User talk:Lavintzin
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[edit] Chicano
Hello,
My name is Marcelino and I wanted to ask you to see the Chicano wikipedia entry to see if you would agree that it is incorrectly define in various places. I myself have been going thru the history and have found some of the earlier entries to be correct but as of today I find the current page falsely misleading and full of errors.
I ask for you support since I see that you have good knowledge of Nahual people. I basically seek to properly define Chicano as those descedants of the Nahual civilization and that have been constantly misinforn of their history.
Thank you for your time, Marcelino 21:49, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
- Hello, Marcelino,
- I agree that the Chicano article could use some work and tightening up. I myself don't know enough about the subject matter to be the one to do it, though. It makes sense that the name is a shortening of Mexicano as (mis)pronounced by Americans, and undoubtedly Mexicano comes from the Nahuatl words Mexihco and/or Mexihka(tl), with the -ano suffix from Spanish. And it is true, fwiw, that the Nahuatl pronunciation of 'x' (like English 'sh') is closer to the 'ch' of 'Chicano' than the 'j' sound of the standard Spanish pronunciation. But the term has for 500 years been used with wider reference than just to Nahuatl-speakers or their cultures or descendants. I don't know that any group who are today called Chicanos are any more Nahuatl than the majority of Mexican citizens are. Likely less, since those from the north of Mexico were, at least historically, highly represented in the Chicano population, and their indigenous roots would more likely be Tarahumara, Yaqui, Tepehuan, and so on.
- Hope that's not too disheartening!
- --Lavintzin 03:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Garbled expressions
My favorite is "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it", a combination of the saying, "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it" and the expression "burning bridges", or unwisely cutting off ties. It doesn't have anything to do with beatings or horses, but I thought you might be interested.--Rockero 22:24, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that's a fun one, and seems fairly widespread. I have a couple of variants on it: "Don't burn your bridges before you get to them", and "Don't burn your britches behind you".
I'm certainly interested in all kinds of blended phrases, not just those with beatings and horses! I just included that as one of many cool sub-collections.--Lavintzin 22:38, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Closed class and loanwords
Hi, thanks for re-wording the sentence at productivity (linguistics). However, for many historical linguists, the issue about the difference between the open and closed classes very much is about which class allows loanwords and which doesn't. And they, their, them are indeed loanwords; they were borrowed from Old Norse. Angr/talk 06:00, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
- OK, I can accept that the open/closed class distinction in some parts of the linguistic world is about loanwords being acceptable or not. But that has nothing that I can see to do with productivity. Loan words by definition are not the results of a native grammatical process (whether productive or not). As for borrowings from Old Norse, I suppose one could argue that just about everything in English is borrowed, from the Romans, the Angles and Saxons, the Normans, and everybody else you can think of. I have a hard time imagining any class of words so closed it would have no borrowings into it if that kind of time span is allowed. (I happen to think that the whole "closed class" idea is an ideal of some kind, but it's pretty hard to find a convincing example of one, that lasted for very many generations. Usually they are made to look more closed than they are by ignoring "peripheral" data.)--Lavintzin 23:43, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Tom Swifties
You said, in part:
- I don't find the mincing one that great, but maybe I don't know (maybe don't want to know?) what the verb mince means nowadays. If it is reference to the stereotype of homosexuals as literally mincing when they walk or talk, I don't find it particularly funny. Is there a pun on Brad Pitt's name? Otherwise why put it in? (Whether he's gay or not—I assume he is?) The standard spelling of the adverb is "gaily", not "gayly".
According to Merriam-Webster, one definition of mince is:
- 2 : to utter or pronounce with affectation
So, yes, it is a reference to the stereotypical speech pattern of homosexuals, but aren't Tom Swifties all about bad jokes and painful puns? As far as I know, Brad Pitt is not gay, but he is (reputed to be) considered very attractive and desirable. I am abashed to admit that I had forgotten the correct spelling of "gaily" when I wrote it, although I would argue that the misspelling actually underscores the joke, such as it is. I didn't write it to bash gay people, or anything, I just wrote it because I found it clever, and it makes me laugh. If you really feel it is beyond the pale, though, you can take it out again. Feel free (he said, liberally).
I also added a response on the talk page. --DavidConrad 09:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
- All right, I'll respond there.
- I'm glad you like the blivit cross: it was fun to think of and work out. Would you believe I actually carved a version in wood (bas-relief) once? It turned out surprisingly well.
P.S. I really like that BlivitCross image on your user page. Nice! --DavidConrad 09:28, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Image:CuevaDelGuacharo.jpg
You have listed this image as GFDL but the page it is taken from is clearly copyrighted. Did you receive some other permission? Rmhermen 18:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I wrote (emailed) the copyright owner and asked if he would allow it to be used in the Wikipedia. He was happy to do so, and asked/permitted me to submit it with the standard license. You could write him and check, I suppose, or I could try to find the email he sent me. He looked at the page and liked what had been done with his picture.--Lavintzin 22:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Chesterton's Book
Good for you that you think that the paragraph isn't beyond salvaging. However, the tone is unacceptable. With a few mitigating phrases, it could be acceptable, but I don't have any desire to read a sales pitch for a book I find morally reprehensible while perusing Wikipedia (not to be shrill, but this stuff cuts pretty close to home). If you want to work something out in the way of a collaboration on the article, I know I'd be up for that.
I think that something more along the lines of the specific content (which you're probably more keen on anyway) would be more beneficial to the Wiki as a whole--while only a miserable few like myself will take issue with your having injected your opinions (be they never so well-deserved) into an article, everyone who reads the article will have been better off if they had actual material or summary to deal with (I know that you've already covered this earlier with the rather lengthy quotation, but perhaps an elucidation of Chesterton's "extremely unusual animal" argument--the hinge of his allegdly mean left hook at Wells' tempting temple--would both serve to express your passion and edify the general intellect). Again, if you can't bear to see the paragraph go, by all means put it back in. Seeing it for me was shades of something completely unrelated to our dear Free Encyclopedia, so my comments are probably unreliable, definitely unremarkable, and, at this point, unreadable. Have a Good Summer.
[edit] Proposed orthography changes: what do you think?
Hi Lavintzin. I recently boldy suggested that wikipedias articles on aztec related subjects should use an orthography that marks saltillo and vowel length (in particular a carochi/jesuit/Launey style classic orthography), contrarily to current practice. We are having a discussion about that particularly controversial topic here Talk:Aztec and I would like to hear your opinions. Maunus 18:14, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
