User talk:Wormsie
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[edit] n't --> not
what's peculiar about changing n't to not. WP:Style explicitily states:
Contractions
In general, formal writing is preferred. Therefore, avoid the use of contractions — such as don't, can't, won't, would've, they'd, and so on — unless they occur in a quotation.
Spearhead 21:57, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Mark Dalton (porn star)
Is there some reason that you made such drastic edits to this article on November 4? Prior to your edits, the article was this and afterwards, was a stub. There's nothing in the edit summary to indicate why all the previous material was deleted.—Chidom talk 04:31, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
- What had happened between those two versions was that the article had been deleted. I didn't even know that at first, I just saw a red link and thought "hey, I know something about Mark Dalton, I'll create a stub - funny Wikipedia doesn't have an article of him." Afterwards my version ended up deleted as well. I didn't know that it was possible to retrieve deleted contents, I thought only mods could do that. The article was a bit more complete, but not much more accurate, after I had been editing it for a while... the new version is of course a lot better and I hope it doesn't have the same fate as the previous attempts.--Wormsie 08:30, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I see what happened after reviewing the deletion log for the article. Thanks for trying to get it started again; I hope it survives the current AfD as well (as may be apparent from my comments on the AfD page). Thanks!—Chidom talk 19:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Finn
As a totally unrelated aside, I happen to be a second generation Swedish-Finnish-American; my maternal grandfather was from Finland and my maternal grandmother from Sweden. My mother was born here in the States; she died when I was quite young (as did my grandfather) and I rarely got to see my grandmother, so I don't have a clue about the language or culture of either country. I am forever spelling my middle name ("Nystrom") for people and/or explaining or correcting its pronunciation (neither of which I am certain is correct, the "o" may actually be "ö"; the pronunciation I was taught is like the English words "knee" and "strum". My first-grade teacher told me it couldn't possibly be my name as it wasn't a word! This despite the fact that there was a Nystrom World Map in every classroom in the school, including hers, a fact my father came to school and pointed out. Angrily. (I suppose it's disheartening to learn that your child's teachers aren't very intelligent themselves in some ways.)
As you may also have guessed, I identify as gay; it turns out that my mother was a lesbian who loved and married my father in order to have children—pretty much the only option available for lesbians at that time. I sometimes wonder if part of my orientation truly is inherited. She died when I was 5 months old, so I never knew her. Imagine my reaction when I was nervously talking to my father about my orientation ("coming out") and he told me about hers. Guess which one of us was more surprised?
Lastly, I also tend to think of myself as a musician (or at least have done so in the past). I have sung in community choruses, glee clubs, church choirs, etc. since I was 6. I was a cantor at two different Episcopal (Anglican) churches (one of which, we used to say, had a priest who couldn't have carried a tune if you had handed it to him in a bucket. With a lid on it). Over the years, I also sang with the Pacific Gay and Lesbian Singers (no longer existing), the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. I used to play some very basic piano, and even more basic guitar; I haven't sung or played any sort of instrument for many years now.
This is probably much more info than you need or want, but I usually notice references to Finland (and Sweden less so, I don't know why). Someday I hope to visit. Take care.—Chidom talk 21:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
- Thanks for taking the time to write someting on my userpage, this is the first time anyone has written anything non-wikipedia related here. :-) It's actually interesting to hear of what has become of Finns who have moved abroad, especially the USA - people here sometimes discuss the subject. There's an element of "they moved there, we stayed here - what would life be like if things had been different?"
- Regarding your surname: The correct Swedish spelling would indeed be with an ö, Nyström. (How do I know this? Swedish is the second official language of Finland, as you probably know.) Ny means new and ström means stream, as you also probably knew. When it comes to pronunciation you are mostly correct.
- I've read conflicting reports on whether or not homosexuality is inherited. But nevertheless, I believe almost everyone has a gay or a lesbian relative, some of them quite possibly closeted, some of them not. I have an aunt who is gay (never knew her though).
- And when you visit Finland, be prepared for the culture shock. =D I recommend summertime - end of June until beginning of August is probably a safe time to visit. The atmosphere in the winter is mostly cold, wet, dark and depressing, and so are the people.--Wormsie 22:36, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
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- Hmmm...."cold, wet, dark and depressing"? I had a date like that once. Oh, wait. I was a date like that. More than once. Having lived in San Francisco for more than 15 years, I know wet and dark; I now live in Chicago, so I know cold and depressing. I would certainly visit in summer; I couldn't deal with hours of twilight or darkness, I'm depressed enough as it is.
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- I was always told Nyström was Finnish, not Swedish, but what do I know? As far as the pronunciation goes, since there is an umlaut, there's no real way to communicate it in terms of English pronunciation—I don't think we have a sound anything like the vowels with umlauts in other languages. Probably the pronunciation of "strew" comes the closest to "ö" , but it's still not quite right, it needs to be a bit nasal, I think. Because I sang umpteen gazillion (not quite a miljardi, but seems like it) songs in German, however, I think I'd do a pretty good job (assuming that the pronunciation is the same between the languages). What we were taught in singing German was to make the vowel sound "u" as in "you" (what we would call a "hard" u) but shape your mouth as though you were going to say "e" as in "feet" (a "hard" e). This was referred to as the "e embouchure". Although that term is most often used to refer to how an instrumentalist shapes their mouth to the mouthpiece of a wind instrument, it's occasionally used to describe the shape of a singer's mouth as well. Of course, it's been awhile, I could have that exactly backwards, and it's ee through the u embouchure. I think I was told that Swedish and Finnish were both common in both countries, but I wouldn't swear to that. Last I knew (around 1981), my cousin in Helsinki worked for the Swedish-Finnish Newspaper Association. I seem to recall that her business card had the organization's name in Finnish, Swedish, and German. In German, I think it all ran together, along the lines of "SchwedischFinnischZeitungsvereinigung" or something.
