But why only "officially"? For many languages, either endangering or newly revitalizing, official use are the least likely ground they would survive. Like gow long it took for Hebrew revitalization movement to gain ground from.being an ancient language to being an official language somewhere? Languages like Classical Chinese is generally considered ancient language, as people generally do not write in such language anymore in their nornal daily life. It's a literary language, not a spoken language, so no one speak it. But still, it's an language still commonly taught across and beyond Greater China area, and people do use the language to create new content, for instance a number of recent years' "Best Chinese essay writing from China's National university entry exam", was written in Classical Chinese, reflecting the language's continued usage, including usage for content creation, despite being seen as a historical language. Indeed, it's unavoidable that words from.old languages in their original meaning might not be sufficient to reflect new cobceot and thus new word are needed, but how would it be different from some living smaller languages, or even larger languages like Japanese or Chinese or English, which saw the import of foreign culture and technology throughout their history? For example, the word "wiki", is a word which existed in no language other than Hawaiian, and even in Hawaiian the word does not mean what we're now using it on this website, but does that prohibit all languages around the world, be it living or not, to simply borrow such term into their vocabulary and use them as part of the language? If let say, someone wrote a Classical Chinese sentence, 維基乃吾所欲, with 維基 being a common transliteration and WMF trademarked term for "Wiki", and 乃吾所欲 mean "is what I want", does that make the whole sentence "Wiki is what I want" not Classical Chinese simply because it included a transliteration odmf the modern word "Wiki", in the same way the word "Wiki" is being transliterated into every other languages around the world? The term Television is a term invented in English, with tele- meaning faraway, and vision meaning vision. In modern Japanese, the term is simply transliterated and shortened from English, into "Terebi". In modern Chinese, the term is translated as 電視, meaning "Electric vision". Why there need to be a formal institute using the language, instead of some general committee around the world, using a language, in.order for new concepts to be officially accepted as translated into historical languages, and cannot achieve the same among communities of.old language users, especially when such communities are usually where endangered languages would last stay and where historical languages would first revitalize?
在 2021年9月9日週四 19:01，Ilario Valdelli ivaldelli@wikimedia.ch 寫道：
Hi all
I suggest to don’t consider “Latin” an ancient language for the simple reason that is still “officially” used as “lingua franca” in some institutions like the catholic church.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/14/world/vatican-introduces-latin-to-21st-ce...
I can assure that in several catholic schools and universities *and* in the “formal” communication the *latin is written, read and spoken* (yes, spoken).
When Benedict XVI resigned, he did his announcement *only in latin*:
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/02/urgent-pope-announces-resignation-...
I think that we must consider a language “ancient” only when is *not used* in “formal” linguistic registers and doesn’t have an evolution, so it’s basically “frozen”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)
But if an institution like the catholic church continues to keep it updated to translate “new words”, is not ancient anymore.
Latin must be kept updated in order to write something like that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical and to have it as the “official language” of the legal codes of the Vatican ( https://www.vatican.va/latin/latin_codex.html).
So this discussion may not have a sense for Latin exactly because Latin users may consider it a form of “discrimination” of a minority of users 😉 while Wikiverse should be inclusive.
Kind regards
--
Ilario Valdelli
Education Program Manager and Community liaison
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371