Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages

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  1. December 2003-October 2005
  2. November 2005 – September 2006

Contents

[edit] German language at WP:GA/R

I've listed German language at WP:GA/R because of the edit war that was going on the past week. The page now is protected. --LucVerhelst 12:32, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed deletions

You might be interested that the following articles were recently proposed for deletion.

  • List of English words of Bengali origin
  • List of English prefixes

Please advertise on other places where editors are interested in lists of words. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 15:04, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Page move request

A request has been made at Talk:Pennsylvania German language to move Pennsylvania German language to Pennsylvania Dutch language. Angr 12:48, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
  • User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
  • User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now moved the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 14:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New template

Just an FYI that I've created a Template:Ethnologue new template for linking to a language's entry at Ethnologue by using its three-letter ISO code. | Mr. Darcy talk 16:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Irish phonology peer review

Irish phonology is up for peer review. Please leave comments at Wikipedia:Peer review/Irish phonology. Thanks! —Angr 18:23, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Style guide? Ethnic population & number of speakers. Comments welcome.

I don't see a style guide, but perhaps I missed it. I'm not proposing one. I would like to discuss only one point about references.

Some articles list their sources in a References section, but don't cite them in the text. I'm not gonna go so far as to say everything should be cited. However, there are two things that I think should be cite.php or Harvard referenced (to refer to a specific item back in the References section) in every single languages article:

  1. Number of speakers
  2. Ethnic population (if included in article).

This information is more dynamic than most other relevant info. It is important to track these facts for languages in danger of extinction. Besides, if anything should ever be cited, it would be the numbers. If I say "language x is the best language in the world," even children can see through the lie. Numbers, however, tend to have an air of authority about them. They may slip through unquestioned, esp. if the References section seems well-populated.

Other pieces of info are more static; numbers are dynamic.

All comments welcomed. --Ling.Nut 21:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Fully agree, and a good initiative. I'm sure other editors of language articles have also experienced that speaker counts are often changed (most often increased) without a source being provided. This is a step in the right direction. — mark ✎ 22:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Agree; but I predict that counts will still be increased without changing the reference. This will decrease the harm, however. Septentrionalis 02:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I am proposing a related WikiProject:

Brief proposal and discussion of scope: User:Ling.Nut#Current_Projects (Especially note my questions about expanding the scope to include language revitalization).

Skeletal project page: see top of page for links to lists of endangered languages that I have been working on:

Interested parties can sign up here (no membership page as yet):

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 03:17, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

[edit] Request for comment

Hello... I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask for help. However, I'll try anyway... could someone knowledgeable in the English dialects, specifically Canadian English, please check out that article? An editor, RyanRP, has been making a series of edits which strike me as being somewhat questionable. Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide, or for pointing me in the right direction. --Ckatzchatspy 09:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, the usual place for things like this is Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Language and linguistics. —Angr 09:55, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Wow - that was fast. Thanks! --Ckatzchatspy 09:58, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good and featured articles

I've added a section on good and featured articles within our scope. It would be great if people could help keep it up to date. At the moment there don't seem to be any GA or FA candidates, but please add them as they come up. —Angr 06:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd be pretty happy about a drive to turn Austronesian languages into a GA then an FA...--Ling.Nut 07:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA, FA drives?

Is there any interest at all in this WikiProject for group GA then FA drives? Choose an article, improve, nom, etc.? Just wondering...--Ling.Nut 00:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm working on getting Irish orthography up to a GA, to match Irish phonology which just got there. Since I'm wikiphilosophically opposed to FAs, though, I'd rather not have that as a goal for myself. —Angr 06:08, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I am trying to drive Mayan languages and later Uto-Aztecan languages, Mixe-Zoquean languages, oto-Manguean languages and Mesoamerican Linguistic Area to GA status. The first is currently being peerreviewed.Maunus 09:47, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nigerian Fulfulde language

"Dara faa en kaala!" Nigerian Fulfulde language is listed among the language entries to be converted to template. I hope that is not imminent, or at least we can hold off on it. That is because it is one of several varieties of Fula, which is already pretty much united in one Fula language article (the exception being one on Pular language mostly of Fouta Djallon, Guinea).

I would like to propose that work on other articles on this language (such as on the Nigerian form) be coordinated as much as possible before there are a bunch of separate articles with different approaches, unnecessary duplication, and misleading content. Perhaps there might be a place for something like template for a meta-article, or a meta-template for articles. For instance one might maintain the Fula language article to discuss the language as a whole, its features in common, an overview of variation within it, and then provide for articles on variant forms (by ISO-639-3 and/or country and/or other) that get into what makes the particular variety different from others without duplicating the basic info in the main article. So, an article on Fulfulde of central Mali or Maasinankore could mention its unique system for counting by 10s; the article on Pular of Guinea or Pular Fuuta Jalon could mention its special vocabulary for respect and its use of the 2nd person plural for respect (unlike other dialects); etc. And, by the time we have a "Nigerian Fulfulde" article in the works, it will be composed (or stubbed, or shelled) with reference to the main Fula language article according to a template that is conceoved with this relationship in mind.

This could be a model for other African languages that are represented by closely-related variant forms.

I'm looking also at the Manding languages complex in which there has been some notable imporvement in the last few months, but which might also benefit from some strategy to economize/organize efforts and produce something optimally accessible/useful for users. What does the user get in terms of understanding of Manding when they look up Bambara first (or only)? Or of the practical interintelligibility of variant forms when they access Manding first? Why should they get pieces of what relate to the whole in an article on a variant form, rather than either the whole narrative (at cost of reduncancy) or less pieces and a clear reference to a main article (arguably more efficient)?

This is just to mention two situations that I think I understand best among many in Africa.

To put this another way: The legendary 2000+ languages of Africa can IMO be best presented and understood in terms of groups and relationships that are linguistic, to be sure, but also integrally part of everyday culture and communication. --A12n 21:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you have to worry about conversion to the template being imminent. Most of the articles listed under "to be converted to the template" have been there for years. Your idea for a model sounds good; I'd say be bold and start implementing it, and then discuss if you encounter resistance. You could start a subpage here (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Fula) to organize the model you'd like pages to follow. —Angr 12:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for this. I'll try to be as bold as time permits. In the meantime I wonder if there is such a thing as "Satallite article" or are all linked-out articles a "Main article" even if in the hierarchy of thinking some may serve mainly to complement a particular article. I.e., in the suggested model for Fula and its variants - all articles are "Main..." even if one is in effect more "Main..." than the others?--A12n 01:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Agree with Angr. Shouldn't we just remove the whole 'Pages_awaiting_conversion_to_the_template-section? As far as I know it isn't used anymore, and it hasn't been updated in years. — mark ✎ 13:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I decided to be bold and remove the whole list. — mark ✎ 13:34, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for this. It's simpler not to have old info confusing new arrivals... --A12n 01:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dutch Declension and Dutch declension

Those 2 pages looks the same but one is providing incorrect information. I tried to revert it to the one which provide correct information and it gets reverted back. Then I put the dispute tag and not verified tag, and it gets reverted again. Can someone please help? Thanks. matt-(my page-leave me a message) 14:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I restored the original article to its original name, and restored your tags. I'll keep the page on my watchlist a while, but you should discuss what precisely you disagree with on the talk page. —Angr 14:57, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
It has been pointed out in the discussion page, but the user and and a person (apparently with very similar ip address) keeps reverting it once in a while. matt-(my page-leave me a message) 15:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't the obsolete redirect at Dutch Declension be deleted? Nothing links to it. — mark ✎ 17:57, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't hurt anything. —Angr 19:36, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A NEW WIKILANGUAGE SISTER PROJECT

I propose a new major Wikilanguage or Wiki Linguistics which specializes in the teaching of all languages. I have looked over the internet and have found some sites which do have several of the major languages giving knowledge of learning them but this wuould be huge and would provide all the information for learning languages such as most of the 250 languages that already have wikipedias. Learning a language is a major infomration source but wikipedia doesn't cover them in detail. This would be taking WIkiProject Linguistics to the next level with an entire sister project of its own. Anybody interested in starting this ? I beleive this wikipedia sister project would be developed into an extremwely valuable resoruce not only for achieving knowledge of major languages but also other world languages which are not always readily available to learn. On every page that already covers the basics of languages on Wikipedia there would be a link to the WikiLinguistics.

I beleive that such is the massive global size of wikipedia that wikipedians from each country who have a knoweldge of their own languages could contribute. E.g I would like to have a knowledge of the Czech language but at present there is not much detail. I would like a complete WikipediaLinguistics Sister project devotes to providing languages across the planet.

E.g WikiLanguages would be divded into 250 languages eventually or whatever with each having a massive sub project of its own. WikiFrench WikiSpanish WikiFinnish, WikiPortuguese, WikiGerman, WikiPortuguese, WikiCzech WikiItalian WikiGreek WikiSwedish WikiJapanese etc. What do you think. If you think it is a good idea let me know I have propsed it on the main page but I seriously think this would be an immensely benefical part of wikipedia. Also if it could incorpate translation technology also think of the immense benefit it wuod,have from translating articles from foreign wikipedias!!!

If you think it is a great idea I am thinking of organizing a Support campaign for it to ensure that WikiLinguistics or whatever is established alongside WikiSpecies WikiCommons etc. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 11:52, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

If it is created I would hope that say five years down the line we should have the ultimate language learning resource in the world. If everybody contributes from their respective countris and knowledge of their languages we could see a resource which could allow you to potentially become fluent in hundreds of languages. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 12:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Ernst Stavro Blofeld 11:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

At the moment we have language instruction at Wikibooks, see b:Category:Languages. Is that not enough? —Angr 12:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah I see this has already been set up. However it is very basic and wish it to develop as I proposed. But surely languages is a massive topic and should have a different site of its own. Awareness needs to be clearer as I didn;t even know it existed. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 17:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I also didn't know of the existence (or nature) of b:Category:Languages until now and what an exciting discovery! I shall be exploring this new discovery in the following days.
As for Ernst's proposal, I have two things to say. One is that given the prior existence of the project pointed out by Angr, and certainly if it looks like this is a serious project which has already made some headway and amounts to much the same thing (all of which looks likely to me after a five-minute look-around), then the sensible thing for Ernst (and others) to do at this stage is to get involved in that project, see if we can contribute to it, and if there is any way it can be improved, try to contribute to improving it too. It looks like that should keep a lot of us quite busy for a long time!
Now if you think, Ernst, that something bigger and better than this ought to be done, then we still should look first to see if that cannot be achieved by building on what already exists, and furthermore, even if it should turn out to be the case that, as you suggest, a more grandiose project is needed, I don't think it is good policy to try to start something bigger when we still haven't completed the smaller version. That is known in colloquial English as "running before you can walk".
Secondly, I have another comment to make, and please don't take this in a negative way, but if you propose to start a big project for teaching people languages, I assume you know a lot about language teaching? I really think it is important to be sure we are not reinventing the wheel on this one. Sound methodology is likely to make the difference between success and failure for such a project. (I say this as a language teaching specialist.) --A R King 18:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I have been teaching English to Japanese students (ages 3 to 73) in Japan for ten years and hold a Masters degree in Language Acquisition and speak French, Spanish and Japanese as foreign languages. I intuitively like the idea of a wiki language. I know, however, that learners seek to acquire language through different methods. There is fierce debate on this topic. For me, language acquisition and teaching should be based on input of comprehensible language. For reference and theory: Stephen Krashen. This means that the creation of a language learning site must include massive amounts of graded materials of all sorts. Indeed, no material is too small. Any song or book or story or speech or video would meet the criteria for effective materials provided it is referenced by level and includes help in simple terms in the language that is to be acquired. The difficulty comes with the issue of copyrights. Some of the best language materials are made by professionals who prefer to be paid more than they prefer to support the free learning of languages. Stevensensei 14:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Writing systems

Quick question - I think. Although I have other priorities pending, I just set up a page, Writing systems of Africa, and a category under the same name. These group a lot of pages related to language, and a few language pages where there is not a separate page for the script it uses/used. The variability encountered had me wondering a bit about whether this is also an area that fits under this project. --A12n 01:15, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Whoops! I guess this is more properly WikiProject Writing systems ... --A12n 09:09, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] assessment system?

Any value in setting up a system along the lines of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team's assessment system? --Ling.Nut 20:15, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

If you want any help doing so, let me know and I can do it. Badbilltucker 18:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and been bold for once and added ratings to the banner template. (We need a better logo, though.) --Ptcamn 12:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chochni language, Mehfuz language at AfD

Two recently-created articles, Chochni language and Mehfuz language, are at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion because they lack references. I couldn't find a listing for either at Ethnologue. If you can save either article by adding a relevant reference, please do so. --Eastmain 20:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I did a Google search on Chochni. The only things I could find referenced back to Wikipedia and the orginal article. All it said was that it was some dialect, and wasn't informative at all. Personally, I don't think there is a language called Chochni. Dialect, perhaps, but this is a list for languages. Paxsimius 02:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I also searched and searched for Mehfuz, and I'm fairly certain that it's a hoax. I'm for removing Chochni and Mehfuz from the list without any articles. Paxsimius 04:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] requested language articles

I hope this is the right place for this, but I'm curious about a project focussed on creating articles about languages, but I can't find a section here for requested articles. Is there one I'm missing? Murderbike 09:19, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You can start such a section! Providing references from which an article could be built would also be helpful. —Angr 09:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I started a page here, with a (very incompleted, please add!) list of language articles to be created, expanded, and improved. I'll try to figure out a proper way to put a link on the project page. Murderbike 07:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Cool. I went ahead and incorporated it on the main project page. —Angr 07:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
...and there are plenty of redlinks among the lists of endangered languages that you can access from the top of WP:ENLANG. :-) --Ling.Nut 23:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Endangered languages

.. is up and running at WP:ENLANG. --Ling.Nut 20:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review for European Commissioner for Multilingualism

Though the article is not about a language, WikiProject Languages is the most closely related project as lots of language policy subjects are included in the language articles. So, I have submitted the article Leonard Orban, Romanian European Commissioner for Multilingualism, for peer review at Peer review/Leonard Orban. The article includes a lot of information on European Union language policy. If you are interested in language policy (especially in a European context) and/or have some good ideas to improve the layout, the style etc of an article please take a look. --Michkalas 11:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Portuguese language FAR

Portuguese language has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:39, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Latin phrases AfD

Just letting the project members know about this: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Latin phrases (2nd nomination) --Dweller 10:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal: Wikipedia:Romanization_of_Mongolian

I'm looking for expert input on this proposal. Any takers? It's a rather exotic language, but there's a lot of historic (and other) material based on it. --Latebird 12:36, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing topics

I have a short list of missing topics related to language and linguistics. I've tried to find any equivalent articles but I'dbe grateful if anyone could have a look at it. - Skysmith 13:12, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dialects guidelines

I would like to develop some guidelines for the treatment of dialects, arising from some issues with American English dialects discussed at Talk:New Jersey English. Originally I considered forming a new WikiProject for this purpose, but thought better of it and decided to raise the issue here. Specifically, there are a number of places with vague claims of a dialect existing, but the existence of a separate dialect is not recognized by linguists. There may also be some regional irregularities of pronunciation, which, though real, do not rise to the level of dialect. My proposal is this: that we only have separate Wikipedia articles on dialects that have been well-studied by linguists, and that regional irregularities of pronunciation be described in broader "regional differences in X dialect" articles, where X is an actual dialect as recognized by linguists. Thoughts?--Pharos 04:34, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

One problem I can think of is that almost every linguist who's worked on American English dialects has his own set of dialects. There's actually relatively little uniformity on the question of what the actual dialects of AE are. Some people look at phonological criteria, others look at lexical criteria, others look at a mixture of both. The whole field is a mess. —Angr 15:59, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Angr's right that there is no concensus in many cases, although I wouldn't say that the whole field is a mess so much as that the concept of "a dialect" is a lot less determinate than people realize. It is really best understood as a convenience that allows us to talk about language variation by social identity rather than as an identifier of stable varieties. Without the term it is really hard to talk about real variation, but has a side effect of supporting the illusion that variation is more stable and organized than it really is. That said, it is possible to identify what might be called areas of concentrations of linguistic similarities that can be profitably thought of as units, NY, Northern Cities (and greater north), African American English, Estuary English and so on. These "dialects" receive names from sociolinguists and sometimes, though not always, speakers themselves. There are also what might be called pseudo-dialects such as "New Jersey English" or "Midwestern English" that may be named and thought to exist, but do not really have enough internal linguistic similarity to really be discussed as units in any profitable way.
The way I see it, an encyclopedia exists to allow individuals to get information about a topic they might be interested in. A user might be interested in NJ English, but there is no basis for justifying an NJ English empirically. So, the Wikipedia should be limited to saying that. On the other hand, a user might want to look at Philadephia English, and there is little doubt that there is a justification for that, based on the number of published articles on that topic. So, the project would have to set up a set of criteria that would justify the existence of articles on certain varieties and not others. the most solid grounds would be the existence of a research base on that variety. If that fails due to contradictory claims in the research, there would have to be a kind of second level of appeal, presumably arguing it out on a talk page. However, this happens in many fields, just think of the differentiation of species or the recent argument over whether Pluto is a planet.mnewmanqc 00:28, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
Mnewmanqc, I agree, you've hit on the heart of the issue with asking whether it is "profitable" to discuss such dialects separately. The recognized dialects are a convenience, surely, but they're the only thing we really have to work with.
I've now placed a proposed guideline for dialects on the front side of this page. Feel free to improve the text, if you find it lacking. Thanks.--Pharos 01:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Pharos. I've made some amendments, but I have a feeling that we're not at a final draft yet. Someone else want to make changes?mnewmanqc 13:56, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I think that covers all the bases pretty well, though it may be just a bit wordy. Anyone else care to comment?--Pharos 00:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dynamic tables for lists of languages in languages of X?

Just looking at the Languages of Kenya article which includes a list of 62 languages (per Ethnologue) and wondering about different ways to present this. One thought, which I brought up on Talk:Languages of Kenya#Language list - format is that it would be nice to have a dynamic table (as in a spreadsheet), letting you alphabetize by name, or by family, subfamily, and perhaps by number of speakers and region(s). IOW, you click on the header for "region" and the list realphabetizes by region (and some pre-set criteria for subalphabetization). Click on language family, language group, number of speakers, and the list resets accordingly. Is this even possible in Wikipedia? Could have uses in other kinds of articles too.--A12n 13:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

It is possible, and it's already being used. See List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants for an example. You just have to add class="sortable" to the table description. —Angr 13:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll try to find time to generate a test. Maybe on a page with fewer languages, like Languages of Niger. --A12n 00:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode question

Does anyone know what's the last letter in the third row of the image at Wakhi language#Orthography is? (I thought it was a ҕ, that is, a Cyrillic г with a hook, but I guess not). Does it have a precomposed Unicode form or do I have to make one using combining characters? Thanks! cab 23:59, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Good question. I don't think you could make it with any current Unicode characters (unless it's a variant of a more common letter -- ŋ or ƣ seem like distant possibilities, but given its position in the alphabet, it's probably an alteration of j). You could ask on the Unicode mailing list, but you might like to establish the provenance of that image first. The uploader didn't give any information, and it might not be the current standard, if there is one (and what's with "elphabets"?). --Ptcamn 00:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Languages of Europe

The article European languages has been completely remodelled, separating out the list of languages (which may make sense) and reintroducing a survey of "common features of European languages" which had previously found a home at Eurolinguistics. I'd like to know what others think of the article in this new form. I think the material was OK at Eurolinguistics but it won't do as the Wikipedia article about European languages, because it relies on a new, not generally accepted definition of Europe which is political, exclusionary and non-encyclopedic.

Incidentally, there have also been moves between European languages and Languages of Europe. So far as I can see, these don't relate to the remodelling of the article. Andrew Dalby 20:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tsimshian/Coast Tsimshian

Hi; someone just placed this project template on these two pages; there is a bit of a merge discussion concerning them as the Tsimshian people regard "Coast Tsimshian" as incorrect (Gitxsan and Nisga'a peoples are Tsimshianic, but not Tsimshian). There's also no separate Tsimshian language article currently - that's a redirect to Tsimshian but should be a separate article; at which time the language template can move over there, as the Tsimshian page, by naming convention, is for ethnographic/historical material and language pages have their own categories/hierarchies, though of course interlinked. There are other First Nations languages in BC that are still part of people pages; most have been separated but not all. Just asking your members either to have a look out concerning content and maybe some help separating the language articles and the basic starter material for them would be good; I stubbed things like Okanagan language just to get it started, but couldn't make any linguistics contributions directly except general comments; similarly in some cases there may be dialect pages; currently Halkomelem covers all three main dialects (Straits, Downriver, Upriver) but even within that there's dialects (Musqueam, Chehalis/Sts'Ailes) that may have enough material on them to warrant an article. In the case of Tsimshian/Coast Tsimshian, though, it's not just separating the language material out, it's also removing the redunancy between the two articles....(and as with "Coast Salish", "Coast Tsimshian" is not the name either of a language, or a people - although for different reasons).Skookum1 17:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Featured article review/Tamil language

I've nominated Tamil language for featured article review. Please leave comments or improve the article directly if possible. Grandmasterka 01:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Tamil language has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:48, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

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