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→Linguistics
:No, it would prevent redundancy. That way you don't reinvent the wheel each time a topic is brought up. I would still recommend you create or augment a linguistics article. To the extent that you wish to question articles such as the Tower of Babel, please be specific about why the theory that there was once one language and it was broken off into many languages is believed to be factually shown to be wrong. One of the things that doesn't go very far here is the proverbial "scholars don't believe it". Saying what it is and why means much more. Personally I'm not sure how modern study will show this. If it shows a single language, then isn't that what Babel claims? If it shows multiple languages appearing concurrently, that isn't that the result that Babel claims? This may not be the best battle to pick. [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 01:32, 15 July 2007 (EDT)
:No, it would prevent redundancy. That way you don't reinvent the wheel each time a topic is brought up. I would still recommend you create or augment a linguistics article. To the extent that you wish to question articles such as the Tower of Babel, please be specific about why the theory that there was once one language and it was broken off into many languages is believed to be factually shown to be wrong. One of the things that doesn't go very far here is the proverbial "scholars don't believe it". Saying what it is and why means much more. Personally I'm not sure how modern study will show this. If it shows a single language, then isn't that what Babel claims? If it shows multiple languages appearing concurrently, that isn't that the result that Babel claims? This may not be the best battle to pick. [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 01:32, 15 July 2007 (EDT)
:: Three points. 1) If I was concerned about reinventing the wheel, I would just go edit the more popular wiki style encyclopedia. But as an educator, I'm more concerned that useful information is available where the public who needs it can find it. 2) At first you wanted me to tone down the language so that younger users could read it. Which is fine. But now you're asking for the details on investigations that many adults wouldn't follow without effort. I'm fine with adding it, but it would just take time. (I already tried to include references that are available through ordinary publishers and not just academic presses.)
::3) Modern linguists are divided over both whether there was a single mother language and if there was, whether we can reconstruct it (though the vast majority would say we shouldn't expect results of those attempts to be a very accurate description of the language). What isn't in dispute (at least since the end of the 19th century) is that concurrent with the earliest civilizations in the fertile crescent, multiple languages were already being spoken. We know this from language-internal evidence (take a look at the Afro-Asiatic languages, which had branched long before the first ziggurat and probably before the first granary) and from archaeological evidence (e.g., by following the spread of domesticated plants and animals or tools, you can demonstrate that there were already people in these other areas independent of carbon-dating, which I would guess is too controversial for this encyclopedia). Whether we can trace all human languages to a single language or not, the necessary time-frame for that language precedes the inventions of agriculture and architecture necessary for a Tower of Babel. [[User:Mirror|Mirror]] 14:37, 15 July 2007 (EDT)