Dear all,
I'm pleased to announce that the efforts of Wikimedia Armenia to get separate ISO 639-3 language code for Western Armenian [1] were finally succeeded. SIL International, the ISO 639-3 Registration Authority, decided to create the code element [hyw] for Western Armenian. [2]
We initiated this process three years ago when we started the collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation [3] in order to foster and improve free content in Western Armenian. This resulted in "Western Armenian project" where Wikimedia Armenia through different events and activities started to disseminate and support the creation of Western Armenian content with the help of local and diasporan Western Armenian community members.
From the launch of the "Western Armenian project" we were challenged with
the problem that Western Armenian has no ISO 639-3 language code which did not allow the community to split Western Armenian content into a separate language Wikipedia. This problem made lots of trouble for us, as hy.wiki often had two versions of the same page.
Wikimedia Armenia with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation eventually decided to apply for code split. [4] This was done mainly with the help of Michael Everson. [5] Besides WM AM and Armenian Communities Department of Calouste Gulbenkian foundation there were also other parties involved, such as the department of Armenian Studies of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris and other academic institutions.
Today is a special day for Wikimedia Armenia and Western Armenian speaking community as our proposal was accepted. Thanks all Wikimedians who supported us in this work.
Best, Davit Saroyan Program Manager Wikimedia Armenia
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Armenian 2. http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/PastComments/CR_Comments_2017-023.pd... 3. https://gulbenkian.pt/en/ 4. http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/2017-023.pdf 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Everson