User talk:MichaelGasser

Howdy

Just wanted to say "hi," I'd noticed your edits to various Ethiopia-related articles via my watchlist. Welcome and Happy New Year! -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:47, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Based on your expertise, I wonder if you want to have a look at the discussion at Talk:Semitic languages#Totally disputed? (Or not; it does seem like a potential hornet's nest.) -- Gyrofrog (talk) 22:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Replying on my talk page, like the way you did earlier, is fine with me. -- Gyrofrog (talk)

Personal welcome

Mike, A very hearty welcome from another IU person. It's great to see you aboard! If you have any questions or need any assistance of any kind, please feel free to drop me a note, or we could meet for lunch sometime here on campus. --Durin 15:41, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• As with anything, balance. I'd be happy to meet with you. This place is a fantastic resource, and despite criticisms does pretty well overall. This article from Nature magazine compares Wikipedia to Britannica, and Wikipedia does well. There are significant issues that face this project however. Some of them can be quite depressing. General advice; ignore the idiots as much as possible and press on with the work and knowledge you have.
• I don't believe we've ever met before...we might have, but I'm not sure. We definitely know each other through one handshake; I know Fred C., Raja S. (you know he's over at the B school now?), Devin M., Cathy R., etc. If memory serves, you were on Devin or Cathy's committee (or both)? --Durin 16:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Ethiopian transcription

Hi Mike,

I saw your question over at User talk:Mark Dingemanse and, since he appears to still be off the wiki attempting to recover from ArbCom madness, I thought I'd throw my two cents in. Are you thinking of adding the Ethiopian script into various articles, much like has been done with Arabic? See {{Arabic}} for a neat template encouraging people to add script. There doesn't really seem to be especially relevant existing page for suggesting this. I would suggest Wikipedia talk:Africa-related regional notice board, with a cross-referencing note at Talk:Ethiopia to catch those who don't watch the board.

If you are thinking of creating a Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Ethiopian) along the lines of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Arabic), you may want to draft something in a user subpage and then ask at the above places for initial comments before moving it into the project space as a proposal. If I've completely missed your meaning, please let me know. I have not been on the wiki nearly as frequently over the past little while so a response may not be prompt. Regards, BanyanTree 01:11, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. It was the second I was thinking of (though the first has also been in the back of my mind, and I think I may add a suggestion for that in the proposal since they're sort of related). I'll do what you suggested. -- MikeGasser (talk) 03:23, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I wrote several suggestions in the talk page of your Naming conventions proposal. I would be grateful if you could respond. yhever 13:08, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

You're doing great work

You are barely a month here, but our coverage of Ethiopian languages has already noticeably improved. For your great expansion of Tigrinya, your knowledgeable edits all over the Ethiopian language area, and your cooperative and friendly attitude I hereby present you with the Exceptional Newcomer Award. Keep up the good work! — mark ✎ 09:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks very much, Mark, and I'm glad to see you're back. -- MikeGasser (talk) 23:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Excellent Work!

I've only seen you contribute new information once (and that was just now to the Oromo language article), but it was a very substantial and informative contribution. Apparently this is an ongoing thing, which is even better. I hope you continue to help add to Ethiopia-related articles and bring them up to par!

Yom 18:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to thank you again for the very substantial additions you are making to Tigrinya. It really helps in showing the differences and similarities between Amharic and Tigrinya (e.g. k->x, keeping h, ayin, and differences in morphology). Unfortunately, there is no languages barnstar, so I have to give the following instead ;).

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		For your great contributions to Ethiopian languages (Tigrinya, Oromigna, and Sebat Bet Gurage in particular). Yom 05:31, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Yom 05:31, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Tigray people

There is a debate going on over at Talk:Tigray_people over the name to use for the article. It'd be great if you could participate to widen any consensus reached and increase the input(right now only Merhawie and I are engaged in it).

Yom 18:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Sebat Bet Gurage

I wrote a reply to your question on my talk page. I would like to discuss with you the proper way to split the articles on Gurage languages there. yhever 06:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Tigrinya

I have a couple questions about your additions at Tigrinya. Could you answer them at Talk:Tigrinya language? Thanks. :)

Yom 19:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Question

Do you think English would benifit from a spelling reform?Cameron Nedland 21:39, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Of course, and various people have tried to take this on (including George Bernard Shaw, whose proposal was a radical one). But it isn't easy, especially with a language like English that starts with multiple spelling traditions (Germanic, French). -- MikeG (talk) 20:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

We should keep the Latin Alphabet and I think a good reform would be Cut Spelling. That's just me.Cameron Nedland 21:26, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of this, but yeah, it looks very sensible. -- MikeG (talk) 22:46, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

You want to copy a user box of mine that says that we support spelling reform?Cameron Nedland 00:58, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't think I'd want to go that far. If I were going to add these kinds of things to my user page, there would be a lot of issues I'd want to put ahead of this one. English is doing pretty well, I'd say; as far as language goes, I'm more worried about the other ones (that is, the people who speak them and all the attendant disadvantages they face because of not knowing the language that dominates the internet). -- MikeG (talk) 19:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok.Cameron Nedland 00:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiproject Ethiopia

Wikipedia:Wikiproject Ethiopia is up now, and I know you'll be interested, especially in the transliteration system used. I know you're interested in this (I put up a link to your proposal), so maybe you should be the first to start up the discussion if no one else does (or if Mark doesn't beat you to it ;) ).

ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 04:12, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks for getting all this together. Yes, I'll start up the transliteration discussion. (I know yhever has pretty strong opinions on this; he'll definitely be involved too.) — MikeG (talk) 19:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Oops, can't believe I forgot about him. I need to let Yhever and Gringo300 know about this. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 19:58, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks good so far. I can't comment much right now, but I'll make some points in a few hours. One quick thing I noticed, though. Is the use of the preposition nǝ in Tigrinya to mark direct objects peculiar? I'm not sure if the D.O. has to be direct, but I know that lä is used similarly. Here's two examples (one from an old priest commenting on the Italians in the 20's [He died before the war even!] and the other from the bible - using Leslau & capital letters or ` for phrangeals):

Arwe baHr Sägur'ä gämäl yəh[H?]awəka lä hagär ma`əbäl ('The sea beast with hair like a camel will foment waves [of trouble] for the country' - lä hagär - Ge'ez doesn't have a definite marker AFAIK, but I could be wrong)

Bizuh[H?]an yəmäwə' [alif, not ayin]

wä kəll'ättu yəsädeduw[h?]omu lä'əlf ('The majority rulers, and two chase away them tens of thousands' - lä'əlf)

Just a point. I could be completely wrong on this. The foreign article thing is a good idea, but I think we should let the project get going just a little bit before we propose it. Right now it still hasn't gotten into full swing. We don't want to have to many things on our plate and get discouraged. A few focused items (e.g. Key articles) at first is probably best to maintain efficiency; otherwise, a WikiProject isn't much of a coordination mechanism if everyone does their own thing. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 18:19, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

(wrt to Ge'ez) Okay. Both of my examples could have slight errors because I don't know Ge'ez, and they were both transmitted to me through a person who doesn't speak Ge'ez (my father). In any case, was I understanding what you were trying to say about Tigrinya correctly? That it uses yä in the same way as above (it could be directly from it, I guess, given that l->y isn't all that uncommon - what would be the linguistic name for this shift?)? — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 04:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I thought your second Ge'ez example was convincing. Your first seemed like lä = 'for', so not really accusative (direct object). My point about Chaha was that it also uses a preposition for accusative which is the same preposition it uses for dative (indirect object). This is what Tigrinya does with nǝ. I don't think this is because Chaha yä is actually related to nǝ. I'm pretty sure Tigrinya nǝ is related to Amharic lä (which is clearly the same as Ge'ez lä), but of course Amharic only uses lä for the indirect object ('for' or 'to'). So what makes Tigrinya weird, in comparison to Amharic, is that you say things like nǝhayle ǝfält'o ǝyye, literally 'I know TO Hayle', which is exactly what you do in Spanish and Chaha (but with yä). So Tigrinya and Chaha ended up doing the same thing with historically unrelated prepositions; functionally they're the same. It seems like a really complicated story historically actually, but I don't know enough about it to tell the story. (And needless to say, the story doesn't belong in the "short" version of Tigrinya grammar :-) — MikeG (talk) 13:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Tigrinya

Sure, I'm glad to see it happen. You're really doing a great job on it. I wish I could help, but all I can really do is copy edit. I think Oromo language, Tigrinya language, and Amharic language should all be made key articles — just not one of the five central ones. I've been a little lazy regarding key articles, so I have to start analyzing and listing about 30 existing articles to focus on apart from the 5 main ones listed (whose discussion needs revival btw). Good job again on Tigrinya; I really think you can make it an FA in no time. It's very complete, needing only copy-edits and shortening of certain sections with appropriate splits for large enough sections. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 04:01, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Some cookies for your trouble and late nights on Wikipedia.

Wow! ጎበዝ! You're amazing, Mike. Tigrinya has to be by far the best covered African language now, thanks to you. Hopefully we can add some non-linguistic information to the main page to round it out and get it to GA and then FA status, but it'll need some work yet. Either way, here's a cookie. — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 03:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, ዮም. (I didn't know these cookies existed! It's nice to be appreciated.) Yes, the article needs to be rounded out and be more friendly to non-linguists. Some useful phrases would be nice too, like some other language pages have. For now, I'd like to work on Oromo for awhile and then expand some of the other Semitic languages a bit. — MikeG (talk) 17:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

linguist assistance

You are listed in the linguist by profession category. Would you please look at the discussion at Talk:Caron? It has been suggested that professional opinions are required to resolve the dispute there.

Sorry, no opinion at all on what this symbol is called (though it certainly is used a lot in the languages we work with over here in our neck of Wikiland). — MikeG (talk) 04:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Dance capitalization

I noticed that you listed yourself as a linguist. There is currently a dispute at the Lindy Hop article the Dance WikiProject about the capitalization of dances that could use the expertise of a linguist. If you think you might be able to help, we would certainly appreciate your comments. Thanks! --Cswrye 05:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, no clue about this (other than what I know as a native speaker/writer of English). -- MikeG (talk) 13:39, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

New category proposal

Hi Mike, have you had a glance at Aecis' proposal at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethiopia/Geography? -- llywrch 02:57, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the woredas have changed, & I'll admit that my information is not current; I'm aware of a few woredas having been recently split up, & others reassigned to new Zones. Because I don't have reliable information about these changes (my information appears to reflect the state of things circa 2000-2003), as well as evidence that the official sources contain mistakes about this level of administration, I'm just going with the information I have. I'm falling back on an old Wikipedia principle here: get the facts as close to the truth as you can, & hope that your mistakes provoke an expert into improving on them. (Hope the non-Wiki matters turn out well for you.) -- llywrch 19:28, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello

Thanks, those types of contributions are hard to assess when you don't know the language. Regarding your recent (2 weeks ago) additions to the Amharic language page, why did you simply put "berr" ("bärr") instead of "berrun/bärrun" in the phrase: lä’almaz bärr käffätku-llat (and the subsequent one). Also, what do you think about the use of "ʷ" (basically superscripted "w," but distinct) for Amharic words with that form, as opposed to simply using "w," which is phonetically correct, but not a strict transliteration? — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 05:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

berr: it sounded OK, but I'm not a native speaker of course: maybe berrun is better; please change it if you think so. As for "ʷ", I can't remember if we ever discussed that, but you're right; I think it's a better transliteration for the linguistic articles, especially when it comes to verbs where the three consonants in the root include kʷ, etc. — MikeG (talk) 22:50, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you're talking about opening a door for Almaz it would be correct, but I don't think it's right for opening the door. — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 05:33, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I checked with my mother and aunt, btw, and both agreed with me that "berrun" would be correct, but not simply "berr." Merry Christmas, by the way. — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 09:03, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

As usual, you're on top of everything Ethiopia-related! መልካም (የአውሮጳ) ገና! (BTW, are we ready to convert at least the vowels in the language articles to the Complex ones we agreed on?) — MikeG (talk) 15:02, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Silt'e language

I know it's an old edit, but I noticed something a wee bit fishy with it. The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region does not have a "Silt'e Zone". It does, however have a Silte woreda. Is it possible that this division is what the article is referring too? Or maybe the Gurage Zone, which includes Silte Woreda? Maybe User:Llywrch can help: he created almost single-handedly the article for all the current subdivisions of Ethiopia. Circeus 04:27, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's the relevant section from Sarah Vaughan's 2003 dissertation (University of Edinburgh), which I cited in the article:

After a brief foray up as far as the House of the Federation, the issue was referred back to the SNNPNRS government, and a complex procedure implemented to select representatives for a conference in Butajira in August 1997, to debate and make a decision on the issue. Following elaborate preparation by the ruling party, the ‘infamous’ Butajira conference declared that Silte were Gurage, a decision which horrified many:

It is not clear if that was the stand of the EPRDF but there was a lot of weeping in the rural areas after the decision. After Butajira the Silte party reconsidered its tactics and through contacts started to put pressure at the international level, in an attempt to get the federal government to pressure the region. (Interview zone cabinet member, Dalocha, 25 June 2002)

The tactics seemed to work, and in April 2000 the Federal House finally agreed to reconsider the case. Eventually it was agreed that the issue be resolved by referendum of the Silte weredas. The vote, held between 18 and 26 April 2001, was overwhelmingly for Silte autonomous administrative status. The zone was set up forthwith, and within a year, EPRDF had published in English a lengthy mea culpa, for the way in which it had attempted to frustrate the ‘will of the Silte people’, in its new magazine Tehadso.

She goes on from there to describe "the rhetoric of the new zone's administrators".

How recent are the maps you have the don't show the Silt'e Zone? This would have happened pretty recently. I know no more than what I read in Vaughan's dissertation, however. — MikeG (talk) 04:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea. It was just a weird byproduct of random wikisurfing and cross-referencing two completely different things. It hit me as odd because the Silt'e Zone article was a redlink and User:Llywrch, which I just mentioned before, has created articles down to the woreda level. Would you prefer I ask him myself? Circeus

I just pointed him to this discussion. Hopefully he can help. — MikeG (talk) 04:52, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Once upon a time, I thought adding articles about all of the Ethiopian sub-national units would be a fairly straightforward chore: find a reliable list of these units, some reliable statistics, hopefully a map or two & voila! Wikipedia would be one small step further from displaying a systemic Euro-American bias. However since starting on this project about a year ago, I've come to learn that it is a far more complex task.

In a nutshell, the first source that I would expect to be authoritative -- namely the Central Statistical Agency (Ethiopia) -- has a number of contradictions that I have been struggling with from the start. (Take a look at all of the edits I have had to make in the Zones & woredas of the Somali Region, for example.) So my strategy was from the beginning to "work to rule": reproduce the information that I could verify, & wait until someone who knew the information was wrong to appear & present the information I needed to do the job right -- then accept it with thanks & correct the articles.

I have tried to use UN documents to verify & imporve on my information, but sometimes these have introduced even more contradictions. About a month ago I learned of the existence of a number of local administrative maps on the Ethiopian Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Department, which have only given me more problems! Now, I know that it's not unusual for local administrative units to change their boundaries, absorb their neighbors or be divided -- but there seems to be no easily-accessible source that documents this. In a way, I'm not surprised: I have seen a number of reports about how the Ethiopian government is very understaffed, & the process of publishing documents about these administrative changes is obviously not high on their list of things to do, let alone translate these documents into English & put them on the Internet for me to find.

Also, I'm currently wrestling with the simple task of putting something, no matter how incorrect, up on Wikipedia in the hope that someone more knowledgable than me will come by & fix my mistakes. I had hoped when I started this mini-project that I could structure the information I had found, use a script to write 80-90% of the articles, then after only a little proof-editting upload them to Wikipedia; unfortunately, I have encountered many different complications, & doing the work by hand is about just as quick as automating the task & then revising the published information on Wikipedia. The strategy of contributing something to attract better contributors has worked in the past: my earlier clumsy work on Ethiopia has attracted a number of informed editors like Yom & MikeG (to name only two -- there are many more, some of whom have made their edits anonymously) who have added material I could never find or even think exist.

Anyway, that's the state of these articles. I hope it answers your questions -- & if you see things that need fixing about these articles please step in & fix them. I'm sorry for the length of this post -- especially on MikeG's Talk page, who has no responsibility for either these articles or my mistakes. This post would have been much shorter if I had more time. -- llywrch 06:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

So basically, it appears that Silte woreda became Silte Zone at some point after most data we currently are using, is that right? Circeus 06:03, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I was afraid that I said everything except answer your question. From what I've been able to puzzle out, several of the woredas of the Gurage Zone were split off to become the Silte Zone. When this happened, I haven't been able to find out -- nor do I have separate statistics for the Silte Zone. When I get the time, I'll try to add at least an ackowledgement that this division did happen. (Several other Zones were also split up along ethnic lines, & one woreda -- Basketto, IIRC, became a Special woreda, outside the Zonal system like the Yem or Konso woredass.) -- llywrch 21:32, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the explanation, Llywrch. In this case, yes, I think it might be good to go with what Vaughan says and assume there is now a Silt'e Zone. She seems to be a reliable source (is now a Fellow in Politics at the U of Edinburgh: [1]). Her dissertation is full of useful information about ethnic politics since the EPRDF took over; I just found the link to it again ([2]), added that to the reference in the Gurage article. — MikeG (talk) 14:19, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

RfC re Number of Speakers of the Tigrinya Language

I'd appreciate your input on the RfC re the number of Tigrinya speakers (the request as of 07:19, 1 March 2007), whatever it be. Thanks. Itayb 07:21, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Please help-Amharic language request

Hello! The Wikipedia:Graphic Lab is working on artwork related to Ethiopia, and we need some help to get the proper Amharic language text into the artwork. Please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Images_to_improve#Ethiopia_Scout_Association and see if you can help! Thanking you in advance, Chris 07:31, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

National Scout Association of Eritrea

Can you please help render "National Scout Association of Eritrea" and "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Tigrinya? Thanks! Chris 07:08, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Ethiopian Civil War

Hello, I saw you are a member of the Ethiopia WikiProject. When you get the chance, please improve Ethiopian Civil War as the article is a two sentence-stub. Thanks, Perspicacite 02:44, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Children's Museum backstage pass

The Children's Museum Backstage Pass! - You are invited!

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Your article has been moved to AfC space

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Your submission at Articles for creation

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Your help is needed in the creation of the Tigrinya phrasebook in Wikivoyage

Hi Mike. I noticed that you have extensive knowledge in the Tigrinya language. Please help write the Tigrinya phrasebook in Wikivoyage. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 14:02, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

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Contests

User:Dr. Blofeld has created Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/Contests. The idea is to run a series of contests/editathons focusing on each region of Africa. He has spoken to Wikimedia about it and $1000-1500 is possible for prize money. As someone who has previously expressed interest in African topics, would you be interested in contributing to one or assisting draw up core article/missing article lists? He says he's thinking of North Africa for an inaugural one in October. If interested please sign up in the participants section of the Contest page, thanks.♦ --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:33, 21 July 2016 (UTC)