Talk:Taivoan language

Parameter confliction about fos

It looks like both this article and Siraya one claim that fos are their ISO 639-3 code, the SIL page does only mention the Siraya, and by checking Ethnologue this language is called a dialect of Siraya, any ideas how to resolve this confliction? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:52, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

• Any other solution than we apply for a language code change to SIL?Benson Fang (talk) 19:37, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

• @Bellenion: Why SIL? I don't think that this can be the reason that you make such confliction. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:17, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

• Why SIL? Perhaps check our dialogues previously on this topic. -Benson Fang (talk) 07:03, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami, Plandu, Stevey7788, and StevenJ81: Is this really? A local on-wiki confliction must be fixed in organization? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:30, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

SIL / Ethnologue makes mistakes all the time. Go to the language experts doing active work on the languages and cite them. Ethnologue and ISO are not the Bible. In fact, SIL people working on Ethnologue even consult me for various questions that they have on Southeast Asian languages. — Stevey7788 (talk) 20:39, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Officially, there's a distinction between ISO and SIL. They have different people, who need to go through channels just like everyone else.

This is a common situation, a disagreement as to whether two varieties are languages or dialects. The ISO code [fos] is for Siraya, not Taivoan. According to Ethnologue, Taivoan is a dialect of Siraya, but there's nothing about that in ISO. So, if Taivoan is a distinct language, it does not have an ISO code. Whether a change request should be worded as splitting [fos] or as creating a new code, I don't know. If the identification of Taivoan as a dialect of Siraya in Ethnologue is an error, then it should be ignored and a request made to create a new code. However, since our map, which comes from Tsuchida (1983), agrees in relegating Taivoan as a dialect of Siraya, it's likely that this is a common conclusion (or perhaps assumption) in the lit, in which case a request should be made to split [fos]. (Whether [fos] would then be retired or kept on for Siraya proper would be up to ISO.) But, a case would need to be made that Taivoan actually *is* a distinct language -- that is, that it was mutually unintelligeble with Siraya -- and not just that the people are ethnically distinct or *think* that it's a distinct language. Yes, I know that conflicts with e.g. the recent creation of an ISO code for Montenegrin, but as ISO admits, the artificial split of languages like Shtokavian, Urdu and Malay into national standards, even though inconsistent with ISO ideals, is too politically entrenched to correct. But, ideally, no new cases like that should be created (e.g., we're not going to get an ISO code for "American"). — kwami (talk) 02:05, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Tsuchida's statement that Taivoan is a dialect of Siraya in 1983 has been rejected by himself later in 1991, as more corpora have been analyzed by Mr. Tsuchida and other linguists including Mr. Li, Paul J.K. since 1983. Please check the following material of his:

• Tsuchida, Shigeru, Yukihiro Yamada and Tsunekazu Moriguchi (1991), Linguistic Materials of the Formosan Sinicized Populations I: Siraya and Basai. Tokyo: University of Tokyo.

Because the modern linguistic analysis of Sinckan Manuscripts, one of the most important corpora of Siraya, Taivoan, and Makatao, especially the further two languages which comprised 98% of all the corpora, has only been started since 1989 by Mr. Weng, Jia-yin (which was the first analysis of the corpora after Mr. Murakami's compilation in 1933), followed by the overall analysis of the total 170 pieces of Sinckan Manuscripts, including 69 pieces received by Mr. Li's team after 1990s never disclosed to the public, by Academia Sinica led by the team between 2001-2004.

Based on the research done by scholars including Tsuchida, Mr. Li concluded that Taivoan and Makatao are different languages from Siraya after 2010:

• Li, Paul Jen-kuei (2010), Studies of Sinkang Manuscripts. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica.

Let's go back to the 17th century, if Taivoan were really only a dialect of Siraya, they wouldn't have needed any translator to talk with each other. (Source: De Dagregisters van het Kasteel Zeelandia, 1629–1662, and further analysis in From Single to Group: The Formation of Sideia in the Seventeenth Century by Mr. Lee, Jui-yuan in 2015). -Benson Fang (talk) 17:25, 24 May 2018 (UTC)