User talk:Richardw

Welcome to Wikipedia!

Welcome!

Hello, Richardw, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! Tobes ^(talk) 11:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please Use Edit Summaries

When editing an article on Wikipedia there is a small field labeled "Edit summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:

The text written here will appear on the Recent changes page, in the page revision history, on the diff page, and in the watchlists of users who are watching that article. See m:Help:Edit summary for full information on this feature.

Filling in the edit summary field greatly helps your fellow contributors in understanding what you changed, so please always fill in the edit summary field, especially for big edits or when you are making subtle but important changes, like changing dates or numbers. Thank you. Tobes ^(talk) 11:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		Keep up the good work on language-related articles! Sala Skan 22:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Meanwhile, you may find it useful to create a user page. Here, you can tell things about yourself and keep logs of things you'd like to remember. Again, thank you! Sala Skan 22:46, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dutch telephone directories

Suppose you read that in kiKungili telephone directories the letters "B", "H", "R" and "W" are sorted the same, and that thanks to this the surnames Byatt, Hyatt, Ryatt and Wyatt can be found in the same spot. Wouldn't you be somewhat puzzled? The advantage of sorting is that different name are found in different spots. Only if they know that in kiKungili those four letters are considered variants of the same letter, and that those four names sound the same when pronounced, can a reader appreciate the advantage. Likewise, the typical Wikipedia reader, who doesn't know Dutch, may not immediately see how sorting Bruijn and Bruyn to the same place should be advantageous. You keep removing information that makes this understandable. It also appears that you have some conception about the use or meaning of the term "variant" that I don't understand. Do you think the word is used incorrectly on the following pages: [1], [2], [3], [4]? --Lambiam 10:54, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The way it was used now was (in my opinion) not ideal. In the example Bruijn/Bruyn there's surely something to be said for it but not necessarily in all cases where surnames exist with ij and y these surnames are related. Still, you may be right that I was too brief. Therefore I have expanded the sentence a bit so that your meaning is explicitely "voiced". Richard 14:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Barents

Thanks for the help! Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 10:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

so-called etiquette

I am galled. Not only by the comment but by your stubborn persistence that it remain. It is clearly offensive to at least 10 million people and should not be presented as mainstream Netherlandic thought. Wikipedia relies on the printed word and editors that give their opinions. But this is offensive, nothing else. The only possible rationale for inclusion is continued prejudice. You crassly disregard common standards with this unfortunate statement. Its educational value is Nil...Nada...Nothing. You can surround it with subtle verbs like percieved and dipicted but this does not change a thing. I am not pushing my POV---I am merely protecting it. I will continue to correct this type of slander...here and elsewhere. We are creating a new encyclopedia for the Ages. Not the Dark Ages, tho!--Buster7 (talk) 22:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BTW...No "perhaps" about it!. It has EVERYTHING to do with my heritage--Buster7 (talk) 23:34, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This section is part of a larger discussion on Buster7's talk page that will soon be moved to Talk:Dutch customs and etiquette. Please don't add comments here. Richard 11:14, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

internal/external links

I'm basically flying around WikiWorld by "the seat of my pants", not always sure that the way I'm doing things is right or the most efficient for all concerned. I guess that's obvious. I appreciate your advice. It will make me a better editor. Bedankt.--Buster7 (talk) 10:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Geen probleem ;) Richard 11:07, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

editing talk pages

Hi, I noticed you correcting a grammar mistake on Talk:Dutch customs and etiquette. If this were mainspace very good. However, it is general custom not to change talk page entries by others. While many corrections (like yours) will not be a problem, it is sometimes hard to interpret when you start changing the intention of the original editor. As Talk pages are only intended for other editors perfect grammar or style are not so much important, while the original psoting often is. So my advise, do not change texts on talk pages (except for your own). Cheers. Arnoutf (talk) 19:19, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FIFA World Cup

I was just about to say the same about the singular article....a....but you said it better. Thanks! As you can see, I'm still giving editors grief over Grammar and Usage of the English Language.--Buster7 (talk) 07:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Curious about what your edit does

Hi, Richardw! I just saw this edit you made, and I am curious, what does that do? I tried searching for this in Wikipedia help and elsewhere, but could not find anything. I also tried looking at the page before and after your change, but I can't spot any visual difference. Thank you in advance for satisfying my curiosity! CosineKitty (talk) 18:37, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi CosineKitty,

until yesterday I didn't know the {{-}} template either but the change H Debussy-Jones made had an unwanted side effect in my browser: the {{Time measurement and standards}} template was partially hidden under the list of categories. In that same edit (s)he used the {{-}} template. I was also curious what that was, so I looked it up and it turned out to be "shorthand" for <br style="clear:both" />. Since that was just what I needed to get a properly displayed page again, I added a second {{-}}. That's all.

Richard 07:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that makes sense. I have been using Google Chrome recently (converted from Firefox). There was one occasion where I had to make a similar fix to the article about Morse code to fix a problem that was visible only in Chrome. CosineKitty (talk) 16:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed: similar problem, basically same solution. Richard 07:35, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tree image

I wanted to point out that the image Lone_Cypress.jpg is actually hosted on Wikimedia Commons, not here. The image is provided there for all people to use, under a free license. If you feel the image is not actually free of copyright, you should start a discussion there. Removing the image from the article here does not change its availability on Wikimedia Commons. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:53, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I know that that image is on commons and that it's free to use. My last edit on 17-Mile Drive removed a different image that does NOT exist (17milecypruspoint-crop.jpg). That, plus I changed an indirect link to a direct one ([[Freedom of panorama]] to [[Panoramafreiheit|Freedom of Panorama]]. In my (truncated) edit summary I mentioned that applicability of "freedom of panorama" on private property is arguable, since on private property permission may be required. Richard 13:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Brasstown North Carolina Tornado

Brasstown, the community, resides inside the township of Brasstown, that covers the western portion of clay county. I would bet money that the tornado is described in relation to the location unincorporated community (as the township is a larger area and therefore less accurate for describing the location of anything, in addition to the fact that there's very little reference to the townships themselves that I've seen.)

user:ncboy2010, 10:00PM EST —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.98.63.8 (talk) 02:01, 19 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ramstein Airshow

Thanks for the edit help. It was getting late and I wanted to make sure the references were there. Also, the memories of that day were starting to come back and I needed to take a break.--DeknMike (talk) 17:19, 28 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My pleasure. Richard 17:31, 28 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Deprecated Unicode glyphs

Hello! I spotted your comment at user talk:Martijn Hoekstra:

although there is one (1) glyph for "ij", its use is officially discouraged. See (among other places) here and here.
— User:Richardw 09:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Could you please be a bit more verbose on this? Actually, I'm interested in second link: it deprecates the use of Unicode glyphs U+01C4 – U+01CC, which can't be properly written otherwise. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 09:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hej Dmitrij! Well... it says you should use individual letters and allow the software to create these ligatures where appropriate so in the case of (for instance) U+01C4 I think you should use a D followed by a Ž (U+017D) (resulting in DŽ). Richard 09:58, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that these are not ligatures, these are letters. Eg. the Serbian word "injekcija" has 10 letters (with second letter "n" and third — "j"), but the word "ǌen" has only three letters (first letter — "ǌ"). This is apparently evident with the words spelled in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets: these words are "инјекција" and "њен" accordingly. Writing the letters in question as separate glyphs creates ambiguity and hinders some tasks. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:22, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't write the recommendation but I see your point. unicode.org itself makes the same recommandation by the way. Richard 11:02, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as I get it, the chart You linked doesn't deprecate the letters I talk about: they are classified as Croatian digraphs matching Serbian Cyrillic letters and are not marked as "historic", "deprecated" or "compatibility". I contacted you as I thought you might know something about SIL's document you've linked to. Anyway, I think I would better address my questions to its auther. Thanks! — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 12:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I couldn't be of more constructive help. Good luck on your quest, and should you receive more information: I'm always eager to learn something new, so if you could keep me posted I'd be much obliged. Richard 13:10, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

	The Minor barnstar
	Minor edits are often overlooked, but are essential contributions to Wikipedia. Thanks for sticking around and making steady improvements to encyclopedia over the years. (You recently passed 1,000 edits to articles!) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:49, 23 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Richard 06:51, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello

Hi. Nice to see you here.Jeff5102 (talk) 07:51, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise ;) Richard 08:56, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

O yes, maybe you can look here. I`ve gotten myself into a fine mess, as Oliver Hardy would say. ;) Regards,Jeff5102 (talk) 12:01, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to your message

The same can be said for your own grammar. It seems like you do not really know what you are doing, both grammatically and in the context of the article itself - unless of course you are a biased Dutch person (as usual). You seem to agree with the placement of words that do not seem correct at all. Do not undo any edits until a consensus has been agreed.--Robedia (talk) 14:55, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for proving my point. To that point:

You say that a lot of Dutch humor is often of [...] nature. By combining 'a lot of' and 'often', this implies that a given joke can sometimes have a different topic.
Casual attire, such as jeans, are most commonly worn. Attire is singular.
Weddings are mostly small private affairs as the Dutch do not mostly like to - aside from the fact that the Dutch do not mostly like doesn't make sense, it's bad style. The same goes for The Dutch attitude is a no-nonsense attitude and informal.

Furthermore:

The Dutch people have a tendency to not understand foreign jokes and only understand Dutch jokes. Whatever gave you that idea? Sure, if jokes are specific to some other culture, it might be true, but you cannot generalize it like that.

Your (as usual) in the statement above hints to prejudice on your side. Also, I find it rather suspicious that this entry was originally made by Timbot18, who forgot to sign, and that you replaced the signature added by Sinebot by Robedia's. To me, this smells like a sockpuppet.

I could go on, but I'll leave it with this. Richard 09:10, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like we were right.

See here for the SPI on Robedia. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 01:04, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Irrelevant.

Your article does not contribute anything to the general discussion, Richardw, which is about the generally accepted Dutch culture as a whole. Accept it. Even Dutch academics admit it. Your article does not contain much information either to prove anything...even the cafe owner admitted it started as a joke. It is quite possible that her customers were Dutch tourists. The article does not prove that the "rude" customers are foreign...it is quite common for Dutch people after all to barge in. I have no need to go into further discussion with you anymore about this topic. It is childish trying to prove yourself...and frankly a waste of time.--Nederlander90210 (talk) 18:53, 21 May 2014 (UTC) P.S. Your behaviour leaves something to be desired and you are not an expert on grammar judging by your own edits... If you are Dutch, you are really not doing a good job proving that the Dutch are not rude.--Nederlander90210 (talk) 19:17, 21 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're missing the point (several points, actually). Pots and kettles come to mind as well. Richard 08:14, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Although I obviously don't have a clue and don't know what I'm doing, I predict my very next edit will be reverted and I give it a 50 percent chance that afterwards the changes will be implemented again. Richard 18:17, 22 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Something else was confirmed, but this particular edit was not reverted. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong. Richard 07:14, 23 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tenerife

The reversion has been done. Hopefully the higher-ups can fix what's wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bjnboy (talk • contribs) 14:54, 10 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for showing the PDF of the Spanish report. I took a look at the PDF and it seems to be the English translation. What I wanted to do was also link the document in the original Spanish language and not only the English translation. This is because many aviation accident agencies say "As accurate as the translation may be, please refer to the original, and if there are differences between the original and the translation the original has supremacy" WhisperToMe (talk) 18:52, 4 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Undoing multiple edits

Hello, thanks for your attempts to revert the edits by Terry Lee Marzell. However, you didn't revert the edits properly when there was more than one ... the undo feature can work with consecutive edits. see Help:Reverting for more information. Graham87 16:17, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That depends. I can undo only one edit at the time. In some cases, a manual revert is easier. I left behind the info you removed here because I wasn't sure whether it was correct or not. In this instance, I didn't see (then) that Leeddle had been a slip of the keyboard. Here and here, I went to the 'original' version with a minor improvement in the wikitext. So, in the cases I didn't restore the exact same wikitext, it was on purpose. Richard 17:12, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh... wait, I see now that I can undo multiple edits at the time. I'm not really sure if I would have done so in all cases in question (for reasons given earlier), but I do see what you meant. Thanks for the helpful tip! Richard 18:39, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone and undone my reverts of your edits at Francis Wayland Parker and Adickes v. S.H. Kress Co. Re: the edit to Carter G. Woodson (which is on my watchlist), I was very suspicious about the statement that he drove garbage trucks before the age of 17, in the early 1890s, because I didn't think they existed then. This eventually led me to restore some long-lost text about the history of trucks (among other things) to the Truck article. Now that I know about steam trucks, that text seems a bit more plausible, but I'm still very reluctant to put it back because of how it was added. Graham87 04:53, 14 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. Thanks again. Richard 08:06, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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My error.

I didn't notice until now that there was a notice of "ten minutes later" (06:23 UTC) Had I noticed. I certainly wouldn't have reverted. TheGRVOfLightning (talk) 11:18, 28 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Capital ß and ij

Hi Richard, I just noticed that user ßlackHeart (the one who claims that ß is a capital letter) also made this edit to IJ (Amsterdam). Personally I don't feel that such a remark is appropriate for an article about a body of water — or encyclopaedic at all. I don't think there is a need to state what the letter(s) do not stand for, especially in view of the detailed (and maybe also superfluous) explanation already given. What do you think? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 20:04, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I read his edit summary, which (again) illustrates his skill in comprehensive reading. You're right, this addition has (had) no added value and might as well be reverted (which I have done just a moment ago). Yesterday, I came across his first (and so far only) edit on the Dutch Wikipedia in which he changed the correct 'IJsbergen' into the flawed 'Ijsbergen'. How he came to doing so, I cannot tell. Richard 08:21, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ongelofelijk, want iedereen weet dat volgens de Taalunie alleen 'IJsbergen' juist is. Als hij geen idee van de Nederlandse spelling heeft begrijp ik niet waarom hij op nl.WP artikelen bewerkt en verschlimmbessert. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 13:17, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Kennelijk weet niet iedereen dat ;) maar zelfs al zou deze persoon daarop gewezen worden, maak ik me sterk dat hij zich er niets van zou aantrekken (zijn bewerkingen aangaande de hoofdletterstatus van 'ß' in aanmerking genomen). Richard 13:24, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Me and the IJ

Dear Richardw,

I am sorry that I acted immature and annoyed you guys for "correcting" the IJ. You can look at my edit history: I no longer "correct" instances of capitalized IJ anymore (my most recent edit is to add the redirect page Ysbrand to IJsbrand. However, I am posting this message to ask you something:

Do you consider IJ as 1 or 2 letters?
In your elementary school, how does your alphabet go? How does the end of the alphabet goes as?
Do you consider Ij acceptable?
How rare are instances of (i )IJ and (ii) Ij?
Is IJ really unique among the digraphs in terms of capitalization and other unusual features?

Just a little backstory: I often joked around with my friends about the IJ, and we always pronounce capitalized IJ as I.J.

ßlackHeart (talk) 22:12, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! In the same order as your questions:

I was taught it a letter, but nowadays it's called a digraph which implies that there are two letters. However, it still has all the characteristics of a single letter.
When children first learn to recite the alphabet, it ends with 'x, ij, z'. When they begin to learn to read and write, 'ij' is taught much earlier than 'y'. The 'y' (also called 'Greek ij' or 'i-grec') is one of the least common letters in Dutch. In my years in school, 'y' was never officially given a place in the alphabet — as one grew older, one just got used to the idea that between 'x' and 'z', there was this extra letter. The 'y' never took the place of the 'ij', though. They co-existed. I'm not sure how and when present-day children learn that, when writing the alphabet, they ought to write 'x, y, z' and not 'x, ij, z'.
Never (in Dutch).
IJ is not rare at all. Every sentence beginning with a word starting with 'ij', starts with 'IJ'. Proper names are capitalized and if they start with 'ij', that means an 'IJ' is required. 'Ij' is not rare, but non-existent (in Dutch).
As far as I know, it is.

Richard 07:07, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Quite interesting. A compilation of IJ can be found in this flickr page. I and my friends enjoyed going through the entire compilation, shouting I.J. whenever it occurs within a word, even though it is pronounced I. in most cases.

Just a fact, the dijgraph/trijgraph thing come from a Quora question. Dzs is also distinctive for being the only trigraph that is also a letter, but unlike IJ, I do not oppose the Dzs, or any multigraphs in Hungarian, since Hungarian is a highly phonetically consistent language (there is a simple one-to-one mapping to sounds and letter/letter combos with only a few irregular cases, unlike English), and some sounds have to map to multiple letter combinations, and then treat this combination as a single letter. The Dzs is also quite rare, since it does not have a "Hungarian Rune" counterpart, and it is almost exclusively used to transliterate the foreign 'J' sound or letter, such as those in English. I sometimes call the Dzs a Hungarian J, evne though this language also has a J character, which make the 'Y' sound. So in Hungarian, IJ could become I.Dzs. or something.

It seems that the special treatment of IJ is quite needless, and when I first saw it I was shocked. Interestingly, I spread this fact to my friends, and we all joked about anything which contain an IJ, such as "how much IJs do you have?" when we buy ice cream, and such. Or we completely omit the IJ, and pronounce the remainder of the word, such as pronouncing IJsbrand as Sbrand, and IJntema as 'nTema.

File:Ijsjegrotten.png

ijsjegrotten, Dutch for ice cream caves.

By the way, here is an instance of a regular Ij, from Candy Crush (official Dutch language), once the most popular mobile and Facebook game in the world, and is still among the most popular. This also applies for the mobile version.

Here are some more questions for you:

For the Dutch alphabet, how much letters does it have, in your opinion?
How do you feel if you see an 'Ij' rather than an 'IJ'?
Reverse the letters in the following sentence (from the Bijectie page in the Dutch Wikipedia:
Bijectieve functies zijn essentieel voor veel deelgebieden binnen de wiskunde
How strict is the 'IJ' capitalization convention enforced?

ßlackHeart (talk) 21:11, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In most cases, 'ij' is not pronounced as 'i'. In fact, it is only common in the word bijzonder (special), making that a special case. That is a bit strange, since 'ij' originated as a long 'i'. Common pronunciations of 'ij' are ɛi and (in the suffix -lijk) ə.

You might find the special treatment of 'ij' strange and needless, I find the use of a capital when referring to oneself needless. That too has a historical background.

That the makers of Candy Crush used 'Ij' does not make it right.

Since 'ij' is no longer considered a letter, the alphabet has 26 letters – the same 26 that are used in the English language. That is something you have asked multiple times before.
Depending on when and by whom, I might think that the writer simply did not know, that he ought to now by now, that he made a mistake or that he's just trying to annoy someone else.
That is not a question, but you are trying to find out if I would change the 'ij' into 'ji'. Yes, in both instances. In 'bijectie' there is no digraph, but there is one in 'zijn'. A digraph means two letters. If the order of letters is reversed, it is also reversed when those letters form a digraph.
Not at all since we don't have a spelling police. Also, it is not outlawed to make spelling errors.

Richard 07:35, 10 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Compliment?

Extended content

Transferred from User talk:89.172.185.158. See this edit and the next ones for context.

Compliment?

I really am surprised that saying 'you are a little more evolved than monkeys' is meant to be a compliment. Also, 'dutch people didn't do anything important for the civilisation' is offensive in its own way — that it is preceded by 'this is an offense' makes it even more dubious to put it like that. In the edit that was summarized that way, you removed (among other things) The Dutch are proud of their rich history in art — and yet you claim not to know who Rembrandt (Rembrandtdtdtdtt) was. To be honest, I am not sure if I should take your remarks seriously. The only more or less constructive edits you have done, resulted in eleven (!) references to prove the Croatian background of a missionary — a background that is not mentioned anywhere else in the article and the relevance of which remains unclear. The rest, I still perceive non-constructive. If you seriously doubt something, adding {{Citation needed}} is usually a better way to start than removing text. Richard 17:09, 4 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Humans and chimps have 98% of same genes. Also, 'dutch people didn't do anything important for the civilisation' this is one of the biggest truths ever. You like to think you are integrated and an example for all the other nations, but you are very nationalistic and conceited. 'this is an offense' means that the sentence I deleted is offensive to all those people who actually did something for the civilisation. You think you did something big for the civilisation. Chinese did, Japanese did, Germans (who Dutch people love a lot) did, and they do not brag themselves. Personally, I think Rembrandt's paintings are black as Ethiopians and have no quality. Why did I put so many sources? because when something is true, it is easy to find independent, reliable sources which confirm that truth. The whole article is silly, and almost every sentence there needs {{Citation needed}}. --89.172.181.176 (talk) 21:18, 4 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I can see that any discussion with you on this subject would be a waste of time, so I won't continue this one. Richard 07:12, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

IJ Drop Cap

Richardw, I am currently wondering is there any sites or books which show an IJ drop cap? If possible, can you provide me a page link in which one of the drop caps is an IJ? For books and non-web resources, can you post a snippet of the IJ drop cap (as long as it does not violate copyright?

I found a flickr link which contains many instances of the peculiarities of IJ: https://www.flickr.com/groups/ij/pool/

Have you gone to the Stedelijk Museum? Besides the unusual IJ which fits quite awkward in the logo, are there any instances of IJ which stay on one line where others do not in non-horizontal text? If possible, can you provide me a snippet?

ßlackHeart (talk) 02:42, 12 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is one in this image (which is likely copyrighted, but also illustrates the position in the alphabet ij had when it was still considered a letter) and you could always make one yourself:

IJ is een ijsbeer die wit is van vel

or, if you prefer it to be part of a whole word:

IJsberen zijn wit van vel (well... actually they're black but that's beside the point).

Decorated IJ drop caps are probably rare. Your perception of IJ fitting awkward in said logo probably stems from the fact that you still think of it as an I and a J and not of a unified glyph. Richard 06:51, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tenerife disaster

I've reverted myself. Thought you had removed images but they don't exist. Mjroots (talk) 17:41, 16 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

They don't exist anymore. They were screenshots from a TV documentary, uploaded as 'own work'. Had the images been acceptable, I probably would have changed the caption as to reflect that the images were artist's impressions. Richard 06:12, 17 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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German language

In Alsace, Rhine Franconian/Central German dialects are only spoken in Alsace bossue. TheCarlos1975 (talk) 09:29, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If that is true, the article on Alsatian dialect should be corrected and reliable sources for the change should be added. The section "Language" in the article on Alsace as well gives Alsatian an area larger than just Alsace bossue (even for the Frankish dialects of West Central German, "and in the extreme north of Alsace" is added). True, it is not the dominant language, but neither article says it is. Richard 09:53, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Low Alemannic (Upper German), High Alemannic (Upper German), South Franconian (High Franconian) and Rhine Franconian (Central German) dialects spoken in Alsace are referred to as Alsatian, the Rhine Franconian dialects spoken in Moselle are referred to as Lorraine Franconian. TheCarlos1975 (talk) 10:00, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You placed "(spoken in Alsace bossue only)" directly after "Alsatian", giving the first impression that Alsatian is only spoken in Alsace bossue. It could be interpreted that both Lorraine Franconian and Alsatian are only spoken in Alsace bossue, but that is not correct either. In your remark from 9:29, you address Rhine Franconian and not Alsatian. Maybe "(spoken in...)" was intended to add information about Lorraine Franconian, in which case it should have been put elsewhere in the sentence. However, the entire sentence reads "These dialects (being the Central Franconian dialects and the Rhine Franconian dialects) are considered as Lorraine Franconian and Alsatian in France". No need to elaborate on where, when and by whom these dialects are spoken. Both Lorraine Franconian and Alsatian have an article in which that information can be found. Richard 10:27, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is not right either. Alsatian is not spoken exclusively in Alsace bossue. If you disagree, correct the various articles and provide sources. Richard 10:47, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The Central German dialects that are spoken in Alsace, and which are referred to as Alsatian, are spoken in Alsace bossue only. TheCarlos1975 (talk) 10:55, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm... I see what you're getting at. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Sorry about that. That being the case, the article Alsatian dialect and, for instance, template:Germanic languages place Alsatian under Upper German and not under Central German, which makes me wonder if Alsatian should be mentioned here in the first place. It could be justified if, as you say, Rhine Franconian is referred to as Alsatian – but I don't readily see that in the articles. Maybe omit it here altogether (since it is not a Franconian dialect) or state explicitely that, although the name Alsatian is normally used for an Alemannic dialect, the same name is used for this specific Franconian dialect (preferrably with proper citation)? In the section "Upper German", Alsatian would be an implicit part of "the Alemannic dialects in the west". Richard 11:22, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's why Alsace bossue would be better than Alsace. TheCarlos1975 (talk) 11:31, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But that would not make it less prone to misunderstandings – not without mentioning somewhere that this use of 'Alsatian' is not the generic use as described in the article on Alsatian. Richard 12:06, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence: The Franconian, West Central German dialects are considered as Lorraine Franconian (in Moselle) and Alsatian (in Alsace bossue) in France. would be correct. TheCarlos1975 (talk) 12:23, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not entirely. Put that way, it states that the dialects are considered Lorraine Franconian in Moselle and Alsatian in Alsace bossue. They are considered that in other parts of France (and elsewhere) as well. The word 'spoken' should be included.

I already said that I made a mistake before. However, given the current content of the articles, I would not be surprised if someone else made the same mistake. It has to be mentioned somewhere that the Alsatian in Alsace bossue is not the Alsatian as described in the article that is linked to – or this use of Alsatian has to be mentioned in that article. Richard 12:36, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

considered as Lorraine Franconian (spoken in Moselle) and Rhine Franconian variant of Alsatian (spoken in Alsace bossue only) in France. TheCarlos1975 (talk) 12:42, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A Rhine Franconian variant of an Alemannic dialect? Hmmm... well, make it "and as a Rhine Franconian variant of Alsatian (spoken only in Alsace bossue)" and I will leave it as you left it. Richard 12:51, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Help wanted

@Richardw: I'd like to ask for your advice and help... Hi, I'm from Italy and I've seen you're a Dutch admin, I hope there's no problem if I speak English. I'm having troubles in Dutch wiki, there's a pair of corrections about Italian towns that should be done, but the Dutch users I met are biased towards me and don't want foreign users to interfere with Dutch wiki. I'm not trying forcing my "point of view", never ever: I'm providing correct information about the correct spelling of that pair of cities. So you don't have to trust my word, I well know that the whole wiki project isn't based on volunteer users but on primary sources, in fact I'm going to privide them to you, it'll be up to you to decide whether those sources are reliable or not, more or less authoritative than the ones "found" by the other Dutch users. But I strongly believe that you'll agree with they higher reliability. Obviously, should you disagree instead, I won't insist further. Consider that, without any offense for anyone, Italian mother-language speakers living in Italy since they were born have a better knowledge of Italian language, conventions and sources than any foreign person trying to understand them, exactly as Dutch speakers like you compared to Italian speakers like me have a better knowledge about Dutch language issues. For example, I'd never contest a Dutch user coming to it.wikipedia in order to ask Italian users to correct a pair of Dutch proper names from the "Y" spelling to the "IJ" spelling, I might try understanding more about this issue but I'd never doubt a mother-language speaker nor the sources he brings. This was the whole premise, now if you think you could be able to advise and help me I'll explain you what's this particular issue, I'll be shorter than I've been here since sources will speak for me. I'll wait for your reply. Thank you anyway for reading so far :-) 46.249.38.152 (talk) 12:33, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ciao! Could you be more specific? Please provide the names of the cities concerned, links to the articles, pointers to earlier conversations and the like. The IP addressed you used to post this question doesn't seem to have been used on the Dutch Wikipedia.

Also – and I do not know if that's the case here – some cities do have a name in Dutch that is different from the one in Italian, for example Rome for Roma, Venetië for Venezia, Milaan for Milano, and Florence for Firenze (see http://namen.taalunie.org/land/it for more examples). In those cases the Dutch name is usually preferred.

Please let me know the what and where. Richard 13:08, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your disposability! Okay, I'll answer your questions. The 2 cities are "Ruffré-Mendola" and "Cirié", too small to have a Dutch translation. The first is currently named "Ruffrè" in Dutch wiki, it's because originally there were 2 towns, Ruffé and Passo Mendola, which some years ago were united in one city; almost all other wikis have moved the page after that but not Dutch wiki. Here's the source: Comune di Ruffrè Mendola (actually, the pronunciation of the final E in "RuffrE" is closed, so the correct orthography in Italian should be "Ruffré", but since the website didn't care about that it's okay renaming the page "Ruffrè-Mendola" with grave accent). The second has always been named in all wikis, that is also in nl.wikipedia, "Cirié" with acute accent. As you can see in the municipal site (Sito istituzionale della Città di Cirié) and in particular in the official statute (Statuto del Comune di Cirié) the correct spelling is Cirié. Unfortunately, a Dutch user has moved it to Ciriè, without any discussions and without consensus, just because he found a random road sign spelled with an apostrophe looking like a grave accent. I've been told that in Nederlands road signs have "an official value", but in Italy the situation is different: we Italians don't care so much about accents, since they're always and only at the aend of the words on the final vowel, so we often replace them with apostrophes, and this always happens for road signs and generically in signs. Here you can see a road sign near Cirié where the word "velocità" (speed) is written "velocita'" with an apostrophe in place of the grave accent. All this was to explain why foreign people may make mistaked about such issues. Anyway, do you agree with me that the most authoritative and reliable source about the spelling of a town is its statute? I hope so. Well, this is all I had to say about this issue, but if you have more questions please ask me. The pages should be moved to Ruffrè-Mendola and to Cirié. Let me know!

46.249.38.152 (talk) 13:51, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For Ruffrè-Mendola, I would have no objections. There was a move proposal which was denied, but the website clearly states Ruffrè-Mendola.

For Cirié: when moving that page, Erik pointed to the move proposal mentioned above. I will ask him to have a look here. The websites you link to do seem to use the acute accent.

To be continued. Richard 14:16, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good! If ErikvanB is willing to discuss with me on equal terms I'll have no problems, but as I've said I'm afriad he's biased towards me: he moved the page Cirié to Cirié just because I asked in the general discussion to move Ruffrè to Ruffré-Mendola. I'd like me and him to be clear with each others, but so far all I could do is ask other users like you. Let's remember that it's not "me" the issue but the correct spelling of those 2 Italian comuni, if Dutch users as you consider autorithative enoughs their municipal sites and their official statutes, then the renaming should be done just for correctness of information in nl.wikipedia.

46.249.38.152 (talk) 15:39, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Some remarks:

You tend to ignore sources that contradict your viewpoint. When I show you the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica or other sources, for instance, you prefer not to pay any attention to them.
I have not just moved the page Cirié to Ciriè because of the road sign, but mainly for reasons of consistency.
The topic of accents is also controversial on the Italian Wikipedia. Here, for example, somebody changing Cirié into Ciriè wrote: seguendo quanto ovvio a chiunque conosca la lingua italiana, e inequivocabilmente emerso dalla discussione. - Ortografia corretta. Prima di tutto perché l'uso dell'accento grave è una regola della lingua italiana; in secondo luogo perché – come è ovvio e come è emerso dalla discussione – tutte le fonti serie sono assolutamente concordi nell'usare l'accento grave (in English: "obvious to anyone who knows Italian, as has become unequivocally clear from the discussion - Correct spelling. First of all because the use of the grave accent is a rule of the Italian language; secondly because - as is obvious and as has emerged from the discussion - all serious sources absolutely agree about the use of the grave accent"). In 2013, user Ellegimark moved the Italian page from Cirié to Ciriè "come da discussione" ("as discussed"). Some discussion can be found here. In 2015, user AttoRenato moved the Italian page from Ciriè to Cirié. So who says the Italians know best and agree?
In general, it is obvious that other wikis will copy the spelling of the Italian Wikipedia. In 2014, user Qwertqwertqwert, for example, moved en:Ciriè to en:Cirié because that was the spelling on the Italian Wikipedia.
The same thing has been going on in the case of Ruffrè and Ruffré. In 2015, user MisterMicro moved it:Ruffrè-Mendola to it:Ruffré-Mendola. On 6 March 2018‎, user LuigiPortaro29 moved en:Ruffrè-Mendola to en:Ruffré-Mendola. Some pages on some wikis have been moved after you put administrators and ordinary users under enormous pressure to do so, if I'm not mistaken, because you have been campaigning for other accents for years.
Finally, it may even be disputed that the "the municipal site" is an authority on this issue – firstly because such websites are often created by the local community, not the local government, secondly, because there may be rivalry between communities speaking different dialects, and so on.

I hope I have made my point clear. ErikvanB (talk) 17:33, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you've come here to reply, ErikvanB, and I'll be glad to answer all of your points, forgive me for being long in this message.

I don't ignore them: I'm Italian and I already know why they're not considered reliable about such issues. Don't you think that Italian users who discussed about them know what's the ISTAT? You're Dutch so you couldn't be aware of what I'm going to say, no offense at all in this, trust me! ISTAT has chosen not to distinguish between accents: it always uses the grave accent, for all Italian cities, without exception (except for French named cities in Aosta Valley: French are more exigent than Italian about accents). Do you think that all Italian accented cities end with grave accent? It would mean that all Italian cities ending with E are pronounced with final /ɛ/ and none of them with final /e/. Do you think this is possible? Tell me, sincerely. Well, it's not possible. There're about a dozen of cities ending with acute accent over E, among the which Cirié. ISTAT was founded in 1926: you couldn't know it but in Italian it was commonly used only grave accent at the end of words before WWII, only dictionaries distinguished between "è" and "é". Seriously, Italian users has discussed and established that ISTAT couldn't be used as source for geographical names, do you think that we all were wrong and you only are right? Come on... Instead, about your second link: Google results aren't exactly "reliable sources". Aren't you just using numbers to justify your idea? There're over 80 millions results for "perchè" with grave accent on Google, and it's the wrong spelling for "perché". Try discerning which are the most reliable sources: random Google results? There're 2 books written by an Italian born in Cirié, Giovanni Crosetto, titled "Cirié in guerra" and "Cirié tra sviluppo e guerra": you won't find any occurrence for "Ciriè" in there, while in random books containing "Ciriè" there're occurrences for "Cirié" too. Sincerely, which do you think can be considered "reliable sources"? It's not me (nor all Italian users) not paying attention to them, it's you paying attention only to them, without taking in consideration the official site, the official statute of the town, which is the first source that anybody would look at to find the official spelling. I'm sure you can understand this, this is a simple concept and you don't seem stupid, you know what I'm saying it true.
Consistency of what? Of all (ALL) the other wikis? Dutch wiki is the only inconsistent wiki, as you can see, and it's been consistent for years, since the very beginning, until you moved that page without any discussion, just because I asked to move "another" page.
Okay, I'll explain to you this too. From 2004 to 2013 it's been named Cirié. In 2013 a simple autopatrolled moved the page. In 2015 a sysop moved the page back. In the discussion not everybody agreed, it was moved against consensus, so it was moved back, a user who had joined the old discussion asking for sources for grave accent without receiving answers thanked the admin for that. Do you know, instead, who wrote the first message you cited? An anonymised Italian user registered as Arbalete/Friedrichstrasse who was blocked for "disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point". In fact he was immediately reverted twice by the admin. He also was either ignorant or mendacious about Italian language: no rule exist establishing that all Italian words and names must have the grave accent, it's just more common than acute accent. De facto, it was only the blocked user and the user who moved the page the first time who thought the correct spelling was Cirié: as I keep saying, the official source, that is the "Comune di Cirié" itself, confirms that the name must be written with acute accent.
In a few cases, the pages were originally written with grave accent. In all the other cases, they had the acute accent since the beginning. In the wikis where the page was moved, it's obvious they copied the spelling used in it.wikipedia: they entrust Italians, knowing that Italians understand Italian issues better than non-Italian, again without offese for anyone. Why don't you consider the official statute of the city, saying in Art. 1 "Il Comune di Cirié è ente autonomo locale con rappresentatività generale secondo i principi della Costituzione", reliable?
I've never been campaining for Ruffré, never ever! Just in nl.wikipedia for Ruffré-Mendola because it had the name "Ruffrè". And it still has. But I told you that it's not a matter of "accent", because I'm insisting in adding "-Mendola", not in changing the accent, since in the official site it's written with grave accent. I'm Italian so I know that the correct pronunciation is closed and it should have the acute accent, but since the official site use the grave accent... Do you see I'm being sincere? If I wasn't, I'd be trying making you change the accent, not add the second name, I'm consistent for this issue and for Cirié issue, considering for both the municipal site as the most authoritative source. There're still lots of wikis where the name is written with grave accent, and in none of them I've tried asking for a renaming, because they had the full name, the only thing I'm interested in. And, no need to say, I've never had anything to do with the users who moved the pages in Italian and English wiki.
Your statement is an "original research". And you're wrong. Municipal administrations are dependent from national government, they can't do anything against it, if the name written there uses a certain accent it's because the central government agrees with that, do you think that when a new "comune" is instituted Rome isn't informed of the name and doesn't have to approve it officially? You're wrong also in your other supposition, because the local name of Cirié is Siriè with grave accent: in piemontese dialect is pronounced with /ɛ/, in standard Italian with /e/. It's exaclty the opposite than you said.

I hope my replies were clear enough, I'm here to answer your doubts anyway. 46.249.38.152 (talk) 21:11, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop importing problems from another languageversion here and refrain from block evasion by using an open proxy. MoiraMoira (talk) 22:35, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please correct that manifest error (i.e. just restore as it was before) and you'll never see me again in nl.wikipedia under any form, this is a promise, shouldn't I keep it I know you'll move again the pages, so this will be an assurance against seeing me again in Dutch wiki or talking to Dutch users. 46.249.38.152 (talk) 11:31, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting reply. Let me compliment you on your excellent English and let's take a break, because you are making some administrators and users very nervous and upset. ErikvanB (talk) 00:10, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't offensive at all in my reply, and it took me long to answer exhaustively... Please, don't make me think that "it was a waste of time since the very beginning because you didn't come here with the intention to discuss on equal terms but just in order to confirm your point of view without even questioning yourself about it and to ask admins another global block", show me that you're better than this and reply to my argumentations, contest them if you have better arguments, but don't ignore them. I'll tell you more: if I'm annoying Dutch users with these corrections, I'll just disappear from nl.wikipedia forever and I won't disturb any other Dutch user, if you just restore the page you moved. If you think you did it with tacit consensus, then try discussing it with other users in nl.wikipedia: tell them that an Italian user (without insulting me, the subject of that topic isn't me but Cirié) sustains that the correct accent is acute because that's how it's officially registered in the municipal statute; tell them that in it.wikipedia it was discussed the issue and, even if not everybody agreed (but consensus doesn't mean unanimity), the consensus was reached for the spelling with acute accent; tell them also your point of view, but without saying your wrong assumptions I've shown you (ISTAT uses only grave accents for its own choice, not because all Italian town have grave accents, municipal names are officially approved by national government, etc...), just say that the spelling Ciriè seems more commons but not in authoritative sources, that not all Italian users agree but the majority including a sysop confirmed that the official spelling has the acute accent. And do the same for Ruffré-Mendola, no, for Ruffrè-Mendola. If you do that, if you don't show any bias towards me and Italian users who established to use Cirié, I'm sure Dutch users will agree with the spelling with acute accent, and in that case you won't see me ever again, because should I show up under any form you'll have a valid excuse to move again the pages to the not official (wrong) names, and you know I don't want it, so I'll keep my promise. Please also note that in nl.wikipedia there're still lots of Italian names with grave accent which should have acute but I'm not trying to make you move them. Consider what I've just told you and let me know, please. 46.249.38.152 (talk) 11:31, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: in fact, there are two cases. First, the case of 'Ruffr[éè]'. The proposed move was twofold: the accent was to be changed and the '-Mendola' was to be added. Although the first part (changing the accent) was later deemed less urgent, it became the main reason for denying the request. In the past, similar changes have been found controversial and/or counterproductive. That the request was made by someone working behind open proxies and the like, didn't help either. Justified or not, it always gives the impression that s/he is hiding something. Second, the case of Ciri[éè]. Erik renamed the page for reasons of internal consistency – that is, consistency within the Dutch Wikipedia. I don't know if I would have done that, but he did and he explained why he did it. My personal knowledge of Italian is extremely limited so I cannot say who's right and who's wrong – or if both opinions are justifiable. In any case, I can see that at the moment there is no consensus (not even between the users on the Italian Wikipedia) and that is a powerful regulating mechanism in the Dutch Wikipedia.

Some final thoughts for 46.249.38.152:

You said we Italians don't care so much about accents. For something you don't care much about, you sure are passionate.
You accuse Erik of personal bias. I don't think that's a fair assessment. He doesn't agree with you, but that has probably nothing to do with you personally. On the other hand, you wrote I'm Italian and I already know, You're Dutch so you couldn't be aware, and a little further on you couldn't know it. That way of putting it might be seen as biased: Italians know and non-Italians don't. Perhaps it would have been better to use something like you're probably not aware and you might not know it. After having read your post above, I am still Dutch but now I am aware of the things that, according to the way you put it, I could not be aware of.
- Similarly, I am sure that I do not know everything pertaining to the Netherlands, the Dutch and their language, and I am confident that there are people with other nationalities that know more about these things than me.
If you can't reach an understanding, sometimes it's best to 'agree to disagree'. Starting discussions on the same topic in several places can be perceived as 'pushy'. Most likely, it will not help you in getting it your way, but it sure will undermine your credibility in future conversations.

Richard 09:21, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for letting us discuss in your talk page, Richard.

Italians don't care about accents and one of the most common errors is using apostrophes in place of accents and viceversa. This doesn't mean that all Italians are such ignorants, people like me are very careful in such issues, that's why I'm so astonished for seeing that an "encyclopedy" like this shows such errors to readers and I wish they were corrected.
I'm really sorry if my sentences were offensive for any Dutch user. It's as you said, the meaning was "you're probably not aware" or "you might not know it". I didin't mean that Ducth are ignorant, not al all! And I admit I'm ignorant about Dutch language. I'm just saying that most of his assumptions would have never been done by an average Italian because most of us already know about these linguistic issues, because it's about the language we speak every day and we've been speaking since we were child. Now you know much more about Italian language, I've explained and sourced lots of things, and shown which were the mistakes he was committing. Again, I apologise for having been offensive without wishing it.
You may not know everything about Dutch, but I bet this: you know where to search if you have a doubt and you know how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources about Dutch, and you know Dutch better than an average non-Dutch, you may not know Dutch better than a foreign speaker who studied Dutch language as first or second foreign language, such as an interpreter. I know Italian better than an average Italian and I've proven it showing sources and pointing out mistakes, this doesn't mean I'm an expert like the best Italian linguists, not al tall, just that I'm not ignorant and careless about my own language like much of us are.
Don't you think that, if these discussions about Ruffré/è-Mendola and Cirié are dealt in nl.wikipedia among Dutch users but without any bias towards the user who proposed them (that is, without talking about "me" but just about the issues and the related official sources) without my interference, you Dutch may decide that my proposal is correct and that both Ruffrè and Ciriè should be renamed (as they're named in their official sites and in all other wikis)?

About the first part of your comment: what's the reason for not moving "Ruffrè" to "Ruffrè-Mendola" if the accent is kept? And what was the consistency in nl.wikipedia you were talking about? He had to change also the template where the name of Cirié was written to recrate consistency after the renaming: there was already consistency, there's always been until then... Don't trust "me" for these issues, trust source and Italian users and admins who established which sources provide the official names of the cities, the names that have to be written in Wikipedia. 46.249.38.152 (talk) 11:31, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, thank you for trying giving me a hand, if all Dutch users were as disposable as you towards foreign users everything would go better in Dutch wiki and not only there... Instead, alas, there're users proving themself totally biased towards us such as Moira, who instead of even just reading my rightful requests invites other users to ignore me, and Erik, who instead of replying to my arguments preferes talking to other users about me in a perfect "argumentum-ad-hominem" style... None of them has either recognised anything good I've tried doing or considered opening a discussion among Dutch user to verify whether the consensus if for Ruffrè-Mendola or Ruffrè and Ciriè or Cirié as I invited them to do (as they were scared of their lack of consensus)... It's not a genetic or environmental matter afterall, or I wouldn't have had the chance to meet users like you, Richard, and another pair of kind Dutch users I've found who couldn't help me despite agreeing with me because they were afraid of Ducth admins, it's just a matter of single persons, the worst but, alas, the most powerful... This is a defeat, not a victory, for Wikipedia... 46.249.38.152 (talk) 17:59, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Select Survey Invite

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Sincere thanks for your help! Porteclefs (talk) 12:38, 16 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Porteclefs: the timeline on Wikimedia reads 'We expect to pilot the survey mid-May 2017 and to launch the full survey soon thereafter for a period of a few weeks. We plan to conduct data analysis in early June.' At present, it is alread mid-April 2018. Is it still relevant? If so, it might be an idea to dust off the page a bit since it looks like something that was abandoned. Richard 14:02, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

British Airways Flight 38

Hi Richardw. No worries. But, as you can see from the comments on the recently-closed move request on the Talk Page, there is considerable variation in how articles of this type open. There seems to be an irreconcilable conflict between using present tense for a flight that is still in operation and past tense to describe that a crash occurred in the past. User:Lord Belbury has made a fair point that the opening sentence should really sum up what the article is about. Any ideas? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:20, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hej Martinevans123! See the talk page of the article itself. I think it makes more sense to discuss this there, don't you? Richard 09:22, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:34, 28 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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German language

Hi, Richardw! You may know more than I do on this matter, but I don't quite understand from your edit summary what you disapproved of regarding my recent edit to German language ([5]). Thanks! Wolfdog (talk) 22:15, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What you left read 'Due to the limited intelligibility between certain varieties and Standard German, as well as the lack of an undisputed, scientific difference between a "dialect" and a "language", some German varieties or dialect groups (e.g. Low German or Plautdietsch) are classified as distinct languages.' So, first is told that the difference between dialect and language is not always clear, then it concludes with 'some varieties are [always] classified as languages'. It is the implied 'always' that makes it problematic –in my opinion– to put it that way. When classifying those varieties as languages would always be the case, why would it be necessary to mention 'the lack of an undisputed, scientific difference between a dialect and a language' here? Richard 09:18, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It seems the "always" was more inferred than implied. I certainly didn't intend it. We can simply say "some varieties x classified as languages", where we can fill in x with "are sometimes" or "may be" or "can be" or "are arguably". Any preference? Wolfdog (talk) 19:39, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Why not simply leave it as it is (some varieties […] are alternatively referred to as "languages" and "dialects")? Depending on context and referrer, the same variety could be referred to in different ways. Richard 20:11, 19 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think my problem for some German varieties or dialect groups... are alternatively referred to as "languages" and "dialects" is the grammar of that sentence. "Alternatively" to what? How about "are alternatively classified as "languages" or "dialects"? With alternatively, I think we want an "or" rather than an "and". Wolfdog (talk) 21:52, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The construction with 'and' doesn't strike me as odd, but I see what you mean.

Done. Richard 08:30, 26 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Colognian

Hi Richard. I saw your comment at Colognian dialect. Do you know anything about the phonology? E.g. in the lead of that article, there's the pronunciation [kœlʃ²]. The superscript 2 is not IPA, and is not defined in that article, the phonology article, or the IPA key linked from {{IPA-ksh}}. I assume it is supposed to indicate pitch accent or something, but it would be nice if we either defined it or replaced it with IPA (which is what we're supposed to be using). Do you have any idea what it is?

Could you ping me if you respond? Thanks — kwami (talk) 02:15, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kwamikagami: Colognian is subject to Rheinische Schärfung, see de:Rheinische Schärfung and nl:Stoottoon en sleeptoon. The transcriptions mentioned at de:Rheinische Schärfung#Lautschriften do not seem very helpful to users of standard IPA.

This is the start of chapter 5.4 Akustische Merkmale der „Schärfung“ on page 106–118 of Georg Heike's Zur Phonologie der Kölner Stadtmundart of 1964:

Unterscheidungsmerkmale „geschärfter“ von „ungeschärften“ Phonemsequenzen sind ... in drei Parametern zu beobachten: 1. Intensität, 2. Grundfrequenz, 3. Zeit. Im allgemeinen sind „geschärfte“ Segmentfolgen charakterisiert durch: 1. stark abfallende Intensität, 2. stark abfallende Grundfrequenz, 3. Verkürzung von Quantitäten.

That is to say the Colognian geschärft "prosodeme" — Heike's monograph contains a chapter 4.3 Prosodeme (Schärfung) on p. 51ff. — is characterized acoustically by decreasing intensity, decreasing F0, and shorter segments than its ungeschärft counterpart, which is the unmarked one. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 02:44, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@LiliCharlie: Thanks, Lili. Do you think we could characterize it as a falling tone, then? Syllables with falling tones tend to be short compared to others. (E.g., in Mandarin falling-tone syllables are shorter than those with level, rising or low/dipping tone, and many other languages are similar.) Not sure about the decreasing intensity, but that seems to match falling tone in other langs as well, at least in citation form. — kwami (talk) 06:04, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't read Dutch, but this,

Stoottoon en sleeptoon zijn de traditionele namen uit de fonologie voor de twee tonen die gebruikt worden om woorden van elkaar te onderscheiden. Andere termen die wel gebruikt worden zijn respectievelijk hoge toon en valtoon en accent 1 en accent 2.

... suggests that stoot (abrupt?) = hoge (high) = accent 1 and sleep (level?) = val (falling) = accent 2. But the pitch traces in the next section contrast sleep and val, which means they can't both be accent 2. Was the order of the lead mixed up, with sleep = hoge = accent 1 and stoot = val = accent 2? And is their accent 2 what we've been marking with a superscript 2? — kwami (talk) 06:28, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The superscript 2 is actually a 'reference' which links to Help:IPA/Colognian. It is not part of the IPA representation of "Kölsch" – that is kœlʃ and nothing more. Richard 14:53, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

So, is it supposed to indicate footnote 2, then? Can I go through and replace all superscript 2's with half-long signs, as in the IPA chart, or should I just delete them maybe? — kwami (talk) 20:09, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oh... wait... seems I made a mistake there. The ² is not a reference and it is put in as part of the IPA representation. However, it is not in the German version of this page. That page uses [kœɫːɕ] (with a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative) and provides a link to this audio file. Seems both pages agree that ʃ isn't quite right – but not on exactly what would be right. It could also be that the ² refers to the entire word and not to the ʃ alone (the œ sounds rather long, like œː maybe?). The pages disagree on l/ɫː (as well?). All in all, I don't think I'm qualified to decide which page is correct. Maybe they both are. Seems I can't be of much help here. Sorry about that. One other thing though, if you don't mind: what comment of mine were you referring to when you started this section? Maybe you confused me with Kbb2? Richard 21:13, 21 January 2019 (UTC) (edited 21:27, 21 January 2019 (UTC))[reply]

The superscript 2 isn't a reference but an indication of schleifton. It's the same as in the JIPA articles about Limburgish accents. AFAICS there's no need to use a different notation which is more complex and less helpful (it doesn't even show the correct phonetic pitch). See [6] for more information. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 23:58, 21 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Pitch-accent language#Franconian dialects. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 00:05, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Richard, just your comment that a translation wasn't literal. I thought from that you might be familiar with the language.

@kwami: well, I can read it, but above the prayer it is also mentioned: This is not a literal, but an artistic rendition of the Lord's Prayer. Richard 12:45, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kbb2:, thank you for clarifying. I linked Schleifton in the IPA key to the description you provided. Since the key uses the half-long sign, that's what we should use in the articles too.

Is the Schleifton 'marked' and the Schärfung 'unmarked', then? The terminology is rather confusing, with geschärfter being Schliefton (2) but ungeschärfter being Scharfung (1). Is that contradictory, like English inrounded = exolabial, Or do I have them backwards? Would you mind checking this table?

Accent 1	Accent 2
Schärfung	Schleifton
ungeschärfter	geschärfter
stootton	sleepton
hoge ton	valton

— kwami (talk) 05:45, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is the German and (in italics) Dutch terminology as I understand it, cf. the second section of de:Rheinische Schärfung and the first of nl:Stoottoon en sleeptoon:

Accent 1	Accent 2
Tonakzent 1 (T1)	Tonakzent 2 (T2)
Schärfung (+Schärfung)	(-Schärfung)
geschärft (+geschärft)	ungeschärft (-geschärft)
Stoßton	Schleifton
stoottoon	sleeptoon
hoge toon	valtoon
accent 1	accent 2

Please note that the Dutch hoge toon "high tone" and valtoon "falling tone" are descriptive only when applied to certain varieties. Applied to Colognian they would be misnomers.

At Help:IPA/Colognian it is proposed to mark Schleifton with the IPA symbol for half-long segments and leave its geschärft counterpart untranscribed. As Schleifton seems to be the default "accent" with a much wider distribution and is the one that lacks the Schärfung/geschärft feature (which probably also developed later in history) I consider this an unfortunate decision. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 11:57, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the diphthongs. Monophthongs take the long mark for Stoßton.

I'm copying the table into the main article. — kwami (talk) 13:00, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Going back to the original question: Article Colognian dialect not only has [kœlʃ²] in the lead section but also /ˈkœɫːʃ/ in the Features in comparison to Standard German section. The transcription between slashes seems more detailed than the one in square brackets. (What is that stress mark meant to inform us of?) Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:12, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I assume the stress mark is meant to convey the tone accents, that the position, presence or choice of 1ary vs 2ary stress indicates whether it's T1 or T2, since tone accent only occurs on stressed syllables. Swedish and Norwegian have similar conventions. But ideally we'd want some way to convey this with the IPA, so that naive readers can have some idea of what's going on. If I had to guess, I'd think that in ⟨ˈkœɫːʃ⟩, the stress mark indicates that the syllable has a tonic accent, and the length mark tells us which one -- in this case T1, which of course contradicts the transcription ⟨kœlʃ²⟩.

There are lots of walled-garden conventions for using digits to indicate tone. A lot of the SE Asia articles use 1 for low tone and 5 for high tone, but claim that's IPA, and it's a constant cleanup effort to convert them to actual IPA. But at least with Chao tone letters (bars) the conversion is straightforward. Digits don't work because the African convention is that 5 is low and 1 is high, or sometimes 2 and 1 for low and high, while in Mesoamerica 1 is low and 3 is high, or sometimes 4. Digits are opaque unless you're privy to the local convention, which is at odds with the entire idea of an international phonetic alphabet, and with the MOS where it's been decided that we should use the IPA and other international conventions. I think it probably won't be so difficult with Swedish and Norwegian -- one tone diacritic vs two, patterned after the standard language, and readers familiar with other dialects should be able to extrapolate the local realizations of the tone accents. For Colognian, the half-long vs long convention is misleading, but perhaps it's adequate. If we actually indicate tone, which I'd prefer, I assume we'd want either one tone diacritic, to be placed on the tonic syllable of tone-marked words, which evidently would be T1, or two contrasting diacritics for T1 and T2.

Should we take this discussion to Kbb2? I don't know your background. I wouldn't want to decide something, go to the effort of converting the articles, only to have someone who really knows their stuff tell us we got it backwards. — kwami (talk) 22:54, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Article Colognian dialect has /ˈkʰœlʃ/ with ⟨ˈ⟩ for standard German Kölsch as well. And yes, I would like Mr KEBAB to discuss this with us, no matter where.

But that's a phonemic transcription, so it would need to indicate stress regardless. — kwami (talk) 03:41, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is a phonemic transcription. I contest that aspiration of voiceless obstruents is phonemic in Standard German and that speakers saying [kœlʃ] without aspiration use a different sequence of phonemes that has the potential of representing a different word. The same goes for stress of monosyllables. To me this looks like an inappropriate use of slashes. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:48, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mr KEBAB's link to de Vaan (sine anno) is very interesting, especially their remark on p. 27 that accent 1 "in Vianden are always realized with a glottal stop". This is reminiscent of Danish stød, and maybe it is not a coincidence that stød and Stoßton/stoottoon are cognates. (Stød is nowadays typically realised as creaky voice. So are the allotones of the Standard Chinese tones 3 and 4 that drop low [i.e. tone 3, unless it precedes another tone 3 syllable, and tone 4, unless it precedes another tone 4 syllable].) Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 23:46, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll re-check my sources and will get back to you. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 23:54, 22 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another question would be whether we bother with stress marks. If we have some convention for both T1 and T2, then it would be redundant. If we only indicate the 'marked' tone accent, then the stress mark would indicate the other. (But it could also mean whoever added the pronunciation didn't know the tone accent and so ignored it.) And then there's the question of secondary stress. AFAIK, that's never been demonstrated to be phonemic in any language. It certainly isn't in English, despite what American dictionaries claim (though thankfully not the OED anymore). — kwami (talk) 03:38, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Based on that paper, given the author's opinion that it's unfortunate the conventional notation resembles IPA length marks (implying that they're not supposed to indicate length), and while waiting for Mr KEBAB to get back to us, I propose a circumflex for T1 and either just a stress mark or some other tonal diacritic, maybe a grave, for T2 -- say, zɛ̂i (T1) vs zɛ̀i (T2), or ˈzɛ̂i vs ˈzɛi. — kwami (talk) 06:01, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Since this topic appears to have come to a standstill, I'm transferring it to talk:Colognian dialect#IPA. Please, do not make any more modifications here. Richard 12:42, 11 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

DRVIP93

Thank you Richard! I am new to Wikipedia and did not know how talk pages work, I figured it out now. :)

Kind regards, David — Preceding unsigned comment added by DRVIP93 (talk • contribs) 18:11, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, David. You're most welcome. Richard 19:24, 23 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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