Talk:Jingpo

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Burma/Myanmar To-do: edit purge Tagging articles.

language? Gringo300 07:48, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Done. Happy? Babelfisch 05:17, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Categorization makes for lots of work

Um... this is going to be a lot of fun to sort out. Lots of red links out there that refer to either a language or a sometimes recognized ethnic group, and nearly all should probably redirect here. Before embarking on that, though, we should try to clarify a structure. Key questions:

Using Maru as an example for all the (sub)groups

1. Do we mark Maru language and Maru people as their own pages?
2. Alternatively, do we decide to treat the dominant meaning of Maru as the language, make a page for it called Maru and describe it as "one of the languages used by the Kachin ethnic group".
3. Do we accept some dialect classification scheme for the languages and redirect the dialects to the "main" language? Leach (1965) for example, calls Lashi, Atsi, Maingtha, and Hpon (plus "Normal Maru") dialects of Maru.
4. Where do we redirect Atsi, Lisu etc.?
5. Adding links to disambiguate Maru, Guari and maybe more.

This is too much work for me alone, so I'm asking for input and creating a space to discuss it.--Carwil 03:11, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I hope you dodn't mind; I've changed your asterisks to numbers, in order to facilitate point-by-point discussion. My opinions:

1. Yes.
2. No (see 1 above).
3. Could be done, depending upon how authoritative/controversial the chosen scheme is. If you have more info, please provide. (Maybe ethnologue can help some?)
4. What are they? I'll go look...
5. Is that a question?

Thanks --Ling.Nut 03:57, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Let me make things a little more complicated here... While I agree that people vs. language distinctions should appear wherever possible for nominalized adjective ethinic group titles, I have doubts about separate articles for each group.

In terms of different views, it seems that most sources have a hierarchy, but disagree substantially on the importance of language groups. Leach (1965) says the Kachin are an ethnic group, while the Maru, Jingpo (i.e. Kachin-speaking Kachin, he creates a fake distinction for clarity) etc. are populations. Leach also argues that clans, which cross language lines are more significant. Cultural Survival[1] uses "confederacy of peoples". The Kachin Indepence Organization and Kachin National Organization use "an ethnic affinity of several tribal groups". The Myanmar government has an awkward neologism for the Kachin overall and "ethnic group" for the subgroups. Some groups are recognized "minority nationalities" in China, without necessarilty having a clear territory within Yunnan province. Since the China people are on top of creating ethnic group pages, they already exist, though they need to be related to Jingpo in some way.

In any case, I'm not sure that Maru people will have very much distinct content for quite a while; indeed, ultimately, it may have little more content than "Maru people are those among the Kachin/Jingpo who speak Maru. It has been recognized by the Myanmar government as an ethnic group." Okay, there will be a bit more, but not without quite a bit of research. For comparison, checkout the Ogoni people who speak five languages which are at least somewhat geographically arranged.--Carwil 06:15, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow, you don't choose easy problems, do you. :-)

Perhaps one top-level article could be created which would basically include everything you just said, well-cited. Every sub-article could include a link to the topmost, with a sentence in each sub-article explaining that any ethnic boundaries that exist may not be as salient as clan boundaries. Every article would be completely uniform in that respect, for at least the first one or two sentences of the lead. Then after those sentences, you could give more specific details about that group.

Does that sound like a workable solution? I'm not nearly as familiar with this situation as you are; I'm just sorta making general observations.

Thanks for all your thought & good work

--Ling.Nut 14:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)