Talk:Valencian language

Historical repression against the language

@Agpshi: I can't believe that someone thinks that speaking of "a number of political and social factors, including immigration" is unacceptable, while "historical repression against the language" is a balanced and neutral description. Most or all the minority languages of Europe and the world have been historically marginalized by state powers vis-à-vis the main national languages, and that is certainly true for all the languages in Spain save Spanish, but the repression bit seems to imply that Valencian underwent a particularly mean persecution. Is that true? Can that be sourced? Or is the intended meaning something else? --Jotamar (talk) 19:56, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

The decrease in the number of speakers is obviously due to a number of political and social factors, but I don't see why immigration, in particular, should be highlighted as the most representative of these. The persecution towards Valencian was indeed mean (see below) and, again, I do not see why the phrasing should imply that it was meaner than the persecution against other languages.

I've been checking a few sources, but unfortunately the literature on the particular case of Valencian is scarce in English. The best I could find is this book chapter: Casesnoves, Sankoff & Turell, "Linguistic Shift and Community Language: The Effect of Demographic Factors in the Valencian Region, Balearic Islands and Catalonia", in Molinero and Stewart, Globalization and Language in the Spanish-speaking World. Palgrave McMillan, 2006 (pp. 197-219). The authors compare the three regions and show that, while immigration does have an effect on language loss, this alone is unable to explain why the non-migrant population is losing it at almost the same rate in Baleraric Islands and, very specially, in Valencia. They conclude that the best explanation lies in the different public policies for language preservation implemented by the three regional governments, particularly educational policies. Formal schooling seems indeed to have had an enormous effect on language loss, for the repressive policies did not have a real effect on the proportion of Valencian speakers until the first half of the 20th century (before that, monolingualism was the common rule).

A quick search shows that the word repression is quite common when talking about the policies against public use of Catalan: Laska Anderson (2020, ESSAYS ON EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN POPULAR CULTURE AND THE FORMATION OF NATIONALISM): "in times where the political climate favored Spanish centralization and the Castilian monarchy, often the Catalan language endured repression". Webber & Strubell (1991, The Catalan Language: Progress towards Normalization): "The years of the Franco regime (1939-1975) were a period of severe repression—cultural genocide even, in the early stages". Roller (2004, When does language become exclusivist? Linguistic politics in Catalonia): "The roots of the strategy lie in the backlash against the historical, cultural and political repression experienced by Catalan language, culture or national identity under the Franco regime". Strubell (2011, The Catalan Language): "Apart from brief periods, the language that had served the Catalans for over nine centuries became subjected to continuous official repression". Shabad & Gunther (1982, Language, Nationalism, and Political Conflict in Spain): "repression of Basque and Catalan language and culture, in particular". Conversi (1990, Language or Race? The Choice of Core Values in the Development of Catalan and Basque Nationalisms): "the Catalan case, we shall see both that language is a core value in all Catalan public life, and that its political importance has been strengthened as a consequence of repression". Kraus (2015, Language Policy and Catalonia's Independence): "this special attention was, and is, sorely needed to compensate for the effects of the massive repression of the Catalan language". And that is only the two first pages of Google Scholar.

Perhaps we could simply rephrase it. How about "due to a number of political and social factors, including repression, immigration and lack of formal instruction in Valencian, the number of speakers has severely decreased"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Agpshi (talk • contribs) 08:29, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I think that marginalization conveys a more neutral and objective picture for readers, compared to repression or suppression, which evoke images of violence, police raids, etc. Anyway, since you have sources for it, ok. --Jotamar (talk) 14:47, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Revise Lead (2023)

The lead was too long (against Wikipedia guidelines), contained material that did not appear in the body, contained material that was not important enough to be in the lead, had a contradiction in the first and second paragraphs, and had duplicated citations.So I have simplified and rearranged the lead, based on editorial consideration (as distinct from subject matter considerations.)

I have tried not to change any wording of phrases, since it is controversial. But I have moved some unnecessary sentences to the body, juggled some sentences or phrases around, and moved some citations to different places. I hope this makes the lead more useful for readers, and fits in with Wikipedia guidelines better, without altering the actual information in the article. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 03:42, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

You've done a good job. It seems that an IP is trying to make it again longer. And in fact, the data the IP used is very old and it neither said what he/she claimed on the edit. I'm not an active Wiki user but I have seen you are, I would like to ask you if you can watch this page more regularily. Unfortunately, it often gets biased edits for political reasons. LucenseLugo (talk) 23:34, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I was not trying to make it longer, but merely adding some additional data besides the CIS, whose methodology for carrying out the surveys was heavily criticised by academics. And the references do say exactly what the article says now - just read the paper. If the lead is too long (which probably is), then the whole discussion on the data should not be removed, but rather moved elsewhere (not just the newly added data, but the whole discussion: privileging the CIS studies as if they were the only valid source is quite biased, for this kind of stuff has been studied from long before the CIS started asking about it).

The only edits that are biased for political reasons are those that do not follow the references. And you only need to open any handbook on Romance linguistics to see whose edits are biased.--109.205.143.163 (talk) 11:12, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Please, next time you do an edit be sure that what you write is not already mentioned inside the page. Much of your text was already written on this page (or very similar one) yet I have kept your edit and made a better representation based on the source.

Your edit belongs to the language controversy section, not on the lead to make it even more immense. I have moved it where it belongs. I didn't delete your edit and like I've said before, I have improved it with more specifical data based on the source. I have only removed the political voting phrase which was clearly irrelevant because politics are already mentioned in the same section and there you can find specifical Wikipedia articles (disambiguations / links) about Valencian politics regarding the society and the language in general. Just go to the controversy section and you will see it by yourself. 47.60.33.74 (talk) 00:02, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your edit. I just made a couple of amendments:

1) The logistic regression is employed for determining which variables are actually relevant, not for establishing mere co-relations (that's what polls do). A poll may tell you that a certain behavior is more frequent, say, among younger people and people with higher studies, but, since young people usually have a higher level of studies, it may turn out that the only relevant variable in this case is just level of studies, not age. That's what that paper shows. It is therefore new information, not information already mentioned. I re-wrote that passage in the most concise way I was able to.

2) As I mentioned before, moving just a part of the discussion into the main body while the other part is left in the introduction entails privileging a certain source as the most relevant. CIS is an government institution, but that does not mean that its surveys are trustworthier than those conducted within Sociology departments - in fact, they have received quite a lot of criticism from academics. Besides, the data themselves are quite old (ca. 20 years). I just moved everything into the "controversy" section - any reader willing to check the data may just click the hyperlink in the same line. Thus, on the other hand, the introduction is further shortened.--109.205.143.163 (talk) 15:11, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Please seek consesus before adding that text again. When you cherry pick data from the source that suits your POV and you separate between people can be seen as discriminatory and not fitting WP:NEUTRALITY, like why is it important people from a specific province or with a specific political view sees that? You are escalating the issue of this language page to a political one, and this doesn't belong here.

Also, the lead only quickly mentions the majority of Valencians consider Valencian to be a separate language from Catalan (no matter which source you want to use) I'm not sure why did you delete that phrase if it was in the lead from years back? What wasn't is the entire explanation which is properly found on the controversy section.

Also don't rely everything over a single source. The source you have put is clearly biased when it refers to the Valencian Community as País Valenciano in the entire textbook, which is an unofficial name for the region (Valencian Country) and it's only used by nationalist parties. Using a biased source is not even acceptable by Wikipedia standards. Still, I won't delete anything as your source uses other better sources but the writer who published it also puts data coming from his own perspective (starting with the first phrase, where he refers to the Valencian Community with an unofficial name) so that's why you should seek consensus to add that edit including the cherry picking and the segregation of people based on their opinion. LucenseLugo (talk) 23:52, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

About the "cherry picking": as I already told you, that study is not a poll. It does not show mere co-relations. It checks, among all the variables for predicting a certain behaviour, which of them are actually relevant. It therefore does not belong with the data extracted from the polls: rather, it helps clarify the demographic mess the polls point out to. And it does so by saying that, among all the variables that display a co-relation with a certain linguistic attitude of an inhabitant of the Valencian Community, most of them can be disregarded, and only four of them actually matter: political ideology, level of studies, geographical origin and ethno-territorial identity. You can read it yourself (pages 512-513):

De esta manera, quedan fuera del modelo la edad, el sexo, el tamaño delmunicipio y la situación laboral, por no establecer relaciones significativas conla variable de estudio. Las variables significativas del modelo son, de acuerdo conel estadístico de Wald y por orden de importancia, la ideología, el nivel de estu-dios, la provincia y la identidad etnoterritorial. Respecto a la ideología, como el valor de ß es negativo, esto quiere decir que, cuanto más hacia la izquierda seubican las personas, más están a favor de la unidad lingüística del valenciano.Por su parte, el valor de ß de la variable nivel de estudios revela que, amayor nivel, más se está a favor de la unidad lingüística. Respecto a la pro-vincia, podemos decir que el hecho de vivir en Alicante incide significativa-mente en contra de la unidad lingüística del valenciano en comparación conValencia y, especialmente, Castellón. Por último, en relación con la identidadetnoterritorial, cabe señalar que cuanto mayor es el sentimiento de «valencia-nía», más se está a favor de la unidad lingüística, mientras que cuanto más seidentifican los sujetos con España, más se está a favor del secesionismo.

So please stop modifying that. You are selecting only two of the four variables, i.e., cherry picking. And, by placing the source among all the data from the polls, you are misrepresenting it.

As for your statement to the effect that "The source you have put is clearly biased when it refers to the Valencian Community as País Valenciano in the entire textbook", this is probably the most biased thing you have said. You don't seem to be quite used to reading academic papers (articles published in scientific journals), so perhaps you'd be surprised to find out that "Valencian Country" is the most commonly used name for the Valencian Community in academia - I am talking about sociologists, historians and the like. Are you saying, for example, that this, this or this are biased? Are you saying that Spain’s Socialist Worker’s Party is a Catalan nationalist party? Have you ever attended any courses at the University of Valencia? Please don’t mistake your prejudices for “objective information". Specially when it comes to a name that Valencians have been using since the 18th century.

Even if you were right in saying that the paper is biased, that is just an ad hominem fallacy. The point is: is the analysis well done? It clearly is.

Now, let me pose this question to you. You are relying on the CIS data as the most trustworthy source. I provided two sources, both of which are academic papers published in scientific journals that have therefore gone through strict peer review. Do you really think that these sources are biased while, at the same time, you take as an authoritative unbiased source a series of polls conducted by a government institution under the Aznar government? I guess its director back then was politically uncompromised, wasn't he?

To summarise, let me quote you: 'You are escalating the issue of this language page to a political one'. So, please, enough.--109.205.143.163 (talk) 17:10, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:Disruptive, the only thing here is that you try to impose your own POV without asking for any consensus. Again, do you realize you repeat your biased agenda by saying the official Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas was biased because it was "under Aznar government"? Let me remind you the AVL was also created during that era... And the 2014 source uses a Generalitat Valenciana poll, from Argos GVA, so that's your personal political views which should not interfere when editing Wikipedia articles.

You use an IP yet you are very used to Wikipedia as it seems. Did you know that activates some alarms right? Leaving that apart, "Valencian Country" isn't even close to be the most used term as you claim, as it's in fact a barely used term, and it's either focused politically or historically as the UV source you have shown (and PSPV-PSOE was created in 1978 in the Spanish transition to democracy, when the Valencian Community was called Valencian Country yet that name only lasted for few years as you know... unsure why you brought that here) basically +95% of modern academics, scholars, universities, official, government and whatsoever works use Valencian Community as you perfectly know, in fact, you had to point 2 specifical pages that use such a term, one of them being from 1982 (made before the official name change of the region) so you try to prove a point with that? And like if that was really relevant. It's not here. I'm just pointing out how the author of your source has a nationalist bias by using a non-official name (which is only used by a very specifical sector of the Valencian and Catalan politics) as well as discriminating between Valencians by their local area or voting preferences, like if there are 1st class and 2nd class Valencians.

If I was you, I would wait and act as it should. You said in your last edit "you are putting the previous lead back" but you did that without deleting your biased edits... this page has a long, looooong history of biased edits and vandalizations, it seems you know Wikipedia very well so you know what WP:NPOV and WP:CONSENSUS are, right? Since you're at the edge of an edit war, I recommend you to seek for consensus as I will apply WP:AGF and I won't be filling an ANI report against your edits for now. But just to let you know, at this moment it's clear you are a case of WP:SPA looking at your IP's edits and you're also at the edge of an edit war, I hope you're not also an active user just using an IP without an account (or someone that's evading a block) because that's even worse. Prove your good will by asking for a consensus. LucenseLugo (talk) 23:34, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

First things first. If I were you, I would not try to revert the lead for a fourth time, because then it would be you the one who started an edit warring. Now, let me summarise:

1) Read things before making any edits. You have not read the source and, in fact, you have not even read my comments here. So calm down, sit down and calmly go through all the comments.

2) If that source seems biased to you, that's only your personal opinion. It turns out that peer-reviewed scientific articles are the first kind of reliable sources mentioned by Wikipedia. And don't distort what I said: I never doubted the validity of the CIS source. I simply pointed out your contradictions: you take a paper to be biased only because of the name it uses, while you don't take that survey as biased in spite of the fact that its promoter was the brother of a minister. You may think whatever you wish, but both of them are valid sources.

3) Again, don't distort what I say. I said it is the most widely used name in academics. Official institutions, obviously, use the official name. Sociologists, historians, linguists and the like are not obliged to do it. And, as it turns out, the kind of staff the latter publish count as reliable sources.

4) As for your accusations, go ahead. I've been editing Wikipedia for years and I have never registered. For a start, it was you who logged out and made an edit through an IP - "cree el ladrón que todos son de su condición", as you say in Spanish. In fact, you sort of remind me of User:Venezia Friulano, who, like you, had the idea that Wikipedia did not properly portray the greatness of the Spanish Empire and was obsessed with removing the word "Catalan" from every Wikipedia article he could find (he claimed he was half Italian and half Spanish, but it seems he was also somehow half Belgian). Do you happen to be friends with this person?

5) Now let's go for what matters. As I said, you are misinterpreting the source. I already explained it twice, so I am not going to explain it for a third time. Just scroll up and read it, for once. I did not touch anything because this would be my fourth edit, i.e. this would mean edit warring. But, as the text stands now, the source is clearly misrepresented. I added a tag to that effect. We can convene on an alternative wording, if you wish, but the text simply cannot stay as it currently is.--109.205.143.163 (talk) 07:31, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay so now you've just admitted that you are a Wikipedia editor with a lot of experience and you even know other users despite your IP having its first edit on 14th October 2023. And all of your IP wikiedits are within the same article. Do you know what this means, right? This is a clear case of WP:SPA based on your edits but also a possible case of WP:Block evasion as you've just admitted that you're an older editor.

I have reverted your last edit but I've undone my own edit so the actual version is based on your last edit, because I saw on the history of the page that such text was deleted by another IP few days ago, the one you probably think it's me as you just made that accusation (btw, reverting disruptive edits don't count as edits for breaking edit-war rules) and there is no "stable version" as you claim, as the actual lead was shortened on 6th October 2023 and the purpose is to make the lead shorter so the article can be easier to read about your claims saying I have used an IP to make edits instead of my account, why would I? Go away and open a WP:SPI investigation if you're so sure. But a Wiki article talk page is not the proper place for this.

So for this reason, please stick to the topic. As I won't tolerate again if you break WP:NPA doing accusations against me, and there are enough reasons already to fill an ANI against you basically because your IP has a single purpose and you've admitted by yourself you're an older user, as you even know that user that I see it was blocked several months ago despite your first edit with this IP being shorter than a week ago, so you basically admit to use WP:SOC. Nice... are you sure do we wanna go that way? As I have said, check for consensus instead of being WP:Disruptive on a talk page. Here I am, doing a friendly debate with you to prove my Good faith. Do you want to put all of that text? You can request for a consensus. I have already said that for me that sounds discriminatory, like if there are 1st and 2nd class Valencians and ones count more than others just based on petty things mentioned in a publication made by someone with a questionable Point of View. And I'm not talking about you but about the source, such as the used terms as I have said before. I don't like to repeat things twice so for me I have already explained my arguments. LucenseLugo (talk) 08:24, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

OMG, you know that a single device can get assigned different IPs, right? Please read this. My internet provider changes my IP about every month. Others change it almost every day. Sockpuppeting occurs when you pretend to be two different people, not when your internet provider changes your IP and you happen not to be registered (have you hear of 'the free encyclopaedia'?). I'm not hiding. I can let you know, for example, that my first interaction with the aforementioned User:Venezia Friulano is this one in which, incidentally, I tried to made him understand that he had misunderstood the source he was employing (he apparently never understood it, but other users did and reverted the edit).

In the second place, you should know that the three-reverts rule applies. Period. Your edits clearly do not fit any of the exemptions. So technically you have already violated the rule – since you self-reverted, I’ll just assume good faith.

If the data that the article gathers sounds to you discriminatory, that's just your own subjective appreciation. Those are demographic data. Stating that the opinion that they are two different languages is more widely held among right-wing partisans is like saying, for example, that the percentage of voters of Vox is much higher among younger people - I personally don't like it, but it is a true fact, and I won't revert your edit if you add that information to Wikipedia and support it by a valid source.

The controversy section already contains a lot of assertions to the effect that opinions vary significantly depending of age, gender, etc. Do they also sound discriminatory to you? What this study does is to help clarify, among all those variables, which ones actually matter (in fact, this kind of studies are normally employed for fighting against hate speeches that try to link migrants or racial minorities with higher rates of criminality: they have been very helpful in the past for clarifying that the relevant variable was not ethnicity, but rather income, employment rate and the like). And you cannot take the four variables selected and reduce them to just two. That’s a misrepresentation of the source.

If the wording I first employed sounds to you too harsh (and here you may have a point), we can simply rephrase it. We can take your own wording as a basis, indeed. You rephrased it thus:

By applying a binary logistic regression to the same data, it was also found that different opinions about the unity of the language are different between people with certain levels of studies and the opinion also differs between each of the Valencian provinces.

This misrepresents the source. The idea that different opinions regarding the unity of the language vary across provinces and levels of studies was not found by the regression, but by the CIS studies themselves. What the regression helped clarify is that these two are relevant variables, as opposed to age or gender. Besides, the regression points at two more relevant variables, which you have arbitrarily decided to leave out: political ideology and ethno-territorial identification.

Here is the wording I suggest: By applying a binary logistic regression to the same data, it was also found that the differences in opinion about the unity of the language can be attributed to geographical origin (people from the Alicante province are far less likely to acknowledge the unity of Catalan/Valencian than those from Valencia and, specially, Castellón), level of studies (the higher the level of studies, the more in favour of linguistic unity), political ideology (left-wing partisans are more prone to acknowledge the unity of the language) and ethno-territorial self-identification (the greater the self-identification with Valencian identity, the likelier to acknowledge linguistic unity).--109.205.143.163 (talk) 10:27, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@LucenseLugo: Same IP, now registered in order to have access to additional functionalities. Now that you are active again, are you going to answer?

--Fromcs (talk) 14:18, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I will answer that I'm not the only editor in this page and your edits need a WP:CONSENSUS which no one engaged in, so you have to wait or do a WP:RFC that's why I have reverted your changes again since you didn't do any consensus.

Also please stop doing WP:BIASED edits using nationalistic names such as "Valencian Country" because your account is a WP:SPA account with a good traceability of IPs you have been using so if you made an account why are you not doing things as they should be done? Like asking for other comments and applying for a consensus? LucenseLugo (talk) 14:05, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

That was not the same change. Read it again. What I added is a literal quotation from the source. That is something quite common in order to make it clear that the references say what editors claim they say. I even added the pages from which it was extracted. You should refrain yourself from re-interpreting what the sources say without even reading them.

You are not the only editor here, but you are the only one trying to make a reference say what it does not say. You should read it before reverting. All the other editors said nothing.

PD: since that was a literal quotation, that name is the one that the source employs. As I told you (and I don't like repeating myself), that is an extremely common name in academic sources, which, incidentally, happen to be the kind of sources Wikipedia prefers.--Fromcs (talk) 18:45, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

By repeating something that's not true 1000 times won't make it true either. That name is, by very far, not the most used one in academic sources as you claim, as I have proven it to you last month. As you literally had to cherrypick 2 specifical sources to be somehow able to back up your claims.

Exactly where did you show such thing?

And as I have said, why aren't you waiting for the opinion of other users? And if you do certain edits, why don't you use only real and neutral names instead of using nationalistic ones? You perfectly know Valencian Community is the only accepted (and official) name in Wikipedia. LucenseLugo (talk) 20:27, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Do you know what a literal quotation is?--Fromcs (talk) 21:00, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Map on the southern frontier of Valencian

LucenseLugo has tried to remove a map containing a visual explanation of the evolution of the southern frontier of Valencian. The map was in need of references (with a tag added nearly three years ago), but I recently added them. Then LucenseLugo tried to remove the map arguing that the names it uses "are not official".

The map was originally created in Valencian and, of course, it uses non-official names insofar as they are names in a language that is no longer official in many of those towns (they belong to the Region of Murcia). But that does not mean it is no longer a useful map. It simply means it is a map in Valencian, which is quite natural in an article about Valencian. Notice, in fact, that many of these names reflect the original name of the place (Favanilla, for instance).

If someone wishes to create a translated version of the map using the names usually employed in English, be bold. But, until then, the map stays, for it is both useful and referenced. Agpshi (talk) 14:52, 9 June 2024 (UTC)