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Revision as of 01:43, 15 March 2015

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Keep Redskins White!

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Ling.Nut: Language-population update project

Hey. I'm Ling.Nut. I did all that lang stuff using Python to generate tables. Can do again if the task is large enough to warrant the effort. Please email new User id; Ling.Nut is very retired, & I check Misplaced Pages very seldom... Tks! • Serviceable†Villain 12:57, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi LingNut! Good to see you're still around. If I can get a DB of the pop figures, I'll let you know. — kwami (talk) 02:06, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Please don't call me jingoistic.

Please don't call me jingoistic. It's rude, offensive and for someone who knows three languages and cheers for different national sports teams, untrue. American is used to refer to something from of the United States of America unless it has a modifier such as in Latin American to refer to something from Latin America and South American to refer to South America. If someone types American Spanish, they're looking for the Spanish language in the United States just like if they type American English, they're looking for the English language in the United States. I'm putting in the modifier when needed (example: if it's something pertaining mostly to Latin America, use Latin American). Please don't assume it's jingoistic. I even removed the translations so there wouldn't be a conflict over that. Dash9Z (talk) 07:55, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't call you jingoistic, I said your edits were. And I think they were, wherever the jingoism entered in. (Not everyone who thinks Obama was born in Kenya is a racist. Some just believe what they hear on Fox News.) When "American Spanish" is mentioned in the lit, it means the Spanish of America, not the Spanish of the USA. (Certainly redirecting American Spanish (disambiguation) to US Spanish is ridiculous, if not vandalism.) This has been discussed several times, and I have to agree. I live in the US, and this is what "American Spanish" has meant my entire life, including instruction in state schools. For the US, people say US Spanish, or Chicano Spanish, etc. — kwami (talk) 17:08, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

"Some just believe what they hear on Fox News." Sad but true. :v -MPA Neto (talk) 02:00, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Number of speakers of Romani chib

What’s the purpose of maintaining a ridiculous low (and clearly untrue) figure in this important page of the Misplaced Pages? And, above all, what’s the purpose of deleting mi correction, which, apart from prudent and conservative, is shared by many versions of Misplaced Pages in other languages (German among them, for instance)? Certainly, there are no reliable data about the actual number of speakers of Romani, either in Europe or in other continents, but the most conservative estimate would suggest that there are upwards of 3.5 million speakers only in Europe. The actual number may be much higher, up to 9.300.000. This makes Romani the largest minority language in the EU since its enlargement in May 2007, after Romania and Bulgaria joined the Union. Some 1.5 to 2.0 million for the rest of the world is also a most reasonable estimate.

Of course, Roma are well used to this kind of neglect, end even, contempt, so I do not wonder very much of being amended in such a quick way, without a single word of explanation.

http://www.romaninet.com/ROMANINET_Linguistic_report.pdf

Pica-soques (talk) 20:41, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

If you have reliable sources for your claims, provide them. (I have no idea where the data in your online source comes from, as it gives no refs. See WP:RS for what we expect of our sources.) Saying something doesn't make it so, and accusing people of conspiracies only makes you sound like a crackpot. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Your impoliteness does not turn your figures right. Moreover, I dislike to be called a crackpot just for writing the truth. But don’t worry, I won’t participate any more in this page of yours. Have a good night. Pica-soques (talk) 21:05, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't call you a crackpot, I said that accusing others of conspiracies to silence the TRUTH makes you sound like a crackpot. And it does. Since you refuse to engage in a real discussion, I will assume you have no reliable sources to back up your claims. — kwami (talk) 21:09, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Here you are a source, if you consider The University of Manchester reliable enough:

http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/whatis/status/numbers.shtml

Pica-soques (talk) 21:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that does look like a reasonable source, though it is not the source of the higher numbers you gave earlier. I'd prefer it if it were published, but this should be good enough for now. — kwami (talk) 21:36, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I will send an email to Professor Yaron Matras (present director of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at The University of Manchester) asking the precise information about the higher numbers I gave, relying on his own published estimates (which I do not find right now). I will send the references to you as soon as I receive them. Pica-soques (talk) 22:20, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Perfect. That's all we could ask. As it was, I'd updated the article with the U. Manchester figure, but it would be nice to give our readers more info.

Reading over your comments, I realize that "if you consider The University of Manchester reliable enough" may have been an honest question. I'd taken it as a snarky implication that, since your previous comment had suggested I'm part of some racist anti-Roma conspiracy, I would pretend that UMan is not reliable. Thus my (now deleted) "chip on your shoulder" comment in response. Sorry, I take that back. — kwami (talk) 22:23, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

You are welcome. But there was no need to delete anything, since I believe firmly on freedom of expression. With respect to my initial suspicions about a hypothetical anti-Roma bias from you (not as much as racism) are very well based on my own life experience. I did not pretend to hurt, just state a well-known fact (in my country and in the USA as well). Defending Roma and Romani culture is not yet an easy cause. Pica-soques (talk) 22:53, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, hardly anyone in the US knows that the Holocaust targeted the Roma as much as the Jews.

The only time I've met Roma, that I know of, was in Slovakia, while I was waiting with a group of them for an inn to open. They gave me several "gifts", all of which they'd filched from my backpack. Maybe they were just playing with the stereotypes, or maybe I didn't have anything worth stealing, I don't know. The rather uncomfortable experience left me pondering how easy it might be to acquire anti-Roma stereotypes, and the kinds discriminatory interactions that occurred in Slovakia. — kwami (talk) 23:09, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Your moves

It is an extremely bad idea to move those Canadian languages to their traditional English names without discussion. The source you are claiming support from also does not in fact seem to support it. Move them back and start move discussions. I really don't understand why you would do this, after being asked soooo many times not to make controversial moves without discussion. It is bound to cause problems. For you most likely. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:17, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I was going off their pub here. Your ref goes by endonym, including non-Latin letters that most fonts don't cover. They're hardly English. — kwami (talk) 22:18, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

That doesn't by a long shot provide adequate support for these moves that you were bound to know will prove to be controversial. That report does not pretend to provide guidance on language names at all, and in their actual information material they always use the native name first and then supply the traditional name in parenthesis. It is fairly simple: Use the discussion process for this kind of moves.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:22, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Chinese articles

I have been wondering about the various articles about 'Chinese' we have, specifically "Chinese language", which uses singular 'language', but then (correctly) goes on to tell that it is "a group of related but in many cases mutually unintelligible language varieties", and a separate "varieties of Chinese", which correctly notes the same thing about Chinese and also compares the internal diversity to that of Romance (that of Chinese being greater). What would really be the topic of the latter distinct from that of the former? From how I look at it, despite the sociological situation and common view on this topic, the former should really simply be at "Chinese languages". And then the latter is really an oddity, it's not like we have "varieties of Romance", or "varieties of Germanic". But before I would raise this issue there, I'd like to ask your take on this. --JorisvS (talk) 14:38, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Culturally, Chinese is one language. Sinologists often treat it that way, or as ambiguous. And we do have German dialects and varieties of Arabic. As for moving Chinese to "languages", that would require that we provide a list of Chinese languages. We can't do that, because no-one knows what they are: the work has never been done, unlike e.g. Hindi, German, or Arabic. (And if we were to go by mutual intelligibility, Hindi would be a rd to Urdu, Indonesian to Malay, and Serbian to Croatian. But try convincing Indians, Indonesians, and Serbs that their national language is not a language.) Moving the main Chinese article to "languages" would be to promote a specific POV that is not the academic consensus, even if you or I might agree with it. — kwami (talk) 16:46, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, redirects between those different standard varieties is a bit too far, because we can and do have articles about them that handle their subjects. But they do point out that these are standardized varieties of a single language, not distinct languages themselves (as their speaker would often have us believe). But how is the singular "Chinese language" the academic consensus? Does anyone dispute the great differences that significantly impede mutual intelligibility? Whether we know exactly which distinct varieties are and aren't mutually intelligible doesn't make a difference as to what they really are; there are lots of language families where the exact number of languages is unknown due to a lack of data. And this is ignoring that in dialect continua it becomes nearly impossible to give an exact figure. --JorisvS (talk) 11:41, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

German isn't a language, or Italian, or Arabic, as you define it, yet we have articles on all three. There's an editorial decision to be made in how much info to have at Chinese language, Mandarin, written Chinese, and varieties of Chinese, but each of those articles has its use. — kwami (talk) 17:02, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

enquête

Hello, I consider this pronunciation is , do you think so? 138.229.21.81 (talk) 02:05, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Your disambiguation...

You disambiguated (and thanks for doing so by the way) the "American English" page on the grounds that having United States English at such a page was based on politics rather than linguistics.

But in doing so, you made a blatant political claim regarding General American that is not universally agreed upon by linguists nor general people.

If you don't like my wording, you can use a wording similar to that which we use on our General American page:

"General American (commonly abbreviated as GA or GenAm) is the umbrella term for an American English dialect or accent whose definition, though persistently debated, is popularly based upon a perceived lack of any notably regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics. General American has been characterized by an origin and sound system separate from the various dialects of the American South and East Coast, including New York City and New England....General American is sometimes, controversially referred to as a de facto standard accent of the United States."

To be clear, my only issue is with your statement on the disambiguation page about General American. That's all. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 23:24, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Reference Errors on 14 March

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that some edits performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. They are as follows:

• On the Banjar language page, your edit caused a broken reference name (help). (Fix | Ask for help)
• On the Bulgarian language page, your edit caused a broken reference name (help). (Fix | Ask for help)
• On the Shawiya language page, your edit caused a broken reference name (help). (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check these pages and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:22, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Disruptive page moves.

Due to the disruptive nature of certain of your recent page moves, you are hereby prohibited from moving any pages with incoming links without first obtaining a consensus in accoradance with the procedures set forth at Misplaced Pages:Requested moves. Please acknowledge that you will conform to this condition, and your block will be lifted immediately. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:43, 15 March 2015 (UTC)