Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages

Following this edit request at Template talk:Infobox language, which didn't get any participation, should new colors be added for Chibchan languages and Tucanoan languages?

Pinging editors from the previous thread: @Kepler-1229b @PersusjCP @Kwamikagami Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 09:52, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

In support of my argument, most American language families with large amounts of languages typically get their own family colors. Campbell (2024) highlights Arawakan, Cariban, Chapacuran, Chibchan, Macro-Jê Sensu Stricto, Pano-Takanan, Quechuan, Tukanoan (Tucanoan), and Tupían as being "larger language families" (i.e. >6 languages present).^[1] Per this argument, Chapacuran should also get its own color (  ). 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 18:49, 18 October 2025 (UTC) 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 18:49, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Support adding, though the proposed colors imo seem too similar and too hard to distinguish from others Қатысушы Апельсин (talk) 07:29, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Support per above. Also agreeing with Қатысушы Апельсин on color similarity, though not because they're too close to each other but too close to others. Other language families like Siouan and Muskogean need the same as well, but I'm not sure the process for bringing it up. Any advice appreciated. ThaesOfereode (talk) 13:28, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

I meant other colored families too heh:) Қатысушы Апельсин (talk) 15:41, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Fair point. I attempted to make them different shades of blue, but anything in that range works too. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 15:48, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Is the idea to make them blue because they're all New World languages? I would recommend a shade of orange/brown for Siouan, red for Muskogean, and purple for Iroquoian since these colors are less represented in the current swatches; blues, greens, and the in-betweens make up the majority of colors there. ThaesOfereode (talk) 18:35, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

To me, it seems the American languages are all blue and I would recommend keeping the current color scheme for the new colors. Purple for Iroquoian could work. The conlang colour should be changed to be grayscale to not seem like one of the American language families like Macro-Jê. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 18:41, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

That does seem to be the case, though I don't know why or how that was chosen. The colors seem very strange choices and not as cogent as maybe they should be. For example, why are Hmong–Mien and Kra–Dai dull purple when it appears they should be a shade of red? Is there some way we can consider alternative groupings? I'm not sure geographic is necessarily that helpful and may be counterintuitive (e.g., implying geographic proximity reflects phylogenetic closeness). I do agree conlangs should be changed, though; it is misleading. Perhaps black? ThaesOfereode (talk) 18:58, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Black would be nice. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 21:00, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

The aritcle on Philistine language talks about two different languages with the same name it should be split to Philistine Canaanite and Philistine Indo-European based on the two infoboxes in the article Isla🏳️‍⚧ 21:49, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

The article talks about two very different theories on the origin and affinities of the language, and does not suggest that there were two different languages called "Philistine". I don't know anything about the evidence for the affinity of the language, but if assignment to the Afro-Asiatic family and the Indo-European family are both considered plausible, then not enough is known to support either infobox. Donald Albury 23:30, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

This early edit from 2005 is almost entirely copied from Mackenzie, Ian (2001). A Linguistic Introduction to Spanish. pp. 141–143. (Mackenzie's own website has largely the same text). The article has been expanded since and a lot has been rewritten but portions of the plagiarized text remain. I could delete remaining plagiarized material but beyond that does anyone know what should be done? Erinius (talk) 01:31, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

Deleted remaining plagiarism, an admin sensibly denied revdel. Erinius (talk) 04:33, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion on WikiProject Song Contests regarding the separation of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian — IмSтevan ^talk 15:56, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Kabyles hadra#Requested move 22 December 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 23:36, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Biblical Hebrew has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 20:45, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

While editing the article Brunei, I noticed that the Jawi text has some funky markup: {{script|Arab}} wrapped in {{lang|ms-Arab}}. The two "Arab"s look redundant at first, but actually the inner one fixes the rendering of special Jawi characters and the outer one I guess is important for metadata in the rendered HTML.

[[Jawi alphabet|Jawi]]: {{lang|ms-Arab|{{Script|Arab|نݢارا بروني دارالسلام}}}}

→ Jawi: نݢارا بروني دارالسلام‎

To avoid anyone getting confused about this, and to reduce typing, I suggest a template that encapsulates all of this: {{Jawi}}

At its most basic, it would just do the same thing as {{script|Arab}}, but if you supply a language code, it'd wrap the output in {{lang|code-Arab}}. And to further save typing, it could also add a label and/or link, i.e. [[Jawi script|Jawi]].

In pseudocode (Python-ish), the template would look like:

if link == 'yes':
    "[[Jawi script|Jawi]]: "
elif label == 'yes':
    "Jawi: "

if lang:
    "{{lang|" + lang + "-Arab"

"{{script|Arab|" + text or error('No Jawi text provided!') + "}}"

if lang:
    "}}"

So then the above wikitext would look like:

{{Jawi|نݢارا بروني دارالسلام|ms|link=yes}}

(rendered the same)

— W.andrea (talk) 22:31, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

This seems sensible, assuming lang|ms-arab can't handle everything itself. (And even then, Jawi may be a better name than ms-Arab.) CMD (talk) 01:59, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

I've been meaning to ask about this for a while, but are vulnerable languages considered endangered by UNESCO? A lot of sources treat them as such, but official documentation from UNESCO is much more ambiguous, though earlier papers and books such as the Red Book of Endangered Languages, the status is mentioned separately from the endangered set of statuses if I recall correctly. I'd have to look into it again, though I'm a bit busy right now. I figured I should bring this up while I remember it. Arctic Circle System (talk) 02:15, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Wirö language#Requested move 21 January 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ScalarFactor (talk) 03:45, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

These two articles could use some attention from someone familiar with linguistic and/or ethnology minutiae. older ≠ wiser 11:51, 23 January 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Demotic (Egyptian)#Requested move 16 January 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 01:03, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

There is currently an edit-war with a new user at Ainu language over whether it is extinct. Consensus on the talk page appears to be that it is.

We don't have a source as good as saying the language went extinct when the last speaker died in 20xx, as we do for the other Ainuic languages. However, we do have a couple sources, including ones by Ainu scholars, that the language was extinct by 2017. There are other sources that continue to say it is critically endangered, but whether they reject the claims that it is extinct or are simply outdated I don't know.

It would be good to have a third opinion, esp. given the lack of really clear sources. — kwami (talk) 03:16, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

I checked scholarly literature on Ainu and could not find very much info on dormancy/extinction of Ainu. The 2017 source only mentions its dormancy briefly. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 16:14, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Looks like it depends on the definition of "extinct", but this 2019 source writes:

Today, there remain only a few speakers in Hokkaido, who learned vocabularies from their parents or grandparents and who can use simple sentences in Ainu. Nobody speaks only Ainu in everyday life anymore.

This 2022 source writes:

Even so, although the Ainu language, in all of its varieties, is more or less extinct, or "dormant", as a living medium [...] but also Hokkaido Ainu, which has survived longest, has still a few native semi-speakers, as well as a growing number of neo-speakers

So it's not extinct like Wangerooge Frisian is extinct, but it's not in good shape. I don't see any dates for language death at large, but they map out the deaths of non-Hokkaido dialects (e.g., Sakhalin Ainu in 1994). ThaesOfereode (talk) 02:30, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Does "semi-speaker" mean rememberer of their native language, which they once commanded but have since largely forgotten, or does it mean they never had full command of it in the first place (e.g., "learned vocabularies from their parents")? If the latter, which would make the two statements consistent, by the normal definition that would mean the language is extinct. I learned a few words of my grandparents' language when I was a child, but if that were all that was left of it I'd certainly call it 'extinct'. — kwami (talk) 02:44, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

I think there's a blurring of the lines here. Feel free to double check my work (2019 is free to preview; 2022 through TWL), but my read is that these were rememberers who probably bordered on command which they were probably sharply discouraged from in most contexts who mostly lost whatever native command they had (my grandmother could understand the news of her parents' native language around her tween years, but I think that was mostly lost by the time she became my grandmother), but have since re-established their ability through interest groups (e.g., with these neo-speakers) and using previously collected data in a similar way to Native American revitalization happening in the United States. I would consider this about as dead as, say, Mandan: revitalization is ongoing and active, but no truly fluent native speakers have been alive for at least a decade. ThaesOfereode (talk) 03:08, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

I'll just quote the statements without trying to interpret them. — kwami (talk) 04:00, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

In any case, this info should be in the infobox. I have commented out the old critically endangered UNESCO status and mentioned the existence of "native semispeakers" in the infobox. Modify the info if needed. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 16:45, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Looks good. I've downloaded some books and article on Ainu so I'll eventually get to reading some of that stuff and add whatever I think is pertinent. Definitely needs an overhaul, esp in the phonology and grammar. Thanks for the assist on this in the meantime. ThaesOfereode (talk) 16:54, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

No problem. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 18:55, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Do we have a citation for the statement that there were 2 elderly speakers in 2008? The claim is only in the lead; we have the same figure in the text but as p.c. at the ELP with no date. — kwami (talk) 00:41, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

The ELP personal communications were broken with the new formatting of the pages. They originally had dates and text but that is no longer present. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 14:57, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

I saw the 2008 number when I was digging through sources for the extinction. I'll dig through a little later and see if I can't reverse engineer my source mining to find it. ThaesOfereode (talk) 15:27, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

I hate it when I do that. — kwami (talk) 22:33, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

The Wikipedia equivalent of slamming your toe against the furniture, no doubt. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:47, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Good news is I found the source I was looking for. Bad news is it does not confirm that 2 elderly speakers figure. It criticizes a 2009 UNESCO report for its estimate of 15 speakers, but annoyingly doesn't seem to make its own estimate and even more annoyingly cites a 2006 poll saying that 304 people speak Ainu... but only 14 speakers claim to know how to speak it well enough to teach it. I'll let you use this how you see fit. I'm not sure what to make of it myself, but I'll mill around a little more to try and find that 2008 stat. ThaesOfereode (talk) 23:49, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I've contacted the ELP; maybe they'll respond. — kwami (talk) 01:51, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Čestmír Loukotka's 1968 book contains a series of wordlists indicative of the South American languages he listed there. However, many of his transcriptions are inaccurate (e.g. Mochica xllac *[ɬak] 'fish' as ⟨shľak⟩ [ʃʎak] using Loukotka's transcription into IPA) and are outdated with the advent of modern linguistic practices (e.g. Ticuna tones not being represented in Loukotka's lists), which provide much more accurate transcriptions for words. I am uncertain as to why this outdated source is even prevalent in most South American Indigenous language articles. There are much better compilations of vocabulary created more recently.

I propose that these wordlists be systematically replaced with Swadesh lists taken from modern linguistic sources for modern and well-documented recently extinct languages, and be replaced by the original source(s) or modern analyses of the original for extinct and poorly documented languages. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 19:06, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm not all that familiar with South American linguistics, but it looks like it was a pretty important piece of literature at one point, even if it is outdated now. For any language out there which have more recent compilations or works on them, we should definitely consider replacing them with more up-to-date sources per WP:AGEMATTERS. My main question is how do you plan to make the replacement systematic? And do you have a plan to identify source materials for those languages? I have a couple sources which focus on the Indigenous landscape of South America, but I'm not sure you necessarily would (or even could) make word lists from them. ThaesOfereode (talk) 20:52, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

All of the living languages of South America have sources for vocabulary. This can be extracted from grammars, dictionaries or shorter vocabularies. Glottolog has a large repository of sources. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 23:38, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

Loukotka's extensive bibliography can be employed for languages extinct before 1964. This is the baseline for sources listed there. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 23:40, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

That makes sense. How were you thinking of going about this at scale? ThaesOfereode (talk) 15:28, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

@ThaesOfereode Finding sources, from databases like the IDS or dictionries for the language itself, if possible first, then looking in grammatical descriptions to find words. Languages poorly documented and extinct before 1964 should use sources from the Loukotka bibliography. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 16:18, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

There are a number of edge cases, Arutani language, Taruma language, etc. for still-living languages that have no grammatical description. In these cases, a short, recently recorded vocabulary should be used. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 16:38, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Okay, a follow-up question because I think it's important to clarify. Do these pages need wordlists? I've argued once or twice against it on talk pages, but I don't think they're really helpful as strictly encyclopedic content outside of comparative linguistics pages like family pages (e.g., Romance languages) or other contact linguistics pages (e.g., loanwords). I'm not going to get into an edit war over it, but I am happy to be convinced since I haven't been so far. I love a great wordlist as much as anyone (I started editing on Wiktionary before Wikipedia!), but I haven't been convinced this is the forum for their inclusion when Wiktionary is designed for that kind of stuff. I've milled through all the FAs and GAs, and none of them have wordlists except to exemplify some other concept (e.g., case structure, comparisons of dialect). ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:36, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

They are a useful tool to exemplify a language's basic vocabulary. They do not need to be very long, as that would detract from the encyclopedic format of articles, but for numerous languages we have no grammatical info and the wordlists are the only existing examples of the languages.

On a side note, many articles are marked as "Start" when they are at least C or even B in terms of their content. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 01:41, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose I can see the value of a wordlist if there is no accessible RSs for grammar or vocabulary, but barring that, I'm still skeptical. Still, if sources exist and we can improve these pages, I'm interested in helping out, esp on a basis like this. Let me know how I can help and I'm happy to get involved.

Yeah, this is a site-wide issue. Not sure there's a systemic way to fix it, especially since it doesn't really affect the average reader's experience. Download Rater to your .js and fix them as you mill around. Lord knows I've re-rated more articles than could possibly be reasonable at this point. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:51, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I do have Rater but am busy with other projects at the moment. I believe that some of the South AMerican language articles could qualify for GA as well. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 01:57, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Most of the stub articles have entire grammatical descriptions which could majorly improve the article. An egregious example is Tanimuca-Retuarã language, which has one line of text but an entire book on its syntax. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 01:58, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

No worries. I'm no stranger to the "other projects" feeling myself. I have a few irons in the fire right now, but shoot me a link to the grammar for that linked language and I'll try to take a look in the near future. I think C → GA is good; I think stub → GA is better. ThaesOfereode (talk) 02:09, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

It isn't publicly available online from what I can tell, but it is titled Retuarã Syntax by Clay Strom. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 02:15, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, doesn't look like it. I'll see if I can order it from my local library when I return my next book. ThaesOfereode (talk) 02:22, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Talk:Guarani languages regarding a proposed merge with Guarani dialects. The thread is Merge proposal. ~ oklopfer (💬) 07:21, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

What started as a dispute with a TA editor on the Fiji Hindi page (resulting in it getting protection locked) has now made its way into Western Hindi languages and likely soon Eastern Hindi languages. The editor has been attempting to alter the definition of Standard Hindi as both Western and Eastern based on geographical reasoning, that it is spoken all across India. Relevant discussion can be found here: User talk:~2026-10794-16#February 2026

Against my better judgement I have been getting into an intense EW with them, and recognize continuing is not going to bode over well for me. They have added content that is not corroborated by the sources they are providing here to make their point that the linguistic classification is wrong: Special:Diff/1339333907

I am requesting help in resolving this from fellow linguists and language enthusiasts as I clearly need to step back. ~ oklopfer (💬) 00:56, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Pinging @Kepler-1229b, @Kwamikagami, and @ThaesOfereode as recent frequenters. Apologies if this is unwelcome. ~ oklopfer (💬) 01:50, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

@Oklopfer Glottolog lists Fiji Hindi under Hindustani, so following them it should be placed under there. I have no specific knowledge in the subject matter though. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 03:08, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Glottolog says their subclassification of Hindustani is from Masica 1993 and Kogan 2017. Kogan doesn't mention Fijian Hindi, and Masica only speaks of Indo-Aryan koines in Fiji and Trinidad, and Bhojpuri in Fiji (that is, that Fiji Hindi derives from Bhojpuri). That leaves us with Siegel 1992 for the Glottolog classification of Fiji Hindi. I can only find the intro to Siegel 1988. In Siegel, Bhojpuri counts as 'Hindi'. He reviews the accounts of Pillai, Moag, Tiwari and Hobbs. Siegel says that koineization [in cases like Fiji Hindi] 'comprises several component processes resulting in the elimination of differences between dialects and the emergence of a new dialect which consists of a mixture of features of the dialects in contact but is less complex.' He speaks of diglossia, with later Hindu and Muslim missionaries introducing Standard Hindi/Urdu to Fiji. In Trinidad, the cline goes from Bhojpuri (or more accurately Magahi) as the basolect and near-standard Hindi as the acrolect.

Fiji Hindi as a distinct language would need to be the basolect. And that is a koine. The Indian standards are used for education and literature in the 6 countries he covers. He says his paper shows that Fiji Hindi is not based on Bhojpuri (really Magahi) like the other overseas varieties. But our article has long said it's based primarily on Awadhi.

There's also an influence of Bazaar Hindustani.

For leveling, Siegel says, "I show for FH [Fiji Hindi] the -in perfective suffIx for third person plural is found only in one dialect, Avadhi, but in Fiji this dialect was spoken by over a third of the North Indian labourers. On the other hand. the ergative past construction for transitive verbs is characteristic of dozens of Western Hindi and Rajasthani dialects. But these dialects were spoken by less than a fifth of the North Indian labourers and the feature is not found in FH." He notes that the word for 6 is from Chattisgarhi, despite being spoken by less than 3% of immigrants, and quotes Pillai that the choice of which dialect supplied a lexeme can be 'capricious'. But the only sources he notes are Eastern Hindi.

We'd need to check the full chapter to be sure, but from the intro it seems a bit dubious that Fiji Hindi is 'Hindustani' in the narrow sense that Glottolog (and we) use the term. — kwami (talk) 04:38, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Well this is an interesting aside... we had not been disputing about Fiji Hindi being an Eastern Hindi language, only about whether Standard Hindi is a Western Hindi language (I just added four sources to the Western Hindi languages article which all corroborate that it is, but I have a feeling the other editor is going to revert me purely on dispute rather than checking the sources; time will tell). ~ oklopfer (💬) 05:08, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

This is the old problem of "Hindi" not having any defined meaning. Anything that doesn't have its own standard is "Hindi", which after all just means "Indian". The official language of India is Urdu [though most Hindus of course won't call it that], and that is largely based on Dehlavi, which is definitely Western Hindi (as are the dialects of the earlier capitals, which carried over somewhat into the standard). The more expansive use of the word corresponds to the Hindi Belt, which isn't a linguistic grouping and is defined negatively. — kwami (talk) 05:17, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I figured that is the basis for their dispute.

This is bringing up yet another question for me: is the current redirect of Dehlavi dialectDehlavi dialect to Hindustani language the right path? Delhi dialectDelhi dialect redirects to Kauravi dialect, and the only mention of "Dehlavi dialect" on Hindustani is a quote that it is derived from such. Old Hindi is the only one which makes a claim to the title Dehlavi in its lede, and it is apparent that the same confusion of terms exists for Khariboli. The Kauravi page does not help with the confusion, which most of its lede seems to be about Old Hindi and not the dialect at all. ~ oklopfer (💬) 06:08, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I forget the details, but several of these terms are used to refer to more than one thing. It's hard to be consistent when words keep changing meaning, even if sources agree on substance.

Dehlavi and Delhi dialect should rd to the same article, though. Thanks for catching that. — kwami (talk) 06:19, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

I think things would be easier if we moved the article to Modern Standard Hindi, with a hat note to the dab page, much as we have with Standard Chinese. With the current setup, 'Hindi' doesn't mean Hindi. But it's been debated to death and doesn't seem worth the effort. — kwami (talk) 06:32, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Probably a good idea ~ oklopfer (💬) 20:21, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

Hello WikiProject Languages Members,

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There is a requested move discussion at Talk:English personal pronouns#Requested move 2 March 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Abesca (talk) 03:54, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

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)