User talk:94.21.238.64

Sorting out the spelling mess of P(o)(u)(w)adh

Hi.

Since I'm still relatively inexperienced when it comes to editing, I thought I might share what I have before I make any hasty changes.

My impression of 'Powadhi' being the most commonly used spelling was wrong.

About the correct spelling:

Searching on 'Google Books':

A) For the language:

Search Text	Number of Results
poadhi punjab	784
powadhi punjab	393
puadhi punjab	731
pwadhi punjab	427

B) For the place:

Search Text	Number of Results
poadh punjab	390
powadh punjab	724
puadh punjab	228
pwadh punjab	6

C) Combined (A+B)

Search Text (A+B)	Number of Results (A+B)
poadh(i) punjab	1174
powadh(i) punjab	1117
puadh(i) punjab	959
pwadh(i) punjab	433

It seems the deeper we look we find that there is no single spelling that stands out as most common.

If we agree that both topics, the place and the language, should share a common base spelling, then table C should be the one to go by.

One conclusion we can safely draw from table C is that Pwadh(i) is clearly used least often amongst the ones I've looked at. Thus, at the very least, the language page needs a new name (currently Pwadhi_dialect).

I am inclined towards using 'Puadh(i)' as the spelling is literally the IAST transliteration of ਪੁਆਧੀ (name of the language). You can also look at Google Translate for ਪੁਆਧੀ, it uses some sort of transliteration that reads Pu'ādhī, and in English it says Puadhi. It's consistent with its native name and it's used comparably as much as the other two most common spellings.

Side rant: I'm not sure what the character ' stands for in Google's transliteration scheme. It's confusing because in most cases it means a glottal stop (like how some Britishers English people pronounce the tt in Butter = Bu'uh). No Indian languages have any form of glottal stop whatsoever.

Suggestion

I'm committed to fixing this mess over the next few days by making the following changes:

Spelling of choice: Puadh.

1) Move Pwadhi_dialect to Puadhi_language (fixing all redirects while I'm at it)

2) Move Poadh to Puadh and fix redirects

3) Find and rename all other variants of the spellings on related topics to 'Puadh(i)'

4) Redirect the related '_people' pages to a 'People' section under the Puadh topic.

I'll also put this discussion under the talk page for the language. --HFret (talk) 08:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

@HFret: Thanks for that. I speak English with a glottal stop so I know what you are on about (and I am sure you are aware wikt:Britisher can be seen as pejorative, but I am sure you didn't mean it that way).

You are probably right that the frequency of the "Powadh" spelling is influenced by that one work, which is unfortunate. The "w" in words like "power" is frequently not sounded anyway (I can't find a specific phonological term for this) so I imagine it has been kinda retrofitted.

I don't know what the apostrophe stands for either: we are having a similar discussion about the Yupik languages where the "'" in Yup'ik is not a glottal stop. the IPA "ˈ" (U+02C8) is a stress mark, which of course should not influence the English spelling.

Some of the references use Puadh(i), and there's a balance between "most common" and "most correct", so I've no obection to you changing to "Puadh(i)".:

The double redirects will get fixed by a bot, although I tend to like to categorize them as {{R from other spelling}} or {{R from other name}} as appropriate.

Consistency of spelling in titles comes under WP:CONSISTENCY. Unfortunately MOS:CONSISTENCY deals only with using a consistent variety of English, it says nothing about using consistent spellings of proper names within articles. WP:PROPERNAME says to use "the name which is likely to be most familiar to readers of English", and by inference that will be as it is named in the article title, I suppose.

I was hesitant here to suggest anything as I am not at all knowledgeable about Indian languages, for example I wasn't sure if "Puadhi" was correct for the language/dialect since there are always exceptions, we say "Greek" not "Greecish" or "Grecian".

I don't know Indian languages at all so I am in the intelligent-but-ignoriant role: that can be useful sometimes. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 09:05, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for understanding and for the guidance. :)

And Whoops! It didn't come to my mind at the time of writing that Britisher can be seen as pejorative. Initially I was going to write Brit, but I thought that was pejorative so I refrained. Apologies.

I'll get started on making the Puadh(i) topic consistent and neat. Phew! Feels good to start cleaning this! --HFret (talk) 10:00, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

@HFret: I wasn't offended, and I doubt many others would be: more likely they would just not understand that it can be a loaded term. I've categorized Britisher as {{R to neutral}}. I think Orwell mentions it somewhere in "England Your England" as being pejorative, but then he was born in India...

Yeah, just do it... remember that uses in references etc should be maintained in the original. It would be good to have a note discussing the various spellings. In particular your nugget that the spelling "Powadh" seems to originate from one acadamic work. It's a pity we don't have an article in any other Latin-script language as that might have been a useful pointer. We also have Bir Puadh, which adds a little strength to your elbow, I couldn't find any other titles (beyond those being discussed) using alternative spellings. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 10:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

lol TIL! Thank you. I've learned many new things from you today.

Yes, I'll add in that info about Grierson's Linguistic Survey book sometime in the future. I'll also add in a 'people' section after reading how other articles do it. --HFret (talk) 11:51, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

@HFret: No worries. I've changed the links in incoming articles, and made a DAB at Puadhi per WP:NCLANG. The links in the infoboxes and so on, I've changed to use Puadhi language specifically, and piped them (like [[Puadhi language|Puadhi]]}}) where appropriate. i.e. just general housekeeping.

I've retargeted the "People" redirects to Puadh. You can target a link to a specific section or anchor using the syntax [[Puadh#People]], so that is what you would do in the redirects. (You can catgegorise them as {{R to section}}). It is better sometimes to use {{anchor}} because section names can change, and that breaks incoming links. (I've put an anchor where you changed the name of the Puadh#Powadhi dialect section for that reason). It is good practice when linking to a section to add a courtesy note at the target per WP:RSECT or MOS:LINK2SECT, so that editors in future are wary of changing or removing the section name.

If you want to add a footnote, you can put it in a separate group by using e.g. <ref group="Note">my note here...</ref> syntax. Then you generate a separate list for this group with {{reflist|group="Note"}} and they will be "Note 1", "Note 2" etc. This keeps the notes and references separate.

Sorry if I'm telling you what you already know. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 12:16, 8 February 2019 (UTC)