User talk:Trigaranus

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Hello, Trigaranus, 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:

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[edit] Citing sources

Welcome to Wikipedia. We invite everyone to contribute constructively to our encyclopedia. However, adding content without citing a reliable source is not consistent with our policy of verifiability. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. --Icarus (Hi!) 21:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Pavanar talk

hmm.. i am still not sure i agree with everything you say. for one, you(and dab) seem to be a little swayed by stereotypes that are generally way off the mark. for example, the demonstrations against hindi were not as spurious as you seem to think it was. nor was it limited to tamils and tamil nadu. they were perhaps most vocal and animated(given their 'history' and the history of their politics) but the fact of the matter is that it was rejected unanimously by several(perhaps all) non-hindi states(not just south indian).

any which way you see it, the attempt to make hindi the off/nat lang was not just the innocent run-of-the-mill administrative decision that you make it out to be. It was peppered with as much (if not more) linguistic zealotry from the for-Hindi camp as you accuse the 'against'-Hindi camp of. For starters, believe it or not, hindi was a foreign language to the 60%+ of the country in those days. whatever hindi people in the non-hindi speaking areas speak/understand today is primarily thanks to bollywood. 50-60 years ago, though, it was totally different. the generation of my grandparents and even my parents for example would truly and seriously have been handicapped if they'd been expected to use hindi everyday or to write exams(for govt., jobs) in hindi etc.,. believe me, the average south indian (my grandparents and parents, for example) atleast (I'd imagine it would true of several other parts of the country too) of that day and age spoke no more hindi than they spoke, say, Persian or Swahili.

Education in english (especially at the college level) had taken firm root and almost everyone who was 'eligible' to work knew english and was comfortable with it (atleast in south india). And to understand the fully gravity of the situation, you should be familiar with the importance and prestige that used to be accorded in India to "government" jobs. If you got a "govt., job", you'd literally reached the pinnacle of glory in your life. Fathers fell over each other to give their daughters in marriage to you :D In short, if you landed a 'govt., job' your life was made. It is still the case in parts of India. That being the case, it certainly was no 'master stroke' on the govt's part to thrust hindi(proficiency in Hindi) on such a large population. imo, it was an extraordinarily ill-advised and short sighted attempt on the govt's part and no wonder it ended up the way it did. even today, not as many as you think are 'proficient' in hindi. it is one thing to hum a popular song or for girls to drool over shah rukh khan, but if you asked the same people to give exams in Hindi and carry out everyday transactions in hindi, pen official correspondences in Hindi etc., I'm sure half the population would still be seriously handicapped. English, on the other hand, is seen as a reasonable middle way because it is only as 'foreign'(or as 'native') to Karnataka as it is to Bihar.

also, i must say that your understanding of 'minorities' and 'majorities' vis a vis the linguistic groups is also off the mark. for one, 'dravidas' afaik do not think of themselves as lingusitic 'minorities'. I mean.. statistically they might be.. but they dont really think on those lines. this may partly also be due to the fact that the four 'Dravida' states happen to be four of the most economically progressive states in the country. also, irrespective of how linguists classify Indian languages, every linguistic ethnicity in india has a sense of their own unique identity. there is no special brotherhood between, say Kannadigas and Tamils ('dravidas' both) that you cant find between, say Kannadigas/Tamils and Marathis or Sindhis('IA' both). Yes, there may be a sense of camaraderie(between Kannadigas and Tamils) that is borne out of geographic and demographic proximity/familiarity but it has nothing to with how linguists classify the different languages.

For the most part, the average Indian is fairly oblivious to the linguistic classifications you take for granted. and, I must add that they're just as oblivious and disinterested in the AIT/AMT/OIT polemic. You talk to the average Indian about Frawley and Kak and Rajaram, and I can assure you that you will draw a blank (even from your average 'Hindutvavadi'). The average indian is at peace with the fact that the vedas etc., are from 'long, long ago... so long ago.. nobody remembers how long ago (nor can be bothered to dig)'. This attitude perhaps also explains why no serious historical, archeological or epigraphical studies had ever been carried out in India before the advent of western indologists. "Do you believe that Rama, Krishna were historical figures", "Do you believe the Mahabharata really happened?" etc., is a topic that does come up in conversation once a while, but mostly just begins and ends with a voice vote(and no.. the results arent always "Yes"). and this again, has little to do with whether the people discussing are IA or dravidas. It is not like OIT is patronised by the Indo-Aryan 'majority' alone. Like I said, the overwhelming majority(whether IA or D) cannot be bothered with any of those theories and the few who are even aware of such theories can be drawn equally from both groups.

All the above notwithstanding, I must say that the case of Tamil cranks like Pavanar, Periyar et al is unique and different. I do not know of any parallel anywhere else in India. And your parallels between the Pavanarite/Periyarite crackpots and German cranks of WWII is certainly not misplaced. It is a perfectly valid and fair parallel and I dont see any reason why you should be coy about it. If Hitlerian cranks concocted a superior Aryan 'race', Periyarites simply drew from linguistics(of all things) to concoct their 'Dravidian' 'race' (superior, of course). The parallel is certainly uncanny. It is one thing to criticise (perhaps, even hate) Hitler and his pals for all their evil but another thing to be so paranoid as to be excessively worried about political correctness when talking about it.

I'll be grateful if you can throw similar light on the linguistic dynamics of Europe. In many ways, I think India and Europe are similar in that while they were always 'culturally' contiguous, politically they were never so homogenous. It perhaps just an accident of history that European states remained politically different entities(as they always were), while in India's case, they got stitched together. Feel free to dump it all on my talk page. Thanks and regards. Sarvagnya 08:41, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

p.s - i apologise for the looong reply.. but I thought that the discussion was better off on our talk pages instead of the article's. Sarvagnya 08:43, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spamming

Hi. There is a good level-by-level warnings in WP:WARNING. When you have already sent the final warning, then you can report the spammer/vandals/etc. to WP:AIAV. You may want to use the nice WP:TW tool to warn vandals and spammers easily. Cheers. — Indon (reply) — —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 07:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Löschig vo de Kategorie User als

Hallo Trigaaranus, das chönnti dich interessiärä: User_talk:Black_Falcon#Category:User_als-N Gruäss DidiWeidmann (talk) 19:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Turkey Mountain

Seems like an excellent addition to me, same goes for the Barry Fell page. ClovisPt (talk) 21:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New userboxes feedback

I'm pretty offended by the pigster userbox. See Wikipedia:Userboxes for recommendations about content. I'm sure that you'll find a better way of expressing similar sentiments. :) Concerning Thor's Hammer, you might try coding the link [[Mjolnir|Thor's Hammer]] to bypass the disambiguation page. (Don't put any nowiki statements in the final product. They're just so you can read it out of edit mode.) Finished link would look like this: Thor's Hammer Regards. Trilobitealive (talk) 19:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I particularly liked the pun on trilobites. "...That box does need cleanup, be it only for the language..." Actually I was thinking more of the photo content than the wording. (Verbosity is the mark of a dedicated Wikipedian.) My level of offense was minor but I thought I'd mention it ... but I know of at least four pretty good sized ethnic/religious groups who might find it really offensive especially if they click on it to get a better look. If it was me I'd either put up a thumbnail of the same photo so when somebody clicks on it they won't see so much anatomic detail or use a different photo for the Bambi effect. Maybe something like Image:Lamb first steps.jpg ? But all this is just my opinion and it's your userbox. Glad to see you fixed the Thor's Hammer box. Regards. See you around. Trilobitealive (talk) 00:38, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Germany Invitation

Hello, Trigaranus! 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) 02:44, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Turkey mountain

Sorry not to be of help, but anti-paranormal-goofballs fights are so exhausting that I only participate in those where I know the topic, and I'm afraid I know nothing about this one. Good luck! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 11:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)