Category talk:Swiss German

WT:RFM discussion about renaming this category

From Category:Swiss German at Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits:

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits.

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Category:Swiss German

This lists Helveticisms in the German language and should be at Category:Swiss Standard German. "Swiss German" is the name for the High German language that we call Category:Alemannic German language. (See Swiss Standard German, Swiss German.) Ƿidsiþ 06:35, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Which would entail a move of Category:German language to Category:Standard German language, which I don't think many people will support. Swiss German follows our nomenclature for regional categories, being defined as German terms used only in Switzerland. Is the degree of confusion with the German dialect really that high? -- Liliana • 10:59, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Widsith here. "Swiss German" is commonly understood to mean the variety of Alemannic spoken in Switzerland, just as Schweizerdeutsch and Schwyzerdüütsch are understood to mean. Wikipedia understands this too: compare Swiss German and Swiss Standard German. And yes, the degree of confusion with the dialect is pretty high, and importance of clearly distinguishing the two lects is great. Is it then impossible to program our templates in such a way that {{context|Switzerland|lang=de}} assigns terms to Category:Swiss Standard German without completely moving Category:German language to Category:Standard German language, and while ensuring that {{context|Switzerland|lang=fr}} and {{context|Switzerland|lang=it}} continue to categorize terms into Category:Swiss French and Category:Swiss Italian without the word "Standard"? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:11, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

We used to be able to do this before context labels were migrated to Lua, but now it's impossible. -- Liliana • 12:27, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why it requires doing anything to Category:German language. The word "standard" is only used in the Swiss case because it's necessary to distinguish it from "Swiss German", which is a different language (code gsw). Anyway at the moment the labelling is plain wrong, so something needs to be done. Ƿidsiþ 12:14, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Oppose of course. I don't feel the need to give a rationale, it's obvious enough. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:49, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

It's "obvious enough" that you prefer a misleading—nay, downright false—category name? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:39, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Can I request a rationale? Swiss German has the language code gsw, but we are filling Category:Swiss German with de words. Why do you think this is OK? Ƿidsiþ 07:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we call gsw Alemannic German which is a distinct name from Swiss German, and Swiss Standard German isn't any clearer. Quite the opposite, seeing Swiss Standard German makes me want to change it to Swiss German to make it clearer. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:43, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Apologies, but this is an aurgument from ignorance. You may not know what the language is called, but in linguistic terms "Swiss German" means something, and it does not mean "the form of standard German used in Switzerland". To quote Wikipedia: "The dialects of Swiss German must not be confused with Swiss Standard German, the variety of Standard German used in Switzerland." Exactly the mistake our current categorisation has fallen into. Ƿidsiþ 13:09, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

That's sort of the point; in all my years of studying languages I've never come across this, so you can't expect readers to know this sort of thing. It'll solve a problem for a small minority and screw everyone else over. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

There's a lot of things I don't expect casual users to know, but I still expect us to get them right. You seem to be arguing that since this is a language you don't know much about, it doesn't matter if it's wrong. This is a very weird attitude to take, given some of the far more obscure languages we all work on here. I also just don't see how correcting a mistake will "screw everyone else over". Surely it can't be that complicated to change the name of the category created in these cases? Ƿidsiþ 14:10, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree; it's the current system that's screwing people over. Specifically, we're lying to our users. Unfortunately, from Liliana's comment above, it seems we can no longer get {{context}} to file entries marked {{context|Switzerland|lang=de}} in anything other than Category:Swiss German unless we change the name of German to Standard German everywhere, which is also not a desirable result (for one thing, it would result in such paradoxes as Category:Standard German nonstandard terms). But keeping these terms in a misnamed category is absolutely unacceptable. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:07, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

We could create a label “Swiss-de” that categorises the entry as “Swiss Standard”. — Ungoliant ^(Falai) 10:34, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's good. I wonder if there are other country/language combinations where this is a problem. {{context|Egypt|lang=ar}}, which could be applied to Standard Arabic (ar) words as used in Egpyt, doesn't seem to categorize pages at all; but if it did, Category:Egyptian Arabic would be a bad name for it as that would imply Category:Egyptian Arabic language (arz). But for now, as long as no Standard Arabic words are being categorized into Category:Egyptian Arabic, it's only a hypothetical problem, not a real one. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:41, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we should consider changing the naming scheme altogether? —CodeCat 14:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

"You seem to be arguing that since this is a language you don't know much about, it doesn't matter if it's wrong." No I assume either you're not being serious (least funny joke ever) or you just didn't bother to read my comment. Right and wrong is a POV thing anyway, we call it Alemannic German which by the way has a separate Wikipedia page to Swiss German, but both list gsw as the ISO 639-3 code. What you seem to be arguing is that people should not use the adjective Swiss to qualify the word German when they mean the German language as used in Switzerland. Whether you think that and whether I agree with you, that's irrelevant, as people do use it that way. Angr's got this completely right about Egyptian Arabic too. Whether you agree with people using the word 'Egyptian' to qualify the Arabic language as used in Egypt is irrelevant; people do use it that way. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:49, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Just because some people do things wrong doesn't mean we have to follow them. Swiss German refers to a specific lect, which is not the lect that Category:Swiss German is being filled with. Maybe people who don't know better do refer to Standard German as used in Switzerland as "Swiss German", but we're a dictionary trying to be as high-quality as possible, and we do know better, so we shouldn't misuse a term in our category structure just because a subset of our readership won't know the difference. You say, "Whether you think that and whether I agree with you, that's irrelevant, as people do use it that way", which sounds more like an argument about what our entry for Swiss German should say than an argument about what our category Category:Swiss German should contain. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:19, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I've already answered this two paragraphs up from this one. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:20, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I was being serious and I did read your comment. You said, ‘I've never come across this, so you can't expect readers to know this sort of thing.’ Hence my conclusion that you thought it didn't matter for our readers since you didn't know about it. If you look at the Wikipedia page for Alemannic German, you will see that it covers three separate ISO codes, only one of which is gsw (which by the way stands for "German, Swiss"). I don't care if we call gsw "Alemannic German" (although it's unusual, almost all the literature refers to it as Swiss German), but I do mind our labelling standard German words as Swiss German because it's wrong. Ƿidsiþ 17:32, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

That your conclusion is bad. I'll leave to figure out where you went wrong. What I'm saying is, you think you're making a correction, I'm saying your taking something misleading and trying to make it more widespread. These aren't two different things but two opposing viewpoints on the same thing. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Well it could hardly be more misleading than the current situation, which perpetuates something that's flat-out wrong. Ƿidsiþ 17:44, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

You've already said that. I've already said, that's not your decision to make. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:47, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

You're right. It's not our decision. It's the decision of common English-language usage. And common English-language usage is that the term "Swiss German" refers only to the (primarily spoken, only occasionally written) Alemannic dialect of Switzerland, identified by the ISO code gsw, and not to the (primarily written, only occasionally spoken) variety of Standard German used in Switzerland, identified by the ISO code de; the latter is known as Swiss Standard German. Neither Widsith nor I nor Wikipedia made that decision; that is the existing, longstanding, widespread practice in English-language discourse about the varieties of German used in Switzerland. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:14, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Martin, I still don't really understand your objection. I am not making any unilateral decision. In the real world, ‘Swiss German’ refers to a specific language. Ethnologue. SIL. Wikipedia. Omniglot. I get why you think it's confusing, but these are the facts. I am moving to Switzerland and currently studying the language, so I have been reading endless books and websites on it; all of them call it the same thing. There are several ‘learn Swiss German’ books and websites, and none of them are talking about code "de". Are you suggesting that we, alone, should use the phrase ‘Swiss German’ to mean standard German? Surely ‘Swiss standard German’ is obviously clearer for those cases? Basically, I don't really get what the objection is, I mean I can see that it's technically challenging, but I don't understand why you would be opposed to the change in principle. Ƿidsiþ 19:41, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Um I don't think I can simplify my argument any more, if anything I think you might be looking for something complicated where it's actually very simple. Trying asking someone else. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

You're right, it's very simple. The name of the category does not match with the words inside it. The terms listed in Category:Swiss German aren't Swiss German. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:16, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps you should read this discussion. Actually don't bother, if you haven't understood yet, give up and do something else. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:13, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

This might come across as sarcastic, but both of you stop trying to understand; it's not going happen. Give up. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:19, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't seem sarcastic so much as rude. This page is for discussion and reaching consensus. If you're unwilling to help us understand your position, which obviously you are, then don't post. Telling other editors to "give up and do something else" is not helpful. Ƿidsiþ 14:57, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I interpret Mglovesfun's comment as a concession of defeat, couched in rudeness in order to save face. Now, how do we technically go about getting Lua to understand that {{context|Switzerland|lang=de}} is to categorize terms in Category:Swiss Standard German rather than Category:Swiss German, without renaming Category:German language and without renaming Category:Swiss French and Category:Swiss Italian? Once that's done we should put {{movecat|Alemannic German language}} on Category:Swiss German. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 15:06, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm hopeless with the technical side, especially post-Lua. Maybe this should be raised at the Grease Pit. Ƿidsiþ 15:08, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Not at all. Lest you will face the wrath of User:CodeCat, who will do some of the worst possible things to you. -- Liliana • 17:18, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I was hoping for an intelligent debate on the subject where each side would learn from the other by arguing their case. Clearly, I couldn't've been more wrong. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:11, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I was hoping for that too. However, since you never argued your case, it was impossible to do so. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 16:04, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

No I did, just apparently nobody understands my argument. But like I said, if you haven't got it by now you never will, so go do something else. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:53, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Is your argument something beyond "'Swiss German' is simpler than 'Swiss Standard German'"? Because that's the closest thing to an argument I can find from you in this thread. If that's the extent of your argument, then your argument has failed, because simplicity cannot take precedence over accuracy. It would be as if someone suggested moving Category:Brazilian Sign Language to Category:Brazilian on the grounds that it's simpler—it is simpler indeed, but it's wrong, because the language isn't called that. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:20, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I think people are missing the point here: it's not that using "Swiss German" for non-Alemannic German is incorrect, it's that "Swiss German" used for anything is hopelessly ambiguous: the contexts that separate the Alemannic sense from the Standard German sense are very similar, and overlap (then there's the matter of Alemannic dialects in Germany and Lichtenstein, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms). We simply can't expect the average user- who is unlikely to have even heard of Alemannic German- to figure out what it means without careful explanation- which, of course, they probably won't read.

The problem is that the logic in Module:Labels for processing the regional labels is separate from the part for selecting the language names, and we really need to have it recognize a specific combination of the two. The obvious solution would be adding code substituting "Swiss Standard" for "Swiss" if the language code is "de". If it's put in the right place, it would only spend the execution time on checking when it's already determined that it's a regional label. The problem with that is that adding ad-hoc tests for individual exceptions is a bad habit to get into, especially if there are potentially other exceptions that might come up later. Perhaps there might be some way to add a field to Module:Labels/data that would show whether a particular label had alternative forms, or even one field with the language code that would necessitate substitution and another with the alternative form itself. Chuck Entz (talk) 07:57, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's my point. We don't only cater for linguists (a small minority of the population, I'm sure we agree) but for everyone. That's why I say it doesn't improve the situation, it just changes the nature of the problem. I'm not keen on just changing from one problem to another. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

No one's proposing that we move Category:Alemannic German language to Category:Swiss German or indeed that we allow Category:Swiss German to hold any entries at all. The point is that a category containing Swiss Standard German terms shouldn't be called Category:Swiss German--it doesn't matter whether you believe "Swiss German" to refer to something specific that this category doesn't contain or whether you believe "Swiss German" to be ambiguous in its referent. Either way, the current name for this set of entries has to go. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

As a data point: I'm no professional linguist, hardly any kind of linguist. I'd heard of Swiss German and know it to be distinct from Standard German and the variety of Standard German used in Switzerland. Alemannic was news to me when I came to Wiktionary, though I have relatives from the vicinity. Swiss Standard German, as I understand it, is not really a dialect, any more than "Canadian English".

Move per Widsith and Angr. Is there some kind of kludge that can force the right result out of the defective current label system? Can {{context}} be made to work as well as it used to in pre-Lua days? If neither, a substitute, ad hoc template should be developed and applied to achieve the result with requiring hardcoding categories. DCDuring TALK 14:16, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

• Don't move to the proposed title; the proposed title is no less misleading than the current title. Swiss German is the variety of New High German that is found in Switzerland. Swiss Standard German is the variety of New High German that is official / standard in Switzerland; not all words found in Swiss German are standard.
• I feel the current category name is clear enough to be kept: not only does Wiktionary call the language which has the code gsw "Alemannic German", Wiktionary also distinguishes languages from regional varieties by using "language" in the category names of the former, and making the latter subcategories of "language" categories. Thus, it's clear (within our system) that Category:Alemannic German language and Category:Swiss German are different things.
• There may be people outside Wiktionary who do not notice how we use the terms, and do not notice how we structure category names, and who therefore confuse "Category:Swiss German" and "Category:Alemannic German language". We could, to address the confusion, rename Category:Swiss German to Category:Switzerland German. Using a noun rather than an adjective is clunkier, but there is precedent; we have, for example, Category:Louisiana French and Category:Quebec French rather than *Category:Louisianan French and *Category:Quebecois French. It would also be simple to bring about; unless I've missed something, we'd just change the line labels["Switzerland"] = { regional_categories = {"Swiss"} } in Module:labels/data to labels["Switzerland"] = { regional_categories = {"Switzerland"} }. We would also need to move Category:Swiss Italian, etc.
• As "confusing names" go, "Swiss German" is small change, though. It's much more confusing that, for example, (1) Wiktionary currently calls one language "Aja" and another "Adja" even though both go by both names; (2) there are six or seven languages and one regional variety of a language all most commonly known "Kara", and Wiktionary currently calls two of them "Kara" and calls the rest by other (sometimes less common, but more distinct) names, and some of those substitute names are also polysemous; (3) etc, etc. (IOW: our system already results in confusion, and there's no easy way of fixing it. I've already made several efforts, and in some cases the confusing status quo is the result of my efforts: some messes were even more confusing before I started.) - -sche (discuss) 03:45, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

  I disagree. "Swiss Standard German" refers to the variety of "Standard German" that is found in Switzerland. It does not imply that all words found in Swiss Standard German are standard, as the word "Standard" in this case either refers to the fact that it is the standard language of Switzerland. "Switzerland German" would have been a good solution, except that "Swiss Standard German" is the most commonly used term for this variety and there is therefore no need to invent a name. --WikiTiki89 04:15, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

  "Switzerland German" would be fine for me. Even better if the change is easy to make. To be honest it doesn't matter what we call the category, as long as it isn't "Swiss German", which is wrong. Ƿidsiþ 12:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Seeing no agreement about "Swiss Standard German", but seeing agreement that "Switzerland German" was acceptable, I've updated Module:labels/data. This has automatically moved all of the entries out of Category:Swiss German, Category:Swiss French and Category:Swiss Italian into Category:Switzerland German, etc. I've deleted the empty Category:Swiss German and left the empty French and Italian categories for someone else to delete. - -sche (discuss) 06:36, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you -sche! Ƿidsiþ 07:13, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Since no-one else was going to do it, I've also deleted the empty French and Italian categories with a note directing users to the new category names. Thus, this is  Done. - -sche (discuss) 18:27, 27 November 2013 (UTC)