Talk:Shan alphabet

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On 13 August 2022, it was proposed that this article be moved to Shan script. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Requested move 13 August 2022[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 12:57, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Shan alphabet → Shan script – abugida not an alphabet. AleksiB 1945 (talk) 14:21, 13 August 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. – robertsky (talk) 19:01, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support Agreed; it's consistent and natural EmeraldRange (talk/contribs) 13:44, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support, but not for the nom's reasons. The proposed title is more common in RS. Srnec (talk) 16:01, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting comment: The RM has reopened and relisted as Kwamikagami had reached out to me almost immediately after this was closed at my talk page. I have relisted this for future discussion. – robertsky (talk) 19:02, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I opened a move review per Srnec's instruction at Wikipedia:Move_review/Log/2022_August#Shan_alphabet. Should I delete it? — kwami (talk) 19:08, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There have been several references now to Wikipedia's in-house distinction between alphabets and scripts. I find this distinction impractical. We should not be naming pages based on a hidden distinctions known only to the initiated. (This is hardly the only area where this happens.) I see no reason to think that 'alphabet' and 'script' are used in this way to make this distinction in the real world, but perhaps I am mistaken. @Kanguole and Austronesier: pinging linguists. Srnec (talk) 19:06, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There was a long, drawn-out discussion, over several months, leading to the present consensus. Changing consensus is fine, but meanwhile we should follow it. — kwami (talk) 19:09, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Per longstanding WP convention, a 'script' is a writing system, and an 'alphabet' is the application of a script to a particular language. Whether the script is an abugida or abjad is irrelevant. (The separation of abugidas and abjads from 'alphabets' is found in several RS's but is far from universal.) See for example Burmese script and Burmese alphabet, also Latin script and Latin alphabet, Arabic script and Arabic alphabet, etc. The Shan alphabet is an application of the Burmese script to the Shan language. It's possible there is a distinct Shan script, but if so it's not the topic of this article. If people want to change the consensus, that's fine, but it took months to come to the current convention, and during that time no-one was able to come up with a better verbal distinction. 'Script', 'alphabet' and 'hand' are all highly polysemous, so they make it difficult to follow WP:CONSISTENT because any convention is likely to contradict some source for any particular article. — kwami (talk) 19:18, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Kwamikagami: Can you point me to this discussion? Thanks, Srnec (talk) 23:24, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It was probably over a decade ago. I don't know where it would be now. Hopefully in the archives at Wikipedia:WikiProject Writing systems, but I don't know if it was discussed there or just announced there for a move discussion somewhere else. But it was a major discussion and resulted in moving many (dozens?) of articles. Granted, I moved many of those myself, at least among those not under direct discussion, but had the consensus to back me up when challenged and most have been stable since.

Much of the debate was the same as the objection presented here, that e.g. Arabic is not an alphabet because it's an abjad, and according to i.a. Daniels & Bright (1996), abjads are not 'alphabets'. But if we adopt that convention (the narrow definition of 'alphabet', which is useful but plays into the Eurocentic narrative that the Greeks invented the alphabet), how do we distinguish, say, the Arabic script as a whole, used i.a. for Persian, Urdu, Malay &c., from its application to a particular language, as we distinguish the Latin script from the Latin, English, Italian etc. alphabets? There doesn't seem to be any good solution among terms found in RS's. And if we attempt to decide by COMMONNAME, following separate tallies for different languages, among sources following different traditions, it's impossible to maintain CONSISTENCY, and what's a 'script' in one article becomes an 'alphabet' in another, and vice versa. It would be different if we could distinguish the Arabic 'script' from the Arabic and Persian 'abjads', as we distinguish the Latin 'script' from the Latin and English 'alphabets' (or the reverse: the Arabic 'abjad' from the Arabic and Persian 'scripts', with a parallel distinction between the Latin 'alphabet' and the Latin and English 'scripts'), but AFAICT that's not RS usage. Really, I would welcome a better solution, as the current one is awkward, and the same objection (that many of the world's segmental scripts aren't true alphabets) pops up over and over, as it did here.

At the same time, I hate to encourage the 'Greece invented civilization' narrative, with the Greeks inventing the 'alphabet' being one of the primary pillars. D&B never struck me as Eurocentric, but their nomenclature, while convenient and useful, plays uncomfortably into Eurocentric biases.

But if we can come to an agreement that, say, this article should be at 'Shan abugida', with it and 'Burmese abugida' classified as child articles to 'Burmese script', parallel to 'Arabic abjad' and 'Persian abjad' as child articles to 'Arabic script', and to 'Latin alphabet' and 'English alphabet' as child articles to 'Latin script' (or vice versa, with 'script' for the individual instantiations and 'alphabet/abugida/abjad' for the superordinate writing systems), then I would support that change. Though I expect we'd get the similar objections, that 'Shan abugida' and 'Arabic abjad' fail COMMONNAME, that we get with the current convention. (Or, for the contrary convention, that 'English script' and 'Russian script' fail COMMONNAME.) — kwami (talk) 03:01, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we should include the typological classification in the name of articles about both scripts and alphabets in the WP sense.

As for our naming convention, there is an interesting clash with COMMONNAME insofar as that there are many instances where alphabets in our sense are commonly called "scripts" (e.g. the modern Shan writing system), and also where scripts in our sense are most commonly called "alphabets" (e.g. Phoenician), but not too many cases where alphabets in our sense are called "alphabet". –Austronesier (talk) 17:02, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment No opinion about the use of "alphabet" as an in-house convention. I feel more strongly about having hundreds of content forks of genuine script articles (I would definitely burn to the ground any attempt to fork Lontara script into Bugis alphabet, Makasar alphabet, Mandar alphabet etc.). This article is an exception because of the ingenious "reformed" use of the Burmese letter inventory; this is an interesting story to tell and sort of deserves a standalone article, whatever it is called. –Austronesier (talk) 20:12, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
AFAIK no-one has ever suggested we fork the script articles. 'Lontara script' follows the current convention, and if I remember correctly was part of the discussion. If our treatment of the individual Lontara alphabets is ever sufficiently developed to warrant stand-alone articles (they currently don't even have separate sections!), then they might be split off, but 'Lontara script' would remain as the parent article, just as Latin script remains alongside English alphabet, Cyrillic remains alongside Russian alphabet, etc. — kwami (talk) 21:53, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting case. I would tend to oppose a move since none of the supposed reliable sources touted by move supporters is mentioned here. For article titles, Wikipedia seems to use the term alphabet in the broad sense in most cases (e.g. Arabic alphabet, not Arabic abjad) which is to be expected of a general reference work. Based on the article and the image to the right, the Shan abugida is an adaptation of Burmese script (just as e.g. German and Latin or Persian and Arabic) in contrast with the different pre-20th century Early Shan scripts. (I notice that Unicode uses one block for Burmese, Shan, Karen and Mon.) Wikipedia follows this pattern with S'gaw Karen alphabet, but not with Mon script.* (*The Mon case is especially confusing as old Mon script is what is usually called "Mon script" in sources and moving Shan alphabet to Shan script could create the same confusion vis-à-vis Early Shan script.)

Addressing the concerns about a precedent of forking too many "alphabet" articles, another possibility is to move this article (along with others like it) to Shan orthography, a practice now only used for Latin and Cyrillic languages. It would be a bit of shift of focus, but could justify the continued existence of the article. Even the current article is not all that different is scope from e.g. Danish orthography. — AjaxSmack 18:28, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Mon script should be moved to Mon alphabet. I think the problem traces to the sensitivity of Mon rights groups, given that the Mon were the precursors to Burmese civilization and that the Burmese script derives from the Mon (or at least is commonly assumed to), but now we're claiming that Mon derives from Burmese. But as you say, there's a confusion here of 'Mon script' used by the precursor to Burma, and the alphabet to write Mon in modern times, which is an obvious adaptation of Burmese. If you want to suggest a move to 'Mon alphabet', I'll support. — kwami (talk) 20:34, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.