Template talk:Jewish languages

Indo-European

Given that neither Hebrew nor Aramaic is Indo-European, the present breakdown of categories seems a bit odd. -- Jmabel | Talk

Yeah, I just didn't want a huge list of languages in one section. The section heading can come out, or if you think of other classifications that would be fine too. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:40, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeshivish and/or Yinglish

Should Yeshivish and/or Yinglish be added to the template? If so, should they go under the Yiddish section? Jayjg ^(talk) 05:29, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd say prolly yeah...I also think it might be appropriate to split the growing bottom section up in some logical manner, and perhaps remove the parentheses, leaving the clarification of what each language is a Judæo- of to the articles themselves, or conversely, but probably less desirable, leaving the giving of the language's self-designation to the article, and putting in awkward-sounding names like Iranian Kurdistani Judæo-Aramaic and the like. Tomer ^TALK 01:23, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

One possible recommendation for splitting up that bottom section: Indo-European (Ladino, Italkian, Yevanic, Knaanic, Djidi, Zarphatic, Juhuri); Afro-Asiatic (Judæo-Arabic, Judæo-Berber, Kayla, Kaïliña); Ural-Altaic (Krymchak (which should really have its own article, Krymchak_language, separate from the Krymchaks article, which should be moved to Krymchak), Karaim); Other (Judæo-Georgian, Judæo-Malayalam); Tomer ^TALK 01:28, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Given that each division makes the template longer, I would recommend no section have fewer than 3, and preferably 5 items in it. Thus Indo-European (Ladino, Italkian, Yevanic, Knaanic, Djidi, Zarphatic, Juhuri); Afro-Asiatic (Judæo-Arabic, Judæo-Berber, Kayla, Kaïliña); Other (Krymchak, Karaim); Other (Judæo-Georgian, Judæo-Malayalam). Of course, that leaves the question of what to do with Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic; do they get their own sections, or go in Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic? I suggest the former, based on their importance and number of sub-topics, but people might object. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:15, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm fine with "the former" as well. Thus far, you Jmabel and I are the only three who have made any input yet, I say we get Jmabel's vote and move forward. So far, we have a 2/3 majority tho... ;-) Tomer ^TALK 18:40, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

I don't have a clear picture of how this should be done. My only remark is that some sort of a hierarchy may be appropriate. Why doesn't someone go for it, and I'll comment on the result. Sorry to be a wimp. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:55, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

OK, I done gone fer it. Lemme know whutcha think. Tomer ^TALK 22:51, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Splitting off Indo-Iranian languages

The time may soon come to split off Jewish Indo-Iranian languages to a separate section, and possibly Jewish Romance languages as well...especially after I finish the articles I promised to have done in half an hour (and won't be done with...) Any objections? Tomer ^TALK 08:10, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

Attention-stealing template

It looks like a lot of effort has been made to improve these articles on Jewish languages, but I don't know if this template really helps. In some articles it actually displaces the language infobox, and it is very big. Is there any way of making it more discrete or maybe solve it with ordinary link lists? Peter Isotalo 21:40, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

The problem is not (IMHO) that it's displacing other templates, but that it is having an attention conflict with the language infoboxes in a couple (far from the majority) of the relevant articles...If you really feel that it's that big a problem, I think the solution would be to get rid of the language infoboxes instead of the template, as the language infoboxes are quite easily accessible from the "parent language"s of each individual Jewish language. Tomer ^TALK 21:45, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

The language infobox is present in at least a hundred language articles. To remove it just to make room for an exclusively Jewish infobox is less than ideal. Like all other language articles, the Jewish languages are still first and foremost linguistic, and should be shown in a continuum of related languages by having the infobox, not that they happen to be spoken by Jews.

Peter Isotalo 08:14, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I went and looked, and the only article I found affected by what you appear to think is "wrong" was Bukhori. So, I moved the template in that article. Did I miss anything? Tomer ^TALK 17:19, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

But my beef wasn't mainly about this template taking precedence over the infobox, but rather about its ungainly appearance. Is there really no way of making it a bit more descrete, like making it horizontal and placing it at the bottom, like with most other similar templates, and perhaps cutting down on the amount of links?

Peter Isotalo 17:27, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I'm cool with making it horizontal and putting it at the bottom. I was the one who made an effort to put all the mentioned Jewish languages in one box, so I'll take responsibility for the clutter and am agreeable to the proposed solution. I'll give it a couple of days and then I'll do it, though I'm hardly an expert on template design. --Leifern 17:42, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I dunno, Peter...I'll solicit comment from people who have shown an interest in such templates in the past, except Leifern, who seems to be monitoring this closely already. :-p Tomer ^TALK 17:46, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I think one reason the template clashes a bit with the language info box is due to the different sizes and colors of the two templates. The language info box is wide and bright green, and this template is long and has an almost purple blue in some of the background. One suggestion I would make is to use a more subtle blue background like this, using color #d6e7ff instead of #ccccff. Also, On the info box for Yiddish language for example, I think the family color should be changed to "lightgreen" instead of that bright "lawngreen"; compare with Abaza language. If the colors of these two templates/info boxes are made, it would make them less attention-stealing and gaudy together. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 18:51, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

In fact, maybe I'll go make these two changes, and someone can revert me if they don't like it. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 18:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

There, I think it looks better; two templates still may be too much, but at least they don't clash so badly. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 18:52, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

You also might want to consider the approach we took at Template:French Revolution, which takes all of the content of Template:History of France, but supplements it with topics specific to the Revolution. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:06, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

I'd recommend checking out this first, MPerel. The different colors are used because the languages belong to different language families. And this is really isn't a matter of color... It's because this template has been applied to a group of articles (languages) that it wasn't really intendend for. The size of the template is also a reason for it being ill-suited for the current design. I can recommend redesigning it based on Template:Chinese language as well as the placement of the Chinese template (at the bottom, not right smack at the top, where it's bound to come in conflict with text, section layout and pictures).

Peter Isotalo 19:15, May 15, 2005 (UTC)

oops! You're right, I didn't realize there was a color scheme to the infobox, sorry about that! And the model templates recommended by either Jmabel or Peter are definitely something to consider in perhaps redesigning this template. --MPerel ^{( talk | contrib)} 19:32, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

A bottom template might work better; what is the convention on whether templates go on the side or on the bottom? Jayjg ^(talk) 13:50, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Tomer, for bringing this to my attention. I think that if a group of articles has a predetermined infobox that goes in a specific place, a template should not usurp that infobox's attention. In the case of this template, which will be on more than one article on languages and will only be on articles on languages, it would be prudent to turn this into a {BOTTOM} template. E=MC^2 T@lk 17:50, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

The template is still clashing with the normal language article infobox and will keep on doing so until someone removes it or redesigns it. Do we actually have any takers on horizontalizing this template?

Peter ^Isotalo 18:03, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew naming conventions

Urgent: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 18:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

redesign

Per the above discussion, I've redesigned the template. Until we have consensus to replace the old one with this one, please make changes at {{Jewish language/redesign}}. This is what it looks like:

Tomer^talk 17:19, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I tightened up the bottom of it a bit so it now looks like this:

Tomer^talk 17:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that we need to come up with a design that minimized whitespace as much as possible. The former had that advantage, but I see the advantages of having a horizontal version at the bottom.

A larger issue, I think is the extent to which this template a) gives an overview of the field of Jewish language by way of an implied taxonomy; and b) provides a navigational device for those who want to immerse themselves in the topic. For example, the article on Yinglish is interesting, but is a very different phenomenon from Yevanic, to take a random example. So I guess my question is, what is the right way to structure this knowledge? --Leifern 18:09, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

If you put Hebrew (vocalizations) under Hebrew (eras) it would help remove a lot of whitespace. Jayjg ^(talk) 18:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make whatever changes you feel are needed. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in! (Although there are some reasons why you might like to...) The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome.

Tomer^talk 19:35, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, I put "vocalizations" down a line (although I'm still not at all happy with that description), and took out some spaces in the bottom line. It now looks like this:

Tomer^talk 19:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

For some reason, Bijil Neo-Aramaic is now a redirect to Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic, so I've changed that in the template, which makes the Aramaic line a bit shorter, thus:

Tomer^talk 19:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, now with some edits by Joe and another by me, this is what it looks like:

Any objections to replacing the old version with this? Tomer^talk 20:05, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

OK, another minor edit...this time I added Category:Jewish languages to the template...so whoever does the changing out, when you take the template from the top to the bottom of the article, remove Category:Jewish languages. Tomer^talk 20:09, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

A great improvement over the current template, guys, but it needs to a bit easier to separate categories of links within the box. Template:Chinese language to me seems like a pretty good act to follow. How much wider is it possible to make the template without having it screw up smaller screen resolutions?

Peter ^Isotalo 10:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

To which categories do you refer? Tomer^talk 15:34, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The language families, of course.

Peter ^Isotalo 19:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Like this?

Category:Jewish languages

Clearly it would be preferable for the 3 columns on the bottom to be all the same width...a help Joe? Tomer^talk 02:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

OK...more modifications...first I reduced the family names, and that ended up looking like this...then I added in the "missing" articles, and got this rather putrid result. Any comments?

Category:Jewish languages Tomer^talk 06:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

You're really getting somewhere, TShilo. But why "vocalizations"? "Dialects" seems far more natural. I would also really prefer "Judeo" over the decidedly inkhorn-ish "Judæo". Also, is it possible to make slightly wider?

Peter ^Isotalo 07:48, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The "vocalizations" thing is not my doing, and as I've said before, I really dislike it. Because of a decided lack of defining vocabulary differences, however, someone decided that "dialect" was an inappropriate description. Given stress and intonation differences especially between Ashkenazic and other "vocalizations", I think the "vocalizations" and "dialects" arguments have about equal weight. As for Judeo- vs. Judæo-, I prefer "inkhornish" over "lazinessish" and "uneducatedish". Width is presently being determined here by the length of the text on each line. The reason it's as "narrow" as it is now, however, is to reduce "whitespace". Understanding your preference for "wider" might be helpful in understanding your insistence upon it, so if you could develop why you want it wider, that'd be nice.  :-p That said, my big issue right now actually has more to do with the choppy left margin... Tomer^talk 19:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

If it only refers to written variants, "vocalization" is appropriate (for Hebrew), but if we're talking one or more spoken variants, then it needs to be changed.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

It refers, actually, only to spoken variants. Ashkenazim, for example, say [ˡta ˑ lɪs] or [ˡta ˑ lɛs] for tallit, while sfaradhim say [ta ˑ ˡlet] or [ta ˑ ˡleθ]. Not only are the stressed syllables different, but so are the consonantal realizations. That said, Sfaraði "vocalizations" vary from community to community, influenced primarly by the phonology of the predominant regional language, Judezmo or otherwise, the "Sephardi vocalization" being a convenient "lumping together" of disparate communities' pronunciations, based on the erroneous assumption that Sfaraði communities had the same kind of cohesive communal history as Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi communities did... Such a mess... Tomer^talk 09:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Is it time?

If y'all are sufficiently happy with the template that it's good enough to appear in articles, say so and I'll be happy to do the grunt work. (In other words, I think any remaining issues with the new template are minor enough that they can be hashed out without adversely [or significantly] affecting the usability or appearance of the template as it shows up in the affected articles.) Cheers, Tomer^talk 16:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Bring 'em on, I say!

Peter ^Isotalo 12:07, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Done. Tomer^talk 09:40, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Isn't the template supposed to list languages?

What are the "Nat'l Yiddish Book Ctr.", "YIVO", and "Yiddish Theater" doing in a list of languages? --futhark 16:51, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Where does it say that the template is restricted to listing languages? Tomer^talk 10:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

The template is headed "Jewish Languages". Each of the subheadings is the name of a language family. Every entry in the table is the name of a language, with the exception of the three entries about Yiddish that I am questioning. If I have incorrectly inferred the purpose of the table, would someone please explain it to me? --futhark 15:58, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

The "list" idea you refer to is part of the Jewish languages article. Additionally, there is a Category:Jewish languages. While the heading says "Jewish Languages", the topic is not a list. The template brings together all aspects of Jewish languages--the fact that there's plenty of room to grow for other languages besides Yiddish is no reason to hobble the Yiddish section of the template. I foresee a future for the template in which several new sections are developed that go way beyond the current scope, which is primarily organized on the basis of genetic relationship between the languages. Right now, based on the number of articles there are out there, this is the organizational structure that makes the most sense. This structure, however, is only one of several possibilities that suggest themselves (age, number of speakers, [secular] literary importance, use by the sages, etc.)... The current layout is a reflection of the table's original layout, which was itself a reflection of the then-burgeoning section on Jewish languages in {{Jews and Judaism sidebar}}. There are additional articles on Hebrew phonology, alphabet, grammar, study, literature, and all the articles in {{Hebrew alphabet}}, for example, and Yiddish orthography and phonology and Yiddish morphology, as well as the lists Yiddish words and phrases used by English speakers and List of English words of Yiddish origin. With time and effort, these can all be incorporated into the template. Anyways, my primary interest for right now was to implement the "bottom" vs. "side" template style that was agreed upon by basically everyone but me several months ago. I'm not strongly attached to keeping the other links there (w/ the definite exception of YIVO), but I'd rather see the template developed than stripped down. The links for Yiddish theatre, National Yiddish Book Center, Yiddish typography and such could probably be handled together by including instead a link to Category:Yiddish. Tomer^talk 22:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I also think that the first three Yiddish entries look out of place. Also, if this list were "further developed," it would really become a monster. I think it nicely does the job of connecting the Jewish languages. Perhaps it would be appropriate to have some sort of "Yiddish Language/Culture" table to connect that category of articles. --Eliyak 00:50, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Italkit vs. "Judeo-Italian varieties"

I reverted an anon's alteration of [[Italkian language|Italkit]] to [[Italkian language|Judeo-Italian varieties]] for 2 reasons:

1. Italkit covers all the varieties so this doesn't need to be specified in the template and,
2. Putting it in there that way unnecessarily widens the template for no redeemable reason I can see.

Tomer^talk 10:18, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Dialects versus vocalizations

TShilo reverted my change of "dialects" to "vocalizations" with the claim that there are even differences in vocabulary.

This is simply not so. The historical differences between Ashkenazi, Sepharadi, Yemenite, etc. are for a language that was used for liturgy and Torah study, not a spoken language in day-to-day life. The texts were written similarly in all locations and could be sent, say, from Syria to France and read, but they would be read with different pronunciations in each place. All groups shared a common written corpus but pronounced it differently.

The way "dialect" is normally understood is not appropriate to the historical reality being described in this chart. Dovi 08:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Ethiopian Semitic languages

Should Amharic and Tigrinya be included here since they were (and still are) spoken by the Beta Israel and related Jewish groups in Ethiopia? What about Ge'ez as a liturgical language? ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 18:38, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, those languages are not specifically Jewishly developed languages, but languages which happen to be spoken by Jews, and to include those would probably result in a list of nearly all existing and dead languages. --Eliyak 01:07, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Revert

I have rolled back User:Danielbart's inexplicable removal of Judeo-Kurdish. I'm curious to learn how the removal can possibly be defended, so if any one can, lay it on me... Tomer^talk 06:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Judeo-Alsatian language

To add, somewhere... I'm uncertain...but I think this doesn't properly belong under "Yiddish" http://judaisme.sdv.fr//dialecte/ Comments? Tomer^talk 23:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Further reading indicates that Judeo-Alsatian is another name for Western Yiddish. Perhaps some redirects? Tomer^talk 04:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Judeo-Alsatian is a local Western Yiddish dialect. The terms are not synonymous. I'll say more about this on the as yet unstarted Western Yiddish talk page. There have also been remarks about a vestigial argot from another Western Yiddish dialect on the Yiddish talk page. It may soon be time to indicate the hierarchical relationships between classes of Yiddish dialects in the template. --Futhark|Talk 09:27, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. When this is clarified, the redirects I've created should be fixed to point to the appropriate place. Tomer^talk 10:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Yiddish articles template

Any interest in breaking Yiddish off to its own template? Presumably, such a template would include:

• Yiddish language
• Yiddish literature
• Yiddish theatre
• Yiddish Wikipedia (although I'm not sure this article should even exist...)
• Yiddish dialects
• List of English words of Yiddish origin
• Eastern Yiddish
• Western Yiddish
• Yiddish typography
• Yiddish orthography
• Yinglish
• Yiddish Renaissance
• Yiddish phonology
• Yiddish Renaissance
• Yeshivish
• YIVO
• National Yiddish Book Center
• Yiddish morphology
• Klezmer-loshn
• Bucharest Yiddish Studio Theater
• The Joys of Yiddish
• prolly some stuff from Category:Yiddish literature and Category:Yiddish-language occupations as well...

Gedächte? Tomer^talk 00:20, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean a Yiddish template instead of the current one, or in addition to it? I don't think that there is anything particularly useful to be gained by the former, but do feel that the latter would be unjustified extra baggage. Why the separation of Yiddish and not any of the other Jewish languages that head multiple articles (Hebrew comes immediately to mind)? Might it not be more effective simply to lighten the present template by restricting it to its nominal purpose, and only including references to languages proper? -- Futhark|Talk 17:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Care to elaborate on your last remark? Tomer^talk 18:06, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

To be clear, the above was forwarded as an extension of this discussion. Tomer^talk 18:08, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I took your proposal to indicate that you no longer felt it appropriate to keep the references to "Yiddish institutions" in the template. My intention was to suggest simply removing them, without constructing a separate template (regardless of any further references that might be placed there). -- Futhark|Talk 21:26, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I think characterizing it as a "proposal" is a bit strong... :-p Tomer^talk 21:53, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. What about my own suggestion of removing the line headed "Yiddish institutions" from the present template? -- Futhark|Talk 22:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I was never particularly attached to it... it was only included in the template I redid because it was in the old rhs template. I would still like to see the template better developed, but I'm inclined to agree with others that it should prolly just stick w/ the languages themselves. If you want to take the extraneous yiddish links out, go for it, but you might find yourself suddenly opposed by whoever originally thought they belonged in there. I'm inclined to redo that section myself already, as I don't think Yinglish and Yeshivish properly belong as "derivatives" of Yiddish, but as "Judeo-English" or "Jewish English", which is how they are described elsewhere (i.e., outside Wikipedia)... and there needs to be some way of including Judæo-Alsatian (and possibly other Jewish Germanic languages, should they exist). See above. Cheers, Tomer^talk 22:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I've now deleted the institutional references. -- Futhark|Talk 09:03, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Jewish English

Jewish-English helps: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] I'm not sure if the Encino/Hebonics thing is actually just a joke... Tomer^talk 01:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I've written a stub article on Jewish English languages, added it to the template, and moved Yinglish and Yeshivish. (While at it, I also moved Klezmer-loshn — which is definitely not of comparable status to the other dialects — to another new heading.) -- Futhark|Talk 10:29, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Good work. :-) Tomer^talk 00:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Good work indeed. New articles are needed: Yinglish and Yeshivish--HIZKIAH (User • Talk) 13:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Uh...have you looked at them? Tomer^talk 07:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)