Talk:Indo-Aryan languages

Mitanni

It seems strange that Mitanni language would be Indo-European if its speakers are hurrian?

no, the Mitanni nobility were indo-aryan, ruling over a hurrian population. there was some confusion as to which language should be labeled "mitanni", but the term generally refers to the upper-class indo-aryan language now. see Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni dab (ᛏ) 07:24, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

wrong numbers

@Kautilya3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_languages

• The largest in terms of native speakers are Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu, about 329 million),[2] Bengali (about 200 million), Punjabi (about 100 million),[3] Marathi (about 70 million), Gujarati (about 50 million), Bhojpuri (about 40 million), Awadhi (about 38 million), Maithili (about 30 million), Odia (about 30 million), Sindhi (about 26 million), Braj Bhasha (about 21 million), Rajasthani (about 20 million), Saraiki (about 20 million), Chhattisgarhi (about 18 million), Nepali (about 16 million), Sinhala (about 15 miilion), Assamese (about 15 million), Haryanvi (about 13 million), Kannauji (about 9 million), Bagheli (about 8 million), Kashmiri (about 6 million), Dogri (about 4 million), and Bundeli (about 3 million), Garhwali (about 3 million), Kumaoni (about 2 million), with a total number of native speakers of more than 900 million.

• i was understand in wikipedia 900 = 1086!

329+ 200+100+ 70+ 50+40 +38 +30+ 30+ 26+21+ 20+ 20+ 18 + 16 + 15+ 15 + 13 + 9+ 8 + 6 + 4+ 3+3+ 2 million=1086 million, with a total number of native speakers of more than 900 million.

Question of the day

Who coined the term "Indo-Aryan"? And when? Grierson already used the term in a matter-of-factish way at the end of the 19th century, and it is found earlier in works by William Wilson Hunter. @Dyḗwsuh₃nus, Chariotrider555, Uanfala, Joshua Jonathan, and Others: do you have a source about the ultimate provenance of the scholarly term? Austronesier (talk) 21:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Forgot to ping @AryamanA. –Austronesier (talk) 21:34, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

An interesting question @Austronesier, and not just of the day!

I'd like to dig deeper, but from what I know it appears that there's no clear answer to this. At least from the documentation available. It just appeared at some point in the 1800s.

And as is a must these days, one even consulted Giptipedia, with the same result! :-) Dyḗwsuh₃nus (talk) 09:54, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @Kashmiri as well. Dyḗwsuh₃nus (talk) 10:04, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Dyḗwsuh₃nus, thanks for pinging, but I regret I won't be of much help here. Sanskrit grammar is the field I feel more comfortable in than the history of linguistics. — kashmīrī ^TALK 11:47, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Superfluous template?

I don't understand the necessity of the Anchor template call in ==== {{Anchor|Old Indo-Aryan}}Old Indo-Aryan ==== — wouldn't the anchor be there anyway, by virtue of the subtitle, even if the template call were removed? — Tonymec (talk) 14:10, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Someone please update the classification chart

The current chart/language tree implies that Vedic is the ancestor of the Prakrits , this has been refuted by later scholars such as Walter Petersen and Thomas Oberlies whose works are also cited in other Wiki Articles. I propose using a cropped version of the Indo European Language tree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages#/media/File%3AIndo-European_language_tree_(with_major_international_languages_highlighted).svg Bodhiupasaka (talk) 07:37, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

The IE tree is not really doing a better job, as it suggests that Vedic and Classical Sanskrit form a disjunct branch coordinate to later MIA branches, which is also over-simplistic. Ideally, we should have a diagram that directly reflects the prose: While Old Indo-Aryan is the earliest stage of the Indo-Aryan branch, from which all known languages of the later stages Middle and New Indo-Aryan are derived, some documented Middle Indo-Aryan variants cannot fully be derived from the documented form of Old Indo-Aryan (on which Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are based), but betray features that must go back to other undocumented variants/dialects of Old Indo-Aryan. –Austronesier (talk) 15:57, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

in other words , the current chart/tree used in this article is inaccurate/false ? Thanks for concurring, I'll remove the current tree then. There are citations in other articles that state that the Prakrits have even preserved features from Proto Indo Aryan languages that were lost even in Old Indo Aryan languages such as Vedic Sanskrit. Bodhiupasaka (talk) 09:22, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Oh, and I just remembered that User:AnonMoos has spend lots of energy in Talk:Prakrit to explain it to you over and over again since 2020. I have nothing to add to that. –Austronesier (talk) 16:03, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately whatever "explanation" the mentioned user has given is inaccurate as well. The anology that they state is false as well. Bodhiupasaka (talk) 09:24, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

There is NO source that says that Prakrits did not emanate from the same Old Indo-Aryan dialect continuum that included the attested forms of OIA, viz. Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit. –Austronesier (talk) 09:36, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

What is with the all caps and the anger ? And could you explain why you reverted my edits despite you yourself implying that the Chart is inaccurate ? That chart implies that "all" Indo Aryan languages descend from Vedic Sanskrit.

"There is NO source that says that Prakrits did not emanate from the same Old Indo-Aryan dialect continuum that included the attested forms of OIA, viz. Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit. "

I never said anything of the opposite. This is typical strawman argument. What I said was this.

"

Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan (1500–300 BCE), which is directly attested as Vedic and Classical Sanskrit, as well as by the Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni. Indeed, Vedic Sanskrit is very close to Proto-Indo-Aryan.

Some of the Prakrits display a few minor features derived from Proto-Indo-Aryan that had already disappeared in Vedic Sanskrit."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Aryan_language Bodhiupasaka (talk) 11:40, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Wait, you said Indo Aryan languages descended from "Classical Sanskrit" . Pray do tell, which language would that be ? Indo Aryan languages have descended from OIA, that I don't dispute, but even Vedic can't be considered the only ancestor of them all just because it is OIA, becouse even MIA's such Prakrit preserve features of Proto Indo Aryan that were lost in Vedic Sanskrit(source mentioned in previous response). For all Indo Aryan languages to have descended solely from Vedic, the latter had to be in widespread use, for that to happen it would require a vast empire over the Indian subcontinent to mandate its use with the language eventually experiencing deviations that will ultimately turn it into separate languages. But that never happened unlike what happened to Latin that spread with the Roman Empire, then turned to Vulgar Latin and then evolved to the many Romance languages that we know today. Which is why the "analogy" that Anonmoos or whatever their name is, gave for Latin and Vedic is simply inaccurate if not downright false . Latin was literally a lingua franca used throughout much of Western Europe but the same cannot be said for Vedic which was instead a language specialized for chanting religious hymns and was confined to the priestly class of Indian society. Bodhiupasaka (talk) 11:51, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

And Forget about Vedic being the ancestor of some of the MIA's/Prakrits. There are scholars that argue that the Prakrits and Vedic developed in parallel instead. Therefore such statements of Vedic being an ancestor of the Prakrits are also disputed/don't have consensus. Below article was also quoted in another wiki articile.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3087594

Refer page 416, first paragraph, last sentence. Bodhiupasaka (talk) 12:07, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

...you said Indo Aryan languages descended from "Classical Sanskrit" No. I said: There is NO source that says that Prakrits did not emanate from the same Old Indo-Aryan dialect continuum that included the attested forms of OIA, viz. Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit.

The POV reflected in Petersen's article from 1912(!) is that Prakrits and Vedic are "sister" languages, which is a skewed view on the history of Prakrits that has not been pursued further in Indo-Aryan linguistics. To stay in the analogy, they are better described as "nieces" of Vedic Sanskrit. All attested IA languages are derived from a common Proto IA source. This includes Vedic and Classical Sanskrit as attested forms of Old IA, the various Prakrits as attested forms of Middle IA, and all documented forms (historical and contemporary) of New IA. The fact that there is evidence that attested Prakrits cannot be fully derived from Vedic or Classical Sanskrit as direct ancestors, does not mean that they have miraculously bypassed the Old IA stage in their development from Proto IA. It is scholarly consensus that each Prakrit went through an unattested Old IA ancestral stage that maximally differed from Vedic Sanskrit at the dialect level. The bulk of linguistic features of Middle IA varieties can be derived with ease from Vedic/Classical Sanskrit, and it is only a few characteristics that betray an ancestral Old IA stage that slightly differed from attested forms of Old IA. This fact is the very reason why scholars of IA studies are confident that the time of first documentiation does not necessarily correspond to the time of actual usage as a spoken language (hence the dating of Vedic Sanskrit back to at least two millenia before its first written attestation). –Austronesier (talk) 14:53, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Again, you refer to Old IA as a "stage" as in Chronological. This is maybe or may not be true(I'm a little rusty right now, been a long time) but Middle IA cannot be construed as the same. The latter is a classification based more on common linguistic features rather than purely on Chronology. Hence just because Prakrits are Middle IA does not mean they supersede Vedic, Classical Sanskrit etc. This is from the Wiki Page for MIA:

"The classification reflects stages in linguistic development, rather than being strictly chronological."

Case in Point, Classical Sanskrit was synthesised from Vedic Sanskrit around the same time when Prakrits were already being spoken and the language was created/standardised from Vedic by Panini who lived around the same time when the Buddha and Mahavira were already preaching their doctrines to the masses in Prakrit. Despite being created in a time period when Prakrits were already being spoken, it is classified as Old IA ! Which implies even OIA is not strictly chronological in its basis of classification.

Weirdly in the same MIA article in Wiki:

"

The Middle Indo-Aryan languages are younger than the Old Indo-Aryan languages but were ****contemporaneous with the use of Classical Sanskrit, an Old Indo-Aryan language**** used for literary purposes."

The statement contradicts itself.

The point is the classification of Indo Aryan languages is still evolving, there is no universal consensus on what language(not just classification/group) gave rise to the Prakrits. Which is why including Vedic Sanskrit as an ancestor to the Prakrits in the chart would be misleading to the readers. Atleast I'm glad you agree that the Prakrits cannot be direct descendants of Vedic but instead "nieces".

Bodhiupasaka (talk) 07:32, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Pinging @Austronesier and @Kwamikagami. I thought we should have a discussion about the high-level classification we are using as of now, i.e., Eastern, Western, Central, etc. It seems as if the current groupings we are using are pretty arbitrary and do not seem to be a linguistic grouping. For example, Central Indo-Aryan (W. and E. Hindi) doesn't seem to have a common ancestor that it doesn't share with non-CIA languages as well and is only used by Kausen. Perhaps we can have a discussion and do a minor re-grouping? What say you? PadFoot2008 17:28, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

What could a "minor regrouping" possibly describe other than original research? Remsense诉 17:30, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I meant using other sources. Other sources aren't drastically different therefore I used "minor". PadFoot2008 17:35, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

We had an exchange of thoughts about it a few years ago: Talk:Indo-Aryan_languages/Archive_1#Classification_3. But we haven't really made much progress from there, except for the table by @AryamanA. –Austronesier (talk) 17:33, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I had had a look at that discussion earlier (not too deeply) and so read it once more again now. I suggest we use Ethnologue? Much of the Indo-Aryan language-related articles seems to be sourced from either Ethnologue or Glottolog on Wikipedia.

Or how about we just see which group is a language most commonly classified in per the table you mentioned and use that? That would mean something like this: Eastern (Odia, Bengali–Assamese, Bihari), Central (E. Hindi, W. Hindi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Romani), Northern (Pahari), Northwestern (E. Punjabi, W. Punjabi, Sindhi, Dardic) and Southern (Marathi-Konkani, Sinhala–Dhivehi). (Edit – Just noticed that this is the exact same classification as Glottolog.) PadFoot2008 17:53, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Ethnologue does not cite their sources, and in the past has proven unreliable. Glottolog would be better, as a judgement on which of the classifications in the lit has the firmest basis. — kwami (talk) 18:00, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Kwami, I agree that it would be better to use glottolog. I just noticed that the second suggestion I had made (to use the most common classification from the table) is the exact same as Glottolog. PadFoot2008 18:06, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

@Austronesier, your thoughts about using Glottolog? Basically — Eastern (Odia, Bengali–Assamese, Bihari), Central (E. Hindi, W. Hindi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Romani), Northern (Pahari), Northwestern (E. Punjabi, W. Punjabi, Sindhi, Dardic) and Southern (Marathi-Konkani, Sinhala–Dhivehi). PadFoot2008 05:10, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Austronesier, what are your thoughts on this? Should we use this? PadFoot2008 12:14, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm no expert here, so may I ask what the consensus in the field is about the reliability of Ethnologue and Glottolog? Though a quick skim, I haven't seen much criticism in their respective articles or, more importantly, consensus in the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard archives to list either as some level of unreliable. How do scholars overall tend to view these publications? AnandaBliss (talk) 17:33, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

@PadFoot2008 and AnandaBliss: Actually, both Ethnologue and Glottolog serve as a sort of default source to start with for WP purposes, but both are problematic each in their own way (and should never be used to replace classifications that come from secondary expert sources). @kwami already pointed out the issues with Ethnologue. As for Glottolog, it is basically a synthesis of classifications in reliable sources, based on the judgement of its main contributor, Harald Hammarström (although he also much relies on suggestions from other experts and is always very open to them—if they appear convincing to him). A major problem with Glottolog is the way Hammarström produces a "big picture". Often, classifications from reliable sources are "grafted" on one another when they overlap, even if they partially contradict each other. Sometimes, this results in a scaffold classification that is not supported in its full extent by any of the sources that have been used. This kind of synthesis is of course fully ok for a scholarly maintained site like Glottolog, but the ensuing classifications often contain ideosycrasies and do not necessarily represent academic consensus.

As for the IA languages, there simply is no academic consensus about the broad picture, and Masica's unsurpassable synopsis from 1991 is still adopted in works that appeared in the the 2010s. Actually, academic consensus probably leans towards treating the IA languages as a dialect continuum that defies the tree model for the most part. The chapter "The dialectology of Indic"[1] in the Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics consequently divides IA into geographic divisions.

But still, I won't object to follow the Glottolog model as a first step for our purposes if there's consensus for it, although we should cross-check whether the classification in Glottolog is in fact supported by its sources and not totally at odds with the little consensus that exists about IA classification (on a quick glance, I couldn't find anything outlandish in Glottolog's classification). In cases where there is unambiguous support from those sources, we may opt to use them directly.

A final caveat: Glottolog relies quite heavily on Kogan's work, more than would be considered WP:DUE here in WP (although IMO Kogan is still better than Kaussen). –Austronesier (talk) 18:52, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

@Austronesier, the classification I proposed was actually a sum total of the sources provided in the table in this article you had mentioned earlier. Basically I checked which was the most common classification for each major language. I then realised that Glottolog uses the near same classification as the one I proposed. If you and @Kwamikagami (as well as any other participants) don't object then I should implement it (per Glottolog). PadFoot2008 07:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Also Glottolog lists Western Pahari as Himachali (languages) and under Eastern Dardic. I propose we should move it. @Austronesier and @Kwamikagami. PadFoot2008 07:52, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I did notice that Glottolog 5.0 is drastically different from 3.0. It presents this picture more or less:

• Pashayi
• Chitral
• Dameli
• Gawarbatic
• Khowar
• "Middle-Modern Indo-Aryan"
  • Sinhala-Dhivehi
  • Eastern Dardic: Kashmiri, Himachali, Shina, Kohistani
  • Continental Indo-Aryan
    • Northwestern zone: Sindhi, Punjabi, Hindko, Saraiki, Pahari-Potwari
    • Eastern zone: Bengali-Assamese (Gauda–Kamrupa), Oriya, Halbic
    • Southern zone: Marathi—Konkani
    • Midlands Indo-Aryan
      • Northern zone: Eastern Pahari, Central Pahari
      • "Apabhramsic"
        • Gujarati—Rajasthani: Gujaratic, Rajasthani
      • Bhil
      • Khandeshic
      • "S(h)aurasenic"
        • Bihari
        • Eastern Hindi: Awadhic, Chhattisgarhi, Powari
        • Central zone: W. Hindi, Domaki, Domari, Romani

This is more or less the basic classification per 5.0. @Austronesier, should we use these as the base divisions of Indo-Aryan languages? PadFoot2008 16:43, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@PadFoot2008: May I do a few changes to the above list to better reflect the classification in Glottolog 5.0, especially its more nested character? I'm asking for your permission because it's part of your signed comment, and I don't want to inflate this thread by duplicating the list (with the necessary amendments). –Austronesier (talk) 17:17, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, of course, @Austronesier. PadFoot2008 17:44, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@PadFoot2008: Done. Still not complete, but I wanted to emphasize the nesting because it produces a few things that appear odd to me, such as: 1) W. Hindi is more closely related to Romani than to any other IA branch; or 2) The Bihari cluster appears in a mid-level clade ("Midlands IA") that also includes Gujarati, but excludes Odia and Bengali-Assamese. I'm pretty sure these things are artefacts of Glottolog's practing of grafting classifications onto one another and not directly supported by the sources cited in Glottolog. –Austronesier (talk) 18:26, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Mostly it appears to be a conflation of Masica and Kogan, but 'Shaurasenic' and 'Apabhramsic' (but not Gujarati-Rajasthani!) also take Bubenic [1996] into account. — kwami (talk) 18:45, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@Austronesier: It seems that Grierson (1887) was the first one to classify Bihari in eastern Indo-Aryan languages. He maintained that Bihari was different from (and not a member of) E. Hindi. Some subsequent scholars have agreed with him in that Bihari is not a member of E. Hindi, however do not consider it to be a part of Eastern Indo-Aryan, e.g., Cardona (1974), Jeffers (1976) and Dass (1976) who maintained that it was a part of distinct IA subgroup which didn't include Bengali. I say we might as well go along with this classification. PadFoot2008 19:00, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@Austronesier, should we implement this now? Do you have other changes to propose to the above classification? PadFoot2008 12:15, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

No, we shouldn't. You still have to show which of Glottolog's sources supports the Midlands group in its full extent (i.e. including Bihari and Gujarati). Sure, the inclusion of Bihari languages in the Eastern zone is not unchallenged. But to my knowledge, no scholar who groups the Bihari languages with the languages spoken to their west goes as far as to include Gujarati in such a group. And those scholars who do group Gujarati with the W. and E. Hindi languages don't include Bihari languages in that scheme. –Austronesier (talk) 13:00, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

@Austronesier, I think you are partially correct, and it is probably a case of Glottolog's grafting here, but IMO "Mainlands" isn't a group in the same sense as "Central zone", "Eastern Zone" or "Eastern Dardic". "Midlands" seems to be a broad classification sort of like "Continental". It is subdivided, as you have seen, into "Northern zone", "Shaurasenic" (containing "Central zone"), and "Apabhramsic". Gujarati–Rajasthani is classified by Glottolog as an "Apabhramsic" language while Bihari is classified as a "Shaurasenic" language, kind of similar to Eastern or Central zone. "Central zone" per this classification only includes W. Hindi, Romani, Domaki and Domari, while "Shaurasenic" including Central zone, Bihari and E. Hindi, while Gujaratic and Rajasthani languages are classified as separate "Apabhramsic" languages. I don't see a problem in using a broad classification of "Midlands" (like "Continental"). PadFoot2008 15:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

It's actually simple. A classificatory unit (whether it is on the low, mid or high level) that has no support in any specialist source at all, not even as a mere geographical unit, is a Glottolog-only construct and has no place in Wikipedia. (Although I still might be mistaken and actually there is a source for the Midlands group as presented in Glottolog; have you tried to find one?) That doesn't mean I give a thumbs down to the entire Glottolog classification. If we just discard "Midlands" and use its subbranches instead, that might be workable, although issues like the lumping of W. Hindi and Romani/Domari into one branch still need to be adressed. We're not in a hurry. Please take a dive first into the literature that is actually cited in Glottolog (Kogan, Bubenik, Masica etc.), like @kwami has done. –Austronesier (talk) 18:05, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I looked into various sources (including that of Kogan, Grierson, Chatterji, Katre, among others). I think we should use a model based on Katre. The branches form clades, though I am unsure about the position of E. Hindi:

• Dardic
• Northwestern
  • Lahnda
  • Sindhi
• Central
  • Rajasthani–Gujarati
  • Romani–Domaaki
  • Pahari
  • Punjabi
  • W. Hindi
  • E. Hindi
• Eastern
  • Bihari
  • Bengali–Assamese
  • Odia
• Southern
  • Marathi–Konkani
  • Sinhala–Dhivehi

PadFoot2008 12:43, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I wonder if there are any classifications that depict some clades as transitional, e.g. "central-eastern transitional", rather than forcing them all into discrete branches. — kwami (talk) 17:30, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

@kwami, Well, Grierson's earlier "Mediate" sub-branch in which he classified E. Hindi, or his later "Intermediate" sub branch in which he included E. Hindi (as intermediate between Midland and Eastern), and Gujarati–Rajasthani and Punjabi (as intermediate between Midland and Northwestern) were classified on that basis, I think. Personally I would prefer such a classification for E. Hindi. PadFoot2008 18:25, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Austronesier, what do you think about this classification? PadFoot2008 17:28, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@PadFoot2008: It's certainly an option, although I expect this won't long stay stable when Lahnda and Punjabi are assigned to different zones. This will attract editors who insist that Hindko and Saraiki are just dialects of Punjabi. And of course many RS view Hindko and Saraiki as distinct but nevertheless assign Lahnda, Punjabi and Sindhi to the same subgroup, so we wouldn't be fully present an NPOV if we followed Katre. Also, the Southern group is not uncontested (I have re-checked Chatterji (1926), the flipchart at p.6 in the first volume of The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language has Elu and Marathi at completly different ends of the tree). –Austronesier (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@Austronesier, I have looked into those issues and, in my opinion, Katre seems to be a good classification all in all. Lahnda and Punjabi do not appear to form a clade, considering that Punjabi developed from Shauraseni and Lahnda did not, so they likely don't belong to the same sub-group. PadFoot2008 18:11, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

@Austronesier and @Kwamikagami, is this classification good? Should we implement it? PadFoot2008 14:45, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

What's your source that those are the descendants of Shauraseni? You should first add that to our Shauraseni article; we currently don't have any RS there on classification/descent. — kwami (talk) 18:58, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami, I added a source at the Shauraseni article [2]. PadFoot2008 18:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami and @Austronesier, I think we should implement this now? (Also, apologies for the excess pings, I was having some trouble replying to my own outdented reply above.) PadFoot2008 16:49, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Let's also hear User:Treetoes023 (who did this[3] absolutely cool badass thing) for ideas. –Austronesier (talk) 18:50, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining that, Austronesier! I try to help out as much as I can in this space but I unfortunately don't have expertise. It helps to know the "temperature" of some issues, to avoid stepping on any toes. AnandaBliss (talk) 19:34, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Glottolog typically uses the most convincing classification, according to the judgement of Harald and his colleagues, and provides the ref. In such cases it would be reasonable for us to use that source directly. In some cases, as Austronesier noted, G reflects a synthesis. AFAICT, in such cases the synthesis might not be from someone familiar with the languages, and might not be fully referenced. These are generally cases where there is no single convincing complete classification. These cases are going to be headaches and would benefit from discussion, but may be obscure enough that we won't be able to do any better.

BTW, Ethn. is moving in this direction, and are much more reliable than they were before they became the default source of the languages of the world (which they had not intended to be). But because they don't provide sources, and we might not be able to tell where their old classification-for-convenience might remain, IMO it's still best not to treat them as a RS for classification.

And of course in cases of dialect continua, any classification is going to have arbitrary elements. — kwami (talk) 20:14, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I would like to point out that the claim Central Indo-Aryan (W. and E. Hindi)... is only used by Kausen is fundamentally untrue. If you look at Masica's classic text on this language family, and go to the chapter on internal classification, you'll see quite a few proposals over the year with similar groupings (not by Kausen), though not necessarily under the same name. Brusquedandelion (talk) 17:07, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

No classification in Masica's synopsis has a Central Indo-Aryan group that contains W. and E. Hindi but nothing else. Only Nigam comes close, the main difference being the dotted line from Punjabi into W. Hindi. –Austronesier (talk) 17:25, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

The Nigam classification essentially coincides, it just uses different labels, as well as a schematic we are essentially unable to use in our presentation here—the "dashed line". The Turner, Katre, and Cardinal schemas don't necessarily disagree, insofar as they don't subdivide "Central" further, we can't read that as evidence against the thesis that E. and W. Hindi form a clade. It's really only Grierson and Hoernle that actually refute such a clade. None of this is to argue in favor of a specific presentation, or its converse, here on Wikipedia, only to note that the current presentation is not so aberrant/unsupported as was claimed. Brusquedandelion (talk) 00:29, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Regarding Glottolog: I cannot speak with any expertise on the Indo-Aryan classification, but my overall impression of Glottolog is very negative. By and large, it appears to be a one person project, with little care for accuracy. For the language branches with which I have some expertise, Glottolog has proven to be highly inaccurate on several occasions. My own recommendation would be to declare Glottolog an unreliable source for WP purposes. When better sources exist, they should be used. When no other sources exist, it is highly unlikely that Glottolog has soke expertise others have missed. I simply cannot see a situation in which Glottolog could be trusted. Jeppiz (talk) 00:06, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Then do something. Don't give up on expert-run sites like Glottolog and Ethnologue when at the same time you "waste" your valuable time as a scholar in a "Randy in Boise"-infested site like this one. Every exchange that I have had with Harald Hammarström and Charles Fennig so far resulted in a better and more up-to-date classification in both sites, even if it's been only small pieces in the big, big puzzle. While we're discussing now, I'm drafting my next mail with suggestions about how to remove inconsistencies in Glottolog's current presentation of Indo-Aryan classification (among other things). –Austronesier (talk) 18:10, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Does Glottolog actually respond to emails? Brusquedandelion (talk) 00:21, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes. — kwami (talk) 20:16, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Second this: yes :)–Austronesier (talk) 19:08, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

@PadFoot2008: Let's continue here for better readabilty of the thread. I think I have stated elsewhere that I consider a classification that groups Eastern Punjabi closer to the Central languages than to Lahnda and Sindhi as problematic and not the preferred way to present things for many authors cited in the article. FWIW, the source that you cite in Shauraseni is not a reliable source: its citation list of is full of references to Wikipedia which is a big red flag for reliability issues. –Austronesier (talk) 19:17, 1 July 2024 (UTC)