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IPA tones

Kwamikagami has been changing all numerical Chao tones into tone sticks, in articles on East and SE Asian languages. For example, 33 should be used, not ˧.

I am a specialist who works in this field and strongly recommend against this. Nowadays, Southeast Asian linguists do not use tone sticks to mark tones. This is something that only old-fashioned Sinologists do now. If in doubt, you can e-mail linguists working on SE Asian languages or take a look at STEDT.

This is the equivalent of converting IAST into IPA on all Indo-Aryan articles, Semitic transcriptions into IPA, or especially turning combining accents in African languages into tone sticks.

Can we get community consensus on this first? Please ping active linguistics editors if you can. Lingnanhua (talk) 23:38, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Or if Kwamikagami insists on using tone sticks, we need to at least have the numerical tones and tone sticks placed side-by-side, similar to how many IAST and Semitic transcriptions are complemented by IPA. One way to implement this is to create a template that displays both numeral tones and tone sticks. Kwamikagami has agreed on his talk page that using such a template would be a good idea. Lingnanhua (talk) 23:57, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

We have a longstanding consensus to use IPA as the default transcription of pronunciation on WP. What you're arguing is essentially like insisting on Americanist phonetic notation for languages in the USA but encoding it as IPA. It's not necessarily a problem to use local conventions, but they shouldn't be the default, and we should always define what they mean. If you transcribe a tonic syllable as [se31], the reader won't be able tell if that's supposed to be a rising tone or a falling tone, and if falling, if it's a high-falling or a mid-falling tone.

It's fine to use specialist transcriptions, as long as we clearly define what we mean by it. Wikipedia is, after all, a global resource, not intended just for Sinologists and SE Asianists. You'll notice that for IAST transcription of Indic languages, they're tagged as IAST and linked to a key (or at least they should be). The problem is not just that the digits are not IPA, but that they are undefined. '3', for example, might be high pitch, mid pitch or low pitch, and which it is varies from language to language and even from author to author. In the languages I've worked on, for example, '1' is HIGH and '5' is LOW, and I've worked briefly with material where '1' is LOW but '2', '3', '4' or even '6' is HIGH. It's very confusing to try to read something where all the tone numbers are the inverse of what they're "supposed" to mean. Chao tone letters don't have that problem. As for combining diacritics, those are also IPA and unambiguous, so there's no problem using them. — kwami (talk) 01:34, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

There is an argument to be made for sticking to the original transcription. Mithun in her Languages of Native North America kept all the original transcriptions, even if they were archaic and opaque, to avoid corrupting data with her judgements of what it should be. (Especially a problem when the original has a typo and converting it obscures what it could be a typo for.) On WP, though, where our readers may be naive to the many orthographies and conventions that have been used over the centuries, we usually normalize unless there's some reason not to. For instance, rather than giving the pronunciation of an English word in Webster's, OED or Random House transcription, we will normalize it to our own in-house IPA convention, so that our articles are in agreement with each other. Specialist works can afford to be more persnickety, and works targeted to a limited audience (such as SE Asianists) can afford to ignore the rest of the world, but WP can't. — kwami (talk) 01:45, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

It's hardly a limited audience. Usage is on par with specialist linguistic transcriptions used for the languages of South Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We have specialists working in Sinology (Sinitic lgs), Austroasiatic lgs, Kra-Dai lgs, Hmong-Mien lgs, and even Austronesian lgs who all use this transcription. That is basically half of the Asian continent, and a large proportion of world's language diversity. We are already using IAST and other specialist transcriptions for the Indosphere, so there is no reason why the same can't be done for the Sinosphere and SE Asia. Lingnanhua (talk) 02:03, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
That *is* a limited audience. If you count the number of publications that use imperial units, you might claim that's not a limited audience either, but the global standard is metric. The global standard for phonetics is IPA. — kwami (talk) 02:10, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
US geography articles use imperial units, but there are templates to convert them for non-US readers. Wikipedia does not force readers to use *only* metric units because that would be highly impractical for the "limited audience" of US readers. Same goes for SE Asian languages. Lingnanhua (talk) 02:23, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
The original Sinologist/Mainland SE Asian transcriptions should nevertheless be preserved. They are so widely used that we must preserve the original transcriptions, like for IAST. Americanist transcriptions from many decades ago can often be converted because they tend to be obsolete and ambiguous, but Sinologist transcriptions are still used as standard in the 21st century. Lingnanhua (talk) 01:55, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
NAPA notation is also still standard in the 21st century, and it's no more ambiguous than MSEA transcription. There are even publications that in the year 2021 insist on NAPA and say they will reject submissions transcribed in IPA. You see the problem? You are personally not familiar with NAPA transcription, so you think it should be replaced by IPA, while you are familiar with your local convention, so think the rest of the world should cater to it. But an Americanist will likely feel the opposite: that MSEA transcription is a bizarre local convention that should be replaced by proper IPA, but that NAPA is ubiquitous in the literature and should therefore be replicated on WP. Everyone feels that their way, how they were educated in school, is the correct way of doing things, and that the rest of the world needs to accept it. The only global convention is IPA. — kwami (talk) 02:06, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I actually strongly support the usage of NAPA in recent publications. I'm only saying that obsolete NAPA-like transcriptions from the early 1900s can be converted (to either NAPA or IPA). If it's standard NAPA, I would much rather have Wikipedia use that than converted IPA. But that's a different story. Lingnanhua (talk) 02:13, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I don't think proper NAPA should be converted to IPA. It's being used like IAST in many ways. But that's for the Americanists to weigh in on, not me. Lingnanhua (talk) 02:17, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

But instead of arguing over ideology, let's just start making the template. Lingnanhua (talk) 03:26, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

  • Comment My take on it: use IPA standard in phonetic square brackets, but don't alter numeric tones in phonemic slashes or in conventionalized Latin transcriptions where obiously no full IPA-ization is intended. E.g. the change of Taishan ngwoi33 to ngwoi˧ in Tone_(linguistics)#Tone and inflection is pointless when it's obvious from the initial "ngw" that no IPA transcription is intended. –Austronesier (talk) 10:18, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
That's probably a good idea. And whatever you do, don't completely replace the original transcription with standard IPA, because I have seen many conversion errors where Kwamikagami converted from the original to IPA without preserving the original. Lingnanhua (talk) 13:41, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I'd be curious what conversion errors you've found. But that rather proves my point: if I'm confused by a transcription, how many of our readers will also be? IPA is one thing, because it's the international standard. Any local or idiosyncratic convention needs to be clearly explained in each article it occurs in. — kwami (talk) 09:06, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
I would also concur with Austronesier. The coincidentally relates to some of the confusion in the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC? thread, in which some (at least two) respondents have not been clearly distinguishing between explicit pronunciation material provided by {{IPA-xx}} and {{Respell}}, versus names/words in running text.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:09, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure there is any MSEA standard. I've seen forms ranging from IPA to plain Latin, usually with Chao pitch levels for phonetic transcription and often tone categories in phonemic transcription. There doesn't seem to be a parallel with IAST, which is a transliteration scheme like Wylie or Yale Korean. The issue of fidelity doesn't apply to the tone notation, since the Chao pitch levels 1–5 are in one-to-one correspondence with the IPA tone letters. (I've also seen 6 used, but for a level outside the speaker's normal pitch range.) Kanguole 16:59, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
FWIW, Enfield's The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia is out now. Needless to say (←tried to bite my tongue, but can't), Enfield uses Chao 1-to-5 pitch levels in an otherwise very strict IPA notation. I think this is de facto standard. NB: The book is intended for a wide audience not necessarily familiar with the area, and apparently the series editors did not consider the use of Chao numbers as something esoteric and inaccessible to non-specialists. –Austronesier (talk) 18:38, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
It's still a local standard. For other areas it's backwards. Ambiguous conventions need explanation, and there's no conversion problem to make them IPA. — kwami (talk) 11:10, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
In any case, I agree to use strict IPA in strictly phonetic notation. This is first of all the case where you can't deliver the pronunciation with a full baggage of explanations, e.g. when giving the native pronunciation of a lemma in the lead. Otherwise, it depends on context and what we want to illustrate. If I were e.g. to expand the phonology section of Majang language based on Joswig (2019), I would probably use strict IPA for the tones at the beginning and explain how it translates into Joswig's notation, but then proceed to use the transcription of the source.
What about Help:IPA/Mandarin then? It uses IPA with Pinyin tone diacritics. Unlike IPA with Chao numbers, that's a hybrid convention I have rarely encountered outside of WP. –Austronesier (talk) 14:34, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Help:IPA/Mandarin uses normal IPA, with the simplification that the 'dipping' tone is analyzed as low. — kwami (talk) 18:50, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
Oh yes, my dumb! –Austronesier (talk) 09:16, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment In principle, I agree with Kwami - in Wikipedia, all phonetic data needs to be presented in IPA, or it needs to be made very explicit in which way the transcription deviates from IPA. That, however, does not mean that all transcribed data needs to follow the IPA - that rather depends on the level of representation. If the transcription already represents analyzed data on the phonemic or underlying level, then of course the character inventory can be quite different from IPA. But even then there needs to be a clear key as to what these characters would stand for in terms of IPA. Kwami is right that it is not acceptable if only readers initiated to the regional jargon can fully grasp what the pronunciation of data would be. There is a very similar situation in Ethiopic studies, where uninitiated readers are left at a loss as to what to make of some vowels and consonants. Landroving Linguist (talk) 12:47, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Template

@Kwamikagami: Can someone with enough experience with templates create a template for tonal SEA languages, equivalent to Template:IAST?

I would suggest naming it Template:MSEA for the Mainland Southeast Asian linguistic area. Lingnanhua (talk) 01:24, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I can do that if you give me a little time. Could you create the key, with IPA equivalents to all the non-IPA characters, and which characters may be ambiguous? — kwami (talk) 01:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
Can @Kanguole: or @Tibetologist: help create a key? There is probably already a key published somewhere. I will be compiling a key, but it would help if we can cross-check each other's work. Lingnanhua (talk) 01:39, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Opinions sought on the appropriate link target (if any) for individual English words that are being listed as words in articles such as List of Greek and Latin roots in English/A. Discussion thread here. Cross-posting here since it seems the talk page I started the discussion on doesn't have many watchers. I'm tempted to boldly implement my preferred change soon in the absence of any objections, but it would involve big diffs spread over at least 27 articles, so I don't want to give the appearance of a WP:FAIT-style action. Colin M (talk) 00:05, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Need help with language template

Hi folks. I'm having a problem using the Farsi (lang-fa) template at Hamid Jasemian. Somehow I can't get the characters in the right order, probably due to Farsi being right-to-left writing system. Could someone please help? Robby.is.on (talk) 10:47, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

@Robby.is.on: What you did looks good on my browser. — kwami (talk) 19:58, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
@Kwamikagami: Sorry, I should have been clearer: It does look fine here, too. But the source text doesn't. Robby.is.on (talk) 10:53, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't know what that means. It sounds like you're saying your sources are badly typeset. I checked if maybe you meant the html code for the article, that looks fine on my browser too. — kwami (talk) 22:24, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
Ah, must be a browser thing. Firefox is fine but Safari is not. Thanks! Robby.is.on (talk) 23:24, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

ConLang Code Registry

Since there are several parameters just for conlangs and many of them don't have standard codes, you may want to add a parameter for the ConLang Code Registry. The list is extensive, and Rebecca G. Bettencourt operates the Under-ConScript Unicode Registry. --Error (talk) 20:31, 6 April 2021 (UTC) [copied from infobox talk page by — kwami (talk)]

What do people think? We have more conlang articles than we used to; last time I remember s.t. like this coming up we didn't even have articles for all the conlangs with ISO codes, with the argument that they weren't notable. I went through them and added the art-x-... codes from the Registry (though I was reverted for Enochian). But for the more formal-looking private use (q...) ISO codes, I'd like to see some indication that they're useful as identifiers. Is there any kind of consistency? — kwami (talk) 00:16, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I suspect, from the inability of anyone I know to contact them, that the ConLang Code Registry is no longer being maintained. — kwami (talk) 05:15, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

FAR for Tamil language

I have nominated Tamil language for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. (t · c) buidhe 17:37, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Pennsylvania German language requested move

There's a proposal to move Pennsylvania German language to "Pennsylvania Dutch language" here. I'm interested in this project's input. Nardog (talk) 17:40, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to move the Expand language template to Talk pages

A discussion about moving the {{Expand language}} template (and its associated templates, {{Expand French}}, {{Expand Spanish}}, and so on) from article pages to Talk pages is taking place at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2021 April 16#Template:Expand language. Your feedback would be appreciated. Mathglot (talk) 20:34, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

ANI notice

There is an open ANI thread about a user's behavior in your topic area. I've recently proposed a remedy for the situation. Thanks, –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 09:35, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Most viewed High-importance stubs in this Wikiproject

--Coin945 (talk) 04:10, 19 June 2021 (UTC)


A bunch of other widely-viewed articles in a shocking state:

Nomination of Slovio for deletion

This had been deleted, then a few years later recreated by backtranslating from WP-de. Its only real notability seems to be that it has a Wikipedia article.

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Slovio is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Slovio (3rd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article.

— kwami (talk) 07:25, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Opinions and comments needed

Opinions and comments needed here.

It is a renaming proposal of the Italian municipality currently spelled Codogné. It was proposed to change the spelling to Codognè. The reason of the proposal is that the Italian state websites listing Italian municipalities use the same accent (è) for every accented town name and that on the website of the town itself this is the most common spelling. The reason to reject the proposal is that Italian orthography handbooks and encyclopedies which distinguish between two different accents prescribe the current spelling (é) corresponding to the prescribed pronunciation in Standard Italian. Since both options are reasonable a large number of opinions is desirable to have a shared consensus.

Tsistunaɡiska (talk) 20:12, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

The rest is history article request

Popular idiom.--Coin945 (talk) 09:52, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Lists of loanwords

I came across List of loanwords in Indonesian trying to learn more about loanwords in Indonesian. I am extremely tempted to TNT the thing. While the topic Loanwords in Indonesian is certain encyclopedic, the content of the list is indiscriminate and dictionary-like. I did TNT the "German loanwords" section as being primarily Nazi propaganda, but at least 75% of the examples are unnecessary in an encyclopedia and could simply be replaced with links like wikt:Category:Indonesian terms derived from Japanese. Thoughts? Most of Category:Lists of loanwords has similar issues, so I figure this is a better forum than the talkpage. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 23:45, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Per the MOS, mentions of countries should not be linked unless doing so contributes to the article. Otherwise they obscure useful links by burying them in a sea of blue. If however we were to delink all the countries, some officious person will link them all again, because the habit is entrenched. So I'd like to make a bot request, turning country links under the 'states' param of the info box into 'languages of' links. Those at least may be of some use to the reader. E.g. at Levantine Arabic, where I advised making this change, [[Syria]] would become [[Languages of Syria|Syria]]. There may be other options, e.g. 'Turkey' in that article might should be a rd to 'Arabs in Turkey' instead, but such details can be handled manually. The main point would be to break the bad habit of making thousands of useless links to the country articles, as we've already managed to do with dates. Any suggestions or objections? — kwami (talk) 19:58, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

I like the idea to change [[Country]] to [[Languages of country]] (or [[Demographics of country]] if [[Languages of country]] does not exist?). As you said it is of some use to readers and also, because these "Languages of" pages are often not developed it may bring awareness to them so that people improve them.
However, is this practice currently it a "bad habit" or a recommendation? The Template:Infobox language documentation's example has links for all countries (Example 2: Persian language). And the documentation only says: "Do not use flag icons except for national or official status", which for me implies that links are okay (if not recommended instead of flag icons?)
In any case, the documentation should be modified in parallel. A455bcd9 (talk) 20:10, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, the documentation should be adjusted. The MOS says,

"Unless a term is particularly relevant to the context in the article, the following are usually not linked:
  • countries (e.g., Japan/Japanese, Brazil/Brazilian)"

This is because "links compete with each other for user attention."

But we should not link to 'Demographics of' articles. At the least, 'Languages of' should be a rd there, in which case there's no need; and if in the future a dedicated 'Languages of' article is created, then the links to it will already be in place, without requiring another bot run to fix them all. — kwami (talk) 20:19, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Kwami, just ten minutes after you quoted the guidelines, they got changed :-) – Uanfala (talk) 20:46, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Couldn't we assume that countries without a "Languages of country" page are "non-major countries" that in this case the bot would keep the [[Country]] link? A455bcd9 (talk) 20:59, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Articles tend to be developed based on how many languages are spoken in the country. If there's only one or two languages, there's not much point in a dedicated article. It has little to do with the geopolitical importance of the country. From most to least developed, we may have a dedicated languages-of article, a demographics article, a languages section in the country article, or a demographics section in the country article. A 'language of' link should rd to one of those if there's no dedicated article. That way, the reader will at the very least be directed to the country article, and maybe to a relevant section of that article. So there's no benefit to having a direct link to the country, and by using a rd we're set for if/when someone splits off the topic into a dedicated article. — kwami (talk) 22:25, 10 October 2021 (UTC)
Just for the record, I agree that the proposed change will be an obvious improvement. Are we going to do anything with countries listed in |nation=? Or cases where the country appears within another parameter (like Thai language)? And even if it's just for |states=, then the bot operator will need to know that the field can sometimes have complex structure, as at Swahili language. – Uanfala (talk) 14:37, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
I agree it should also be for countries under |region=. For |nation= I would think so also -- that's for official languages, and the 'language of' articles should cover such info. Should it be done to any country link anywhere in the info box? The bot might overlook some oddly worded rd's to countries, but that's a minor concern (though we should catch obvious ones to countries w lots of languages, like DRC). And by 'country' we would include Category:Languages by dependent territory. — kwami (talk) 23:08, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
Agree with linking to 'Languages of' as standard procedure. For all, there should be an article or a redirect ("R with possibilites", I mean even Languages of Liechtenstein is a full article). Having a link to the relevant specialized pages/sections is helpful for our readers. –Austronesier (talk) 16:16, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Ethnicity

I've noticed WP:INFOBOXETHNICITY and wonder how this might be relevant for {{infobox language}}. The RfC that has led to this categorial rejection was about mentioning the ethnicity of a person in the infobox. Obviously nobody has thought about the consequences of such a general policy for other projects, and clearly, we ignore it (help me if I have missed a discussion about it) in many, many infoboxes. Thoughts? –Austronesier (talk) 16:07, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it looks like just an oversight on their part. Obviously {{Infobox ethnic group}} is going to mention ethnicity. For us it's relevant. The point of the ethnicity param in the language info box, like the language param in the ethnicity info box, is to allow readers easy access to the other article (e.g. the two meanings of 'French'), in addition to the general interest of who might speak a particular language. It can be a bit difficult with historically imperial languages, but for the majority of the world's languages there's a fairly decent ethnolinguistic correspondence, and it isn't always obvious where the article on the people will be (even though we try to use the same name for both people and language). — kwami (talk) 00:18, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
I would also say that for most languages the ethnicity of the majority of the speakers is a) noteworthy, b) a fact that can be established by quoting reliable sources, and c) not in any particular way information that should be hidden from the users without running the risk of breaking WP:CENSOR. Of course, as we all know, language use and ethnicity are not one-to-one relationships, and for some languages such a relationship cannot be established at all, except in a historical sense. But even in those situations there should be reliable sources that make this clear. I would therefore vote to keep the ethnicity parameter in the language infobox. LandLing 06:29, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

My personal take on this is that an infobox should only present simple hard facts which are not debatable except maybe in fringe discourse. Any cases of political ethnicizations or similar complex things that would necessitate to make detailed statements in order to maintain NPOV, should get a blank ethnicity entry in the infobox. But this is something that's better left to editorial judgement, not to policy. We could leave it to WP:IAR, but then if e.g. I blanked the infobox ethnicity-para in Levantine Arabic out of pure dickishness because I'm annoyed by the edit-warring around the infobox (among other things), I could wave the guideline and that's it. So maybe some kind of amendment of the current blanket wording is needed. –Austronesier (talk) 09:12, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Now what is the exact wording of the guideline that you are referring to? I see nothing going beyond individual biographies. LandLing 11:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
The mention of biographies was only added today [1]. Before that, the guideline was worded in a way that seemingly banned ethnicity parameters from all infoboxes. – Uanfala (talk) 12:05, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
Nice'n'bold, cool. That will help and hopefully will remain uncontested (at least for our purposes). –Austronesier (talk) 12:32, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I started a thread on the talk page for WP:INFOBOXETH in case I'd narrowed the wording too much for their needs, explaining how the language and ethnicity boxes need to be able to link to each other. — kwami (talk) 19:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Merge discussion at AfD

A merge discussion is taking place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Qahveh Khaneh Sign Language that may be of interest to this WikiProject. Please feel free to contribute if you have any pertinent knowledge or perspective at that discussion. VanIsaac, MPLL contWpWS 18:32, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Czech language

Hi everyone, I intend to nominate this article for FAC soon, any comments from members of this project would be appreciated. There is also a source query on the talk page, in case anyone here has access to that source. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 13:30, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pashyanti

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pashyanti. Venkat TL (talk) 10:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

The discussion has closed as 'speedy delete' for copyright violation. Cnilep (talk) 01:32, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

FAR for Irish phonology

I have nominated Irish phonology for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 22:34, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Hmar language(s)

Does anybody know the relationship between Hmar languages and Hmar language? The first looks like it is about a language family, but the sources do not support it. Joofjoof (talk) 20:16, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks ok. The classification follows Glottolog, which in turn follows this dissertation. I will add a citation to it in Hmar languages. –Austronesier (talk) 20:37, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Private use tag for Common Brittonic with Module:Lang

Hello, I would like to suggest a private use tag cel-x-bryproto for tagging Common Brittonic on Wikipedia. Any objections or other suggestions? Other possibilities might be cel-x-britpro, cel-x-protobry, cel-x-probritt... the relevant talk page is here. Thanks. Tewdar (talk) 18:19, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Wiktionary uses cel-bry-pro, so maybe there's some merit in selecting a similar code here in WP for cross-Wiki consistency. –Austronesier (talk) 19:12, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
@Austronesier: Not sure if that's possible: "bry is an ISO 639-3 tag assigned to Burui language" as the lang module talk page says. Not sure if that applies to your suggestion (which I like) or not. Tewdar (talk) 21:49, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Enochian

Anyone know of anyone beside Laycock who's looked into the phonology or grammar? (Have an editor who says it's unscientific to analyze Enochian w/o interviewing angels.) — kwami (talk) 20:54, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Cornish language tags

Hi! Please feel free to add your opinions and suggestions to the discussion here. You might also like to read the previous section, which is here. Thanks!  Tewdar  (talk) 21:48, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Enochian language

Article currently protected (for 5 days), due to a dispute with an editor who argues that Don Laycock isn't a RS because he didn't interview any angels, and has been trying to remove any categorization of Enochian as a conlang (found an LSA cite for that). Don't think it needs much work, just some eyes to stop any future edit-warring. — kwami (talk) 07:53, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Adding ethnologue.com to the wikipedialibrary

Hello from Wikipedia in French.

I have just been granted the right to use the Wikipedia Library and I would like to propose to all contributors to vote to add the ethnologue.com database to this library.

Please go to https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/suggest/ , search for "Ethnologue" (with Ctrl+F) and vote for this site to be added.

I remind you that this site has served us for years as a source for language articles and that it contains ethnographic data (most of it first hand) on almost all languages. Some may say that their data is sometimes unreliable, but on the whole, it is by far the most comprehensive database on languages that exists, and there is no source that is 100% reliable.

Sincerely, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 20:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

How do you vote? I don't see anything. — kwami (talk) 07:55, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
@Kwamikagami: There is an "Upvote"-button on the right side of every requested item. –Austronesier (talk) 12:07, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't see it. The only button on my screen is the blue 'submit' button at the very top. Tried both FF and Falkon. — kwami (talk) 12:10, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
I can see them with Chrome on my PC, but not on my mobile. –Austronesier (talk) 12:50, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
You first need to log in here and then you'll see the "Upvote" button. A455bcd9 (talk) 13:24, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
By the way, it's pretty easy to get a free access to Ethnologue: you just need to join their Contributor Program and make at least one contribution every year. A455bcd9 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Micronational Languages

Hello! I think there should be a page or a WikiProject for micronational languages.

-- A MicroWikipedian Wikipedian (talk) 19:21, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

What micronational languages? - Donald Albury 21:13, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Yw Kernowek korr-kenedhlek? 🤔  Tewdar  21:36, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
If "micronational language" refers to the thing mentioned in the OP's user page, then I don't think there should be one. Not in Wikipedia. –Austronesier (talk) 21:37, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
I agree with Austronesier. Insufficient notability, although you might claim that it spans whole nations... LandLing 08:29, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Discussion about article "West Low German"

An editor has requested for West Low German to be moved to another page. Since you had some involvement with West Low German, you might want to participate in the move discussion (if you have not already done so). --Heanor (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

New distribution of English map

@M.Bitton: at the map project has made a very nice replacement map for Template:English official language clickable map, here: User:M.Bitton/sandbox.

Question: what should our criteria for inclusion be? E.g. we don't link to the BIOT, but do link to South Georgia, which also has no permanent population. With a map that's labeled rather than having invisible clickable links, it's now more apparent where the inconsistencies are. Maybe add Languages of the Gambia, Tuvalu#Languages and Seychelles#Languages, but there's also Xmas Is., Cocos/Keeling, the US possessions in the Pacific, Pitcairn, etc. I don't want to repeatedly ask M.Bitton to revise the map, so could we maybe get some consensus here to present?

— kwami (talk) 01:36, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Leonese dialect#Requested move 20 February 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Leonese dialect#Requested move 20 February 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 19:23, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello,
Please note that Letter (alphabet), which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing!
Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 14 March 2022 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Women in Red translation contest: April to June 2022

At the beginning of April, WikiProject Women in Red is launching a three-month translation contest focused on increasing our coverage of women's biographies.--Ipigott (talk) 10:09, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Levantine Arabic FAC

I nominated Levantine Arabic for FAC here. After 3 weeks there's still no general reviews, so any feedback would be more than welcome :) A455bcd9 (talk) 19:31, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

A template relevant to this project has been nominated for merging

I have nominated Template:Lang-grc-x-byzant (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages) to be merged into Template:Lang-grc-x-medieval (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages). The discussion is at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2022 March 21#Template:Lang-grc-x-byzant. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  19:05, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Thankyou. AriesTriputranto9 (talk) 10:45, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Kaitag language needs arbitration

Apologize if this is not the appropriate place for this, but I need some advice regarding Kaitag language. In short, the current version references Ethnologue page that was updated, and hence the Wiki article statements are inaccurate as of 2022. I've made my points on the article's discussion page, but the second editor doesn't seem to be willing to engage into a talk. Alkaitagi (talk) 14:41, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

I deleted the dated statements and also updated the population. — kwami (talk) 00:36, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Merging Sama language and Bajaw language into Sama–Bajaw languages

Hi, I am wondering about anyone's thoughts of merging these articles. Please see the talk page of Sama–Bajaw languages for more information. Many thanks. --WikiEditor50 (talk) 16:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Greater Toronto English needs expansion and improvement

I don't know if this is the right place to be putting this topic on here but, I need some help and advice on how this article can be improved and worked on, because as of right now this article barely has any in-depth topic information about the history, vocabularies and grammar. Also, Greater Toronto English has very strong similarities to Multicultural London English, regardless of having a different accent, few different slangs, etc. But overall this topic barely even gets mentioned on Google about its origin of history, and vocabularies, and I don't know how this wiki article is gonna get improved. So if anybody has any suggestions on what I can do or if y'all can help the article, I would appreciate it, thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ninjamaster1099 (talk • contribs) 14:30, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Example texts for languages (redirected from the Teahouse)

Hi everyone, earlier today I asked a question at the Teahouse here regarding whether there are any rules, policies, or guidelines regarding the selection of certain texts as examples of certain languages (e.g. Lord's Prayer, Article 1 of the UDHR). Cullen328 suggested that I ask here, so here I am :)

(I will admit, in hindsight, I didn't word the question at the Teahouse very well – my bad.)

— MeasureWell (talk) 10:11, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Yola (language)#Requested move 19 April 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Yola (language)#Requested move 19 April 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. signed, 511KeV (talk) 16:07, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources

Main page: User:Headbomb/unreliable

I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like

  • John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14. (John Smith "[https://www.deprecated.com/article Article of things]" ''Deprecated.com''. Accessed 2020-02-14.)

and turns it into something like

It will work on a variety of links, including those from {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}} and {{doi}}.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Old Polish assessment and feedback request

Hello! I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask but I recently made some rather big changes to the article Old Polish. Of course it is far from complete compared to what I could still add with the sources I have, but it took me quite some time to work through all this and now I need a break esp. since I have some test at the university coming.

The phonology is probably the most complete section. In the spelling section there was another spelling reform proposal in 1513 but I think this makes it Middle Polish so I didn’t add it. The morphology is missing a lot. The nouns are the most complete but still missing some info, like some details on the development and reassignement of Proto-Slavic declension types, as well as leveling, esp. the consonantal stems of which most were leveled. Also there is info missing about some special types of masculine inflection. The verb morphology is summarized and that’s it. No info about the syntax at all. Also a part about dialects could be added.

I’d greatly appreciate any feedback, corrections and suggestions concerning my input into the article. One very obvious improvement would be adding the exact pages of the works I cite Oxford-style, shortened footnotes which I have plans to do. Also if you think that the quality of the article has improved enough to up the assessment to C I’d greatly appreciate that. Cheers! MichaelTheSlav (talk) 20:06, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I want to give a belated thank-you to Hwqaksd for reviewing and reassessing the article, and for making fixes. Thanks a lot for help! MichaelTheSlav (talk) 15:18, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Non-typo fixes

Hi all! User:Spburstein506 has made changes to dozens (hundreds?) of pages that were intended as typo fixes, apparently as a (semi-)automated task, but in many cases this led to incorrect changes of non-English words that were not lang-tagged, e.g. here[2]. I've managed to restore some the altered content (from my watchlist and parts of the editor's contribution history), and other editors noticed the botched "fixes" too, but maybe you can also help out in restoring the original texts. Thank you! –Austronesier (talk) 10:24, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I've just had a look at about six of the non-language-related "fixes", and most of them were wrong too. Given that it took them less than 20 minutes to fix about 250 "typos", I really don't fancy the prospect of going through them manually one by one, just so that we can potentially save a few dozen good edits. Mass rollback is maybe the way to go? – Uanfala (talk) 14:19, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
I think all the edits in this list can safely be reverted (using, for those who have the rollback user right, something like User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/massRollback). – Uanfala (talk) 14:30, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
I’ve gone through over two dozen of these edits and I reverted almost all of them. Some made it apparent that they were made without looking at the changes preview at all. I support mass-rollback. MichaelTheSlav (talk) 14:36, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
I’ve asked an admin to do the rollback. MichaelTheSlav (talk) 23:21, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
That one admin has refused, citing the presence of genuine typo corrections. That prompted me to sample another half a dozen edits, and I wasn't able to find a single correct one among them. Given the effort needed here – it usually takes reading the context and then some digging to figure out if the apparent typo really is a typo – I don't think it's worth dedicating hours of our time just so that the handful of typo corrections could remain. Mass rollback remains the most sensible option. – Uanfala (talk) 12:02, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
I have reported the incident to the admin noticeboard, per admin’s suggestion. If you wish to comment there go ahead. MichaelTheSlav (talk) 14:50, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
MichaelTheSlav, you need to inform the user if you report their edits at ANI, I have done so for you this time. TSventon (talk) 14:58, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
TSventon Yes I know, I got distracted by someone IRL and then it took me a bit to get the template to work, sorry. But thanks! MichaelTheSlav (talk) 15:02, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Austronesier, I have mentioned this conversation at Wikipedia talk:Correct typos in one click and pinged the author of the script to inform them of the issue. TSventon (talk) 15:23, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Malaysian language#Requested move 17 May 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Malaysian language#Requested move 17 May 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. CMD (talk) 02:50, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

New Template

The Template:Language Endangerment status has been created. It is modelled upon the Template:Conservation status for endangered animals. The reflects how the Red Book of Endangered Languages was modelled upon the IUCN Red List for endangered species and the similar categorisation systems used by both. The new template contains redlinks because creating new articles for all of the categories will take some time. Please feel free to create and develop them yourself to assist in this regard. There are already long and extensive lists of endangered languages on Wikipedia which could be better separated into more manageable articles according to the sub-categories of language endangerment defined by UNESCO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ggdivhjkjl (talk • contribs) 21:16, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Infobox language

The following discussion (related to the preceding section above) might of interest for members of this project:

–Austronesier (talk) 20:30, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Template:Expand language has an RFC

Template:Expand language, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. --N8wilson 20:28, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Mass edits to phoneme tables

Once again, an editor has set the goal to streamline phone/phoneme tables in language and phonology articles. @Stan traynor: I think that you should get consensus here for your idea of what a good table must look like before you continue to impose personal preferences on content that has been built as a collective effort. –Austronesier (talk) 09:17, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

@Austronesier okay - that's fair. I'll give a short rundown of the principles I have been using to condense or otherwise modify tables up until this point.
  1. One cell per phoneme. It's much clearer and easier to read a table when the cells aren't crowded up with two or three phonemes, and this also makes it easier to tell what's a phoneme and what's not. While editing earlier I saw some tables - such as the old ones in Kusunda language - which were very annoying or hard to read.
  2. More compact is better. Ideally there should be as few blank cells as possible. (I imagine this would be the biggest point of contention - some people think the term Sonorant is too broad for example.) Common examples are merging stops and affricates (usually because the language doesn't have /c/ /ɟ/ but does have /tʃ/ /dʒ/.), and merging palatal and alveolo-palatal - usually because the language doesn't distinguish between /ʃ/ and /ɕ/ for example.
  3. IPA links are mandatory. Shouldn't need any extra explanation, more links are better. Yes, I know they're annoying to put in. Usually I use the source editor and ctrl+f to easily change them.
  4. Free variation displayed with C1~C2. Self explanatory.
  5. Marginal phonemes displayed in (brackets)
  6. Allophones displayed in [square brackets]
  7. Ordering of rows - I used to put nasals on top but have since stopped. Regardless I think it's good to keep the rows and columns in a fairly regular order, unless the language family has its own conventions, like Australian languages do.
  8. Vowel tables can be condensed by merging cells to put phonemes in the space "in between" them. This is best demonstrated by an example below -
Front Central Back
Close i u
Close-mid e ə o
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open a
since the schwa is a mid vowel, putting it between close-mid and open-mid makes sense here.
9. Base changes to tables off precedent - if a table prior displayed a marginal phoneme, display it. If it didn't, and there's good reason not to, don't.
10. Don't use colour. It has a whole host of issues and is generally just inconvenient. Use footnotes, bold, or italics to distinguish phonemes and leave notes about them.
11. If the orthography is included in the table, it must use angled brackets. Self explanatory.
That's about all of them - let me know what you think. Stan traynor (talk) 11:24, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
In principle, I agree with most you say here as good ideas for creating phoneme charts. I particularly run my own campaign for your point 2, something that already goes back to Trubetzkoy or Pike's "matrix permutation." But all this applies for phoneme charts in phonology write-ups and papers. Wikipedia is a different matter, as all we do here requires a published source. So if the author of the source we quote decides to keep post-alveolar and palatal apart as places of articulation, I don't think it is our place to combine them here on Wikipedia, as this amounts to original research. More complicated is the demand for a link to IPA. Many publications do not adhere to the IPA in their symbols for the phonemes. I guess we can replace them in the charts when the source itself makes it clear which IPA character underlies the symbol; but if not, any replacement again would be original research.
I don't see any accepted best practice for ordering rows in the linguistic literature, so we really shouldn't go into installing one here. For the matter at hand, placing nasals first strikes me as rather off the beaten path.
And finally, I usually leave out allophones or free variation from phoneme charts, even in publications. There's a reason it's called a phoneme chart, after all. LandLing 17:02, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
I should have made it clearer - I usually don't display allophones/free variation, but when I do (mainly because the chart showed it in the first place) I use those symbols.
With regards to the ipa link thing, I can't remember ever seeing a phoneme chart on wikipedia that didn't use IPA - if a publication uses nonstandard symbols and doesn't explain them (and as such they can't be put into IPA) then it would be fine not to have links.
If the author does keep post-alv. and palatal apart, then would
Post-alv./

Palatal

be acceptable? It still keeps the places of articulation apart (but places them in the same column - we're not saying for instance /j/ is post alv rather than palatal), so I think this should be permissible. Not sure though.
Final thoughts - what if a source doesn't display their phonemes in a chart, and instead uses just a list or something? (like phoible does). What would be the best course of action then? Stan traynor (talk) 17:25, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
I'd be happy with combining labels in a single column, but I would not know what to respond to people who claim that this is not what the source does, and therefore we can't do it either. I would not get into a fight with someone about it. The same with re-arranging a list into a chart. If I'm honest, I'd have to admit that creating a chart out of unsorted data goes quite beyond what the source says, in a similar way as making calculations based on raw numbers constitutes original research. I'd therefore not resist anyone who opposes such an edit on any article. I suspect that this probably happens a lot in language articles, and I'm also not going out of my way to identify and un-chart these sections. In the long run, it would be good to have some kind of agreed-upon policy about it, if it doesn't exist already. But I can also live with the current state where we have some slack about this. I agree with Austronesier, though, that we should not attempt to press all phoneme charts into a consistent format, because such a consistent format does not exist in the linguistic literature. The value of avoiding original research to me is more important than the desire to present similar facts in a consistent way across Wikipedia. LandLing 23:13, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
Not making tables out of lists makes sense, sounds like potentially a WP:SYN violation. Stan traynor (talk) 06:37, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
I'd say that if a source doesn't display its phonemes in a chart then making a chart (especially if it's a list of vowel phonemes) seems to usually be OR. For example Hiw language has a vowel chart even though the sources cited just give a list of vowel phonemes, and the vowel chart looks kinda wonky and it seems to imply things about the language's phonology and the vowels' exact quality that aren't actually stated in the sources. I'll delete that chart after posting this but I'm just saying you should be careful about turning lists into charts. Erinius (talk) 01:36, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
I wouldn't say usually. If you have a simple vowel system of, say, /i, e, a, o, u/ and the source specifies /a/ as central, that gives you a very good idea of how the vowel system works in the language. I agree that six vowel heights in Hiw definitely aren't phonemic. Five would already be exceptional. When you look at the chart, it's clear that /ə/ and possibly /ɪ/ and /e/ are misplaced. /ə/ is likely phonologically open-mid, whereas /ɪ/ and /e/ may be close-mid and open-mid, respectively. In that case Hiw would be much like Danish, in which near-close [e̝] and close-mid [e] pattern as close-mid /e/ and open-mid /ɛ/. This shows how far removed the phonology of a language can be from the phonetic reality of its vowels (I have no idea about Hiw, though). Danish has only four phonemic heights, BTW. Sol505000 (talk) 11:46, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
I was actually mistaken about Hiw, sorry. That vowel table is taken straight from a reliable source, and there's a graph in François 2011 showing Hiw's vowels. It really does have six phonetic vowel heights, though it still certainly doesn't have six phonological or phonemic ones. Its vowel system is just a little asymmetrical. But you are right, turning a simple 5-vowel system into a table isn't really a big logical leap. Erinius (talk) 00:28, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
IPA links are mandatory. I'd say that they generally should be used, except in those cases where there's just too much variation to be covered with one link. A great example for that is /r/ in Standard German ([r ~ ʀ ~ ʁ ~ ɐ̯]) and Standard Dutch ([r ~ ʀ ~ ʁ ~ ɻ]). Another example is where a phonetic diphthong patterns with monophthongs and is therefore placed in the "monophthong" table. If Dutch phonology#Monophthongs covered only Northern Standard Dutch, /eː, øː, oː/ should not link anywhere as they are always diphthongal in their full form [eɪ, øʏ, oʊ] (or even [ɛɪ, œʏ, ɔʊ]), with special allophones [ɪə, ʏə, ʊə] before /r/ (where the phonological diphthongs /ɛi, œy, ɔu/ do not occur). In such cases, the plain IPA template should be used.
Free variation displayed with C1~C2. If it is a table of phonemes, only one symbol should be used.
Allophones displayed in [square brackets]. Allophones in tables are fine as long as the table is not titled "Consonant phonemes".
Vowel tables can be condensed by merging cells to put phonemes in the space "in between" them. I would be careful doing that. Tables of vowel phonemes should group vowels according to their phonological behavior. If, say /ɔ/ is phonologically open-mid (it alternates with /ɔː/, umlauts to /œ/, whatever) then it should be grouped together with open-mid vowels even if it's phonentically true-mid, rather than placed in any merged cell. Then again, phonemic mergers (and vowel shifts too) may mess things up - a former distinction between /ɔ/ and /o/ may still manifest itself in that the merged vowel (whether we write it /ɔ/ or /o/ doesn't matter, but we should follow the sources) patterns with both open-mid and close-mid vowels simultaneously. In that case, we may as well merge the cells, yes.
Base changes to tables off precedent. Base them off reliable sources. WP:Wikipedia is not a reliable source.
I personally don't like "Post-alv./Palatal" in the tables. Either separate the columns or use the label "palatal". Writing it as such does not "keep the places of articulation apart", it lumps them together (and ⟨j⟩ is never used for a postalveolar sound in proper IPA, though allophones of /j/ can actually include [ʒ]). The phonological behavior of /ʃ/ etc. varies from language to language, also because that symbol can be used for [ɕ] (as it is in Catalan and Dutch). Sol505000 (talk) 12:06, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
I disagree with a couple of these. Marking free variation can be useful when there's no good reason to posit one allophone as the phoneme. For example, if a language has [l] and [ɾ] in more-or-less free variation, it could be misleading to claim that it is really one or the other. Similarly, some languages have unusual allophony, such as [g] ~ [n], and listing only one would be misleading. There may also be a dispute over whether a consonant series is /b d g/ or /m n ŋ/, or we may have a single source that says it's not clear how they should be analyzed, so again IMO they should be listed as being variants. But I do agree that if, say, /t/ is [ts] before /i/, we shouldn't show [ts] in the table, as the 'elsewhere' phone isn't controversial.
Also, while compact tables may be preferable for linguists, who can be expected to understand the tradition of intentionally mistranscribing sounds for ease of typesetting etc., IMO that should be avoided in introductory material such as WP. As annoying as I find separate columns for bilabial and labiodental, for example, there's a benefit in having such precision when our readers might be confused by us merging them. — kwami (talk) 23:11, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

A with grave (Cyrillic)

I came across A with grave (Cyrillic) during new page patrol and would appreciate a knowledgeable second opinion. In particular, is it really a distinct "letter"? As opposed to a regular A with a stress mark? – Joe (talk) 13:19, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Pidgin/Creole Status of Kanbun

Basically, the Wikipedia page about Kanbun says that it is a creole or a pidgin, based on a single source, in Japanese, titled "'Kundoku' as a Pidgin-Creole Language". I can't read or even access that source. Based on the rest of the article, Kanbun Kundoku seems to be a way of annotating Chinese writing so it can be more easily understood by Japanese people. This can't be a creole and, although one source I found online described "simplification", it really doesn't sound like a pidgin either. Could I edit the article (and articles linking to Kanbun) to frame its pidgin status as just one author's opinion, rather than, say, the consensus of experts on the matter. I know I don't have any sources saying Kanbun isn't a pidgin, but I feel the current article gives undue weight to a single source. User:Error has already expressed skepticism on Talk:Kanbun, I'd appreciate feedback and discussion there. Erinius (talk) 09:14, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't know a thing about that situation, but the way you describe it, there is a source (even if it is badly accessible) that states that Kanbun is a creole, and you have no source beyond your own strong conviction that it isn't. I think Wikipedia's policies are clear in this case - leave the article alone unless/until you find a source that supports your view. LandLing 00:34, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay in responding. I'd point you towards @Dekimasu's comments on WT:WPJ and Talk:Kanbun. A single IP editor added these references towards Kanbun Kundoku being a creole language, and the title of the source used could also be translated as a hypothetical. Other editors, on two occasions (here and here, reverted the IP's editions. @Aeusoes1 pointed out in their edit summary that Kanbun Kundoku doesn't even qualify as a language and so could hardly be called a creole. We essentially have one interpretation of a single, dubious source which goes against a basic background understanding of pidgins and creoles and which multiple editors have tried to remove. Erinius (talk) 16:44, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
@Erinius: the article at Ueda, Atsuko (December 2008). "Sounds, Scripts, and Styles: Kanbun kundokutai and the National Language Reforms of 1880s Japan". Review of Japanese Culture and Society. 20: 133–156. JSTOR 42800998. defines kanbun as 'classical "Chinese" writing'. - Donald Albury 01:31, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
The statement is about Kanbun Kundoku, not Kanbun. Nardog (talk) 01:32, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Vietnamese_language#Writing_systems

This discussion about the exact nature of the Chinese-derived script that was historically used to write Vietnamese, and how to mention it in the lede and infobox might be of interest to members of this project. –Austronesier (talk) 20:39, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Requested moves: List of Romanian words with possible Dacian origin > List of Romanian words of possible pre-Roman origin

All comments on a possibly controversial moving proposal would be highly appreciated here. Borsoka (talk) 03:46, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Announcing template Wiktionarylang

French wiktionary has a page about a term in this section:

New Template:Wiktionarylang may be used to add a small box flush right with a link to a term in a foreign language wiktionary. If you're familiar with {{Wikisourcelang}}, the operation of the new template is similar, and uses the same four positional parameters, and adds one more to allow you to specify 'section' (as in this example), 'paragraph', and so on instead of 'article'. Mathglot (talk) 03:48, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Standard WP romanization of Arabic

In Help:IPA/Arabic and Romanization of Arabic there are several possible romanization schemes, and of particular concern IMO for accessibility, machine readability, and consistency of encoding is the different characters for the glottal stop. There is already a Wikipedia:Indic transliteration guideline, so why not get a consensus which romanizations and characters may be simply inappropriate for general WP use (we're likely not going to come to a consensus on one particular romanization used for all cases of MSA/Classical, nor should one be necessary). Of course other scripts with problematic inconsistent and/or non-standard character usages should be considered for essay/guideline proposals as well. This is not within the scope per description of WProject Arabic. SamuelRiv (talk) 14:53, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Nvm, finally found WP:MOSAR. This WikiProject should really have all the language MOS guides listed at the top. You see the navbox at WP:MOS? How is a user supposed to figure out that to find the MOS for the Arabic language you have to first navigate to Islam??? I guess we might as well put MOS:CHINESE under MOS:ACUPUNCTURE while we're at it! SamuelRiv (talk) 04:46, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

New Varieties of English map

Sorry if I'm repeating myself; I don't see this in the threads above.

We have a new SVG map from the Graphics Lab, File:Anglophone World.svg, intended to replace the old PNG map, File:Anglospeak(800px)Countries.png used in the clickable navigation template. With the PNG map the geographically smaller varieties of English were difficult to access and it wasn't apparent that many were missing. See Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop/Archive/Mar 2022.

Could people review and see if the SVG is still missing any national/regional varieties? E.g. it is missing Gambian English, possibly Seychelles? We might not need Tuvalu or the BIOT, but anything else that should be added? — kwami (talk) 21:14, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to exclude Gambia or the Seychelles. As far as I can tell English is an official language in both countries. I'd add Gibraltar too, to the light blue category. Also I don't think the map currently includes Norfolk or the Pitcairn Islands (the relevant template has them in the native speakers category). I don't think Vanuatu (official but not majority L1) or some other Oceanian nations are included in the new SVG map either, but they should be IMO. I think English is still co-official in Hong Kong too.
There are populations on the Atlantic Coast of Central America, besides in Belize, who speak varieties somewhere on a continuum between English-based creoles and non-creole English. There's also San Andrés Island in Colombia which has English and a local English-based creole. I'm raising these places for consideration at least, I'm not sure they should be included, and it would certainly be a mistake to highlight, say, the entire countries of Honduras or Colombia as English-speaking. Erinius (talk) 00:51, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
I know the English-speaking population in the Bay Islands Department in Honduras is very small, and, afaik, English is not official there. It would not be practical to show on this map all the places where small segments of a population speak some dialect of English, but English is not official. Donald Albury 15:09, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
Maybe if it's worth a WP article, we should have it on the map, which functions as a navbox. — kwami (talk) 01:58, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
There is in fact a stub about Bay Islands English (which from what I can gather is not a creole), but I can't find any articles about non-creole Englishes anywhere else in Central America outside Belize. The book Central American English[1], available on ProQuest, does mention a continuum between standard English and Limonese Creole in Costa Rica, but there's no article about Standard Limonese English. I'm not sure if such a continuum exists elsewhere.
Anyway, I'm really not sure what the scope of this map should be. It doesn't seem to include any places that aren't either independent countries or dependent territories, with the exception of Hawaii. I'm not sure this maps' scope should include every minoritized English-speaking community (of which I don't think there are many), and I don't know the Bay Islands' current linguistic demographics, but English might not be the majority first language there anymore. Erinius (talk) 08:38, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
So yeah, I wouldn't add the Bay Islands rn since I'm not even sure they're a majority-English-L1 territory. Erinius (talk) 08:51, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
English is official in Hawaii, and there's a different history of English there, with Hawaiian English as a redirect.
From the template list, it would appear that there are two criteria: English is the majority native language, or English is official or the language of administration, education or the like. I'm not sure about Tuvalu, where English is official but practically unused. — kwami (talk) 09:03, 22 August 2022 (UTC)
The discussion on the PNG map, and all the other discussions they link to, often break down around the definition of the key colors, so that should be very precise when you decide on final colors and place a caption+description. I imagine you're using data from List of countries by English-speaking population? Make sure you link to that, which columns you use are specified, and use terms like "native language" instead of "L1". It might reduce the amount of complaints, or at least make talk-back easier. SamuelRiv (talk) 03:29, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Holm, John A. (1983). Central American English. Heidelberg: J. Groos. ISBN 9783872762955.

Ruanruan language

Hello ! I recently published the article called Rouran (langue) in French, and I saw that the article in Simple English says that the Ruanruan language was possibly Yeniseic and close to Xiongnu language. I can't verify the information. Has anybody got the full citation or an another source saying Ruanruan is a Para-Yeniseic language [fr], please ?

For more details, please see :

PS : it seems that the article in Simple English was translated from this version, itself a derivative of this version

After all the research I've done, I haven't found anything.

Yours sicerly, --Rishāringânu 09:59, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Courtesy link: Le rouran, une langue ienisseïenne ?
@Richaringan:, Ethnologue does not have entries for either name; neither does Linguist list, which is a bit of a red flag. I would try adding a request at Linguist list, and see what kind of response you get. What's the level of sourcing at the articles, have you accessed the sources? If there doesn't appear to be anything, maybe the articles should be challenged, or nominated for deletion. Mathglot (talk) 21:08, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
@Mathglot:, Hello, thank you for your response. Firstly, I'm sorry for the links, I replaced them.
I'm not familiar with these sites and wouldn't know if I get an answer. However, I don't think entry to these sites is an eligibility requirement.
Regarding sources:
-the article in English has 6 references for 5,325 bytes, which is good,
-the article in Simple English has 6 references too (but they are messy) for 1,968 bytes,
-and the article in French has 27 references for 16,294 bytes, which is correct, I guess.
And yes I accessed the sources, except one, Vajda (2013). So there is no need to delete the articles, only to verify the information.
Yours sincerly, --Rishāringânu 07:07, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
Hi Mathglot:
Ethnologue's cut-off date for extinct languages is 1950, so they're not relevant.
It looks like the only info Linglist has anymore is ISO codes, and Ruanruan isn't well enough established as a language to have one of those, so that might not mean anything either.
— kwami (talk) 05:22, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Kwami; I didn't know that about Ethnologue! Sad about Linguist-list; they used to have a lot more; I admit I haven't been there in quite a while now. Is there something better now? Mathglot (talk) 05:33, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
Very strange, for example, the Ye-Maek language, which is hypothetical, has an ISO 3 code, and the Xiongnu language, hypothetical too, has a Glottolog entry. Let's refocus the discussion, can you access the Vajda's book ? --Rishāringânu 07:18, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Afar people and Ethnologue

I was surprised by this pair of edits, which changed numbers by millions. The numbers are sourced to Ethnologue; and so "No problem", I thought: "I'll look them up." So a few minutes ago I made my first visit to Ethnologue in months -- and I was amazed to find that (for me, in a not-poor country), (i) even humdrum records are behind a paywall, and (ii) the asking price is very high. Could somebody with access to Ethnologue please look at "aar"? -- Hoary (talk) 21:45, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Consider cross-posting also at the Resource Exchange -- Resource Request, though be sure to specify there that you need an updated (2021/2022 or whatever) version of the page, since open archived copies are from 2013. SamuelRiv (talk) 02:04, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
@Hoary: if you check the history, you'll see that the numbers were changed without changing or updating the ref, which almost certainly means that the numbers will fail verification. And if you check further back, you'll see that's not the first time that has happened. — kwami (talk) 06:45, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, SamuelRiv and Kwamikagami. But does nobody here ("WikiProject Languages", after all) not have paid-up access and a few minutes spare? -- Hoary (talk) 07:29, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
The page says:
  • User Population: 1,862,800 in Ethiopia, all users. L1 users: 1,840,000 in Ethiopia (2018). L2 users: 22,800. 906,000 monolinguals (1994 census). Total users in all countries: 2,563,800 (as L1: 2,541,000; as L2: 22,800).
Please note that this is about the language, and not the ethnic population. The page also mentions that the Afar language is "Used as L2 by Argobba [agj]."
Access to Ethnologue is extremely expensive but you can get a free access by applying to their Contributor program: https://www.ethnologue.com/contributor-program A455bcd9 (talk) 07:56, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
There is more info in the lists of languages per country:
  • Djibouti: 196,000 speakers, 335,000 ethnic population
  • Eritrea: 505,000 speakers (no ethnic figure)
–Austronesier (talk) 08:37, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
I corrected the figures after posting here. — kwami (talk) 02:07, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, all. I wouldn't qualify for Ethnologue's "Contributor Program". (Simply, I've nothing to contribute.) I'm sure that Ethnologue is A Good Thing, but I was shocked by the request for that much money: I was sure I remembered a limited access to Ethnologue for no payment whatever. I like to "AGF" and to suspect that information has been misunderstood before suspecting that it has been deliberately misrepresented or just fabricated; but must also remind myself that some editors just like to invent stuff and that they may be able to get away with doing so for quite some time (example; supplement). -- Hoary (talk) 23:29, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
It's not always in bad faith. Sometimes people update figures and don't bother to update the associated citation, perhaps because they don't understand how WP and citations work. But then of course it looks like the figures are cited when they're not. If they don't understand that they should change the citation, it's likely that they can't determine whether their source is reliable either. It's possible that they're correcting miscited figures to what it says in the ref, but if so they'll usually say as much in the edit summary. So IMO it's best to revert edits like this even when you can't access the ref. — kwami (talk) 02:13, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Feedback requested at Template:Infobox language

Your feedback regarding parameter |ethnicity= in Template:Infobox language would be appreciated. Please see this discussion. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:21, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Chinese language#Requested move 6 September 2022

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Chinese language#Requested move 6 September 2022 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. – robertsky (talk) 03:36, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Requested move: Languages of x to Language in x

Hello, I just started a conversation for a requested a move from Languages of Morocco to Language in Morocco, as the former title suggests that the languages are either endemic or official in some way, which is not necessarily the case, while the latter title would be more suitable for an article that discusses the matter of language in the country in general. I then noticed that most articles are named the former way, such as Languages of the United States and Languages of India, so I wanted to see if there would be support for this kind of a change for these kinds of articles in general. If you have an opinion on the matter, please participate in the discussion. إيان (talk) 00:56, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi,
Country digests on Ethnologue ("A PDF document that collates all the information from Ethnologue about the language situation in X.") are called "Languages of X" and they include all languages (endemic, immigrants, official, etc.), see for instance: Languages of Morocco. So "Languages of X" seems okay but I understand your point. The problem is even more apparent for geographical regions (Languages of South America vs Indigenous languages of South America, Languages of South Asia) and political unions (Languages of the European Union, Languages of the African Union, Languages of the Soviet Union, on the other hand for the UN we have Official languages of the United Nations). Sometimes we have one article for the official languages and one for the language situation (Official languages of Spain vs Languages of Spain and Languages with official status in India vs Languages of India): not ideal?
So "Language in X" or "Language situation in X" or "Languages in X" may be better and it would be consistent with articles dedicated to a single language in a country: Russian language in Israel, French language in the United States, or German language in Namibia. But we can also keep "Languages of X" and make it clear in the lede that the article covers the whole language situation in the area (endemic, official, immigrant & past, present, future). A455bcd9 (talk) 07:28, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

The name for ISO 639-3 code arc changed in 2007. This should be reflected in the link of {{lang-arc}}. I started a discussion at Template talk:lang-arc#Change language link to Imperial Aramaic respectively Module talk:Lang/data#Template-protected edit request on 25 September 2022. I‘d be glad for your input. S.K. (talk) 21:06, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

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