Wikibooks talk:Languages bookshelf

First Comments
Gaelic(scots) should be changed to Scottish Gaaelic due to the confusing with Scots a seperate language in Scotland totally unrelated. the redirect also makes the mistake with Scots(Gaelic).

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 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_in_the_world

is an article that has been posted on Votes for deletion on wikipedia, on the ground that it is not really encylopedic. Does anyone think we should copy it over here ? Theresa knott 16:41, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * I say, yeah, bring it over, I don't know why they want to delete it. Although it does not fit in any specific book right now it could be in a common area between different language books. --Karl Wick


 * It's been removed from VfD btw. Dysprosia 01:57, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * In that case there is no longer any urgency. I wont port it over just yet because people are working on it over there. I'll wait a while 'till they get it nearer to pefection first. Theresa knott 11:33, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What are the general guidelines for language bookshelf authors? should we present here linguistic analisys style books, or self-learn languages guide with dialogs and such?

What about Elvish? Anyone interested in starting a page? I guess the font would be a problem but is there a way to get around that with images perhaps? Just a random suggestion... Drunkasian 05:58, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * I would like to see it (klingon's already there), and will add it to the requested list. On an unrelated note, BorkBorkBork!, if it is appropriate for wikibooks at all, is not a real language (and I don't mean real as in non-fictional, I mean that it is not a language.  It is an idiosyncratic method of speaking used by a single fictional character.  I am removing it from this list.). TUF-KAT
 * What's the point in learning Elvish? I don't see many elves around here that speak it.
 * Do you see elves that speak a different language? :) Anyway, it's a real language that some people do learn, and I don't see any reason why Wikibooks can't cover it. I'm less certain of the newly-created Tsan language wikibook, since it is a homegrown invented language deleted from Wikipedia for non-encyclopedicness. TUF-KAT 22:18, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Relation with wiktionary
I'm thinking about the relations of this to Wiktionary. A good bilingual would be a great language resource. feel we can do more than make wiki textbooks.

I'm trying to focus a few ideas around that on Wiki Language School. It would be something in a more dictionary / encyclopedia format - very browseable, but with focus on teachign rather than definitions. So the actual contents may actually look more like what's in a textbook.

Comments welcome - oh, and is there a page on wikibooks that talks about this kind of things ? Flammifer 19:20, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Common resources
I am working on French Sign Language over in fr:Langue des signes française, and I was wondering -- Kowey 11:24, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * if there are any ASL (American SL) or BSL (British SL) speakers here who would like to work with me to build common resources
 * if any of these resources could be shared by languages (i.e. comics to describe, stories to translate, etc)

The Fox language
I was serching around, when I saw a language called Fox in the unfinished section. What kind of language is Fox?

IALs versus artlangs
Might international auxiliary languages and artlangs be divided into separate sections? Their purposes and audiences are very different.

ural-altaic
could we list Japanese and Korean according to family? especially since Chinese is listed under Sino-Tibetan. Nateji77 22:36, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Language families unhelpful?
Anybody else feel that language categories for this bookshelf are unhelpful? I found them much easier to scan and find the language I was looking for before they were categorized into groups like ROMANCE, Q-CELTIC or OTHER INDO-EUROPEAN. If I would make one division, it would be between natural languages and constructed languages, but other than that the divisions make things harder to find.

Think about our users here and what they would reasonably expect to see. Most people know less than half of those language families, so grouping would be an encumbrance to them. --Everlong 18:27, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Agree. --Singkong2005 04:08, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree. I also find the level of categorisation by "family" employed (i.e. how do you define family?) very arbitrary, e.g. "Q-Celtic" is not a language family, it is a subranch of a branch (Celtic) of a family (Indo-European): why choose to categorise at that particular level? Maybe someone will disagree with me there, but that is precisely my point: the decisions are debatable, hence (at least potentially) arbitrary, providing one more argument for getting rid of the categorisation. --A R King 08:14, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Disagree. I accept anyone without specialist knowledge would perhaps not be familiar with all the family/branch etc. hierarchies, but I think a simple alphabetical list completely removes the possibility for people to learn about these distinctions and possibly lead them in directions which are intellectually stimulating. I read often in User talk pages about how people follow random link after random link and become interested in subjects they were previously unaware of. To take away the categorisation is to restrict access to knowledge, not increase it. I accept the division between Q-celtic and P-celtic could come across as an excessive concentration on differences that in world terms are relatively small, but I think the main point is this: To be simply looking at the languages bookshelf means you have some interest in languages and so it is only natural to find out the answers to curiosities that jump out at them. To name but a few: Why are Welsh and Irish in different "branches"? Why is Basque not in any group? Arbitary maybe, but none the less interesting to anyone with an interest in languages. Kijog 21:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * To be clear, I only meant to argue for the removal of categorizations in the little box up top. The family/branch grouping is a very good thing for the organization of the Languages Bookshelf page, but not for a small box.


 * It shows up on many pages and should be just a quick reference with organization that is easily understood by someone wishing to browse popular or developed language texts. I do not think it should be the job of a bookshelf to serve as a primer on etymology. Think of the user here and their likely expectations and search strategies. Alphabetical order is quick to recognize, but the family groupings make most languages harder to find (just try finding Arabic, Finnish or Irish without having to read through half the box first). As a bonus, we'd also free up another line so that more books could be featured. --Everlong 19:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with you on that basis; it would be good to include extra languages and give them a chance to be seen by casual browsers Kijog 16:57, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Some wikibooks need serious improvement
Somebody needs to finish the Czech language wikibook that they started over a year ago, at least add a vocabulary list or something, or announce that it is totally blank.

Mongolian
Could we add Mongolian as a suggested book under Altaic languages? Waitak 02:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

New approach for courses
A while ago I developed a new approach for language courses and today I had the idea that it might be a very helpful for people who are thinking of writing a new language course here and who don't have a background in didactics. I explained it in detail at Bite-sized language lessons. I haven't yet created a course on Wikibooks using that approach, but you can get on idea of what it might look like by going to e. g. this lesson on my personal website and I plan to transfer the German lessons there to Wikibooks so that more people can contribute and benefit from them. What do you think? (Best use the discussion page of the Wikibooks article I linked to, wouldn't want to take up all the space here) Junesun 18:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That's a great techique, but German is already so developed, with in its lesson plans and teaching techique, but can create a new German book, Like "Alternative German." --German Men92 04:05, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I decided to create a new German book. It's now available as BLL German and I'll keep adding to it. Anybody else is welcome to contribute, too. If you would like to help, please consult this page on contributing, which explains in detail what you could do. Junesun 18:54, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Pama-Nyungan languages
What about the native languages of Australia, any interest here? Pama-Nyungan languages. 58.107.196.209 06:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)correct person is Enlil Ninlil 06:51, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

List of books
Is there any way of keeping the list of books updated automatically by category templates? I notice that some that are on the Languages bookshelf template aren't on the the complete list below - Irish & Finnish to name a couple Kijog 22:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Hungarian language classification problem
Hungarian is listed as Finno-Ugric, while Finnish has a separate part as Baltic-Finnic. Baltic-Finnic is part of Finno-Ugric, and Hungarian belongs to the Ugric subfamily, both Finno-Ugric. See on the wikipedia article. I'd change it myself, but the page is locked. 84.3.187.90 17:23, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion
Just wondering - are there any explicit criteria to decide what books get included in the template and which don't? I've look around but haven't discovered an answer, and none seems obvious just from looking at the list. Who if anyone is "in charge" of deciding what to include? If there were a bit of transparency about this I might be willing to offer some help (if it is wanted) making the template list better. At present I'm afraid it looks a bit chaotic to me. --A R King 06:59, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding Miskito
I want to add Miskito to this bookshelf but don't know how it is classified. Also, the system seems slightly confused as mentioned above. Poppy 20:29, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Poppy. Thank you for adding the templates and looking into the bookshelf issue. I'm not keeping a close watch on the page right now (because of a minor health mishap, but I'll be back soon!), but I'll try to keep track and help if I can. Cheers, --A R King 10:58, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Mongolian
Can someone please add Mongolian? I'm interested in learning some. Thanks.--68.54.253.180 16:35, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * See your talk page for reply--Uzbekscholar 08:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Rohingya miscategorized.
"Rohingya" is not a constructed language. It is an Indo-European (specifically, eastern Indo-Aryan) language spoken by the Muslim Rohingya people in Myanmar. It needs to be moved.

Uzbek
I'm starting up a Uzbek Wikibook, how do I get it listed? Or must i finish a first draft first?--Uzbekscholar 07:38, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I found out the sections actually do have editing ability :) --Uzbekscholar 20:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Concerning Miskito: featured book
Hi everyone. I have a few things to say, but I'll do it under two headings to facilitate separate discussion of them (if there is any). First of all, I'd like to say that the Miskito language course I've been working on (as time permits; not much lately) has been made a featured book. I'm still not sure what the whole process leading to that is, but I'd like to thank whoever supported that decision, and also take the opportunity to invite anybody who's interested in such things to give their feedback on what they think of the (unfinished) course's design and content, since I think it's a bit innovative in the Wikibooks context. I'd be glad to discuss matters anybody might like to bring up, time permitting. Cheers, Alan --A R King 06:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

A few things about the bookshelf
There are serious problems with the way languages are ordered/classified in the bookshelf - both in the smaller template at the top and in the main list. The points I will raise have already been touched on higher up on this page (but not resolved, I think, and certainly not satisfactorily in my opinion), and I think they do need attention.

I'll start with a practical point. In the template at the top, as it is presently organised, there is NO PLACE to put Miskito (or any other American Indian language): they simply haven't been alotted a place. Perhaps this is simply because until now there were no American Indian language courses considered worth including in the template, so it wasn't necessary to have a category. In principle, therefore, the problem could easily be solved by adding a new category.

That, however, leads to my second point, which is that the choice of currently existing categories is somewhat inconsistent because it mixes two different ways of classifying languages: by language family and by geographical area.

Most of the template goes by the former: thus we have various branches of Indo-European (taking up more than half of the entire list), followed by some other families (e.g. Finno-Ugric, Turkic) or sub-families (e.g. Semitic, Chinese). That's okay in principle, as long as we realise that the (sub)-families present do not cover all the world's languages and will therefore have to be repeatedly revised to make room for new additions not accommodated by the present categories. For example: (1) as I mentioned, there is presently no category for (any) American Indian languages; (2) if we wanted to incorporate, for example, Somali or Hausa, which belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family, we'd have to add Afro-Asiatic, but also remove the Semitic category since Semitic is also a branch or subfamily of Afro-Asiatic. (Actually, you could do it in at least two ways: If we continue in this way, the more languages are incorporated the more complicated this is going to get, and we're going to need to revise (and discuss?) the classification over and over again.
 * List all of Arabic, Hausa, Hebrew and Somali under Afro-Asiatic.
 * List Arabic and Hebrew under Semitic (as at present) and Hausa and Somali under "Other Afro-Asiatic" in imitation of the present category "Other Indo-European".)

However, near the end of the template (just before "Constructed" languages, which obviously should stand on their own as they now do), we now have the category "East Asian/Polynesian", which has several things "wrong" with it in relation to the preceding categories namely:
 * East Asian and Polynesian have nothing to do with each other, so why have they been lumped together?
 * None of the languages listed is Polynesian anyway. (The Polynesian languages include Tongan, Samoan, Maori, Tahitian, Hawaiian..., none of which appear there.)
 * Some languages listed (as a matter of fact, all of them except Japanese and Korean) are neither East Asian nor Polynesian.

All the above points could be "fixed" by simply correcting the categories without questioning the whole system of classification, but the next problem raises a whole new issue:


 * As far as linguistic classifications go, "East Asian" is not a family at all, it is simply a geographical location. So if the classification is by families, you cannot suddenly say "East Asian" without disrupting the classification and making it internally inconsistent.

Before talking about how to solve this, let's take a glance at the main listing of all the language courses. (So far I've been talking about the shorter template that is seen at the top of the page and shows up elsewhere in Wikibooks.)

The Contents box at the top of the page shows how this is structured at present, and it is immediately obvious that it is badly organised, the top-level divisions being:


 * General topics
 * Constructed
 * Indo-European (over 60 books listed, classified into 4 branches plus "Other Indo-European languages", listing 6 further branches covering 9 books)
 * Sino-Tibetan (6 items: five Chinese "dialects" plus Nepal-Bhasa)
 * Other languages (35 books, divided by language family - 16 top-level divisions plus "Miscellaneous languages", containing three)
 * Other language books

This is partly internally consistent, but not altogether (why should Sino-Tibetan have a different status from other non-Indo-European families?). I would also object to Constructed languages being placed before natural human languages rather than at the end of the list. Notice that this system does not mix geographical and "genealogical" categories. Potentially, it could be cleaned up, made more consistent, and mechanisms could be determined to open up new families and branches as needed to accommodate new books (I put Miskito in the Other languages/Miscellaneous languages sub-category simply because there was nowhere else to put it on the existing list).

But, I would ask, do we want to do that? Do we want the bookshelf to be ordered following a strict classification into families (and sub-families)? Is that useful for most users, and does it best serve the bookshelf's main purpose? These questions have already been raised on this page but I think they remain unresolved. Some people feel it is not a useful, practical system, and I tend to agree. One argument in its favour that has been given is that it encourages people to learn about the "etymological" (I quote; the word is used incorrectly here, but we understand the point) relationships between languages and facilitates random browsing. I myself feel there is much to be said in favour of the rejoinder that the principal function of this bookshelf is not to teach people about the relationships between languages - for that there are other sources; try reading Wikipedia, for example; and that as for random browsing, why not let people randomly browse through an alphabetical language list for that matter?

For many practical reasons, which I won't spell out further as I've already gone on for too long (I tend to do that, I apologise), I think there are two options either of which would be more useful to most Wikibooks readers than the present one, and which each have points in their favour (and against, obviously):


 * a simple alphabetical listing by language
 * a simple, broad geographical listing, e.g. by continent (and alphabetical within each major geographical category)

Perhaps the second of these (by continent) would be good for the smaller template and the first (alphabetical by language) for the main, complete list.

At least with either of these solutions I'd know where to put Miskito! --A R King 07:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank-you! I've never been able to formulate this, but I've always had that nagging feeling that (well-meaning) attempts to classify languages into linguistic families are not going to help anybody trying to find a language book. If you're just a guy trying to learn enough Korean for a business trip, you're probably not going to know that it is an Altaic (maybe) language or even care for that matter.  I'd say we go with the geographical listings.  Continental seems a little large, but anything smaller is probably going to be too arbitrary. -- Kowey 08:33, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, we might be able to use this UN classification -- Kowey 08:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Kowey jumps the gun
Hi Kowey. I would have liked an opportunity to discuss this here before going ahead and implementing your suggestion. (I was waiting to see if there was input from anyone else.) I suspect there will be practical problems with parts of the classification you've put there - cases where it is hard to decide which subdivision a language belongs to and hard to avoid arbitrary decisions on that. Remember that whatever makes it more difficult for a reader to guess which division to look in, or less probable that she will get it right the first time, goes against our present purpose. While I agree that in some cases it may be convenient to get slightly narrower than just continents, I wouldn't advocate going too far in that direction because it will create new problems, for sure. One other thing: I oppose any proposal to classify the languages according to official political units. Any division proposed by the UN is likely to reflect such units because the members of the UN are political entities (i.e. states). Sorry to be a spoilsport, but I think you jumped the gun a bit. Can we go back a step and discuss the matter properly first, and act afterwards? Cheers, --A R King 11:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi again, Sure! Despite appearances, I am actually in no particular hurry and was just laying down a concrete proposal. Never sure how to navigate the mixed cultures of wikiboldness and consensus-based decision making.  For what it's worth, I personally agree that we should eschew the use of national/political boundaries as a basis of classifying languages (no need to see wikibooks descending into a mass of useless politico-linguistic flamewars).  I had simply assumed that the continents would be impractical as a basis for organising the shelf, and that broad, commonly accepted (?) geographical regions would be "safe".  Note however, that we could always classify things in more than one place... perhaps an option to consider if things are looking too fine-grained. -- Kowey 13:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Another thought. If we went with a coarse-grained continental classification, we could use something very neutral as a sub classification, like 'African languages from A-M' -- Kowey 14:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, rereading your comment, I realise that you are saying that the adoption of UN-style region implies the acceptance of the political boundaries (i.e. nations within those boundaries). Not sure what to do about that.  I went with the classification as I had expected it to be uncontroversial.  Oops.  :-) -- Kowey 14:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

My 2 cents: when I am trying to find a language, I do use the language family tree. I feel it is the most efficient classifiation, since some languages are spoken accross continents. Also, If I am looking for a language and I do not know its familly, I simply use CTRL-F and find it by its name, no need for a near-impossible regional classification (I may not know the region anyway). So I am fine with the genealogical classification and don't need any other. I beleive any competent user of the internet should also be able to do a search on a web page and find what they need. If not, well what they need is a "computer for dummies" book, first, and then they can move on to learning a foreign language using web resources after that. Lgriot 12:15, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, well, it's true that one could always search, but (i) that's asking just a tiny little bit more computer literacy than I think reasonable (very tiny bit) and (ii) part of the issue is not so much finding a particular book you are looking for -- admittedly that is what I had used as an example -- but even knowing that certain books exist. In any case, I'm not suggesting that we do away with the linguistic genealogy altogether, just that it play a secondary role to a classification that is more obvious to the layperson.  In any case, let me stress that I have no strong feelings on the matter and would be happy to see what the community come up with -- Kowey 13:57, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

A R King's proposal (expanded)
I share Kowey's attitude of "no strong feelings on the matter and would be happy to see what the community come up with", as far as practicality is concerned, but as far as my own feelings there (even if not "strong") are concerned, I tend to side with Kowey rather than Lgriot on the point that the latter has just raised, and for both of the reasons Kowey has given under (i) and (ii). Where my feelings might get a wee little bit stronger would be if the proposed solution were one that tended to exacerbate rather than correct what the Wikipedians call systemic bias, such as with a system that tended to favour European or Indo-European languages and marginalise African, American Indian (etc.) ones. And with that we come full circle, in a way, back to the original problem I had with the present system - which, by the way, Lgriot's comments do not address. I also agree that it would be great to have some more input from the community here; I hope we do.

As far as specific proposals go, I fail to see what major problems there are with a "flat" (no sub-categories) classification such as the following:


 * African
 * American
 * Asian
 * Australian
 * European
 * Pacific
 * Constructed
 * Other books (not actual language courses)

Here they're given in alphabetical order except for Constructed and Other, for less bias, but another interesting (and practical) option would be to follow the analogy of the listing of languages on the Wikipedia project generic homepages, in descending order of representation: thus European would be placed first because there are more language books for European languages, and so on.

These categories refer to area of ORIGIN of languages; thus English is classified as European, not American (but Cherokee is American). I think there are very few languages for which it is at all debatable (and not easily resolvable) which of these areas they come from. I also think it does not take a great deal of linguistic sophistication from users to figure out where things are going to be. And Lgriot's argument about using Ctrl-F in the last resort is equally applicable here if there are doubts. The fact that there are only a few categories means that it's easier and quicker to browse through the whole lot and see what is there whether or not you know what you're looking for (i.e. in both cases in which Kowey envisages people browsing: to find something, or just to see what there is). Within each category alphabetical order would normally be followed, perhaps to be waived in certain cases such as placing different kinds of "Chinese" together, so you could perhaps have Mandarin Chinese under C, not M, for example.

In this list, I propose for American to include North, Central and South America, and Pacific refers to islands (not the coasts of America, Asia or whatever) whatever their size, from the biggest (Australia) to the smallest (Micronesia etc.), unless it is desired to treat Australia as a separate category, either way would do. "Oceanic" is not a good term for this because linguists recognise a certain group of languages as Oceanic languages which wouldn't coincide in range with what we mean here, hence I propose Pacific.

I do foresee a fairly small number of possible doubts here, but not enough or insurmountable enough to invalidate the proposal. Speaking of Pacific, I guess Japanese would be an exception because although it actually is the language of islands in the Pacific Ocean, we should follow tradition by classifying it as Asian (because that is where everybody will look for it). Secondly, languages of the Middle East might be awkward (is Hebrew to be classified as European, Asian or African?); here we might want to decide to add a Middle Eastern category which would, I guess, include Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, Hebrew, Sumerian and Ugaritic? I don't think Pidgins and Creoles are a problem because they pretty clearly pertain to the areas where they are spoken (not the place of origin of the lexifier language), so for example Tok Pisin would be Pacific, not European! Unless it is felt desirable to keep Pidgins and Creoles as a separate category of its own, which might be okay as long as it is clear enough which languages constitute Pidgins or Creoles for the purpose. Other issues? Romani and Yiddish are both European languages, I think that's clear enough, so no problem there...

I would be in favour of only using one classification on the bookshelf page, not providing more than one alternative classifications, as I think it's unnecessary (this is essentially an inventory, not a categorisation) and could only make things less clear. I would also recommend using that same, single classification system in the template and the full listing on the page, keeping them parallel to help users to find their way around. The difference is that the template would not contain all the titles; ideally, only those having reached a certain level of completion should probably be there.

Well, that's my contribution to the discussion for now. --A R King 15:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

A R King try 1
This is what the implementation of my proposal would look like applied to the template part of the bookshelf page:

I have gone for the option of ordering the categories (European...) by size, so the more books there are in a category, the higher that category gets placed on the overall list. The content of the template needed updating anyway, so rather than copy the present content I have taken the information from the full list on the page, only including books that are claimed to be at least 25% completed. Needless to say I have done nothing to check out that information, and some of it may need revising, but that wasn't the purpose of the present exercise. At present this template is only in my private user space; I haven't touched the "real" template yet. What do you say? --A R King 07:07, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * We could perhaps limit ourselves to the top N% completed books in each category. This is what we do for programming languages, anyway -- Kowey 07:18, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Certainly. I just didn't want to be too restrictive, and besides, since this is an illustration of how the books can be classified, including more books for the exercise allowed me to give a more complete illustration. If this classification is adopted, I would recommend applying it in the full list too, so there's still more work to be done. --A R King 07:40, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

A R King #2
Here's what happens when you only include books 50% or more completed. Kind of shows you why I opted for 25%.

However, I repeat that some of the progress thingies may need updating. --A R King 07:55, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Ouch :-) We could also have a minimum (say) 3 books per category (number of books permitting) -- Kowey 08:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Featured books should also go in -- Kowey 08:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been doing some checking and found a number of discrepancies between the (original) template list and the full list, such as: (1) books listed in the template and not in the full list, and (2) books listed in both but with a higher level of completion registered in the template than in the full list. Taking into consideration that information, and assuming that if two indications differ the more "optimistic" one is more recent information and therefore to be preferred, I have updated the first proposed template above to reflect the fuller information. At the same time, where necessary, I have revised the full book list on the present bookshelf page following the same assumptions, so that this information is not lost if we should decide to replace the old bookshelf template. I only hope that in doing so I haven't introduced new human errors; of course it is theoretically up to the editors of each book, I suppose, to take some interest in ensuring that "their" informtion is accurate and updating as necessary. In any case, all the information provided is still that given by editors (presumably of the books concerned), meaning that I still haven't checked into how true a picture this gives of the real situation of those books. --A R King 08:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Dev markers on all our bookshelves are horribly out of date. Would there be enough 50%+ books if they are updated? Many new books are also added only to the templates, probably because the templates feature an "edit" link and are on pages like All bookshelves. All bookshelves should eventually be checked and updated. Great job with the proposals, have you considered sorting and updating the other bookshelves that you are knowledgeable about?. --hagindaz 13:46, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

A R King #3
Kowey: I feel that three books per category makes little sense (sorry). Do you realise that would mean (according to my classification proposal) listing only three European languages? Hardly practical for many users, I think (since some of the most widely studied languages are European ones), and besides, how to choose which three to list?! On the other hand it would also be inappropriate, arbitrary and unhelpful, in my opinion, to apply such a principle to languages of other continents. Is it really a big problem to have a list of the length of the above template? Does it make sense to limit the list of language books if they really exist? (IF they exist! I repeat that so far we are taking the word of editors on that, which I think is the usual procedure here...) If you want to shorten it a little bit, though, one suggestion is that we limit it to one book per language (the most generic one, e.g. German but not German In Bit-Sized Lessons? the most completed one? some other formula?) --A R King 08:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The one-book-per-language principle, if implemented, would look like this:

--A R King 09:26, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Nono, i meant three minimum! :-) Just to avoid empty-looking categories -- Kowey 09:43, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * To elaborate on this, I was thinking that we could have some principle, say "must be >= 50% or featured" which decides which books get into the template, but bend the rules so that we have at least three (or whatever) books per category -- Kowey 09:45, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That said, your third proposal looks very reasonable -- Kowey 09:47, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, sorry, I guess it was me jumping the gun that time! ;-) Yes, I think the third proposal looks pretty good myself. And we could certainly incorporate your 3-minimum suggestion there too. I was thinking that some people (I might even be one of them) might think it a not-so-good idea to only list one book per language in the template if that means people are likely to go straight to that book and not even see other books (possibly even better ones for all we know) on the same language; that might be thought unfair, and I was wondering how to solve that problem (if it is one). And one idea I had for that is that when there is more than one book on any language, when the user clicks on the language's link, rather than being sent straight to one of the books, she gets sent to a disambiguation page (like the ones used on Wikipedia), with a list of the available books to choose from. That way nobody would be left out. What do you think? --A R King 09:56, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

A R King #4
Here you are, I've implemented the minimum-3-languaged-per-category rule, by including Zulu for African and Sumerian for Middle Eastern. The only other candidate was Swahili, but it really is too unsubstantial to justify listing in the template.

Looking better all the time, isn't it? --A R King 10:07, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yep! That looks very nice. As for the languages with more than one book, we might consider having a small, for example, German bookshelf which the German link would point to.  Perhaps a way to implement disambiguation pages. -- Kowey 12:50, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

So much for the template, now for the complete bookshelf
--A R King 16:10, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It's quite clear from here that sub-classifications are not all that necessary (yet). The broad geographic approach you have taken does seem like the right way to go for now. -- Kowey 06:08, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Since we appear to have agreed on that (with the dissenting voice of Lgriot, which I respect, but I think it's fair to say there is a majority consensus - though it's a shame more people didn't get involved), I've now moved the list to the bookshelf and omitted it from here for reasons of space. I've read Junesun's comments and will respond to them below. --A R King 07:45, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * How about the new template? Are you waiting on that because you think it needs more discussion? -- Kowey 07:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Yesterday I placed a request on the template's talk page with intructions for the change. There has not been any response yet. If we decide to implement my and Kowey's proposal for disambiguation pages/templates (for languages with multiple textbooks), the bookshelf template will subsequently need to be updated to reflect that; or if Junesun's alternative proposal of leaving multiple books in the bookshelf template itself is opted for, again that will entail modifications. In this respect, what I have requested (#4) can be considered as "provisional", but I think it's a step in the right direction. Kowey's disambiguation strategy sounds good to me but it does require "technical" implementation (i.e. somebody still has to make those pages or templates). Kowey, could you yourself either: (1) create them and incorporate them, or (2) failing that, at least create ONE of them for me to see exactly what your proposal looks like, and I can try to do the others following that model if you prefer it that way? Alan --A R King 07:41, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, please see my response below -- Kowey 12:22, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Re: Language Shelf Reorganisation
I'm glad that finally things are moving. I found the old classification very correct (going as far as Q-Celtic and so on), but not usable by the average guy on the street. I believe a classification by continent is much preferable, though some people may look for Spanish under 'American'... By the way, I don't really see why we can't list all languages for which there are books that are at least 25% complete in the template, at least for the Languages Bookshelf page (and maybe limit them for the main page, though a lot of subjects have more books listed there).

Unfortunately most of the language books can't actually be used as textbooks for any kind of study, even if they have received the "Book of the Month" award. I mean for example the main German textbook, which is why I started creating the "Bite-sized" method for German. I believe the main problem is a lot of good will paired with zero knowledge of pedagogics. The help page on how to create a good language-teaching Wikibook should be a must read for anybody wanting to create a new book in this shelf. Since that's not going to happen and since I now got a well-paying job creating multimedia lessons, I am no longer actively creating lessons here. I do believe that a wiki could be a good way of having people collaborate to create courses, but only under the condition that they get together at the start and then work as a team (single contributors work well too, as you show, Alan, but it's too frustrating) and that they first discuss the goals, methodology and lesson plan of their course. Otherwise there will be too many cooks in the kitchen and the result will be something like the Chinese Wikibook. I'm currently testing this concept (having a small team develop a course using a wiki) creating a basic English course for people in developing countries.

Junesun 21:49, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * First of all, Junesun, I'd like to let you know that as far as I'm concerned, at least, your work and attempts to improve things here did not go unnoticed. I am a relative newcomer to these parts and it looks like all that happened before I got here. I sympathise with your efforts, agree with your evaluation of the situation, approve of your intentions, and can understand perfectly well your frustration too. I have hopes of continuing to work in the direction you have begun by (a) producing some quality materials that may be useful (at least to some of the more serious potential editors here) as models (the Miskito material represents a first, somewhat experimental step towards that), and (b) in the future, if I can manage it, also writing some instructional materials here teaching the whole process of language textbook production - material that might be of practical use both for future wikibook writers and for writers of such materials in any medium. That's a very ambitious project, and not all ambitions get fulfilled, so I won't shout too loudly about that yet, but I have thought about doing this. Support would be helpful regarding all that, and while I understand you may decide you have better things to do now (and perhaps you're right), if you change your mind or would like to at least discuss these plans, I hope you will do so - your contributions could be most valuable.


 * Coming to your comments and suggestions on the bookshelf and template:


 * some people may look for Spanish under 'American'...


 * I've inserted a note at the beginning of the "American" section to warn people.


 * By the way, I don't really see why we can't list all languages for which there are books that are at least 25% complete in the template...


 * As in my 1st proposal? We could. I don't have strong feelings on the matter. Perhaps we should go on discussing that point.


 * Unfortunately most of the language books can't actually be used as textbooks for any kind of study...


 * Yes, I noticed. In that sense, this whole list could be seen as a bit of a farse - the titles look very impressive, but when you start to look at the contents, most of it is very disappointing indeed. While that can be seen as a criticism of the list, it is a matter that exceeds the purpose of the present exercise as I understand it, which was to decide how to organise the list. Another matter for future discussion?


 * I do believe that a wiki could be a good way of having people collaborate to create courses, but only under the condition that they get together at the start and then work as a team...


 * And, I would add, have the minimally necessary know-how to do so (which you said too). It comes down to a matter of education, doesn't it: education so that people understand what it takes to create a course, and education for those really interested in making the necessary effort to teach how to do the things that need to be done. I have also worked in this area in the "real world" - by producing language textbooks (including a small-scale collaborative effort which WAS a success); by teaching language teachers to teach (and working as a language teacher myself, of course); by working with teams producing language-teaching-related materials (e.g. learning objectives); and more recently, by working in a third-world country (El Salvador) in a project (designed by me) to support recovery of a dying indigenous language (Pipil or Nawat) in which a team was formed and worked together on the production of language-teaching materials. My experiences reinforce my belief that education is the first stop - people can't do things if they don't know how (or don't even know what they're supposed to be doing, never mind how). Some people aren't really interested in learning and will just plod along blindly for a while, and perhaps it's the best policy just to let them do that. The important thing is to help the other people who do want to improve and learn and produce good work. That good work, when it's done, will speak for itself, as results usually do. I find arguing with people enormously tiring, while working can be tiring at times too, but can be exhilarating too and is ultimately far more productive. Now, how to make that work in the Wikibook environment? Cheers, Alan --A R King 08:24, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Important ideas for improving the language books (EVERYBODY PLEASE READ!)

 * Thank you for your reply. Working on Wikibooks is very frustrating and I believe this is actually part of the problem: somebody starts a Wikibook, gets frustrated with the lack of encouragement or participation by others, abandons it, then somebody else comes, adds something and leaves, a serious contributor may arrive long after the fact and add to the course or start to re-write lessons according to his ideas, leaving again... This explains some of the mess. That's why I believe it's essential to start with a team who have the same ideas and can see the project through together. Maybe it could also work if there's one initiator with a background in teaching who leaves clear instructions for people who want to join in later, but for my German course that didn't work out.


 * The problem is even bigger than I initially thought because on the Wikibooks sites in other languages people often just translate existing courses from the English Wikibooks site, also translating all the poor pedagogy. This really is a pity, because the people there are really ambitious and work hard to do all those translations and then it's all for naught since nobody can use the books. I almost feel like putting big warning templates on every bad Wikibook so that people don't translate it or use it as exam preparation, but that would probably discredit the site entirely. Already language lovers advise each other not to come here to study...


 * Here are some ideas for a solution. I already suggested some of these at the Wikimania Conference 2006:


 * suggesting to everybody signing up to Wikibooks or creating a page to read the help page on creating a good Wikibook;
 * heavily promoting a model language Wikibook or at least creating a language course template that includes sections like "Dialogue", "Vocabulary", "Grammar" and "Exercises" so that people won't leave them out;
 * having somebody answer a short quiz on elementary pedagogy (drawing from that page) before giving him the privilege of starting a new book (he would still be able to edit existing ones);
 * requiring the publication of a lesson plan for every course, so that new contributors will have a guideline;
 * promoting a special page where people can look for other contributors to form a development team or post their ideas and lesson plans for new courses if they don't have the time to write them themselves. This would have to be advertised with a big link on the front page or on the page creation page, so that newbies actually find it;
 * prominently displaying author names for every book in an effort to make authors feel it is "their" book that they should take care of rather than leaving it to an anonymous wiki community;
 * displaying page views for every book in an effort to show authors that their work is being noticed and used even if nobody comments;
 * providing a user-based rating system (0-5 stars) as an additional way to give quick feedback to the book authors and also so that potential translators and users quickly see if the book is any good;
 * making it easier to upload audio files and add interactive exercises (template?)


 * As for improving the "learning to teach" resources, I believe the existing help page is already very good but goes unnoticed by those who would need it the most. I mentioned it on several Wikibook talk pages to try to draw attention to it. What would maybe work even better than that page would be a step-by-step guide towards creating a new language course and a lesson, mentioning all the things to consider at the right place. I would help create this, but only if it will be prominently mentioned at least on the language shelf template, so that it stands a chance of being seen by those who are about to create a new language Wikibook.


 * Junesun 08:41, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Excellent ideas, every single one of them. Attention, all editors! (The title at the top to draw everyone's attention was placed by me, not Junesun.) --A R King 12:02, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi, I'm new here and just wanted to give some comments:
 * I'm very thankful that I may start a wikibook on learning a language even without having a clue or a plan about it!
 * I don't think that guidelines for contributers are very important if there really is only one or two contributers at a time. I guess the active contributers can always rewrite the guidelines if they wish to.
 * The de-facto model language wikibook is the Miskitu wikibook. Maybe this should be emphasized in more places.
 * In my opinion, hoping for contributers is bascially futile. Authors should be prepared to write a first version of the whole book on their own.
 * How to display contributing authors on the cover page of each book should be decided by the authors of each book. I don't think it makes sense for the categories to include authors as the categories are already cluttered with failed book projects.
 * Audio files should probably be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons; thus, I'm not sure what can be done about this within the WikiBooks project.
 * Displaying page views and a rating system are great suggestions.
 * One question: I was looking for a place to discuss the design of exercises for the course I'm working on and finally put my thoughts on the discussion page of the Miskitu wikibook as A R King has written some interesting things about this. Is there a better place to discuss the design of wikibooks for language learning? Or is there just very limited interest in such discussions? --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:03, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Back to the template
Resuming the discussion in progress above: (1) I understand that only certain people have permission to edit the template. So if and when we're ready to modify the template, who does that and how do we go about getting them to do it?

(2) Kowey, please see Junesun's question about whether we really want to only list one book per language in the template, or include all books that are over 25%, and tell me what you think because I'm pretty easy either way. Alan --A R King 08:34, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Re (1): we could always post something on the discussion page of that template and maybe one of the Staff Lounge areas to get an administrator's attention. As for (2), I'm afraid of having the template be too cluttered, but I suppose if we allowed for 25%s and used the disambiguation page method, it would be fine.  I tend to see the template as being our first foot forward, so whilst (a) we want to show that we cover a broad range of subjects (b) we also want to highlight the best of our work...  Although one thought is that the progress bars tend not to be updated frequently enough to be informative, so maybe we shouldn't rely too much on them anyway.  As usual, no real resistance to offer.  -- Kowey 11:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Re (2): Kowey, when you say "but I suppose if we allowed for 25%s and used the disambiguation page method, it would be fine", are you just suggesting that we stick to my fourth proposal (the most recent one) for the template and do the disambiguation thing, i.e. 25%s but no multiple-books-per-language on the template? I guess so. What I think this means is that the link for (for example) "German" on the template will not lead directly to the book titled "German" (which would in a sense be overriding other German textbooks on the bookshelf which could, for all we know, be even better than that one, or at least different), but rather to some sort of disambiguation page where the German-related textbooks are all listed and the user chooses which one(s) to look at. Extra work, but it may work and would keep the template list less cluttered, as you say. Someone's going to have to created the necessary disambiguation pages and maintain them (as new books emerge, requiring new disambig pages or updating of existing ones), and I don't see much evidence of there being a large, busy, active community here to do those sorts of things (as one gets on Wikipedia); do you think we have the human resources for it? Otherwise, it sounds fine to me.

As for the progress "bars", we do need some sort of index of progress for some such decisions, and I think it should be (and is?) the responsibility of people working on books to keep them updated, and in their interest to do so if they want their work to have the visibility it deserves. But if somebody wanted to look at individual books and evaluate whether they deserve to have a higher progress indication (and so, perhaps, get onto the template list), I guess that would be okay too; but again, who is going to do it? --A R King 11:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Right, so I guess we're stuck with the progress bars, then. Anyway, I guess I was advocating example #4 without remembering it.  Also, I suspect that creating the disambiguation pages requires a pretty small initial effort (I would make them bookshelves, like this one) will likely be maintained by the respective language book authors.  To avoid duplicating effort, we might use the transclusion mechanism to automatically merge the individual subbookshelves into this one.  -- Kowey 12:06, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I've answered a littlie bit higher up on the page, please read my response there. --A R King 07:43, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Template proposal 5 (Kowey)
How's this? I've made some prototype subshelves for English and Chinese, with the links appropriately replaced. Also, I have noticed that the template was only locked so that registered users (i.e. not anonymous) could edit it, and have thus replaced it with your proposal #4 (perhaps somebody heard our pleas and downgraded the locking, or there was a misunderstanding) (and thanks for your note) -- Kowey 12:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It looks good to me, Kowey. If you would like to go ahead and fully implement the same idea throughout, you have my blessing. By the way, in the case of Chinese and Cantonese, my suggestion would be to keep it the way you have it now, with Cantonese both listed as a separate language and included in the Chinese bookshelf. I think it's the most practical way in that particular case. Well done! --A R King 13:48, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * (That was a suggestion, but if you would prefer me to do the rest of the implementation, let me know.) --A R King 09:07, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Please go ahead and do so. Wikibooks makes for excellent procrastination, which I fear is not what I should be doing.  Best, -- Kowey 09:39, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay. --A R King 09:47, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I've done that. (Your comment about procrastination served as a reminder of its dangers...) What do you think? --A R King 11:48, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The new "Spanish - see European languages" tag ought to be clickable, no? --Lutonia 10:24, 16 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It could be made so... --A R King 14:46, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Language books quality
If I recall correctly, there was a wikibook: page that tried to suggest some best practices for writing language books; however, those practices seem to have the mix of good intentions + poor pedagogy that Junesun was talking about. We might do well to hunt that page down and make it better! -- Kowey 11:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, I don't think Help:How_To_Build_An_Excellent_Wikibook_Teaching_Any_Language was the culprit. If memory serves me right, the book I had in mind was quite painful (sorry... I am pretty clueless about pedagogy myself, so what do I know?) and all the language books except for Miskito and some others seemed to follow it like a template -- Kowey 11:25, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, I've thought about this before, as apparently a number of us have, and it seems to me that if we can't actually stop people from writing books (or so-called "books", in some cases) of dubious quality and usefulness, then that leaves us with the options of (1) creating other books, hoping that setting an example will eventually have some effect, or (2) offering advice, and hoping that it will at least sometimes be followed. I plan to try doing both at some point. It would be good if there were cooperation between some people on such projects. Such people would effectively self-select themselves (those who are not interested will probably remain uninterested) and my theory as that by being more active, our voice will eventually prevail. That seems to be, grosso modo, what happens on Wikipedia on the whole, don't you think.

Another thing I notice is that (predictably, I guess) there are plenty of moves to start new Wikibooks and much less work done to develop them. As Junesun says, most of the titles are actually pretty much useless as they stand. Not sure what can be done about that though, within the philosophy of Wikibooks. --A R King 11:57, 9 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm writing a kind of "wikibooklet" for an audio course: Spanish by Choice. I have no experience in language teaching; thus, any advice, opinion, or comment that you can give on it is more than welcome! --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Questionable links added
I see new links have been added to the bookshelf page, linking to LIL Esperanto 1, LIL French 1 and LIL German 1. After having a brief look at the target pages, I have my doubts about whether these are wikibooks at all, in which case as I understand it the links should not have been put here. But perhaps I'm mistaken; would someone else like to have a look and see what you think, please? Would the author of the pages and the new links like to explain here whether or not these are wikibooks? Thanks. No offence intended, but I think we need to be a bit coherent... --A R King 21:35, 10 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I would hope that they are Wikibooks. They are no different to other books on the site (except for being longer than two pages, perhaps).  Same GFDL license; same spirit of community authorship.  I sincerely hope that someone will one day be able to improve everything I have written.  I'm quite aware that if I simply write some lesson plans and wait for everyone to fill them in, I'll still be waiting twenty years from now.  After I have presented a completed text, the Wikibooks community can make any changes they please.


 * You can download the "mainstream" French and German books as PDF files. You will also be able to download my books directly from Wikibooks as PDF files as soon as I have finished making my own corrections to them.  (I made the assumption that it would not be acceptable to upload a 300-page rich-text file to Wikibook's servers.)


 * My VR software doesn't understand PDF or Wikicode, but it is quite comfortable with rich-text. That is why I want to finish making corrections to the text itself before I format the books as polished PDF documents.


 * I hope that answers your question. --Lutonia 06:34, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Lutonia, I appreciate your commitment to the spirit of community authorship and the GFDL. That said, the purpose of the wikibooks and wikimedia sites is also partly technical, in that it allows people to edit the same document immediately (impulsively!) without any overhead, i.e. downloading the RTF source, learning about version control software (for instance) or about diffing and patching.  So unless you are willing to translate your books to wikicode and have them be edited with the (admittedly less than ideal) wiki software, wikibooks is really not the appropriate place for your books.  I'm sure the staff lounge would be a fine place to advertise your project and to attract collaborators.  But creating links like LIL French 1, which do little than point to a PDF is not wiki-appropriate.  Also, I would understand your reluctance to switch to wikicode if you were working with a typesetting language LaTeX, but since you're dealing with RTF anyway, it seems that you won't be losing much by switching to wikicode.  How about getting somebody technical to help you make the conversion?  We can figure out how to a PDF out of it later; it has been done before many times over -- Kowey 07:14, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Also, in case you were worried about convenience, there are tools which will let you edit the wikibooks content directly from a text editor. There is a piece of software called MVS, which allows you to 'check out' pages from any mediawiki hosted site as if it were a CVS repository (if you're not sure what I'm going on about, it's no big deal).  These pages can then be edited in any editor, such as Emacs and 'committed'.  -- Kowey 07:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I am very keen to have the books converted into wikicode, and as soon as possible. There are obvious benefits to a course which can be read online, a page at a time, and that contains clickablable hypertext.


 * However, I cannot make the conversion myself. I cannot use a keyboard and my voice recognition software knows nothing about LaTeX or MVS.  I cannot use these editors.


 * As far as I can see, it makes a lot of sense for me to finish my editing, convert the document into a polished PDF file, upload it to Wikibooks, and then ask for the community's help in converting it to other formats. It would be a waste of time to do the conversion right now, only to have to do another conversion a month later.


 * While someone is doing the conversion (it's not a five-minute task), it's not such a bad thing to have a completed PDF file available for download, which people can read right away.  How many usable books are there on the language bookshelf right now - two? --Lutonia 10:33, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I don't have the time to formulate a proper response. More later. -- Kowey 11:13, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * The LIL books were deleted after a Vote for Deletion early in 2008. Recent Runes (talk) 20:26, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Where are the Baltic languages - Lithuanian, Latvian?
I've seen full text of Lithuanian in the requested books after I inserted Lithuanian. Why this very old indoeuropean language is not presented in common list?

78.62.22.250 09:28, 22 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Inclusion of languages in the template (the "common list" as you call it) is no reflection of how "important" they are. It was agreed in recent discussion (see a little higher up on this page) to try to include languages that at least have the 25% progress bar. My own position is that all languages are important; this restriction is aimed at providing a manageable list and indicating to users the books that are likely to be most "useful" - simply because those books are minimally developed. Develop the books (or revise the progress bars if they are out of date - this should preferaby be done by books' authors, and taken on good faith) and the books can then be included in the template. I hope that answers your question. --A R King 10:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

New book on learning German
There's a new book on the above subject that I think is under 'languages' classification. Could someone figure out where to put it? Laleena 11:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Laleena. If you can please tell me where the book you are referring to is or (preferably) the link, I'll see what I can do. --A R King 08:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

High quality Public Domain courses online with audio
Some organisation have created a page with PDFs and MP3s of courses from the US Foreign Service Institute. This is high quality material (although it dates from the 60s and 70s). I say this mostly because it's often extensive: lots and lots of MP3s and course books of 150 pages or more. Languages include Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Greek, French, Yoruba and more. The organisation claims that they are public domain (which would make sense, these being govt produced). We should definitely think about raiding these for our respective books. -- Kowey 11:24, 26 October 2007 (UTC)


 * One of my language-loving friends says that these courses use the same techniques as the much celebrated Pimsleur method (at least for the Cantonese module) -- Kowey 11:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The new URL appears to be http://fsi-language-courses.org. --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:07, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Language example conversations
Is there a guideline or template for conversation examples in the language courses? I don't see many examples of conversations, but I have seen some here: Japanese Mini-tutorial lesson. I have also asked for some opinions on a few ideas I posted on the Talk Page of the Japanese Mini-tutorial lesson. Hope to get some more opinions or maybe even ideas... 真実 - Shinjitsu To my Talk page! 23:08, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Language groupings
Turkish is a European language but Azerbaijani (a dialect of Turkish) is an Asian language? I know for political reasons Turkey is European, but it doesn't make sense linguistically. (In that case Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish would be "Asian" too). Maybe Azerbaijani should be European too, since Azerbaijan is partially in Europe.


 * Or perhaps we should not divide languages by continent. Maybe doing so by language family (Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, etc) would be less ambiguous. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 04:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)


 * There has been a long discussion about this issue (see above) and the consensus was that a linguistically correct categorization is less useful for typical Wikibook readers, who are usually unaware of the linguistically correct language family they are looking for. Therefore, whenever there is a serious ambiguity, links should be added to point to the correct category. (I added links for Azerbaijani, Afrikaans and Hebrew from European; and for Yiddish from Middle Eastern.) --Martin Kraus (talk) 20:13, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Learning through songs
Learning through songs is valuable, so I thought I'd mention that some songs on Youtube have the lyrics in subtitles, e.g. the Indonesian pop song Jadikan aku yang kedua.

On the one hand, I've read that it's harder to absorb information when it's in both spoken and written form (this was talking about Powerpoint presentations with text). On the other hand, it probably helps in language learning where the sound alone is not enough to pick up the words - and where the focus is less on the understanding the specific content, and more on making the connection between the sounds and the words.

If we want to promote the use of this method, is it acceptable to link videos from the lesson pages? I'm guessing not, as they very likely will have copyright issues. If that is the case, I'll just add the idea to How to Learn a Language. --Chriswaterguy (talk) 20:18, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * My experience with learning from songs is that you always run into copyright issues. Neither can you publish the lyrics nor a translation of the lyrics without a permission by the copyright holders. I'm not sure what can be done about this. --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:09, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Church Latin
After reviewing the section for Latin, I feel that an entirely different section should be allowed to be created for Latin in the form that is in current use within the Catholic Church. This is not to diminish the good work that has been done for the study of Republic Latin, but let us say the truth, it is not what is used or taught by Catholic clerics. This is not to say that people should not study the classics by any means, just to point out that someone wishing to study the form of Latin used in Vatican Documents, and in Catholic rituals would be better served by a different section with a different scope.

It is still the same language to be sure, but there are lots of issues of Idiom and Vocabulary that would be very different. Certainly you can understand what feelings of repression someone may feel if they are forced to learn Catholic Latin before they may move on to Caesar. In the same way, many Catholics feels a sense of being misunderstood when we have to study Caesar first and read about pagan gods before we get to what we think is the good stuff, like the vulgate and the breviary.

Also, the end goal is different. In Classical studies, students are taught to decode the sentence (translate) and understand the final English result. The focus is on translation, changing the Latin into English. For some Catholics, that may be the case but many Catholics do not want to translate, they want to learn the various prayers, passages from the Bible, hymns, and Papal quoted in the original Latin and keep it in the Latin and understand it in the Latin.

I would be more than happy to get to doing much of the work myself, and indeed it would not be that much work. I am simply asking for you to allow the pages to be created and to be here and not to go behind taking out the "j"s or turning the "u"s back into "v"s.


 * Hello there and welcome to the languages bookshelf! First of all: please sign your comments with --~ . Even if you have no username, this will at least show the time when you wrote a comment. Second: Just go ahead and start a new wikibook. You'll find more information about how to start a new book here: Help:Starting_a_new_page_or_book. The most important issue is probably the name. Since "Latin" is already the title of the wikibook about Republic Latin, you should choose something different such as "Church Latin". (It's more difficult to change the name of the book "Latin", but I think you really shouldn't worry about that.) As you will see there are really not a lot of people working on language books right now. If someone takes out "j"s and turn "u"s to "v"s, just undo the changes and discuss the issue with the user. I'm sure everyone will understand and won't bother you again. And really: this is a very peaceful place. Welcome! :) --Martin Kraus (talk) 10:00, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, I have started the book under the title Ecclesiastical Latin and will work on it from there. Thank you for your help. 219.127.251.137 (talk) 01:19, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Great, I've added the book to the bookshelf. It is certainly OK if you want to proceed without a user name; however, I would recommend that you create a user account just to make it possible to attribute your contributions to a specific user. Imagine this scenario: you finish this book anonymously. One year later another user comes along and decides to rewrite the book in a totally inacceptable manner. If you then want to discuss these changes, you will have a much stronger position if you can be identified as the original author of the book. I think it is always in the interest of books and their readers that the main contributions can be attributed to specific users. In any case: Happy writing! --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)