Talk:South Australia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
 This page has been selected for the release version of Wikipedia and rated Start-Class on the assessment scale. It is in the category Geography. It has been rated High-Importance on the importance scale.
Flag South Australia is part of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.
Start This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

Article Grading:
The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
This article is supported by WikiProject Adelaide.
WikiProject Australia To-do:
To-do list for South Australia: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • History
  • Geography and climate220.240.132.103 08:44, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Adelaide Meetup
Next meetup: -
Last meetup: 24th August 2006

Contents

[edit] Misc

Sorry, I shouldn't have used the rollback feature to revert 65.6.41.238's change of "Queen of Australia" to "Queen of England". Queen Elizabeth II has many titles. The proper one to use in this context is "Queen of Australia". See Queen of Australia and Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom#Titles. -- Tim Starling 01:53, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Addition of Ingenious Groups

Can we have links on this page to indigeneous groups of SA? I've added to the Kaurna article. I'm thinking about doing some more groups soon. Frances76 11:30, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sources for Proclamation Changes

There is no Murray River valley per se. Burden is on someone else to prove that there is and cite sources.

I added information about the establishment of the colony (otherwise how can the link between Europeans seeing the South Australian area and the modern state be made?), but more could be added. Sources for the Proclamation include:

Troy88 03:28, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your changes.--cj | talk 12:42, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "piping shrike"

I question the following sentence: While the term piping shrike in scientific circles is unknown it is colloquially referred to as the piping shrike in South Australia. It's more widely accepted name is the Magpie-lark.

The "Magpie-Lark", also known as the "Murray Magpie" (Grallina cyanoleuca) is a totally different bird to the larger Australian magpie. Official government descriptions of the state badge refer to the bird as a "White backed Magpie" (Gymnorhina tibicen leuconota).

I agree that the Murray Magpie and Australian Magpie are quite different birds However, it seems less clear exactly which is represented by the Piping Shrike. Even the department of Premier and Cabinet seems uncertain. State Badge of South Australia (copyright 1997) says "The Piping Shrike or White Backed Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen leuconota) ...". Use of the Piping Shrike (PDF) dated June 2003 on the same website says "There has always been discussion on whether it is the common magpie or the Murray magpie and which ever it is, why is it called a Shrike?". I think most people on being asked to point to a "piping shrike" would point to the state badge. If asked to identify a bird of species "Grallina cyanoleuca" (by the questioner pointing at one or showing a picture), it would be called a Murray Magpie, and the same test on a white-backed magpie would get the response "Magpie", as we do not have black-backed magpies in South Australia. --Scott Davis Talk 23:41, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

For clarity's sake we must surely have just one or the other represented here. The South Australia page refers to the "Magpie-Lark" but the link to the flag refers to a "White backed shrike (Magpie)" and the link then refers to a page on the Australian magpie rather than the Murray magpie. If we must argue the point, that argument could be added to the page devoted to the flag. -- Unsigned.

The solution seems obvious to me. Someone should create the Piping Shrike page as a place where the controversy can be explained in full, and then pages to which the controversy has some relevance could simply link to it. Both of the complementary goals of Clarity and Truth would then be satisfied. (Incidentally, as I see it the primary evidence that the bird is a Murray Magpie is that it looks like one, and the primary evidence that the bird is a true Australian Magpie is that the name "piping shrike" implies a bird noted for the quality of its song - a pipe being a musical instrument - and Australian Magpie is indeed noted for its song whereas the Murry Magpie is not.) 203.63.92.110 16:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Essentially a city-state"?!

I was more than a little surprised to read this statement in the intro. Granted Adelaide dominates the state in terms of population and politics, but to claim this makes South Australia "essentially" a city-state is faintly ludicrous, especially if you read the city-state article and find it referring to places like Monaco and Singapore. A quick calculation using the population figures from Wikipedia's Adelaide and South Australia articles (which admittedly aren't from identical time periods, but close enough for these purposes) reveals that Adelaide can lay claim to just under 73% of the state's population, hardly the 90%+ I was expecting on the basis of this statement (even if I were willing to discount the problem of South Australia's vast land area). This is far from unique in the Australian context, as similar calculations for Melbourne's population as a proportion of that of Victoria and for Perth in Western Australia both yield just over 73%. In the absence of objections, I'll be editing this misleading reference out of the sentence in the near future. Thylacoleo 03:30, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The proportion can be as high as 80% depending on which definition of Adelaide is used. Nevertheless, I've cut the reference.--cj | talk 06:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, nice to see someone agrees! Thylacoleo 07:31, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] rv war

I have been in a revert war on this article, the has been a discussion on it here and here, what do you think? Myrtone

You missed that you're also trying to hold a discussion via the edit history! My edit comment ((South) Australian English!) was connected to a range of spelling and grammar edits, and also removed the German translation from the intro, which appears to be the issue you are concerned about.
The point is that in both the language of this wiki (The English Wikipedia) and the official and common language of the place being described (South Australia), the name is "South Australia". Nobody disputes that we had German-speaking migrants early in the history of the colony, but the German translation of the name does not belong at the top of the article. Is it "South Australia" or "Sudaustralien" in Barossa Deutsch? FWIW, one or two of my grandparents were educated in German in South Australia, even though their parents were also born here. I don't know if any schools now teach exclusively in German—do you? --Scott Davis Talk 13:11, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
From User talk:ScottDavis:
The problem for me is that those "countless other languages" were/are each spoken by *much* less than ten percent of the population, wheras German was once spoken by "ten percent" of the population, this is why I disagree with Michael (talk • contribs) about whether it deseaves primacy (whatever 'primacy' is). Myrtone
It would be more appropriate for this article to provide the translation in Pitjantjatjara and Kaurna than German, Barossa Deutsch, Italian, Vietnamese, Cornish, or Welsh, all of which have also been spoken by significant groups of migrants in the past. The last two may also have achieved 10% of the population in the 1850s (I don't know).
Note that I am not proposing any of those other languages in the introductory paragraph, and probably not anywhere else in the article. It is possible that something like These migrants referred to their new country as "Sudaustralien" could sensibly be added to History of South Australia near the section that talks about bringing their culture and language rather than just learning English. --Scott Davis Talk 09:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

"...translation of the name does not belong at the top of the article." As a matter of clarification, do you mean that it is rejected by consensus? I know of no policy or guideline that suggests that non-official languages shouldn't be emphasised like that, in fact I added that after reading a number of articles on Canadian Provences (Yes, Canada and Australia have so much in common, actually much more that most people in either country think). Basically, English and French language are the two offcial languages, but in all provences except Quebec, where French is the sole official language, and Neubauschweig (New Brunswick) where English and French are both official. Despite this, it seems that both the articles on Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island seem to have Galic notations in the lead despite it's lack of official status. Note however, I do not live in SA nor have I ever, I have been there a number of times and I have read about the history of it. Myrtone (☏) 01:21, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Given the number of people involved in reverting that addition at the time, yes, I think that was a consensus decision.
In Canada, both "French" and "English" are official languages at the federal/national level. In fact, there are several distinct groups of French-speaking people, each with their own dialects and histories. I note that the article on Canadian Gaelic says there are still people on Cape Breton Island (the northern part of Nova Scotia) and P.E.I. who speak Gaelic as a first language. As far as I know, there are no communities in SA where the first choice of language in the street is German. In parts of New Brunswick, it can be quite disorienting for an English-speaking Australian (with a bit of very dodgy high school French from a long time ago) to go from being served in English in one shop to going next door and finding I speak as much French as the server does English. In Montreal restaurants, tourists are greeted with "Bonjour-Hello", and the conversation continues in whichever language the customer chooses to answer in. The equivalent does not happen in Tanunda or Nuriootpa. --Scott Davis Talk 09:22, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Motto

Does anyone have a reference for the motto? I did a Google search [1], and almost exclusively Wikipedia mirros came out. The motto was added because it is listed at Goway.com, but I don't think that qualifies as a reliable source. PruneauT 20:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/o/u/Talk%7ESouth_Australia_396d.html"