[Wiktionary-l] Christmas day in the morning, the "Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!" project

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
A merry Christmas from Almere in the Netherlands :).

On the Italian wiktionary we have a project to collect as many 
translations and soundfiles as possible for the phrase "Buon Natale e 
felice Anno Nuovo!" or "Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!". We have 
already many translations but many are sadly missing. For this project I 
have had people originally from Armenia and Iran at home to add their 
contributions. I had twice a nice evening drinking tea :) and talking 
about languages and culture. Christmas in Armenia for instance is on the 
6th of Januari not on the 7th or the 25th of December :) this results in 
the phrase needing to be turned around; Happy New Year and a Merry 
Christmas.

The project aims to promote Commons, sound files, .ogg, wiktionary and 
yes, we wish everyone a merry christmas in the spirit of friendship.

Today, we have had several peoplecontribute to the Italian project and 
the Dutch sister page. I am happy to say that we now have the first 
Bengalese in the Italian wiktionary as a result. There were also 
corrections in the spelling and phrasing of Icelandic and Slavic 
languages. Really, to me this is the Christmas spirit in action :) The 
cool thing of the wikimedia projects is that this cooperation, this 
working together is not restricted to the christmas perios and, that is 
the good news. If we can extend this cooperation far and wide, who knows 
what the world will be like in ten years of wikimedia..

So have a merry day and, I am thankfull for all the good things that we 
do together.

Gerard
<http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Merry_Christmas_and_a_happy_New_Year%21>