User talk:Cassowary

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Felix the Cassowary

Contents 1 Stuff that used to be on User talk:Kesuari 2 "Gone" 3 Changes to Phonology 4 05:10, 29 August 2005 Cassowary m (rv: Hertz was a person, but you don't abbreviate personal names. SI unit names are not capitalised, regardless of derivation.) 5 Out of respect for the United States of Mexico... 6 Customising keyboard 7 My RFA 8 Thank you 9 template in signature 10 NZ vowels etc. 11 Re:Chance 12 Vowel wheel dialect 13 Revert 14 Photos of Bendigo 15 Indipsutability 16 Alemannic German 17 Italian pronounciation of greek 18 asteroid names 19 Gothic article state 20 Queensland governor's flag 21 A project idea 22 Another language 23 Jandal 24 Image:Victorian governors flag.png listed for deletion 25 Decimal point 26 Unblock me please 27 Peachtree Street edit 28 Central Asia 29 Speech synthesis up for FAR 30 Edit??? 31 Melbourne meetup in planning 32 Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can 33 Melbourne meetup 34 link to website 35 Fifth Melbourne meetup 36 Melbourne meetup 6 37 Equine conveyances? 38 Australia Act 1986 39 Melbourne Meetup 40 Royal Society of South Australia 41 Australian vowels 42 Heyfield, Victoria 43 Royal College of Surgeons

[edit] Stuff that used to be on User talk:Kesuari

I used to be User:Kesuari till I lost the password and email address accompanying it. At one stage, I used an older computer and discovered it new my username and password, so I was able to take them back, but I was quite happy with my new shell, so I kept it. This stuff was originally there; now it’s here.

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

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If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

snoyes 00:00, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Just adding IPA to the description of Australian English and I couldn't figure out what SAMPA [o:] was supposed to be in your comments about gone. After rereading it I decided I didn't know what you were getting at here at all. Care to elucidate? Moilleadóir 05:31, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

(Random self-test — Felix the Cassowary 02:43, 5 August 2005 (UTC))

[edit] "Gone"

The Australian English page seems to be suggesting that AusE has a phoneme which is only used in one word, gone. Is this right (with gone rhyming with neither don nor dawn) and do you know anything about the origin of this? --JHJ 20:34, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, 'gone' doesn't rhyme with either 'don' or 'dawn', or any other word in English. I'd describe the vowel as being [ɔː] to don's [ɔ] and dawn's [oː]. This distinctiveness has been confirmed annecdotally (without prompting) by people in both Melbourne and Adelaide, but I've never seen anything written about the sound in any published work, in spite of much looking. [i know now this means it probably shouldn't be included as WP:NOR.] I know nothing about it's origins; it might be vaguely related to the bad-lad split, though. (Length is quite distinctive in Australian vowels, with pairs /ɪ/–[ɪː]=/ɪə/, /e/–/eː/, /æ/–/æː/, /ɐ/–/ɐː/, /ʊ/–[ʊː]=/ʉː+l, ʊə+r/.) — Felix the Cassowary 01:38, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

I presume you're aware that gone is one of the words which had /ɔː/ in very old-fashioned RP (like off and cloth) and hence rhymed with dawn. I thought that might be related, but these other words generally get short [ɔ] in AusE, don't they?

Length is quite distinctive in many British accents too, though it varies a lot from region to region. The merry/Mary distinction is essentially one of length for me (though I think Mary is slightly more open), in spite of British dictionaries' liking for transcribing the Mary vowel as a diphthong, and I think you can argue that length is actually the main difference between pairs like cot/caught and cam/calm, at least in some areas. (For southerners, replace cam with come, as in AusE.)--JHJ 18:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

No, I wasn't aware that gone was one of the lengthened words. The lengthened form was [o:] in AuE when it existed, though, rhyming with 'dawn', but aside from a few people from the bush ("country"), they get the short [ɔ] nowadays (along with some words that would've rhymed, like caustic, Austria, Australia when stressed on the first syllable, hence Aussie). How 'gone' would've managed to get a different vowel, and keep it, is beyond me though.

That bit about British accents is interesting, but not surprising I spose, when you consider that British accents and the Australian one are quite closely related. Australian dictionaries are still habitually denoting some of the old centring diphthongs as ... centring diphthongs, but research since the 1960s has shown that length is the primary and increasingly the only cue in both production and perception. (How about sirius vs serious.)

— Felix the Cassowary 00:52, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Sirius/serious: not really. Although I don't feel much of a glide in serious, the vowel qualities feel too different to call it a length contrast. Maybe my /ɪ/ is really [ɘ]. (It may be relevant that I don't hear anything odd in the New Zealand kit vowel, though there are lots of ather odd things in theer eccint.)--JHJ 19:49, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

'Gone' is definitely lengthened for me, and does not exactly rhyme with 'don'. Likewise 'God' uses the same lengthened vowel, and does not exactly rhyme with 'Cod' or 'Odd'. --Wizofaus 21:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

That's not one I've ever heard of! Do you also pronounce "bred" and "bread" differently (as [bred] vs [bre:d])? That's been reported by a few Aussies on this and other sites, but I don't think I've ever heard it (or at least, noticed it). (02:38, 5 May 2006 (UTC))

Nope, I'd read that one too: 'bread' and 'bred' are homophones for me, both shorter than "faired".

It is /bred/ vs /breːd/ for me rhyming with "head" vs "haired". But there's nothing special about my "gone". It rhymes perfectly with "don", "on", "tonne", "con", "shone", "John", "Ron", "yon", "non", etc. Jimp 09:58, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes to Phonology

To me, Missouri and misery are much closer of a minimal pair for stress than desert and dessert. At least in my dialect, the phonemes are Missouri /mɪˈzɚi/ misery /ˈmɪzɚi/. The pronunciation /mɪˈzuːɹi/ is not an accepted pronunciation. In some very conservative dialects you might get /mɪˈzʊɹi/ with /ʊɹ/ distinct from /ɚ/, but for most Americans, there is no such distinction. And even for those who have a distinction, /ʊɹ/ and /ɚ/ are a lot closer than /ə/ and /ɛ/ which form a major non-stress distinction in desert and dessert. Nohat 12:15, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Ah, sorry. I have reverted the change. (FTR, it is actually pronounced [m@zu:ɹi] in AusE, but that [u:] is probably the infinitely rare /u@/ i.e. /ʊɹ/.) — Felix the Cassowary 12:25, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 05:10, 29 August 2005 Cassowary m (rv: Hertz was a person, but you don't abbreviate personal names. SI unit names are not capitalised, regardless of derivation.)

Hi not sure if I should address this to you as you reverted it, but SI units where the discovery is made by a person is reflected by capitalisation. N = Newtons, F = Farards, H = Henries, C = Celsius and so on. The convention, as far as I have been taught, is to refer to proper noun even when written in prose. --Machtzu 21:15, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

No. If that's what you were taught, then I'm afraid you were taught wrong. The symbols (i.e. abbreviations) are capitalised if they're from a proper name e.g. N, J, K; the symbol for 'litre' is optionally also capitalised because l and 1 often look too similar.

But with the names of the units, they always use lowercase e.g. newton, joule, kelvin. So you get joules and kilojoules, otherwise you'd have to do something odd like kilo-Joule. Take a look at other wikip. articles, too, like SI, where it says:

Symbols are written in lower case, except for symbols derived from the name of a person. For example, the unit of pressure is named after Blaise Pascal, so its symbol is written "Pa" whereas the unit itself is written "pascal".

The exception is the 'degree Celsius', on which the Wikipedia article says:

The degree Celsius is the only SI unit whose full unit name ("degree Celsius", not "Celsius") in English includes an upper case letter. That is a quirk of English, because it is a proper adjective rather than a noun ... SI prefixes are applied normally, so you can have, for example, a measurement of « 12 m℃ ».

which is in full 'millidegree Celsius', so it causes no problems.

— Felix the Cassowary 23:10, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok well if thats the consensus then I have no problem with it, I suppose in the grand scheme of things my even having an issue with it is fairly redundant ;) --Machtzu 23:15, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Out of respect for the United States of Mexico...

I have to say thanks for your thanks, and disclaim that I'm quite sure I didn't come up with it, even if I don't know who did! 23:25, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

б== Thankyou ==

Belated thanks for emailing those PDF papers on Australian English vowels to me. – AxSkov (☏) 04:24, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Not a problem at all. (04:45, 1 September 2005 (UTC))

thank you for having this website for other people

[edit] Customising keyboard

Sentence from Talk:Australian English:

(The easiest way to put in IPA symbols is to copy and paste them from somewhere else—I’ve customised my keyboard layout though, so that when Scroll Lock’s on, I can enter some characters a bit like in X-SAMPA.)

Does this customising work for all aps such as Word, WordPad, Notepad and the editor in Wikipedia? – AxSkov (☏) 07:37, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I use GNU/Linux, on which it works for every GUI app that supports Unicode (which is almost everything I use, and certainly everything I’d want to put IPA in). It’s also heavily geared towards Dvorak keyboard layout, so while it might be useful, it won’t have the same mnemonic power. If you’re looking to convert to a Free operating system, I could give you the files I use; otherwise, I probably can’t help you. —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 13:45, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My RFA

Hi, thanks for voting for me in my RFA. I was really touched at how many people voted for me! --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 22:47, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thank you for your attention to matters concerning my RfA, which I have formally withdrawn. The full text of my withdrawal and statement of appreciation is on the RfA page. Sincerely, Leonard G. 04:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] template in signature

Hi - I noticed you use a template in your signature. Can you consider changing this so that no template is invoked? Using a template on a signature causes an extra database fetch every time a page including the template is changed (to fetch the template contents). Since signatures are used on talk pages, which are edited a lot, this can actually add up. You can expand the template manually and include its contents (i.e. the issue isn't what results from the template). Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:13, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Hm, I'm a little reluctant to—the expansion’s practically a paragraph in itself, and that looks a bit ugly when editing. Most of the pages I post on have the IPA template on them already, I would think—is it the number of times it’s used per page that’s the problem, or is one use on a page the same as one hundred million uses? Is the problem it causes generally considered to be worse than the problem of having a massively large sig? Thanks! (02:05, 20 September 2005 (UTC))

I'm not sure if the number of times a template appears on a page is a factor (see Jamesday's description of how a page is built at Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates#How a page is built and cached), but I think not - meaning I think 5 references results in one database fetch. The servers are often overloaded, so I suspect Jamesday would say "definitely the performance problem is worse than having a massively large sig". The note on Special:Preferences says not to do this, which I suspect came from Jamesday. Another alternative might be to use a simpler sig :). I can't (and won't try to) tell you what to do - it's just something I thought you might want to consider. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I think I’ll do this, which isn’t exactly the best of both worlds (as it still won’t work for most IE users), but meh. At least they can see what it's meant to say. —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 03:21, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NZ vowels etc.

I'm replying here rather than on Talk:Vowel shift because this doesn't really have a lot to do with improving the article on vowel shifts.

Wait, you are the same JHJ who said ‘Personally … I distinguish higher and hire, and would consider the former to be two syllables and the latter to be one…’? You speak non-rhotic English but distinguish them? How do they sound? Or do you have accent that is sometimes non-rhotic?

Complicated. The accents of the area I'm from are generally non-rhotic, but I have rhotic influences too, and so I'm not consistently either rhotic or non-rhotic. However, I don't think this is relevant to the higher/hire issue; I seem to pronounce them differently regardless of rhoticity. As to what the difference is, I think higher gets much closer to [i] between what I feel are the two syllable nuclei, whereas hire probably has something like [aɛə], so it doesn't actually go up and then down again. Alternatively maybe higher stays in the [i] area for longer. Do you have two syllables for both?

It just occurred to me that I also use the triphthong (if that's what it is) in a "two-syllable" pronunciation of diamond, which I certainly pronounce non-rhotically.--JHJ 07:47, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I make the disyllabic [hɑejə] for both ‘higher’ and ‘hire’, though it's usually transcribed phonemically as /hɑeə/ or /haiə/. As for ‘diamond’, the only pronunciation I’ve used, and I feel fairly sure the only pronunciation I've heard at least by an Aussie, is /dɑemənd/. I spose you pronounce the A in the usual course of things? (13:52, 30 September 2005 (UTC))

I think the pronunciation I use most naturally is the one I mentioned above, which feels like two syllables: /daɪə.mənd/. However, the only pronunciation in my copy of Chambers Dictionary is three syllables, /daɪ.ə.mənd/ (translating their system into IPA), and I think I might use that if speaking carefully. It strikes me as being a bit like the way that the NEAR vowel /ɪə/ (or /ɪː/, if you prefer) crops up in places which were never just before an /r/, like in theatre, idea and vehicle (all two syllables for me, although Chambers shows them all with three, and doesn't actually have a way of showing an /ɪə/ that isn't before historic /r/).--JHJ 12:30, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Anyway, I know I've heard British accents that appear to have a frontish roundedish vowel in NURSE, but I've normally attributed this to mishearing something. I noticed that until today, I thought my Uncle had the same vowel as I do, but no—he seems to have an almost perfect [əː] (or at least as perfect to that as an Aussie gets).

NURSE varies quite a bit in (non-Scottish) BrE. I've certainly seen descriptions of front rounded vowels (e.g. for Welsh English). Some accents (like Scouse, which has something like [weːx] for work) have a front unrounded vowel, which is often merged with SQUARE. Anyway, I think mine can range between an RP-like [ɜː] and something like [œː], as I said before. Then the main difference between fur [fœː(ɹ)] and fair (which I think is close to [fæː(ɹ)]) can be rounding (though there's a height difference too).

Yeah, with [feː] and [fɵ̟ː] or [fø̠ː] for me, rounding is probably the most salient distinguishing factor. (13:52, 30 September 2005 (UTC))

I understand the NZ NURSE vowel is maybe marginally higher than AusE; not nearly the same as the diff b/n our respective DRESSes. Of course, this makes sense if it's a front vowel (all Kiwi front monophthongs are higher) and rounded (it needs to be careful not to clash with /ʉː/) or unrounded and short (… /ɪ ~ e/). I don't really notice a huge difference tho, as I said. But I've never noticed any shortening in NZE vowels (which doesn't, of course mean anything; because if there is a merger I'll probably unwravel it without noticing it unless it gets in the way of communication). Notice that a shortened broad A in NZE would be homophonous with NZE STRUT: Between these vowels, the difference is length, same as on this side of the Tasman.

Of course I'm just reporting my impressions of the relatively small number of NZ accents I've heard (mostly cricket players and pundits). So all I can really say is that some Kiwis I've heard sound to me as if they're using a fairly short [a] (like my TRAP/BATH vowel) in BATH/START/PALM, and similarly a fairly short [ʏ] in NURSE, at least shorter than the vowels I use in PALM and NURSE respectively, and that I haven't noticed this from Aussies.--JHJ 17:50, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Chance

Fair enough, I'll take your word for that. I'm just going from the people I know from around Aus - I must simply know the "posher' Victorians :).

BTW, at the risk of telling a joke that might be taken as anti-Australian (and certainly no offence intended), I've heard it said that you can tell where an Aussie is from by how they pronounce the name of the national anthem: If they say Edvents Ostrilia Fear, they're from Sydney. If they say Edveens Ustraalia Far, they're from Brisbane. If they say Hadvaance Austraalir Faa, they're from Melbourne. If they say Odvawns Ostroilia Fair, they're from Adelaide. If they say God Defend New Zealand, they're from Bondi... and if they just grunt, they're from Canberra. :) Grutness...wha? 09:39, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

It's horribly inaccurate (except that bit about Canberra, and maybe Bondi), but it's still funny :) (09:55, 3 October 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Vowel wheel dialect

>>What dialect of English does your Kinesthetic vowel wheel illustrate? (General American perhaps?) Also, how is it made? Is there any documentation on it? —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 00:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)<<

Yes, I do believe that the vowel wheel reflects General American. Lately I have been studying American English pronunciation using a Longman Advanced American Dictionary: its words entries include IPA broad transcriptions: these transcriptions most probably reflect General American.

This was my original kinesthetic vowel wheel (phoneme = azimuth): ɑ=45°, ʌ=30°, a=0°, æ=330°, ɛ=300°, e=270°, ɪ=240°, i=225°, u=180°, ʊ=150°, ɔ=120°, o=90°. Bold indicates phonemes whose position deviate from their positions in the second, final, version of the wheel. The following are the extent of their deviations: Δ(ɑ)=+15°, Δ(ʌ)=+7.5°, Δ(i)=+15°, Δ(ɔ)=+60°. The first three of these phonemes changes their position by small amounts, no more than 15 degrees, but did not change their relative positions. The last phoneme, open o, changed by 60° which is significant and also swapped its relative position with "Spanish" o. (By the way, I do speak Spanish and so do know how to pronounce the "Spanish" vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/. These five monophthongs are the same as those in Japanese, except that Spanish /u/ is replaced by lax /ʊ/ in Japanese (is this right?): /a/, /i/, /ʊ/, /e/, /o/. Anyway, my objective was/is to try to pronounce the remaining characteristically English monophthongs correctly.) The reason for the swap is that I was pronouncing the open o wrong: learned this by comparing the kinesthetic vowel wheel with the IPA vowel chart.

To understand the positions of the vowels on the wheel intuitively, imagine a picture of a profile cross-section of a talking head which is facing towards the right (usually in phonetics these heads face towards the left of the page (why?)). Now, when pronouncing a vowel, try to imagine the position of the upper jaw with respect to the lower jaw, as might appear on the mouth diagram. (Notice I said imagine, not to actually observe the position of the jaws externally through, say, X-rays.) Try to reduce this jaw position down to a unit vector quantity indicating the direction of the upper jaw. This is a kinesthetic exercise: to try to imagine the position of the jaw while not really actually looking at it but just feeling it. The exception is the schwa, located at the hub of the wheel: this corresponds to the IPA vowel chart in which the schwa, mid central vowel, is located at the center of the chart.

After I came up with the first, incorrect, version of the wheel, I came up with this hypothesis: that the (relative ordering of the) wheel can be obtained from the IPA vowel chart by projecting the English vowels radially outward and away from the central schwa onto a circle drawn around the periphery of the IPA vowel chart (and then rotating the vowel wheel as appropriate (actually, reflecting the wheel about its horizontal diameter)). It turned out that one half of the wheel was reconstructed correctly this way. Later, after coming up with the corrected version, realized that the entire (relative positions of the) wheel could be obtained correctly by projecting the IPA vowel chart radially outward from a point on the central line just above the mid-close line but below the near-close invisible line occupied by lax /ɪ/ and lax /ʊ/. Also remembering that the ʌ is actually a ɐ in General American (is it?).

The "absolute" positions of the vowels were then fine-tuned, tweaked, in order to correspond to kinesthetic intuition, and eventually realized that most of the vowels would fit into angles which are multiples of 30°, just like a clock, except for the caret, /ʌ/, which intuition said was very close to the /a/. Notice that four out of five Spanish vowels are located at multiples of 90°: /a/, /e/, /u/, /o/.

Now for the "harmonic" properties of the vowel wheel. The top half of the wheel is occupied by open vowels, the bottom half by close vowels. A 15°-195° axis divides the wheel into two regions: a western side occupied by front vowels, and an eastern region occupied by back vowels. Think of the 15°-195° diameter as an axis of rotation (metaphor). It is tilted 15° with respect to celestial North-South axis (0°-180°) so that the "Tropic of Cancer" is the chord 75°-285° and the "Tropic of Capricorn" is the chord 105°-255°. The Tropic of Cancer, and not the "Equator" (90°-270°), is the dividing line between open vowels and close vowels. Think of the 0°-30° chord as the Arctic Circle (part of extended metaphor), and the 180°-210° chord as the Antarctic Circle. The IPA vowel chart has four horizontal lines: close, close-mid, open-mid, open (from top to bottom respectively). These lines correspond to "geographic" lines on the kinesthetic vowel wheel, like so:

Arctic Circle : Open

60°-300° chord : Open-mid

Equator : Close-mid

Antarctic Circle : Close.

In the IPA vowel chart, the following pairs of opposite vowels can be found:

(a,u), (ɑ,i), (ɛ,o), (e,ɔ).

Each of such pairs of vowels is opposite in the sense of being radially symmetric with respect to the schwa. In the kinesthetic vowel wheel, the pairs (a,u) and (ɑ,i) are opposite w.r.t. the center of the wheel, and the pairs (ɛ,o), (e,ɔ) are opposite w.r.t. a point above the center of the wheel, near the intersection of the Tropic of Cancer and the Celestial North-South Axis. The schwa would have to be located at this intersection above the center in order for it to be mid central vowel exactly. However, in English, there is no close-mid central unrounded vowel ("backwards e" : ɘ) which would be located at the exact center: in the kinesthetic wheel, this narrow region from (ɛ,o)∩(e,ɔ) to (a,u)∩(ɑ,i) can be interpreted as being occupied by the schwa, so complementary pairs in the kinesthetic wheel and in the IPA chart correspond. This might be seen as "cheating" since the complement of /ɛ/ should be /ʊ/. In the IPA chart, /ɛ/ and /ʊ/ are indeed ɘ-complements. In the IPA chart, /ɔ/ and /ɪ/ are ɘ-complements, and in the kinesthetic wheel they are center-complements. The point is that there is a common harmony between the IPA vowel chart and the kinesthetic wheel: this validates the wheel's internal harmonic properties.

Note (once again): the "melodic" (chromatic?) properties of the wheel (i.e. relative ordering of the vowels) can be obtained by projecting the English vowels on the IPA chart radially outward from an eccentric point slightly above /ɘ/, between close-mid central and near-close central, onto a circle. This accounts for the relative ordering around the circle but not the exact positions. The exact positions were obtained by: (1) kinesthetic intuition, (2) spreading the vectors around the circle, apart from each other (like a Kohonen net), (3) snapping the vectors onto the twelve-hour grid of a clock. —AugPi 18:34, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Gosh! That was a lot more detail than I expected! So you made this whole thing up (including the very concept)? Impressive! One thing I don't quite understand is the absolute position of /u/ relative to /i/ and /ʊ/ (particularly when you describe the Spanish /i/ and /u/ as occupying the same positions as the American ones). Many speakers of languages that don't have a tense-lax opposition have difficulty distinguishing the pairs of [i ɪ] and [u ʊ], so I would've they'd be much closer together. Given that of the Spanish vowels, in the IPA vowel chart they're probably the two furthest apart, why are they the two closest together in this Kinesthetic vowel chart? (I did one for my own Australian English I think following your principles, which doesn't have the [i ɪ] and [u ʊ] pairs, instead using onset (diphthongal quality) & length to distinguish /iː ɪ/ and has [ʉː] instead of [u]. It comes out with the same space between [ʉ ʊ] but here I'd expect it...)

About phonetics of languages: Japanese /u/ has a special form of rounding, which is its most well-known feature. Apparently it's a bit centralised, so you can describe it as [ɯ̹̈], but it's not really a specially-rounded [ʊ]. American English /ʌ/ is indeed centralised, and you could describe it as [ɐ] (which is commonly also used to describe the Australian English equivalent vowel, though they're quite different: Australian /a/ (as it's also described) is almost identical to the Spanish/Italian equivalent vowel.

(01:34, 6 October 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Revert

Philiph unilateral decision to change the voting procedure after several people had already voted just made the vote utterly confused, incomprehensible and apparantly not according to RM guidelines. Unfortunately your votes came after and I don't know how to interpret them. Please cast your vote once more so that it's clear exactly what you wish to do.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:08, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Photos of Bendigo

Hello, I went to Bendigo a few weeks ago and have some photos of its buildings. I am desperately trying to find a way to pass them on to someone so they can be uploaded on the Bendigo, Victoria article. Got any ideas of getting them across? Frances76 09:50, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

You can't do it yourself? The best way is to upload them to the Wikimedia Commons. Get yourself an account there and click on the "Upload file" link on the side. Then, where you want to put the image into the article, just use [[Image:filename|thumb|right|caption text]], and you get something like this. (You can also just upload it to the English Wikipedia by cliciking the "Upload file" link on the side here, but it's better to put it on the Commons because that means every language Wikip. can get it.)

(Or is your problem that the photos are deadtree, and you need to digitise them? In that case I have no way to do it, but I think you can at a Kodak shop or the like.)

(On a completely unrelated note, I think it's a job requirement to come from either Sweden or Bendigo to work at the Ikea in Richmond, at least the Restaurant dept.)

(10:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Indipsutability

Greetings, Oh Indisputable Lord and Inevitably Obvious Master of the World. Not wishing to dispute your obviously inevitable indisputability, of course, but I'm just wondering for old time's sake what an Indipsutable Overlord is. Is it the same as an Indisputable Overlord, only with a unique and obviously indisputable spelling emanating from your obvious and inevitable indisputability, and indeed from your apparently even more obvious and presumably ultra-inevitable indipsutability?

(I must really take my hat off to you, Oh Lord. I thought I was really something special, but I'm merely your common-or-garden immaculate and impeccable). JackofOz 14:43, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Just a typo by one of my minions. Thanks for pointing it out. (PS: It's "Overlord", not "Oh Lord".) 15:45, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alemannic German

Thanks for your great contributions to en:Alemannic German!! -Ayeroxor 16:12, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank Google and de:, not me! I only introduced errors and mis-translations :) (23:43, 5 November 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Italian pronounciation of greek

Hi i'm the authoe of that stuff, well, i do not understand what you do not understand, it is simple how do you pronounce in german "ich" wel,l that is the sound in italina of X. It is somethin like k aspirated, i hope you will now undeerstand Philx 19:59, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I replied to this on Talk:Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching#Italian pronunciation, where the discussion began. (00:26, 12 December 2005 (UTC))

[edit] asteroid names

Thanks, Cassowary. I obviously don't control these sounds ... kwami 02:15, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

No worries, I'm sure I'd have just as hard a time if I was trying to distinguish the poor-vowel from the pore. If it helps, I tried to include a guide to when it's \ær\, when it's \ɛər\ and when it's \ɛr\ in my edit summary but it's a bit constrained, so basically...

• \ɛr\=err is used only if there's a short e (by the normal rules of orthgraphy) followed by an r and the next sound is a pronounced vowel. (Excepting a few Scottish accents, \ɛr\+consonant (and merry-mary merging dialects) is not possible in any dialect that I know of; even in borrowings if it doesn't become \ɜr\ it's \er\.)
• \er\=air is used if there's a long a followed by an r. In borrowings, foreign /er/ and /ɛr/-type sounds are often taken as this one, so the Nissan 4x4 "Pajero" is \pədʒeroʊ\ (=/pədʒeːrəʉ/ in AusE, at least).
• \ær\=arr is used if there's a short a followed by an r and the next sound is a pronounced vowel. Again if there's no following vowel, it's become \ar\ (as in car) which is either phonemically equivalent (as in Scottish) or wildly different as in AusE/RP.

Because of the trisyllabic laxing rule, whether an a is short or long isn't always obvious (compare is long \kəmper\, comparison is short \kəmpærɪsən\).

Also, in AusE at least, if the "a" in -ary is given a full quality, it's exceptionally as /e/ (short e), so "secondarily" is /sekənderəli/.

(Things in backslashes aren't intended to denote phonemes.)

(04:12, 1 January 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Gothic article state

You've just removed the "Good article" status from the Gothic article, with the only justification being "I don't feel that this article currently meets the standards of a good article". Could you please elaborate on why you feel that, so that we can improve the article? —Felix the Cassowary 01:07, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

To be honest I was acting on a recommendation from the anonymous editor who has been editing the article. This is what he said:

I've just made some small corrections, and rewordings for clarity, to the section on Grimm's Law. Much of this article I'm not qualified to comment on, but it did strike me as surprisingly readable compared to this [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_language ], which rather disturbingly "has been listed as a good article; it adheres to certain quality standards, and may become a featured article." Is there any way to dis-recommend an article, till such time as it gets put right? It really needs a complete rewrite.

Since this person is a linguist whom I have a lot of respect for I glanced at the article, decided he was right, made the edit you're asking about and told him that this is how you can remove a recommendation :) I hope to get back to you with more info later. - Haukur 01:27, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Queensland governor's flag

Hi Felix. What is the source for the 12 April 1988 date you put on the Queensland flag at Flags of the Governors of the Australian states? The flag was the appropriate flag for the Governor to use at sea from 1876, so I'm wondering exactly what happened in 1988. Was it adopted for use on land then as well, or was there some sort of proclamation about a flag that was already being used? JPD (talk) 10:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I forget by now. I'll try and find it again. I think I recall being awfully surprised by the late date, given (as you say) the age of the design. It might just've been a typo on my part, though. (10:27, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

I wouldn't be surprised if there was something from that date, so it'd be good if you could find it. Thanks, anyway. JPD (talk) 11:01, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I can't seem to find that date again from the sources on the Internet I have, nor can I find anything about the flag at the Queensland Governor's website. For now I think I'll take the date off until someone can find the source. Thanks for pointing this out :) (10:04, 24 January 2006 (UTC))

[edit] A project idea

You on im anymore? Just jabber these days? If so, you know how to reach me; I have an idea for a project that might be fun. It's related to those semi-proto-Germanic verb tables you used to have up but I couldn't find, as well as conlanging. I'd say more, but if the project happens, I don't want any record of it left anywhere.

Btw, you need to update your blog even worse than I need to update mine.

—Firespeaker 12:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, you just left a record ;) I haven't been logging on much these days, but I'm installing Gaim just now, so will talk soon. (13:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Another language

just to let you know your not the only one feeling the affects of old age, crikey today i felt absolutly ancient. With the language I grew up with and live with had developed into something I no longer understood, or want to. aveagoodweekend Gnangarra 14:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not really old (I hope); it just feels like I've been on Wikipedia for ages. When I first started here I was anything but a deletionist, is all. But if you're referring to our friends attempts to say that we use certain words as pronouns we don't use as pronouns, I don't think you need to be old to not want to understand it. (15:14, 26 January 2006 (UTC))

Hi again ireferred both the user R0m and socket 210...100 to User:David Gerard as he is a sockectpuppet checker, my check was based purely on the edits of both via their individual contribs pages Gnangarra 15:04, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Ahkays, I was actually referring to User:150.101.112.253 who has signed his posts as "J". On second inspection, R0m appears to be using multiple IPs so it could still be him (a 195... one, I think). In any case, David Gerard's page says he normally does it just for ArbComm level stuff, which this isn't yet. I thought normal SysOps had that übermighty power (or at least could check contributing IPs of usernames), but I must be wrong. Fanks! (15:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Jandal

Re suggested merge of Jandal with Flip Flops. Why not merge Flip Flop with Jandal? No one in NZ English calls Jandals Flip Flops. @#$%^&* Aussie cultural imperialism :-) Geez Wayne, Gumboots already get called Wellingtons on Wikipedia eh? Yeah, no doubt going to end up as an Anglo-American Encyclopedia...just please stop people saying why do we have all these cultural references to Enzed, and deleting them - they are hilarious:-).Winstonwolfe 04:14, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Victorian governors flag.png listed for deletion

Greentubing 08:55, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Decimal point

Using comma instead of dots as seperator is not a habit, it is according to SI and correct. According to SI there are to correct usages for decimal point seperation, comma or dot. --Lucius1976 07:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_point

(this in regards to this)

Yeah, I know that it's an SI-approved method, and I didn't mean anything negative by it when I said "habit". In fact, if you'll notice the change I made, it was turning a thousands-separating comma into a space, there by implicitly accepting the European method. It is annoying when Europeans use the comma when writing in English, because it conflicts with the more common in English method of using a comma for the thousands separator. In any case I follow the lead of the SI and the Australian Government in preferring 1 234.567 89 (meaning one thousand, two hundred and thirty-four point five-six-seven-eight-nine) for use in English. (09:16, 13 March 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Unblock me please

{{unblock|My IP, 203.82.183.147, apparently has (or is behind?) an open proxy, about which I can do nothing.}}

Your user name or IP address has been blocked from editing.

You were blocked by Jayjg for the following reason (see our blocking policy):

"open proxy"

Your IP address is 203.82.183.147.

Sorry we open proxies are indefinitely blocked and do not get unblocked. You can do something about this by talking to whoever provides you internet service and getting them to fix the proxy to stop it being open to abuse. --pgk^(talk) 20:42, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peachtree Street edit

In the unlikely event that anyone comes here looking for my contribution to the Talk:Peachtree Street page in relation to my dispute of that page, I apologise for not including it, but my ISP has an open proxy and I get randomly blocked and that happened while I was editing! But it's included in the edit log: Old Peachtree Street Road Highway almost certainly doesn't exist, at least not with the specification given. Knowing that that's inaccurate, I don't know how much else we can trust the rest of that page. I hope some Atlantan can help fix it! (13:29, 20 May 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Central Asia

WikiProject Central Asia has finally been created! If you're interested, please consider joining us. Aelfthrytha 21:56, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer, but my knowledge of Central Asia is limited to a very basic knowledge of the Kazakh phonology! For now, I'll take my position as an interested observer. (10:29, 5 July 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Speech synthesis up for FAR

Hi there,

You're listed in the edit history of this article. I wonder whether you're able to help bring it up to FA standard again? Please see WP:FAR#Speech_synthesis.

Tony 06:53, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit???

I am not sure the edit you are refering to. If it was this one - [1] then I thought that I would add your sig as it had not been included. I truly did not intend to change anybody's vote, and I am not aware of any alterations I made. Can you show me what you are refering to? Apologies if there is a screw up.SauliH 23:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh I’m really sorry, I misread what happened there. I thought you’d changed my normal sig ‘—Felix the Cassowary’ into ‘Cassowary’, but evidently I typed one too many tildes. I really should know what’s happening before I get miffed at people. My apologies. 01:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Melbourne meetup in planning

Hello, you've indicated that you're interested in future Meetups in Melbourne on this list, so I'm giving you this message to remind you that Melbounre meetup number four is currently in planning. If you haven't already, please go to Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne to suggest possible dates, times and locations. Thanks --Michael Billington (talk • contribs) 02:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can

[edit] Melbourne meetup

Greetings, person who is listed as being interested in future meetups in Melbourne. The fourth meetup will be held on 18 December, at Lower House in Fed Square (in the Alfred Deaking building, Flinders Street end near the Atrium: map), starting from 7pm. We don't currently have a separate location for discussion beforehand, but there'll be plenty of time to talk wiki over dinner. --bainer (talk) 14:53, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] link to website

Hi. Here on your wiki user's page the link in section "contactiong" is not working (Website: thecartographers.net). Fix it up. Greets --Krzysztofpawliszak 02:50, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes sir. I hear and obey. Your every word is my command sir. ... Ahh, wait a second, since when does the Indisputable Overlord of the Whole World take orders? —Felix the Cassowary 11:37, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fifth Melbourne meetup

The fifth meetup of Melbourne Wikipedians is being planned as a breakfast meeting in the city with Jimbo Wales (at a venue to be arranged) on Friday, 27 April 2007.

Jimbo has proposed breakfast as the one real window of opportunity during his tightly scheduled stay in Melbourne. Tbe precise time has to be sorted out with Jimbo, but the arrangements for the equivalent Adelaide meetup a few days before may give a good idea.

Feel free to edit the relevant page in any way that might be helpful. I feel like a bit of an interloper, not having attended previous meetups. If there's anything you can do to help, I'll be grateful. Please think about whether you'll be able to make it, assuming the arrangements are similar to those Adelaide is adopting (i.e. a block of time with people being fairly free to arrive when it suits them). Some indication on the page of your possible participation would be really helpful. Metamagician3000 06:15, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Melbourne meetup 6

Hi. This is a reminder to people on the Melbourne meetup participation list that the next meetup has been arranged for 19 June. Could you indicate on the meetup page your likely attendence, or otherwise. Regards. - Cuddy Wifter 23:11, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Equine conveyances?

Saw your edit to horse trailer. As a horse owner for 40 years, this is the first time I have ever heard the term "horse float" (to us Yanks, a "float" is either something covered in colored paper you enter in a parade or else it is a root beer with ice cream in it!). However, given that there are any number of Austrailian terms that vary from American English (imagine that!), I'll grant that your term might be accurate in AU. So, what I did was hide the word for now, and if you could verify if that is the correct term, go ahead and restore it. And, while you are at it, want to check to see what terms are used for a horse trailer in the UK? Somewhere they term "horse box" is in my head, but that might also be the word for a box stall in a stable, so not sure. Thanks!Montanabw^(talk) 17:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

A quick check with Google limited to Australia [2] shows that "horse float" is very definitely used here. (One interesting result is the first, the beginning of their main page reading "Rowville Horse Trailers have been manufacturing Horse Floats for over 30 years...".) Considering also that "horse trailer" is used here too (by the results of that google), I've removed the "(USA)" and "(AU)" tags (Google also suggests that "Horse float" is used in NZ, so they might be a little unhappy to be forgot).

As a non-horse owner for under 40 years, I've always assumed that the float entered into a parade and the term "horse float" have something in common, but I could never decide which came first.

(02:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC))

Going to tweak to just somehow keep non-horsey Yanks from looking (more) like idiots and saying "horse float" in the US and saying "horse trailer" in Au and NZ. (grin) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Montanabw (talk • contribs) 05:14, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Australia Act 1986

Just wanted to let you know I've posted my thoughts on Talk:Australia Act 1986. If you can prove me wrong, go ahead :) ajdlinux | utc 06:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Melbourne Meetup

Melbourne Meetup Next: In planning? Previous: Sunday 20th April, 3pm This box: view • talk • edit

Hello! The Melburnians are having another meet-up! Please consult this page if you are interested to participate in the discussion! Thanks! Phgao 03:24, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Royal Society of South Australia

Hi. On Royal Society of South Australia, you changed [ [ Category:Organisations based in Australia with royal patronage ] ] into [ [ Category:Organisations based in Australia with royal patronage|Society of South Australia, Royal ] ]. Could I impose upon you to explain to me why you made that change? Also, while you were there, why did you not make a similar change to [ [ Category:Organisations based in Adelaide ] ]? Thanks, Pdfpdf (talk) 05:10, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Imagine a category, which is largely "Category of things based in Australia with names beginning with 'Royal'". Considering that categories are sorted alphabetically, you then get the R section taking up almost all of the article, with a handful of other things (like Perth Royal Show) in other sections. In order to make the alphabetical ordering more useful, I decided to ignore initial "Royal". I made equivalent changes to everything else beginning with "Royal". (I'm in two minds about whether "Perth Royal Show" should be sorted as "Perth Show, Royal" and so "Royal" is completely ignored in sorting, but seeing as it doesn't currently make a difference, I've left it as-is.) (06:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC))

I see. Quite simple really, and once pointed out, quite obvious. Thanks. Pdfpdf (talk) 09:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Australian vowels

Hi, I belive you are the person who's created the Australian English vowel quadrangle images. I was wondering what the source was for these images because a recent article in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association covers Standard Australian and has a similar table. If your source is old enough, it might behoove us to update the images. If yours is also new then we can attribute the differences to minor variation but we can still source it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

The actual images themselves are largely based on http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/phonetics/vowelgraphs/AusE_Monophthongs.html and other similar pages, and checked against other works cited on that page and the Australian English phonology page. The information is therefore from around the early to mid 1990s.

I haven't had a chance yet to read this article thoroughly and this brief review that follows is based on a very superficial reading. However, this article appears to be significant for a for few reasons. Firstly, it has replaced the old division of Broad, General and Cultivated Australian English with Standard Australian English and added Aboriginal English and Ethnocultural Australian English alongside. I've seen other articles moving in this direction, but none that appear to take it for granted as this article does. It is an interesting move and presumably implies that Cultivated AusE is so minor as to be unworthy of much attention and that variants previously called Broad are also so minor that they can be discussed either as Standard, Aboriginal or Ethnocultural AusE according to the social background of the speaker. I'm not sure how much I agree with this move, as I would be surprised if lexically or grammatically Standard, Aboriginal and Ethnocultural Australian English clearly form a separate group from other forms of English. Phonetically, you would have to look at very particular things to group SAusE, AAuse and EAusE as separate from various forms of English used in London. I will have to read more to say anything, but this move looks like it's based on nationalistic, rather than scientific, reasons. A disappointment, because the authors are generally very good in my (limited) experience.

Secondly, it's the first published article I've seen other articles suggesting it's time to reform the AusE IPA spelling system that's used a revised spelling system for AusE IPA. (Including Cox's post-1997 work, when she co-authored an article proposing such a revision.) Of course, it's meant to be illustrating the IPA so perhaps it still doesn't count.

As to the diagrams they include, I am surprised at how low /æ/ is shown. /e/ is likely an authentic change that's been hinted at as beginning even in the sources our article and images are based one (during my Phonetics & Phonology classes in 2006, the lecturer found it necessary to tell some people to say [e] with their teeth closed to get the cardinal value). /U/ is probably just a difference of drawing; I personally think theirs is a better representation but that would've been OR at the time I did the images. There's no significant difference between the values of /I@/ and /i:/ shown here and there; that's just a matter of opinion.

But as I say, I haven't had the chance to thoroughly read the article yet.

(05:02, 14 January 2008 (UTC))

Interesting. Well, if you'd like to use the C & P vowel charts, I've got them drawn and ready to upload.

Hey, while I'm here, maybe you can weigh in on the issue of the vowel in nurse. I used Australian English phonology to determine that it's rounded, but I'm not sure how accurate or controversial that is. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Heyfield, Victoria

Hi, Mr Cassowary. Re this edit, please see my reply at Talk:Heyfield, Victoria#Origin of the Name. Cheers. -- JackofOz (talk) 10:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Royal College of Surgeons

I do not see the copyvio you see except for an individual sentence or two. I'm restoring the article, rewriting those sentences. Please discuss on the talk page. DGG (talk) 14:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I have figured out the problem--the link you gave was to the page for the College at Edinburgh, and of course it did not match--I see the correct page now & I'm rewriting the article to eliminate the copyvio. Sorry about that. DGG (talk) 14:47, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Hm, sorry about mislinking. I don't even remember doing this; it's possible that the page changed since? or maybe I just got the wrong link in the clipboard or something. —Felix the Cassowary 06:31, 3 May 2008 (UTC)