Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages/Archive 7

Choosing a proper language for transliterating the name from

Ask for your expertise in this matter: Talk:Wladimir Klitschko#Name --eugrus (talk) 10:13, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Santorum (sexual neologism)

Santorum (sexual neologism)

This article has recently been expanded with additional sources and referencing improvements. There is also some ongoing discussion about that, at the article's talk page. If you are interested, please have a look at Santorum (sexual neologism) and the associated talk page discussion at Talk:Santorum (sexual neologism). Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 20:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

occlusive vs. plosive

Re. the recent moves of the C articles, the defs I'm reading suggest that occlusive and plosive are not exactly synonyms, and occlusives include plosives, implosive stops, and ejective stops. Am I reading too much into it? — kwami (talk) 05:20, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

iso codes

I've been cleaning up the iso codes in our infoboxes. (A lot of supposed iso2 codes were spurious, being simply the iso3 code entered twice.)

Question: in, say, Fiuman dialect, which does not have an iso3 code assigned to it, should that cell be left blank? Or, since it's a dialect of Venetian, should the code for Venetian be used? We're horribly inconsistent. — kwami (talk) 11:32, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd say articles about dialects shouldn't be taking the language infobox in the first place. Other dialect articles like American English and Ulster Irish don't have them. —Angr (talk) 20:55, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps have a separate dialect infobox? Also possibly relevant are issues of whether something's a language or dialect. Munci (talk) 10:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's a perennial issue.

We have lots of Italian, German, Slavic, Chinese, and Arabic "dialects" with info boxes. Some of them list the iso3 code for the parent language. Some leave it blank. Some use an iso2 code like roa 'romance'.

'Nother question. Is it okay to use the iso3 field for non-iso3 codes? I thought we could add another parameter for Linguist List / Multitree. Problem is, I'm not sure where to draw the line:

For some iso3 codes, Ethnologue names the language but redirects the reader to Linguist List for details.

For others, Ethnologue only says its "active" (or sometimes "private use"), but does not name or link to the site. For these, we might want to use a LL parameter to link to the site ourselves, even though technically it's an iso3 code.

In addition, there are many codes at Linguist List which are not valid iso3 codes, but which would work with the same template as valid iso3 codes.

Currently, I've added a large number of unsupported iso3 and non-iso3 through the lc and ld parameters. This is rather unwieldy, since there are two links for the code, the first of which is a dead end. — kwami (talk) 15:56, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Apart from a bunch of conlangs and identified dialects, I've got the following which might need some review:

African Romance, Ait Seghrouchen Berber, Alo-Teqel language, Amorite language, Ayapaneco, Ba-Shu Chinese, Balboa Creole French, Balomar language, British Romance, Bungi creole, Cacán language, Chagossian Creole, Daman Indo-Portuguese language, Damin, Deilami language, Dhudhuroa language, Diu Indo-Portuguese language, Gorgotoqui language, Guernésiais, Gunai language, Gurindji Kriol language, Gutian language, Himyarite language, Inuit Sign Language, Judaeo-Portuguese, Kalix language, Karamay dialect, Khuzestani Arabic, Kichwa language, Kilit language, Kitara language, Kyakhta Russian-Chinese Pidgin, Labrador Inuit Pidgin French, Nese language, Ngkoth language, Northern Ireland Sign Language, Old French Sign Language, Palta language, Panzaleo language, Papia Tugu language, Pidgin Wolof, Plateau Sign Language, Qoqmončaq language, Queensland Kanaka English, Rusenu language, Rwanda-Rundi, Samoan Plantation Pidgin, Sercquiais, Shao-Jiang Min, Shirvani Arabic, Solombala-English, Southern Quechua, Tai Bueng, Takalak language, Talossan language, Tangwang language, Tetserret Tuareg, Tijuana Sign Language, Tommo So dialect, Warlpiri Sign Language, Yurats language,

— kwami (talk) 20:43, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

infobox colors

I've scanned many of the family & language infoboxes, apart from IE and maybe ST or some in SE Asia (I forget which), and all should now have the proper family color coding. If you notice any which don't, please let me know and I'll scan all the langs in its category (a few always slip through).

I've now recoded the templates, so that any boxes which have the color coded as a color name rather than through 'family' or 'familycolor' (apart from white, which is the default) should now be black (unless they were black, in which case they'll be red); there shouldn't be any such boxes any more, so if you notice any, please fix or let me know. — kwami (talk) 13:12, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Politics related navigational template nominated for deletion

The navigational template {{Political neologisms}} has been nominated for deletion. Please see discussion, at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_May_25#Template:Political_neologisms. Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 17:53, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Request for comment - Santorum (neologism)

• Santorum (neologism)

Request for Comment discussion started, please see Talk:Santorum_(neologism)#Proposal_to_rename.2C_redirect.2C_and_merge_content.

Thank you for your time, -- Cirt (talk) 06:25, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Can't ID this language

Ana'ava. Any ideas? — kwami (talk) 20:26, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah, no wonder. By "Ugric" he didn't mean Ugric, but Ugric (Nger languages: Ugric, Livic, and Davic). I'm deleting this too. — kwami (talk) 23:52, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

DYK

Tambora language made it to DYK. Shame, most of the interesting lang articles I've expanded or written I never thought to take to DYK (Kusunda?), but it would be nice to have more language stuff on the main page. — kwami (talk) 20:04, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

AfD: Pledge of the Tree

Our article on Pledge of the Tree has been nominated for deletion.[1] As best as I can tell, none of the editors participating in the discussion can speak Arabic, so it's a bit difficult to assess its notability. Perhaps someone here can help us out? Thanks. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:31, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Danish orthography

See discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Denmark#Danish orthography. Thanks 86.28.121.200 (talk) 14:44, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

AfD for List of Urdu words and their origin

The List of Urdu words and their origin has been nominated for deletion. Please consider contributing to the discussion at WP:Articles for deletion/List of Urdu words and their origin. —Angr (talk) 09:30, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Language recognition chart

There was a mistake in Wikipedia:Language recognition chart#Polish (Polski). According to the uncorrected version of the page "byl" is a form of copula "być", and it is commonly seen as a beginning of words in Polish texts. Unlike "był", "byl" isn't a form of "być". However, some words start indeed with "byl": "byle" and many similar words, "bylica" and "bylina". Words similar to "byl" are commonly used in Polish, but not commonly enough to be placed in this list.

I'm not native to English, so please forgive any mistakes I've made. Greetings, Marcgal (talk) 13:24, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

RfC notification

A new discussion on wording changes to the current guideline to clarify the use of diacritics for subjects whose native names contain them has been initiated. It can be found at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)/Diacritics RfC Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:48, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Linking ISO codes

Need: For language-related web sites, it is helpful to be able to link to Wikipedia for further information about a language, if any is available. Currently, there is no reliable way to do this. One can link to a search for the language by name, but for languages with names like Mono this gives poor results. For languages that have an ISO 639 code field, one use a search URL such as "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=%3E%22iso3%20dah%22&fulltext=Search", which is fairly reliable, but some languages do not have an ISO code field. My suggestion then would be that the WikiProject_Languages#Structure section specify the need for an ISO code (or for a standard infobox, which might imply the ISO code). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Huttarl (talk • contribs) 17:17, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I think if you search for ISO 639:xxx, replacing xxx with the ISO 639-3 code of the language you're looking for, you'll get redirected to the article on the language. At least, this works for a whole lot of ISO 639-3 codes; I can't promise it works for every single one. Angr (talk) 17:28, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

family links

I've added an "sil" parameter to the lang-family info box, and it will link to the Ethn. page. For those articles which are tagged for no refs, this is a simple way of proving that the family at least exists.

Of course, if SIL changes their coding again for the 17th edition, this will be a pain in the ass to update, as the lang codes are at least reasonably stable, so I don't know how much we'll actually want to use this option. But it's there for those who want it.

We might want to consider a linglist link. That has the advantage of showing a variety of classifications, but the disadvantage of being even more amateurish than SIL. — kwami (talk) 18:46, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Greek negator μή

Proto-Indo-European particles#Negators states that Ancient Greek μή was μᾶ in Doric, which has led an editor to change the PIE reconstruction from *mē to *mā. Now *mē is supported by Fortson's IE Language and Culture, and my Greek dictionary doesn't say anything about μᾶ. Could someone resolve this? Thanks, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:56, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's *mē now. That's ŌK with mē. --Thnidu (talk) 08:36, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Your feedback is requested

WikiProject Writing Systems is conducting a poll regarding its future goals, and we have identified you as a person with a vested interest in the future of that project. Whether you are a member of the WikiProject, a frequent contributor, or a passerby with an interest in the subject, we want your input as to the future emphasis that the Writing Systems project will take. Please take a moment to peruse the entries and add your comments where you have an opinion. You can visit the poll by clicking here, or on the project image, 書, on the right.

Notification of Article for Deletion nomination

The article Present simple continuous has been nominated for deletion. Please consider expressing your support or opposition at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Present simple continuous. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:06, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

A really good and reliable website for languages

http://www.omniglot.com

there is information there about ANY language — Preceding unsigned comment added by Someone35 (talk • contribs) 14:27, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Verifiability‎‎ - Machine Translation - Request for Comments

Comments are requested from all interested editors at a discussion to amend WP:V. Please participate. Do you support the proposal to amend the guidance in WP:NONENG regarding the use of machine translations, as given below? Please note that the scope of WP:NONENG is limited to the translation of non-English sources for use in English Wikipedia.

The proposal is to replace this sentence in WP:NONENG :

• Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations.

with the following :

• Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, and should always be attributed. A machine translation may be used in the text of the article only if the Wikipedian speaks the source language and confirms the accuracy of the translation.

Footnote: Attributions and confirmations may be provided on the talk page or in the edit summary.

Please add your comments at WP:V:talk and not here. Thanks. Rubywine . talk 02:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Example of writing?

Is it common for language templates to include a graphic image of a sample of the written language? Template:Berber languages includes File:TaReK_g.png, which is the name "Tarek" handwritten in Neo-Tifinagh, as described on the graphic's page:

Tarek in Tifinagh (Amazigh)

In a quick look at some other language templates I saw only one other such graphic: Template:Arabic_language includes File:Arabic albayancalligraphy.svg, which is described as

"Arabic Language" in the Arabic Al-Bayan Script

Would it be more appropriate to use a sample of printed or calligraphic Tifinagh? --Thnidu (talk) 21:32, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we usually just choose something that looks nice. In the language articles we commonly have the name of the language itself in its script. — kwami (talk) 22:14, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Translation help needed

Translation help needed for the articles Rus' people, Rus (name), Kievan Rus', Rus' Khaganate, and probably also Varangians and Annales Bertiniani.

Original Latin source: [2] (starting with "Venerunt etiam legati Graecorum a Theophilo imperatore directi, Theodosius videlicet, Calcedonensis metropolitanus episcopus, et Theophanius spatharius, ferentes cum donis imperatore dignis epistolam quos imperator quinto decimo Kalendas Iunii in Ingulenheim honorifice suscepit" on that page, and continuing AFAIK for two more pages).

The Latin source I need help on is the Annales Bertiniani, which is a collection of Frankish annals that was completed in 882 AD. The issue behind this is the historical first mention of the Rus' people, which was a Norse tribe, also known as the Varangians from Sweden that, starting in the 9th century from Novgorod and Kiev (Kievan Rus') and allegedly under the leadership of their chieftain Rurik (or rather RøRikR in Old Norse) conquered portions of the Baltics and today's northwestern Russia, a realm which was soon known as the Rus' Khaganate (with the result that lots of placenames, such as Novgorod, actually have an Old Norse etymology). Eventually, the Rus' Khaganate, even though the Norse ruling elite was but small and soon assimilated to the Balto-Slavic population, became the nucleus and namegiver for modern Russia.

The thing is, this so-called Normannic theory is still kinda controversial, as modern Russian scholars often regard it as a modern romantic nationalist myth originating with late-19th century Pan-Germanism. What the Russians are saying is that the original Rus were actually Slavs. Now, these 9th century Annales Bertiniani seem to be a rather authoritative, and, given their time of origination, pretty concise, source to refute these Russian scholars.

What I get of this Latin text is only the gist of it. Apparently, a delegation of Rus people were interrogated by Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious at Ingelheim am Rhein in 839 AD, where they said that:

• the name of their tribe was Rus (spelled "Rhos" in this Latin text, maybe via Byzantine Greek translation? As far as I can tell, a letter from Byzantine Emperor Theophilos or Michael III is mentioned),
• they originally came from Sweden
• but had settled in what is northwestern Russia today (I find this information several times in modern sources, attributing it to the Annales Bertiniani, but *WHAT THE HECK* was their contemporary name for "northwestern Russia"?), and
• that they had switched to calling their chieftains chacanus now.

Chacanus is Latin for Khagan, a title they had likely borrowed from contact with the Avars while conquering from the Baltic coast southward. It's why their realm in centuries to come was to be known as the Rus' Khaganate.

But what I need for good sourcing is an exact translation of portions relevant to the informations bulleted above. Original Latin text at [3] (starting with "Venerunt etiam legati Graecorum a Theophilo imperatore directi, Theodosius videlicet, Calcedonensis metropolitanus episcopus, et Theophanius spatharius, ferentes cum donis imperatore dignis epistolam quos imperator quinto decimo Kalendas Iunii in Ingulenheim honorifice suscepit" on that page, and continuing AFAIK for two more pages). --79.193.34.87 (talk) 02:35, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Sotho or Sesotho?

We have Sotho language, Sotho tonology, but Sesotho phonology, Sesotho grammar, etc. These are both the same language; surely they should be consistent? Which one? Benwing (talk) 22:57, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

The prefix se means language. It would be superfluous to repeat it in that title. No comment on the others. Nightw 04:17, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, they should all be moved to Sotho, per consistency and our NC's. — kwami (talk) 04:29, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I moved them, only to be reverted. I'm not going to edit war over it. Make a move request if you like. — kwami (talk) 02:55, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Changes to the Naming conventions (Mongolian)

I want to draw attention to a proposal that has been made at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Mongolian). Following some transcription norm that appears to exist but is not widely applied in Mongolia, MongolWiki (talk) has proposed to replace |kh| by |h|, |ö| by |o’| and |ü| by |u’|, supporting the first change with the suggestion that English readers would read |kh| as [k] (which I don’t know) and the statement that [k] is even historically inappropriate (which it is not), but not arguing for the other two changes at all. The problem is that s/he is already happily and uninhibitedly moving around pages without engaging into much discussion and much less waiting for it to end. But especially the latter change, I fear, may greatly affect searchability. I have posted invitations to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Scripts#Transcription of Mongolian Cyrillic and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Central Asia/Mongolia work group (which is basically defunct now, unfortunately), but without drawing anybody into the discussion. If consensus can be established for one or the other form, the guidelines may be left intact or changed, but most importantly, they may be enforced. And the longer this situation lasts, the more work for an administrator will arise. G Purevdorj (talk) 20:37, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Category for military pidgin languages? (specifically Barikanchi Hausa)

I was glancing at Hausa language and saw mention of Barikanchi, a military pidgin version of Hausa used to unite soldiers from diverse Nigerian language groups. I made a short stub for it with a few refs, but I can't quite figure out how to fit it into the WP:MIL category tree to put it with other military languages. It goes in Category:Military of Nigeria, of course, but do we have anything resembling Category:Military languages or similar? MatthewVanitas (talk) 14:33, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

How common is the phenomenon of a specifically military pidgin? I've never heard of such a thing before, though its existence doesn't surprise me. If Barikanchi is the only one, then it's not surprising we don't have a category for them. Angr (talk) 18:49, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I've found mention of several others, including Bamboo Pidgin[4] (US in Japan and Southeast Asia), Sabir[5] (crusaders in Southern Europe), snippet view of "military Pidgin-Amharic"[6], Russenorsk[7] (Northern Europe soldiers' pidgin), parler tirailleur[8] (West African military French), Bimbashi Arabic[9] (Sudan). That's a rough start, so I need to check and see how well those can be cat'ed together. Some of these need new-article starts, so I'll create the cat and then try and fill in more of it. MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Sinhala Language Wikipedia

Sri Lanka is multilingual country and three main languages are Sinhala, Tamil, English (in popularity order). But so far wikipedia doesn't have support for Sinhala Lanugage. Luckily Tamil is a language that is spoken out side Sri Lanka and due to that there is Tamil Wikipedia. One could argue Tamil that is spoken is Sri Lanka is different than Tamil that is spoken outside but nevertheless Tamil Language wikipedia exist and currently a good translation activity taking place in a rapid space. I would like to find out how can we request Wiki media foundation to support another language and what steps I should take to start this process. It will be a great help if some one from the language project guide me on this. Please accept my apology if I have put this note in a wrong section. Anu (talk) 15:55, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

The Wikipedia in Sinhala already exists. In the future, request new language additions on m:Requests for new languages. πr² (t • c) 14:51, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Palau’amine

A question from WT:CHEM: is there any linguistic reason for the ’ in Palau’amine? And which type of apostrophe should be used? According to Palauan language, the Palauan writing system does not use an apostrophe (and "Palau" hasn't got a glottal stop anyway). --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 15:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it seems Palauan quite perversely uses ‹ch› to represent the glottal stop. My guess is the apostrophe is there just to show the morpheme boundary between "Palau" and "amine"; perhaps people thought palauamine had too many vowels in a row. Since it's an English word, and English only uses the apostrophe as a punctuation mark and not as a letter, I'd use the normal typewriter apostrophe ‹'› as that's preferred by Wikipedia's manual of style. In printed work, I'd use the curly apostrophe ‹’›. I would not use the modifier letter apostrophe in an English word (as I would in languages like Navajo where it functions as a letter). Angr (talk) 18:37, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, as always, ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 18:49, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Telugu language

We have a problem with an editor pushing the POV that Telugu is an Indo-Aryan rather than Dravidian language. He appears to be unaware that is what he's saying, since he insists that's not the case. (The quotation he gave of the ref is that the Andhra adopted a Prakrit, and that was the immediate ancestor of Telugu.)

If it's a notable fringe view, that's fine, but we'd need a secondary source that notes that it's a notable view. I can't find anything. There's also the usual POV about it being the most "mellifluous" language, which I tried toning down but got reverted. (The editor has even been edit warring on my talk page.) Could someone here chime in? — kwami (talk) 02:50, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Sican language

Article based on a blurb in a BBC magazine. Supposedly it was extant until the 20th c. I can't find any linguistic ref, and the author only knows what she read on the BBC. As it is, it's not practical to de-orphan it. Anyone know anything? — kwami (talk) 13:15, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposal of WikiProject Applied Linguistics

Hi everyone, I have made a proposal over at the WikiProject Council to start WikiProject Applied Linguistics. I would be grateful to hear your thoughts about how this project might fit into the larger scheme of WikiProjects at Wikipedia. The proposal page can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/WikiProject Applied Linguistics. Thanks for your time. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 04:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Please see the thread below for the revised version of this proposal. — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 10:29, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Linguistics proposal: your comments are requested

I have created a proposal that the smaller daughter WikiProjects of WikiProject Linguistics be converted into task forces, and your feedback would be much appreciated. The discussion can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#RfC: Proposal to merge smaller daughter WikiProjects into WikiProject Linguistics. Regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 10:28, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Source on Louisiana French

I found:

• http://www.jstor.org/pss/455786 - American Speech. > Vol. 72, No. 2, Summer, 1997 > "Enclave Dialect Contradiction: An External Overview of Louisiana French" - Michael D. Picone

If you need a full text of this article for research on Wikipedia, please ask Wikipedia:Resource request WhisperToMe (talk) 16:23, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Language link mess with Ferrous/Non-ferrous metal

Can anyone help sorting out the interwiki links from Ferrous and Non-ferrous metal? The former is about iron(II), i.e. iron with oxidation state +2, and the latter is about metals containing no iron at all (no matter which oxidation state). About which of these topics (if any) are the following pages?

• ar:حديدوز
• fa:آهنی
• ko:비철금속
• zh:黑色金属

--ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:09, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Some doubt as to the nature of the Gorani language

An editor has recently changed this article to state that Gorani is not a language, but just an accent of Kurdish. This contradicts what is stated in Gorani language, but I do not know much about the subject. I figured this might be a good place to ask for more informed opinions. Thanks! LWG ^talk 02:04, 7 November 2011 (UTC) (Copied over from WT:LING — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ^♫ 07:47, 7 November 2011 (UTC))

Deleted article

The article English words with uncommon properties (Google cache) was recently deleted. I find this problematic as this article had over 1,000 viewers a day, was established (linked to by several articles) and was considered informative, albeit disorganised and subjective in some passages. I am not sure where to bring this up, I have posted on Wikipedia:Help_desk#Deletion_review and I am posting here to raise the issue with experts on the English language (I am a biochemist and have given the article attention solely because I found it a very interesting yet abandoned article). --Squidonius (talk) 09:58, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The place to discuss deletion review is WP:Deletion review. In the case of WP:Articles for deletion/English words with uncommon properties, I believe it can be argued that there was no consensus to delete the article and that the closing admin therefore made a mistake by closing it as "Delete". !Vote count is not the only factor, but when 5 people argue to keep in some form (I'm including the "Split" vote as a form of "Keep") and 6 people argue to delete, it doesn't look like consensus to delete to me. Angr (talk) 12:05, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. From a contents point of view, does the article seem valid? And if so what major revisions should be done?--Squidonius (talk) 23:14, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

team up to fix population figures?

I'm finding a lot of articles with exaggerated populations and false references. I wonder if we might be able to team up to verify them? There's also a problem with outdated figures left over from Ethnologue 14 and 15. This is probably something we should review whenever a new edition of Ethnologue comes out.

(Another common error: giving the population of the main country as if it were the entire language, probably from not bothering to read the Ethnologue entry well.)

There are about four thousand articles with ISO3 codes. If forty of us agree to team up, that's a manageable amount. It's not like there's any rush: We'd only need to each check half a dozen articles a day to get through them in a couple weeks. Any questionable cases we don't know how to handle we could {{cn}}-tag or make a list of here.

I suggested at Infobox language#automated referencing? that it would be nice to autogenerate an Ethnologue reference from the language infobox. Having overt refs to Ethnologue has been proposed here before, but the effort required to do this manually was evidently too great. Kanguole worries that if we automate it, we'll get mismatches, but we've got lots of mismatches anyway, so if we do this in conjunction with verifying our articles, I think we should be okay. (An Ethnologue ref would only be autogenerated if there is no manual ref, and any article with something other than the Ethnologue population figure should be manually referenced anyway.)

At the very least we should occasionally go through the languages listed at List of official languages by state and List of languages by number of native speakers, which I've started but may not get through on my own just gone over. (The latter, BTW, lists the Eth 16 figures, apart from the section that's not finished, and I've been policing it to stop people from gumming it up.) There are only a couple hundred of 'em, so even a small team could get through them easily. We could maybe send a talk-page mailer to project members, say, twice a year? And if we note the articles that have suffered population inflation since the last check, we could list them here and put them on our watch lists to keep on top of them. There seem to be a couple dozen articles where this is a perennial problem, which again is an easily manageable amount once we identify which they are.

If people would like to help out: (1) what would be a good way to divide up the articles? By families we're interested in? Alphabetically? We could make an alphabetical list w AWB and divide it up into chunks of a set size, say 1% of the total, and sign off on them, maybe. There's also Category:Language articles with undated speaker data for ones I haven't gone over recently. (2) how should we track what we've verified? (Easy if we use the latter approach, though it will only work the first time.)

— kwami (talk) 06:28, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposal

This is what I think would be useful. Please suggest any improvements or problems you can think of.

• speakers fields:

Split or don't split comments on the number of speakers between speakers= and speakers2= so that date=, which comes after speakers=, is the oldest date we're citing. That way obsolete data will be tracked better.

The number of speakers should be rounded off to 2 or 3 figures. (E has started doing this with ed. 16.) Usually even 3 figures is misleadingly precise. From 1.1 million up, millions should be used instead of raw numbers. From 1.2 to 11.9 million, only one decimal place should be used. For 12 million up, round off to the nearest million (assuming the data allows even that much; some will be to the nearest 10 million).

"1,000,000" should be given as "1 million", as there is no implication that it is as precise as 1.0 million. Similarly "5 million" for 5,000,000, etc.

Verify that the figure we're giving is the language total, and not merely the first figure in the E16 article. Many of our articles report the figure for a single country as the language total.

Do not blindly copy the E total. Often their totals are nonsensical. If, for example, 100,000 speakers in country A are reported from 1983, and 4,321 in country B are reported from 2006, E will tally them up as 104,321 speakers, which is ludicrous, since the 100,000 cloud be off by tens of thousands, swamping the 4,321, and in any case the number in country A in 2006 could have been 200,000. (In some countries, populations double every 25 years.) In such cases, either round off the total according to the least precise component (in this case, the total here should be speakers=100,000, date=1983), or keep the data separated: speakers=100,000 in A, date=1983, speakers2=4,320 in B (2006). (One example of this in E16 is Shina.)

• date fields:

date= will only accept a four-digit date. Anything else should go in date'=. It isn't necessary to add   to the beginning of date'=, as that can be cleaned up with AWB later. Same with using a hyphen for an en dash.

If 90% of the figure is covered by a single date or range of dates, that is sufficient. That is, if E reports 108,000 from 2006 and 1,000 from 1983, we can just give the date as 2006. The idea is to give the reader some idea of how reliable to figure is, and a few % being old doesn't matter much.

If more than 10% is undated, then either the data should be split up into dated and undated chunks, or the total should be undated. (Put ⟨no date⟩ in the date= field to have it report "no date". If you want to suppress the date field altogether, put in ⟨NA⟩.)

When census figures are cited, put "census" in date'=. This is useful to know, because otherwise publication dates can be years after the data was collected. In one case, E give a date in the 1980s, but the actual data is from the 1950s, and you wouldn't know that unless you were familiar with the ref.

• ref field:

If non-E16 data is being used, it should be referenced. If the ref is already there, just put it in the ref= field. If it isn't ref'd, but doesn't look too suspicious, put {{cn}} in the ref= field.

If we're just citing E, as is usually the case, enter e16 in the ref= field. This will auto-generate a reference to E16 using the code in the iso3= field, and will let other editors know that the figure has been verified.

Sometimes we may want a manual reference to E16, for example when there is no entry under iso3=. (If there is no iso3= field, then putting e16 in the ref= field will generate a generic E16 reference, and it might be better to link directly.)

• Quick check:

For editors who can only spend a few minutes, a quick check should take care of 70–80% of our articles:

If the figure checks out, and already includes a date in parentheses (or in the date field), just add |ref = e16.

If the figure checks out, but does not include a date, clip & paste the figure from E, including the date in parentheses, and add |ref = e16.

Someone else will come by with AWB to format it.

Does that seem reasonable? — kwami (talk) 17:55, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Constructed languages nominated for deletion

Portal:Constructed languages has been nominated for deletion, please see discussion at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Constructed languages. — Cirt (talk) 04:23, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Anglo-Saxon/English linguistic purism

Ther is a discussion ongoing about whether to rename this article "Linguistic purism in English". Three of us agree that it should be renamed and one editor disagrees. However, the discussion has stald and I think we need more input from other editors. ~Asarlaí 23:01, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Moving Kalmyk language?

Hi! Due to some disagreement about the existence of particular articles for Buriat in relationship to the countries where it is spoken, not having to classify Kalmyk language as either language or dialect would be desirable. As is mostly agreed upon, Kalmyk is a variety of Oirat. (The few who disagree would state that Kalmyk and Oirat are subbranches of one branch of Mongolian/Mongolic that one would then, in default of a better name, have to call Kalmyk-Oirat...) Moving Kalmyk to Kalmyk Oirat would solve the problem. In the course, I would also move articles like Khorchin dialect to Khorchin Mongolian, thus providing a similar title-internal classification for similar varieties as well. If you want to discuss, please go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Central Asia/Mongolia work group#X dialect to X Mongolian. Best, G Purevdorj (talk) 15:47, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Islah (concept)

The article Islah (concept) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

The corresponding Dab contains the only encyclopedia-worthy content this article has seen in its more than six years' existence. If its prose content can be expanded beyond a dictdef, it's high time to do so.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Jerzy•t 04:59, 15 December 2011 (UTC) Timestamp: 20111215044412

Asking for help

On the Wikipedia page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Croatia#Information it takes a while exhausting debate on the writing and writing at all of minority languages in articles about settlements in Croatia. Please if you have time, look at the page and try to help us in forming some kind of agreement. We will highly appreciate your effort.--MirkoS18 (talk) 22:56, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Italian verbs

The page Italian verbs is in a poor shape. I am not an expert — just a trouble-making fan! —, but I think it may need expanding as it completely omits the indefinite moods and the section titles seem odd at first — the first few section have titles based tenses, but from what I understand they are all tenses of the indicative mood (I am not sure if progressive forms are technically part of the indicative mood). Not much editing goes on there, so I am posting here. --Squidonius (talk) 22:10, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Turkic vocabulary

I was patrolling new pages, and stumbled upon this article. I wasn't sure how to go about adding sources to it, or whether a table of this kind was a useful addition to Wikipedia, so I thought I'd throw this link to some language people and see what they make of it. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 18:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

request: Hmong ref

Does someone have access to Ratliff (2010) Hmong–Mien language history? I'd like to know how the other 15 ISO codes should be assigned to her classification, and if there are maybe lower-level branches that we don't have, so they can all be linked through an expanded classification. — kwami (talk) 08:10, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Wichí languages

While there are pre-existing articles for the individual Wichí languages, I tried to fill a gap by creating Wichí languages. If anyone could look it over and correct any mistakes, I would be grateful. Thanks! -Uyvsdi (talk) 05:29, 31 January 2012 (UTC)Uyvsdi

Tasmanian

I added some phon/gram info to Tasmanian languages. However, it was from Schmidt (1952). Should be updated with Crowley & Dixon (1981), but I don't have access. — kwami (talk) 15:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Potential error at Gunwinggu language

An inventory was added, with the following note:

• Evans (2003) uses the same symbol for the short apico-alveolar stop and apico-alveolar retroflex stop. To avoid confusion I have used the standard IPA symbol "ʈ" for the short apico-retroflex stop.

Could s.o. check the ref? There could have been an error involved. (The same editor speaks of "bilabial lateral flaps", and has made other dubious substitutions.) — kwami (talk) 10:58, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

BiH

We have an edit war going on at Bosnia and Hercegovina over the official language. ELL2 quotes a 1993 language law that speaks of a single official B/C/S language. Another editor insists the law is no longer valid, but provides no evidence. There are legally three separate official languages at the state level, so it's reasonable that that may be true at the federal level, but the federal constitution is mute. Anyone know for sure? — kwami (talk) 18:54, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Language assistance required at Project Eurovision

Greetings neighbouring project team at Languages. I write with regards to a very lengthy dicussion that has been taking place now for several days over at Talk Eurovision 2012. The debate all started soon after the representative was selected for Austria. It was announced that their entry would be performed in a dialect of the Mühlviertel region of Austria. However, as each annual article for the Eurovision Song Contest only lists language used, it caused an issue as Mühlviertel is apparently a dialect. The project members agreed that the dialect should be footnoted, and a language inserted. Problem solved, one would think - but not quite. Some editors stipulated that the language to be listed should be Bavarian, whilst others say Bavarian is a dialect and shouldn't be listed in the "language" column.

This lead then to a wide research into articles on Wikipedia, and also across the internet. At this stage editors then said the language should be listed as German, while others said Austrian German, as we're listing a language in regards to Austria and not Germany. However, those who stipulated German as being correct said that to list something as 'Austrian German' would mean we're implying it is Standard German; yet I personally found this contradicting, as German-German is more Standardised to Germany than what 'Austrian German' would be.

After reading Wikipedia:Common knowledge, and the part that basically refers to as "when in doubt, seek professional advice", I felt that it was now time to do exactly that, and see once and for all how the language information should be listed as in regards to Austria, and Austrian songs in Eurovision. We've all agreed that at the end of the day, what you as the professional team stipulate as being correct would settle the dispute, as we're none the wiser trying to work things out ourselves going of articles within Wikipedia.

Thank you in advance - Wesley☀Mouse 01:53, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for asking, Wesley Mouse.

It also would be nice if someone made clear that Austrian German is a variety of German and those edits (column = language) were mindless. --87.160.193.247 (talk) 15:31, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

"German" can mean the following: "all the German languages" or "a specific German language" (often "Standard German" but not necessarily). See German language, where all the German languages are listed in the InfoBox for example. It is totally accurate to use that name to describe the language used in that Austrian song, it might just not be precise. A note could clarify things, just as a more precise name would. "Austrian German" usually means "Austrian Standard German" which itself is not Austro-Bavarian since it's a regional variation of Standard German (not Austro-Bavarian but High German). A very precise name (German > Upper German > Austro-Bavarian > Central Austro-Bavarian > Mühlviertel Austro-Bavarian) would be odd, as you don't seem to care about which English songs are in, which French, which Italian, which Dutch, etc. I would just vote for "German" with a precision note. --Moyogo/ (talk) 16:20, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

POV at Brāhmī script

We have a self-confessed Hindutva activist edit warring to push the POV that the Brahmi script derives from the Indus Valley script, against the "Anti-Indian conspiracy" of the Semitic hypothesis. Anyone want to help out? — kwami (talk) 10:29, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

en–dash or hyphen-dash?

Please see {{Infobox language/quilt}}. The language family names have hyphen (-) or en-dash (–). Does anyone know which is the right one per MOS? (Researching this myself could result in a tentative at best). Probably someone has looked into this already. If there is an outcome, I can change the dashes into one type. Now there is a mixed usage. -DePiep (talk) 20:20, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Check MOS:HYPHEN, that appears to give examples on which one is more appropriate depending on how you intend to use em-dash or en-dash. Wesley☀Mouse 20:44, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

It follows a consistent rule: after a bound morpheme like "Indo-" and "Afro-", a hyphen is used, while after a free morpheme like "Niger" and "Tai", an en-dash is used. Angr (talk) 21:15, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Good logic, but I could not have found that myself. The quilt shows it right then (I assume), and background-templates should capture both forms to be safe. -DePiep (talk) 21:58, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

{{Infobox language/genetic}}: edit message in output text?

Please see {{Infobox language/genetic}}. Can someone explain the code |altaic=(specify language family under 'fam1') in there? I guess it is an instruction, but as it is now it ends up in the page (probably solved/killed somewhere in between, but still). -DePiep (talk) 22:26, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Romanization of Tuvan

Please join a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Central_Asia/Tuva_task_force#Transliteration_of_Tuvan_Language. Thanks. --Stacey Doljack Borsody (talk) 22:52, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot request for references (feedback needed)

There's a bot request here for adding ethnicity, reference, and date fields to all boxes which do not have then, and to add a ref section to all articles with boxes that do not have one. This is just to make it easier for us to overtly ref our articles, rather than just covertly ref'ing them through the SIL link as we tend to do now, but it's running into problems. Would anyone object to having this done? This would facilitate a project review of our articles, to confirm the population figures are supported by our refs. — kwami (talk) 04:46, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

need help w Kuric

I think we (I) may be confused with the Kuric languages. There are only two left after some recent removals, but both look like they may be misidentified. It's hard to tell, with all the multiple name variants. — kwami (talk) 23:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Aramaic language

I just noticed the Timeline template under the "History" subsection of Aramaic language appears broken. I took a quick look at it and was unable to see why, maybe somebody familiar with that template can fix it.--William Thweatt ^Talk | ^Contribs 18:25, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

It was this edit. Reverted. — kwami (talk) 20:13, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:54, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Fictional language

This doesn't sound like a very scientific term? Is it really in use? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:52, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

RfC regarding the official language of Mexico

I have started an RfC regarding the question of whether Spanish should be mentioned as an official language in the infobox recognizing its de facto official status in spite of the fact that it is not legally given that status in Mexican law which simply mentions it as a National language along with the indigenous languages, and does not specify an official status. Please give your input. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 12:56, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

what should count as "significant use" on a language map?

Should we set some significance level for including a country on a language map? I just came across the Indonesian map, which included the Philippines under "significant use", despite the fact that according to Ethn. (which was evidently the ref for the map) it is just 0.003% Indonesian speaking. By that standard, we can probably shade in every country on Earth (and half the seas as well) for English and French. Should we have a cut-off of, say, 1% of the population of the country? Or maybe 1% of the population of that language? Or would some other guideline be useful? I'm thinking of immigrant languages here. Native territory and official recognition are IMO different matters. — kwami (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

its not an easy question, but I think that unless there is a special significance immigrant languages shouldn't be included. Just imagine the trouble when we try to color the US as Spanish speaking...·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:59, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Or as Mixtec speaking, for that matter. Netherlands for Indonesian, I would think, but are Nigeria, Greece, and Korea really part of the "Tagalosphere"? I'm thinking of going through and reducing some of these claims, but wanted to establish a consensual basis for doing so. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

My Google search for language map reported about 1,080,000,000 results. The first result was MLA Language Map (Modern Language Association). It has an interactive map at http://arcgis.mla.org/mla/default.aspx, with different colors for different ranges of percentage of speakers.

—Wavelength (talk) 21:04, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

So, what do we do w s.t. like "Tagalosphere"? — kwami (talk) 22:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Your question is the first place where I have seen that word, and I reckoned that it probably meant "the union of all places where Tagalog is predominantly spoken", but the map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tagalosphere.png suggests otherwise, or at least represents actual numbers instead of percentages.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:56, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

The number of statistical dimensions available for linguistic demographics is too high for all of them to be represented conveniently on a single two-dimensional non-interactive map, so I suggest that we use a set of maps for any specific language and for any specific geographic area.

• For example, one map of the United States can show the predominant language of each state, and another map can show the predominant language of each county.
• With both a language and a geographic area specified, one map can show the percentage of speakers in that area, and another map can show the absolute number of speakers in that area.
• For multiple languages and one geographic area, there can be isograms of different colors (for different languages) and different intensities or thicknesses (for different boundary percentages).

—Wavelength (talk) 00:54, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not thinking of creating a bunch of new maps, though. I'm looking at reining in ones that are overly enthusiastic, to try to have some consistency among our articles. — kwami (talk) 02:24, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

The map here of the Indonesian language seems to show areas where that language is official, regardless of significant use, so probably a change of description is sufficient to correct matters in that example.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:35, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

That's because I changed it. It used to show Saudi, Philippines, and Malaysia as well. — kwami (talk) 04:01, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Now I am wondering what policies Wikipedia has for reliability of sources for map images.

—Wavelength (talk) 06:31, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I have mentioned maps representing languages by absolute number of speakers, and maps representing languages by percentage of speakers, but now I am aware of another possibility: maps representing languages by rank within a geographic area.

(Those three types of maps remind me of statistical mean, statistical median, and statistical mode, respectively. They may not be perfectly analogous, especially as a set, but the relationship in the reminder to me may be useful to answering the original questions.)

A language may be designated as of significant use within a geographic area if it is among the x most prominent languages by percentage, where x is an integer greater than 1. For example, the three most prominent languages by percentage might be spoken by 99%, 0.5%, and 0.4% of the population respectively.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:22, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Ideally there should be a minimally arbritary arbitrary method for deciding the criteria for including or excluding specific languages in regard to specific maps. Ideally there would be standards already decided by international or professional organizations (after they have deliberated the details and have reached consensuses), and then Wikipedia could adopt those standards. A Web search for language map might lead to web pages that mention or illustrate such standards. For example, the author of : What are the linguistic criteria you apply for the content of your site? describes some criteria, but not in terms of percentages.

—Wavelength (talk) 23:34, 9 April 2012 (UTC) and (spelling correction) 16:52, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, clearly if we're mapping the langs of the US, we wouldn't have an area filled in as Tagalog. However, this is a map of where Tagalog is spoken, which requires a different approach. Our maps of English and French include lots of countries where English and French would not show up on a national language map. It just seems to me that the Tagalog map is exaggerated compared to other maps on WP. — kwami (talk) 00:55, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

If there is to be a limit of only one map for each language, then I suggest that either one of these two options be used.

• A map for a given language can show the areas where that language is the most commonly spoken language, and the resolution of the map can be according to country level, administrative division level, or square kilometer.
• A map for a given language can show the areas where that language is the official language or one of a number of official languages, and the resolution can be according to the national level or administrative division level.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:03, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

There are many not-insignificant languages that are neither official in their state nor spoken by the majority in their region. Chickasaw language comes to mind; I may be wrong, but I don't think the Chickasaw Nation has an official language policy, and only English is official in Oklahoma.

This may be an academic point, as I don't think there are currently maps related to similar minority languages. It does suggest, though, that adopting the official/majority standard would require either having a parallel standard for minority languages, with attendant disputes about which competing standard to use in particular cases, or a de facto prohibition on maps for such languages. Cnilep (talk) 03:36, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

The issue of what is significant of course depends on the language if the context is Languages of the US ethen putting a dot for chickasaw in oklahoma might not be necessary, but if the context is the article about Chickasaw then it is obviously relevant to see in which Oklahoma communities it is spoken. My point is that "significance" is context dependent. Obviously it should be possible to make maps showing the location of languages that are in the minority in the areas where they are spoken.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:48, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I've started replacing the maps when s.t. better was available, removing them otherwise. So far: Tagalog, Russian language, Japanese language, Vietnamese language, Turkish language, Persian language, Bhojpuri language, Ukrainian language, Malayalam, Oriya language. (That's all of the articles with silly maps I noticed linked from list of langs by native speakers, which is probably most of them.)

The new Russian map (bottom) seems reasonable to me: official, significant minority as a %age of the country, plus scattered cities where it's not significant as a %age of the country. However, the top map is dubious: Russian is a minority language is Tatarstan, correct? — kwami (talk) 02:04, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

See Choropleth map.—Wavelength (talk) 01:05, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Language families for infoboxes

I'm a bit puzzled by the way that different language families are displayed in the infoboxes. It seems to frequently show a very heavy bias for the most recent scholarship, rather than relying on standard works of reference. Or perhaps it's just that the whole thing is wildly inconsistent in ways that are hard to parse. As a specific example, the Dené–Yeniseian languages, a language family whose existence was first postulated four years ago, is listed non-problematically as the parent family for all the languages posited to be included within it. The Nilo-Saharan languages, long posited and universally found in general works of reference, is listed with a question mark. The Altaic languages, seem to be somewhat controversial, but which were posited a long time ago and which are still used, for instance, by Ethnologue and by Britannica, are not listed at all. This makes very little sense to me. The individual articles about these families ought to detail controversies among linguists, but things like infoboxes should stick with the consensus of general reference works, even if those may be wrong. Certainly, of these three families, the one that definitely shouldn't appear in infoboxes is the one that was proposed four years ago. john k (talk) 04:21, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I think these need to be discussed individually. Others would be better placed than me to discuss DY. NS has been controversial ever since it was proposed. Although support has grown with better data, it has never been demonstrated despite decades of research. But if people feel the question mark is unwarranted, it's easy enough to remove, since it's automated. Altaic is another that has been around forever but never demonstrated. We compromised by coloring all boxes as 'Altaic' without using the name, apart from the top branches and, once upon a time, the most familiar languages (only Mongol remains). — kwami (talk) 04:31, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Dene-Yeniseian just seems to me to pretty clearly be a grouping that should not be shown in templates. As "well-received" as the idea may have been, so dramatic a proposal could not possibly be generally accepted within four years. For the other two, I understand that they are not universally agreed upon as being real groupings by specialists who study those languages. I guess at that point the question becomes - "what's the point of grouping languages into families?" Obviously, for specialists, the point is to understand how languages are related to one another. And this feature ought to be discussed in detail in the various articles devoted to both proposed and generally accepted language families. But for the templates, it seems to me that we should also consider the issue of convenience. I'd even go so far as to say that, for readers, it might even be useful to include clearly non-genetic groupings of language families at the topmost level - to start with Papuan languages, for instance, even though nobody has really posited that these languages are all related to one another genetically. A grouping like Nilo-Saharan is useful in this sense because, even if it is not a genetic family, it cobbles together all the various northern African languages that are neither Afro-Asiatic nor Niger-Congo. Altaic is considerably less useful for that purpose, admittedly, but Dene-Yeniseian is completely useless for orienting readers. john k (talk) 05:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we want to start lying to our readers because we think the current understanding isn't simple enough for them. Note that we do use Papuan as a classification: all Papuan language boxes are the same color, as are all sign, creole, Altaic, Nilo-Saharan, Caucasian, Australian, Khoisan, and Amerind languages (with a recent minor change made to Uto-Aztecan). — kwami (talk) 08:48, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I think Dene-Yeniseian should definitely not be shown in templates yet. Nor should Altaic. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:24, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not advocating lying to anybody. Is Ethnologue or Britannica lying to people by treating Altaic as a real grouping? As far as color coding, this is worthless because nowhere in the article is the color coding explained. It's something that makes sense to editors but which isn't actually helpful to readers. I do think it would be reasonable to leave Nilo-Saharan, which seems to be the most widely accepted of the three families, with a question mark and to not list Dene-Yeniseian and Altaic. I think my preferred solution would be to list Nilo-Saharan without a question mark (controversy can be explained in the Nilo-Saharan languages article), to include Altaic with a question mark, at least for the Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, and probably to exclude Dene-Yeniseian, although I'd be open to a question mark. john k (talk) 15:26, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Ethn. and EB accept Altaic as real, we are agnostic. We'd be lying to say it's true one place and that we can't say it's true in another.

Those suggestions seem reasonable. I suspect that at least adding a ? to DY won't be controversial, so I went ahead and did it; that is there at least while we discuss whether it should be removed altogether. (Ah, it's not working in all articles because we have manual overrides in some. But it's potentially there.)

We've discussed Altaic before, several times, so I think that needs input from the other editors. AFAIK we'd need to include Korean and Japanese, because those who advocate Altaic these days include them. However, we'd have lots of fights on the Japanese and Korean articles about even coloring them green, so I suspect adding 'Altaic' to the family list, even with a question mark, would cause some problems – not that that's not reason to do it, of course, but agreement first would be helpful. — kwami (talk) 21:31, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

A question mark for Altaic seems like exactly the thing that would be consistent with the uncertainty about Altaic's existence expressed in Altaic languages. In terms of whether Japanese and Korean should be included, I'm agnostic. I'm not sure the position of "those who advocate Altaic these days" is the only one to be considered. What works of general reference say should also be considered, and they tend to define Altaic as Mongolic, Turkic, and Tungusic. But including "Altaic?" on all of them would seem reasonable. john k (talk) 17:23, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with that. Does anyone else? [done] — kwami (talk) 00:36, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Bharia

Ethn. lists "Bharia" as unclassified Dravidian. It's currently the language with the largest number of speakers (per E16) which we do not have an article on, or at least have merged into another language. But I'm having a hard time confirming it actually exists, rather than just being a name in the census data that Eth. picked up on and listed as unclassified because they had no source for classification. The Bharia are a "semi-Dravidian" tribe who were reported to speak Hindi, but that's as much as I can tell. They are also supposed to be northern Dravidian, so if that's real (rather than, say, northern Gondi) that would be potentially important for Dravidian as a whole. Anyone know? (They're not mentioned in Krishnamurti.) — kwami (talk) 06:50, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Trollhunter#Move to Trolljegeren?

This discussion about naming of the film is occuring right now. For consensus, please discuss. --George Ho (talk) 02:50, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

WP Languages in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Languages for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign your answers. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 04:31, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Guthrie codes

The infobox now supports Guthrie codes for Bantu languages. "|guthrie=". Generates a ref you can link to in the text (needs a capital G in the name "Guthrie" to link). — kwami (talk) 09:29, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Parsi / Parsi-Dari

Evidently these Ethnologue languages do not exist, but I'd recreated one of them. The relevant discussion from years back is now at Dari (Zoroastrian) and the ISO codes now link to Parsi (disambiguation). I'm not sure this is the best remedy, but I've emailed the editors who knew this stuff (and haven't been active for several years). — kwami (talk) 03:33, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Should bots remove flags from info boxes?

See Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Removing_flag_templates_from_infoboxes. Should Infobox language be added as well?

I think it's fine to add flags for where a language is official, but in the 'where spoken' cell it's just clutter. There are a very few exceptions, such as Austrian German, where the 'where spoken' is doubling for 'where official', but we should probably set that up properly anyway. — kwami (talk) 06:01, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Edxisting phonetic sound file: name changes

See [10]. A dozen are broken now. -DePiep (talk) 00:23, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

questions on Pama-Nyungan

Questions for s.o. who has better resources than me:

• up-to-date classification for top of family (primary branches, etc.)
• is Mirning the same as Ngadjunmaya+Kalaaku?
• are Yugambal (dialect: Ngarrabul/Ngarrbal) and Yugumbir different languages?

— kwami (talk) 07:21, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Bloke is broke

Hi bloke: I created a new article for the word bloke but it was reverted by one user on grounds of 'dictionary definition'. I disagree and need outside opinion help to build consensus. The proposed article is bloke/bloke and there is a comment section at Talk:Bloke#Bloke_is_broke, any comments/ help appreciated, thanks bloke! Green Cardamom (talk) 16:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Protolanguages and Infoboxes

Should protolanguages get infoboxes? I notice that Proto-Indo-European language doesn't have one. (FTR, I vote for "yes".) —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 15:46, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Category:Fictional speakers of Klingon

FYI. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:18, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• Propose deleting Category:Fictional speakers of Klingon (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: No other languages, real or fictional, has a similar category - the other categories listed here refer to Speaker (politics), not to speakers of specific languages. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:42, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Keep The nominator's first claim is false, as its parent category, "Fictional characters by status" contains the category "Fictional Esperantists" (which omits Herr Lodovico Settembrini of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann). Klingon-speaking, like Esperanto-speaking, is an important element in the portrayal of the character, of course, which is why this category was preserved in a previous discussion. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:09, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Standardized conjugation chart

Could a standardized conjugation chart be agreed upon? Maybe not for all languages, but for at least language types (Romantic, Cyrillic, Asiatic, ect.)? 96.3.139.41 (talk) 23:31, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

There are no such language types as Cyrillic (an alphabet) and Asiatic (a continent). And all Romance languages (which I assume you mean by Romantic) have different conjugation systems. Nothing would be gained by attempting to have a standardized conjugation chart.

Moved from WP:Requests_for_comment/Request_board Coastside (talk) 18:48, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not optimistic that an IP user will follow a discussion moved here from Requests for comment, but I'll ask the question anyway. Like Maunus, I am having trouble understanding what would be gained by creating a standardized conjugation chart. The syntactic information (person, number, tense, aspect, gender, etc.) encoded in different languages is far from uniform, and the ways of indicating those conjugations is likewise diverse. I worry that you would either end up with a chart of mostly blank cells (for categories not encoded in a particular language) or one with information shoe-horned together in ways that render it relatively useless. Could someone (ideally the person who requested the standardization) suggest what benefits such standardization would provide as an opening to discussing advantages versus disadvantages of trying? Cnilep (talk) 07:31, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Khmer language GA nomination

Hello all! I'd like to see more of our language articles improved to GA & FA quality. I have nominated Khmer language for consideration as a Good Article. The initial reviewer has placed it on hold, listing some concerns (Talk:Khmer language/GA2). Any help answering the concerns and getting the article to pass as a GA is welcome.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 04:17, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Infobox language and grandfathered tags

Some languages have grand-fathered language tags that (I believe) the current ISO standards. For example Navajo_language features in an example in rfc5646 which uses the tag "i-navajo". Is possible to include these in the infoboxes? Stuartyeates (talk) 08:54, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Does anyone use them? — kwami (talk) 09:25, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Languages on their Wikipedias

Members of this WikiProject may be interested in User:Interchangeable/Languages on their Wikipedias.
—Wavelength (talk) 20:21, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorely needed article

We apparently don't have an article on Brain and language/Language in the brain/Neurology of language/Neural bases of language. We have an article on Neurolinguistics, but its about the discipline and its history and methods - it doesn't outline its findings. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:23, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Language

I am in the process of improving the main article for our project. All help and assistance will be appreciated. Specifically I have an inquiry on the talk page about whether we should explicitly restrict the scope of the article to cover only natural human language, and relegate programming languages and animal communication to another article. Also I need expert eyes on the section on syntax. And on the sections on classification, typology and areal linguistics.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:16, 14 August 2012

Can you point me to the right place?

This is probably the wrong place to ask this: sorry in advance. I'm interested in knowing what high-stakes exams there are in the US that test grammar and/or punctuation. I realize many such exams have a composition portion, but I'm more curious if any specificly test grammar and/or punctuation. If there is a better locatio nto ask this, let me know! Rschwieb (talk) 19:07, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Rschwieb, and don't worry about asking. :) Maybe someone here will be able to give you an answer, but if not then probably the best place to ask this question is over at the language reference desk. Regards — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 19:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

My Google search for grammar punctuation examination reported "[a]bout 5,660,000 results".

—Wavelength (talk) 20:02, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what part of that comment is more ridiculous: the fact that you are toying with the idea that I didn't google it or that you think 5.6 million hits off of three common words in google is necessarily helpful! Anyhow I was hoping to get very focused information by asking people who thought about it a lot, not just spend my afternoon kowtowing to a search engine. Thanks for the input so far! Rschwieb (talk) 21:57, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I can add: strange that Wavelength did not add US to the google search. -DePiep (talk) 16:37, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Speaker numbers, ethnologue and Spanish

There is a discussion at Talk:Spanish language about how best to represent the number of speakers of Spanish, the current ethnologue has 328,5 million l1 speakers, but the 1999 version has a higher figure which is preferred by some. The 2009 Ethnologue still bases its summation of speakers on population data from Mexico in 1995 and Spain in 1986 - is there a more reliable source for total speakers of highly transnational languages like Spanish (reliable = not the CIA factbook). 16:24, 30 August 2012 (UTC)·ʍaunus·snunɐw·

image:Yi Syllabary Chart.svg

File:Yi Syllabary Chart.svg has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 05:56, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciations

Recently an editor has been adding a lot of pronunciations of Nahuatl words, the editor is not a native speaker and while some of them sounds reasonable to me others are quite far off the mark. Furthermore most words are form classical Nahuatl which of course has no native speakers, and the pronunciation of which is not fully known (since it has to be reconstructed from documentary sources and extrapolated from modern dialects). I have myself hesitated to add my own soundfiles not being a native speaker. And i have also in the past discarded the notion of getting native speaker recording because they will necessarily only represent a single dialect. I wonder whether we should make a general policy about the use of recorded pronunciations in language articles. It seems to me to be a bad idea that basic learners upload pronunciation recordings. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:09, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

"History of X" vs. "History of the X Language"?

There is inconsistency in article title names "History of X" vs. "History of the X Language" and some people (including me) have moved pages from one to the other. I think we should be consistent here unless there's a good reason not to.

I personally think we should use "History of X". In nearly every circumstance, you can't reasonably interpret this as referring to anything but a language, e.g. "History of Italian" cannot reasonably refer to the Italian people (in which case we'd say "History of the Italians"), the Italian peninsula (in which case we'd say "History of Italy"), etc. Generally, shorter article titles are better as long as they're unambiguous, for reasons of conciseness, and the "History of X" form is used for most other disciplines rather than something longer.

Benwing (talk) 06:01, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Where the main article is "X" we should use "History of X". Where the main article is "X language" we sohuld use "History of the X Language". Redirects can be added freely Stuartyeates (talk) 03:51, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

many small supporting edits needed, for anyone who wants to help

If anyone's interested, I compiled a list of the primary language names used in Ethnologue 14 and 15 (these are the names in the index, and so don't have parentheticals); removed the ones which already have articles or redirects, as well as the red links duplicated in our current ISO list, and ended up with 660 new names which need redirects. Most of these are minor spelling variants. Most of them can be done quickly and require only a little consideration. The list is at:

Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Primary Ethnologue 14 and 15 names without redirects

I've done the A's. I segregated out Mixtec, Zapotec, and Chinantec, since most of those do not have articles to rd to. — kwami (talk) 04:50, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay: 150 do not have articles, though 110 of these are Mixtec, Zapotec, & Chinantec. Going through these old names resulted in cleaning up several neglected articles. — kwami (talk) 23:55, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Now 530 E13 names at Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Primary Ethnologue 13 names without redirects. — kwami (talk) 23:37, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

These are harder to verify, since SIL no longer supports them, and so there are going to be more red links. In a few days I'll have done what I can; any further help would be appreciated. — kwami (talk) 00:28, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Now also Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Ruhlen (1987) names without redirects. I've redirected all but a handful outside Africa and 'Austric'. Africa should be straightforward, but many AN links will remain red, w 500 SIL languages w/o articles. — kwami (talk) 07:02, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

All families confirmed but Niger-Congo and Austronesian, in case you have in interest in one. — kwami (talk) 06:00, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Found the E12 list. This appears to be the edition that many of our articles were based on. 530 new names which are red links, and mostly need redirects: Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Primary language names in Ethnologue 12. — kwami (talk) 00:32, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Tapeba needs attention

Another "this is a language but not really" article: Tapeba language.[11] — kwami (talk) 10:18, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Move request (NSL)

Move request at Nepalese Sign Language. At issue is whether we maintain a distinction between Nepali and Nepalese. — kwami (talk) 08:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Undo move from Northern Italian languages to Gallo-Italic languages?

Please pay attention to the more recent revision history of Gallo-Italic languages. Benwing has completely rewritten the page according to the relevant literature, but some users have resisted this and one (Enok) has even reverted the page to an older version and moved the article back to its older title. I've undone the wholesale revert, as it was unexplained. Shouldn't the page move be undone, too? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:36, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

It's just the old article on Gallo-Italic with a short intro on northern Italian varieties tacked on front. These are two different topics. Most of our articles are genealogical, so I split it up. The intro part could also have been moved down as a section on Gallo-Italic in its regional context, but I don't see how hiding a taxon within a geographic context improves the article. — kwami (talk) 08:34, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. That's probably the best solution. "Northern Italian" is clearly only an areal group and I've never quite understood the point of the intro, either. It's rather confusing and distracting instead.

Note that Talk:Northern Italian languages still redirects to Talk:Gallo-Italic languages. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:11, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I've fixed that now. Angr (talk) 20:52, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Diacritics in Portuguese IPA transcriptions

Hello everyone. There's a discussion over at Help talk:IPA for Portuguese and Galician#Brazilian Portuguese unstressed vowels about whether we should include diacritics in our IPA transcriptions for unstressed vowels in Portuguese. If anyone could comment, your input would be very welcome. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 07:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Tupi needs attention

The article about the Tupi language has apparently been written by a non-linguist (or several non-linguists) originally, as it is full of problems which have been pointed out on the talk page ever since 2006, and still not rectified. Anyone who can help? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:30, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Turkic Language Classification

Hi, I think the Turkic language classification template is going to need some help from this group. The template originally followed the classification scheme sourced from Lars Johanson and Eva Csato on the Turkic languages page. Actually throughout Wikipedia we have been using the Johanson schema and that is reflected across multiple pages. Johanson names one of the groups "Uyghur" and this was recently changed to "Karluk", which from what I can tell is a name used by Baskakov in his schema. This led to the Uyghur Turkic page being renamed to Karluk languages. It was said that Johanson is a minority view, which I don't really know whether it is true or not. Now the information on the Turkic languages page no longer reflects the cited source. Ethnologue, naturally, has a different scheme. I think we need to use whatever schema is widely taught at the macro level and avoid the internal classification debates that are still ongoing. See more here Talk:Karluk_languages. --Stacey Doljack Borsody (talk) 22:44, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Swati language (Pakistan)

I'd like to draw attention to Swati language (Pakistan). My suspicion is that this "language" is spurious: the article seems to be about a sub-dialect of Pashto belonging to the northeastern group (note that the distinctivity of this sub-dialect compared to the dialect of – say – Peshawar is probably close to nil). Should the article be deleted? Quite possibly, there is hardly any material left to merge, anyway. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:55, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

In any case, it should not be confused with the Swazi language of Swaziland.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:14, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

There was no material on the dialect other than it being spoken in Swat. Redirected. — kwami (talk) 19:13, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Classification of Bashkardi

Bashkardi language gives the language as Northwest Iranian, closely related to Balochi, following Ethnologue and Linguasphere. However, according to the Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, a work in German specifically on the Iranian languages, Bashkardi is rather to be classified as Southwest Iranian, which is also followed on German Wikipedia. Shouldn't the more specialised source in this case trump more general sources such as Ethnologue or Linguasphere, which are not too reliable and often outright contradict the specialised literature, and which we therefore use more as a stopgap solution? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:31, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

More than that, we say it's part of a continuum with Balochi. Rees (2008) Towards Proto-Persian has it as NW. So does Payne "Iranian Lanugages" in Comrie (1990) The Major Languages of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. — kwami (talk) 02:15, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Era styles

We use a mix of BC and BCE dates for Category:ancient languages. Except for liturgical languages, any reason not to regularize these to BCE?

Turkish language FAR

I have nominated Turkish language for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Daniel Case (talk) 21:03, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Ngombe language (Central African Republic)

Can anyone ID what this is? It appears to be an ethnic name that has been copied from one list to another without data for actual classification. It's not included in Moñino's reconstruction of proto-Gbaya. — kwami (talk) 00:12, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

But he does mention it on page 39[12].·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 00:56, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

He only mentions it in a list of names, with no indication of what it might actually be. — kwami (talk) 07:35, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Ethnologue has three languoids (to borrow a term from The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) called Ngombe.

1. The one you want would be Ngombe: A language of Central African Republic, ISO 639-3 code nmj:

   Classification: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, North, Adamawa-Ubangi, Ubangi, Sere-Ngbaka-Mba, Ngbaka-Mba, Ngbaka, Western, Baka-Gundi

2. Also Ngombe: A language of Democratic Republic of the Congo, code ngc
3. Also a language group, Ngombe (C.50), of which Ethnologue considers #2, the D.R.C. language Ngombe (ngc), to be an immediate member.

--Thnidu (talk) 08:18, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's the first one that I want. So, what is it? It there any data to actually classify it? Placement in an Ethnologue tree doesn't actually mean very much, especially when they suggest that it's wrong. — kwami (talk) 07:35, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor language testing

Hi, guys. I wanted to let you know that next week's VisualEditor tests will include non-Latin scripts and to invite you to assist wtih this.

message from Quim Gil

Next week we are going to focus on testing VisualEditor in conjunction with non-Latin scripts: العربية, Ελληνικά, 한국어, हिन्दी, עברית , 日本 語, Русский, 中文 and more. mw:VisualEditor/Testing_Non-Latin_Characters_Input_and_Behavior The testing will be done at the English Wikipedia (primarily in User pages), where VisualEditor can be enabled. Any editor can contribute, regardless of testing / technical experience and even knowledge of languages in those scripts. For instance, copying texts from http://ru.wikipedia.org/ or http://ja.wikipedia.org/ and playing with them in your User page is also a good starting point. Of course we welcome the participation of editors from projects based on non-Latin scripts. Your help as ambassadors connecting with your communities is especially needed! A main incentive is that good testing coverage of VisualEditor in a specific script plus good community involvement might lead to its inclusion in the related Wikipedia(s) for broader testing. If you have any questions or feedback please comment at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Testing Non-Latin Characters Input and Behavior or send me an email [qgilwikimedia.org]. Thank you!

Given your interest in languages, I'm hoping that some of you might be willing and able to help test things out. :) Please share the request with any others you think might be interested! Thanks. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

TAFI

Hello, Please note that Slang, which is within this project's scope, has been selected to become a Today's Article for Improvement. The article is currently in the TAFI Holding Area, where comments are welcome about ideas to improve it. After the article is moved from the holding area to the TAFI schedule, it will appear on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Today's Article for Improvement" section for one week. Everyone is invited to participate in the discussion and encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thank you, TheOriginalSoni (talk) 11:24, 26 January 2013 (UTC) (From the TAFI team)

Sign languages in WP languages

Hi! I just noticed that most sign languages have not formally been included into WP languages. But there is a nice List of sign languages. If somebody could get a bot to insert WP languages (including |class=, but best without importance rating) and WP deaf into their talk pages? G Purevdorj (talk) 15:43, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

How should we rate their importance? I thought I remembered an outline for this, but I don't see anything now. — kwami (talk) 21:52, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

You mean Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Assessment#Importance scale? Angr (talk) 21:56, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Speech

• Speech (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This article could use some improvements. I've been working on formatting and standardization, but additional research from experts would be appreciated. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 22:45, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Kohlreng vs. Koireng

It appears that Kohlreng and Koireng might be variants of the same name. Kohlreng is listed as a dialect of Kom, but E16 notes it might be a separate language. None of the sources listed at LingList have both. Might E16's entry for Koireng be a duplicate of Kohlreng? According to the separate articles, one's Kukish and the other Zeme. (See Kom language (India).) — kwami (talk) 09:08, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Ethnologue 17 is online!

The Ethnologue links in our articles no longer work. I think this is just because SIL hasn't posted the E16 archives yet. (I hope I got the URL right. That should be watched.) Now that the 17th ed. is out, we should organize to update our articles. (E17 links work just fine.) What you y'all think? If we set the ISO codes out in chunks of 50, and people signed off on chunks to verify the populations, it wouldn't take us long to get through them. I'm moving, so I can't put in the kind of time I normally would. — kwami (talk) 22:08, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Linguasphere

It just occured to me that the Linguasphere website has been restructured. All indeces are now listed on separate pdf sheets, so any old references to their online register are no longer working. Maybe we can get a bot to fix them, so I'm going to look into that. De728631 (talk) 16:55, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we should definitely do something about that. I've converted a few manually. — kwami (talk) 07:06, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Resurrect Kotava & Romanova?

Resolved

We once had articles on Kotava and Romanova, but they were deleted as non-notable. However, we have articles on all other conlangs w ISO codes, including Europanto, whose code was retired because it isn't a language. Kotava at least is interesting as one of very few non-Western conlangs. Should these articles be undeleted? — kwami (talk) 07:08, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

The main problem I see with keeping articles for marginally notable subjects is that they need being maintained and watched. You have been a very persistent editor for language articles; if you could promise to keep these on your watchlist and maintain them, then I don't think it would hurt to have these articles. If it's good enough for LoC, then it should be good enough for us.

• Kotava was deleted per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kotava (2nd nomination). While there were more editors voting delete than keep, the overall quality of the keep votes was much better, with the delete faction presenting faulty or disingenious arguments such as applying WP:OR to the subject matter instead of the article, or claiming that "There's been plenty of time to fix this [article] up, and it hasn't happened" when the article had been continuously edited and at the time of the AfD nomination there was no evidence for any unaddressed issues; neither in the article (e.g. with template messages) nor on its talk page. The last version of the article was pretty elaborate and would be an improvement to Wikipedia.
• Romanova, on the other hand, had practically no content; it would have to be rewritten from scratch; in other words, it would need more than just some maintenance and watching. Is anyone willing to do that? — Sebastian 10:24, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I was under the impression that Kotava was African, which would be notable in itself (cf. Afrihili, which if Western would not be notable). Now that I've seen the article and that it's not what I thought, I'm personally less interested. I'm also trying (rather unsuccessfully) to wind down my involvement in WP, though I have no problem keeping these on my watch list. I doubt they'd get much traffic, so they shouldn't be a problem. They are two of only nine remaining ISO red links, though that's not much of an argument for resurrecting them. Kotava does seem to be a decently written article, though.

I think Romanova was at Romanova language when last deleted, rather that at the link you gave, which was an earlier article. There might have been more content in the later version. Could you check? Even if it's just a line or two, I could add an infobox and we'd have the history. — kwami (talk) 22:10, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

I've redirected to where their ISO codes are listed, and added a section for external links. The one for Kotava had to be in French, as the old WP article was apparently the only thing in English that was legible, which does comment on the notability of the topic. 00:35, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed your reply. Romanova language, as of February 28, 2009, at 10:20, when Angr prodded it, had only one sentence. "Romanova language is a constructed language based on Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese invented by David Crandall." and two external links: The Romanova language on the Linguist List and Romanova site. — Sebastian 23:47, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I made them rd's and added sources in the external links. Romanova links to to the ial wiki, which is written by the author; the link for Kotava is WP-fr, as the only decently written thing in English was our old article. That's probably good enough.

Would it be worthwhile to leave them as rd's but to restore the page histories so that they're accessible to others in the future? — kwami (talk) 06:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know how worthwhile it is, but I don't see how it could hurt, so I just did it. — Sebastian 00:32, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Kotava being African is a complete fairy-tale and I've no idea where it comes from. The reason why the article was deleted IIRC was not only because of notability problems, but also because it was rather promotional. As for Romanova, well, much as I like the project myself, it seems to be one of those projects that "didn't make it". Nowadays the demands for an ISO code are quite severe, but initially it seems like languages just got one because someone on some mailing list had heard of it. There are very few sources for Romanova, but something could be cooked up, like this. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 12:49, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

I suppose we could, but the external link at the rd is written by the author of Romanova and is quite accessible, so I don't see much point. Mostly I just wanted people to be able to able to see the page history. — kwami (talk) 19:15, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Shopski language

Comments are requested at Talk:Bulgaria in the Eurovision Song Contest#Shopski language regarding the existence and nature of "Shopski". I'd never heard of it, but Macedonian nationalism#cite_note-78 suggests that it is a cover term for non-Macedonian dialects of Bulgarian. Cnilep (talk) 03:42, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Category:Words and phrases by language

I just came across Category:Words and phrases by language.

It's a strange hotchpotch of a container category, and I have proposed some changes at Category talk:Words and phrases by language#Cleaning_up_this_category.

Comments welcome (preferably on the category talk page, to keep discussion centralised). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:08, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_March_6#Template:Latin_outtro

This is more of a debate on wikicode organization, rather than content or visible layout. The template in question is used in List of Latin phrases, so I'm notifying the two projects listed on that page's talk page. Your comments are welcome: Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_March_6#Template:Latin_outtro -PC-XT+ 07:21, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

What are these languages?

Hey guys!

The last page of this document (Archive) lists these "languages")

• Afghani (I assumed it meant Dari (Persian dialect) instead of Pashto language
• Jamaican (Jamaican English or Jamaican Patois)
• Granadean (referring to Grenada)

Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 03:51, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Isn't it obvious? Each country has its own language. For example, in the US they speak Ewessian, in Australia they speak Australian, and in Libya they speak Libalian. Or at least that's what the school appears to believe. (I wonder why no-one there speaks Canadian?) — kwami (talk) 09:12, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Turns out "Jamaican language" redirects to "Jamaican Patois" anyway... and there is Grenadian Creole so I am redirecting "Granadean language" to that one WhisperToMe (talk) 06:29, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

The name "Granadean" isn't even English. "Afghani" most often means Pashtun, though it's ambiguous. — kwami (talk) 08:53, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it was written as "Granadean" - Schools need to be careful with their publications. Anyway I thought Dari was the better option because the prestige language of Afghanistan is Dari (Persian dialect) and even the Taliban, which was dominated by Pashtuns, had its laws written in Dari. WhisperToMe (talk) 10:07, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

From what I've seen, when people speak of the "Afghan(i) language" in English, they usually mean Pashtun. But I have seen it for Dari. I changed the link to a dab, and then to a rd to Pashtun. Perhaps the dab is a better idea? — kwami (talk) 21:05, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Since Afghan language is long-standing redirect to Pashto language, it makes sense for Afghani language to be the same. Also, dab pages disambiguating only two things are kind of silly (and discouraged by WP:2DABS when one of the two is clearly the primary topic). Alternatively, Afghani language could redirect to Afghan language (or vice versa), which would then be a disambiguation page listing not only Pashto language and Dari (Persian dialect) but also Languages of Afghanistan. Angr (talk) 06:38, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Voegelin

Trying to link the language names in Voegelin (1977) {here}, the principal ref before Ethnologue became popular. Anyone who wants to chip away at it will have my thanks! — kwami (talk) 09:36, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I added a shortcut: WP:LANG/V.—Wavelength (talk) 15:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Template:Ethnic slurs

I think Template:Ethnic slurs is useless and should be removed. Please join the discussion at its talk page. --91.10.13.118 (talk) 10:55, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Unique sample text of every language

Hi, I'm Lekemok and I work on the Breton wikipedia. I'm currently working on many things, and one of these is languages articles. I'm trying to find a text that would have been translated in many languages which could be found on Wiki (and moreover in minority languages). Does it exist? If not, would that be a good idea to do? Trying to make translations of maybe the Universal Human Rights Declaration in every language we could get and propose it on wikidata by example. Thank you for your time and for you lecture. - Lekemok (talk) 20:07, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The Declaration is commonly used for this purpose. So is the Pater Noster. I think those two are the main ones. — kwami (talk) 21:05, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Another widely translated text is "The North Wind and the Sun". Angr (talk) 22:55, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

The North Wind and the Sun definitely seems like the best of the three. Pater Noster has a religious bias, and the Universal Declaration is politically motivated. 198.151.130.156 (talk) 23:04, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your responses. And I wondered if there was a unique place where those texts and their translations are gathered or not? If not, do you think it would be a good idea to gather them on wikidata? -- Lekemok (talk) 09:11, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Wikisource is the usual Wikimedia project for storing previously published text materials. Angr (talk) 09:27, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to PotatoBot, (nearly) all ISO now supported

Apart from a couple cases where the appropriateness of a redirect to an article is under discussion, and one (kyp) where the language may have been misidentified (waiting for feedback on that), all ISO 639-3 codes now have redirects, so the ISO search engine should now take you to the correct WP article (or subsection of an article for really obscure langs) 99+% of the time. — kwami (talk) 07:20, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Colognian

[copied over from Talk:Kölsch dialect#Colognian or Kölsch? Dialect or language?]

Every other page on Colognian/Kölsch calls it 'Colognian' (Colognian phonology, Help:IPA for Colognian, etc.), but {{lang-ksh}} calls it 'Kölsch' and {{IPA-ksh}} calls it 'Colognian (Kölsch)'. It'd be nice to be consistent. — Lfdder (talk) 17:12, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Fuck (film), freedom of speech-related quality improvement project

• Fuck (film)

As part of a quality improvement project on a topic related to freedom of speech, I've greatly expanded upon and improved the quality of the article at page, Fuck (film). Any further suggestions for additional secondary sources and referencing would be appreciated, at the article's talk page. — Cirt (talk) 20:19, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Chalkidiki Greek

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Admin_reinstates_unsourced.2C_very_obviously_false_material.2C_protects_page if anybody would like help me rid Chalkidiki Greek of all the uncyclopedic nonsense. — Lfdder (talk) 20:25, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

There's now an AfD here. Admin removed PROD. — Lfdder (talk)

Saliba language (South America)

Request for help: could a knowledgeable person here transfer / translate the charts for Saliba language (South America) from the French language version? Djembayz (talk) 01:24, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Székely language AfD

AfD discussion for Székely language here, no consensus, relisted if anybody would like to chime in. — Lfdder (talk) 08:50, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Also Dennis Brown rm'ed the hoax tag because an "experienced user commenting" confused writing systems with spoken language reading a paragraph from a book on the Szekely people posted on an online forum. Said paragraph actually disputes Turkic origins, argues that they spoke some form of Old Hungarian. I hope I meet this admin more often, he makes my days brighter. — Lfdder (talk) 09:02, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I've deleted the article on the basis of the AFD and made the lemma a redirect to Hungarian dialects. Angr (talk) 12:06, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Might Székelys#Sz.C3.A9kely_language not have been a better redirect? Not sure on that one. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:09, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Since there's nothing in that section about the language, no. In fact, I'm going to go change that section's name now. Angr (talk) 18:27, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Fuck peer review

1. Fuck (film)
2. Wikipedia:Peer review/Fuck (film)/archive1

I've listed the article Fuck (film) for peer review.

Help with furthering along the quality improvement process would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/Fuck (film)/archive1.

— Cirt (talk) 00:36, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Am I the only one thinking that this section heading is quite ambiguous? ;) De728631 (talk) 18:39, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Esperanto cats

Any reason to have both Category:Esperanto and Category:Esperanto language or should we merge them? — Lfdder (talk) 11:36, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I can't think of a reason to have both. I also can't imagine why the vast majority of articles in Category:Esperanto are alphabetized under T regardless of what letter they actually begin with. Angr (talk) 12:02, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

It's because of {{Esperanto sidebar}}. Someone put the cat inside the include. — Lfdder (talk) 12:46, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. It'll take a while for the category to catch up, though. Angr (talk) 12:49, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Ta. I've moved them all from Category:Esperanto language to Category:Esperanto and put the redir notice up. Don't know what the process for deleting cats is. — Lfdder (talk) 13:24, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

WP:CFD. Angr (talk) 14:11, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I was hoping there's a quicker avenue for empty obviously redundant cats. — Lfdder (talk) 14:27, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:CSD#C1 is for categories that have been unpopulated for at least 4 days, but it doesn't apply to category redirects, which is what Category:Esperanto language now is. Angr (talk) 17:27, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

CFD is here. An editor has suggested Esperanto be merged into (renamed to) Esperanto language instead (or at least I think that's what they're suggesting). — Lfdder (talk) 17:18, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Hidden audio file links

I've made a rather drastic edit to Template:IPA soundbox and simply removed the code that allowed users to hide the link to the file pages at Commons. It has caused a bit of havoc with some IPA templates that relied on it, but this can't be helped.

It is not okay to hide links to file info pages that contain information about license, creator and a reasonably easy way of reusing the file. As far as I know, this has beendiscussed many times before. Info links have to shown. Period. And still this has managed to spread all over.

I might have missed some other clever way of keeping the media player small without removing the link since I'm not all that tech savvy. But we need to get some attention on this right away, because the previous arrangement was simply not acceptable.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:56, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Created new article: Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties

• Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties

I've gone ahead and created a new article for the book, Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties.

Collaboration and particularly suggestions for additional secondary sources would be appreciated at the article's talk page, Talk:Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties. — Cirt (talk) 06:37, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of List of languages by name

The article List of languages by name has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

no criteria for inclusion, unmaintainable; there's ISO 639, linglist and linguasphere for lists of languages, we don't need our own homebrewed one

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Lfdder (talk) 11:38, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Input from other editors (rather than just Lfdder and myself), at Talk:Index of language articles#"warrants a real into", would be very helpful. Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 17:48, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian grammar

Saw some recent edits by an IP editor that give me cause for concerns. Perhaps one of you experts can have a look. Drmies (talk) 18:36, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Language templates up for deletion

See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_August_26#Organisation_language_navboxes -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 06:03, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

{{Estonian dialects}}

Template:Estonian dialects (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 06:08, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Fuck featured article candidate discussion

• Fuck (film)

Fuck (film) is a candidate for Featured Article quality — comments would be appreciated at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fuck (film)/archive1.

Thank you for your time,

— Cirt (talk) 18:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

{{Brunei English}}

Template:Brunei English (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.112 (talk) 05:22, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

{{Malaysian English}}

Template:Malaysian English (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.112 (talk) 05:22, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Romance-speaking Europe

The article Romance-speaking Europe has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

there's no original content here, boils down to a dicdef, if that

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Lfdder (talk) 09:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Nomination of Romance-speaking Europe for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Romance-speaking Europe is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Romance-speaking Europe until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Lfdder (talk) 14:53, 13 January 2014 (UTC)