Talk:Numic languages

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Languages

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Kawaiisu not Numic?[edit]

The article on the Kawaiisu seems to state that they were Uto-Aztecan speakers but not Numic speakers. --Riction 08:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kawaiisu doesn't have a reference for that statement, while both Ethnologue and Project Rosetta list Kawaiisu as a Southern Numic language. I'm inclined to leave it. 195.171.182.14 16:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kawaiisu is absolutely, positively a Southern Numic language. No Uto-Aztecanist or Numicist will challenge that statement. I'm the authority on Numic languages, but if you need a reference you can look at Maurice L. Zigmond, Curtis G. Booth, & Pamela Munro. 1991. Kawaiisu, A Grammar and Dictionary with Texts. Ed. Pamela Munro. University of California Publications in Linguistics Volume 119. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. (Taivo (talk) 01:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC))[reply]

NOT EVERY LINK IS A GOOD ONE[edit]

The references to Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, and Ute should NOT be liked to the articles by those names. These are names of dialects in this article and do not refer to anthropological groupings. The articles that these names were linked to are not appropriate for a linguistic link and I'm removing the links as irrelevant. All other links on this page are to "language" pages and that is the way it should stay. (Taivo (talk) 20:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC))[reply]

South Plains[edit]

This is a language article, not a history or geography article. "South Plains" is perfectly accurate enough for describing the historic Comanche range in this article. Comanche already has the very top limit of specificity in this article, getting an entire paragraph on its brief history while other languages in the group are not described in the same detail. If you want to get specific about describing the 18th century Comanche range, then go to Comanche. But this isn't the article for that. This article is about the Numic languages (there are seven of them), not just Comanche. Naming every state in the South Plains in this article is WP:UNDUE. --Taivo (talk) 01:41, 31 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia article on "South Plains" describes a specific and quite limited area of 24 counties in Texas. (Texas has about 250 counties) Thus, the reader would understandably be confused and misled by the use of "South Plains" to describe the location of the Comanche in the mid 18th century.

To describe where and when the Comanche lived, we should be as accurate as possible. The language I proposed locates the Comanche in terms that are clear and accurate. Your formulation is vague, unclear, and subject to misinterpretation. Smallchief (talk 02:02, 31 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This article isn't about "accurately locating the Comanche" any more than it is about accurately locating the Northern Paiute or Timbisha or Kawaiisu or any of the other six languages of the Numic family. It is about the languages, nothing more. The only reason that Comanche gets a little more treatment is because it doesn't follow the "small language in the southwest Great Basin/big language to the north and east" pattern of the other languages. The text you propose simply gives WP:UNDUE weight to Comanche's location. I've removed "South Plains" for you and made the text even more general as is appropriate for this article. --Taivo (talk) 02:07, 31 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see that you have finally proposed a minimally acceptable text regarding the history and location of the Comanche. Your latest text is not very informative, but at least, within a broad spectrum of what constitutes fact, it is accurate.

This article is meaningless to the average reader without locating the Numic speaking people in time and space. I'll be looking the article over to see if further clarifications and corrections need be made.Smallchief (talk 02:19, 31 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There aren't any good maps of the Numic languages available on-line. Even the map at Uto-Aztecan languages has some serious errors on it. But the fundamental problem is that the borders of these languages expanded and contracted even before the arrival of Europeans and the treaty/reservation era. At one time the Shoshoni ranged as far north as Alberta and the Comanche into southern Coahuila and Chihuahua. But this article isn't about ranges, but about the languages. --Taivo (talk) 02:34, 31 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]