User talk:Mahagaja/Archive 3

WP:RM

Please see Talk:Josef Hirsal on how to lay out a request to move on the talk page as specified on WP:RM#What to do on the talk page. Give a man a fish... but teach him to fish... Philip Baird Shearer 1 July 2005 21:33 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Franco Lombardi

I merged a few VfD listings into just one since it's all the same related cruft. If you want to go move/revise your vote to a "delete all" so we have a clearer vote listing that would be great. Thanks! — Phil Welch 1 July 2005 21:52 (UTC)

Irregular verbs

Hey Angr, I've been trying to match up the verbs in List of English irregular verbs with the discussions in other articles, but I have some gaps. This is because I haven't found the information quite as I wanted it, and I'd rather be careful. For example, it is obvious that wear wore worn is parallel to bear bore born, but for some reason my Old English dictionary (Clark Hall) doesn't actually say that werian is class 4, and that leaves a slight doubt in my mind - could it be a later analogy, etc. Why don't you have a look at this and see if any of the gaps can be filled in. At some time you might also like to give me some feedback on West Germanic strong verb too. --Doric Loon 3 July 2005 15:28 (UTC)

VfD

Since it looks like it's been you who has been updating the VfD pages lately, could you check if I forgot anything when updating today's? --cesarb 4 July 2005 00:34 (UTC)

Re: VFD bot isn't updating VFDL

If you had read the front of my user page, you'd find the reason why. --AllyUnion (talk) 5 July 2005 04:59 (UTC)

Miskin

Thank you for the tip, I have just reported him for five reverts within 6 hours:-))) VMORO July 5, 2005 07:09 (UTC)

Does Miskin have any idea what he's doing in List of extinct languages? He claims that "linguists" support viewing ancient Greek as "alive", yet "middle English" as "dead". And those claims of Modern Greek being "so close" to Koine...well...I've read references that say otherwise. He is degenerating into propaganda and POV-pushing again. Decius 7 July 2005 17:18 (UTC)

Irish names

See above article for some edits and additional material. Fergananim

Convergence

Thank you for correcting me on the info I recently added....I didn't know the "C" in EBMC was also "convergence". Thanks! NickBurns 8 July 2005 00:18 (UTC)

Uranism

I too am a linguist with uranistic inclinations, if you take my meaning: thanks for your additions to Proto-Celtic on P-Celtic but it would be much appreciated if you could inculde an elaboration on current theories sbout how P-Celtic / Q-Celtic developed. What evidence is there to suggest that there was no intial split into P-Celtic/Q-Celtic? Do experts generally agree that the *p or *qu was largely a matter of local dialect similar to how English dialects handle the pronunciation of post-vocalic r? Surely this would impy that for some time most Celtic languages were mutually intelligible?. it would be most appreciated if you could make a small addition to Proto-Celtic on this matter. GeoffMGleadall 8 July 2005 11:07 (UTC)

Noric language (and Lepontic and Ligurian)

Ciao Angr,

First of all, let me congratulate you on your use of IPA in your "tɔk tə mi". I must confess I hadn't come across that yet in the Wikipedia. As for my creating the article Noric language, I must confess that the only reason I did that is simply that the "Noric language" was referred to in another article with a link that led to nowhere. If you go to "Noric language" and click on "What links here", you will see that the first article listed is Celtic languages, which refers to "Gaulish and its close relatives, Lepontic, Noric, and Galatian." (That's the current version and apparently you were the last contributor.) Now, I did make some contributions to this article on July 8-9, 2004, but I did not create the reference to Noric. It was already there, as I repeat, with a link that led to nowhere. The question now is: Who added that reference and link to nowhere? I just checked and apparently it was Rmhermen on 13 June 2003. So, maybe he knows.

As an aside, I happen to know Lepontic probably as well as anyone else, and I doubt very much that it is even a Celtic language, let alone a close relative of Gaulish. I happen to believe it is closely related to Ligurian, a member of a separate branch of Indo-European. (There is a note to that effect in the article on Lepontic.) And given that we know even less about Noric than we know about Lepontic, who knows... You draw your conclusions.

Cheers,

Pasquale 8 July 2005 23:49 (UTC)

The notion has been around a long time that the dialect of the Lepontii (Lepontic), together with those of the Salassi and Taurini (the three have been jointly referred to as North Ligurian or Subalpine), were affiliated with Ligurian (an Indo-European language originally spoken not only in Liguria proper but also in the Western Alps, the South of France, both sides of the northern Appennine ridge, as well as remote valleys of North-Eastern Italy and the Eastern Alps). Traditionally the main source was Joshua Whatmough (in Robert Seymour Conway, Joshua Whatmough, and Sarah Elizabeth Jackson Johnson, The prae-Italic dialects of Italy, 1933). While this work may be outdated in many respects, it still remains an extremely useful source. Personally, I wrote a 1973 thesis at the University of Rome entitled "La lingua delle iscrizioni leponzie" (unpublished) in which I weighed all the evidence and took a position slightly in favor of the Ligurian hypothesis (I'll spare you the details). Then some ten years later, Michel Lejeune published a long article in which he took a stand in favor of the Celtic hypothesis. His entire argument, however, hinges on a sleight-of-hand. It is based on one important inscription, whose attribution to Lepontic is doubtful. Many think it may be in Cisalpine Gaulish. (The same alphabet of Lugano used for Lepontic was later also used for Cisalpine Gaulish.) In this inscription there is a personal name Uwamogotsis, or "highest host". Lejeune says the inscription cannot be in Gaulish because *gotsis is nowhere else attested in Celtic. So, it has to be Lepontic. Ergo, Lepontic is closely akin to Gaulish, because this personal name clearly shows Celtic phonology (*p > 0, *st > ts). Never mind that with this sleight-of-hand, *gotsis does become attested in Celtic! (Furthermore, personal names are not all that significant because, having fallen under Celtic influence, the Lepontii may have used Gaulish personal names, something for which there is some evidence also among the early Germanic people.) It all pretty much boils down to whether Indo-European *p was preserved in Lepontic (as in Ligurian) or not. The most commonly attested word in Lepontic is PALA (possibly for *palla, since geminate consonants were apparently never written), which means 'stone, tombstone'. Does this show an Indo-European *p? Whatmough seemed to think so. I favor that view as well. But, having chosen the Celtic interpretation, Lejeune, of course, had to reject that etymology. One of the problems with the Lepontic inscriptions is that no distinction is made between voiced and voiceless stops, so that PALA can stand for *pala, *palla, *bala, *balla. BTW, in the Alps, there are lots of mountain peaks called Palla-this and Palla-that. By folk-etymology, these seem to have been interpreted as "ball" and even translated into German as "Kugel" (e.g. Pallabianca = Weisskugel). But these mountains don't look like balls at all, they look more like... well, rocks!

Pasquale 22:58, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, bravo, Angr, you've gone ahead and and made Noric language a redirect to Noricum! That's fine. You can go ahead and do whatever you want. Frankly, I am no longer interested in contributing to the Wikipedia, least of all in matters linguistic, and I am surprised that you, as an active professional linguist, would care to do so. In due time, you'll grow tired of it too, when your carefully-crafted contributions are messed up by the last Johnny-come-lately. As for the Todi inscription, indeed, when I worked on it, it was universally considered to be Cisalpine Gaulish. I am sorry about Paul Russell, but I'm afraid he doesn't know what he's talking about. The Lepontii were just a small indigenous mountain tribe of Canton Ticino and adjoining areas of northern Lombardy and Piedmont. Well before the Gaulish invasion of northern Italy, they developed the alphabet of Lugano, one of five alphabets of northern Italy traditionally known as "North Etruscan" alphabets because they were derived from the Etruscan alphabet (Lugano, Sondrio, Magrè, Bolzano, Este -- with additional subtypes and variants). There is no presumption, however, that to each alphabet corresponds only one language. In particular, the alphabet of Lugano was clearly used for Cisalpine Gaulish.

However, I admit I have been away from the most recent scholarship. It appears that there is a trend now to consider Lepontic and Cisalpine Gaulish not as discrete languages, but as closely related dialects of "Cisalpine Celtic" (e.g. Joseph F. Eska, The linguistic position of Lepontic, 1998). This position seems to be gaining ground, although it plays fast and loose with both history and data. On line, you can find this article by Eska, which will give you an idea of what he's up to: www.bol.ucla.edu/~maom/ research/Eska_Mercado_Vergiate.pdf. Notably, he has to reject the identification of Lepontic KARITE (which can be read as *karrite) with Gaulish karnitu, showing different 3sg preterite morphology and most interestingly (for me) a typically Ligurian progressive assimilation of -rn- to -rr-, something quite alien to Celtic, that, of course, Eska has never heard about. Notice that the Lepontic corpus is, by and large, older than the Celtic invasion of norther Italy. I don't know how these Celticists square that away.

After 400 BC the powerful Gaulish tribe of the Insubres held sway in what is now Western Lombardy, centered around Mediolanum (Milan). They may have commingled in part with the indigenous Lepontii, their northern neighbors, but to say that they were one and the same or that their languages were dialects of one and the same language, or even the same language, is, IMO, absurd and ignorant. To then go as far as say that the Insubres spoke Lepontic because they used a variant of the alphabet of Lugano (as Paul Russell seems to do) is plainly ridiculous.

Unfortunately, I have been away from academia for a long time now and I don't have the time or energy to gainsay these people. As far as the Wikipedia is concerned, I no longer give a hoot about what it says about Noric, Lepontic, or any other ancient language. So feel free to alter any of this stuff. If you feel it should reflect this recent "scholarship" (Eska, Russell, or whoever else), go ahead and change it accordingly. I don't care.

By the way, the assertion that Celtiberian is closely related to Gaulish is also way off the mark. Celtiberian is probably the most divergent of the Celtic languages. Among other things, it is the only Celtic language to preserve final -m -- other than Lepontic, of course (but not Cisalpine Gaulish, which shows -n).

Pasquale 02:16, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

No, Angr, I am afraid you misunderstood me. I was not referring to you when I used the term "Johnny-come-lately", but to others, or more precisely to a general experience with the Wikipedia which you will no doubt soon experience yourself. Basically, what happens is that the more you become invested by making more and more contributions, the more you expose yourself to seeing your work deleted or severely altered. But, again, I assure you I was not referring to you.

You are right, I had no attachment whatsoever to the Noric language stub. As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, I had initially created a link to Noricum myself, and only later decided to create a stub for the actual language, hoping that some Celticist might be able to add some detail.

As for Lepontic, thank you for your additions. I had already mentioned Whatmough to you (scroll above a little and you'll find it). Conway, Whatmough & Jackson Johnson 1933 still remains a fundamental reference not just for Lepontic, but for all the prae-Italic languages of Italy, a kind of editio princeps, if you will. If you get a chance to look at it, you'll see what I mean. Whatmough 1933 carefully weighs all the evidence and leans slightly towards the Ligurian affiliation for Lepontic. But he certainly would have been shocked by the current claims identifying Lepontic and Gaulish, which seem totally to ignore the historical reality of the Gaulish invasion of northern Italy of approx. 400 BC, the fact that this invasion most probably came from Noricum (!), that there is no other evidence of Celtic peoples in northern Italy prior to that invasion, that large swaths of the South of France were Celticized even later than northern Italy (Provence was still Ligurian-speaking possibly as late as 200-150 BC and the dede bratou dekantem inscriptions are most probably Ligurian, not Gaulish). The Lepontic inscriptions, on the other hand, date as far back as 600 BC, if not even earlier.

Personally, having studied all the Ligurian evidence in depth (substratum terms, toponymy, and the few extant Apuanian inscriptions, written in the Etruscan alphabet), I have no doubt that Ligurian was Indo-European. And, BTW, that's what the Wikipedia stub for the Ligurian language used to say, until an anonymous contributor (172.153.145.157) changed the wording from "Very little is known about this language which is believed to have been Indo-European" to "Very little is known about this language, which is believed to have been non-Indo-European, as evidenced by certain place-names in the region where it was spoken." What place-names? Genua, nearly identical to Genava (also alternatively known as Genua in ancient times)? Briga? Langa? Alba? Album (e.g. Album Intemelium, Album Ingaunum)? I have never seen more Indo-European-looking place-names. No, in fact, Ligurian represents a little-known extinct branch of Indo-European, akin but different from Celtic (and not simply for the preservation of *p), and sharing some features with Osco-Umbrian (e.g. the full labialization of ALL the labio-velars, but NOT of the velar plus glide clusters (e.g. *ekwo-, etc.), a very different situation than in Celtic. There is ample evidence of the previous presence of this Ligurian branch not only in northern and central Italy, the Alps, and at least the south of Gaul, but also in the Iberian peninsula, and Corsica and Sardinia. There is even, in all likelyhood, a considerable Ligurian adstratum in Basque!

But have I changed the wording of Ligurian language back to what it used to be? No, and I'm not going to. It's a waste of time. In due time, you will come to see what I mean.

Pasquale 19:25, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

While sympathising with the frustration, from my own (limited) experience a terse two sentence article which is distilled down from extensive research but cites no sources is indistinguishable from a two sentence article that someone made up out of whole cloth. If there is a lot to say, then say it, cite it, and it is likely to stick.

Since the information above is available to anyone who happens across this user talk page (but few will) I have taken the liberty of copying it to the talk page on Ligurian; keeping the attribution of the original author and snipping the parts about frustration etc. The volume of useful information is much larger than the actual article on Ligurian, and hopefully will make its way into that article at some point. --Nantonos 20:26, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I have asked on the continentalceltic mailing list for pointers to recent scholarship on these topics, and hope to get some resources from that enquiry. --Nantonos 20:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, Angr, it appears that Nantonos has done all the work for me! Many thanks to both of you, and thanks as well for the pointers. I certainly agree that it would be nice to have sources buttressing every argument and point of contention, but that requires a lot of time that I have not had. The Wikipedia is lucky to have you guys on board. Nonetheless, I assure you my frustration with the Wikipedia did not arise overnight. I still believe that sooner or later every contributor will eventually have good reasons to become frustrated. For one thing, it is impossible to keep up with the constant changes being made. But, I suppose, new generations of contributors will always come on board to replace the ones who abandon ship because of fatigue or tedium. Meanwhile, keep up the good work, both of you!

Pasquale 01:19, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

verses

Hiya,

you recently voted to delete John 20:16

Uncle G has made a wider proposal covering a much larger group of verses.

would you be prepared to make a similar vote at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Individual Bible verses, which covers the full list of verses in Uncle G's suggestion?

~~~~ 9 July 2005 16:44 (UTC)

Gaulish language

I see that on Gaulish language you edited "Gaulish is grouped with Celtiberian and Lepontic as Continental Celtic." to "Gaulish is grouped with Celtiberian and Galatian as Continental Celtic." Since you added the template which lists Gaulish, Celtiberian, Lepontic and Galatian as Continental Celtic, is that an oversight (you meant to add Galatian rather than replacing Lepontic) or are you advocating that Lepontic is not Continental Celtic (in which case, I would be interested to know why? Lambert places it as a Continental Celtic language, for instance). --Nantonos 23:57, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

I think that perhaps people are using 'dialect' and 'language' in a loose and interchangeable way. There is no particular evidence for dialects, Watmoughs work in the 1940s being largely discredited. Perhaps easier to change 'dialect' to 'language' and list Lepontic as well, for consistency with the template. --Nantonos 21:09, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Nantonos, I am not sure why you say that Whatmough 1933 is largely discredited. Have you read it? I submit that, if you do, you will find it still useful and valid. Personally, I find it more persuasive than Lejeune's work from the 1970s, in the conclusions arrived at, I mean, not in terms of the wealth of data and documentation. I also find the more recent work identifying (or nearly identifying) Lepontic and Gaulish singularly unconvincing, in fact, preposterous, to be absolutely honest. But I suppose that, with such a limited corpus, it is inevitable that radically different claims and interpretations will be made. Pasquale 01:33, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

OK I have a passing reference on p.177 of DLG, but the arguments I summarized were made by him on a mailing list. --Nantonos 14:01, 12 July 2005 (UTC) Pasquale, it was the Gaulish dialects from his 1949 book that I was referring to as discredited. Angr, I would cite a reference for Delamarre but a not sure how to cite an email archive. or I could look through his book on Gaulish and see if he expresses a similar opinion (but this is unlikely; Lambert might, though). --Nantonos 13:38, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Signature

Thank you for your help! Sonic Mew | talk 15:11, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Moving bet (letter) to ב

Thanks Angr. I thought it was such an excellent idea (I was too close to the forest to see how glaringly obvious the trees were), but I was far too involved in the initial fit-throwing about it for it to have been appropriate for me to have moved the article. Violetriga has moved the article per your recommendation. IZAK and I sometimes butt heads. Thanks to you and to Violetriga for putting some foam between us.  :-) Tomer ^TALK 04:46, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I concur. It might be best to take this up with User:IZAK, since it's a project I think he's probably the most interested in seeing through to completion. Tomer ^TALK 05:55, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Long since done. See User talk:IZAK#Moving bet (letter) to ב.  :-) Tomer ^TALK 06:01, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

Battle categories

Hiya. Regarding your move of Siege of Boulogne from Category:Battles of England to Category:English battles... I am aware that 'English battles' is the more populated category. But there is currently a discussion over what the battle categories should be changed to, and much like the (far more lengthy and active) recent debate over the History categories (English history vs. History of England), most people agree that the 'Fooish battles' model is no good. I may have jumped the gun a bit in beginning to re-categorize battles to 'Battles of Foo' instead of waiting for a consensus to be reached; I'll admit that. But 'English battles' is not populated because it's the correct category; it's populated because people haven't been active enough in voicing their opinions, and thus no consensus has yet been reached. I have tried to jumpstart the discussion a number of times, but to no avail. I'm gonna go put it back now, hope you don't mind. LordAmeth 12:26, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Prince Richard as King

Am I correct in thinking that if Edward had not abdicated (but everything else remained the way it really happened), Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester would today be King? When Edward died in 1972, he had no children (at least no legitimate ones; we don't know for sure if Scott Chisholm's grandfather was really his son) and his only surviving sibling was Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. Surely Henry would then have become king, rather than Elizabeth becoming queen, wouldn't he? Henry died in 1974, and his oldest son Prince William of Gloucester had already died in '72, leaving Richard next in line to the throne. Right? --Angr/_comhrá 12:01, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Answered at Talk:Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester. In short - no, Elizabeth would have become queen. john k 13:27, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

You are wrong about Prince William he was still living when Edward died, and if his father became King, he may not have died do to the added security of an heir. If all of this occured Elizabeth would have become queen anyway, as the line of succession goes from sibilings, than their children and then the next sibiling and their children. If the sibiling is deceased, their children would remain in the same spot in the line of succession, and still take prescedence over younger sibilings. So, if Edward had not abdicated and had no children at the time of his death the line of succession would have been: 1. HRH Princess Elizabeth 2. HRH Prince Charles 3. HRH Prince Andrew 4. HRH Prince Edward 5. HRH Princess Anne 6. HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester 7. HRH Prince William of Gloucester (Still living at the time of the Duke's death) 8. HRH Prince Richard of Gloucester etc.

((Cooldoug111 17:30, 3 August 2005 (UTC)))