Category talk:Hismaic language

RFM discussion: June 2016–February 2017

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Ancient North Arabian

Next up, the Ancient North Arabian lects. They are understudied, their scripts are not yet in Unicode, and it's not entirely clear what their relationships are. I think the conservative way to add codes for them, given that they are long-extinct and have relatively small, finite lexica, is to assign a code assuming that each one is a separate language from each other and from Arabic. (This will also be helpful down the line when their scripts are encoded.) There appear to be multiple languages being called Thamudic, but that's a bridge that we can cross when the scholarship does. I'd suggest sem-dad (Dadanitic), sem-dum (Dumaitic), sem-has (Hasaitic), sem-his (Hismaic), sem-saf (Safaitic), sem-tay (Taymanitic), and sem-tha (Thamudic). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:16, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Why sem-dud for Dumaitic? Benwing2 (talk) 19:07, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 22:47, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Support. - -sche (discuss) 03:19, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

I suppose we should distinguish Thamudic B, C and D, as sources do... the names are not great, but neither is Category:Tocharian A language, Category:Tocharian B language, Category:Linear A script, Category:Linear B script. - -sche (discuss) 04:20, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, once they're better understood I expect scholars to attach distinguishing names for them, as has happened in the past. Naturally, we can adapt, so I suppose I support adding the Thamudic X's. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:37, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I actually think that on the contrary, the conservative approach would be to keep them all together. Perhaps we should ignore the "conservative" approach and actually look into the existing research to see whether any differentiation has been made. And don't forget that even if there are differences, that doesn't make them necessarily separate languages. Anyway, splitting up ancient languages is very tricky since we have no data about mutual intelligibility (although thankfully politics don't get in the way as much). --WikiTiki89 14:42, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

• I have added them all as suggested, and put them in sem-cen. We can make any needed changes when somebody wants to work on adding terms from them. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:18, 13 February 2017 (UTC)