Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List european countries and cities in all languages


 * 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. Ad Orientem (talk) 02:46, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

List european countries and cities in all languages

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Violates WP:NOT. Batternut (talk) 10:27, 20 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete, if not speedy delete. With a title like "List of European countries and cities in all languages" there is no coherent subject. Also redundant, with articles like List of country names in various languages and List of countries and dependencies and their capitals in native languages. soetermans . ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 10:35, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete. It seems a shame, as the creator has clearly expended a lot of effort researching and tabulating the information: but per nom and per the preceding comment, it's not really what Wikipedia is for ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 11:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment The title is really bad but normally even terrible titles aren't a reason for deletion. Creator of the article really does not get Wikipedia article naming conventions or the logic behind them. This needs to be moved to something like "List of European countries and cities in various European languages" except there are still several problems. First, this should really be split into separate country and city lists because they are two distinct topics and there is no coherent way to mix them. Also, because of the nature of this content, even including all European languages would be unwieldy as far as the width of the table. The way this is constructed is entirely arbitrary and it is hard to say why or why not something would be included even if it were broken out into separate lists. And yes, this may be nothing more than dictionary-like material which Wikipedia is not for. —DIYeditor (talk) 13:04, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - I agree it's regretful that so much work went into this, but... so much of this is arbitrary and random, besides being based apparently entirely on Google Translate, which is pretty bottom-of-the-barrel as far as sources go. Most of this wouldn't even meet criteria for a non-English redirect, and it... just doesn't seem to have any clear encyclopedic purpose. Presumably, even if someone did for some reason want to know the name of Bern in Hungarian, they would just go to google translate, and not prefer to use an unwieldy and fairly arbitrary table, even if they could find it. The cities chosen appear to be purely OR, as does the languages chosen (Why leave out so many of Languages of Europe?), as arguably are the countries chosen to some degree (Where's the Vatican, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Moldova? How did we decide whether or not to include Kosovo?).  G M G  talk   13:55, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per all of the above, and, more particularly, WP:NOT. &mdash; fortuna  velut luna Rarely receiving (many) pings. Bizarre. 14:13, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * delete Per all of the above. Wales? Luxembourg? Monaco? Barcelona? Catalunia? C'mon. -Roxy, Zalophus californianus. barcus 14:19, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * What's the deletion reason (guideline) ? I made this (indeed very badly named, that is acknowleged) list as an experiment. Which grew. The idea comes from an older discussion about names in Austria-Hungary. If the list is "un-encyclopedic", I can agree. But if it's about syntax, that could well be changed. My intention was to have blue links in English only, and "local" names in bold. But please note, all (current) links go to this Wikipedia. (the construction is limited due to my poor knowledge of Wiki-syntax only). Due to the syntax everything becomes bold, but I'm certain someone with better knowledge could fix that. About further languages - yes, naturally. I began with 6 or 7 and have added several after that. Anyone can add a new language. (If it "survives", my intention is to add Finnish (as a second Uralic language) and Portuguese (which I guess is the largest not available). And then a very large majority of all Latin spelled languages, spoken in Europe will be covered. (But naturally further languages can still be added)
 * Please note - the list/table isn't random, if I only knew how, I would have marked vertical lines between Germanic, Romance, Slavic and Uralic languages. And also indicated a "bondry" to Hungarian, which isn't an Indo-European language at all. English first, then in "size order" - within Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages. (perhaps Italian should change position with Spanish, though). Would there be any advantage in adding languages which are not spelled with Latin letters ? I chose to begin with languages spelled with Latin letters. One idea is to compare spellings, but I have encountered confusion of for instance Prague and Vienna in the past, here at this Wiki.
 * Also, the list could well (and quite easily) separate countries from cities, into two tables - or horizontal lines or different style. The cities a side of Capital ones, are chosen from an linguistic interesting point of view. It's not much point in adding for instance Luton, Kiel or Bordeaux which I presume are spelled the same. But there are naturally far more to add. Also "European languages = languages spoken in Europe". Naturally can Wales be added as well as Welsh. Etc. If it's "un-encyclopedic" however, I will not defend it. Otherwise it can be improved in many ways. Boeing720 (talk) 19:43, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The problem is that Wikipedia is not the place to conduct experiments on things that editors personally find interesting from a linguistic point of view. At best this is pure original research.  G M G  talk   19:50, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * It began as an experiment in my Sandbox. Is it "un-encyclopedic" ?Boeing720 (talk) 19:54, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * But I strongly object to it being "arbitrary and random" or OR - if I just knew how to, the structure could be made much clearer. Florence, Venice, Elsinore, Cologne etc are chosen because they are spelled differently in most languages. Boeing720 (talk) 20:00, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, yes. It is not an encyclopedia article, nor does it serve any clear purpose as a collection of encyclopedia articles chosen for any obviously objective and meaningful reason. In the best case scenario, all it does is comparatively poorly duplicate the language links on the existing articles, which themselves have clear encyclopedic relevance because they serve to point multilingual readers to versions of articles on non-English projects. It has nothing to do with the syntax.  G M G  talk   20:07, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I can accept your beginning. But a clear purpose exists, to compare spelling between languages, and language relationships. If studying the table, one can see clear similarities within the different language groups. (Which a better syntax would underline better) But also historical and cultural elements can be traced through this table. In order for a language to make a translation of a geographical name, there are two major aspects, A. Is the "local name" pronounceable in an other language, there is no call for a translation. (or a minor "local change" occurs) B. The geographical area/country or city has to be known well enough, and over a fairly long time as well. Otherwise no translation of the foreign name will be done.  Take England as an example, apparently "good enough" within other Germanic languages ("Engeland" in Dutch is sooner a "local adoption"), but in Romance ("Latin based") languages, Angleterre, Inglaterra etc are obvious translations, where "Angle" refers to (East-)Anglia and "terra" means "land", the Spaniards then thought "Ingla" sounds better than the French "Angle". But as "France" in spelling is good enough for English pronunciation, no transtation has been required. But "Deutchland" has called for a translation, also in Romance languages. (Whilst the Dutch "Duitland" and Scandinavian "Tyskland" are more of local adaptions) Etc. So there is a clear linguistic purpose and objective included (which will increase if it is expanded), in my opinion. Boeing720 (talk) 20:42, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * But the purpose of Wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia, and not an experiment on similarities within language groups.  G M G  talk   20:45, 20 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Userfy for the creator's future reference. --John (talk) 21:46, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * To GreenMeansGo. As I explained, it began as an experiment in my Sandbox. To explain the way I can see the table or list as useful to our readers, isn't an experiment. It would be more helpful if you could express what's unencyclopedic. Boeing720 (talk) 00:59, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * When nominating for deletion I had in mind the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" policy (as in WP:NOT), as the article currently resembled the back page of an inter-railer's phrasebook. The policy is expanded in Wikipedia is not a dictionary, particularly section WP:NOTDIC which explains that Wikipedia articles are about people, places, concepts etc, not just the words and etymologies which (though interesting enough) is food for Wiktionary instead. Perhaps much more focus on the history of the relationships between the names might turn into something encyclopedic, see for example (noting that "other stuff exists" is not a defence), Names of Germany. However, taking that approach for all European countries together will run into scoping trouble. You are welcome to try, and I wish you success. But that is sandbox work, imho. Batternut (talk) 01:52, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I thank you for this information. This isn't a dictionary. OK. Do you know what John meant by "Userfy" ? Boeing720 (talk) 03:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * A wikibook explains userfy - to move the article into the User namespace (~= sandbox). Batternut (talk) 09:53, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Not a dictionary? I can imagine finding this list in for example the Yachtsmans Ten Language Dictionary. Batternut (talk) 10:13, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I meant I agree, Wikipedia is not supposed to be a dictionary. A valid criticism. Could Userfy be accepted ? Boeing720 (talk) 15:53, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Userfy seems entirely reasonable to me; I don't think it's listed as a typical AfD result, but this article is all your work so putting into your userspace must be OK. Then if you manage to rework it appropriately I'd suggest putting it through WP:AFC. Batternut (talk) 17:26, 21 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete Per Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. It might be interesting to compare different language versions of these names, but it serves no encyclopaedic purpose. - Nick Thorne  talk  05:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. NewYorkActuary (talk) 16:47, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. NewYorkActuary (talk) 16:47, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. NewYorkActuary (talk) 16:47, 21 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment per 's suggestion, I'm willing to strike out my "delete" vote and replace it with "userfy" if others are in agreement ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 21:41, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 * My vote: Userfy. I no longer wish to defend it (including the horrific name I gave it). A reasonable and valid criticism is accepted for my part, such as what Wikipedia isn't supposed to be. The minor adjustments I've done today, was only done in order to try to illustrate, there were no OR or any random selection, in my intentions. But as other, and valid arguments has been presented, I now hope for Userfy. And I won't object to a deletion if the outcome will be that instead. Sorry for this and thanks! Boeing720 (talk) 00:23, 22 November 2017 (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.