User talk:Ish ishwar

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Contents 1 wscla 12 2 Requesting help for Mayan languages 3 Alaska Native languages 4 reference for word list? 5 Hi again 6 Camsá article 7 Image:Algonquian langs.png 8 Style guidelines for sound pages 9 Tones in Kiowa-Tanoan 10 Okanagan language stub made 11 WikiProject Endangered Languages 12 English orthography 13 GA 14 Fair use rationale for Image:MorrisOpler.jpg 15 Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can 16 Endangered languages of South America 17 Bimzalazim 18 Merger 19 Image:Langs N.Amer.png 20 could you check a couple of pages for me 21 Ergative-absolutive language 22 Is "Kalahin" a Tahltan name/word? 23 Glottal fricative 24 "promiscuous" number marking 25 Vietnamese alphabet name change 26 Saanich (linguistics) vs "Saanich language" 27 Okanagan language and Colville language needed 28 Indigenous North America Newsletter - Jul '06 29 A Few Words on Croatian /nekoliko riječi na hrvatskom/ 30 About IPA references 31 Vietnamese IPA 32 Eurocentricity? 33 Empty articles 34 Fair use rationale for Image:Harry Hoijer.jpg 35 language family map 36 DYK 37 Red Cloud 38 Oowekyala vs Heiltsuk vs Kwak'wala 39 Vietnamese phonology 40 List of languages by number of native speakers 41 Request 42 How do Most Pronounce This? 43 Two Greenlandics? 44 Map question 45 San Carlos 46 archives

[edit] wscla 12

Are you going to WSCLA 12? --Ling.Nut 19:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

hi. no. but, i'm going to: LSA Institute 2007. – ishwar  (speak) 19:00, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requesting help for Mayan languages

We are currently nominating Mayan languages for featured article status and we can use help both to suggest improvements and to actually introduce them in the article. Maybe you would be so kind as to read the article and maybe change the things that you find criticizable or alternatively just comment at the Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mayan languages·Maunus· ·ƛ· 17:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Ok, I'll have a look. It seems to be one of the better language pages.

At a quick glance, I notice that there is much less "anthropological" type information (e.g. speech styles, ethnography of communication, speech community attitudes). I see that some of this is promised here: Mesoamerican literature#Oral Literatures. A lot of good Wikipedia language articles lack this (including my own contributions to Wikipedia). For readers not interested in grammatical structure, this may be what they are most interested in. What about bilingualism? Any statistics on the endangered languages? – ishwar  (speak) 19:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that the anthropological stuff is better suited for pages on single languages (although I admit that it lacks for most language artivcles as well)- simply because it is difficult to characterize anthropology of language for an entire langauge family. I think the stratus of the endangered languages which aren't that many (mostly Lacandón and Itza') is covered in the overview section which tries to give the most current population figures for all the languages including endangered status and number of monolingual speakers where information is available. I do think that currently this article is the best one on wikipedia about a language family - although it can stillbecome much better. I have been thinking mysrelf that it needs a section on the history of classification and scholarship. Your comments, additions and corrections are greatly appreciated.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 19:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alaska Native languages

Hey, thanks for your corrections to language infoboxes. I'm working pretty intensively on Alaska Native stuff right now, & created Category:Indigenous languages of Alaska yesterday (a geographic rather linguistic category), & have been working to make sure that each of the languages has at least a stub article with a language infobox, doing some cleanup along the way. But, I'm not a linguist, so your corrections are welcomed, as you seem to know quite a bit more about linguistics than I do. --Yksin 17:14, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. That's good as there isnt much written about those peoples, unfortunately. I'm glad someone is doing this instead writing about TV show characters.

I removed those subfamilies because they are mostly geographic groupings and not true genetic subfamilies. However, if you read somewhere where comparative research seems to suggest a genetic subgrouping, then go ahead and note it.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:08, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, there's plenty written about those peoples, it's just not in Wikipedia! The entire state of Alaska is a big mess in terms of how it's represented here, actually... I've just carved out Alaska Natives as my small little slice (!!!!) of what I'll do to improve it. Thanks again. --Yksin 19:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there is a good amount, but none of it is here. thanks – ishwar  (speak) 19:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] reference for word list?

Hiya Ish,

Thanks again for the maps! :-)

Do you have a reference for a source from which I could get a wordlist of a manageable number of common words in all (or at least, several) Algonquian langs? Thanks in advance, --Ling.Nut 04:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

(Not ishwar, but responding anyway!) Well, there's always this. Is there something specific you're looking for? I have a few PDFs related to Algonquian historical linguistics that have some comparative word lists and such I could send to you if you need. --Miskwito 07:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

There is a proto-Algonquian (or -Algic) dictionary, i believe. I'll have to look that up. However, having never seen it, i dont know whats in it. Besides, that i could only give you references for (sub-)family surveys that appear in Mithun's (1999) book. If you already have that, then i'll save my typing. If not, then i'll add them to the Algic page. I dont know much about this family, so if you want more i'll have to refer you to a specialist (like look at the SSILA directory). You also may look for comparative work (e.g. Bloomfield's stuff) and search through JSTOR's IJAL archive (you probably know all this). There is some newsletter or published conference proceedings that is devoted Algonquian research. Maybe someone has an unpublished database?

A thank you to Miskwito for the mention of PDFs (i dont have any myself). About www.native-languages.org, i dont how accurate that site is. I would go to published stuff by linguists if available. – ishwar  (speak) 04:27, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hi again

I've noticed you've been busy working on the Navajo language page. I've been too busy myself with other things to have a close look yet, but just wanted to say it's good to see! --RJCraig 21:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, and when I should be doing something else in "real" life. If you find in anything wrong or unclear, just fix it. peace – ishwar  (speak) 21:45, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Camsá article

Just found your stub on Camsá. I added one very useful reference to it (the only collection of primary texts with morphemic glosses and translations that I know of). Do you have any plans to expand the article any time soon? If not, I may take a stab at it using McDowell's grammatical description of the language, but I don't know anything about the language first hand, so if you do happen to know anything more, I don't want to take it on... --Fenevad 00:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I have no plans to expand & do not have any materials on this Camsá. I just made the page to show that the language exists. Please go ahead and take it on. I'll be looking forward to it. Thank you – ishwar  (speak) 22:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Algonquian langs.png

Hiya, I like this map very much. Is it too much to ask to kinda show which languages were in which area? Ulterior motive: I would like to know which Algonquian langs were westernmost... thanks!! --Ling.Nut 02:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that would be ideal. And eventually, I will do this if no one does it before me. However, it is time-consuming so I dont know when it will be done. Plus, knowing my biases I would probably want to start with the Northwest. In the meantime, I can email you a scanned section of my sources (which are much better anyway) if you want. – ishwar  (speak) 06:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be excellent. But take your time; please do it only at your convenience. I'm just considering writing a little semester paper about Algonquian langs. Thanks! --Ling.Nut 15:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Style guidelines for sound pages

Hello, Ish. Recently CyborgTosser and I discussed and came up with proposed style guidelines for all the individual consonant and vowel pages wherein the Occurrence section would have a table rather than a bulleted list. You can see the discussion here. So far nobody else has commented on the proposed guidelines and I believe it's safer to get a solid consensus before undergoing the work to change so many pages. If you could comment on what has been proposed, even if it's a simple yay or nay, this would help us out quite a bit. Thank you very much. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Ok. Give me some time to read as there is a lot written there. peace – ishwar  (speak) 02:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tones in Kiowa-Tanoan

Sorry for removing Kiowa-Tanoan from the list of tonal languages nbone of my sources mentioned anything about Tone for any of the languages of that family (Campbell, some IJAL articles some of which have reconstructions of ProtoKT phonology) and neither did the rather well developed article on Kiowa language. I defer to your sources and knowledge about the topic (especially since reliable information about tone is hard to come by even in languages that are better attested than KT and often altogether left out). but maybe it was an idea to put apart about tonality into the section on the Kiowa phonemic system? Maunus 22:00, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I assumed that they were all tonal since I knew that Kiowa was tonal, but since you removed them from the article I tried to look them up. As far as I can tell, all Tanoan languages are tonal, except for Southern Tewa (which I cant confirm if its really tonal since the phonology work appears to be mostly an unpublished dissertation — it's probably tonal guessing from J.P. Harrington's comments on the Ysleta de Sur dialect) and Piros (which is basically unattested anyway and may not even be Tanoan).

About the tones: Kiowa has two level tones, high & low, with a falling tone, which if I remember correctly is a sequence of H+L (according to Watkins, but dont quote me until I check again). I dont remember about whether Kiowa has stress. I think that most (if not all) Tanoan languages have 3 level tones: high, mid, low. They also are reported to have 3 stress levels (primary, secondary, unstressed), which are realized at least partly as vowel length effects. In some languages (e.g. Taos), stress interacts with tone. I didnt read closely enough to learn the details of stress or the interaction. I have IJAL Tanoan papers in PDF form if you would me to email you some (they all seem to be in a structuralist framework). I havent read anything about tonal reconstruction (and dont even know if anyone has written on this).

I think I put some of that in the Kiowa article, but I never got to tone or any morpho-syntax. I find the inverse number very interesting and may eventually add a section on number marking. – ishwar  (speak) 22:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I have acces to the IJAL papers myself - so no need for mailing them, but thanks for the offer. If you find some articles particularly useful you can just give me the references. Inverse nmber really is very interesting and deserves elaboration.Maunus 11:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Okanagan language stub made

Hi. I seem to recall you're around the BC indigenous language pages quite a bit, although I can't remember if you're a Salishanist; I blind-copied template-style another language page to create the Okanagan language article and am hoping somebody qualified will come by and flesh it out; it was created as a result of needing to create at least a series of stubs for Okanagan people and the governments of Okanagan Nation Alliance, as there's a growing group of BC indigenous peoples' categories but there was nothing on the Okanagan people at all; and of course Okanagan goes to the region/valley of that name so it couldn't be that for a category name (which is Category:Syilx, thanks to TheMightyQuill). They were a big blank spot in Wiki coverage of BC First Nations, so I went ahead and zipped 'em together as obviously needed; I also went through a spate of tribal council and band government stubs for the Island Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth, although haven't tried to figure out the Salish on the southeast island yet; but all Nlaka'pamux, Secwepemc and Nlaka'pamux bands and TCs now have stubs (got started because of creating Ulkatcho First Nation because of Carey Price's Mom being the chief...). Most of those already have language articles, but there's still a few wholes here and there up north; I also have created a basic Ktunaxa article for its tc, the Kootenay Kinbasket Tribal Council, as Ktunaxa as it stands is a redirect to the band in Bonners Ferry ID (Kutenai (tribe)); the Ktunaxa link should be its own ethno article, for all the Ktunaxa (the Bonners Ferry band and the Elmo MT one are both part of the KKTC, however; in other words there's a series of articles needed there....and the Ktunaxa language article needs to be spun off separately....as on a lot of different languages....I should build myself a list as it's hard to remember where and which...

Anyway not meaning to go on, but just a heads-up about the Okanagan language stub in case you know anybody who can write it, if you can't. In general I think the BC language articles could use, as you may have heard me say before, more "lay" content and less technical content. Some have moved in that direction - easily accessible for non-linguistics scholars, full of examples and stories and key words and concepts and so on, instead of IPA tables and abstruse morphological analyses...but content is content; if you know of a Salishanist in Wikidom who'd be interested in the article's emergence, please let them know. I titled it Okanagan language rather than Syilx'tsn (which is a redirect) as this is an English language Wikipedia, and while native-language names are increasingly common in BC English, that's not the case in the outside world; could be either way as some language pages are titled in the original language, others in English (St'at'imcets vs. Thompson language, for instance...). Skookum1 09:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Endangered Languages

Hello Ish, long time! I see that Ling.Nut already told you about the new WikiProject Endangered Languages when he was in the process of starting it up. It has been created now, at WP:ENLANG, and I thought you might be interested in becoming a member. Feel free to decline, I understand that you're busy in real life.

All the best, — mark ✎ 10:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] English orthography

I changed the //double slashes// back to |pipes| since the latter is the standard IPA method of showing morphological representation. I also changed /e/ and /o/ back to diphthongs, mostly because the page discusses both American and British English and I think that doing so will make things a little clearer and simpler since they are analysed phonemically as diphthongs in RP. I'll fight harder for the first one than the second one. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I'd prefer not fighting about anything. Are the pipes standard for the IPA? Please point me where the IPA handbook says this (I assume in the introductory text). If that's true, I didnt know that. And it would be too bad because the double slashes (or double pipes), which I have encountered more often in phonological writings, seems to a better symbol to me (partly because it's iconic, partly looks more distinctive).

Whether [eɪ] is phonemically a diphthong depends on what phonological analysis you are following. It's often phonetically a diphthong, but the offglide is predictable. In some generative analyses, the offglides are inserted by phonological rule. My bias is toward an analysis of this type. As far as following a standard, some write /e/ while other write /eɪ/. There's a note to this affect on the talk page of that article. peace – ishwar  (speak) 20:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't notice the talk page discussion. I agree with the analysis (although my dictionary sources both use <eɪ>); really, as long both American and British should be analyized the same way--and right now RP is shown as either /e(ɪ)/ or /eɪ/-- it should be fine and if youi prefer /e/ then I can simply change the RP examples. As for the pipes, well I seem to have spoken overzealously. I actually don't know if it's standard or not. I assumed as such because of the notation adopted on various phonology/morphology books as well as Wikipedia pages (phoneme, morphophonology, phonetic transcription, etc). If it's not standard IPA, it still seems to be de facto Wikipedia convention for morphemic representation. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, take a look in the handbook — that should tell you. I doubt that the IPA has anything on deep underlying representations/morphophonemes because the implicit theories behind the creation of the IPA didnt consider morphophonemic alternations a part of phonemics. Also, since the IPA already uses | for prosodic (intonational) phrases, I wouldnt expect it to use the same symbol for MP forms.

I dont think that there is a standard notation for MPs. For fun, I searched through Language for this: 3 authors used //...//, 3 authors (in 5 articles) used |...|, 2 authors used {...}, 1 author used ||...||. Looking through some grammars/dissertations at my house, Geoffrey Kimball's Koasati grammar uses //...//, Timothy Montler's Saanich phonology/morphology uses ||...|| as does Stephen Tyler's Koya sketch and Mary Foster's Tarascan sketch (both of these are University of California publications, so maybe this is the preference of those editors). The first edition of Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (the best linguistics encylopedia) uses {...} in its entries on morphology and morphophonemics. Many authors in Language also simply used italics (but I didnt count).

Whatever is used in Wikipedia can be changed. I would prefer //..// over |...| because in some fonts the lowercase letter l looks very similar to |, which may be confusing to people who are reading about the concept of morphophonemics contrasted with phonemics. ||...|| may be a bad choice because the IPA also uses || for prosodic phrases as well. {...} may not be preferred because it is also used to represent morphemes (e.g. {plural} or {past}). – ishwar  (speak) 21:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I added a note about making this a standard: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Phonetics#notational standard for morphophonemic/deep URs – ishwar  (speak) 22:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA

I didn't read your summary thoroughly enough. I see that you were talking about allomorphy, which is somewhat different than allophony. Let me know if you want me to find a source for my analysis. I recall a phonologist who transcribed English phonemically with just one symbol for [ə] and [ʌ]. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:45, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

The allomorphy is phonologically conditioned.

If you can find a source for this analysis, i'll be happy to take a look at it. Following Chomsky & Halle (1968), many people have a -tense, unstressed V → [ə] rule. Restricting [ə] to be a variant of only /ʌ/ is unsatisfactory as it doesnt account for the predicable variations in related words. Nor does it account for the variation in some words, e.g. reveal [rɪˈvil~rəˈvil].

Incidentally, because vowel reduction involves stress, the situation is complicated. C&H posit rules that make lax Vs tense & tense Vs lax. So, you can find lax Vs in unstressed syllables that dont reduce. (read pp. 110-126).

peace – ishwar  (speak) 06:42, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:MorrisOpler.jpg

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[edit] Article in need of cleanup - please assist if you can

[edit] Endangered languages of South America

Hi,

I noticed your name in the hist of Culina language and other pages, and also User:Mark Dingemanse mentioned your name to me.

I'm trying to put together a table of Endangered languages of South America, which I eventually hope to move into the main namespace. It's actually a part of a larger plan; a WikiProject on endangered languages (which may or may not also covered language revitalization efforts; everything is very preliminary).

If you have the time and the inclination, I would deeply welcome any contributions you might make.

Thanks --Ling.Nut 22:28, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi.

Unfortunately, I know little about South America and dont really read much detailed literature on any of those languages. What I have is basically general works on the area, namely Campbell's American Indian Languages, Adelaar's The languages of the Andes, and two chapters by Terrence Kaufman (1990, 1994). I dont know if you have these.

Adelaar has a lot of useful information on number of speakers and endangered status. Campbell applies two labels in his language lists: moribund (fewer than 10 speakers), obsolescent (fewer than 100 speakers). Campbell gets his information from Kaufman's 1994 chapter, the 11th ed. of the Ethnologue, and other various articles. But, these are just number of speakers and not evaluations of their endangerment status.

I was focusing on just creating language family articles for the time being, as most still dont have articles.

Are making a bibliography of sources?

– ishwar  (speak) 20:13, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi again!

Bibliographies.. lists.. articles.. anything.. everything.. any region:

WikiProject Endangered Languages - Brief proposal and discussion of scope: ::User:Ling.Nut#Current_Projects

Skeletal project page: see top of page for links to lists of endangered languages that I have been working on:

• WikiProject endangered languages (and language revitalization)

--Ling.Nut 21:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bimzalazim

I've replied on my talk page, and there's a small discussion here. --ZimZalaBim (talk) 16:50, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

ok. i'll reply at the two other places. – ishwar  (speak) 18:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merger

I feel that the article Spirit Mountain Casino (Oregon) should be merged with Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon as their is very little information pertaining to the casino and therefore, I do not feel that it is substantial enough to stand alone. T. White 09:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Langs N.Amer.png

Love the map. One niggling point: #17 needs a line pointing to its area. Rmhermen 13:14, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. It's not finished yet, but i got tired of playing with it.

I didnt put lines where I thought the numbers clearly were connected to a language. But, perhaps I should be consistent. It wont be much work to do that.

if you have any other comments/criticism, I would welcome them. – ishwar  (speak) 20:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] could you check a couple of pages for me

Hi could you check a couple of pages for me. I did sort of a major rewrite of The Navajo Long Walk. I would like your opinion and for you to put the Navajo words in the right font. I also spent some time with Navajo Wars. Notice you probably made some major contributions to those pages.

Back in 1970s I lived and volunteered for a school at Coyote Canyon (Brimhall) and in my spare time researched US Army Navajo Scouts. Decided to pull out my BA thesis then 10 or 12 books.--70.109.180.142 22:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

ok, but i wont have time to do this anytime soon. – ishwar  (speak) 20:00, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ergative-absolutive language

I really appreciate your adding a syntactic-ergativity example to Ergative-absolutive language. I was wondering if maybe you could add information on other forms of coreferential coordination besides A/S and S/O? Like, English obviously supports S/S and A/A coordination, and it supports O/O coreferential coordination in a limited way (though it's much less natural than A/A or A/S or S/S coordination, unless there's A/A coreferential coordination as well, producing something like "I_i cooked ____j and ____i ate it_j"); I'm assuming Dyirbal supports S/S and O/O coordination, but does it support A/A coreferential coordination? Also, Dyirbal says Dyirbal is always syntactically ergative, even in sentences that are morphologically accusative; does this mean that sometimes the foo_i isn't in the right morphological case for the ____i? (I don't know how much information on Dyirbal you have access to, but this line of thought never occurred to me, and I'm fascinated by it.) Ruakh 02:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

hi.

The syntactic section looked lonely, so I felt obliged to write something. I dont think that other types of coordination should necessarily be in article since they arent relevant to ergativity. But, I guess that you are thinking of improving an article on coordination, no? At any rate, I'll need more time to answer about this. In the meantime, try to find out about syntactic "gapping" (which seems to be what you are interested in).

I dont have a grammar of Dyirbal, so I dont know if I can look this stuff up very easily. I believe that Dyirbal has ergative morphology on noun phrases, but nominative-accusative clitic pronouns that attach to an auxiliary that occurs in second (Wackernagel's) position (before the verb). Do you have a copy of Dixon's 1979 article in Language? I can email a PDF to you if you want it. It has some information on Dyirbal (Dixon also wrote, by the way, a good grammar of Dyirbal, which is what we would need to learn more about Dyirbal).

peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:47, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think huge numbers of examples are necessary, but I think a brief paragraph along the lines of "In English (SVO word order), A or S can be co-referential with a deleted A or S, and O can sometimes be co-referential with a deleted O, but neither A nor S can be co-referential with a deleted O, nor vice versa. By contrast, in Dyirbal (OSV word order), [whatever the case is]" would not be out of order, if only to provide some context for the comparison.

And I'd be very grateful if you'd send me that article, thanks! (My e-mail address is ran [DOT] arigur [AT] gmail [DOT] com.)

Ruakh 20:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is "Kalahin" a Tahltan name/word?

Hi. I've been building a List of Chinook Jargon placenames and wrastling with the wide range of variant spellings possible. I checked with a Tlingit scholar (User:James Crippen) and he says for sure it's not Tlingit, but it might be Tahltan. If it's not Tahltan it's probably Chinook Jargon, i.e. from kullaghan, meaning a fence, boundary or fenced enclosure; it happens to be a border peak (or not quite on the border, but close enough).Skookum1 02:09, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I'm sorry, but I dont know Chinook Jargon or Tahltan and I dont have a dictionary of these (& my library doesnt either). Perhaps you could email William Bright about this (http://www.ncidc.org/bright/). He has been working on indigenous American placenames for a while now. He published a book on United States placenames in 2004, although this doesnt help you with Canada. Otherwise, you could email a query to SSILA (http://www.ssila.org/). Let me know if you find this out. peace – ishwar  (speak) 04:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Bill Bright just passed away, so he cannot be asked – ishwar  (speak) 17:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Glottal fricative

Hi again. Although you maybe are tired of this, you may also be interested. Peter Ladefoged had a comment in Journal of the International Phonetic Association (1990, Vol.2, No.2, pp.24-25) where he argued (following the recent IPA revision) that [h] should be removed from the main consonant chart because it makes [h] appear as a glottal fricative, which he calls a "misnomer". He also disagrees that it should be considered a glottal approximate because it is not glottal but rather is placeless (i.e., unspecified). He recommended that the symbol be called simply "voiceless approximant" and be placed under the "Other symbols" box.

However, see also J. C. Catford's disagreement (pp. 25-26) where he thinks they should stay on the chart for reasons "more phonological and practical than strictly phonetic". He does agree with Ladefoged's phonetic description but notes that /h/ functions as a fricative in certain languages.

Anyway, just some more info & perhaps to convince you a little better that it is ok to classify Lillooet /h/ as an approximant (glide) based on phonological criteria. peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the info. My first impression of the consonant chart was that it was an attempt to say that the Lillooet /h/ was somehow different phonetically from English /h/ especially since /z/ and /z’/ were classified as approximants. Maybe English /h/ should be classified as an approximant since, as with /j/ and /w/, it doesn't appear word-finally. :) AEuSoes1 21:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

hi. Yeah, I would guess that Lillooet [h] & English [h] is basically the same. Their /z/'s differ a little. English /h/ could be called an approximant. It often is specified phonologically with the distinctive feature [-consonantal] (along with vowels & glides) opposing it to other consonants which are [+cons]. But, you often have to figure out 2 things: what it is phonetically and what it is phonologically.

Some analyses of English treat diphthongs as sequences of V+j and V+w — so, here, English /h/ is the only segment that cant occur syllable-finally (except for varieties which also dont have syllable-final /ʒ/). But, /j/ & /w/ could also be treated as identical to /i/ & /u/ that just occur in different positions in the syllable structure. Just depends on your analysis. One reason to not group /h/ with /j/ & /w/ is that English has onset clusters of C+j and C+w (as well as C+l, C+r, which are also glides), but no C+h clusters. – ishwar  (speak) 16:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "promiscuous" number marking

What does this mean? JWB (talk • contribs)

i guess youre talking about Tlingit, Haida, Aleut?

This refers to a grammatical marker that may indicates number on two or more nouns within a phrase. So, Tlingit has a proclitic has= that can attach to a verb indicating that either the subject or the object or both the subject & object is plural (but only if the subject or object is animate). Alaskan Haida has a verbal suffix -ʔu which can pluralize any animate noun within a clause. Here are examples of Haida:

ʔlá•   hal   qíŋgan

"She saw him"

(ʔlá• "3rd.pers.pron", hal "3rd.pers.pron", qíŋ-gan "see-past")

ʔlá•   hal   qíŋʔugan

"She saw them" or "They saw him" or "They saw them"

(ʔlá• "3rd.pers.pron", hal "3rd.pers.pron", qíŋ- "see", -ʔu "pl", -gan "past")

ƛuwá•y   ʔlá•ŋa•   ł   qíŋgan

"I saw his boat"

(ƛuwá•y "boat", ʔlá•ŋ "3rd.pers.pron (attrib)", ł "1st.pers.pron", qíŋgan "saw")

ƛuwá•y   ʔlá•ŋa•   ł   qíŋʔugan

"I saw their boat"

(ƛuwá•y "boat", ʔlá•ŋ "3rd.pers.pron (attrib)", ł "1st.pers.pron", qíŋʔugan "saw.pl")

The suffix appears in sentences #2 & #4 and are underlined. Interesting, isnt it? The article on this is

• Leer, Jeff. (1991). Evidence for a Northern Northwest Coast language area: Promiscuous number marking and periphrastic possessive constructions in Haida, Eyak, and Aleut. International Journal of American Linguistics, 57 (2), 158-193.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnamese alphabet name change

Hi, there is a vote on changing the name of Vietnamese alphabet to "quốc ngữ". As someone who've contributed to the article, you might want to participate in the vote. DHN 01:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for the invitation.

I dont have much of an opinion on these things. I find either acceptable. I think "quốc ngữ" is commonly encountered in specialist literature. Maybe you can check out what other encyclopedias do and follow them. Since Vietnamese does have more than one writing system, like Japanese, it is useful to refer to quốc ngữ with a specific name. However, since quốc ngữ is the only Latin based writing system, there is no ambiguity. I dont think that having the article name based on the Vietnamese word is unusual or unexpected.

Either way, a redirect solves all problems, doesnt it? (My real opinion is that there are many other things that need to be written, so thats what I would do.) peace – ishwar  (speak) 05:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Saanich (linguistics) vs "Saanich language"

Hi; me again; just saw you're the one who created the Saanich (linguistics) article. The main stlye I've seen across the board via the Indigenous people's WikiProject appears to be Saanich language, which currently is a redirect to Saanich (linguistics), as created by you; in cases where there's a specific language name, like St'at'imcets, there's no "language" appended to the title, so maybe Sencotem should be the core article, and both the others should be redirets - ????Skookum1 19:16, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

hi. I think it's preferable to call it Saanich language. It was there originally, but someone moved — presumably because Saanich is a sub-variety of Northern Straits Salish continuum. I dont know if using Sencotem is all that common in English, Timothy Montler (who wrote his dissertation on Saanich) always calls it Saanich. I dont know what members of the community call it, but I would guess that they also call it Saanich. – ishwar  (speak) 05:09, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Okanagan language and Colville language needed

You're on a Wikibreak so this may not be the best place to ask, but I know you're a Salishan language specialist/interestee; I think it was on Northern Straits Salish or Saanich where I noticed this, or else the Tillamook page....anyway, I'm not a linguist (other than in a polyglot, un-academic sort of way) and know better than to wade into technical materials, where I've already trodden on toes (Bill Poser's, for example) by trying too hard....so anyway, for a while now there's been a big hole in the Salishan languages area, namely the Okanagan language and the Colville language; and lately someone has expanded the Sinixt ethno article, implying the need for a Sinixt language article. As it is there's no article for Okanagan people yet either, but this is one of the largest groups in the BC Interior where Secwepmec, St'at'imcets and Nlaka'pamux are already in Wiki. With Colville, from what I can see on the Reservation/Agency page, it sounds like a creolized Salishan interlingua that's evolved since the reservation brought different groups together (including Sinixt and Okanogans and ??); but I wouldn't dare say that on a main page without knowing. In the case of Okanagan the history articles on that area (Okanagan's history section, and Okanagan Trail, which I recently started)) need some ethno-linguistic background; I can maybe come up with a stub on Okanagan people based on some books I have around here, but I wouldn't dare start Okanagan language. If you're too busy, can you refer this on to another Salishanist?Skookum1 17:17, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

hi. well, give me a few weeks & I'll look into this. To get you started, here are some links:

• http://www.umt.edu/ling/resources/reading1.htm (a few Okanagan-Colville lessons with sound)
• http://www.neh.gov/GRANTS/guidelines/delsamples/colville.pdf (Anthony Mattina's Okanagan-Colville grant proposal from NSF website)

I'm not a Salish specialist, but I love these languages & 've taken short classes on Lillooet syntax & intro Klallam. I believe that Okanagan(-Colville) has been around long before the creation of reservations. Okanagan and Colville are really the same language. Okanagan is the language proper while Colville is a regional variety (i.e. a "dialect", that dangerous word...). There are about 5 or 6 or 7 Okanagan varieties. I dont think that Okanagan refers to true variety, rather there is a North Okanagan variety & a South Okanagan variety. Going from the name, maybe these are more closely related to each other than they are to the other varieties, but you never know (because linguists sometimes inherit names created by non-linguists). I can ask an Interior Salishanist about this (however, this language isnt the lang they work on). I dont know where that creole idea comes from — I'm skeptical, but, of course, I'm not a Salishanist myself.

Mattina is the one who works on this language: (http://www.umt.edu/ling/faculty/amattina.htm)

peace – ishwar  (speak) 05:02, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Indigenous North America Newsletter - Jul '06

The Indigenous Peoples of North America Portal The Indigenous Peoples of North America Portal has been established, as a starting point for those wishing to learn more about the subject, with information and links on a wide variety of issues. It also contains news regarding the continent's various tribes and nations. It's a graphically pleasing site, and everyone is encouraged to check it out. Home Page Reorganization The project's home page has a new design, featuring tabbed subpages on participants, templates, articles, categories, and the to do list. Article Classification Move The Article Classification lists have been moved to their own subpage due to size. This is a sign of progress in the ongoing work of this project. New Talk Page Template The project's talk page template has been updated, along with the classification system, to include the assessment on the talk pages of the articles that have been classified and assessed.

Balance As the Project reachs its first six months of activity, the great effort all of you have invested in it has turned the vast information available on Indigenous North American topics from a deorganized cumulous into an excellent and easy to consult database. Although much work is still in order, few WikiProjects are able to obtain the amazing results we are proud to show today. To all of you, thank you and congratulations! What You Can Do to Help The assessment of articles within the scope of the project is still an ongoing process. We need people to help in this who are not contributors to the articles they are assessing. Also, there is the ongoing need for identifying and cataloguing articles that fall within the scope of this project. As of today, nearly 1,500 have been identified within the Project's scope. Signed by Aaron Walden & Phaedriel - 15:50, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A Few Words on Croatian /nekoliko riječi na hrvatskom/

• Language… jezik /pl. jezici/
• Language family… jezična porodica
• To talk… govoriti
• Tribe… pleme /pl. plemena/
• Word… riječ /pl. riječi/
• A few… nekoliko
• Book… knjiga
• Athapaskans… Atapaski
• Apaches… Apači
• man…čovjek
• woman… žena

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.172.170.22 (talk • contribs).

hi. thank you for the words – ishwar  (speak) 19:11, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the Map of Athapaskan languages. Z

[edit] About IPA references

Awhile ago, you added a large amount of references to International Phonetic Alphabet. Could you perhaps tell me where these sources can be cited in the text? We're trying to bring the article up to featured article status but we need to cite the sources within the article. Thanks.--The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

hi. These explain the history of the IPA including the notational systems the preceded the IPA: Sweet (1880-1881), Sweet (1971), Passy (1888), Kelly (1981), Kemp (1994), Ellis (1869-1889), Albright (1958), Hultzen, Lee (1958). Ladefoged & Halle (1988), IPA (1989), Ladefoged (1990) discuss issues related to the most recent major revision of the IPA. The text does not state anything about the IPA's history, so you could move these to History of the IPA (which is a rather incomplete).

MacMahon (1996) is a general article on phonetic notation which briefly discusses the IPA. MacMahon (1996) is already cited in the text.

IPA (1999) is just the manual for how to use the IPA. IPA (1999) should remain there, of course, since it is the IPA's manual. As for citing the manual, the whole article references the manual. It probably doesnt need to be cited specifically, but if you insist on doing so, you could just mention in the intro (or wherever appropriate) that the IPA manual is IPA (1999).

Wells (1987) is the article that explains the IPA computer codes. I havent read this & I never bothered to figure out what the codes are actually good for. Some of this is in the handbook. Maybe its pre-Unicode ideas (?). The article doesnt mention them, so maybe you can take this out.

Pullum & Laduslaw (1986) is a reference for the values (& a little history) of symbols. As not all linguists like or use the IPA, it is convenient for cross-notational comparison. I also put a reference to a review of it, which is interesting to me but maybe overkill for others.

Ball et al. (1995) is an extention to the IPA called VoQS (Voice Quality Symbols) created by speech pathologists (for transcribing speech disorders). This includes things like diplophonia, ventricular phonation, protruded jaw voice, etc. It also has its own chart. I'm not clear why the IPA website does not mention it. Wikipedia lacks any information on this. I think it should be added as the article only indicates the use of the IPA as a tool for linguists and language teachers/learners, not mentioning the use by speech clinicians.

Duckworth et al. (1990) is the beginning of the extIPA.

Jespersen (1889) can be removed as this is now in Phonetic transcription (he made an analphabetic notational system).

is this what you wanted to know? – ishwar  (speak) 19:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes yes! This is wonderful! This made my day! Now I can cite it in the text! Thank you thank you thank you! I'm copying your answer to the IPA talkpage so everyone can work on citing the article. Thanks again. With this, we have a chance of bringing this article to featured status. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 22:09, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnamese IPA

Hi Ish ishwar,

I am an administrator at Vietnamese Wiktionary, I am creating a template which takes a Vietnamese word as input and gives IPA pronunciation as output. Basically the template will break a word into (C1)(w)V(G)(C2)+T as in Vietnamese phonology. I have finished with 3 auxilliaries templates [1], [2], [3]. I am a native Vietnamese speaker but I have no knowledge of Vietnamese phonology. Therefore I would like to ask for your cooperation in this project, to finish the other template relating to (w)V(G). For example, if you could check out already the code of 3 templates for C1, C2, T (in the given links) to see if I have missed out something from reading your article, feel free to discuss and that would be very helpful. I also have a question about the pronunciation at Thich Nhat Hanh, why "Hạnh" have the "ʲ" and the tone is 3ʔ1 instead of 31 or 32?

Thank you very much in advance for your contact!

Best wishes, Tttrung 17:09, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I have just completed the template here. Your comment is highly appreciated. :) 193.52.24.125 09:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

hi.

hmm, you are going to make me do some work, i see. i will have to look this up as I forget many things about Vietnamese. About tone, they are complex and i have read conflicting descriptions of them. So, as i am not a specialist, i am currently not sure about them. As to why 3ʔ1 instead of 31, the ʔ is there because it represents a glottalized vocal quality which is present in many Vietnamese speakers. If you arent aware, Vietnamese tones are not simply changes in pitch (as they are many Chinese languages) — they are changes in pitch in addition to specific vocal quality (such as a breathy or creaky voice). However, here is where i have read different descriptions of this in acoustic studies — there seems to be differences in regional dialects. Why 31 instead of 32? I dont remember & will have to look this up. The "ʲ" is there because (if i remember correctly) some dialects have a diphthong there because of the following nh consonant.

Question: why do you include a pronunciation of only one dialect?

peace – ishwar  (speak) 16:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers.

I will add ʔ to the tonal mark if a rule is found and no one disagrees. In Vietnamese language, the tonal marks have subscriptions instead of superscriptions, but that may be minor problem in convention. By the way, could you confirm that "iệ" (in Việt of Vietnamese language) has IPA ḭɜ instead of iɜ̰?

Including more dialects will eventually be the goal. For starting, I just want to do nice job on one dialect that I know best. So far many bugs have been fixed. When the template is stable, I can repeat the job for dialect of HCM city. I also want to add standard Vietnamese voice (I think this exists but I may be wrong), but I don't have yet good references. Tttrung 17:24, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

hi.

I have mostly seen superscripts in general linguistic literature, but I dont read much literature on languages in Southeast Asia or in Africa or other places. (In the Athabascan family, there are usually just 2 tones high or low, so we dont need to worry about complicated tone notation. So, I cant comment that convention for Vietnamese. I'll take a look at my Vietnamese library & see what they write.

If you are writing that tone with sub/superscript number 3ʔ1 or 3ʔ2 (I still havent had the time to look this up yet), then you should also mark [iɜ] similarly as in [iɜ_3ʔ1] or [iɜ^3ʔ1] because they are the same tone. The tilde under the vowel represents creaky voice phonation (that is, a glottalized vowel). The [ʔ] in the sub/super-script number is a glottal stop which also represents glottalization of the vowel. Since the glottalization is actually part of tone in Vietnamese, I would think that it is preferable to mark them together in the sub/super-script. From a pedagogical perspective, I dont that think either notation is superior because I doubt that many readers know what creaky voice or a glottalized vowel is anyway — they will have to read more to learn what these are. What do you think?

– ishwar  (speak) 04:50, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Eurocentricity?

Hi, I was looking at the article for the City of San Leandro and noticed a pretty bad (imho) Eurocentric bias. No mention whatsoever of the people who lived there before it was "discovered" by a Spanish soldier in 1772. I put a comment about that on the Talk:San_Leandro,_California page but was unsatisfied, so I started looking at the wikipedia style pages. Still unsatisfied (it does not seem to be addressed at all there!) I looked at the History of California page and found your comments there. I'm wriiting to ask if you have had discussions with other wiki-ers or if there is a forum for discussion of mitigation of eurocentrism.

thanks, Tzf 19:15, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

hi.

i havent really discussed this with others. But, if you dont know of it, there is a project Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias that attempts to address these issues. Could this what you are looking for? peace – ishwar  (speak) 16:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Empty articles

Please don't create lots of empty articles it makes for quite a bit of work deleting them. It would be much better to create one or two stubs that wern't going to get deleted. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 01:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

ok. if those are the rules, i wont do that. i agree, but there are thousands of stubs that need to created & its easier to just add them to the project category. oh well. peace – ishwar  (speak) 07:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Harry Hoijer.jpg

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[edit] language family map

please check the map I inserted on the article. Dreg743 21:33, 2 June 2006 (UTC) Tried to make it "representative" of various families. Languages on the map are at large taken from the controversial article "list of languages by native speakers", and I tried to locate them where they are spoken.

[edit] DYK

On April 9, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Filippo Salvatore Gilij, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--Cactus.man ✍ 18:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Red Cloud

Hi ishwar,

Do you know what the correct spelling of Red Cloud's name in Lakota would be? Thanks. —Khoikhoi 22:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

hi. I'm sorry – no, I dont know Lakota (or any other Siouan for that matter).

I guess I would suggest looking him up in the Smithsonian's Handbook of North American Indians. Hmm, doesnt Lakota have different spelling systems used by different people (?). I cant remember.... Maybe you could try to email a contact person from a tribal website (they may want to add some other stuff to the article)?

You could also send SSILA an email. Sometimes people ask questions like this which are forwarded to a given lang family's specialists.

Happy hunting – ishwar  (speak) 05:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the advice! —Khoikhoi 05:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oowekyala vs Heiltsuk vs Kwak'wala

Saw your edit. I was only going by what's already in Wikipedia, i.e. pre-existing Oowekyala article and a separate Kwak'wala article; from what I could see up-to-the-latest-postmodernism linguists had established and separated these two, and I was already aware of the problem with calling Kwak'wala by the name "Southern Kwakiutl", which happens to also be how the Cape Mudge Band (the Weywakay of the Laich-kwil-tach) style themselves as separate from the other Kwakiutl, the other Kwakiutl being the Kwakaw-ka'wakw (or however it's spelled) and the Kwagyuilh; and not including the so-called "Northern Kwakiutl" who are the Oowekyala speakers (Heiltsuk, Owekeeno et al). Language politics are VERY confusing in BC, and also very sensitive; so I went with the existing delineations and wouldn't dream of going by an externally-defined definition (e.g. ethnologue or sil.org, for example) rather than one "indigenous" to the area; i.e. how the people themselves want it represented; which is why I used Laich-kwil-tach for that one group, instead of the more historically familiar anglicizations Euclataws or Yucultas. Gets nasty when the "traditional" orthography differs from the "linguistically-approved" orthography; e.g. Stl'at'imx vs St'at'imc, the latter being the Latin set used for St'at'imcets and how they like to see it in English now; problem is t' doesn't mean "tl" in the English phonological landscape; but oh no, they want to see THEIR spelling (i.e. the St'at'imcets spelling) in lieu of anything anyone else can also sort out. That different latinization methods are used for neighbouting languages e.g. St'at'imcets vs Nlaka'pamux vs Secwepemc. vs Halkomeylem makes it all the worse.....not that this has to do with Oowekyala/Kwak'wala except by way of caveat, i.e. treading on local toes.....Skookum1 10:12, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

PS I think it was a Heiltsuk community who rescued passengers and crew of the Queen of Prince Rupert recently; or maybe they were Haisla/Tsimshianic I can't quite remember nowSkookum1 10:12, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Postscript: I see from the indigenous peoples project page it was Oowekyala vs Heiltsuk you were talking about; same comments apply, more or less: if the Owekeeno and Heiltsuk want to distinguish themselves linguistically, i.e. as separate languages, then it follows that it's wisest for Wikipedia to do the same thing. The issue for me at this point is what to do about other cases like this, e.g Halkemeylem's subdialects aren't broken down to separate articles; but Nitinaht, Nuu-chah-nulth and Makah are all separate articles; I don't know the linguistics technicalities but my impression is that the "Aht" languages (Nitinaht, Nuu-chah-nulth and Makah and, I think, one other I can't recall the name of at present) are pretty much in the same ballpark the way that the various Halkemeylem subdialects/sublanguages are; similarly Shishalh and Squamish are pretty similar, and both are similar to Halkemeylem. Essentially there's a lot of articles extant for splinter languages/dialects and other articles at the same "tier" of the language hierarchy that DON'T have articles done yet; quite the web (see Salishan languages).Skookum1 21:40, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

hi.

re: Oowekyala lang

Yes, I think that Oowekyala and Heiltsuk could be separated because of the political distinctiveness of the two groups and because of the structural differences present between the two languages. Heiltsuk has been worked on more than Oowekyala, & it seems to me that Oowekyala has been assumed to be similar enough to Heiltsuk, but perhaps this hasnt been looked at with a lot of attention (at least until Darin Howe's 2000 dissertation).

re: Halkomelem/Halkemeylem, Sechelt/Shishalh, Squamish langs

It is my understanding that the Halkomelem (Halkemeylem) dialects are very similar, while the differences between the Halkomelem dialect continuum, the Sechelt (Shishalh) language, and the Squamish language are greater. And I have seen where Squamish is considered more similar to Halkomelem and Nooksack (together in a South Georgia sub-branch) and where Sechelt is more similar to Comox and Pentlatch (in a North Georgia branch). These South Georgia and North Georgia sub-groupings are found in Marianna Mithun's book, but Czaykowska-Higgins & Kinkade (1997) do have these sub-groupings (and this is what I followed for the Wikipedia article).

re: Nitinaht, Nuu-chah-nulth, Makah

I dont know much about Wakashan, so I dont know how similar these all are. Mithun classifies them as separate languages, so I would recommend following this in Wikipedia. I'll give you a quote from Mithun (p. 549):

The Northern and Southern branches of the family [ishwar: i.e. Wakashan] are quite distantly related, but languages within each branch are close. Nitinaht and Makah have generally been considered closer to each other than either is to Nootka, with an estimated separation of 1000 years, although Embleton 1985 found greater similarity between Nootka and Nitinaht, which are adjacent.

For more on Oowekyala, below is from Howe's dissertation Oowekyala Segmental Phonology (pp. 11-13), which is essentially most of what I know about Oowekyala:

1.1.2. Adjacent languages

1.1.2.1. Adjacent unrelated languages

As mentioned in the previous section, Oowekeeno territory is geographically adjacent to that of the Nuxalk, a Salishan people (Bella Coola is about 30 miles northeast of Rivers Inlet). The Oowekeeno and Nuxalk use English to communicate together (the Nuxalk language, a.k.a. Bella Coola, is virtually as endangered as Oowekyala is; Dr. Ross Saunders, lecture notes 1998). However, according to Mrs. Hilda Smith, her people used Chinook Jargon as a lingua franca in their dealings with the Nuxalk, given the complete lack of mutual intelligibility of their languages. As an example, Mrs. Hilda Smith recalls that her late mother Maggie Bernard could speak some Chinook Jargon but no English. Stevenson (1982:27) calls into question the Oowekeeno’s supposed knowledge of Chinook Jargon and claims instead that the Nuxalk and Bella Coola simply knew each other’s languages: the Oowekeeno at the top of Owikeno Lake had regular contact with the Nuxalk of South Bentick Arm, and intermarriage between the two tribes was not infrequent (McIlwraith 1948). A dramatic story by Willy Gladstone (Heiltsuk) in Boas (1928:132-5) might be taken as evidence in favour of Stevenson’s claim. According to the narrator, a vengeful Heiltsuk delegation once visited Chief Walkus of the Oowekeeno in the evening. One of the Heiltsuk pointed at several Oowekeeno, saying “All are about to die!” in Chinook Jargon. The Oowekeeno, who did not understand, asked what he had said, and the Heiltsuk replied “You will have plenty to eat, is what I said.” The next morning, several unsuspecting Oowekeeno were killed by the Heiltsuk. Crucially, in a footnote to this story, it is explained that “Chinook Jargon ... at that time [of war between the Oowekeeno and the Heiltsuk] was understood by the Bella Bella [Heiltsuk] but not by the Rivers Inlet people [Oowekeeno]” (ibid.:133, fn. 1).

There is another, perhaps more solid, piece of evidence that the Oowekeeno and Nuxalk had extensive and direct linguistic contact. The extremely rare consonant clustering property for which Nuxalk is notorious (see e.g. Nater 1984, Bagemihl 1991) is also found in Oowekyala, e.g. c’k’x̌tƛkc ‘the invisible one here-with-me will be short’.

1.1.2.2. Closely-related languages

According to Lincoln & Rath (1980), Oowekyala is one of four closely-related North Wakashan (previously known as Kwakiutlan) languages, all spoken in the same western coastal area of British Columbia. The others are Heiltsuk, Haisla, and Kwakwala (formerly Kwakiutl). The linguistic division between Kwakwala and Oowekyala is undisputed. Even Boas, who has been criticised by Hilton & Rath (1980) and Stevenson (1982) for treating all North Wakashan languages as dialects of one language, acknowledges the reality of this division in the introduction to his Kwakiutl Grammar (1947:205):

North of the Kwakiutl area, beginning at Rivers Inlet another dialect of the language is spoken which differs considerably from the Kwakiutl here discussed. The languages are not easily mutually intelligible, partly on account of differences in vocabulary, partly on account of differences in grammatical forms.

The relation between Haisla and Oowekyala is somewhat more controversial. Lincoln and Rath (1980:2) claim that Haisla is not mutually intelligible with either Oowekyala or Heiltsuk (the latter are mutually intelligible) and they warn that “A great deal of intermarriage takes place within this northern area and the tendency is to minimize the very real differences which exist between Haisla and Heiltsuk-Oowekyala” (ibid.:4). The claim that Haisla and Heiltsuk-Oowekyala are mutually unintelligible is abandoned, however, in the introduction to their Haisla dictionary (Lincoln & Rath 1986). Mrs. Hilda Smith tells me that she is able to converse in “Indian” with her son-in-law from Kitimat (Haisla territory). Significantly, the Haisla are assumed to have originated from the Rivers Inlet area according to the Oowekeeno version of the Great Flood story. Legend has it that several canoes were carried away to the Kitimat area by the strong current. Bach (p.c.) notes, however, that a comparison between Henaksiala and Haisla origin and flood stories remains to be done. Moreover, Bach notes that Haisla shares some traits with Kwakwala not evident in Heiltsuk-Oowekyala, e.g. unrounding before u.

Finally, John Rath, who had prolonged experience working on both Heiltsuk and Oowekyala (Lincoln & Rath 1980; Rath 1981; Hilton & Rath 1982), proposes a linguistic division between these two languages which has generally been rejected by linguists. Oowekyala is not listed separately from Heiltsuk by Jabobsen (1979), nor by Bach (1995:5). As McMillan (1999:10) writes, “the Oweekeno of Rivers Inlet speak a distinct dialect but are usually included [in Heiltsuk]”. It is also noteworthy that in Lincoln & Rath (1980), roots from Oowekyala and Heiltsuk are combined in a single column, while Haisla roots and Kwakwala roots are listed in separate columns. As Lincoln & Rath (1980:4) explain, “since the Heiltsuk and Oowekyala languages had essentially the same roots, they could justifiably be combined in a single column.” Moreover, in Hilton & Rath (1982:33), we are told:

For readers interested in checking the translation [of the Oowekyala texts] in more detail, the Heiltsuk vocabulary and syntax in Rath 1981 can be helpful because of the high degree of regular correspondence and mutual intelligibility of Oowekyala and Heiltsuk. ... Mindful of pronunciation and hence spelling difference between Oowekyala and Heiltsuk, one can find a listing of some of the pertinent morphemes in Rath (1981:70-73).

Nonetheless, there are two a priori reasons for linguists not to collapse Oowekyala and Heiltsuk into a single language. First, Oowekyala is definitely viewed by the speakers as a distinct language. “From the perspective of the Oowekeeno people themselves, the Kwakiutl are a Kwakwala speaking Indian subdivision with which they no more identify than with their Bella Bella [Heiltsuk] or Bella Coola [Nuxalk Salishan] neighbours” (Hilton & Rath 1982:7). (Significantly perhaps, according to historical accounts in Boas (1928:124-135), the Oowekeeno and Heiltsuk were frequently at war with each other.) Apparently, the Heiltsuk feel the same way about Oowekyala. Thus, according to Stevenson (1982:3-4) “the term Heiltsuk can be rendered literally into English as ‘those who speak correctly’. This term emphasizes their differences with their Oowekeeno neighbours”. Second, from a linguistic perspective Lincoln & Rath (1980:2) state “Although the [North Wakashan] languages are undoubtedly very similar phonologically and, as is attested in the present work, in root structure, they are much less similar in their inventories of suffixes, in morphophonology, and in syntax.” Lincoln and Rath do not identify these dissimilarities, but it is relatively easy to find even phonological differences between Oowekyala and Heiltsuk.

For example, Heiltsuk has tone (k’ʷás ‘mussels’ versus k’ʷàs ‘sit outside’), Oowekyala doesn’t (Kortlandt 1975); Oowekyala has contrastive vowel and resonant length (y’ak’ ‘bad’ vs. t’aːx ‘gun powder’; ƛ’mq’ ‘yew tree’ vs. smːs ‘mouth’), Heiltsuk doesn’t; Oowekyala allows glottalization in syllable-final position (łl’ ‘dead’) whereas Heiltsuk doesn’t; and the extensive consonant clustering characteristic of both languages is broken in Heiltsuk by epenthetic schwas after glottalized stops and affricates, but not in Oowekyala (He t’əxt’ək’ʷəs vs. Oo t’xt’k’ʷs ‘fish hawk’; Lincoln & Rath 1980:31). There are also numerous idiosyncratic segmental differences between Oowekyala and Heiltsuk. There are differences in voicing, e.g. Oo ki’skc’a vs. He giskc’a ‘an unidentified edible shellfish’; Oo cuq’ʷqəla vs. He ʣúq’ʷəqəlá ‘sleet’; Oo taqila ‘to make an oolichan net’ vs. He dáqał ‘an oolichan net’. There are differences in continuancy, e.g. Oo łinəma vs. He ƛ’ínəmá ‘to take back lent out property’; Oo kʷuta vs. He xʷuta ‘to suspect, guess’; Oo kʷumitəla vs. He xʷúmítəla ‘to rock, to seesaw’. There are differences in place of articulation: Oo ǧʷəl’ik vs. He ǧʷəl’iq ‘spruce pitch’; Oo bgʷ- (e.g. plural bipgʷanm) vs. He dkʷ- (e.g. plural dítgʷánḿ) ‘humans, men, people’. There are differences between the presence vs. absence of vowels, e.g. Oo ǧiǧis vs. He qqs ‘eye’; Oo n’ixn’ika vs. He n’əxn’əká ‘to say repeatedly’, as well as between the presence vs. absence of consonants, e.g. Oo c’łtxa vs. He c’łxʔit ‘to squirt (clam)’; Oo k’əyus vs. He k’ús ‘not the case, nonexistent’. There are differences in segment order (metathesis), e.g. Oo ti’xsala ~ ti’xsəla vs. He tisxálá ~ tisxəlá ‘splashing’.

Lastly, it should be acknowledged more generally that linguistic comparison of Oowekyala with Kwakwala, Haisla or Heiltsuk is premature as there are poorly understood dialectal distinctions within Kwakwala, Haisla and Heiltsuk themselves. This is especially true of Kwakwala, which subsumes several dialects, including ǧuc’ala (Quatsino Sound Tribes), kwak’wala (Gilford Island, Knight Inlet, Kwakiutl and Nimpkish), lik’ʷla (Lekwiltok Tribes), n’ak’ʷala (Northern Tribes), ƛ’aƛ’asik’ʷala (Nahwitti Tribes). Only the first of these is well-documented (e.g. Boas 1947). Haisla is also used as a cover term for two divergent dialects: Henaksiala (Lincoln & Rath 1986) and Haisla proper (Bach 1999). Bach (1995:5) lists these as two separate North Wakashan languages, alongside Heiltsuk and Kwakwala. Finally, Heiltsuk too has at least two divergent dialects, spoken in Bella Bella and Klemtu respectively. The differences between the various dialects in these languages clearly needs more detailed and extensive research before we are able to decide on their precise genetic relation with Oowekyala.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:26, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnamese phonology

Hi, could you check the IPA pronunciation of "tiếng Việt" in the infobox for Vietnamese language? I added the Northern and Southern forms, but wasn't sure. Thanks. DHN 19:36, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

hi. Ok, i'll take a look maybe next week. peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:02, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of languages by number of native speakers

Hi Ish,

If you're not too busy, would you mind keeping an eye on this article? I'll be off the grid in about a week, and may not be back for a year. It's currently in half-way decent shape (as good as Ethnologue permits), but attracts numerous unreferenced edits. Mostly it's just a matter of reverting those, with occasional discussions about what to do when Ethnologue is wrong. However, there is the occasional (but usually mild) edit war, like the current one on French. kwami 01:50, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

hi. ok, but I am a bit busy these days. peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:59, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request

Hi Ish,

My name is Fernanda Viégas and I have been studying Wikipedia for a while now (you can see a paper I published on the subject here). I would like to ask you a few questions about your activities as a Wikipedia image creator. I am fascinated by the pictorial side of Wikipedia and it would be great to hear about this community from one of its members. Would you be available to participate an email survey this week? Thanks, — Fernanda 03:24, 4 April 2006 (UTC) | talk

ok, just send me an email.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do Most Pronounce This?

Talk: Individualized Education Program: pronunciation?

how do most pronounce this?

like "eye-ee-pee"? or like "ee-ehp"? or like "yep"?

thanks – ishwar  (speak) 23:58, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Just sound out the english letters: "Eye" for I (long I), "E" for E (long E), "Pee" for P (long P). I believe this was your first pronounciation choice.

jeannaf (talk • contribs) (10:33, 2006 April 3)

hi. got it. thank you. – ishwar  (speak) 17:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two Greenlandics?

Hi, congratulations to your map being featured. I've noticed that all of Greenland has one color on it. A cousin of mine happens to work in Tasiilaq and I remember him telling me that the East-Greenlandic is quite different from the (main) West-Greenlandic. I even found a websource:

Greenlandic. 1st foreign language is Danish and 2nd is English. The language of East Greenland is Greenlandic, but it’s substantially different from that of West Greenland both in its pronunciation and its vocabulary. Approximately 3.500 people in the world speak East Greenlandic. For obvious reasons only a handful books has ever been published in East Greenlandic. In school the children of East Greenland have to learn West Greenlandic (which is the official language) Danish and English.

eastgreenland.com

Maybe this difference is too subtle for your classification. Thought you'd be interested. Michbich 21:20, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

hi. thanks.

yes, i was just showing language families and not individual languages (which would result in a very complicated map). So, since the two you mention are related to each other and in the same family, i just put them under the Eskimo-Aleut color.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:32, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map question

Congrats on the featured picture. =) I was wondering if there was a particular software package you used to create the map, and further, if it was possible for you to provide the map in a vector format (Wikipedia supports SVG, for example)? Thanks for your time. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 08:51, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

hi. thank you.

that was the first map that i ever made. I explain a little about the map below: User talk:ish ishwar#Dates of maps in Mithun 1999 and Campbell 1997.

I used the GIMP program (Mac version); i should put mention this on the map, shouldnt i?.

According to the GIMP website, it is possible to convert to the .SVG format, but i dont know how to do this. Right the map is in the GIMP format (.XCF) from which I convert to .PNG. I am using several different layers, such one for labels, one for water, one for language boundaries, etc. If you know how to convert it, then that would be very helpful. I was going to upload my working file so that everyone can modify it as they saw fit. My ultimate plan is to donate the map to http://www.native-languages.org/ when the map is completed, with Wikipedia acting as a test. I have not uploaded the working file yet because i am not completely finished adjusting language borders. But, i dont know when i'll have time to work on it again, so maybe i should just do this anyway. Maybe it is better if it is converted to .SVG before i (or we) start fiddling with it again.

peace – ishwar  (speak) 17:24, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] San Carlos

Dagotʼéé ish ishwar, I am curious as to your source for the name "Sengaa" for San Carlos. Bray's Western Apache-English dictionary gives "Sangada", and that corresponds with what I have heard. Iinagodzin atʼéé :-) -Node 15:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

the source is:

* de Reuse, Willem J. (2006). A practical grammar of the San Carlos Apache language. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 51. LINCOM. ISBN 3-89586-861-2.

this is the way the San Carlos generally say it. The Sangada may be a White Mountain form. The Bray dictionary has errors as it was not written by linguists. But, it should be approximately that if that's what you hear. Anyway, since most San Carlos speakers actually live in San Carlos, I'd use their word for it if you choose a single form to represent Western Apache. – ishwar  (speak) 22:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Dagot'ee, I agree, although the preface says that all placenames were supplied by Dr. Basso. I was also wondering if you have any other native names for other Arizona (or other American) places whose articles don't already have them besides Mohave, which I have and am planning to add to certain articles. --Node 04:41, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

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