Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages/Archive 15

I had initially proposed to rename Category:History of the English language to Category:History of English, which was opposed and withdrawn (link). Then, I decided to do the reverse (link). Unfortunately, User:36.77.92.121 added more articles into the RM, which hampered the entire process by oppositions. I only wanna rename History of English to History of the English language, not the other language articles titled as "History of foo". Pinging those who are involved in this problem.​​​​​ --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:15, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I also wanna punish 36.77.92.121 for nominating more article titles into the RM that I am neutral with. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:15, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

IP reported to ANI. Nardog (talk) 18:23, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

If this is supposed to be a proposal for a requested move, please format it properly (see WP:RM#CM). If it's just a discussion and not a proposal, then I'd say you've given no reason why changing the name would be an improvement, or how it would better satisfy the article titles policy. Mathglot (talk) 10:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Both titles are consistent with a typical articlonomy (e.g. History of English is consistent with History of Danish et al. History of the English language is consistent with History of the Spanish language et al.). However, the latter is more consistent with Category:History of the English language. I am drafting a naming convention proposal to mitigate this problem (link). --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 12:50, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

hey everyone! I've proposed merging Language preservation into Endangered language on the latter's talk page. I figured I'd post this here as the talk page doesn't appear to see much traffic. Thoughts?

CampWood (talk) 15:49, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

I have proposed some (59) maintenance categories for renaming.

The schema is Category:Articles with text from the Afro-Asiatic languages collective to Category:Articles with text from Afro-Asiatic languages. The reason is that these groups of languages are not called collectives, they do not need an explicit group qualifier, and if they did it would not be "collective".

It has been suggested that the proposal would be of interest to members of this project.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 21:56, 18 August 2020 (UTC).

There's a discussion we're having at Talk:Molossians#Georgiev in which members of this wikiproject could contribute and provide new perspectives.--Maleschreiber (talk) 07:31, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

We are fighting against vandalising on wiki, so we should fight against vandalising of writing systems in reality as well: https://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=57993

This is common russian practice BTW:

• https://lenta.ru/articles/2004/11/16/language/ (in Russian) -- "criminalized Latin", "outlawed any switch to Latin"
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_press_ban
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Ukaz#Yaryzhka
• and so on, and so on, and so on...195.114.146.60 (talk) 05:31, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

FYI - there is a move discussion Talk:Te'un language#Requested move 2 September 2020 about an apostrophe (yes, kwami, an apostrophe!) in the title. –Austronesier (talk) 08:37, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

FYI - this might be interesting for members of this project not watching WP Linguistics:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#What is WP:SYNTH when using multiple sources about language classification?

–Austronesier (talk) 11:00, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

I recently wrote an article about the Language Question (Malta), and while I was researching it I came across a somewhat similar linguistic debate which took place in Italy. This is covered by a fairly decent article on the Italian Wikipedia (it:Questione della lingua) but there's no article about it on the English Wikipedia. Would someone from this project be interested in translating the article from Italian and perhaps improving upon it?

I am also making this request at WikiProject Italy and WikiProject Linguistics. --Xwejnusgozo (talk) 19:28, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject English Language § Inconsistent examples in talk page templates. Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 12:21, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Talk:Middle Tamil#Sharp contradiction between Middle Tamil and Old Malayalam articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:36, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Continuing debate at Ainu language about whether it should be treated as a small family or a single language. We're going in circles, with bad/unsourced info repeatedly restored (such as treating Amur Ainu as a distinct language, as well as a Tohoku Ainu which AFAICT is OR). We could use input from more people here. — kwami (talk) 00:03, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

WikiProject Constructed languages is semi-active, with Esperanto task force being inactive. We have to reorganise the project and convert it to a task force. We can reorganise the Esperanto task force as well. What do you think? --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:03, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

We also have to reorganise WikiProject Endangered languages and convert it into a task force. --Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:12, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm generally in favor of merging WikiProjects when they're (semi-)inactive. Having multiple venues makes discussions harder to follow and inhibits coordination. By merging WikiProject Conlangs and WikiProject Endangered Langs here, we consolidate discussion traffic and reinvigorate this more general project. I'd say go for it, and get in touch if you need help. — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:03, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

I was fiddling with the Petscan earlier today, and I found out there are quite a few language articles that are not tagged with this project's banner. It's hard to know exactly how many there are, but if you go for a concrete question, like 'How many articles have a language infobox but are not tagged for this project?', you'll get a concrete answer, 931. That's a lot. Over 7% of all the articles already tagged over the years.

The list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Articles to tag. Anybody interested in lending a hand with this massive task? – Uanfala (talk) 01:49, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Yup, looks like fun! –Austronesier (talk) 09:09, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Well, my assumption has been that the fact of not being project-tagged may sometimes be an indication that the articles need attention. That's why I thought it might be a good idea to review them manually. Is that the case? If they invariably turn out to be alright, and it's just the banner that needs adding, then we could probably request that as a bot task. – Uanfala (talk) 22:08, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I think we should continue to do it manually, so we can catch "gems" such as Dagestani Russian, which I think is close to being AfD-able. –Austronesier (talk) 10:40, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

 Done Just removed the last ones from the list. Uanfala, do you want to run the Petscan report again to see if it's all fixed now? Carter (talk) 21:01, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Excellent, Tcr25! The Petscan report is at , I've just run iy and and there was only one article with unusual (rather than missing) tags, which I've now corrected. – Uanfala (talk) 22:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Awesome. Mission accomplished! Carter (talk) 00:38, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Oh, wait – the petscan was misbehaving when I ran the full search, so the above link only shows some of the results. The full picture can been seen by running it for each template individually: Infobox language family, Infobox proto-language, and Infobox language. Still, I don't see anything that needs doing now – there are three articles in the last set, but they only have a bit of language content embedded within a bigger article, so I'm not sure whether we would like to track them. – Uanfala (talk) 14:12, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

I went ahead an replaced the language info box on one of those three (there's a full article on the language, so I added a main link to that). The other two seemed like adding the WP Languages template made sense. Carter (talk) 18:27, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

FYI

For details, please see: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Finished MOS:DIACRITICS merge.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:00, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

If you can write Amharic or Tigrinya, please see WT:WikiProject Ethiopia#Help needed for Amharic/Tigrinya welcome-template translation. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:52, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

There is a discussion at Template talk:Interlanguage link#Suppressing Crewbot conversion that may be of interest to this WikiProject. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 14:29, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Several articles such as French language and Spanish language has dozens of categories for every single country that has a population of speakers. Categories are supposed to be defining, and Spanish is not defined by being spoken in the United States.★Trekker (talk) 21:01, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Need help in developing, some users keep delete the contents of it. Magysze (talk) 12:55, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

The language exist for sure, it has its own script. Magysze (talk) 12:55, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

According to a widely accepted modern hypothesis, the Székelys were originally a Turkic people who joined the Magyars in the Pontic steppes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magysze (talk • contribs) 13:07, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

User keep delete it because it is a hoax. The Székelys speak a Hungarian dialect. Borsoka (talk) 13:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Comment: Dialect vs. language can be a slippery slope often more about politics and identity than linguistics. That said, the created article looked like it borrowed heavily from the Old Hungarian script article and the Székelys article doesn't include anything about language or dialect. I'd suggest that Székelys include a section on what Székelys speak and highlight how it is related to/differs from standard Hungarian. Carter (talk) 13:45, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

There is no scholarly debate on this issue: Székelys speak a Hungarian dialect. The editor who claims the existence of a "Szekely language" has unable to refer to a single reliable source to verify his statement. Borsoka (talk) 14:18, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not arguing either way, just noting that the Székelys article is probably the best place to start outlining what's being spoken. Carter (talk) 14:27, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

If you don't agree with Borsoka talk you get blocked. Instead of Borsoka talk) to develop the article he warns you with blocking. If there exist people of Szekely why not in democratic way it's recognized also their language? They have their own script right? It's a language not dialect but someone has a POV here. Borsoka talk)...Magysze (talk) 16:32, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Magysze, I understand why you're upset, but any article here needs to be supported by reliable sources. I've been googling around and can find little describing Székely speech and outlining where it falls among Uralic languages, it's relationship to Hungarian, etc. (at least not in English). The use of Old Hungarian script among the Székely community is attested, but a different script doesn't always mean a sperate language; Serbian language, for example, has uses of both Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Again, I'd suggest not making dialect vs. language the main issue; instead focus on describing the speech and writing, using WP:RS, outline its use, history, linguistic classification, and what distinguishes it from related languages/dialects. That could be done as part of the Székelys article first and if it turns out there's enough well sourced material out there, then it could be appropriate to expand it to a full article.Carter (talk) 16:54, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Using their own script is irrelevant. Quite a few languages are or have been written in more than one script, whether by the same people or by separate groups of speakers. Largoplazo (talk) 17:15, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: just a remark: Székely script is widely used in Hungary as well, as it is demonstrated by the above picture. It was taken at the Hungarian village of Vonyarcvashegy. Borsoka (talk) 17:29, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Why not the article to explain better the history, with pro and cons. The difference between hungarian and szekely have to be described. Magysze (talk) 16:56, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I see there is POV from some Hungarian users to mock the Szekely language and to block any edits on it. Save the Szekely language article from this army POV pushers. Magysze (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Comment: Magysze has stated on two Talk pages that he is Hungarian ( and ). These were obviously false statements and he is obviously not here to build an encyclopedia (). Borsoka (talk) 17:27, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Actually I am proud Szekely, something that you don't recognize of course. Magysze (talk) 17:28, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

And you twice stated you were Hungarian. You should explain your contradictory statements, or one can assume you are a PoV pushing liar. And we both know that you are actually Romanian and you cannot speak Hungarian, you cannot use "Szekely" sript, and you have nothing common with "Szekelys". Borsoka (talk) 17:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I am a proud Szekely, which you don't recognize and respect me. Magysze (talk) 17:49, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Borsoka, fanning the flames is not the way to build an encyclopedia. –Austronesier (talk) 17:47, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier: how would you describe an editor who twice stated falsely that he was a Hungarian in order to push chauvinistic Romanian PoVs? Borsoka (talk) 17:55, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

What are you saying? It's Szekely people here about. Has nothing to do with Romanians. It has to do with HUngarians and Szekely only. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magysze (talk • contribs) 17:57, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I think Austronesier's point was that regardless of what justification you might give for your ad hominem attacks, they are still ad hominem attacks and not helpful to resolving the debate on its merits. (That goes for everyone who's involved in this "you're this, I'm that" side show.) Largoplazo (talk) 18:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your message. I hope you do not say that making false statements about our ethnicity is a respected way of discussing issues. :) Borsoka (talk) 18:07, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

By the way, the Romanians recognize Szekely ethnicity which Hungarians don't, so who is chauvinist? This is to reply to Borsoka. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magysze (talk • contribs) 18:03, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Comment: The Hungarian editor Borsoka refuses to recognize the Szekler identity. Which of course its not democratic in European Union. Magysze (talk) 18:06, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Could you refer to a reliable source describing the "Szekely language"? Borsoka (talk) 18:11, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I propose that anyone who claims the existence of a distinct Székely language

• look at all the sources given at Székelys#Origins and Origin of the Székelys#Social group: Hungarian border guards;
• ascertain the extent to which they support the assertions in those articles that there is no distinct Székely language; and
• if they do support those assertions, either accept that for our purposes it isn't a distinct language or find sources that say the opposite and be prepared to explain why they are more reliable than the sources we already have.

Largoplazo (talk) 18:12, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your proposal. I hope that Magysze (who have just identified himself as a half Hungarian, half "Szekely" ) can also accept it. Borsoka (talk) 18:18, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Would you stop with the irrelevant ethnic taunting? Largoplazo (talk) 18:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Having said that: Whether or not it's a distinct language is apart from the question of whether there can or should be a separate article on what the Székely people speak if (a) it's distinct from mainstream Hungarian in significant ways explained in reliable sources and (b) it meets the notability criteria for a separate article. We have plenty of articles about language variants. Largoplazo (talk) 18:19, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I am sure that the Székely dialect meets the notability criteria for a separate article. Borsoka (talk) 18:26, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

• That half the people involved in this dispute are not from the region is quite unhelpful. No Székely language exists. There is nothing to discuss, change or negotiate, and there is no new article to create. No Székelys claim a different ethnicity. In the Romanian census of 2011, out of the approximately 600,000 Székelys that exist, only 532 did not declare themselves as Hungarian (look this up at the Székelys article). I would in fact say that Székelys are the most nationalistic out of all the Hungarian subgroups. And it's obvious anyway that this guy isn't Székely or Hungarian. This discussion is completely pointless and should be stopped and this troll should be ignored and subsequently blocked. Super Ψ Dro 18:32, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I was not brave enough to say this. Yes, this impostor makes fun of us. I maintain that a separate article should be dedicated to the Székely dialect (and all other Hungarian dialects). Borsoka (talk) 18:38, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I am surprised it doesn't exist yet. Yes, it should exist. By the way, is the Csango dialect really referred to as "Moldavian"? This is what it says in the Hungarian dialects article. Super Ψ Dro 18:59, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I am not sure what is the scientific term, but I would say Csángó in Hungarian. Perhaps for English readers the term "Moldavian" is more familiar (or less alien). Borsoka (talk) 19:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I was going to propose replacing all mentions of "Moldavian" to "Csango" but I made a quick search and the term is apparently used as well. Super Ψ Dro 19:50, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

A lot of the mentions I'm seeing are to either Moldovan language or Moldavian dialect of Romanian (even the Moldovan disambig page doesn't mention a Hungarian dialect); I don't see many unambiguous uses of Moldavian when talking about Csángó. Carter (talk) 21:54, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't mean all the mentions of Moldavian in the whole of Wikipedia, just those related to the Csango dialect (and it's a valid name for it too so it doesn't matter). Super Ψ Dro 22:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't looking specifically at Wikipedia, but at Google Scholar and general Google searches as Borsoka speculated that "Moldavian" might be more familiar than "Csángó" to English speakers. It wasn't to me and I don't see that looking around elsewhere. That said, if it is a valid name (whether the dominant one or not), then it belongs on the disambig page too. Carter (talk) 23:51, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

The adjective can refer to anything from or related to Moldavia. Therefore, it can refer to the Moldavian dialect(s) of both Romanian and Hungarian. However, I do not know what is the proper English term when speaking about the Csángós' tongue. Borsoka (talk) 00:54, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

I understand that. What I'm saying is that a look at what's out there in Google Scholar seems to be heavily weighted towards "Csángós dialect." Articles discussing "Moldavian dialect" more frequently point to the Moldavian dialect of Romanian. Carter (talk) 02:11, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your research. Borsoka (talk) 03:34, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

• I don't think we should get too hung up the dialect/language issue. Separating (Moldovan language or Macedonian language come to mind) or joining (Langues d'oïl and Provençal dialect, German dialects) elements in the language continuum into discrete languages is more of a political issue, than a linguistic issue. In this case dialect is probably more appropriate than language, but this affects the proposed article very little.--Bob not snob (talk) 07:18, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

I have the list of language articles maintained by the Endangered Languages Project and am requesting a bot to add them to our info boxes, analogous to the Glottolog etc. links. Wanted to give everyone a heads-up in case you think there may be complications. I did one by hand at Dâw language as an example.

The ELP covers 3000+ languages. They have demographic data, sometimes quite different from the numbers Ethn. reports, and their sources are clear. They're also freely available and so will be accessible to more of our readers. (Ethn. is now $480/year without map access.)

I'm planning on asking the bot to ID the correct article for each ELP link by tracing the ISO redirect, verify that that ISO code is actually listed in the info box (it's been years since we verified they match, so some of them won't any longer), and add the ELP link and name as params in the box. Since the ELP language "code" is just the identifying part of the URL and has no other meaning, it would probably be best for our box to display the name rather than the code, as it currently is in the Dâw article. (But that can be adjusted in the box template after the bot is run.) There will be more than one ELP link in some info boxes, so the bot will need to keep a list of those too, so we can add the needed level of support to the box template.

Any opinions? — kwami (talk) 10:44, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

I can't think of any serious repercussions. Go ahead, and if the bot messes things up here and there, we can always clean up behind it. Most language pages are watched by some people, so things shouldn't stay bad for too long. Landroving Linguist (talk) 13:04, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

If unforeseen problems crop up, that the bot wasn't tracking, we'll have the master list to ID other pages that might have the same issue. — kwami (talk) 03:47, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

• I'm agnostic on whether these links should be included in the infobox rather than the "external links" section. If they are included, then I think they should be presented more succinctly than they currently are: I've started a discussion about that at Template talk:Infobox language#ELP and Glottopedia links. – Uanfala (talk) 17:58, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Controversy on Szekely language I will work on this now. Magysze (talk) 18:05, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Does anyone know if a Wikipedia in Moselle Franconian was or is being requested? And if not: is it possible to write in in the Luxembourgish Wikipedia using other Moselle Franconian varieties? --Son-of-my-comfort (talk) 18:28, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Requests for new language Wikipedias are handled at Meta. That page links to a list of current proposals, and to instructions on how to request a new language project. Questions about what may done in the Luxembourgish Wikipedia should be asked there. The English Wikipedia has no power or standing in any other language project. - Donald Albury 22:02, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

I object to this line "colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu are almost completely mutually intelligible, so they are sometimes classified as one language, Hindustani, instead of two separate languages" in the title of the website ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers

Hindi and Urdu have EXACTLY the same relationship that Serbian and Croatian have. The difference is that Hindi and Urdu are not European, thus the author's prejudice in dividing Hindi and Urdu as "separate" languages, even with this ridiculous heading noting they're actually the same spoken language. Serbian is spoken by the religiously Eastern Orthodox and uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Croatian is the Catholic, Roman alphabet version of the SAME language spoken in Serbia. Urdu is written with an Arabic script and its speakers are, by and large, Muslim. Hindi is written in its own, different script, and, by and large, spoken by Hindus, but these are the SAME language, like Serbo-Croatian. The differences and similarities in these two/four languages is striking, yet, in an apparent western bias, you divide the Hindi/Urdu speakers into two different languages (thereby lowering the number of speakers of this one true language, while uniting Serbo-Croatian to give them a higher position in the count of "number of speakers").

I write this by way of experience. I am a white North American native English speaker who butchers Spanish as my only semi-second language. But I have watched my Delhi wife converse effortlessly with South Indians (who supposedly don't speak Hindi, but I've never met one yet here in the USA that couldn't understand her Hindi) and, more to the point, Pakistanis, without issue. She speaks with them as easily as I can speak to an Australian. Sure, Australians don't sound like Americans, but my understanding of them is a WHOLE lot better than my Spanish speaking brethren. If Serbo-Croatian is going to be listed as one language (and it should be), Hindi and Urdu deserve the same. Mutual intelligibility is more important than religion or script or past political difference when the subject is "spoken languages". Please apply the same standard for eastern languages that you shower on western ones, and list Hindi-Urdu speakers as a whole, instead of dividing them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.118.30.14 (talk) 17:01, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Reliable sources, both South Asian and western sources, describe it differently. The article Hindustani language exactly explains why Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible at the colloquial level, but not on the literary level. So they do not have "the same relationship that Serbian and Croatian have" (add: Bosnian, Montegrin). You will not succeed to write a text in Standard Croatian that will be unintelligible to a Serb, Bosnian or Montegrin provided they can read Latin script, whereas Hindi or Urdu texts at a sufficiently sophisticated level can be quite unintelligible to a speaker of the other variant. If anything is ridiculous here, it is to speak of an "apparent western bias". Quite to contrary, many Hindi and Urdu speakers find it condescending when English WP tells them that actually they speak the "same language". –Austronesier (talk) 17:20, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Input from a broader community of scholars wanted for discussion of the terms 'dormant' or 'sleeping' vs 'extinct'/'dead' for languages that do not have a current community of speakers: see Indigenous Languages of the Americas: Talk page--AmyFou (talk) 22:44, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect South Scandinavian languages. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 20#South Scandinavian languages until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:55, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I've been adding foreign language tags to Wikipedia for a while now, and I've noticed there's no mention of {{transl}} in the Cleanup lang template, or the supporting page for the template.

This, I think, is an issue that possibly needs acting upon. When I started adding foreign language tags, it was because, I think, I'd seen a cleanup lang template somewhere; clicked on it, and thought, "oh, right. So, I add {{lang|[ISO code]-Latn to romanised text, then, gotcha".

This wasn't correct; I should've used the transl template for romanised text, and I shouldn't have used the italic=no function for a number of words - because, as someone pointed out to me, if there's no indication to a seeing reader that a word should be pronounced differently, what's the point of doing so for a user with a screenreader? Not only that, the -Latn function causes some text to display oddly for certain viewers, leading some editors to actually remove the tags outright, as they think it interrupts the flow of the article and shouldn't be there. All of this, I emphasise, is my own fault. I'm still cleaning up my unfortunate mess today.

I know that Template:Lang mentions the transl function, but there's no mention of it in the Cleanup lang template or its supporting page. I really think it should; it's one thing getting editors to add lang tags, but it's another trying to raise awareness of the transl template, which even fewer seem to have heard of. It saves having to cleanup faulty language tags later, for one thing.

I don't know how changing the layout of the template would affect the pages it happens to be on, so apologies if this comes across as a "just do it, it's so easy" kind of comment for something that might actually be quite hard. However, I just had to point it out. I'd appreciate any thoughts on the matter. Thanks! --Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 13:30, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Feedback is being requested at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)#Disambiguation by language family. The question is whether something like Mango language (Sino-Tibetan) is better as a title or Mango (Sino-Tibetan language). This concerns about 15 articles. – Uanfala (talk) 21:00, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Is there a way to opt a page out of bot-aided spell-checks? It is nice that language tags assists spellcheckers in their semi-automatized cleanup task, but: who assists us in manually adding these tags for the benefit of an automatized process? Whenever I see this {{cleanup lang}}-tag added, I feel I'd rather check the spelling manually once in a while rather than to bloat the code, which makes the pages harder to edit. –Austronesier (talk) 20:35, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Bots can be excluded from a given page using {{bots}} (provided they're exclusion compliant). However, most typo fixing appears to be done manually (or semi-manually using AWB) – I don't know if there's a way to turn that off. The bigger issue here is that preventing spellchecker cock-ups is only one of the many purposes of lang tagging, a more important one has to do with accessibility – screen readers need the tag in order to appropriately render the text in the correct language rather than attempt to pronounce it as an English word. Screen readers should probably recognise some of the major languages, but I'd be surprised if they cared for the rest. I sincerely doubt lang tagging in an article like Medumba language would ever make a meaningful difference to accessibility. In principle, tagging there should be a good idea, but in practice it will involve a lot of effort with little tangible benefit. If it were up to me, {{cleanup lang}} would just be removed from this article – even if you agree with the need for inserting lang formatting there, there's absolutely no need to have such a technical task prominently advertised to readers. – Uanfala (talk) 21:40, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm continuing this at Template talk:Lang#Is the template needed for obscure languages? – Uanfala (talk) 01:27, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

A new editor has been added a language infobox and wording to the article Spanish language in the Philippines to be about Philippine Spanish as a distinct variety of Spanish, rather than just the history & usage of Spanish in the Philippines.

There were past discussions about this at Talk:Philippine Spanish#Merger and Talk:Philippine Spanish#Proposal to recover this page, where only one RS could be found describing it as a distinct variety of Spanish. Any additional insight would be much appreciated. — MarkH₂₁^talk 21:29, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Pinging the new editor, Dbee384, to discuss here as well. — MarkH₂₁^talk 21:31, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

@MarkH21: I saw one mention of Philippine Spanish here. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 15:23, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

See also very lengthy discussions and research that make up the bulk of Talk:New Mexican Spanish (formerly Spanish in New Mexico for a while, I think, and certainly re-scoped to include that). In short, it is much, much more difficult to write an actually encyclopedic and properly sourced article on an alleged regional dialect, than to have a section on dialectal difference at a broader article on the history and status of a language in a particular region. A dialect article is certain not impossible, but there are far fewer sources for it (and many of them will be things like linguistics theses/dissertations at regional universities, which may not even be online-accessible but require a trip to the university library, and which aren't very good sources to begin with). We probably need a general article with more specific dialect-related section much more than we need a dialect article, and we don't need both (if we had both, it would be a likely merger, unless the resulting merged article was so long it hit WP:SIZE limits. English itself is a bit of an exception, because this is English Wikipedia. An article like American English is very viable and there are reams of sources immediately available via Google Scholar and other journal searches.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:59, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

The source by Lipski mentioned in Talk:Philippine Spanish#Merger actually contains valuable data that illustrates the distinct (and pretty volatile) character of contenmporary Philippine Spanish, but at the same time gives the impression that much it is related to the L2- and semi-speaker status of ethnic Spaniards in the Philippines. It doens't look like a stable and established variant that could justify a standalone article. –Austronesier (talk) 14:45, 9 April 2021 (UTC)