Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of sounds that are meaningful in a 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   no consensus. Although "delete" wins the headcount 9-5, both sides have presented valid arguments; also, some of the issues like original research have since been fixed. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 00:48, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

List of words that comprise a single phoneme

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

A list of single syllable words in a handful of European languages. Unencyclopedic. &mdash; RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 00:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete unencylopedic material; a list. JJL (talk) 00:29, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions.  -- — LinguistAtLarge • Talk  01:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete since this list is problematic, to say the least, beginning with the title, and the indefinite article in it. The lead can't make up its mind as to what it is, and the list does not clarify. If this is going to be a list of all meaningful sounds in all languages--what would be the point? Drmies (talk) 01:59, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed. You ask what is the point? I ask: what is the point in articles like List of long place names or List of short place names (to name just two out of thousands)? Adam78 (talk) 15:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * There are many articles I consider pointless (on wrestlers, comics, monster trucks, college athletes), but those are not under discussion here. Besides, your comment refers to what might be considered a new article, and mine refers to a different one. The point of the "first" article still escapes me, but this, with a new title, is a meaningfully different animal. Consider rewriting the lead to better reflect the new title (I still don't understand the indefinite article in the first half of the first sentence), including a note on the various languages present in the list, if only to indicate that click consonants are part of the discussion, for instance: I agree with editors here who have raised the POV-issue. And I know that AfD is not for cleanup, but this is more than cleanup. Drmies (talk) 15:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete or clean-up, this could also be considered a POV as it only discusses European languages and the fact that different people have different opinions of what is "meaningful" in a language. This could probably be salvaged, but would require a complete rewrite of the lead, name-change, and different criteria for the list, but I don't see that happening (is it possible?) Tavix | Talk  02:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete per above users. Lord Cornwallis (talk) 02:57, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem with the title is, ironically, that it is not technical enough. I can see what the author has in mind.  For what it's worth: It appears to be a list of words that comprise one single phoneme.  A phoneme is not the same as a phone, which is a "sound".  So the "sound" in the title is highly misleading.  So, also, is the "meaningful".  It's not whether these are "meaningful".  (There's a whole linguistic debate on whether phonemes have meaning, that hinges on what one defines "meaning" to be.)  It's whether they are recognized words.  So a more technical title would be something on the lines of List of words that comprise a single phoneme.  But even that's not perfect.  There's the whole intermediate layer of morphemes to consider.  And even then that would be glossing over the fact that there isn't a recognized universal phoneme inventory for all languages, so the idea of including all languages mixed together, side by side, as this list does, as if the phonemes were universal across all languages, is on shaky linguistic foundations. I hope that this conveys what is apparently intended here better than the title does.  &#9786;  Uncle G (talk) 03:40, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Adam78 (talk) 11:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep it's a very useful list of sounds. It would not be useful converted into prose. kgrr  talk 04:31, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Not really useful and WP:Original research Steve Dufour (talk) 05:13, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Being useful is not a criterion but a POV (cf. Unusual articles), and original research has been eliminated by adding sources. Adam78 (talk) 15:24, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Uncle G's description of what this list actually is, and what it should be called, is spot on, but the encyclopedic usefulness of such a list is quite dubious. I'd say this list is an indiscriminate collection of information. If it should exist anywhere, it could perhaps be an Appendix at Wiktionary (but even then it would probably have to be divided up by language, otherwise it would become enormous - single-phoneme words are not exactly rare), but not at Wikipedia. —Angr 05:23, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * False. Luckily there are tons of examples of similar articles whose inclusion in Wikipedia is not challenged. This point doesn't apply here, see the explanation given on the quoted page. Adam78 (talk) 15:24, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS has never been a reason to keep anything. And Unusual articles lists encyclopedic articles on unusual topics. This is an unencyclopedic article on, well, nothing very special. As I said, single-phoneme words aren't exactly rare. (Irish, for example, has at least 8 different words that are all pronounced .) —Angr 21:31, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Mmmmmm... delete. MyDog22 (talk) 10:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Disregard this last 'comment': user has been banned indefinitely as a sock puppet. Drmies (talk) 16:48, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. You may have missed the page Unusual articles that lists hundreds of articles, most of which could be similarly called "unencylopedic material" by this standard... But you can also consider articles like Open back unrounded vowel, which simply describe the formation of a sound and give a mere list of its examples in various languages. Including consonants, there are more than two hundred articles like these. Have a look at them. Is there anything that makes these many articles more encyclopaedic than this one? Adam78 (talk) 11:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You can't possibly list all the words that are a single phoneme, it should be list of single phonemes used as words (which could be all of them) with selected examples. MyDog22 (talk) 11:21, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course I can't. But exhaustiveness is not and has never been a condition for a Wikipedia article. Articles like Open back unrounded vowel don't list all the existing instances of a phoneme in the world's 6000 languages, do they? Adam78 (talk) 15:09, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as original research, trivial, rife with factual errors Cnilep (talk) 17:02, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Then please be bold to fix at least some of the errors. Adam78 (talk) 06:13, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. There has been several precedents of language-related articles which can be seen as "original research". (The article Pseudo-anglicism for example, lists several words from many languages, similar to this list.) Many arguments here are just wrong, titles can be fixed, factual errors can be fixed too, and "trivial" basically means that you aren't interested in it... – Alensha   talk  18:20, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Browsing is an encyclopedic use. Finding unexpected and interesting things has always been a very major use of  encyclopedias. A list of words like this, though it might also fit as a supplement to a dictionary, is also appropriate in an encyclopedia--especially in  Uncle G adds some discussion. Guidelines & policies have exceptions, & this is a suitable case for that.  OTHERCRAP exists is not a good argument when the so called crap is a significant feature of the encyclopedia-- to eliminate them all we'd need a general discussion. DGG (talk) 23:51, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep - an interesting list with the potential to grow with entries from other languages. (If it gets too large in the future, it could be broken up into sublists based upon language family.) It appears to be sourced well, and if there are factual errors, these should be corrected rather than deleting the whole thing.  LadyofShalott  Weave  17:53, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete The notability of this grouping is not established. Why not another list of words which are made of two phonemes, three phonemes, and so on?  We then have lists of every word but Wikipedia is not a dictionary.  Colonel Warden (talk) 19:49, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wrong. The notability of this grouping is simply the record shortness (records, extremes are notable in themselves) and the fact that there are phonemes that are not only building bricks of words but they are words instead. It has nothing to do with a dictionary (note that hundreds of thousands of words are excluded), it has to do with records. Adam78 (talk) 05:42, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete as original research by synthesis. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:51, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Misinterpretation of the policy. It says "Do not put together information from multiple sources to reach a conclusion that is not stated explicitly by any of the sources." There is simply no conclusion in the article that could be beyond the sources. Adam78 (talk) 05:52, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * As I see it, this is clearly synthesis. The only information from external sources is dictionary pronunciation guides. The conclusion that these pronunciations encompass a single phoneme in the relevant language, and the further conclusion that that cross-linguistic observation constitutes a class are conclusions original to the page's editor(s). The fact that the conclusions appear relatively easy ones to make does not obviate the fact that they are original. Of course, I will be proved wrong if Francia–magyar szótár states explicitly that /ɑ̃/ is a French word consisting of one phoneme and compares this to the Hungarian word /ɛ/, but I'm not holding my breath. Cnilep (talk) 15:00, 23 April 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.