Talk:Rʻ

This and other Latin letters added to Nivkh

@kwamikagami Hi, Nivkh doesn't need a bunch of Latin-character entries (with transcriptions... what?). Please move these to Translingual. Thanks. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 04:13, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Not sure I understand. What do you mean by "need"? They are letters of the old Latin Nivx alphabet. They are not necessarily translingual, like this one, which AFAIK was only used for Nivx. kwami (talk) 04:22, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

First of all, technically, Nivkh terms spelled with Latin characters are marked as non-standard because the Nivkh script is set only to Cyrillic.

Back to the thing in my last comment, too, why does this have a transcription? It's Latin. The transcription you put doesn't even match MOD:niv-translit. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 04:37, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Special:Diff/80503470/81592694 Where'd you even get these? And why do the entries you made for them not make their status as alternative forms clear? (quite the opposite, actually, you listed the standard character as alternative) -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 04:40, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

At the time the Nivx script was set to Latin, which is why they're labeled "obsolete". For a time, all minority languages of Russia were written in Latin script, apart from a few that weren't implemented before the switch to Cyrillic.

I removed the transcription. Entries were demanding transcriptions, even when Latin, so I supplied them. I used the standard transliterations I had access to. They also stood in for pronunciation.

You'll need to specify what "these" refers to.

There is a debate as to what the standard forms of the letters are. The ones I listed as standard are those used by Russian ministries in contracts etc. If you have a RS as to which allographs are standard, I'd appreciate seeing it, it would help elsewhere, but from the sources I've seen it's just a matter of which publisher prints the material. Arbitrary which we list as an alt of the other. I'll switch them if you prefer. kwami (talk) 04:51, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Set being in the language data on Wiktionary - see Category:Nivkh language - which makes these entries get added to Category:Nivkh terms in nonstandard scripts, because they aren't in Cyrillic. Also, the whole "this character was only used for Nivkh" argument would be fine, except you're spamming out stubs in a bunch of languages for Unified Northern Alphabet characters. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 04:56, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm listing languages that the letters are used for, same as we do with all Latin and Cyrillic letters. Not sure of the meaning of "spamming" here. kwami (talk) 04:59, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

For reference: spam.

ꞓ: Stuff like this is essentially useless - what is the point of having a bunch of practically identical stubs instead of just one Translingual entry? And, like I said before, these languages use Cyrillic, so they show up as nonstandard. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 05:05, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I checked there. How you used it is not what 'spam' means.

As for having multiple language entries of a letter instead of a single translingual entry, that's a question that's been discussed several times. Why should we have multiple entries for A, for example, instead of just one? Many many languages use 'a' for the IPA [a] sound, have the same case pairing, etc., so why would we have e.g. separate entries for Spanish and Italian? Some people feel quite strongly about this, but so far we haven't had consensus to go that way.

In the case of these letters, not all have the same value in every language. They might have different periods of use or other differences. Yes, if all we have is 'a letter of the X alphabet' stubs, there's not much point, but with expansion they may be more distinct. Here though there's only one language. kwami (talk) 05:29, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Is 'Category:Nivkh terms in nonstandard scripts' an error category meant for cleanup? If so, perhaps there's a way we can prevent it from being generated. kwami (talk) 05:03, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it's a maintenance category. I can't speak on whether it can be prevented, but the more sensible solution seems like just... moving it to an L2 which is actually meant for letters and which won't have it added to a maintenance category. -saph668 (user—talk—contribs) 05:08, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

Maintenance categories shouldn't drive content, or prevent content. The data is primary, the categories play a secondary supporting role. Especially maintenance categories which the average reader will never see.

As for moving this to another language, sure -- except that AFAICT this letter is (was) used only for Nivx. kwami (talk) 05:29, 22 September 2024 (UTC)