Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my language and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Viquipèdia, l’enciclopèdia lliure.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
...in Catalan (Valencian) and Valencian (Catalan).
Hope this helps,
Fran
On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 00:13 +0200, Carlos Navarro Mallach wrote:
Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my language and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi,
The intention is that you may use ca.wikipedia.org.
It is actually started by Valencians, and prominent writers there are Valencian.
Mark
On 04/07/07, Carlos Navarro Mallach carlos.navarro.mallach@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my language and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi,
Our friends and I we're very surprised about the answers replied to my mail account because we consider Valencian different to Catalan and that's why we want to start our Wikipedia. We have a lot of articles and info explaining those differences, we have our culture, different to Catalonian culture, our traditions and our celebrations. We want to put this in our Wikipedia, but first you must understand that Valencian is not Catalan. I repeat the answer: Anybody can help?
Thanks for the replies,
Carlos.
2007/7/5, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Hi,
The intention is that you may use ca.wikipedia.org.
It is actually started by Valencians, and prominent writers there are Valencian.
Mark
On 04/07/07, Carlos Navarro Mallach carlos.navarro.mallach@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my language and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi, I understand that a discussion about Catalan also exists in the ISO 639 world. My impression is that Catalan and Valencian are both considered to be part of "Ibero-Romance Northeastern". However, given that Catalan has so far been considered to include Valencian, it will be interesting to see what the result will be.
When you ask for help for starting "your own" Wikipedia, it has to be understood what the language context is. When people say our language is different, it does not automatically follow that their assessment is accepted for instance, there are differences between the many flavours of Spanish, English, Portuguese and we do not consider the difference enough reason to start another Wikipedia project for flavours of those languages.
So from my perspective, it is of relevance what happens in the ISO 639 realm. When they make Valencian indeed a language, it will be interesting to see what the impact will be on Catalan.
Thanks, GerardM
On 7/5/07, Carlos Navarro carlos.navarro.mallach@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
Our friends and I we're very surprised about the answers replied to my mail account because we consider Valencian different to Catalan and that's why we want to start our Wikipedia. We have a lot of articles and info explaining those differences, we have our culture, different to Catalonian culture, our traditions and our celebrations. We want to put this in our Wikipedia, but first you must understand that Valencian is not Catalan. I repeat the answer: Anybody can help?
Thanks for the replies,
Carlos.
2007/7/5, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Hi,
The intention is that you may use ca.wikipedia.org.
It is actually started by Valencians, and prominent writers there are Valencian.
Mark
On 04/07/07, Carlos Navarro Mallach carlos.navarro.mallach@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my
language
and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 05/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When you ask for help for starting "your own" Wikipedia, it has to be understood what the language context is. When people say our language is different, it does not automatically follow that their assessment is accepted for instance, there are differences between the many flavours of Spanish, English, Portuguese and we do not consider the difference enough reason to start another Wikipedia project for flavours of those languages.
And it's important to keep in mind: the reason we have 200+ Wikipedias is only mutual incomprehensibility, so as to serve the readers. There are occasional stupidities like having four Wikipedias for Serbo-Croatian, but they remain examples of how not to do it rather than reasons to perpetuate unnecessary multiplication of Wikipedias.
- d.
Of course it's an stupidity making a new Wikipedia for a same language. But at this moment, it's a fact that Valencian is not Catalonian, but there is a lot of people saying that Valencian is the same as Catalonian. We, the true valencian people (people who born in Valencia and has a huge legacy of valencian parents), don't accept this term, because we know our real history. We know facts such as when Joanot Martorell (a historic valencian writer) wrote Tirant Lo Blanch many centuries ago, he said that he wrotes the novel into "the beautiful and rich valencian language". Examples like that, we have a lot. Is about those facts because we want to make our own Wikipedia.
Regards,
Carlos.
2007/7/12, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 05/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When you ask for help for starting "your own" Wikipedia, it has to be understood what the language context is. When people say our language is different, it does not automatically follow that their assessment is accepted for instance, there are differences between the many flavours
of
Spanish, English, Portuguese and we do not consider the difference
enough
reason to start another Wikipedia project for flavours of those
languages.
And it's important to keep in mind: the reason we have 200+ Wikipedias is only mutual incomprehensibility, so as to serve the readers. There are occasional stupidities like having four Wikipedias for Serbo-Croatian, but they remain examples of how not to do it rather than reasons to perpetuate unnecessary multiplication of Wikipedias.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
As previously stated, we do not make any decision about what is a language and what is not. The source making all such decisions for us is ISO 639-3. We simply import their standard.
Currently they do not classify Valencian as an independent language, so we cannot open a wikipedia in that language. If you feel that ISO is in error you should open a request for an ISO code for Valencian.
It's not very easy, yet if you have strong scientific arguments to back your request they may well consider it.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Carlos Navarro Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2007 4:12 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Of course it's an stupidity making a new Wikipedia for a same language. But at this moment, it's a fact that Valencian is not Catalonian, but there is a lot of people saying that Valencian is the same as Catalonian. We, the true valencian people (people who born in Valencia and has a huge legacy of valencian parents), don't accept this term, because we know our real history. We know facts such as when Joanot Martorell (a historic valencian writer) wrote Tirant Lo Blanch many centuries ago, he said that he wrotes the novel into "the beautiful and rich valencian language". Examples like that, we have a lot. Is about those facts because we want to make our own Wikipedia.
Regards,
Carlos.
2007/7/12, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 05/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
When you ask for help for starting "your own" Wikipedia, it has to be understood what the language context is. When people say our language is different, it does not automatically follow that their assessment is accepted for instance, there are differences between the many flavours
of
Spanish, English, Portuguese and we do not consider the difference
enough
reason to start another Wikipedia project for flavours of those
languages.
And it's important to keep in mind: the reason we have 200+ Wikipedias is only mutual incomprehensibility, so as to serve the readers. There are occasional stupidities like having four Wikipedias for Serbo-Croatian, but they remain examples of how not to do it rather than reasons to perpetuate unnecessary multiplication of Wikipedias.
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 04:19:18PM +0300, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote a message of 81 lines which said:
Currently they do not classify Valencian as an independent language, so we cannot open a wikipedia in that language. If you feel that ISO is in error you should open a request for an ISO code for Valencian.
Already done. Wait for the outcome.
Hoi,
Thank you, that's the right place to address this sort of problems.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Stephane Bortzmeyer Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2007 6:40 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 04:19:18PM +0300, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote a message of 81 lines which said:
Currently they do not classify Valencian as an independent language, so we cannot open a wikipedia in that language. If you feel that ISO is in error you should open a request for an ISO code for Valencian.
Already done. Wait for the outcome.
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/chg_detail.asp?id=2006-129
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi, :) Thanks GerardM
On 7/12/07, Stephane Bortzmeyer bortzmeyer@internatif.org wrote:
On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 04:19:18PM +0300, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote a message of 81 lines which said:
Currently they do not classify Valencian as an independent language, so we cannot open a wikipedia in that language. If you feel that ISO is in error you should open a request for an ISO code for Valencian.
Already done. Wait for the outcome.
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/chg_detail.asp?id=2006-129
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Of course it's an stupidity making a new Wikipedia for a same language. But at this moment, it's a fact that Valencian is not Catalonian, but there is a lot of people saying that Valencian is the same as Catalonian. We, the true valencian people (people who born in Valencia and has a huge legacy of valencian parents), don't accept this term, because we know our real history. We know facts such as when Joanot Martorell (a historic valencian writer) wrote Tirant Lo Blanch many centuries ago, he said that he wrotes the novel into "the beautiful and rich valencian language". Examples like that, we have a lot. Is about those facts because we want to make our own Wikipedia.
History is irrelevant. Two languages are the same if they express any given idea with the same sequence of words. It doesn't matter if they are used by completely different people with unique cultures, they are still the same language.
Hi,
You can contribute articles in Valencian to the Catalan-Valencian Wikipedia, on your culture, on the differences between Valencian and Catalan.
I'm not saying Valencian is Catalan. I'm saying that there is a Catalan-Valencian Wikipedia and you should contribute to that in Valencian.
I consider American as different to English, but I still value the fact that both American, English, Australian, and all the other Englishes, including the English of second language speakers can be found on the English Wikipedia. It is vital for a neutral point of view, which is one of Wikipedia's main policies.
Regards,
Fran
On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 14:38 +0200, Carlos Navarro wrote:
Hi,
Our friends and I we're very surprised about the answers replied to my mail account because we consider Valencian different to Catalan and that's why we want to start our Wikipedia. We have a lot of articles and info explaining those differences, we have our culture, different to Catalonian culture, our traditions and our celebrations. We want to put this in our Wikipedia, but first you must understand that Valencian is not Catalan. I repeat the answer: Anybody can help?
Thanks for the replies,
Carlos.
2007/7/5, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Hi,
The intention is that you may use ca.wikipedia.org.
It is actually started by Valencians, and prominent writers there are Valencian.
Mark
On 04/07/07, Carlos Navarro Mallach carlos.navarro.mallach@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my language and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
And as I have previously noted, ca.wp was started by Valencians.
Mark
On 05/07/07, Francis Tyers spectre@ivixor.net wrote:
Hi,
You can contribute articles in Valencian to the Catalan-Valencian Wikipedia, on your culture, on the differences between Valencian and Catalan.
I'm not saying Valencian is Catalan. I'm saying that there is a Catalan-Valencian Wikipedia and you should contribute to that in Valencian.
I consider American as different to English, but I still value the fact that both American, English, Australian, and all the other Englishes, including the English of second language speakers can be found on the English Wikipedia. It is vital for a neutral point of view, which is one of Wikipedia's main policies.
Regards,
Fran
On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 14:38 +0200, Carlos Navarro wrote:
Hi,
Our friends and I we're very surprised about the answers replied to my mail account because we consider Valencian different to Catalan and that's why we want to start our Wikipedia. We have a lot of articles and info explaining those differences, we have our culture, different to Catalonian culture, our traditions and our celebrations. We want to put this in our Wikipedia, but first you must understand that Valencian is not Catalan. I repeat the answer: Anybody can help?
Thanks for the replies,
Carlos.
2007/7/5, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Hi,
The intention is that you may use ca.wikipedia.org.
It is actually started by Valencians, and prominent writers there are Valencian.
Mark
On 04/07/07, Carlos Navarro Mallach carlos.navarro.mallach@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my language and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
English spoken in one country (USA) is the same as in another (England). There are dialect differences, pronunciation differences, vocabulary, but I can understand an Englishman (unless he says 'Congress are'! :) ), and he can understand me. I can talk to an Aussie, and she can talk to me. It seems to be the case as well for Valencian and Catalan. Same as for Brazilian and Portugal-based Portuguese. There are vocabulary and perhaps spelling differences, but it's still Portuguese.
James
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Francis Tyers Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 9:06 AM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hi,
You can contribute articles in Valencian to the Catalan-Valencian Wikipedia, on your culture, on the differences between Valencian and Catalan.
I'm not saying Valencian is Catalan. I'm saying that there is a Catalan-Valencian Wikipedia and you should contribute to that in Valencian.
I consider American as different to English, but I still value the fact that both American, English, Australian, and all the other Englishes, including the English of second language speakers can be found on the English Wikipedia. It is vital for a neutral point of view, which is one of Wikipedia's main policies.
Regards,
Fran
On Thu, 2007-07-05 at 14:38 +0200, Carlos Navarro wrote:
Hi,
Our friends and I we're very surprised about the answers replied to my mail account because we consider Valencian different to Catalan and that's why we want to start our Wikipedia. We have a lot of articles and info explaining those differences, we have our culture, different to Catalonian culture, our traditions and our celebrations. We want to put this in our Wikipedia, but first you must understand that Valencian is not Catalan. I repeat the answer: Anybody can help?
Thanks for the replies,
Carlos.
2007/7/5, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Hi,
The intention is that you may use ca.wikipedia.org.
It is actually started by Valencians, and prominent writers there are Valencian.
Mark
On 04/07/07, Carlos Navarro Mallach carlos.navarro.mallach@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my language and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
No project is being accepted unless it has a valid ISO 639 code, such are our current policies. We chose to do this to avoid being "those who decide what is a language and what is not". We don't make the standards, we just use them "as they are". :) Any alternative would fall in the boundaries of "Original Research", which is not what wikipedias are about.
Currently your best option is entering the Catalan wiki and asking for space there (that's unless ISO people change their minds). Anyway, no matter how the ISO process will eventually end, making yourself an experience as an active wiki editor will be a great help for future projects. :)
Bèrto d Sèra Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Carlos Navarro Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 3:39 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hi,
Our friends and I we're very surprised about the answers replied to my mail account because we consider Valencian different to Catalan and that's why we want to start our Wikipedia. We have a lot of articles and info explaining those differences, we have our culture, different to Catalonian culture, our traditions and our celebrations. We want to put this in our Wikipedia, but first you must understand that Valencian is not Catalan. I repeat the answer: Anybody can help?
Thanks for the replies,
Carlos.
2007/7/5, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
Hi,
The intention is that you may use ca.wikipedia.org.
It is actually started by Valencians, and prominent writers there are Valencian.
Mark
On 04/07/07, Carlos Navarro Mallach carlos.navarro.mallach@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all there,
I want to create a new version of Wikipedia in my mother language, Valencian, but I don't know how to do it. I've searched for my language and I haven't found it. Anybody can help me? I've a lot of friends anxious for writing in our language.
Thank you very much and sorry about my english......
Best regards,
Carlos.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
No project is being accepted unless it has a valid ISO 639 code, such are our current policies. We chose to do this to avoid being "those who decide what is a language and what is not". We don't make the standards, we just use them "as they are". :) Any alternative would fall in the boundaries of "Original Research", which is not what wikipedias are about.
What nonsense. Wikimedia can and should do original research. It's only in the main namespace of Wikipedia that we have that restriction, and that's because we see an encyclopedia as a secondary source.
It's only since the addition of ISO 639-3 that it's even feasible to use ISO 639 as a canonical list of languages, and that's only because SIL was recognised as the most competent body to do such a thing. The Library of Congress was doing a poor job of it, and I would absolutely stand by our decision to add language editions to Wikipedia that they didn't recognise.
-- Tim Starling
What nonsense. Wikimedia can and should do original research. It's only in the main namespace of Wikipedia that we have that restriction, and that's because we see an encyclopedia as a secondary source.
It's only since the addition of ISO 639-3 that it's even feasible to use ISO 639 as a canonical list of languages, and that's only because SIL was recognised as the most competent body to do such a thing. The Library of Congress was doing a poor job of it, and I would absolutely stand by our decision to add language editions to Wikipedia that they didn't recognise.
How would you suggest deciding what is and isn't a language?
Thomas Dalton wrote:
What nonsense. Wikimedia can and should do original research. It's only in the main namespace of Wikipedia that we have that restriction, and that's because we see an encyclopedia as a secondary source.
It's only since the addition of ISO 639-3 that it's even feasible to use ISO 639 as a canonical list of languages, and that's only because SIL was recognised as the most competent body to do such a thing. The Library of Congress was doing a poor job of it, and I would absolutely stand by our decision to add language editions to Wikipedia that they didn't recognise.
How would you suggest deciding what is and isn't a language?
It's really quite easy. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. But that's not the question.
The question is whether we should have a Wikipedia edition in a given language or dialect. This should be deicided by the judgement of a competent committee, following research into the nature of the language and the opinions of its community of speakers.
There are two critical questions:
1) Are the participants prepared to accept a mixed-form or standard-form wiki as representative of all speakers? For example, this appears to be the case with modern English, where we have a mix of two standard forms (US and UK), and where speakers of regional dialects are happy to write in one of these standard forms.
2) Are the differences between proposed written forms trivially resolvable in software? This is the case in zh-tw/zh-cn, sr-ec/sr-el, and it would certainly be the case if there was any proposed split between en_US and en_UK.
If the answer to both is no, then there's a case for starting a new wiki.
-- Tim Starling
Hoi,
It's really quite easy. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. But that's not the question.
Must be because of this that Switzerland and Austria have no language on their own (no navy) :)
- Are the participants prepared to accept a mixed-form or
standard-form wiki as representative of all speakers? For example, this appears to be the case with modern English, where we have a mix of two standard forms (US and UK), and where speakers of regional dialects are happy to write in one of these standard forms.
It's dangerous to compare non-official languages to English or Spanish. English doesn't have a bit of the tensions that are associated to non-officially recognized minorities. So don't expect people to be cool, calm and collected when they often think they are defending their right to exist at political level (which does NOT happen with English or Spanish).
Deciding whether people will be able to live with mixed scripts is quite a bet. Most will actually depend on the ability of the admins. If they can work to smooth problems and conflicts it will work, if a major ego-trip starts it can break a community in no time. Also, pls consider that basically all new wikies come from small linguistic entities, most of which have no official status and are not taught in schools. This means having a more radicalized feeling of "belonging into the culture" for those who work for it, and it also makes a much smaller potential audience. Small numbers make interpersonal relations simply sky-rocket the weight of their influence over the final quality of a project.
Anyway, there is a possible software solution to all this: if we could include dialects into an official "language" and tag them as such at page level people could grow their space inside a bigger project.
This would kill the frequency of "personal fight based" secessions and would help to share admin resources. It would also make a better human environment, as people would not interpret such "new areas" as a betrayal or a reduction of their current projects, but rather as an enlargement.
There's no magic wand anyway, all situations are pretty specific, yet there are well identified trends that we can address.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
Whether what I say is nonsense or not is none of my worries, I judge by the practical results an approach gives me, not based on any ideological theory. To a certain extent all subjective decisions ARE pure nonsense anyway, and I can't think of anything more POV than stating what is a language and what is not.
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream and swear as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan Knights and make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given, you know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you choose yourself (as WMF) you either have a limited number of people playing God or make it the result of a wider battle.
Make your choice. It's but three checkboxes in all.
I made mine. The WMF has a voting rate of about 5% at elections, only a VERY limited number of people read lists and come to META, so no vote can represent the majority in principle.
No matter how you restrict the number of people having the right to decide (to avoid socket-puppets) you pretty often end up with votes that are 100% emotional, and pretty often have nothing to do with languages (they are actually internal splits based on personal conflicts).
Will you enter this mud and start to play God? I'd rather have an external decision made. Even if sometimes my own opinion and ISO codes DO diverge. So what? Most of the stuff on this planet is not as I would want to be...
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Starling Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 5:34 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
No project is being accepted unless it has a valid ISO 639 code, such are our current policies. We chose to do this to avoid being "those who decide what is a language and what is not". We don't make the standards, we just use them "as they are". :) Any alternative would fall in the boundaries of "Original Research", which is not what wikipedias are about.
What nonsense. Wikimedia can and should do original research. It's only in the main namespace of Wikipedia that we have that restriction, and that's because we see an encyclopedia as a secondary source.
It's only since the addition of ISO 639-3 that it's even feasible to use ISO 639 as a canonical list of languages, and that's only because SIL was recognised as the most competent body to do such a thing. The Library of Congress was doing a poor job of it, and I would absolutely stand by our decision to add language editions to Wikipedia that they didn't recognise.
-- Tim Starling
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream and swear as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan Knights and make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given, you know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or to reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it because you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most Wikipedia policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which would be disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Hoi, In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age. Thanks, Gerard
On 7/5/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream and
swear
as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan Knights
and
make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given, you
know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or to reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it because you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most Wikipedia policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which would be disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the form of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Bye.
2007/7/5, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age. Thanks, Gerard
On 7/5/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream and
swear
as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan Knights
and
make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given, you
know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or to reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it
because
you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most Wikipedia policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which would be disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi, When a living language creates new concepts it is completely different from the creation of extinct languages. I am not bothered by for instance Cherokee finding a need for new vocabulary. I am bothered by this same need for extinct languages. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/11/07, Roberto Bahamonde Andrade chilotin@gmail.com wrote:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the form of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Bye.
2007/7/5, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because
"we
can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age. Thanks, Gerard
On 7/5/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream
and
swear
as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan
Knights
and
make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given, you
know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or to reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it
because
you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most Wikipedia policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which would be disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Nunca pensé que justo este invierno sería el más frío que he visto pasar: Yo no sirvo paramar" _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
That seems to be a double standard.
On 11/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When a living language creates new concepts it is completely different from the creation of extinct languages. I am not bothered by for instance Cherokee finding a need for new vocabulary. I am bothered by this same need for extinct languages. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/11/07, Roberto Bahamonde Andrade chilotin@gmail.com wrote:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the form of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Bye.
2007/7/5, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because
"we
can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age. Thanks, Gerard
On 7/5/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream
and
swear
as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan
Knights
and
make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given, you
know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or to reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it
because
you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most Wikipedia policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which would be disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Nunca pensé que justo este invierno sería el más frío que he visto pasar: Yo no sirvo paramar" _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi, It is not a double standard as the two things are not comparable. From the start we have been clear that we will look at an individual requests and work towards a conclusion based on what is on offer. An extinct language is decidedly different and it is not as much in the interest of the WMF to have wikipedias in such languages.
In this double standards are good. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/11/07, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
That seems to be a double standard.
On 11/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When a living language creates new concepts it is completely different
from
the creation of extinct languages. I am not bothered by for instance Cherokee finding a need for new vocabulary. I am bothered by this same
need
for extinct languages. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/11/07, Roberto Bahamonde Andrade chilotin@gmail.com wrote:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that
"original
research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee)
haven't
words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find
the
form of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another
way
is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to
phonetics of
the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Bye.
2007/7/5, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life
because
"we
can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to
be
able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as
we
know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create
new
words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age. Thanks, Gerard
On 7/5/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to
scream
and
swear
as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan
Knights
and
make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given,
you
know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or
to
reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it
because
you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most
Wikipedia
policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which
would be
disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Nunca pensé que justo este invierno sería el más frío que he visto
pasar:
Yo no sirvo paramar" _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
So it seems. Yet it's dictated by a simple fact: a dead language is taught to access existing sources and to learn the evolution of language.
If you add a transistor radio to the Cro-Magnon section of a museum you're going to pollute that section with improper content.
Bèrto d Sèra Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 1:16 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
That seems to be a double standard.
On 11/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, When a living language creates new concepts it is completely different
from
the creation of extinct languages. I am not bothered by for instance Cherokee finding a need for new vocabulary. I am bothered by this same
need
for extinct languages. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/11/07, Roberto Bahamonde Andrade chilotin@gmail.com wrote:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the form of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics
of
the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Bye.
2007/7/5, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because
"we
can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to
be
able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as
we
know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create
new
words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age. Thanks, Gerard
On 7/5/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream
and
swear
as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan
Knights
and
make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given,
you
know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or
to
reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it
because
you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most Wikipedia policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which would
be
disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
-- "Nunca pensé que justo este invierno sería el más frío que he visto
pasar:
Yo no sirvo paramar" _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
So it seems. Yet it's dictated by a simple fact: a dead language is taught to access existing sources and to learn the evolution of language.
Fine. That could justify a Wikibook about the language. It could justify the inclusion of texts in the language in Wikisource. It might even justify a Wiktionary for people who want to study the language. The case for a Wikipedia in that language is much weaker.
If you add a transistor radio to the Cro-Magnon section of a museum you're going to pollute that section with improper content.
One might similarly argue that air conditioning or other atmospheric controls should not be allowed. ;-)
Ec
Hi!
One might similarly argue that air conditioning or other atmospheric controls should not be allowed. ;-)
Most of that stuff is kept under very well controlled atmospheric conditions, but that's only because they are prevent that stuff from changing/degrading :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:40 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
So it seems. Yet it's dictated by a simple fact: a dead language is taught to access existing sources and to learn the evolution of language.
Fine. That could justify a Wikibook about the language. It could justify the inclusion of texts in the language in Wikisource. It might even justify a Wiktionary for people who want to study the language. The case for a Wikipedia in that language is much weaker.
If you add a transistor radio to the Cro-Magnon section of a museum you're going to pollute that section with improper content.
Ec
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi!
This is true for every language that has its first UI developed for a wiki. For a small number of words that totally wiki-related it's also true for major languages, English included. "Wiki" wasn't an English word before wikipedia.
IMHO, most small languages don't need borrowing from English at all. They have a long and sound tradition on their own, and can basically translate all IT related words to make them "accessible".
We translate "Feed aggregator" as "Marossé" in piemontese, because that's the word that historically defines the profession of "Horse trader", and it has the added meaning of "the one who always knows what's going on where".
"Ping" is something you can pretty much translate with the verb you'd use to "Knock at the door", etc.
One of the reasons behind the weakening of local languages (mid-sized official languages included) is in that at a certain point in history they gave up "explaining" things. In instead, they privileged the English speaking layer of society.
This eventually damaged English itself. The number of English words that are drifting away from their original meaning because of the way in which they are used in foreign languages is constantly increasing. I see that frequently in business, as the number of "supposed to be in English" emails and faxes coming from Italy is constantly growing.
As a result, people come to me asking to translate "from Italian English to English". Since telepathy does not exist usually all I can do is have the communication sent back and ask the guy to write in Italian.
Importing English words is rarely doing any good both to your language AND English; unless a native population really is bilingual in English.
Bèrto d Sèra Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Roberto Bahamonde Andrade Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5:17 AM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the form of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Bye.
2007/7/5, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age. Thanks, Gerard
On 7/5/07, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream and
swear
as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan Knights
and
make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given, you
know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or to reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it
because
you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most Wikipedia policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which would be disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
This is true for every language that has its first UI developed for a wiki. For a small number of words that totally wiki-related it's also true for major languages, English included. "Wiki" wasn't an English word before wikipedia.
This usage of wiki actually goes back to Ward Cunningham's WikiWiki Website in 1994. That's before Wikipedia.
IMHO, most small languages don't need borrowing from English at all. They have a long and sound tradition on their own, and can basically translate all IT related words to make them "accessible".
In theory. If you have a small glossary of common English IT terms that you want to translate into Piedmontese (Note the different "English" spelling even for this language term.) you will not have an easy time. If there is only a small number of these you can get away with literal translations. If you introduce too many of them you will become incomprehensible because it begins to look like an out-of-context jumble. It takes time for these neologisms to become understood in their new language and intended meaning, and the time usually isn't there. In English, when there is no word for something you just make one up, begin to use it in key contexts, and it becomes acceptable. There is no academy to tell you that the word is right or wrong. The evidence for a word comes from its usage.
We translate "Feed aggregator" as "Marossé" in piemontese, because that's the word that historically defines the profession of "Horse trader", and it has the added meaning of "the one who always knows what's going on where".
What's a "feed aggregator"? What you say leads me to believe that it's some device for mixing the food that is given to livestock on a farm. I've lived in a city all my life, so what would I know about modern farm practices? When you mention "horse trader" as a possible meaning I become thoroughly puxxled. Horses are an old technology, and "horse trader", as we know it now, has drifted away from its original meaning. It has now come to mean a person who profits through a series of effective trades. The recent case of the person who set off on the net trading a paper-clip for gradually more valuable items until he had acquired a home for himself is a great example of a horse trader. How will that contribute to my understanding of "feed aggregator"..
"Ping" is something you can pretty much translate with the verb you'd use to "Knock at the door", etc.
"Ping" is onomatopoeic, that is to say it is understood by its sound. It does not resemble the sound made by a knock at the door. It is a distinctly a higher pitched metallic sound such as in hockey when a slapshot strikes against a metal goal-post, or the sound of a single note on a vibrophone. Very seldom does it have anything to do with wood, except perhaps in the resonance of a single note on the xylophone. In English a cow says "Moo", a dog says "Woof", and a duck says "Quack", but the way speakers of another language perceive these animal sounds can be quite different.
One of the reasons behind the weakening of local languages (mid-sized official languages included) is in that at a certain point in history they gave up "explaining" things. In instead, they privileged the English speaking layer of society.
To a point yes. But English is absolutely profligate in the way it generates words. Who could keep up with so many bastard children?
This eventually damaged English itself. The number of English words that are drifting away from their original meaning because of the way in which they are used in foreign languages is constantly increasing. I see that frequently in business, as the number of "supposed to be in English" emails and faxes coming from Italy is constantly growing.
As in the case of "horse trader" English doesn't need the help of any foreign language to create that drift. When an English speaker sees these kinds of errors, and knows that the message is from a non-native speaker he has a good quiet laugh, and proceeds on the basis of what the word should be. The point then becomes one of politeness, and how often do you tell a native foreign speaker about his English language errors. I know that they want to write better English, but pointing out mistakes too often can be horribly discouraging.
There is a current example on the Wikimania site where the people who have registered are called "registrars". It should be "registrants". A litteral reading of "registrars" doesn't make any sense at all. The correct word, however, can be inferred from the context. In the interest of not being too picky, one lets it go.
As a result, people come to me asking to translate "from Italian English to English". Since telepathy does not exist usually all I can do is have the communication sent back and ask the guy to write in Italian.
Yes, that can save a lot of misunderstanding. If the person making that request really doesn't believe that telepathy exists, he shouldn't be expecting you to use it. :-)
Importing English words is rarely doing any good both to your language AND English; unless a native population really is bilingual in English.
It's not so harmful to English, because English has become able to absorb these variants. In part it explains why American and British English have been able to adapt to each other on Wikipedia, and language aware English speakers are even able to make room for the peculiarities of India's Hinglish.
Roberto Bahamonde Andrade:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the form of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Maybe, but it's up to each community to define what it means by original research. At the very least if you are going to discuss original research in one of these languages that language must have a term for "original research". Rules discussions should then take place in that language. If a rule puts you in a Catch-22 something's wrong with the rule.
2007/7/5, GerardM:
In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age.
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile." Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but only by people who do not exist.
Ec
Hoi, Considering what you say, you provide a perfect argument why NOT to localise the user interface of an extinct language. So far we have always insisted on a localised UI. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/11/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
2007/7/5, GerardM:
In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial
languages
or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because
"we
can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be
able
to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we
know
it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age.
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile." Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but only by people who do not exist.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Considering what you say, you provide a perfect argument why NOT to localise the user interface of an extinct language. So far we have always insisted on a localised UI.
We insist on a localised UI because it makes it easier for the intended users (ie. speakers of the language) to use the site. Who are the intended users of a Wikipedia in an extinct language? Wikipedia exists to spread knowledge, how does a Wikipedia in an extinct language further that aim?
Hoi, Historically we have allowed extinct languages to have Wikipedias. There is little reason to deny people from having a Wikipedia in yet another dead language when we have projects in other dead languages. NB Latin is not a dead language.
When content is written in an extinct language, it helps people exercise their ability of that language. Neologisms however are not what we want to see in projects in such a language. It is for this reason that that a user interface in such a language is not a good idea.
Thanks, GerardM
On 7/11/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Considering what you say, you provide a perfect argument why NOT to
localise
the user interface of an extinct language. So far we have always
insisted on
a localised UI.
We insist on a localised UI because it makes it easier for the intended users (ie. speakers of the language) to use the site. Who are the intended users of a Wikipedia in an extinct language? Wikipedia exists to spread knowledge, how does a Wikipedia in an extinct language further that aim?
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
One could draw that conclusion, but far be it from me to step on sacred toes ... even extinct ones. :-)
Ec
GerardM wrote:
Considering what you say, you provide a perfect argument why NOT to localise the user interface of an extinct language. So far we have always insisted on a localised UI. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/11/07, Ray Saintonge wrote:
2007/7/5, GerardM:
In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial languages
or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we
can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be able
to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we know
it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age.
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile." Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but only by people who do not exist.
Hi!
Admittedly, we had similar worries when we started the UI localization for our wiki. The basic fear was that "people won't be able to use it". The discussion was quite long and the number of candidate words was judged by a much larger community than those who eventually got involved in the wiki.
We eventually decided that when you offer a product (because any localized software IS a product) you have to give it an added value, i.e. a reason why people would use it. We identified this value in "being able to explain to what IT mumbo-jumbo actually means". The result is positive, there is not a single english word left in our wiki and people magically "understood" what is used to do what.
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from young (15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
We don't "move things", we "make St. Martin" (because St. Martin's Day was the end of all location contracts in the Middle Age). We call someone who is chatting about everything a "marossé" (although not many people remember that they actually talk about a horse vendor). We say that "it takes 20 solds to make a Lira" (because the 5 cent piece was called "sold" for almost a thousand years, coming from Emperor Constatine's "solidus"). I guess that none of those catholics who nowadays shout "you Catholic swine!" when something falls off their hands have a clue at the fact that the expression dates back to our 500 years long religious war. Yet they do curse like that, even if they are Catholics themselves.
A language is social history condensed in sounds. Basically nobody remembers the "because" section behind most words, yet they are current in everyday language and deliver a clear message. Moreover, most of the frequent press attention we get originates from the fact that our UI "is fun". Just one month after opening pms.wiki we got a giant article in the main newspaper in our area just because we translated "Web" literally :) At that point we understood that our "added value" could sell the project pretty well.
Yes they laugh, so what? It's free ads you get, so let them laugh while you get your crop in fresh users :) It doesn't really matter how you get to be frontpage news, whoever gets there becomes "fancy" anyway. BTW, I'm currently localizing Drupal and a videogame called Freecol, so the number of "funny words" is growing exponentially...
People like it, so why not? You know, if you start to believe that "your language is not fit" and resolve to abandon it (if only partially) then there's no reason for you to use that language at all. If you don't believe in what you're doing... than you probably chose the wrong business. You may be a wonderful contributor in other fields, but localizing is clearly not your bag.
It's not only about Uis ant the IT, as I'm often surprised by what people write about physics and mathematics in Piemontese. Mostly because concepts are so much clearer than they are in Italian or English... If you look at our discussion pages you'll find that almost 70% of them are about the terminology used. Such results don't simply "happen", they are the result of a complex team-work.
Anyway, all languages are unique and it takes some care to identify what moves are best in your context. When you translate an interface you really need to contact as many native speakers as you can and check their reactions. We work for the people, so their opinion comes first.
Bèrto d Sèra Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:25 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
This is true for every language that has its first UI developed for a wiki. For a small number of words that totally wiki-related it's also true for major languages, English included. "Wiki" wasn't an English word before wikipedia.
This usage of wiki actually goes back to Ward Cunningham's WikiWiki Website in 1994. That's before Wikipedia.
IMHO, most small languages don't need borrowing from English at all. They have a long and sound tradition on their own, and can basically translate all IT related words to make them "accessible".
In theory. If you have a small glossary of common English IT terms that you want to translate into Piedmontese (Note the different "English" spelling even for this language term.) you will not have an easy time. If there is only a small number of these you can get away with literal translations. If you introduce too many of them you will become incomprehensible because it begins to look like an out-of-context jumble. It takes time for these neologisms to become understood in their new language and intended meaning, and the time usually isn't there. In English, when there is no word for something you just make one up, begin to use it in key contexts, and it becomes acceptable. There is no academy to tell you that the word is right or wrong. The evidence for a word comes from its usage.
We translate "Feed aggregator" as "Marossé" in piemontese, because that's the word that historically defines the profession of "Horse trader", and it has the added meaning of "the one who always knows what's going on where".
What's a "feed aggregator"? What you say leads me to believe that it's some device for mixing the food that is given to livestock on a farm. I've lived in a city all my life, so what would I know about modern farm practices? When you mention "horse trader" as a possible meaning I become thoroughly puxxled. Horses are an old technology, and "horse trader", as we know it now, has drifted away from its original meaning. It has now come to mean a person who profits through a series of effective trades. The recent case of the person who set off on the net trading a paper-clip for gradually more valuable items until he had acquired a home for himself is a great example of a horse trader. How will that contribute to my understanding of "feed aggregator"..
"Ping" is something you can pretty much translate with the verb you'd use
to
"Knock at the door", etc.
"Ping" is onomatopoeic, that is to say it is understood by its sound. It does not resemble the sound made by a knock at the door. It is a distinctly a higher pitched metallic sound such as in hockey when a slapshot strikes against a metal goal-post, or the sound of a single note on a vibrophone. Very seldom does it have anything to do with wood, except perhaps in the resonance of a single note on the xylophone. In English a cow says "Moo", a dog says "Woof", and a duck says "Quack", but the way speakers of another language perceive these animal sounds can be quite different.
One of the reasons behind the weakening of local languages (mid-sized official languages included) is in that at a certain point in history they gave up "explaining" things. In instead, they privileged the English speaking layer of society.
To a point yes. But English is absolutely profligate in the way it generates words. Who could keep up with so many bastard children?
This eventually damaged English itself. The number of English words that
are
drifting away from their original meaning because of the way in which they are used in foreign languages is constantly increasing. I see that frequently in business, as the number of "supposed to be in English" emails and faxes coming from Italy is constantly growing.
As in the case of "horse trader" English doesn't need the help of any foreign language to create that drift. When an English speaker sees these kinds of errors, and knows that the message is from a non-native speaker he has a good quiet laugh, and proceeds on the basis of what the word should be. The point then becomes one of politeness, and how often do you tell a native foreign speaker about his English language errors. I know that they want to write better English, but pointing out mistakes too often can be horribly discouraging.
There is a current example on the Wikimania site where the people who have registered are called "registrars". It should be "registrants". A litteral reading of "registrars" doesn't make any sense at all. The correct word, however, can be inferred from the context. In the interest of not being too picky, one lets it go.
As a result, people come to me asking to translate "from Italian English to English". Since telepathy does not exist usually all I can do is have the communication sent back and ask the guy to write in Italian.
Yes, that can save a lot of misunderstanding. If the person making that request really doesn't believe that telepathy exists, he shouldn't be expecting you to use it. :-)
Importing English words is rarely doing any good both to your language AND English; unless a native population really is bilingual in English.
It's not so harmful to English, because English has become able to absorb these variants. In part it explains why American and British English have been able to adapt to each other on Wikipedia, and language aware English speakers are even able to make room for the peculiarities of India's Hinglish.
Roberto Bahamonde Andrade:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the
form
of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Maybe, but it's up to each community to define what it means by original research. At the very least if you are going to discuss original research in one of these languages that language must have a term for "original research". Rules discussions should then take place in that language. If a rule puts you in a Catch-22 something's wrong with the rule.
2007/7/5, GerardM:
In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial
languages
or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be
able
to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we
know
it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age.
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile." Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but only by people who do not exist.
Ec
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
In Friulian we translated the normal words, such as mouse, to click, computer, login and so on. But we prefer not to translate technical word, because I think it's confusing. I mean, in music, other languages use Italian words, because Italian was the language of classical music. English is the same in this field. In my opinion is mainly a problem of understanding: will the translated word be clearer? Or they will be confusing for those who already know the English word, but still not useful for those who didn't know it? Neologisms could attract interest, but what if people come, see a Wikipedia in a "artificial language", and go away? Every lost user is a big problem for small wikies. Then there is also the problem to "transfer" new words to spoken language: we translate computer with "ordenadôr", but I heard this word used only by a man who lives in France, but it has Friulian origins. And I guess he used it under the influence of French.
By the way in Friulian we say "fâ San Martin" for moving too ;-)
On 7/11/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hi!
Admittedly, we had similar worries when we started the UI localization for our wiki. The basic fear was that "people won't be able to use it". The discussion was quite long and the number of candidate words was judged by a much larger community than those who eventually got involved in the wiki.
We eventually decided that when you offer a product (because any localized software IS a product) you have to give it an added value, i.e. a reason why people would use it. We identified this value in "being able to explain to what IT mumbo-jumbo actually means". The result is positive, there is not a single english word left in our wiki and people magically "understood" what is used to do what.
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from young (15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
We don't "move things", we "make St. Martin" (because St. Martin's Day was the end of all location contracts in the Middle Age). We call someone who is chatting about everything a "marossé" (although not many people remember that they actually talk about a horse vendor). We say that "it takes 20 solds to make a Lira" (because the 5 cent piece was called "sold" for almost a thousand years, coming from Emperor Constatine's "solidus"). I guess that none of those catholics who nowadays shout "you Catholic swine!" when something falls off their hands have a clue at the fact that the expression dates back to our 500 years long religious war. Yet they do curse like that, even if they are Catholics themselves.
A language is social history condensed in sounds. Basically nobody remembers the "because" section behind most words, yet they are current in everyday language and deliver a clear message. Moreover, most of the frequent press attention we get originates from the fact that our UI "is fun". Just one month after opening pms.wiki we got a giant article in the main newspaper in our area just because we translated "Web" literally :) At that point we understood that our "added value" could sell the project pretty well.
Yes they laugh, so what? It's free ads you get, so let them laugh while you get your crop in fresh users :) It doesn't really matter how you get to be frontpage news, whoever gets there becomes "fancy" anyway. BTW, I'm currently localizing Drupal and a videogame called Freecol, so the number of "funny words" is growing exponentially...
People like it, so why not? You know, if you start to believe that "your language is not fit" and resolve to abandon it (if only partially) then there's no reason for you to use that language at all. If you don't believe in what you're doing... than you probably chose the wrong business. You may be a wonderful contributor in other fields, but localizing is clearly not your bag.
It's not only about Uis ant the IT, as I'm often surprised by what people write about physics and mathematics in Piemontese. Mostly because concepts are so much clearer than they are in Italian or English... If you look at our discussion pages you'll find that almost 70% of them are about the terminology used. Such results don't simply "happen", they are the result of a complex team-work.
Anyway, all languages are unique and it takes some care to identify what moves are best in your context. When you translate an interface you really need to contact as many native speakers as you can and check their reactions. We work for the people, so their opinion comes first.
Bèrto 'd Sèra Personagi dl'ann 2006 për l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:25 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
This is true for every language that has its first UI developed for a wiki. For a small number of words that totally wiki-related it's also true for major languages, English included. "Wiki" wasn't an English word before wikipedia.
This usage of wiki actually goes back to Ward Cunningham's WikiWiki Website in 1994. That's before Wikipedia.
IMHO, most small languages don't need borrowing from English at all. They have a long and sound tradition on their own, and can basically translate all IT related words to make them "accessible".
In theory. If you have a small glossary of common English IT terms that you want to translate into Piedmontese (Note the different "English" spelling even for this language term.) you will not have an easy time. If there is only a small number of these you can get away with literal translations. If you introduce too many of them you will become incomprehensible because it begins to look like an out-of-context jumble. It takes time for these neologisms to become understood in their new language and intended meaning, and the time usually isn't there. In English, when there is no word for something you just make one up, begin to use it in key contexts, and it becomes acceptable. There is no academy to tell you that the word is right or wrong. The evidence for a word comes from its usage.
We translate "Feed aggregator" as "Marossé" in piemontese, because that's the word that historically defines the profession of "Horse trader", and it has the added meaning of "the one who always knows what's going on where".
What's a "feed aggregator"? What you say leads me to believe that it's some device for mixing the food that is given to livestock on a farm. I've lived in a city all my life, so what would I know about modern farm practices? When you mention "horse trader" as a possible meaning I become thoroughly puxxled. Horses are an old technology, and "horse trader", as we know it now, has drifted away from its original meaning. It has now come to mean a person who profits through a series of effective trades. The recent case of the person who set off on the net trading a paper-clip for gradually more valuable items until he had acquired a home for himself is a great example of a horse trader. How will that contribute to my understanding of "feed aggregator"..
"Ping" is something you can pretty much translate with the verb you'd use
to
"Knock at the door", etc.
"Ping" is onomatopoeic, that is to say it is understood by its sound. It does not resemble the sound made by a knock at the door. It is a distinctly a higher pitched metallic sound such as in hockey when a slapshot strikes against a metal goal-post, or the sound of a single note on a vibrophone. Very seldom does it have anything to do with wood, except perhaps in the resonance of a single note on the xylophone. In English a cow says "Moo", a dog says "Woof", and a duck says "Quack", but the way speakers of another language perceive these animal sounds can be quite different.
One of the reasons behind the weakening of local languages (mid-sized official languages included) is in that at a certain point in history they gave up "explaining" things. In instead, they privileged the English speaking layer of society.
To a point yes. But English is absolutely profligate in the way it generates words. Who could keep up with so many bastard children?
This eventually damaged English itself. The number of English words that
are
drifting away from their original meaning because of the way in which they are used in foreign languages is constantly increasing. I see that frequently in business, as the number of "supposed to be in English" emails and faxes coming from Italy is constantly growing.
As in the case of "horse trader" English doesn't need the help of any foreign language to create that drift. When an English speaker sees these kinds of errors, and knows that the message is from a non-native speaker he has a good quiet laugh, and proceeds on the basis of what the word should be. The point then becomes one of politeness, and how often do you tell a native foreign speaker about his English language errors. I know that they want to write better English, but pointing out mistakes too often can be horribly discouraging.
There is a current example on the Wikimania site where the people who have registered are called "registrars". It should be "registrants". A litteral reading of "registrars" doesn't make any sense at all. The correct word, however, can be inferred from the context. In the interest of not being too picky, one lets it go.
As a result, people come to me asking to translate "from Italian English to English". Since telepathy does not exist usually all I can do is have the communication sent back and ask the guy to write in Italian.
Yes, that can save a lot of misunderstanding. If the person making that request really doesn't believe that telepathy exists, he shouldn't be expecting you to use it. :-)
Importing English words is rarely doing any good both to your language AND English; unless a native population really is bilingual in English.
It's not so harmful to English, because English has become able to absorb these variants. In part it explains why American and British English have been able to adapt to each other on Wikipedia, and language aware English speakers are even able to make room for the peculiarities of India's Hinglish.
Roberto Bahamonde Andrade:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the
form
of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way is the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics of the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had made original research.
Maybe, but it's up to each community to define what it means by original research. At the very least if you are going to discuss original research in one of these languages that language must have a term for "original research". Rules discussions should then take place in that language. If a rule puts you in a Catch-22 something's wrong with the rule.
2007/7/5, GerardM:
In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial
languages
or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because "we can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be
able
to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we
know
it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age.
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile." Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but only by people who do not exist.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi!
We are luckier with IT basically because Olivetti was there, so a lot of native speakers worked there and had words for what they were using.
We did not have to invent most basic words, and more or less 50% of the people would say "calcolador" instead of "computer" anyway. Same applies to OSes, most stuff that runs on a command line still has a slang piemontese equivalent, so it was mostly a matter of building on an existing semantic base. Yet we translate more recent stuff like "to click" in "to hit" (bate), because it would otherwise be impossible to render expressions like "double-click" or "right-click" and retain a native sound.
As I said, it really depends on your local situation.
Bèrto d Sèra Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of A. Decorte Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2007 1:51 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
In Friulian we translated the normal words, such as mouse, to click, computer, login and so on. But we prefer not to translate technical word, because I think it's confusing. I mean, in music, other languages use Italian words, because Italian was the language of classical music. English is the same in this field. In my opinion is mainly a problem of understanding: will the translated word be clearer? Or they will be confusing for those who already know the English word, but still not useful for those who didn't know it? Neologisms could attract interest, but what if people come, see a Wikipedia in a "artificial language", and go away? Every lost user is a big problem for small wikies. Then there is also the problem to "transfer" new words to spoken language: we translate computer with "ordenadôr", but I heard this word used only by a man who lives in France, but it has Friulian origins. And I guess he used it under the influence of French.
By the way in Friulian we say "fâ San Martin" for moving too ;-)
On 7/11/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hi!
Admittedly, we had similar worries when we started the UI localization for our wiki. The basic fear was that "people won't be able to use it". The discussion was quite long and the number of candidate words was judged by
a
much larger community than those who eventually got involved in the wiki.
We eventually decided that when you offer a product (because any localized software IS a product) you have to give it an added value, i.e. a reason
why
people would use it. We identified this value in "being able to explain to what IT mumbo-jumbo actually means". The result is positive, there is not
a
single english word left in our wiki and people magically "understood"
what
is used to do what.
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
We don't "move things", we "make St. Martin" (because St. Martin's Day was the end of all location contracts in the Middle Age). We call someone who
is
chatting about everything a "marossé" (although not many people remember that they actually talk about a horse vendor). We say that "it takes 20 solds to make a Lira" (because the 5 cent piece was called "sold" for
almost
a thousand years, coming from Emperor Constatine's "solidus"). I guess
that
none of those catholics who nowadays shout "you Catholic swine!" when something falls off their hands have a clue at the fact that the
expression
dates back to our 500 years long religious war. Yet they do curse like
that,
even if they are Catholics themselves.
A language is social history condensed in sounds. Basically nobody
remembers
the "because" section behind most words, yet they are current in everyday language and deliver a clear message. Moreover, most of the frequent press attention we get originates from the fact that our UI "is fun". Just one month after opening pms.wiki we got a giant article in the main newspaper
in
our area just because we translated "Web" literally :) At that point we understood that our "added value" could sell the project pretty well.
Yes they laugh, so what? It's free ads you get, so let them laugh while
you
get your crop in fresh users :) It doesn't really matter how you get to be frontpage news, whoever gets there becomes "fancy" anyway. BTW, I'm currently localizing Drupal and a videogame called Freecol, so the number
of
"funny words" is growing exponentially...
People like it, so why not? You know, if you start to believe that "your language is not fit" and resolve to abandon it (if only partially) then there's no reason for you to use that language at all. If you don't
believe
in what you're doing... than you probably chose the wrong business. You
may
be a wonderful contributor in other fields, but localizing is clearly not your bag.
It's not only about Uis ant the IT, as I'm often surprised by what people write about physics and mathematics in Piemontese. Mostly because concepts are so much clearer than they are in Italian or English... If you look at our discussion pages you'll find that almost 70% of them are about the terminology used. Such results don't simply "happen", they are the result
of
a complex team-work.
Anyway, all languages are unique and it takes some care to identify what moves are best in your context. When you translate an interface you really need to contact as many native speakers as you can and check their reactions. We work for the people, so their opinion comes first.
Bèrto 'd Sèra Personagi dl'ann 2006 për l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray
Saintonge
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 9:25 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
This is true for every language that has its first UI developed for a
wiki.
For a small number of words that totally wiki-related it's also true for major languages, English included. "Wiki" wasn't an English word before wikipedia.
This usage of wiki actually goes back to Ward Cunningham's WikiWiki Website in 1994. That's before Wikipedia.
IMHO, most small languages don't need borrowing from English at all. They have a long and sound tradition on their own, and can basically translate all IT related words to make them "accessible".
In theory. If you have a small glossary of common English IT terms that you want to translate into Piedmontese (Note the different "English" spelling even for this language term.) you will not have an easy time. If there is only a small number of these you can get away with literal translations. If you introduce too many of them you will become incomprehensible because it begins to look like an out-of-context jumble. It takes time for these neologisms to become understood in their new language and intended meaning, and the time usually isn't there. In English, when there is no word for something you just make one up, begin to use it in key contexts, and it becomes acceptable. There is no academy to tell you that the word is right or wrong. The evidence for a word comes from its usage.
We translate "Feed aggregator" as "Marossé" in piemontese, because that's the word that historically defines the profession of "Horse trader", and
it
has the added meaning of "the one who always knows what's going on
where".
What's a "feed aggregator"? What you say leads me to believe that it's some device for mixing the food that is given to livestock on a farm. I've lived in a city all my life, so what would I know about modern farm practices? When you mention "horse trader" as a possible meaning I become thoroughly puxxled. Horses are an old technology, and "horse trader", as we know it now, has drifted away from its original meaning. It has now come to mean a person who profits through a series of effective trades. The recent case of the person who set off on the net trading a paper-clip for gradually more valuable items until he had acquired a home for himself is a great example of a horse trader. How will that contribute to my understanding of "feed aggregator"..
"Ping" is something you can pretty much translate with the verb you'd use
to
"Knock at the door", etc.
"Ping" is onomatopoeic, that is to say it is understood by its sound. It does not resemble the sound made by a knock at the door. It is a distinctly a higher pitched metallic sound such as in hockey when a slapshot strikes against a metal goal-post, or the sound of a single note on a vibrophone. Very seldom does it have anything to do with wood, except perhaps in the resonance of a single note on the xylophone. In English a cow says "Moo", a dog says "Woof", and a duck says "Quack", but the way speakers of another language perceive these animal sounds can be quite different.
One of the reasons behind the weakening of local languages (mid-sized official languages included) is in that at a certain point in history
they
gave up "explaining" things. In instead, they privileged the English speaking layer of society.
To a point yes. But English is absolutely profligate in the way it generates words. Who could keep up with so many bastard children?
This eventually damaged English itself. The number of English words that
are
drifting away from their original meaning because of the way in which
they
are used in foreign languages is constantly increasing. I see that frequently in business, as the number of "supposed to be in English"
emails
and faxes coming from Italy is constantly growing.
As in the case of "horse trader" English doesn't need the help of any foreign language to create that drift. When an English speaker sees these kinds of errors, and knows that the message is from a non-native speaker he has a good quiet laugh, and proceeds on the basis of what the word should be. The point then becomes one of politeness, and how often do you tell a native foreign speaker about his English language errors. I know that they want to write better English, but pointing out mistakes too often can be horribly discouraging.
There is a current example on the Wikimania site where the people who have registered are called "registrars". It should be "registrants". A litteral reading of "registrars" doesn't make any sense at all. The correct word, however, can be inferred from the context. In the interest of not being too picky, one lets it go.
As a result, people come to me asking to translate "from Italian English
to
English". Since telepathy does not exist usually all I can do is have the communication sent back and ask the guy to write in Italian.
Yes, that can save a lot of misunderstanding. If the person making that request really doesn't believe that telepathy exists, he shouldn't be expecting you to use it. :-)
Importing English words is rarely doing any good both to your language
AND
English; unless a native population really is bilingual in English.
It's not so harmful to English, because English has become able to absorb these variants. In part it explains why American and British English have been able to adapt to each other on Wikipedia, and language aware English speakers are even able to make room for the peculiarities of India's Hinglish.
Roberto Bahamonde Andrade:
However, there are many cases on communities can't avoid that "original research". Many American languages (Quechua, Náhuatl, Cherokee) haven't words for "edit", "talk page" or "internet", then is necessary find the
form
of say such concepts. One way to solve it is paraphrasis and another way
is
the borrowing of a word of English or Spanish and adapt it to phonetics
of
the language. No matter the way used, the community of Wikipedians had
made
original research.
Maybe, but it's up to each community to define what it means by original research. At the very least if you are going to discuss original research in one of these languages that language must have a term for "original research". Rules discussions should then take place in that language. If a rule puts you in a Catch-22 something's wrong with the
rule.
2007/7/5, GerardM:
In the language committee we are not really happy with artificial
languages
or with languages long dead that are given a new lease of life because
"we
can". In dead languages you have to do original research in order to be
able
to name the concepts that are modern and foreign to that language as we
know
it. Wikipedia is not about original research and you have to create new words and in the process change the language in order to write an encyclopaedia that is to be used in this day and age.
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile." Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but only by people who do not exist.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from young (15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Hoi, You are wrong. When a living language is localised as a result words may get new meaning or new phrases are coined, I would say that it is perfectly fine. When a good job is done, attention is given to what is done in other applications, this is to ensure that the terminology used is as consistent as possible.This does not make it a new language, it is what happens in living languages. We are not talking here about purifying languages, we are talking here about creating a working User Interface for MediaWiki.
There is no problem with original research as this is not done as part of any of the WMF projects.
In languages that are extinct it is different, the language is dead and consequently by adding words, meanings to the language it is no longer that language. It is for this reason that I am opposed to localising the user interface in extinct languages.
Thanks, GerardM
On 7/16/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language.
This is the same as saying that English ceased to be a language when someone first wrote WWW and URL as independent words :) Living languages are alive. They grow, change, make choices as any other living thing. Would you stop being yourself just because you had a new haircut or you just learned a word you never heard before?
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
On 16/07/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia. "Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
If they're a native speaker, they're arguably allowed to use new words and see if they catch on :-)
(e.g. in Welsh the neologism for "computer" is "cyfrifiadur", but quite a lot of native speakers just use the transliteration "compiwtar" so the latter may eventually win.)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
On 16/07/07, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia. "Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
If they're a native speaker, they're arguably allowed to use new words and see if they catch on :-)
(e.g. in Welsh the neologism for "computer" is "cyfrifiadur", but quite a lot of native speakers just use the transliteration "compiwtar" so the latter may eventually win.)
I guess to me it depends on who's doing it. If, for example, Welsh uses either one, then when localizing MediaWiki I wouldn't mind either one being used. But if the only word used in Welsh heretofore had been "compiwtar", then I would oppose Wikimedia coining the new word "cyfrifiadur" as part of some project to purify Welsh. That isn't really our job, and we should follow developments in the language elsewhere, not lead them.
-Mark
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from young (15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they are. We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in foreign languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi Berto: Yes! We will have a Maya wikipedia quite soon. It is a matter of time. We, Yucatan Mayans, Carnegie Mellon University and Unicef-Mexico are working in this matter; soon Mayans will request the relevant information to start. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they are. We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in foreign languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
All you have to do is go here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
And fill a request. Bear in mind that the 4 factors that are going to be decisive are: 1) An existing ISO 639-3 code for the language (no language mix allowed) 2) A good number of native speakers supporting the project 3) A good performance in the incubator 4) A localized UI for your edition
Feel free to contact us directly at any time for more info/support
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:53 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hi Berto: Yes! We will have a Maya wikipedia quite soon. It is a matter of time. We, Yucatan Mayans, Carnegie Mellon University and Unicef-Mexico are working in this matter; soon Mayans will request the relevant information to start. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they
are.
We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in foreign languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Dear Berto: Thank you for the information. I will pass this directly to the Yucatan Mayan people. We may send the request some time in the next months, as soon as we are all ready to go.. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
All you have to do is go here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
And fill a request. Bear in mind that the 4 factors that are going to be decisive are:
- An existing ISO 639-3 code for the language (no language mix allowed)
- A good number of native speakers supporting the project
- A good performance in the incubator
- A localized UI for your edition
Feel free to contact us directly at any time for more info/support
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:53 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hi Berto: Yes! We will have a Maya wikipedia quite soon. It is a matter of time. We, Yucatan Mayans, Carnegie Mellon University and Unicef-Mexico are working in this matter; soon Mayans will request the relevant information to start. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they
are.
We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in foreign languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
As a quasi-native Italian speaker and native Piemontese speaker I can understand most Castillan, so if they are better off with that they can ask for info in Castillan, when needed.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 2:05 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Dear Berto: Thank you for the information. I will pass this directly to the Yucatan Mayan people. We may send the request some time in the next months, as soon as we are all ready to go.. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
All you have to do is go here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
And fill a request. Bear in mind that the 4 factors that are going to be decisive are:
- An existing ISO 639-3 code for the language (no language mix allowed)
- A good number of native speakers supporting the project
- A good performance in the incubator
- A localized UI for your edition
Feel free to contact us directly at any time for more info/support
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:53 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hi Berto: Yes! We will have a Maya wikipedia quite soon. It is a matter of time. We, Yucatan Mayans, Carnegie Mellon University and Unicef-Mexico are working in this matter; soon Mayans will request the relevant information to start. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they
are.
We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in foreign languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from
english
other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using
a
language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots
are
incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate
for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Berto: Good to know. I will pass that information also. As I said, I am working with them, as with other Amerindian peoples, such as Mapuche from Chile and Argentina, and Aymara from Bolivia (Consejo Educativo Aymara); they all agree to have a Wikipedia in their own native language. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
As a quasi-native Italian speaker and native Piemontese speaker I can understand most Castillan, so if they are better off with that they can ask for info in Castillan, when needed.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 2:05 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Dear Berto: Thank you for the information. I will pass this directly to the Yucatan Mayan people. We may send the request some time in the next months, as soon as we are all ready to go.. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
All you have to do is go here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
And fill a request. Bear in mind that the 4 factors that are going to be decisive are:
- An existing ISO 639-3 code for the language (no language mix allowed)
- A good number of native speakers supporting the project
- A good performance in the incubator
- A localized UI for your edition
Feel free to contact us directly at any time for more info/support
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:53 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hi Berto: Yes! We will have a Maya wikipedia quite soon. It is a matter of time. We, Yucatan Mayans, Carnegie Mellon University and Unicef-Mexico are working in this matter; soon Mayans will request the relevant information to start. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they
are.
We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in foreign languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from
english
other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using
a
language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots
are
incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate
for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
Fine for us :) The policy works planet-wide, so whatever I said applies to all requests. My greetings from an Old World "small tribe" to our fellow "small tribes" of the New World :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 2:26 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto: Good to know. I will pass that information also. As I said, I am working with them, as with other Amerindian peoples, such as Mapuche from Chile and Argentina, and Aymara from Bolivia (Consejo Educativo Aymara); they all agree to have a Wikipedia in their own native language. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
As a quasi-native Italian speaker and native Piemontese speaker I can understand most Castillan, so if they are better off with that they can
ask
for info in Castillan, when needed.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 2:05 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Dear Berto: Thank you for the information. I will pass this directly to the Yucatan Mayan people. We may send the request some time in the next months, as soon as we are all ready to go.. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
All you have to do is go here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
And fill a request. Bear in mind that the 4 factors that are going to be decisive are:
- An existing ISO 639-3 code for the language (no language mix allowed)
- A good number of native speakers supporting the project
- A good performance in the incubator
- A localized UI for your edition
Feel free to contact us directly at any time for more info/support
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:53 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hi Berto: Yes! We will have a Maya wikipedia quite soon. It is a matter of time. We, Yucatan Mayans, Carnegie Mellon University and Unicef-Mexico are working in this matter; soon Mayans will request the relevant information to start. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they
are.
We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in
foreign
languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti
vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from
english
other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using
a
language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and
it
would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots
are
incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface
to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms
to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a
new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it
appropriate
for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi, Yucatan Maya, spoken in Mexico and Belize, ISO-639-3 yua. With the sponsors that you supply, with a number of native speakers, the time you will spend in the incubator is likely to be short. Thanks, GerardM
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=yua
On 7/16/07, Rodolfo M Vega rmvega@cs.cmu.edu wrote:
Hi Berto: Yes! We will have a Maya wikipedia quite soon. It is a matter of time. We, Yucatan Mayans, Carnegie Mellon University and Unicef-Mexico are working in this matter; soon Mayans will request the relevant information to start. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they
are.
We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in
foreign
languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti
vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from
english
other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using
a
language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and
it
would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots
are
incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it
appropriate
for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
This are very good news!!!! Rodolfo
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, Yucatan Maya, spoken in Mexico and Belize, ISO-639-3 yua. With the sponsors that you supply, with a number of native speakers, the time you will spend in the incubator is likely to be short. Thanks, GerardM
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=yua
On 7/16/07, Rodolfo M Vega rmvega@cs.cmu.edu wrote:
Hi Berto: Yes! We will have a Maya wikipedia quite soon. It is a matter of time. We, Yucatan Mayans, Carnegie Mellon University and Unicef-Mexico are working in this matter; soon Mayans will request the relevant information to start. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Hoi,
This is actually a "must". No foreign "expert" can create words in any language. In that case you're much better off by importing them as they
are.
We are not very keen to release wikies for the use of students in
foreign
languages. All wikies are for natives first, foreigners are welcome, but designing a UI is none of their business.
I'll love to see a Maya wiki :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti
vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from
english
other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using
a
language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and
it
would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots
are
incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it
appropriate
for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
ABSOLUTELY
The user interface is typically maintained by the admins of a language. When there is a need for some technical constructs the developers may change or add messages.
The only requirement we have is that a language can be recognised for what it is said to be. Practically it means that we insist that a language is recognised in the ISO 639 standard. Recognition for these languages can be had.
Thanks, GerardM
On 7/16/07, Rodolfo M Vega rmvega@cs.cmu.edu wrote:
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from
english
other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using
a
language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots
are
incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
OT :) You might find it funny to know that the word "Gringo" in a strict historical sense applies to piemontese people only. It was born in Argentina, to define Italian immigrants.
"Gringos" were our people (who still mainly reside in the "Pampa Gringa", around Cordoba) and "Tanos" were the guys from the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (as a shortened form of "Napulitano", I believe).
But why "Gringo"... I don't know.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Really? :-) There are many stories about this. For example: Gringo is the name Mexican gave to US guys who invaded their territory, in the US-Mexican war. The US uniform at the time was green; so, Mexicans say them "green go home!;" this then came to be "green-go!" and then the "Castellanized" form came to life: "gringo." Very interesting how words are created, and the stories behind. I will add yours to my notes. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
OT :) You might find it funny to know that the word "Gringo" in a strict historical sense applies to piemontese people only. It was born in Argentina, to define Italian immigrants.
"Gringos" were our people (who still mainly reside in the "Pampa Gringa", around Cordoba) and "Tanos" were the guys from the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (as a shortened form of "Napulitano", I believe).
But why "Gringo"... I don't know.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in english, too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language. In our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
Then it could be that the Argentineans imported it to define "northern foreigner", which would explain why it has no apparent relation to Piemontese words :) Yes, philology is big fun :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M Vega Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 2:03 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Really? :-) There are many stories about this. For example: Gringo is the name Mexican gave to US guys who invaded their territory, in the US-Mexican war. The US uniform at the time was green; so, Mexicans say them "green go home!;" this then came to be "green-go!" and then the "Castellanized" form came to life: "gringo." Very interesting how words are created, and the stories behind. I will add yours to my notes. Rodolfo
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
OT :) You might find it funny to know that the word "Gringo" in a strict historical sense applies to piemontese people only. It was born in Argentina, to define Italian immigrants.
"Gringos" were our people (who still mainly reside in the "Pampa Gringa", around Cordoba) and "Tanos" were the guys from the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (as a shortened form of "Napulitano", I believe).
But why "Gringo"... I don't know.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rodolfo M
Vega
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 1:14 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"? Rodolfo'
Delirium wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
young
(15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
english,
too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
In
our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are incredibly old.
This seems somewhat different than advertised. Localizing an interface to a language means making it be *in that language*. Coining new terms to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language, does not make the interface in that language. Rather, it makes it in a new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
"Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed. Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Rodolfo M Vega wrote:
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"?
Why should there be a problem?
When the language is a pre-literate one there is still the need to develop a symbolic representation, such as an alphabet. One thing that appears to have happened with the languages of the west coast of North America is that alphabets were devised by late 19th century anthropologists on phonetic rather than phonemic grounds. This was fine with the anthropologists who wanted to understand accurate pronunciations, but it would involve distinctions that the native people would not make themselves.
Ec
Yes, most situations are like that in Amerindian languages, and the process to create a more accepted alphabets is a political rather than "academic" one. But now, many Amerindian peoples have intellectual native speakers, many are writers and many are trained in linguistics, so the process to create an alphabet from the native perspective is more than possible, and far desirable, for the reasons you say. For example, Aymara already agreed on an alphabet for all Aymara, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and they are in a process to create an Academy of the Aymara language, with representation from all these countries. Similar process I understand is happening in Maya, and in less extent in Mapuche (here, the competing alphabets differ only in a couple representation of specific phoneme). Soon or later, seeing new opportunities for information sharing (such as a Wikipedia in their own language, which is now under consideration in many groups) all Amerindian people will agree on an alphabet for their specific language. ---Rodolfo
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Rodolfo M Vega wrote:
The "language invention" must be done by the native speakers of that language. This is what native speakers of Amerindian languages are fighting for, and are part of United Nations agreements and conventions on language rights for native peoples. I am working with Maya, Mapuche and Aymara, from the Americas, in this issue. Soon, they will ask to have Wikipedia in their own language, including the interface, done by themselves, and not by an "expert gringo". Is this possible based on your "rules"?
Why should there be a problem?
When the language is a pre-literate one there is still the need to develop a symbolic representation, such as an alphabet. One thing that appears to have happened with the languages of the west coast of North America is that alphabets were devised by late 19th century anthropologists on phonetic rather than phonemic grounds. This was fine with the anthropologists who wanted to understand accurate pronunciations, but it would involve distinctions that the native people would not make themselves.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Rodolfo M Vega wrote:
Yes, most situations are like that in Amerindian languages, and the process to create a more accepted alphabets is a political rather than "academic" one. But now, many Amerindian peoples have intellectual native speakers, many are writers and many are trained in linguistics, so the process to create an alphabet from the native perspective is more than possible, and far desirable, for the reasons you say. For example, Aymara already agreed on an alphabet for all Aymara, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and they are in a process to create an Academy of the Aymara language, with representation from all these countries. Similar process I understand is happening in Maya, and in less extent in Mapuche (here, the competing alphabets differ only in a couple representation of specific phoneme). Soon or later, seeing new opportunities for information sharing (such as a Wikipedia in their own language, which is now under consideration in many groups) all Amerindian people will agree on an alphabet for their specific language.
The languages that you mention have a fairly large population. Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive. Most of the native speakers are elderly, and in that regard these oldsters are no different from their counterparts in larger cultures for whom computers do not fall within their comfort zone. Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
Ec
Hoi,
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize Wikimedia. And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included. Based on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations can make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but also tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact that comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this happens often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers feel they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In time this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic entity used only by elders.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a determined minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard from their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either. The efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not keep it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted to be a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing that I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such a thing.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means access to special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of identity got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance, like saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's much we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects and start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself it will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to an enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying that such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated by expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 4:37 AM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Rodolfo M Vega wrote:
Yes, most situations are like that in Amerindian languages, and the process to create a more accepted alphabets is a political rather than "academic" one. But now, many Amerindian peoples have intellectual native speakers, many are writers and many are trained in linguistics, so the process to create an alphabet from the native perspective is more than possible, and far desirable, for the reasons you say. For example, Aymara already agreed on an alphabet for all Aymara, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and they are in a process to create an Academy of the Aymara language, with representation from all these countries. Similar process I understand is happening in Maya, and in less extent in Mapuche (here, the competing alphabets differ only in a couple representation of specific phoneme). Soon or later, seeing new opportunities for information sharing (such as a Wikipedia in their own language, which is now under consideration in many groups) all Amerindian people will agree on an alphabet for their specific language.
The languages that you mention have a fairly large population. Most of the native speakers are elderly, and in that regard these oldsters are no different from their counterparts in larger cultures for whom computers do not fall within their comfort zone.
Ec
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize Wikimedia. And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in question. It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic lifestyle. The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by comparison; both are romance languages.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included. Based on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations can make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer than 100 native speakers. What makes the latter interesting is that it is also a linguistic isolate.
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but also tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact that comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area. The culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread over a wider area. In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and the barriers to migration are greater
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this happens often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers feel they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In time this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic entity used only by elders.
Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the residential schools where native children were taken from their families and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak their native languages.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a determined minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard from their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either. The efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not keep it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted to be a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing that I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such a thing.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories. It also requires having a leadership that is capable of pulling a population out of chronic depression.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means access to special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of identity got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance, like saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's much we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects and start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource. It's also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about intellectual property rights. Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material. All the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in another 50 years.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself it will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to an enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying that such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated by expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
God save us from the experts!
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
Ec
Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that when the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as in amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/18/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize
Wikimedia.
And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in question. It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic lifestyle. The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by comparison; both are romance languages.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included.
Based
on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations can make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer than 100 native speakers. What makes the latter interesting is that it is also a linguistic isolate.
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but also tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact
that
comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area. The culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread over a wider area. In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and the barriers to migration are greater
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this
happens
often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers
feel
they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In
time
this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic
entity
used only by elders.
Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the residential schools where native children were taken from their families and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak their native languages.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a determined minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard from their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either. The efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not
keep
it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted to
be
a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing
that
I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such a thing.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories. It also requires having a leadership that is capable of pulling a population out of chronic depression.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means access
to
special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of
identity
got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance,
like
saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's
much
we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects
and
start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource. It's also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about intellectual property rights. Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material. All the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in another 50 years.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself it will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to an enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying
that
such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated by expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
God save us from the experts!
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 18/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that when the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as in amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready.
The problem is that even once localised, we have a confusing and complex interface program and markup language to teach them! It's not simply a matter of getting all the labels right - the user interface is a pretty sharp learning curve to the uninitiated or the technologically inexperienced.
Language localisation is a necessary precondition, but it's not the magic bulled.
Hoi, A learning curve is a problem in any language and as such not that special. When you compare it with having to work with a user interface that has no connection to the language of the user, you will agree that this is easier and a lot more inviting, Thanks, GerardM
On 7/18/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that
when
the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as
in
amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready.
The problem is that even once localised, we have a confusing and complex interface program and markup language to teach them! It's not simply a matter of getting all the labels right - the user interface is a pretty sharp learning curve to the uninitiated or the technologically inexperienced.
Language localisation is a necessary precondition, but it's not the magic bulled.
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
That's right Gerard, and it is critical for those languages that are in a process to develop further to catch up the technological global culture. I know many native young people who are IT professionals, is for them quite difficult to understand and work with the MediaWiki? ---Rodolfo
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, A learning curve is a problem in any language and as such not that special. When you compare it with having to work with a user interface that has no connection to the language of the user, you will agree that this is easier and a lot more inviting, Thanks, GerardM
On 7/18/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/07/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that
when
the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as
in
amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready.
The problem is that even once localised, we have a confusing and complex interface program and markup language to teach them! It's not simply a matter of getting all the labels right - the user interface is a pretty sharp learning curve to the uninitiated or the technologically inexperienced.
Language localisation is a necessary precondition, but it's not the magic bulled.
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi,
Yes, one week seems more realistic. It took me about two weeks to fully localize MediaWiki to Vòro (in Southern Estonia) and to check the translation with another native user of Vòro.
About the small Finno-Ugric language Veps in Russia. They have some strong leaders (like Nina Zaiceva) who are also linguists and have written good school materials and children books in Veps and even a grammar books entirely in Veps, linguistic terminology developed in Veps etc. But unfortunately Veps has very low prestige and there is not even a single Veps-language school nor kindergarten.
Karelian has basically the same situation, but much more speakers. There are hundreds of young people who have prepared as teachers or linguists of Karelian language in University of Petroskoi/Petrozavodsk. But Karelian-language workground of these people is very limited, because Karelian (and Veps) are teached only in some schools and only as an optional subject. I think wikipedia in Karelian (or even in Veps) would be function and grow not too slowly (as Vòro and Samogitian are doing now) if at least some of these educated young Karelians and Veps' were attracted with the idea of the Wikipedia.
Regards Sulev Iva
Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that when the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as in amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/18/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize
Wikimedia.
And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in question. It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic lifestyle. The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by comparison; both are romance languages.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included.
Based
on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations
can
make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer than 100 native speakers. What makes the latter interesting is that it is also a linguistic isolate.
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but
also
tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact
that
comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area. The culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread over a wider area. In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and the barriers to migration are greater
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this
happens
often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers
feel
they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In
time
this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic
entity
used only by elders.
Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the residential schools where native children were taken from their families and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak their native languages.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a
determined
minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard
from
their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either.
The
efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not
keep
it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted
to be
a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing
that
I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such
a
thing.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories. It also requires having a leadership that is capable of pulling a population out of chronic depression.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means
access to
special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of
identity
got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance,
like
saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's
much
we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects
and
start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource. It's also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about intellectual property rights. Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material. All the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in another 50 years.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself
it
will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to
an
enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying
that
such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated
by
expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
God save us from the experts!
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hopefully it would. Yet the requesters disappeared. We have tried to contact them to clarify a few details before approving their request, but got no answer thus far.
The actual problem is that they are mixing languages in their incubator project and temptatively building a koiné of finnish languages in the area. This is not allowed. One language is one wiki.
So if you can contact any of them, pls let them know that they can have two wikies but not a common Veps-Karelian wiki.
As per social prestige... yes, my impression is exactly that. I suppose most of their problems is based on that factor. People perceive "not being Veps" as a social status upgrade.
Bèrto 'd Sèra Personagi dl'ann 2006 për l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Sulev Iva Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 1:23 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Hi,
Yes, one week seems more realistic. It took me about two weeks to fully localize MediaWiki to Vòro (in Southern Estonia) and to check the translation with another native user of Vòro.
About the small Finno-Ugric language Veps in Russia. They have some strong leaders (like Nina Zaiceva) who are also linguists and have written good school materials and children books in Veps and even a grammar books entirely in Veps, linguistic terminology developed in Veps etc. But unfortunately Veps has very low prestige and there is not even a single Veps-language school nor kindergarten.
Karelian has basically the same situation, but much more speakers. There are hundreds of young people who have prepared as teachers or linguists of Karelian language in University of Petroskoi/Petrozavodsk. But Karelian-language workground of these people is very limited, because Karelian (and Veps) are teached only in some schools and only as an optional subject. I think wikipedia in Karelian (or even in Veps) would be function and grow not too slowly (as Vòro and Samogitian are doing now) if at least some of these educated young Karelians and Veps' were attracted with the idea of the Wikipedia.
Regards Sulev Iva
Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that when the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as in amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/18/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize
Wikimedia.
And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in question. It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic lifestyle. The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by comparison; both are romance languages.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included.
Based
on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations
can
make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer than 100 native speakers. What makes the latter interesting is that it is also a linguistic isolate.
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but
also
tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact
that
comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area. The culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread over a wider area. In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and the barriers to migration are greater
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this
happens
often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers
feel
they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In
time
this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic
entity
used only by elders.
Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the residential schools where native children were taken from their families and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak their native languages.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a
determined
minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard
from
their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either.
The
efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not
keep
it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted
to be
a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing
that
I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such
a
thing.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories. It also requires having a leadership that is capable of pulling a population out of chronic depression.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means
access to
special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of
identity
got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance,
like
saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's
much
we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects
and
start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource. It's also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about intellectual property rights. Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material. All the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in another 50 years.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself
it
will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to
an
enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying
that
such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated
by
expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
God save us from the experts!
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I agree. I think that Wikipedia is not only a good vehicle for language preservation but more interestingly for language development as a good reference source for education and intellectual endeavor. Rodolfo
Sulev Iva wrote:
Hi,
Yes, one week seems more realistic. It took me about two weeks to fully localize MediaWiki to Vòro (in Southern Estonia) and to check the translation with another native user of Vòro.
About the small Finno-Ugric language Veps in Russia. They have some strong leaders (like Nina Zaiceva) who are also linguists and have written good school materials and children books in Veps and even a grammar books entirely in Veps, linguistic terminology developed in Veps etc. But unfortunately Veps has very low prestige and there is not even a single Veps-language school nor kindergarten.
Karelian has basically the same situation, but much more speakers. There are hundreds of young people who have prepared as teachers or linguists of Karelian language in University of Petroskoi/Petrozavodsk. But Karelian-language workground of these people is very limited, because Karelian (and Veps) are teached only in some schools and only as an optional subject. I think wikipedia in Karelian (or even in Veps) would be function and grow not too slowly (as Vòro and Samogitian are doing now) if at least some of these educated young Karelians and Veps' were attracted with the idea of the Wikipedia.
Regards Sulev Iva
Hoi, Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that when the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as in amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready. Thanks, GerardM
On 7/18/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize
Wikimedia.
And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in question. It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic lifestyle. The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by comparison; both are romance languages.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included.
Based
on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations
can
make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer than 100 native speakers. What makes the latter interesting is that it is also a linguistic isolate.
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but
also
tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact
that
comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area. The culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread over a wider area. In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and the barriers to migration are greater
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this
happens
often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers
feel
they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In
time
this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic
entity
used only by elders.
Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the residential schools where native children were taken from their families and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak their native languages.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a
determined
minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard
from
their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either.
The
efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not
keep
it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted
to be
a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing
that
I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such
a
thing.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories. It also requires having a leadership that is capable of pulling a population out of chronic depression.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means
access to
special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of
identity
got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance,
like
saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's
much
we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects
and
start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource. It's also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about intellectual property rights. Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material. All the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in another 50 years.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself
it
will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to
an
enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying
that
such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated
by
expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
God save us from the experts!
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Ray,
Pls explain what language is missing the concept of "change" (edit), "move", "discuss", nickname, etc.
Calling "genocide" what you do would perfectly qualify for the forced education in Italian imposed after the Italian Unification. Children were beaten and publicly humiliated for generations, just for having said a "word in dialect". Some 20 years ago I saw the last case of a piedmontese family being taken away the custody of their daughter because "they could not even speak Italian".
Yet, calling this "holocaust" seems quite a strong terminology to me. While I agree that we were object of cultural deletion I cannot say that we were physically mass slaughtered or gassed, as it happened in the Holocaust.
There was an deliberate plan to delete us all as a culture, this much is true and must be documented. Besides, it's mostly still happening. Let alone Italy, there are extremely worrying things happening in France, where recent studies implies that people "exposed to regional languages in their youth" become socially lesser. This is nazi POV, although I doubt they fully grasp the implications of what they say. (http://www.europe1.fr/informations/articles/714735/les-illettres-ne-sont-pa s-ceux-qu-on-croit.html ). To make things even sadder the UNESCO "International Mother Language Day" this year was held in Paris. Apparently some French officers are unaware of what UNESCO is :)
For most people belonging in majorities, minorities are simply "weird people" who must be "corrected". They actually feel they are helping you, which makes things pretty cruel, but I'd say it excludes a comparison to genocide in principle. BTW, the same behavior applies to left-handed vs right-handed people (I was born left-handed and personally experienced the joy of being "educated" to "do it RIGHT", and yes, I still "do it WRONG" any time I can :p ).
It's really a matter of defending your own rights without getting to hysterics. Whether we like it or not, minorities will remain minorities anyway, and they can only loose in direct brute force confrontation. So take a stand, defend the rights and NEVER get to compromise on that, but pls let's avoid a terminology that can only generate further lost conflicts. We need rights NOW, not a formal recognition about past mischief while the current mischief keeps going.
It's mostly a matter of learning how to market minorities to a wider audience, and make them recognized for what they are: one culture as another (with robbers, idiots, saints and lots of ordinary people as anybody else). Pride is important, but hatred won't do any good.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories.
I can only agree in full. I won't rewrite what I already wrote in full, so I can only invite you to read this: http://eng.i-iter.org/project-presentations-0 and especially this: http://eng.i-iter.org/quest-effective-policy-0
It's not a WMF project and it cannot be, since while being 100% no-profit it involves commercial activities, but it moves exactly in that direction.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe... only no such a place as "native Veps place" exists anymore, they are all mixed among other nationalities and always in a minority position (Karelians enjoy a much better survival chance, because they live in compact groups and it was possible to open schools in Karelian).
Besides, in a society whose main values are "living in Moscow" and "making lotsa bucks", I would have expected more people to use a facility that was opening them an easy road to a diplomatic career and to a "rich life abroad". Yet, it did not happen. It's matter for reflection, indeed. Since we deal with very small entities you might be interested to know that the last pagan community in Europe is based in Yoshkar Ola (Russia) and it's close to extinction, too. In their case the behavior of the Russian Authorities seems to have been quite aggressive, but the results are substantially the same. Governments, although sometimes very unpleasant in their stance, seems to be mostly non influent on these dynamics, when it comes to final results. So possibly the one and only answer is in the native community itself, as you suggested.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource.
We are already exploring that possibility. Yet it would take some commons.wikisource, with individual page language tags, so that admin work is shared and kept to an absolute minimum.
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
This is obviously a respectable POV, but when you have small resources you need help, and help is better found from a neutral party. UNESCO seems the only neutral party available.
I understand the "leave me alone" stance, as it's quite natural for cultures that have long being offended. But if you take that stance... then why should WMF be any better than UNESCO? It's filled up with yanks, after all :) Anyway, all tribes make their own decisions in full freedom, as it must be :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 8:56 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize Wikimedia. And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in question. It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic lifestyle. The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by comparison; both are romance languages.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included. Based on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations can make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer than 100 native speakers. What makes the latter interesting is that it is also a linguistic isolate.
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but also tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact that comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area. The culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread over a wider area. In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and the barriers to migration are greater
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this
happens
often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers feel they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In
time
this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic entity used only by elders.
Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the residential schools where native children were taken from their families and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak their native languages.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a determined minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard from their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either. The efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not keep it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted to be a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing that I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such a thing.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories. It also requires having a leadership that is capable of pulling a population out of chronic depression.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means access to special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of
identity
got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance,
like
saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's much we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects and start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource. It's also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about intellectual property rights. Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material. All the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in another 50 years.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself it will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to an enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying that such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated by expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
God save us from the experts!
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
Ec
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Yes, but the difference is that Italian children were still raised in an environment where regional languages could perhaps be used in the home or at the market.
The point of the residential schools was more that all of the kids were taken away from their parents, not just the ones whose parents couldn't speak English but all of them. The fact that they weren't allowed to talk in their native languages at school lessened the chances of their languages, but it's not what did them in in the end.
Mark
On 18/07/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Ray,
Pls explain what language is missing the concept of "change" (edit), "move", "discuss", nickname, etc.
Calling "genocide" what you do would perfectly qualify for the forced education in Italian imposed after the Italian Unification. Children were beaten and publicly humiliated for generations, just for having said a "word in dialect". Some 20 years ago I saw the last case of a piedmontese family being taken away the custody of their daughter because "they could not even speak Italian".
Yet, calling this "holocaust" seems quite a strong terminology to me. While I agree that we were object of cultural deletion I cannot say that we were physically mass slaughtered or gassed, as it happened in the Holocaust.
There was an deliberate plan to delete us all as a culture, this much is true and must be documented. Besides, it's mostly still happening. Let alone Italy, there are extremely worrying things happening in France, where recent studies implies that people "exposed to regional languages in their youth" become socially lesser. This is nazi POV, although I doubt they fully grasp the implications of what they say. (http://www.europe1.fr/informations/articles/714735/les-illettres-ne-sont-pa s-ceux-qu-on-croit.html ). To make things even sadder the UNESCO "International Mother Language Day" this year was held in Paris. Apparently some French officers are unaware of what UNESCO is :)
For most people belonging in majorities, minorities are simply "weird people" who must be "corrected". They actually feel they are helping you, which makes things pretty cruel, but I'd say it excludes a comparison to genocide in principle. BTW, the same behavior applies to left-handed vs right-handed people (I was born left-handed and personally experienced the joy of being "educated" to "do it RIGHT", and yes, I still "do it WRONG" any time I can :p ).
It's really a matter of defending your own rights without getting to hysterics. Whether we like it or not, minorities will remain minorities anyway, and they can only loose in direct brute force confrontation. So take a stand, defend the rights and NEVER get to compromise on that, but pls let's avoid a terminology that can only generate further lost conflicts. We need rights NOW, not a formal recognition about past mischief while the current mischief keeps going.
It's mostly a matter of learning how to market minorities to a wider audience, and make them recognized for what they are: one culture as another (with robbers, idiots, saints and lots of ordinary people as anybody else). Pride is important, but hatred won't do any good.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories.
I can only agree in full. I won't rewrite what I already wrote in full, so I can only invite you to read this: http://eng.i-iter.org/project-presentations-0 and especially this: http://eng.i-iter.org/quest-effective-policy-0
It's not a WMF project and it cannot be, since while being 100% no-profit it involves commercial activities, but it moves exactly in that direction.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe... only no such a place as "native Veps place" exists anymore, they are all mixed among other nationalities and always in a minority position (Karelians enjoy a much better survival chance, because they live in compact groups and it was possible to open schools in Karelian).
Besides, in a society whose main values are "living in Moscow" and "making lotsa bucks", I would have expected more people to use a facility that was opening them an easy road to a diplomatic career and to a "rich life abroad". Yet, it did not happen. It's matter for reflection, indeed. Since we deal with very small entities you might be interested to know that the last pagan community in Europe is based in Yoshkar Ola (Russia) and it's close to extinction, too. In their case the behavior of the Russian Authorities seems to have been quite aggressive, but the results are substantially the same. Governments, although sometimes very unpleasant in their stance, seems to be mostly non influent on these dynamics, when it comes to final results. So possibly the one and only answer is in the native community itself, as you suggested.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource.
We are already exploring that possibility. Yet it would take some commons.wikisource, with individual page language tags, so that admin work is shared and kept to an absolute minimum.
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
This is obviously a respectable POV, but when you have small resources you need help, and help is better found from a neutral party. UNESCO seems the only neutral party available.
I understand the "leave me alone" stance, as it's quite natural for cultures that have long being offended. But if you take that stance... then why should WMF be any better than UNESCO? It's filled up with yanks, after all :) Anyway, all tribes make their own decisions in full freedom, as it must be :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 8:56 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize Wikimedia. And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in question. It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic lifestyle. The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by comparison; both are romance languages.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included. Based on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations can make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer than 100 native speakers. What makes the latter interesting is that it is also a linguistic isolate.
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but also tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact that comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area. The culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread over a wider area. In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and the barriers to migration are greater
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this
happens
often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers feel they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In
time
this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic entity used only by elders.
Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the residential schools where native children were taken from their families and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak their native languages.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a determined minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard from their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either. The efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not keep it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted to be a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing that I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such a thing.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories. It also requires having a leadership that is capable of pulling a population out of chronic depression.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means access to special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of
identity
got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance,
like
saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's much we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects and start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource. It's also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about intellectual property rights. Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material. All the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in another 50 years.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself it will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to an enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying that such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated by expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
God save us from the experts!
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi,
All stories are different, Both at individual and social level. That's absolutely true.
Bèrto d Sèra Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 2:48 AM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Yes, but the difference is that Italian children were still raised in an environment where regional languages could perhaps be used in the home or at the market.
The point of the residential schools was more that all of the kids were taken away from their parents, not just the ones whose parents couldn't speak English but all of them. The fact that they weren't allowed to talk in their native languages at school lessened the chances of their languages, but it's not what did them in in the end.
Mark
On 18/07/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Ray,
Pls explain what language is missing the concept of "change" (edit),
"move",
"discuss", nickname, etc.
Calling "genocide" what you do would perfectly qualify for the forced education in Italian imposed after the Italian Unification. Children were beaten and publicly humiliated for generations, just for having said a
"word
in dialect". Some 20 years ago I saw the last case of a piedmontese family being taken away the custody of their daughter because "they could not
even
speak Italian".
Yet, calling this "holocaust" seems quite a strong terminology to me.
While
I agree that we were object of cultural deletion I cannot say that we were physically mass slaughtered or gassed, as it happened in the Holocaust.
There was an deliberate plan to delete us all as a culture, this much is true and must be documented. Besides, it's mostly still happening. Let
alone
Italy, there are extremely worrying things happening in France, where
recent
studies implies that people "exposed to regional languages in their youth" become socially lesser. This is nazi POV, although I doubt they fully
grasp
the implications of what they say.
(http://www.europe1.fr/informations/articles/714735/les-illettres-ne-sont-pa
s-ceux-qu-on-croit.html ). To make things even sadder the UNESCO "International Mother Language Day" this year was held in Paris.
Apparently
some French officers are unaware of what UNESCO is :)
For most people belonging in majorities, minorities are simply "weird people" who must be "corrected". They actually feel they are helping you, which makes things pretty cruel, but I'd say it excludes a comparison to genocide in principle. BTW, the same behavior applies to left-handed vs right-handed people (I was born left-handed and personally experienced the joy of being "educated" to "do it RIGHT", and yes, I still "do it WRONG"
any
time I can :p ).
It's really a matter of defending your own rights without getting to hysterics. Whether we like it or not, minorities will remain minorities anyway, and they can only loose in direct brute force confrontation. So
take
a stand, defend the rights and NEVER get to compromise on that, but pls let's avoid a terminology that can only generate further lost conflicts.
We
need rights NOW, not a formal recognition about past mischief while the current mischief keeps going.
It's mostly a matter of learning how to market minorities to a wider audience, and make them recognized for what they are: one culture as
another
(with robbers, idiots, saints and lots of ordinary people as anybody
else).
Pride is important, but hatred won't do any good.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories.
I can only agree in full. I won't rewrite what I already wrote in full, so
I
can only invite you to read this: http://eng.i-iter.org/project-presentations-0 and especially this: http://eng.i-iter.org/quest-effective-policy-0
It's not a WMF project and it cannot be, since while being 100% no-profit
it
involves commercial activities, but it moves exactly in that direction.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe... only no such a place as "native Veps place" exists anymore, they are all mixed among other nationalities and always in a minority position (Karelians enjoy a much better survival chance, because they live in
compact
groups and it was possible to open schools in Karelian).
Besides, in a society whose main values are "living in Moscow" and "making lotsa bucks", I would have expected more people to use a facility that was opening them an easy road to a diplomatic career and to a "rich life abroad". Yet, it did not happen. It's matter for reflection, indeed. Since we deal with very small entities you might be interested to know that the last pagan community in Europe is based in Yoshkar Ola (Russia) and it's close to extinction, too. In their case the behavior of the Russian Authorities seems to have been quite aggressive, but the results are substantially the same. Governments, although sometimes very unpleasant in their stance, seems to be mostly non influent on these dynamics, when it comes to final results. So possibly the one and only answer is in the
native
community itself, as you suggested.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource.
We are already exploring that possibility. Yet it would take some commons.wikisource, with individual page language tags, so that admin work is shared and kept to an absolute minimum.
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
This is obviously a respectable POV, but when you have small resources you need help, and help is better found from a neutral party. UNESCO seems the only neutral party available.
I understand the "leave me alone" stance, as it's quite natural for
cultures
that have long being offended. But if you take that stance... then why should WMF be any better than UNESCO? It's filled up with yanks, after all :) Anyway, all tribes make their own decisions in full freedom, as it must be :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray
Saintonge
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 8:56 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language is a considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize
Wikimedia.
And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and more) you won't get any server space anyway.
That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in question. It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic lifestyle. The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by comparison; both are romance languages.
Some of the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with only several thousands native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included.
Based
on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations can make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer than 100 native speakers. What makes the latter interesting is that it is also a linguistic isolate.
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but also tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact
that
comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area. The culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread over a wider area. In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and the barriers to migration are greater
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this
happens
often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers
feel
they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In
time
this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic
entity
used only by elders.
Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the residential schools where native children were taken from their families and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak their native languages.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a determined minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard from their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either. The efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not
keep
it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted to
be
a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing
that
I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such a thing.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories. It also requires having a leadership that is capable of pulling a population out of chronic depression.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means access
to
special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of
identity
got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance,
like
saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's
much
we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects
and
start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource. It's also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about intellectual property rights. Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material. All the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in another 50 years.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign" intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself it will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to an enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying
that
such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated by expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
God save us from the experts!
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Ray,
Pls explain what language is missing the concept of "change" (edit), "move", "discuss", nickname, etc.
I can't do much of that getting into a lot of research. The Russian system of nicknames and patronymics can be very complicated for one that is unfamiliar with the culture. The idea of changing things by edit makes no sense in a culture that is completely oral.
Calling "genocide" what you do would perfectly qualify for the forced education in Italian imposed after the Italian Unification. Children were beaten and publicly humiliated for generations, just for having said a "word in dialect". Some 20 years ago I saw the last case of a piedmontese family being taken away the custody of their daughter because "they could not even speak Italian".
Yet, calling this "holocaust" seems quite a strong terminology to me. While I agree that we were object of cultural deletion I cannot say that we were physically mass slaughtered or gassed, as it happened in the Holocaust.
I didn't use the word "holocaust". "Genocide" ned not imply the physical killing of the target culture. Cultural genocide is achieved when the exercise of a culture is no longer functional.
There was an deliberate plan to delete us all as a culture, this much is true and must be documented. Besides, it's mostly still happening. Let alone Italy, there are extremely worrying things happening in France, where recent studies implies that people "exposed to regional languages in their youth" become socially lesser. This is nazi POV, although I doubt they fully grasp the implications of what they say. (http://www.europe1.fr/informations/articles/714735/les-illettres-ne-sont-pa s-ceux-qu-on-croit.html ). To make things even sadder the UNESCO "International Mother Language Day" this year was held in Paris. Apparently some French officers are unaware of what UNESCO is :)
My impression is that nobody in Europe likes the gypsies.
For most people belonging in majorities, minorities are simply "weird people" who must be "corrected". They actually feel they are helping you, which makes things pretty cruel, but I'd say it excludes a comparison to genocide in principle.
Genocide doesn't need to be malicious.
BTW, the same behavior applies to left-handed vs right-handed people (I was born left-handed and personally experienced the joy of being "educated" to "do it RIGHT", and yes, I still "do it WRONG" any time I can :p ).
My son is left-handed, and has not run into these problems. The educational system here hasn't tried to change people here for a long time. A left-footed person can be an advantage on the left side of a football field. Most often he would end up on left defence.
It's really a matter of defending your own rights without getting to hysterics. Whether we like it or not, minorities will remain minorities anyway, and they can only loose in direct brute force confrontation. So take a stand, defend the rights and NEVER get to compromise on that, but pls let's avoid a terminology that can only generate further lost conflicts. We need rights NOW, not a formal recognition about past mischief while the current mischief keeps going.
Defending rights and needing rights are a different matter from using them. If, for example, the government permits you to teach your language in the public schools and even pays the salary for the needed teachers, it will still be up to you to find the teachers.
It's mostly a matter of learning how to market minorities to a wider audience, and make them recognized for what they are: one culture as another (with robbers, idiots, saints and lots of ordinary people as anybody else). Pride is important, but hatred won't do any good.
Why market to a wider audience when it's not the culture of that wider audience? Even when one wants to encourage a tourism industry it becomes somewhat voyeuristic. The past history helps us to understand the nature of the current problem, but it cannot be changed.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories.
I can only agree in full. I won't rewrite what I already wrote in full, so I can only invite you to read this: http://eng.i-iter.org/project-presentations-0 and especially this: http://eng.i-iter.org/quest-effective-policy-0
It's not a WMF project and it cannot be, since while being 100% no-profit it involves commercial activities, but it moves exactly in that direction.
I think that the weakness in that argument lies in building expectations that the written material can be sold. That is something that would need to be marketted to a wider audience that already has access to more than it can handle.
I do agree that making yet another series of political claims will get nowhere. It takes considerable skill to write effective political commentary; most of what I see is just too whiny.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe... only no such a place as "native Veps place" exists anymore, they are all mixed among other nationalities and always in a minority position (Karelians enjoy a much better survival chance, because they live in compact groups and it was possible to open schools in Karelian).
I was not aware of that. Their struggle will not be an easy one.
Besides, in a society whose main values are "living in Moscow" and "making lotsa bucks", I would have expected more people to use a facility that was opening them an easy road to a diplomatic career and to a "rich life abroad". Yet, it did not happen. It's matter for reflection, indeed. Since we deal with very small entities you might be interested to know that the last pagan community in Europe is based in Yoshkar Ola (Russia) and it's close to extinction, too. In their case the behavior of the Russian Authorities seems to have been quite aggressive, but the results are substantially the same. Governments, although sometimes very unpleasant in their stance, seems to be mostly non influent on these dynamics, when it comes to final results. So possibly the one and only answer is in the native community itself, as you suggested.
This is not to say that when they go to Moscow they become fanatic supporters of Russian culture. Because of the easy availability of other cultural attractions they tend not to have the time to do the extra work needed to maintain the minority culture.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource.
We are already exploring that possibility. Yet it would take some commons.wikisource, with individual page language tags, so that admin work is shared and kept to an absolute minimum.
Spend more time on the contents, and less on the packaging.
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
This is obviously a respectable POV, but when you have small resources you need help, and help is better found from a neutral party. UNESCO seems the only neutral party available.
I understand the "leave me alone" stance, as it's quite natural for cultures that have long being offended. But if you take that stance... then why should WMF be any better than UNESCO? It's filled up with yanks, after all :) Anyway, all tribes make their own decisions in full freedom, as it must be :)
I admit ignorance of what UNESCO is offering.
I'm not suggesting an isolationist "leave me alone" stance. What I'm saying is that you need to take the initiative because nobody else can do it.
Ec
Hoi,
I can't do much of that getting into a lot of research.
The reason I'm asking it is that I want to add online help for those in the process of making a new localization. I'm aware of the problems of my own tribe and of those tribes that have a similar condition, but I cannot know everything. So please, be bold and suggest all the individual trouble point in the Wikimedia localization process.
The rest is slowly drifting to mostly not WMF issues. I'm extremely interested in this exchange, but if people are bored with us, pls say so, and I'll move the following posts (if any) to private email.
"Genocide" ned not imply the physical killing of the target culture.
There are two levels in a word: one is "proper definition" and the other is "diffused attached strings". "Genocide" is an overloaded word, since lately it's been used to justify the start of wars in the eyes of the opublic opinion (cfr. Iraq). I'm not saying that we should make any discount to those who had aggressive behaviors towards our cultures; I'm suggesting that not many people would interpret the word according to its "proper definition". IMHO, outward communication is very important. When you fail to build yourself a public image you are bound to accept the public image you are given. We'll never have full control on our public image, but if we don't try our control will be absolute zero, so we have nothing to loose.
My impression is that nobody in Europe likes the gypsies.
It's only locally true. It really depends on a number of factors: 1) how nomadic they still are 2) how much "fresher meat for racism" comes from recent migrations 3) local traditions
In Italy the basic amount of hatred goes to Albanians (which is inconfessable, because Italy is a NATO country and we "freed them") and Romenians (also not clearly expressable -> UE country). Media usually mimetize this stuff by labeling "everything east" as "slavic", which allows recycling the rethorics from the last yugo-war. The only hatred that is loudly and clearly expressed goes to moslims, as this much is "politically correct". I'm not saying that all immigrants are saints, yet Italian immigrants weren't either, and I cannot see any Italian media spending time on the issue.
Gypsies are rarely in the news, as it's not many of them left, and nowadays the label got to mean "people living in a van" (let alone tourists, obviously). There are relics in the languages, and comparing someone to a Gypsy usually has a derogative value (but in Turin even calling someone a "Catholic" is far from being a friendly approach and there are tons of derogative terms for all nationalities and even single villages).
Racism is a layered behavior, it used to be against other people coming to town from the country, then it moved first to venetians and later southern italians, depending on the migratory flux. Nowadays it's mainly concentrated on the recent layers. I usually say that we need Aliens from Mars to unite Mankind :) Once we can hate them, we won't waste time in hating each other.
I frequently see the Gypsy issue high on Hungarian and Polish news, it doesn't look serious in the Ukraine (where the usual subject for ethnic make-wars are jews and all other slavic people). I haven't noticed any focus on Gypsies in Russia, either. I know ukrainian Gypsies who are succesful businessmen and actually boast their origins. My impression is that Gypsies never were perceived as a problem in the former Tsarist Empire, so there was no background for conflict here, but I admit a very superficially knowledge of the Gypsy issue.
I can advice those who are interested in Gypsies to contact http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Desiphral who was really helpful for us when we reconstructed the history of the Piemontese Sinto, who are one of the 5 Native Nationalities protected by the Piemontese "Statut" (Act? Chart? Regional Constitution?), along with the Piemontese, the Occitans, the Franch-Provensal and the Walser. Sinto have long become stantial, and are renowed in the Piemontese Community as those who retain the purest forms of the Piemontese Language (which they use as a foreign language to communicate with us, their native language is RAKARASSA ROMANES http://www.vurdon.it/RR_antep.htm ).
Desiphral told us they are belonging in the most ancient layer of Sinti migrations, based on the language they use. Anyway, they are a stable ethnic component for Piedmont since the Middle Age, and got to be perceived as "absolutely native" long time ago. As such they can be object to "class separation" based on money or on the suspect that their shiny cars come from robbery, but aren't an object for xenophoby. It must be said that most of them cannot stand other gypsies, whom they perceive as "not native". It's quite a complex interaction system. Majorities aren't nice, yet minorities can byte, too. I guess it's simply part of the human nature.
My son is left-handed, and has not run into these problems.
LOL that's because you weren't ruled by Catholics, with their idea about the "hand of the Devil" :) Anyway, Catholics have been explained that they can educate their OWN children as they please, but must leave other people's descendants alone. AFAIK, currently kids are allowed to write left-handed, in Italian schools.
Defending rights and needing rights are a different matter from using them. If, for example, the government permits you to teach your language in the public schools and even pays the salary for the needed teachers, it will still be up to you to find the teachers.
Thank God that's true, otherwise they would choose even the way you breathe. Everything requires an effort, and everything is trouble. I'm aware of the number of problems associated with the start of schooling in a native language. As soon as money comes people divide in "associations" who fight to control the funds, invent tons of conflicting graphies, excommunicate each other as "traitors of the Sacred Original Culture" etc etc... Native are humans, just as non-Natives. Yet if we want cultures to have the strenght to stand up and live they must take their own responsibilities and learn the price of existence. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Whenever you have such activities you need two kind of people: those who are able to claim, obtain and difend the Rights, and those who are able to use them and diffuse them. They rarely are the same people. I don't know why it's like that, but that's what I see.
Spend more time on the contents, and less on the packaging.
You are wrong on this. Both sides need to be addressed. Chances are that most people will deal with content, yet someone must care for accessibility (proper catalogation, indexing etc). It doesn't need to take many people's time, solutions can be reused by all. Yet it's necessary to give "parity" to all linguistic entities. You don't want to be "less", do you? So don't accept a catalogation you get given, control the process and make sure you understand it.
Why market to a wider audience when it's not the culture of that wider audience? Even when one wants to encourage a tourism industry it becomes somewhat voyeuristic. The past history helps us to understand the nature of the current problem, but it cannot be changed.
Then why are you here in the first place? None of us is a Native American. If it's okay for you that my son will know Native Americans as "those redskins who get shot by the cowboys"... it's your right to do so. I'd rather have my son reading who Native Americans are from Native Americans themselves.
Toursim is voyeristic, true. Yet it keeps entire countries alive (just think of Venice). It really depends on how you are ready to live "today" and accept the fact that people may be interested in your past. It's just a matter of self-peception. If you judge your own past as "valuable", then you can show it with pride, if not, you'll feel like a monkey in a zoo cage. And you WILL be a monkey in a zoo cage.
Tourism and all sort of "foreign superficial interest" are valuable financial resources, and most of all are a vehicle to propagate your culture and "make it trendy". Yes foreigners will get their own distorted idea of what you really are, so what? As long if you are capable not to distort your OWN self-perception their distortion is none of your problems. In time a few of them will get the message right, and it's worth working even for those "few", let alone that fact that you can finance community activities based on those revenues.
I think that the weakness...
I'll answer privately, since it has nothing to do with WMF.
This is not to say that when they go to Moscow they become fanatic supporters of Russian culture.
Sadly they do. My Veps friend is over-reacting to the the slightest incorrect pronounciation in Russian (even with us foreigners). I'm told it's a common behavior and that "being Veps doesn't mean being stupid"... I guess this is one of the clearest "social markers" I've ever met. And it did not take to go to Moscow, to get that fanatic. No way to talk about it, it's an instinctive emotional reaction for this person. Other people who were in contact with other Veps reported similar stories, although I cannot check their reports in any way. It's an extremely diffused behavior in Italy, too. I call it the "I'm not a foreigner in my Country" syndrome.
I admit ignorance of what UNESCO is offering.
The point is that they are not "offering" anything apart from a well known trademark, which in turn helps in gathering funding and international cooperation. They work to save the so called "Human Heritage" and Human Cultures are a part of this heritage. So it's not up to them to tell you what to do, it's up to you to get in contact with them, present the heritage you have and propose ways to difend it. It's a human organization, so their activity is subject for discussion as anybody else's activity, yet they are the only existing BIG world-wide organization that takes care of such issues.
See www.unesco.org/human_rights
but mostly see: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=19434&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&U... ON=201.html
you need to take the initiative because nobody else can do it.
YES! "Be bold" is the one and only secret :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 5:32 AM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Ray,
Pls explain what language is missing the concept of "change" (edit),
"move",
"discuss", nickname, etc.
The Russian system of nicknames and patronymics can be very complicated for one that is unfamiliar with the culture. The idea of changing things by edit makes no sense in a culture that is completely oral.
Calling "genocide" what you do would perfectly qualify for the forced education in Italian imposed after the Italian Unification. Children were beaten and publicly humiliated for generations, just for having said a
"word
in dialect". Some 20 years ago I saw the last case of a piedmontese family being taken away the custody of their daughter because "they could not even speak Italian".
Yet, calling this "holocaust" seems quite a strong terminology to me. While I agree that we were object of cultural deletion I cannot say that we were physically mass slaughtered or gassed, as it happened in the Holocaust.
I didn't use the word "holocaust". "Genocide" ned not imply the physical killing of the target culture. Cultural genocide is achieved when the exercise of a culture is no longer functional.
There was an deliberate plan to delete us all as a culture, this much is true and must be documented. Besides, it's mostly still happening. Let
alone
Italy, there are extremely worrying things happening in France, where
recent
studies implies that people "exposed to regional languages in their youth" become socially lesser. This is nazi POV, although I doubt they fully grasp the implications of what they say. (http://www.europe1.fr/informations/articles/714735/les-illettres-ne-sont-p
a
s-ceux-qu-on-croit.html ). To make things even sadder the UNESCO "International Mother Language Day" this year was held in Paris. Apparently some French officers are unaware of what UNESCO is :)
My impression is that nobody in Europe likes the gypsies.
For most people belonging in majorities, minorities are simply "weird people" who must be "corrected". They actually feel they are helping you, which makes things pretty cruel, but I'd say it excludes a comparison to genocide in principle.
Genocide doesn't need to be malicious.
BTW, the same behavior applies to left-handed vs right-handed people (I was born left-handed and personally experienced the joy of being "educated" to "do it RIGHT", and yes, I still "do it WRONG"
any
time I can :p ).
My son is left-handed, and has not run into these problems. The educational system here hasn't tried to change people here for a long time. A left-footed person can be an advantage on the left side of a football field. Most often he would end up on left defence.
It's really a matter of defending your own rights without getting to hysterics. Whether we like it or not, minorities will remain minorities anyway, and they can only loose in direct brute force confrontation. So
take
a stand, defend the rights and NEVER get to compromise on that, but pls let's avoid a terminology that can only generate further lost conflicts. We need rights NOW, not a formal recognition about past mischief while the current mischief keeps going.
Defending rights and needing rights are a different matter from using them. If, for example, the government permits you to teach your language in the public schools and even pays the salary for the needed teachers, it will still be up to you to find the teachers.
It's mostly a matter of learning how to market minorities to a wider audience, and make them recognized for what they are: one culture as
another
(with robbers, idiots, saints and lots of ordinary people as anybody else). Pride is important, but hatred won't do any good.
Why market to a wider audience when it's not the culture of that wider audience? Even when one wants to encourage a tourism industry it becomes somewhat voyeuristic. The past history helps us to understand the nature of the current problem, but it cannot be changed.
The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders. For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own territories.
I can only agree in full. I won't rewrite what I already wrote in full, so
I
can only invite you to read this: http://eng.i-iter.org/project-presentations-0 and especially this: http://eng.i-iter.org/quest-effective-policy-0
It's not a WMF project and it cannot be, since while being 100% no-profit
it
involves commercial activities, but it moves exactly in that direction.
I think that the weakness in that argument lies in building expectations that the written material can be sold. That is something that would need to be marketted to a wider audience that already has access to more than it can handle.
I do agree that making yet another series of political claims will get nowhere. It takes considerable skill to write effective political commentary; most of what I see is just too whiny.
It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more people. If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to their own people.
Maybe... only no such a place as "native Veps place" exists anymore, they are all mixed among other nationalities and always in a minority position (Karelians enjoy a much better survival chance, because they live in
compact
groups and it was possible to open schools in Karelian).
I was not aware of that. Their struggle will not be an easy one.
Besides, in a society whose main values are "living in Moscow" and "making lotsa bucks", I would have expected more people to use a facility that was opening them an easy road to a diplomatic career and to a "rich life abroad". Yet, it did not happen. It's matter for reflection, indeed. Since we deal with very small entities you might be interested to know that the last pagan community in Europe is based in Yoshkar Ola (Russia) and it's close to extinction, too. In their case the behavior of the Russian Authorities seems to have been quite aggressive, but the results are substantially the same. Governments, although sometimes very unpleasant in their stance, seems to be mostly non influent on these dynamics, when it comes to final results. So possibly the one and only answer is in the
native
community itself, as you suggested.
This is not to say that when they go to Moscow they become fanatic supporters of Russian culture. Because of the easy availability of other cultural attractions they tend not to have the time to do the extra work needed to maintain the minority culture.
A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource.
We are already exploring that possibility. Yet it would take some commons.wikisource, with individual page language tags, so that admin work is shared and kept to an absolute minimum.
Spend more time on the contents, and less on the packaging.
Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware, but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the presumptions that they take for granted.
This is obviously a respectable POV, but when you have small resources you need help, and help is better found from a neutral party. UNESCO seems the only neutral party available.
I understand the "leave me alone" stance, as it's quite natural for
cultures
that have long being offended. But if you take that stance... then why should WMF be any better than UNESCO? It's filled up with yanks, after all :) Anyway, all tribes make their own decisions in full freedom, as it must be :)
I admit ignorance of what UNESCO is offering.
I'm not suggesting an isolationist "leave me alone" stance. What I'm saying is that you need to take the initiative because nobody else can do it.
Ec
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 7/11/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
At one time I had an old medical dictionary (ca. 1820), and the entry
for "cadaver" started with "A cadaver is generally immobile." Immobility for these dead languages means that they are no longer able to move, and generate new life. We cannot expect that the new terminology that we invent for it will be accepted by the people who normally speak that language, because those people don't exist. Our newly invented words do not rise above the level of fantasy. The resulting encyclopedia is indeed to be used in this day and age, but only by people who do not exist.
OT: Are you quite sure they weren't simply referring to "rigor mortis"?
And, no, rigor mortis is neither immediate, nor permanent.
-- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
As you please :) I really care only for the result :)
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tim Starling Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 6:56 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
Seriously, how would you manage? Do we call up the mobs to scream and
swear
as we did before, or do we nominate 7 Valencian and 7 Catalan Knights and make it a Royal Tournament? That's all the choice you're given, you know?
You EITHER choose an external reference OR choose yourself.
If you're deferring to an external authority to avoid conflict, or to reduce workload, then that's fine. Just don't say you're doing it because you want to follow the "no original research" policy. Most Wikipedia policies are common sense. NOR is probably the only one which would be disasterous if it were generalised to life outside Wikipedia.
-- Tim Starling
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Our friends and I we're very surprised about the answers replied to my mail account because we consider Valencian different to Catalan and that's why we want to start our Wikipedia. We have a lot of articles and info explaining those differences, we have our culture, different to Catalonian culture, our traditions and our celebrations. We want to put this in our Wikipedia, but first you must understand that Valencian is not Catalan. I repeat the answer: Anybody can help?
Differences in culture, traditions and celebrations aren't really relevant. It's just the language that is significant. Is the Valencian language significantly different to the Catalan language? Articles on the Valencian culture should be accepted on any Wikipedia, written in the appropriate language - the language of a Wikipedia doesn't effect what subjects are written about there, just what language they are written in.
Hoi,
I was asking myself whether small wikies could put the google analytics javascript code in their common.js UI message.
It doesn't seem to add load to the WMF server and it would give us extremely valuable data on our users (including the list of subjects they mostly read, geolocation, etc).
Bèrto d Sèra Personagi dlann 2006 për larvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
On 7/6/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hoi,
I was asking myself whether small wikies could put the google analytics javascript code in their common.js UI message.
It doesn't seem to add load to the WMF server and it would give us extremely valuable data on our users (including the list of subjects they mostly read, geolocation, etc).
Not just us, but a certain company in Mountain View. Would you explain it to all of your users/visitors?
Mathias
On 06/07/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hoi,
I was asking myself whether small wikies could put the google analytics javascript code in their common.js UI message.
It doesn't seem to add load to the WMF server and it would give us extremely valuable data on our users (including the list of subjects they mostly read, geolocation, etc).
You might want to talk to Tim Starling - I think he's working with generating better (well, any) statistics from our end, and if we have something coming down the road it might be better to hang on rather than using an external source. If nothing else, the privacy (and PR) implications of sending all our reader data to Google are... not wonderful.
Hoi,
Thanks, I hope Tim is reading the list and he will take the time to comment.
As per privacy, I don't think pms users would mind having data sent to Google. I'd rather expect most small communities to welcome such a move, as it would serve as evidence that localizing the search engine in their languages may make sense. Anyway, this is but an opinion based on what I hear from a number of channels.
No matter how we get it, what a small linguistic community needs to know for its marketing is: 1) where users come from (geo-coordinates) 2) what they read 3) when they read
It would be nice to have more complicated stuff, like the rate of returning users, keywords from search engines, referring sites, etc. Yet those 3 data are enough to plan work with the press and to analyze the actual outcome.
Berto 'd Sera Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Gray Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 10:34 PM To: wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] RFC: Google analytics
On 06/07/07, Berto 'd Sera albertoserra@ukr.net wrote:
Hoi,
I was asking myself whether small wikies could put the google analytics javascript code in their common.js UI message.
It doesn't seem to add load to the WMF server and it would give us
extremely
valuable data on our users (including the list of subjects they mostly
read,
geolocation, etc).
You might want to talk to Tim Starling - I think he's working with generating better (well, any) statistics from our end, and if we have something coming down the road it might be better to hang on rather than using an external source. If nothing else, the privacy (and PR) implications of sending all our reader data to Google are... not wonderful.
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org