Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Runglish

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. Needs a good spring clean though, particularly with OR. Black Kite 01:58, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Runglish

Runglish (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Currently, almost the entire article seems to be original research, and using "Runglish" or "Russlish" I can find nothing on Google Book Search or JSTOR that could be used as a source to write a real article. Some of what this article attempts to cover could be the focus of other articles (e.g. Russian use of English as a second language; English loanwords in Russian; there apparently is an English-influenced variety of Russian spoken in Brighton Beach[1], but I don't know if there's enough reliable sources on it to make an article. And it is certainly not a "pidgin"!) But putting them all in one article is just crying out for confusion. I see no reason for there to be an article entitled "Runglish", and its existence I think can be attributed to a desire to have a complete set of English+some other language portmanteaus. Ptcamn (talk) 04:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete - Per nominator. Calvin 1998 ^Talk _Contribs 07:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - There are some good reliable sources. The article can be developed further by adding commentary on the Russo-English slang in A Clockwork Orange. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  Their reliability is arguable, but more importantly, news articles are not in-depth and do not contain enough information to write an article. Furthermore, there is already an article on Nadsat, and there is no need to confuse this article further by mixing it in along with all the other things referred to as "Runglish". --Ptcamn (talk) 17:25, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• Weak keep per Colonel Warden, but I agree that this article majorly needs to be cleaned up because it's choked with WP:OR, and indiscriminate information resembling a how-to guide.--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 18:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions. -- Russavia (talk) 19:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. -- Russavia (talk) 19:06, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. Sources available. The term was coined around 2000 [2] [3] and has WP:RS coverage and criticism since then [4] [5] • Gene93k (talk) 19:24, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  Firstly, your links are talking about different things. The first two are about the "language" spoken on the space station (which, based on the quote, sounds more like alternating between the two languages rather than a third distinct language), the third is about the English-influenced variety of Russian spoken by immigrants, and the fourth is about English loanwords in Russian proper (again, not a distinct language).

  To write an article on a language, you need actual studies of the language, not just brief news articles that give a tiny sampling of words they use. These are not sufficient sources. The article on Singlish cites books like Singapore English in a Nutshell: An Alphabetical Description of its features, The English Language in Singapore, New Englishes: the Case of Singapore, and so forth. Hundreds of pages have been written on Singlish. Can you find any equivalents for Runglish? The amount published on Runglish is minuscule. All I can find about the space station Runglish, for example, is articles that basically just say "the crew speak Runglish", with no description of what it is actually like. You cannot write an article with that. --Ptcamn (talk) 20:07, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• Strong keep The article needs references, not deletion. We have articles on Engrish, Singlish, etc, etc, but this WP does at times jump too quickly when it comes to Russian articles. As a native English speaker, and learned Russian speaker, I can attest that Runglish is very, very real, particularly when talking in English to a native Russian speaker and you ask where have they been, and they reply "On the meeting". This is Nadsat, which to compare to Runglish, is an insult, as a ficticious slang language, compared to a naturally occurring and evolving 'language'. The NY Times, CNN, The Telegraph (which interestingly notes that because of the intrusion of English into Russian language, the Kremlin made 2007 the Year of the Russian Language), Newsru.com, St Petersburg Vedomosti, RIA Novosti, Gazeta.ru all give this world-wide phenomenon (not just Brighton Beach, but wherever Russians speaking English can be found) notability and verifiability. --Russavia (talk) 19:31, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  This is exactly the sort of confusion I was talking about. The language spoken in Brighton Beach is Russian with English loanwords, not second-language English influenced by Russian usage which is what you refer to. They are not examples of a worldwide phenomenon, but two independent phenomena. If this article is kept, it should be made into a disambiguation page.

  Engrish, Singlish, and "Runglish" are three very different things. Singlish is a creole, a distinct language with people who speak it as their first language. "Runglish" (at least, the kind you're talking about) is mistakes made by native Russian speakers when speaking English. "Engrish" is not even a language at all, but the results of poor translations from Japanese. --Ptcamn (talk) 20:07, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

  I notice that the "For the Thirsty Runglish Speaker" article has been linked to three times in this discussion already. For future commenters, could we please get some new attempts to establish notability? Preferrably ones that are actually substantial, not just brief articles? --Ptcamn (talk) 20:07, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep. Valid topic. Needs work, not deletion. Maybe requires split Anglicism contamination in Russian or someting, [see e.g., here]. `'Míkka>t 22:41, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

  You can't just assert that it's a valid topic. You need to actually demonstrate that it meets the requirements of Wikipedia's policies, in particular the one on notability. How is work on it supposed to be done when there are no reliable sources to cite?

  And "contamination" is not NPOV. --Ptcamn (talk) 23:38, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

  • • You have wrong understanding of the applicability of policies, and poor attention span (refs mentioned already). And contamination is not POV but linguistic term; judging from your contribs, you should have known better, colleague. Just chill down, dont take it too close to your heart, dont pick fight with everybody who disagrees with you and better spend our time writing something. Clearly this page is not utter nonsense, so that its very existence would harm wikipedia. `'Míkka>t 04:56, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

  As you can see, I don't think the above refs establish notability. I'm not picking fights, I'm expressing my disagreement with the justifications given, and I'm going to continue doing so until the issues are addressed. "[Wikipedia's] primary method of determining consensus is discussion, not voting." Discussing the issues is what we're supposed to do, not just adding another "keep".

  Contamination is not a linguistic term (at least, not with this meaning). The linguistic term is "loaning" or "borrowing". Regarding loanwords as "contamination" is an attitude more associated with nationalism than linguistics (e.g.). --Ptcamn (talk) 07:49, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.