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Previous peer review
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I've listed this article for peer review because the previous Featured Article Review didn't pan out and I would like to ensure that this article is up to standards before trying again. Please be very picky! I have been looking at this article for so long that I think I am blind to any current problems with it.
Thanks, Mo-Al (talk) 01:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Ruhrfisch comments: This looks much better compared to the version I reviewed back in July 2009 - thanks for all your work on it. I think it still needs some polish before it would be ready for FAC. Here are some suggestions for improvement, general first, then I will try to point out as many specific issues as I can.
- The biggest issue I see is a lack of references in the History section, where there are whole paragraphs with no refs. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref.
- The external links checker tool (in the toolbox on this page) shows several dead links.
- The disambiguation link finder finds one dab link (back to this page) that will also need to be fixed
- The external links section seems pretty long - are all of these needed? As WP:External links asks, are they all "minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article"?
- WP:See also says that see also links are usually not already in the article
- As a general note, the article has several short (one or two sentence) paragraphs, which impede the narrative flow. There are two such one-sentence paragraphs in History, and some other later sections also have many short paragraphs - Syntax is especially choppy.
- The article refers to the language mostly as Tamazight, so I think this should be the first alternate name listed first in the lead. I know it used to be under the name "Central Morocco Tamazight" and it still uses this once in the Algeria section and in the Berber languages nav box at the bottom of the article.
- The article also uses general time terms like recently or currently in several places - wherever possible these should be replaced with things like "since YEAR" or "as of 2010", Something that is recent now may not seem so in a few years. Even non-specific statements like Berber languages are not official state languages in Morocco and Algeria. might read better with an "as of 2010" added.
- On to specifics, starting with the lead. The lead is a summary of the whole article and as an introduction, should be written at a more accessible level for the general reader than the rest of the article. Nothing should only be in the lead, and the amount of space devoted to subjects in the lead should roughly reflect the weight of that topic in the article. I think the lead could be a little easier to follow for the general reader, note that all of the alternate names are not really explained in the body of the article, and also note that the History section is given pretty short shrift in the lead compared to its size in the rest of the article.
- The dab link at the top of the lead calls it a dialect, but the lead does not use that word until the second paragraph, and then only once. I realize this is probably a contentious issue and Classification goes into more detail on this, so perhaps the lead should too.
- The lead first talks about four languages Central Atlas Tamazight is one of the four most-spoken Berber languages... but then refers to three Additionally, the differences between all three groups are largely phonological and lexical, ... which is it 3 or 4?
- Use double quotes like this " in this sentence: Differentiating these dialects is complicated by the fact that speakers of other languages may also refer to their language as 'Tamazight'.[2]
- Seems incomplete The standard word order is Verb-Subject-Object but sometimes [is?] Subject-Verb-Object [or add "is used"?].[17]
- I am not sure I follow this sentence in the lead Even borrowed verbs will undergo native patterns, including ablaut, due to pervasive borrowing from Arabic.[18][19] Borrowed words follow native patterns because words have been borrowed from Arabic??
- I also think Using <gh> for [ɣ] when embedding Berber words in English text follows the tradition set by French-language publications, even those written by Berbers.[22] could be made clearer - explain what the <> and [] mean.
- Problem sentence The name "Tamazirt" results from French transcription of Tamazight /ɣ/ with the letter <r>, which in French represents the similar-sounding phoneme /ʁ/.[nb 2] First off the note is just a reference, so why not make it a ref? Second how is /ɣ/ different from [ɣ] used earlier in this paragraph? Why is Tamazirt in quotes, when other foreign langiage words / names are in italics in this paragraph? Finally, there is no explanation of the word Tamazirt - is this the French name? Who says it or uses it? See WP:PCR
- Dialect continuum is already linked, so is a link to "dialect continuum between" needed? How is it different from a regular dialect continuum?
- Is AS a dialect or a tribe? Ayt Ayache (AA) and Ayt Seghrouchen (AS) are two mutually intelligible dialects of Tamazight (Ayt Seghrouchen being a much larger tribe).[27]
- Is Ayt Atta in Southern dialects (e.g. Ayt Atta) may also be differentiated syntactically the same as Ait Atta in the Additional groups speaking Tamazight list? If so, spell consistently.
- I would add the dates to the caption King Juba II of Numidia and Mauretania. Also does not need a period as not a full sentence
- The article says Carthage fell in 146 BC, so this seems out of chronological order Masinissa's line survived until AD 24, when the remaining Berber territory was annexed to the Roman Empire. After the fall of Carthage, the area was annexed to the Roman Empire in A.D. 40,...
- I would mention that IRCAM comes from the Frnch name
- In Geographic distribution the first sentence uses "Berber languages" (plural) while the second sentence use "Berber language" (singular). Later Shilha and Riff are called languages, then called dialects.
- OK, I am stopping here for now. I think the article needs a copyedit. A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow. There are several FAs in Wikipedia:Featured_articles#Language_and_linguistics that may be good models
Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 13:55, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you again for your useful advice. It will take some time to work through all your points. Mo-Al (talk) 03:55, 12 September 2010 (UTC)