[Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

[Stephen Forrest]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 02:08:38 +0000, Ron H <aceron99 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I would like to request adding Quenya to the list of languages on
> Wikimedia.  Quenya is the language of the elves in the works of
> Tolkien.

ObNitpicking: it is one such language.  Sindarin is the other elvish
language about which Tolkien wrote a significant amount.  I suppose
granting a wikipedia for one would make it rather difficult not to
grant one for the other as well.

I don't see that the Tengwar fonts would be a big problem: writers
could simply use hardcoded entities everywhere, which is ugly but
which works for the Gothic wikipedia, at least.  I have been told
that, crazy as it seems, there are actually Unicode entities for this
alphabet (though I haven't confirmed this).

> Other fictional languages, such as Klingon, already exist on
> Wikipedia. I speak passing Quenya. I have already prepared
> several articles, including one on constellations, and would
> like to add them to a quenya-language wiki.

And we also have a Wikipedia in Rohirric. :)

Perhaps this goes without saying, but if a Quenya wikipedia were to
exist, an article on constellations that mentions specific
constellations would have to refer, by default anyway, to the real
world.  For example, Earendil must be described as a fictional star.

It seems to me to be a reasonable thing to insist that a language must
have at one time been a native tongue of some human population in
order for it to be granted a wikipedia.  Otherwise we could be deluged
with requests from enthusiastic 16-year-olds who have fashioned their
own languages (I know, I was one once).

It's true that Klingon doesn't fit this criterion (though Esperanto
does) and yet exists, but I don't think we need be bound by precedent,
especially as the Klingon experiment hasn't been a particularly
successful one.

Steve