Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages/Archive 14

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject
Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Languages

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.&mdash; Rod talk 16:49, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Pointing
Your Talk page feedback and article contributions would be welcome at recently created page Pointing. (Relevancy to this project: a paralinguistic phenomenon, and in sign languages, also a semantic one.) Mathglot (talk) 07:20, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Bot for WP:WPENGLISH
I've made a request at at WP:Bot requests to have the articles within the project scope bot-tagged, since doing it by had or even with AWB might be an enormous amount of effort. I'm not sure if BOTREQ requires a showing of support before action is taken to implement a bot, but I get the sense that this might be the case. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:56, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Interlinear
We've now got a template for formatting interlinear glosses: interlinear. At this stage, it will be really helpful to receive some feedback on its overall structure, like the parameters used or the various default behaviours (for example with respect to the presence of free translations, or the formatting of glossing abbreviations). All these things will be difficult to change once the template becomes more widely used. Your input is welcome at Template talk: interlinear. Bug reports or feature requests will be appreciated as well. – Uanfala (talk) 17:53, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Overhauling the lang-xx templates for more selective italics behavior
Please see: Template talk:Lang

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  07:17, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
 * As part of this overhaul, there are a several templates with names that use non-standard codes.  Two of these are  and.
 * appears to be a catch-all template for the several languages that MARC Code List for Languages groups under the ISO 639-2 code .  Most of the  templates use valid IETF language tags as part of their names (those that don't, should);   is not a valid IETF subtag according to the IANA language subtag registry.  Similarly,  uses code   (for Medieval Greek) which code is also not in the IANA language subtag registry.
 * I have created a handful of private-use IETF language tags that apply to the several  languages identified in the MARC Code List for Languages along with matching  templates.
 * Aeolic Greek –  –
 * Attic Greek –  –
 * Biblical Greek –  –
 * Byzantine Greek –  –
 * Classical Greek –  –
 * Doric Greek –  –
 * Hellenistic Greek –  –
 * Ionic Greek –  –
 * Koinē Greek –  –
 * Medieval Greek –  –
 * Patristic Greek –  –
 * I will redirect to  and run an AWB script to convert instances of  in article space to .  I will also convert  to .  The rest of these are beyond my ken.  Instances of  and  should be converted to the appropriate private-use code by those who know.  There appear to be about 1400 transclusions (all namespaces) of the former but only a handful of the latter.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:17, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
 * ISO 639-2 collective codes are problematic. Description and proposed a solution at Template_talk:Lang.  Your opinion?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:36, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Is it even necessary to have so many templates? The language code could just be a parameter, like the way Wiktionary does it as well as our own . It would reduce a lot of code duplication. Rua (mew) 20:22, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There are two kinds of lang templates., like  takes a language code as it first positional parameter:
 * → Je suis française.
 * and then there are the templates that are language-specific and produce a different kind of output:
 * → Je suis française. – also has builtin support for transliteration (non-Latin scripts only) and translation outputs
 * These two kinds of templates have been with us for a long time. This current overhaul is disruptive enough; deleting all of the 650-ish  and replacing their calls on I-don't-know-many-pages (in the order of 300k transclusions) with an enhanced version of  would certainly call out the hordes with their torches and pitchforks.
 * I have thought about taking over (presently a redirect to Template:Lang) for use as a general purpose  template that would take a language core parameter as well as all of the the other  parameters and render in the same way that  did above with the exception of categorization.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:03, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Frisian languages and their codes seem to me to be not quite right. In the table, the IANA names (these are the names that the  templates prefer) are taken from the the IANA language-subtag-registry file.  These names have redirects to the listed en.wiki articles:
 * I have thought about taking over (presently a redirect to Template:Lang) for use as a general purpose  template that would take a language core parameter as well as all of the the other  parameters and render in the same way that  did above with the exception of categorization.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:03, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Frisian languages and their codes seem to me to be not quite right. In the table, the IANA names (these are the names that the  templates prefer) are taken from the the IANA language-subtag-registry file.  These names have redirects to the listed en.wiki articles:
 * Frisian languages and their codes seem to me to be not quite right. In the table, the IANA names (these are the names that the  templates prefer) are taken from the the IANA language-subtag-registry file.  These names have redirects to the listed en.wiki articles:
 * Frisian languages and their codes seem to me to be not quite right. In the table, the IANA names (these are the names that the  templates prefer) are taken from the the IANA language-subtag-registry file.  These names have redirects to the listed en.wiki articles:


 * Why does Eastern Frisian redirect to Saterland Frisian language?  Shouldn't it instead redirect to East Frisian Low Saxon?
 * For completeness, the ISO 639:xx redirects:
 * ISO 639:fy → West Frisian language
 * ISO 639:frr → North Frisian language
 * ISO 639:frs → East Frisian Low Saxon
 * ISO 639:fry → West Frisian language
 * ISO 639:ofs → Old Frisian
 * ISO 639:stq → Saterland Frisian language
 * these, to me, all appear to be correct. Are they?
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:31, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:31, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion
Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Hebrew language, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, –Ammarpad (talk) 19:26, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

"Henri" versus "Henry" for historical French figures
Please see Talk:Henry III of France — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:18, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Relisting of move discussion
Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Ainu language, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, Sky  Warrior  02:46, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Infobox colours for Japonic and Koreanic?
Should the infobox colours for the Japonic and Koreanic language families be (language isolate) or (altaic)? As far as I know, most Japonic infoboxes are altaic green, but Korean is language isolate grey. I was recently changing the infobox colours before I thought to ask if there was already a preexisting colour code for both language families. The Verified Cactus 100% 20:55, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm going to change them to altaic, seeing as there doesn't seem to be any opposition. If my actions are against consensus, I hope someone will direct me to a discussion deciding on said consensus. The Verified Cactus 100% 14:44, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * That's not my area (and I don't know if there have been previous discussions) but this seems reasonable: after all, for the vast majority of language families these colours are areal rather than genetic. – Uanfala (talk) 15:31, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Featured article review of Swedish language
I have nominated Swedish language for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. DrKay (talk) 18:03, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

List of three script Languages
Why not a separate article or list on the subject, may include Mandinka language, Punjabi Language and others. Feedback ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by KTisori (talk • contribs) 03:54, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia Visiting Scholar
There is an open position for a "Wikipedia Visiting Scholar" at Rutgers that might be of interest to some of you: https://wikiedu.org/blog/2018/02/27/announcing-a-new-opportunity-at-rutgers-for-wikipedians-interested-in-endangered-languages/. The topics are centred around language endangerment, endangered languages, language ideologies etc. – Uanfala (talk) 00:39, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Request for Information
Would the assembled kindly advise which resource is best to study the Middle French language? Antiquated literature is not beyond my means. - Conservatrix (talk) 02:00, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Norman French and Anglo-Norman French? - Conservatrix (talk) 19:53, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Announcing Binnen-I
Please come help improve the article Binnen-I. This is a non-standard typographic convention used with people nouns to indicate gender inclusivity in modern German. A bit of German, or an interest in feminist linguistics or gender equality is a plus. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:09, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Where do I post about fixing spin-offs by a block editor leaving orphan citations?
If you looked at the contributions of the sock you'll see he spun off bits of the Tamil and Gujarati articles to make new ones, eg Old Tamil. Unfortunately a lot of the verifiable bits of the references got left behind, leaving just a surname and date or page number. Doug Weller talk 15:48, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template Transclude lead excerpt.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  10:58, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Nascent gender-neutral language approach in Romance languages
Talk:Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Links to DAB pages
I have collected several more linguistics-related problems which IMO need expert attention, because generalist DABfixers like me are out of our depth. Search for "disam" in main text, or for "{{d" in edit view. If you solve any one of these puzzles, I suggest that you add a {{tl|done}} tag here. Thanks in advance. Narky Blert (talk) 21:00, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Guosa
 * Itsekiri people
 * Pax Assyriaca
 * Radical 213
 * Languages of the United States
 * Distributional semantics
 * Takpa language
 * Kashmiri language
 * Bar (diacritic)
 * Neurolinguistic approach

Template:Infobox language and reference errors
In order to avoid having the same reference listed twice in a language article. template Infobox language exports the named reference used in its "ref=" field. Existing articles often use these references. Any change to the field, such as updating the Ethnologue used from 18th to 19th edition or using a different reference such as a census, will leave such articles with broken reference names and red error messages in the references list. If you are updating the field, check and update article information also or provide a full reference.

I regularly fix broken references (and have run into this problem from e16 updates on). However I rapidly exhaust my free views on Ethnologue. So far I have run into this list of language articles with problems. The most common complains about a missing reference named "e18". Please fix these. Thankyou.

Please fix:
 * Abaga language - does e21 even exist?
 * Abkhaz language
 * Babine-Witsuwit'en language
 * Belarusian language
 * Carrier language
 * Corsican language
 * Crow language
 * Deg Xinag language
 * Fox language
 * Gamilaraay language
 * Guató language
 * Guragone language

StarryGrandma (talk) 01:43, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Formatting a lang-de quote
Please see Martin_Walser. Can someone format correctly the German speech title & translation? Maybe using ? Thanks. -DePiep (talk) 00:33, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I've added, which may be enough. can be used if you feel any text needs a "German:" label before it. — Eru·tuon 01:12, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks. Also solved the issue of italicising nicely (such a hard lang-logic for me ...). - DePiep (talk) 02:05, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Bimbo
Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Bimbo. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:27, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Zhangzhou dialect
Can this page be protected to prevent edit warring? — justin(r)leung { (t...) 03:18, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Cyrillic advice merge
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:03, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

lang coding for transliterations
Working on Typo Team/moss items I keep coming across unknown strings which are transliterations of what are ... words/phrases. Even when I know what language is the original, I don't know how to code/tag the transliteration string. I'd *really* like to avoid universally doing ...

For instance, Satkaryavada has both Sanskrit and transliterated text, sometimes together e.g.
 * Satkaryavada (सत्कार्यवाद)
 * Satkaryavada (सत्कार्यवाद)

and sometimes isolated e.g. samsambhavatbhavat and (uncoded) असदकर्णाद् उपादान ग्रहणात् सर्वसम्भवाभावात्.

I found an example elsewhere where everything was labelled:
 * Akasha (Sanskrit  आकाश)
 * Akasha (Sanskrit  आकाश)

but I'm really thinking most transliterations seen are not IAST-approved.

I see references to transl and I suppose I could do
 * samsambhavatbhavat
 * samsambhavatbhavat

but the documentation suggests I should supply the transliteration 'kind', which I don't know.

What do I do with the bare isolated transliterations?

Any suggestions? Shenme (talk) 00:12, 21 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I usually just do and don't bother with figuring out which transliteration system it is or what the code would be, though I do  for pinyin, which is easy to recognize. It would be easier to add codes for transliteration systems if the documentation for  linked to the pages that describe the transliteration systems so that editors can try to identify which one is being used when they are adding the template to an un-tagged transliteration. — Eru·tuon 02:17, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Bot Request to Cleanup Category:Featured articles needing translation from
A bot request has been recently created to clean up articles that no longer have FA status on their host Wikipedia page from Category:Featured articles needing translation from. Any comments would be appreciated. Kadane (talk) 18:26, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

gaelach
Can we check the use or not of gaelach picture in Irish language? when it was included when it was deleted ※ Sobreira ◣◥ ፧ (parlez)⁇﹖ 08:51, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

GUOSA LANGUAGE PHONOLOGY
GUOSA LANGUAGE PHONOLGY: The phonological perfectness of Guosa language is such that the original word phonetic is retained at all level so as to give it fluent pronunciation as well as maintain high degree of cultural unification within the various units of vocabularies. This is why Guosa language has been able to bring about the much desired national unity and multi-culture.

Examples: mo yama la mota .... I bought a car. This sentence is evolution of words from Yoruba, Agbo (Cross Rivers Stat of Nigeria) and Hausa languages (both major and minor language evolutions) thus: mŏ .... I (first person pronoun) evolved from Yoruba and Itsekiri major and minor languages. yámá..... buy or buying (evolution of word from Agbo, CRS, Nigeria) mótà...... motor (word evolution from Hausa languages, major and minor) lá .... a Guosa part of speech used for past tense.

Therefore, when I say in the Guosa language: mŏ yámá lá mótà, I simply meant: "I have bought a motor". Please note the tonal patterns of high, low, low-to-high respectively as these are the phonological guidance in spoken and written Guosa language. Reference: Alexander Ekhaguosa Igbineweka, (Alex Igbineweka) The Dictionary of Guosa Language Vocabularies 1987, ISBN 978-30291-1-8

thumb|ISBN 978-30291-1-8 — Preceding unsigned comment added by ALEX G. IGBINEWEKA (talk • contribs) 06:19, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Shümom language
Red links at several articles on the Bamum people and script,, supposedly an artificial language invented to be written in Bamum, but I can't find a description. Was this maybe a standardized literary language, analogous to N'ko language, or an artificial language in the conlang sense, like Medefaidrin? — kwami (talk) 03:30, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Featured quality source review RFC
Editors in this WikiProject may be interested in the featured quality source review RFC that has been ongoing. It would change the featured article candidate process (FAC) so that source reviews would need to occur prior to any other reviews for FAC. Your comments are appreciated. --IznoRepeat (talk) 21:39, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Humanities published first article
T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 09:36, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Any Yakut experts?
There is a translation request at Reference_desk/Language; posting here in case anyone can help out there. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 17:23, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Sámi vs. Sami vs. Saami
Please see: Talk:Kildin Sami orthography – multi-page RM primarily about diacritics in an endonym. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:22, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Italo-Celtic
I just wanted to confirm whether or not Italo-Celtic should be added to all Italic and Celtic language infoboxes in the family tree thing, seeing as it's "generally accepted", according to its' wiki page. For comparison, Insular Celtic is also "generally accepted". I no next to nothing as to the linguistic side of things, which is why I ask. The Verified Cactus 100% 02:55, 24 December 2018 (UTC)


 * No, not a good idea. It's not generally accepted. The only living branches of IE that are generally accepted as being related are Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian. Insular Celtic is only 'generally accepted' in the sense that a majority of sources that WPians found supported it, but P-Celtic is also commonly accepted in the lit. It might be reasonable to add Italo-Celtic with a question mark to the Italic and Celtic info boxes, but not to the branches and languages further down. — kwami (talk) 03:23, 27 December 2018 (UTC)


 * alright, got it! The Verified Cactus 100% 22:05, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Language or dialect
Regarding section Article names, I don't see much in the Archives about the choice of terms (Archive 6 has default naming and US English Dialect Page Titles) but the whole issue about what's a dialect and what's a language is fraught, and one that linguists generally decline to take a stand on. Personally, I'm sticking with A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

Regarding this recent edit by, Wikipedia (or this Project) may have arrived at its own conclusions about when to use 'dialect' and when not to, and I'm not trying to rock the boat, but maybe the Proj page deserves a section or subsection entitled 'Language or dialect' and how we arrived at that. Either that, or a MOS subpage perhaps, edited by the people in this project, and added to the Manual of style, and linked to from here. Mathglot (talk) 08:11, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Just pointing out there's also Naming conventions (languages). – Uanfala (talk) 10:30, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that link. They do offer this: "The term dialect should only be used for distinct but mutually intelligible varieties of a language", which does explain kwami's edit which pretty much hews to that recommendation.  I may need to do some sleuthing at that page to see how that recommendation came about, and whether a change should be proposed there or not.  In the meantime, I have created shortcut WP:DIALECT (which I had tried earlier, hopefully, but which went nowhere) and linked it to that page. I'm still curious to see what others think.  Btw, now that you've linked that page, perhaps this conversation should be moved there, as a better venue? What do you think,, or anyone? Mathglot (talk) 11:09, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

I added that wording because it suggested we should not use the word 'dialect' in titles of varieties of Chinese or Arabic. But that would contradict a consensus that's been stable for a decade. My wording was intended to reflect what we had actually decided on, and didn't want someone to try to move hundreds of articles because they contradicted the previous wording. What we had decided, maybe a decade ago? and what the article titles are based on, is that when AFAWCT from the lit, varieties truly are dialects, we call them "X dialect" rather than "X Chinese", "X Yue" or the like. If you take a look at Category:Xiang Chinese, you see there's 'New' and 'Old' Xiang, as those are the common names (and are not necessarily MI), but the rest all all called 'dialects', as no-one's provided any source that describes them as anything but MI dialects of New or Old Xiang. (If someone provided evidence in even the most splittist source that one of them was not MI with the others, then we would move it from 'B dialect' to 'B Xiang', but without such evidence such a move would give undue prominence to that variety. Also, when an article is on a simple topolect that is not listed as a dialect in our dialect classifications of Xiang, then we would either name it 'B Xiang' (as we do w national variants of Arabic that don't follow dialect boundaries) or -- the usual and IMO better solution -- merge it into the corresponding dialect article per our classification.) That is the consensus situation (after long debate), and I wouldn't want to upset it with careless wording here. Since the guidance here was based on that decision, I thought it shouldn't contradict that decision or the many article names that came from it. I believe the situation is the same for Arabic, though we haven't gone into the same level of detail with varieties of Arabic because we have better data of MI and haven't broken our level of coverage down to that extent. The same convention could apply to German and Italian, though in those cases there's less objection to simply calling things 'languages'. — kwami (talk) 19:17, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * , you'd be surprised what you stir up in Germany if you dare to call Low German a language. I did that once and was almost beaten out of town. Landroving Linguist (talk) 10:34, 9 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Maybe we'll need to apply this to German too, then! Though I don't recall it being a problem on WP. I've known expat Italians to say that Calabrian etc. is an entirely different language, then prove it by saying something that no-one else can understand. Maybe in Italy it would be more of an issue. — kwami (talk) 17:28, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Northumbrian dialect (Old English) - Requested move
It has been requested to move Northumbrian dialect (Old English) to Northumbrian Old English, see here. The discussion has stalled, but it appears there might be issues that go beyond the scope of that article. If anyone wants to have a look, that would be appreciated. Renerpho (talk) 00:54, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

new Glottolog names
At Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Glottolog 3.3 language names I've listed all the language names used at Glottolog and separated out the red links. Many of these will be redirects, but for some we'll need to decide if they should be subsumed under another article (perhaps Glottolog split a language, but we don't feel we need to follow, or a newly listed pidgin could be described in a section in the article on its lexifier language) or create a new article for a more distinct language (e.g. several new sign languages).

But the first (rd's to existing articles) will be a big help. — kwami (talk) 07:57, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Okay, down to 8 redlinks, listed on the talk page. 3 unconfirmed sign languages (might be homesign etc.) and 5 pidgins. — kwami (talk) 23:21, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Sourcing at Ancient Greek
Hello, The sourcing at Ancient Greek is in a sorry state. I'm willing to help, but I'm not the best placed to do so; the article would probably benefit from members of this project with knowledge of the subject. Your assistance is welcome: please see Talk:Ancient Greek. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:27, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Anyone? Mathglot (talk) 07:27, 21 January 2019 (UTC)

Guaraní or Guarani
Input is requested at —[  Alan M 1 (talk) ]— 00:14, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Feedback requested at Villon poem article
Should a second translation of poet François Villon's poem be included at this article? Your feedback is requested at Talk:Ballade des dames du temps jadis. Mathglot (talk) 08:56, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

MediaWiki Edittools expanded a bit
FYI, MediaWiki Edittools (which you see under the edit window when you edit) has expanded the Latin script character set to include saltillo (Ꞌ ꞌ), ʻokina (ʻ), hamza (ʼ - same as ejective symbol in the IPA, most common character for glottal stop) and ayin (ʽ - as in Arabic dictionaries, for those who don't use the 'okina for ayin). These are all Unicode modifier letters and are intended to replace "apostrophes" which do not function as punctuation, and so should replace ASCII <'> and curly quotation marks in such cases. That is, possessive -'s, contractions, and usage that is equivalent to a hyphen, such as adding suffixes to a proper noun (all functions of punctuation) should still be ASCII <'>, but when the "apostrophe" functions as a letter or part of a digraph, as in "Hawaiʻi", Wade-Giles transliteration of aspirated consonants in Chinese, or the Micmac long-vowel mark, we should use one of the modifier letters. Since per the MOS we should not use curly quotation marks as punctuation, I'm not sure if they should appear in WP at all, or if they should always be replaced with either ASCII <'> or one of modifier letters above.

This year, apostrophes in ISO language names that do not function as punctuation marks will be replaced with one of the modifier letters above, just as punctuation marks were replaced with proper click letters last year. Already, the ISO name  uses a proper modifier letter apostrophe (hamza) rather than a punctuation apostrophe -- click on it and you'll see that the whole name is highlighted, unlike the behavior of the ASCII apostrophe, , or of the punctuation substitute , both of which are technically wrong per Unicode definitions (with the idea that punctuation marks should function as punctuation, as e.g. the click letter <ǃ> is correct for Khoisan words but the exclamation mark <!> is not). We might want to discuss how to handle this in language articles and titles. — kwami (talk) 01:48, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Language article "Metaphorical language", lacking References since 2006
Greetings, Sharing with Language WP about article Metaphorical language was tagged in 2006 as having no references. Hoping members of Language wikiproject may be able to improve this article (totally outside my area of expertise). Thanks. JoeHebda (talk) 20:43, 24 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm going to go ahead and delete it and redirect it to 'metaphor'. There's an interesting claim or two, such as autistic people speaking in metaphor, but they're completely unsupported and could just as easily appear in the metaphor article. Of course, if anyone here feels they can flesh it out into a real article, by all means revert me. — kwami (talk) 02:26, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Propose merger
I have proposed merging Nonstandard dialect into Standard language. Discussion is at Talk:Standard language. Comments are welcome there. Cnilep (talk) 03:43, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Interlinearised text: help for readers?
You've seen Template:IPA notice? The little box that sits below the infoboxes of an article and warns readers that there are uses of IPA in the article. That's partly for very small group of readers whose browsers can't quite render IPA yet, but it also serves the purpose of linking to Help:IPA for the rather larger group of readers see IPA alright but who might need help making heads or tails of it.

Now, I've been wondering whether there might not be a need for something similar for interlinear glossed text. Something to tell readers the all those hyphens are not part of how the language is actually written, but are there only separate the morphemes. Or that the equals sign separates clitics. Stuff like that. So what does everybody think, is there a need for something of this kind? – Uanfala (talk) 04:57, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:English language for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:English language is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:English language (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 23:17, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Disputed title
Your feedback at Talk:Le Marais would be welcome. Mathglot (talk) 08:53, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
 * – Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Discussion regarding transliteration of Greek
The discussion at Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 May 4 would benefit from input from those familiar with transliteration of Greek. Thryduulf (talk) 15:58, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Japanese honorifics
Please, someone can help me with this discussion? Thank you very much. --80.180.136.136 08:19, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with the people who responded to you there: Wikipedia is not the place to go for advice or instruction. Perhaps you will have better luck with a language-learning service or discussion board. Cnilep (talk) 01:45, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Urdu for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Urdu is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Urdu until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 06:41, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Help on Modern Eyeri
Is there anyone reading this familiar with Arawakan languages. An article has just been created on Modern Eyeri, which seems to be a recent attempt to revive Kalinago. What references I can make out anything about do not seem to be about Modern Eyeri, and other references are to off-line books in Spanish or French. I am thus unable to verify the contents of the article. - Donald Albury 01:50, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Develop Bengali language article
Please read thoroughly about WikiProject Languages guidelines for improvement in Bengali language article. Read articles like Tamil language, Danish language or English language these are all featured or Good articles. Please ensure that Bengali language article do get a FA or Good article status.--2405:201:8803:5F9D:85D4:4FE1:C448:F480 (talk) 15:06, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Language for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Language is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Language until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 23:02, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:English language for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:English language is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:English language (3rd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 23:02, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Comparative tables of sample words
There are articles dedicated to language families which display tables comparing sample words in different languages of the language family (for instance, see Eastern Romance languages). Do members of this project think that editors are required to verify the list of compared words with references to reliable sources about the language family, or can we freely choose the words to be compared (and we should only verify the proper form in each language with a reference to a dictionary)? Thank you. (I also raised this question on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics.) Borsoka (talk) 09:32, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Minority Languages ​​in Country Article Infobox (Serbia)
Hello, I guess that some of you may be interested to express your opinion on RfC if the country infobox (Serbia in this case) should contain "Recognised regional or minority languages" or should they be removed. The RfC can be seen on THIS LINK. Best regards and thank you for your contribution.--MirkoS18 (talk) 21:33, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Talk:East Frisian language
This corresponding article has been expanded from a disambiguation to full article status. I just wanted to let you guys know that I reset the project rating template at the talk page, so you can have another look at this fresh article page. That said, kudos to for taking up the work. De728631 (talk) 21:14, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

a natural deaf-blind language
Bay Islands Sign Language. ‎First time I've heard of such a thing, so thought I'd mention it here. — kwami (talk) 21:02, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

English language GAR
English language, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Megaman en m (talk) 13:01, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Language code maz
Some templates etc currently have maz=Mazovian language, but this has no support at Ethnologue or SIL websites. Please see WP:CFDS where it is proposed to change this to Central Mazahua. – Fayenatic  L ondon 10:44, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

language naming inconsistencies
There are language naming inconsistencies between articles, categories, templates and MediaWiki. Please see and participate in discussions at: —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:00, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Indigenous langauges edit-a-thon suggestions
Hi everyone! L235 and I are running an edit-a-thon focusing on indigenous languages to celebrate the UN International Year of Indigenous Languages. Since many editors in this wikiproject work in that area, it would be a huge help to get suggestions on what articles need the most attention, especially for things new editors could help out with like adding examples or information from well known but hard to access sources. There's a section on the event page where you can suggest articles for improvement. Thanks! Wug·a·po·des​ 20:17, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool
Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Requested move
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Visayan languages I relisted today that would benefit from your input. Please come and help!  P. I. Ellsworth , ed.  put'r there 17:09, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Etymology of chorisepala
I have posted a question in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics regarding the etymology of the botanical epithet chorisepala. I would like to have some input from members familiar with ancient Greek. Thanks in advance. Wimpus (talk) 09:50, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Definition of 'Language'
Contributors to this WikiProject may be interested in discussion at Talk:Language. I think changing the definition warrants input from more editors, but unfortunately don't have time to add much to the discussion right now. Cnilep (talk) 07:48, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Help with Origin of language article
I need some help from an expert with the Origin of language article. Under the The Romulus and Remus hypothesis section, it says:
 * 1. A genetic mutation that slowed down the Prefrontal Synthesis (PFS) critical period of at least two children that lived together

What is being slowed down? Is it "the Prefrontal Synthesis critical period" or is it "the Prefrontal Cortex critical period"? In the Critical period hypothesis article in WP, it says "Recently, it has been suggested that if a critical period [in language development] does exist, it may be due at least partially to the delayed development of the prefrontal cortex in human children." I can't find any reference to "slowing down" the Prefrontal Synthesis critical period or even what a PFS critical period is. It seems to me that the original author may have entered Synthesis when they meant to say Cortex.

Could someone explain what critical period applies to Prefrontal Synthesis and how it may be "slowed down"? Or maybe revise the indented sentence above, removing "slowed down" and substituting, say, "delayed the development of the Prefrontal Synthesis (or Cortex) critical period...". You might have to explain how the PFC affects the PFS. My guess is that the article is technically right but they just don't explain enough for us linguistic novices.

This question is also on the talk page of the Origin of language article. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 20:28, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

New bot to remove completed infobox requests
Hello! I have recently created a bot to remove completed infobox requests and am sending this message to WikiProject Languages since the project currently has a backlogged infobox request category. Details about the task can be found at Bots/Requests for approval/PearBOT 2, but in short it removes all infobox requests from articles with an infobox, once a week. To sign up, reply with and tell me if any special considerations are required for the Wikiproject. For example: if only a specific infobox should be detected, such as infobox journal for WikiProject Academic Journals; or if an irregularly named infobox such as starbox begin should be detected. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Sent on behalf of Trialpears (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:34, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Undeciphered -k language of ancient Yemen same language as Himyaritic language?
The article Undeciphered -k language of ancient Yemen seems to say that its subject has been identified as Himyaritic, an unclassified ancient Semitic language. But if that's the case, then Undeciphered -k language of ancient Yemen (which has a Glottolog code, but no ISO code) should probably be merged into Himyaritic language (which has a Linguist List code, but no Glottolog or ISO code, apparently). In fact, the literature at Glottolog also implies that the mystery language is the same as Himyaritic. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:19, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I am not quite sure if these two are the same language, but they clearly belong to the same thread of research. But since it is controversial whether the Undeciphered -k language of ancient Yemen actually represents a language distinct from Sabaic or not (see Stein 2008, who even considers Himyaritic as a late form of Sabaic), having a standalone article is not NPOV. So arguably, Sabaic language might also be a legitimate merge target. –Austronesier (talk) 15:57, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Fur languages
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Fur languages. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 13:08, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Request for citations for phonetic symbols for Unicode submission
Hi. I'm opening a discussion at WikiProject Linguistics here for additional phonetic symbols to request from Unicode. They're looking for evidence of use, not just wish lists. If you need Unicode support for some symbol, or come across something unusual in the lit, please give a citation there. Kirk (talk) 22:03, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

vandal
User:110.70.56.247 has relatively sophisticatedly vandalized two articles two days apart, so might need to be kept an eye on. — kwami (talk) 10:59, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks like the same as this one. –Austronesier (talk) 13:39, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a long-term abuser. Their MO is to make unconstructive yet not blatantly disruptive edits to the phonologies of Asian languages with empty, canned, or nonsensical summaries. Wonder what their endgame is. (Just to be a jerk?) Nardog (talk) 14:07, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Can someone review 's edits to Historical Chinese phonology? I'm beginning to think this may not be entirely in bad faith (with serious WP:COMPETENCE issues nonetheless). Nardog (talk) 12:50, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Here's the full diff. I can't see any major harm, nor any real improvement. The back-and-forth editing is still disruptive. I'll rv for the last two reasons. –Austronesier (talk) 18:17, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd revert them by default because of their history of disruptive editing. If someone sees that revert and it turns out to be unjustified, that's great. If not, that's too bad. We shouldn't have to clean up after that guy. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 21:56, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

See topic at Wiki:Linguistics
FYI, see this proposal. --SynConlanger (talk) 09:16, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Language
Contributors to this WikiProject may be interested in a discussion at Talk:Language regarding making that article easier to read. Cnilep (talk) 03:02, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I plan on giving a definition of language and further explaining Language in terms of Anthropology — Preceding unsigned comment added by SusanFrancisco (talk • contribs) 00:31, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Notification of requested move
Discuss at Talk:History_of_English. --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 16:51, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Notification of requested move
Discuss at Talk:Académie_française. --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 09:28, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

AfD Oligoisolating language
FYI - This AfD (Articles for deletion/Oligoisolating language) might be of interest for members of this project. –Austronesier (talk) 10:22, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

Varieties of the Dutch language
The classification on the second last page of the following page includes different features, not only vocabulary: https://www.academia.edu/3130916/De_analyse_van_taalvariatie_in_het_Nederlandse_dialectgebied_methoden_en_resultaten_op_basis_van_lexicon_en_uitspraak. However, it poses several questions. It includes Low Saxon, also in a minor part of Germany, and also Limburgish, but not the German parts of Limburgish and South Guelderish. It has South Guelderish and Brabantian as Centraal zuidelijke dialecten. The other issues concerning this classification include, that it does not follow the Uerdingen and Benrath Lines, as well that it divides Limburgish. Furthermore, it uses the umbrella term Friesland, which of course can't be taken.

Other statistically founded sources have to be taken into account for the purpose of classification, too: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384115000315 figures 8 and 9 as well as  https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-dendrogram-derived-from-the-distance-matrix-based-on-unweighted-Manhattan-distance_fig2_2546927 also exist. https://benjamins.com/catalog/avt.22.17spr/fulltext/avt.22.17spr.pdf, figure 5, is a map about syntax. Sarcelles (talk) 09:56, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Indic languages redirect
FYI, just saw this has been a rd to Languages of India for months. There's a long history of this going back and forth between these targets as well as being a dab page (though AFAICT, "Indic languages" almost always means the branch of IE, and has for over a century). Should probably be something for some of us to keep on our watch lists. — kwami (talk) 01:16, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Infobox request
I'd like to request an infobox for proto-languages (Template:Infobox proto-language). We can base it off Template:Infobox language family. — Sago tree spirit  (talk) 07:35, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure if we really need one. Not that I think that "infoboxes must burn in hell"; they are useful as a bird's-eye view of uncontroversial information, and also serve as tonsils (see the hist of Vasconic languages and you'll see what I mean). But for proto-languages, I can see little advantages and a number of disadvantages. Hierarchically, every proto-language article is just a subtopic of a language family article, which has its own infobox. There is little information about a proto-language that isn't mentioned there anyway. Duplicating info would lead to the usual problems of content-forking, especially synchronizing content. We have an article Proto-Altaic language about a proto-language that many believe is a spurios reconstruction, but yet quite a number still think is a valid concept. The infobox of Altaic languages is subject to endless back-and-forth editing just about the "acceptance"-parameter. A potential proto-language infobox certainly should also have that paramater. Who wants to maintain it for Proto-Altaic language or Proto-Dené–Caucasian language?


 * Some information genuinely pertains to the proto-language, such as homeland proposals and hypothesized connections to archeological cultures or haplogroups. However, as a rule, such hypotheses are far too complex and often too controversial for a bird's-eye view. All-in-all: Mild oppose.–Austronesier (talk) 10:39, 30 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Whether an infobox should be included has nothing to do with whether the proto-language or family is valid or not. Template:Infobox language family is also used for Altaic languages. — Sago tree spirit  (talk) 03:18, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not my point. It's about the question of what kind of meaningful info we want to convey via an infobox. The overall acceptance is a very important piece of information for a language family, which also applies to its reconstructed ancestor. It's shouldn't be missing. I'd rather miss the nice colors. –Austronesier (talk) 06:59, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Makes sense then. — Sago tree spirit  (talk) 08:17, 31 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Proto-language articles can use the generic infobox language (the way Proto-Inuit language does). Most articles in Category:Proto-languages, however, appear not to be using any infoxes, possibly because of concerns like those raised by Austronesier. – Uanfala (talk) 16:31, 30 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose – Infobox language works fine. I support adding the parameters "hypothesized_by", "reconstructed_by", etc. on the said template. --Soumyabrata stay at home wash your hands to protect from coronavirus 08:05, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Your feedback would be appreciated at Greek language
Your feedback would be appreciated at this discussion at Talk:Greek language concerning the region in which Greek is spoken. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:47, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 15 March 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved.  Anarchyte ( talk  &#124;  work )  11:55, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

– The above article titles are inconsistent. There are at least two options to make them consistent: Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 13:37, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * English-language spelling reform → English spelling reforms
 * Reforms of French orthography → French orthography reforms
 * Reforms of Portuguese orthography → Portuguese orthography reforms
 * Reforms of Russian orthography → Russian orthography reforms
 * Armenian orthography reform → ?
 * Option 1 – Rename the articles à la "English-language spelling reform".
 * Option 2 – Rename the articles à la "Reforms of French orthography".


 * I would suggest "XX-language orthography reform(s)". That would take the language into the focus of the name. "Orthography" is more precise than "spelling", as these reforms usually go beyond spelling, changing things such as punctuation, word boundaries, hyphenation, capitalization etc. Landroving Linguist (talk) 14:16, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The English is in Category:English spelling reform, without the "-language". There's no particular consistency in the titles in Category:Spelling reform, and changing these won't make it so. Many are proper names. Leave them be. 94.21.10.195 (talk) 23:06, 15 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The names of the categories you mentioned will be renamed for consistency in future. --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 07:22, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose any blanket change. Unlike French etc., English has no regulatory body, so it has no rigid "orthography" (literally "correct writing") to speak of. Armenian orthography reform discusses one specific occasion of reform, so it wouldn't make sense to include it in Option 2. Nardog (talk) 14:59, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * But the spelling reforms of English try to rigidize the English orthography. --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 12:27, 22 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose for the reasons cited by 94.21.10.195 and Nardog. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tcr25 (talk • contribs)
 * Comment – I have changed my mind. See above --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 14:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Requested move 4 April 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Consensus is that present titles are clearer. (closed by non-admin page mover) Srnec (talk) 01:12, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

– The requested move on Talk:History_of_English is rejected, with many people preferring "History of foo" over "History of the foo language", being WP:CONCISE. Therefore, the language history should be renamed "History of foo" and the ethinic history should be renamed "History of the foo(s)" to avoid confusion. Soumyabrata stay at home wash your hands to protect from coronavirus 13:30, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * History of the Bulgarian language → History of Bulgarian
 * History of the Cherokee language → History of Cherokee
 * History of the Chinese language → History of Chinese
 * History of the Czech language → History of Czech
 * History of the Dutch language → History of Dutch
 * History of the Hungarian language → History of Hungarian
 * History of the Irish language → History of Irish
 * History of the Malay language → History of Malay
 * History of the Russian language → History of Russian
 * History of the Russian language in Ukraine → History of Russian in Ukraine
 * History of the Scots language → History of Scots
 * History of the Slovak language → History of Slovak
 * History of the Spanish language → History of Spanish
 * History of the Welsh language → History of Welsh


 * Oppose, I think the moves would be misleading and would just confuse some. The mentioned WP:RM should've been moved.--Ortizesp (talk) 12:20, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose as plainly ambiguous. The sort of question that will arise is e.g. "is History of Foo language or History of Foo people intended"? Mutt Lunker (talk) 12:18, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose - the current titles are clear. The propose new titles have multiple meanings.  Remember that many editors of Wikipedia articles speak English as a second language (or even not at all), so having article titles with multiple meanings is just asking for trouble.  The proposed titles would make great disambiguation pages though.   Toddy1 (talk) 13:05, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose - History of XXX language is clear and precise. No need to make it more ambiguous. Carter (talk) 15:42, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:CONCISE and WP:CONSISTENT (with History of English etc.) – except Scots. We have e.g. Hungarian language where it is rather than at Hungarian only because we don't include grammatical articles in titles unless they are part of proper names (The Hauge but Netherlands). When part of a phrase, especially preceded by a preposition, there is no ambiguity: the language is the only thing an article named "History of Hungarian" could possibly be about. Nardog (talk) 03:03, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. In spite of what Nardog says, History of Scots would be a very ambiguous name and could be about more things than just the language. The current wording is much clearer than the proposed moves, and clarity trumps consistency. Landroving Linguist (talk) 08:28, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, exclude Scots. Nardog (talk) 08:37, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Current titles are much clearer, less ambiguous and less confusing for our readers.--Darwinek (talk) 22:40, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:CONCISE and WP:CONSISTENT (except oppose Scots, which actually is slightly ambiguous). This just mostly reverses redirects, in most cases from undiscussed moves from years ago. The proposals are completely understandable as referring to languages to all fluent English speakers. Station1 (talk) 21:38, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Ok, concise is better, but it's not that important, especially since there are just 2 more words. Precision is here more important than concision. And there's also the editing time consumed. --Jotamar (talk) 00:00, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. There should not be a convention either way, because the least ambiguous choice depends on context. I am concerned about Scots, Cherokee, and Malay, which are especially likely to be misinterpreted. Wikiacc (¶) 02:20, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. At least in the case of the Welsh language. 'History of the Welsh language' is clear and unambiguous. The Welsh language is now spoken by a minority of the Welsh people. Two pages, one entitled 'History of Welsh' and the other 'History of the Welsh' is unnecessarily opaque and confusing.Gwedi elwch (talk) 22:55, 12 April 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proto-Foo or Common/Primitive Foo?
This is re. "protolanguages" that have not been reconstructed, but are the actual ancestor of a family, or cases where a language is both reconstructed and attested. E.g. Proto-Norse, Proto-Romanian. There is currently a discussion of my move of the latter on its talk page.

Sources are often ambiguous in their use of the prefix "proto-". It could be either a reconstruction or the actual ancestral language. The definition in Bussmann's dictionary (Routledge) is that a 'protolanguage' is reconstructed by the comparative method, but not everyone is so consistent. Agard (quoted on the Common Romanian talk page) distinguishes Common Romance (the attested ancestral language) and Proto-Romance (the reconstructed ancestral language), and discusses the degree to which they can be equated. Instead of "Common", some sources use "Primitive".

Is this a distinction worth making on WP? We wouldn't put a protolanguage infobox in an article on an attested language. Should 'proto' articles be about reconstructions, with actual languages moved to 'common', 'primitive' or some other name? I don't know that many articles would be affected, but it might not be a bad idea to see if we can reach consensus on this. — kwami (talk) 04:11, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Proto-languages are usually reconstructed, but proto- can also be used for a hypothetical proto-language that hasn't been reconstructed yet. Common is often problematic, and only applies to such cases as Romanian which evolved from a form of Latin spoken over a large area. Primitive implies the earlier language is "less advanced" and judges it, and is often avoided by modern scholars. Language evolution often discards language features, and stating that the prior language (with consistent suffixes, tenses, grammatical gender) is "primitive" in relation to the (often simplified) modern language is problematic.--Bob not snob (talk) 06:09, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

"History of" article titles
(removed RfC)

Should the language history articles be titled "History of foo" or "History of (the) foo language"? The former is more WP:CONCISE, while the latter is more WP:PRECISE. --Soumyabrata stay at home wash your hands to protect from coronavirus 06:14, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
 * RfC disabled as premature. Let's give the RM some time first. Nardog (talk) 23:05, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. And even after the above RM, an RfC will be unnecessary. The two RMs will have settled the issue for the foreseeable future. If it turns out they're inconsistent, it's not really a big deal. Station1 (talk) 21:42, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I think this may be language dependent. No one would think Esperanto means anything else, it doesn't overlap with a national adjective. English, however, refers both to the people and the language. "History of English" refers only to the language as the standalone national use is an adjective, and "History of the English" would refer only to the people. But non-native English speakers may miss the distinction. Other languages can be even more complex, for instance: history of Fiji Hindi could be ambiguous.--Bob not snob (talk) 05:58, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I am WP:BOLDly changing the article title as such. --Soumyabrata stay at home wash your hands to protect from coronavirus 04:49, 20 April 2020 (UTC)


 * You can't be bold against a clear consensus from only a week ago. The recent page moves you made were clearly against the consensus in the move discussion above, and have been reverted. - BilCat (talk) 06:24, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion relisted
Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Yakuts, regarding a page relating to this WikiProject, Yakut language. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks, Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 21:38, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Proposed split of Latin phonology and orthography
I am composing a split of the Latin phonology and orthography article on User:Soumya-8974/Latin phonology and User:Soumya-8974/Latin orthography. Feel free to contribute on the composed drafts. --Soumyabrata stay at home wash your hands to protect from coronavirus 04:47, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Inanely basic question, but how do i compose a split of an article? is there a way to attach it to the original article? currently i'm just using my sandbox, but that's only enough space to hold one long-ish article. Irtapil (talk) 11:09, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Good question. If you want to compose a split of the article Foo and bar into Foo and Bar, compose it under the user subpage (e.g. User:Example/Foo and User:Example/Bar respectively) with an Userspace draft. I do not recommend composing it under the "Draft:" namespace, as they are deleted after 6 months of inactivity. --Soumyabrata talk contribs subpages 13:44, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * thanks. did i do it right? i had a go at it before your reply. what i did doesn't seem to quite match what you say, but i think i got the same result?
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Irtapil/Urdu_alphabet
 * Is there time limit after which user namespace pages are deleted? i always thought the speedy deletion policy on trivial and vanity articles was to save data storage space since wikipedia is on a tight budget due to no advertising etc. but now i'm confused.
 * Irtapil (talk) 06:32, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Mro/Awa Khami people and language
Please can anyone help at Talk:Mro people (Awa Khami) and Talk:Awa Khami language? Following repeated page moves, neutral editors have raised RMs which we neither support nor oppose. Thanks, Certes (talk) 15:19, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Request for input on pending merger
Formal request has been received to merge: Low Bergish into Bergish dialects; dated: May 15, 2020. Proposer's Rationale: As I stated on Talk:Bergish dialects, the term Low Bergish is deprecated.--User:Sarcelles. Please join the debate; >>>discussion is HERE<<<. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 23:34, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Local geographic names
Why are the local names of places suddenly disappearing from the intros? that used to be one of my favourite parts of Wikipedia.

Is it due to a policy change?

If it is, where's the discussion where i can talk people into stopping it?

If it's not, can we make it one of the Project tasks to monitor and revert these deletions, please.

Irtapil (talk) 17:31, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Could you be more specific? How are local names disappearing – do editors remove them? Are the articles affected related to India, or to other countries? – Uanfala (talk) 17:46, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * if you're referring to the Indian subcontinent, see WP:MOSIS. Wikiacc (¶) 21:27, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

last time i read that it was just India itself? when did they get worse? Irtapil (talk) 03:01, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's still only applicable to India, not to other countries like Pakistan or Nepal. Have you seen editors removing the names of places outside of India? – Uanfala (talk) 15:49, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Irtapil, if this is happening outside of Indian articles please point out. Local names are very important.--Bob not snob (talk) 07:03, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you I noticed local names removed from two or three Pakistan-related articles, but i forget which now. Potentially a coincidence of unrelated reasons (e.g. names were inaccurate). If i notice any other local names from outside India disappear without a good explanation i'll restore them? Irtapil (talk) 07:59, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Merge proposal at Source language (translation)
Your feedback would be appreciated at Talk:Source language (translation). Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 01:33, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Adding language spoken samples within the infobox
Would it possible to add spoken language samples at the bottom of the Template:Infobox language? Germartin1 (talk) 08:45, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

New dab page Islamic language
FYI I have opened a discussion about the rationale of the new dab page in Talk:Islamic language. –Austronesier (talk) 07:13, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

languages with "apostrophes" in their names, to be verified
Following are some language articles I moved recently that have "apostrophes" in their names. The article names had all used curly apostrophes, which should almost never be used on WP. If you're familiar with any of them, please review and correct me if I got them wrong.

True apostrophes -- that is, punctuation marks -- should be straight ASCII $⟨'⟩$, but occur in relatively few names, e.g. S'gaw Karen, where (if I'm not mistaken) the apostrophe merely separates two letters (I have no idea why). Similarly with names that begin with prenasalized N'd, M'b, etc.

Other "apostrophes" indicate ejective consonants or Wade-Giles aspiration, and should be transcribed with hamza and okina, respectively, or glottal stop, which should be the same (depending on the orthography of the language).

I moved all the following to hamza under the belief that they were glottal stop:


 * Toʼabaita, Telaʼa, Talondoʼ, Taeʼ, Soʼa, Raʼong, Nyaduʼ, Ndaʼndaʼ, Mbəʼ, Mbuʼ, Kwaʼ, Kacoʼ, Ganaʼ, Faʼ, Duanoʼ, Daantanaiʼ, Bakatiʼ, Abuʼ Arapesh.

In the next two, I believe the mark is part of a consonant, so if it's supposed to have a 9-shape then it should also be hamza:


 * Toraja-Saʼdan, Oluʼbo

In the nex two, the mark is part of the vowel:
 * Oʼdu, Oʼchiʼchiʼ

It looks like the first is the Vietnamese letter o-hook, but the 'd' is wrong for it to be true Vietnamese. The latter we could move to o-sub-dot and i-sub-dot.

Finally, I assumed that in Oya'oya it was a true apostrophe, merely separating the elements of reduplication -- unless maybe it's glottal stop, which isn't written word-initially?

Anyway, please fix, move or discuss here if any of these are wrong. — kwami (talk) 00:26, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

how does Ethnologue have "universal accessibility"?
I'm confused now. I was about to make a suggestion that we should add Glottolog references (if applicable) anywhere Ethnologue references appear.

But first i checked the main page to see what the current rule was, and i found:  "There are several obvious advantages to Ethnologue, beside its universal accessibility".

What do you mean by "universal accessibility"? When i last tried to access Ethnologue the staff member i spoke to said access cost several hundred dollars per year (AUD), there's no way i can afford that. (For comparison, an individual Ethnologue subscription costs more than: Microsoft Office 360 + Netflix + plus Audible + plus Amazon prime, combined) Am i missing a trick? how is it universally accessible at that price?

Whereas Glottolog seems to be accessible on line, so readers and editors can check it for themselves. And, allegedly Glottolog is more thoroughly referenced, though the project page kind of covered that.

Another worry i had is that SIL (the organisation who run Ethnologue) are a Christian organisation, so it might contain some bias or culturally inappropriate perspectives? especially given how many languages have religious significance? That doesn't seem to rate a mention on the project page?

Maybe i have mixed up Ethnologue and something else? But i think i looked into it twice with similar results.

Irtapil (talk) 11:02, 8 May 2020 (UTC)


 * No, you didn't mix anything up. Until quite recently, Ethnologue was a free resource, but a paywall has been erected over the last few years. So the statement you quoted above has become obsolete. Landroving Linguist (talk) 12:00, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing this out. The opening lines need to be updated. The rest about the overall validity of Ethnologue-data is still accurate. Probably we should also provide a more detailed note about Glottolog in a separate section.
 * As for the SIL-background, opinions differ, but I have not found a systemic bias in Ethnologue in this respect, except for the fact that in some parts of the world, SIL is not welcome to operate and cannot perform sociolinguistic surveys. And because often no-one else does, Ethnologue data about these areas lacks accuracy and detail (e.g. about language vitality, mutual intellegibility etc.). –Austronesier (talk) 16:58, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * should the Ethnologue links be replaced with something now accessible? or should we add a public database as well? Irtapil (talk) 06:11, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I think there is no reason to replace the Ethnologue links. Wikipedia has no policy that disallows non-free sources, and Ethnologue information is in my opinion generally very good, and Ethnologue uses the Iso 639-c code. But it would certainly be good to also add Glottolog or World Atlas of Language Structures links for more information. Both are excellent sources. Landroving Linguist (talk) 19:13, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think they should be replaced, however it is a darn shame that they became paywalled. We should slightly prefer non-paywall stuff if we can.--Bob not snob (talk) 05:42, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * if i add gotlog pages in addition to the ethnologue pages will that be useful? or reverted as non standard? could we make adding an alternate public link one of the project missions? Irtapil (talk) 06:11, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Practically all language pages already have a Glottolog code, and so do most language family and subgroup pages (as long as Glottolog accepts them). –Austronesier (talk) 20:25, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * thanks, if i spot any missing i'll add them? though, the main page said gotlog has a few weak spots, it's a bit rubbish at dialects? so, are there any categories that are likely to be deliberately and systematically missing? Irtapil (talk) 17:36, 11 May 2020 (UTC)


 * also... what's gping on with this?  i thought there was a third person in the conversation. Irtapil (talk) 17:36, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Hiya, I have (partially) managed to pass through the hard paywall erected by Ethnologue by registering my account on the website. As of now, I found that there are 131,631,870 total speakers of Standard German. --Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 06:39, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I have access (when the login is working), so you can ping me if you need to confirm or update something -- though the days when I update all 7,000 languages with every Ethn update are over.

There is no way their figure for German is that precise! One of the probs of Ethn is bad arithmetic. — kwami (talk) 23:52, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I know. I am just giving an example that I have access to some of the data of Ethnologue. --Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 05:14, 29 July 2020 (UTC)