User:Copey

Kia ora koutou

Ko Neil Copeland taku ingoa. Nō Waitara ahau, engari, kei Ōtepoti taku kāinga ināianei. He Pākehā ahau, engari he whanaungatanga tōku ki Te Ātiawa, ki Ngāti Maru, ki Ngāti Mutunga, ki Ngāti Tama, ki Ngāti Maniapoto.

Ka whakamāoritia te toenga o tēnei tuhinga ā tōnā wā.

My interests are:

Ngā reo—Particular interests are comparative linguistics, especially Indo-European languages. I am seeking to become more knowledgable in the area of Polynesian languages. I have a reading knowledge at varying competence levels of Classical and Koinē Greek, Hebrew, Māori, Latin, Russian, Old English, Old Norse, Old Church Slavonic, Gothic, French, German, Biblical Aramaic, and smatterings of things like Italian and Spanish.

Te whakapono Karaitiana—I am an evangelical/charismatic Baptist with a deep appreciation of Catholic worship. I believe that the Bible is authoritative in our understanding of God and in determining the way Christians live their lives, but I find the doctrine of inerrancy unhelpful—and sometimes meaningless, as it often implies accepting as history writings that the writers themselves plainly did not intend as such. In 2 Timothy 3.16-17 (All scripture is inspired by God...) I find no reference to the Bible as a geological or palaeontological textbook. I am interested in the writings of the Church Fathers and the light they throw on scripture.

Māoritanga—Over the last four years I have been studying te Reo Māori at University. I have also been doing other Māori papers, cultural and linguistic, and I have been involved in an extra-curricular kapa haka (Māori performing arts) group, visiting marae and high schools in various parts of New Zealand, performing, and promoting the University of Otago among young Māori. I performed my first haka at the age of 51, which I think is pretty dam' good. I want to make contributions to the Wikipedia in this area.

Te pūoro—Folk music in particular. I am active in the Dunedin and South Island folk scene, participating in all five annual festivals on the Canterbury/Otago circuit. I am a fairly competent guitarist, and play a number of other instruments, including piano accordion, mandolin, 5-string banjo, blues harp, tin whistle etc, with varying degrees of skill. I enjoy Celtic music, contemporary folk, bluegrass, blues, the folkier sort of country music, trad English and virtually anything well-written and witty. I also enjoy quite a lot of jazz, with Dave Brubeck as a particular favourite.

Mathematics—very much an amateur here, but I did work out the factorial of ½ accurate to 15 decimal places before I learned it was half the square root of π. I also worked out for myself why e to the power of iπ = –1. I have a particular interest in factorials, the Fibonacci and Lucas series and complex numbers.