Talk:mąʼii bikʼiizgi hadzíjiní

RFV discussion: March–May 2020

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mąʼii bikʼiizgi hadzíjiní

Nowhere but Wiktionary and places which quote it. Appears to be a Wikipedia innovation. Reasoning also for practically everything in Category:nv:Canids with the exception of mąʼii, mąʼii łitsooí and mąʼiitsoh. --Corsicanwarrah (talk) 09:04, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Keep anyway because there's not much Navajo content online in the first place and Stephen G. Brown is our resident expert on Navajo. —Suzukaze-c◇◇ 06:10, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware Navajo is an LDL, but we still need at least once cite from a reliable dictionary to be a consensus for keeping. --Corsicanwarrah (talk) 09:38, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Per WT:LDL, the citation doesn't have to be from a dictionary. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 03:39, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, Navajo speakers apparently often adopt a descriptive approach to importing terms that have not previously been part of the lexicon. This particular term, mąʼii bikʼiizgi hadzíjiní, parses out to mąʼii (“coyote”) + bi- (third-person possessive prefix) + kʼiiz (“side (of the body)”) + -gi (“at, on”, locative suffix) + hadzíjiní (“the one that is striped? smeared? from end to end”). Various wild canids or canid-like animals are described in Navajo as variants of mąʼii (“coyote”), such as mąʼiitsoh (“wolf”, literally “coyote + big”) or mąʼii łitsooí (“fox”, literally “coyote + it is yellow”) or tábąąh mąʼii (“racoon”, literally “shore + coyote”). ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 04:43, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

• RFV-deleted. @suzukaze-c, you can't vote at RFV, and you should know that Stephen was in the regular habit of making up Navajo words. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:45, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
  • @Metaknowledge, what about the other entries in Category:nv:Canids other than "coyote", "wolf", "dog" and "fox"? (There's also a ton of entries for other non-canid animals, but that's a topic for another RFV entry...)--Corsicanwarrah (talk) 07:51, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

    @Corsicanwarrah: Why don't you make a mass RFV for them? But be careful — for example, you didn't mention "dog", which is sure to pass. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 16:01, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

    "Dog" is in Category:nv:Dogs, but yeah... Well, the initial proposition included the statement "Reasoning also for practically everything in Category:nv:Canids with the exception of..." --Corsicanwarrah (talk) 16:23, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

• Noted that Navajo is included in WT:LDL. So far as I know, with the departure of Stephen, we have no Navajo speakers actively involved in the EN WT. I am loath to remove entries that were added by such speakers, and which can at least be found in use over at the Navajo Wikipedia.

I am uncertain how to evaluate Metaknowledge's claim that Stephen would invent neologisms. If a given Navajo term is in use at the Navajo Wikipedia, that would seem to be evidence of a term's existence outside of Stephen's own personal lexicon, would it not?

I fully understand that Wikipedia sites in general are not usable for meeting WT:CFI; however, for LDLs like Navajo, that language's Wikipedia might be the only online presence for much of that language's vocabulary in general.

Moreover, of the few editors involved in this RFV, I appear to be the only one with any functional knowledge of the language in question. This does not seem right. Those of us who have not studied a language in depth are much less likely to know where to go to find citations in dead-tree format -- and very little of the world is actually on the internet.

I am deeply uneasy about this removal.

‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 22:55, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Exploring the history of our entry here (for those with the permissions to see it), the mąʼii bikʼiizgi hadzíjiní EN WT page was created on August 30, 2012 by User:Stephen G. Brown. Meanwhile, the history for w:nv:Mąʼii_bikʼiizgi_hadzíjiní shows that the NV WP article was created on April 9, 2012 by User:Seb az86556, predating ours by nearly five months. Moreover, Stephen does not appear in the NV WP's page history, just Seb az86556 and a few bots. This suggests that this term was not invented by Stephen. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 23:30, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Eirikr: A bit late, but anyway... you're acting like you don't know about WT:CFI, but I know that you do. When Stephen was active, he was confronted on these neologisms multiple times and was never able to provide any evidence for them outside of wikis. He grew frustrated and chose to stop adding Navajo rather than follow the CFI. Navajo has some thorough documentation, and I'm sure you know just how hefty Young's dictionaries are. So, yes, some terms were invented by Seb rather than by Stephen, but that doesn't change the functional reality that CFI exists in part so that we don't spread neologisms made up by Wikipedians, but instead document language as it is actually used, even if that use doesn't include words for fauna of other continents. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 06:56, 15 May 2020 (UTC)