Talk:Istvaeonic languages

Intro needs work
If the Istaevones appear in Tacitus, how can they be dated from ca. 500? Second point, they can't be in the Low Franconian category, as they are earlier by far than it. Moreover, the Istaevones must include the Ripuarian Franks, who went all the way upstream to Mainze. And finally, Istaevonic must fall into the Proto-Frankish period. At its eastern end it became various grades of Old High German. And post-finally, Istaevonic is only an unverified hypothetical. While I appreciate the desire to get something up on the topic we ought to try to get something accurate up, which is considerably more work. I suppose one would start by working through the references. Meanwhile this discussion entry gives some idea of the sort of reference work needed. Importance? Well, Istaevonic, Ingaevonic and Ermannonic are sort of being abandoned in favor of Proto-Frankish and other dialectical protos, so I would say medium or even low. It does have some historical value. Perhaps medium? Oh, and post-post finally, the part about the relationship of the Chatti and other tribes to the Istaevones is pure guesswork, manufactured history, so to speak. All we know is what Tacitus says. He covers the tribes rather than the Istaevones, etc. Earlier German linguists often got carried away in speculation. I can't say I blame them as the topic is so interesting, but stories made up using scattered fragments out of context is historical fiction not history.Dave (talk) 12:49, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think articles on this and similar subjects face a challenge. There are actually several inter-related definitions for the same term. First, Istaevones are mentioned in classical sources, but not clearly defined. (I disagree that we can say that they "must include the Ripuarian Franks" for example, who were a later people, whose ancestry is unknown. But there is a possible link.) Secondly, the word has been picked up by modern linguists, but, as you correctly point out, they are talking about distinctions in Germanic which were probably not even existent in the classical period when the term was original used. Again, there might be a connection, but we need to be cautious.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:19, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Could this be made more linguistic and less speculatively tribalistic?
The map with the various West and North Germanic linguistic variants correspond to some articles about Germanic tribes or "nations", which try to trace a kind of Germanic peoples subunits continuity not very commonly accepted among scholars today, and some articles about linguistic differences, which are much better founded. This article now is of the "tribalistic" kind, while Ingvaeonic languages is "linguistic". I think it would be good to make also this article mainly "linguistic", if someone with sufficient knowledge and access to good sources could do so.

Of course, this does not mean that all the references to Tacitus et cetera have to be removed. They should be retained at least for explaining the nomenclature, and with a short explanation of how the name-giving was related to an earlier hypothesised very strong correlation between having common language and genetic common origin. (In 1942, when the linguistics treatment by the German professor Friedrich Maurer was published, such hypotheses still had a rather strong support in Germany, to put it mildly.) Possibly, there might even be a split between Istvaeones (hypothetical Germanic supertribe) and Istvaeonic (linguistics); but this liguistically based map then only should belong to the linguistics article. Providing it in an article about what Pliny the Elder and Tacitus wrote about the distribution of Germanic tribes is completely misleading.

Actually, if Maurer did discuss his model as an alternative to the strict tree-model, as stated in Ingvaeonic languages, he was in a sense more modern. The modern idea is that people move around, and that some linguistic innovations may be spread geographically to some speakers of a "language" (here defined as "speakers of mutually understandable idioms"), both by some people moving, and by some people simply taking over a way to speak that they hear others using. Other linguistic changes may have spread to other parts of the same "language area". This leads to the possibility of a split between a northern and a southern part with respect to some features, an eastern and western split with respect to others, and a mixture, where some feature has spread along trade routes, but not affected more pure rural areas at the sides, with respect to a third set. This makes articles about such features, as Ingvaeonic languages, rather interesting.

I am not that happy about calling the dialects influenced by the Ingvaeonic (or e. g. the Istvaeonic) linguistic changes "languages"; this is a mistaken reflex of the strict tree-model, I fear. JoergenB (talk) 16:14, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 4 December 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Title has been redirected to Weser-Rhine Germanic. I have put up a request for a histmerge. Consensus is that the people will be dealt with at Istvaeones as a topic of classical ethnography, while the languages will be dealt with under a more modern title, currently Weser-Rhine Germanic. Srnec (talk) 20:13, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Istvaeonic languages → Rhine-Weser Germanic peoples – The move to the current name appears to have been carried out, incorrectly, as a 'cut-and-paste' rather than using 'Move page', so part of the history has been lost. Moreover, the article is about a people group, not a language, so this proposal is to move it back in a way that restores the history and lines up with the article content. Bermicourt (talk) 19:32, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi! I would just like to remark that the concept of a "Rhine-Weser Germanic group" is almost entirely a linguistic one. That is, it's almost always used in a linguistic sense, almost never in an ethnic sense beyond describing the Istvaeones of Pliny and Tacitus. If you leave out the linguistic part, an article about "Rhine-Weser Germanic group" would become totally incoherent. Therefore I added the archeological finding to the subsection of this article, which deals with the same subject. AKAKIOS (talk) 19:49, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * On second thought, I'd prefer a move to Istvaeones with Rhine-Weser Germanic being listed as an alternative term. This because it would be more in line with the Ingaevones and Irminones (with the current Elbe Germanic peoples merged with the latter). I continue to object to the use of "peoples" as it suggest an ethnic bond which cannot and has not been proven. Even the linguistic ties are (to a certain degree) speculative. What would you think about that? AKAKIOS (talk) 07:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Possibly it is correct that the various articles related to these matters need to be reconsidered. But there are several obvious problems that do not seem to be considered in the approach which you have started to push through with major re-writes and moves.
 * Discussion of the classical sources has now been deleted or obscured, and this should be reinserted, replaced with vague modern speculations. You can either divide or combine the "serious linguistic" and the "classic ethnography" subjects, but if you choose to combine them then of course there is no longer any justification for demands to remove, for example, discussion of the small number of classical sources and what they actually say. (And to me it appears all such discussion has now effectively been deleted from Wikipedia? Or where is it now?) See WP:PRESERVE.
 * Whatever you do with the difficult classical term Istvaeones, you should do with the Ingvaeones and Irminones, and the 3 articles should refer to each other because the 3 terms come from the same sources, and are defined (in as much as they are defined at all) in contradistinction to each other. In fact maybe they should all be in one article. But now they will apparently only mention in each other in the "See also" section? This section is by definition a section where readers can not see why a link might be relevant without following it themselves, so this is effectively removing a key piece of explanation which is needed. Whatever the solution, these 3 concepts must be discussed together somewhere on Wikipedia again please.
 * It is wrong that we are now presenting specific modern speculations as if there is one consensus. I think that in order to avoid such problems, serious modern linguistics should not be forced into the template of classical terms, and the 3 difficult classical terms still deserve a discussion based on what the original sources said, rather than any one modern author's non-consensus theories being favored in a map and summary. This approach would seem to be against Wikipedia core content policies. We must not simplify reality in order to make our editing job easier. There is no consensus about how to explain exactly what these 3 terms meant, so we should explain what the small number of classical sources actually said.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:47, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Further comments just to help explain my point:
 * Just in case it is not clear the term Istvaeones almost certainly means different things in different periods, and in different types of works. This is because a classical term was later used for other purposes, and there is no strong evidence that the modern proposed use of the term (which is not common) is the same as what the classical authors were talking about.
 * We have no other term to use for what the classical authors were talking about. We hardly know what they were talking about. We have lots of other terms we can use for what the modern linguists are talking about.
 * The new version of this article now constantly refers to a non-existent article for Istvaeones in order to palm off discussion about the original sources which mentioned the original version of them. Actually the links come back to this article. So either there really needs to be a separate article (like there was :) ) or else this article needs to handle the subject fully.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:54, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll try to respond with numbered replies, for the sake of clarity:
 * 1) I've readded the classical sources, in full. I did not at first see much added value in quoting them, because the references to the Istvaeones were so minute.
 * 2) I agree with you on matter of consistency. Perhaps in 3 articles, mainly concerned with the linguistic aspects but with a classical ethnography section to explain the context/origin of the terms used? Or would you prefer separate linguistic articles and a single article discussing the 5 Germanic tribes of the Roman historians?
 * 3) I'm not sure which consensus you are refering to?
 * 4) I am well aware of the distinction between the classical Istvaeones and the linguistic grouping. Where would you say the article obscures this?
 * 5) I agree, I could consider Rhine Weser Germanic as a substitute for the "Istvaeonic languages".
 * 6) I've fixed this, for the moment.
 * AKAKIOS (talk) 12:47, 5 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Hopefully the new section below helps explain, bit by bit, but easier was just for me to edit. I do not have a strong preference between one article or more, but such choices need to be done in such a way that Wikipedia does not become misleading or confusing. Perhaps it is important to note that:
 * 1. Every possible encyclopaedic discussion connected to the words Istvaeones (and similar) is going to be small, or else it is going to overlap completely with related articles such as Franks, Salians, Germanic languages, Chamavi, etc. So a small article or articles (not large ones) seems very appropriate.
 * 2. Very simple problem: the title of THIS article says it is about LANGUAGES, but it not only has a lot of generic information about Franks and specific tribes, which are better handled in other articles, you even deleted an article which was NOT about languages and claimed that THIS was the new home for that material. The material can be handled together if necessary but the TITLE seems wrong.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:16, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Concerning the original topic, Rhine-Weser Germanic peoples might indeed be the best title to cover all classical, linguistic, and archaeological ideas in a single short article. It would be good to get more input and see more real sources though. Is the concept still used in archaeology in recent years?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree, the title is wrong but I'm not in favor of the title Rhine-Weser Germanic peoples. My preference would be Rhine-Weser Germanic, which - mind you - is a linguistic concept and not - to my knowledge, an archeological one. AKAKIOS (talk) 17:29, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Seems like something we should check. There is an archaeological culture proposed for the area, so what do they call it?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:25, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

FYI, the current German language article Rhein-Weser-Germanen says:
 * Der Begriff der „Rhein-Weser-Germanen“ geht auf eine Arbeit des Germanisten und Sprachwissenschaftlers Friedrich Maurer [...] Diese Gleichsetzung von archäologischen Fundgruppen und linguistischen Gruppen ist jedoch bis heute umstritten, weshalb der Begriff von vielen Wissenschaftlern nur als archäologischer Terminus akzeptiert wird und nicht als linguistischer.

If that is correct then the approach taken by English Wikipedians concerning Maurer seems to be a mess, and not based on looking at the literature itself?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:19, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Other Wikipedia pages are not a valid source. Also, please stick to the subject; the question is what to name this article. You're basically started 4 more or less identical discussions, let's keep it simple and to the point. I say move this article to Weser-Rhine Germanic. What are your objections, if any, so this show can move on. AKAKIOS (talk) 16:51, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed, let's stick to the subject. In this section, please clarify your point. Sourcing rules are not the issue here. This is a talk page, and I am asking as a person working in a group, whether the German Wikipedia is right or wrong. It seems worth thinking about because at least that article mentions the term Rhine-Weser, and apparent sources (outside Wikipedia). So what do you think? Right or wrong? OTOH, please state your rationale for the move, as requested, in a separate and dedicated talk page section on this talk page (not here where we were discussing something else). But please keep in mind that currently the article does not mention this term.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:40, 7 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

section proposed for deletion
User:AKAKIOS, concerning this reversion, and your explanation, please let's be realistic and keep in mind that this section is really only 2 paragraphs. And one is admitted now to be wrong, while the other is about the Franks, whose connection to this topic is tenuous, and who have many other articles about them. There is no extensive good sourcing or even clear relevance. Furthermore, while you defend this section, the whole article has fundamental questions that need discussion (see above) and you did not show yourself very exemplary when it came to making much bigger edits very recently? :) In summary I find your edit summary a bit misleading. By all means though, please do use the talk page...--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:18, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Looking at the article history, I seem to be the only one who has put in considerable thought into this recently (not meant in an insulting way!). My intentions are to improve it and to be open to critism, but please do understand that a lot of time has gone into the expansion of this article and removing (not moving, as I did) a lot information can be somewhat discouraging. I disagree with what you wrote about the Franks not being relevant, as the most probable and major (and in any case assumed by Maurer) succesor group of the Istvaeones they of course need to be mentioned. Wouldn't you agree? AKAKIOS (talk) 12:36, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * That history will seem short because you moved the article? I will give you a chance to edit, before I restart editing. But your rhetorical question is not promising, because obviously the Franks are MENTIONED a lot already in this article? So yes of course they should be mentioned, but constantly writing as if Franks = Istvaeones (definitely no difference), and as if anything about Franks should also be in this article, is wrong. If one famous author long ago equated them, then we need to report that as someone's opinion, and not simply write as if everyone agrees, because they do NOT. (Also, if Franks = Istvaeones we can delete this article, and cover the whole subject under Franks.) To point to one really big problem with what you are writing, many modern and qualified authors specialized in the actual period when the term Istvaeones was really used have serious doubts about whether those tribes spoke anything we would recognize as a Germanic language. That makes use of this term for Germanic linguistics very dubious, which is probably why no linguists do it any more. I fear Wikipedia is using far too many 19th and early 20th century ideas on this subject, developed during a time of Germanic nationalism.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * No offense, but I'm going to be blunt and ask where you consider your expertise to lie, with the classical ethnography or with linguistics? Because the linguistic concept of "Istvaeonic & friends" is quite an established theory. In its revised form(s) it generally refers to the unattested precursor dialects of the various Old X Germanic languages which are attested. Now I agree, that there is no way of knowing the ethnicity of the "Istvaeones" as mentioned by Pliny/Tacitus as being either Germanic or Celtic, and frankly (no pun intended ;) I don't particularly care, because I'm aware that ethnography in Roman times was sketchy at best and borderline mythological at worst. I'm perfectly able to believe that the tribes/Istvaeones that Caesar met on the Rhine, were Celtic. I think it's even quite likely. I and many reputable historians would disagree in later centuries though, when the Rhine area does become more Germanic. I'm quite allergic to German nationalism (which indeed seems to latch on to these kind of subjects much too often) but I think that instead of removing that information, we should place the term into context. AKAKIOS (talk) 17:25, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I presume when you say the "concept" is "established" you are not necessarily including (a) the name "Istvaeonic" or similar for this family, which is specifically a name going back to the time of Tacitus and Pliny, and not afterwards, and (b) the conclusion or implication that this modern family of languages and dialects can be taken back past the Merovingians, to the tribes Caesar fought around the Rhine. Correct? But if we take away a and b, aren't you just saying that there is a western "Frankish" family within West Germanic? That is indeed not very controversial, but does not really address the concerns that can be raised about this article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:24, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

list for work
First priority is the question of how many articles there need to be concerning "Istvaeones". This was not discussed properly yet. I think these are the related but distinct topics which connect to this term: Problems:
 * The original use was as a category of tribes living near the Rhine in the early Roman empire. They may or may not have spoken a Germanic language as we would define it today.
 * There is an out-of-date linguistic usage, which has no consensus. It is similar to the Rhine-Wester Germanic concept, which I think is a more common term. But even that is just a speculative idea.
 * The current article says it is about languages, the second bullet above, so the recent "move" (actually it was just a deletion done in several steps) from the other Istvaeones article gives the material from that article no natural home any more. If we try to handle it in this article then the name of the article seems wrong, AND we need to be very careful about not mixing up the two quite different meanings! How do we resolve those two problems?
 * It has been pointed out that concerning historical linguistics, there are other more common terms to describe proposals about there being a specific Roman era Germanic family that is ancestral to modern Dutch. So this article title is also not ideal for this purpose! A major concern about ANY such article is that it should not present any single speculation as being the only idea around.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:38, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

The current article also says nothing at all about the Rhine-Weser concept, although it redirects here? I understand it is both linguistic and archaeological? Does anyone have sources for it?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:16, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Next some examples of specific problems I will hesitate before fixing again:
"Germanic tribes generally assumed to have been Istvaeonic in terms of dialect and culture, are principally those who would later form the Frankish confederation, itself made up of the two Frankish polities: the Salian and the Ripuarian Franks, which had formed during the 3rd century."
 * Wikipedia is full of references to the "Frankish confederation" (a political entity) which is a concept appearing in non specialist works, but something which appears in no classical sources. While this is an issue deserving a bit of discussion in some articles it does not seem important to this particular article, so we should remove it.
 * No one knows how many Frankish kingdoms there were, so we should not say there were exactly two. Again, it is also not really relevant to this article.
 * No one knows when such kingdoms formed, given that we know basically nothing about early Frankish politics. We just know when the term Frank started being used.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Possibly useful is this quote from a well-known book, already used in our Franks article (I put it there today):
 * A Roman marching-son joyfully recorded in a fourth-century source, is associated with the 260s; but the Franks' first appearance in a contemporary source was in 289. [...] The Chamavi were mentioned as a Frankish people as early as 289, the Bructeri from 307, the Chattuarri from 306-15, the Salii or Salians from 357, and the Amsivarii and Tubantes from c. 364-75.
 * A Roman marching-son joyfully recorded in a fourth-century source, is associated with the 260s; but the Franks' first appearance in a contemporary source was in 289. [...] The Chamavi were mentioned as a Frankish people as early as 289, the Bructeri from 307, the Chattuarri from 306-15, the Salii or Salians from 357, and the Amsivarii and Tubantes from c. 364-75.

The marching song is what we are putting such emphasis on. I think the context Edwards gives is important though!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

"The Sallian Franks (L. Salii, meaning 'of the salt', i.e. living near the sea.) are thought to have been an amalgation of the Batavians, Cananefates, Bructeri, Chamavi and Tungrii."
 * As can be seen on our Salian article there are various ideas about what the name means, so there is no consensus and we must not pretend there is one.
 * The Salians were a tribe themselves, distinct from the others. The sources only tell us they settled in the Civitas of the Batavians and Cananefates, and then expanded into the Texuandrian lands (which seem to have been in the north of more Romanized Civitates of the Tungri and Nervians). But for example many people think that other folk had been moving out and not breeding very much in these Northern areas.
 * Only the Bructeri and Chamavi in the above list are normally seen as Frankish.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2017 (UTC) (And whether they joined the Salii or Ripuarii or neither is unknown. Salians settled in the empire but the Chamavi, though similar, did not? See the mentions from the time of Julian: )--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:29, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

"Whereas the Ripuarian Franks (L. Ripuarii, meaning 'of the river'.) were principally formed by the Tencteri, Usipetes and Ubii, followed later by the Cherusci and Chatti."
 * Again, look at our Ripuarian article and you'll see there is no consensus about the meaning of the name. I do agree that it is commonly speculated to have something to do with the river that the kingdom was apparently associated with (the Rhine), but that is all we need to say then in this article?
 * Again, there is no clear information that has survived about the origins of the Ripuari. We can say that it likely formed from Frankish tribes known to live nearby but we should not be given a "just so" story.
 * The Ubii were long Romanized [like the Tungi above], the Tencteri and Usipetes long gone, and the Cherusci and Chatti were Hermiones according to Pliny, one of our only 2 real sources for this whole Istvaeonic article! Out of this whole list only the Chatti are frequently proposed as possibly being Franks, but always in the uncertain lists. In any case we are making statements which sound very certain, when they are not.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I am going to apologize for not going into every detail here. I see and recognize many of the problems you raise, however, I also think you are taking some liberties here ("many people think") and it's perfectly acceptable to speak of two polities within the Franks (Salii and Ripuarii) at or after a certain time; though of course on the whole it was more fluid at various points. Also, I think this article (or its future version) should support information already on Wikipedia, but only when that information is sourced. A lot of articles in this niche, are not even close to that. Especially articles on German dialects, regional identities, etc. I'm going to think this over and propose a new approach to you in a couple of days. AKAKIOS (talk) 17:51, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * "Many people think" seems acceptable in a discussion like this, on a talk page. It saves time. Furthermore, the creation of new pages about very closely related topics means anyone trying to keep an eye on a topic constantly has to keep naming the same sources which are already discussed in other articles. If specialized articles do not yet exist, or are not yet well sourced, this means they should be fixed, and does not necessarily mean this article has to cover for example everything topic possibly related to it. I guess this is obvious, but sometimes it seems important to point out the obvious.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:29, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Honestly, it’s not helpfull and doesn’t further the discussion at all. Please mention the sources you base this on, especially when generalising - as I too try to do. AKAKIOS (talk) 07:49, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I suppose you realize you are making a generalization about generalizations. You are effectively saying "many times you write". Please tell me which information you say needs sourcing in order for us to discuss this article or articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:46, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I will not go into this matter any further as I consider it a waste of time to continue a semantical discussion. My point was, and remains, that "many people think" is not the way to go in trying to get clarity on a talk page and - to add to that - I also do not consider an attitude of "ask me anything and I'll give you sources" to be acceptable: your sources should always be included, as they are the reference needed, not yourself. AKAKIOS (talk) 16:48, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Again: There are detailed explanations above which you refused to respond to.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:29, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Before further editing, lets reach a consensus on talk
I would kindly ask you to refrain from large edits or modifications to the now sourced (though perhaps not relevant) information present in the article, until we reach some kind of consensus or plan as to which direction to take with this (and related articles). As I said, I'd like to propose a plan/concept to you within a couple of days. I'd like to ask you to wait until, we've discussed this. AKAKIOS (talk) 18:50, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * No, I think you are being hypocritical here and not applying the same rule to your own edits which have removed a lot of material and changed the article name without discussion. I am not seeing lots of good sourcing either. Furthermore you've refused to respond to details explanations here on the talk page, so you are not acting in a way consistent with your own proposal. I would be willing to ignore it for a while but most of your edits involve large amounts of material being removed, and that can become permanent by accident if we lose track of it. I think it is a bad idea to try to freeze on a version where lots has been deleted. Please instead of reverting, discuss any concerns on this talk page?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:37, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I never removed information, I either relocated it or removed the lenthgy citations from primary sources. That’s different. You however do remove information, and you do not move it to articles where it could be relevant and change the wording without changing the source. That’s confusing and not the way to go. AKAKIOS (talk) 07:54, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * You did remove information. You started this round of editing by removing a whole Wikipedia article. (Anyone tracing back the actual edits will see that it was not a move, as claimed, because the text of the original article was not moved to this article.) When you reverted my edits of yesterday much of that was also simply deletion of material. Furthermore, I have attempted to show in detail that you introduced mistakes and you simply won't respond to that. That would be the way forward. If you don't have time to respond to such efforts, then frankly you should not be deleting the work of other editors. Wikipedia can be a challenging work environment, I know, but please remember that we have to work together. No editor has the write to demand other editors have to stop because they couldn't be bothered reading. This is a SHORT article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:52, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to argue wether you did or not remove information, the page history is available to all and will suffice in supporting my previous argument. I'm here to edit (something I don't do that often to begin with, only when I'm taken in by a subject) and not to spend much time quarreling, ultimately irrelevant, matters on talk pages. I did not demand you to stop editing, I asked you, kindly, to stop making major changes before a consensus on talk was reached. That's all. AKAKIOS (talk) 16:48, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Neither of us own the article and there is no clear problem under discussion, so neither of us has a right to demand a stop to editing by others.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:30, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Which I, again - as can easily be read above - did not demand to begin with. AKAKIOS (talk) 22:31, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * What, because you called all my edits including small ones "major changes" (and reverted edits and deleted materials etc)? I don't see any difference. Of course on a short article a few small changes can be argued to be major changes I guess. But in effect this means you have been demanding no real editing. You have not defined what makes changes major according to you and you have not described clearly what consensus you are waiting for. Consensus about what? I raised some points and refused to respond.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:09, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Proposal
It seems to me that this would probably be the best solution to the current predicament:

Articles based on the polychotomy introduced by Maurer and Kuhn:


 * North Sea Germanic (linguistic theory, context of theory, relation to modern and/or attested Germanic languages/dialects)
 * Elbe Germanic (idem)
 * Weser-Rhine Germanic (idem)
 * Oder-Vistula Germanic (idem)

Articles based on the main (sub)groups of Germanic peoples mentioned by Pliny and Tacitus:


 * Illeviones (classical mentionings, possible archeological connections, disambiguation comment in/above lead to avoid confusion with linguistic term)
 * Ingaevones (idem)
 * Irminones (idem)
 * Istvaeones (idem)

Other:


 * A certain part of the information on the Franks should/could be moved to more appropriate/specific articles.

What would you say about this? AKAKIOS (talk) 20:14, 5 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The second list of 4 points seems odd to me (no Istvaeones or similar, Ingvaeones doubled, and who are the Illeviones?). But apart from that are you not proposing to go back to the article structure before your recent removal of the separate articles and addition of lots of extra information on Frankish history? If you are agreeing to revert all your own work, then why are you still reverting edits and telling others not to edit? It is a little hard to follow. I think there is some aspect of your proposal I must not be understanding.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:41, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Well obviously the doubling of Ingvaeones was a typo. The Illeviones are mentioned by Pliny and Maurer associated them with a group ancestral to North and East Germanic dialects. If you think this proposal comes down to me reverting all of my edits you are indeed mistaken, as this new structure would result in integrated, non contradictory, articles; instead of the unsourced rag tagg mess most if not all of them were previously. I'm reverting your edits partly because of this, because you change the wording in places while not providing sources. That's not how it should be, and it's somewhat confusing for me. No offence intended. AKAKIOS (talk) 07:29, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Tell me what sources you say are needed most urgently, and I will attempt to supply them quickly. I would say everything I've written while we've been discussing the future of this simple article is obvious and clear to anyone familiar with this small subject area. Let's keep context in mind:
 * 1. Apart from the linguistic and archaeological sides of this subject, which we have hardly discussed or worked on, this is a tiny subject area based on two classical quotes and some additional things. Apart from those two quotes, I think everything else is cited in related articles written before you made this new article, and can easily be tracked by you or me as conscientious editors by clicking on the links to those older articles.
 * 2. The entire structure of the articles for this subject is an open subject, meaning everything might need re-writing. So I think it is perfectly reasonable to say I'd rather not waste time on anything you might be about to delete again.
 * 3. One more time: I've pointed out some detailed reasoning on this talk page. You refused to respond. I think this is a critical point!
 * 4. I think most of my edits and concerns mentioned in detail on this talk page have been about trying to remove additional speculative material that I know is wrong. So if I understand correctly probably all or most of what you demand sourcing for are actually to prove that material you want to include is wrong. That is not how sourcing responsibility works on WP. Sourcing is demanded for positive statements, not for removal of them. (Of course if I am wrong about this point, you should explain this, but that would be responding to detailed discussion on the talk page, which you have refused to do.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:08, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm well aware of how Wikipedia works, but thanks for the explanation anyway. I'm going to edit the articles now, if you feel your knowledge of the subject and/or sources at hand is adequate enough to warrant a discussion on this talk page, please do so, but I would ask of you to keep it factual and not politicize matters or add a personal dimension to this. I'm here to improve these articles and not (with all due respect) to be 'taken by the hand' by someone who (again, no offense) is not an expert or particularly well-read on the subject. AKAKIOS (talk) 16:48, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * That's great and I look forward to it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:30, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * But just to be clear, the correct way to proposal an article split or re-naming is not to create 2 new near-copy articles, add a merge proposal of the 3 articles, and then start editing the new ones instead of the previously existing one. That kind of looks like a way to get edits in without discussion? Can you please fix that? Concerning any proposals for re-naming or moving or splitting or whatever, please give your rational here on this talk page and let it be discussed clearly. (And separately from discussions about content details.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:33, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

RFC. Merge? Split? Re-name?
We now have a template added to this article saying there is a proposal to merge this article, to Istvaeones and Weser-Rhine Germanic. This was added by User:AKAKIOS. There is a complicated background I will try to explain: My proposals (feedback please): 1. First procedural, while this discussion is proceeding, turn the 2 new articles, which are effectively POV forks now, back into redirects to this one article. Move all discussion to here also. 2. My proposal for this "merge" discussion is that, if there is agreement, we stick to a one article approach, but move back to Istvaeones. 3. Make the one article primarily about the history of the term, and therefore primarily about the classical ethnography texts. 4. The conventional linguistic aspect, where the term is occasionally used, is mainly handled elsewhere on Wikipedia, and only needs to be mentioned briefly in this Istvaeones article. 5. It seems to me so far that no one has yet written any material for Wikipedia about the supposed archaeological aspect. Until someone writes something significant it deserves no new article. For now it can still be mentioned in the Istvaeonic article, if sourceable, as yet another field where the term has occasionally been mentioned. 6. FWIW I think that "Rhine-Weser" is a known term, but not "Weser-Rhine". I am not confident about how completely it overlaps with any meaning of Istvaeonic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually there were no such articles when the "merge proposal" template was added, so this is not a normal merge proposal. These are effectively new articles (whatever their past) which were started by copying this article. And this was in fact done by the editor proposing, at the same time, that this article should be merged to the new articles. Talk page discussion has not been perfect, but probably the editor involved is actually proposing a split of this article?
 * Currently we have all aspects of the term Istvaeones covered in this one article called Istvaeonic languages. There are at least 3 aspects: 1. classical ethnography (the original use of the term by Tacitus and Pliny, arguably the primary use); 2. Linguistics (but Istvaeones is not a common term in that field) and the conventional subject is currently mainly handled under other articles such as Frankish and Low Franconian languages. 3. Archaeological, but the more common term for this aspect seems to be "Rhine-Weser Germanic"? Currently this subject is not really being discuss much on English Wikipedia, except a tiny bit on talk pages.
 * The one article approach is not new, but previously the material in this article was in the more generally titled Istvaeones. This was recently turned into a redirect and the material changed a lot and then moved to here, in a series of edits which initiated the current round of edits and discussions. (And then now this action has effectively been partly reversed with the original article receiving a modified copy of material from this new article.)


 * Comment. My original proposal was made for 2 reasons. First, the new name of the article, "Istvaeonic languages" didn't seem to match the content which was (then) more about a people group than their language. Second, the correct procedure for moving an article to a new title was not followed; instead there was a cut-and-paste job which means that the article history is lost. That has been made worse by all the subsequent edits and it will need an admin to sort that out. All that said, I am not an expert on this subject, but would recommend the following:
 * 1. If the article is mainly about a people group (i.e. it's "archaeological"), it should be so titled e.g. "Rhine-Weser Germanic peoples"; if the article is mainly about linguistics, the title should reflect that e.g. "Istvaeonic languages"
 * 2. We should use the most common names from the sources as per WP:COMMONNAME
 * 3. We should use the naming consistently. So, for example, if we only have one set of articles, we should either use "North Germanic", "North Sea Germanic", "Rhine-Weser Germanic", etc, or Ingvaeonic, Istvaeonic, etc, but not mix them. Of course, if we have two sets, then each set should be consistent. One could be a set of people articles ("Foo peoples") and the other a set of related language articles ("Foo languages").
 * 4. Because it seems relatively easy to be confused by all this, it may be better to have two sets of articles as mentioned at 3 above. Or even 3 sets if we need to distinguish between the tribal names used by Pliny and Tacitus and the naming scheme used by Maurer and Kuhn (as suggested above).
 * I hope that makes some sense! Bermicourt (talk) 10:13, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Bermicourt, so it seems that for you it is important to know whether Istvaeonic is a common name in linguistics, or a term with more common alternatives. If it is, then a special Istvaeonic languages article might be needed in addition to an Istvaeones (classical ethnography) article. If not then Istvaeonic languages should be handled under whatever their more common name is. Correct? (FWIW my understanding is that it is NOT the most common term. That is why I think there should be one article which is mainly about the classical ethnography, or tribes, but can mention the linguistic and archaeological connotations.) Please let me know if this makes sense to you.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:28, 8 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment
 * 1 The linguistic term (from Maurer) is "Weser-Rhine", not "Rhine-Weser".
 * 2 This is now much more commonly used than "Istvaeonic" in linguistic work (admittedly handbooks often also mention the older term). Keller, Wells and Nielsen all use "Weser-Rhine Gmc".
 * 3 We (historical linguists) are now much more aware of the problems of confusing ethnographic and linguistic classifications, so having a single article is actually a step backwards. In this case, the ethnographic term is itself problematic, which doesn't help. --Pfold (talk) 10:46, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Exactly! AKAKIOS (talk) 10:58, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * FWIW "Weser-Rhine Germanic" is about twice as common in book sources as "Rhine-Weser Germanic", but the latter is common enough to warrant mention in a lede and be a redirect. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:06, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. --Pfold (talk) 11:20, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * @Pfold & Bermicourt, would you agree that articles on North Sea Germanic and Elbe Germanic in line with Weser-Rhine Germanic have a place on Wikipedia? That is, as articles focussed on describing the presumed proto-languages. AKAKIOS (talk) 11:33, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

OK. It seems there really is a subject called Weser-Rhine Germanic, which is nice to know. But then can you also confirm that this topic equates to the definition we are using currently (Frankish and its descendants)? If so, then why do we need a new article when we already have one on Frankish on one on its descendants? Please advise.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:24, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

It's really simple … if you want it to be
I’m writing this in a different subsection because I do not want to give any credulity to the above mentioned accusations of forking the article and being biased. I think the articles speak for themselves and that, in any case, making this discussion personal isn’t going to be very helpful.

This is the situation: I was being bold and wrote the article Istvaeonic languages, which – apart from new material – included information from the articles on Rhine-Weser Germanic peoples and Istvaeones which I subsequently turned into redirects to the Istvaeonic languages-article.

Not long after that, I realized that I’d made a mistake because now the link between classical ethnography and a 20th century linguistic theory seemed to be more clear and proven than it actually was and that it would be better to create a distintion between the two. This can be seen in the Istvaeones-article (classical ethnography) and the Weser-Rhine Germanic-article (linguistic theory) which I subsequently created.

This article should be turned into a redirect (to Weser-Rhine Germanic) and this would solve just about everything concerning this article.

In order to make it more coherent with other articles on Wikipedia, it might be advisable to create / adapt:
 * Keep Ingvaeones (ethnography) and rename Ingvaeonic languages to North Sea Germanic, a term used synonymously by Maurer and more common in modern linguistics.
 * Merge Irminones (ethnography) with part of Elbe Germanic peoples (to which Elbe Germanic currently directs, but which does not mention linguistic aspects, and, with Irminonic languages also redirected to Elbe Germanic which should be made into a proper article, as it now - incorrectly - redirects to High German languages.)

That way we would have a three-part set of articles on the tribes mentioned by the classical authors and their possible archeological / ethnic links, and three articles on the linguistic theory of Maurer; with all using proper and acceptalbe names. AKAKIOS (talk) 10:57, 8 December 2017 (UTC)


 * AKAKIOS I have not mentioned bias, but you should not have made new parallel articles, once let alone 3 times. That has created problems NO MATTER which alternative is eventually chosen. So yes, you did create forks in a very incorrect way.
 * Concerning other articles, they should be discussed separately in my opinion. Not here, although there can and should be cross referencing to talk pages. They are not necessarily all the same.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:21, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I would kindly ask you to let other people comment factually, instead of once again trying to steer this discussion into the non-factual. AKAKIOS (talk) 11:25, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The fact is that your started 3 new articles that you should not have done. This one here is currently still the one I am editing as the new version of Istvaeones because you moved it here as a merged article, without agreement from other editors, and it still exists. The new article Istvaeones has already been made by you as part of your split proposal which you call a "merge proposal". But you have now started editing it before it is agreed to move back, making a bad situation worse. It is a fact that this is not good. Also it is not easy to fix these problems with you still acting so tendentiously. Please allow these problems to be fixed!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:35, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I think both of you have been trying to help by improving this and creating other articles in good faith, but in hindsight we should perhaps have done that by creating 'sandbox' articles in our user space rather than operating in main article space during move/merge discussions. Nevertheless, there is greater clarity around the terminology (certainly for me!) and, if we can forgive each others' past impetuosities and press ahead towards an agreement on article names and content, which I sense is close, we will have made a great step forward. Bermicourt (talk) 11:51, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes thanks for your comment. I'd be very happy to get moving on any clear path forward. But I think it is obvious that means we must stop making "bold" new articles on a solo basis. First we need a clear path forward for this one article or articles, then we can move to others. Right now we can not really move ahead because we have 3 parallel articles, and so at least one text and probably two will need to be deleted. (Depending upon whether the linguistic Istvaeones are already covered or not under various articles which already exist or not, such as Frankish. See discussion above.) If we can get a good clear discussion and decision for those points, then we can move ahead.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:03, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Your assumption "we have 3 parallel articles, and so at least one text and probably two will need to be deleted" is wrong. Not only are there not 3 parallel articles, there is one article under discussion, and two articles which take part of its information, without dublication between the later two. There is also no need at all to delete these two articles, as the point has been made that Ingvaeonic languages can easily be made into a redirect to Weser Rhine Germanic without any loss of information to the project. I seriously feel you are trying to manipulating the outcome of this discussion by means of the non-factual. I once again ask you to stop this. AKAKIOS (talk) 13:39, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I think you misunderstand. Firstly, I am not even taking any strong position. Secondly, when I say delete an article, I mean the text. So changing an article to a redirect counts as deleting that article. But anyway, currently we certainly do have 3 active articles based on one original article. Thirdly, I am happy if there is consensus to split this into two subjects but this could still imply deleting 2 of the 3 articles, because one thing which has still not been discussed is whether the language part should have its own article or go to another pre-existing language article (like Frankish). I have asked for more opinions, and please let other people say what they think. Please also stop writing these attack posts about me, because I am not the subject here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:49, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * My immediate response to the question of new vs pre-existing article is to suggest that we restrict the Weser-Rhine article to the pre-historic period and start the Frankish/Franconian article from the Second Sound Shift, which definitively splits any supposed Weser-Rhine Gmc. homeogeneity and is the point at which we can distinguish individual dialects within W-R Gmc. I think we have to make our own pragmatic decision - I don't think we'll find a clear consensus in the literature.--Pfold (talk) 14:52, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * But if I understand correctly we may have some consensus for this proposed article as an article about "pre Frankish". So from a Wikipedia policy point of view, which is what I'll try to help on here, the question now is first to make sure that's what we are saying (we want/need a "pre Frankish" article) and second, to chose a name (concerning which, we can draw straws or whatever!). So the ancestry of Frankish is something that can be sensibly handled as a separate subject (not handled in one of the other various articles on Frankish etc)?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:11, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Attempt to come to some agreed actions
@ AKAKIOS, Bermicourt, Pfold and anyone else, I think/hope we have 2 clear proposals to confirm or reject, which is promising:
 * 1) Merge this article back into Istvaeones, and give it a classical ethnology (tribes) focus. Any objections? I suggest I can do this if you want.
 * 2) Turn this "language" article into a redirect to a linguistic article. But does it need to be a new article or can it fit in an existing one?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:31, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * This article should be a redirect to Weser-Rhine Germanic. The articles on the Istvaeones is already based around classical ethnography by Pliny and Tacitus, the article about Weser-Rhine Germanic is already about the linguistic theory. It's the easiest, most logical and most prudent course of action. AKAKIOS (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Makes a lot of sense of course. Trying to aim at an agreement reasonably soon, I will also ask if anyone DISAGREES with the proposal of AKAKIOS? Obviously it is the most clear proposal the way discussion has gone.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:48, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * No dissent from me. --Pfold (talk) 19:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Good. Let's give it a day and if there is no new dissent, one of you can switch this article tomorrow to a redirect to the correct language article. And on the other side, if I get time over the weekend I will merge the text I've kept working on in this article, into it's original home, as the "tribe" article. When I do it I'll try to keep in mind all concerns that have been mentioned during the various exchanges. (So please keep in mind that if you work on Istvaeones, preferably do it here.) Thanks to both of you.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:42, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * D'accord. We just need to get an admin to close the discussion with the above recommendation. --Bermicourt (talk) 19:50, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
 * This is not normally something which requires an admin? I don't mind getting in admins or anyone else, but I think they'll just say we should clean it up. (The exception might be if we want any editing history such as for this talk page to be moved to the original/future article, so that the history is not lost. But a rough solution to that, at least for talk page discussion, would be to put a link there or even place a copy in a box on the talk page there.) Feel free to ask around of course.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:15, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Additional: Obviously the link to here should be on both of the "new" articles. Also, thinking about it, I tend to think that just placing such a link is in some ways the clearest and neatest way to let any future editors find out what happened, concerning this particular discussion about how to delineate the subjects of the two articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:02, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Botteville's look-in
Andrew asked me to look in. Holy smoke, the discussion is much larger than the article. I really should be on it to look in properly, but I'm working on other material right now. First of all, let me say, we're talking about historical views only. The world has gone on. There's no Rhine-Weser or Weser-Rhine Germanic. So, the article should make no pretense of any explanation of linguistic ideas current. Maurer's view is Maurer's view. What went wrong with it? Well, there probably was no exact correspondenc between tribes and languages. For example, the OHG change when it came went right down the river taking in tribe after tribe and partial tribes. It was a recasting of the political dice on a different basis. This tribal material should not be taken too seriously. We could talk about the Chicagoan tribe and the New Yorkian people, but it would not make much sense, would it? In our material, dialects are not necessarily equal to tribes. So, this article has to be the view of the theoretician and nothing else. Sorry, but the desired unities for the proposed mergers don't exist. There should be more articles, not fewer. What I miss in this article is the relevance to the modern. Rhine-Weser? What is that? Who speaks that? What's the point of it? To put this in its place we should be describing the view, and being critical of it, that tribes equal languages. Historical linguistics has gone on to try to obtain a standard view of languages. There are now ISO codes for languages and Ethnologue has come to the front of the scene. They avoid extinct historical languages but another respected organization, Linguist List, delves into that. They publish Multi-tree. It gives the current views of the language tree. If you start looking at WP articles on languages you will see that nearly all have infoboxes and nearly all of those give ISO codes and reference Ethnologue. This is not basically a problem with Wikipedia or this article as originally intended. Even as I type these words the world and the field goes on. Articles that were done only a few years or months ago are now obsolete and way out of touch. Staying current on the scene is a lot of work! We don't get paid for this but it is a public service and once you start you can't stop unless you just want to abandon it. So, I am sorry if I do not say what you want to hear. I don't think the article is finished. If it were to be finished it would not be merged, especially not with any tribal articles. Best of luck. Have fun with it.Botteville (talk) 10:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you User:Botteville, yes you were one previous editor I contacted and I find your remarks interesting. I think they give no big problem, because in principle there is no problem having an article about a non-consensus theory if it is notable. In any case, the language article is now under another name, and the classical ethnography article has gone back to plan "Istvaeones". Hopefully you'll see no critical problem with that? (To me it seems your advice is more relevant to the details of how the theory should be described on the Weser-Rhine article that now exists.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:27, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. Bonne chance.Botteville (talk) 16:14, 12 December 2017 (UTC)