See-alsos
Hi,
I'm not sure if
- See also
- * Ecofeminism
- * Social ecology
is adequate for the ubuntu article. Could someone explain how they relate?
-- till we ☼☽ | Talk 10:38, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Pronunciation
- Ubuntu is pronounced "oo-BOON-too".
Could someone from Africa check if the following is a faithful description of the real pronunciation? IPA: /uˈbuːntu/ KJ 13:01, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)
- Probably isn't, since the Xhosa language uses tones. Any help with tones will help too. KJ 13:01, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)
- Yes it is, except for the fact that the middle /u/ normally isn't long (so /uˈbuntu/ is better). If spoken slowly, in most Bantu languages it would be syllabified like this: /u.bu.ⁿtu/ (with a prenasalized t in the last syllable), whereas most English speakers will syllabify it like /u.bun.tu/. Normally you won't hear a difference between the two because prenasalization is heard most clearly in initial position.
- I'm not sure of the tone pattern. Wilken (1993) might have something, I'll be able to check that tomorrow. But since the word is heavily used in other contexts (including non-tonal languages), /uˈbuntu/ is a very good start.
- Thanks BTW for adding the IPA pronounciation, I don't like those 'English-only' approximations at all. — mark ✎ 13:16, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Follow up. Wilken (1993) doesn't mark tone, which is bad for a book titled "Understanding everyday Xhosa". Anyway, like I said above, the toneless transcription is OK because it's used in a lot of non-tonal contexts. — mark ✎ 10:00, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I did a search for "bantu ubuntu -linux" on the web. The results seem to imply that ubuntu is common to a lot of Bantu people, not just speakers of Zulu or Xhosa. I guess that makes a non-tonal representation OK, since some Bantu languages aren't tonal.
Real Origins?
Is it really from Zulu and Xhosa? This is just a hypothesis, but couldn't it be from a primordial Bantu language?
- In a sense, it is indeed. /ntu/ surely is a common Bantu root and is also reconstructed as protoBantu. But the 'ubu' part betrays the Zulu/Xhosa origin of this particular form; ubu- is the class 14 noun class prefix in the Nguni languages. — mark ✎ 09:28, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I should add that the Nguni languages are not the only languages where the class 14 prefix is ubu-. Bemba, for one, is another example. — mark ✎ 09:33, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Church youth groups
Which church? --84.42.165.49 11:56, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Linux
The history of this article is quite amusing to look at. I've added some inline comments to the article so that anyone editing it with the intention of talking about the Linux distribution of the same name will hopefully be directed to the article that actually discusses Ubuntu Linux. There were a few links pointing here that I've also disambiguated to try and cut down on the number of people coming here and thinking: "How strange! It doesn't say anything about Linux!" (By the way, I've used Ubuntu Linux and been impressed, but what is it with its advocates that makes them unable to read disambiguation links?) — Trilobite (Talk) 12:27, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- Move the f-ing page! Nobody cares about the stupid word, everyone wants the real Ubuntu here which is 100x more famous than the word. ubuntu-less-ly Eric B. and Rakim 29 June 2005 20:34 (UTC)
- Yeah! So very true! Along the same lines, we should give the highly relevant information on a fictional Star Wars race a prominent place at Yaka instead of some boringly real ethnic group from the inlands of Africa. Who wants to know about real people anyway, these days? In fact, who is so stupid as to think that we're writing for a global audience?? — mark ✎ 29 June 2005 21:02 (UTC)
- I've left a note on the user's talk page. Interestingly they also tried to move Python programming language to Python recently, because, in their words "the real life snake just isn't interesting enough". I don't know whether to laugh or cry! — Trilobite (Talk) 29 June 2005 22:12 (UTC)
- The name of the distro is "Ubuntu." It happens to be the same as a South African concept. The distribution happens to be much more well known than the concept. Therefore, a page move is warranted. It all comes down to what the user typing down "ubuntu" in the search box likely mean. The same applies to Python. Also please compare the amount of work/page lengths of the respective software articles and the snake/concept. Eric B. and Rakim 30 June 2005 00:17 (UTC)
- Wow, you have some odd ideas. I'm not going to bother arguing with your propositions about page moves and relative importance, I just trust and hope that you're on the fringe here. Comparing article lengths in Wikipedia is a totally, totally, misguided way of judging the importance of a topic. In fact, I was just remarking to someone today that our article on Schindler's List is longer than our article on Oskar Schindler. By your logic the film is more important than the man! — Trilobite (Talk) 30 June 2005 01:51 (UTC)
- Eric B. and Rakim, if you really think about notability and importance this way, I have the feeling that you're on the wrong project. Wikipedia is not a specialist or a geek encyclopedia; it is an encyclopedia with a global audience. Maybe you should check out the s23 wiki or the Linux wiki. In the meantime, be sure to read something more on Wikipedia. Our own article on Wikipedia is a good start. Wikipedia:Google test#Google bias might be relevant too, just like Wikiproject Countering Systemic Bias. — mark ✎ 30 June 2005 11:40 (UTC)
Yes! The *movie* Schindler's List is much more important than the person Oscar Schindler. Just like Ubuntu, the distro, is much more important than ubuntu, the concept it was named from. Mark, you are not understanding what the issue is about. It has nothing to do with policy nor NPOV - The content is exactly the same whether Ubuntu the distro gets the Ubuntu article name or not. What this issue is about is usability, making it simple and painless for people to use the website. Eric B. and Rakim 30 June 2005 17:17 (UTC)