Dear All,
We would like to open a Wiktionary for the Amis language. Amis is an
Austronesian language used by the Amis -- one of the Austronesian
people in Taiwan. The Amis account for about one third of Taiwan's
indigenous population (i.e. 130 thousand), however, many of the younger
generation do not speak the language and till now there is still no
exact ststistic report of the number of real speakers.
There are two prevailing writing systems of this language: the
Presbyterian Church system and the International Phonetic Symbol
system, the later is used only within the academic circle. We would
like to edit a Wiktionary which basically employs the Presbyterian
Church system but also notes the IPS so that readers can also know the
exact pronounciations.
At this moment there are at least three people who are willing to
commit to this project. They are Nakao Eki, Afah Lisin, and Tai-ni
Tsou. The former two are native speakers and the later two as
ethnographers are also familiar with the academic Amis writing system.
Pektiong Tan (zh-min-nan:pektiong) will help those people to get
familiar with the wikipedia system.
We would prefer to set the default interface language to be Mandarin
with traditional character used in Taiwan (zh-tw) since most of the
potential user of this wiktionary can read Mandarin with traditional
character.
Proposed domain name:
http://amis.wiktionary.org/
Language tag for Amis:
ISO 639-2: N.A.
ISO 639-3 (Draft): Ami
SIL: ALV
RFC-3066: i-ami
Sincerely,
Nakao Eki,
Afah Lisin,
Tai-ni Tsou,
Pektiong Tan
Some info about Taiwanese aborigine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_aborigine
Some of you may have noticed that I said I was going to anonymise
the email but I screwed up and didn't. I wrote to apologize to the
author, and she responded:
"In regard to publishing the e-mail, I am not concerned about my name
being included."
Even so, I offer my public apologies as well for this error.
--Jimbo
--
"La nèfle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on fr.wikipedia.org
Previously the Lojban Wikipedia was using date abbreviations like "7 knb 2005"
both in recent changes and history lists and in the expansion of "~~~~". This
is fine for recent changes and history lists, which are full of other
abbreviations, but in "~~~~" expansion it should be written "de'i li
2005-01-07 ti'u li 03:54". Also, some people use "pavma'i ... pavrelma'i" and
some use "kanbyma'i ... celma'i", but dates with the day in the middle are
not used in Lojban. Can someone help me program this?
phma
--
Mes règles mensuelles ont lieu une fois par an.
-Les Perles de la médecine
I read in a recent e-mail (I think about Catalan or some other new language)
that you can choose the interface for your wiki. How so? What kind of
customizations are available?
James
I hate to interrupt important matters of state with a trivial concern, but while I was in the Catalan wikipedia today I went to use the special characters in the copyright area of the edit page and only managed to invoke some gobbledygook. I ignored it at the time, but then found that it was doing the same thing in the Sicilian wikipedia. Has anyone else come across this? Has anyone got any tips? Have both the Catalan and the Sicilians gone awry somewhere along the way or is this universal? Appreciative of any helpful thoughts. Salutamu.
pippudoz
---------------------------------
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I have to say that the ang: looks like it will be a very useful tool to understanding Old English, as the ,,wísdómbóc'' ties Old English into topics well familiar to modern English speakers. I commend it for existing. Finally, something other than Beowulf. :-)
Hello Vegard, Mark, etc.,
An Old Norse project sounds fine with me -- either as a Wikipedia or as a
Wiktionary. I am reasonably competent in Old Norse and can provide a bit of
help along the way -- although I cannot promise to spend a lot of time on
it, since there are so many other things I need to tend to also (including,
first and foremost, the Nynorsk Wikipedia and the English one).
Arguments against an Old Norse Wikipedia might be its proximity to
Icelandic -- to which it is so similar that the difference between
normalised Old Norse and Icelandic orthography can be summed up in a
handful mostly one-to-one rules.
Thus, Old Norse -r after consonant corresponds to Icelandic -ur; the Old
Norse O with ogonek (a C-like shape under) corresponds to Icelandic ö; Old
Norse long ø corresponds to Icelandic æ; Old Norse -k in personal pronouns
corresponds to Icelandic -g; and the Old Norse grammatical ending -t
corresponds to Icelandic -ð. Otherwise, the morphology and syntax are
mostly the same (with some archaic forms in Old Norse being lost in
Icelandic), but Icelandic has undergone a relatively dramatic expansion of
its vocabulary in the recent century or so.
Regarding the name, I suggest that the language be called norrnt (with oe
digraph) or norrønt with acute accent over the ø (not possible to type in
Eudora...). The name gamalnorska ("Old Norwegian") would not have been used
as a self-designation in the time of Old Norse as a mother tongue. Also,
the language was used both in Norway and Iceland, as well as as a mostly
spoken language in Sweden and Denmark before the languages of these
countries started to drift apart.
As for writing system, orthography etc., there is clearly a potential for
disagreements there. My take on the matter would be that using the latin
alphabet rather than the (Runic) Futhork makes the most sense, and that
some degree of normalisation of the spelling is needed. (Should one write
bók, bok, or boc, for instance?)
The wiki language code :non: sounds fine with me.
-Olve
At 22:54 03/01/2005 +0000, you wrote:
>From: "Vegard Aukrust" <vegara(a)stud.ntnu.no>
>I want to start a Wikipedia page in old norse (gamalnorska), and I suggest
>the language code "gno".
>From: Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com>
>I'm not sure the current environment is the best place for a request
>regarding Old Norse. But anyhow, I have a question: will you use the runic
>script, or the latin script?
___________________
Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org
All Wikipedians,
> Olve Utne (who is starting to get a bit sick of this peck-order-oriented
list...)
I have to agree with Olve. And that is largely why I have not felt like paying attention to wikipedia-l lately. Sorry I haven't been around to voice my opinions against this idiocy. I do not have clearly defined convictions as to the interactions of both parties here (mainly Mark and YOU, harassment squad), but I am certain that this peck-order rudeness is not what Wikipedia needs to be. In fact, I dare say that this stuff needs to end here and now. If I were completely new to Wikipedia and signed up for wikipedia-l, I'd unsubscribe in a heartbeat. Leave Mark W. alone and get on with your lives.
Ooh, and I abbreviated here. Sorry. (Referencing a rude, old e-mail from a certain party which I felt no urge to respond.)
Have a great day. Takk, Ovne. Du forstår Wikipedia-l vel, og jeg er glad i deg for det. Nå skal jeg snakke norsk! (GOD it's been too long. Almost two years since I used Norwegian seriously. At least I can tell you something in Norwegian that people will not undertand literally in English. High five for Nordmenn -- we seem to get along well!)
Mark, you take care. Sorry I haven't been around. You have my support.
~ Jeremy
Agidoda tsalag, kenv; hla yagiliya wigiquediya. (Funny how my identity is meddled with languages, isn't it?)
----------
Dear Yann, Gerard & al.,
I have noticed that some people find it amusing (or whatever it is) to
harrass (!) Mark W. Please stop with it -- Wikipedia has bigger problems
than some of you not agreeing with Mark W. Acceptance of escalated
personal attacks is one of them -- and it is not exactly like Mark W. has
been proven to have a monopoly on those...
Respectfully,
Olve Utne (who is starting to get a bit sick of this peck-order-oriented
list...)
At 12:17 04/01/2005 +0000, Yann Forget wrote:
>Hi Mark, [...] Please stop spreading FUD. Requests are not well received
>when they are sent by YOU, that the point.
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>You are like an old record, stuck in the same phrases time and again. You
>have annoyed and insulted many people and you are unappologetic about it.
Hello,
First of all, I wish a happy new year to all who may
be concerned.
This year, I spent Christmas and New Year Eve in an
unusual way, since I was in the Sahara desert (south
of Algeria) for 15 days, as an ecotourist.
I had a real great time over there, which I will share
with Wikipedia in trying to improve many articles
related to the areas I went to, as well as with many
pictures.
However, I wished to share a couple of additional
things/thoughts with you. About languages and
education.
I spent a little while in Tamanrasset, and discussed
with some of it inhabitants, men and women. It is a
strange situation, as it cannot be said that people
are "poor", in the sense that most have the basics
which allow them to live quite happily. The city is
growing pretty fast (50 000 unhabitants), but is not
sustainable for its water, nor for its food, nor for
most of its industrial goods. Most of it is imported
from the north of Algeria. The city is essentially
living from camels, goats and sheep... and tourism in
the surroundings of course. While the city is shared
by many ethnies and different nationalities, most
people over there are muslims. They speak a mixture of
Tuareg language (tamazight or tamahaq) and some local
arab which can hardly be recognised by those of us
French who learned classical arab in France.
One thing surprised me greatly. I thought the majority
of Algerians could be said to speak French (since
Algeria was previously a french colony). Well, I
discovered over there that if all adults have notions
of french language, many of them are very very far
from fluent. I could speak to no kids under 15, even
though I was told that all of them start learning
french language at school from the age of 8 (?). So, I
went for a little check and discovered that according
to statistics, about 62% of Algerian speak decent
french (enough for communication), and this number
have been increasing in the past years.
Now, Tamanrasset is in the most southern part of
Algeria, so rather far away from France, though there
is still obviously strong French influence. People I
met talked with one another in Tamahaq, talk with
other Tamanrasset people in a southern arab, speak
with us in french, and receive education in classical
arab. Guys ! these people manage roughly 4 languages !
When France left Algeria, the whole educational system
was in french language; the algerian government tried
to switch entirely to classical arab over the years,
even though there were at that time not enough
teachers knowledgeable in classical arab, even though
most Algerians do not manage well classical arab, even
though there were no educational books in classical
arab to teach children. Over the years, the government
has tried to impose more and more classical arab, to
the dismay of all those speaking berberes languages
(such as the Touareg). From my friends in Algers, I
know that university education is still partly in
french, in particular in scientific and technical
domains. But from what I understood, the algerian
educational system is in great part a failure, as it
is taught in a language that many Algerian do not
manage well, as it results in diplomas of little value
on european or american market, and as many students
end up secondary school with such a poor knowledge in
french that they are unable to come to french
universities or even to follow well algerian
university classes. Possibly, knowing more of english
language might help but it seems currently limited.
Two things raised my attention greatly.
First, a university is currently being built in
Tamanrasset. For now, students usually go to Algers to
follow upper studies (about 1500 km away, which
evidently implies only quite wealthy people can afford
this).
Second, as we crossed villages in the mountains, we
were surrounded by kids, from 6 to 12. Only the eldest
could really communicate a bit with us. We had some
pens for them, which we distributed. But it was not
really what they were looking for. The youngest wanted
paper mostly. But all asked for books. Only books. Not
food, nor money, nor sweets, only books. And they
wanted books in french language. I told them "but you
can't read french". But this is what they wanted
nevertheless.
When I asked to my favorite guide, he told me "they
learn french at school, a little bit, but they have no
opportunity to practice. Except for a few tourists,
who could they talk french to ? At least, with books,
they can learn a bit".
I suspect the school probably only has a couple of
worn out ones. Possibly only a couple of worn out
books in arab as well.
I dig a couple of my son books to give them. Not much.
If I had guessed, it would have been easy to bring a
few more.
As I understood, analphabetism is rising over there,
especially among girls. If the kids do not speak
french, their access to university is limited. And the
main economical resource of the area is tourism, most
tourists being french speaking.
Computers in these villages is out of question. They
have electricity but I doubt a computer could survive
long in such an environment (I spent two hours in the
local gendarmerie, they have desks, paper, pens and
sand). However, most of our youngest guides had an
email adress and went on the net thanks to cybercafes
in Tamanrasset.
There might be things to do no ?
__________________________________
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