[ resending - I sent it to a wrong mailing list earlier ]
Hallo!
I am going through https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Open_requests_for_new_languages , project by project, letter by letter, up to ten requests per email, one email per day.
I am now working on Wikipedia, and today I'm handling the letter H.
Most of the requests today happen to be quite complicated, and I don't have a clear take on them. If this particular thread doesn't resolve them in a week, I'll make separate threads for each request, so that there will be a chance for proper discussion.
== Hadauti / Hadothi == Request: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hadauti Code: hoj My take: Probably eligible, but I'd love to hear more opinions. It is a part of macro-language Rajasthani (raj), and there's also a request of Rajasthani: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Rajasth... . I don't know enough about Indo-Aryan languages to make a decision here.
== Hanja == Request: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hanja_3 Code: ko-kore (according to the request) My take: Not eligible. I don't know Korean, but to the best of my understanding, Hanja is occasionally used in books and newspapers, and it is similarly used in the Korean Wikipedia. Wider usage of Hanja is outdated, and comparable to Polytonic Greek or pre-1918 Russian. The request says that it should be eligible for the same reason that Mongolian in Mongolian script is eligible ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Mongoli... ), but this comparison is not valid: Mongolian in Cyrillic and in Mongolian script may represent the same language (and I'm actually not even sure about that), but the scripts are completely different, and both are currently widely used for general-purpose writing by different (and only partly overlapping) groups of people, whereas Hanja has not been used for general-purpose writing for several decades. If this factually wrong, or if this is factually correct, but you have a different conclusion, I'm happy to hear it.
== Hassaniya == Request: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hassani... Code: mey My take: Eligible. I haven't seen any claims that it is the same as another Arabic variety.
== Hijazi == Request: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hijazi_... Code: acw My take: Not sure. In speech, it's probably different from Standard Arabic, but it doesn't appear to be written much, unlike Moroccan (ary) and, to a certain extent, Levantine (apc). It also appears to be somewhat similar to Levantine (apc), but I am not saying that it's completely the same. In addition, there is almost no content in the Incubator, the request text is quite generic, and the request creator didn't do very much except posting the request. So I'm not inclined to mark it as eligible. Perhaps it can be "waiting" or simply "rejected", until a more serious requestor comes.
== Hindko == Request: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hindko Code: hnd My take: I'm inclined to reject it on procedural grounds, even though a better-written request can become eligible. The current request says "Hindko" and gives the code hnd, which is for Southern Hindko, and as far as I can see in the literature, e.g. Elena Bashir's "A Descriptive Grammar of Hindko, Panjabi, and Saraiki", Northern (Peshawar and Hazara) have a (relatively) more established written standard. There are Incubators in both Northern (hno) and Southern (hnd) Hindko, but both have almost no content. The request creator hasn't been active for a long time, and doesn't claim knowledge of Hindko on the user page ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Open_requests_for_new_languages ). Finally, there's no actual text in the request to explain the intention. Given all this, I prefer to reject this request with a comment saying that a person who can actually speak and write it is welcome to make a new request with a clear name code and a description of their intention to which variety to use, etc.
== Hindustani == Request: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hindust... Code: - My take: Not eligible. The easy procedural response is that there is no ISO code. However, the request has a detailed rationale, which deserves a detailed reply. "Hindustani" is a common name for Urdu and Hindi, which are similar, but have separate written traditions. The rationale in the request says that the current Urdu and Hindi Wikipedias are written in a high register that is hard for many people to understand. This problem may be real, and I heard similar things from some other people, but that should be resolved within those two communities and not by creating a new wiki, which may make things even more complicated.
== Ho == Request: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Ho Code: hoc My take: Eligible.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore