Category talk:en:Sign languages

RFD discussion: February–March 2022

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Sign languages

I think most sign language names are SoP: Nationality (occasionally Regionality) + Sign language. Exceptions are Protactile, BANZSL. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 21:25, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Keep I agree with msh210's comment here: "American Sign Language, unlike Latin language, is the name of the language". You can break, for example, Swedish language into Swedish + language, and we have a sense for Swedish referring to the language specifically. However, you cannot (except by ellipsis) refer to American Sign Language as "American"; American Sign Language is the canonical, undecomposable term for the entity. There are also other sign languages used or historically used in the US, like Keresan Sign Language and Martha's Vineyard Sign Language but this term refers to a specific one.

More generally, I think you would have to delete entries like Canadian English, Ashokan Prakrit, Nigerian Pidgin, and Old Frisian if you delete these. 70.172.194.25 21:51, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

‘American’ refers to anglophone North America, and is therefore a supranationality here. The terms Keresan Sign Language and Martha's Vineyard Sign Language are not lexicalized, and are thus not dictionary stuff. And no, we actually keep names of dialects/varieties, pidgins/creoles, basilects, and chronolects. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 22:05, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not saying we should add those terms, although if they're attested I would not be against it. I'm saying that "American Sign Language" refers to a specific sign language, not to any sign language from the US, let alone from North America (Quebec Sign Language is separate), and let's not even talk about the Americas in general.

I agree that keeping the names of languages and language varieties is a good idea. That guideline is not currently codified in Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion#Names of specific entities, but I would support adding it hypothetically. So I'm confused why you want to get rid of American Sign Language, which after all is a specific language/variety as much as Rapa Nui or Canadian English is. So, why shouldn't we keep it? Just because its canonical name happens to include a space? But if you accept those other examples I mentioned, like Nigerian Pidgin, I don't see why this would be any different. To reiterate: With "Swedish language" we can place the definition under "Swedish", but we can't do that with "American". We could put it under ASL, but I don't like that solution since it's just an abbreviation for the full term.

If you still think this term should be deleted, but at the same time that the other examples I gave should not be, please explain why Nigerian Pidgin, Canadian English, etc. are more worthy of inclusion than American Sign Language. I hope it's not because "Nigerian Pidgin" has only one space and "American Sign Language" has two, so is doubly SOP (/sarcasm, sorry) or because you think we should give preferential treatment to spoken languages over sign languages. I really don't see any good reason to treat these cases differently. 70.172.194.25 22:15, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Strongest possible keep per 70.172.194.25. These are all lexicalized and names of entities/languages. There's no reason to delete American Sign Language when other dictionaries have it as well (lemma principle) and there's the fact that other languages are kept as well. AG202 (talk) 20:40, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Also Strongest possible keep - I’d say that British Sign Language and American Sign Language are in fact MORE idiomatic than British English and American English. You’d be forgiven for thinking that BSL and ASL were different varieties/dialects of the same language like BE and AE are but they’re completely different languages with different alphabets (every letter is two-handed, apart from ‘c’, in BSL but every letter is one-handed in ASL - I’m only level 1 BSL but I know that much) - it’s not at all obvious that this is the case if we try to analyse the terms British Sign Language and American Sign Language as sums of parts. Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:59, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Keep in the general case, for the reasons 70.172 (and msh210) gives, that e.g. "American Sign Language" is the generally-unbreakable name of the language, and it doesn't encompass just any American sign language. (Nor are it and BSL different dialects of one language like American English and British English.) While I wouldn't put much weight-of-precedent behind Talk:Canadian English (which was nominated by an IP, got one vote and was closed by Wonderfool), because it was invoked above by the nominator I will say that I think "American Sign Language" is at least as idiomatic as "Canadian English", and "Canadian English" was kept. If some other sign languages are only rarely attested and seem more like "occasionalisms", they might be considered separately. - -sche (discuss) 05:46, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Keep per above. WordyAndNerdy (talk) 10:01, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

We had this discussion a while ago (couple of years?) and we did delete a bunch that did not seem idiomatic. For the rest: I think people above me have made good points. Equinox ◑ 03:00, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

RFD-kept. A month has passed and the consensus is clear. 70.172.194.25 21:47, 25 March 2022 (UTC)