[Foundation-l] Why so many Italian language wikis

[Gianluigi Gamba]

> Bence Damokos schreef:
>> ps. OFF. why are there so many wikis in Italy?
> ...
> NB the "correct" way to ask your question would have been "Why are there
> so many wikis for language spoken in Italy?" (All the Wikimedia
> Foundation wikis are in Florida :) )

In spite of the common Latin root, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Ligurian, Venetian, 
etc... diverged enough from each other to make the speakers of those 
languages poorly understandable to each other, when not understandable at 
all.
Then the Florentian language was chosen as model to create a national 
language (well before the creation of Italy as a unified nation). Today most 
of the Italian citizens speak both Italian - recognized as common and 
official language for the whole state - and their old local language, 
according to the context and the situation; local languages like Sardinian 
and Furlan got local official acknowledgment in order to preserve them as 
cultural heritage.

The wikis in local languages of Italy are driven by the same purpose: 
preservation of the wealth of that cultural past.
Some of their most active users, besides, never happened to learn Italian, 
as because of the emigration Italy underwent they were born in the US or in 
South America or in Australia or in Germany and they currently speak 
Neapolitan/Sicilian/Venetian/etc and English or Spanish or German.

As far as I've seen up to now (probably with the exception of the Lombard 
wiki) those communities are big, committed and open enough to keep their 
wikipedias alive and growing, and not battlefields for nationalistic issues.

Because that's the point IMHO: Wikimedia resources should not be hostage of 
nationalistic issues or (worse) become unaware megaphones of political 
movements. That's not what we're here for.

Bye,
G. (aka Paginazero)