[Foundation-l] "Historical" languages and constructed languages

[Andrew Gray]

On 25/01/2008, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:

> And I know you have been an advocate of Latin Wikipedia.  I would not
> call such a language "reconstructed", but rather, a living and
> evolving "classical language", with an active contemporary literature.
>  And I do not believe Latin to be unique in this regard.

I suppose the difference between modern versions of Latin and, say,
modern versions of Sumerian (and I know a couple of people who could
attempt to write in the latter) is that Latin is the product of an
unbroken line of use - maybe a rather minor one at times, but there's
always been a continuing usage of it since the year dot. Sumerian,
however, is reconstructed from surviving fragments; we know how it
works, but there's no "connection", it's just a philological curiosity
for researchers.

So acceptable ancient languages would presumably be things like Latin,
or classical Greek, or the various languages mostly known for
liturgical purposes.

> What do you think of the proposal for using the demonstrated
> notability of a language's contemporary literature (as demonstrated by
> a Featured Article on the subject in the English Wikipedia) as the
> criteria for the approval of a primarily-written language (such as the
> "historical" and constructed languages)?

I wouldn't go so far as to specify "an article on enwp", but some
similar kind of positive demonstration of widespread contemporary
literature, in the absence of a large "native" population, feels like
a good measure.

The converse, a large native-speaking population and not much
contemporary literature isn't a problem, of course - these are exactly
the cases where we need to put lots of effort into helping kickstart
the project.

In how many languages is Wikipedia the *only* major encyclopedia? I
know there's at least one smallish European language where we're the
first general encyclopedia in most of a century...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk