User talk:Mahagaja

I am hopelessly inconsistent about where I will answer messages left here. If you don't get an answer on your own talk page, check here to see if this is where I've answered.

To the archives

template book reference

We are actually in the process of upgrading templates to make them compliant with WP:AUM.

At Template talk:Book reference#Rewrite due to WP:AUM (begin of that thread) I present a new version for book reference which is not a metatemplate (you can view the code of that at User:Adrian Buehlmann/work/b-ref/1).

May I ask you to carefully review your position? (Please post at Template talk:Book reference#Rewrite due to WP:AUM). Thank you very much indeed. --Adrian Buehlmann 23:21, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

template:book reference is no longer a meta-template and conforms with WP:AUM [1]. This is a temporary solution and we are looking for further improving to adress any issues. --Adrian Buehlmann 15:29, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedians in Germany

Hi Angr, thanks for the notice that the list of Wikipedians in Germany was replaced by a category; I've categorised myself by my Bundesland now. -- pne (talk) 07:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for your notice. I just read that you live in Berlin: we just had our monthly wikipedia meeting last night. Berlin has an active and lively wp community, even including american wikipedians who live here :-) If you should be interested, check de:Wikipedia:Berlin. Next meeting will be on february 19th. See you --Magadan ?! 12:51, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Angr, thanks for the notice about the Bundesländer category thingy! At first I tried to include it into my Babel box, but apparently it doesn't work that way. So I just put myself into the appropriate Category (...ies). --Wutzofant 13:53, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Angr, I'm the fourth to begin my comment with 'hi' ;-) Thank you for the, err, the Bundesländer category thingy. Really good idea. Sciurinæ 00:19, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. Now I can be found more easily. Winnie-MD 12:49, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

South Park Republicans

Hey I had never heard that, but you're absolutely right! I just looked that up. How's this for a great quote from Mat Stone: “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals.” That's me! Thank you for helping me, at long last, find out who I am! ElectricRay 14:39, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

ů

Modernes Deutsch natuerlich nicht :) aber Fruehneuhochdeutsch (EMHG), 14.-16. Jh., benutzte die Ligatur sehr wohl, und ich habe sie manchmal benoetigt fuer Zitate aus dieser Zeit. Die Frage ist aber wirklich, ob es eine gute Idee sei, das Menu nach Sprache zu sortieren: Viele glyphs werden so mehrmals vertreten sein. ů waere auf einer Seite "Latin ligatures" geradesogut untergebracht. dab (ᛏ) 16:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Wäre meiner Meinung nach logischer, es derart zu sortieren, ja, sonst dürften die vielen Dopplungen wirklich mit der Zeit überhand nehmen... —Nightstallion (?) 17:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Also ich glaube es wird jetzt daran gearbeitet, dass jede Gruppe von dem Server einzeln abrufbar ist, damit dieser bei jedem Edit nicht überfordert ist. Wenn das soweit ist, wird es dann egal sein, wie viele Dopplungen es gibt. Dann können die Leute, die nur mit Tschechisch oder Estnisch arbeiten, nur die Palette benutzen müssen, die sie eigentlich brauchen. --Angr (tɔk) 17:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Mh... Okay, gut, lass ich gelten. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 17:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

schon, aber wenn die Menu-Liste erstmal auf 500 Eintreage aufgeblasen wird, ist es sicher muehsamer, daraus "Czech" auszuwaehlen, nur um an haceks zu kommen, als wenn haceks einfach unter "Latin diacritics" oder aehnlich abrufbar sind. dab (ᛏ) 17:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Mh. Und wie wär's, wenn man sich einfach selbst aussuchen kann, ob man die allgemeinen Gruppierungen "Latin extended", "Arabic", ... schwafel, bla, haben will oder lieber nach Sprachen gruppiert? Kann ja auch kein großer Aufwand sein, oder? —Nightstallion (?) 20:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Und wie wär's, wenn wir diese Diskussion auf MediaWiki talk:Edittools verschieben und auf Englisch umschalten, damit auch andere teilnehmen können? ;-) --Angr (tɔk) 20:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Originelle Idee. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 20:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

-

1. Warum "es gibt" statt "gäbe es"? [2]

   Rein technisch korrekt wäre "... wird es dann egal sein, wie viele Dopplungen es geben wird". Parallelkonstruktion im Englischen: "... it won't matter how many double instances there will be". Ich glaube, du verwechselst das de:Relativpronomen "wie viele" mit dem de:Interrogativpronomen "wie viele"... ;) —Nightstallion (?) 07:25, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

   Uf. See, this this the kind of question you ask when you haven't used German in 15 years...you start confusing other languages' subjunctive patterns and think it actually sounds "normal"... Tomer^talk 10:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

2. Wat káin a (hmmm...méibí "káinn" instèd ä "káin a") Igglix dú ái (hmmm...méibí "dw ái" instèd a "dú ái") tók? (see last section of User:TShilo12#Other stuff about me.) Tomer^talk 23:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

   I almost understood that. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 07:25, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

   The above is written in my own personal orthography for English. See User:TShilo12/Igglix orcâgrïfí. The flapped r on my userpage was a typo; it's definitely a liquid retroflex. Tomer^talk 10:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Disruption to articles WP:TFD#Template:Okina

I don't have an opinion on the merits, but Kauai is almost unreadable with the text < ‹The template Okina has been proposed for deletion here.› inserted in almost every line and caption of the article. I wonder if it might be possible to proceed in a less disruptive manner? --Walter Siegmund (talk) 07:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I wonder about that, too, and I went ahead and removed the TFD note. Sorry about that, but It also ruined every article on Hawaii (today linked to from the Main Page). There must be a better way of settling this without going a whole week with many articles practically unreadable because of the note. Shanes 07:42, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

The best way to avoid it would have been not to use a template for the purpose of inserting a single character in the first place. But I've moved the TFD notice to its talk page, so it won't disrupt the appearance of the template anymore. --Angr (tɔk) 12:17, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks to you both. Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

"Congregation"

Well, Ecclesia actually means "congregation", literally "called together", while Oikumene means "world, everybody", congregated or not. "Congregation" is "Versammlung", while "Gemeinde" is "Community", in the sense of some total population, physically congregated or not. dab (ᛏ) 16:26, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

"Oireachtas" in IPA

If you have a moment, could you provide an IPA pronunciation guide for Oireachtas article, please? Someone keeps adding naff pseudo-English "pronunciation guides". --Red King 17:51, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

reverting Celtic languages (pictish)

You beat me to it. Hmmph. :P

→ P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 18:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

And I just put it back. I can readily find, and have added, sources supporting Celtic Pictish. It shouldn't be difficult, if it remains controversial, to find some published support for non-Celtic Pictish since the turn of the millennium using recent research. The best I could find was Marija Gimbutas in The Living Goddesses (1999), not exactly an uncontroversial work and not post-millennial. Sure, I found more, but they relied on positively ancient research. Lehmann's Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics (2005) is a good example of this sort of thing. Angus McLellan 12:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

It's always difficult finding sources arguing against fringe theories like this, because while supporters publish lots, the majority who don't believe them just ignore the issue and don't bother publishing arguments against them. If Pictish is generally omitted from lists of Celtic languages compiled by modern scholars, then the implication is that they do not consider it to be a Celtic language, even if they don't discuss it explicitly. --Angr (tɔk) 12:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I confess to zero expertise in the matter - I only read the end results - but it seems to me that e.g. Price, Nicolaisen and Forsyth are not cranks. That being so, I don't see how the current orthodoxy can be any more of a fringe theory than Jackson's theory which preceded it. I understood that "P-Celtic Pictish" was also the long-accepted theory before Jackson proposed a non-IE Pictish alongside the Pretenic/Brythonic one. Re Jackson's theory on the Picts page, where you added a (fact) template, I know where he wrote about this, but I haven't read it myself. Wearing your Wiki-admin hat, is it considered the done thing for me to put in a ref to something I have not actually seen myself (i.e. Glanville Price says Kenneth Jackson says, so I can add "see Jackson, K.H. whatever") ? Thanks in advance ! Angus McLellan 00:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it (wearing my Celticist hat), the current orthodoxy is neither that Pictish is Brythonic, nor that it is non-IE, but that too little is known about Pictish to know what it is. That's what Ball & Fife say in the introduction to The Celtic Languages, and also what my professors said when I was studying Indo-European linguistics in graduate school. In the introduction to a different book also called The Celtic Languages Donald MacAulay has a diagram making Pictish a sister branch to Brittonic under the heading "P-Celtic" (itself a sister to "Q-Celtic" under "Insular Celtic") but in the text never discusses this. Paul Russell's An Introduction to the Celtic Languages never discusses Pictish at all. Wearing my admin hat, I think it's fine to give the bibliographical information of a source you haven't read, though you should probably be careful not to put words in Jackson's mouth before reading him yourself. I also want to make it clear that I'm all in favor of saying that there are people who have argued that Pictish is Brythonic, and citing those sources, but I don't think it's NPOV to present that as the current communis opinio. --Angr (tɔk) 09:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Belated thanks for the info. FWIW, MacAulay discusses Pictish at the bottom of page 2. ISTM that I could have written that. Angus McLellan 00:03, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Welcoming Committee

What do you mean by this edit summary? --TantalumTelluride 20:47, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

That here and here Jimbo has made it clear that he thinks his vision of user pages is more important than the users' own vision of their user pages. If that's not biting the newbies (and the oldbies too, for that matter), I don't know what is. --Angr (tɔk) 21:11, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I see. I respect your opinion, but I don't really care about userboxes anymore. I prefer my cow, which should be safe unless a rogue admin starts deleting public-domain works of the U.S. government. --TantalumTelluride 21:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I concur with both of you, but am personally to stubborn persistent to give up my userboxes. —Nightstallion (?) 21:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

However it works out hopefully you can come back to WC eventually...-Ravedave 18:00, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

AfD Thanks

Please accept my embarrassingly belated thank you for supporting my RfA, which much to my surprise passed 102/1/1, earning me minor notoriety. I am grateful for all the supportive comments, and have already started doing the things people wanted me to be able to do. And hopefully nothing else... Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 12:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome! --Angr (talk) 13:10, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Theoretical linguistics project live

I've moved the project page to Wikipedia:WikiProject Theoretical Linguistics -- Dalbury^(Talk) 23:16, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I need your input

You need to take a look at the Iranian languages page. I am in a edit war with a certain contributor there. The page is on Iranian languages, yet the contributor keeps adding many paragraphs on the language history of Azerbaijan. It is rather nationalistic in its tone. Do we need over half the page on Iranian languages how Azerbaijan was once Iranian speaking? Shouldn't this be on the Languages of Azerbaijan page. He also quotes a government controlled language source. This is just a horribly written article. Who could take it seriously. Imperial78 01:16, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how much I can do alone. If I were you, I'd make a note of the dispute at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Language and linguistics and maybe Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages. --Angr 06:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

canuinti

Haigh Angr

is mor liom do chuid oibre ar altanna na gcanuinti. Rinne me roinnt mionathruithe don alt fa Ghaeilic Uladh. An e go raibh foinse amhain agat le haghaidh an ailt? Bhraith me go raibh rud beag michruinnis ann o thaobh liostai na bhfocal de. Ta sraith leabhar ann a molfainn go mor leat iad ma bhionn tu ag iarraidh goil ar aghaoidh leis an jab seo, mar ata, An Teanga Beo: Gaeilge Uladh le Pol O Baoill, An Teanga Bheo: Gaeilge Ch., agus, bhuel, ta's agat cade teideal an chinn eile... Pe sceal e ta neart eolais bheacht sna leabhair udai fa na canuinti, an stor focal s'acub, a gcuid suaitheantaisi gramadula, 7rl. Beir bua, Palmiro | Talk 22:18, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I have to answer as Béarla, ach níl Gaeilge agam ach cúpla focal. I do have both of those An Teanga Beo books (as well as the ones for Corca Dhuibhne and Gaeilge Chléire). The source for the vocabulary is mostly the Linguistic Atlas and Survey of Irish Dialects by H. Wagner. The source for the phonology is listed (Ní Chasaide 1999). The source for the morphology I don't remember; it's just stuff I picked up along the way somewhere. That said, it's probably all in Mícheál Ó Siadhail's Modern Irish: Grammatical Structure and Dialectal Variation, I just haven't tracked down the specific claims to that book yet. The syntax stuff you added, so finding a source is up to you! ;-) Beir bua --Angr 22:29, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I have a source for that, though I need to sort it out more... I am a long way from Min na Leice at the moment, and the only source I have here is a copy of Caisleain Oir, so I was going through it and marking typically Ulster constructions out for citation in that section, but have suddenly been attacked by a rampant workload, so won't be doing it just yet. I think it's an excellent start as it is, and well done. The morphology is fine, as far as I can see. There were one or two things in the vocabulary list that struck me as odd, and that was why I was impelled to suggest the Teanga Beo book - "tinn" and "Gaeilig" instead of "Gaeilic".

One more question: would it not be better, in general, for the vocabulary at least, to talk about variations relative to other dialects rather than variations relative to the standard language?

Oh, and while I'm at it, how do we refer to forms (such as the synthetic form, or the absolute form of verbs such as chím, which are in line with the pre-Caighdean Oifigiuil literary language?

Finally, the article on initial mutations indicates incorrectly that l and n do not lenite; perhaps you are in a position to fix that? Palmiro | Talk 23:04, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for voting!

Hello there! I wanted to thank you for taking the time to vote on my arbitration commitee nomination. Although it was not successful, I appreciate the time you spent to read my statement and questions and for then voting, either positively or negativly. Again, thank you! Páll ^{(Die pienk olifant)} 22:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

More help with IPA pronunciation

Hi Angr. The Dún Laoghaire page uses a frustratingly vague non-standard pronunciation guide. If you get a chance, could you convert it to IPA? You seemed like the best person to ask. Thanks! Take care, --Whimemsz 01:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Request for mediation on Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło dispute

Hi Angr. Can I ask you to mediate a dispute, Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło. It concerns the naming of the Lithuanian ruler Jogaila, who also became King of Poland, as Wladislaus II. The current title is Władysław II Jagiełło, which, along with other rulers of Poland, violates general wiki rules for naming monarchs (although Polish users a little while ago agreed amongst themselves to Polonize the names of all Polish monarchs, moving all the articles in correspondence with this decision). This I personally have little objection to (although others might), but Jogaila was not even Polish nor solely a Polish ruler, and the latter means he is not governed by "rules" "agreed" for Polish monarchs. I moved the page to Jogaila of Lithuania. I may or may not have been wrong in the first place for moving it, but I saw this as uncontroversial, as my experience has taught be that it is far more common to refer to him by his Lithuanian name Jogaila, or the corruption thereof Jagiello, and seemed sensible on almost every other ground I could think of. This was objected to by some Polish contributors. Eventually, it had seemed that compromise was reached with Jogaila (Władysław II), but then another Polish user with admin powers (Piotrus), whose intellectual integrity has been far from obviously displayed, reverted this back to the absurd name. Opinions seem hardened, good counter arguments are not being advanced, and the convo now is producing more heat than light. I'm very busy ATM, and am quite anxious to resolve this, but I can't see it happening. Can you help, or have someone help mediate? Thanks. - Calgacus 18:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I've learned that when it comes to eastern Europeans arguing with each other on Wikipedia, it's best to just cut your losses and run. And anyway, I'm a terrible mediator. --Angr 20:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi

Just wanted to let you know the vast quantity of excellent work you are doing on Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/de is not going unnoticed, very well done, keep it up! Martin 10:17, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! It's interesting translating articles on topics I know nothing about. But I do hope other people come along and edit them, because even after I've translated them out of German, they often still have content that makes it clear it was written in Germany (e.g. the Habitat section of Garden dormouse or the number of Germans living in Llucmajor). --Angr 10:21, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Chinese templates

I see you changed Hanyu Pinyin to Pinyin in the templates for Chinese words. That's find, but to keep everything uniform, please go through and change it in all of the templates if you're going to do that. --LakeHMM 00:13, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

A list of related templates can be found at Template:zh-all. --LakeHMM 00:38, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

List of Proof-read requests on the de-en translation page

Hi Angr, I'm still learning the ropes and just saw that you did a lot of list cleanup today. I had totally missed the previous tanslations archive before :(. I've done several translations now but did my first proof-read yesterday. My question is this: After I proofread the article I took it off the list thinking this is what we are supposed to do so we know what's been done and what hasn't. Now, having found the archives, I'm not so sure anymore it was supposed to come off, unless the archives include only articles that still need proof reading. If the list includes all, whether proofread or not, how do we know which articles still need proofreading and which don't (other than checking around and clicking on user talk pages)? Please let me know and I'll put it back on the list if it's supposed to stay on. Thanks for your help. --Mmounties 14:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there are rules about what is and isn't supposed to go into the archives. I just stuck a bunch of stuff there because the de-en translation page is huge and needs cutting down, and those things were more than a month old. I doubt anyone ever looks at them anyway; they're just there because you aren't supposed to permanently delete things. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Angr/talk 14:49, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

THanks

...for getting rid of those backslashes. Sorry! Joey Q. McCartney 10:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Nickname sig thing

Thanks for alerting me. I think it's fixed now. Bhumiya/Talk 21:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Accent on Ìmola

You are mistaken when you say the "grave accent is never used" on Italian placenames. Indeed, in many Italian reference works (such as atlases and dictionaries), it is standard to show stress when it is not on the penult (or when the word ends in two vowels, e.g. -ia) using a grave or acute. In principle, the grave is for open vowels and the acute for closed, but this distinction is not followed systematically. Please contribute to the discussion at User talk:Macrakis/Italian accents. (I suppose there could be a better place for it...) --Macrakis 15:57, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Template:Ll

Wondering why this useful template was deleted? I often use it to subst long lists of languages, and was just trying to use it...but it no longer exists. It saves alot of effort. If you don't have any objections I will undelete it. JonMoore 00:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

It was deleted by consensus. It was considered not to be useful enough to keep, a drain on the servers, and not the correct use of template name space. Please just type out [[French language|French]], [[English language|English]], [[Spanish language|Spanish]], etc. Angr/talk 06:23, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

You can also just use [[English (language)|]]. --Army1987 20:27, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Not every language article has a redirect with "language" in parentheses though. English (language) redirects to English language, but Galatian (language) is just a red link; you have to use [[Galatian language|Galatian]]. Angr/talk 20:36, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Database dumps

Hi Agr, that was a good question you asked on the missing articles/de talk page. How often do they do such dumps? (I've started to go through the list when I need a change of pace and eliminated some of the ones only listed there because of missing links.) Did I understand correctly that the last dump didn't even include all those they normally include because it would have been ridiculously many? Btw, I'm really grateful for the layout conventions on the pages across the wikis because it enabled me to, while I'm at it, to add the en: interwiki link to the other language articles as well that were linked from the German article. So now, after just a short time, I can say that I've modified cyrillic, japanese and other pages written in to me incomprehensible characters.  :) Keep up the good work. I really like what we all got accomplished last week. --Mmounties 01:08, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how often they do the database dumps. I'm not sure it's even organized. I too am under the impression the last dump excluded pages in German + three other languages excluding English, because there were over 2000 of them. And I too have enjoyed adding en: links to languages I can't read, thinking "Hmm.. this must be Edit... this must be Save page... I hope... let's see what happens..." Angr/talk 06:28, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:German Wikipedians' notice board

I know you are not German, but if you have some time, would you mind having a look at this brand new notice board? I think it could be used to either start or stand in place of a WikiProject Germany, and to gather some people to revive Portal:Germany. And of course it should be used by any Wikipedia editor who needs Germany-related help or a German opinion on something. I am currently trying to make sure it does not become a rallying point for German POV pushing. Any help would be appreciated at Wikipedia talk:German Wikipedians' notice board. I also do not know all that many German editors here: can you point me to some experienced German Wikipedians that might be interested in helping? Thank you, Kusma (討論) 02:40, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Currently we are moving toward German-speaking already and are starting to include Swiss and Austrian topics, so de-N is the right place, but I don't really want to spam all these people (there's just too many of us!). I will just try to ask all the German-speaking people I know and those I happen to interact with to come to our board and to spread the word. Kusma (討論) 05:49, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Noticeboard

Hi, I'm trying to find someone who might help us get the looks to work on all browsers. In the mean time, I'd like for you to take a look at how it looks in your browser coded so that the To Do's box shows next to the flags. Ok with you? As long as we don't take out the TOC that wouldn't look too bad in IE. --Mmounties 20:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

blanking

ya...that was not what I was going for...I was having a lot of troubles w/ WP and that appears to have been one of them. :-\ Thanks for rolling it back, I'll hafta go see what else might have gotten mucked up, now that the servers appear to be back up. Tomer^talk 23:35, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Lord of the Dance

Well done! - you beat me to it on the same grounds.... Tyrenius 00:03, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

tonal language

Hey dere. A new user created Tonal Languages. When you get a few free minutes, could you please review my comments here, here and here? Cheers, Tomer^talk 02:05, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts

With Userpages getting vandalized often, perhaps Wikipedia ought to just have it where only users can edit their pages. I figured I'd say this here since your page was a victim of many attacks. 144.126.161.43 03:50, 14 February 2006 (UTC)