[Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia

[GerardM]

Hoi,
You are wrong. When a living language is localised as a result words may get
new meaning or new phrases are coined, I would say that it is perfectly
fine. When a good job is done, attention is given to what is done in other
applications, this is to ensure that the terminology used is as consistent
as possible.This does not make it a new language, it is what happens in
living languages. We are not talking here about purifying languages, we are
talking here about creating a working User Interface for MediaWiki.

There is no problem with original research as this is not done as part of
any of the WMF projects.

In languages that are extinct it is different, the language is dead and
consequently by adding words, meanings to the language it is no longer that
language. It is for this reason that I am opposed to localising the user
interface in extinct languages.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 7/16/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> Berto 'd Sera wrote:
> > The only requests I am receiving are about totally clearing from english
> > other UIs. You might be surprised, but the highest pressure comes from
> young
> > (15-20 y.o.) bilingual users, who are native or almost native in
> english,
> > too. It has nothing to do with liking english or not, it's about using a
> > language for what it's meant to do: to deliver a clear message.
> >
> > The choice of words really depends on what's current in your language.
> In
> > our case even if the dominant culture has long become industrial and it
> > would take you ages to find a horse anywhere, there still are lots of
> > metaphores originating from the farmers' life. Sometimes their roots are
> > incredibly old.
> >
>
> This seems somewhat different than advertised.  Localizing an interface
> to a language means making it be *in that language*.  Coining new terms
> to use in the interface, even if based on other words in the language,
> does not make the interface in that language.  Rather, it makes it in a
> new language (or dialect, at least), invented at Wikipedia.
>
> "Purified" languages, in which loanwords are purged and replaced with
> neologisms based on "native" roots, are often created, and sometimes
> they succeed and sometimes they fail.  See [[en:Katharevousa]] for an
> example of a purified Greek that eventually more or less failed.
> Regardless of the merits of such a project, I don't think it appropriate
> for *us* to engage in such language-invention.
>
> -Mark
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>