Talk:Greater North Borneo languages

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Move to "Greater North Borneo languages"

The concept of a single "Bornean" group (even as a geographic one) is outdated and scarcely attested. I don't think it merits its own article; it is at least not notable enough. No serious scholar on the languages of Borneo has ever referred to these families as "Bornean". This is unlike the Paleosiberian languages and Papuan languages, which are clearly defined in most publications as the remnant languages that are not part of any other family in the area where they are spoken (despite not forming a genetic family either). This article needs to be moved either to Languages of Borneo, which means that it would cover all languages in the island, regardless of language families; or to Greater North Borneo languages, which means that it would cover all the families native to Borneo except Greater Barito, in addition to Malayic, Chamic, Sundanese, and Rejang.

I am more inclined to the latter option, as it would strictly be genetic grouping, and thus much more relevant to the classification of the languages in the region. I will update the map in Malayo-Polynesian languages accordingly, so that it wouldn't confuse the readers. Tagging @kwamikagami and @Austronesier for opinions. Masjawad99^💬 02:42, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fine by me. A lot of articles like this were more or less placeholders while we worked on complete coverage and better sources. Though, the first idea (languages of Borneo) might be better as a subsection in the Borneo article. I don't know about Blench's AA-substratum idea. Maybe both places, if it's noteworthy? — kwami (talk) 04:44, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Kwamikagami: Thanks for the reply. I appreciate your contribution in starting hundreds of articles on languages btw; that is in no way an easy task to do. But some of these articles are seriously out of date now ahaha. Austronesier suggested to repurpose the Languages of Kalimantan article (which is just a wholesale copy of Ethnologue) as Languages of Borneo and move the section about AA substratum there. I think that would be the best way indeed. The list of languages in that article can be moved into something like List of languages of Indonesia (not yet an independent article, but I would like to develop it after expanding Languages of Indonesia). I will also start to clean up other articles on Austronesian languages. Masjawad99^💬 08:24, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with moving to "Greater North Borneo languages", which is the largest proposed genetic subgroup covering the languages which are dealt with here, excluding the Greater Barito languages which are already covered in "Barito languages". Currently, less than 100 articles link here, after I have removed the link to "Bornean languages" in the template Template:Bornean languages. We will have to check and clean up these links, but this will be an easy task, which can also be done after the move from the redirect page. The AA-substratum should be kept, not quite sure where. But then we must give credit to the true author of the proposal, Adelaar. (Roger Blench's more or less takes a free rider part here). –Austronesier (talk) 08:15, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering why he'd be the one proposing s.t. like that. Yes, definitely should give proper credit. — kwami (talk) 08:51, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@kwami: RB has gone out-of-Africa, following the footsteps of Greenberg and Fleming, with all it implies quality-wise. –Austronesier (talk) 10:50, 13 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]