Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages

Wikimedia subject-area collaboration From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This WikiProject aims primarily to provide a consistent treatment of each human language on Wikipedia. Many languages already have extensive pages, and the systematic information on those pages is not presented in a consistent way. The purpose of this WikiProject is to present that information consistently, and to ensure that each of the major areas is covered at least briefly for each language.

These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. However, try to stick to the format for the Infobox for each language. See the template for an example Infobox.

The easiest way to get started writing for a language that doesn't already have an article or to convert an article to the WikiProject format is to start with the template.

Article alerts

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Articles for deletion

  • 06 Mar 2026 T-rules (talk · edit · hist) was AfDed by Replayful (t · c); see discussion (4 participants)
  • 04 Mar 2026 Nawat typology (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by EllaMinnowPea371 (t · c) was closed as redirect by Kelob2678 (t · c) on 11 Mar 2026; see discussion (4 participants)
  • 04 Mar 2026 Generational terminology in immigrant communities (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by All in (t · c) was closed as delete by Explicit (t · c) on 11 Mar 2026; see discussion (7 participants)
  • 02 Mar 2026 Licei Linguistico e Pedagogico di Montepulciano (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by BhikhariInformer (t · c) was closed as delete by Explicit (t · c) on 12 Mar 2026; see discussion (2 participants; relisted)
  • 02 Mar 2026 Mirzapuri (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by Adrikshit (t · c) was closed as delete by Explicit (t · c) on 10 Mar 2026; see discussion (4 participants; relisted)
  • 01 Mar 2026 Sylheti nationalism (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by Muydivertido (t · c) was closed as delete by OwenX (t · c) on 09 Mar 2026; see discussion (14 participants)
  • 28 Feb 2026 List of English-language pop songs based on French-language songs (talk · edit · hist) AfDed by EasternShah (t · c) was closed as delete by RL0919 (t · c) on 07 Mar 2026; see discussion (5 participants)

Categories for discussion

Templates for discussion

Redirects for discussion

Good article nominees

Good article reassessments

Requests for comments

Peer reviews

Requested moves

(2 more...)

Articles to be merged

Articles to be split

(8 more...)

Articles for creation

Quality articles

Featured articles marked in bold have appeared on the Main Page.

Article assessment

Place the {{WikiProject Languages}} project banner template on the talk pages of any language-related articles. To rate the article on the quality scale, add one of the following parameters:

  • class=FA for featured articles
  • class=A for A-class articles
  • class=GA for good articles
  • class=B for B-class articles
  • class=start for Start-class articles
  • class=stub for Stub-class articles (which may not necessarily have a "stub" message on them!)
  • class=NA for non-articles (templates, images, etc.)

See WP:GRADES for pointers on classification.

Statistics

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Article names

The guidelines for article titles for languages are at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages). In short, most language articles should be titled XXX language. Reasons for this recommendation:

  1. Ambiguity. While some language have special forms that refer unambiguously to the language, English is inherently ambiguous about language names. Having a standard of "XXX language" ensures that it's always unambiguous.
  2. Precedent. This is how Encyclopædia Britannica and many other English-language encyclopedias name their articles.

When there is nothing to disambiguate a language name from, such as Hindi, Esperanto or Inuktitut, there is no need for the "language".

Whether the varieties of Arabic and Chinese should be called "languages" or "dialects" continues to be a highly controversial issue. The current convention is: use NAME + Arabic for Arabic varieties (e.g. Egyptian Arabic) and NAME + Chinese for Chinese varieties (e.g. Mandarin Chinese). Infoboxes are put at both Arabic language and Chinese language and at their first-level subdivisions. However, where there is little controversy that a variety of Arabic or Chinese is a dialect (when it is demonstrably intelligible to other dialects), then 'dialect' is acceptable in the title.

Even in cases in which there is a consensus that varieties of a language have a dialect status, the number and divisions between such dialects are often vaguely-defined, and controversies exist among dialectologists over whether certain varieties should be treated in a unified way or are best understood as separate though related varieties. Separate articles should only be written on varieties (e.g., Estuary English) or related groups of varieties (e.g., Hispanic English) that have been well-enough studied by linguists that at least a minimal body of literature exists about that variety or group of varieties, as a distinct dialect or group of dialects. Phonological, morphosyntactic, or lexical variation that may be considered subdialectal should be noted as "differences within X dialect,", where X is a dialect as discussed in the relevant literature. Controversies over dialect status can be noted in articles as such, but should also be based on citable work. Names used to refer to that dialect in the title should be preferred over folk-linguistic terms (e.g., Inland North versus Midwestern Accent).

Article structure

If you would like to create an article on a new language, you can use {{subst:New language article}} to help streamline the process. An example structure and explanation of the sections can be found at /Template for oral languages and /Template (sign language) for sign languages. Language articles are subject to Wikipedia's inclusion criteria.

Open tasks

General

Updates

Population data has been mostly updated from Ethnologue 16 to 17. However, an unknown number of articles which did not have the ref field set to "e16" slipped through the cracks. For instance, Cumanagoto did not have a ref'd population figure because E16 had mistakenly listed it as extinct. Articles which are not ref'd to Ethnologue could be checked in case E17 has a more recent figure.

User:PotatoBot helps keep ISO redirects in sync with changing WP articles and ISO standards. The results of the latest run are displayed at ISO 639 log and ISO 639 language articles missing.

Names at Spurious_languages#Spurious_according_to_Glottolog with asterisks have not been addressed.

Articles to improve: Category:Language articles with unknown population not citing Ethnologue 18

Articles citing previous editions of Ethnologue can be found in the following categories:

Articles citing undated versions can be found in:

Most should be updated to a reference to the latest Ethnologue edition or to another reliable source. However, references to old editions may continue to be appropriate, for example, with undated citations, or where an old edition shows the date or range of estimates of the source, and that info has been lost from recent editions, or where a new source in the latest edition of Ethnologue just cites an old edition of Ethnologue, so we should cite the old edition ourselves.

Some articles do not use templates such as {{e25}}:

Short descriptions

All articles should have a short description. As of December 2022, about 1,000 articles about languages do not have one: -hastemplate:"Short description" hastemplate:"Infobox language"

Articles to be created

Here you can see languages what others Wikipedias have, but English one is don't (SPARQL-code what you can run by yourself). Below is a list of the five what have the most interwikis:

Red links should either be redirected or have their own articles.

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99.9% of ISO language names have articles, though not always one-to-one (e.g. Fulani, Zhuang, and Mazatec); the 0.01% which do not are spurious, dubious, or insufficiently attested to justify their own article, and are redirected to an article stating that.

Lists for evaluation

The lists below are of self-links in our articles, language names from various sources which do not have articles or redirects, and suspicious cases to keep track of.

More information Lists of obscure names from common refs ...
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More information Circular and suspicious links ...
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More information Cases to track ...
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Requests for expansion

Images for articles in Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of languages.

Requests for attention

(no article Ashéninka people; Keres functions as the lang article but reads as a family article)

Tagged categories

Category:Articles lacking sources

Only language varieties are included here. Subjects such as 'French language in Jordan' and 'Westernized Chinese language', though in bad shape, are not listed.

  • 2004–2014: (only articles with 'language', 'dialect', 'creole', or 'pidgin' in name are included; distilled from an insane number of articles)
English: Jewish English languages
Germanic: Central Franconian dialects, Eastphalian dialect, Hamburgisch dialect, Norwegian dialects, Orsamål dialect, Ripuarian language, Sognamål dialect
Romance: Chipilo Venetian dialect, Comasco-Lecchese dialects, Fornes dialects, Pavese dialect, Sabino dialect, Sutsilvan dialects (Romansh)
Slavic: Debar dialect, Reka dialect, Strumica dialect
Maltese: Qormi dialect, Żejtun dialect
Chinese: Luoyang dialect, Mango dialect, Qihai dialect, Weihai dialect, Ningbo dialect, Ganyu dialect, Fu'an dialect, Xuzhou dialect
other: Kfar Kama Adyghe dialect (Adyghe), Enuani dialect (Igbo), Thanjavur Marathi dialect, South Korean standard language

Titles containing 'language' checked through November 2024: Bangi–Tetela languages

Category:Orphaned articles

(same search terms as missing sources)

Ordek-Burnu language (moved to 'stele')

Open ISO issues

The following ISO requests for new languages from previous years were still open in 2016 Jan. The articles should be updated if they are accepted. (See the current list, reviewed to 2024-11.)

2023-006 	ynb 	Yamben 
2021-044 	ftg 	Taigi

Articles proposed for deletion

including WP:AFD, WP:PROD and other processes

Articles to watch

The following are language articles which come under repeated POV attack, often for ethnic or nationalistic reasons. Feel free to add ones you've noticed, and to remove languages which have not been a problem for some time. That way, if one of us drops out from editing, the articles we've been watching hopefully won't go to pot.

(Note: Ethnologue 17 and the Swedish Nationalencyklopedin use Indian census data, which is not a RS because it does not have a consistent definition of Hindi. For example, part of the Awadhi population is listed under Awadhi, but most is counted as Hindi. This problem is acknowledged in the presentation of the census results, but has gotten lost in 2ary sources.)
  • Serbo-Croatian & Croatian (subject to ARBMAC)
  • Saraiki dialect, Punjabi dialects, and "Panjistani" (requires text searches to purge repeated additions of contradictory claims of "Panjistani" to multiple articles)
  • Southern Luri language. It may be worthwhile splitting the Luri article, but so far the attempts to do so have been incompetent and motivated by OR redefinition of the language. The present description of the two varieties in the Luri article is so intertwined that splitting them would create something close to a content fork. — kwami (talk) 02:32, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, along with the ethnic articles. A seemingly chronic ethnic dispute.
  • Luganda and Baganda: deletion of ISO name
  • Misleading maps: Many national languages have had maps with half the world filled in because of emigration, with no apparent standard for what counts as a speaking population. Most of these will be caught by checking the top 100 at List of languages by number of native speakers.

Interpreting online sources of data

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