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Hello;

I'm not sure if this is necessarily the best place to note this, but I ran across Drift (linguistics ) (note the extra space), and found that there already is a Drift (linguistics) article. The new (albeit mistitled) article has some useful information, including a reference, but I am not a linguist, so I thought I'd bring it to the attention of the most relevant WikiProject so someone with more familiarity could have a look. Thank you! J. Spencer 02:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I merged them. —Angr 04:04, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Two related languages under one name

Hi, I need help to sort something out, I hope this is right place to ask for it. This is related with few articles on Baltic languages/dialects. Firstly, Latgalian language describes two languages - one hipotetical and sort of extinct, the other one is subject of century or so long debates if it is a language or a dialect of Latvian language (it seems that most scientists go for dialect). Furthermore the ancient Latgalian language is concidered basis of modern Latvian and there are two other stubs that deal with ancient Latvian - Old Latvian language and Proto-Latvian language. I pruposed to split article, because it might be dificult to understand about what the article is, moving the dialect to Latgalian dialect or Latgalian writen language, but this was not supported (see Talk:Latgalian language#Split). I have no idea how to sort this out without spliting it and not saying that modern Latgalian evolved strightly from ancient Latgalian, which I think is a disputable claim. Secondly there is unrelated but simillar problem with Curonian language - an extinct western Baltic language and extinct Easter baltic language/dialect of Latvian (in this case known as language to most Latvians, not sure what general sientific views might be) - this is less textualy confusing, however infobox claims that there is such thing as Western Baltic Latvian language, the terms in this case were diputed on Talk:Courlandians as well, I had complitely forgoten about it and am mentioning it here only because of similarity. ---- Xil/talk 19:25, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Chinese Language template help

Is there a Chinese equivalent to Template:Nihongo (specifically for traditional, if there is one)? The only templates I can find so far only compare the different words, and can't be used in-line like the Nihongo template can. Please reply on my talk page, thanks!KrytenKoro 19:38, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Missing major article!

Proto-Italic language is pretty much the only article in that entire Proto-* series of articles that is still a redlink. Pretty serious omission. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

1. I don't know that this article is especially major. The articles on the actual attested Italic languages themselves are basically stubs, and surely they're more important that Proto-Italic.
2. It's far from the only Proto-language article we're missing. We're actually quite a bit behind in this area. There's no Proto-Austronesian language or Proto-Malayo-Polynesian language, no Proto-Bantu language, no Proto-Tibeto-Burman language... There's a lot of work to do. --Alivemajor 11:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Old English language

Article is currently on hold to be a Good article. A few issues need to be addressed for it to keep its status as a Good article. T Rex | talk 15:56, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: PAN Localization

Resolved

PAN Localization (via WP:PROD on 1 October 2007) Deleted

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:27, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:52, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Chromography

Resolved

Chromography (via WP:PROD on 26 September 2007) Speedy deleted under WP:CSD#A5

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:27, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Articles for Deletion: Draafstein

Resolved

Draafstein at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Draafstein (2 October 2007) Speedy deleted

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 10:32, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

updateed --13:50, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Indo-European infobox

Within the "Indo-European Topics" infobox, "Italic peoples" is only listed under the "historical" section of the "Indo-European Peoples" sub-section. It's not even clear what "historical" means but judging by the fact that Greeks, Celts, and Germanic peoples are listed in the preceding section I'm assuming this is an accidental omission. Can someone please fix or clarify. Datus 20:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Reviving WP:CL

Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languages, aka WP:CL and see whether you could join / help. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 01:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Recruiting

Any of you who are interested are more than welcome to come to Wikibooks and contribute. We have many Language books which need authors. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:34, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Help request for Talk:Sḵwxwú7mesh

Hi. There is a discussion at Talk:Sḵwxwú7mesh#Name: "7" and pronunciation concerning what the article title should be. An RfC in September didn't come to any solid conclusions, so I thought I'd ask for input from here. Thanks for any insight you can provide. --Quiddity 06:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Roman Malayalam

Resolved

Roman Malayalam (via WP:PROD on 6 November 2007) Deleted

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:53, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Avshalom Kor

Avshalom Kor (via WP:PROD on 12 November 2007) Kept

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:34, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Page on "National language" on topic for this project?

Is the article on National language in the purview of this project? It needs a lot of work and the "Expert attention" tag might be specified for this project. Just checking whether that is the appropriate move. --A12n 23:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a linguistic topic alright, sociolinguistics as far as I can tell, but the vagueness needs to be addressed. I've made a comment on the talkpage.

Peter ^Isotalo 00:51, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll change the Expert attention tag accordingly. I made a couple of comments just now. On the broader subject, it looks like the categories of Language policy and some others could use some work. --A12n (talk) 23:45, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Mappila Malayalam

In view of the article Malayalam language, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mappila Malayalam may benefit from your input. Please consider participating in that discussion. -- Jreferee t/c 06:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Swedish language improvement

There has been a drive initiated by panda to improve the old FA Swedish language, but the process has hit a few snags due to misunderstanding and the occasional personal issues between users. I think outside comments by users with interest and knowledge of the topic might make the process flow somewhat smoother.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:37, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Swedish language has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. –panda (talk) 03:37, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Lombard Wikipedia

FYI, please see:

• meta:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Lombard Wikipedia

--A. B. ^(talk) 15:41, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation template

Would you say that using the template {{convertIPA}} on articles using trivial nonstandard pronunciation (for example currently well-formed formula ("wiff") or Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ("eye-triple-e")) is appropriate? --Abdull (talk) 14:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely not. These are examples of very good pronunciation guides that would hardly benefit from being converted to IPA.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

International Year of Languages

FYI, I added a page on International Year of Languages (2008). --A12n (talk) 03:06, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Just a quick request to those of you who write in other language editions of Wikipedia: Could you write short articles on IYL in those languages? Apparently only en, jp & ca editions have anything on the subject. TIA. --A12n (talk) 16:56, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Romization? Transliteration? What is this called?Wh

What would one call the process of changing characters with one or more diacritics into the most familiar-looking letter for people who primarily speak English?

Examples:

Piñata -> Pinata

Jalapeño -> Jalapeno

Quinceañera -> Quinceanera

I'm not saying it should be this way... but what is the action of changing ñ to n (using Spanish only as an example) called? thadius856_{talk|airports|neutrality} 07:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd just call it "dropping the diacritics"; I don't know if there's a technical term for it. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

This is a good question. It applies not only to situations where there are diacritics dropped, but also to the use of ASCII letters instead of extended characters (from extended ranges of Unicode). For example, BBC Hausa service uses an ASCII-only version of the Hausa Boko orthography. How about "asciify"? In any event, it's not Romanization, nor is it transliteration (or else piñata in your example would be pinyata in English). --A12n (talk) 18:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Punic language

Can someone have a look at this? This article seems to possibly be based on nonsense. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 03:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

Cross-posted from Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages open tasks, in case people have this page watchlisted but not that one:

• There is a request to move Early Modern Irish to Classical Gaelic. Discussion is at Talk:Early Modern Irish#Requested move. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 13:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Slovak language

There is a bit of a revert war at this page. From my perspective, it appears that a user is repeatedly including a section that is about the Hungarian language, not Slovak. Please take a look and help resolve this. Thanks. Helikophis (talk) 16:43, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me a simple solution would be to have a generic section on loanwords that could describe words loaned into Slovak from other languages and words that Slovak gave to other languages. The "Relationship to other languages" section could be split up that way. --Stacey Doljack Borsody (talk) 17:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Use of the word "Generic" in dispute

An interesting discussion RFC has been initiated at Talk:Generic role-playing game system, where the use of the word Generic is in dispute, as it is being used to describe Propriety game systems. If anyone with provide an expert opinion as to whether the word Generic is appropriate in this context, this would be most welcome. --Gavin Collins (talk) 16:38, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I presume you meant proprietary. Trekphiler (talk) 06:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Miskito grammar a "start class" article, WTF?

Who on Earth rated this superb grammar article as "start class"? How can someone possibly view such a well-structured, detailed and comprehensive article as if it were stub-like? Not only it is already nowhere near being a stub or poor article, I think it is so unusually good for a grammar article, it should even be nominated as a Featured Article candidate and picked as a model for other grammar articles to follow. 213.37.6.23 (talk) 14:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

You are of course right; I've upgraded it to B-class.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 15:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Nahuatl is at FAC

If ayone wants to comment on or review Nahuatl it is at the FAC now. You can acces the nomination discussion from here.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 06:05, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The article has received a lot of comments, to which Maunus has responded by making edits to the article, but so far Support is lacking. A few issues remain to be fixed, and the article needs light copyediting, but I think it is very close to FA quality. --Una Smith (talk) 14:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Determiners at English Wiktionary

Over at the English Wiktionary, it appears that we may be facing a vote regarding whether to allow determiner as a "part of speech heading" for English words. Anyone willing to make arguments for or against should make themselves heard here.--Brett (talk) 14:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Grammer check on Himura Kenshin

There is a sentence on the article which says:

During the story Kenshin wanders around Japan

I would like to change this line to the following:

For the duration of the story Kenshin wanders through Japan

Though I'd like to know is the grammer is ok. For instance, would a comma after "story" be necessary? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 05:52, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Comma not necessary. Does the story involve Kenshin eventually leaving Japan? If not, then depending on the intended meaning I would write:

For the duration of the story Kenshin wanders in Japan

or

For the duration of the story Kenshin wanders throughout Japan

--Una Smith (talk) 14:48, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

He never leaves Japan. Which do you feel best fits? I'm thinkin' the latter. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 18:35, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Not knowing the story, I cannot say. I can say wanders in puts more emphasis on wanders but wanders throughout puts more emphasis on how widely (very widely) Kenshin wanders. Hope this helps. --Una Smith (talk) 22:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I could go with what Una Smith said :) WhisperToMe (talk) 17:22, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you clarify? Which example? Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 19:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I prefer the second example since I know Kenshin travels from Tokyo to Kyoto - I.E. east to West. If it was Tokyo to Yokohama it would be better to use Wanders in, I guess. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks to all, Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 19:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

It is "grammar," not "grammer."Ace Fool (talk) 03:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Chaps and shaps

A lengthy content dispute over Chaps, concerning the etymology and historical pronunciation(s) of a loan word from Spanish into English, is being mediated here. I would appreciate input re appropriate technical sources. --Una Smith (talk) 14:54, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Economics of language

FYI, I put up a stub on Economics of language. --A12n (talk) 14:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Kinship terms, pragmatics

Hi, I was thinking about adding some preliminary info on Korean kinship terms to the Korean language article, but I'm not sure where such info should be put or how.

Should it be a part of the vocabulary section? Since it's related to culture and politeness on many levels, should it be mentioned in a pragmatics section? Do we have pragmatics sections in other languages? I see we don't have one on the English language page and I don't see any language-specific articles in Category:Pragmatics. --Kjoonlee 14:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I would put it under the vocab or lexicon section of a lang article. You could also include it in that culture's culture article if you wanted (but, of course, there could be more to say about kinsfolk social interactions than just the kinship terms).

Generally wikipedia neglects more anthropologically oriented language info. I have added a stubbish section along these lines to Vietnamese with notes on two types of word play (Pragmatics & ethnography of communication), a mostly nonexistent section to Zuni (Sociolinguistic aspects), and eventually I'll add some bits to Navajo (just a short laundry list now).

There is plenty of research on English to add info on this language. Apparently, either no one is interested or has the knowledge. – ishwar  (speak) 20:22, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

There is also the bit I added to Apache#Kinship systems if youre interested. – ishwar  (speak) 00:43, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Another thought. I would put kinship terms in Vietnamese under its description of the grammar (under a nominal/noun phrase section) since Vietnamese kinship terms are considered to have a pronoun function in several analyses of Vietnamese. – ishwar  (speak) 01:39, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

new languages

i just created Awa-Cuaiquer language and Arhuaco language the latter i also created in Spanish. Are there any other languages that are needed to be added? Is anyone working on a particular group effort for a particular language/group of languages?Latinlover-sa (talk) 04:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

List of Tibeto-Burman languages is awfully red. I guess I don't constitute a group and I'm probably not going to get any real work done on the project until later this year, but if you help me out I'll give you (a picture of) cookies! --Gimme danger (talk) 04:34, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

You can start with the other members of the Barbacoan family (besides Awa). Also, is Awa-Cuaiquer the most common name? Lyle Campbell lists this language under the name Coaiquer while Timothy Curnow calls it by Awa Pit. I would also suggest linking to the language family from the individual language pages. – ishwar  (speak) 01:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Listishness

Is there enough distinction to justify List of words having different meanings in Canadian and American English, per the Britlish/Amglish list? (Or just List of words having different meanings in Wikipedia than real life? ;D) Trekphiler (talk) 06:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

How about a "list fo words having a different meaning in Canadian English" period? So as to mark differences with either Am or Br English? Circeus (talk) 23:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

World Atlas of Language Structure

This month the Max Planck Digital Library published the web version of the World Atlas of Language Structures. This seems to be a great resource, published under a Creative Commons license. It has entries with typological and bibliographical information on most languages, and therefore we might want to consider to link it to all articles on individual languages. Maybe we might even want to adapt the info-box template accordingly (I don't know how to do that). Landroving Linguist (talk) 16:05, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It's a non-copyleft CC license: the NonCommercial and No Derivatives provisions preclude direct use of its text on Wikipedia, although it would be great as a resource and for linking. Wikiacc (¶) 16:26, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Quirky Subject

Hi all: Quirky subject was recently proposed for deletion and I did a cursory search and found quite a few articles. However, the problem is that I am far from an expert in the field....thus, I was wondering if someone could take a look at the article with an eye to expanding? Lazulilasher (talk) 04:43, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Sound files

Some language articles have sample texts. What I think would really improve the articles is a sound file of someone reading these texts -- or maybe even a conversation in that language. I find it much harder to tell languages apart by ear than by text, so I think having access to examples of spoken language would be a great resource. Brutannica (talk) 21:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Bengali language FAR

Bengali language has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 03:09, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Revived Languages: Infobox

Does anyone agree with stating that a revived language went extinct at some point in the "number of speakers" section of the infobox, eg. "extinct as a spoken language by the ?th century; ? dialect later revived and now with ? speakers"? I think it's very misleading otherwise; if people read something like "? language was nearly extinct by the 17th century" and then see in the infobox that there are 50 native speakers, you can see how they might get the wrong impression.--Yolgnu (talk) 22:00, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion needed at Talk:Slovene language#Flagicons in the infobox

I am requesting an outside third opinion for a content dispute at Slovene language on flagicons located in the infobox. Thanks in advance for any help. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 13:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Systematic treatment of language policy?

Has there been any consideration of either systematic inclusion of sections on language policy and planning in "Languages of [country]" pages or a whole set of new pages on language policy by country? --A12n (talk) 23:33, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Laypersons need to make sure what they're doing when editing language articles

I'm an amateur linguist (academic linguistics). I just translated a short article on an Amazonian language from Spanish Wikipedia to English. The original article used a fair number of sources, yet it was full of technical errors. Errors about linguistics, not the language (I have no way to verify the facts of that language.) People who worked on the translation before me also didn't know terminology and theory. What thoughts do others have on the prevalence of bad information in Wikipedia language articles do to lay editors? 146.244.72.204 (talk) 12:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

That the wiki format makes it pretty much inevitable, and that Wikipedia doesn't really distinguish between lay editors and professional ones. If you find a mistake, correct it and move on. That's pretty much all we can do. —Angr 14:29, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 688 of the articles assigned to this project, or 20.2%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. Subsribing is easy - just add a template to your project page. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:41, 3 July 2008 (UTC)