[Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

[James R. Johnson]

I can't say anything about Gothic lit after WW2, except for: 
http://www.stormloader.com/carver/gutrazda/bagmebloma.html
http://www.stormloader.com/carver/gutrazda/ringpoem.html

and a few more on http://www.stormloader.com/carver/gutrazda/index.html

I can understand the hesitation with dead languages, especially Gothic, with
such a limited vocabulary as it has, but other languages, such as Latin, Old
Norse, and Old English/Anglo-Saxon should definitely have wikipedias, as
they have quite a large corpus of material written in their languages, have
large vocabularies, and have large numbers of people who learn them, write
in them, and speak them.  Just check out these sites on
Old English: 
http://www.buckrogers.demon.co.uk/nasc.htm and
http://home.comcast.net/~modean52 and
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/4506/ and
http://www.kami.demon.co.uk/gesithas/index.html 

Old Norse: 
http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/ and 
http://hem.passagen.se/peter9/gram/index.html and
http://www.snerpa.is/net/isl/isl.htm 

I can list at least 20 to 30 more sites between the two languages.  Material
is being written both in Old Norse and Old English nowadays, and there are
mailing lists for both languages, with communities willing to support
wikipedias in both languages.  I myself would contribute to both languages'
wikipedias, and a Gothic one as well, if it were created.  Could the
requestor please list some sites or material he has available to him, as I'm
simply curious about the ability of Gothic to adequately describe modern
concepts and events.  

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andre Engels
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 6:08 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000 Fredrik Adevåg <gadrauhts at hotmail.com> 
wrote:
>I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in 
> gothic.
>
>Full name: gothic
>
>Language code: got
>
>Number of speakers: 0
>
>Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably 
>much more.

I still am very wary about putting Wikipedia in dead languages. Reason is 
that in my opinion the first function of Wikipedia is to bring over the 
information content in the articles; the language, in my opinion, is just a 
means to do this, it should not be a goal in its own. Because, as far as I 
can see, nobody would _prefer_ to have Gothic as the language in which s/he 
gets this information, I don't think having a Gothic Wikipedia aids in this 
goal (and yes, there are languages in which Wikipedia already exists with 
which I have the same objections).

My doubts would be much lessened if you could give me evidence that the 
language is actually used - in the sense of being written/spoken rather than

just read. I would like to ask this:

Can you specify a body of literature written in Gothic, from recent date 
(say, after World War II)?

Andre Engels
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