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This edit would make it see like you want to unify and (as w:Antillean Creole does). Is that true? Not that I have a problem with that, but do you have any other reasons for wanting to unify them aside from Wikipedia? Cheers. --Bequw→τ01:03, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
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Now that Dharuk/Sydney has an ISO code ({{xdk}}), we can convert our entries to use it, rather than the exceptional code {{aus-syd}}. The only obstacle is the name: we currently call the lect Sydney; the ISO calls it (and until 2008/9 we (sometimes?) called it? see the deletion of Category:Dharuk language) Dharuk. The best name, however, seems to be Dharug: if this ngram is accurate, it was (with Sydney) among the original names and has remained in use since then, even as Sydney became less common and Dharuk came into use in the modern era of renewed interest in the lect (post-1970). I propose we rename {{xdk}}Dharug (the name WP prefers as well) and switch our {{aus-syd}} to it. - -sche(discuss)20:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
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pnm. Punan Batu 1. I'm not sure what to do with this one; I haven't fiound enough information yet to be comfortable just removing the 1: there may be other languages (even if they are not yet in Wiktionary) with the same name. - -sche(discuss)21:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
I've renamed it "Punan Batu", dropping the "1". If another language is added someday with this language, we can cross that bridge at that time. - -sche(discuss)22:50, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
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We currently call {{bmn}} "Bina (Papua New Guinea)", to distinguish it from the not-yet-created {{byj}}, the "Bina" of Nigeria. Although I would prefer to appropriate unmarked "Bina" for the living Nigerian language (the Papuan language is extinct), the one and only(!) Google Books hit for "Bina" as a language refers to the Papuan language; and there is one (only!) Google Books hit for "Binawa", an alternative name for the Nigerian language. (See Citations:Bina, Citations:Binawa.) I therefore propose we rename {{bmn}} to plain "Bina", and create {{byj}} as "Binawa". - -sche(discuss)21:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
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To fit our current naming system, {{mve}} should be "Marwari (Pakistan)" and {{rwr}} should be "Marwari (India)". We could, of course, merge all of the Marwaris into {{mwr}}: {{dhd}} (Dhundari), {{rwr}} (Marwari (India)), {{mve}} (Marwari (Pakistan)), {{wry}} (Merwari), {{mtr}} (Mewari), {{swv}} (Shekhawati). - -sche(discuss)05:09, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
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Well, this is a mess. There are no fewer than six languages vying for / going by the name "Kara". Some of them are even attested; see Citations:Kara:
{{zra}}, a Korean language, is the easiest to ‘solve’: there certainly are many books that use "Kara" to mean {{zra}}, but many more books call it "Kaya", so I've just named it that.
{{kxh}}, an Omotic language. It seems to be called "Kara" more often than it is called "Karo", but the latter name is attested (Citations:Karo) and distinguishes it. ({{kxh}}-Karo is in turn distinguished from {{btx}}-Karo Batak / Batak Karo, and I'll sort out {{arr}}/Citations:Arara/{{aap}} later.)
{{leu}}, which I created as "Kara (Papua New Guinea)" because the synonym "Lemakot", while attested, is quite dated, and literature referring to "Kara" most frequently refers to {{leu}}.
Others are unattested:
{{reg}} was created some time ago as "Kara (Tanzania)", but I find only one GBC hit for it under this name, and none for its alternative name "Regi".
{{kah}}, which could be "Kara (Central African Republic)" (but I find no GBC hits of Kara in reference to {{kah}}) or "Fer" (which I find one(!) GBC hit of).
{{kcm}}, which could be "Kara (Central African Republic)" — yes, even the differentiator would be the same, under our current scheme of parenthetical country names as differentiators, but my favourite part is that its alternative name is "Gula", which is attested — as the name of five other languages! The alternative name "Tar Gula" might be just barely attested, so we could rename {{kcm}} that.
I also found 1 citation of "Kara" as the name of a Sudanese language, and 1 citation of it as an Ethiopian language; these may refer to one of the previous languages; I can't tell. Oh, and there's also the Kara family of languages.
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FYI, I've renamed {{bez}} from "Bena" to "Kibena", to make it distinct from {{yun}} "Bena"; previously, both languages were called "Bena". Amusingly, this pair was struck in the Mwera discussion as resolved, when both languages were still called "Bena". I was initially going to rename {{yun}}, but discovered its alternative names were all rare, whereas {{bez}}'s alt name "Kibena" is common (250+ Google Books hits). - -sche(discuss)03:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Ki- is actually a language prefix like in most other Bantu languages, it's not strictly part of the name. Swahili is often called 'Kiswahili' for the same reason. —CodeCat12:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I suppose it's a question, as with the Aja languages: is it more important to give the languages distinct names, or to give them the most accurate and otherwise bare names and distinguish them with parenthetical notes? As this page shows, I've been renaming languages to their most common attested names, preferably autonyms, except when that would require parentheses. WT:Languages stated, even before I updated it, that parentheses were to be avoided, but perhaps we should (re)discuss that as a community. - -sche(discuss)20:41, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
a language Wikipedia calls Arawá / Aruá, and says went extinct in 1877, and identifies with {{aru}}
a language Wikipedia calls Aruán / Aroã, and says is extinct and codeless
We currently call {{arx}} "Aruá (Rodonia State)", and {{aru}} "Arua". I'd like to rename {{arx}} in a way that drops "(Rodonia State)"... perhaps by renaming {{aru}} to "Arawá", and {{arx}} "Aruá". - -sche(discuss)23:10, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
I've renamed {{arx}} "Aruá". I'll check {{aru}}'s names more closely (to see which are attested) before perhaps renaming it; for now, it is distinguished by lacking the accent over the final "a". - -sche(discuss)04:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
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Should be "Q'anjob'al" or "Q’anjob’al" (is there a preference?) rather than "Kanjobal", as the latter spelling is both less correct as less common. I'll rename it and update the pages that use it if there are no objections. - -sche(discuss)23:10, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
I'd highly prefer the straight apostrophes for convenience purpose. I'd like to think that we only use the straight ones in language names, but there are apparently cases where this is not so. -- Liliana•01:43, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
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We have other language names with correct diacritics - so why are we not calling this language by its correct name, Māori? I've heard people say it's harder for them to type, but it is certainly easier than typing !Xóõ, which is a real language name around here (Category:!Xóõ language). Technical note: it will take more than just changing the template name, but most of the work can be easily done by a bot like KassadBot, and the rest I will do manually. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds19:50, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
"Correct" is subjective. I don't think Maori is a misspelling, it's just a standard transcription of the word Māori into English. I have no opinion. I'd welcome some frequency analysis of the two spellings in English. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:19, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Oh, right. In that case, let's keep it at "Maori" since it's an equally valid spelling. No point in creating a bunch of work just for the sake of a macron. —Angr14:02, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
I would expect that there are far more English speaking people in New Zealand that write 'Maori' than there are that write 'Māori'. For that reason I think the name should stay as it is. —CodeCat12:05, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
I favour "Maori" and oppose a move. "Māori" is, indeed, the native name of the language, but English disuses diacritics, and even before I overhauled it, WT:LANGNAMES noted that Wiktionary avoids diacritics, too. Like CodeCat said, "Maori" is common, in part because many non-specialists write about the language. In contrast, the only people who write about ǃXóõ tend to be specialists who spell it "ǃXóõ" (rather than "Xoo" — though note my proposal below to rename it "Taa"). - -sche(discuss)03:01, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Support renaming; thanks for drawing my attention to this. "Tolai language" seems to be about twice as common as "Kuanua language" on Google books (if you click through to the last page of hits to see how many hits are really there, rather than going by Google's "about _ hits" number). - -sche(discuss)00:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
FYI, I think you can proceed with this whenever you have time. It's been a week and no-one has objected, and one vote of support is about as much attention as most obscure-language-rename discussions get. - -sche(discuss)04:53, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
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We currently call this language "Bo (Laos)", which was probably to distinguish it from {{akm}} and {{bpw}}, but I propose we rename it to simply "Bo" because
Template:bpw is currently a redlink and it should perhaps stay that way given that WP says the status of that Bo (bpw) as a language is unclear,
and even if we do create {{bpw}}, we can follow our usual practice of using variant names to distinguish languages ("Po" seems to be attested). - -sche(discuss)22:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
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Romani L2 header
We currently have categories for, and entries in, both the Romani language/macrolanguage {{rom}} and the dialect/sublanguage Kalo Finnish Romani {{rmf}}. There are six other Romani dialects with ISO codes, namely {{rmn}}, {{rml}}, {{rmc}}, {{rmo}}, {{rmy}}, {{rmw}}. WT:LANGTREAT currently says "only the macrolanguage Romani is treated as individual language". I'd like to change that so that both the macrolanguage and the dialects are considered individual languages (and translations may be added in any of them, etc), though most entries will continue to use the macrolanguage's L2 header. (Arabic is currently handled in this way.) - -sche(discuss)08:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
Alternatively, perhaps the best solution is to allow nested translations while keeping the languages merged under one L2 header. (For now. Obviously, if we ever get many contributors in different Romanis, we should reconsider.) That way, translations can show all the different lects' forms, and entries can use {{context}} and have ===Alternative forms=== with {{qualifier}}s, showing all the lects' forms in that way. Is there any objection to that? It is difficult to add notes to WT:LANGTREAT, but if there are no objections to this idea, I'll archive this discussion and add a link to it from WT:LANGTREAT#rom. - -sche(discuss)17:58, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
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After a break, I'm back to going through our language templates, checking to see if we give each language its most common distinct name (avoiding parenthetical or hyphenated disambiguation in favour of distinct alt names when possible). I propose that instead of naming {{fla}} "Kalispel-Pend d'Oreille", we name it "Montana Salish", which does seem to be a more common term, and is also shorter and closer to the language's autonym. (It's also what WP calls the language.) I also ask: should {{spo}} be merged with {{fla}} (i.e. should the lects be treated as one)? - -sche(discuss)19:58, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
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Should be called "Pichinglis" rather than "Fernando Po Creole English", as it seems "Pichinglis" is significantly more common as the name of the language, at least judging by Google Books. - -sche(discuss)22:28, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
If we treat zza as a language, why do we also treat diq and kiu as languages? (Or: if we treat diq and kiu as separate languages, why do we also treat zza as one?) - -sche(discuss)18:13, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
In the past, I had the impression that templates were kept even after codes were merged (i.e. Template:diq and Template:kiu would be kept even though the languages are covered by the code zza). Is my impression incorrect? If not, should we reconsider, and delete templates like Template:diq to prevent them from being used by mistake? - -sche(discuss)19:08, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Campbell considers these one language; I think they should be merged. (Failing that, {{tsz}} needs to be renamed "Eastern Purepecha".) I suggest using {{pua}} as the code for unified "Purepecha". - -sche(discuss)01:16, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
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Should be renamed from "Kekchí" to "Kekchi" (which is the most common name of the language, when old reference works are considered) or to "Q'eqchi'" (which is also markedly more common than "Kekchí", and may equal or surpass "Kekchi" in commonality in newer — post-1995 — reference works). - -sche(discuss)00:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
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WP's page on Inuvialuk seems to suggest that these codes refer to the same language, but I gather the first may actually designate a macrolanguage that encompasses both {{ikt}} and {{ike}}. Is this correct? If so, is this desirable? - -sche(discuss)03:06, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I would lean towards retiring the macro-code in favour of the specific codes, but I, too, know little of the languages. WP has separate pages for Eastern Canadian Inuktitut and Western Canadian Inuktitut, but gives the same ISO 639-1 and -2 codes for them. There are spelling differences (angatkuq and angakkuq derive letter-for-letter from the two lects), but it's hard to guess if they would be better handled by {{qualifier}}s than by separate headers. Anyone know if inflection is different? - -sche(discuss)05:28, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
I have updated LANGTREAT to note that there is currently no policy (loosely defined) on whether to use only ikt and ike, or only iu. - -sche(discuss)19:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Having looked into this more, I notice that there are more variants than just these two that the ISO gave codes, and they all seem about as intelligible. Therefore, I am merging ike and ikt into iu. - -sche(discuss)03:49, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
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We currently call this lect "ǁAni". ǁAni is one part of a dialect continuum, the other part being Khwe proper. We currently call Khwe proper ({{xuu}}) "Kxoe". I propose that we could merge the two lects under the name "Khwe", the name Wikipedia uses. "Khwe" is well attested; "Khwe language" gets 130+ BGC hits, "speak Khwe" and "spoke Khwe" get two each; "ǁAni" is hard to search for, but e.g. the scanno "IIAni" ("II" being a common OCR misinterpretation of "ǁ") gets only a handful of relevant hits. "Kxoe" gets 117 BGC hits. Renaming to "Khwe" also allows us to avoid a click character. Please consider also commenting on #WT:RFM#Template:nmn. - -sche(discuss)20:48, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
On the other hand, the difference between the various dialects of the Khwe continuum is supposedly large. On the third hand, however, it is unclear to what extent it is helpful to arbitrarily separate out only {{hnh}} and {{xuu}}. - -sche(discuss)18:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
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We currently this language "ǂHõã". I propose renaming it to the more common "ǂHoan". (With apologies to Widsith and Wikitiki, I couldn't find any name that both didn't contain clicks and wasn't vanishingly rare.) - -sche(discuss)20:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I actually have no problem with using these terms. I would have preferred if we didn't call them English though, but I'm unfortunately not a dictator here. --WikiTiki8910:06, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.
As Liliana put it in an earlier discussion, if you know Germanic languages, this code is a joke. As Purodha explained on Meta, it "collects, or seems to collect, languages from three different groups by describing an area of use", for which reason (as Angr pointed out) the request for a vmf / East Franconian WP is on hold. The only use of the code on Wiktionary was in a Hessisch (lol!) translation of ]. Since the code doesn't stand for a valid language — it waves its hand ambiguously at several separate lects — I propose we delete it. - -sche(discuss)02:57, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
"Arc" should only be used for "Imperial Aramaic" (aka "Official Aramaic"), ideally written in the Old Aramaic script rather than Hebrew. Current usage does not reflect that though and there are a whole mix of dialects intertwined within the "arc" code, so that one at least should be split. "Syc" should stay as it is. --334a (talk) 08:04, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
I think SIL has done a really bad job with the classification of Aramaic languages. ARC was an umbrella code that was used to describe all later Aramaic varieties in ISO-639-2 in ISO 639-3 they introduced SYC for classical Syriac, by far the most widespread form of literary Aramaic.--Rafy (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
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As part of my ongoing effort to ensure Wiktionary calls each language by its most common distinct English name, I have discovered that Auhelawa is about three times more common as the name of this language than 'Auhelawa. I propose renaming it accordingly (i.e. dropping the apostrophe). - -sche(discuss)02:49, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Oppose. I would also like to know your methodology for determining relative commonness, because I suspect that most search engines would not necessarily show the apostrophe in their results. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds21:48, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Search engines' OCR softwares do not always notice apostrophes and reproduce them in the snippets displayed on the search engine page, but it is possible to check the sources directly and confirm the spelling used in them. In this case, searching Google Books for "Auhelawa", "'Auhelawa" and a large number of possible scannos and OCR misreadings ("Nuhelawa" "Wuhelawa", "Ruhelawa", etc) finds 36 books; 18 have no preview available and/or are different copies of the same book; 4 are printed copies of Wikipedia. Of the usable books,
Eleven English works spell the name Auhelawa:
1992, publication of Library of Congress subject headings — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 2506
1992, in Culture change, language change: case studies from Melanesia (edited by Thomas Edward Dutton) — uses no apostrophe
1993, Loinane miyamiyanane: Old Testament stories and extracts in the Auhelawa language, published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics — uses no apostrophe
1995, Darrell T. Tryon, Shigeru Tsuchida, Comparative Austronesian Dictionary — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 131: "AUHELAWA Alt. KURADA, NUAKATA, URADA. Class. OC, WOC, Papuan Tip, Nuclear PT, Suauic."
1998, in Papers in Austronesian linguistics, volume 5 (edited by H. Steinhauer and Malcolm Ross) — uses no apostrophe
2003, Shelley Mallett, Conceiving cultures: reproducing people & places on Nuakata, Papua New Guinea — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 50 "Daphne Lithgow informed us that the language of Nuakata, Alina Nu'ata, is a dialect of Auhelawa, ..."
2006, G. W. Trompf, Religions of Melanesia: A Bibliographic Survey — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 646
2009, Roger Averill, Boy He Cry: An Island Odyssey — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 289 "'I was hoping to have a look at some of your transcriptions, to expand our Auhelawa dictionary, for the Bible translation.'"
2009, Aparecida Vilaça, Robin Wright, Native Christians (the language name occurs only once, without an apostrophe, but in the bibliography, in the title of an article by Schram)
2010, Michael R. Leming, George E. Dickinson, Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement (the language name occurs only once, without an apostrophe, but in the bibliography, in the title of an article by Schram)
2011, Ryan Schram, Feast of Water: Christianity and the Economic Transformation of a Melanesian Society — has no preview, but the blurb uses no apostrophe, and Lindhardt (who refers to Schram) uses no apostrophe (see below)
2011, Martin Lindhardt, Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 303: "Schram's 2007 discussion of the opposition of “Christian” feasting with previous modes of feast in Auhelawa (Normanby Island, Papua New Guinea) presents a similar kind of purification ..."
2012, Christopher Moseley, Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages — apparently uses no apostrophe (but is odd, for which reason I'm willing to discount it)
2010, Nuclear Papuan Tip Languages (copy of WP)
2010, Austronesian Language Introduction (copy of WP)
2011, Articles on Milne Bay Province (copy of WP)
2011, Austronesialaiset Kielet (copy of fi.WP!)
Only one English work apparently spells the name 'Auhelawa:
1990, David Lithgow, Daphne Lithgow, 'Auhelawa New Reader, book 1 — has no preview, but the blurb does use an apostrophe
One work, written in Auhelawa(!), spells the name Auhelawa:
1986, Elisa Ephraim, Talauvahili ʻAlina Auhelawa (which means "We read Auhelawa") — uses no apostrophe
No works written in Auhelawa spell the name 'Auhelawa.
One work written in German spells the name Auhelawa:
2002, Harald Haarmann, Sprachenalmanach: Zahlen und Fakten zu allen Sprachen der Welt — uses no apostrophe
Earlier, I looked at all of the sources first, and then commented here, and so posted my general impression that the spelling without the apostrophe was "about three times more common" than the spelling with it. Now that I have taken more detailed notes, I see that my estimate was over-generous, and I recognise that one work I had previously though independent is another WP copy; the spelling without the apostrophe is used by the only available published work in the language, and (with as far as I can see only one exception) by all researchers studying the language and all reference works treating it at a distance; the spelling with an apostrophe doesn't even meet CFI.
Addendum: searching WorldCat finds a few of these books, and no other books. It does find a few "computer files"; five of the first six "computer files" use no apostrophe, one uses an apostrophe; all the other "computer file" hits don't use the term in their accessible portions. - -sche(discuss)23:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
OK, striking my opposition above. I still suspect that the apostrophe is more correct, but clearly there is no attestation to back that up. (If you're wondering why I'm so suspicious in this case, it's because Latin script orthographies have maddeningly kept to a long-standing practice of ignoring glottal stops in Pacific languages (sometimes only when they would be obvious and unambiguous to speakers, like what de Feu does, and sometimes wholesale), which I assume this represents, even though they are critical to the languages.) —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds02:00, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
I suppose... but Good admits that Mungbam is currently unciteable by our standards, and unless something has changed in the meantime, it would be crystal-ballsy to change it based on expectation that it will become standard. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds05:26, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Well, Good says "This name has now been used in several publications, two of which are given in the bibliography. Lovegren is presently working on a grammar of the varieties and will use the name Mungbam in that grammar, at which point it can be fully expected to become the standard reference name in academic works, though we should stress that the name has already been used in peer-reviewed publications." And he says "both publications use the name Mungbam:"
2011, Good, Lovegren, Mve, Nganguep Tchiemouo, Voll, and Di Carlo, The languages of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon: Grammatical overview, in Africana Linguistica 17, pages 101–164
2011, Di Carlo, Lower Fungom linguistic diversity and its historical development: Proposals from a multidisciplinary perspective, in Africana Linguistica 17, pages 53–100
OTOH, those two publications and Lovegren's dictionary only make two citations (once published, Lovegren's dictionary and Di Carlo's Lower Fungom... can both count, but The languages of the Lower Fungom can't, because it was co-written by both). As you say, it may be best to wait and revisit this in time. - -sche(discuss)23:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Update: I am still unable to find, via Google Books, any uses of "Abar" (the name we currently call this lect by) as a name for this lect. Via Google Scholar, I can track down several more uses of "Mungbam", including:
2012, Jesse Lovegren, Stem-initial prominence in Mungbam, in the Selected Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of African Linguistics
2012, Pierpaolo Di Carlo, Jeff Good, What are we trying to preserve? Diversity, change, and ideology at the edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields: Mungbam, the Ji group, Fang, Koshin, and Ajumbu are only known to be spoken within Lower Fungom and have no established close relatives outside of the area.
Finally something has appeared in Google Books proper:
2013, Balthasar Bickel, Lenore A. Grenoble, David A. Peterson (editors), Language Typology and Historical Contingency→ISBN:
The dashed lines separating Missong from the rest of Mungbam and Buu from the rest of Ji are intended to indicate that the speech varieties of these villages deviate considerably from that of the other varieties with which they are grouped
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Zomg! It turns out "Fakkanci"—one of the many, many alt names of this language listed by Ethnologue—is attested. I propose we rename the lect accordingly. We currently call it "Kag-Fer-Jiir-Koor-Ror-Us-Zuksun", which is just the names of seven of its eight least-obscure dialects strung together with hyphens. (Ethnologue uses "ut-Ma'in" as the main name, but that name has proven virtually impossible to search for.) - -sche(discuss)02:09, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
To be more precise: "Kag-Fer-Jiir-Koor-Ror-Us-Zuksun" is a dialect cluster, called the "Kag cluster" because Kag = Fakkanci is the main member of the cluster. It appears (whether this is pure co-incidence or not) that authorities who treat Kag/Fakkanci merely as a dialect call it "Kag", while those who call it "Fakkanci" treat it as the (main form of the) language of which Fer, Ror, etc are dialects and speak of "Fakkanci and its dialects". - -sche(discuss)02:09, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
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A less extreme example of the "string all the dialects' names together" phenomenon, "Hun-Saare" is unattested. Somewhat surprisingly, "Saare" is also unattested. "Duka", however — the name WP uses — is just barely attested. - -sche(discuss)08:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
{{ltc}} currently describes itself as "Late Middle Chinese", which fits the abbreviation ltc rather nicely. However:
We don't have any lang code specified for "Early Middle Chinese", and as best I can tell, no such ISO code even exists.
SIL International's page lists {{ltc}} as "Late Middle Chinese", but without much detail, whereas MultiTree's page lists {{ltc}} as just "Middle Chinese", with a bit more detail in the "Brief Description" field towards the bottom of the page, giving a range of the 6th through 10th centuries.
No I'd support it. It seems like madness to have Late Middle Chinese but not Early Middle Chinese or Middle Chinese. I think we discussed this before and we decided it was yet another ISO 639 error, but apparently nobody did anything about it. Support. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:55, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Keeping an established and official code is probably preferred, even if we treat it slightly differently. So I support deleting {{zhx-mid}} and replacing it with {{ltc}}. —CodeCat23:47, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
LOL, wow, indeed... a seven-speaker-strong creole of {{akj}}? I'm comfortable excluding that. I speak Denglisch with more people than that (and wouldn't dream of giving it a code)! - -sche(discuss)00:05, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
Some family members do a Denglish/Yinglish mix with me, and it's always painful. They know more vocab than I do, but they know absolutely no grammar. My grandmother uses ziessen/זיסן(zisn) as a nominative singular... —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds00:10, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
This should be moved to the etyl: subspace, to discourage/prevent the creation of ==Cajun French== {{head|frc|noun}} entries: Cajun French words are entered as ==French==; this is only used in the etymologies of words which came specifically from Cajun rather than European French. (See also Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2012/April#Category:Cajun_French_language, in which everyone supported considering Cajun French ==French==, and the only editor who was ambivalent about moving {{frc}} to {{etyl:frc}} misunderstood the code-naming sytem, IMO.) - -sche(discuss)02:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
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{{gfx}} — Mangetti Dune ǃXung - This is another ǃKung-ic lect (we have several already...we even gave exceptional codes to some that we already had ISO codes for, because reasons). It's "currently being investigated". I think we can sit on it until someone finishes investigating it, determines whether it's a separate language or not, and gives us some words. - -sche(discuss)20:24, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
Have you seen w:Shelta? I can't make anything of the "old" Shelta at all. I really don't see how you can convince anyone that that is English. While it may not be a full language because it borrows its grammar from English and Irish, we've split languages in the past that have far better mutual intelligibility than that. —CodeCat01:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Deliberately scrambled Irish vocabulary grafted onto first Irish, then English language structure. It's like a weird combination of pig Latin and double Dutch in another language substituted for most of the significant words of English. You'd have to be a word-game fanatic fluent in both Irish and English to figure it out without help. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:14, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Keep. It's neither a dialect of English nor a dialect of Irish, and is incomprehensible even to people who speak both. —Angr08:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
Keep, especially for the sake of older Shelta. Some references do consider Shelta an English-Irish creole, but creoles are still separate languages. Other references (Creolization and Contact, →ISBN make the case that it is or was a full language: "Material in Shelta from the 1890s shows structural features which are not of Hiberno-English origin. Some of these can be attributed to Irish Gaelic, others cannot. It is possible that, since much of the lexicon of Shelta derives from non-Irish and non-English sources, the mysterious elements in the lexicon may be the remains of the language underlying Shelta which was then swamped by elements from Irish, first of all, and then from English. In modern Shelta with its English-derived structural framework we may be witnessing the later stages of a process of language intertwining which began at a time when English was unknown to Shelta-speakers." (This last line is a reference to the theory, advanced e.g. by Kuno Meyer, that Shelta originated in the 12th or 13th century, at a time English did not even exist and Middle English was unknown to the Cant's speakers.) Modern "Shelta" continues to move closer to English, and there may be cases where it's hard to determine if a word from a more anglicised text is Shelta or English, like can be hard to determine if words from Denglisch texts should be considered English or German (or neither), but we should still keep the code. - -sche(discuss)00:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
Good point about older Shelta. But how do we relegate off some of the newer stuff (which can come closer to English than even, say, questionable Scots)? In any case, withdrawing due to heavy opposition to deletion (and partial convincement of yours truly). —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds19:04, 23 February 2013 (UTC)
I had a look, and these four are just dialects of Swahili. I don't think they have any entries, but any that may exist should be {{sw}}. Oh, and don't forget to delete the script subpages. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds00:59, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Is the nomination to redirect these to {{sw}}? I thought we usually deleted things like this, in which case the discussion should be at WT:RFD/O, shouldn't it? —Angr10:49, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Technically it's a deletion of a page, but it's a merger of the languages. So... it does kind of belong here. —CodeCat14:10, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
Re "discussion should be at WT:RFD/O": when Metaknowledge posted Template:tnv in WT:RFDO, msh210 said the discussion "should be in the BP, not here". LOL, seems you just can't win, Meta! :b
Anyway, (@Angr) see WT:RFDO#tnv, WT:RFDO#pld, and WT:BP#Notice of language-merger discussion at RFM. I suggested in the tnv discussion that a dedicated WT:Requests to change the treatment of lects page might be useful, because when I want to merge lects+codes+templates, I post on WT:RFM (the page for merging things)—and the majority of discussions are on WT:RFM, in part because I am the most prolific starter of them—but other people sometimes post in RFDO or even, very rarely, in the BP. In the WT:BP#Notice discussion, the idea of posting lect mergers on a separate page was opposed, however... so we've ended up back at WT:RFM, where we (or at least, the majority of discussions) started. :) - -sche(discuss)20:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
I support merging zdj, wni and wlc into swb, but tentatively keeping swb separate from sw. (I note swb is properly the code of Maore Comorian, but we currently call it plain Comorian, and it's useful to continue to.) Quoth John Mugane (The Linguistic Typology and Representation of African Languages, 2003): “The various dialects of Comorian were traditionally seen as being dialects of Swahili, although there is not consistent mutual intelligibility between Comorian speakers and Swahili speakers. Around , more discussion arose of the possibility that Comorian should be considered a separate language from Swahili. Ottenheimer & Ottenheimer (1976) provides a discussion of the place of Comorian among Bantu languages. The contribution of Asian, African and European languages, as well as Malagasy, to the lexicon and grammar of Comorian is acknowledged. A history of Comorian linguistics is given, along with the remark that linguists took a long time to accept that the Comorian dialects are not simply dialects of Swahili, but rather are different enough from Swahili to be considered a different language. Other linguists soon followed suit, beginning with Sibertin-Blanc (1980), who posits that the Swahili-Comorian split was one of the more recent Swahili dialect separations.”
There are some differences between Comorian dialects, and some are more similar to Swahili than others (Nurse & Hinnebusch write that Swahili and Nzwani+Maore feature a future based on -caka, while Ngazija+Mwali do not), but in general the IEL writes that "all dialects sufficiently distinct from mainland Swahili to warrant separate translation".
Comorian looks about as close to modern Zanzibari Swahili as 17th century Swahili does. However, I don't think anyone is advocating for 'Old Swahili'. Moreover, Swahili is a very pluricentric language, as will often happen with languages that arise at a linguistic interface. Taken as a whole, I don't see much deviation in vocabulary, although I cannot speak for grammar/inflection. I can accept keeping Swahili and Comorian Swahili separate, but I would prefer to see wordlist comparisons if you have them. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds23:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
I don't have any substantial wordlists at hand. Eh, I don't mind merging Comorian and Swahili; we can always use context tags and split them again later if it becomes apparent that's merited. 'Tis a wiki, after all. - -sche(discuss)20:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
I am striking this. Echtio (talk • contribs) actually is learning Comorian, and has extensive comparative wordlists at their disposal, and recommends we keep all the lects separate and consider swb to be Maore Comorian as we originally did, a change which I have thus effected. Looking at the words Echtio is entering and the orthography used, I have switched my opinion on the issue, TBH, and in any case I trust them more than us. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds23:57, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
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According to Ethnologue/the ISO, there are two languages called "Mor": moq (an almost-extinct Trans-New Guinea language) and mhz (Austronesian). Module:languages currently includes moq as plain "Mor". I'd like to add mhz, but we obviously can't have two languages with the same name... and our usual method of disambiguation, adding the language's home country in parentheses after it, won't work either, because both are from West Papua, Indonesia. I'm thinking the language families could be the disambiguators instead... but does anyone have a better idea? - -sche(discuss)02:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
Not that I can see. If you can find an alternative name, that'd be great. I saw "Mor-Yeretuar" mentioned a couple times, but it turns out to be the name of the subgroup of Wandamen that moq and Yeretuar are both members of, not an alternative name of Mor. And "Morait" also gets mentioned in the context of Papuan languages, but turns out to be a Doberai language, not another name of the Bomberai language mhz. Ethnologue doesn't have alt names, either; it resigns itself to disambiguating one of the Mors by its family ("Austronesian Mor") and the other by calling it "Mor 2"! lol - -sche(discuss)19:07, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
Remember Pray 1, Pray 2 and Pray 3? Yeah. This is a difficult situation and we may have no other choice but to go with "Austronesian Mor" and "Papuan Mor". -- Liliana•19:09, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
Chinese Pidgin English is or was a real pidgin, but like pld and hwc, written records don't seem to support calling it an independent language. Even the name 'Chinese Pidgin English' suggests that. I think all our existing entries have or should have English sections independent of the result of this RFM. Moreover, the dialogue quoted in Bauer (1974) doesn't seem too far from a Chinese-accented GA slang with noticeable lexical borrowing. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds02:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
OK, I thought the name referred to something else. In that case, instead of merging it we need to rename it to something more accurate, I suppose. 'Classical Irish' might be best, although it seems crazy the number of Irishes we have over time (Primitive Irish, Old Irish, Middle Irish, Irish and now this Classical Irish). What do you prefer? —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds23:37, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
I'd prefer not using this label or the ghc at all. There's no reason 17th-century Irish can't be simply ga, with words no longer in use labeled "archaic" or "obsolete", and any words that occur in texts from Scotland can be gd and similarly labeled. Speakers of Modern Irish have no more difficulty reading Geoffrey Keating than speakers of Modern English have reading Shakespeare. —Angr09:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Maore Comorian: Template:t-simple should appear, and not * Comorian: Template:t-simple. Code changed in 2009. Water = madji in Ngazidja Comorian and maji in Maore Comorian. I'll try to create an 'About' page soon, after some reflection on it. --Echtio (talk) 22:04, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
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(The content of) {{dti}} should possibly be renamed: the current name seems to be an amalgam of two variant names for the language, Ana Dogon and Ana Tinga/Ana Tiŋa. However, not one of those names is attested in Google Books, so I don't know what to suggest. - -sche(discuss)00:48, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
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Click characters in language names and 2x ǃKung
I have modified the three languages which previously used exclamation marks (!) in their names to represent clicks, so that they now use click characters (ǃ) like the other click languages use and like entries for words in all those languages use. In doing so, I noticed that we have two codes, both marked as "regular language"s (rather than one being a family or such) called "ǃKung": {{khi-kun}} and {{knw}}. It was decided that the two codes should be kept: but I want to know if it is a problem that they display the same name, and if one should be renamed. - -sche(discuss)21:31, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
I wonder, should English entries such as ] use the exclamation point or the click character? Since technically the click character is not a letter in English, but neither is the exclamation point. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
{{knw}} could display "Ekoka !Kung", as at Wikipedia. To Wikitiki's point, we should use the click character because it won't get confused with the exclamation point by the software. The difference between ! and ǃ is relevant only to software, since to humans they look identical. —Angr21:52, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
There's also one more difference you're forgetting: You can't type the click character with an English keyboard. Personally, I think it would be better if ] were moved to ] (for English) and the !/ǃ added only on the page itself, but that seems like too radical of a change. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 22:07, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
That's hardly important; the click character is in the "IPA" section of the character insertion box below the text field. And as the cited quotation shows, the language is called ǃKung in English. —Angr22:33, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Also, we wouldn't move Москва to Moсквa (or any other such variant) — even if the only citations of the word were in books rather than online, and thus it were philosophically impossible to tell whether о or o were the character used: we would find the character in Cyrillic text and so use the Cyrillic codepoint. Here, we find a click, and so should use the click codepoint. (Although if !Kung is attested, with the exclamation mark sic, on Usenet, then we should definitely have it as an alt-spelling.) - -sche(discuss)22:37, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Currently the spelling with the click character, ], redirects to the spelling with the exclamation mark, ]. I think this is exactly the sort of case where redirects are the right solution, but I do think the redirect should go the other way. The entry should use the click character, and the spelling with the exclamation point should be the redirect. —Angr23:00, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
The brief discussion of these templates last year was closed, without resolving the issue at hand, after only three comments — the nominator's suggestion of deletion, PK's noting but also questioning the distinction between them, and Daniel's closing comment. I propose that we should either only use the macro-language code {{khi-kun}} for entries in all three dialects, or we should keep the dialects separate and thus disuse {{khi-kun}}... but we shouldn't use both. Using both creates problems for our category structure and for {{langrev}} (as both are called ǃKung) and while there are ways of getting around this (rename one "ǃXun" or the other "Ekoka ǃKung" or such), it doesn't seem necessary to have the problem in the first place. - -sche(discuss)03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
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{{duh}} and {{noi}} are varieties of the Bhilori language, but Bhilori does not have its own code. (The situation is analogous to that of Nahuatl, which does not have a single, unified code in ISO 639-3. Nahuatl had the ISO 639-2 code {{nah}}, however.) I suggest we merge the two, using one of the codes. (Failing that, {{duh}}-proper goes by several names other than "Dungra Bhil", and a rename may be in order.) - -sche(discuss)05:46, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Darn! that spoils any chance to have a template for sarcastically commenting on content. After a long session of patrolling, that option sometimes starts to look almost obligatory...Chuck Entz (talk) 13:59, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
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Although I would love to rename this language "LargeFloweryMiao", that phrase gets only 2 Google Books hits—though that's two more than our current name for it, "A-hmaos". By far the most common name for the language is "A-Hmao" (or "A Hmao", but I prefer the hyphen, myself). I propose we rename it. - -sche(discuss)02:59, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
These are English-based creoles spoken in the remote Pitcairn and Norfolk islands, which are extremely similar to each other. {{cpe-pit}} is labeled as Pitkern and has no entries, {{cpe-nor}} is labeled as Norfuk and has a few entries, and {{pih}} is labeled as Pitcairn-Norfolk and has a couple entries. The lects seem massively similar to me, with the same sound shifts and vocabulary for the most part, and I propose that we merge them as {{pih}}, either called Pitcairn-Norfolk or Pitkern-Norfuk (i.e. English names of the islands on which they are spoken or the creole names of the islands). —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds20:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Support. In one short previous discussion, Liliana agreed that the split was silly and supported a merger, too. The differences seem no greater than those between the kind of English that's spoken in Hawai'i and the kind that's spoken in Ireland: yeah, there are differences in pronunciation and orthography, and there are even differences in grammar and vocabulary, but they're not different languages. - -sche(discuss)06:05, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
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Liliana deleted {{mlg}} for being redundant to {{mg}}. So are the many other dialects: {{xmv}}, {{bhr}}, {{msh}}, {{bmm}}, {{plt}}, {{skg}}, {{tdx}}, {{txy}}, {{xmw}}. There are two more, {{bzc}} and {{tkg}}, which don't currently exist and should be specifically disallowed with the rest of these at WT:LANGTREAT. They should all be removed from Module:languages, and if they have categories, those should be deleted. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds21:37, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
Support. The consensus of scholarship does seem to be that Malagasy is one language, not many. E.g. Leonard Fox wrote (in Hainteny: The Traditional Poetry of Madagascar, 1990, →ISBN, page 17) that "Madagascar, although it is the world's fourth largest island, is characterized by a remarkable degree of linguistic homogeneity. Dialectal differences certainly exist, but the Malagasy language exhibits greater uniformity than many languages spoken over a much smaller area...". Øyvind Dahl concurred (in Meanings in Madagascar: Cases of Intercultural Communication, 1999, →ISBN "all Malagasy speak the same language, with only dialectal differences, which is an exceptional fact in an African context and a consequence of the relative late immigration from South-East Asia." Ann Kumar wrote (in Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, 2012, →ISBN, page 107) that "Grammar is remarkably uniform, and no dialectical differences are very great." - -sche(discuss)08:54, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Done. None of the codes were used, AFAICT, so I simply removed them from Module:languages. As a side note, if the OP hadn't overtly linked to the templates, I wouldn't have thought to delete them, too... which highlights how untenable it is that we haven't deleted all the language code templates en masse yet. The template side of things hasn't been updated to reflect most if any of the past several months' renames, mergers, and additions of new codes. If there's any infrastructure that still calls templates rather than Module:languages, that's a problem. - -sche(discuss)05:19, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
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"Muslim Tat"
Currently {{ttt}} is called "Muslim Tat"; I propose that (like Wikipedia) we simply call this lect "Tat". The name was probably chosen because Tat is in fact a macrolanguage, with two sublects traditionally spoken by the separate communities of Muslims and Jews (we call the latter lect "Judeo-Tat"). In any case, common practice is to use Judeo- for the Jewish versions of standard languages, and leave it off for the non-Jewish version. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds17:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
Support. Even many of the BGC hits for "Muslim Tat" for which Google provides snippets also refer to the language as plain "Tat", and only use the qualifier in phrases like "Jewish and Muslim Tat", or in parentheses as "(Muslim) Tat". (One hit is referring to a person—a Tat whose religion is Islam—rather than to the language.) PS, it's possible that Ethnologue included "Muslim" to disambiguate it not just from Judeo-Tat but also from this language / group of languages, but it can be distinguished as "Tati" if we want to include it as a single language. (At the moment, we include all of its subvarieties instead; none of them have names similar to "Tat".) AFAICT, the only entries which need to be updated (because they include Tat words) are tree, dog, year, ear and eye. - -sche(discuss)04:47, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't doubt that the time it took for me to change Module:languages was more than it took you edit those entries, just from sheer page loading time. Something really needs to be done about the size of that module. --WikiTiki8905:08, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
The code is used in about 60 entries, which I'm going through now in AWB. They don't show up in WhatLinksHere because they use Module:languages, not Template:bxr. (That's one of the only drawbacks to the switch to the module: it's harder to find which pages use a given language code.) - -sche(discuss)01:37, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
By the way, renaming "Russian Buryat" to "Buryat" breaks the alphabetical order in translations, as in this revision. Also, the overwhelming majority of Buryats, especially those who speak the language live in Russia, so "Russian Buryat" is an unnecessary qualifier. The language also has automatic transliteration. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)02:07, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
As indicated in my edit summaries, I'm under the impression that Autoformat/Kassadbot will sort languages into alphabetical order next time it runs. As for transliteration and qualification: OK, I'll drop both. :) - -sche(discuss)02:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
For Mari, which code should be deleted, chm or mhr? Both are in use at present. Whichever code is deleted, "Eastern Mari" (="Standard Mari", but we avoid using "Standard" in language names) should continue to be called that, not only to distinguish it from "Western Mari", but to distinguish it from the several other languages called "Mari" — some of which, e.g. mbx, hob, have not been added to Module:languages yet. - -sche(discuss)05:14, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
My preference is to keep "chm" with the name "Mari" (without "standard") and delete "mhr" ("Eastern Mari", "Meadow Mari"), which is identical with "chm". Don't know if "mrj" ("Western Mari", "Hill Mari") is used. The transliteration module Module:chm-translit handles all three codes and letters, which are only used in the Hill Mari - Ӓ, ӓ and Ӹ, ӹ. I haven't considered mbx or hob. Eastern Mari (Meadow Mari) and standard Mari are the same language. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)05:38, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Great job on the transliteration module! Calling the language plain "Mari" isn't an option, since it does need to be distinguished from the Sepik language that's also called "Mari", and the Austronesian "Mari" (which could be renamed "Hop" if necessary), both of which I just added to Module:languages. (Those two are currently distinguished from one another as "Mari (Sepik)" and "Mari (Austronesian)".) Given that the name "Eastern Mari" seems to be noticeably more common than "Meadow Mari", and given that we use "Western Mari" as the primary name for the other variety, I think we can go with "Eastern Mari". - -sche(discuss)08:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I've changed all uses of 'mhr' to 'chm' and updated the name of the lect in those instances. Whenever it's decided where the contents of Module:languages will be hosted, 'mhr' can be removed from that module. In the other places where 'chm' occurs (the pre-existing occurrences of 'chm'), the language's name still needs to be updated. I will try to find time to do that in AWB. Then this will be finished. - -sche(discuss)05:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
I've updated the module and about half of the ~140 entries that referenced chm; the other half, and the categories, remain to be updated. - -sche(discuss)09:00, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
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Currently, we call amg "Amarag". That's the name a number of general linguistic encyclopedias (International Encyclopedia of Linguistis, etc) use. However, I propose we switch to "Amurdag", since that name is more common both in specialist sources (including Handelsmann's dictionary of the language) and in non-specialist sources. (The fact that non-specialist literature mentions the language at all is astounding, but see e.g. International Sport Management, →ISBN.) PS: no one has created Category:Amarag language yet, so one could argue that this is not quite a "request for move"... nonetheless, this page has established itself as the place where language renames are discussed. - -sche(discuss)23:57, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
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I propose we rename the lect kzh from "Kenuzi-Dongola" to "Dongolawi", which seems more common. Some literature uses "Dongolawi" as the name of one of the lect's two dialects, namely dgl (the dialect also known as "Andaandi"); but because we've merged that dialect and xnz (Kenzi / Mattoki) and consider kzh to be a single language, I don't see any prolem with that. - -sche(discuss)18:35, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
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Currently, Module:languages contains three codes for Mongolian: mn for Mongolian proper, khk for Khalkha Mongolian, and mvf for Peripheral Mongolian. Scholars agree that Khalkha is Mongolian, so it is redundant to have khk as a separate code. Scholars disagree on what else is or isn't Mongolian (see w:Mongolian language#Classification_and_dialects), but 'Peripheral Mongolian' is too vague a term to be useful — scholarly disagreement is over concrete lects, like Buryat (which, NB, we consider a separate language). I propose we delete khk and mvf. (WT:LANGTREAT already calls for this, but using language that I think should be reworded for clarity given the scholarly disputes: rather than say "only the macrolanguage is treated as an individual language", I'd like to spell out that "Only the code mn is used; khk is redundant to it and mvf is too vague to be usable.") - -sche(discuss)19:15, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
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Baluchi (bal) has at least six dialects. Ethnologue has encoded three, namely bcc (Southern Baluchi/Balochi), bgp (Eastern Baluchi/Balochi) and bgn (Western Baluchi/Balochi).
Various editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica say that "Despite the vast area over which Balochi is spoken, its numerous dialects are all mutually intelligible." / "Despite the vast area over which is spoken, its six dialects (Rakhshani, Sarawani, Kechi, Lotuni, the Eastern Hill dialects, and the coastal dialects) are all believed to be mutually intelligible." Alan S. Kaye, in Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus)→ISBN, on page 762, is slightly more cautious: the "Balochi dialects are six in number, and with one exception they are all mutually intelligible." (Emphasis mine.) He writes that Eastern Hill is among the mutually intelligible dialects, but Google hides enough of his book that I can't see which one he considers unintelligible.
Quoth Asya Pereltsvaig in Languages of the World: An Introduction (2012, →ISBN, page 102: "Sometimes Standard Uzbek is also referred to as Northern Uzbek, to distinguish it from a related language, Southern Uzbek, spoken by 1,400,000 speakers in northern areas of Afghanistan." (The Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, 2010, adds that "Southern Uzbek includes the dominant urban dialects of Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand, etc.") So, uzn should definitely go. uzs should probably go, too, in part because it doesn't seem to be a single, unified thing with firm differences from uz / uzn; instead, it's the other part of the continuum that starts with northern/standard Uzbek and gets progressively more "Iranized" / influenced by Persian, e.g. in in the pronunciation of vowels (per the Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World and the works of Settar Cabbar). - -sche(discuss)21:30, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
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Although LANGTREAT notes that they should be subsumed into fa, the following codes still exist in Module:languages:
pes, for "Western Persian", the most common variety of Persian. We should merge it into fa because it *is* fa.
prs, Eastern Persian / Dari, the variety of Persian spoken in Iran Afghanistan. Its status as a separate language, and its very name 'Dari', were products of Afghanistani politics. Not even Afghani speakers of the language call it 'Dari' or consider it separate from Persian; we shouldn't consider it separate, either.
aiq, Aimaq, a variety spoken by nomads in Afghanistan and Iran. It is sometimes considered specifically a variety of Dari (which is itself little more than another name for Persian, as explained). It differs from standard Persian mainly in matters of pronunciation, something we usually handle with {{a}} rather than separate L2s.
haz, Hazaragi, another Afghan variety. WP summarizes scholarly opinion (with citations, for which look here): "The primary differences between Standard Persian and Hazaragi are the accent and Hazaragi's greater array of Mongolic loanwords. Despite these differences, Hazaragi is mutually intelligible with other regional Persian dialects."
deh and phv, Dehwari and Pahlavani, which it is hard to find information on because even WP simply redirects the words to "Persian".
As indicated above, my opinion is that we should merge all of those codes into fa.
Incidentally, LANGTREAT originally also banned Tajik (tg), but this was not supported by scholarship or by our own practice (we had hundreds of Tajik entries), so after two discussions, I updated the page to note that Tajik is allowed. LANGTREAT made no mention of Judeo-Persian (jpr), Bukhari (bhh), Judeo-Tat (jdt) or Tat (ttt), and past discussions of them have assumed they were separate languages, so I also updated the page to reflect that. - -sche(discuss)05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC) (fixed think-o)
The Persian lects are an interesting issue; they are on the whole pretty similar, but Persian and Tajik have separate literary and cultural traditions, and I believe Dari does too. I think it is best to keep them separate. The Jewish varieties are often written in the Hebrew script and have a separate cultural tradition, so I think it would probably be handy to keep them separate as well. All the rest probably ought to be merged into their macrolanguages, unless there are script conflicts I'm unaware of (it is, of course, easier to keep with one script per language). —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds05:23, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
The difference between Dari and Persian is not great AFAIK, there are some references on Wikipedia. Tajik should stay separate, not just because it's in Cyrillic. It's very different from Persian and has many Russian and Turkic loanwords. There is also a significant difference in phonology (vowels). Persian e, o and â are usually i, u and o in Tajik. ZxxZxxZ (talk • contribs) may be able to say a bit more. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)05:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Regarding Dari, to merge Dari into Persian, we would have to figure out what to do with transliterations. In standard Persian, ē merged with ī into what we transliterate as i (no diacritic) and ō merged with ū into what we transliterate as u. In Dari, ē and ī and ō and ū are still differentiated. Furthing complicating the problem, standard Persian e, o, ey, and ow are pronounced i, o, ay and aw in Dari, although these differences are not phonemic. The other differences are not as much of a problem, but see a brief description at w:Dari#Phonology. --WikiTiki8914:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
That has been the practice on Wiktionary. Dari should be under the Persian heading with {{context|Dari|lang=fa}} label. That is what we do already. Take a look at فاکولته, for example. Regarding the transliteration of long vowels, ZxxZxxZ (talk • contribs) has been trying to implement a classical Persian transliteration (which is pretty much used for Dari by scholars) as a standard for all Persian entries. So far, it's been a slow and selective process. I'm not opposed to it and it can easily be indicated as the standard Wiktionary practice in the Appendix:Persian transliteration. --Dijan (talk) 06:35, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I support keeping Dari (and Western Persian) under Persian heading, but I'm not sure what to do about transliteration. By the way, Eastern Persian / Dari (prs) is the variety of Persian spoken in Afghanistan, not Iran, that of Iran is the first one, Western Persian (pes). --Z17:48, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
James Minahan says "The Hazara language, called Hazaragi, is a Farsi dialect, although the Hazaras are physically Mongol. The intermixture of the Indo-European and Mongol linguistic groups resulted in a dialect of Dari Persian that contains extensive words and forms from Farsi, Turkic, and Mongol. Most Hazaras also speak Dari Persian as a second language. In Iran most are bilingual, speaking both Hazaragi and Farsi. Until the 1980s educated Hazaras used Farsi or Arabic as the literary language, but a movement to create a Hazaragi literary language has gained momentum." This suggests that Hazaragi is a separate language; we also already have a few translations into it. Therefore, I've kept it separate and updated WT:LT accordingly.
Barbara West, in the Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania, writes that the Aimaq speak "Aimaq, a dialect of Dari or Afghan Persian"; Brian Williams writes that "Aimaqs also have a strong Persian admixture, and their language is Dari or Farsi", Jake Kircher writes that "Once there was a generally used, common Aimaq language but now, few seem to speak it anymore. Dialects spoken today resemble Dari (Afghan eastern Farsi) admixed with words of Mongolian and Turkic origin." In general it seems that it should be handled the same way as Dari, via {{lb}} and {{a}}.
Several references consider Pahlavani an alternative term for Pahlavi, but the 2003 International Encyclopedia of Linguistics says Pahlavani is still spoken today in a village in Afghanistan, Haji Hamza Khan, where it is "similar to Dari Persian but still distinct" (earlier editions of the IEL are explicit that this is the only village where the language is spoken). I suppose it can be left unresolved for now.
Dehwari is spoken by Persians in Baluchistan; several references seem to consider it to be Persian, but Denys Bray's 1934 The Brāhūī problem writes as if it and Persian are separate languages; I suppose it too can be left unresolved for now.
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We currently separate {{rw}}, {{rn}}, {{haq}}, {{suj}}, {{han}}, and {{vin}}, which can all be treated as a single language and often are; their separation seems largely political. The Wikipedia page Rwanda-Rundi language catalogues the differences between rw and rn: they are pretty minor, and a lot seem to have to do with regular spelling differences and tones, which are not even reflected in the standard orthography and could thus be relegated to pronunciation sections. To quote Zorc and Nibagwire's Kinyarwanda and Kirundi comparative grammar (2007):
The terms dialect and language are used loosely in everyday communication. In linguistic terms, the two are bound together in the same definition: a language consists of all the dialects that are connected by a chain of mutual intelligibility. Thus, if a person from Bronx, New York can speak with someone from Mobile, Alabama, and these two can converse with someone from Sydney, Australia without significant misunderstandings, then they all form part of the English language. Kigali and Bujumbura are similarly connected within a chain of dialects that collectively make up the Rwanda-Rundi language.
Kimenyi's A Relational Grammar of Kinyarwanda (1980) explains that:
This language is very close to both Kirundi , the national language of Burundi, and Giha , a language spoken in western Tanzania. The three languages are really dialects of a single language, since they are mutually intelligible to their respective speakers.
I got the ping, thanks. :) I've just been busy. I'll look into this more closely soon, but on the face of it, it does seem like we could merge them. (And that reminds me that en.Wikt really needs to have a discussion about merging Nynorsk and Bokmal. It's bizarre that we manage to accept that Drents and Twents — and, to use the example above, the English of Alabama and the English of Australia — are not separate languages, but haven't managed to accept that Nynorsk and Bokmal aren't. But that's for another discussion...) - -sche(discuss)06:04, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
I was just talking to a native speaker today to get their perspective on this. They said that the vocabulary varies a lot dialectally, but not along national lines, and it's still easy to understand people on the other side. They claimed that the biggest differences were in the tones, but that's not even marked in the orthography. I think that's a pretty strong ase for merger. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds19:22, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
R. David Zorc and Louise Nibagwire have an entire Comparative Grammar (2007, →ISBN devoted to the differences between the two, which Google unfortunately only shows snippets of, including the TOC which lays out spelling differences, noun class differences, "word pairs, one matched, the other completely different", and false friends, as well as dialect-specific tonal marking. However, vocabulary differences and false friends exist even between English dialects (luck out), and tonal marking and other pronunciation differences which aren't reflected in the orthography can be handled in pronunciation sections, as with Iranian Persian vs Dari. The only thing that gives me pause is the point that dialects on the extremes of the continuum "may not" be intelligible with each other per WP, but then, if the dialects aren't split up along national lines / along the same lines as the codes, then that's not a good argument against merger. - -sche(discuss)00:14, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Elena Zinovʹevna Dubnova, in The Rwanda Language (1984), page 15, writes: "A. Coupez maintains that "as a matter of fact, Rwanda, Rundi and Ha ( and maybe other languages spoken east of the latter two areas) are so close that they can be regarded as dialects of one language" (17. p. 11). According to the other view they are closely related but still different languages (11, p. 26)." Other sources concur, "In linguistic terms, Kirundi and Kinyarwanda are mutually intelligible dialects of the Rwanda-Rundi language." Merged under the code rw. - -sche(discuss)19:17, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
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Template:pml is currently called Lingua Franca which is a very unclear name. I would greatly prefer that it be called Sabir, which seems to be what speakers called it, or if you really don't like that, 'Mediterranean Lingua Franca' which is what Wikipedia calls, and at least distinguishes it other languages considered lingue franche in various times and various locales. PS: If you agree, it would be nice to "speedy" this process (it only requires editing the template) so that I can create entries without it becoming an annoyance to whomever it falls to to close the RFM (deleting and recreating categories, etc). —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds19:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
"Lingua Franca"! Wow, that is a bad name. I often note that I try to "ensure Wiktionary calls each language by its most common distinct English name", and that's not distinct—nor, AFAICT, all too commonly used as the name of that language in English (as opposed to mentioned as what the name of that language was in various Mediterranean tongues).
Numbers and pros and cons, as I see them:
I gave up the search strings "Lingua Franca" and "Lingua Franca language" because they turned up too many irrelevant things, but google books:"speak Lingua Franca" gets 18 hits, of which 5 refer to this language (though none capitalise "lingua"); 3 just happen to contain those words in that order, 1 is unclear, 1 uses it as the name of a sci-fi language, 1 is "Lingua Franca Creek" and 7 show no preview or are duplicates. Of the 25 variously-capitalised hits for "spoke Lingua Franca", almost all refer to this language.
"Mediterranean Lingua Franca" gets ~70 hits with previews. Some are of "Mediterranean lingua franca", but because every name this language has shows up uncapitalised half the time, it isn't clear if those hits mean any lingua franca of the Med or still refer to this language. "Mediterranean Lingua Franca" does seem to be the most common name of the language, but it's still somewhat ambiguous... English is a language people in Tunis and Rome can use to communicate, is it the Mediterranean Lingua Franca?
"spoke Sabir" gets five hits ("speak Sabir" gets nothing relevant AFAICT), "Sabir language" gets ~10 hits—but one is a reference to a Turkic language. Other search strings could probably show it to be about as common as LF if not MLF. And no-one is quite sure who the Sabirs were, or what their language was (it might have been Khazar or Common Turkic; otherwise, it doesn't have a code), so it's possible to put off worrying about a naming conflict with Turkic Sabir until such a time as it has a code and actually conflicts.
{{mnt}} was the ISO code for "Maykulan", a small, now-extinct language. The SIL/ISO recently retired the code, updating the name of the principal lect to "Mayi-Kulan" (which does see slightly more use), recoding it as {{xyk}}, and adding codes for Wunumara {{wnn}}, Mayi-Thakurti {{xyt}} and Mayi-Yapi {{xyj}}, which had previously been considered dialects of Mayi-Kulan. What little literature I can find on the lects suggests there is little difference between the dialects. I therefore suggest that we retain{{mnt}} and not follow the ISO in splitting it into {{xyk}}, {{wnn}}, {{xyt}} and {{xyj}} at this time. We could also rename it from "Maykulan" to "Mayi-Kulan", or it could be that the second is not so much more common enough than the first to merit the bother of a rename (and keeping "Maykulan" might make it more obvious we weren't following the SIL into splitting the dialects). - -sche(discuss)07:23, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
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WT:LANGTREAT says only Azeri (az) is treated as a language, but azb (South Azerbaijani) and azj (North Azerbaijani) are currently encoded in Module:languages / its new subpages. What should be updated, the module or LANGTREAT? WP says " dialects of Azerbaijani do not differ substantially. Speakers of various dialects normally do not have problems understanding each other." - -sche(discuss)05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
The only reason to differentiate them would be due to the different writing systems used (Cyrillic/Arabic), but we can handle that with script codes, so {{azb}} and {{azj}} should most certainly go. -- Liliana•17:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, even if we split azb and azj, the latter would still have entries in two scripts, because it (like Romanian) has been written in both Cyrillic and Latin at different points in history, so the use of Arabic script for azb shouldn't be an impediment to incorporating its entries under the single header ==Azeri==. (And we do handle e.g. both Latin- and Arabic-script Afrikaans under one header.) - -sche(discuss)20:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Incidentally, it is worth mentioning the existence of Qashqai (qxq), another Oghuz lect spoken in Iran and written in the Arabic script. It is so close to Azeri that it is sometimes considered just another dialect of it. Gilles Authier, in New strategies for relative clauses in Azeri and Apsheron Tat, in Clause Linkage in Cross-Linguistic Perspective (2012, →ISBN, says "There is an almost perfect mutual intelligibility between Azeri and Kashkai speakers. I tested this personally by submitting recordings to both audiences." - -sche(discuss)20:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
To avoid one click character (/exclamation mark), we could rename this language from "ǃXóõ" to "Taa", the name Wikipedia gives it. It's very difficult to search for terms spelt with either click character or exclamation marks, but I found about 19 Google Books with "ǃXóõ language" in them, while "Taa language" gets about 50 Google Books hits, about 25 of which are scannos or references to unrelated things. Still, that means the two terms seem about as common. So, shall we rename to "Taa"? - -sche(discuss)00:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
Note: there remain a number of entries which contain "!Xóõ" (with exclamation mark). A robot should update these to either "ǃXóõ" (click) or "Taa" depending upon the outcome of this discussion. - -sche(discuss)00:57, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
These beguilingly named, closely related West African lects (one is called "Pular", one is "Pulaar") seem to quite possibly just be dialects of {{ff}} (Fula). It also seems possible that Fula is pluricentric and really a sort of macrolanguage that needs to be split up. Pulaar has a bunch of entries, Fula has a couple, and Pular has none. However, entries like Haalpulaar suggest that {{fuf}} and {{fuc}}, at least, are even considered to be the same language by Pula(a)r speakers themselves. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds21:58, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Whenever we know or suspect that a form is restricted to any of these dialects, or any of the dialects Ethnologue declined to code, we should indicate that, yes. We should be careful not to mark general forms as dialect-specific, of course. Our Serbo-Croatian editors can tell of how nationalists often mark a {{sh}} form as natiolect-specific when they're really used by all the languages. (Disclaimer: alternatively, if you subscribe to the philosophy some expressed in a recent RFDO discussion, it's not misleading to mark a general word as being restricted to a narrow context.) If we ever find native speakers to really expand our {{ff}} entries, verbs will need multiple conjugation tables to show the different endings used in different dialects, but that is not an argument against a merger: several Germanic languages have verbs with multiple tables because the verbs sometimes conjugate strongly, sometimes weakly. - -sche(discuss)22:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Abstain. I do not oppose a merge, but I feel I should abstain because it is not clear to me that the differences are smaller than those between {{sco}} and {{en}}, or {{lb}} and {{ksh}} (and {{de}}). - -sche(discuss)02:03, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Currently, our Maasina Fulfulde entries treat themselves as alternative forms of Fula entries, which is ... nonstandard. {{alternative form of}} is not supposed to be used across languages. I'm back to saying "merge". I'll take care ffm, at least, since the current situation implies that the user who added it (User:A12n) considers it a mere variety. - -sche(discuss)18:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
After checking for uses of them, and fixing those that weren't on old out-of-date user subpages, I've merged and deleted all of the dialects: ffm, fub, fuc, fue, fuf, fuh, fui, fuq, fuv. - -sche(discuss)19:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
The codes pqe-pol-pro and poz-pep-pro refer to the same language, AFAICT. The latter (poz-pep-pro, "Proto-Eastern Polynesian") has both the more common name and the more well-formed code. Accordingly, instances of the pqe-pol-pro in entries and appendices should be switched to poz-pep-pro, the "Proto-East-Polynesian" categories and appendices should be renamed, and pqe-pol-pro should be removed from Module:languages/datax. - -sche(discuss)04:14, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
I looked through the edit histories of a random sampling of eight pages that used each of the above-mentioned codes. It looks like the editors who edit Proto-East(ern)-Polynesian are User:Metaknowledge and User:Amir Hamzah 2008. I'm pinging them now to see if they are aware of any reason why this merger shouldn't go through. - -sche(discuss)22:00, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
I seem to remember creating the pep one because I couldn't find a code for it. I think I also made poz-pnp-pro for Proto-Nuclear Polynesian. Anyway, these definitely refer to the same thing, and not surprisingly I'd prefer Proto-Eastern Polynesian as the name. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds15:47, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
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Wintu
What's this business about recoding Wintu? I reckon that we should use not use retired codes unless there is a pressing linguistic need to do so, e.g. sh. But I'm not aware of the facts of this case. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds06:57, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
At the start of this year, the ISO retired the code wit for "Wintu" and split it into wnw ("Wintu"), nol (Nomlaki) and pwi (Patwin). Adding nol and pwi was straightforward, but we already have entries in Wintu. I decided the path of least change was to let them keep using wit. I would have no problem with changing them to wnw, though, and it's not like there are that many of them. As for why the ISO made the split: Alice Shepherd notes in her 2006 work on Proto-Wintun→ISBN that "The Wintun language family consists of four languages, Wintu, Nomlaki, Patwin and South Patwin divergence is similar to that of the Romance languages, with a time depth of perhaps 2000-2500 years (for additional discussion, see Whistler 1980: 17)." Marianne Mithun, in The Languages of Native North America, adds that Harvey Pitkin, who made the same analogy to Romance as early as 1984, had furthermore recognized that many of the similarities between northern Wintu and Patwin were due to contact. - -sche(discuss)14:49, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I see. I made the Wintu entries with a dictionary that definitely describes wnw, so I advocate moving them over and retiring wit. (I support ISO's decision; actually, I assumed it was already like that.) —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds02:22, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Ok, I've made the switch. PS I should possibly have explained, btw, that the reason I dropped a bundle of scholarly info was so I could then cite this thread (and have it be informative) in the table, not because I thought you needed persuading or something. :b - -sche(discuss)05:44, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
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Module:languages includes codes from the individual members of several language/dialect groups which WT:LANGTREAT says, without citing any discussion, should be merged. Something needs to change: either WT:LANGTREAT should be updated to note that the individual varieties are allowed, or their codes should be removed from the module. The following language/dialect groups are affected: (Note 1: whenever the merging of a particular dialect group had been discussed and that discussion was cited by LANGTREAT, I simply updated the module.) (Note 2: Haida, Cree and Kalenjin face the same issue; I expect to write about them later.) - -sche(discuss)05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
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I suggest we delete ayc and ayr, the codes for Aymara's dialects. The International Handbook of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (1998, →ISBN says "the dialectal differences in Aymara are not so great that they create problems of mutual intelligibility (Briggs, 1976)." James Stuart Olson (in The Indians of Central and South America, 1991, →ISBN and other scholars concur. - -sche(discuss)05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
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What little information I can find regarding the mutual (un)intelligibility of the dialects of Bikol (bik) — agk, agz, atl, bcl, bln, bto, cts, fbl, lbl, rbl and ubl — suggests that LANGTREAT should perhaps be updated to legitimize their existence as separate lects. Fenella Cannell, in Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines (1999, →ISBN says: "The Philippines is rich in languages, and the Bicol language is itself rich in dialects, including mutually incomprehensible dialects." But that's not much to go on. Anyone have more information?
I've updated LANGTREAT to note that the subdivisions are allowed as languages. We do, however, have 8 bik entries, all nouns: Category:Bikol nouns. Hopefully it won't be too hard to find out which varieties of Bikol they belong to. - -sche(discuss)22:42, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
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LANGTREAT says Kanuri (kr) should be treated as one language, and scholars (e.g. Norbert Cyffer, who wrote A sketch of Kanuri and other works) agree on that point. Ethnologue, for whatever reason, gave codes to several of the dialects, which I suggest we delete: bms, kau (AFAICT this one has already been removed), kbl, kby, knc, krt. - -sche(discuss)05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
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Stephen Tyler (not the singer), in his oft-cited works on Gondi, states "Though I have no real evidence, the general pattern seems to be for geographically adjacent Koya and Gondi populations to speak different, but mutually intelligible Gondi dialects. Where these populations are geographically non-contiguous, the dialects are not mutually intelligible. This same pattern probably prevails among all Gondi dialects." WP says "The more important dialects are Dorla, Koya, Maria, Muria, and Raj Gond." Ethnologue, meanwhile, as encoded only two varieties, ggo (Southern Gondi) and gno (Northern Gondi). Should we deprecate those two codes? Or deprecate the macro-code gon and recognise those dialects? Or allow all three? - -sche(discuss)05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
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Same kind of question as in previous sections: is Kongo (kg) one language, or several (kng, kwy, ldi, yom)? (That last one, Yombe, is not mentioned in LANGTREAT.) - -sche(discuss)05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
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LANGTREAT recognises only Oromo (om) as a language. The codes of its varieties (gax, gaz, hae and orc) are, however, included in Module:languages. WP asserts that "not all varieties are mutually intelligible", but scholars disagree:
Alan S. Kaye, Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus)→ISBN, page 493: "On the subject of dialect differentiation, Oromo scholars agree on the mutual intelligibility between them".
Robert L. Cooper, Language Planning and Social Change (1989, →ISBN, page 22: "The largest of these conquered groups is the Oromo. They are divided into numerous clans. But they are united by a single language, whose many dialects are mutally intelligible."
David H. Shinn and Thomas P. Ofcansky, Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia (2013, →ISBN, page 319: "Although there are numerous dialects, they are mutually intelligible. Over the years, the language has been written in the Latin, Sabaean, and Arabic scripts. The Bible was first translated into Afan Oromo well over 100 years ago..."
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Of all the names this language goes by, we seem to have picked one of the least common; see . I propose to rename it "Tashelhit". This entails "moving" a few categories and updating ~46 entries. PS the spelling "Tashelhit" is already commonly used in translations tables. - -sche(discuss)02:58, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
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AFAICT 'aus-you' and 'aus-yol' refer to the same language family. I suggest that 'aus-you' be replaced with 'aus-yol'. This entails some updates to Module:languages and the merger of the families' categories. - -sche(discuss)02:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
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Now that the Gabi-Gabi / Gabi language has an ISO code (gbw), we ca switch all two of our entries to use it rather than the exceptional code they had been using (aus-gab). - -sche(discuss)19:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
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yga, wdk, yxl and yxi are dialects of a single extinct language. yxi isn't even a valid (ISO/Ethnologue-approved) code, and has the same canonical name as yxl, which is problematic. I propose to merge them under the code yxl. - -sche(discuss)03:53, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
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The spelling with one 's' has always been noticeably more common. (Renaming the language entails moving a few categories and updating a few pages.) - -sche(discuss)07:20, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
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the Mashi lects
The ISO/SIL, as they are wont to do (vide their assigning different codes to the Republic of the Congo's Kituba vs the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Kituba, Achterhoeks vs Sallands, etc), gave the Beboid Naki language language several codes for the several villages it is spoken in. Specifically, they gave it the code mff ("Naki"), but then also two more codes, buz for the variety spoken in the village of Bukwen and jms for the variety spoken in the village of Mashi. I propose to merge jms and buz into mff. As an added bonus, this will allow us to add mho (the code of the not-closely-related Bantoid "Mashi" spoken in Zambia and Angola) without a clumsy disambiguator. - -sche(discuss)20:26, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
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Generally we name codes for "old" languages starting with "o" and followed by the two-letter code of the modern language, if there is one. Several ISO codes follow this scheme as well. The code "ptg" makes it look like it's modern Portuguese, and I'm not sure why it was created like that in the first place. —CodeCat18:02, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
This is about the code though, not the name. Wikipedia says both names are in use. Would you prefer roa-gpt instead? —CodeCat21:02, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
The Wikipedia article says it's an Osco-Umbrian language. That would make it part of a different branch of Italic from Latin. —CodeCat04:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
How could it be Osco-Umbrian? It's Q-Italic, not P-Italic, as you can clearly see from inscriptions. (Wikipedia also says that "Their language differs very slightly from Roman Latin of that date", which would be an argument in support of merger.) —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds05:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
I've seen two different classifications of Italic languages: the one Wikipedia uses that puts Latin into a 'Latin-Faliscan' group and Marsian into an 'Oscan-Umbrian(-Sabellian)' group, and another which distinguishes the 'Sabellian' group (containing Marsian) from the 'Oscan-Umbrian' group. As Philip Baldi notes in The Foundations of Latin, "speakers of the Italic languages participated in a steady multi-directional linguistic and cultural intercourse with each other over a period of hundreds of years", with this "common genetic inheritance and shared linguistic space result in irregular patterns of mutual retention and gradations of similarity among various groups. Language A may share some phonological or lexical feature with B, yet A may have another feature in common with C which is not present in B." He specifically lists q vs p as a reflex of PIE *kʷ as one feature influenced by that intercourse, which probably explains how Marsian can be both Q-Italic and Oscan-Umbrian-Sabellian. Given that all the classifications do consider Marsian to be as distinct from Latin as Oscan and Umbrian are, I would keep the lects separate. Marsian is an extinct language with a small corpus, so any redundancy (if a Marsian word is homographic with its Old Latin synonym) will be limited. Also, the people I imagine looking up Marsian words are people who are familiar with the concept of Marsian as a language, who will thus expect the words to be labelled Marsian and probably consider it a mistake if they find them labelled 'Old Latin'. - -sche(discuss)07:36, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
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Split len
Ethnologue and the ISO either conflated two languages into the code "len", namely "Honduran Lenca(n)" and "Salvadoran Lenca(n)", or failed to give a code to Salvadoran Lenca, depending on your interpretation of what they say about len. As Lyle Campbell writes in American Indian Languages (1997, →ISBN, "Honduran Lenca and Salvadoran Lenca (the latter is also called Chilanga after the the name of the principle town in which it was spoken) are not closely related; Swadesh (1967a:98-9) calculated thirty minimum centuries of divergence."(!) We should either split len into two exceptional codes, or make clear that we're using len for Honduran Lenca and then create an exceptional code for Salvadoran Lenca ... but I am drawing a blank on what prefix to use to create exceptional codes for languages of unknown family affiliation. und-? Or should we convert len into a family code and then prefix the language code(s) with len-? - -sche(discuss)23:18, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
I think the latter is the better choice, since, according to WP, they're related, and someone has even come up with a proto-language. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:53, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
OTOH, until now, the only three-letter family codes we have accepted (and thus the only things used as prefixes in exceptional language codes) have been ISO-approved family codes. When we've created our own exceptional family codes, we've prefixed them with qfa- or the nearest ISO-approved code that they are a subset of—hence we have qfa-len—and we have never had occasion to use an exceptional family code to make an exceptional language code. If we create e.g. len-slv as an exceptional code for Salvadoran Lenca and the ISO subsequently grants the family code len to some family other than Lencan, it will be problematic. Then again, I suppose we could just rename the code at that time. - -sche(discuss)06:56, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
In April, there was discussion of how to encode Jeju, which (like the Lencan lects) belongs to a family which has not been assigned an ISO code. Ultimately, Jeju was encoded as "qfa-kor-jjm", i.e. using its family code as the prefix, as per usual, even though that family code is an exceptional code. Following that model, it makes sense to encode Salvadoran Lenca as "qfa-len-slv". - -sche(discuss)02:25, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
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Rename Wangaaybuwan-Ngiyambaa → Ngiyambaa (wyb)
"Ngiyambaa" is far more common than "Wangaaybuwan-Ngiyambaa". "Wangaaybuwan" is one of the two peoples that speak the language, and hence the name of the dialect used by that people. The other Ngiyambaa-speaking people, whom the current name neglects, are the Wayilwan, who speak the (you guessed it) Wayilwan dialect. Renaming the language entails moving a few categories and updating a few pages. - -sche(discuss)04:32, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
Support. The old name can stay as an alternate name, natch, and the autonyms Kriol, Crioulo, Kriolu, Kriyol, and Kiriol can be added as other alternate names. - -sche(discuss)07:19, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
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Varieties of Huave are spoken in four villages in Mexico. Ethnologue gave each one its own code: San Dionisio del Mar Huave is hve, Santa María del Mar Huave is hvv, San Francisco del Mar Huave is hue, and San Mateo del Mar Huave is huv. Confusingly, we call the last of those (huv) plain "Huave".
Specialist literature, such as Yuni Kim's dissertation on Topics in the Phonology and Morphology of San Francisco Del Mar Huave, speaks of "Huave dialects", and Campbell likewise considers that the villages speak dialects of a single language isolate. "Huave languages" seem to be spoken of only in connection with the (unsupported) idea that the "Mixe-Zoque-Huave languages" form a family.
I suggest that we merge hve, hvv and hue into huv. Failing that, we need to rename huv (from plain "Huave" to "San Mateo del Mar Huave")... - -sche(discuss)20:26, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
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The term "Old East Slavic" must have been created to avoid offending Ukrainians and Belarusians and to please nationalists who use "Old Ukrainian" and "Old Belarusian", since "Old Russian" may imply to some that Belarusian/Ukrainian languages are derivations of Russian. However, "Old East Slavic" (Russian: древнеру́сский язы́к(drevnerússkij jazýk)) translates into Belarusian as старажытнару́ская мо́ва(staražytnarúskaja móva) and into Ukrainian as давньору́ська мо́ва(davnʹorúsʹka móva) (alternative names also exist, including "Old Ukrainian"). All three terms are literally translated as "Old/Ancient Russian/Rusian", not "Old East Slavic". Note that in Ukrainian ру́ський(rúsʹkyj) refers more specifically to Rus rather than modern Russia. (Unlike Russian and Belarusian, the Ukrainian term росі́йський(rosíjsʹkyj) means "Russian" both referring to ethnicity and the country. Cf. Russian ру́сский(rússkij) / росси́йский(rossíjskij) and Belarusian ру́скі(rúski) / расі́йскі(rasíjski)). Despite the current tensions between Russia and Ukraine, linguistically it makes much more sense to rename "Old East Slavic" to "Old Russian". Call me biased, whatever, but respectable East Slavic linguists all use "Old Russian", it's of the Ancient Rus, not modern Russia, the centre of which was in Kiev, modern Ukraine. :) --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)02:47, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I don't think the names that modern speakers use should really count. They're bound to have some kind of national pride in them, like discussions on the Wikipedia article show. (And I'm hoping to avoid a straw man, but by the same logic we'd call Dutch "Netherlandish", German "Dutch", Greek "Hellenic", Armenian "Hayeric", Hittite "Neshite", and so on...) I think we should focus purely on what modern English-language scholarship calls the language. —CodeCat03:23, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Re: English language usage. Ngram, Ngram 2 can't even find "Old East Slavic (language)", not sure if I interpret this correctly or if it is possible to check the English usage via Google.
Being half-Russian, half-Ukrainian, I take pride in belonging to both but pride can take various ways. E.g. ру́ський(rúsʹkyj) is sometimes translated by Ukrainians as давньоукраї́нський(davnʹoukrajínsʹkyj, “Old Ukrainian”) and some Ukrainian nationalists claim they have nothing to do with Russian but others take pride in being the cradle of all Slavs. We all know the Serbo-Croatian language story and Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn't make Hebrew and Arabic belong to different language families. Modern Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian are distinct languages but they are all derived from one, so your comparison is not valid.
In any case, Belarusians (educated), considering the name of the language, are not even trying to deny that Belarusian is derived from Old Russian (=Rusian, Old East Slavic), the language of Rus, in Ukrainian, the term ру́ська мо́ва(rúsʹka móva) is also used, without "Old", since ру́ський(rúsʹkyj) has this meaning ((modern) Russian language is called росі́йська мо́ва(rosíjsʹka móva) in Ukrainian). Ukrainians also know that Украї́на(Ukrajína) is quite a new term, although there are some ridiculous claims about so-called "Ukr" tribes, derived directly from Proto-Slavic, bypassing Old Russian stage. I wonder what discussion you're referring to?
BTW, I disapprove the policy of Russian government and respect the right of Ukrainians to decide their fate but we are talking about language names and linguistics here. Bad timing for this discussion, considering the Ukrainian and Crimean crisis. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)04:22, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I think this should be decided solely by the most commonly used name in English. Thus, I tentatively support "Old Russian" based on the Ngrams above, and based on a hunch that English speakers are less likely to have to look up the language if it is called "Old Russian" than if it is called "Old East Slavic". However, there needs to be a more thorough investigation into the evidence, since Ngrams are often inaccurate and/or skewed by unexpected factors. --WikiTiki8904:55, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Agreed but Google books count of "Old Russian language" is also significantly larger than "Old East Slavic language" (even though "Old Russian language" may not always have the same sense as "древнерусский язык"). I'm happy if someone else can analyse it better using Google or other sources. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)05:02, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Re: solely by the most commonly used name in English. We should also take into consideration the literal names in the affected languages. I think "Old East Slavic" is a result of some kind of political correctness or fairness, ignoring the fact that Ukrainian and Belarusian don't use this fairness in the name, also not note French "vieux russe", Estonian "vanavene keel", Dutch "Oudrussisch" and many Slavic names. The rest of names must have followed English Wikipedia in their namings. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)05:21, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I disagree, whatever the origin of its usage, if "Old East Slavic" became were shown to be used more commonly in English, then that is the name we should use. The only other factors we should consider are the ambiguity of the name (for example, if "That Language There" were the most commonly used term for some language, we probably still shouldn't use it), or possibly some other minor issues that I can't think of at the moment. --WikiTiki8905:30, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
I meant it seems it was coined out of some considerations but I agree that if it were more common we should use it. I can't think of another example but in Japanese ハングル語 (Hanguru-go) "Hangeul language" was specifically coined, out of political correctness, to avoid giving preferences to either Korea or their languages (North and South Koreas have different names in East Asian languages, see 韓国 and 朝鮮). --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)05:38, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
If you agree that if it were more common then we should use it, then isn't that the same thing as only relying on which is more common? --WikiTiki8905:43, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
It is not easy to get a sense of which name is most common in English. Chaff like "an old Russian car" skews counts of "Old East Slavic" vs "Old Russian", but if "language" is added, the number of hits drops so low that it is statistically insignificant / unreliable. However, based on manual review of a search with "in", I think "Old Russian" is the more common of the two names. - -sche(discuss)06:25, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
-sche's data
On BGC, "Old Russian language" gets 4 relevant hits, 7 chaff hits of things like "thirty-three-year-old Russian-language specialist" or "the old Russian language", and 2 hits alongside "Old East Slavic language" in Library of Congress subject heading catalogues.
"Old East Slavic language" gets 3 relevant hits, 6 hits in LOC subject heading catalogues or printed editions of Wikipedia, and 1 hit that actually uses both terms: "the purely vernacular, Old Russian — or, more precisely, Old East Slavic — language".
"in Old East Slavic" gets 13 relevant hits, 2 in books that also use "Old Russian".
"in Old Russian" gets 32 clearly relevant hits, 25 clearly irrelevant hits (like "dressed in old Russian uniforms") and 13 hits where its not clear whether it means Old Russian or just Russian that is old, and that's just the first 7 pages: I stopped counting after that because it was clear at that point that "Old Russian" was more common than "Old East Slavic".
I support the rename to Old Russian per the following Google Scholar Data, showing that "Old Russian" is more than 10 times as common as all other names I could think of, combined. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:20, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
Google Scholar data
"Old Russian" language – 13,200 hits
"Old Ukrainian" language – 847 hits
"Old East Slavic" language – 167 hits
"Old Belarusian" language – 139 hits
"Old Ruthenian" language – 96 hits
"Old Byelorussian" language – 38 hits
"Old East Slavonic" language – 26 hits
"Old Eastern Slavic" language – 9 hits
"Old Eastern Slavonic" language – 4 hits
“Old Russian” reflects systemic prejudices that go back to times of the empires, when Encyclopedia Britannica defined wrote about White Russians and Little Russians, some of whom were Ruthenians. These prejudices were still felt in academics and journalism when the Soviet Union broke up, and are only going away now. I don’t think Wiktionary is part of an establishment that tries to wilfully reinforces these backward practices.
Furthermore, the moment when the Russian regime is exploiting such ideas in its anti-Ukrainian propaganda is the shittiest possible time to start this discussion. —MichaelZ. 2014-03-12 19:18 z
I feel kind of the same about it. I can't motivate the choice with widespread usage, but I feel that "Old East Slavic" just is a better, more descriptive name for the language. So I oppose. —CodeCat19:42, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
@Mzajac I agree about bad timing and with the criticism of the Russian regime and I'm very sad about the latest events - Putin, in a short period, has created a situation, which was unimaginable for hundred years - Russians fighting Ukrainians. I wish we didn't mix politics in here, though. The political split of Yugoslavia caused the artificial language split but we all know that Serbo-Croatian is one language, despite the tensions. Jewish and Arabic are still semitic languages and Ukrainian and Russian are still derived from the same source (after a big injection of Old Church Slavonic into Russian and Polish injection into Ukrainian). I'm not stating any Russian supremacy or support any name-calling. Regarding the names, I disagree that "White Russians" and "Little Russians" were a result of prejudice, just as "Белару́сь" (Бе́лая Русь) and "Малоро́ссия" are just historical words, names among others like "Great Rus", "Red Rus", "Black Rus", "Carpathian Rus". Nikolay Gogol, native of modern Ukraine, also used "Малороссия" when referring to his homeland. The "offensive" meaning (if "Малоро́ссия" ("Little Rus(sia)" sounds offensive to Ukrainians) was acquired mistakenly in the modern times. In any case, Русь(Rusĭ) originated on the territory of modern Ukraine by people who lived there and this is where all East Slavs originate from. I don't see or Ukrainians don't see anything offensive in terms "давньору́ська мо́ва" and "ру́ська мо́ва" when referring to Old East Slavic language but I won't insist on continuing this discussion, if it hurts someone's feelings. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)02:10, 14 March 2014 (UTC)
Guys, call it Old Bulgarian and that's it. Though modern Bulgarian belongs to the southern branch, the early Bulgarian and Russian texts do show their being one language. Alexdubr (talk) 14:31, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
You are confusing two different languages. Old Bulgarian, which we call Old Church Slavonic, was also a South Slavic language, but it was used even in Russia/Ukraine/etc. as the main written and liturgical language. The main spoken language, however was Old Russian or Old East Slavic, which was an East Slavic language and the ancestor of modern Russian/Ukrainian/etc. --WikiTiki8916:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
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Pretty much every source I could find referred to Zamboangueño et al. as varieties or dialects, not languages. Two of them in particular make it very clear:
“The result of the study showed that while there are observable differences in certain language features beween and among the four variants, they are nonetheless, mutually intelligible with each other even among native speakers who do not have any special language training. Thus, for the purpose of this pilot study, al four variants were identified as dialects of PCS.” Sister María Isabelita O. Riego de Dios, A Pilot Study on the Dialects of Philippine Creole Spanish
“The two variants of PCS share enough distinctive differences from regular Spanish or regular Philippine usage that they must be considered historicaly related dialects of the same language” Charles O. Frake, Lexical Origins and Semantic Structure in Philippine Creole Spanish
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Meänkieli (fit) and Kven (fkv) into Finnish (fi)
Finnish dialects
I think that linguists consider these to be dialects of Finnish, so that would make these pluricentric standards of a single language. I don't know if keeping them separate would hold any value? —CodeCat14:05, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
The impression I get from the example at w:Meänkieli is that the differences are very minor, no more than there might be between Croatian and Serbian. I notice systematic loss of -d- and Finnish -ts- corresponds to -tt- in Meänkieli. They definitely look mutually intelligible. Kven looks a little more different, but it might also just be the spelling; I don't know how hard it would be to the average Finnish speaker. —CodeCat23:26, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
I know maybe a dozen words of Finnish, so I can't judge for myself, but the impression I get from the Wikipedia articles is that there's an equal or greater range of variation between dialects in Finland as there is with these dialects- if these dialects were on the other side of the Finnish border, they would probably be considered just part of the normal dialectal variation (I'm sure there are some differences due to their isolation from the influence of standard Finnish, as well). They have special status because they're in Sweden and Norway surrounded by Swedish and Norwegian. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:53, 23 March 2014 (UTC)
Finnish wasn't even a single language to begin with originally. There's several dialect groups that form a continuum, but it's not easy to draw clear lines. Savonian (eastern) dialects for example might well be closer to Karelian (considered a separate language) than they are to western Finnish. —CodeCat00:10, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
My impression is the same as Chuck's, that these could be merged. By my (quick) count, we have 11 Meänkieli entries and 14 English entries with Meänkieli translations, and 19 Kven entries and 8 entries with Kven translations. - -sche(discuss)02:45, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
Blue indicates areas where Finnish is spoken by the majority, and green indictes minority. Meänkieli and Kven are considered Finnish on this map
I somehow missed this discussion when it was active, but better later than never. I have the following comments:
The map is outdated. There's practically no Finnish-speaking population left in the areas which were annexed by the Soviet Union during and after the WWII. The map on the right is more up-to-date.
There's some Ingrian population left in the St. Petersburg area, but their number and share of population (less than 0,5‰ in Leningrad oblast) is drastically reduced due to 1) inflow of Russians to St. Petersburg, 2) Stalin's terror in the 1930's and 3) emigration to Finland between 1990 and 2011.
I'm not sure of Kven-speakers, but the speakers of Meänkieli tend to be quite strong in their opinion that they are not Finnish-speakers. It is probably true that if the border were in another place, Meänkieli would be considered a Finnish dialect. But then again, it would hardly be the same language as it is today - it would have preserved less archaic features and there would be much less Swedish influence in it. If ISO regards it a language, how could we be wiser?
Meänkieli is an official minority language in Sweden, and is regarded as distinct from Finnish which also has a (separate) minority language status there.
"Finnish wasn't even a single language to begin with originally." -- Show me one that was!
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This language name is from Spanish, and has a tilde. Google tends to strip the tilde in its search results, but if you look at the actual page images, you'll see that the tilde is overwhelmingly the standard throughout the literature. I don't really want to mess with the modules, but I'll happily do all the changes to categories and entry (that's right- there's only one!). Chuck Entz (talk) 02:49, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
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I've spent some time over the years with various California Indian languages, though I'm not an expert by any means. I've already added a good bit of material on Cahuilla, but there are a few additions I would like to make to the modules to make it easier to do etymologies as I broaden my focus a bit.
First of all, we don't show any divisions within Uto-Aztecan except Nahuan, which includes all the Nahuatl lects. Most scholars would divide Uto-Aztecan into Northern Uto-Aztecan and Southern Uto-Aztecan, with Nahuan included in the latter. The division seems to me, though, to be more of a consensus hunch: it's hard to say whether it represents areal/diffusional spread of features or the result of a split into separate proto-languages. I have no need to refer to Northern or Southern Uto-Aztecan, so I'm not asking to create either. It just happens, though, that all the languages I know much about are in the northern group. Here's my understanding of the internal structure of the group, with language codes in bold, and families, proto-languages and synonyms that I'd like to add to the modules in italics:
hop Hopi, a.k.a Moqui (an obsolete term in older references)
tub Tübatulabal
Numic languages (descendants of Proto-Numic):
Central Numic:
com Comanche
par Panamint, a.k.a Panamint Shoshone, Timbisha, Tümpisha, and Koso
In the Numic languages, "Ute", "Paiute" and "Shoshone" are occasionally randomly applied all over the place in older sources. There also seems to be some disagreement between Wikipedia articles about whether "Koso" refers to a group of Panamint speakers or to Northern Paiute speakers, and Owens Valley was home to not just the Eastern Mono speakers of what is known as "Owens Valley Paiute", but also to Northern Paiute speakers.
Then there's the matter of Tataviam, an extinct language represented by at least one word list, with another word list for Alliklik, which may be the same language- or not. Depending on which source you read, it's:
A Takic language
An independent branch of Uto-Aztecan
A Chumashan language strongly influenced by its Takic neighbors
The modern-day descendents of the Tataviam have merged with the descendents of the Fernandeño into one group for purposes of recognition by the US government, so I fully expect to see references to Fernandeño as Tataviam any day now. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:16, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
I have incorporated into the modules all of the synonyms/aliases you mention except Iviatam, which seems to only be an ethnonym. "Koso" is identified with Panamint in the references I could find, so I've added it as an alias of Panamint (not of Northern Paiute). Given how freely the ISO gives out codes, I'm wary of creating exceptional codes for things known only from wordlists that the ISO hasn't even granted a code to. (I'm not sure if you were suggesting that Tataviam be given a code or not.)
Thanks! My comments about Tataviam were more of an illustration of/rant about how murky things can get than a serious request to do anything. It wouldn't be that hard to track down the word lists, but coming up with way to synchronize the different sources would be a real challenge (I wish I could go back in time and slap C.H. Merriam for refusing to learn proper phonetic transcription...).
I think your suggestions for Numic, Takic and Cupan are fine. There are articles in the literature with reconstructions for the proto-lnguages for each, so I'll eventually include them in etymologies, too.
My main reason for this topic was to be able to create entries for Chemehuevi (I still have to work out a usable orthography, though), but I figured it would be good to deal with the other stuff while I was at it. I have some material on the Ipai dialect of Diegueño and on Havasupai, so I'll have to do something like this for the Yuman languages later. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
It looks like everyone forgot about this thread. Well, I've added Numic, Takic and Cupan to Module:families/data, and added codes for their proto-languages to Module:languages/datax. I've even added *nɨmɨ(“person”) and *taka(“person”) (feel free to move them if you feel a different orthography is preferable). @Chuck Entz Is there anything else that remains to be done (besides adding entries in these languages)? - -sche(discuss)22:42, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
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Merge Komi-Zyrian (kpv), Komi-Permyak (koi), Komi-Yodzyak (no code) with Komi (kv). Komi-Zyrian is dominating over others. Currently, they all use the same alphabet but there were differences in the past. There's very little information on the grammar differences but they are mostly considered dialects, not separate languages. Merging kv and kpv should be straightforward, Zyrian is the language of Komi Republic.-Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)10:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
Actually, it has been planned as far as Komi-Zyrian and Komi-Permyak are concerned, see WT:LANGTREAT: "kv and kpv refer to the same lect; one will eventually be deleted.". Apparently, there are differences with Komi-Permyak but those can be labeled as "Permyak", similar Serbo-Croatian or Albanian varieties. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)01:54, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
Komi-Permyak has a distinct written tradition and should not and cannot be merged. Your statement that Komi-Zyrian is dominating shows your pro-Russian and anti-minority POV which should never be a basis for consensus on this wiki. Komi-Zyrian can be handled under {{kv}}, yes. -- Liliana•12:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
Do you have paranoia or something? I'm not Putin and not suppressing any minorities. Komi-Zyrian is a language of majority of Komi people in Komi Republic, has a much larger number of speakers and much more materials written in this variety of Komi. Komi-Permyak is used by a minority in Perm Krai and has only 63,000 speakers. By all means, I'm not forcing anyone to merge, this is only a suggestion. They are mutually comprehensible and each of them has dialects. It's possible to merge Komi varieties like it's possible to have one L2 header for Albanian, Norwegian or Serbo-Croatian, marking varieties accordingly: тӧлысь (Zyryan)/тӧлісь (Permyak), выль (Zyryan)/виль (Permyak). --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)12:58, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
That was completely rediculous and has no place on this wiki. It shows your anti-Russian bias more than Anatoli ever showed any pro-Russian bias. —CodeCat13:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I can't help to have some Russian bias, though. This is my language, my culture. I can help with the Russian language and Russia-related topics, even if Russian may now be interesting perhaps as a "language of enemy" for some. I don't blame people for criticizing Russian politicians looking at Russia with suspicion. I don't support Russian politics and propaganda but I don't have to apologize for being Russian either. :) Certainly I shouldn't be blamed for being against minorities. Why would I add contents for minority languages, if I wanted to supress them? --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)13:19, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
There is one problem: as WT:DATACHECK reveals, "Komi-Zyrian language (kpv) has a canonical name that is not unique, it is also used by the code kv." Presumably one of the two needs to be retired (or, failing that, at least renamed). - -sche(discuss)18:52, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
Komi-Zyrian is less ambiguous and clear. Although I favoured "Komi", perhaps we should retire it and leave Komi-Zyrian for kpv and kv and Komi-Permyak for koi. Komi-Zyrian is implied if Komi is used. --Anatoli(обсудить/вклад)00:12, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
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At present, we call fak "Fang" and fan "Pahouin". This is a strange state of affairs, because fan — the dominant Bantu language of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, spoken by 1.3 million people — is more commonly known as "Fang" than "Pahouin" (a French spelling of the ethnonym of a Fang-speaking group), and is usually the language which is meant when people speak of "Fang". fak is a Southern Bantoid language of Cameroon, spoken by only 2400 people, and it isn't even actually called "Fang" — Fang is the name of a village where it's spoken. Therefore, I propose to rename fak to "Fang (Cameroon)" and fan to "Fang (Guinea)". (fan is actually spoken in Equatorial Guinea, not in the country of Guinea, but the reference is to the region of Guinea. A previous BP discussion concluded that using region names was preferable to using country names like the ISO/SIL does. That discussion also touched on the idea of using parenthetical disambiguators even when alt names existed, if — as here — disambiguators were clearer.) - -sche(discuss)06:30, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
The move looks good. There doesn't seem to be any other language (either present already in WT:LOL or among the codes that are still being added) for which "Jin" is the most common name, so there doesn't seem to be any naming conflict, and "Jin" does seem to be more common than "Jinyu" as a name for this language. - -sche(discuss)18:50, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
We are not supposed to treat dialects as independent languages. How are these not dialects? --Æ&Œ (talk) 20:21, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
I support a merger of Campidanese (sro) and Logudorese (src) into Sardinian (sc), for reasons I outlined on my talk page and repeat here for others' benefit: those two lects differ from each other, quoth WP, "mostly in phonetics, which does not hamper intelligibility among the speakers". They are perhaps comparable to the dialects of Irish, with standard Sardinian (sc) existing as a unification of the dialects (again, comparable to Irish). Notably, we already include standard Sardinian (sc) — which means the additional inclusion of sro and src is quite schizophrenic.
There is some disagreement over whether Gallurese (sdn) and Sassarese (sdc) are dialects of Sardinian, dialects of Corsican, or languages separate from both Sardinian and Corsican. I would not mergethem at this time. - -sche(discuss)03:19, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
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Hello everyone. I'm curious as to how one would go about requesting an exceptional code for the standard Kichwa language? There are several SIL/Ethnologue codes for various Kichwa dialects (Imbabura (qvi), Chimborazo (qug), Cañar Highland (qxr), etc), but not one is for the standard Kichwa language that's taught in schools and used by the government in Ecuador. There is a common Quechua code (qu) is currently used for Quechua Wiktionary and Wikipedia, but both projects are exclusively written in standard Southern Quechua. Both Kichwa and Southern Quechua are part of the Quechua II branch of the Quechuan languages, but they are different dialects with different standardized grammars and different standardized writing conventions. --Dijan (talk) 18:28, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
Hmm... how mutually intelligible are Kichwa and Quechua? It wasn't that long ago that the various Quechua dialects' codes were removed from Module:languages, though I'm having trouble locating the discussion(s) that led to that.
They are mutually intelligible for the most part (similar to differences between Danish and Swedish), but they are also significantly different from each other to be considered separate. Linguistically, Kichwa belongs to a different subgroup of Quechua. The grammar of Kichwa is more simplified (loss of possissive suffixes, loss of the voiceless uvular fricative, etc) and the vocabulary is affected by native languages spoken before the Incan conquest of the territory of today's Ecuador and Colombia (meaning, Quechua was imposed as a foreign language, whereas it is a native language in the regions where Southern Quechua is spoken - in southern Peru and Bolivia).
I was referring to designing our own code and using that as an umbrella for all the Kichwa varieties - which now all use a standardized alphabet different from the Peruvian varieties (such as Southern Quechua), but I couldn't find the procedure for it.
There was an attempt to create a separate Kichwa Wikipedia, but apparently no one got around to it and it got complicated as somone pointed out that an official ISO code must be requested specifically for the standard variety. And for some the problem was that it was trying to use the Chimborazo (qug) code (which is one of the most widely spoken varieties of Kichwa). Apparently the issuing of codes is very strict on Wikipedia. --Dijan (talk) 20:57, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
If none of the ISO codes cover this we should create our own code. The languages seem different enough that they warrant separate treatment, at least. -- Liliana•21:43, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
Do you know whether I can change the name of the stub site at http://en.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/Category:Waura_language
from “Waura” to “Wauja”, or should I ask permission from someone first? If so, do you know whom I should ask? The Wauja would be disappointed to see their name mispelled yet again.
Perversely, w:Wauja language redirects to w:Waurá language. It's not quite as simple as you might think: the name of the language is actually set in a data module that only admins can edit. The category page you're referring to actually consists solely of {{langcatboiler|wau|Brazil}}. Fortunately, we have people who deal with this sort of thing all the time. I've moved it to the proper venue and, with any luck, we should be able to take care of this fairly quickly. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:52, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Support renaming. I added "Wauja" as an alternative name a while ago so that people who searched our list of languages for "Wauja" would be able to find it. I didn't change the canonical name (the one used in the name of the language's category, and in entries' headers) from 'r' to 'j' at that time because I could not, and still cannot, tell which spelling is most common or preferred — it seems like every reference work and site has its own spelling of the name, right down to the dichotomy Chuck notes of Wikipedia's article on the language being "Waura" while the article on the people is "Wauja". But if there's someone who's here to add content in the language, I'm inclined to trust their assessment of which spelling is best. On a technical note, no other language is called "Wauja", so there do not appear to be any technical considerations preventing a rename. - -sche(discuss)04:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
I also support renaming and trust Emi-Ireland to know what he's talking about. But changing a canonical name is a slightly tricky process that involves editing pages that only admins can edit, so, Emi-Ireland, you can't actually change it yourself. But you can already start adding Wauja words yourself, following the formatting of the three Wauja words we already have: a'napi, e'pi, and kamá. This will require a certain amount of tolerating the term "Waura" until we get around to changing the name, though. Don't forget to add Wauja words to the Translations section of English entries, too! (I checked, and "Waura" i.e. Wauja is already listed at water#Translations.) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:54, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
Support renaming. Probably my opinion doesn't carry much value here :-), but I have been in contact with Emi and she seems to have some real knowledge of this indigenous language of Brazil. The idea is for the wauja people to add entries to pt.wikt (where I do most of my work) because their second language is Portuguese; and for Emi to add the corresponding entries here because she's a native speaker of English who knows the wauja language. She seems to know what she's talking about and will be a serious contributor to the wauja cause.
@Emi-Ireland, ValJor I've renamed the language. If you know them, I would be most interested in learning the Wauja words for man, woman, and iron, and in confirming the Wauja translation we have of the word water, since those four English words are ones Wiktionary has managed to collect the most translations of. Note that some of those pages — especially water — may be so exceedingly large that you may find them difficult to edit if you have a slow internet connection. If that happens, you can just leave the translations on the associated talk pages. Cheers! - -sche(discuss)17:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Hmm, how did we come to have a "Proto-Inupik" in the first place? Let's see... Template:proto:esx-inu-pro was created in 2011 by User:Jakeybean. There are so many similar-sounding Arctic I-words that it's easy to lose track of which are alternative forms of which, and which are subsets or supersets of which, and I'm going to guess that's what happened here. Inupik is a group of (dia)lects, and it's possible that someone would try to reconstruct the proto-lect behind them all (people have done that for Basque), which may explain why "Proto-Inupik" gets a few Google hits besides us — but the code used here ("esx-inu", the code of the Inuit language family), and the existence and contents of Category:Inuktitut terms derived from Proto-Inupik, suggests that's not what was going on here. I support a rename. - -sche(discuss)18:41, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
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It seems to be markedly more common to call the language which has the code cbn "Nyah Kur", rather than "Nyahkur". I propose to rename it accordingly, moving its category and updating its one entry (which was notably added using the header "Nyah Kur"). - -sche(discuss)17:06, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
Done. - -sche (discuss) 18:57, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Support. We could well treat these as Finnish dialects, though I think to account for any local neologisms and such, they would deserve categories of their own under Category:Regional Finnish. --Tropylium (talk) 19:55, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
