to anyone who doesn't already know what the Baltic languages are. I'm not sure a proper definition is always useful. One would take more writing skill than I have. — kwami (talk) 17:01, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

!Kung pronunciation

Do you have any idea what !Xuun is actually pronounced like? And, that said, N!xau ǂToma's name? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 08:39, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if it's the same in all varieties, but I converted the form for Akhwe in Heine & Honken (2010) into IPA. For the name, I don't know: I'd need it in proper orthography. — kwami (talk) 16:28, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for reverting Mjbr's edits. I've tried to get through him before on his talk page using the exact same rationale you were using, but he subsequently stopped replying, but now seems to be continuing his disruption. I suggest ANI should be the next step.

Regards and bests - LouisAragon (talk) 18:41, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

@LouisAragon: I went to the 3RR noticeboard, where we're supposed to be able to go for edit-warring, but they said he'd not violated 3RR itself and so did nothing. However, if we both revert him (he's just reverted a couple more of my reverts), or get someone else on board, he won't be able to keep up without violating 3RR. I know that's playing the system, which is bad form, but if the 3RR board isn't going to do their job, then perhaps that's what we need to descend to. — kwami (talk) 18:54, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

This seems to have been resolved. But kwami, notice that the scholar's name is Gernot Windfuhr, not Windfurh. This typo should not be allowed to propagate further on Wikipedia. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:42, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Oops! Thanks. — kwami (talk) 16:38, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Guam

Hi, Guam legalized same-sex marriage so it should be yellow on the world same-sex marriage map, but idk where Guam is... Prcc27 (talk) 09:57, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Soyaltepec Mazatec

What references do you have for your addition of the layers of purported organization on this language? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:46, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Gudschinsky 1958, as noted in the edit summary. It would be nice to have something more recent, but this is what we use in the Mazatecan article. — kwami (talk) 17:51, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

All these languages have the same sublevel, with no distinguinshing at any higher level, please add to the Mazatecan article the reference and his classification. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:55, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

It's already there, and has been for years. — kwami (talk) 17:56, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

ABVD vestiges?

I've just noticed that in the intro of Meso-Melanesian languages, the family is called a "moderately supported group". Isn't this a vestige from the now-removed calculations from the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database project? The confidence the ABVD assigns to traditional Austronesian subbranches is fairly irrelevant for the reader, especially when all mention of the project is gone from the article. I'm mentioning this here because the problem may be present in other articles too. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

You're right, of course. Don't know how we'd find them all, though. — kwami (talk) 20:08, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Sumerian, extinct languages and Language Isolate Category

Hi Kwamikagami. I initiated a discussion in the talk page of Language Isolate. You may remember, just I dont feel comfortable with the language of the article. I want the usage of modal "can be" instead of "is". Also, some minortiy view references could be given. But I cannot talk to, I am not sure they listen.

May I invite you to consider the issue? Just take look. Thank you.Okurogluselo : Blah 00:52, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Nostratic is not a mainstream linguistic theory. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it's WP:FRINGE, but it's definitely not demonstrated. In all mainstream language classifications, Sumerian *is* an isolate. I think that's a fair statement. Of course, it's not really an isolate, in the sense that, if we were able to go back far enough, we'd find relatives, but then neither is Basque. Language families are postulates of classification and reconstruction, and as long as there is only one language in a family, then it's an isolate in that classification. — kwami (talk) 17:47, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Uysyn

Hi, Kwamikagami. As you seem to be a very knowledgeable and respected editor in the fields of history and linguistics, your thoughts on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Uysyn could be helpful. Krakkos (talk) 21:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Na-Dene languages

I was reading the article on Na-Dene languages, and I saw that half of the article uses "Na-Dene" and the other half uses "Na-Dené" (with the accent on the final "e"). Shouldn't the article be consistent? If so, which should predominate? CorinneSD (talk) 02:00, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Wasn't there a similar question elsewhere recently? I think the unaccented form is probably more common, but don't really know. — kwami (talk) 01:00, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Bradley's classification in Burmish languages

The scheme has two nodes called "Burmish". It's present in the source (p. 38), I know, but pretty awkward, anyway. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:59, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Would it be OR/SYNTH or something to differentiate them somehow? After all, the term "Ugong–Burmish" isn't found in the source, either. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:03, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Macro-Arawakan languages

OK, another dumb question. According to Macro-Arawakan languages, Kaufman (1990) includes Candoshi in the group, but Candoshi-Shapra language does not mention anything, although it has an "Arawakan (Maipurean) languages" template. It also mentions that two other sources, Payne (1991) and Derbyshire (1992), include Puquina and Harákmbut, but again, neither Puquina language nor Harákmbut languages mention Macro-Arawakan. Is that intentional because the sources are outdated, or a mere omission? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:21, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

See Macro-Jibaro languages for another proposal in which Candoshi has been included. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:55, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, Kaufman (1994) has Candoshi in Kandoshi–Omurano–Taushiro, so that would trump (1990). And its inclusion in MJibaro is questionable according to that article. IMO it would be unwieldy to try to include contradictory provisional or speculative classifications in the info box. — kwami (talk) 00:52, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Not in the infobox; I just wondered if the proposals deserve a mention in the running text. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:00, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Sure. Though we should note that Kaufman apparently changed his mind. — kwami (talk) 23:30, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Dené–Yeniseian languages

Hi, Kwami - I'm reading the article on Dené–Yeniseian languages and I came across something that puzzled me. It's a chart in the section Dené–Yeniseian languages#Ket and Navajo word pairs. I was comparing the words in the different columns, and when comparing the words in the second column ("Ket") with the words in the third column ("Ket Cyrillic"), I saw that the first two words in the "Ket" column end in "s", and the corresponding words in Cyrillic next to them also end in сь. If you look at the third word, next to "old", you'll see in the "Ket" column that the word sīn does not end in "s", and yet there is a сь at the end of the word written in Cyrillic (third column). I'm just wondering if that final сь should be there. CorinneSD (talk) 01:34, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Just "sīn" according to the Wikt. Swadesh list. — kwami (talk) 00:58, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't questioning the "sīn"; I thought I had discovered an error in the Cyrillic, which I see you have corrected. CorinneSD (talk) 02:03, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The Latin and Cyrillic did not match, so one of them had to be wrong. The Latin version was supported by the list. — kwami (talk) 23:30, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I know the Latin and Cyrillic didn't match. That's what I was pointing out to you. I figured the Cyrillic was wrong, but thought I'd let you make the final determination. If you'd rather I didn't point out errors in etymology, language and linguistics articles when I find them, I won't. CorinneSD (talk) 20:55, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure how I offended you. And I've never objected to you pointing out errors.

If you weren't questioning the Latin version, then presumably you already knew it was correct, which means the Cyrillic had to be wrong. I guess I don't understand the point of this thread. — kwami (talk) 21:05, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Your first response, "Just "sīn" according to the Wikt. Swadesh list.", doesn't acknowledge that I was correct in catching an error, and it wasn't really clear what you were trying to say. (It might help if you wrote a complete sentence.) Your second response just repeats what I had written to you. CorinneSD (talk) 16:12, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

2015-06 Bembe language

d:Q3196320, d:Q4885023 and d:Q11051704 are about some "Bembe language". Do you think that d:Q4885023 and d:Q11051704 should be merged? Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 20:25, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

No, ...20 and ...04 should be merged. You can tell by the ISO codes: ...20 links to [beq]; ...04 only links to a WP article, but that links to ISO [beq]. The Glottolog codes also correspond.

However, the Swahili and Kongo WP articles link to the wrong Bembe. (Both would be "Kibembe" in both languages.) You can tell the Swahili article is wrong by the geographical description, population, and the Guthrie code, which correspond to WP-en article Bembe language (Ibembe), and that the Kongo article is wrong by the geographical description, which is our Bembe language (Kibembe).

The Polish article was also wrong, and an English article was to a rd. I think I've fixed them all now.

The SUDOC link was also to the wrong article. Supposedly inherited from WP-fr, but WP-fr contradicts it. Fixed.

Piedmontese WP got the locations of the two mixed up, so that's also now fixed. — kwami (talk) 23:05, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 19:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Suri Language

Dear Kwami, you have renamed Suri language to Surma language, without previous discussion, just with the note that this is according to naming guidelines. Could you please elaborate what in these guidelines prompted you to do so? Frankly, I believe this is not a helpful move, as it gets the naming to a misnomer. In any case, this is not the first time I'm asking you to first start a discussion on the talk page of an article before you start messing around with article names. This is not something that should be done unilaterally, and as an administrator you should know this. Landroving Linguist (talk) 05:51, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

I realized that move was problematic after I made it. I can't move it back, but I can request a move.

As for not moving articles unilaterally, that's not an option. I move hundreds of articles. Few are ever a problem. A discussion for an obvious move can take three months. Times a hundred ... I'm not going to spend a decade arguing on move requests when I can just move them, and have discussions on a few to move them back. — kwami (talk) 18:31, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

That is not an acceptable attitude. Particularly because a move/name change is not easily reversed, a discussion needs to happen beforehand. If that reduces your volume of moves, that must not be a bad thing. On top of that, a discussion does not need to take three months. I think in the case of Suri, two weeks would have been easily enough.

In any case, thanks for moving it back. Landroving Linguist (talk) 06:20, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

@Landroving Linguist: I do understand. We're all people and can all make mistakes. Usually, these moves are no problem and the odd move that is is easily reversed. Why require others to spend an exorbitant amount of time on requested moves when a move is unlikely to be contested (what else is the move button supposed to be for)? --JorisvS (talk) 09:10, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Rollback

Please stop using the rollback feature for edits you disagree with. The feature should only really be used for vandalism and you're abusing it. --Monochrome_Monitor 11:08, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) It may be used for revert edits where the reason for the revert is clear without edit summary, regardless of whether they are technically vandalism. See WP:Rollback. Having gone through his last 1000 edits, I can't find any inappropriate use; in fact, only reversion using the undo button. --JorisvS (talk) 13:47, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

And MM, you should not be edit-warring when the issue is under discussion. You know better. — kwami (talk) 20:24, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I do, and so do you. That was your third revert. I won't report you because that would be a bitchy hypocritical thing to do, but just saying. --Monochrome_Monitor 23:56, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Richard Francis Burton

Do you agree with this edit to Richard Francis Burton and the accompanying edit summary? [18]. I don't know whether Neapolitan is a language or a dialect, but a statement early in the lede of the Neapolitan article saying that it has been recognized as a language by UNESCO has a "citation needed" tag. CorinneSD (talk) 04:18, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Italian, like German, isn't really a language. (It's a Dachsprache.) I don't think it even existed in Burton's day. I'm not sure, but I think the Tuscan standard only became Italian with the unification of Italy. Regardless, the idea that the WP article should be deleted is ridiculous and suggests POV-pushing as the motive for the edit. — kwami (talk) 04:40, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Oh. O.K. Thanks for the information. CorinneSD (talk) 04:47, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Khwe language

In Khwe language you changed the reference in the infobox from e18 to Brenzinger, Matthias (2011), leaving the reference in the lead paragraph as a broken reference. Is the new reference also the correct source for that sentence? StarryGrandma (talk) 20:10, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Thanks. Fixed. — kwami (talk) 21:05, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Kwisi

Hi Kwami. Can you see what you can do about this? "Kwisi ... along with the Kwadi, the Cimba, and the Damara ... are unlike either the San (Bushmen) or the Bantu". The page on the Kwadi says they could be pafrt of the Khoe group, which are San(??) - or so I would have thought. However, at Khoe, is starts off saying it is not Khoisan, later is says it is. A bit of a mess, I guess. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 23:29, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

The first claim is biological, the second linguistic. There are several groups in Angola and Namibia that do not resemble either Bantu or Bushman peoples physically, though they speak either Bantu or Bushman languages. I don't follow your last statement. Could you elucidate? — kwami (talk) 23:35, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

At Khoe languages it first says 1. "The Khoe languages [....] were once considered to be a branch of a Khoisan", then further below, it says 2. "The Khoe languages were the first Khoisan languages known to European colonists". In a strange way it makes sense if you read it from an historical perspective - when first encountered and until recently they were thought to be Khoisan. Thanks. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 10:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

The word "Khoisan" is retained as a typological/areal term of convenience, like Papuan, American Indian, or Paleo-Siberian. I'll try to clarify the wording. — kwami (talk) 17:35, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Hey there

I know I've gotten off to a bad start. I'm sorry I've been so militant, and I certainly need to remember to use a talk page. I see that you have strong opinions about this, as do I. I'm not doing it for Zionist purposes, but because it's the mainstream. Also I have a linguist friend who thinks Wexler is a hack, and who has admittedly colored my views on him. --Monochrome_Monitor 20:37, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

@Monochrome Monitor: No problem. I also tend to assume people are going to be unreasonable without giving them a chance to prove otherwise.

Wexler may be a hack, I don't know. But Zuckermann is not. Maybe Wexler is just cited, even by people who disagree with him, because he shook things up and got people thinking about these things. It's not really Wexler I'm trying to include, but rather a recognition that Israeli (or whichever name you prefer — see Nurit Dekel, Colloquial Israeli Hebrew) is a rather extraordinary language, and not easy to fit into established categories. I suspect that's part of the reason opinions are so varied. We've had half a century of creole studies to establish concepts and define terms, but before we did, people were just as confused as to what was going on with those languages. (We still don't classify them.) I hope that with Israeli, we will start to see a similar development in the treatment of revived languages, something that may be applied to modern Sanskrit, Neo-Cornish, etc. (For example, Neo-Cornish has been described as Cornish-relexified English.) But for now, the work is pretty much confined to Israeli as the exemplar of language revival. — kwami (talk) 20:49, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I've learned a bit about Cornish revival, and it does seem a bit dubious. I'd need to know more to make judgements though. --Monochrome_Monitor 23:27, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I can't see what merit Wexler's ideas have, or what insights they offer. To me it looks like obvious bunk. Relexification doesn't mean strong sub/super/adstratum influences, nor even metatypy and the like. If Modern Hebrew (or Neo-Hebrew, if you will) were simply a relexified European language and Modern Cornish (or Neo-Cornish, whatever) simply relexified English, you'd see European or respectively English (especially verbal and pronominal) morphology, or something innovative perhaps, à la Tok Pisin, not Semitic or respectively Brythonic morphology. Is that the case? As far as I know, the morphology of Modern Hebrew is still basically Semitic and that of Modern Cornish is basically Brythonic (although I'm not familiar with spoken Cornish).

Despite all the Arabic loans, Persian grammar is still not Semitic, and despite all the Italian loans, Maltese is still not a Romance language. Sure, the large-scale borrowing resulted in the importation of foreign nominal morphology as well (especially in the case of Maltese, not so much in the case of Persian, where it's only derivational morphology at most, and even the Arabic plurals are only found in lexicalised form, while especially in colloquial Persian, plurals are formed very regularly and un-Arabic-like), but influence and replacement are two completely different pairs of shoes.

People who pretend to be linguists but are really clueless tend to use terms such as pidgin/creole and mixed language far too liberally, and it has ugly overtones, like they try to insinuate these supposedly "mixed/semi-creolised" languages are somehow "inferior" or not "the real thing" or "baby/foreigner-talk-like". People keep beating the English-is-not-really-a-West-Germanic-language-anymore (but Romance or North Germanic) horse too, but that doesn't mean it's anything but clueless malarkey. Anyone who has studied Old and Middle English even marginally will be surprised by how obvious the continuity is and how there are no sharp breaks at all. Sure, there is no weak or consonant declension as such in Modern English, but there are still several plurals that preserve traces of it, and I'm struck again and again by how many cognates with German have survived – even if only in dialects, archaic expressions, or in changed meanings. Also, the irregular pronouns are still there, and the verbal morphology has retained both some striking irregularities and suppletivisms and last but not least all those strong verbs (while Afrikaans, by the way, has got rid of almost all of them, so it does look semi-creolised). You can't make me doubt that English is really closely related to German anymore.

I mean Brythonic and Romance have done away with cases too, basically, and Continental North Germanic has simplified its inherited verbal as well as nominal morphology every bit as radically as English, but I don't see a lot of people argue that Brythonic is not a direct continuation of Old Brythonic, Romance of Latin, or Norwegian/Swedish/Danish of Old Norse. That last one would be especially lunatic because the continuity can be observed just as well as in English. My suspicion is that non-linguists just underestimate (due to lack of training in historical and contact linguistics) how strong foreign influence on a language can be (witness Cappadocian Greek) without the language losing its identity (or undergoing serious attrition) – i. e., without the chain of communicating generations being interrupted, which is what creolisation and mixing really imply. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:45, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

A lot of ad-hominems and strawman arguments, rather than addressing the sources, which you apparently haven't read. Relexification includes morphology, and Wexler is not attacking Hebrew. You're mixing up relexification with borrowing, and he's specifically not talking about substrates. Per Zuckermann, Israeli is mostly Yiddish in its phonology and syntax, and mostly Hebrew in its lexicon and morphology. He calls it a mixed language rather than a relexified one. Either way, quite a few mainstream sources say that Israeli is not a simple Semitic language. — kwami (talk) 18:35, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Quite a few... you've identified only three. You used to cling to Wexler as a source, but now Zuckermann. You have to understand these are minority views. --Monochrome_Monitor 11:10, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

What an odd thing to say. I'm sure you use the sources you have as well, and would find it odd if I condemned you for that. They may be minority views, but at least Zuckermann is a mainstream view, being found in some of the most mainstream linguistic refs there are. — kwami (talk) 18:23, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

June 2015

Hello, I'm Devopam. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, it's important to be mindful of the feelings of your fellow editors, who may be frustrated by certain types of interaction, such as your addition to Talk:Oriya language. While you probably didn't intend any offense, please do remember that Wikipedia strives to be an inclusive atmosphere. In light of that, it would be greatly appreciated if you could moderate yourself so as not to offend. I will appreciate if you avoid direct attacks and not repeatedly try to bully your point of view , being a seasoned editor. Devopam (talk) 18:06, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

What you said was blatantly false ("the language has always been called Odiya only"). It's not a personal attack to point out you're making false statements, and I made no personal comment about you whatsoever. — kwami (talk) 18:16, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I am afraid I won't go by what someone has put something on Internet to prove otherwise while ground reality is far from it. They call themselves Odia (more like Udia in phonetics) and I have got to respect that. Sad, could not understand how you would use strong words and still insist that make no personal comment but I leave it to you for good. For me this topic is buried , got better things to do in life Devopam (talk) 04:03, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

3RR on Modern Hebrew

You are way past 3RR on that article, and not for the first time. Take a break. NOW. All Rows4 (talk) 04:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The edit you're referring to was restoring a cleanup tag because the claim fails verification. Edits like that don't count against 3RR. — kwami (talk) 04:23, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes they do. There are 7 exemptions to 3RR, this is not one of them, Read Wikipedia:3RRNO. Try it once more and you'll be at the notice board, for the second time today. I'm serious. All Rows4 (talk) 04:26, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Result of the AN3 complaint about Luri language

Please see WP:AN3#User:Kwamikagami reported by User:Zack90 (Result: No action on Kwami, concerns about Zack90). Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 16:12, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

2015-06 language status

Please take a look at this. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 19:49, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

I suspect the defs might have been taken from SIL. — kwami (talk) 19:54, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Visite fortuitement prolongée (talk) 21:39, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Seems it was a sock after all eh?

Hey Kwami,

I wrote you some time ago about a common issue we had about user Mjbmr. Now that he's blocked, there's still some of his nuisance left such as here [19]. Are you waiting before reverting this or? Please let me know ;)

- LouisAragon (talk) 14:38, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

No, just wasn't online. Thanks. — kwami (talk) 05:08, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Internment of Japanese Americans/Archive 9 listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Talk:Internment of Japanese Americans/Archive 9. Since you had some involvement with the Talk:Internment of Japanese Americans/Archive 9 redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. The Theosophist (talk) 09:55, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Valencian

There is an edit warrior at Valencian (with no activity at other articles), who insists on removing that it is a variety of Catalan from the first sentence, instead calling it "a language spoken in ..." and saying it is a "glossonym for the Catalan of the area" (whatever that is supposed to mean). He refuses to take it to the talk page and just keeps on reverting. What do you think of it? --JorisvS (talk) 19:01, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, they have "the language spoken in", not "a language", which in my idiolect means they're not claiming it's a distinct language. In some ways it seems to be an improvement. "Glossonym" is inappropriate jargon, though. I reverted; hopefully they can come up with a nice compromise on the talk page.

BTW, the edit-warrior at Modern Hebrew has now started exaggerating the population at Hebrew language as well, if you care to look. It took me a long time to find an actual figure for native speakers, from 2012, and she's replaced it with the "more recent" Ethnologue figure from 1998 that isn't even for native speakers, as well as adding a world-wide figure of 9M from a newspaper article (not a RS) that does not give their source. (They cite stats further down for other figures, but AFAICT not for the 9M.) — kwami (talk) 19:50, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

It could be easily read like that it claims it's a distinct language (although it need not mean that). IMO, it is best to say it differently to avoid any such ambiguity.

I've also taken a look at the Hebrew issue. --JorisvS (talk) 09:30, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

He has now simply reverted Valencian except that he changed "glossonym"→"name". Given that there are speakers' sensitivities involved, we should be crystal-clear about what the linguistic situation is: Valencian is one of the dialects of Catalan. We do the same in other articles where such sensitivities exist (Serbo-Croatian and its standard languages!). Writing "the language ..." can be misconstrued and hence is not an improvement. I'm very much open to alternatives, wherever they are actual improvements. --JorisvS (talk) 19:01, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

He seems to be running out of arguments, as his last edit contained a major ref falsification. Peter238 (talk) 21:20, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Modern Hebrew

he went against consensus -> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_Hebrew&diff=666066897&oldid=666063253 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.170.29.90 (talk) 20:32, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

(She, actually.) I'm not going to edit-war against someone who doesn't care about getting blocked or banned, as I'll just get caught up in it. At this point, so much garbage has been introduced, and so many of my own improvements reverted, that I'm writing the article off as a lost cause. If other users decide to help revert the bad edits, we can clean it up; otherwise we are saying that a national language like Hebrew is not worth bothering with. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

German language: Bizarre reference to "prestige variety of high franconian"

As me and another user were puzzled by your reference in the infobox of German language: "L2 speaker: 28 million including the prestige variety of high franconian" I removed that statement from the article. Could you elaborate on what you meant with this? --37ophiuchi (talk) 16:57, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I believe I meant including native speakers of other varieties of German, per the definition of German in the article. That is, they're L2 speakers of standard German, but their native language is also German, so they're already counted in the number of native speakers. — kwami (talk) 23:45, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

You must have mixed something up. "High Franconian" is a dialect-group within the German language. As the article is pertaining to German and all its dialects (compare to article on Standard German) there is no need to specify. Furthermore, to my knowledge, there is no such thing as a "prestige version" of any German dialect. --37ophiuchi (talk) 23:06, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The prestige variety *is* Standard German. (Or so our articles claimed at the time. The classification has since been changed.) The number of L2 speakers includes native German speakers for whom Standard German is their L2. They are therefore being counted twice, once under native speakers, and once under L2 speakers, and therefore the total cannot be calculated by adding the two figures. — kwami (talk) 23:21, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

First time I ever heard the term "prestige" associated to a dialect. In any case, "High Franconian" (or High Allemanic) is not Standard German. "Native German speakers for whom Standard German is their L2" - Who are you referring to? This is a very arbitrary and imprecise formulation. Even Swiss children, growing up with Swiss German, only learn the Standard German writing. Therefore such a distinction is almost impossible to make, let alone to statistically measure. If anything, people like Swiss Germans would have to be considered "bilingual" (i.e., two L1s), but, again, the term would be inaccurate, as Swiss German, Luxembourgish, Hunsrückisch, Bavarian, Saxonian, etc. are German dialects/subvarieties, not separate languages. Some of them might have standardized written forms or are sometimes referred to as "language" for political/cultural reason (like Luxembourgish, the same is done with Brazilian/Portuguese or Moldavian/Romanian), but they remain German subvarieties and are therefore to be fully considered in the article on the German language (as opposed to the article specifically for Standard German). --37ophiuchi (talk) 22:57, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that the number of native speakers is for German, but the number of L2 speakers is for Standard German. We don't know that it is the number of L2 speakers for German. — kwami (talk) 23:05, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

@37ophiuchi: Those are properly considered distinct languages, given their low mutual intelligibility. However, most of them use the same dachsprache, Standard German, which is why they are commonly considered dialects of a single language. That is sociolinguistics, not linguistics proper, though. Luxembourgish is Moselle Franconian and has its own standardized written form very distinct from Standard German, a situation very different from the examples you gave. --JorisvS (talk) 09:20, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

They are not "distinct languages" in a strict sense. However, it is an issue that researchers have trouble agreeing on (partly due to its cultural/national implications; compare Moldavian/Romanian!). The exact transition from a standardized dialect to a different language is very blurry, and may also change over time. I do fully agree with you, Luxemburgish, and any other German subvariety, whether there is an accepted, standardized written form of it or not, are not Standard German. Of course not. While Standard German is the Dachsprache, the article German language encompasses the entire dialect/subvariety continuum (like Arabic language, and also a little bit like Chinese language), so subvarieties should definitely be included in the statistics mentioned in it. It is comparable to Chinese or Arabic, where there is a Dachsprache, and several national/regional subvarieties, that are sometimes, for different purposes, called a "language". Mutual intelligibility is a dangerous parameter to assess the transition dialect-language. Scots is sometime called a language, but most researcher agree that it is an English dialect with a standardized written form. Yet someone from California might not understand a Scots-speaker - although both speak some form of "English". Likewise, a Moroccan might have trouble understanding someone from Syria, but no one would argue that both still speak "Arabic". Even their written forms may differ. --37ophiuchi (talk) 09:28, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Low German is part of a different branch of West Germanic languages altogether and you say "are not distinct languages in a strict sense"?? If you have two distinct mutually intelligible varieties (i.e. dialects) that have both been standardized, that does not make them distinct languages. What makes them distinct languages in a strict sense (i.e. using linguistics and not non-linguistic parameters such as culture or ethnicity) is that they are structurally very distinct from Standard German, and consequently only very low mutual intelligibility. --JorisvS (talk) 10:02, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with you, JorrisvS... And I never ever said Plattdeutsch (Low German) to be a German dialect! :) It is a GermanIC language, like Danish, Icelandic, Frisian, German, English etc.. Just because it is called PlattDEUTSCH, does not mean it is a German dialect. Pennsylvanian Dutch is not Dutch, either, but... you guessed it, a German dialect :D PS: I would appreciate if you and kwami could contribute to the L1+L2-speaker discussion a started on Talk:German language! --37ophiuchi (talk) 10:09, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Then why did you basically say otherwise above? --JorisvS (talk) 10:25, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I have not mentioned Plattdeutsch at all in those posts. --37ophiuchi (talk) 11:32, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

But you did speak of "dialects of German" and gave a non-exhaustive number of rather different varieties that are spoken by ethnic Germans (and Swiss and Austrians) and Low German is spoken by ethnic Germans. For High German internally, what I said above is also valid, except, of course, that they do belong to the same branch of West Germanic as Standard German. The structural differences are still easily significant enough to be "distinct languages in a strict sense" and mutual intelligibility is low. --JorisvS (talk) 13:28, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

If you are trying to say that Luxemburgish or Swytzerdütsch are separate languages from German, then we will never come to a final settlement. As far as I know, most linguists consider both a dialect or "standardized variety" of German and part of the German language dialect continuum. And as I pointed out, intelligibility is not necessarily a good benchmark, as it may even vary individually from person to person. I never learned Dutch, but as a German speaker I can understand most of what a Dutch-speaker says. The same may hold true for many Swedes and Norwegians, for instance. That does not mean one has to be a dialect of the other. Likewise, limited intelligibility does not imply that a dialect or subvariety has to be a separate language (even if there is a standardized written form). In that sense, "German" is perhaps comparable to the Serbo-Croatian "macro-language", as well as to the already mentioned Arabic. In any case, I do not claim to be a studied linguistics-expert, I am merely citing knowledge I collected by reading books, and Wiki-articles of course ;) --37ophiuchi (talk) 13:56, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

"I never learned Dutch, but as a German speaker I can understand most of what a Dutch-speaker says." Hardly. You may be able to make out things, but you wouldn't be able to reliably follow entire conversations. And if you think you can, you are fooling yourself, the differences are just too great for that to be possible. If I'd put you to the test, then you'd see you actually can't. This is something I've encountered a lot before: People can understand something said in a language simply claim they "understand it" (and believe so). As for Serbo-Croatian, the situation is completely reversed: the differences between Standard Croatian and Standard Serbian are very minor and speakers have no problems communicating with each other. On all linguistic accounts they can only be a considered a single language. --JorisvS (talk) 16:22, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I acknowledge the difficulties with mutual intelligibility. A whole range of all sorts of passive bilingualism and non-linguistic factors have an effect on it. It's the structural differences that count. Mutual intelligibility can only be a pointer to whether those structural differences are significant. --JorisvS (talk) 16:22, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I see we agree then. Any as you know even myself better than I do, I surrender (I only live close to the Dutch border). You get a cookie! :p --37ophiuchi (talk) 18:36, 25 June 2015 (UTC) PS: Please find the time to stop by Talk:German language to contribute to the L1+L2 speaker discussion. --37ophiuchi (talk) 18:39, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

My personal experience (of many years ago) with Dutch and Swiss German is that even despite extensive linguistic and other previous knowledge (knowing Bavarian and passively Swabian dialect helps with Swiss German, and some limited passive familiarity with Low German helps with Dutch) I've noticed I cannot follow Dutch speakers consistently (only patchily, with a lot of concentration and cues from context) and while I can understand Zurich German on TV (especially of announcers), I cannot understand Bernese German and I cannot follow fast-paced real-life conversations in Zurich German. More recently, I watched an interview with Michele Hunziker (not sure about her dialect) and I barely understood her, but it was hard and I think I did not understand everything. So, for all intents and purposes, or at least in terms of mutual intelligibility, Swiss German is a different language from Standard German, if closely related, and Dutch most definitely is. However, if 37ophiuchi has good familiarity (passively or even actively) with Low German, I would be much more inclined to believe he can understand Dutch; in fact, some traditional dialects spoken close to the Dutch border are very similar to Dutch, but I don't know where 37ophiuchi lives. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:36, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Also, Scots is most definitely not "an English dialect" – if anything, it's a group of dialect groups, but nowhere like a single, homogeneous dialect! At least Insular Scots and perhaps also Doric Scots are basically completely unintelligible to monolingual speakers of Standard English as spoken in London, for example (there's a continuum between basilectal, "broad", rural Scots dialects, mesolectal, urban Scots and acrolectal Scottish English). Similarly, Moroccan Arabic is most certainly so divergent from the other varieties of Arabic (with the exception of neighbouring Algerian and Tunisian Arabic) that the intelligibility problems with speakers from the other end of the Arabic-speaking world – or even from Egypt – are severe. German and Arabic are more like Chinese in that regard than like Spanish, which is "merely" pluricentric with different but largely mutually intelligible national standards and substandard dialects (though if one were to count the Romance languages of Spain as "Spanish dialects", as in former times, the situation in Spain would be comparable), let alone Serbo-Croatian (unless one considers the traditional dialects like Chakavian, Kajkavian and Torlakian, which are much more divergent than the national standards). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:58, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Los Banos

Hi, I saw you recently changed some of my changes to the article on Los Banos. I wanted to run a couple things by you as a result: according to Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key, the way to respell the sound "o" of words like "goat" is with the letters "oh" and not just the letter "o" which Respell uses for the sound of the letter "o" in the word "lot" which is the equivalent of the IPA sound /ɒ/, and which is not the sound I meant to be indicated here (do you disagree? Which is fine, just lay it on me as to why if so). Second, you capitalized the BAN part of the respell— the respell template does this automatically, and was already doing it when you changed it (which is neither here nor there, technically, but I wasn't sure you realized this). I did not want to simply undo your edit (which I always consider a rather rude gesture whenever I see it done to anyone) but wanted to ask you to reconsider your changes to the respelling. Thoughts? Let me know. Thanks! KDS4444^Talk 04:43, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for not just reverting.

The IPA was /ɒ/, so I changed the respelling to match. When the two disagree, I generally assume that someone able to format the IPA template is able to correctly identify the vowels. It's also more likely that people will notice mistakes in the respelling than in the IPA, so matching the respelling to the IPA has a greater chance of detecting errors.

If you don't capitalize, the template generates a tracking error so the transcription can be verified.

Also, the usual pronunciation should go first. From the description, it sounds like the last pronunciation, the one used by local news stations, is the usual one. — kwami (talk) 04:57, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

I live nearby (but not close enough that people talk about it regularly; it is just a town out in the middle of nowhere that you drive past on the way to LA) and I've always heard it pronounced bænoʊs - i.e. long o, no 'y' sound. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 16:44, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Changed it to two long oes, one short a. Is that correct? — kwami (talk) 00:20, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Western Baluchi language

Hello Mr Kwamikagami! Please don't redirect Western Baluchi language in Baluchi language .--Ibrahim khashrowdi (talk) 21:36, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I will continue to do so until we have a proper discussion. There have been edit wars over dividing up Balochi and Luri, that have resulted in one account being blocked and another being shut down. Please go to the talk page of Balochi language and explain what you want to do and why. — kwami (talk) 00:10, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Odia alphabet

Hi, while checking the revision history I realized you had reverted back all the changes I had done in the article yesterday after the movement from Oriya to Odia. Can you let me know why you have reverted back everything? - Remoonline (talk) 08:40, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't realize the move request for the language article had been closed as 'moved'. — kwami (talk) 05:00, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Old Persian

What do you think of this edit to Old Persian? [20] CorinneSD (talk) 22:52, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Looks like an attempt to conform w default WP IPA chart w/o really knowing what they're doing, unless they have a source that *r is a semivowel. — kwami (talk) 05:10, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Re Oriya/Odia

I must admit a close call either way. Was swayed by the more contemporary change to "Odia" and trending more common use than the historical "Oriya". Either way, our readers won't fail to find it. --Mike Cline (talk) 14:58, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Tunisian Arabic

Dear User,

As you are one of the contributors to Tunisian Arabic. You are kindly asked to review the part about Domains of Use and adjust it directly or through comments in the talk page of Tunisian Arabic.

Yours Sincerely,

--Csisc (talk) 12:54, 30 June 2015 (UTC)