Talk:Sama language

Comments
User:Northamerica1000, I need help moving the wiki page Sama Language back here to Sinama. Here are my reasons modified from my original post on User:Kwamikagami's talk page:

The language page should be listed as Sinama and not Sama for the following reasons:

1. Sama speakers do not recognize Sama as a language. Therefore on facebook when listed as Sama Language for years only around 200 users spoke it. For the past month or so when listed as Sinama 3,400 speakers identified Sinama as their language. This move back to Sama Language will now alienate those users on Facebook.

2. Ethnographic literature has consistently called the language "Sinama". I can provide the references by Sather, Nimmo, Bottignolo, Pallesen, Teo if needed.

3. There are two other languages called Sama on wikipedia. One from Gabon and one from Angola. There is no reason to add a third when the speakers of this language recognize it as Sinama.

4. What I feel is most clear on this subject is the Central Sinama dictionary by Kemp Pallesen. Sama people use Sama to refer to the people and Sinama to refer to the language. This is consistent with these two definitions provided by the SIL published dictionary on the issue. Sama: "The Sinama-speaking people or Sama, often called Samal or Badjaw by outsiders." Sinama: "The language spoken by the Sama."

5. I am no expert on Wikipedia, but the only reason that the page was originally able to be moved to Sama Language is because a wrong spelling was used sama_langauage. It seems like discussion for this issue should take place on the talk page of the Sinama article, especially when referring to the confusion caused on Facebook.

I hope this can be resolved fast. I have been pouring my time and great effort into making this page useful with good information. I've worked with current anthropologists to provide good pictures. I have been working carefully with the ethnographic material.

Luke (talk) 05:48, 23 December 2014 (UTC)


 * ✅ Sama language has been moved to Sinama. North America1000 18:12, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

User:Kwamikagami, could we please have some discussion regarding the above 5 points from December? You went to User:Northamerica1000 in order to have the page changed from Sinama to Sama_language. Therefore since no one responded to discussion, I went to User:Northamerica1000 and asked him to change it back. Once again, you have moved it back with the help of a different administrator User:Chrislk02.

Referring back to my previous points. Does the name the people group call their own language have no bearing on the title of the wikipedia article? Should wikipedia creators not be concerned with the ability or inability of people to identify their language on Facebook due to a misnomer? Point 2, 3, 4 seem rather weighty arguments for why the article should be returned to Sinama. Finally regarding point 5, I recognize that you have a vested interest in high quality language articles on Wikipedia. This is laudable. I as a post-graduate student of linguistics and fieldworker among these people have a vested interest in this particular language. It was a stub with very little information before I first started editing it. I made the edits because they are the sort of things that I wish were well spelled out on Wikipedia when I first begun my research. A proper discussion regarding your change seems to be the Wikipedia standards and the purpose of these talk pages. It seems that changing the title of an article is a "minor edit". Luke (talk) 08:00, 21 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Addressed below. Note, the move was done while this discussion was archived.  — kwami (talk) 21:37, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 21 May 2015

 * 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: no consensus. Discussion seems to have died out with no agreement. However, if anyone thinks it would be productive to keep the discussion open for another week drop me a note and I'll re-open and relist it. Jenks24 (talk) 01:05, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Sama language → Sinama – For reasons given higher up this page. I have (as yet) no opinion either way, but there's been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing here and this should be discussed. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 08:14, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose proposal, it seems that the current title has a better recognizability than the proposed one. Also it seems that the article Pangutaran Sama language maybe merged into this article. Also, we need to add a disambiguation to the current title so that the title is clearly differentiated from the unrelated Sama language (Angola) and Sama language (Gabon). Therefore, I counterpropose move from "Sama language" to "Sama language (Austronesian)". Khestwol (talk) 14:24, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Nearly all mentions of "Sama" mean this language, and so per our naming conventions (primary meaning of a name), it does not need to be a dab. Note too that "Sama (Gabon)" is just a rd.  — kwami (talk) 21:34, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * We still need a suitable disambiguator with the title for disambiguation. Khestwol (talk) 04:13, 22 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Note, a merge proposal is now open at Pangutaran Sama language's talk page. Khestwol (talk) 16:48, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment, it appears that everything on Pangutaran Sama language is already covered on this page. So a merge will simply mean that "Pangutaran Sama language" will be converted into a redirect to this page. After that happens, and after this page itself is moved into "Sama language (Austronesian)" for disambiguation, then "Sama language" can be converted into a disambiguation page, because "Sama language" also refers to Sama language (Angola) (a Bantu Zone H language from Africa), and Sama language (Gabon) (a Bantu Zone B language from Africa). Khestwol (talk) 16:53, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, no. The population of that variety is not counted here, so it would require more tinkering.  But no vote for whether we should or not.   — kwami (talk) 21:34, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * That variety has been classified as a Sama dialect here so why is the population not been counted already? Khestwol (talk) 04:19, 22 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose. First, the objections about Facebook are irrelevant.  We can't be responsible for what they do.  If their users have problems, that's something they need to address, not us.  Second, there is tension in many languages between endonym/autonym and exonym/anglonym, but our naming conventions are that a topic should go by its primary name in English.  We've discussed this at the Language Wikiproject, and agreed with it, and also decided that, where possible, we should use the same name for the ethnicity and the language.  In this case, "Sama" *is* the autonym, just for the people.  Sinama is a derivation meaning "Sama-ese".  But just like our use of Swahili language rather than "Kiswahili", we've decided to try to keep things as simple as possible by avoiding these kinds of irregular alternations.  We generally only decide against the common English name when it's pejorative, which "Sama" is not.  Sinama isn't actually even a different name, just a different grammatical inflection, but an inflection that's not English, and which we can't expect our English-speaking readers to be familiar with.
 * And the same "Sama" is common in the lit, and has been for decades. The Sama-Bajaw languages, for example, are a long-established branch of Austronesian that nearly always use that name. I appreciate all the work Luke has put into this article, and hope we don't put him off if he doesn't get his preferred title.  I suppose at times politics may trump issues of accessibility and consistency.  There are cases where we've placated a temperamental editor (not that Luke strikes me as one!) by moving an article, only to move it back after they're done with it.  In one case we had a resident doctor, contributing a lot of valuable information in his specialty, who threatened to leave Wikipedia if we copy edited his contributions for punctuation!  We had to accept his ambiguous punctuation, or forgo his expertise.  So we left him alone for a few months, and cleaned up after he moved on.  It's weird:  autonyms often seem to be a touchy subject for minority languages, while speakers of major languages could care less.  What would we do, I wonder, if French and German speakers started insisting that we move the French and German language articles to "Fraçais" and "Deutsch"?  Whose consideration takes precedence, the subject of the article, or the people reading it?  — kwami (talk) 21:34, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with what you have said however I cannot support an ambiguous title. We have to add a parenthetical disambiguator (Austronesian). Or else even "Sinama" is a better title than just "Sama language" because "Sinama" provides a WP:NATURAL disambiguation to differenciate this language. With the ambiguous title readers wanting to know about the 2 living Bantu languages that have been called "Sama" will get to this article instead which will be annoying for them. Khestwol (talk) 04:27, 22 May 2015 (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.