Talk:Harold Williams (linguist)

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.

[[List of polyglots#Highest Claims]]

Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group.

Journalism Low‑importance

	Journalism portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Journalism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of journalism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JournalismWikipedia:WikiProject JournalismTemplate:WikiProject JournalismJournalism articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Linguistics Low‑importance

	Linguistics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of linguistics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

New Zealand Low‑importance

	New Zealand portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject New Zealand, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of New Zealand and New Zealand-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.New ZealandWikipedia:WikiProject New ZealandTemplate:WikiProject New ZealandNew Zealand articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Veganism and Vegetarianism Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Veganism and Vegetarianism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of veganism and vegetarianism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Veganism and VegetarianismWikipedia:WikiProject Veganism and VegetarianismTemplate:WikiProject Veganism and VegetarianismVeganism and Vegetarianism articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

[Untitled]

--Te Karere (talk) 01:17, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would have liked to have done more to expand this article on Harold Williams, but I lack the time at this moment. Much information about him can be found at this page:

http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/williams.html

However, I tried to use as little as possible, to avoid copyright infringement (I'm a little fuzzy on how much is legally usable under Fair Use).

This article is largely taken and plagarized from the first external link, from what I know about fair use. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.16.161.209 (talk) 05:20, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

12,000 characters would be extreme even for a very well-educated native Chinaman. That's why Chinese people have dictionaries. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.163.65.9 (talk) 10:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This looks like pretty bad plagiarism, and plagiarism of a pretty doubtful source. Describing Latin as "one of the great root languages" (copied verbatim) is at best very non-linguistic/non-scientific. And how well did he speak the languages really? Listing languages as a binary spoken/not spoken doesn't really make sense, there's a lot of steps between saying hello and speaking like a native. Claims of hyperpolyglottism tend to be highly misleading, and I'm not convinced that this is an exception. Donostia Gipuzkoa (talk) 21:25, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be curious to see a list of the 58 languages he supposedly knew. Muzilon (talk) 10:17, 30 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Cornish Language

Did he ever learn the Cornish language?Bodrugan (talk) 03:49, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reassessed as C class

I have dropped the article back to C class, as it fails two B class criteria:

It needs inline citations, and
The lead is far too short for an article of this length. Schwede 66 01:24, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Born in ...

Williams was born in Auckland, as per the article. Just in case anybody ever comes across this page on the website of the Christchurch City Libraries, you can rest assured that they've got it wrong when they say that he was born in Christchurch. I quizzed them on it, and here's what one of their librarians replied:

We have found references in the birth index and on Paperspast that indicate that Harold Williams birth was registered in Auckland. The chronology is on the libraries website is from a council publication and we are not sure what reference was originally used.

The book they refer to is the Christchurch chronology: a history of settlement. Oddly, it would appear that they are unwilling to update their online version, despite knowing that they've got it wrong. Schwede 66 23:23, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]