Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages/Archive 3

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

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)

Proposed deletions

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

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

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)

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)

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)

Irish phonology peer review

Irish phonology is up for peer review. Please leave comments at Wikipedia:Peer review/Irish phonology/archive1. Thanks! —Angr 18:23, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

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):

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Endangered languages

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)
Done, on Languages of Niger as an example. --A12n 18:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I just added a more ambitious table to Languages of Mali#Spoken languages - perhaps it can be developed for multilingual countries. There is a problem with sorting by number of speakers. Estimates of L2 speakers is problematic, though I think this is an important category of information. --A12n 04:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Gwoyeu Romatzyh

Suggestions needed on color-coding issue at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gwoyeu Romatzyh. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:05, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Promoted FA 3 April 2007. But comments on the principle of colour-coding still welcome. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 22:32, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Language Families

Alastair Haines mentioned on the project page about setting up structure for language families so this seems like a good starting point to bring up an issue this project should address. Take for example an article like Aromanian language. One of the first things you see is the Infobox, which lists the Language Family, as per this project's template. Go down all the way to the bottom and you'll see a template on Romance languages. Underneath that you see that the article belongs to the Categories Eastern Romance languages and Romance languages. You'll notice there's three different methods being used here to show the Language Family information. Now take a look at Turkish language. It has the same three different methods, but notice there are two different Templates, one for the Turkic languages node and another for Altaic languages family. Language families can get complex and there are no guidelines for editors on this topic. Persian language has templates for both Iranian and Indo-Iranian groupings. Aromanian language only show Romance languages navigation template but not an Italic grouping Template. Spanish language is only a member of the Romance languages category but not of any sort of category like Italo-Western, Gallo-Iberian, Ibero-Romance, or West Iberian (like Aromanian is a member of Eastern Romance languages). I'd like to get a discussion going on creating project guidelines for editors. I'm not a fan of the navigation templates since the Infobox to me fulfills the goal of showing Language Family information and the templates can get out of hand unless by policy they are kept to a narrow scope. I do like the hidden templates as done on Spanish language if the templates are deemed as being ok, but I'm hoping no one goes around trying to make an Indo-European template as was done with Altaic languages. What next, Nostratic? This discussion is related to Talk:Altaic_languages#Template --Stacey Doljack Borsody 18:47, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Sborsody! Great to hear someone is working hard. Productive editors normally suggest the best policies. I will study what you are saying and work with you to improve the system. Our two main issues are likely to be — simple effective navigation, and sufficent quality content for language family and sub-family pages. The project is huge, an encyclopedia within an encyclopedia. Anyway, thanks for pointing to where I can get informed about the action directly. I'll report back within 24 hours. Cheers! Alastair Haines 01:32, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, back already! :D I posted this in the other discussion also.
“ A couple of quick comments from me. I study ancient near east languages, especially the semitic ones. They have distinct regional dialects and many modern derivatives. The whole language family is important to my field of study, because sometimes the best way to get a good guess at an ancient word that is ambiguous in context is to look for possible cognate words. What this means is, for my purposes only, the templates at the bottom are more useful than the info boxes. I'm a rare breed, but I'm not alone. I think rare people like me want the info in the templates at the bottom. Most people want the info box, but some of us want the template. I think it is appropriately placed at the bottom, that way people can ignore it unless they are serious. It comes after See also and references. Essentially the template box is just a way of organizing a lot of See also and category type information for the page. Let's just try to make these templates default to hidden form, as they do on the medical pages, what do people think? Alastair Haines 02:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC) ”
Here, I would add that those templates at the bottom are probably the key language family issue. The info box is a project languages issue, the template ignores most of that and covers material less interesting to most readers. I propose project language families provides those template boxes as it's core business. They should default to "hidden" mode, they should also automatically place pages in appropriate categories, so editors don't need to worry about all the manual work. There is also a natural division of labour and expertise. We need experts on languages to provide content for language pages, without worrying about cognate and family issues. We also need experts on language relationships, who don't need to worry about providing the main content. Well, I've probably got it all wrong. Let me know what you think. I am going to put time into helping, whatever way we choose to go. Cheers! Alastair Haines 02:40, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

R from ISO 639 / missig articles

Around 100 language pages can be accesed via ISO 639:code, e.g. ISO 639:nan. All implemented redirects can be seen at Category:Redirects_from_ISO_639. There are also articles with that naming style, e.g. ISO 639:art. Compare Category:ISO 639 I would like more redirects to be added by a bot and would to make a bot request. All languages articles that have an infobox and have only one ISO 639-3 code, could be added by a bot. Further down the road we can then let a bot check, for which ISO languages we do not have an article. And start creating them. At the end en:WP will be able to offer to outside websites to link via the ISO 639-3 system. Maybe we could even get the Ethnologue to link to WP :-). What do you thing? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 18:57, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd agree with that. —Nightstallion (?) 14:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I filed the request [1] Tobias Conradi (Talk) 01:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Swedish phonology PR

Swedish phonology is up for peer review. Your comments are most welcome.

Peter Isotalo 11:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Taglish

Taglish has refences to Phillipno (2001-2006). Can anyone explain what these bracketed dates mean? Rich Farmbrough, 12:56 27 April 2007 (GMT).

It seems to be different spelling reforms of Filipino. (E.g. In 2001 "driver" was changed to "drayver", and then in 2007 changed again to "drayber".) If that is the case it should be clarified in the article. --Ptcamn 13:30, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Articles by iso639 code

I've created a list of articles linked by iso639 code, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Articles by code. Bold entries in this list link to articles which have the indicated iso code in the language template. Non bold entries are articles that have the same name as the language name (or "<X> language") according http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/download.asp. The NOCODE list at the end is a list of 429 (!) articles that reference Template:Infobox Language but don't have a name matching an official language name (according to sil's list). The BADCODE list is a list of codes my scripts parsed that aren't in sil's list.

I'd be willing to regenerate this list with different heuristics if anyone has suggestions for improvements. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

This is really great! Especially the No/BAD/DUPLICAT analysis. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

All the bold codes then could get redirects. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I've revised the list so the links are to "XXX language" rather than just XXX (where XXX is the iso639 language name - except where the language name includes the word "language"). A lot of the blue links were to unrelated articles - this change has fixed this but has made the number of red links much larger. I've just created redirects for all the Zapotec languages with codes starting with z (on the theory that getting to Zapotec language is close). If you look at the "what links here" for the Zapotec language page, you'll see these. Note that many of these have accented characters in the name, and have names that defeat the case insensitive match heuristic used by the Go button, so these redirects are perhaps less useful than they might seem. I'm really not a language person, so if anyone thinks creating these was a bad idea please let me know and I can get them deleted. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:34, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello from LINGUIST List!

This message was posted on the Wikipedia Talk: WikiProject Linguistics discussion page, but I wanted to make sure it was seen here as well:

I hope you have all had a chance to read about LINGUIST List’s new effort to recruit linguists for updating Wikipedia pages (see links on Wikipedia Talk: WikiProject Linguistics discussion. It is good to see that there is an active group of editors already working away. For those of you who haven’t already heard, The LINGUIST List was nominated by Dr. Partee (in Russia) to coordinate academic linguists in an update of the linguistics and language pages. In April, our online linguistics community confirmed this with an overwhelming vote, and as promised, I am the graduate research assistant working to recruit linguistics editors. For the past few weeks, I have been reading about WikiProject Linguistics, familiarizing myself with all the subprojects, and trying to get a handle on the many activities you’ve already started. Here at The LINGUIST List, we’ve decided to place our focus on any areas is not being actively worked on yet. This might be tackling the “to do” lists of a few subprojects, adding to those lists, or whatever else is appropriate. Feel free to make suggestions on this page, or shoot me an email at hannah@linguistlist.org (my name is Hannah Morales).

Looking forward to working with everyone,
--Linguistlist 16:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC) Hannah, LINGUIST List

Hallo. Regarding the Isan language article, I find it accurate and correct. Yes, no sources are given ,by most of the editors of the page are native Thais from Isan and they know the characteristics of their dialect. It is a dialect ,not a language, a Laotian dialect. There are 9 different variations in the diffrent parts of the region and most of the differences are due to a mixing (patois) between Thai and Lao. Korat, as written in the article, is a de facto Patois with Isan and Thai words mixed. Another dialect of some parts of Northeastern Thailand (not related to Isan dialect) is the Phasaa Suay which is a dialect of Khmer (Cambodian language) and it is spoken in the Surin and Buriram provinces. However, even this Phaasaa Suay is now mixed with some Thai and Isan (indirectly Lao) terms by the younger generation.

See meta:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Herero Wikipedia

If anyone here has any Herero language proficiency, please take a look at this proposal and at the small Herero encyclopedia itself to see what should be done with this wikipedia (keep it or delete it.) Keeping it implies more than a sentimental commitment ("it would be nice to have a wikipedia in every language ...") but also that it can be something more than a 10 or 20-article spam and vandalism trap -- and not just "someday" but in the here and now. (Otherwise, it may be best to delete it for now and wait until there's more interest in the future.)

Please do not respond here but rather at that discussion (meta:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Herero Wikipedia).

Thanks, --A. B. (talk) 12:14, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Suffix deletion

You may be interested to know that two suffix articles I created are up for deletion at AfD now: -ship and -manship. Apparently there is a move toward transwiking possibly all of them to Wiktionary. Dhaluza 16:56, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Stop vs. plosive

Is there a preference for one term over the other? My understanding is that 'plosive' may be more common in Europe and Australia than the US? The main article on Wiki is stop consonant, but a whole slew of articles use plosive. Many editors apparently prefer using plosive, creating many redirects [2] including the consonant table at IPA; or they prefer using this code: [[Stop consonant|plosive]]. Don't see why the latter is necessary. I may be a bit partial to 'stop' (just can't bring myself to say "plosive"), but it would be nice to have something of a standard. — Zerida 07:44, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

According to Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics, the two are not perfect synonyms. Plosives are stops with an egressive pulmonic airstream mechanism; thus implosive, ejective, and click stops are not plosives. —Angr 15:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Tsk, tsk (to me)! I read Ladefoged as an undergraduate, I guess I need to hit the books. I suppose that means all plosives are stops, but not all stops are plosives. Then again, not all ejectives are stops either. It may not be a bad idea to include a small explanation of the distinction in plosive instead of redirecting it to stop (or include it in stop consonant). — Zerida 21:32, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
So would it be worth the effort to disambiguate the above in plosive instead of redirecting it to stop consonant, or is this splitting hairs? Right now the main article on stops indicates that plosive "is reserved for oral (non-nasal) stops", which might be a bit of an oversimplification. Furthermore, the articles on implosives and ejectives actually state that they are plosives, as does Template:Manner of articulation, making things more confusing. — Zerida 03:56, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
I think the current structure is good, ie with plosive redirecting to stop consonant, and then an explanation of the precise distinction. If we're agreeing to follow Ladefoged, then the distinction and the articles you mentioned should be amended accordingly. Gailtb 13:47, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
I edited the lead at stop consonant to reflect the information above, and also switched the term in the template and the articles in question from plosive to stop since the latter is more inclusive. — Zerida 08:05, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Code2000 DRV

Recently the article on the Unicode font Code2000 was deleted, with no informed comment. That deletion is being reviewed, and members of this project who wish to do so may comment here. --KSmrqT 07:04, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Without knowing that there had been a discussion about deleting it (I did look, but cursorily), I created the Code2000 article again, and another user restored info that had apparently been in a the previous Wikipedia article and preserved on Answers.com. It wasn't my intent to bypass discussion, but rather to fill what I saw as a gap as I worked on a parallel mini-project on the PanAfriL10n wiki. Apologies for the transgression, but hopefully this article will stay now.--A12n 15:47, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

The votes in the deletion review were unanimous to restore. One comment was that the article could use a little attention. Especially, if we know and love this font, why? Volunteers welcome! (Remarks on talk page also welcome.) --KSmrqT 19:29, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Russian language FAR

Russian 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. Colchicum 18:10, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Ayoreo language

Hello, I'm new to the project, and was writing the Ayoreo language article, and came across a couple of Genesis translations in the language. However, I'm not sure of how to include them, or if it is legal to include them. (They were at the Language Museum and The Rosetta Project.) Since I know very little about copyright and the Bible and such, could I please have some help in this matter? Thank you very much, Neranei T/C 06:41, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Although the original text of the Bible is obviously not copyrightable, individual translations are. Do you know how old the translation into Ayoreo is? —Angr 18:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

"Pseudo-dialects"

Could some linguistically-informed people comment on the deletion of a navbox for "English pseudo-dialects"? --Ptcamn 03:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

User sm, User smo

I have looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_by_language . It would appear that there are no templates like Template:User sm, Template:User smo, Template:User smo-3 . :( I don't know how one would go about getting them set up, but as one of the more common Pacific Islander languages, there should be. Chris 05:07, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

  • there is also no ty for Tahitian
  • no ny for Chichewa
  • no mh for Marshallese
  • no map for Ulithian
  • no yap for Yapese
  • no chk for Chuukese
  • no ssa for Zarma
  • no pau for Palauan
  • no tvl for Tuvaluan
  • no map for Futunan (note, labeled the same as Ulithian, can that really be the same ISO code?)
  • no ber for Berber
  • no syr for Syriac

no Template:Infobox Language

Also, folks, there are several languages I found the last few days that have no infoboxes, and I am not a linguist to properly do it. There is no Woleaian (which according to your standards should be at "Woleaian language" but is not)

  • no infobox for Ponapean
  • no infobox for Kosraean
  • no infobox for Tokelauan
  • no infobox for Fakauvea

Chris 05:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Article titles

What is the preferred way to name an article in which the local name is different from the linguistic name? English is the official language in Jamaica, but there is a local language spoken by the majority of the population. This language is called "Patois" ("Patwah") locally, but Jamaican Creole by linguists. Give that most Jamaicans do speak and read English fluently, there seems to be a preference for Jamaican Patois among these users. So, who do we cater to: the linguists, or the average readers and native speakers? - BillCJ 17:49, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Chinese GR romanization will be tomorrow's TFA

The article on the Chinese romanization system Gwoyeu Romatzyh will be tomorrow's FA on the main page. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 17:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Angaur language

This article is nominated for deletion as the nominator believes it may be a hoax. The CIA World Factbook lists Angaur as one of the three official languages on the island state of Angaur in Palau. E.B. Carr, "Notes concerning Language-Names", American Speech (1953)[3] also mentions "Angaurese". Ethnologue does not list it as a living language in Palau and the island of Angaur only has a population of 188, so it's possible this may be an extinct language. Can anybody in this Wikiproject confirm details of this language? Dbromage [Talk] 06:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)