Talk:Languages of Europe

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[edit] Sami

Shouldn't the Sami language be in here?

It is (currently) listed under Finno-Ugric languages -- is that good enough? Pagan 07:37, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Provencal

How about Provencal (or is it included in catala) ? Pagan 07:34, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Actually, at least now both Franco-Provencal and Provencal (under Occita) appear -- are these duplicates? Pagan 07:34, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Created languages

I've just added Volapük to the list, and am checking Interglossa and Basic English in order to add those. I was surprised not to find them on the list, so I wondered if there was some reason for this. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:11, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hindi, Marathi, etc.

What is the justification for including Asian Indo-European languages like Persian and Romany but not Hindi, Marathi, etc.? It should also be noted that languages like Persian cannot really be said to "linguistically belong to European language families" as stated in the first paragraph. While related to European languages, Persian belongs to the Indo-Iranian language family, only found in Asia, which derives from the language of the Proto-Indo-European speakers, whose Urheimat is widely contested but generally believed to be somewhere near the Black and Caspian seas. — Ливай | ☺ 21:19, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Not quite NPOV

This is not quite NPOV: These are languages of non-European origins which are spoken in parts of Europe. Maltese, Turkish, Tatar. Semitic and Turkic languages have been around parts of Europe for some 14 centuries now (in fact long before Hungarian, which no one questions as a European language). And then, Indoeuropean languages originated out of Europe as well. -- User:Perique des Palottes 2005/02/17

[edit] Language map

About the lenguage map. it shows galician (NW of spain) as a celtic language, however galician is an romanic language, brother of the portugues

[edit] Expand

Turkey is soon to be an EU member state, and in any event 3% of Turkeys land area is within Europe. Can, therefore, Turkish be added by somebody who understands these things ? (Alas, not me). Thanks --jrleighton 13:35, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The classification is more or less well-construed. But there should be more about them on this very page. A language is what makes a human human. There should be more data provided here.--~::Annie Chung::~ 16:27, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map

The map Image:CelGerLatSla europe.PNG is stupid. What is the green area labeled "Celtic" supposed to represent??? It certainly doesn't represent the area in which the main language spoken is Celtic! The creator of this map seems to be deeply confused about the status of Gallego... In other cases, there is a fatal tendency to follow current national boundaries. AnonMoos 00:53, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the new map is not very good. It certainly isn't Wikipedia-like. Also it mixes ISO 639-1 and ISO 639-2 language tags, which doesn't seem sensible. Evertype 08:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

As long as it doesn't show Celtic being spoken in Trieste(!?) like Image:CelGerLatSla_europe.PNG does, then it's got to be something of an improvement... AnonMoos 16:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The first (uppermost) map contains a quite important error. There is no Danish-spoken minority in Scania (the southernmost peninsula of Sweden). The local dialect, “Scanian”, have been claimed to be an own language. However, persons claiming so did not arrive to that conclusion in the ordinary linguistic way. Please don’t accuse me for being a language denier as some nationalistic politicians! Scanian is close enough to standard Swedish to be mutually understandable. Since there is no Scanian writing standard it should be considered a dialect, not a language of its own. (The word “Scanian” was invented by me for this propose. I did not know any English word for the Swedish dialect of Scania.)

2006-11-06 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

You are incorrect. Scanian (skånsk or skånelandsk) is a Danish dialect closely related to the dialect of Bornholm and that of Amager (in the area of Dragør and Tårnby). Your argument about Scanian being close enough to Swedish to be mutually understandable is void. Danish, Norwegian (Bokmål) and Swedish are all closely related and mutually understandable (Norwegian is Danish spoken in Swedish - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Germanic_languages#Classification )

Denmark have three major dialect groups. One of these is Eastern Danish (østdansk), with the Amager, Bornholm, Blekinge, Scanian and Halland dialects.

The fact there isn't a standard for Scanian does not mean it isn't a language. It just means it has no standard. A standard is not required in order to assign a language the label "language". Due to Scanian being Danish it is correct to say there is a Danish minority in the kingdom of Sweden. The fact Sweden denies this does not change the presense of the Danish minority.Dylansmrjones 03:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

There is two ways of defining language. One is language as a social construct: a variety defines itself as language by creating it’s own rules of writing. However, by this definition there would not be any non-written languages. The other way is as a group of mutually understandable dialects. I myself use the first definition for written language and the second for non-written ones. By this definition Scanian is not a language of it's own. Your expression “Danish minority” is misleading, Scanians does not view themselves as Danish! They might be proud of being Scanian but they don't want independence from Sweden. In other words there is no “Scanian Republican Army” or anything such.

2007-05-31 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

You are again incorrect. Scanians definitely view themselves as Danish. Swedish persons in Scania may not view themselves as Danes, but the native Scanian population surely does. There is no republican army but that is completely irrelevant. And there are several groups working for independency of Sweden. By any of your definitions Scanian is a Danish dialect. Dylansmrjones (not logged in) 80.197.57.23 11:28, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

What did you get that from? My mum is a Scanian an she does NOT perceive herself as a Dane. I have visited Scania at least once a year for 25 years and I can’t remember meeting any locals who call themselves Danes! Furthermore, I have never heard of any groups working for the independence of Scania. According to my mum there is such a group but it is really marginal. About Scanian being a Danish dialect I don’t think all linguists agree with you. I have read an essay by a Swedish one who don’t.

2007-08-11 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Ironically, there is in fact a Jamtlandic Republican Army (JRA), though. For those of you who don't know what Jämtland is, I can tell you it's a province in northwestern Sweden which became Swedish in the mid 17th century. The dialect spoken (or today rather used to be spoken) is a Norwegian one, at least when you ask Norwegian dialectologists. (This should be marked in the map somehow.)

Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 (talk) 22:02, 12 January 2008 (UTC))

Sorry, but the Jamtlandic Republican Army is not meant to be taken seriously. If Jamtlandic should be considered a Swedish or Norwegian dialect is probably a matter of definition. In this case I don’t know what most linguists would say.

2008-01-19 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.229.19.152 (talk) 19:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Maltese?

I don't see it...65.101.174.47 23:14, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Voila (Stpaul 07:20, 30 March 2006 (UTC))

[edit] About Galician

In the list, Why is galician show as "son" of the portuguese? although both have the same origin (Galician-Portuguese), they are diferent languages. Also, the Fala language is often considerated a galician dialect, not portuguese --Alyssalover^(talk) 08:46, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Galicia is very far apart from the towns where the Fala is spoken... FilipeS 18:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merger

Against the merger, the subjects are very different, and there are many other languages outside the EU.

True, but all Languages of the EU are within the category of European Languages. I don't claim that the entries are synonymous, but that the EU languages are a subgroup of European languages. --Sinatra 09:26, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

The EU languages includes things like language policy and so forth, whereas European Languages is a purely geographical exercise. This is important, as languages and language policy are very interesting within the EU.

Very true, the difference between the political question of the languages of the European Union and the geographical question of all European languages is very important, so I oppose. ― j. 'mach' wust | ⚖ 07:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I oppose for the same reason. Andrew Dalby 12:22, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Which is the context? Merge with what? It is possible that someone removed the 1st line. --Antonielly 13:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Common features of European languages"

This is an interesting idea, but the "cultural-anthropological definition of Europe" with which this section begins is unreferenced. Since it excludes more than half of geographical Europe it appears to be a bad definition. In fact it looks more like a definition of "the parts of western Europe that we like", therefore none too neutral. Am I being unfair? Andrew Dalby 20:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

After writing the above comment I have noticed that the whole long section "Common features of European languages" is identical (except for a few recent edits) with a section of the article Eurolinguistics. This looks a bit like spamming, in a respectable way. Since it hasn't been properly wikified, and it all depends on the so-called "cultural-anthropological definition of Europe", which isn't referenced and doesn't correspond with the normal English meaning of Europe, I am now thinking of taking nearly all of the section out of this article and replacing it with a cross-reference to Eurolinguistics, which seems to be a better place for it because it's all about the research relevant to this special definition of Europe that's going on in certain German universities. Does anyone object? Andrew Dalby 18:29, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

The definition is now referenced. --Sinatra 22:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree Remove this section a place a link

Hello! I think this article should be merged with (into?) the Eurolinguistics article. They handle very similar topics. Moreover, a lot of sections are almost identical in content between them.

Maybe the list of languages could be put into a separate article, e.g. List of languages of Europe or List of European languages.

What do you think? --Antonielly 13:15, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Errors in Slovene and Croatian

1. ...Croatian (e.g. léta he flies, is flying with long rising accent vs. lêta years with long falling accent) and Slovenian (e.g. sûda of the vessel with long falling accent vs. súda of the court with long rising accent)... — words used in these examples are wrong. The supposed Slovene words are definitely not Slovene (vessel = posoda, genitive: posode; court = sodišče, genitive: sodišča). They probably aren't correct Croatian either (vessel = posuda, posuđe, genitive: posude, posuđa (should be verified with a native speaker of Croatian); court = sud, genitive: suda). In the first Croatian example: 'to fly' is leteti, 'he flies' would be (on) leti. I don't think leto exists in Croatian, 'year' is godina and 'summer' is ljeto (leto means year in Slovene and 'summer' in Serbian).

2. ...Cz. restaurace, Slow. Slovenian reštaurácia, ... — is Slow. intended for Slovak? Slovenian 'restaurant' is restavracija and it probably isn't same as in Slovak. NikNovi 15:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Typo?

In the last section 8.10 'Issues in language politics', the word 'relais' seems to be used in the sense of 'relay'. Is this a simple typo or has a new word been created to denote the translation of one language into another and then into another (as the European Union is considering doing in future)?

[edit] Geography and classification in conflict

Since this is a geographical grouping, I don't see why languages that belong to so-called "European language families" but are spoken outside Europe are included. This includes the three examples given in the opening paragraph, Afrikaans, Pennsylvania German and Persian (Persian is there because of the migration of the Ossetians into the Caucasus, but that doesn't make Persian a European language; Afrikaans etc. because of migrations out of Europe, but, again, Afrikaans is not a European language). The relationships of these languages with European languages are important but they are dealt with in articles such as Iranian languages, Germanic languages.

There is a second question: does a modern migration make a language into a European language, or are languages brought to Europe by modern migrations excluded? Something needs to be said about this. Andrew Dalby 12:06, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The first sentence

"Most of the many indigenous languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family."

Wikipedia article on indigenous languages says that: "An indigenous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples"

Is there any indigenous Indo-European languages (in Europe)? There are of course several Finno-Ugric indigenous languages and Basque might be one too, so the sentence seems to be just plain wrong. Even if indigenous meens something else, why shouldn't other language groups and Basque not be in the introduction? 213.243.181.212 21:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

If we take the definition of "indigenous" to its limit, no group can be proved to be indigenous anywhere. I am not sure when the Sami languages reached their current locations, but other Finno-Ugric languages are no more indigenous than the Indo-European ones. And even the ancestors of the Basques arrived from somewhere.

I think the problem you raise is the same as the one I raised just above: when does a migration become too recent to be counted? My suggestion is that the word indigenous has to come out of the article, and, instead, we have to say that we place in a separate section of the list languages spoken in Europe as a result of modern migration, say (for the sake of argument) after 1850. What do others think? Andrew Dalby 12:45, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Fenno-Ugric languages in Fennoscandia and Siberia are certainly indigenous, as before there was only ice for tens of thousands of years. Samis are indigenous people too but Finns are usually not called so because the is a Finnish national state (the definition is very much political). If there was not Finns would be "indigenous people" too and same might be true of Estonians also. I did take the word out just indigenous because of this confusion. There need to be a separate article on the origins of European languages in general.213.243.181.212 17:01, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This is just nonsense. First, there is no linguistic evidence whatsoever that Fennoscandia has been populated by speakers of Fenno-Ugric languages since the end of the Ice Age, and such an idea is rejected by the majority of specialist in Finno-Ugric comparative linguistics, who even date Proto-Uralic thousands of years later. Second, it is a historical fact that Finnish is not an "indigenous" language in most parts of Finland, for instance; most parts of central, eastern and northern Finland are known to have been inhabited by "Lapps" (= Saami) even in the Middle and Early Modern Ages before the northward spread of Finnish and Karelian.

As for the idea that there ought to be a separate article "on the origins of European languages in general", I can see no justification for this. The topic is far too wide and diverse. --AAikio 18:38, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The map is misleading

I am removing this map from the page and moving it here for the moment because it is misleading. A map is of course useful, but this one is misleading. If only a single map is used, it should show the *predominant*, not minority languages for each area. Therefore, the language for the entirety of the British Isles should be shown as English - the *majority* of people in Wales, Scotland and Ireland speak English as their first and (in most cases) only language.

And this is just the area I am familiar with - if this is anything to go by the entire map is unreliable.

On the flip side, the map also suggests stark boundaries that simply don't exist in multi-lingual countries where two or more languages are either the official languages or are widely spoken.

TO summarise: good idea, but the data used is wildy innacurate. Perhaps it would be better to have a series of smaller maps showing the spread of each language, with gradations of colour/tone for what percentage of people speak that language in that particular zone (ie a high percentage (dark) blue for German-speaking people in germany, a lighter blue for German-speaking people in Switzerland, since it is only one of serveral official languages there, and not everyone speaks it)

Thanks - PocklingtonDan 16:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Languages overlap, that's so true! But I think the series of maps you propose, if you care to draw them, would rather belong in the articles about single languages, not in a general article about languages of Europe.

Whether the map is misleading depends on what people want and need to read from it. You apparently want to know the "predominant" languages of each "area", and you seem to think of areas as being fairly big; OK then, it's true the map is not ideal for you. But for people who want the locations of as many as possible of the languages listed in the article, including minority languages, because they don't know these locations in advance, the map may be of some use. Maybe better than removing the map would have been to improve the caption? Andrew Dalby 21:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I have now put the map back and tried to do as I suggest. The map's not so very bad, really. Improvements to caption or article text are welcome! Andrew Dalby 18:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

This map is really pretty bad, and not of a standard for wikipedia. It should be removed. Just looking at spain, where I am right now, and Scotland, where I'm from, I can see glaring errors that make the rest of the map completely unreliable. Interestingly I actually came to this article from Reddit, where the map was completely ridiculed for its inaccuracies. Every commenter was able to find an error, omission or downright nonsense. This was reddit readers remember, if they think the map is poor, it must be dreadful.81.37.127.125 (talk) 20:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

What the map appears to represent is a classification of 'native dialects' in a simplified taxonomy. The part classified as Dutch in northwestern France is for instance accurate as a classification of original native dialects, which are dialects of Dutch, but these dialects have nearly completely been replaced by standard French in public life over the last century. Furthermore the Dutch taxon subsumes language cousins (Low Saxon, Limburgish) not generally considered 'Dutch' by their speakers (or by the Dutch for that matter). Same with the English, Italian language area, and probably many others. In most cases of argued language overlap we find local dialects belonging to one language group overlapped by a standard administrative language taught in schools from another one. There is merit in having a map based on the classification of native dialects, even if these have largely disappeared in public life in favour of a standard language from another group, but to make the classification principle more obvious it would be nice to add a map representing the dominant language in public life. In this map Dutch would for instance not appear in France, while Frisian would be reduced to the province of Fryslan in the Netherlands, where it is an administrative language and taught in schools. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.18.192.124 (talk) 10:40, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Should be completely rewritten

This page is a disgrace for Wikipedia, an article of such relative importance as the languages of Europe should not be allowed to look this bad. The second half of the article may very well be a copyright violation, it reads exactly as if it was taken from a book - note in particular the frequent use of "we may assume" and similar sentences. The only thing that speaks against the article being a copyright violation is the wast amount of errors. Saying that the Irish alphabet is still used in many books is completely wrong, it has hardly been used in any new books for the last 40 years.

Well, you actually find it in reprints of dictionaries that are still used! --Sinatra 10:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The author even appears to be unaware of the fact that all Slavic Orthodox nations are Europeans

You appear to be unaware of the fact that there are different definitions of Europe ;-) - Ok, I have added a remark on that. --Sinatra 10:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

- he talks about features being common to European cultures, but then points out that they also appear among Orthodox Slavic nations. Neither does the author seem to have any insight into European minority languages. Frisian is listed as being in a weak position while many much weaker languages are listed as being in a strong position.

There is probably a problem of definition again.--Sinatra 10:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I just noted that the statement of "weak" vs. "strong" minority languages was not made by me. --Sinatra 10:53, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The author also implies that Flemish would be a weak language in Belgium.

I certainly did not want to imply that Flemish is in a weak position. --Sinatra

These are only some of the countless errors, and then I haven't even begun to list the statements without sources. If not major improvements to the text is made, the second half of the article, starting with Common Features of European Languages, should be deleted.JdeJ 15:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

As to the section about "Common Features of European Languages", I proposed deletion some months ago (above), and no one has disagreed, so I'll now do it. As I said then, the material is repeated at Eurolinguistics; it is essentially a puff for a researcher's comfortable theory, and certainly doesn't need to be in two places. Andrew Dalby 18:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for not reacting earlier. Since it is me you're talking about, please let me tell you that I've not set up any theory yet, but just collected observations. If you would like to simply put a link to Eurolinguistics (e.g. in the form "For a description of common features among European languages see the article Eurolinguistics"), that would totally be okay with me. -Sinatra 21:50, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

The text sections that remain are not necessarily better than those just deleted, but I think they deserve to remain and to be improved. Do others agree? Andrew Dalby 18:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! This is a good beginning. I'm rather busy at the moment, but I will contribute as well in the future, and I hope others will join in as well. JdeJ 02:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

By now I've had time to improve my text under Eurolinguistics, from which I had pzut some information here. I personally would prefer to reorganize this entire article here (starting with the definition of Europe); but I guess this should be done by the author who started the article. --Sinatra 10:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Norwegian Nynorsk and Bokmål

Why is Norwegian Bokmål mentioned specifically and not Norwegian Nynorsk? I know that there is some discussion about which category Norwegian Nynorsk should be in, but it looks very odd to just leave it out. - Nidator 16:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC) -

Good point. I deleted bokmål because it is not a language, it is just one of the two different literary standards used for the Norwegian language. --AAikio 09:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganization of this page

I've tried to reorganize the contributions on languages in Europe a little bit: see European languages. I added the various definitions used for Europe and put the list of languages in a separate article. I also deleted the information in the article Eurolinguistics, so that it doesn't occur in the Wikipedia twice. I hope everybody is happy with this. --Sinatra 12:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The big problem (hence the NPOV tag) is that you use the English word Europe with a meaning that you have defined; unfortunately this word already exists in English and it has a different meaning (see any dictionary). I think your material was OK as a self-description of your research in Eurolinguistics; it won't do as a Wikipedia article about Languages of Europe or European languages because it begins with, and relies on, a definition of Europe that is not generally understood or accepted. In research, you can do that. In encyclopedia articles, you can't. Andrew Dalby 20:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. Please note that I don't use a definition for Europe that I myself have established. It is a definition used by anthropologists (which indeed I find very useful, because it is based on culture, and language history is very much related to culture). I have quoted Huntington, certainly not an unimportant name. I have quoted a renowned politician, Helmut Schmidt. If you think that more sources should be quoted I can do that. I understand that Europe in everyday language is most frequently associated with the geographical definition, but I don't think that this forbids the use of a different technical meaning in an encyclopedia. A word like dialect also has different meanings in everyday speech and in linguistic terminology, and I guess nobody doubts that this should be reflected in an encyclopedic article. This is why I have mentioned all current usages of Europe (quotes included). And I have said for which definition the observations presented holds true, so I don't quite see why the article should be NPOV. --Sinatra 23:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Huntington's name may be important, if you say so, but he is politically highly controversial (see the Wikipedia article about him). You're citing him (the only native English speaker you cite?) for a definition of the English word Europe which differs from that used by nearly all the other speakers of English.

I'm pretty sure (from my experience) that quite a number of Europeans who speak English use Europe not in the geographical sense.

To me, this makes it appear that you are doing something political yourself. Otherwise, why choose him?

No, I'm not doing anything political, I'm interested in culture, that's why I chose a definition from cultural anthropology. Other scholars who use this definition of Europe are, e.g.: Jeremy Rifkin, Lawrence E. Harrison, Mariano Grondona, Ronald Inglehart.

Similarly, in setting out by stating a new definition of Europe, one that is likely to be very comfortable and satisfying to global powermongers who speak western European languages, you appear to be hanging on the powermongers' coat-tails. Otherwise, why start out like that?

Because I would like to be comprehensive, as it should be in my concept of an encyclopedia. If there are definitions of terms that are technical and not part of everyday language, this should be reflected in an encyclopedia.

But this impression, that I have derived from the way you start out in the article, may be quite false.

In fact I'm really interested in your work, which, I'm sure, is valid and important. What I don't agree with is turning it into the whole body of an encyclopedia article called (last time I looked) European languages, as if the European languages that don't fit into the new definition are to be squeezed out.

That's not the impression that I want to give. The link to List of languages in Europe lists the languages in Europe in a geographical sense (however, most allochtonous languages are missing there--which makes the problem even more complicated). My own passages are introduced by the remark that these passages refer only to the languages in Europe in its anthropological sense. I do not claim that this is already a complete article.

In a good article under this heading, their features need to be discussed just as much as the languages that fit your special definition.

I totally agree with that. However, I'm not an expert in the Slavic orthodox or "eastern European" languages. If somebody wants to add sub-sections on these languages, I have nothing against it.

In fact, you are doing something different from writing an encyclopedia article about all European languages.

Again, I'm trying to write on all European languages--re Europe in its cultural definition... - Information on Europe in its geographical sense may be added

You are identifying Areal features and you are defining a very important Sprachbund, perhaps the most significant in the world right now. If your text, just as it stands now, were headed European linguistic area (or, for those who prefer the loanword, European Sprachbund!), were linked to all other relevant articles, with a brief summary at European languages, then I would welcome it, praise it and even draw other people's attention to it!

I'm not sure that we have enough common features to speak of a European sprachbund. As a matter of fact, some of the features are indeed also present in the "eastern European" languages as well. My goal would be to have information on Europe lato sensu added to Europe stricto sensu. Maybe you are able to do that.

Andrew Dalby 13:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

-Sinatra 19:44, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback reorganization

I was bold and restored the page to a version before the edits by User:Sinatra. IMHO, the article "Languages of Europe" should really describe the languages of Europe, and not the languages of Central and Western Europe. Btw, does the redirect American languages refer to Indigenous languages of the Americas or to Indigenous languages in the United States of America? --zeno 21:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Dear Zeno! I checked your userpage and can see that you are an administrator of the German Wikipedia, so I understand that you are keen on contributing good articles to this encyclopedia and I respect this. It is also my aim to make good contributions to Wikipedia. However, I feel disrespected if you delete contributions without referring to the arguments that have been discussed. The consequence of your reorganization is that we now have 1. an article that lacks two important definitions that--as I have tried to point out--are used in the academic world and also in everyday speech; 2. an article that lacks many references and sources that I had added in my new version. Viewing these two aspects what we have now is a version now that is farther away from a good encyclopedic article than before. Can you give me a reason why you would like to neglect the other definitions and why you would like to insert unsourced statements? --Sinatra 19:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Dear Sinatra, I generally appreciate if specialists in certain fields contribute to Wikipedia. But sometimes they are biased and try to present their views as the generally valid views on a certain topic. I have the feeling that while you may have worked a lot in the research of European languages, you try to push a certain view into Wikipedia which is not at all shared by the majority of linguistic researchers. I think it is a little bit problematic to rely on and cite one's own work that much in a Wikipedia article. Are you sure your book is so relevant for people interested in the languages of Europe? Hint: You may be biased.

I have no problems with mentioning relevant minority views in articles (that should generally be the case in Wikipedia!), however, they should be presented as such. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. I would also like to point out that the approach of Eurolinguistics, especially your interpretation of it, is not shared by most linguists. As I have heard, many linguists have not even heard that the "discipline" of Eurolinguistics exists.

For example, mentioning it in the first sentence of an article about the languages of Europe is not in the interest of our readers, who want to learn about European languages, and not about a rather obscure branch of linguistics.

If you want to elaborate on the opinions shared by the people who work under the label of Eurolinguistics, it might the best to do it in the article "Eurolinguistics", but not here. But be prepared that also there you may have to live with the fact that other people may have different opinions on the matter.

With kind regards, --zeno 12:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Since you bring up the topic of NPOV, I see that I still haven't expressed myself clearly. Let me try again. I am not at all interested in views or opinions, I'm interested in facts and observations. So the only passage where I had mentioned views was in the section on language politics, and there I had only summed up other people's suggestions without evaluating them. I don't see how this should violate any WP rules.

If you think that Eurolinguistics should not be mentioned in the first sentence of this article, this is fine with me. What I would expect though from an encyclopedic article, though, is that it gives all usages of the entry word, in this case: the three definitions that I cite.

Let me also point out that I did not just quote myself, but also other linguists. To what extent my book is relevant for people interested in the languages of Europe I don't dare to decide--to avoid the criticism of original research, I quoted two prominent eurolinguists who reviewed my book. That there are linguists who are not familiar with certain subbranches of linguistics does not surprise me. I wouldn't claim to know all branches either. If I'm correct, you're from Freiburg University, and I know that colleagues there are familiar with Eurolinguistics, as they are working in this field themselves (and I also know that some of them use my book). Other universities where eurolinguistic research is carried out are Mannheim, Berlin, Leipzig, Regensburg, Passau.

--Sinatra 19:12, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Sinatra: What I would expect though from an encyclopedic article, though, is that it gives all usages of the entry word, in this case: the three definitions that I cite.

If we followed this logic, then we would have to mention several different definitions of "Europe" in every article that covers some European topic.

Yes, I would definitely expect that from an encyclopedic article: if an author uses a polysemous word without making clear which sense is used, how could a reader be clear about the content? - Sinatra 20:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we should make that clear. But: Why talk about Western Europe in an article that may cover all of Europe? Because you did so in your book? --zeno 07:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Because some scholars use Europe in this way. The article should of course also include information on Europe in its other senses. Actually, my version did not exclude information on the other senses.-Sinatra 20:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

To what extent my book is relevant for people interested in the languages of Europe I don't dare to decide--to avoid the criticism of original research, I quoted two prominent eurolinguists who reviewed my book.

The crucial point here is: The two reviews were not published in a widely accepted linguistic journal, but in an online journal of which you are (1) the editor and (2) the author of about 50 % of articles. To put it in other words: Your own, private publication.

Whether a linguistic journal is widely accepted or not and whether it is an on-line journal or a printed one, is not the guarantee for quality. But what can probably be expected is that a peer-reviewed journal makes quality more probable. Please note that, although I am the editor and so far the author of most articles, all articles--including my own--have been peer-reviewed. - Sinatra 20:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I can turn these sentences around: Being peer-reviewed is not a guarantee for quality. It can also be expected that a wide acceptance of a journal makes its quality more probable.

If JELX is peer-reviewed, who were the reviewers for the different issues? I could not find that information on the website.

The consulting editors of the journal are named on its main page. Who reviewed which article and review remains anonymous, of course.

If your research may be interesting to a wider range of people, why don't you try to publish it in the usual publications?--zeno 07:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "usual publications"? Printed publications? Are you trying to tell me that on-line publications are principally less valuable then printed ones? -- I don't know how much experience you have with traditional publication venues, but with many you have the following obstacles: (1) with some you have the problem that you have to wait years for the actual publication (I've been waiting for the publication of a simple review in one of the internationally most renowned journals for three years now! this is mostly okay with me as regards historical publications, but not as regards quite topical issues); (2) where should Eurolinguistic contributions be published that it reaches the right audience (I wanted to create a central venue of Eurolinguistic study with easy, fast and general access--that's why I've created EuroLinguistiX); (3) not infrequently traditional journals are not interested in innovative approaches before they have been accepted elsewhere. In sum, to reach a wider audience, the traditional linguistic journals do not seem to be the right place to me. So far, I have had the chance to publish over a dozen articles in internationally renowned journals, but my most innovative ones have appeared elsewhere....-Sinatra 20:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The eurolinguists you cite may be prominent in the small community that operates under the label "Eurolinguistics", but I am not sure whether this makes your book relevant to the topic "European languages"/"Languages of Europe".

I don't understand the logic. So are you saying that eurolinguists are not relevant to the topic "European languages"? Would it help matters then if I said that I am also a scholar in "English linguistics" and "general linguistics"? Would it help if I said that the two reviewers are also experts in "Slavic linguistics"? Would it help if I told you that these two reviewers have carried out projects sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the central sponsor of academic projects? When is a review relevant then, when is a book relevant then in your view?

I do not say Eurolinguistics are not relevant. What I do say is that Eurolinguistics is not as relevant to the study of European languages as, let's say, Slavistics to the study of Slavic languages. Only a minority of researchers who work on European languages call themselves Eurolinguists. --zeno 10:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by Slavistics is relevant to the study of Slavic languages? Slavistics is the study of Slavic languages? If you say that not only few researches who work on EUropean languages call themselves Eurolinguists that's because not everybody working on European languages is a Eurolinguist, because just comparing two European languages, for instance, doesn't make somebody a Eurolinguist. But I see that this should be clarified in the article Eurolinguistics.--Sinatra 20:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

That there are linguists who are not familiar with certain subbranches of linguistics does not surprise me.

As I see the matter, it is disputable whether Eurolinguistics is to be considered a proper branch of linguistics. Maybe "Eurolinguistics" is better described as a small community of researchers.

I don't know whether you can describe -icses as communities, but that is probably not relevant to the topic. Viewing the number of entries in my Eurolinguistic bibliography I also think that the community is more than "small", but "small" is of course a relative description. - Sinatra 20:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Best regards, --zeno 15:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

The last passages have brought us a bit away from the actual issue here, namely the organization of this article. Let me repeat that I haven't seen any convincing argument yet, why an article that ignores that a word has several definitions is more encyclopedic than one which does. Also, I don't see that the article is left with the unreferenced statements instead of my completed version. Regards, Sinatra 20:04, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have not seen any convincing argument yet why defining "Europe" as "Western Europe" makes sense for this article.

Because European is understood in the sense of your Western European by some scholars (like the ones I have indicated).-Sinatra 20:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I also don't see why citing your book should make the article complete.

mfg, --zeno 07:30, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying that citing my book makes the article complete, I'm saying that all the references that I had given (of course including my book, but not exclusively) had left the passages without unsourced statements. Now the passages include unsourced statements again. -Sinatra 20:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

If I'm correct, you're from Freiburg University, and I know that colleagues there are familiar with Eurolinguistics, as they are working in this field themselves (and I also know that some of them use my book).

Who are they? Using Google, I could not find any. Please give me their names, either here, or via WP-E-Mail. With kind regards, --zeno 10:16, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Here's the homepage of the study program [[1]]; Professor Bernd Kortmann is the coordinator. You will find out that the study program sees Europe in the sense of "Western Europe". --Sinatra 20:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

If you look at their map, it does not seem so. And at least they do not exclude Russian: http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/mel/semesterplan/semesterplan.html

--zeno 21:02, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. There might have been a new development, because the first courses offered as you can see did not include any Slavic classes at all. They have had two courses on Russian, but the rest of the Slavic classes seem to be focussed on Western and Southern Slavic languages. So viewing the small amount of Russian classes in contrast to the other classes and viewing the homepage of the study program, it seems to me that nonetheless the basic view of Europe is a cultural one. By the way, the cultural definition is fortunately a flexible one. It is therefore not at all excluded that Russian becomes a part of this civilization one day. -- Sinatra 19:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese

What about the 140,000 chinese speakers in Ireland alone? There are more people speaking Chinese than Gaelic in Ireland yet they are not even mentioned in this article. 83.70.219.91 00:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

-hardly, in the latest Irish census, 1,650,000 Irish people claimed to be fluent in Irish, and over 500,000 claimed to use the language daily. (I don't know how to do these things, but I'll put the date and my name if it helps. (10/9/2007 - Paul) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.62.176.93 (talk) 03:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal

It has been suggested that List of languages in Europe and Alphabetic list of living languages in Europe be merged into this article or section.

Reasoning: the other two lists make assertions that aren't supported, mainly in regards to numbers of people using them. Since this article is almost completely formatted as a list already, they seem redundant and easy targets to POV pushing. Since it's not very likely that they will be sourced, the best solution is to simply redirect them here and find citations for this article to support any claims about usage numbers. 24.4.253.249 20:14, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Romance languages merge

I recently cleaned up Category:Romance languages and List of Romance languages. I am going to move all correct information from this list to List of Romance languages and then i'll put back whatever is relevant for Europe. --Amir E. Aharoni 17:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Map term "Romanic"

I believe the proper term should be "Romance" and not "Romanic." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Facial (talk • contribs) 07:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Esperanto debated as official language?

Section General issues - Issues in language politics Sorry, but that's laughable. Esperanto was and is never seriously debated as an official language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.246.46.30 (talk) 19:50, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kosovo Demographics

After the war in Kosovo, a large number of primarily Serbian speaking people have left the region. I recommend someone look at Wikipedia's own web page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Kosovo so that a more accurate mapping of the region can be made. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.234.149.235 (talk) 04:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Catalan and Occitan

The area for Catalan in the main map is wrong, as well as its merging with provençal. The map that represents only the romance languages is right and very good. I don't know how to change the main map, but someone who knows should do it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.159.136.238 (talk) 07:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The New Map

And I'm back :) Here are some suggestions for improving the map, I'll be happy to discuss any of them.

The Catalan area in France is missing. It's true that Catalan is not in a strong position everywhere in Roussillon, but that's true about some areas in Spain as well.
In the map, the Sami language is found in large parts of Finland and Sweden. It is spoken in both countries but not in the areas coloured on the map. Especially in Finland, it's much further north. There are hardly Sami speakers in the area now coloured as the Sami language area. On the other hand, more than half the Sami speakers in the world live in Norway, yet they aren't found on the map.
Staying in Scandinavia, the Swedish speaking areas in Finland are completely missing from the map. As the Swedish language area in Finland is relatively large and the percentage of native Swedish speakers is higher in parts of Finland than anywhere else in the world (including Sweden), it's strange that they are missing.
The Irish Gaelic language is marker on the map, though in the wrong places. There aren't any Irish speaking communities at all in County Clare, yet all of the county is coloured for Irish on the map. On the other hand, the Irish speaking enclaves in Kerry, Cork and Donegal are missing.
German in Alsace is missing. It's retreating, though not more than many other languages marked on the map
The same goes for the French in Aoste.
Corsica is coloured for Italian, with Corsican as a minority language. The main language of Corsica is French.
If colouring Croatian and Serbian as different languages, bosnian should logically also be coloured as a language.

These are some of the points I noticed straight away. There could be others, but fixing these would make the map much more correct and representative. I hope this is helpful, cheers! JdeJ (talk) 22:09, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi again! I've had a loog at the larger map now [2], and unfortunately there are even more errors on it than on the smaller. I can't go through, but the main error is that you seem to select which areas that are to be coloured as unilingual or bilingual rather arbitrary. To take but a few examples:

Ireland is a complete mess. The major part of Ireland (in the middle) is coloured as bilingual. In fact, most of this area is as English in speech as England although there are also smaller parts in that colour that are unilingually Irish. Most of the area coloured as unilingually Irish is in fact unilingually English, although small parts of it are either bilingual or unilingually Irish.
For some reason, Cornwall is coloured as bilingual. The number of people speaking Cornish daily is below 100, or 0.02%.
All of Bretagne is colured for French and Breton. In the Eastern half of Bretagne, Breton hasn't been a spoken language for the last 800 years.
In Spain, some Basque and Catalan areas are coloured bilingual, others unilingual. Some of the strongest unilingual Basque and Catalan areas are coded as bilingual, while areas that is very much bilingual or even with Spanish domination is coloured as unilingually Catalan/Basque.
Corsica still gives the impression that Italian is spoken there instead of French.
As I said earlier, the Sami area is in the wrong place altogether.
Why are all of the Swedish speaking areas in Finland coded as bilingual, even those that are more unilingually Swedish than any community in Sweden?
How come all of Galicia is unilingually Galician?

Well, these are some points from the areas I know best. I really appreciate the work you're putting into this, but I must ask what kind of sources you are using. Cheers JdeJ (talk) 12:56, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Several errors on the main map

The main map is false-in Poland the Upper Silesian region has minority languages and dialects, not the Lower Silesia one, also in both Ukraine and Poland Polish language areas are missing.--Molobo (talk) 14:34, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. The map needs a legend; I guess the author might have intended to show Silesian language, but currently it looks like German.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Misleading image

The Image "Knowledge of French" makes French look more spread than it really is. The different percentages of French-speakers aren't distinguishable because even areas with about 10% French-knowers are coloured with a rather dark blue colour (compare this with the "Knowledge of German" image). The whole image seems a bit politically motivated to me, its creator might well be a part of the French-lobby. 'Knowledge' is a very broad term as well: I doubt that every 10th Swede, for instance, could read a French book. --Fennicus

[edit] "Linguas Francas"

First of all, the correct plural of "lingua franca" is "lingue franche". Second, why is this section even here? For that matter, what's the purpose of the "General Issues" section at all? I can understand the "treatment of minority languages" section, and maybe "language and identity", but the other two sections don't seem to be adding anything of value to the article. Sectori (talk) 19:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

76.104.198.129 (talk) 22:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC) I'd like to add that even if the proper plural of "lingua franca" is not going be used, in what circumstance does English ever have adjectives agree in the plural? Wouldn't "Linguas franca be more appropriate?

I would actually consider [lingua franca] to be a single unit, and would pluralize it in English as lingua francas. But yes, either way it's problematic, and I'm not sure what to do with this section. Sectori (talk) 13:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

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