Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of known 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. Redirecting was also proposed, but there was little indication that either content or history are needed and no consensus as to the redirect target. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:55, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

List of known languages

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How is this page different from List of languages? William2001(talk) 01:43, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 05:00, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 05:00, 17 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete recently created (17 July), un-referenced, un-complete (gets to b), and plausibly also a WP:A10. A qualification of "known" is indeed unnecessary as we don't, as of yet, have a list of unknown languages - for if we do, the language would become known. This indeed duplicates content linked to from Lists of languages, and specifically List of language names, List of languages by total number of speakers, Index of language articles, .... Icewhiz (talk) 06:39, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom, completely useless article that already has another article that suitably covers the topic. Ajf773 (talk) 08:41, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi there. I created this article because I couldn't find a complete list of languages on wikipedia. The difference between this article, and other similar articles, is this article will become a complete list of all the languages. I'm using Ethnologue as a reference of what languages we know of: https://www.ethnologue.com/browse/names, I am going to work on adding the complete list, and will add a reference to ethnologue. I hope that's ok. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CcfUk2018 (talk • contribs) 12:13, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe a better name for this article would be "List of languages according to Ethnologue"? CcfUk2018 (talk) 12:52, 17th July 2019 (UTC)
 * That's already available at WikiProject Languages/List of ISO 639-3 language codes (2019) (there's a one-to-one relation between ISO 639 codes and ethnologue language entries). A glance at the links there should reveal why such long lists are difficult to maintain. – Uanfala (talk) 13:23, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah thanks for the link. At the same time, I think this list is useful as it provides a clear list of languages in their English name, in alphabetical order, and will be able to be linked for easy use to all language. It can then be further expanded to include where the languages are spoken, if they are living or extinct, and how many people speak that language. I hope that makes sense. I'll do my best to create the full list. It can also be used as a reference to quickly see how many languages there are in the world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CcfUk2018 (talk • contribs) 16:08, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is viable as a list article. There are over 7,000 languages listed in ethnologue, simply enumerating those languages, without providing any additional details, will already get you well over the recommended maximum article size. More generally, lists of this type (even if more circumscribed in scope, as in "Languages in Country X") tend to quickly deteriorate over time as they can't easily keep pace with all the changes (ISO codes created or retired, wikipedia articles renamed, merged or split...) and as they're difficult to police against well-meaning editors introducing inconsistencies. Looking after such an article will be a tremendous job and in my opinion there's not enough encyclopedic benefit to justify it. Maybe there could be a way to dynamically generate a list of all language articles? – Uanfala (talk) 20:36, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks Uanfala for explaining that. I see what you mean. I wonder if it will one day be possible to have a list on wikipedia of all the languages, the number of speakers, and where it is spoken. I see now that this article can't, in its current state do all that. I would like to see this article be kept, but for the time being, it might be better to delete it. I apologise for the issue this article created. I wanted to be able to find a complete list of languages with the number of speakers, and where it is spoken, but can see that isn't viable at the moment. Thanks again for explaining this to me. (CcfUk2018 (talk) 15:13, 18 July 2019 (UTC)


 * I believe redirect to List of ISO 639-3 codes is the simplest option. Pichpich (talk) 22:47, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Redirect (or possibly merge if necessary) to List of ISO 639-3 codes. A more complete lead section or at least a note on that page might be in order, since the current lead is just a one-sentence definition and an index. But that discussion is beyond AfD. Cnilep (talk) 03:22, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Redirect to List of languages. Incomplete list, no need to keep it. Masum Reza 📞 20:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Redirect to List of languages. Although, the optimist in me would prefer to rename this to List of languages Wikipedia is written in.  -- RoySmith (talk) 01:41, 25 July 2019 (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.