Talk:List of contemporary ethnic groups/Archive 2

Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Ukraine

If Ukraine is listed in Russia's subgroup, then why isn't Russia listed in Ukraine subgroup? They have each others largest diaspora. -G — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.44.122.209 (talk) 19:05, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Ethnic groups not showing up in the 'A' section

None of the ethnic groups between 'Arab Britons' and 'Ayrums' are being displayed. ArenTMA (talkcontribs) 15:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Arab Britons are described as" an endangered Amazonian tribe of hunter-gatherers"... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.50.131.40 (talk) 08:05, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I did eventually manage to fix this, although I quite liked the idea of Arab Britons being categorised as an endangered Amazonian tribe of hunter-gatherers. --Roisterer (talk) 07:30, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
I do know for 8 years, the mysterious Adyhaffe people was a supposed Ethiopian tribe that lived in the list of modern ethnic groups, but it turns out they did not exist and the edit was removed. The list is in need of proper regular maintenance to make sure no hoax, myth or fake edits show up again. 71.102.1.95 (talk) 18:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

List Split by Continent

Surely this list should be split by Continent, i.e List of Ethnic groups in Africa or Europe--WALTHAM2 (talk) 23:00, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. If no one disagrees, I'll start the long, labourious process. --Roisterer (talk) 13:01, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
That should probably be a separate page; "list of ethnic groups by continent"? Maybe even multiple pages: "ethnic groups of Africa" "ethnic groups of North America", etc. I think this is fine as an alphabetical list can be useful.

Are castes ethnicities?

I've noticed a few Indian castes on this list (e.g. Brahmin and Boyar caste). Are they actually seperate ethnicities? Or am I opening a huge can of worms raising this? --Roisterer (talk) 09:17, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Ethnicity, A-H

Did some industrious editor get tired of working on this page after they got through "H"? Because getting all of this information on to one page is a helluva lot of work and is very useful (even realizing that the population numbers are quickly outdated).

If anyone wanted to return and finish I-Z, I certainly would applaud the effort! Newjerseyliz (talk) 22:26, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I've done some editing - namely expanding and joining the tables for all groups while removing the alphabetical grouping which made sorting by population numbers impossible. 91.49.230.169 (talk) 17:35, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

This doesn't make sense!

Seriously, when you order things by population in the table, you can see how outrageous the numbers are. I mean, there's no way there are 300 million Bengalis and Bretons. How about thos 38 million Chickasaws in the United States? Or 280 million Arabs? I'm going to try to fix all this. InMooseWeTrust (talk) 18:13, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

African-Americans and Their Statelessness

While I have no objections to the classification of the descendants of African slaves living in the U.S. as "stateless," (which is, in itself, a controversial opinion that I happen to adopt) I think the justification for this claim ought to be reconsidered. It is not due to "mental conditioning" by European/American colonizers that African-Americans cannot (or do not) identify with a state in West Africa. A more valid reason is that most West African states which exist today did not exist at the time of slavery in the U.S. More, it is extremely probable that most African-Americans are of mixed ethnic ancestry (not to mention mixed racial ancestry) due to the intermingling of various African ethnic groups once they reached the New World via slave ship. Lastly, as descendants of Black slaves have likely had lineages extant in the U.S. for centuries, it is not unexpected that they would not trace their personal ethnic identities back to a single African state. Even many White Americans who have ethnic group-specific last names may not identify with a particular European state due to intermarriage through the generations, a loss of record of where their families came from, and/or a lack of interest in identifying as European after numerous generations are born in the U.S.

71.162.197.201 (talk) 02:57, 13 October 2013 (UTC)Chuck G.

WP:TNT

this list is ostensibly a wiki-trainwreck of the first order, and should be divided into "list of lists" format linking to the applicable sub-lists. I do not think it is at all salvageable. --dab (𒁳) 12:15, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

in fact, looking through the list, I find it is worse than useless, because it contains patently false information, especially concerning populations (naturally all unreferenced).

I have compiled a list of the largest dozen or so ethnic groups and checked their approximate sizes with the linked articles on the group, their language, their diasporas, etc. I suppose if there is to be any list on this page at all, it will need to build on that and begin with the really large groups. Collections of minor groups must go to regional sub-articles. If nobody objects I will remove the broken general list. --dab (𒁳) 14:49, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi. I have corrected data about Germans, Italians, Japanese people and Russians by using sourced information about their own article on En.Wikipedia. I agree with your edits but I would recommend you to wait other opinions before removing the broken general list. Thank you.--Giant4s (talk) 14:58, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


look, I told you I would fix it, and I said it would take some hours, so at least give me a chance, would you?

I am done now. I settled for citing ranges where the "ancestry" question messes up estimates. I also updated the figures to CIA Factbook estimates where possible (the Indian groups add millions to their headcount on a yearly basis). I understand you mostly care about listing the Italians. I now give "60–140 million". It is not acceptable to simply say "140 million" and as "reference" give a link to some pdf file on the internets. We now have a low and a high estimate and a footnote explaining why they are so far apart. I did the same for Germans, French and English. This problem is mostly encountered with European groups. This has political reasons (Europe is in the process of abolishing ethnic groups altogether, or at least attempting to stigmatize the concept) but also historical ones (ethnic miscegenation in the US takes generations, and is now in the process of becoming basically untraceable. Two generations ago, most Americans still had an ethnic identity, now most have a long list of ancestries). In the case of Turks and Arabs, the question is also political, in this case not because attempts of abolishing the concept, but on the contrary the attempt to inflate one's own count as much as possible. --dab (𒁳) 09:19, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


I expected this, and it came up quicker than I feared. Yes, we need to make explicit what method we base these estimates on. Preferably based on a single identifiable WP:RS. If we mix references, we mix methods, and the result will be unusable.

Peoples with colonial histories are difficult. The Japanese are a good example of a well-defined ethnic group. So, to a somewhat lesser extent, are the Russians. The Germans are notoriously difficult, as are the Irish, English, Spaniards, and Portuguese.

By definition we do not want to count everybody who speaks Spanish (because Spanish is a multicultural, multi-ethnic, even multi-racial lingua franca); conversely, we probably don't want to count remote descendants of Germans who emigrated to the USA as "Germans" just because they ticked "German ancestry" in the census. --dab (𒁳) 15:06, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay. But in the French people and Germans you considered also the ancestry. 100 million for both includes also the ancestry or not? For example, you wrote French diaspora that considers also the ancestry.--Giant4s (talk) 15:16, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


I know. I am not done with this, you caught me in the middle of building the table. But I don't have time to finish it today anyway.

I think we will have no choice than to fall back on a published source which has done this work already.

I suggest the criterion should be, "people who identify as $ETHNIC primarily, retaining cultural and linguistic ties". You need to sift through the "diaspora" article in every case. This will take hours. As I said, it's very easy with the Japanese, because they retain a strong ethnic identity. If you ask me, count only those parts of the "German diaspora" living in German-speaking communities. Out of "50 million German Americans" maybe count a quarter million of Pennsylvania Dutch, plus maybe another couple of thousand from smaller communities. But again, even if we agree on a methodology like that, it will still be WP:SYNTH, so we'll have to look out for published sources.

The problem is endemic to Wikipedia. People started to build "$ETHNIC diaspora" articles like it was going out of fashion. After ten years, this Wikipedia trend has actually had an effect on how the term "diaspora" is used in the real world.

A "diaspora" used to be a tight-knit ethnic community scattered among a host ethnicity. It is wrong to use French diaspora for anyone descended from 18th-century French settlers. Or at least it used to be wrong before Wikipedians imposed this usage. Now it's not "wrong", it's just misleading, and open to a wide range of interpretations. --dab (𒁳) 15:24, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


Perhaps require "native speakers", as there is no ethnic group in the world that isn't connected to a language.

This cuts only one way. "English speaker" does not imply "English ethnicity", but "English ethnicity" must imply "native English speaker". So the figure cited can in no case be larger than the total number of native speakers, and it must be smallers if there are identifiable groups who natively speak the same language. This is how I estimated 100 M Germans (maybe it's closer to 90M). From this also follows that there cannot be more than 60M or so Italians, or 47M or so Gujaratis. It's useful as a sanity check.

Or perhaps the proposition of building a "list of ethnic groups by size" is flawed from the beginning and we should drop it. --dab (𒁳) 15:30, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Okay. I absolutely don't want to be disagreeable because you have more experience than me in Wikipedia. But I study ethnic groups and the ancestry is fundamental. Also in the United States there is a census by ethnic groups http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/c2kbr-35.pdf who shows 50 million Germans who must be added to the list. The same for Italians, Russians and Japanese people. I have reliable sources. What do you think about? Ethnicity is not always linked to languages. As you said above, this list should be corrected and not deleted. Ethnicity is a matter recognised and studied and ethnic groups are quantified and identified therefore I think we should mantain it but also considering the ancestry if we don't want to do a list of languages and nationalities that are different things from ethnicity.-Giant4s (talk) 15:40, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
I corrected data by considering the ancestry and by using references.--Giant4s (talk) 16:23, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

the thing is, if this is to be done properly, it needs hours of work. It's not so much about who is right but about who is willing to do the work. I started adding references now. If there is a huge margin between high and low estimates, you cannot just cite the high estimate. If you want to include "ancestry", you need to go through sources and distinguish between reported single and partial ancestry. And whatever we do, we shouldn't just copy-paste figures from other articles, as these are notoriously flawed. All ethnic articles are perpetually trolled by people who are hell-bent on somehow inflating the importance of their ethnic group. Any reference cited in these articles must be verified, never believe the reference actually states what the article says it does, and always ask yourself if the reference is neutral and "reliable" to begin with. Never use "estimates" by emigrant interest groups, these always inflate figures, often up to 10 times anything that can be considered reasonable. These people have axes to grind, and I am happy to accept they do, but this means their "estimates" cannot be used for the purposes of Wikipedia. --dab (𒁳) 08:14, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

The fact is that you consider the ancestry for some groups (i.e. English people or French people) and only the nationality (aka citizenship) for others (i.e Italians and Germans). According to me this is the main problem. It is impossible that 50 million people of English ancestry have also the English citizenship.--Giant4s (talk) 08:30, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
I agree with your latest edits. There is a clear range between ethnicity and nationality.--Giant4s (talk) 09:16, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


look, I told you I would fix it, and I said it would take some hours, I cannot do magic.

I am done now. I settled for citing ranges where the "ancestry" question messes up estimates. I also updated the figures to CIA Factbook estimates where possible (the Indian groups add millions to their headcount on a yearly basis). I understand you mostly care about listing the Italians. I now give "60–140 million". It is not acceptable to simply say "140 million" and as "reference" give a link to some pdf file on the internets. We now have a low and a high estimate and a footnote explaining why they are so far apart. I did the same for Germans, French and English. This problem is mostly encountered with European groups. This has political reasons (Europe is in the process of abolishing ethnic groups altogether, or at least attempting to stigmatize the concept) but also historical ones (ethnic miscegenation in the US takes generations, and is now in the process of becoming basically untraceable. Two generations ago, most Americans still had an ethnic identity, now most have a long list of ancestries). In the case of Turks and Arabs, the question is also political, in this case not because attempts of abolishing the concept, but on the contrary the attempt to inflate one's own count as much as possible. --dab (𒁳) 09:19, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. It's very hard to treat this argument because of too much political pressure and also because of the evolution of the meaning of ethnicity. Great job anyway.--Giant4s (talk) 10:09, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I would like to expand the list to "50 million or more"; but not today. Atm we have the Irish, there are about 6 million in Ireland, but "ancestry" estimates go from "50 to 80 million". Needless to say, the dozens of millions of "Irish Americans", "English Americans" and "German Americans" will turn out to be the same individuals ticking several ancestries. The Gujaratis seem to hover close to 60 million, and the Persians close to 70 million (inflated counts nonwithstanding). Of course there are more Persians that Portuguese, because there are 60-70 million Persians and "11-100 million" Portuguese (in sane reality more like 11-40 million, if not 11-15 million). --dab (𒁳) 10:44, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions

I have several suggestions for modifications to the new List of contemporary ethnic groups revamp. However, having only worked on the trainwreck version of the page, I'm curious to see if these could be implemented without disrupting the now better-organised page.

Perhaps we could also the limit for "largest contemporary ethnic groups" to ten or twenty million from forty million. Ethnic groups vary quite wildly and a good portion of them lie in the single-digit millions range. Some of the more prominent ethnic groups with small numbers such as the Balkans or some African ethnic groups are excluded as a result of this criteria. Lowering the bar may mean more entries but it provides a more wholesome picture of the largest ethnic groups in my opinion.

The "homeland" section seems to give an incomplete view of the distribution of ethnic groups. I personally prefer "countries with highest concentration of ethnic groups" or something along those lines. It does result in some arbitrariness and ambiguity, so if it violates MOS, then I'd understand.

Could flags be included in the "homeland" section? I have ever tried implementing flags in another list with a table such as this one but it was rejected for violating MOS:Flags. I don't know if it's the same case here and I'm not willing to repeat that mistake again.

AlexTeddy888 (talk) 13:54, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Where are Hungarians?

There are more than 10 millions of them, so they should be somewhere in the table.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.98.160.141 (talk) 07:24, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Where indeed, there are thousands of declared ethnicities in the world and this so-called "list" represents a mere handful. Does such an inconclusive list serve any encyclopaedic purpose? --Oranges Juicy (talk) 11:02, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
If you care to check the list, you'll find that Hungarians were added quite some time ago, Oranges Juicy. If you don't believe this to be a potentially useful list, I'd suggest that you WP:PROD it. Otherwise, it may benefit from assistance from you or any other editor who wishes to develop it into a worthy resource. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:58, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
WP:PROD is extreme. I suppose I'll add to it when I can. --Oranges Juicy (talk) 10:50, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

European Americans

There seems to be an edit war over the inclusion of "European Americans" as an ethnicity. Under WikiProject it is officially an ethnic group, but personally, its status its debatable. For one, it's very broad. "European" refers to hundreds of ethnicities residing in Europe and is too diverse to be included as a separate entry on this page. Even if it were separated into 'Croatian American' or "Anglo-American", it feels superfluous to contain a subcategory of an ethnic group simply because they reside in another country.

Your thoughts? AlexTeddy888 (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

It stated that there are 50 millions berbers, which is much higher than 30 millions refered here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.199.69.1 (talk) 16:29, 8 April 2014 (UTC)


Then under your logic African-American is far too large to be an ethnic group. Some countries in Africa have more ethnic groups and languages spoken within it than All of Europe combined.2602:306:375D:C2F0:C01D:87B9:C507:10B (talk) 17:42, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[Whoisgreater?]

Why are there so few African ethnic groups?

This page contains a link to ethnic groups in Africa. Many of those listed on the linked page are larger than the smallest groups listed on this page. Since this page is supposed to list the largest ethnic groups, is there a good reason why African groups - such as the Kongo, of 100 million, equal to the English - are not listed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by OldDundonian (talkcontribs) 19:16, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

OldDundonian, you're more than welcome to develop this article using reliable sources for content. As it currently stands (as can be seen from various unanswered queries posted on this talk page), the criteria for inclusion and the updating of content is spurious. All hands on deck, and all discussion and development is welcome! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:38, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Sardinians as an ethnic group

I've been noticing some anonymous reverts on this article; since it would be pretty embarassing to start an heated edit war, which would lead to nowhere but trouble, I'll be starting a dialogue (or, at least, try to do it). The anonymous, always deleting the voice, states Sardinians are not an ethnic group (too bad the reason why they wouldn't is left to the imagination), therefore they absolutely shouldn't be here; a source has been provided saying the opposite, so I've done nothing but restore part of the reverted edit adding the above-mentioned reference; however, the anonymous once again deleted what's been written asserting I posted a source stating exactly what he/she's being saying. The encyclopedia says as follows: ...It is not easy to define the charateristics of Sardinians as an ethnic group, but certainly the common linguistic tradition and insularity are two crucial elements... and ...It is difficult to conceive of Sardinian culture as a homogeneous whole, despite the region's insularity and its unique history; it is, however, possible to highlite some distinctive themes in its popular culture.; therefore, in my opinion the source considers Sardinians to be an ethnic group indeed for historical and linguistical reasons, in spite of the fact it couldn't be that easy to portrait their culture as a monolith (the same thing, however, could be said to any people). That said, I just want to raise the issue on this talk page in order to invite the anonymous to give me some reasons about her/his recent edits, so that we could discuss about the problem (otherwise, I'll be bringing back the page as it was before), as well as to ask for a third opinion. [I'd be pleased if you correct my grammar mistakes]. --Dk1919 (talk) 13:43, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Sardinians are not an ethnic group for several reasons:
1)There is not a common Sardinian culture; For instance people from Gallura are very different from those of Cagliari in terms of traditions, culture and language. Strangely enough, the only thing that all people from Sardinia have in common is the Italian language and culture.
3)The most important people from Sardinia show a deep Italian culture. Grazia Deledda won the Nobel Prize for her work written in Italian. Strangely enough again, two Presidents of the Italian Republic were from Sardinia (Antonio Segni and Francesco Cossiga) as well as Goffredo Mameli, who wrote the Italian Anthem; Enrico Berlinguer, one of the most important Italian politicians , was from Sardinia as well. There are thousands of similar examples that show how Sardinia is now part of the Italian culture as well as the Italian ethnic group.
4)In the Italian Parliament, the Region of Sardinia is represented like all Italian regions and not as an ethnic minority (like the Germans and the Ladins in Alto Adige).
5)The reference you use doesn't say that Sardinians may be considered an ethnic group, it says the contrary.
6)Wikipedia doesn't consider Sardinians as an ethnic group as well.--93.32.141.192 (talk) 13:21, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
1) As I already said above, the same thing could be said to several people, including the "Italians" that, according to your logic, wouldn't exist either; many people in Italy still don't even have Italian as their first language, which was imposed by law both in Italy and in Sardinia, so your point is flawed: not to speak about the "Italian culture" thing, which is quite debatable and could be called into question; how could Sardinians share in common something which is all but "common", given the huge amount of internal cultural differences in Italy? Please.
2) Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that these more or less contemporary "most important people" (all belonging to the Sardinian bourgeousie and the upper class, which is now Italian just like it was Catalan back when the island was Aragonese property...) you're talking about should prove the "true" nature of Sardinian social identity; even then, one could just states their status as assimilated ethnic group (the alterity of Sardinians from Italians was notorious even to Dante, considered the father of Italian language...), just like the Ainu living in the Japanese island of Hokkaido and our Corsican northern brothers (that, by the way, are still here on the list in spite of the fact that one of the most important individuals of theirs, Napoleon, had once been non other than the Emperor of French... What's the meaning of this double standard policy?).
3) Sardinian-speakers are recognized by law (even if not "de facto") as a linguistic minority (they constitute the largest one in Italy), just like the German-speaking South Tyroleans are.
4) The source says otherwise, as I already pointed out. As long as you don't prove what you're asserting, it's merely your opinion and, being it totally unexplained, should be treated as such.
5) That page, strangely enough as you'd say, has just been edited a couple of days ago by some people (actually, it's always the same user), whose activity just resulted in edit war, and probably for political, rather than objective, reasons. I'm afraid that a wikipedia article, editable by anyone at any moment, is not that kind of reliable source you're trying to pass off.
Seriously, I just didn't want to be involved in edit war (that's the reason why I wanted to start a dialogue) but as long as you persist in it and if some unsourced, as well as rethorical, pov is all I could get, I frankly don't think we're going anywhere.--Dk1919 (talk) 19:23, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
It's clear you have your personal point of view about Sardinia. I dont want to criticize your ideas. But the edit war you are talking about in the article of Sardinia began on September 19th, when a user edited the article by using the term "ethnic group" for Sardinian people for the first time in the history of the article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sardinian_people&diff=573684848&oldid=573142235, without consensus. The Corsican people and the Ainu people are not considered an ethnic group by Wikipedia. The Sardinian people are just the people from Sardinia. If it had been an ethnic group (hence different from Italians), we would have had data about "how many Sardinians and Italians live in Sardinia" as we do with Trentino Alto Adige (Italians, Germans and Ladins), Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italians, Slovenes, Ladins), Calabria (Italians, Albanians and Greeks) and a lot of similar examples. I saw your edits on Wikipedia and they are not always impartial; in some edits your attitude to promote the Sardinian culture becomes a sort of Sardinian nationalism/independentism (as in this article), that today is just a political idea, nothing else. Even the tone you use to talk is a bit radical (i.e. you used the term "brothers" to classify the Corsican people: we are in an encyclopaedia, you are not doing a political speech!). Wikipedia is not involved in politics, therefore if you want to promote your political ideas, you are free to do it on internet but not here.--93.32.141.192 (talk) 00:18, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
Italy is very political about Ethnic groups, there is lots of pressure on minorities to assimilate to Italian culture. The languages are internationally recognised as different languages, and many older people learned Italian as adults. If Wikipedia wants to be non-political it'd be way more responsible to recognise them as a separate ethnic group and just discuss these nuances of italian politics rather than exclude them. The same thing with Sicilians, Arbereshe, Griko, etc. You can have an ethnic identity and a separate national identity. Paolorausch (talk) 09:08, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Too arbitrariness in this list

Why Catalans, Valencians, Castilians, Andalusians, Asturians, Aragonese and Leonese people are considered separated ethnic groups? They speak overall Spanish language and they have a commune history and culture. Why greek, greek Cypriots and pontik Greeks aren’t the same ethnic group in different area but they are considered indipendent ethnos? Maybe is a group of person an ethnic group just if it has an official recognition from a state? Are Flemish, west Fleming and Dutch people different just because they live in different (adjoining) areas? Here, each group of jewish persons is considered like an independent ethnos. Nowadays Judaism is just a religion! Spanish jews are spanish, german Jews are german! They speak spanish and german (or german dialect) respectively, and they live the culture and the history of those countries. Jehovah's Witnesses marry other Jehovah's Witnesses but nobody considers them as an ethnic group! Moreover lots of Ashkenazi Jews (everybody of them perhaps) have European ancestry!
Then, according to this list Manx, Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English people are independent groups but Italians are a unique ethno-group, except sanmarinese people. What? It’s senseless! This list is completely arbitrary. Italy has been a “league” of different mediterranean groups since 153 years about. 153 years are not many! The union among Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England or the union among the different parts of Spain are older than italic union one. The influences among Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, or among Catalonia, Castile, Andalusia, etc, are the same historical influences among Sardinia, Sicily, Veneto, Piedmont, etc. Italy is the state (desired by Savoy and, yes, by English monarchy) but in Italy there are several characteristic groups.
If for Spain it needs to distinguish Catalans, Valencians (they’re Catalans too!), Castilians and Leoneses, and in UK/Ireland there are English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh people, therefore in Italy there are Sardinians in Sardinia, Sicilians in Sicily, Neapolitans in south Italy, ladins and Venetians in Veneto, Occitans and Piedmonteses in Piedmont, Slovenians and Friulians in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Arpitans in Aosta Valley, Austrians (or German?) in AltoAdige, Tuscans in Tuscan (Sardinia and even Corsica), Emilian-Romagnols in north Italy (Sanmarineses are precisely emilian-romagnol, not an independent ethnic group), Ligurians in Liguria (and in France too), Lombards in Lombardy and Switzerland.
Here I’ve read “The most important people from Sardinia show a deep Italian culture. Grazia Deledda won the Nobel Prize for her work written in Italian”. Therefore the most important people of Wales, Scotland and Ireland write in english and they show a deep English culture! Swift, Wilde, Stoker, Joyce, Hume, Even irish people speak English especially! The Cranberries sing in English. Sicilians (or Sardinians or the others) is to Italy as Scotland (or Wales or the others) is to UK. Here I’ve also read “two Presidents of the Italian Republic were from Sardinia”, so Sardinians aren’t an ethnic group for this reason? What? Therefore the Prime Ministers Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, James Ramsay MacDonald, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Arthur James Balfour were Scottish! David Lloyd George was welsh even if born in Manchester. Even queen Elisabeth has Scottish ancestry!
Too arbitrary points of view in this list. Genetics says there aren’t specific traits among peoples in Europe, genetically we are an unique European ethnic group, with different histories and languages. Genetically malteses are like Sicilians, but they speak a language derived from an old Arabic dialect spoken in Sicily during the Arabic domination. So this list is just based on cultural arbitrariness. How many persons in Wales, in Scotland or in Ireland know their autochthon languages? In Scotland just 1% speaks scottish Gaelic; in Wales just 12% are fluent in welsh. Even 26% of irish people can understand irish language (and Ireland is another state!). Manx language is extinct! Instead 37% Lombard area (included Switzerland), 50% Piedmonteses, 51% of Neapolitan-calabrian-apulian area, 77% of Venetians, 78% of Sardinians, 94% of Sicilians, etc, speak their local language.
Does the list contain neither nationalities nor religion? I don’t think so! It’s based just on religion and politics. Parameters should be the same for each group.--01:42, 26 April 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.153.229.67 (talk)

Hi, I agree with you about the criteria, if there are any at all, adopted in listing all the ethnic groups. As you may have already seen, I had some kind of an argument with an anonymous user some time ago when trying to raising this particular issue. Given that connoting the very concept of ethnic group is a controversial topic, well, at this point, I think the whole article needs to be rewritten. Saludos. --Dk1919 (talk) 11:39, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Oh yes! at the end of your clarification, you forgot the magic word: Viva O'Re. We will change the world (and the history) by changing Wikipedia ! (even if we are a minority) Ps. the Emilian-Romagnols rule! Seriously, let's open a history book instead of doing politics like in a pub (my personal advice). Italy is more similar to Germany and France in terms of society and history. Spain and the UK are particular nation-states who recognize and accept the term "nation" also to their constituent parts who have considered themselves as a ethinc group since the beginning. I.e. in Scotland and Catalunia there has always been a national awareness that was absent or almost absent (we are talking about minorities) in the French/German/Italian regions. The matter is also that you are denying the existence of the Italian people and in sociology this is what we call "science fiction". Italian people are one of the most homogeneous ethnic groups as well as one of the oldest in the world (in sociology, ethnic groups are not determined by genetics!), with origins after the fall of the Roman Empire. Also in terms of culture, Italian is the third largest language by Incunable [[1]] and it was already official centuries before the unification of Italy (in Sicily has been official since 1723 along with Latin or in the Kingdom of two Sicilies, Italian was official along with Latin or in northern Italy, Italian has been official since the 16th century). Italy and Germany are two examples of national cultures born before the nation-state while in France the process was a bit more "artificial" but with the same results. Spain and the UK are unions of different crowns and cultures not always in contact, they are nation-states as well, but with a totally different process and criteria. So, in these two countries there has been a different development who caused the born of different ethnic groups. Just for making an example: in the US, there is a periodical report about the ethnicity, and they consider Scottish and English as separated ethnic groups while Italians are considered a united ethnic group. Finally, language does not mean ethnic group, and regional languages (such as Sicilian, Lombard, Sardinian, Venetian, Tuscan...) have (unfortunately, if you like it) never been considererd in the past as work or cultural languages, but just as popular languages. Among the languages of Italy, in the past only Venetian gained the honour to be official along with Italian and Latin. Furthermore, Tuscan and Italian are different languages (in the received as well as in the lexicon) while Spanish is also called Castilian and in the UK the official language is de facto the English language and these things remark the difference of the Spanish and British situations from the French/German/Italian ones. I hope to have been clear (I study sociology).--Giant4s (talk) 15:07, 26 April 2014 (UTC)


You study sociology but I think you’ve never been in Italy. Italy is not just pasta and pizza. Its history, or rather its histories and its cultures are fascinating and very complex. I absolutely don’t want to offend but you probably read bad history books. I advise you to talk with your sociology teacher. Yes, nowadays the Italian culture exists, nobody denies it, but this commune culture doesn’t exclude the differences among italic peoples. Exactly like in UK with welsh, scottish, english and irish people, or in Spain with catalan, castilian, and the other groups. Moreover Italian culture exists because the government imposed Italian as unique official language. It imposed italian because the inhabitants had to communicate, not because the government wanted to be evil. In fact Italian was the language more used among the north (not many but important) writers, sometimes Italian was a lingua franca among the states with different languages or with several dialects, for example in Lombardy-Venetia. Between the partenopean dialect and apulian dialect there are too differences phonetically. They look like two separated languages. However the population doesn’t know Dante Alighieri and Petrarca! Before the unification (and till 50’s of XX sec. about) people were ignorant! The majority of south Italy was illiterate! After the unification the most important south writers (especially sicilian) went in north Italy because they wanted to learn Italian perfectly, even if often their syntax remained non-italian. For example Giovanni Verga. Pirandello wrote with typical (traditionally but non-standard) sicilian orthography! The father of modern Italian language, Alessandro Manzoni, wrote in Italian but he spoke in French! There a famous sentence about Manzoni who went near Florence «a sciacquare i panni in arno» (to wash the clothes inside the Arno). Arno is the main tuscan river. He meant “tuscanize his language”. The Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda said «Io scrivo ancora male in italiano - ma anche perché ero abituata al dialetto sardo che è per se stesso una lingua diversa dall'italiana» (I stil speak a bad italian, even if I used to speak my sardinian dialect, that it is a different language comparated to italian». She won the Nobel prize «for her idealistically inspirited writings witch with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general». Did Samuel Becket and Oscar Wilde write in english? Till recently, when the Italian boys went for military service, they didn’t understand each other! Learning Italian language to the Italians was an urgent necessity, but it isn’t an “ethnic” language.
Later, with mass media and free educational, Italians have learnt this language, exactly like a Catalan speaks spanish or an Irish speaks english. Massimo D’Azeglio after the unification wrote «S’è fatta l’Italia, ma non si fanno gli italiani» which means «Italy has been made, but we can’t make the italians». Because the groups of Italy were very different. Even now there are some people who doesn’t speak Italian, especially the old people of the south. According to Tullio De Mauro (important linguist), in the time of unification just 2,5% could speak Italian.
It isn’t true that Italian has been the only cultural language! You’ve already remembered venetian. Sicilian has been the first literary language since XIII sec, when in Sicily was Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen. After his domination, the Sicilian manuscripts was translated by the Tuscan copyists. Sicilian, Neapolitan, Sardinian, etc have our specific literature.
Plus, the flag of Sicily, for example, is one of the oldest flag in the world! The Sicilian Parliament is considered one of the oldest in the world. Sicilians have always been peculiarly sicilian! Sicilians identify themselves in sicilianness.
Sardinian was official with the Giudicati. However also in Switzerland Italian is an official language, or English in Ireland. And how long has English language been using commonly in Scotland, Ireland and Wales? Why English can be an official language or common language of these so-called separated ethnicities, but if Sardinians or Sicilians use Italian they lose the “ethnic dignity”?
Tuscan and Italian is the same language! Where have you read your information? Italian is the national standard derived by literary fourteenth-century Tuscan. Contemporary Tuscan is a dialect non-literary of Italian language.
Sure, you can say «in this list we have to include just the groups that the respective state recognizes», but you can’t say «Italian people are one of the most homogeneous ethnic groups», this is the fascist idea of Mussolini! The influences among part of Italian peninsula is obvious, Italy is a narrow land surrounded by the sea, but the different part didn’t a real unique culture before television and obligatory education in italian. And these differences are evident and alive nowadays too.
So in this list there are scottish, welsh and irish people, even if they have the same culture of english people and they speak always the same language (except a little minority). On the contrary in Italy:
• linguistically there are several alive differences among the different parts;
• the history of different parts was different till the Savoy unification (remember the unification of UK or Spain is older than it). Between the fall of Roman Empire and the savoyard kingdom of Italy there was 1385 years (one thousand three hundred and eighty five!);
• Italian people, in addition to Latins, have different genetic influences according to geographic area, etruscan, celtic in north; Sardinia has always been rather isolated; and greek, semitic, norman and preindoeuropean in south (however especially greek and anatolian). Moreover with the migrations, south people went in north but north people didn’t go in south, so north Italy could be more “italically” homogeneous, on the contrary south and islands are more homogeneous only locally: Sardinians with Sardinians, Sicilians with Sicilians, etc.
• There are also some differences in physical appearance! More differences than among english, irish, scottish and welsh people!;
Anyway for you, and your books, sardinian or sicilian ethinic group doesn’t exist, but irish and welsh groups exist. When you talk about groups of italic persons genetic isn’t important, languages aren’t important, traditions aren’t important, history isn’t important (except the very old Roman Empire). what is important for an ethnic group? There’s a big difference between ethnic group and national border. Italy is a nation-state but it isn’t an ethnic-state (“ethnic” according your interpretation of this term). It has surely a different politic compared with UK, but irish, scottish, english and welsh people are more homogeneous than sardinian, sicilian, venetian people, etc. So, this list is based just on politics, not on ethnicities. Or rather we should say “peculiar local characteristics”, in fact the only ethnicity in Europe is the so-called european, or white, or caucasian one. However if you want to call the different cultures “ethno”, you can’t discriminate any group. Or you include every single group, or you exclude all of them. Irish, scottish, welsh, english people is to UK culture as sardinian, venetian, sicilian, friulian, etc, is to Italian cultures, or rather among the italic areas there are more differences culturally, historically, linguistically, artistically, sociologically, traditionally, culinarily, etc. Italians are a unique group only when the national soccer team plays. Including in the list the invented sanmarinese ethnic group and denying the real peculiar identities is a big absurdity.
I hope you’ll talk with your teacher about this argument, better if not in a pub. Thank you. --18:27, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Innanzitutto sono di sangue italiano al 100%. Sono nato e vivo in Italia e se ti fa piacere sono siciliano (come te) ma tifoso del Catania (ahimè). Tuttavia risponderò in inglese per ragioni formali (nonostante tu sembri essere di Palermo e dintorni eh eh eh, scherzo). Prima ti chiedo gentilmente di non mettere di mezzo la politica, perché Fascismo e altro non c'entrano nulla con i miei studi. First of all, I agree with almost everything you said about history. On the contrary, large part of scholars agree on the fact that Italians can be considered also an ethnic group. It's a matter of fact. The evolution of Italy has been different from British and Spanish ones, as I said above. Italian ethnic evolution has been similar to the German and the French ones. Also in these countries there were different cultural groups (i.e. Occitans, Bavarians, Bretons, Corsican, Saxons...); the difference is that in Italy, France and Germany we saw the creation of a unique ethnic group respectively, for historical, political and also social reasons. Ethnic groups are not static, they evolve much more fast than you think. Large part of the world reports treat Italians, Germans and French people as homogeneous ethnic groups, while Spanish people and British people are treated as a mix of several ethnic groups. In our studies we pay also a lot of attention about the term i.e. Sicilians. Do you know why? Because if we should be accurate, the Sicilian ethnic group existed but only before and during the Roman Empire, when Sicily was a different province with remarkable differences with the rest of the Italian peninsula. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Sicily was united to Italy by the Ostrogoths, Byzantine, Normans, Spanish and so on. These dominations created what was a proto-italian ethnic group also in Sicily (thanks to several deportations as well). Culture confirms it, because of the close literary contact between Sicily, Florence and Rome (Sicilan School - Dolce Stil Novo - Accademia dell'Arcadia) and the artistic contact between Sicily and northern Italy (Antonello da Messina or Vaccarini are two of several examples). This was just an example about Sicily. I want to correct you about Manzoni, he was very good in Italian; his sentence about the Arno river is about the literary standard for the "Promessi Sposi". Lots of people were good in the Italian language in Milan and northern Italy (Pellico, Monti, Goldoni, Alfieri ...), Italian was the official language of the Lombardo-Veneto and everything was written in Italian. Tullio De Mauro is considered by some linguists too pessimist about the knowledge of the Italian language before Italian unification and some linguists (such as Arrigo Castellani) say that the percentage was about 10-15 %. Don't think that French and German situations were different about their national languages. In France only 10% of people were able to speak French and in Germany the percentage of people who spoke German was less than 40%. In conclusion what I want to say is that when you talk about modern ethnic groups, you must take in consideration the "ethnic evolution" that has been similar in Italy, Germany, France, Poland, Japan ...and different in the United Kingdom, Spain, Switzerland, China, Russia, India ... or we go nowhere. Reports confirm the homogeneus nature of Italians. I leave some sources: Alesina and Fearon studies (note the ethnic, cultural heterogeneity and fractionalization indexes that are very low in Italy) http://telematica.politicas.unam.mx/biblioteca/archivos/040107017.pdf ; The US census about ethnicity (note Italians vs Scottish people vs English people) http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/c2kbr-35.pdf ; infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0855617.html ; nationsencyclopedia.com(note the sentence "For centuries, however, Italy has enjoyed a high degree of ethnic homogeneity") http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Europe/Italy.html; http://www.indexmundi.com/italy/ethnic_groups.html; and the CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2075.html . In italiano ti consiglio di leggere la Storia d'Italia Einaudi, parecchio interessante e dettagliata e soprattutto imparziale. Ovviamente l'enciclopedia Treccani ti da uno spaccato molto interessante dell'etnia italiana (anche se personalmente non mi piace). Bye.--Giant4s (talk) 22:02, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
Furher clarification: Giovanni Verga. Pirandello wrote with typical (traditionally but non-standard) sicilian orthography. False. Their masterpieces show a pure and standard Italian (Pirandello, Nobel prize for the Italian literarature). Massimo D’Azeglio after the unification wrote «S’è fatta l’Italia, ma non si fanno gli italiani» which means «Italy has been made, but we can’t make the italians. False D’Azeglio said: L'Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani" (literally: Italy has been made. Now it remains to make Italians; but it is often reported more colloquially as: We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians. Sardinian was official with the Giudicati. False Only Latin was official. Tuscan and Italian is (are) the same language(s) False Lexicon and received are totally different (source: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/dialetti-toscani_(Enciclopedia-dell'Italiano)/) Sicilian has been the first literary language since XIII sec, when in Sicily was Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen. After his domination, the Sicilian manuscripts was translated by the Tuscan copyists. Sicilian, Neapolitan, Sardinian, etc have our specific literature.Plus, the flag of Sicily, for example, is one of the oldest flag in the world! The Sicilian Parliament is considered one of the oldest in the world. True but Sicilian has never been official. Moreover with the migrations, south people went in north but north people didn’t go in south, so north Italy could be more “italically” homogeneous, on the contrary south and islands are more homogeneous only locally: Sardinians with Sardinians, Sicilians with Sicilians, etc. Partially true and false Remind that during medieval foreign dominations millions of people were deported from northern Italy to southern Italy (i.e. in the province of Messina there is the highest percentage of blonde hair and blue eyes in southern Italy). ... invented sanmarinese ethnic group... TrueIt's obviously a nationality and it should be removed.--Giant4s (talk) 22:37, 27 April 2014 (UTC)


So, you confirm, this list is based on politic events and historical arbitrariness, because the ethnic groups are dynamic depending on the borders of the national recognized states. In fact a united state homogenize its citizens who have to communicate among them. But between a Welsh and an English there is the same level of communication than between a Sardinian and a Sicilian! Do you deny it? It have always been like this. Therefore if Italy had been separated in states, with their own official local language (only official!), italic ethnic groups would be existed. Given that in Italy the only common culture is officially the Italian one, the local differences doesn’t count, even if those differences constitute the real condition of majority of Italian inhabitants (especially in the south). Moreover you are Sicilian! Do you live your island? I can’t believe in you! I don’t like the secessionists, Italy can be an united state, but it’s undeniable that a Sicilian is to Italy as a Scottish is to UK. Factually is like that! Catalans use catalan at the school too and Sicilians use Sicilian at home (or in the classroom with their classmates), anyway they use their respective languages! Probably you are one of these persons who snubs sicilian language, but it’s undeniable its lively use in the island.
If the data of De Mauro is wrong it doesn’t matter, because in any case even nowadays Sicilians use Sicilian more than, for example, welsh people use welsh. Italian language and all national symbols have not removed (especially in south Italy, included Sardinia) the local languages and peculiar identities. Majority of sicilian people or Neapolitans migrated abroad spoke and speak in Sicilian and Neapolitan! Often also the new generations.
Europe (and generally all west world area) is completely globalized and homogenized. The main differences among the people concern languages, mentalities or eating habits (irrespective of politics, laws, economies). So, a recognition of a group as ethnic group is just an arbitrariness officialized by a government. Spain recognize the ethnic groups, so you say «they exist», UK idem. France, Germany and Italy have always been more centralist, so you think «these countries are very homogeneous ethnically!». Sorry, but only a blind can’t see the diversities of his own nation! The same differences existing in Spain among its communities, and the similar differences among the various parts of UK (or rather in south Italy there are more differences in relation with Italy).
Anyway you wrote that languages wasn’t important, genetic wasn’t important, politic and social factors are obviously dynamic, and nowadays irish, scottish, welsh and english people have a common culture. So, this ethnic separation is unjustified no more. Maybe it come from traditional and politic distinction. Therefore this page should be called “list of recognized official modern groups”. Otherwise no list would be objective.
I’ve the impression you want to deny the existence of a peculiar sicilian group, with some pretext.
Everywhere there was invasions and migrations. The influences created the (dynamic) cultures and societies, new languages, etc. But I didn’t say that Sicilian ethnicity exists in name of its past. Sicilian (and Sardinian or Neapolitan) peculiarities are still lively, now!
Your translation about the sentence of D’Azeglio doesn’t change the nitty-gritty: the Italian culture is recent, the local cultures are oldest (and alive).
According to Treccani we are both right: Tuscan is to a certain extent italian language, but typologically it’s close to a separate language. Giannelli said we can talk about just a «graduale decantazione degli elementi insidiati da usi standard». I hope you joked when you denied the sicilian syntax of Verga. Tell me that you were joking. Verga is one the most important writer of Italy! Even if you’ve never read a book of him, every anthology says that! And in every school we study Verga’s works thoroughly. I’m not going to quote a piece of his novel. The Anglophone wouldn’t understand anything. So, please don’t give false information.
Pirandello wrote “ajuto” instead of “aiuto”, “vojaltri” instead “voi”, ecc. like common traditional (non-standard) sicilian “ajutu”, “vuautri”. However Pirandello Nobel prize of italian doesn’t remove siciliannes. Therefore all welsh, scottish and irish authors write in English! Samuel Beckett is a Nobel prize too. He wrote in English (and French), but according to you Pirandello is a proof of italiannes of Sicilians, instead Becket or Wilde could write in English remaining ethnically irish. In this list all the so-called independent european ethnic groups must be delete, or the article’s name should become “list of recognized official modern groups”.
I don’t advise you to reply on the spur of the moment. Ponder harder, talking with other people.
Unni jisti a scuppari pi taliari di unni sugnu? Talianu 100%, sicilianu 0%? Accussì ni nzìgnaru, ma s’ava a stari attangati dintra pi nun addunàrisi ca cà i cristiani hannu saputu mantèniri zoccu d’un sicilianu u fa sicilianu.

I will give you an answer anyway. Yes of course, I do confirm this list because ethnic groups are dynamic and closely linked to history, and in the long term to the kind of nation-state considered. If we took in consideration the local culture we would have at least 3 different ethnic groups only in Sicily. Local culture of Catania is different from those of Palermo and Agrigento. A language does not define an ethnic group. An ethnic group is defined by history and choices. When the Kingdom of Sicily declared the independence from the Bourbons, it wrote a constitution only in Italian with nobody who imposed the Italian language: Constitution of Sicily (1812). A Nation is a political concept. All nations are invented and only in some cases implemented while ethnic groups are the product of long term choices who really make history. You can ask: So the modern ethnic groups are the product of choices made by only wealth people who belonged to the upper class. Yes. All ethnic groups in Europe are the product of what kings and upper classes have done. For instance, French revolution was organised by rich people who hated the aristocracy. In the present as well as in the future it will be different, also common people will influence the creation of new ethnic groups. You don't like secessionism? I never talk about secessionism and I am not interested in this issue. You keep comparing Sicilian to Scottish people and Catalans. Do you read the sources I have provided? Most of the scholars state that Italians are an ethnic group. An ethnic group must be quantified before being identified. It is like playing a game if we identify ethnic groups with only the inhabitans of the Italian regions. For instance, in Sicily there are about 5 million people, do everybody belong to the fictional Sicilian ethnic group? Impossible. So who is Italian and who is Sicilian? Can you provide reliable sources who tell us how many Sicilians and Italians live in Sicily? The same problem in Sardinia. If you were right, in Sardinia we would have at least 4 different ethnic groups. Do you know the cultural and linguistic differences between a Sassarese and a Cagliaritano? Can you provide reliable sources who tell us how many Italians and Sardinians live in Sardina? Or do you believe that an ethnic group is just a question of how many people live in an institutional region or country? Moreover, have you ever been in Catalunia and Scotland? I have. In Sicily all movies at Cinemas are in Italian. All tv shows in Sicilian local channels are in Italian ... there is no law in this case who impose us to translate films only in Italian or to produce tv shows only in Italian in Sicily: it is a spontaneous choice who show us our Italian nature. In Catalunia more than 50% of films at Cinemas are in Catalan. In Scotland some of the local tv channels are only in Scots. Governments and laws in Italy, Germany or France don't recognise any ethnic group. Scholars and Academic Institutions quantify, identify and study modern ethnic groups as in this list. In conclusion, some of your sentences seem personal (i.e. Do you live your island? or Probably you are one of these persons who snubs sicilian language or I’ve the impression you want to deny the existence of a peculiar sicilian group, with some pretext.) and I will answer you: No commonplace, pretext or false information. Only sources. Ps: si capisce dall'indirizzo IP di dove sei. Ovvio che ci sentiamo siciliani. Anche io mi sento e sono siciliano. Sono nato e vivo qui. L'etnia è una cosa diversa. Il 100% si riferiva all'etnia. Ciao.--Giant4s (talk) 11:43, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


The italian government has always been centralist, you obviously know. And you also know that italian culture didn’t exist before television (except for very few well-to-do intellectuals who were making it), so it isn’t true the sentence “Italy [and German] are two examples of national cultures born before the nation-state”. It’s very very false. The Treccani encyclopedia confirms that several cultural anthropologists and historians affirm that ethnicities are just arbitrariness. According to Treccani among the scholars (Weber, Banton, Smith, Morris, Schermerhorn, Glazer, Connor, Barth, Moynihan, Horowitz) there are several dissonances about the expression “ethnic group”. That encyclopedia talk about “the revival of ethnic movements in countries where the ethnic divisions were considered part of the past and completely irrelevant in contemporary situation.” among which scottish and welsh people. Then it wonders “why has asleep ethnic relationships achieved a lot of social importance that they require un official recognition?”. According to Hechter the ethnonationalism revives because of local disastrous economical development, but also because an area is richer than another, for example Veneto recently in Italy, secessionist among secessionists of “Padania” (but Venetians are also a cultural historical group, “padanians” have just an economical specious motivation). as Treccani says “the issue about ethnic groups has been interesting for some scholars of various social sciences, they have analyzed it with their own methods, often without considering the other pertinent works. So, their results are often opposed instead of complementary”. So there are no objectivities in this article.
In this page, the “ethnic European groups” should be deleted. Or, if we have to consider all peculiar local differences it need to add every typical group, irrespective of national borders. Or it’d need to say that factually there are other groups without official recognition.
If Americans mix together Pulcinella and gondolas, we must clarify to them the differences! Apart the irony, the constitution of Sicily doesn’t show anything. How did scottish or welsh people write? But they are separate ethnic groups and Sicilians or Sardinians (with all Italy) are the same group. Why this double standard? “Nation” is a politic concept, but “ethnicity” should follow other parameters.
Sorry, I don’t want to be boring but you contradict yourself, because you say “If we took in consideration the local culture we would have at least 3 different ethnic groups only in Sicily. […] In Sardinia we would have at least 4 different ethnic groups”, then you talk about a “fictional Sicilian group” (fictional!! We aren’t at all talking about Padania!). Plus you say that languages aren’t important for ethnicity, then you say “Scottish are tv channels only in scots” or “In Catalunia more than 50% of films at Cinemas are in Catalan”. Languages are or aren’t important? Anyway it doesn’t matter, Sicilians use a lot more their language than Scottish people use theirs (if you live in Sicily you can confirm that Sicilian is used in every social class, also in the cities). Sicilian language hasn’t any recognition and the institutions has always disseminated the idea that Sicilian is just a vulgar dialect (according to Italian meaning). On the contrary catalan in official. A formalization of Sicilian language could mean “to reawaken the autonomist sentiments”. A channel in sicilian would be not much advantageous economically, even because Sicilian language hasn’t a standard and it has a lot of dialects, so Italian is (and was) a good way to understand each other. Languages is an important ethnic characteristic. It doesn’t count just in some cases, for example Mexicans speak Spanish, but they are another group (or groups); in many African states people speak English or French and their constitutions are written in English or in French, but they aren’t English or French. Sami people speak Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish, but those one aren’t their ethnic languages. Instead Catalan is the language of Catalans, Sicilian is the language of Sicilians, Sardinian is the language of Sardinians, so it’s an ethnic peculiarity.
Yes I keep comparing Sicilians or Sardinians to Scottish people or Catalans. The source talk about recognized groups. My disquisition is coherent. Who is Spanish and who is Catalan? According to Spain Dalí was Spanish (from Catalonia), Picasso was Spanish (from Andalusia) as Verga was Italian and Sicilian. Catalans are Spanish but not every Spanish people are Catalan. The person who has a Sicilian identity is part of Sicilian ethnicity (language, customs and traditions, the most part of ancestry’s history, similarities of religion rituals, attitudes, mentality, sharing of the same mother earth, etc). Nowadays the term appropriated for UK and Ireland should be for example “irishunitedkingdomian”. I know it’s very horrible. British is inappropriate because irish people live in another island, not in Great Britain. But a missing terminology cannot be a reason of a different treatment!
I could imagine everything but behind this page there was a Sicilian who denies the “ethnic similarities” among Spanish, irish-british and Italian situations!
With the last changes the article is much better, you could add in “subgroups” the sentence, for example, “local identities”. I don’t know why now there are a subclassification for Germans and French people but for Italians nothing of the sort. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.40.250.233 (talk) 18:18, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

There is a Sicilian language wikipedia, https://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A0ggina_principali and there are a variety of Sicilian language standards. It's also internationally recognised as a language. Sicilians have all of their own pages as any other ethnic group would have. Including plenty of pages for their hyphenated identities. The idea of excluding Sicilians as an ethnic group sounds terrifying to me. Would you force a Northern Irish Person to Identify as British even if they spoke Irish as their first language? If there is doubt about the existance of an ethnic group shouldn't we also veer on the edge of accepting them rather than running the risk of minimising culture and invalidating their experience? I would move that at least in the case of Sicilians we immediately include them.Paolorausch (talk) 08:11, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
A language does not always identify an ethnic group. I am sorry, but you are not the first one to discuss about it. Other sociologists and historians before you have already faced this argument (see Alesina, Fearon, Kaufmann ...). Their studies underline that the case of Italians is pretty different from the ones you mentioned (Irish vs British ...). All the sources are in the dedicated pages. But also history dismantles your suggestions. During the Risorgimento so many people from Sicily fought for the unity of Italy (Crispi, Settimo ... even Giovanni Verga and Mario Rapisardi (writers) joined the Italian cause). The composer Vincenzo Bellini, in many of his works, wrote allegories about Italian unification. The Italian case is different because it has a different history. There are talks on wikipedia about it. We have widely discussed about. So, trying to write everywhere on en.wikipedia and trying to impose your point of view (also by using sockpouppets, as you did in the page Italians) does not make sense.--93.36.0.14 (talk) 08:29, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Firstly, I looked up sockpuppet, and I posted that talk page on a Sicilian language forum. It appears as if someone commented based on what they read. You'll see that our IP addresses don't match. I don't believe that spreading this discussing violates any rules of Wikipedia. But as you can imagine there are a lot of people who are very anxious about having their experiences invalidated. You mention many people fought for an Italian state, absolutely you're right, but many later would fight against it. See Brigandage_in_Southern_Italy_after_1861. Far from imposing my view I'm seeing a variety of opinions here that are being ignored. I'm actually seeing people communicating with each other about a shared identity in a shared language and then seeing other people say they aren't an ethnic group. "An ethnic group or ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other based on common language, ancestral, social, cultural, or national experiences. Unlike most other social groups, ethnicity is primarily an inherited status." I'm seeing this happen even in this talk page! Because of Italy's history we know that identity in Italy is complicated. I personally have Sicilian as my ethnic identity. I have family that cannot communicate in Italian language, there are many Siciliani all over the world who use Sicilian language only to communicate with family in Sicily. If you ask them their ethnic group, they would typically reply "Sugnu Sicilianu". I fully understand saying "Italian identity is solidifying replacing ethnic identities", but to pretend we never existed or don't exist as separate ethnic groups is in my opinion very ethnocentric and non-inclusive. The short of it is "Some people identify as ethnically Italian, others as ethnically Sicilian", but the Sicilians/Sardinians, etc don't just not exist. I know others with Arbereshe as their ethnic identity, regional connections to Sicilian and Italian as their national identity. I know Mazandarani with Mazandarani ethnic identity and Iranian national identity. Why do we have to take the unitary position of the Italian state? If so many people are expressing that they identify as a Sicilian ethnic group, many of which are doing so in Sicilian language, why are we continuing the position of only the Italian state? Wouldn't it be more inclusive to acknowledge this complex situation? Siti vautri taliani, siculi o tuttedu?Paolorausch (talk) 09:43, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
You see that you don't know history. The brigandage in South Italy was something that existed before Unification, a criminal phenomenon, that also previous pre-unitary Italian states were fighting against.--Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 09:48, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Moreover, I am from Sicily and I can assure you that everybody feel Italian culturally and ethnically. But this does not matter here. What matter are documents and source already in the articles. (It is so weird that Italian-Americans still believe that there is a conflict between being Sicilian and Italian).--Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 09:55, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
I never stated there was a conflict. There is a national identity and an ethnic identity, both can coexist, it doesn't mean the ethnic identity doesn't exist nor never existed. It also doesn't mean that the ethnic identity doesn't exist more in the diaspora than in the home country. Diaspora communities often times don't receive a national education and may also approach the history with a more critical lense. There are a lot of critical works on the idea that Brigandage was not just a criminal movement and expanded rapidly due to the inclusion of disbanded Loyalist forces. Including in that wikipedia article, you'll see references to that. Here is a great critical work: https://www.amazon.com/Italys-Southern-Question-Orientalism-Country/dp/1859739970/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464344925 . I want to make sure that it is made clear that I am not advocating that many people don't identify as Italian. But many others especially in rural areas still identify as Sicilian and may even today feel little connection to the central italian state. If that's the case now, what can we say about 100 years ago? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paolorausch (talkcontribs) 10:37, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
No. In the rural areas in Sicily like in the rest of Italy, a very common feature is that rural people identify themselves also with the name of their native Town or city and not with the region's name. About 100, 300. 500 years ago there are official documents whose features clearly show us ethnic, cultural and social connections between all pre-unitary Italian states, unfortunately we can't talk directly to all people of those times (including the illiterate ones), because of biological limits, they can't give us info now.--Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 10:56, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
It appears as if 54% of Sicilians identify themselves as first Sicilian[1] I think that along with our common language, history, and the evidence in this talk page of how many sicilians identify as a separate ethnic group is enough to include us in this page. I would say more consensus would be necessary to *remove us* but to include us this is ample. There ethnic groups on wikipedia with very few members, in this case based on our estimates there are over 2,500,000 Sicilians. With this new evidence do you still have any objection to Sicilians being included as an ethnic group?Paolorausch (talk) 11:27, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
This Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).</ref> isn't an ethnic census. Statistically speaking it is a limited sample of people living in Sicily that has been chosen for a survey. You have to provide an ethnic census of all the population like the one of the Istat in Italy. Or we go nowhere. I hope I was clear.--Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 11:32, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
We both know that Istat has an official position on this. By requiring Istat stats youre requiring stats from an inherently nationalist organisation. If we were to use the position of the Italian state Sicilian isn't even a separate romance language. Just because we're not officially classified by the Italian state as an ethnic group doesn't mean that we aren't an ethnic group. We have a defined autonomous region, a defined language, a defined history. Here in this thread we've seen people identify with each other on common language, ancestral, social and cultural experience. If we just take the people in this talk page we have a bona-fide tiny ethnic group. Even if all of the potential members of this ethnic group may not identify as such, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paolorausch (talkcontribs) 11:49, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
By requiring Istat stats youre requiring stats from an inherently nationalist organisation. Okay, I figure out that you are emotionally involved, so your point of view in not neutral. And, keep in mind that I see in a comment you posted on a user page that you said wikipedia talk pages are nationalist. This is the las offence I tollerate. Next time I will report to the admins. The source you showed [2] is a SURVEY. Where are the other ethnicities of Sicily? Italians, Romanians, Arbereshe ....? Or you are going to tell me the European is an ethnic group? or world citizen is an ethnic group? Until you don't bring an ethnic census we go nowhere.--Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 11:58, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Firstly, I apologise if I offended you. I think you're misunderstanding what I mean by nationalist. In this case I'm actually talking about a particular belief, ethnonationalism[3]. The idea that the nation and ethnic group are the same. It's not a political slur, it's an actual position that I believe you to be supporting. As the other user mentioned, ethnonationalism is quite common in Italy. I don't think there is any rule against talking to people directly who support different historical perspectives and asking them to connect with you to learn more about each others perspectives. In some places of the world European is an ethnic group, European-American for example. As people become more integrated in European society and have 3 or 4 European ethnic affiliations and minimal national identity European could very well become an ethnic group if they identify each other as such. I think we're really far aware from 'Human Ethnic Group", but it could happen one day if all ethnic differences disappear. That said, I'm going to reorganise myself after work and grab some citations from some publications I've referenced before so that I can make a more evidence driven case.Paolorausch (talk) 12:24, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

References

Ethnicities are not exclusive

The introduction to this list is very brief but I think it is important to mention that ethnicities are not mutually exclusive. For example, on Wikipedia I run into editors who argue that an individual could not be Jewish and German. They imply that individuals have only one ethnicity. But for millennia, people have migrated and intermarried and shared customs. Many people are biracial and if you ask an individual what their heritage is, they might mention 5 or 6 different ethnicities. Many individuals identify with multiple ethnic identities. Liz Read! Talk! 23:36, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I have to agree with you, Liz. I find this list problematic in that it fails to define 'ethnicity' using RS (even the lead is generic WP:OR). Further to that, even for the few sourced entries in the list, estimates are taken from a myriad of sources which appear to be mixing the population of a nation-state with diasporic estimates. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:34, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
As a multiethnic person myself, I also agree.
Interestingly, this list doesn't contain the one ethnicity formally currently recognized by the US federal government: Hispanic.
Nor does it include ethnicities currently under consideration for formal recognition (and currently recognized by my state), such as North African; Slavic; or Hmong.
Nor do I see any American Indian, indigenous South and Central American, nor any of the multiple sub-Saharan African ethnicities listed. The current chart seems to be almost entirely Eurasian-centered. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 23:54, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Split into sections based on population

I think it would be a good idea to split this page into several sections for different ranges of the populations of different ethnic groups, as is done here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias#All_Wikipedias_ordered_by_number_of_articles

(Though replacing the word "articles" with "ethnic populations"). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Last edited by: (talkcontribs) 02:11, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Multiple religions

Why do we have entries under the "Majority (plurality) religion and sect" column with multiple religions? If we intend this column to show the most common religion there should only be one religion listed for each ethnicity. Many of the entries follow a "Religion → Sect" format (e.g., Azerbaijanis) but others list multiple religions (e.g., Bengali). Meters (talk) 19:24, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

200M British people?

You gotta be kiddin' me. And 3.5M in Hong Kong only? Seriously? Like 'partial ancestry is counted, citizenship is counted, everything is counted'??? I am sorry to tell, but there is 7.5 million people in Hong Kong overall,92% of which are Han Chinese. So, if you count whatever you want, you shall write something like '300 M+ Russians as all the post-Soviet countries are at least 50% Russian ancestry and 100% of people living in Russia nowadays have ...surprise(!) Russian citizenship. So, the list is a crap, as for now, If you have such uncertainty and controversy for the nation in top-5, than how can you trust the data at all? 119.33.136.192 (talk) 11:37, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Sicilian americans, sicilian canadians, etc

Why only sicilians are specifically subdivided here (in sicilian-americans, -canadians, -argentinians). If you're going to mention these you gotta mention: sicilian -uruguayans, -brazilians; german-americans, -canadians, -argentinians, -bolivians, -mexicans, -brazilians; lithuanian-americans, etc etc and so forth. 20:51, 7 April 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.86.255.5 (talk)

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"Spaniards" over-inclusive

There is a note (as citation) that says:

"There is no clear definition of Spanish ethnicity. In Spain, ethnic identity is divided into regional groups, and internationally, Spanish ethnicity is not clearly delineated from "Spanish ancestry" in the territories of the former colonial empire. There are 41 million Spanish nationals in Spain, and some 2 million living abroad. The total worldwide rounds to more than 47 million."

However the Spanish government has a clear definition of what "Spanish nationality" is. Though the Spanish ethnicity's consideration as a single ethnic identity is contested in Spain it is fairly clear that people of Spanish descent who are not Spanish citizens (not of Spanish parents) and who have are of another ethnic identity are not included.

Furthermore it appears the majority of Spanish speaking Americans do not identify as "Spanish" but rather with their own nationalities and racial/ethnic identities. By the logic of "ethnicity" by descent alone the "British ethnicity" should be much greater in number and all former Roman provinces could be called Italian. It's a very faulty logic. This entry needs major edits, at least one which takes an estimate of those inhabitants of "Hispanic America" who identify as Spanish to distinguish them from those "Hispanic Americans" who do not. If a remotely correct estimate is made in sure the number of Spaniards is much lower than 500 million. Mepersondudeman (talk) 08:59, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

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Ethnicity vs Nationality

In general I've noticed a problem here that many people are not aware of the difference between the two. Each nationality usually has many ethnic groups and language, some nationalities assimilate their minorities. Saying that one group is just a 'type of this larger group' works if you clarify the relationship, but it doesn't negate the existence of the smaller community. My ethnicity is Sicilian, my Nationality is Italian. They do not conflict they're just different. But my other ethnicity is Irish and that Nationality is also Irish, in this case they are the same. But let's say I'm Irish Traveller? Ethnicity: Irish Traveller, Nationality Irish. Northern Irish? Azeri Iranian? Swiss German? Etc. You follow. In a lot of these countries the topic of ethnicity vs nationality is very political as ethnicity is viewed as a form of separatism. We need to be sensitive here to the fact that the word ethnicity doesn't mean 'has their own state' or even 'wants their own state'. Nationalism has nothing to do with your existence as a community, and in communities where assimilationism is the official policies we need to be even more careful to acknowledge the existence of these separate groups within a national identity.Paolorausch (talk) 00:22, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand what you are referring to exactly. I am from Sicily, and my ethnicity as well as my nationality are Italian. People born in Sicily are culturally Italian, maybe you don't live in Italy, but actually there is not ethnic distinction between Sicilians and the rest of people in Italy.--Katane89 (talk) 00:37, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Aymara

Aymara might need fixing. Benjamin (talk) 08:02, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

British vs English/Scottish/Welsh/Cornish/Irish

So I noticed British has been removed and reinstated a few times. I readded it twice recently, after being removed on the basis of English/Scottish/Welsh/Cornish/Irish being listed. I don't think it is fair to remove this purely on the basis of overlap. In cases such as the Scottish, the national identity has existed for much longer then the British national identity, but still the British have all lived together in the same archipelago for the last thousand years. The relationship between the various nations is complex. For example, the Cornish have been part of England for as long as they have been a separate group from the Welsh. And even while the Scots have been independent for most of history, they're intrinsically linked to the other nations through their partly Brittonic (Pictish) and Anglo-Saxon heritage. I don't think it's really up to a few editors on Wikipedia to decide what is or isn't an ethnicity. If we're going to start limiting the definition of what is an ethnicity, we need a very clear definition that can be consistently applied. Otherwise, any groups that can be considered ethnicities should be listed. Rob984 (talk) 17:57, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

What? I'm sorry, but this is the first time I have ever heard of a single person who considers British as an ethnicity. 2600:8800:5A80:1394:D8E0:4B78:1D0E:E290 (talk) 03:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Some IPs have been removing "British" without gaining consensus. I note that British has been listed for long here,[2] until the edit war that started this year. Capitals00 (talk) 08:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
Yeah... Looking at that version, I can find a lot of other groups who should not be on that list, and thankfully have been removed since. So no, that the fact that British have been listed here for quite a long time doesn't cut it for me. 2600:8800:5A80:1394:44D9:1CDF:82A1:80D6 (talk) 07:32, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Ethnicity is one of those porous terms that are difficult to numerate. The combination of cultural, racial, linguistic and religious differences make it a somewhat like making a list of colours. But given that we group Germans, Italians, French and Spaniards together as ethnicities, then doing the same with the British doesn't seem unreasonable. --Inops (talk) 19:49, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

First off, yes, we are listing those four as ethnicities, but we are also listing groups such as Frisians, Sardinians, Corsicans, and Catalans. Second, the ethnic groups in Ethiopia have been under Solomon's rule for just as long, and I didn't see anyone trying to add Abyssinians onto the list repeatedly. And for the claim that the British should be listed here because the various groups on the British isles have intermingled with each other: so did the groups in the former Yugoslavia. 2600:8800:5A80:1394:44D9:1CDF:82A1:80D6 (talk) 23:23, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
If we're to decide on that standard, then the list needs a great deal of other European groups: ones that us English-speakers usually cast aside as "Spanish" or "German" or "French", etc. --Inops (talk) 00:15, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
Fine by me, I guess. I am just saying there's appears to be a lot more consensus that the Germans, the Italians, the French and the Spaniards are enthicities in their own right then there are for the British. 2600:8800:5A80:1394:4598:51B9:4B73:9E5C (talk) 06:00, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Inclusion Criteria and Sub-groups

After searching the whole discussion page I'm still wondering: Is there some criteria set for inclusion of specific ethnic groups in the list? For example a minimum population? I see that the smallest population estimates of the included ethnic groups are 0.2 million, but some other larger ethnic groups are still missing, even European ones, where data should be more easily accessible (I went on and added a few). Another issue is the inclusion of groups such as the ethno-religious ones, but I guess since Assyrians are included, then Copts, Druze and Maronites should also be. Of course it would be impossible to include all ethnic groups in one page, but I believe we should agree on some criteria for inclusion.

I'm also wondering what is the definition of sub-groups and what are the inclusion criteria for them? Should they refer to linguistic or other cultural definitions (e.g. religions)? Or is also the number of their population? Should recognized minorities numbering smaller population (e.g. the German-speaking minority of Belgium) included? There are definitely some inconsistencies there. For example I don't understand why Gozitans are included, but Madeirans or Azoreans are not. Also I can't see why some groups are included as subgoups, for example Carpatho-Rusyns and Lemkos in Ukrainians, although this is disputed by some ethnographists, or Afrikaners in Dutch, while they are members of UNPO?

Any suggestions are welcome! Argean (talk) 02:06, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello! As who has been editing this page for a quite some time (often anonymously because I'm too lazy to log in), I have to be honest, I have no clue what the criteria is for being on this list. I have pretty much been editing this page and hope that I don't get accused of vandalizing this page. Now for your points:
  • I personally have been using 0.1 million as the minimum for this page. And yes, there are definitely a number of ethnic groups who are still not on this list. (I really can't believe that the Bretons was not on this list until now).
  • As for the inclusion of groups who may not be an ethnic group... I am not an ethnologist, so I pretty much have been basing their inclusion on the state of the article, and whether I can conclude "Yep, they are a legit ethnic group." So why are the Assyrians on this list and not the Copts, the Druze, and the Maronites (who I have now listed as subgroups since you posted this section)? Well I did not add the Assyrians on this list, but it seems like you can be Assyrian and not be a Christian? From the other three groups's pages it appears to me that if you converted to a different religion, you're no longer a member of that group; you'll just be an Egyptian, an Arab, and a Lebanese respectively.
  • Now, for the question on what the inclusion is for subgroups? I don't think there is one. I know we were not supposed to have diaspora populations, but that got thrown out the window a long time ago. So you can list any subgroup you want (so long as they are predominantly of the ethnic group they are listed under). Hell, you can list subgroups under multiple ethnic groups (so long as they are predominantly of the ethnic groups they are listed under).
  • Finally, about UNPO. Two things: 1. I don't see any mention of the Lemkos anywhere in that article. 2. Washington, D.C. is currently a member of UNPO. I don't think being an ethnic group is a prerequisite to join. Having said that, there are a lot of members of UNPO who should be on this list, either as an ethnic group or subgroup, so go ahead and add them. It's just that the Afrikaners predominantly descended from the Dutch, so most people tend to see them as, well, Dutch.
So, what I'm saying is: don't be afraid to edit!

Rjrya395 (talk) 04:52, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer! We largely agree on most points. A few quick comments
  • self-identification is very important and is not a fixed concept for everybody. One might identify with many ethnic groups or change affiliation.
  • Some diasporas have very distinct identity, that might even diverge from their homeland population. Overseas Vietnamese are a characteristic, if rather not extreme, example of this.
  • Finally, the affiliation for Washington DC in UNPO is mentioned as "D.C. Statehood Congressional Delegation". So, in that case UNPO qualifies it as an ethnic group, as much as Alabama or Tennessee could ever be, since it recognizes it as a potential state of USA, not as a distinct ethnicity. Quite an oddity for UNPO, compared to other entries, but well who knows why they became members.

Regards. Argean (talk) 10:00, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Adding a few more thoughts in the discussion: In my opinion, this is one of the most comprehensive lists of ethnic groups that I've seen on the web and we should keep it that way, but I really feel that we have to set some consensus criteria for inclusion. Otherwise we could easily end up having there hundreds to thousands groups and sub-groups (I don't know how many we have already included). I will give some examples:
  • The distinction between ethnic groups and indigenous peoples can become quite ambiguous (btw I'm not an ethnologist either and I'm not sure if the criteria I have in mind are correct). Sure, the limit of around 0.1 million people seems a decent cutoff, since most non-national (meaning that they don't have a nation of their own) indigenous peoples are usually a few to tens thousands. But there are some notable exemptions: Maori, Native Hawaiians, Cherokee, to name a few, definitely have a population of more than 0.1 millions and have their own language, homeland, cultural identity, etc, but are nowhere to be found, while we are listing Cree, Guarani, Navajo and a few African groups, who are definitely indigenous and have smaller populations. So if we are going to list all groups of self-identifying peoples above 0.1 millions, why not including Inuit, Sami and Iroquois then? (I thought of adding them, but then I changed my mind). Why Samoans but not Tahitians? Why not all the groups in Africa that are above 0.1 million? (and they are many...).
  • Sub-groups can actually mean many things: linguistic, regional, religious, cultural or even recognized minorities and diasporas. I believe that they all could be listed under the term. It doesn't seem that we have a population cutoff either. As, I mentioned earlier we list the 30,000 large Gozitans, but not the 250,000 large Azoreans. I might be missing some point there.
  • Honestly I can't follow the "Majority (plurality) religion" column, since in many entries we definitely have included more than one religion. By definition the majority (plurality) religion should be only one. If we are including the 20% Hindus in Sindhis and the 25% Muslims in Abkhazians, then why not the 20% Christians in Albanians would be my question.
I'm really not trying to be judgemental here -I hope you don't misunderstand me- I really don't know tbh, before continuing editing.
Regards. Argean (talk) 19:21, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
Hey, don't worry. For such a semi-important list, there is nobody important keeping an eye on this. Right now Khabaric7 and I are the only active users on this page. So if you're wondering why some groups are on this page and others are not, it's now just mostly because no one has added them in yet. One of your examples (the Navajo) was not even on this list until a few days ago! Just as long as the page for the ethnic group isn't crap (which clearly is not the case for the seven groups you just mentioned, but sadly it is for a large number of the African ethnic groups—I just removed one of them from this list) and they are in fact an ethnic group (there has been more than one occasion of someone trying to add the British on this list) go ahead and add them. Personally, I don't think there's a difference between an indigenous group and an ethnic group. An indigenous group is just a very small ethnic group (i.e. less than 100,000 people) who are most likely getting screwed by their country's government.
As for your other points:
  • No, you're not missing any point. By now we can add any sub-groups we want regardless of population (in fact, I just add the Azoreans). We probably should have a cut off point, but right now I don't know what it is other than it's most likely not going to be not based on population numbers.
  • Yeah, the "Majority (plurality) religion" column definitely needs a clean up, and I deleted the two things you mentioned. So if you see a group that has more than one religion listed (an it's not a "33% Religion A, 30% Religion B, 27% Religion C"-type situation), delete the rest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rjrya395 (talkcontribs) 23:02, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks and good to know that. Absolutely agree that there is no real difference between ethnic groups and indigenous people. I would add that, in my opinion, calling a group indigenous is actually a left-over of european colonialism, in an effort to deny their rights to self-identify as an ethnic group and discourage them to ask for further recognition. Personally, I will ignore the definitions given in the pages of the groups' description and I will include the ones that I mentioned before and others that I believe have the characteristics of an ethnic group, i.e. distinct identity, language, homeland, etc. Absolutely agree on the religion column as well and I don't find it very useful either. I'll follow the rules set, since it seems that we cannot get rid of it. I see that you are adding more African and Asian groups recently, so I'll go on editing the European ones basically, but keeping in mind that the list should remain inclusive and not too skewed towards one or another region. Best. Argean (talk) 13:57, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Aborigines

Is there any aboriginal ethnic groups whose population is greater than 100,000? Because I'm not really comfortable that there is not one aboriginal group on this list. Rjrya395 (talk) 04:28, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Felvidék

Argean,

what you have wriiten it edit log does not hold, Felvidék has an actual modern definiton, that is even known better than the historical one. Modern definition restricts the term to modern-day Slovakia, while the historic one is a bit broader, but includes the earlier. Further details see Upper Hungary. Cheers(KIENGIR (talk) 01:17, 6 November 2018 (UTC))

Ethnic superpowers and "mental conditioning."

Look; the statement that African Americans don't know their heritage due to "mental conditioning" is just completely asinine. It's difficult enough to convince people that slavery left a cultural imprint even without trying to blame a tangentially-related social ill on a polyethnic racial category like "Europeans."

African Americans have not been "conditioned against" knowing their heritage; they don't know it because the records have been lost and because many have intermarried. And in any case, blaming Europeans in general rather than slaveowners in particular for the very real mental and cultural conditioning of slavery... to blame the general rather than the specific: first, is to trivialize the sacrifices made by millions of whites (among others) who fought for the North during the Civil War; second, is to reject the solidarity expressed and realized by whites (among others) from the time of the Underground Railroad through the Civil Rights movement and into the present day; and third, is to ignore the dedication put forth by those researchers who have given us a glimpse into the real psychological and cultural cost that was actually incurred by slavery.

Because frankly, the notion that mental conditioning is even *capable* of preventing people from identifying with their heritage roughly seems to imply that African Americans have this superpower wherein they automatically know what African state they were from, a superpower that is deactivated as if by kryptonite whenever African Americans come into contact with "suppressive Europeans." (Did you catch the Scientology reference? Because that's the other thought-system the statement brings to mind...)

I'm going to delete the phrase "mental conditioning by Europeans" and replace it with the phrase "lost records and intermarriage". The text will then read, "Due to the inability to identify themselves with any particular African ethnic group or African state as a result of lost records and intermarriage, they are largely considered a separate ethnicity." In the future, if you wish to claim that "Europeans mentally conditioned African Americans to make them unable to identify with Africa," please give a reason, specifically one that is grounded in actual psychology and not just half-minded racist mythology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.173.18 (talk) 02:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


You are absolutely incorrect. It was and still is a large effort in part by powers that be to knowingly wash and destroy the Heritage of Africans in America. I cannot believe your incongruent babble of insolence. Simply admonishing history because it does not make you comfortable is doing the exact thing that you claim the large majority of whites did not do. Simply because it was not the majority does not mean that Europeans did not do it. Please educate yourself and come to reality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:375D:C2F0:C01D:87B9:C507:10B (talk) 17:39, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Although the first user has a lot of questionable statements here (native Europeans are polyethnic? assuming all historical researchers were white? whites made a lot of sacrifice?), his/her overall agreement seems reasonable. The second user should respond with good points rather than just dismissing the argument. Wiki user wiki (talk) 22:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Arab population of 400 million heavily wrong and distorted, out of lne with actual ethnic reality and genetics

Removed Arab world and Arab peoples as population of 400 million; it was biased (included Somalia?!) and was not in line with reality (Syria includes ethnic Syrians, genetically part of East Mediterranean genetic group, but also Arabs from Gulf). Too many mistakes to be accurate as a single ethnicity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Funhouse5050 (talkcontribs) 20:10, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

This is your interpretation of the figures. Such synthesis is not permitted on Wikipedia, and I have restored the data you removed. RolandR (talk) 20:28, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
I've also removed further changes made to the content which suggest that Funhouse5050 is applying WP:OR to the concept of "ethnicity". DNA is not the single defining factor for an ethnic group. There are numerous criteria for defining ethnicity. If the user can provide reliable sources pointing to being part of a single haplogroup as being the irrefutably defining criterion for ethnicity, then I might reconsider what it is to be 'Arabic'. For the moment, it WP:POV WP:SYNTH at best. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:57, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

This article is an absolute trainwreck as described somewhere above. Arabs are not an ethnic group but a cultural and, arguably, linguistic group. They don't even speak the same language but a group of related ones. What ethnicity are Sudanese Arabs? Clearly a different one than Lebanese or Algerians.The Maghrebis are mainly of Berber stock and on a daily basis speak either Maghrebi Arabic (various versions) which is not intelligible with, e.g., Modern Standard Arabic. In addition you have local Berber languages. This all you could have looked up on Wikipedia. How the hell did someone come up with 100m French if France has less then 70m people, a lot of it of migrant origins. A few millions in Quebec clearly can't account for it (are they still French at all?). Han Chinese are not one ethnic group - again more of a cultural group. Hindustani up to 1.200billion??? Even worse for Italian and Irish - was every American claiming to be one of the other counted in just because his grand grand father on the maternal side was? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.203.34.9 (talk) 20:30, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

It seems that Arabic speaking ethnic peoples are largely excluded from this list. For example, there are no entries for countries located on the Arabian Peninsula. This is a huge oversight and needs to be remedied as quickly as possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miramisk (talkcontribs) 20:22, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

I think this article needs to clearly define ethnicity as opposed to race. Race is, for example, black, white, Asian. Meanwhile, there is a reason the US census has "Hispanic" or "non-Hispanic" separately from the rest. There can be white Hispanics, black Hispanics, or native American Hispanics. With Arabs, I do think they are an ethnicity. They originated as a race, but there is also a separate Arab ethnicity of all *Arabized* peoples, including North Africans, Turks, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Iranians, etc. Arabs are nonetheless an ethnic group, though. Wiki user wiki (talk) 22:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Horrible name

What a horrible name for this list! List of existing ethnic groups, yes. List of extant ethnic groups, yes. Contemporary groups? When you're talking about possible historical entities, contemporary is more likely to mean "existing at the same time as each other. The Phoenicians, Babylonians, and the Lapita were contemporary, for instance. Grutness...wha? 13:57, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

I've beena sked to clarify so: "Contemporary" has two meanings. It's come to mean "present day", but its earlier and still more widespread meaning, particularly in archaeology and anthropology, is "at the same time". So while you're actually trying to list present-day ethnic groups, many of the more likely users of the page might expect the page to be lists of ethnic groups who were contemporaries with each other.Grutness...wha? 05:09, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Incomplete by 2.1Bn people (11/2017) and over-accounting for Caucasian ethnic groups

The list total, taken estimates by their average, only amounts to 5.5Bn people. Also, breaking down said 153 ethnic groups that are listed here into U.S. Census-Style racial/ethnic uber-groups, this list disproportionately lists Caucasian groups, which could simply mean that most authors of this page are more familiar with Caucasian ethnic groups and less familiar with ethnic groups of non-Caucasian backgrounds. Particularly under-reported here are African/Black ethnic groups (based on African census data, approx. 600 Million people aren't listed on here), Latin American / South American groups (based on South/Latin american census data, 400 Million people aren't on this list), 500 Million East Asian people aren't accounted for, and 600 Million South Asian / Indian people aren't accounted for.

Current world population is 7.6 Billion, so 600M+400M+500M+600M=2.1Bn that are missing on this list that totals only approx. 5.5Bn

These numbers are generally a bit wishy-washy and a matter of opinion/classification, but simple math tells us that this list is missing approx. 2.1 Billion people, and the vast majority of the ones unaccounted for are not Caucasian. If anything, this page should list more than 7.6Bn people because some may be part of multiple ethnic groups (i.e. a Jewish Spaniard). Our understanding and discovery of ethnic groups is very incomplete.

Gentle (talk) 20:25, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, totally agreed. The total should be well over the world population as my parents were Irish and German/Irish, but we're now "Midwestern". Meaning I'd check down 3 or more different ethnic groups if the list was exhaustive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.122.89.179 (talk) 03:01, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Kinda missing an obvious category.

So according to this, I have no ethnic group because it doesn't exist? We have no... culture, food, ancestry, history, homeland, language, or dialect? ...that seems a little racist. Exclusive rather than inclusive. 97.122.89.179 (talk) 02:57, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

What the hell are you talking about? Rjrya395 (talk) 02:37, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Racial Groups vs Ethnicity

I recently included information on Australian Aborigines, Malagasy and Papuans and had them removed for being racial categories rather than ethnicities. This seems wrong headed - The Australian aborigines are very clearly an ethnic group as well as a racial category, and to make it unacceptable to include them at all in the article simply wipes their existence from the books needlessly.

Likewise, the Papuan people are listed as ethnically distinct in their article, and with good reason - they are. They are a large ethnic group under which many smaller groups are included. Putting each tribe in the list would be unwieldy, but removing an ethnicity of over 2 million people from consideration entirely seems unwarranted.

The Malagasy inclusion was likewise cut, partly because several smaller groups are also included. Nonetheless, the Malagasy are generally considered am overarching ethnicity including these smaller groups, and once again placing every small tribal group under that umbrella would be a very intensive endeavor.

Where do you get the idea that the Aborigines and the Papuans constitute a single ethnic group? I'm aware that most non-ethnologists usually view them a single group due to how similar their large number of tribes are to each other, but among ethnologists, each tribe is its own ethnic group. As for the Malagasy, I will admit that outside of Madagascar, the eighteen or so Malagasy group are usually seen as one group. When you look at each group, however, you can easily tell which group descended from the Bantus and which one descended from the Dayaks. Rjrya395 (talk) 08:10, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Yoruba

See Yoruba religion JMGM (talk) 14:31, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the majority (or at least a plurality) of the Yoruba are Christian. Rjrya395 (talk) 07:27, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Macedonians

Geronikolakis, why do your remove Macadonians from the list?(KIENGIR (talk) 22:40, 20 June 2019 (UTC))

Simple! Because he's a fucking nationalist. Rjrya395 (talk) 04:26, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 July 2019

2.85.10.166 (talk) 09:57, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

  Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.

Kabyle

Kabyle no Kabule because Kabule the afloat with RED color — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:6609:D800:BD12:8256:1E8E:F608 (talk) 18:47, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 July 2019

2A02:587:660F:1600:D17F:99C0:6E20:C50 (talk) 14:16, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

(2A02:587:660F:1600:D17F:99C0:6E20:C50 (talk) 14:16, 27 July 2019 (UTC)).

  Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Melmann 15:28, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 July 2019

Aggelos1234 (talk) 12:45, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Please want to take an change

  Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone will add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 12:47, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Want to take an edit please

Thank you Aggelos1234 (talk) 12:55, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Please want to take an change

Kabyle no kabule because with kabule the red color Aggelos1234 (talk) 12:50, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Aggelos1234, I think you're saying that Kabule, which is currently a redlink, needs to be changed to Kabyle, which has an article and is therefore a blue link? --valereee (talk) 14:23, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Aggelos1234

PLEASE NOT CHANGE THE NYMBER THANK YOU Aggelos1234 (talk) 16:40, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

The last edit by Aggelos1234 is full of arbitrarily altered figures, which makes it hard to assume good faith. I took a random sample from figures which have Encyclopædia Britannica as source:

Kimbundu:

Britannica: 2,420,000
WP before edit: 2,4 million
WP after edit: 4 million

Uab Meto:

Britannica: 530,000
WP before edit: 0,5 million
WP after edit: 0,8 million

Igbo:

Britannica: nearly 20 million
WP before edit: 20 million
WP after edit: 40 million

And so on. I'll revert and post a warning. –Austronesier (talk) 20:18, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Total Number of Spanish Speaking people(Hispanics)

Source used in this article 46,380,000 in Spain, all users. L1 users: 42,700,000 in Spain (Instituto Cervantes 2017). L2 users: 3,680,000 (Instituto Cervantes 2017). Total users in all countries: 534,335,730 (as L1: 460,093,030; as L2: 74,242,700)

Please, If you have a different amount in your mind give another source to back it up Aggelos1234. Malotun (talk) 14:34, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

El Britain

No because the Portuguese is in the world 222.7 million who is alls ethnic genetics Portuguese El Britain (talk) 15:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

? Check the Portuguese people article.(KIENGIR (talk) 21:40, 30 September 2019 (UTC))

Semi-protected edit request on 23 September 2019

Change Portuguese ethnic group population from 222.7 million to 10.36 million. (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/po.html) Reason: using number of native speakers of a language as the same thing as ethnicity is obviously nonsense. Brazilians (and others from ex-colonies) are not Portuguese; they belong to a myriad of ethnic groups (ex. Japanese, Arab) and speaking Portguese does not make someone ethnically Portuguese. Change the population of Portuguese ethnic group to actual Portuguese people, and not everyone that speaks Portuguese. As an analog of this absurdity imagine considering the population of the US as ethnically British because their language is (mostly) English, not considering the actual culture and ethnicity. Alinefrost (talk) 17:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

  Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Sceptre (talk) 09:46, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 3 November 2019

According to a study, there are about 42 million ethnic portuguese in the world, not 222.7 million. That's the number of speakers. The source is: https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugueses#cite_note-1 87.196.72.86 (talk) 17:46, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

  Not done: The article does clearly label the number listed as the number of speakers, as you say, but the offered source is not persuasive. It links to an article in Diàro de Noticias (which itself is a reliable source) but DN is not the actual source of the figure. An unpublished non-academic survey from a Brazilian businessman using unclear methodology is the ultimate source of the figure, which is not generally accepted as a reliable source. I hope this helps. Thank you for the suggestion, however. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 05:38, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Portuguese people

Portuguese people in the world is 222.700.000 in the end thank you . — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nikosgero1717 (talkcontribs) 21:29, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 10 November 2019

Nikosgero1717 (talk) 07:33, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

(Nikosgero1717 (talk) 07:33, 10 November 2019 (UTC)).

  Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 07:53, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

extra closing parenthesis in Arab subgroup section

Bedouins, Druze, Shirazis (including Zanzibaris, Comorians and Maores), Baggara), Arab-Berbers

This should probably not have a closing parenthesis after Baggara? 8bit (talk) 21:10, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 30 November 2019

Venetians  ethnic group   speaking the Venetian language with its varieties. The group originated from the present area around the city of Venezia. Speakers of the Venetian language around 10 millions sprea all over the world because of the diaspora originated mainly after italian annexation of Venetian territories.
  Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:03, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 6 December 2019

Tyronqe7 (talk) 09:17, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

i wish add on new ethnic group from some of uganda monarchy ethnic group, i hope add in since still not there yet.

  Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. –Austronesier (talk) 10:20, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

North-Central Indians

I don't believe Hindi-speaking individuals in states like Uttar Pradesh are listed under any of the ethnic groups listed. How should we go about fixing this? Some sources list them as "Hindustani people" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.175.192.200 (talk) 21:57, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Mandinka2000

Egyptians is subgroup in arabs and Spaniards in the planet is 460 million and Happy new near 💙 Mandinka2000 (talk) 18:05, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

January 2020

I have just reverted some changes to this page today that deleted several groups and changed numbers despite them being properly sourced (and the sources were left in line). Could we discuss the rationale behind the deletions here please and arrive at a consensus. Thanks. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 23:05, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Copts

I feel like the Copts need their own group, if the Assyrians have their own group, than the Copts should too. --Toby Mitches (talk) 06:34, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Do you have the information to make an entry? -- Sirfurboy (talk) 07:51, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Yea, Name: Copts. Native language: Afro-Asiatic - Ancient Egyptian - Coptic. Primary homeland: Egypt. Population (estimate): 17 million. Subgroups: Sudan and Libya along with significant populations in United States, Canada and Australia. Relgion: Christianity.
Let me know if that was all you need --Toby Mitches (talk) 15:57, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
I went to edit them into the page and found they were already there! However the entry differed from the information you have supplied and I updated it with the subgroups. I went with the population figures on the Copts page itself (15-20 million) as it has a reference. Yours is bang in the middle of that range so should be fine. Most significantly I changed reliogion from Islam (Sunni) to Christianity (and I linked to Coptic Christianity which is the majority, but clearly there are a range). This is out of my expertise but my understanding has always been that the Copts were primarily Coptic rite Christians, and this is also the sourced information on the Copts page so I think the change is all in order. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 16:41, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Just had a look and I'm glad to see the change, thanks for your help --Toby Mitches (talk) 23:05, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Masa

Just found a problem in the 'Masa' section under 'religion'. It claims they are just Islamic, which is wrong, about 45% is Muslim but also another 45% is Christian, if anyone is bothered, they could add Christianity, like in the Tutsi section, that'd be nice to see --Toby Mitches (talk) 06:52, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Do you have a ref for that to verify? Thanks. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 07:26, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
Yea, just press the link here and it'll send you over to their wiki page, you'll find a couple links there, hope that helped --Toby Mitches (talk) 11:25, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. Good information. I was able to update the citation request for population numbers with the same source. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 11:56, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for all the help you've done on this page, one last problem I found which isn't that bad, but still easy to fix is in the 'Fula' section under homeland they forgot to add Mauritania with along with the other West African countries, once again thanks for all work you put in --Toby Mitches (talk) 03:44, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
Now added. Thanks for letting me know. Also the temporary page protection I requested for this page (because of the edit warring by an IP sock puppet) has now been lifted. Any account can edit this page now. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 07:38, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Kind of ironic because I already got you to edit every mistake I saw, but thanks for letting me know, I might come back to this page after a couple of weeks and do more research and see if I can spot anymore small mistakes, but once again thank you for all your help --Toby Mitches (talk) 07:56, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Not all Portuguese speakers are ethnically "Portuguese"

This page for example lists about 60 million Portuguese and Portuguese descended people in the world. Defining ethnicity solely by language is not the practice for most other ethnicities on this list, including its closest analogue, Spaniards/Spanish speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:603:4E80:9550:9428:F9FC:F10D:F204 (talk) 04:25, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, but this is a general issue with this list. Ethnologue is referenced 150 times, and many of those references confuse language with ethnicity. Note the caveats in the lead on that point. Nevertheless, I am more than happy to update the figures for ethnic Portuguese for you, if you can provide any figures. We need a sourced figure. It would be perfectly acceptable, in my view, to use the figure just for Portugal as long as we caveated it. Or we could caveat the larger figure. But whatever we do, sources are welcome. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 15:47, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Spaniards

@Sirfurboy:,

recently as I see the edit history there was a debate about this..we should catch what the original additions meant to be. I have no problem to accept your argumentation, but you have to see in the Sugroups bracket all Spaniards all listed....so then where else their total number should be shown?(KIENGIR (talk) 02:55, 12 February 2020 (UTC))

Yes, I understand the point, but I did search and failed to find any source that tells us the answer. How many people across the world are, or consider themselves ethnically Spanish? We do not know. It cannot just be the number of people speaking Spanish as it only takes a moment to realise that in South America there are large indigenous populations who speak Spanish but are clearly not ethnically Spanish - and that is only one example of confusing language with ethnicity (particularly for a World language). We know the number in Spain which is why I carefully caveated that number to show it was Spain only.
It is not just Spain that is problematic here. For instance, the English are being reported on this page as 137.4 million. This number is less than the number of English speakers but more than the number of English people in the UK. It seems to be adding in Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Americans, but then not everyone from the US perhaps. The link is failing so I cannot see what they are counting, but it is clear that all these countries are mixtures with high populations that do not have any English ethnicity, however that is defined. This all looks like WP:SYNTHESIS and I think we should reduce the number and just count the English. This page has many such errors. The problem is that Wikipedia should only be reporting what we can actually know, and when it comes to the size of ethnic groups, we don't really have good answers because we don't really carefully define what is and what is not an ethnic group. Thanks for your input. -- Sirfurboy   (talk) 07:39, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
@KIENGIR and Sirfurboy: I think we reach an inherent problem of the article here. Like both of you, I haven't actively added much content, but mostly patrolled this page from crank edits. I react to IP edits without summary with Pavlovian reverts (or when the summary reads PLEASE, PLEASE).
The concept of an "ethnic group" works pretty well for smaller regionally contained groups, such as Latvians, Māori, or also larger ethnic groups such as Koreans which have a big, but origin-conscious diaspora. When it comes to English, Spanish or French speakers, we end up in a hodgepodge of nationalities and ethnographic groups. Americans (a nationality) are subsumed under English, but historically this is only true for WASPs (unless of Scottish descent), and most of them do not self-identify as English people, except for recently naturalized Americans such as John Oliver. We have they same fuzzy to incorrect conflation of Spaniards with Hispanics.
Look how this article started: [3]. I totally agree with dab's talk post Talk:List of contemporary ethnic groups/Archive 2#WP:TNT. He did a good job of bringing the article into managable size [4], but it was subsequently blown up to oversize again. I opt for a second round of TNT. –Austronesier (talk) 14:31, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Austronesier, and yes, I haven't really attempted to deal with this page in earnest. Interesting history on the article, thanks. Some kind of judicious demolition is probably called for, but first I think we need to agree the "rules of engagement" For instance, when do we allow language to act as a proxy for ethnicity? Indeed, what do we even mean by Ethnicity? I guess we would not even get everyone to agree it is socially constructed, but even among the majority who would argue it is, there is much debate as to what constitutes ethnicity, e.g.[5] So... counting ethnicities is always going to be problematic. To take one example though that is close to home for me: how many people of Welsh ethnicity are there? Is that even the same as how many Welsh people are there? Because on the UK census Welsh people can call themselves Welsh or British. Are only those who tick Welsh ethnically Welsh? We cannot use the language as a proxy as only about a quarter if Welsh people speak it fluently. Genetics advocates may never accept the (very old) Somali community in Wales as ethnically Welsh, yet that community has been there as long as many other communities that think of themselves as Welsh but hail from England. And what of all the Welsh people living outside Wales?
Clearly we need something that is agreed and sourced - yet ar ethere any agreed measures of ethnicity? -- Sirfurboy   (talk) 19:13, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Well, @Rjrya395:, did a great job by caring about this article, let's hope he will chime in and comment, problems started since he were not active after a while...Well, in case of TNT please let the Hungarian section as it was, I supervised it personally so that section is really ok.(KIENGIR (talk) 23:24, 12 February 2020 (UTC))
Thanks KIENGIR (talk · contribs), more eyes would be helpful. And yes, I don't plan chopping up the Hungarian section :) I did just take a look at the Welsh section though, and, oh dear. 16.3 million Welsh? That is many times the population of Wales, and the link does not work so I cannot tell how it is arriving at that figure, but the ref title appears to suggest it is an analysis of who has Welsh names. Hmmm. -- Sirfurboy   (talk) 23:40, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
@KIENGIR and Sirfurboy: Hungarians and Welsh people are good examples for how this page works well and is problematic at the same time.
Hungarians can safely be added to my list of regionally contained groups that allow a relatively sharp definition of ethnic identity. It is the classic case of an ethnolinguistic group, i.e. an ethnic group where language defines the demarcation line between members and outsiders.
In the case of Welsh (and several other groups), the ethnolinguistic approach does not work. Beyond this, the term Welsh can at least have two definitions: Welsh as a traditional ethnic group which has partially undergone language shift to English; and Welsh as a regional identity, that can also include non-ethnic Welsh "immigrants" and their descendants. So you can have Welsh-speaking Welsh-descent Welsh people, English-speaking Welsh-descent Welsh people, English-speaking English-descent Welsh people, English-speaking Somali-descent Welsh people etc. (Sirfurboy does that make any sense? Please protest if not). Similar problematic cases of ethnic groups which have undergone language shift are East Frisians, Bretons.
Ok, TNT may then not be the correct approach just because of a limited number of obviously problematic cases, as with the descendants of voluntary mass migrations during colonial times, English, Spaniards and Portuguese (the descendants of African peoples that were enslaved and forcefully settled in the Americas are given correct mention, e.g. Akan people). –Austronesier (talk) 10:20, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Austronesier, I see you conceern, however the are Hungarians who cannot speak the language, but yes however your definition is quite near to the truth in this case. Well if Rjrya395 would return, I think he could argue and solve problems the best to help us...(KIENGIR (talk) 17:52, 13 February 2020 (UTC))
@KIENGIR: I've just had a look at Rjrya395's talk page. Unfortunately, they are not in the position anymore to contribute here. Anyway, I'm still thinking about under which entry we can best fit in the overseas diasporas of English, Spanish etc. descent. Will bring it to talk first rather than BRD. –Austronesier (talk) 19:56, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Oh, I did not notice...well then we have to solve it without him it seems...(KIENGIR (talk) 23:54, 13 February 2020 (UTC))

Uzbeks

Hello. You have greatly reduced the number of Uzbeks and given incorrect information. I will give you the right source and ask you to correct it as soon as possible--Asadbek Botirqulov (talk) 16:08, 6 August 2020 (UTC).[1]

References

  1. ^ "Demograhpic situation in the Republic of Uzbekistan". The State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Statistics. stat.uz. Archived from the original on 17 November 2019. Retrieved 13 April 2019.

Koreans

Korean section: Korean Peninsula population is 77 Million. The real factual number for the Korean population is 86-90 Million. If you count all ancestral populations with Overseas Korean Population it would be about 100 Million at least. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KoreanPenin5ulaKP (talkcontribs) 08:44, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Fertility rates

What about the fertility rates? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.66.154.110 (talk) 09:00, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

What about them? Please specify how you would like to improve the article. — Chrisahn (talk) 15:50, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Precision

Some numbers in the table have four significant digits. That implies a precision that cannot be achieved, because ethnic groups cannot be delineated precisely (as we mention in the lead). I'd suggest we reduce the precision of all numbers to two significant digits. More than that would be misleading. — Chrisahn (talk) 16:04, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Sorting by population broken for Altai and Cheyenne

When you sort the ethnicities by population the altai and cheyenne will show up at the top/bottom instead of in the order they belong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vendarian (talkcontribs) 04:11, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Fixed. — Chrisahn (talk) 14:23, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

African Americans

Are there not a separate ethnic group now? I don't talk about the racial group of black people in the US nut the group which comes from slaves but now blended into one ethnicity and has a certain culture (200 years already). (so this group WILL NOW include recent African immigration). Afrikaners are included too for example despite also being a group originally from thge Dutch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.15.241.95 (talk) 18:50, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Do these qualify as ethnicity?

Writing Systems

Should we add writing system next to Languages? Doremon764 (talk) 18:49, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Fixing up page!?!

The chart rows are now merged in some areas. Doremon764 (talk) 02:32, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Primary, Subgroup, and number of people are mixed. Doremon764 (talk) 02:33, 20 May 2021 (UTC)