User talk:Lambiam/Archive 8

Archives

Archive 1: January 2006 – March 2006 Archive 2: April 2006 – June 2006 Archive 3: July 2006 – September 2006 Archive 4: October 2006 – December 2006 Archive 5: January 2007 – March 2007 Archive 6: April 2007 – June 2007 Archive 7: July 2007 – September 2007 Archive 8: October 2007 – December 2007 Archive 9: January 2008 – March 2008 Archive 10: April 2008 – June 2008 Archive 11: July 2008 – September 2008 Archive 12: October 2008 – December 2008 Archive 13: January 2009 – December 2009 Archive 14: January 2010 – June 2010 Archive 15: July 2010 – December 2010 Archive 16: January 2011 – March 2011 Archive 17: April 2011 – June 2011 Archive 18: July 2011 – September 2011 Archive 19: October 2011 – December 2011 Archive 20: January 2012 – June 2012 Archive 21: July 2012 – December 2012 Archive 22: January 2013 – December 2015 Archive 23: January 2016 – December 2017 Archive 24: January 2018 – December 2019 Archive 25: January 2020 – December 2021

Copyvio?

I responded on my talk page. Thanks for your concern.Dchall1 15:02, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Dyoh

Lambiam, I am trying to improve the template. "If you don't like it, just don't use it" doesn't apply. This template is clearly trying to look like an official thing. If you think I should just don't use the template if I don't like it, then add your signature to it and the signatures of whoever agree with it. Otherwise, it will have to be a neutral, referenced, verifiable template without any personal opinion presented as fact. I am also not disrupting Wikipedia in order to make a point. All my changes were valid. If you don't have a reference, don't write it. If not all people agree with you, make it clear. If it is the guideline that doesn't allow people to do others' homework, we must mention the guideline, and I think we should also mention how one can change the guideline, should they disagree with it. We should also make it clear that it is not a policy, it's merely a guideline. I don't think mentioning a guideline that I already know about (WP:POINT) is a good way to convince me not to do something. It looks as if you were making a threat that I may be blocked for that. I don't want to start a revert war, but the template is wrong. If the template remains as it is, then I'll just make another template with the correct information and place this new template on every thread where someone placed the other one. I think this would be a terrible solution, because it would mean that we couldn't reach a consensus on a good way to write the template. a.z. 17:35, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protect your talk page?

Lambiam, regarding the ANI thread, I think the best we can do at this point is to semiprotect your user talk page. Do you want that?--chaser - t 06:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't see that as too much of a problem, but more a symptom of a problem. My primary aim in bringing the issue to your collective attention was to get a workable situation on the Turkic peoples page.  --Lambiam 11:01, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Moving The Fall

Hi, saw you moved The Fall. This move had already been discussed in depth, and the discussion had been archived. Did you read the discussion before moving the page? In any case, you haven't moved the archive pages, so now the archive links are red. Thanks sparkl_!sm ^talk 08:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Formula

HI. I don't want to rub anyone up the wrong way, but can you deny that the correct Latin plural of the Latin word formula is formulae? Like I said to Doctormatt, I think Wikipedia should encourage correct grammar and spelling, whether or not it is the more used form of the word. Here is how first declensions nouns, of which formula is one, decline in Latin (formula is actually in the list). Please note that formulas does not appear; many people making a mistake does not make that mistake correct. Would you be happy with radiuses, axises, matrixes etc.? asyndeton 18:43, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

It occurs to me now that I may have come on a little strong and I'm sorry if I come across that way; I'm not trying offend you or be rude, I just feel strongly about this issue. asyndeton 18:45, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

re

öncelikle göstermiş olduğun nezaket için teşekkürler. bende senin gibi wikinin gelişmesi için elimden geleni yapıyorum. sana sorum Pan-Turkic Movement ile Grey Wolfes kısmının aynı segmentte gösterilmesi. sence böyle daha güzel olmazmı? mesajını IP e yollayabilirsin. saygılar--88.233.178.57 23:01, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Turkish people

Please take a look at this: [1] and comment on it. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.83.129.97 (talk) 22:56, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Please, no personal attacks

You may not agree with my edits, but to call them "vandalism" as you did in the summary of this edit can be seen as a personal attack, which is not allowed under the Wikipedia policies.  --Lambiam 16:32, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Ne yapmaya çalıştığını açıkça ortada; Türkler hakkında yabancılara yalan yanlış bilgiler (doğrularla harmanlayarak) sunuyorsun, bunu da kasten ve bilerek yapıyorsun. Ben sana kişisel saldırıyı durup dururken yapmam, sen Türkler hakkında böyle yalan yanlış şeyler yazarsan olacağı budur. Birşeyi zorla knıtmış gibi sunmaya çalışıyorsun, makaleleri okuyan da Türkiye'de hiç Türk yok zannedecek. Böyle devam edersen bende ırkçı duygular uyandıracaksın, ki, ırkçılığı hiç sevmam. Ben de sizin kakkınızda seninin yaptığın gibi şeyler yaparsam bakalım tepkin ne olacak. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ilhanli (talk • contribs) 17:56, October 18, 2007 (UTC) – Please sign your posts!

Talk:Angular diameter

I noticed that in October 2006 you updated the formula for Angular diameter. I have noticed that at Talk:Angular diameter someone has mentioned that the correct formula should be theta = 2arcsin(d/2D). Any thoughts? Kheider 20:05, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Oops. My mistake. I think it is correct. I was on a friends old computer and main article was not displaying properly. Kheider 20:17, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Lambiam: Thank you for your clean-up. Every bit helps. -- Kheider 19:50, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Italian Progressive

Cross-posted in response to what you wrote on my talk page: It's not. "We are reading" (Sto leggendo) is present progressive, "We have been reading" is present perfect progressive (No Italian equivalent). The perfect aspect (which includes some conjugation of "to be" and "to have") does not exist in Italian; "have been reading" is not equivalent to "were reading" in English. "We have been reading" has a different connotative meaning than "We were reading," which is the difference between present perfect progressive and past progressive, the latter of which can be expressed in Italian, but not the former. I hope that clears it up, because foreign grammar can be a dicey issue. - Sestet 22:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

"Sto leggendo" and "Io leggo" mean exactly the same thing in Italian, but they are translated into English differently, because the progressive has different connotations in English than it does in Italian. The former is translated as "I am reading," and the latter as "I read," but to an Italian, there is no difference. The standard present can express progressive actions, which is not true in English.

You said: "Some Italian sentence that, depending on the context, can mean both "We are reading" and "We have been reading"., but then assume no such sentence exists. Actually, many such sentences exist! Every Italian sentence written in the present tense and the present progressive tense (as with the past and past progressive tenses) can, depending upon context, be most appropriately translated into English as "I read" (present) "I am reading" (present progressive) or "I have been reading" (present perfect progressive). "Io leggo" can mean ALL THREE of those things; "Sto leggendo" can mean all of these things too. Not only does Italian not differentiate between progressive and perfect progressive as I said, it does not really differentiate between past progressive and past, nor from present progressive and present. I hope that clears it up. - Sestet 05:28, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Categories by Erdos numbers

User:Mikkalai/By Erdos contains a very raw list made from remnants of categories and the log of the bot which implemented the deletion you opposed. Please join the discusion here to decide how to proceded. A clandestinely proud Erdos-Number-3-wikipedian `'Míkka 16:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of the Erdos Number categories

Recently, as you know, the categories related to Erdos Number were deleted. There are discussions and debates across several article talk pages (e.g. the Mathematics WikiProject Talk page. I've formally requested a deletion review towards overturning the deletion, at this deletion review log item. Pete St.John 21:22, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Mathematics

Dear Lambiam*: Concerning Talk:Mathematics#Disambiguation text at top of article: Edit conflict, you raise points there that I believe have been worth further discussion. And the Talk p. is the place to discuss them. Despite the apparent un-resolution of the Math(s) section that leads into "Mathematics#Disambiguation text...", the Disambig question is distinct, though not necessarily dichotomous from it. I wrote a similar note to the other discussant. (Personal aside: This has not been a pleasant experience for me. C'est la vie.) Looking ahead, if there is no agreement, WP:RfC might be one way to proceed. I welcome your thoughts. If you'd wish ro post this or your own separate response on Talk:Mathematics, that would be fine too. Otherwise, I'll watch for your response wherever. My thanks. * With a Talk section like the preceding, I know I could be in trouble. --Thomasmeeks 14:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Turkish people

Hi, Lambiam. I just want you to note that in the Turkish phenotypes and diversity section, my aim is to provide the sourced information. For this reason, i wanted somebody who is an expert in genetics to make a compilation but just from the cited references. That's why i wrote in the edit summary as "removed the quotation until somebody provides the details (direct quotations from the cited references) in the talk/discussion pages". In that case, the quotation is not a direct one but a misrepresentation of the cited article by the banned User:Tajik who edits under ips. That quotation were starting with a sentence as "most historians believe...", this is nothing but pov. That's why i removed them all along with the others (amazon staff) and called for direct quotations from the cited references. I read the articles but i'm not an expert on genetics, i do not know how they get the data and how they analyze the data. The error analysis of the data is also needed in order to make a generalization. All these should also be compared with other research results. I do not find it useful to make generalizations in such cases. To sum up, if you're an expert on this field and make such a collection of quotations and present them as "according to x, ... and according to x, ..." but also stating that "the research is going on", that's ok for me. However, i may object if somebody try to make some general conclusions from a single report with a large variance. Regards. E104421 16:35, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

• Hi, Lambiam. Thanks for your comment. I read the article and all the comments in the talk/discussion pages again. Yes, you're quite right in summarizing the main point of the article, but the certainity of the results as i pointed out above is not certain. That's my point. In my opinion, it's impossible to generalize a single research unless it's accepted by mainstream researches. Of course, you may state that a research result holds its validity unless it's falsified. In that case, i would have no objection, of course, since i'm not an expert on genetics but making a statement as "most historians believe that ... " is not a scientific approach. That's my objection. That's why i totally support the direct quations from the cited references as i already stated above. Best. E104421 22:48, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Sylvain Tristan

I think you may have "outed" an editor in that last edit. I think the article should fail on its own merits, regardless of whether the author wrote non-notable books with a non-notable publisher. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:55, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Jamaica

I suppose you'll tell me Jamaica is LATIN TOO. Tell you want since I'm on my way to both places I'll ask the people what they think. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Subman758 (talk • contribs) 06:56, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

RfA for Geometry Guy

I note your comment. Please can you tell me which policy prohibits the addition of a vote to an RfA that is still open, even if it has been open for more than 7 days. Thanks.--Bedivere (talk) 17:40, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Do I know you?

"One of the most vociferous proponents for deletion in the debate, SparsityProblem, is a geek if there ever was one, the kind of person who thinks that labelling a cat lying on its back "flip concatMap" and things like that are fun." -- I'm curious how you figured this out. Do I know you from somewhere, or do you just have unusually good Internet-stalking skills? SparsityProblem (talk) 00:15, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Surgical excision or Down the Memory Tube?

Congratulations, Winston Smith. After a couple months of criticism and edits you have excised the third method and all book references completely in Greatest common divisor of two polynomials. Larry R. Holmgren (talk) 01:38, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

366 deletion

Is that you who deleted my articles? If so you didn't respect the wish of at least 3 people who wanted these articles to be merged in one. Wiki may not be a democracy, but it's not a dictatorship either. There are some basic rules of respect to the opinions expressed in the discussion. --Snicoulaud (talk) 06:29, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Lambiam had nothing to do with the deletion. It was the uninvolved closing admin who deleted the articles. --Cronholm¹⁴⁴ 06:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

All right, my apologies. Still, I don't know how you can know admin has deleted it (couldn't personally find any record anywhere of the deletion), but I trust you. And still, I regret the decision of the deleter - I am not Butler, and I believe his now 8-year-old amazing theory deserves at least an article for the hypothesis that, again, has been covered by renowned British and French media. Who can possibly have any vested interest in deleting such a (quite well-known, in Britain at least) hypothesis? Maybe not as famous as UFO's, but still.--Snicoulaud (talk) 18:26, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

You can check this at Special:Log/delete, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Salt_Lines.  --Lambiam 18:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot.--Snicoulaud (talk) 20:10, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Re:Single / double quotation marks

Hi, sorry about that, you can go ahead and add them back. Singles are just mainly used for quotes within quotes, though. Just don't call them "double" and "single" quotes, but double and single quotes. Reywas92^Talk 14:19, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Niobe

Good correction on Niobe! --Wetman 10:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

constant

Hi Lambiam,

You seem to know about physical constants. Thanks for the few edits you made on the article constant. Could you give me a hand expanding part "1.3 specific to the physical sciences" or give me a few ideas. Thanks, Randomblue 15:05, 4 December 2007 (UTC).

Thanks for replying so early. I would like to address two of your concerns:

• "As I see it, the main commonality between the mathematical constants and the physical constants is that both concepts are designated by terms containing the word "constant". Putting this material together in one article, is like having an article Rock with substantive sections on disparate concepts like Christian rock and Metamorphic rock."

=> Yes and no. I have tried my best to link both subjects. For example, the very first part of the article deals with constants apparent in both mathematics and physics! Also, topics like "representing constants" and "aesthetics behind constants", though still under construction, is a major way of dealing with both types at once.

• "which in just 3 weeks blew up by a factor of 7"

=> Is that a problem? The article I started with was very poor. I think one should be happy about such things... Randomblue 15:50, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Other concerns:

• "Numerical constants are fixed numbers or values": are there any numbers or values that are not fixed?

=>Sure, "today's temperature" is not a fixed value. "the volume of a sphere" is a number but not all spheres have the same volume. You may argue that these are functions not numbers or values. But if you're not happy with the wording, you may consider finding a better one.

• "When specified, they represent mathematical or physical invariants": anyone care to reveal what the invariant is represented by the Euler-Mascheroni constant?

=>Well, they are invariant in the sense that they appear so recurrently in mathematical formulas. And analyzing the formulas will certainly reveal a few deeper invariants.

• "When unspecified, constants indicate classes of functions all equal up to a constant": what is that supposed to mean? In the problem statement: "What is the volume of a cone of height h whose base has an area A?", what is the class of functions indicated by h?

=>I am talking about similarity and conjugation here. Get my point? (ditto here, change the wording adequately)

• "Emphasis will be given to those that appear both in mathematics and science": Like which ones? 0 (number)? The appearance of mathematical constants in physical formulas simply reflects the use of mathematical models such as Euclidean space.

=> Come on, read the first part of the article. But you have indeed raised a trivial point. Don't you think this idea should be expanded in such an article as constant?

• "the most elementary maths articles are the worst"

Trivial point again. These articles require taking things into perspective (which I don't claim I know how to do). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Randomblue (talk • contribs) 16:15, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your constructive comment! Randomblue 17:37, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Megullia Dotata

Your input would be appreciated on the article Megullia Dotata. --Doug ^talk 23:33, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Haiti

There seems to be a battle of statistics going on. A rather languid battle to be sure, spread over a day or so, but I don't know enough to interject. I would generally trust your numbers over those from an IP, but thought that I am best just to let you know there has been another reversion. Is either of you sourcing the numbers? There is nothing on the talk page I can find to help the either. Bielle (talk) 03:17, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Apologies if I appear to be pestering you, but asking questions is the fastest way to learn. Why would you revert the coding under Demographics so the you have a red-linked series of countries as a single entry, rather than the individual countries, most of whose links, I think, would be blue? I am sure I am missing something essential here and would appreciate any help you can give to lead me out of the dark. Bielle (talk) 19:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I hope you got out before they locked the door. I have made a pass at better linking. There is not a lot of consistency in articles about countries, is there? If you have time to look over the changes and see if there could be more specific links, I would be grateful. Bielle (talk) 20:30, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Niobe

Yes, it was unintentional - your changes have been restored. Sorry! --Doug ^talk 10:27, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

P = NP

I know that you have many a stars, but you clearly are not an expert in theoretical Computer Science. So, it was rather drastic claiming my writeup to be "wrong" and "irrelevant". It is much better than what is written currently. Of course, giving the "lock" analogy is not formal enough, as it is a physical and analog process, but it drives home the point very well.

Try explaining to someone an exponential time hard problem !!

Good luck with that. In fact I am sure, you wouldn't even know a single EXP-time hard problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ustadny (talk • contribs) 17:38, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The rigorous proof of minimum 5000 tries to solve it with probability 0.5 is correct. It also shows the importance of proofs vs claims of P=NP or P /=NP.

Anyway, I have moved my writeup to the Talk section, and hopefully there will be debate on it. The current preview writeup is really really bad. Only mathematicians or engineers might understand it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ustadny (talk • contribs) 18:09, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Divergent infinite products

FWIW, in complex analysis an infinite product is sometimes said to diverge if the sequence of partial products has the limit 0. This is almost identical to the idea that a sum is said to diverge if the sequence of partial sums has limit infinity. In both cases the type of divergence is fairly minor, but calling it convergent allows for many mistakes that some authors wish to avoid completely, and others are bold enough to handle as they come. The major difficulty is that infinite products are almost equivalent to infinite sums using log and exp, but 0 is a singularity for log, and it is not hard to get on the wrong branch during conversions from products that diverge to 0 and sums that diverge to infinity. Page 164 of Conway's Complex I has such a discussion, though he does not go so far as to say the product diverges. Page 191 of Ahlfors does go so far (though he allows finitely many zero terms, since finitely many infinities in a sum is no big deal). Page 298-299 of green Rudin only indicates that uniform convergence follows from being able to use the log/sum trick, and gives an idea of what it means for a product to converge absolutely: |prod(1+un)-1| <= prod(1 + |un|)-1, and the latter converges to a finite number iff Sum |un| converges to a finite number. The goal in all of these is the Weierstrass factorization theorem where the product is made from entire functions with prescribed zeros, and the goal is to have the infinite product have precisely those zeros.

At any rate, I thought you might find the trivia interesting, though not particular relevant to the refdesk conversation. When reading your posts a second time, it might even be that you were trying to make precisely this point (you may have only been applying "convergent" to the partial products and using "defined" to avoid saying the product converged while still saying it existed). If so, I'm glad the world is filled with people who care about infinite products :) JackSchmidt (talk) 19:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Response to your comments

Your comments are absolutely ridiculous. When I made a mistake, I apologized. I actually did it here before on Wikipedia. In this case, you are just absolutely wrong on the issue.

--CBKAtTopsails (talk) 04:16, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

"With this kind of argument the following is correct English:

A positive integer n is composite if there exists a positive integer d, other than 1 or n itself, which evenly divides n without leaving a remainder. The number d is called the divisor of n.

Here is the argument. Step 1. You are given a number n. Step 2. You look for a decomposition into two or more factors greater than 1. Let's say you found one and we call this multiset of factors F. Step 3. You take the smallest factor of F. Step 4. You take a deep breath. Step 5. You call this factor that you found "the" divisor. Step 6. You have a formal definition for composite.

But, curiously enough, it is nevertheless not good English in this situation. It would imply that 2 is the unique divisor of 6. You can counter this with the argument why should one want to pick a larger factor like 3 when 2 will do to establish that 6 is composite. Well, why not.  --Lambiam 21:58, 16 December 2007 (UTC)"

This nonsense is just a distortion of my position.

--CBKAtTopsails (talk) 02:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

If you deny you are making distortion of the facts, you need to explain (step for step) how this nonsense has any thing to do with what I said on the formal definition of NP. You've got to stop doing this. Otherwise, everybody here on Wikipedia can do the same thing throwing mud at each other without having to prove what they are saying.

--CBKAtTopsails (talk) 16:27, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Re: Refimprove Fermat's

The beginning appears to be entirely sourced. Unless it's sourced in one of the noes in the "references" section...? The Diophantine notes at the end are also non verifiable. Also, it seems to me that the article lacks inline citations. Temperal^{talk and matrix?} 20:55, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Strive

FYI: strive – strove – striven (next to regular strive – strived – strived).

Thanks for the heads up Lambian. Unfortunately I really don't remember which article this was in or what the context was... -- Saukkomies 20:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Curiously, your original posting is timestamped "12:21, 18 December, 2007 (UTC)" but shows up in the page history at 17:23, December 18, 2007 (UTC).

Maybe you could help me with this. I have been having all kinds of wretched problems trying to gte the dang Username Signature thing to work right. I might have screwed things up in my Preferences or something - although I went back and reset them, but it still acts screwy. If I either click on the Sign Your Username with the 4 tildas in the editor tool bar, or manually enter the 4 tildas on my own, it kicks me into a page where I'm still in editor mode, except now there are two editor frames opened and it tells me I have to copy and paste from one to the other. It's a HUGE HASSLE to do this. So instead I just manually enter my own timestamp for whatever time it says on my computer, which is my local time. Is there some way to get this all to work right? -- Saukkomies 09:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

RD snafu FYI

huh, [2], [3], &c. No charge :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:54, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

ln can be defined as the integral of the reciprocal function

Does that section actually explain why ${\frac {d}{dx}}\ln(x)={\frac {1}{x}}.$ --Seans Potato Business 23:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)?

The section states that the function ln can be defined as the integral of the reciprocal function. If you indeed define it that way, then by the fundamental theorem of calculus d/dx ln(x) = 1/x is an immediate consequence.  --Lambiam 02:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Is it fair to state that the function ln can be defined as the integral of the reciprocal function? Can't it be mathematically demonstrated? It's not obvious to me... :/ --Seans Potato Business 19:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I copied this to your talkpage, figuring that no-one would see my reply otherwise. Thanks. --Seans Potato Business 19:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

re:

I removed it because I followed that users advice and I have used his sources to improve the article.

I now want to nominate it for Good article status. Can you please help me with this? KabuliTajik (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 07:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

factors through

It's not at all major, but I was very happy to see that your change in exact category to include the above link actually works. I had tried doing this a long time ago, when I first put mathematical jargon into its present form, and I remember it not working. It's quite a thrill to be able to link to the precise jargon I use. Ryan Reich (talk) 15:24, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Etymology of Uyghur

You added the following text:

The word [Uyghur] means "Confederation of Nine Tribes", and is synonymous with the name Tokuz-Oguz.

Are you sure this is a correct rendering of the cited source by Lev Nikolaevich Gumilov? Somehow this doesn't make sense. Tokuz means "nine", and Oguz means of course the same as Oghuz, whatever that may mean. You appear to be saying that "uy" and "ghur" mean "nine" and "tribe", in some order. What language is that supposed to be? What would make more sense is something like "The Uyghar are equated [by whom?] with the Tokuz-Oghuz, which means Nine Tribes".  --Lambiam 20:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Lambiam, thank you for making your comment. I am quite sure about rendering of the citation from Gumilev, and the reference provided allows to verify it. The reason for expanded phrasing that I included is that Gumilev gives a semantic equivalent, without identifying the language or providing a detailed linguistical research (he is not a linguist). His phrasing provides semantical equivalent, conveying the meaning of the term. The part "uz/ur" stands for "people, man, men" in two dialectal branches, -s branch vs. -r branch, and within each branch the s/r substitution is stable and consistent. That -s in our (and our sources') rendering is quite conditional, i.e. it must have been akin to voiced and voiceless interdental th, and depending on the ear of the listner, it was rendered s, z, d, t, creating a slew of testimonies like uz, ud, maybe Chinese -t. From what Gumilev is saying, the ui part must be equivalent to 9, and it would be nice if it was a direct equivalent, but it may also be indirect, via an intermediate equivalent like location, river, particular direction etc. If you would want me to cite here the original paragraph in Russian, I will do that. Barefact (talk) 20:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please translate that sentence for me; Google translate somehow got confused with the character encoding, in particular for the capital letters and the lower-case letter я. If Gumilov was not a linguist, does he have any justification (like some other source) for this equivalence, in particular the contention that ui means "nine", directly or indirectly (although I don't understand how it would mean "nine" via an intermediate equivalent like location, river, particular direction etc., since none of these mean "nine")?  --Lambiam 21:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The language (or languages) of administration of the Mughal Empire

Hello. My citation for the position of Persian as the offical language of administration of the Mughal Empire didn't mention Hindustani because Hindustani was never an offical language of administration of the Mughal Empire, except in the degenerate sense that there are some Persian texts (for example, the national anthem of Pakistan) that qualify as Urdu by tradition. (The army used Urdu, certainly, so in practical terms I can see that there is an argument for classifying it as a language of administration, but there is no real doubt that Persian was the written language, that endorsed for use by civil servants, and that which most people who've paid disinterested attention to the history of the region will cite as *the* language of adminstration of the empire.) The British did not need to disestablish Hindustani in favour of English in the 1830s; they needed to disestablish Persian. Happy New Year! 91.64.168.202 (talk) 23:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)