User talk:Doric Loon/Archive 2005

Yiddish page

Hey Doric Loon, were you planning to return to the Yiddish page at all? It desperately needs someone with your erudition to help out. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:41, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Linguistics

Hi Doric Loon, your remark on Talk:French grammar about the article Relative pronoun that "It is not meant to be about any one language..." made me think that you might like the linguistics section of project Countering Systemic Bias. I'd be curious to know your thoughts! — mark ✎ 11:50, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good point. I'll mention it there. --Doric Loon 18:14, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Umlaut "diacritic"

It's a well known quagmire, and much of what you've done with the umlaut article is very good, but I am somewhat disturbed by some other details.

Your usage of the term "umlaut diacritic" in connection with certain languages is contradicting since the text still, correctly, notes that the dots do not serve as diacritics. In particular your change of the other languages heading seems to call for revision or reversion.

I'm a pretty irregular contributor to Wikipedia these days, but I guess I will try to change (back) some of your edits.
--Ruhrjung 06:40, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's your prerogative, but I'm not sure what your objection is. This sign was designed for German where it has a very logical function, and was borrowed into some other languages, where it simply represents a sound without the same relational function, but significantly in these languages it represents the same sound as in German - or the nearest phoneme. So it IS the Umlaut diacritic which has been borrowed in a simplified fashion. I think Swedes do think of Ä as A with dots; the fact that the treat it as a separate letter when alphabetising doesn't change where it comes from. But by all means try to express these things more clearly. --Doric Loon 06:56, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's always hard to know how people think, but (having lived four year there and having worked with Danes in Denmark) I would suggest that they don't think so any more than we think of a 'R' as a P-with-an-extra-line, or the danes think of 'æ' as a+e. If one has to describe the character for someone who doesn't know it, of course that's how to express it, but in our everyday thinking one doesn't go around considering 'W' and 'U' as variants of 'V', does one?

:-)

--Ruhrjung 08:03, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. Though it's a bolle-a they have in Danish, not a double-dotted a like in Swedish, isn't it? (Just going by the Wiki articles on the alphabets of these languages - I don't speak them at all!) You will see I changed a couple of things in this section before I saw your comments, and changed the title of the section after I saw it, so maybe you are a little happier now, but go ahead and make improvements if you see fit. The only thing I would ask is, if these symbols are NOT to be called umlaut diacritics in these languages, should they be in this article at all? --Doric Loon 06:44, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good job and thanks for your work on ablaut

Ditto. -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:03, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Germanic verbs

Hi Doric loon, and thanks for your kind comments on my work. Unfortunately, I am not an expert on Old Norse. I consult secondary sources. I will have a look for information about strong verbs in Old Norse, but I don't think I can do the work as fast as you hope. Concerning modern Scandinavian, I think Bokmål would be the best example, because it is in many ways intermediary between Swedish and Danish. You could try with a Norwegian contributor, such as User:Egil.--Wiglaf 06:38, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PS, you're doing amazing work on the verbs. Keep up with your good work.--Wiglaf 06:38, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi Doric Loon, I have responded to your request to add the Afrikaans forms to the Germanic weak verbs table. The distinction between strong and weak verbs does not exist in Afrikaans as the language has lost the strong verb so all verbs follow the weak pattern. For example "he sang/he has sung/he had sung" (for practical purposes Afrikaans only uses the perfect tense to express the past) is hy het gesing rather than the ancestral Dutch hy heeft gezongen. This follows exactly the same pattern as werk: "he worked/has worked/had worked" is hy het gewerk.

Hope this helps. Booshank 12:26, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

moving articles into parent Category:Germanic languages

Hey, I was just wondering why you are moving massive numbers of articles from West Germanic languages and East Germanic languages to the parent category. If these categories are depopulated of their languages, then they're rather useless, eh? --Laura Scudder | Talk 17:14, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi Laura, the reason is that the category system for Germanic philology seemed pretty chaotic (as is that for Indo-European). I found it very difficult at first to get an overview of what had already been done, and it seems other people are too, because in the last couple of days one user has written a long (and excellent) article on an phenomenon which already had an article under a different title. So I thought I would try to simplify things by experimenting with a single category for Germanic languages. You are right - that would then render the sub-categories redundant. But now I am wondering if this is really helping or not. Try it out yourself and see what you think. I'll do no more until I get some more feedback. --Doric Loon 17:21, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In general it's a good idea to have articles in the lowest possible category. For one thing, it keeps the number of articles in any given category down to a manageable size. I would say any article specific to North, East, or West Germanic should be in the respective subcategories, and the only articles in Category:Germanic languages should be North Germanic languages, East Germanic languages, West Germanic languages (since the title article of a subcategory belongs in the parent category as well as the subcat), plus articles on phenomena shared by all branches. --Angr/_comhrá 22:20, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Source

Hi Doric loon, here is a link to strong verbs in Old Norse [1], weak verbs: [2], and irregular verbs: [3], [4].--Wiglaf 21:59, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks interesting. Though the "holy language", English purged of non-Germanic elements for use in holy rites, is a truly weird idea. --Doric Loon 08:05, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it's a weird idea. However, they have scanned the information from a scholarly work and I am pretty sure about the reliability.--Wiglaf 11:33, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Germany

Thanks for your constructive contributions to the Germany page. Question: Where is the "POV" in the article that Gidonb was talking about? I can't see any. PS I have long stopped posting on the Germany Talk page, because there is too much aggro there. - Heimdal 15:43, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

To be honest, no, I don't see his point. But I gather there has been a history of arguments on this page, and I haven't followed it, so I don't want to judge that. I would advise you not to stop posting on the talk page unless you intend to stop editing the article, because you need to justify what you are doing. But if there is aggro, stay sober and factual. --Doric Loon 22:19, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Every time we've got a half-way decent Germany page, here come the loonies to disrupt the page. We've seen all that before. Gidonb is well-known for his hatred of Germany and the Germans. I think it's got to do with his personal background - because, apparently, his family was a victim of the Holocaust. Some months ago he insisted on adding an image of a Nazi camp mass grave to the article, which I reverted. Since then it's war between us. Just try to discuss with such a person. It's impossible. - Heimdal 12:40, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your input on the Germany talk page. I just read the above accusations for the first time. Being of German descent, a child to a father who fosters German culture worldwide, and strengthening the cultural aspects of the Germany article in the past, I was amazed to read Heimdal's interpretation of my efforts. Yet there is no need to answer my posting and I will not answer subsequent accusations, if any are placed here again. I just thought that some word of disagreement is necessary as these may effect my reputation on Wikipedia. I favor a discussion of the contents of any article on the relevant talk page, without insults. gidonb 20:23, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad you clarified that. It confirms my suspicion that there is no really big issue here. This is an irritation which has gone out of control, and I am obviously not the only one who is bewildered by it. --Doric Loon 20:32, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Doric Loon, I wanted to inform you that User:Gidonb has just deleted your piece about the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (ZJD) which you posted yesterday on the Germany page. I reverted, not least to save your edits. Please excuse me this shameful act of vandalism. - Heimdal 14:51, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Yet another shameful accusation in a list of too many lies. The text has been moved to another article, as explained in the edit summaries. Only one person vandalises the Germany page and thinks that he can do whatever he likes, while telling plain lies about the course of events. Heimdal went as far as to delete large sections of the Germany talk page, including your comments. This is my last reaction to his lies on this page. gidonb 15:54, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Please spare us from moving edits to other articles. Who asked you to do so anyway. - Heimdal 16:16, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

The point of an overview article is to point to the relevant places. To me it is not so important whether this information is in Germany as that the reader of Germany can easily find the links to the places he or she needs to go. There has to be a link to the ZJD in some form. Surely, though, three lines on today's Jews is not too much, given that, precisely in view of the Holocaust, the situation of Jews in today's Germany is something lots of people must wonder about! And I would give the Muslims more space too. Remember, this article should be about today's Germany, and the reason some people were arguing that the history section was too long was because they wanted to make space for that. There is no pressure at present to shorten the information on contemporary affairs. --Doric Loon 16:27, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Geschichtsaufarbeitung

I thought vaguely remembered the concept being slightly distinct from Vergangenheitsbewältigung, but if you are sure they are effectively the same, the redirect is fine... I also notice that the German 'pedia has no article on Geschichtsaufarbeitung, and I'm sure they know best, so I'm fine with this. Thanks. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:28, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Maps

File:Benrath-Speyer.PNG

The Benrath and Speyer lines are marked in red

Thanks for clarifying. I guess it is now only the combination tz that I am a bit puzzled about. Was it pronounced [tz] or was it a way of writing ts? I am sorry if it sounds like a silly question.

As for maps, I'd love to make some. Just tell me what kind of map you would like, and allow me some time for research.--Wiglaf 21:38, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

PS, if you want someone who knows Old Norse well, you could leave a message to User:Haukurth.--Wiglaf 22:01, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have made a map. I am not completely happy about the colour composition, but I chose yellow, green and blue in order to show continuity. Red was chosen for the borders to make them more clear as black was already taken. Don't hesitate to ask for changes.--Wiglaf 22:05, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sound changes to and from Old Irish

Hi, For PIE -> Old Irish the standard is Holger Pedersen's Vergleichende Grammatik der Keltischen Sprachen, or if you don't read German, its abridged translation Concise Comparative Celtic Grammar by Henry Lewis. It also include PIE -> Welsh/Cornish/Breton. I don't know of anything adequate for OIr. -> Scots Gaelic, I'm afraid. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 12:25, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The main alternative to lexical diffusion is the Neogrammarian hypothesis that sound change applies simultaneously to all words in which the context of the sound change is found. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 21:28, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

grammatischer wechsel, wandel

i've never heard of either of these terms used in english historical linguistics and i think it would be preferable if possible to use more descriptive english terms, all the more so since the literal meaning of these german terms is so vague. for example, what you call "wandel" is known to me as "pre-nasal raising"; since that term could describe various sorts of changes, however, the preferable title would be "Germanic pre-nasal raising". as for "grammatischer wechsel", all the old english books i've seen simply list this as "due to verner's law"; hence, you might simply want to merge this into "verner's law" as a "synchronic effects" section.

see also my comments in Talk:West Germanic strong verb. Benwing 04:41, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Hi Benwig, I would certainly be against merging GW with VL, as it is too important a phenomenon for that. I would be afraid that the same might happen to VL as often happens to Ablaut, namely that the diachronic phenomenon which affects the entirel language is generally seen as nothing more than the synchronic effect in the verb paradigm. But I don't mind using English-language terminology when there is any. In these cases I only know the German terms, but your suggestion of "Pre-nasal raising" seems OK, so go for it. It's more descriptive than Wandel anyway. For GW, though, you don't seem to have an English term to offer me, in which case I would tend to leave it as it is. At the end of the day, it was Germans who invented this discipline back in the 19th century, so we can accept with a little humility that some of the terminology is German - the amount of English terminology which the Germans have accepted in science and technology is very much greater! --Doric Loon 07:26, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Medieval German Literature

If you had to move medieval German literature, with a lower-case l, to medieval German Literature with a capital L, then why didn't you just move the page instead of doing a copy-and-paste? That would have kept the edit history intact, but instead you've mangled it. I was going to move it back, because the L is incorrectly capitalized, but now I have to do another copy-and-paste that will leave the edit history in two distinct places. Michael Hardy 13:01, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeh, well I certainly didn't set out to move that page, but possibly I was editing two files at once and made a cock-up. It happens. --Doric Loon 21:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Disruption of 1843

I have written this up, think you might like to take a look? I've also done quuite a lot of work on the Free Church of Scotland and the related Presbyterian denominations - probably full of typos but its a start --Doc (?) 12:56, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Reads very well. I'm glad you've done this. Well done! --Doric Loon 21:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

cleanup tag on Vergangenheitsbewältigung

See Talk:Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Feel free to comment further there. Buffyg 22:04, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Unionists (Scotland)

You might want to have a look at this awful article. It is in urgent need of some help. --Doc (?) 23:12, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Unionists (Scotland)

It's back - and User:Mais oui! has called your redirect 'vandalism'. I've rebuked him/her on their talk page, but I think we'll need to have the discussion again and pull some other views in. --Doc (?) 21:03, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for sticking up for me there, Doc. There are some people here on Wiki who are just very difficult to deal with. Mais oui! seems to be very reluctant to see opposition to the independence movement properly represented. But I may of course be wrong to impute an agenda to him, because he doesn't explain his reverts. You are right that we now need a broader consensus. But if we get it, Mais oui! should not be allowed to bully us all. --Doric Loon 23:07, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Tron photo

I tarted up image:Wfm tron church glasgow.jpg per your suggestion (at the expense of entirely bleaching the sky out). It's called the Tron because, at night, it tranforms into a giant Japanese robot, which stalks the streets of Glasgow, zapping neds with its massive sandstone gun. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 20:45, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

"the Low German / Dutch continuum"

Hi Doric Loon. I'm trying to give a fresh impulse to the chaos of language variety naming conventions by renaming several German varieties into "XXX German" (in analogy to the "XXX English" scheme which is common for English varieties).

I've stumbled onto a remark of yours at Talk:German language that uncovers the weak spot the naming scheme "XXX (parent language)" has as well: It doesn't work for articles such as Low German which includes not only German varieties, but also independent standard languages.

You won't have the solution either, but noticing your comment (which I then overread being into other things), maybe some interesting thought? However, I wouldn't blame anyone who shuns such desperate problems. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 16:09, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeh, the terminology is a problem. For one thing, the distinction between a dialect and a language is impossible to pin down, and finding the sensible middle way between listing the lingo of every Bavarian village as a language and at the other extreme calling Yiddish or Dutch forms of German is like walking a tightrope. My tendency would be to say there is one German language (with many high and low dialects), and not to use the phrase "German languages", even in the phrases "High German languages" and "Low German languages" - to be honest I rarely hear those except on Wikipedia. However I would be more comfortable with dividing West Germanic into three: High, Low and Insular West Germanic languages. But that raises the next problem: where to draw divisions. For example, is English a Low WG language, or is Insular to be treated separately? Probably separately. Then what do we make of the term Ingvaeonic (which we use at Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law? The high-low split is not as clear as we like to think either; partly because that is a continuum too (our article High German consonant shift shows that well) and partly because it is very difficult to argue that that one consonant shift devided the language more fundamentally than all the other things that have happened to it: the differences between Low German and English or even between Low German and Dutch are so very much greater than those between Low German and High German, for example. So, given the choice, I would not work with stemma-type tables at all for dialects and closely related languages. Better to think in terms of waves of influence, a bit like the way we do with political thought, or schools of art or literature. (But if you try to remove the classification tables from the Germanic languages pages you will get into an edit war: I'm not sure we would get away with that!) I don't suppose that helps you, though. --Doric Loon 05:49, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

The use of the trias Insular/Low/High Germaniic languages might be feasible. The plurals seem to be justified since all of these embrace more than one language in the sense of Ausbausprache (if we count English creoles). Are these common in English linguistics. For what I know (that is, according to the Metzler Lexikon Sprache), Nordseegermanisch is more common in German linguistics, and it is also mentioned at Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law. This might also appease Frisian fundamentalists. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 12:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Catholic Encyclopedia

I've noticed you have worked on an article that is covered by the public domain Catholic Encyclopedia. While a religious resource, there is a great deal of impartial information about historical events, persons and ideas that are covered by the CE. I've created a project page for the Catholic Encyclopedia as part of the Missing encyclopedic articles project to coordinate incorporation of relevant information from the CE into wikipedia. I would appreciate any help you can offer in the project. Reflex Reaction 21:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

A merge to reduce the permutations of articles

There is a discussion about merging United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland into United Kingdom. If you would like to contribute, please do so at: Talk:United_Kingdom. Regards Bobblewik 17:30, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Begijnhof, Amsterdam

Hi Doric, I do not know whether you are still making use of the Begijnhof, Amsterdam article, but if you are, I should like to point out that I have just reverted a few alterations which to me seemed mistaken. But then, I myself may be the one groping towards light. (Aren't we all.) Regards, Bessel Dekker 02:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeh, thanks. This still needs a couple of stylistic alterations, but it is becoming a nice article. --Doric Loon 18:09, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I think your recent alterations make a lot of sense. I am not a historian or an architect myself, and am not completely sure what some of the phrases in the article in my native Dutch mean. -- Bessel Dekker 21:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)