User talk:Pasquale

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Contents

1 Willkommen, bonjour/bonsoir, salve, kia ora! 2 List of alternative country names 3 Transcription of Greek spellings 4 List of alternative country names 2 5 List of alternative country names 2 6 List of country names in various languages 7 city name changes 8 Elymian language at the Sicels entry 9 Megara Hybaea 10 Sanksrit origin for Afghanistan 11 Geographical names 12 Finno-Ugric languages 13 Folk/fake etymology 14 Some background on the Finno-ugric debate 15 Improvements to Finno-Ugric languages 16 Article Licensing 17 Article disputes 18 Walliser/Walser 19 Noemi

Willkommen, bonjour/bonsoir, salve, kia ora!

Good to see another linguist declaring himself.

Do you know you can get your previous anonymous edits attributed to your user name? Wikipedia:Changing_attribution_for_an_edit

If you could bear to glance at the very new WP for a reviving modern Polynesian language with over 100,000 speakers but only half a dozen WP contributors, please see my last 500 contributions (haha) (http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&hideminor=0&target=Robin_Patterson&limit=500&offset=0)

Kind regards Robin Patterson 01:39, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

List of alternative country names

Could you possibly add new entries in an alphabetical order? That eases later additions a bit. Halibutt 14:05, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)

Refer to the talk page. A proposal was made and I implemented it. --Jiang 22:38, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If you have objections, then make them. We'll act on consensus. No objections were made to the proposal to split the article. --Jiang 22:41, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Pasquale, in case you looked and gave up in disgust that I didn't keep my promise, I have made a start -- a day late (sorry) -- on answering your questions re my interventions in the List of alternative country names. See my talk page. -- Picapica 23:39, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've now finished my answers. I ought to let you know, too, that I have referred to you on User talk:Pne -- Picapica 20:07, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Transcription of Greek spellings

Hi Pasquale, I've answered you on my talk page. -- pne 07:32, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

List of alternative country names 2

Hi, could you please add a note in the List of alternative country names that Serbian J is equivalent to English J like in for an example : You

List of alternative country names 2

Hi, could you please add a note in the List of alternative country names that Serbian J is equivalent to English J like in for an example : You

[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 17:46, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

---

Hi, Pasquale.

• Actually, Południowa Afryka means in Polish rather "Southern part of Africa". For the country, Afryka Południowa or Republika Południowej Afryki is usually used. Reverse word order emphasizes the fact that the adjective here is denominative rather then descriptive. Such order is also standard in many other similar Polish names, like N/S Korea, Northern Ireland or Western Samoa.
• Rakusy as name for Austria were used primarily between 14th and 17th century. This word is unrecognizeable by nearly all users of modern Polish, so I believe that including it in your list has very limited value.

Naive cynic 01:52, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

PS: Thanks for fixing my sloppy cyrillic transcription. :)

Rakusy perhaps is unknown, but Rakusza is still understandable (at least among those who passed their final school exams from history). The word is also reflected in many royalty names like Elżbieta Rakuszanka. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 04:12, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

It doesn't appear in PWN encyclopedia (http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/), PWN thesaurus (http://sjp.pwn.pl/) or Polish wordlist (http://www.kurnik.pl/dictionary/). Google search gives one hit - name of a horse (http://www.zmdom.com.pl/gonitwy/1999/skarba_1999.html). -- Naive cynic 08:57, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)

Hi N.c.,

As far as South Africa is concerned, your point is persuasive. I had assumed that, since the full official name is Republika Południowej Afryki, the short name had to be Południowa Afryka, but adjective placement is a subtle linguistic distinction in Polish, requiring a sense for the language that I do not have. So, I have already restored Afryka Południowa. (On the other hand, USA seems to be given everywhere as Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki.)

I can very well understand it being confusing sometimes. Since Polish is a highly inflected language, its word order is very flexible, but it still often carries subtle stylistic (or, in this case, semantic) distinctions.

For the US, both names are used, but neither is common. -- Naive cynic 22:19, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

As far as Rakusza is concerned, you have to consider the following. The List of country names in various languages has had nearly one thousand contributions, and Rakusza has been there since the very first contribution. This article was started on 7 Jul 2004 by [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] with four country names, one of which was Austria. Now, you say that Rakusza does not exist, that only Rakusy existed, primarily between 14th and 17th century. Could it be that Halibutt erroneously back-formed Rakusza from the adjective form Rakuszanka??? For the time being, I have changed it to Rakusy. Personally, I believe including historical forms in this list is of great value. Several other historical forms have in fact been included.

I can't (of course) say that *Rakusza doesn't exist, I have simply never seen it (as opposed to Rakusy which used to be quite popular at that time). Since the meaning (but not the etymology) of Rakuszanin and Rakuszanka ("an Austrian", "a female Austrian") is still recognized in some regions, it seems possible that *Rakusza would be some kind of back-derivation from them. You could perhaps ask Halibutt about his source.

I wasn't aware that the list was supposed to include historical forms as well, this of course invalidates my previous comment. :) -- Naive cynic 22:19, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

BTW, can anyone explain the etymology of the "Raku-" forms for Austria in the West Slavic languages? The other etymology I am dying to find out about is Lithuanian Vokietija and Latvian Vācija for Germany.

Polish Rakusy comes from Rakus ("an Austrian", historically), which itself comes from Czech Rakous. According to Aleksander Brückner, the Czech name comes from the castle of Rötz (Rakous, in Czech) in Bavaria, at the Bohemian border. I guess that Czech sources can provide more details.

I have heard these Baltic names to come from Vagoths which supposedly were Gothic tribe inhabiting Gotland, but you should probably verify it. -- Naive cynic 22:19, Aug 14, 2004 (UTC)

Pasquale 17:57, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

List of country names in various languages

Hi !

Thanks for your feedback regarding List of country names in various languages. I completely agree with you what it comes to cyrillic transliteration and I apologize my previous slightly messy edits. Anyway I decided to use ISO-9:1995 transliteration for cyrillic letters and changed previous edits to match this. I hope this makes text look more uniform from now on. --Kulkuri 16:26, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hello, Trying to figure out how the Scandanavian place names in List of country names in various languages settled on the convention of using the Latin form as the standard for rendering in English. Have not found this approach common in English language publications - much more common to use an Anglicized form of the Swedish, Norwegian or Danish. Since you appear to be the founder and strongest contributor, am hoping you can clarify (or direct me to the source of this Wiki convention). Thanks Williamborg 16:47, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

city name changes

Hi! I am really sorry if I changed some city names but I didn`t have any vandal intention and I hope you will show some respect for what I done and how many city names I have added. What I thought that Lozanna was a typo because nn and it is read Lozana. I hope that we will stay in friendly realtionship and that we will cooperate instead of accusing each other.

[[User:Avala|Avala|★]] 19:02, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Elymian language at the Sicels entry

"the Elymian language, which some would consider related to Ligurian or to Anatolian." Would you be a little more specific here please. We need your help. Even to identify "Some" perhaps. Or "How" would help. Perhaps you'd best re-edit the Elymian entry. And please add an External Link, if there's anything on the web, to help us out. Thank you. Wetman 06:13, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Megara Hybaea

Megara Hyblaea, I suppose (a "L" is missing) mailto:carlo@morino.it from Italy

Grazie! Pasquale 18:27, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sanksrit origin for Afghanistan

No, I'm not aware of the use of the word sthaana in any comparable sense in Sanskrit. I come from a community where the word for temple is devasthaana. This may be understood to mean 'place of the gods', but it does not mean 'country of the gods'. I don't claim to be an expert, but I do claim to be reasonably sure that the name Rajasthan is a relatively recent derivation, due to Persian / Urdu influence. No doubt there are linguistic nationalists who would do anything to claim a Sanskrit origin,

http://pauillac.inria.fr/~huet/SKT/DICO/s.html#sth=ana

The comparable words in Sanskrit for the Persian meaning of 'stan' (country, land) would be desha, or sometimes perhaps bhumi or a derivation. Do you have any counter-examples of the term sthaana used for land/country, unambiguously derived from Sanskrit? Imc 17:25, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments Pasquale. I've read (skimmed) through the talk page for these etymologies. It's entertaining sometimes! Imc 19:04, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Geographical names

Greetings, Pasquale. I have recently stumbled upon a large database of geographical names in various languages, and I thought that it might perhaps be of interest to you. You can find it at http://www.eki.ee/knab/knab.htm. Another such database, though apparently much smaller, is at http://www.geonames.de/indcou.html. -- Naive cynic 20:55, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC) -- Thanks, Pasquale 19:40, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hello, Pasquale. Thanks for your pointer to the discussion on European cities with alternative names; I do indeed not visit it often, but tend to agree with your points. I left a comment on the talk page. -- pne 07:17, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Finno-Ugric languages

A debate on the validity of Finno-Ugric is going on at Talk:Finno-Ugric language; as a historical linguist, your input would be particularly welcome. - Mustafaa 21:47, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Folk/fake etymology

The distinction between folk and fake etymology didn't originate with me! They're completely different things, and they're not even opposites. Folk etymology is a process that changes a word or phrase; that process is part of the actual history of the word of phrase.

The reason that the phrase "kitty-corner" exists is that enough people mistook "cater-corner" to be about cats that it caught on. You can't explain why "kitty-corner" exists without talking about the process by which people misunderstood its history and changed it based on that misunderstanding. That process is folk etymology.

But when you say something is a fake etymology, you're simply saying that that particular account of its history is inaccurate. It's just an etymology that's fake.

In other words, to say "cater-corner" refers to the way cats walk is a fake etymology, because, well, it's not true. But to say "kitty-corner" developed from "cater-corner" because many believed "cater-corner" to refer to the way cats walk is a description of an instance where the folk-etymological process occurred.

"Popular etymology" isn't a synonym of "folk etymology". It's an etymology which is popular instead of accurate, which is fake etymology. It's "popular" like "popular belief". It has the advantage of not looking quite so judgmental in the middle of an article that isn't about a word's history. I have no idea which way this should go having dug further. See Talk:Folk etymology.

So when you're talking about an explanation of a word's history which is well-known but wrong, you have a fake etymology; when you're talking about the way that misunderstandings can create change in a word of phrase, you're talking about the process of folk etymology. "Fake etymology" basically means "fake history-of-a-word"; "folk etymology" means something closer to "folk changing-of-a-word".

(Note that Folk etymology and fake etymology still need some work; folk etymology still doesn't capture that folk etymology is process and not result. Auto movil and I were fighting over that a bit and have settled down to only discussing it; I've put what I think is a decent explanation of the difference on his talk page which you might find useful.)

"Folk etymology" is generally misunderstood that way, because it looks like "etymology" being modified by an adjective, and because it's so similar to "fake etymology", and because some particular fake etymology must be involved in the process of folk etymology.

Man, I really need to get this stuff back on the article's talk page. I'm going to cut and paste a bit of this and a bit of what I wrote to User:Auto movil onto the article's talk page, and we should probably continue the discussion there. :-) — mendel ☎ 14:42, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Done -- let's continue this discussion on Talk:Folk etymology. — mendel ☎ 16:06, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

You wrote:

But then, why say fake etymology and make such a big deal of it

I have no idea. The article was there when I came along, and it seemed like a good place to move all of the not-really-folk-etymology bits from fake etymology. And then when it came time to fix the articles that pointed at folk etymology but were talking about mistaken etymologies, pointing them at fake etymology followed naturally. But if you can think of something better to do there I'm all ears. I think "fake etymology" is a confusing and awkward term. Google returns mostly Wikipedia mirrors for it, but I'm hesitant to stick it on VfD because I think a list of etymologies that are inaccurate but popular is useful.

It was important to me to get folk etymology to stop talking about etymologies that were wrong, but I don't really have any investment in fake etymology except as a place to stick the stuff that doesn't belong on folk etymology. Thoughts? — mendel ☎ 00:44, Nov 20, 2004 (UTC)

I hear you. Sounds good. Let's mull it over for a while. It's not a life-and-death situation. I think you've got some good points there. The main things now are: Are there better expressions than fake etymology for that particular (and fascinating!) meaning? And, what exactly does Popular etymology mean -- and so, what sould it redirect to? Pasquale 01:13, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A disambig page for popular etymology is an excellent solution. I feel sort of silly for not thinking of it myself. I'll throw one in place shortly. — mendel ☎ 01:28, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Some background on the Finno-ugric debate

Hi Pasquale,

On my talk page you wrote:

"There is absolutely no serious scientific dispute about the status of the Finno-Ugric language family. You have done a disservice to the Wikipedia by elevating this troll to such high status. Pasquale 21:31, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)"

Let me give you a little background on the subject of the Finno-Ugric debate and User:Antifinnougric.

In Hungary there is a highly charged political debate between academics who support the finno-ugric theory and their usually (far) right wing critics. You are correct that there is very little serious debate in the linguistic community. But in Hungary the debate is not linguistic, it's political. We've reached a point where Hungarian academists rarely dare to speak up and criticise the proponents of alternative theories lest they be charged with being "Anti-Hungarian" and "serving foreign interests" by "trying to hide the true origins of our language" (exactly the kinds of rhetoric Antifinnougric repeats).

The alternate theories range from relatively moderate supporters of Turkic origins of the Hungarian language to truly radicals supporting Sumerian and even Japanese origins. Usually the closer the proponents of a theory are to the fringes of the political spectrum the more off the wall their theories and the more agressive their rhetoric become.

Hungarian Wikipedia editors treat User:Antifinnougric in a very special way. He is the first truly radical editor (both in a political and "scientific" sense) in the Hungarian Wikipedia and he was the one who started the first ever edit war on the Hungarian pages (still going on in some sense). What many of us are trying to do is set up a positive precedent by being extremely polite and patient with him and follow all the guidelines described in Wikipedia:NPOV, Wikipedia:No personal attacks and Wikipedia:Wikilove. It's often not easy, he had upset many editors with his behavior and his radical views on finn-ugric theory in the Hungarian WP could not be formulated into acceptable articles yet.

I hope this sheds some light on why many Hungarian editors (including me) seem to be surprisingly patient with him. I know his tendency to start edit wars (if you look at the page histories, you'll see that there are still edit wars going on) and the best I can do when I see him insert arguments of his campaign trying to discredit the finno-ugric theory is to mark articles being POV and needing attention and hoping that editors with a background in linguistics and above all enough patience will come and correct his often incorrect and/or POV statements. (Although I'm Hungarian I'm a software guy and I know little about linguistics).

Cheers, Nyenyec 23:54, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi Nyenyec,

Thank you for your reply, but I am afraid your "polite" policy is quite misguided. The appropriate thing to do would be to bar this individual from the Wikipedia, in Hungarian, English, or any other language. He has now brought his two idiotic questions to my talk page (above), not realizing that no linguist is ever going to bother responding to them, because they make asolutely no sense. I understand what you are saying about the political debates and I am aware such debates exist in many countries, but they have absolutely nothing to do with linguistics. In India, for example, there is a raging debate about the autochthonous origin of the Aryans, with many people believing Sanskrit is native to India since creation and, therefore, all other Indo-European languages, to the extent they are related to Sanskrit, must come from India. These theories invade the Internet too, but they are ignored by linguists, because they have no scientific merit. It is a mistake to engage these crackpots in a debate, because it leads nowhere. As I have said before, I would not engage a physicist in a debate on the quantum theory, because I don't know anything about it. But at least I know I don't know anything about it. So, I don't believe I am being an élitist if I ask non-linguists to leave Linguistics to linguists. Pasquale 21:38, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Improvements to Finno-Ugric languages

Hi Pasquale,

Thanks for correcting what I wrote in Finno-Ugric languages#Structural features. You say that "my" and "your" are not possessive pronouns; do you realize the page on possessive pronouns says otherwise? I don't know one way or the other, but you might want to correct that page if it's wrong. Also, at Talk:Uralic languages#Possessive pronouns, Dhanak says "enyém means mine, tiéd is yours" in Hungarian. Again, I have no idea whether that is correct.

It's clear you're quite frustrated with User:Antifinnugor's behavior, as are we all. Try not to take it personally! Also, note that Finno-Ugric languages has improved a lot since her attacks started on November 9. Her actions have caused a lot of people to think about the topic more critically, and the article has benefitted from that.

Dbenbenn 03:36, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You're welcome. The difference between a possessive adjective and a possessive pronoun is very simple: The adjective is followed by a noun (e.g. "my book", "your book") while the pronoun is not ("mine", "yours"). It is the same difference as between a demonstrative adjective and a demonstrative pronoun (e.g. "that book" vs. "that"). Forgive me if I say so, but this is Grammar 101. Now, it may be that the reason these are often confused is that in many languages they are identical (e.g. Italian "il mio libro" vs. "il mio"; "questo libro" vs. "questo").

Many languages do not have either possessive adjectives or pronouns because they simply use the genitive of the personal pronouns, strictly speaking the equivalents of "of me", "of you", etc., but with a case ending instead of a preposition; e.g. Japanese "watashi" ("I") : "watashi-no hon" ("my book"), where the suffix "-no" is the equivalent of a genitive case ending. This works just fine. You will obviously see how there is no loss of meaning if you say "book of me" rather than "my book" (adjective), or "of me" rather than "mine" (pronoun).

Believe me, I do not take User:Antifinnugor's behavior personally at all. The things this person says are clearly borne of ignorance and they are just good for a laugh. However, I have also said that this person, who clearly fits the definition of crank, if not troll, should have no place in the Wikipedia. By the way, I did not realize that User:Antifinnugor was a she. You can only feel sorry for this person.

Pasquale 21:10, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The phrase "friend of mine" is an interesting exception, eh? As far as Grammar 101 goes, I admit I don't know anything formal about grammar. The fact that I'm completely ignorant of linguistics means I see inconsistencies or confusing explanations that an expert such as you might overlook. (To steal your phrase, I would be perfectly capable of debating a physicist.) Anyway, since the article should be aimed at regular people, it makes sense for me to question anything I can't understand.

If I had referred to Antifinnugor as "he", would you have assumed I knew she was male? I tried to phrase what I wrote in gender neutral terms, but I felt constantly saying "this person" was too awkward. So I arbitrarily picked "she". And as a bonus, it points out the issue of systemic sexism in English.

In my experience, when a native Hungarian speaker tells a story in English about an arbitrary person, whose sex is not identified, she tends to switch back and forth between "he" and "she". The Hungarian doesn't even notice she's doing this until the terribly confused American listener mentions it. I have a theory that Hungarian brains can think of gender-neutral people in a way that American brains can't, simply because the Hungarian language supports gender-neutral speech. --Dbenbenn 01:37, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, Dbenbenn, the phrase "friend of mine" is actually not an exception. As for my statement about Grammar 101, it was not meant to be in any way a reproach, I thought that was clear. And, in any case, as you can see from the talk page, I had to backtrack on that terminological point, since clearly the Wikipedia article on Possessive pronouns uses the terms determinative possessive pronouns and independent possessive pronouns for what I was referring to, respectively, as "possessive adjectives" and "possessive pronouns". Furthermore, I totally agree that the Wikipedia contents should be aimed at the general public. When I have made references to linguists vs. non-linguists, I assure you I was not trying to score points or get on a high horse, but I was simply referring to very specific factual points.

I definitely was assuming User:Antifinnugor was a male because of her aggressiveness. I don't believe it's sexist of me to assume that. I would say statistically it would be very unusual for a female to be so combative in the face of a host of people telling you you are wrong, and to fight them individually one after the other.

As far as gender-neutral usage is concerned, as a linguist (you'll forgive me!), I'm well aware of a host of languages that have a single, gender-neutral third-person pronoun, including Turkish and all other Altaic languages, and also Chinese. (Although in Chinese there are different characters for 'he' and 'she', the word is the same, "ta1", and linguists have proven that the word was always the same and that the two different characters always represented a purely graphic, not verbal, distinction.) Most if not all of these languages are spoken by cultures that are traditionally quite sexist, proving once again that there is rarely any correlation between linguistic and cultural features. Pasquale 02:19, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Ram-Man&action=edit&section=new)| talk)

Article disputes

Hello, and thanks for your note on my talk page. A good place to start when in disagreement with another user regarding the content of an article is Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. Even when it seems someone else is completely off base in the information they are contributing, it's important to follow the appropriate steps to ensure a smooth resolution to the issue. Hope this helps.  – Jrdioko (Talk) 02:45, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Walliser/Walser

I was wrong to equal Walliser and Walser. My main critique on the article was that to me, it looked as if there were the Walser language standing as a language on its own as opposed to the Alemannic language/dialects spoken in the Wallis as well as in other parts. The dialects spoken by the Walser are very heterogenous. They differ from each other as much as they differ from the Alemannic dialects of the Wallis.

I'd rather prefer to have an article on Walser migration with a section on the dialects, since they are only one of the different elements that constitute the Walser, together with the denominations (many place names) and the culture (a special type of settlements and of agriculture).

I've made several changes to Walser language, mainly replacing language by dialects. Especially in linguistics, the Alemannic varieties are considered dialects. The wikipedia articles on Alemannic speak all of dialects, not of languages. J. 'mach' wust 14:24, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Allow me to cite your own reply here so the everything stays on the same page:

OK, I read your message and saw your changes. I understand what you're saying about the Walser diaspora speaking a rather diverse group of dialects rather than a language. And I've studied enough dialectology (including German dialectology) to know what you're talking about. While in a strict dialectological sense, you are most probably quite correct, the fact remains that a lot of sources, including the Ethnologue (a link is available on the Walser page), consistently classify Walser as a separate "language" from Alemannic, possibly simply to underscore the distinctive Walser ethnic identity. This identity is very strong and it specifically identifies the diaspora, all the way from Haute-Savoie to Tyrol, but not the Walliser who stayed in Wallis. This is a very common phenomenon all around the world (e.g. the Cajuns of Louisiana vs. the Acadians who stayed behind in New Brunswick), so it's no surprise that it should be so. Historical and political considerations often trump a strictly dialectological classification and it makes sense that it should be so. Otherwise, if you were to apply a strictly dialectological approach, you would have to say that there is no Dutch language, but that Dutch is simply part of the Low German dialect continuum. While that is technically correct, it would not be very "politically correct" and it would get you into a lot of trouble. Regards, Pasquale 17:00, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How come you're affirming that there's a strong ethnic identity among the Walser diaspora? For more than half a millenium, they've been seperated from each other, not only by high mountains, but also by regions where other people live (many Walser settlements are isolated), by political borders and by confession (they left the Wallis before the reformation and some became protestant). Therefore, I think that the Walliser identity is much stronger than the Walser identity.

The language of those who live within German speaking areas has assimilated to the surrounding dialects. That is, it has become less archaic than the original Walliser dialects. I knew Walser people when I visited a friend in Liechtenstein (his father is from Triesenberg). In my Bernese German ears, their dialect was identical to the Liechtensteiner dialect, and very different from the Walliser dialect (which I can hardly understand). I guess that one has to be from the region in order to hear the differences between the normal Liechtenstein dialect and the Walser Liechtenstein dialect.

Politically, it is very strange to Swiss people if the Walser dialects are considered a language on its own, and I'm sure it is even stranger to Walliser people since the purest/oldest Walliser/Walser dialects are spoken in the remote valleys of the Wallis (in Italy/Ticino, the Walser language is fading into an old peoples' talk—like the Swiss French patois).

It seems to me that the "Walser language" is an internet myth produced by the ethnologue report. My faith in the ethnologue report is a little bit restored by the fact that the entry on Alemannic (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=GSW) mentions Valserisch as an Alemannic dialect. J. 'mach' wust 18:45, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sure, I agree we don't disagree any more. I also based myself on what seems to be the consensus among Swiss linguists. Thanks for the link (http://www.wir-walser.ch/de/walser/). A nice page, and surprisingly a page both of us can use for supporting our points of view! It clearly is a Walser page, but it makes no big deal of Walser identity and includes the Walliser in many respects (e.g. in the Internationalen Vereinigung für Walsertum). :) J. 'mach' wust 06:47, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Noemi

I've got one question regarding the redirect for the article Noemi. Are you sure this is correct translation? In Douay-Rheims Bible (http://www.drbo.org/chapter/08001.htm) as well as King James version (http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1120102) the name Noemi is connected with somebody different than Naamah. Do you think I could delete the redirect, write an article about Noemi and possibly add disambig to the page pointing to Naamah? --Bebenko 12:17, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have to correct myself. I found Naomi (Tanakh) to be the article I wanted to write.

• According to the first reference I mentioned, Noemi should be the name
• according to the second, Naomi is right

Do you know, as linguist, which one is right? Thanks. -- Bebenko 12:48, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Bebenko. Frankly, I always thought that Noemi and Naomi were two forms of one and the same Biblical name, both perfectly valid English forms of the name. My assumption was that one form (Noemi) was based on the Latin tradition, which is based on the Greek tradition, based in turn on the Aramaic tradition, while the other form (Naomi) was taken into English directly from the Hebrew tradition. There are many other such doublets of Biblical names in English and I would not presume to favor one over the other. However, according to the Wikipedia, Noemi is a variant form of Naamah and a totally different name than Naomi. So, I don't know what to tell you. I must confess my ignorance in matters of Biblical exegesis. Pasquale 17:56, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)