User talk:SimonDonnelly

Hello, Simon, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially your expansion of Phuthi language. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! — mark ✎ 14:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for Phuthi

It would be great if you could add sources for your additions to Phuthi. Thing is, because Wikipedia is only a tertiary source and doesn't report original research, we depend on secondary sources for our reliability and verifiability. More info on citing sources can be found at the cite your sources policy page. Needless to say, its not the case that your additions look like sloppy research or something (to the contrary!); it's just that we'll need to have sources cited. By the way, what kind of publication is Bourquin 1926? Is it specifically on Phuthi or is it comparative, like his 1923 'Neue Ur-Bantu Wortstamme'?

Kind regards, — mark ✎ 14:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Mark, for your kind welcome (some months back!). I've finally begun to add sources. The main source is my own doctoral work over a four-year period (1994 to 1998, based in Mpapa village, southeast of Mount Moorosi, in Lesotho), but it's as yet unpublished. The published sources are very meagre, but I've added them now. Bourquin (1927) is a set of word roots, from the standard comparative historical point of view. The roots are pre-analysed, stripped of affix morphology, so there's no way to reanalyse them. Bourquin worked in Mt Fletcher, which unfortunately is more Phuthi diaspora (like Matatiele) than the main speech communities in Lesotho (currently, at least). Mzamane (1949) is from a sort of early structuralist point of view, but it's incoherent in places, and also based on the diaspora communities in the far northern Transkei.

This very small language (demographically) is an extraordinary trove of hybrid Sotho-Nguni phonology and lexicon. It displays a wide range of novel segment-tone interactions, and two types of vowel harmony unattested elsewhere in Nguni and Sotho.

Cheers, SimonDonnelly 09:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Simon, thanks for replying and for adding sources. I think it's fine to cite your own dissertation also. In fact I just added it; please check if I did it right. Even if its unpublished as of yet, it has been produced in an academic environment; I mean, it's not like we're talking about a dubious self-published collection of fringe theories (I haven't read it of course <grin> ). — mark ✎ 14:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sotho

Hi Simon,

I've noticed that there is a disagreement about which name to use in the Sesotho/Sotho article. Maybe you could weigh in at Talk:Sesotho_language. — mark ✎ 10:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, done... Thanks, Mark. Obviously, I guess, one has to be practical, and consider what is broadly in use. But I propose the line of reasoning on the Talk page. Cheers, — NguniTraveller 23:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your replies. By the way, you might want to create a user page to get rid of the alarming red link in your signature. Best, — mark ✎ 21:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Mark. So, I've de-redlinked. I guess I've said what seems relevant to the prefixful/prefixless discussion for (South African) Bantu languages. I don't know how firm concrete decisions are made in the Wikiworld. I guess the consistency of general prefixlessnes in Bantu language appellation strikes me as sensible. I leave it to you and any who may be involved in such formatting and structuring decisions. In the future, I'll try to focus only on adding contentful stuff to pages that I know something about. Cheers, — NguniTraveller 00:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Phuthi alphabet

Excuse me, can you give me the entire Phuthi alphabet? Regards, --Blake3522 09:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]