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

[David Gerard]

On 16/07/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> 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.


If they're a native speaker, they're arguably allowed to use new words
and see if they catch on :-)

(e.g. in Welsh the neologism for "computer" is "cyfrifiadur", but
quite a lot of native speakers just use the transliteration
"compiwtar" so the latter may eventually win.)


- d.