Word/quotation of the moment:

The Church says that the Earth is Flat, but I know that it is Round, for I have seen its Shadow on the Moon, and I have more Faith in a Shadow than in the Church. (commonly misattributed to Magellan)

Previous:

In the early years of the study there were more than 200 speakers of the dialect, including one parrot. (from the WP article Nancy Dorian)

Mikebrown is unusually eccentric and not very bright. [...] Astronomers have not noticed any outbursts by Mikebrown. (from the WP article 11714 Mikebrown)

Keep Redskins White!

"homosapiens are people, too!!"

a sprig of spaghetti

"I've always had a horror of husbands-in-law."

awkwardnessful

anti–zombie-fungus fungus

"Only an evil person would eat baby soup." (said in all sincerity)

Hello. Please can you check my edits to dab Ngalia and fix as appropriate? I've fixed most of the incoming links but Loritja and Wirangu people still link to the dab intending a language. One idea is to link them to {{R from subtopic}} redirects Ngaliya language → Warlpiri and Ngalea language → Western Desert language but I'd rather leave that to a specialist. Thanks, Certes (talk) 18:20, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Better to use piped links, I think. The two language rd's should go to Ngalia language, IMO, since the spelling diffs are arbitrary. — kwami (talk) 18:30, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I see you've fixed Wirangu people. So should Loritja say Aluratji (Ngalia exonym) linking to Warlpiri? On reflection they're probably dialects rather than languages anyway. Certes (talk) 18:35, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. I figured the ethno articles will probably have greater detail than the broader language articles, and so would make better targets. The Walpiri lang article doesn't even have a dialect or alt name section. — kwami (talk) 18:38, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I thought an arbitrary division of the alt spellings might work, but this is just too confusing. It's like using "Mexico" for the country and "Mejico" for the state. I moved the ethno articles to 'Ngalia (X)' to make the difference clear. Sorry if that's messed up the work you've done. I'll follow up on some of the links. — kwami (talk) 18:47, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing you've done so far messes up my work. I've diverted most of the incoming links so that they lead to Ngalea peopleNgalea people and Ngaliya peopleNgaliya people, which still work fine as redirects. If you retarget them to the dab then their incoming links (both those I added and any that already existed) will need to be changed. I'll also leave Loritja to you as I'm unsure how best to fix it. Certes (talk) 18:57, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're right about Loritja. I got them backwards. — kwami (talk) 19:10, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hard links to 'Ngaliya people', which might not all intend the Warlpiri's neighbors - Tjilpa, Warlpiri people, Songline, Pintupi, Ngarti, Yumu. I'll try to fix them up, but some may end up at the dab. — kwami (talk) 19:38, 20 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Naw, they all look correct. Rd'd both Ngaliya and Ngalea to Ngalia, now that there are no more incoming links.

Kwami, can you review the tables on this page for accuracy? Some of the changes introduced by an IP last month seem clearly wrong to me, but I suspect there are other errors too. Abecedare (talk) 22:22, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Since Sanskrit is no longer spoken natively, it's a little difficult to say. There is one letter, I think it's ॡ, that's purely theoretical -- it's for a spurious phoneme added to the system to make it symmetrical. I suspect most people pronounce Sanskrit as they do their native language, in which case there is no one correct pronunciation. I'd advise going off a well-respected source, or maybe two to give some idea of the variation.

Transcribing अ as [ɔː], though -- that would be a Bangla/Oriya pronunciation, but I don't see how it could be long. Maybe basing it off the closest English equivalent? — kwami (talk) 16:26, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Abecedare:. How's that? I might've gone too far back with <ai>, <au>, though. — kwami (talk) 02:53, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank Kwami. I was hesitant to edit the page myself exactly for the reasons you cited (suspicion that I would be influenced by the pronunciation of its modern derivatives) but, with that caveat, to me your changes to the pronunciation of ऐ, औ etc look correct. Also agree that the only way to make any of the versions stick would be to cite some authoritative source(s); will see if I can locate one although, in my prior reading, linguistic scholars rarely oblige us with convenient look-up table and insist on discussing the variations, uncertainties sound-shifts etc. :)

(pinging @Ms Sarah Welch: who had revised the Sanskrit article last year and would be more au courant with the literature). Abecedare (talk) 03:15, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We should probably take the discussion to the IPA key talk page. — kwami (talk) 07:00, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

When you want to move "Foo" to "Bar", instead of first moving "Foo" to "Bar ()", then redirecting "Bar" to "Bar ()" and then tagging "Bar" for G6, wouldn't it be a lot simpler if you skipped the first couple of steps and just tagged "Bar" instead? I imagine you believe that you'd stand a lower chance of getting the speedy declined that way, but you risk leaving the appearance of gaming the system, you create several unnecessary steps in the process that add clutter to watchlists and page histories, the articles get left at bizarre titles until the next admin comes along to clear out the categories, and some of these titles would occasionally get left behind as pointless redirects that somebody will eventually have to deal with. – Uanfala (talk) 04:02, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If the system were functional, sure. But I once spent a month on an uncontroversial move that AFAICT no-one objected to. It just took a month to convince the mover that proper procedure had been followed. At that point, why bother trying to improve WP at all? — kwami (talk) 04:07, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nowadays they are processed very swiftly. Try WP:RM/TR. Nardog (talk) 04:17, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks. — kwami (talk) 04:21, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You once spent a month on a move? I guess that must have been an RM? I understand why RMs can be frustrating and I generally try to avoid them for issues that are topic-specific. As for G6 tagging, I don't think it ever takes more than a couple of hours until an admin processes them. And yes, RM/TR is usually even faster, but half of the time it's going to be done not by an admin but a page mover who's likely to use an unnecessary page swap (I dislike the results this leaves in the history, but I admit it's not really a big deal). And anyway, if you think any moves are likely to be challenged by people who don't understand the rationale, then it might be more efficient to compile a list and then just ask an admin who's got some familiarity with this area to make the moves? – Uanfala (talk) 04:44, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That makes sense. There are three of them, same rationale ('script' for a distinct writing system that would e.g. get a Unicode block, 'alphabet' for the application of that script (extra letters, diacritics etc.) to a specific language). — kwami (talk) 04:51, 15 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that worked well! If things keep going like this, I might become trusting enough to post on Commons again. (They once deleted a map I posted as copyvio, despite the fact that it was just their generic world map with the countries colored in.) — kwami (talk) 08:03, 16 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Currently Altaic people redirects to Altaic languages. That does not seem correct: the Altaic people are not languages, they may not speak "Altaic languages", and most seakers of "Altaic languages" are not "Altaic people".
Readers who look up "Altaic people" may be looking for Altay people, or for people who live in the Altai Mountains region, or maybe other things.
This seems to be the kind of potential confusion that disambiguation pages were supposed to help resolve. However, "Altaic (disambiguation)" is a redlink with a warning that the page once existed but was deleted by you. Would you care to explain why? Would you object if I create it again?
All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:03, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jorge. I think it would be perfectly fine as a dab page, and a better solution than what I did, given that I never thought about the Altay.

As to why, "Altaic people" is a fiction, a reification of a linguistic theory, not an actual ethnicity. If the Altaic languages actually do form a family, there were presumably a proto-Altaic people who spoke the ancestral language, but the only reason for lumping the modern Altaic peoples together to the exclusion of neighboring peoples is the proposed linguistic connection, not anything else they have in common. There were lots of articles like this on WP, mindless reifications of language families, mostly OR and mostly rather dubious, so I deleted those that didn't have significant support in the lit (though I'm doubtful of the value of such constructs even then). — kwami (talk) 01:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think of the recently created article Negro-Egyptian languages? – Uanfala (talk) 17:16, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Please look into the Bengali language article in the infobox "Native speakers" figure has been diluted and more confusing for viewers to read. Please fix it with credible source. Thanks--Priyansh90 (talk) 04:35, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Sorry to bother you but the colouring and key of this important map is wrong

It is used in Societal attitudes toward homosexuality and maybe others Hope you or anyone else fix it soon cos i'm unable to do so Thank you

AdamPrideTN (talk) 10:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

We know that Negro-Egyptian languages is pure pseudoscience. But I've dealt with some of these people in real life, and it's like talking to fundamentalist evangelicals. They are 100% convinced that there's nothing wrong with their thinking no matter how hard you try to explain it to them. Hence, I've kept it short and sweet at Talk:Negro-Egyptian languages. Being nice and civil to them and gently telling them to put their "great work" elsewhere usually works better. — Stevey7788 (talk) 13:32, 25 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]