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Welcome to Wikipedia!

Hello Joziboy/Archive 1, welcome to Wikipedia!

I noticed nobody had said hi yet... Hi!

If you feel a change is needed, feel free to make it yourself! Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone (yourself included) can edit any article by following the Edit this page link. Wikipedia convention is to be bold and not be afraid of making mistakes. If you're not sure how editing works, have a look at How to edit a page, or try out the Sandbox to test your editing skills.

You might like some of these links and tips:

If, for some reason, you are unable to fix a problem yourself, feel free to ask someone else to do it. If you are stuck, and looking for help, please come to the Wikipedia Boot Camp, where experienced Wikipedians can answer any queries you have! Or, you can just type {{helpme}} on your user page, and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Wikipedia has a vibrant community of contributors who have a wide range of skills and specialties, and many of them would be glad to help. As well as the wiki community pages there are IRC Channels, where you are more than welcome to ask for assistance.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on my talk page. Thanks and happy editing, --Alf melmac 10:51, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Zulu

Welcome to Wikipedia! I've fixed the image syntax at Zulu language for you. Also, judging from your contributions I thought you might be interested in the Africa-related regional notice board or in WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias. If you have any questions, feel free to ask on my talk page. Happy editing! — mark ✎ 15:27, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

RE: Zulu

Thanks Mark :) Those links look really interesting - I'm definitely gonna look into them. And thanks for fixing the link. I'm really not very good with computers, should really work on that :) Al

Languages of South Africa

Hi, Al, I creade a proper template to implement that table and then I manually included it on several articles. I've seen you did it by yourself, but I allowed myself to fix your mistakes (the table should be stored just in Template:Languages of South Africa, and then included in every single language article by the {{Languages of South Africa}} syntax). Now it works good, feel free to make any correction and, if you need more information, quite use my talkpage. Ciao! --Angelo 15:48, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Rand

Just a quick note: I responded to your query on my talk page. Cheers, — mark ✎ 15:42, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

List of Zulu first names

List of Zulu first names has been proposed for deletion. An editor felt this list was unencyclopedic. Please review WP:NOT for some general guidelines. If you believe this topic does meet Wikipedia standards for inclusion, please explain your reasoning on the talk page or improve the article to make that more clear and remove the prod notice.

If no one objects to the deletion within five days by removing the prod notice, the article may be deleted without further discussion. NickelShoe 06:15, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not the one who proposed it for deletion. I just saw it was up for deletion and dropped you a note. I went ahead and removed the prod notice for you. NickelShoe 15:00, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah okay, thanks :) Does removing the prod mean it's not up for deletion anymore? Joziboy 26 Feb 2006, 15;12 UTC

Yup. But someone could still send it to AfD if they were concerned. NickelShoe 15:15, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Zulu

I have created Template:User zu-2, Category:User zu and Category:User zu-2, would you be so kind as to edit the main one to translate it and the category templates so that the Zulu equivalent of "this user is able to.." is in the top half of the template, I'm sure you'll see what I mean. --Alf melmac 12:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Muti

Cheers. I remember hearing the etymology was from tree (bark) specifically because of the use of tree bark in traditional medicines. But that might be a back-construction... And thanks for weighing in on the African language names stuff. That one will take a bit more wrangling before it comes down anywhere, I imagine! If you have egs of usage in SA English (or other African Englishes), pls feel free to add them at User:JackyR/African language names - current usage. What I really need is the Oxford Dic of SA English, but of course it's not big here (=UK)!

Meanwhile, enjoy my beloved Edinburgh (cold notwithstanding)! Are the daffs out on the castle mound, yet? JackyR 17:33, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I dunno - it's too cold to leave the flat! :) Are you from Edinburgh? I have the Oxford Dic of SA English, so feel free to ask if you want me to check stuff. Not really sure how that table works on African languages... Joziboy 22:55, 26 Feb 2006 UTC

From Edinburgh in spirit only, alas. The Edinburgh branches of the family died out a while back, and I only lived there for a year while studying. But I fell in love with the place - ice inside the windows and all - and am kinda sad that life has conspired to keep me elsewhere. It's surely one of the world's great city's (along with Cape Town, of course!), and even now I get off a long-distance coach/train for a rare visit and find myself looking round my feet for my shopping - surely I'd just popped out for a few groceries!
But to business. What I'd really, really like is someone to trawl the ODSAE for its usage of African language names. (Obviously the date of your edition would be relevant.) User:ZyXoas points out that it contains, for instance, "isiZulu" - but he is in SA and has poor internet access. I'm cruising to have the ODSAE usages entered in my horrid table. If you can't cope with the vile wiki-markup, just dump all the material here, and I'll feed it in. The point of the exercise is to try to demonstrate to all of us, internationally, the variety and approx distrib of usages. JackyR 04:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah it's a fantastic place. By the end of every summer I'm ready to live here, and by February I'm always ready to buy myself a flight home and drop out! :) Right, well regarding languages, my OED calls them isiZulu, isiXhosa and isiNdebele (in fact, it says Zulu is 'another term for isiZulu').It calls Swahili Swahili, calls Swazi siSwati, Herero Herero, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, says Tswana is 'another term for Setswana, Sepedi is 'the core dialect of Sesotho sa Leboa ', and calls Sesotho Sesotho, and Shona Shona. It's the 2002 edition of the Oxford Dic of SA English. Hope that helps! Can't remember which other languages are on your list - I'll have a look. Joziboy 27 Feb 2006, 20:07 UTC

Yup, Chichewa, 'another term for Nyanja(the language)', it doesn't have Rundi, Kirundi, Nyoro or Gikuyu, it calls Kikongo Kikongo, and Luganda and it calls Ndonga Ovambo (It says Owambo is a variant spelling of Ovambo). Joziboy 27 Feb 2006, 20:25 UTC

What a hero are you?! Thank you, thank you! I'll throw that lot in shortly... Keep warm, now! :-) JackyR 01:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar

For your excellent work in articles pertaining to South Africa, wizzy awards you The Barnstar of National Merit. Good work! Wizzy…☎ 06:30, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Help has arrived

You wanted some help, here I am! How can I help you? You can ask your questions right here, and I will respond.--Commander Keane 22:48, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Wahey! Thanks :) How do I search for templates? I can't seem to do it the normal way, and there's one which I can help edit (it says 'incomplete' on it) but I don't know how to access it. Joziboy 22:50, 1 March 2006 UTC

Commander Keane was looking at the same time as me :) I normally just search on Google for Wikipedia, Template, and then words that are in the template... looking on Google seems to go faster than searching through Wikipedia itself, for me at least. You might be looking for the one at Template:incomplete, which can be used by placing {{incomplete}} in an article. To see what a template called ??? looks like before using it, simply go to the article called "Template:???". --Atari2600tim (talk • contribs) 22:56, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

You can search for templates the usual way, using the search bar (as long as Templates is ticked in the Search section in Special:Preferences).
If you see a template on a page and you want to edit it, the way to find it is open the page in the edit window. Then look for something within curly brackets. That's the template.
For example: the page Plane. You want to edit the template at the bottom that says "This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles...". Open Plane in the edit window. At the bottom you will see {{disambig}} - that's the template. To edit the template you go to Template:disambig (or type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:disambig into your browser).--Commander Keane 23:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

"help me" thing

Hi there, I was looking at the help me category after I noticed someone else using it, and I see that you added a help me tag onto your own page. I don't know if I'll be able to help or not, but can try... What do you need help with? --Atari2600tim (talk • contribs) 22:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. It's just the template thing - you know how I can find them to edit? I'm probably being really dumb, but I can't figure it out! Joziboy 1 March 2006, 22:56 UTC

We seem to have all responded at the same time. If you want to use a template but modify it without changing the original template (for example if you want to use slightly different wording), then you can either go to the template's page at Template:incomplete and click edit, and copy from there, or else you can include it into the target page by doing {{subst:incomplete}} and I think that will automatically copy the code into the page, and then next time you see it it will show the actual text stuff in the target place, where you can edit it. {{incomplete}} and {{subst:incomplete}} are different because the first one will make it always retrieve the template whenever you look at the page, but the second one will substitute it in, and not change when the template changes. --Atari2600tim (talk • contribs) 23:02, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks so much for the help guys :) Think I've got it now. You're great, thanks! Joziboy 1 March 2006, 23:08 UTC

Region

Hi there

I saw what you did for Cresta, Gauteng being region 4 - but I can't figure out how to do that same with Darrenwood. Can you help?

Thanks ThirteenthGreg 18:07, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks for you comment. I tried the curly-bracketed region 4 tag but that just showed the table without Darrenwood appearing in the listing. Whatever you did to get it in the table-listing does work ... so thanks. ThirteenthGreg 14:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Re: Hi!

Hey, good to meet a fellow Joburger, and congrats on getting into Edinburgh University, that's not bad at all. I went to St. John's College, and I'm now studying IR and Politics at Wits University. What school did you go to? And yeah, Wikipedia is rather addictive, though I'm a slower editor than I used to be, thanks to the demands of varsity. I don't understand how some editors find the time to make thousands of edits a month. :P — Impi 20:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Cool, Crawford's a decent school, and no doubt it was a bonus to be able to wear jeans instead of an English public-school style uniform. The degree at Wits is not bad, though nothing spectacular unfortunately. While most of the staff are knowledgeable and friendly, some come up somewhat short. For example, it's not exactly a good thing when as a first year student I had to correct errors made by my Strategic Studies lecturer. Some were really basic, like saying SA was getting four submarines, instead of the three we're actually buying, but others were worse, such as his claim that Bin Laden was a US agent, which he retracted after I called him on it. Small errors, perhaps, but it's unprofessional. But yeah, the IR dept's outlook is decidedly more Afro-centric than it used to be, which makes sense, and yet they've still managed to not ignore the wider world in the process. That said, a problem that does crop up from time to time is a reluctance to cast a critical enough eye on Africa's problems. Much of academia is still stuck on the premise that Africa's doing nothing wrong, and that it's just getting the short end of the stick, which doesn't really help much. Ah well. As for Zulu, I've tried it, and I suck at it. :) Cheers, — Impi 14:29, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Back to the ODSAE

No, not for language names this time. Am I wrong, or is an outdoor water heater - you know, an oil drum over an enclosed wood fire - called a donkey boiler? My UK dic doesn't have it at all, and online dics just give me the US def of a ship's boiler. So I come to my wise one... :-) JackyR 01:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Haha, yeah I have to confess I've never heard that term before, but you're right. ODSAE says donkey boiler: a device for heating domestic water consisting of a metal drum under which a fire is lit, typically used in areas with no mains electricity. It doesn't have the usual S African though, so maybe it's used elsewhere too? Joziboy 9 March 2006, 22:29 (UTC)
Townie! ;-D That's great: I shall plug it in. First heard it from my British mother when in South Africa, so will have to ask her where she got it. Ireland's a possibility. JackyR 22:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Lol, we had power outages during thunderstorms! That's quasi-rural ;) So did you grow up in SA too? Joziboy 9 March 2006, 22:58 (UTC)

No, born in the UK. But the family I'm closest to are the South African crowd (my great-grandfather [1] emigrated from Scotland to teach music in the Cape, ending up Registrar at UCT), and I've lived or worked in several SADC countries. You know what it's like, you see more of an area you're new in than around where you grew up. I used to hitch down to South Africa with my laundry...
Btw, what does "lol" mean? (I'm old, I don't know much txt tlk!) JackyR 00:05, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you must be old, calling it 'the Cape' :D I know what you mean - both my brothers went to UCT and had never gone up Table Mountain till I went to stay with them and insisted. And I've never even been to Soweto! Don't they do laundry in other SADC countries? :) Lol stands for 'laugh out loud' :) Joziboy 10 March 2006, 09:55 (UTC)

Aaah! I've been wondering about lol for ages! Yeh, it's a case of who or what does the laundry - I only met one washing machine north of the Limpopo, and that was the sort of twin-tub my mother got rid of in 1973. There's just no tradition of buying them, as those who can afford a machine can afford a servant (and there's the issue of providing employment and all that). But you can get bored of washing sheets in a bucket... And on a related topic, here's the donkey boiler! JackyR 12:25, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Hehe, cool article. You even had a picture handy! :) Mmm seems driving to another country is slightly more of a schlepp than washing sheets in a bucket! Although I often met people shopping for groceries in Joburg who'd driven down from Harare Joziboy 10 March 2006, 19:58 (UTC)
Perhaps I was visiting my aunt as well as her washing machine... at least, that's what I tell myself... Yeah, the food bit is unsurprising. Too tragic even to contemplate at the moment. Last wk my Zim "sister" spent a day running round looking for drugs while my 20-mth-old niece couldn't breath (measles). Grim.JackyR 20:16, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Back to the... ODE

I've been keeping it a secret but... I now have my own! Oxford Dic of Eng, not Oxford Eng Dic, but hey, who has the shelf space for the latter? I won it in a newspaper crossword competition last year, but they were slow to deliver. Now, however, I can tell you that the Brit dic (2005) has not the slightest ref to isi-Anything. So clearly they're saying this is a difference between SaffAfrican and British Eng. I'm still working on that, btw, just v slowly right now... Hear you've had serious snow up there? JackyR 17:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Nor does it have "donkey boiler" - Joziboy scores again! JackyR 17:06, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Excellent :) I'm on a bit of a one-man mission to get people to recognise Saffa English as a distinct dialect (rather than just British versus American which most people seem to think are the only alternatives), so your little discovery has helped us both!
Yeah, snow was great! I still get very excited when that happens.. the whole novelty of European winters still hasn't worn off :) Joziboy 15 March 2006, 18:32 (UTC)

Map clones

Hello there JB! I noticed that you have uploaded this and this language map which are identical to this one contributed by myself. I was wondering, should they be "merged" somehow? Seeing as they are identical, and all... :v] //Big Adamsky 18:08, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

You know what though? I actually have no idea either what "image mergers" entail or even if they are feasible. I just made that up. *blush* I do know that articles are mergeable and I have become quite familiar with that procedure. //Big Adamsky 18:34, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Zulu

No need to say sorry, of course. Only after commenting there I followed your track, and when I saw your comment on Talk:Finnish language I already thought I'd probably given the issue too much weight. Hope you don't feel uneasy about it; please know that I respect your work. Congratulations on the barnstar, BTW, you earned it! Best wishes, — mark ✎ 20:05, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

== "to have" in isiZulu == This is almost like that theory from Amistad (?) that you can't say "it is mine" in Kiswahili. The verb "-ba" can either be transitive ("ukuba muhle" - to be well) or 'conjunctive' ("ukuba nendlu" - to have/be with a house). I speak Sesotho, btw, so I don't promise that my spelling is perfect. Another conjunctive verb would be "ukufana" ("ukufana nabantu" - to look/be like people). Reciprocal verbs (ending with "-ana") are conjunctive. "ukuthanda umfazi" (to love a woman), "ukuthandanomfazi" (to be mutually in love with a woman). If you ever need to know anything about Kintu linguistics feel free to ask me on my talk page. I would love to know where you got this "information" from... User:ZyXoas 09:21, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

To be or not to be - there is no question.

You meant there is no atomic way of saying is in the Kintu (Bantu) languages? There is definitely a way of saying "have"! In the Kintu langs "is" is expressed by using the concords (sorry, I can't remember their specific names at the moment). These books you've been reading, what names do they give to these highlighted formatives: "izinto ezinhle", "ilanga elihle", "imithi emihle"? User:ZyXoas 15:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

North-West (Province?)

Hello again JB. I see that you have moved "North-West Province" to just "North-West (a province)". Is that really the official name of the province, just North-West? Most internet sources (e.g. this one about heraldry and stuff) will include the word province as part of the title, presumably in order to avoid confusion with the ordinal point. Regards // Big Adamsky • BA's talk page 16:26, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

adj. != vb.

Well, at least the books you've been reading tell you what "concords" are... You seem to be confusing adjectives with relatives. I take it you're the guy who wrote that stuff about adjectives and verbs on Zulu_language? Note the difference in "imithi ebomvu" (?) and "imithi emikhulu" - different concords are used because the qualifiers are different parts of speech. Verbs use the relative concord when used in Relative_clauses.

Nah I didn't write the thing about adjectives morphologically being verbs... Thanks, I think I get the difference. So 'the big tree' would be imithi ekhulu and 'the tree is big' would be imithi emikhulu? Joziboy 23 March 2006, 16:46 (UTC)

In the same way that Waswahili speak Kiswahili and Vhavenda speak Tshivenda Bantu spoke Kintu. The word in isiZulu is "isintu" - culture of Kintu language speakers. User:ZyXoas 16:52, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

== "wow! what a big tree you have!" == Please don't let me confuse you. khulu is an adjective while bomvu is a relative. My isiZulu grammar is not perfect so I'm not exactly sure how you would say those 2 phrases, the qualifiers that changed were the describing words - I didn't mean the noun changed. The adjective concord is used with a limited number of qualifiers (see my comment on Talk:Closed-class_word). Please respond on my talk page. User:ZyXoas 17:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Confusion

For a thorough but complicated intro to isiZulu grammar try Doke's Text Book of Zulu Grammar. I haven't read the book but if it's anything like Textbook of Southern Sotho Grammar then it will be a great investment. Don't believe him when he says that isiZulu has 9 tones, however... Sorry for seeming a bit harsh - it's just been a frustrating day. I use my cellphone out of necessity since it's the only internet connection I have. Don't be afraid to ask me any more q's you have User:ZyXoas 18:15, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Anon Zulu edits

Hey JB; you seem to be knowledgeable on Zulu... Could you please check the recent changes 80.218.13.118 (talk · contribs) has made to both Zulu and Zulu language? I wish I knew enough to actually judge whether they are correct or not. Thanks, dewet|™ 09:18, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation

I have noticed you have been very active moving a lot of South African articles around. I would ask you in the future to be more careful, as your changes to the South African provincial articles' names have created a ton of re-directs. Páll (Die pienk olifant) 06:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

More context: a redirect is left at the old location of the moved article. If you need any useless redirects to be deleted, let me know, I can do it for you. — mark ✎ 11:20, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Hall_l.jpg

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Buddhism in SA

My pleasure. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that such an article already existed, I was anticipating having to create it. :-) Kind Regards, Elf-friend 13:07, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Judaism in SA

Hi there, I've set up a redirect from your request for Judaism in South Africa to South African Jews - there doesn't appear to be a standard for naming national Judaism articles, but SAJ seems to cover the relevant ground. Best wishes - Humansdorpie 12:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Exchange

Of course, ask me anything! Remembr that my isiZulu is not perfect, it's actually a bit worse than that of the average non-1st speaker from the "townships". Also, since you know my internet problem, then you'll understand why exchanging e-mails won't be trivial for me. I can "E-mail this user" but I'm still limited to 512 chars per message. As always, I'm more than willing to offer my help and advice to anyone who asks. Why can't we simply do it on our talk pages?

Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 16:28, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

IsiZulu user language categories/templates

The translations are pathetic. I can't fix them myself since it would be too much trouble. Shall I tell you what's wrong with them, exactly? Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 18:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC) "Ukuzijwaeza" ngani? Firstly, when translating you should be careful not to translate idioms litterally. So it should be "this person" not "this user" (think about it - what exactly are you "using"?). Also, "intermediate" does not mean "inside" but rather "okay-ish". If you're a 2nd language speaker then the African idiom would be you "know how to speak X" and native would be you "speak X" (1st lang and 2nd lang are both idioms). Shall we make the other categories, then? Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 19:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC)


Okay, tell me what the other levels are and I'll try to de-idiomise them (this is the reason why I hate translating...). Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 19:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Right. I remember translating those to Sesotho for Revolucion (I don't know why - the templates still don't exist). I'll need to think about these a bit. I'll get back to you on them. In the meanwhile I'm still available for any other questions you may have. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 20:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

List of Zulu names

Did you write this? You do know that "Thabo" is a Sesotho name, right? Thabile exists in Sesotho as a contraction of Rethabile (we are happy). IsiXhosa Thabani is from Sesotho Thabang. They all come from "ho thaba" (to be happy). Thabo is actually an archaic alternative to the noun lethabo (but there are a lot more people named Thabo than Lethabo). You knew that, right? To see how I dealt with language categories, go to the latest archive of Revolucion's talk page and read Sesotho userboxes. Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 12:47, 17 April 2006 (UTC)


Would I mind checking what? I didn't mean you should remove the names, just state that the actual words come from Sesotho. Have you checked Revolucion's talk archive yet? The thing I'm worried about the most is "nice-ish" (yes, I suck at translations). I might become an admin on the practically non-existent Sesotho Wikipedia very soon (maybe even by tomorrow), and I'll have to translate all the system messages by myself... st:User:Zyxoas Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 13:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)


Oops! Actually it's Sesotho Boxes on his current talk page... Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 14:23, 17 April 2006 (UTC)


There's an accent atop the second "o" (useless "Search" form! How are lay users expected to find anything?). Try using "What links here" from my user page. I'll look at the name list now, but I have to find it first... I'll try List of Zulu first names?... Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 16:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC)


I've left you a little present on the article's talk page... Zyxoas (talk to me - I'll listen) 18:47, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

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