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

Wed Jul 18 23:48:09 UTC 2007

Yes, but the difference is that Italian children were still raised in
an environment where regional languages could perhaps be used in the
home or at the market.

The point of the residential schools was more that all of the kids
were taken away from their parents, not just the ones whose parents
couldn't speak English but all of them. The fact that they weren't
allowed to talk in their native languages at school lessened the
chances of their languages, but it's not what did them in in the end.

Mark

On 18/07/07, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Ray,
>
> Pls explain what language is missing the concept of "change" (edit), "move",
> "discuss", nickname, etc.
>
> Calling "genocide" what you do would perfectly qualify for the forced
> education in Italian imposed after the Italian Unification. Children were
> beaten and publicly humiliated for generations, just for having said a "word
> in dialect". Some 20 years ago I saw the last case of a piedmontese family
> being taken away the custody of their daughter because "they could not even
> speak Italian".
>
> Yet, calling this "holocaust" seems quite a strong terminology to me. While
> I agree that we were object of cultural deletion I cannot say that we were
> physically mass slaughtered or gassed, as it happened in the Holocaust.
>
> There was an deliberate plan to delete us all as a culture, this much is
> true and must be documented. Besides, it's mostly still happening. Let alone
> Italy, there are extremely worrying things happening in France, where recent
> studies implies that people "exposed to regional languages in their youth"
> become socially lesser. This is nazi POV, although I doubt they fully grasp
> the implications of what they say.
> (http://www.europe1.fr/informations/articles/714735/les-illettres-ne-sont-pa
> s-ceux-qu-on-croit.html ). To make things even sadder the UNESCO
> "International Mother Language Day" this year was held in Paris. Apparently
> some French officers are unaware of what UNESCO is :)
>
> For most people belonging in majorities, minorities are simply "weird
> people" who must be "corrected". They actually feel they are helping you,
> which makes things pretty cruel, but I'd say it excludes a comparison to
> genocide in principle. BTW, the same behavior applies to left-handed vs
> right-handed people (I was born left-handed and personally experienced the
> joy of being "educated" to "do it RIGHT", and yes, I still "do it WRONG" any
> time I can :p ).
>
> It's really a matter of defending your own rights without getting to
> hysterics. Whether we like it or not, minorities will remain minorities
> anyway, and they can only loose in direct brute force confrontation. So take
> a stand, defend the rights and NEVER get to compromise on that, but pls
> let's avoid a terminology that can only generate further lost conflicts. We
> need rights NOW, not a formal recognition about past mischief while the
> current mischief keeps going.
>
> It's mostly a matter of learning how to market minorities to a wider
> audience, and make them recognized for what they are: one culture as another
> (with robbers, idiots, saints and lots of ordinary people as anybody else).
> Pride is important, but hatred won't do any good.
>
> > The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders.
> > For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival
> > has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own
> > territories.
> I can only agree in full. I won't rewrite what I already wrote in full, so I
> can only invite you to read this:
> http://eng.i-iter.org/project-presentations-0 and especially this:
> http://eng.i-iter.org/quest-effective-policy-0
>
> It's not a WMF project and it cannot be, since while being 100% no-profit it
> involves commercial activities, but it moves exactly in that direction.
>
> > It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the
> > capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more
> > people.  If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being
> > marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to
> > their own people.
> Maybe... only no such a place as "native Veps place" exists anymore, they
> are all mixed among other nationalities and always in a minority position
> (Karelians enjoy a much better survival chance, because they live in compact
> groups and it was possible to open schools in Karelian).
>
> Besides, in a society whose main values are "living in Moscow" and "making
> lotsa bucks", I would have expected more people to use a facility that was
> opening them an easy road to a diplomatic career and to a "rich life
> abroad". Yet, it did not happen. It's matter for reflection, indeed. Since
> we deal with very small entities you might be interested to know that the
> last pagan community in Europe is based in Yoshkar Ola (Russia) and it's
> close to extinction, too. In their case the behavior of the Russian
> Authorities seems to have been quite aggressive, but the results are
> substantially the same. Governments, although sometimes very unpleasant in
> their stance, seems to be mostly non influent on these dynamics, when it
> comes to final results. So possibly the one and only answer is in the native
> community itself, as you suggested.
>
> > A lot of these documents could fit into the
> > mandate of Wikisource.
> We are already exploring that possibility. Yet it would take some
> commons.wikisource, with individual page language tags, so that admin work
> is shared and kept to an absolute minimum.
>
> > Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware,
> > but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the
> > presumptions that they take for granted.
> This is obviously a respectable POV, but when you have small resources you
> need help, and help is better found from a neutral party. UNESCO seems the
> only neutral party available.
>
> I understand the "leave me alone" stance, as it's quite natural for cultures
> that have long being offended. But if you take that stance... then why
> should WMF be any better than UNESCO? It's filled up with yanks, after all
> :) Anyway, all tribes make their own decisions in full freedom, as it must
> be :)
>
> 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 at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 8:56 PM
> To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia
>
> Berto 'd Sera wrote:
>
> >>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.
> >
> That two days assumes a reasonable degree of computer literacy among the
> affected people, and a stable symbolic representation of the language in
> question.  It also takes a tremendous effort to bridge the gap between
> the concepts of a highly technical society, and those of a pre-literate
> society whose language was suited to an agricultural or nomadic
> lifestyle.  The gap between Italian and Piedmontese is tiny by
> comparison; both are romance languages.
>
> >>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).
> >
> I was thinking of languages like Haida and Kootenai where ther are fewer
> than 100 native speakers.  What makes the latter interesting is that it
> is also a linguistic isolate.
>
> >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.
> >
> In the great prairie areas of North America when food became scarce in
> one place it was relatively easy to travel to a better area.  The
> culture was built around such a nomadic existence, and became spread
> over a wider area.  In rain forests food tends to be more plentiful, and
> the barriers to migration are greater
>
> >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.
> >
> Here there has been some reversal of this in recent years, but it may
> not be enough to undo the damage done by the cultural genocide of the
> residential schools where native children were taken from their families
> and put into an English environment where they were forbidden to speak
> their native languages.
>
> >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.
> >
> The pride and positive self-perception cannot be supplied by outsiders.
> For the successful native populations in North America cultural revival
> has needed to be accompanied by economic opportunity within their own
> territories.  It also requires having a leadership that is capable of
> pulling a population out of chronic depression.
>
> >"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.
> >
> It says something about governments when they put such facilities in the
> capital instead of the indigenous territory where it would involve more
> people.  If the most capable individuals among the Veps are being
> marinaded in the culture of the capital they may no longer be useful to
> their own people.
>
> >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.
> >
> A lot of these documents could fit into the mandate of Wikisource.  It's
> also important not to get entangled in a lot of futile wranglings about
> intellectual property rights.  Bureaucratically waiting until 50 years
> after the apparent author's death simply because you cannot determine
> who has the rights can be highly damaging to some of this material.  All
> the people who can read and understand it now may not be alive in
> another 50 years.
>
> >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.
> >
> God save us from the experts!
>
> Outsiders can provide the means in the form of such things as hardware,
> but they need to avoid introducing their expectations, and the
> presumptions that they take for granted.
>
> Ec
>
>
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