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 Right now, the list is based on published population stats (which I admit may be soon outdated; I have a sense that the CSA is in the process of a national census, but likewise I admit that I have no proof of this), but if I had a pubished, official (or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)

[edit] Re: Benishangul-Gumaz

Actually, I was responsible for the "Benishangul-Shamuz" error -- I added it back in the days when I knew far less than I do now about Ethiopia, & was often confused. Unfortunately, I don't always go back & check my work, so I'm sure many more of my errors can be found in Wikipedia. :-( I fixed it, but don't be shy: if you find a mistake like that, feel free to jump in. (Just make sure you have a good explanation.) llywrch 22:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please help-Amharic language request

Hello! The Wikipedia:Graphic Lab is working on artwork related to Ethiopia, and we need some help to get the proper Amharic language text into the artwork. Please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Images_to_improve#Ethiopia_Scout_Association and see if you can help! Thanking you in advance, Chris 07:27, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Ethiopian towns & cities

About Injibara...well, you caught me in the middle of a category re-organization. Or creation. With the last dozen settlement articles I've created, I've become more & more uncomfortable calling the tiny communities "cities" when they are little more than overgrown villages at best. So my plan right now, while I'm creating the rest of these entries, is to label any settlement with a population over 50,000 as a "city" (especially if it provides urban services like a bank, post office, college, etc.), those with a population over 1,000 (or is the administrative center of a woreda or Zone) as a "town", & the rest will be labelled villages. By which time the new Ethiopian census ought to be published, & I can start all over again. :-/

The only reason I have not changed the categories of Manbuk or Mankush is that I haven't gotten to them yet. And I'm not picking on Injibara: the reason I haven't made some of the other "cities" into "towns" yet (like Alamata or Humera) is because of that (IMHO) stupid "Cities of Ethiopia" template, which also needs to be pared down to about 20 entries before I can change the categories of any more.

I expected some upset folks about these changes, but I honestly thought I'd hear from one of the few Afars with an account on the Internet (there have been at least one -- who made some quite useful contribution to articles on Afar history & culture) who would complain, "Why did you make Diche Oto and Gewane towns when other Ethiopian settlements of the same size are still called cities?" I'm just trying to avoid making anyone think I'm targeting his or her people for unfair treatment, when the real cause is just a lack of time on my part.

Anyway, I apologize for any insult you may have felt. Feel free to "promote" Injibara, or "demote" Manbuk & Mankush -- or both. I just wanted a few entries from every Region for the time being until I get far enough along in labelling new settlements or communities that I feel its time I should go back & fix the older articles. -- llywrch 21:19, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Re: Dengel Ber. I took the elevation from the Nordic Africa Institute, & the infobox of Lake Tana states its elevation as 1788; IMHO, 2 meters is sufficient to be dry. However, the text states the lake is 1840 meters; I'm not sure which is correct, but I do know the depth of the lake varies. I guess this is a situation where details should be left out until more research is done.
As for your question about the roads -- my intent was to add to what might be expected. But is what the expected means of access to a town or village in Ethiopia is -- that I don't know how to handle. Should an article on a settlement always state that a given town has a paved road, a rutted track suitable only for 4-wheel drive -- or only a footpath? If so, how would one find this information? I don't know the answer -- but I'm not so worried about the problem of original research on this topic. -- llywrch (talk) 23:14, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
No problem; I'm more interested in getting the details right than being right, so to speak. FWIW, I've felt our exchange has been a pleasant conversation -- at least in comparison with some I've had on Wikipedia. Lastly, from my research your GPS readings for elevation are about as accurate as the ones in the published sources; draw what conclusions you want from that observation. -- llywrch (talk) 16:40, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] About Low Level Groups

Basically I'm going to take the next few years and work my way through ISO 639-3 and make sure there's at least a stub for every language. I'm not following Ethnologue's spelling, but ISO 639-3's spelling. In cases, where there is a full article with another (more acceptable) name, like for Blin I haven't changed the name but just made a note of the variant spelling in ISO 639-3. In the case of Kambaata, the existing article was no more than a rehash of Ethnologue 14th edition (pre-ISO 639-3). I'm trying to bring all the language articles that are in older formats up to newer Language template formats. As far as the low level adjustments made to Awngi, etc. I've deleted a subgroup where there was only one language unless there was some evidence that there may be other languages in that group. For example, for Qimant I left West as the final group because of the ambiguous nature of Qwara and Kayla. I deleted South from Awngi because it is the only language in the group. That's redundant and is basically a case where there used to be two languages listed in Ethnologue in the group (Awngi and Kunfal), but the two were collapsed into one language. Ethnologue simply hasn't cleaned up the tree yet (there is no difference between listing a "South" group with Awngi and Kunfal and listing "Awngi" as including Kunfal). This is not unusual for Ethnologue to have "historical" branches with only one daughter. There are, of course, cases where this is a bad idea--for example, where there are extinct languages that Ethnologue doesn't list that comprise the other members of a single-member subgroup (like, for example, Coahuiltecan). But that's not the case with Awngi, etc. If specialists want to keep the lower level groups, I don't have a vested interest in the matter. I'm just trying to clean things up and create standard templates. You might also notice that I have not used the "Lowland East Cushitic" node in the East Cushitic languages (for example, Saho) since it's not in Ethnologue (although whoever wrote the Afar article used it). I don't have any vested interest in any of these things. As I work my way through ISO 639-3 you'll see other language stubs pop up. I hope they're useful. (Taivo (talk) 08:00, 27 February 2008 (UTC))

I just noticed that you had written both the Awngi and Qimant articles. I hope I didn't offend. (Taivo (talk) 08:06, 27 February 2008 (UTC))

[edit] WikiProject Germany Invitation

Hello, Landroving Linguist! I'd like to call your attention to the WikiProject Germany and the German-speaking Wikipedians' notice board. I hope their links, sub-projects and discussions are interesting and even helpful to you. If not, I hope that new ones will be.

--Zeitgespenst (talk) 00:55, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnologue

Hi and thanks for your nice post! In the case you make about Low Saxon, I'm the first to agree. From a linguistic point of view, they are closer to Dutch. Similar examples abound, I'm definitely not claiming that Ethnologue is always wrong, just that it's wrong much too often... ;) My speciality are the Celtic languages I mentioned, those that I should have sourced from the start and will source in the next few days. Please let me outline their description of the Goidelic languages

  • Irish Gaelic. Lots of errors and outdated information. The number of speakers is from the Irish census in 1983, although there have been three censuses since that. The areas where it is spoken are randomly picked and follow no apparent logic. The dialects are a complete mess with what looks like pure invention. I'll source it, but belive me when I say that I know what I'm talking about here :)
  • Manx Gaelic. Ethnologue's information here is completely correct :)Incredible though it .
  • Scottish Gaelic. The number of speakers is based on the last census although the year is wrong. The dialects are just silly. Two dialects that are already extinct are mentioned as the only two dialects of the language, while none of the living dialects seem to be known to Ethnologue.
  • Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic. Ethnologue has invented a whole new language, I guess they are thinking of Middle Irish, similar to Middle German or Middle English but most definitely never a separate language from Irish.

This is just for a very small subgroup of languages, I plan to have a look at some further language families and see if I find any obvious errors. One that I've found already is the claim that Italian would be closer related to languages such as French than to the Corsican language - a language that every linguist I know of agrees that is very close to Tuscan dialects and thus closer to standard Italian than even many Italian dialects are. I might understand Ethnologue having a hard time on issues where linguist disagrees, but when they invent their own realities in opposition to a common academic view, I find it strange. Inventing new languages that never existed, using outdated data instead of new and readily available, listing only two minor dialects but missing all main ones, inventing new dialect families... I hope I've made my case for why I distrust Ethnologue and why many linguists feel it is so bad as to be more hurtful than helpful. The effects can be seen on Wikipedia, where some users - most definitely with the best intentions - have edited articles to reflect what Ethnologue writes. Well, this is getting long... :) As you've correctly pointed out, this needs to be sourced in the article and I'll gladly do my part of it! Cheers! JdeJ (talk) 19:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Ouch, thanks for the reminder! You don't even have to wait a week, if I haven't put up the sources by tomorrow, feel free to take out the paragraph! :) JdeJ (talk) 08:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I still haven't provided the sources, as one of the books I'm looking for is missing. For that reason, I've removed the paragraph for now. I will post it again once I've sourced it properly but it wouldn't be fair to keep it in so long after I promised to source it. I guess you're watching the article, but I will notify you in any case once I've edited and reposted the paragraph on linguistic mistakes. Cheers! JdeJ (talk) 07:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Awngi

Yes, I was worried that "palato-velar" was language specific. I think that it's possible to say in the article "palatal and velar consonants behave similarly phonologically." If Hertzron has a "palato-velar" column then I'd rather mention it in the prose than use it but maybe I'm being too oh-no-people-might-get-confused; who else would be reading this page but people familiar with the IPA?
My understanding with representing affricates is that using ligatures was formerly IPA practice but is no longer so. There are some languages (like Polish) that distinguish an affricate with a stop+fricative cluster. You can click on that link and see the tie-bar that's used with Polish affricates. This can look a little funny for Internet Explorer users but is still usable. I wouldn't think that we'd need to distinguish this with Awngi since it doesn't really have consonant clusters.— Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 07:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if I'm being nitpicky here. In Polish (and very formal Russian), the distinction between an affricate and a stop + fricative cluster is the amount of time it takes to produce. Cluster [ts] takes about twice as long as affricate [ts]. You say that sédza has a phonetic affricate... do you mean that phonetically it is [sédza] with a stop + fricative cluster or do you mean that it is actually an affricate with the same production time as, say, [tʃ]? — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)