[Wikipedia-l] Languages

[tarquin]

Merritt L. Perkins wrote:

>What languages? All languages! Do you mean that you want to include
>Encyclopedia articles on all languages. There are so many obscure
>languages that you cannot expect to include them all.
>What languages should the Encyclopedia be translated into? I think that
>you should choose languages that would have many readers. High German,
>French and Spanish for example. There is a difference between this French
>spoken in France and in Canada, in the Spanish spoken in Spain and in
>Mexico. There are special characters used to write the languages. 
>Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers. The language should be
>easily written from a computer keyboard. This would exclude Arabic and
>Chinese. There must be some way to write them but I don’t know how. It
>may require a special keyboard and software. 
>The head of the modern language department of a large German university
>may be fluent in several languages and able to teach about subjects from
>the Kavala to Xenophon’s Anabasis. He may have served in the Army and be
>familiar with Army terminology and idioms, but not familiar with
>submarines, ships, or airplanes.
>The translator should be a native speaker thoroughly familiar with the
>subject of the article and may choose to write his own article instead of
>translating the existing article.
>I find no objection to including articles written or translated into
>Icelandic, Hungarian, or any other language even though there would be
>few readers. Readers need to know where to find them 
>Merritt L. Perkins
>  
>
timewarp much?
all this stuff is already happening!