[Foundation-l] What to do with moribund languages?

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The notion of redundancy of articles in minority languages coming from you
Milos is painful. There is typically an article of a majority language that
arguably covers the subject best. All other articles are redundant because
you can use something like Google translate to share the benefit of the
best. While the article in Lower Sorbian may not be as good as the German or
Polish article, it is still part of the maze of articles that makes up this
encyclopaedic effort. Given that all projects have their room to grow, we
should let them and be happy when they do.

It is not for the language committee to opine about the relative value of a
language. When it is a living language, it is eligible and when the other
requirements are met, it is for the people who support their project, their
language to make it as good as they can.

The requirements for new projects have one aim and one aim only; to prevent
more moribund *projects*. It it painful and stupid to have Wikipedias that
never got a first article or are not in the language they are supposed to
be. When a language is extinct or almost extinct, we might allow for a
Wikisource in such a language. These are conservation projects. I have no
opinion if Wikisource and MediaWiki provide the appropriate environment for
such a project. I would not be surprised when other platforms do a better
job for such languages.

Incubator is in and of itself a temporary affair. This is its original
purpose.
Thanks,
     GerardM



2009/1/4 Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>

> I wasn't precise while describing my intention, so I'll try to do it
> now with responses to the previous emails.
>
> * About moribund languages: It is not a precise term, but it is
> possible to make some description and to realize where are the borders
> of the term. For example, a language with ~15.000 speakers would be a
> very alive language if it is spoken at some Pacific island. However,
> if it is spoken inside of much stronger culture with a different
> dominant language (the case of Lower Sorbian) or the population is too
> disperse inside of some area (let's say, dialects of Ladino at
> Balkans), such language is at the edge. The good side of that position
> is a possibility for the revival of that language (like in the case of
> Welsh). But, any kind of our positioning is related to the
> contemporary linguistic situation, not to a future one.
>
> * Policy: Just to say that I am not talking about new policies, but
> about preferences of LangCom members. As it was mentioned, in the most
> of the cases such language wouldn't get a new project. In the mean
> time we did nothing. Even there is really one person who is a native
> speaker, such person would loose the initial enthusiasm after a couple
> of months of waiting for the project.
>
> * Intention: So, i think that in such cases we should think about what
> is more important to a particular endangered or moribund language. For
> example, having an article about the Earth in Lower Sorbian is fully
> redundant. All of the speakers of Lower Sorbian are able to read much
> better article in German. Similar situations are with the most of
> endangered and moribund languages.
>
> Those languages are usually not endangered or moribund because of
> physical extinction of the population (except in Paupa New Guinea and
> some other similar places in the world, but it is not so hard to
> predict that we won't get any native speaker of those [endangered or
> moribund] languages soon), but because of dominance of surrounding
> culture(s) and language(s).
>
> If we want to help to such linguistic group, we shouldn't force them
> to pass our standard procedure. One-person project may work just if it
> is a life dedication of that person. In almost 100% of the cases, we
> won't get MediaWiki localized, we won't get more than ~50-100 articles
> at Incubator and so on.
>
> So, our response should be: Don't waste time with making your own
> Wikipedia (by passing our measures made because of completely
> different reasons), but try do something important for your language.
> Writing oral literature, writing dictionaries and similar are much
> more useful task than trying to write the article about the Earth.
>
> We have enough resources (particularly, Wikisource and Incubator) to
> help to the speakers of endangered and moribund languages. My
> intention was not to forbid such projects, not to make some new
> policy, but to make some more efficient procedure for such cases. The
> other option is to wait for years in the process of "discussion" about
> some proposal. And such languages are in the position to loose 1% of
> speakers every month.
>
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