[Foundation-l] Klassical Chinese

[Ting Chen]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 4:23 PM, Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de> wrote:
>   
>> What I wonder is, is there a meaning to write an encyclopedia with this
>> language. Who would look for Olympic Games in a classical chinese
>> Wikipedia, except the people who write the article themselves?
>>     
>
> Usually, the most of Internet users who read English without problems
> won't use any other edition of Wikipedia for such purposes (current
> events), except the English one. Those who are not fluent in any
> foreign language and don't have such happiness to be born in some
> large culture (German, French, Russian, Spanish, Chinese...), would
> read about current events on professional media in their languages,
> not on Wikipedia. So, then, why to write encyclopedia in any other
> language?
>   

I don't agree with you on this point. For example a lot of German look 
up in German wikipedia instead of in english Wikipedia or in German 
media. And I personally would use chinese Wikipedia if it is a China 
related topic or in german Wikipedia if it is a german related topic. 
Only if it is an english speaking language related topic or a topic for 
which language I don't understand I would look in german and english 
Wikipedia. If it is a disputed and current event topic I would look into 
as most of language versions and media from different countries as I can.

What you said is may be the situation three years ago. And I am sure you 
will find the serbian Wikipedia in three years in much topics more 
useful then or as useful as the english Wikipedia.

> But, article about Han or Qin dynasty and their times in Classical
> Chinese may be very useful for a lot of East Asians. AFAIK, one
> average Japanese is not able to read even Traditional Chinese (my
> friend told me that he is able just to suppose what some character
> means; so mistakes like reading a character for "dentist" as a
> "physician" is usual level of understanding), while, as Aphaia said,
> is able to read Classical Chinese. I may imagine that the similar
> situation is in Korea and maybe in some countries of South-East Asia.
>   
That I disagree. The japanese version and the vietnamese version of 
Han-dynasty (that's the two languages that I at least know a little) are 
far more better than the Classic Chinese version, and I am sure that a 
Japanese or a Vietnamese would be more comfortable to read the article 
in their own language then in Classic Chinese. There is no article about 
the Qin Dynasty in Classic Chinese but in Japanese, Korean and 
Vietnamese. But I am sure the rest would be similar. By the next 
Wikimania I would ask Aphaia if she would ever think of a situation when 
she would look up in the Classic Chinese :-P
> The point here is that a number of non-linguists are trying to make
> some tautologies from linguistics; which is completely impossible.
> There are a number of social variables which makes one language
> valuable. And there are a number of other social variable which makes
> one language worth of efforts to help them.
>
> BTW, note that a lot of languages with small number of speakers are
> not able to write an article about, let's say, nuclear chemistry. And
> more languages are not able to express almost anything about computer
> technology in their standards; and if they are able, it is usually
> better to read it in English because texts in standards are more
> foreign than English text is.
>
> There is a very small specter of languages which, AFAIK, shouldn't
> have separate projects: stupidities (cf. Siberian Wikipedia), hobbyist
> languages (Klingon, Tengvar) and ancient languages used exclusively
> for research of language and cultural history (Sumerian, Phoenician).
> Other languages should pass careful analysis: are they useful? do they
> deserve needed amount of our time and energy? Also, some Wikimedia
> projects are more useful for some languages: Wiktionary and
> Wikisource, are, by default, much more useful for any language than it
> is, let's say, Wikinews. So, even ancient languages should get their
> Wiktionaries and Wikisources; but I really don't see a need for Old
> Church Slavonic Wikinews (while even Wikiversities may have some
> sense).
>
> And to conclude: We need some more sensible rules. (And, so, I fully
> agree with Tim's changes.)
>   
Yes, I think at this point we agree each other. Maybe we could consider 
a project category, whose purpose is the conservation of languages. As I 
wrote in a reply to Tim earlier I think MediaWiki can help a lot. But it 
must not be a Wikipedia.

Ting