User talk:P-A.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Welcome!

Hello, P-A., and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. 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:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  --Khoikhoi 00:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your proto-Basque etymologies

Dear P-A., as a historical linguist and a long-time Wikipedia contributor, I am puzzled and perplexed by what you have been doing to the Wikipedia in recent months. I happen to be very interested in substratum toponymy too, but I am fully aware of how conjectural and dubious that whole field is. It is easy to attribute every placename that begin with *kar- (just one example) to some pre-Indo-European "root" *kʰar(r)- or other, but, without solid proof, it all remains mere conjecture. I object to your insertion of purely conjectural "pre-Indo-European" etymologies in hundreds of articles, with a wording that implies certainty, when in fact there is no certainty at all about these etymologies. This is a clear violation of the Wikipedia's NPOV rule.

Also, if you are not a native speaker of English, why do start an article on "Neolatine languages" using a spelling that is used nowhere in English? If anything, "Neo-Latin languages" may be used in English, but "Neolatine languages" simply does not exist. Having taught Romance linguistics at Harvard, I am confident of what I am saying. Pasquale 22:10, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I must agree, your pages on supposed "pre-Indo-European linguistic roots" are very dubious. They are either completely unsourced, or sourced to obscure literature, without making clear which part is actually taken from there and which is your idea. Please be very careful when creating pages on reconstructed terms. Also, be aware of wiktionary which is the place for pure dictionary entries. dab (𒁳) 07:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)