Talk:Language isolate

message: These are listed on their own pages as Khoisan languages, but the Khoisan page says they are other languages. Anyone know for sure? -phma 14:55, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The Khoisan family is rather tentative. Most linguists expect that the three (or perhaps four) Southern African families will prove to be related to each other, but Sandawe and especially Hadza are iffier. There really isn't any good reason for including Hadza in Khoisan; it was put there primarily because it has clicks and isn't obviously related to anything else. Part of the problem is that these langages are very poorly described. --kwami 06:42, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hadza and Sandawe 

message: By definition, no "family" qualifies as a "language isolate."  Will be looking to delete that inclusion barring user input in the next week or so.67.170.176.203 14:13, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Yukaghir family

message: This article clearly suggests that Korean is a language isolate, but it is related to Japanese, and they are both part of the Japonic languages, which is part of the Uralic-Altaic language family.Thomasiscool 14:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have great insight into it, but I do know that any such link is disputed rather than established fact. Basic grammar forms are different, and Korean is not considered a Japonic language on the Wikipedia page. What are the links between Korean and Japanese to which you refer? Dekimasu 07:48, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Korean is clearly not Japonic, though it may be related at a deeper level. (The evidence for a connection is not strong enough for it to be widely accepted.) Ural-Altaic is no longer accepted even by long rangers (at least in Russia and the USA), as it appears to reflect a purely typological similarity. kwami 08:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think vibrant is supposed to be more than living, although it isn't clear at all from the context of the article. But any way I have changed all instances of vibrant to living, The distinction between the two is not obvious and I don't know of a general linguistic classification of vibrant languages in contrast to living languages. Maunus 08:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

text:  He does but the Altaic family and particularly the inclusion of japanese and Korean in it is not generally accepted. Also Charles Berlitz is not known for his contributions to Historical linguistics and does not constitute a reliable source to the linguistic history of Korean or any other language. Maunus 13:47, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We can't leave Korean as a language isolate without the inclusion of Japonic/Japanese as a language isolate. If you guys wanted we could break down the Korean language in to dialects and call it Koreonic classification. Anyways Korean is generally classified as Macro-AltaicStratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archaeology? In; Sanchez-Mazas, Blench, Ross, Lin & Pejros eds. Human migrations in continental East Asia and Taiwan: genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence. 2008. Taylor & Francis --Objectiveye (talk) 04:19, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No, Korean is generally called an isolate. Japanese is a family of unintelligible languages. Korean is not. kwami (talk) 04:24, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I can find references to Korean language being Altaic in general, and rarely a language isolate. Can you put in some citations for the Language Isolate theory. If you start classifying Old Korean, middle Korean and Korean you can break it down in to dialects as well and now you can almost start to differentiate North, South Korean and Jeju Korean and classify it Koreonic but in a broader sense it is generally in the Altaic family. Anyways in general I keep seeing Korean as Altaic in linguistics books so can you get a quote which state that most linguists classifies it as a language Isolate. --Objectiveye (talk) 04:33, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

text: Please see Talk:Korean language#Language isolate vs Altaic --Caspian blue 05:29, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Korean 

message: What about North Picene? There seems to be very little information on it, but from what I understand it's not considered to be Italic and only possibly Indo-European. Fingon 18:17, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unclassified isn't the same as an isolate. — kwami (talk) 08:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  North Picene 

message: This article says that Pirahã is "endangered" but the main Pirahã article says it is not, arguing that "language use is vigorous and the Pirahã community is monolingual". Paul Koning 16:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that any language with less than 200 speakers can be called endangered, even if not facing immediate extinction. ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 21:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pirahã 

message: Shouldn't sign language isolates have a separate category? They're currently separated by continent, but maybe we ought to have a "sign language" category all to its own for ease of use.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Graymornings (talk • contribs) 00:54, August 27, 2007 (UTC) 
:There's no way to list SL isolates, though. Tanzania alone has seven; for many countries we simply have no idea. So yes, I think they should be split off into their own section. kwami 02:30, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sign language isolates 

message: For some reason, Ebizur has repeatedly deleted all references to the Ainu in Honshu, saying it's equivalent to Sasquatch. The Ainu population of Honshu is common knowledge, and we can come up with dozens of references. Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan (Weiner 2004), for one, but plenty of others. — kwami (talk) 08:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wouldn't it make sense for each entry in those tables to have one reference?  I notice a "references needed" flag above it. That way edit wars could be avoided by pointing to a cited source. Paul Koning (talk) 15:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. In fact I think it is highly problematic that lists seem to be exempt to the high standards for references that apply to articles.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 16:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ainu in Honshu 

message: The link to Yurimangui reminded me that many of these alleged isolates are nothing of the sort: like Y., many are simply too poorly attested to be classified, but that doesn't mean they constitute a full-fledged independent family of their own. Should we expand unclassified language to be more inclusive, and move many of these languages to there? kwami (talk) 21:59, 17 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  these are both isolates and merely unclassified 

message: Taivo removed Quileute because it's part of the Chimakuan family. That depends on how we conceive of an "isolate"; we could remove Ainu for the same reason. From the point of doing fieldwork, Quileute is effectively an isolate, because it's no longer possible to work on its (extinct) relative. Perhaps we could have a section on languages like these and Great Andamanese that have become isolates in historically attested times? kwami (talk) 22:03, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quileute  

message: The first paragraph of the article. Ainu language is by no means a member of Karasuk phylum, isn't it? —89.112.21.154 (talk) 09:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ainu 

message: The Ethnologue article says it lists 50 isolates, but this article has more than that. It would be helpful if somebody compared the lists. Maybe this article has some that are not true isolates, maybe the Ethnologue editor needs to be informed of some additional isolates. Pete unseth (talk) 19:39, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Ethnologue includes several families we don't accept, such as Khoisan and Australian, and some of our isolates they count as small families (the language/dialect debate). There are also disagreements as to the reliability of the date. We have Elseng as unclassified, whereas they have Aikana as unclassified. They also don't list many extinct languages, and in fact are offloading any that went extinct before 1950. They also put some isolates in families of one rather than in with the other isolates. — kwami (talk) 08:51, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

text: I added Leco, Trumai, Candosh, and Bangime from the E16 list. We should probably add Páez, Chimané, and Urarina as well. — kwami (talk) 10:26, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Ethnologue's list of isolates

message: There seems to be a contradiction here; user:Taivo deleted a mention of A-Pucikwar, saying that it doesn't qualify since it had relatives that are now extinct, but left in Pirahã, which is in the same situation. Furthermore, the actual lead says that 'Some languages became isolates after all their demonstrable relatives went extinct', which would seem to support the addition of isolate-families with one surviving member.
Personally, I think we should leave A-Pucikwar in, as well as Pirahã, as languages that are spoken as isolates, but I think we should have some discussion on it. Kielbasa1 (talk) 14:50, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't notice Piraha, it should also be deleted.  "Isolate" has a specific linguistic meaning--no known relatives, not no living relatives.  --Taivo (talk) 17:38, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I was inclined to disagree, but after seeing Ethnologue's list, I think you're right. I'll delete Pirahã and change the header to reflect this. Edit - never mind, you already have. Kielbasa1 (talk) 23:09, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isolation by extinction 

message: The article presently speaks of "oral" languages to distinguish them from "sign" languages. I believe that ""spoken" languages" is the more standard term. How to others see this? Pete unseth (talk) 19:25, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, "spoken" language is the usual term.  --Taivo (talk) 23:14, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  "oral" languages or "spoken" languages? 

message: Is Kutenai really a good example of an isolate? I'm not familiar with the field, but Kutenai language makes it sound like a connection with Salish is now a seriously investigated possibility. Neither this page nor List of language families, however, mention this or any other suggested connection. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:38, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it's an isolate.  While back in the '50s and '60s, when Americanists were lumping every Tom, Dick, and Harry language together into macro-families, it was included in Macro-Algonkian or Macro-Salish.  But today, it's almost universally considered to be an isolate.  (I say "almost" not because I actually know one of my colleagues who espouses a connection, but because I don't know everyone in the field.)  There have been no publications attempting to link Kutenai to anything since the 1960s.  --Taivo (talk) 23:48, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing this out.  The "Classification" section at Kutenai language was rather confused.  I cleaned it up and split the genetic information from the typological information.  --Taivo (talk) 00:02, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, yes! Thank you. The wording was so unclear that I was unsure whether it was supposed to link Kutenai to Salish merely typologically or genetically. So the relationship is areal at best. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:25, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kutenai 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Language isolate. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20150527000725/http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/language-isolate-0 to http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/language-isolate-0
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:03, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: A few people learning vocabulary from an extinct heritage language does not constitute "reviving" or "revival".  Revival constitutes a significant number of L2 speakers who can use the language in a wide variety of contexts (not just in tribal ceremonials or reciting coyote stories).  --Taivo (talk) 20:29, 19 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Even if a lot of effort and government money is expended in such revival efforts, the focus of this article is on these languages beig isolates.Pete unseth (talk) 02:32, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revival 

message: I am concerned that there are a lot of claims being made in the tables ("poorly attested," etc.) without any accompanying referencing. Loathe as I am to remove insightful content, we cannot have it unless those insights can be properly attributed to a source outside of Wikipedia. There are clearly enough knowledgeable editors working this article that could track down sources for each and every one of these evaluative comments; that is going to be necessary, or we are going to have to start trimming them out. 
I will wait a week, to see if any substantive work has been done. If not, I will start the culling. I have tagged a few suspect statements, to alert some of the editors who might not be watching the article talk page. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 15:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Just re. this, I am in the process of adding refs for the tables. Boynamedsue (talk) 18:25, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tables have no references 

message: I was planning on reorganizing the beginning part of this article a bit (everything before the list of isolates) so that it's a little more readable. Right now it seems to have lots of jargon that isn't explained very clearly and concepts that people who are unfamiliar with linguistics might not understand. I'm also planning on going through and try to find sources for some of the info that needs citations. Eileen 01:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorganizing and adding citations  

message: Is there a reason why Korean is mentioned in the lead as an isolated language, however isn't mentioned in the List of Language Isolates by Continent (Asia) section? I don't know anything about linguistics or languages, and considering Korean is a controversial language in this article, I don't want to mess something up.  RandomEditorAAA (talk) 01:36, 11 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: One question here, pardon my ignorance, but what criteria determines whether a variety is considered a distinct language or not? You mentioned how Jeju has been "reclassified", but which authority classifies what are languages and what are not? Or is it just a general consensus reached by most linguists? David Jiang (talk) 23:43, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: "When is something a distinct language?" That is a question that many people argue over, including communities of language speakers, linguists, government officials. There are some entities that try to make definite classifications of language: ISO 639-3, Ethnologue, and Glottolog. None of these imposes their decisions on the broader world. Pete unseth (talk) 01:49, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Korean, not mentioned? 

message: user:Map Mapx recently added "Lapic" (extinct; Poland/Lithuania) - no link, no sources. Unless more info is given (and sourced), it should be removed again. Nø (talk) 09:48, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: user:Pete unseth has reverted the addition - thanks! Nø (talk) 08:46, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lapic?