As Ido says, Amir might be very right on his skepticism. There are some big challenges, surmountable for sure, but they should be taken into account:
1) Finding the right people: this can prove to be a difficult if not impossible task. Here we are assuming that inside each language community there might be a few people committed enough to dedicate themselves to record their own language, and perhaps rich enough to do it on a volunteer basis (here by "rich" I mean "with enough free time and resources"). It might be true in some affluent societies, but it cannot expected to be the norm.
2) Technology: then again, in order to empower certain individuals, they need to have some tech knowledge already. Or spend a lot of effort creating simple workflows... which sometimes takes more effort than the task you want to simplify.
3) and finally you need a common language to communicate with them and transfer the know-how, which might not necessarily be English...
I think it is kind of naive to offer the same kind of tools to each language-society and expect the same results... Wikisource is perfect for languages with an existing written record and a society that has reached a certain development level.... this is of course a nice tool that hasn't reached its full potential yet, but it cannot be used for *every* case.
Things that can work: a) reach out to the linguists and invite them to share their field notes/research data/other on commons/wiktionary/wikisource b) downsize the tech tools: If a language has only oral tradition, then maybe it is better to provide devices that can record audio (easy to operate) instead of teaching how to use a computer (difficult). Or request to the NSA all their recorded phone conversations... c) adopt a 2001's monolith strategy: they are silent, patient, and when they notice a spark, they catalyze the reaction. Aim for long time spans.
With all this I don't mean that nothing should be done, but that it should be identified realistically what can be done now, identify which signs to look for that could trigger an intervention, and how could it all help future efforts. For instance, every spoken word recorded now could be automatically transcribed in 50 years by an automated system. Same for written records. Or when the number of internet users in a particular language reaches a certain number that could trigger an event to facilitate community building.
In any case I appreciate your efforts in bringing this topic into the limelight.
Cheers, Micru
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 6:37 PM, ido ivri idoivri@gmail.com wrote:
I second what Amir is saying, although I understand the heartbreak.
Ido
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Today's Topics:
- Re: How Wikimedia could help languages to survive (Andrea Zanni)
- Re: How Wikimedia could help languages to survive (Chris Keating)
- Re: How Wikimedia could help languages to survive (Amir E. Aharoni)
- Re: How Wikimedia could help languages to survive (Milos Rancic)
- Re: How Wikimedia could help languages to survive (Amir E. Aharoni)
- Re: How Wikimedia could help languages to survive (Milos Rancic)
- Re: How Wikimedia could help languages to survive (Milos Rancic)
Message: 1 Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:18:53 +0200 From: Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive Message-ID: <CAC=VxyZAz5t13GKr9P8zFtNztQOiMwgJo+_-eECzZ-g3w= eGQw@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
[snip]
For the things we could do, I quote form other people:
- encourage Wikisource, Commons, Wiktionary as primary projects for
new/endangered languages. You could scan books or documents if the language is written, or record audio/interviews and put that on Commons if t the language is just oral.
or
we could do both.
- we can work on a "kickstart Wikisource" workflow, we are alreading
discussing this on the Wikisource mailing list (Ganesh and other Nepalese folks are interested in developing a Nepalese Wikisource).
- we can work on https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Wiktionary and
try
to takle the huge challenge of a real semantic wiktionary using Wikidata. That's a tough one, but i can't wait it to happen.
All these 3 points are mid-term and reachable. as others said, they are just tools, and for preserving a language, not make it survive.
Aubrey
(sorry for poor english, just before coffee)
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
This is not quite correct. It's very hard, but possible. But Wikimedia alone cannot do it. Wikimedia can be one of the tools that are used by
the
cultural elite, which Milos brought up. Each of these languages needs people like [[Pompeu Fabra]] and [[Vuk Stefanović Karadžić]] and, dare
I
say, [[Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]]. That's the sine qua non. Wikimedia is
just a
tool - a very important one, but not the main one.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-04-22 14:20 GMT+03:00 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de:
Hello Milos,
welcome back.
Basically I agree with your attitude, with one difference:
I don't think that anyone can help languages survive. What we can do,
is
to help conserve them.
Greetings Ting
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Message: 2 Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:25:54 +0100 From: Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive Message-ID: <CAFche1o5L12Qvr30cPJaCp7O47iVMF2ema6YZn=JX72W= VEgkg@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
I'd certainly take quite a broad view of which languages fulfill our mission. Certainly I wouldn't be comfortable with arguments as simple as "All people who speak Y also read X, so there's no purpose putting resources into Y".
Wikimedia UK does little work with Gaelic, but quite a bit with Welsh; I wonder if Robin Owain reads this list? He's a good person to speak to
about
this.
Chris
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
This is not quite correct. It's very hard, but possible. But Wikimedia alone cannot do it. Wikimedia can be one of the tools that are used by
the
cultural elite, which Milos brought up. Each of these languages needs people like [[Pompeu Fabra]] and [[Vuk Stefanović Karadžić]] and, dare
I
say, [[Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]]. That's the sine qua non. Wikimedia is
just a
tool - a very important one, but not the main one.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-04-22 14:20 GMT+03:00 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de:
Hello Milos,
welcome back.
Basically I agree with your attitude, with one difference:
I don't think that anyone can help languages survive. What we can do,
is
to help conserve them.
Greetings Ting
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Message: 3 Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:37:40 +0300 From: "Amir E. Aharoni" amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive Message-ID: <CACtNa8uNg= 1hRB8kj3LPfmbRuj139OUtP+o-wyHZ9EfM9Z1LsQ@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
I cannot cite anything, but there should be studies that show that even though most people are "bilingual" or reported as "bilingual" in their regional language and another major language, they are more comfortable
in
getting education in their regional language. I'm pretty sure that there are such cases, and they should be given priority. Projects that are focused on language revitalization per se should be given less priority when resources are limited, even though it breaks my heart to say this.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-04-22 15:25 GMT+03:00 Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com:
I'd certainly take quite a broad view of which languages fulfill our mission. Certainly I wouldn't be comfortable with arguments as simple
as
"All people who speak Y also read X, so there's no purpose putting resources into Y".
Wikimedia UK does little work with Gaelic, but quite a bit with Welsh;
I
wonder if Robin Owain reads this list? He's a good person to speak to
about
this.
Chris
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
This is not quite correct. It's very hard, but possible. But
Wikimedia
alone cannot do it. Wikimedia can be one of the tools that are used
by
the
cultural elite, which Milos brought up. Each of these languages needs people like [[Pompeu Fabra]] and [[Vuk Stefanović Karadžić]] and,
dare
I
say, [[Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]]. That's the sine qua non. Wikimedia is
just a
tool - a very important one, but not the main one.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-04-22 14:20 GMT+03:00 Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de:
Hello Milos,
welcome back.
Basically I agree with your attitude, with one difference:
I don't think that anyone can help languages survive. What we can
do,
is
to help conserve them.
Greetings Ting
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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?subject=unsubscribe>
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Message: 4 Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:43:56 +0200 From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive Message-ID: <CAHPiQ2FmWff_QDwew9SpW= T0nxR+eZehJZbSVeqPZ0Aa9_e46Q@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
This is not quite correct. It's very hard, but possible. But Wikimedia alone cannot do it. Wikimedia can be one of the tools that are used by
the
cultural elite, which Milos brought up. Each of these languages needs people like [[Pompeu Fabra]] and [[Vuk Stefanović Karadžić]] and, dare
I
say, [[Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]]. That's the sine qua non. Wikimedia is
just a
tool - a very important one, but not the main one.
In the case of Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, there is a not widely known fact that he was actually hard worker willing to listen others. He was a villager from Serbia, sent to Austria and Germany to learn how to help his people.
In relation to gathering spoken folk tradition, he was listening brothers Grimm.
But, more importantly, the ideology and actually the final form of the modern Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, as well as Vuk's logistics in Vienna were the product of a Slovene [[Jernej Kopitar]].
In our case, we need to find those hard workers all over the small ethno-linguistic communities, explain what they should do for themselves and give them logistics. That, of course, *if* they are willing to that part of job for their communities and *if* they want to build their knowledge in the form of Wikimedia projects.
BTW, I know that what I said above sounds enlightenmentish, with all of the traps of that way of thinking. However, it's not about how they should live. It's about how they could adopt our technology *if* they want.
Message: 5 Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:49:28 +0300 From: "Amir E. Aharoni" amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive Message-ID: < CACtNa8t_1j4H18_pg3Dq3ewDnWiAEEsZX1d+JNtN3y449vcNFw@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
With this I agree. If this depended on me, I'd give this resources.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-04-22 15:43 GMT+03:00 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
This is not quite correct. It's very hard, but possible. But
Wikimedia
alone cannot do it. Wikimedia can be one of the tools that are used
by
the
cultural elite, which Milos brought up. Each of these languages needs people like [[Pompeu Fabra]] and [[Vuk Stefanović Karadžić]] and,
dare
I
say, [[Eliezer Ben-Yehuda]]. That's the sine qua non. Wikimedia is
just a
tool - a very important one, but not the main one.
In the case of Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, there is a not widely known fact that he was actually hard worker willing to listen others. He was a villager from Serbia, sent to Austria and Germany to learn how to help his people.
In relation to gathering spoken folk tradition, he was listening
brothers
Grimm.
But, more importantly, the ideology and actually the final form of the modern Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, as well as Vuk's logistics in Vienna were the product of a Slovene [[Jernej Kopitar]].
In our case, we need to find those hard workers all over the small ethno-linguistic communities, explain what they should do for themselves and give them logistics. That, of course, *if* they are willing to that part of job for their communities and *if* they want to build their knowledge in the form of Wikimedia projects.
BTW, I know that what I said above sounds enlightenmentish, with all of the traps of that way of thinking. However, it's not about how they should live. It's about how they could adopt our technology *if* they want.
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Message: 6 Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:54:31 +0200 From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive Message-ID: < CAHPiQ2GDW7QjD6LyTYSVNCTGjZnwSdRHqCJO55A2Y5_mfyHdZA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Projects that are focused on language revitalization per se should be given less priority when resources are limited, even though it breaks my heart to say this.
I don't think that we are dealing here with limited resources. After we show what we are doing and how successful we are (assuming that we'll be successful, of course :D ), I am sure that funds won't be limited just on WMF's budget.
However, we are dealing with limited resources at the beginning and, basically, not seen scale of the job, with a lot of potential issues. I don't think that we'll come into the stable phase in less than five years of work. And it's true that this is enough time to see negative changes in some of the languages.
Message: 7 Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:09:52 +0200 From: Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive Message-ID: <CAHPiQ2FOU4CQ1=_+nE22aWoz= Py4oFp1sndc1uFPGovDeFbfWw@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 2:25 PM, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Wikimedia UK does little work with Gaelic, but quite a bit with Welsh;
I
wonder if Robin Owain reads this list? He's a good person to speak to
about
this.
I mentioned Scots Gaelic with a good reason. Not counting languages with so small number of speakers, that statistics for them are not relevant and not counting Sanskrit, known to a lot of linguists, gd.wikipedia.org is Wikipedia with the highest relative number of active editors.
That means that it's the best starting point to raise that number from 157 per million to ~1000 per million. If WM UK would be successful in achieving that goal, we'd know that it's possible. And we'll have some ideas how to do that.
[1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm
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-- -Ido
"There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't." (unknown) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe