Request to add Manadonese in Translatewiki

That's not limited to just this list, but as well for use in sentences like "This user can speak in Indonesian" (here it is clear that this refers to a language, as there's an adjective, and it would translated in a sentence using the term "Bahasa Indonesia" and not just "Indonesia" alone) but less clear in sentences like "This user can speak in Java" (referencing also a region, island, or city name, i.e. a location rather than a language). There are some cases where the term "Bahasa" may be removed, just like we can freely remove the term "language" in English as long as there's no ambiguity with a place (e.g. "This user can speak in Manado", whereas the dedicated term to refering to that language in English is "Manado Malay", short for "Malay *from* Manado", which as no ambiguity, given that "Malay refers to a language/culture and not the country like "Malaysia"/"Malaysian" or "Indonesia"/"Indonesian"; as well for "Javanese" for the language/culture name in English clearly distinct from "Java" alone for the place).

So as much as possibly we should avoid such ambiguity between languages/cultures and places. Note also that the term "Manadonese" in English is also a good alternative to "Manado Malay", but "Manado" alone is then not correct in English to refer to the language/culture where it designates a wellknown and very populated city (and its area around). Note also that this area covers multiple native ethnic groups speaking that language (a creole, Malay-based grammatically, but with a large terminology bottowed or derived from Dutch plus some other major Germanic, Romance, Autronesian and Sinitic languages like English, German, Portuguese and Chinese; it has so many differences with standard Malaysian or Indonesian that is has its own code, even if there's some good mutual understanding with "standard" Malaysian and Indonesian, so that it was incorporated as well in the "Malay macrolanguage"; the native speakers of this creole are bilingual for most of them, but there's no sign for now that Manadonese is shifting towards standard Indonesian and is in real danger, unless the Indonesian standard starts being more inclusive and becomes a "hat language" encompassing its regional varieties and creoles, just like what happened for most other "major" languages of the world that are now less strict and "pure" as they were in their past "standard").

Now you can also look at how this is managed in Wikidata (or other databases like OpenStreetMap for place names in various languages): both languages (or "langoids") and places can have a "normal" name (which is disambiguated) and a "short name" (where terms like "Bahasa" can be removed, and that variant could be used in contexts like lists of languages where it is already disambiguated by the context). They can also have a "formal/long name" (notably countries) citing their current political regime (with terms like "Republic (of)"), which are rarely used except in formal contexts (and usually not in lists of unrelated entities, but in plain sentences). In ISO 639 and BCP 47/IANA (which are maintained and standardized only in English), there's no "long" or "formal" names for language names in English, but they are all disambiguated (as much as possible). But we find some short names or local names as well as "aliases/alternate names" in Glottolog and The Linguist List (those aliases are not always distinguished by the local cultures using these "alternate names", we just have the reference of the external databases or historic documents using that terminology, and frequently with some confusion with ethnonyms or place names).

Verdy p (talk)15:26, 8 December 2022