I'll try to answer the questions asked by Steven and MF-Warburg:
What I would hate to see is that we approve a project
and then become a
laughing stock because it turns out to be an unserious thing in
one way or
another.
I don't think it's an unserious thing, and you surely don't have to worry
that the language isn't real. It's as real as its grammar, its dictionary
and all the texts written in it. Kotava doesn't claim to be some
undiscovered natural language, so you can't call it a hoax either — unlike
Siberian, which was a real language with an extensive dictionary and quite
a few texts in it, too, yet the Siberian Wikipedia was deleted after the
language turned out not to be what it claimed to be. The Klingon Wikipedia
was deleted, as far as I can tell, because the language simply was too
incomplete for a workable encyclopaedia. In the case of Kotava, neither of
these problems are likely to arise.
The only thing that is not verifiably true is that Kotava is indeed a
serious proposal for an international auxiliary language. The fact that it
claimed 40 speakers right after its first publication on the Internet, this
in spite of a total lack of publicity, could indicate that it is rather a
hobby project of a dedicated group of friends (not that this would
necessarily disqualify it, mind).
Is there some proof here of any of:
"independently proved number of
speakers, use as an auxiliary language outside
of online communities
created solely for the purpose, usage outside of Wikimedia, publication of
works in the language for general sale", as suggested by the admirable
Language Proposal Policy?
Numbers of speakers are always trouble when it comes to constructed
languages. The only figures we can establish objectively are the number of
members of a mailing list, a forum, a Facebook group, etc. We can dig a bit
deeper and establish how many people in these groups are really active
users of the language, but that's it.
Kotava has a Facebook group with currently 67 members, but with little
activity. Compared to other constructed languages, that is an extremely
small number. For example, the Esperanto group has 21628 members,
Interslavic 7788 members, Toki Pona 4146, Klingon 2155, Interlingua 1641,
Lojban 1641, Lingua Franca Nova 550, Volapük 401, Ithkuil 353, Slovio 286,
Folkspraak 260, Interlingue 215, and Novial 92). Obviously, not every
member is a speaker and not every speaker is a member. Based on my own
experience and research, I'd say that in general no more than 5–10% of
these members can be considered regular, proficient users and another
10–20% are beginners and interested bystanders.
Kotava also has a forum (
http://www.kotava.org/phpBB3/index.php) with 194
members and 7260 messages. Although the vast majority of all communication
is in French, there is also a reasonable amount in Kotava. It is hard to
tell how many people actually write in it, but I'd say at least ten.
However, there has been remarkably little activitity on that forum these
days (only 8 short messages in 2019), which makes me wonder if this
language is actually used for anything else but making massive amounts of
translations.
Perhaps I am being over-suspicious here, but the simple truth is that
auxlang proponents have a vested interest in exaggerating its significance.
Let me just remind you of Slovio, which claimed to have thousands and
thousands of speakers, but in reality has never been used by more than
10–15 people. The author tried to build the impression of a whole user
community by writing under dozens of different names, but as soon as he
abandoned the project, all activity died out instantly. While I don't
believe Kotava is a similar case, we can't know it for sure.
"Kotava indeed has an impressive text
corpus." Is there a convenient list
somewhere?
Mainly here:
http://www.europalingua.eu/wikikrenteem/?title=Emudexo
I would suggest you consider looking at
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotava. It also has sourcing problems, to be
sure. But this conlang, unlike many, comes out of the francophone world. So
I'm not sure the lack of awareness in the anglophone world is the most
appropriate measure of the language.
That argument would be valid if we'd try to establish notability by
googling for "Kotava language" or somesuch, but in the case of Kotava,
there is no need for that at all. What I do notice, however, is that Kotava
generates practically no results in news items, books and scholarly
publications in any language, French included. All we have is three
publications by Alan Reed Libert, none of which discusses Kotava in depth;
two sentences in Turenne; and one mere sentence in a Brazilian magazine.
These are exactly the same sources that we already had six years ago, in
other words: even the fact that Kotava has had an ISO 639-3 code for over
ten years now does not seem to have made it any more notable than it
already was. Numerous books and articles about constructed languages that
have been published in the meantime do not even mention it. Even Google
gives very few hits, and most of those refer to a surname or a Belarussian
village).
Besides, the French Wikipedia article is by no means better than the
English article. It's 100% based on primary sources and all information
basically comes from one single website. In other words, original research.
That's the biggest problem with Kotava: the amount of information that can
be verified in independent, reliable sources is totally insufficient to
base a decent article on.
One thing that makes me kind of suspicious is the discrepancy between the
rather bold claims made by Kotava supporters and this total lack of
verifiable evidence. If Kotava really has 40 fluent speakers (BTW, the same
figure as 12 years ago), 200–300 less advanced speakers and 1000–2000
people who started learning it at some point, how on Earth is it possible
that (except for the above) not a single authority in the field, not even
some local newspaper, has paid attention to it? Mind, these numbers are
exceptionally high for a constructed language! Since the language
apparently has managed to fly under the radar for over 40 years, I'd really
like to know where all these people come from, and why they are totally
invisible.
Questions like this are answered with defensive answers. Like this one: we
are not interested in promulgating our language, we prefer to use it
instead. A strange argument, since promulgation is essential for an
International Auxiliary Language to function as such, and not true either,
given the promotional nature of the original Wikipedia entries about Kotava
and the behaviour of their author(s) in deletion discussions. Or this one:
we are often neglected, because we are opposed to the supremacy of English
(also strange, considering that 90% of all internal discussion is in
French). Thus, the whole plea for notability is solely based on a large
text corpus, a successful request for an ISO 639-3 code (which surely would
have failed if it had been made a few years later) and complaints at the
address of Wikipedia censors, jealous Esperantists and English
supremacists.
Furthermore, what exactly do they NEED a Wikipedia for? Since Kotava is an
a priori language, content in it is of no use to anyone outside its own
small incrowd of two or three dozens of people, in other words: the same
people who write it. This group already has a well-functioning
infrastructure, including a Wikipedia clone and a Wiktionary clone, so
what's the point of duplicating all this info? An additional Wikipedia
project cannot serve any other purpose than promoting the language, which
(as demonstrated by the examples of Lojban, Novial and Volapük) is not
going to happen anyway.
The basic question is, therefore: should a language that doesn't fulfil the
basic criteria of notability and verifiability on Wikipedia.en nevertheless
be allowed to have its own Wikipedia?
I'm not saying it shouldn't. The language is certainly interesting, and I
truly admire all the work done by those who generate content in Kotava. As
I wrote earlier, the main criterion for establishing a new Wikipedia
project should IMO be viability, and a Kotava Wikipedia is definitely
viable. But one thing remains: merely writing/translating lots of text in a
conlang does not make it notable.
Best regards
Jan van Steenbergen
Op di 12 nov. 2019 om 17:48 schreef Steven White <koala19890(a)hotmail.com>om>:
> I highly doubt this would become a laughing stock. This project is
> actually one of the best, highest-quality, most serious projects I have
> seen in my three years (short two weeks) as a sysop on Incubator. That
> doesn't make your questions any less valid; I only share my perspective
> that this is a serious effort worthy of consideration.
>
> - Just now looking at Catanalysis, I see six contributors with at
> least 500 edits, four more with at least 100, and four more with at least
> 50. So this is not a project of only 3–5 people.
> - There are close to 5,000 mainspace pages. Very few are redirects.
> Many are short, but even those have good bibliographies, which is better
> than a lot of our projects do.
>
> I would mention two points about Jan's 27 September email to the list:
>
> - "Kotava indeed has an impressive text corpus." Is there a convenient
> list somewhere?
> - I would suggest you consider looking at
>
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotava. It also has sourcing problems,
> to be sure. But this conlang, unlike many, comes out of the francophone
> world. So I'm not sure the lack of awareness in the anglophone world is the
> most appropriate measure of the language.
>
> Steven
>
> Sent from Outlook <http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Langcom <langcom-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of
> MF-Warburg <mfwarburg(a)googlemail.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 12, 2019 11:21 AM
> *To:* Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> >
> *Subject:* Re: [Langcom] Kotava Wikipedia
>
> I somewhat share the concerns mentioned by Amir and Jan van Steenbergen.
What I would hate to see is that we approve a project
and then become a
> laughing stock because it turns out to be an unserious thing
in one way or
> another.
>
Is there some proof here of any of:
"independently proved number of
> speakers, use as an auxiliary language
outside of online communities
> created solely for the purpose, usage outside of Wikimedia, publication of
> works in the language for general sale", as suggested by the admirable
> Language Proposal Policy?
>
>
>
>
> Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby(a)gmail.com> schrieb am Di., 5. Nov. 2019, 13:12:
>
> Any other comments other than Michael's repeated approvals? ;-)
>
> If not, we can move forward on this, but I'd like to hear the thoughts of
> at least a couple more committee members.
>
> tir. 1. okt. 2019 kl. 15:28 skrev Michael Everson <everson(a)evertype.com>om>:
>
> There seems to be something wrong with my mail server.
>
> > On 30 Sep 2019, at 20:33, MF-Warburg <mfwarburg(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Michael, are you ok?
> >
> > Michael Everson <everson(a)evertype.com> schrieb am Mo., 30. Sep. 2019,
> 21:24:
> > I support approval.
> >
> > > On 26 Sep 2019, at 22:47, Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Kotava Wikipedia. Kotava is a
> conlang created in 1978, mainly known in French-speaking countries
> (according to the English Wikipedia). They have a very active test wiki in
> Incubator, with more than 3,000 articles, which makes it bigger than the
> Novial Wikipedia (which we approved in 2008) and about the same size as the
> Lingua Franca Nova (LFN) Wikipedia (which we approved in 2017). There are
> several active users, and sustained activity for many months.
> > >
> > > Does anyone have reasons for why we should not approve this project?
> > >
> > > --
> > > mvh
> > > Jon Harald Søby
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
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