Category talk:Caucasian languages

Category:Caucasian languages
This is not a linguistic category, it is geographical. The families mentioned are not related at all, and should either be moved to 'Languages of the Caucasus' or split by language family. Nadando 22:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * They can't be split by language family. One of the reasons this category exists is that relationships among the various languages are very much up in the air, although there is a "feeling" among many experts that many of the languages are related...somehow.  Note that there is a geographical category Category:Languages of the Caucasus, but its contents are different, because there are many other languages spoken in that region which are not part of the "Caucasian" assemblage of languages. --EncycloPetey 18:03, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * One of the reasons this category exists is that relationships among the various languages are very much up in the air - what? there's a very clear consensus that there are three Caucasian language families - that is Northwest, Northeast and South Caucasian. -- Prince Kassad 18:30, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * So, you mean that each of those three groups sprang into existence from non-language independently? The relationships between those groups and other language families is unclear. --EncycloPetey 22:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * All categories moved, striking. Nadando 20:11, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

RFDO discussion: August 2014–August 2016
Also included: the family code "cau" and all the categories that use it. This survived deletion back in 2009, but, even after reading through the discussion archived at Category talk:Caucasian languages, I'm not sure why.

This is strictly a geographical grouping: although many linguists have an unprovable hunch that the Northeast Caucasian languages and the Northwest Caucasian languages may be related, there's been very little support for linking them to the Kartvelian languages. Indeed, even among those proposing that the North Caucasian languages are related to everything from Basque to Sino-Tibetan to the Na-Dene languages of North America, and those who say the Kartvelian languages are related to Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic Dravidian, and many others, linking North Caucasian and South Caucasian/Kartvelian is rarely even considered. If there were such a family, it would probably be named the Ibero-Caucasian languages.

This category is mostly a holding category for the three families mentioned, but, judging from the derivational categories, there are a dozen entries that refer to the Caucasian languages as a group in their etymologies, of which seven are Old Armenian. Perhaps we can get an idea from about whether this is a serious obstacle. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:31, 17 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Scholarly sources, modern or dated, dealing with Armenian linguistics often refer to "Caucasian languages", when they cannot distinguish between Kartvelian/East Caucasian/West Caucasian. The code cau is very convenient for such cases. However, I understand that our etymological categories are based on genetic relationship and that the laziness of sources does not justify having this category. I will go through the Old Armenian entries and try to assign them to different branches. So, delete. PS By the way, your ping did not work. --Vahag (talk) 15:38, 17 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. There is no reason that we cannot have a category for languages that are often referred to as "Caucasian languages" outside of our etymological tree. --WikiTiki89 14:59, 18 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete for the same reason that Category:Australian languages shouldn't exist. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:58, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yet we do have Category:Languages of Australia. Perhaps we should rename the nominee accordingly. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 19:52, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep per Wikitiki; and per msh210: we have Category:Languages of Australia. shows this is a high-frequency term. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:04, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. This is category-cruft that doesn't seem to contribute anything other than some useless pages to click through. Note that we also already have the corresponding non-pseudo-family category: Category:Languages of the Caucasus. If we really need to ensure e.g. that people can find Category:Kartvelian languages even if they don't know the exact term, a page such as List of families could be fitted with a "geographical area" column or similar. As of before this comment, we had one Hungarian term (, now set to NEC) categorized as "derived from Caucasian languages", and still have one Old Armenian term:, which would still have to be sorted out before this. --Tropylium (talk) 22:23, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
 * If all we have is a reference to a meaningless wastebasket-category, why are we even categorizing it? We could put an xcl tag in it so it won't get lost, and just convert the etyl template to straight text. Alternatively, we could replace "Caucasian" with "Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian or Kartvelian"- ugly and awkward, but it's only one entry.
 * Delete. Category:Languages of the Caucasus is sufficient for this geographical grouping. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:32, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Deleted based on the consensus of our linguistically-trained and Caucasian-language editors, pace the two keep voters, who'll have to content themselves with the longstanding category for the geographic grouping, Category:Languages of the Caucasus, that doesn't imply genetic relationship like this category inappropriately did. - -sche (discuss) 08:27, 18 August 2016 (UTC)