User talk:JacquesGuy

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[edit] Bettocchi

I've been trying to review Bettocchi's claims because of an editor (based on his Spanish ability, I'm assuming he's Polynesian) who is convinced she's right. My French and Spanish aren't fluent enough for me to be sure whether I'm just not following the language, or whether she really doesn't make any sense. (I keep scratching my head and thinking I'm missing something.) I see you recently removed all reference to her - I just added a section back in in the hopes that if people put her views back in, they will confine themselves to that section rather than infusing her in every paragraph of the article. However, if she's really nonsensical, we can take it out again and just police the article.

PS. Since you didn't link yourself to the rongorongo talk page (type ~~~~ after your entry), I didn't see your threat to disassociate yourself until I came here. I'll copy what you have on your main page to the rongorongo discussion. kwami (talk) 21:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Cher Kwami Nous pensons que quelqu'un a usurpé l'identité de Jacques Guy qui est la bonne éducation mëme. Aussi bizarre que cela puisse paraitre seuls sont demolis les chercheurs qui mettent en valeur le patrimoine polynésien. Aussi votre edition sur Wikipedia ne peut etre considérée comme sérieuse. (talk)

Myself I had thought of adding a section "The Loonie Bin". Would fit there snugly with Barry Fell, Andis Kaulins, Egbert Richter-Ushanas, Billimoria, Carroll, Hevesy and, eventually... eh eh eh eh.

I stumbled across the "diaporama" the day before yesterday. Wait a minute... got it.

First slide: Maori en su silla. I'd rather say it's a woman giving birth rather than a wise man in his chair, but never mind. What does it say? Nothing.

Second slide (I'll spare you the Spanish)

  1. First of all, we must consider that the language spoken on ancient Easter Island was not a dialect...
  2. The Maori language comes from the Austro-Tai language, of the Austronesian family which extends from Madagascer to Easter Island and from Taiwan to New Zealand.
  3. The writing of Easter Island comes from Austro-Tai. Its structure is the same as the Zhou Chinese writing.

Point #1 is linguistic nonsense.

"Language" means two very different things:

  • a set (family) of close dialects, mutually intelligible, e.g. the English language, with a multitude of dialects.
  • a dialect, taken as official norm, e.g. Modern French which is actually a Parisian dialect. Modern Chinese, which is a Peking dialect. Chinese is really a family of languages, each with its own dialects.

Whichever meaning you pick "the language spoken on ancient Easter Island was not a dialect" is meaningless.


Point #2 More nonsense

Austro-Tai is not a language (a set of dialects).

It's a superset (superfamily) of two sets (families):

  1. the set of Austronesian languages (each member of which is a set of dialects)
  2. the set of Tai-Kadai languages (each member of which... ditto)


Austronesian is a language family, not a language. Same for Tai-Kadai. Austro-Tai is not even a superfamily, it's a hypothesis (Paul K. Benedict's baby). The hypothesis that Austronesian languages and Tai-Kadai languages have a common ancestor. (I've seen Benedict's evidence and I say "let's throw the baby out with the bath water." And I'm not the only one of that opinion. But never mind.)

Let's sum up. A dialect is part of a language; a language is part of a language family. Got it?

If the Austro-Tai superfamily exists (fat chance), then the Austronesian family is part of Austro-Tai.

Now look back a bit..."The Maori language comes from the Austro-Tai language, of the Austronesian family" Stuff and nonsense, the Austronesian family is part of Austro-Tai (assuming that it exists), not the other way around. She has no idea what she's writing about. She's just stringing words together without regard to what it might mean, without regard to what the linguistic picture is.

To say that the writing of Easter Island comes from Austro-Tai is another piece of nonsense. A writing system does not come from a family of language families, it comes from another system, or it's invented from scratch. It makes even less sense than "English writing comes from Proto-Indo-European" because at least Proto-Indo-European is well attested and reconstructed whereas Austro-Tai is all pie-in-the sky.

"Its structure is the same as the Zhou Chinese writing."

"Zhou Chinese writing" is Chinese written in characters known as "Great Seal" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Seal_Script). The structure of "Zhou writing" is the same as modern Chinese characters because only the style differs. Think of script, italic, boldface. Or Courrier, Arial, Bookman. Different shapes and styles for the same letters, that's all. Here is an example of the same character in four different styles each older than the other: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronzeware_script You clearly recognize the same three elements. Same elements assembled in the same manner: same structure. QED. If the structure of Rongorongo is the same as Zhou (it isn't!) then it is the same as Modern Chinese. But hey, saying that is less glamorous. And lots of people know Modern Chinese and might ask questions.

So, summing up. First slide: no content. Second slide: 100% absurdities and ignorance, 0% understanding and knowledge. If I were twenty, thirty even, I might bother debunking that crap. But I am twice as old and I don't have so long left to live anymore. I resent having my remaining time stolen away from me by lunatics.

JacquesGuy (talk) 11:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I went through the entire thing, thinking that problems could be due to a combination of a language barrier, sloppy writing, and being out of context (if it were designed for an oral presentation), but I didn't find much that was better in the later slides. Also, I assume now that Zhou might have been chosen because it looks closer. Who knows? Maybe 'structure' meant graphic composition rather than functional structure. Anyway, unless I see something from B that's coherent, I'm not going to bother any more. kwami (talk) 21:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


She also broke the principles of the Wikipedia. Big time. And often. And that threat "Estamos poniendo varias universidades sobre vuestro comportamiento y avisando la comision indigena de la ONU" early in the discussion (immediately before the section titled "Rongorongo, New Zealand) is the hallmark of a basket case. Many clues of sockpuppetry too if you can be bothered reading all those interventions again.

JacquesGuy (talk) 22:28, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] steel cut

I came across the ref to steel-cut tablets in an online discussion group from 2005. If you enable an email address in your preferences (I won't see what it is), I'll let you know who. kwami (talk) 05:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Done

JacquesGuy (talk) 09:19, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Greetings

Nice to see you here, Jacques. -- Evertype·✆ 22:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Michael! I've got something for you you might be interested in. And you are the one to understand what I am trying to do there. It's got to do with ISO specs and roro glyphs and TrueType fonts. About which, alas, I know shockingly little. Allow me a day or two before I put it together in not too human-hostile form. JacquesGuy (talk) 01:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
That's me. You can contact me via e-mail. -- Evertype·✆ 09:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image copyright problem with Image:Roro-1770-signatures.gif

Image Copyright problem

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