[Foundation-l] Fwd: Tokipona

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Jan 21, 2008 12:41 PM, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I tend to disagree with this. The goal of a conlang like Esperanto is
that people with different natural languages (English, Spanish,
Chinese, etc) can all communicate on common ground. This way, you can
avoid the old arguments "I'm not going to learn your language, you
need to learn mine", and replace it with "We all need to learn this
neutral language where we will all be on equal footing".

Whether this approach is beneficial is beyond me.

A better way to expand that point is to ask whether more information
could be shared by using the conlang or the ancient language then
could happen otherwise. En.wikipedia is very large, but does that
benefit people who don't speak english? In other words, does the
conlang or ancient language represent a path of communication that
would not exist otherwise? Are there people in this world who would be
worse off if we didn't host that language project? Are there people in
this would who would receive significant benefit if we did?

> 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.

Fair enough, I rescind my criticism of the latin language. Latin is
not nearly so useful now as it used to be, especially as a standard
platform for communication among the educated and elite. But, that
does not imply that it is not useful still.

> 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.

I agree here 100%. The purpose of wikipedia is to create information
collaboratively, and to share that information freely. If there are
too few writers to engage in actual collaboration, and if there are
too few readers to actually cause any information to be shared, then
the project is a failure. When creating a new language project we
should not just measure the demand of people looking to write, but
also the demand among people who want to read. This is inherently more
difficult.

--Andrew Whitworth