[Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[Milos Rancic]

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 00:34, M. Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, Milos, my "reasoning" is not "of the industrial age". It is backed up by
> first-hand experience and by research. People who live in cities are by
> nature a part of a larger urban community, with few exceptions (if there is
> some kind of enforced segregation, like ghettoization of Jews which often
> preserved Yiddish in urban environments pre-holocaust), which means it is
> very, very, very highly likely that their children will learn the LWC of the
> city in addition to the language of their parents. There is also a much
> higher chance that children who grow up in the city will marry someone
> outside of their own linguistic group, which often means their children will
> be raised primarily in the main language of that city. Now, like I said in
> my original e-mail, a 100% bilingual minority group does not usually stay
> bilingual for more than a couple of generations, especially in an urban
> environment where they must interact on a daily basis with people who do not
> speak their language, and often, might only use their own language at home.
>
> Also, keep in mind that the idea of "generations" varies from country to
> country. In some countries, people typically don't give birth until mid-late
> 30s; in others, it is in the teenage years, so things like language death
> happen a bit more rapidly as the new generations come more quickly.

You are talking about cities like New York and London are; or about
communities which have strong social reasons to forget their native
language. Besides that, you are not counting the fact that people who
speak the same language are able now to reach each other more easily.

In the most of the cases migrants are forming neighborhoods and they
keep their language because they are semi/self-ghettoized. Such
languages have chance to survive if there is written culture. And if
the language hasn't disappeared during the time when descendants stop
to struggle for survival, some of the descendants are starting to
learn the language again.

Your scenario is well known everywhere on the planet. However, many
things are changing thanks to the Internet and much better
possibilities for communication.

Here are two opposite examples from Serbia:

* My grandfather came from the Torlak area to Belgrade with my father
who was ~10 years old. Prestige language of Torlak speaking population
from Serbia is Serbian and Torlak doesn't have written culture. My
father knows Torlak. My mother is from other part of Serbia and I
didn't use to go to the village near Pirot often. I understand Torlak
well, but I don't speak it. However, my brother and my sister speak
Torlak. But, it is true that their children would know just a couple
of Torlak words.

* Roma languages from Serbia are in constant state of shrinking. Their
prestige language is Serbian, but not just that: their prestige
ethnicity is Serbian. I know a number or the third generation of
integrated Roma who don't know a word of any Roma language. But, some
of those from the third generation are now leaning Romano-Serbian, as
a couple of years ago it's finally got written form. It is possible
that we'll have Wikipedia in Romano-Serbian in a couple of years.

Note that the state of their language was probably among the worst for
a language of that amount of speakers (170k): Very negative attitude
toward language *and* ethnicity, no written culture, high rate of
marriages with the dominant population; the only social environment in
which it is used regularly are slums and all of them want to leave
slums and integrate into the majority population. However, it is
highly likely that all of Roma languages will survive, thanks to the
increased awareness for their situation and Internet and mobile
phones.

They don't need anymore to be in slums to be able to communicate in
their language. A lot of them won't use Romano-Serbian in written
form, but better communication will allow them to raise children who
would know their language and who would be willing to educate their
children in the language of their grandparents. Just a couple of
decades ago such scenario wouldn't be possible.