Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Neo-Quenya (2)

Quenya
Hello,

As stated on the page : http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Quenya

This Wikibook is not about Quenya but about a language created by the person who wrote the Wikibook. "This book is about Neo-Quenya and is not a study of Tolkien's Quenya. Lots of statements in this book were invented by the author and not taken from Tolkien. It contains lots of vocabulary from early Qenya, an earlier conceptual stage of what would become late Quenya in the late 50s. This WikiBook is meant to be used as a reference "as is". It is not meant to be authoritative in any way."

This Wiki book is "fan fiction" not a serious grammar book about Quenya as conceived by Tolkien, a philologist. I think it should be deleted as soon as possible. Laurifindil (talk) 23:32, 4 January 2011 (UTC)


 * An anonymous person contributing under an IP address changed the previous wording of "derived from only a few examples" to "invented by the author". Whether it was invented by the author or derived from a few examples could matter. If deemed to be outside the scope due to NOR, I propose transwiking it to Wikiversity. --dark lama  00:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * In the Quenya Wikibook, there is not a sigle reference to a book, a linguistic text, or a dictionary written by J.R.R. Tolkien.Laurifindil (talk)


 * I think references to only works written by J.R.R Tolkien is too restrictive. Wikipedia's article on Quenya certainly doesn't limit itself to works written by J.R.R Tolkien. Doing some reading on Wikipedia suggests David Salo is responsible for expanding the development of the Quenya constructed language for use in the movie adoptions. The Quenya book does include external links, if they are not enough more could be added using the links Wikipedia uses as a starting point. --dark lama  13:03, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Transwiki if not covering Tolkien's Quenya; keep here if can be salvaged to do so. Wikibooks is not a web host for non-notable constructed languages or a place for original research.  No disclaimer as seen on the book's main page is present in the custom PDF for the book, though. – Adrignola talk 02:22, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has an article on Quanya and briefly mentions "Salonian Neo-Quenya", which is apparently the name Wikipedians gave to the extended version of Quenya developed by David Salo. "Salonian Neo-Quenya" appears in only one Google search result outside of the English Wikipedia article and even that seems to have been copied from Wikipedia. References to "Salonian Neo-Quenya" probably need to be removed at Wikipedia as OR.
 * "Neo-Quenya" returns more Google results including an ambitious project to write an entire encyclopedia in Neo-Quenya. Google Scholarly results show there is a book/journal called "Tolkien Studies" that discusses the topic of Neo-Quenya, and a dictionary called "Elvish Dictionary Quenya-English" which was published by the Ambar Eldaron website, along with at least 12 other books on the subject. Wikibooks' Quenya book apparently links to one version of the dictionary, but should probably link to The Google Book version instead since the current link admits registration is required.
 * Many books have been published about Quenya. "The Lord of the rings, 1954-2004" mentions that "Neo-Quenya" is sometimes used to refer to "usable" and "standard" forms of the language. Sometimes suggests that "Neo-Quenya" is not always used to refer to "usable" and "standard" forms of the Quenya language.
 * I have trouble imagining that if this were really a problem that this wouldn't of been picked up before since Wikibooks' Quenya book use to be a featured book. If all that still isn't enough to suggest this book as-is might be in scope, Marquette University seems to think all things tolkien is worth collecting, and that may mean this book could be useful as an annotated text of some kind or educationally useful to schools. --dark lama  13:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem is largely that I'm not a linguist to know if the actual content in the book, regardless of name, is "usable" and "standard". In terms of salvage, likely the disclaimer needs to go, to at least create an intended scope that is line with site scope.  The original intention received a unanimous keep (other than the nominator) in the previous RFD. – Adrignola talk 14:50, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not a linguist either. I did a little searching using Google and Wikipedia and thought I'd share the results for all our benefit. The results to me suggest the subject may be noteworthy and may be taught in schools as part of a historical literature or linguist class. The only issue I could find is there may be some differences in terminology that could cause confusion and debate as to where Quenya ends and Neo-Quenya begins. I guess Laurifindil is of the opinion that Quenya ends where J.R.R Tolkien stopped and Neo-Quenya begins where other people contributed to the constructed language. I think one way to resolve the issue could be to be clear where vocabulary, grammar and syntax was defined by J.R.R and where vocabulary, grammar, and syntax was introduced later. --dark lama  15:17, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * As per Adrignola... I made a couple of small edits to this book the other day and thought the same thing at the time. As a study of Tolkein's work, keep, otherwise Transwiki. QU TalkQu 11:24, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Transwiki. Anyone who would have a username of Laurifindil would most likely know a lot more about Tolkein's languages than I would, and I trust the assessment that the current incarnation of this book is fan-fic. --Jomegat (talk) 12:15, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Symbol keep vote.svg Changing my opinion here. I do not want WB to become embroiled in a political battle between warring factions.  "Salonian Neo-Quenya" is notable enough to warrant inclusion here. --Jomegat (talk) 13:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Symbol keep vote.svg Keep Since did the translations for the, I suggest his work has gravitas comparable to Paul Frommer's Na'vi or Marc Okrand's Klingon.  Of course, OR can creep into any wikibook, but that's an opportunity for improvement rather than a reason for deletion/transwiki.


 * There is a familiar political dispute between factions within the Tolkien-languages community, between (as I recall) "purists" and "reconstructionists". From the nominator's comments here and at their, it seems likely the nominator belongs to the purist camp.  My own knowledge of the factions (since my own conlanging interests lie mostly elsewhere) comes largely from David Salo's comments during Q&amp;A after his talk at the second ; IIRC, he had pretty negative things to say about extremists on both sides, involving the words "fascist" and "anarchist".  The purists are politically inclined to suppress work that isn't strictly limited to Tolkien's writings.  --Pi zero (talk) 16:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Tolkien is well-known for working out the full background for something before using it in his stories; one of the reasons it took so long for Lord of the Rings to be written is that he had to first devise an entire universe history and mythology for that world. Lord of the Rings is placed in the Third Age; The Silmarillion is the story of the First and Second Ages, and a quick run-down of the Third Age including the events at the end of it that were detailed in Lord of the Rings. This would lead me to believe that Tolkien probably had significantly more Quenya worked out than was ever published. If Salo had access to that, through Tolkien's estate, then neo-Quenya (sic) would actually be more based on Tolien's work than is supposed by the purist camp. Me, I don't have an opinion on this, as I can see the benefits of studying Tolkien's work, but I also see Quenya as "just another conlang", albeit a famous one that has at least as many active users today as the t'Lingan conlang, which would be at least as likely to have a useful textbook here. Chazz (talk) 17:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It's pretty much all been published now in the 10 volume "History of Middle Earth" and many other works. I have a number of them around, I shall try and find the time to read the book here and compare it to these as sources. QU TalkQu 22:08, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * That might indeed yield information that would be, as Darklama has suggested further up, useful for improving the book.


 * I don't think Salo had any special inside information; I'd like to think my memory of his LCC2 talk wasn't that badly flawed, but the place to go to check would be the recording of the talk at the . In any case, my immediate point is that the existence or nonexistence of such inside information has no relevance to the outcome of this DR discussion.  What we're looking at here is our policies being gamed in order to bring about censorship of one group of Tolkien fans by another group of Tolkien fans (not that I'd expect the nominator to see it that way).  I don't like to see our policies exploited so.  --Pi zero (talk) 23:55, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep It seems to be a serious work, even if its scope isn't what perhaps many think it should be.--Wisden (talk) 08:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)


 * After initial doubts Chazz' comment made me have a closer look into the topic. After some reading on other pages a clear keep from my perspective. --Chrkl (talk) 22:30, 12 January 2011 (UTC)