User talk:Kwamikagami

Word/quotation of the moment:

Astrology has no effect on reality, so why should reality have any effect on astrology? – J.S. Stenzel, commenting on astrological planets that astrologers acknowledge don't really exist

(Previous quotes)

Do you think the liberals are using these school shootings to further their anti-tragedy agenda? — Col. Erran Morad, Who Is America?, s01e01 yod-dropper — (when you need something that sounds like an insult)[1] ALL keys matter — response to the scale-wandering rendition of the national anthem at CPAC 2021 The Lunatic-in-Charge becomes the Lunatic-at-Large Lame duck à l'orange (AKA canard à l'orange) It is a mortifying circumstance, which greatly perplexes many a painstaking philosopher, that nature often refuses to second his most profound and elaborate efforts; so that often after having invented one of the most ingenious and natural theories imaginable, she will have the perverseness to act directly in the teeth of his system, and flatly contradict his most favorite positions. This is a manifest and unmerited grievance, since it throws the censure of the vulgar and unlearned entirely upon the philosopher; whereas the fault is not to be ascribed to his theory, which is unquestionably correct, but to the waywardness of Dame Nature, who, with the proverbial fickleness of her sex, is continually indulging in coquetries and caprices, and seems really to take pleasure in violating all philosophic rules, and jilting the most learned and indefatigable of her adorers. [...] The philosophers took this in very ill part, and it is thought they would never have pardoned the slight and affront which they conceived put upon them by the world had not a good-natured professor kindly officiated as a mediator between the parties, and effected a reconciliation. Finding the world would not accommodate itself to the theory, he wisely determined to accommodate the theory to the world. — Washington Irving, Knickerbocker's History of New York Pela primeira vez na sua vida a morte soube o que era ter um cão no regaço. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog in her lap. — José Saramago, Death with Interruptions / Death at Intervals It is now generally accepted that the megaliths that make up Stonehenge were moved by human effort. — as opposed to by what? Anybody who says you only have yourself to blame is just not very good at blaming other people. — It's Happy Bunny When poppies pull themselves up from their roots and start out, one after the other, toward the sunset – don't follow them. — Slavko Janevski, 'Silence' And the dough-headed took their acid fermentation for a soul, the stabbing of meat for history, the means of postponing their decay for civilization. — Stanislaw Lem, Return from the Stars The Church says that the Earth is Flat, but I know that it is Round, for I have seen its Shadow on the Moon, and I have more Faith in a Shadow than in the Church. — (commonly misattributed to Magellan) In the early years of the study there were more than 200 speakers of the dialect, including one parrot. — from the WP article Nancy Dorian Mikebrown is unusually eccentric and not very bright. [...] Astronomers have not noticed any outbursts by Mikebrown. — from the WP article 11714 Mikebrown Ecce Mono Keep Redskins White! "homosapiens are people, too!!" a sprig of spaghetti "I've always had a horror of husbands-in-law." awkwardnessful anti–zombie-fungus fungus "Only an evil person would eat baby soup." (said in all sincerity)

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A discussion is taking place as to whether the article M-T pronouns is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M-T pronouns 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 improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 09:51, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please remember, since you seem to be editing along these lines and have a counterfactual statement on your userpage, that neither Proto-Human nor the techniques used to reconstruct it are taken seriously within linguistics. Edits along those lines need to take WP:FRINGE into account and be made carefully, especially if it accidentally ends up reading as advocacy for those theories. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 10:30, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The existence of the M-T pronoun pattern is not FRINGE. Some of the conclusions drawn from it are. — kwami (talk) 11:38, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't mean to imply it was, though it certainly fails WP:N considering there's the source you utilized and a singular other paper. It doesn't appear to have any wider significance within linguistics at present. I'm more referring to the conclusions you drew and this WP:PROFRINGE statement on your user page:

By comparing basic vocabulary across the established families of oral languages of the world, we have been able to reconstruct the Proto-Human language. We find that all reconstructed words are *na. An extension of this method to additional lexical items (in other basic word lists) finds that those items also reconstruct to *na. We therefore conclude that the ancestral human population used the word *na for everything.

I don't mean this to give you a hard time at all, I just don't necessarily know from some of your edits and this statement if you're aware of the actual acceptance of those theories. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 11:44, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nostratic (and Amerind, which depends on a similar pattern of pronouns) are definitely FRINGE. Yet these patterns have been noticed for over a century, and people have struggled to explain them. I don't see how a fringe hypothesis could be notable, yet the real evidence provided for it not be notable. We need to understand the evidence if we want to be able to evaluate the claims that depend on them.

As for your claim of PROFRINGE statements, you've failed to see the sarcasm. — kwami (talk) 11:56, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But this isn’t evidence for those theories. That it’s claimed to be evidence can be thrown in the large pile of things Nostraticists et al consider to be evidence that nobody takes seriously. That’s why it’s a WP:PROFRINGE concern.

Either way, I wasn’t intending to be difficult on this and sorry if it came across that way. Warrenᚋᚐᚊᚔ 12:35, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The evidence is the evidence they present, not the evidence you accept. And we can't debunk those claims without a consideration of the evidence. Not that we should be advocating debunking either, but the claims can't be evaluated by the reader without consideration of the evidence. If we don't present the evidence, then the only ones that do are the advocates. If we only present the theories and their advocates, then we're engaging in FRINGE by omission. — kwami (talk) 12:45, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, apparently the /-aɪn/ pronunciation is older. In James Knowles' 1835 pronunciation dictionary, both iodine and fluorine have a long i (never mind that the spelling varies between iodine, fluorine and iodin, fluorin.)

Unfortunately, the page with chlorine is missing from this copy. And instead of bromine, we have brome, a direct borrowing from French.

It does raise the question of when precisely the /-iːn/ pronunciation came into the picture, and how it became the most common one for F and Cl. (I have the impression that for iodine, /-aɪn/ is more common in AmE than BrE. Google seems to confirm this.) Double sharp (talk) 05:19, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe about the time the capital of Peru changed from /aɪ/ to /iː/? — kwami (talk) 07:05, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a copy on GBooks. 'Chlorine' has the ee vowel. — kwami (talk) 07:09, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, that is pretty weird. My current working hypothesis is that Cl was better-known than the other halogens by then, because it was already known as a bleaching agent (as stated in Knowles' definition). But it's just a guess. Double sharp (talk) 07:14, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they already had both pronunciations, but only one was chosen for the dict? — kwami (talk) 14:51, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could well be! Double sharp (talk) 03:44, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but you are wrong about the prenasal sounds according to Levinson (2022). They are never transcribed as voiceless, they are always voiced. And regarding the transcription of the prenasal/post-nasal sounds, yes they are always transcribed with a superscript. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the IPA. Fdom5997 (talk) 13:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Levinson transcribes them in different places as both phonemically voiced and unvoiced. I think it might be more straightforward to transcribe them as voiced, as you have done.

"Take a look at the IPA" is not a ref. They are usually not transcribed with superscripts, and positing 4 different types of prenasalization and 4 different types of nasal release is not supported by our sources. That works phonetically but not phonemically. It's also harder to read. — kwami (talk) 13:13, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The only time you see “unvoiced” is when he writes the orthography. But both phonemically, and phonetically they are voiced. Henderson (1995) also transcribes them the same.

But you are still wrong about the prenasal/post-nasal transcription. They *are* transcribed with superscripts. I’m sure you have seen it quite a lot within phonetic and phonemic transcriptions. And whether the sources don’t use superscripts, or 4 types of prenasalization/nasal release is irrelevant.

According to Prenasalized consonant in the IPA, “in the IPA, a tie bar may be used to specify that these are single segments: ⟨m͜b, n͜d, ŋ͡ɡ⟩. Another common transcription practice is to make the nasal superscript: ⟨ᵐb, ⁿd, ᵑɡ⟩. Fdom5997 (talk) 13:26, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's not true. He writes them as unvoiced in some of the phonemic-IPA consonant tables, as voiced in others.

So you concede that superscripts are not "the" way to transcribe prenasalized stops? That's good, but you shouldn't cite me for what the IPA is. I'm not a RS. Cite the IPA. — kwami (talk) 13:29, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

“Some of the phonemic-IPA consonant tables.” No, there should only be one standard table that we use, and that is the one where they are transcribed as their main sound, which is voiced. Not more than one consonant table

And yes I did cite the IPA, and you are just refusing to look at the source. That is what it states on prenasalized consonants, I don’t know where you are insisting otherwise. Fdom5997 (talk) 13:35, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And what I cited said that they can be transcribed with a tie-bar or a superscript, in the IPA. Using standard consonant symbols like <mb, nd, ŋɡ> is not “the” way to transcribe them, and is only used unambiguously by different authors. Fdom5997 (talk) 13:43, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You never cited the IPA. For a citation, you need an author, title, date and page number. And don't cite me. To cite the IPA, you need to cite the IPA.

We cannot use one table, because the inventory is split across multiple tables. You can write Levinson that he wrote his grammar wrong, but that's not relevant here.

Levinson gives the singly articulated stops as /mp nt ṇṭ ŋk/ on p.42 and the doubly articulated stops as /nmtp ṇmṭp ŋmkp/ on p.43.

Anyway, I've already conceded that your way is probably best, so I don't know why you continue to misrepresent the source. — kwami (talk) 14:01, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, the reason for not using the tie bar for NC and CN consonants is that, when they're doubly articulated, that would create a mess of 3 overlapping tie bars per consonant, e.g. ⟨n̪͡m͡d̪͡b⟩.

We might be able to improve that by using an under-tie for the NC or CN part and an over-tie for the double articulation, or vice versa, e.g. ⟨n̪͡m͜d̪͡b⟩ or ⟨n̪͜m͡d̪͜b⟩. But that still looks rather messy. — kwami (talk) 14:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well I strongly believe that using a superscript is the best option, because it looks less messy and less ambiguous.

But using the chart as per Levinson (2022:42-43) is pointless. That does not represent the true sounds of the prenasalized consonants. He states “Prenasalized consonants (such as /mb/) are however voiced, but post-nasalized stops are initially voiceless”. Nowhere does he actually state that the prenasals are ever heard as voiceless. Fdom5997 (talk) 14:28, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Again, you apparently don't know the difference between phonemic and phonetic. The oral stops are also 'lightly' voiced between vowels. So what? This is a phonemic transcription. We could use signs of the zodiac for all it matters.

Anyway, I've already conceded that it's probably better (because it's more accessible to our readers) to transcribe NC with letters for voiced stops, as you prefer, and restored your edits doing just that. — kwami (talk) 14:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Listing prenasalized-voiced sounds is not just phonetic. Even Levinson (2022) himself lists them as phonemes on page 45. Fdom5997 (talk) 16:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're not listening. I have no problem with listing the phonemic inventory in our sources. I have a problem with you claiming phonemic distinctions that do not exist in our sources just because you think it's pretty. — kwami (talk) 17:02, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t “think it’s pretty”, it is just incredibly misleading to list them as “voiceless” when even the sources themselves say that they are always voiced. *You’re* not listening, and you’re the one who’s claiming nonexistent phonemic distinctions! Fdom5997 (talk) 17:08, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What are you talking about? I was talking about the superscript nasals, which you apparently only want because you think it looks better. I don't know why you continue to harp on the voicing when there's no disagreement about it. — kwami (talk) 17:15, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of course the superscript nasals look better, because they are approved by the IPA. You're method is not, and it is too ambiguous. Fdom5997 (talk) 17:56, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously, can we just settle on the nasal superscript? What is the big deal if they are transcribed this way. You just don't want it because you personally don't agree with it. Fdom5997 (talk) 18:04, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where are they "approved by the IPA"? I've repeatedly asked for a citation, and you evidently don't actually have one.

It seems that you're just making stuff up, and projecting your own biases rather than owning up to them. — kwami (talk) 18:12, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well how about you show me a source that proves that your way of transcribing them is correct. I'll wait.. Fdom5997 (talk) 18:39, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't be an ass. You've already conceded that it is. But if you like, check out the Tukang Besi chart in the IPA Handbook.

BTW, arguing for a change by demanding that your opponent prove why you shouldn't is not generally a productive approach. It is a good way to have people ignore you for not being a serious editor. — kwami (talk) 18:53, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, because you don't have a source either. At least I have some information (that you wrote!) to back me up, you clearly don't. So therefore, we should settle on the superscript nasal transcription. Like it, or not. Fdom5997 (talk) 18:57, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let's see if I understand: The IPA Handbook is not a source for the IPA because you disagree with it. Your lack of any sources doesn't matter because you set an ultimatum, and that's what counts. Even though you don't understand the WP article that you're using instead of a source. So, yeah, talking with you appears to be a waste of time. I'm done. Good bye, and stay off my page. — kwami (talk) 19:03, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kwamikagami: Hirayama (1966)'s 琉球方言の総合的研究 talks about the prosody of the Tokunoshima Boma (母間) dialect on page 151-152. However, I am fine if you leave the redirect as redirecting only to Teke language. Chuterix (talk) 22:05, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, there's nothing about that on the Toku-no-Shima page, and it's not in the list of dialects, so people won't know why a link directs them there. — kwami (talk) 22:10, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Kwami, first of all, thanks for putting in the effort to make sure that Wikipedia articles stay encyclopedic, clean, and tidy. However, I strongly disagree that lexical comparisons in Papuan language articles are unencyclopedic. If you look at Bill Foley's chapter on Papuan languages of the Sepik region and many other sources, vocabulary comparison tables containing no more than 30 words are included because so little is known about those langauges. Oftentimes, basic vocabulary (anywhere from 20-100 words) and pronouns are all that we know about these languages, with very little grammatical information available.

These vocabulary tables strongly complement Ross's pronoun tables.

I know that Wikipedia is not Wiktionary - which was why I included no more than 30 words - but sample words for the world's least documented, most obscure language families are very important. Foley (2018) included tables comparing about 20-30 words, but his chapter was still encyclopedic and didn't get turned into a dictionary.

Such lists would not be very suitable for major languages such as German or Luxembourgish, but they are absolutely essential for Papuan languages, which are undoubtedly the world's least known languages. Wikipedia articles about sparsely documented Amerindian languages also list the few words that are attested in those languages. It would be completely inappropriate to remove all those words on the basis of Wikipedia's NODICT guideline, which is a guideline, not a set-in-stone policy, meant to discourage the creation of dictionary-type stubs, rather than to dissuade editors from including useful vocabulary comparison tables in linguistics articles.

And if you really want to delete these painstakingly compiled and highly useful tables, please move them to Wiktionary appendices first.

Pinging @Austronesier: and @Womtelo: for opinions. Please consider supporting to keep these vocabulary tables, as they are of utmost importance to historical linguists. For now, I am restoring the tables, since I am certain that I have set up a strong case for why these tables should be kept. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 22:12, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a distinction between brief encyclopedic basic vocabulary tables and lengthy dictionary-type vocabulary tables that do not belong in encyclopedic entries. Please consult language survey articles and chapters to see what I mean. Tables comparing up to about 30 non-cognate words are encyclopedic and typically do not need to be shuffled into appendices. In language survey papers, articles, and books, non-encyclopedic tables such as Swadesh lists with 100-200 words usually get moved into appendices. The vocabulary tables that I have included in Papuan language family articles are completely encyclopedic. Thus, there is no reason to remove them without proper discussion. Since this is contested by multiple editors including both me and Womtelo, I strongly do not recommend removing any of the tables for now. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 22:44, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Sagotreespirit. I agree with your arguments here (and on my Talk page). The tables in question represent abundant efforts by earlier contributors (not necessarily by myself), and I find it a bit blunt to delete so much data so fast, without any discussion or search for consensus. I'm talking about both East Papuan and Baining languages, to cite the first two I noticed; but I now see there are many more pages that Kwami had unilaterally decided to empty of their lexical content; I find that unreasonable.

In fact, I think it's all the more useful to keep such lexical lists, that precisely the small language families in question are still being actively researched. As you (Sago) said, we wouldn't need such tables under entries on German or Dutch; but researchers & students will find it very useful to have easy access to well-structured lexical lists on WP (as long as the data itself is sourced and not OR); this can only help science grow, much easier than if people were forced to retrieve every data point individually.

Thanks also to @Kwami for constructively taking part in the discussion. Best -- Womtelo (talk) 23:16, 23 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]

If the point is to use WP as a repository for raw data, there are other places to do that -- Wiktionary appendices, Wikibooks, etc. That's not the point of an encyclopedia, so all of these lists are unencyclopedic. Doesn't matter how well referenced they are, that's not the purpose of WP. Foley may do that in his publications, but those serve a different purpose.

I don't have a problem with such vocab lists in the individual language articles (what you call 'brief encyclopedic basic vocabulary tables'), and if you moved all the data there I wouldn't have a problem with it. But what does it have to do with the family? For the average reader, nothing.

If they're cognate sets, sure. I left those in. Either just the reconstructed forms, or better yet those forms with reflexes in a sampling of languages, along with the same for phonemes. That would tell the reader something. It's also okay IMO to list cognate sets without a reconstruction, if we have a RS they are cognate but the reconstruction hasn't been done. There were a few cases of that, and I left those in too.

What's the point of putting the lists for various languages together? It can only be for comparison. But what are we comparing? There's no explanation, and we shouldn't expect the reader to do the historical comparative work. Also, how is the reader supposed to know which words are cognate, and which are not, when they're all scrambled together? Some seem obvious, but sometimes even obvious resemblances turn out to be coincidental (e.g. English much and Spanish mucho). That occurs in New Guinea as well: e.g. the Bunaq word for 'hand' is ton. If we placed that in a row with East Timor tana, Alor-Pantar tan and Kalamang tan, the reader would naturally assume that it's related, but it's a false cognate. It took Usher years to figure that out, and it would be entirely unreasonable to expect the reader to figure that out just by looking at the table.

Sometimes words that are cognate don't look related (e.g. the Armenian word for 'three'), and the reader might therefore assume the words in each row are all cognate (otherwise why list them together?). Worse yet, sometimes these word lists include the reconstructed forms in the left column, which essentially tells the reader that they are reflexes of that form when in fact many are not. So these lists are useless at best to the reader, and sometimes highly misleading. Their only use is as raw data, and again that's not what an encyclopedia is for.

We could link to the original DB's in an external links section, or move these lists to Wikt or Wikibooks and link to them there. — kwami (talk) 23:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As an analogy, in our astronomy articles we give orbital information. For some objects the orbits are highly uncertain. These vocab tables are the equivalent of giving the raw positional data of multiple astronomical observations, including some that might not even be of the correct object, and expecting the reader to work out the orbit from that. Instead, we rely on the experts to calculate the orbit, and if the raw data is relevant somehow, we can link to it. — kwami (talk) 00:03, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, Sago, you ask me to do your work for you. If you want to make this information available, that's a task you've taken on for yourself, and it's up to you to carry it out. I might help you if I saw the value in it, but that is irrelevant when it comes to deleting unencyclopedic content. You can always go back into the article history and recover it, so deletion does not need to wait for it to be transferred. — kwami (talk) 00:21, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your answers Kwami, but I'm afraid I disagree with your arguments. If you tell me that a family called XXX exists and has 15 members, that is very little information and is telling us nothing. But if you give me a list of 20 words in these 15 members, now that’s what many readers are looking for. Anyone interested in the existence of a family will also want to get a good idea, at a glance right there on the page of the family, of how internally diverse that family is. That is extremely useful information that is telling so much more on that subgroup, than just a name and a list of languages. Some families are terribly homogenous like Nuclear Polynesian, while others are surprisingly heterogenous; and just a lexical list can already tell us so much.

People sufficiently curious to get interested in Baining or Leonhard Schultze languages will be smart enough to know what you're saying here about false cognates and the rest. And if they mistake a list of translation equivalents for cognate sets, so what? Is that reason enough to deprive the rest of us of the valuable data? We can easily add a disclaimer template that will remind people that list of translation equivalents are not cognate sets, and voilà the job's done. But it is foolish to delete so much useful information, which target readers (students, researchers) actually need badly, just because some imaginary reader might interpret them wrongly. I find that a very strange way of reasoning, really.

In sum, these painstakingly-created tables are very useful, and much welcome on pages of families -- much more so than on entries of individual languages. (Perhaps one thing that could be done, would be to make them collapsible; but I don't think that's necessary.) -- Womtelo (talk) 00:12, 24 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]

That's the purpose of cognate sets. As I said, I agree those are encyclopedic. But random sets of words that we falsely imply are related is misinformation and do not belong. If they're useful to the historical linguist, fine, but put them where they belong.

And they don't tell us anything about the family, and they do not show us how diverse the family is. For that they would have to be cognate sets. I could create a list of random words that makes the Romance languages look like dialects of a single language, or like a collection of unrelated isolates. Neither would serve any useful purpose. In fact, Serbo-Croatian and Hindustani speakers do this all the time to 'prove' that their languages are either identical or completely unrelated. — kwami (talk) 00:19, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, you're not getting it. If you only accept a list of cognate sets, then you're forcing a view of unity in the family, which is not necessarily a fair representation of its diversity; you're doing precisely what your Hindustani and Serbo-Croatian speakers do all the time, namely cherry-pick examples to suit an agenda. What is needed is precisely the opposite: random lists of words (à la Swadesh lists), absolutely avoiding the criterion that they should be cognate sets. What we need are simply lists of translation equivalents within that family, whether or not they're mutually cognate.

So in Romance you'd have aller, andare, ir for 'go'; bras, braccio, brazo for 'arm'; femme, donna, mujer for 'woman', etc. No-one in their right mind will be so foolish as to believe these are cognate sets! Why do you assume that will be "falsely implied"? That's just wrong. (and there can always be a warning message/ disclaimer in small characters reminding people that the list is not of cognate sets.)

Such lists would provide an excellent overview of the internal homogeneity vs. heterogeneity of a lg family: both (1) diversity due to sound changes within cognate sets, and (2) diversity due to lexical replacement across cognate sets. If you only display cognate sets, then you can show #1 but not #2, and that becomes a cherry-picked sample biased towards homogeneity. For the purpose of showcasing a family's internal homo- / heterogeneity, it is thus crucial that there should not be any requirement of cognacy. (In addition, color coding or something could identify cognate sets, a bit like in this Romance table).

Ideally, the list of meanings would be constant across families (like Swadesh, but shorter; perhaps 15 or 20 meanings of basic vocab); but for some little-documented families we would provide whatever small lexical info there is. -- Womtelo (talk) 09:55, 24 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]

For better visibility to the community, I suggest to bring this up in WT:LANG. Kwami and also, @Womtelo and Sagotreespirit: as you already have had the opportunity to shape your thoughts in this discussion, you can each probably repeat them in a condensed form there (without reproducing the back-and-forth, at least to this point). My 2 cents in brief here. I have seen many tables that go much beyond 20 items. I find them way too massive, visually dominating and literally pushing our painstakingly-created prose (c'mon, what's painstaking about retyping wordlists, often to the point of producing blatant copyvios?) to invisbility. Frankly, I hate them ;) So ~15 items per table, and all tables headed by at least two or three lines of parsable prose with substantial content (NB: wordlists of languages not known to our readers are per se imparsable and only serve an "impressionistic" purpose). That's what I consider the absolute maximum for a tertiary source like Wikipedia, anything beyond that is not really helpful for our readers. FWIW, collapsed tables don't appear collapsed on many mobile browers, thus in the very case when navigatability matters most.

Tables don't have to be cognate tables, but for established language families and subgroups, cognate tables give a better feel of what these languages have in common; after all, these languages by their very nature are relevant to the topic of the article (= the language family) since they do share cognates with regular sound correspondences. In order to capture diversity, a cognate table can serve the purpose as well. E.g. for Austronesian languages you often see those silly "mata, mata, mata, mata, mata...lima, lima, lima, lima, lima"-tables which may lead naive readers to think that Austronesian languages are alike all over the oceans; ideally, we should present them also cognate sets like Paiwan sapuy, Palauan ngau, West Damar oso, and Kusaiean e :) Ok, not all that brief, but that's how I feel about it (= my editorial judgement). –Austronesier (talk) 15:57, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]