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Keep Redskins White!

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You have no right to change the name of the language.

Could you tell me why is it on the Serbo-Croatian family languages written all the dialects? I mean, shouldn't it be only language groups and not dialects? Only enwiki promotes all the "families" of dialects, and I can't find it on dewiki, shwiki etc. I already asked JorisvS, and also I would like to hear from you. --MunjaWiki (talk) 23:27, 28 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what the question is. WP-de and WP-sh say that the national standardized forms of SC are based on the Shtokavian dialect, which is the same as what we say. — kwami (talk) 00:11, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

By this question, I mean look at Croatian language and all those categories under Serbo-Croatian at the right side. There is Shtokavian, Eastern Herzegovinian etc. They're dialects, not languages, so they shouldn't be there. --MunjaWiki (talk) 12:18, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

By that I mean: If we would write each dialect for i.e. English or German, then that category would be enormous. But mentioning dialects in article, beside info box, is fine. My opinion. --Munja (talk) 17:09, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't understand. The English and German articles *do* have sections on dialects. — kwami (talk) 17:41, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've replied to you on my talk page. --Hordaland (talk) 01:48, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the article already contains refs, and a cited explanation that: "Farsi is the Arabicized form of Parsi, due to a lack of the 'p' phoneme in Standard Arabic".

Prior to Arab Islamic conquest of Persia, Iranians referred to themselves and their language as Parsi. In fact, the Iranians who fled the prosecution to India are known to this day as Parsi people.

Today both Parsi and Farsi are used as endonyms.

As mentioned Arabic language lacks the four sounds "G", "Č", "P", and "Ž". The word "Parsi" is not the only casualties of this; the name of Pars Province was also changed to Fars. "Chatrang", the Persian word for chess, was changed to "Shatranj". Etc.

Parsi is the original non-Arabicized term, from which derives the English "Persian" (via Hellenic and Latin Persis and Persianus respectively). Ferdowsi author of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, calls the language "Parsi". This term predates "Farsi" by thousands of years. Grinevitski (talk) 02:17, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! — kwami (talk) 04:39, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You say you don't understand what I am talking about, but revert my changes over those articles. You can't put some dialects in language family. --Munja (talk) 18:38, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is no language family. Nearly all of our well-developed language articles cover dialects.

As for your edit, you claimed that the three SW Slavic languages are Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, and Bosnian, which is utter nonsense. — kwami (talk) 21:30, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, the language family is Slavic. South Slavic is a probable branch, and it's conventionally divided into East (the Bulgarian–Macedonian dialect continuum) and West (the Slovene–Kajkavian–Chakavian–Shtokavian dialect continuum). Bosnian is a literary standard for the Shtokavian dialect. — kwami (talk) 21:33, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fine. Let me ask you something. See this map:

File:Serbo croatian dialects historical distribution.png

Linguistics and politics should not mix together. Well name Serbo-Croatian is political and, in my opinion, it should not be used. Also, Serbo-Croatian is a term made recently (in 1945. or a few decades before 1945.), by mixing terms Serbian and Croatian. Oldest document in Bosnian language is Bosnian-Turkish dictionary by Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi Bosnevi in 1632 (over 200 years before SC term). Also, looking at this map, you can see that Shtokavian was not based in Croatia fully, just in part of Slavonia. Also, calling Bosnian just as standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian is wrong, because of facts I already said. Term Shtokavian is older term than Serbo-Croatian, but I know what you want to say: It's same language. YES, it is, almost. But it's totally wrong to call it Serbo-Croatian. I was searching in many books for sentence "Bosnian is standardized variety of S/C", and came up with nothing. --Munja (talk) 22:23, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Correct about politics, wrong about the history. The term Serbo-Croatian dates at least to the 19th century. It is also the most common English name for the language, and therefore the name we use on WP. Bosnian was only recently invented; the Bosnian–Turkish dictionary is for the dialect of Serbo-Croatian spoken in Bosnia, and has little to do with the modern Bosnian language.

We've debated all this a dozen times, with nationalists who believe their standard or nation is original or superior or being contaminated or whatever. As you say, we don't give such political claims much weight. — kwami (talk) 22:29, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two replies waiting for you at my talk page. Wikarth (talk) 22:36, 29 May 2014 (UTC) Hehehe... well, considering that you even dont recognize Serb and Croatian as two languages, I can see you have a problem with understanding Norway... Wikarth (talk) 22:36, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry, but do I hear fine? You are also calling (my) Bosnian language Serbo-Croatian. S/C term does date to the 19th century, but term Bosnian dates to 16th or even before (according to Bos-Tr dict.). About saying that 16th century Bosnian is different or so from modern Bosnian, I advise you to read Charter of Ban Kulin. He lived after 10th century, spoke on language almost same as modern Bosnian, and I really doubt that he would say: "I speak Serbo-Croatian." Also, term Serbo-Croatian could not be older than Serbian, nor Croatian, like it is case with Czecho-Slovakian. To make combined term you have to have two separate terms. They are make for piolitical reasons to put Bosnian nationality in bad position. --Munja (talk) 22:43, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's because the English name of the language is "Serbo-Croatian". We use English names for things in English Wikipedia. If you succeed in changing the name of the language, so that the most common name for the language of the Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks becomes "Bosnian", then we will of course follow common usage and move the Serbo-Croatian article to "Bosnian". — kwami (talk) 22:51, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, South Slavic or Yugoslavian would be more common. And family-tree like here is nowhere to be found. On dewiki and bswiki, hrwiki, srwiki, shwiki etc. you can see: BALTO-SLAVIC >> SLAVIC >> SOUTH SLAVIC >> BOSNIAN; You're still putting dead language name as alive language and considering it more living than already standardized form. Term Serbo-Croatian is banned from all ex-Yugoslav republics, because of its nationalistic name. --Munja (talk) 23:02, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, "South Slavic" includes Slovenian and Bulgarian, and practically no-one calls it "Yugoslavian".

WP-de etc. are wrong, as you can verify with even the most elementary reference. The are also not a valid reference for us.

Serbo-Croatian is spoken by 20 million people; calling it "dead" is simply nonsense.

Wikipedia is not an ex-Yugoslav republic. — kwami (talk) 23:15, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:MunjaWiki is a Bosniak nationalist who already got banned under User:SuperNepoznat (and various of his sockpuppets with which he tried to influence votes). He was also IP-banned for two weeks but as soon as the IP-ban expired, he continued doing what he did before. Thought you should know before wasting more time on discussing with him. 78.1.143.200 (talk) 13:31, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, see [1]. Technically, the block has expired so he's entitled to a clean start, but creating yet another account to do that is troubling from the start. No such user (talk) 14:46, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He's technically permanently blocked for sockpuppetry. So any edits he makes are grounds for blocking, regardless. CodeCat (talk) 17:37, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see second opinions. Please propose the move of Yiddish language to Yiddish at talk:Yiddish language. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 12:04, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to take the time to debate it, but the language is pretty much the only use of the word, so there's no reason for a dab. — kwami (talk) 06:25, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding this,[2] it places "Dalecarlian", "Jamtska" and good ol' Scanian are back to separate language status under "Macro-Swedish". Similar dialects are all just plain Swedish, though. So where does this novel classification come from and why are we linking to it in infoboxes?

Peter ^Isotalo 07:25, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But we don't classify those as Swedish either, so their Swedish corresponds to our Swedish, and that's the proper code for the link. We're linking it because as far as possible we're linking all languages to Glottolog, just as we do to Ethnologue. That way most languages will have at least two refs, and Glottolog provides a lot of bibliographic info. As for their source, that's given at the link: Patrick V. Stiles. 2013. The Pan-West Germanic Isoglosses and the Subrelationships of West Germanic to Other Branches. NOWELE - North-Western European Evolution 66. 5-38. — kwami (talk) 17:02, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We do actually. See Swedish dialects or South Swedish dialects. Glottolog, on the other hand, makes the weird claim that Bornholmsk should be classified as "Scanian", which is quite dubious. Both are historically East Danish dialects, but modern classifications would consider them variants of Swedish and Danish respectively.

Stiles appears to be literally the only source here, but I can't access him right now. I need to get to the local library to check pages 8-10 (it's the same exact ref for every entry among the Germanic languages). It doesn't seem to like a fair representation of the consensus view on Scandinavian dialects. It seems more like a repetition of the oddball Ethnologue classifications, like the claim that Scanian is a separate language. Both Jamtska and Dalecarlian both rely entirely on Glottolog for the classification, which is pretty problematic.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:58, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Jamtska and Dalecarlian articles were written without any input from Glottolog. We can certainly change them to reflect the preponderance of sources. But that's not reason to delete sources. Glottolog isn't a ref for classification so much as a resource for more sources. We don't need to use their classification just because we link them from the info box, any more than we need to follow Ethnologue just because we link to them. There are also plans to update Glottolog so that distinctions between entries better reflect mutual intelligibility. — kwami (talk) 21:06, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Kwami, is the latest edit to Pali correct? CorinneSD (talk) 21:39, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not my area, but Pali wasn't written in Devanagari, so I'd say no for that reason. The first spelling matched Nepali WP, but not Hindi, Sanskrit, or other WPs. I have no idea if it might be an acceptable be an acceptable variant, though. — kwami (talk) 21:45, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

O.K. I saw that you added "Ref?" CorinneSD (talk) 22:16, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice if they supplied a ref. — kwami (talk) 22:22, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I know what you meant. CorinneSD (talk) 22:29, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are you watching Fiji? Do you agree with the latest edits? CorinneSD (talk) 21:45, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How far back? The latest is closer to a standard transliteration of Devanagari. I suspect someone used "th" to mean a dental t rather than an aspirated t, but the transliteration isn't really enough to show you how to pronounce the words either way. — kwami (talk) 21:52, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I meant mainly the last one, but I thought you could just check to be sure the parentheses were correct in the one right before it. I don't know anything about how the info right at the beginning is supposed to be formatted. Re the last edit, which you addressed above, how do you know it is Devanagari? CorinneSD (talk) 22:21, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I recognize the script. Formatting's rather inconsistent, but I like to leave English pronunciations out of the parentheses when they're simple enough they don't bog down the lead that way. — kwami (talk) 22:35, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering, where did you get the English-style pronunciation you put? (I added the Quenya one later, after wondering for a while how to handle the situaiton.) Double sharp (talk) 05:41, 3 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]