Talk:urban Indian

RFV discussion — moved to RFD

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Note: the heading of this section was previously [[Urban Indian]]. The named page has been moved. —Ruakh_TALK 03:15, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Sum of parts? Caps? SemperBlotto 08:28, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not sum of parts if it's applied only to American Indians and not to persons from India. --EncycloPetey 21:40, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

EP: Does this mean then that:

for any multi-word headword meets cfi if

one of whose components is polysemic and

which has one component definition that is excluded from the compound-headword definition.

This might be the new explicit version of cfi that we need. DCDuring TALK 23:31, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

To be precise, I assume that you would exclude adjective-noun noun phrases like "creamy skin" but include noun-noun noun phrases like "peanut butter" and "head butter". DCDuring TALK 23:45, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

It might be tried as a guiding principle, but I don't know that it's universally applicable. Certainly, there are adjective-noun combinations that I would say neet CFI, like clean slate, which is idiomatic. However, the principle might work in those cases where idiomaticity does not obviously exist. --EncycloPetey 23:56, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I supplied adequate references for this term when I created the entry, and have added more since then. I thought it was clear enough. I don't see the problem. This entry started out as a dictionary definition on Wikipedia. I transwiki'd it here, that's all. Anachronist 01:32, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Links to websites do not meet our criteria for inclusion. We need specific citations from durably-archived sources (such as printed media) spanning a suitable period of time. This means adding dated quotations from such sources. See Citations:listen for examples. --EncycloPetey 00:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

The criteria for inclusion do not require citations from durably archived sources; that is just one means of attestation. The relevant attestation criterion here is "clearly in widespread use". For that purpose, a U.S. Government website and three nonprofit organizations wholly devoted to "Urban Indians" should be sufficient to establish such use.

The term also meets the other requirements of conveying meaning, independence, and spanning at least a year.

Again, I don't see the problem with this entry, and I fail to understand why it was tagged with a verification request. Anachronist 22:44, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Websites are not considered durably archived, and therefore their content is not acceptable to meet CFI. The inclusion of the links has only demonstrated that some specific organizations use the term as part of their name. We don't view inclusion within the proper name of specific entities the same way as we do the rest of the language. They also do not demonstrate widespread use, but specialist use.

You can verify the word by providing specific citations from durably archived media. For example, quotations (with bibliographic information) from a US Goverment document would be considered acceptable, since such documents are archived. Independent use of the term in a history or ethnic studies book (quoted, with bibliographic information) would also support this item. --EncycloPetey 23:05, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to give you an idea, Anachronist, "clearly widespread use" would be like the feline sense of cat. Basically, if something sees clearly widespread use, and verifictaion for it requested on thispage, then everyone following this page will jump all over the requester yelling "clearly widespread use!".  :-)  This term doesn't seem to meet that criterion.—msh210℠ 23:13, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I, for one, do not agree that this is in "widespread use". In fact, I don't remember ever hearing it. There are many terms that may be in use in some government circles that we would not consider in "widespread use". We use the "widespread use" criterion largely for colloquial terms that may not be found widely in print. We require broad consensus for "widespread use".

The cites need to convey the meaning provided, be from a print source that someone could find in a library or from a durably archived on-line source. We need the quotation (not merely a link) to actually be provided. Try Google Books, Google News, Google Scholar, and Usenet, all of which have often proved acceptable and always convenient. Take a look at any of our previously challenged entries for examples.

It also appears SoP to me, notwithstanding the comment of EP above. DCDuring TALK 23:31, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Move to RfD or delete non-idiomatic collocation. DCDuring TALK 23:45, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. You want archived sources? Checking Google Books hadn't occurred to me earlier. Google Books returns 1,630 results, some of which are academic works on the very subject of urban Indians. Which one should we choose to cite?

Proposing this for deletion seems highly premature given that the term is well established. Given the sources available, I still don't see an explanation of why this was tagged with a verification request when the act of verifying at Google Books would have been more efficient than the preceding discussion. Anachronist 02:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Not highly premature. We normally want RFV to close within a month (4 weeks), and nearly 3 weeks have passed with no citations yet provided in support of this term. I note this citation is among those in the 1,630 returns you found on b.g.c.:

• 2006, Shashi Tharoor, India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond, page 313

  But if Calcutta symbolizes urban Indian civilization, thank God New Delhi is not civilized.

This shows that the combination is not necessarily deserving of recognition. We need a demonstration that it does meet CFI. Another of your 1,630 returns, while not as visibly unsupportive, also does not lend support to the Urban Indian entry:

• 1986, Ronald Spores, Patricia A. Andrews, Ethnohistory: Ethnohistory‎, page 185

  I have argued (Chance 1976) that a distinct urban Indian culture, heavily Nahua in orientation, had emerged by 1580

The quote uses "urban " and "Indian" as adjectives to describe a culture, rather than naming a particular thing. We need clear demonstration that a term meets the requirements of CFI, and not simply evidence that two words frequently occur next to each other. --EncycloPetey 02:46, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

What I'm seeing above are interpretations of WT:CFI that aren't specifically stated there.

EncycloPetey, you wrote above, "Independent use of the term in a history or ethnic studies book (quoted, with bibliographic information) would also support this item." Such works are at the top of the search results at Google Books. So I included one of them in the urban Indian entry, to satisfy your request.

A government document should be easy to find, as the government maintains a web site devoted to the topic. I have demonstrated above that the entry meets all the other requirements in WT:CFI. Every time I meet a demand, another one comes up. Where does it end?

Yes, there are sources that use this term in an "India" context rather than a "Native American" context, but that doesn't appear to be the dominant usage based on the search results.

I have also renamed the entry to urban Indian (lowercase U). The uppercase U was an artifact of transwiki-ing from Wikipedia, where the convention is for all articles to start with an uppercase character. That isn't the case on Wiktionary. Retaining the uppercase U was not intentional, and is now corrected. Anachronist 18:08, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Not interpretation, as this is the second basic requirement of that policy. Requirement (1) is attestation, (2) is idiomaticity. You can read more under WT:CFI#Idiomaticity. In short, it will tell you that if urban Indian merely means "urban and Indian", then it fails to meet CFI. --EncycloPetey 18:27, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly so. Applying the fried egg test, in which a fried egg generally means an egg fried in a particular way, "urban Indian" is idiomatic. It is specific to a particular context of "urban" in the sense of "urbanized yet intimitely tied to a traditional identity that considers urban property as an extension of Indian territory" — not the broader meaning of merely existing in a geographic area characterized as "urban". The Lobo book excerpt cited in the entry makes interesting reading on this point. I encourage you to read from the middle of page 76 through the next page.

I honestly didn't know any of this when I transwiki'd the entry here, but the more I study this subject, the more I am convinced that this entry meets the criteria for inclusion. Anachronist 00:41, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Cited. This entry has been open over a month. Above comments about the references cited explain the attestation and idiomaticity of this term. ~Anachronist (talk) 23:47, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Eh … see ablow, pimp slap, and Citations:mouton enragé for examples of pages that are cited. (Or, for a more formal presentation, see Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion and Wiktionary:Quotations.) —Ruakh_TALK 03:24, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Um, if you read the discussion above, WT:CFI is exactly what we're discussing.

The examples of citations you give only serve to illustrate how the term is used in a sentence. I fail to see the usefulness of such a citation format in this instance. References such as I provided are still necessary to establish idiomaticity. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:21, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

This allows the same citation to serve as:

1. evidence of attestation as to existence of headword;
2. evidence of idiomaticity;
3. evidence that usage corresponds to definition; and
4. a usage example. DCDuring TALK 20:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I've collected some mainly Canadian citations at Citations:urban Indian. Some of these are sum-of-parts, and at least a few are clearly not, but I'm not sure if there's enough to pass CFI or not. In Canada, the term is likely being partly displaced by urban Aboriginal people or urban First Nations, because in the last couple of decades Indian has become somewhat stigmatized in formal writing.

By the way, Native American is a somewhat US-slanted term. Not sure if that can be avoided, but perhaps a person of Native American heritage can be changed to North American Indian. —Michael Z. 2009-03-10 21:35 z

• I have provided three citations of use as applied to Asian urban indians re: EP's early point about SoPness.

  I am having trouble seeing anything idiomatic about the citations. They seem to refer to Indians who are urban. If it were a legal/regulatory category, that might meet CFI, but I don't see that. DCDuring TALK 21:50, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but urban Indians (in Canada at least) are a significant and growing socioeconomic and demographic group. The term is used in contrast to Indians residing on reserves (there is no corresponding large “rural Indian” group). “Urban Indian” isn't a legal status, but urban Indians fall under particular residency and status categories which affect their benefits and rights related to taxation, land ownership, participation in self-government (and possibly health care—I'm not sure). I believe the term also includes non-status First Nations people, and those who lose their status under the Indian Act (and those who regained status under changing laws in the 1980s).

It's complicated. I don't think these facts justify inclusion in themselves, but the term carries related connotations which do not originate in the sum of the parts. —Michael Z. 2009-07-27 04:33 z