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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics
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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!
Titles for untypeable letters
(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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- "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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- I probably would yes.★Trekker (talk) 08:50, 9 December 2025 (UTC)
- 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)
- 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)
- See also Talk:Heng (letter)#Requested move 16 May 2026. Викидим (talk) 08:51, 19 May 2026 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:English personal pronouns#Requested move 2 March 2026
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:English personal pronouns#Requested move 2 March 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Abesca (talk) 03:54, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
What should be done with Tongue shape?
This article has had minimal citations for over a decade, and until my edits to it a few months ago, had no footnotes either.
As it stands right now, it is almost entirely about sibilants, and in large part equivalent to Sibilant § Tongue shape (which links to it as a main article, but is arguably less descriptive than the section), and for non-sibilants chalks it up to secondary articulation, even though sibilants have plenty of attestation for secondary articulation, too.
There is currently one redirect to it, domed consonant, which is barely explained and may well be better off pointing to the section on sibilants.
Realistically, is it worth expanding the article? Should it face WP:TNT? Should it instead be turned into a redirect elsewhere (and if so, where)? Or should it just be deleted entirely? ~ oklopfer (💬) 23:34, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
- After a passing look at the prose, I'm not sure how this is not just a subsection of Place of articulation or similar. I have more of a background in phonology than phonetics, but this feels like it should be a subsection of the PoA. Ping me if this gets brought to AfD; I will suggest a redirect. Seems unreasonable to keep on its own unless a more phonetic-grounded editor can dispute. ThaesOfereode (talk) 02:44, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
- I have since updated the article to make the distinction clearer based on Catford's Fundamental Problems in Phonetics and L&M's SOWL, but IMO it is still too sibilant heavy to warrant not simply being merged into the section on the sibilant page. ~ oklopfer (💬) 15:33, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet#Requested move 24 February 2026
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:NATO phonetic alphabet#Requested move 24 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. CNC (talk) 17:00, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
Progressive present
Please add reliable sources. Note that if you register for the Unref backlog drive, you can earn a Barnstar! Bearian (talk) 00:47, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
- Should it exist though? The "progressive past" in the "see also"-section is a redirect; this one could be redirected to Uses_of_English_verb_forms#Present_progressive by analogy. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 15:51, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
Faggin–Nazzi alphabet
I'm not sure that this is the right venue for this question, but... The article Faggin–Nazzi alphabet could be a joke. There are few sources, and they're of mixed quality. After a cursory scan, I'm not sure that there's a single reliable source. Help please. Mgnbar (talk) 00:38, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- I can't contribute reliable sources at the moment, but per WorldCat, Giorgio Faggin was the author of Grammatica Friulana among other works (though, there appears to be a Giorgio Faggin who writes on art history and may be a different individual), while Gianni Nazzi authored Dizionario Friulano as well as other multilingual Friulian dictionaries and other references. Both people are also listed at Open Library. The book Salvâ l'Italie e altris stocs has a preface by "Ǧorǧ Faggin" and a postscript by "Ǧuan Nazzi", which might also be them, but I can't read it, so I don't really know. The postscript does refer to La grafie uficiál de lenghe furlane normalizade and La grafie uficiál de lenghe furlane, which I take it are books on Friulian orthography. Again, I don't really understand the language, though. Cnilep (talk) 08:05, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- Yes, this does indeed sound like a joke, but that could just be a quirk of the English-speaker's perception. The work cited by Nazzi is stocked in numerous major libraries, but you'd have to look at it to see if it supports the content. I've asked User:Rgrg to comment - he started this article twenty years ago. Doric Loon (talk) 12:56, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- It seems like there's good indications that it's not a hoax at least. But I think the practical questions are 1) Is the title the proper term for it? 2) Is it notable? (there doesn't seem to be an article about the standard orthography of Friulian) //Replayful (talk | contribs) 13:19, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- Just jumping in to mention this work with a preface by Faggin and an afterword by Nazzi. These at least seem to be real people with published work on Italian langauages, but Replayful is asking the right questions. AviationFreak💬 13:23, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- It seems like there's good indications that it's not a hoax at least. But I think the practical questions are 1) Is the title the proper term for it? 2) Is it notable? (there doesn't seem to be an article about the standard orthography of Friulian) //Replayful (talk | contribs) 13:19, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- Yes, this does indeed sound like a joke, but that could just be a quirk of the English-speaker's perception. The work cited by Nazzi is stocked in numerous major libraries, but you'd have to look at it to see if it supports the content. I've asked User:Rgrg to comment - he started this article twenty years ago. Doric Loon (talk) 12:56, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
Good article reassessment for Long and short scales
Long and short scales has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 17:51, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Continuative aspect
Please add reliable sources. Note that if you register for the Unref backlog drive, you can earn a Barnstar! Bearian (talk) 21:29, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
"Pho" Canadian pronunciation
You may be interested in the discussion at Talk:Pho § Canadian pronunciation.
— W.andrea (talk) 13:41, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Discussion at Talk:Realizational morphology § "Realizational" vs "word-and-paradigm", move request and useful sources
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Realizational morphology § "Realizational" vs "word-and-paradigm", move request and useful sources. IlmarisenVasara 03:37, 20 March 2026 (UTC)
Edit Request Help
Can someone take a look at this edit request? I tried to answer them but I don't have a linguistics background and feel like I might be missing something. Thanks! InfernoHues (talk) 00:53, 29 March 2026 (UTC)
Draft articles for uncommon letter
Szimon017 created some articles on uncommon letters that were subsequently moved to draft, including Draft:Ꟗ, Draft:De with dot below, Draft:Rounded Ve (Historic letter variants) , Draft:Long-Legged De, Draft:ꭤ. The drafts lack references. If you think notability can be established for any of these characters, please add references and submit the drafts. If you think that notability cannot be established, you don't need to do anything. After six months without edits, a draft is likely to be deleted. For an example of what an article on an uncommon letter should look like, see Char (Cyrillic). DowntownUgarit (talk) 02:48, 2 April 2026 (UTC)
RfC on letter names and case in articles
Hello. Lumegrin and I have discussed on the Wikimedia Community Discord server about the inconsistencies of the letter names and case in articles, and it doesn't seem to be defined in MOS:CAPS, or seemingly any other MOS page. Some examples he found are:
(The first three have already been changed by him)
The solution that he and I ended up with is:
- For the first mention of a letter that is the subject of the article (in the lead sentence),
A (miniscule: a)will be used. For the first mention of a letter that is not the subject of the article,A (a)will be used.For any mention of a letter that is not the first mention of it, simplyAwill be used.- For any mention of a letter that is not the subject of the article, simply
awill be used, per MOS:WAW.
Note from 2026-04-05T15:45:00Z: MOS:WAW seems to take precedence, therefore both 2 and 3 have been merged to 4.
Example article to explain the usage, about the letter X:
X (miniscule: x) is the 24th letter in the English alphabet. It is immediately before the letter
Y (y) y, which is the 25th letter. Both X x and Y y are often used as variables in mathematics.
Please either:
- Support - Change the usage of letters in articles to match with the solution above
- Oppose - Have a different solution for any three, or keep the articles as-is
As this is my first time personally starting an RfC, I am not completely sure if an RfC should be started for this, however I feel that it is a good idea. dot.py 04:43, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- Support as RfC creator, to make mentions of letters more consistent.
dot.py04:51, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- Support. Seems reasonable to me. Regulov (talk) 06:38, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- Partially oppose – There is a MOS page mentioning this (MOS:WORDSASWORDS), and this idea for casing might clash with it (see third example with the letter e). But yes, use is inconsistent as of date and should be standardized. I do agree with how you decided to format the letters in the lead sentence, though.
- Regarding letter names, I think e.g. "Ż (lowercase: ż), called Z with overdot, is a letter of/in the XYZ script, etc." is the best option, as lowercase might be more common than minuscule/miniscule, and I believe this format follows MOS:ALTNAME more closely. This would also avoid conflicts in spelling (min[u/i]scule). IlmarisenVasara 08:13, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- Support 1 with preferably lowercase rather than minuscule, oppose 2 & 3 as MOS:WAW may take precedence ~ oklopfer (💬) 15:07, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- Comment: @User:dot.py hey that 5 April edit to change the RfC to account for MOS:WAW seems to not have gone entirely as planned. I don't think you meant for it to look the way it currently does. ⹃Maltazarian ᚾparleyinvestigateᛅ 23:53, 6 April 2026 (UTC)
- Comment (post-refactor): I think the best course of action is to stick to minimal article changes beyond the initial letter name mentions (on pages where the letter is the subject), as it will differ on a case-by-case basis. I don't know if #4 is suggesting any changes, but I think those examples should be left as-is for now. ~ oklopfer (💬) 00:54, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
- Partially opposed (based on the current version). I still think the term lowercase should be used, and that the English name of the letter should appear somewhere in the lead sentence (e.g. Y with tilde for ỹ), although I recognize this discussion is mainly about casing.
- If MOS:WAW is to take precedence, mentions of letters—whether the subject of the article or others—should be lowercase and italicized.
- I believe exceptions should include:
- the lead sentence, as discussed;
- letters in angle brackets for phonological/phonetic descriptions (as in the Ż article; e.g. ⟨ỹ⟩ represents [ɨ̃]);
- and probably other situations that can be assessed on a case by case basis.
- IlmarisenVasara 06:33, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
- So to clarify:
X (lowercase: x), called ex, is [...]. It is immediately before the letter y, which is the 25th letter. Both x and y are often used as variables in mathematics.
IlmarisenVasara 06:44, 7 April 2026 (UTC)- I think there is a bit more nuance. Angled brackets are used for graphemes in general, not just phonology/phonetics, so one could justifiably write
the letter ⟨y⟩
just as much asthe letter y
, and particularly if the letter is being linked, I also think it is perfectly reasonable to do any ofthe letter Y / Y y / y / ⟨Y⟩ / ⟨Y y⟩ / ⟨y⟩ / Y / Y y / y
(though here, the capitals or both cap and lower might actually be preferred to just lower). - I agreed with your original point that WAW may take precedence when referring to a letter as if it were a word, and is a good reason not to alter on a major level, but it is also not the only option. That's why I suggest being more conservative and only changing the introduction sentences with mentioning the primary subject letters to be consistent. ~ oklopfer (💬) 06:58, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
- Of course if we were to be consistent the change would not be conservative, but I'm fine with it targeting only the first few sentences (or leads in general).
- To be fair, WAW does not really mention casing, so I might walk back on that a little bit. I think the following would be acceptable as well.
X (lowercase: x), called ex, is [...]. It is immediately before the letter Y, which is the 25th letter. Both X and Y are often used as variables in mathematics.
- I based my suggestion on that one WAW example (
The most common letter in English is e.
) but that might not be enough to inform customary use on WP. - My point about angled brackets used in sentences where phonetics/phonology are discussed was based on general use in language articles (which, in all fairness, are not letter articles), where they are really only used in phonology sections; it was not about actual use in linguistics. As you said, in these articles, angled brackets could be used anywhere because they are literally about letters. IlmarisenVasara 09:27, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
- I think brackets ⟨⟩ should be used more than they are now, because letters are not words (put a little squarely), so they could be used here (otherwise I'm not sure I see the need to standardize the first sentence of articles this way). //Replayful (talk | contribs) 21:20, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
English Toponymic Etymology Project - looking for other editors
Hello all! I'm looking to start a wikiproject that better integrates the etymological findings of the English Place-Name Survey into the pages for English settlements (where it is often missing). Much of this etymological work is, of course, Old English. Would anyone be interested in joining me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Faust.TSFL (talk • contribs) 14:23, 16 April 2026 (UTC)
Intervocalic consonant
Do we really need this page? I'm thinking about bringing it to AfD on grounds of WP:NOTDICT. It seems rather unnecessary and not worth salvaging with how little it provides. ~ oklopfer (💬) 00:13, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- Yes, I think the lenition stuff would be better at lenition. Apart from that there is no encyclopedic content. — kwami (talk) 04:03, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- I agree. Teangacha 12:17, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- We might redirect it to Lenition rather than delete it, but I don't see a reason for it to have its own page at this point. ThaesOfereode (talk) 12:51, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- There are several possible rd's: syllable, phonotactics, etc. I don't think we can predict which one someone might intend if they turned 'intervocallic consonant' into a link. — kwami (talk) 21:12, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- That's a fair point. Not opposed to full on deletion then. ThaesOfereode (talk) 21:32, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
- There are several possible rd's: syllable, phonotactics, etc. I don't think we can predict which one someone might intend if they turned 'intervocallic consonant' into a link. — kwami (talk) 21:12, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Nomination of Intervocalic consonant for deletion
The article is being discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Intervocalic consonant until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the AfD notice from the article until the discussion is closed.New discussion on IPA key
In case anyone is interested, I’ve opened a new discussion regarding a possible change in our English IPA conventions at Help talk:IPA/English#Superscript or other form of marking for reduced sounds. Feel free to join. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 22:06, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Help requested for improving article on Turkish language
Hi, I've been trying to improve the article on Turkish recently, but I am unable to do it on my own. For example I've been reading a good source on consonant voicing, but I have no idea how to summarize and integrate it into the article; it currently primarily follows the interpretation of only one source (I was the one to add most of that but it should be trimmed). I also found a few sources on gender that I can't access. Is there anyone who'd be willing to help? The article is very sadly at C-class right now. Wreaderick (talk) 21:46, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
Omniglot has an RfC
Omniglot, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has an RfC for determining its reliability as a source. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. ~ oklopfer (💬) 01:16, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
- This RFC has been copied back from the archive and closed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:52, 6 August 2026 (UTC)
Restructuring the RP article
There's a discussion ongoing over at the RP article on restructuring it to more clearly separate the old standard and the current spoken form. Please come and join the discussion here! [citation unneeded] (talk) 14:29, 8 May 2026 (UTC)
Assibilation
Did you know that Assibilation includes an assimilation? This would be a great DYK for the front page. Just saying. Bearian (talk) 00:31, 20 May 2026 (UTC)
Depth charge sentences vs "Wason verbal illusion"
Right now depth charge sentences are written about in the article titles Wason verbal illusion, but I've never encountered that name for this phenomenon. I tried asking if that was really the WP:COMMONNAME on its talk page but I thought I'd being this up here too. Does anyone have thoughts? A move request might be necessary. Umimmak (talk) 21:20, 20 May 2026 (UTC)
- FWIW, I was not familiar with the name, but I'm a sociolinguist and not a psycholinguist. The phrases "depth-charge sentence" or "depth-charge illusion" appear in several papers (e.g. Giannouli 2016 "A verbal illusion revisited"; Kizach et al. 2016 currently cited; Paape et al. 2020, currently cited; Paape 2023 "The Role of Incremental and Superficial Processing in the Depth Charge Illusion"; Zhang et al. 2023, currently cited). The phrases "Wason verbal illusion" or "Wason illusion" didn't show up in my quick search. Wason and Reich appear to call it simply "a verbal illusion".
- On a broader note, wouldn't it make sense for similar "illusions" (Comparative illusion, misnegation of the "still unpacked" variety, etc.) to be included in a more general article? Category: Cognitive biases and Category:Illusions don't seem sufficient to the task. Cnilep (talk) 01:24, 22 May 2026 (UTC)
Inclusion of IPA transcriptions for non-English songs
Hello, everyone. After a personal dispute with another editor, I have opened a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs#Inclusion of IPA transcriptions. If you’re interested in the matter, feel free to join. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 23:04, 26 May 2026 (UTC)
Requested move at Talk:David Buchbinder#Requested move 7 May 2026
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:David Buchbinder#Requested move 7 May 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Robloxguest3 (talk)
20:43, 28 May 2026 (UTC)
Help on Caucasus-Lower Volga?
I just did a touch-up on this newly created article, but feel that it could use a look-over by someone with more knowledge than me. Any takers? Botterweg (talk) 18:45, 5 June 2026 (UTC)
Discussion at Template talk:Language grammars § WP:NAVNOREDIRECT
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Language grammars § WP:NAVNOREDIRECT, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. ellaminnowpea (371 💬) 05:35, 8 June 2026 (UTC)
Discussion at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser § Usage of JWB/AWB for reducing phonetics links with templates
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser § Usage of JWB/AWB for reducing phonetics links with templates, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. This regards usage of the {{lcons}} and {{lvow}} templates. ~ oklopfer (💬) 17:26, 10 June 2026 (UTC)
Scientific terminology Article
Hey! I came across scientific terminology, and I think it needs quite a substantial rewrite. IMO it doesn't read like an encyclopedic article and doesn't provide enough information on how scientific terminology is created, or its history. I have written up what I think should be done on the talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Scientific_terminology#Tone_&_Article_Purpose.
Since this is quite a big task, I would really appreciate some input & assistance from linguistics project members. Are there similar high quality pages that can be used as a model for this one? Maybe a fellow wikipedian is willing to write some sections on linguistics - e.g. on how new language is spread though media and how that is relevant to science? BennBluee (talk) 16:06, 13 June 2026 (UTC)
- Also, I think this article serves as an important place for understanding linguistics within science. Would it be possible for the page's importance to be assessed? It hasn't seen much love for quite a long time (10+ years), and currently hasn't got a rating. BennBluee (talk) 16:25, 13 June 2026 (UTC)
Glossary of sound laws in the Indo-European languages at WP:FLC
Hello all! I have been working on Glossary of sound laws in the Indo-European languages for nearly two and a half years now and finally submitted this massive project to Featured List Candidacy. I would appreciate any and all comments at its nomination page. Hope to see some of you drop by! ThaesOfereode (talk) 00:44, 25 June 2026 (UTC)
Longshot question
Does anyone know where the creator of File:Celtic languages over time.gif might have gotten this information from? I would like to use it in Glossary of sound laws in the Indo-European languages but it's currently uncited. ThaesOfereode (talk) 00:23, 1 July 2026 (UTC)
Proto-Indo-European accent
A temporary account flagged a possible weight/fringe issue at Talk:Proto-Indo-European accent#POV a few months ago. The article is rather technical and it might help if someone knowledgeable on the subject were to take a look at it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:42, 6 July 2026 (UTC)
- I've taken a look and responded to the editor in the talk page. I'm not really sure what he's driving at or what the "traditional view" is in his mind. Ringe and Kapović are mainstream scholars of the subject who are cited in the bulk of the body, and neither Ilich-Svytich nor Dybo are mentioned anywhere except "Alternative theories". I've removed the tag for the time being. ThaesOfereode (talk) 22:29, 6 July 2026 (UTC)
- Yes, the temporary account is correct. The traditional mainstream treatments of accent can be found in the likes of Sihler 1995 New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin and other works prominently cited in the main PIE and PIE phonology articles. One potential problem with the article as a whole is that it is rather impractical to discuss PIE accent to the exclusion of ablaut. The mainstream views that actually compete with those of Dybo and Illich-Svitych (who are, don't get me wrong, respected scholars in their own right) wouldn't really belong on the accent article as much as the ablaut article. The current article, minus the last undue weight section, is about as detailed as handbook treatments of PIE accent get. Kisseran (talk) 22:32, 6 July 2026 (UTC)
- Do you think it would be best to delete the UW section and move on then for the time being? Clearly the page needs a bit of work, but I'm working (slowly) on improving PIE phonology articles. ThaesOfereode (talk) 23:18, 6 July 2026 (UTC)
Discussion at Talk:Velopharyngeal (disambiguation) § Requested move 23 July 2026
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Velopharyngeal (disambiguation) § Requested move 23 July 2026, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. ~ oklopfer (💬) 17:08, 23 July 2026 (UTC)
Ancient Cappadocian language at WP:FAC
Hello everyone! I have just submitted Ancient Cappadocian language for featured article candidacy. I would really appreciate any comments, which you can leave on its nomination page. Kisseran (talk) 03:20, 1 August 2026 (UTC)
English phone examples in ledes
I feel that all articles for phones/phonemes that are present in English should mention an English word they occur in as quickly as possible. This helps the reader. This is especially useful for vowels. I think this should eventually be some kind of guideline, possibly in MOS:LEAD. Thought I would float float the idea here first. Thoughts? Dingolover6969 (talk) 04:55, 2 August 2026 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell, this is already the norm for consonant articles, whereas for vowel articles this would be the least useful, given the variation among different English varieties. If you find one where the addition would be useful, you can just BOLDly add it yourself. Given that there are only a few dozen articles at most relevant to this question, (with no prospect of that increasing any time soon), it definitely doesn't need to be a guideline. Kisseran (talk) 05:04, 2 August 2026 (UTC)
etymology help
Is Karašica (Drava)#The origin of the name "Karašica" a reasonable amount of information for the general encyclopedia article about this topic? Esp. given lousy amount of sourcing. --Joy (talk) 16:46, 5 August 2026 (UTC)
- Yes, I believe so. The only problems here are rest of the article being underdeveloped and the lousy amount of sourcing. (And, of course, the information may be inaccurate — but I would have no way of knowing that.) But there's no point whittling down a well-developed part just to get it to fit in with the other parts. Dingolover6969 (talk) 18:37, 5 August 2026 (UTC)
- Please see WP:COATRACK for the flip side. --Joy (talk) 12:40, 6 August 2026 (UTC)
- I don't think that amount of information about the etymology of the name of the article subject would be a coat rack on an article of normal size, which I'm evaluating the article as though it will grow into because WP:Wikipedia is not finished.
- Then again, maybe we are fine with short articles and should spin off the etymology section into its own article 🤷♂️ Dingolover6969 (talk) 18:50, 7 August 2026 (UTC)
- Please see WP:COATRACK for the flip side. --Joy (talk) 12:40, 6 August 2026 (UTC)
- I think those paragraphs could be written more concisely, and I don't read Croatian well so my ability to check the sources is limited, but the information itself at least passes the sniff test of linguistic validity and I at least found it interesting. I agree with Dingo that I would focus on improving rather than removing unless there is a reason to doubt the actual information being asserted. Also, since I saw the concern raised in an edit summary, while that text is a bit odd, it doesn't read as AI text to me, and scans as 100% human on GPTZero. -- LWG talk (VOPOV) 18:54, 5 August 2026 (UTC)
- I did a search of Hrčak, a portal of a lot of Croatian scientific literature, for this topic, and it brought up less information than there is on the English Wikipedia article, which is fairly eyebrow-raising. The third proposed etymology citation seems to be to this Matica hrvatska publication, in the section "Zanimljivosti", meaning miscellaneous curiosities. Is this even a properly reviewed scientific article? Googling just that title only brings up Facebook posts. Are we promoting some random theories? (WP:UNDUE, WP:OR) --Joy (talk) 12:50, 6 August 2026 (UTC)
- It's definitely not a "properly reviewed scientific article", but I don't know if we would expect something that rigorous for the etymology of an obscure geographical feature. I'm doing more digging into the sources, since source quality aside it looks like the info added by User:RandomGuyFromCroatia may contain WP:OR that goes beyond what the sources actually claim. -- LWG talk (VOPOV) 23:03, 7 August 2026 (UTC)
- I did a search of Hrčak, a portal of a lot of Croatian scientific literature, for this topic, and it brought up less information than there is on the English Wikipedia article, which is fairly eyebrow-raising. The third proposed etymology citation seems to be to this Matica hrvatska publication, in the section "Zanimljivosti", meaning miscellaneous curiosities. Is this even a properly reviewed scientific article? Googling just that title only brings up Facebook posts. Are we promoting some random theories? (WP:UNDUE, WP:OR) --Joy (talk) 12:50, 6 August 2026 (UTC)
English dialects q
If anyone here's got some time to spare: mind looking over these claims to see if you can think of any counterexamples/see if they're wrong?
Every English dialect has a non-standard variety.
Every English dialect has an informal register.
Linguists may/sometimes do say an English dialect has a standard variety even when not fully, explicitly codified by prescriptive authorities (dictionaries, style guides, etc).
If an English dialect is often used/preferred in formal settings, then it has a formal register.
Every anglophone country has a national English dialect with a formal register.
Every English dialect has novel/unique vocabulary (new forms or new meanings, eg for local culture, flora, fauna, etc).
(And for those w/ even more time: wanna review WP:ENGPG/7 to see if it's right/sound? Np if not :) - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 03:21, 12 August 2026 (UTC)
- Asdfjrjjj: It's not clear to me what a lot of these arguments are trying to get across. For instance, "American English" is a "dialect" of English. But then, so is "California English" a (sub)dialect of American English or just of English, but then so is "San Francisco English" a (sub)dialect of California or American English or just English, but then one person's own idiolect is arguably a (sub)dialect of San Francisco English, etc. etc. My point is, there are no cut-and-dry rules about what makes a language variety a "dialect". So absolute claims like "Every English dialect has..." don't really compute, to me. A dialect is simply any subdivision of a language. (And the famous joke about a language, that it is just a dialect with an army and a navy.) Both words, however, are shockingly poorly defined in linguistics. Rather, they serve as useful albeit fuzzy concepts. Maybe if I understood the purpose of these claims I could better help you. Wolfdog (talk) 11:35, 15 August 2026 (UTC)
- Based on the linked WP:ENGPG/7, this is related to a desire to support more varieties of English in {{English ties}} and similar templates. Which IMO puts is squarely in the army and navy category, i.e. not something the expertise in this Wikiproject can really resolve. -- LWG talk (VOPOV) 02:25, 16 August 2026 (UTC)
- To editor Wolfdog: Tysm, very helpful :) Basically, LWG is mostly correct, these claims are for an essay interpreting WP:ENGVAR/WP:TITLEVAR, which use
variety of English
andvariety of Standard English
for English dialect and English dialect with a standard variety, respectively (or per my reading, at least). So English dialect in 1–6 above is meant to be any X English where X is a demonym or geographic region, so including AmE, San Francisco English, Caribbean English, etc, but excluding any other variety or subdivision of English (idolects, standard language varieties, informal language varieties, English-based creoles/pidgins, etc). Given that reading, 1–6 seem correct to me, or at least I can't see any counter-examples to them, but I only read a bit/took a college course in this area, so figured someone more well-read might here. Lmk if you can, but no worries otherwise :) - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 10:20, 16 August 2026 (UTC)- Perhaps pluralization would make these sound more accurate in their generalizations? For instancs: "Every dialect of English has non-standard varieties" or perhaps "... has one or more non-standard varieties" (though specifying numbers, like in the latter example, may seem weird). Unfortunately, "a non-standard variety" has the possibility of being misinterpreted as "one and only one non-standard variety". (Is this level of nitpickiness what you're seeking?) Wolfdog (talk) 12:12, 16 August 2026 (UTC)
Using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for scientific names
Hello, fellow Wikipedians.
I am an editor who enjoys working on plant species, especially those which are endangered and underrated. Most of these species are only known by their botanical name and some of them are almost always pronounced incorrectly by spelling alone.
I have some references which show how to pronounce the botanical names of the species, not in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) but with words. I have attempted to include two myself; Grevillea scortechinii, pronounced "SKOR-TE-CHEE-NEE-EYE" and Grevillea beadleana, pronounced "BEADLE-ARE-NA" I mispronounced them as "SKOR-TE-CHIN-EE-EYE" and "BEAD-LEE-ARE-NA" at first).
I would like to hear your feedback and advice, since here seems to be the best place. I may also consider doing my own voice recordings of the correct pronunciations of some plant species names as many other users have done for prehistoric taxa.
Any help would be very much appreciated.
Best regards, Lord.of.the.Proterozoic (talk) 10:54, 15 August 2026 (UTC)
- Lord.of.the.Proterozoic: You seem to be looking for this: Wikipedia:Respell. Wolfdog (talk) 11:26, 15 August 2026 (UTC)
- What @Wolfdog has given is a standard way to respell English phonemes, with a 1:1 correspondence with the International Phonetic Alphabet. What you seem to have in your book is similar but not really reliable, not in the sense that the pronunciations themselves are wrong, but they could be easily misread: there is no clear indication of stress, and the phonemes themselves are ambiguously transcribed such as -TE- in scortechinii and possibly all syllables in beadleana. That being said, WP:Respell can definitely be unclear or ambiguous too, so reading when not to use WP:Respell is useful in this case. The main problem here is trying to get what pronunciation the book you have endorses; in my opinion it's unclear, based on the two transcriptions you provided as examples. It also seems to base itself on England's pronunciation in some way, which is not what Wikipedia transcriptions generally accept. ~ Teangacha (talk; contribs). 12:31, 15 August 2026 (UTC)
- Thank you both for your feedback. Indeed, the source I used for the names (The Grevillea Book volumes 2 and 3) may be ambiguous as there are many ways to interpret the sounds by spelling with regular English characters. This is mentioned in when not to use WP:Respell which is why the IPA is almost always preferable; there is only one way to pronounce each character.
- I will go through my book collection later and see if I can find any that display the species names with IPA characters.
- To my knowledge, with scientific names after a person (such as Grevillea shiressii and Grevillea oldei), the suffix -ii is always pronounced (EE-EYE) and -i is always pronounced (EYE). There are also other Latin and Greek words used in many other species names (eg. the suffixes -folia, -oides, -flora, -ensis) that likely have existing references with IPA characters, so this would come in handy. As far as I am aware, these are always pronounced the same.
- I will continue to seek feedback and advice and will do more research before I continue with IPA pronunciations on more species names.
- Would you happen to know of any other resources?
- Thank you and best regards,
- Lord.of.the.Proterozoic (talk) 22:59, 15 August 2026 (UTC)
- Lord.of.the.Proterozoic: Whoops, I think I misinterpreted what you were looking for. I assume I don't have access to the Grevillea Book, but I can certainly help with your IPA transcriptions. I agree that stress/accent is missing in the transcription /skɔːrtɛtʃiːniːaɪ/. The same problem exists for /biːdlɑːrnɑː/, which currently reads as BEED-LAR-NAH, including that last syllable rhyming with spa! Also, the inclusion of the /r/ suggests a British-only pronunciation. If the pronunciation is beadle-AH-nuh (rhyming with Botswana), the transcription would be like this: /biːdəlˈɑːnə/. Wolfdog (talk) 12:40, 16 August 2026 (UTC)
- @Wolfdog @Lord.of.the.Proterozoic I think /biːdəlˈɑːnə/ is correct, given it's named after Beadle, which is most likely pronounced /ˈbiːdəl/. If we were to go this route, scortechinii is wrong, since it's named after Benedetto Scortechini, whose name is pronounced [skorteˈkiːni], without tʃ. /skɔːrtəˈkiːniːaɪ/ would be my guess for an English-language pronunciation. ~ Teangacha (talk; contribs). 17:57, 16 August 2026 (UTC)
- Lord.of.the.Proterozoic: Whoops, I think I misinterpreted what you were looking for. I assume I don't have access to the Grevillea Book, but I can certainly help with your IPA transcriptions. I agree that stress/accent is missing in the transcription /skɔːrtɛtʃiːniːaɪ/. The same problem exists for /biːdlɑːrnɑː/, which currently reads as BEED-LAR-NAH, including that last syllable rhyming with spa! Also, the inclusion of the /r/ suggests a British-only pronunciation. If the pronunciation is beadle-AH-nuh (rhyming with Botswana), the transcription would be like this: /biːdəlˈɑːnə/. Wolfdog (talk) 12:40, 16 August 2026 (UTC)
Overall verifiability concerns at 'Agreement in the English language'
Your feedback would be much appreciated at Talk:Agreement in the English language#Verifiability concerns and a possible TNT proposal. Thanks! Mathglot (talk) 02:01, 22 August 2026 (UTC)