Hi, being in the middle of this discussion I'd like to underline some
points and tell you what came out in a private conversation with Gerard,
half joking half being serious. Sorry, probably this mail is going to be
a very long one.
I am copying this message to wiktionary and wikipedia list ...
>>For the nl:wiktionary we have over 300 sound files with pronunciations
>>of words in the Dutch language alone. They are much easier to use than
>>phonetic notations. As such it would be cool to have the standard
>>pronunciations recorded and available from Commons for all wiktionary words.
>>
>>
>
>I agree, the only phonetic notation I understand is Spanish.
>
>
Sound files are the only way to really learn to understand a foreign
language - the reason is quite simple: every region of a country
pronounces things a bit different - so we need these soundfiles and if
possible different versions of them - talking about German: take a
person from Hamburg, one from Berlin and one from Munich and have them
say the same sentence (not talking in dialect, but talking "pure
German") - you'd be surprised ...
I cut the part Gerard wrote as I'll come back to it below.
>
>
>
>Ramadan is one of those meaningful holidays, not the happy kind (like
>TV news anchors won't tell people to have a Happy Yon Kippur). There's
>probably some Arabic greeting used throughout much of the Islamic
>world, so its probably not as interesting of a project.
>
>
Why not? I think it is not only interesting, but it is a must to make
people understand that Islam is one thing and yyy is another ... in many
parts of the world people don't know anything about the Islam besides
the fact that some of them are yyy (like there are catholic, protestant
etc. etc. ones) - I am curious what you thought when you saw yyy (were
you influenced by the media as you don't know enough about it yourself?)
- I know many people that grew up with the muslim religion and they are
more or less practicing - none of them are yyy, all very fine and
helpful people, some of them real friends. Not knowing helps to create
fear and fear helps to create racism - knowledge helps to create
security - if you know about Ramadan start writing about it, start
telling people about it - make them curious - it is the only way to
globalise our world: understand the culture of each other.
>>So again, do write about channuka and ramandan in wikipedia and do add
>>relevant phrases and words in wiktionary. Inform us about the difference
>>times of the start of ramadan. About the three days of the birth of
>>Jezus. About the differences in the way a christmastree is decorated in
>>Italy compared to Germany. About the carp as a traditional dish at
>>easter in Poland. But other people do have different sensibilities and
>>do not make what you believe override everything and everyone else
>>believes and values. To me the censorship of the "Bon Natale" project
>>was a nasty surprise, to me it shows an intolerance that I had not
>>expected from the wikipedia crowd.
>>
>>There will be other projects and other moments, that will be mo
>>
>>Thanks,
>> GerardM
>>
>>
>
>People are overly sensitive on the subject. You stumbled into a
>dispute which has already occurred regarding whether to turn the
>Wikipedia ball into a Christmas ornament (as the Italian Wikipedia did
>this year). I did think it was kind of odd that my boss wished us all
>a Merry Christmas even though about a 1/4 of my co-workers are Muslim.
> But, at the same time, who cares, I'm sure they didn't.
>
>
>
Again: I agree to what Gerard says - write about your religions and
about those you know - create sentences, glossaries etc. etc. ask people
for translations and help - this helps to get attention to all -
"deleting" religion out of our lifes does not help anyone - creating
knowledge and understanding is the only way to go. Even people not
believing in anything: write about atheism, connect it to science. All
the world talks about globalisation - the only way to globalise is to
understand and accept diversity. If we try to uniform things we will
have some very unexpected results - dangerous results. We can only
accept things we understand - it is impossible to accept things we don't
understand. It is easy to create propaganda against a group of people if
hardly anyone knows details about their habits, if hardly anyone has
friends there - it is quite impossible instead to create propaganda
against a group of people you know well.
Let's take a part the political and religious points of view - everyone
has to be heard and no one may be surpressed.
Some short notes about my life: I was born in a protestant lutheran
region in Germany - when I was about 6 years old Siemens had lots of
workers coming from Turkey and I remember well their ramadam period when
everyone was waiting for dawn to start to prepare for dinner - it became
part of our life - often I was at a friend's home in the evening and
even not understanding a word of Turkish I felt at home - the same
poeple who did not believe in Christmas allowed their children to
participate when we prepared for our Christmas feast at school - often
you could also see some stars painted on the windows, just like we did.
As anywhere in Germany you find protestant and catholic people living in
the same place and we prepared things together. This was the
"globalisation" of a small village of approx. 6000 people. This kind of
"living together" is not possible in huge cities and so many different
cultures live one beneath another without knowing - really sad ... Now I
live in Italy - people in this small village hardly know any other
religion (at least up to some time ago) - better not to tell what they
considered me to be ... and how surprised some were that I have a
Christmas tree and a Crib at home ... some years ago I still worked as a
German teacher - imagine where: in a catholic grammar school - and they
wanted me to tell pupils about German protestantism as they believed
this would help pupils to find their place in life ... strange, isn't
it? To me it is not strange at all: only knowing whatever exists can
help us to find our way of life.
But back to the Christmas project: while it seems as if people thought
that the Christmas project would disturb other religions the strangest
thing of all is that many contributions came from people not believing
in Christmas ... so shouldn't we think a bit about what this means? To
me this means that those people are really tollerant - they know and
want others to know. And this takes me back to the conversation with
Gerard. Talking about the project and what came out of it there was a
point when i said: yes, really there's so much to tell about the
different usages that one could build up a Chrismaspedia ... and then
talking about religious and cultural feasts in general what came out was
"no, not a Christmaspedia, but an Eventpedia that aims on showing on
which day which feast/event is on anywhere in the world creating links
to all the relevant articles on the wikimedia projects.
I am sure there are translations, literature, proverbs, glossaries etc.
about any event of any culture and religion (don't forget to add them to
the different projects).
Wikimedia is made for people by people, the best thing of all: it is
free; culture and religion is part of all of us, understanding each
other is fundamental - it will never be possible to be neutral as even
neutrality is a very wide expression - to my opinion the only way we
have to really globalise the world is to contribute to understand each
other describing local habits, thoughts (even our own thoughts). Give
and conserve wisdom to and for people is great and all wikimedia
projects already do this - but wisdom is not all - we are humans and
like all humans we need "food for the soul" and not only for the brain.
If you, yes you, who is reading this long letter now, are from another
culture and/or religion - think about what you would like us to know and
write about it - and ask others for help to make it grow - make people
talk and more and more poeple will understand you and your culture, thus
leading to what globalisation really means: open up frontiers, live
together as peaceful as possible.
Thank you for your patience reading this long letter!
Wishing you all the best and
Seasons greetings ;-)
Ciao, Sabine
Dear Stirling Newberry:
You wrote:
>Lot's of sensible things make no sense to you Mark, so I am not surprised.
Is such an ad hominem attack really necessary/constructive?
(Please consider that a rhetorical question -- the answer should be obvious...)
-Olve Utne
___________________
Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org
First of all: thank you for all your help and contributions. As Gerard already said: the Christmas project on the Italian wiktionary had quite a lot of response - and even today I am receiving some contributions by members from other mailing lists who whould like to contribute but are worrying to mix up things if they insert contents themselves. So today is quite busy between family and adding Christmas wishes as they arrive.
Just to pass you again the list of relevant links:
Everything started with this sentence:
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_Natale_e_felice_Anno_Nuovo%21
As for the Christmas wishes: we still would like to be sure about the spelling, need writings in proper alphabets (as for example for Arabic), and of course we need the recordings !!!!! If you don't want to upload them or if you have problems in creating .ogg-files - just send them to me and I'll convert and upload them (this would really be a great Christmas present!)
Than out of this a Terminology-category was created:
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categoria:Terminologia_natalizia
And the next step (just started) is linking all projects
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikizionario:Buon_Natale
I am inserting all links I find and know here - there are quite many others around - maybe you could help with links to wikisource in your language, wikipedia, wikiquote etc.
Please don't forget about the photos you take - they might be somewhat normal for you, but very interesting to many people - just to see how Christmas is alike in many countries - upload them to commons and please, let me know about this - I'll create a special "Christmas around the World" ... really this would be a theme for a complete wiki ... the Christmasedia ;-)
Christmas is a wonderful period - may it be that it is considered from a religious point of view, may it be seen as a "feast of friendship" or may it be seen as an occasion full of wonderful traditions ... have a great Christmas period and see you soon on it.wiktionary!
Again: Buon Natale e felice Anno Nuovo!!!!!
Sabine
--
Sabine Cretella
s.cretella(a)wordsandmore.it
Phone: +39-340-1809828
Skype: callto://sabinecretella
Meetingplace for translators
www.wesolveitnet.com
Hoi,
A merry Christmas from Almere in the Netherlands :).
On the Italian wiktionary we have a project to collect as many
translations and soundfiles as possible for the phrase "Buon Natale e
felice Anno Nuovo!" or "Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!". We have
already many translations but many are sadly missing. For this project I
have had people originally from Armenia and Iran at home to add their
contributions. I had twice a nice evening drinking tea :) and talking
about languages and culture. Christmas in Armenia for instance is on the
6th of Januari not on the 7th or the 25th of December :) this results in
the phrase needing to be turned around; Happy New Year and a Merry
Christmas.
The project aims to promote Commons, sound files, .ogg, wiktionary and
yes, we wish everyone a merry christmas in the spirit of friendship.
Today, we have had several peoplecontribute to the Italian project and
the Dutch sister page. I am happy to say that we now have the first
Bengalese in the Italian wiktionary as a result. There were also
corrections in the spelling and phrasing of Icelandic and Slavic
languages. Really, to me this is the Christmas spirit in action :) The
cool thing of the wikimedia projects is that this cooperation, this
working together is not restricted to the christmas perios and, that is
the good news. If we can extend this cooperation far and wide, who knows
what the world will be like in ten years of wikimedia..
So have a merry day and, I am thankfull for all the good things that we
do together.
Gerard
<http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Merry_Christmas_and_a_happy_New_Year%21>
Mark Williamson node.ue at gmail.com
Fri Dec 24 03:03:54 UTC 2004
> I see no problem here, but undoubtedly it will be cast in an extremely
> negative light by some of the users on zh: who will probably oppose it
> on the grounds that it will take oh-so-many valuable users away from
> the oh-so-poor zh.wikipedia.
I am a native Chinese speaker. I really don't think this may happen
before hell freezes over. Believe it or not, written Cantonese is nearly
indistinguishable from written Mandarin (or any other Chinese dialect).
There are houndreds of co-existing dialects around. We have been using
them for thousands of years. But we write in the same way.
So far there are no Jamaican, South African, Philipino or Texan English
Wikipedias for these English dialect speakers. There is no need to setup
a Cantonese Wikipedia following the same logic.
I have collected some good examples of formal Cantonese writing on the
Chinese Wikipedia's talk page:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%81%8A%E5%A4%A9
or
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%81%8A%E5%A4%A9#.E7.B2.A4.E8.AF.A…
Personally I don't believe that setting up a Cantonese Wiki would drain
the Chinese Wikipedia in anyway. You have created a nearly
non-functioning Taiwanese Wikipedia. It has less than 600 articles and
only 49 contributors. People are not using it.
http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hid…http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
As you can see, there are less than five active Taiwanese contributors.
Sometimes a day's job was totally done by one user (usually A-giâu, the
sysop, she has made 4500 edits out of less than 8000 total edits). Why?
Because every educated person in Taiwan knows how to read and write
Chinese. It's been used for the past hundreds of years. Very few people
knows how to write using the system used by the Taiwanese Wikipedia. I
am living in Taiwan. I can speak Taiwanese. My mother's a native
speaker. But I cannot read a single sentence without banging my head
against the wall. Only a handful of books were published using that
system. Most Taiwanese (or Minnan dialect) speakers decide to use
Chinese Wikipedia. Most of us simply cannot contribute.
Network bandwidth is cheap. Disk storage is cheap. A useless
encyclopedia is cheap. I don't mind to see you setup a Cantonese
project. It will not drain Chinese contributors. because it will not be
used by anyone. In the end, it will be used by a only few. Possibly, it
will become another one man band. Next time, start a New York English
(they don't speak English, do they?) encyclopedia. You'll know what I mean.
Best regards,
Jiaqing Bao
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Toytoy
Shizhao post a new thread about Cantonese Wikipedia on Village pump at Chinese Wikipedia.
I asked many Cantonese to express their opinion, so far most of them showed their opposition.
please visit here for details:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%81%8A%E5%A4%A9#.E7.B2.A4.E8.AF.A…
I support setting up Cantonese Wikipedia.
User Toytoy debated with me that:
(1) The daily writings of Cantonese is almost the same with Mandarin Users.
(2) Only very few people use romanisation system, they even can't finish the
list of articles all languages should have
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_shoul… )
User Toytoy doubt the value of some small languages that can't finish the list.
This point seems to be reasonable for me.
I just want to ask what is the language policy for Mediawiki projects?
--[[User:Mountain]]
Mark Williamson node.ue at gmail.com
Fri Dec 24 03:03:54 UTC 2004
> I see no problem here, but undoubtedly it will be cast in an extremely
> negative light by some of the users on zh: who will probably oppose it
> on the grounds that it will take oh-so-many valuable users away from
> the oh-so-poor zh.wikipedia.
I am a native Chinese speaker. I really don't think this may happen
before hell freezes over. Believe it or not, written Cantonese is nearly
indistinguishable from written Mandarin (or any other Chinese dialect).
There are houndreds of co-existing dialects around. We have been using
them for thousands of years. But we write in the same way.
So far there are no Jamaican, South African, Philipino or Texan English
Wikipedias for these English dialect speakers. There is no need to setup
a Cantonese Wikipedia following the same logic.
I have collected some good examples of formal Cantonese writing on the
Chinese Wikipedia's talk page:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%81%8A%E5%A4%A9
or
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%81%8A%E5%A4%A9#.E7.B2.A4.E8.AF.A…
Personally I don't believe that setting up a Cantonese Wiki would drain
the Chinese Wikipedia in anyway. You have created a nearly
non-functioning Taiwanese Wikipedia. It has less than 600 articles and
only 49 contributors. People are not using it.
http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&hid…http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics
As you can see, there are less than five active Taiwanese contributors.
Sometimes a day's job was totally done by one user (usually A-giâu, the
sysop, she has made 4500 edits out of less than 8000 total edits). Why?
Because every educated person in Taiwan knows how to read and write
Chinese. It's been used for the past hundreds of years. Very few people
knows how to write using the system used by the Taiwanese Wikipedia. I
am living in Taiwan. I can speak Taiwanese. My mother's a native
speaker. But I cannot read a single sentence without banging my head
against the wall. Only a handful of books were published using that
system. Most Taiwanese (or Minnan dialect) speakers decide to use
Chinese Wikipedia. Most of us simply cannot contribute.
Network bandwidth is cheap. Disk storage is cheap. A useless
encyclopedia is cheap. I don't mind to see you setup a Cantonese
project. It will not drain Chinese contributors. because it will not be
used by anyone. In the end, it will be used by a only few. Possibly, it
will become another one man band. Next time, start a New York English
(they don't speak English, do they?) encyclopedia. You'll know what I mean.
Best regards,
Jiaqing Bao
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Toytoy
I'm from Chinese Wikipedia, and an administrator of it.
I support to setup Cantonese Wikipedia.
In fact setting up Cantonese Wikipedia is not a new topic
for the Chinese Wikipedia community. some months ago, we had discussed
same topic about foundation of Min-nan Wikipedia.
At that time, some of us opposed to setup Min-nan Wikipedia,
but many of us agreed.
just see: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E4%BA%92%E5%8A%A9%E5%AE%A2%E6%A0%88…
In fact the mordern Mandarin Chinese have absorbed many vocabulary and usage
from differnent Chinese dialect. I don't want to see Mandarin Chinese
dominate other dialects, they all are equal and can mutually inspiration each other.
Mandarin Chinese was setup only for convenience to people from different area of China,
it dosen't have any priority. That's my opinion.
Objection! The way dissimilarity that Cantonese and Chinese languages
just talk, but the sames all use the Chinese characters to write of.
[[zh:user:shizhao]]
re: Propose to set up a Cantonese Wikipedia
Objection!The way dissimilarity that Cantonese and Chinese languages
just talk, but the sames all use the Chinese characters to write of.
[[zh:user:shizhao]]