A lot of languages don't write language names with capital letter at the beginning. This rule includes almost all Slavic languages, Italian, Hungarian (I think Norwegian) etc.
Interwiki links are not headings and it should not be written as headings. All of them are references. Even we can treat it as headings, it makes a lot of confusion and bad orthography. For example, Serbian interwiki link is with bad orthography ("Српски / Srpski") as well as Serbo-Croatian.
As interwiki links use natural form of language name, we should use natural orthography, too.
I think that it should be "announced" as Wikipedia policy, because it seems that it is not just technical question. So, I am writing the proposal here because of that.
Milos Rancic wrote:
A lot of languages don't write language names with capital letter at the beginning. This rule includes almost all Slavic languages, Italian, Hungarian (I think Norwegian) etc.
Interwiki links are not headings and it should not be written as headings. All of them are references. Even we can treat it as headings, it makes a lot of confusion and bad orthography. For example, Serbian interwiki link is with bad orthography ("Српски / Srpski") as well as Serbo-Croatian.
As interwiki links use natural form of language name, we should use natural orthography, too.
I think that it should be "announced" as Wikipedia policy, because it seems that it is not just technical question. So, I am writing the proposal here because of that.
Hoi, I love to second this request. We also write Arabic, Georgian, Hebrew, Thai, Chinese and Farsi it in its script, the whole point IS that we write it as it is written in the script of the language, why write it with bad orthography?? The name of the language in Italian is: *italiano. *Please make it so. Thanks, GerardM
Gerard, have there been complaints from Italians yet?
Mark
On 11/07/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
A lot of languages don't write language names with capital letter at the beginning. This rule includes almost all Slavic languages, Italian, Hungarian (I think Norwegian) etc.
Interwiki links are not headings and it should not be written as headings. All of them are references. Even we can treat it as headings, it makes a lot of confusion and bad orthography. For example, Serbian interwiki link is with bad orthography ("Српски / Srpski") as well as Serbo-Croatian.
As interwiki links use natural form of language name, we should use natural orthography, too.
I think that it should be "announced" as Wikipedia policy, because it seems that it is not just technical question. So, I am writing the proposal here because of that.
Hoi, I love to second this request. We also write Arabic, Georgian, Hebrew, Thai, Chinese and Farsi it in its script, the whole point IS that we write it as it is written in the script of the language, why write it with bad orthography?? The name of the language in Italian is: *italiano. *Please make it so. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hoi, Yes, and from Sicilians and from others and from myself as well. Then again what is it to you. Do you need to reply to everything? Are you "the keeper of our collective conscience"?? And to be absolutely plain about it, you are not the only one speaking about languages with other people. I at least have the courtesy of keeping almost all of it of this or any other list. I need to learn about languages and I do but your learning process if way too public.
On the subject of interwiki links, both no and nb give the same name for the language in the Interwiki links. This does not work out well in Wiktionary where you find no and nb often side by side.
Thanks, GerardM
Mark Williamson wrote:
Gerard, have there been complaints from Italians yet?
Mark
On 11/07/05, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Milos Rancic wrote:
A lot of languages don't write language names with capital letter at the beginning. This rule includes almost all Slavic languages, Italian, Hungarian (I think Norwegian) etc.
Interwiki links are not headings and it should not be written as headings. All of them are references. Even we can treat it as headings, it makes a lot of confusion and bad orthography. For example, Serbian interwiki link is with bad orthography ("Српски / Srpski") as well as Serbo-Croatian.
As interwiki links use natural form of language name, we should use natural orthography, too.
I think that it should be "announced" as Wikipedia policy, because it seems that it is not just technical question. So, I am writing the proposal here because of that.
Hoi, I love to second this request. We also write Arabic, Georgian, Hebrew, Thai, Chinese and Farsi it in its script, the whole point IS that we write it as it is written in the script of the language, why write it with bad orthography?? The name of the language in Italian is: *italiano. *Please make it so. Thanks, GerardM
Hoi, Yes, and from Sicilians and from others and from myself as well. Then again what is it to you. Do you need to reply to everything? Are you "the keeper of our collective conscience"??
"And from myself as well" -- yes, but you're not Italian, are you? I don't see what's wrong with asking a question that is quite relevant. I don't reply to everything, only those topics which I have a question about.
Surely, it didn't hurt for you to respond to my question. And, I'm sure that everybody will be more open-minded to your request now that we know that there has been input from real, living, Italian people, instead of only you.
And to be absolutely plain about it, you are not the only one speaking about languages with other people. I at least have the courtesy of keeping almost all of it of this or any other list. I need to learn about languages and I do but your learning process if way too public.
I will remind you that intlwiki-l was merged into this list. Thus, all posts here about languages, no matter how off-topic they may seem for "wikipedia-l", are more on-topic because this is also where what once would've gone on intlwiki-l should go. If you don't want that much public discourse about language and linguistics with regards to Wikipedia, then you are welcome to campaign for the re-separation of the mailinglist.
But you have already indicated that you are against a re-separation -- anything that affects policy or creates a new Wikipedia should go on this list, right? Then, stop whinging about it.
On the subject of interwiki links, both no and nb give the same name for the language in the Interwiki links. This does not work out well in Wiktionary where you find no and nb often side by side.
This is true. The recommended practice is to replace links to no: with links to nb:, if I recall correctly.
Thanks Mark
We talked about this time ago - and then we also said that if all are capitalised Italian of course can be capitalised as it is then part of a list where ALL interwikilinks are capitalised.
And for example the language names for the interwiki links on the Main Page of en.wiktionary are not all capitalised, so the ones that should go with a lower case should be adapted accordingly.
And I remember that even then you told Gerard that he is not Italian and that he could not tell this. And I remember someone saying that in Italian schools kids are taught to write Italian "italiano" since it is correct ortography.
Now there's the big question on why for example I don't start such discussions (that's quite easy): a simple thing like this one starts a never ending discussion and really I don't have much time - so I prefer to use my time working on wiktionary instead.
Going back to work.
Ciao, Sabine
___________________________________ Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB http://mail.yahoo.it
Ultimately the issue is: Is there still a demand, from native speakers, for it to be changed?
Sabine is obviously a native (I think? if not, at least very fluent) speaker of Italian, and so is in a position to tell us what should be done here.
Gerard says there is demand from Italian speakers, and since he is a fairly honest and respectable fellow (I don't much like him, I will admit, but it doesn't mean he's not a good person), I believe him when he says this.
Mark
On 11/07/05, Sabine Cretella sabine_cretella@yahoo.it wrote:
We talked about this time ago - and then we also said that if all are capitalised Italian of course can be capitalised as it is then part of a list where ALL interwikilinks are capitalised.
And for example the language names for the interwiki links on the Main Page of en.wiktionary are not all capitalised, so the ones that should go with a lower case should be adapted accordingly.
And I remember that even then you told Gerard that he is not Italian and that he could not tell this. And I remember someone saying that in Italian schools kids are taught to write Italian "italiano" since it is correct ortography.
Now there's the big question on why for example I don't start such discussions (that's quite easy): a simple thing like this one starts a never ending discussion and really I don't have much time - so I prefer to use my time working on wiktionary instead.
Going back to work.
Ciao, Sabine
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB http://mail.yahoo.it _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
Ultimately the issue is: Is there still a demand, from native speakers, for it to be changed?
No, the question is:
a) is it a good idea? b) is someone prepared to do the research, change all the necessary entries in languages/Names.php, make a patch and submit it to bugzilla?
-- Tim Starling
On 12/07/05, Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Ultimately the issue is: Is there still a demand, from native speakers, for it to be changed?
No, the question is:
a) is it a good idea? b) is someone prepared to do the research, change all the necessary entries in languages/Names.php, make a patch and submit it to bugzilla?
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
a) is basically the same as what I said.
It would not be a good idea if native speakers did not want it.
Mark
On 12/07/05, Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Ultimately the issue is: Is there still a demand, from native speakers, for it to be changed?
No, the question is:
a) is it a good idea? b) is someone prepared to do the research, change all the necessary entries in languages/Names.php, make a patch and submit it to bugzilla?
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
a) is it a good idea?
Yes, it is :) As I see, at least Serbian (we want that), Croatian (one contributor is strongly pro, one realizes that it is correct, one is against), Serbo-Croatian (I am a "linguist consultant" there ;) ) and Italian. (As well as I can say that Bosnian Wikipedia should change it, but people from bs: should be asked.)
The problem is that a lot of the "first contributors" on small Wikipedias don't know their own orthography well. (For example, until we realized that admins can change MediaWiki interface 0:) we had interface translation on Wikipedia with a lot of orthography errors.) A lot of them are the first just because they use Internet, not because they have correct knowledge of their own orthography.
This means that should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it. So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution, but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly against.
b) is someone prepared to do the research, change all the necessary entries in languages/Names.php, make a patch and submit it to bugzilla?
If other people think that it is OK, I can try to do that (or to help to someone to do).
This means that should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it. So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution, but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly against.
Millosh, with this you are making the assumption that it is correct orthography for all those languages -- including some you've probably not heard of, like Venda, Herero, and Chamorro -- and this is not the case. In some cases it is correct orthography, HOWEVER in others it is not. It should be on a case-by-case basis, rather than switching all to lowercase.
Obviously you know best about Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bosnian, but instead of changing all Wikipedias we should have a vote at each one, or find if it is correct orthography.
Mark
On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
This means that should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it. So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution, but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly against.
Millosh, with this you are making the assumption that it is correct orthography for all those languages -- including some you've probably not heard of, like Venda, Herero, and Chamorro -- and this is not the case. In some cases it is correct orthography, HOWEVER in others it is not. It should be on a case-by-case basis, rather than switching all to lowercase.
Obviously you know best about Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bosnian, but instead of changing all Wikipedias we should have a vote at each one, or find if it is correct orthography.
I heard that English speakers/writers write "English" with capital letter at the beginning and I didn't think to ask en: community to vote about that ;) (I am sorry if my English said that I think that small letters should be implemented for English, too :) )
I don't have an idea what is Venda or Herero orthography; but if the orthography says (and this is very simple if we are talking about standardized language) that they should write their language name with small letter at the beginning, it should be implemented in MediaWiki. If community says that they want to write with capital letter, Wikipedia should implement it with capital letter. And I think that this is very simple: MediaWiki default is the matter of orthography, Wikipedia is the matter of community (even it should not be).
If we are talking about non-standardized language, then community on Wikipedia should standardize language and then it is the real matter of community.
But... You should keep in mind that a lot of small Wikipedias have standardized languages. (last year Serbian Wikipedia was very small and Macedonian was existed only as "if you know this language, please start to write something", but both of languages have standardized language). And the relevant person who should be asked for what is right and what is wrong is not Wikipedian (who is probably programmer) but some linguist: in the cases like this we should ask some linguist from MIT, Harvard... specialized for that language. For example, out of developed communities, we should make some questionnaire for each language: (1) Does language X has standard orthography? (2) If language X has standard orthography, what is the right writing of the language name in this language? ... And to send it to a couple of universities. I am sure that we would get answers.
Of course, we can realize maybe a lot without asking any question; examples are: (1) Sicilian is not standardized, but follows Italian standard; (2) Klingon is not standardized, but follows English standard; (3) Esperanto has a lot of grammars so we can see what the rules are; etc. etc.
And, of course, it should be implemented in MediaWiki. For Wikipedias communities should be asked with the question like this: Interwiki links are not headings, but references. We found that your orthography says that the name of your language is written with the starting small letter; do you want to implement this in interwiki links or you prefer to leave interwiki links like they are now?
And to add to the list Macedonian and Slovenian (I am sure that they would agree about that).
"This means that should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it. So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution, but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly against."
I took this to mean that all language names should by default be small letters, and it can be changed later if it is a problem. Is that what you were saying?
Mark
On 12/07/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
This means that should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it. So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution, but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly against.
Millosh, with this you are making the assumption that it is correct orthography for all those languages -- including some you've probably not heard of, like Venda, Herero, and Chamorro -- and this is not the case. In some cases it is correct orthography, HOWEVER in others it is not. It should be on a case-by-case basis, rather than switching all to lowercase.
Obviously you know best about Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bosnian, but instead of changing all Wikipedias we should have a vote at each one, or find if it is correct orthography.
I heard that English speakers/writers write "English" with capital letter at the beginning and I didn't think to ask en: community to vote about that ;) (I am sorry if my English said that I think that small letters should be implemented for English, too :) )
I don't have an idea what is Venda or Herero orthography; but if the orthography says (and this is very simple if we are talking about standardized language) that they should write their language name with small letter at the beginning, it should be implemented in MediaWiki. If community says that they want to write with capital letter, Wikipedia should implement it with capital letter. And I think that this is very simple: MediaWiki default is the matter of orthography, Wikipedia is the matter of community (even it should not be).
If we are talking about non-standardized language, then community on Wikipedia should standardize language and then it is the real matter of community.
But... You should keep in mind that a lot of small Wikipedias have standardized languages. (last year Serbian Wikipedia was very small and Macedonian was existed only as "if you know this language, please start to write something", but both of languages have standardized language). And the relevant person who should be asked for what is right and what is wrong is not Wikipedian (who is probably programmer) but some linguist: in the cases like this we should ask some linguist from MIT, Harvard... specialized for that language. For example, out of developed communities, we should make some questionnaire for each language: (1) Does language X has standard orthography? (2) If language X has standard orthography, what is the right writing of the language name in this language? ... And to send it to a couple of universities. I am sure that we would get answers.
Of course, we can realize maybe a lot without asking any question; examples are: (1) Sicilian is not standardized, but follows Italian standard; (2) Klingon is not standardized, but follows English standard; (3) Esperanto has a lot of grammars so we can see what the rules are; etc. etc.
And, of course, it should be implemented in MediaWiki. For Wikipedias communities should be asked with the question like this: Interwiki links are not headings, but references. We found that your orthography says that the name of your language is written with the starting small letter; do you want to implement this in interwiki links or you prefer to leave interwiki links like they are now?
And to add to the list Macedonian and Slovenian (I am sure that they would agree about that). _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
"This means that should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it. So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution, but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly against."
I took this to mean that all language names should by default be small letters, and it can be changed later if it is a problem. Is that what you were saying?
Only where it is according to orthograpy rules.
Mark Williamson wrote:
This means that should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it. So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution, but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly against.
Millosh, with this you are making the assumption that it is correct orthography for all those languages -- including some you've probably not heard of, like Venda, Herero, and Chamorro -- and this is not the case. In some cases it is correct orthography, HOWEVER in others it is not. It should be on a case-by-case basis, rather than switching all to lowercase.
Obviously you know best about Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bosnian, but instead of changing all Wikipedias we should have a vote at each one, or find if it is correct orthography.
Using votes to determine proper capitalization of language names strikes me as absurd. A pre-literate culture with a newly written language will likely take on the standards of its colonizing masters, and retain those practices when the colonizers leave. Imposing a "correct" orthography puts us in the same boat as those colonizers who made a habit of ignoring the Prime Directive.
Ec
Sabine Cretella wrote:
And for example the language names for the interwiki links on the Main Page of en.wiktionary are not all capitalised, so the ones that should go with a lower case should be adapted accordingly.
I have no problem with this. For Italian the link currently appears as "Italiano (Italian)", and this should probably be changed to "italiano (Italian)" with the name in English remaining capitalized. Nevertheless, if a change is to be made it will be on a language by language basis, and no one person is likely to know the rule for each language. This is especially problematical with the more obscure languages where it could very well be that no standards exist. Keeping them all capitalized at least has the advantage of consistency.
Ec
On 7/13/05, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I have no problem with this. For Italian the link currently appears as "Italiano (Italian)", and this should probably be changed to "italiano (Italian)" with the name in English remaining capitalized. Nevertheless, if a change is to be made it will be on a language by language basis, and no one person is likely to know the rule for each language. This is especially problematical with the more obscure languages where it could very well be that no standards exist. Keeping them all capitalized at least has the advantage of consistency.
But, "Suomi" means "Finland" (not "Finnish") and Francais means "Frenchman" (not "French")...
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Sabine Cretella wrote:
And for example the language names for the interwiki links on the Main Page of en.wiktionary are not all capitalised, so the ones that should go with a lower case should be adapted accordingly.
I have no problem with this. For Italian the link currently appears as "Italiano (Italian)", and this should probably be changed to "italiano (Italian)" with the name in English remaining capitalized. Nevertheless, if a change is to be made it will be on a language by language basis, and no one person is likely to know the rule for each language. This is especially problematical with the more obscure languages where it could very well be that no standards exist. Keeping them all capitalized at least has the advantage of consistency.
Ec
Hoi, When we find that what we do is wrong, we can mend our ways. When we learn that particular words are to be written in a particular way we have to change things, that is progress for you. When we find that there is no standard (highly unlikely) we have the option to go either way. And as to "italiano (Italian)" that is a practice of the English wiktionary. There are many projects where the local word for a language is not given at all.
It may be consistent, true, but it is also consistent incorrect for languages like Italian.
Thanks, GerardM
On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
I love to second this request. We also write Arabic, Georgian, Hebrew, Thai, Chinese and Farsi it in its script, the whole point IS that we write it as it is written in the script of the language, why write it with bad orthography?? The name of the language in Italian is: *italiano. *Please make it so.
Hey, it seems that I'm the only Italian on this list and that as soon as I leave the computer for two or three days something interesting happens.
In Italian, language names *used* to be capitalized, and the adjectiove for inhabitants (Italians, Americans and so on) as well. The recent trend is instead to not capitalize those names. The result is that you can find both forms, since older people are used the first and younger people to the second. People who want their writing to be seen as "learned" and authoritative might use the capitalized form too...
The problem anyway doens't exist since the interwiki list is indeed a list, and there's no problem in having a list with capitalized items, be they language names or not. So the current form is OK. A list with mixed case would be instead quite strange and, I suspect, wrong.
Alfio
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
The problem anyway doens't exist since the interwiki list is indeed a list, and there's no problem in having a list with capitalized items, be they language names or not. So the current form is OK. A list with mixed case would be instead quite strange and, I suspect, wrong.
Indeed; I don't see how this is an issue of whether languages typically capitalize nationalities or not. If you look at the sidebar, *all* the menu entries are capitalized in all the languages I've just spot-checked, whether they're proper nouns or not. "Community portal" starts with a capital "C" on en:, and "Accueil communauté" starts with a capital "A" on fr:, and so on. I don't see why we would specifically lowercase the language names, while everything else in the menus is capitalized.
-Mark
Delirium pravi:
Indeed; I don't see how this is an issue of whether languages typically capitalize nationalities or not. If you look at the sidebar, *all* the menu entries are capitalized in all the languages I've just spot-checked, whether they're proper nouns or not. "Community portal" starts with a capital "C" on en:, and "Accueil communauté" starts with a capital "A" on fr:, and so on. I don't see why we would specifically lowercase the language names, while everything else in the menus is capitalized.
The sidebar menu entries are supposed to be *titles* of their respective pages, as opposed to the language names, which are ... well, language *names* rather than article (or page) titles.
Roman Maurer wrote:
Delirium pravi:
Indeed; I don't see how this is an issue of whether languages typically capitalize nationalities or not. If you look at the sidebar, *all* the menu entries are capitalized in all the languages I've just spot-checked, whether they're proper nouns or not. "Community portal" starts with a capital "C" on en:, and "Accueil communauté" starts with a capital "A" on fr:, and so on. I don't see why we would specifically lowercase the language names, while everything else in the menus is capitalized.
The sidebar menu entries are supposed to be *titles* of their respective pages, as opposed to the language names, which are ... well, language *names* rather than article (or page) titles.
So even in the links to other language Wiktionaries on the English Main Page it become arguable whether a series of items separated by dashes are a series of titles or of language names. At least the first option helps us avoid an item by item determination.
Ec
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