Talk:Indic languages

Unnamed section
User:Lithopsian, The term 'Indic' refers to entire India, whereas Indo-Aryan languages are found only in Northern part of India. Hence, The topic 'Indo-Aryan' cannot be considered as 'obvious primary redirect', just because the names appear similar. I would like to quote another example here. North Indians use the term 'Hindustan' to refer to entire India, but south Indians don't use that name and restrict that term to North India itself. (Hindustani music = North Indian Music) Hence, I feel redirect is unnecessary. I can quote a second example as well. People assume Bollywood(Hindi cinema) to be synonymous with Indian cinema, whereas Bollywood forms only 65% revenue of Indian cinema and Tamil and Telugu cinema are other two big cinema industries. I hope you understand the differences. Thanks.-2405:204:7205:D7A3:F474:CF91:C5C9:80FD (talk) 14:55, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Primary topic
I have made a technical request to revert this page back to "Indic languages", following your bold undiscussed move to "Indic languages (Disambiguation)" (btw, disambiguation should not be capitalized). Bold moves are totally ok, but in the case of a disambiguation page, you should at least execute all necessary steps: the disambiguation page has become almost invisible to our readers; when they type "Indic languages" with something else in mind than the "Indo-Aryan languages", they won't get here. So at least, you should have added a redirect-hatnote to "Indo-Aryan languages". Also, we need to estabilish if "Indo-Aryan languages" really is the primary topic for "Indic languages". In IE studies, "Indic languages" is occasionally used, but in computational linguistics, "Indic languages" is at least as often encountered with the extended meaning "languages natively spoken on the Indian subcontinent". The current second definition is not ideal as it does not mention the IA languages. I will fix it later. Austronesier (talk) 10:42, 21 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello @Austronesier. That's my bad, I hadn't noticed that disambiguation pages shouldn't be capitalised and I forgot to add a hatnote. I suggest that you take back your move revert request and instead make one to merge this page's history with Indic languages (disambiguation). Also, I have now added a hatnote to Indo-Aryan languages and converted made this into a redirect to the correct disambiguation page. PadFoot2008 (talk) 11:07, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for handling these details now. But I also disagree with the actual rationale of the move. I could of course also initiate a move discussion now, but per WP:BRD and the onus principle, I'd prefer to have the discussion starting from the status quo ante to give you room to argue why we should have the Indo-Aryan languages as primary target of "Indic languages". As I said, many linguists (mostly computational linguists from India) use the term "Indic languages" in a different way. –Austronesier (talk) 11:21, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Austronesier, It seems that a quick Google books search (preferably with the filter 'preview or full view' or else how shall you know what it's talking about inside) shows that a (vast) majority refer to Indo-Aryan languages. Also I think no one would ever would use the term "Indic languages" if the person's meaning to look for "Indian languages". Why would anyone use the term "Indic" rather than "Indian". The specific term Indic languages very commonly seems to refer to Indo-Aryan languages (again do a Google books search and see a few of the top results and see how many books refer to Indo-Aryan languages v. not). PadFoot2008 (talk) 11:29, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Try Google Scholar then. Don't be shoked, the first search result that is displayed is a WP:FRINGE-article by Subhash Kak (at least in my search). But then it's mostly computational linguistics. Admittedly many preprints, articles from low-ranking or predatory journals etc. Few books except for proceedings. But still, it's quite likely that people reading such stuff come across the term and want to find more about it here. Directing them right to Indo-Aryan languages might not be a good idea. –Austronesier (talk) 11:39, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Austronesier, It's all computational linguistics indeed (I just checked what that meant) in Scholars. Don't you think we should be rather checking scholarly articles/books about actual linguistics instead of computer science? There's a very slim chance that a reader might want to investigate in the context of computational linguistics specifically. We are talking about the primary topic here. Computational linguistics isn't very popular, especially compared to actual linguistics. You shall see that in Google Search results books that there are very few books about computational linguistics at the top. Most readers wouldn't be using Scholar, would they? It seems clear that Indo-Aryan languages is the primary topic here. PadFoot2008 (talk) 11:50, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Again on a techniical note: this is a copypaste move which is strongly dispreferred as it breaks the edit history (because the actual history of the disambiguation page is here). As for the primary topic question, we should get wider input. It's almost always about soft criteria and editorial judgement. I think both of our viewpoints are legitimate, just taking different angles about what hypothetical readers might be looking for and about where they might have stumbled first across the search term. –Austronesier (talk) 12:13, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Austronesier, I know about the copy paste move and I apologise for that but I was looking for a quick fix. That's why I also suggested to merge the page history with the correct disambiguation article. I also agree that we should ask for a wider input (maybe by listing it somewhere like India-related topics or something or an RfD?). PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:17, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Let's wait and see what happens with my technical request. If it gets rejected for some reason, I might even be to lazy to initiate a formal move discussion (WP:RM) and leave things as they are now out of plain inertia. If it gets moved back, you can initiate a formal move discussion and summarize your arguments from this discussion. I'll obviously also present my arguments in favor of the status quo ante, but apart from that I will just see what other people say. The move discussion will automatically be notified in the WikiProject talk pages, and we can also notify interested editors manually in Talk:Indo-Aryan languages, Talk:Indo-European languages and Talk:Languages of South Asia. –Austronesier (talk) 12:33, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @Austronesier, All right! PadFoot2008 (talk) 12:38, 21 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Reverted per Austronesier's request. You can open a requested-move discussion in a new talk section below by following the instructions at WP:PCM. SilverLocust 💬 02:10, 22 April 2024 (UTC)