Talk:Central Atlas Tamazight/GA1

GA Review

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After a first quick glance I see the following problems that must be adressed.

1. Prose.

a. The prose is not very good and it is chopped up into very short sections with little content. It uses many terms without providing a proper context for them making some sections hard to understand.

b. The lead does not comply with WP:LEAD, and the WP:LAYOUT with its many short sections, many tables and very little actual text is also not very pleasing to the eye.

4. Factual accuracy and verifiability.

It seems well referenced at first glance - I will check up on the references in more detail.

3. Comprehensiveness

a. it doesn't adress the issue of classification very well - the classification section doesn't give any kind of overview of what its closest relative languages are, of its position in the Berber, and afroasiatic groupings or of ots position withn Atlas berber - all of this can only be seen from the infobox. This makes it confusing when the article later discusses berber languages, and other related tamazight languages.

b. it doesn't stay on topic. For example it does not seem justified to have a section on Berber languages in algeria when supposedly central Atlas Tamazight is only spoken in Morocco according to the lead. Also some of the information in the Algeria section seems to deal with Berbers in general - are all Berbers in Algeria Tamazight speakers?

4. Neutrality

It seems neutral.

5. Stable.

it seems stable.

6.illustrated.

A map would be nice.

·Maunus·ƛ· 19:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've tried to address some of these issues, though regarding some others I'm not entirely sure what action to take. Since you wrote your review I have added:

• A map of the distribution of the language
• More information regarding status and orthography. I will also probably delete the 'Algeria' subsection under 'Official Status', although Ethnologue does indicate that there are speakers there. (I have not found any sources indicating how many of the non-Moroccan speakers are Algerian; I suspect that most of them live in France instead.) Much of the status section refers to Berbers in general rather than Tamazight-speakers specifically because as far as I can tell neither the Moroccan government nor the Berbers themselves seem to differentiate much between speakers of different dialects.
• Some information on classification and dialects. I have not been terribly successful finding sources which deal with classification in-depth, and I have had especial difficulty finding a source documenting the disagreement regarding whether Tamazight should be grouped under Tashelhiyt.
• I have removed some section headings and replaced them with bold text, when the length of the section did not justify an entry in the TOC.

Hopefully this fully addresses 3b and 6, and mostly addresses 3a. Regarding 1, I have generally tended towards including all relevant information I could find, even when it resulted in disjointed writing, and I've been editing incrementally and as such probably have not done enough to unify the text. I will also try to expand the article lede promptly. I'm not entirely sure how to clean up the grammar section, as much of the information seems to me to be most naturally expressed with tables. Mo-Al (talk) 00:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You could take a look at ome other GA and FA articles dealing with languages - for example see Nahuatl for an idea about how to avoid tables in the grammar section. Also remember that there is such a thing as "unnecessary detail". Maybe some of the grammar material would be better put in a daughter article like Tamazight grammar or some such·Maunus·ƛ· 01:31, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I have taken your advice and transferred the detailed grammatical info to Central Morocco Tamazight grammar. I am now working on simplifying the grammar section of this article, and improving the level of its prose. Mo-Al (talk) 07:17, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Classification section

"It belongs to the class of Berber languages in which the phonemes that were originally plosives have shifted into fricatives, contrasting with a group where they have remained plosives and one where they have become affricates."

I want to know which other dialects have shared this change and which dialect groups have plosives and affricates respectively. Without that information the usefulness of the stamement is close to zero.

" However, some argue that Central Morocco Tamazight should be considered a dialect of Tashelhiyt."

We need to know who argues this and just as importantly we need to know the arguments for and against this proposal.

What does templatic morphology mean? Morphology is wikilinked - templatic is not. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:34, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Orthography section

We need to know more about the origin of Tifinahgh it was looking like the king invented it when in fact he merely sanctioned its use. ·Maunus·ƛ· 13:57, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Also the Berber article says that the number of schools teaching Tifinahg Ircam is "very limited" that is not the impression one gets form this section.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:00, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Phonology section

Still much to listy and unreadable. A good guideline is that everything that the reader can glean from tables should also be explicitly written as prose text. The tables should only be a visual aide to understand better the systematic interrelation between the different concepts.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:57, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

History section

Missing. I think it would be a good idea to write a history section including information about the origins of the berber in north africa, about the arab expansion and its effect on berber languages, on french colonial rule and finally how we arrive at the current sociolinguistics political situation of the berber langauges. Some information in the Status sections would have to be removed and inserted into such a section. The benefit would be that the reader would from the start have much better understanding of what kind of historical processes has put tamazight where it is today - geographically, politically and sociolinguistically.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:57, 26 June 2009 (UTC)