On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 9:52 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
The issue is that grc developped over time and consequently what standard should be followed?
Gerard, allowing Wikipedias in (non-Esperanto scale) constructed languages immediately triggers the fact that there are much more people capable to communicate in Ancient Greek than in any constructed language.
If you are worried about the lexicon, contemporary users Ancient Greek could do the same as Ancient Greeks: to borrow a word from Latin, which is a living language; or they could simply make a Modern Greek word to look like an Ancient Greek one.
I mean, if we are approving projects just because they are elaborate intellectual games, there is no difference if it's about a constructed or a classical language. OK, it would be hard to invent modern vocabulary in Sumerian, but Ancient Greek is not at all that hard (while Ottoman Turkish and Classical Chinese have concepts of train, steel, steam engine, electricity...); and possibly even easier than in a constructed language.
I am all for lowering the criteria, but that should be systematic. If our criteria is "usefulness", Ancient Greek would easily pass (the most of bigger universities in the world have course in Ancient Greek). If our criteria is "any language with ISO 639-3 code", Sumerian passes, as well. And keep in mind that LFN is in between, as it's definitely less useful than Ancient Greek, but we could say that it is "useful enough".
A note for Jan: Latin is a living language, while Anglo-Saxon and Old Church Slavonic, for example, have been created before Language committee and, according to the present rules, they wouldn't be allowed.