Talk:Yamas language

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@Kwamikagami:, do you recall where you found the association of Yamas with Gira language? I couldn't find mention of this name in ethnologue, glottolog, or the two other sources listed there. On the other hand, there's at least one text that mentions "Yamas" in the context of the language of the Yamasee: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25132315. – Uanfala (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Given the date, it was almost certainly while I was IDing the red links at Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages/Language names in Voegelin and Voegelin (1977). Given that the classification note I had taken from V&V ID'd it as one of the Astrolabe languages, it certainly wasn't Yamasee. I don't know which source I found to re-ID it from Oceanic to Finiterre-Huon, but it may have been one of the many old refs you can find at Glottolog. (Unfortunately, the Glottolog search engine only returns primary names, not page mentions, so I can't tell if that's where I got it.) I wasn't documenting sources for rd's because there were over 1,800 of them, and I just didn't have the time. Plus, most of the names were so obscure that it probably wouldn't be worth mentioning them in the articles anyway. And indeed, in this case you only care because it coincidentally looks like something else! It looks like yamas is an old Spanish name, though, and explained in translation, not something people reading English sources would need to ID. — kwami (talk) 08:11, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

There's also a Yamas dialect of Central Asmat.[1] A lot of names would require dabs if we include obscure enough refs. — kwami (talk) 08:21, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, there is one possible association with the Finisterre language: the brief paragraph about Gira on p. 50 of this mentions the village of Yeimas. Could "Yamas" have been a typo of this? – Uanfala (talk) 10:45, 24 September 2018 (UTC)