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Sections dormant by 31 December 2016

Happy New Year

I have archived all the discussions which appeared to have ended by 31 December 2015. LynwoodF (talk) 15:06, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks you help out LynwoodF

Hello, Emmanuel2312. I notice you are a new editor and I know from personal experience that the technicalities can be a little daunting at first. McRae-Helena, Georgia is a new article about a relatively new entity (formed just a year ago). There is a lot of work to be done on it and you have already introduced some useful material. I have never been there, and so if you know it well, you are in a better position than I am to expand the article. LynwoodF (talk) 11:35, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

A bowl of strawberries for you!

Thanks for involving yourself with digging around for those details surrounding history we all love! Well, erhem, perhaps that should read 'the more discerning and excitable history buffs amongst us all love'. I hope you enjoy the strawberries. They're full of iron to keep your energy levels at their peak levels. Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:03, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the strawberries. I love them. They have always been one of my joys in the summer. My father, who was a keen, practical gardener in the wake of World War II, used to grow them, along with many fruits and vegetables far more delicious for being so fresh. Of course, that was a long time ago – he died 64 years ago, shortly after King George VI.

I was disappointed not to find any more than I did, but I have learned quite a lot because of the discussion. My Valois Dukes did have a brush with the Ottomans – as a young man one went on the Nicopolis Crusade, had to be ransomed, but earned the name John the Fearless – but I was only vaguely aware of their expansion north of the Black Sea.

I think WP is at its best when editors help each other get a better understanding of their own special interests. LynwoodF (talk) 08:52, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

SCAD Bees link to redirect

Hi Lynwood, and thanks for your help. In this case, I am planning to break the SCAD Bees article into two (Atlanta/Savannah), so I intentionally linked to the redirect. It's OK either way, just wanted to let you know what's going on. Thanks! Jacona (talk) 14:49, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for telling me. Sorry if I interfered with your intentions. From what you say, you seem to know where you are going with this. LynwoodF (talk) 14:55, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Molenbeek

Hi. I'm not sure that you intended to do this, did you? I don't think we should be citing the Daily Express - it's not a reliable source. Cordless Larry (talk) 08:43, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Cordless Larry. Yes, I did intend to do this. I am sick to death of the level of biased editing on the page and have requested semi-protection. I was about to look back through later edits to restore any which might have been worthwhile. I shall certainly restore your edit and will go and do that now. LynwoodF (talk) 08:58, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

OK, no problem. I had already reverted the article back to your version of last night, and then removed that source in a subsequent edit. It probably needs more work, though. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:04, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and I've also filed this regarding the edit warring about this issue, which seems to have been resumed by a newly registered editor. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:06, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Sorry. I now realize that you had already dealt with everything that was bothering me. I am happy with your view of the Daily Express. LynwoodF (talk) 09:15, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Strasbourg request

Hello LynwoodF. I've got a little favour to ask. I would like to turn the article Palais Rohan, Strasbourg into a Good Article, and for that purpose, I made a request for a review here. Only - no one reacted because no one seems to care! So... tell me if I'm being rude... given your interest for Strasbourg I thought maybe *you* could read the article and add your thoughts. (I made the same request to Chris j wood). All the best,

Hello, Edelseider. I did not see your request, as I have never become involved in peer review. However, I have put the relevant pages on my watchlist and of course I will do what I can to help. I would much rather be dealing with a sensible editor like you than the kind of people I have had battles with on Molenbeek, Cyrillic script and (minefield of minefields!) Transnistria.

I know relatively little about the Palais Rohan and you perhaps know that I lived in Strasbourg over 50 years ago, when I travelled between le Stift and the University on a trolleybus. Incidentally, I was there when the old tram system came to an end, but I now see that there is a new, much more modern one.

I love Strasbourg and would like to visit it again, but my present state of health precludes travel. However, I can "travel" electronically and see from Google Street View that many of the buildings I knew and loved look much the same. LynwoodF (talk) 09:41, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

That is very touching. I know that you are a living memory of the Strasbourg of old. The last set of Google Earth aerial photographs of Strasbourg is from October 2015. There has been a new bridge built between Strasbourg and Kehl, France and Germany since - the new tramway bridge (http://www.kehl.de/stadt/webcam/webcam.php). That means that there are now four bridges side by side leading from Kehl to Strasbourg over the Rhine, where there were only two 50 years ago. If you add the Pierre Pflimlin Bridge (2002) a little farther south, it makes 5 bridges! *That* is was Europe is all about. Best regards, --Edelseider (talk) 10:07, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Hello again, Edelseider. Thank you, especially for the information updating me on the bridges. I am reminded that in the days before the UK joined the EEC, as it then was, British students who had not applied for permission to live in France would, once every three months, take the bus to the Rhine Bridge, ask to have an exit visa stamped in their passports, walk over to Kehl, have a beer in a café, then walk back and obtain a new entry visa. It was quickly done, but is now completely unnecessary of course.

I have been busy for a couple of days, but I have now had a chance to look at the article. I do not think I would be qualified to do a full peer review, but I think you are most concerned about the quality of the English. I know from your previous work that your English is very good, but I can understand that you would like a native speaker to look at it. So I shall be very critical, although I hope not hypercritical. I shall have to alter my mindset a little, as I am very forgiving with some Romanian students I help. Their English varies from very good, with occasional excursions into the unidiomatic, to virtually incomprehensible, and so I do not lecture them on the finer points, e.g. the subtleties of the various uses of shall and will. So I tolerate things which I perceive as French mistakes, e.g. failure to distinguish at and to, of and from, and make and do. Anyway, I shall spend some time over the next few days reading through the article and making any minor changes. Best wishes, LynwoodF (talk) 19:01, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you LynwoodF, I'm looking forward to your improvements! Best wishes, --Edelseider (talk) 19:32, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I have started to go through the article, Edelseider, and so far have made some minor changes to the lede (printers' jargon for lead, if you have not come across it) and the History section. If you feel that I have altered the meaning of anything, please complain to me and we can discuss a further amendment. LynwoodF (talk) 16:59, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

You are doing a great job and I now see how much better some things could have been expressed. All the best, --Edelseider (talk) 06:24, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Hello again, Edelseider. Thank you for your positive reaction. I am still trying hard not to alter the essential meaning of the text, but it is sometimes very difficult to find the mot juste. (We use that expression in English!) For example, there is a subtle difference between alternatively and alternately, although you will see that in the end I decided to go for the idiomatic in turn in two places. Also, customary tense usage in English would sometimes seem irrational to a native speaker of a Romance language. For example, Je suis professeur depuis vingt ans would translate as I have been a teacher for twenty years. And that implies that the speaker is still a teacher – otherwise he/she would have said I was a teacher for twenty years, i.e. J'étais professeur pendant vingt ans. Incidentally, I never really was a teacher. I earned my living as a cost accountant, but in retirement I am trying to help Romanian students to express themselves in English. At least their English is better than my Romanian. I doubt whether I shall ever master the numerous tenses and moods of the eleven conjugations! Best wishes, LynwoodF (talk) 14:31, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Hello yet again, Edelseider. I have now been through the main sections and done some tidying of language. Most of the changes are minor and relate to subtleties of meaning. For example, palatial means resembling a palace and not pertaining to a palace, but I doubt whether all native English speakers appreciate this point. Again it is difficult to explain the difference between historic and historical and between classic and classical. I think it requires a lifetime of immersion in a language to know precisely how to use these words. No doubt there are similar subtleties in French usage which I have failed to appreciate in the six and a half decades since I started to learn the language.

I shall look through it all again after a while in order to see if there is anything I could express better. LynwoodF (talk) 09:25, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

You are doing a great job and I hope that you have learnt something about the building in the process! So, if palatial means resembling a palace and not pertaining to a palace, what is the word for "pertaining to a palace"? Because the meaning of that precise sentence has been altered a bit by your addition of the word "more" and I would like to put it correctly.

When you are finished reviewing, would you mind fill out the form at Wikipedia:Peer review/Palais Rohan, Strasbourg/archive1? And could you then tell me which points of the article need complementary informations, if any? Because as it stands now, with your precious help, the article doesn't do Wikipedia any shame (ne fait pas honte à Wikipédia).

Thank you again. Have a nice and sunny day. --Edelseider (talk) 10:15, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your vote of confidence. I have changed more palatial to of the Palace. At another point I changed the text to Palace apartments, but I felt this construction did not work well with the word rooms, which is shorter and far less specific. Apartments is used particularly for palaces, rather than quarters, which are less palatial. In English we use nouns attributively in a way which is not possible in French, and so often there is no adjective for a concept. We say school head, team captain, railway station. No doubt non-native speakers find this odd, as I am sure they do with all the phrasal verbs we use. Romance languages add prefixes to form new verbs, but we just continue a sentence with an adverb or preposition which modifies the meaning of the verb. This must cause confusion to students of English.

I shall have a good look at the peer review process and then go through the article looking at the content, rather than the language. I doubt whether I am in a position to suggest major changes. I now know more about the Palace than I ever did when I went past it every day! LynwoodF (talk) 11:44, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

"working" or "to work"?

Hello LynwoodF, I hope you are fine. I have another grammar question to ask you. When I wrote the article Palais de la musique et des congrès, I included the sentence "Le Corbusier started working on the commission and made drafts and a wooden model but died before he could provide definitive plans." I wondered then and I still wonder now if it would be more correct to write "started to work". Both don't sound natural to me. In French, we would say "a commencé à". Which one is right? Thank you very much! --Edelseider (talk) 20:10, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Edelseider. I am fine, thank you. Nice to hear from you. What you wrote was perfectly idiomatic. In the example you give working is a gerund, a verbal noun, and not a participle. Now the gerund can be used interchangeably with the infinitive. We could say To see is to believe (Voir c'est croire), but the usual expression is Seeing is believing. Incidentally, you could perfectly well have said began working or began to work. All four expressions mean pretty well the same thing. LynwoodF (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much, LynwoodF. It's a bit like in a supermarket: there's such a large choice of identical products with different labels that one is always (wrongly) convinced to have picked the worse one. Still better than Communism, of course! :) Have a nice day, --Edelseider (talk) 10:05, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Hello again, Edelseider. As your standard of English is very good, I am going to be picky about the way you have used convince. This is a very subtle point and I should ignore it if one of my Romanian students wrote it. One can convince somebody of a fact and one can persuade somebody of a fact. The two verbs are synonymous is this context. Quite separately, one can persuade somebody to do something (i.e. they then go and do it). During my lifetime a new usage has arisen and one can now convince somebody to do something. So persuade and convince are synonymous in both senses. This means that your usage of convince to is not idiomatic. You could have said convinced that one has picked, or convinced of having picked. Mind you, I think English speakers would have understood without any trouble. LynwoodF (talk) 10:04, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you again - maybe I should apply for a status as "honorary Romanian student" (just kidding). What part of Romania do your students come from? Have you been to that country? I've seen it in 1998 under difficult circumstances (it was, for personal reasons, a trip I should better not have made), this is not 50 years ago but in terms of economic and social changes, much must have happened since. Have a lovely day, --Edelseider (talk) 10:30, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Hello again, Edelseider. My students are in Iași and Bucharest. I do not tutor them formally. We chat in English and I give them informal guidance. The standard of English varies hugely. A business studies student has good, though not perfect, English which would be adequate for a job with an importing or exporting company. Another student has started from a very low base and is barely comprehensible, but recognizes that in the real world a knowledge of widely used languages such as French and English is important. Yet another has comprehensible, but rarely idiomatic, English and causes me some amusement. She has developed the knack of getting things precisely wrong. For example, she confuses at and to, of and from and make and do. So she goes at church and returns of church and then makes her homework.

I have never been to Romania, although I have been interested in Romanian, which is a linguistic curiosity, for many years. I am not at all fluent in Romanian, and shall probably never manage to master the plethora of verb forms. There are eleven conjugations and numerous tenses. Also, there are verb forms of types which just do not exist in French or English. If you studied Latin, you may remember having to learn the supine. Well the supine is alive and well and living in Romania.

In the 70s I went to what was then Czechoslovakia. Gustáv Husák was in charge and it was a grim place. It felt like going back to the 40s or 50s and I was relieved to get back to Western Europe. Talking to the Romanian students, I get the impression that many aspects of their lives are decades behind us. Of course there is a veneer of modernity (they have laptops and mobile phones), but their options are limited.

This country is drowning in a mass of undigested facts being put forward as reasons to vote one way or the other in the forthcoming referendum. Nothing has been said which convinces me of anything, and so I shall vote to stay in the EU, for the sake of the younger members of my family, who are keen to stay in, and of my various friends in other EU countries, none of whom wishes us to leave. LynwoodF (talk) 10:45, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Skyscraper list

Where is number 6? What happened to it? Thanks for reverting malicious edits there. Triplecaña (talk) 10:13, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Triplecaña. I noticed this anomaly and investigated. The item was removed by an editor who pointed out that the particular tower did not meet the criteria for being regarded as a building. I was wondering what to do about it, but you have now spurred me to put the item back with a curt edit summary. LynwoodF (talk) 12:23, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, LynwoodF. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

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Crooked House of Windsor

Have tried to tidy it up a bit. KJP1 (talk) 15:20, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts. It certainly looks better now. I think your later date makes much more sense.

I am told there is a monograph by a respected local historian, but I have yet to set eyes on a copy. If one does come into my hands, I might be able to expand the article, but I am not holding my breath. LynwoodF (talk) 16:11, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

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