User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive Feb.-May 2006

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[edit] Use of accent in Gènova

There's a question as to whether the optional Italian convention for stress accent (in placenames) should be used. Please join the discussion at User talk:Macrakis/Italian accents if you're interested. --Macrakis 05:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Picture copyright

Hi Kwami, the Writing systems map [media:WritingSystemsoftheWorld3.png] is apparently in danger of getting deleted for copyright reasons. As you were apparently involved in creating it, could you have a look? Lukas (T.|@) 10:07, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I created it (based on an older map), so there is no copy vio. kwami 10:10, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Phoebe density

Kwamikagami,

Actually, I stumbled on the update reading the excellent, and unrelated, Jewitt’s The Solar System Beyond The Planets. The data originally come from Porco Initial Results on Phoebe and Iapetus. Science, 307, 1237. Easy source: Nasa Natural Satellite Physical Parameters [1]

By the way, the Phoebe's density of 1.6 is consistent with Enceladus and makes the argument about Phoebe v inner moons a bit weak IMHO. I should have added the source, sorry. Done. Eurocommuter 11:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IPA

Could you give any reason for your last revert in IPA? "Coronal" is a general term, I think that "lateral alveolar" would be a better description - it is more precise and that's how IPA calls this sound: [1]. --Filemon 12:01, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

No, "alveolar" is inaccurate. The IPA calls it a "voiceless dental or alveolar lateral fricative", but of course it can be postalveolar as well. The only glyphs which are specifically alveolar are [s] and [z]. kwami 21:59, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] De-linking

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation). If anything, as some tables already do, one can provide a link next to the character as in /d/ voiced alveolar plosive.

AEuSoes1 02:43, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] hello kwami

You are still editing articles about linguistics? Hey I saw you don't claim you are uninvolved. Here's a barnstar for you. Take care! talk to +MATIA 01:46, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Matia! kwami 01:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I, +MATIA, award kwami with the Rosetta Stone Barnstar, in recognition of his contributions and his efforts to improve WP.
Enlarge
I, +MATIA, award kwami with the Rosetta Stone Barnstar, in recognition of his contributions and his efforts to improve WP.

[edit] Tone contour weasle words

Please respond at Talk:Tone contour. -- Felix Wan 00:41, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tone sandhi in Wu

In Wu, Shanghainese is quite atypical in terms of tone sandhi. The Suzhou dialect, for example, has an extensive and very complex tone sandhi system, which is not even predictable in all cases. It's covered in pages 64 - 68 of 汉语方言概要 (by 袁家骅 et al, ISBN 7801264746). -- ran (talk) 22:30, 19 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Image Tagging Image:BigSplashEnglish.png

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[edit] verb arguments

hi. if you dont have anything better to do, maybe you can improve my musings at Talk:Verb argument#Compulsory arguments & Talk:Verb argument#Required semantic arguments. I'm not very good at semantics. peace – ishwar  (speak) 07:31, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Family emergency right now, but I'll see what I can do later. Thanks for the heads up. kwami 16:14, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Source

Could you cite a source for the list you put at Folk etymology? Ashibaka tock 07:08, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

They were from some 'story of English'-type book; I forget which. We should be able to confirm with the OED. If not, please let me know and I'll see what I can dig up. kwami 09:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Austronesian languages

Hi! Could you tell me why you reverted the change in Austronesian languages? I added Kuanua because it is usually considered one of the major Austronesian languages - certainly one of the major Oceanic languages. (See Lynch, Ross & Crowley 2002) I looked at some of the other languages in the list and it is certainly a larger and more familiar language than some of the others. (One in particular that I'm familiar with is the Nakanai language. Kuanua is much more prominent in the literature (often referred to as Tolai) and also has many more speakers (100,000 compared to 13,000).

Anyways, I'm new to editing Wikipedia articles, so I'm not too sure what some of the reasons are that people revert back to older versions after someone has added something. It'd be great if you could let me know so that I'll know in the future. Thanks!--Sheena V 01:00, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's pretty arbitrary. I reverted initially because the language didn't even have an article, and I didn't recognize the name until you mentioned Tolai. Yes, there's a good amount of linguistic lit dedicated to Tolai, but much of this has to do with Tok Pisin. That's probably not something that someone who's wondering what an Austronesian language is is looking for. After all, is Tolai a more important language than Acehnese? Anyway, once I got started I deleted the other minor languages, and added a few, so that what the article now has is every AN language in excess of 4M speakers (down to Balinese, which everyone has heard of), plus the national languages of Oceania. Those are admitedly arbitrary criteria, so feel free to change them (I could see deleting Hiligaynon and adding Acehnese), but it's a list that I think will give the naive reader a decent idea of what "Austronian" covers. kwami 01:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation - it makes a lot more sense now with some of the smaller languages out of the list. I do still think Kuanua probably should be there, particularly since it's the largest Austronesian lang in Papua New Guinea. But in reality, I don't think it matters that much and I'm just as happy to leave it out. On another note, I'm thinking of redoing the Oceanic classification following Lynch, Ross and Crowley (2002) The Oceanic Languages. This will probably require quite a bit of work to do it properly, so I thought I'd see what people think before doing it. I'm going to add this to the discussion page on Austronesian Languages and Oceanic languages, and if no one objects, then I'll go ahead and do it! Thanks!--Sheena V 00:02, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I would love to see that. I redid the Western MP classification following the articles in Wouk & Ross some time ago, so your suggestion would make wikipedia more internally consistant. kwami 01:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: List of languages

Sorry for the mistake with the links. Countries that are not sovereign states are not comparable to ordinary subnational entities (e.g. states, provinces, cantons, prefectures) either. In most real life examples they're rarely, if not never, listed in the same manner as ordinary subnational entities. — Instantnood 20:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

It's odd, too, to see these countries that are not sovereign states being dealt with in the same manner as that of ordinary subnational entities. — Instantnood 17:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] By the way

Have you ever seen the websites from the guy who thinks the Kharoshti script was derived from Meroitic Demotic? I can't give an accurate assessment, what do you think? There do seem to be a few uncanny resemblances, on the surface... If true, it would really change the picture of things a lot!ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 18:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

No I haven't. But Kharoshti is so obviously similar to Aramaic (much easier to connect than Brahmi, for example) that I'd be very surprised if there were anything to it. kwami 19:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Yeah a lot of his (Clyde Winters) stuff seems pretty half-baked, but thought you might want to take a look at it: http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/mero.htm (Just found it in my "page history" cache from my surfing of last week!) ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 19:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Ow, stop the pain! kwami 19:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I take it that means you couldn't bear to see such poor scholarship as on that site?! ;o) ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 21:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, I know a couple people who would be surprised to learn that the Sudanese languages are Indo-European. kwami 21:24, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image copyright problem with Image:SpesmiloItalic.png

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[edit] Nasal Fricatives

OK, I'll go along with the revert for now. However, I know that John O'Hala specifically denied the existence of such segments, saying something like "buccal obstruents require velic closure" (paraphrase, not quote). While I personally can say, for instance, a nasal [z], I don't recall encountering nasal fricatives in Ladefoged & Maddeson's Sounds of the World's Languages (or did I just miss them?).

Any references? Thanks. Godfrey Daniel 01:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

For a buccal obstruant without velic closure, how about [n]?
My refs are handouts from a conference talk. A UEA linguist working on S Arabic langs reported the nasalized [z̃]; in her pronunciation it was clearly a fricative, and she was quite adamant about this when I expressed amazement.
In SOWL they say "Ohala (1975) offers persuasive reasons for believing that voiced nasalized fricatives are difficult to produce" because of the conflict between two directions of airflow. In languages like Guarani, the nasalized allophones of fricatives are actually approximants, and therefore claims of nasalized fricatives in languages like Waffa (PNG) must be taken with a grain of salt. However, Umbundu contrasts phonemically nasalized [ṽ] from allophonically nasalized [w̃]. Schadeberg (1982) maintained that Umbundu [ṽ] was a fricative even after commenting on Ohala (1975). —kwami 02:53, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
PS. It seems to me that nasalized sibilants like [z̃] are significantly easier to maintain than other nasalized fricatives like [ṽ].

You wrote:

For a buccal obstruant without velic closure, how about [n]?

Ah, but nasals are, by definition, not obstruents, because the nasal airway is not obstructed (unless you have a cold ;-) Obviously, nasal [d] is impossible, which is why some languages have [nd] (e.g., Fijian) and even [dn] (e.g., Russian).

Interesting data. Thanks for sharing. BTW, the note with nasal frix is gone. Godfrey Daniel 22:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

We can have fun with the semantics: by this definition, [z̃] is not an obstruent either, and nasalized obstruents are impossible simply because they're a contradiction in terms. ([n] is often classified as an obstruent, and is the direct nasalized equivalent of [d].) kwami 22:40, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I believe you are mistaken when you say that [n] is classified as an obstruent. It is sometimes called a nasal stop, but the term obstruent, by definition, is understood to exclude nasals. A quibble, perhaps, but we have to know what the terms mean in order to make any sense of them and the ensuing exposition.
Also, there is no "direct nasalized equivalent of [d]." That implies that one could, in theory, write [n] as a [d] with a tilde (~) over it, but that would be an abomination in the eyes of St. Henry, St. Daniel, and St. Peter (Sweet, Jones, and Ladefoged). Such a creature simply does not exist. (Or am I so far out of touch with the phonetics & phonology literature that I am simply unaware?) Godfrey Daniel 20:00, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, you're correct that no one would ever write dee-tilde for [n], but that could simply be because there's no need, and it's completely counter-intuitive to someone raised on the Latin alphabet. (I suspect that people would think you meant pre- or post-nasalized.) But you do see fish-hook ar with a tilde for a nasalized flap, which is to [n] what [ɾ] is to [d]. In some languages nasalization spreads, turning vowels into nasalized vowels, flaps into nasalized flaps, and [d]s into [n]. (Don't ask me for refs though!)
There are two definitions of 'obstruent', articulatory and acoustic. Phonetically, [n] is an articulatory obstruent, for it completely obstructs the mouth. However, it is acoutically a sonorant. Phonologically, it may behave as either, depending on the language, or may be ambiguous, just as [h] may behave as either a consonant or a vowel, or be ambiguous, depending on the language. I remember that in my intro phonetics class we had to always clarify whether we meant 'obstruent' in the articulatory or acoustic sense. kwami 22:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

(Coming back out to the left edge of the page)
I think the basic issue is that nasals are inherently sonorants, and stops are inherently non-sonorants. Since [n] and [d] differ in more than one respect (i.e., nasality, continuancy, and sonority at the least), it is only natural to have separate symbols and not just modifiers, and this is (in part) why dee-tilde is an abomination.

Flaps/taps are stops that are so short they've become sonorant, and have therefore lost their obstruency. Of course, all sonorants are able to undergo nasalization, so there's no contradiction between what you and I are saying.

As for the historic--and even synchronic--change of d > n, this is not one change but a set of changes, because each of the relevant features must be changed. I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but give me some data and I could break it down into the appropriate phonological processes.

Interesting about the articulatory/acoustic obstruent distinction. It's not one I ever encountered in grad school, or since, before now. I would put it in terms of phonetic description vs. phonological features/functions, but that's me.

As for [h] (etc.) being "ambiguous," I think it would be more accurate to say that in some languages, it acts in both consonant-like and sonorant-like ways. English is one such example, where it clearly patterns with the other obstruents in its distribution (i.e., consonant-like), yet does not block nasalization (i.e., sonorant-like). Godfrey Daniel 20:44, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Korean manual alphabet

Good work on that page. However, I have some sort of source (see that talk page) that seems to show you might have got the "R" character confused? Anyway, goodwork, I give you a hip hip hurray! cheers Nesnad 14:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I wish now I had left the pix in color. Oh well.
Could you give your contradictory reference? I picked up a book of sign alphabets in a library in Japan, photocopied it, and this follows their diagrams. It's in no way authoritative, but it was clear that this is what they meant. kwami 22:43, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spread of Proto-Sinaitic writing systems in Asia

Hi Kwami, after a long time! Just wanted to clarify a bit about the map showing spread of Proto-Sinaitic writing systems in Asia. The arrow from "Nepali" is towards Tibet region, and the Tibetan alphabet is an Indic alphabet. The map was created based on the map on this site. Also, Siddham is known in Japan as bonji (梵字) (of course, you would know better.) This map does not intend to imply that the Japanese script is based on Siddham, but only shows the route through with Siddham travelled to Japan. It's a great idea to clarify this in the articles where this map is used to dispel any confusion. The map on the website is clickable, so I clicked on Nepali, and this was the corresponding page. I must say that this "Nepali" script is quite similar to Devanagari, which is currently used to write Nepali language. Maybe it's a predecessor of Devanagari. Best regards, deeptrivia (talk) 04:47, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

PS: I observed there's another arrow from Siddham to China. I guess, like in case of Japan, this shows use of Siddham script for religious calligraphy. Cheers :) deeptrivia (talk) 04:51, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi DT,
Yeah, it has been a while.
Siddham is fine. But now that I see the source, I see that the "Nepali" arrow (the green one) is spurious and should be removed. Nepali is written in Nagari, and so is covered by the ochre arrows, and never spread to Mongolia as the map shows. Neither did the old scripts of Nepal, in case the author got confused about Indic Nepali (Gurkhali) vs. Tibeto-Burman Nepali (Newari). kwami 06:13, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oh cool

When I first ran into you on the Giant Impact Hypothesis page I thought you must be an astronomer, but actually you seem to be more into my field... Cool.

[edit] Sorry for missing the links

Sorry I missed the old links in the Austronesian languages and Oceanic languages pages. I later realized that these must be there, even though they were turning up red for me. That's why I never did create new pages for all of them (as I had said I would). I was too tired to figure out what they all were and do redirects for all of them. But now I see how you've done those links with those horizontal lines in them. I think I understand them now (but will go look again in help pages to make sure I do before making anymore changes). Sorry for making more work for you - I'm still learning all this and I promise not to do that again! Thanks for looking over what I did do. --Sheena V 22:11, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

No problem at all. I was hoping you'd be able to concentrate on the new material. Would you mind writing the South Oceanic linkage article, and verifying that the subclassifications in the other articles match our reference?
The pipe separates the name of the article from the words that appear in your link. Also, if the article name has a word in parentheses at the end of it, then you can add just a pipe to automatically remove it. For example, [[Phobos (moon)|]] will show up as Phobos. That can save you some time. —kwami 22:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah - it makes much more sense to concentrate on new material. Now that I'm a bit more clear on what's actually here. I think I'm starting to feel my way around things a little better now. I'm happy to do the South Oceanic linkage article, as well as checking the others. Hopefully I can do this in the next few days (I'm going on holidays after that, and not sure of my internet connection while I'm gone.)

And thank you for the information about the pipe - that will make writing much easier. I tried to read as many of the help pages as I could before I started doing any editing, but I'm sure I missed a few, and forgot a few things too. Hopefully it won't take me too long to get used to everything!

Hi Kwami. I just wanted to write a note about your current edit on Oceanic languages, with regards to the hedging about the number of Kuanua (Tolai) speakers. The data I got of over 100,000 comes directly from Lynch, Ross and Crowley (2002) - though I'm not sure where they got it. I've seen quite a few different estimates in the literature, and not sure which is the best. But this is the most recent, and is also a well-respected source. The Ethnologue (which says 61,000) tends to be a bit off on the languages in this area, as there are no SIL people working at all on any of the languages in this area. I also suspect the 100,000 is probably true, based on my knowledge of the area. Anyways, I'll try and dig up the info from the 2000 census (which doesn't have language info, but will give a good idea how many people live in Tolai-speaking areas - like whether the 60,000 or 100,000 is a more accurate number). I probably won't get a chance to do this till after holidays. I just think the hedging sounds funny, and is unnecessary, but I'll try and get more info before changing it back.--Sheena V 11:56, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and change it, Sheena. However, if the 100,000 figure includes 2nd language speakers, perhaps we should change Fijian to 500,000? kwami 11:59, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah - that's exactly what I'm wondering about. Let me see if I can do some digging first. I agree, if it does include second language speakers, it's a bit misleading!--Sheena V 12:27, 20 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Image Tagging Image:Labial flap.png and Image:Labial velars.png

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[edit] Polynesian languages

Hi, why did you remove one of two Lynch's book? Is one of them only a newer edition of the other one? Apokrif 20:10, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

No. I'll restore it. kwami 20:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] what was wrong with my edit?

i cleaned up the chinese section of List of languages by number of native speakers. i didn't change any information i just put it in a better format so that people could actually read it. it took me a while to do it too, and then you just reverted it. could you please tell me what was wrong with it at least? Mike 01:10, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Mike,
Actually, you did change information. Chinese was listed as a "significant" (>1%) language of Australia, which you removed. (You left it only for Xmas Is.) You listed Cantonese as official in HK & Macau, though as far as we've been able to tell that's only de facto, not de jure. You also listed HK and Macau as if they were separate countries. On a more minor note, you added a bunch of hyphens as ad hoc colons, which is substandard punctuation, and you changed the universal 'million' to provincial 'billion', which besides being mildly undesirable is unnecessary since it's not needed for any other language.
Sorry about not commenting. There are frequent unsupported or inconsistant edits to this article (people inflating the population of their favorite language, listing their home town, etc.), and it's rather time consuming to leave a comment, since I have to re-edit the article rather than just revert it. kwami 01:30, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks kwamikagami, but i was wondering if i fixed all the information so that it was right, would the format be wrong in any way? it's alot easier to really that way instead of it being all squashed together. Mike 01:41, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd only object to the hyphens. Those are best used for abbreviations, not for punctuation. In this case, I'd use colons rather than dashes. (When in doubt, use colons. They supposedly have opposite meanings: "The colors of the flag: white, red, and green" vs. "White, red, and green—the colors of the flag", though people usually don't care.) Also, if you want to create paragraph breaks inside a table, you can use <br>, though that isn't necessary. kwami 02:01, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I think I have seen someone complaining over the use of HTMLʼs <br> in WP articles. The person suggested that XHTMLʼs <br/> (or <br />) be used instead. Wikipeditor 07:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks again Mike 02:23, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

It does help. I did the same thing to the other 100M+ languages. Shouldn't be necessary for the rest. kwami 03:00, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
something's gotta be done about the "number of speakers" column it's a bit too narrow and it makes too much space on the chart. i don't know how to do it, do you? Mike 03:09, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Just stumbled over your excellent Image:IPA chart 2005.png. That must have been a lot of work. Thanks a lot!

I especially like that it is in my favourite font. Gentium arguably has some minor flaws, and all work and feedback on it seems to have stopped, but it is great for IPA. I think I should tell my universityʼs phonetics department about your chart – they handed out a copy of the 1996 version this week.

AFAIK, an unofficial extension not included in your chart is sometimes used to transcribe Standard German's central open unrounded /a(ː)/, located half-way between [a] and [ɑ]. It looks like a. As your chart is an image, an aesthetically satisfying a symbol could be easily created from Gentiumʼs ʌ. Wikipeditor 07:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

You're very welcome. I'm glad it's appreciated. I think I'll forgo any additional vowels, as that chart's already quite crowded. I am thinking of restoring the lateral flaps to the consonant chart, though, especially since requests have been put in to SIL for them. kwami 10:12, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Do you have the chart in a non-image format? If it is simply a screenshot of some word processor document, it would be great if you shared that document so people can get better prints and adjust things to their needs. For example, I'd swap italic and regular in the note on diacritics so that IPA symbols never appear in italics. Wikipeditor 23:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
It's yours if you can answer one question: How can I access my PC hard drive from my laptop?
(The mother board is toast. I have a power source and an IDE-USB2 adapter, but my laptop won't recognize the drive.) kwami 23:42, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't know that. How about asking for help in a forum or here at the Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science? Wikipeditor 16:28, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] article for non-Pama Nyungan?

Hi Kwami, I note you've remove the red linked non-Pama Nyungan at Australian Aboriginal languages. I'm wondering if this was just a temporary measure until there's an article to link to, or if perhaps you feel that there's no need for such an article (given that it's a negative term). I can see it both ways, but I think it would be good to have at least a brief article giving the history and usage of the term, along with links to the actual language families of which it's comprised. BTW, just saw the above discussion and had a look at your IPA chart--very nice, and completely up-to-date (labiodental flap and all). I think it might have to be my new reference IPA wall-chart. Dougg 00:26, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

No reason not to have an article, but I think it's generally a bad idea to have red links. They make Wikipedia look incomplete and, more importantly, invite vandalism that's hard to catch, since no one's monitoring them.
Glad you like the chart! kwami 02:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
hi. Sorry to butt in here, but I thought I would also say that I like the chart too. a much better layout than what the IPA provides. peace – ishwar  (speak) 02:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hi Kwamikagami!

Did you check out the sources? I saw your recent edit to Kwomtari-Baibai and it made total sense to me. I've done a *ton* more on Andamanese, the trouble is that it's unpublished original research. What I'd like to do is post it on Andaman.org, then you can cite it. But first I have to finish it. I could tell you what they were, but editors might still ask for an external cite.Timothy Usher 11:26, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

In addition to taxonomy, have you any interest in historical phonology and reconstruction?Timothy Usher 23:39, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About italian language

Please, read my post at talk page on the list of languages by numbers. All statistics are stupid because they consider only the population where italian is official but this statistics doesn't consider Italian citizens or Italian mother tongues who live outside these countries, and also Italians are discovering them recently. Italian is the second language daily spoken in Australia, is also spoken widely in Canada and Brazil and Argentina and 2,15% of Americains speaks it at home. People who lives in Italy are 58 million, as you can see, 3 million of other speakers are very very reductive. --Ilario 11:43, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The figure includes all countries, not just where it's official. Of course, the data is probably dated, but we still need a reference. Your Italian Wikipedia source gives a figure of 70-120M, which obviously isn't native speakers. Also, Italian does not appear to be 1% of Germany or Brazil, or to be official in the Vatican. kwami 12:00, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Reference??????? If you make addition, this is the reference. I've done reference in the talk page and the reference doesn't named "Kwamikagami" or "Ilario", is named i.e. US Census, Italian Foreign Office, etc. Ok, I add a calculation in the talk page and I revert your modification. In any case, which are your reference? Ethnologue? Please, Ethnologue isn't an acceptable source. --Ilario 15:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Your figures for the US Census (2.5% Italian) don't agree with the US Census (0.3% Italian[2]). You have not provided complete figures. I agree that Ethnologue isn't a great source, but there doesn't appear to be an alternative. Nothing else covers all these languages. kwami 20:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Katakana and Korean

Hey, Kwami. Sivak here from Chu shogi and Shogi. I saw you had some posting in the Hangul article's discussion and I wanted to ask if you knew something about this: Do Koreans use Katakana in writing anywhere? I'm very inclined to think they don't. The reason I'm asking is I've obtained some animation artwork from an old cartoon and the drawing has Katakana on it, which led me to believe the show may have been animated in Japan. Though sources tell me it was done in Korea (as were a lot of shows). So any info about them using Katakana?

Also, how is Hangul actually pronounced? Is it /hahn'-gool/ or /hahn'-gyool/ ? I have seen it spelled Hangeul, which led me to believe the latter.

Thanks. I made up a neat template for a Shogi user box if that's your thing. You can see it on my user page. Hope to hear from you. --Sivak 03:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please use real edit comments

I'm getting tired of edit comments of the form of "Reverted edits by 217.98.206.83 (talk) to last version by SashatoBot". That tells me nothing I couldn't have figured out on my own, but fails to tell me why you made the changes. You've recently reverted Voiceless postalveolar fricative and Esperanto, of the pages in my watchlist, and both of them were fair edits. Perhaps the edit to Esperanto wasn't good, but the editor deserves a reason for the change. If the VPF edit was wrong, then it needs a statement to that effect, otherwise it was a good edit. I can't tell whether its reversion was overly hasty vandalism changes or it was actually wrong.--Prosfilaes 07:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Going into an edit window to add a comment requires significantly more time than hitting the revert button, which is what you're seeing, and I generally don't bother with editors who don't take the time to sign in. As for those two edits, Zamenhof was not a Pole, and Polish sz is not a Voiceless postalveolar fricative, at least not as that term is generally used in English. (It's given as an example under Voiceless retroflex fricative.) kwami 07:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your revert

(discussion moved to Talk:List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers#French.2C_again)

kwami 20:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pollard script

Thanks for the edit. Nice to bump into a fellow language geek. :-) Waitak 16:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Turkish in Bulgaria

I found out that you have reverted my change to the List of languages by number of native speakers. And I can't see why, because all sources I use (including the Bulgarian Constitution) say the same thing: Bulgarian is the official language in my country. Yes, there are many people in the country that speak Turkish, but for now it's not an official language (though our public national TV channel has a 15-minute news program in Turkish). I hope we can settle this matter soon. --Mégara (Мегъра) - D. Mavrov 08:44, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I revert all changes that have no reference and which I can't substantiate. Granted, it's hard to substantiate a negative. My apologies if I'm completely off base here.
Ethnologue lists both Bulgarian and Turkish as "official or regional" languages, while Turkish is listed as having "official regional recognition". Whether this is more than the recognition given to other minority languages in Bulgaria I don't know. It would be nice to get this cleared up. kwami 05:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archive please

Kwami, - could you archive some of the older debates onthe Talk:List of languages by number of native speakers page please. This page is so long now that it is difficult to add edits - it keeps timing out. Thanks Jameswilson 01:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alphabet

Hi Kwami,

what do you think of this edit by 209.76.23.144 (talk • contribs)? Judging from the editing pattern and the IP adress, it's an editor known as Roy Lee, who is known for trying to edit self-referential Afrocentric original research and fringe theories into Wikipedia. See User:Mark Dingemanse/Roylee and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Roylee for more info. I don't trust him on principle, but if you say it's OK, I'll leave it at that. Thanks for looking into it! — mark ✎ 14:20, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that's just a rewording of the intro I wrote for the history of the alphabet article! The 3rd paragraph is now misleading, so I'll reword it, but other than that as far as I know it's accurate. kwami 18:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Good to know that - thanks for checking! — mark ✎ 20:24, 30 April 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Rolling R

Hi Kwami,

I'm from Germany and have problems with my rolling R and wanted to ask you whether you could help me a little bit?--*Rammstein* 12:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your message. Yes I'm talking about the "alveolar trill", and I've also already read your explination. But nevertheless I have some problems. Not the problem to get the tongue vibrating, but to give it a "voice", if you know what I mean? Here's myself trying to speak a trilled R with the word "ara". It just doesn't sound good and not like a trilled/rolles R. image:ara.ogg --*Rammstein* 18:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Perfective, inceptive, perfect

Thanks for your correction to my "perfective"->"inceptive" edit to Esperanto grammar. I obviously confused the general "perfective aspect" with the specific "perfect aspect" and, thinking about "ek-" verbs in Esperanto, I took them to be much closer aligned to inceptive aspect than they are to the perfect aspect, both of which were contained in "prefective" per the pre-edited version. Cheers! The Rod (☎ Smith) 23:43, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Talk:Isa

Allow me to thank you for your recent comments on Talk:Isa. You may have noticed my involvement there, and perhaps you've also noticed my recent block resulting from this content dispute, now being discussed on User talk:Sean Black. Drop me a line anytime. Also, let me know if you ever enable e-mail.Timothy Usher 10:55, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why did you revert my change on List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers?

The Turkish language is not official in Bulgaria!!! By Constitution Bulgaria has only one official language - Bulgarian! There is a large community of Turkish speeking people in Bulgaria which I noted on the page, but to say that the Turkish is official in Bulgaria is totally incorrect even if you put "(regional)" after it! I insist on puting back my change! Please reffer to the page about Bulgaria. --Georgi D. Sotirov 07:31, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I have a reference for Turkish being officially recognized as a regional language of Bulgaria, as discussed on the talk page, even if Bulgaria has only one official language at the national level. I realize it's difficult to demonstrate a negative, but do you have any references to gainsay this? kwami 16:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
You ask me for a refference and you didn't gave one!? Where exactly did you read that the Turkish is official in Bulgaria (regionally)? What is Ethnologue, btw?
Here is my reference - the constitution and I thik this is the strongest one. Look at Article 3:
Bulgarian shall be the official language of the Republic.
Dot. The problem solved. I saw that another user tryed to point this in Turkish in Bulgaria, but you didn't pay attention. I hope you pay now. --Georgi D. Sotirov 14:10, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
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