[Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedias

[jneden at bellsouth.net]

Hi there

Do me a favor, somebody, and create the following Wikipedias for me as soon as you get a chance:

http://mus.wikipedia.org/ -- Muscogee (Creek)
http://cho.wikipedia.org/ -- Choctaw
http://nv.wikipedia.org/ -- Navajo

I would also like to create a Wikipedia for the Mikasuki language, sort of a sister language to Muscogee, one of my ancestral languages. (My grandmother is Cherokee and my grandfather is Muscogee, although, due to my upbringing, I have a much stronger Cherokee background.) Mikasuki is used alongside Muscogee on many of the Seminole areas of Florida, and, although small by numbers, has an extremely vibrant population of speakers, young and old, actively promoting the language. I can easily be in touch with the Seminole reservations to inform them of the creation of a Mikasuki Wikipedia, which, I'm sure (knowing them) will excite them quite a bit.

Mikasuki does not have an ISO code. What is preferred to use in this case?

I am also readily in touch with Muscogee and Choctaw speakers. Choctaw is a particularly good candidate for Wiki'ing, for a SE First Nations language, as it has a good number of young, native speakers who could highly benefit from a Choctaw Wikipedia. Muskogee is also a good candidate for wiki'ing--it still has a good number of fluent speakers, but it is suffering from significant language shift, which is rather worrisome. Muskogee (unlike Cherokee) is easily learnable, for the most part, and has a robust but simple grammatical structure (much like Esperanto). I am in the process of learning it from native speakers.

Cherokee, on the other hand, with which I am gaining increased fluency, is a much harder language to quickly pick up, not because of irregularities, but because of its sheer grammatical complexity. Still, it is a very good candidate for Wiki'ing, and I am also adding Cherokee material to the Wikisource archives. Muskogee texts, with a little research and permission, may also be easily added.

You can find a large Muskogee archive here, if you are curious:

http://www.wm.edu/linguistics/creek/

Cherokee has a large amount of written text out there, but only a small amount of it is online. There is, however, a large amount of conversational Cherokee (little of it actually being ORIGINAL!) available -- fire up Google with "o-si-yo" (a dumbly hyphenated version of the syllables that make up "hello") and you'll see what I mean!

Creek has the exact opposite situation. I am in the process of improving both of these situations and will have the first of many high quality IPA-friendly, Cherokee dialogues [with sound files of native-level speakers, including myself] and exercises up on my website, FNN:SE (http://www.nativesouth.org) by tomorrow afternoon. (My accent in Cherokee is at the native level--I just need to increase my fluency in Cherokee! My grandmother and great-grandmother speak English with Cherokee accents, even though they don't realize it!) I will also be adding a large amount of Cherokee source material to my website, within time, as well as to the Wikisource archives. All of my work is copyright-friendly, and ALL of it may be freely and mercilessly reproduced for the betterment of the Cherokee language.

Navajo needs a spot in Wikipedia. It has a HUGE number of native speakers, young and old, who grow up speaking the language more often than they speak English.

For all of these languages, I will set to work on creating their place in Wikipedia, and in advertising their presence to native speakers.

Thanks!
 -- Jeremy
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