User talk:Bathrobe

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[edit] Welcome to the Wikipedia

I noticed you were new, and wanted to share some links I thought useful:

For more information click here. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, like this: ~~~~.

Be bold!



(Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 14:28, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] response

I've added a response to the comments you left on my talk page. Kowloonese 18:43, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

For the record, I live in the US and I've never heard of doufu. We used to called it "bean curd" and the name changed to "tofu" when it became popular. I don't know how it is called in other English speaking countries. I support using pinyin over WG to do all Chinese transliteration. But I am neutral regarding similar treatment to existing English words. Kowloonese 19:57, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Just out of interest, I think some residents of the US state of Hawai'i (often ethnic Chinese) do use the pronunciation /doufu/ in English, not the pseudo-WG (incorrect) pronunciation /tofu/ (i.e. voiced "t"). --Dpr 01:56, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
The most important difference is whether you are talking about an English word or a Chinese object. When the name is already entered the English language as Tofu, it is just silly to argue how the original Chinese word is pronounced. Clarify the pronunciation in the corresponding Chinese article in the Chinese version of wikipedia. The English name has become part of the English language and should not be changed. Kowloonese 01:05, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
/tofu/ is not 'pseudo-WG'; it is from Japanese. For cultural/nationalistic reasons, some Chinese take exception to the fact that English uses a Japanese term for something that was originally Chinese. For such people, ousting the Japanese term and replacing it with Chinese is seen as 'setting things right'. Bathrobe 11:16, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Mediterranean Sea

With regard to deleting the pronunciation for the Hebrew: I felt that it was the semantic content of the Hebrew name for the sea, rather than the pronunciation, which was important to the paragraph in question. For instance, the part which gives the name in the Bible "the Great Sea" in the Bible does not give the literal Greek or Aramaic for this.

I considered deleting the Hebrew characters as well, but for some reason chose not to. I think we should avoid devoting excessive space to any one language here unless the meaning of its name for the Mediterranean is interesting or relevant somehow, as there are too many countries and languages bordering on the Mediterranean to mention them all. Saforrest 16:17, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your Website

Hey, welcome to Wikipedia! I'm a big fan of your website, especially the translations of "Mind the Gap" and other oddities. Thanks for putting up such a great resource. :P --Xiaopo ℑ 04:15, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I love it too. Hey bathrobe, maybe you can offer your website's content under GFDL so we can easily use it on Wikipedia? I could imagine a marvellous article about the days of the week... --Mkill 18:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

The content of my article on days of the week is all from published sources. As long as it isn't reproduced absolutely verbatim, I'm happy for people to take information / conclusions from the site and use them elsewhere. The conclusion that 'xingqi' is not the original word for 'week' in Chinese has been reached by others on better evidence than I have. The main "slant" I've given it is criticism of modern Chinese sources (dictionaries, etc.) for twisting the word's pedigree to make it sound like something it is not.

(Actually, it was when I was researching the site that I first came to realise how deeply ideological history is in East Asia. It became clear that there are Chinese who want to prove that everything came from ancient China; there are Japanese who want to show that they are not simply an offshoot of Chinese culture, and that the Japanese day names came not from the Chinese, as the Chinese would claim, but almost direct from an Indian monk who got them from the West. In many ways, the "war" over history is still going on!) Bathrobe 01:38, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summaries

Hi. Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. I just wanted to give you some helpful advice, or maybe just a reminder about a feature in Wikipedia known as an edit summary. The edit summary is filled out using the 200 word text field located right below the editing text box. It is strongly recommended that one get in the habit of filling out edit summaries for each edit, giving a general summary of why particular changes were made, as well as a very terse summary of what those changes were. Edit summaries are a way to defend your edits, especially if you're an anonymous user. Ambiguous edits made by anonymous users may often be mistaken for vandalism. Filling out the edit summary also gives the users who monitor those pages on watch lists or recent changes, an idea of what kind of activity has taken place. If these changes do not strongly affect the content of the article, mark the This is a minor edit check box below the edit summary field. For further help on using edit summaries, consult this guide. Thank you. — oo64eva (Alex) (U | T | C) @ 04:53, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Patua

Bathrobe, I feel the Patua page is packed with information, and by now means in dire need of improvement. I'm probably too liberal in my use of the attention tag. Nonetheless, I usually "tag" pages that I admire! I just think the article could use more technical linguistic terminology and could stand to be copyedited for style and grammar. Parts are rather informal. In fact, if I have a chance, I will try my hand at this task myself. Thanks for the interest. Please let me know if you had any other questions. --Dpr 02:00, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Han chauvinism

Aloha, and thanks for your message. I added the POV check template as I wasn't sure of the POV being presented due to the lack of references. Today, I added the template for articles that lack sources. I have removed the POV check at your request. --Viriditas | Talk 21:28, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hainan

Bathrobe,

I re-added the sentence on Hainan.. --Hottenot

[edit] Etsunan etc.

I see your point. Maybe it would be better to start a new page, List of historical place names in Japanese or something. Still there is a precedent on the page; if you look at the entry for "Ethiopia" you see all the languages' words for "Abyssinia" as well as "Ethiopia". Just do a search in the page for the word "former" and you'll see a lot more. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 11:03, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea, and of course it should include Chinese (as many dialects as possible, at the very least Mandarin and Cantonese), Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. List of country names in various languages is already incredibly long, and anything that encourages people to contribute elsewhere is good. The fact that you don't know Korean doesn't matter; it's a wiki, so someone else will come along and fill the Korean in. Now we just have to find a good brief, NPOV title for the page. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 12:30, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Well of course you don't have to do it if you're busy! But I really don't know enough about East Asian languages to do it myself. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 13:05, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chu Nom Script for Vietnamese

Your comments on my page were: "I am also a little concerned at the Sinocentric nature of such an attempt. It can't be denied that Chinese characters were the cultural binding force of East Asia and that they lie behind a lot of current Vietnamese vocabulary. Since many people know Chinese and Japanese, putting in characters is no doubt a useful way of linking Vietnamese to a greater body of shared knowledge. But I feel there is a danger of cultural bias. Why put in the Chinese characters and not the Chu Nom, for instance? Because Chu Nom is a minor script? A dead script? Isn't that just belittling things that are uniquely Vietnamese in favour of aspects that are tied to 'great and ancient culture' of her neighbour?"

It's pleasant to see a Chinese speaker interested in Chinese etymology of Vietnamese terminology. I'm the opposite, I'm a Vietnamese speaker who appreciates knowledge of my fellow East-Asian Sinoworld members, as I am not pleased with my own people being erroneously called "Southeast Asians". Historically and culturally that term does not reflect the Vietnamese people, and is almost an insult to some of us, though not myself. You also sound like you are on my side of this so-called "argument". The Chu Nom system was actually written only for vernacular Vietnamese words that had no Chinese equivalent, but Chu Nom would have included Sino-Vietnamese words as well, virtually unaltered in wriiten form.

My Vietnamese name, for instance, is written Lê Anh-Huy, in vernacular Latin Vietnamese. But it would be "黎英辉" for both Chinese and Chu Nom. Take care. User:Le Anh-Huy

[edit] PS, CJVLang.com

You are right, turning back the clock is not the answer, but it is easy to mislead people through "supressed information" (ie. overseas Vietnamese Catholics often deny any Sinosphere cultural roots in Vietnamese culture and overglorify French intrusions into vernacular Vietnamese trends...I noticed you said you're from Australia, I find the Vietnamese community living in your beautiful country most often comes from this misled "modernist" discourse to understanding their own ancestors' history), as I think you mentioned.

It is nice to finally meet the writer of www.cjvlang.com/ Thank you very much for enlightening me about my own roots! I had only "discovered" your amazing website while netsurfing earlier this year. I also noticed you are also a speaker of French and German, languages that I happen to need to refesh. - User:Le Anh-Huy

[edit] Korea

Hi, would you be able to add the CJK names for Korea? I understand there are two traditional ones: Chaoxian/Chosun/Chosen and Hanguo/Hanguk/Kankoku. Maybe Vietnamese has two names corresponding to the same characters too? Thanks! --Angr/tɔk tə mi 07:15, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I knew North Korea tended to use the C-words and South Korea tended to use the H-words, but I didn't know South Koreans went so far as to be offended by the C-words. Maybe put in (now used for North Korea) and (now used for South Kora) or something. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 07:52, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I added the Korean names. I just copied them out of North Korea and South Korea. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 08:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Vietnamese names for Korea:
Triều Tiên (Joseon)
Hàn Quốc (Hanguk)
Cao Ly (Goguryeo)
The two modern countries have been called by different names over time: Nam Hàn and Bắc Hàn (South and North Korea, respectively) were formerly used, as were Nam Triều Tiên and Bắc Triều Tiên, and sometimes collectively as Đại Hàn. Officially, DPRK is known as Cộng hòa Dân chủ Nhân dân Triều Tiên (shortened to Triều Tiên) and ROK is known as Đại Hàn Dân Quốc (shortened to Hàn Quốc).

By the way, I enjoyed reading your website, especially the section about Harry Potter names. I sent you some corrections for the Vietnamese version a while ago :-). Keep up the good work! DHN 10:07, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

In case you aren't aware, the Online Thiều Chửu Hán Việt dictionary [1] has a very useful lookup tool [2] that allows you to give it a string of Chinese characters and it will translate each character into its Hán-Việt form. DHN 10:10, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
You received the corrections and gave me credit for it. Don't worry about it. DHN 04:27, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your 'Treatise'

I appreciate the 'treatise' on naming you wrote for the Yangtze River talk page; it's well-reasoned and does a good job of identifying your personal bias as such. Having bias is no problem, in my book—pretending not have bias is.

I'm also interested in your opinion about something that's been bothering me: the EN version of Wikipedia is for readers of English, but there's a great deal of ZH in articles about Chinese subjects. I find all the parentheses with ZH characters make it difficult to read, and I question their value to EN readers. Is it just there for the (relatively) tiny group of EN+ZH readers? Has an argument been made for or against it? I would think that it belongs on the page, but not in the text itself; the {{Chinese}} template seems like a good way to handle it, but I notice that on, for example, Grand Canal of China it's moving the other direction. Can you give me any insight?

Thanks, —Papayoung ☯ 19:08, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Yasukuni

Thanx. Feel flee to collect my Engrish. ;) Yoji Hajime

Thanks for fixing up Yasukuni Shrine, but please don't arbitrarily change which variety of English is used on the page (British vs. American) as this tends to lead to edit wars and articles with a mix of British and American spellings. No harm intended, I'm sure, but please be aware of this issue in the future. CES 13:13, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

My apologies for not looking closer ... the article is mostly in American English and in the edit history I noticed that you made several changes from American spellings to British spellings without noticing that the sections you edited were recently edited using British spellings. I will edit the article to make sure one system is used ... probably American, since that is the original and predominant usage in the article. Life would be much easier if we all used the same spelling system! CES 02:31, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese emperors

Thanks for your message. Please see my response on my talk page.-Jefu 04:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your message. I may have used provocative words, but let me explain what I have felt. To me, it seems Korean posters take almost obsessive interests and politicize historical facts in Japanese history, boasting and showing attitudes like "Japan owes what it is today to Korea (for what happed 1500years ago) ". See Talk:Korean-Japanese_disputes. It is true that Buddhism and Chinese culture was introduced from the Korean peninsula, but that is due to the geographcal location; only because Japan is more far from India and China. I believe these ideas due to Sinocentrism, which you might understand becuase of your contributions to Wikipedia. (It is true Japan also had, but it has disapeared by US occupation after WWII).

Under this scheme of international relations, only China had an Emperor or 'huangdi' (皇帝), who was the Son of Heaven; other countries only had Kings or 'wang' (王). (See Chinese sovereign). The Japanese use of the term Emperor or 'tennō' (天皇) for the ruler of Japan was a subversion of this principle. Significantly, the Koreans still refer to the Japanese Emperor as a King, conforming with the traditional Chinese usage.

Can you stand someone swearing about your parents? Whether it is Thai or Sweden I will totally leave it up to those people about talking about their monarch. Nobu Sho 21:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sino-Vietnamese

Hi, I started an article on Sino-Vietnamese. With your knowledge in Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese, perhaps you'd be able to help do some factchecking and improve the article. Thanks! DHN 00:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eastern Thinkers

Hi, I received your message about suggestion on starting an article about Korean scholar, Yi Sugwnag. Although I'm not personally an expect on subject of thinkers and intellectuals of East Asia, an article on Yi Su-Gwang would be a great idea indeed. There aren't much English information on his life and works though. I currently do not have the time to write the entire article, but I could start the basic structure for it, and have more editors participate in the article creation process. I don't have much time on my hands now and i'm trying to find more sources to start articles regarding RoK navy/air force and its armamaments, so it take a while for me to start a page on him. If you can contact other editors who are acquainted well with Korean history and get them to start articles regarding Eastern thinkers of Korea, I'll be glad to lend my hand. Deiaemeth 22:25, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Temple of Confucius

My reason for removing the two categories was only that a temple isn't an example of political philosophy or philosophy of religion; Confucianism itself belongs in the former category, though not in the latter (it belongs in one of the religion categories).

I had a look at the Vietnamese article on Van Mieu; which photo did you want to use? I've contacted the photographer & uploader of one of them to ask if we can use it. Neither seems to be available on Commons. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The first photo, I believe, was taken by the uploader. It was uploaded when the Vietnamese encyclopedia was quite undeveloped (~300 articles a year ago - we now have 5300+ articles), so there wasn't a support structure for copyright notices. I believe that you can just save the picture to your computer, then upload it here to use it (just say where you got it from). I don't think the uploader (who hasn't been seen in almost a year) minds. DHN 03:23, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I'll follow DHN's advice. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:31, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories again

My thought was that a building doesn't belong in a category concerning a philosophy/religion, but in a buildings category (that's why I added Category:Temples). Starting Category:Confucian temples might well be a good idea. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:46, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Click on the red link above, and edit the new page just like any article. You'll need to add parent categories: Category:Temples, definitely; probably Temples,Confucian too. The best thing to do is to look at similar categories and see how they do it. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 14:07, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of English words of Chinese origin

I was trying really hard to think of one to add and could not. I realised that pretty much all Sino-Korean words that have entered the English language are such neologisms, which is what led me to write that disclaimer-type statement I added. Chaebeol, for instance, was borrowed in hanja/kanji form from the Japanese zaibatsu, which is a Japanese neologism of the type I described. Even words like kimchi that seem to have an obscure Sino-Korean etymology (and are not ordinarily considered Sino-Korean words) derive ultimately from Korean neologisms (in this case, 沈菜 chimchae) that do not correspond to any words that were actually used in Chinese.

The list of English words of Korean origin is not very extensive in the first place, so it is quite probable that there are no widely used English words of Chinese origin that came via Korean. --Iceager 10:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sinocentrism

There's a difference between disagreeing with an argument, and simply not presenting that argument at all. If an argument is solid and has merit, than it should be able to withstand objections and criticism, and similarly, if an argument is completely without merit, then such should be easily spotted by a reader, should it not? That argument you quoted is one I'm familiar with. As you said, Sinocentrism is a complicated subject encompassing many historical concepts and different perspectives.

Certain accusations of sinocentrism merely state that the various Chinese states regarded (or continue to regard) themselves as superior to others, others that they exibited signs of sinocentrism through their interactions with the rest of Asia, sinocentrism as conquest, sinocentrism as cultural imperialism, sinocentrism displayed by individual people, etc. That argument seems to be an objection not to the tribue-vassal foreign relationship system, but to the specific sinocentric charge that those old Chinese states enforced cultural imperialism through its forced adoption by other cultures or maybe that China's sinocentrism was used as a motivation for conquest, and sinocentrism as a percieved sense of racial or cultural superiority. Particularly, this line: "In modern times, this can take the form of according China unwarranted significance or supremacy at the cost of other nations in East Asia or elsewhere in the world." But of course, if sinocentrism isn't clearly defined, then it can't be clearly objected to, can it?

I'll comment on my deleted line. This line, to me, seemed blatently NPOV:

While this possibly means that "chauvinism" was not everpresent, it also suggests that the Chinese, like many civilizations that consider themselves superior, were willing to accept people from other cultures as long as they conformed to metropolitan standards.

Instead of discussing whether or not the Chinese self-perception of superiority was true, it simply assumes it so, and then uses it to support the argument of sinocentrism.

The other line, I think the reason for deletion was rather obvious for its factual shortcomings. Were such an attitude about Manchu and Mongol conquests to actually hold true, all of Central Asia, Persia, Siberia, and Russia might well be regarded as part of the Chinese heartland. (which obviously isn't true) And Zhonghua Minzu is supposed to be a response and reversal of centuries of Han chauvanism, yet both somehow seem to get tied into sinocentrism.

Personally, I think there are too often confused attempts to conflate historical Chinese attitudes towards barbarians, various historical Chinese political concepts like the tribute-vassal relationships, experiences of the Europeans like McCartney, Han chauvaunism, Chinese military conquests, Zhonghua Minzu, anti-Japanese sentiment, Chinese nationalism, communism, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Chinese names, characters, and language, etc from various stages and aspects of several thousand years of history and collectively lump them all together into, "Chinese are racist and bad, mkay?" and call it by the convenient catchall of Sinocentrism.

Personally, I would divide it up into sinocentrism by ancient imperial politics, by culture, by historical narrative, etc. and then put the specific counter arguments, if any, after each section. Currently, the article looks incredibly disjoint right now, explaining ancient imperial politics on one hand and then showing spaghetti as a sign of modern cultural imperialism on the other. --Yuje 08:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I do want to eventually reorganize the article. It'll just come down to finding the free weekend to spend on doing it. I'm somewhat bothered by the article's lack of sources, so I'm hunting some down as well as digging through some of the Confucian books for the philosophical justifications of the ancient tribute-vassal system. --Yuje 02:55, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese Macrons Mediation

Hi, I've been assigned to be the mediator for the Japanese Macrons case. Discussion will be carried out on the Talk page of the case request. I will have some preliminary questions up soon, I am looking forward to working with everyone to get this resolved. Thank you, pschemp | talk 16:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Summaries

You're still not using edit summaries, which makes life just a little more difficult for people going through their Watchlists. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hanja/Sino-Korean

Right, I suggested the merge because basically the Sino-Korean article is very short and both it and the article for hanja suggests that they are the same thing. I'll give an explanation in the talk page for the Sino-Korean article. --Hong Qi Gong 21:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Macrons

While you're essentially right, I'd like to make a couple points. Tokyo was originally spelled Tokio, and then eventually Tokyo, and at about the same time people began trying to spell it Tōkyō and Toukyou. Accurate romanization of languages that don't use roman characters is a rather new phenomenon. But all that's beside the point.

I realize that it's quite an uphill battle. I've put the quote on my user page to remind me of that. I don't mind the concept of macrons at all; I believe Japanese has the right to be represented accurately as much as any other language. I just can't see past the technicalities of inputting macrons, and using them in Wikipedia. For the record, I kind of disagree with the use of "orthoghraphical" accents and macrons in the titles of articles for other languages as well (Vietnamese, Pinyin), although I would never challenge a French or Spanish spelling. That's one of the reasons I wanted to call this meditation as well, the Wikipedia infrastructure has no means of controlling large issues like this, and it should not be left to a vote between Japanified editors. As long as someone that has some real feel for the way Wikifoundation works makes the final decision, I won't make any more fuss about it.  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  23:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks for comments!

I'm brand new to Wiki, and am not even sure if this is the correct place or way to respond to your comment on my user page as follows:

"I saw your note on the simplification of Chinese characters (many being pre-20th century). I agree that the current statement is rather broad brush. If you want a more sophisticated explanation, why not Be Bold! (a principle of Wikipedia) and make the changes yourself?

Bathrobe 01:49, 17 March 2006 (UTC)"

This is only my 2nd day on Wiki (other than browsing contents as a reference). Feel free to delete this from your User talk page if this is inappropriate. Should I have emailed instead? Is my formatting appropriate? Oh, I'm such a clueless newbee right now! Pls feel free to email me to straighten me out -- mailonekms-wpost AT yahoo DOT com. First, thank you for your comment. I'm an amateur scholar specializing in the origins of the Chinese language, and do plan to make extensive improvements where needed. It's just that I'm still learning the ropes (e.g., formatting, signing properly etc.) and am a bit shy about screwing up. :) Second, I've read your changes on Chang Jiang vs. Yangtze, and fully support your position; I've added comments on that talk page. Cheers! Dragonbones 04:48, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Writing in Asian languages

Ah, I wasn't aware that some countries had switched to horizontal writing altogether. In that case, I accept that I should have tried to compromise rather than simply reverting. Apologies for a too-hasty action.

I've edited the article again to try a wording that states that horizontal writing is "increasingly common", which I think is a more accurate summary of the situation than either extreme. If you think this is still misleading, then by all means please adjust it again.

— Haeleth Talk 13:04, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

If the trend in Chinese is clear enough that even "increasingly common" seems too weak to describe it, then naturally I won't object if you want to strengthen the wording further - my edit is purely a suggestion and a stopgap measure to ensure that the text wasn't totally unacceptable to either of us. As you may have gathered, my knowledge is largely restricted to Japanese, so I don't claim to have a good feel for how well any given phrasing will describe the situation in other languages.
My main concern is to avoid anything that looks like a prediction that horizontal writing is certain to take over. It does seem to me that the status of vertical writing in Japan is still fairly secure; I've never seen a book other than a bilingual dictionary use anything else. But I'm willing to consider the possibility that I'm erring on the side of conservatism.
Perhaps it could be modified to state that horizontal writing is "increasingly common, and now [almost] ubiquitous in some [countries/contexts/areas]"? Would something along those lines be an improvement?
(Incidentally, I believe some versions of Internet Explorer support vertical text layout, which does make it seem rather strange that it's not commonly used. Possibly some link to the general bias of web users in favour of the young and more radical?)
— Haeleth Talk 13:20, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't see vertical writing in Taiwan disappearing in Taiwan anytime soon; I'm not sure the statement that "most" newspapers have switched to horizontal is correct either. Be sure not to carelessly lump Taiwan in with China/Macau/HK in such broad, sweeping statements... Dragonbones 15:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eurasia Change

I don't think the words are going to be changed to make them fit Eurasia. First certain political bodies would have to change their name and identity. Europe is acknowledged as a political body in Europe. Asia is acknowledged as a political body in SAARC and ASEAN. Second labeling would be hard for some regions. Far Western Eurasia and Far Eastern Eurasia might be acceptable but the regions in the middle of Eurasia would be hard to label. I don't think the change will happen in Eurasia and I hope you don't change wiki around to confuse users to make it fit the Eurasia concept. -- 18:00 March 30 2006User:Dark Tichondrias

  • He really doesn't get it, does he? --Lukobe 04:39, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia survey

Hi. I'm doing a survey of Wikipedia editors as part of a class research project. It's quick, anonymous, and the data will be made available to the Wikipedia community later this month. Would you like to take part? More info here. Thanks! Nonplus 00:14, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Harry Potter and terms of reference in Vietnamese

Hi, are you interested in writing on your website about how pronouns used in Harry Potter are rendered in Vietnamese? Whereas in the original English, Rowling used "you" and "I", the Vietnamese translator did not have that luxury and had to choose the proper Vietnamese term of reference appropriate for the relationship between the speaker and the addressee as well as the speaker's attitude toward the addressee. I'm not sure if the Chinese and Japanese translators had the same problem because those languages have direct terms for "you" and "I". DHN 23:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I wasn't aware of that phrase. They have the exact sentiment! DHN 02:57, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Japanese Macrons

Hi, we have a proposed solution now and need everyone's input as to whether its acceptable so the rfm can be closed. Please add your comment to bottom of the page. Thank you, pschemp | talk 17:30, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tell me about it.

Yeah, it's gonna be a long uphill battle. I'm reading through the Japanese 百人斬り競争 wiki article and translating it into English, but there's a lot of BS involved with this issue on the Japanese side as well. Someone there went through and changed the references to victims from "people" to "Chinese soldiers", which of course, it doesn't say in the source articles. Damn ideologues.

BTW, technically you aren't supposed to delete things that people post on your talk page, but you can feel free to delete this message if you think it's taking up space. Bueller 007 11:01, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Holi merger

Hi, and thanks for asking.

The reason I recommended the merger between the pages is that (from what I saw), there was a correlation between the riots and the holiday. Considering that the page on Muslim hajj contains information on similar situations (there is also the fork article Incidents during the Hajj), and I am looking for incidents that have occurred in Christianity and other religions as well, I thought the two articles should be intertwined or merged.

If the 2006 riots have nothing to do with holi (which, again, from my POV, it seemed that they did), then I'll be fine with a cancellation of a merger. I'm not out to offend anyone at all; I merely thought that it was a valid point, enough so that I'm looking for similar instances in other religions (aside from hajj incidents) so that I don't appear hypocritical or anti-Hindu.

Hope this helps.--み使い Mitsukai 12:46, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: User talk:Saito Hajime

I noticed you commented at User talk:Bhadani over what happened to your message at User talk:Saito Hajime. I did a little investigating, and found out that his talk page had been deleted per his own request. As a result, your message was removed. BTW, even before it was removed, the user himself was continuously deleting all the messages he was recieving, including one by you, one by User:Stephen B Streater, and a welcome message by User:Gflores.--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91($ |-| ŗ 3 $ |-| ţ |-|) 14:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I don't think he was referring to you

I made a comment on FBWOarticle's page that I wanted him to go back to the Nanjing page because it was "me vs. the Chinese nationalists". So I think that guy was referring to that post, not yours.

Thanks for chipping in though.  :-) Bueller 007 09:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yi Su-Gwang

Hi. I think, a month earlier, you contacted me and several other Korean editors about writing an article on Yi Su-gwang. Well, I finally got to it today and wrote a little stub on him. I will try to incorporate more information and correct grammar/structure to bring the article upto wiki standards. Just thought you might want to know. Cheers and happy editing, Deiaemeth 10:12, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi. The term Silhak came into being in the late 17th - 18th century. This links explains what Silhak is (very briefly) [3]. It basically de-emphasized Confucianism and argued adopting more modern schools of thought in statecraft. Silhak attacked neo-confucianism. They also argued for modern approach to economy, sciences, and philosophies, arguing that Yangban-class of Korea, who practiced confucianism and was very conservative, was deletrious to the interest of the Korean people and the state. Their reasoning was that the Yangban-class did not participate in any economic activity - all they did was sit around and study confucianist school of thought. Silhak practicionners argued for supply-side economics and revival of economy. [4] Yi Su-Gwang is considered early Silhakja, but he didn't attack confucianism outright. Deiaemeth 04:21, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE:Civility etc.

Great. I try to maintain some basic civility on talkpages and get accused of being POV-pushing/biased/Chinese nationalist. It's a good thing I chose not to check in and had a nice Easter weekend.

When you're pounced on on the slightest, most neutral issue like basic civility, first being accused of having some ulterior motive and then receiving a niggardly refutation, I think I had plenty of reasons to be pissed.

Lastly, what I did is in no way "restricted" to admins. Like any user can remove vandalism or give {{test}} warnings for vandals, any user can issue warnings for incivility. -- Миборовский U|T|C|M|E|Chugoku Banzai! 22:43, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Saito Hajime talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Saito_Hajime

I will shortly try to understand the problem, and shall come back to you. --Bhadani 11:04, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I could not figure it out. Please see your edit history, and try to locate that particular edit. --Bhadani 11:29, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nation Building

Hiya, you contributed to the talk page of Nation building. I've just flagged up what I think are a bunch of problems with the article and would welcome your input. Cheers Vizjim 15:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hi Bathrobe!

Did you put this on the Yasukuni-discussion site?

"There's an interesting article in the journal "Japan Echo", December 2004, on Yasukuni. It discusses the rationale for the founding of the shrine and traditional views that make the shrine meaningful to some."

If that is the case, do you have a .pdf copy or a good url or something?

Thanks man =D

でわまた

--Yanemiro 05:05, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chang Jiang / Yangtze

Bathrobe.. thanks for the reply. My point, which you seem to agree with, in the redirect page was that in English, "Chang Jiang" is not well-known. Indisputably, it is the more-common (i.e. official, as it were) name of the river in China. Zai jian! Izaakb 14:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I really have no idea of your problem, sometimes I also encountered the same ones,but after for a while,maybe somedays, I found I can access these pages.Maybe you can consult the technicians of wikipedia.Ksyrie

[edit] An opportune juncture, which may or may not be dangerous...

Ni Hao. Thanks for the explanation on my talk page regarding that. It would be nice if the article explained this explicitly, though (it might, but I found it too confusing and not to the point). A short while ago I tried learning Hanzi but eventually stopped; I guess I could always start again. Enjoy your day. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen)

[edit] Macrons

very sorry for that... I meant to use that (to avoid the "oo/ou" discrepancy), but I was then in a haste and forgot to do so, sorry :( Cheers.--K.C. Tang 09:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apologies

Guess I need to brush up on my Wiki policies. I guess I felt that since i wasn't making major changes I wasn't stepping on anyone's toes. As for the talk page thing I was treating it like a message system, so I was deleting a read message. I've restored my talk page. I feel silly now, and I've felt I've disrespected the wiki community. I hope you understand I meant no harm.kojaxs 04:26, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] On 1st/2nd person

Hi, the Manual of Style is probably what you want regarding avoiding 1st/2nd person. Encyclopediae have almost never, historically, been written using 1st/2nd person, and scholarly works similarly tend to avoid it - if in some circumstances professors use it in lectures, we can probably attribute that to differences between spoken and written english -- the same professor would probably not do that in written works. The important part is encyclopedic tradition and a consistent style. Take care. --Improv 18:35, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Zhonghua Minzu

Hi Bathrobe,

I reverted only because the edit was by a banned user. WP:BAN states that "any edits made in defiance of a ban may be reverted to enforce the ban, regardless of the merits of the edits themselves". Feel free to revert me if you like, I have no opinion on the matter. Cheers, Khoikhoi 21:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POSIX error: Connection reset by peer

Bathrobe: This error is due to a caching server or proxy server between you and the website you are trying to access. IT is entirely possibly the URL for the Yangtze entry is being targeted, there is little way to figure out otherwise. POSIX is a hypothetical Unix standard which is used for a lot of programming by the Linux community (notice the ---ix ---ux endings, all related operating systems). It is my understanding that the Linux OS is widely in use by PRC Izaakb 16:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

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