User talk:Florian Blaschke

Welcome!

Hello, Florian Blaschke, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Although it seems like you've got it pretty well figured out. Nice job on media lengua. Makemi 01:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Florian, I noticed your good edit to the article substratum. Would you happen to know a source for the Norn example, so perhaps you could add that as well? I tagged the article with the source tag as the current version does not cite any sources. --AAikio 13:27, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are sources (scientific literature, not websites) listed on Norn language, but I haven't checked them out personally, so I'm not sure which is most appropriate. By the way, your name is familiar - I came across your homepage in April or so. Florian Blaschke 15:17, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for your reply. I think I'll try to check these myself sometime if I have the chance; as it happens, I'm also personally interested in cases of susbtrate influence, as this is a topic I do research on. Btw, it's great to notice that there are other comparative linguists around here as well. Maybe we could improve together some articles in this field sometime... I've been planning to edit the comparative method for a while but haven't gotten up to it yet, there are a few things discussed on the talk page that I think would need improvement.`

As for my web site, if you visited it in April it might still have been the older and horribly outdated version. I replaced it with a new version sometime in the summer. And also, thanks for your comment on the Altaic issue on my talk page; there's been quite a bit of discussion on this recently , but this is scattered all over various talk and user talk pages... The original question I've been disputing with user E104421 is whether we should keep the "disputed" tag in the language infoboxes of "Altaic" language articles, as in Turkish language for example. Do you have an opinion on this? --AAikio 07:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is getting too long, I'm mailing you. Florian Blaschke 11:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for uploading Image:Alestormpromo1.jpg. I noticed the 'image' page specifies that the image is being used under fair use, but its use in Wikipedia articles fails our first fair use criterion in that it illustrates a subject for which a freely licensed image could reasonably be found or created that provides substantially the same information. If you believe this image is not replaceable, please:

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A tag has been placed on Alestorm requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a band, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, as well as our subject-specific notability guideline for musical topics.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding {{hangon}} to the top of the article (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Stephenb (Talk) 15:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank for this great job, you did. I had already checked what you corrected. And I'm satisfied with what you did so far. I didn't checked everything yet. Thank you very much. I wish I could master english like you.

Does avant garde deviate from the basic principles or the tonal language?

Well to reply to this question, it depends what we mean by "avant-garde". Because it's a term that can be used loosely and differently according to certain persons who use it. If by" avant-garde" we called any music ahead of their time or any non standard music then no, avant-garde doesn't necessarilly deviates from the tonal language. However musicologically and historically speaking the term "avant-garde music" has stongly been associated with the radical tendencies of modernist music including atonal music, twelve tone music, Serial music, Stochastic music, Concrete music, electronic art music, spectral music, etc... All these modernist tendencies are characterized by a general rejection of tonal language. So my specification about tonal language concerned the fact avant-garde metal despite its name doesn't necessarilly rejects tonality like avant-garde music often does. In this regard avant-garde metal is closer to the experimental approach of postmodern music than modernist avant-garde in music.Frédérick Duhautpas (talk) 09:09, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're invited to the above. --Bardin (talk) 14:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your request, But I don't have much time to reply for the moment.But I think I' m going to surprize you, if I tell you I actuallly second many claims by this guy. Actually there's a misunderstanding going on here. He doesn't say" Britney Spears is as complex as classical music" as you seem to believe. No, he says that criterias (such as modulation) used to point the complexity of classical in this article are wrong or misguiding, because use of such elements can be found in popular music. Which is correct. Those criterias in this article are naively worded. Anyway even though he exagerates a little bit concernign BS and even if he omits some specifications, I mostly agree with him concerning things about Modulation, Repetition, Variation. They just are not criterions of compelxity at least the way it is worded. Concerning polyphony/counterpoint, the issue is a little more complciated. Yes even counterpoint is sometimes used in popular music. But that's here the root of another misunderstanding going here I'll have to dissipate when I'll have time. Actually the kind of counterpoint or variation used in popular music is quite different from the classical tradition one . Classical one is generally more codified and regulated than the one used occsaionaly in popular music which is much freer and more instinctive. Which make it far more difficult to master.Frankely speaking I doubt anyone can give an example of Britney Spears using Bach's complex mastery of Fugue. Here's the point. However another latent misunderstanding is to confuse complexity with superiority. Many people hear "superiority", when using the word "complexity". Which is completely misguiding. Because complexity doesn't necessarilly make music superior. This confusion is a source ( I think) of many heated debates. Because people believe by claiming Classical compelxity, one states superiority over their favourite genres...Frédérick Duhautpas (talk) 21:16, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the process of moving images to Commons and sorting them, I've realized that we seem to have two categories on Commons for the same thing. commons:Category:Medieval festivals seems to cover such events in Europe, while commons:Category:Renaissance fairs covers such events in the US. In this (English) Wikipedia, the articles are named "Renaissance fairs" (or "faires" or "festivals"), and point to the similarly named categories on Commons, while the German Wikipedia calls (what seems to be the same thing) Mittelaltermarkt and points to the Medieval festivals category. As far as you can tell, are these describing essentially the same thing? If so, we should probably merge the categories on Commons; what are your thoughts on which name they should merge to? Commons says to use the English language term, but I don't know what terms are used to describe this activitiy in the English-speaking world outside the US, nor if it is as common elsewhere as in the US. Thanks, cmadler (talk) 14:21, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

They don't seem quite the same to me. commons:Category:Medieval festivals seems more related to historical reenactments in historical places , and commons:Category:Renaissance fairs to the American-style fairs. In the first category, while obviously there's nothing medieval or Renaissance in the US, there are plenty of historical forts, parks, etc. where historical festivals are played out. They may be of later timeperiods, but they share an ambience of historicity and location. However, the Renaissance Fairs are much more like theme parks, and however much they aspire to "authenticity", they are more fantasy oriented. Only the subject matter is the same. Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 21:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So perhaps Renaissance fairs and Mittelaltermarkt are essentially the same thing, and should both point to commons:Category:Renaissance fairs, while commons:Category:Medieval festivals should be linked to an article on historical reenactment, perhaps Medieval reenactment, and used for more authentically inclined events? cmadler (talk) 12:24, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like an excellent suggestion. Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 21:02, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree; this solution makes sense and is even an improvement over the current state, in being more precise and separating events geared towards fantasy from those with aspirations towards authenticity. In my opinion, "Renaissance fair" is a suitable translation for the German term "Mittelaltermarkt". Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:01, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I will start making the changes. Could you put a note on de:Diskussion:Mittelaltermarkt about this, explaining the changes and reasoning? My knowledge of German is not at all up to the task. Also, maybe the US Renaissance fair phenomenon should be mentioned in the German article? Thanks, cmadler (talk) 14:20, 28 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've written something on the talk page. Hope it is OK that way. Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for fixing that, careless of me. Dougweller (talk) 21:18, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

re [1] - Etymonline is not a particularly reliable source, but the Merriam Webster entry is fine - it's the first reliable citation I've seen (and I have searched previously), even if it only says that it is a "probable" derivation. If you have such a citation, it should be included in the text though, so I've added it.

However, as for your edit summary "rv again: WTF are you trying to say?" - this falls below our project's civility standards. Please consider that the editors you are dealing with can be politely spoken to as reasonable people. Knepflerle (talk) 10:12, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry if you felt offended, but it wasn't meant in an offensive way at all, just to point out my bafflement as your statement didn't make any sense to me. Perhaps it's because of my linguistic training ... but there is no way that foosball could somehow be an "independent development" that I could think of, and that's just so vague a way to put it that I didn't know what to make out of it. (You mean, like, some weird English dialect that shifts [t] > [s] that the word would fortitiously have been loaned from? I just don't see it.) After all, you didn't doubt any of the other entries, either.

Thanks for fixing the article. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:45, 29 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Florian, I've only moved those articles to import old edits from the Nostalgia Wikipedia. The moves of which you speak appear to have been made by John J. Bulten (talk · contribs) in May 2008, and he noted his justification for them at Talk:1 metre#Rename proposal. Graham87 00:46, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm moving the discussion here because it does not really belong on the Talk page.

As an aside, I wonder if children raised in (say) rural Southern England without exposure to other varieties of English (through mass media, especially TV), only the local/regional dialect/accent, might not also have major difficulty understanding (say) American English, when first getting in contact with it, just like you had with South African English. After all, American English might conceivably have diverged from Southern British English even more since Shakespeare's time than South African English has diverged from Southern British English, which, after all, has happened much more recently. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:15, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

American English, probably not. But they would have major difficulty understanding people from Northern England. If you were to show a film like "Kes" to a hypothetical person from southern England, he'd have as hard time with it at first as an American would, if not more so, simply because of the pronunciation. American English hasn't "diverged" as much as it has "converged", being a "consensus mixture" of southern, northern and West Country accents.

By the way, both the South African boy and I were speaking the same "dialect" of English (Standard English), which is extremely similar whether it's spoken in South Africa, the US, Ireland or Great Britain, except in pronunciation. The difficulty I had was solely due to pronunciation. The only term he used that I didn't understand was "noughts and crosses", which in America is called "tic tac toe".

It takes a lot more than differences in pronunciation to make two varieties different dialects. There have to be substantial differences in lexis and grammar as well. The differences between Standard American, Standard British, Standard South African etc. are far too small for them to be considered separate dialects. On paper, it would be extremely difficult to distinguish them were it not for the minor differences in spelling and the occasional give-away lexical or grammatical differences.

If you want to find truly divergent dialects of English, you will find them only inside Britain, in Yorkshire, for example. Differences between dialects within Britain are far, far greater than differces between Standard British and any oversees variety, including American, with the possible exception of African-American English, which even I cannot understand without focusing, and even then only when they are speaking directly to me, and not among each other.

Strangely, for Dano-Norwegian, the opposite is true. The language is extremely uniform in Denmark, the motherland, and very diverse in Norway, where it is an introduced language. The reason is that Norwegian Dano-Norwegian was highly influenced by the related Norse language which it displaced, whereas American English was not influenced by the completely unrelated Native American languages, except for a few lexical borrowings. Contary to popular belief, American English has hardly been influenced by immigrant languages, except, again, for a few lexical borrowings.

By the way, I studied in Germany (Regensburg and Oldenburg). For comparison sake, the difference between English and Scots is far less than the difference between Hochdeutsch and Niedersachsener Plattdeutsch. It's more like the difference between Hochdeutsch and Bayrisch. The difference between American Standard English and British Standard English is about the same as the difference between Standard Hochdeutsch as spoken in Munich and Standard Hochdeutsch as spoken in Vienna, Berlin or Hamburg.Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:48, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the difference between the SBE vs. SAE and the SBE vs. SAmE examples. In both cases, the main difference is in pronunciation. Of course I'm not talking about the written language. A "monolingual" speaker of SBE would scan the SAmE pronunciation of, for example, bottle as bardle. Of course the SBE speaker would understand the sound correspondences involved after a short time (and that's exactly what must happen in the case of children first exposed to an accent different from their own), but initially, the unfamiliar pronunciation would stump them as the SAE pronunciation has stumped you. The catch is, even if the differences are small, there is still some learning effort involved, it's just so automatical (and in the case of BE vs. AmE at least, so early in life) that people don't realise they have learned a new system, even if it is mainly only a phonological system.

I know for a fact that people from Northern Germany frequently complain about the accent in Munich (especially subway drivers and policemen are notorious for often having a thick Bavarian accent), and depending on the strength of the accent either find it alien or hard to understand. Bavarian dialect, as opposed to Standard German, is positively unintelligible to them (unless they spend years in Bavaria), although Bavarian dialects do not seem quite as divergent from Standard German as Swiss German dialects are (this may have been different in the past, though), and the dialect of Munich in particular is strongly influenced by the standard language and much less distinctive than more rural dialects. That "Prussian" foreigners struggle so much with the local linguistic features (younger people in particular only speak a very slight, generalised South German accent that I barely recognise as distinctive, though my own accent seems to be stronger even though I tend not to be aware of it unless I get to hear my own voice recorded) is especially curious in view of the observation that through TV, Northerners should have become more familiar with Bavarian, and vice versa (in fact, Bavarian at least in the form of the accent is considered to be very popular nowadays in Germany), and I'm at a loss to explain how it is possible that in practice, the difference is still so momentous.

By the way, I'd like to point out that the terms accent, dialect and language are ill-defined in linguistics and I use them rather intuitively, which is why I prefer the more technical term variety. As closely related as varieties often are, as subtle as the differences between two varieties can be, my point is that despite the significantly varying learning burden, some sort of learning – even if only in the form of barely conscious "accomodation" – is virtually always involved.

A final remark: I'd say you are severely overstating the case if you claim that the authentically (Western) Norse dialects of Norway have become displaced by Dano-Norwegian entirely. Especially in Western Norway, distinctive local dialects that can be shown to have developped from Old Norwegian without any break are still in place and well and alive, despite all foreign influences, and form the basis for the modern Nynorsk standard. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 06:04, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hallo! I found you through your edit comment in this edit. I agree that consistency in dates is a good thing, but am wondering how to achieve this for articles on Japanese history since the dates are not always fixed. With older periods, new archaeological finds are pushing those dates further back in time (in fact in this case there is some evidence for a Jōmon-Yayoi transition as early as 500 BC) and even for more recent periods, different definitions can lead to different transition dates (I started to collect various definitions here in case you are interested). If you have a good idea how to point out (with a footnote,...) that dates in these cases are not fixed, please let me know. Also if you want to add to User:Bamse/Japanese historical periods, feel free to do so. bamse (talk) 15:43, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really see the problem here. There was likely no sudden transition, at least not one that would have taken place at the same time all over the Japanese archipelago. Instead, there was most probably a period of several centuries where the two traditions existed side by side. Presumably, the Yayoi tradition slowly spread towards the east and north, gradually assimilating the previous inhabitants culturally (unless they were displaced or fled to the east/north). Therefore, depending on the exact place in the archipelago, the Jōmon period ended at quite different times, which is exactly what the overlap explicitly indicated in the table implies. In the far north, there was never a Yayoi period at all. That means, even if Yayoi started earlier, Jōmon didn't necessarily end earlier, as well.

Anyway, as long as the discussion is still ongoing and the dating still in flux, it's best to stick to the traditional date. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:23, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fully agree. But in some later transitions (Asuka->Nara,...) there are different dates depending on definition and it is not always obvious which to chose in articles or for the infobox. In these cases, I think some kind of note could be useful. What do you think? bamse (talk) 16:31, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, you don't happen to read kanbun, or have a translation of the Shoku Nihongi at hand, do you? bamse (talk) 16:33, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I'm not a specialist on East Asian languages, literature or history at all, so I can only really apply what I've learned about the subject from Wikipedia itself. But it seems that the start of the Nara period is quite consensually defined as 710, because of the move of the capital to Heijō-kyō in that year. Of course such delimitations are always to an extent arbitrary, but in this case, the periods do seem to have established precise definitions. I notice that the alternative dating at Asuka period is not sourced, so I would be sceptical and hesitate to assume that there is really a difference in opinion in this case. But as I've cautioned, I'm not conversant with the subject. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:44, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and rewrote the page on Northern Italian languages to reflect its title properly and to try and reflect some of the debates. I do agree that the normal grouping of Gallo-Italian is with Gallo-Romance rather than Italo-Romance, and like you I suspect that the tendency on the part of certain Italian linguists to group it with Italo-Romance has an ideological basis. I'm not too familiar with Hull's work but I doubt that the term "Padanian" has currency in scholarly circles beyond Hull himself, which means it probably doesn't meet the notability standard of inclusion. On top of that, the "Padanian" concept seems to have been appropriated for political purposes by northern Italian separatists trying to invent a unified northern Italian ethnic identity, which is a further caution against its inclusion. Benwing (talk) 00:24, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the problem with "Padanian" is that it's not a commonly-used term among the specialists. We need to follow standard terminology, otherwise we are veering into original research territory. As for your other statement: The discontinuous territory of the current Rhaeto-Romance languages strongly suggests that R-R languages were once spoken over a significantly larger territory, and later displaced by neighboring languages. In a situation like this, it's natural that words will survive from the former (substrate) language, including e.g. words with palatalized /tɕa/ or similar. But this doesn't imply that Venetian, even the Venetian spoken in former R-R areas, was once more of a Rhaeto-Romance or Gallo-Romance language. It may indeed be the case that certain Italo-Romance features have diffused from areas to the south and overlaid themselves onto Gallo-Italic languages of northern Italy ... Of course, it may also be the case that Gallo-Romance features have diffused from the northwest and overlaid themselves onto languages that were once more Italo-Romance in character, or (even more likely) that there were various waves of diffusion of features coming from various directions at various times.

As an example, Giacomo Devoto, in his book on Italian dialects, relates a traditional anecdote where a Tuscan and a Genovese speaker were competing to see who could produce the most vowel-heavy and consonant-light sentences. The Tuscan said Io vidi un'aquila volare "I saw an eagle flying", to which the Genovese responded E êia e ae? "And did it have wings?". Devoto says the modern Genovese dialect is less extreme in this respect, more like E avea e ale? In this case, features closer to the standard language have clearly diffused from elsewhere in a way that eliminated the more unusual aspects of Ligurian speech. But in general it's difficult-to-impossible to figure out how such diffusion has happened -- and in many cases, to separate out diffusion from internal developments -- without direct evidence of the older speech. Indirect evidence embedded in the vocabulary is often interpretable in various ways.

If you want to insert some statements about such diffusion, you should be careful (1) to try and see which are the prevailing views rather than a particular theory you happen to like, (2) to make sure the statements you insert are actually representative of what individual scholars say, (3) to quote secondary rather than primary sources. For example, claiming that specific Italo-Romance features have been overlaid on specific modern Gallo-Italian languages is very different from a generic statement such as that the "Padanian" languages as a whole were once Gallo-Romance or Rhaeto-Romance. (It's not even generally agreed that the Rhaeto-Romance languages are a subset of the Gallo-Romance languages.) In addition, Hull's PhD thesis is a primary source. These are generally non-ideal for Wikipedia because they are trying to advance particular theories rather than summarize consensus, meaning they are much more likely to be non-representative of overall views. Benwing (talk) 03:44, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot quite agree here. With proper attribution, sourcing and context, even views that go beyond current scholarly consensus can be mentioned in Wikipedia articles, especially if they are still well within academic credibility and conform to academic standards – truly fringe views coming from outside of the academic/scientific community, of course, should not be mentioned at all unless they are notable. However, there is a wide continuum (hypothesis, conjecture) in between consensus (theory) and crackpottery (speculation – more specifically, unbridled, careless, fanciful speculation at odds with known facts, and often motivated by ideology and wishful thinking). If we were applying your strict standards to all of Wikipedia, Koch et al.'s recent attempt to interpret Tartessian as a Celtic language – which strikes me as rather implausible on the face of it, even disregarding the implications attached to the idea, and, judging by the comments on Talk:Tartessian language, Koch's analysis is so flawed methodologically that this view is unlikely to ever become consensus – should be completely excluded, though even I, despite my profound scepticism of the idea and loathing of its aggressive promotion on Wikipedia, have no qualms accepting mentions in relevant articles in principle, as long as the reader is not misled into receiving the impression that the classification of Tartessian as Celtic were more than a view esposed by a marginal group in historical linguistics. Hull's view, even if perhaps not that conclusive or compelling after all, is clearly reasonable and possible in principle. Koch's views on Celtic, Renfrew's views on Indo-European, or Vennemann's views on Germanic and pretty much everything else, while quite sensational as things go in this field, and well-received outside specialist circles, are, for all their revisionist fervour involved in its promotion, rather lacking in their methodological rigour, violating principles such as regularity of sound change (Koch), the Uniformitarian Principle (Renfrew, by assuming a much more static and homogeneous prehistoric past), and a host of other principles (Vennemann). These are unconventional to eccentric views, even if "fringe science" may be too strong a descriptor (and in the case of Renfrew, very much dependent on the academic discipline). How about Mario Alinei's Paleolithic Continuity Theory? It violates the UP even more egregiously, and leads to assumptions that make Blut und Boden nationalists rejoice, implying that modern ethnicities and languages have essentially been in place all the way back to the end of the last glacial period, that Latin, with various regional forms, has been present in Italy since the 2nd millennium BC – and that Etruscian is an archaic form of Hungarian, apparently. Alexander Häusler, a well-publicised archaeologist, seems to endorse the "theory". Wikipedia respects it, it even devotes an entire article to it, even though the "theory" ventures even deeper into la-la land. Let's not even get started on creationism and other examples of pure bullshit "science". Are you honestly ready to get rid of all that junk completely? I would be on your side, let's make Wikipedia consensus only and throw out everything just slightly without the scientific mainstream – but that would be a radical break and I'm not sure if you'd be willing to accept the consequences of that principle. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:13, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Another example is the classification of Austronesian languages, where the results of the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database have been used in preference to the traditional classifications established through handbooks, and older classifications are frequently not even mentioned anymore. That's quite blatant recentism, spread through hundreds of articles. I'm not particularly happy about the way the older scholarly work has been treated in this case, especially as the results of the ABVD, which are essentially based on lexicostatistics, are given far more credence than they deserve, compared to traditional arguments for subgrouping and the comparative method. This is certainly excessive in the other direction, compared to your conservative approach. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:08, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In short, your refusal to allow Hull's views even mere (not even necessarily prominent) mention in the article you entirely contradict the established practice in en-WP which is to give notable non-consensus views not ample, but at least limited mention where appropriate. WP does not limit itself to being a summary of the relevant handbooks in an academic field. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:23, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Florian, this phenomenon occurs because the import process links the 2001 edits to the the wrong place. It happens because The previous/next edit links work by revision ID's, not dates, and affects most UseModWiki revisions to some extent. See User:Graham87/Page history observations#Revision ID numbers. Graham87 03:20, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quasihuman | Talk 10:27, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Replied again on User talk:Quasihuman#Merge "Insight", "Eureka effect" and "Aha! effect"?, thanks. Quasihuman | Talk 15:20, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've started the merge discussion at Talk:Aha! effect, if there are no opposers after a week or two, I'll merge it then. Thanks, Quasihuman | Talk 15:43, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is very interesting! Can you tell me where to get the book? The webpage of Freiburg University looks as if the LIN were still underway. Thanks, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 20:08, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to mention that the title has changed to NIL, perhaps that's the reason why you weren't able to find it. Even Amazon carries it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 08:25, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, have you heard about this? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 09:14, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Sounds really interesting. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 18:43, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I responded to your comment on the talk page of Selena. Best, Jonayo! ^{Selena 4 ever} 06:40, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, although not strictly enforced, when nominating articles for deleteion it is a widely accepted courtesy to inform the good-faith creator and major contributors to the article of the discussion. I have informed User:Varsijousi who pretty much single-handedly created Lake numbers in Finland in September for you. Thanks, hydrox (talk) 18:15, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking of doing that, but forgot about it and also didn't read further in the instructions. Sorry. Thanks for your help. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:35, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You should not base your love or hate of a subject on the state of its Wikipedia article. It's only the internet. The internet is full of stupid people, and the subject of Celtic studies tends to attract all sorts of muddle-headed individuals. They all have internet access, and some of them will invariably end up messing with Wikipedia articles.

If this means the Tartessian language article is broken right now, you can either try to fix it if you have the patience and motivation, or you can simply tag the broken article for cleanup and move to some other topic that catches your interest. At some point, the confused and agenda-driven crowd will get tired of Tartessian and flock to some other topic-du-jour, and there will still be ample time to fix the coverage of Tartessian then.

Obscure topics like "Tartessian article" have it comparatively easy. They only get attention at the rare occasions when they make some kind of headlines. By contrast, editing articles that attracts religious zealots (and, most of the time even worse, anti-religious zealots), such as Yahweh is much much worse, as there will never be a time without any confused and/or stupid people messing with it. Also much worse are articles about fringe theories or crackpot ideological movements and the like, say, such as Afrocentrism, Matriarchy, The Zeitgeist Movement or David Rohl, because these will also be invariably be disrupted by adherents.

I will be happy to help fix the Tartessian article once the pov-pushers have moved on. It's usually enough to sit out their interest and then revert to the last sane version of the article, perhaps with a brief paragraph added to summarize the incident that sparked their interest in the topic.

Happy editing, --dab (𒁳) 11:07, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for editing the article. My concern was that the numerical conversions appear to be done by Wikipedia users. Do you feel that this is acceptable and does not constitute original research? You could comment here: Talk:Kardashev_scale#Source_used_for_numbers. Regards. Shawnc (talk) 12:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I left my first reaction on my talk page. Might as well keep discussions together. Ciao.Dave (talk) 19:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hallo Florian. I looked into it a bit and left a reply for you on my page. Bottom line: I think the scientific evidence has epistemological priority.Dave (talk) 22:24, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just to let you know, I've finally merged the two articles, per your request at my talk page. Sorry for the long delay. Because everyone agreed with the merge, and there was no clear consensus about what the name of the final article should be, I decided to be bold, and merge Eureka effect into Aha! effect, mainly because Aha! effect is the bigger article, the merge would be easier that way. A separate move discussion could take place to decide the name if you wish. Thanks, Quasihuman | Talk 13:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fine to me. I tried to clean up the article a bit; did you find my edits helpful? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what's going on in this article. An editor dropped in a huge chunk of stuff he clearly didn't write and with references that don't have enough information to verify them. I'm guessing this [2] is the source, do you agree? If so we don't do massive copy and pastes from other language Wikipedias without attribution, and we still have the verification problem. I've asked the editor to explain their actions on the talk page, perhaps we shoudl wait until he does. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 07:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that's clearly a translation of the material from German Wikipedia.

At least the Turkic (not to mention Mongolian, Mordvin, Romance and English) etymologies should be treated as suspect – especially given that they do not refer to Proto-Turkic reconstructions, but Modern Anatolian Turkish (or in one case, Modern Bashkir) words, forms which are about 2000 or 2500 years younger. Proto-Turkic was probably spoken sometime in the 1st millennium BC, so – apart from the generally dubious practice of explaining Scythian material as Turkic (or something else) rather than Iranian – this comparison would at least be temporally plausible. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:26, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just looked at the history, he's the author of that material in the German Wikipedia. Thanks for your comments. Dougweller (talk) 21:41, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. I'm wondering if you could be of any help at this article: Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Moscow). The editor who mostly wrote the article is a native Russian speaker and his English is poor. The article needed extensive copy edit work to bring it to where it is today, but we have all left the newspaper translation section alone, I suppose because none of us speak Russian (see the talk page #6). As far as I can tell you don't speak Russian either, but I wonder if your knowledge of words and syntax could improve the translation? Thanks for looking at it! Gandydancer (talk) 15:08, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My Russian is very basic, and my English isn't perfect, either, but I've left a comment on the talk page concerning the expression which you seemed most interested in translating; HTH. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:29, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is Florian, I am just so unhappy with the present translation. It is my impression that the news reporter said that the cathedral was just grand! in the style of the old churches that one sees in Europe. He seemed to see it as on a level of great art or great music. If you look at the translation on the article page, IMO, it just won't do! It is my impression that Orange Pumpkin can't see how bad it is because his English is so poor. I asked you on the talk page if you were willing to do a complete translation. If you do not feel quite competent, do you think I could ask on the Wikipedia help page for a person very competent in both Russian and English? Though actually, reading your English and your suggestion to use the word "perfect", I'd guess that you are quite competent... Gandydancer (talk) 18:17, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is, I'm fairly competent in English, but not in (especially literary) Russian. I just went from your translation – I used it to guess at the meaning of the original text without analysing the original itself.

I agree, the best solution would be to consult a Russian speaker with a more than decent grasp of English. It would be useful if he could give us both a fairly close, literal translation and a loose one.

I've just asked a buddy for help. I'll post his suggestion to the talk page. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:27, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot Florian. Some very good people helped with the article--I'm so impressed with the amount of work that went into it and how well it turned out. Besides Orange Pumpkin's tremendous amount of work, I knew an excellent copy editor that went through it--and then you helped... We should give him a group barnstar? Gandydancer (talk) 21:15, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good idea! You have my blessing to act in my name. My own contribution was tiny, after all, it only concerned a single paragraph out of dozens. :-) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:23, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I am requesting your attention to a dispute over the content of Diasystem. An administrator who is a regular participant at WikiProject_Linguistics is threatening me. Please read my post at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Linguistics#Requests_for_attention (the first new post in that section in 12 months!). If, after reading that post and the version of the article as of 5:10, 2 March 2012, you want to know more, please read Talk:Diasystem and/or write me. Thanks. Dale Chock (talk) 06:37, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Florian, I did not write this part, as far as I know, maybe I do not remember, but I would not have written that this way. There are two different suffixes in the ethnic names in French with two different etymologies (VL -ēse and OLF *-isk), that is the reason why some ethnic names are in -ois : danois, gallois, chinois, etc. and others in -ais : irlandais (OF irois), portugais, hollandais, etc. There is a confusion between the two suffixes. The feminine form of some ethnic adjectives in OF was -esche : danesche cf. la danesche parleure 'the Danish language', more danico = la danesche manere, englesche cf. la gent englesche 'the English' (Chanson de Roland), all replaced later by -oise or -aise. Yes, the suffix -esque was borrowed from Italian -esco in the 16th, when words ending this way were borrowed : pittoresco > pittoresque. The Norman-Picard -esque (corresponding to OF -esche) does not seem to have something to do with that : it is only found in toponyms nowadays, such as Englesqueville, Anglesqueville. See further explanations for example (French) .Nortmannus (talk) 22:40, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merci beaucoup! I was not aware of the difference between those two suffixes. I thought it was simply like était vs. étoit.

Another passage I have found there which is a bit strangely phrased, but which I could not fix:

/r/ becomes uvular sound: trill /ʀ/ or fricative /ʁ/, (replacing the rolled 'r' formerly often used by the clergy).

Apparently, this means that while the change from front (alveolar) /r/ to uvular trill took place already in the 18th century or so, the archaic /r/ articulation survived in the clergy for a longer time – but for how long? Early-mid 20th century perhaps? In that case, it should read "(replacing the rolled 'r', which, in the early 20th century, was still often used by the clergy)". --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:01, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

De rien ! euh..I do not know exactly what it means too. Yes, I read somewhere, that the royal court used to pronounce the rolled 'r' possibly to the 18th century (later there is no more king..) and the people of Paris did not. The upper clergy did probably pronounce the way it was at the court. I do not think it was the case anymore after the French revolution. Concerning the priests, the lower clergy, I think they pronounced the way it was in their native region. The rolled [r] (in the langue d'oïl regions) was concentrated in Berry, more generally the center of France, Burgundy, some parts of Anjou, the southern part of the Orne and the southern part of the Manche departements in Normandy, and so on.., but I do not know exactly where else, solely among the farmers born before the second world war. In Normandy, that I know better, except the specific case of the south, I do not think that people ever pronounced the rolled [r], because early traces of its total fading (in certain conditions and consonantic environments) are mentioned in the documents for example Thuit-Hébert is mentioned as Tui Herbert in 1216, but somewhere else Pont-Hébert is mentioned as Pons Heberti in 1260, same thing for Le Plessis-Hébert as Plaiseis Herbert in 1190 and Saint-Martin-le-Hébert as Beati Martini le Hebert in 1250. Today modern Norman surnames Hébert, Bénard, instead of Bernard. In the Val-de-Saire patois and in the Cauchois the /r/ disappears totally in all the cases f.i. : French curé 'Pfarrer', Valdesairois tchué [tʃye], cauchois cué. It probably exists in other patois too, but I do not really know. For people with a bit knowledge, the rolled 'r' is still very typical berrichon and bourguignon. For people from Paris, it is part of the stereotypical farmer accent, so that they advertise for Norman camembert with a typical Berry or Bourguignon rolled 'r'. That is the only thing I know about this subject. I never studied the question. Another thing : there is a popular pronounciation in Paris (that tends to disappear) the pronounciation of the 'titis parisiens', where they had developed a sort of prothetic /a/ before the /r/, that is (was) less marked in Paris than in Rouen and in le Havre, where the popular class still use it (myself for example, when I am with people having this /ar/, I automatically get it, because as a kid I used to hear it at school, but my parents do not, because they are from the countryside) : we can call it the Seine valley accent. Good evening.Nortmannus (talk) 19:17, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see; to me, when I hear formerly, that doesn't mean "more than 200 years ago", so formerly often used by the clergy sounded as if the alveolar /r/ had been used by the clergy in somewhat more recent times, so that linguists of the 19th or 20th centuries or even Wikipedians of the 21st century could even personally remember clergymen using this pronunciation in their childhood, or were even able to document it in current use. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:50, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think this needs to be turned back into a redirect - it had been a redirect for years until someone gutted Medes in January and added it to this. The material was restored to Medes. We also have an edit warrior on both claiming it was a Kurdish dynasty. Dougweller (talk) 08:40, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is all the info in Median Empire already found in Medes? If so, it's a duplicate, and you can simply turn it into a redirect. Otherwise, just merge any remaining useful information from Median Empire into Medes. Wikipedia has no need for redundant articles or even forks. But you know all that already, so I'm not sure what you're intending with your request – are you trying to secure my support, or reassure yourself of a consensus for the merger? Let me assure you that you have my support; in general, having separate articles about an ancient polity and its ruling ethnicity is probably the typical case, but we know very little about the Medes and the Median Empire, and the history of either, so a separate article for the polity is not necessary. I believe there is even serious doubt about what exactly the nature and extent of the rule of the Medes was and whether a "Median Empire" as traditionally conceived even existed. Also, it is unclear to whom exactly the term Medes even referred. Presumably, it was a cover term anyway, or at least the Greeks applied it to (Western) Iranian-speaking groups in general.

There are Kurdish POV-warriors attacking the German version of the article, too, and I have no sympathies for them, but I've never heard anything about Kurdish being Southwest Iranian before. I've never seen it classified as anything but Northwest Iranian and therefore into the same subbranch as "Median" at least, even though there is just not known enough about "Median" to be certain of its status versus Kurdish.

Only if we had good reasons to think that the common ancestor of all Northwest Iranian varieties was spoken about 2500 years ago and not considerably earlier or later, we could identify Proto-Northwest-Iranian with "Median" and draw a direct (at least linguistic) connection between "Medes" and Kurds, but we could not identify them specifically as (at least linguistic) ancestors of the Kurds. Kurdish on its own doesn't seem to have that great a time-depth, so Proto-Kurdish was likely spoken too recently to attempt an identification of the "Medes" with the linguistic ancestors of the Kurds specifically, as opposed to other groups, such as the Baluchi, so yeah, that identification is inherently dubious even if Kurdish and Median are both Northwest Iranian. Parthian is a much better fit on a temporal basis alone, and its intense contact not only with Persian but also Armenian, and Windfuhr does identify Parthian – "albeit with a Median substratum" – as the language Kurdish descended from. However, Jost Gippert thinks Zaza is closer. The problem is that, apparently, Persian has exchanged a lot of vocabulary with other Iranian languages, especially Northwest Iranian languages, which has muddled the distinction between Northwest and Southwest Iranian and wrecked havoc on the isoglosses, with Kurdish and Baluchi appearing most influenced by Persian vocabulary, Zaza much less and Gorani even less. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:34, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, careless of me. Dougweller (talk) 12:02, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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To prevent misunderstanding. I've deleted the text because this is definitely an original research. There isn't Baltic substratum in Belarusian and Russian, it's a bare fact accepted by mainstream Russistics. I've read a great bulk of russistic literature including special works which deal with the history of the Russian language but I've never seen that some researchers mention this substratum or that any substratum made an impact if any on the development of the language. There are not any traces (except for, maybe, a dozen or little more borrowings) of Baltic languages in Belarusian and Russian.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 10:40, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Florian, thanks for your hidden comments at the above article; I'm currently copy-editing it and I appreciate your help in clarifying the text. I haven't reached that section yet, though I'll bear this in mind when I do. I'm not an expert in the subject of dead languages so if you see me doing something that doesn't make sense, feel free to revert or correct my work. Sometimes it's all too easy to alter meanings without realising it. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 20:21, 24 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Florian, I believe it is somewhere in the Balkans. John D. Croft (talk) 06:38, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Florian, I appreciate your point but I think you'll find that all the relevant material has been merged into the main Star Carr article but just made less prominent as the house is actually one of the less important aspects of the site's findings. The Star Carr house article was created by non-experts responding to the press release and news coverage in summer 2010 - it never should have been created as a separate article. Among archaeologists the house is referred to as a 'structure' as calling it a house can mislead the public about the permanence and nature of the occupation. I ensured I got the agreement of several people from WikiProject Archaeology and WikiProject Yorkshire before I went ahead with the redirect. I hope you understand but am happy to discuss it further. Thanks, PatHadley (talk) 08:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

From what I understand, although Min cannot be traced back to Middle Chinese, that does not mean that it split off earlier. Perhaps it's a contact effect; I don't know the details. I had made that claim in a few articles and had been corrected. — kwami (talk) 15:30, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Who has disputed that, and on which grounds? Note that Historical Chinese phonology#Branching off of the modern varieties treats that issue in quite some detail, and the description sounds fairly convincing. Also, it makes no sense to say that Min cannot be traced back to Middle Chinese without having split off earlier (and I have no clue what kind of "contact effect" would provide a way out of this conundrum), unless the relationship between Middle Chinese and the modern varieties is completely different from the way it is described in Historical Chinese phonology#From Early Middle Chinese to Late Middle Chinese. Perhaps the person who disputes the issue has a heterodox view of historical linguistics (especially with regard to tree structures), in which case it will be very difficult to communicate and their views are possibly irrelevant for our purposes anyway. Admittedly, I'm not a Sinologist, but still, I have gone through the (apparently) traditional (and consensus) account given in Historical Chinese phonology (as I was initially sceptical, too) and it sounds sensible, while its denial does not – pending the arrival of more detail.

This reminds me of a Tibetologist who, on a talk page in German Wikipedia, voiced suspicion regarding the unity of Tibeto-Burman, suspecting that most of the groups assigned to it were only quasi-relexified forms of neighbouring non-TB groups (along the lines of Siangic, which is, however, isolated), which I can only take as meaning that, for example, Kiranti languages would be structurally Indo-Aryan with TB vocabulary, which possibility I think we can easily rule out. It may well be that, as Blench surmises, Siangic is not the only case of isolates mistaken for TB because of TB loans, but the German Tibetologist's idea just makes little sense and is probably easily disproved, even if people who voice scepticism regarding TB partly have a point. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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I see that you created this stub about the Etruscan alphabet back in the day (so long ago!), complete with various abbreviated references to the technical literature, such as Rix and Jensen, which are still present in the current version of the article, now titled Old Italic script. However, you forgot to add the titles of the works referenced to, and have not done so later, either, so the references are now hanging in the air and no-one knows for certain what you meant, and as a consequence (and due to the dearth of further expert input since then), the article is still left without any proper bibliographical references. Could you recover them from your memory and add them after all this time? That would be awesome! --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:04, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I was just reverting to a previous version. I have no idea what those references are to. They were introduced in this edit by Damian Yerrick (t c). (wow, 10 years old.) Good luck. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 16:44, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hallo, I see you are interested in the problem of substrate languages. I am not a professional linguist, but came across this issue while researching the background of the prehistory and protohistory of Latium.

I discovered that many toponyms there are neither Italic nor Latin nor Etruscan: e. g. Caenina, Medullia, Ameriola, Amitinum, Tibur, Praeneste and river names such as Astura, Cremera, Albula, Ufens, Arro etc. Since then I read something I found online by Italian and Spanish linguists on the problem. I found that Italian lniguists have been aware of the problem and have written a lot on it since the 1920s, especially V. Bertoldi, C. Battisti, G. Alessio, G. Devoto etc. They have used the term Mediterranean to denote this substrate. It looks that some words may be IE while other not. A new insight has been given by the linear B tablets which bear some word reflected in toponyms, mainly poleonyms (such as Dizo, Vareke, Manth, Othr). The issue is unclear as most words are certainly not IE.

I wish to point that Wp articles on the subject do not deal with the Mediterranean substrate in toponymy. But it is important to explain some phenomena in Latin such as the devoicing of the voiced aspirates where one would expect a voiced outcome such as e.g. rutilus reddish and Rutuli (compare Sicel litra and Latin libra). Alessio sees this as a reflex of a substrate he calls Tyrrhenian due to Sicel-Ausonian influence. He and Ribezzo think Sicanians were the original not IEsized Sicels. Etruscan was a late comer and aspirated the p>f as palatum>fala(n)do.

As far as I can see these toponyms are spread on an area which looks too vast to be ascribed to just one of the known ethnonyms: e.g. Na(h)r (Umbrian river), Ne(h)r which is found in Syria (the river of Antiochia) and beyond for river and also the word nero' Etr. neri for water, found in South India.

As for river names I found at least 4 Albula, Esaro in Calabria and I do not understand why Krahe, according to the Wp article, writes these topnyms are not to be found in the Balkans: I left a note on the talk page of old european hydronymy. Although the ethnicities may have been known with different names it looks there was a great uniformity in usage: In Liguria there are many such toponyms, I would say they form a majority but many are found where no record of a Ligurian presence is extant. Unless one supposes Ligurians had inherited them or they were the same people as the Sicanians as A. Sergi thought, which may well be but does not explain these finds farther to the East, at Creta, in Anatolia and in the Caucasus.

I would suggest adding some paragraphs on the issue in the related articles.

Sorry for being so long.Aldrasto11 (talk) 06:14, 9 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Florian. Somehow I missed your message when you sent it.

Unfortunately I don't know much about Dalmatian vowels, although I imagine what you say is true, that it follows the Western Romance (7-vowel) system rather than the Eastern Romance (6-vowel) or Southern Romance (5-vowel) system.

It looks like it has vowel deflections that are similar to the Italian dialects that would have been opposite, i.e. those on the east coast of Italy, about halfway down. These have rather radical deflections that are said in Giacomo Devoto's book on Italian dialects to stem from "Illyrian" (presumably meaning the pre-Latin language of Dalmatia), evidently due to a large amount of cross-Adriatic trade. If I remember aright, these deflections are similar to those of French: e.g. all mid vowels are affected but usually only in open syllables, of the sort /ɛ/ > /ie/ or /ia/; /e/ > /ei/ or /ai/; /ɔ/ > /ue/ or /ua/; /o/ > /ou/ or /au/. Usually there are additional complications caused by metaphony, where a following /u/ (e.g. from -us or -um) or following /i/ triggers raising or diphthongization (in both open and closed syllables), and when diphthongization would already apply, a different diphthong often results. Sometimes final /a/ may trigger a lowering-type metaphony.

From the example text, forms like doi, so, to suggest a Western Romance vowel system (otherwise /u/ would be expected).

Also it looks like:

1. /a/ > /uo/ (/date/ > duote, /tata/ > tuota, santificuot), but /an/ > un in the prayer (pun, cotidiun) but uan in the story (puan, bonduanza), which has other cases of /a/ > ua (puarte), possibly in closed syllables?
2. Final /u/ is usually dropped (but raigno).
3. /ɛ/ > /i/ under metaphony (sil, cf. Italian cielo < *cielu).
4. /ɛ/ > ia otherwise (tiara < */tɛrra/; cf. also malamiant, stiass in the story below; this is similar to Romanian).
5. /e/ > ai, possibly only under metaphony (raigno presumably < */reɲɲu/, venait presumably < venetu), but daic presumably < */deke/ < *de:kit is non-metaphonic.
6. /ɔ/ > ue in nuester (< */nɔstru/), nuestri; both are metaphony contexts although might not matter. /ɔ/ > ua in muar "I die" < *mɔro, a non-metaphonic context.
7. /o/ > au in naun, tentatiaun; but > ua in debetuar < *debetori; possibly a difference of metaphony and/or following n or r? In the story, /loro/ or /loru/ > louro; not sure whether this is metaphonic. Might be the same as ua in the prayer, in a slightly different dialect.

Benwing (talk) 01:44, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Regarding the dating of human and material findings please see p. 247 & 266 (appendix 1). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.71.19.40 (talk) 05:50, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I've checked the sources and they do not support the statement made in the article. There is no contradiction as the dates given are only the upper limit of the range afforded by the precision of the measurement, the range spanning several centuries. Fortson gives 3400–3300 BC as the dating of the earliest wheeled vehicles attested within the Kurgan/Yamna horizon, which period he considers the latest stage of the community speaking the Proto-Indo-European language (the community identified by mainstream thought with the Kurgan/Yamna horizon) prior to its breakup and spread. This is consistent with a migration of speakers of Proto-Indo-European to the area of the Afanasevo culture and the earliest radiocarbon dates, with a lower limit in the 34th century BC, and a migration between about 3700–3300 BC, the deliberately imprecise wording (by David Anthony, who actually supports the Kurgan hypothesis, which is why it is misleading to quote him as witness against it) leaving open the possibility that the migration happened or was completed only around 3400–3300 BC. Note that thanks to the employment of wheeled vehicles and domesticated horses, the migration may have lasted no more than a few decades. "3500±200 BC" or "mid-4th millennium BC" would be a more appropriate description of the period in question, which spans four centuries, as assuming excessive precision leads exactly to such mistakes. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:33, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to go to a disagreement and I don't like fights. If you are sure about that, remove the sentence, I will not object to. Now, since you expressed your opinion, I will kindly answer it. The Afanasevo culture is a disturbing issue for the Kurgan theory decades now long before Gimbutas' death, and is a matter of simple arithmetic: One of the problem of the Kurgan hypothesis (has many) is that between the Yamna culture and the Afanasevo (which is roundly the area covered by the Andronovo culture), it became impossible to find anything older than the 1,800 BC which makes about 2,000 years difference from the starting date of the two other culture. To me this is the main problem with the Kurgan hypothesis, and I thought that no ref. is needed for simple arithmetic. It is also a problem to me for years since that, although they had invented the wheeled vehicles as you say, I don't believe the people at the time travelled or migrated upon them. But the speed isn't the real issue, the real issue with the Kurgan hypothesis is that based on the dates, they had to take planes as to avoid inhabiting any of the intermediate places. I don't have myself an answer as to how that happened as to try to implement it, an agenda so to speak, so I don't have a reason to go to a disagreement over that, I only don't see reasons not to present the issue even though I don't have and I haven't seen any answer about. As for David Anthony, I never tried to mislead anyone as you say since both his dates and the ref. is not mine. Since the sentence only have to do with the dates saying "more modern archaeologists are giving more compatible with the evidences dates at around 3700 to 3300 BC", which is true and referenced, I don't think that misleads to anywhere. Again it is the date by itself that is embarrassing for the theory, not me or D.Anthony. Only by misleading about the culture's real date can someone save the integrity of the theory, which is what Gimbutas and her followers really did for some decades now. For me to know it is enough, if you think that it's not good for the readers, go ahead and remove it. It is also OK by me. --94.71.15.10 (talk) 16:48, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The only disturbing and embarrassing thing here is your complete failure to provide anything resembling a convincing (or even intelligible) argument. I have explained to you why simple arithmetics does not cut it when the dates are this rough, and that's why the real experts, unlike you, do not see a problem (Anthony would certainly have had the intellectual honesty – and the prudence! – to admit if this were a problem at all, especially a problem this obvious even to the layman); you've become far too much caught up in excessively precise dates. A difference of a hundred years simply does not matter when it comes to carbon dates many thousand years into the past. The Kurgan people did not need planes to migrate quickly and without having to inhabit the intermediate areas, they had carts and horses, and your assertion that they did not use them to travel is simply your personal belief, backed up by no evidence and no authority I have encountered. Prior to the modern age, people would simply avoid settling in less suited places and concentrate in suited areas (preferentially near open water such as rivers and lakes and at sea coasts, and in particular, close to river mouths and confluences), with vast areas of the continents staying complete wilderness (especially in the Eurasian steppes of the Bronze Age, this is only expected), so your expectation to find continuous settlement traces everywhere with no geographic gaps in between is simply unrealistic. Also, your assertion that Andronovo and Afanasevo cover roughly the same area is simply completely wrong, as a quick look at the maps at Andronovo culture and Afanasevo culture reveals. Your 2000 years difference, too, comes out of nowhere. Yamna: mid-4th to mid-3rd millennium, Afanasevo: mid/late-4th to mid-3rd millennium, Sintashta (recognised as predecessor to Andronovo): late 3rd millennium, Andronovo: most of the 2nd millennium. By the way, the Kurgan hypothesis may not be the ultimate truth, and I do not deny that there may be problems, but it simply fits the evidence better than any alternative interpretation, and affords a reasonably convincing narrative in broad outlines. The Anatolian hypothesis, for instance, has even more serious shortcomings. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I note that with your final comment, you're basically constructing a conspiracy theory of the kind "the truth is suppressed by mainstream academics" (not including Anthony, who's a follower of Gimbutas as well, although while he does not mislead about the date, you are accusing him of ignoring the alleged discrepancy) – I'd recommend to assume good faith. Those carbon dates were not known until recently anyway, so accusing Gimbutas and her followers of consciously misleading about the dating of Afanasevo is an unreasonable accusation in the first place. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:17, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! I reverted your change in the Aberdeenshire article from "in-migration" to "immigration". The source quoted uses the word "in-migration", and I think there's a difference of meaning. "Immigration" would imply people moving from other countries, whereas "in-migration" can imply regional movement within a country. Best wishes, --Deskford (talk) 19:58, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A-ha, I've never encountered this word before and neither Wikipedia nor Wiktionary have an entry on it, hence my assumption that it is a spelling error or hypercorrection. Perhaps a [sic!] would be in order. Alternatively, let me propose a term like internal migration or a paraphrase like migration within the UK as clarification. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 04:54, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think perhaps "inward migration" would make the meaning clearer. As I understand it, the article is referring to all migration into Aberdeenshire, whether from within the UK or from abroad. --Deskford (talk) 10:34, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see. So in-migration can also be a synonym for inbound migration, and out-migration for outbound migration? (By the way, just curious: Wouldn't you normally say "I've reverted your change"? As a non-native speaker, I reverted your change strikes me as something I often myself say inadvertently but that I thought was strictly speaking wrong, the simple past being specifically for narration and dated events, the present perfect instead revolving around the issue whether something has happened at all.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:50, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You might have not noticed that the discussion Talk:Catalan language#unneeded classification is a consequence of your reversion of one of my editions. For this reason, I expect you to give some kind of answer to my comments in that discussion. Cheers Jotamar (talk) 16:14, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm again waiting for an answer from you in the same discussion (Talk:Catalan language#unneeded classification) Jotamar (talk) 17:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm again waiting for your response in Talk:Catalan language#unneeded classification. Jotamar (talk) 16:59, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if you want to help tackle this, but see Talk:Pytheas#Major problems with the Thule sections. Dougweller (talk) 08:53, 5 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I lack the (math/science) competency necessary to judge the technical details involved in these arguments. But as a quick fix, how about commenting out the problematic (unattributed and quite possibly OR) passages? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:32, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if you would care to comment on the borrowing among the Mediterranean cultures during the European Bronze Age/Classical antiquity. Why is there dismissal of borrowing from languages other than Greek and Latin, as exemplified by the contemporaneous use in for example the Regensburg amulets, and I think also Badenweiler find? More specifically, I read your tribe etymology contribution, but an alternative to Latin was not offered Crock81 (talk) 01:01, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I fail to see your point. The standard etymology for Latin tribus sees it as an old derivation from well-attested Indo-European roots, not as a loanword. The derivation can have happened at any point between the Proto-Indo-European period and the Proto-Italic period, but for internal reasons as well as existence of the Umbrian cognate is probably not more recent than Proto-Italic. While it is not impossible that the word was borrowed into Latin, perhaps from other Italic languages or even Celtic, there is no way to demonstrate that; it looks every bit like genuine Latin with regard to morphology and historical phonology; nothing unexpected or suspicious about it, and the morphemes trēs, tri- as well as fu- (as in fuī, futūrus, fuat, forem, fīō) are also well-attested both in Latin and other Italic languages. I have no idea what you are alluding to with the Regensburg amulets and the Badenweiler find. Care to elaborate?

That said, borrowing has been going on all the time, both in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age as well as classical antiquity of Europe, but for natural reasons, borrowings from Greek and Latin are easier to demonstrate and also quite frequent, probably most frequent, in classical antiquity. Nothing in the section you linked to, or in my comment, dismisses the possibility of borrowing from other languages. I am at a loss to understand how you arrived at that conclusion; it's completely out of the blue. I am moreover mystified because it is easy to find lists of words in Wikipedia for example for words from French words which have been proposed to be borrowings from Gaulish. Many words are assumed to have been borrowed from Celtic (and later, Germanic) languages into Classical Latin and Preliterary Romance ("Vulgar Latin"), in particular, so it's clearly not all about borrowings from Greek and Latin. There are even words that are suspected to have been borrowed from languages such as Etruscan or Phoenician into Latin, and many words in Greek are known or suspected of foreign origin, too, but our scant knowledge of most possible source languages remains when trying to argue for or against such proposals. Loanwords from Old Persian, Sanskrit/Middle Indic or Aramaic (or other Semitic languages) are definitely known in Greek, though. There are Germanic words which are thought to be from Celtic, some early (such as the word for iron, most prominently), some later, some mediated through French or other Romance languages; there are lots of borrowings everywhere in the world, in every period, it's simply that it is often not easy to make the case, first that some word is a borrowing at all, second where the origin is. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No one ever spoke "Indo-European", never mind "Proto-Indo-European". Its a theory based on proposed hypothesis about how languages change. Historical phonology is also a guessing game since there are no recordings pre-dating the late 19th century. We just rely on the structure of the human anatomy.

I think that the amulets used three languages, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. You say that "Loanwords from Old Persian, Sanskrit/Middle Indic or Aramaic (or other Semitic languages) are definitely known in Greek, though." Interaction between Greek and Latin speakers with Hebrew speakers predate both Celt and Germanic histories of interaction, or Aramaic as lingua franca. Jewish presence in Greece dates at least to the mention by Strabo in approximately 85 BCE that Jews could be found in all the cities of the eastern Mediterranean (VII 7 4). However, after the Maccabean victory most agree that many Hellenized Jews left Judea. The Talmud records Alexander the Great passing through Jerusalem. Even if only that is taken for a beginning of Koine-Hebrew interaction, it would be enough. However, Jewish sources suggest maritime trade throughout the Mediterranean dating to (suggested) before the establishment of Rome! So why not consider Hebrew cognates?

Perhaps based on the above you have detected that I am not a professional linguist, but I offer a suggestion that evolved over years after a particularly 'heated' discussion with a friend some years ago, so I have been reading a bit since. The suggestion is that the current theory on the evolution of languages is based on establishing logical connections between word A in language X, and word B in language Y and extrapolating the relationship. However, most people don't function logically, and certainly I think in the ancient times those that were not given to study logic borrowed words in a less-than-logical fashion.

For example, a vignette - welcoming a non-native speaker in, and pointing to a chair, while pronouncing please sit, may well be interpreted by the visitor as his cultural equivalent of relax, and when he returns, assuming he has an average memory, he will relate that the word for relax in my language is pleesit. As a novelty, pleesit becomes all the rage in that society, and soon becomes a loanword in that popular culture, just like saying OK for post-Soviet era Russians, displacing the native word for relax (otaru). 1,000 years later a linguist finds that a people who lived 500km from me had a word for a chair which was plast, and extrapolate that plast and pleesit found in the visitor language located 1,500km away at the time are cognates for the word chair!

The reason I mention the tribe, is because I did find a Hebrew cognate of tribus in Hebrew, but I'm not sure it 'fits' the way linguists think just now because it doesn't mean tribe in Hebrew, though a phonetic match.

The original discussion I had wasn't about Hebrew (I'm not a Hebrew speaker), and I only started looking at Hebrew after trying to work out which cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean could be influencers, and the Hebrew speakers were both mobile, 'networkers', and possessed writing, which to me made them prime candidates. Crock81 (talk) 01:40, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No one ever spoke "Indo-European",

There is no single Indo-European language, but in the sense that speakers of Russian, Czech, Croatian, Bulgarian, Polish (etc.) can be said to speak Slavic, exceedingly many people in the world speak and historically spoke Indo-European.

never mind "Proto-Indo-European".

How would you know for certain? Why should this language (whatever it may have been like, nobody claims any specific reconstruction can be more than imperfect and fragmentary) not have existed? Are you trying to say that Proto-Romance, Proto-Scandinavian, Proto-Goidelic, Proto-Brythonic, Proto-Slavic, Proto-East-Slavic or Proto-Indo-Aryan were never spoken by anyone, either?

Its a theory based on proposed hypothesis about how languages change.

Language development (as current mainstream historical linguistics understands it to work, derived from the direct observation of language change throughout attested texts) is only a theory just like evolution is only a theory. Read Evolution as fact and theory to understand the scientific sense of "theory" –, which is not "a guess(ing game)".

Historical phonology is also a guessing game since there are no recordings pre-dating the late 19th century.

There are certainly recordings, only no sound recordings. Again, analysis and reconstruction is the key. Your suggestion that the phonology (as opposed to the precise phonetic details) of an ancient language such as Latin – or even a recent language stage such as Early Modern English – is inherently unknown and can only be guessed at (in a "shot in the dark" way, the results being of dubious validity, and every proposal equally valid) is, frankly, laughably uninformed. Are you aware that phonology, too, is an abstraction, and in some ways quite similar to the reconstruction of earlier language stages? Do you have an idea how many competing analyses of Standard Modern English phonology exist? Just because a language is attested in sound recordings does not mean that its phonology is certain! On the other hand, it does not mean that phonology is only a guessing game, as long as the language to be analysed is attested at all.

We just rely on the structure of the human anatomy.

What you are saying is essentially the same as creationists who insist that Tyrannosaurus rex is only a wild guess since the species is only reconstructed, not directly observed from living specimens. Or pseudo-archaeologists/pseudo-historians who deny the existence (or relatively early dating, in the case of creationists) of prehistorical societies because they are only reconstructions, not based on direct observations of living people. You have no leg to stand on, and with your lack of basic understanding of science you are venturing deep into the realm of pseudoscience.

I think that the amulets used three languages, Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

More details please.

You say that "Loanwords from Old Persian, Sanskrit/Middle Indic or Aramaic (or other Semitic languages) are definitely known in Greek, though." Interaction between Greek and Latin speakers with Hebrew speakers predate both Celt and Germanic histories of interaction, or Aramaic as lingua franca.

No, it most certainly does not.

Jewish presence in Greece dates at least to the mention by Strabo in approximately 85 BCE that Jews could be found in all the cities of the eastern Mediterranean (VII 7 4).

Speakers of both Latin and Greek have interacted with Celtic speakers at least since the 4th century BC, and in the case of Greeks it must have even been longer, as Herodotus already writes about them in the 5th century and contact with Celts occurred at the Greek colony of Massalia (modern Marseille) from the 6th century on, for all we know. Aramaic had been a lingua franca in the Ancient Near East since the 8th century BC. Even Hellenistic Judaism precedes not a single one of these dates, and I am not aware of any evidence for any kind of Jewish diaspora in Classical Greece or the Aegean. Please do me the favour and at least read up on basic historical facts before you attack historical linguistics.

However, after the Maccabean victory most agree that many Hellenized Jews left Judea. The Talmud records Alexander the Great passing through Jerusalem. Even if only that is taken for a beginning of Koine-Hebrew interaction, it would be enough. However, Jewish sources suggest maritime trade throughout the Mediterranean dating to (suggested) before the establishment of Rome! So why not consider Hebrew cognates?

Cognates are not established through borrowing. You mean loanwords. I am not aware of any evidence for Hebrew (as opposed to Phoenician) contact with pre-Republican Rome, the Etruscans or any other people of ancient Italy that early. Note that Celtic, too, not only Umbrian, has cognates with Latin tribus: Old Breton treb "subdivision of the people", trebou (glossed as turma, which is the Latin word for "crowd, flock" and also designates a subdivision of the Roman cavalry) and Old Irish treb "tribe". Anyway, why should dubious loanword etymologies be considered for words which already have accepted derivations that are in any event simpler and more plausible (as they do not require any – in this case, rather far-fetched – additional assumptions)?

I note that you have even refrained from mentioning what Hebrew word exactly you have in mind. Is this motivated by some sort of rhetorical strategy? I don't see how it is supposed to help your case, and the omission makes no sense I can discern – unless it is accidental, which I will assume just to be nicer than you deserve.

Perhaps based on the above you have detected that I am not a professional linguist,

To say that your lack of expertise was glaringly obvious would be a huge understatement. But lack of expertise is not shameful at all – unless accompanied by know-it-all arrogance, belligerence and a priori complete disrespect of experts. You display a typical case of the Dunning–Kruger effect just like Randy in Boise – you are lucky that you have received another reply from me at all! Also, tellingly, pseudo-etymology is the classic playing field of wannabe linguists. At least you don't try to derive all Latin words (or even all words of all languages in the world) from Hebrew, apparently ... --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:26, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, Florian, spoken like a true professional linguist.

The Indo-European and Proto-Indo-European 'languages' are theories, but they in no way can be compared to scientific theories. The former was invented by a clerk amateur.

Yes, I do say that "Proto-Romance, Proto-Scandinavian, Proto-Goidelic, Proto-Brythonic, Proto-Slavic, Proto-East-Slavic or Proto-Indo-Aryan were never spoken by anyone", if only because Romans predominantly spoke Greek in preference to their mother tongue Latin, which the Hebrew sources suggest is 'Semitic' in origin.

There is absolutely no way to compare language theory and the theory of evolution. There is for example no Carbon dating of sound. As for attested texts, they are very fragmentary indeed. Far more so than fossils because of the very late emergence of writing, and the effect social change and production technology effect on the materials used.

When I say that "We just rely on the structure of the human anatomy.", I mean just that, so you should address the common sense meaning and not invent what you think I mean. You know full well that the human sound organs did not change significantly over the past 3-4,000 years, but the accenting of speech changes periodically in many cultures and in fact in many communities within these cultures. Even if written records of these communities exist, we have no way of reproducing these accent changes and the dialects. Even today in England nearly 50 dialects exist, but records suggest that the 17th and 18th century saw many more than that. A similar situation existed on the European Continent, and every other continent on the planet, accounting for the variety of languages among indigenous populations now. There is no way to reconstruct the many extinct and assimilated dialects and accent changes through written record analysis.

I think you are just being obtuse. Language is made in the urban centres that also represent the power cores of the community and society as a whole. Celts were not found in Greek cities, and neither was Aramaic. Greeks are known to be notoriously xenophobic (see, even the word is Greek), and yet Jews are reported in all the Greek cities. It probably meant that Jews interacted with Greeks having learned Greek language. Hellenised Jews certainly did, and the Jewish High Priest was able to converse with Alexander the Great when he entered Jerusalem. That is 4th century BCE. This sort of interaction within the centres of language production was far more likely to generate mutual borrowing than occasional contact with the Celts seasonal trading on the Greek periphery.

I would say that you are not aware of any evidence of pre-Republican Roman contact with Jews because no one looks for it. Since the declaration in the highly anti-Semitic European society of 1863 that Hebrew is not the root of all languages, as was the accepted theory at the time, all works proposing this were simply pronounced unscientific, and eventually archived, so don't look for any mention of them in Wikipedia. The experts, was in fact Müller and not Jones, who now emerged and pronounced what would become the Aryan theory of languages, changed to Indo-European officially after [is it?] 1939. Everything was quite tidy. Aryans emerged from somewhere in Persia, invaded the Indus valley, then turned around and headed to unpopulated Europe. Greeks too arrived from that direction, so could be included. And the Latins? Linguists would make them 'fit in' since they couldn't really exclude the Romance languages and deny 'scientific confirmation' to the romantic nationalism sweeping Europe.

This is why you can now call me a "wannabe linguist" playing with "pseudo-etymology", while the "Language development as current mainstream historical linguistics understands it to work" is "scientific". But, I don't mind ad hominems. I know I'm human and prone to mistakes, which is apparently genetically impossible for mainstream historical linguists.

In your haste to dismiss me ("I note that you have even refrained from mentioning what Hebrew word exactly you have in mind") you even missed the word tribe, which I did mention as the subject of this request for comment. Yes, I do think that the Latin tribus is in fact derived from a Hebrew word. Tarbut, Hellenised Tarbus, that means 1. BH an increase, brood, 2. PBH rearing, educating, 3. NH behaviour, way of life, etc. Teerbut means cultivation, taming, domestication in the Hebrew Bible (Kline, Etymological dictionary of Hebrew), i.e. concepts that at the time would have defined the extent of a tribal domain through physical evidence (dykes, field walls, plantings, and corrales for animals). The root is Ravah, to become much, many or great. Why do I say that Tribus and Tarbut/s are cognates? Because the Hebrews ultimately and always referred in introducing themselves by also mentioning their fathers and grandfathers, and tribe-of-origin in Israel, and so this would have invited constant requests for explanation. Romans did not have tribes! They only needed the word to describe others. The Hebrew word was a perfect loanword as Greeks preferred their city-state as identity rather than tribal affiliations which were rural, and therefore less prestigious, rural inhabitants being less civilised by "living in nature". The difference in phonology is due to the omission of vowels in Hebrew, so the Latin speakers had to rely on memory for pronunciation even if they could read Hebrew, and over time vowels became mangled. And how did an ancient Hebrew speaker introduce himself? For example Joseph bar Ephraim bar David mi'shevet Zebulun. You are correct on the status of Aramaic as lingua franca, and this helps to date the time of contact with Greeks because bar is the Aramaic equivalent of ben, son, in Hebrew. From this we get the Greek BarBar[ian] (yes, I know Greeks referred to Carians)Crock81 (talk) 13:00, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so you're really Randy in Boise and a Hebrew-root-of-all-languages crank, just as I suspected. Haha. It's not ad hominem because I'm not attacking you personally, only the ridiculous views you hold and the "method" you are using, which is able to "prove" anything. You're completely clueless about linguistics and history and have disrespected me from the beginning, how's that for ad hominem? End of discussion, you're wasting my time. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Can you review and verify -stan article? I think lead section has wrong and incorrect linguistic details and info. If you can, please add sourced material to this article. e.g. etymology or the history usage of the suffix. Also at wiktionary. Thanks. Zheek (talk) 23:01, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly should be incorrect there? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 12:57, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing, but maybe lead section needs more sources to make the article better. Zheek (talk) 15:04, 9 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the video is the perfect example of the quote " Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats," which is the centerpiece of the 1st half of the meme. If you don't agree feel free to remove it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:55, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am working my way through some problems with citations to EB1911, and I came across your comment of 15 May 2012. I had a look at Smith and have modified the articles Aurunci and Ausones to reflect that work (I also created a couple of others relating to the subject copied from Smith as they were short and easy to do (Aurunca and Ausona (ancient city)). Please have a look and see what you think (as I think it addresses the issue you raised), and if you think that you need to do so please edit my contributions mercilessly :-)

-- PBS (talk) 11:06, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the heads-up, I did a little proof-reading and tweaking in Aurunci, nothing substantial, though. The names appear clearly related, pointing to a common origin, even if the tribes had become distinct in the historical period. It's very easily possible that the self-designation of the Aurunci was something like Ausones, and Aurunci the name given to them by the Romans. The etymologically identical self-designation Ausones could then also have been transmitted through the Greeks as a name for the tribe in Southern Italy. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:42, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Would you please review this new changes (diff) on article Bactrian language? Thanks. Zheek (talk) 13:07, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bactrian happens to be a Bildungslücke of mine (a gap in my education), but the changes look completely OK, nothing suspicious, no warning signs. The IP seems to know more about Bactrian, its history and the relevant literature than I do. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:37, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Florian, just noticed your contribution to Common name. Quite reasonable, but I missed it at the time. I have addressed your objections (I hope) and invite criticism. Rushing at the moment. Cheers. JonRichfield (talk) 14:42, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The example from Moby Dick does not really fit your explanation, as the common name whale in English contains no hint at folk classification (at least none that would be apparent to the modern-day speaker: it has been suggested that the ancestral form in Proto-Indo-European, *(s)kʷálos or the like – from which the Proto-Germanic form *hwalaz "whale" descends –, originally designated a sheatfish, and was perhaps ultimately borrowed from Proto-Uralic *kala "fish"). In Dutch (walvis), Middle Low German (walvisch) and Modern West Frisian (walfisk), however, the common name does literally mean whale-fish; note that in Modern German, Walfisch exists as a familiar variant of Wal, but is not the most used name.

(As an aside: Perhaps *hwalaz itself still referred to sheatfish, as German terms for them are Wels – plural Welse – or Waller, obvious derivations from the Proto-Germanic word. The Germanic word might have been transferred to the whale only relatively late, as Germanic expanded from Northern Germany into Scandinavia.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:57, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Florian. Can you verify Scythians lead section? Recent changes does not match with the sources and only support one theory. Some sources like Britannica say they are ancient Iranian peoples (Iranian stock). But recent changes replaced "Iranian" with "Iranian-speaking". I think the lead section is biased and needs editing to covers valid theories. Both "Iranian-speaking" and "Iranian origins". Thanks. Zheek (talk) 14:57, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Now it's more OK and much better. Edited by Dougweller and has a better lead. But it will be helpful if you contribute. Zheek (talk) 16:27, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment[edit]

Hi. Please comment: Scythians: Consensus for the lead section: Iranian people or Iranian-speaking people. Thanks. Zheek (talk) 10:32, 3 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there. I know it's quite hard to do, but have you succeeded in finding any sources describing the presence of retracted /s z/ in Dutch (=also of course Frisian, Dutch Low Saxon, perhaps northern Limburgian), English in Scotland (got a source only describing Glaswegian), Icelandic, Danish (=also Faroese??), Norwegian etc.? Or any of these? I'm 100% sure I heard it also in Swabian dialect(s?) of German. But I couldn't find any more sources than the Glaswegian one. Perhaps you've had more luck? That would be a major improvement of phonetic articles in my opinion, apart from separating dental sibilants and sibilant affricates from the alveolar ones (which I'm still doing). Cheers. --Ahls23 (talk) 13:16, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the late reply, haven't had a lot of time for Wikipedia lately. Not really, but I haven't looked either, to be honest. Judging from the talk given by Aurelijus Vijūnas, they're present in Dutch (not sure about Frisian and Dutch Low Saxon, but possible if only due to areal conservatism, and even more expectable in the case of Limburgian in the light of both extremely close areal and genetic relationship), Icelandic and Faroese, and as for Romance languages, in Castilian dialects as well as Catalan. I fear this point is severely understudied because linguists and phoneticians do not give enough consideration to the often subtle differences between the sibilants, which they aren't trained to hear, either. By the way, I think the "retracted" sibilants are better described as "post-alveolar", a term not to be confused with palato-alveolar (i. e. [ʃ] [ʒ]) or alveolo-palatal (i. e. [ɕ] [ʑ]), although post-alveolar sibilants are admittedly quite similar to alveolo-palatal sibilants, only the place on the tongue where contact is made is slightly more front (laminal or even apical), which explains why the Middle High German s in particular is often described as alveolo-palatal. Palatal, palato-alveolar, alveolo-palatal, post-alveolar, alveolar – to say nothing of the retroflexes – that's quite a mouthful! Unfortunately, Postalveolar consonant treats a more general class of sibilants, while I mean the place of articulation immediately to the back of the alveolar one only. When there's not even an established term for the type of sound in question, no wonder it is so poorly known and wrongly described. Pace Postalveolar consonant#Point of tongue contact (laminal, apical, subapical), it's not even always apical, and hardly retroflex!

In any case, I don't find the merger helpful, quite the opposite.

The only thing I could do is look for the hand-out I got from Aurelijus and glance through the bibliography. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:22, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind a late reply at all. I might be wrong about Frisian, but they for sure are present in Dutch Low Saxon. Only speakers farthest north (Groningen province for example) may pronounce an ordinary alveolar [s], as that's their usual realization of Dutch /s/. Surinamese speakers also don't use postalveolar [s̠ z̠]. Their accent is like a cross of the Amsterdam and general Belgian one. I've never heard it in Afrikaans as well, but who knows - there are so much languages spoken in South Africa. You never know if there isn't a regional accent influenced by a certain language with such feature.

Yes, it's also because IPA is a minimalistic tool. The available IPA symbols/possible sounds to pronounce ratio is like 1:5 or higher.

Indeed they are similar to palato-alveolars. I think "depalatalized [ɕ ʑ]" describe these consonants quite correctly. Yes, it's a very subtle difference, the tongue is one or two milimeters more front when I'm pronouncing the postalveolars ([ɕ ʑ] are in my native language, Polish).

It's also because there's no proper symbol for it. Consonants described [t͡ɕ d͡ʑ] in Catalan are in fact, from what I can hear, slightly or not palatal at all. Therefore they're also rather postalveolar [t̠͡s̠~t̠͡s̠ʲ d̠͡z̠~d̠͡z̠ʲ].

I get it. I like to call postalveolar [s̠ z̠] "postalveolar s-type sibilants", whereas I call [ʃ ʒ] "postalveolar sh-type sibilants", since I'm using these symbols when transcribing Slavic languages (in place of /ʂ ʐ/, as they have only some retroflexion, rather than being full-on retroflex like in Chinese.) German [ʃ ʒ] also aren't palatal at all so I prefer to stick to the old name "postalveolar" (that's how IPA called them about 20 years ago), and use a superscript [ʐ] to indicate some retroflexion when needed. It's not even non-standard to do it... IPA states explicitly that you can use every single letter as a diacritic. Not that I care what they say, since most of what I write using IPA is for myself. I'm not a professional phonetician.

That'd be great. Take your time, and thanks very much for helping. Even one sourced language more would be better than nothing. --Ahls23 (talk) 04:44, 14 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I managed to find sources for Finish and Icelandic. I've put them both on Voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant. --Ahls23 (talk) 04:13, 15 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See now Talk:Voiceless alveolar sibilant#Merge with Voiceless apico-alveolar fricative (again). I'd appreciate your comments, even if you aren't a professional phonetician (although it seems you aren't active on Wikipedia anymore). I've seen that Aurelijus has posted his work about sibilants in Indo-European languages to Academia.edu. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:43, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

--Ricordisamoa 14:14, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is that ok now? Dougweller (talk) 16:14, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, thank you. Seriously, this guy ... People whose command of English (or reading comprehension, or attention) is this poor should not be allowed to edit en-WP. The dab hatnote is prominent enough. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:36, 23 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We do have WP:Competence which is only an essay but we block people at times for very poor command of English. Dougweller (talk) 10:27, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is to my knowledge that Corea was rather a term used in continental European languages, whereas Korea was the term used in the English language. Therefore, Corea is a name formerly used in non-English languages. What's your take on this? I don't mind Corea being explained in the names of Korea later in the article, but I don't think it belongs to the first sentence. 02:06, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's take this to Talk:Korea#Corea, OK? I'm copying your question there. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:20, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just saw your response to an old talk page post, did you see the latest posts? Dougweller (talk) 15:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually not, thank you. If anything, the genetic evidence actually puts the nail in the coffin of the attempt to identify the origins of the Bell Beaker phenomenon with Indo-European, not to mention Celtic! --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, just wondered. Dougweller (talk) 09:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The words obverse and reverse appear nowhere else in the article, so I was bold and plugged the tags where they did appear, without bothering to open discussion on what's essentially a trivial matter. What I think is worth citation is calling "obverse" one side of the palette and "reverse" the other. We could, a priori, say that the side depicting Narmer smiting his enemy is the obverse. Is there scholarly consensus on the side of the palette that should be labelled as such?

Nicolas Perrault III (talk) 22:05, 20 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What if we renamed the sides "Smiting side" and "Serpopard side", as I did in the images' names? This would be superior, in my opinion, to "obverse" and "reverse" if there is no scholarly consensus on the naming of the sides. However, if there is a consensus, the obverse-reverse option would be preferable, as we'd want to reflect standard use rather than making up names on the go.

Nicolas Perrault III (talk) 22:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Done!

Nicolas Perrault III (talk) 22:41, 20 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

Regarding OP. /rθ/ > MP. /hl/,[3] isn't it /θr/ > /hl/? I'm not an expert, just asking because I've seen sources has reconstructed the root of MP. gōhr (< early MP. gōhl) as OP. *gauθra-.

According to this, if I understand correctly, MP. gu- is from vu-, but I've read somewhere that generally vV-, where V is a vowel, becomes gu-. For example, MP. gul "rose" is usually considered to be from OP. *varda- (not *vurda- etc. AFAIK), and MP. Guštāsp is from OIr. Vištāspa. --Z 15:46, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing of this contradicts what I wrote. Indeed, i generally becomes u after word-initial labials, and the example OP. vazrka- > MP. buzurg indicates that the same is true for a (thanks for pointing that out), although in this case /v/ does not become /g/ but /b/ (as usual before /a/), which indicates that you misremembered the rule and it is only the vowel rounding that's general, not /v/ > /g/ (relative chronology seems to indicate that the colouring of /a/ was later than that of /u/). That said, OP. could equally have had *vrda- rather than *varda-, and the fact that MP. does not have **bul seems to point to *vrda-. For OP. /rθ/ > /hl/, compare OP. *prθu- > MP. puhl (with rounding) and OP. *Parθava- > MP. Pahlav (no colouring here, by the way, which indicates that the rounding of /a/ occurred only after /v/, another indication that it's not part of the same rule). Also note that /θr/ is rare in OP. because Proto-Iranian *θr became /ç/ in OP. and /θr/ therefore only occurs in Medisms. I wasn't aware that it also results in /hl/ in Early MP. For example, the already mentioned Čihrfar has the expected /hr/. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:04, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation, you're quite right. Yes OP. /ç/ becomes /hl/ in MP., actually MP. puhl ("son") is from OP. puça- ("son"), the OP. word is attested. --Z 17:05, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But MP. pus is also attested (and even the normal word, which is also continued in ModP. pesar, from the MP. oblique pusar), with /s/ being the regular continuation of OP. /ç/ (don't forget MP. sē "3" and sīh "30"). Therefore both the native Persian form and the Medism (or Avestism, possibly) are continued. The same kind of doublet is found in Book Pahlavi pās ("watch, guard", continued in ModP.!) besides pāhl, where Manichaean MP. has even the Parthian borrowing pāhr. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:38, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes, I totally forgot pus.

I thought about *vrda- today, which you suggested as the true OP. form of MP. gul instead of *varda-, but there's a problem: we have Sogd. ward, Parth. wār (OIr. ard gives Parth. ār, e.g. *sarda- > sār[4]), and the syllabic r is always recorded as ərə in Avestan AFAIK, while here we have Av. varəδa-, so the evidences point to OIr. /varda/. If we assume what you suggested is correct (MP. gul < *vu... < OP. *virda- < OP. *vrda- ?), then it seems the syllabic *r in OP. *vrda- should have been developed from *ar, is it possible? --Z 05:45, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm not suggesting that. The apparent fact is simply that OP. reflects the zero grade and the other Iranian languages a full grade. Check Wiktionary: there are possible cognates in other Indo-European languages which also seem to reflect the zero grade, so OP. wouldn't be isolated. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:59, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tnx fr yr msg about this item. See the Talk page for my feedback. jxm (talk) 00:40, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could you clarify this, and fix the Bashkardi article to match? Currently we say it's NW Iranian (as does Ethn.) Also, shouldn't Lari be in the box? — kwami (talk) 02:06, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ethnologue is simply wrong in this case, as in many others. Bashkardi underlies areal influence by Baluchi, being surrounded by it on three sides, but in origin it is closer to Persian. Bashkardi language has already long been fixed, haven't you checked it? Also, why should Lari be in the box? It's a subbranch within Southwestern Iranian. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:23, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

hey florian, we just started a article about [Michael Corballis]. Maybe be you like to contribute! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Janus von Abaton (talk • contribs) 16:28, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No substantial changes or additions, only some quick copyediting. Hope it helps! Looks good to me now. Well done. Thanks for notifying me. (By the way, next time simply click the "add section" tab.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:03, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dougweller (talk) 20:48, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I saw you had a note in the talk page for the Pacific Ocean about some 'Tepre Pacificum nonsense'. You may be amused to know, (or depressed I suppose) that 'Tepre Pacificum' is now well entrenched in the internet (first page of a google search), it is described in a 2011 book on galleons and is the name of a range of swimwear. Amusingly there are critiques of that book on galleons that judge it to be rushed with a poor bibliography. However, it does mean that there is now a print reference to 'Tepre Pacificum', perhaps I should re-instate it into Wikipedia (just kidding). - Pondfox — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.165.80.175 (talk) 12:20, 10 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Should you really decide to do that, be sure to add a link to File:Relationship between Wikipedia and the press.svg. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:55, 13 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]