Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/East and West Flemish


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   delete. Black Kite (talk) 15:14, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

East and West Flemish

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Unused classification, content fork. We have articles on West Flemish, East Flemish, and Flemish. Yesterday, a new article was created on East and West Flemish combined, as a POV fork from Flemish (as indicated by the latest version, ), to restrict "Flemish" to the two dialects East and West Flemish only. This is a rather medieval point of view, from the time when Flanders was restricted to the County of Flanders instead of the current Flanders. The term "Flemish" (as a language) is normally used for either the common Dutch version spoken and understood by most people in current Flanders, or strictly for West Flemish only. Other (minority) definitions, if any, can be discussed at the Flemish article: e.g. the East+West definition was in the version of the article before this kerfuffle began, but the source to define it was not very clear on what was actually included and what not. Fram (talk) 12:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 13:04, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Belgium-related deletion discussions. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 13:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * This probably isn't the best title, but we should have separate articles for the linguistic meaning of "Flemish" (i.e. West Flemish and East Flemish) and the political meaning of "Flemish" (i.e. all Dutch varieties spoken in Belgium). Ideally the article currently named "East and West Flemish" should be called "Flemish language" and the article currently named "Flemish" should be called "Belgian Dutch". For a parallel, consider Austro-Bavarian language (about a linguistic entity) vs. Austrian German (about all High German varieties spoken in Austria). Angr (talk) 13:58, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Any evidence that the "linguistic meaning of Flemish" = "East and West Flemish"? This seems to be a rather exceptional definition. Note that Ethnologue doesn't use your definition, but the "whole of current Flanders" one. Any evidence for your proposed changes? They seem to go against both common usage (where Flemish clearly designates the language used in the whole of Flanders) and more scientific usage (e.g. Ethnologue, see the talk page of Flemish for more examples). Fram (talk) 14:05, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Ethnologue just follows the ISO 639-3 codes, which are not necessarily linguistically accurate, and Ethnologue's own map contradicts its entry, as according to the map, Vlaams is spoken only in West Flanders and "mainland" Zealand (south of the Western Scheldt). As for linguistic evidence, this book discusses how Brabantian and Limburgish are different from Flemish, and this one discusses how calling all of Belgian Dutch "Flemish" is a misnomer begun by the French and Spanish. Here too is a quote from a linguist stating it's incorrect to refer to Belgian Dutch as "Flemish". Angr (talk) 15:00, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * But none of these discusses "East and West Flemish" as a group, apparently: as far as I know, East Flemish is usually considered as a separate dialect, a hybrid between West Flemish (or "proper" Flemish in some opinions) and Brabantian (with e.g. Waaslands being much more closely related to Antwerpian than to Brugs or Oostends). It's obviously not all so clearly delineated, the country and province borders don't closely match the language borders, which are much more fluid and vague. Note that the Ethnologue map supports the "Flemish = West Flemish" definition, one of the two main definitions, as well (the other being "Flemish" = "General Dutch variant of the whole of Flanders", supported by the Ethnologue text page). Nothing on Ethnologue, as far as I have seen, supports the "East and West Flemish" article which is up for deletion here. In fact, your first source,, states "The term 'Flemish' could be used for all of the Dutch dialects of Belgium, but in this chapter we will abstain from this usage, and use it only in the compounds 'West Flemish' and 'East Flemish', which refer to two of the big subgroups of Belgian Dutch dialects, the other two being the Brabantic and the Limburgish dialects". So that book (or at least that chapter) does, contrary to what you claim, not discuss how Brabantian and Limburgish are different from Flemish: it it discusses the differences between the four, not three groups, and doesn't group East and West Flemish together. This book actually supports my suggested deletion of this article. Fram (talk) 15:26, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Not if you read the content, where it discusses linguistic phenomena found only in Brabantian and Limburgish, and marginally in the parts of East Flanders closest to Brabant, but not in most of East or any of West Flanders. And again, Ethnologue simply cannot be blindly trusted to know what it's talking about. It gets some things right, but it gets a lot of things wrong. Angr (talk) 15:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Um, I did read the content, and nothing you are mentioning here in any way supports the topic "East and West Flemish" so far (some contradicts it, some has no real relevance). Which (parts) of sources are you claiming to actually support the existence of "East and West Flemish" as a separate topic of discussion and interest? Not as "two of the four dialects of Flanders", but as one complete group? And if you are not claiming that these sources discuss this, then why did you present them? I'm getting rather confused here about your intended message... Fram (talk) 21:13, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete The existing article Flemish also explains the different meanings of the term when it comes to describing language. This article adds nothing, and can be deleted as a duplicate. If there is some reason, supported by reliable sources, to discuss East and West Flemish as a linguistic unit, then create an article with a suitable title, but this current article is an obvious content fork rather than an attempt to add encyclopedic content. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:46, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, it started of as a split of the main article, which had a dab section for a lead, and so was the opposite of a content fork. — kwami (talk) 22:29, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment This whole discussion is best included in the discussion at Talk:Flemish, and the deletion should be put off until that move proposal is resolved. It makes no sense to have two parallel conversations about the same thing.  Oreo Priest  talk 18:11, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * The move of "Flemish" has no bearing on whether the topic "East and West Flemish" exists as a separate topic of discussion and study or not (or only in a minimal sense, in which case a merge back is the best solution probably). The move discussion can best be put on hold until this AfD is finished, but not the other way around, since it e.g. would make no sense to move "Flemish" to another title to make it possible to move this page there, if this page isn't going to survive (at all or as a separate page) anyway. Fram (talk) 21:13, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with Fram there. Too many issues getting conflated. The title is irrelevant for now.
 * My sources state either that Flemish is a misnomer for Belgian Dutch, or contrast Flemish with Dutch, Frisian, Afrikaans, etc. One speaks specifically of West Flemish (they use as a source an author who investigated West Flemish specifically), others just say "Flemish" without identifying the constituent dialects. However, the historical accounts contrast Flemish (SW Dutch) with Brabantic (C Dutch). Those are Middle Dutch dialects, and I don't know if we can extrapolate from them to the modern dialects. I posted some quotes from my refs at Talk:Flemish. It may be that a separate article is not justified, and that it can be merged with Middle Dutch or West Flemish.
 * The books Angr cited say that the term "Flemish" (Vlaams) is correctly applied to East Flemish and West Flemish, but Fram seems to be correct that they don't postulate that "Flemish" is a linguistic entity. It seems to be a purely geographic term, from what I've seen so far, other than the Middle Dutch dialect of Flemish. If Flemish is used in a modern linguistic sense, it would seem to be less common than discussing East and West Flemish separately. — kwami (talk) 22:27, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment-I totally agree with Kwamikagami.--Soroboro (talk) 00:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
 * We might want to look at what the West-Flemish and Zealandic WPs have to say, or the refs they use, both for West Flemish and for the word "Flemish". I seem to recall somewhere than in Belgium "Flemish" is used for West Flemish (though of course that's from the West Flemish POV). — kwami (talk) 18:18, 27 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   20:33, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

 
 * Don't delete. Keep it if it be a reasonable topic, and if not, redirect it to Flemish.  Nothing wrong with this title, so people are going to search for it.  Nyttend (talk) 02:22, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Any evidence for your !vote? There are alkl sorts of things wrong with this title, it is grouping two dialects together for no good reason, and you will be redirecting them to an article about either a smaller or a larger topic. This "title" is not a reasonable topic. Fram (talk) 14:28, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mdann52 (talk) 13:26, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

 
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Automatic  Strikeout   ( T  •  C ) 01:50, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.