Appendix talk:Altaic Swadesh lists
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).
This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
Altaic is not accepted as a valid grouping by the scientific establishment, and it has been established by vote that it cannot be presented as anything more than a carefully couched hypothesis in Wiktionary entries. There is also no set definition of what is and isn't Altaic, meaning that some of the languages here are arguably not even Altaic. My proposed solution: All of these already have Swadesh list appendices except for Manchu and Oroqen, which are Tungusic. We should simply remove all the duplicates, leaving just the Tungusic ones, and then move this page to Appendix:Tungusic Swadesh lists. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:31, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
- It's a bit more complicated than that: it's not that Altaic has been rejected as a valid grouping, it's just that the mainstream has rejected the attempts to prove its validity and is skeptical that the evidence for proof could have survived the randomizing effects of language change at such a time depth. These languages could very well be related- or not. Who can tell?
- At any rate, I don't see the harm in an Altaic Swadesh list- after all, the methodology behind the Swadesh lists, themselves, has been thoroughly discredited, and we still have them. They're an interesting way to look at the similarities and differences in vocabulary between languages, whether they're provably related or not. If memory serves, we have several Swadesh lists that include at least a few unrelated languages in the same list. As long as we keep this out of mainspace, it shouldn't be a problem. If we don't already have a note on the page explaining that Altaic isn't accepted as a valid grouping, we should add one- but we don't need to get rid of the whole thing. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:00, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
- I carefully said "not accepted" rather than "rejected", because I am using the language of hypothesis testing. The harm is that it is against the spirit of a Wiktionary vote, and the philosophy of letting things be substandard because they aren't in mainspace is ultimately damaging to Wiktionary's credibility. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 23:46, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
- Move. The list is an arbitrary selection of languages from different families not demonstrated to be related. It is useless even as a demonstration of the Altaic theory: Altaists themselves compare proto-languages, like Proto-Turkic and Proto-Tungusic, and not Kyrgyz and Manchu. If for some obscure reason somebody would like to compare Kyrgyz and Manchu, he can go to the Turkic and Tungusic Swadesh lists respectively. Guldrelokk (talk) 21:40, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
- Moved to Appendix:Tungusic Swadesh lists. I've removed all the non-Tungusic languages, but only two remain and it's probably a good idea to add some more and work on the formatting. — surjection ⟨?⟩ 11:05, 5 March 2019 (UTC)