Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Irish pre-Celtic substrate language


 * 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   keep. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 00:30, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Irish pre-Celtic substrate language

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Article is totally SYNTH, OR, and FRINGE. It cites a Yahoo group and a post on listserv. There is also no such term in existence. Google only turns up what this page has produced. DinDraithou (talk) 01:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: Hoax. Joe Chill (talk) 02:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete . I'm not going to call WP:HOAX here, as I don't think this is a hoax - I think it's an earnest attempt in linguistic studies.  WP:FRINGE is a maybe.  However, I do see WP:SYNTH, as well as a lack of notability, and it's definitely original research.  Therein lies the trifecta.  -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 02:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Changing !vote to keep on account of discussion below. My statements still stand - I'm still rather cnocerned about the synthesis factor, and I'm not sure on the notability - but given that we have similar articles, I'm going to rely on an existing precedent here and assume that it will continue to improve.  That, and I lurve the Celtic languages. =) -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 22:53, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep I don;t think it's really fringe. As for N, there seem to a be a few jstor articles right in this article to give it substance. Whether there wasa pre-Celtic population is I believe debatable, as are all questions involving population and language change in the period. I don;t know the current scholarly consensus, if there is one, but I do know this concept was accepted m in the past, and would therefore remain notable   The article does have some OR--the section an analogs will have to go unless it can be sourced.   DGG ( talk ) 05:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete + Note: I have now looked at all three actual articles cited and find nothing to support the existence of this article at Wikipedia. The main text has been completely fabricated, with the discussion not derived from any source, and the author fails to mention that in Ériu 53 (2003) Schrijver is dismissed by Isaac (pp. 151-5). While there is general agreement among scholars that a pre-IE language at one point existed in Ireland, just as pre-Present languages have existed all over the world, no substratum survival has ever been demonstrated. The author also fails to mention that Schrijver's FRINGE contention is that there was a survival of pre-IE into the 6th century AD, which is rejected by every available resource. DinDraithou (talk) 06:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ireland-related deletion discussions.  —  Lady  of  Shalott  06:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions.  —  Lady  of  Shalott  06:37, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions.  +Angr 06:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, but perhaps under a different name, and clean up. Definitely not a hoax; there is serious discussion among reputable linguists (Schrijver's hypotheses may prove to be incorrect, but he is no crackpot) whether traces of a pre-Indo-European substrate language can be found in Irish. The pro (e.g. Schrijver) and contra (e.g. Isaac) sides need to be presented in better balance, for NPOV, and the whole bit comparing the situation to Australia, Chinese Turkestan, and Turkey is OR and needs to be deleted, but the article as a whole is on a genuine topic of academic discourse. Perhaps Non-Indo-European substrate effects in Irish would be a better title as it would not imply that the article is about a particular language, but rather about an aspect of the history of Irish. +Angr 06:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, weakly. I may try to work on this a bit, but that's going to require some prep time.  IIRC, the most frequently cited evidence of substrate influence -- the VSO default word order -- is hardly touched on here.  I'd suggest renaming this to Insular Celtic substrate hypothesis, to match Germanic substrate hypothesis. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:48, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I would not be opposed to a move to a more appropriate name. Given this, I'm changing my !vote, methinks. -- Dennis The Tiger   (Rawr and stuff) 22:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That I can support. A move to that title and a rack of tags would be acceptable, or a total delete followed by the creation of Insular Celtic substrate hypothesis, there not being much to move from the current article. Either way we can then happily go into how most of the allegedly unique to IE features of Insular Celtic, VSO included, can be divided up by a few modern Romance dialects and the occasional reconstruction of Proto-Slavic. DinDraithou (talk) 16:36, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep per DGG, as well as that this is well-documented theory. It is not a hoax, nor necesarily a fringe theory - lingistics is not as settled a field as it was c. 1986 (when I was in college).  An example not yet explored is Ptarmigan; see these WP:good sources:, . Bearian (talk) 21:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I doubt linguistics was as settled a field in 1986 as you thought it was. One thing I learned as a graduate student in linguistics is that professors tend to paint a simplified picture for the benefit of undergraduates, and often in their own research argue vehemently against the very theories they present to their undergrads as uncontroversial facts of linguistics. +Angr 07:21, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * LOL. I'm afraid I do the same thing! Bearian (talk) 18:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep - per Angr and others. Izzedine 04:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep - It needs renaming because there are quite a few potential sources of borrowings, but the subject matter is generally valid. It is a bit, um, minor? but that's never stopped nobody from writing an article on it. is a reliable source and there is material in it discussing potential Wanderwörten, substrate borrowings, etc.  Ogress  smash!  23:41, 3 December 2009 (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.