Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Madras Tamil


 * 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. (non-admin closure) Timotheus Canens (talk) 00:25, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Madras Tamil

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Totally Original Research. Non-notable - no verifiable or reliable sources to attribute any portion of this article. On top of the above, non-encyclopaedic content forms the majority of this article. Note, the nominator has not left the reason in talk page (IP nomination). Felt that this should go through a proper AfD and deleted. VasuVR ( talk,  contribs ) 04:16, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete I can't find any confirmation of the existence of this hypothetical language. I would love to be proven wrong, if someone can pull up real information on it, so we can just trim this article down to basics and leave it be. But until I see something -- anything -- this has to go. Avram (talk) 05:14, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, because the sources below look strong enough. I do wonder whether this should be renamed-- I still have trouble finding sources that refer to this language as Madras Tamil. Avram (talk) 18:37, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 13:47, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep - Exists. Tamil is diglossic and dialects vary from region to region and from caste to caste. The article is OR, but most of it is accurate. A citations required template needs to be added and left as such. Search for "Madras Dialect" when searching in English language books/web., , , , , , , , , , ,.--Sodabottle (talk) 15:22, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - In scholarly works, this is sometimes mentioned as part of "Northern Tamil" like here . There is a mention of it in Tamil wikipedia article for madras. There a lot of sources in Tamil itself both online (like this, ,  and ) and offline. Despite the temptation to AGF, i am thinking that the nominator IP was either playing a prank or didn't like the fact that such a dialect exists.--Sodabottle (talk) 15:41, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment - I believe there are more than 800 dialects in India. We know they exist. Now, are they notable? Where is the boundary drawn for each dialect. I am sure many of these terms are used differently in different parts of Chennai and its suburbs - now what is the correct categorization in terms of verifiability? I would like to know how the level of details given in this article are important to be written in such detail in an English encyclopaedia. Should it belong elsewhere, like the Tamil Wikipedia or "Learn Tamil dialects" book or other such area? Guidelines, precedents and/or senior editors' opinions would be very useful on this subject. VasuVR  ( talk,  contribs ) 15:45, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * what is the correct categorization in terms of verifiability? There is enough scholarly work which has already been done on the categorisation of the dialects of Tamil. They specifically mention "Madras dialect", "madras tamil dialect" etc. IMO it is enough notability for inclusion in English language wikipedia. Should it belong elsewhere, like the Tamil Wikipedia. If it warrants inclusion in Tamil wikipedia, why not here. I don't like to use "other stuff exists" line of argument, but here are some examples with other languages dialects of hindi, Yorkshire dialect, American Spanish, Quebec French etc. And WP:NOTDICDEF says " Descriptive articles about languages, dialects, or types of slang (such as Klingon language, Cockney, or Leet) are desirable. Prescriptive guides for prospective speakers of such languages are not". I agree with you on the content part, most of it is OR and has no citations. Article needs a rewrite and not a delete.--Sodabottle (talk) 16:24, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I did some random checks and I find that words like naina are included as examples in the books about the dialects. My concern is the enormous amount of baggage (WP:OR) that is being inserted here. I myself can vouch for some of the items in this article. But most of it cannot be found in references / searches - most of the article is per WP viewpoint OR and some are just random words taken out and explained in a dictionary fasion. I would find only 3 to 4 paragraphs in the article that would be left of a thorough rewrite (end up as a stub?). Also, I take back the order of questions I had asked. I was wondering about all the terminology being notable - but asking it first meant that it is looking like I asked whether the dialect is notable. That was not my intention.
 * I wonder if there is material that goes into similar analysis of this dialect, like the other examples you have mentioned, to keep at least stub-level content. VasuVR  ( talk,  contribs ) 17:35, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Strong Keep per SodaBottle above, and also because Madras Tamil is a recognized dialect of Tamil per Ethnologue. The article tends to get cluttered over time, and needs to be periodically cleaned/pruned (I used to do this before my priorities changed), but that's not an excuse for a hasty deletion nomination. --Brhaspati\talk/contribs 18:58, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep The sources provided above by Sodabottle shows that the topic is indeed notable, and a dialect spoken by a significant number of people (the city's population is about 4.5Mn, while not all of them will speak the dialect). If there's OR in the article, it's a case for editing, not deletion. - Spaceman  Spiff  16:40, 21 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.