Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kana alphabet articles

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was as follows:

• の had 19 keep, 5 delete, and 4 merge to wiktionary. The result was KEEP.
• い had 8 keep and 3 delete. The result was KEEP.
• あ had 6 keep and 4 delete. The result was no consensus.
• Votes for all three overall were 12 keep, 0 delete, and 1 merge to wiktionary. The result was KEEP.

The final result was KEEP. Robert 20:21, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kana alphabet articles

This is a merger of three VfDs: あ, い, and の. The outcome on these articles should all be the same, so let's get a consistent consensus rather than having some of them deleted and others not, ok? Kelly Martin 16:30, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Can you make it clear how votes count here? Do I have to put delete after each kana, or will you only count votes one for each person for the whole article? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I'm not sure of the rules. --DannyWilde 00:57, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not likely to close this AfD myself (I rarely close AfDs) but I would recommend that whoever does close this use common sense in counting votes. It is important, in my opinion, that all three articles close with the same result, and I imagine that the closing admin will examine all offered opinions without too much regard to which articles they are offered in connection with to reach a decision about consensus. Frankly, at this point, I can't see how a consensus will arise out of this swamp, but stranger things have happened.... Kelly Martin 01:27, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/い and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/あ. I have only created three kana articles and stopped when "no" was VFD'd. Toothpaste 03:19, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Note that all the other kana are being added, so the outcome of this vote should also apply to those also. This was the first letter to be added, so the main discussion for all of them should probably be here. --Interiot 01:08, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] の

Dictionary definition. DannyWilde 00:59, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, dictionary entry exists in Wiktionary anyway. --DannyWilde
• Weak Delete, as DannyWilde said, they're already in wiktionary. The roman alphabet (A, B, C, ...) has individual pages, but the wiktionary pages seem to already have more information than is being created in the en/wikipedia pages. If there's enough information to go in these, that doesn't belong in Wiktionary, then Keep. Are all 50/100 kana going to be added? Are any kanji going to be added?? --Interiot 01:20, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge to Wiktionary, per Uncle G. How a word is written and pronounced belongs in a dictionary. The same goes for letters that make up words. --Interiot 12:49, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. No, kanji will not be added, only the kana, and the katakana will redirect to the hiragana articles. Like with the articles on the English alphabet letters, these articles could show the history of the writing of individual kana. In fact, I have a 2000 page dictionary in storage that shows the history of each English letter, with each article on them at least two pages. Aside from the history, the article could go slightly deeper into phonology, too, and possibly instructions on how to write the kana. Toothpaste 01:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Also, I've temporarily stopped until this AFD is closed. Toothpaste 01:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Wiktionary is the place for this (The fact that you are referring to a dictionary should tip you off.), and a lot of such work has already been done, long since. You are encouraged to go to Wiktionary and contribute your dictionary work there. Uncle G 01:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Seems to be the place for an Encylcopedia entry, too. Toothpaste 03:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. No reason why these aren't any less encyclopedic than the letters of the Roman alphabet. Kelly Martin 01:20, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• As per our Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), if there is an encyclopaedia article to be had, it should be under an English title. But, as per the far better dictionary article の in Wiktionary, there is clearly no subject for an encyclopaedia article to be had. This article is a mis-placed dictionary article, pure and simple. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. As a stub encyclopaedia article it would have no hope of expansion. Delete. Uncle G 01:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • If you are unsatisfied with the name of the article, it can be moved to No (kana) and the actual hiragana and katakana can be made into redirects.
    • I reiterate: There is no encyclopaedia article to be had here. Everything that you have proposed adding, pronunciations, stroke indexes, and so forth is dictionary article content about the word. Wiktionary has had vast numbers of such articles with pronunciations, stroke indexes, and so forth, since 2003. If you want to improve them with pictures, Wiktionary is the place to do so. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Uncle G 01:55, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
      • We have articles on A and B and so on. I don't know, but I should expect you would be able to say as much about the kana as about Roman letters. ~~ N (t/c) 02:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
        • One can, and the dictionary does. Go look at some of the thousands of such entries in Wiktionary. Some of them are huge. They have Unicode values, stroke indicies, input method indices, meanings in several languages, transliterations in several systems, translations, and more. Pictures would improve them yet further. A random medium-length example (selected, ironically, by hitting "random page" exactly once at Wiktionary) of what a dictionary can contain: 冝. Uncle G 02:19, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge. Agree that this would be better in Wiktionary. Disagree that the article in Wikitionary is "better." This one has some nice information not duplicated there. Crypticfirefly 02:49, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • New content was added since the "better" comment. Agree that the new content is good, and should be merged to Wiktionary. --Interiot 14:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep I agree with Toothpaste - there is a rich history at A and B ... and it would be nice to have the same sort of history for the kana. Johntex\^talk 01:26, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, articles about letters are well-founded (we used to have them even back in UseModWiki days, indeed). James F. (talk) 01:30, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • What of the overlap between wikipedia and wiktionary? Is there a substantial reason to have them in both places? If not, which one should be kept? --Interiot 01:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Wiktionary. Uncle G 01:55, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Both can be kept, just as how the elements of the periodic table belong in both dictionaries and encyclopedias. In addition, the Roman alphabet also exists in a dictionary. Toothpaste 01:51, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
      • A false analogy. Whereas a dictionary article on plutonium tells one about the word, how it is pronounced and so forth, an encyclopaedia about plutonium tells one about plutonium — about the element that the word represents. This is not the case here. You are not creating encyclopaedia articles about the things that the words represents. (It's clear from the Wiktionary entry telling us the meaning of the word that there isn't an encyclopaedia article to be had about the thing that this word represents.) You are creating dictionary articles about the words themselves. Uncle G 02:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
        • See for instance the precedent with the wikipedia Z vs the wiktionary:z. Okay, Ungle G's description doesn't fit with precedent, but I agree that his description is the right way to go. --Interiot 02:10, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per Toothpaste. Acetic'^Acid 01:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and move to e.g. No (kana) because we have articles on the Roman alphabet, and surely the Japanese alphabet is just as interesting. ~~ N (t/c) 01:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge to Wiktionary, and leave redirect. Uncle G has me convinced. Maybe we should do this to the Roman-alphabet articles as well. ~~ N (t/c) 02:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Very, very strong keep. I didn't even know that there were actual entries about the kana characters on English Wikipedia. It would be a total and complete shame to delete these entries. Cjmarsicano 01:48, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • There are vast numbers of entries for these in the dictionary. They were added in 2003. Uncle G 01:55, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• If kept, rename. I don't have any particular strong opinion on whether we should only have a wiktionary entry, or an encyclopedic entry (although I lean slightly toward the latter; alphabets are encyclopaedic). However, I have a very strong opinion about the title: it should be in English (or, at least, the English alphabet). Noel (talk) 02:22, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I've decided to move it to No (kana) if kept, along with all other kana articles, as that seems to be the consensus here. Toothpaste 02:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Merge these contributions into Wiktionary, but make sure that it's easy to get to from the hiragana, katakana, and other relevant articles. I would love to see full histories, stroke orders, and such for each of the kana (and kanji!), but I don't see any compelling reason that they should be here instead of at Wiktionary. —HorsePunchKid→龜 02:28, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, a good reason might be that that's /way/ outside the scope of Wiktionary. The article you describe doesn't belong in a dictionary. It belongs in an encyclopædia. James F. (talk) 03:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Complete rubbish. It's not outside of the scope of Wiktionary at all. Go look in Wiktionary at some of the existing articles. See the one that I picked at random above, for example. Many of them have stroke indexes, Unicode encodings, and other technical information. (And even they aren't complete. One could add audio pronunciation files, for one example.) That's what Wiktionary would like for all such articles. Uncle G 03:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. This could start a trend. Do we want to keep the wikipedia server administrators employed (or unhappy with heavy storage issues )with 70,000 or more Chinese characters stored in their databases? While we're all here, could we also start articles for each character of Thai, Arabic, Tamil, Hebrew, Both Simple and Traditional Chinese, each 70, 000 characters x2 =140, 000, also Vietnamese,Cyrillic, Greek,Sinhalese, Sanskrit, etc. BTW, this is the character for cow:牛, horse:馬、--Jondel 02:33, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• To my understanding, kanji are used as the bases of words. Hiragana and katakana are uses as noun endings, adjective endings, for other suffixes, to show the pronunciation of kanji, for stylistic purposes, for otomotopoeias, for emphasis, for technical terms, and for the transcription of words borrowed from other languages. I do not think we should have an article for every character representing a word, or part of a compound word, or a rootword, but for characters that represent individual sounds that can form a word, as in the English alphabet and with the kana. If this and similar articles were to be kept, only approximately 50 or so kana articles would be created total. Toothpaste 03:11, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Articles about English affixes go in Wiktionary. (See all of the Wiktionary articles linked to from in numerical prefix, or the Wiktionary articles on -ing, -ism, or -icle, for examples.) Articles about other language's affixes should be too. Uncle G 03:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • The kana themselves are not affixes. When combined, they form affixes, though there are probably a few that could form afixed by themselves, like A can be both a letter and an affix. There shouldn't be an article on -ing, certainly, but there certainly should for i, n, and g. Toothpaste 04:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Neutral I guess as its gonna be moved to 'No' or whatever. I don't think every character will be necessary as this is just one of the most common and all... zOMG not bold Extremely strong machoman randy savage delete. C'mon, a solid majority of us (I'd estimate between 80 and 95%) just see a ?. Its a dicdef even for those who have the language pack. Useless for an English Encyclopedia. Redwolf24 (talk) 02:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • This is English language Wikipedia, not English subjects Wikipedia. Pilatus 03:05, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • And as per our Wikipedia:naming conventions (use English) our article titles are not in other alphabets. Uncle G 03:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Why does that matter now that I have moved の to No (kana)? Toothpaste 04:12, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, see reasoning at い). Pilatus 03:05, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Just a note from the person who suggested deleting this in the first place: there is some information about some of the kana characters which could be worth having in Wikipedia. For example the origin of the kana ン is disputed. It might belong in Wikipedia if we were to discuss the origin of the character, or if there is to be something other than just "this is a Japanese character, it is pronounced "no" ". However, I'd expect such information to come from a split from katakana or hiragana pages if it came from anywhere. Also, "no" has very important grammatical functions in Japanese grammar. So I think there is a possibility of expansion or split from Japanese grammar of a "no" page. However, since there are already lists of Japanese symbols on the hiragana and katakana pages, I'm very dubious about making a full set of small, unexpandable stub articles about every single Japanese symbol. --DannyWilde 03:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• keep this please and all other hirigana katakana and kanji characters pilatus is right we are an english wikipedia but we should also too stop the systemic biases here enough is enough Yuckfoo 04:33, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Did you read the discussion? The point is that the characters all already exist on Wiktionary. --DannyWilde 07:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. We already have articles on Latin alphabet letters and Cyrillic letters, why not Japanese kana syllabary? In any case, this is more than just a stub. -- Curps 05:35, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

There are two articles, hiragana and katakana, and complete entries on Wiktionary. If there is any additional extensive material to be added to the article, let it first be added to hiragana or katakana, then if those pages become too long, then consider breaking them. --DannyWilde 07:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Useful. Taco Deposit | Talk-o to Taco 07:10, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: since I started the vote for deletion, this article has been artificially bulked with copy-paste edits from other pages, probably in order to avoid being deleted. For example, the comments about "no" coming from the sousho form of characters, etc., apply to ALL of the Japanese kana, not just this one - there is no point in having fifty identical pages, one for each kana, with the same copy-pasted statement. Using this kind of trickery in order to avoid the page being deleted should not be acceptable. --DannyWilde 07:40, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Please assume good faith. If you'd prefer the history section to be taken out temporarily, this would be fine. The transition of man'yōgana to hiragana is much more complex than what is written now. For example, it's a pretty big jump from the second character to the third in the picture at Image:Nohistory.jpg. I'd rather have a few copy and pasted statements, aided by pictures, than an article lacking completely in history content, which applies to this VFD, but overall, and I already it's already a beginning to be a bit comprehensive. Toothpaste 07:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

If you are serious about writing in detail about the origins of kana on a per-kana basis, I would suggest an article on "Origin of kana" with section headings for each kana you want to discuss, if you have enough material that it will make hiragana or katakana too big, of course. If there is so much stuff on one kana that you actually need a whole article on it, I'd be surprised. Spreading origins all over the place in fifty different articles doesn't make any sense, since the hiragana and katakana are all very closely related to each other and the history is the same. --DannyWilde 13:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to bed now, as I've been working on these for the past four hours, so you'll know why my reply will be delayed. Toothpaste 08:17, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Keep. It's too much to ask that an article be born an adult. The purpose of stub tags is to indicate potential growth. These articles have the same potential as the articles on the letters of the Latin alphabet. The number of symbols, and that the language is foreign, might result in slower growth, so let's give them time. Fg2 08:03, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. See A or B. JPD 10:33, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Not a dictionary definition, but it doesn't belong in an English-language, Roman script encyclopedia. I'm not even excited about article like å, and keep in mind that I'm saying this as native Swede. / Peter ^Isotalo 14:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • More precedent: various punctuation, some which are fairly obscure. Those article names are in roman characters, and there are corresponding wiktionary entries as well. I still don't think there's a good reason to have the same information in both places though (in fact, the punctuation templates are identical in wikipedia and wiktionary). --Interiot 15:02, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, unless we are going to delete other alphabetic and syllabic characters as well. Еdit 14:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. The most notable kana. - Nat Krause 15:08, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Strong delete. The over-reaction to any perceived (and non-existant)systemic bias is ridiculous. A lot of the keep votes have not even read the above discussion, or do not actually understand the difference between an encylopaedia and a dictionary. The articles on roman letters are encylopaedic. Everything on this article is wiktionary material, and as this is an English lanugae encyclopaedia, will never be more than that. Not encyclopaedic. Kana are the new schools? Discuss. Delete delete delete, and hit the PC police with big sticks. Proto t c 15:28, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

As I've stated before, just because this Wikipedia is written in the English language, is no reason for articles about Japanese kana to exist, and I feel it is just as justified here as on the Japanese Wikipedia. How are the Roman letter articles different from these? Also, I think saying, "You didn't read anything that was said," is a patronizing tactic way too common in Wikipedian discussion, which also applies to the other side, given a few people that, at first continued to site the article's location at の as a reason to delete even after I had moved it. Toothpaste 15:50, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep I wouldn't naturally think to look for a letter of a foreign alphabet in an English language dictionary --TimPope 17:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as per the precedent of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. --Carnildo 21:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. We have articles on colors also, so why not kana? (ok I know there are differences, but kana have more history and symbolism behind them than our alphabet. AngryParsley 04:13, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] い

This is a mis-placed dictionary article. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Wiktionary, which is a dictionary, already has い (and many others). As an encyclopaedia article, this article would have no hope of expansion, and would be under an English title anyway, per our Wikipedia:naming conventions (use English). Uncle G 01:19, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete agree with nominator -- (☺drini♫|☎) 01:30, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Keep I like the new No (kana) version -- (☺drini♫|☎) 21:14, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete . This could start a trend. Do we want to keep the wikipedia server administrators employed (or unhappy with heavy storage issues )with 70,000 or more Chinese characters stored in their databases? While we're all here, could we also start articles for each character of Thai, Arabic, Tamil, Hebrew, Both Simple and Traditional Chinese, each 70, 000 characters x2 =140, 000, also Vietnamese,Cyrillic, Greek,Sinhalese, Sanskrit, etc. BTW, this is the character for cow:牛, horse:馬、 ,yamemashou やめましょう,sayounaraさようなら:佐様奈良--Jondel 02:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: I do not believe that "heavy storage issues" are close to being a problem or are likely to be a problem in the future. It seems to me that this is not a good reason for wishing to delete or prohibit certain types of articles. Lupin|talk|popups 02:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. See my reasoning at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/の. Toothpaste 02:38, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep or merge... somewhere. I don't see the reasoning behind deleting letters of languages with lots of letters if we have quite respectable articles on languages with fewer letters. It does need more information if it is to stand as an article in its own right, though. Lupin|talk|popups 02:59, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • That we have articles on the languages is no reason to have articles on the individual words in those languages. That is what a dictionary is for. As I have already pointed out both at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/の and above, Wikipedia is not a dictionary. That's Wiktionary's job. If you think that い needs pictures, or pronunciation guides, or Unicode information, or attached audio files (which will being it up to the level of the other dictionary articles that have these things), then please add them. But turning the encyclopaedia into a dictionary, counter to the official policy, is needless duplication. The dictionary is right there, and will take all of the dictionary content that editors have to offer. Uncle G 03:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. There are entries for the characters of the Latin alphabet and on some unicode characerts, so there is good reason to believe that a decent article can be written on each individual kana character. Note that I don't hold similar optimism for primary sch**ls. Pilatus 03:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • For good articles on these characters, see the dictionary, which has had lots of such articles since 2003. The dictionary is the place for writing articles about words, and many such articles have already been written. Uncle G 03:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • This is not a word but a glyph from a syllabary alphabet, and as such should be kept here. The article in its present form isn't a dictionary entry at all but an entry on the character. Pilatus 13:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• keep this too please my explanation is already at no (kkana) Yuckfoo 04:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. We already have articles on Latin alphabet letters and Cyrillic letters, why not Japanese kana syllabary? There are only a few dozen kana, by the way, so comparing this to adding thousands of Chinese character articles is off the mark. -- Curps 05:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • It's a bad precedent to set. Proto t c 15:30, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. See A or B. JPD 10:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as per Pilatus. Please try to avoid bias against non-English languages. --Last Malthusian 13:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Not a dictionary definition, but it doesn't belong in an English-language, Roman script encyclopedia. I'm not even excited about article like å, and keep in mind that I'm saying this as native Swede. / Peter ^Isotalo 14:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Wikipedia may suffer from systemic bias, but it's also en.wikipedia. Dict def articles about non-Roman symbols are not encyclopaedic. Proto t c 15:30, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] あ

As per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/い. Uncle G 01:27, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete agree with nominator -- (☺drini♫|☎) 01:29, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

keep I like the new No (kana) entry -- (☺drini♫|☎) 21:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete Better stop this trend, else we might as well list 70 000 + Chinese Characters as well and other characters of other languages. --Jondel 02:05, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. See debate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/の. Toothpaste 02:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• keep and please combine all these discussions it is not really the best to repeat this over and over for all the kana characters really Yuckfoo 04:35, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Please. I agree with the nominator. Matt Yeager 05:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. We already have articles on Latin alphabet letters and Cyrillic letters, why not Japanese kana syllabary? There are only a few dozen kana, by the way, so comparing this to adding thousands of Chinese character articles is off the mark. -- Curps 05:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. See A or B. JPD 10:33, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• keep obviously. Dunc|☺ 14:26, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Not a dictionary definition, but it doesn't belong in an English-language, Roman script encyclopedia. I'm not even excited about article like å, and keep in mind that I'm saying this as native Swede. / Peter ^Isotalo 14:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, of course. Proto t c 15:31, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Continued, merged

• Comment. Dictionaries are for the physical written, spoken, and electronic symbols, how those symbols fit into larger physical expressions such as individual sentences, and the historical changes of the physical symbols. Encyclopedias explain the ideas those symbols refer to, and refer back to physical symbol history only when needed for disambiguation purposes. This goes doubly for individual letters. You wouldn't put an audio pronunciation on the wikipedia の page, any more than you would put 'his-t(&-)rE &v "ar-&-'zO-n& on the History of Arizona page. --Interiot 16:32, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Or, in the words of epistemology, dictionary=map, encyclopedia=territory. --Interiot 22:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep I wouldn't naturally think to look for a letter of a foreign alphabet in an English language dictionary --TimPope 17:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • (moved above so comments aren't doubled) Why not? You find satsuma and seppuku and yakitori in an English dictionary. They're in an English dictionary because the definition is in English, not because the subject itself is english. --Interiot
    • Those are all words, these articles are about characters. I see a distinction. --TimPope 17:23, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
      • And, as stated above, letters are even more low-level representations than individual prefixes, words, or phrases. You find pronunciation of words and a long list of historical spellings in dictionaries, but not in encyclopedias. That's because dictionaries describe how you write a word down, how you pronounce the word, how you attach it to other words. Encyclopedias describe the concept, history, and larger context that pops into your head when someone says/writes/types that word to you. Individual letters having nothing to do with abstract ideas in your head. There's clear precedent that pronunciation belongs in a dictionary, so it follows that how a letter or word is expressed in Unicode or Braille also belongs in a dictionary, because these are just different mechanisms for communicating between two people, but they don't have any impact on the higher-level thoughts a person has once the idea is communicated to them. Note that kanji (and chinese characters generally) blur the line between letters and words, and chinese characters clearly belong in a dictionary. --Interiot 17:38, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I have made the information expressing how to pronounce it more similar to that of a. The only difference now is that Usage does not have its own section. Should I give it one? Toothpaste 18:11, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

If given its own section, the Grammar section will be merged into Usage. This is similar to how "a" as an article is mentioned under the Usage section of a. I'm just using Latin alphabet articles as models. Toothpaste 18:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. There are also articles on pentagram, and ampersand. Some opponents seem to confuse syllabary with ideograms. Kana is syllabry, so its characters are letters. -Hapsiainen 18:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Ahh. Ideograms clearly are dictionaries (eg. see character dictionaries). As for the difference between pentagrams and syllabary... You can stick a pentagram next to an octagon next to a circle, and it doesn't mean anything syntactically. Whereas, with syllabries and letters, their purpose is to be part of the language hierarchy (eg. letters form words, words form phrases, phrases form sentences, sentences form paragraphs, paragraphs form encyclopedia entries (or something)). Letters are on the opposite end of the language hierarchy from where encyclopedias sit. --Interiot 18:38, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I used pentagram and ampersand as examples of signs that have their own articles. I didn't say that pentagram is a letter or an ideogram. -Hapsiainen 18:46, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
      • According to the standard I put forth in the couple of comments above, language-oriented graphemes should be placed only in a dictionary (contrary to current precedent), but non-language-oriented pictograms (such as a pentagram) should be placed only in an encyclopedia. So those were arguments for that position. Both Encarta and Merriam-Webster include entries for individual roman letters, so I suppose a safe way to rule on this would be to put the same/similar content on both wikipedia and wiktionary. But that's a bit of a weird solution, especially if we can find a standard that indicates which articles should go where. --Interiot 18:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
      • As does Britannica. If this gets deleted, do you agree that a should be VFD'd? Toothpaste 19:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
        • I'm proposing that if an organization produces both an encyclopedia and a dictionary, and makes them equally available (especially for free), it should not have duplicate entries for every single grapheme. So, yes, I'm suggesting the two articles should be merged. --Interiot 19:15, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Not a dictionary definition, and that pretty much says it all. -- grm_wnr Esc 19:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
  • ...so... The wiktionary entries should be VfDed? --Interiot 20:25, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
    • You can try, but I guess Wiktionary wouldn't take too kindly to proposing their article for deletion on Wikipedia :P. If by "VfD" you mean wikt:Wiktionary:Requests for deletion, I guess a dictionary entry could be written under that topic as well, so no. I hope you're not implying that wikt:encyclopedia should be deleted just because we have Encyclopedia. -- grm_wnr Esc 20:44, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
      • I think most people can understand the difference between Wikipedia and Wiktionary. However, I don't understand how there's a difference between existing content for the grapheme articles (Braille, Unicode, audio pronunciation, part of speech usage, stroke order, etc). It seems to be the same on both sides. --Interiot 21:01, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
        • I am of the opinion that this is material that is perfectly appropriate for an encyclopedia, and maybe less appropriate for a dictionary entry. However, whether they think it is appropriate there is something they have to decide by themselves, and I'm saying that I think this is appropriate here in this discussion. There is no rule that content must not be duplicated on Wiktionary and Wikipedia, as long as both communities want it. -- grm_wnr Esc 21:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
          • So, the suggestion then is that users should click on the interwiki link, and read through both articles at the same time, to make sure they get the full/best information? Or that one of us personally ferry information back and forth to create two copies of the best information? --Interiot 21:27, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
            • Note that the "best" information for Wiktionary is not the same as the "best" information for Wikipedia, but apart from that, that is what I'm suggesting above, yes. -- grm_wnr Esc 21:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
              • Well, can't say I'm bored enough to do it, but for anyone who wants to semi-troll, or pick up easy edit points or whatever, here's a start of all the various edits that were just proposed be made, using just the existing information (no new kanji or anything yet). Madness. --Interiot 23:06, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
              • As said before, kanji are not pertinent to this discussion. Quite a few of the glyphs on those lists exist as redirects to what they represent, similar to how $ redirects to dollar, where it has a section for the history of the symbol. This cannot be done with kana. Toothpaste 23:20, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
              • I must say, the directory path of your link intrigues me, Interiot. Maybe I should just let this discussion rest for now. -- grm_wnr Esc 00:18, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
                • The directory path wasn't commentary per-se. It was describing my actions if I would have decided to combine this with this. --Interiot 00:50, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as pre the precedent of the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. --Carnildo 21:18, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep some (not necessarily all) characters are notable --madewokherd 22:04, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, at least until we delete Z. Seems a reasonable start. —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 00:34, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Keep keep keep. Not only per precedent, but there's some damned interesting stuff in here. Are we supposed to go to Wiktionary to find out how the stroke order evolved? --Golbez 04:29, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep of course. The history of these ideograph and ideograph components is certainly encyclopedic, as is the practice of writing them and any notes on usage and significance (in the same manner as we have "grade A" or the quote "I am the alpha and omega"). Demi ^T/_C 04:33, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

A small correction: Japanese kana aren't ideographs. Anyway, I completely agree with your point. I hope something everyone will agree with is that the history of kana does belong in Wikipedia. But, before deciding whether to keep the article on that basis, please take a look at the two excellent existing articles, hiragana, and katakana. If there is a lot of information to include, it is possible that each individual character might need to have a history page, giving more details, but as I suggested above I think it would be better to integrate the information into one focused page if at all possible. --DannyWilde 05:56, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, but rename in English, otherwise the articles are more or less useless. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:37, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
• Comment, The issue is that, I strongly believe it's a problem if the standards say that information should be completely duplicated in both places. At this point, there's precedent on both Wikipedia and Wiktionary (1), (2) to keep all the information discussed so far on either side. When AfD/RfDs come up, the easy thing to do is vote Keep, and act like a problem doesn't exist. So eventually this information will get copied to both sides, while all along, people aren't required to give reasoned arguments for or against the idea that it should be copied verbatim in both places. I'm a programmer, and one of the first things that was pounded into my head over and over, was that you don't keep information in multiple places unless there's a really really good reason, because it always causes more problems than you think it will, keeping them synchronized or coordinated wastes a lot of human time, and usually there's a simple technical or procedural fix for it. This discussion is made more important because we really are talking about duplicating hundreds and thousands of characters.         Most dictionaries and encyclopedias have characters in them. So people will come to either place looking for information. We're an electronic wiki, we're one community, not two, and we can do better. The solution is to put a redirect or interwiki link on the other side, and only store information on one side. And there is precedent for doing that too. --Interiot 14:20, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
• Merge While there exists the potential to make a significant article for each of these, none of these has enough to justify a separate encyclopedia article at the moment. Caerwine 23:19, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
• Merge into Japanese alphabet? Keep, we have A, A (Cyrillic), Alpha (letter) and Æ, so why shouldn't we have articles on Kana, given that they are now at English titles? Alphax ^τεχ 13:37, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

• Keep at their japanese names, we use Unicode on this installation, no reason not to use it. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:39, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
• Ausir 13:45, 6 October 2005 (UTC) at the Japanese names
• Keep all kana, like all letters of the Roman alphabet. Kappa 21:49, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.