Language List Names

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Which naming scheme would you like to see in the language list?

Poll ended at 2018-02-28, 20:13

Egyptian Arabic
9
69%
Arabic, Egyptian
4
31%
Other [Must comment below!]
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 13

księżycowy
Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-21, 20:13

So, we were having a discussion in the " My Languages" Options thread about how languages are listed, and I promised to start a poll to see if we can decide on one format or another.

You can see the conversation here. So as not to clog up the request thread, I invite any further comments/conversation to take place here.

As I see it, there are two main schemes:
Wu Chinese
-and-
Chinese, Wu
But, in the interest of fairness, I'll leave a third option in the poll for other suggestions and ideas. This third option must be followed up with a comment in this thread, or it will be considered a null vote (whether it is suggesting a new scheme, or voting for someone else's suggestion).

I'll run the poll through the end of the month (2/28 3:13pm, local time). And, since this is on a timer, I'll allow editing your vote, just in case.
Last edited by księżycowy on 2018-02-21, 20:30, edited 2 times in total.

księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-21, 20:26

Personally, as I said later in the My Languages Options thread, am in favor of the Arabic, Egyptian ordering. I admit that initially I was in favor of the reverse, but after consideration of how the list is alphabetized, it make much more sense to have language varieties listed together rather than separately.

Consider my list for example. I have three forms of Chinese on it, but in order to find them you have to look under "C", and "M". It makes more sense to me to have them all together:
Chinese, Cantonese
Chinese, Mandarin
Chinese, Minnan
This way they form their own little group.

Karavinka

Re: Language List Names

Postby Karavinka » 2018-02-21, 21:01

If we're settling that "Arabic, Egyptian" is to be a thing, it's going to have to be "English, American" instead of "American English" as well.

księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-21, 21:05

Yes, it will.

The ultimate idea here is uniform names.

Karavinka

Re: Language List Names

Postby Karavinka » 2018-02-21, 21:28

The reason I mentioned it is:

While "Langauge, Variant" format may look better when you're looking at the whole list,
but I think "Variant Language" format would look more reasonable when you see them on the profiles.

My two cents, it doesn't really seem to make sense to me to go with "Language, Variant" when the profile view is sorted by proficiency first and it's less likely for someone to list multiple variants of the same language at the same time. Chinese would be a different story because we're dealing with Chinese languages, but for most language variants, I think people tend to stick to one primary variant among the dialect group(s).

księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-21, 21:31

That's actually a valid point.

If only there was a good middle ground, because I'm sure some users have the same proficiency level in two or more language variants.

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Re: Language List Names

Postby linguoboy » 2018-02-21, 21:39

Karavinka wrote:While "Langauge, Variant" format may look better when you're looking at the whole list,
but I think "Variant Language" format would look more reasonable when you see them on the profiles.

FWIW, that's mostly how I look at them. I only rarely check the lists in people's profiles, generally when a new person joins. But I often forget the language codes--so often, in fact, I have that page bookmarked. It's easier to find a variant there with the "Language, Variant" format. Whereas on people's profiles it doesn't really matter.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-21, 21:47

It wasn't the profiles that initially got me thinking about this, but the language list. Karavinka does bring up a good point for those who do pay attention to profiles though.

I imagine that it's possible to not lost by proficiency, but strictly alphabetic. Luís would have to confirm and assess difficulty of course.

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Re: Language List Names

Postby aaakknu » 2018-02-21, 22:23

I think it's a bad idea to list only alphabetically without taking into account proficiency. It would be a mess. And in my profile, for example, Ukrainian would be in the end of the list.
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księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-21, 22:31

I'm not nessicarily saying we do that, just offering it up. Personally, I don't have much of an opinion on that part of this discussion yet.

Karavinka

Re: Language List Names

Postby Karavinka » 2018-02-21, 23:20

Irusia wrote:I think it's a bad idea to list only alphabetically without taking into account proficiency. It would be a mess. And in my profile, for example, Ukrainian would be in the end of the list.


Of course...

The languages on the profile are sorted by the proficiency first, and then into language names, right? Say, I list two kinds of Chinese, Classical and Mandarin. If they were on the same star level, then I guess I see ksien's point that having them as "Chinese, Classical" and "Chinese, Mandarin" brings them into a little group, but since that's not the case, I just think "Classical Chinese" and "Mandarin Chinese" would look cosmetically better.

After all, with some major exceptions like Chinese or Arabic, it's not going to be like people will list multiple variants of, say, Spanish. Natives may pick Spanish + Venezuelan Spanish (for example), but even on Unilang we don't really list Venezuelan, Argentine and Cuban Spanish on our wishlists.

And as for the master list, I think it already has variants listed under the umbrella term. "Classical Japanese" is listed under Japanese, not grouped with other languages starting with C. I don't think finding "Egyptian Arabic" under "Arabic" should be too hard to make it "Arabic, Egyptian" if we want to add something to our profile. ...And of course, the language list page on Unilang top page is sorted by the native name, and even that is divided into disparate chunks, which doesn't mean "Arabic, Egyptian" is easier to find on the list there either. Personally, if I need to find a language code there, I'd just use CTRL+F.

Here's my suggestion:

1 Use "Egyptian Arabic" for the English names
2 On the user profiles, sort first by the proficiency, and then by language code, not English name

At least this way, we'll see multiple Arabic variants grouped together as they all have ar-xxx format, and while this can make things like German stand between Danish and French, I think it's still acceptable. What do you think? (And ksien, sorry even then your Chinese variants will be all over the place)
Last edited by Karavinka on 2018-02-21, 23:33, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Language List Names

Postby aaakknu » 2018-02-21, 23:26

Karavinka wrote:Here's my suggestion:

1 Use "Egyptian Arabic" for the English names
2 On the user profiles, sort first by the proficiency, and then by language code, not English name

At least this way, we'll see multiple Arabic variants grouped together as they all have ar-xxx format, and while this can make things like German stand between Danish and French, I think it's still acceptable. What do you think?

I agree with you.
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księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-21, 23:51

Language code ordering maybe interesting, but that can make some weird combinations (and a bigger mess IMO).
For example, Mandarin Chinese would be under 'z', Kaytetye would be under 'g', ect.
And considering you don't see the codes on the profile list, you wouldn't necessarily know the underlying idea until someone told you (assuming you're a new user).

Whatever the case, the poll goes for about a week, so we'll see what happens. :)

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Re: Language List Names

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-22, 1:08

I don't really get what the purpose of this poll is. Didn't we already agree that there's nothing wrong with just "Arabic," "Egyptian Arabic," "Moroccan Arabic," etc.? :hmm:

księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-22, 1:38

Nothing wrong with how they are named? Or nothing wrong with having the dialects?

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Re: Language List Names

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-22, 3:04

With how they're named.

księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-22, 10:32

I obviously don't recall coming to a consensus on that. I remember us discussing dialects recently, but not the other.

Whatever the case, it never hurts to double check. :wink:

księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-22, 19:49

By the way, Karavinka, I forgot to add this in yesterday, but where as listing but language code might work for Arabic to get the Arabic variaties together, it would not nessicarily work with Chinese. Most Chinese codes do start with "c", but not all. Like my example of Mandarin before, which starts with a "z".

And, depending on what else is on someone's list, because of the way the codes are for Chinese, there's a chance that something could come between the Chinese entities.

But ultimately, this wasn't even my main concern. :P

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Re: Language List Names

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-23, 3:14

księżycowy wrote:I obviously don't recall coming to a consensus on that. I remember us discussing dialects recently, but not the other.

Whatever the case, it never hurts to double check. :wink:

Well, the only reason why the whole "Chinese, Mandarin" etc. thing happened in the first place was because OldBoring was trying not to get into the whole "is Chinese one language or several" debate. I guess it doesn't really matter though.

księżycowy

Re: Language List Names

Postby księżycowy » 2018-02-23, 3:18

Not for my purpose here anyway. :wink:

I actually just used Chinese as an example to explain my point in my choice, since they are on my profile. :lol:


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