Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sentinelese 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   keep. (non-admin closure) DavidLeighEllis (talk) 01:18, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Sentinelese language

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This has to be one of the weirder articles I've come across, about a language that is presumed to be spoken by a presumably small number of people and is presumed to fall into some language family, though nobody really knows. The only concrete information is that some other people don't understand it, whatever it is, if it even exists. Looking at the citations I'm not seeing much more than passing references which affirm the lack of knowledge. It's hard to say how we can (at least implicitly) claim that a language exists when all that we can say about it is that nobody knows anything about it that isn't speculation. Mangoe (talk) 21:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge into Andamanese languages. There is a little content that can be reliably sourced, but not much. &mdash; goethean 22:00, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose deletion. Merger would be appropriate, deletion is not.  If it is merged, the resulting article should probably be moved to "Sentinelese".  — kwami (talk) 00:01, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment as Sentinelese is only presumed to be related to or part of the Andamanese languages, what sense would a merger make? I'm inclined to think there is a case for keeping the article, though I'm not yet voting either way. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:26, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * See Nicoleño language, or Cimmerian language. When a language is scarcely attested, and we have a non-stub article on the people, it's not unusual for us to cover the language with the people.  There's usually enough info on a language to warrant splitting it off as a separate article, and often we don't even have an article on the people, but there are exceptions.  — kwami (talk) 04:26, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * My comment was actually a reply to Goethean: I was trying to point out why Andamanese languages isn't necessarily an ideal merge target. If there's an article on the Sentinelese people, it might be a good merge target, but personally I'd rather see the article kept (again, this isn't yet a vote). FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 08:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm now thinking maybe the precedents you cite may indicate another and better way to resolve this. But I think that "The Sentinelese people speak an unknown language presumed to be related to Ongan languages, though on the two occasions that Onge individuals were taken to the island, they could not understant the language spoken there" is far better than a separate article. Mangoe (talk) 12:09, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 04:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 04:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. It's a linguistic curiosity with few parallels, there are sources about it – even if they can hardly do more than speculate, it's routinely included in treatments of the Andamanese languages – and it's got ISO 639-3 and Glottolog codes. Andreas JN 466 04:39, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep per Andreas. We have lots of articles at WP:ODD, including the article about these people. I recall that sometimes we've merged the language or dialect into the people or clan, or vice versa. Bearian (talk) 20:49, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep per Andreas. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 21:19, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. If I'm understanding correctly, the nominator seems to be implying that we can't be sure the language exists, which is simply not true: people have heard the Sentinelese speak, and whatever they were speaking was the Sentinelese language. This article also provides sourced information about the language: the fact that Onge speakers cannot understand it and a hypothesis about what language family it might be part of. —Mr. Granger (talk · contribs) 01:42, 18 May 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.