Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages

Please say a word in Talk:Serbo-Croatian#Is_Serbo-Croatian_South_Savic_or_Western_South_Slavic? --Altenmann >talk 17:24, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Guaymí language#Requested move 27 March 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. NerdyEpiscopalian (talk) 14:39, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

As many of us know, Fdom was a frequent language article editor, mainly adding phonology sections to stub articles, and was banned recently for sockpuppetry. While these edits may have been seen by those involved in the SPI investigation as constructive, I have uncovered significant issues in his edits. They sometimes involve WP:SYNTH, as can be seen in a particularly egregious example at Special:Permalink/1336657251 and Special:Permalink/1344017382 (the latter of which was restored by a sock), wherein the phonological information is seemingly synthesized from nothing but an alphabet table in a dictionary. The dictionary itself says: "This is just a rough guide; there are still issues to be resolved with the help of the community, particularly with the consonants." I am virtually certain other instances of this inaccurate addition exist and propose that these tables be removed from articles until a manual check of their accuracy is performed, or some similar action.

Pinging involved editors: @Oklopfer @Kwamikagami @IvanScrooge98 @Stockhausenfan @Yacàwotçã @PharyngealImplosive7 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 22:01, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

There have indeed been other instances of inaccurate additions like that. I removed many, but where they looked reasonable I tended to leave them in. I have no objection to a blanket revert of all of Fdom's edits. — kwami (talk) 22:06, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I have come across this problem with a few Athabaskan and Salishan languages they have worked on the pages for, with sweeping featural assumptions sometimes being applied when they aren't explicitly stated in the provided sources (as in, this feature is common in multiple languages of the family, therefore it must apply to all).

For example with Athabaskan languages, there has been a false assumption applied that all phonology tables using voiced consonants for the unaspirated series are actually describing tenuis consonants, when this is not always the case, as McDonough & Wood (2008) went over in great detail; and this often occurs when the source does not make it clear whether they are truly voiced or voiceless.

I also regularly come across tables introduced by them lacking inline citations, making it quite difficult to track down which sources listed on the page the information actually comes from, as well as often being a mixture of phones and phonemes without any explanation as to which is which or where such listed allophones arise (i.e. the problem we had recognized a few months ago).

Unless info seems particularly dubious, I generally prefer tagging with {{cn}}, {{urs}}, {{vs}} over outright removal of content. I think we all agree that some of the content added by Fdom was productive, but also that much of it requires additional verification. ~ oklopfer (💬) 23:35, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

(To add to those tags, there's also {{synthesis}} and {{synthesis inline}}) ~ oklopfer (💬) 23:39, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I would also generally agree with the assessment of oklopfer. Reverting all of Fdom's edits seems a bit excessive, and I would prefer tagging unless the content is particularly dubious. – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 00:44, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

I wouldn't trust most if not all edits by Fdom, but I tend to agree we probably shouldn't be thoughtlessly reverting everything they have added on language articles Yacàwotçã (talk) 03:09, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

just my 2 cents btw, I'm not a really active editor on this subject Yacàwotçã (talk) 03:10, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

@Oklopfer: @Kwamikagami: I have decided to change my stance on possible actions. I propose creating a backlog of Fdom's edits to manually check them, one by one, until their factual accuracy is verified. I can dedicate some of my time to checking this. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 19:19, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't know if the quality of even their better edits are worth that investment of time, but if they're blanket-reverted a lot of those articles are going to remain unimproved for quite a while. — kwami (talk) 19:21, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

I will probably majorly expand some of them, particularly those pertaining to South American languages, during the upcoming destubathon. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 19:22, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

That will be nice! — kwami (talk) 20:16, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

That seems reasonable to me. If the backlog is mostly just a list of language pages I can probably help chunk away at verification, too. ~ oklopfer (💬) 19:40, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

It probably is. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 19:40, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Hello Guys I have had back and forths with Oklopfer over the above topics - his arguments are that the two groups are Lwo/Luo speaking groups as classified in Oxford and Ethnologue plus others

- I left many response on his talk page and on my talk page.

My findings are summarized as follows - Lango and Kumam originally were not part of the Luo/Lwo ethnic group but Ateker both ethnic and linguistic origin supported by sources e.g. Nzita, R. and Niwampu, M. 1993: Peoples and Cultures of Uganda, Kampala, Fountain Publishers Ltd. A lot of their Ateker languge was lost when they encountered a Lwo speaking group during migration in the current location of Uganda.

Many authors have mentioned this language shift. The two groups currently speak Lwo/Luo words but also retain original elements of their Ateker language Ateso aka nilo-hamites, therefore it is a mixed language as of todate due to proximity with Lwo groups, not withstanding it has been classified in ethnologue as a Lwo langauge except Britanica.

Other editors have mentioned this issues in the Kumam page - I did not edit this page but I am being accused that I am bringing original research, that no scholar has ever spoken as above. So most of my responses are in my talk page and Oklopfer's.

I must admit there has been many issues about whether Lango/Langi and Kumam are Luo or not, and whether their original language was Lwo or Ateker for years reading from sources.

In 2024 the two groups Lango and Kumam were formally reunited with Ateker speaking groups, which should bring the confusion to a resolution. https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/museveni-to-grace-first-ateker-reunion-fete-4812352

I would like your thoughts on this topic. My issue is that Oklopfer cleared many pages dismissing references without group discussion, seeing that the pages were not built by just one person, there should have been inputs from other editors as well.

Thanks Gwoktik (talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gwoktik (talk • contribs) 19:16, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

To bring a bit more clarity to this dispute:

• The Oxford Handbook of African Languages (2020) and Ethnologue (2025) [with Glottolog using Ethnologue as its primary source] both classify the languages as belonging to the Southern Luo group. Britannica simply uses a broader umbrella classification of Eastern Sudanic.
• Sources have argued that the ethnic groups belong to the Ateker peoples, but those same sources still regard the languages as Luo, such as Uzoigwe (1973) JSTOR 41856972 and Benson (2015) (though I question the usability of that latter source as it is riddled with typos and lacks a bibliography), and not as Teso–Turkana languages. These two sources were both brought forward by Gwoktik, and do not substantiate the claims they were being tied to.
• Most of Gwoktik's arguments fall on grounds of ethnic classification rather than linguistic, and this improperly bled into the language pages. As sources do not make parallel claims about the languages as they do on the ethnic groups, I had removed this conflation on grounds of SYNTH. I recognize that the lines between ethnic and linguistic grouping can very much be a touchy subject, but there is still a complete lack of scholarly claims that the established linguistic classifications are wrong. We cannot make claims that are not supported by sources.
• It should also be noted that "Nilo-Hamites" is regarded as an outdated term, presumably a subset grouping of the scientific racism terminology Hamites. There are apparently a few instances of the term in WP articles, but they should probably be removed, unless specifically referring to it as an outdated and largely disregarded historical term.

~ oklopfer (💬) 20:14, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Hello all, Old Frisian is currently a Featured Article Candidate. Anyone interested is invited to make comments at the nomination page. ThaesOfereode (talk) 10:34, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

IANA recently updated their language-subtag-registry file. The update includes updates to ISO 639-3 tag oss (see here) and consequently to ISO 639-1 tag os. The update changes the list of associated language names from:

• 'Ossetian' and 'Ossetic'

to

• 'Iron Ossetic', 'Iron', 'Iron Ossetian', 'Ossetian', and 'Ossetic'.

When given a list of allowed language names, Module:Lang takes the first name in the list. Prior to this change Module:Lang used 'Ossetian' when rendering os-tagged text and when linking to the associated category: Category:Articles containing Ossetian-language text. Because of the update, Module:Lang has begun populating Category:Articles containing Iron Ossetic-language text.

There are at least two related articles that can likely confuse the issue: Ossetian language and Iron Ossetian. Before the update all {{langx}} templates linked to Ossetian language; because of the update, those same templates will link to Iron Ossetian.

My question to this community is: Which is the preferred language name.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:38, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coláiste na nGael

The article Coláiste na nGael has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Poorly sourced article about an organization. Tagged for notability concerns for 14 years, and for needing more references for 11 years. Fails the relevant notability guidelines. Lacks significant coverage.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion based on established criteria.

If the proposed deletion has already been carried out, you may request undeletion of the article at any time. Bearian (talk) 00:34, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

Omniglot, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has an RfC for determining its reliability as a source. 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. ~ oklopfer (💬) 01:18, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Emerillon language#Teko language that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. {{GearsDatapacks|talk|contribs}} 20:54, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

I drafted Wikipedia:Notability (languages) in response to requests by editors policing notability, for verification that we consider all natural languages to be notable. What I drew up is my impression of consensus from years of editing language articles, and where I thought the limits on notability might lie, but it should be reviewed by this project. Once/if we get consensus here, we can add it to {{Notability sidebar}}. — kwami (talk) 20:15, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I could have sworn some project page somewhere already said every natural language was presumed notable, but I guess not. Thanks for writing this. One question, should/does stability include past stability? So that endangered or long-extinct languages would be presumed notable? Erinius (talk) 23:50, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Saying "all natural languages are notable" is very open-ended. There are languages for which the historical evidence is a few recorded words, primarily names. There are languages for which the only evidence is someone's comment that a particular people did not speak the same language as their neighbors. There is little to no hope that even a stub article could ever be written about such languages, so there is no benefit in talking about them being notable. Donald Albury 00:50, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

The draft is already more specific than that. You might want to suggest particular changes, or other objections, at the draft or its talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cnilep (talk • contribs) 01:09, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

"There are languages for which the historical evidence is a few recorded words, primarily names" is not a determinative factor; many of those cases (including some I was reading about via WP just a few days ago!) are subject to a great deal of real-world debate by linguists, in reliable-source publications, so they already clear the WP:GNG hurdle anyway, without any subject-specific notability criterion even coming into play. And "There is little to no hope that even a stub article could ever be written about such languages" is clearly not true with regard to this category. (It could be true of some particular member of that category about which there is little RS material, but having a small stub in such cases is perfectly fine, in the "better than nothing" department). I'm not sure what to make of "There are languages for which the only evidence is someone's comment that a particular people did not speak the same language as their neighbors." Yes, there are notes of this sort in various ancient texts, but that doesn't mean an identifiable, named language exists/existed, in the sense of in-depth coverage in reliable sources, for us to write an article about. So, that would appear to be a self-resolving issue; we can't have encyclopedic coverage of an idea with no RS to use about it. Or another way to look at that: some academic somewhere tentatively hypothesizing that there must have been an Elbonian language, because Brosis of Sparta wrote that the Elbonians did not speak the same language as the neighboring Durkastinians, doesn't equate to "Elbonian constitutes a natural language for encyclopedic purposes"; it's just some person what-iffing. But if such a what-if results in a flurry of debate and hypotheses in various high-end journals and books on linguistics, then it also does in fact pass GNG and is something readers may expect to find an article about here. Much of WP's job is distilling scattershot academic material running through decades of obscure journals, and presenting a summary for the non-expert reader. If a stub about such a [purported] language were too small to bother and likely to stay that way, then we could merge it to the parent language family, if known. That'd be a merge performed as an editorial consensus decision (probably with a categorized redirect left behind). The fact that an subject technically can exist as a stand-alone page due to GNG does not tie our hands and require us to have one in cases where it wouldn't be the best option for readers. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy or a suicide pact. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:59, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Per the above: yes, we say that extinction date is irrelevant. "Stability" here is intended to mean that a stable language existed. This is not always the case for pidgins, for example, where RSs distinguish stable, multi-generation languages, which are notable, from people throwing a bunch of words at each other when they meet at the market. For the same reason, we wouldn't have a stub article on every child who ever used home sign [in fact, the ISO code for Rennellese Sign Language was retired for just that reason], but it would be notable once kids are brought together in a school and develop a stable language.

The point of this guideline is to show that we do count distinct languages as inherently notable, because outside editors come along every so often and tag a language article for deletion because it has too little academic coverage to be notable under our general guidelines. But, per SMcCandlish, we do need to have enough info to know that there actually was a distinct language, which means at a minimum having enough data to establish its uniqueness. And of course speech varieties that do not meet that criterion -- and even entirely spurious languages -- may still be notable per the general notability guidelines. — kwami (talk) 10:23, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

This is my personal opinion, but I think if all we know of a language is a few words that are not enough to classify it -- or even to identify it as a separate language -- then that info is best placed in the ethnographic article for the people. And if a taxonomic node is not backed up by reconstruction, so that we can say something about the protolanguage, then it should probably not have a separate article just so we can have a place to park that part of the cladistic tree. I'm guilty of creating quite a few articles like that to break up the list of languages in large families like Austronesian. — kwami (talk) 10:34, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I believe that any language that is attested should have its own article. Most if not all of these will have been covered by some linguist somewhere who has done some analysis on the language and its classification. Take, for example, Sewee language amnd Amotomanco language, both of them known from a handful of words or phrases, but are analyzed in Zamponi (2023). Because they have been covered in secondary reliable sources, they would have articles. The same goes for unattested languages covered in similar sources, provided they give proper coverage. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 17:50, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I am thinking of more recent (16th - 17th century) examples, such as Ais people#Name and language, Guale#Language, Uzita and Tocobago (see 5th paragraph in Mocoso), and the possible non-Hitchiti language of Sabacola. We know that each of those peoples spoke a language, we just do not know anything about those languages. Donald Albury 13:28, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, but if we don't say something, we may get well-intentioned editors creating articles for them anyway because all languages are inherently notable. — kwami (talk) 13:35, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I would oppose this proposal as it stands. Languages that do not pass WP:GNG are unlikely to have sufficient coverage to establish that they even are genuinely languages. Edge cases like extinct languages only marginally attested in primary sources and have not received WP:SIGCOV in modern sources should not be considered notable enough for standalone articles. A wordlist from a non-linguist 200 years ago is not enough to build an article on.

Obviously all living languages are notable, and so we would only require one decent source that proves this (in practice they will always have this). But "language" is itself an artificial category, and one that has not been, and is not, applied consistently across space and time. We should not be creating articles just because Glottolog notes that some explorer in the 18th century wrote that a language exists. There is no potential for an article there.Boynamedsue (talk) 18:21, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

I am very much in agreement with the proposed guideline. As per User:SMcCandlish's remarks, a lack of reliable sources would regulate any creation of articles on spurious or poorly attested languages. There is a difference between Glottolog noting the existence of a language in passing and Glottolog providing a code for a language. LandLing 01:45, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

..a lack of reliable sources would regulate any creation of articles on spurious or poorly attested languages. That has never stopped editors from creating articles for dubious instances in other topic areas. What benefit would this proposal provide for Wikipedia that is not available from abiding by the GNG? Donald Albury 11:59, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

We occasionally have drive-by tagging of articles as non-notable, with the argument that languages are not notable unless they meet GNG. Rather than simply deleting the tags, as we have been doing for the past 20 years, we'd have a policy to point to that says that languages are notable. — kwami (talk) 19:31, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

There is inherently nothing to write about an unattested language, which serves as a sufficient deterrent to any prospective editor. Just because WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS doesn't mean that has happened, or will happen, with languages. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 19:35, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

See my comments in the talk page propoosal. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 18:52, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Emerillon language#Teko language that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Robloxguest3 (talk) 20:58, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Shetland dialect#Requested move 9 May 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Jeffrey34555 (talk) 18:13, 23 May 2026 (UTC)

An editor has requested that Silesian language be moved to Upper Silesian language, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. Fortek67 (talk) 23:52, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:59, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Atanque language#Requested move 20 May 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 01:39, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Template:Proto has been listed for discussion, which may result in the template being merged or deleted by consensus. You are invited to comment on the proposed action at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. phuzion (talk) 21:16, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I propose merging the inactive Wikipedia:WikiProject Endangered languages into this project as a taskforce. It makes sense to have a division dedicated entirely to endangered languages as they are consistently undercovered as part of systemic bias. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 04:58, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

ditto with Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous languages of California 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 06:26, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Strong support to both. They are quite well suited topics to become task forces here. ~ oklopfer (💬) 15:06, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Support to both. I wonder if we might broaden the latter into just an Indigenous languages task force. ThaesOfereode (talk) 10:19, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser § Usage of JWB/AWB for reducing phonetics links with templates, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. This regards usage of the {{lcons}} and {{lvow}} templates. ~ oklopfer (💬) 17:26, 10 June 2026 (UTC)