[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] SIL Ethnologue vs. ISO codes for determinationof language inclusion

Fri Jun 4 03:39:52 UTC 2004

From: "Andre Engels" <engelsAG at t-online.de>
> As strange as it may sound, it is not fully nonsense. As
> I understand, our own contributor and Steward Arno Lagrange
> grew up in a family where Esperanto was the language spoken
> at home, and thus can be considered a native speaker of the
> language.

No, you misunderstand my
intention. I've actually met
a family from Rochester NY
who are raising their children
with Esperanto as the lang
in the home. And I was 
delighted to speak with 
the little boy in Esperanto.
That wasn't my intention.
The fact that the Ethnologue
mentions that Esperanto is
a language native to France
and has 200-2000 native
speakers there is highly
irregular. In fact it is a lie.
Esperanto was Zamenhof's
invention and he wasn't 
French, perhaps they meant
"Ido". Gasp! 

But really, if the info here
is flawed and they have no
respect for the truth in this
matter how can you trust 
what else they claim. I've
been a World Language 
teacher for 18 years (and
a professional translator).
In my evaluation these errors 
make the Ethnologue list highly
flawed and very suspect.

If a language has documents
published in a certain language,
and has a following of active
users. And the ISO recognizes
this and assigns an abbrev. this
in my opinion is a much better
standard than some biased and
prejudiced linguist list. Not that
the Ethnologue list doesn't have
it's merits, and it is usable for
some research purposes, but
definitely not for the purpose
of basing a decision on whether
a language merits inclusion in
the wikipedia project or not.

I maintain that the ISO list is
a much better standard in this
respect. And the Wikipedia may
actually help some minor languages
be included in the ISO list in the
future... consider this. A minor
language of Latin America, 
spoken by some few folks in
the jungle and having no 
written standard form is assigned
some other subdomain name.
(e.g. Guarani-dialect-B.wikipedia.org, 
not that there's anithing such, I think.)
If they get a hundred articles 
written in a common acceptable
or unagreed standard it could
be brought to the attention of 
the ISO, they get a shorter 
address after they are assigned
an abbrev. and the Ethnologue
gets a hold of their existence
(and would probably mention
that there are actually 100-1000
native speakers in France, as well,
by the way, maybe the emigrated ;-)

But we have gl.wikipedia.org and
there are still arguments pro or 
con a standard written form for
Gallician/Galego. There's a lot
of other languages out there who
are minority languages which
may be recognized by the ISO
but which don't actually yet 
have the necessary standardization
that would bring a common look
to the articles in a Wikipedia
project based on multiple persons
editing a specific article. One could
use one spelling another yet some
other prefered spelling etc.

In this regard several conlangs,
constructed languages, are actually
more settled, Occidental/Interlingue
comes to mind, there is a small 
group of speakers who are active
and use it in publications even today.
It has an ISO code "ie" and it has
almost a century long history of
use and a library of publications,
an extensive and detailed vocabulary
in the sciences and yet it doesn't 
have a wikipedia namespace.

But let's move the discussion
to Wikipedia-l and consider
what needs to happen for some
acceptable stipulations to be
accepted which will result in
the inclusion or exclusion of
a certain language. This would
be very helpful although it does
seem quite difficult.

With regards,
Jay B. 