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Nobiin language

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Géryì! Nobiin is a Nubian language spoken along the Nile in southern Egypt/northern Sudan. Its ancestor Old Nubian was the language of several consecutive Nubian kingdoms of the first milennium AD. Give it a read (that's what géryì means), it's intriguing. What does this article need in order to survive WP:FAC? Thanks for reviewing! — mark ✎ 10:53, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I made some changes to the introduction. Hope they're helpful. Kaisershatner 17:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed, thanks! I agree it's better this way. — mark ✎ 19:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone else have anything to say about this article? Would it survive FAC? Is it hopeless? (Or does it just look plain uninteresting to non-linguists?) — mark ✎ 09:44, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't have time to do a full review at the moment (maybe this evening), but some things I'd change before seeking featured article status:
    • The images dominate the article. The map and the photo of the Nubian wedding can be made smaller, the scan of the book cover I'd just leave out.
    • The sentence "Practically all speakers of Nobiin are bilingual in Arabic" is not supported by the Werner quote in fn. 1, who says the men are bilingual in Arabic, implying that the women are not usually bilingual.
      • The statement is comes from Burckhardt, but then I suppose that he could have based it only on his interaction with Nobiin men. I'll go and see what Werner does say exactly; I can well imagine that the women are less bilingual than the men. — mark ✎ 10:01, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't like forced fonts in tables. Use the IPA template where necessary in the table, otherwise allow the table to use the same fonts as the text. I'd follow the examples at Wikipedia:WikiProject Phonology Template for the consonant and vowel tables. And as suggested there, if there are vowel charts (the trapezoids with the dots on them indicating vowel position) anywhere in the literature, I'd say make one for Nobiin and use it instead of the vowel table.
    • Converted the tables to the ones of the WP Phonology Template; rewritten the sections on the phoneme inventory to include more phonotactics. I have not yet come across a phonetic vowel chart of Nobiin. — mark ✎ 09:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, it's looking a lot better. I'm wondering though what the circumstances are under which /s, t, k, f, g/ can turn into /h/. Is it morphosyntactically conditioned? If so, it's probably a case of consonant mutation and could link to that article. Or is it phonologically conditioned, or is it free variation, or what?
Werner (1987:36-7) doesn't define any morphosyntactical contexts for this process; I have quoted most of his examples but I'll add the two I omitted; on the basis of these examples, I'd say that it is free variation (though unidirectional); but I think his examples are too few too draw a conclusion. — mark ✎ 09:52, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Angr/talk 09:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • More later today. Angr/talk 10:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, here are the rest of my comments:
    • More info (actually, any info) about the writing system is needed, especially since the article asserts that Nobiin has a written history of over a thousand years. The letters in parentheses in the the table of the "Sounds" section suggest that the Latin alphabet is used today, but presumably it wasn't a thousand years ago. If Latin characters are used today, when did they replace the original script? Was the Arabic alphabet ever used? How many people are literate in Nobiin?
    • On a related point, orthography shouldn't be blended in with phonology. The consonant table should just have phonetic characters. Orthography should have a separate section, in which the sounds associated with each letter/digraph can be discussed.
    • Take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Template to see what points should be included in an ideal language article. It doesn't have to match that template exactly, but no major parts should be missing. What I miss from Nobiin is:
      • A discussion of its classification. How does it fit into the Nilo-Saharan language family? What are its closest relatives in the family? Does it have any dialects?
      • A discussion of its place in society. Does it have any official recognition in Egypt or Sudan? Related to this, but not in the template, are there any newspapers or radio/TV programs in Nobiin?
        • The short answer is no; it's really a marginalized language and matters have only got worse after het forced migration. I'll try to touch this point in the 'geography and demography' section. — mark ✎ 15:32, 21 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • The possessive pronoun chart looks ragged. Make a table here instead.
    • And on the references:
      • Some references are missing: Lepsius (1880) and Browne (2002) need to be added to the reference list.
      • The references need complete bibliographical information, including publisher's name. Consider using the {{book reference}} template.
      • The ISBN of Werner (1987) must be wrong: it has only 8 digits, not 10, and it doesn't begin with 3 (as all ISBNs from German publishers do).
  • And before you get the impression I have only negative things to say: Great work! I learned a lot from this article! Angr/talk 19:25, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've had a look at it before; it looked good back then and it looks great now. I think it might have some problems in an FAC due to its being smaller than more recent languages FAs, but personally I think it covers Nobiin very well. A good way to pad the article with more info would be a well-balanced paragraph or two about the written language and vocabulary, perhaps as separate sections too. / Peter Isotalo 09:07, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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