Wiktionary:Language treatment/Discussions

Discussions and notes about how languages are treated on Wiktionary — e.g. discussions about splitting, merging, deleting, adding or renaming lects — may be archived to this page or its talk page if nowhere else (such as a language's About page) is more appropriate. Additional discussions, archived using the aWa tool, can be found on the talk page, Wiktionary talk:Language treatment/Discussions. Do not start or continue discussions here; do that in an appropriate community forum, such as WT:BP or WT:RFM.

= 2010 =

Merging Antillean Creole (acf, gcf)
would make it see like you want to unify [acf] and [gcf] (as Antillean Creole does). Is that true? Not that I have a problem with that, but do you have any other reasons for wanting to unify them aside from Wikipedia? Cheers. --Bequw → τ 01:03, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Most dictionaries simply refer to the language as "Antillean Creole". They don't differentiate either. -- Prince Kassad 09:05, 25 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Added to Language treatment. --Bequw → τ 14:52, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

= 2012 =

Recoding Woiwurrung (aus-wwg, wyi)
to (new ISO code) -- Liliana • 20:21, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Aha! I thought, when I added, that we already had a code for that language. Support, obv. - -sche (discuss) 20:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I've started switching the entries which use aus-wwg, since this is non-controversial. - -sche (discuss) 22:02, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 22:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Renaming and recoding Dharug (aus-syd, xdk)
Now that Dharuk/Sydney has an ISO code, we can convert our entries to use it, rather than the exceptional code. The only obstacle is the name: we currently call the lect Sydney; the ISO calls it (and until 2008/9 we (sometimes?) called it? see the deletion of Category:Dharuk language) Dharuk. The best name, however, seems to be Dharug: if this ngram is accurate, it was (with Sydney) among the original names and has remained in use since then, even as Sydney became less common and Dharuk came into use in the modern era of renewed interest in the lect (post-1970). I propose we rename Dharug (the name WP prefers as well) and switch our  to it. - -sche (discuss) 20:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Support both the move to the code and the rename to Dharug. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I've switched some of the aus-syd entries to xdk, others remain. - -sche (discuss) 22:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
 * All done, including entries, cats, translations, etymologies, and templates. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:41, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Punan Batu (pnm)
pnm. Punan Batu 1. I'm not sure what to do with this one; I haven't fiound enough information yet to be comfortable just removing the 1: there may be other languages (even if they are not yet in Wiktionary) with the same name. - -sche (discuss) 21:58, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I've renamed it "Punan Batu", dropping the "1". If another language is added someday with this language, we can cross that bridge at that time. - -sche (discuss) 22:50, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Renaming Bina and Binawa (bmn, byj)
We currently call "Bina (Papua New Guinea)", to distinguish it from the not-yet-created, the "Bina" of Nigeria. Although I would prefer to appropriate unmarked "Bina" for the living Nigerian language (the Papuan language is extinct), the one and only(!) Google Books hit for "Bina" as a language refers to the Papuan language; and there is one (only!) Google Books hit for "Binawa", an alternative name for the Nigerian language. (See Citations:Bina, Citations:Binawa.) I therefore propose we rename to plain "Bina", and create  as "Binawa". - -sche (discuss) 21:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 03:35, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Merging Marwari (mve, rwr, ...)
To fit our current naming system, should be "Marwari (Pakistan)" and  should be "Marwari (India)". We could, of course, merge all of the Marwaris into : (Dhundari),  (Marwari (India)),  (Marwari (Pakistan)),  (Merwari),  (Mewari),  (Shekhawati). - -sche (discuss) 05:09, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Merging them is probably the most sensible option. -- Liliana • 07:27, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I have merged them. - -sche (discuss) 19:30, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Handling the Kara languages
Well, this is a mess. There are no fewer than six languages vying for / going by the name "Kara". Some of them are even attested; see Citations:Kara: - -sche (discuss) 04:02, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * , a Korean language, is the easiest to ‘solve’: there certainly are many books that use "Kara" to mean, but many more books call it "Kaya", so I've just named it that.
 * , an Omotic language. It seems to be called "Kara" more often than it is called "Karo", but the latter name is attested (Citations:Karo) and distinguishes it. (-Karo is in turn distinguished from -Karo Batak / Batak Karo, and I'll sort out /Citations:Arara/ later.)
 * , which I created as "Kara (Papua New Guinea)" because the synonym "Lemakot", while attested, is quite dated, and literature referring to "Kara" most frequently refers to.
 * Others are unattested:
 * 1)  was created some time ago as "Kara (Tanzania)", but I find only one GBC hit for it under this name, and none for its alternative name "Regi".
 * , which could be "Kara (Central African Republic)" (but I find no GBC hits of Kara in reference to ) or "Fer" (which I find one(!) GBC hit of).
 * , which could be "Kara (Central African Republic)" &mdash; yes, even the differentiator would be the same, under our current scheme of parenthetical country names as differentiators, but my favourite part is that its alternative name is "Gula", which is attested &mdash; as the name of five other languages! The alternative name "Tar Gula" might be just barely attested, so we could rename that.
 * 1) I also found 1 citation of "Kara" as the name of a Sudanese language, and 1 citation of it as an Ethiopian language; these may refer to one of the previous languages; I can't tell. Oh, and there's also the Kara family of languages.


 * I've struck the ones that have been 'solved'. - -sche (discuss) 03:32, 23 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Meh, leu and reg can keep their parenthetical disambiguators. Striking. - -sche (discuss) 23:40, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Kibena (bez) and Bena (yun)
FYI, I've renamed from "Bena" to "Kibena", to make it distinct from  "Bena"; previously, both languages were called "Bena". Amusingly, this pair was struck in the Mwera discussion as resolved, when both languages were still called "Bena". I was initially going to rename, but discovered its alternative names were all rare, whereas 's alt name "Kibena" is common (250+ Google Books hits). - -sche (discuss) 03:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ki- is actually a language prefix like in most other Bantu languages, it's not strictly part of the name. Swahili is often called 'Kiswahili' for the same reason. 12:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I suppose it's a question, as with the Aja languages: is it more important to give the languages distinct names, or to give them the most accurate and otherwise bare names and distinguish them with parenthetical notes? As this page shows, I've been renaming languages to their most common attested names, preferably autonyms, except when that would require parentheses. WT:Languages stated, even before I updated it, that parentheses were to be avoided, but perhaps we should (re)discuss that as a community. - -sche (discuss) 20:41, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Renaming the Arua languages
There are three "Arua" languages: We currently call "Aruá (Rodonia State)", and  "Arua". I'd like to rename in a way that drops "(Rodonia State)"... perhaps by renaming  to "Arawá", and  "Aruá". - -sche (discuss) 23:10, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Aruáshi / Aruá, spoken in Rondônia state,
 * a language Wikipedia calls Arawá / Aruá, and says went extinct in 1877, and identifies with
 * a language Wikipedia calls Aruán / Aroã, and says is extinct and codeless
 * At the very least, let's spell it correctly. I don't have sufficient permissions to edit, but the state is actually called Rondônia. --Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:10, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I've renamed "Aruá". I'll check 's names more closely (to see which are attested) before perhaps renaming it; for now, it is distinguished by lacking the accent over the final "a". - -sche (discuss) 04:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Renaming Q'anjob'al (kjb)
Should be "Q'anjob'al" or "Q’anjob’al" (is there a preference?) rather than "Kanjobal", as the latter spelling is both less correct as less common. I'll rename it and update the pages that use it if there are no objections. - -sche (discuss) 23:10, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd highly prefer the straight apostrophes for convenience purpose. I'd like to think that we only use the straight ones in language names, but there are apparently cases where this is not so. -- Liliana • 01:43, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I share your preference for '. In April, I renamed the last of the languages listed at Index to templates/languages that used ’, . - -sche (discuss) 02:20, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Thirded. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:56, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Renamed. - -sche (discuss) 22:20, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Renaming Maori (mi)
We have other language names with correct diacritics - so why are we not calling this language by its correct name, Māori? I've heard people say it's harder for them to type, but it is certainly easier than typing !Xóõ, which is a real language name around here (Category:!Xóõ language). Technical note: it will take more than just changing the template name, but most of the work can be easily done by a bot like KassadBot, and the rest I will do manually. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:50, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * My guess is because Maori, without diacritics, is an actual English word. -- Liliana • 20:42, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Māori, with diacritics, is also an actual English word. I don't see a problem there. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:46, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * "Correct" is subjective. I don't think Maori is a misspelling, it's just a standard transcription of the word Māori into English. I have no opinion. I'd welcome some frequency analysis of the two spellings in English. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:19, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
 * This isn't a request for a move, merger, or split. Just edit the template. —Angr 11:50, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * It is, because it affects categories like Category:Maori language. -- Liliana • 13:52, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, right. In that case, let's keep it at "Maori" since it's an equally valid spelling. No point in creating a bunch of work just for the sake of a macron. —Angr 14:02, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm willing to do the work for a significant macron. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:45, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I would expect that there are far more English speaking people in New Zealand that write 'Maori' than there are that write 'Māori'. For that reason I think the name should stay as it is. 12:05, 21 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I favour "Maori" and oppose a move. "Māori" is, indeed, the native name of the language, but English disuses diacritics, and even before I overhauled it, WT:LANGNAMES noted that Wiktionary avoids diacritics, too. Like CodeCat said, "Maori" is common, in part because many non-specialists write about the language. In contrast, the only people who write about ǃXóõ tend to be specialists who spell it "ǃXóõ" (rather than "Xoo" — though note my proposal below to rename it "Taa"). - -sche (discuss) 03:01, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Renaming Tolai (ksd)
Currently we call this language Kuanua; Wikipedia and most of the linguistic literature I've seen calls it Tolai. It doesn't have much, so it'll be easy to move, too. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:38, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Support renaming; thanks for drawing my attention to this. "Tolai language" seems to be about twice as common as "Kuanua language" on Google books (if you click through to the last page of hits to see how many hits are really there, rather than going by Google's "about _ hits" number). - -sche (discuss) 00:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
 * FYI, I think you can proceed with this whenever you have time. It's been a week and no-one has objected, and one vote of support is about as much attention as most obscure-language-rename discussions get. - -sche (discuss) 04:53, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Done, by Mglovesfun. - -sche (discuss) 03:02, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Renaming Bo (bgl)
We currently call this language "Bo (Laos)", which was probably to distinguish it from and, but I propose we rename it to simply "Bo" because
 * 1) whenever possible, we disuse parentheses,
 * 2)  is already distinct as "Aka-Bo",
 * 3) Template:bpw is currently a redlink and it should perhaps stay that way given that WP says the status of that Bo (bpw) as a language is unclear,
 * 4) and even if we do create, we can follow our usual practice of using variant names to distinguish languages ("Po" seems to be attested). - -sche (discuss) 22:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Support --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:39, 22 August 2012 (UTC) Support. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:44, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

I know nothing about this, but, seeing three supporters and no opposition, I've effected it. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 17:35, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Handling Romani (rom, ...)
We currently have categories for, and entries in, both the Romani language/macrolanguage and the dialect/sublanguage Kalo Finnish Romani. There are six other Romani dialects with ISO codes, namely, , , , ,. WT:LANGTREAT currently says "only the macrolanguage Romani is treated as individual language". I'd like to change that so that both the macrolanguage and the dialects are considered individual languages (and translations may be added in any of them, etc), though most entries will continue to use the macrolanguage's L2 header. (Arabic is currently handled in this way.) - -sche (discuss) 08:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Alternatively, perhaps the best solution is to allow nested translations while keeping the languages merged under one L2 header. (For now. Obviously, if we ever get many contributors in different Romanis, we should reconsider.) That way, translations can show all the different lects' forms, and entries can use and have ===Alternative forms=== with s, showing all the lects' forms in that way. Is there any objection to that? It is difficult to add notes to WT:LANGTREAT, but if there are no objections to this idea, I'll archive this discussion and add a link to it from WT:LANGTREAT#rom. - -sche (discuss) 17:58, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

No objections. The Arabic solution seems good here. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:37, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Renaming Montana Salish (fla), not merging it with Spokane (spo)
After a break, I'm back to going through our language templates, checking to see if we give each language its most common distinct name (avoiding parenthetical or hyphenated disambiguation in favour of distinct alt names when possible). I propose that instead of naming "Kalispel-Pend d'Oreille", we name it "Montana Salish", which does seem to be a more common term, and is also shorter and closer to the language's autonym. (It's also what WP calls the language.) I also ask: should be merged with  (i.e. should the lects be treated as one)? - -sche (discuss) 19:58, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Support renaming, oppose merging (unless I get strong evidence in favor). --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:38, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Renamed, not merged. - -sche (discuss) 21:57, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Renaming Pichinglis (fpe)
Should be called "Pichinglis" rather than "Fernando Po Creole English", as it seems "Pichinglis" is significantly more common as the name of the language, at least judging by Google Books. - -sche (discuss) 22:28, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. Note also above. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:51, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 22:04, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Merging Zazaki (zza, diq, kiu)
If we treat zza as a language, why do we also treat diq and kiu as languages? (Or: if we treat diq and kiu as separate languages, why do we also treat zza as one?) - -sche (discuss) 18:13, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I have merged diq and kiu into zza. - -sche (discuss) 00:06, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
 * In the past, I had the impression that templates were kept even after codes were merged (i.e. Template:diq and Template:kiu would be kept even though the languages are covered by the code zza). Is my impression incorrect? If not, should we reconsider, and delete templates like Template:diq to prevent them from being used by mistake? - -sche (discuss) 19:08, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think my impression must be incorrect, because Template:mo was deleted. - -sche (discuss) 19:10, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Merging Purepecha (tsz, pua)
Campbell considers these one language; I think they should be merged. (Failing that, needs to be renamed "Eastern Purepecha".) I suggest using  as the code for unified "Purepecha". - -sche (discuss) 01:16, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * PS if there are not merged, they should at least be grouped: Category:English terms derived from Purepecha and Category:English terms derived from Western Highland Purepecha are currently separate top-level subcategories of Category:English terms derived from other languages, alongside varied language families. - -sche (discuss) 01:16, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Merged. - -sche (discuss) 11:04, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Renaming Kekchi (kek)
Should be renamed from "Kekchí" to "Kekchi" (which is the most common name of the language, when old reference works are considered) or to "Q'eqchi'" (which is also markedly more common than "Kekchí", and may equal or surpass "Kekchi" in commonality in newer &mdash; post-1995 &mdash; reference works). - -sche (discuss) 00:39, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Rename to Q'eqchi. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:15, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 18:57, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging ike and ikt into iu
WP's page on Inuvialuk seems to suggest that these codes refer to the same language, but I gather the first may actually designate a macrolanguage that encompasses both and. Is this correct? If so, is this desirable? - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
 * My understanding of this is that and  should be deprecated in favor of . However, I don't have much experience with these languages, so I can't judge very well. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:11, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, I would lean towards retiring the macro-code in favour of the specific codes, but I, too, know little of the languages. WP has separate pages for Eastern Canadian Inuktitut and Western Canadian Inuktitut, but gives the same ISO 639-1 and -2 codes for them. There are spelling differences (angatkuq and angakkuq derive letter-for-letter from the two lects), but it's hard to guess if they would be better handled by s than by separate headers. Anyone know if inflection is different? - -sche (discuss) 05:28, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
 * According to WT:LANGTREAT, only the macrolanguage is treated as a language. - -sche (discuss) 23:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I have updated LANGTREAT to note that there is currently no policy (loosely defined) on whether to use only ikt and ike, or only iu. - -sche (discuss) 19:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Having looked into this more, I notice that there are more variants than just these two that the ISO gave codes, and they all seem about as intelligible. Therefore, I am merging ike and ikt into iu. - -sche (discuss) 03:49, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Renaming ǁAni (hnh)
We currently call this lect "ǁAni". ǁAni is one part of a dialect continuum, the other part being Khwe proper. We currently call Khwe proper "Kxoe". I propose that we could merge the two lects under the name "Khwe", the name Wikipedia uses. "Khwe" is well attested; "Khwe language" gets 130+ BGC hits, "speak Khwe" and "spoke Khwe" get two each; "ǁAni" is hard to search for, but e.g. the scanno "IIAni" ("II" being a common OCR misinterpretation of "ǁ") gets only a handful of relevant hits. "Kxoe" gets 117 BGC hits. Renaming to "Khwe" also allows us to avoid a click character. Please consider also commenting on. - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, the difference between the various dialects of the Khwe continuum is supposedly large. On the third hand, however, it is unclear to what extent it is helpful to arbitrarily separate out only and . - -sche (discuss) 18:05, 17 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Struck; the status quo shall continue. - -sche (discuss) 06:13, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Renaming ǂHoan (huc)
We currently this language "ǂHõã". I propose renaming it to the more common "ǂHoan". (With apologies to Widsith and Wikitiki, I couldn't find any name that both didn't contain clicks and wasn't vanishingly rare.) - -sche (discuss) 20:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I actually have no problem with using these terms. I would have preferred if we didn't call them English though, but I'm unfortunately not a dictator here. --WikiTiki89 10:06, 18 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I've renamed the template. - -sche (discuss) 19:34, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Excluding vmf
As Liliana put it in an earlier discussion, if you know Germanic languages, this code is a joke. As Purodha explained on Meta, it "collects, or seems to collect, languages from three different groups by describing an area of use", for which reason (as Angr pointed out) the request for a vmf / East Franconian WP is on hold. The only use of the code on Wiktionary was in a Hessisch (lol!) translation of [[cider]]. Since the code doesn't stand for a valid language — it waves its hand ambiguously at several separate lects — I propose we delete it. - -sche (discuss) 02:57, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete by merging into . 03:59, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * There's nothing to merge. - -sche (discuss) 06:02, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, I have no idea, but I believe you. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:36, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Deleted. - -sche (discuss) 09:22, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Renaming kud
As part of my ongoing effort to ensure Wiktionary calls each language by its most common distinct English name, I have discovered that Auhelawa is about three times more common as the name of this language than 'Auhelawa. I propose renaming it accordingly (i.e. dropping the apostrophe). - -sche (discuss) 02:49, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose . I would also like to know your methodology for determining relative commonness, because I suspect that most search engines would not necessarily show the apostrophe in their results. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:48, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Search engines' OCR softwares do not always notice apostrophes and reproduce them in the snippets displayed on the search engine page, but it is possible to check the sources directly and confirm the spelling used in them. In this case, searching Google Books for "Auhelawa", "'Auhelawa" and a large number of possible scannos and OCR misreadings ("Nuhelawa" "Wuhelawa", "Ruhelawa", etc) finds 36 books; 18 have no preview available and/or are different copies of the same book; 4 are printed copies of Wikipedia. Of the usable books,
 * Eleven English works spell the name Auhelawa:
 * 1992, publication of Library of Congress subject headings — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 2506
 * 1992, in Culture change, language change: case studies from Melanesia (edited by Thomas Edward Dutton) — uses no apostrophe
 * 1993, Loinane miyamiyanane: Old Testament stories and extracts in the Auhelawa language, published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics — uses no apostrophe
 * 1995, Darrell T. Tryon, Shigeru Tsuchida, Comparative Austronesian Dictionary — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 131: "AUHELAWA Alt. KURADA, NUAKATA, URADA. Class. OC, WOC, Papuan Tip, Nuclear PT, Suauic."
 * 1998, in Papers in Austronesian linguistics, volume 5 (edited by H. Steinhauer and Malcolm Ross) — uses no apostrophe
 * 2003, Shelley Mallett, Conceiving cultures: reproducing people & places on Nuakata, Papua New Guinea — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 50 "Daphne Lithgow informed us that the language of Nuakata, Alina Nu'ata, is a dialect of Auhelawa, ..."
 * 2006, G. W. Trompf, Religions of Melanesia: A Bibliographic Survey — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 646
 * 2009, Roger Averill, Boy He Cry: An Island Odyssey — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 289 "'I was hoping to have a look at some of your transcriptions, to expand our Auhelawa dictionary, for the Bible translation.'"
 * 2009, Aparecida Vilaça, Robin Wright, Native Christians (the language name occurs only once, without an apostrophe, but in the bibliography, in the title of an article by Schram)
 * 2010, Michael R. Leming, George E. Dickinson, Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement (the language name occurs only once, without an apostrophe, but in the bibliography, in the title of an article by Schram)
 * 2011, Ryan Schram, Feast of Water: Christianity and the Economic Transformation of a Melanesian Society — has no preview, but the blurb uses no apostrophe, and Lindhardt (who refers to Schram) uses no apostrophe (see below)
 * 2011, Martin Lindhardt, Practicing the Faith: The Ritual Life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians — uses no apostrophe, e.g. page 303: "Schram's 2007 discussion of the opposition of “Christian” feasting with previous modes of feast in Auhelawa (Normanby Island, Papua New Guinea) presents a similar kind of purification ..."
 * 2012, Christopher Moseley, Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages — apparently uses no apostrophe (but is odd, for which reason I'm willing to discount it)
 * 2010, Nuclear Papuan Tip Languages (copy of WP)
 * 2010, Austronesian Language Introduction (copy of WP)
 * 2011, Articles on Milne Bay Province (copy of WP)
 * 2011, Austronesialaiset Kielet (copy of fi.WP!)
 * Only one English work apparently spells the name 'Auhelawa:
 * 1990, David Lithgow, Daphne Lithgow, &apos;Auhelawa New Reader, book 1 — has no preview, but the blurb does use an apostrophe
 * One work, written in Auhelawa(!), spells the name <tt>Auhelawa</tt>:
 * 1986, Elisa Ephraim, Talauvahili ʻAlina Auhelawa (which means "We read Auhelawa") — uses no apostrophe
 * No works written in Auhelawa spell the name <tt>'Auhelawa</tt>.
 * One work written in German spells the name <tt>Auhelawa</tt>:
 * 2002, Harald Haarmann, Sprachenalmanach: Zahlen und Fakten zu allen Sprachen der Welt — uses no apostrophe
 * Earlier, I looked at all of the sources first, and then commented here, and so posted my general impression that the spelling without the apostrophe was "about three times more common" than the spelling with it. Now that I have taken more detailed notes, I see that my estimate was over-generous, and I recognise that one work I had previously though independent is another WP copy; the spelling without the apostrophe is used by the only available published work in the language, and (with as far as I can see only one exception) by all researchers studying the language and all reference works treating it at a distance; the spelling with an apostrophe doesn't even meet CFI.
 * Addendum: searching WorldCat finds a few of these books, and no other books. It does find a few "computer files"; five of the first six "computer files" use no apostrophe, one uses an apostrophe; all the other "computer file" hits don't use the term in their accessible portions. - -sche (discuss) 23:50, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, striking my opposition above. I still suspect that the apostrophe is more correct, but clearly there is no attestation to back that up. (If you're wondering why I'm so suspicious in this case, it's because Latin script orthographies have maddeningly kept to a long-standing practice of ignoring glottal stops in Pacific languages (sometimes only when they would be obvious and unambiguous to speakers, like what de Feu does, and sometimes wholesale), which I assume this represents, even though they are critical to the languages.) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:00, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ - -sche (discuss) 00:35, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Renaming mij
This should probably be renamed "Mungbam" for the reasons Good gives here. - -sche (discuss) 18:02, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I suppose... but Good admits that is currently unciteable by our standards, and unless something has changed in the meantime, it would be crystal-ballsy to change it based on expectation that it will become standard. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:26, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, Good says "This name [Mungbam] has now been used in several publications, two of which are given in the bibliography. Lovegren is presently working on a grammar of the [mij] varieties and will use the name Mungbam in that grammar, at which point it can be fully expected to become the standard reference name in academic works, though we should stress that the name has already been used in peer-reviewed publications." And he says "both [of these] publications use the name Mungbam:"
 * 2011, Good, Lovegren, Mve, Nganguep Tchiemouo, Voll, and Di Carlo, The languages of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon: Grammatical overview, in Africana Linguistica 17, pages 101–164
 * 2011, Di Carlo, Lower Fungom linguistic diversity and its historical development: Proposals from a multidisciplinary perspective, in Africana Linguistica 17, pages 53–100
 * OTOH, those two publications and Lovegren's dictionary only make two citations (once published, Lovegren's dictionary and Di Carlo's Lower Fungom... can both count, but The languages of the Lower Fungom can't, because it was co-written by both). As you say, it may be best to wait and revisit this in time. - -sche (discuss) 23:23, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Update: I am still unable to find, via Google Books, any uses of "Abar" (the name we currently call this lect by) as a name for this lect. Via Google Scholar, I can track down several more uses of "Mungbam", including:
 * 2012, Jesse Lovegren, Stem-initial prominence in Mungbam, in the Selected Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of African Linguistics
 * 2012, Pierpaolo Di Carlo, Jeff Good, What are we trying to preserve? Diversity, change, and ideology at the edge of the Cameroonian Grassfields: Mungbam, the Ji group, Fang, Koshin, and Ajumbu are only known to be spoken within Lower Fungom and have no established close relatives outside of the area.
 * - -sche (discuss) 07:14, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Finally something has appeared in Google Books proper:
 * 2013, Balthasar Bickel, Lenore A. Grenoble, David A. Peterson (editors), Language Typology and Historical Contingency ISBN 9027270805:
 * The dashed lines separating Missong from the rest of Mungbam and Buu from the rest of Ji are intended to indicate that the speech varieties of these villages deviate considerably from that of the other varieties with which they are grouped
 * - -sche (discuss) 00:39, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

= 2013 =

Renaming Kag-Fer-Jiir-Koor-Ror-Us-Zuksun → Fakkanci (gel)
Zomg! It turns out "Fakkanci"—one of the many, many alt names of this language listed by Ethnologue—is attested. I propose we rename the lect accordingly. We currently call it "Kag-Fer-Jiir-Koor-Ror-Us-Zuksun", which is just the names of seven of its eight least-obscure dialects strung together with hyphens. (Ethnologue uses "ut-Ma'in" as the main name, but that name has proven virtually impossible to search for.) - -sche (discuss) 02:09, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * To be more precise: "Kag-Fer-Jiir-Koor-Ror-Us-Zuksun" is a dialect cluster, called the "Kag cluster" because Kag = Fakkanci is the main member of the cluster. It appears (whether this is pure co-incidence or not) that authorities who treat Kag/Fakkanci merely as a dialect call it "Kag", while those who call it "Fakkanci" treat it as the (main form of the) language of which Fer, Ror, etc are dialects and speak of "Fakkanci and its dialects". - -sche (discuss) 02:09, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Major victory against the hyphenationist cabal! Support —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:01, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 21:29, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Hun-Saare → Duka (dud)
A less extreme example of the "string all the dialects' names together" phenomenon, "Hun-Saare" is unattested. Somewhat surprisingly, "Saare" is also unattested. "Duka", however — the name WP uses — is just barely attested. - -sche (discuss) 08:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 09:33, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 22:24, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussing Central Nahuatl (nhn)
Currently called 'Central Nahuatl'. I think it is actually a dialect of (Nahuatl) but I am not completely sure. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 07:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Per WT:LANGTREAT, the dialects of Nahuatl are treated as independent languages. - -sche (discuss) 16:44, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Struck; no action taken at this time. - -sche (discuss) 22:33, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Repurposing ltc
I've moved 's comments from the GP below. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:54, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

currently describes itself as "Late Middle Chinese", which fits the abbreviation <tt>ltc</tt> rather nicely. However: Would anyone object to renaming Category:Late_Middle_Chinese_language to just Category:Middle_Chinese_language?
 * We don't have any lang code specified for "Early Middle Chinese", and as best I can tell, no such ISO code even exists.
 * SIL International's page lists as "Late Middle Chinese", but without much detail, whereas MultiTree's page lists  as just "Middle Chinese", with a bit more detail in the "Brief Description" field towards the bottom of the page, giving a range of the 6th through 10th centuries.
 * The Historical_Chinese_phonology section suggests that "Early Middle Chinese" would be around 600-1000 CE, and "Late Middle Chinese" would be around 1000-1300 CE.
 * The WP article on the ISO lang codes that lists, at w:ISO_639:l, links through to Middle_Chinese.
 * The Category:Late_Middle_Chinese_language links to Late_Middle_Chinese_language, but that redirects to Middle_Chinese.

-- Eiríkr Útlendi │ <small style="position: relative; top: -3px;">Tala við mig 19:47, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No I'd support it. It seems like madness to have Late Middle Chinese but not Early Middle Chinese or Middle Chinese. I think we discussed this before and we decided it was yet another ISO 639 error, but apparently nobody did anything about it. Support. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:55, 29 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Support removing "Late". —Angr 17:21, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support for accuracy's sake. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:44, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

, someone else fix the categories, or I might do it tomorrow if no one else volunteers. -- Liliana • 23:06, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Not done. There is which also says Middle Chinese. They need to be merged. -- Liliana • 09:00, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Which way should these be merged -- so that we keep, or so that we keep ? -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ <small style="position: relative; top: -3px;">Tala við mig 23:45, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Keeping an established and official code is probably preferred, even if we treat it slightly differently. So I support deleting and replacing it with .  23:47, 18 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I've raised the question of which code to delete in the BP: Beer parlour/2013/December. - -sche (discuss) 19:54, 2 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Seeing some support for and no opposition to replacing all instances of zhx-mid with ltc, so I have requested that someone with a bot make the replacement: Grease pit/2014/January. - -sche (discuss) 22:38, 26 January 2014 (UTC)


 * As a final update : zhx-mid has been orphaned (thanks again, kc_kennylau) and I have now deleted it from Module:languages. - -sche (discuss) 01:40, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. --kc_kennylau (talk) 11:20, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Excluding Mixed Great Andamanese (gac)
gac — Mixed Great Andamanese
 * looks like to me —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 18:21, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * LOL, wow, indeed... a seven-speaker-strong creole of ? I'm comfortable excluding that. I speak Denglisch with more people than that (and wouldn't dream of giving it a code)! - -sche (discuss) 00:05, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Some family members do a Denglish/Yinglish mix with me, and it's always painful. They know more vocab than I do, but they know absolutely no grammar. My grandmother uses / as a nominative singular... —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:10, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Encoding Cajun French
This should be moved to the <tt>etyl:</tt> subspace, to discourage/prevent the creation of <tt>==Cajun French== </tt> entries: Cajun French words are entered as <tt>==French==</tt>; this is only used in the etymologies of words which came specifically from Cajun rather than European French. (See also Beer_parlour/2012/April, in which everyone supported considering Cajun French ==French==, and the only editor who was ambivalent about moving to  misunderstood the code-naming sytem, IMO.) - -sche (discuss) 02:18, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Move per nomination. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:44, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Move. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅ - -sche (discuss) 20:24, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Excluding Mangetti Dune ǃXung (gfx)
— Mangetti Dune ǃXung - This is another ǃKung-ic lect (we have several already...we even gave exceptional codes to some that we already had ISO codes for, because reasons). It's "currently being investigated". I think we can sit on it until someone finishes investigating it, determines whether it's a separate language or not, and gives us some words. - -sche (discuss) 20:24, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Not merging Shelta (sth) into English (en)
is Shelta, a cant or argot from Ireland. Go on, try to convince me that this isn't just an extreme form of Hiberno-English. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:14, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Have you seen Shelta? I can't make anything of the "old" Shelta at all. I really don't see how you can convince anyone that that is English. While it may not be a full language because it borrows its grammar from English and Irish, we've split languages in the past that have far better mutual intelligibility than that. 01:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Deliberately scrambled Irish vocabulary grafted onto first Irish, then English language structure. It's like a weird combination of pig Latin and double Dutch in another language substituted for most of the significant words of English. You'd have to be a word-game fanatic fluent in both Irish and English to figure it out without help. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:14, 19 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep. It's neither a dialect of English nor a dialect of Irish, and is incomprehensible even to people who speak both. —Angr 08:40, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep per Shelta, can't really think that's English. Mglovesfun (talk) 10:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep, especially for the sake of older Shelta. Some references do consider Shelta an English-Irish creole, but creoles are still separate languages. Other references (Creolization and Contact, ISBN 9027252459 make the case that it is or was a full language: "Material in Shelta from the 1890s shows structural features  which are not of Hiberno-English origin. Some of these can be attributed to Irish Gaelic, others cannot.  It is possible that, since much of the lexicon of Shelta derives from non-Irish and non-English sources, the mysterious elements in the lexicon may be the remains of the language underlying Shelta which was then swamped by elements from Irish, first of all, and then from English.  In modern Shelta with its English-derived structural framework we may be witnessing the later stages of a process of language intertwining which began at a time when English was unknown to Shelta-speakers." (This last line is a reference to the theory, advanced e.g. by Kuno Meyer, that Shelta originated in the 12th or 13th century, at a time English did not even exist and Middle English was unknown to the Cant's speakers.) Modern "Shelta" continues to move closer to English, and there may be cases where it's hard to determine if a word from a more anglicised text is Shelta or English, like can be hard to determine if words from Denglisch texts should be considered English or German (or neither), but we should still keep the code. - -sche (discuss) 00:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Good point about older Shelta. But how do we relegate off some of the newer stuff (which can come closer to English than even, say, questionable Scots)? In any case, withdrawing due to heavy opposition to deletion (and partial convincement of yours truly). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:04, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Not merging Swahili
I had a look, and these four are just dialects of Swahili. I don't think they have any entries, but any that may exist should be. Oh, and don't forget to delete the script subpages. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:59, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Is the nomination to redirect these to ? I thought we usually deleted things like this, in which case the discussion should be at WT:RFD/O, shouldn't it? —Angr 10:49, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Technically it's a deletion of a page, but it's a merger of the languages. So... it does kind of belong here. 14:10, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Re "discussion should be at WT:RFD/O": when Metaknowledge posted Template:tnv in WT:RFDO, msh210 said the discussion "should be in the BP, not here". LOL, seems you just can't win, Meta! :b
 * Anyway, (@Angr) see WT:RFDO#tnv, WT:RFDO#pld, and WT:BP#Notice of language-merger discussion at RFM. I suggested in the tnv discussion that a dedicated WT:Requests to change the treatment of lects page might be useful, because when I want to merge lects+codes+templates, I post on WT:RFM (the page for merging things)—and the majority of discussions are on WT:RFM, in part because I am the most prolific starter of them—but other people sometimes post in RFDO or even, very rarely, in the BP. In the WT:BP#Notice discussion, the idea of posting lect mergers on a separate page was opposed, however... so we've ended up back at WT:RFM, where we (or at least, the majority of discussions) started. :) - -sche (discuss) 20:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I support merging zdj, wni and wlc into swb, but tentatively keeping swb separate from sw. (I note swb is properly the code of Maore Comorian, but we currently call it plain Comorian, and it's useful to continue to.) Quoth John Mugane (The Linguistic Typology and Representation of African Languages, 2003): “The various dialects of Comorian were traditionally seen as being dialects of Swahili, although there is not consistent mutual intelligibility between Comorian speakers and Swahili speakers. Around [1970], more discussion arose of the possibility that Comorian should be considered a separate language from Swahili. Ottenheimer & Ottenheimer (1976) provides a discussion of the place of Comorian among Bantu languages. The contribution of Asian, African and European languages, as well as Malagasy, to the lexicon and grammar of Comorian is acknowledged. A history of Comorian linguistics is given, along with the remark that linguists took a long time to accept that the Comorian dialects are not simply dialects of Swahili, but rather are different enough from Swahili to be considered a different language. Other linguists soon followed suit, beginning with Sibertin-Blanc (1980), who  posits that the Swahili-Comorian split was one of the more recent Swahili dialect separations.”
 * There are some differences between Comorian dialects, and some are more similar to Swahili than others (Nurse & Hinnebusch write that Swahili and N[d]zwani+Maore feature a future based on -caka, while Ngazi[d]ja+Mwali do not), but in general the IEL writes that "all [Comorian] dialects [are] sufficiently distinct from mainland Swahili to warrant separate translation".
 * I can [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=mji&diff=prev&oldid=20091411 create] a few words in Comorian, if we decide to keep it. - -sche (discuss) 21:37, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Comorian looks about as close to modern Zanzibari Swahili as 17th century Swahili does. However, I don't think anyone is advocating for 'Old Swahili'. Moreover, Swahili is a very pluricentric language, as will often happen with languages that arise at a linguistic interface. Taken as a whole, I don't see much deviation in vocabulary, although I cannot speak for grammar/inflection. I can accept keeping Swahili and Comorian Swahili separate, but I would prefer to see wordlist comparisons if you have them. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:26, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't have any substantial wordlists at hand. Eh, I don't mind merging Comorian and Swahili; we can always use context tags and split them again later if it becomes apparent that's merited. 'Tis a wiki, after all. - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I am striking this. actually is learning Comorian, and has extensive comparative wordlists at their disposal, and recommends we keep all the lects separate and consider swb to be Maore Comorian as we originally did, a change which I have thus effected. Looking at the words Echtio is entering and the orthography used, I have switched my opinion on the issue, TBH, and in any case I trust them more than us. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:57, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * NB WT:RFC. - -sche (discuss) 08:04, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Accepting Tajik (tg) as distinct from Persian (fa)
Tajik is treated independently. See Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:tg. --Vahagn Petrosyan 21:45, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * STATS shows that Tajik has almost 400 entries. Was this discussed somewhere? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 22:02, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It says that it's a dialect of Persian that doesn't get to be an L2 header, but Category:Tajik nouns says otherwise. Does this need an RFM or vote? --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:04, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * See above. I've updated the table to reflect longstanding actual practice. - -sche (discuss) 21:05, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Naming Papuan Mor (moq) and Austronesian Mor (mhz)
According to Ethnologue/the ISO, there are two languages called "Mor": moq (an almost-extinct Trans-New Guinea language) and mhz (Austronesian). Module:languages currently includes moq as plain "Mor". I'd like to add mhz, but we obviously can't have two languages with the same name... and our usual method of disambiguation, adding the language's home country in parentheses after it, won't work either, because both are from West Papua, Indonesia. I'm thinking the language families could be the disambiguators instead... but does anyone have a better idea? - -sche (discuss) 02:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Does our "look for alternate names" approach not work here? -- Liliana • 11:02, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Not that I can see. If you can find an alternative name, that'd be great. I saw "Mor-Yeretuar" mentioned a couple times, but it turns out to be the name of the subgroup of Wandamen that moq and Yeretuar are both members of, not an alternative name of Mor. And "Morait" also gets mentioned in the context of Papuan languages, but turns out to be a Doberai language, not another name of the Bomberai language mhz. Ethnologue doesn't have alt names, either; it resigns itself to disambiguating one of the Mors by its family ("Austronesian Mor") and the other by calling it "Mor 2"! lol - -sche (discuss) 19:07, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Remember Pray 1, Pray 2 and Pray 3? Yeah. This is a difficult situation and we may have no other choice but to go with "Austronesian Mor" and "Papuan Mor". -- Liliana • 19:09, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've added them under those names. - -sche (discuss) 19:57, 27 July 2013 (UTC)


 * These names were changed, as part of a general change to naming practice, after discussion discussion (of fan/fak) and discussion (of mjh). - -sche (discuss) 21:59, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Not merging Chinese Pidgin English (cpi)
Chinese Pidgin English is or was a real pidgin, but like pld and hwc, written records don't seem to support calling it an independent language. Even the name 'Chinese Pidgin English' suggests that. I think all our existing entries have or should have English sections independent of the result of this RFM. Moreover, the dialogue quoted in Bauer (1974) doesn't seem too far from a Chinese-accented GA slang with noticeable lexical borrowing. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Gah, I forgot to mention that we'll need an etyl: code, because some English entries have this in the etymology. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:48, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * User:-sche, another lect for you... —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 16:05, 2 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I dunno, it's pretty hard to consider either of the citations in joss-pidgin-man to be English. - -sche (discuss) 00:34, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Based on those citations, and how different they are from English, I'd keep this separate from en for now. - -sche (discuss) 20:07, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Merging Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic into Irish
As the name suggests, a dialect of gd. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No it isn't. It's a name Ethnologue made up for the language called in Scotland and  or Classical Irish in the rest of the world. —Angr 10:47, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I thought the name referred to something else. In that case, instead of merging it we need to rename it to something more accurate, I suppose. 'Classical Irish' might be best, although it seems crazy the number of Irishes we have over time (Primitive Irish, Old Irish, Middle Irish, Irish and now this Classical Irish). What do you prefer? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:37, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer not using this label or the  at all. There's no reason 17th-century Irish can't be simply , with words no longer in use labeled "archaic" or "obsolete", and any words that occur in texts from Scotland can be   and similarly labeled. Speakers of Modern Irish have no more difficulty reading  than speakers of Modern English have reading Shakespeare. —Angr 09:12, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Merged into ga. - -sche (discuss) 08:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Renaming swb from Comorian to Maore Comorian
See http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=swb So when one uses swb in the Wiktionary,
 * Maore Comorian: should appear, and not * Comorian: . Code changed in 2009. Water = madji [maji] in Ngazidja Comorian and maji [maʒi] in Maore Comorian. I'll try to create an 'About' page soon, after some reflection on it. --Echtio (talk) 22:04, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Gah, I'll change it and hope it doesn't break something. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:51, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Excluding mkw as redundant to ktu
mkw — Kituba (Congo)
 * Didn't notice this before, but it's the same as . I don't know why the ISO allowed it in twice. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:30, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Apparently they felt like they needed one code per country the language was spoken in. ktu suffices for our purposes. - -sche (discuss) 05:59, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Ana Tinga Dogon (dti)
(The content of) should possibly be renamed: the current name seems to be an amalgam of two variant names for the language, Ana Dogon and Ana Tinga/Ana Tiŋa. However, not one of those names is attested in Google Books, so I don't know what to suggest. - -sche (discuss) 00:48, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Struck. No action taken at this time. - -sche (discuss) 23:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging Buryat (bxr)
All uses should be per WT:LANGTREAT -- Liliana • 17:52, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * or we should update LANGTREAT. I have no preference at the moment. I've raised the issue in the BP. - -sche (discuss) 19:47, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

merged -- Liliana • 17:47, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
 * So that this section is findable by a search for "Buryat", I'm dropping that word into it. - -sche (discuss) 01:20, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussing Wè Northern / Wobé (wob)
Is this distinct from both <tt>krw</tt> and <tt>kqo</tt>? If so, should it (<tt>wob</tt>) be renamed Wobé? If not, let's combine them. (See Wee languages, Krahn language, Wobé language.) - -sche (discuss) 00:23, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems to contrast with and  . -- Liliana • 05:00, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Struck. No action taken at this time. - -sche (discuss) 23:41, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Renaming the Batak languages (btx, ...)
I suggest we rename this from "Batak Karo", which is AFAICT unattested as a language name, to "Karo Batak", which is attested. - -sche (discuss) 06:29, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * This should be kept in line with the other Batak languages. One language shouldn't deviate from the others, so if at all, all these languages would need to be changed. -- Liliana • 09:42, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Alright, I've done Google Books searches on all the names,
 * gets 614 Google Books hits, gets 1 valid hit
 * is far more common than
 * is more common than
 * is more common than
 * is more common than
 * is four times more common than
 * neither nor  gets any uses, AFAICT (although "Batak Alas-Kluet" does seem to be slightly more commonly mentioned as the language's name)
 * I wonder why the Batak-first names were originally chosen, here and on Wikipedia. Indonesian grammar? - -sche (discuss) 18:58, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Update:
 * gets 8 Google Books hits, gets 3 hits
 * gets 14 hits, gets 9 hits
 * gets 4 hits, gets no hits
 * gets 5 hits, gets no hits
 * gets 2 hits, gets none
 * gets 7 hits, gets none
 * neither nor  gets any hits, AFAICT
 * Whenever Module:languages settles down (i.e. we all decide where to host its contents), I plan to rename these languages. - -sche (discuss) 23:49, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 06:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussing ǃKung (khi-kun, knw)
I have modified the three languages which previously used exclamation marks (!) in their names to represent clicks, so that they now use click characters (ǃ) like the other click languages use and like entries for words in all those languages use. In doing so, I noticed that we have two codes, both marked as "regular language"s (rather than one being a family or such) called "ǃKung": and. It was decided that the two codes should be kept: but I want to know if it is a problem that they display the same name, and if one should be renamed. - -sche (discuss) 21:31, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That could be a problem, yes. Our category structure requires a unique name for each language. also depends on it.  21:41, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I wonder, should English entries such as [[!Kung]] use the exclamation point or the click character? Since technically the click character is not a letter in English, but neither is the exclamation point. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 21:49, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * could display "Ekoka !Kung", as at Wikipedia. To Wikitiki's point, we should use the click character because it won't get confused with the exclamation point by the software. The difference between ! and ǃ is relevant only to software, since to humans they look identical. —Angr 21:52, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * There's also one more difference you're forgetting: You can't type the click character with an English keyboard. Personally, I think it would be better if [[!Kung]] were moved to [[Kung]] (for English) and the !/ǃ added only on the page itself, but that seems like too radical of a change. --WikiTiki89 (talk) 22:07, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That's hardly important; the click character is in the "IPA" section of the character insertion box below the text field. And as the cited quotation shows, the language is called ǃKung in English. —Angr 22:33, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, we wouldn't move Москва to Moсквa (or any other such variant) &mdash; even if the only citations of the word were in books rather than online, and thus it were philosophically impossible to tell whether о or o were the character used: we would find the character in Cyrillic text and so use the Cyrillic codepoint. Here, we find a click, and so should use the click codepoint. (Although if !Kung is attested, with the exclamation mark sic, on Usenet, then we should definitely have it as an alt-spelling.) - -sche (discuss) 22:37, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Currently the spelling with the click character, [[ǃKung]], redirects to the spelling with the exclamation mark, [[!Kung]]. I think this is exactly the sort of case where redirects are the right solution, but I do think the redirect should go the other way. The entry should use the click character, and the spelling with the exclamation point should be the redirect. —Angr 23:00, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've started relocating such entries. I especially fixed [[ǃxóɲa ǂàã]]! - -sche (discuss) 00:11, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Someone with a bot could change all instances of "!Kung" to "ǃKung" now. - -sche (discuss) 01:19, 23 August 2012 (UTC) (Perhaps best to wait until the names are sorted out. - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC))
 * But, whenever a name is chosen, the things in this red category and others such should changed (by bot or by bored hand): Category:!Kung verbs. - -sche (discuss) 02:40, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've started a separate discussion about whether we actually need both languages, anyway: Requests_for_moves,_mergers_and_splits. I think we should revisit and resolve that question before proceeding with a rename (as it may remove the need for a rename). - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Struck. This was resolved long ago. This discussion can be archived to Wiktionary talk:About ǃKung. - -sche (discuss) 23:55, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging ǃKung (khi-kun, knw, ...)
The brief discussion of these templates last year was closed, without resolving the issue at hand, after only three comments &mdash; the nominator's suggestion of deletion, PK's noting but also questioning the distinction between them, and Daniel's closing comment. I propose that we should either only use the macro-language code for entries in all three dialects, or we should keep the dialects separate and thus disuse ... but we shouldn't use both. Using both creates problems for our category structure and for (as both are called ǃKung) and while there are ways of getting around this (rename one "ǃXun" or the other "Ekoka ǃKung" or such), it doesn't seem necessary to have the problem in the first place. - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I've merged mwj, knw and oun into khi-kun. - -sche (discuss) 09:26, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussing duh and noi
and are varieties of the Bhilori language, but Bhilori does not have its own code. (The situation is analogous to that of Nahuatl, which does not have a single, unified code in ISO 639-3. Nahuatl had the ISO 639-2 code, however.) I suggest we merge the two, using one of the codes. (Failing that, -proper goes by several names other than "Dungra Bhil", and a rename may be in order.) - -sche (discuss) 05:46, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Darn! that spoils any chance to have a template for sarcastically commenting on content. After a long session of patrolling, that option sometimes starts to look almost obligatory...Chuck Entz (talk) 13:59, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There's always (and for good things, ). :b No  yet, though. - -sche (discuss) 22:35, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Struck. No action taken at this time. - -sche (discuss) 23:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Kawésqar (alc)
This language is more commonly called "Kawésqar" (even our entries treat "Kawésqar" as the lemma; compare Qawasqar, Kawésqar). - -sche (discuss) 02:53, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:49, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 06:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Large Flowery Miao / A-Hmao (hmd)
Although I would love to rename this language "Large Flowery Miao", that phrase gets only 2 Google Books hits—though that's two more than our current name for it, "A-hmaos". By far the most common name for the language is "A-Hmao" (or "A Hmao", but I prefer the hyphen, myself). I propose we rename it. - -sche (discuss) 02:59, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Support —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:49, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Wait, your comments on User:-sche/missing codes have led me to wonder: should this code even exist, or should it be subsumed into ? - -sche (discuss) 22:39, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Meh, kept for now. (This issue can always be re-examined later.) - -sche (discuss) 06:51, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Btw, "Big Flowery Miao" gets 23 hits (that's still less common than "A-Hmao"). - -sche (discuss) 02:12, 16 February 2013 (UTC)


 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 06:51, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Unsplitting cpe-pit and cpe-nor from pih
These are English-based creoles spoken in the remote Pitcairn and Norfolk islands, which are extremely similar to each other. is labeled as Pitkern and has no entries, is labeled as Norfuk and has a few entries, and  is labeled as Pitcairn-Norfolk and has a couple entries. The lects seem massively similar to me, with the same sound shifts and vocabulary for the most part, and I propose that we merge them as, either called Pitcairn-Norfolk or Pitkern-Norfuk (i.e. English names of the islands on which they are spoken or the creole names of the islands). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 20:12, 28 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Support. In one short previous discussion, Liliana agreed that the split was silly and supported a merger, too. The differences seem no greater than those between the kind of English that's spoken in Hawai'i and the kind that's spoken in Ireland: yeah, there are differences in pronunciation and orthography, and there are even differences in grammar and vocabulary, but they're not different languages. - -sche (discuss) 06:05, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Funny you should bring up the English spoken in Hawaiʻi. Luckily, we don't (AFAIK) have a code for Hiberno-English, but we seem to be treating Hawaiian English slang as a separate language. See WT:RFDO. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:41, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Support. — Ungoliant (Falai) 06:15, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I have unsplit cpe-pit and cpe-nor from pih. - -sche (discuss) 22:25, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Merging the Malagasy lects
Liliana deleted for being redundant to. So are the many other dialects:, , , , , , , ,. There are two more, and, which don't currently exist and should be specifically disallowed with the rest of these at WT:LANGTREAT. They should all be removed from Module:languages, and if they have categories, those should be deleted. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:37, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Support. The consensus of scholarship does seem to be that Malagasy is one language, not many. E.g. Leonard Fox wrote (in Hainteny: The Traditional Poetry of Madagascar, 1990, ISBN 083875175X, page 17) that "Madagascar, although it is the world's fourth largest island, is characterized by a remarkable degree of linguistic homogeneity. Dialectal differences certainly exist, but the Malagasy language exhibits greater uniformity than many languages spoken over a much smaller area...". Øyvind Dahl concurred (in Meanings in Madagascar: Cases of Intercultural Communication, 1999, ISBN 0897896424 "all Malagasy speak the same language, with only dialectal differences, which is an exceptional fact in an African context and a consequence of the relative late immigration from South-East Asia." Ann Kumar wrote (in Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past, 2012, ISBN 9814311960, page 107) that "Grammar is remarkably uniform, and no dialectical differences are very great." - -sche (discuss) 08:54, 17 November 2013 (UTC)


 * ✅. None of the codes were used, AFAICT, so I simply removed them from Module:languages. As a side note, if the OP hadn't overtly linked to the templates, I wouldn't have thought to delete them, too... which highlights how untenable it is that we haven't deleted all the language code templates en masse yet. The template side of things hasn't been updated to reflect most if any of the past several months' renames, mergers, and additions of new codes. If there's any infrastructure that still calls templates rather than Module:languages, that's a problem. - -sche (discuss) 05:19, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Tat (ttt)
Currently is called "Muslim Tat"; I propose that (like Wikipedia) we simply call this lect "Tat". The name was probably chosen because Tat is in fact a macrolanguage, with two sublects traditionally spoken by the separate communities of Muslims and Jews (we call the latter lect "Judeo-Tat"). In any case, common practice is to use Judeo- for the Jewish versions of standard languages, and leave it off for the non-Jewish version. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Support. Even many of the BGC hits for "Muslim Tat" for which Google provides snippets also refer to the language as plain "Tat", and only use the qualifier in phrases like "Jewish and Muslim Tat", or in parentheses as "(Muslim) Tat". (One hit is referring to a person—a Tat whose religion is Islam—rather than to the language.) PS, it's possible that Ethnologue included "Muslim" to disambiguate it not just from Judeo-Tat but also from, but it can be distinguished as "Tati" if we want to include it as a single language. (At the moment, we include all of its subvarieties instead; none of them have names similar to "Tat".) AFAICT, the only entries which need to be updated (because they include Tat words) are tree, dog, year, ear and eye. - -sche (discuss) 04:47, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That's a lot of entries. Who's gonna do all that work? --WikiTiki89 04:49, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * In the time it took you to make that comment, I had already done it. :b - -sche (discuss) 05:03, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't doubt that the time it took for me to change Module:languages was more than it took you edit those entries, just from sheer page loading time. Something really needs to be done about the size of that module. --WikiTiki89 05:08, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Btw, WP considers this a dialect of Persian. See Persian language, Tat language (Caucasus). - -sche (discuss) 04:33, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging Buryat dialects; also, merging Mari dialects
As per Beer_parlour/2013/September. As for Buryat, there was an agreement. Three Mari varieties can be merged into two. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:58, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I've deleted bxm and bxu. A number of entires use bxr; they should be switched to bua before bxr is deleted. Then WT:LANGTREAT can be updated. See also WT:RFM. - -sche (discuss) 01:18, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. bxr (WhatLinksHere) is only used in the talk pages or have I missed anything? --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:28, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The code is used in about 60 entries, which I'm going through now in AWB. They don't show up in WhatLinksHere because they use Module:languages, not Template:bxr. (That's one of the only drawbacks to the switch to the module: it's harder to find which pages use a given language code.) - -sche (discuss) 01:37, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for addressing this! --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 02:00, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * By the way, renaming "Russian Buryat" to "Buryat" breaks the alphabetical order in translations, as in . Also, the overwhelming majority of Buryats, especially those who speak the language live in Russia, so "Russian Buryat" is an unnecessary qualifier. The language also has automatic transliteration. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 02:07, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * As indicated in my edit summaries, I'm under the impression that Autoformat/Kassadbot will sort languages into alphabetical order next time it runs. As for transliteration and qualification: OK, I'll drop both. :) - -sche (discuss) 02:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I think I've switched all instances of bxr to bua, but we could wait a day or two to be sure. - -sche (discuss) 05:14, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * For Mari, which code should be deleted, chm or mhr? Both are in use at present. Whichever code is deleted, "Eastern Mari" (="Standard Mari", but we avoid using "Standard" in language names) should continue to be called that, not only to distinguish it from "Western Mari", but to distinguish it from the several other languages called "Mari" — some of which, e.g. mbx, hob, have not been added to Module:languages yet. - -sche (discuss) 05:14, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * My preference is to keep "chm" with the name "Mari" (without "standard") and delete "mhr" ("Eastern Mari", "Meadow Mari"), which is identical with "chm". Don't know if "mrj" ("Western Mari", "Hill Mari") is used. The transliteration module Module:chm-translit handles all three codes and letters, which are only used in the Hill Mari - Ӓ, ӓ and Ӹ, ӹ. I haven't considered mbx or hob. Eastern Mari (Meadow Mari) and standard Mari are the same language. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 05:38, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Great job on the transliteration module! Calling the language plain "Mari" isn't an option, since it does need to be distinguished from the Sepik language that's also called "Mari", and the Austronesian "Mari" (which could be renamed "Hop" if necessary), both of which I just added to Module:languages. (Those two are currently distinguished from one another as "Mari (Sepik)" and "Mari (Austronesian)".) Given that the name "Eastern Mari" seems to be noticeably more common than "Meadow Mari", and given that we use "Western Mari" as the primary name for the other variety, I think we can go with "Eastern Mari". - -sche (discuss) 08:17, 18 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Nah, not a great job, I copied the logic from other modules and done so for a few other. OK with "Eastern Mari". Thanks for the efforts. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 00:02, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I've changed all uses of 'mhr' to 'chm' and updated the name of the lect in those instances. Whenever it's decided where the contents of Module:languages will be hosted, 'mhr' can be removed from that module. In the other places where 'chm' occurs (the pre-existing occurrences of 'chm'), the language's name still needs to be updated. I will try to find time to do that in AWB. Then this will be finished. - -sche (discuss) 05:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've updated the module and about half of the ~140 entries that referenced chm; the other half, and the categories, remain to be updated. - -sche (discuss) 09:00, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅, I think. - -sche (discuss) 03:33, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Amarag → Amurdag
Currently, we call amg "Amarag". That's the name a number of general linguistic encyclopedias (International Encyclopedia of Linguistis, etc) use. However, I propose we switch to "Amurdag", since that name is more common both in specialist sources (including Handelsmann's dictionary of the language) and in non-specialist sources. (The fact that non-specialist literature mentions the language at all is astounding, but see e.g. International Sport Management, ISBN 0736082735.) PS: no one has created Category:Amarag language yet, so one could argue that this is not quite a "request for [a] move"... nonetheless, this page has established itself as the place where language renames are discussed. - -sche (discuss) 23:57, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Kenuzi-Dongola → Dongolawi
I propose we rename the lect kzh from "Kenuzi-Dongola" to "Dongolawi", which seems more common. Some literature uses "Dongolawi" as the name of one of the lect's two dialects, namely dgl (the dialect also known as "Andaandi"); but because we've merged that dialect and xnz (Kenzi / Mattoki) and consider kzh to be a single language, I don't see any prolem with that. - -sche (discuss) 18:35, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 00:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Merging khk and mvf into mn (Mongolian)
Currently, Module:languages contains three codes for Mongolian: mn for Mongolian proper, khk for Khalkha Mongolian, and mvf for Peripheral Mongolian. Scholars agree that Khalkha is Mongolian, so it is redundant to have khk as a separate code. Scholars disagree on what else is or isn't Mongolian (see Mongolian language), but 'Peripheral Mongolian' is too vague a term to be useful — scholarly disagreement is over concrete lects, like Buryat (which, NB, we consider a separate language). I propose we delete khk and mvf. (WT:LANGTREAT already calls for this, but using language that I think should be reworded for clarity given the scholarly disputes: rather than say "only the macrolanguage is treated as an individual language", I'd like to spell out that "Only the code mn is used; khk is redundant to it and mvf is too vague to be usable.") - -sche (discuss) 19:15, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:34, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Support as well. The language of Inner Mongolians has more difference to Outer Mongolian but it's still "mn". --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 05:40, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 19:23, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Merging the Baluchi lects
Baluchi (bal) has at least six dialects. Ethnologue has encoded three, namely bcc (Southern Baluchi/Balochi), bgp (Eastern Baluchi/Balochi) and bgn (Western Baluchi/Balochi).

Various editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica say that "Despite the vast area over which Balochi is spoken, its numerous dialects are all mutually intelligible." / "Despite the vast area over which [Balochi] is spoken, its six dialects (Rakhshani, Sarawani, Kechi, Lotuni, the Eastern Hill dialects, and the coastal dialects) are all believed to be mutually intelligible." Alan S. Kaye, in Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus) ISBN 1575060191, on page 762, is slightly more cautious: the "Balochi dialects [...] are six in number, and with one exception they are all mutually intelligible." (Emphasis mine.) He writes that Eastern Hill is among the mutually intelligible dialects, but Google hides enough of his book that I can't see which one he considers unintelligible.

What should be updated, the module (to remove the dialects) or LANGTREAT (to legitimize them)? - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is a difference. These should most certainly be merged. -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Merged. - -sche (discuss) 06:29, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Merging the Uzbek lects
Uzbek (uz), Northern Uzbek (uzn) and Southern Uzbek (uzs). Which, if any, should go? - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The latter... -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Quoth Asya Pereltsvaig in Languages of the World: An Introduction (2012, ISBN 1107002788, page 102: "Sometimes Standard Uzbek is also referred to as Northern Uzbek, to distinguish it from a related language, Southern Uzbek, spoken by 1,400,000 speakers in northern areas of Afghanistan." (The Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, 2010, adds that "Southern Uzbek includes the dominant urban dialects of Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand, etc.") So, uzn should definitely go. uzs should probably go, too, in part because it doesn't seem to be a single, unified thing with firm differences from uz / uzn; instead, it's the other part of the continuum that starts with northern/standard Uzbek and gets progressively more "Iranized" / influenced by Persian, e.g. in in the pronunciation of vowels (per the Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World and the works of Settar Cabbar). - -sche (discuss) 21:30, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Merged. - -sche (discuss) 06:45, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Renaming Lingua Franca (pml)
Template:pml is currently called <tt>Lingua Franca</tt> which is a very unclear name. I would greatly prefer that it be called Sabir, which seems to be what speakers called it, or if you really don't like that, 'Mediterranean Lingua Franca' which is what Wikipedia calls, and at least distinguishes it other languages considered lingue franche in various times and various locales. PS: If you agree, it would be nice to "speedy" this process (it only requires editing the template) so that I can create entries without it becoming an annoyance to whomever it falls to to close the RFM (deleting and recreating categories, etc). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 19:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * "Lingua Franca"! Wow, that is a bad name. I often note that I try to "ensure Wiktionary calls each language by its most common distinct English name", and that's not distinct—nor, AFAICT, all too commonly used as the name of that language in English (as opposed to mentioned as what the name of that language was in various Mediterranean tongues).


 * I gave up the search strings "Lingua Franca" and "Lingua Franca language" because they turned up too many irrelevant things, but gets 18 hits, of which 5 refer to this language (though none capitalise "lingua"); 3 just happen to contain those words in that order, 1 is unclear, 1 uses it as the name of a sci-fi language, 1 is "Lingua Franca Creek" and 7 show no preview or are duplicates. Of the 25 variously-capitalised hits for "spoke Lingua Franca", almost all refer to this language.
 * "Mediterranean Lingua Franca" gets ~70 hits with previews. Some are of "Mediterranean lingua franca", but because every name this language has shows up uncapitalised half the time, it isn't clear if those hits mean any lingua franca of the Med or still refer to this language. "Mediterranean Lingua Franca" does seem to be the most common name of the language, but it's still somewhat ambiguous... English is a language people in Tunis and Rome can use to communicate, is it the Mediterranean Lingua Franca?
 * "spoke Sabir" gets five hits ("speak Sabir" gets nothing relevant AFAICT), "Sabir language" gets ~10 hits—but one is a reference to a Turkic language. Other search strings could probably show it to be about as common as LF if not MLF. And no-one is quite sure who the Sabirs were, or what their language was (it might have been Khazar or Common Turkic; otherwise, it doesn't have a code), so it's possible to put off worrying about a naming conflict with Turkic Sabir until such a time as it has a code and actually conflicts.


 * Support renaming to whichever name you think best. - -sche (discuss) 08:40, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Collocations like give way more relevant hits than . The former name has been used to the refer to the language since at least the mid-19th century. So I think "Sabir" remains the best option. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 08:59, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support renaming. “Mediterranean Lingua Franca” sounds much better, but you know best. — Ungoliant (Falai) 23:05, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The only reason why that might be better is that it isn't associated with Molière as much. As for euphony... somewhat. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:21, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅: renamed to "Sabir" (with MLF being an alternative name). - -sche (discuss) 19:12, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Not splitting Maykulan (mnt)
was the ISO code for "Maykulan", a small, now-extinct language. The SIL/ISO recently retired the code, updating the name of the principal lect to "Mayi-Kulan" (which does see slightly more use), recoding it as, and adding codes for Wunumara , Mayi-Thakurti and Mayi-Yapi , which had previously been considered dialects of Mayi-Kulan. What little literature I can find on the lects suggests there is little difference between the dialects. I therefore suggest that we retain and not follow the ISO in splitting it into, ,  and  at this time. We could also rename it from "Maykulan" to "Mayi-Kulan", or it could be that the second is not so much more common enough than the first to merit the bother of a rename (and keeping "Maykulan" might make it more obvious we weren't following the SIL into splitting the dialects). - -sche (discuss) 07:23, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅, in that nothing was done (as far as creating new codes or renaming things). I will update WT:LANGTREAT to note that xyk, wnn, xyt and xyj are subsumed into mnt. - -sche (discuss) 01:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Wathaurong (wth)
The ISO calls this Wathawurrung; Wathaurong seems to be about twice as common. - -sche (discuss) 20:29, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 01:16, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Unifying Azeri (az, azb, azj)
WT:LANGTREAT says only Azeri (az) is treated as a language, but azb (South Azerbaijani) and azj (North Azerbaijani) are currently encoded in Module:languages / its new subpages. What should be updated, the module or LANGTREAT? WP says "[the] dialects of Azerbaijani do not differ substantially. Speakers of various dialects normally do not have problems understanding each other." - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The only reason to differentiate them would be due to the different writing systems used (Cyrillic/Arabic), but we can handle that with script codes, so and  should most certainly go. -- Liliana • 17:21, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, even if we split azb and azj, the latter would still have entries in two scripts, because it (like Romanian) has been written in both Cyrillic and Latin at different points in history, so the use of Arabic script for azb shouldn't be an impediment to incorporating its entries under the single header ==Azeri==. (And we do handle e.g. both Latin- and Arabic-script Afrikaans under one header.) - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, it is worth mentioning the existence of Qashqai (qxq), another Oghuz lect spoken in Iran and written in the Arabic script. It is so close to Azeri that it is sometimes considered just another dialect of it. Gilles Authier, in New strategies for relative clauses in Azeri and Apsheron Tat, in Clause Linkage in Cross-Linguistic Perspective (2012, ISBN 3110280698, says "There is an almost perfect mutual intelligibility between Azeri and Kashkai speakers. I tested this personally by submitting recordings to both audiences." - -sche (discuss) 20:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * ✅: azb and azj merged into az. (qxq not merged at this time.) - -sche (discuss) 04:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Not renaming ǃXóõ (nmn) to Taa
To avoid one click character (/exclamation mark), we could rename this language from "ǃXóõ" to "Taa", the name Wikipedia gives it. It's very difficult to search for terms spelt with either click character or exclamation marks, but I found about 19 Google Books with "ǃXóõ language" in them, while "Taa language" gets about 50 Google Books hits, about 25 of which are scannos or references to unrelated things. Still, that means the two terms seem about as common. So, shall we rename to "Taa"? - -sche (discuss) 00:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: there remain a number of entries which contain "!Xóõ" (with exclamation mark). A robot should update these to either "ǃXóõ" (click) or "Taa" depending upon the outcome of this discussion. - -sche (discuss) 00:57, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't know if it helps but all books I have seen used !Xóõ. -- Liliana • 16:46, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. Maro 19:16, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Struck; no change made. - -sche (discuss) 07:12, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Merging the Fula lects
These beguilingly named, closely related West African lects (one is called "Pular", one is "Pulaar") seem to quite possibly just be dialects of (Fula). It also seems possible that Fula is pluricentric and really a sort of macrolanguage that needs to be split up. Pulaar has a bunch of entries, Fula has a couple, and Pular has none. However, entries like Haalpulaar suggest that and, at least, are even considered to be the same language by Pula(a)r speakers themselves. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:58, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge all to -- Liliana • 22:07, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge into . Also consider: Template:ffm, Template:fue, Template:fuh, Template:fuq, Template:fuv, Template:fub, Template:fui. - -sche (discuss) 22:32, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Definitely merge the Fulfuldes, I have no doubts about that. Should we use tags to distinguish entries currently marked as Pulaar? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:38, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Whenever we know or suspect that a form is restricted to any of these dialects, or any of the dialects Ethnologue declined to code, we should indicate that, yes. We should be careful not to mark general forms as dialect-specific, of course. Our Serbo-Croatian editors can tell of how nationalists often mark a form as natiolect-specific when they're really used by all the languages. (Disclaimer: alternatively, if you subscribe to the philosophy some expressed in a recent RFDO discussion, it's not misleading to mark a general word as being restricted to a narrow context.) If we ever find native speakers to really expand our  entries, verbs will need multiple conjugation tables to show the different endings used in different dialects, but that is not an argument against a merger: several Germanic languages have verbs with multiple tables because the verbs sometimes conjugate strongly, sometimes weakly. - -sche (discuss) 22:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Abstain. I do not oppose a merge, but I feel I should abstain because it is not clear to me that the differences are smaller than those between and, or  and  (and ). - -sche (discuss) 02:03, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Currently, our Maasina Fulfulde entries treat themselves as alternative forms of Fula entries, which is ... nonstandard. is not supposed to be used across languages. I'm back to saying "merge". I'll take care ffm, at least, since the current situation implies that the user who added it (User:A12n) considers it a mere variety. - -sche (discuss) 18:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * After checking for uses of them, and fixing those that weren't on old out-of-date user subpages, I've merged and deleted all of the dialects: ffm, fub, fuc, fue, fuf, fuh, fui, fuq, fuv. - -sche (discuss) 19:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Merging pqe-pol-pro into poz-pep-pro
Are "pqe-pol-pro" = "Proto-East-Polynesian" and "poz-pep-pro" = "Proto-Eastern Polynesian" different languages? - -sche (discuss) 05:55, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * They refer to the same proto language. "Proto-Eastern Polynesian" is the more common name. —Stephen (Talk) 00:32, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks; I'll start a RFM. - -sche (discuss) 04:04, 23 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The codes pqe-pol-pro and poz-pep-pro refer to the same language, AFAICT. The latter (poz-pep-pro, "Proto-Eastern Polynesian") has both the more common name and the more well-formed code. Accordingly, instances of the pqe-pol-pro in entries and appendices should be switched to poz-pep-pro, the "Proto-East-Polynesian" categories and appendices should be renamed, and pqe-pol-pro should be removed from Module:languages/datax. - -sche (discuss) 04:14, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't have any objections. 04:16, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I looked through the edit histories of a random sampling of eight pages that used each of the above-mentioned codes. It looks like the editors who edit Proto-East(ern)-Polynesian are User:Metaknowledge and User:Amir Hamzah 2008. I'm pinging them now to see if they are aware of any reason why this merger shouldn't go through. - -sche (discuss) 22:00, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I seem to remember creating the pep one because I couldn't find a code for it. I think I also made poz-pnp-pro for Proto-Nuclear Polynesian. Anyway, these definitely refer to the same thing, and not surprisingly I'd prefer Proto-Eastern Polynesian as the name. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:47, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Merged. - -sche (discuss) 19:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Discussing Wintu
What's this business about recoding Wintu? I reckon that we should use not use retired codes unless there is a pressing linguistic need to do so, e.g. . But I'm not aware of the facts of this case. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:57, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * At the start of this year, the ISO retired the code wit for "Wintu" and split it into wnw ("Wintu"), nol (Nomlaki) and pwi (Patwin). Adding nol and pwi was straightforward, but we already have entries in Wintu. I decided the path of least change was to let them keep using wit. I would have no problem with changing them to wnw, though, and it's not like there are that many of them. As for why the ISO made the split: Alice Shepherd notes in her 2006 work on Proto-Wintun ISBN 0520098528 that "The Wintun language family consists of four languages, Wintu, Nomlaki, Patwin and South Patwin [... with] divergence is similar to that of the Romance languages, with a time depth of perhaps 2000-2500 years (for additional discussion, see Whistler 1980: 17)." Marianne Mithun, in The Languages of Native North America, adds that Harvey Pitkin, who made the same analogy to Romance as early as 1984, had furthermore recognized that many of the similarities between northern Wintu and Patwin were due to contact. - -sche (discuss) 14:49, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I see. I made the Wintu entries with a dictionary that definitely describes wnw, so I advocate moving them over and retiring wit. (I support ISO's decision; actually, I assumed it was already like that.) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 02:22, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've made the switch. PS I should possibly have explained, btw, that the reason I dropped a bundle of scholarly info was so I could then cite this thread (and have it be informative) in the table, not because I thought you needed persuading or something. :b - -sche (discuss) 05:44, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

merging the Aymara lects
I suggest we delete ayc and ayr, the codes for Aymara's dialects. The International Handbook of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (1998, ISBN 0313244847 says "the dialectal differences in Aymara are not so great that they create problems of mutual intelligibility (Briggs, 1976)." James Stuart Olson (in The Indians of Central and South America, 1991, ISBN 0313263876 and other scholars concur. - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No opposition -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 08:29, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

keeping the Bikol lects separate
What little information I can find regarding the mutual (un)intelligibility of the dialects of Bikol (bik) — agk, agz, atl, bcl, bln, bto, cts, fbl, lbl, rbl and ubl — suggests that LANGTREAT should perhaps be updated to legitimize their existence as separate lects. Fenella Cannell, in Power and Intimacy in the Christian Philippines (1999, ISBN 0521646227 says: "The Philippines is rich in languages, and the Bicol language is itself rich in dialects, including mutually incomprehensible dialects." But that's not much to go on. Anyone have more information?
 * Cf. Central Bikol language. Seems like a clear case where we want separate codes for the dialects. could possibly stay as a language family code, I dunno. -- Liliana • 17:29, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I've updated LANGTREAT to note that the subdivisions are allowed as languages. We do, however, have 8 bik entries, all nouns: Category:Bikol nouns. Hopefully it won't be too hard to find out which varieties of Bikol they belong to. - -sche (discuss) 22:42, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

merging the Kanuri lects
LANGTREAT says Kanuri (kr) should be treated as one language, and scholars (e.g. Norbert Cyffer, who wrote A sketch of Kanuri and other works) agree on that point. Ethnologue, for whatever reason, gave codes to several of the dialects, which I suggest we delete: bms, kau (AFAICT this one has already been removed), kbl, kby, knc, krt. - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No opposition -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 08:29, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

merging the Kongo lects
Same kind of question as in previous sections: is Kongo (kg) one language, or several (kng, kwy, ldi, yom)? (That last one, Yombe, is not mentioned in LANGTREAT.) - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * One; get rid of the others. We even deleted Category:Koongo language previously. -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 08:37, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

merging the Oromo lects
LANGTREAT recognises only Oromo (om) as a language. The codes of its varieties (gax, gaz, hae and orc) are, however, included in Module:languages. WP asserts that "not all varieties are mutually intelligible", but scholars disagree: Hence, my inclination is to merge the dialects into om. - -sche (discuss) 05:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Alan S. Kaye, Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus) ISBN 1575060191, page 493: "On the subject of dialect differentiation, Oromo scholars agree on the mutual intelligibility between them".
 * Robert L. Cooper, Language Planning and Social Change (1989, ISBN 0521336414, page 22: "The largest of these conquered groups is the Oromo. [...] They are divided into numerous clans. But they are united by a single language, whose many dialects are mutally intelligible."
 * David H. Shinn and Thomas P. Ofcansky, Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia (2013, ISBN 0810874571, page 319: "Although there are numerous dialects, they are mutually intelligible. Over the years, the language has been written in the Latin, Sabaean, and Arabic scripts. The Bible was first translated into Afan Oromo well over 100 years ago..."
 * Merge 'em -- Liliana • 17:25, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I've merged hae; I'll merge the other codes later, after checking for and updating any uses of them. - -sche (discuss) 06:33, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 08:29, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Renaming Tachelhit → Tashelhit
Of all the names this language goes by, we seem to have picked one of the least common; see. I propose to rename it "Tashelhit". This entails "moving" a few categories and updating ~46 entries. PS the spelling "Tashelhit" is already commonly used in translations tables. - -sche (discuss) 02:58, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 03:57, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Merging aus-you into aus-yol
AFAICT 'aus-you' and 'aus-yol' refer to the same language family. I suggest that 'aus-you' be replaced with 'aus-yol'. This entails some updates to Module:languages and the merger of the families' categories. - -sche (discuss) 02:06, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Do these exist anywhere? It would be nice to know what it is we're changing. Chuck Entz (talk) 17:02, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean. On Wiktionary, both codes exist in the family data module, Module:families/data. One language (rit, in Module:languages/data3/r) lists aus-you as its family; several languages list aus-yol as their family and at least one English word has "from " as its etymology because it isn't clear which Yolngu dialect it derives from. Category:Yolngu Matha languages and Category:Yolngu languages both exist. - -sche (discuss) 21:11, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 18:38, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

= 2014 =

aus-gab → gbw
Now that the Gabi-Gabi / Gabi language has an ISO code (gbw), we ca switch all two of our entries to use it rather than the exceptional code they had been using (aus-gab). - -sche (discuss) 19:59, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 20:35, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

merging the Yarli lects
yga, wdk, yxl and yxi are dialects of a single extinct language. yxi isn't even a valid (ISO/Ethnologue-approved) code, and has the same canonical name as yxl, which is problematic. I propose to merge them under the code yxl. - -sche (discuss) 03:53, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I've gotten rid of the invalid code yxi (presumably a typo!). I will get to the rest later. - -sche (discuss) 05:28, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Done. - -sche (discuss) 04:50, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Various code retirements, part one
In 2012 and 2013, the ISO retired several codes by merging them into other codes or splitting them up. Thirty of the retirements initially escaped our notice; discussion of fifteen of them subsequently occurred here: Beer parlour/2014/February. The discussions were about:
 * merging "Upper Tanudan Kalinga" (kgh) and "Lower Tanudan Kalinga" (kml) into kml as "Tanudan Kalinga"
 * merging "South Wemale" (tlw) and "North Wemale" (weo) into weo as "Wemale"
 * retiring gbc and splitting "Garawa" proper (wrk) and "Wanyi" (wny)
 * splitting Kadu and Kanan (result: not split)
 * splitting Paku and Mobwa Karen (result: not split)
 * retiring mwd and splitting "Mudburra" proper (dmw) and "Karranga"/"Karrangpurru" (xrq)
 * splitting Jiwarli and Thiin (result: not split)
 * "Aghu Tharrnggala" (ggr/gtu), the spurious non-language "Gugu Mini" (ggm), and "Ikarranggal" (ikr)
 * merging "Yangbye" (ybd) and "Chaungtha" (ccq) into Rakhine (rki) (Rakhine's other major dialect, rmz, was not merged)
 * splitting Yendang and Yotti (result: not split)
 * splitting Yir-Yoront and Yirrk-Mel / Yirrk-Thangalkl (result: not split)
 * merging "Baagandji"/"Bandjigali" (bjd) and "Darling" (drl) into drl
 * merging "Horuru"/"Haruru" (hrr) and "Yalahatan" (jal) into jal as "Yalahatan"/"Atamanu"
 * merging "Ibilo" (ibi) into "Okpamheri" (opa)

Rename Tabassaran → Tabasaran (tab)
The spelling with one 's' has always been noticeably more common. (Renaming the language entails moving a few categories and updating a few pages.) - -sche (discuss) 07:20, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. Wanted to do it myself. --Vahag (talk) 08:20, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 19:48, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

unifying Naki, discussing Mashi
The ISO/SIL, as they are wont to do (vide their assigning different codes to the Republic of the Congo's Kituba vs the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Kituba, Achterhoeks vs Sallands, etc), gave the Beboid language several codes for the several villages it is spoken in. Specifically, they gave it the code mff ("Naki"), but then also two more codes, buz for the variety spoken in the village of Bukwen and jms for the variety spoken in the village of Mashi. I propose to merge jms and buz [back] into mff. As an added bonus, this will allow us to add mho (the code of the not-closely-related Bantoid "Mashi" spoken in Zambia and Angola) without a clumsy disambiguator. - -sche (discuss) 20:26, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 04:54, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Renaming Diitidaht → Ditidaht (dtd)
The spelling with one 'i' is far more common. (Renaming the language entails moving a few categories and updating a few pages.) - -sche (discuss) 07:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine to me, though I'm tempted to suggest Dahdiditdahdahdidit so the Morse code matches the language code... ;) Chuck Entz (talk) 10:19, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Support, but I would use "-..--.." instead of the lengthy "dahdiditdahdahdidit". See Category:-..--..:All topics --kc_kennylau (talk) 10:51, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Renamed in the way I suggested. - -sche (discuss) 20:31, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Recoding Old Portuguese (roa-ptg → roa-opt)
Generally we name codes for "old" languages starting with "o" and followed by the two-letter code of the modern language, if there is one. Several ISO codes follow this scheme as well. The code "ptg" makes it look like it's modern Portuguese, and I'm not sure why it was created like that in the first place. 18:02, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Neutral. The term "Galician-Portuguese" is more appropriate to designate this language. It doesn't make sense to label a Galician word as derived from "Old Portuguese". Liuscomaes (talk) 20:59, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * This is about the code though, not the name. Wikipedia says both names are in use. Would you prefer  instead?  21:02, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * And anyway, of course it makes sense. There are Scottish Gaelic terms derived from Old Irish and Scots terms derived from Old English and Walloon terms derived from Old French and Yiddish terms derived from Old High German and so on and so forth. Just because two modern languages have different names A and B, that doesn't mean they can't both be derived from "Old A". "Galician-Portuguese" sounds more like a language family than the name of a medieval language. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 21:56, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * You are correct. Nonetheless, the terms "Old Portuguese" or "Old Galician" are avoided because of their ambiguity. Most authors use "Galego-português" ("Galego-portugués" in Galician) when referring to the language of the cantigas of the 12th - 14th centuries. Liuscomaes (talk) 10:08, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Support "roa-opt" per nom. - -sche (discuss) 23:11, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Support "roa-opt" as well. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 00:06, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I just noticed Template talk:roa-ptg... looks like you weren't the first person to think the name should be roa-opt. :) - -sche (discuss) 07:38, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Done. CodeCat and MewBot did the heavy lifting, and I think I have cleaned up the edge cases and outliers. - -sche (discuss) 20:22, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Not merging ims into itc-ola
The Marsian language ims looks like dialectal Old Latin to me, and is sometimes considered thus in scholarly works; now that we have a dedicated code for that, it seems that we can merge this into it. User:-sche, User:CodeCat, and User:Fsojic may have opinions. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:55, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The Wikipedia article says it's an Osco-Umbrian language. That would make it part of a different branch of Italic from Latin. 04:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * How could it be Osco-Umbrian? It's Q-Italic, not P-Italic, as you can clearly see from inscriptions. (Wikipedia also says that "Their language differs very slightly from Roman Latin of that date", which would be an argument in support of merger.) —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 05:08, 14 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I've seen two different classifications of Italic languages: the one Wikipedia uses that puts Latin into a 'Latin-Faliscan' group and Marsian into an 'Oscan-Umbrian(-Sabellian)' group, and another which distinguishes the 'Sabellian' group (containing Marsian) from the 'Oscan-Umbrian' group. As Philip Baldi notes in The Foundations of Latin, "speakers of the Italic languages participated in a steady multi-directional linguistic and cultural intercourse with each other over a period of hundreds of years", with this "common genetic inheritance and shared linguistic space result[ing] in irregular patterns of mutual retention and gradations of similarity among various groups. Language A may share some phonological or lexical feature with B, yet A may have another feature in common with C which is not present in B." He specifically lists q vs p as a reflex of PIE *kʷ as one feature influenced by that intercourse, which probably explains how Marsian can be both Q-Italic and Oscan-Umbrian-Sabellian. Given that all the classifications do consider Marsian to be as distinct from Latin as Oscan and Umbrian are, I would keep the lects separate. Marsian is an extinct language with a small corpus, so any redundancy (if a Marsian word is homographic with its Old Latin synonym) will be limited. Also, the people I imagine looking up Marsian words are people who are familiar with the concept of Marsian as a language, who will thus expect the words to be labelled Marsian and probably consider it a mistake if they find them labelled 'Old Latin'. - -sche (discuss) 07:36, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree with -sche. --Fsojic (talk) 19:01, 14 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Result: not merged. (The best place to archive this discussion is probably Language treatment/Discussions.) - -sche (discuss) 03:03, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Splitting Lenca
Ethnologue and the ISO either conflated two languages into the code "len", namely "Honduran Lenca(n)" and "Salvadoran Lenca(n)", or failed to give a code to Salvadoran Lenca, depending on your interpretation of what they say about len. As Lyle Campbell writes in American Indian Languages (1997, ISBN 0195349830, "Honduran Lenca and Salvadoran Lenca (the latter is also called Chilanga after the the name of the principle town in which it was spoken) [...] are not closely related; Swadesh (1967a:98-9) calculated thirty minimum centuries of divergence."(!) We should either split len into two exceptional codes, or make clear that we're using len for Honduran Lenca and then create an exceptional code for Salvadoran Lenca ... but I am drawing a blank on what prefix to use to create exceptional codes for languages of unknown family affiliation. und-? Or should we convert len into a family code and then prefix the language code(s) with len-? - -sche (discuss) 23:18, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the latter is the better choice, since, according to WP, they're related, and someone has even come up with a proto-language. Chuck Entz (talk) 23:53, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * OTOH, until now, the only three-letter family codes we have accepted (and thus the only things used as prefixes in exceptional language codes) have been ISO-approved family codes. When we've created our own exceptional family codes, we've prefixed them with qfa- or the nearest ISO-approved code that they are a subset of—hence we have qfa-len—and we have never had occasion to use an exceptional family code to make an exceptional language code. If we create e.g. len-slv as an exceptional code for Salvadoran Lenca and the ISO subsequently grants the family code len to some family other than Lencan, it will be problematic. Then again, I suppose we could just rename the code at that time. - -sche (discuss) 06:56, 18 February 2014 (UTC)


 * In April, there was discussion of how to encode Jeju, which (like the Lencan lects) belongs to a family which has not been assigned an ISO code. Ultimately, Jeju was encoded as "qfa-kor-jjm", i.e. using its family code as the prefix, as per usual, even though that family code is an exceptional code. Following that model, it makes sense to encode Salvadoran Lenca as "qfa-len-slv". - -sche (discuss) 02:25, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 02:44, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Renaming Ngiyambaa (wyb)
"Ngiyambaa" is far more common than "Wangaaybuwan-Ngiyambaa". "Wangaaybuwan" is one of the two peoples that speak the language, and hence the name of the dialect used by that people. The other Ngiyambaa-speaking people, whom the current name neglects, are the Wayilwan, who speak the (you guessed it) Wayilwan dialect. Renaming the language entails moving a few categories and updating a few pages. - -sche (discuss) 04:32, 26 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Renamed. Categories and entries still need to be moved. - -sche (discuss) 02:46, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I think I've updated all effected entries and categories. - -sche (discuss) 17:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Renaming Upper Guinea Crioulo → Guinea-Bissau Creole
Compare: (10 hits),  (1650 hits). — Ungoliant (falai) 05:18, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. The old name can stay as an alternate name, natch, and the autonyms Kriol, Crioulo, Kriolu, Kriyol, and Kiriol can be added as other alternate names. - -sche (discuss) 07:19, 18 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Done. The entries remain to be updated. - -sche (discuss) 02:44, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I think I've updated all affected entries. - -sche (discuss) 17:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Merging the Huave lects
Varieties of are spoken in four villages in Mexico. Ethnologue gave each one its own code: San Dionisio del Mar Huave is hve, Santa María del Mar Huave is hvv, San Francisco del Mar Huave is hue, and San Mateo del Mar Huave is huv. Confusingly, we call the last of those (huv) plain "Huave". Specialist literature, such as Yuni Kim's dissertation on Topics in the Phonology and Morphology of San Francisco Del Mar Huave, speaks of "Huave dialects", and Campbell likewise considers that the villages speak dialects of a single language isolate. "Huave languages" seem to be spoken of only in connection with the (unsupported) idea that the "Mixe-Zoque-Huave languages" form a family. I suggest that we merge hve, hvv and hue into huv. Failing that, we need to rename huv (from plain "Huave" to "San Mateo del Mar Huave")... - -sche (discuss) 20:26, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Merged. - -sche (discuss) 05:53, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Various code retirements, part two
In 2012 and 2013, the ISO retired several codes by merging them into other codes or splitting them up. Thirty of the retirements initially escaped our notice; discussion of six of them subsequently occurred here: Beer parlour/2014/March. The discussions were about:


 * merging Xiandao (xia) into Achang (acn)
 * merging Panang (pcr) into Amdo Tibetan (adx)
 * merging Sansu (sca) and Hlersu (hle)
 * merging Piru (ppr) and Luhu (lcq)
 * merging Talur (ilw) into Galoli (gal)
 * (Southern) Yamphe/Lorung: the ISO merged Yamphe (yma) into lrr, renaming that code from Southern Lorung to Southern Yamphu

Renaming Luiseno (lui) to Luiseño
This language name is from Spanish, and has a tilde. Google tends to strip the tilde in its search results, but if you look at the actual page images, you'll see that the tilde is overwhelmingly the standard throughout the literature. I don't really want to mess with the modules, but I'll happily do all the changes to categories and entry (that's right- there's only one!). Chuck Entz (talk) 02:49, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ ([//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Module:languages/data3/l&diff=prev&oldid=26167471]). - -sche (discuss) 07:44, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Northern Uto-Aztecan language module additions
I've spent some time over the years with various California Indian languages, though I'm not an expert by any means. I've already added a good bit of material on Cahuilla, but there are a few additions I would like to make to the modules to make it easier to do etymologies as I broaden my focus a bit.

First of all, we don't show any divisions within Uto-Aztecan except Nahuan, which includes all the Nahuatl lects. Most scholars would divide Uto-Aztecan into Northern Uto-Aztecan and Southern Uto-Aztecan, with Nahuan included in the latter. The division seems to me, though, to be more of a consensus hunch: it's hard to say whether it represents areal/diffusional spread of features or the result of a split into separate proto-languages. I have no need to refer to Northern or Southern Uto-Aztecan, so I'm not asking to create either. It just happens, though, that all the languages I know much about are in the northern group. Here's my understanding of the internal structure of the group, with language codes in bold, and families, proto-languages and synonyms that I'd like to add to the modules in italics:


 * 1) hop Hopi, a.k.a Moqui (an obsolete term in older references)
 * 2) tub Tübatulabal
 * 3) Numic languages (descendants of Proto-Numic):
 * 4) Central Numic:
 * 5) com Comanche
 * 6) par Panamint, a.k.a Panamint Shoshone, Timbisha, Tümpisha, and Koso
 * 7) shh Shoshone, a.k.a. Shoshoni. Dialects:
 * 8) Western Shoshoni
 * 9) Gosiute
 * 10) Northern Shoshoni
 * 11) Eastern Shoshoni
 * 12) Southern Numic:
 * 13) kaw Kawaiisu
 * 14) ute Ute, a.k.a Colorado River Numic. Dialects:
 * 15) Chemehuevi
 * 16) Southern Paiute
 * 17) Ute
 * 18) Western Numic:
 * 19) mnr Mono (California), a.k.a Mono (California), Mono (United States of America), Mono, Monachi, Monache, Owens Valley Paiute. Dialects:
 * 20) Western Mono ("Mono" and its variations originally applied only to this dialect, but were extended to the whole language).
 * 21) Owens Valley Paiute, a.k.a Eastern Mono
 * 22) pao Northern Paiute, a.k.a Numu, Paviotso
 * 23) Takic languages (descendants of Proto-Takic):
 * 24) ser Serrano. Dialects:
 * 25) Serrano
 * 26) Kitanemuk
 * 27) Vanyume (maybe)
 * 28) xgf Gabrielino-Fernandeño, a.k.a. Tongva. Dialects:
 * 29) Gabrielino
 * 30) Fernandeño
 * 31) Cupan languages (descended from Proto-Cupan)
 * 32) chl Cahuilla, a.k.a Iviatim. Dialects:
 * 33) Mountain Cahuilla
 * 34) Desert Cahuilla
 * 35) Wanakik Cahuilla
 * 36) cup Cupeño
 * 37) lui Luiseño. Dialects:
 * 38) Luiseño
 * 39) Juaneño

In the Numic languages, "Ute", "Paiute" and "Shoshone" are occasionally randomly applied all over the place in older sources. There also seems to be some disagreement between Wikipedia articles about whether "Koso" refers to a group of Panamint speakers or to Northern Paiute speakers, and Owens Valley was home to not just the Eastern Mono speakers of what is known as "Owens Valley Paiute", but also to Northern Paiute speakers.

Then there's the matter of Tataviam, an extinct language represented by at least one word list, with another word list for Alliklik, which may be the same language- or not. Depending on which source you read, it's:
 * 1) A Takic language
 * 2) An independent branch of Uto-Aztecan
 * 3) A Chumashan language strongly influenced by its Takic neighbors

The modern-day descendents of the Tataviam have merged with the descendents of the Fernandeño into one group for purposes of recognition by the US government, so I fully expect to see references to Fernandeño as Tataviam any day now. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:16, 30 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I have incorporated into the modules all of the synonyms/aliases you mention except Iviatam, which seems to only be an ethnonym. "Koso" is identified with Panamint in the references I could find, so I've added it as an alias of Panamint (not of Northern Paiute). Given how freely the ISO gives out codes, I'm wary of creating exceptional codes for things known only from wordlists that the ISO hasn't even granted a code to. (I'm not sure if you were suggesting that Tataviam be given a code or not.)
 * I'd suggest perhaps "azc-num" as a family code for the Numic languages, "azc-tak" for Takic and "azc-cup" for Cupan. - -sche (discuss) 08:34, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! My comments about Tataviam were more of an illustration of/rant about how murky things can get than a serious request to do anything. It wouldn't be that hard to track down the word lists, but coming up with way to synchronize the different sources would be a real challenge (I wish I could go back in time and slap C.H. Merriam for refusing to learn proper phonetic transcription...).


 * I think your suggestions for Numic, Takic and Cupan are fine. There are articles in the literature with reconstructions for the proto-lnguages for each, so I'll eventually include them in etymologies, too.


 * My main reason for this topic was to be able to create entries for Chemehuevi (I still have to work out a usable orthography, though), but I figured it would be good to deal with the other stuff while I was at it. I have some material on the Ipai dialect of Diegueño and on Havasupai, so I'll have to do something like this for the Yuman languages later. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)


 * It looks like everyone forgot about this thread. Well, I've added Numic, Takic and Cupan to Module:families/data, and added codes for their proto-languages to Module:languages/datax. I've even added and  (feel free to move them if you feel a different orthography is preferable).  Is there anything else that remains to be done (besides adding entries in these languages)? - -sche (discuss) 22:42, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Renaming the Fang languages
At present, we call fak "Fang" and fan "Pahouin". This is a strange state of affairs, because fan — the dominant Bantu language of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, spoken by 1.3 million people — is more commonly known as "Fang" than "Pahouin" (a French spelling of the ethnonym of a Fang-speaking group), and is usually the language which is meant when people speak of "Fang". fak is a Southern Bantoid language of Cameroon, spoken by only 2400 people, and it isn't even actually called "Fang" — Fang is the name of a village where it's spoken. Therefore, I propose to rename fak to "Fang (Cameroon)" and fan to "Fang (Guinea)". (fan is actually spoken in Equatorial Guinea, not in the country of Guinea, but the reference is to the region of Guinea. A previous BP discussion concluded that using region names was preferable to using country names like the ISO/SIL does. That discussion also touched on the idea of using parenthetical disambiguators even when alt names existed, if — as here — disambiguators were clearer.) - -sche (discuss) 06:30, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 03:51, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Renaming Jin (cjy)
Postfact. Jinyu has been moved to Jin (Jin Chinese - Category:Jin language. Yell out if you disagree. Wiktionary:Grease_pit/2014/May--Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 06:15, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The move looks good. There doesn't seem to be any other language (either present already in WT:LOL or among the codes that are still being added) for which "Jin" is the most common name, so there doesn't seem to be any naming conflict, and "Jin" does seem to be more common than "Jinyu" as a name for this language. - -sche (discuss) 18:50, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Renaming Wauja (wau)
Hi, I am an anthropologist who speaks an endangered language, Wauja (wau) (alternate spellings Waura, Aura) and who wants to contribute to the Wauja site that is here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Waura_language

I have several hundred terms that are on my PC, and I want to add them to the Wauja-English language site. However, the site uses the term "Waura," which is an outdated term, resulting from outsiders mispronouncing their name. The Wauja call themselves Wauja, not Waura. Scholars who write about the Wauja are now using the correct spelling: https://www.google.com/search?q=arawak+languages+wauja&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

Wikipedia also has it right: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waura&redirect=no It redirects readers from the "Waura" entry to the "Wauja" entry.

Do you know whether I can change the name of the stub site at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Waura_language from “Waura” to “Wauja”, or should I ask permission from someone first? If so, do you know whom I should ask? The Wauja would be disappointed to see their name mispelled yet again.

Thanks for advice. Emi-Ireland (talk) 01:30, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Perversely, Wauja language redirects to Waurá language. It's not quite as simple as you might think: the name of the language is actually set in a data module that only admins can edit. The category page you're referring to actually consists solely of . Fortunately, we have people who deal with this sort of thing all the time. I've moved it to the proper venue and, with any luck, we should be able to take care of this fairly quickly. Chuck Entz (talk) 01:52, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Support renaming. I added "Wauja" as an alternative name [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Module:languages/data3/w&diff=next&oldid=25702904 a while ago] so that people who searched our list of languages for "Wauja" would be able to find it. I didn't change the canonical name (the one used in the name of the language's category, and in entries' headers) from 'r' to 'j' at that time because I could not, and still cannot, tell which spelling is most common or preferred — it seems like every reference work and site has its own spelling of the name, right down to the dichotomy Chuck notes of Wikipedia's article on the language being "Waura" while the article on the people is "Wauja". But if there's someone who's here to add content in the language, I'm inclined to trust their assessment of which spelling is best. On a technical note, no other language is called "Wauja", so there do not appear to be any technical considerations preventing a rename. - -sche (discuss) 04:17, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I also support renaming and trust Emi-Ireland to know what he's talking about. But changing a canonical name is a slightly tricky process that involves editing pages that only admins can edit, so, Emi-Ireland, you can't actually change it yourself. But you can already start adding Wauja words yourself, following the formatting of the three Wauja words we already have: a'napi, e'pi, and kamá. This will require a certain amount of tolerating the term "Waura" until we get around to changing the name, though. Don't forget to add Wauja words to the Translations section of English entries, too! (I checked, and "Waura" i.e. Wauja is already listed at water.) —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:54, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Support renaming. Probably my opinion doesn't carry much value here :-), but I have been in contact with Emi and she seems to have some real knowledge of this indigenous language of Brazil. The idea is for the wauja people to add entries to pt.wikt (where I do most of my work) because their second language is Portuguese; and for Emi to add the corresponding entries here because she's a native speaker of English who knows the wauja language. She seems to know what she's talking about and will be a serious contributor to the wauja cause.
 * ValJor (talk) 16:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I've renamed the language. If you know them, I would be most interested in learning the Wauja words for man, woman, and iron, and in confirming the Wauja translation we have of the word water, since those four English words are ones Wiktionary has managed to collect the most translations of. Note that some of those pages — especially water — may be so exceedingly large that you may find them difficult to edit if you have a slow internet connection. If that happens, you can just leave the translations on the associated talk pages. Cheers! - -sche (discuss) 17:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Proto-Inupik and Proto-Inuit
See Category:Proto-Inupik language. The family is called "Inuit", as far as I know "Inupik" is an individual language of this family, so the name doesn't seem appropriate. 23:15, 15 June 2014 (UTC)
 * What do you think of this? 17:44, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Hmm, how did we come to have a "Proto-Inupik" in the first place? Let's see... Template:proto:esx-inu-pro was created in 2011 by User:Jakeybean. There are so many similar-sounding Arctic I-words that it's easy to lose track of which are alternative forms of which, and which are subsets or supersets of which, and I'm going to guess that's what happened here. Inupik is a group of (dia)lects, and it's possible that someone would try to reconstruct the proto-lect behind them all (people have done that for Basque), which may explain why "Proto-Inupik" gets a few Google hits besides us — but the code used here ("esx-inu", the code of the Inuit language family), and the existence and contents of Category:Inuktitut terms derived from Proto-Inupik, suggests that's not what was going on here. I support a rename. - -sche (discuss) 18:41, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Done. 16:10, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Renaming Nyahkur to Nyah Kur
It seems to be markedly more common to call the language which has the code cbn "Nyah Kur", rather than "Nyahkur". I propose to rename it accordingly, moving its category and updating its one entry (which was notably added using the header "Nyah Kur"). - -sche (discuss) 17:06, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * ✅. - -sche (discuss) 20:22, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

= 2015 =

Miscellaneous code changes

 * Nota bene the following discussions


 * Beer parlour/2015/January
 * Beer parlour/2015/January (codes affected: ymt (mtm), thx (oyb), xsj (suj), aue (ktz), ime, sgo, dzd, bmy, bxx, byy, kbf, ynh; jje, rts, pgd, cbq, syx, nxo, txj, gku, iks; and the codes for Norman and Kajkavian which are discussed above and below)
 * Beer parlour/2015/January

Merging Twi and Fanti into Akan
It's bizarre that we currently have all three of Akan (the macrolanguage) and Twi and Fanti (its two dialects). References, even old ones, tend to treat Akan as one language with two or three dialects — from Johann Gottlieb Christaller's 1875 A Grammar of the Asante and Fante Language all the way through Florence Abena Dolphyne's 1988 The Akan (Twi-Fante) Language and the 2011 Modern Akan: A Concise Introduction to the Akuapem, Fanti and Twi Language. The dialects have always been mutually intelligible when spoken, and in 1978 speakers established a unified orthography to make them intelligible in writing, too. - -sche (discuss) 01:06, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I support this. I meant to propose a merger when I posted WT:RFV, but I never got around to it. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 01:18, 1 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Merged. - -sche (discuss) 01:35, 27 September 2015 (UTC)