Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Germanic words of Unknown Origin

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was - redirected - SimonP 05:00, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Germanic words of Unknown Origin

This article is entirely made up of erroneous information. There are no sources given. This was first pointed out 18 months ago on the discussion page, but it has not been remedied. I think this is because the article has no real purpose, so no-one is interested in making something of it. See the discussion page for documentation of all this: Talk:Germanic words of Unknown Origin; deletion was proposed there several times.

• Delete There is some research going on in the early history of Germanic languages, and some of it does theorize about contact with pre-Indo-European inhabitants of Europe. But the article as it stands neither summarizes nor cites any of the research going on in that field. I think as a matter of policy when an article is discussing ideas which, while they might well merit a place in Wikipedia, are far removed from mainstream thinking, that it should be held to higher standard of citation and of clarification about who holds what ideas and what reasons they give for them. Unless those improvements can be brought to this article - unless it turns into a referenced discussion of a minority body of theory - I don't think it should be there. Diderot 15:38, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. In addition to the arguments given above, original research is inevitable in this sort of thing. There is no fixed set of Germanic words which all scholars agree are of unknown origin. And even for the words where everyone agrees they're of unknown origin, what more is there to say about them? Speculation about where they might come from amounts to original research. --Angr 21:27, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • That depends if it's speculation on the part of the contributor, or documented speculation by someone else. Kappa 22:19, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, original research teetering on codswallop. Wyss 02:33, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Eh, sorry, forgot to identify myself at the top. It was me who proposed deletion, yesterday afternoon.--Doric Loon 12:23, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. There is information here that is wholly unsound. For instance, the word house, which is said, in this article, to have no known connections to other indo-euro. languages ouside of germanic ones, has a cognate in Spanish "Casa." The C to H change between Germanic and Latinate languages is well-known, and appears also in words like Horn in Germanic languages, which are related to Cornus in Latin. Jon
• I have attempted a complete rewrite of this page at Germanic substrate hypothesis. -- Smerdis of Tlön 20:25, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm willing to accept it in the rewritten form. It has all the virtues missing in the earlier version: Who makes what claims, why, and the current status of those claims. Diderot 14:22, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Yup, that's the direction we want to be going. NOW let's delete the old version. (Or turn it into a redirect if you want to keep the history and discussion?) --Doric Loon 15:40, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd say make it a redirect. Google suggests that the page as it stands now is heavily linked from outside Wikipedia. -- Smerdis of Tlön 00:29, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I have gone ahead and made it a redirect, which I hope resolves this issue. If someone wishes to revert it, go ahead. -- Smerdis of Tlön 16:18, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. (Incorrect) Original research. RickK 00:51, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Appears to be original research - David Gerard 17:51, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.