Fred Bauder wrote:
on 8/26/03 10:11 PM, Merritt L. Perkins at mlperkins3@juno.com wrote:
There is a difference between this French
spoken in France and in Canada, in the Spanish spoken in Spain and in Mexico.
It is likely that French speaking Wikipedians will choose to have one French Wikipedia, but the possibiltiy arises for a second French Wikipedia, perhaps a Cajun one? Or simple French?
We've already done quite well in accomodating British and American English in one Wikipedia. Contrariwise the Yugoslavs have chosen to have separate projects for languages that are not very different. Each group has to sort that out for itself
There are special characters used to write the languages.
Yes but there almost any imaginable language in included in the unicode system.
I can't use it to write Egyptian hieroglyphics. :-(
Basque, Maori, and Manx would have few readers.
Good examples of Wikipedias which might happen when those folks discover Wikipedia in any numbers, The Basques are rather nationalistic, Maori presumably have both specialized interests and a desire to preserve their language, Manxmen and Manxwomen might take an interest in resurrecting the language.
The number of readers doesn't matter; we should probably be more concerned with the number of writers. The readers will follow.
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 dont know how. It may require a special keyboard and software.
It does require software but that is easily available. The Apple system X has it, for example. I have seen pictures of special ideograph keyboards but I don't think they are in general use.
There's no need to make enterring the special characters easier for someone who will never use them anyway. I'm sure that a computer literate Arab has no problem enterrring text in his own language.
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 Xenophons Anabasis. He may have served in the Army and be familiar with Army terminology and idioms, but not familiar with submarines, ships, or airplanes.
While it is fun to learn about and write articles on subjects one is unfamiliar with, it is not expected of anyone.
I wouln't normally expect someone from a modern language department to write about the mentioned topics.
Ec