Talk:Mixtec writing

Mixtec writing was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
July 11, 2007	Good article nominee	Not listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 5, 2007.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that from around 900 to 1500 the Mixtec people wrote using pictorial representations and symbols?

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GA fail

The sources that this article uses are unreliable:

[1] - While this is written by a scholar, it is a self-published website. See here for an explanation of reliable sources.
[2] - This is also a self-published website. It does not even have the distinction of having been written by a scholar. Note what it says on the "About" page: "Here's the disclaimer: I am not a linguist. It's my hobby (even though it consumes a lot of my time). I've been a computer scientist since the age of 8, and that's what I do to make a living."
[3] - I can't even find out anything about the author of this single paragraph. The .com doesn't inspire me with confidence, though. This appears to come from some sort of generalized encyclopedia, again not the kind of source we want to use on wikipedia.
[4] - This looks better, as many of the institute's authors are academics, but it is hard to tell who wrote that particular page.
The link in footnote 5 does not work.

This page lacks many sections, such as a detailed description of how the writing system works, its connection to the spoken language, its connections to other writing systems, the historical development of the writing system, etc. See Mayan languages and Mayan hieroglyphs for good examples of similar kinds of pages.

The editors of this article need to do a lot more research - most of it will need to take place off of the internet, I'm afraid. Good linguistics studies, written by scholars and published by academic presses, are not available online. A quick search of google scholar reveals that there is plenty of material available - the trouble will be sorting through it all. If you have any questions regarding this review, please let me know. Awadewit | talk 11:43, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it logographic or are there phonetic symbols?

The writing system is described as logographic, yet there is also talk of 'phonetic symbols', which are claimed to be important 'because the language is tonal'. This is a non sequitur, since segments are just as important as tones for distinguishing meanings - if the system is phonologically based, that is; if it is logographic, the phonological content of the words corresponding to the signs is completely irrelevant. In any case, the article should make up its mind: if there are phonetic symbols, for tone or for something else, then clearly the system isn't purely logographic. I suspect that there is some confusion here, because my understanding (perhaps outdated) was that the only deciphered Mesoamerican logographic (and not pictographic) system was the Mayan one. 62.73.69.121 (talk) 19:38, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right, according to FAMSI, which is the most authoritative and scholarly online source I can think of, Mixtec writing is actually not logographic, but pictographic, just like Aztec writing (and unlike Mayan): 'Despite the fact that hieroglyphic writing systems rooted in Maya, Zapotec, Mixe-Zoque, and other languages had been employed in Mesoamerica in earlier times, the Mixtecs as well as the Aztecs prefered to use pictographs, representational signs that could be understood at some basic level no matter what language the reader actually spoke. Some scholars even compare them to cartoons.' This article thus seems to be profoundly inaccurate and misleading. --62.73.69.121 (talk) 19:56, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]