Hoi, There are some 231 living languages spoken in Australia. I think English is the only one that has it's Wikipedia. Thanks, GerardM http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:AU On 9/4/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Hoi, Maybe, but isn't it sad that the Australian languages are doing so poorly ? Thanks, GerardM On 9/4/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Native aboriginal languages? I meant languages like english, german, greek, spanish, french etc. Is there a greek wikipedia? On 9/4/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 04/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone(a)gmail.com> wrote: Um ... yes. Go to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and see the links. - d.

A few people? Ideally a wikipedia would have 20-30 contributors to start with and grow from there, to ensure that there is some sort of editing activity. A few of the inactive wikipedias appear to have five - six edits a day. On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 04/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310116.NSF/85255e31005a1918852556c200550… (corrected URL-from-Hell) - d.

Custom made in-house, terrible recode of Mambo or outsourced most likely. A friend of mine made a CMS for his school and stored all the data in mysql, assigning each file a unique identifier that appeared in the url. The value of this unique identifier? md5 of the filename and md5 of the file put together. On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/D3310116.NSF/85255e31005a1918852556c200550…

Is this database Jesus built around a proprietary MSSQL specification by any chance? On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

When you look into it that's not so bad, 93.2% of US edits are to enwiki, and 96.9% of GB edits as well, so we're actually going pretty well for internationalisation.

On 9/4/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think it was meant to be humorous, since normally *English* is the slut of languages, as has been pointed out because of its indiscriminate importation of words. At least, that's how I read it. ~maru

It depends on what you mean by a simple language. English is second only to Chinese in its simplicity. Ec Akash Mehta wrote:

Hi! I'd say that english is the easiest language I've ever met. Its grammar can be written in 20-30 pages, and basically you need only the first 3-4 to become an average speaker. BTW, this is also one of the reasons why it's so wide-spread. Having a lightweight grammar allows speakers to save memory for more words: if you look at an english dictionary it's going to be huge, if confronted (say) to italian. But if you confront grammar/dictionary pairs the overall weight gets more equilibrated. if you want something more "strong" for grammar, you should try piedmontese and/or russian. One may object to the way english is written (that is, syllabically instead of alfabetically), but that's not going to stop people from learning to write in it, it only makes it more complicated as a spoken language. Besides, closely related languages like dutch (and even more closely related frisian) all have this derivation, because of the high number of vowels they use. So this is not even typically english. If I have to say the plain truth, I guess english speakers love to rate their language difficult as an excuse for their being usually unable to learn just even a second language :) They mastered such a terrible language as english, so they now have the right to take a nap :) Anyway, in the next ten years native english speakers will really become a minority on the net, so I guess we (the not natives) will eventually enforce radical reforms in the language, by pure brute force. It already happened in small with en_us, it's going to big really big with en_int. Bèrto ----- Исходное сообщение ----- От: "maru dubshinki" <marudubshinki(a)gmail.com> Кому: <wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org> Отправлено: 4 сентября 2006 г. 21:20 Тема: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin

Hi! Yes... but then, you'll end up as in the joke, where "classical theater is when the actors are so english that you cannot understand what they say":) It actually already happens. More and more cases are reported, when non-native en-speakers undertand each other perfectly in english> but need an interpreter to relate to native speakers. AS per myself I love UK english much better (have many more friends living under the rule of H.M. :) True, most of my friends do barging in France and\or Holland, and as soon as they started to live abroad they also started to learn that there is much more than english, out there :) It's already happening. Not sure that we will not miss the American Empire once it will be gone (there always room for the worse) but I'm pretty sure that I will not die under its rule. Economy talks, and migratory movements are simply impossible to manage. In a couple of generations or so the most read wiki in the US will be ES:wiki. And that's the end of America, at least, in the way we are used to perceive it. Not that Europe faces a different destiny... In a thousand years or so, there will be people speking of neo-anglians languages... and it will be the start of another fashinating story :) But that's something you and I will not see :) Bèrto

On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Apparently. Chinese is far from simple, so the only logical way I could read it was as sarcasm and understatement. What did you mean? ~maru

On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html I know, because I have Chinese class in about two and a half hours and I've been trying to comprehend the textbook (it's all in Chinese) for the last week and I'm still only about four and a half paragraphs in. :-) -- theProject

How would you define "simple" -- Personally I'm not sure that I'd say that any natural language is simple. Fran On Mon, 2006-09-04 at 10:42 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:

David Gerard wrote: Perhaps, as you say, oversimplified but the important points are there. It's the grammar that I consider most important, particularly the lack of complicated inflections. Joe wasn't worried about finding the correct accusative plural for "turnip" which the corresponding Latin sentence would require. This makes syntax and word order more important. English forms new words easily, and does not worry about an Académie Anglaise to debate and dictatate what those words will mean or whether they will be words. The new words are often easier to understand than the old ones, and can be context driven. Having Britannia rule the waves for a couple centuries was also an effective marketting tool for the language, as has the more recent dominance of a country with a similar language. The spelling has lagged behind, and there is a continuing effort by some to fix that, but that's just a matter of time. Chinese has even less inflection than English, and has retained its stability for a very long time. Very old texts are still readable. Of course the script is a deterent to many outsiders, but there is a peculiar logical structure to the traditional Chinese characters that has contributed to the stability. Ec

On Mon, 04 Sep 2006, David Gerard wrote: I speak French to a reasonable degree, and have travelled to plenty of places where English is not the first language. I find that I can simplify my English - short sentences, easy words, repeat for emphasis - and can be easily understood by a non-native speaker. I think English is one of the easier languages to speak and be understood, and probably one of the hardest to speak as a native. Things like collective nouns add no extra information, but considerably add to the vocabulary. But you can brutalise English and still be understood, which I gather is not the case for Chinese. Cheers, Andy!

On 9/6/06, Andy Rabagliati <andyr(a)wizzy.com> wrote: Grammar for Chinese is very simple, with no conjugation of verbs. But learning the first 1,000 characters can be a pain. :) For those not used to tonal languages, pronunciation is often challenging. Add on top of that - there are a wide variety of computer input methods for Chinese, so sitting down in front of the random computer may or may not allow you to enter Chinese they way you're used to. But for zh:I was surprised to see the bulk of contributions coming from HK, and so many from NL... zhwiki (1.5%): HK: 28.6%, TW: 25.9%, US: 13.7%, NL: 8.2%, CN: 6.1%, DE: 3.6%, BE: 2.3%, CA: 2.0%, FR: 1.3%, MO: 1.2%, JP: 1.2%, all others: 5.9% -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 9/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Right - Hong Kong is completely free media-wise and Internet-wise. Wikipedia's never been blocked there and nor will it be anytime soon. As for Taiwan, I'm surprised they don't make up a larger percentage, since they have 3x the population and, from what I know, are more focused on study in Chinese language than in HK. -Andrew (User:Fuzheado) Stats: zhwiki (1.5%): HK: 28.6%, TW: 25.9%, US: 13.7%, NL: 8.2%, CN: 6.1%, DE: 3.6%, BE: 2.3%, CA: 2.0%, FR: 1.3%, MO: 1.2%, JP: 1.2%, all others: 5.9%

On 04/09/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'd say so :-) - d.

Gregory Maxwell wrote: Absolutely, all the honor to the Dutch and Belgians! But this cannot be taken to the level that they make up 26.7% of contributions to the Danish Wikipedia. The Danish Wikipedia was the most striking example, so I suggest you take a look at which IP address ranges (group by size /20 network) that contributed to the Danish Wikipedia were reported as coming from the Netherlands. It should be fairly easy to identify one or two big ISPs there. Then ask on the Danish village pump how this can be explained. Some local users are sure to know how their own IP addresses work. No need for separate tools, even though that could be nice too. What was the name of the geolocation database you used? -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

On 9/6/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher(a)gmail.com> wrote: Greg has promised me numbers for *all* projects, but I don't know when he'll be able to get them to me. All projects listed. Kelly