Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages

Does Nivkh currently have one alphabet or two?

This is under discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Nivkh alphabets discussion, but doesn't seem to be getting anywhere, and the moderator suggested continuing here. It relates to the article Nivkh alphabets.

Unicode has published statements by linguists working on Siberian languages that the difference between the 'ticked' and curved variants of extended Siberian letters like Қ қ Қʼ қʼ Ң ң Ҳ ҳ vs Ӄ ӄ Ӄʼ ӄʼ Ӈ ӈ Ӽ ӽ are allographs, and Unicode has therefore refused to encode additional pairs. Nivkh isn't mentioned specifically, but we've had a similar debate with Khanty, and there it's quite clear that the forms of the letters is an editorial choice, and makes no difference to the orthography. In the case of Nivkh, we have publications using either set of allographs.

For Nivkh, we have an editor who insists that this is not allography, but two entirely separate alphabets, and that when govt agencies currently use the ticked variants of the letters, they're using the 'old' alphabet, even though they include the new letters that were introduced with the latest orthographic change.

Anyway, if someone could chime in, we'd appreciate it. — kwami (talk) 01:40, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Common Era has an RfC

Common Era, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has an RfC for value. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Jeaucques Quœure (talk) 07:50, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

LINGUIST list codes in language infoboxes

In a string of good-faith mass-edits, User:Spino-Soar-Us has started to add LINGIUST list codes into quite a few language articles. While in most cases, I see don't any "harm" in it (except for producing redundant bloat in articles with multiple LINGLIST/ISO-codes, e.g. here[1]), do we actually need these entries? LINGIUST list codes are no longer maintained (the parameter produces Web Archive links!) and for historical reasons are mostly identical to ISO-639-3 codes. This is hardly in line with WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE which is to provide key facts at a glance. I think most would agree that ISO- and Glottolog-codes are key data points, but what about a deprecated and almost always redundant set of codes? Maybe it's time to deprecate the parameter entirely. Austronesier (talk) 12:24, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Is there a single case of a language having a LingList code that doesn't have an identical ISO 639-3 code? If not, we can certainly drop it from infoboxes. Even if there is, there's no point in recording the ones that were copied into ISO 639-3. Deprecating or dropping the parameter also seem reasonable, given that LingList is no longer active. Kanguole 13:45, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

ISO codes of languages extinct before 1950 were maintained by LingList, which is why we linked to them. I don't know what we should do if a code isn't maintained by anyone. But no, if the code is maintained by SIL/ISO, we shouldn't link to LingList, which wasn't a RS even when they were functional. — kwami (talk) 19:26, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't see use in it when it's identical to ISO 639. Nardog (talk) 16:12, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Some ISO codes are maintained by Ethnologue, some by LingList [or at least they used to be]. There's no point linking to Ethn if there's nothing there. Now that LingList is defunct, maybe Ethn. will take over, but unless that happens I think we should maintain the links to LL. At least ppl could check web archives for the URL. — kwami (talk) 19:31, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

honorifics

Hi friends, I came across German honorifics which is currently unsourced and was wondering if there was any consistency in these kinds of pages across different languages. I'm not entirely sure who to ask, appreciate any advice because I'm not seeing good references which could be added. Thanks. JMWt (talk) 09:08, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with such articles, but it you search for articles containing "honorifics", a number of articles appear, including many titles in the form of Korean honorifics, French honorifics, Thai honorifics, etc. If you are inclined to pursue this, you can look at those articles. Donald Albury 17:23, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Redlinked tracking categories

Nearly every run of Special:WantedCategories, for cleaning up redlinked (i.e. non-existent) categories that have to be either created or removed as pages aren't allowed to sit in redlinked categories, always contains at least one, and much more frequently several, new template-generated categories of the "Articles containing [Language]-language text", "Articles with [Language]-language sources (lang-x code)" and/or "Pages with [Language] IPA" varieties, because somebody has added new lang-x templates to a Wikipedia article for a language that didn't already have those categories in place yet.

Since like other categories they can't stay red, but unlike most redlinked categories they're template-generated and thus impossible to remove without removing the template entirely (which would be disruptive), I end up having to invest my time into creating the categories on your behalf even though I'm not a member of this project.

Since these are maintenance-tracking categories which are allowed to be empty, however, nothing would stop this project from just preemptively creating every possible category of this type right off the bat, so that the category is already there when needed instead of turning into a redlink cleanup problem for me to fix. So would somebody associated with this project be willing to tackle creating any missing categories of those types for any and all languages that don't have them yet, so that it stops becoming my problem? (You could almost certainly farm the drudgery part of that out to a bot instead of having to do it all manually, but you guys are in a much better position than I am to figure out which categories are missing in the first place.) Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 12:53, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

And I just had to create another one. This should not be my problem to fix, and needs to stop becoming my problem to fix, so could somebody please address this somehow? Bearcat (talk) 14:03, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

I can manually create the categories myself. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 00:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Addition of family colors to Template:Infobox language/family-color

Many of the large American language families have no specific color in the language infobox. I propose to add colors for some of the major families, as presented below. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 00:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

•   Salishan languages
•   Penutian languages
•   Hokan languages
•   Oto-Manguean languages
•   Mayan languages
•   Arawakan languages
•   Quechuan languages
•   Tupian languages
•   Macro-Jê languages
•   Cariban languages
•   Pano-Tacanan languages

🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 00:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• I'd support this. PersusjCP (talk) 01:47, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  So, do we keep 'American' as family-color of other American families, or just some? E.g. should the American color apply to family isolates, or to unclassified American languages, as such languages are colored as 'Papuan' in New Guinea, or should they get the 'isolate' and 'unclassified' color? One potential problem I see is that it can be difficult to decide whether an American or Papuan language is an isolate. — kwami (talk) 00:36, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Only to the small families, so isolates get the isolate color, as I have already implemented, and I suppose unclassified languages get their color too, but they could also use the American color. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 00:37, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  I peopose the same treatment for the Papuan isolates. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 00:39, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  But isolates are small families. How is a family of two languages American, but a family of one not American? — kwami (talk) 00:42, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  I still find it better to use the isolate color for those specific languages, otherwise the entire color is pointless. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 00:45, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  It's not pointless. It means 'none of the above'. It's not practical to create a distinct color for every language isolate, or in the Americas and Sahul for every larger family. In other parts of the world we have separate colors for families, but in the Americas, blue is 'none of he above'. Also, classification doesn't depend on whether divergent dialects are recognized as distinct languages. What you're saying is that isolate families in the Americas are not American. I'll revert your edits until we have a coherent way to treat the families that aren't one of the new colors. — kwami (talk) 00:51, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  What would be consistent is to change the default American, Australian and Papuan color to the same grey as language isolates. — kwami (talk) 00:57, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  Then change all of them - you appear to have forgottten some like Takelma and Haida. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 01:11, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  No, I got them too. — kwami (talk) 01:11, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

  I see. I was only opinting them out as when you first reverted the changes you forgot some. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 01:16, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

If someone is familiar with Indo-Iranian languages

...could they take a look at this diff? I'm hesitant about whether or not to revert. JayCubby 22:01, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Gascon dialect#Requested move 4 December 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Gascon dialect#Requested move 4 December 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 21:50, 28 December 2024 (UTC)