Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Nizaa language/archive1

Nizaa language

Featured article candidates/Nizaa language/archive1

Nominator(s): – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 15:47, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a language spoken in Cameroon by around 10,000 Nizaa people. I have significantly expanded this article from a one sentence stub to a GA. The main concern I have is the lack of media in the article; however, I think this is due to a lack of free-license images in general, not because I haven't added them. Nevertheless, any suggestions would be appreciated.

Please ping me when starting this review. – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 15:47, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment as GA reviewer (see review). Given my past involvement with the article and lack of familiarity with FAC (as a first-time contributor to an FAC discussion), I won't attempt to do a full review, but I just want to mention a couple of things that might be relevant for this review: firstly, the TheilEndresen-1991 source is fully accessible to users of The Wikipedia Library. Secondly, a couple of the sources are from University of Oslo (UiO) scholars, and UiO's online repository has (fairly recently, I think) been restricted to members-only access until the content has "been migrated to the national research archive (Nasjonalt vitenarkiv) during fall 2025" (according to the 403 error message). Because of this, Kjelsvik-2008 is currently only accessible via ResearchGate and Pepper-2016 is only accessible via archive link. Kjelsvik-2002 is available via CORE as well as ResearchGate. I hope this helps! Also, I'm not sure whether consistently-formatted dates are a requirement for FA, but just in case they are, it might be worth standardising them throughout the article; I was going to do this myself based on WP:DATEVAR, but looking at the early edits it isn't clear what would be classed as the original format, so I'll defer to @PharyngealImplosive7 on that one! :) Pineapple Storage (talk) 22:39, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've gone ahead and standardized the dates to mdy, just because that's the format I'm most used to. – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 23:04, 1 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Don't duplicate captions in alt text

File:Map_of_the_Mambiloid_languages.svg: see MOS:COLOUR. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:02, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria: I've modified the alt text for the images that have it. In terms of the MOS:COLOR issue, should I go ahead and remove the image or do something else (sorry, I'm not too familiar with MOS:COLOR). – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 04:33, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The alternatives would be to expand the legend to cover all the languages included, or add some kind of pattern or symbol to the map itself. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:55, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've gone ahead and requested someone at WP:GL/M to add a legend/pattern to the map. For now, I have removed the image. – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 01:09, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sophisticatedevening

Based off of Special:permalink/1298618922:

Refs 24, 27, 31 and 34 don't point to any citation.
" Older speakers of Nizaa also pronounce /ɛː/ is also pronounced as the sequence /ar/" This feels a little wordy/confusing.
"...in one word root (xag or 'to clear one's throat'), and is not consequently, is represented the same as /h/ in the orthography." Also feels very wordy.
For ref 19, I can't find where it says in the given page for the source that says "extensive documentation began in the 1990s".
The text mentions "orthography" a lot but I don't really see anything that elaborates on what that is for WP:TECHNICAL.
- Overall very nicely written aside from those few nitpicks above. Sophisticatedevening🍷^(talk) 18:33, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All of those should be fixed. Refs 24, 27, 31, and 34 just needed "Theil Endresen" as the last name instead of "Endresen" in the sfns. I fixed the two awkward sentences as well and defined what orthography was the first time it was mentioned in the phonology and orthography section. I also removed the claim about the classification doubts resolving in the 1990s. – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 18:49, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nice, support. Sophisticatedevening🍷^(talk) 19:12, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Airship

The article seems quite reliant on Kjelsvik 2002, which is a "Candidate of Arts and Letters" thesis; I'm not familiar with the Danish academic structuring, but this seems about equivalent to a PhD thesis. WP:THESIS advises to use such theses which "have been cited in the literature, supervised by recognized specialists in the field, or reviewed by independent parties"; as this is a potential FA, I'd like to see evidence that Kjelsvik 2002 meets at least two of those three criteria. Thanks, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:10, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@AirshipJungleman29: For the have been cited in the literature requirement, Pepper (2016), Pepper (2010), and Phillip (2011) seem to cite it (which are all the non-Kjelsvik-authored sources that I could find published about Nizaa after 2002). As for supervised by recognized specialists in the field, Kjelsvik (2002) states I must thank my knowledgeable and always patient supervisor, Rolf Theil Endresen, which suggests that Endresen supervised over Kjelsvik's work. – PharyngealImplosive7 (talk) 19:46, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me. Comments to follow if I have time. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:55, 11 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]