Talk:List of language families

message: I miss any mention of languages of the Middle East, or a reference to an article about these families. Or maybe I´m missing something?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.203.105.96 (talk) 20:56, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: For Semitic, see under Afro-Asiatic, for Persian-Iranian under Indo-European. Eklir (talk) 21:23, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Semitic and Persian

message: Is Altaic actually controversial?  I know it's controversial to have it include Japanese and Korean, but I thought the relationship between Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages was well-established.  Similarly, how is Afro-Asiatic controversial?  I've read that there's some controversy over at least some of the Chadic languages, but is the relationship of Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, and Cushitic to one another disputed? At any rate, both families are listed in just about every general reference work I've ever seen. john k 08:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Altaic" even in the narrow sense is very far from being generally accepted. Numerous comparative linguists who work on Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic languages do not accept the Altaic hypothesis or at least do not consider it proved. Recently there has been a lot of  research on how lexical and typological correspondences between the "Altaic" languages can be explained as contact phenomena. My impression is actually that opposition to the Altaic theory has increased during recent decades. --AAikio 13:44, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough, although I do think that our discussions of this tend to confuse the very controversial issue of whether Ainu, Japanese, and Korean are included with the less controversial issue of whether it is a group  at all. The first is a not widely-accepted hypothesis.  The second is a widely-accepted usage that has come into question in recent years. john k 14:57, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I have removed the highly speculative Aegean languages from the list. Nilo-Saharan and Khoisan are both less accepted than Afroasiatic (see Joseph Greenberg#African languages). And I share AAikios viewpoint that Altaic is indeed still quite controversial. ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 13:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Altaic

message: In the part which has India, I found a mistake. Where they labeled Marathi and Gujarati, they put them in the wrong places. If I am correct, they should be switched because currently Marathi is in Gujarat and Gujarati is in Maharashtra. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.81.107.17 (talk) 14:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The map of languages picture 

message: please want to the of adansi, one of the ethnic`s group.
thanksI--196.29.232.90 (talk) 19:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I do not understand your question. Adansi appears to have something to do with the Akan languages — which fall under the Niger-Congo family, if that helps. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  One of the ethnic groups. 

message: User:Trikemike is engaged in an edit war in violation of WP:BRD.  He is claiming that the Japonic languages are automatically included in Altaic.  He is wrong.  This is a minority view even among Altaicists.  --Taivo (talk) 10:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: User:Trikemike continues to edit without discussion and inserting his POV.  Help?  --Taivo (talk) 10:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Japonic definitely needs its own entry as Altaic is not universally accepted, and doesn't even include Japonic according to most proposals.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:32, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree that Japonic needs separate inclusion. The inclusion of any form of "Altaic" in a list of "fairly often recognized families" seems suspicious, really. (Switching to just Turkic wouldn't even change the figures all that much.) --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 18:47, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you, especially since neither Mongolic nor Tungusic is a blip on the count.  --Taivo (talk) 19:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: To clarify things, I've added a note that Altaic is Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic, but that the majority of speakers are Turkic.  --Taivo (talk) 01:32, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japonic 

message: "Altaic" is not universally accepted as a valid genetic unit.  Indeed, it is only accepted by a minority of historical linguists as valid.  Therefore, in Wikipedia, we nearly always include the word "controversial" to describe it so that casual readers do not get the idea that it is widely accepted by scholars.  --Taivo (talk) 13:55, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Correct.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Altaic" 

message: Where do the uralic languages belong in these groups?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.39.110.172 (talk) 08:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Uralic is a top level family by current knowledge and is listed in the Europe/Northern Asia section, AFAICS. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uralic (finnic-ugrian) languages 

message: Tropylium suggested in the previous section, regarding the list at Proposed language stocks: 
This is a very good question; I feel that a better place would be in the article macrofamilies, which would also solve the problem Tropylium raised that the disclaimer may not be strong enough. That article is currently a stub, but it's clear that that's not for lack of interesting things to write about the topic, and a list would de-stub the article. If the name "macrofamily" doesn't suit everyone, we could rename that article to a more generic name such as "proposed language family". — Sebastian 20:53, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: We also have a reasonably detailed article Classification schemes for indigenous languages of the Americas. Perhaps similar articles could be written for Africa, Australia and Eurasia as well. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:48, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Best place for the list of proposed language stocks 

message: This whole column needs to be removed.  It's simply not needed.  This chart is, by definition, for top-level language families--those language families that are not demonstrably related to any other.  In the currently constituted "Proposed Parent Family" are rejected groupings (Khoisan, Altaic, Caucasian), groupings that are still widely accepted (Niger-Congo), and groupings that have been recently proposed and have not received very much scholarly support beyond the original proposal (Austronesian-Ongan, Dene-Yeneseian).  In other words, either we list the "proposed family" as part of the list (based on consensus) or we drop it.  Listing fringe or rejected groupings in that column is simply doing a disservice to our readers.  There are so few of these anyway that the column is mostly empty.  Get rid of the highly speculative or rejected and there is almost nothing left.  It's a confusing and somewhat misleading column for our readers.  --Taivo (talk) 14:06, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the information in the column is still (largely) useful, i. e., to provide traditional (and until recently accepted, and still widespread in the literature, and in some cases still accepted by a large number of mainstream scholars) classifications to help recognition and placement, but a better solution would be to convert the column into a group of footnotes, which would also eliminate redundancy and make the code more compact. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:17, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  This information would be far better in footnotes.  --Taivo (talk) 17:15, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Proposed Parent Family" 

message: What does the location column refer to?  It seems for some languages it is some ethnographic present (Indo-European:  1492?), but this is not stated.  Also, is it consistent across language families?Kdammers (talk) 07:10, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think Indo-European became anywhere as dominant as it is now outside Eurasia before the 18th or 19th centuries, and by most accounts it is still a primarily or at least mostly Eurasia-based language family, with a few languages that can be called exceptions, which does not, however, affect the whole family in general. And apart from Indo-European, I can't even think of any other example where there could really be a debate. That Chinese is spoken outside Asia doesn't mean Sino-Tibetan is not still mainly an Asian language family. So, to be frank, this sounds like nitpicking. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:15, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I am asking for accuracy and clarity; I don't think that is being nit-picky.  At least on the map of North America, the time represented is given, so why can't it be in the chartKdammers (talk) 10:23, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Location 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Would the extinct Scottish language Pictish qualify for the unclassified list? 
This language, although widely considered to be Indo-European (and probably Celtic) is still, at least to some extent, disputed in terms of its exact origins.
It is for the most part considered to be a Celtic language, similar to Welsh. However, some still hold the view that Pictish was non-Indo-European, and a leftover of the Bronze Age languages of Scotland.
 JoeyofScotia (talk) 13:53, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pictish for unclassified? 

message: Some references need to be added so that others can check the veracity of these claims.  Otherwise there is no way of telling if the entire "mainstream consensus" column is someone's personal opinion. Roidroid (talk) 04:15, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Proposed families" list has zero references.  "Mainstream Consensus" column may be original research. 

message: Where do the numbers of speakers come from? It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't also ridiculously overprecise. I doubt that more than two significant figures for the speakers of a whole language family are ever appropriate – or of interest to the reader, even if they could be verified (by sources – which still has little do with the real world, where even population numbers for well-defined nationalities are probably rarely stable for much longer than a few minutes). Even in a well-defined single language, three significant figures are pushing it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:41, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbers of speakers 

message: Does anyone has access to the latest edition (24) of the paywalled Ethnologue and could update the numbers given here? The List of languages by total number of speakers is up-to-date, so it would be great if whoever had access to the information used in that article could also update this one. --Krissie (talk) 19:58, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updated numbers? 

message: An edit of mine has been reverted, after I amended the "mainstream consensus" of the hypothesised language-grouping Eurasiatic to "controversial" (from "widely rejected") and did so on the groundwork of this being the delineation of the grouping at the applicable article. This was and remains reverted on the basis that Altaic too is thought "rejected" - this language-grouping is likewise under the "controversial" heading at the Altaic article. My proposal is that the "widely rejected" denomination of both groupings in discussion be replaced by "controversial" in reflection of their articles. I am willing to discuss this issue at length and will not go ahead with these proposed alterations without prior approval.
JoeyofScotia (talk) 20:01, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Eurasiatic and Altaic - "Rejected" or "Controversial" ? 

message: This article should only include language families, it should not include language isolates and unclassified languages, those should have their own separate articles. I can clear out the entries that are not language families if no one is opposed to the idea. – Treetoes023 (talk) 00:51, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not opposed.  Just basing the current list on Glottolog would make a "family + isolates" list 429 entries long.  If you've ever tried to skim that list alphabetically, it is unmanageable.  If you sort the list by number of daughters in each entry to make it workable, then you've, in essence, already created two separate and roughly equal lists:  those entries with more than one daughter (families) and those with just one daughter (isolates).  Unclassifiable languages are a separate list in Glottolog of 121 entries.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 01:40, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is far too much 

message: This map is wildly inaccurate, and if it is from 1996, it was widely out of date even then. It shows the west African languages as Bantu! What's going on here? john k (talk) 19:54, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language families of Africa 

message: Given the time passed since the addition of this entry in the article (and even earlier) and its citation, could it be worth an update?
Some possible good starting points in order of recency:
Computational phylogenetics reveal histories of sign languages (Abner et al. 2024)
Historical Linguistics of Sign Languages: Progress and Problems (Power 2022)
Historical Linguistics and the Case for Sign Language Families (Reagan 2021) Edittlealittle (talk) 16:07, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Family relation of sign languages