Talk:Languages of North America

Immigrant languages section

I didn't want to get into it, because once it's started it's a long list; but mention shoudl be made of newer-era immigrant languages, especially as now current in many parts of Canada due to official multiculturalism - Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog and also German, Ukrainian notably of European languages (again a long list). Or deoes "immigrant language" have a meaning to language WPers than it does to non-linguists? "Settler languages" by the way is a fashionable term in BC First Nation/academic argot....Skookum1 (talk) 19:58, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

And I'd think Yiddish might deserve mention, no? Or is it not so widely spoken in the US as used to be? But then the US also has large German and Polish and even Irish-speaking communities, or did.....(well, in the case of the Irish, it was peopel/families who knew Irish but maybe didn't use it as in the case of the Germans).Skookum1 (talk) 20:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

In order for the article not to descend into an enormous "List of every language spoken by anyone anywhere in North America" we should really stick to the immigrant languages used by tolerably large communities, preferably in more than one North American country. Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin) and Tagalog could probably be profitably added, especially since they're found in both Canada and the U.S. German, Ukrainian, Yiddish, and Polish are really not so important nowadays, and are probably better covered in the more detailed Languages of the United States and Languages of Canada articles rather than in this summary article. —Angr 11:04, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll add a mention of those pages. babbage (talk) 18:56, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:North America

I have remove Category:North America since the Category:Languages_of_North_America is in that category. Convention dictates that generally the eponymous articles are not included in the parent category along with the sub cat. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 07:24, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary, WP:EPON says "an article should not be excluded from any set category on the grounds that its eponymous category is made a "subcategory" of that category" (emphasis in the original). This article is about a primary topic dealing with North America as a whole and as such is exactly the sort of article readers will expect to find listed directly at Category:North America rather than having to burrow around in its subcategories to find it. +Angr 08:57, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The guideline and convention do not match. If you browse through the categories you will find the vast majority doe not follow the guideline. A classic case is categories by country, say Category:Agriculture by country by way of example. Only articles that are not in a sub-cat are included in the category as articles. If all of the sub-cats had their eponymous articles in the parent category you will get "category clutter" with an additional 141 articles in the parent category. It will then extend past the 200 article limit and reduce the effectiveness of categories as a navigational tool. In the case of Category:North America the sub-cats collect all of the important topics leaving the parent category to sweep up all of the stray articles. If the eponymous articles are shoved in the parent category it adds needless articles that the reader has to trawl through. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 09:59, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Category:North America has only 39 subcategories, meaning it could have at most only 39 eponymous articles added to its existing 21 articles (some of which, like Indigo snake and Invasive earthworms of North America clearly don't belong in it). Sixty articles 19 articles. Fifty-eight articles in a category is not an undue burden on the reader. +Angr 10:25, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Update: I've moved Indigo snake and Invasive earthworms of North America into more specific categories. +Angr 10:34, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Why should Languages of North America be singled out to be included in Category:North America? None of the other subcats have their eponymous article in the parent category? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 19:57, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

It shouldn't be singled out. The eponymous articles of the other subcats should be in the parent category. But it's difficult to get that to stick when so many Wikipedians still think that the eponymous article of a category should be only in that category and nothing else. +Angr 21:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

And that is my point. Convention is dictating that the eponymous articles of the other subcats are not included in the parent category. The problem is that the guideline does not match convention. WP works on consensus and conventions are a consensus. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:52, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

The guidelines are consensus too, and in this case it's the guideline rather than the practice of some (by no means all!) Wikipedians that makes sense. It's pointless to have an article only in its eponymous subcat and no others, because no one using the categories to navigate will ever find it. You might as well have it in no categories at all. But this isn't the place to discuss it. If you think the guideline doesn't reflect de-facto consensus, the place to bring it up is WT:Categorization. +Angr 22:18, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I find that the practice (convention) is a more sensible option rather than the guideline. I don't agree that it is "pointless to have an article only in its eponymous subcat and no others". Readers will still find the articles. Having an RfC on the guideline is on my looong list of things to do. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 23:04, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Edit on Feburary 11 2014

I added links to other wiki pages from this wiki page.

TheInformativePanda (talk) 00:05, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, but those pages already had links. We generally don't include more than one link to the same page within a single article. See WP:OVERLINK for guidelines. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:20, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

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