User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 6

Here's a stamp from the Faroe Islands for you! Stamps from the Faroe Islands somehow promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving something friendly to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Make your own message to spread WikiLove to others! Happy editing! Vatomanocu (talk) 14:13, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Archives

"Only an evil person would eat baby soup."

Thanks for taking an interest in the language families of South America - they really need a hand! ·Maunus·ƛ· 08:32, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		I, Agnistus award this Barnstar to Kwami for his invaluable contributions to the Origin of hangul article.

		The Anti-Flame Barnstar
		I think you deserve a golden fire extinguisher for helping me deal with that misguided revolutionary Serendi ^podous 10:47, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Decipherment of Rongorongo FA discussion

Being basically unfamiliar with the FA process, I'm not going to comment on the review. But I will say that I'm a great fan of your work, in particular in turning Rongorongo from a sketchy, unhelpful mess into a tightly organized family of articles covering the entire Rongorongo corpus in a manner both scholarly and accessible. Say, that would sound good on a barnstar.

		The Original Barnstar
		For transforming Rongorongo from a sketchy, unhelpful mess into a tightly organized family of articles covering the entire Rongorongo corpus in a manner both scholarly and accessible, I award you this Barnstar. May it bring you much mana! Fishal (talk) 02:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

*Groan*—pun painful. But thanks. I'm glad someone's reading them! kwami (talk) 02:34, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks again.

I really appreciate your help and time on the Romanization. Whenever I have a problem on linguistic, I've got your help. Keep up the good work!! Best.--Caspian blue (talk) 02:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Glad I could help. kwami (talk) 07:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First steps in Hadza language

Dear Kwamikagami,

Thank You for improving and correcting my last contributions.

I tried to make the first steps in learning Hadza language. I have found some special papers and other materials, all discussing a specific aspect. (It was a pleasant surprise that the the exclamations of the Hadza about a recently killed kudu on the Italian video could be recognized clearly after having read these papers.) Despite of the extreme value of these materials, their topic is very special. How have You done the first steps? I could not find any good introductory materiasl. I even looked for not-online materials (books, journal articles, catalogues, bibliographies), but still, I have not found any yet.

Or, if no introductory materials exist, are there at least some raw texts in Hadza, enabling learning by induction on a sufficient corpus? Are there any (continuous) raw texts at all, or, at least, whole sentences?

For contrast: I began to learn two Eskimo languages since the end of the 1990s: Sireniki Eskimo language and the Ungazigmi variant of Siberian Yupik languages. Since then, Sireniki went extinct, and the death of Ungazigmi is approaching too (no youth knowlege among youth, failed plans in school education). Despite of that, the written material about Siberian Yupik languages and cultures are A B U N D A N T, and also Sireniki materials are enough for a good start.

But the state of Hadza is not exactly like these extinct/endangered Siberian Eskimo languages. Hadza is a living language, with vigorous knowledge even among youth! And they seem to be actively studied (ecological, anthropological, phonetical studies, videos, even turistical visits). The seeming lack of available corpus and comprehensive linguistical materials seems form me very surprising.

Thus, how could You make the first steps in Hadza language? I tried to take them on my own, but I cannot find out the way now.

Best wishes, and thanks for the attention,

Physis (talk) 20:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Kwamikagami,

Thank You very much for Your help.

I am glad to hear that the availability of Hadzabe linguistical materials can improve in the next few years.

Till then, maybe I can ask for a copy of Berger 1943 from a German library. It had to be searched by series + journal (omitting title!) in the German bookfinder GVK. Wikipedia's Book sources was a great help in finding that.

Best wishes,

Physis (talk) 22:02, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eris/Makemake resonances

We're going to need more authoritative sources that that hobby page if we're going to include them. Serendi ^podous 09:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, but we already know Brown accepts this. We should be able to dig something up. kwami (talk) 11:08, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a quick look through Google scholar and haven't found anything yet. Serendi ^podous

I'll remove the "few more years" wording as OR. However, I think this is one of those cases where an otherwise unacceptable source may be considered reliable—the expert in the field accepts it, but it's still too tentative to publish. kwami (talk) 18:51, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ㄧ一

which one is the correct one for zhuyin? ㄧ一 and why are there two variants?ㄏㄨㄤㄉㄧ (talk) 21:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ㄧ is used when you're writing horizontally, and 一 when you're writing vertically. The idea is for the letters to kern better, just like the hangul vowels with the same shapes. kwami (talk) 21:23, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

re: IPA notice

Hi, there used to be a chart at IPA chart for Macedonian but now it's just a redirect. Thanks for the notice, though. :) --Kjoonlee 23:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wow

I love how you've really cleaned up List of English words without rhymes, thanks for the help! (I know, I did a pretty pathetic job, but I don't come here often anyways). Teh Rote (talk) 01:35, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I second the appreciation! It has been getting gradually better for a while, but this is a big leap forward. maxsch (talk) 13:30, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. If anyone can track down that list of 55 alleged monosyllabic refractory rhymes, that would be a nice contribution. I'll verify w OED2, and you can verify with whatever you have available. kwami (talk) 19:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Expert attention required

[1], [2]. OpalNet IP's as before (User_talk:Black_Kite/Archive_17#Malta/OpalNet_user) Any offers? Knepflerle (talk) 19:46, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked the socks and copy edited the article. Angr's right: I can see Arabic al- having its own article, as it's found in English, but il should be merged with Maltese language, which doesn't even mention the definite article. kwami (talk) 20:33, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the swift action. I've got no particular interest in this article, and agree it could be well dealt with in the Maltese language article or some such. But my biggest concern is the multi-sock offense that is going on over dozens of articles connected to Malta, Sicily and the Sicani. I've fixed the link above - if all that info is correct this is an issue that needs a thorough, concerted investigation and action (including an dnot restricted to checkuser etc) - the high-traffic articles are being corrected, but the insidious introduction of disinformation into low-traffic articles is an attack on the project's integrity. I only spotted this instance because I chased up the contributions of another suspicious edit, I hate to think what other damage has been done.

Apologies for bothering you; it's so frustrating to be personally unable to do much against this sort of edits. Thanks again, best wishes, Knepflerle (talk) 21:18, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You need to take this to the admin board. Hopefully there's something they can do. kwami (talk) 21:20, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tried AN/I here [3], no response. Contacted the checkuser who last dealt with the case, no response [4]. Asked last blocking admin [5], [6]... well, you guessed it. In fact, the guy who first introduced that "fact" into Il- has already(!) been identified as a likely member of the sockfarm [7] but nothing was followed up at all. Noone can say I didn't try though ;) Will try and file something again at some point but my editing time will be a lot more restricted for a while. Knepflerle (talk) 21:45, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(And a bonus prize if you can work out if/how this edit and these contribs fit into it all.) Knepflerle (talk) 21:54, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seen it. If Wikipedia isn't going to be serious about protecting itself from vandals, I am not going to waste my time with it. I'll continue to protect the articles I'm involved with or egregious conduct I happen to come across. kwami (talk) 22:14, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

For your level-headed and informative suggestions/comments. Much appreciated. the roof of this court is too high to be yours (talk) 00:16, 15 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Bimorphemic logograms

Can you comment on the logogram talk page why you restored the part that I took out on bimorphemic logograms? I explained there why I thought it should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.114.75.233 (talk) 23:20, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You removed it with the comment that it's nonsensical, but it makes perfect sense. Morphemes have nothing to do with syllables, so if Chinese characters adhere to syllabicity over morphology, then they're not strictly logographic. There are also couple bimorphemic and bisyllabic characters in modern Chinese, such as 卅 sānshi and 卌 sìshi. (Yes, I know they also stand for monosyllables, but they're used for both.) kwami (talk) 23:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

First, morphemes surely have to do with syllables because I don't know how you can identify what is and is not a morpheme unless you can point to its pronunciation and show that it can occur elsewhere. A monosyllabic but bimorphemic example would take some justification. Maybe not impossible, but one would have to say a few words about it. The example with 王 is not well articulated on the page. Was 王 in Archaic Chinese actually pronounced as hjwang-s? That wasn't clear, especially because it would be a case of a bisyllabic character, which is itself quite rare and something I didn't even believe was possible. Also talking about the present-day lexical ambiguity of 王 (king vs rule) is confusing because those are not the two morphemes involved in its past bimorphemic-ness; rather, it's the morphemes king+suffix. You should also note there your examples of 卅 and 卌 as examples of bisyllabic logograms in *modern Chinese*, to support the fact that 王 could have been bisyllabic in Archaic Chinese, since 王 is not itself bisyllabic or bimorphemic in modern Chinese. Is it possible to use 卌 in a sentence, by the way? --130.91.109.98 (talk) 17:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't follow you at all. *hjwang-s was monosyllabic and bimorphemic; that's the whole point. kwami (talk) 19:43, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh shoot. Obviously. So, right, I am not paying attention. (I was stuck on modern Mandarin's syllable structure --- you couldn't, as far as I understand, have that -s in the same syllable as the rest, and there's not much room to decompose a Mandarin syllable into morphemes.) Nevertheless, whether something is confusing is in the eye of the beholder, right? Let me suggest the following re-write of that paragraph: "None of these systems was purely logographic. This can be illustrated with Chinese. Not all Chinese characters represent morphemes: some morphemes are composed of more than one character. For example, the Chinese word for spider, 蜘蛛 zhīzhū, was creating by fusing the rebus 知朱 zhīzhū (literally "know cinnabar") with the 'bug' determinative 虫. Neither *蜘 zhī nor *蛛 zhū occur separately (except to stand in for 蜘蛛 in poetry). In Archaic Chinese, one can find the reverse: a single character representing more than one morpheme. An example is Archaic Chinese 王 hjwangs, a combination of a morpheme 'hjwang' meaning king (coincidentally also written 王) and a suffix pronounced 's'. (The suffix is preserved in the modern falling tone.) In modern Mandarin, bimorphemic syllables are always written with two characters, for example 花儿 huār "flower (diminutive)"." Still, seeing some existing academic discussion of this would be useful. 王 is not a particularly good example if in Archaic Chinese hwang was also written as 王, because then it's not clear whether the writer actually wrote hwangs or simply wrote as much of the word that he had a character for. That's why I was asking for a citation. --130.91.109.98 (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Yes, that is an improvement. And yes, there is a question whether the character is truly bimorphemic, or whether derivational suffixes were simply ignored. (Either way, the script isn't purely logographic.) The problem with using other words is that you need a base of comparison, an un-suffixed form. I'll see what I can track down. kwami (talk) 20:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not getting involved in the first but you can use 卅 and 卌 in sentences in Cantonese, for example in 佢買咗卅幾本書 "he bought some 30 books". I never considered the oddness of these 2 characters before :) Akerbeltz (talk) 18:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To follow up, if you use it in a sentence, do you pronounce it as sānshi? --130.91.109.98 (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No idea about Mandarin but in Cantonese it's sā a (2 syllables/words whatever) Akerbeltz (talk) 21:41, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moons of Haumea

Cool, I never even heard of this dwarf planet before, I learned something today. :) But why does the article say there are three moons, but only two are listed? Corvus cornix_talk 21:22, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, it's a work in progress. I've cut & pasted to keep the formatting the same as similar articles, and some text slipped through. Should be fixed up soon. kwami (talk) 21:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RE: okina

My understanding is that IE versions prior to 7 cannot display the okina, so the template {{okina}} is used instead on all of the Hawaii-related articles. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:21, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For you

		The Working Man's Barnstar
		For getting all the EL61 links changed to Haumea (dwarf planet), I think you deserve the working man's barnstar. Must have been tedious as heck. Serendi ^podous 09:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it was either that or a nude beach party. I mean, come on, which would you have done? kwami (talk) 09:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ataegina

Wow! I am seriously impressed by your work, and even more so by your accolades. Keep up the good work.

I would like to discuss one of your edits to one of my edits to the Ataegina article (chuckle). My intent was to show the identifier in the first sentence, then the name (as a link) in the second sentence (and, bonehead that I am, I forgot to link the name). All of which was intended to semantically show the evolution of the name.

Just wanted to state my case; I'll go with your decision.

Keep up the great work!

WeeWillieWiki (talk) 18:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

zhuyin for wu dialect

for shanghai and ningbo dialect, i know the extra letters, but do you know any letters that i Don't need?ㄏㄨㄤㄉㄧ (talk) 22:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You mean standard zhuyin letters which are not needed for Wu? kwami (talk) 22:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

yesㄏㄨㄤㄉㄧ (talk) 00:47, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you presumably wouldn't need ㄓ, ㄔ, ㄕ, or ㄖ, though I don't see how you'd write xx [ʑ̊], ss [z], hh [ɦ], or initial glottal stop, so maybe some of ㄓㄔㄕㄖ get reused. For finals, you wouldn't need ㄞ, ㄟ, ㄠ, ㄡ, ㄥ, ㄤ, ㄦ. kwami (talk) 01:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Numeric format changes

Per your sweeping revisions to non-MoS-standard number formats on various science articles, I invite you to join the discussion at Talk:Earth#Number_format_changes. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 04:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just did. kwami (talk) 04:41, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Move of Hakka (linguistics) to Hakka Chinese

Hakka Chinese could refer not only to a group of people with a linguistic background, but also to the language itself. It would have been better, IMO, to have entitled the new name Hakka Chinese Language instead, given that 'Chinese' in itself is loaded with different interpretations such as the writing system, a spoken family of languages, and a rather large ethnic group. You should really have consulted on the talk page first before making the move unilaterally.

A copy of this will be pasted in the Hakka (linguistics)/Talk:Hakka_Chinese talk page. 00:15, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Except that not everyone agrees it's a "language". A see also link can be placed at the top of the page. kwami (talk) 00:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's only a matter of semantics. Besides, now you've conflated Hakka Chinese (people) and (language/dialect), the original 'linguistics' was the original compromise... With respect to language, the Indonesian and Malay languages are so similar and mutually intelligible yet they are called languages. But, Spoken Hakka and spoken Wu are mutually unintelligible, and considered only dialects of Chinese. Dylanwhs (talk) 00:30, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe someone can come up with unambiguous wording. But "Hakka (linguistics)" makes about as much sense as "British (linguistics)". We should name our articles with the normal English phrase for the topic; ambiguities are taken care of with 'see also' links and disambig. pages. The normal English phrases for Chinese languages are "X Chinese", so per the MOS that's what we should use.

Anyway, let's take the debate to the talk page. kwami (talk) 00:37, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hence the need for debate before your move. I assume it's reversible. Anyway, on the idea of 'British (Linguistics)' of course that's silly. You have 'English' for which which you could add 'linguistics' or phonology, or phonetics. I'm not saying that you should, but for Hakka (linguistics) at least you have a good idea what the article is about before clicking on it. The title of the article is therefore appropriate in its terse summary, and does away with the need for a disambiguation page. Why further add to the already amazing number of useless pages if you could have the title as succinct as that? Dylanwhs (talk) 00:44, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's factually wrong, it's awkward, it violates Wikipedia standards, it's hard to enter in the search window, it implies Chinese languages are bizarre, etc. etc. Yes, "British (linguistics)" (not the same thing as "English(linguistics)", of course) is silly, just as silly as "Hakka (linguistics)". And changing the title doesn't involve adding any more pages. kwami (talk) 00:50, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Kwamikagami, congratulations and thank you for following the community guidelines formed by Wikipedians earlier and enforcing them consistently. – Kaihsu (talk) 22:17, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, consistency is praiseworthy, but take note of past concensus on a subject before unilateral changes. Dylanwhs (talk) 05:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's what the discussion's about. kwami (talk) 08:05, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ulster Scots

I reverted your move to Ulster Scots dialect, as the title Ulster Scots (linguistics) was recently established in a debate that you did not participate it. See Talk:Ulster Scots (linguistics)#Requested move. These kinds of classifications are rarely black and white. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 08:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Debate? There was no debate. kwami (talk) 09:22, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]