Wikipedia:Notability (languages)

This guideline is used to help evaluate whether or not a language or related topic is to merit an article in Wikipedia.

Confirmed stable natural human languages, as outlined below, are presumed notable. Constructed languages, macaronic languages, and dialects and other language varieties are subject to general notability guidelines, as described below.

Criteria

In general, all confirmed stable natural human languages, whether oral or sign, and language families generally accepted by linguists, are presumed notable. Conlangs, as well as dialects, accents and registers of natural languages, macaronic languages, and proposed but not generally accepted language families and intermediate nodes are considered notable only if they meet the general notability guideline. A dialect or register may also be considered inherently notable if it is treated as a distinct language for sociolinguistic reasons. Dialects of a language with low mutual intelligibility may be considered languages in their own right.

Stability

"Stability" refers to established language-transmission across generations, either at present or historically. This applies primarily to pidgins and homesign, but also occasionally to conlangs. Language decline or extinction does not negate a language having once had stable transmission.

Confirmation

Confirmation of a language's existence is most easily established with reliable surveys such as (but not limited to) Ethnologue/ISO-639 and Glottolog, though note that Ethnologue, as a rule of thumb, generally only covers languages still spoken after 1950. A purported language with an ISO or Glottolog code may not be notable if other reliable sources conclude that the assignment of that code was in error. (See spurious languages, but also ISO codes that reliable sources think should be merged.) Other surveys, such as AUSTLANG by AIATSIS, may not always distinguish established languages from ethnonyms. In such cases, merely being assigned a language code does not confer notability. Poorly attested languages, such as Sewee language, not covered by general surveys but discussed in sufficient detail by reliable sources in the academic literature, also qualify as notable.

Presumed but unattested languages are generally not notable, unless they have sufficient coverage in the literature. Otherwise they may be covered in the ethnographic article on the people thought to have spoken them, in a geographic survey article, a list article, or a language-family article. (As an example, see Rer Bare people § Language and origins, which has an ISO 639 code.)

Confirmation of a language family, a generic term that includes intermediate nodes in a classification, generally depends on it having been established by comparative linguistics. That is, a language-family article should ideally have the potential to have a section on reconstruction. Working hypotheses for intermediate nodes, even in reliable sources, are not notable unless they meet general notability requirements.