Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Finnish language/archive1

Finnish language

I think it should be a featured article because there is much detail in it, and I just frankly think people need to know more about Finland! There haven't been that many featured articles about languages also. flockofpidgeons 23:52 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Comments. There's a "Plenty more to add ..." at the end of the list in the Vocabulary section, and a lengthy 'to do' list in commented-out HTML. Have these things been done (the to do list seems like it probably mostly has)? I think there should be summaries in the Sounds and Grammar sections (if someone has trouble thinking what they should have, I'm not enuf of a language person to know about the actual content, but the size of the corresponding summaries at Spanish language seems to be about right). And this is may be just a nit, but "to date" in English can have two distinctly different meanings (social vs. calendar contexts); it seems unlikely to me that the Finnish word cited (at the bottom of the Borrowing section) happens to also mean both, in which case, the applicable def should be identified. Niteowlneils 03:30, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Object. I'm not a linguist either, but it seems strange that the Uralo-Altaic grouping is described as "disputed" in the language infobox, while there is no discussion or mention of it or its disputedness in the two-sentence "Classification" section. I appreciate that it may not deserve a mention on account of the grouping being "almost universally rejected by historical linguists as a mistake" (see Ural-Altaic languages), but in that case how does it deserve to tantalize the reader by inclusion in the infobox...? Bishonen | Talk 06:12, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • sigh, the Hungarians were here. Just remove the 'disputed', or we'll have to tag pretty much every statement on Wikipedia. Better still, change the header to "From Wikipedia, the free disputed encyclopedia." dab sorry, I didn't read. Ural-Altaic is of course controversial. I wouldn't say "disputed" so much as "uncertain", but the matter is too complex to convey in the table anyway, so I'm still for just removing the qualifier. dab (ᛏ)
• the grammar article is quite nice too, but the grammar section should be a little bit more than just the link: it should be a paragraph briefly summarizing and putting in context the grammatical peculiarities of Finnish (same goes for "Sounds"). dab (ᛏ) 11:25, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Object. 1) Has several sections without content. (Sounds, grammar). Also there are a lot of subsections with barely any content. Please restructure these. 2) This article needs images. I can imagine some map images for - for example - the dialects. Other illustrations, especially in the history section, seem possible too. 3) This article needs some samples of spoken Finnish. 4) Lead section is brief and does not summarize the article well. 4) Annotations for the references (use this instead of bibliography) are nice, but sometimes POV and unnecessary. 5) The article doesn't read well at times, often indicated by single-sentence paragraphs. 6) The article has a lot of vagueness: "Some linguists", "sometimes", "mostly", "usually", "some estimates", "mainly believed", etc. Please rewrite these, or attribute the statements to a source or to persons. Jeronimo 11:30, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. I already objected above, but I'm afraid I have more objections to the infobox, sorry I didn't list them all before. 1) In other major language articles I've sampled (Swedish, German, English, Dutch) the infobox heading "Spoken in" is used for the countries the language is spoken in, while "Region" is used for the larger, umbrella, unit (Northern Europe, etc). Here, the "Region" box contains instead smaller units, as in parts of the countries, such as Tornio River Valley (which is incidentally a redirect to Torne Valley), Karelia, Finnmark. Is there a misunderstanding, or is there a dispute as to what this part of the infobox is for? 2) And, in any case, given the apparent principle, how can Finnmark (in Norway) be under "Region" when Norway isn't under "Spoken in"? And how, on any principle, can "Finland" appear in both places? 3) As with the Uralo-Altaic grouping I mentioned before, the infobox and the article text need to be put on speaking terms with each other on the subject of Meänkieli (a language, or perhaps a Finnish dialect, spoken in the Swedish Torne Valley region). The box doesn't mention Meänkieli, which is fine (that level of detail doesn't belong there), but the box has an obvious (to a specialist, ahem) reference to it in the only Swedish region it mentions, Tornio River Valley = Torne Valley. In the article proper, on the other hand, Meänkieli is ascribed to Västerbotten. OK, Torne Valley is in Västerbotten, but how is a non-Swedish reader of the article supposed to know that? It's completely confusing to use different geographical terms. Btw, also, the article needs to refer to Meänkieli in a more clarifying way than is done in the brief mention under "Western dialects", i.e. explain that the difference of opinion concerns whether it's a form of Finnish at all (see article Meänkieli), not what kind of Finnish dialect it is. Bishonen | Talk 15:12, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)