Wiktionary:Proto-Bodish entry guidelines

	This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. This is a draft proposal. It is unofficial, and it is unknown whether it is widely accepted by Wiktionary editors.
	Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

Proto-Bodish, as defined for Wiktionary's reconstruction pages, is the reconstructed ancestor of the Tibetic (including Tibetan) and East Bodish languages, or collectively the Bodish languages. "Bodish" (and the related term "Bodic") has had many definitions, but the definition that restricts "Bodish" to Tibetic and East Bodish can be credited to Nathan W. Hill.

Many Proto-Bodish words are reconstructed in {{R:sit:Bodt 2023}}. Bodt, however, calls his reconstructed proto-language "Proto-Bodic". Despite that, since Bodt's reconstructions are solely based on what Hill would call "Bodish" and do not take into account correspondences with any other "Bodic" branch, it is more accurate to call his reconstructed words "Proto-Bodish".

The spelling of Proto-Bodish lemmas is based off of Bodt, but with some considerations:

• Bodt marks, with parentheses, pre-initials that appear in Tibetan but do not have any direct reflex in East Bodish.
• Bodt marks all 'a chung, both as an initial and pre-initial, with ḥ, implying it is some sort of fricative.
  • Marking the value as an initial that way is fine.
  • However, an apostrophe (') should be used instead in pre-initial position, since the value of 'a chung pre-initially is still debated between /ɣ/ or a nasal and the apostrophe would be less suggestive of one's preferred value for 'a chung here. In fact, Bodt reconstructs nasal origins for multiple 'a chungs in Tibetan.
  • 'A chung as a final should not be projected to any value Proto-Bodish phonetic value, since it is disputed the letter represented anything phonetically in Tibetan final position. Such final 'a chung should be ignored.
• Bodt breaks up multisyllabic words with periods; either spaces or no space at all should be used instead.

Unlike traditional uses of "East Bodish" as a wastebasket taxon containing both Bumthangic (Bumthang, Kheng, Kurtöp and the like) and Dakpa-Dzala (self-explanatory), Bodt finds Dakpa-Dzala to be significantly closer to Tibetic than it is to Bumthangic ("Other East Bodish"). This leads to the conclusion that "East Bodish" as traditionally defined must be rejected. For the purposes of these descendants sections, Dakpa-Dzala is not included under East Bodish.

The following taxonomy is used in Proto-Bodish descendant sections. It is not exhaustive (e.g. there are many more Tibetic languages than listed here).

• Tibetic
  • Dzongkha
  • Sherpa
  • Sikkimese
  • Tibetan
• Dakpa-Dzala
  • Dakpa
  • Dzala
• East Bodish
  • Bumthang
  • Kheng
  • Kurtöp

All Bodish descendants should be spelled with Tibetic script. However, many references mainly give Latin-script transcriptions; ask User:Thadh for advice on how to convert them to Tibetic script. If you do not know how to spell a descendant, put the transcription in the |ts= parameter of {{desc}} for someone else to handle later. This comes with multiple cautions:

• All syllable-final stop consonants must be spelled with voiced stop letters. Even though non-Tibetic syllable-final stops are voiceless, they are still typically spelled with voiced stop letters in transcriptions and orthographies. The transliteration module will transliterate the voiced stop letters into voiceless consonants; do not worry.
• Beware that special digraphs and trigraphs, etc. are in use to transcribe features of non-Tibetic languages that Tibetic script did not originally account for. See the "East Bodish" code section of Module:Tibt-translit for some of these multigraphs (if you understand some Lua).