Talk:Djerma

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Zuni girl; photograph by Edward S. Curtis, 1903 This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Ethnic groups, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to ethnic groups, nationalities, and other cultural identities. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project's talk page.
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I don't get it. The article begins with Djerma, also spelled Zerma, Djerma, Dyerma , or Zaberma but any other time it says Zarma. Is Zarma also a good name, or is it a misspelling? --81.38.190.57 22:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

This language, which belongs to the Songhay language group, is spoken just about entirely in the West African nation of Niger (although there are a few thousand speakers in neighboring Mali). The name used by Ethnologue at the pages of both these countries is Zarma (specifically Zarmaci at the Mali page). In 2007 at the Talk:Songhay page, a contributor (not me) complained about the use of the spelling, Djerma. Therefore, there seems to be good reason for the move (renaming). I would appreciate knowledgeable people giving advice on this proposal. I have followed all three steps prescribed in the procedure for requesting a potentially controversial move. See WP:RM. Hurmata (talk) 06:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

As I'm sure you know, all African names are victims of transcription. I personnally prefer Djerma, as this is the accepted Francophone transcription. As Niger, Mali, and Benin are Francophone, and almost all Djerma speakers are there, this makes sense to me. Fluglestad's history of Niger, one of the few English language works on the history of the nation uses Djerma, as does Decalo's Historical Dictionary of Niger. Zerma is the traditional British spelling. That's all I have in front of me right now, but I'll do a google search as well.
It strikes me that there can be honest disagreements about this, but the advantages of Djerma/Dyerma/Zerma/Zarma seem marginal. I would suggest we leave it where it is, regularise the spelling across the article, and point out that which anyone studying West Africa will quickly determine for themselves; that there are eight spellings of every African word and that's not going to change anytime soon. My 2 cents. T L Miles (talk) 13:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Googling, Zerma seems to come up more often for the language, but the ISO 639-3 code is "dje". CIA world fact book uses one, Library of Congress uses the other. Picking a Nigerien site at random (http://www.nigerdiaspora.net/ ), the search reveals almost no usage of Zerma, many for Djerma, but the site is written in French. An interesting case is http://patstoll.org/afspeaknew/, a site collecting students autobiographies from Niamey. Djerma is the term used there, but it was likely translated from French. A side note: people in Niger talk about Djerma / Songhai people (as opposed to language) pretty interchangably, as the Dosso kingdom identified as Djerma in the immediate pre-colonial people. It seems Djerma is more common in English as the group name, Zerma as the language, I would assume because of disciplinary diferences: what might be standard for anglophone historians could be different for anglophone anthropologists. T L Miles (talk) 14:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Please accept my apologies for triggering this discussion inadvertently. My move request was prompted by a misunderstanding purely on my own part. I did not realize this article is about the Djerma *ethnic group*. I am concerned with the naming of the Wikipedia article on their language. After posting the move request, I discovered that Wikipedia already has an article, Zarma_language. Therefore, I have voided the move request. I have removed notice of it from the WP:RM page as well as from this talk page. I do not have a stance on moving *this* article on the ethnic group. If someone else were to make a move request, I would follow the discussion with interest. Hurmata (talk) 03:16, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


Dude, seriously, it's still not a bad idea. I think eventually that move will happen, but I don't get the feeling anglophone academics have decided (though Zarma is where it's trending). It's like Fulani/Puel becoming Fula in the last twenty years in English. With African transcriptions (or any language that uses a non-western script) there's always chaos in English spelling. T L Miles (talk) 13:34, 25 April 2008 (UTC)