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Hey dude, no worries about changing the spelling, I have a suspicion that it may be an Aboriginal word and as such the spelling probably varies. If you google for Quongdong you will find entries with this spelling though granted not that many. Perhaps an alternative spelling option could be a go. I did eat some flesh and the nut on a bushtucker trip but couldn't find out much about them since - maybe because of the way I was spelling it?. Cheers. SeanMack 07:19, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Hi. Sorry if I came across as hostile with the Papua page. My reasoning is that while there are certainly people who consider using "Papua" in this way to be incorrect, there are also those who would think otherwise. Regardless of which side is right, Wikipedia's NPOV policy means that we shouldn't take sides — it isn't our role to be arbiters of what's "correct" or not, particularly since the large numbers of Wikipedians means that we often can't agree ourselves. If we take sides, the page will always be flipping backwards and forwards as people argue over it — much better to have a neutral statement which sticks to the agreed facts. By removing the "(incorrectly)" comment, I believe the NPOV policy is upheld — we are not commenting one way or the other on whether the usage is correct or not, and people can make up their own minds. (If you think it appropriate to discuss the disputed use in detail, that would be fine — add a note that "some people consider this incorrect, arguing that...", or suchlike. That would make sure people knew the use is disputed, without breaking the policy about taking sides.) Again, sorry if I seemed hostile — I should have explained my reasoning in the edit summary. -- Vardion 09:00, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, fair enough. I'll accept that you're right, though I still think it's incorrect to refer to the island as 'Papua' and that it's not a matter of opinion, this being the internationally accepted name for the island for centuries. I suspect that 'Papua' might be the name used by Indonesians as most of the links you give are about that side of the island. And I would argue that the authors of those articles simply haven't checked their facts and would more than likely accept that they got the name wrong. Anyway, how about if I change the line on the disambig page to:
'Sometimes used as a name for the island of New Guinea (the official name).'
or...
'Sometimes used as to refer to the island of New Guinea (the official name).'
BTW, thanks for those links, I think I bumped into the author of the Diacritica article when he was in Vanimo so it was interesting to read it. Dougg 00:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, my understanding is that 'New Guinea' has been the official name for over 400 years (here's the first known map showing 'Nova Guinea'), and has been universally accepted as such by all authorities, atlases, geographical names bodies etc. Regards regulation, my understanding is that where nations share an island they work together to establish the official name which is then ratified by the UNCSGN, but in all such cases of which I'm aware (e.g. Hispaniola, Borneo, Timor, Cyprus, Ireland...can't think of any others) the island in question has had its name for centuries, so there is no such regulation happening. I really don't think there's any question that the official name of the island is 'New Guinea'. While anyone can call the island by any name they want to, I think that only if some name is being used by a fair number of commentators is it reasonable to put it in Wikipedia. I'm willing to accept that this is the case with 'Papua' used for 'New Guinea'. But I think it's also reasonable (even obligatory) in such cases to highlight the official name. Dougg 23:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Well sorry for being another person picking up on this but, it seems against Wiki standards to be adding personal comment on alternate names. For example US, Australia, MSG, and no doubt tens of thousands of other 'unofficial' names are not cited as 'unofficial' or in any other way listed as a 'lesser' name.
So that's the first reason there is no need for any comment about it being 'unofficial', 'improper', 'tainted', 'lesser', or otherwise not fitting some community's preferred usage of a alternate name.
The Second reason is that IF someone started improssing their community's viewpoint on word usage, by what measure could that be limited? Would political groups be entitled to revert each other on a hourly basis, would Geological and Historical groups be battling over place names, would you have Specialist groups opposing the general community? By allowing someone to claim one word usage is politically 'correct' and the other is 'not' is to turn Wikipedia into a political propaganda box instead of being a neutral reporter. 211.30.222.139 01:58, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Dougg,
I have no basis for saying any spelling is "standard" - and don't believe there is a standard. The first sentence in the article itself states that "Noongar" is the preferred spelling in the south of the state. I was just trying to be consistent - and failing at that I see :) - at the time I had the =Culture= section open for editing to sort out a similar issue related to the spelling of "Wagyl". In hindsight I should have returned to finish the job - which I'll do now. Notwithstanding my omissions, the Noongar article is spelt as such and "Nyoongar" and "Nyungar" both redirects, so it seems reasonable to be consistent throughout. Special:Whatlinkshere/Noongar indicates that "Noongar" is the most common useage in Wikipedia. -- Ian ≡ talk 13:09, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for that, I thought you were suggesting that 'Noongar' is the standard. You're correct that there is no one standard, athough I personally would prefer to see 'Nyungar' used in the article as it better reflects the speech of the best living speakers such as Len's father, Fred Collard (actually, 'Nhunga' would be a closer approximation to the speech of speakers from a couple of generations ago, but I don't think anyone would like it.) The main dialect difference was between 'nyunga' and 'nyungara', but I don't think anyone says the latter anymore. Anyway as you say, it's good to be consistent. I might just add something to the language section discussing the various spellings of the word. cheers, Dougg 02:08, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually I suspect both 'conflate' and 'distinguish' are wrong, though 'conflate' is also insulting, though I doubt you were aware of the history involved.
The term 'Austronesian' is a super-set originally referring to anything south of the equator, though in recent times referring to anything from Indonesia to Melanesia to Polynesia. Of course the original French definition and maps of Melanesia included the Australian mainland, a usage which I suspect fell out of usage by the start of the twentieth century due to Australian sensitivity about being viewed as an island and in more recent times indigenous Australian sensitivity about being different from Torres Strait Islanders.
The political manipulation & use of the term 'Austronesia' came into affect since the 1930s by which time Standard Oil executives had extensive desires to both discredit the Dutch administration and prevent the region from being divided into multiple independent States which would have made life difficult for other Rockefeller related corporations such as Exxon, ConcoPhilips, Freeport Sulphur, etc. to gain and keep their mine licenses. By the end of WW-ii the Ford Foundation joined the Rockefeller in this interest, though for different reasons, the Rockefeller group were motivated by personal profit, whereas the Ford Foundation viewed replacing the Dutch East Indies with a US corporate model was an ideal means to improve the U.S. quality of life. Both presented the corporatisation of the region as the only means to fund the Marshall plan for Europe with the resources of 'Asia' as it was stated at Ford functions in 1949.
To support the Javanese claims to Western Papua, university studies were presented to prove that Papua was ecologically, geographically, and historically part of Asia and not Melanesian. To support these claims a racial theory was proposed, based mostly upon linguistics that claimed the indigenous people of West Papua were not Melanesian but Asian Austronesians, and were the descendents of a dark skinned Malay population. Funny enough the US universities which supported these theories through the 1950s became silent once West Papua's administration had been transfered to Indonesia.
The term Melanesian is most extensively used to specifically distinguish people from the Asian and Polynesian peoples and cultures. There has also been a growing political movement for a Melanesian confederation of States. 211.30.95.182 14:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps as a linguistics expert you could insert a few sentences of discussion of the terms Austronesian versus non-Austronesian and Melanesian versus Papuan, which I understand to be parallel synonymous usages, without any political or other baggage, apart from their unfortunate ambiguity. Masalai 07:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree that 'non-Austronesian' is synonymous with 'Papuan' (actually I prefer the latter term). My disagreement with the parallel is because 'Melanesian' does not refer to a single group, but rather originated as a cover term for the dark-skinned people of the south-western Pacific, and continues to be used to refer to that region and its people, and so includes Papuans and Austronesians. I can see however that an anthropologist might use 'melanesian' when talking about Austronesians to contrast those from that region with Polynesians and Micronesians, but I imagine it would be clear from the context? Anyway, if you have examples of that usage I agree that it would be a good idea to add mention of it to the article. Dougg 06:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
You're welcome. I'm currently working on putting Diary of Ten Years on Wikisource; I'm 29% finished. I doubt I'll have the energy to put A Descriptive Vocabulary online too. If you're interested in taking this on, I can provide error-ridden OCR text. No pressure - source transcription is certainly not everybody's cup of tea. Snottygobble | Talk 08:56, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
Answer on my own talk page. Caesarion 11:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi Dougg,
Would you mind double-checking my IPA rendering of the pronunciation of "Yagan". At the head of the article I have rendered it as 'jæɪ gn, and later in the article I have written:
If you disagree with this, please feel free to correct it.
Drew (Snottygobble) | Talk 04:58, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I thought this might be of interest http://www.dcita.gov.au/indig/maintenance_indigenous_languages/publications
The National Indigenous Languages (NILS) Survey Report (2005) (PDF format, size 2.6 MB) -- Paul foord 11:17, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi Doug, you might be able to add something to the Bill Stanner stub. Paul foord 14:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi Doug
My source of information on the traditional owners of the site came from [2]. I have no problem with you correcting any error that I might have transferred from the Alice Springs News article to the article. Tiles 08:20, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for the article pointer. I note that it does actually say, correctly, that the Devil's Marbles is on Kaytetye country. Dougg 04:51, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi, my mistake. Well spotted. Tiles 05:54, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi Dougg,
There's a proposal under discussion at Talk:Dreamtime (mythology) to move the article to Tjukurpa. I'd appreciate your input in the debate in general, but specifically I'd like your response to the question whether the word "Tjukurpa" is shared by many indigenous dialects or is unique to one dialect.
Snottygobble 03:07, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
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Dougg, Added the section on "Homeland" to the Austronesian languages page. Thanks kicking in your comment.
Ling.Nut 02:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi, my edit[3] to the Indigenous Australians article was improperly labeled, it was late, I ment to mark it as 'removing peacock words'. Weasel words is not POV, it as a Wikipedia Guide to actually reduce POV :) The new wikilink is fine, but the other words were not needed (see the peacock guide for more information). And sorry for the all the confusion! -Trjn 07:49, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
There is a discussion about whether Australian Aborigines, practised agriculture pre white settlement on an AFD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aboriginal and European agricultural practices in Australia. Is there any linguistic evidence relevant to this? Paul foord 09:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
The anon who's editing these areas seems not to have adult Western thought processes. See THIS for a sixteenth-century reference to "Papua" as a name for "New Guinea" (scroll down to the table under History). PNG is a remote and mysterious place to me, but I'm interested in learning more about the geography and WWII naval history of Oro Bay. Do you happen to know where I might find something? (Google and my local library sources don't do the job. I've communicated with a very nice guy from the University of PNG, but there are some language problems.) Lou Sander 01:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi Dougg, I'm not too sure how to send messages, but here goes. I created a separate Pintupi people page and moved that last par there, as it wasn't about the language, but the people. Most Indigenous pages appear to have both a people and a language page. Cheers
Hi Dougg, thanks for your responses at the above's talk page. I've made changes largely as suggested, including switching to calling her "Makinti" throughout the article. Since you seem to be across the linguistics a bit, here's one you might like to ponder: Rosella Namok is from Lockhart River in far north Queensland. i have a biography of her that in one place refers to her as "Rosella" and in another as "Namok", while the McCulloch Encyclopedia nicely sidesteps the issue by not using her name again after spelling it out in full in the first line! Any thoughts? Cheers. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi Dougg, I'm working on some Indigenous artist bios. Can you advise me on:
All help gratefully appreciated. hamiltonstone (talk) 07:05, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
As you requested (3 Feb) I've added a reference to support my statement at Pitjantjatjara people that loss of one of two identical adjacent syllables (ie haplology) occurs within the language name 'Pitjantjatjara'. It likewise occurs in 'Yankunytjatjara' so I might add the comment there as well. Within Pitjantjatjara (and indeed all Western Desert Language varieties) this *is* pronouncing it properly. cheers Dougg (talk) 05:28, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Hi Dougg, I was just reading through the talk page at Noongar people and I noticed that you created an article on Wilfrid Douglas. After looking it over, I noticed that the references are not Wikified; it also seems to be a mix of a bibliography and a works cited sheet. Would you be interested in fixing it? I cannot as I cannot differentiate between what is being used as a reference and is listed only because it was written by him. Thanks. Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:15, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
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