Reconstruction talk:Proto-Bantu/ìdìbà

, all the descendants from lineages other than Southern Bantu are in class 5, making me think that the switch to class 7 is a Southern innovation. Do you have any thoughts on me moving it? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:13, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * No objections from me, but there should be a note saying that at some point it was changed to class 7 and all Southern Bantu languages inherited that form instead. —Rua (mew) 14:44, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It may not be as widespread as the class 5 forms, but class 7 seems to be very widespread. According to Guthrie's Comparative Bantu, class 7 forms are found in at least zones A, C, D, H, K, L, M, N, R, and S. And Shona has a class 5 form, so not all of Southern Bantu has class 7. Smashhoof (talk) 20:44, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Shona is not in the Southern Bantu clade. As far as I can tell, the cognates in some zones has come to mean "water" and gets put in class 6 with other liquids (see 🇨🇬 for zone A or 🇨🇬 for zone R). Zone N's most prominent language is Chichewa, which only shows class 5. This is all just to say that I'm not sure which languages Guthrie is relying on, but I can easily see some zones where that doesn't seem to be the inherited noun class. Finally, Schadeberg reconstructs this word in class 5 in The Bantu Languages. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:07, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * That sounds good enough to me. But in the future it may be more of a problem trying to pick which noun class to list a reconstruction as. Smashhoof (talk) 22:48, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Currently, About Proto-Bantu only describes our notation — I would like it if we could decide what we're counting as PB and how we decide things like noun class, and then put those decisions there. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:06, 16 April 2019 (UTC)