User talk:Janinga Chang

Reconstructions
Hi - thanks for adding Pela entries. I noticed that you added a reconstruction at : we actually have a special way of handling reconstructions, which is to put them on separate pages, so I've moved it to Reconstruction:Pela/ŋa³¹. You can link to it by putting an asterisk at the start of the link (e.g.  gives, but links to the proper page). Theknightwho (talk) 20:52, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'm still a green hand of editing here, so thank you very much for your kind help!
 * a³¹kju̠⁵⁵ kɔ̠³⁵ vɛ³⁵! Janinga Chang (talk) 23:04, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Tiger colon
I've answered your question at the Information Desk, but I forgot to notify you. If alerts are enabled, my writing here should automatically alert you. --RichardW57 (talk) 12:45, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

IPA
Hi Janinga,

Added my comment for the other tones as well. To repeat a point I made here, though, IPA transcription should be in IPA. There are Americanist variations that replace  with  and <ʃ> with <š>, but they should be converted to IPA or, if used, they should not be labeled as IPA. Similarly, Sinological transcription like you're using be either converted to IPA or relabeled.

There are no numbers in IPA. Thus *kʰui³⁵ should be either /kʰu᷄i/ or /kʰui꜔꜒/, or in a case like this, where there's only a single rising tone, just /kʰǔi/.

Would you mind telling me what the various tone marks mean? The Wikipedia article on Lhao Vo doesn't even mention tone. kwami (talk) 22:21, 16 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I just noticed that lao" doesn't display properly, so the ASCII character " isn't going to work for the same kinds of reasons that the colon doesn't work. kwami (talk) 03:18, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Kwamikagami There's a long-established tradition on Wiktionary of using Sinological IPA in Sino-Tibetan languages. Theknightwho (talk) 03:21, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, it's an IPA-based Sinological transcription system, not actually IPA. NAPA is also IPA-based to a large extent, but we don't call it "Americanist IPA". But yes, there is a long tradition of using it, though there's been some agreement that if we don't use IPA it should at least be labeled correctly. kwami (talk) 03:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you! That helps a lot. I'll add the ref to WP. kwami (talk) 03:48, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Pela orthography
Heyo, I'm excited to see someone interested in editing Pela! I've noticed you're using some kind of IPA-based transcription in your entry, and I was wondering if there is some alternative to that? I'll admit, I don't know the first thing about Pela, but I know the struggle with languages that are exclusively oral and thus are not written down, and usually there is still some kind of proposed/occasionally used orthography that uses more accessible symbols. I ask this because IPA in entry names has a lot of disadvantages to both the reader and the editor. Thadh (talk) 18:16, 11 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the message!
 * Unfortunately, there's not any orthography, even unofficial, for the language yet. That's mostly because of the situation Pela is facing.
 * Firstly, it's such a small community with its population less than 500; and the speakers already have more than one language for writing (Chinese and Zaiwa); and even if they're far apart, they can send voice messages to each other now.
 * So at least all the speakers I have had a talk don't feel much necessity of an orthography, and unfortunately the orthographies of neither Chinese nor Zaiwa can be directly used to write Pela.
 * Btw, Lhaovo, the closest sister language of Pela, has a orthography designed in Myanmar at last century; some Pela are trying learning it. It might be a good idea using that also for Pela, but persuading most speakers to accept a new system would not be easy.
 * For now, I think we can still only write Pela by nothing but IPA.
 * If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask me.
 * (I'm currently a PhD student studying about Pela (not a native speaker).)
 * Janinga Chang (talk) 08:05, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Using a Lhaovo-based orthography would solve all problems with usability, but of course you shouldn't use orthographies if no speaker uses it in the wild and the community opposes its usage. If however it's simply not used by a majority, that's fine - most of our minority languages are largely unwritten and thus most speakers cannot and do not write in the orthography we use. Thadh (talk) 06:13, 15 August 2023 (UTC)