This page is an archive of the discussion surrounding the proposed deletion of a page entitled Silesian language.

Further comments should be made on the talk page rather than here as this page is kept as an historic record.

The result of the debate was to redirect the page.

• Silesian language As far as I am concerned, Silesian is a dialect of Polish, unlike Kashubian that is a separate language. It was treated as Polish, even when Silesia was a part of Germany. There is no reason to put separate article. Other solution is to create article Silesian dialect, that would deal with Silesians dialects of Polish and German. GH AM (post archive alteration making note of name change)
  • Ethnologue lists two Silesian languages - Lower Silesian (which it considers to be a separate language, and Upper Silesian which it says is a dialect of Polish. See [1] for lower selesian language. Secretlondon 11:33, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)
  • As far as I am concerned, LowerSilesian is dialect of German (probably extinct), while UpperSilesian is a dialect of Polish.
  • There are two concept about Silesian ethnolect:
    • separate Western Slavonic language (similar to Polish and Czech with some German influences) or just
    • a regional dialect of Polish. As the linguists say there ae no strict definiton of what is a language, what is a dialect (both are called ethnolects). I am a native Polish speaker, and when my friends from Silesia speak, I don't understand anything except a few words, that are similar to Polish. . The same applies to Czech, Slovak, Russian, Ukrainian and Kashubian. Kashubian and Silesian are sometimes clasified as dialects of Polish. The Silesian people consired themselves to be a separate nation and their speak to be a separate language. And the Polish nationalists deny them this status. This is a political not lingusitic(scientific) debate. Silesian language should stay Grzes of Poznan(caius2ga) 11:55, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Keep. Even if it was a 'mere' dialect of Polish, the article wouldn't want deleting, just renaming. Morwen 12:11, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Rename. IIRC current agreement that Kashubian is separate language, while Silesian is Polish dialect - in fact I've heard that it keeps many features of old-Polish much better than Modern Polish. It's just mixed with German. I bet caius2ga that you wouldn't be able to udnerstand medieval Polish too :).
  • In that case, rename to Silesian dialect and discuss origin and controversy. --Delirium 12:48, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)
  • Keep. There is no clear-cut, objective definition for the common-use meaning of "language". Wikipedia should not delete the "X language" page just because (in the opinion of some, many or most), X is not really a distinct language but a dialect of something else. Even if a rigorous linguist's definition of "language" exists, it's counter-intuitive to remove pages because of a definition that most users won't even understand. Only delete if the argument for X being a distinct language is particularly weak or clearly perverse. Onebyone 15:11, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Keep. I think Onebyone has the matter pretty well defined. An inclusive definition of "language" is (in the long run) much preferable to one which places unreasonable hurdles on claiming that status on wikipedia. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick 17:05, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)
    • Modern Polish speakers can understand Medieval Polish pretty well (except some words that had changed their meaning), but IMHO this is irrelevant here - we are comparing modern languages. Silesian dialect implies that we deny the language status, and thus it is abusive to the Silesian people who think it is. Please take a look at the Silesian lang links. They use different spelling, different words, and sometimes fifferent grammar. This is certainly not Polish. Grzes of Poznan(caius2ga) 18:01, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Keep, user GH wants the deletion of this page for personal political reasons (Polish nationalism) and for no valid reason. Maximus Rex 21:18, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
  • Redirect. It should be an article about "Lower Silesian", not Silesian which is too general. Upper Silesian is a dialect of Polish as far as I can tell. I'm going by Ethnologue: their data and neutrality about languages is quite good. Daniel Quinlan 22:06, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)
  • We should have a disambig article here then, linking to Upper Silesian and Lower Silesian. Both should have articles and discuss the controversy (some Silesians consider Upper to be distinct enough from polish to be a separate language, but many linguists do not). A similar precedent is at Macedonian language, despite some linguists considering it just a dialect of Bulgarian. --Delirium 22:09, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)
    • No need for a disambiguation page, I made it into a simple redirect to Lower Silesian as it should be since the "SLI" language code on Ethnologue is for Lower Silesian and not Upper Silesian — they are not even related to each other and are on totally different branches of the Indo-European classification tree. I also created an Upper Silesian page, but as it is generally considered by linguists to be a dialect and not a distinct language, I did not include "language" in that page title. Daniel Quinlan 22:43, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)
  • Why the Silesian page have been vandalized (twice) before we resolved this voting????? Proper language name is Silesian, there's no such thing as Upper Silesian language. The Silesians will be very angry that somebody tries to destroy their language (again). caius2ga

Almost nobody voted to delete, so it seems "keep", "rename", or "redirect" is the clear consensus. I don't think Wikipedia should take a firm stance on whether Silesian is a dialect or language, though, so what I ended up doing is redirecting everything (including this page) to Silesian and tried to be as neutral as possible in that text. Daniel Quinlan 05:33, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate up to the point of deletion and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the new method of assessing voting, should be placed on other relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.