[Wikipedia-l] Request for Amis Wiktionary

[Mark Williamson]

Hello Pochung,

This is a strange coincidence because 3 days ago I was wondering when
somebody would start a Wikipedia or a Wiktionary in a Taiwanese
aboriginal language. It seems logical that Amis would be the first
because it has the largest population.

I have a few things to say.

First of all, you don't need to use a Traditional interface - you can
translate the interface to Amis. (not sure if there's a way to say
"click here" in Amis, but you could always use Mandarin words when
there is no Amis word, or you could coin a new term)

Second of all, I think it will be a good idea to divide efforts
between a Wikipedia and a Wiktionary. There are many similarities
between the projects, but on Wikipedia you can give much more
information about a subject, while in Wiktionary you give information
about the word itself (ie pronunciation, translations, definition).
Perhaps it would be a good idea to get a "head start" with the
Wiktionary until you have a "working lexicon" of 500 words, and then
split efforts and start more on a Wikipedia.

While it is more common to start first with a Wikipedia, there have
been proposals recently to 'force' or suggest people to start with
Wiktionary, because it is less "intensive" and is better to get
acquainted with the system.

However, perhaps it will be a good idea to have an article base of 25
or 50 articles on an Amis Wikipedia before concentrating efforts
entirely on Wiktionary - good, solid articles about things relevant to
Amis people, such as Taiwan, Chinese language, Amis, Amis language,
Tayal, Tsou, traditional culture items, and also basic articles on men
and women, some plants common in the Amis area, and some animals.

I think that in general it is a Very Good Thing that a project should
be started for Amis, as it sets an example for other languages in a
similar situation, and provides an outlet for knowledge of Amis people
and a place to use exclusively Amis online.

Mark

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 17:15:20 +0800, Pochung Chen <pcchen at phys.nthu.edu.tw> wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
>   We would like to open a Wiktionary for the Amis language. Amis is an
> Austronesian language used by the Amis -- one of the Austronesian
> people in Taiwan. The Amis account for about one third of Taiwan's
> indigenous population (i.e. 130 thousand), however, many of the younger
> generation do not speak the language and till now there is still no
> exact ststistic report of the number of real speakers.
> 
>   There are two prevailing writing systems of this language: the
> Presbyterian Church system and the International Phonetic Symbol
> system, the later is used only within the academic circle. We would
> like to edit a Wiktionary which basically employs the Presbyterian
> Church system but also notes the IPS so that readers can also know the
> exact pronounciations.
> 
>   At this moment there are at least three people who are willing to
> commit to this project. They are Nakao Eki, Afah Lisin, and Tai-ni
> Tsou. The former two are native speakers and the later two as
> ethnographers are also familiar with the academic Amis writing system.
> Pektiong Tan (zh-min-nan:pektiong) will help those people to get
> familiar with the wikipedia system.
> 
>   We would prefer to set the default interface language to be Mandarin
> with traditional character used in Taiwan (zh-tw) since most of the
> potential user of this wiktionary can read Mandarin with traditional
> character.
> 
>   Proposed domain name:
>   http://amis.wiktionary.org/
> 
>   Language tag for Amis:
>   ISO 639-2: N.A.
>   ISO 639-3 (Draft): Ami
>   SIL: ALV
>   RFC-3066: i-ami
> 
>   Sincerely,
>   Nakao Eki,
>   Afah Lisin,
>   Tai-ni Tsou,
>   Pektiong Tan
> 
> Some info about Taiwanese aborigine:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_aborigine
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