Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Northern Okinawan 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. Dennis - 2&cent; 20:57, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Northern Okinawan language

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This is a content fork of the original version of the article Kunigami language, edited to suit the proposed new classification of the Ryukyuan languages by. To this effect, Nanshu had repeatedly modified the other article (amongst others) to suit his desires on this page. There is no entity that refers to a "Northern Okinawan language" that is not the "Kunigami language". There is extremely minimal coverage of this proposed language name on the Internet except in mirrors of Wikipedia, considering most sources equate "Northern Okinawan language" with what is called "Kunigami". — Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 13:35, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Merge to Kunigami language (or merge Kunigami language into Northern Okinawan). Seems clear that these are at least sometimes used as two names for the same group of varieties. Questions of classification and naming should be maintained in a single location with weight assigned to viewpoints according to their weight in the literature. A short google scholar search suggests that "Northern Okinawan dialects" is used more frequently than "Kunigami language", so maybe Kunigami should be merged into this article instead. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:51, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Kunigami is the name given in Ethnologue though. It's simply not the name that Japan has given to the language/dialect. According to the University of the Ryukyus' "Nakijin Dialect" dictionary, it's "Yanbaru Kutuuba".— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 19:06, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is frequently the case that languages are grouped differently and named differently in different sources. Hence what we have to do is try to help the reader to understand what the different names refer to and what is the basis for the different classifications. That is best done by having the article located at what ever is the most commonname used in English language publications. What that most common name is should be decided by talk page consensus.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:44, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * "Kunigami language" appears more often in English media. "Northern Okinawan language" is simply a stretch considering that "Kunigami-go" (Kunigami language) and "Kunigami hōgen" (Kunigami dialect) are not used in Japan but "Okinawa Hokubu Hōgen" (Northern Okinawa dialect) is instead. "Yanbaru Kutuuba" is never called "Northern Okinawan language" in English.— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 20:04, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That is a discussion for the talkpage, not for an AfD.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:12, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * No, it's a discussion for here to show that "Northern Okinawan language" is not a term that exists to define any langugae found in the northern regions of Okinawa Island.— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 20:34, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That claim is incorrect, as a google scholar search shows very clearly. The question about what should be the final name of the article is not relevant for the Afd. I suggest you make an RfC on the talkpage of the article and make an actual survey showing what sources use which terms instead of bickering here and all over wikipedia.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 20:43, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * One of the sources that predicated all of this division uses the other name over the one used on this page. I don't see how that's not relevant here.— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 21:07, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Because this is an AfD discussion not a move discussion. The title is irrelevant, it is the notability of the TOPIC that is being discussed here. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:37, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, but when you !voted to merge either this article to Kunigami language or vice versa, any discussion about which article (title) the information belongs under becomes relevant here.  ミーラー強斗武   (StG88ぬ会話) 22:51, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment. This is only part of Ryulong's continued mass-removal of content with reliable sources. The article of Kunigami language superficially resembles to Northern Okinawan language only because Ryulong removed content with reliable sources. He has never explained to the community why content with reliable sources must be removed completely. He continued mass-removal even after it became obvious to everyone that no one supports Ryulong's mass-removal. So the first thing to do is restore the content Ryulong removed. And Ryulong's disruptive editing needs wider attention.
 * We have already started discussing how to improve articles after we recover from Ryulong's mass removal. Since this involes multiple articles, I recommend to discuss the issue at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages unless you specifically argue for deletion. --Nanshu (talk) 16:40, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Nanshu, I am explicitly seeking out the wider community's view on this rather than constantly having to revert you as you wanted in the first place. There is no such thing as the "Northern Okinawan language". This is just a content fork of the topic described at Kunigami language. This was sent to PROD for that exact reason. Now it's at AFD. Stop making this about "me vs. you". This is about me not agreeing that this is a valid topic that you happened to make. Every single discussion you are linking to was started in a way so you could get the better end out of it for yourself. You intentionally worded the questions in the straw polls section you created such that there was only one answer: "Ryulong is bad and we should ban him". Your restructuring doesn't have consensus. Your constant changes to existant articles don't have consensus. You only vaguely have consensus over people thinking these pages might be suitable. I do not. I brought it to AFD so it could be discussed by more than 6 people at the linguistics project. Each article stands on its own and you are the person who violated WP:MULTI first by complaining about me on ANI and WT:LANG simultaneously.— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 18:31, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I was planning to nominate this article for deletion but Ryulong beat me to it.  ミーラー強斗武   (StG88ぬ会話) 19:56, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Merge to Kunigami language or Delete. This article is a blatant content fork of Kunigami language. Nanshu has renamed a language to fit his agenda, which is to reclassify the Northern Ryūkyūan languages. This article is a copy-and-paste of Kunigami language, only changing the lead and infobox and adding a section to better fit his newly created language family. In his added section, he cut-and-pasted the first paragraph from Amami–Okinawan languages#Subgroups (which he did on multiple other articles as well). He has taken sources which label Kunigami language as a "dialect" of Japanese and synthesized them to create this new language. This reclassification and renaming is all based off of fringe theories and his own personal research. This article violates WP:POVFORK, WP:NOR, WP:SYNTH, and WP:UNDUE, and needs to be merged or deleted.  ミーラー強斗武   (StG88ぬ会話) 19:53, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:56, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:56, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. Ryulong's assertion above that "Northern Okinawan language" is not a term that exists to define any langugae found in the northern regions of Okinawa Island is quite simply badly mistaken . Andreas JN 466 18:33, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The first source I wasn't able to see (Google Books is very scatterbrained about free previews), but I looked at the other three. The second source said "Northern Okinawan dialects". I don't interpret this as any one language in particular being talked about. The last source was most compelling in that it gave the family tree as well. However, this "Northern Okinawan language" is still completely identical to Kunigami language; they are the same thing with a different name. This article was originally a copy-and-paste clone that Nanshu just modified. Just look at Northern Okinawan language and Northern Okinawan language and compare it to the originals on Kunigami language and Kunigami language. Ethnologue, which Nanshu has gone on and on about because it lists Yoron language and Okinoerabu language as seperate languages, lists "Northern Okinawan" as Kunigami. The fact of the matter is that even if Kunigami is sometimes refered to as "Northern Okinawan", it is still not the majority. I would consider adding an "also known as" to the lede of Kunigami language, but this blatant fork needs to go away.  ミーラー強斗武   (StG88ぬ会話) 18:58, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Doing a search for "Kunigami language" resulted in 5,490 web hits and 6 book hits, while searching for "Northern Okinawan language" resulted in 887 web hits and 3 book hits.  ミーラー強斗武   (StG88ぬ会話) 21:16, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The Kunigami language article is completely unsourced. It states for example that The Kunigami language includes the Okinoerabujima dialect (島ムニ Shimamuni) and the Yoronjima dialect (ユンヌフトゥバ Yunnu futuba), as a bald fact. The preponderance of scholarly sources I've seen disagree, and consider Kunigami, Yoron and Okinoerabu separate, mutually unintelligible languages. That includes the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics and Evidentials in Ryukyuan . It seems to me the Kunigami article has more sourcing and reliability problems than this one, and should redirect to it. Andreas  JN 466 10:38, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Just because it's unsourced doesn't mean that this article is better because this article contains all of the same information because they are the same language. UNESCO considers Okinoerabu and Yoronjima as part of Kunigami. Most other sources consider that as well. Those two minor books do not mean anything in the long run and most certainly do not state that this language is known as Northern Okinawan.— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 15:58, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Here's a good question: why did Nanshu create this article instead of just adding his information to Kunigami language? Although it's kind of pointless to ask him since he's never answered a straight question from me with a straight answer. What do you think Jayen466?  ミーラー強斗武   (StG88ぬ会話) 20:30, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

'Keep This seemsto be an argument over content or naming, not overthe existence of an article.  DGG ( talk ) 03:55, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep with possible renaming.
 * First, keep in mind is that there are two distinct entities regarding Kunigami. For the sake of convenience, I call them GKunigami and LKunigami here.
 * GKunigami: Northern Okinawan + Yoron + Okinoerabu
 * LKunigami: Northern Okinawan
 * Yoron and Okinoerabu cannot be added or removed arbitrarily. If they are added, then it becomes a distinct entity. This is a sensitive issue because GKunigami crosses the political boundary between Kagoshima and Okinawa Prefectures.
 * Second, how to name these entities has nothing to do with the deletion discussion. Ryulong is desperately trying to hide the fact that names for these entities are far from standardized. Names found in the literature include:
 * GKunigami: Okinoerabu–Northern Okinawan group (Uemura, 1972), Okinoerabu–Yoron–Northern Okinawan dialect (Karimata, 2000) and Kunigami language (UNESCO, 2009)
 * LKunigami: Northern Okinawan ((Uemura, 1963), (Nakamoto, 1990), inter alia) and Kunigami ((Uemura, 1963), inter alia).
 * I chose the title of Northern Okinawan language only for technical reasons: MediaWiki forces us to choose a unique title per article.
 * A key finding through the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages is that I still gave too mich weight to UNESCO (2009). Kunigami has been used as an alias for Northern Okinawan (aks LKunigami). Calling GKunigami as Kunigami is like using American English as an umbrella term covering Canadian English and American English. Also note that GKunigami is an artifact of comparative studies. It was first proposed in 1972, independently of the speakers' own perception. And GKunigami's existence is questioned by Pellard (2010) among others. So now I support the following renamings:
 * (LKunigami) Northern Okinawan language -> Kunigami language
 * (GKunigami) Kunigami language -> Okinoerabu–Yoron–Northern Okinawan dialect (per Karimata (2000)) or something else.
 * --Nanshu (talk) 14:09, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * There should only be one article on any language spoken in Northern Okinawa Island in Kunigami district and Nago City, as well as similar spoken dialects on Okinoerabu and Yoron Islands. This is the "Kunigami language" and not the "Northern Okinawan language".— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜 ) 15:17, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * The article already existed as Kunigami language until this article was made as a POV fork. This second article should have never been made, and its information could have easily been added to the original article instead.  ミーラー強斗武   (StG88ぬ会話) 05:36, 23 October 2014 (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.