Thanks, Amir.
I've contacted two linguists for their comments on din:wp on incubator
<https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex/Wp/din/>.
Awaiting their responses, and so long!
Oliver
On 26-Apr-17 14:37, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
Hi,
See the forwarded email from Prof. John Myhill, who is trying to set
up a Dinka Wikipedia.
Dinka is a language spoken in South Sudan. We already discussed its
language code in the past:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/langcom/2017-February/000948.html
In that thread agreed that even though there are several relevant
language codes, it's acceptable to have one Wikipedia with the
language code "din".
Like myself, Prof. Myhill happens to live in Israel, but we are
otherwise unrelated. (His work may have something to do with the fact
that quite a lot of refugees from South Sudan live in Israel, but this
is just a guess.)
The translations at
translatewiki.net <http://translatewiki.net> look
quite solid. The Most-used group, which is required for creating the
project, is complete.
My impression of the Incubator at
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/din is that it appears to have
legitimate content. It's very basic: the pages have practically no
formatting, images or links, but the text appears to be fine, and the
pages are not too short.
Technically, most of the pages were written by User:Dinkawiki (Prof.
Myhill himself); most of the anonymous edits there were probably by
him as well. In the last couple of weeks other users started uploading
articles. Prof. Myhill says that most of the pages were actually
written by other Dinka speakers (see the email below) and he only
helped them upload them. In the last few days other people started
joining the effort, although this is a recent development.
I don't know the language, and if anybody wants to verify with another
expert that this is indeed Dinka, it would be fine with me. Maybe
Oliver can help with this—in the previous thread he mentioned he knows
people who can read this language.
Other than that, I'd be flexible and support approving this.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Amir Aharoni* <aaharoni(a)wikimedia.org
<mailto:aaharoni@wikimedia.org>>
Date: 2017-04-26 15:07 GMT+03:00
Subject: Fwd: Starting a Dinka Wikipedia
To: Amir Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il
<mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>>
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: john <john(a)research.haifa.ac.il <mailto:john@research.haifa.ac.il>>
Date: ср, 19 апр. 2017 г. в 18:19
Subject: Starting a Dinka Wikipedia
To: <aaharoni(a)wikimedia.org <mailto:aaharoni@wikimedia.org>>
Dear Amir,
This is in connection to opening a Wikipedia in Dinka. We have
translated more than 100 articles and put them them in the Incubator,
and we have also translated all of the terms needed to open a
Wikipedia. Almost all of the translations were done at 5 workshops of
Akutmɛ̈t Latueŋ Thuɔŋjäŋ (the Dinka Language Development Association,
or DILDA) in Juba, South Sudan, in the last 2 and a half years. I
participated in these workshop but the translations were done by the
Dinka participants; there were about 25-30 translators at each
workshop, but the specific people involved changed somewhat from one
workshop to the next so that I would guess maybe 50 different people
participated in doing the translations. A few of the translations
(maybe 5 or 6) were done by me and other members of the Facebook group
of the same name. DILDA in Juba is a private NGO which has existed
since around 2006 with about 60 dues-paying members, all of them
Dinkas and citizens of South Sudan, and it is registered as an NGO
with the South Sudanese government; the Facebook group of the same
name has existed for about a year and has 12,800 members, the
overwhelming majority of whom do not live in South Sudan. Very few of
the people participating in the Juba workshops are in the Facebook
group (maybe 3 or 4). I uploaded all of the translations to the
Incubator myself although I did not do the translations myself,
because I have more consistent access to the internet in Israel than
do the DILDA members in South Sudan, because I wanted to regularize
the orthography according to the conventions we agreed on at the
workshops, and because I did not realize that this would create the
impression that I had done all of the translations myself.
There is some urgency to get this Wikipedia approved and on the
internet in the next week or two. Until now all of DILDA's activities
have been in Juba, because this is the effectively the only city in
South Sudan and because this is the only place where members of the
different dialect groups live together. However, May 1 to May 15 of
this year, a number of DILDA members and I will be traveling around
South Sudan to meet representatives of the state governments (there
are 10 Dinka-speaking states) to talk to them about the organization
and its work and to begin to coordinate our activities with the work
of the state governments. It has been our hope that we will be able to
show them the Dinka Wikipedia so that they will understand that our
work is serious and that the Dinka language is being developed so as
to be used in a wide variety of functions, so that it can and should
be used in more functions and not excluded from government and
education in favor of English (only a tiny majority of Dinkas can
function in English (perhaps 2% of them), while Dinka is spoken by
about 4 million people). Dinkas are in principle very supportive of
the idea of using their language for all written functions but they
are simply not aware that this is possible because they do not now
about DILDA's activities. The trip around South Sudan was planned at
this time so as to come as soon as possible after we completed the
translations of 100 articles in March and before the rains begin in
South Sudan in June and make traveling around the country effectively
impossible until next year. It is therefore very important that the
Dinka Wikipedia be approved as quickly as possible.
Thank you very much for your help and best wishes,
John Myhill
John Myhill
Professor of Linguistics
Department of English Language and Literature
University of Haifa
Mt. Carmel, Haifa, 31905
Israel
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