Talk:Jhelum

@Beland: – I appreciate your comments and for concluding the RFC. However, I am still confused by your edits to the main article. The Punjabi IPA wasn't restored, but the Urdu IPA was also removed? Should the Punjabi IPA not have been reinstated?

As far as the Urdu IPA is concerned – @SheriffIsInTown: I do wish to propose another transcription which is /ˈd͡ʒeːʱləm/. IMO, it represents the medial /h/ is frequently weakened accurately here. نعم البدل (talk) 00:31, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

The RFC result is conditional on citing an inline reliable source for Punjabi IPA. However, another dilemma arises: the majority of people in Jhelum speak the Potohari dialect/variety, and the IPA for that should be added with a reliable source. The official census indicates that 89% speak Punjabi, but it does not distinguish between Potohari and Majhi as separate languages. Those 89% therefore include all Punjabi dialects, with Potohari forming a large majority and Majhi (standard Punjabi) a small minority. We cannot add IPA for a dialect/variety spoken only by a minority. A table on page 8 of this SIL source clearly states that Potohari is spoken in Rawalpindi and Jhelum. The fact that Wikipedia articles for these locations do not list Potohari does not mean that people stopped speaking it; rather, it reflects the absence of official census classification of Potohari as a separate language. This does not negate Potohari's existence as a distinct dialect/variety with its own IPA. Based on this highly reliable source, we should be adding Potohari IPA instead of Majhi (standard Punjabi) IPA. As for Urdu, thanks for trying to resolve the matter and for the suggestion, but I maintain my earlier position that /ˈd͡ʒeː.ləm/ is the proper Urdu IPA. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 03:37, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Note that this article is for the city, not the district. Do you have any sources for which dialect is spoken by the majority in the city itself? Sutyarashi (talk) 09:19, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Do you really think that 89% in the city speak Majhi (standard Punjabi) and 0% speak Potohari? WP:COMMONSENSE applies here: when the district speaks Potohari, the major city in that district cannot possibly have 0% Potohari speakers. If you check all of the districts where Potohari is spoken, none of them list Potohari separately; the only reason is that it is classified as a dialect rather than a distinct language. Jhelum District, Rawalpindi District, Attock District, Chakwal District, and Murree District—all Potohari-speaking districts—do not list Potohari speakers. Instead, they respectively show 88%, 90%, 65%, 89%, and 43% Punjabi speakers. It is therefore common sense to conclude that those "Punjabi" speakers are in fact majority Potohari speakers. Whether one considers Potohari a language or a dialect, it is officially treated as a dialect of Punjabi; that is why it does not appear in the census records. Dialects can, however, have distinct IPA, so how is it a good idea to include Majhi (standard Punjabi) IPA instead of Potohari? At the same time, we must meet the reliable source requirement—no one's original research can be used. The norm is that if a reliable source does not cover an aspect, Wikipedia does not cover that aspect. So yes, regional language or dialect IPA can be included, but it must be supported by a reliable source, and the same applies to Urdu. No reliable source, no inclusion. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 10:26, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Sorry but you're indulging in WP:OR here. First, the "district doesn't speak Pothwari", parts of it do. The very same source you cited above state Hindko to be predominant in Hazara and Peshawar city, while we know it's spoken in three out of eight Hazara districts and is no longer majority language in Peshawar. Clearly We can't take that table on face value. Hence we need clear sources stating the majority language of the city to be Pothwari for the insertion of Pothwari IPA, per the very same principles you have been opposing the addition of Punjabi IPA for past four months.

In any case, the people of Jhelum and Rawalpindi don't consider their language to be different enough from Punjabi to worth considering its separate enumeration. Unless the predominant language of Jhelum city is proven to be Pothwari and the government starts counting Pothwari separately instead, we should go with the census data and use standard Punjabi IPA here. Sutyarashi (talk) 11:17, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

In any case, the people of Jhelum and Rawalpindi don't consider their language to be different enough from Punjabi to worth considering its separate enumeration. So, you are agreeing that the people of Jhelum do not consider Potohari to be sufficiently distinct from Punjabi? Unless the predominant language of Jhelum city is proven to be Pothwari and the government starts counting Pothwari separately instead, we should go with the census data and use standard Punjabi IPA here. No, the government does not need to start counting Potohari separately; it considers Potohari a dialect of Punjabi. The census data does not distinguish between dialects, nor does it state that 89% are Standard Punjabi speakers. It simply states that they are Punjabi speakers, meaning all dialects are included. By that standard, we do not have a source stating that the majority are Standard Punjabi speakers. Therefore, while we can include Punjabi IPA, it would correspond to the Potohari dialect IPA, not the Standard Punjabi (Majhi) dialect IPA. Since both the people and the government consider Potohari to be Punjabi rather than a separate language, why should we treat it differently? Including Punjabi IPA based on the Potohari dialect would still be accurate, as it falls under Punjabi, and the RFC does not specifically require "Standard Punjabi IPA." It simply calls for Punjabi IPA, which could rightfully be represented through the Potohari dialect—the majority spoken in Jhelum. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 12:18, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

There's no reason not to include both the local majority and minority dialect pronunciations in an explanatory footnote, and this article does not need to specify which is which if that data is not explicitly available (rather than guessing based on the district data). So far no sources have been provided as to what those actually are, so the question is a bit moot. -- Beland (talk) 14:08, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for identifying this source; I have added it as a citation to an existing claim at Jhelum District#Language. Is there any reliable source supporting the notion that Majhi is also spoken in the district? That claim is uncited in that article. -- Beland (talk) 14:16, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

The reason I dropped the Urdu IPA from the article is that it was not supported by a citation, either inline or in the body of the article. I did not reinstate the Punjabi IPA for the same reason. Pronunciations for both can and should be re-added if and when reliable sources are identified to directly support them. Your newly proposed Urdu IPA cannot be included in the article unless it is directly supported by a reliable source; your opinion that it is correct is not sufficient, given that it has been factually challenged. -- Beland (talk) 14:12, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

But the issue isn't that it's unreliable, I've given a reliable source for the Punjabi IPA, which was the Oxford Punjabi dictionary. For the Urdu one, yes the IPA was challenged, but the reason given was WP:OR. The IPA wasn't directly challenged, Urdu phonology as a whole was challenged by saying that /h/ is sometimes weak in some word (not all!). That's a discussion for Talk:Urdu. Otherwise the issue was the local Urdu pronunciation (which isn't the first language of the city) compared to the standard pronunciation. نعم البدل (talk) 19:21, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

Great. I did not see any <ref>...</ref> citations in the article version history, but I see you mentioned an Oxford Punjabi dictionary in a thread on this talk page. If that source says "/jeː˦ləm/", feel free to add that to the article with a citation. You can use {{efn}} to make an explanatory footnote. It would help to specify the edition and official name of the dictionary, if your device will tell you that, or at least put the date and method of access in {{cite}}. It may be original synthesis to decide that "[d͡ʒéːˈlˑɐ̃m]" means the same thing as "/jeː˦ləm/", and I am actually not sure that it is correct. If we point readers to Help:IPA/Punjabi to decode the meanings of this symbols, that says that "j" is like "y" in "yuck" and "d͡ʒ" is like "j" in "jug" - clearly different sounds. It also says some dialects transform /j/ into /d͡ʒ/ in some contexts, so it is important to specify the correct one. That key also does not list "é" and "ɐ̃" as valid symbols. International Phonetic Alphabet#Brackets and transcription delimiters also points out that "//" and "[]" indicate different levels of sound notation, so the two strings are not equivalent.

Continuing the linguistic debate on Urdu orthography-to-phonology mapping is not appropriate; that is simply more original research. Perhaps there is an Oxford Urdu dictionary that simply gives the pronunciation; that would be an acceptable way to resolve the dispute. -- Beland (talk) 20:19, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

@Beland The reason given to challenge the Urdu IPA was not WP:OR. In the section above, I cited a 2023 sociophonetic study which confirmed that in spoken Urdu, /h/ is frequently deleted in medial positions (e.g., in mujhay), particularly when it is unstressed and non-contrastive. This supports the view that the medial /h/ in جہلم is phonetically weak or elided in natural speech, thereby justifying the transcription [ˈd͡ʒeː.ləm]. As for the Oxford Dictionary, it uses /j/ instead of /d͡ʒe/, which produces the sound of y rather than j. I don't think we should follow that rendering, as it goes against Punjabi IPA norms by using /j/ instead of /d͡ʒe/ for the j sound. WP:COMMONSENSE and WP:EDITDISC would apply here as well, in that we should avoid including an IPA that appears inconsistent with established norms and instead look for another reliable source if such inclusion is necessary. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 23:12, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

As I wrote before, this word could be irregular, so using well-sourced general Urdu rules to predict the sound of this word is an unreliable synthesis.

What evidence is there that Oxford uses "j" to mean the jug sound and not the yuck sound? -- Beland (talk) 23:37, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

@Beland That source includes the example word mujhay, which is closely comparable to Jhelum. In mujhay, the medial /h/ occurs after the voiced affricate /d͡ʒ/ and before a vowel, and the study shows that it is frequently weak or elided. In Jhelum, /h/ occurs in a similar medial position—following the voiced affricate /d͡ʒ/ and preceding a vowel—so by analogy, the medial /h/ may likewise be phonetically weak or elided in natural speech, supporting the transcription [ˈd͡ʒeː.ləm]. Conversely, we do not have any source stating that medial /h/ is voiced when occurring after a voiced affricate /d͡ʒ/ and before a vowel; this study remains the closest evidence available. As for Punjabi IPA, I am not aware of any word in which j corresponds to the y sound. Unless another example can be provided, we should be cautious about relying on a single screenshot of a dictionary entry submitted by one editor. In the present day, it is difficult to justify reliance on an offline or otherwise inaccessible source when verifiable alternatives should exist. We should either identify another accessible source or, preferably, ensure multiple independent sources support the claim that /j/ produces the y sound—since this is a WP:EXCEPTIONAL case. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 03:31, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

An Oxford dictionary is a highly reliable source; I see no reason to doubt what it says about a specific word based on how other words in the same language are pronounced. The whole point of putting a pronunciation guide in a dictionary is to document irregularities. We should not doubt Oxford if it tells us that "soul" and "foul" do not rhyme.

It's possible this is the one word in Punjabi where a "j" makes the "yuck" sound, or that it depends on context, or that your understanding of Punjabi is incorrect; the point of consulting a dictionary is to answer those questions. If this is an unexpected pattern, we should consult the pronunciation key of the Oxford dictionary to confirm what they mean by "j". -- Beland (talk) 04:06, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

While poking around I noticed wikt:جہلم has both standard Punjabi and standard Urdu IPAs, both of which start with /d͡ʒ/. These are unfortunately without citations, but one of the links under Punjabi is to a source that actually has an audio clip that confirms the Punjabi version starts with the "j" as in "jug" sound. Perhaps someone can correctly transcribe the audio into IPA, but I would trust a written source more.

I have access to an Apple desktop, but it is unclear how to "enable Oxford Punjabi-English dictionary". What application would I use to do that? I would now very much like to verify the reported string. -- Beland (talk) 04:41, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

I will respond in detail later, but on iMacs and MacBooks, there is a pre-installed application called "Dictionary". You can enable the Punjabi dictionary (and it will explicitly state "Oxford Punjabi Dictionaries"). It also has the Urdu Oxford dictionary, which has the IPAs as well, but unfortunately the dictionary doesn't contain the name جہلم. نعم البدل (talk) 07:57, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

@Beland and SheriffIsInTown: I have found another source for the Punjabi IPA pronunciation. It's similar to the Oxford reading. As per Oxford it was jeː˦ləm, the following source has transcribed it as ɟé:lǝm, giving the transliteration of the name as "ɟihlam and Ĝihlam". Given that on Wikipedia and elsewhere, the practice is to transcribe ج as /d͡ʒ/ for Punjabi (and as per Punjabi language#Phonology, we should take these reference and include the transcription of /d͡ʒeː˦ləm/.

Please do bear in mind that is extremely difficult to source the absolute precise IPA transcription of local places, and having two seperate references which include the exact IPA transcriptions should warrant the inclusion of the IPA. نعم البدل (talk) 22:17, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Gimel is orthography and /d͡ʒ/ is phonology; Wikipedia editors cannot simply turn one into the other without a source saying that is what happens for a given word, and your new source apparently does not say that. -- Beland (talk) 23:07, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Yes, but it is well established that ج / ਜ is pronounced as /d͡ʒ/, such as Bashir (2019). This isn't really disputed (especially when it comes to determening whether 'Gimel' is pronouned as a /d͡ʒ/ or /j/.^[1] نعم البدل (talk) 23:16, 16 September 2025 (UTC) نعم البدل (talk) 23:16, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

See also this website which is run by Patiala University, which has it's well-established resources for the Punjabi language, including a Punjabi dictionary. It has an audio clip for the pronounciation of the ਜ letter (equivalent of Gimel). They also have an audio clip for the pronunciation of the name "Jélam" . نعم البدل (talk) 23:19, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Please note that the rest of it differs between the two sources: Oxford records it as eː˦ləm, while the other source gives é:lǝm. You are first suggesting that we replace j with d͡ʒ—but what should we do with the rest? Which version should we rely on? Would that not amount to synthesis and original research? Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 23:32, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Bro é and ˦ are the same thing. ˦ is used because IPA discourages accents and diacritics. Please read Tone_(linguistics)#Phonetic_notation نعم البدل (talk) 23:40, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

To the degree that they are denoting different sounds, we can simply report both. -- Beland (talk) 00:35, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

@Beland: In this case, they are equal because in Punjabi there are only three tones - High/Low/Level. نعم البدل (talk) 07:59, 17 September 2025 (UTC) Actually, it is not that simple. First of all, we do not know what Stewardship is or whether it can be considered a reliable source. Secondly, that source does not state anywhere that this is Punjabi IPA, and we do not even know whether it is IPA at all. The same issue exists with Oxford, as it also does not specify whether the transcription is in IPA. IPA stands for International Phonetic Association, and anything that does not comply with the standards set by the Association cannot be classified as IPA. The use of 'j' instead of 'd͡ʒ' confirms that these sources are not complying with IPA standards. If they fail to comply with the standards in one part of the transcription, how can we trust that the rest of it follows the Association’s standards? Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 01:27, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

@SheriffIsInTown: So you actually think Oxford Dictionaries are implying that Gimel is /j/ and not /d͡ʒ/, even though they've done that for every single word that contains the letter jeem? With your logic the term بجری 'bajari' in Punjabi is pronounced as "bayari", because they've provided the transcription of "bəjəriː"? Or maybe, we can use a little bit of common sense, and assume that they've used 'j' and not 'd͡ʒ', as to make it simple for people. Let's be honest, you're only making this difficult, as you have been doing in the past four discussions, because of your opposition to the inclusion of the Punjabi IPA in the lede. نعم البدل (talk) 12:27, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

It is required that we all assume the best intentions on the part of other editors and direct our comments to the content question.

It's clear from the audio recording that the first sound in this word is the "j" in "jump". Presumably whatever notation the cited sources are using denotes that sound with "j". They should have a legend somewhere that explains how to read their notation; we can use that to either explain the notation to readers or convert to IPA if that can be done mechanically. -- Beland (talk) 17:34, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

You completely misunderstood my comment. I am not implying what you think I am; rather, I am pointing out that the Oxford source does not provide an IPA transcription, and therefore we cannot use it as a source for IPA transcription. They are using 'j' for 'd͡ʒ', which is not the standard set by the International Phonetic Association. If that part is inaccurate or even simplified, we cannot assume that the rest of the transcription complies with IPA standards. The distinction here is important: the Urdu Oxford Dictionary does provide proper IPA transcription (for example, بجری is shown with /d͡ʒ/ for 'j'), but the Punjabi Oxford Dictionary does not — it only gives a simplified learner-style transcription. Because of that, we cannot use it as an IPA source, nor can we modify parts of it ourselves to "correct" them into IPA, as that would fall under WP:OR. Thus, a source that does not actually provide IPA transcription cannot be treated as one. Also, please do not display bad faith in your comments. You have been doing this since the beginning—you stopped for a while after Beland pointed it out, but you have now resumed with your accusations. My position from the start has been consistent: we cannot rely on your original research IPA transcriptions. We need a valid, reliable source to verify their accuracy. Until such a source is provided, we cannot include your WP:OR IPA transcription—whether for Punjabi, Urdu, or any other language. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 19:03, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

I would provide a legend if I had one. Unfortunately, I have only seen the Oxford Punjabi dictionaries being licensed to Apple thus far. The oxford press has removed their digital versions of the bilingual dictionaries from the internet several years ago. نعم البدل (talk) 17:59, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Then we await additional sources. In the meantime, we could do an external link to the audio clip. -- Beland (talk) 18:35, 17 September 2025 (UTC)