Talk:Illyrian (South Slavic)

Marked for deletion

This article has been marked for deletion for the following reasons: (a) It is pushing a POV that is not supported by reputable scholarship - refer to point (b). It may also pushing fringe theories or propaganda.

(b) It is a well established fact that Illyrian and Dalmatian were synonyms used for the Croatian language. For reputable scholarly evidence refer to Edward Stankiewicz’s “Grammars and Dictionaries of the Slavic Languages from the Middle Ages Up to 1850”, Walter de Gruyter, 1984.

(c) Using classical Latin names for languages was common during the Renaissance and the Humanist revival all the way through to recent times. This is not Catholic propaganda, as the article claims, but was also used by Protestants and Orthodox. Some examples are: Gallic for French (still used in Greek), Bohemian for Czech (used in English until the beginning of the 20th century), Illyrian for Croatian, Lusitanian for Portuguese, Batavian for Dutch, Epirotic for Albanian, Etruscan / Hetruscan for Italian, Hispanic for Castillan (the name Spanish is still used as a synonym for Castillan).

(d) If this article is NOT deleted, then it ought to be changed so that it redirects to the Croatian language just like "Bohemian language" redirects to the Czech language.

(e) It is disingenuous to say that Illyrian is a common name of the South Slavic languages, as this article claims.

I object deletion:

a) this article is a hitorical description of the term, not pov-pushing or propaganda etc.

b) you should then add these info to the article

c) sure, you should also reflect it in the article and improve it

d) such should be done by redirect request, however, the content should be preserved

e) the article did not say this, it states it was.(KIENGIR (talk) 16:03, 2 August 2020 (UTC))

deletion

The article as it stands is misleading. Illyrian language was a name sometimes used to refer to Croatian in the 15-19th centuries. This is evident from a list of Croatian dictionaries: List of Croatian dictionaries and the list of Croatian grammars: Croatian-language grammar books in Wikipedia. See also the standard work on Slavic lexicography by Edward Stankiewicz “Grammars and Dictionaries of the Slavic Languages from the Middle Ages Up to 1850”, originally published in 1984, latest edition is from 2016.

The article offers no sources for the claims it makes. There are two external links in the article. One links to a website which describes the grammar by Bartol Kašić as the first grammar of the Croatian language. Stankiewicz describes this grammar as follows, at page 77: “Croatian Grammars 17th-18th Century Cassius, Bartholomeus [Kašić, Bartol], Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo, 2 vols., Rome 1604. K.’s grammar, written in Latin and modelled on popular Latin grammars (especially on those of Manuzio and Alvarez), deals with orthography, phonetics, declension (vol. I) and verbal forms (vol. II). K. aimed at the creation of a unified Croatian language, but in effect he codified čakavian with an admixture of štokavian elements. The grammar served as a base for later grammarians up to Appendini.”

The second link is to a Bulgarian history book. The page referred to in the article says that Petar Bogdan, apart from his native language {Bulgarian} mastered classical and contemporary languages - Illyrian {Croatian}, Old Bulgarian {Old Church Slavonic}, Russian, Vlach {Romanian}, Turkish and Italian. {The modern language names are in curly brackets.} It also says that Bogdan was held in high regard by the esteemed Croatian literary figure Rafael Levaković and that he collaborated with Levaković on editing and publishing of Illyrian liturgical books.

It is clear from the list of Croatian dictionaries and grammars in Wikipedia, and in Stankiewicz, that names formerly used as synonyms for the Croatian language were Illyrian, Dalmatian, Slavic (slovinski) etc. Other South Slavic languages were not called Illyrian, though they were called different names as well: eg. Carniolan and Windisch for Slovenian.

This article is nominated for deletion AfD. It had already been marked for deletion, but the deletion tag was removed within 7 days. The article can’t be fixed through normal editing. It may be possible to have a redirection, where Illyrian language redirects to the Croatian language, just like Bohemian language redirects to the Czech language article. However, this is not a solution here, because there was an ancient Illyrian language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zixt2010 (talk • contribs) 14:44, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

This a historical description of an obsolete term, if the article would be misleading, it could be cured by renaming, however some short article titles does not necessarily imply the case the nominator thinks, since it does not say South Slavic would be Illyrian, just refers to the historical association of it, etc. The article may be improved with sources, as for the reasons listed here we should not delete as well the Illyrian movement article, which was as well a South Slavic cultural movement (shall it be scientifically true or not the connection to Illyrians, on such ground many other issues may be debated or to be judged uncertain, but it does not mean these did not exist, e.g.)(KIENGIR (talk) 15:06, 8 August 2020 (UTC))

The reason for deletion is POV. Illyrian language was a name used to refer to the Croatian language in the 15-19th centuries (other names were used – refer to Stankiewicz pp. 77-93). The article makes unsourced claims in almost every sentence, and for that reason it cannot be improved. At best, it can be changed as a redirection to the Croatian language, but I consider that is not a good option because there was an ancient Illyrian language. The better option is for the Croatian language redirection to occur in the Illyrian language disambiguation page, and for this article to be deleted.

Going through each sentence of the article:

“The Illyrian language was a common name of the South Slavic languages…” Unsourced statement. POV. The standard reference, Stankiewicz, has Illyrian as referring to Croatian only; no other South Slavic language was referred to as Illyrian.

“… before the emergence of Slavistics and Cyrillo-Methodian Studies, and especially during the Ottoman period.” Unsourced statement.

“It was imposed as a common language as a result of Catholic propaganda in the Balkans in the 17th century.” Unsourced statement. POV. Illyrian was used as early as the 15th century to refer to Croatians and the Croatian language. This has nothing to do with Catholic propaganda. See the article talk’s page for more details.

“ In the 18th century it was replaced by the Slavonic-Serbian.[1]” The link, which talks about Petar Bogdan, does not support the statement. Illyrian was used to refer to the Croatian language until the second half of the 19th century (Stankiewcz). The Wikipedia article on Slavonic-Serbian correctly states that the Serbian recension of Church Slavonic was replaced in the 18th century by Slavonic-Serbian. Illyrian has nothing to do with this.

“Its base is Dubrovnik literature and Kotor literature from the Bugarštica,” Unsourced statement.

“and its first representative is Dinko Zlatarić.” Unsourced statement. The Wikipedia article on Dinko Zlatarić correctly states that he wrote in Croatian and Italian languages.

“Bartol Kašić can be considered the father of this language.” Unsourced statement. POV and possibly original research. Illyrian was used to refer to Croatians and the Croatian language before Bartol Kašić. Kašić was the first to write a grammar with the word Illyrian in the title, but as the second link states, that book was the first Croatian grammar book.

“In 1595, during the Long Turkish War, he became a Jesuit. From 1609 to 1633 he lived in Dubrovnik. In 1613-1614 and 1618-1619 he was on a mission in Bosnia, Serbia and Eastern Slavonia.” Unsourced statement. Irrelevant to the language, and already covered in the Wikipedia article on Bartol Kašić.

“In 1604 Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo (the structure of the Illyrian language in two books; 200 pages) was published in Rome. Grammar is used as textbooks by Jesuits who have been sent on a mission in the Balkans. Bartol Kašić adopts the South Slavic dialect of grammar in Shtokavian, pointing out as such the subdialect of Dubrovnik that is everyday for him. [2]” This passage requires a bit of rewriting to make it grammatical and understandable. The link clearly states that this book was the first Croatian grammar book. Calling it a “South Slavic dialect of grammar in Shtokavian” is misleading and POV.

In summary, there is nothing to improve in the article. If the unsourced statements are removed, there will be nothing left.

Zixt2010 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:13, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

I uphold my argumentation and you don't need to repeat every entry twice at different articles.(KIENGIR (talk) 18:05, 10 August 2020 (UTC))

@Zixt2010: While have !voted for turning this page into a redirect, I have to say that you have botched the AfD by referring to unverified information as POV, which made it appear to the closer that the AfD is about a content dispute. However, POV is something different, it does not mean "unverified", but cherry-picked from contradicting sources.

As far as I can see, the claim that the "the Illyrian language was a common name of the South Slavic languages" is totally unsourced, and would be odd anyway, since "South Slavic" is a scholarly concept in historical-comparative linguistics, that only emerged in the 19th century. So unless anyone can provide sources that "Illyrian" was ever used in a linguistic sense to include Bulgarian and/or Slovenian, the lead is simply wrong (and not just "POV").

Next, if there are no reliable sources that "Illyrian" was ever used for anything else than "Croatian" (i.e. other lects of the Serbo-Croatian dialect contiuum), then "Illyrian" simply is a historical alternative name for "Croatian". And surely we do not need articles for alternative names of languages, unless the history of the term itself has some degree of notability of its own, which I cannot see here. –Austronesier (talk) 10:26, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

scope

Demetrios1993 your argument was let's ignore the fact that the article about a term is based on a complex source, but then exclude the fact that the source says something else? That's classic WP:SYNTH - implying a conclusion that is not actually stated by the source.

This article started as a weird hodgepodge of now-indef-blocked User:Angel Angel 2, which was then nominated for deletion, but was patched up by Vorziblix, yet that doesn't mean that its content is somehow fixed for good. "Illyrian" was a common name for proto-Serbo-Croatian for a period of several centuries, but it was in parallel with several other common names, notably "Slavic", and having an article that pretends that this isn't so while citing a source that literally says so - is like constructing an artificial reality. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 06:14, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Since I was pinged: I agree that the use of "Slavic" (slovinski) is worth noting. I don't agree with the assertion that the article "pretends that this isn't so" – the alternative use of "Slavic" was already mentioned several times in the content I added, albeit not in the lead (for roughly the same reasons of scope that User:Demetrios1993 mentions). If we want to make this about early names of Serbo-Croatian in general, it might make sense to move the article to some other name; on the other hand, I think the use of the term Illyrian deserves consideration as a phenomenon of its own, especially considering its eventual importance in the 19th-century Illyrian movement and leading into the early cultural currents that would develop into Yugoslavism. Of course, we ought to have more academic sources to properly cover this ground. (Unfortunately I don't have the time to dig through them personally at the moment.) Vorziblix (talk) 13:50, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Joy, you misunderstood me. Probably i didn't explain myself properly. Vorziblix understood what i meant though. My main issue is the first sentence. This isn't about excluding mentions of the additional names used to describe the language or language family, since if you take the time to read the whole article you will see that it includes statements such as:

• Some used the term "Slavic" when writing in proto-Serbo-Croatian and "Illyrian" as a synonym when writing in Romance languages.
• In general, no clear distinction was made between the vernacular language and Church Slavonic – names such as Illyrian, Slavonic, Slavic, Croatian, and Dalmatian were applied to both lects without distinction.

Though, this article isn't focused on all of the different names used to describe the relevant lects, language, or language family; as if we were dealing with the main articles of Serbian, Croatian, or South Slavic. It is focused on the use of the term "Illyrian" in relation to them. Thus, the use of Slavic, at the very beginning of the introductory sentence, is technically out of scope. Demetrios1993 (talk) 14:43, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

None of this explains why we should focus on "Illyrian", if it's quite apparent that it as a phenomenon wasn't really defined well enough to stand out from "Slavic" etc even in its heyday. Treating the current article title, "Illyrian (South Slavic)" as some sort of a clear moniker which in turn warrants merely a simple and unambiguous glossary entry, is fundamentally meaningless when the main source for the article explicitly contradicts any such thinking. Encyclopedia articles should describe their topics without going out of their way to avoid their complexities. Besides, just like someone decided to create a title called "Illyrian (South Slavic)" out of thin air, we can immediately create a redirect called "Slavic (proto-Serbo-Croatian)" to here, link it from Slavic and then bold the word "Slavic" in the intro based on WP:R#PLA. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:48, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

But i am not trying to explain or justify the focus of this article on the term of "Illyrian", as it relates to South Slavic. That is a different discussion, and to be honest, i haven't personally looked into it to have an educated opinion. What i am trying to tell you is that, as the article currently stands, the use of Slavic at the very beginning of the introductory sentence is "out of scope". It would be a different matter if we eventually chose to change the title and the scope of this article, in order to encompass all the different historical terms used for South Slavic and its individual lects; but for the time being there is no such consensus. Having written that, if what Vorziblix wrote is true – regarding the term's "eventual importance in the 19th-century Illyrian movement and ... the early cultural currents that would develop into Yugoslavism" – and can be supported with more academic sources, then i concur that the article's scope should remain as it is. If not, then we should probably change the scope of it. For the time being, i will add the Template:More citations needed, since we all seem to agree on this. Demetrios1993 (talk) 17:11, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes. Basically, article scope should not be decided based on arbitrary decisions made once upon a time by random anonymous editors, but based on an actual review of reliable sources (not cherry-picking). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:53, 8 July 2021 (UTC)