I remember the recent discussion about communication with a Polish lady ... that is quite similar for me as Japanese with Classical Chinese.
Since we at Japan consider it part of our literature heritage, we spare hours to learn it for years compulsory. I can read somehow Classical Chinese, even better than modern one, besides I am not familiar much with simplified characters and my skills in writing was not as super as Meiji era people who could freely compose poems and prose in Classical Chinese. And I sometimes used this knowledge to communicate with Chinese whose language is of curse modern one (by writing down of course).
I am not familiar with the current zh-classic community, but if it is live, we have no reason to shut it down as well as we now keep Latin Wikipedia alive.
On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 5:59 PM, Ting Chen wing.philopp@gmx.de wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
Ting Chen wrote:
Hi folks,
since its creation I wondered why this happend. Why is there a classical chinese Wikipedia? This language has no native speakers and is not used by any relitious or official institution as official language.
Because at the time it was created, we had not yet given GerardM and his team of rules lawyers the power to decide all wiki creation issues. There was a sentiment that we as a community should make our own decisions on language issues, rather than to delegate it to some standards body who might not have similar interests at heart. And some people held the opinion that while language study and preservation is not our core mission, it'd be nice if it happened anyway, especially if there is no significant cost to the organisation.
-- Tim Starling
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I totally agree with you on the issue of language conservation. Actually I had even thought about the possibility to use our wiki to do such things. I had read quite some articles for example on Scientific American about the problems of language conservation that the researchers are facing. And I think that wiki can be a technical way for them.
But the classic chinese is another case. Classic chinese is a dead language, and to write about the modern Olympic games with such a language is simply original research. It has nothing to do with language conservation.
Ting
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