Talk:Puadhi dialect

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Requested move 7 February 2019

Pwadhi dialect → Powadhi – In most English academia and linguistic studies (e.g. LSI - Grierson) this tongue is transliterated as 'Powadhi', and not 'Pwadhi'. Doing a quick google-books search on Pwadhi also yields loads of unrelated results, while searching for Powadhi pretty much gives results mentioning the Powadhi language. Furthermore, tagging the word 'dialect' into the title is undesirable as it unnecessarily lengthens it (e.g. Shanghainese and not Shanghainese_dialect, Hindi and not Hindi_language). HFret (talk) 10:23, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Regardless of the spelling of "P(o)(w)adhi", I am not sure about removing "dialect". I would support that per WP:NCLANG,in the absence of a "people" article it would be better to have the dialect at the base name with the other as a {{R from unnecessary disambiguation}}.

But we have Pwadhi people, Powadhi people and Powadhis, so in that case the common outcome is to create a DAB at the base page name with entries for the language and the people. So far so good, but they redirect to this article, which is a bit WP:ASTONISHing or WP:RFD#D2 confusing: probably they should target Poadh as demonyms. Or we can move the dialect to the base page name and delete the "people" redirects.

There's a related and perhaps larger problem, that Poadh itself is inconsistent with its spelling. The lede starts "Powadh (or Puadh or Powadha) is a region..." (my removal of emphasis) so why is the title spelled "Poadh"? The lede also says "The people of the area are known as Poadhi and speak the Poadhi dialect". It uses "Powadh" as the spelling three times, and links (unpiped) to both Powadhi and Pwadhi dialect within sight of each other.

Poadhi and Poadhi dialect also redirect to this article. This article uses spellings "Poadhi dialect" and "Powadh tract" too. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 11:23, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

• It looks like the article content was added on 6 March 2013 by User:Maria0333 then some overlapping content was removed from "Poadh" on 28 September 2013 by User:Kwamikagami. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 13:13, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

I noticed this mess a while back, and I'd like to mention that the spelling that seems most natural to me (as a native speaker of Punjabi) is Puadh and Puadhi. Those are closest to its true pronunciation, but then again I haven't written any scholarly articles or anything to propose renaming all of this mess to Puadh/Puadhi. The common-most spelling in English academia seemed to be Powadh (even though there is no 'w' audible or present in its native spelling), so I thought to start off maybe I can make all the spellings the same here on wiki. BTW, google 'Puadh' and you'll find that most natives anglicize it as that.

Beyond that, I agree that perhaps removing 'dialect' from the title is not desirable. But that motive stems from most natives calling it a language (it's not much intelligible to a person who only understands standard Punjabi). It's actually highly mutually intelligible with Bangru (a dialect of Hindi spoken in nearby villages), so much so that it's mistaken for Haryanvi at times. What I'm trying to say is that 'P___dhi language' is perhaps more desirable. --HFret (talk) 13:57, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I've no objection to it being called a language instead of a dialect, or, as Haryanvi -> Haryanvi language has it, a "dialect/language". 94.21.238.64 (talk) 14:09, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

I think it is important for the language to have its own page. I'd like to grow the article more, but one of the things holding me back is that the whole P___dh topic needs a spelling to settle on.

Here's my ranking from most natural/desired to least:

• Puadh
• Poadh
• Powadh (used in academia)
• Pwadh

I'm just tossing out what I'm thinking right now. It would be perfect if this mess can be standardized to one spelling. Something must be done. --HFret (talk) 14:06, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

We should use the most common spelling found in reliable, English-language sources. Yes, it is important to have consistent spelling, otherwise we lay false scent. As a reader looking at these articles for the first time, I did not know that "Pwadhi dialect" and "Poadhi dialect" were the same topic.

We could add Poadh to this proposal. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 14:19, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Right. In academic writing, the most common spelling is Powadhi (and Powadh for the place). Which I suspect is a result of Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India. He used that spelling (albeit strange) in his book. And yes, Poadh should also be renamed to match its language. I am willing to fix the articles if we can get the articles to move. Pwadhi dialect to Powadhi language and Poadh to Powadh. --HFret (talk) 15:19, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sorting out the spelling mess of P(o)(u)(w)adh

Hi.

Since I'm still relatively inexperienced when it comes to editing, I thought I might share what I have before I make any hasty changes.

My impression of 'Powadhi' being the most commonly used spelling was wrong.

About the correct spelling:

Searching on 'Google Books':

A) For the language:

Search Text	Number of Results
poadhi punjab	784
powadhi punjab	393
puadhi punjab	731
pwadhi punjab	427

B) For the place:

Search Text	Number of Results
poadh punjab	390
powadh punjab	724
puadh punjab	228
pwadh punjab	6

C) Combined (A+B)

Search Text (A+B)	Number of Results (A+B)
poadh(i) punjab	1174
powadh(i) punjab	1117
puadh(i) punjab	959
pwadh(i) punjab	433

It seems the deeper we look we find that there is no single spelling that stands out as most common.

If we agree that both topics, the place and the language, should share a common base spelling, then table C should be the one to go by.

One conclusion we can safely draw from table C is that Pwadh(i) is clearly used least often amongst the ones I've looked at. Thus, at the very least, the language page needs a new name (currently Pwadhi_dialect).

I am inclined towards using 'Puadh(i)' as the spelling is literally the IAST transliteration of ਪੁਆਧੀ (name of the language). You can also look at Google Translate for ਪੁਆਧੀ, it uses some sort of transliteration that reads Pu'ādhī, and in English it says Puadhi. It's consistent with its native name and it's used comparably as much as the other two most common spellings.

Side rant: I'm not sure what the character ' stands for in Google's transliteration scheme. It's confusing because in most cases it means a glottal stop (like how some Britishers English people pronounce the tt in Butter = Bu'uh). No Indian languages have any form of glottal stop whatsoever.

Suggestion

I'm committed to fixing this mess over the next few days by making the following changes:

Spelling of choice: Puadh.

1) Move Pwadhi_dialect to Puadhi_language (fixing all redirects while I'm at it)

2) Move Poadh to Puadh and fix redirects

3) Find and rename all other variants of the spellings on related topics to 'Puadh(i)'

4) Redirect the related '_people' pages to a 'People' section under the Puadh topic.

--HFret (talk) 08:24, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I speak English with a glottal stop so I know what you are on about (and I am sure you are aware wikt:Britisher can be seen as pejorative, but I am sure you didn't mean it that way).

You are probably right that the frequency of the "Powadh" spelling is influenced by that one work, which is unfortunate. The "w" in words like "power" is frequently not sounded anyway (I can't find a specific phonological term for this) so I imagine it has been kinda retrofitted.

I don't know what the apostrophe stands for either: we are having a similar discussion about the Yupik languages where the "'" in Yup'ik is not a glottal stop. the IPA "ˈ" (U+02C8) is a stress mark, which of course should not influence the English spelling.

Some of the references use Puadh(i), and there's a balance between "most common" and "most correct", so I've no obection to you changing to "Puadh(i)".:

The double redirects will get fixed by a bot, although I tend to like to categorize them as {{R from other spelling}} or {{R from other name}} as appropriate.

Consistency of spelling in titles comes under WP:CONSISTENCY. Unfortunately MOS:CONSISTENCY deals only with using a consistent variety of English, it says nothing about using consistent spellings of proper names within articles. WP:PROPERNAME says to use "the name which is likely to be most familiar to readers of English", and by inference that will be as it is named in the article title, I suppose.

I was hesitant here to suggest anything as I am not at all knowledgeable about Indian languages, for example I wasn't sure if "Puadhi" was correct for the language/dialect since there are always exceptions, we say "Greek" not "Greecish" or "Grecian".

I don't know Indian languages at all so I am in the intelligent-but-ignoriant role: that can be useful sometimes. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 09:05, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for understanding and for the guidance. :)

And Whoops! It didn't come to my mind at the time of writing that Britisher can be seen as pejorative. Initially I was going to write Brit, but I thought that was pejorative so I refrained. Apologies.

I'll get started on making the Puadh(i) topic consistent and neat. Phew! Feels good to start cleaning this! --HFret (talk) 10:00, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

I wasn't offended, and I doubt many others would be: more likely they would just not understand that it can be a loaded term. I've categorized Britisher as {{R to neutral}}. I think Orwell mentions it somewhere in "England Your England" as being pejorative, but then he was born in India...

Yeah, just do it... remember that uses in references etc should be maintained in the original. It would be good to have a note discussing the various spellings. In particular your nugget that the spelling "Powadh" seems to originate from one acadamic work. It's a pity we don't have an article in any other Latin-script language as that might have been a useful pointer. We also have Bir Puadh, which adds a little strength to your elbow, I couldn't find any other titles (beyond those being discussed) using alternative spellings. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 10:23, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

• I don't think using "language" in the title is a good idea. All sources I remember seeing refer to it consistently as a dialect. If there are any problems at all with using "dialect" in the title, then the article can be moved simply to Puadhi: this is allowed by WP:NCLANG provided the language variety is the primary topic. – Uanfala (talk) 13:50, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

You may be right, but there was a danger that by arguing over that distinction during the recent move discussion, we'd lose sight of the larger point, i.e. the spelling of "Puadh" and "Puadhi". I've no strong feeling, and I only created the DAB at Puadhi to plug a gap. 94.21.238.64 (talk) 14:13, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Nominative postposition?

HFret, I really don't think there could be any nominative postpositions here. You've listed ਤੇ te and ਤਾ ta, ਤੋ to and ਤੌ tō as nominative. I don't know Punjabi, so I can't know the best term to use, but I can help if you tell me what is their actual meaning, or if you give me the nearest Hindi equivalent. – Uanfala (talk) 21:39, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Uanfala. I really appreciate your help with this article. As Hindi is highly intelligible with Punjabi (to the point that some fringe linguists make a case for Punjabi to be considered a dialect of Hindi), I can easily provide you with Hindi examples without compromising the meaning of the topic at hand.

ਤੇ te and ਤਾ ta, ਤੋ to and ਤੌ tō are four variants of the Standard-Hindi तो (to) as used in the following sentences:

चंडीगढ़ तो दूर है। (Chandigarh to duur he.)

दिल तो पागल है। (Dil to pagal he.)

For example, the first sentence can be said in Puadhi using any one of the four variants:

Chandigarh te duur he. Chandigarh ta duur he. Chandigarh tau duur he. Chandigarh to duur he.

This particle is a Subject marker. Basically it comes right after the 'subject' of a sentence. Also known as Topic marker. The page over at Topic :Marker has some examples for Bengali, in case you understand Bengali.

TL;DR: The particle(s) at hand are all equivalent to the Hindi तो to, which is a subject marker / topic marker.

Thank you for your guidance with this issue. I really value your help. HFret (talk) 12:57, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Ah, so it's that. It's a topic marker then. It marks topics, not subjects, mind the fact that subject has a narrower meaning in grammar than in everyday language. That's assuming the particle in Puadhi is not radically different from the Hindi counterpart: I assume it's possible to have one-to-one equivalents in Puadhi of Hindi sentences like वही तो मैं बोल रहा हूँ where to can follow other sentence units than the subject. – Uanfala (talk) 13:51, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for clearing that up! And, yes Puadhi 'to/te/ta/tau' are exactly the same as Hindi 'to', which is not surprising as both languages come from Shauraseni prakrit. And, if you're curious वही तो मैं बोल रहा हूँ is ओहि तो मैं बोल रया हाँ in Puadhi. HFret (talk) 14:24, 3 April 2019 (UTC)