Disputatio:Fafa

message: In en:wikipedia, s.v. Falealupo, the image captioned "Looking west at the western tip of Savai'i" is in fact a view of the Fafā: the Samoan underworld lies just beyond those depicted rocks. If anybody'd like to import the image to Vicipadia (I don't know how), feel free to do so. IacobusAmor 19:09, 27 Ianuarii 2007 (UTC)
thumb|the image you requested
replies: text: As this image has good licence status (author, source and a good licence [GFDL] are specified on the image's description page), there is no problem in transferring the image to commons:. I did so now (and I used CommonsHelper for this). Feel free to add the image to the article now. --UV 20:28, 27 Ianuarii 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Imago

message: iures ==>genus neutrum , iura--Marc mage 21:34, 27 Ianuarii 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good catch. Thanks! IacobusAmor 22:36, 27 Ianuarii 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: correcta

message: Samonane non calleo. Itaque haec velim, quaeso, mihi respondeas: in primis de nominibus "Pulotu" nec non "aitu" agitur. Constat, si linguam Latinam eiusque nominum declinationes respicimus, nomina in "~u" exeuntia, quia nullo excepto facto neutrius generis sunt, neque accusativos in "-um" nec nominativos plurales in "-us" cadentes ferre. Potestne fieri ut Sa. Pulotu Latine "Pulotus, -i" declinetur aut, nisi hoc tibi placet, nominis indeclinabilis modo ("Pulotu" m.) tractetur? Itidem de voce Sa. aitu; an possimus forse cogitare manes defunctorum Samoanorum sexum suum "saecularem" adeo amisisse, ut neutrius sexus/generis facti sint? --Neander 04:06, 2 Ianuarii 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Amice, those are good questions, though vexing, and I'll answer quickly in English, a language in which I have more freedom than Latin. For Polynesian proper names, what I've been experimenting with here and in a few other articles is an adaptation of Doctor Lönnrot's method for Latinizing Finnish words. (Finnish & Polynesian, though they're utterly unrelated, exhibit common phonetic traits—and that commonality suggests the aptness of Lönnrot's method here.) Somewhere in Vicipaedia is an extensive discussion of goals & suggestions for reaching them. At this point, consider these articles merely little trials, designed to flush out the problems that will arise over & over as Vicipaedia grows. ¶ European concepts of gender are foreign to Polynesian languages: neither nouns nor pronouns are marked for gender (or for sex), so it shouldn't matter if a man finds himself in a neuter paradigm; however, you're right that a fourth-declension neuter noun whose accusative isn't identical with its nominative indeed startles the Latin mind, so maybe that proposed irregularity would be inadvisable, and I'll fix Pulotu accordingly. ¶ Also, let's leave Polynesian common nouns indeclinable unless they naturally develop a sense of being Latin enough to merit the honor. (One that might, a word that has entered English and many indigenous languages of the western Pacific, is lavalava, denoting a wraparound cloth; that would obviously go into the first declension.) Thanks for noticing these problems and correcting errors! ¶ Btw, I deliberately used the passive of emergo because each of the first two of its definitions in one of my dictionaries is marked "Pass. in reflexive force" (meaning she 'raised herself up' out of the water), and you've changed it to an active form (meaning, I guess, she 'emerged' from the water), but your sense is easier, and other dictionaries imply that the active is more frequent, so let's leave it your way. IacobusAmor 01:19, 5 Ianuarii 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: De declinatione nominum