User:ECardwell/sandbox

Article Evaluation

"Swedish Alphabet"

This article is excellent in its citations and hyperlinks, with every single claim being cited, and with every hyperlink functioning properly. Being a native Swedish speaker, I was also able to check the pronunciation of each of the sounds that the article mentioned, and they are all correct, which is very hard to do because of the large variety in Swedish pronunciation. The article is effective in conveying this, however, mentioning the variants in each of the consonant and consonant-combination sounds, as the pronunciation in Swedish changes depending on what type of letter follows the target consonant/consonant-combination.

Because the article is very unbiased and simply tries to explain the Swedish alphabet and its sounds objectively, there is not a large amount of citations, but that is because the article is not full of claims. For the pronunciation part, the IPA is hyperlinked, and in the sections on grammar and eccentricities, there are citations to reputable sources, namely Swedish grammar books and Swedish academic articles/journals.

One could argue that the article needs more information, but when explaining a language's alphabet and just that, I find that the length of this article is very appropriate. Not only is the pronunciation of each letter included, but also the combination of each letter, which is not necessarily required when labeled "Swedish alphabet."

The "talk" section is varied in the different discourses, and many of the topics seem to be brought up by non-native Swedish speakers. Some people suggested the removal of the three unique Swedish letters, å, ä, and ö, and replacing them with aa, ae, and oe, respectively. However, these are simply part of the alphabet, and are in fact not pronounced the same as the suggested vowel combinations. In this case, they can not be referred to as "umlauts," because that term refers to the Germanic eccentricity, which the article discusses pretty effectively. The talk page here seems to be subjective and variegated, and not directly related to the quality of the article.

Again, as a native Swedish speaker, I was pleased with the article, and agree with everything that I read. The citations were rather small in number, but that is due to the nature of the article being objective and simply stating facts. The hyperlinks all work, and all add important information to the article.

"Proto-Celtic Language"

This article is well-written, and has clearly been by someone with great knowledge in the field of linguistics/historical linguistics. It deals with Proto-Celtic language much like other language articles on Wikipedia, despite the lack of knowledge on the old, obscure language, which is very helpful to a reader. In addition to the layout, the information, all of which is claiming or stating something as fact, is supported by evidence and reputable sources. The reference section, though not super extensive due to the obscurity of the article, is extensive enough to cover the points proposed in the article.

The article explains the change of consonants and vowels over time, and does so in comparison to other languages, which here are best defined as "sister languages."--Welsh and Old Irish. One statement in the first paragraph says that the Proto-Celtic language is a derivative, or close relative of, the Proto-Italic family. The evidence is scanty, but it is substantiated with a few references. This, from my experience with Gaelic Irish and Latin, makes a lot of sense. A lot of simple words are similar enough to where the relation is immediately noticeable, and if not so, is clear after having read the article and/or done some study on articulation of consonants and vowels. One example: the word for "God" in Latin is "deus" in the nominative, masculine, singular, and is "dia" in Gaelic Irish, though I am less versed and experienced in the Irish declensions and conjugations. The similarities are immediately recognizable, even to those who are not familiar with linguistics and language change. In Latin, though, the feminine, nominative, singular form "dea" would probably be a better comparison.

There are more words used as comparison, including numerals, familial diction, words of status or reverence, etc., and many of them are similar to the Romance root, making the Italic similarities a strong possibility.

The "Talk" section of this page is once again variegated, with people deliberating and arguing about many different things. One argument that was immediately noticeable was the layout of the article and the consonant changes, saying that a logical layout according to place of articulation or manner of the consonants would make more sense. I agree that it would make more sense, as the current layout is a little haphazard, but the original author is steadfast in standing by the original layout, saying that it makes sense in context.

The morphology is extremely interesting to see, especially in the tabular form. Being a student of Latin and Ancient Greek, I am familiar with the different cases and their usages, something that I find interesting when transposed onto a different culture/language. Even more fascinating is the fact that the language is supposedly Proto-Italic in relation, thus making the similarity in cases more revealing. In addition to the case systems, the endings of the cases are similar to that of Latin, with -m being a common ending for the accusative case. The genitive, though not always, has an -i stem, which seems to be present in many of the Proto-Celtic forms. The masculine words often have a strong -u, -o, or -us, the neuter a -u or -um, and the feminine an -a, which parallels clearly with the genders and significant letters in Latin, and even Ancient Greek.

This article is very unbiased, and seems to present the information in a logical, indifferent manner, with the matter-of-fact statements mostly, if not always, being substantiated by articles and evidence. The hyperlinks all work and are relevant. Rather than explaining certain things in the Proto-Celtic language" article, the author has decided to hyperlink jargon and esoteric terms, which makes more sense anyway, allowing the author to stay on topic. I agree with everything that I read, though a lot of the linguistic information is a little over my head, and I find it very informative and interesting.

"Prestige (Sociolonguistics)"

Prestige is an interesting topic, and certainly has some real-world manifestations. The article is written in an impartial manner, and seems to be trying to simply define the idea of prestige in sociolinguistics. When I first read the article, it was hard to apply the definition to a real-world example, but the thoroughness of the article clarified that definition. Instead of being solely abstract and ideological, the article makes mention of the idea of people seeing certain modern languages, or language dialects, as the best of that group. For example, Standard Arabic, the one used in most literature, is generally considered as the prestige variety. In contrast to Egyptian Arabic, Literary Arabic is the one that garners more prestige. The article explained that people often consider the most common form of a language to be the prestige variety, but that it is not always the case. Again, though Literary Arabic is more prestigious and considered the prestige variety, Egyptian Arabic is the form that is most readily-available, especially in mass-media.

Another example is Latin and it being regarded as a prestige variety, but this time of a different language. The prestige variety is not necessarily a different form of the same language, but can be the most prestigious among a group of different languages. Latin is often thought of as elegant and beautiful, but also relatively difficult or logically-complex, and is associated often with classical literature, the catholic church, etc. At other times in Europe's history, French and Italian were considered the prestige variety of a common pool of European languages. The breadth of the examples not only proved the well-read nature of the author, but also helped explain what prestige in sociolinguistics is, as it is a relatively fuzzy term. The breadth of the examples also aids in the unbiased standpoint maintained in this article, stating that no language is inherently better or worse than each other, as they all are complex, unique, and have merit.

The "Talk" section of the article reveals that it is a very new article, and as a result of that, does not have very much information in this section. One of the sections in the "Talk" section was about the correct hyperlinking on all of the article's hyperlinks, and that appears to be correct. The hyperlinks all worked, and they were all appropriate to prestige in sociolinguistics. Another section talked about an extraneous reference in the references section, one that was not actually referenced in the text. Though a minute mistake, having it fixed would be good. Having an extra reference is better than missing one, in my opinion. There is not much regarding content in the "Talk" page, which is probably due both to the thoroughness of the article and the short time it has been up.

I agree with the argumentation of the article, and find the information compelling and convincing. I never thought of the different attitudes toward languages and dialects in this way before. But, when a reference was made to Latin and to English, I understood the references quite well. British English is often seen as a high, formal, and fancy type of English, while Latin, for a very long time, has been regarded as elite or esoteric. Prestige seems like a natural phenomenon, and could most likely be applied to all kinds of socio-economic-cultural things, as a preference will always be made or established, especially if there is a commonality, a size difference, a geographical, or sociogeographical difference.

The article is rated as a C-class, which means that there is some room for improvement. If I were to improve the article more, I would provide additional examples, as well as describe the ideological approach more thoroughly, as the introductory paragraphs did not do much for me in terms of explaining the concept.

"Heritage Language Learning"

This article is my first encounter with heritage learning, and it is very fascinating. When first reading the article, the definition of a heritage language seems to be almost identical as one's native language. However, the article goes on to distinguish the two in great depth. The native language is the first language to which someone is introduced, usually at a young age, and is one that a person will often claim as their primary language. Heritage language is one that is taught because of origin, ancestry, familial ties, etc., and is one that is often maintained in the house, like a cultural heritage. This language, though not always, is not as strong as the native language, and many times the native or dominant language is the one that is taught at school or in the person's environment. This is one of the reasons why the heritage language is often not as fluent as the native language.

This article is especially interesting to me, because I think my situation is an example of a type of heritage language learning. I was born in the United States, moved to Sweden at a young age and stayed until adolescence, at which point I moved back to the United States, while then maintaining my Swedish with my brother and Swedish friends. By doing this, I had a mixed sense of my native language; at one point, I was more than likely perfectly bilingual, not having a preference to a language due to any knowledge difference. Now, however, because I have spent most of my late academic life in the United States, and because my brother passed away recently, I would consider English to be my dominant language, with Swedish as my heritage language. I'm unsure how to apply the term native language in this context though; I think Swedish and English could both be argued as being my native language.

This article not only discusses the idea of heritage language, but also explores the ways in which it is both taught and lost. I can attest to some of the examples given, which is why I find this article so interesting and compelling. The argumentation of acquisition is lengthy, but only in a good way; the thoroughness allows the reader to understand the means by which ordinary people maintain or lose their heritage language. In many cases, the language is one that is taught at home from family and friends, or one that is explored via vacations to the location in which the language spoken. This interspersed learning seems to be a good reason for the often non-fluency of the language, and how the more fluent language is the dominant language. Though it is not explained, I would venture to guess that a heritage language could be very specific, such as an amalgamation of two languages that has occurred due to their specific circumstances. As in my case, some of the conversation at home, at least when first having returned to the United States, was in a language that my brother and I termed "Svengelska," a make-belief word, or at least not officially coined, that refers to the English-Swedish hybrid spoken at home. After having aged more in the United States and having amassed a more formal vocabulary, the everyday Swedish to which I was accustomed was difficult to cross-translate. Sometimes my English would have Swedish words or structures, but many times it was my Swedish that would have English words or structures, such as prepositional phrases and idioms.

The argumentation of the article is very thorough, and it addresses many facets of the learning of a heritage language. The different sections have informational, appropriate titles, and all of the claims are linked to documentation and the sources, though the reference section is not as long as the citations would suggest. The large number of examples, along with the careful explanation of the topic, means that this is a good article with solid, compelling argumentation. There is always room for improvement though; in this case, I would say that comparison of heritage language with other linguistic topics would be interesting, as well as beneficial to the readers's understanding of the definition of heritage language.

"Lexicon"

This article is interesting for a number of reasons. I very much enjoy languages and the field of linguistics. Being a student of Classics, the term "lexicon" is used very often. In my field, a lexicon is essentially a dictionary that contains every word of a given language; in this case, one for Latin, and one for ancient Greek. In linguistics, the term "lexicon" refers to a given person's word bank, or words that they know. Often one's lexicon is of a certain language, and contains things that a dictionary would not, such as affixes. Although all affixes are hard to independently translate, there is usually an assigned meaning to those for a given person. The word comes from the ancient Greek "λεξικόν," which means "of words," or something similar. The lexicon of a person is often thought of as consisting of two parts: a lexicon and a grammar. A person's grammar is more or less the rules and systems by which a person puts words together, forms sentences, and effectively creates meaning.

The article goes on to explain more things that a lexicon includes. Supposedly, compound words, idiomatic expressions, slang, and other collocations are part of a person''s lexicon, which makes total sense. In many languages, if not every, certain words do not carry their usual meaning in certain contexts. The idiomatic expression, "it's raining cats and dogs," would literally not make any sense, but an appropriate speaker of English would know that it means "a hard rain." There are many other examples of idioms, but the important part is to realize that a lexicon is not merely individual words, but combinations of words or components of words.

After explaining what a lexicon is, the article goes on to explain "lexicalization," which is a term that refers to the creation of a person's lexicon, and the means by which things are added thereto. The mechanisms are innovation, borrowing, compounding, abbreviation, acronym, inflection, derivation, and agglutination. Although these are not all means by which a person adds to their lexicon, they deal with language acquisition and the establishment of one's lexicon.

New words are neologisms, and are candidates for being placed into one's lexicon. A lexeme is added to one's lexicon if they gain wide usage over time, which is important. because the lexicon of an English speaker from 1900 would not be the same as that of an English speaker from 2000. Lexica are not only language-specific, but also time-sensitive. Under the subheading "Neologisms" is a section that explains how and why words are added. Words can be guestwords, foreignisms, or loanwords, all of which are very similar. If a word is borrowed from a different language, and is widely used in the unoriginal language, it may be added to the lexicon of a person in the unoriginal language, as a new meaning has been established. Although the word usually has the same meaning as it did in the original language, it is important to note that this is not always the case. An example would be the word "noir," which in French means "black." However, in English, the term refers to a certain genre of literature or film, and is often associated with moral depravity and a range of emotions.

The article is written very well, has a clear introduction and explanation of the topic, and does a good job in going through the different aspects and components of the topic. The hyperlinks all work, and the references are included. My only qualm with the article would be the length and breadth of sources. If I were more knowledgeable on the topic, I would add more studies or examples, and then add references for those things; this would make the article more in-depth, and would mean that the article is more foolproof.

"Irish Language"

The article is interesting from the very beginning, starting off with a number of different names or terminologies for the language and language group. It is classified and recognized in Ireland as one of the official languages, and is the first national official language of Ireland. The language is an ancient one, and is part of the Indo-European language family, and has undergone many changes over the years. Not only is Irish on the decline in terms of native speakers, but different forms of the language exist. There is Primitive Irish, Old Irish, Middle Irish, Early Modern Irish etc., all of which have similarities, and which evolved respectively. Early Modern Irish is the most common among the Irish literature, and flourished between the 13th and 18th centuries. There are still many native speakers of Irish, but the numbers are extremely low in comparison to times of old. Diglossia is one of the main reasons for the diminishing of the language; Irish-speaking grandparents have bilingual children, who then have monolingual English children. In this way, the Irish language is slowly dying out. English has become a more useful, practical language, and it's importance often outshines Irish. The factors that led to Irish losing its ground in the eastern parts of the country are: 1) discouragement of its use by the Anglo-British administrators, 2) the Catholic church supporting the use of English over Irish, and 3) the spread of bilingualism from the 1750s, resulting in language shift.

Irish, as a language, spread some too; the Isle of Man, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, etc. all have forms of the language. In Ireland, many efforts have been taken to preserve and revive the language. It is taught in schools, with a high emphasis on fluency, and many political and bureaucratic exchanges are carried out in Irish in certain counties. In addition, there are areas throughout Ireland, mainly on the western coast, where Irish is spoken to an extent as a first language. These areas are rural, and are referred to as Gaeltacht. Irish youngsters are encouraged to spend summers in these areas in order to learn Irish, where they stay with Irish families and are obliged to speak in Irish. Immersion learning is great for learning languages, so I am fairly certain that these summer camps or schools have proven to be successful.

The language is like many old languages in that it is inflected, and it has complex verb and case systems, which, as a Classics student, I am extremely drawn to. In November 2016, Irish was introduced on Duolingo, the iPhone language-learning app. I actually downloaded the application around that time, and very much enjoyed the experience. The language is difficult, and the morphological and phonetic aspects are very complex. The pronunciation is probably the most difficult aspect for me, as a seeming jumble of consonants, and sometimes vowels, creates a rather simple sound.

The article is written very well, and is extremely informative. The sections are labeled clearly, and they appear in a logical order. There are many references and hyperlinks, all of which add prestige and authority to the article. The one thing that the article seems to be lacking is a clear explanation of Irish grammar. The article talks about the language and the history of the language and its use, but does not do much in terms of explaining grammar.