On 6/27/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Which are those, just out of curiosity? (I imagine the list includes Esperanto and Volapük?) -Patrick

Mark Williamson wrote: This is another argument against touching qualitative aspects (constructed or not) of languages and projects, and for focusing instead on quantitative aspects: Are people willing to do serious work over a long time? For Esperanto: yes, apparently. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

I would imagine that there are some basic standards. I can't name them, but I can say which ones do and don't follow the standards I would approve of: Romanica, Espreso, Sasxsek, D'ni, Glos, and Bitruscan most certainly don't meet the standard. LFN, Klingon, Quenya, Sindarin, Cirth, and Tengwar may or may not. One important thing is that as far as I know, Romanica, Espreso, Sasxsek, D'ni, Glos, and Bitruscan have very few people who care at all about them, while LFN, Klingon, Quenya, Sindarin, Cirth, and Tengwar have some degree of followers (to be sure, I sometimes wish Tolkien had combined all his languages into Tolkienish --- it's too bad the Tolkien languages fanbase is sort of divided over so many different languages) Mark On 27/06/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: -- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

Well, Quenya and Sindarin are as far apart as Latin and French, or almost so. We can't use them on one Wikipedia. Just create Quenya first, if we are to create Tolkien pedias at all. Wouter _________________________________________________________________ MSN Webmessenger overal en altijd beschikbaar http://webmessenger.msn.com/

And similar to the problem on tlh: W. _________________________________________________________________ Speel online games via MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/

Hi, Le Tuesday 28 June 2005 11:46, Phil Boswell a écrit : I don't think there should be any Wikipedia in any of the Tolkien languages. Tolkien is a wonderful author, but Wikipedia is not here to host this kind of languages. But maybe in Wikicities ? Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux

Angela wrote: This seems like a familiar pattern! Ec

Please, please, please, don't get personal! W. _________________________________________________________________ Speel online games via MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/

Huh huh huh. There we go again. Do you see what I mean now? Of course the Tolkienists know it is fantasy. Why the HELL should anyone learning a fictional language be pathologically confusing fantasy and reality. there are perhaps a few who do, but it is really offensive and personal to state they all do, or the majority of them does. Learning Quenya and Sindarin is most of all a tribute to Tolkien's great work and the beatiful languages he created. And note: a language is always an abstracted thing. It either never exits or already exists when someone invented it, since it dwells in people's minds and in written records. So while elves, Isengard, dwarves, Sauron, hobbits, Gandalf, Lothlorien etc. all don't exist, Quenya and Sindarin surely do. Btw I speak none of Tolkien's languages (yet). Wouter _________________________________________________________________ Nieuw: Download nu MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/

Tim Starling wrote: Absolutely. We started out using the ISO codes because they are external to us (which is usually a good thing because it gives us one less thing to argue about so we can just get our work done) and because I assumed they were more or less sensible. As it turns out, though, the ISO codes are highly politicized and often just plain wrong. This means that we have inconsistencies that are hard to correct after the fact, because it involves community issues, etc. I hope that over time, we will get better and better at this and the existing nonsense will be ironed out over time. I view this as a longterm project that is going to take a few years. --Jimbo

Wouter Steenbeek wrote: I recently visited Serbia and Croatia, and opinions there are divided as to whether the languages are separate. The significant majority opinion seems to me to be that they are not separate languages, but I did meet a few people who argued that they are. However, we had a Wikipedia meetup at Millosh's house, with Serbian Wikipedians and the Croatians who drove me there, and they all immediately and quite easily talked to each other without any difficulty at all. Of course I did not understand a word, but it did not seem to me any different from American and British English. With Serbian/Croatian/Bosnia(n|k) there are significant other issues as well, having to do with the fact that they just concluded a rather awful war not so long ago. This complicates matters in a number of ways. First, it increases the chance of major NPOV problems if people of different views choose to work in different places rather than meeting in the same place to try to achieve consensus. Second, it decreases the chance of major useless flamewars if people who are still very angry becasue of the deaths of loved ones can't find a way to agree. There are additional complications, though, having to do with spelling and script. I'm not an expert, but essentially there are 4 different ways to write and... well, anyway, it is complicated. The one thing I can say about this is that Wikipedians there are like Wikipedians everywhere -- people of good will who seem to really care about getting it right, and thoughtfully feeling their way forward in a manner that attempts to be cognizant of significant opinions and difficulties. I left feeling much better about the whole mess than I thought I would. There are good people there, and they'll figure it out. --Jimbo