User talk:Ish ishwar/2005talkpage

2005 archived talk page

Image:Barred lambda.png listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Barred lambda.png, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please look there to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in its not being deleted. Thank you. —MetsBot 18:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

• replaced with Image:Barred lambda.svg by User:Zippanova. – ishwar  (speak) 09:15, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Hawaiian Language is Important as Well

Please consider working with me to find a way to respect and represent both Remo and Hawaiian on Wikipedia. Kukini 20:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

hi. Hawaiian is represented with its own article: Hawaiian language. as it turns out, i mispelled this alternate name for the Remo language — i should have written Kukuini. so, this reference to Remo should be removed from that page. thanks for making me look again.

however, the word kukini is just a word in the Hawaiian (at least that is all that you have written). if so, then this page will probably be deleted soon because wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary. having a separate article on every single word in the Hawaiian language does not belong here. but, it does belong in Wiktionary the related dictionary project which is here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:02, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Good point. As "kukini" were a special category of people in ancient Hawaii, I will have to update that link soon. Best wishes in your work in here. Kukini 22:29, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Happy Crimbo!

Have a Proper and Merry Crimbo. File:Pressie.gif, in fact here is a pressie from the Doctor to you. Ho. Ho. Ho! File:Unclecrimbo.gif Dr. McCrimbo 22:40, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

hi. thanks. thanks also for introducing me to some new lingo. peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:44, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

hi i leave u a message here!

hi i leave u a message here! - CaptainUnderpants (talk · contribs)

hi. – ishwar  (speak) 22:17, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Pipil

Thanks for the note on the Pipil talk page -- if you can find a Pipil ethnography, please make the corrections. As I have no Spanish, I've been looking for one in English (at the university and public libraries) for most of the year. So far, no luck. Thank for your interest. WBardwin 04:50, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

hi.

i didnt mention it, but i was referring to the derivation of Pipil from the Nahua word meaning "nobility". i dont know if someone just made this guess up or if one of the sources used stated this. not knowing anything about Pipil peoples, i simply question the accuracy of the article overall. perhaps this is unwarranted. i just cant be sure.

the other reason that i have doubts is that in Campbell's grammar, he says that the interpretation of the primary sources is "not without complications". the article does not have any account of these different interpretations of Pipil scholars, so this furthers my distrust.

i expanded the biblio to include what Campbell says are the primary sources & the (major?) interpretations (at least until 1985). other works written in English may be further interpretations or just summaries of the previous research. Campbell has a short bit on ethnohistory (pp. 6-13) where he quotes some sections of the original sources (which are Torquemada, Oviedo, Ixtlilxochitl, Clavijero, and Fuentes y Guzmán).

i'll type up some of what Campbell says. peace – ishwar  (speak) 16:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Featured Picture

Your Featured picture candidate has been promoted Your nomination for featured picture status, Image:Langs N.Amer.png, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate another image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. ~~~~

Congratulations. This is indeed a wonderful map, and thank you very much for creating it for us. You truly deserve this barnstar.

I award you this Graphic designer's barnstar for your wonderful map.
Raven4x4x 07:09, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

hi.

thank you. it was my pleasure.

it is always nice to give indigenous languages more exposure. peace – ishwar  (speak) 09:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Category sorting

Hey, I see you're going through Category:Linguistics and re-categorising stuff, are you working off a plan, can I help? Good work btw, the category was becoming very cluttered, a lot of the articles need more specific sub-categories - FrancisTyers 17:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

hi. i have no plan. just was trying to organize things a little. i get tired of it quick, though. feel free to help out. peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:18, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

linguolabial image

Hi Ish,

Thanks for all the articulation images. One comment on one: linguolabials aren't pronounced by simply touching the tongue to the lips; rather, the tongue and lips meet halfway. The upper lip should descend past the bottom of the upper teeth and maybe curl inward slightly - at least, it should be in full contact with the teeth, without any gap.

kwami 20:09, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

hi. sure. thanks for the comment. i cant really remember a full description of these, but (i think) i remember the photos in L&M 1996 looking like what you write above. i will have to change it (one day). i snagged the images from

• Canepari, L. (2005). A handbook of phonetics. Lincom Europa.

without hardly any modification. it was just for a quick visual of an "exotic" sound. it could (& should) be better. – ishwar  (speak) 23:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Slavey language

Hi. I was wondering in the Slavey language article, you talk about the Bearlake, Hare, and Mountain dialects, which are all dialects of of North Slavey, and also "Slavey Proper" Is Slavey Proper the same as North Slavey, or South Slavey? Is any of this article about South Slavey? Just wondering. --Hottentot 21:50, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

hi. good question. Slavey is considered different things by different people.

• Keren Rice's usage: Slave = a language with 4 dialects, which are Slavey, Mountain, Hare, & Bearlake. So, Slave & Slavey are different things. However, this is only based upon a single criterion (i.e. how the initial consonant of stems are pronounced). The real situation is that every different town has a different dialect & it is a (misleading) simplification to put these into 4 groups. According to Rice, Slave is a dialect complex (that is, a more complicated dialect continuum); surrounding groups can understand each other, but groups that are farther away can't. (Slavey = Fort Liard, Fort Providence, Hay River, Kakisa, Jean Marie River, Trout Lake, Nahanni Butte, Fort Simpson, Wrigley; Mountain = Wrigley, Fort Norman; Bearlake = Fort Franklin; Hare = Fort Good Hope, Colville Lake) (Rice 1989:9).
• others consider these 4 "dialects" to be 4 different languages
• still others form 2 groups: (1) Slavey/Slave (proper) (or Southern Slavey/Slave), & (2) Northern Slavey/Slave = Mountain + Bearlake + Hare (this is Ethnologue 2005)

Belated Thank you

Yikes! I just realized I forgot to thank you for the Cherokee Phoenix barnstar you gave me a few weeks ago. You definitely deserve about twenty of them; I'm continually impressed with your depth of knowledge and incredible number of useful edits. Thanks for helping give NA languages more exposure on Wikipedia!

Take care --Whimemsz 04:51, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

hi. thanks to you for contributing. peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:14, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Question about Paiute-Shoshone

Hello, Ishwar,

I have not been in touch with this field for quite a while. In 1965 I was taught about 800 words of Northern Paiute by people living in what was then called Stillwater, the name used for the Fallon Indian Reservation.

I used a phonemic transcription devised by Sven Liljeblad, who was even then in his 60s, and was a professor of anthropology at the University of Idaho in Pocatello. He was a wonderful teacher and I liked him very much.

Sven Liljeblad spoke Bannock.

Would it be wise to have some of his transcription in the Northern Paiute article? Should there be some reference to his work, and that of other non-Native Americans who worked notably in Northern Paiute ethnography?

Also, I suppose you know Carobeth Laird's book The Chemehueve, with its rich glossary of vocabulary. When I started reading the words, I felt I was coming home--it was so like the Northern Paiute I learned in Nevada.

Best Regards, Arnold Perey --Samivel 22:56, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi.

It surely wont hurt to have more information on Northern Paiute, so including language information & expanding the bibliography would be good (which is hardly representative). Even if Liljeblad's orthography is not currently used by language users, information on his system will probably be helpful to anyone who wants to investigate previous research. I wonder if there is a bibliography on Numic languages anywhere on the internet. If not, I think a few references to Northern Paiute ethnography would be a nice addition to cyberspace.

I dont know about Laird's book. In fact, I know little about Uto-Aztecan - I've read just a little about its reduplication. My area of study is in Apachean linguistics.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

archiphonème

Bonjour, j'ai vu que vous avez ajouté une note sur l'archiphonème /Q/ en japonais. J'ai commencé un article fr:archiphonème. Peut-être pourrez vous m'éclairer au sujet de cet archiphonème. Y a t il une règle d'exclusion ? S'agit il bien de l'exclusion du /h/ ? Peut-être pourrez vous ajouter quelques exemples d'archiphonèmes, dans une des langues que vous connaissez (je n'en ai qu'un en anglais! une référence en sioux ou autre est la bienvenue) Peut-être pourrez-vous me conseiller pour la gestion des lettres non latines? Pour l'instant j'ai fait n'iporte quoi, je pense que beaucoup de gens ne peuvent pas lire mon article. Soyez indulgent, il s'agit de mon premier article. Merci ! PS : Quelle est votre langue natale ? WikiMoi 20:22, 4 November 2005 (UTC) édité WikiMoi 10:24, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

bonjour.

my native language is English. i havent formally studied French and the little i know is not very good. please forgive me for responding to you in English.

it is good that you have created an article on archiphonème. the English wikipedia does not have an article on this topic at this time. i did, however, write a section in the phoneme article here (which is here: Phoneme#Neutralization, archiphoneme, underspecification). there are a few examples there. if you want to have more examples you can add something from languages with vowel harmony (such as Turkish, Yawelmani, etc.). vowel harmony examples from an American language are here: Yawelmani language#vowel harmony.

Japanese /Q/ is an underspecified moraic obstruent. It only occurs before other obstruents; it doesnt occur before nasals or vowels. it assimilates completely to the manner & place of the following obstruent. so, Q+p = pp, Q+s = ss, Q+k = kk. These geminate stops, such as kk (Q+k) are phonetically long consonants, i.e. [kː] in which the closure lasts for one mora; the same is true with the fricatives, ss = [sː] (Q+s). Q + affricates are realized as a long stop closure followed a fricative release: Q+t+j = [cːɕ]] (t+j = [cɕ]). in native vocabulary Q does not occur before voiced obstruents. in borrowed words (mostly from English), some have claimed that the geminates are devoiced (Q+b = bb → pp), but i have read one phonetician that says that they remained voiced. you can see examples here: Japanese phonology#moraic obstruent.

concerning non-Latin letters, I see only Russian there, which I dont know anything about. so maybe I am not much help.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 21:31, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Fonts

Hi Ishwar, I noticed you used certain fonts (Lucida Grande, Gentium, Doulos SIL, Code2000, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode) on the phoneme tables on the Tonkawa language page. Is there a reason you used these instead of Template:IPA? Is the IPA template not sufficient? Just wondering.  –Benjamin  (talk)  03:05, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

hi.

i did this so i could paste the font info once, rather than typing/pasting the template 20-50 times. this also makes it easier to read when i'm editing. as i understand it, the difference between what i do & the template is that font declaration will force all browsers to use these fonts while the template only affects Internet Explorer.

i do it just to make my life easier. peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:08, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Mandan

HI! Mark Dingemanse gave me you name as someone who might be able to give me some information on the language of the Mandan people of North Dakota. I have put together an article on them but I was only able to find a few details which I of course included on their page. Might you be able to provide me with some details or possibly a source where I may be able to locate some more details? Thanks! *Exeunt* Ganymead ^Dialogue? 14:04, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

hi. ok. i'll make a biblio. peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:38, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

The addition is brilliant! I'm deeply indebted to you. If I may help you in any way, please do not hesitate to ask. Thanks again! *Exeunt* Ganymead ^Dialogue? 01:56, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

In recognition of your work on the Mandan and your marvelous work on a host of other Native American languages I have created the The Cherokee Phœnix Award.

The Cherokee Phœnix Award for excellence in articles relating to Native American Linguistics. Presented by Ganymead.

Congratulations! *Exeunt* Ganymead ^Dialogue? 18:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

thank you – ishwar  (speak) 19:36, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

One question, you make reference to a Hayden recording the name Mi-ah´ta-nēs in 1862, who is the Hayden you are referring to? *Exeunt* Ganymead ^Dialogue? 20:40, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

i'll look it up. – ishwar  (speak) 01:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

quotes

Hi, I was looking at the quotes section on your user page, and I apologize for my ignorance, but who was c̓acmacút? Also, who's Joshua Fishman? Thanks. --Hottentot

hi. no apology needed: its not exactly common knowledge.

c̓acmacút was one of last Klallam speakers. he passed away a few years ago. there are still a few speakers left, but they are all elders (like 70+ yrs old). fortunately, a high school in Washington is teaching Klallam, so some young people can have access to their ancestors' language. the quote is from c̓acmacút's telling of the Klallam Flood Story. you can hear him say it & read the transcription here:

~montler/Klallam/Flood/index.htm.

(this site also has a picture of him.) the main page of this site is here:

www.ling.unt.edu/~montler/Klallam

Joshua Fishman is a linguist that writes on sociolinguistics, language & culture, language endangerment, and other things. His website is here:

suse-www.stanford.edu/~joshuaafishman.

The quote is from this:

• Fishman, Joshua. (2000). Reversing language shift: RLS theory and practice revisited. In Gloria Kindell & M. Paul Lewis (Eds.), Assessing ethnolinguistic vitality: Theory and practice (pp. 1-25). Dallas, SIL International.

I first saw the quote in an online article:

From Endangered to Less Endangered: Case Histories from Brazil and Papua New Guinea.

enjoy! – ishwar  (speak) 05:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey, thanks! Those links were very interesting. --Hottentot

sure. glad you liked em. peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:37, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Ao language, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Siouan and Catawban languages

I'm confused by the red patch around Virginia at Image:Siouan langs.png. Aren't those Catawban languages? Image:Siouan-Catawban langs.png has a couple of little flecks in North Carolina extra, but isn't the big fleck in Virginia Catawban too? --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 12:13, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

the big patch in Virginia on the Siouan map is the language Tutelo-Saponi. On the Catawban map, the fleck closest to the coast is Woccon, the other is Catawba. the language border on these maps is following Ives Goddard's (1996) map that is in the back cover of the Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 17: "Languages", I. Goddard, editor) (it was also printed as a giant wall-size in 1999)

i do realize that if you are looking in Marianne Mithun's (1999) survey or any other work that has maps based on Harold Driver's map from the late 1950s-early 1960s, then Catawba appears in much larger area (all the way to the coast) and Woccon is not separated from it. in general the Goddard map appears to be more accurate. so because of this and it being 40 years more recent, i have chosen to use Goddard for these languages on my map. however, it wouldnt hurt to see what the volume 14 ("Southeast") of the Handbook has under these languages.

thanks for double checking. – ishwar  (speak) 15:52, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

oh, if you are interested, i have scanned sections of Goddard's map which i could email you. it really is a nice map. peace – ishwar  (speak) 15:55, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

deepskyblue & lightblue

Hi, I was wondering in what cases one should use deepskyblue as the color for the infobox on a Native American language article as opposed to lightblue. There's no info about it in WikiProject Languages#Colors in the infoboxes --Hottentot

hi. there are 3 colors. the Nadene family is deepskyblue. Nadene = Tlingit + Eyak + Athabascan (Navajo is under Athabascan, southern branch).

Eskimo family is lightcyan. and all of the rest are lightblue. actually, these are the colors after i changed them. before my change, there was a 3-way division of

• Eskimo
• Tupian
• all others

it was peculiar to bring Tupian out and not have a separate color for Nadene. the 3-way division as it is now is following the 3 wave theory. i dont really want to imply that i support this theory, but thats the way it is now. having 100-300 or so different colors for all the other families is probably too much. peace – ishwar  (speak) 04:42, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Language Death and Linguicide

A few months ago you proposed that these two articles be merged. Since no-one objected I had a go. I put the result at Talk:Language death/Temp and I'd be grateful if you'd have a look to make sure I haven't completely butchered two articles before I actually put it live (as t'were.) --Cherry blossom tree 23:37, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

ok. peace – ishwar  (speak) 04:25, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the redirects!

I was going to create redirects for Höðr but now I see that you've beaten me to it. Thank you! :) - Haukur Þorgeirsson 11:56, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

sure. – ishwar  (speak) 22:42, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Re:Funny pic

salaam. thank you for the funny picture. peace – ishwar  (speak) 02:37, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

That was the most relevant barnstar I could get. you've been here for a long time helping in linguistics topics and thought you've not seen a barnstar before (for your achievements) -- Cheers ;) Svest 02:48, 16 October 2005 (UTC)  Wiki me up™

thanks again – ishwar  (speak) 03:27, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi, again...

About two months ago I came across your user page via the native american language pages, which led me to go read about Klallam, I spent a few days listening to speakers reading and looking at the phonology. It was most interesting. Today I happened to be browsing de:Kategorie:User de-0 and clicking on names and I clicked on yours just out of chance, not remembering the name. I saw your German user page was very interesting, so I went to go read your english page. I was rather surprised to see that I'd already been here before :-)

I wonder, would you be willing to translate my user page into some languages (whichever ones you can manage, ja: and apw: would be nice, though I realise the latter has no wiki yet) ? — Nicholas 16:39, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

hi.

glad you find Klallam interesting. if you want to know more about it, i can send you some stuff. there is a high school pedagogical grammar currently in progress. but, as it is still unpublished, you shouldnt quote it without permission of Timothy Montler. if you look on Montler's website, he has there his 1984 dissertation on the phonology-morphology of Saanich (which is closely related to Klallam). Saanich is in better shape than Klallam which has only a handful of semi-fluent speakers left (Saanich has 2 handfuls of flully fluent speakers.)

whats on my German page is just some stuff from the English site that I want to put up there (there're 2 people over there who are interested in American peoples & languages). however, i've never studied German, so i cant say when that will be.

sorry, i cant take requests to do translations. my Japanese is not so good anyway (even though i'm married one!). Western Apache doesnt even have a grammar yet, although a pedogogical grammar will probably be published this year or the next in Germany. (it does have a dictionary in print which is an excellent example of how not to write a dictionary of an Athabascan language.)

peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:35, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Nez Percé

Hi, thanks for expanding the Nez Percé language article. Some anon just blanked the entire language section out of Nez Percé! At first I was going to put it back in (it was too late to do a rollback since the remainder of the article had been edited in the meantime), but then I figured it was long enough that I could just start an article with it. Do you know what year the Aoki grammar was published? The text says 1975, the bibliography says 1970. Also, do you have the bibliographical info for the Aoki dictionary of 1994? Thanks! --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 06:50, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

the main grammar was published in 1970. maybe what is meant is 1965 which is the date of Aoki's unpublished dissertation. i'll look up the dictionary. – ishwar  (speak) 07:05, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi, can you add the reference for Cash Cash 2004? Thanks! --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 20:16, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

sure – ishwar  (speak) 20:27, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Manx

hi. someone removed Manx from the extinct language article. does Manx have any remaining speakers? i thought not. i imagine that this is a touchy subject? peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:26, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Manx is what I like to call an "undead language" (or "zombie language"). Like a zombie or vampire, it was dead, but it's been revived and now it has to feed off living languages to survive. You can't say there are still native speakers, but rather that there are again native speakers of a sort. There are people who speak their nonnative Manx in front of their children, and there are even Manx-language preschools and schools, so these kids are growing up with a native competence in Zombie Manx. The same applies to Cornish. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 05:31, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

that is what i suspected. i think i will add the Manx entry back to Extinct language. however, i dont want to offend anyone by doing so. the former entry was:

1. Manx: Ned Maddrell (December 1974) (but is being revived as a second language)

maybe you have a suggestion? peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The way it's written sounds good to me. If it's a registered user who deleted it and they want to delete it again, talk about it with them. If it's an anon, just keep putting it back till they get tired of playing. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 19:06, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

A simple viewing of the history for the article will show that I was the one who removed Manx from the extinct language article.

Angr is correct, but not entirely on one vital point: Ned Maddrell himself taught Manx to people before he died. Those people have been the core group that has kept Manx alive- not revived it, but kept it alive. Ergo, there is continuity, not a gap, in the speakers of Manx. I quote: "The Manx language, one of the Gaelic languages, closer to Irish and Scottish than to Welsh, is still spoken in the Island by a minority, but the primary language is English." (source #1). Still spoken, not 'being spoken again'.

The fine point of those people not having learnt it as children is a silly reason for a few scholars as well as layfolk to make such a sweeping conclusion for the 'death of Manx' or 'extinction of Manx'. Tecnically, one can make an argument for extinction since the people who learnt Manx from Ned learnt it as a second-language, so it is not precisely 'native' learning. This, to my thinking, is splitting hairs: if people learnt Manx from the last speaker, made recordings of him (both Man and Ireland did this), and now are raising children utilising both their own education as well as the recordings, how are those children not native speakers? There is not even a generation gap: Ned died in 1974 CE, and children have been formally learning Manx in government-sponsored classes since at least 1992 CE (source #2) , with some being educated informally before 2003. Recording technology, if nothing else, has changed the equation that is used to determine whether a language is extinct: now anyone can learn Manx from a native speaker if they wish, since Ned's words are permanently recorded.

In sum, if Wikipedia editors want to list Manx as an 'extinct' language, they are ignoring facts, not to mention positing something that is contrary to the main Manx language article. I will continue to remove Manx from any listing at Wikipedia that asserts it to be 'extinct' until someone can demonstrate that there is no continuity in Manx speakers from Ned's lifetime to the present. Or someone can ask Dr. Brian Stowell of the Isle of Man what he thinks about Manx being extinct. I am sure he would find that idea to be rather interesting considering his role in ensuring the survival of Manx.

He can be reached at the following address and telephone number, courtesy of Yn Cheshaght Ghailckagh:

Dr. Brian Stowell, 16 Hilary Road, Douglas, IM2 3EG Tel: +(0)1624 623821

If the tone of my words seems curt or irritated, well, they are. That is not directed at Ish Ishwar or Angr. It is directed at those who have misled people into the conclusion that Manx died. P.MacUidhir 20:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

hi.

generally, when one speaks of a language being "alive", there are native speakers of that language. if Manx does not have native speakers, then it is extinct.

most of linguistics holds that native language users are not taught to use their language, but rather they acquire a linguistic grammar. the details of how children do this is not so well understood & debated. so, a linguist can study a language for 50 years & know the language very well, but this knowledge is not a linguistic grammar and that linguist will never become a native speaker. 2nd language speakers are not equivalent to native language speakers. most linguists will not consider this splitting hairs.

because children did not acquire individual grammars of Manx based on data provided by Ned Maddrell, the children do not have Manx grammars.

children can create grammars based on non-native input. this is generally how creoles are formed from pidgins. however, these new grammars will not stand in a lineal relationship to a deceased native speaker who did not provide the data for grammar acquisition. this is the situation with the Hebrew language spoken today.

that Manx is no longer spoken by native speakers is held not by just a few scholars but by the overwhelming majority of linguists.

if one agrees with your discussion above, then there will need to be redefined terms. encyclopedias dont really function to provide new definitions, but summarize generally accepted ones.

(my opinion: this is a truly sad matter. to say that Manx is dead is not a happy statement. i feel that if we deny what has happened then we do a disserve to the Manx community. members of dominant communities should be aware of their negative actions toward minority peoples and correct them. i am involved with minority languages in the US. i see that most people not even aware that language death is going on or even what it entails.)

peace – ishwar  (speak) 00:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Hello once again. I am pleased to see your interest in this topic.

Manx does indeed have native speakers at this time. They have been educated in school programs and at home since (according to official records) 1992 CE, and in formal classes since 2003 CE. The children are being taught according to a combination of older materials that were published before Ned died as well as the materials generated by recordings made of his pronunciation and syntax. Therefore, the children are receiving an education as native speakers since their teachers are required to be at least fluent in Manx (for the purpose of teaching the language), and the children are more often than not taught the language from birth in bilingual homes, with those parents also having learnt the language utilising the same resources. This creates continuity from Ned Maddrell to the present generation; since those who now use Manx have learnt the language utilising resources developed from both Ned's students as well as Ned himself, the language never died. Any child has been able to learn Manx as a native speaker because of Ned's legacy, which is permanently preserved in recordings and other materials. It is an unusual situation, but one that was necessary at the time in order to preserve the 'native' aspects of the language for future children to be able to learn. This in turn means that those who have learnt the language as children since Ned died have acquired linguistic grammar rather than a second-language grammar.

I understand that Wikipedia is not an appropriate place for original research. At the same time, if errors are perpetuated in any respectable medium, the errors become more difficult to correct. A case can be made for the extinction of Manx as well as for it having a native continuity. At best, Wikipedia should reflect both judgements rather than making a judgement in favour of one faction since each side has more than enough facts to support a debate on the matter. Obviously I am quite biased toward one faction, so having other people comment on the matter is helpful in achieving some sort of consensus in the context of what Wikipedia should have in its articles on Manx language.

In regard to your feelings about doing a disservice to the Manx community, I say that it is a greater disservice to have those who are being raised with the language as their mother tongue be taught that their learning is somehow inferior in quality to those of speakers from fifty years ago when that has not been established as unreservedly true. They are learning the same language that Ned spoke before he died, so they are native speakers in their own right.

Yes, I am somewhat familiar with the organisation to which you belong. It is doing vital work for the Americas. The situation of native American languages, cultures, and even their tribal world-views in many cases makes me sad to read of it as well as experience its effects when I visit the reservations. One of my saddest memories from childhood was from visiting Cherokee, North Carolina where some of the tribesfolk work at a living history community. I remember very vividly that their spirit and pride in who they are seemed to have departed, and that they were angry people. I never forgot that impression, and even had it renewed when I dated a Cherokee woman for some years. She helped me to understand more of that story, and enabled me to realise that native Americans are fighting many of the same battles that the Celtic peoples are in Europe; kin, of a sort, in that struggle.

So, what do you want to do about the Manx language article? The "History" section of the article can be expanded to reflect more than its current paragraphs regarding the modern education programmes. If you wish, I can do this in order to shed light on the situation with Ned Maddrell and the subsequent generations of Manx speakers in order to try to be fair to both sides of the story. Suggestions for other possibilities are welcome, of course, as I do not want to be the only voice for this matter. Should we, perhaps, move the discussion to the Manx language Discussion page? P.MacUidhir 01:32, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

i think mentioning both views are ok. if children are speaking, then they are native speakers. no one will deny this. however, the point of contention will be whether or not this is the Manx of old. it could probably be called New Manx. i dont know of any children who acquired language from recordings; they learned from people. these teachers will have learned a Manx-like 2nd language (let's call it them L2 processors rather than zombies) that will have been filtered through their native English grammars. it is in this area where many would say that Manx was not passed on to children.

there is no valid reason to consider these New Manx speakers to be inferior to any other speakers, be they French or Thai. grammars are equal in their value. although some will unfortunately pass judgement as often happens, these attitudes are frowned upon by linguists. the same goes for creoles and new sign languages and the like.

i am just writing from general knowledge and have not really looked at Manx or other Celtic languages (the closest thing i have in my personal library is a grammatical sketch of Scots English). so, perhaps, it is best to leave the article editing to more the knowledgeable. User Angr is a Celtic specialist, so maybe he is a better choice. however, if you request that edit something, i look into it. i do think that something should be said in the article, as it is confusing to have Wikipedia say that Manx never died while language encyclopedias say otherwise. feel free to move this discussion anywhere you like: maybe others are interested in voicing their opinions.

thanks. – ishwar  (speak) 06:19, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't actually have a lot to say on the topic, but I do want to point out that when the Manx Heritage Society says Manx is "still spoken", not "spoken again", they're not addressing an audience of linguists, they're addressing the general public, who aren't going to care about fine points like the distinction between a native speaker and a nonnative speaker. And no one denies that Manx continued to have nonnative speakers after Ned Maddrell died. But for linguists, the "Apostolic Succession", if you will, of children learning the language from parents who had learned the language as children from parents who had learned the language as children, and so on, has been broken. And the language will necessarily be different after that. And not necessarily different for the worse! If you look at George Broderick's Handbook of Late Spoken Manx you'll see the language was in a terrible state in the last few decades... speakers couldn't remember when they were supposed to lenite, word order was all over the place, even the phonology seemed to vary from speaker to speaker. Maybe by starting over with teachers who learned Manx as a second language, some order will come to the chaos. (Too bad they couldn't scrap the orthography and start over with a new, Goidelic one, but I suppose one can't have everything.) --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 07:10, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Good points from both of you. I will copy-paste this discussion to the Manx language article's talk page when I finish dealing with the History of Iceland article.

I agree especially with Angr's point about the standardisation of Manx usage having become much improved in recent times. The orthography issue is a "two-edged sword", really: when I teach a native English-speaker anything in Irish, I will use Manx equivalents in order to ease the person into the pronunciation, for obvious reasons. At the same time... having a decent Goidelic orthography would be poetic justice at the very least. Having the vocabulary gender issue resolved would be a good idea too. ;) P.MacUidhir 18:40, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Burmese bibliography

Hi, I only just noticed you added a paper of mine to the bibliography of Burmese. Thanks! (I just corrected the spelling of my first name and added a link where the paper can be found.) --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 08:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

hi. sure. i confess that i havent read it, although it is on my list (i've only read the one by Becker & flipped through Roop). but, i assume that there isnt much available on Burmese on the internet (& that is reliable). i'm sure some will find your paper interesting. what made you jump from Celtic to SE Asia? peace – ishwar  (speak) 20:45, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

It wasn't a permanent jump, just a temporary excursion. I suppose I got interested in Burmese because my father was born in Burma (his parents worked for the American Baptist Mission Press there, if I remember correctly), so I feel a certain connection with the place. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 10:22, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Miwok

Hi. At www.blackoakcasino.com/..../boc_press_phase2_steel.html, they call themsevles "Mi-wuk". Is this the new "PC" spelling? User:Zoe|^(talk) 05:14, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

hi. i dont really know. maybe this spelling is closer to the way it pronounced. English miwok is derived from Northern Sierra Miwok miwwyk which means 'people'. the vowel y is a central vowel not a back vowel like u or o (the vowels in NS Miwok are i, e, y, u, o, a). i also notice that this site uses Me-Wuk. what it weird is that they use a hyphen. this doesnt look very nice to me. old transcriptions (100 years ago) used these hyphens. nowadays they make names look "Indianized". but, if we really want know why it's spelled that, we should ask them. – ishwar  (speak) 06:25, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Native Americans

You said:

Precisely because of the different usages [of "Native American"] experienced by Harmil, Rmhermen, me, & others, we have different expectations of the term. Harmil suggests that a certain usage be adopted to the exclusion of the other.

I just wanted to clear up that I suggest no such thing, and would oppose any attempt to do so. If I wasn't clear enough on that before, I hope I am being so now. I'm the person who created the Native American name controversy page, and I'm not at all insenstive to the different usages, but I am trying to deal with the fact that right now, Wikipedia is broken, and we're standing around gabbing about it. From the reader's perspecitve, Wikipedia's information on the natives of the Western Hemisphere is redundant in several places, fragmented and generally quite hard to follow. I'm not bringing an opinion to this other than, "Wikipedia must be useful". I hope you can appreciate this, and read my contributions in future in the light in which they are intended.

Thank you for your time. -Harmil 12:33, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

hi. thanks for your time.

perhaps we are misinterpreting each other. what i meant was that your suggestion proposes that a certain usage be chosen for the scope of that article and that this choice be made explicit at the top of page with a note mentioning that there are other usages of the term and a link to another page where this can be explained in detail. this is a good suggestion. however, user Rmhermen objected to your choice of usage because it was not within her/his expectations of common usage. so, i was trying to come up with a way to avoid the issue of choosing one usage over another (and also mentioning that i also have expectations similar to Rmhermen).

i didnt intend to mean that you were advocating that one usage is correct/more desirable and another incorrect/less desirable.

it is nice that terms that are not biased toward a particular community (i.e. country) are being considered. it is interesting to see what they mean in different communities and how we can resolve such things (if possible). peace – ishwar  (speak) 12:55, 2005 September 9 (UTC)

The problem with being all-inclusive is that there are already several pages that cover all of the rest of the territory. By describing "Native American" and "American Indian" as most Americans (yes, I mean USians) use the terms in casual conversation, news media, entertainment and government, you better serve the more inclusive pages (e.g. Indigenous Peoples of the Americas) that link here (go look at the linkages, they're very explicitly US-centric). To that end, I'm not interested in limiting the scope of Wikipedia's coverage, only of this one page which now stands as an anachronism in the midst of an otherwise fairly readable collection of pages about the natives of the Western Hemisphere. -Harmil 14:50, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok. I was only talking about the name of such an article. I dont (& didnt) think you were trying to limit any coverage (or mean to suggest this). I think it is a good to have separate pages discussing the cultural groups according to country as the topic is really too large to fit in one article. (it would also be nice if a grouping by culture area could undertaken.) you dont need to convince me that indigenous peoples of americas is better than these other terms: i agree with you. hopefully any instances of US-centrism that you notice can be remedied. peace – ishwar  (speak) 15:07, 2005 September 9 (UTC)

great work and much appreciated: Wintun

Great work and much appreciated. Glad that you enjoyed that California Tribal map, and glad to see that you've included the link on so many other pages.

Small quibble - Chico, California is actually east of the Sacramento River, and the Wintu/Wintuan are usually associated with being west of the River. Also, the Wintu/Wintuan stretched for quite a distance from Chico.

Hence, I do think that the current comment about Chico sounds mis-leading, and may not be accurate at all.

Do you have some solid info that the Wintu/Wintuan were east of the Sacramento at Chico?

Also, if there is going to be a reference to the Wintu/Wintuan at Chico, perhaps you would agree with the following phrasing:

"They lived in the Sacramento River valley, on the west side of the river to the coast range, including in the vicinity of present-day Chico, California."

Again, thanks for a really remarkable amount (and quality) of work! NorCalHistory 18:48, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

hi.

yes, i do like that map. did you make it? i like maps - they help me to think about things. i recently have been trying to create maps. here are two (if you have any suggestions/comments, let me know):

• Image:Langs_N.Amer.png
• Image:Tlingit-map.png

i dont know so much about Wintun peoples, but i will look in the Handbook of North American Indians and see what they say there. peace – ishwar  (speak) 02:12, 2005 September 6 (UTC)

The map link that I suggested is a color version of Kroeber's classic map that he published in his California Indians Handbook (do you have access to that work?). No, I didn't make the colorized map, but it's picked up and included on a number of websites.

I would like to correct that Chico reference, once you've had a chance to confirm the accuracy of removing it.

Again, thanks for all the wonderful work you're doing! NorCalHistory 07:33, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Sure, it is my pleasure (really). I do have access to Kroeber, but I havent checked it out yet. Below are some quotes from the handbook about the locations of the 3 Wintuan groups:

Wintu (Lapena 1978:324):

"Wintu territory covered parts of what are now Trinity, Shasta, Siskiyou, and Tehama counties. The northern boundaries of the region are the valleys of the upper Trinity River, extending up the Sacremento River to the high divide between the Trinity and Scott rivers, to Black Butte and Mount Shasta, passing a little north of Black Fox Mountain. From the northernmost point north of La Moine the boundary runs south to about six miles south of Cottonwood Creek. On the northeast the frontier with the Achumawi comprised a strip of land several miles wide, east of Squaw Creek, which was a no-man's-land on which both peoples hunted and gathered food (Du Bois 1935:4).

"Within this region the nine major groups of the Wintu are identified by names referring to their areas: nomitipom 'in-the-west-ground' (upper Sacramento valley), wenem-em or wenemem 'middle water' (McCloud), dawpon 'front-ground' (Stillwater), ʔelpom 'in-ground' (Keswick), λ’abal-pom 'good (peaceful) ground' (French Gulch), nomsu·s 'those being west' (Upper Trinity valley), dawnom 'front-west' (Bald Hills), norelmaq 'south-uphill people' (Hayfork), and waymaq 'north people' (upper McCloud River valley) (Du Bois 1935:6-9)."

Nomlaki (Goldschmidt 1978:341):

"There were two major Nomlaki divisions, the River and Hill Nomlaki. The River Nomlaki lived in the Sacramento River valley in present Tehama County. The Hill Nomlaki occupied the foothill land to the west, extending to the summit of the Coast Range, in what is now Tehama and Glenn counties.

"...The River Nomlaki were of two groups: the memwaylaka 'water north language' in the north, and the pumok 'easterners.' The Hill Nomlaki were themselves subdivided into dialects extending along the several creek drainages: waykeweƚ (Redbank area); waltoykeweƚ (north of Elder Creek); nomlaka (Elder Creek to below Thomes Creek); and noykeweƚ or kolayel (Grindstone Creek). People from further south were called noymok whether or not they spoke a related language."

Pawtin (Johnson 1978:350):

"At one time Patwin occupied the southern portion of the Sacramento River Valley to the west of the river, from the town of Princetown south to San Pablo and Suisan bays. They were bounded on the east by Nisenan and Konkow, one the north by Nomlaki, on the south by Costanoan and Plains Miwok, and on the west by Yuki, Wappoo, Lake Miwok, and Pomoans. In actuality the region so delimited was occupied by many groups usually called tribes in the earlier literature and tribelets in the later. The Pawtin were also divided among speakers of many different dialects, for example, Kabalmen, Cache Creek, Cortina, Tebti (Hill Pawtin); Colusa and Grimes (River Pawtin); Knight's Landing and Suisan (Whistler 1976).

"General territorial limits drawn by various investigators for the Pawtin are essentially similar. The greatest differences lie along the eastern and southern boundaries and internally with the classification into linguistic or cultural units. Gibbs (1853) differentiated numerous tribes from Suisun Bay to Clear Lake on the basis of language, but only the Copéh of Putah Creek from which he had collected a vocabulary (Merriam 1929) is clearly a Patwin group. Powers (1877) located Pawtin in the lower hills of the eastern Coast Range mountain slope (Long, Indian, Bear, Capay, Cortina, and Napa valleys were some of the most populous), both sides of the Sacramento River several miles below Stony Creek south to just above the mouth of the Feather River, and on the west side of the Sacramento only from the Feather River south to Suisun Bay. Parts of upper Napa Valley and Coyote and Pope valleys were ascribed to other groups as were the headwaters of Cache and Putah creeks. From informants' claims of particular hills and streams, Barrett (1908) was able to more carefully delineate the western extent of the Pomoans, Yuki, Lake Miwok, and Pawtin. There is general agreement that Patwin occupied a strip several miles wide along the east bank of the lower Sacramento River. At Gray's Bend, above the juncture of the Feather River with the Sacramento, the boundary then extends to the west bank and from there proceeds in a southwesternly direction. Excluded from Pawtin ownership are the Sutter Buttes on the northeast periphery and the Montezuma Hills on the southern extremity. Both are considered as unclaimed and utilized by more than one group. Sonoma Valley was once included under Pawtin dominance but upon reexamination of linguistic evidence is assigned to Coast Miwok (Beeler 1954; Kroeber 1957). From time to time portions of the eastern and southern territorial limits have been called into question (Kroeber 1957; Heizer 1966; Bennyhoff 1961).

"From north to south Pawtin territory extended 90 miles, and from east to west 40 miles. It can be divided into three physiographic regions from east to west: both banks of the Sacramento River ...; flat open grassland plains ...; and the lower hills of the eastern Coast Range mountain slope .... Most of the population was concentrated along the river in large villages. ... occupation of [the plains] was sparse and seasonal. Tribelets in the hills lived in the numerous intermontane valleys, particularly along the drainages of Cache and Putah creeks. (Powers 1874; Koreber 1932)."

• Goldschmidt, Walter. (1978). Nomlaki. In R. F. Heizer (Ed.), California (pp. 341-349). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 8) (Sturtevant, W. C., Gen. Ed.). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.
• Johnson, Patti J. (1978). Pawtin. In R. F. Heizer (Ed.), California (pp. 350-360). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 8) (Sturtevant, W. C., Gen. Ed.). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.
• Lapena, Frank R. (1978). Wintu. In R. F. Heizer (Ed.), California (pp. 324-340). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 8) (Sturtevant, W. C., Gen. Ed.). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 06:46, 2005 September 10 (UTC)

Thank you for your continuing good work. However, it would be fair to mention that some of Prof. Lapena's observations contained in the 1978 Handbook, are at some variance with other people who have studied the Wintu - including more recent publications. I won't go through now and propose a more balanced text, but if you do own the Chase-Dunn work, or have access to the Kroeber work, many of these differences will be apparent. If you don't have access to these works, I will be glad to figure out ways to get you a copy of these other broadly-accepted studies. What would be the best way to get you photocopies of other studies? NorCalHistory 05:48, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, they are kind of old. Kroeber & Chase-Dunn are both available to me. I am sure that you know about this & have read more than me, so feel free to make adjustments. My primary background is in Athabaskan (linguistics), but still I know little about Californian Athabaskans. I am sure that you are more qualified. If you are wanting to expand the Wintu article, I see that the Tlingit article, although far from finished, may be a good model to follow (?). I think that I am wanting to expand the coverage of Wikipedia so that at least the names of peoples and languages are mentioned. After this point, more detailed expansions will follow. This is in large part because I simply know so little about all of these (including Wintun). So, I encourage you to improve/expand my small contributions. Since you are so interested in Wintu, I will put this high on my list to make a map for (but dont ask me when...).

one thing that i noticed was that all 3 authors noted that little archaeological work had been as of 1978. hopefully the situation has changed somewhat by now. peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:15, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

>>>>>>>

I've been going through my copies of all the written materials you've mentioned (including Lapena, Kroeber and Chase-Dunn), and with all due respect to Prof. Lapena, the maps in the 1978 Handbook itself (at p. 211, and the map accompanying Lapena's own article at p. 324) are not consistent with all of Lapena's claim for Wintu territory. Moreover, both Kroeber (based on original sources), and Chase-Dunn (including recent archeological finds) are not consistent with all of Lapena's territorial claims.

During the next several weeks, I will include a more balanced text in the Article on territorial issues; I'll see about uploading (amended) maps of the territory, similar in detail to those in the 1978 Handbook.

NorCalHistory 22:07, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Apache

Thanks for the fix on the Kiowa-Apache caption. I confess I know little about these tribes, but I came across the image and thought it should be used. I see that there is an article on the Plains Apache-- sounds like I should really move the image to that article? Mwanner 13:04, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Perhaps it wouldnt hurt to have the picture in both articles? peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:22, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

Done. Thanks, Mwanner 19:11, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Writing system

Hey Ishwar,

The new image for Writing system is just about ready, and I thought you might want to take a look before I move it over.

kwami 07:57, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

hi.

i think that it looks nice. i suggest that the image be a little bigger so that the scripts can be more easily seen (i dont have the best vision myself). i would suggest that you simply increasing the font size, but this may make certain areas too crowded.

what i like compared with the old one:

• better map projection
• country borders
• nicer script styles for Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Mongolian

actually, i dont so much about the distribution of different scripts, although i have looked at that expensive book by Daniels & Bright. peace – ishwar  (speak) 18:09, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

Yes, I would like a finer resolution map myself. However, this was the largest blank map I could find, so I'm stuck with it unless I want to do all that work over again. (Do you have any high-res blank maps of the world?) I suppose I could increase the resolution of the existing map; I'll have to look into that. The borders would all be stair-stepped, ut the fonts would have better resolution. kwami 19:48, 2005 August 27 (UTC)

Okay, doubled the resolution (and quadrupled the file size). The map's now a bit blurry, but the fonts are nice & crisp. Don't know if I'll ever get around to making a Yup'ik font; that's the last one. (I even found a photo of a woman writing "Nü Shu" on a chalkboard in Nü Shu, which I never expected to find!) kwami 12:08, 2005 August 28 (UTC)

Austronesian language categorization

Why did you remove the Austronesian languages categorization from the Marshallese language article? --Chris S. 06:01, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

hi. i did so because that seems to generally be the way people use categories. that is, articles are not under both top-level categories and lower-level subcategories (Marshallese is Micronesian which is ultimately under Austronesian). i am not saying that this is always the most useful thing to do. you can read about this (assuming you want to spend some time on this) here: Wikipedia:Categorization. maybe things will change... (perhaps the software?).

anyway, i was just trying to be consistent. if you dont like this, that is ok with me (i am not sure that i like it either). peace – ishwar  (speak) 06:50, 2005 August 25 (UTC)

I understand where you're coming from. And I agree - they should be linked somehow. However, I'm building up the Austronesians category so it'd be easier for others to find Austronesian languages. Right now if you click on the category link, it's easy to see all the Austronesian languages. If you took off Marshallese, then it won't be too easy to find. --Chris S. 07:24, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Native American languages Cfd

This discussion is now closed. You mentioned something about creating a category Category:Indigenous languages of the South American Amazonia in the discussion and wasn't sure what you requested. You can go ahead with the creation or moving as you proposed. Thanks. ∞Who?¿? 01:16, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

• Also, a note on moving the talk pages. If you are going to move a talk page to a new category, please use the move button, this way it keeps its edit history. Note, you can only do this if the target page does not exist. Thanks again. ∞Who?¿? 01:17, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

List of Native American tribes

About your work on List of Native American tribes and Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas, I appreciate your enthusiasm and drive, but I put up the merge notice to foster discussion about the best way to do the merge. You also seem to be leaving both pages in a state of flux while you work, which is never desirable on Wikipedia (as it is constantly being used as a source of reference information). Would you mind backing out your changes long enough to get some consensus over the change? Thanks. -Harmil 19:26, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

ok, i was just being bold. wikipedia always seems to be in flux, as do my edits. i am somewhat worried that people would use this as a reference since it is in such a flux. i do, however, understand your concern. feel free to revert my work at List of Native American tribes. i would request that you not revert Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas because this list is missing many, many names some of which appear in List of Native American tribes: a revert would make the list smaller. i will not edit List of Native American tribes any further before the future discussion. peace – ishwar  (speak) 01:16, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

I think the real question is: do we need a one-stop-shop for all of the names, or should we (as Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas had been doing) just list the groups into which the smaller tribes fall, and get detailed on their pages. Think of this in terms of duplication of information. If you have a page that details, for example, the Aleut, and then that page lists the List of Alaska Native Tribal Entities and locations such as the Pribilof Islands, then you have a much better way of organizing information and keeping it where it is most relevant. You can list information that is general to the Aleut at their page, and then have the Native Village of Saint Paul Island, Alaska on its own page.

Having one giant list doesn't really tell anyone anything, and makes research harder, not easier.... -Harmil 11:52, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

hi. i am going to move this to Talk:Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas in case anyone else wants to read this. to be continued there. – ishwar  (speak) 06:07, 2005 August 24 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article Indian Shaker Church, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Wari’

Hi Ishwar,

Since you liked the Toda article, I thought you might like this too. Not much there, but fun. kwami 09:29, 2005 August 12 (UTC)

hi. yes, thanks. Toda has a very interesting sound system. i actually hadnt heard of Wari’ before.

by the way, i also see that you have stumbled across Dahalo. what a wild inventory. i cant help thinking there is a more phonological simplification of it, but i have only read Ladefoged's description, so i cant say. peace – ishwar  (speak) 08:42, 2005 August 14 (UTC)

Maybe the labialization, but I don't know how you could get around having implosives, ejectives, and clicks in one language!

BTW, pulled a few things together in inclusive we. kwami 11:17, 2005 August 17 (UTC)

nice. hard to believe that it hasnt been written until now. – ishwar  (speak) 09:28, 2005 August 18 (UTC)

Some of it was in other articles. Not details, though. kwami 05:57, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

Wichita

I was wondering if you had the resources to verify Wichita. When Ladefoged describes how the 3 vowel lengths of Estonian are not phonemic, and gives Mixe as an example of a language where they are, he mentions that the same claim has been made for Yavapai. He makes no mention of Wichita. Also, 3 central vowels is one thing, but 3 front vowels is quite another: I have a hard time believing this inventory! Unless they are misleadingly not representative of the allophonic variation found in the langage? I have some notes on Wichita [n]~[r] allophony, but unfortunately nothing else about the language. kwami 05:57, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

I dont know about Wichita, but I will see what I can find out. peace – ishwar  (speak) 08:26, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

hi. i made a bibliography. this seems to be the analysis of David Rood. i have found his article in Language on Wichita phonology. he does describe the phonology this way. i havent read through it yet. my library doesnt have anything else readily on hand, but i requested a copy of Rood's grammar & another article from 1971. i will eventually go through the old volumes of IJAL. i think that the allophonic variation may be detailed in Paul Garvin's article in 1950 & hopefully in Rood's grammar.

do have access to Language or IJAL? if not, i have a PDF of Rood's article in Language which i could email you if you are interested. i can probably get PDFs of IJAL too (i will have to go to a nearby university). the copies are all from the JSTOR service.

i had no idea that Wichita was so interesting. peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:37, 2005 August 31 (UTC)

Close central unrounded vowel phonemes

Since you seem to be the resident expert on Native American languages, I would like to ask your advice on something. When working on Swedish language I conctacted the Swedish phonetician Olle Engstrand about the (in)famous voiceless palatal-velar fricative (among many other names) and its status as being unique for Swedish. He more or less confirmed this, though as a precaution he mentioned the close central unrounded vowel, [ɨ], as previously being believed to be very unique to certain Swedish dialect, but that it recently had been analyzed in a lot of South American languages. Do you happen to know which these languages are? It would be interesting to know if there is actually a language that has phonemic contrasts between for example /i/ and /ɨ/. The current examples in the articles are all of allophones, and the only other example I think of is the /i/-phoneme of Mandarin, which as far as I know varies according to phoentic context akin to the Russian /i/ rather than being analyzed as a separate phoneme.

Peter ^Isotalo 19:56, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

hi. i dont know so much about South America, so i will need some time to look this up. but i do know that high central vowels occur in both North & Central America.

• North America: some Uto-Aztecan languages (such as O'odham and Kitanemuk) and the Keresan family have [i, ɨ, u]. proto-Uto-Aztecan is reconstructed with a high central vowel (both long & short vowels). (Uto-Aztecan extends down into Mexico).
• Central America: several languages, such as the Huave, Cuitlatec, and in many languages of the Mixe-Zoquean, Otomanguean, and Mayan families. Proto-Mixe-Zoquean is also reconstructed with a high central vowel. In fact, Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman list the presence of a central high vowel as an areal feature of the Meso-American Sprachbund (although not shared by all languages in the area).

perhaps a good source to consult for this would be Ian Maddieson's survey of segmental inventories. it would show which languages in their survey have this over all continents. peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:47, 2005 August 8 (UTC)

Very informative. I added some of the information you mentioned to the article. Please feel free to elaborate on it, since it seems as if this particular sound is over-represented among the American languages. Would you also consider adding some information to UPSID? It's no more than a humble stub right now.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:52, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Use the indent! :-)

"hi. i was writing in response to user Shoaler above. the description of the terms high, mid, low are correct."

Use proper indent then :-) Last time I checked, your "post" should have one more indent than what you're replying to. I'll fix it :-) --67.172.99.160 17:23, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

hmm. i didnt know that this would be improper indenting usage. i guess i dont like this as it makes reading threads hard to follow. peace – ishwar  (speak) 18:30, 2005 August 8 (UTC)

Thanks for coming, and be very welcome

As said, thanks for coming to es.WP. I've started to work on a better taxonomy on Amerindian languages, under the idea: "Most scholars agree on this, and that is disputed, wich is what I've done for isolated and unclassified languages.

Isolated and unclassified languages seem to be the hard part (or seemed when I started, but we both have already seen how many digressions exist on a living and vigorous language as Páez). The main reason for that, IMHO, is that most of them are also extinct (and many of those have been extinct for centuries). Documentation about them is poor or plainly nonexistant, thus many classifications are very speculative.

Perhaps we could cooperate in this field, and reflect the results in both en.WP and es.WP. Let me point out that I'm no linguist at all; just an amateur who got there coming from theory of languages (I'm a mathematician by profession and pleasure).

Regards, es:Usuario:Cinabrium - Talk page

Curonian language reference?

I have read for years that Curonian was not only long-extinct, but poorly attested. Is there any reference you could add to the article about the surviving community you have mentioned?--Theodore Kloba 20:59, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

hi. the article gave both (conflicting) statements that the language was extinct & still spoken in Germany. the endangered language article states that it is still spoken in Germany. this info is coming from a single editor, i believe. i dont know anything about this language, so if this incorrect, please correct it. thanks. – ishwar  (speak) 22:13, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

i put a note requesting information here: User talk:84.56.227.182. – ishwar  (speak) 22:21, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

so, it looks like User:Mikkalai has found out some more information about this. thank you sparking interest. peace – ishwar  (speak) 02:47, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

Southeast

Thanks for the compliment. You might want to check out American Indian Exposition some of the tribes are misclassified. I'd make the changes myself, but I'm involved in a nasty article dispute with its creator and his sockpuppet. However, I feel obliged to tell you he does not look kindly upon being corrected and often ignores sources that contradict his POV. Again thanks. -JCarriker 00:59, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

german wp

see de:Benutzer Diskussion:Ish ishwar. --213.209.82.64 12:43, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Wonder-ful

I am fairly new to WP, am mainly very impressed but do have some concerns about it. The WP:CSB is very important to me. Your work, however, (I know little about languages and speak almost nothing but English) seems to me the most important that I have come across on WP. Are there similar researchers with African, Indian and other languages working on WP? Your work may explain why I (and others) are so fascinated by WP: it provides a living opportunity to compile, categorise, record what is of importance to us. As I write that, however, I also remember I have been warned, by someone I respect user:rbellin, that WP is not a place for 'original research.' Has that caused any difficulty for what you are working on?

I also appreciate that new entries on your talk page come in on the top: it makes editing so much easier! What do I have to do to make that happen? Thank you. Jeffrey Newman 15:42, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

hi. nice to meet you. thank you for your kind words. i dont know if my editing is the most important. there are others who do even more valuable work, i think. i will introduce you to a few of them (but i rarely go outside of the linguistic world, so they are linguistically-oriented too - hence my bias!).

i think that Wikipedia is very interesting, too. it does allow for a potentially very global authorship. it could become a very beautiful thing. one thing that is very interesting to me is that it is possible to create a Wikipedia in any language (theoretically anyway). this may be a very good thing for endangered minority languages. i wonder how beneficial a tool this could be to prevent language loss.

no one has warned me about original research. but, i have not included any information that was not published (ok, so i have included a few words from 2 languages that i know from another linguist's fieldwork). i guess i dont know the situation(s) you are referring to, so i dont know how to respond. i think that the main point of this is prevent someone from writing personal opinions or crackpot theories (the printed word is a very powerful thing).

the newest on top: if you want to have the latest messages come first, you can put a link like i did at the top of the page. but, many dont even use this, so you will have to move their posts to the top yourself. actually, i mostly keep to myself & dont get many messages, so i dont mind. i dont know Wikipedia has evolved in this way where the newest is at the bottom. you have to inconveniently scroll all the time. oh well, i am just fighting the flow, i guess.

have a nice day. peace – ishwar  (speak) 16:40, 2005 July 24 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your generosity of spirit and time and for the introductions. I have written a brief note to both user:Mustafaa and Mark Dingemanse and had a very quick look at the work with which they are involved. I am impressed, I suppose, with concentrated interest in particular areas - I tend to be a 'generalist' with an awareness that 'globalisation' is a mixed blessing and that English is a very dominant language and culture. As a global tool - 'a Wikipedia in any language' - that would mean 'spoken' would it, as many languages are not written. Excuse my ignorance.

Where are you situated? I think I came to you via someone in Seattle where I have family. But I also appreciate the 'anonymity' of WP so will understand if you do not reply. And thanks also for the 'technical' info which I will use.

Jeffrey Newman 18:03, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

sure, no problem.

yes, it would only work for languages that have writing systems. so, unwritten languages would need to have some kind of orthography developed. this is often problemmatic. scripts are very political things. having a written form of a language often helps prestige and recognition from governments. some cultures are against having their language written (e.g. the language is sacred).

i currently live in Texas. peace – ishwar  (speak) 18:48, 2005 July 24 (UTC)

Wikiproject Phonetics

Well, I have been adding articles that have at least a phoneme inventory chart to the list. Is that okay, or should the list only include articles where the discussion of phonology goes beyond that? --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 17:07, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

yeah, its ok with me. i was just going to follow you... – ishwar  (speak) 17:41, 2005 July 23 (UTC)

polysynthesis: Western Greenlandic

In your article about Polysynthetic languages you claim that Western Greenlandic is Polysynthetic but not incorporating. I disagree. Greenlandic inforporates heavy adverbial phrases and objects. It is true that it doesn't incorporate direct objects in transitive verbs, but it does incorporate objects into intransitive verbs as obliques. Below I present some examples of incorporation in Western Greenlandic.

mattatorpoq

He eats mattak (whale blubber)

mattak nerivaa

mattak eat-3p.sg.SUBJ/3p.sg.OBJ

He eats Mattak

Mattamik Nerivoq

mattak-INSTR Eat-3p.sg.SUBJ

He eats mattak

pisiniarfimmukarusukkaluarpunga

pisiniarfik-muka-rusu-kkaluar-punga

shop-go.to-want-ASSERTIVE-1p.sg.SUBJ

I did want to go to the shop

illoqarpunga

illu-qar-punga

house-hav-1p.sg

I have a house

— User:83.95.146.143

hi. thanks for the note.

well, my first comment is that the article is very malnourished and needs more material. this claim of mine and your claim have been controversial.

there was a debate 90 years ago between Edward Sapir and Alfred Kroeber (Kroeber 1909, 1911; Sapir 1911, 1921). many years later in the 1980s, there was a very heated debate between Jerrold Sadock and Marianne Mithun (Sadock 1980, 1986; Mithun 1984, 1986; Rosen 1989) (perhaps they still dont speak to each other). a different theoretical perspective is offered in Baker (1988).

if you havent checked out the above, then i invite you to do so: it is interesting reading. for a general background see: Fortescue (1994), Mithun (1994), de Reuse (1994).

the unqualified comment of mine is simply from Comrie (1989). you are right that this needs more explanation, but i havent the time to do it now.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:21, 2005 July 23 (UTC)

(the biblio:)

• Baker, Mark. (1988). Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Fortescue, Michael. (1994). Morphology, polysynthetic. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 5, pp. 2600-2602). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
• Kroeber, Alfred L. (1909). Noun incorporation in American languages. In F. Heger (Ed.), XVI Internationaler Amerikanisten-Kongress (pp. 569-576). Vienna: Hartleben.
• Kroeber, Alfred L. (1911). Incorporation as a linguistic process. American Anthropologist, 13 (4), 577-584.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1984). The evolution of noun incorporation. Language, 60 (4), 847-895.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1986). On the nature of noun incorporation. Language, 62 (1), 32-38.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1994). Word-formation: Incorporation. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 9, pp. 5024-5026). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
• de Reuse, Willem J. (1994). Noun incorporation. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 5, pp. 2842-2847). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
• Rosen, Sara T. (1989). Two types of noun incorporation: A lexical analysis. Language, 65 (2), 294-317.
• Sadock, Jerrold M. (1980). Noun incorporation in Greenlandic: A case of syntactic word-formation. Language, 57 (2), 300-319.
• Sadock, Jerrold M. (1986). Some notes on noun incorporation. Language, 62 (1), 19-31.
• Sapir, Edward. (1911). The problem of noun incorporation in American languages. American Anthropologist, 13 (2), 250-282.
• Sapir, Edward. (1921). Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

numbers in var languages

Please stop unjustified removals from Numbers in various languages. mikka (t) 00:48, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

hi.

why is Aingeljã a justified inclusion?

peace – ishwar  (speak) 00:53, 2005 July 22 (UTC)

Why not? The language has an article, and the "Numbers" article is useful as a comparison tool for languages, whether natural or artificial. If you think that the language is nonnotable, please put at vote for deletion. I will vote for deletion as well. I didn't put it to VfD myself, because I am not an expert in the area. mikka (t) 16:40, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

ok. i have never done this before. let me see... – ishwar  (speak) 17:17, 2005 July 22 (UTC)

Lillooet vs. St’át’imcets

Great article - I've added a table (and was able to fill in all the slots). From what I have read, knowing nothing of the language, Lillooet would be the name for the language as a whole where more correctly, St’át’imcets refers to the Upper, Fountain language. Is this correct? Thanks, Oldak Quill 03:58, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I am not completely sure, actually. In the linguistic literature (which is what I read), the name St’át’imcets is used to refer to language as a whole and is synonymous with Lillooet/Lilloet. But I am not sure what people from the community call themselves (in English or St’át’imcets). According to van Eijk, the St’át’imcets language does not have a word that refers to all people who speak the St’át’imcets language. They have words that refer to the different communities, but these people did not traditionally view themselves as being a united people even though they could understand each other. So, this grouping is a grouping of Western people. But, nowadays this Western classification, I believe, has influenced their thinking to some extant.

But, at any rate, I will ask someone who knows about this and let you (& the article) know.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:57, 2005 July 20 (UTC)

oh yeah, i almost forgot:

thank you for making the table!

peace – ishwar  (speak) 00:24, 2005 July 21 (UTC)

i asked some who currently work on the language. what follows is from them.

* most simply call their language 'the people's language' which is ucwalmícwts (úcwalmicw = 'the people').

* Lillooet is practically never used by any of the indigenous population: it is a whiteman's word; it is also the most common word used by academics in which case it usually refers to people from all areas. natively, there was no term equivalent to the whiteman's Lillooet. Incidentally, English Lillooet is derived from Li'lwat which refers to the Mount Currie band.

* St’át’imcets = language of upper region (St'át'imc < 'Fraser River')

* Lil'wat7ulmecets = language of only the Mount Currie band

* Lower St’át’imcets = language of lower region

* many call themselves after the tribe or village name

So, basically you are right, & it is hard to find equivalents between the English and Lillooet. So maybe we should rename (?). peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:52, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

St'at'imcets language on DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article St'at'imcets language, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently-created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

IPA dispute

Hi, Ishwar.

We're having a dispute with the IPA article now that the two versions have been merged. Nohat's reverted it because he says that any modifications to the main IPA publication are not "official", I've reverted back, and now he's put it up for vote.

I know we'd talked about what would be appropriate. Would you like to join in the debate? kwami 23:46, 2005 July 14 (UTC)

ok. i'll give my 2 or 3 cents. thanks – ishwar  (speak) 23:51, 2005 July 14 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Ish, I'd be curious to know your thoughs about an uncontroversial proposal of mine over at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)#Proposed addition. Cheers, — mark ✎ 30 June 2005 12:28 (UTC)

Ahtna language map

Hi, do you have a map for the language Ahtna ? Please do me a favor and put the the map to common s... Many thanks in advance ! de:Pierre gronau

Thanks de:Pierre gronau

(= de:Benutzer:Pierre gronau - de:Benutzer Diskussion:Pierre gronau ; re: de:Ahtna)

ok. – ishwar  (speak) 16:32, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)

replied at de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Pierre_gronau#Karte_-_Ahtna

lots of edits, not an admin

Hi - I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins. If you're at all interested in becoming an admin, can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list, although there is certainly no guarantee anyone will ever look at it. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:46, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

"not phonetic"

The term "phonetic alphabet" refers to two different kinds of alphabets: one, the kind used for transcribing phonetics; the other, used to distinguish symbols of an alphabet in speech by representing them with unique words. The latter is the kind you call a "spelling alphabet", but those alphabets are also referred to as "phonetic alphabets". I wish you had been less hasty in declaring "not phonetic" and changing the category tag, especially since the new category should have been Category:Spelling alphabets, with the 's'. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:15, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

hi. thank you for your comment & concern. you can change my edits if you would like. i didnt mean to be "hasty". i am sorry to upset you.

i felt that grouping these systems together with true alphbetic phonetic notational systems is misleading, as these "spelling" systems dont have much to do with the study of linguistic sounds. so, the term is a misnomer. but, this terminology is apparently widespread in the realm of general knowledge.

so, you could rename the category to other things like Phonetic alphabet (spelling) or put Spelling alphabet under the Phonetic alphabet category. i see listed in 2 of the articles the term radiotelephony spelling alphabet, and in the Phonetic alphabet article, term radio alphabet. these could be rename options. or you could think of a better name.

i dont know about naming conventions. so, you are telling me that categories should be named with plural nouns while articles should be named with singular nouns?

peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 23:34, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

the above pasted to Category talk:Spelling alphabet

Pawnee language

Hi there, I went ahead and moved your material on Pawnee from Pawnee to Pawnee language, I'd be interested to know your reactions. Also, there seemed to be some &thinspace; tags interspersed in your vowel chart -- was that a cut and paste issue? I tried in a couple browsers and neither had the fonts, so I nixed them. Cheers, --babbage 11:41, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC) (another language buff =) )

hi. yes, that is fine with me. i was just experimenting with how to make better tables — thinspace is unnecesary. i will also move categories. peace. — ishwar  (SPEAK) 18:34, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

Geronimo

I replied to your question on my talk page. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 05:24, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New stub categories

Mustafaa and I have been creating some new stub categories because the meta-category lang-stub has expanded to the point of being unusable: Template:aa-lang-stub, Template:ns-lang-stub, Template:nc-lang-stub, Template:ie-lang-stub. A lot of your articles could use a more specific stub category as well. I can't seem to find guidelines as to what number of articles really merits its own stub category (most relavant links: WP:WSS/ST and Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria), but if it has the potential to exceed 75 it is probably a good idea to create one. (The minimal number is rather arbitrary, but take the case of Khoi-San: it won't work to create ks-lang-stub for Khoi-San, since we're never going to have more than 50 or 60 articles on Khoisan languages anyway.)

So, what would you think of template like st-lang-stub (Sino-Tibetan), or maybe na-lang-stub (for Native American langs)? If you want, I can create some categories like this. Which ones would be most needed? By the way, more specific stub categories have the additional advantage of enabling one to easily keep track of a certain set of stub articles.

Cheers, — mark ✎ 23:15, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

hi.

ok, this sounds good to me. i will give it a try with Template:na-lang-stub. — ishwar  (SPEAK) 06:32, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

Endangered languages

Hi, at Talk:Endangered language you said some time ago that you could email the 'Endangered languages' article to persons that are interested. I am (mainly because I'm lazy — I know I can look it up in my library in a few minutes). So if it's easy to do, please email it to me. The full reference you gave there is:

• Hale, Ken; Krauss, Michael; Watahomigie, Lucille J.; Yamamoto, Akira Y.; Craig, Colette; Jeanne, LaVerne M. et al. (1992). 'Endangered languages.' Language, 68 (1), 1-42.

You can reach me at <email removed>. Thanks in advance! Kind regards, — mark ✎ 10:09, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ok. no problem. peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 16:48, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

Thanks! — mark ✎ 23:15, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Tlingit map

Hi, do you have a map for the language Tlingit ? Please do me a favor and put the the map to common s... Many thanks in advance ! de:Pierre gronau 02:21, 30. Mai 2005 (CEST)

hi. yes, some time in the unknown future i will create a map. but, i do not have one yet. — ishwar  (SPEAK) 02:42, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

speedy deletion

You can also use {{db|reason}} which allows you to provide a reason for the deletion request within the template. Mgm|^(talk) 10:37, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

General (and Swedish) phonology

I'm quite interested in getting the work on phonetic articles going. I've contacted Nohat about information on those recordings by Ladefoged that are linked from the articles on individual sounds and I did some recordings of ejective consonants. I'd like to make an attempt at making some sort of standard for future phonologies too.

Also, if you feel you can wade through all the (sometimes quite heated) debate at Swedish phonology and Standard Swedish, I'd appreciate it. But I certainly won't blame you for avoiding it. It's gotten a bit uncivil occasionally and we're currently trying to mediate with help of Inter. :-/

Have you though of joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Phonetics? That would seem like a good place to start working on a proper inventory of the pronunciations recordings available and such. I think we should consider trying to organize Commons:Category:Pronunciation as well. Peter Isotalo 20:51, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I guess I am not sure what you are requesting. Perhaps just an invite to participate? Thanks!

I would be happy to help.

Currently, I am on a mission to improve the representation of Native American languages. Part of this entails sound inventory charts. This will probably take a good long while. I am probably not going to make the effort to get a hold of a grammar of every language though. Just what is available in my library & the local ones here in town.

Re Swedish language: I dont know so much about Swedish, so maybe I can help much. Regarding dialects, this is usually an animated area. Lots of opinions. Perhaps I am inclined to think that dialects & languages dont really exist—there are only individuals which sound more or less like other individuals in many different ways. Dialects & languages are just abstractions. Anyway, I probably am not helpful. But I do suggest: Be kind (its good for you & others). Peace! — ishwar  (SPEAK) 18:27, 2005 Apr 14 (UTC)

There are some pretty decent articles on phonetics up already and all we need is just to try to standardize them somewhat and try to fill in whatever blanks that do exist. I'll elaborate on some of my ideas in the phonetics project talk page later.

As for the Swedish, I wouldn't say the dispute is actually about anything particular, it's just that the other three currently participating editors, Johan Magnus, Ruhrjung and Tuomas are very suspicious of anything I say. I did kinda barge in on the work they and others had done before me, but I really didn't feel as if I was reckless and and after som initial tactless comments, I've tried to be as welcoming to their input as possible. That I'm alone against the three of them (they know eachother irl, no less) doesn't exactly help, because they're completely convinced that I'm some sort of aggressive and tactless Swedish nationalist newbie and that I'm generally disrespectful to them being experienced editors. Unfortunately, most of their claims have been made without any valid sources, and they tend not to respect the ones I present. As it stands right now, they're arguing against facts from two Swedish books on phonetics (one is a complete Swedish phonology), articles on the matter in NE, a Swedish grammar, the IPA Handbook and to some extent even their own sources. Inter is mediating right now, and he's doing a great job, but I don't think this issue will be resolved unless other editors are involved.

I don't really know how specific to Swedish the issues we're discussing are. A lot of the disputes seem to be about general confusion of pretty basic things like the difference between phonetics and phonology as well as petty squabbles over unimportant details that tend to constantly be interpreted as being insulting to non-Swedes. I think I'm being as civil and factual as possible, but since I get no comments except from JM, R and T, it's really hard to tell. Peter Isotalo 21:04, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Phonetics project

I'm trying to get some activity in the Phonetics project going. I've organized the project page and added some links and templates. Anyone who feels they're interested in phonetics, come and have a look. The more the merrier. Peter Isotalo 15:06, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

I joined. — ishwar  (SPEAK) 18:44, 2005 Apr 14 (UTC)

vceless palatal velar fricative

I'm trying to put some finishing touches to voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative and while it does seem that this sounds is found in no other language except Swedish and is altogether unique to the dialects that use it, I'd like to confirm this with others who are interested in phonetics. Have you read anything about this sound being featured in any other language? Peter Isotalo 07:17, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

hi.

i dont really know about this. if this sound is really a doubly-articulated sound (a description which Ladefoged & Maddieson disagree with), then it is probably not that common & may be restricted to Swedish. if it is simply a dorsal fricative that is articulated in the middle of the hard & soft palate, then i would expect there to be other languages that have fricatives in around the same area (e.g. Klallam [x] is called velar (or front velar, as opposed to back velar [χ]) but it is often articulated more forward than velars in other languages).

however, concerning the variation of the Swedish phoneme, it does seem to be Swedish-specific. but, of course, all phonemes will be language-specific as they all exist within different systems.

regarding the other variants of the phoneme, i.e. the labial or labialized sounds, i am not sure about them. have you thought of asking the Linguist List? they have an Ask a Linguist thing on their website ([1]). (my thought: do all of these different sounds really belong on this page, as they are not really palato-velars?)

i will be attending the LSA institute this summer, so if you would like i can try to remember to ask one of the phoneticians about this.

actually, i like to think that all sounds are "unique" to a given language, although perhaps some sounds are more "unique" than others...(?)

peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 17:26, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

nat. amer. lang

I've had an interest in Native American languages for a while now (especially the issue of language extinction and revitalization), so as someone who likes reading articles about those languages but generally doesn't know enough to actually contribute to them, I think you've been doing some really good work. Everyking 08:14, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi.

Thank you for reading. If you have any suggestions, my ears are open.

I mostly know about Southern Athabaskan languages (aka Apachean), but I know some about the coastal Salishan languages.

I find the entire Northwest Coast fascinating. Although belonging to unrelated languages, these remarkable linguistic creations have very complex series of consonants. Several years I ago, I would not have thought that there could exist a language which had words with no vowels. I now know that the phenomenon also occurs in Berber and Caucasian languages.

I highly recommend to you Marianne Mithun's (1996) The Languages of Native North America and Ives Goddard's (1996) Languages (volume 17) contribution to The Handbook of North American Indians. (Mithun is the most technical linguistically.)

Another specific book that I like is Keith Basso's Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Basso is an anthropologist who has worked a lot with the Cibecue group of the Western Apaches. This book is about the names of places in the Western Apache language & how this works in the culture. What a nice book!

Peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 15:15, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)

I'd just like to second Everyking's thankyou. I'm trying my best to help with language articles in general, and especially Native American ones, but there's only so much I can do when I have only a basic knowledge of the languages (or none at all, and I'm just using Ethnologue and such--I'm hoping to be able to get my hands on Mithun's book within the next few days though, so hopefully I can be more helpful soon!). You've been a great help with many different articles, and you should know that I very much appreciate it. Good luck, and keep up the good work! --Whimemsz 19:57, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words. It is nice to have you aboard. I have some book reviews of Mithun: if you are interested I could email them to you. peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 09:35, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

Apache - Navajo Nation

Would you like to make your linguistic changes to the same info I stashed in Navajo Nation? I defer to someone with more linquistic background. Comments welcome. WBardwin 06:24, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, no problem. Thanks for contributing to the articles. Peace. — ishwar  (SPEAK) 20:17, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)

Additional information: A sentence or two on how the two languages differ, if it can be boiled down, might be good, as well as the approximate date the two diverged? Thanks. WBardwin 21:37, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I am looking into this. Cheers! — ishwar  (SPEAK) 14:55, 2005 Apr 9 (UTC)

Swedish

See: Talk:Voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative#Question. :-) --Johan Magnus 08:41, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I didnt know you were discussing this with so much vigor. Peace! — ishwar  (SPEAK) 22:07, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)

voiced alveolar lateral affricate

Hello. Which is the correct way to write the voiced alveolar lateral affricate, [dl] or [dɮ]? The latter seems more appropriate when compared to the voiceless counterpart [tɬ], and the English /dl/ is not an affricate, but I've seen both. I'm going to add a list of affricates to the affricate consonant page, and I want to know which is better. - TAKASUGI Shinji 07:05, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi.

I guess that if you want to state that affricates are, most generally sounds, produced with a complete closure immediately followed by a period of rather narrow constriction (i.e. of both the plosive and fricative type), then [dɮ] would be the preferred symbol. This would also parallel the non-lateral affricate symbolization.

However, i think that it is very common to encounter [dl]. The reason for this, i believe, is because no known language has been found to have a phonemic distinction between a voiced lateral affricate with significant frication and a voiced lateral affricate without significant frication. So, generally people type the more common symbol.

The actual phonetic realization is a language specific question. Since the speech sounds are really continuous, there are problems of segmentation. We might find a possible realization like [dɮl] where the obstruction is gradually widened—an initial position of audible frication transitioning to a later position of no frication but still a lateral tongue shape to a position of the following vowel.

Aditionally, you might find that some voiceless lateral affricates are partially voiced: [tɮ] or [tɬɮ]. The voice onset time varies from language to language & speaker to speaker. For instance, most English voiced stops are voiceless at the beginning of words, but they are occasionally (actually rarely) partially voiced.

It seems that you want to be very precise? (or maybe you just want consistent symbolization?) To be extremely precise, you simply cant use IPA. You must use spectographs, fiberscopic measurements, etc, and speak in terms of millimeters and milliseconds.

So, whatever you choose perhaps you should mention both. (I dont know if I did a good job explaining this.) Peace. - ishwar (SPEAK) 18:34, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I just want to add a list of affricates, like other pronunciation pages such as approximant consonants. - TAKASUGI Shinji 23:52, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Countering Systemic Bias

Hi Ish ishwar. You are doing great things in the area of general linguistics and the indigenous languages of the Americas. Are you aware of WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias? In particular, you might be interested in the Linguistics section of the project. Kind regards, — mark ✎ 21:36, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

hi.

enjoy yr work as well. yes, i have seen this project. i am a bit unstructured in my edits — I just edit where/when my heart tells to. the bias is what pulled me into this wikipedia project. there was so little on the different Apache groups, much misconception, & nothing on their languages. and then I looked at the Japanese & Vietnamese language articles...and was sucked in.

bright moments! - ishwar (SPEAK) 17:08, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Well, you're countering the systemic bias of Wikipedia anyway. Bright moments to you, too. — mark ✎ 00:41, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

But i dont mean to suggest that i wont be a part of this. i am working to get at least a mention of every known language spoken in N. America (not only to counteract bias but to educate myself - there are so many!). i am making language family pages.

after this is a plan to get a separate page for all of these languages.

i'll take breaks from this & fiddle with other articles (i am thinking of playing with the reduplication article). peace. - ishwar (SPEAK) 06:12, 2005 Mar 16 (UTC)

OK, sounds very good. Now if you ever come across some linguistic article with a limited point of view and you lack the time to correct it, feel free to add it to the linguistics section of CSB I linked to above. There are several other linguists who look at this listing and who are ready to help out.

By the way, your signature seems to be broken; I think that's because template are not working in signatures. Best regards, — mark ✎ 09:36, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hello

Hi. Suffice 19:46, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Peace & Bright Moments! - ishwar (speak) 21:55, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

Mohegan

Hi. Please do not create articles with no content. I have restored the page Mohegan as a redirect to Mohican. Please consider converting the page into a disambiguation page, rather than blanking it. Thanks. -- PFHLai 04:19, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Hi. The page should not redirect there. I corrected this. But I didnt add any content. So I guess you are requesting me to author content. Ok, will do. Cheers!. - Ish ishwar 04:27, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Oh, yes, please add content. Thank you for working on it so quickly. I'm impressed. I'll let you decide if a disambiguation ({{disambig}}) at the top of the page is needed. I think it'll be useful. BTW, if you don't think the Mohicans "exist today under the name Mohegan" (the reason for the original redirect ???), please correct that line on the Mohican page as well. Thanks. -- PFHLai 05:19, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Vietnamese phonolgy

I think you've been the main contributor to this. Can you tell me why there are two different tables of consonants with some similarities and some differences? The second table doesn't seem to be in proper IPA (possibly SAMPA, but I can't recognise it as standard SAMPA)? rossb 22:31, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I have spent some time on this. It seems that the table is from the early edits of Vietnamese language. I cant stand SAMPA so I didnt know it wasnt that. I guess it is an ad hoc system resulting from the early browser limitations.

It looks like it is mostly following the Ho Chi Minh City variety (a.k.a. Saigon). The consonant phonemes have merged from proto-Viet in different ways in the different varieties. Vowels are more stable, but tones also differ. (And of course tones were not originally there either.)

I have not read about the HCMC variety yet, so I cant comment on the chart yet. But I have listed all of my references. I was told that Thompson's work is outdated but I cant read Vietnamese so I am limited to English language (the French material I know about is even older). Anyway, Thompson (1959, 1965, & 1967) are my main sources, so you can check those out. I have the 2 articles in PDF format if you dont have access to old copies of Language.

If you are interested in tones:

It is hard to figure out what the tones are exactly like. I have read conflicting descriptions from different linguists. Frustrating. I recently met a guy that has does some phonetic work on tone in Cham (spoken in Vietnam). He is fluent in Vietnamese & wants to eventually work on Vietnamese. He says that someone from a Florida university (?) recently wrote a good dissertation with nice summaries of previous research.

Peace. - Ish ishwar 23:19, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

Japanese

May I ask why you removed the whole paragraph about timing (linguistics) in the Japanese language page? While the simplified explanation ("all morae are equally long and loud" etc.) may not be completely accurate, the issue of stress timing vs. mora/syllable timing is well established and IMO it deserves a mention. --Pablo D. Flores 02:34, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi.

Yes, you caught my mistake. I intended to move this up to the mora section. I apparently deleted it by accident.

By the way, there is some discussion in the literature about whether the mora in Japanese is only a timing issue and not something that effects structures. I dont know so much about this, but it is probably safe to say that Japanese is a mora-timed language. Maybe a few more years of research & this can be better re-evaluated.

Peace. - Ish ishwar 00:59, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)

Declension and conjugation -- huh?

Hello Ish --

I really appreciate your rewrite to the Inflection page. Now that I've read it over a few times, the part about Declension and Conjugation (which I moved to the top, since those terms are the most familiar), doesn't seem clear to me.

The intro is great, but your example of declension in Latin contains, as far as I can see, very little declension, and no Latin at all. This is probably a standard format known only to linguists, but I confess I can't make head nor tail of it.

The comparison with Tzutujil is a good idea, but i don't understand the format of that example either.

Can you make it clearer to the rest of us?

Best regards,

Steve

Hi.

Yeah, it needs work & I could explain better.

Declension refers to the paradigm of inflected forms of nouns and other things that either modify nouns (adjectives, demonstratives, etc.) or are similar to nouns (pronouns). So a declension of the Latin word agricola would include all the different forms as inflected according to number and case, which would be:

agricola, agricolam, agricolae, agricolā agricolās, etc.

Usually appears in a nice table that labels the case and number (often listed in the backs of grammar books). Ditto with conjugation except it applies to verbs. So, conjugation = verb inflectional paradigm.

We can also speak of different declensions as some nouns can be grouped with one set of inflected forms and other nouns with another set of inflected forms. These are traditionally called something like e- declension, u- declension, etc.

In these Latin grammars it useful to distinguish between noun inflectional paradigms and verb inflectional paradigms because they are inflected according to different inflectional categories, i.e. nouns are inflected according to case but not tense, while verbs are inflected according to tense but not case. This is cool for a language like Latin. It works well.

But when we encounter a language like Tzutujil or Western Apache then we cant use this terminology in the same sense.

Latin and many other European langs are dependent-marking (i.e. the dependents carry inflections). This means that

• in noun phrases, modifiers are marked instead of nouns;
• in verb clauses, nouns are marked instead of verbs; and
• in prepositional phrases, nouns are marked instead of prepositions.

In head-marking languages this opposite is true (i.e. the heads of phrase carry inflection). So,

• in noun phrases, nouns are marked instead of modifiers;
• in verb clauses, verbs are marked instead of nouns; and
• in prepositional phrases, prepositions are marked instead of nouns.

So in Western Apache (some San Carlos speakers) will have inflected postpositions (basically same as prepositions). The inflection is a prefix added to the postposition. It is inflected by according to person and number:

• shiká’ 'on me'
• niká’ 'on you'
• biká’ 'on him'
• nohká’ 'on us two'
• nohwiká’ 'on you two'
• danohká’ 'on us'
• danohwiká’ 'on y'all'
• dabiká’ 'on them'
• koká’ 'on someone' ("4th person")
• dakoká’ 'on someones' ("4th person")

You can see this clearly in a postpositional phrase. We know if the noun is singular or plural by the inflectional prefix on the postiposition:

• nnéé biká’ 'on the person'
• nnéé dabiká’ 'on the persons'

So, what do we call a preposition or postposition inflectional paradigm? It seems a little weird to call this a declension or a conjugation. This traditional terminology doesnt really cover a language like this.

My point then is: How useful is this terminology in describing the languages of the world? Do we really need these terms? Obviously they have a place in traditional grammar & we probably cant get rid of them. But people who want check out lesser known languages can see how the terms are biased towards European-like langs.

This is what I am trying to add to the article. I think the article should try to cover all kinds of inflection including things from non-European languages.

Is this a little clearer? Hopefully I did better.

Well, yes and no. I now believe I understand why "declension" and "conjugation" aren't adequate to explain non-european grammatical inflections. In fact, the explanation above is so clear that some form of it merits inclusion in the page itself. It's an excellent, clear, well-worded answer to a question. I don't think it's the question I asked, though. Apparently my question was unclear.

I'll try again: Unfortunately I still don't understand how

ab	host-i
by	enemy-ABLATIVE
preposition	noun+inflection
'by the enemy'

is an example of declension in Latin. Where are the cases? Where, for that matter, is the Latin? I see only one Latin word in the whole table. What you wrote in your answer above, namely:

agricola, agricolam, agricolae, agricolā agricolās, etc.

seems like a Latin declension to me. In fact, even your inflected postpositions above make perfect sense to me. Could you possibly also rephrase your table in the article to a form that I can understand? I hope that was clearer.

Peace, Steve

Ok, I will try to fix it. Ish ishwar 23:41, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Now that's more like it. Great work and informative too. --Steverapaport 11:12, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)