Hoi,
Just getting a minimal user interface in their language
is a
considerable challenge.
This is a myth. It takes 2 days to ONE person to fully localize Wikimedia.
And if you don't have one person willing to spend a couple of days (and
more) you won't get any server space anyway.
Some of
the languages from mountainous areas may not have the critical mass
needed to keep them alive.
True. I'd say that most linguistic entities with
only several thousands
native speakers left are in serious trouble, Western Europe included. Based
on what I saw thus far I seriously doubt that such small populations can
make any positive use of a wiki (and of anything else).
They usually developed their cultures based on total insulation, while
living in places that offered very little food (like mountains, but also
tundra, deserts or jungles) but very good protection based on
inaccessibility, and can hardly stand the overwhelming cultural impact that
comes with a sudden increase of social connectivity.
Besides, basically all such entities are exposed to get the "social
stigmata". Most young people from the community will rather hide their
origins, trying to integrate in the dominant culture asap. When this happens
often the number of female speakers starts to contract, since mothers feel
they should provide their children with better "social identifiers". In time
this leads to a situation in which children can hear the linguistic entity
used only by elders.
When you have a big population (say millions) you often find a determined
minority wishing to "get their roots back", based on what they heard from
their elders. But if you start from just several thousands people your
statistical chances of success get very low.
I can't see how you could change their social self-perception either. The
efforts of the Russian Government to protect the Veps minority did not keep
it from getting smaller and smaller, and the one Veps I know admitted to be
a Veps only years after we got to be friends, while perfectly knowing that
I'm the kind of person that can only have a positive impression of such a
thing.
"Declaring yourself a Veps" in Karelia (among other things) means access to
special elite Moscow schools (there are a number of places reserved for
minorities). Yet, the number of people making such a declaration of identity
got 50% smaller since the help started to be given.
Maybe for such desperate cases one should choose a conservative stance, like
saving all the material that can be saved (audio recordings, samples of
crafts, elements of grammar, etc). In such cases I don't think there's much
we can do as WMF, unless we open an entirely different set of projects and
start to work in close connection with UNESCO.
No matter how you try, it cannot be done without some active "foreign"
intervention. So while helping mankind to save knowledge about itself it
will also push the linguistic entity towards death, by exposing it to an
enhanced foreign presence/influence/attention. This is why I'm saying that
such operations are dangerous in nature and they should be coordinated by
expert neutral parties like UNESCO.
Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 4:37 AM
To: wikipedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
Rodolfo M Vega wrote:
Yes, most situations are like that in Amerindian
languages, and the
process to create a more accepted alphabets is a political rather than
"academic" one. But now, many Amerindian peoples have intellectual
native speakers, many are writers and many are trained in linguistics,
so the process to create an alphabet from the native perspective is more
than possible, and far desirable, for the reasons you say. For example,
Aymara already agreed on an alphabet for all Aymara, Argentina, Bolivia
and Chile, and they are in a process to create an Academy of the Aymara
language, with representation from all these countries. Similar process
I understand is happening in Maya, and in less extent in Mapuche (here,
the competing alphabets differ only in a couple representation of
specific phoneme). Soon or later, seeing new opportunities for
information sharing (such as a Wikipedia in their own language, which is
now under consideration in many groups) all Amerindian people will agree
on an alphabet for their specific language.
The languages that you mention have a fairly large population. Most of the
native speakers are elderly, and
in that regard these oldsters are no different from their counterparts
in larger cultures for whom computers do not fall within their comfort
zone.
Ec
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