[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek Wikipedia

Sun Apr 13 08:20:50 UTC 2008

Hoi,
The Wikimedia Foundation aims to bring knowledge to all people in the world.
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." The best way to inform is by
using the mother tongue of people. There are languages where certain words
or concepts are not available and people either learn about the associated
subjects in another language or they add new words, new concepts to their
language.

As Milos wrote typically extinct and constructed languages are considered
together. What they have in common is that both are not optimal in bringing
knowledge to people. What they are good at is bringing knowledge about the
language itself. When you read a well written text about a subject, you are
informed about the subject and at the same time you learn the language and
you learn the words that are needed for that language.

As I have argued before, an extinct language that is of relevance only
because of its historic value should be confined to its vocabulary. When you
start to expand the meaning of words, when you start to add words to the
language it is no longer true to say that a text written with such
innovations helps you understand the original texts in that language. When
writing in ancient Greek is part of a course, then it is for your professor
to evaluate the text. Obviously it is an essential tool in learning a
language but it does not imply that it is of value to other people who are
studying ancient Greek.

When an extinct language is brought back from extinction, the technicla term
is re-constructed, it is essentially a different language. When you applied
for an ISO-639 code that says that the language is "Re-constructed Old
Greek" you make explicitly clear that even though it looks like Old Greek,
it is not.

This requirement for being precise about in what language a WMF project
exist for any language. When we cannot pin down what language it is exactly
that e will be expressed in a Wikipedia, we will not promote a project from
"discussion" to "eligible". We use the ISO-639-3 as a reference. You are
welcome to apply for a label for reconstructed Old Greek.

When you consider a language like Dutch, you will agree that it has evolved
over time. The language of Vondel is almost a different language and it is
not understood without  considerable effort for native Dutch people. When
someone studied the language of Vondel and would write a Wikipedia article
in that language the article would be deleted. When you talk consider old
Greek, the language will have evolved over time and consequently the oldest
Greek is likely to be quite different from the latest original writing. I
can even argue that there is no singular old Greek, there are many. With a
living language you do know how to write because you are writing for the
living no such reference exists for an extinct language.

The arguments the language committee uses are clear. They are published and
they are objective. You may not like them, but they are the arguments we
use. When people have issues, the arguments have to be convincing to make a
difference.
Thanks,
     GerardM

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 9:39 AM, Dovi Jacobs <dovijacobs at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> GerardM strongly feels the following,
> an argument he has made countless times
> as the reason the Ancient Greek Wikipedia
> was cancelled (even after being approved
> with the sole remaining condition of finishing
> the interface translation):
>
> >When you write in a dead language you will invariably start to
> >use neologisms or start to give a different meaning to a words that they
> >originally did not have. As a consequence you do not learn the language
> as
> >it was at the time of its demise. It is no longer that language...
>
> >In contrast to historic languages neologisms are fine
> >in constructed languages.
>
> This, however, is a conceptual point that may not be
> a good reason to deny a Wikipedia, and indeed many of us
> do not feel it is, nor that it is even correct.
>
> What is so terrible about neologisms?
> What makes them so distasteful to you that you were willing
> to go so far as to close down an approved project with some
> highly educated and qualified people contributing to it?
> Why, Gerard, must a Wikipedia represent a language exactly
> as it was "at the time of its demise"? (Can you define,
> exactly, the exact state of the "demise" of a classical
> language like Greek?)
>
> As previous posters have mentioned, Greek is still to this
> very day a basic part of a classical education, and "creative
> writing" in such a rich language is par for the course when
> studying it. So are "neologisms" really so foreign to it?
> And is it really completely "dead" for the purposes of an
> encyclopedia?
>
> On the contrary, I posit that the issue of neologisms has
> nothing to do with the validity, or lack thereof, of a
> Wikimedia project. There is no reason not to have a project
> with neologisms, and there are languages without neologisms
> that may not be appropriate. That neologisms must be foreign
> to Wikipedia language projects is Gerard's firm conviction,
> but it is a value judgement like any other, and not shared
> by many others. There is nothing objective about it.
>
> On the contrary, *all* languages have adapted to the technical
> needs of Wikipedia and even changed as a result. This includes
> English itself and other major European languages. The English
> of Wikipedia today is different than the English language of
> 2001 precisely because it has been used in a Wikipedia environment.
>
> On a larger scale, I would like to know more about the language
> committee and how it is appointed. It seems to have very dedicated
> and highly qualified members. But from recent discussion it also
> appears to be somewhat monolithic and might benefit from a greater
> diversity of voices.
>
> Dovi
>
>
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