Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Okinoerabu language

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Dennis - 2¢ 20:51, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Okinoerabu language[edit]

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This is one of several language articles recently created by Nanshu that is a violation of WP:SYN and includes information that contradicts other articles on Wikipedia and bases much of its existence due to a separate listing in the Ethnologue and a single sentence entry in Oxford's linguistics dictionary that I cannot remember the exact title to. There was a large discussion at WT:LANG to effectively censure me for having the gall to contest Nanshu's proposed new articles.

The language spoken on Okinoerabu is considered elsewhere on Wikipedia (including on other language projects) as a dialect of the language spoken in northern Okinawa, the Kunigami language, even though the article was heavily edited by Nanshu to suit his new classification system. There is minimal coverage of this topic outside of mirrors of Wikipedia, even when using the alternate name of "Oki-no-erabu language" instead of searching for "Okinoerabu language". It is reliant on separate coverage in the Ethnologue and the Oxford linguistics encyclopedia (again I can't remember the exact title) as well as sources that are describing this as a dialect (方言) rather than a separate language (語). The article is simply an extensive description of Nanshu's new classification system for the languages of the northern half of the Ryukyu Islands archipelago and massive IPA tables. This is not a valid topic for separate discussion on Wikipedia when there's very little to validate that Okinoerabujima has its own language, particularly one separate from Yoronjima and the Kunigami/Yanbaru region of Okinawa Island. —Ryūlóng (琉竜) 13:54, 15 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Japan-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:05, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:06, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If it's listed in some sources as a language, shouldn't it be merged with the Kunigami language article if you are correct? —innotata 00:27, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I am aware, only the Ethnologue and the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics list OKN as a separate language, and even then they dedicate like a sentence to it in each location. The result of this should be merging anything useful that isn't Nanshu's original synthesis and classification back into Kunigami language as discussion as a dialect rather than anything unto itself, but that's only if anything is worth salvaging at this point.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 00:31, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If the name exists in reliable sources, it should be redirected at least even if there's nothing worth salvaging. —innotata 02:53, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That is what I was doing, but Nanshu demanded that I was wrong for turning it into a redirect and I was a threat to the encyclopedia so here we are at AFD.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 04:57, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ryulong is wrong and even dishonest on numerous points, but here I focus on one point. Even if we choose merger, which is a bad option IMHO, we need to choose which article the article of Okinoerabu is merged into. Okinoerabu–Northern Okinawan / Okinoerabu–Yoron–Northern Okinawan / Kunigami is an artifact of comparative studies. It was first proposed in 1972, independently of the speakers' own perception. It only represents one hypothesis regarding the number of primary branches of Amami–Okinawan. Another theory, which was recently re-evaluated by Pellard (2010), does not support the existence of this group. Okinoerabu is a child of Southern Amami, which is one of two children of Amami. This is what I outlined at Amami–Okinawan languages and was reconfirmed at the discussion Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages#Mass deletion of language articles by Ryulong. Also, this is what Ryulong is desperately trying to hide. --Nanshu (talk) 14:09, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Please ignore any and all arguments in Ryulong's nomination that don't have a source attached to them. Sources considering Okinoerabu a language include
- Tomoko Arakaki (28 June 2013). Evidentials in Ryukyuan: the Shuri Variety of Luchuan: A Typological and Theoretical Study of Grammatical Evidentiality. BRILL. p. 7. ISBN 978-90-04-25340-7.
- International Encyclopedia of Linguistics: AAVE - Esperanto. Oxford University Press. 2003. p. 335. ISBN 978-0-19-513977-8.
The latter points out that Okinoerabu has no mutual intelligibility with Kunigami, to which Ryulong would like to redirect it. Regardless of whether Okinoerabu should be considered a language or a dialect (it seems to me, linguists prefer the former, politicians the latter), it is an active academic field of study, and there are detailed secondary sources about it, some of them obviously not in English. The present article cites a number of them, but is hardly exhaustive. Note for example Uwano, Zendo: Materials for the accents of verbs in Okinoerabu islands dialects. Does this sound detailed enough? There was a conference last month at Okinawa International University where one paper was titled "Non-spatial setting in the Masana dialect of the Okinoerabu language". In other words, scholars are actually studying subdialects of Okinoerabu. That's secondary sources addressing the topic in detail, and it's all we need to know here. Andreas JN 466 18:11, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There is one sentence in the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics about Okinoerabu. It is not enough to satisfy this massive article that is based on research on the dialects.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 20:42, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is one more example of you making a statement about a source that upon examination is found to be incorrect. What the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics actually says about Okinoerabu is this: Oki-No-Erabu: spoken in Japan in north central Okinawa; Oki-no-erabu Island. Dialects are East Oki-No-Erabu, West Oki-No-Erabu. Inherent intelligibility is generally impossible or very difficult with other Ryukyuan languages and Japanese. Dialect differences are noticeable, but communication is not impossible. Beyond that, it's a really odd argument to make. No one has said an article should be written on the strength of that one paragraph in the IEOL. There is a wealth of more detailed sources available. Andreas JN 466 10:00, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's all that book says and you and Nanshu have taken it to be "make it a separate article" when north central Okinawa is Kunigami. There are no other detailed sources. No one has considered Okinoerabu as a language other than whoever wrote that book and Nanshu.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 15:56, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As Andreas pointed out, there are numerous linguistic sources for Okinoerabu. Only a total lack of knowledge about the language in question can lead to such a nonsensical deletion proposal. And whether Okinoerabu is a dialect (dialect of what, BTW?), language, language variety or whatever has nothing to do with the deletion discussion. It only affects the article's title (i.e., possible renaming). --Nanshu (talk) 14:09, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All of those refer to it as a dialect and there's very little in English to support its existence as a language unto itself.—Ryūlóng (琉竜) 15:15, 22 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per JN466. His sources and evidence are convincing throughout these listings. HOT WUK (talk) 16:13, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.