User talk:Landroving Linguist

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[edit] Hello

Great to see you contributing! I hope you like it here at Wikipedia; we could really use the help of some experts on the Agaw languages and other Ethiopia-related pages. There is a WikiProject on Ethiopia, by the way. You can find the page here. Its purpose is to coordinate the expansion of Ethiopia-related articles, though we could use more contributors (as a result, progress is slow). Anyway, welcome! — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 13:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inijbara

Hi, I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm (& I thank you for contributing the picture of Injibara), but Injibara isn't large enough to be included in the template of the list of Ethiopian cities, so I remobved it. Right now the unwritten rule is that the settlement needs to be at least 20,000, & seeing just how many cities are listed in that template, that number might need to be raised. If you have any questions about this -- or anything else related to Ethipia, Wikipedia, or even life in general, feel free to contact me. -- llywrch 21:16, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

• I agree that you want to free the list of Ethiopian cities from local interest clutter. Still I think that Injibara belongs on that list, for the following reasons:

1. It is politically important. It is not only the capital of Banja Woreda, but also of Awi Zone, and as such on the same level as (for example) Debre Marqos.
2. It is bigger than 20,000 inhabitants. Unfortunately, the Central Statistics Data don't show this, for whatever reason. It is a fast growing city with at least 20,000 inhabitants. My estimate goes more towards 30,000 inhabitants, but I admit that I have no written source to prove this... --Landroving Linguist 10:03, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You make some good points. Right now, the list is based on published population stats (which I admit may be soon outdated; I have a sense that the CSA is in the process of a national census, but likewise I admit that I have no proof of this), but if I had a pubished, official (or even semi-official) list of Zonal capitals I'd probably use that & a population criteria: the definition of a town (albeit a Western one) includes much more than just the number of inhabitants. -- llywrch 20:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Woreda Capital

You wrote:

Thanks for copy-editing my stuff - I know it needs it. However, I feel a little uneasy when you consistently call the place of a wereda administration a capital. Even for a zonal administration it sounds a bit pompous. I would agree to call a regional administrative center a capital, but for lower levels I am looking for a better term, which explains my wordiness in some of the entries.

I'll admit that I'm not entirely happy with the use of the word "capital" -- even though some of the authors of the various Oromia Regional economic surveys use that word. For example, if a woreda is the equivalent of a county in the US, then we should talk about "seats", not "capitals". However, my intention is to keep the terminology consistent out of consideration for non-native English speakers: having had the experience of struggling with outdated school-German while in Germany, I know just how important keeping the language as simple and predictable as possible. That is why I force these entries into a banally repetiively -- if not stereotypical -- format, so to make it easier on the person reading the article with (for example) an Amharic-English dictionary, who may be looking up each word in the article. A person outside the English-speaking world can be very educated yet still need help understanding English, especially if she/he doesn't use it every day. (I'm certain that if I had to speak or write German in the next fifteen minutes on any topic, I'd fail spectacularly.)

So while I'm willing to accept a better choice (maybe "administrative center", if that is not too imposing?), I'd prefer that we find as broad of a consensus as possible then change every instance of "capital" to the new term. -- llywrch 20:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Let's stick to capitals then. And that will also be a guideline for me while wording other Ethiopia related entries: Keep it simple! -- Landroving Linguist 08:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)