Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (languages)/Archive 2

message: ::The article should be named ALGOL following both Wikipedia conventions and common usage. Google gets 778 hits for Google Search: "ALGOL programming language". Changing the search to Google Search: ALGOL programming language without quotation marks (which means the words do not have to be together in a single phrase) gets 43,900 hits. Check some of the references found. 
::Note [Encyclopedia Britannica: ALGOL]. 
::The "alternative" expression "ALGOL programming language" is not much used. I say expression because "ALGOL Programming Language" was never an even an unofficial name for ALGOL. "ALGOL Programming Language" is limited to part of all of a tile in a few articles and "ALGOL programing language" is only an expression in which the name "ALGOL" is used as an adjective, similar to expression like "roach motel" or "circus ring" or "UNICEF annual campaign".
::Even if both Wikipedia conventions and general usage did not support the ALGOL as the name of common use, Danakil is also wrong in claiming that conventions are only for an article's so-called author. An early paragraph of [Wikipedia:Manual of Style] reads:
::Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required.  Copy-editing wikipedians will refer to this manual when weeding, and pages will be gradually made to conform with this guide.
::This makes is quite clear that copyediting is expected to be often done by someone other than the writer of an article and such copyediting by others is encouraged to bring an article into conformance with the Style Guide.
::Danakil, in any case, is only one of many authors of this article, even if one who has made a number of recent contributions. Yet were he the main "author", at the bottom of the Wikipedia editing page a note in boldface says:
::If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it.
::No one personally owns an article in Wikipedia. At any time a later editor may change any parts of an article, including the name, sometimes for standardization reasons. Debate may then occur. But even an original sole author of a single article has no special status in determining what changes should or should not be made to an article, including changes to its name. Nor can an administrator settle such an issue as this.
::Also typing in capitals, shouting as it were, is considered impolite and bad etiquette here as elsewhere on the web. A courteous and judicious thing for Danakil to do would be to recognize that there is no virtue in wasting Dankil's time and others' time in supporting retention of a needlessly long heading for this article against both Wikipedia convention and general usage.
::Jallan 01:06, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Continued Discussion (heading for breaking up this long discussion)

message: I was surprised to find that this naming convention appears to mandate the use of the suffix programming language for disambiguation (à la Scheme programming language, SML programming language etc.). I had assumed that on Wikipedia the usage of a parenthesed suffix (à la Scheme (programming language) and SML (programming language)) was standard for disambiguation. Even more surprising, the naming convention appears to mandate the creation of redirect pages using the parenthesed suffix?? -- Tobias Bergemann 20:38, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Programming language suffix 

message: I find the naming conventions for languages not to be very helpful, since they don't mention varieties at all.
Take for instance German varieties found in the family tree of the article West Germanic languages: We find the following schemes being used for subgroups of languages (I'm referring to the actual names of the articles, not to the names used on the page):
#XXX, for instance Austro-Bavarian
#XXX language, for instance Alemannic language
#XXX [parent language name], for instance High German
#XXX [parent language name] language, for instance Central German language
#XXX [parent language name] languages, for instance Upper German languages
In the same family tree, the following schemes are used for individual varieties:
#XXX, for instance Wymysojer (what's that?)
#XXX language, for instance Limburgish language
#XXX dialect, for instance Silesian dialect
#XXX [parent language], for instance Basel German
#XXX [parent language] language, for instance Pennsylvania German language
With regards to varieties of the English language, there is luckily less confusion of naming schemes, the de facto standard seemingly being XXX [parent language] (that is, XXX English), both for subgroups and for individual varieties, as can be seen on the pages linked on the List of dialects of the English language. There are very few exceptions that use the scheme XXX, such as Received pronunciation (most of the XXX schemes, however, don't link to varieties of English, but to regions or ethnic groups, such as Dorset or Cockney). I have not found any English variety or group of varieties whose naming scheme would include language(s) or dialect(s), which makes a sharp contrast to the varieties of German discussed above.
I favour the de facto naming standard for English varieties and groups of varieties, XXX [parent language]. There are several advantages of the scheme XXX [parent language]:
*It avoids the delicate term dialect.
*It does not distinguish between a group of varieties and an individual variety, which is in most cases a question of interpretation (Southern American English can be referred to either as a group of varieties or as a special variety).
*It specifies at once what language the variety belongs to.
Of course, varieties that are being used as standard languages of their own right should be named according to the existing scheme XXX language, for instance Luxembourgish language or Yiddish language.
-- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 11:25, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: These are some good points. I would support the scheme XXX parent (i.e. Standard Yoruba, Anlo Ewe) for language varieties and I think it is a good idea to add something to the conventions to this effect. — mark ✎ 07:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: language varieties and groups thereof

message: There's two ways of naming language histories at the moment:
#History of XXX
#History of the XXX langauge
The latter seems to be more common, but no centralized discussion has been conducted. I tried putting this on the agenda by making a proposal in the language template and starting a thread over at the  project talkpage, but I suppose it's better if he had the discussion here.
The arguments I've seen so far are that 2. is better because it looks better and is supposedely less ambiguous. My own preference is 1. because I like concise article titles and because wordage that isn't actually necessary should always be avoided. Yet another argument has been that the title should follow the formula used by the individual language articles, but I must say that I'd rather have consistent naming even if I didn't agree with the format.
Peter Isotalo 12:17, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd prefer (1), as long as it is unambiguous, which it will almost always be. As per general principle of Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: History article should be named like the language article. TurkChan (talk) 20:23, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language histories 

message: =Mentioning a language=
Convention: Languages which share their names with some other thing should suffixed with "language". If the language name is a unique noun, there is no need for the "language" suffix. For example, write "English language" and "Persian language", but "Esperanto" and "Latin". Programming languages will need "(programming language)" as a parenthetical suffix if their name is shared with some other thing.  For example, write "Python (programming language)", but "VBScript". Notice how a wikilink also use parenthetical phrases, but for a different purposes (disambiguation and redirects).
==Linking a language name==
If you should decide to also wikilink such phrases,  link the entire phrase, and then take care to prove the link. If a disproven link goes to a non-existent page, take up the offer to create the page (by clicking on it's red title), and simply redirect. For example, you may need to create the page GoScript (programming language) with the text "#REDIRECT GoScript".  (To be thorough, you would similarly check  GoScript programming language.) 
If a disproven link goes to a disambiguation page (English orPython), repair your wikilink to match the one you find on the disambiguation page. If you do not find it there, please add it.  (Simply edit the disambiguation page to include a direct link to your target, and then go repair your own link.) These type efforts automate the repair of all writing, even that which uses other naming conventions. 
=Plural name of a language=
If you do not speak the language you mention, consider the very real possibility that the language you are writing about may need to be made plural. In normal English the plural form of a language term is the same as the non-plural form—Spanish, English—but some language names are better referenced as Language families and groups of languages. Thus, "Niger-Congo languages" rather than "Niger-Congo language", and "Sino-Tibetan language" rather than "Sino-Tibetan language". 
When you need to use plurals, writing "languages" is preferred over writing "[some] language family" because the three-word, family phrase method will mention an ethnic or geographic term which may create a future need to cleanup the article, in case a related controversy arises. There are cases where dialect clusters and ethnic groupings change over time.  Compare Kalenjin language and Kalenjin languages. 
These natural language considerations do not apply to computer programming languages. These all have families and versions. Do not make plural the name of a specific Computer programming language. For example, do not write "C (programming languages)".  There is some valid context for "C (programming language) family", however.
Discussion points:
# A black and white printout would fail to show the blue links in the first paragraph.
# Paragraphs and sections clearly separate naming and linking subjects.
# The idea "wikilink also use parenthetical phrases, but for a different purpose" was added to serve as both a transition and a clarification of the main ideas (and might help deter discussions like 3 and 6 above concerning programming language suffixes).
# Added the idea to "link the entire phrase", as in examples at Wikipedia:Link#Link_specificity
# A more realistic example of a redirect concerns a future programming language called "GoScript" replaced an example using "English".
# The last paragraph, concerning plural" was broken into two: p1 and p2...
# The idea that "In most cases, a redirect from the singular to the plural title is not needed" seems to be covered. (The other part of the sentence was moved up.)
# The last paragraph was added to clarify that "plural" applies in the opposite way for computer programming languages.
CpiralCpiral 08:06, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A review of the text