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Welcome to the talk page for WikiProject Linguistics. This is the hub of the Wikipedian linguist community; like the coffee machine in the office, this page is where people get together, share news, and discuss what they are doing. Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions, and keep everyone updated on your progress. New talk goes at the bottom, and remember to sign and date your comments by typing four tildes (~~~~). Thanks!

Persian nouns

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This has been tagged as unsourced for 15 years. Please add reliable sources. Bearian (talk) 20:51, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I tagged this for expansion from the Chinese article. It's one of the oldest unsourced articles on English Wikipedia. Bearian (talk) 18:26, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lexical definition

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Is this just a dictionary definition about a dictionary definition? Or is there something else? Bearian (talk) 23:30, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I tagged it just now for expansion from the Chinese version. Bearian (talk) 18:24, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Ciamik

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Notice

The article Ciamik has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Tagged as Unreferenced and unimproved for 14 Years. Tagged as a dictionary definition for 2 Years. Still a WP:DICDEF, still not notable.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Bearian (talk) 20:00, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Grammatical aspect in Slavic languages

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Can someone please fix the issues tagged in this article? Bearian (talk) 21:46, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Thanks for the lead on this. ThaesOfereode (talk) 16:07, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for doing the hard work! Bearian (talk) 18:22, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RfC notice

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Template talk:IPA#RfC: add option to disable link to IPA help page?

Hello, above is a WP:Request for comment about the template {{IPA}} that may be of interest to this WikiProject. grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 21:37, 4 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic transliteration help needed

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The discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 July 6#Muƹawiya needs input from editors familiar with the topic area around Mu'awiya I (the founder of the 7th-8th century CE Umayyad Caliphate) and/or with the transliteration of Arabic from that era (in the 20th century). 10:33, 6 July 2025 (UTC) Thryduulf (talk) 10:33, 6 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Welsh Romani – extinct or not?

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Is Welsh Romani extinct, or is it still a spoken language?

(This should not be a difficult question to conclusively answer by academics, in principle: just scour Wales for remaining speakers. Even if the claim that the language went extinct around 1950 or in the 1960s is incorrect, it could still be extinct by now, and even if it's not, it would most probably at least be endangered or moribund: it's unlikely that all 20th-century academics have overlooked dozens, hundreds or even thousands of speakers of Romani in Wales somehow. Possibly, the claimed speakers do not actually speak what we mean by Welsh Romani, but a different variety of Romani – or Welsh with Romani loanwords, something more like a Para-Romani variety, but – if some sort of continuity can be demonstrated – even that one may still count, since it does in the case of Anglo-Romani.)

How should Wikipedia treat the issue? See this edit. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:26, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, maybe the Boretzki source says something about it. Otherwise, we have to find some other up-to-date and contemporary source which reports the number of speakers. Aspets (talk) 17:58, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Alveolo-palatal ejective fricative

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Can somebody please add reliable sources to this stub that has been unsourced for 13 years. Bearian (talk) 21:22, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I added a source for the Kabardian language example. I checked both sources cited by PHOIBLE, but in neither case was it clear that the sound discussed in the source was actually an alveo-palatal ejective fricative as both sources used Americanist notation that doesn't distinguish ejectives from other types of glottalization. -- LWG talk 23:32, 14 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Bearian (talk) 18:19, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Mayan languages maps

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There's a FAR notice given on Mayan languages which as far as I can discern is only because of the maps with speaker distributions being unsourced. Does anybody know where one could look for those statistics/maps? And maybe someone could take a look at the article and if there are no further problems (and once the maps are sourced) we could knock it off the list without it going to FAR. Aspets (talk) 19:29, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed IPA article: Voiceless velar alveolar sibilant affricate

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Óki! (Hello)! I’m here because i need help and assistance for the proposed wikipedia article: Voiceless velar alveolar sibilant affricate [k͡s], is a article currently in development, and i need help for many reliable sources, fix grammar, etc. If you see this message, reply to my comment, okay Nitsíniiyi’taki (thank you). ᖻᒪᓱ ᒋᔈᒪ (talk) 19:04, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Given that the affricate [k͡s] (which also seems to be be notated [kˢ] in some publications) has only been claimed to exist in the Blackfoot language, it might be challenging to find enough references to support an independent article. Still, here's a few papers I was able to find that discuss it at least tangentially:

https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/server/api/core/bitstreams/ce0d8a81-d3cf-4b2c-b736-36e3d033083f/content

https://people.ece.ubc.ca/donaldd/publications/proceedings_NWLC22_donald_derrick.pdf

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2000&context=etd

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254966583_Syllabification_and_Blackfoot_s

If you find additional scholarly works on this subject I would be very interested to read them. -- LWG talk 20:22, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, Nitsíniiyi’taki! (Thank you!) ᖻᒪᓱ ᒋᔈᒪ (talk) 20:25, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Featured Article Candidate

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Hello, the article for the Nizaa language is currently undergoing a candidature review at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Nizaa language/archive1. Getting more linguistics articles to Featured status shows off this wikiproject's dilligence. So please, read the FAQ and help review this article. Aspets (talk) 11:10, 24 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Nexus grammar" and "junction grammar"

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tl;dr Nexus and junction are much used by Jespersen. We currently have a dire stub about "Nexus grammar" and a strange article about "Junction grammar". Should I do something drastic about either or both, or can I just pretend not to have noticed them (perhaps while discreetly doing my bit to keep them hidden)?

-- Hoary (talk) 06:18, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad to hear someone is working on this topic. I would like to add that from the Danish perspective, the concept of nexus was influential, and it may often be baked in various kinds of grammatical thinking without explicit mention. There's an article by Lars Heltoft (co-author of the 2011 important academic reference grammar) arguing explicit for the concept of "neksus". You probably also see that in the existence of NEXG, but unfortunately, I am unaware of any historical account of nexus within Danish linguistics (or any overall account of Jespersen's theory). Also note that Danish Wikipedia has a separate article on nexus the individual concept (rather than the concept), though I'm not sure that works very well. But that article has a number of interwiki links (of various size, note that the Russian one is called "nexus and junction").
However, my point is that there is potential for an article, and I'm not sure I support deletion of Nexus grammar - though I have not found the optimal source (as I haven't been looking that seriously beyond putting this concern in the back of my mind, and expecting such sources to be somewhere in the slump of not easily available stuff). Alternatively, Nexus grammar could be merged into Otto Jespersen (or a section could be written about it). On the question of what Nexus grammar is/should be about, I would probably prefer it to be about the theory (rather than one concept of the theory), but that may just be wishful thinking. Letting it "sleep" is fine by me (but not sure why removing it from the category matters for that?).
I agree that Junction grammar is odd, but it's unrelated and thus a separate problem (that I can't help with). //Replayful (talk | contribs) 23:55, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Replayful, thank you for your stamina in reading and digesting my original post. I've taken the liberty of removing surplus ( ) from a link within your comment (the link didn't work, now it does); I hope you don't mind. I'm pausing for a time while I consider the meat of your comment. -- Hoary (talk) 02:49, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Replayful, (or anyone), how about the following suggestion. On my hard drive, I create a short article about nexus (in Jespersen's sense). When I'm fairly certain that it's better than the current Nexus grammar, I blank the latter, copy my creation into the blank, save, and move the result to "Nexus (linguistics)" (on the grounds that "Nexus grammar" was probably a mistake for "Nexus (grammar)" and that "grammar" is unnecessarily over-specific here, and unfortunately so). In order to prevent a charge of "original research/synthesis" (and perhaps also out of laziness), I wouldn't mention the term as used in Role and Reference Grammar (which, incidentally, is an article that would greatly benefit from well-informed expansion). Within the article Otto Jespersen, I'd add a brief explanation of nexus and junction and I'd link from the former to "Nexus (linguistics)". None of this would preempt anybody's addition to "Nexus (linguistics)" of material about later Danish, R&RG or other related uses of the concept expressed by neksus/nexus. (Meanwhile, I'll forget I've ever seen the article Junction grammar.) -- Hoary (talk) 04:42, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine by me (though not sure why you'd need to blank before overwriting with something better). I wish I could help with the RRG article, but I think you're right in keeping that separate. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 19:27, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Replayful. I'm open to other editors' perhaps contrary opinions, but if I don't receive any in the next couple of days I'll go ahead as described above. -- Hoary (talk) 07:39, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Now done. -- Hoary (talk) 08:53, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Roundedness in vowel chart files

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French vowel chart
Hanoi Vietnamese vowel chart

I’ve noticed that some vowel chart SVG files have unrounded and rounded vowels placed incorrectly. In these charts, several vowels are not positioned on the left and right sides of the column, respectively, as they should be. Would anyone be able to fix these? It looks like the file creator (Kbb2) hasn’t been active in over 5 years. Thanks a lot! Greenknight dv (talk) 05:32, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is no such rule. Just look at any illustration in the Handbook of the IPA. Nardog (talk) 06:02, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure there's a rule that says "Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel." I understand that most of these vowels are not in pairs, but it would still be better if the charts were consistent. At least, the source for the Hanoi Vietnamese chart (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100311000181) clearly indicates the intended positions of each vowel symbol. Greenknight dv (talk) 06:17, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's just for the chart of the IPA itself. You can find lots of unrounded vowels on the right and rounded ones on the left in part 2 of the Handbook of the IPA, the whole point of which is to illustrate how to describe the sound system of a language using the IPA. I don't know what else to tell you. Nardog (talk) 06:21, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
the vowels are placed where they fall in formant space. that's what the charts at right do, so there's nothing to correct. — kwami (talk) 10:57, 8 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure they're talking about the placement of letters in relation to the dots. Some users have uploaded charts with awkwardly placed letters under the mistaken assumption that unrounded and rounded vowels should go to the left and right of the dots, respectively. Nardog (talk) 08:49, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ah, that makes sense. thanks. — kwami (talk) 08:51, 12 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Giovanni Semerano

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I'm not sure what to do with this biography of a fringe theorist, which has been unsourced for 10 years. Please discuss. Bearian (talk) 18:18, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's an article in the Treccani encyclopedia, which seems like an important source. Unfortunately, my Italian isn't really in a shape to take on a biography. That suggests that other sources in Italian exists (check the article on Italian Wikipedia). //Replayful (talk | contribs) 12:59, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Origo (pragmatics)

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Notice

The article Origo (pragmatics) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Tagged as Unreferenced for 13 years. Nothing but a dictionary definition. No other language has a reliably sourced article from which to translate. Possibly trans-wiki or redirect to the Wiktionary article.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Bearian (talk) 12:18, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm away from my books presently but from a quick Google search that term appears to be the term used by Karl Bühler to refer to the Deictic center so I suspect the correct course of action would be to merge to those pages, then eventually write a sourced article at Deictic center. -- LWG talk 13:03, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Cover symbols used in linguistics

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This has been unsourced for 10 years. There is a list of criticisms on the talk page. If someone can please add reliable sources, that would be great. Bearian (talk) 11:55, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Tagging Rua, Peter238, and Hoary. Bearian (talk) 11:57, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
the extipa chart has the consonant wildcards, and i believe voqs has the 'x'. but the lower-case are just broad phonetic transcription, and there is of course more variety than just those letters and meanings, esp cross-linguistically.
the wildcards are listed in the IPA article, with refs [some embedded as comments]; not sure if that's the better place or if it should be covered in a separate article like this. if the latter, we need some incoming links.
per the comment on the talk page, we should of course distinguish para-IPA wildcards from broad-transcriptional use of IPA letters with their normal meanings. the latter are open-ended and probably pointless to try to list, apart from a couple examples in our coverage of broad vs narrow transcription — kwami (talk) 12:54, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some of these are in Pullum and Ladusaw's Phonetic Symbol Guide (2nd ed) -- a copy of which is conveniently within arm's reach -- with the meanings attributed to them here. I looked up ⟨C⟩, ⟨N⟩, ⟨L⟩, and ⟨R⟩ and found the first pair (with such meanings) but not the second pair (or anyway, not with such meanings). The book of course doesn't claim to be a phonological symbol guide. My guess is that ⟨L⟩ and ⟨R⟩ and most if not all of the others are used and will be explained somewhere, but I am very poorly equipped to search for such explanations. (Rua, one of the two main contributors, last edited Wikipedia as recently as one week ago.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:19, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hoary, I'm very impressed. Bearian (talk) 08:24, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Bearian, by my possession of the book, or by the length of my arm? Incidentally, the book doesn't have an entry for ⟨Q⟩, which also isn't listed in the article. I've seen it used for a geminate, in the context of the phonology of Japanese. So perhaps it too is a "cover symbol". Indeed, ⟨Q⟩ (together with ⟨N⟩) is used in en:Wikipedia's explanation of gemination in Japanese. (And no, I'm not suggesting that one WP article should cite another.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:01, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your possession of the book. I haven't seen your length. Bearian (talk) 01:20, 21 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A concerning and, as it stands, misleading article. I have left concerns on the talk page. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 19:35, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Naming articles on accent/phonology

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There is a discussion at here about the consistency of article titles on the topic of accents/phonologies that may interest participants of this WikiProject. Thanks. Wolfdog (talk) 21:30, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed deletion of Leiden school

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Notice

The article Leiden school has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

The article is based only on a primary source. I couldn't find any independent sources discussing this school of thought. There are some independent mentions of the Leiden school in linguistics literature, but it's in relation to historical linguistic models, not the memetic approach to language that this article is about. Therefore, notability for the topic can't be established.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Antibabelic (talk) 08:19, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Italian IPA – again

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Re-notifying about this discussion which ultimately got stuck in a quagmire for stupid reasons. I believe some fresh input would help us get to a conclusion in either direction. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 01:03, 30 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Swahili language

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An editor has requested that Swahili language be moved to another page, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. Kowal2701 (talk) 20:57, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Daniela Landert

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Just alerting you that this BLP of a linguist has been proposed for deletion. Bearian (talk) 00:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lithuanian declension

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Please address the multiple issues tagged. This was proposed for deletion, and could be nominated for deletion, so this is urgent. Bearian (talk) 03:51, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Hangul orthography#Requested move 23 September 2025

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There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Hangul orthography#Requested move 23 September 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 20:43, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Synchrony and diachrony feels like a Start-class article to me

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Despite the countless inbound links as a subject frequently referenced on Wikipedia, the article itself is...not very good. C-class seems, at least to me, to be a charitable understatement. It may need another week of AFI, and it definitely needs to be reorganized. T3h 1337 b0y 23:14, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Draft:Finiteness

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Can someone who understands the concept of finiteness in linguistics have a look at the section Draft:Finiteness#Mathematics and linguistics? I want to be sure that I am correctly relaying that the linguistic concept of finiteness actually relates to the general concept of finiteness (i.e., things being finite, bounded, having an end). I copied some content there from the finite verb article, but I'm not entirely sure I understand it well enough to have conveyed it correctly. Cheers! BD2412 T 00:17, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some new biog articles at Leiden, cleanup help wanted

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As part of cleanup for a lot of AI articles recently generated (see WP:ANI#URGENT: Mass draftifications by User:Asilvering (100+ in like a half hour) despite great sources; targeted at one editor and User talk:PaulHSAndrews) there are a couple of new linguist biogs. These could use any assistance available from people more familiar with the field of Indo-European linguistics.

Also, does Marc Pierce (U. Texas, Austin) warrant a biog? (Hopefully not AI-spawned!)

Thanks Andy Dingley (talk) 11:00, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion on RSN about the works of Sevan Nişanyan

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There is a discussion about the Nişanyan Dictionary and Nişanyan Names websites on the reliable sources noticeboard. Input from anyone with relevant knowledge would be helpful. See WP:RSN#Are Nişanyan Dictionary and Nişanyan Names considered user generated?. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:09, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Voiceless alveolar taps and flaps#Requested move 25 October 2025

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There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Voiceless alveolar taps and flaps#Requested move 25 October 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPathtalk 15:09, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion regarding chart placement of Creaky-voiced glottal approximant

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Information icon There is currently a discussion at Template talk:IPA pulmonic consonants regarding the transcription and placement of certain consonants in the current chart. The thread is Template-protected edit request on 31 October 2025. The discussion is about the topic Creaky-voiced glottal approximant. ~ oklopfer (💬) 15:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:Altaic (disambiguation)

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An editor has requested that Altaic (disambiguation) be moved to Altaic, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. PK2 (talk; contributions) 22:35, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Articles on cases a mistranslation or hoax?

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There's currently an AfD open about an alleged "revertive case" in Manchu that doesn't seem to show up in any published sources. This could use attention from knowledgable editors, in case the current article is a garbled version of something that appears in sources under another name.

But I've noticed that the author of that article also created others that are similarly questionable. I'm particularly curious about ergative-genitive case, which is sourced to two papers that talk about the genitive case in ergative languages, but don't seem to mention a unitary genitive-ergative case. The alleged glossing abbreviation "EGN" doesn't seem to exist either as far as I can tell. So other eyes would be appreciated. Botterweg (talk) 16:18, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I replied to the AFD. I agree with your suspicion here. I will try to look over the other articles when I am back where I have access to resources. -- LWG talk 16:35, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding ergative-genitive case, there are languages in which genitive and ergative are identical (see this paper for one example). But I don't see evidence for the term "genitive-ergative" or the glossing convention EGN. -- LWG talk 16:50, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another term for a case with ergative and genitive function is relative case. But I don't believe this thing is able to carry its own article independent of the ergative article. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 18:24, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for this! I think I'll go ahead and nominate this one for deletion too. Botterweg (talk) 23:52, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The AfD link is here by the way, if anyone wants to weigh in. Botterweg (talk) 19:14, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think all these go back to the 2006 addition of a "less used cases"-section in the Manchu article, and it's descriptions (or interpretations thereof) then spread to list of grammatical cases and individual articles. I spent a bus ride yesterday going through them to check which of them are in Erich Haenisch's old-ish grammar. In most cases there is no proper equivalent, or there is a very creative analysis (or misunderstanding) based on something in the language. The two things closes to how they're described in the Manche articles are the "(essive-)formal case", which in reality is a postposition, and the "terminative", which in reality is an adverbial verb form. I think those descriptions were already somewhat creative or unfortunate readings of the sources, and then were spread with possible reformulation to other article - so probably not a hoax, but some unfortunate repeated reanalyses. On Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Initiative case it's suggested that some of it may go back to a 1879 grammar, which is probably a bit older than what we want modern case descriptions to be based on. Given that the Manch article has at some point been updated with modern sources (which I guess then don't support the less used cases-section) and that some of the relevant suffixes are actually already treated better somewhere else in the same article, I think it should be safe to remove the "less used cases" from the Manchu article, and then go through the relevant entries in the case list article, and maybe double check if articles based on the Manchu article still deserve to exist. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 16:48, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help with IPA in Italian

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I'm asking the community's opinion about an Italian IPA: Margherita Hack. It should be [marɡeˈriːta ˈak] because Italian the sound /h/ isn't pronounced. It may be forcedly pronounced in foreign names or words to underline their foreigness, but: 1) not for names of Italian persons (nor for stably naturalised words) even if of foreign origin; 2) a realiable source proving such a possible pronunciation must exist. Instead, a user is continuously adding a /h/ between parentheses for the surname Hack: [ˈ(h)ak]. His point is: every /h/ can be either pronounced or not pronounced in Italian. This is false, you can search all the articles of Wikipedia about Italian or the sources cited in the articles and you won't find anything supporting this point. He bases his assertion on a footnote of the help page (Help:IPA/Italian) where it's said that "/h/ is usually dropped", which clearly means what I've explained, not what he claims. Note that this sourceless footnote was added by him years ago, exactly as the /(h)/ added to the original IPA of Hack. But a user himself isn't a source, much less a reliable source (and much less if banned from the Italian Wikipedia for his behaviour incompatible with Wikipedia itself...). A reliable source is needed to prove that the pronunciation with /h/ is possible, but the user just added a random YouTube video and a Forvo audio by a random person. Everyone could add any pronunciation of any Italian IPA if he goes cherry picking through the Internet to find an unreliable source which agrees with his POV. Reliable sources are for example the 2 Italian phonetic dictionaries cited in the help page, for example one certifies that "Heidi" can be pronounced with /h/ while "hotel" can't. All I'm explaining here is explained in a discussion in the talk page of Margherita Hack, where I invite any interested user to say his opinion about this matter, i.e. the Italian pronunciation of "Hack", not the help page containing the foreing sound /h/. I hope you'll agree that, if the general rule is that /h/ is dropped, for any exception an authoritative source is necessary. The discussion is here: Talk:Margherita Hack#Pronunciation. ~2025-34431-41 (talk) 23:30, 17 November 2025 (UTC) @Moyogo, Tropylium, Kjoonlee, Buidhe, Phinumu, Paintspot, PharyngealImplosive7, and Citation unneeded: (WikiProject Linguistics participants) ~2025-34533-51 (talk) 12:12, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Titles for untypeable letters

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(moved here from User talk:Beland)

Hi, I can see that you've moved the articles Æ (to "letter ae") and Ø (to "O with slash") (among others, but not Å). Has there been any discussion of this anywhere? You cite WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS, but from what I can read, it recommends the redirect situation ("redirects from versions of the title that use only standard keyboard characters") that was present before your moves. In the case of Æ, I don't think the term "letter ae" is used anywhere else than the Unicode description. Do you want to elaborate a bit? I would have thought this should be discussed at Wikiproject Linguistics before implementation. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 21:20, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted both bold moves. Please open a move discussion if you would still like these pages to be moved. You did not perform necessary post-move cleanup by fixing the redlinked hatnote at Ø. I will also note that Æ has been through an RM before; you may find inspiration for other alternative titles there. Toadspike [Talk] 00:35, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Beland, I see you have done a rather large number of these moves in quick succession. They appear to be based on a misinterpretation of TSC. Please stop performing similar moves and undo all of them, as they are controversial. Toadspike [Talk] 00:39, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's no particular rule requiring discussion before moving articles if the move hasn't been discussed before. If there had been incoming redirects at the move destinations, I would have looked for previous discussions, but there weren't. I couldn't find any move discussion for Ø; digging into archived discussions, it appears a move to AE ligature was suggested two decades ago, before the current title policies were written and before Wikipedia even used Unicode. I was going to move Å to A with overring, but since there is now an objection to this type of move, I'll pause for the suggested discussion here on the WikiProject talk page. Thanks for pointing out the broken link, BTW; it never occurred to me that a page move could cause a broken link if a redirect was left behind. I'll check for that if I end up doing any future moves.
It's true, WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS says to use redirects for characters that can't be typed on a standard keyboard if those special characters are part of the most appropriate title. I'm going through systematically and making sure that either those redirects exist or that articles are renamed to more appropriate titles. WP:ENGLISHTITLE says that titles should reflect the common English names of our subjects. The naturalness criterion at Wikipedia:Article titles also seems relevant; if a title can't be typed on a standard keyboard, that doesn't seem like a natural way to search for or link to an article (though we may find evidence to the contrary). I question whether "Ø" and "Å" are the most common English names for those letters. Looking at the Unicode standard, which has widely used names for every letter in English, for U+00D8, it doesn't use the name "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Ø"; the standard calls it "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH STROKE". This to me reinforces the notion that "Ø" is not the English name for this letter. most people would say this letter isn't the English alphabet, even though it's retained in some imported words.
One thing that made me pretty comfortable making these page moves is that most of the articles in Category:Latin-script letters use English words as titles rather than the Unicode characters for those letters, for example: Thorn (letter), Hwair, and Turned A. H with stroke seems to be directly parallel to O with stroke. WP:CONSISTENT tells us that we should either use English words or Unicode characters for letter titles, but not have a mix of the two. If there is consensus for Unicode characters, that's fine, but English words seem to be somewhat better for navigation. It's not possible to make the redirects required by WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS for many letters. For ligatures there's usually a disambiguation page, which isn't so bad for cases like AE. For Latin letters with diacritics, there's always going to be a letter article in the way. So for example to get to Å, you need to go to A and either notice that Å is in the infobox, or click through to A (disambiguation) then Å (disambiguation) and finally to Å. -- Beland (talk) 04:52, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Doing bold stuff is fine, but you should be ready for a bold response. I don't think the Unicode descriptions are enough to argue that they are common in English sources, so that more has to be established on a per-article basis. That makes them a bit different from thorn (a specifically English letter for which there are many English sources). Ø and Å are not treated as "letters with diacritics" in the languages that use them (which also is the case for Æ, but other languages use it as a genuine ligature), so the "with overring/slash"-title seems misleading from that perspective. I'm not sure which redirects you say are impossible to make - A with overring, O with slash works, and you say the AE disambiguation page isn't so bad. But generally, I don't think one simple way to title letter articles can be established, so it has to be discussed on a per-article basis. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 08:41, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, I'm happy for the bold response!
WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS envisions e.g. a redirect to Å from an ASCII version with diacritics removed. That would be A, but it is impossible to make a direct redirect from there because it is the article for the Latin letter A. I'm just a bit worried about readers looking for Å, typing A, and getting lost on the way from one to the other. I suppose readers who don't know what title we've chosen will have that experience anyway. But it would be easier on the second visit if readers knew they could type "A with ring" or whatever they vaguely remember and get to the right place. Or they learn this naming pattern from other letters. Given our guidelines, perhaps these concerns are neither here nor there, and we should just look to source evidence.
In that spirit, what sources do you have that show "H with slash" should be treated differently than "O with slash", which would outweigh Unicode treating them the same and also outweigh WP:CONSISTENT? -- Beland (talk) 09:07, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Allan et al. 2000 Danish, an Essential Grammar simply refers to Æ, Ø and Å, at most in the formulation "the letter(s) X" (p. 185) - never uses formulations like "with overring/stroke" or ligature. In this review of a dictionary (p. 334), æ and ø are also just referred to with the character. This is in line with my experience reading about is (as far as I remember). It comes off to me as very odd to refer to those with the "X with Y" description - and if the articles were so titled, people would be misled to think they should refer to them like that. I'm not saying they should be treated different from "H with slash" as such (but that one doesn't exist so it shouldn't have a title, I guess), but whatever name they're moved to, should be a term actually used in sources where people might (have) read about it (in line with WP:COMMONNAME).
I don't think moving to "X with Y" is going to change whether people get lost when looking at article X; as you say, the derived character cannot take the place of what it's based on. Whether an "X with Y" page redirects to the unicode title or opposite doesn't change that. And as pointed out below, some of the characters have multiple possible descriptions, and different sources use different names. For instance, "letter tone two" for Ƨ seems odd given its use in the Metelko alphabet where tone is not relevant. "Turned m" isn't a great description of what the capital form looks like. Using the character as the title seems the most consistent (and will probably also be in line with WP:COMMONNAME), and many people are smart enough to search by copying (arriving from search engines will also look more relevant with the character as the title, I'd say). The gist of WP:CONSISTENT also seems to be that consensus can trump consistency. Using the character in the title is also more consistent with the many articles about people with those characters in their names (definitely the case for ÆØÅ; the IPA characters are a bit different since the sound they denote will have a separate article - also a reason why it doesn't make sense to compare "Ə" with "schwa", since we don't know which are used to refer to the vowel or to the character).
I think the Unicode descriptions you mention are written specifically to avoid the use of Unicode characters - a practice we don't need to copy. Better sources are needed to establish how the letters are referred to. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 22:02, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding Replayful – the possible alternative names are many and varied, the situation for each letter is complex and different. "There's no particular rule requiring discussion before moving articles if the move hasn't been discussed before." – Yes, for uncontroversial moves. It doesn't require a previous RM to see that something could be controversial, but moving pages that have been through one, or have been boldly moved several times, is obviously controversial. Toadspike [Talk] 10:00, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Now that the discussion has been moved here, I would like to point out some other characters relevant for linguistics that were moved, such as IPA characters (I put them first here):
I don't think the IPA symbol pages work well at another title than the symbol (at least the first 4).
(And sorry for being nitpicky, but "untypeable letters" is a somewhat misleading title. They are perfectly typeable on keyboards designed for it, and by changing your keyboard layout, you can also get to type Æ, Ø, Å. The others here, like the IPA symbols, probably need plugins or more complex though.) //Replayful (talk | contribs) 09:08, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean "untypeable" in the sense of WP:TITLESPECIALCHARACTERS - not able to be entered on standard keyboards, by which it seems to mean ANSI US QWERTY give or take a £. English Wikipedia is designed for English speakers with English keyboard layouts, not Swedish, etc. Most people have no idea how to change that, and wouldn't and shouldn't do so for a one-off web query. This makes non-ASCII characters de facto untypeable for many readers in our core audience.
What sources would you point to show that general English sources would use the symbols rather than names with words for these characters? Google Books Ngrams shows "schwa" surpassed "Ə" in frequency around 1970, and is currently much more common.
I was going to check the fourth symbol against "theta", but it turns out to be a barred "O". Visual confusion like that seems like a good reason to prefer English words as titles. -- Beland (talk) 09:34, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"letter ae" and "O with slash" can just be useful redirects, but I absolutely do not support moving letters/symbols to descriptions like these.★Trekker (talk) 10:15, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, "barred o" or "o with stroke" are very confusing as they could very well be ø or ɵ. For example Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style uses "barred o" for ø but Unicode uses "o with slash" for that letter, the IPA handbook uses "slashed o". Both Unicode and the IPA handbook use "barred o" for ɵ, but Unicode uses the name "o with middle tilde" for the capital Ɵ. This is not to say articles should or shouldn’t be renamed, just that it’s not straightforward and that there are pros and cons either way. --Moyogo/ (talk) 14:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Would y'all then support moving articles in Category:Latin-script letters that previously had English-word titles to Unicode character titles, to follow WP:CONSISTENT? -- Beland (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't mind more articles having a title just consisting of a character, but it needs to be taken into account whether the article is written from the perspective of the character or something else (handwriting variation, orthography-specific terms, probably others) - so it's not just a question of moving, but possible rewriting. My opinion is that the ones I listed above could be moved back, but I won't wouldn't say it can be done for all, as it depends on why it was moved to its current position. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 13:04, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I probably would yes.★Trekker (talk) 08:50, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Details on needed cleanup (conditionals)

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User:Botterweg believes that the articles Conditional logic and Ramsey test may have some indeterminate sort of issue regarding their prose style, or support from sources, or plagiarism, or what have you. I do not see the issues that Botterweg is pointing at, and I believe that the articles have no such issues, hence I would like project members to take a look at both articles and give feedback, thank you. Thiagovscoelho (talk) 14:33, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like Botterweg's concern is that the articles appear to have been generated by a LLM like ChatGPT, which is strongly discouraged on Wikipedia (see WP:LLM for more details). Can you please describe the process by which that text was written and verified? -- LWG talk 15:03, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For "conditional logic", first I read (1) SEP on "logic of conditionals" (2) this SEP supplement to "defeasible reasoning" that had a nicer axiomatization of VC than the one in Lewis's own works on counterfactuals (3) Handbook of Philosophical Logic, edited by Gabbay and Guenthner, volume 4, p. 82 on Stalnaker's logic and following pages on other mentioned logics (4) Stalnaker's own original "Theory of Conditionals" paper, featured in the book "Ifs". I took notes and made an initial draft of my edit based on them, then I did a web search for additional sources to use and incorporated those in the final product. For "Ramsey test", I first read about it in Gordian Haas's book on verificationism (§9.3) a while ago, which made me aware of there being a lively academic literature dedicated to improving it; so recently I looked at the section under "Belief revision" and produced more content expanding on it and did a web search for additional sources and information. I verified that all content was supported by citations and all citations supported the content, of course. Thiagovscoelho (talk) 15:30, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I replied on the article talk page. From a quick glance over, it appears to me that many/most of your citations lack sufficiently specific page numbers to enable someone to verify them without reading the entire book in question, which is time-prohibitive. Please update the article with citations based on your notes so other readers can follow your thought process and verify the content. -- LWG talk 15:54, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will replace the complaint with "Page numbers needed" since this is a more helpful criticism, and I will begin to provide specific page numbers wherever they seem lacking. Thiagovscoelho (talk) 16:19, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, my concern is simply that these are LLM-generated articles. I added the LLM template to indicate that they will require more careful inspection before being marked as reviewed. Surely you're not disputing that these are LLM-generated? Botterweg (talk) 20:43, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't seem possible to address your complaint when you are not pointing to specific flaws in the content that can be improved by further edits, such as improving tone, sourcing, etc. Per its page, the LLM template is intended for articles that have problems, and potentially need similar treatment to "cleanup rewrite", because they have actual issues in tone, sourcing, etc.; and is intended to be removed when the problems (it is understood that there are known problems) are removed. You are misusing it if there are no specific issues with the content. Since I had been working on the articles, I am interested in ensuring that they have no issues, and I thought I had successfully ensured this; so the template communicated the wrong message to me, if it was meant as indicating nothing in particular about the content, when this is not what it is for. Thiagovscoelho (talk) 23:12, 2 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have read over the article on conditional logic and it does not look like an LLM generated article to me. I pasted it into the ZeroGPT checking tool and the result was "Your text is authentically human-written 95.85%". Then I used QuillBot and it reported "0% of text is likely AI". Then I tried Surfer AI Content Detector and it reported "0% chance that your text was generated by AI". I know these tools are not always accurate, but 3 out of 3 ain't bad. I am familiar with the subject matter of this article and it seems to be well-written and accurate. The only issue I can see is that it could benefit from page numbers being supplied in some of the referenced books and papers. I don't see any reason for the LLM tag to continue. Dezaxa (talk) 21:13, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The user hasn't denied that the article is LLM-generated. They're just claiming that they thoroughly fact-checked it. That could be true, since I agree (as someone with background in the topic) the LLM's text does pass a sniff test. But I think the template should remain until the article has been thoroughly vetted by other users. Botterweg (talk) 21:57, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding AI detectors, the only one that's remotely reliable at the moment is Pangram, though I think that's a moot point for this discussion unless the user actually wants to go there. Botterweg (talk) 22:03, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. I checked with Pangram and it said 30% AI generated. When I get some time I'll make some edits and try to improve it further. Dezaxa (talk) 11:30, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about WikiProject banner templates

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For WikiProjects that participate in rating articles, the banners for talk pages usually say something like:

There is a proposal to change the default wording on the banners to say "priority" instead of "importance". This could affect the template for your group. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Proposal to update wording on WikiProject banners. Stefen 𝕋ower Huddle • Handiwerk 19:45, 6 December 2025 (UTC) (on behalf of the WikiProject Council)[reply]

Requested move at Talk:*Dʰéǵʰōm#Requested move 5 December 2025

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There is a requested move discussion at Talk:*Dʰéǵʰōm#Requested move 5 December 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vestrian24Bio 13:36, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Angela Marcantonio

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Is Marcantonio considered a fringe theorist? Contents referencing Marcantonio is being removed by a user on the grounds that her views are fringe. Oumuamua8 (talk) 01:48, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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