[Wikipedia-l] Re: multilingualism (was Q1 drive)

[Pablo Saratxaga]

Kaixo!

On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 09:02:37PM +0300, V. Ivanov wrote:

> While the larger language Wikipedias compete with commercial
> encyclopedias (and the larger language speakers have the choice), the
> smaller language Wikipedias are _unique_, the speakers of such
> language don't have much choice -- and Wikipedia appears to be the
> only _try_ to create an encyclopedia. It also can become the main
> source for a future "official" encyclopedia, which might be too
> expensive for a not so large people, if all the authors are paid.

That's so true.

Here I share my experience with Walloon wikipedia.
Walloon language doesn't have any official support at all
(while Wallonia has quite very great autonomy in several areas
(including the ability to sovereingly sign internationa treaties),
the areas of culture, edutcation and medias are outside the scope
of the Walloon government, and the body in charge of them seems to
do anything to hide differences that may exist between Wallonia
and Brussels (and the native language is indeed such a difference);
as a result you won't find anything with official backing in Walloon
language.
But even about the language, you can't find much (most of the existing
texts (in French or German) have been written in the 19th and beginning
of 20th centuries).

When I discovered Wikipedia, I wanted to have a Walloon version, mainly
for the prestige increase that would give to the language; I didn't knew
however if that could success or not; the number of users is still
low (only three very frequent contributors, and a small handfull of 
occasional ones; less than 10 in total, but I hope there are more
readers).
However, once it started to run it had some effects I didn't expected
at first.
The first one, is a living example of coperative work where a common
spelling is need; because as long as you write novels, poetry or even
journalistic articles, which have a single author, the normalization
of the spelling can be avoided; but when a single text may have (and
indeed, has) many authors, a common spelling is a practical necessity.
There has been also a good number of articles about Walloon language and
culture and about Wallonia; yes the content is heavily tilted that way,
more than I thought at the beginning (but will change with time
probably), but on the other side I learned a lot of things that I
ignored previously, about writters, historic personnages, places or
rivers of my country, that I should have known but didn't, as there
isn't any public nor private mass diffusion of that info; in fact
wikipedia had come the first source of information on the internet
for some of those topics, and something we are proud of.
Also, the copying of articles from other wikipedias, have pushed the
need for Walloon terminology about some topics that traditionally
weren't spoken or written in Walloon, in particular we are growing
a list of articles about mushrooms that created the need to name
in a precise way the different specias; strange as it may seem,
there wasn't attested names for mushrooms (only a generic name
"mushroom"); a side effect of the wikipedia has been the creation
of Walloon names for a lot of mushrooms (from their French or latin
names).
Also, the creation of articles and the hyperlinks between them have
lead to the exploration of a lot of connex subjects, and the discovery
of Walloon names for some plants or animals that were used only
locally in some places, and the rehabilitation/revival of those names;
something that we wouldn't have thought about if it weren't for
the fact of putting [[ and ]] around some terms (for example, an apple
everybody knows what it is, there wasn't much thinking about it before;
but from the startting of the article about apples, there is a list
of apples species, and then we realize there is actually a lot to learn
and to say about apples, about their history, their cultivation,
their use in culinary preparations, etc) 

Wikipedia is indeed a very powerfull tool; in the specific case
of Walloon (and probably that can be the case too for most minorized
languages) it is the *best* tool existing.

> Wikipedia for a nation of 500 thousand to, say, 5 million seems to be
> the best way of writing an encyclopedia in their language. And even if
> the English WP fails, that will not mean the idea is all wrong for
> every language on the Earth.

Even if English fails (because of unsustainable traffic, that seems the
greates problem for en:) other wikipedias, and particularly small ones,
can still continue to exist; the Walloon wikipedia ran on my own server
for the first months of it existance, and if the wikimedia hosting
should collapse some day for whatever reason (something I hope will
never happen) I will move it to somewhere else, but it wouldn't die;
it is a too valuous thing for us.
 
-- 
Ki ça vos våye bén,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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