User talk:Oryanw

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This user, William O'Ryan, died on February 12 2008. His talk page is preserved here for historical purposes. DS (talk) 23:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


Welcome!

Hello, Oryanw, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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:Where to ask a question, 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!  -- Jon Cates 02:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome! --Oryanw 21:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Is there a free external editor?

I'm looking for a freeware editor that displays (renders) text just as it will appear in Wikipedia after I press "Preview" or "Save". This would be invaluable for finding typos, Wiki-formatting errors, and Wiki-syntax errors, etc. without uploading to Wikipedia. A spell-checker would be nice too.

Two (fairly uselss :-)) features that are much talked of in the notices that I have seen are: 1) Downloader/uploader (seems like Mosex is that); cut and paste seems simpler, and is certainly not a problem. 2) Wiki format macros; I usually find it quicker to type [[ and . Thanks. --Oryanw 21:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

You might want to try the Reference desk. I can't think of anything off hand. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk) 21:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. --O'RyanW 23:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Constructed languages

Kara Bill,

Dankon por Via letero, after my contribution to Sándor Szathmári page. Dia dhuit! Is mise Mark… Do You speak Irish language? Also I learnt Esperanto (but only a little), I read Sándor Szathmári's Maŝinmondo in Esperanto. Now I learn Lojban (another constructed language being more of an “a priori” taste), applicative universal grammar, Haskell (programming language), and Siberian Yupik language.

Much success to Your many projects!

Physis 22:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Kara Physis,

Dankon pro la mesaĝo. Unfortunately, I don't know Irish, though I did take a one semester course in Old (6th to 10th century) Irish. It was joked that Old Irish is the only language too complicated for a child to learn. The basis of the joke lies in the fact that -- due to the nature of the evidence, what is called Old Irish (and what is in the authoratitive grammar) is largely a compendiun of irregular forms representing a variety of dialects over a number of centuries.

I don't think I ever read Maŝinmondon. I did read his Kain kaj Abel after reading Vojaĝo al Kazohinio.

I looked at the interesting links you sent. I actually have two books on Loglan: the introduction and the dictionary. I believe that had Loglan or Lojban been around (and I been arawe of it) when I became interested in Esperanto, I would have been much more interested in one of those two. I am still quite curious about them. But whether that interest and curosity would have fueled me thru to the point where i am now in Esperanto is a big question. (I am also ingterested in the Shavian alphabet, and use some of the letters when taking notes, but have never mastered it.)

For me much of the fun went out of programming when I started using Windows. I'll probably get back into it later. I find that I can only rotate so many pigs over the fire at once!

The joke above about Old Irish reminds me that I have a question about loglan or Lojban. But to put the question I must first explain that for this purpose I use a very idiosyncratic and hypothetical definition for natural language. A natural human language, as I wish to use the term, is any language that can be "taught" by immersion to a child without recourse to torture or special drills and excercizes, and without the child making significant changes in the language. (I am wanting the end product of the acquisition to be fluent speech without significant error or distortion.) Clearly, pigins fail this test as the native-speakers-to-be restructure them into creoles.

I think my definition is both more restrictive and less restrictive than more commonly accepted notions. It is more restrictive in that it leads to the correlary by definition that the faster a language evolves, the less 'natural' it was to begin with. American English does not pass my test with an A+! Possibly no language does. Most pre-Esperanto a priois fail my test miserably, I think. Many Esperantists have their pet dissatisfactios, and we all disagree on what they are. Mine are any features failing my test; in particluar, I think, paronyms and some of the single letter morphemes.

It is perhaps also less restrictive in that the definition does not require that the language be a possible result of natural language evolution. So, if a language is already spoken by a community, my test produces a gradation, not a stark yes-no.

Now I can pose my question. Were I to become convinced that an a priori language (like Loglan or Lojban) clamed to be highly logical is also a natural language as I defind that term above, then my interest would increase considerably. The question then becomes: Has anybody addressed the question of whether Loglan or Lojban is 'natural' in the above sense, and made a convincing argument or study?

Some years ago, despite wanting to learn more languages, I made a decision to concentrate on the ones I have already started. Thus my current focus outside Esperanto is on Spanish, then Russian, and then some more Tigrinya. I have taken a course each on Turkish and Swahili, so they are in the queue. Later, I might like to study Indonesian/Malay and Hindi/Urdu since they like Esperanto and Swahili are — as I understand it — largely regular languages spoken primarily by non-native speakers and have been accused of having a constructed origin (sometimes pejoritavely, though it is not for me. I am also quite curious about Aymara, about which I have seen claims for its logicality.

Caveat: Of course, I intend no claim that my above definition of natural language is or should be the standard one.

O'RyanW (☺ ₪) 06:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] adding signatures to unsigned talk page comments

Hi, the comment at Talk:Yevgeny_Zamyatin to which you appended an unsigned sig sig seems to be a punctuation "fix" for this earlier edit. It seems to me that it would be preferable to report the earlier editor's user name in the unsigned sig sig.

Appending an unsigned sig sig is made easier by any of several templates. The one that I like is Template talk:Unsigned2, because it simplifies copying from the edit history into the template.

NB: these macros templates are expanded, so you will not see them in the edit box after a save.

--Jtir 11:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks much. I think I've got it right now. (:-)=| --Bill
p.s. Actually, I didn't mean to question the notion that Orwell had the opinion that NR is cited to report. Rather, I meant to add mild support to the criticism of the wording in the lead paragraph on Yevgeny Zamyatin: "his novel, We, a story of dystopian future which influenced George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World." (my underlines)
Actually, I only became aware of We a month ago after doing my first article translation for Wikipedia (on Kazohinia. I promptly ordered a copy which I will read soon, probably after reading Orwell's Coming Up for Air. --O'RyanW (☺ ₪) 21:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. Did you mean to attribute the body of the quote to the second editor (the one who fixed the punctuation)? FYI, I copied most of your comment over to Talk:Yevgeny Zamyatin; I hope you don't mind.--Jtir 22:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Wow! Thanks! No problem about the comment — actually, thanks. O'RyanW (☺ ₪) 22:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
In her interview, NR talks about the difficulties she had when translating We. I ambitiously ordered three translations to get three introductions to the novel, to compare the translations, and to source the quotes in the article. --Jtir 23:50, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
The copy I ordered is NR's. Is it the one you would reccommend? When things settle down, I'll look forward to taking another look at my Esperanto translations of the articles on We and Zamyatin to make improvements there. O'RyanW (☺ ₪) 22:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image calling

Jtir, thanks for fixing the image call in article, Kazohinia. It had me stumped.
Also, I notice that the Russian and Latvian(?) Wikipedias have different pictures of Zamyatin in their articles on him, from what the English has. In my Esperanto translation on Zamyatin I atempted to use one of the images from the Russian site -- assuming that a Wikipedia to Wikipedia link would be ok. But I couldn't get it to work.
Similarly, in my translation into Eo of Sepia tone only some of the pictres would transfer to Sepikoloro.
Any ideas? --O'RyanW (☺ ₪) 22:18, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know why that doesn't work. Instead, I arduously copied two photos from the Russian site to Wikimedia Commons, which is the preferred location for images to be shared among projects. I had been wanting those photos for the En article anyway. I don't know the copyright status of the photos (the Russian site had no info about them -- I used BabelFish to translate). ATM they are doomed to be deleted in seven days.

Since I don't have an account on the Eo site, here is what will work (I did a preview.)

[[Dosiero:Zamyatin_photo_2.jpg|thumb|right|Javgenij Zamjatin  -- vidu dikuton, mi petas.]]

NB: You need to set up a separate account on [Wikimedia Commons] -- they recommend using the same User name and password as on WP. Will look at the other probs later.

--Jtir 00:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Just compared locations of all images in Sepia tone with locations in the Eo translation. The ones that are correctly displayed in the Eo version are on Wikimedia Commons, the ones that are not are on en.wikipedia.org. What I do when this happens is download the images to my home system and then upload them again to Wikimedia Commons. It is rather tedious -- esp. finding suitable cats and the copyright info. I try to emulate someone else who has done something similar. Maybe you can find a better way. --Jtir 05:12, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

"Images on external sites can no longer be linked inline due to several reasons:" Wikipedia:Images#Using images ... I'm not sure if this includes other WP sites too. --Jtir 17:57, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] a gallery helps organize pics

Hi, the unsigned sig sig looks good (I haven't seen anyone else use that term though). WP == Wikipedia (This abbreviation is fairly common, probably because it is used in so many shortcuts).

While working on Boris Kustodiev, I discovered the <gallery></gallery> tag, which is used to lay out images in rows. It is very easy to use.

==Selected works==
<gallery>
Image:Kustodiev pushkina.jpg|Portrait of Elizabeth Grigorievna Pushkina (Early 1900s).
Image:Kustodiyev bolshevik.JPG|[[Bolshevik]] ([[1920]]).
</gallery>

--Jtir 22:25, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sepia

I'm glad you liked the photo. I've been to that page a few times, and always thought it was a shame there wasn't a better photo to display the concept. Then I read this page discussion; apparently, someone had used an image from Playboy, somebody else took it down, and wrote "If you think this page needs a photo, then go out and shoot one of your own." I agree, so I did just that. I love sepia photographs, and I love the idea of a free encyclopedia, the most comprehensive one at that, so the reader deserves a good demonstration of the concept, too.

Also, thanks for correcting my misspelling of "century!"

Forrest

[edit] Sepia photo & Wiki Commons

I don't know how to do this, but if you'd like to add it to the Commons, that would be fine with me.

Forrest

Thanks. I'm brand new there myself. It will be a learning experience. O'RyanW (☺ ₪) 01:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dune & Dunia

Hi. Do you have a source for the material you added to the Dune article concerning word play on Arabic dunia? It seems an awful lot like speculation/OR. Another user has also commented on this, so I've temporarily moved the paragraph to the talk page pending provision of a citation.

SandChigger 12:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Patience sorting

Dankojn pro viajn paciencajn korektojn de miaj stultaj eraroj cxe la eo:Paciencluda ordigo. Mi esperas ke dum mallonga tempo me povos ekaliri al plu bona nivelo de kontrolo de la lingvo :-) mi ne uzis E-on aktive dum la lastaj ~20 jaroj! Viaj resumoj de la redaktoj helpegis por mia lernado. Mi do ne ekzakte scias, cxu la nomo "tuteca ordo" estas la plej bona por total order, sed tiel Maksim-bot tradukis gxin. --BACbKA 08:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Saluton!

Hi Oryanw,

I was just looking at your UserPage... Vi ŝajnas kiel tre intersan ulon! I was browsing your userboxes and noticed that you have a degree in linguistics; I'm 16 years old, currently studying at a music school, but think that I may want to pursue linguistics instead. I am not fluent in anything save English, but am vaguely familiar with several languages - I do well when I study a particular tongue, but have never really advanced far enough to achieve fluency or near-fluency. Well, anyway, I have been trying to learn Esperanto for about a month now. I read Ivy Kellerman's "A Complete Grammar of Esperanto", but have been mostly trying to get by through reading Vikipedio articles, talking to Esperantist Wikipedians, and using bits of Esperanto in daily conversation and writing (much to the annoyance of my friends). I am determined to actually master it to the point where I can read, write, speak and understand it with ease (the "eo-3" on my User Page is an exaggeration). I was just wondering if it's possible to actually study Esperanto in a university or other professional setting, rather than just online.

Dankon, --MosheA 03:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Salut/Saluton/Salute

Since you can speak Esperanto very well, I just wanted to say hello to you. I am happy that you joined Wikipedia in 2006 and I hope that eveything goes well! :) It would be nice if you, other Esperanto, and I can translate some pages from teh Eng Wiki to the esp wiki. (its just a suggestion). Ok... Merci Beacoup! Orthodoxy 20:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jan Fethke

Sorry about the mixup. I tried to clean up the language, and ended up changing the meaning. Thanks for the heads-up. - Yekrats 16:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been doing a lot of work to clean up the Category:Esperantists due to this. So, if you find something that I did wrong, please let me know -- or go ahead and fix it yourself. :-) -- Yekrats 17:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Answer to a fairly old question

To answer the question you asked here [1], you can refer to it as either "Malayala bhasha", with bhasha meaning language (so it should probably be "malayala language" in English if you want to be pedantic) "Malayanma" (archaic term that most people have never heard of) or just Malayalam. Basically, you take off the final m if you are using it as an adjective or non-final part of a compound. --Kannan91 (talk) 19:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Disputed fair use rationale for Image:Tur-strato4Cover.jpg

Thanks for uploading Image:Tur-strato4Cover.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale you have provided for using this image under "fair use" may be invalid. Please read the instructions at Wikipedia:Non-free content carefully, then go to the image description page and clarify why you think the image qualifies for fair use. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If it is determined that the image does not qualify under fair use, it will be deleted within a couple of days according to our criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot (talk) 02:46, 12 February 2008 (UTC)