Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)

Addition of "language histories"

There is a great disagreement among editors on whether history articles on language varieties should be titled with the bare name of the variety or with a natural disambiguator like "the ... language". To reduce furthur disagreement, a section called "language histories" should be added with the content rendered like the following:

History articles on language varieties (i.e. languages, dialects, or sociolects) can be titled with the bare name of the variety where it is unambiguous (e.g. History of Latin) or unquestionably the primary topic for the name (e.g. History of Danish, History of English). In other cases, where the language is not the primary topic, a natural disambiguator like "the ... language" is preferred (e.g. History of the Irish language, History of the Spanish language).

There is a great disagreement among editors on whether history articles on language varieties should be titled with the bare name of the variety or with a natural disambiguator like "the ... language". However, there is a consensus that the history articles on language varieties should not be renamed, either directly or with the requested move, without discussion at the respective WikiProject.

References

--Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 13:47, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguation by language family

When there are two or more languages with the same name, they would typically be titled something like XXX language (YYY), where YYY is either the country/region, or the language family. Country names appear to be more common, but there are a few dozen articles using the language family. Most of those that use family disambiguation have just been boldly moved to XXX (YYY language) [1]. Anyone think this may actually be better? If not, I'm planning to have the moves reverted. – Uanfala (talk) 14:57, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

IMO, there is a clear hierarchy: first comes the natural disambiguation (Foo could be a language, a toponym, a demonym etc.), so we have Foo language. If there happens to be another language with the same name, then another disambiguator is required which comes after Foo language: Foo language + (country/region) or less ideally "Foo language (Bar)" where "Bar" is the language family. I support to revert all moves per BRD. –Austronesier (talk) 21:18, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

First, we should always have the title be XXX language as a matter of consistency per WP:AT, so the recent moves should be undone for that reason alone. I agree with Austronesier that country and region are better disambiguators than the language family. Readers are likely to know where the language is spoken, while the language family is only useful to specialists. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:54, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

There may be times we want to dab by 'family' instead of location. E.g. two languages in New Guinea, one on the Indonesian side and one in PNG, may be better dab'd as AN and Papuan. — kwami (talk) 01:25, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• I've reverted most of those edits. Two tricky ones remain though:
  • Pyu language (Sino-Tibetan) was historically spoken in what is nowadays Myanmar, and the article until recently used a country disambiguator. Do we go back to Pyu language (Burma), Pyu language (Myanmar), or do we try to eschew possibly anachronistic geographic disambiguators and stick to the language family?
  • Taman (Sino-Tibetan language) is similarly confined to Myanmar, but given it went extinct in the 1930s, it probably won't be anachronistic to use Taman language (Burma) (assuming that's prefereable to Taman language (Myanmar))? – Uanfala (talk) 15:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I suggest Pyu language (Sino-Tibetan) (anything else would be very anachronistic) and Taman language (Myanmar) (which isn't anachronistic since the descendants of Taman speakers still live in present-day /ˈmiː.ənmɑːr/, /miˈænmɑːr/, /ˌmaɪ.ənˈmɑːr/, /maɪˈɑːnmɑːr/, /ˈmaɪ.ænmɑːr/, /ˌmjænˈmɑːr/, /ˈmjænmɑːr/, /ˌmjɑːnˈmɑːr/, /ˈmjɑːnmɑːr/). –Austronesier (talk) 15:23, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

And we should also resist tagging all Tibeto-Burman languages as "Sino-Tibetan". -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Why? Sino-Tibetan is an established grouping in a way that Tibeto-Burman isn't. – Uanfala (talk) 19:22, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anachronism is a problem. Whether we call the country 'Burma' or 'Myanmar' is a political decision. I prefer 'Burma' myself, but it's splitting hairs to say we can't use 'Myanmar' because that wasn't in use in English at the time. Doesn't matter: it's the same country, with no possibility of confusion. — kwami (talk) 06:13, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

I recommend keeping the status quo with the XXX language (YYY) convention, for the reasons mentioned above. Lingnanhua (talk) 00:08, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Proto-languages

Why are proto-languages almost exclusively found under "Proto-X language", or even deliberately moved there with reference to this guideline (e. g. Proto-Athabaskan language)? In virtually all cases, they should be the primary topic for the term "Proto-X" quite unambiguously. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)