[Foundation-l] On Arabic and sub-language proposals.

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

Hi Ting,

In the days since I have first sent my email, I talked to several people,
and due to their arguments, I am less worried now about division of effort,
however, I still strongly believe that my arguments about the language being
mostly a spoken one with no stable orthography and that by WMF approving any
of those dialects/language, it will be essentially making a political stand,
still hold.

On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 5:29 AM, Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hello Muhammad,
>
> as I first heard about the discussion of the establishment of an
> egyptian arabic wikipedia I find the situation is quite similar to the
> discussion two years ago, as the first minor chinase language wikipedia
> was about to start. So I think maybe the experience we had in the
> chinese language wikipedias can help you a little. Though, this is my
> personnal impression, it is not representative and if surely do not
> match the standards of an academic research (indeed I would find such a
> research helpful and interesting).
>
> Before the first minor chinese language wikipedia was started there was
> a long during (I believe at least one year or more) discussion inside
> the by that time chinese community. The arguments exchanged by that time
> (for or against) are very similar to the arguments that are now put up
> in the arabic community. I personnaly took at that time a skeptic view
> against a new chinese wikipedia. My concern at that time was mainly of
> the division of the community.
>
> Now, after more than two and a half years, we have seven chinese
> language wikipedias, these are zh (the standard chinese, mandarin),
> zh-yue (cantonese the first minor chinese language wikipedia established
> in march 2006), wuu, cdo (min-dong-language), gan, hak (hak-ka language)
> and the zh-classic (the classic language). Except the zh-classic all
> other languages have native speakers, some have established writing
> system, some not.
>
> For me personally, after two and half a year of experience, the most
> important conclusion is that my original faer of a splitting of the
> community proved to be wrong. Especially the yue-language wikipedia
> developped well. It is a small (far more smaller than zh) community, but
> it is a vivid and sustainable community, with a lot of interchanges
> between zh and zh-yue communities. I find this interchange very
> fruitful. We have articles originally in zh-wp transfered to zh-yue-wp
> and vice versa. I think the creation of this language version very
> beneficial.
>
> Not so well do the wuu and gan wp develop. Both languages suffer from
> being endangered, their native speakers diminishing rapidly and they
> have no really established writing system. Also after the lifting of the
> ban on mainland-china these two versions remain crankly.
>
> Personnally I am especially disappointed by the hak-ka version wp. I
> think it should do better as it is now. But naturally, the number of
> Hak-ka native speakers are less than yue, wuu and gan.
>
> So, I think that a writing system, especially a used writing system is
> also important. Yue has such a system and the system is very popularly
> used in BBSes, blogs and chatrooms in Hongkong. I think this is a vital
> point for the success of the yue-wk.
>
> My friend Theodoranian said while the discussion two or three years ago,
> the big community should not be afraid that the minor community would
> splitt it. Contrary, the big community should help the minor
> communities. I am very happy that the time proved him right.
>
> Ting
>
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-- 
Best Regards,
Muhammad Alsebaey