User talk:Fitzwilliam

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[edit] IP range block cleared

I think the IP range block has already been cleared, so you should be able to edit. It's unfortunate that some ISP seem to rotate their IP addresses so that vandals and legitimate users are forced to share the same IPs, it makes it hard for us to block one without blocking the other. -- Curps 02:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Establishment of The Wikimedia Hong Kong

Fitzwilliam ：

The planning of the establishment of Wikipedia Hong Kong as a society has entered the final stage.

From 27th April 2006, every Hong Kong Wikimedians is welcomed to participate in the discussion on the vote on the official name of the chapter. Then a one-week nomination period and a three-week voting period will be held. At the same time, you are also welcomed to join in the discussion on the draft constitution of the chapter.

After an official name is decided, the recruitment of member will be started and the first general meeting will be held (Please refer to the schedule). If you're interested to join, please sign your name on this page so that an estimation on the number of member could be done.

WIKIMEDIA HONG KONG NEED YOUR CONTRIBUTION AND SUPPORT NOW.

I am the Wikipedian who invites you:encyclopedist 17:09, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, Fitzwilliam, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! - Darwinek 12:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Teochew/Chaozhou hua

The information in my webpage ultimately comes from the two sources listed at the bottom. It is a shame that there aren't many more books on minority dialect/languages available. Most of the books I have come from Hong Kong and China, bought when I visited there. However, I've not seen any with regards to learning Chaozhouhua at all. I know Chaozhouhua isn't Hokkien, but there is the occasional article here [1] The participant 'ong' posts links to sites with Minnan resources such as thesis and papers and other articles which may interest you. The romanisation scheme is one of the offial ones from the Guangdong Ministry of Education. I'm just someone interested in Chinese dialect pronunciations of characters, and not an expert at all. The Chinese page looks very good, keep up the good work.

BTW, if you go to | My preferences uncheck the Raw in the user profile, and this will allow people to access your talk page via an automatic link.

Cheers, Dylanwhs 09:43, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arbuthnot Road

Greetings! I would be most grateful if you would please expand and improve this article. - Kittybrewster 09:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German pronunciation

Fitzwilliam, please see my last response to your Helpdesk question. I am concerned that you may left with an incomplete understanding of German e. Marco polo 15:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Language reference

(To be moved soon)

[edit] 1-21 A Polish word

I would like to ask: what does "Xieza" or "xieza" mean in Polish? I use this as an account name in Chinese Wikipedia and when I search it on the web, many sites with Polish sentences and .pl link ending appear. Could anybody tell me?--Fitzwilliam 04:13, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, the letter x is absent from Polish orthography. Wareh 01:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Polish? The sites I get are all in Dutch talking about a Chinese guy. CCLemon-ここは寒いぜ！ 02:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. That's a funny word :)--Fitzwilliam 03:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You can see the many Polish examples, which I hope someone can explain, via this Google search. Wareh 17:20, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Got it the letter x is actually absent from the modern Polish alphabet, so the word "xieza" is not grammatically correct so I had to figure it out. But the letter X is often used during mathematics and science classses and then it is pronounced in polish as "ks" so xieza (xięża) is a rare short/funny/archaic word for księża (prular form of ksiądz) which means priests (usually catholic priests as most Poles are catholics). Mieciu K 16:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Bravo. The Polish word in question is even mentioned in the first line of an English Wikipedia article: War of the Priests. Wareh 21:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1-23 Vowels

I searched on wikicommons and found a lot of pictures showing vowel "quadrilaterals" for different languages like American English, Dutch and Cantonese, etc. Many came from a Linguistics book (something like Handbook of IPA).

My question is: why are the positions of those vowels on the pictures differ so significantly from where they are on the IPA vowel chart? I tried to pronounce vowels of my native Cantonese and still got no clues.--Fitzwilliam 08:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The cardinal vowels of the IPA are ideals. The cardinal vowel /i/, for example, is a maximally close, maximally front vowel. In real languages, vowels almost never reach these "ideal" positions. Rather, any given language's /i/ sound is simply the closest, frontest vowel that language has, which in an absolute sense may not be particularly close or front. —An gr 10:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

So, the charts I found at commons:Category:Phonology "approximate" the positions a language's vowels? Or, in one language, all the vowels are drawn on a chart based on their relative "distance"?--Fitzwilliam 13:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Usually on a vowel chart like the ones in that category, the points show the positions relative to the ideal cardinal vowels. Thus in the California English vowel chart, the /u/ is considerably further forward, and slightly lower, than cardinal /u/. —An gr 14:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1-28 Cardinal vowel

Now that this article contains:

The lip positions can be reversed with the lip position for the corresponding vowel on the opposite side of the front-back dimension, so that e.g. Cardinal 1 can be produced with the rounding for Cardinal 9, etc.; these are known as 'secondary cardinal vowels'.

I don't quite understand the italic text. What I get is: it means (according to the example that follows) when you change the lip position (e.g. from unrounded to rounded), then the vowel you pronounce will be another one. This sentence looks a bit clumsy for me...

Or are the vowels are numbered in pairs according to backness and height and roundedness? --Fitzwilliam 04:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The unmarked (or default) system of vowels has unrounded vowels in front and central and rounded ones in the back. I think there is a physiological motivation for this pattern. In any case a typical case is that a five-vowel system like that of Spanish has /i/, /e/, and /a/ front and central as unrounded. It also has /o/ and /u/ which is back as rounded. Therefore, primary cardinal vowels are those that correspond to this unmarked system. In more complex systems, like English, German, and French, you are liable to get marked correlates of these vowels, a front rounded vowel like /y/ or a back unrounded one like /ɯ/. Those are the secondary cardinal. Remember that cardinal vowels are abstract constructs, and therefore they just indicate potentialities.mnewmanqc 23:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1-31 Presto

What is presto? It seems to be a proper name of Italian origin. --Fitzwilliam 08:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

It is Italian for "quickly". See presto. --Shantavira 09:13, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2-6 German e

I was taught that the German letter e is read as the same as English letter a. And hence, things like first e in gegen, eh in sehen are also read as English a (except that vowel length differs).

Is it true? Wikibook says e is roughly ay as in English bay. Again, ay appears. But in articles German language and German phonology, the e is clearly a monophthong. I don't really know which is correct.--Fitzwilliam 16:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

German e is in fact a monophthong. It is the first element in the diphthong that consitutes "long a" (phonetically eɪ) in English. English pronunciation guides typically refer to "long a" because it is the closest phonemic sound in English to German e. But it is not an exact match. Marco polo 17:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

English phonology lacks a "long e" in native words, the "ee" sound is a "long i", if anything... I should write IPA, but I'm a little lazy... 惑乱分からん 19:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Some accents of English, though, such as Scottish English and some Midwestern U.S. accents, do have a monophthong FACE vowel. —An gr 19:55, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, what is a face vowel? I'm unfamiliar with the terminology... 惑乱分からん 23:35, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

It's quite straightforward really: it's the vowel in the English word 'face' as pronounced in those dialects. — Gareth Hughes 00:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about the jargon. It comes from John C. Wells, who gives each vowel of English a name. The FACE vowel is the vowel of the word "face" (and other words with the same vowel, like "name", "take", "day", etc.); it's a convenient cover term because the exact pronunciation of it is different from accent to accent. Other vowels have other names like FLEECE, KIT, DRESS, TRAP, and so forth. —An gr 06:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm...that means the e is purely "e", and when read in words, it is always a monophthong unless when combined with other letters to form digraphs (such as eu). Thanks.--Fitzwilliam 01:54, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

ppl can understand you either way, and I see that you are a Cantonese speaker, the vowels in German should pose no problem for Cantonese speakers, as long as you just want to make yourself understandable. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 04:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Fitzwilliam, that isn't entirely correct. The letter e, when it stands alone, has more than one possible pronunciation in German. When it is a long vowel, typically represented orthographically by duplication (as in See), by a subsequent h (Reh), or when it occurs as a stressed vowel before a single consonant in a multisyllabic word (the first syllable of lesen, the second syllable of auftreten), it is pronounced with the {IPA} [e:] vowel that we have been discussing. However, when it is a short vowel, it is generally pronounced {IPA} [ɛ]. This is almost or exactly the same as the English vowell in red or deck. (In some southern dialects, German short e can be pronounced {IPA} [e], but that is nonstandard.) The orthographic signal for short e in German is the appearance of two or more consonants following the vowel (as in Dreck, Bett, or the first syllable of helfen. Finally, e in German can also represent a schwa, or {IPA} [ə], a sound that occurs frequently in English unstressed syllables (for example, the second syllable in sudden or central). E represents a schwa in German typically in unstressed prefixes (be- and ge-) and final syllables. Examples of the prefixes include genau and Besitz ; examples of unstressed final syllables include bitte, Fähre, and the second syllable of helfen or auftreten. Generally, if an e before a final, single consonant is stressed and therefore long, it will be duplicated or followed by an h to indicate that it is long (sehr, Lehm). Marco polo 14:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that. My only error is on treating the first e in gegen and eh in sehen as [eɪ]. :)--Fitzwilliam 15:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 2-8 French text about Teochew

From the section of Teochew (dialecte):

Le programme de romanisation du teochew (潮州话拼音方案), aussi appelé Peng'im (拼音), créé en septembre 1960 par le Département de l'Éducation de la province de Guangdong, est le système de romanisation dédié au teochew. Le standard suivi pour son élaboration fut la prononciation de la préfecture de Shantou (汕頭/汕头 suan1tao5). Ce système transcrit les sons de la langue par l'alphabet latin et les tons par des chiffres mis en exposant.

What does it mean? Especially the second and last sentences? --Fitzwilliam 13:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

The Teochew Romanization Programme (also known as Peng'im) was created in September 1960 by the Education Department of the province of Guangdong as a Romanization scheme specifically for the Teochew language. It is based on the pronunciation used in the prefecture of Shantou. This scheme transcribes the sounds of Teochew using the Latin alphabet and the tones using superscipt numbers.

--Diderot 14:24, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I'm going to add this to English and Chinese versions.--Fitzwilliam 16:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chaozhou

Hello Fitzwilliam,

I don't quite understand what you mean by 'minor changes in layout' and 'some supplements', but you have actually mis-corrected the information in the article, such as the intelligibility index. If you will read more carefully, 45.5% is the intelligibility between Minnan and Yue dialects whereas the intelligibility between Chaozhouhua and (Guangzhou) Cantonese is 43.5%. Cantonese, in its stricter sense, refers to the Guangzhou variety of the Yue language family and could be very different from some other Yue dialects.

As for the sub-grouping of the Chaoshan dialects, I have followed the convention used by Lin Lun Lun et al, i.e. Shantou sub-group, Chaopu sub-group and Luhai sub-group. You could read more about it in his 廣東的方言.

The information of Hakka speakers in a predominantly Chaoshan speaking region is given in the section under "languages in contact" while the section on where Chaoshan is spoken does not seem to have any particular reason to include other languages.

And would you kindly justify your addition of "informal" to the second person?

I have therefore undone the edits you have made and if you would like to discuss more, you could leave me a message.

Shingrila 14:40, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I was actually talking about 李新魁 instead of 林倫倫 Shingrila 05:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

汝 [lɯ⁵³] or [lɤ⁵³] or in Chaoyang's case, [lu⁵³] refers to the second person singular and there should be no distinction between a formal and an informal you as this does not normally exist in southern Sinitic languages. Could you by any chance have mixed up the inclusive and exclusive first person plurals with the honorifics? Shingrila 23:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Userpage revert

Thanks for catching that vandalism. I seem to have irritated someone, though I've no clue who or how... cheers! Tony Fox (arf!) 07:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

And thanks from me too! The Rambling Man 08:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Internal page links in English phonology

Hi, I saw you added internal section links to English phonology. When section links are to sections in the same page, you can omit the article title: [[#Word-level rules|word-level rules]]. This makes navigating using the links faster, and also simplifies things should the page be moved. Thanks! –EdC 14:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Is that function new? I don't notice that until you told me. :)--Fitzwilliam 15:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's worked for quite a while; see Help:Section#Section linking. –EdC 15:21, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] this is not vandalism

what are you talking about? I the one who created and setup History of DC Comics Timeline myself I have right change my mind I had to leave blank page for now, because I have prolem the Page. and you called me vandalism? this is not vandalism. thethunderstrike04

[edit] Twinkle edit comment

It looks to me that the edit summary your TWINKLE script generated is quite unreadable. A better option would be "(Reverted to revision 108567850 by 193.123.249.83 by TWINKLE)", not just a period between the editor and the name "TWINKLE". --Der yck C. 09:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, sorry for blaming the wrong person v.v I just thought TWINKLE was like popups (which I'm now using) such that each edit summary can be configured. --Der yck C. 09:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't have regular access to computer and my net connection is slow, so I won't really do much anti-vandal things. Being better-equipped with editing tools, I'd rather prefer popups. --Der yck C. 10:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Apology

My edit on ArglebargleIV's user page was meant for his discussion page, my apologies.

63.136.116.166 03:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] response to Talk:Hsu Wei Lun

I have added a response to your comment. Since you live in Hong Kong, I assume religious differences play a bigger part than the cultural differences regarding this matter. Kowloonese 23:52, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Survey Invitation

Hi there, I am a research student from the National University of Singapore and I wish to invite you to do an online survey about Wikipedia. To compensate you for your time, I am offering a reward of USD$10, either to you or as a donation to the Wikimedia Foundation. For more information, please go to the research home page. Thank you. --WikiInquirer 02:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)^{talk to me}

[edit] Membership application for Wikimedia Hong Kong is now open

08:30, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Dear wikipedian:

I am glad to tell you that, out local chapter, Wikimedia Hong Kong is now open for membership applications. The Chapter will hold several Recruitment days in different locations in the territory.

Please check out the time, date and location of the recruitment days here, and please hand in your application in person in the one that is convenient to you. Please follow the instruction on that page, and better prepare all the documents needed before the recruitment day.

Please feel free to contact us via this email, whether you can or cannot attend recruitment days, for further details or special assistances.

Regards,
Sith lord darth vader (talk)