Template talk:Infobox language/Archive 11

Edit request 27 December 2022
Description of suggested change: Category:ISO language articles citing sources other than Ethnologue only seems to cover "e11–e19". Other editions (up to e25 and the upcoming e26) should be included as well. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 11:56, 27 December 2022 (UTC)


 * There are similar issues with:
 * Category:Articles with citation needed in ref field (needs to be repopulated manually?)
 * Category:Language articles with unknown population not citing Ethnologue 18
 * Category:Language articles with old Ethnologue 19 speaker data
 * Category:Language articles with old Ethnologue 18 speaker data
 * a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 12:01, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Not sure Category:Languages without ISO 639-3 code works either. It lists Afrikaans and Carib language, both have an ISO code in their infobox. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 12:14, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I have added e25 to the switch statement, which should remove Category:ISO language articles citing sources other than Ethnologue from articles that use it. I have not added e26 yet, since it does not exist so cannot be cited. I'm happy to add it when it exists. Please link to specific articles that display problems with the other categories that you listed.
 * As for Category:Languages without ISO 639-3 code, it appears in Afrikaans because of the "Hottentot Dutch" infobox and in Carib language because of the "Pidgin Carib" infobox. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:38, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95: thanks a lot!
 * You're right for Afrikaans and Carib, so no problem there.
 * Regarding the other issues:
 * Category:Articles with citation needed in ref field contains Belizean Spanish and Chinese Sign Language even though none of them have cn in their ref field.
 * Category:Language articles with old Ethnologue 18 speaker data => such a category is only added for E18 and E19. Should we add it for all editions?
 * Category:Language articles with unknown population not citing Ethnologue 18 => should it be renamed to "Language articles with unknown population not citing the latest edition of Ethnologue"? It doesn't make sense to arbitrarily choose E18 as the reference.
 * a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 22:43, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The reason it's stalled at e18 is that was when I stopped blacket-updating WP. Up till then, I'd updated the Ethn. data for every WP article that had an infobox with an ISO code. When Ethn. started coming out with annual updates, but no list of languages that had actually been updated in the new edition, I think I did it once more and then called it quits, as it took too much time. So WP was updated to that point and I wanted future editors to know where the updates had stopped. — kwami (talk) 06:46, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for providing more context. So should we create "Category:Language articles with old Ethnologue XX speaker data" for all editions? Otherwise we can just have "Category:Language articles with old speaker data" and use PetScan to find the intersection with those citing Ethnologue.
 * What about the other two issues? ("Articles with citation needed in ref field" and "Language articles with unknown population not citing Ethnologue 18")? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:00, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Is it necessary to track articles where the field doesn't have a reference? Infobox content doesn't need citations if it's supported in the rest of the article; sometimes, this field will just provide a range that summarises a number of population estimates that are otherwise discussed and sourced in the article body. In my experience, the only sourcing problems here are when the infobox field has a reference that doesn't support the population figure (this usually happens when drive-by editors pump up the speaker numbers without wasting any time checking or updating references); as far as I can see, this is not possible to track. – Uanfala (talk) 12:58, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi @Uanfala. There are two questions:
 * Should we add ref in infoboxes after the number of speakers? I agree that infobox content doesn't need citations but because numbers of speakers are very likely to be challenged it's good to have a reference, even if the information is already sourced elsewhere.
 * Is it necessary to track articles where the field doesn't have a reference? I checked 10 random articles in Category:Language articles without reference field to see whether this tracking was useful or not:
 * Dehwari language: referenced elsewhere in the article but not up-to-date
 * Liha language: already sourced in the article but infobox not formatted correctly (year not in "date" field)
 * Glasgow dialect: no ref, not in the article. "likely up to" => WP:OR?
 * Garhwali language: different estimate in the article (sourced) and in the infobox (sourced) and incorrect formatting
 * Malavedan language: sourced but not well formatted and outdated
 * Mendawai language: undated and unsourced figure
 * Chesu language: Ethnologue mentioned as the source in the article but not using inline citation
 * Muna language: sourced in the article but outdated
 * Bjarmian languages: using "speakers" instead of "extinct"
 * Magar Kham language: I couldn't verify the estimate as the census mentioned as the source says 27,113 native Kham speakers (p. 172) and not 69k. However, the census also asked for the second language but I couldn't find it. Ethnologue gives 69k for Kham, Western Parbate [kjl] only.
 * Conclusion: based on the above I feel like this category is useful to track articles that need attention, even though in many cases it's not directly due to an empty ref field.
 * a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:30, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed, many of these tracking categories catch bad edits even if they're not what the cat was intended for. Following up on them helps clean up a lot of cruft that might otherwise pass unnoticed. — kwami (talk) 11:42, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Indeed, many of these tracking categories catch bad edits even if they're not what the cat was intended for. Following up on them helps clean up a lot of cruft that might otherwise pass unnoticed. — kwami (talk) 11:42, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

unsupported lang-code numbers
Arabic language goes up to lc32 and ld32, which are not supported by this template. — kwami (talk) 06:42, 10 January 2023 (UTC)


 * And it's not even including Judeo-Arabic varieties, Hassaniya, Ki-Nubi, and Maltese. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:55, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

'cn' on speaker ref
Currently, if there is a speaker number but no ref, this template adds the article to the tracking category 'Language articles without reference field'. However, if someone adds 'cn' to the ref field, the article is removed from tracking. We should probably automate 'cn' to appear if there is no ref provided, so we get both, but I don't know how that would work with 'cn' wanting a date.

Or perhaps we could also get it to generate the tracking cat with a manually entered 'cn' tag after the bot expands it and adds a date. I added an 'edit request' tag to this thread because I don't want to mess with the template without input, and other people are now probably more familiar with how it's structured than I am. — kwami (talk) 19:07, 31 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Feel free to play around in Template:Infobox language/sandbox and see if you can get it working &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:48, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

"no date" doesn't work for sign languages
Compare Zigong dialect ((undated figure of...)) to Maroua Sign Language ((no date)). It seems that we treat sign languages differently in the code. Why? a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 17:58, 31 December 2022 (UTC)


 * That may have been intentional. SL population figures are very often undated, so treating them the same as oral languages could be more disruptive than helpful. But this is certainly something we can change. — kwami (talk) 23:26, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Support Ethnologue 26th
Hi,

How can we add support for the newly released edition of Ethnologue? I've already created the related template: e26.

Best, a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 18:36, 21 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Should work now. — kwami (talk) 05:53, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 09:03, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Proposing new parameters
Are the parameters "linguistic_event", "linguistic_event2", "linguistic_event3", etc. or "language_movement", "language_movement2", "language_movement3", etc. and "language_day", "language_day2", "language_day3", etc. be added, please?

Because we need it atleast in articles on Indian languages. Examples are Meitei language has Meitei classical language movement, Meitei associate official language movement, Meitei linguistic purism movement, Meitei scheduled language movement and then Meitei language day, Meitei poem day, Meitei language festival, etc.

Another example is Bengali language, here please see Bengali Language Movement (Barak Valley), Bengali Language Movement (Manbhum), Bengali language movement, Bengali language movements in India, etc.

Telugu Language Day, Kokborok Day, Marathi Language Day, etc. are in India. For other parts of the world, please see Romanian Language Day, Icelandic Language Day, Māori Language Day, etc.

It is Bengali language movement (Language Movement Day) that inspired the creation of the International Mother Language Day across the world. --Haoreima (talk) 21:55, 12 March 2023 (UTC)


 * For a language like French or English, there is potentially a huge number of movements, associations, organizations and events. I worry that this could become unmanageable. At least, they should probably be collapsible into a single list, the way we handle the official country list. But are most of these even notable? For example, at Bengali language, only one of the movements is mentioned in the text. If the others are not notable enough to include in the text, they would just be clutter in the infobox. — kwami (talk) 04:30, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Kwamikagami It might be due to missing the information, I think so. They're notable due to the fact that they have independent articles instead of merging them into one. Though I ain't sure specifically about the Bengali case, for others, at least they're notable. I agree with your opinion of keeping them at least in one single collapsible list, like that of the official language status. --Haoreima (talk) 04:47, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems rather peripheral to me. The parameters that exist consist of characteristics inherent to languageswho speaks them, where they're spoken, their line of descent, how they're writtenand conventional designations like the various ISO codes. A language movement isn't a characteristic of the language. To me, it seems more like something that merits a section in the article but not as part of the language's profile as given in the infobox. Largoplazo (talk) 09:12, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok, getting all your suggestions in my mind, I am requesting at least only one parameter titled "linguistic_event" where only extremely notable item or items will be added. It may not be just for language movements but might be other important event also, which is highly relevant and close to the development/existence/survival/promotion/protection of the very language. Pinging ! --Haoreima (talk) 09:41, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree. These aren't properties of the language, and I can think of several language infoboxes that would become overwhelmed with entries. Kanguole 12:02, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This is entirely a digression, but I'm thinking that if there's something of an organizational nature that might be suitable for the infobox, it could be "regulatory_org", which, for French, would display Académie Française and Office québécois de la langue française and, for Spanish, would display Royal Spanish Academy and Academia Mexicana de la Lengua. Largoplazo (talk) 10:01, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Isn't this the existing agency and development_body? Kanguole 12:02, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, I guess so! Largoplazo (talk) 22:26, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Sourcing UNESCO endangerment/extinction status
I've just gone through a bunch of articles that had the UNESCO Language Status template (see "file usage" section ) to ensure they were in line with what's actually in the UNESCO Atlas. In quite a few cases, they were not, so I wanted to say the following:

(1) If editors decide to add the UNESCO Template to articles, I think it's crucial to work from the UNESCO Atlas itself and include a reference. In particular, I don't think it's wise to mass-add the template to articles which happen to be in "Category:Extinct Languages".

(2) In several cases, I found that the UNESCO Atlas conflicts with seemingly well-cited claims in the text of the wiki article. In case any editors here have the requisite knowledge to resolve these conflicts, I've left notes on talk pages (for instance here and here) and there are surely other article that could use this kind of attention. Botterweg14 (talk)  21:44, 13 March 2023 (UTC)


 * That edition of the Atlas was published 12 years ago, and the data in it is going to be older than that. One of the two languages you mentioned went extinct after it was published and the other not long before, with the exact situation unattested for the latter and word taking years to filter out.
 * Extinction is an abrupt change that will quickly make the Atlas dated, but even less abrupt changes can be a problem, e.g., an announcement that most children are no longer acquiring a language that had been relatively robust a decade before (e.g. Hadza). I don't think it's unreasonable to change the status per more recent RS's. Otherwise we'd be held hostage to the publication schedule of the Atlas. Though that shouldn't be a problem if they continually update their online edition -- if they are out of date, we can always send in a correction along with our sources so that we're in sync. I'm not familiar with them and have no idea how on the ball they are with keeping up to date. — kwami (talk) 22:17, 13 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I appreciate it! Botterweg14  (talk)  18:38, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Absolute or relative default image size?
Our image policy states that we should normally use relative image sizes rather than a specific number of pixels, and this includes info boxes. This is because some users have custom defaults set. For example, some people with high-res screens set their default at 300px, rather than the 220px you see if not logged in. Currently, the default image size is 200px and the default map size is 220px. These are 90% and 100% of 'thumb' size for someone who hasn't customized their display. However, for someone who's set their image default at 300px, these are 67% and 73% of 'thumb' size. should we change this template from size = 200px and 220px to (upright =) 0.9 and 1? — kwami (talk) 21:31, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course we should, or we should do something like that. There are other editors who will battle over this obviously beneficial change, though. For a contentious but thoughtful discussion that fizzled out due to lack of technical expertise, see this discussion from July 2022. It looks like the next step might be to post a request for help at Module talk:InfoboxImage. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:20, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Would you like to start that? I'm just figuring out our image policy myself after using px sizes for a decade. — kwami (talk) 23:25, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I have posted a request for help at that Module talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:03, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * We have a solution, though perhaps maps can only be custom-set in px? — kwami (talk) 06:13, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I replaced these size params with the new (relative) scale params in all the articles that used them and then removed the size params from the template code. We still have a set size param for the pushpin maps; should those also be recoded? I've only come across a couple articles that use them and am not familiar with them. Also boxsize, and I don't know if we can coordinate that with map size, but there was apparently only one article that used that option and I reset it. (I didn't bother to create the tracking cat Category:Language infoboxes with set boxsize, but you can see there are no entries there -- assuming it's working.) — kwami (talk) 22:32, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Those changes look good to me. Nice work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:01, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I have a proposed change in the the sandbox which implements two features for the image and the maps: This is analogous to the changes we made at Template:Infobox historic site, which has gained consensus over there. What do editors think? — hike395 (talk) 06:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It defaults to user-adaptive image size with 0.9 and 1.45, but allows editors to override that with fixed size if the user-adaptive size breaks the layout. This cab be done with parameters imagesize and mapsize.
 * It implements a maximum limit on all of the sizing parameters, per WP:IMAGESIZE: imagesize <= 300px, mapsize <= 325px, imagescale <= 1.35, mapscale <= 1.5


 * Sounds good to me. It should be simple enough to adjust the numbers 0.9 and 1.45 in the future if people feel a need to. But when you say "allows editors to override", do you mean setting e.g. "imagescale=1.25"? That's how we should handle it IMO.
 * I think perhaps we should also take out the coding for box size, since we never use it. — kwami (talk) 07:29, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Editors can either set 1.25 (if 0.9 doesn't look good), or can set 275px if editors have a very good reason (per WP:IMAGESIZE).
 * We can remove boxsize --- that sort of flexibility is unusual in an infobox and is unlikely to be used well. — hike395 (talk) 12:30, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 22 July 2023
Extend ancestors up to ancestor15 for articles that require it (i.e. Murcian Spanish) and to bring it in line with the fam parameters. Arctic Circle System (talk) 04:22, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ * Pppery * it has begun... 21:22, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 11 August 2023
I propose that the following parameters be added to, and the following edits be made to this template, please:

PK2 (talk) 13:29, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * 1)  for information regarding the reconstruction of proto-languages.
 * 2)  for the pronunciation for certain language names in English.
 * 3)  alongside, and 'Pronunciation' be replaced with 'Native pronunciation' in its label, to prevent confusion as to whether that label is about the pronunciation of a certain language's name in that language, or in English.
 * 4)  for information about reconstructed descendant proto-languages, of a subgroup of the family.
 * 5) If at least  is used, and that's set to a proto-language, display 'Reconstructed form(s)', otherwise, display 'Early form(s)' instead. I tried to test this parameter to the best of my abilities, but I couldn't.
 * 6) Replace http:// with https:// for the  parameters, per this RfC, because the 'Endangered Languages Project (ELP)' website now supports 'https'.
 * regarding 1 and 4, see and . Kanguole 13:58, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:53, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * the link that contains all the edits I made to this template's sandbox. I personally believe that the edits regarding questions 1, 4 and 5 are controversial, while the edits regarding questions 2, 3 and 6 are uncontroversial. PK2 (talk) 12:30, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Deactivated. Not to be reactivated until consensus is achieved for these edits (except of course for #6, which has .  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;, ed.  put'er there 14:04, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Edit request 24 August 2023
Glottolog:  →

NM 18:09, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ Fixed at Glottolink. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

What to do with Linguist List?
Since some months ago, visit any links provided by such parameters only result same webpage called "The LINGUIST List no longer maintains the Multitree service." Is this meaning that our Linguist List parameters can be deprecated? This also affects Infobox language family. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:51, 18 September 2023 (UTC)


 * The problem is that, last I heard, this is the official repository for ISO codes for languages extinct before ca. 1950. If the repository has moved elsewhere, we should update the templates to handle that automatically. — kwami (talk) 05:34, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
 * @Kwamikagami I'd personally suggest to just remove Linguist List parameters from both infoboxes, as far as I reviewed Multitree pages via archive.org archives, many of there so-called datas are from propaganda websites we already defined as DEPS (e.g. CGTN, the SUN, Sputnik, etc.), I don't see if there are benefits we continue to give such advertisements to propaganda subscribers for language articles. Such details on ethnic-related speaker distribution are already given via Glottolog, where Glog has more user-friendly formattions than Multitree (which in the last months this lived, it goes the same way of Fandom to provide lots of Slava Ukraini-related advertisements and, by even clicking the white part of webpage, you're entering a popup webpage to let you donate.) Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 05:17, 22 September 2023 (UTC)