Talk:Romanization of Syriac

Sourcing issues
There are some massive problems of false reference and downright fabrications in this article (as created under the title Syriac Latin alphabet in this version). They go far enough to call the entire legitimacy of the article into question.
 * 1) The lead sentence, "The Syriac Latin alphabet is the version of the Latin script that is used to write classical Syriac, Assyrian and other modern Aramaic languages" is ostensibly sourced to Phillips, George (1866). A Syriac Grammar. This book contains no mention at all about a Latin alphabet, nor does it mention "Assyrian" or "other modern Aramaic languages" anywhere. Moreover, in its Latin transliterations this book uses a considerably different scheme than the one presented in this article. This reference is a complete fabrication.
 * 2) The following sentence, " The romanization of Syriac was developed in the 1930s, following the state policy for minority languages of the Soviet Union", has two footnotes, the second of which is to a work from 1895(!) (Brockelmann, Carl (1895). Lexicon Syriacum. Berlin: Reuther & Reichard). Was Brockelmann a clairvoyant?
 * 3) The last paragraph of the lead section, which talks about the use of the Latin script on the Internet and in present-day social media, is sourced to a 1946(!) work, "Hatch, William (1946). An album of dated Syriac manuscripts. Boston: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, reprinted in 2002 by Gorgias Press. p. 24." Unless the "reprint" is really not a reprint but contains some substantial new material, this is of course another obvious absurdity.
 * 4) The sentence " It is thought that the Eastern method for representing vowels influenced the development of the niqqud markings used for writing Hebrew" is ostensibly sourced to P. R. Ackroyd,C. F. Evans (1975). The Cambridge History of the Bible: Volume 1, From the Beginnings to Jerome. p. 26. Page 26 of that book does speak of vocalization in Syriac, but doesn't mention any influence on Hebrew.
 * 5) There is a sentence that currently reads: "The classical Syriac Latin alphabet usually consists of 36 letters". Until yesterday, it said "35 letters" instead . Both versions of the sentence were written by the same editor and ostensibly sourced to the same reference:  S.P. Brock, "An Introduction to Syriac Studies", in J.H. Eaton (Ed.,), Horizons in Semitic Studies (1980) I don't have online access to the source, so I can't check what is actually said there, and where.
 * 6) In the "phonology" section, the "list of the altered letters and the sounds that they denote" is ostensibly sourced to "Nestle, Eberhard (1888). Syrische Grammatik mit Litteratur, Chrestomathie und Glossar. Berlin: H. Reuther's Verlagsbuchhandlung. [translated to English as Syriac grammar with bibliography, chrestomathy and glossary, by R. S. Kennedy. London: Williams & Norgate 1889. p. 5]". Passing over the fact that the page number ("5") matches neither the original German nor the English edition, the overview of letters and sounds in that book (on the surrounding pages) doesn't match the list provided in the article.
 * 7) The table in the section "orthography comparison" is ostensibly sourced to the online version of the "Encyclopedia Brittanica" article on "Syriac alphabet" . This online article doesn't contain any such table, or information equivalent to it.
 * 8) The table in the section "English equivalent" is ostensibly sourced to Coakley, J. F. (2002). Robinson's paradigms and exercises in Syriac grammar (5th ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 141. I can partly access the 6th edition on Google books; p.141 is part of an appendix on "The pronunciation of the BGDKPT letters". This is unlikely to contain the material needed to source this table.

All in all, of the sources I was able to check, every single one was wrong. None of them were saying what they were claimed to be saying.

As a result, this article has failed to establish even as much as the existence of its topic. I see no evidence that there is any such thing as a Syriac Latin alphabet (i.e. a single one); what there is is a variety of scholarly transcription conventions (probably largely centered around a single standard; I'll grant that much), plus a variety of non-standardized ad-hoc romanizations used in informal online writing. If I had at least a basic fundament of reliable material to work with, I'd stub the article back and rename it to something more suitable (probably Romanization of Syriac or similar). Unfortunately, nothing in the article can currently be trusted, and I personally lack the expertise to replace it with something of my own. So, for the time being, I'll remove the article by first renaming it but then redirecting it to Syriac alphabet. It can be resurrected at Romanization of Syriac if and when somebody is willing and able to rewrite it based on actual, non-fake source material. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:25, 31 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Like I told you in the other talk page, there are not many "genuine" sources for Assyrian content. Except, all the letters seen in the article are used in in the Latin transcription of the Syriac script. You can clearly see that the image in the lede had Syriac writing in the Latin script. Deleting every inch of the article is really a huge stretch, as it doesn't really solve the problem. Those sources came close to what I could find. Is there anything I can do for the page to be reverted? Meganesia Meganesia 08:00, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The question is not so much what you can do to get the page back, but what you can do to convince me not to simply block you indefinitely for source falsification. I'll tell you what you can do, in a first step: Go and remove every bit of related content you inserted in other articles (I just saw Breve and Macron below, which you edited the other day, but there are evidently more, reaching further back, which I don't want to all hunt down and clean up myself.) You seem to be completely unaware of the seriousnes of your misconduct; this is not looking good. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:21, 1 April 2017 (UTC)