[Wikipedia-l] Syriac vs Aramaic

Fri Oct 8 17:27:14 UTC 2004

Hi all.

Just a short question:

Why is it that we have a Wikipedia for the ancient, dead language
Aramaic http://arc.wikipedia.org/ - no content currently, but none for
its modern descendent Syriac (or "Neo-Aramaic"), spoken by millions,
which according to the ISO code would be at http://syr.wikipedia.org/
? Presumably, the number of people who could actually read and fully
understand an Aramaic Wikipedia would be very low, while the number of
people who could read and understand a Syriac Wikipedia would be in
the range of millions of people, almost exclusively native speakers.

Also there is the issue of what script to write it in: it would seem
that some people would write Aramaic in the Syriac script, and others
in the Hebrew script; on the other hand, Syriac is written exclusively
in the Syriac script.

I think that ultimately, the existance of arc: is not a Good Thing,
but that the existance of syr: would indeed be a Good Thing,
especially as there are people fex the people at the Beth Marduto
institute who would probably contribute to syr:.

--node