Yann Forget <yann(a)forget-me.net> wrote:
Dmcdevit wrote:
(...)
Your notion that Klingon, the language of a
fictional alien race on a
popular American television show, has some kind of existence separate
from its origins is absurd. It only needs to be rejected for its
present: which is as a linguistically unimportant, functionally
nonexistent, and educationally useless language to write a dictionary in.
I agree with the closing of this Wiktionary, and this argument says it
all.
It is not an argument, it is rhetoric. And very weak, at that. It can be used
with equal force by the other side, e.g.
> Our language is considered linguistically
unimportant, functionally
> nonexistent, and educationally useless. It is thus all the more imperative
> that we produce a dictionary in it.
Prejudice like that against a natural language (which is very often expressed in
the world) would, I hope, never stand here against the opening of a wiki. The only
remaining part of the agreed-with argument is that it is a constructed language, and
we have not been deleting wikis merely because they belong to constructed languages.
*Muke!
You are under the misimpression that I don't like Klingon *because* it
is a constructed language. Nowhere have I said that. I have given actual
reasons, including its lack of speakers, lack of literature, lack of
significance, lack of educational use. On the other hand, if your
argument *is* "Our language is considered linguistically unimportant,
functionally nonexistent, and educationally useless. It is thus all the
more imperative that we produce a dictionary in it" that's not a
problem. The problem would be using that argument to create an
admittedly "educationally useless" dictionary as a WMF project rather
than on an external site. Inclusion guidelines are not prejudice; if you
are against any vetting of supposed languages at all, I think you are
fighting a losing battle. Wiktionary is not for promotion of your pet
project, so this is beginning to sound rather like the sort of argument
I hear when I delete some kid's protologism on Wiktionary, of some high
school band on Wikipedia ("The world doesn't know about it/us yet;
that's why we need an article!"). In fact, it *is* important that our
work support educational purposes, and it's not unreasonable to demand that.
Dominic