Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tunisia/Archive 2015

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Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Brahim Darghouthi

Dear Tunisia experts: This old draft page has never been submitted to be included in the encyclopedia, and will soon be deleted as stale. It has no reliable sources, and because book reviews, etc., are not likely in English, I can't look for them. Is this a notable writer, and can anyone find the sources needed? —Anne Delong (talk) 23:21, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

It appears that there were two articles with differently spelled titles; the topic is now at Brahim Dargouthi.—Anne Delong (talk) 15:26, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Arabic vs. Tunisian Arabic

Tounsimentounes is changing Arabic into Tunisian Arabic on Tunisia-related articles such as Coat of arms of Tunisia or Oulaya. Since standard Arabic is the official language, I'd say we'd need a reliable source to claim that the national motto is written in another variety of Arabic. I don't have much of an opinion either way on the language given for Tunisians' names, but there may be some kind of rule that should be adhered to. Bringing it here for a community discussion. Huon (talk) 01:10, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

There is no variety precised anywhere and that is why linking the pages to Tunisian Arabic is as possible as to any other variety of Arabic, however since Tunisian Arabic is the mother tong variety of the Tunisian population, it stands to sense that Arabic names originating from Tunisia can be considered as displayed in Tunisian Arabic. Furthermore standard Arabic is not the official language, only Arabic is without further precision.Tounsimentounes (talk) 19:10, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I have studied Tunisian law and it's true that legally speaking "standard arabic" is as non existant as "tunisian arabic", only "arabic" ever appears. That's what we call a grey zone in juridiction for this case, I think Tounsimentounes made a point here. I definitely agree on linking Tunisian arabic to Tunisian name and places, since their morphology and pronunciation are dependant of the latter.

Elioun (talk) 18:04, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Personally I'd say if legally speaking only "arabic" ever appears, then that, not Tunisian Arabic, should be linked to, at least in official contexts. Huon (talk) 22:24, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Tunisia says its official language is Arabic and its motto is ("Liberty, Dignity, Justice and Order"). But where does it say that ? In the Tunisian Constitution of 2014 of course (Articles 1 and 3). And in which language is written that constitution ? in Arabic, the Modern Standard Arabic. Same thing for the cities, who manage the cities in Tunisia ? The Ministry of Interior. Does the Ministry has an official list of cities in his website ? Yes, he does. In which language it's written ? In Arabic. From where comes your Arabic Tunisian translation ? Purely from your imagination and your local accent of the Tunisian Dialect (WP:NOR). If you want to work on your invented languge please do so in the incubator not here.--Helmoony (talk) 03:40, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

We can say the exact same thing about standard arabic if you read my precedent message, "arabic" isn't standard arabic or "tunisian arabic" or "anything arabic" it is a general term and "Tunisian Arabic" belongs to Arabic and so does standard, morrocan, algerian etc... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elioun (talk • contribs) 18:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

• It seem that we are going to an WP:EDITWAR. @Tounsimentounes reverted 19 of my recent reverts. Even if I asked him to discuss here before making any prior major changes. --Helmoony (talk) 19:06, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

You started reverting all of my works, I had to revert them back, i'm open to discussion but it seems you prefer to act rashly. By your doing you also removed improvement to texts and pronunciation files, I can say you're the one doing wrong here. Tounsimentounes (talk) 18:04, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Let me chime in here and point out that a proper process is "bold, revert, discuss", not "bold, revert, revert." See WP:BRD. Moreover, I think it's important that you and everyone else discuss this small yet controversial change. It's not as though this is a change to a single article that can be easily reverted. This is a far-reaching, wide-sweeping change that absolutely needs some kind of consensus. I urge you, Helmoony, Melekimos, User:Elioun and everyone else to stop unilaterally changing all Tunisia-related article and discuss. Thank you Abjiklɐm (tɐlk) 19:55, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Same thing for Elioun, he's reverting my edits. May be they are 2 accounts for the same person when we analyse their edits. --Helmoony (talk) 19:46, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Ok so we start again, I have read all the discussion until now and let's reach a consensus before doing anything more Tounsimentounes

I think that since Tounsi is the language of Tunisians it should figure on Tunisian related pages, it is our mother tong and is quite different from clasical arabic, as we can see on the page i'm co-developing Tunisian Arabic. I don't see why this became an issue at all with Helmoony. I could agree that Tunisian governmental institutions or pre-16th century Tunisian people can have their names in standard or classical Arabic, but that's pretty much it, the rest follows the rules of Tunisian Arabic not of classical or standard. So that's my point of view I wait for the ones of Elioun, Helmoony, Abjiklɐm or others.Tounsimentounes (talk) 20:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I'm gonna use your own article to make a distinction :

caption

Arabic	Arabic Tunisian
official language (see Tunisian Constitution of 2014 and the style it uses) and also the Tunisian passport	not official
cities names are listed in Arabic by the government	cities names don't follow any single rule (see refs in Tunisian_Arabic#Arabic_script)
birth certificates are issued by the government in Arabic	names don't follow any single rule (see refs in Tunisian_Arabic#Arabic_script)
Arabic is the official language of all Tunisia (see Tunisian Constitution of 2014)	Dozens of dialects are spoken in Tunisia. Moreover, only Tunis, Sfax and Sousse dialects do use the Tunisian phonology. However, Northwestern and Southwestern Tunisian speak Tunisian with the Algerian Arabic phonology which tends to simplify short vowels as short schwas and Southeastern Tunisian speak Tunisian with the Libyan Arabic phonology. (see refs in Tunisian_Arabic#Dialects) Geographic disposition of Tunisian Arabic as of 1960 (in Blue). The fields in dark blue and light blue are the geographic dispositions of Algerian and Libyan Arabic
Arabic is studied in schools since the independance	a project to teach Basic Education for the elderly people using Tunisian Arabic had been proposed in 1977 by Tunisian Linguist Mohamed Maamouri ... But, it was not recognized and adopted. (see Tunisian_Arabic#Modern_history)
Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) says that local official names should be listed before other alternate names if they differ from a widely accepted English name.	The convention says : Alternatively, all alternative names can be moved to and explained in a "Names" or "Etymology" section immediately following the lead, or a special paragraph of the lead

--Helmoony (talk) 22:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Questions: Is the difference between Tunisian and Modern Standard Arabic only in pronunciation or also in orthography? Is there a standard for the transcription of Tunisian Arabic or do users have to create the transcription according to their own perception of Tunisian phonology? --RJFF (talk) 13:04, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

RJFF Tunisian Arabic differs in morphology, pronunciation, syntax and vocabulary from Standard Arabic, there is no official standard transcription for Tunisian Arabic, however there is a standardized one for scholarly works dealing with the language, that we can see in Tunisian Arabic

Helmoony Ok, first the official status of the language is irrelevant in our situation, it is both of common knowledge and scholarly reported that people in Tunisia communicate in Tunisian Arabic and so are the name given to people and places. Furthermore languages such as Japanese are not official in Japan, yet it is not a problem in any kind as it is the language used for communication.

Secondly, Tunis dialect is considered to be the standard form of Tunisian Arabic, however it would be more accurate to adapt the pronunciation to the 6 dialect varieties of Tunisian Arabic (Tunis, Sahil, Sfax, Northwestern, Southeastern and Southwestern) in terms of the local names and places. (for instance bourguiba, would have its arabic script be bourguiba with a ڨ because that's how it is pronounced not bourqiba and kasserine would be gasserine because that's how it is pronounced locally). Also you seem to misunderstand that it is Tunisian Arabic that merges with Algerian and Lybian, the dialects spoken in Tunisia are all part of Tunisian Arabic. (Likewise we won't put Annaba in Tunisian Arabic, because it is in Algeria)

Thirdly, Tunisian Arabic is also written in Arabic script so the script is not an issue here.

Fourthly, standard Arabic is taught in schools, well that's cute and Tunisian Arabic is the mother tongue of the population. If the government says a cat is a dog we should not turn "cats" into "dogs", otherwise we would be bending the truth and that would be against the principle of wikipidia and common sense.

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names), states that official names should be listed before other alternate names, "For English accepted names" that's quite important. Even though you won't tell me that Tunisian Arabic: تونس‎ is a different name from Arabic: تونس‎. This could appear as a problem for displaying characters such as ڨ (That are part of Arabic btw), because the official names could be written with a ق. Also anyway, this convention is off subject toward putting Tunisian Arabic in lieu de Arabic. Here we are more dealing with pronunciation than with actual script.

I'll finish by saying that replacing Arabic by Tunisian Arabic would not only remove imprecision and obvious errors in Tunisia related pages but give Tunisian Arabic more visibility to understand more clearly and thoroughly how Tunisia works. Which is the principle of an Encyclopedia after all.Tounsimentounes (talk)

Giving Tunisian Arabic more visibility is not a principle of Wikipedia, but WP:Verifiability and WP:No original research are. Let's take the example of Habib Bourguiba. Do textbooks and other reliable publications in Tunisia spell his name الحبيب بورقيبة (Standard Arabic) or حبيب البورڨيبة (Tunisian Arabic)? If in doubt, Wikipedia should always follow the practice in reliable sources. Does the street sign in Tunis' Avenue Habib Bourguiba read شارع الحبيب بورقيبة (Standard Arabic) or شارع حبيب بورڨيبة (Tunisian Arabic)? --RJFF (talk) 21:41, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

To RJFF: The problem of following official/street sign spelling for ق vs ڨ is that their usage is not consistent. The same city can be spelled with either letter on two different signs. I suspect it's simply because ڨ is not always readily available on every computer. The same can be said for Bourguiba.

Now about choosing whether to write Tunisian Arabic or simply Arabic, I've noticed that those advocating for the former pushed for the change even on the pages of political parties such as the Congress for the Republic whose name is clearly not Tunisian Arabic. So at the very least we have to be careful not to introduce new errors by overzealously claiming that everything in Tunisia follows Tunisian Arabic rules. Finally, what distinguishes a Tunisian Arabic name from an Arabic name with Tunisian pronunciation? Once we clear all this up we'll also have to tackle the issue of WP:OR transliteration. Abjiklɐm (tɐlk) 00:17, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Abjiklɐm. For how to recognize, we can already list that name of places (cities, lakes, mountains...) in Tunisia and post-16th century (first written proof of modern Tunisian Arabic) Tunisian figure's names are in Tunisian Arabic. Above that we would need to check for the other things if they are displayed following the standard arabic morphology or the Tunisian one. Concerning the transliteration, I believe the "Scripts" and "Phonology" section of Tunisian Arabic page, furnishes enough scholarly elements against WP:OR. Tounsimentounes (talk)

This in short is a pathetic way to split Tunisia from its native and most widespread language. Saying things like "Tunisians don't speak literal Arabic" is totally stupid. I haven't read a Tunisian News report in Tunisian Accent, or read any official Newspaper that writes using this form of Arabic. Soon enough we'll see a "Tunisian Language" :-) Even the Tunisians who speak the worst and most grammatically wrong literal Arabic Still understand it completely. In short people, anything you replace we will undo, please don't make fools of your selves, your ultimate goal is totally wrong and your project is rejected in Tunisia it self before any other Countryباسم (talk) 16:41, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

To باسم: This is not up to you to decide, I don't recognize litteral arabic as my mother tongue (and its very probably not yours too) and I feel more comfortable with Tunisian Arabic. I could say that your views are totally wrong and denote a degree of an inferiority feeling toward your own culture. Actually, most of the people I know would welcome very warmly Tunisian Arabic, so I can say that what you put is wrong. Also understanding Arabic is not the issue here, it is taught in schools alright, but if you read the whole argumentation of the discussion you'll understand that it gives erroneous informations about Tunisia among other problems.Tounsimentounes (talk)

• Hi @Huon @RJFF, everyone has presented its arguments, if someone is a sysop or something like that please make a final decision. --Helmoony (talk) 17:13, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

This is a content dispute. Administrators enjoy no special privileges regarding content disputes, and I don't really know enough about Tunisia to offer deep insight. I'll only say that "I don't recognize litteral arabic as my mother tongue" is not a valid rationale on Wikipedia. As RJFF pointed out, we should follow reliable published sources. For example, this is the Office of the President giving a Standard Arabic spelling for "Bourguiba", which I'd consider pretty strong evidence that the official Tunisia uses Standard Arabic. For comparison I also searched for the Tunisian Arabic spelling of "Bourguiba" and came up with "لا نتيجة" which Google translates as "No results". This apparently is one of Tunisia's main Arabic-language newspapers (the only one I could find online with a working "search" function) that uses the Standard Arabic spelling of "Bourguiba". Searching for the Tunisian Arabic spelling produced "Aucun résultat", which is "No resut" in French. So if someone wants to argue that Tunisian articles should use Tunisian Arabic spelling, I'd like them to provide some hard evidence, not just personal opinions. Huon (talk) 18:11, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I am surprised that you didn't find Habib Bourguiba "حبيب بورڨيبة" written with a ڨ on google. I have worked on Habib Bourguiba's life and works in the past and that writing is actually common. When I put it on the search-bar I received a decent feed of information on him. But as said RJFF, the issue with the letter ڨ might be that it is not commonly found on keyboards. Nevertheless, with a ڨ or ق, it should be pronounced "Bourguiba" Huon.Exacrion (talk) 22:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

See the article Ve_(Arabic_letter) to understand the problem when using the letter ڨ. --Helmoony (talk) 23:11, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I haven't searched for spelling variants via Google. A count of Google results would not really be a reliable source. I only searched for the different spelling variants on selected websites I thought would show both official and media usage in Tunisia - the Office of the President and the newspaper. Huon (talk) 23:56, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Arguments in favor of Tunisian Arabic (random break)

This discussion is getting very long, so i'm gonna summarize the arguments in favor of Tunisian Arabic:

- Tunisian Arabic is the national language of Tunisia. For that we have to look at the definition of a national language, i.e the language of communication of the people. This fact is normally widely accepted but just in case, it is recognized by the ISO 639-3 with the letters "aeb", also here: http://www.ethnologue.com/language/aeb as "De Facto National working language"

- Tunisian Arabic is the mother tongue of the Arab-speaking population (Similar argument to national language), here also it is widely accepted but just in case, a source: (Sayahi, L. (2011). Introduction. Current perspectives on Tunisian sociolinguistics. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2011(211), 1–8.)

- Tunisian Arabic is widely used both in written and spoken forms in Tunisia at least since the 17th century, sources: (Fakhfakh, N. (2007). Le répertoire musical de la confrérie religieuse" al-Karrâriyya" de Sfax (Tunisie) (Doctoral dissertation, Paris8).) another one: (Dhaoudi, R. &, Lahmar, M. (2004). Ali Douagi, The Ghalba Artist and the Taht Essour Troupe in the Taht Essour Troupe. Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, pp. 134-145 ISBN 978-9-770-18950-4) or this one: (Volk, L. (Ed.). (2015). The Middle East in the World: An Introduction. Routledge.) or (Maleh, G., Ohan, F., Rubin, D., Sarhan, S., & Zaki, A. (1999). World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre Volume 4: The Arab World. Routledge.)

- We could also cite that apart from Newspapers and Religion, all of Tunisia's medias: radio, TV... are airing mostly in Tunisian Arabic (for some medias the news only are kept in a standardized form), Advertisement (on the streets, in medias, on internet...) is done in Tunisian Arabic sources: (Ennaji, M. (1991). Aspects of multilingualism in the Maghreb. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 87(1), 7–26.) also this one (Boujelbane, R., Khemekhem, M. E., & Belguith, L. H. (2013). Mapping rules for building a tunisian dialect lexicon and generating corpora. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing.)

- A Tunisian Arabic newspaper existed from 1937 to 1959 "kull šay b- il-makšūf", source: Tunisian Front (2014). Ali Douagi. Artistic and Literary Personalities, 23 February 2014

-A handful of companies' official names and slogans are written in Tunisian Arabic, source: Daoud, M. (2001). The language situation in Tunisia. Current Issues in Language Planning, 2(1), 1–52.

- Some Tunisian Arabic works got broader recognition in the Arab World, like the ASBU Festival First Prize in 2015.(TAP (2015). Tunisian Television series "Naaouret El Hwa" received the first prize in ASBU Festival. La Presse de Tunisie, 17 May 2015) and the Festival of Arab Media Creation Prize in 2008. (Ouertani, N. (2008). "Sayd Errim", A recognition at least! Mosaique FM, 17 November 2008)

- Also, none the less, Presidential and official speeches are sometimes done in Tunisian Arabic, including the historical one of ex-President Ben Ali "ena fhemtkom". source: Auffray, E. (2014). Tunisian, written language of the street. Libération, 14 April 2015

- "Arabic" comprises all varieties of Arabic (if it wasn't, then we would speak of a Tunisian Language) see "Bassiouney, 2009, p. 29.". In this case it would be more logical to link the pages' names to the national variety's page rather than the general Arabic one (that itself lists Tunisian Arabic).

- If we agree that ڨ is a perfectly valid Arabic letter that is used in Tunisia, then there shouldn't be a problem concerning spellings toward Tunisian Arabic. As it would be a generally accepted spelling. (Eventually for some cases we could add another variant with a ق so both variants can be searched) source: Brustad, K. (2000). The syntax of spoken Arabic: A comparative study of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, and Kuwaiti dialects. Georgetown University Press.

Also I invite you all RJFF, Huon, Exacrion, Elioun, Helmoony, Abjiklɐm to read the Tunisian Arabic page that has been nominated for good Wikipedia Article. Also I believe one of the most knowledgeable person on this subject Csisc had yet to comment the discussion.Tounsimentounes (talk) 18:50, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm rather unimpressed by this list of references. For example:

• The step from "de facto national working language" to "national language" seems non-negligible to me, and it certainly doesn't say anything about the language used in official contexts such as for the state motto.
• Mapping Rules for Building a Tunisian Dialect Lexicon and Generating Corpora says: "Indeed, the majority of speech is no longer made in MSA but alternates between MSA and Tunisian Dialect (TD)." I don't see how that supports a preference for Tunisian Arabic, particularly in historical contexts; it seems rather to say that until very recently, the majority of speech was made in MSA while the current situation is ambiguous.
• Whether a Tunisian Arabic newspaper existed more than 50 years ago is irrelevant to whether or not Wikipedia should use Tunisian Arabic spellings.
• The Libération article stresses the vast prerogatives of literary Arabic into which the dialect has made some inroads. A single presidential speech, held in that dialect for political purposes (and utterly failing to have the desired effect) doesn't mean we should ignore the rest of the article, which explains that the "Arabic" enshrined in the Constitution as "'the' official language" is to be understood as literary Arabic.

I don't have the time to check any more of the references right now, but those I looked at so far don't really seem to support the point of view they're cited for. Huon (talk) 19:20, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

The Liberation article doesn't only cite the one made by Ben Ali, but says that political and official speeches in Tunisian Arabic are becoming more frequent and are not something new (parts about Al-Massar, Bourguiba and Rached Ghannouchi) Huon. Also I believe this discussion is no longer about arguing about the official language but how in this context Tunisian Arabic should be reported. Because, we have 2 variants of a language that is Arabic being used, each for more or less specific purposes. However it is also reported that code-switching to Standard Arabic is done in Tunisian Arabic. Personally my point of view is should we put the 2 variants or just Tunisian Arabic that already deals with standard Arabic usage in Tunisia ?Exacrion (talk) 08:45, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Given that we have reliable secondary sources such as that Libération article unequivocally stating that literary Arabic, not Tunisian Arabic, is the official language, we should use literary Arabic in official contexts, for example for the state motto. The use of Tunisian Arabic is obviously on the rise, but I don't think it's sufficiently common yet to be widely used for historical contexts such as, say, the spelling of Bourguiba's name - I have not seen a reliable published source that uses the Tunisian Arabic spelling for him. For biographies of living individuals matters are somewhat more complicated and may need to be decided on a case-by-case basis, depending on how reliable published sources most commonly refer to that person. Given the discussion above I see no reason at all to provide Tunisian Arabic transliterations without published sources backing them up. That's original research. Huon (talk) 09:24, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Tounsimentounes, Huon, Elioun, Helmoony, Melekimos, Abjiklɐm, Exacrion, RJFF, باسم: I thank you for the discussion you raised those days. I had chosen not to interfere in the first days of this important discussion in order to see what would be said. However, as Tounsimentounes had invited me to write about the problem and as I have seen that some of the provided information is not very accurate, I decided to answer to the questions raised in this discussion.

I recognize that most of the points raised in the discussion are accurate because they are picked from Tunisian Arabic. However, the other given opinions should be discussed as it should be. Huon had said that using the Tunisian Arabic spelling of words would not give results. This does not mean that the spelling does not exist. This means that this spelling is used in Internet only in quotes or in Social Networks. Howeverr, Let me inform you that this spelling exists in Internet:

ڨوڨل (Google): 4010 results

ڨنارية (Artichoke): 724 results

ڨابس (Gabes): 32800 results

ڨبلي (Kebili): 21500 results

ڨبي ڨبي (Gabi Gabi): 4940 results

بڨرة (Cow): 990 results

ڨراج (Garage): 2620 results

ڨطو (Cake): 277 results

So, even if you do not get the spelling for some words by Google Search, the spelling exists.

As for the problem of the uniqueness of the seplling of words in Tunisian Arabic, this problem has been solved by Nizar Habash in 2012. He is nowadays teaching Computational Linguistics in New York University Abu Dhabi. A convention for transcribing words in Tunisian Arabic using his method has been developed in 2014 with the cooperation of the University of Sfax and is entitled the "Conventional Orthography for Tunisian Arabic".

The principle is simple:

- We take the word from Standard Arabic: المهدية.

- We see if it contains a q. If it really exists, we see how this q is pronounced in Tunis Dialect. If this q is pronounced as /q/, it is kept. If this q is pronounced as /g/, the q is changed into a g.

- Same fact for the p and v.

- If the word finishes with a short vowel, the ta Maghluqa is changed into an h.

- For the words that do not have an Arabic ethymology, the transcription is phonemic.

By this, the conversion can only give a unique transcription for each word in Tunisian Arabic because of the uniqueness of Standard Arabic Spelling. So, المهدية becomes المهديه. We have promoted this method and generalized it in order to let it transcribe paragraphs and not just words in a unique way for all Maghrebi dialects. This method would be used in creating the new Wiktionary in Tunisian and is described here. --Csisc (talk) 12:37, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

That happens with any other Arabic Accent, Tunisian is not a special case at all. Still, the majority of Tunisians read and Mostly write in literal Arabic when they decide to use Arabic font, other than that they use French or English to a lesser degree. No one can deny that many Arabs use local Accents when browsing the web and chatting and some local TV shows. But no one uses his Accent for any literal or Academic purposes. This is still pointless and wrong and even stupid (sorry, but thats how it is), and I'm totally against itباسم (talk) 13:01, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

باسم: Please read Tunisian Arabic. Therre is a least four books written in Tunisian Arabic. As for the idea, I agree with you that writing Tunisian Arabic spelling when it is nearly the same as the one of Standard Arabic is useless. However, this idea would be very useful when the word differs from the Standard Arabic one. For example, buṣŭffir is التهاب الكبد الفيروسي in the Classical Arabic.--Csisc (talk) 13:05, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Still no reason at all. That's a common thing among all Arabic Accents. According to this we'll have about 18 Wikipedias. As for the books, just four among thousands: A drop of rain in a thundering stormباسم (talk) 15:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

باسم: We will obtain 18 Wiktionaries and not 18 Wikipedias. As you have said, creating 18 Wikipedias is a waste of time. However, the creation of wiktionaries will be helpful in explaining Standard Arabic words for people that do not have a proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic. For example, a person who does not know what is buṣŭffir in Modern Standard Arabic can search Wiktionary and then access to التهاب الكبد الفيروسي in Standard Arabic Wikipedia. --Csisc (talk) 10:11, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

@Csisc take a look at the top-left corner of the Arabic article about Viral hepatitis, that's how we deal with particular local words. As you can see we have a pop-up that indicates local equivalents. I've added the Tunisian word. Anyway it's not really our main discussion here.--Helmoony (talk) 14:42, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Helmoony: This is an important advance for the Arabic Wikipedia. This would solve the problem for us. Here, the author just writes the Standard Arabic synonym for the word and when he accesses the work in Arabic Wikipedia, he would find all the existing synonyms in all existing Arabic dialects. --Csisc (talk) 11:54, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Archiving

Hi all, is there any objection to having this talk page automatically archived? It is getting large and I think we'd benefit from cleaning it up a bit. I'm suggesting the following configuration which would archive 50-days old threads by year, leaving at least 3 threads on the main talk page:

{{User:MiszaBot/config
|archiveheader = {{Talk archive}}
|minthreadsleft = 3
|minthreadstoarchive = 1
|algo = old(50d)
|archive = Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tunisia/Archive %(year)d
}}

Abjiklɐm (tɐlk) 11:17, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Tunisian Arabic

The official language according to the Tunisian constitution is Arabic. I does not ignore that the people there speaks Tunisian dialect in a daily basis.--88.91.62.28 (talk) 23:46, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Help:IPA for Tunisian Arabic

Similar with the above discussion. The same user created the article and put there his own invented "transcription". I tried to correct it but since I have little knowledge of Tunisian (and as I understand there are several dialects there), help from a linguist or Arabist who knows phonetics and the IPA well is required.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 11:45, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, the transcription used on that page is WP:OR and must be changed. Abjiklɐm (tɐlk) 16:53, 26 November 2015 (UTC)