Talk:Chadian Arabic

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This should definitely be Shuwa Arabic, not Chadian Arabic. If you look in Ethnologue, you will see that it listed as Shuwa Arabic for every country but Chad. If you look for the Baggara people, you will see they mostly speak Shuwa Arabic, both in Sudan and Chad. Baggara of Sudan and Chad While I have seen a lot of spellings, Showa, Shoa, Shua, etc., I have never seen this language called anything else. What Ethnologue calls Western Sudanese Arabic is another name it uses for Shuwa Arabic. Note that it says Western Sudanese Arabic and Khartoum Arabic are not "compatible". Mikenassau 00:45, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Please note that The Linguist List gives this language only as Shuwa Arabic. Mikenassau 01:01, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

first, please don't go unilaterally redirecting without consensus. Secondly, wikipedia uses the most common English name, and I've never heard a Chadian or anyone who's lived in Chad call it Shuwa Arabic, nor a linguist. Hence revert. Drmaik 04:06, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

ISO 639-3, following Ethnologue, of course, also refers to this language as Chadian Arabic. "Shuwa Arabic" should be submitted as an alternate name to the ISO authorities for inclusion in the standard, but they are hesitant to change the primary name of a language without overwhelming linguistic evidence. I know because I've tried to change names of other languages with them and they only added the "native name" as an alternate. "Chadian Arabic" is what ISO uses, so that is what Wikipedia should lean towards, if possible, with appropriate redirects. (Taivo (talk) 01:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC))

[edit] Include Sudan?

Right now, the distribution of Chadian/Shuwa Arabic is what is shown in Ethnologue. Is this the same language as Western Sudanese Arabic? If so, we should include Sudan in the distribution comments with an appropriate reference. Just saying so doesn't make it so in Wikipedia. Do you have a reference that we can include that will back that up? (Taivo (talk) 02:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC))