Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics/Archive 9

Kamarupa dialect of Magadhi vs Kamrupi dialect of Assamese
Could someone from this WikiProject please comment on this WP:RSN topic? Thanks. Chaipau (talk) 11:17, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The Scots Language Society
The Scots Language Society is redlinked in Lallans. I've added a hyperlink to their website. See Talk:Lallans. It could probably use an article of its own.

I'm posting this note to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scotland. Thank you.

--Thnidu (talk) 04:25, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

""
The usage of is under discussion, see talk:Ћ -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 10:26, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Article title please
I remember an article saying that there are some words with a noun form ending in a voiceless consonant (belief and breath) and a verb form ending in a voiced consonant (believe and breathe.) But I don't remember the article's title; what is it?? Georgia guy (talk) 17:58, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It used to be at Consonant mutation, but now it's at Consonant voicing and devoicing. Angr (talk) 22:12, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Module:IPA symbol
There's currently an effort to rewrite IPAsym in Lua and improve it (and associated templates IPAlink, IPA soundbox, infobox IPA to different extents). Discussion is here and the code is here if you'd like to to contribute/voice concerns/ideas/whatever. Thanks, — Lfdder (talk) 17:22, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Abbottsford
Need more input at Talk:Abbotsford,_British_Columbia.--Canoe1967 (talk) 16:13, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:IPA diacritic description
Template:IPA diacritic description has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Lfdder (talk) 11:32, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Template:IPA keys/vertical


A tag has been placed on Template:IPA keys/vertical requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it must be substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes ( ).

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page's talk page, where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, you can place a request here. Lfdder (talk) 14:38, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Rather than deleting it outright, I have moved it with IPA keys without leaving a redirect in order to merge the page histories. After all, IPA keys/vertical used to be called IPA keys and most of the page history was there. Now it's all in the page history for IPA keys. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:14, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Better, thanks. — Lfdder (talk) 15:19, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Articulate sound
The page Articulate sound is a one-sentence stub copied essentially word-for-word from the (no longer copyright protected) Cyclopedia (1740). It has languished essentially unchanged since 2006, which is not surprising given that the concept appears to be an eighteenth century term of art not much used since the first half of the nineteenth.

"Articulate sounds" refers (or referred) to the sounds of human speech, as distinct from vocalizations in animal communication. That is a pretty common topic in philology, anthropology, and linguistics, but the outdated term doesn't really seem notable to me. I'm wondering whether it would be better to redirect this somewhere, maybe to an article that discusses the differences between human and animal vocalization, or to keep it pending possible expansion. In the latter case, though, I don't know what would be added: philological notions from the likes of John Locke and Francis Bacon? contemporary linguistic notions on human language versus non-human communication? historical discussion of the notion and the term as it was used in the 1700s? Cnilep (talk) 01:00, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd just redirect it to Phone (phonetics). Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:19, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I've redirected it to Articulation (phonetics) on the theory that "to articulate sounds" is "articulation". In addition, the two pages that linked to "Articulate sound", Rapid automatized naming and Tongue-twister, seemed to intend "articulation". Cnilep (talk) 01:18, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Click sound
Hi, I am not a liguistic. On the other hand, I am a technician, so I can get the grasp of IPA. I have spend Wikitime on IPA. Since some years, I have read and learned and edited IPA issues. All fine.

But only today first time I met a song that has African click sounds. WOW! (via Miriam Makeba):.

Now how can we get this into the IPA/Wikipedia wisedom (in audio)? -DePiep (talk) 22:33, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you want to "get into IPA/Wikipedia", but would suggest you start by looking at International Phonetic Alphabet and Click consonant. After perusing those articles and associated links, you may be able to formulate what you think is missing. Cnilep (talk) 00:53, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the hints (I acually build IPA sound pages myself btw -- I know). My question is: as MM sings the click, I had not met in wp pages. Ever. How can we explain (sound) that talk to readers? -DePiep (talk) 01:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, sorry; I completely overlooked the external link. I think the sound you're noticing is a postalveolar click, but I trust that someone who knows better than I do can clarify. Are you looking to create/upload a recording of Makeba or some other Xhosa speaker pronouncing the sound? Cnilep (talk) 08:05, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * What realy would be good, to me, is a fluent speach of that sound. The isolated Click consonant sound we know, but is isolated. What I would like to illustrate (here at WP, whatever page) is that the consonant is used in an ongoing sentence. MM was my example. -DePiep (talk) 00:34, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * We haven't done "in-sentence" examples of speech sounds at all, I think. Consonant samples (including this one, which is clearly the postalveolar click; a nasalized variant I think) are just "Ca, aCa". I believe this is for the sake of the sounds being better comparable with each other (for the same reason, optimally all examples should be by the same speaker). I suppose this song might be worth adding to the external links of postalveolar click though (or, even in-line, if a reference can be found?) -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 01:37, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

We have an article on The Click Song... AnonMoos (talk) 19:50, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Project affiliation of articles on phonology
I have started a discussion on whether articles on the phonology of a particular languages should be tagged as WP languages, WP linguistics/Phonetics, or both on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages, so please come over and give your opinion! G Purevdorj (talk) 02:22, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Social_sciences/Linguistics#Idioms
Someone with more knowledge of language than me should take a look at these; just skimming it, it's fairly obvious that most of them are things people made up with their friends but I don't dare be bold and remove them myself in this case. -- T K K ! bark with me if you're my dog! 20:14, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

(Reposting from WT:RA; any help from those with more expertise, here, would be appreciated. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:41, September 3, 2013‎ )

Template categories
language templates and linguistics templates are up for discussion, see Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_August_19 -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 03:56, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Clipping (phonetics)


The article Clipping (phonetics) has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * no currency in literature

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Lfdder (talk) 10:39, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Phonetic dictionary


The article Phonetic dictionary has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * When stripped of spam, this article amounts to a WP:DICTDEF

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Lfdder (talk) 10:42, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, this is a marketing term, really; these dictionaries are only very broadly 'phonetic'. — Lfdder (talk) 10:47, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Task force membership
I have been doing quite a lot of editing of articles on phonetics. I notice there is a list of Phonetics Task Force members, but I can't see how people get to be members. Do you wait to be invited, or propose yourself? Would it be a good idea for me to offer to join? RoachPeter (talk) 12:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes! Just add yourself to the list, and you're a member. :) It would be great to have you on board. And if you have any other questions about how things work around here (or around Wikipedia in general) don't hesitate to ask. Best — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 14:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza
WP uses disambiguation ("DAB") pages where an article title might be misconstrued for an article on another topic. the DAB page serves to show the reader all the different articles that might have been intended as the object of search, to make sure the user didn't find the "wrong" article.

I'm looking for the right way to present and idea or two about disambiguation, perhaps it is of interest to this group. I think my proposal will improve the way Wikipedia covers subjects, and there's an etymology angle to it, so here goes.

Sometimes these DAB pages can have quite a lot of topics on them, such as Mercury.

Here's the problem: If one of the topics related to that DAB subject does not meet the WP:NOTABLE subject guidelines, then there is no article on it, and never will be. But in the search for knowledge on a subject, we all sometimes search for something that is only marginally notable. Now, if you do a search for something and don't find an article on it, you might be disappointed. Life sucks like that sometimes. But if your subject happens to have a similar name to some other articles, you are likely to get frustrated and confused instead of merely disappointed.

How so? For example:

On the Mercury DAB page, there's an entry for Mercury (cyclecar). Cyclecars were early budget automobiles, and the Mercury is probably not very notable. Someone may well nominate it for deletion. DAB guidelines would then call for removing the entry from the DAB, because "red links" (non-existent articles) are only recommended on DAB pages where the subject is notable, and likely to have an article in the future. So, say that happens, and now someone goes looking for information about this thing called the Mercury Cyclecar. Lands on the DBA page, searches through eighty-seven(!) entries, can't find it. Looks again, in case the eyes just passed over it. Still nope. Not disappointed: frustrated. Or, worse, if the reader understands that a cyclecar is a automobile, might even click on Mercury (automobile) and become really confused, because perhaps now, dear reader thinks that Ford made an extensive line of these Mercury cyclecars for about 73 years. Great, Wikipedia just misled someone, with technically accurate and well-sourced information.

In fact, the main purpose of DAB pages is to avoid that situation. The "member pages" of the DAB all have a note at the top saying something along the lines of "You might have been looking for something else when you landed here, see SUCH AND SUCH disambiguation page for other uses." Well, our Mercury hunter fell out of that loop, because by policy or guideline, Wikipedia doesn't want to share with the reader the possibility that Mercury (automobile) is not relevant to Mercury (cyclecar), even if it might mistakenly seem so.

What I'd like to propose is taking another look at that guideline, and finding a middle ground between notable and not notable. Anything that falls in between should not get its own article, but it should be OK to put a typical one-line entry on a DAB page, with no link. In the example, Mercury (cyclecar) stays gone as an article, but the DAB entry remains. Our hypothetical reader now at least can find the object of the search, and maybe even know a tiny bit about it.

I'm only proposing this for situations where there is already a DAB. I'm not looking to proliferate DABs because almost any subject probably has some other topic of some sort that it could be confused with.

Sorry for the wall of text, and thank you for your time.

-Dovid (talk) 03:07, 27 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Actually, our disambiguation guideline does allow for items to be listed when they are not notable in themselves. The guideline says that "Disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might search, there is more than one existing Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead." Note that this is subtly different from saying that something must have an article to be disambiguated - all it requires is that someone is likely to search for it, and that it is covered in Wikipedia in some form. (Even some red links are allowed, although I see from your post that you are aware of that already.) If you look at the Mercury disambiguation page you will see quite a few examples of terms for which there is no standalone article. There is "Mercury, Shuttle America's callsign" (the article is about the airline, not the callsign), '"Mercury", a song by Kathleen Edwards from Failer', and "Mercury, a member of Cerebro's X-Men", to name three. You mentioned finding a middle ground, but I think we're there already. Or maybe there is something about this situation that I've misunderstood? — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 10:11, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that there must be a link of some sort. That works well in the Mercury examples where the "missing" subject can be reasonably linked to some other article. I suppose, in my example, one could have an entry such as Mercury Cyclecar, an early motorcar company specializing in the small cyclecars form; unrelated to Ford's Mercury division. That seems forced, but perhaps it would do. As you point out, the distinction is subtle enough to be confusing, or even ambiguous. What I would like to see is an update to the guidelines, making it less confusing, less ambiguous. -Dovid (talk) 14:49, August 29, 2013 (UTC)

Missing topics page
I have updated Missing topics about Languages - Skysmith (talk) 10:44, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Cline (linguistics)
The page Cline (linguistics) was apparently created in 2008 by a user who had "never heard of this term in conjunction with linguistics" until just before creating the page. It strikes me as just a collection of things the field that have been described as having a continuum (or cline) of values. Is it worth keeping? Cnilep (talk) 07:43, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Normalized Google distance
Normalized Google distance appears to be an original essay. None of the sources it cites use the phrase, though one does refer to "Google similarity distance". Additionally, one of the external links (Wong, Liu & Bennamoun 2007) does refer to "the well-established Normalized Google Distance (NGD)", but without citing a published source. (It cites older work on Kolmogorov complexity and Shannon–Fano coding.) This could something that engineers and mathematicians talk about without ever publishing, or it could be that this article, which has grown quite a bit over the past three years, is the publication. Cnilep (talk) 07:47, 10 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hunting this down, I think "Normalized Google Distance" was first defined in this 2004 CWI manuscript by Cilibrasi and Vitanyi. It made it to Arxiv in 2005, but as far as I can tell, was never published. There seems to be a resulting paper by the same authors that was published in 2007 on the "Google Similarity Distance" (Arxiv preprint is here.) where they also define the NGD and relate it to Latent semantic analysis. So NGD is a real measure and the term is used in the first reference cited in the Normalized Google distance article, but I haven't done enough digging to determine if it is a notable topic. --Mark viking (talk) 11:56, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Speech Errors
Hi, I'm a student from the U of A and I've been looking through the Speech Errors wiki and noticed there is nothing in regards to historical models that attempt to explain the root of speech errors and why they occur. I would like to change this and expand on the article in a way that includes different models throughout the years that have been developed to explain speech production. If anyone has any ideas that may help with this please let me know on my talk page. Jenaya (talk) 17:37, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Edits by Maria0333
While discussing Talk:Punjabi language, I found that Maria0333 (one of the many socks of LanguageXpert) inserted several fake references to an imaginary linguist "Afzal Ahmed Cheema" in a number of articles. I've removed many of these, but I suspect some misinformation still remains. I'd request an expert to take a look at the edits made by this user. utcursch | talk 18:15, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Language
has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.131.217 (talk) 11:21, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Reflex in linguistics
Some one on Talk:Reflex action asked for it, since I don't know anything (if the request is valid), I am echoing it here.Malignea (talk) 17:37, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

/ʑ/ in IPA for Japanese
In Help:IPA for Japanese, I've changed example for the English approximation of Japanese /ʑ/ from "garagist" to "pleasure", and documented the change and the reasoning in Talk#(d)ʑ. I'm putting this here because "not many people read this talk page" (OWTTE) and there's no project associated with the page. --Thnidu (talk) 21:43, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Phonetic value of the letter κ in Modern Greek
The phonetic value of the letter κ in Modern Greek is under discussion at Help talk:IPA for Greek#/c/. Your input would be appreciated. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 10:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Fuck featured article candidate discussion
Fuck (film) is a candidate for Featured Article quality &mdash; comments would be appreciated at Featured article candidates/Fuck (film)/archive1.
 * Fuck (film)

Thank you for your time,

&mdash; Cirt (talk) 18:07, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Notice of posting to TFA nominations
I've added Fuck (film) to TFA nominations, discussion is at Today's_featured_article/requests. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 22:34, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Personal conlang?
Possible personal language project at Free Greek language. — kwami (talk) 23:18, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. A conlang that is (to quote the page) "not yet endorsed by any national institution" and which has "no active speakers yet ... apart from the creator" (who doesn't seem to get many google hits) seems pretty straightforwardly non-notable. garik (talk) 23:50, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Now at AFD; see WP:Articles for deletion/Free Greek language. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

List of Romanian words of possible Dacian origin
There is a debate over a deletion proposal. All comments are welcome. Fakirbakir (talk) 20:01, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Featured article
Truthiness is listed as a featured article, but possibly truthiness is just a social and political idea not a linguistic idea. Certainly, truthiness was listed as a vocabulary word by certain sources, such as the word game sources referred to at Truthiness. Speling12345 (talk) 6:52, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion
I suggest removing the "Former Good Articles" header of the page. Speling12345 (talk) 7:14, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Sycophant at AFD
There is a proposal at AFD to delete this article, which has an important etymology component. Articles_for_deletion/Sycophant Banks Irk (talk) 18:05, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Fuck peer review, again

 * 1) Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties
 * 2) Wikipedia:Peer review/Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties/archive1

I've listed the article Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties for peer review.

Help with furthering along the quality improvement process would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties/archive1.

Thank you for your time,

&mdash; Cirt (talk) 01:07, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Hyperpolyglot
I have just declined the nomination for speedy deletion of Timothy Doner. However, although of potential value, the article is of poor quality and could do with some supervision. Ben  Mac  Dui  19:47, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Accidental gap
What I had thought was a reasonably well-written summary is apparently not effective in explaining accidental gaps to non-linguists. Please see Talk:Accidental gap. Cnilep (talk) 01:06, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties for Featured Article
I've nominated Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties for Featured Article candidacy.

Comments would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties/archive1.

Thank you for your time,

&mdash; Cirt (talk) 05:32, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

English exonyms for place names
English exonyms. This is primarily a WP Geography issue, but maybe also someone from here can also check this please. An editor has suggested striking the following and similar as "original research"

I've defered the issue to No original research/Noticeboard, but in the meantime editors may like to check the article to distinguish between "Paris is the capital of France" type statements (which don't require footnotes per "attributable" common sense content), and those more controversial where a should be added. See also article Talk. Many thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Examples in other languages
Many topics within concerning linguistic topics have a couple of paragraphs devoted to the specific topic in other languages. (For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:T%E2%80%93V_distinction) Often they only refer to 4 to 10 different languages. There are a couple of issues with this kind of randomly adding examples from other languages. It makes articles very long and hard to navigate, which also discourages users to add examples in even more languages, because the article is already too long. It also makes for more difficult navigation, because it's hard to search for linguistic topics for a specific language, because they are all embedded into other articles. What would be a better way of going about this issue? I would like to suggest to make different pages for about these specific topics in every language and add links to those pages in the main article talking about that topic in general or ho it appears in the English language.Jb (talk) 10:44, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Consonant mutation might be a decent precedent. Two of the bigger subtopics have separate articles: a whole series for the Celtic languages, and secondly consonant gradation for the Uralic languages. These are only briefly described in the top article. More forks like this would be a good idea for other "in XX language…" subsections getting overlong.
 * Still, that doesn't solve the general problem. Describing a phenomenon in general and listing examples wholesale are two very different goals for an article. I suppose two different general articles might be needed as well… and for that we'd then need to agree which examples to cover in the general description article. (This being the English WP, I suggest that English should be included if possible, otherwise we should aim for illustrativeness rather than familiarity.) -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:30, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think two different articles are needed for 'describing a phenomenon' and 'examples of that phenomenon'. But I do agree with your suggestion to aim for illustrativeness rather than familiarity. At this moment though, it seems like most examples in articles are chosen from more 'familiar' languages. So, there's work to do there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baars.jan (talk • contribs) 12:31, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Should this article be listed under WikiProject Linguistics?
I posed the following question on the Talk page of a new article, Accents (psychology):

"Should the article be included in WikiProject Linguistics? I'm generally a big advocate for interdisciplinary cooperation and discourse, so I thought it was appropriate, but there might be a reason to not include it about which I am unaware."

Your thoughts, either here or on the article's Talk page, would be most appreciated.

Thanks -  Mark D Worthen PsyD  12:40, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

IPA's recording of RP
Peter Roach uploaded his RP recording that JIPA uses for its IPA transcription of English. It's been marked for deletion as copyvio. I've made some suggestions on his talk page; notifying y'all in case s.o. has a better suggestion or can navigate the bureaucracy better than us. — kwami (talk) 19:00, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Archived some threads
I've archived some inactive threads to subsections which were notifications about discussions that have since been closed. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 06:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

New template: Linguistics collapsible
I have just created a new template, Template:Linguistics collapsible. It has the same content as the sidebar Template:Linguistics, but by default each section is collapsed. Readers can click 'show' to expand a collapsed list, and editors can set parameters to show one list and collapse the others. The more compact format maybe useful on articles with more than one sidebar, such as Sociolinguistics. (This is my first template using collapsible list, so please fix any errors I made.) Cnilep (talk) 06:39, 31 January 2014 (UTC)


 * A collapsed linguistics template is a good idea. The template works for me, thanks. --Mark viking (talk) 16:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

"Southern Dutch" = "Flemish" ?
There is an issue in the Flemish article that I am not able to resolve without research. I have described it on the talk page there, in Talk:Flemish

If you want my input on this, please me. --Thnidu (talk) 22:09, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Two merger proposals
I have proposed merging both Elegant variation and Sesquipedalianism into Verbosity. Discussion is at Talk:Verbosity. I have also proposed merging Gobbledygook and Gibberish, but have no preference for the title of the merged article. Discussion is at Talk:Gobbledygook. Cnilep (talk) 02:52, 15 January 2014 (UTC)
 * There was no comment on the Verbosity merge, so I was bold and did it. There was some support for the Gobbledygook/Gibberish merger, so I merged the former page into the latter. Cnilep (talk) 03:34, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/English phonetic alphabet
Dear phonetics experts: This o ld Afc submission is about to be deleted as a stale draft. Should it instead be saved and made into a section of Pronunciation respelling for English? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 21:57, 8 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd say no. It doesn't appear to be notable, just a mnemonic used in one teacher's classroom.  — kwami (talk) 22:10, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the analysis. I will leave it be. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 00:52, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikiproject proposal
I would like to invite members of this group to take part in WikiProject Council/Proposals/Neutral Editors. Basically I'm trying to start a Nonpartisan group of editors that can go into (for a lack of better term) Partisan situations or battlegrounds in articles were ideology causes chaos. I presuppose some linguistic knowledge on the part of members here that certainly would be greater than mine. I've seen numerous fights start over wording and think it's probable linguistic knowledge could help in these situations.Serialjoepsycho (talk) 01:28, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Mergant dialect


The article Mergant dialect has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * Not only is the word "mergant" unknown to all major English dictionaries, the concept of a "mergant dialect" is unknown to all Wikipedia-independent works searched by Google Books and Google Scholar.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:44, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Main Page appearance: Fuck (film)
This is a note to let the main editors of Fuck (film) know that the article will be appearing as today's featured article on March 1, 2014. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. If you prefer that the article appear as TFA on a different date, or not at all, please ask. You can view the TFA blurb at Today's featured article/March 1, 2014. If it needs tweaking, or if it needs rewording to match improvements to the article between now and its main page appearance, please edit it, following the instructions at Today's featured article/requests/instructions. The blurb as it stands now is below:

Fuck is a 2005 American documentary film by director Steve Anderson, which argues that the word is key to discussions about freedom of speech and censorship. The film provides perspectives from art, linguistics, society and comedy. Linguist Reinhold Albert Aman, journalism analyst David Shaw, language professor Geoffrey Nunberg and Oxford English Dictionary editor Jesse Sheidlower explain the term's history and evolution. The film features the last interview of author Hunter S. Thompson before his suicide. It was first shown at the AFI Film Festival at ArcLight Hollywood; it has subsequently been released on DVD in America and in the UK and used as a resource on several university courses. The New York Times critic A. O. Scott called the film a battle between advocates of morality and supporters of freedom of expression, while other reviews criticized its length and repetitiveness. Law professor Christopher M. Fairman commented on the film's importance in his 2009 book on the same subject. The American Film Institute said, "Ultimately, [it] is a movie about free speech ... Freedom of expression must extend to words that offend." UcuchaBot (talk) 23:01, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Above was posted to my user talk page, posting here as well. Cheers, &mdash; Cirt (talk) 23:19, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Category:English grammar
The Category:English grammar is a bit of a mess. It includes articles about "grammar" in the sense of syntax, morphology, or other linguistic rules or patterns, but also articles about so-called prescriptive grammar, including both standard but variable grammar (e.g. Shall and will, Run-on sentence) and usage or style related prescriptions that don't really touch on "grammar" in the first sense (e.g. List of English words with disputed usage, List of banished words and phrases).

I recently removed the category 'Semantics' from Elegant variation and replaced it with 'English grammar'. Even though I thought that was not quite the right label for it, 'English grammar' is the nearest category we currently have. Another user then removed the category with the (not unfair) comment, "[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elegant_variation&diff=594774872&oldid=594766145 What? Grammar? How so?]"

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to create a new category, something like Category:English usage or Category:Usage and style, and move the non-structural prescriptions or observations there? There is currently Category:Style guides, but that mainly contains books. There is also Category:Language varieties and styles with a daughter Category:Forms of English, but that contains named varieties such as Standard English and Regional accents of English. Cnilep (talk) 02:54, 11 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Would it make sense to have a "English prescriptive grammar" category, or is this too esoteric for non-linguists? I think of "English usage" as not only being prescriptive for grammar but also word usage. Style is something else, e.g., Strunk and White's "omit needless words" is a prescriptive style that isn't about grammar or word usage but is about composition. --Mark viking (talk) 03:59, 11 February 2014 (UTC)


 * "English prescriptive grammar" would have partially the same short-coming as "English grammar" – a presumed focus on grammar to the exclusion of other elements of language or language use. Cnilep (talk) 04:10, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

IP user removing sources
Could someone please have a look at contributions by IP 87.113.180.161, particularly [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linguistic_anthropology&oldid=prev&diff=596711721 this one], which is inching toward edit-warring? (If it were an edit war, I would be the other combatant.) See also my comment at User talk:87.113.180.161. Cnilep (talk) 01:32, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Also [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prestige_(sociolinguistics)&oldid=596712471&diff=prev this] and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Language_ideology&oldid=596712895&diff=prev this]. Cnilep (talk) 01:41, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * It kinda seems like he's got an axe to grind about prescriptive linguistics, but I can't say I disagree with a lot of the changes he's making, beyond the fact that he's deleting wholesale things that should really just be cleaned up. A lot of the stuff he's taking objection to is stylistically inconsistent with an encyclopedia, things like the section removed from Line 39 of this diff - the general idea is solid, but it's written like an essay, and it probably is synthesizing sources. It's got extensive quotations, it draws two conclusions, and really sounds like OR. Nearly the same content can be made encyclopedic by being more simply descriptive. Would probably get the IP user off your back, and finding a compromise form is often the right solution to edit wars anwyay. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 02:50, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I wasn't seeing which axe it was (I can think of at least two, and there are undoubtedly more), but [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3APrestige_(sociolinguistics)&diff=596789667&oldid=596717794 this] seems to clarify it, at least in my mind. Of course, it doesn't matter so much why a person is editing, so long as those edits improve the 'pedia. I think adding perspectives is usually an improvement, but removing sources almost never is. Cnilep (talk) 02:05, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I think that adding and removing material are two sides of the same coin. Quality isn't measured in word count. Some of the things he's removing are original research and don't belong on the encyclopedia if they create a mistaken impression or reduce the quality of the article. I also think that it's not quite right to say he's "removing sources". That implies that he's removing the sources without removing the material that's sourced. He's removing material that happens to have sources for some of its claims, and may actually represent WP:SYNTH, which is very different from just removing a source by itself. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 04:23, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Four-paragraph leads -- a WP:RfC on the matter
Hello, everyone. There is a WP:RfC on whether or not the leads of articles should generally be no longer than four paragraphs (refer to WP:Manual of Style/Lead section for the current guideline). As this will affect Wikipedia on a wide scale, including WikiProjects that often deal with article formatting, if the proposed change is implemented, I invite you to the discussion; see here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section. Flyer22 (talk) 16:39, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Question about interlinear glosses
Is there are preferred style for formatting glossed examples? I've seen several different styles, so I'm wondering if there's one that's generally accepted. Some possibilities I've noticed are:


 * anyani a-na-meny-ets-an-idw-a ndi mikango `The baboons were made to hit each other by the lions.' (baboons hit- by lions)

or


 * anyani a-na-meny-ets-an-idw-a ndi mikango
 * baboons SUBJ-PAST-hit-CAUS-RECIP-PASS-ASP by lions
 * `The baboons were made to hit each other by the lions.'

or




 * anyani || a-na-meny-ets-an-idw-a || ndi || mikango
 * baboons || hit- || by || lions
 * colspan=4|`The baboons were made to hit each other by the lions.'
 * }
 * colspan=4|`The baboons were made to hit each other by the lions.'
 * }
 * }

Any thoughts? Is there a style guide for new linguist contributors? -Rmalouf (talk) 19:29, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's an existing style guide, but I'd prefer the last one (the table). Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:14, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Agreed. The first is fine in-line, but that would only be legible for relatively short texts.  For anything of any length, a table should be used, and tables should always be tabulated so the words and their glosses are aligned.  I would consider tabulating your second example as a formatting fix.  One other variant:  Sometimes the morphemes rather than words are aligned.  That seems better when the text is just a couple words with multiple morphemes, and we want to illustrate the morphology rather than the syntax.
 * BTW, I drew up an index of those capitalized abbreviations, and I think they should be linked the first time they appear, unless they're obvious from context. — kwami (talk) 23:43, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Merger RfCs
~Thanks for any help/input you can offer. GenQuest "Talk to Me" 23:52, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Request received at the Proposed Merger Noticeboard that should be merged with ; Input welcome at Talk:Sycophancy; and
 * 2) Request received at the Proposed Merger Noticeboard that should be merged to/from .  Input welcome at Talk:Jargon.
 * 3) Proposed merger of the DISAMBIGUATION PAGES and  into the disambiguation page Swing. Rationale: This is a followup to the successful proposal to move Swinging to Swinging (sexual practice) (see Talk:Swinging (sexual practice) and the section that immediately follows).  Discussion underway at Talk:Swing.  Language people please help sort this out!

Notable?
I am not familiar with linguistics or writing about academics or Lithuanian, so I need help.

Is this guy notable per English Wikipedia standards? []. I have created an article about the artist of the same name Kazys_Morkūnas born in the same era, and when trying to find sources for the artist came up with a lot of hits for the linguist as editor. The Lithuanian article is lacking in sources that would help determine. Thanks! -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  14:07, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Linking verb, verb, and copula.
Currently, Linking verb redirects to Copula (linguistics). That article says "In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb." This is correct if it means be is a type of linking verb, but it implies there is no other linking verb, which is not the way "linking verb" is used in English primary education grammar courses.

The article Verb has a section called "Linking verbs" and section called "To be verbs". Not only are linking verbs distinct from to be verbs (the word "copula" does not appear), the sets don't even intersect.

We need consistency. Verb is a weak article needing work otherwise. We need to redirect Linking verb to an article which describes linking verb the way it is described in English primary education grammar courses.  Randall Bart    Talk   16:30, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Nominal
Nominal (linguistics) is about "a part of speech in some languages", while many articles use the term in the broader sense of "a noun or an adjective", or "a word/clause in the role of a noun". Many of these currently link to the dab Nominal. How should this be solved? What is/are the standard use(s) of the term? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 18:45, 8 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Bussmann's Routledge dictionary gives it as a synonym of noun phrase, so from that we would merge it as a rd. However, "nominal" is also the adjectival form of 'noun', as in "nominal agreement" (meaning just "noun agreement"; cf. pronominal agreement).  Adjectives are nominals in those languages, like Spanish or Arabic, where they can form noun phrases:  el gordo "the fat one".  They are not nominals in English, or in languages where they're verbals (can form a predicate on their own).  I believe pronouns are classified as nominals in English, as they can function an NPs, and that is presumably true of all languages.  So "nominal" is the set of noun + pronoun + (in some languages) adjective or numeral, just as "verbal" is the set of verb + (in some languages) copula or adjective.  Though "verbal" can also mean the opposite, verb forms like gerunds which cannot form a predicate on their own.  — kwami (talk) 22:11, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, what about
 * Moving the ambiguous Nominal (linguistics) to Nominal (word) or Nominal (part of speech), covering "nominal" as the supercategory for noun+pronoun(+adjective), words that function as both nouns and adjectives (Latin albus = white / the white [one]), and languages that don't have the noun/adjective distinction at all (as these concepts seem to be closely related).
 * Making Nominal (linguistics) a DAB pointing to the above, to noun phrase=nominal phrase, and to noun.
 * ? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:18, 9 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't see how moving the article would improve anything. The problem's in the article, not in the name.  Also, calling it a 'word' is wrong, and calling it a 'part of speech' is dubious.  — kwami (talk) 21:06, 9 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, then "nominal" isn't noun+pronoun(+adjective), but noun+pronoun(+adjective) plus noun phrases consisting of several words? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 09:35, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Imprecative mood in Turkish?
An editor keeps removing the sourced statement that Turkish has an imprecative mood, claiming it's a negative optative. See Imprecative mood for their explanation of the difference. Anyone knowledgeable of Turkish grammar? Thanks --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 09:47, 16 March 2014 (UTC)


 * This is too obscure for my rather pathetic knowledge of Turkish, but Lewis says it's imprecative, and I've found him cited by other linguists in two peer-edited volumes. It would thus seem that his claim was still accepted decades later in peer-reviewed sources, and that as far as  WP is concerned, Turkish has an imprecative mood.  If the other editor would like to disprove that, wonderful, but it would require a RS that Lewis and his reviewers were wrong.  (This could easily be true – there are many volumes on Bulgarian grammar which give declensions of a fictitious mood, but he does need a good source.)  — kwami (talk) 05:48, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties promoted to Featured Article
Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties was promoted to Featured Article quality.

Thank you very much to all who helped with this successful quality improvement project related to freedom of speech and censorship,

&mdash; Cirt (talk) 00:39, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Glossary of linguistics
At this moment, Category:Glossaries does not contain "Glossary of linguistics" [red link now]. Manual of Style/Glossaries [version of 01:01, 7 October 2013) is in the proposal stage. Wikipedia can benefit by having "Glossary of linguistics", where entries can be drawn from Category:Linguistics.  There is also "Outline of linguistics". —Wavelength (talk) 17:03, 5 March 2014 (UTC) I am given this some more thought, and I have decided that there are enough linguistic terms for several glossaries (such as "Glossary of grammar" [red link now]), all of which can be categorized in Category:Glossaries of linguistics [red link now]. —Wavelength (talk) 16:14, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Glossary of linguistic terms
 * ODLT - The Online Dictionary of Language Terminology

Causative
Hi. I'm currently trying to work on this page on Causatives. I feel like it should definitely fall into the scope of this project. It is somewhat thorough, though poorly written (perhaps a copied and pasted essay from an undergrad?) and poorly cited. Can I add this page to this WikiProject so it can get some attention from other project members? Joeystanley (talk) 19:45, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * This is a topic in linguistics, so by all means add the WikiProject banner to the talk page. The article does looks essay-like. Nice set of examples. --Mark viking (talk) 20:29, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Wasla (diacritic)
Hot mess. Please fix. Bearian (talk) 21:10, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to User Study
Would you be interested in participating in a user study? We are a team at University of Washington studying methods for finding collaborators within a Wikipedia community. We are looking for volunteers to evaluate a new visualization tool. All you need to do is to prepare for your laptop/desktop, web camera, and speaker for video communication with Google Hangout. We will provide you with a Amazon gift card in appreciation of your time and participation. For more information about this study, please visit our wiki page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Finding_a_Collaborator). If you would like to participate in our user study, please send me a message at Wkmaster (talk) 05:12, 22 March 2014 (UTC).

Translanguaging
Translanguaging has been written about for about the past five to ten years in applied linguistics and bilingual education (e.g. Creese and Blackledge 2010), but it seems pretty recent and underdeveloped to warrant an article. Maybe it should be merged somewhere? maybe Code-switching or Bilingual education? Cnilep (talk) 12:19, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

A new draft article needs help
Please see WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk. AIUI the issue is basically whether the draft is about a notable encyclopedic topic and should be accepted, or not. Suggestions on improving the draft (if the topic is acceptable) are also welcome. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:46, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Those interested may wish to see my arguments in its favour, here: User talk:Aggie80. Myrvin (talk) 13:17, 28 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The article (I take it that the title would be "So (at the beginning of sentences)") appears to be an essay on attitudes toward a specific use of so. That really seems out of scope to me. User:Aggie80 noted that Wikipedia is not a grammar book (perhaps Aggie had in mind WP:NOTGUIDE), though Myrvin rightly notes that there are encyclopedia articles about grammar. I don't think that the proposed article is one of those, however. Where articles such as English modal verbs summarize the linguistic literature treating some grammatical class, "So (at the beginning of sentences)" is really more of an essay synthesizing dictionary and grammar treatment of the word with media commentary on usage. The problem, as I see it, is not that the article treats a grammatical topic. The problem is that it synthesizes these source to create, at best, original research in applied linguistics, or at worst a somewhat interesting but ultimately unencyclopedic essay. Cnilep (talk) 00:41, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

List of English words of Dravidian origin
I have proposed that List of English words of Malayalam origin, List of English words of Tamil origin, and List of English words of Telugu origin be merged into a new article, List of English words of Dravidian origin. Discussion is at Talk:List of English words of Malayalam origin. Comments from contributors to this WikiProject are welcome and would be most appreciated. Cnilep (talk) 00:35, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Most Influential Languages in the World Economy
Please comment at Talk:Linguistic demography on a chart which I believe should be removed from the article. Since the editor who created the chart disagrees with me, consensus is needed. Cnilep (talk) 00:59, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Updated Active Members List
Hi. I was curious to see how many of the members in the Active Members list Active Members list are actually still active. Since it had been about 2 years since the lists were updated, I took the liberty of updating it myself. Not sure if I was allowed to do that. I contacted potentially inactive members and left them a note on their talk pages (it looks like that was done a while ago, but those names were never removed from the list). By doing this, I took out about 20 names or so.

As for Category:WikiProject Linguistics members, which is populated automatically by people adding the userbox, I left a note on the Category's talk page wondering how that is kept up to date. Can I go through and remove the userbox from inactive participants' userpages or is that left up to the users themselves? Thanks, Joeystanley (talk) 13:19, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd leave that up to the users themselves. I think removing userboxes from other people's user pages is poor Wikipedia etiquette, even if they are inactive. Angr (talk) 20:40, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Tempo of speech
I expressed dissatisfaction with the current WP article on Tempo of Speech on its Talk page. I have now produced something which I hope improves on this. It can be seen in my sandbox. I would be glad of advice before I go further with it. I have three problems:
 * it would seem odd to treat this as an edit when what I propose to do is remove the old article entirely and replace it with this one, but equally odd to submit it as an article on a topic that already has an article.
 * the article does not reflect work done in this field in recent years, i.e. during the time I have been retired. I intend to appeal to younger colleagues to contribute suggestions, but I don't expect much to emerge.
 * the article is perhaps too heavily influenced by the survey I published in 1998. I have tried to avoid following that too closely, but the resemblance is clear to anyone who reads both.

RoachPeter (talk) 15:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC)


 * For the benefit of other people: the existing article is at Tempo of speech, and Peter's proposed article is at . Angr (talk) 15:28, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Orwellian
I added this WikiProject's template to the talk page of the article on the term "Orwellian." The article is lacking in inline citations (possibly disguising original research) and I thought it could benefit from the attention of the etymology task force. Thanks, GentlemanGhost   (converse)  22:28, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

In-line language examples or all in one section?
Hi there. I've been working on Causatives for a few months now. It was a poorly cited, poorly organized article. I'm getting close to cleaning it up completely, but I have one question. Examples from other languages. I see the benefit of citing them in-text (to show examples of different types of causation), and I also see the benefit of having one giant "Languages" section so we can see all the types of causation a single language employs. Is one preferred over another? Should I include both since there's no worry about wasted space? What languages should I include? As many as possible or just the most illustrative ones? Should I repeat everything mentioned in the description sections in the individual languages' sections? Thanks. Joeystanley (talk) 20:02, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I have another possibility. What if I made a separate page for the examples of Causatives. Is that something that has been done before? What other linguistic pages are there that require a lengthy page and have lots of language examples? Joeystanley (talk) 19:35, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Formation of Postcolonial Englishes: Theories - possible mergeable material?
I came across this article at AfD, and though it's clearly not suitable for inclusion as-is it seems to have a load of well-referenced material in it. I wondered if any of it might be worthy of merging somewhere, but I don't know enough about the topic to know where, so I thought I'd leave a note here in case any of it seems useful to people who know more about the topic than I. Olaf Davis (talk) 00:02, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the post. I've left a comment on the page. Joeystanley (talk) 20:55, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Merge Monotransitive verb into Transitive verb?
I've proposed a merger. I've never heard the term "monotransitive" to mean something different than just "transitive." I'm open to the idea of it though. If anyone has any insight, that'd be great. Plus, monotransitive verb is page that needs some work if it is to stay. Joeystanley (talk) 20:50, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The discussion is at Talk:Monotransitive verb. Cnilep (talk) 05:33, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Project on valency and transitivity
Due to the substandard page on Causatives and similar articles, I've taken on a new project. There seem to be several pages on valency (linguistics) and transitivity (grammar) that are either not very well done, contradictory, or near-orphans. I want to find all these pages that relate to this topic and group them together in some meaningful way, with links to the rest so that readers can get a solid understanding of this topic. I've made a quick page of my own to help me get started on this (User:Joeystanley/Valency Project).

If anyone has any suggestions, recommendations, or would like to help, it would be greatly appreciated.Joeystanley (talk) 15:10, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Update: I have created the following to help with this project:
 * Category:Transitivity and valency
 * Template:Transitivity and Valency to (eventually) go along the side of most if not all pages in this category.

This is still a work in progress for sure. Joeystanley (talk) 17:42, 21 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I now have the problem with the valency (linguistics) page and the transitivity (grammar) page. They both have sidebars showing other prominent topics in linguistics, however, I want to include the new specialized sidebar I'm still working on. But per this page, "few articles have more than one sidebar." Should I replace the old sidebar with the new one or put them both in somehow? Joeystanley (talk) 12:43, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Help:IPA for Serbo-Croatian and Slovene
Hello. Who's against having Slovene on the same page as Serbo-Croatian? They're similar enough, more or less the same as Galician is similar to Portuguese. However, User:Ivan Štambuk has removed Slovene (from Help:IPA for Serbo-Croatian, he also restored the content which means that Serbo-Croatian has two guides!) with no explanation at all.

I'm proposing the following solution:
 * Move Help:IPA for Serbo-Croatian and Help talk:IPA for Serbo-Croatian to Help:IPA for Serbo-Croatian and Slovene and Help talk:IPA for Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, respectively.
 * Keep the content of Help:IPA for Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, maybe slightly modify it (flags), but don't remove it without explanation... I don't think that Slovene deserves a separate page - what I mean is that it has most sounds of Serbo-Croatian, and Galician isn't the same as Portuguese either - yet they coexist on Help:IPA for Portuguese and Galician, and nobody (or hardly anybody) seems to be against it.
 * Add Slovene to the IPA-sh template.
 * Everybody's a winner, because we have the Slovene IPA guide on Wikipedia. --Peter238 (talk) 20:00, 2 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Vocalism and accents are almost completely different, and 9 out of 32 rows for consonants are different. Why on earth do you think that it's a good idea to merge SC and Slovene IPA guidelines? There should be a separate guideline for sh and sl, invoked via separate templates. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:20, 2 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Vocals and some consonants are indeed different, but tones are the same; it's just that Slovene doesn't have unstressed long vowels. As I said above, I think it's a good idea because the situation with Portuguese and Galician is similar, yet they're on one page. --Peter238 (talk) 20:31, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Slovene has both stress- and pitch-accent-based system whereas Serbo-Croatian has only the latter. Slovene also lacks short rising/low vowels of Serbo-Croatian. Explaining them together is just confusing and I don't see any benefit for readers who ordinarily just want to quickly look up how some particular word is pronounced on those help pages. The degree of similarity is irrelevant. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 04:49, 3 May 2014 (UTC)


 * As far as I can see, the differences are about the same as between Czech and Slovak (almost exactly the same amount of exceptions) and those two use a common IPA page on Wikipedia with no one making a fuzz about it. Heck, Norwegian and Swedish also have a common IPA page, as well as Dutch and Afrikaans. None of those are in a substantially different situation to warrant opposition to common a common SC and Slovene IPA page. 78.0.239.200 (talk) 22:11, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but the idea to have a combined IPA guideline for multiple languages is just plainly stupid. Why should anyone be wasting time looking up which column or column group is valid for which language, especially when differences as almost as numerous as similarities? Those existing combined guidelines should be split as well. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 04:49, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Though phonological comparisons are interesting, they aren't the purpose of Help:IPA pages. — lfdder 04:54, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

We started doubling up mainly to keep similar the transcriptions of similar languages. We had a problem a couple times where people started using very different IPA transcriptions for very similar languages, which is extremely confusing for anyone who's ignorant enough of the IPA to need a key in the first place. Swedish and Norwegian, for example, could be transcribed in an almost contradictory fashion. For that reason, adding Slovene to SC might be a good idea. People are always messing with the keys, and if they're disconnected, they will drift apart, until we have something like $⟨c⟩$ for [tʃ] in one language and for [kʲ] in another. It's also easier to police a smaller number of charts, especially for languages like Slovenian which are scarcely used. But I can certainly see wanting to have a dedicated key for each language too. The concern I have is, who is going to oversee it to minimize confusion for our readers? Who is going to keep it in line with our other keys? And what will happen when that person is no longer around? — kwami (talk) 07:14, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
 * In Lua it's easy to check whether a string (i.e. the template parameter used to specify transcription) is composed of specific characters, or sequences of characters (i.e. whether it follows a particular transcription scheme). If not - an error could be thrown, or the article could be placed in a cleanup category. Perhaps it should be done like that to enforce uniformity? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:14, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That would be wonderful. I used to scan the transcriptions with AWB, but for most languages I haven't done that for years.  We now use IPAc-en for English, and that forces uniformity for things it recognizes, and throws an exception for things it doesn't.  But it would be nice to have a Lua check of that as well, as some of the conversion to IPAc-en ignored English phonotactics.  (For example, /əl/ and /ən/ are always treated as allophonic to syllabic consonants.)  It would be very useful for most of our IPA templates, which will accept anything; I've found orthography and even numbers being passed off as IPA, let alone anything approaching the key.  — kwami (talk) 22:34, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What would also be cool is a template that allows you to enter (X)SAMPA and have it display IPA. That would greatly mitigate the absence of IPA keyboards on most people's computers. Angr (talk) 18:41, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * We have been doing that, or something similar (such as direct conversion of orthography) for a few languages that are used often enough for it to be worth the effort: English, Mandarin, Hungarian, Polish, Japanese. The IPAc-xx templates.  Sometimes they catch transcriptions that aren't supported by the key.  — kwami (talk) 00:00, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hmm, to judge by the documentation for IPAc-en, it accepts non-SAMPA characters like $⟨,⟩$ for ˌ (secondary stress mark) and $⟨&⟩$ for æ. And IPAc-en returns, so at least one SAMPA character isn't recognized at all. Ideally the conversion template would convert a whole string of characters at once rather than requiring a vertical line between the characters. But IPAc-en can't handle {{tltt|IPAc-en|par={l@"b{m@}} at all. Angr (talk) 17:56, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It's trivial to add SAMPA support, except for where symbols clash, e.g. "j". — kwami (talk) 19:56, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * It's trivial indeed, since the SAMPA to IPA conversion isn't done by Lua module at all, but by some very fancy #switch: footwork at {{tl|H:IPA}}. But a Lua module could convert whole strings. And as far as I know, "j" has the same meaning in SAMPA for English and in X-SAMPA as it does in IPA. Angr (talk) 12:24, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * A module could accept IPA and X-SAMPA input fairly easily. The module would only need to check whether there are any characters that are only allowed in one scheme or the other, and use that to determine how to interpret the string. The common subset of the two is only the lowercase letters (which have the same meaning in both, so no danger of ambiguity) and I suppose also spaces and maybe a few other characters. CodeCat (talk) 12:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Since there's no consensus, do I have a green light to create a separate Slovene guide? We could always re-merge it with Serbo-Croatian. --Peter238 (talk) 11:16, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that the current combined guide isn't particularly clear. Wiktionary has separate guides for both languages, and never combines them. Using the flag of Yugoslavia to represent SC is probably an even worse idea, and is just asking for someone to protest, change or vandalise it. CodeCat (talk) 12:39, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Done. That was quite a lot of work overall. Enjoy it: Help:IPA for Slovene Peter238 (talk) 16:19, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Template:Zh language tags
I'm looking at adding language tags to template:Zh, so not just Chinese characters but also Romanisations like pinyin are properly tagged, and am looking for some feedback on some of the changes. The thread starts here: Module talk:Zh, the summary and details here: Module talk:Zh.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 23:18, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Requested move of "Pussy"
I have proposed that Pussy be renamed and moved to Pussy (word). Discussion is at Talk:Pussy. Cnilep (talk) 00:09, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

en:Languages in censuses
I invite you to help write Languages this article.--Kaiyr (talk) 13:50, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Wikiproject Linguistics At Wikimania 2014
Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to: Project leaflets Adikhajuria (talk) 10:40, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

N-v-t distinction
The page N-v-t distinction was recently created by User:Dr M. Cook. It cites two sources, papers by Manuela Cook. I've never heard of the theory, and I suspect it may be an attempt by the author to promote an as-yet not very noted theory. Any input or expansion is welcome, or if the theory is not notable the page might be deleted or merged to T–V distinction. Cnilep (talk) 23:33, 14 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I've noted and removed citations of those papers added by 'Dr M. Cook' to Sociology of language, Language change, Power (social and political), and Critical discourse analysis. The user also added the sources to T–V distinction; I didn't remove those, since they actually seem relevant there. Cnilep (talk) 23:52, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:55, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Does anyone know about the American Journal of Linguistics? I haven't heard anything about that journal, but its publisher, Scientific & Academic Publishing, is accused of predatory open-access publishing. The publisher is on Beall's list, though the individual journal is not. One of the citations that Dr M. Cook added to T–V distinction is a paper in that journal; I wonder if there are other, similarly questionable citations in other Wikipedia articles. Cnilep (talk) 06:02, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Educational Linguistics
Dear linguistics experts: One more old abandoned AfC ssubmission. Is this a notable topic? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 16:23, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Discussion about "she" for ships
There's a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style about changing the Manual of Style to deprecate the use of "she" for ships. As it concerns the intersection of grammatical gender with actual gender, I thought some of you might be interested. --John (talk) 08:59, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Phonological history of English: Tendency to gloss over conflicting accounts
I have gained the impression that the whole suite of articles about the phonological history of English is marred by a widespread failure to acknowledge the fact that different authors simply don't agree about many points in the development. This does not even only concern negligible minor details but even quite substantial issues regarding the sequence of changes, etc. I have observed an unfortunate tendency to gloss over these differences on Wikipedia and act as if each version were but a variation on a theme, and to enforce artificial harmony where none exists. The result is confusion, with articles constantly contradicting each other and worse, even contradicting themselves internally. I must remind people of the policies of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, whose wisdom may be underappreciated. While there appears to be a consensus (more or less) about some points such as the pronunciation of Late Middle English, it's simply a fact that issues like the precise way the Great Vowel Shift unfolded to eventually arrive at the modern dialects are solved differently by different authors, and the logical approach is to acknowledge these differences and describe the different solutions side by side.

Clearly, there is no general consensus, no grand unified narrative as of yet in the field that we could simply follow and present to the reader, which sucks for us and considerably complicates things but we can't help it. The current state of confusion where one passage states A as plain fact and the next passage B, another article says C and the table gives a fourth variant D, a third article has a table and a chart presenting two additional variants, and each completely ignores the obvious disagreement with the others, is much worse. The desire to portray a single consistent picture is understandable but simply not possible as the blatantly failed attempts demonstrate. (This would not happen if Wikipedia only followed a single model and ignored any dissenting authors, or if we had our own synthesis, like on Wiktionary, but articles clearly cite different authors with differing accounts.)

In part, this is probably due to the fact that even the authors themselves tend to ignore the fact that other authors differ: it's not even as much as "my model A is correct, model B given by my esteemed colleague is wrong", but simply "here's how it happened: A" while the colleague equally confidently asserts "here's how it happened: B" (the model may not even be given explicitly, only assumed), and if you have read only a single book and aren't familiar with the other authors' works you can't have a clue that there is disagreement. It's not only like that in Anglistics, it seems to be far more widespread, especially in Germanic studies. I wish authors would just be more explicit about the models they follow; usually you have to puzzle them together all on your own. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 07:40, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's seemed to me like many of the articles use too few sources regarding the historical sound changes; several rely almost entirely on Barber. I've looked at Barber, and he doesn't seem to leave much room for alternative explanations (besides being focused on southeast England and largely ignoring more conservative varieties in the British Isles). His explanation about the fate of EModE (or, or –another problem), namely that it merged with  and was later displaced by variations inspired a spelling pronunciation, makes me wonder. I'm not saying he's wrong, but the rarity of one phoneme merging with another and then unmerging due to spelling (to such an extent that no trace of the merger can be found) leaves me somewhat doubtful. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 17:26, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Assessment of Ethnologue
Hi. I'd like an assessment of Ethnologue. Thanks. Chris Troutman ( talk ) 08:08, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
 * For Linguistics I ranked it C-class; what's there is pretty good, in that it's mostly sourced, and with reliable sources (though it might rely a bit too much on primary ones), but it's incomplete as it lacks information about the publication's history/internal workings and its reception/popularity in the linguistic community. I also ranked it as High-importance as it's pretty vital to an understanding of linguistics, particularly the online linguistic community, but only in the late-twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I'm open to either of these ratings being challenged; in particular, I think it could reasonably be Top- rather than High-importance given some other articles in those categories. You know, it's not forbidden to rate articles yourself based on where you feel they stand, although of course asking is okay, too. Tezero (talk) 20:07, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Problem with IPA for Swedish
It would be nice to have a table of IPA for Swedish. We don't have that, instead we have a table of IPA for Swedish and Norwegian combined. I'm sure that is interesting to some people, but it's not really as good as a table of IPA for Swedish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.131.80.54 (talk) 20:54, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * We have Help:IPA for Swedish and Norwegian which does have Swedish and Norwegian subcategories for the instances where the languages differ. It may be helpful to have separate tables, but the Swedish-specific information is there. --Mark viking (talk) 21:03, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Language template TfD
Several templates have been nomintead for deletion. Participants here may be interested in those TfDs, pro or con. See also: The nominator raised related issues in a number of other forums (most of these deal with templates in particular, while the one at WT:NOT is more general): — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  07:11, 19 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 132
 * Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility
 * Template talk:Lang-de

Scope of this project vs. the Languages one
You may want to chime in here. Tezero (talk) 15:29, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Language phonology and orthography articles
I think we need to sort out what goes in each language's phonology, orthography, and alphabet articles. Many languages (e.g. Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Slovak, Slovene, Albanian, Maltese, Lithuanian, Estonian) either have no orthography article or have a redirect to their alphabet article. It seems to me that Orthography ought to focus on sound–spelling correspondences (unlike the Hungarian orthography article), while Alphabet should be more like a list of characters in the language's alphabet. The ideal content of a Phonology article seems fairly self-evident, but a large part of the Albanian phonology section deals with sound–spelling correspondences, and the vowels are displayed only in list form. This is not as bad as Afrikaans phonology, where the vowel section consists of a list of phones (not phonemes!).

A lot of the IPA keys need work too, but I think when there's a decent Phonology article, doing the IPA key should be fairly simple. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 00:42, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced that languages need an alphabet article. Most languages share an alphabet with a bunch of other languages (e.g. the Latin alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, the Arabic alphabet), so we only need one Latin alphabet article (for example) and not separate articles on English alphabet, French alphabet, German alphabet, Swahili alphabet, and so forth. Language-specific letters of the alphabet can be discussed in the "Foo orthography" article. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:00, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I don't really think it's necessary either; I mentioned it because as it is right now, such articles are more common than Orthography articles. Perhaps Alphabet articles with no corresponding Orthography should eventually be retitled "Orthography" and in most cases repurposed as well. (BTW, for convenience, I'm using capitalized Orthography, Phonology, etc. to refer to [name of language] orthography, phonology, etc. articles.) (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 15:23, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that it's better to merge the "alphabet" articles into the "orthography" articles. CodeCat (talk) 17:13, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Looking at Alphabet articles, I see a couple of things that may not be within the scope of Orthography: letter names and pronunciation thereof, and spelling alphabets. If we keep separate tables for alphabet and sound–spelling correspondences, the things I mentioned might fit in the former; otherwise I'm not sure what to do with them. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 17:33, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The names of letters are still used to spell out words, so they relate to orthography in that sense. CodeCat (talk) 00:29, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There's a bit of confusion. The term "orthography" is not generally used in graphemic studies because of its prescriptive nature. The word "alphabet" refers to a specific kind of writing system. A writing system is constituted by a set of graphic units (graphemes) and a list of rules that map the graphic units to the phonological units (phonemes and/or phones). Thus, the Latin alphabet is the specific writing system of Latin. What is in common with other languages is what is called "script": the latin script. Different writing systems use the latin script (its original version or an extended version): so the Italian alphabet, the English alphabet, the French alphabet and so on all use the same script, with is the Latin script. A script is thus simply a set of graphs, deprived of their phonological content: then  is just the graph (or letter) "a", with no reference to the sounds it may represent. In a language-specific writing system article there should be the set of graphemes with the correspondences "grapheme-phoneme" and other kind of rules that states the distribution of certain graphemes (certain kind of distributions of graphemes are the way they are just because the phonemes in that language are distributed that way so it is useless to state them all in the writing system article too). SynConlanger (talk) 04:21, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

I have been going through and redoing/merging orthography and alphabet articles. So far I've done French, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian; I had just done Polish when reverted, saying "Reverted large-scale removal of contents and cross-article rearrangements without prior discussion or consensus to do so". Perhaps I'll pause this until further discussion. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 00:11, 15 July 2014 (UTC)


 * "Swedish alphabet" has been moved to "Swedish orthography". I'm going to move it back, because it's not an orthography article.  The only thing orthographic is the various spellings of the sje sound, but that hardly constitutes Swedish orthography.  As an alphabet article, it has a bit extra appended, but as an orthography article it's seriously deficient.  — kwami (talk) 08:52, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I stress again that there shouldn't be any difference between "alphabet" pages and "orthography" pages, since the discipline that studies that, graphemics, doesn't make that kind of difference (Coulmas, Florian. Typology of Writing Systems. Vol. 10.2, in Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikations- wissenschaft, di Walter de Gruyter, 1380-1387. Berlin, New York, 1994. Coulmas, Florian. Writing Systems: an Introduction to Their Linguistic Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Harris, Roy. Semiotic Aspects of Writing. Vol. 10.1, in Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikations- wissenschaft, di Walter de Gruyter, 41-48. Berlin New York, 1994.). SynConlanger (talk) 09:45, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I think if possible, that article should be expanded, if someone has sufficent information about Swedish orthography (I don't), and moved back. Several others of the pages I moved also need expansion. pʰeːnuːmuː  →‎  pʰiːnyːmyː  → ‎ ɸinimi  → ‎ fiɲimi  15:23, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Having found resources online, I added a section about sound–spelling correspondences. I have now moved the article back to Swedish orthography. pʰeːnuːmuː  →‎  pʰiːnyːmyː  → ‎ ɸinimi  → ‎ fiɲimi  23:39, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer we err toward orthography rather than alphabet articles, as the latter also includes things like punctuation and capitalization rules. Tezero (talk) 00:29, 13 August 2014 (UTC)