Talk:North Syrian Arabic

Merge

The article should be merged with Iraqi Arabic, "North Syrian Arabic" refers to the dialect spoken around the Euphrates in Syria which is Iraqi Arabic, according to these sources: [1], [2], [3].

Language name: Arabic, Mesopotamian Spoken.
Population: 1,800,000 in Syria.
Region: Eastern Syria.
Alternate names: North Syrian Arabic, Furati, Mesopotamian Gelet Arabic.
Dialects : Euphrates Cluster.

Iraqi Arabic (also known as Mesopotamian Arabic [ISO 639-3], Mesopotamian Qeltu Arabic, Mesopotamian Gelet Arabic, Baghdadi Arabic, Furati, 'Arabi, Arabi, North Syrian Arabic) is a variety of Arabic spoken in the Mesopotamian basin of Iraq south of Baghdad as well as in neighboring Iran and eastern Syria.

Ethnologue is confusing and i'm not sure how reliable it is, it gives the same alternate names for Mesopotamian Arabic and North Mesopotamian Arabic - "Mesopotamian Qeltu Arabic". If these three dialects all have the same name then they must be describing the same dialect.

I believe the dialect spoken in Aleppo is not the same as the dialect spoken in Baghdad (Iraqi Arabic), so I think North Syrian Arabic needs merging with North Mesopotamian Arabic. Izzedine (talk) 05:10, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Anyone forthcoming with a view on this? Izzedine (talk) 09:17, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

dude ... Aleppo Arabic has some resemblance with the Mosel dialect but it is obviously much more related to Damascus'. The ethnologue information is bullshit. I don't know what that is but it is obviously not a reliable source on these matters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.218.108.234 (talk) 01:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Maunus, first of all, you overrode my rv without discussion. This is edit warring. Be careful. Second, before we talk anything, do you even speak Arabic? The merge request has no basis. Two native speakers decided a year ago against the merge (me and the IP). This is a very good number for such a rare and specialized topic. Who are you to argue against? What do you know about North Syrian and North Mesopotamian Arabic? They are as different as Spanish and Italian. Can you speak Syrian Arabic? Do you know any Arabic dialect? DID YOU EVEN READ THE ARTICLE?--HD86 (talk) 16:22, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be confused about how editing works here. BEing a native speaker holds no weight - sources do. I don't need to know anything about arabic to see that this article does not conform to how wikipedia articles should be. It has no sources. Your personal knowledge is not a source. Two native speakers a year ago merely contradicted two sources - they didn't provide anything but personal anecdotal conjecture. This is not how wikipedia works. I would suggest that you read up on policies and stop playing that you are the owner of this particular corner of wikipedia or that your apparent personal knowledge of the topic holds any sway untill you can show that it is based on reliable sources.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:34, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

IPA/Romanization

I agree with Kwamikagami that it looks werid to have everything in romanization except for the glottal/pharyngeal stops. At the very least the article should explain why it chooses that transliteratio scheme. It doesn't now. And the description of the phonology is written in a way so that the reader has to know about the phonology of other varieties in order to understand what is going on. A better introduction to the phonological system would give the entire inventory and a key to and explanation of the orthographic system in use. That being said I think it was a bad idea for Kwamikagami to revert a second time when he saw that his changes were not being accepted. That was the correct moment for the D in WP:BRD.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:22, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't care so much about the mix of romanization and IPA letters (though I agree that it looks bad), but there are two more fundamental problems here: formatting the transcriptions as if they were IPA when they are not, and formatting letters differently within the same word, which screws up the display. What we have now would be like formatting a Persian word with {{lang-fa}} only on the letters specific to the Persian alphabet, and formatting the rest of the word with {{lang-ar}}. Choose some other template than {{IPA}} when you aren't transcribing into the IPA, and place the entire word or phrase within the template, not just the letters which otherwise wouldn't display correctly. — kwami (talk) 21:17, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Sources

This article is in dire need of verification through references to reliable sources. There is no reason that any editor should see information in this article as being authoritative before sources are introduced - this could easily be simply a lot of original, unverifiable research - there is no way we can know. The choice of a nonstandard transcription system that mixes IPA with roman symbols can only be justified if it is in commone use in reliable sources. Simply stating "I am an expert because I wrote the article" is not an admissible argument for reversion.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:30, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

The article definitly needs references, but it is not "in dire need" of references since it is mostly consistent with common knowledge on the subject and there is nothing weird or peculiar that would make you think it is original research and require you to use such a strong phrase as "dire need." Second, this is a very specialized topic and you will never find any source dealing specifically with this topic. You will find it only covered partly within different references. It takes only someone with good knowledge of the subject to compose such an article. If you really have the above impression about the article, then it is obvious that you have no background in the subject.--HD86 (talk) 16:03, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

'common knowledge' holds no authority in wikipedia. If the topic is too specialized to have any sources then the article should not be here in wikipedia. Wikipedia does not publish common knowledge - only knowledge that is verifiable through reliable sources.·Maunus·ƛ· 17:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Well you're right. I have a confession to make, this article is actually an original research of mine. You were true about that. It is mostly things that I have made up myself and you won't find them in any reference.--HD86 (talk) 21:35, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

It is probably very well done research I am sure - but ublishing research is not really what wikipedia is for. You should consider writing it up into a research article and publish it in a journal.·Maunus·ƛ· 21:57, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

It's a shame to loose it, but the problem is that we have no way of judging the accuracy of the material. Most things like this are fine, and I agree with Maunus that this probably is good material as well, but it only takes a few cases of fraud to make WP less reliable--like the Nigerian 'color alphabet' I came across earlier this year. — kwami (talk) 22:30, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Merge and redirect to Syrian Arabic

Since this article has remained a stub, without inline citations, for eight years, I'm doing a merge and redirect to Syrian Arabic.

Furthermore, "North Syrian Arabic" is not a widely-used or recognized linguistic term. A Google Books search returns only two results that use "North Syrian Arabic" as a proper noun/name or language subgroup; one of them defining it as the "dialect spoken in Aleppo". Most Google hits for "North Syrian Arabic" trace back to this article, so I'm concerned about Wikipedia promoting a term that is not generally used in scholarship. The references given in the article don't use the term "North Syrian Arabic", but rather "Arabic Dialects of Aleppo", and "Dialects of Syria: Aleppo, Damascus...".

In terms of notability, it is the dialect of Aleppo that is of interest. The material that was formerly in the article (removed for being original research) was in general about the Aleppo dialect. "North Syrian Arabic" seems to be an invented term that either means the Aleppo dialect (which might be notable), or the set of all dialects found in northern Syria (which, as a group, separate from other Syrian or North Levantine dialects, does not seem to be a notable subject). In any case, currently there doesn't seem to be any good reason for a separate article, and Syrian Arabic is sufficient to discuss the different dialects. --IamNotU (talk) 18:48, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Some further information: the one book source that uses it is The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics [4], which is a major work. The authors explain that they decided to use the Ethnologue categorizations (see the "Merge" disussion above), as they are the most comprehensive. Ethnologue is also a very serious work, and I would say both are definitely reliable sources. Ethnlologue gives "North Syrian Arabic" as a synonym for "Mesopotamian Arabic". But the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics doesn't actually use it in the text, just in an index. The phrase doesn't mean much if nobody really uses it. It's certainly not a WP:COMMONNAME for it, and I haven't seen it used anywhere else. I think they invented it, to fit in with their system. So basically this article, "North Syrian Arabic" should not exist, as anything but a redirect, as there is no notability for it. The question is whether to redirect to Mesopotamian Arabic, or to the general Syrian Arabic. As it's not really an accepted name for Mesopotamian Arabic, and people searching Wikipedia for the term will most likely be looking for the Aleppo dialect, or an overview of Arabic use in northern Syria, I'm going to go ahead with the redirect to Syrian Arabic. There won't be a merge, so it's just blank-and-redirect. --IamNotU (talk) 02:43, 15 July 2018 (UTC)