on 4/2/08 5:08 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
BOTH of you, I am not talking about "changing" anything. I am not a believer in the premise that "observing an object, alters it". If that were true, in my profession, I would be considered a sorcerer :-). To change something you must act upon it. I am talking about creating new ways of looking at old things; and discovering things we never new about them before. And, BTW, a language never dies so long as at least two people are still using it. And, the idea of discouraging anyone from creating a project to study and to learn from something is incompressible to me.
It may be a worthwhile project, but it's not a worthwhile part of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is about making an encyclopaedia in order to inform people. It's not a linguistics project - the language is just there as a means of communication. If people want to study extinct languages, they are welcome to, but that's not what Wikipedia is about.
Thank you for this perspective, Thomas - one of many.
The facts of something can have very different appearances depending on the angle of sight - what's most important is the dialogue those different angles produce.
Marc