[Foundation-l] Shavian Wikis

[Brion Vibber]

Joe wrote:
> I¹m fairly new on Wikimedia, and even more so to this mailing list--but I¹m
> sure you¹ve heard plenty of this before, so I¹ll get right to it.
>
> I was directed to this list to enquire about starting new Wikis in the
> Shavian alphabet, especially a Wikipedia and maybe Wikinews.

For those not familiar with Shavian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet

It's a phonetic (well, phonemic ;) alphabet for the English language,
developed in response to a contest specified for in George Bernard
Shaw's will.

While a very neat thing, it's needless to say not in common use for
writing English.

> I'm not sure
> this is entirely appropriate for Wikimedia since it will just be English
> spelled phonemically (or phonetically, if you prefer).

Since it's not even a language unto itself, and only a small handful of
hobbyists use it at all, it's very unlikely that any Wikimedia projects
will be established using Shavian writing. You might ask Wikicities --
http://www.wikicities.com/ -- which is where the Toki Pona wiki got
moved. (Toki Pona is a hobbyist conlang.)

 >  But such
> considerations don't seem to preclude other Wikis, such as Simple English or
> Tok Pisin (not quite English, I know), so I thought I'd give it a try.

Tok Pisin is a creole language which is spoken natively by actual
people. The 'Simple English' Wikipedia was created long, long ago and to
this day it's unclear what its intended mission is.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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