2. An academic
excersise?
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_3_110/ai_73064217/pg_1
<- Gothic was last heard in the Crimea by outsiders between the 1780s
and 1790s, according to the page (and if travellers passing through
still heard it in the 1780s, it probably survived in remote areas
until the 1800s or 1810s). As is normal with language death,
descendants of the last native speakers undoubtedly knew some of the
language, less with each generation, until perhaps the 1850s or 1870s
(though it could hardly be declared fluency most likely), and I would
not be surprised if there are still a couple of hundred Gothic words
in use by their descendants today in Tatar/Ukrainian/Russian/whatever
language it is they speak now.
I can't speak for everyone here (obviously), but IMO there's nothing
wrong with promoting a Gothic revival of course, just a concern that a
Gothic Wikipedia is not currently the best way to do it. It seems it is
not actually spoken by anyone fluently, or used in day-to-day
communication, which is the sort of thing Wikipedias are for (for
looking up encyclopedia-type facts).
Actually there are fluent speakers (though no native speakers). I'm
not sure about communication on a day-to-day basis, but I do know that
I have seen entire e-mail conversations on lists as well as entire
webpages in Gothic.
It is apparently an interesting
language, with some amount of information available and a community of
people interested in it, which would make it a good candidate for
hosting the extant historical texts in wikisource, and developing a
working dictionary of the language in a Gothic Wiktionary.
Actually there are already people who are fluent in Gothic, and their
internet connectivity percentage is probably much higher than for
other such populations because the core of that community is
academians (though there are plenty of general enthusiasts who are
fluent).
There's probably not much of a point of hosting the extant historical
texts in WikiSource as a major project as they're already available
online for free (under what license, I am not sure).
If that were
done, and if people started to use the language, then the case for a
Gothic Wikipedia would be much stronger. It's just odd for there to be
an encyclopedia for a language in which there is apparently no
contemporary writing and no good dictionary.
No good dictionary? What? There are quite a few good Gothic
dictionaries, a couple of them available on the Internet. There *is*
contemporary writing, i.e. e-mails, webpages, and a small collection
of short poetry. In fact there are even neologisms for things like
"computer", "e-mail", and even "electric bill" (of course
these are
recent inventions, but they were derived similar to the way neologisms
in Icelandic or in formal Arabic have been derived, ie using existing
words in the language rather than borrowing).
--node