User talk:Yom/Archive2

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Re: landlocked Ethiopia

Hi, I just noticed your edit to Battle of Adowa. Actually, Ethiopia had been cut off from the sea for a few centuries prior to that battle, ever since the Ottoman Empire captured Massawa. The long, painful story of how several Ethiopians were sent to bring Abuna Krestodoulus back from Cairo during the reign of Iyasu II illustrates this; the Italian arrival only emphasized this problem -- & was a betrayal to Yohannes IV by the British.

But I admit I'm fussing over details here. Any other comments about my changes to the Adowa article? (Besides that it needs more work.) -- llywrch 18:08, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

That's not entirely accurate. I'll explain later as I have work to do right now, but the Ottoman province was limited to Massawa, Arqiqo, and its environs (though it had influence over other parts of the coasts). Also, the port of Beylul, part of the vassal (to the Ethiopian empire) Afar Sultanate had occasionally been used by the Emperor, though obviously of inferior quality to Massawa.

Iyasu II reigned just before the Zemene Mesafint, anyway, so Ethiopian control at that time had already decreased significantly. Either way, Assab was bought by Italians from the Afar vassal sultanate (vassal to Ethiopia), so Ethiopia did have some degree of sea access immediately prior to the founding of Eritrea as a colony.

Yom 18:19, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I had a suspicion that our disagreement over this was going to rest on differing interpretations of just what "landlocked" meant -- which is why I held off in changing your edits. I'm saying that unless a country or nation has unrestricted control of a port on a sea or ocean, then it is landlocked. As an example, one could say the Czech Republic currently has some access to the nearby bodies of water (such as the Mediterranean, the North or Baltic Seas), but any one of the nations between it & those bodies of water could withdraw access at any time.

If I understand you correctly, you believe that because the rulers of Ethiopia had some ability to import goods thru any of a number of Red Sea ports -- Massawa, Beylul, Assab, Obok or Zeila -- & could alternate between these & other smaller ports to import whatever they wanted, then Ethiopia was not landlocked. This strategy worked for a while following the expulsion of the Portuguese, when that country was largely indifferent towards communication with Europe & most of the outside world -- if not actively hostile, as was Yohannes I. However, the importance between some & absolute access to the sea was not appreciated by Ethiopians until the early 19th century -- when warlords like Sabagadis and Wolde Selassie realized that they needed to possess a seaport in order to import as many firearms as they needed. In fact, Sabagadis learned the importance of this difference when he had managed to obtain a large shipment of firearms from the British -- enough that he could have controlled Ethiopia -- only to have them blocked in Massawa by the local Naib, who was opposed to this development.

I know you wanted to explain yourself more fully, Yom, but I'm guessing that I have addressed your objections. Am I correct? Please, speak for yourself if I'm wrong. -- llywrch 23:35, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the incident during Iyasu II's reign, but (I'm actually doing some research for a paper on Ottoman activities in the Horn of Africa) incidents like those were actually the exception. Aside from that particular Na'ib (and probably excluding the Zemene Mesafint, though I'm not sure what power the local rulers in the area had), the Emperor had basically free access to the port (duty free for any goods for the Emperor or for the Church that weren't for personal use - personal regarding the church obviously, not the Emperor). Whenever this was threatened or the Na'ib (ruler of Mitsiwa) demanded taxation on goods or impounded goods, he would threaten to cut off the Ottoman territory from trade from the hinterlands (esp. Hamasien), which would usually result in a quick acquiescance by the Na'ib. The situation with Iyasu II was the exception because the Na'ib actually had human prisoners that he could threaten to kill (the threat of destruction of goods didn't mean much compared with the threat of killing holy men, obviously), so the Emperor had to give in. Of course, this doesn't mean that Ethiopia controlled that area of the coast, but it was not powerless of Mitsiwa and Hergigo/Arqiqo. It did have control over other parts of the coast however, which I'll address later, as I don't have the time at this instant (maybe tomorrow afternoon).

Yom 07:45, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Ahmaric question

Hi Yom, I noticed that you changed the spelling of one of the Zones of Oromia from "semen" to "semien". (I was following the spelling of the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia on this.) Is this how the word is pronounced? And is it pronounced differently from the mountain range in the north? I'm asking this because while I have no strong opinion either way about the issue, I've been working on a number of articles on the Zones of Ethiopia, & I'd rather get that right as early in the process as possible, than have to go back & fix things. And I have already been using the spelling "semen" so far. -- llywrch 23:30, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes that is how the word is pronounced - Sämén (e often replaces ä instead of a, and "ie" very often represents the "é" sound - which is why sometimes "bet" or "house" is sometimes transliterated "biet"). Semien is how it's usually spelled (like the mountains). It just means "north" (in this case "North mountains" or "North zone"). "Semen" is misleading since it spells two different sounds with the same letter, as well as being spelled the same as semen.

Sorry for not responding on the access to the sea issue yet. I had a substantial response written up the day you made the comment, but my computer crashed, and I haven't had the time to expand on my comments.

Yom 00:08, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll confess to a weakness for spellings that I find interesting or neat in transcribing foreign words -- but I'll also confess to ignorance about Amharic and how the words should be transcribed. However, I have taken many of the transliterations of Amharic from my sources -- which is why I wrote "Misrak" vs. "Misraq": this also was how I found the word in the CSA source. I'm not looking forward to you, Codex Sinataicus, and Sendeq getting into an argument over how to spell some Ethiopian words.

But take your time in responding to my comments above: I consider that we are having a friendly discussion, not an argument that only one of us will win. -- llywrch 05:19, 4 May 2006

I doubt we'll get into an argument. I prefer that the transcription be accurate, but I realize that prevalence (when clear) is more important than correctness (which is why I've dropped the "ababa" vs. "abeba" issue). Semien is definitely preferable, though (if not only for its clarity, then also for its more common usage). The only other problem that arises is that "Simien" is much more prevalent for the spelling for the mountains and other things involving the mountains (but not for zones). I would prefer "Misraq" for its correctness, but I'm willing to leave it at "Misrak" (but not meaning west ;)) if that's what you prefer.

I'll see if I can respond to your comments before this weekend. Yom 05:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

"Addis Ababa" is more familiar to English users: the issue of how to spell that city in English was decided long before there was a Wikipedia. (I suspect it's the same with "Tekle" vs. "Takla" or other variants, due to how it is spelled in Edgar Allen Poe's short novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket -- & again in H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.)

About Misrak/Misraq: I don't have any preference. Having noticed that I spelled the Zone in Tigray "Misraqawi", I really haven't been paying attention -- & thus am doing the one thing I've been trying to avoid: be inconsistent. If you think it is better -- & no one else objects, let's go ahead & change it.

(P.S. -- Now I notice that I've spelled "Mirab" 2 different way. Bleh.) -- llywrch 18:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Template:Empires

Hi Yom. That template was one of the many little works in progress Ive started over the years that I completely forgot about. Please feel free to edit it - ideally by incorporating the formatting from a standard template sidebox such as template:numbers, etc. See Wikipedia:Templates for more info and help. Regards, -Ste|vertigo 18:38, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Request for comment on User:Futureobservatory

Hello!

Since we still have no proof that User:Futureobservatory is David Mercer (as you asked for on Talk:Tigray Region), I filed a RfC against him at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Futureobservatory. I believe that he is, actually, David Mercer, but he doesn't seem inclined to provide any proof, and I suspect it may still constitute a copyright violation if his editors have the rights to the books. Flammifer 04:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Agame

I noticed there is an article on Agame that looks like it needs work, not too many editors have worked on it yet, but I don't know enough about it so thought I'd let you know... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 17:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that today. I would put back the stub notice for now. It's barely started. I'll try to work on it some.

Yom 17:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Yemeni language prior to the advent of Islam

You said that most Yemenis spoke a south Semitic language while some spoke Arabic. I have to disagree, the current version of the Semitic Languages article suggests that Yemen (an already Arabic speaking country) was Arabized in the Islamic era. Yemen has always been an Arab country even in ancient times. Ancient Greeks refer to Yemen as "Arabia Eudemon," the Romans called Yemen "Arabia Felix." I think the burden of proof is on you. I'm quite certain most reliable sources say that Yemenis spoke Arabic from ancient times, I have yet to see a source say that Arabic replaced the languages of Yemen in the seventh century. --Inahet 18:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Yemenis spoke South Arabian/Sabaean in the west and Eastern South Semitic (predecesors of Modern South Arabian languages) in the East (and on Socotra). "Arabia" was a geographic designation (the peninsula), not the language they spoke. Yemen was called "Arabia Felix" during times when we know that they spoke Sabaean, so that designation doesn't mean that they spoke Arabic. The burden of proof is not on me, the evidence shows that they spoke Sabaean (or Eastern South Semitic), which has been recorded in writings since at least the 6th c. BC through the Islamic conquests, whereas Arabic inscriptions have only begun in the 4th & 5th c. AD (and first in Saudi Arabia, not Yemen). The burden of proof is on you.

Yom 18:17, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Gotta Say Something My Main Man...

Hey, my Ethiopian brotha, I REALLY REALLY appreciate your input into the Ancient Egyptian debate. You know why? Because YOUR people actually have a connection to Ancient Egypt, unlike most Afrocentrists, who are almost always West African descended. You know maybe Alek Wek or Jon Doe Beja should have gone to the 1981 UNESCO conference instead of Chiek Anta Diop, eh? Because hey, as far as genetics, archaelogy, and tradition (Land of Punt) goes, all roads lead to Addis Ababa.(laughs to himself as he looks at the saying parody) Get back to me. Peace. Teth22 17:02, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the wrong warning

Sorry, my bad. Give a warning to a wrong user. Sorry once more abakharev 03:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. It was an honest mistake.

Yom 03:17, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Re: Controversy over race of Ancient Egyptians

Sorry Yom, for not getting on top of this faster. I saw your note just as I was getting my behind downstairs for dinner, & I was late as it was. Any more of a delay would have gotten me in trouble with Mrs Llywrch. By the time I got back to my computer to intervene, things appeared to have settled down for the moment on this article, so protecting it would have been overkill; but both participants clearly deserve monitoring. Also, three reversions are grounds for banning an editor, not protecting an article -- but I guess you know that know.

Anyway, don't sweat too much over quickly responding to my comments above, although I look forward to reading what you have to say. I know quite well about how "Real Life" interferes with Wikipedia. But I hope you don't mind my returning to read your talk page until either you are able to write a response or something else distracts me: posts here have led me to some work that needed to be done. -- llywrch 03:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the head's up; I sprotected the page, so that those anon editors are blocked. Some people. (Sigh.) -- llywrch 05:06, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I was to late, the issue is fixed. Thanks for noticing me anyway abakharev 05:37, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Re: CSA

1. The links to CSA are broken because I was using their old URL, & not their new one. Darn: now I have to go back & update them all. Thanks for the catch; I was wondering if anyone noticed all of my work.

2. The mention of "Argobba" in Pawe special woreda was another mistake, caused by how I wrote most of these articles: a mixure of cut-n-paste & creation with a perl script, then hand-customize to fit the administrative unit. (My understanding of how to present this information improved the more articles I wrote -- which is why there are a number of small variations in the structure of these articles.) BTW, there's an even more glaring error in this article -- which I hope to fix before I leave on vacation Saturday. Can you find it?

3. When I opened this page to edit it, I received the message, "This page is 42 kilobytes long. This may be longer than is preferable". It may be time to archive part of this Talk page, Yom. It's a fiarly simple process, but if you need help, feel free to drop me a note. -- llywrch 16:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Amlak

Hi, I'm not sure everyone interprets 'Amlak as having been a plural of melek (king). It seems more usual to derive it as a participial of the verb '-m-l-k to worship. 'Amlak has its own plural, 'amalikt. Melak (angel) probably is connected with l-k to send, just as the Greek aggelos. But then, the deeper one gets into the mysteries of the Geez language the harder it is to say where the connections first came from! Also 'Amlak is not a holy name, since it applies to anything that is worshipped, whether rightly or wrongly; even a carved statue or idol is called an 'amlak. Cheers ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 22:17, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

That's more modern. '-m-l-k (to worship) comes from Amlak, and the plural was probably derived from the mel'ak (mel'a'ikt) plural. I've never heard of Amlak being used for worshipped things other than God, though... mlk was used for king in Old (pre-Aksumite) Ge'ez, though. See Munro-Hay on D'mt. The kings were called mlkn (king) and mkrb (mukarrib or priest king). Either way, Amlak still means lord (just as "God" can be used to mean masterful in English, but it's not its primary meaning). If "Lord" doesn't count as God, then I'm sure a number of those etymologies (Is anything with "rab" in it for Hebrew?) would have to be discounted.

Yom 22:22, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, amlak and amalikt are used throughout the Mes'haf Qiddus to describe anything at all that is worshipped, be it statues, whatever... Even in the two chapters where the English has the word "goddess" - 1 Kings 11, and Acts 19 - the Ethiopian version translates "goddess" as Amlak...!

ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 22:32, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Qahtan

Hi Yom, regarding Qahtan, Hadramut and basically all southern of arabia are inhabitated by Qahtani arab tribes. If you don't belive me, the following is an autobiography from Ibn Khaldun, personally!![1] في التعريف بابن خلدون:

كان غاية في النباهــة واللباقة والحزم والعزم، ولعل ذلك ما يفسّر لنــا كتابته لسيرته الذاتية بنفسه، وهو فن مستحدث سبق فيه العرب الغرب قرونا عديدة، وقد يتساءل أحد عن سرّ اهتمامنا بسيرة الرجل وحياته، وهي مدونة مرحلة بمرحلة، وحدثا بحدث، دون إغفال أو مواربة فيما بعد القسم الرابع من مجلده السابع والذي خصّصه للتعريف به وبرحلته شرقا وغربا، وجواب ذلك يكمن فيما لحق الرجل عقب وفاته من إهمال ونسيان بلغ قرونا عدّة، وهي أربعة طويلة وشاقة على أمّته وبنيها العرب المسلمين، فكيف كانت حياته وماهي أهم التقاطعات التي أثّرت عليه ؟

هـو أبـو زيــد ولي الديـن عبد الرحمن ، بن أب بكر محمد ، بن أبـي عبد الله محمد ، بن محمد ، بن الحسن ، بن محمد ، بن جابـر ، بن محمد ، بن إبراهيم ، بن عبد الرحمن ، بن خلدون ، اليمني ، الاشبيلي ، التونسي ، المالكي ، الأشعري ، ولد في غرّة رمضان 732 هـ الموافق لـ: 27 ماي 1332 م ، وتوفي في 27 رمضان 806 هـ ، الموافق لـ: 19 مارس 1406 م ، " لا أذكر من نسبي إلى خلدون غير هؤلاء العشرة ، ويغلب على الظن أنّهم أكثر ، وأنّه سقط مثلهم عددا ؛ لأنّ خلدون هذا هو الداخل إلى الأندلس ، فإن كان أول الفتح فالمدة لهذا العهد سبعمائة سنة ، فيكونون زهاء العشرين ، ثلاثة لكل مائة ، كما تقدم في أول الكتاب الأول .

ونسبنـا حضرموت، من عرب اليمن ، إلى وائــل بن حجر ، من أقيال العرب ، معروف وله صحبة . قال أبو محمد بن حزم في " كتاب الجمهرة " : وهو وائل بن حجر بن سعيد بن مسروق بن وائل بن النعمان بن ربيعة بن الحارث بن عوف بن سعيد بن عوف بن عدي بن مالك ابن شرحبيل بن الحارث بن مالك بن مرّة بن حميري بن زيد ابن الحضرمي بن عمرو بن عبد الله بن هاني ، بن عوف بن جرشم ابن عبد شمس بن زيد بن لأي بن شبت بن قدامة بن أعجب بن مالك بن لأي بن قحطان

Since you have a level-2 of arabic, I didn't bother to tranlsate it.Just notice the word bin Qahtan(بن قحطان). It would help a lot if you have faith/trust in me, and stop reverting edits I make. I am an Arab and its natrual that I know more about this stuff then you do. Thanks. jidan 13:27, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Kerma

Hello, I removed that paragraph because the information it contained was somewhat dubious. It is quite true that people had lived in the Kerma basin for thousands of years, but one can't really call the prehistoric culture Kerman. - SimonP 17:03, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

'Self' in Tigrinya

Hi Yom. I got ነብሲ from Leslau, but I see that the EPLF dictionary has ነፍሲ. I think this is a dialect thing. Leslau's book is based on Akkele Guzay dialect, which seems to differ in significant ways at least from Hamasien (Asmara). I know that some dialects have ኣፍቲ ገዛ for ኣብቲ ገዛ 'in the house' (not sure which dialects), which seems to be related to this. — MikeG (talk) 22:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, immediately after my edit I saw that nebsi does exist in some dialects. I'm guessing that nefsi is more predominant given that it's not as corrupted (p->b? or p->f->b? doesn't happen very often either way), and I think that's what's used in Tigray as well.

Yom 22:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I wondered about Tigray (I don't have any references for Tigray Tigrinya, just what I heard years ago when my Tigrayan friends were chatting (but then I knew almost nothing about the language)). — MikeG (talk) 05:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Re:Columbine

The rv was meant for the edit by User:69.40.91.215. It was basicly the same content that we had. The Gerg 05:59, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Sure thing. People keep screwing around with that article, so I can never tell. Tim Long 06:20, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi there, u gave me a response to my comments about Eritrea not being apart of the Middle east because it hasnt been arabized. But isnt the official language Arabic? and the other language, Tigrigna is similar to arabic. What do u mean by arabized?

Re:Wikipedia:Wikiproject Ethiopia

Thanks for the welcome back, Yom. I took a look at the Wikiproject page, & have two groups of comments: 1. Unless we have some clear goals, this Wikiproject will eventually run out of steam & die, like a couple of others I have been part of -- & there is a fair amount of Ethiopia-related discussion at Talk:Ethiopia, which will distract from this page. So some goals, I think this project needs to address would include:

a. Keeping naming procedures consistent (e.g., whether to include the father's name as part of the inidividual's name, making sure that well-meaning but uninformed editors don't keep rearranging names into nonsense (e.g., "Zara Yaqob" into "Jaqob, Zara")

b. A consistent method of transliterating names & words written in Ge'ez/Fidel into Latin characters. (I have some general thoughts about this, which I will be happy to share in the appropriate forum.)

c. Developing Featured articles & a list of Key articles. My selection of topics to write about has been largely hit-&-miss, & I still wonder if I am focussing on the unusual & curious rather than the important.

2. I also took a look at {{History of Ethiopia}}, & tweaked it a little. I think we should follow a slightly different division of historical periods -- but any final conclusion should follow how Ethiopian history is seen by Ethiopians. (And that is something I am very ignorant of.) But I doubt my suggestions would lead to any significant changes. -- llywrch 21:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I haven't gotten to the goals portion yet, but I agree with what you're saying. I was intending on first focusing on transliteration (have you seen Mike's proposal at his talk page? - I was thinking of something like that or a slight variant). The naming procedure wrt to transliteration will be a problem (e.g. do we keep names that are well known where they are, or change to transliterated versions?), but I don't think the father's name issue will be very difficult to resolve. The generally accepted organization is to put it first name first and last name second (see e.g. the listing of names in Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, or listing of Turkish names in encyclopedias), so I don't think that will be a problem. As to featured articles, the best way to do that would probably to have a specific, already relatively well-built up article (like Kingdom of Aksum, though that's a little less built up than an ideal example would be) designated as a collaboration for a specific period of time to get built up to FA status. I've provided a bunch of resources (and I'm collecting some more from already used ones on Wikipedia) to make collaborations easier. As to key articles, what do you define as key (and are you talking about in General or History?)? Should the list only contain 20 items, or could it be up to 50 with less essential things, like one on Dejazmatch Bulcha (the "Oromo" General at Adwa) - an important figure, but certainly not as important as having an article on the Zemene Mesafint, the "Sabaean invasion" (which, even though I believe was minimal, is central to Ethiopian history and culture), Ethiopian Resistance during Italian occupation, the Ethiopian Civil War, etc. As to the History of Ethiopia template, edit away. I'll let you know if I have any problems. That talk is better left on its talk page, though. I'm interested as to what you have to say. Have I left something out? The Ethiopian civil War actually should be on there as a subset of the Derg Era, actually... Anyway, Cheers, and welcome back again!

ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 03:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

ሰላም — Another thing I was thinking of -- I don't know whether this has been mentioned before -- is adding fidel versions of all of the place names and people's names at the beginning of each article, as is done for Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, Thai, and other languages. What do you think? At least this would not be that controversial. — MikeG (talk) 19:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

That was my intention, and what I've done where I've come across words without the Ge'ez script (see e.g the emperors, which I've added Amharic for when I was rather certain of the spelling). I don't think it's controversial at all either. I'll make a few more edits regarding the scope, projects and goals (which I had almost done before until my computer restarted spontaneously causing me to lose all my work), and then make the project live. I'll send a notice to you (Mike), Llywrch, and some others like Gyrofrog, Banyantree, Merhawie, etc.

One more thing. I was thinking that the best thing to do was to just label anything written in the Ge'ez script as "Ge'ez," with a link to the "Ge'ez alphabet," unless the term differs in the languages considered. E.g., the emperor names would all just say "Ge'ez." An article on injera, however, might have ([[Ge'ez alphabet|Ge'ez]]: እንጀራ Ənjära – [[Amharic language|Amharic]] and [[Tigrinya language|Tigrinya]]; also Tigrinya: ጣይታ t.ayta), ignoring the transliteration I used (just going by convention) for now. This is what I just did for the Tigrinya language article

ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 19:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem with adding fidel versions to appropriate articles is that unless you have the proper fonts preloaded, all that you will see is a series of question marks; not very useful -- or inviting -- to those people who come to Wikipedia wanting to teach themselves about Ethiopia. I've been thinking about a solution to this: creating a plugin for fidel. There are several plugins to the Wikimedia software that allow editors to add Egyptian hieroglyphs & latex markup (which is critically important for mathematics); I've been meaning to write a plugin based on one of these to solve the problem -- which shouldn't be that much of a challenge to create, & would allow everyone to see the proper characters. (And maybe I'll be able at last to see what Codex Sinaiticus' signature looks like. ;-) -- llywrch 21:13, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure, that'd be great. I'm surprised you still haven't downloaded GF Zemen unicode, given the number of Ethiopia-related articles you've contributed to. It would definitely be an asset, though. I don't think I could help much with that, though. Don't know much about plugins (and even less how to write one) — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 22:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I confess: I've been lazy about installing the GF Zemen font. I have my excuses, the most significant being I've been planning on updating the software on my computer for some time now. -- llywrch 23:20, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

We have an enterprising user over at the Amharic wikipedia who designed a monobook.css file that allows any user to see the fidel. This is intended to help users who have to log in at a library or some public place where they cannot download a font. You can take a look at the code, but I'm not sure if that is the same thing you are referring to as a plug in, as far as I know my computers are already able to work with hiero automatically and I never had to plug anything in for that. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 22:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

About "key articles". Take a moment & consider if you could write about only 5, 10 or 20 subjects concerning Ethiopia -- concerning geography, history, the people or culture -- what would they be? These then, would be key articles. Two Ethiopia-related articles are considered "Good Articles" at the moment; with the quality of the people we have contributing to Ethiopian articles for Wikipedia, there is no reason why we can have at least as many Featured Articles.

(P.S. -- my short list for 5 "key articles" would be Ethiopia, the Languages/People of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, Axum, & the Ethiopian Famine of the 1970s. We currently have articles on all of these.) -- llywrch 23:20, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking more of dividing the categories into a few categories (maybe History, Languages, General, Politics), with a couple key articles from each, and one key article from each category perhaps. I'm not sure I would put as much importance on the famine (I take it you mean the 1984 famine and not the 1972 Wollo one) & Haile Selassie is a pretty large article already with many contributors, but the others I agree with (Aksum could be made much better, Ethiopia's a given, and Languages/Peoples of Ethiopia is just a list).

Actually, if the goal is to get them up to FA status and to portray what is more widely known (i.e. the famine & Haile Selassie are far more known than other very important topics), then maybe they should be included.

ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 00:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Yemen

Merhaba and Welcome to WikiProject Yemen. We are happy that you joined us. If you have any questions, need help on something, or suggestions, then please don't hesitate to tell us. To identify yourself as a member of this project, you can add this template to your user page:

{{User WikiProject Yemen}}

Cheers, Jidan 03:27, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: GDRT

Good work finding that PDF copy of Munro-Hays' book. However, as you noticed, the pagation in this file do not match the pages in the printed text, so I still need to travel back to my alma mater to verify page numbers & citations. I suspect the reason for this discrepency is that the PDF omits a lot of photographs & illustrations that appear in the printed text (for example, note on page 67 of the PDF that there is a sentence describing "Illustration 10", but no picture).

As for placing "Atsbi Dera" in Eritrea, I can offer no source for this; I was writing the articles on the Axumite kings in an assembly-line fashion, & in my haste to extract the information from Munro-Hays' book before it was due at my University's library, probably wrote "Eritrea" when I saw "Ethiopia". (I tend to learn the location of most Ethiopian towns & villages by getting them wrong the first time & then going back & fixing my mistakes.)

BTW, I made a few copy edits to this article, most important being my creation of a link to Encyclopaedia Aethiopica. I haven't had the chance since you mentioned it to me to verify my suspicions, but if this is the work I think it is, then it's important enough to have an article about it on Wikipedia. (Either that, or we should start a campaign to delete some of those Pokemon stubs. ;-) -- llywrch 05:28, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

standards

Yes, because when there are multiple banners on a page, all with differet colors, it looks terribly garish. There was a discussion someplace, nd the standard was incorporated then. - UtherSRG (talk) 18:57, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

RE:Block

heh, probably is but he so far has just resorted to creating sockpuppets. If he contacts me and tries to be rational I'd shorten it but the user is just being difficult... and if it's User:Freestylefrappe as he himself claims... then it's justified as that user has been warned and even underwent an Request for Arbitration for his behaiviour. Sasquatch t|c 02:04, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Ethiopia - capital P

Hi Yom, I just wanted to inform you that you chose Wikiproject instead of the more widespread term WikiProject. If it's not too late, I do advice you to change it.Jidan 12:44, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Two Project-related things

ዮም, one other goal I've been thinking of is improving the key articles on the other-language Wikipedias (Spanish, French, German especially). I just looked at the Spanish Wikipedia article on Amharic, and it's clearly based on an old version of the English Wikipedia article. It's got lots of mistakes. Is it worth adding this to the goals? Of course it'll take volunteers willing to keep track of the key articles across languages.

You're right. Premature. There's so much else to do. — MikeG (talk) 02:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Since you and I were the only ones to comment on the length of the Tigrinya grammar page, I thought I'd just ask what you think about this. I started a short version of the grammar that emphasizes what Tigrinya has in common with other ES languages and what's different. I thought we could use something like this as a template for the other languages (as least ES) as their pages grow. It's not finished yet (needs more examples), but what do you think of this? User:MikeGasser/draft — MikeG (talk) 17:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[Tigrinya accusative] I don't know much about Ge'ez, but I checked the grammar I have handy (Tropper) and Leslau's dictionary for lä, and it seems like accusative is marked by the suffix -ä on the noun. If so, your second (Biblical) example in particular is hard to explain. In any case, it turns out, I realized, that Western Gurage uses the same prefix for direct and indirect object (yä in Chaha), so what I said about Tigrinya isn't peculiar at all within ES, and that shouldn't be on my list. — MikeG (talk) 02:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

2 Questions

Hi Yom,

I have two questions. 1)Are you an adminstrator? 2)To give out a Barnstar, do you have to be an adminstrator? Thank you. Jidan 21:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Yom, would you like to be an administrator? I would be honored to nominated you. -- llywrch 03:35, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

No problem. -- llywrch 15:14, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

No Yom, you have added thousands times more than me to ancient Yemen related articles. It will give me honor if you accept this:

Yom is awarded this Barnstar for the tremendous contributions made in regards to Ancient Yemen related articles. Jidan 13:54, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

It's an honor to accept this from you Jizan, though I must admit that I feel as though I've not added enough information to deserve this! Never fear, though. I'll be sure to keep adding to Pre-Islamic Yemeni history (check out GDRT for some relatively recently added information regarding ancient Ethio-Yemeni involvement). — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 21:15, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

No, you desrve at least this. Trust me Yom, I don't give barnstars that easly! ;-) Jidan 11:11, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Axum coinage

Thankyou for improving this article, a least there ia another persom who has interest in coinage and the area of issue. Enlil Ninlil 06:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Image:GDRTHorn.png

Nice map creation. Is there any reason this map couldn't be used for other related articles? I think it would be very helpfrul to add it to Kaleb of Axum. -- llywrch 22:54, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Sure, you could use it, but I was actually planning on expanding (i.e., change the colors, cut out the unnecessary latitude longitude lines and add some colors for different kingdoms). Go ahead and use it for other articles for now. When I have time, I'll modify the map for each of the articles it's used for.

ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 23:01, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Geez numbers

Apparently ALL of the Geez numerals are from Greek numerals. The hardest one to see is how Λ became ፴ (30) by adding a curl to the left, and μ was apparently reversed to become ፵ (40). ν added a tail to become ፶ (50). was the origin of ፺ (90) though it is a little cursive. The others should all be obvious. ፮ (6) is from the Greek stigma, a ligature of s and t.

Regards, ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 21:21, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

You're right. I thought that some had fidel sources, but http://www.geez.org/Numerals/ (where I thought I had seen it), says no. In fact, it has a very useful table showing how the Coptic forms might have influenced the Ethiopian forms as well.

ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 23:06, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

About the Eritrean Name order

Are you sure about the naming scheme for the Eritreans? The only reason I ask is in every Eritrean academic paper I have seen we follow the European tradition of the second name first and the first name second.

Questions from Eritrea talk page for Yom from Anon.

Yom, I wanted to know, what does it mean when they say that Eritrea is apart of the Arab league as an observer? Whats the difference between that and a full member of the Arab league like Somalia?

List of churches in Ethiopia (sl)

Hi, Yom. Recently I am compiling a list of churches in Ethiopia in Slovene Wikipedia (seznam cerkev v Etiopiji), and since I can't speak Amharic, I guess I'll probably need some of your assistance, and probably I'll have to lean on English names, but transcriptions of Amharic from English to Slovene is not just plain task. I do have some sources, but of course not all. And unfortunately I also do not have a dictionary of type: am <-> sl. Best regards. --xJaM 00:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: GDRT

Yes, that map looks quite nice now -- & the article has gained enough content that you might want to submit it either to Peer review or WP:GA. BTW, if you need my help with references, pleas leave a note on my Talk page: sometimes it takes me days (if not months) to notice questions or comments on different article talk pages, but I'm much better with items on my Talk page. -- llywrch 02:34, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do with Axum coinage. BTW, I have often made minor copy edits to your articles while I read them, so I hope you don't mind my doing this. -- llywrch 05:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

"Semitic" letters

the articles are about "Canaanite" letters, i.e. glyphs descended from Proto-Canaanite, not "Semitic" in general. The point is that these alphabets are practically isomorphic. While the connections with South Arabian are far less known (Middle Bronze Age alphabets). And even if we organized the article by one specific hypothesis, there would be many empty fields in cases of letters with no cognates. Phoenician is more closely related to Greek, Latin, Runes, than to South Arabic, so I don't see why we should lump Phoenician with South Arabic. dab (ᛏ) 06:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

fine, so that means we should check the wording on these articles, and say "West Semitic" or "Canaanite" in cases where there is no Southern cognate. dab (ᛏ) 06:45, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

here is my suggestion: For letters that have clear cognates in South and West Semitic, we do a comprehensive Pan-Semitic article. For letters where there is no or no certain cognate, we keep an article on the South Semitic letter separate and point to possible Western cognates. This would be similar to how I handled the Arabic letters: ﻝ for example redirects to the Canaanite article, while ﺥ has its own "Arabic letter" article. What we need first is a serious source discussing South-West cognates. I can accept about 12 Southern letters as obviously cognate to Canaanite, but there is a number of letters for which we need expert opinions. dab (ᛏ) 07:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Ethiopia

I would be glad to help. I was really thinking of improving Ethiopia related articles but failed to find members that cooperate.

I think I misunderstood what you wrote. Anyways, I will be working on an infobox (like a sidebar) in the near future. But I think we need to talk about standardization. Like, what shoud be the namespaces in the cities infobox (name, size, population, etc..). Thanks. Elfalem 05:54, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I like your idea of making sup-groups. I will try making the infoboxes as soon as possbile. But at present, I'm writing stub in the ethiopian media category. Elfalem 06:05, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I've been experimenting with a new infobox for ethiopian cities. It's located at Template:Infobox city in ethiopia. I was creating an infobox for Addis Ababa (located at User:Elfalem/ethiopian city infobox). Everything is going good except I can't find statistics such as population, density, land and water area and percentage and so on. Also, we need flags and seal of the cities. This brings me to the next point, we need a place where we can list the images and other media we need. Elfalem 19:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Demographics of Ethiopia

I just wanted to thank you for your help to make the French article Démographie de l'Éthiopie more accurate. Your help was appreciated. fargomeD 22:53, 19 June 2006 (UTC)