. This redirect is clearly questionable, as good points have been made that it's taxonomically odd that "South Scandinavian languages", a group of which Danish might be described as being a part of, should itself point to a subcategory of Danish. However, a better target hasn't really been suggested, and those arguing to keep make the fair point that this is potentially the best place to describe this information, and that it might just need better explanation within the article. Our current coverage of this topic clearly produces a rather strange edge-case that leads to nobody being particularly sure what the best way of handling this title is. ~ mazca talk 09:45, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
- {{no redirect|1 = South Scandinavian languages }} → :Danish dialects (talk · links · [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=South_Scandinavian_languages&action=history history] · [https://iw.toolforge.org/pageviews?start=2021-02-18&end=2021-03-19&project=en.wikipedia.org&pages=South_Scandinavian_languages stats]) [ Closure: {{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|(@subpage)|[{{fullurl:South Scandinavian languages|action=edit&summary={{Urlencode:{{FULLPAGENAME}}#South Scandinavian languages closed as keep}}}} keep]/[{{fullurl:South Scandinavian languages|action=edit&summary={{Urlencode:{{FULLPAGENAME}}#South Scandinavian languages closed as retarget}}}} retarget]/[{{fullurl:South Scandinavian languages|action=delete&wpReason={{Urlencode:{{FULLPAGENAME}}#South Scandinavian languages closed as delete}}&wpMovetalk=1}} delete]}} ]
Not mentioned at article. It is possible that at some point various dialects of Danish have been considered full-fledged languages (such debates are common, including among other Germanic languages), but there's nothing in the article about that, much less saying this was the term employed. I thought at first that this was probably a legitimate linguistics term being used too narrowly and that it should be its own article and include Danish and various now-extinct ancient and medieval southerly languages of the Scandinavian group. However, a search at Google Scholar produces zero hits for this term at all [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22South+Scandinavian+languages%22&btnG=]. So I'm thinking it's probably an outright deletion candidate. I spot-checked for similar titles and didn't find any as actual pages ("Southern Scandinavian languages", "South Scandinavian language", "South Scandinavian", etc.). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:48, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
:Keep and mention the term somewhere in the article. The term "South Scandinavian" is used in Glottolog[https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/sout3248]. The source given for this grouping is: Oscar Bandle (1973). Die Gliederung des Nordgermanischen. (Beiträge zur nordischen Philologie, 47.) Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. I don't have access to that book, so I can not verify if "South Scandinavian" (or rather its German equivalent Südskandinavisch) is acutally mentioned there. Glottolog is notorious for terminological ideosycrasies, so someone needs to check it. Otherwise, I couldn't find the term in any source in Englisch. Südskandinavisch fares minimally better on Google Scholar: a handful of the [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22S%C3%BCdskandinavisch%22&btnG= 34 hits] indeed refers to a linguistic subgroup. A Danish source however has been easy to find[http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:700645/FULLTEXT01.pdf#page=45], although here, the context is mutual intellegibility, not genealogical subgrouping. –Austronesier (talk) 17:44, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
:Comment: Danish language shows the family tree as North Germanic > South Scandinavian > Danish, which makes a redirect to Danish dialects a little odd or out of order. No actual mention of the term outside of the infobox. Unless something is added to one of the articles (and the redirect pointed appropriately), I'd be in favor of delete. Carter (talk) 18:40, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
::That, and the existence of Südskandinavisch in one source doesn't give us license to freely translate this to "South Scandinavian", nor equate this with a singular use of this term at the Glottolog list, and equate all that in turn with {{em|the}} Danish language. That's a big pile of WP:OR. The Danish sourced linked to, with sydskandinavisk appears to agree with our chart in the infobox, and suggests this is either a grouping once larger than Danish, or is a proto form that later became Danish, and either way it is not what the article Danish is about. So, this should be a redlink, either because it's a legit subject for an article, or it's an uncommon idea without enough real-world traction to merit an article. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 09:29, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
:Comment The reason I made the RD to 'Danish dialects' was that "South Scandinavian" refers to the group that Danish belongs to, and that group is mostly covered at 'Danish dialects'. This is because the South Scandinavian languages are mostly spoken in Denmark and are therefore generally considered to be Danish dialects. If we'd treated e.g. Jutlandic as a separate language and excluded it from the Danish dialects article, the confusion wouldn't arise. There are other Danish rd's that are messed up. It might be worthwhile creating a 'S. Scandinavian' stub with component languages Danish, East Danish and Jutlandic, if that wouldn't be a content fork with 'Danish dialects'. Or perhaps move 'Danish dialects' to 'S. Scandinavian' and add Scanian? — kwami (talk) 03:10, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
::Some cleanup like that might result in a viable article, but we need to avoid confusing 1) a language group (even a small one) with 2) dialects within a language; these are essentially opposite topics, with standardized Danish in the middle of them. To the extent sources may conflict on how they want to define these things, we have to document that conflict (within WP:DUE) not silently pick a side in it. When it come to specific classification of something like Jutlandish, go with the predominant view in contemporary linguistics sources (i.e., if it's mostly treated as dialect of Danish, then focus on that, and only mention briefly that it is sometimes classified as a seprate South[ern] Scandinavian language. If it's mostly classified as the latter, then make that the main story, and only briefly touch on it sometimes being classified as a dialect of Danish. In short, treat this the way we treat all other intergrading continua that run from language group down to dialect. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 00:48, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
- Keep / Comment. I really don't see the need for a potential split with a tiny stub article - I think that would just be a fork of the same topic, per kwami's comments above. It doesn't appear to be a super-notable alternate term per nominator so I'm not sure the term deserves to be mentioned in the article, but even if this is Glottolog's weirdness, the standard for a redirect is very light - one source using the terminology may well qualify it as a valid redirect. SnowFire (talk) 04:32, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
{{resize|91%|Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.}}
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, signed, Rosguill talk 04:56, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
- Delete. I've read the above a few times now and I feel like I get a different sense of the issue every time I read it. There seems to be some kind of nuance, assumptions, and/or confusion going on with the term. As such, we really ought to nail down what it can mean and describe it (either in its own article or a section of one) if we have the sourcing to do so. Until or unless this happens, the potential for confusion may continue so this is better off deleted. -- Tavix (talk) 17:25, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
- Keep per Austronesier and Kwami: I really don't see where the confusion lies: there's a bunch of language varieties covered in the article Danish dialects, and the redirect under discussion appears to be just an alternative name for this group of varieties. It doesn't matter if you see them as a collection of sister nodes to Standard Danish, or – following everyday perceptions – as somehow subordinated to Danish; these are two ways of perceiving the same underlying situation. If there exists some language that is clearly South Scandinavian but also unambiguously not Danish, then we can think twice – but only if there's evidence of actual discussion of such an entity in the literature and not just an RfD-internal hypothetical. {{br}} There's no OR in translating sydskandinavisk as South Scandinavian, and even if we just stick to Glottolog's use of the English term, then the current target has mostly the same scope. I'm not worried that different sources may present slightly different definitions of a term (and since when do we expect completely water-tight classifications of dialect continua anyway?). These can be explained in the article text: there's no need to spin off a separate article for each shade of meaning. {{br}} The term South Scandinavian should ideally be mentioned in the target article, but even if it's not, I don't see any potential for confusion. How puzzling could it be for a reader to arrive at an article which has right at the top a map of the language varieties in what is clearly a country in the south of Scandinavia? – Uanfala (talk) 20:58, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page.
