Talk:Khanty languages

Note

It would be nice if someone could provide a recording of this language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.177.44.57 (talk) 13:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

The origin of "sot"

Right now, there is a notice at the end of the numeral section, to wit:

"Sot is similar to Russian sto "a hundred"; this is a coincidence. It was not borrowed."

I certainly would not believe that Khanty borrowed this from Russian; but is this really a "coincidence"? This is in disaccord with what I've heard about the Finnish word "sata" for "a houndred". I've heard that this is assumed to be borrowed from some "Satem language", more precisely of the Iranian group (and I just noted that the wiktionary entry claims the same); and is taken as one of the indications for the linguistic forefathers of Finns to have lived in the vicinity of speakers of some language of the Iranian branch of the Aryan languages at some prehistoric time. This would actually make Finnish sata a cognate of Russian sto, not by direct borrowing but by a several thousand years old common descent. In any case, I'd be rather surprised if Uralian linguist expert do not consider Finnish sata and Khanty sot as cognates.

This would make sot and sto cognates, too, wouldn't it; although the similarities of the present-day forms partly would be due to independent but incidently similar simplification of the original satem-language form, probably something similar to Avestan satəm.

Does anyone who has access to more reliable sources than my vague memories a possibility to check this? JoergenB (talk) 05:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm to tired to think clearly. If the words are cognates as I proposed, the youngest common origin of course would be placed back at the differentiation of the proto-Slavic and the proto-Aryan groups.JoergenB (talk) 05:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It could be at any time, right? Slavic doesn't have to be a descendant of the source language, only a cousin. However, the borrower would have to be proto-Fenno-Ugric or earlier, unless there were a second borrowing. kwami (talk) 06:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Was it borrowed at such an early time? Really, I can't deny it, I might have been uncareful in putting this statement in. I'll remove the statement from the article then; on the other hand, perhaps you can tell us where you read the claim that the Uralic languages - for clearly if it has been borrowed it must have been at a very early moment indeed, before Finnic and Ugric split! - borrowed satem from the satem-languages. Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 07:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I read it here! My point was just that, if the Khanti and Finnic words are cognate, then they inherited it from their last common ancestor - unless they borrowed it independently from IE or from each other. If the latter is the case, there's no more sense in pointing this word out as a Fenno-Ugric cognate than there is in saying that the Arabic, Japanese, and Aymara words for 'radio' are cognate. kwami (talk) 08:25, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Follow the wikt link I gave: sata! (I'll try to find out where I read it; but it might be from a book, "Uraliska språk" by Björn Collinder, which I've lent out 20 years ago and haven't got back yet...)-JoergenB (talk) 17:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Dialect Phonology, Orthography

Several requests:
1) If the three main literary dialects are Kazym, Shuryshkar, and middle-Ob, it would be nice to have some phonological information on these dialects.
2) It would also be useful to map the alphabet with the phonology. For example, what cyrillic characters does the Kazym dialect use, and what are the sounds of these letters?
3) For the examples given in this article, is there mention of which dialect it is?
languagegeek (talk) 18:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Split proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was No Concensus

---

Much like with Mansi, Khanty is not a language: it is a dialect continuum of related languages. All sources discussing Khanty from a synchronic perspective focus on a particular dialect (usually a Northern or Eastern one). Khanty as a whole is only ever treated as a historical entity.

It seems to me splitting the information into separate articles on 1) Khanty languages, 2) Northern Khanty, 3) Southern Khanty, 4) Eastern Khanty would be beneficial organizationally.

Compare the splitting of Nenets languages into separate bottom-level articles: Tundra Nenets language and Forest Nenets language. We also have split Komi language into Komi-Zyrian language, Komi-Permyak language and Komi-Yazva language despite that these three are still considered to be in only a dialectal relationship to each other.

Scholarly consensus on if the Khanty varieties comprise dialects or languages regardless does not seem to exist though. I'm aware of a very small number of papers explicitly arguing for a separate languages analysis, as well as a large implicit near-consensus (purely by inertia, without explicit arguments!) in favor of a multi-dialect analysis. We might need to pull a Chinese and describe each subgroup as simply a "variety" and leave discussion on the lang/'lect issues into the main article?

--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:59, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Support split. --JorisvS (talk) 14:37, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. As long as most linguistic sources treat Khanty as a single dialect cluster, then we should have a single article. The details of internal variation belong in the text, not in the title. There are many many other languages which are similar in this regard. — kwami (talk) 23:26, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
  • (Comment) I'm not sure I follow your argument… We have no shortage of articles for dialects of "single dialect clusters" (say, Category:German dialects). This article could well be retained as "Khanty language" in the singular if you feel "Khanty languages" would be too POV.
    What I'd mainly like to see is to split the discussion of particular dialects into articles of their own, since that is what most of the sources appear to do. E.g. even Abondolo (1998), which is supposed to be an encyclopedic overview of Khanty, starts by describing some of the general variation among the dialects, but then proceeds to present a more in-detail description of the Tremjugan dialect. As the article grows, presenting generalizations covering all the varieties is going to be difficult and might require us to construct them rather than citing them from anywhere; and an article split in sequentially describing the varieties one by one, repeating the same information a couple times, does not strike me as good organization.
    (BTW, can I assume that editors' views here also apply to the largely similar proposal I have going over at Mansi language?)
    --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 13:37, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but we don't delete German language or move it to "German languages" just because we have articles on German dialects. It remains the main article despite the dialects. If the article becomes unwieldy and repetitive as it's developed, then yes, that would be a good reason to split. — kwami (talk) 10:12, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Who said anything about deleting anything? I'm proposing more articles, not less. If this one might need renaming is an entirely secondary issue. (Also, the German analogy has the problem that there is no Standard Khanty to present as the "main" variety.) --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 20:12, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

"Or move it to German languages". German isn't a good analogy. I guess the ? is whether 2 articles wd be better developed than 1. If so, we shd split. — kwami (talk) 20:49, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

• Support. These are considered to be sufficiently different from each other that the same books are published in different variants. -Yupik (talk) 21:44, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but that has nothing to do with us. English books may have separate US and UK editions too. — kwami (talk) 10:12, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Assumedly, you'd still be able to understand the US and UK versions. In the case of Khanty, that's not necessarily true. It's more akin to there being an English version of some book and a Swedish version of it. You might understand some of it, but not a great deal of it. -Yupik (talk) 13:15, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Also since we do have articles for British English and American English, I really do not follow how this comparision is an argument against a split. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 20:12, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Missing (latin) letters?

Compared the ‘Latin (1931–1937)’ table and its corresponding ruWiki, there are

Г, г — G, g

Ө, ө — ?

Ц, ц — C, c

Ы, ы — ?

? — Ł̦, ł̦

Garamond (talk) 15:46, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Disputed alphabet

Should probably say or show somewhere, that the alphabet, not even for Kazym dialect, isn't set in stone, or to which everyone agree to. This can be seen between dictionaries and the current Khatny newspaper. One pheud is between ԯ and ԓ that I've noticed myself.

"El with hook has been in use in Khanty since 1990. El with hook and El with descender are considered variants of the same letter in Khanty; their use depends on the particular publisher."[1]

Ewithu (talk) 18:35, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

New Split Proposal

In accordance with the split conducted on Wiktionary, and on the Mansi languages article, this section should be split as well. I would appreciate it if someone else could conduct this one, since I did the last. Though as a last resort I can do it. Ewithu (talk) 15:46, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Ok. I'll do it soon. 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 21:48, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Is there a reason "intransitive" is in boldface?

The first sentence of the "Syntax" section is as follows: "Both Khanty and Mansi are basically nominative–accusative languages but have innovative morphological ergativity. In an ergative construction, the object is given the same case as the subject of an intransitive verb, and the locative is used for the agent of the transitive verb (as an instrumental)."

It's not obvious to me, a layman reader, why this word is bolded. I was about to treat it as a strange anomaly and unbold it, but it occurred to me that this might be some kind of formal linguistic notation. Is that the case and, if so, is it in line with the MOS to use bold in that way? MOS:BOLD refers to mathematical notation, but this seems a bit different since we're dealing with inline text.

I am pinging @Twenex: since he appears to be the one who wrote this sentence almost twenty years ago.

Nicknimh (talk) 23:21, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Goodness. It's amazing to me that I wrote this nearly twenty years ago, and I definitely don't know what I had in mind when I wrote it in bold. It's not linguistic notation as far as I'm aware, so I'd say feel free to unbold, and thanks for picking this up. Twenex (talk) 22:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 24 August 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (non-admin closure) Bobby Cohn (talk) 18:16, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

---

Khanty language → Khanty languages – Agglomeration of mutually unintelligible varieties 🪐Kepler-1229b | talk | contribs🪐 16:42, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

• Support – Glottolog splits them out. I'm a little surprised (though maybe I shouldn't be) that SIL doesn't. Snowman304|talk 18:10, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

• Weak support. In Oxford Guide to Uralic languages (2022), Janne Saarikivi says that Khanty consists of three different languages (North, East, and South Khanty), traditionally labelled as dialects. Elsewhere in the Guide the choice of words is more agnostic (it is sometimes claimed that [the] main dialects or dialect groups [of Ob-Ugric languages] should be regarded as separate languages). Instead of "languages" or "dialects", East Khanty etc. are called "varieties" in the Guide. In Routledge's The Uralic Languages (2023) Tapani Salminen argues for recognizing the Khanty varieties as separate languages, and says From any relevant point of view, it is quite astonishing that not only a relatively large number of conservative linguists but also the Soviet and Russian authorities as well as SIL International [...] unanimously talk about a single 'Khanty language'. In the chapter dedicated to Khanty in the same book, Márta Csepregi calls them dialects, but says that We gain a clearer picture of the situation if we think of Khanty not as a monolithic language but rather as a cluster or loose chain of more or less distinct dialects. Based on these, I weakly support the move, but the issue is not very clear in the literature and that should be acknowledged in the article. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 06:07, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Letters

@Kwamikagami Hi! I just wanted to ask, what prompted you to remove the hooked variants of the letters, and only leave the қ ԯ ң ҳ ҷ? Ewithu (talk) 22:05, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

General govt sources. AFAICT only the publishing house that created the hooked variants uses them; other sources continue to use the original forms.

I just found this again for Nivx, with a govt publication on some energy project from 2014. — kwami (talk) 22:16, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to leave the link to the 2013 seminar here, for others.

Why couldn't we include both, as used orthographies? If we only inlcude one, we are exculind the validity of the others in the face of the reader. Both can be correct, both were used at some point. Neither is better then the other. I feel it is down to personal preferenc now, if the Ob-Ugric institutes ruling is not a valid argument for officiality.

The hooked variants are used over on wiktionary too, after a long winded debate. Ewithu (talk) 07:01, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, they should both be mentioned, but perhaps more obviously. I think we should make it clear that they're not distinct orthographies, though, despite the unfortunate Unicode encoding. — kwami (talk) 07:20, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Note that Surgut cannot be written in all hooked letters without a dedicated font, because Unicode has refused to encode the hooked variant of Ҷ ҷ. And if you have a dedicated font, there's no need for any of these letters.

See: L2/23-015 Comments on CYRILLIC CHE WITH HOOK’s use in Khanty and Tofa (Tofalar) (L2/22-280).

— kwami (talk) 07:27, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the have. But we shoukd still include all. So people know it is used.

Overcomplicating this issue will not help expanding these languages, just include both or all three, and we'll call it a day. Still seperate letters, but all used to write the same sound yes, which was a given before your edit, due to them being there in the bracekts beside the others. Ewithu (talk) 07:35, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I've added a second table. How does that look?

No, they're not separate letters. That's the point. This is no different than an English-language publishing house deciding to print all their books in a font that has the script variants of 'a' and 'g'. Despite this being an encoding option in Unicode, i.e. 'ɑ' and 'ɡ', the words should still be encoded in the basic Latin alphabet, e.g. haggle, not *hɑɡɡle. — kwami (talk) 07:42, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes thank you.

So you are saying even ӈ ң ҥ

should be encoded under a singular code? And the font should decide which to display? Ewithu (talk) 09:39, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

< ҥ > is a distinct letter. But < ӈ > is just Просвещение's in-house variant of < ң >.

Ideally, you would either choose a Просвещение-style font or a traditional font, but the underlying encoding / data structure would be the same for everyone. I could even see someone like SIL adding character variants, so you could choose how you want them to display within a single font. But now we have duplicate Unicode characters, which means that the same word will be encoded different ways by different people, which is going to create a mess. These languages have enough problems with language revitalization and preservation without something like this to mess things up. — kwami (talk) 09:56, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Can you give us a source that ӈ ң ҥ were intended to be one letter? Ewithu (talk) 10:18, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

What about the eyclusive use of the ӈ letter in Mansi? Does that supposed to be ң? Ewithu (talk) 10:20, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

If there is no established standard of character use, you can't just say that there is a "main" form between ӊ, ң and ӈ. The statement about the "font" difference is just not true, since they use them them in digital sources (pdf, sites) as unicode characters you can copy and paste (unlike Лӯима̄ сэ̄рипос, which uses empty unicode characters and displays them as а̄о̄ӯэ̄я̄ё̄ю̄е̄ы̄ via their working font). And since there is no defined standard, shouldn't Wiktionary just pick up one but consistent form and just give alternative forms until the time they standartise it? If I'm wrong there already is standard, why not using it? Kaarkemhveel (talk) 10:23, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

@Kaarkemhveel I have to agree with this, @Kwamikagami. To use an example you are probably more familiar with, neither you nor I would accept ꞑ as an alternative of ŋ for use in the IPA. It's absolutely possible that these might be treated as stylistic variants in certain contexts, and they may have been treated that way originally, but you cannot say that they are always mere variants, especially when a descender and hook are objectively not variants of each other when applied in some other contexts. I also agree with the point that you cannot call one a "main" letter unless there is actual evidence in support of that. Theknightwho (talk) 12:05, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Even the IPA accepts 'g' as an alternative of 'ɡ' for use in the IPA alphabet. That's the analogy here.

From what our sources say, these are always treated as stylistic variants, not just originally but this century. It's merely an issue of which publishing house typesets the text.

As for the rest, please read the ref. — kwami (talk) 12:10, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I never said either "ӈ ң ҥ" or "ӊ ң ӈ" were the same letter. AFAIK no-one has. E.g. <ӊ> contrasts with <ң/ӈ> in Sami.

The "main" form, as I've call it, is the traditional glyph used before a single influential publishing house decided to make their own fonts. Call it the "traditional" form if you prefer.

Asking for a standard between font variants is like asking whether English should be written in a serif or sans-serif font. It would make no difference at all if Unicode hadn't effed up here. But it's kinda like whether the IPA gee should be <g> or <ɡ> when they're interchangeable.

I agree that we should pick one and stick to it, at least as the default.

As for Mansi, the only text I have uses 'ӈ'. But again, concluding anything from that would be like having an English text in a sans-serif font and concluding that English is "supposed" to be typeset in sans-serif. — kwami (talk) 12:07, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Here's a relevant bit from the response to Unicode, by "Tapani Salminen (Finno-Ugrian language specialist with expertise in Forest Nenets, Northern Khanty and Eastern Khanty":

the WITH HOOK characters represent allographs created by the «Просвещение» (“Enlightenment”, later «Дрофа») publishing house, which, however, is responsible for printing the bulk of school books in the relevant languages, hence the *shape* WITH HOOK is the one first encountered by pupils learning to read and write in the said languages. Nevertheless, Җҗ Ққ Ԯԯ Ңң Ҳҳ Ҷҷ are to be preferred over the respective “hook” allographs, and search engines in particular should start treating them correctly as variants of the same characters.

Very much like variants of a, g and t used in school primers in English, which we treat as a font choice. — kwami (talk) 12:31, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah. They are not treating them equaly, that's why we need to include both. We cannot help that fact from here I don't think.

As a footnote, OOO Format also uses the hooked ones. Ewithu (talk) 13:07, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Afaik the purpose of "alternative forms" section in the first place is to show all the forms in which word can be found in texts, which to my look is pretty much the situation here. You type "ясӑӊ", Wiktionary shows you the main entry e.g. "ясӑӈ", which contains "ясӑӊ" in its alternative forms, you click on it, you see the definition. Word is found, problem solved.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Kaarkemhveel (talk) 14:12, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that would work for Wiktionary. But for WP we should probably decide if we want to be consistent for a language, or between languages.

BTW, for Җҗ and Ҷҷ we don't need to worry, because Unicode doesn't support two forms. So it's just Ққ Ԯԯ Ңң Ҳҳ. — kwami (talk) 14:19, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Sans-serif and serif are both accepted by the same speakers as representative of the written glyphs they use in pen-to-paper writing. I'm not sure the same is true for these letters; If a Khanty speaker writes their /ŋ/ as an ӈ and don't accept ӊ as a variant of that glyph, no amount of official Unicode descriptions of these glyphs being the same will make that go away. Compare also the various 'okinas and similar where it is important to the speaker exactly how the letter is written. I suspect the same is true here, that certain if not all Khanty speakers will not consider the two 'spelling variants' as the same letter, but rather distinct letters, not all accepted by the same speakers as adequate to spell their language. Thadh (talk) 08:04, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

You keep saying Unicode. It's not about Unicode. These are print books for the most part. One publishing house came up with their own in-house font. Others continue to use the original letter forms.

If some speakers of a small language in the US only know their language in writing from school primers that use children's a's, g's and t's, then they may believe that's the proper way to write their language, and that normal Latin a, g and t are wrong. They may prefer to write it that way themselves. But that doesn't mean it is wrong, or that the all publishers should switch to a primer-style font.

Also, it's rather doubtful that there's any difference in handwriting, any more than there is for a, g and t in English.

You say you suspect one thing or another, but we have a specialist in Khanty who says the opposite. Not uses one or the other, but clarifies that these are trivial graphic variants and that it's wrong to claim that one instead of the other is correct. — kwami (talk) 08:17, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

That is exactly what that would mean, for that language. Not for English, of course, but for that language, we would indeed need to use the proper forms. I think it's an assumption to think it's only Просвещение which uses these glyphs - have you tried looking at handwritten Khanty? Thadh (talk) 08:25, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

We follow sources, not your suspicions. If you have contrary reliable sources, then we can write about the dispute and source it. But meanwhile we follow the sources we do have.

And no, that not what that would mean for that language. It would only mean that some people have minimal education in their language. — kwami (talk) 08:31, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

First of all, your last remark is incredibly anglocentric and colonial: "Those stupid natives don't know how to write their own language properly, let me show them how to do that." I think that kind of thought is not tolerated on this Wiki.

Second of all: the Khanty museum uses the hooks in signs. Is the Khanty museum a book published by Просвещение? there are books that use the hook for ł but the tail for ŋ. The Khanty bible is also not published by Просвещение afaict, so I have no idea where you got the idea from that it's one publisher who uses these. Seems to me like you decided that one of the variants was 'correct' and just didn't bother looking for counterevidence, but you could prove me wrong. Thadh (talk) 09:22, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I never said anything like that. If speakers with minimal education in their language (which occurs a lot with small languages) base their idea of writing it on the primers they learned from, and that does not match native speakers who have significant education in their language, we shouldn't conclude that the educated speakers are wrong.

Again, you're engaged in OR. If you can find counter sources, great, but I'm not pushing my experience against sources by experts in the field. — kwami (talk) 10:10, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

This is bullshit and you know it. You're engaged in OR just as much as I am.

You give one source for a claim that I have shown is obviously incorrect. You dismiss absolutely everything that doesn't support your claim. If a source says dogs are cats, that doesn't make it true, and we don't need scientific articles saying it's not true to ignore that source. Thadh (talk) 11:41, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

You haven't shown anything, AFAICT. If you have, my apologies. Please quote a sentence or two from your source to point me in the right direction.

Reporting RS's is not OR. You've been here long enough to know what OR is. — kwami (talk) 11:46, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Again, look at the links I sent. None of them are published by Просвещение, all of them include hooks. This is directly counter the claim that hooks are orthographical variants used only by Просвещение.

One of the books also uses both hooks and tails. This is directly counter the claim that hooks are orthographical variants of tails - otherwise text would have to be written only in one or only in the other, not mix the two. Thadh (talk) 11:52, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

They never made that claim. — kwami (talk) 11:53, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

No, but you have:

"One popular publishing house uses hooked variants of the letters ԯ and ң, and these have been redundantly encoded in Unicode as separate characters."

This is simply not true, multiple publishers use it and multiple instances outside of publishers. It's also demonstrably not redundant, since as I've shown above, the two diacritics are used by Mansi writers even within one work for different letters. Thadh (talk) 16:39, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it's better to cite sources and stating that the situation with orthography is problematic, and giving "stylistic issue" as one of the opinions, not as the fact (because it doesn't seem to be). The claim about "minimal education" is rather bold considering that there is simply no solid language standard to compare one's education with. English has codified norm and school program, Russian does - Khanty barely has one.

As for character use in various sources: as I get it, the most mainstream source for Khanty today is Khanty Jasang, and apparently, from around 2019 it transitioned to ӅӉ, starting inconsistently even within one article, but to this moment using solely tailed letters and leaving letters with descenders only in old navigation titles e.g. "Архив газеты ХӐНТЫ ЯСӐҢ". Again, the paper itself is now written with tailed letters on purpose, since, letters with descender were used before inconsistently, but now they don't.

I wonder what do you think about that. Kaarkemhveel (talk) 09:27, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, we should follow sources, as always.

No, we should not say that the claims in those sources are 'opinions' because we disagree with them. We should simply summarize them.

Wow, there we do have Ӆ Ӊ for Nivx Khanty. Those are Sami letters, and Ӊ contrasts with Ӈ in Sami. But here we have them being used as graphic variants of the Khanty letters. If we're going to use our own opinions, then here IMO that shows that these are all allographs and not distinct letters, except of course in Sami where we have a semantic contrast.

I don't see what's inconsistent in the 2019 issue, though. They use the tailed letters throughout, apart where they have PUA characters, and we have no good way to know what's going on there. All we can say with certainty is that they stopped using PUA. — kwami (talk) 10:20, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

First of all, there is no Ң in Kildin Sami, there is Ӈ.
Second of all, unlike Khanty, Kildin has three codified orthographies, with defined characters. There is no official sources, where Ӈ or Ӊ is consistently written as Ң.
Third of all, is there Ӆ in Nivkh at all? I'm in a chat with native speakers of Amur Nivkh, and I've never seen the letter before. Could you send me something where I can read about it?

Speaking of 'opinions' - you're position is opinion, not mine. Some language have certified standard, some don't. Khanty doesn't. What are the objective reasons to prefer Ң over Ӊ or Ӈ outside of your personal feel of right?

When we don't have a document certifying certain set of characters, we can't just claim X character is a "stylistic variantion" of Y character, especially when two or more official or well-respected sources consistently use different sets. "Stylistic variation" is ԓ, which can be displayed differently in different fonts. You can't say "nah it's just a Просвещение variant of Ң".

And I'm sorry, who are you to claim that "those are Sami letters"? Is Ї Ukrainian letter, or you allow it to be used for Rusyn orthography? Kaarkemhveel (talk) 10:56, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I said "Ӊ contrasts with Ӈ in Sami".

Sorry, typo for "Khanty".

Maybe you could read the source I've been using for this? It's not the only one, but it is representative. That would answer your question of where my opinion comes from. (Your opinion is of course not an opinion, but fact.)

Again, your not-an-opinion-but-fact against the statement of an expert in the field. No offense, but I don't know who you are, so I'll go with the expert.

If I say "J is an English letter", I'm not forbidding anyone else from using it. — kwami (talk) 11:05, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

1) You said "Ӊ contrasts with Ң in Sami" before the correction.
2) In your source, the very next paragraph below the one you cited, says:

"I attach an image that we have discussed before [see L2/12-052] to demonstrate that the very same language, Eastern Khanty, is written accurately with descenders in a regular newspaper article, of which there are hundreds, as opposed to “hooks” that only appear in a handful of publications quoted by Nikita M."

Now there are hundreds of "tails" in the still regular newspaper. Think about it.

3) I don't have personal relationships with Khanty and it simply isn't important for me what type of letter it uses. I never said my opinion is a fact, nor writing my opinion as the only possible or preferable over the others - quite the opposite: "I think it's better to cite sources and stating that the situation with orthography is problematic, and giving "stylistic issue" as one of the opinions". Of many equal options. The reality is, Khanty doesn't have the only "right" set of characters, and modern different official sources use different letters quite consistently according to their local tradition. That's it. Kaarkemhveel (talk) 11:25, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I don't know what we're debating then.

If in the era of hard-copy different publishers used different graphic variants, and now in the electronic age reputable sources for the language use different Unicode characters for the same, then those are allographs. A stylistic difference, as you say. I thought there were only two variants (excluding non-RS's with various hacks, such as ⟨л,⟩ and ⟨н,⟩), but you've shown there are three. I agree that we should simply report on the situation, which is that these Unicode characters are interchangeable. We do need to address the issue of Unicode, whatever its defects, because we're a Unicode-based electronic source. — kwami (talk) 11:34, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I would say it's rather a problem of poorly codified orthography rather than a Unicode issue, because both Kildin nor Kazakh, for instance, don't have an issue with Ң being written as Ӊ, since they do have an official document showing the Unicode value of each individual character in the alphabet.

All in all, I'm glad we came to a conclusion. I'm sorry about the heat of discussion in some places, it wasn't intended. Kaarkemhveel (talk) 11:46, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I realized partway through that I misread the tone of your argument, misinterpreting agreement as disagreement and dragging you down a rabbit hole for no purpose. So yeah, sorry from me too.

Is there anything I've done in the article that you disagree with? We now have a 3rd stylistic variant of the alphabet, but IMO it wouldn't be beneficial to add a third one of those yellow tables. — kwami (talk) 11:52, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I think orthography section should look like "Eastern Khanty doesn't have a solid orthography standard — different sources (both official and unofficial) can use different characters for representing the same sound. For instance, the official periodic paper "Хӑнты ясӑӈ" before 2019 used letters with descenders, then switched to "tailed" letters [source]. The museum of Khanty source uses "hooked" letters, ..." And so on in that manner. I think it's important to cite modern instances (2019 and later?), since as we saw earlier, the orthography traditions within one producing group tend to change over time.

As for tables, I think, it wouldn't be a mistake to write "tailed" letters with asterisk and write "Letters Ӊ, Ң and Ӈ are used interchangeably depending on local written tradition", just to not overload it much, but I know there could be other options as well (I just can't come up with them right away). Kaarkemhveel (talk) 12:21, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it doesn't have a solid orthographic standard, only that it's not settled which Unicode characters should be used. Those are two different things. We're only talking about a single modern alphabet here. In print it would be hard to impossible to tell the difference. I think your 2nd para is the better approach. — kwami (talk) 13:11, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Huh, I found something.

"Единые принципы графики и орфографии хантыйского языка – путь к развитию письменности и сохранению культурного наследия хантыйского народа"
В журнале «Вестник угроведения» опубликована статья Н. Б. Кошкаревой «Актуальные вопросы совершенствования хантыйской графики и орфографии», в которой излагается история хантыйской письменности и формулируются научные принципы графики и орфографии. На сайте Обско-угорского института прикладных исследований и разработок открыт раздел «Обсуждаем проблемы хантыйской письменности», в котором ведутся дискуссии о путях и перспективах развития хантыйской графики и орфографии. Получено 12 отзывов от ведущих специалистов в области изучения хантыйского языка,
которые поддерживают деятельность Рабочей группы.

РЕЗОЛЮЦИЯ. семинара «Пути совершенствования графики и орфографии хантыйского языка» (2013):
6) обратиться к разработчикам Microsoft Office с просьбой о включении в стандартный набор шрифта TimesNewRoman букв n иN для обозначения среднеязычного согласного [t’] для казымского диалекта и буквы «о с пояском и галочкой» для обозначения краткого гласного [о] сургутского диалекта, а также букв «х с хвостом», «к с хвостом», «ч с хвостом», начертание которых должно соответствовать облику других букв с округлыми «хвостами»;

Topical issues of perfection of the Khanty script and orthography - Brief summary describing situation with Khanty orthography.

That's orthography of Kazym Khanty from 2014: https://ouipiir.ru/sites/default/files/docs/642-1379.pdf. Hooks.

Dialects of Khanty, 2016, "using new practical orthography". Hooks.

Orthography and punctuation of Kazym Khanty. 2023. Hooks. Kaarkemhveel (talk) 15:34, 15 September 2024 (UTC)