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Revision as of 10:22, 1 June 2006

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Big restructuring needed?

I think the whole set of articles on the Greek language suffers from some problems of scope. Much of this seems to be because an originally fairly well-planned series of articles has grown into unexpected directions, not least because there is uncertainty whether the term "Greek", when used on its own in an article title, should primarily refer to Ancient Greek (A.G.) or Modern Greek (M.G.). I'd therefore like to propose a rather large restructuring project for discussion:

Current article scope problems

• Greek language seems to have been originally designed as a diachronic overview article, but has now been changed into a sketch of M.G., with a diachronic section rather awkwardly attached to it.
• Confusingly, there is now both:
  • Modern Greek language, which redirects to Greek language, and
  • Modern Greek, which however deals only with dialects and diglossia.
• Greek dialects, in turn, deals with A.G.
• In contrast, there's another series of articles where "Greek ..." deals with M.G., and the corresponding article about A.G. is titled "Ancient Greek ...":
  • Greek grammar vs. Ancient Greek grammar
  • Greek phonology vs. Ancient Greek phonology

Other issues

• Ancient Greek: duplicates a lot of material also in Ancient Greek phonology.
• Ancient Greek lacks a treatment of syntax.
• Koine Greek duplicates other parts of Ancient Greek phonology.
• Attic Greek duplicates a lot of Ancient Greek grammar
• Arcadocypriot is a stub and should be expanded on the model of Aeolic Greek, Doric Greek, Ionic Greek
• History of Greek is another overview article doing very much what Greek language does or could do.
• Material about phonological change is distributed across Ancient Greek phonology, Iotacism, Koine Greek.

Proposal

1. All articles titled "Greek ..." should be either overview articles dealing diachronically with the whole of Greek, or dab pages pointing to corresponding "Ancient Greek ..." and "Modern Greek ..." pages.
2. Greek language should be turned back into a pure overview article, discussing things like genetic classification, history, periodization, diachronic unity of the language, geographical distribution etc.
3. All detail articles that deal with only one of the stages should be prefixed "Ancient Greek ..." and "Modern Greek ..." respectively.
4. The main articles for the language-system sketches should be Ancient Greek and Modern Greek, with Ancient Greek language and Modern Greek language as redirects.
5. Both should have a series of corresponding sub-articles, e.g.:
   1. Ancient Greek phonology vs Modern Greek phonology (plus Greek phonology as dab page)
   2. Ancient Greek grammar vs Modern Greek grammar (plus Greek grammar as dab page)
   3. Ancient Greek dialects vs Modern Greek dioalecs (plus Greek dialects as dab page)

What to do

1. Merge M.G. language-system sketch material out of Greek language into Modern Greek
2. Redirect Modern Greek language to Modern Greek.
3. Move Greek phonology to Modern Greek phonology, recreate as dab page.
4. Same with Greek grammar.
5. Move Greek dialects to Ancient Greek dialects, recreate as dab page.
6. Merge M.G. dialects material out of Modern Greek into new Modern Greek dialects article.
7. Merge A.G. grammar material out of Attic Greek into Ancient Greek; rewrite Attic Greek and Acradocypriot on the model of Doric Greek, Aeolic Greek and Ionic Greek.

Not sure

1. What to do with the discussion of the phonological changes between Ancient and Modern Greek? It's now mainly in Ancient Greek phonology (and quite big there, after a rather trollish big dispute last year), but much is duplicated in other articles. I think it's good to have it in one place, but as it is a topic that cuts across the different stages of the language, it should perhaps have its own diachronically oriented page, perhaps History of Greek phonology, or be merged into History of Greek.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with this proposal. Let Greek language be in Misplaced Pages:Summary style, the central article facilitating navigation to the topic you are looking for. I think the material on Ancient Greek phonology is at home where it is, while of course there should be a summary and a {{main}} template on History of the Greek language pointing to it. Yes, especially on linguistic articles, trolls are the driving force of Misplaced Pages. The worst trolls often spur the best editors into creating a brilliant article with watertight references where without the trollish ecapades we would only have a brief stub :) dab (ᛏ) 10:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)