User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 18

Alternation (linguistics)

Hello again Angr. Awhile back, you helped with finding resources about the IPA. Now, I'm trying to clean up the article on Alternation, and I need some help finding references about it. Do you know of any good resources on the topic? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:53, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:RM

Hi Angr: thanks for helping out at WP:RM a bit (with the Amish School Shooting). Just letting you know that when you do complete something from the list, just remove it, don't strike it out: we don't archive proposals or anything. — Mets501  (talk)  18:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Honshu is an English word

I found out that Honshū ought to be at "Honshu"; it's in the dictionary!

See [1] WhisperToMe 03:46, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Whatever. Just because there's a place name in an English-language dictionary doesn't make it an English word. Angr 04:52, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Lyric Suite

Berg may be long dead, but George Perle has not been dead for 70 years, and thus the PD tag seems inappropriate. Hyacinth 07:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

But surely the creative aspect of those sets are Berg's, not Perle's, don't you think? Angr 07:27, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Austronesian languages

Hi Angr,

My first post to this page was an embarrassing faux pas. Now I'd like to thank you for your post to Austronesian languages. I also sympathize with some of your arguments on User:Angr/Reasons to leave. Have you been reading Wikipedia talk:Schools? Thanks --Ling.Nut 12:43, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

oops, you included the Chamic languages. Did you see the last sentence of the Homeland section? "[The sole exception, a Chamic language, is a more recent migrant (Thurgood 1999:225)]." The Chamic languages are late & reverse-migrants. --Ling.Nut 14:59, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, well, but how recent? One could say English is a recent arrival to the island of Great Britain since it didn't get there till the mid-5th century AD! Angr 15:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Mmmmmmm. Point taken. Since your point is only that these Austronesian languages are currently spoken on continental Asia, and not that continental Asia is the linguistic homeland of the Austronesian languages, I withdraw my reservation/comment. Thanks.--Ling.Nut 15:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Germany

Hi Angr,

User:Badbilltucker has proposed creating a WikiProject for articles related to Germany. Since you contribute to WP:GSWN and seem to speak German pretty well and to contribute to Germany-related articles such as Konzerthausorchester Berlin, I was wondering if you would be interested in helping with this project. If you want to know more about the proposal you can check the temporary project page or the List of proposed projects.--Carabinieri^T_T^a_a^l_l^k_k 10:43, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Berlin Ostkreuz

Hey angr! I would be grateful if you could take a look at Talk:Ostkreuz and at the points I've made there. Deine Meinung ist gefragt! --IsarSteve 13:35, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

IPA

Hi, Angr! I noticed that you are busy with updating IPA symbols in the Irish language-related articles. I see that the articles become more precise (and useful!) after your edits, but I am having helluva time sorting out a good portion of the new transcriptions, and I probably am not alone.

Would it be too much to ask you to write an article similar to International Phonetic Alphabet for English, only for Irish? Or is there another place where I can look just for Irish-specific symbols without having to filter through loads of IPA symbols that are irrelevant to the Irish language?

I understand that to write International Phonetic Alphabet for Irish is going to be a lot of work, but once it's up there, it will be invaluable to learners like me.--Ag Foghlaim 15:03, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather keep information like that at Irish phonology. In fact, everything I can think of that might go onto a potential International Phonetic Alphabet for Irish page already is at Irish phonology. Is there anything more specific you'd like? There's a to-do list at Talk:Irish phonology/to do you could add to. Angr 15:08, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I see your point. I'd better come back when I can formulate my questions better. While I know that there is something missing at Irish phonology--something that I need for better understanding of Irish IPA transcription--I for some reason can't pinpoint what it is. I guess I'd better go back to the drawing board, brush up on my linguistic terminology skills (or, rather, lack thereof), and figure out what exactly is that which I so desperately need :) Thanks for the to-do list clue, though; I'll keep it in mind.--Ag Foghlaim 15:19, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

This might just be it! Figuring out the difference between bˠ and b wasn't terribly hard, but some of the other symbols were more elusive. If you could compile a table in image of the prototype above, you would have my eternal gratitude... or wait, did I already promise that to you in the past? :)

As for location, Wikipedia namespace should probably do fine, although I am not sure where exactly is the best place to put it. Wherever it's going to be, once it's ready, I'm going to print it out and meditate on it for the next few days :)--Ag Foghlaim 18:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

This is absolutely fantastic! How much do I owe you now? :)

I also have a related question. I don't remember if it was you who told me that or if I read it elsewhere, but, if I remember correctly, the pronunciation of letter "l" depends on its lenition/eclipsis. While in writing this letter is never modified, its pronunciation actually differs if it stands in a position where another lenitable/eclipsable letter would be lenited/eclipsed. An example would be in aice leis an lampa, which is along the same lines as in aice leis an gcoláiste. First of all, is that true at all, or is it something different that I completely misunderstood? Second, if its true, does the strict version of IPA provide any means to show the difference in pronunciation of letter "l" in various positions?--Ag Foghlaim 14:06, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

How much you owe me depends on if you want to pay in cash or sexual favors... As for L, there are only some dialects where it's pronounced differently under lenition than otherwise. If you look at the table in Irish phonology#Fortis and lenis sonorants you'll see rows for Lˠ, Lʲ, lˠ and lʲ in Old Irish, and their modern correspondents in the three main dialects. Under lenition, the modern counterpart of Lˠ becomes the modern counterpart of lˠ, while the modern counterpart of Lʲ becomes the modern counterpart of lʲ. (The same thing holds for N, by the way.) However, being dental consonants, L and N don't undergo lenition after the definite article anyway, so you use the unlenited pronunciation in don lampa. And L and N aren't affected by eclipsis at all, so ár lampa is no different from ordinary lampa. —Angr 14:16, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Being straight myself, I think I'll prefer the cash option :) How about I make a cash donation to Wikimedia Foundation on your behalf? If you prefer another arrangement, I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for pointing me to the appropriate section in Irish phonology. I saw that you added it recently, but I didn't bother reading it thinking it was only applicable to Old Irish. That section and your comments above clarified the issue for me somewhat; now I only wish I could actually hear how these sounds are different in real speech! You wouldn't happen to know any Irish Wikipedians I could pester so they could record a "soundtrack" to Irish phonology and to the dialect-specific articles?--Ag Foghlaim 14:36, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Try spamming the talk pages of the people listed in Category:User ga-N. —Angr 14:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

IP block on User:70.123.133.131

Hi. This user sent a complaint to unblock-en-l that they hadn't done anything wrong and didn't understand what they were blocked for. I do not understand enough of the topics of the stuff they were editing recently to see if any of it might have been false information, but none of it seems blatantly bad or vandalistic. Can you elaborate on what the problem was that led you to block them?

Thank you.

Georgewilliamherbert 18:53, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, there was this total blanking of a page. However, after AntiVandalBot reverted that, the user went on to make normal edits, although AVB reverted that too, presumably because it came from the same IP as the blanking. I blocked when I saw that AVB had had to revert the same IP twice, but I confess I didn't meticulously check all the edits. Anyway, it was only a 3-hour block and it's long since expired. Angr 19:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I've pinged AVB about not autoblocking them. Georgewilliamherbert 20:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Arbcom

As you know, a dispute has been going on for some while between me and User:Ulritz. I feel you are also involved and invite you to say you share. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#User:Ulritz Rex 13:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Footnotes to nowhere

I apologize about the footnotes - I am using AndyZ's semi automated peer review and am not 100% sure how to add the footnotes. It was helpful when I went through peer review and I thought it was a shame no one was doing it now, so I tried to be helpful and did it for the 10 oldest requests without a semiautomated peer review. I tried adding a reference section to the WP:PR page, but that did not work. I need to look at my old peer review and see how AndyZ did it - there was a link to a page with the semi automatic peer review on it and the footnotes were there. Thanks for letting me know and sorry, I will do my best to fix this or use "help me" if I can not. Ruhrfisch 14:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• The footnotes can be found here

• • I am pretty sure I know how to do it now, but the old Automated page needs to be archived first. If it is OK with you I will just leave your review as it is. Thanks again, Ruhrfisch 15:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

That's OK. (I hadn't thought of it as "my review" anyway, I was just reading it...) —Angr 15:20, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

• • • I got it to work on the peer reviews for Demosthenes and Denver, Colorado, if you are interested. Thanks again for letting me know about the problem and take care, Ruhrfisch 15:50, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

More on phonology

Hi, Angr! Sorry for bothering you again--it looks like I'm on a roll today! Just wanted to quickly check something. Irish phonology#Fortis and lenis sonorants provides the transcription for coll and sonn. Per Irish orthography, the vowels should be long, but I see that the phonology to-do list states that you are still to work on materials about "lengthening before fortis sonorants". Is that why the pronunciation is different from what Irish orthography prescribes? Would that apply to words such as poll and donn as well? Thanks again!--Ag Foghlaim 20:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

That section refers to the Old Irish words coll and sonn, and there was no lengthening in Old Irish. The modern Irish words coll, sonn, poll, donn do have lengthening (in the dialects where lengthening happens at all; in Donegal and Mayo it doesn't happen before ll and nn). —Angr 20:44, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Gotcha! Sorry if I sometimes seem not to see the obvious--the amount of material now available in Irish phonology is simply overwhelming (and no, I am not complaining :)).--Ag Foghlaim 20:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

It's okay... your comments are good at letting me know what needs to be made clearer. I'm just in the process of rewording the bit about coll and sonn so it's clearer that the words are Old Irish. Incidentally, if you go to your CSS settings and set lang=ga and lang=sga to different colors or different fonts or something, you'll be able to see what's marked as being modern Irish and what is marked as being Old Irish. —Angr 20:53, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

A fat a lot of good it is going to do me, since I only use this account when I need to leave you a message :) But funnily enough, I was in fact looking at your CSS stylesheet just yesterday and thought of how I could inconspiciously adopt it. Oh well, I can always switch to the edit mode and note the markup by hand.

I think I am done with questions for the next few weeks. Once again, I appreciate all your help.--Ag Foghlaim 21:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

You could of course give up on this silly anonymity and use your main account for Irish-language purposes too. (Or you could set your CSS settings in your main account to display Irish and Old Irish differently.) —Angr 21:15, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Angr, I promise you that when I no longer have the reasons to hide, you will be the first one to know. It will eventually happen, but not through me associating my otherwise Irish-free account with a stylsheet similar to yours :) I just hope you don't think there is something unimaginably horrible or terribly exciting behind my anonymity; the reasons are pretty silly and mundane, as a matter of fact.--Ag Foghlaim 21:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I have trouble imagining any reasons (either mundane or exciting) for not wanting one's probably already anonymized username to be associated with questions about Irish, unless one had a reputation as a staunch Ian Paisley supporter to uphold. Since you've already assured me you have no stake in the politics of Northern Ireland, I know that isn't it, and I'm left to speculate on my own. The only other thing I can think of is that someone is paying you, or trusting you, to edit only articles related to one specific topic, and you don't want them to know that you're straying beyond your permitted domain. Either that or you're someone I've had a disagreement with in the past, and you're afraid if I knew who you are I'd stop answering your questions. But I can't think of anyone (least of all another admin) who I've ever had such a serious argument with. —Angr 21:54, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Angr, I am sorry; it really was not my intention to create unnecessary hype around my anonimity. And I only wish to be so lucky as to have someone pay me for my Wikipedia work! I doubt I'd be distracting on anything else if it were the case. To address your other assumptions--no, I am not involved in Irish politics at all and my anonimity has nothing to do with you personally (as a Wikipedian, I have no reasons whatsoever to avoid you). My reasons lie purely outside of Wikipedia. Thank you for understanding.Ag Foghlaim 16:05, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Nationalism

As you can see for yourself, nationalism is not restricted in Eastern European countries. Your judgement on the topic is rather naive, not to mention prejudiced. Miskin 22:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I never said it was. I just said I'm tired of it coming from eastern Europeans, who seem to express an amount of it disproportionate to their total numbers here at Wikipedia. —Angr 06:25, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

"Welcoming Congregation" restructuring

Please see my comment on reorganization of the "Welcoming Congregation" topic (replying there). Thanks! You were included in this notice because you once edited the article on the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. --Haruo 06:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ulritz

Hello,

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ulritz. Please add any evidence you may wish the arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ulritz/Evidence. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Ulritz/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Arbitration Clerk FloNight 19:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Syntax-stub candidates

As you were good enough to comment on my ling-stub split candidates, and suggest a syntax-stub (not sure why I missed that possibility), I thought I'd upload a list of candidates, and try to pick your brains as to their suitability. Can you have a quick look at these, and comment on whether they'd (all) be suitable for such a stub type? (In short(ish...), these are all the ling-stubs that are also categorised with one (or more) of the following: Category:Grammatical cases, Category:Grammar frameworks, Category:Syntactic categories, Category:Linguistic typology, Category:Parts of speech, Category:Grammatical number, Category:Syntactic entities, Category:English grammar, Category:German grammar, Category:Grammatical moods, Category:Syntactic relationships, Category:Parsing, Category:Syntactic transformation, Category:Noam Chomsky, Category:Thematic roles, Category:Japanese grammar, Category:Verb types, Category:Pronouns, Category:English morphemes.) If these are wildly wrong, I'll give up on the idea; if some of the categories are wrong, I can redo without those; if there's just one or two wrong, you might just delete those from the list. Thanks for any help you might be able to offer. Alai 05:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I've left comments at User talk:Alai/syntax. —Angr 05:23, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Ta. The overlap with linguistic morphology indeed seems rather large, so perhaps that would be the better place to start. Can you similarly comment on these candidates for a {{ling-morphology-stub}} (or whatever one would call the template)? Alai 05:38, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks again. I'll start with that, then -- though I've belatedly realized I didn't propose that one originally, so I'll have a brief wait to make sure no-one at WP:WSS/P yelps. Alai 06:13, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Tapping and flapping

Taps and flaps are two different things, and in English, we have taps, not flaps. Yes, many people mix the terms up, even in published papers, and "flap" is the more popular term to describe both phenomena when using one term to cover both, but that doesn't make that usage correct! This lax usage is explained in the Flapping article. In an encylcopedia article, isn't it much better to be accurate, than to just blindly follow the herd?LiuLanDi 08:58, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Nope. As an encyclopedia, rather than a linguistics journal, Wikipedia follows whatever the most common usage is. Obviously it's important to explain the difference in the article where it's discussed, but because the phenomenon is known virtually universally in the linguistics literature as "flapping", we should stick to that terminology when discussing it in other articles too. —Angr 09:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I haven't read as much on the subject as you have, but without digging through everything I've ever read on it, I seem to remember quite often that when I've encountered either term, both are mentioned, and the writer states his preference before continuing the discussion. As for online mentions of the terms, Google hits: alveolar tap (190k), alveolar flap (212k), alveolar flap cleft (40.5k), so factoring out plastic surgery it looks like tap might be more common. Since I'm teaching in China, I don't have the resources to verify your statement "known virtually universally in the linguistics literature". And at present we aren't concerned with all of the linguistics literature, just English. You can't possibly argue that the term tap is not often found in the literature as well. Will you still be this dismissive?LiuLanDi 11:38, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying taps are universally known as flaps. I'm saying the phonological process of North American English (and some varieties of Australian and Northern Irish English too) by which "pity" is pronounced [ˈpɪɾi] is almost universally known as "flapping", not "tapping". If you go to Google book search (which gives you a better idea of uses in the literature) and look for "flapping" "American English" you get 161 hits; "tapping" "American English" gets you only 107, and in most of those "tapping" is being used as a verb, not the name of the process ("Flap: A sound made by rapidly tapping the tip of the tongue to the alveolar ridge", "results from the tongue tip tapping quickly against the alveolar ridge") and usually in a context unrelated to the process ("one of the greatest advantages of a curriculum on dialects is its potential for tapping the language resources", "Once I was sitting on the subway when I heard a tapping ... When the tapping continued, the businessman sitting next to me poked my shoulder", "evidence that she had succeeded in tapping a more creole-like variety", "Tapping the vernacular") etc. If we could filter all of those out, we'd probably get about 1 instance of the phenomenon being called "tapping" for every 10 instances of it being called "flapping". —Angr 11:53, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Angr, you have one solid point: there's a lot of indiscriminate use of tap and flap in the literature. You win!  :) But you shouldn't win, because taps and flaps are different! A tap should be when the tongue touches the alveolar ridge, and a flap should be when there is sliding movement across it. They have different sounds, and when I teach the tap in words like "pity" to my grad students, and they say it with a flap, it's ridiculous! I just tried Google Books but the damn Great Firewall of China is blocking it at the moment. Using "American English" is too general. That's why I used "alveolar". I still have to talk to you about diphthongs, so brace yourself!  :) LiuLanDi 13:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The trouble with using "alveolar" is it gets you too many general phonetics hits rather than hits relating directly to flapping as a phenomenon in (American) English. And about diphthongs, the same basic argument holds: the symbols /aɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ/ are simply those that are most widely used in IPA transcriptions (Kenyon & Knott, Ladefoged, J.C. Wells, etc.). Using other transcriptions like /ɑi/ or whatever just because you think they're more accurate verges on original research when it contradicts common usage. —Angr 13:12, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Angr, read what I wrote. I didn't just say "alveolar", I said "Google hits: alveolar tap (190k), alveolar flap (212k), alveolar flap cleft (40.5k)". If you just use "tapping" "American English", then of course you're going to get the kinds of hits that you got—if you don't include "alveolar" with "tap" then "tap" could mean what it most commonly does. It's along the same reasoning that I filtered out "cleft" when it appears with "flap" because many of the hits were turning up talking about plastic surgery on cleft palates using some sort of skin graft "flap". Let's talk about the diphthongs on the GenAm page where the chart is.LiuLanDi 01:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

And if you do include "alveolar" with "tap" then you're going to get pages discussing the sound, not the phonological process. —Angr 07:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't get what you mean.LiuLanDi 13:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

We're talking about my reversion of this edit of yours. The reference there is not directly to the alveolar tap [ɾ] itself, but rather to the phonological process of American English by which the phoneme /t/ is realized as [ɾ] in certain environments. The reason the Wikipedia article on that process is called Flapping is that "flapping" is by far the most common name for it in the linguistic literature. Searching Google Books for "American English" flapping and "American English" tapping, and then filtering out the false positives, establishes the predominance of the name "flapping" for the process. Searching general Google for alveolar tap and alveolar flap -cleft will mostly get you hits where the sound [ɾ] itself, rather than the phonological process /t/ → [ɾ], is discussed. —Angr 13:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks. The day before yesterday in my class I was talking about "tap" and caught myself saying "flap"! Anyway, in a class where I can demonstrate it and can check the students' pronunciation directly, it doesn't much matter what we call it.LiuLanDi 14:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Minority languages

I have listed Category:Minority languages for deletetion. Since you are the creator of this category, your comments are particularly welcome. · Naive cynic · 11:55, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Berlin edits

Thanks for your message, I wasn't aware of that (and it was a pure coinsidence that I edited Berlin twice the same day, not trying to start an edit-war :) ). As far the interwiki links go, I assumed that AWB was following standards when rearranging them. --Pax:Vobiscum 19:01, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Puirt a Beul

Interesting question. I think both 'Puirt a Beul' and 'Puirt a Bheul' are correct depending on the usage and both are used on gaelic pages/websites which pop up in the google searches. Il look into it further to try and get back with a definite answer for you in the next day or two. siarach 12:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I can imagine myself saying either 'Puirt a Beul' or 'Puirt a Bheul' in conversation but 'Puirt a Bheul' is what i would use in a plural reference or genre reference as you say. siarach 14:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair use images in lists

Hello, I see you have contributed your thoughts to Wikipedia talk:Fair use/Fair use images in lists. It's been dead for a while, but I have archived it and taken a new fresh start. I hope this time we will be able to achieve something as I have summarized the main points of both sides (feel free to improve them) and I call you to express your support or oppose on the concrete proposal that I have formulated. Thanks, Renata 02:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Benign request for article move

See Talk:Meithei_language -- Evertype·✆ 18:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Minority languages

Hi Angr, I see you were involved in deletion of the Category:Minority languages (the CfD was closed and the deletion is going ahead as I'm writing this, apparently). I came too late to influence the vote. I can see your argument, but somehow I still think it's a pity, for some of these cases. What do you think, would it be a good idea to re-create such a category on a regional basis, like Category:Minority languages of Europe etc.? That way, we could decide on a per-world-region basis whether having such a category makes sense. I think in Europe it does, but I totally agree it might be quite a different case in other parts of the world. Just a thought, and comments appreciated. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I think "minority language" would have to be well defined first. I think it would be silly to include German, even though it's a minority language in France, and Danish, even though it's a minority language in Germany, since German and Danish have "home countries" where they aren't minority languages. Perhaps a Category:Endangered languages would make more sense. Oh, I see that already exists. —Angr 21:15, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, yes, you're right, cases where a major language serves as a minority language outside its own country would of course have to be excluded - except where the minority dialect has its own article, of course, like Kven Finnish, Arvanitika, or Elsässisch. The category would, I think, not be coextensive with the endangered languages one, since some minority languages are (thank god) still solidly alive. But maybe it's also just a big new can of worms we shouldn't open, I'm not sure yet. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)