I actually am leaning a little more towards merging some of the subforums for European languages in the interests of global consistency. Like I said earlier, there are 32 subforums just for Indo-European languages. The vast majority of those languages are European. Now, there are obviously more people interested in certain IE languages than there are in most other languages, but we also wouldn't want to make another 32 subforums for any other language family, would we? Everything would be buried in a system like that.
księżycowy wrote:Personally, traffic or no traffic, I think it was a mistake to get rid of the Albanian and Armenian subforums.
I feel that way even more strongly about the Tagalog and Thai ones. Each subforum was merged into one thread, but then other people just made new threads for both languages anyway.
Wow, thanks!
Thirded.
Well, I said I'd try to add on to what I said earlier and suggested that I'd say more about Asian languages later, and so here it is!
Semitic languages are spoken in all three of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Northeast Caucasian languages, Northwest Caucasian languages, and Kartvelian languages are spoken in a transcontinental area that may considered either part of Europe or part of Asia. Indo-European, Uralic, and Turkic languages are clearly spoken in both Europe and Asia, and Austronesian languages are spoken in Africa (mainly Madagascar) and Oceania as well as Asia. Mongolic languages are mainly spoken in Asia, but Kalmyk is a Mongolic language that is spoken in a part of Russia sometimes considered to be in Europe. The Yeniseian languages are spoken only in Siberia, but they may be related to Na-Dene.
Apart from the 9 language families I just mentioned in the previous paragraph, all (surviving) languages from the following 10 language families are spoken in Asia:
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Tungusic
Dravidian
Luorawetlan
Yukaghir
Japonic
Austroasiatic
Ongan
Tai-Kadai
Hmong-Mien
Sino-Tibetan
In addition, there are three groups of languages called the Siangic languages, the Digaro languages, and the Kho-Bwa languages. AFAIK they are all traditionally considered Sino-Tibetan languages, but their membership in Sino-Tibetan has been questioned (i.e. they may instead be language families in their own right unrelated to Sino-Tibetan).
Asia also has four living language isolates: Nivkh a.k.a. Gilyak, Kusunda, Nihali, and Burushaski. Some people consider Korean a language isolate; others say it isn't because the language variety spoken on Jeju Island off the coast of mainland (South) Korea is unintelligible with other varieties of Korean, making it part of a Koreanic language family. Similarly, the varieties of Ainu are apparently so diverse that while it's generally considered an isolate AFAIK, some people suggest instead that it's a family in its own right.
So, where can we put Asian languages that aren't already included in an existing subforum other than Other Languages? We could make a Semitic forum for Semitic languages other than Hebrew and Arabic. We could expand Georgian to include Kartvelian languages and Japanese to include Japonic. We could perhaps make a Dene-Yeniseian forum (instead of a Na-Dene one). We could
maybe split the South Asian forum up into a Dravidian forum, an Indo-Aryan forum (including Hindi), an Iranian forum, and a Sino-Tibetan forum. Or maybe we could split it into a Dravidian forum, an Indo-Iranian forum, and a Sino-Tibetan forum, but either way, only if Meera's okay with it.
We could also split Southeast Asia up into Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, and Hmong-Mien. That leaves Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian, Tungusic, Luorawetlan, Yukaghir, and Ongan.
Maybe we can make an Indo-European forum and maybe even merge it with Frisian or something! Then that could also include Indo-Iranian, Armenian, minority Germanic, etc. Or we could change the Hindi forum into an Indo-Iranian one if Meera's okay with
that. Or maybe we could even make an "Asian languages" forum (including Hindi...again, if Meera's okay with it
) and a "(minority) European languages" forum (including Frisian)!