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FYI, {{ Quebec English}} has been nominated for deletion. IT is an WP:ENGVAR template. 70.29.208.247 ( talk) 04:28, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
FYI, zh-tw has come up on WP:RFD for retargetting.
70.29.208.247 ( talk) 04:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there is again, an RFC on the naming of the article, see Talk:Cantonese (Yue)
70.29.208.247 ( talk) 08:37, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
I am not sure under what project's "juristiction" this falls under, but there seems to be a problem with
English words with uncommon properties, a page with few watchers but 1,000+ views a day, which tends to list the words with high percentage of vowel and other orthographic outliers.
It is interesting and worth keeping, but it is not very scientific. The majority of words are from IP users who have though about that word. Consequently I put together a code to count such entries in wiktionary and automatically get a list of the top scores to avoid people adding words after simply chewing on pencils. The code needs adjusting to remove acronyms and I have not added all pages. I have not heard a single comment about the idea and despite being entertaining I really do not have the time to do something no one likes.
I am not asking for a barnstar/pat on the back, I just would like to hear someone's honest opinion if it is a good idea or not (
talk page of article). --
Squidonius (
talk)
13:10, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Should there be a common form for pages dealing with the varieties of English spoken in a US region? There's currently a debate on the topic of the name of the variety(ies) spoken in Baltimore Talk:Baltimore_dialect#Recent_page_move_--_should_have_waited_for_consensus. Note the two predominant forms are PLACENAME Dialect as in Baltimore dialect and PLACENAME English as in Pittsburgh English. My own impression is that the latter is tending to predominate in the dialectological literature. mnewmanqc ( talk) 19:30, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
There's now a claim that Tartessian language is Celtic. Seems suspicious to me that s.t. as obvious as the way that is presented should have gone unrecognized for so long. I toned down the claim, but it should be reviewed and probably reworded. (And of course if this was a breakthrough, my edits should be reverted.) — kwami ( talk) 00:40, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Tartessian will very likely be reclassified as the earliest Celtic language. Refer to "Tartessian: Celtic from the South-west at the Dawn of History" (2009) by John Koch. In addition, the first segment of the University of Wales "Celtic in the South-west" study will be released in August 2010. The project's material adds further confirmation to Tartessian being the first Celtic language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by London Hawk ( talk • contribs) 12:54, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Excuse me, "no one except John Koch believes this"? I don't think so. Do some research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by London Hawk ( talk • contribs) 20:24, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
User:Jasy jatere has requested bot assisted creation of the missing ISO 639 language redirects, which seems uncontroversial because of the existing template:R from ISO 639 and category:Redirects from ISO 639. The user has also asked whether my bot could create the missing language stubs in the process (see User talk:Anypodetos#Bot request). Is this desireable? -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 09:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
$language is a language spoken in [[$country]] by $population people. It is also known under the names @alternatenames.{{lang-stub}}
-- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 11:53, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Three relevant questions to be asked about the creation of a new article are 1) is the topic relevant and 2) is there enough content to contextualize the article and 3) is the content sourced to a reliable source. As for 1), all languages which have an ISO 639-3 code are surely relevant. As for 2), the one liner given above seems to be sufficient to contextualize the entry. As for 3), I would argue that SIL/the Ethnologue passes the criteria for WP:RS
Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in reliable, published sources are covered;
Even if Ethnologue might not always represent the majority, it is surely one of the sources that should be given as a significant minority view. Jasy jatere ( talk) 14:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Just for your information: The bot has finished creating the ISO 639 redirects (about 2540). A list of existing redirects the bot couldn't verify is at User:PotatoBot/Lists/ISO 639 log. These are mostly redirects to ISO 639 macrolanguage instead of individual language articles. A list of languages that probably don't have Wikipedia articles (about 5000) is at User:PotatoBot/Lists/ISO 639 language articles missing. -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 15:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
On the proposal to create stubs for every iso-639-3 language, I think that many rare languages might better be covered in articles on their language families or branches, while some dialects are notable enough for separate articles. Some languages with separate iso-639-3 codes are best covered in joint articles (e.g. punjabi pan/pnb), although the separate codes are important to cue script encoding or other features. Bcharles ( talk) 21:10, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Jasy jatere has kindly sent me the SIL and Ethnologue data as text files. I intend to check these against the
ISO 639 lists and update them; but the data could also be used to add missing {{
infobox language}} transclusions to language articles. The following parameters could be filled in (though not all params for all languages): name, iso3, familycolor, famn, script, speakers/signers. region
could also be filled in, but I'm not quite sure whether this field borders the
threshold of originality and thus might be copyrighted by SIL.
Since it will need some work to implement this into my bot's code, I wanted to ask whether this procedure would be supported by WP:LANG. Thanks -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 19:59, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Hope the members involved in improving the projects related to LANGUAGES can contribute a lot to this article about the upcoming World Tamil Conference. I need your help improving the article guys. -- Ben ( talk) 09:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I recently listed a number of slang-related categories for deletion, because they are of an unencyclopedic nature: CfD for Mimzy1990's slang. The result of that discussion, based on only a small handful of opinions from users outside the field of linguistics, was keep. (I actually think it was no consensus, but that's another story.) So, I come here to ask the opinions of the larger WP Languages editorbase. What do you guys think about these categories? And if you agree with my rationale (I went into more detail on the actual CfD), please feel free to relist them for deletion. — Gordon P. Hemsley→ ✉ 11:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
FYI, {{Languages portal}}
has been nominated for deletion.
70.29.210.155 (
talk)
05:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Yue Chinese is up for renaming , this is the article on the Cantonese language. See Talk:Yue Chinese. 76.66.193.224 ( talk) 03:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
FYI, List of languages by name and related articles have been prodded for deletion on 30 May, see Category:Proposed deletion as of 30 May 2010 76.66.193.224 ( talk) 04:51, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
List of languages by name: A through M have been deleted by prod, but List of languages by name: N through List of languages by name: Z exist. Is this a deletion process in progress? or one that has been reconsidered? The initial-letter lists contain redlinks not in List of languages by name, but like Gordon P. Hemsley and kwami I'm not convinced of the value of having such an open-ended list. At least, I don't see the need for the main list and the sublists by initial letter. Cnilep ( talk) 13:28, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI, a bunch of list of languages by name have been prodded for deletion, see Category:Proposed deletion as of 21 June 2010. 76.66.195.196 ( talk) 05:01, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I have a problem with Virgin Islands Creole. Ethnologue considers "Netherlands Antilles Creole" to be a synonym, and assigns them the same iso3 code, something which is consistent with, but not actually confirmed by, other refs that I have found. However, when I rewrote (rather sloppily, I'm afraid) the Virgin Islands Creole article to reflect this, and redirected Saint Martin Creole stub to it, others objected that the Netherlands Antilles are not the Virgin Islands, and that they are distinct dialects. Dialects, yes (Ethnologue implies that St Martin is more distinct from the other Windward NA than they are from the VI); my question is whether they are distinct languages, and if language distinctions is what we should go by when writing the article. Also, the old St Martin Creole article had classified it as being Antiguan, which has a different iso code. Of course, all three may be the same "language". Any opinions on how to proceed here? — kwami ( talk) 06:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
The consensus for naming language articles seems to be "X language" or "X dialect", apart from Chinese and Arabic, in which mutual-intelligibility languages are "X Chinese" etc.. However, there are large numbers of articles which follow the Chinese/Arabic format: "X German", "X Quechua", "X Zapotec", etc. Is this formalized anywhere? Is it what we want, and, if it is, should we be using it for cases where it's unclear whether we have a language or a dialect, or is it simply a shortcut for "X Y language", where Y is Arabic, German, etc.? If the latter, would it be preferable to retain the word "language" if the Y is obscure enough that few readers are likely to recognize it as a language? or is it acceptable also for obscure things like Franconian?
Related formats are "Standard X", and "Old/Middle/Modern X", but "Proto-X language", not just "Proto-X".
There doesn't appear to a similar convention at WP ethnic groups, though there does seem to be a passive consensus on "X people", at least for ethno-linguistic groups. (Though one editor has opined that since language is dependent on people, plain "X" should be used for an ethnicity, and "X language" for their language, as opposed to the common existing practice of using "X" for a dab page directing the reader to "X people" and "X language".) Might it be useful for us to work with that other branch of anthropology and come up with a common philosophy for both language and ethnicity articles, so we don't have future disagreements on what title "X" should cover? — kwami ( talk) 22:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Three different users have objected to content in the subsection "Pacific Northwest" on the page Regional vocabularies of American English based on personal experience. Three editors from the region have claimed that some or all of the forms are either nonexistent, rare, or "somewhat derogatory". Two of these editors have removed the items; the third expressed incredulity on the talk page. I returned the items to the page, as they are sourced to the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of American Regional English. Does anyone have an opinion on whether it would be better to a) seek sources calling these items rare, b) remove the items or the subsection, or c) leave the items in place with current sourcing? Cnilep ( talk) 21:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm planning on merging Croatian grammar into Serbo-Croatian grammar soon, in case there are any comments / objections. So far the only worry has been the reaction of Croat nationalists; no linguistic or procedural objections have been raised. Everything at C. grammar is duplicated at SC. I just merged Serbian grammar, despite the fact that not everything is yet duplicated, as it was entirely in Cyrillic. — kwami ( talk) 01:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
For anyone who is interested, a maintenance script is available to convert the entire contents of a page from American spelling to British spelling, see the documentation here. If you have any queries or feel that the script needs modifying in any way, you know where to find me ;-) Ohconfucius ¡digame! 09:33, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Could somebody please advise on this matter, please, double please? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 18:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Have an editor who insists on using a BBC figure of 490M speakers in the info box, to the exclusion of any other refs, even though he admits it seems "inflated". He then added a table of pop. in various countries, which total 65-66M (the figures seem reasonable), but fudges the total at the bottom to 88-172M, for which he cites Ethnologue, though Ethnologue actually has a figure of 61M. Seems to be more interested in propaganda than the actual language; could use a few more pairs of eyes. — kwami ( talk) 21:26, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Should we follow the example set by Swahili language for other Bantu languages and avoid the prefix in the title, for example at Ganda language? There's a request to move the article to Luganda, but I'm finding plenty of references to "Ganda" both in linguistic and non-linguistic works (such as art, history, and evangelism), some published in Uganda by Ganda authors. Also, in general, since many Bantu languages are obscure, should we try to follow the native or anglicized form? For example, some journals request that names in articles be in a specific format (such as "Swahili" and "the Swahili" rather than Kiswahili and Waswahili), and I can see advantages to consistent usage in an encyclopedia as well. — kwami ( talk) 19:05, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
I guess this may not be directly relevant to the Languages project, but it still might interest some participants. The Rosetta Stone article, a FA candidate, has a fairly long section on languages and decipherment. If anyone would like to read and comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rosetta Stone/archive1, all such comments would be welcome! Thanks -- And rew D alby 14:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
There are articles at Langues d'oïl, Langues d'oc, and both articles mention a Langues de si. Is there an article on this "si" linguistic group? 76.66.193.119 ( talk) 23:35, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I have some concerns about the validity of this article, but insufficient expertise to comment on it. Could someone with more experience check it over? Catfish Jim and the soapdish ( talk) 11:01, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
I have nominated Gbe languages 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 "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.-- Cirt ( talk) 16:08, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
Please can someone look at the recent changes and the thread on the talk page, to do with the various translations added by User:Danielsms. -- JohnBlackburne words deeds 23:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
The current article Standard Mandarin makes clear enough what language it is talking about, and does a great job of describing the several different Chinese names for that language and where those names are used. But I get the impression that "Standard Mandarin" is not the most common English name for that language, nor is it the name that would be found as an encyclopedia entry or dictionary entry in most English-language reference works. I note that the Chinese Wikipedia version of that article is titled 現代標準漢語, which would suggest a different English title for the article.
The Wikipedia rules on article titles says that while "not always possible, the ideal title is: * Recognizable – Using names and terms commonly used in reliable sources, and so likely to be recognized, for the topic of the article."
From the point of view of you editors who read a lot about various languages in English, what do you think is the most commonly used name in reliable sources for the language about which the article Standard Mandarin is written? I appreciate your thoughtful suggestions. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 20:32, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Per John's objection that it should be "Standard Mandarin" because it's Mandarin, I'd raise a few counterpoints:
None of these points make "Standard Mandarin" actually wrong, but they may explain why the ELL never uses the phrase, and instead restricts itself to "Mandarin" and "(Modern) Standard Chinese". — kwami ( talk) 23:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
RfM based on the claim that there is a field of Admiralty Island linguistics with its own terminology, that's independent of the Loyalty Islands or Solomons or any other subgroup of Oceanists. — kwami ( talk) 06:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
There is occasionally a discussion that goes on something like this:
An effective compromise has reached consensus at the language articles listed above (and others) where the disputed state's name is listed in italics with an explanatory note about its limited recognition in parens following. This compromise, in effect, says that completely ignoring the limited recognition state is POV, but listing it as a full partner with other states is also POV, so listing it in italics with a note is the NPOV route. It would be helpful to build a consensus here so that editors who object can be pointed to one place for the discussion. This consensus is construed to effect only language articles. -- Taivo ( talk) 23:58, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
A move request has been made to move Loyalty Island languages to Loyalty Islands languages. -- Taivo ( talk) 15:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Today, I was about to add the Arabic language to the #REDIRECT Gowalla article, and frustration completes here, I didn't know how, surfed the web and went to the help page and I still didn't know how-to, after joining the wikipedia channel in freenode, someone gave me tips on a how-to add one, found out that its a complicated procedure and this is where it hit me...
How about adding a hyperlink option that is called "Add a language" under the Languages sidebar menu where simple Wikipedia contributors can easily and without a hitch add another Language for the article?
I love Wikipedia so much and I have a lot to give and learn, but these sort of frustration that I stumble upon in the website prevents me and probably prevent others from continuously contributing the wiki unconditionally.
Thank you for hearing me and I can't wait to know do you think about it.
Comments from a simple and a newbie user. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CEnTR4L ( talk • contribs) 13:10, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
There is dispute on Talk:Maharashtra#Marathi_statement_dispute about the definition of standard Marathi language. It affects Marathi (lead), Maharashtra and Pune articles. Please help to form a consensus by giving your valuable comments. A request is also put at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/All#Language_and_linguistics. Thanks. -- Redtigerxyz Talk 05:34, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
The New York Times published " Does Your Language Shape How You Think." (Guy Deutscher - August 26, 2010) WhisperToMe ( talk) 18:41, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
With regard to an unsuccessfully requested move - in Category:Language comparison there are the articles Differences between Malay and Indonesian, Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish, Differences between Spanish and Portuguese, Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish, Differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian (all without the word language in their titles), but also Differences between Slovak and Czech languages and North-South differences in the Korean language (whose titles do contain language). Besides, this template links to History of French, History of Greek, History of Dutch, History of Danish, but also to History of the Russian language, History of the Korean language, History of the Welsh language, History of Slovak language. How shall we unify those titles? -- Theurgist ( talk) 07:24, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
I've nominated template:English language and template:Norwegian language for deletion. Please see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Language infobox templates for deletion entry.
Peter Isotalo 08:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Boston English has been put up for renaming to Boston accent. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 04:17, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to link all Wikipedia language articles with lists in Wiktionary's Swadesh lists appendix to their respective lists. Wiktionary currently has lists for around 200 languages, many of them in language-family rather than individual lists — see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Swadesh_lists. I have personally created and finished around 20 different Swadesh lists, with more coming on their way. I'm wondering if it's possible to do so in the {{ Infobox Language}} template, or to create a separate template for this purpose.
My dream is for there to be a 'big database' on the Internet where anyone can access the basic vocabulary words (in standardized topical lists) of all the world's languages. Wikipedia has information on the grammar and demographics of languages, but does not often include vocabulary, which is the core and essence of language. The closest things we have to a massive comparative database on world languages are the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, Intercontinental Dictionary Series, and of course, Wiktionary's Swadesh lists. As a side note, even though this is basically the Rosetta Project's goal, the website is still quite unwieldy for ordinary users, has a very low Alexa site ranking, and does not allow wiki-style contributions. The Rosetta Project has also pulled off Swadesh lists that used to be on there, and does not have any searchable vocabulary databases as of now. And why do this? To help in language preservation, comparative linguistic studies, language learning, and more.
Or perhaps we can even create a separate "WikiVocab" website, similar in style to WikiSpecies! If we do create a big, unified, and searchable database for all the world's languages — all in one place — I believe it will be one of the greatest human achievements in modern times.
Thanks for your considerations! — Stevey7788 ( talk) 10:45, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
The article Aorist is in need of editors who can help develop it. One difficulty (as I see it) lies in trying to balance the need for technical accuracy as required by linguistics with WP:UCN, that is, explaining the aorist in a way that helps the readers most likely to come to it. Input from members of the Languages project would be most welcome and appreciated. Cynwolfe ( talk) 20:59, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Just a query as to what people think of the new Languages of <Country> templates which are being added at the moment, mostly by User:Iketsi ( talk) I think. For example, Template:Languages of Uganda, Template:Languages of Pakistan, Template:Languages of Benin etc. (see also Category:Africa_language_templates). These are being added to any language articles which fit the country concerned.
I don't have a very strong opinion on this, but it's be good to get some consensus on the usefulness of such boxes. Some comments are:
Thanks. — Amakuru ( talk) 11:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Regarding a now-archived thread here, is there really a need to supply stress marks to Russian words on Wikipedia? The mere purpose of those diacritics is to indicate the correct pronunciation whenever it could be ambiguous, just like what the IPA for English is doing when it accompanies English words. The diacritics are usually there in bilingual dictionaries or some children's books, and they were present in my Russian textbooks when I studied Russian at school, but in all other cases their use is plainly unnecessary, and a native Russian may take offense if addressed with a message showing the stress marks in his or her native language. The Russian text in the English Wikipedia is almost exclusively inserted inside the {{ lang-ru}} template, and I daresay the vast majority of our readers are not familiar enough with the Russian spelling rules to avoid assuming that not unlike the acute accents in the modern Greek orthography, the diacritics are obligatory when writing in Russian Cyrillic. Besides, we usually don't proceed in the same manner with words in other Cyrillic-based alphabets, for instance those that are inside {{ lang-uk}} or {{ lang-bg}}. By the way, there is a section above, which hasn't been replied to yet. -- Theurgist ( talk) 02:46, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI List of ISO 639-1 codes has been requested to be renamed into templatespace. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 00:59, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to ask for some advice, hopefully here in a place that isn't swamped by nationalists. Or if I'm out of line, tell me that too.
IMO, the ledes for Serbian language and Croatian language cater too much to nationalists who insist that the languages have nothing to do with each other. They insist at least on the wording "X is a South Slavic language" so they can pretend that they are just like any other pair of SS langs, such as Slovene and Bulgarian. The sociolinguistic reality of separate status is IMO adequately addressed by having separate articles, as opposed to the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics which subsumes both under a single article. These languages aren't even distinguished by dialect, they way, say, Bulgarian and Macedonian are, or Swedish and Norwegian, but by ethnicity: a Torlakian-speaking Croat speaks "Croatian", while a Torlakian-speaking Serb speaks "Serbian". I think we should make it clear from the outset that the distinguishing feature is ethnicity rather than anything inherent in the language; where there are differences, they are only associated with the languages because of their association with ethnicity. I suggest s.t. along the lines of,
or
The most recent compromise version is the following:
This is better than previous versions, but has a couple factual problems and misleading wording which are there at least partly to placate the nationalists:
Any comments/preferences? (To be clear, I'm proposing s.t. like the first wording; the last one is what is currently in the article and which I find problematic.) — kwami ( talk) 01:21, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
There is a request for comment at Talk:Croatian language. -- Taivo ( talk) 15:31, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Göbekli Tepe script — Joseph Roe Tk• Cb, 06:53, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.
We would like to ask you to review the Language articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Sunday, November 14th.
We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of November, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!
If you have already provided feedback, we deeply appreciate it. For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 16:34, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Hello. A group of us are trying to clear the backlog at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_October_2006. The page of the above name is one of the several thousand articles lacking Sources that were tagged in October 2006. Can you help in finding good Sources for the facts in the article? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 08:20, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
FYI, SIL's "Gentium Plus" has been released. [2] Combines the design of Gentium (mostly) with the coverage of Charis. class=IPA has been updated to choose it over plain Gentium, if you choose to install it. — kwami ( talk) 21:57, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi everyone. We would really appreciate any feedback, especially from linguistics experts, on how best to improve the Samoan language article, as it has been tagged (by User talk:GPHemsley) for cleanup. I've made edits there but I'm not an expert - it definitely needs a lot more work. Kahuroa has made some suggestions in the Talk:Samoan language page. Happy to carry out the leg work with any advice from you all. Thank you and much appreicated. teinesaVaii (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Standard Mandarin has been requested to be renamed. 76.66.194.212 ( talk) 05:36, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
There is a discussion here regarding a possible merger of New England English, Boston accent, and Vermont English. Cnilep ( talk) 05:25, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
ISO 639:a and subsequent lists contain language names in French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and German, which should be transwikied to Wiktionary per WP:NOT#DICT. I am planning to remove these columns with my bot unless there is any opposition. In the same go, I'd like to rearrange columns and split the column "Family" (which currently seems to contain a mixture of macrolanguages and language families) into two. The columns of the resulting tables would be:
ISO 639-3 - 639-2B - 639-1 - English name - Native name - Scope/Type - Macrolanguage code (639-3) - Macrolanguage name - Family code (639-5) - Familiy name
Suggestions and comments welcome. -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 13:59, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
I expanded Four tones. Caught a few errors; someone here might want to verify that I didn't introduce any new ones. — kwami ( talk) 16:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
FYI. Valencian language article was tagged as disputed on November 2010. There was conflict because previous versions did not provide readers with neutral information on all sides of the discussion. Several editions later controversy not only remains unsolved, but users seem now engaged into an edit war on its classification. 95.18.192.237 ( talk) 20:52, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
The conflict is over denying that Valencian and Catalan are dialects of the same language / Valencian is a dialect of Catalan, pace ELL2, Ethnologue, and the like. I know nothing of the topic myself, but RSs seem to agree that they are dialects. Any comments would be welcome; this does look like it's going to be another politically motivated denial of reality, unless I've badly misread the sources and there actually is mainstream disagreement. — kwami ( talk) 06:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
I added a request at Village pump (technical) [3] to bring in the Books Ngram Viewer dataset to Wikipedia and to create a template to make use of it. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 12:18, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
New article, created, at Internet and Technology Law Desk Reference. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt ( talk) 12:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Please, see Talk:Languages of Slovenia#Prekmurian dialect? and provide your comments. The issue is whether to include Prekmurian dialect in the article Languages of Slovenia. -- Eleassar my talk 15:51, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Elvish languages (Middle-earth) and Languages of Arda have been proposed to be renamed, see Talk:Languages of Arda.
65.94.45.209 ( talk) 12:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm new to Wikipedia, so I'm unsure if this is the right place to post. I hope it is. The Sindarin article, on which I'm working right now, has not yet received a rating on your project's importance scale. Someone was asking questions about "Sindarin", in order to put a scale on it. But I'm unable to find him/her. :( If peoople need informations about Sindarin, and if they say what sort of infos are needed I can provide them, so as to be able to put the right scale on it. 90.54.1.73 ( talk) 00:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
The conlang Atlantean language has been nominated for deletion. 184.144.162.245 ( talk) 05:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Hi all! I am wondering if there are any linguists interested in reviewing and improving the articles around the Dacian language. The are many holy wars (vandalism and revert wars included unfortunately) and theories around this interesting subject. WikiProject Dacia is proposing a collaboration on this. Of special interest are the controversial Dacian script, Sinaia lead plates and Rohonc Codex. Any specialist opinions and help are greatly appreciated. Best regards! -- Codrin.B ( talk) 05:42, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chicano vendido. Jaque Hammer ( talk) 10:14, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Is the complete linguasphere classification available anywhere online? — kwami ( talk) 10:11, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Regional differences in the Chinese language has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.14.196 ( talk) 06:33, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Simplifications to written Chinese in Hong Kong has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.14.196 ( talk) 06:25, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone know anything about English phonetic alphabet (EPA) ? It's been nominated for deletion. 64.229.103.232 ( talk) 07:06, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Template:Germanic_vowel_development is unused. Is it still wanted? If not, it can be deleted, as it is currently serving no purpose. — This, that, and the other (talk) 02:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Basic Roman spelling of English and Roman Phonetic Alphabet for English have been nominated for deletion. 65.93.15.80 ( talk) 06:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
At Wikipedia talk:IPA for Hindi and Urdu, there's a call to change all [ɛ] in our HU articles to [æ], along with a few other tweaks. Input would be appreciated. — kwami ( talk) 07:14, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
See Talk:Regional differences in the Chinese language. Munci ( talk) 10:02, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
Anyone have an estimate for the number of ǃKung / ǃXun / Ju / Zhu speakers? (The branch / language complex.) Ethnologue is not reliable (it seems they've counted dialects multiple times under different names), ELL just copies Ethnologue, and Heine & Nurse don't give a figure. — kwami ( talk) 05:50, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
This article looks like a stub but is not marked as one. Please look at it. Cliff ( talk) 20:48, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone know which spelling is correct [4] [5] [6]? -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 19:23, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
Konkani is spoken in three Indian states; Goa, Karnataka and Kerala. It is the official languageof Goa and a minority language in Karnataka and Kerala. Konkani is popularly written in three different scripts viz Devanagari (Also used for Hindi-Marathi-Nepalese-Romani), Kannada, Malayalam. Popular and prevalent pronunciation wise the name is कॊंकणि (koŋkaṇi ). This is also how it has been written in the Kannada and Malayalam scripts.
Hence this issue only pertains to how the name of the language is spelt in the Devanagari script which incidently has been promulgated as the official script of the language.
In the Indian state of Goa, where Konkani is the official language it is spelt as कोंकणी (Kōṅkaṇī) in the Devanagari script but read as koŋkaṇi. This paradox is the root of deliberation amongst Konkani speakers. There are two opposite views on this:
The Telugu language page is in need of a severe cleanup. Compare with the Tamil language article. I don't have the necessary knowledge or writing skills to clean it up myself, so I'm requesting help from here and the other relevant WikiProjects. cntrational ( talk) 21:29, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
Languages WikiProject members, this is being discussed at:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Names_of_small_numbers#Names_of_small_numbers
Please also consider what additional sections from binary and other numbering systems and from educationally, historically, linguistically and epistemologically significant concepts and works, including fractions and parts of wholes other than simple number-base exponential systems, including terms from currencies, agriculture, art media, and pre-modern English language names of small portions should be made to this topic as a kept article, especially subtopics which may not be generally known by Wikipedian editors in other particular fields. Etymology for some SI and Metric terms is included in their respective articles to which this one is linked; please consider what portions and extents of etymological information from those sources and what other sources are appropriate to add to this article as well.
Thank you. Pandelver ( talk) 04:06, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
The French have fr:Portail:Langues germaniques
Has anyone on EN wanted to do a "Germanic languages" portal? WhisperToMe ( talk) 08:01, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
I request editors to take part in the discussion here. A consensus needs to be reached. Please comment there. Regards, Yes Michael? • Talk 12:11, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
User:95.246.96.43 added dozens of "native names" to language articles today. There appears to have been a fair amount of thought put into them: many look rather convincing if you're unfamiliar with the languages in question. Several were reverted by the time I got to them, but the reverting editors failed to follow up on this user's other edits. I blocked the account, but since this is an anon IP, and the edits date only from today, it's quite possible they will show up tomorrow under a different IP. If you see info like this added, please check the editor's contributions to see if there's a pattern. — kwami ( talk) 11:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Blocked User:82.49.42.59 for adding a bunch of "incubator" links that didn't link to anything, including such unlikely suspects as Guanche. However, a couple of the edits appear to be okay. Can anyone verify if that actually is the native name of Omaha-Ponca? Was I hasty in blocking? — kwami ( talk) 19:48, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
This appears to follow the definition of an attributive phrase of any part of speech rather than a phrase where the head word is an adjective. I'm tempted to move it to attributive phrase (probably merging with attributive) and writing a new stub for adjective-head phrase in its place, but thought someone here might have a different idea. — kwami ( talk) 22:56, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a request to cleanup Hong Kong English at Talk:Hong Kong English. 65.93.12.101 ( talk) 06:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Could use review. For one thing, it seems odd that a language should use bold el as a distinct letter from roman el. — kwami ( talk) 00:02, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
We currently have a category:Films by language with subcategories for many languages. For some languages these are (direct or indirect) subcategories of the corresponding language category, which makes sense. However, for many African languages, this is not the case because the language category doesn't even exist. So we have the awkward situation that we have categories for one aspect of a language, but none for the language itself. What should be done?
For example, I just created category:Diola-language films as a subcategory of category:Films by language, because this is the way it's done for all other foreign language films. However, I could not assign this category to category:Diola language (or category:Jola language), since that category doesn't exist.
This is a problem because it denies our readers information that would be particular useful. Someone reading an article about a lesser known language will likely find it useful to know that there are some films in that language. So we should offer our readers a way to discover that film category. In the case of Jola languages, I added a link to category:Diola-language films in the "See also" section. That's a bit of a hack, but I think it may be a more lightweight solution than creating scores or even hundreds of language categories that only have one article (that about the language itself) and one subcategory (that for the films).
Alternatively, I had been thinking about using bigger categories, such as category:Atlantic languages films, but that would neither be discoverable for someone reading the Diola article, nor would it be likely to get populated by film aficionados unfamiliar with language categorization. What do others think? — Sebastian 15:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
FYI, {{ Quebec English}} has been nominated for deletion. IT is an WP:ENGVAR template. 70.29.208.247 ( talk) 04:28, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
FYI, zh-tw has come up on WP:RFD for retargetting.
70.29.208.247 ( talk) 04:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
FYI, there is again, an RFC on the naming of the article, see Talk:Cantonese (Yue)
70.29.208.247 ( talk) 08:37, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
I am not sure under what project's "juristiction" this falls under, but there seems to be a problem with
English words with uncommon properties, a page with few watchers but 1,000+ views a day, which tends to list the words with high percentage of vowel and other orthographic outliers.
It is interesting and worth keeping, but it is not very scientific. The majority of words are from IP users who have though about that word. Consequently I put together a code to count such entries in wiktionary and automatically get a list of the top scores to avoid people adding words after simply chewing on pencils. The code needs adjusting to remove acronyms and I have not added all pages. I have not heard a single comment about the idea and despite being entertaining I really do not have the time to do something no one likes.
I am not asking for a barnstar/pat on the back, I just would like to hear someone's honest opinion if it is a good idea or not (
talk page of article). --
Squidonius (
talk)
13:10, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Should there be a common form for pages dealing with the varieties of English spoken in a US region? There's currently a debate on the topic of the name of the variety(ies) spoken in Baltimore Talk:Baltimore_dialect#Recent_page_move_--_should_have_waited_for_consensus. Note the two predominant forms are PLACENAME Dialect as in Baltimore dialect and PLACENAME English as in Pittsburgh English. My own impression is that the latter is tending to predominate in the dialectological literature. mnewmanqc ( talk) 19:30, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
There's now a claim that Tartessian language is Celtic. Seems suspicious to me that s.t. as obvious as the way that is presented should have gone unrecognized for so long. I toned down the claim, but it should be reviewed and probably reworded. (And of course if this was a breakthrough, my edits should be reverted.) — kwami ( talk) 00:40, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Tartessian will very likely be reclassified as the earliest Celtic language. Refer to "Tartessian: Celtic from the South-west at the Dawn of History" (2009) by John Koch. In addition, the first segment of the University of Wales "Celtic in the South-west" study will be released in August 2010. The project's material adds further confirmation to Tartessian being the first Celtic language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by London Hawk ( talk • contribs) 12:54, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
Excuse me, "no one except John Koch believes this"? I don't think so. Do some research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by London Hawk ( talk • contribs) 20:24, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
User:Jasy jatere has requested bot assisted creation of the missing ISO 639 language redirects, which seems uncontroversial because of the existing template:R from ISO 639 and category:Redirects from ISO 639. The user has also asked whether my bot could create the missing language stubs in the process (see User talk:Anypodetos#Bot request). Is this desireable? -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 09:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
$language is a language spoken in [[$country]] by $population people. It is also known under the names @alternatenames.{{lang-stub}}
-- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 11:53, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Three relevant questions to be asked about the creation of a new article are 1) is the topic relevant and 2) is there enough content to contextualize the article and 3) is the content sourced to a reliable source. As for 1), all languages which have an ISO 639-3 code are surely relevant. As for 2), the one liner given above seems to be sufficient to contextualize the entry. As for 3), I would argue that SIL/the Ethnologue passes the criteria for WP:RS
Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in reliable, published sources are covered;
Even if Ethnologue might not always represent the majority, it is surely one of the sources that should be given as a significant minority view. Jasy jatere ( talk) 14:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Just for your information: The bot has finished creating the ISO 639 redirects (about 2540). A list of existing redirects the bot couldn't verify is at User:PotatoBot/Lists/ISO 639 log. These are mostly redirects to ISO 639 macrolanguage instead of individual language articles. A list of languages that probably don't have Wikipedia articles (about 5000) is at User:PotatoBot/Lists/ISO 639 language articles missing. -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 15:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
On the proposal to create stubs for every iso-639-3 language, I think that many rare languages might better be covered in articles on their language families or branches, while some dialects are notable enough for separate articles. Some languages with separate iso-639-3 codes are best covered in joint articles (e.g. punjabi pan/pnb), although the separate codes are important to cue script encoding or other features. Bcharles ( talk) 21:10, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
Jasy jatere has kindly sent me the SIL and Ethnologue data as text files. I intend to check these against the
ISO 639 lists and update them; but the data could also be used to add missing {{
infobox language}} transclusions to language articles. The following parameters could be filled in (though not all params for all languages): name, iso3, familycolor, famn, script, speakers/signers. region
could also be filled in, but I'm not quite sure whether this field borders the
threshold of originality and thus might be copyrighted by SIL.
Since it will need some work to implement this into my bot's code, I wanted to ask whether this procedure would be supported by WP:LANG. Thanks -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 19:59, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
Hope the members involved in improving the projects related to LANGUAGES can contribute a lot to this article about the upcoming World Tamil Conference. I need your help improving the article guys. -- Ben ( talk) 09:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I recently listed a number of slang-related categories for deletion, because they are of an unencyclopedic nature: CfD for Mimzy1990's slang. The result of that discussion, based on only a small handful of opinions from users outside the field of linguistics, was keep. (I actually think it was no consensus, but that's another story.) So, I come here to ask the opinions of the larger WP Languages editorbase. What do you guys think about these categories? And if you agree with my rationale (I went into more detail on the actual CfD), please feel free to relist them for deletion. — Gordon P. Hemsley→ ✉ 11:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
FYI, {{Languages portal}}
has been nominated for deletion.
70.29.210.155 (
talk)
05:16, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Yue Chinese is up for renaming , this is the article on the Cantonese language. See Talk:Yue Chinese. 76.66.193.224 ( talk) 03:43, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
FYI, List of languages by name and related articles have been prodded for deletion on 30 May, see Category:Proposed deletion as of 30 May 2010 76.66.193.224 ( talk) 04:51, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
List of languages by name: A through M have been deleted by prod, but List of languages by name: N through List of languages by name: Z exist. Is this a deletion process in progress? or one that has been reconsidered? The initial-letter lists contain redlinks not in List of languages by name, but like Gordon P. Hemsley and kwami I'm not convinced of the value of having such an open-ended list. At least, I don't see the need for the main list and the sublists by initial letter. Cnilep ( talk) 13:28, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
FYI, a bunch of list of languages by name have been prodded for deletion, see Category:Proposed deletion as of 21 June 2010. 76.66.195.196 ( talk) 05:01, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I have a problem with Virgin Islands Creole. Ethnologue considers "Netherlands Antilles Creole" to be a synonym, and assigns them the same iso3 code, something which is consistent with, but not actually confirmed by, other refs that I have found. However, when I rewrote (rather sloppily, I'm afraid) the Virgin Islands Creole article to reflect this, and redirected Saint Martin Creole stub to it, others objected that the Netherlands Antilles are not the Virgin Islands, and that they are distinct dialects. Dialects, yes (Ethnologue implies that St Martin is more distinct from the other Windward NA than they are from the VI); my question is whether they are distinct languages, and if language distinctions is what we should go by when writing the article. Also, the old St Martin Creole article had classified it as being Antiguan, which has a different iso code. Of course, all three may be the same "language". Any opinions on how to proceed here? — kwami ( talk) 06:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
The consensus for naming language articles seems to be "X language" or "X dialect", apart from Chinese and Arabic, in which mutual-intelligibility languages are "X Chinese" etc.. However, there are large numbers of articles which follow the Chinese/Arabic format: "X German", "X Quechua", "X Zapotec", etc. Is this formalized anywhere? Is it what we want, and, if it is, should we be using it for cases where it's unclear whether we have a language or a dialect, or is it simply a shortcut for "X Y language", where Y is Arabic, German, etc.? If the latter, would it be preferable to retain the word "language" if the Y is obscure enough that few readers are likely to recognize it as a language? or is it acceptable also for obscure things like Franconian?
Related formats are "Standard X", and "Old/Middle/Modern X", but "Proto-X language", not just "Proto-X".
There doesn't appear to a similar convention at WP ethnic groups, though there does seem to be a passive consensus on "X people", at least for ethno-linguistic groups. (Though one editor has opined that since language is dependent on people, plain "X" should be used for an ethnicity, and "X language" for their language, as opposed to the common existing practice of using "X" for a dab page directing the reader to "X people" and "X language".) Might it be useful for us to work with that other branch of anthropology and come up with a common philosophy for both language and ethnicity articles, so we don't have future disagreements on what title "X" should cover? — kwami ( talk) 22:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Three different users have objected to content in the subsection "Pacific Northwest" on the page Regional vocabularies of American English based on personal experience. Three editors from the region have claimed that some or all of the forms are either nonexistent, rare, or "somewhat derogatory". Two of these editors have removed the items; the third expressed incredulity on the talk page. I returned the items to the page, as they are sourced to the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of American Regional English. Does anyone have an opinion on whether it would be better to a) seek sources calling these items rare, b) remove the items or the subsection, or c) leave the items in place with current sourcing? Cnilep ( talk) 21:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm planning on merging Croatian grammar into Serbo-Croatian grammar soon, in case there are any comments / objections. So far the only worry has been the reaction of Croat nationalists; no linguistic or procedural objections have been raised. Everything at C. grammar is duplicated at SC. I just merged Serbian grammar, despite the fact that not everything is yet duplicated, as it was entirely in Cyrillic. — kwami ( talk) 01:53, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
For anyone who is interested, a maintenance script is available to convert the entire contents of a page from American spelling to British spelling, see the documentation here. If you have any queries or feel that the script needs modifying in any way, you know where to find me ;-) Ohconfucius ¡digame! 09:33, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
Could somebody please advise on this matter, please, double please? Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 18:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC)
Have an editor who insists on using a BBC figure of 490M speakers in the info box, to the exclusion of any other refs, even though he admits it seems "inflated". He then added a table of pop. in various countries, which total 65-66M (the figures seem reasonable), but fudges the total at the bottom to 88-172M, for which he cites Ethnologue, though Ethnologue actually has a figure of 61M. Seems to be more interested in propaganda than the actual language; could use a few more pairs of eyes. — kwami ( talk) 21:26, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
Should we follow the example set by Swahili language for other Bantu languages and avoid the prefix in the title, for example at Ganda language? There's a request to move the article to Luganda, but I'm finding plenty of references to "Ganda" both in linguistic and non-linguistic works (such as art, history, and evangelism), some published in Uganda by Ganda authors. Also, in general, since many Bantu languages are obscure, should we try to follow the native or anglicized form? For example, some journals request that names in articles be in a specific format (such as "Swahili" and "the Swahili" rather than Kiswahili and Waswahili), and I can see advantages to consistent usage in an encyclopedia as well. — kwami ( talk) 19:05, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
I guess this may not be directly relevant to the Languages project, but it still might interest some participants. The Rosetta Stone article, a FA candidate, has a fairly long section on languages and decipherment. If anyone would like to read and comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Rosetta Stone/archive1, all such comments would be welcome! Thanks -- And rew D alby 14:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
There are articles at Langues d'oïl, Langues d'oc, and both articles mention a Langues de si. Is there an article on this "si" linguistic group? 76.66.193.119 ( talk) 23:35, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I have some concerns about the validity of this article, but insufficient expertise to comment on it. Could someone with more experience check it over? Catfish Jim and the soapdish ( talk) 11:01, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
I have nominated Gbe languages 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 "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.-- Cirt ( talk) 16:08, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
Please can someone look at the recent changes and the thread on the talk page, to do with the various translations added by User:Danielsms. -- JohnBlackburne words deeds 23:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
The current article Standard Mandarin makes clear enough what language it is talking about, and does a great job of describing the several different Chinese names for that language and where those names are used. But I get the impression that "Standard Mandarin" is not the most common English name for that language, nor is it the name that would be found as an encyclopedia entry or dictionary entry in most English-language reference works. I note that the Chinese Wikipedia version of that article is titled 現代標準漢語, which would suggest a different English title for the article.
The Wikipedia rules on article titles says that while "not always possible, the ideal title is: * Recognizable – Using names and terms commonly used in reliable sources, and so likely to be recognized, for the topic of the article."
From the point of view of you editors who read a lot about various languages in English, what do you think is the most commonly used name in reliable sources for the language about which the article Standard Mandarin is written? I appreciate your thoughtful suggestions. -- WeijiBaikeBianji ( talk) 20:32, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Per John's objection that it should be "Standard Mandarin" because it's Mandarin, I'd raise a few counterpoints:
None of these points make "Standard Mandarin" actually wrong, but they may explain why the ELL never uses the phrase, and instead restricts itself to "Mandarin" and "(Modern) Standard Chinese". — kwami ( talk) 23:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
RfM based on the claim that there is a field of Admiralty Island linguistics with its own terminology, that's independent of the Loyalty Islands or Solomons or any other subgroup of Oceanists. — kwami ( talk) 06:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
There is occasionally a discussion that goes on something like this:
An effective compromise has reached consensus at the language articles listed above (and others) where the disputed state's name is listed in italics with an explanatory note about its limited recognition in parens following. This compromise, in effect, says that completely ignoring the limited recognition state is POV, but listing it as a full partner with other states is also POV, so listing it in italics with a note is the NPOV route. It would be helpful to build a consensus here so that editors who object can be pointed to one place for the discussion. This consensus is construed to effect only language articles. -- Taivo ( talk) 23:58, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
A move request has been made to move Loyalty Island languages to Loyalty Islands languages. -- Taivo ( talk) 15:01, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
Today, I was about to add the Arabic language to the #REDIRECT Gowalla article, and frustration completes here, I didn't know how, surfed the web and went to the help page and I still didn't know how-to, after joining the wikipedia channel in freenode, someone gave me tips on a how-to add one, found out that its a complicated procedure and this is where it hit me...
How about adding a hyperlink option that is called "Add a language" under the Languages sidebar menu where simple Wikipedia contributors can easily and without a hitch add another Language for the article?
I love Wikipedia so much and I have a lot to give and learn, but these sort of frustration that I stumble upon in the website prevents me and probably prevent others from continuously contributing the wiki unconditionally.
Thank you for hearing me and I can't wait to know do you think about it.
Comments from a simple and a newbie user. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CEnTR4L ( talk • contribs) 13:10, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
There is dispute on Talk:Maharashtra#Marathi_statement_dispute about the definition of standard Marathi language. It affects Marathi (lead), Maharashtra and Pune articles. Please help to form a consensus by giving your valuable comments. A request is also put at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/All#Language_and_linguistics. Thanks. -- Redtigerxyz Talk 05:34, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
The New York Times published " Does Your Language Shape How You Think." (Guy Deutscher - August 26, 2010) WhisperToMe ( talk) 18:41, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
With regard to an unsuccessfully requested move - in Category:Language comparison there are the articles Differences between Malay and Indonesian, Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish, Differences between Spanish and Portuguese, Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish, Differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian (all without the word language in their titles), but also Differences between Slovak and Czech languages and North-South differences in the Korean language (whose titles do contain language). Besides, this template links to History of French, History of Greek, History of Dutch, History of Danish, but also to History of the Russian language, History of the Korean language, History of the Welsh language, History of Slovak language. How shall we unify those titles? -- Theurgist ( talk) 07:24, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
I've nominated template:English language and template:Norwegian language for deletion. Please see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#Language infobox templates for deletion entry.
Peter Isotalo 08:36, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Boston English has been put up for renaming to Boston accent. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 04:17, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to link all Wikipedia language articles with lists in Wiktionary's Swadesh lists appendix to their respective lists. Wiktionary currently has lists for around 200 languages, many of them in language-family rather than individual lists — see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Swadesh_lists. I have personally created and finished around 20 different Swadesh lists, with more coming on their way. I'm wondering if it's possible to do so in the {{ Infobox Language}} template, or to create a separate template for this purpose.
My dream is for there to be a 'big database' on the Internet where anyone can access the basic vocabulary words (in standardized topical lists) of all the world's languages. Wikipedia has information on the grammar and demographics of languages, but does not often include vocabulary, which is the core and essence of language. The closest things we have to a massive comparative database on world languages are the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, Intercontinental Dictionary Series, and of course, Wiktionary's Swadesh lists. As a side note, even though this is basically the Rosetta Project's goal, the website is still quite unwieldy for ordinary users, has a very low Alexa site ranking, and does not allow wiki-style contributions. The Rosetta Project has also pulled off Swadesh lists that used to be on there, and does not have any searchable vocabulary databases as of now. And why do this? To help in language preservation, comparative linguistic studies, language learning, and more.
Or perhaps we can even create a separate "WikiVocab" website, similar in style to WikiSpecies! If we do create a big, unified, and searchable database for all the world's languages — all in one place — I believe it will be one of the greatest human achievements in modern times.
Thanks for your considerations! — Stevey7788 ( talk) 10:45, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
The article Aorist is in need of editors who can help develop it. One difficulty (as I see it) lies in trying to balance the need for technical accuracy as required by linguistics with WP:UCN, that is, explaining the aorist in a way that helps the readers most likely to come to it. Input from members of the Languages project would be most welcome and appreciated. Cynwolfe ( talk) 20:59, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Just a query as to what people think of the new Languages of <Country> templates which are being added at the moment, mostly by User:Iketsi ( talk) I think. For example, Template:Languages of Uganda, Template:Languages of Pakistan, Template:Languages of Benin etc. (see also Category:Africa_language_templates). These are being added to any language articles which fit the country concerned.
I don't have a very strong opinion on this, but it's be good to get some consensus on the usefulness of such boxes. Some comments are:
Thanks. — Amakuru ( talk) 11:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
Regarding a now-archived thread here, is there really a need to supply stress marks to Russian words on Wikipedia? The mere purpose of those diacritics is to indicate the correct pronunciation whenever it could be ambiguous, just like what the IPA for English is doing when it accompanies English words. The diacritics are usually there in bilingual dictionaries or some children's books, and they were present in my Russian textbooks when I studied Russian at school, but in all other cases their use is plainly unnecessary, and a native Russian may take offense if addressed with a message showing the stress marks in his or her native language. The Russian text in the English Wikipedia is almost exclusively inserted inside the {{ lang-ru}} template, and I daresay the vast majority of our readers are not familiar enough with the Russian spelling rules to avoid assuming that not unlike the acute accents in the modern Greek orthography, the diacritics are obligatory when writing in Russian Cyrillic. Besides, we usually don't proceed in the same manner with words in other Cyrillic-based alphabets, for instance those that are inside {{ lang-uk}} or {{ lang-bg}}. By the way, there is a section above, which hasn't been replied to yet. -- Theurgist ( talk) 02:46, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
FYI List of ISO 639-1 codes has been requested to be renamed into templatespace. 76.66.200.95 ( talk) 00:59, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
I'd like to ask for some advice, hopefully here in a place that isn't swamped by nationalists. Or if I'm out of line, tell me that too.
IMO, the ledes for Serbian language and Croatian language cater too much to nationalists who insist that the languages have nothing to do with each other. They insist at least on the wording "X is a South Slavic language" so they can pretend that they are just like any other pair of SS langs, such as Slovene and Bulgarian. The sociolinguistic reality of separate status is IMO adequately addressed by having separate articles, as opposed to the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics which subsumes both under a single article. These languages aren't even distinguished by dialect, they way, say, Bulgarian and Macedonian are, or Swedish and Norwegian, but by ethnicity: a Torlakian-speaking Croat speaks "Croatian", while a Torlakian-speaking Serb speaks "Serbian". I think we should make it clear from the outset that the distinguishing feature is ethnicity rather than anything inherent in the language; where there are differences, they are only associated with the languages because of their association with ethnicity. I suggest s.t. along the lines of,
or
The most recent compromise version is the following:
This is better than previous versions, but has a couple factual problems and misleading wording which are there at least partly to placate the nationalists:
Any comments/preferences? (To be clear, I'm proposing s.t. like the first wording; the last one is what is currently in the article and which I find problematic.) — kwami ( talk) 01:21, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
There is a request for comment at Talk:Croatian language. -- Taivo ( talk) 15:31, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Göbekli Tepe script — Joseph Roe Tk• Cb, 06:53, 16 October 2010 (UTC)
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.
We would like to ask you to review the Language articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Sunday, November 14th.
We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of November, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!
If you have already provided feedback, we deeply appreciate it. For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 16:34, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Hello. A group of us are trying to clear the backlog at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_October_2006. The page of the above name is one of the several thousand articles lacking Sources that were tagged in October 2006. Can you help in finding good Sources for the facts in the article? Sincerely, GeorgeLouis ( talk) 08:20, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
FYI, SIL's "Gentium Plus" has been released. [2] Combines the design of Gentium (mostly) with the coverage of Charis. class=IPA has been updated to choose it over plain Gentium, if you choose to install it. — kwami ( talk) 21:57, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
Hi everyone. We would really appreciate any feedback, especially from linguistics experts, on how best to improve the Samoan language article, as it has been tagged (by User talk:GPHemsley) for cleanup. I've made edits there but I'm not an expert - it definitely needs a lot more work. Kahuroa has made some suggestions in the Talk:Samoan language page. Happy to carry out the leg work with any advice from you all. Thank you and much appreicated. teinesaVaii (talk) 07:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
FYI, Standard Mandarin has been requested to be renamed. 76.66.194.212 ( talk) 05:36, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
There is a discussion here regarding a possible merger of New England English, Boston accent, and Vermont English. Cnilep ( talk) 05:25, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
ISO 639:a and subsequent lists contain language names in French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and German, which should be transwikied to Wiktionary per WP:NOT#DICT. I am planning to remove these columns with my bot unless there is any opposition. In the same go, I'd like to rearrange columns and split the column "Family" (which currently seems to contain a mixture of macrolanguages and language families) into two. The columns of the resulting tables would be:
ISO 639-3 - 639-2B - 639-1 - English name - Native name - Scope/Type - Macrolanguage code (639-3) - Macrolanguage name - Family code (639-5) - Familiy name
Suggestions and comments welcome. -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 13:59, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
I expanded Four tones. Caught a few errors; someone here might want to verify that I didn't introduce any new ones. — kwami ( talk) 16:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
FYI. Valencian language article was tagged as disputed on November 2010. There was conflict because previous versions did not provide readers with neutral information on all sides of the discussion. Several editions later controversy not only remains unsolved, but users seem now engaged into an edit war on its classification. 95.18.192.237 ( talk) 20:52, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
The conflict is over denying that Valencian and Catalan are dialects of the same language / Valencian is a dialect of Catalan, pace ELL2, Ethnologue, and the like. I know nothing of the topic myself, but RSs seem to agree that they are dialects. Any comments would be welcome; this does look like it's going to be another politically motivated denial of reality, unless I've badly misread the sources and there actually is mainstream disagreement. — kwami ( talk) 06:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
I added a request at Village pump (technical) [3] to bring in the Books Ngram Viewer dataset to Wikipedia and to create a template to make use of it. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 12:18, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
New article, created, at Internet and Technology Law Desk Reference. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt ( talk) 12:49, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
Please, see Talk:Languages of Slovenia#Prekmurian dialect? and provide your comments. The issue is whether to include Prekmurian dialect in the article Languages of Slovenia. -- Eleassar my talk 15:51, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
Elvish languages (Middle-earth) and Languages of Arda have been proposed to be renamed, see Talk:Languages of Arda.
65.94.45.209 ( talk) 12:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm new to Wikipedia, so I'm unsure if this is the right place to post. I hope it is. The Sindarin article, on which I'm working right now, has not yet received a rating on your project's importance scale. Someone was asking questions about "Sindarin", in order to put a scale on it. But I'm unable to find him/her. :( If peoople need informations about Sindarin, and if they say what sort of infos are needed I can provide them, so as to be able to put the right scale on it. 90.54.1.73 ( talk) 00:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
The conlang Atlantean language has been nominated for deletion. 184.144.162.245 ( talk) 05:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Hi all! I am wondering if there are any linguists interested in reviewing and improving the articles around the Dacian language. The are many holy wars (vandalism and revert wars included unfortunately) and theories around this interesting subject. WikiProject Dacia is proposing a collaboration on this. Of special interest are the controversial Dacian script, Sinaia lead plates and Rohonc Codex. Any specialist opinions and help are greatly appreciated. Best regards! -- Codrin.B ( talk) 05:42, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chicano vendido. Jaque Hammer ( talk) 10:14, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Is the complete linguasphere classification available anywhere online? — kwami ( talk) 10:11, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Regional differences in the Chinese language has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.14.196 ( talk) 06:33, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
Simplifications to written Chinese in Hong Kong has been nominated for deletion. 65.93.14.196 ( talk) 06:25, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone know anything about English phonetic alphabet (EPA) ? It's been nominated for deletion. 64.229.103.232 ( talk) 07:06, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Template:Germanic_vowel_development is unused. Is it still wanted? If not, it can be deleted, as it is currently serving no purpose. — This, that, and the other (talk) 02:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
Basic Roman spelling of English and Roman Phonetic Alphabet for English have been nominated for deletion. 65.93.15.80 ( talk) 06:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
At Wikipedia talk:IPA for Hindi and Urdu, there's a call to change all [ɛ] in our HU articles to [æ], along with a few other tweaks. Input would be appreciated. — kwami ( talk) 07:14, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
See Talk:Regional differences in the Chinese language. Munci ( talk) 10:02, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
Anyone have an estimate for the number of ǃKung / ǃXun / Ju / Zhu speakers? (The branch / language complex.) Ethnologue is not reliable (it seems they've counted dialects multiple times under different names), ELL just copies Ethnologue, and Heine & Nurse don't give a figure. — kwami ( talk) 05:50, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
This article looks like a stub but is not marked as one. Please look at it. Cliff ( talk) 20:48, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Does anyone know which spelling is correct [4] [5] [6]? -- ἀνυπόδητος ( talk) 19:23, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
Konkani is spoken in three Indian states; Goa, Karnataka and Kerala. It is the official languageof Goa and a minority language in Karnataka and Kerala. Konkani is popularly written in three different scripts viz Devanagari (Also used for Hindi-Marathi-Nepalese-Romani), Kannada, Malayalam. Popular and prevalent pronunciation wise the name is कॊंकणि (koŋkaṇi ). This is also how it has been written in the Kannada and Malayalam scripts.
Hence this issue only pertains to how the name of the language is spelt in the Devanagari script which incidently has been promulgated as the official script of the language.
In the Indian state of Goa, where Konkani is the official language it is spelt as कोंकणी (Kōṅkaṇī) in the Devanagari script but read as koŋkaṇi. This paradox is the root of deliberation amongst Konkani speakers. There are two opposite views on this:
The Telugu language page is in need of a severe cleanup. Compare with the Tamil language article. I don't have the necessary knowledge or writing skills to clean it up myself, so I'm requesting help from here and the other relevant WikiProjects. cntrational ( talk) 21:29, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
Languages WikiProject members, this is being discussed at:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Names_of_small_numbers#Names_of_small_numbers
Please also consider what additional sections from binary and other numbering systems and from educationally, historically, linguistically and epistemologically significant concepts and works, including fractions and parts of wholes other than simple number-base exponential systems, including terms from currencies, agriculture, art media, and pre-modern English language names of small portions should be made to this topic as a kept article, especially subtopics which may not be generally known by Wikipedian editors in other particular fields. Etymology for some SI and Metric terms is included in their respective articles to which this one is linked; please consider what portions and extents of etymological information from those sources and what other sources are appropriate to add to this article as well.
Thank you. Pandelver ( talk) 04:06, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
The French have fr:Portail:Langues germaniques
Has anyone on EN wanted to do a "Germanic languages" portal? WhisperToMe ( talk) 08:01, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
I request editors to take part in the discussion here. A consensus needs to be reached. Please comment there. Regards, Yes Michael? • Talk 12:11, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
User:95.246.96.43 added dozens of "native names" to language articles today. There appears to have been a fair amount of thought put into them: many look rather convincing if you're unfamiliar with the languages in question. Several were reverted by the time I got to them, but the reverting editors failed to follow up on this user's other edits. I blocked the account, but since this is an anon IP, and the edits date only from today, it's quite possible they will show up tomorrow under a different IP. If you see info like this added, please check the editor's contributions to see if there's a pattern. — kwami ( talk) 11:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Blocked User:82.49.42.59 for adding a bunch of "incubator" links that didn't link to anything, including such unlikely suspects as Guanche. However, a couple of the edits appear to be okay. Can anyone verify if that actually is the native name of Omaha-Ponca? Was I hasty in blocking? — kwami ( talk) 19:48, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
This appears to follow the definition of an attributive phrase of any part of speech rather than a phrase where the head word is an adjective. I'm tempted to move it to attributive phrase (probably merging with attributive) and writing a new stub for adjective-head phrase in its place, but thought someone here might have a different idea. — kwami ( talk) 22:56, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
There is a request to cleanup Hong Kong English at Talk:Hong Kong English. 65.93.12.101 ( talk) 06:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Could use review. For one thing, it seems odd that a language should use bold el as a distinct letter from roman el. — kwami ( talk) 00:02, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
We currently have a category:Films by language with subcategories for many languages. For some languages these are (direct or indirect) subcategories of the corresponding language category, which makes sense. However, for many African languages, this is not the case because the language category doesn't even exist. So we have the awkward situation that we have categories for one aspect of a language, but none for the language itself. What should be done?
For example, I just created category:Diola-language films as a subcategory of category:Films by language, because this is the way it's done for all other foreign language films. However, I could not assign this category to category:Diola language (or category:Jola language), since that category doesn't exist.
This is a problem because it denies our readers information that would be particular useful. Someone reading an article about a lesser known language will likely find it useful to know that there are some films in that language. So we should offer our readers a way to discover that film category. In the case of Jola languages, I added a link to category:Diola-language films in the "See also" section. That's a bit of a hack, but I think it may be a more lightweight solution than creating scores or even hundreds of language categories that only have one article (that about the language itself) and one subcategory (that for the films).
Alternatively, I had been thinking about using bigger categories, such as category:Atlantic languages films, but that would neither be discoverable for someone reading the Diola article, nor would it be likely to get populated by film aficionados unfamiliar with language categorization. What do others think? — Sebastian 15:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)