User talk:Alef01

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== Dimyat?==--Alif 21:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC) Hi, I noticed that you are the one who moved Dumyat to Dimyat. I changed Egypt template accordingly. But i wonder what your source was since the official site of the governorate is Domyat with an o.--Wedian 22:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I have known it to be so for as long as I can remember; but as I looked it up again, I found it to be as I had known (with kasra on the dal) in AlWatwat and in AlMonged.
I'm aware that the current public pronunciation is domiat, and this is worth mentioning in the article itself. But officially it is in kasra, regardless of what the website. You're from Mansoura, how did you read it in school books? --Alif 18:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, I wasn't that good in geography at school :). I agree with you that the correct pronounciation is dimyat. However, we are not in the issue of translating the city's name. This spelling "domyat" has already been well established e.g. in mailing addresses. For example, try to search google for "dimyat", you will find that the only result referring to Dimyat city in Egypt is the wikipedia. Then, try to search google for "domyat" you will find many results referring to the city. It is more likely that anyone searching the wikipedia will try the most common spelling " domyat". I had the same problem with Mansoura: should we use the spelling "Al Mansurah" - which is used here in Wikipedia - or the more common "Mansoura"? In my opinion, we should use the more common name and mention the correct pronounciation in the article. --Wedian 22:35, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, that's why we have redirection pages. This way those who search for the common pronunciation will still find the article, albeit through a transparent redirection to the properly named one. I agree however that this is a complex issue, and becomes even more so when it involves transliteration. --Alif 21:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Gharbeia. What's the Arabic word? Neither Commune nor Communion quite make sense in English in this context. Incidentally, who's AbdElAziz Pasha Fahmi? It would be nice to have a stub... - Mustafaa 16:56, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! I think Academy, even if it's not literal, sounds better here (like the French Académie de la langue français); on this page it's translated that way too... As for فاديجا, it's written Fadicca in English, and it's another name for Nobiin/Mahas, as far as I can tell from Google; I just added it. - Mustafaa 19:13, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Berber / Amazigh

Hi Alef01, as per the Naming conventions, the practice is to use the most common names for subjects. Berber is far more common than Amazigh (for an easy way to see this, refer to here), so I'm going to re-reverse the redirects for both Berber and Berber languages. Hope you don't mind!

Also, if you make substantial changes like this, please consider discussing the issue on the Talk page first. In this case, the Talk:Berber page indicates that this issue has been raised earlier (though I must admit that the discussion there is rather messy). Incidentally, note that the page history becomes worthless if you just copy and past the contents from one article to the other; the best way to do such a thing without losing the page's history is by requesting assistance from an administrator. — mark ✎ 00:41, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Forgot to add that I do know that Berber is considered a derogatory term by some peoples; the point is that this is not relevant for the naming of an encyclopedic article, as per the naming conventions. The most common way to handle issues of terminology considered by some derogatory/pejorative is to include a statement to that effect in the article. Kind regards, — mark ✎ 01:01, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi! Thankd for the great articles on Egyptian saints. They are very interesting. Two things though. You wrote St Moses the Black and we already have an article Moses the Black. You should probably combine them. Also, our naming convention usually removes the word Saint and other titles, so it would be Demiana and Moses the Black. If it is a problem with disambiguation, you would write Demiana (saint). Keep up the excellent work. Danny 12:46, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Could you perhaps combine the two articles? That way we wont have two articles about the same person. Danny 12:55, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic logo

There is no vector format version of the globe because it is a 3-D rendered object. There are large-resolution versions at meta:logo. The version of the Arabic Wikipedia logo currently on ar.wikipedia.org does not appear to be the same as the version I created at meta:Wikipedia in other languages, but the text of the name Wikipedia appears to be the same. The font is called "KufiStandardGK". It comes standard with Mac OS X 10.3. I don't know any other way to get it. Let me know if there is any other information I can give you. Nohat 19:18, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Star names

Hi Gharbeia,

Thanks for your contributions to the Arabic sources for the English star names. I appreciate it! I don't know of any English-language reference that gives the original Arabic, so I've been trying to create my own, and unfortunately my Arabic is pathetic. (A few sources have transliterations, but they're ambiguous and full of mistakes.)

Is there an Arabic Wikipedia article that already has all of this info?

Now if we can just get someone who knows Persian for Tarazed and Giauzar ...

Thanks again, kwami 06:23, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hello again,
I've normalized our transcription systems; one concern I had is the legibility of diacritic dots to older people with poor eyesight, especially since the dots tend to drift around the page on some browsers (<ka.> instead of <k.a> for <qa>, for example).
More importantly, I reverted a couple of your edits. For example, as far as I know, derivations of Betelgeuse (earlier Bedelgeuse) from "house" or "armpit" of Gawza are folk etymologies based on a mistaken transliteration of ي as B, and the Arabic was يد الجوزا. Likewise the 1st, 2nd, 3rd leap of the gazelle in Ursa major. A corrupted form of leap is found as an alternate name for several of the stars involved, whereas vertebra is only found for one. (The " :  :  : " pattern of the stars could be reminiscent of either.) If you have any information to the contrary, please let me know! You said that you disagreed with several of the etymologies, but I can't tell if you have access to historical documents, or to sources with a better understanding of Arab almanacs than mine, or are going on your knowledge of the language alone. Since people following standard English references such as Allan might have the same POV me, it would be great if you could document any contrary evidence in the talk page.
If you decide to revisit the article, I've added some more partial etymologies: transliterations (perhaps mistaken) or even just alleged translations without the Arabic.
Take care, kwami 09:47, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bektashi

Thank you for adding the Arabic. You may be interested in List of Islamic terms in Arabic. freestylefrappe 15:56, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copt

Hi! Since you were involved in editing that page, I wanted to call your attention to the article to see if you wanted to give any input on the current discussion. Thanks — [zɪʔɾɪdəʰ] · t 19:36, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Zerida, Ezzayek!
Coincedently, I just took a look at Copt today and I'm very content with its content :). It's developed to being a well balanced and informative article. I need to do the same to the Arabic version. Take a look at it. لماذا لا تحررين في الإصدارة العربية، بالمناسبة؟

--Alif 20:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimania 2007

Hi Alef01,

Wikimania 2007, which is being held in Taipei, Taiwan on August 3-5, is offering opportunities for travel scholarships to Wikimania for active users of Wikimedia projects from the continent of Africa. Although the original scholarship deadline has passed, please, if you are interested, you may still apply at Scholarships. Sincerely yours, Cary Bass15:12, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Cary, for the invitation, and sorry for the belated reply. --Alif 21:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikimedia Egypt

Wikimedia Egypt

...would you like to share?--TheEgyptian 19:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

شكر متأخر على الدعوة أيها المصري. رغم أني لم أشارك في الاجتماع فقد تابع أخباره. --Alif 21:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)