Talk:Tadaksahak

There are many spellings in use for the name of this language and this people, including Dawsahak, Daoussahak, Idawsahak, Idaksahak, Dahusahak, Dawssak, Tadawsahak, Tadaksahak, and probably others I haven't thought of. However, "Daksahak" is not one of them, as a quick Google Books search will reveal. I don't know which spelling of the ethnic name is most popular, but the choice for language name should be obvious: there's now a full-length grammar of the language in English, and it uses "Tadaksahak". - Lameen Souag (talk) 11:25, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: return to original name. Aervanath (talk) 04:52, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

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Discuss - Daksahak language → Tadaksahak language. This page was at Tadaksahak language until 28 July. Given that a search of Google Books suggests that no publication has ever used the spelling "Daksahak", and given that all existing publications focused on the language (including the only reference grammar, written in English) use the spelling "Tadaksahak" (bibliography), this move should not be controversial, and no objections have in fact been made. However, since a bot has since edited Tadaksahak language, the move requires assistance. - Lameen Souag (talk) 13:25, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

• Support for no reason whatsoever other than that User:Kwamikagami is the master of undiscussed, unexplained page moves of language pages which requires other users to go around cleaning up the mess. I would also support simply Tadaksahak since there is no ambiguity about the name (cf. Latin, Esperanto). —  AjaxSmack  21:09, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Support Tadaksahak language or Tadaksahak per nom. As User:Lameen Souag has pointed out above and below, "Tadaksahak" is the overwhelmingly common name used in reliable sources. The current title is borderline original research. —  AjaxSmack  02:59, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

• Support--fortunately, there are better reasons than the one cited by AjaxSmack (we can do without the personal accusation). Drmies (talk) 04:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
  • Good point. I stand by my personal accusation but will strike it so as not to compromise this request. —  AjaxSmack  02:59, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose suggested name, but support a move. My bad on substituting k for w. Per WP:NCP and WP:NCLANG, we should try for a common name for a people and their language. Of Lameen's list in the previous section, it appears that Dawsahak language would be the most appropriate choice. — kwami (talk) 12:18, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

"Trying for a common name for a people and their language" may be a useful principle for choosing between alternative names when both are widely used. In this case, as the bibliography link given shows, a blind application of the principle would leave Wikipedia at variance with every single article or book ever written focusing on the language, several of which are in English. If we are to cite general Wikipedia conventions, I would point to WP:PRINCIPALNAMINGCRITERIA - Tadaksahak is the only plausible title "based on what reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject by." - Lameen Souag (talk) 20:49, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how that follows from PRINCIPALNAMINGCRITERIA. There are two conflicting criteria there: Recognizability (arguably Tadaksahak) and Consistency (Dawsahak). It's very common to use autonyms in linguistic sources (Deutsch for 'German', Nihongo for 'Japanese', etc.), but we don't generally follow that on WP. — kwami (talk) 21:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe I've ever seen a book or article about German or Japanese in English titled "A Grammar of Nihongo" or "Relative Clauses in Deutsch". The obvious reason to use "German" and "Japanese" in Wikipedia is because those are what English speakers normally call the languages in question; similarly, one uses Icelandic, even though a person from Iceland is an Icelander.

In English, "Dawsahak" - when used at all, which is uncommon - is used for the people, not the language; Google Books returns 22 results for "Dawsahak", all referring to the people and only 3 of which are in English (namely "This is also true of a particular non-Tuareg group which Johannes Nicolaisen had never met before, namely the Daw-Sahak"; "It is very possible that they are related to the Dawsahak of Mali"; "the origin of other groups living among the Touareg, such as the Ida Oushaq (or Dawsahak, sons of Isaac)"). "Dausahaq" does marginally better, getting exactly two book-hits in the language sense in English ("Having rendered the good news into Bambara, Bobo Fing, ... Dausahaq", "Their language, Dausahaq, is related to Songhai".)

For Tadaksahak, by contrast, you get 163 results, almost all referring to the language, a large number of which are in English: "A grammar of Tadaksahak", "there is also an important nomadic group of cultural Tuaregs known as Daoussahak who speak Tadaksahak", "Closely related to Tasawaq and Tadaksahak", "Tadaksahak verb morphology with reference to Berber and Songhay origins", "the Tadaksahak, a variety of the Songhai's languages", "the Tadaksahak spoken by nomads in the Menaka region northeast of Gao", "Different from Tabelbala and Tadaksahak, the use of a subject pronoun is not obligatory", "Lacroix (1969), basing himself on Tadaksahak, established the following percentages from a lexicon of 950 entries", "Some verb morphology features of Tadaksahak", , "Some "nomadic" or "northern" Songhay languages, not yet well studied, are spoken by small beduin groups in far northern Niger, with one offshoot each extending into Mali ('Tadaksahak" near Menaka)", "Songhay: A dialect cluster in central West Africa with six Western varieties along Niger River and four Northern varieties... Tadaksahak", "In addition, there are some 1, 800 speakers of Tadaksahak in Algeria according...", "There are also Songhay languages such as Tasawaq, Tadaksahak, Tagdalt, Tabarog, Emghedeshie, and Korendje," "The system of Tadaksahak (region of Menaka-Abala) ", "'nomadic' dialects — Tihishit and Tadaksahak", "the names of the languages under consideration and the description of their whereabouts differ slightly from Lacroix (1971): Tadaksahak...", "Two languages are spoken by nomadic people: Tadaksahak in eastern Mali and...", "There is one Saharan Songhay language in Mali, Tadaksahak, in the Menaka area", "hin (Tadaksahak, Tagdalt): be able to", "These languages are Tadaksahak, Tagdal/Tabarog, Tasawaq, Emgedshi (now extinct) and Tabelbala Songhay", "and Tadaksahak (spoken by nomads near Menaka with mainly Tamashek vocabulary)"...

English already has a single well-established name for this language, and it's Tadaksahak; it would be absurd for Wikipedia to impose a new terminology. - Lameen Souag (talk) 08:08, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I get a dozen hits in English for Tadaksahak if you don't count duplicates. That's four times as many as the Dawsahak variants. As I said, it's a conflict between prominence and consistency. However, it's not a matter of "imposing" a new name: English always allows the name of a people for the name of a language. "Tadaksahak" means the same as "the Dawsahak language", and we use the latter construction in nearly all of our language articles. Our guidelines suggest that we take this approach when the autonyms of the people and the language are not transparently related, as in this case. — kwami (talk) 17:48, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

It is not the case that English always allows the name of a people to be substituted for that of a language, although that is common: viz. the unacceptability of *"Icelander language", *"Swede language", *"Finn language", *"Arab language" (vs. Icelanders, Swedes, Finns, Arabs.) And in this case, not one book or article on the subject, and very few even of those that mention it in passing, do so. - Lameen Souag (talk) 22:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

That's only true for languages with well-established forms in English. Dawsahak is definitely not one of them, and you yourself have attested to Dawsahak language (with various spellings) as a large fraction of total usage. And actually it's not even true for your examples: "Arab language" gets plenty of hits at GBooks; "Finn language" and "Swede language" were once used, though no longer. — kwami (talk) 11:48, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually, what I'm saying is exactly that: among Anglophone linguists, Tadaksahak does have a well-established form in English. The quantity point is clear enough; the quality point is what I find crucial. Not only is "Tadaksahak" by far the most commonly used form, it's also the only form used by, frankly, people with any expertise in the subject of Northern Songhay. Any reasonable bibliography of Tadaksahak will include Heath and Christiansen; none will include "William Henry Harrison and Other Poems" nor "Peoples on the move: introducing the nomads of the world". - Lameen Souag (talk) 08:17, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

What you call the "quality point" is not valid. If it were, we would need to go with technical jargon despite common terms being available. Our naming conventions advise the opposite: if jargon is avoidable without loss of precision, it should be avoided. So we're back to a choice of quantity vs. compatibility, a common difficulty in naming our articles. — kwami (talk) 19:30, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.