User talk:Picapica/archive0407

Hi there!

Great work on adding/tidying up/starting the Ireland town articles! Are you from Ireland? An bhfuil Gaeilge agat? Tá leagan Gaeilge den suíomh seo, Vicipéid. Is feidir leat cábhrú ansin chomh maith!

Welcome to Wikipedia!

Zoney 16:39, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Zoney, a chara:

Tá beagán Gaeilge agam, though not really enough to be contributing to the Vicipéid, faraor (except, perhaps, in the most rudimentary fashion).

Like you, I'm into current affairs, railways (I work in railway-related publishing), and all matters Irish - plus other historical-geographical-linguistic topics. In fact, I first got into contributing (anonymously) to Wikipedia by a wish to sort out some of the pages on Irish counties - before I finally took the plunge and registered.

It's only today that I noticed some of the work that's been done recently on Irish towns, and started to work my way through a few of the entries on the Towns of the Republic of Ireland page (plus "spin-offs", which is always the way once you start editing on Wiki...)

Many thanks for your encouragement. -- Picapica 17:36, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm impressed by the quantity of edits you've made to Irish articles! It's a great incentive for me to make more of an effort - there are still many gaps in Irish topics covered (though fortunately, history and politics are very well covered - I think User:Jtdirl is mostly responsible!)! I've added Limerick Junction though (how did I miss that one!!!).

Zoney 15:09, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your gentle nudge on Wikipedia:Captions. I think I've addressed your concernes in that article and its talk page. Please reply there if I haven't. -- ke4roh 17:20, Jul 8, 2004 (UTC)

Hello, again! I've started Wikipedia:WikiProject Writing Captions, and I'd be much appreciative if you would care to comment on the project. (If you'd like to join, that'd be fantastic.) Thanks! -- ke4roh 00:28, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks for your copyedit of Japanese funeral. The article needed it! -- Chris 73 | Talk 03:17, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My pleasure. It's good to know that copyediting (which I do at work and, I have to admit, also as a hobby - it takes all sorts to make a world!) isn't invariably a source of annoyance to those on the receiving end. -- Picapica 08:35, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Dear Picapica,

I appreciate the extensive improvements you recently made to the List of alternative country names. However, I have a few questions for you.

(1) You changed the Greek transcription style for all country names from the more phonetic one (Vélyio, Vulgharía, Dhanía, Éyiptos, etc.) which has the advantage of providing a clue to the pronunciation and avoids confusion with phonetic g, d corresponding to orthographic gk, nt (as in "dolmadhes" spelled "ntolmades"), to the more orthographic one (Vélgio, Vulgaría, Danía, Égiptos, etc.), which closely reflects the Greek spelling, but does not provide a clue to the pronunciation. Fine. Personally, I have a preference for the former style, but I am not going to argue about that. However, you overlooked Souidhía which you should have changed to Suidía.

(2) You reversed the order of double entries such as: Gruusia or Georgia (Estonian), Gronelândia or Groenlândia (Portuguese), so as to alphabetize them. The reason I had not entered these in alphabetical order was so as to place the more commonly used name first. In both cases one name is definitely more common than the other. The order I had used was meant to reflect that. Now, that distinction is lost.

(3) I had used a double reference (English name/native name) for certain lesser-known languages, e.g Alsatian/Elsässisch, Luxembourgish/Lëtzebuergesch, Greenlandic Eskimo/Inuktitut (the last one is the name used in Ethnologue.com). (I happen to own a [somewhat old] grammar of "Greenlandic Eskimo" and that's what the language is called in it.) You changed the above names to Alsatian, Luxembourgish, Kalaallisut. Fine, but why did you use the self-description only for the last one?

(4) With regard to l'Índia (Catalan), el Japó (Catalan), el Marroc (Catalan), els Estats Units (Catalan), which you didn't like, they are the forms used in the Catalan Wikipedia.

(5) Teyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon (Welsh) [which you changed to y Deyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon (Welsh)] is in fact the official Welsh name for the UK.

(6) I had tried to alphabetize the names that were identical but for the accent marks in the following way: first the forms with no accents, then the forms bearing accent marks, starting with the ones with the accent marks furthest to the left and ending with the ones with the accent marks furthest to the right. You have altered this order, so that now there is no clear ordering.

(7) You changed part of the intro from "The English version is followed by the current official name and then variants in other languages, in alphabetical order by name, and then by any historical variants and former names." to: "Each English name is followed by its currently best-known equivalents in other languages, listed in English alphabetical order (ignoring accents) by name and language. Historical and/or alternative versions, where included, are noted as such." Fine. However, the older one is the one that appears in the previously existing List of European cities with alternative names, which served as the model for this page when Halibutt created it.

My impression is that while your contributions are certainly valuable, they sometimes go a little beyond the call of duty. (And I am talking as a fellow copy-editor and linguist here.)

Pasquale 19:51, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ciao, Pasquale. Many thanks for the feedback, and I very much appreciate your taking the trouble to set out your reasoned objections. It's coming up to my bedtime now, but I will certainly try to return the compliment by putting my detailed reacties op uw reacties on this page tomorrow and attempt, in so doing, to reveal the method in my madness. Slán go fóill -- Picapica 21:15, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My plans for yesterday went somewhat aglay, but here -- a day late -- are my answers to your questions, Pasquale.

(1) You changed the Greek transcription style for all country names from the more phonetic one (Vélyio, Vulgharía, Dhanía, Éyiptos, etc.) which has the advantage of providing a clue to the pronunciation and avoids confusion with phonetic g, d corresponding to orthographic gk, nt (as in "dolmadhes" spelled "ntolmades"), to the more orthographic one (Vélgio, Vulgaría, Danía, Égiptos, etc.), which closely reflects the Greek spelling, but does not provide a clue to the pronunciation. Fine. Personally, I have a preference for the former style, but I am not going to argue about that. However, you overlooked Souidhía which you should have changed to Suidía.

Yes, the questions involved in deciding upon a Roman-alphabet transcription of modern Greek are many-sided and all solutions are susceptible of being seen as partial in both senses of the word: failing to address all the issues, and exhibiting a conspicuous lack of impartiality. Let me at least assure you that my choices are far from aleatory: at my place of work we sweated long and hard to come up with a consistent and intellectually sustainable procedure for transcribing modern Greek proper names into the Roman alphabet -- and my transcriptions follow that procedure.

I do recognize the rationale behind wanting to be able to use "dh" and "gh". Our argument against these digraphs was that we were aiming, as far as possible, to come up with a one-symbol-to-one-phoneme system -- and the d/dh g/gh distinction is not only not phonemic but potentially confusing (what is the value of the "h"? -- especially considering that we wished to reserve that letter to express Greek χ). I think we largely succeeded (except that we retained "ng" for γγ -- thereby, of course, departing from the one-symbol-to-one-phoneme rule). A slightly more "picky" objection to "dh" and "gh" that I will own up to is that "d(r)" and "gh" end up sharing one positional bed, and "dh" and "y/g(r)" the other: I tend to feel that makes that "h" appear even more promiscuous!

As for Suidía, thanks for pointing it out -- pure oversight on my part.

(2) You reversed the order of double entries such as: Gruusia or Georgia (Estonian), Gronelândia or Groenlândia (Portuguese), so as to alphabetize them. The reason I had not entered these in alphabetical order was so as to place the more commonly used name first. In both cases one name is definitely more common than the other. The order I had used was meant to reflect that. Now, that distinction is lost.

A fair cop, guv'nor. I failed to see that principle borne out in the couple of "test cases" I ran (neither being those you mentioned): I clearly should have run more! However, I do feel that if frequency-ordering is to be applied to the other-language lists (as opposed to the English headwords, which -- be it noted -- are explicitly the "current best-known names"), then this ought to be spelled out in the premable. (I was going to offer to move them back, except that I've just had a quick look at the page and I see that large-scale reversion has taken place on more important matters anyway -- and I do try to make it a rule never to get involved in "reversion wars": there are so many other things to do in the constructive anarchy that is the chief delight of the Wikipedia.)

(3) I had used a double reference (English name/native name) for certain lesser-known languages, e.g Alsatian/Elsässisch, Luxembourgish/Lëtzebuergesch, Greenlandic Eskimo/Inuktitut (the last one is the name used in Ethnologue.com). (I happen to own a [somewhat old] grammar of "Greenlandic Eskimo" and that's what the language is called in it.) You changed the above names to Alsatian, Luxembourgish, Kalaallisut. Fine, but why did you use the self-description only for the last one?

Well, to be honest, I couldn't see how writing "Alsatian/Elsässisch" or "Luxembourgish/Lëtzebuergesch" would make those languages any better known than writing just "Alsatian" and "Luxembourgish", which to virtually all Europeans, at least, mean just what they say: "relating to, respectively, Alsace and Luxembourg".

Endonymic "Kalaallisut" because there isn't, AFAIK, any other satisfactory English name for the language. "Inuktitut" is, to my mind, too vague: like saying "Slavic" for "Polish". And "Eskimo" is, to say the least, a controversial term.

(4) With regard to l'Índia (Catalan), el Japó (Catalan), el Marroc (Catalan), els Estats Units (Catalan), which you didn't like, they are the forms used in the Catalan Wikipedia.

It's not so much that I "didn't like" l'Índia etc. as that I wasn't convinced these names merited their definite articles any more than those absent in the listings from the French names l'Inde, le Japon, le Maroc, les États-Unis... After all, the respective articles in the Viquipèdia are (despite your saying they are the forms used in the Catalan Wikipedia): Índia, Japó, Marroc, Estats Units -- sans article.

Now, it's a more than a quarter of a century since I last lived and worked in Barcelona and I didn't follow any formal instruction in Catalan at the time (Franco still being alive at the time, and young people I knew still risking a police beating for speaking the language too "ostentatiously" in public, such study was not particularly encouraged!). It's extremely possible, therefore, that my notion that Catalan parallels French in this respect is quite fallacious. Investigations are continuing!

Which "definite article" considerations bring me next to:

(5) Teyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon (Welsh) [which you changed to y Deyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon (Welsh)] is in fact the official Welsh name for the UK.

Having argued for the otiosity of the "el" in the Catalan listing for Japan, am I, Pica-Consistency-Kid-pica, about to be hoist with my own petard, find that I have opened Ockham's Razor only to cut my own throat with it? If you will allow me a few more moments on Death-to-Pedants Row, here is my plea:

You say that Teyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon is in fact the official Welsh name for the UK but I wonder what you mean by official Welsh name and what your source is for this statement. The only source I have come up with so far is Nom officiel en Gallois, Y Deyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon -- but that, of course, is in French. Am still looking for a relevant Act or other declaration of the National Assembly for Wales. In the meantime, I am still convinced that "y Deyrnas Unedig..." is the only form that makes sense: "Teyrnas Unedig..." means "a United Kingdom...".

"Teyrnas Unedig?" can appear in the kind of short-hand list that has Netherlands (when the actual English name is, of course, not Netherlands -- tout court -- but "the Netherlands") -- but that leads on to another discussion in itself, which I'd love to go into, but I have, unfortunately, to report for work in the morning...

Not only that but I promised faithfully to be somewhere else more than half an hour ago. In the interests of domestic harmony, then, I'd better leave my answers to questions 6) and 7) until tomorrow... -- Picapica 23:29, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fit the Second:

(6) I had tried to alphabetize the names that were identical but for the accent marks in the following way: first the forms with no accents, then the forms bearing accent marks, starting with the ones with the accent marks furthest to the left and ending with the ones with the accent marks furthest to the right. You have altered this order, so that now there is no clear ordering.

Well, your honour, now that you explain it, I grant you there was ordering - but "clear ordering"? With respect, I failed -- despite studying it for some time -- to crack your ordering-code. I came to the conclusion that it possibly had something to do with the particular sort function embedded in text-processing software you might have been using. And which diacritic is further to the left: the è of Bèlgica or the é of Bélgica?

I would dispute your claim that my statement "...listed in English alphabetical order (ignoring accents) by name and by language" means that now there is no clear ordering. "Bèlgica (Catalan), Bélgica (Portuguese)" follows my rule precisely (English alphabetical order -- which disregards accents -- by name and by language: Bèlgica is still distinguished from Bélgica, but the C of Catalan comes before the P of Portuguese). Once again, this is not a rule I came up without thought. I have been contributing for a number of years to a project, based in Łódź, Poland, which is building up a multilingual database of European toponyms - and this was one of the earliest ordering principles we established.

I think that if you want your left-to-right criterion to apply, then you must make this explicit in the preamble.

(7) You changed part of the intro from "The English version is followed by the current official name and then variants in other languages, in alphabetical order by name, and then by any historical variants and former names." to: "Each English name is followed by its currently best-known equivalents in other languages, listed in English alphabetical order (ignoring accents) by name and language. Historical and/or alternative versions, where included, are noted as such." Fine. However, the older one is the one that appears in the previously existing List of European cities with alternative names, which served as the model for this page when Halibutt created it.

I'm sorry, but I find your last sentence runs profoundly counter to what I take to be the spirit of the Wikipedia. Undo every last one of my changes if you wish. That is your prerogative and -- as I've already said -- les guerres de réversion, c'est pas mon genre. I put my two eurocents' worth in and if people don't like it they take it out again -- fair enough. But please don't ask me not to touch stuff "because that was how X created it". Wikipedia is an ongoing project not a traditionalist religion.

Well, Pasquale, I'll just put that Suidía right and then I'll leave you in peace to carry on with your page unmolested. Beir beannacht. -- Picapica 19:12, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

NOTE: I WROTE THE FOLLOWING RESPONSE PRIOR TO READING YOUR ADDITIONAL REPLIES AND YOUR COMMENTS ON User talk:Pne.

Thanks, Picapica, for your extensive reply. Well, I can see that you have a lot of good points. I will try to give you brief rebuttals.

(1) With regard to the Roman-alphabet transcription of Greek characters, the solution which you adopted at your workplace, and which you advocate here, seems to have been driven by a one-symbol-to-one-phoneme principle. We are under no such pressure here. Why would you want to stick to a one-symbol-to-one-phoneme principle if the Greek characters do not? Compare the Greek phonemes /u/ written <ου>, /d/ written <ντ>, /g/ written <γκ>, etc. I could see perhaps a one-symbol-to-one-character principle, but that would entail writing Giougkoslavikê for Γιουγκοσλαβική, whereas it makes much more sense to transcribe it as Yiugoslavikí, as it currently is. Your statement that the d/dh g/gh distinction is not phonemic in Greek is incorrect, in my opinion. There are, actually, phonemic /d/ and /g/ in Greek, respectively spelled <ντ> and <γκ>, as I mentioned above, with plenty of minimal pairs. These cannot always be analyzed as underlying /n/ + /t/ and /n/ + /k/. I've had a detailed exchange with pne about which transcription style to use for Greek and we have opted for a more phonetic style of transcription. Please see my comments to pne and his responses on his discussion page: User talk:Pne.

(2) For Gruusia or Georgia (Estonian), Gronelândia or Groenlândia (Portuguese), I adopted a different solution as a workaround. I identified the primary forms as (Estonian) and (Portuguese) and the secondary forms as (Estonian variant) and (Portuguese variant). This way, I avoided altering your alphabetization principle, which still applies to cases in which the alternate forms need not be clearly ranked for frequency.

(3) I would still go for "Greenlandic Eskimo", no matter how controversial (most linguists still talk about the Eskimo-Aleut languages and mean no offense), or simply "Greenlandic". After all, we are trying to be understood by English-speakers, and I'm not sure what percentage of Wikipedia readers will know what "Kalaallisut" is.

(4) As for l'Índia (Catalan), el Japó (Catalan), el Marroc (Catalan), els Estats Units (Catalan), I believe there is a big difference between these Catalan cases and the French use of the article, which follows clear rules that apply across the board to all countries. In Catalan, the article is used only with a small number of countries. (Compare some varieties of Spanish, in which you say: "en Italia", "en Francia", etc., but "en la India".) Please refer to the articles ca:Àsia, ca:Àfrica, and ca:Amèrica in the Catalan Viquipèdia.

(5) As for Teyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon (Welsh), you have a very good point. All I can say is that I took it from the Wikipedia articles for "United Kingdom" in a number of languages, although not English. (Go to the English Wikipedia article for United Kingdom and click the links at left, e.g. Български, Dansk, Ελληνικά, Esperanto, Español, etc. For some reason, they all include the article for Scots Gaelic and Cornish, but not for Irish and Welsh.)

ADDENDUM: I will not push my points (6) and (7) further. I realize they are not very important. I quickly read your comments on User talk:Pne and they seem to lend support to my preference for a more phonetic transcription: obviously you would not want to write such absurdities as "Ntoumpróvnik" for Dubrovnik, etc. It is precisely that kind of reasoning that motivates my entire argument. As for Κάτω Χώρες, it is used repeatedly in the Greek Wikipedia, always specifically in reference to The Netherlands (I realize, of course, the Wikipedia is not the Bible...)

Pasquale 20:25, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pasquale, a chara:

re Go to the English Wikipedia article (..) and click the links (...for...) Esperanto, Español, etc. --

never underestimate the incestuousness of the Wikipedia!

Should anyone have ever wondered why an agreed method of transcription of modern Greek into the Roman alphabet has never been arrived at, let them do no more than look at our debate. We must part company, I am afraid, over Dimokratía and Vulgaría versus Dhimokratía and Vulgharía.

Before I bid you Ffarwél, however, let me just say -- on the question of the lack of an initial article in the Irish Ríocht Aontaithe na Breataine Móire etc that that is an ineluctable consequence of the gramatical rule forbidding two articles in one noun phrase: the first is always surpressed (see: fear an phoist - lit. man of the post - the postman).

It will be interesting to see if our paths ever cross again. -- Picapica 20:56, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC) (Jac-y-do)

Picapica,

Re: We must part company, I am afraid, over Dimokratía and Vulgaría versus Dhimokratía and Vulgharía.

I find it truly odd that you should stubbornly adhere to your arbitrary straitjacket of a one-symbol-to-one-phoneme principle (or one-symbol-to-one-character, whichever it is), even at the cost of using the same symbol for different phonemes. (Or maybe you really believe Dimokratía and Dubróvnik begin with the same phoneme in Greek?) What's the point? Is it perhaps that convenience in IT trumps all linguistic considerations? Or is your reasoning grounded in some phonological analysis? I don't know, I fail to see why this point is so important to you.

Pasquale 21:34, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

(Convenience in IT? Jamais! For me IT stands for Interfering Techies: people who turn up and say "we're just going to upgrade your computer" and after they've gone nothing works!)

I refer you to this and associated pages, in particular to the statement that: "this phenomenon [palatalization] is a phonetic, not a phonological aspect of the language" -- Picapica 22:49, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That's funny. I ask you if you believe Dimokratía and Dubróvnik begin with the same phoneme in Greek and you reply with a link to palatalization, which concerns the gh vs. y for γ issue. So what if gh and y are allophones of the same phoneme? Remember, we are trying to make the transcription phonetic, not phonemic. You are the one who is hung up on the one-symbol-to-one-phoneme principle (or was it one-symbol-to-one-character?).

Pasquale 23:54, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Dear Pasquale, leaving aside the question of who's the "we" in we are trying to make the transcription phonetic, not phonemic, I cannot think where you got the one-symbol-to-one-character idea from (you've implied at least twice now that that might be my principle when I've said that it wasn't). I've already told you that I'd gone for one-symbol-to-one-phoneme, and if I'm "hung up" on that then I'm quite happy to stay suspended there -- if in glorious isolation then so be it. In case you haven't got it yet, you've won as far as the list of alternative country names is concerned: I'm not going to interfere there any more. (Rejoice! in the words of M. Thatcher and A. Blair.)

The article, it seems to me from internal evidence, has a history of "repelling all boarders", so I'm casting off now voluntarily. You now have, as far as I'm concerned, an entirely free hand there (that has been the case, in fact, since my last intervention -- which I told you at the time would be my last). As I said before, our paths may across again, but this correspondence is now closed. J'ai tellement d'autres poissons à frier and life is just too short. My very best wishes to you. -- Picapica 01:16, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well, Picapica, in your great magnanimity, you will not deny me one last rebuttal. Indeed, you had referred only to the one-symbol-to-one-phoneme principle pursued at your place of work. My hypothesis that you might also be striving towards a one-symbol-to-one-character principle was, admittedly, based entirely on some of the empirical evidence of the data you had submitted (e.g. h for χ). On the other hand, you later stated that you would not transcribe "Ntoumpróvnik" for Dubrovnik, so that disproved my hypothesis right there. In my view, however, transcribing Dimokratía and Dubróvnik with the same symbol d, for what are, IMO, clearly different phonemes in Greek, directly violates the one-symbol-to-one-phoneme principle (as I've pointed out repeatedly and you have never quite explained, if I'm not mistaken).

By saying "we", as you well know, I was referring to the consultation I had with Pne, who was responsible for entering a whole lot of Greek names in Roman-alphabet transcription as well as in the Greek alphabet on 16 Jul 2004. It was in fact Pne, not I, who first implemented the phonetic transcription (albeit with some inconsistencies at first), which you then changed to the one that you favor. Now, it seems to me that you complain about the reversal wars only when you are reversed, not when you reverse others. As a matter of fact, I did not reverse the Roman-alphabet transcription back to the original, more "phonetic" style, until after I'd had a couple of exchanges with Pne. Now, if, instead of griping, you had successfully persuaded Pne (as the author of the Greek alphabet submissions) that your transcription style was superior, I would have been gladly overridden, despite my better judgment to the contrary.

As far as the you've won business is concerned, you are attributing emotions to me that are not mine. Perhaps you are projecting onto me feelings that you think you would have in my place. I believe I have always had a fairly dispassionate, scientific attitude towards linguistics, developed over decades of work in the field.

Finally, it's absolutely not true that the article has a history of "repelling all boarders". Just look at the recent history. In fact, on 19 Jul 2004, a certain Jiang highjacked the entire page for his own purposes, believing a decision (i.e. his) had been arrived at by consensus, after a discussion that had featured, in addition to him, only two other people: Halibutt, the creator of the page, and Zoney, one of its early contributors. It turns out that these two other people had not even actually understood what he wanted to do. But so be it. Not only did the article not "repel" this Jiang, it was actually taken over, moved, and renamed! (This is all documented in the discussion.)

I am truly sorry that I have taken up so much of your time. I have not enjoyed having this interchange either, but as long as you attribute ideas and notions to me that are quite inaccurate, I am forced to rebut.

Pasquale 22:29, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)