Babel |
=How well do I know it=
This category page should include definitions of basic , intermediate , and advanced . 15:09, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
:The distinctions are a bit arbitrary I suppose. [http://commons.wikimedia.org/ Commons] (where this idea started) gives this guide:
:::*1 stands for basic knowledge: the ability to understand and answer simple questions in the language. :::*2 stands for intermediate knowledge. :::*3 stands for advanced or fluent knowledge: the ability to correct spelling and grammar errors in the language.
:You can read more about the whole thing at [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Babel Commons:Babel]. I ll add these definitions to the page for now. If you can think of a better way of defining them that d be great. — 16:09, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
What if I know a foreign language (English) better than my native language (Chinese) Perhaps native and level-3 should be merged together, the same that s done on Commons. -- ) 19:46, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)
I think we need to clarify what Native speaker means, since a lot of people (children of immigrants, for example) know foreign languages much better than their maternal or native languages. Simply asking if a language is native to someone may not be a good gauge of how proficient they are in it.
I m going to change the descriptions of the native label on ) 13:44, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
I guess it should be obvious, but the article talks about spoken language and we are of course reading and writing, not speaking here. I might almost get away with th-1 when speaking to someone and with some time when reading, but I can t write. Similarly I may be no-2 for reading and speaking but I wouldn t trust my spelling. I guess that what we re interested in is written performance in the language. 06:50, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I m thinking more on similar questions - are the levels primarilly about reading or writing The question is important, as there are quite a lot of languages that are so similar, that if you know one of them, you might understand all of them, even at a very-close-to-native-level, but you might not be able to write a single sentence (caused by non-existent grammar and spelling knowledges) - you d just use your own language, and hope whoever you re writing to is okay with that too.
For an example - I m myself Swede - take the scandinavian wikipedias. There is quite a lot of flow of information even between them - even if you perhaps can t really write in the article, you might be able to check facts etc, and help with images etc. Sometimes content is copied over in the wrong language and translated afterwards. Another example is plattdütsch - as I am a de-3 (living and studying in northern Germany at the moment, and platt being similar to both german and the scandinavian languages) I can understand it at level 1 too. But I would answer in german...
What is the right level to indicate Right now, the answer is none . I expect norwegians and danes to understand me, just because I know swedish natively...
03:25, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
Well, since I m better at the language I wasn t raised in (in this case, the language I was raised in was Malay, and I speak and write fluent, almost-native English), I m going to put myself as en-4 (not a native speaker, but damn well as fluent as one) and ms-3 (oh, the spirits of my ancestors are rolling, they are...). Tell me if I m wrong ;)-- 08:22, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
-- See also Two native languages here at bottom. -- 16:54, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
:Works for me. I ll err on the side of caution and keep it at en-4. Thanks! -- 17:47, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
It doesn t work for me. I speak good Japanese and can write the language, yet I would consider myself able to modify articles and to participate in discussions . I m not sure I d be happy to write articles myself. Yet when I chose this option I came out as someone who knew a certain amount of Japanese . This is ridiculous. When I went one up the the scale, I became a fluent speaker . But I rather shudder at this characterisation: or advanced or fluent understanding (the ability to write articles in this language without difficulties, minor errors may occur . There is a mismatch between the description on which the numbering is based and the way that is expressed on the user page.
08:02, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
= Language box =
Proposal: What about introducing few more templates :o) Namely language box template, so it s just one template to call in user page and all user languages are ready formatted. I copied the idea from (for 5 languages). So by calling template (template number will define how many languages) user inserts as parameters the language codes.
this approach will require to make n-number templates, one template for every number of languages, i.e. Babel-1 , Babel-2 etc. I think up to 10 should be more than sufficient. -- 09:37, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:I also thought 10 was a good number to stop at, but believe it or not there is someone with 11 templates on their page! I have gone up to 15 to cater for the real polyglots. — 07:12, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:: Well I think if there s someone who has more than these templates make possible , can create suitable template, just by coping one of the current one, it s easy to expand.
:: As I see you have copied one template from Spanish wiki and multiplied it. Great work, now we can hope it is (a bit) easier to see these language boxes. Unfortunately I have to point out that, their version needs a little bit improvements HTML-wise, like the width which is somewhere around 250px not 242px, and I think it will be lighter (HTML-wise) just to put all language boxes to one cell, as table width would force them anyway to pile up . I didn t start to make changes as there maybe be more opinions about how it should look. In Meta there s a bit different way coded it. (I made my example based on example there, and updated code according my taste, but as it s my work I can t propose this look :o) -- 20:32, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::I ve made a few changes to Babel-5 (as an example, so that all of them don t have to be changed again and again) and you re right that it s fine to put them all in one cell. That one contains less HTML now. I suppose to be sure when we ve got it right we need feedback from people with different browsers. The changes I ve made don t affect its appearance in my browser (Firefox running on Windows XP). — 12:01, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I should be en-5 because I m better than just a native speaker. I know how to use the Subjunctive mood correctly. My spelling is usually correct. There, I am better at writing English than 80% of all native English speakers. 23:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
= english translation in category intro =
Proposal: I think there should be also in English what language is in question. As this is wikpedia in English, I think we should have also english translation in language categories introductions. It s not much useful for example for non-French speaker to read in French that these users speak French . s/he won t understand it. (s/he can figure out the language from the language code, though.) I made example in Estonian main category: 09:52, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:Yes this is a good idea, I hadn t noticed that problem. I will try and track down all the relevant category pages and add the translations. — 06:17, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::It might not be a bad idea to even put those on the boxes themselves. Or at least something like (French, intermediate) or something. — 04:29, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::I think it should definately all be in English. 14:51, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::Imho the user-page templates should be bilingual, and, to conserve space, as terse as feasible. 05:37, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:::: What about replacing these sentences in the boxes with something short, e.g. Intermediate level of English , i.e. Level on language + word level + Language name (which order, somebody else can descide) and this in both languages, english and language in question. This way we can ease the problem that the text is too long, doesn t fit etc. Also in my opinion is more easier to understand. :::: Unother suggestion realted to this is that the babel box could have title saying that this box is about language skills. for example Language skill box with Babel templates: instead of just Wikipedia:Babel . (to see example, you can look for my user page) -- 21:22, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
= Wikipedia:Translators available =
Does this project not duplicate 16:06, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC) :Surpasses it. .
= Babel Standards Organization (BSO) =
Has it been decided: *What the standard dimensions of these buttons should be Some tags are taller or wider than others, and it isn t aesthetically pleasing if multiple buttons appear together. *What the standard font size should be I originally had all the use a 10pt font, to make the characters easier to read, but this contributed to the excessive overall dimensions (see above). *Should an English translation of the native-language message appear below, separated by a horizontal line Some of the tags do this, others do not. Again, this contributes to size discrepancies, a major aesthetic issue for people trying to display these tags in a sidebar on their userpages (e.g. ).
Maybe the Dictators Administrators can come up with some kind of system and vote on it (Maybe that will distract them from nominating my pages for deletion, hmmm...) -- 18:41, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:This Dictator suggests that any user can nominate pages for deletion and that any user can come up with systems and vote on them. But he has the following comments: I thought that the buttons were all the same size. At least the few I ve seen. I don t know about the font size. I am in favor of having an English translation on all the pages. — 05:24, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
=en-0=
I have created and its category. This is for people that don t speak English but are contributing in other ways, like with maps or photos, and must depend on machine translation. I did something similar (manually) on my ) 02:52, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:Excellent idea. I occasionally add Commons images to other Wikipedias whose languages I don t understand at all, and I d love to have a template like this to use. — 05:27, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
::: these templates should be only in appropriate language wikipedias, i.e. no german in German wiki, no japanese in Japanese wiki. Sort of way for foreigners in wiki to show to locals the limited knowledge of local language. -- 30 June 2005 12:16 (UTC)
: is a great idea. Some points, though: :*We should not have other languages with -0 templates on en.wikipedia. (That should be obvious, but I just thought I d point it out.) :* . :*We should add en-0 to 15:51, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
=User-0 templates=
Do we really need User-0 templates for languages other than English For example, I could just as well put every one of those on my user page other than English and Spanish, creating unnessary clutter. I think it should be assumed that if a language is missing from a user s babel, it should be assumed that they cannot communicate in that language. 20:44, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC) :No, we don t. This has already been noted 21:58, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::User-0 templates are good if you for example contribute a lot to Israel-related articles and want to be honest about but I don t speak any Hebrew or I speak a little Hebrew but no Arabic . -- 28 June 2005 21:51 (UTC)
: Well, in this case, when you really would want to point out this, then ~i guess it s ok to have set of this kind of templates, but they should be not included to babel categories ...just my opinion : In case these templates are made, then the text should be in english (and maybe also in related language, to keep unified look with other babel templates) ... and in general all these templates should have english aside of local language, as english is user interface language here, it s not much help to read something in polish or korean, when only way to understand is the code on the left -- 30 June 2005 12:16 (UTC)
::The french template fr-0 was already there. I use it on my to indicate that I can understand french with considerable difficulty, and can ask people how they are doing. Maybe the first part This user does not understand language XXX should be dropped in favour of This user can grasp the language with considerable difficulty . ::I agree that it wouldn´t make sense to list all the languages one has never heard of (Dzongkha, Kannada, Tajik, no clue about (Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Arabic), or see some recognisable strucure (Germanic Languages, Roman Languages). :::*REQUEST: remove the first part of the XX-0 description, keeping only the piece between the brackets. Add the usage information to the . ::I added the nl-0 template. ::maybe the text should be english for all languages. :: 4 July 2005 20:12 (UTC)
:::If you can actually read and write French at an elementary level with considerable difficulty, as you say, you should be using 17:20, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
It certainly is ridiculous to have templates like . It s like those people who get tattoos in foreign languages because they think it looks cool, and then find out weeks later that what the tattoo really says is Ha ha, this idiot can t read his own tattoo, or something. The whole point of the template, currently, is that nobody who uses it actually understands it!
Besides, I don t speak 17:20, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
=A new category=
May I suggest a Wikipedia:Knowledge , that indicate our level of knowledege as babel the languages we know
= =
I added the templates to 18:20, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
=Template formating=
I was going to add no-2s template but realised that I wasn t sure what the correct format was. There seems to be some colour coding going on, but I m not sure what the colours mean and if the other templates use them properly. Can somebody write about the colour coding and what should be in the template so we have some instruction to mark their correctness against 03:03, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
: this: 20:23, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
= How to get it working on other-language user-pages =
I ve put the recommended bit of typing on my Userpage here, where it shows a coloured box as expected, and on my Userpages at de:, eo:, and mi:, where it doesn t. What do I do to get it displaying properly on those too (I have read all of the instructions, I think, but something is evidently not evident enough) 22:11, 11 May 2005 (UTC) :Those Wikipedias will have to start a Babel page, then start templates for each of the languages. It s not as bad as it sounds, just lots of copy & paste and making sure you have the pages titled correctly. Touch base with the admins first so they don t freak out when you start all these pages. -- 04:37, 12 May 2005 (UTC) ::Thank you - I think. Start a Babel page could mean all sorts of things. Where precisely can I see one to copy Would I really be moving in a useful direction if I simply made a copy of 20:23, 12 May 2005 (UTC) :::I think this originated on WikiCommons. So at one point they had to have started this page here, and then started copying some of the stuff. Starting templates is easy -- I ve done it. The markup will be the same on all Wikis, it s just the text that you ll have to translate. But that comes after you ve started the categories. Why don t we start a Babel page on the French or German sites (you pick) with just one category: English. Then we can add German and French, and you can put the tags on your userpage there. It won t take long before people start filing in to add other languages and improve it. I ll help with the formatting issues, but you ll have to do the translating since I know very little French or German.-- 20:40, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
(Starting back at left-hand margin so as not to overdo the indenting) Thanks for coming back and explaining more! With encouragement and guidance from you and my friend [http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Klemen_Kocjancic Klemen_Kocjancic], we are making progress. GERMAN sems to be OK! But on fr my 5-language code displayed only the first three last time I looked. Doubtless someone who knows more French than you or I will fix that soon. Nothing showing on la , so maybe I ll sort that out if nobody else does. Must first go carefully through my new to see what must be changed soon and what ought to be improved one day...
I hope this discussion will help others who were wondering as I was but didn t know how or where to ask. Kind regards - 06:39, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
= Messages =
Instead of saying This user is... , shouldn t the templates say I am a... (since they will be used primarily on user pages) 16:13, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
:I m saying This registered member is ... (or an equivalent in the language concerned) - 20:20, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
=Capital letters=
Before I go changing most of the templates: is there any specific reason why many of the templates do not capitalise the initial letter of the languages mentioned I understand why the two letter codes are in lower-case, but not the actual text itself. 18:02, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
*The templates are in the concerned language; and in many languages (but not in English and in some other Germanic languages) language names are not capitalized. So: Cette personne parle français (lowercase) but This user speaks English (language name capitalised) and Dieser Benutzer hat [...] Deutschkenntnisse (all nouns capitalised). 05:27, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
=Template colours=
People have created new language templates with colours reflecting country flags. I think this is a bad idea, because the language and the country don t always match. Several languages are used in many countries, many coutries use several languages etc. By using flag colours you tell Swiss Wikipedians speaking French as their native language that they are French! - 13:35, May 17, 2005 (UTC) *Agreed. Even if someone devises a template-category combo for, e.g., American English, it would not be a good idea, as even American English is spoken in more than one country. 17:18, 17 May 2005 (UTC) :I agree, bad idea. It would just create a huge mess -- especially with languages spoken in former European colonies. You d have dozens for Spanish, French and English. If you want to display national pride, put your nation s flag in a conspicuous spot on your userpage.-- 17:52, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
=Dialects=
Specifically for English, and possibly for other languages, I think the templates and categories should allow for dialects. I m thinking primarily of English here: I might some time need to contact someone fluent in, e.g., New Zealand English, and these templates and categories should allow for that. We d thus have en-US, en-GB, en-NZ, etc. What think you all 17:18, 17 May 2005 (UTC) :You don t need separate tags for that. The dialects of languages like English, Spanish and Arabic are mutually intelligible. It s not impossible for a Briton or an American to become fluent in New Zealand English. Take a Castilian Spanish speaker and plop him down in Argentina, and he ll pick up the slang and realize that you pronounce ll as j in no time. It might be harder for, say, a native Chicagoan to figure out what a .
:I think having these national dialect tags would just complicate matters too much. Pretty soon you ll have subnational, regional dialect and sociolect tags being proposed next: California surfer dude American English , Sheep drover Australian English , Newfoundland codfisherman Canadian English and Working-clas Irish-Catholic-turned professor at a Midwestern American university Boston English. And despite my occasionally inability to fathom what my father or some of my friends from California are saying (As a boy, I was always perplexed when the old man told me to get some padayduhs and peel them for my mother), I really don t think we should start creating language tags for them. How many drovers and codfisherman are logging into Wikipedia They re too busy working . You think Crocodile Dundee is checking the Wikipedia:Babel page with his Blackberry while he boils his breakfast
:Face it, even an entirely uneducated Aussie or New Zealander has no problem conversing with a Briton or American. Most Wikipedia users probably have at least some secondary education or are knowledgeable autodidacts familiar with some of the peculiarties of other dialects of English. We just don t need need these tags. -- 18:53, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
I agree with your 19:08, 17 May 2005 (UTC) ::You might try the mini-lexicon here: New_Zealand_English. :::or even try 20:26, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:I strongly disagree sith the slippery-slope argument. To use regional codes is a finite extention. On 18:37, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
::Since these templates are to facilitate communication, we needn t distinguish between dialects. -- 08:46, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::Actually the difference between en-US and en-GB is more than just the difference between two dialects. Both are standards of the English language and follow different spelling and grammar rules, as well as different vocabularies. In de-DE and de-AT this is a smaller problem, but still existant. :::The problem can be ignored for non-native speakers, tho, as that tends to create even more problems -- in Europe schools traditionally teach en-GB, but pop-culture (e.g. music and the internet) usually water that down with en-US: the result being a sort-of European English representing a mix of both variations. :::I think the difference is still too subtle as that it absolutely HAS to be noted and usually the user pages give enough information as that one can guess which variation the user speaks and writes. :::Since Wikipedia EN has a policy on en-GB vs. en-US already and most other Wikipedias where this became a notable issue probably adopted similar conventions, I don t think this is particularily important in the first place. -- 09:28, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
=More use of templates=
In 13:31, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
=Renaming/moving the Tagalog (Filipino) language to Filipino =
Tagalog has ceased to be the national language of the Philippines albeit being spoken as a dialect in Southern Luzon. It is generally accepted by Filipinos (as supported by academics from major universities such as Ateneo De Manila University, De La Salle University and University of the Philippines) that Filipino_language is based on Tagalog. Loan words from various languages and dialects (ex. siomai {dumpling, Chinese Language}; imam {muslim cleric, Tausug}; gahum {hegemony, Cebuano}) make Filipino distinct from Tagalog.
In practice, these terms are used interchangably here in Manila. I am a Tagalog myself and really don t mind. It is a fact however that Filipinos in other provinces (such as those in Cebu, Davao and even nearby Pampanga) refer to our lingua franca as Filipino, and NOT simply Tagalog. That is to add that it is the official stand of the state, in accordance with our basic law (1987 Constitution states that Filipino, and not Tagalog, nor Pilipino, is the national language).
You may also find the article Languages_of_the_Philippines useful. Thanks!
21:25, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
:If there is a difference between Filipino and Tagalog, then they ought to remain in their own articles. They are in their own articles because there is no one opinion on the definition of Filipino, as there is no definition provided for in the 1987 Constitution. I know for a fact that Filipinos in Cebu and other provinces DO NOT refer to the language as Filipino, but Tagalog, except in school when the name of the subject is clearly Filipino. Tagalog did not cease to be a national language of the Philippines because the Filipino language is still Tagalog (in a sense). On another argument, Tagalog did not cease to be the national language because it never was declared officially as one in the Philippines at all (being officially called Pilipino or Filipino).
:Sorry, but there are loan words in every language and a handful cannot make it a different language, especially if the loan words are in use in Manila (a native Tagalog-speaking area). While they might not be in use some years ago, I believe all Tagalog speakers refer to siomai as siomai, and an imam as imam. English itself even uses siomai and imam! This doesn t make it Filipino, the same way the sentence I savored filet mignon at the soiree CAN still be considered American English. No one considers that sentence as in a different language as compared to I enjoyed steak at the party. There s a mere difference in word choice, and no native English speaker is going to mistake it for French. French-influenced maybe. -- 08:41, May 28, 2005 (UTC)
I just happened to see another discussion about this in the 10:57, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
= Native or not =
The project page instructs me to put xx if you re a native speaker or have a grasp of the language comparable to a native speaker , so I put xx for the relevant languages. However, what appears on my page is text saying that I am actually a native speaker in all those languages. That s not quite right. If I try putting xx-4, it doesn t work for all languages. — 19:07, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
:IIUC, level 4 is a new addition. The templates and categories for it are progressively being made. For instance, when I first built my user page a few days ago, there was no eo-4 template. Now there is (and I didn t even make it). If you put xx-4 in the Babel entry on your user page, and it results in a missing link instead of a template, then you can either create the template and category yourself; or if you are not 03:55, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
= Skills other than languages =
I may be alone on this one, but I think it could be handy to be able to extend this template model to other skills outside spoken language. For example, ability to use computer programming languages or to play musical instruments. While this might not be as directly useful as the current system is in facilitating multilingual communication between users, it would allow people to set out their non-lingual skills in a concise way on personal pages. Perhaps it could also be extended to subjects in which people feel they have a particular expertise or interest Obviously for the sake of practicality the interest/expertise categories would have to be reasonably broad to avoid having a separate tag for every article! This would probably be better as a project distinct from Babel - I d be happy to do some groundwork if people think it s a good idea. Hit my if you like. -- 01:44, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
:I ve added some examples for Piano under [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_piano User_piano] to illustrate, as well as one in context on my 02:32, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
Computer skills, yes, maybe, but piano skills have no obvious relevance to the interaction between WP users. Isn t the 23:06, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:Perhaps one or more generic Babel templates could be created that would allow someone to pipe in various parameters. For example would result in: C++ -1 | This user has a basic knowledge of the computer language C++ . 12:03, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:: : :: Although I had started with musical instruments, my aim was to produce a system similar to the language one which would enable Wikipedians to highlight their interests and proficiencies in a concise way on their user pages. I don t believe this is entirely unnecessary from an encyclopaedic point of view - it would facilitate communication between users about articles in which they have a particular interest; or perhaps might be able to contribute valuable knowledge. For example, a user tagging articles as stubs, finding one about a composer of music for the violin, might be able to bring up the User_violin category, and find someone with an interest in the instrument who would be happy to expand the article. As a secondary function, these templates would also make it easy for people to find like-minded users, and then see what they d contributed to - an interesting way of broadening one s horizons by inviting exploration of parts of Wikipedia one might not otherwise have visited. I freely admit that the way I ve set out the templates I ve made so far is probably non-optimal; if the consensus is that I m causing an unnecessary mess, I ll happily stop and concentrate my efforts on other aspects of Wikipedia. I planned to stop at the 5 categories I ve made so far anyway, and to see what people s reactions were.
::BlankVerse: That sounds like a good idea, although the disadvantage is that you lose commonality between pages; the use of categories which is central to my suggestion would be difficult to implement without a set format or code for each skill. Hope all that makes sense anyway! -- 12:08, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::Robin: 12:20, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
= green colour =
I know this sounds extremely odd, but I would like the green colour of the babel (which is on many user pages) modified. There are three/four colours which make me sick (slightly nauseous infact, and I have no clue why...) Would anyone have any objections if the HTML colour code is modified slightly = )= 07:47, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC) *are you saing that I make you sick I ve green eyes. I think the colour is fine! Blue make me sick cause my father s eyes are blue (also the colour of cold and distance). Keep it green, the colour of hope. Hope to understand has much people as you can. - 22:37, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
How about this:
en
These users are speakers of .
= )= 13:55, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
=subst=
We are still told that subst helps the servers. But when I faithfully followed the instruction, some of my templates didn t work; and my knowledgeable colleagues have made them work by removing the subst . Would the people concerned for the servers please explain exactly what a good alternative would have been Then maybe I can follow the server-saving method in the many more templates I may have to create. 23:16, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
=language noticeboards=
Recently I ve seen a few questions on the VP and reference desk regarding translations to or from English. To deal with this it would be handy to have a noticeboard as a central reference point for e.g. German speakers, rather than picking on a random e.g. German speaker. Indeed the latest one is someone wanting to know the names of different components of an atomic bomb - I d be very lucky to pick someone who knows this first time. 15:39, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
= How does one create the graphical template for lesser known indian languages =
I m quite proficient in 3 indian languages, unfortunately only hindi has the appropriate category and the corresponding graphical sign. for tamil and telugu and many other languages they are missing. how does it get created and if it s easy enough can someone elucidate me on the process so that i can create the suitable images for them. also what color structures should be used
If no one responds to this fine, but remember this isn t the last time no one is responding to obscure information request. i ve tried to get information on other topics but the systemic bias is continuing for some reason.-- 03:30, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
:Creating extra templates is pretty easy, although they should only be used for distinct languages rather than dialects (see above under Dialects). Tamil and Telegu are both worthy candidates though. Here s what you need to do:
:* Find the ISO 639 Alpha-2 code for each language. This is used to name each set of templates. :* Start a new template by typing its name in the search box (eg. for basic Tamil, Template:User ta-1 [no quotes]), then clicking on the link in small text at the very top of the Search results page (next to You searched for ), and then clicking Start the article . :* You can base your templates on the formatting of those already created. The example below is what you d need for the basic Tamil template:
:* Obviously you d need to translate the above text into Tamil, and replace each incidence of ta-1 with ta-2 or ta-3 for the intermediate and advanced templates.
:* For the Native speaker templates, the only difference from the above is in the colour codes, and the use of (eg.) ta-N in place of a number. Here s the Tamil example code:
:* You ll also need to create the relevant categories as specified in the templates. This is done in a similar way, you might want to have a look at the source of some existing categories to get the idea.
:I hope that helps; if you need any further assistance feel free to contact me either here or on my talk page. -- 12:03, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::Thanks for the help. I ve created the template, however the appearance is very crude despite using the standard native font of windows 2000 and XP. ie. it appears fine in my notepad and in google but in wikipedia the letters aren t joined. Since this is hard to explain as in english there is only one letter, in indian languages two letters r combined, however the combination isn t properly reflected only in the template box. in regular articles of the tamil wikipedia there seems to be no problem. maybe a problem with the template box i don t really know. -- 10:11, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
= Intermediate versus Advanced =
I m a native English speaker with a fair amount of experience in French (2 years receiving credit and 4 years of basics prior plus extra-curricular independent study). However, there s a big of ambiguity here... at least from my perspective. I considered using the intermediate level for French; however, the criteria for advanced states that one must be able to correct spelling and grammatical errors. I can do this too, though I m hardly fluent. Should I just stick with the safe bet of intermediate French until further education, or should I be technical about it and put advanced -- 20:30, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC) :Go for what you feel is the best; 20:43, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::I m putting level 2 for now, since I m nowhere near perfect. -- 20:44, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::And I m with the thorns (no old-english pun intended): fr-2. Eight years of doing about an hour s French study every weekday qualifies one for correcting a lot of errors but I was fairly useless at conversation even while still at the 14:46, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
= Bizarre color changes =
I m sure the intent was honourable, in order to separate the levels, however, the new color scheme is rather grating. Can we change them back, or choose more subtle differenes 15:15, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:I personally like them, but they are a bit bright. I agree that more subtle colors would do better. Does anybody have any suggestions for such colors -- 19:26, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
::I think they re fine except for that yellow... and maybe the orange is a bit bright, but I d leave the level 3 and native templates alone. 19:32, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC) :::Positively garish, as it stands now. Please change them! The differences should be subtle, just a shade or two, and the colors should be muted. -- 21:48, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
How about :
That is much better!-- 01:44, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
For the love of God, change them back...Or at least, use pale colors...I feel like my userpage has gone to Vegas for the weekend. -- 02:15, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
:To whomever made the change back: Thank you! Drop by my page and I ll give you a big gold star! 06:33, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
::I rather liked the bright colors :( -- 14:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::New color suggestions 07:39, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
= Subst or not =
I think that proposing the template without subst: should be the standard policy . I understand that expanding eases the load on servers, but it has some drawbacks: if the template is changed in the future, it will lead to different results between pages that used the same template. Of course, it allows for more personalisable pages, and it s ok if that was the intent. But I think this ois an encyclopedia, not a homepage hosting service, and uniformity allows the reader to have quick visual references. Anyway, is this load increase considerable, can it be measured Couldn t it be managed buying more servers or optimizing the code 22:42, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:I agree that subst is not warranted. Actually if anyone changes the colors again they could install some new templates instead. Then we could change the colors more easily. -- 14:22, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::re: measurable load increase: 04:56, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::Still no answer to the uniformity problem. It can t be excluded that the templates get major facelifts in the future. Should users get stuck with the old versions But wait; maybe it would be possible to expand a meta-template into the templates it s made of, instead of down to html 00:13, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::: about colors : as the general look of these babel templates is quite matured I think best would be replace the color definition in template with CSS class, so then if there will be decision of changing color, then it will be done just in stylesheet (monobook.css etc) and magically all templates have correct color, no loads to server, no needs to re-edit tens of templates
:::: about meta template : Related to my earlier proposal why not to first reduce the text in the box to basic: Language name and level, without sentence format (i.e. Intermediate level of English , i.e. Level on language + word level + Language name) and then we can make easily meta templates for these, just by having properties of language name in english and full text in language question: e.g. Nivel intermedio en español . something like this : :::: (wording and names are just for example) -- 10:50, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
= clarification of the levels of each language =
For the levels of proficiency in each language, is it relating to the level of proficiency in speaking the languages or to the level of proficiency at writing each language For example, if it was just the general language, I might have an es-1 or possibly es-2, but if it was referring to writing in particular, I would not even have an es-1. 23:32, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:I would think it concerns writing and reading the language; after all, there is little speaking and listening done on Wikipedia (unless you count 01:39, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
I see another problem: competence levels for various languages may differ according to common expectations about the average learner of a particular language. For English expectations are usually very high, whereas I doubt if Japanese-3 of most users could be compared with English-3 of others. Unless we do not introduce accredited unified proficiency tests for the various levels, the distinctions will stay somewhat blurred. I plea for intuitive self-rating accompanied by some explanatory notes about the rough meanings of the levels. 08:41, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I guess my question is mostly answered; xx-1, which is the most confusing to me, means that you can answer simple questions. 20:37, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Bart133 to define xx-1 like he wrote as a bottom-line for multilingual Wikipedia participation. The most difficult problem for me, however, is to define level-3. (After that level-2 becomes clear: everything below xx-3 and above xx-1) Any proposals 08:25, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:::Bottom line for multilingual Wikipedia participation is xx-0 on that particular Wikipedia. We have an 21:54, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:I would define xx-3 as being fluent and able to correct spelling and grammar. (i.e. you would have no problem whatsoever on that language pedia.) I wouldn t go so far as to say comparable to a native speaker , though. 19:30, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
::I can converse fluently in French and can understand and get my message across quite well, but I still have tremendous problems with feminine vs. masculine nouns and sur versus dans versus a . Therefore I ve consigned myself to a 21:50, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
We just had the same discussion at the German Babel and came to the following conclusion:
Sounds quite straightforward and pragmatic to me. What do you think If you agree, I would put this classification onto the front page. 18:56, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:Up to just now I had understood xx and xx-3 as pretty close to each other, only xx-3 being not native . Is that wrong
= Standard boxes and colors in Categories =
I have jumped around some of the Category pages and I noticed that some of them (like .
I think it would be a nice idea to get boxes on all the levels and have the different knowledge levels follow the colors and shades of the respective User_xx-y templates, so colors would be more uniform.
Is there some reason why this should not be done
Thanks!- 2005 July 7 04:04 (UTC)
Is there some reason why this should not be done Not at all.
If the question were, Is there any reason why the person who did the templates didn t do the Categories then the answer is, Because it took a ridiculous amount of time just to do the templates. Therefore, feel free to do it! Be brave! Have at it! 7 July 2005 16:28 (UTC)
*Good, I will have the boxes on a template to make it easier for speakers of each language to get their translations of the english text.- 2005 July 7 17:17 (UTC)
:: the colors used in boxes is just somebodies ideas, correct me, but there is no clear agreement to use certain colors, there have been many suggestions, some people liked and implemented so, just read the discussion above. ... You are free to do these additions/changes (or use even some other color :o) )
:: there have been voices here that it would be more sensible to make meta templates where is defined the colors and other look n feel issues, so if there will be change in them then it s enough to make change in on place, but ... I think we need somebody (or core group) active/dedicated enough, who will like to take the effort to start to make some order here (moderate a bit these discussions) or even create project page for it so all these kind of questions can have also decision/result at end of the day, and then hopefully it will get more stuctured and easier to implement as well in other wikis -- 8 July 2005 12:27 (UTC)
::: I will start work on the boxes for the categories, as they are quite a mess right now, each one in a different way. I am planning on using templates for all of them, so, color changes in the future shouldn t be a problem. I don t think those language speakers category pages should be of concern in the matters of server load, but please someone correct me if I am wrong. :)- 2005 July 8 14:07 (UTC)
Okay, I think I have the templates for the category pages... Could someone please take a look at 2005 July 9 08:43 (UTC)
= No native language =
Although I believe my grasp of English is native-like, and certainly better than my grasp of my first and family language, it feels very wrong to call it my native language, so I have created . — 7 July 2005 19:01 (UTC)
:I don t think the concept of no native language is that useful.... as far as Wikipedia is concerned, it doesn t really matter if your native language is really native or just like-native ... if I speak English just like a native language, does it matter that technically, I m not actually a native English speaker And what would I put English as en-3 That doesn t reflect my grasp of the English language. :Besides, no one has no native language. Your thoughts, for exmaple, have to involve some use of language. What language do you think in That s your native language. :A better solution would probably be renaming native to something else, e.g. first language . -- ) July 7, 2005 19:13 (UTC)
I agree with you, but my point is to protest that the current system conflates linguistic ability with some esoteric concept of nativeness , thus excluding many people and giving them no way to accurately describe themselves. This esoteric concept of nativeness is irrelevant to my ability to contribute to Wikipedia, and I could describe myself as a native English speaker (and I have made similar claims in the past when it was professionally convenient to me as an English teacher), but since English is not my first language and not the language I speak with many of my family, the description grates on me. — 7 July 2005 19:41 (UTC)
: 7 July 2005 20:18 (UTC)
We are not talking about the article space, we are talking about individual user pages.
I don t think it s a difficult question; to be accurate for a wider range of users and to be closer to its purpose, the template should read This user is able to contribute with a native level of English . However I didn t feel like stirring up a hornet s nest by making that change, so I chose to create a template which would not affect any who do not choose to be affected.
As a side point, I believe that first language and maternal language are worse than native language for my purpose, because they make more concrete false claims. — 7 July 2005 20:43 (UTC)
: Seems that the idea why Babel is for is getting vague. ::: ..aid multilingual communication by making it easier to contact someone who speaks a certain language : the purpose is to indicate to other users what languages one understands and which level, so if somebody wants to leave note then knows which language to use, they may have common language which they feel comfortable to communicate. It doesn t matter is it very good or excellent or super excellent in this case. ... let s keep them in these 4 levels and if somebody wants, feels need to more precisely define the her/his language level then feel free to do it in homepage, let s not clutter this system here.
: the fourth (native) level addition to Babel system is good in some cases when there is need to ask help for something related to this language, but even then for example native english speaker from UK and native english speaker from US may have different understanding for way language should be used, so even then it is just another opinion which may be as good as somebody who has en-3 level. ... anyway at end of the day it is just one s opinion about her/his language abilities (nobody stops to advertise yourself as expert of tens of language it will be her/his problem to fill the claims) -- 8 July 2005 12:15 (UTC)
I agree; we should keep them in these 4 levels, and if somebody wants to more precisely define their language level, they can feel free to do it on their homepage, for example, by adding the template , which does not clutter or interact with the system here. — 8 July 2005 14:06 (UTC)
The question may grate on some; but I believe the distinction between native language and spoken almost like a native has some usefulness, especially for display on user pages, where a user will probably want to communicate things about him/herself beyond just of what use can I be to the Wikipedia . I don t feel awkward when writing in English, and I believe that maybe I talk better English than some natives, but I would never call myself a native speaker of English. I speak Esperanto just as well as any other, but Esperanto has very few native speakers and it is not they who set the language norm. So I listed en-4 and eo-4 on my user page; only French got the honour of being listed as my native language . The concept of people without a native language may seem strange but it is not meaningless, not only in the case mentioned, but also e.g. for adopted children who have forgotten their biological parents language, etc. I know people with several native languages, such as father s language, mother s language, language of kindergarten and grade school schoolmates, etc. This may sound off-topic for the thread, but it has bearing on what the -N template should say: In French, for instance, it says literally French is this person s mother language . That seems to imply that no-one has more than one native language, and also, it reflects on the fact that French has no 03:07, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
=Trouble with tl-N=
Ok, I give up. I noticed that on my user page, that there were two problems with the the Babel categories. First tl-N wouldn t show up. I got to the bottom of that. Second, when I clicked on tl-N it would take me to the page where it s supposed to show me Wikipedians whose native language is Tagalog. However, it only shows 09:52, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
:Ok I solved this problem. What needed to be done was resubmit my User page and then I can show up. I did this for other uses too. Problem solved. -- 19:43, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
= xx-4 =
When was this level created and why isn t it mentioned on the Wikipedia: page
01:02, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
*I also noticed some xx-0... -- 01:44, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
= Incompatible templates =
I noticed that on the esperanto wikipedia, the syntax for the Babel templates was not exactly the same - for a native speaker, you write en-D (D for denaske , native) and not en . I partially solved the problem by making copies of the en-D template into a corresponding en template.
I think that it s important for users to easily copy and paste babel templates between languages - if there s a template whose syntax shouldn t vary across wikipedialand, it s this one, since it s users overlaps with those most likely to have multiple user pages.
I m just putting this here for the record in case this problem reccurs :) 14:48, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
= Template for Ancient Greek =
Would someone with more knowledge of the code required be so kind as to create a Babel template for Ancient Greek Thanks in advance! 08:28, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
= Chinese dialects =
There has been some discussions about the addition of Babel tags in Wu dialect (, aka Shanghaiese ) in 04:00, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
= Other languages =
Hello - I created a new template for s). Contributors writing about such languages may wish to identify themselves as users of the language, even though they are only writing about it in English. It s not perfect and doesn t work in the Babel template (as it has a nested variable which allows you to specify the other language in question). Here are two examples of how it might look:
Another example of it in use is on my user page (I can t get the table to format properly - I don t know much about wiki syntax/HTML, so suggestions are of course welcome!). Cheers :) 07:06, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
:Although there isn t any ISO639 language code for ol yet, I do find it unfortunate to use it anyway - it may become used in the future. A good solution would be to use other but that would totally wreck the template as it s obviously too long... 10:46, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
::How about xx They usually leave codes like that free... Haven t checked it, though. 11:03, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
:: xx is the better option. Usually xx or x prefixes and codes are reserved for non-standard or experimental (hence the x ) variations, so that d work. ol could likely be used in the future. 11:59, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
::In ISO 639-2, sgn is for sign language, and mis is for Miscellaneous languages -- 13:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
:::If at all it is for sign languages or the American sign language. There is no sign language . I d assume making sgn and mis templates with a variable for the particular language s name would work. We already have alpha-3 languages listed anyway. 15:37, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
::::Sorry I missed the s. sgn should be sign languages . See 04:34, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Thanks all for your input! I agree we should ditch the ol code. I like the suggestion of a seperate template for sign languages coded as sgn partly because the template can use a phrase like native signer rather than speaker , and partly because it fits best with this project s convention of using codes from ISO 639. I will go ahead and make it now.
There is still a problem though: if I leave the language variable in the template (so the user can specify which particular language they sign), it breaks the Babel template. Anyone more code-savvy than me got any ideas for fixing this
By the way, according to clause 4.4 of ISO 639-2, other codes can be appended to the sgn code to specify different Sign Languages, but there is as yet no widely agreed-upon system in place. I d prefer to have one template for all sign languages (with a language variable in the template). 06:39, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Now done. Here s a sample:
08:10, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
:Looks better. Same thing for mis and we re done, I say. 10:59, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
::I like the generic language template because it would allow me to make one for Elvish. (Not that I am likely to do so. But I could. You might want to consider whether major conlangs count. There s already an Esperanto template...) However, I find the wording a little awkward. An other language is an odd phrase. A miscellaneous language would work, although I m not sure why it needs to say anything at all. ( This user is a native speaker of Walpiri, in the example, would be sufficient.) - ( Sarah ) 17:03, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
: mis works for that. Walpiri and Tolkienese Elvish are both perfect examples for minor (i.e. miscellaneous or other -- i.e. less notable ) languages. 18:11, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
:What is so strange, or so outlandish, about the existence of an Esperanto [set of] templates Not only it s a language spoken by somewhere between tens of thousands and millions of people (depending who you ask), scattered all over the world, it even has a full-fledged 03:33, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
1. I will leave it up to somebody else to make the mis template (easy enough to convert from the ol template above). The discussion on the sgn template will continue on ; there are some problems to be ironed out. I encourage everyone to have a look! I ll paste the above discussion in there.
2. I agree with Aranel ( Sarah ), there is no need to include the phrase a miscellaneous language - however, there was a reason I put it in there. When clicking on the phrase other language in the template above, you are taken to the 06:17, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
p.s One problem is that the word 06:34, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
No matter how minor the language, if you speak it you can create a template for it. If it doesn t have an ISO 639-2 code, use the ISO/DIS 639-3 code (usually the ethnologue code). If it doesn t have one of those, use an arbitrary 4- or more-letter code, or the whole language name. How am I supposed to indicate, for example, that I am Singlish 2 By writing , of course. -- 17:59, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
= Expansion on the user language template idea. =
This is a bit O/T, but it made me think that maybe we could expand on this concept to add other user-competency/familiarity tags.
:I like the idea in principal, but I can t really think of anything other than languages that would be useful.-- 09:42, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
::Interwiki links Maybe something in the line of [ fr ___ This user has an account in the French Wikipedia ] It would make it more obvious than the small link out of the main page body: see a comment section on that further down. -- 10:20, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
=Mapping Babel templates to ALTE/CEF levels=
I was just wondering about this...
Would it be possible to map the definitions of the Babel templates to the language proficiency levels used by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Association of Language Testers in Europe
Under this scheme, Lang-0 would be the ALTE Breakthrough level, when basic concepts have just been learned. Lang-1 would be ALTE level 1, Lang-2 would be ALTE level 2, and so on and so forth. (It would be assumed that ALTE level 5, which represents complete native command of a language, would be the same as Wikipedia s Lang-N level.)
The CEF/ALTE ranking levels have been used by multiple bodies (not just in Europe, here in the US too) to compare language ability, and I think it d be a good idea for the Babel templates to link to them. I don t think it would involve too much work, since the levels more or less map up already (ALTE 3 / CEF B2 matches up to Babel-3 nicely, and so on and so forth) -- it would just be a way of standardizing what each level means. 01:58, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
:Standardizing is a good idea. I was afraid at first that the proficiency levels would correspond to some test, but fortunately it seems that a description is also available. As such I have no objection to changing. Perhaps we need to add a minus one level for users who need to express that they don t speak a language at all.-- 09:55, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
= Aramaic or Assamese =
In 02:17, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
= Shouldn t the messages be in English =
Shouldn t the messages be in English as this is the English Wikipedia -- 19:34, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
:I like the notion of seeing what the language in question looks like . The xx-n code is unambiguous anyway. -- Just my 0,02 21:15, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
:: Nice to see that I m not totally alone :o) (see above). Made also other day an 17:15, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
:::The number in the picture tells of the level of profiency. The only thing that is not immediately clear is the language. What we could do is add the english name of the language in (), like so Deze gebruiker spreekt uitstekend Nederlands(Dutch). . -- 10:01, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
::::One idea is to change the two-letter (or three, for some languages) abbreviations to links to the languag e (like the 11:11, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
= French templates =
Why do the French templates use the phrase cette personne (this person) instead of this user as is used in the corresponding place in all the other templates (well, all the ones I ve checked anyway) Was a conscious decision made at some point to have a different standard for the French templates - 20:05, 4 August 2005 (UTC) Examples:
he משתמש זה דובר עברית כ שלו
:I don t know. Maybe (s)he thought cet utilisateur ( this user ) would sound awkward in French, or maybe sexist: English user is gender-neutral, but French utilisateur has a feminine, namely utilisatrice . However, in French maybe even more than in English, le masculin absorbe le féminin , i.e., when talking of people of both sexes or of unknown sex, or of things of both grammatical genders or of either, French always uses the masculine. And BTW, here are templates in a few more languages that I ve checked. The Russian one starts This participant , which might be more in line with the way the Wikipedia is (dis)organised; the others have user ( User in Russian might be , though I don t find the latter in my dictionaries):
: 23:51, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
::Text below copied from :: In response to what you put on 17:24, 11 September 2005 (UTC) :::The fact that it is used on the Russian Babel template is irrelevant: the French Babel templates use cette personne (this person) which is not synonymous with cet utilisateur (this user). OTOH, participant, member is obviously cognate with to take part and participation , not with to use , to use; to avail oneself of , use, exploitation , utility , useful etc. Actually, however, (as I stated in 21:05, 11 September 2005 (UTC) :::P.S. And the use of for user in Russian Wikipedia user space doesn t mean that means user either; the Esperanto Wikipedia uses Vikipediisto ( Wikipedian ) to define userspace, rather than uzanto or uzulo which would have meant user . -- 21:05, 11 September 2005 (UTC) I ve gone ahead and changed the fr, fr-0, fr-1, fr-2, and fr-3 templates to read cet utilisateur in place of cette personne . The fr-4 template seems to have been created with utilisateur in the first place. - 06:04, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
=Category: User languages -> Wikipedians by languages =
Should this category be renamed to fit in with the overall categ Wikipedians structure Thanks, 17:15, 9 August 2005 (UTC) :I would actually like to see all of the user language categories renamed to something at least attempting to follow usual standards for categories. As they stand they read like a secret code and aren t much help to the casual browser or to someone looking at a user page. ( Sarah ) 15:33, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
:: Just simple page with links to categories can do the work, something similar to 17:21, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
:::I agree that we should rename the categories. -- 10:03, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
= Add links to the user s page in the wikipedia in other languages the user knows. =
Hello,
one thing that bothered me when I began on wikipedia is that user account on different languages seems to be totally deconneced. You have to create an account on all wikipedia which are on a language you know. Everytime with the same username. And then everybody creates his user page and says hello, you can find me on w:fr w:eo, ...
Why not automate this a bit
We have interwiki links on articles, why don t we user them on user s page
See my home page : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Jmfayard If i am It seems quite logical to add in the model
You may notice that I m not yet registred on w:es. I will have a red link on the spanish page (oups, does not work), and if I click on the spanish link, es.wikipedia.org notes would allow me to register for this username.
Just my 2 cents, but they seems to be a logical extension to the Babel and interwiki systems. :What if I speak or read a language, but don t have an account in that language s Wikipedia You already can add interwiki links to user pages (exactly the same way you add other interwiki links), it just isn t automated with the user langauge templates because it conveys different information. (I also have accounts on Wikipedias where I don t know the language!) - ( Sarah ) 15:26, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
::Well, the information may be a bit different, but they are tightly correlated. What about your accounts on wikipedia where you don t know the language Just add ja-0 in your .
:::I m not in favour of making it automatic. You may know a language, even know it well, but have no intention of creating pages in it. Or you may have created accounts on several wikipedias but not with the same handle: maybe using the various translations of your given name (as in Johnny, Hanske, Hänschen, Vania, Jeannot, Juanito, Giovanello, ...) or you may have created an account in some language, forgotten about it, then found it again... IMHO there are too many imponderables. -- And BTW, since you mention level-0 Babel templates, if you want to emphasise for political reasons the fact that you don t speak some language -- as with e.g. the ru-0 templates on pages for non-Russian ex-citizens of the defunct USSR -- then you re hardly going to get an account in that loathed language, are you -- 09:25, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
::You are right. They are some corner case which may not represent more than 5% but would make the system bad. On the other hand, I feel it s important. Like I said, the different versions of wikipedia looked like deconnected projects a few years ago. The introduction of interwiki links, then of commons.wikipedia.org were two important steps to improve multilingual cooperation. Some kind of (loosely) unification of users accounts would be a small third step to improve the situation. Ideally, the whole very long and indigest
:::I thought we were going to move to unified accounts. I think most people try to keep as few real user pages and make the others into redirects. Then what would be the use Anyway, until everybody learns 10:12, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
::::That s exactly the problem. I don t think that, in any foreseeable future, all Wikipedians will someday agree on a common language, be it Classical Latin, Volapük, Quenya, Basic English, or any other language, which everyone will master at the xx-4 level. So (IMHO) pluri-Wikipedians will have to maintain user pages in different languages: it would be senseless to redirect all my user pages to the one in my mother language (which, BTW, is not English) since not every reader of every one of them can be assumed to have a good knowledge of the language. Oh, I know, English (or maybe sometimes a kind of Broken English) is, for good or bad, a kind of Internet lingua franca , but I said good knowledge of it; you should see some English-language emails which I get from Italian or Russian people. See above, under Expansion on the user language template idea, about (maybe) making simili-Babel templates for these interwiki links. The language and username would IMHO have to be specified (but maybe the username can be defaulted to same as current if not specified) -- 10:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
= Non-serious user templates =
It s just for fun. I m suggesting the creation of user language templates for 17:14, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
:I ve already had great fun in my user page with the xx-0 templates, listing languages I want to learn but can t parse yet. I wouldn t be against this... heck, with enough, it would turn the Babel template into a pokédex entry for every Wikipedian. (Wikidex) 21:38, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
::I d be concerned about where to draw the line. Genuine artificial languages such as Esperanto and Interlingua are fine - there is a legitimate and sizable community of people who speak them. But beyond that, there s already a set of templates for Klingon, and in my view even that is pushing it. Do we really want people cluttering up what could be useful information with templates for Sindarin Gorean Houyhnhnm - 22:07, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
:::Actually, knowing ( Sarah ) 01:30, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
::::Perhaps we should stipulate that such templates not have a 2 letter abbrev. -- 10:16, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
:::::What about Aramaic Asturian Cherokee Friulian Classical Greek Hawaiian Hessian Plattdüütsch Sicilian Scots Sign languages Cantonese Neither is their Babel abbreviation a two-letter one; but ban them all, and I can see the backlash you ll get. -- 11:07, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
:::I would say to allow them, as long as a Wikipedian is actually using them. There are active speakers and users of a number of languages, and we shouldn t set bars for language notability for either real or constructed languages. And besides, isn t allowing Wikipedians to form groups around a common topic, even if it s a non-serious one like being able to speak 22:47, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
:::Also, as to cluttering up ... we have 7 lines on each of 200+ languages. It s not going to get much smaller. 22:53, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
:::I would say to allow all languages with language codes in ISO 639, a two- or three-letter one. I may seem to be very permissive, but who is to tell what languages are serious enough Sign languages share sgn as they already do. All other languages, including ALL (sic!) conlanguages would have to share the mis miscellanous template, ie they are visible but lumped together. A pity there isn t a separate one for conlanguages though, it would have been good as they ARE a bit special. Also a classification with miscellanous dead languages and miscellanous living languages would have been great, but I m going to keep to my first thought proposal. There aren t very many mis-users anyway, at least until someone contacts ISO to correct the problem. 
I would be more restrictive with joke templates though - actually I wouldn t want to allow any template not using the ISO 639 codes, or at least not a code+locale (en-UK). The babel system is supposed to be helpful - even for people that are non-native speakers who perhaps don t know what 23:36, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
::::Checked the page on 00:36, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
These particular templates (such as Klingon...) shouldn t be listed with the other templates (french...). There should listed separatly on another section. 10:24, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
::::::There was some discussion above about creating miscellaneous language templates, with a parameter to allow the user to define the language. 03:24, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
I was just thinking about this, as I was editing my user page. (I wanted 02:17, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
= simple-4,3,2,1 =
I m going to create templates for [http://simmple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Simple English] without simple-N (nobody is a native speaker of Simple English).
23:24, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
= Why no nagari =
Under Hindi , the national language title has just been changed from nagari script to Latin. Why I thought nagari was used to write Hindi -- 16:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
:I didn t do it; but one principal use of these tags is to identify Hindi speakers, for example, to those who don t already read Hindi. Use of nagari defeats this purpose. 17:40, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
::You didn t get what I meant. Against each two- or three-letter code there are two names: one of them is the name of the language in its own writing, the other (here Hindi ) is the English name of the same language. So my question is: why was the hindi name of the Hindi language not left in nagari script, while the Arabic name of Arabic is still in Arabic script, the Chinese name of Chinese is still in hanzi, the Armenian name of the Armenian language is still in Armenian script, etc.
:::With the nagari script being the only one of those mentioned I can actually read, I fully support writing the name Hindi in nagari if the others also are in their native scripts. 08:03, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
= Tok Pisin =
I ve created 20:12, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
= Current Colors =
For those interested, the current colors used on the various templates are displayed on the right. – 23:33, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
= Binary =
I saw we add Binary to the Babel entries, but with only 3 categories. Such as:
*bi-1 - Can speak binary with a medium - little reference.
*bi-2 - Can speak binary with little to no help.
*bi-3 - Can speak binary to another person of the same understanding.
*bi-4 - Can speak binary fluently and can hold a flowing conversation with another fluent Binary speaker. - 17:06, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
Binary is not a language, it is a representation. What about Can speak ASCII , Can speak Cyrillic , Can speak decimal -- 18:05, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
= Two Native Languages =
Is it possible for someone to have two native languages Or will one always have precedece over the other I ask because Spanish is my first, but I speak English much more fluently than Spanish (it s gotten to almost non-native level from lack of practice/use). What should I do Go by fluency, first learned, or both 11:50, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
:It is indeed possible to have more than one native languges: for instance, I have a friend who had a Syrian father and a French mother. His mother language is French and his father language is Arabic. Both are native languages to him. It is even possible to have more than two, e.g., if you spoke one language with Daddy, another with Mommy, another with Nanny, maybe still another with your kindergarten and grade-school classmates, etc. If your Spanish has fallen below native level for lack of use, I suppose you should put es-3 or es-2 depending on how good you think it still is. OTOH if you believe that you speak English just as well as a native or almost you can mention en-4. If no native English-speaker could, at any level of spoken language, detect that you re not a native English-speaker yourself (not even if you were to give a lengthy speech about politics or science in front of professionals of the matter), then you might perhaps pass yoursef off as a native English-speaker. Myself, I don t dare do that, even though I speak English quite fluently. -- 20:19, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
::My uncle s children speak Finnish with their family, English with their friends, Chinese with their former nanny, and spoke Portuguese at some point in their lives. So it s fully possible to be fluent in several languages. 15:21, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
:Yes, it s possible to have two languages. And that s reflected in my Babel template in my user page. My parents spoke/speak both Tagalog language and English - and usually in the same sentence - to me. But since my education was in English and due to the fact that I live in the US, it s my dominant native language. My Tagalog was dormant for many years (though no longer the case), but I still understand it as instaneously I do English, I mean it s not like listening to Catalan language, where it s not as instantaneous.
:My mother, though, has an American father and a Filipina mother and had a varied language environment growing up. I think her skills in both languages are rather equal. Anyway, I think having one dominant language is the norm among bilinguals. -- 20:09, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
= How about... =
Just an idea. lol. -- [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.phptitle=Wikipedia_talk%3ABabel&diff=21944117&oldid=21943249 diff]
= 1337 =
Why on Earth do we have a category for 1337 It isn t even a language, FCOL! It s just a nerdy way of writing English. Shouldn t we have categories for Smurf-speak and Yoda-speak while we re at it 15:18, 27 August 2005 (UTC) : Well, we have Klingon... It s just a bit of fun really. -- 21:33, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
= Modifying Current Colors =
:I think it would look nicer if yellow was used for en-1, and the aqua color used on en-4. Yellow is like a warning color like red is, so I think it makes sense for it to be above red. Aqua is a cool color resembling green and should be immediately under en-native s green. 11:28, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
::Please show us, so we can comment, cause I like you re idea. -- 10:40, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
:::Okay, I made an example to the top-right. I took the liberty of modifying the yellow to a less painful shade. Let me know if you like it. 07:09, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
Or how about a more gradual color scheme Below is GREEN-AQUA-BLUE-VIOLET-PURPLE-RED. 09:46, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
:I like this idea. It correlates the colours with the level of understanding a language, and does not make any colour pop out for no reason. 06:16, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
::I also like that no single color stands out, however I don t like that en-4 (to my eye) looks like it is between en-2 and en-3, that en is close to en-0 and that en-4 and en have such radically different colors.-- 13:10, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
My( 14:26, 2 September 2005 (UTC)) contribution:
|- |
|- |
|- |
|- |
|- |
|- | style= text-align: center | |}
My previous contrib seems very dark compared to the old one, so I made some modifications -- 14:35, 2 September 2005 (UTC) :IMO, the gradient from blue at en-N to green at en-1 is very well-designed; however a reverse transition may be more appropriate, as green is generally not a warning color. (In fact, it is often used to the opposite effect, as in a traffic light). -- 22:03, September 2, 2005 (UTC) ::I think only the zero template should be a warning color. All further levels including 1 point to an ability, it is not a warning that someone speaks some language badly, instead it is the statement that this language is somewhat understood, but far from perfectly. That s why I chose green, but light to signify small ability. Higher levels are darker and gradually change to blue, which may not make sense to everyone, but I like it :) -- 13:23, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
|- |
|- |
|- |
|- |
|- |
|- | style= text-align: center | |}
The current color scheme makes no sense. Why on Earth is en-4 yellow, when en-3 is purplish blue, en-2 is aqua, en-1 is some light-violetish color I don t ever dare to try to name, en-0 is red and en-N is some strange shade of green IMO a better thing would be light red (#FF3333) for en-0, light yellow (#FFFF33) for en-1, light green (#33FF33) for en-2, light cyan (#33FFFF) for en-3, light blue (#3333FF) for en-4, and white for en-N.
-- 20:31, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
:I like this colour scheme best of all proposed ones. 21:35, 3 September 2005 (UTC) I think the second scheme (green->aqua->blue->purple->violet->pink) is the best so far. -- 04:52, 5 September 2005 (UTC) : Thank you. I think soft colors are more preferable than loud colors. 18:59, 5 September 2005 (UTC) ::I also prefer Jigen III s gradated color scheme (the second one, without the yellow band) to the others presented in this section, if any change at all needs to be made. The other proposals either have harsh colors, or are very difficult to read (either because the background is too dark or the contrast between background and foreground colors is too slight). Pastel backgrounds with black text are easiest to read., and a gradation that more or less follows the spectrum makes sense. Maybe someone with more layout skills than I could arrange the proposals side by side and give them designations so that we could call for organized commentary and see if there is consensus for modification. - 04:08, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
How bout this one
-- 20:31, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
= xx-N vs xx-4 =
Why do we have to have seperate categories for native (xx-N) and near-native (xx-4) As many users have noted above, some people speak a second language better than they know their mother tongue. Surely the purpose of the babel templates is to identify someone s competence in a language, not the order in which they learn them. Have a look at some xx-4 users; their contributions are indistinguishable from native speakers. Many of the languages don t use an xx-4 category, and it seems to me like an unneccesary complication and an unfair segregation. Would anyone support merging these two categories into a native or native-like single category 02:25, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
:I would never try to pass myself as a native English-speaker; I am too conscious of the pitfalls of that incredibly difficult language. (Now get me right: It is easy to speak the kind of broken English used by a Japanese to ask his way about in Paris; but I don t believe that any non-native could hold his own on an equal footing in difficult contexts, such as arguing for or against a legal text or a philosophical thesis, if the discussion has to take place in English against a native speaker of the language.) About Esperanto (my other level-4 language), the situation is different: native speakers of the language are few and far between, and although it is not they who set the language norm, they still have a particular status , probably due to their rarity.Summary: I believe the distinction between native and almost-native is useful. The nonexistence of xx-4 templates in many Wikipedias is attributable to the recent introduction of that level. -- 10:50, 6 September 2005 (UTC) :: Not really. Personally, being a native Spanish speaker, I ve been able to debate my way to my teammates satisfaction. As a result, I can claim myself as a native English speaker. But the way I see it, it s just a matter of personal preference. Some prefer to be called near-native while others prefer native . Keep both, they don t hurt. 22:40, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
:::You have to remember that native here refers to native fluency . A native speaker (or writer) has probably been using a language for a very long time, perhaps his/her entire life. A near-native speaker may know the language just as well (or close enough), but may still be more comfortable using another. -- 22:48, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
Tonymec: If you feel your English isn t native-like , then put en-3 ( advanced ). It s really a matter of how many gradations we need some scales of language proficiency have 10 levels. My argument was that, as many users have noted above in this discussion page, the concept of nativeness doesn t always correlate with proficiency. I worked with an interpreter in India who (by her own admission) spoke Hindi and English better than her mother tongue Gujarati. Most deaf people encounter a spoken language first, but develop proficiency in a sign language that far exceeds that of the spoken language. Some wikipedians on this talk page have been confused about whether they are truly native speakers or not, whether they can have two mother tongues, etc. If native and native-like were conflated, it would avoid these confusions. Furthermore, if ability to argue for or against a legal text or a philosophical thesis is a test of nativeness, then most people I know have no native language! 23:38, 6 September 2005 (UTC) :Well, level 4 has (IIUC) only recently been introduced. Are we going to delete it before it has had time to show its usefulnessFor some people, I suppose that two levels are enough ( I speak xx [my mother language] and if you ask me about yy [anything else], then I don t: yy-0 ). For others the numbers of useful distinguishable levels is higher. I would be happy with a couple more than exist: :* Native: I am a native French speaker from Belgium. :* Almost-native: I speak English and Esperanto fluently, with no difficulty; but I wouldn t regard myself as a native. :* Fluent: I speak Dutch easily, with little difficulty, but not as well as English or Esperanto. I can imitate a couple of regional accents of it (let s say Brussels vs. Amsterdam). :* Good: I understand Spanish and Italian easily, I speak them without too much difficulty but I may inadvertently make errors of lexicon (when the word in the language in question is not etymologically related to the French word with the same meaning) or of grammar (e.g. in conjugation) :* Notions: I can speak everyday German. In technical matters I may get lost. I can understand Catalan and Portuguese rather well, helped by analogy with other Romance languages, but I cannot speak them. :* Elementary notions: I can speak Russian with dictionary. :* Bare Bones Beginner: I can read written Czech, and get a glimpse of what it means by analogy with Russian. I know a few phrases each of Arabic, Chinese, Hungarian, Finnish, Polish, and some Scandinavian languages; those languages interest me, but I can t understand them, except by painstakingly looking up every single word in a dictionary. :* Zero: Other languages I don t speak at all. :(Worse than Russian I don t mention in my Babel outtext.) --[unsigned comment by
:::Seems to me everyone is fretting about this just a little too much. The point of these categories is not to certify oneself as a UN translator or make any kind of binding representation that someone s going to come quiz you on ( So! fr-4 are you Well, conjugate croire in the future perfect subjunctive for me, and be quick about it! ) - it s just to signal to other editors here your general level of competence in various languages. One person s xx-2 may be another person s xx-3; I don t think it s necessary to obsess about the difference between one level and the adjacent one, or whether you can call yourself xx-N if you didn t actually imbibe the language with your mother s milk. As far as I m concerned, levels 1 / 2 / 3 plus native are probably sufficient, much more by way of fine gradations seems kind of meaningless. - 03:25, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
I had a feeling the tide of opinion would be against me on this one. I agree with EDM that people are getting confused by finicky definitions that s precisely why I proposed a simpler system! (And hopefully before xx-4 becomes too entrenched). I guess I don t feel anyone has justified the need for a distinction between xx-N and xx-4.
Anyway, for the record, here s the system I like, which was suggested by above:
= Babel code zh ambiguous =
Babel code zh is ambiguous. Does it refer to the spoken language, or the written language Officially it is supposed to mean the spoken language, but within the context of Wikipedia, using zh to mean the spoken language is rather pointless.
This shows up as an inconsistency in the text that is displayed. On the user page, the Babel code would be displayed as
which means this user s native language is written Chinese ; however, if you click the native language link, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_zh-N the page that is shown] says
which means these users native language is spoken Chinese (and Mandarin in particular) .
To illustrate the vast difference between the two meanings, for the former meaning of zh I would claim zh (native speaker ) status, but for the latter I would only be able to claim a zh-1 (elementary level). For the purpose of reading and writing in Wikipedia, the former meaning would be a useful meaning, while the latter (being able to speak Mandarin ) would be a plus but would not be necessary.
Also, with the existence of code zh-yue , ability to speak Mandarin should be indicated by code zh-guoyu .
= =
09:58, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
= linking the ISO 639 code =
Whose bright idea was this! The babel box looks like crap now! If you necessarily need a link to the language in question, make it where the supercategory 16:59, 26 September 2005 (UTC) *I agree that putting a link in the tab on the left is unnecessary and clutters the clean look of the badge. Crap might be putting it a little strong but if a consensus call is being made (was there any discussion of doing this globally before it started getting done), I m on the side of removing it. - 17:10, 26 September 2005 (UTC) ::de has had it for some time; it has now spread to fr, es, it and maybe more. I rather like it. Definitely not crap IMO. — 12:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
:::I m rather indifferent about it. It s not something I missed before, but now that it s there, why not More links and more information. Why not. I say leave it as it is. (But please also link the xx-4 templates; currently, my en-4 is the only unlinked language. ;)) 13:41, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
= Silly languages =
I noticed that some people have a list of silly languages in their bable, such as 13:21, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
:No. It s just a Mac programmer. They tend to do things like that. Better keep your distance -- I heard they sacrify puppies. 08:46, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
= Slovak language =
Can someone create a link between sk and Slovak language in the babel script PBS
=Level clarification (con t)=
Ok someone already talked about this in the past, but it seems that the language level descriptions on the main page are still hopelessly unclear.
First of all, right now there is no clear difference between levels 3, 4, and native. Level 3 says fluent but with a few occasional errors, which is exactly what native is. Level 4 also says like native, only not native , which brings up the question: Why do we need a level 4
In any case, I think the ratings should go something like:
The wording may need to be changed slightly, but this is the basic idea. It retains lvl 4 as similar to native, but makes a clear distinction between 3 and 4/native.
However, if the majority hear is up for it, I suggest a slight revamp, to make a real difference between level 4 and native. That is, IMO, level 4 should be above regular native. Either that or remove level 4 and make a native plus category - basically a person who has special education or interest in a language which enables them to recognize tiny grammar, style and semantic quirks, and high vocabulary which isn t known to most native speakers (i.e. word spadix in English). But again, this last proposal is only if everyone feels up to it, my way of being bold basically. A lot of user pages would have to be changed (and many users would be better alerted) if this came to pass.
-- 22:41, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
:The biggest problem I see is still the existence of a single native level versus multiple non-native levels. Not every native speaker is equally good at the language, so just saying native rather than advanced simply because you learned the language in your early childhood doesn t make sense. :I think the native label should be seperated from the scale and be combined with a normal level blip for clarification. The level scale should not make any mention of nativeness at all. :Either that or we d have to duplicate the scale for natives so we end up with xx-1 through xx-4 and xx-N-1 through xx-N-4, which is ridiculous. :A third possibility would be adding a variable to the template that defines whether a sentence about being a native speaker This user is a native speaker of x or not This user is not a native speaker of x should be visible on the level template. However that sentence should not be the sole statement about the language proficiency. :As for the xx-0 through xx-4 scale I d suggest the following: :xx-0 Does not understand or does not wish to speak this language (some people just assume people speak a language because of the other languages they speak or where they come from, this could be used to indicate that one really does not or does not want to speak the language -- 1337 or French, for example) :xx-1 Knows the basics of the language, but not enough for major contributions (e.g. I learned Latin in school and passed it, but I couldn t contribute in Latin without using a reverse dictionary and looking up endings) :xx-2 Knows enough to make a point or follow the gist of a conversation (e.g. basic school English, or the cliché Asian tourist trying to speak English: grammar tends to be a problem or the vocabulary is lacking, but it s enouggh for basic communication) :xx-3 Knows enough to be considered fluent, only minor mistakes :xx-4 Fluent speaker with a wider vocabulary than usual (i.e. additional knowledge of special technical vocabularies rather than just layman s terms ) :The average, fluent native speaker would probably classify himself xx-3, attorneys or technical engineers on the other hand might use xx-4. I guess one could add xx-5 for actual linguists who have knowledge of the language well beyond that of modern everyday usage, but I guess that group is almost neglectible. 06:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
::I pretty much agree with your reasoning. Yes, it would make sense for native not to be on the scale at all. So, how do we remove it Simply removing the template will cause hundreds of broken user pages. Do we just write a new definition on the main page and encourage users to switch -- 08:54, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
These are not good ideas. The levels as they are now, with the slightly fluid definitions for them that are given way above somewhere, are working fine and there is no need for the radical revamps these two contributors are discussing. Native speaker has a meaning; we all know what it means; to say some native speakers are better than others misconceives what the term is intended to convey. Attorneys or technical engineers should classify at a higher level than other native speakers, because they are familiar with some technical terms as part of their job Please. - 13:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
:No need to ridicule my proposal for a proper definition of xx-4 as beyond average . While English tends to be somewhat clear even if the text is a very scientific one, other languages don t work that way. In German for example, you can t expect most laymen to write like, e.g., Kant -- or at least comprehend his works -- without considerable difficulties. That s not only because of the very specific jargon, but also because of the very complex and precise language they he uses. The same is true for many other philosophers or even scientists. :Even an above-average native speaker may and will experience difficulties in cases like that. This is not restricted to natural sciences, mathematics (which, nowadays, usually rely on symbolic expressions instead, because they are even more precise), social sciences or jurisdiction, either. The only ways to express This user can contribute in a very scienticical and precise language would either to add another scale for each field of language (most possibly based on the general areas where the language is applied) or to generalize it and add it to the existing scale as another level. :Linguists OTOH would possibly go beyond that by having fluent meta knowledge about the language and thus being able to comprehend anything you throw at them, although reality probably shows otherwise -- which is why I only added that level in a notion. :Contrary to what you wrote, Native language has more than one meaning, apparently, because many people take it litterally and use it nearly identical to mother s tongue (which is in fact what many of the foreign-language xx-N templates translate to: eg. Muttersprache for de-N), if that gives you a better image. Its litteral definition pretty much boils down to language you were born with (hence: native). While you may be accustomed to using it more widely to describe a general level of language skill that is usually assumed when talking about native speakers , my above definition and the many critiques on this talk page should be proof enough that the term is a bad choice to get this particular meaning across. :Given the critique on what meaning the term does convey, I repeat my statement: Some native speakers speak their native language better than others. If this sentence breaks in your opinion because your definition of native is detached from the meaning the word as such implies, that means nothing but that the term is not a good choice to convey the meaning you intend. :By your definition xx-N could easily be replaced by xx-5 (de facto, since we already have a level xx-4 that is NOT equivalent to native , apparently) because it does not require the speaker to speak the native language as his mother s tongue. Thus I would like to ask you, if the notion of whether or not a person was raised in a particular language is irrelevant, then why use an ambiguous level in the first place Why not drop xx-N altogether and replace it by the non-ambiguous xx-5 If your answer is because it s established already , then why not remove the notion of nativeness altogether 15:18, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
In learning your native language you pick up an enormous number of idiomatic expressions automatically because you normally use that language every day of the year during sixteen waking hours as well as your hours spent dreaming in it at night. The daytime use alone works out to nearly 6000 hours a year or, in twenty years, some 120,000 hours. During this time you are constantly practicing your native language. You think in it, read in it, speak in it, hear it, and you are constantly updating and perfecting your knowledge of all of its distinctive features.http://members.aol.com/sylvanz/gv10.htm :If we use this definition of native language, rather than one about having learnt it as a children/being one s parents language etc., the en-N template definitely makes sense. En-4 is for someone which knows English language perfectly well, but does not normally use it, i.e., does not live in an English speaking place. Of course it is possible that a highly educated en-4 person is more proficient in formal written English (which is the language in which Wikipedia is written) than an average en-N person. But by writing en-4 in your BabelBox you let know that you don t usually think in English, therefore you might not e.g. get subtle jokes, understand slang, that you have to pay particular attention in order to understand casual speech, etc. As I see it, an unqualified en-N should be thought to imply an en-3 proficiency in formal written English; and if you are more skilled in it than an average en-N speaker (e.g. if you are a language teacher/a professional writer/etc.), you are en-4. I.e., en-N should be a subcat of en-3; and an English teacher (or similar) should mark themself only as en-4 if they don t usually speak in English in normal situation, and BOTH as en-4 and en-N if they do. (Obviously the description of en-4 would have to be changed if it had to conform this schema.) -- 15:57, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
:EDM, if you think the system is fine now, would you be kind enough to explain the current difference between levels 3, 4 and native And if they re indeed the same as I noted in the original post, why are you opposed to making a clear separation or better clarification :Also, I second what Ashmodai said in the last post. Especially about the technical/high language. In Hebrew for instance, there are some complicated grammar ruled (i.e. rules for Niqqud) which most of the native population does not know. There is also a thing called high Hebrew , which is basically a set of several thousand (but obviously it s not clearly defined which words form high Hebrew ) deprecated or Biblical words/expressions which are usually known only to the intellectual elite . Although it s true that some may use a level like this to show off something they don t have/know, it s definitely far above an average native speaker. :The native level is also ambiguous, proven by the mere fact that several people already asked about it in this discussion. It can mean the language you were born/grew up with, which is often a language you no longer use, but it can also mean a language you got your education in and know very well, or the language of your country (but not necessarily the one you used most in your life). :(Update after Army s post): :I agree with such a definition in principle, but this doesn t seem to fit with what other users have said. For instance, by your definition, it s very difficult to have more than one native language, and it s also hard to definte your native language if you grew up and know one very well, but are currently using and thinking in another. Also, this still leaves some ambiguity as to the level, since it s both similar to an average fluent level (lvl 3), and a high fluent level (lvl 4). : 16:17, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
::Actually I agree more with Army s suggestion. We should see the Native speaker level as a disjoint set from level s 3 and 4 (you may reword these if necessary, only slightly), so I could be both Native and at level 3 (or even level 2), or Native and level 4. Moreover we could add level 5 for high technical speakers -- these two could be native or non-native. Finally, with this model I see no problem for people who are native speakers in more than one language: for example I could be both en-N and es-N as well as en-4 and es-4. (Which I happen to be). Let me be more specific: xx-N would be perfect to determine if a user can understand colloquialisms and subtle nuances, while xx-1 through xx-4/5 would describe the level of grammatical expertise and formal vocabulary the user commands. (An aside: i think level 0 is really not useful at all, as to me it seems redundant.) -- 16:31, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
:::That s even better. We could redefine levels as follows: :::* 1. I can read English, but I would not be able to write non-trivial sentences without having a reference book and/or having to look up 50% of the words on a dictionary. (Which is exactly as it is now, as I understand it and use it on my user page.) :::* 2. I can write English well enough to make myself understood, but I am likely to do many mistakes which will let one understand that I m not a native speaker. (More or less as it is now, as I understand it. :::* 3. I can write English, even if minor errors could happen. This may be due either to the fact that I m poorly educated, or to the fact that I m not native. (Notice that there is difference from the errors likely to occour in the former or in the latter: exchanging two homophone but otherwise unrelated words is likely to be done by an uneducated native, wheter using a common verb with a wrong preposition is likely to be done by a learner.) :::* 4. I can write English like an averagely educated native English speaker. :::* 5. I can write English better than an averagely educated native English speaker (e.g. a writer, a language teacher). :::This way most people wouldn t need to recat themselves, as they are very similar to the current ones.-- 16:31, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
I didn t mean to ridicule the proposals; sorry if it came across that way. What I was trying to say was that I think these proposals are trying to make too finely graded distinctions, without consideration of what the purpose of these templates is. In that sense, these proposals run the danger of being feature creep. I don t believe that these levels are (or should be) intended to act as certifications or licenses or warranties by a user as to some level of competence, as though they were applying for a translator position or something. They re merely intended to signify, generally, that a user is a native speaker of a language (=mother tongue, =raised in it, etc.) with the feel for the language that the term native speaker implies; or that the user falls somewhere else on the sliding scale of fluency in a language that categories 0/1/2/3/4 suggest.
A linguist s metafluency is a completely separate parameter, one that I would suggest is inappropriate for capturing in a template. As I believe most linguists will confirm, knowledge of the structure of a language or group of languages - its syntax, phonology, historical development, and so forth - does not necessarily correlate to competence in the language, though of course often it will.
I disagree that English is somewhat clear in all contexts in a way that German or any other language is not. Every language has its noted stylists that the vast bulk of the speaking population can only vainly hope to emulate. German laymen may not write like Kant; most native English-speaking laymen don t write like Shakespeare or Joyce or Hemingway either. That doesn t mean they ought to be classified as less native or fluent in the language, and certainly not for purposes of contributing to this encyclopedia.
As I understand the current consensus usage of 1/2/3/4 levels, (or at least as I use them) they correspond roughly to (1) I can read an article okay, but I wouldn t want to try to contribute much (put another way, decent passive knowledge, little active knowledge ) / (2) I can read and contribute at a level that I won t get laughed at too much / (3) Essentially fluent (maybe book-learnt) / (4) Fluent though not technically native. (Level 0 is a different matter and we might as well leave that undefined without adverse consequences.) I think those definitions are working well enough for the purpose the templates are needed for, and I m just trying to caution against too much definitional fussiness. - 16:50, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
:Well said! I think your description and intention of the levels (as an informal gauge) makes much more sense. As for most native English-speaking laymen don t write like Shakespeare or Joyce or Hemingway either -- don t forget lawyers too! (My apologies to those that practice said profession and are currently reading this entry). Technical knowhow may (or may not!) be too broad to summarize in templates -- well at least in a single templates. Though I m afraid this might lead to a proliferation of technical language templates. But would that be