Talk:ayubowan

ayubowan
While listed as a transliteration, Sinhalese transliterations do not meet CFI as they are not words. Nothing in WT:CFI to justify this. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:24, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * For usability purposes, I'm much in favor of having transliterations of all non-Latin-based terms -- but only as means for users to get to the main entry, and as such, I think they should be stub entries, disambig lists at most. I.e., quotations, etyms, usage notes, and other details should go in the lemma entry, with the romanized entry providing only a link to the lemma and a short gloss.
 * Without transliterations, users have no good way of getting to entries written in scripts that the users themselves might not be able to enter. I have no means of entering Devanagari, for instance, so a transcription-less Sanskrit entry is effectively unfindable for me.
 * That said, if the search feature correctly finds an entry in the native script so long as that entry itself includes the transliteration, then ostensibly there would be no need for redirection stubs. I'm not sure it's up to the task, though.  -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 17:39, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm in favor of having transliterations of non-Latin-based terms if those transliterations are in widespread use. Gothic, Hittite, and Primitive Irish, for example, are probably printed in transliteration in modern works far more often than in their native writing systems. Sanskrit is also widely used in transliteration, though maybe not as much as in Devanagari. For modern languages, Chinese, Japanese, and Yiddish have widely used and highly familiar transliterations; Greek, Russian, Hebrew, and Burmese don't. I'm absolutely in favor of Latin-alphabet entries for Gothic, Hittite, and Primitive Irish, and am absolutely opposed to Latin-alphabet entries for Greek, Russian, Hebrew, and Burmese; for languages like Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, and Yiddish my support is less absolute, but I'm not opposed. —Angr 18:08, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * @Angr, are you opposed to having romanized entries, or romanization at all? My only concern is entry discoverability -- if a user doesn't have the appropriate IME for script X, they should still be able to find term Y written in script X by searching for the romanization.  Whether that requires romanized entries pointing to the script X entry, or just the inclusion of the romanized string within the script X entry, I don't know -- that depends on the technical aspects of how our search feature works.  -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:35, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm opposed to having romanized entries (in certain languages, as I said). Of course the native-script entries should include romanization. —Angr 22:32, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Is there a huge audience of people who know a standardized transliteration for a language yet have no way to enter it?--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:12, 6 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep. Whatever else can be said about it, ayubowan appears hundreds of times in print, in English language books, sometimes in running text with no italicization or other indication of its foreign origin. Once could almost say that this transliteration has been adopted into the English language, at least regionally. Our model of inclusivity is flawed if there is no rule under which such a common word can be included in the dictionary. bd2412 T 18:17, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Then keep it under an ==English== header. At the moment, it's under a ==Sinhalese== header but in the Latin alphabet. —Angr 18:21, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * How is that different from konnichi wa? bd2412 T 18:23, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The point I disagree with is 'word'. This isn't a word no more than English written in the Arabic script would be a word. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:25, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Isn't that a question to be determined by looking to see whether it is in fact used in print and conveying meaning? Is aloha a word? bd2412 T 18:32, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I would be inclined to keep it if it could be shown to be English (used in English sentences without quotes or explanation). Rather like aloha: or taramosalata: are English words. SemperBlotto (talk) 18:30, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Like this?
 * 2007, Karen Roberts, The Flower Boy: A Novel, page 39:
 * He glanced indifferently over his young charges, who jumped up. put their hands together in the traditional form of greeting and chorused, "Ayubowan Teacher."
 * So far as I can tell, that is the only appearance of the word in the book, with no italicization or explanation of meaning. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:36, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Here is another example in print, in running English text, with no italicization and no explanation of meaning:
 * Suharshi Perera, "Zhang Li reveals her love for Sinhala: Lankan voice from the land of Great Wall", in Daily News (June 18, 2009):
 * She chatters gleefully with her colleagues while politely greeting the visitors Ayubowan. In a second, the attention falls on her, the Chinese girl who invites her listeners to a têtê-à-têtê speaking in flawless Sinhala.
 * Cheers again! bd2412 T 19:00, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Here's one more:
 * 2007, Vidushi Seneviratne, "Echo of Koggala cradle", in The Sunday Times (June 3, 2007).
 * Charming girls dressed in the traditional, low-country reddha and hattaya, welcomed the invitees at the regal Galle Face Hotel, with a customary ayubowan.
 * Unless you already knew the meaning (or had a place to look it up), you wouldn't know from this source what an ayubowan was. It could be a flower or a beverage or a piece of furniture from all the context that is provided. bd2412 T 19:13, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * In case anyone objects to two of these three citations being in the same year, here is fourth, from 2003, also in English running text with no italicization:
 * 2003, Lester Jansz, "Guest house in the misty mountains", Daily News (September 20, 2003):
 * Manager Sumith Perera who has considerable experience in the hotel industry, here and overseas, warmly greets guests in a typical Sri lankan Ayubowan style.
 * Cheers again! bd2412 T 19:19, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * So, as I said above, keep but under an ==English== header, and probably tagged, but do not keep under the ==Sinhalese== header. —Angr 20:22, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I have no objection to that. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 20:34, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Nota bene: I have added an English sense and moved the citations there, as that is the sense better supported by them. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 23:24, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I really don't get the idea of something being a "word" depends on which script it's in. In some ways the Latin script is special here; if we get a large corpus of text messages, will we have thousands of examples of Sinhalese "not words" written in Latin, or will Sinahlese written in Latin suddenly become words?--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:12, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Whether we call it Sinhalese or English, any comprehensible unbroken string of letters regularly used to convey a meaning is a word. In this case, the question is not whether it exists, but what we call it. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 23:24, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete the Sinhalese, keep the English but it needs reformatting. We do have Mandarin, Japanese and Gothic standard romanisation entries. The Sinhalese script is a bit complicated, only recently started being supported by software vendours. Perhaps we could have redirects in Roman letters to Sinhalese entries if there is no English or other languages borrowing like this one? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 22:34, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
 * There's a precedent for keeping this as English at da. Though I feel uncomfortable with it, I also acknowledge BD2412's point about readers who will encounter this in running English text and not know how to look it up in the original script. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:38, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I have no objection to keeping it as English and not as Sinhalese. I have seen no complete transliterations of Sinhalese texts at all, so it understand that is hard to say that this is a "word" in Sinhalese. However, sooner or later we are going to have to address the question of how we present commonly appearing transliterations of terms from languages which do not have well-organized rules of transliteration. I would note that in the case of ayubowan, I also found a few Dutch language sources using the term in Dutch running text. At some point does a transliteration become multilingual? <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 12:11, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Arrowred.png|15px]] This touches on a number of big issues that have sparked sizable threads in the past.
 * One of these issues is script. Some folks are of the opinion that changing the script changes the language.  I must say that I disagree.  Ι κουλδ ωριτε αλλ ιν Γρεεκ λεττερς, or алл ин Сириллик, but that doesn't change the language of my statement, just the script -- perhaps the visual equivalent of talking in a funny accent.  Writing Sinhalese in the Latin alphabet doesn't make that English any more than me writing English all in katakana suddenly makes that Japanese.
 * Another of these issues is language itself, and what the threshold is for considering a term as belonging to a given language. Case in point here, how many English speakers who are not already familiar with Sinhalese customs would have any idea what ayubowan is?  Some may argue that this is specialized terminology, similar to how culturally specific terms like  or  were adopted wholesale from Japanese, or taarof from Persian.  However, as best I understand it, ayubowan is just hello / goodbye; the only thing culturally specific about this is the language itself.  Use of the term in running English text doesn't strike me as an adequate proof of a term's "English-ness", especially when it is being used specifically to draw attention to the "Sinhalese-ness" of the context.
 * Blue Glass Arrow.svg So I would cast a vote firmly opposed to marking romanizations as  simply for being romanizations that might be used in running text that is mostly another language.  -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ <small style="position: relative; top: -3px;">Tala við mig 15:22, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose putting romanizations under the Translingual L2. I might imagine a proposal I could support that decomposed Translingual into more homogeneous groups, at most one keeping the Translingual name. DCDuring TALK 18:03, 7 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete. If the Sinhalese editing community (do we have one?) wants to include romanisation entries they should start a vote, this is completely unorthodox. — Ungoliant (Falai) 10:55, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose putting romanizations under the Translingual L2. This is exactly the same case as kimono (also a romanization). Here, the word is less common, but this is the only difference. Lmaltier (talk) 21:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep Sinhalese romanization entry pending a proper rationale for deletion. The rationale given as part of the nomination is implausible to me, as it seems to confuse written forms with words. Wiktionary does include romanization for some languages. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:44, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

deleted the Sinhalese section. Kept the English one. -- Liliana • 18:33, 22 August 2013 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Arrowred.png|15px]] @Liliana, I'm not sure that's the best course. Of the contributors to this thread, I count results as follows:


 * That's three counts (2.5 maybe) to keep as EN, two counts to keep as SI, two counts (maybe three) to delete altogether, and a few whose opinions remain unclear (to me) with regard to keeping or deleting. I don't see anything resembling a consensus, and FWIW, I'm opposed to keeping this as an English entry.  As I noted above, the only reason this term is even used in the quoted publications is precisely because it imparts a quality of Sinhalese-ness, strongly suggesting that this is a Sinhalese term used in English text.  I don't see any evidence that this is regarded as English.  &#8209;&#8209; Eiríkr Útlendi │ <small style="position: relative; top: -3px;">Tala við mig 01:13, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

This discussion was quite a bit apart and confusing to decipher, so I tried the best I could. As for Sinhalese, I think it's pretty clear that this fails CFI. I could've kept it, tagged it as and deleted it immediately. The result would be the same, but it would add one more edit to the version history. So there would be no point in doing it like this. The English is a bit more difficult. The entry is cited, so that's one point in favor. I couldn't find any clear consensus against the English entry, so I applied the benefit of the doubt and kept it. Maybe the English entry can be reconsidered in a future RFD sometime later, in the hopes that the next discussion will be less confusing. -- Liliana • 11:15, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
 * RFD discussions are a bad way to reach me. Next time, try my talk page.
 * @Eirikr: This is a undisputedly a single lexical unit with over a dozen citations in English running text. If you want to call it a regionalism, that's fine, we include those. However, if you want to call it "not a word", then you'll need to go find yourself a prescriptivist dictionary to write for. In this dictionary, you can delete it as not being a word after you've deleted adios, aloha, and anaconda. <i style="background:lightgreen">bd2412</i> T 01:18, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
 * @Eirikr, re: "I don't see anything resembling a consensus, ...": If there is no consensus, then this RFD should not be acted upon and both Sinhalese and English should be kept. And again, the argument that romanizations in general somehow are not representations of words (actually word forms) is just silly. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:00, 10 September 2013 (UTC)