_______________________________________________Hmmm - I'm afraid I cannot agree with your depiction of such a categorical difference between Latin and Classical Greek.
Let's start with Latin: According to Pei (1976) and Herman (1996), Latin was displaced gradually in spoken form between 400-700; it was in official use up to the first decades of the 19th century [as] the language of research and philosophy in Europe, although Latin was not the native tongue for any group of people during this time; by AD 1000, Latin's daughter languages Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Provençal, French, Italian, Rheto-Romance, and Rumanian were all firmly established as native languages of Southern Europe, to the exclusion of Latin as a first language (!).
Now to Classical Greek: The two strands of [grc] would be Ancient Greek (starting with Homer etc) and Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament); please note that Ethnologue subsumes Classical Greek and Koine Greek as dialects of "Ancient Greek". The history of the Greek language (cf. Horrocks 2009) actually bears out almost a tug-of-war between the more literary Classical and the more colloquial Koine, including the movement of Atticism in Byzantine times, and its grip on Katharevousa over the last two centuries, where Classical Greek finally "lost out" to Demotic only 40 years ago in modern Greece. Also, Koine Greek is just as "alive" in the Orthodox Church as Latin was in the Catholic Church up to Vatican II (cf. the discussion at http://orthodoxoutpost.com/?p=164).
My conclusion: Latin and Classical Greek are very comparable in their history, development and language use, including the fact that both are dead languages now, and both are still vehicles of (more or less successful) communication in their respective churches. Hence, I cannot support a decision to grant a wikipedia to one and deny it to another - especially if there are communities willing and able to guarantee and demonstrate the success of their wikipedia.
Fwiw,
- Herman, Jozsef. “The End of the History of Latin” Romance Philology. 49:4 (1996) pp364-382.
- Horrocks, Geoffrey. Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
- Pei, Mario. The Story of Latin and the Romance Languages. Harper & Row: New York, 1976.
Oliver
On 07-Feb-17 06:36, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
GerardMThanks,Hoi,The point of teaching GRC is to help understand the old documents in GRC. As it is not a living language the point is that students learn it as it was. Innovation is therefore counter to the objective of teaching the language. Compare this to Latin; the same applies but it has always been spoken / used in the Roman Catholic church so it is a language where documents can be found in Latin that are from many later centuries and it does have this history of innovation.
On 3 February 2017 at 18:23, Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren.jan@gmail.com> wrote:
> The issue is that grc developped over time and consequently what standard should be followed?
There are plenty of languages with Wikipedias that do not have a single written standard. For example:* Silesian has two or three different orthographies, all of which can be used (in other words, it's the author who decides which orthography an article is in).* Norman has four different dialects, all of which can be used. Articles are also categorised by the dialects they are written in.* Rusyn has multiple dialects as well, but AFAIK they try to stick to the dialect used in Slovakia.* Some languages (like Serbo-Croat) can be written in multiple alphabets and have special software for switching between them.* If I recall correctly, I have seen cases of the same article having multiple versions in one Wikipedia.
In other words, all kinds of possibilities. My guess is that in the case of grc it will be Attic Greek for 99%, but if there will be a few articles in Doric or Koine, then I'd say that would be an enrichment.
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2017-02-02 21:52 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>:
Hoi,The issue is that grc developped over time and consequently what standard should be followed?Thanks,GerardM
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Op do 2 feb. 2017 om 15:52 schreef MF-Warburg <mfwarburg@googlemail.com>
Shouldn't we, when we accept this line of argument, also accept Ancient Greek (grc)?
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2017-02-02 12:34 GMT+01:00 Oliver Stegen <oliver_stegen@sil.org>:
_______________________________________________ Langcom mailing list Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcomHi,
I found Jan's exposition most helpful and actually convincing - thanks!In response, I am no longer opposed to make lfn eligible. Go ahead! (And may it thrive.)
Oliver
On 02-Feb-17 10:37, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi,I like the argument put forward by Jan and Michael. Personally I do not mind when people are busy with knowledge in any language and we do know that some say that the WMF is in the business of education.. Surely people get educated in this way.
The problem is in two parts. How do we prevent an environment that is out of control ... (This is not specific to a conlang) and two, what does it take to prevent death by lack of attention in the future.
The first is not really a problem we have a precedent whereby a project can be closed. The second does not need to be a problem when there is attention for its quality (also automated).
So I am rather positive to allow for a change of heart.Thanks,GerardM
On 1 February 2017 at 12:57, Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren.jan@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not a member of the Langcom, but I've been subscribed to this mailing list for quite a while now. Since my primary field of interest is constructed languages, let me tell you why I am inclined to support this request. Mind, I am in no way involved with LFN itself.
My point of view is that there is only one criterion that should really matter for allowing a project to exist, namely the question: is it sustainable?
At present, we have Wikipedias in seven constructed languages: Esperanto, Volapük, Ido, Interlingua, Interlingue (Occidental), Novial and Lojban. Of these, only Esperanto has native speakers, albeit an extremely low number compared to virtually all ethnic languages with a Wikipedia. Yet, the project is thriving. With >236,000 articles it is #32 on the list, which is more than Wikipedias in for example Greek, Danish, Bulgarian and Hindi. Ido and Interlingua (#98 and #109) are doing fine as well, in spite of the fact that both languages have no native speakers and less than a thousand users. The number of Volapük users is not more than a few dozens, but the "Vükiped" is doing reasonably well anyway. Even Interlingue seems to manage somehow, although its number of users (I always avoid the word "speakers" in the case of constructed languages) is probably less than ten.
The only project that IMO has become a failure is Novial. Currently it has 1,644 articles. About 50 of them have some real critical mass, perhaps another 200 are more than just one or two lines of text, tables and infoboxes. After its foundation it had a few enthusiastic, active users, but they all seem to have vanished a long time ago. Since 2011 practically nothing has been happening over there. New articles still appear every once in a while, but most of these are the work of people who don't even know the language and just copy info from other articles, giving articles whose sole content is: "George Clooney is an American actor".
Wikipedia projects in three other constructed languages have been closed in the past, for different reasons: Siberian because it turned out a hoax, Toki Poni because it is a minimalistic language with just ±120 words, Klingon because it is a work of fiction with a vocabulary too small for creating a viable project in it. For the same reason, Quenya and Sindarin are not suitable either.
Anyway, compare all this to Wikipedias in African languages, for example Oromo: a major language with 60 million speakers, but only 726 articles, most of which are oneliners like "Germany is a country in Europe" or even empty. Where's the educational value in that?
Speaking about educational value, I think this boils down to two things: communicating valuable content, and working with the language itself.
When it comes to perusing Wikipedia because one is looking for info, a vast majority of the projects we have are quite unnecessary. Speakers of Bavarian, Luxemburgish, Rhaeto-Romance, Belarusian, Bashkir or Pennsylvania German won't be looking for information in their native language, they will look for info where they can find it, and in a language they speak fluently, i.e. in German, Russian, English etc. Wikipedias in languages like that serve an entirely different purpose: they offer a platform for generating content in a particular language, for practicing it, developing it, showcasing it. In other words, these projects are there for the sake of the language itself rather than the information presented in it.
And in this respect, numbers of native speakers are completely irrelevant. Latin has no native speakers, but its Wikipedia is still a success. What really matters, in other words, is whether there are people willing to write in it and read in it.
LFN is of more recent date than the other auxlang projects, but remarkably vivid nonetheless. I don't know if it really has 100 active users; numbers like that are notoriously difficult to verify, and the only persons who really have an idea about these figures are the same ones who have a vested interest in exaggerating them. But it is clear that there is a large number of people involved in it anyway, enough to generate quite some content. Of course, nobody knows what will happen when the author of the languages stops being involved with the language for whatever reason: it might go down the same road as Novial, but that would be a worst case scenario. In any case, the LFN wiki at Wikia (http://lfn.wikia.com/wiki/Paje_xef) has 3,774 pages at present, and keeps growing. Quite a lot of these pages are substantial articles, some of them having even more content than their equivalents in the major European languages. Obviously, not all pages could be moved to a Wikipedia in LFN, as they also contain translations of poetry and prose, but still, even at the very start this Wikipedia would be at a higher level than those in Interlingue, Novial, Volapük and Lojban. Not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of substance and quality. So why not give it a chance?
Best regards,Jan van Steenbergen (User:IJzeren Jan)
2017-02-01 10:15 GMT+01:00 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 7:44 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
> We had in the past really well functioning languages that were also shifted
> to Wikia. It is all part and parcel of the original idea of the policy to
> prevent the easy creation of new projects. This was needed because at the
> time there was a groundswell of sentiment to prevent new projects all
> together.
>
> When one member of the committee says "NO", it will not happen. Wen doubts
> are raised it is not no. So please be clear what your intentions are.
True. Here is my more precise position.
My basic position is on the Amir's line: So weak against ("Wikia
should be good enough") that I don't want to be the one who blocks it.
However, for me it *is* mandatory to have a good reasoning in favor.
That's why I asked Michael to make one. I see that as mandatory
because of the future request.
There is a tiny line, invisible from both sides, which differs
relevant institutions from irrelevant ones. LangCom exists to keep
Wikimedia relevant institution in relation to the languages. I would
define relevancy as.
We are still on the relevant side and LFN is one of the possible lines
and we need to make a good decision here. And I have to say that what
Amir's said about LFN doesn't sound promising at the moment.
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