Nationalities & Languages

[Jofwu he/him]

Quick observation...

@BeskarKomrk made a redirect page for "Dynastic" and I was going to add the Language category (Culture also?). Well, I realized that there are a lot of cases where these categories seem to be missing. Particularly on Roshar, where there are lots of languages mentioned. For example, Alethi, Thaylen, Shin, Unkalaki, etc.

Is there a reason for this, or would it be good to update these with [[Category: Culture]] and [[Category: Language]]?

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

I was thinking about this as well (we're so in sync!). I think it would be good to create separate pages for the languages specifically and link to those from the culture pages, as the names of the languages won't always be the same as the culture they're associated with. It also covers the cases where there are multiple languages spoken in a single country and when one country speaks another country's language, like how Jah Keved mostly speaks Alethi, but also contains the Horneater Peaks with their own language. So yeah, my idea was to make separate pages like "Alethi (language)" to differentiate between the language and the nation.

[Jofwu he/him]

But is there enough substance (at this point) to have a page like that?

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

I'm not sure, that's a good point. I'm in favor of having a consistent structure set up, and we already have some separate pages for certain languages that are fairly small (one example: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Fen). We could also create them as redirect pages to the Language section on another page (similar to how the Ethnicities and Nationalities category is set up).

[Windrunner he/him]

One point of information on the Fen page is that we don't know the specific region or culture that speaks Fen, so that's why its on its own page. If it did, Fen would probably redirect there, as that's our current standard. If that's something people are interested in changing, we can talk about it. I too wonder if there is sufficient information to create pages that are just languages.

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

I think some of them do. Some languages (generally the ones with different symbols associated with them) already have their own page. Aon, the women's script, and the thaylen script are all examples of that. And as I said above, I think this will help a lot in cases where multiple countries speak the same language (like Arelon and Teod). It doesn't really make sense to me to duplicate the info on both pages, and I think it would be strange to have it on one page but not the other. The cleanest solution, in my opinion, is to have a separate language page. Even if it leads to some small articles being created, I think it would clear up some of the more complex situations.

[Chaos he/him]

I'd tend to prefer redirects. (The redirects should be properly categorized, so I'm with you there. Redirects should usually have relevant categories.) I'm not opposed to some languages having their own pages, but it would need to be a proper, meaty article. If there is a language that does deserve more than a section, then that would work.

With those scripts, it does seem reasonable to merge them into a language article. And you are indeed right about languages spoken by multiple nations. It just kind of depends. I know for Aonic there exists a crappy page for it (that currently is referring to the ethnicity), and language information could be there. But in the case of Aonic in particular, it could be a bit tricky to not duplicate too much from the Aon article.

So, I'd say redirect usually, but on a case by case basis there can be a language page. I think merging scripts with a general language article seems very reasonable.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

I would generally be opposed to merging scripts into language articles, because they really are very distinct concepts. It's not always an easy correlation between language and writing system, the Latin script for example is used by the majority of European languages. Sure we could potentially merge the Thaylen script into a Thaylen language article, but the same could not be done with the women's script, as it is used by multiple languages. (I saw this mentioned earlier, but the Vedens do not speak Alethi, they speak Veden. And both languages, and probably more, use the women's script.)

[Jofwu he/him]

Even Thaylen can be written with women's script, I imagine.