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

[Berto 'd Sera]

Hopefully it would. Yet the requesters disappeared. We have tried to contact
them to clarify a few details before approving their request, but got no
answer thus far.

The actual problem is that they are mixing languages in their incubator
project and temptatively building a koiné of finnish languages in the area.
This is not allowed. One language is one wiki.

So if you can contact any of them, pls let them know that they can have two
wikies but not a common Veps-Karelian wiki.

As per social prestige... yes, my impression is exactly that. I suppose most
of their problems is based on that factor. People perceive "not being Veps"
as a social status upgrade.

Bèrto 'd Sèra
Personagi dl'ann 2006 për l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojàotri)
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 Sulev Iva
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 1:23 PM
To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] About creating a new language on Wikipedia

Hi,

Yes, one week seems more realistic. It took me about two weeks to fully
localize MediaWiki to Vòro (in Southern Estonia) and to check the
translation with another native user of Vòro.

About the small Finno-Ugric language Veps in Russia. They have some strong
leaders (like Nina Zaiceva) who are also linguists and have written good
school materials and children books in Veps and even a grammar books
entirely in Veps, linguistic terminology developed in Veps etc. But
unfortunately Veps has very low prestige and there is not even a single
Veps-language school nor kindergarten.

Karelian has basically the same situation, but much more speakers. There
are hundreds of young people who have prepared as teachers or linguists of
Karelian language in University of Petroskoi/Petrozavodsk. But
Karelian-language workground of these people is very limited, because
Karelian (and Veps) are teached only in some schools and only as an
optional subject. I think wikipedia in Karelian (or even in Veps) would be
function and grow not too slowly (as Vòro and Samogitian are doing now) if
at least some of these educated young Karelians and Veps' were attracted
with the idea of the Wikipedia.

Regards
Sulev Iva

> Hoi,
> Two days is a reasonable amount of time for someone who knows what he is
> doing to do a complete MediaWiki localisation. Experience suggests that
> when
> the terminology is not readily available, it can take a week. A week as in
> amount of time spend on the job not as in within a week it is ready.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> On 7/18/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>> 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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