Category talk:South Semitic languages

RFD discussion: August–November 2020
There is scanty support for Modern South Arabian languages and Ethiosemitic languages forming a clade, and specialists in those languages dispute it. We would be much better off by following the scholarly consensus in admitting that we don't know how to classify them, and having them nest directly under Semitic. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:21, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The following is the classification used in our sister project, it is a modified tree first established by the work of Robert Hetzron with emendations by John Huehnergard and Rodgers by the late 90s early 2000s; its been the most widely accepted today as far as I am aware:
 * East Semitic
 * West Semitic
 * Central Semitic
 * Northwest Semitic
 * Arabic
 * South Semitic
 * Western: Ethiopian Semitic and Old South Arabian
 * Eastern: Modern South Arabian
 * I agree with you Ethiosemitic and Modern South Arabian should not be inherently grouped. Modern South Arabian is a misnomer as we had once thought they were descendant of the Old rather than its eastern sister group. You're also not wrong in saying the consensus is still out, even if this is the mostly accepted working model. Largely my fear is the impression of leaving these things simply labelled "Semitic" without classification, as they do indeed have some sort of reasonable relationship in comparison to others even if the exact position is putative. It is far more likely for them to be somehow under the West Semitic sphere of things by comparison to East Semitic grammar, and likely to be related in some capacity to each other by features like the -k suffixed conjugations. Of course I will defer to the judgement of what others think here about it, so long as we are all on the same page about organization of pages. You perhaps might want to ping a few others who can weigh in. My discovery of this topic only stems from my attempt to restructure the Reconstruction:Proto-Semitic/ṯalāṯ- page as per the discussion and subsequently finding the Minaean and Hadramitic languages have seemingly been removed from the list of available languages. Their situation also should be resolved as all pages featuring them now have errored red module links. -Profes.I. (talk) 05:56, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I misspoke above; they should be directly under West Semitic, rather than Semitic. Minaean and Hadrami(tic) have not been removed; I simply made a mistake in a module today and have now reverted it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:45, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * But you want to leave “Central Semitic”? The genetic position of Arabic is more controversial than anything else. Though I agree the clade “South Semitic” is conceptually without importance, unlike Northwest Semitic. I wanted to say I have actually used “South Semitic” to denote a not further identifiable Semitic language more southern than Arabic, but it turns out I have barely used it, only two times, so a code is evidently dispensable. In this “South Semitic” here I find a “South Arabian” group, which is evidently even more useless and a misnomer since in the category category:South Arabian languages we have the Modern South Arabian languages (but the three times I derived from “South Arabian”, I apparently meant Old South Arabian or the theoretical ancestor of Modern South Arabian or another theoretical sister group of Old South Arabian, so here is the confusion). And for some obscure reason we have Category:Old South Arabian languages under “Central Semitic” (wut? how? That’s usually considered South Semitic). Note also the Category:Taymanitic language with alleged synonym “Thamudic A”, which I point out to you since you wanted to create some Old Arabic continuum group with lettered Thamudic languages or something like that. Fay Freak (talk) 07:45, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, Central Semitic bears some signs of being real, especially if you include Old South Arabian in it. As for the "South Arabian" terminology, the standard usage is... problematic, to say the least. The usual scholarly distinction is between "Old South Arabian" and "Modern South Arabian", despite the fact that there are two living descendants of the former and the latter may well have a longer (but unwritten) history there. Be that as it may, a bare "South Arabian" clearly confused you, which is good enough reason to change it to prevent confusion in the future. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:03, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The terminology is unfortunate, but if "Old South Arabian" and "Modern South Arabian" are indeed the most common names for the languages, we should stick with them anyway. It's not the only instance; for example, Old Uyghur is not an ancestor of Uyghur, and Old Kirghiz (an etymology-only variant of Old Turkic) is not an ancestor of Kyrgyz. —Mahāgaja · talk 06:33, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree about using the most common name. Wikipedia happens to use "Old South Arabian" but I have also seen "Sayhadic" and "Epigraphic South Arabian" in various sources. Benwing2 (talk) 17:15, 3 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Removed South Semitic as a family, and renamed "South Arabian" to "Modern South Arabian". —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:42, 25 November 2020 (UTC)