Appendix talk:Swadesh lists for lesser used European languages

This is the talk page for a deleted page. It is being kept for historical interest.

Strange name

I propose renaming this list, since when are languages such as Greek or Finnish "lesser used"? Is Finnish less used than Norwegian, Slovak, Croatian? No, rather the opposite. And is Greek less used than Swedish or Serbian? Hardly. There's no logic to this list. 128.214.107.233 11:33, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

The logic seems clear to me. These are important European languages that are much more rarely studied and learned by English speakers, and much less likely to be the subject of professional commercial translation in the U.S. European languages that English speakers usually try to learn, and that American companies pay to have translated, are French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch, etc. I think "lesser used" is a more acceptable term than "lesser studied", "lesser known", "lesser practiced", or "lesser learned". —Stephen 11:50, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Error?

There might be something wrong since 157 - Sand. --Ooswesthoesbes 14:39, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Somebody has added another language, marked as "al", beginning at 157. Might be Template:gsw. Since I’m not sure of the language, I will remove the entries. —Stephen 20:43, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Deletion debate

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process.

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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The object of a Swadesh list is (or was) primarily to establish the closeness of the relationship of genetically related languages. The languages assorted here belong in different linguistic branches or even families:

• Faroese, Icelandic, Kölsch, Lëtzebuergesch and Low Saxon are Germanic languages and as such, they are already included here.
• Greek and Albanian (along with Armenian) consist the three independent branches of the Indo-European family. Albanian features under the section Assorted lists, but this makes no sense, since a single language can not be considered an assortment.
• Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language and is included in both that family's list and the Baltic-Finnic languages.
• Basque is a language isolate. A Swadesh list of the Basque language of its own already exists.

Since:

1. an assortment of unrelated between them and / or already included elsewhere languages serves no linguistic purpose
2. the corresponded Wikipedia article links to this appendix with the caption "grouped by language family, on the Wiktionary Appendix pages"
3. the Greek list included contains a number of errors, the sort one gets by entering words in a translating machine, and
4. the description lesser used in the name of the appendix is both inaccurate and controversial,

I suggest the following:

1. Deleting Appendix:Swadesh lists for lesser used European languages.
2. Creating a new list, Appendix:Independent Indo-European languages Swadesh lists, where Greek (Ancient (Classical) / Modern), Albanian (Gheg / Tosk) and Armenian (Eastern / Western) will be included, under the sub-header Language-family Swadesh lists in need of expansion.
3. Removing the Appendix:Albanian Swadesh list from the Appendix:Swadesh list and adding it as an entry to the Category:Swadesh lists.

Jaxlarus 08:46, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Keep. You're talking about correcting it and renaming ok sure, but there's way too much good content here to outright delete it. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

It is useless to compare languages which are not even remotely related, like Basque, Finnish and Icelandic. Also, all the content is already covered by other swadesh lists: Low Saxon, Icelandic, Faroese, Kölsch and Luxembourgish are already covered by Appendix:Swadesh lists for Germanic languages, Albanian is covered by Appendix:Albanian Swadesh list, Greek is covered by Appendix:Greek Swadesh list, Finnish is covered by Appendix:Swadesh lists for Finno-Ugric languages, and Basque is covered by Appendix:Basque Swadesh list. So delete as fully redundant. -- Prince Kassad 09:29, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Didn't know that. Delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:23, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

and deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:15, 27 March 2010 (UTC)