Talk:Italic languages

Italic peoples

I've seen the peoples speaking Italic languages being referred to as Italic peoples. I still don't know much about these peoples besides the Romans, though. Gringo300 11:00, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

studied?

I've been studying Latin for several years now.

Has anyone on here studied the other Italic languages?

They're rather scarcely attested afaik. There just isn't enough corpus left for a thorough understanding of these languages. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:17, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

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Relation between [Romance_languages] and [Italic_languages]?

Acconding to the entry on romance languages, it's a subfamily of italic language, but the italic language page thosen't mention them. Which one is right?

Yes, they are mentioned:

As Rome extended its political dominion over the whole of the Italian peninsula, so too did Latin become dominant over the other Italic languages, which ceased to be spoken perhaps sometime in the 1st century AD. From so-called Vulgar Latin the Romance languages emerged. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | ^Talk 16:12, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The page presents Italo-Celtic as a fact when actually it's more of a hypothesis (and though I'm no expert, I don't think it's a particularly popular hypothesis any more.) Seems like it should hedge that a bit or something.Excalibre 06:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The hierarchy

Why, in the infobox, is Romance shown as a sibling of Latino-Faliscan when the Romance languages are descendants of Latin, itself a descendant of Latino-Faliscan? —Largo Plazo (talk) 14:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Extinct? really?

I'm tired of everyone saying latin is a dead language. It is the language of science, medicine and law. A pre-cursor to so many languages, an understanding of latin will give ANYONE an advantage ANYWHERE language skills are needed. I submit that we use a better word than extinct. Just because a language is not spoken now-adays does not mean it is dead.72.12.72.122 (talk) 01:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That is the definition of the expression "dead language" so, yes, it does mean that, despite your perfectly true observations. —Largo Plazo (talk) 18:58, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I would like to see a person speaking Latin with correct pronunciation. Dude, Latin is dead! Language of science? Replaceable. Languages are living and developing over time. This is fairly natural. Why do you learn a dead root language to understand other languages better? Latin does not help you as much as you think. In my country, we have to choose between learning French or Latin at school and the tendency for Latin is declining. Later you can also take Italian. Now guess what! The students having taken Latin have more problems with learning Italian despite of the similar vocabulary. There are too many false friends because Latin is dead and hasn't changed much. However, French and Italian share more true friends and grammar because they have developed together and dropped declination. Besides, French is more useful nowadays.--95.116.231.215 (talk) 21:22, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

With all due respect, Latin is for all intents and purposes a dead language. Even the Pope's 'Latinist', who translates official documents for the Vatican (the only state where it is still officially used, though Italian is far more common even there), said back in 2007 that its use within the Catholic church has effectively passed the point of no return: young priests are no longer learning it, and even cardinals now often request translations into something they can understand. There are certainly people who can still speak it (so in that sense it isn't completely dead), but it must be hard for them to find anyone else to converse with. As for the statement that Latin is 'the language of science, medicine and law', I'm afraid it's a century or two out of date. Of course, set Latin phrases are used in all three disciplines, but the vast majority of scientists, physicians and lawyers use them merely by rote - they don't know the underlying grammar, and couldn't produce a new Latin phrase on the basis of an existing one (as most of their 17th-century predecessors still could). An English-speaking lawyer who says 'in camera' knows it means 'behind closed doors', but probably couldn't translate it literally ('in a chamber') - and a French-speaking lawyer would simply say 'à huis clos', using a now obsolete French word for 'doors'. In short, Latin is not 'the language of law'. As for medicine, my mother was a nurse and remembered that 'nil per os' meant 'nothing by mouth' when patients were not allowed to eat or drink anything before surgery or a blood test - but the American Medical Association has now decreed that this phrase or its abbreviation 'NPO' must not be used, and that 'nothing by mouth' should be used instead. In other words, Latin is not 'the language of medicine' either - if anything, Greek is used more often ('arthritis', 'cardiology', 'diarrhoea'). For that matter, my mother grew up as an Irish Catholic and still knew all her prayers in Latin, as well as what they meant - not because she understood Latin, but simply because she'd had it all drummed into her as a child. She certainly couldn't help me with my Latin lessons at school. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.127.210.95 (talk) 16:39, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I've never bought the argument that Latin gives English-speakers a unique insight into other languages. I'm an English-speaking hyperpolyglot, and I did have Latin lessons at school; but I could just as easily have learned the Latin-based vocabulary and system of verb endings by studying Spanish, Portuguese, Italian or French, and the principle of noun and adjective declension ('case endings') by studying German, Russian or Modern Greek - languages that are still actively spoken by many millions of people. Latin has no other unique advantages for English-speakers, if only because most Latin literature worth reading has already been competently translated into English. Irish people already have the advantage of compulsory Irish lessons at school, which introduce them to the idea of noun and adjective cases. As far as I'm concerned Latin only survived in our schools from force of habit, and a sense that it was good for school discipline to make children learn something difficult and, in today's world, largely useless!

Quod erat demonstrandum?213.127.210.95 (talk) 17:01, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Dead or Alive - the case of Friulian

The article on Friulian says it is an Italic language. However, the article on Itlaic languages lists the romance languages and "extinct languages". Friulian is not a Romance language, so logic would make one reason that it must be included under the reference to extinct languages. However, Friulian is alive and kicking and has a thriving community on the Wikipedia! --Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 18:35, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

FYI general: someone changed the Friulian article to make it a Romance language. Nice catch Correia, you ought to do more on WP.Dave (talk) 02:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Extinct?

Is there any non-Romance Italic language still alive? Kanzler31 (talk) 06:18, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

No. --Taivo (talk) 06:32, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. See Griko language 88.193.103.47 (talk) 00:55, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

The anonymous IP obviously doesn't have a clue about what he is saying since "Griko" is a dialect of Greek and not an Italic language at all. --Taivo (talk) 06:23, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Sicel and Oenotrian

The list is incomplete: Sicel is attested in inscripitions and mentioned even by Varro in his De Lingua Latina: it belonged in the Latino-Faliscan group. Oenotrians too were possibly a Latino-Falsican speaking people.Aldrasto11 (talk) 12:45, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

IIRC, Rix also mentions that a Latino-Faliscan dialect was originally spoken in the town of Caere, besides Etruscan, and I seem to recall that Auruncan, the dialect of the Latin tribe of the Aurunci, attested in the Garigliano Bowl, is sometimes considered a separate language or variety. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

It seems there is not enough changes from PIE, because applying those rules one can't convert PIE *h₂ŕ̥ḱtos to latin ursus. Only arktos has appeared: #HRC → #aRC91.76.135.242 (talk) 16:42, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Latin ursus is an unsolved problem. Rix's law predicts **ar-, that's true. The s is probably regular, see Thorn cluster. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 13:36, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

It is assumed that words for 'bear' (and 'wolf') are affected by taboo deformation. —Tamfang (talk) 00:34, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

In the case of lupus, a Sabellic loan (maybe to avoid homonymy with lūcus) is more likely. In the case of ursus, taboo deformation is of course possible, but unsatisfying as an explanation. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:52, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

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Raetian/Raetic?

The caption for the coloured diagram of languages in Italy refers to 'Raetian', but the diagram itself refers to 'Raetic'. I don't know which is correct, but the same term should surely be used in both cases.213.127.210.95 (talk) 15:21, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Latin "duo" is without macron

at least according to wiktionary, it is with a short o — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.22.110.19 (talk) 11:01, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Axe grinding

Beginning of lead:

The Italic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken in the Italian peninsula in the first millennium BC. The best-known member is Latin, the only language of the group that survived into the common era. All other Italic languages became extinct by the 1st century BCE, when their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and switched to some form of Latin.

Much later, at the end of the lead:

The Romance languages, being descended from Latin, are technically part of the Italic branch too. With over 800 million native speakers, they would make Italic the second most widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, after the Indo-Iranian languages. However, there are profound linguistic differences between Romance and the other pre-Roman Italic languages, such as the loss of the grammatical case system.

So the first paragraph definitively disavows the Romance languages as part of this tree (see bolded phrases), and the final paragraph (if the reader gets that far) begrudgingly allows them back in, a little bit, sort of, if you're none too bright.

Unfortunately for the cause of consistency, the article on Romance languages stubbornly insists on being none too bright:

The Romance languages are the modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin between the third and eighth centuries and that form a subgroup of the Italic languages within the Indo-European language family.

I think it would be wisest to refactor this "none too bright" axe-grinding subtext, and allow the Romance languages a mention in the lead paragraph. — MaxEnt 07:22, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

@MaxEnt: I think the seemingly odd detachment of the Romance languages from the Italic languages in the lede is less a willful denial of the former being firmly nested within the latter, but rather an involuntary product of the two mostly being completely separated research areas in academia: Italic studies as a subdivision of Indo-European studies usually deals with Italic languages minus the Romance languages. But yes, for most readers the current wording is definitely misleading.

The easiest way to fix this is to rephrase the second sentence from:

• "The best-known member is Latin, the only language of the group that survived into the common era. All other Italic languages became extinct by the 1st century BC..."

into:

• "With the exception of Latin and its contemporary descendants, the Romance languages, all other Italic languages became extinct by the 1st century BC..."

@Dk1919 Franking, Jorge Stolfi, Florian Blaschke, Kwamikagami, and And others: What do you think? –Austronesier (talk) 14:23, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

The situation here is roughly comparable to that of Dinosaur, for example (in fact, in biology, such situations aren't exactly uncommon since the triumph of cladistics). Still, I don't think it's necessary to treat the Romance languages as completely separate, and it shouldn't be over-emphasised – Romanian, at least, still has a case system. Closer to home, compare Celtic languages, with the modern representatives being similarly distinct from the ancient ones. That kind of thing just happens. I see no problem with acknowledging that Italic is a branch that is still extant; that the Romance languages are Italic (not only "technically"); and that Italic (via Latin/Romance) is therefore very widespread in the world. It might sound a bit unusual, but it's simply a fact. That the research traditions regarding ancient Italic vs. modern Romance are sharply separate is more of an accident of history – understandable, but still not decisive. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:36, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

• Response The highlighted parts of first paragraph cited above are perfectly correct. AFAIK, Latin *is* the only Italic language to survive into the common era. That is, in 1 CE there was only one Italic language, Latin. But we should append something to that paragraph about the Romance languages, which developed since then.

I do object to the claim that "The best-known member is Latin". I would think it's French or maybe Spanish. So I might rewrite it as something like,

The Italic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken in the Italian peninsula in the first millennium BC. The only language of the group to survive into the common era was Latin, the official (?) language of the Roman Empire. All other Italic languages became extinct by the 1st century BCE, as their speakers assimilated into the Roman Empire and switched to some form of Latin. Then, between the third and eighth centuries CE, Vulgar Latin diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today.

As for the 2nd paragraph above, maybe reduce it to s.t. like,

With over 800 million native speakers, the Romance languages make Italic the second-most-widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, after Indo-Iranian.

I think it's fine to go a bit light on our coverage of Romance in this article, given how much space we dedicate to them elsewhere, as long as we don't imply that they're somehow not "real" Italic languages. But it may be appropriate (I don't know) to say the field of Italic studies specializes in the ancient languages, or that scholars of the ancient languages tend to ignore Romance. (If they do.) E.g., the Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary). We need something to explain to the reader why this article concentrates on the ancient Italic languages to the exclusion of the medieval and modern ones. So that last para might be s.t. like,

With over 800 million native speakers, the Romance languages make Italic the second-most-widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, after Indo-Iranian. However, in academia the ancient Italic languages form a separate field of research from the medieval and modern Romance languages. This article focuses on the ancient languages. For the others, see Romance studies.

Since we seem to be on the same wavelength, I went ahead and rewrote the lead. But if you disagree w something, please modify or revert. I'm not trying to own the article.

— kwami (talk) 18:30, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Just a nitpick, at least Oscan was still spoken in 1 AD, judging from the inscriptions found at Pompeii (Oscan language § Evidence), and it would be highly unrealistic in the first place to assume that the Sabellic languages disappeared immediately after the Social War, rather than surviving a few centuries more. (It has been suggested, plausibly so in my opinion, that the development of the Latin vowel system in Italo-Western Romance was influenced by bilingualism with Sabellic.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:28, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

That's hardly nitpicking, esp. if they featured in the diversification of Latin into Romance. I reworded it, but please feel free to make it more accurate. I'm doing it myself because I don't see any reason to let the errors remain while we discuss them, not because I claim any expertise. — kwami (talk) 21:19, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke and Kwamikagami: Thanks as always for your great input! The edits by kwami hit the nail on the head in my opinion. –Austronesier (talk) 07:06, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

@Dk1919 Franking, Austronesier, Florian Blaschke, Kwamikagami, and And others: I am quite happy with Florian's proposed rewording, with a minor correction just for safety: "With the exception of Latin and its contemporary descendants, the Romance languages, all other Italic languages were extinct by the 2nd century BC...".
However, I do believe that the term "Italic Languages" is generally understood to not include Romance. The inclusion seems to be a case of axe grinding indeed...--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:08, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

If that is the case, then what is the accepted term for Proto-Italic and its descendants? If the descendants of Proto-Germanic are Germanic languages, then are the descendants of Proto-Italic not Italic languages? Rua (mew) 19:25, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

That's exactly the point I was making with cladistics above ... it really makes no sense to arbitrarily exclude descendants from a family merely because of historical or social reasons. I don't know any analogous case in linguistics, actually. Of course the Romance languages are Italic – not only technically, but in every relevant sense. By the way, I think Jorge means kwami's proposed rewording, because I haven't proposed any. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:37, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Calvert Watkins paragraph ... what did he say about Italic?

The Calvert Watkins paragraph says that he suggested dividing Indo-European into four dialect areas -- but not mention which of the four Italic would be from. Given the placement, it also suggests that that he may see Italic as having originated as two separate language families (that later influenced each other by proximity). If so, that should be stated explicitly, and the original (directional) dialect of each should be listed.

For that matter, it would be best to clarify which languages the dual-origin theories do group together. (Is it the Latin group vs the Oscan-Umbrian group?) --JimJJewett (talk) 17:43, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

And why don't we have this in our IE or proto-IE articles? If it's important enough to include, the outline of the four branches should be in one of those articles, and the details relevant to Italic here. — kwami (talk) 18:59, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

It's actually 11 branches excluding Anatolian, which would be a fifth group, and ignoring several of the Balkan languages. The division is:

• East: Indo-Iranian
• West: Celtic, Italic, Tocharian
• North: Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Albanian
• South: Phrygian, Armenian, Greek

He says "Each branch [i.e., each of the 10 branches] shares certain features with the nearest branch in the adjacent quadrants. The closest affinities of Anatolian are with the western group." but I don't know what he means by that. There aren't clear connections in his diagram -- e.g., Indo-Iranian is centered in its quadrant and isn't particularly close to anything, though graphically it's closest to Albanian (in the N) and Phrygian (in the S). Does Watkins mean that II shares the most features with Albanian and Phrygian? I can't tell. Since the other 3 quadrants each have 3 branches, I take it he means that Celtic and Germanic share features, as do Tocharian and Greek and perhaps the branches in the inner points of the pie slices: Italic w Albanian and Phrygian, Albanian w Italic and II, Phrygian w Italic and II.

But he says nothing about Italic not being a single node. (E.g. see p. 28.) That claim came from the EB, but that's hardly a RS for such a radical claim. Anyway, we only said "some authors doubt this common affiliation". Which authors? When? With no RS for any recent doubts as to the unity of Italic, and with the Watkins claims being so ambiguous, I deleted the whole paragraph. Though if you can make sense of it and can find some good sources to back it up, by all means please do so. — kwami (talk) 19:25, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

At Osco-Umbrian languages we say,

[The] unitary scheme has been criticized by, among others, Alois Walde (1869–1924), Vittore Pisani (1899–1990) and Giacomo Devoto (1897–1974), who proposed a classification of the Italic languages into two distinct Indo-European branches. This view has gained acceptance in the second half of the 1900s, although the exact processes of formation and penetration into Italy remains the object of research.[Villar, cit., pp. 447–482.]

• Villar, Francisco (1997). Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell'Europa [Indo-Europeans and the origins of Europe] (in Italian). Bologna, Il Mulino. ISBN 88-15-05708-0.

The two groups are presumably Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian.

@Austronesier:, @MaxEnt:, @Dk1919 Franking:, @Jorge Stolfi:, @Florian Blaschke: Is this POV notable enough to copy over to this article? The current wording we have for similar claims from e.g. Rix is so opaque that I don't know how many readers will understand it to mean a proposal that Latino-Faliscan and Osco-Umbrian are two independent branches of IE. In fact, from our summary, *I'm* not sure that's what they're saying. IMO we should start that section with a very simple lead sentence that restates the claims unambiguously. — kwami (talk) 20:13, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure. Some Italian and German scholars have in the 20th century doubted the consensus that Latino-Faliscan and Sabellic go back to Proto-Italic and treated them as two independent branches of Indo-European, which could be noted, but I don't think the opposition to Italic is relevant anymore; I think the viewpoint is now even more marginal and outdated than the idea of Slavic as an independent branch – especially after Rix in 2002 evidently retracted his former scepticism about Proto-Italic. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:37, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

The problematic presentation actually already begins in the section "History of the concept". It opens with the use of "Italic" as a cover term for all ancient languages of the Italian region, without genetic significance. This is of course absolutely a minority view and not in accordance with commom usage in IE studies.

Fact is: the textbook view and also the majority view among IE-ists is that the Italic languages make up an innovation-defined branch of IE. Italo-sceptics are a small minority among IE-ists, but are (or were?) more significant when counting only scholars specialized in Italic studies, so this POV is clearly worth mentioning. –Austronesier (talk) 07:22, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

We are clearly in agreement. ("Italic" as a non-genetic cover term is a marginal use, likely outdated – Villar 1997 again? – and is more confusing than enlightening for the reader, so probably not worth mentioning and best off removed.) However, I must note that at this point the article rather places undue weight on the Italo-sceptic POV. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:54, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Regardless of what it's called, an article should have a coherent topic. (I'm not counting dab pages as articles.) This is our article on the Italic branch(es) of the IE family, so the text should be restricted to that topic. For other meanings, we could place a hatnote at the top saying 'for other uses, see Italic languages (disambiguation)' or 'see also 'Ancient languages of the Italian peninsula' or s.t. like that, and maybe those same links again in the External links section.

Yeah, the Italo-sceptic POV is probably over-emphasized, but even if we leave it all in, we need some evaluation of how accepted it is. If either of you know of any good sources for that, that would be useful. Just Rix's retraction would be a good start. — kwami (talk) 19:22, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@Austronesier, MaxEnt, Dk1919 Franking, and Florian Blaschke: Since the section is "History of the concept", even outmoded views should be mentioned (of course with note that they are outmoded).
In particular, the very name "Italic Languages" and their lumping into one topic calls for an explanation: which seems to have been the original (unconscious?) definition "apparently IE, and spoken exclusively in the Italian peninsula". --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 19:24, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Good point. Wikipedia is not Wiktionary – here, articles are about concepts, not terms. Any meaning of "Italic languages" that diverges from the genetic definition, especially this strongly, doesn't belong here. If it is notable enough, it might merit its own article. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:43, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The sharp contrast between the two schools of thought is quite visible in the two editions of the Routledge volume The Indo-European Languages:

• Silvestri, Domenico (1988). "The Italic Languages". In Ramat, Anna Giacalone; Ramat, Paolo (eds.). The Indo-European Languages. Routledge. pp. 322–344.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Wallace, Rex (2017). "Italic". In Kapović, Mate (ed.). The Indo-European Languages (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 317–351.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Silvestri not only refutes the unity of the Latino-Faliscan languages and the Osco-Umbrian languages, but in fact restricts the use of the label "Italic" to the latter: "The label 'Italic languages' is nowadays used to refer collectively to a group of IE languages, which does not include Latin...". Wallace on the other hand accepts the traditional notion of an Italic subgroup, and naturally includes the Romance languages in this subgroup. –Austronesier (talk) 19:30, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Thanks! The fact that it is the older edition that opposes Italic and the newer edition that supports it as a matter of course is telling. I suspect that the virtual disappearance (or fall into irrelevance) of the opposition can be dated to the first decade of the century indeed, and Rix's change of heart and importantly his argument was probably a significant factor. (In a contribution from 2003, in Languages in Prehistoric Europe, he already treats Italic as fact, if I recall correctly.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 06:19, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Fortson 2010 does mention the opposition on p. 275, but only in two sentences in ch. 13.3, and proceeds to ignore it in what follows (I believe this was so already in the first edition, from 2004). This is strong evidence that we should treat it as largely historical. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 06:32, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

BC versus BCE

It seems to me that if we are using CE (and not AD) we should use BCE (and not BC). Or am I out of touch? Jlaramee (talk) 19:00, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Referencing

The article is in a poor state of sourcing, which is required per the core principle of WP:Verifiability. I have tagged various sections as unreferenced or poorly referenced, and plan to start removing unsourced content after a decent interval, starting with the #Phonology section, and continuing on from there. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 00:21, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: I've got access to a copy of this book: Stuart-Smith, Jane (2004), Phonetics and Philology: Sound Change in Italic, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Give me some time, I'll take care of #Phonology. The current version gives an oversimplified picture of the phonoloigcal history, but at the same time gives undue weight to things like the sporadic change of Latin d > l. –Austronesier (talk) 20:17, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

@Austronesier:, thanks so much for this. (Here's a formatted ref for you; it also includes a hidden full-text url if you have login access via one of hundreds of universities or other institutions). For quite some time, I've noticed that among major topic areas, languages/linguistics has some of the worst state of sourcing of any of the topics that I'm aware of. I have this theory, that it's related somehow to Chomsky's "native competence" idea, namely, that everybody feels that they are (and indeed, they are) experts in their own language, and therefore feel qualified to add material unsourced to the article. However, even with legit expert ability, WP:Verifiability takes preference, for good reason. I'm sometimes tempted to reduce painstakingly developed articles on language or linguistics with 100kb, ten years, and 300 editors to a skeleton of what they were, because they are almost entirely unreferenced. So far, I've held back, and am considering what approach to take. One possible approach was my message above, just sort of nibbling at the edges, waiting a more than decent interval, and then remove a section, then leave another message. I think a more activist approach might be warranted, I'm just not sure what. Maybe try to get something going at the project pages at WP:LING or WP:Languages. Thanks again, and looking forward to your changes. Mathglot (talk) 00:10, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

References

@Mathglot: Yes, occasionally, it stems from "native competence", but the same problem occurs in many articles about general linguistics. I think these pages were developed with much verve in an early stage of WP when adherence to WP:V seems to have felt optional even to good editors (that's at least how it appears to me, a relative newbie). And the field still has "experts" who apply WP:BLUESKY to things which aren't blue-sky-knowlegde even for experts (e.g. "per WP:BLUESKY, [x] in sources about Dutch and German actually refers to [χ], so we can use the latter even if the source writes the former" – believe it or not, I have read something like this in a talk page). And look at all the phonetics pages: the section "Features" is almost always unsourced (e.g. Voiceless retroflex plosive). In short: you have my full support. –Austronesier (talk) 11:03, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

The best known of them ...

The lead says

The best known of them is Latin

"them" referring to the italic languages. That is hardly true - I'd say Spanish and French are better known. I'm not sugesting writing that instead; I think the intention was to say something about Latin (but I'm not sure what, or how to say it). Possibly (but I don't know), the problem is that Italic is used in two different senses: A "monophyletic group" including the Romance languages, and a "paraphyletic group", including only Indo-European languages spoken in Italy (and not Romance languages in general).--Nø (talk) 19:11, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

@Nø: I've fixed it. An IP changed the version which was the outcome of the discussion in Talk:Italic_languages#Axe_grinding above. –Austronesier (talk) 19:45, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Hadn't seen that discussion - thanks! Yes, "dinosaurs" are a good comparison. The modern stance is that birds are dinosaurs - and Romance languages are Italic, making groups monophylitic clades.--Nø (talk) 13:04, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Should we change the use of BC and AD in the article to BCE and CE?

I was about to do it myself but decided to get a consensus. My reasoning for changing it is that BC and AD mean "before Christ" and "in the year of our lord" respectively, which seems like a biased set of terms to have in an article. Thoughts?

Asparagusus (talk) 16:06, 30 March 2022 (UTC)