[Foundation-l] A dangerous precedent

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Dec 26, 2007 10:26 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that preserving a language is a good goal, but it is one that
> Wikipedia is not well suited for and is not intended to fulfill.
> Creating an automatically translated article on every city and town in
> the US is not a way to 'preserve' a constructed or dead language. If
> the point is to aggregate knowledge in a way that is accessible to as
> many people as possible, how does a Wikipedia in a constructed
> language (a code, really) serve that point? Additionally, someone
> mentioned that there are present native speakers of Latin. I'd be
> interested to find out who these folks are.

You're right about that point, a conlang isn't really a method of
enhancing communication so much as obscuring it. "live" conlangs, that
is conlangs with an active speaking community may be worthwhile
because they can help to facilitate communications between various
peoples. However, dead conlangs are little more then a cypher to
obscure information. Once a conlang dies, not only is it's wikipedia
not a benefit, but it's actually a hurdle to the information found
there.

As for latin, the Catholic church still performs sermons in latin, and
Latin is one of the languages spoken in the Vatican. Some universities
hold graduation ceremonies in Latin. I'm sure there are other examples
as well. While there are likely no "native" speakers of Latin, it is
still spoken

--Andrew Whitworth