Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hudson Valley English (2nd nomination)


 * 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. Davewild (talk) 19:46, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Hudson Valley English
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This article still doesn't appear to achieve notability. It doesn't meet WP:GNG's guideline to achieve "significant coverage" among reliable sources. There is only one author, Dinkin, who is repeatedly cited. Other reliable sources I've noticed merely call back to Dinkin's 2009-10 work. I went through a process many months ago of separating out the substantial amount of uncited/original research. Anyway, in the original 2007 deletion discussion, User:Angr commented that "unless you rewrite it yourself, saying 'keep but rewrite' will result in it being kept but never rewritten." As it's played out, unless we add reliable sources to bolster notability ourselves, we will see that the page never receives those sources. And so far, it still hasn't and so still fails notability. Wolfdog (talk) 21:29, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Strong delete - fail; I could self-publish a study of the English spoken in my kitchen, including the vowel sounds in the word DELETE, and it would be as notable. —Мандичка YO 😜 21:52, 10 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep/Merge: This is a dialect band. I'm not sure about the granularity, though. The Hudson Valley is a dialectical band due to its settlement pattern and isolation, which created the conditions for a stable dialect region. The Poughkeepsie sort of American dialect was distinct (and much more distinct from New York City, historically), although post-1945 migrations will have levelled it a great deal. (There are at least fourteen "southern" dialects. Most states have five or so dialect bands.) This article is poorly referenced and not very accurate, but the topic is legitimate/notable. I don't know how well we cover other elements of dialectology, so I can't suggest a good target for a merge. (I trained in field linguistics but that was decades ago.) Hithladaeus (talk) 01:38, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * What is needed is reliable sources discussing the Hudson Valley dialect/band/accent/something. Do you have any? Mnnlaxer (talk) 18:31, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. North America1000 01:45, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. North America1000 01:45, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 11:53, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep It seems easy to find recognition of this dialect - see Accents of English, for example. That cites a source from 1958 and so the topic seems well-established. Andrew D. (talk) 12:02, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Recognition of the region, but not the dialect. Accents of English designates the Hudson Valley as an important region regarding the migrations of English speakers, etc., but it doesn't seem to define or separate a unique Hudson Valley dialect. And Labov et al's analysis (2006) seems to take modern-day Hudson Valley speech (a historically designated region) and basically equate it both phonologically AND geographically with modern-day Southwestern New England English. Wolfdog (talk) 04:11, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Your point seems obscure. As the region is well recognised for its dialect, the topic is valid.  Here's another source which is cited by the Washington Post and explains the matter well.  My !vote stands.Andrew D. (talk) 06:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Not sure what you mean by obscure. Although I understand that, historically, the Hudson Valley was inhabited by the Dutch settlers, its native variety of English today appears to fall under the Western New England dialect region. In other words: the Hudson Valley has no real notable features of its own that earn it its own WP page. Meanwhile, the other source you gave does not explain matters well. It gives only a total of three whole sentences on the "Hudson Valley" dialect, and lists four lexical terms, of which at least three are in no way confined to that region, and may even be widespread throughout the country. For just one example, see here that teeter-totter is not at all specific to the Hudson Valley. Even if these four terms were unique to the region, that's not enough to make it its own notable dialect. Also, the source as a whole seems questionable; it strangely claims, for example, that Cajun speakers say "New Orleans" as monosyllabic "Nawlns" and it shows a map that classifies "Chicago Urban" and "Inland North" not only separately but even in different locations on the map, when one is widely accepted to be a subset of the other (although it's not clear what would even make a unique "Chicago Urban" dialect, and it seems extremely bizarre for the source to state that one of Chicago's main influences is the "Southern dialects," except with regards to AAVE--a separate dialect). Wolfdog (talk) 01:48, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's a zoomed-in example of the Hudson Valley region as classified by Labov and crew. Wolfdog (talk) 10:27, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Agree with User:Wolfdog in general. The Washington Post article from 2013 is the best source for a distinct Hudson Valley dialect I've found, but it's not a good one. Notice the producer of the map, Robert Delaney, is a "reference associate," i.e. a librarian. At an university, yes, but a librarian. The entire quote from the original source (linked above), not the WaPo. "Hudson Valley. New York was originally a Dutch colony, and that language influenced this dialect's development. Some original Hudson Valley words are stoop (small porch) and teeter-totter. They call doughnuts (which were invented by the Dutch) crullers and olycooks." Those are examples of a few foreign language words being adopted by the local English speakers, not a separate dialect or accent (phonetics). It is self-published as well. Mnnlaxer (talk) 18:59, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete The article itself denies the existence of the topic. It starts out: "A spectrum of American English varieties is spoken in the Hudson Valley region of New York State..."  I'm confident the same could be said of any region of the United States, and probably the equivalent in most of the rest of the world. Kitfoxxe (talk) 13:32, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 02:35, 24 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete - The sole source of the current article, the work of budding scholar Aaron J. Dinkin, does not support the idea that Hudson Valley is a distinct dialect of American English. The dissertation defense handout (source 1) from 2009, accepts the Atlas of North American English (Labov, Ash & Boberg 2006) as its starting point, which does not include a Hudson Valley dialect. For Upstate New York, Dinkin's area of focus, there is only Inland North, Western New England (with subdivisions of Northwestern and Southwestern) and New York City, as shown on the "zoomed-in" map above. Only one source, Kurath (1949), is cited as identifying "Hudson Valley" as a dialect region. The Hudson Valley Handout (source 2) from a talk to the International Linguistic Association, conveniently located in the Hudson Valley town of New Paltz, Dinkin states the "current phonological status of Hudson Valley is unknown." Q.E.D. Mnnlaxer (talk) 19:38, 6 July 2015 (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.