User talk:Gilgamesh~enwiki/Archive 15

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Atolls etc

Hi, I have been fixing a lot of problems caused by your edits over the last couple of days to various atolls, including but not limited to:

The total number of articles involved has (so far) been about double this. They have been appearing in the category of Pages_with_missing_references_list because the articles do not have a {{reflist}} or <references/> tag. Would it be possible for you to ensure that this detail is included before you move on to the next page? Also, please could you cite correctly as the barelink citation format you have used is susceptible to linkrot and pretty meaningless - WP:CITE has more information. Thanks - Sitush (talk) 06:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I have some communications deficits when it comes to switching between my savant ability (such as linguistics entries) and actually forming meaningful thoughts and sentences. I can see if I can add reflists to some of them, but I thought the links to dictionary pages were sufficient. - Gilgamesh (talk) 07:01, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that I understand. However, adding the link is not sufficient if nobody can see it (which they cannot without a reflist etc). And adding a link that appears as a [1] even when a reflist is present is both meaningless &, as I said, liable to linkrot, hence the policies/guidelines on the subject. Since you are at present referencing one particular dictionary, perhaps you could just cut-and-paste the relevant link into your edits. This would save you - and everyone else - some work. I can provide you with the cut-and-paste cite if you need it, and it will be better than the one on the pages because I used a tool to generate those. - Sitush (talk) 07:20, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Gilgamesh. Sitush asked me to provide my input on these matters. Let me start by saying that there are basically 2 different issues here, one of which is really important, the other of which isn't.

Adding the "reflist". What Sitush is referring to is that whoever adds the first reference to an article has to add a thing called a "reflist" to the bottom of that article. If you don't, then reference you added isn't visible. To see what I mean, take a look at the page for Namdrik Atoll right after you added the dictionary reference: [1]. In the first paragraph, you can see the superscript 1 indicating the reference you added. However, if you scroll down to the very bottom of the page, you'll see a big red message saying "Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{Reflist}} template or a <references /> tag; see the help page.". So, even though the reference is on the page, no one can actually see it. Next, take a look at the next revision, after Sitush added the "reflist": [2]. Now, right in between the "History" section and the "External Links" section is a "References section", which includes a link to the dictionary site you added. Now readers can easily click through to the dictionary website. So, as an editor, what you need to do is this: if you add the very first reference to a page, you need to add two lines. These lines go after the last body section of the article, above any External Links or categories that are on the page. When you type them, they should look exactly like this:

==References==
{{reflist}}

This will add the that new section at the bottom, and make your reference visible. Note that you only need to do this if you're adding the very first reference to a page.

The second point Sitush is making is about providing a "full" reference, instead of just a URL link. That one isn't nearly as important. The advantage of providing a full citation is that it makes it easier to keep it updated and shows the reader clearly what the source is. However, that one isn't really necessary, as the link is "enough" for a first pass. There's a way to add full references by hand, but it's a pain, and requires memorizing a bunch of different templates and their parameters. Instead, if you would like, I can tell you how to turn on the advanced editing tools that make it easy to add common citations, by giving you a pop-up window with the most commonly needed fields. You can let me know here if you'd like assistance getting that started. But, if not, it's alright to use the URLs by themselves. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Alright, I already finished all that earlier. Reflists and link titles included. - Gilgamesh (talk) 03:39, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

That's great. Sorry if you thought that I was being a pain. I wrote the messages above before reading your user page, which was not the cleverest thing I've done in the last 24 hours. My linguistic abilities, by the way, rarely extend beyond gibberish: I wouldn't have a clue where to start with what you're doing. - Sitush (talk) 03:51, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

That's alright. Your comments weren't bad. - Gilgamesh (talk) 06:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Project Cafe

Hi, AfDs are not votes, but discussions. The most powerful argument wins. Thus, your comment does nothing to help the situation. Please insert some sort of reason for keeping it. Thanks, _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 22:04, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Marshallese

Hi Gilgamesh,

Just came across your nice Marshallese phonology article. Good to have; I've wondered about this language for some time. However, it, and the IPAc-mh templates you've set up, present the phonetic difference between p and b as one of primary articulation, whereas the refs seem pretty clear it's a matter of secondary articulation. Is there any RS for the phonetic details? Or do the advanced and retracted diacritics maybe need to be replaced with ATR and RTR diacritics? — kwami (talk) 01:28, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

See "Practical Marshallese", which describes it better than any resource I've found. Voice is not phonemic, and habits can vary between speech, song, chanting, etc. But in common speech practice, obstruents are voiceless at the beginnings and ends of words and when geminated, and voiced word-internally. The distinction between "p" and "b" in orthography is purely one of appearance, and the insistence of phonemic voice in all positions is apocryphal. Also, "Practical Marshallese" specifically describes the tongue root being relatively advanced and retracted, which is verified by listening to spoken Marshallese. For vowels, the most descriptive resource is at the Marshallese-English Online Dictionary, on the page describing the sounds of Marshallese — the page uses IPA symbols. I cannot ascertain why that source and "A Brief Introduction to Marshallese Phonology" differ on the vowel heights of the allophones, but I also noticed that the latter source's word examples actually inappropriately blur the mid-open and mid-close vowels as phonemically transcribed in the dictionary. However, I have no reason to believe that Brief Introduction's description of phonotactics laws is apocryphal, as it is very specific on the details.

I mean, Marshallese is not an endangered language and it has vigorous use, but it has the disadvantage of being scarce on the Internet (many Marshallese people have more immediate poverty-associated concerns), and of accredited linguistics materials being sparse especially online. And the MED is also the only complete Marshallese dictionary in existence. But on a strictly personal note, the language is rather important to me, since I grew up in the Marshall Islands. I never learned much of the language, but I respect it, and it deserves better treatment on Wikipedia and Wiktionary than it currently gets.

By the way, I've also been expanding Marshallese entries at Wiktionary, and in porting the pronunciation templates, I greatly streamlined them. I'm thinking of revising the template code here to match, which will take significantly less work than it did to deploy at Wiktionary. The current problem with the templates here is that the phonemic and articulate templates use different and mutually incompatible code formats. The one I ported to Wiktionary uses the same code format for both systems. I know it would ultimately be neater to use a single phonetic transcription, but Marshallese has an unusual vertical vowel system and an orthography that does not line up with it, and it's as important to understand the morphophonemic structure of a word as it is to understand how it's articulated to Western ears. - Gilgamesh (talk) 02:24, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so it is ±ATR then. We can fix up the IPA for that. That was my main concern. (The 'more rounded' diacritic is also a bit odd, since [ʷ] is the standard way of transcribing that.) — kwami (talk) 02:32, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

That was for brevity. In the articulate transcription, the vowels already provide cues of how the consonants are pronounced. Using superscript secondary articulations like [ʲˠʷ] actually made it harder to read. - Gilgamesh (talk) 03:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I can see that. But it's going to make it very obscure for most readers. Esp. if the rounding diacritic looks like the RTR diacritic at the reader's screen resolution. — kwami (talk) 03:09, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I tried some adjustments on c-mh. (Since it's centralized, it will be easy to revert any mistakes.) First, the ±ATR diacritics are ◌̘ and ◌̙. (What you had were advance vs retracted, which are modifications of the primary articulation. [p̠] would presumably be labiodental.) But ◌̘ and ◌̙ can be difficult to distinguish, and PM suggests that it's a contrast between neutral vs. RTR, so that's how I put it. (Perhaps they shouldn't be on the velars, and maybe there should be a plus on the /rʲ/, but that's minor.) ~~Also, I didn't understand what you meant with the 'more rounded' diacritic; AFAICT, [ʷ] captures what PM describes.~~ And the short sign on the glides: they're already short, so I didn't get that either. For the high values [j ɰ w], maybe we should have [i̯ ɯ̯ u̯], by analogy with the other heights? — kwami (talk) 03:07, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah, the dictionary also says "The term LIGHT is used to describe consonants that are pronounced with the body of the tongue in an "at rest" position for such consonants; the term HEAVY is used for consonants that have the back of the tongue raised (velarized) and the root of the tongue retracted (pharyngealized) so as to elongate the oral cavity, thereby giving the consonant a "heavier" or "darker" sound", suggesting it is RTR which is distinctive. — kwami (talk) 03:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Hm, it the article, you have some phonemic non-syllabic vowels, sometimes between consonants. It that an oversight or typo? — kwami (talk) 03:39, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, in analogy to IPA transcription of Romanian phonology, it only seemed logical to use [j ɰ w] instead of [i̯ ɯ̯ u̯], since they are equivalent. In fact, see the corresponding table on Wiktionary, where the unified template code format is described in detail. I realized that [ʕ] (as an approximant) is equivalent to [ɑ̯] too. (I use [j̆ ɰ̆ w̆] as the heightless phonemes, though I still wonder whether [ɦʲ ɦˠ ɦˠʷ] would be more appropriate.) Since I want to overhaul the template system here to be unified like on Wiktionary, perhaps we can see what we can do to fix that first? Are you on Wiktionary?

The asyllabic vowels between the approximants is not a typo. The first vowel in io̧kwe /j̆ɨ̯j̆akʷɜj̆/ [jæɒɡɔɛɛ̯] is asyllabic, but has a close vowel height, not an open one we would expect from eo̧kwe /j̆akʷɜj̆/ [æ̯æɒɡɔɛɛ̯]. - Gilgamesh (talk) 05:25, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

By the way, it's redundant to labialize labial consonants. To velarize them gives them a labiovelar flavor, which already rounds them. Also, the plain approximant phonemes are heightless, and the standard approximant symbols [j ɰ w] are strictly equivalent to semivowels at close height [i̯ ɯ̯ u̯]. Unfortunately, I haven't thought of an adequate way to transcribe heightless approximants. What do you think: [j̆ ɰ̆ w̆] or [ɦʲ ɦˠ ɦˠʷ]? I considered [ɦ] because it has no place of articulation by itself, and whereas the plain approximant symbols are specifically close height, the palatalization/velarization/labialization superscripts do not specify vowel height. [j̆ ɰ̆ w̆] is very ad hoc, and I only later realized that using the breve diacritic will make many people believe they are flaps, not approximants. - Gilgamesh (talk) 12:14, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Re: PTSD article edit - addition of "sortable" parameter to table...

Thanks! Very nice addition - aside from the increase in presentation possibilities this edit engenders, the increase in the interactivity of the table is VERY cool. Much appreciated. Tom Cloyd (talk) 17:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

File:Wikipedia xenogears kislev.png listed for deletion

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File:Wikipedia xenogears nisan.png listed for deletion

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File:Wikipedia xenogears yggdrasil.png listed for deletion

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File:Wikipedia xenogears ethos.png listed for deletion

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No contest, as creator. - Gilgamesh (talk) 23:43, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:Volcanoes of Zimbabwe

Category:Volcanoes of Zimbabwe, which you created, has been nominated for discussion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. Babakathy (talk) 11:16, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Sema:'

Template:Sema:' has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Transliteration of Arabic

I'm puzzled by your recent edit to Arabic grammar in which you replaced the modifier letter left and right half rings, transliteration for the hamza and ʿayn, with left and right single quotes as a more scientifically accurate transliteration. But the half rings are correct for DIN and apostrophes for ALA-LC, and it's DIN that's used in the article, so why change transliteration to apostrophes? — Eru·tuon 03:16, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I was mainly correcting the letters rather than the half rings. But I thought the half rings vs. apostrophes were mainly a matter of taste. Half rings don't display well in a lot of fonts at smaller sizes, even those that actually support the glyphs. The apostrophes I used (which are specifically the apostrophe letter code points and not the punctuation code points) display better. Really, I thought they were interchangeable with the half rings. - Gilgamesh (talk) 04:05, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, I guess in actual Wikipedia practice the apostrophes and half-rings are interchangeable, so it doesn't really matter which is used. But I was puzzled mainly because I only noticed the half ring → apostrophe change and nothing else, so I assumed that was the change to "scientific transliteration" that you meant. If changing letters was your transliteration correction and the apostrophe change was an addition, the confusion is cleared away. — Eru·tuon 15:24, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I changed quite a lot of letters. ð -> ḏ. ð̣ -> ẓ. j -> ǧ. x -> ḫ. θ -> ṯ. Stuff like that. - Gilgamesh (talk) 06:05, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

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Modern Hebrew verb conjugation (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)

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Inclusion or exclusion of ancient languages in phonetics articles

Given your interest in historical phonology, I wonder if you would be able to contribute a perspective (whether it agrees with mine or not) to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Linguistics#Dead_languages_in_phone_tables. It's not very productive to have so few participants in a discussion, and I'm sure I'm missing part of the perspective that you may possess. Cheers, Wareh (talk) 20:34, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

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Ichthus: January 2012

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January 2012

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AfD for Chronology_of_diplomatic_recognitions_and_relations_of_South_Sudan

You participated in a related discussion before. The current one is here. Japinderum (talk) 11:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

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Marshallese phonology

Hi Gilgamesh. I came across your article on Marshallese phonology and I have some concerns about possible OR in the article. See the talk-page comments. I gather you know a good deal about this language; but the analyses presented are very unusual from a cross-linguistic perspective, and I'd like to see sources that back this up. Otherwise we are clearly venturing into OR territory. As for the approximants, IMO you should just use /j/ /w/ /ɰ/ unless you find good sources that suggest otherwise. It is extremely hard to read the transcriptions you present with the strange /ɦʲ/ and such forms, and your narrow transcription needs to correspond to what is actually spoken -- if a long vowel appears on the surface, the transcription needs to include that. If you need to present three separate levels (deep analysis, less deep analysis, surface analysis), then by all means do that. Benwing (talk) 22:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

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Shinar

In the Shinar article, you recently changed the single left-quote mark to a single straight-quote mark in the transliteration of the name (Šin`ar »» Šin'ar). I have been mulling the change in my head for several days. It does not sit well with me as the single left-quote is often used for ע while the single straight-quote is often used for א, and there are still people who make a distinction between the two. Would the use of Šinˁar work with you, or would you have issues with that as well? The use of the pharyngeal ˁ mark would seem to be the best choice as it is frequently employed in ANE and Semitics journals. Your thoughts??? — al-Shimoni (talk) 00:07, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

The standard convention is ʼ for aleph/glottal stop, and ʻ for ayin/pharyngeal fricative. There are special dedicated Unicode characters for these. Though, as I understand, they may not display very distinctly in certain fonts at certain small sizes (including Tahoma). Try zooming in on your browser with Ctrl + until they are large enough to tell apart. But the answer to that is fixing the site, not fixing the Unicode. Me, I use custom user stylesheets. - Gilgamesh (talk) 07:39, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I see now that it's an okina. Zoomed it until I could see the curve, but still wasn't certain, so stuck it through a string-to-hex converter. :P Thanks for the clarification. I'm using whatever the default font for the Vector skin is (although I made a custom CSS file to go with Vector, I didn't override the font). — al-Shimoni (talk) 08:20, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I tend to use a list of fonts that attempt display for each letter. Palatino Linotype is my favorite, but it doesn't have those two letters. Times New Roman does though (and distinguishes them very clearly), and it's further down the list. - Gilgamesh (talk) 09:20, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

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