M.Aurelius.Viator

Your submission at Articles for creation: Neo-Brittonic (August 15) edit

Latest comment: 1 year ago5 comments2 people in discussion

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Doric Loon was:

This submission is not adequately supported by reliable sources. Reliable sources are required so that information can be verified. If you need help with referencing, please see Referencing for beginners and Citing sources.

The comment the reviewer left was:

If Neo-Brittonic really is a reconstructable proto-language on which academic work has been done, then this article is certainly notable. However, our article on Common Brittonic seems to suggest that Neo-Brittonic is simply a grouping of some of the modern Celtic languages. So we need proper sourcing. Unfortunately, this article at present only has five references, all of which are problematic. Note 1 (Multi-Tree) is a dead link, though that may be a temporary problem. Note 2 (Jackson) is to a book with no page references, and therefore is to vague to prove anything, and the other three (Schrijver and the two Stifter papers) do not contain the term "Neo-Brittonic" - I haven't read them all the way through, but I did manage to download them and search for the term, getting no hits at all. The bibliography contains other works, but gives no indication of their relevance.

If you are sure this term is in common use among linguists, I would encourage you to pursue this. It would be worth expanding the text, which is fairly short. But the important thing is to get at least two references to works that actually use the term prominently, preferably in the work title - if this is a historical language that linguists are investigating, that shouldn't be hard.

A good discipline is to make sure that every work in the bibliography is also used in an in-line citation. For a precise science like linguistics, it is also good form to use the short foot-note format (Template:Sfn) and use the cite-book or cite-journal templates in your bibliography (ask me for help if you don't know how). That won't help the notability question, but it will make your writing look more serious.

Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit after they have been resolved.

If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Neo-Brittonic and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
If you do not edit your draft in the next 6 months, it will be considered abandoned and may be deleted.
If you need any assistance, or have experienced any untoward behavior associated with this submission, you can ask for help at the Articles for creation help desk, on the reviewer's talk page or use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

Doric Loon (talk) 09:47, 15 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hello, M.Aurelius.Viator! Having an article draft declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! Doric Loon (talk) 09:47, 15 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

I am 100% certain that Neo-Brittonic (some scholars use the variant Neo-Brythonic) is a widely-used term for the Insular Celtic languages from approximately the mid-6th century CE through the modern period.

Jackson's entire book (Language and History in Early Britain) is about the transition from ancient Brittonic to Neo-Brittonic, so the relevant page numbers are 1-752. Sorry about the Multi-tree link - I don't know how to update that (my Wikipedia skills are somewhat limited). Schrijver uses Neo-Celtic and Neo-British, which are the exact same thing as Neo-Brittonic (he also cites papers by John Koch and Patrick-Sims Williams with "Neo-Brittonic" in the titles). Stifter (with whom I have been corresponding for over 20 years) often uses Neo-Celtic or Modern-Celtic, but I am certain that he is familiar with the term Neo-Brittonic (he was a member of my old Neo-Brittonic mailing list!). It is my belief that Wikipedia should use Neo-Brittonic over variants such as "New British" to avoid confusion with non-historical-linguistics uses of the term "British".

The term is used by many of the biggest names in Celtic linguistics - for example:

Falileyev, Alexander, and Morfydd E. Owen, The Leiden leechbook. A study of the earliest Neo-Brittonic medical compilation, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Sonderheft 122, Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 2005.

Koch, John, Neo-Brittonic Spirants from Old Celtic Geminates, Ériu 40 (1989) pp. 119–28.

Sims-Williams, Patrick, Sims-Williams, P. (1990). Dating the Transition to Neo-Brittonic: Phonology and History, 400-600. In A. Bammesberger, & A. Wollmann (Eds.), Britain 400-600: Language and History. (Vol. 205, pp. 217-261). (Anglistische Forschungen). Heidelberg: Universitaetsverlag Winter.

A Google search of Academia.edu for the term "Neo-Brittonic" will give you many more relevant papers. The same goes for a Google Books search. You could substitute "Neo-Brythonic" in both searches for even more hits.

Let me add that I have been studying Celtic historical linguistics since the mid-1980s and have been very active online for the past 20+ years, running several mailing lists and Facebook groups dedicated to the subject; despite the fact that I am not myself a professional academic, I have been cited as a source in numerous papers and books by top scholars in the field (I am happy to provide links/proof via email; I prefer to keep my identity private on Wikipedia). M.Aurelius.Viator (talk) 18:34, 15 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Hi @M.Aurelius.Viator. Yes, I guessed you knew your way around the field, but in Wikipedia it's not really your personal qualifications that matter. What you have just written here looks like good evidence, so put it in the article. Ideally each specific point you make needs to be supported with a specific source, but I am sure you are well-placed to do that. As far as notability is concerned - which is the only issue for deciding about whether we should have the article or not - you need prominent references to the lemma, "Neo-Brittonic". The best way to do that in a field like this is to reference a book with "Neo-Brittonic" in the title, or a chapter with this title in a standard overview of Celtic languages, but failing that, a page number in Jackson where he actually discusses the term would be perfect. If there are as many variant terms as you say, it might be worth having a "nomenclature" section and discussing their pros-and-cons, but again, you want a source for each. (I know many older Wikipedia articles do not have this level of referencing, but when you put a new article through an AfC review, that's what it needs to pass.)

I hope you understood I was not rejecting the article out-of-hand, I was encouraging you to do the necessary to get it accepted. Please read my comments again, go back and rework the article on that basis, and if the literature is as good as you suggest, I'm sure it will then pass AfC review. Let me know if you need any technical help or more precise advice. (BTW, I don't normally look back here unless I get a ping, so tag me the same way I tagged you at the top of this paragraph, so I get a warning that there is something here for me to read.) Good luck. Doric Loon (talk) 10:51, 17 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Just to clarify, in case it wasn't obvious from what I said: there are two separate issues when we talk about sourcing. One is establishing the "notability" of the topic as a whole, according to the criteria listed here: here, which is what decides whether an article can exist. After that, every significant statement needs to be referenced, but for that it is enough to have the kind of references you would have in an academic paper. The burden of proof for notability is higher, because Wikipedia's anonymity means there is no way to tell if you are a serious researcher or a joker. I am sure you are the former. Do due dilligence and I am sure you can build a great article. --Doric Loon (talk) 11:02, 17 August 2022 (UTC)Reply

Your submission at Articles for creation: Neo-Brittonic has been accepted edit

Latest comment: 1 year ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Neo-Brittonic, which you submitted to Articles for creation, has been created.

Congratulations, and thank you for helping expand the scope of Wikipedia! We hope you will continue making quality contributions.

The article has been assessed as Start-Class, which is recorded on its talk page. Most new articles start out as Stub-Class or Start-Class and then attain higher grades as they develop over time. You may like to take a look at the grading scheme to see how you can improve the article.

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Thanks again, and happy editing!

Felix QW (talk) 19:17, 31 October 2022 (UTC)Reply

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