[Foundation-l] Fwd: Tokipona

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
From my point of view, we are following the definitions of ISO for how we
classify languages. A constructed language is as a consequence explicitly
different from a reconstructed language. In a constructed language new
vocabulary can be created. From my point of view, a reconstructed language
is not the same as the historical, ancient or extinct language it builds
upon. When you consider Latin, according to iso-639 an ancient language, the
standard has it in my opinion wrong because the language never got
completely in disuse.

The discussion about whether we should have constructed languages is in
essence a boring one. People have their opinions and they are typically
unreasonable about it. It would be good when we have some objective criteria
for this. This will keep these ever recurring discussions go away somewhat
more easily. From my point of view, a language needs to have an ISO-639-3
language code and acquiring this is not trivial. When a language can then
show some 200 really well written articles with an active community of at
least five people and having done a good job on the localisation, they can
have my blessing. In this way, the criteria for such a language are much
harsher then natural languages and this should be sufficient for the
exclusionists.

Thanks,
     GerardM

On Jan 21, 2008 6:41 PM, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2008/1/21, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com>:
>
> > Good questions, all, and I think it deserves a good reply. As far as I
> > am concerned, a language (constructed or natural) is worthy of having
> > a wiki project under one of two conditions:
> > 1) If the language has a large number of natural speakers. A wiki
> > project can be used to faciliate communication and the sharing of
> > information among these people
> > 2) If the language has a large number of secondary-speakers. In this
> > case, the language can be used to faciliate the share of information
> > between people who are not able to communicate directly using their
> > natural languages.
>
> I would put 2) even stricter: We should only count secondary-speakers
> for which the language can reasonably be expected to have a Wikipedia
> of similar or larger size than their first language. Someone with
> English as their first language would not have much use of the
> Esperanto Wikipedia, since they can get all and more on the English
> Wikipedia. But apart from the few first-language Esperanto speakers
> there are plenty of second-language speakers whose first language is
> not in the top-10 Wikipedia languages. For them there might be
> considerable material in Esperanto that's not in their first language.
>
> > Latin: Has few (but some) primary speakers, and a large number of
> > secondary speakers. However, Latin may be problematic for other
> > reasons besides these. Latin doesnt have words for many "modern"
> > concepts that are worth discussing, and many people who know latin are
> > familiar with different forms of latin (latin for catholic mass, dog
> > latin, etc).
>
> I disagree with those objections. There are Latin words created for
> modern terms by the Catholic church. And there are different forms of
> Latin, but I am unconvinced that those differences are more
> problematic than (for example) the differences between European and
> Brazilian Portuguese.
>
> > Just because you or I speak a particular language doesnt mean that
> > it's important in the global sense, or that it is useful in spreading
> > information. Small languages, including small conlangs and natural
> > languages, can be a very large barrier to communication simply because
> > not enough people choose to write it, and few people are able to read
> > it. Having large numbers of articles, especially poor-quality or
> > bot-generated articles (especially in the case of Volapuk) is not
> > really a counter-argument to this point.
>
> My opinion would be that a Wikipedia in a language should be there to
> give information to its readers. If there are few or no readers, that
> will not work out. I have strong doubts to that for Klingon or
> tokipona, but also to for example Anglo-Saxon and to a lesser extent
> volapük and Latin. I get the idea that those are made by people for
> the fun of writing and reading in those languages rather than
> primarily as a means of communication. Having fun writing and reading
> in some language is a valid aim, but not one that Wikipedia is for.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
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