Talk:Uralic languages

Table unusable on mobile site

The table of comparative Uralic features is unusable on the Wikipedia mobile site; when navigating around it the footnotes move with the table rather than having a fixed position. Stockhausenfan (talk) 12:31, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Disputed families, on daughter language pages.

@Kaarkemhveel, @Thadh, @Kwamikagami, @Kepler-1229b I'm mentioning users who I know worked on at least one Uralic language, or languages in general.

Is there a rule that I have not seen that describes how disputed families should be displayed?

If not, then I suggest, we show them, just put them in brackets, so it'll be intuitive that they are considered not to exist, just as brackets are used in regular writing, to show something out of context, I think out of context can fit this use. Leave the question mark out, since it'll just cluter, and imo will not add aditional meaning. Ewithu (talk) 17:21, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in that, but I suppose it should either be made by analogy with Hungarian page or the question itself should be addressed to discussion about formatting norms (because Yeniseian page seems to display it with question mark) Kaarkemhveel (talk) 17:47, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

For the Yeniseian remark, it seem to use question marks for a proposed family. Ewithu (talk) 17:57, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Since Uralic isn't disputed (Marcantonio notwithstanding), I guess you refer to the traditional subdivions like Finno-Ugric, Ugric, Volga-Finnic etc.? Or is it about long-range proposals? In the latter case, we shouldn't mention any of them, since none has gained the level of acceptance that would justify an infobox entry.

As for the subdivisions, we'd better leave them out in the Uralic infobox. Every recent good source that gives a general overview starts with the nine undisputed branches, and only mentions the disputed subdivisions at a later point in the discussion of the family. So our current infobox aligns well with this kind of presentation as found e.g. in the Oxford and Routledge handbooks. For individual languages, it's a different thing. When you talk about the genealogical position of Hungarian, one of the first things to mention is Ugric, even if it is contested by many as a genealogical unit. I find question marks more useful than parentheses, since they explicitly display doubt, while the latter don't necessarily do so. –Austronesier (talk) 18:45, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Pinging also User:Tropylium and User:Jähmefyysikko. –Austronesier (talk) 18:47, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The unofficial convention appears to be question marks. I have seen this used in the aforementioned Yeniseian page, but also elsewhere, like Pama-Nyungan languages which displays Macro-Pama-Nyungan with a question mark. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 21:54, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't understand what parentheses mean. I'd think they meant intermediate nodes between the family and the language. (Hungarian is in the Uralic language family, and BTW there is this intermediate classification as Finno-Ugric and as hUgric.) Formatting it as (Ugric?) rather than as Ugric (?) would be fine, probably better. We might want to distinguish dubious nodes in parentheses and question marks from dubious membership in an accepted node with just a question mark, but I don't know how intuitive that would be. — kwami (talk) 23:27, 17 September 2024 (UTC)