On 30 September 2011 11:31, iain.macdonald@wikinewsie.org wrote:
There's a lot of discussion about Scots.... But what of Scottish Gaelic? That's a very distinct language and of real benefit to those who still speak it - though that number is diminishing.
Indeed. Part of the issue there is that the number is diminishing so much that there aren't enough speakers left to really produce a good encyclopaedia (there's something like 60,000 global speakers). The problem is even more apparent when you realise that what speakers there are tend to be a lot older than our core contributing demographic.
I'd be inclined to say that Scots isn't really a separate language and Scottish Gaelic is too small to ever be a successful project, so we shouldn't really worry about either. If there are speakers of either language that want to do something, the chapter can support them through microgrants. I wouldn't advise a proactive approach by the chapter.
The main argument is that there is essentially no-one that speaks Scots or Scottish Gaelic that doesn't also speak fluent English. That means our efforts will have significantly more impact if we concentrate on English. (Welsh is substantially larger, so it might be worth reaching out to the Welsh community, even though they all speak English too.)
Welsh people don't all speak English: I used to work with people from north Wales who couldn't speak a word of it. They /only/ spoke Welsh. Unusual, perhaps, but it happens.
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Dalton Sent: 30 September 2011 13:05 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A little wiki "hacking"
On 30 September 2011 11:31, iain.macdonald@wikinewsie.org wrote:
There's a lot of discussion about Scots.... But what of Scottish Gaelic? That's a very distinct language and of real benefit to those who still
speak
it - though that number is diminishing.
Indeed. Part of the issue there is that the number is diminishing so much that there aren't enough speakers left to really produce a good encyclopaedia (there's something like 60,000 global speakers). The problem is even more apparent when you realise that what speakers there are tend to be a lot older than our core contributing demographic.
I'd be inclined to say that Scots isn't really a separate language and Scottish Gaelic is too small to ever be a successful project, so we shouldn't really worry about either. If there are speakers of either language that want to do something, the chapter can support them through microgrants. I wouldn't advise a proactive approach by the chapter.
The main argument is that there is essentially no-one that speaks Scots or Scottish Gaelic that doesn't also speak fluent English. That means our efforts will have significantly more impact if we concentrate on English. (Welsh is substantially larger, so it might be worth reaching out to the Welsh community, even though they all speak English too.)
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On 30 September 2011 13:07, Richard Symonds chasemewiki@gmail.com wrote:
Welsh people don't all speak English: I used to work with people from north Wales who couldn't speak a word of it. They /only/ spoke Welsh. Unusual, perhaps, but it happens.
Our article says: "[M]onoglot Welsh speakers are now virtually non-existent, except among mother tongue speakers below school age as well as small numbers of elderly people in traditional Welsh speaking regions. Almost without exception, Welsh speakers in Wales also speak English[.]" (although there is a citation needed tag in there)
So I think it is sufficiently unusual that we don't need to worry too much about it.
On 30 September 2011 13:04, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. Part of the issue there is that the number is diminishing so much that there aren't enough speakers left to really produce a good encyclopaedia (there's something like 60,000 global speakers). The problem is even more apparent when you realise that what speakers there are tend to be a lot older than our core contributing demographic.
The whole point is that encouraging minority language wikipedias helps revitalise the language. These wikipedias will never compete with enwp for completeness, but you only need a handful of good wikipedians who are fluent in the language to be able to produce a reasonable number of good quality articles, which can have a beneficial impact on increasing language acquisition amongst the young, which in turn will tend to increase the number of contributors in that language as time goes on.
Andrew [[User:BabelStone]]
It also gives us the benefit of government support for those languages - as with, for example, the Catalan Wikipedia, which is encouraged rather a lot by the regional government. I wouldn't be surprised if the Welsh Wikipedia was the largest general reference work ever written in that language.
-----Original Message----- From: wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediauk-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew West Sent: 30 September 2011 13:20 To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] A little wiki "hacking"
On 30 September 2011 13:04, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. Part of the issue there is that the number is diminishing so much that there aren't enough speakers left to really produce a good encyclopaedia (there's something like 60,000 global speakers). The problem is even more apparent when you realise that what speakers there are tend to be a lot older than our core contributing demographic.
The whole point is that encouraging minority language wikipedias helps revitalise the language. These wikipedias will never compete with enwp for completeness, but you only need a handful of good wikipedians who are fluent in the language to be able to produce a reasonable number of good quality articles, which can have a beneficial impact on increasing language acquisition amongst the young, which in turn will tend to increase the number of contributors in that language as time goes on.
Andrew [[User:BabelStone]]
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On 30 September 2011 13:26, Richard Symonds chasemewiki@gmail.com wrote:
It also gives us the benefit of government support for those languages - as with, for example, the Catalan Wikipedia, which is encouraged rather a lot by the regional government. I wouldn't be surprised if the Welsh Wikipedia was the largest general reference work ever written in that language.
True. There are definitely grants available for projects benefiting the Welsh language, and those are probably among the easiest grants for us to get. The rest of our work can then benefit from the economies of scale you get by doing more stuff. I'm not sure we would be able to get similar grants for Scots or Scottish Gaelic (there probably are grants from Gaelic, but not anywhere near as many as for Welsh).
It is certainly the case that there is (European) money around these languages, indeed I have been trying to get the content of the European funded dictionaries released CC-By-...
It is important to remember, though, as Thomas pointed out (and was pointed out by members of both Lang Com and WMF staff at Wikimania) that the aims of language revitalisers (or saviours), while closely allied with ours, are not identical.
Interesting stat of the day: The second most visited Wikipedia in the UK is Polish. http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBr...
The non-English 'local' languages don't even register in that breakdown, being less than 0.1% of pageviews. Of course this could be taken two ways: * We shouldn't spend too much time on them if they're of such minority interest * We need to spend time promoting them better, and making them viable projects
Pete / the wub
On 30 September 2011 18:05, Richard Farmbrough richard@farmbrough.co.uk wrote:
It is certainly the case that there is (European) money around these languages, indeed I have been trying to get the content of the European funded dictionaries released CC-By-...
It is important to remember, though, as Thomas pointed out (and was pointed out by members of both Lang Com and WMF staff at Wikimania) that the aims of language revitalisers (or saviours), while closely allied with ours, are not identical.
Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
On 30 September 2011 13:19, Andrew West andrewcwest@gmail.com wrote:
The whole point is that encouraging minority language wikipedias helps revitalise the language.
Revitalising languages isn't what we're here to do, though. We're here to provide free and open content/knowledge. Ideally, we do that in the user's own language, but only because that's the most use to the user not because we're trying to promote the language.
On 30 Sep 2011, at 13:19, Andrew West wrote:
On 30 September 2011 13:04, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Indeed. Part of the issue there is that the number is diminishing so much that there aren't enough speakers left to really produce a good encyclopaedia (there's something like 60,000 global speakers). The problem is even more apparent when you realise that what speakers there are tend to be a lot older than our core contributing demographic.
The whole point is that encouraging minority language wikipedias helps revitalise the language. These wikipedias will never compete with enwp for completeness, but you only need a handful of good wikipedians who are fluent in the language to be able to produce a reasonable number of good quality articles, which can have a beneficial impact on increasing language acquisition amongst the young, which in turn will tend to increase the number of contributors in that language as time goes on.
I have to admit (from a completely personal viewpoint) that this sounds like a reason _not_ to support minority language Wikipedias. I personally much prefer the trend towards more people speaking a single language, or set of main languages, rather than encouraging more small niches of people speaking their own language. The former makes it a lot easier to communicate with more people on a global basis and hence gain more knowledge, whereas the latter does the complete opposite.
For me, the key points are increasing the availability of knowledge for those that only understand that language; increasing the body of knowledge that's shared between multiple languages to make it easier to learn a more common language; and to preserve information & culture specific to that language (which, of course, would ideally also be translated to other languages).
Mike
On 30 September 2011 13:04, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com
wrote:
Indeed. Part of the issue there is that the number is diminishing so much that there aren't enough speakers left to really produce a good encyclopaedia (there's something like 60,000 global speakers)....
The whole point is that encouraging minority language wikipedias helps revitalise the language.
I have to admit (from a completely personal viewpoint) that this sounds like a reason _not_ to support minority language Wikipedias. I personally much prefer the trend towards more people speaking a single language, or set of main languages, rather than encouraging more small niches of people speaking their own language.
I'd tend towards the opposite viewpoint; personally I think contributions in particularly rare languages are particularly valuable, and that linguistic (and hence cultural) diversity is important in stopping the whole world ending up dull, identical and boring.
But thinking about what Wikimedia UK ought to do, rather than the more abstract point, I would argue that since we represent the whole UK, we ought to at least aspire to doing work in all the languages spoken in the UK.
Chris
On Monday, October 3, 2011, Michael Peel wrote:
I have to admit (from a completely personal viewpoint) that this sounds like a reason _not_ to support minority language Wikipedias. I personally much prefer the trend towards more people speaking a single language, or set of main languages, rather than encouraging more small niches of people speaking their own language. The former makes it a lot easier to communicate with more people on a global basis and hence gain more knowledge, whereas the latter does the complete opposite.
For me, the key points are increasing the availability of knowledge for those that only understand that language; increasing the body of knowledge that's shared between multiple languages to make it easier to learn a more common language; and to preserve information & culture specific to that language (which, of course, would ideally also be translated to other languages).
The issue becomes slightly more philosophical: languages *are* a form of knowledge though. A simple argument: if I know how to express the statement "Snow is white" in English, I know one thing. If I know how to say it in German, I know two things. In either state though, when I use it, I'm still expressing only one fact about the world.
Expressing the facts is a matter of primary importance: it is important to the misson of sharing the sum of all human knowledge that we tell people whether snow is white, but we should also be sharing the more implicit, linguistic knowledge.
Basically: language is a component part of the "sum of all human knowledge", not just a means of expressing that knowledge.
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