Hi, being in the middle of this discussion I'd like to underline some
points and tell you what came out in a private conversation with Gerard,
half joking half being serious. Sorry, probably this mail is going to be
a very long one.
I am copying this message to wiktionary and wikipedia list ...
For the
nl:wiktionary we have over 300 sound files with pronunciations
of words in the Dutch language alone. They are much easier to use than
phonetic notations. As such it would be cool to have the standard
pronunciations recorded and available from Commons for all wiktionary words.
I agree, the only phonetic notation I understand is Spanish.
Sound files are the only way to really learn to understand a foreign
language - the reason is quite simple: every region of a country
pronounces things a bit different - so we need these soundfiles and if
possible different versions of them - talking about German: take a
person from Hamburg, one from Berlin and one from Munich and have them
say the same sentence (not talking in dialect, but talking "pure
German") - you'd be surprised ...
I cut the part Gerard wrote as I'll come back to it below.
Ramadan is one of those meaningful holidays, not the happy kind (like
TV news anchors won't tell people to have a Happy Yon Kippur). There's
probably some Arabic greeting used throughout much of the Islamic
world, so its probably not as interesting of a project.
Why not? I think it is not only interesting, but it is a must to make
people understand that Islam is one thing and yyy is another ... in many
parts of the world people don't know anything about the Islam besides
the fact that some of them are yyy (like there are catholic, protestant
etc. etc. ones) - I am curious what you thought when you saw yyy (were
you influenced by the media as you don't know enough about it yourself?)
- I know many people that grew up with the muslim religion and they are
more or less practicing - none of them are yyy, all very fine and
helpful people, some of them real friends. Not knowing helps to create
fear and fear helps to create racism - knowledge helps to create
security - if you know about Ramadan start writing about it, start
telling people about it - make them curious - it is the only way to
globalise our world: understand the culture of each other.
So again, do
write about channuka and ramandan in wikipedia and do add
relevant phrases and words in wiktionary. Inform us about the difference
times of the start of ramadan. About the three days of the birth of
Jezus. About the differences in the way a christmastree is decorated in
Italy compared to Germany. About the carp as a traditional dish at
easter in Poland. But other people do have different sensibilities and
do not make what you believe override everything and everyone else
believes and values. To me the censorship of the "Bon Natale" project
was a nasty surprise, to me it shows an intolerance that I had not
expected from the wikipedia crowd.
There will be other projects and other moments, that will be mo
Thanks,
GerardM
People are overly sensitive on the subject. You stumbled into a
dispute which has already occurred regarding whether to turn the
Wikipedia ball into a Christmas ornament (as the Italian Wikipedia did
this year). I did think it was kind of odd that my boss wished us all
a Merry Christmas even though about a 1/4 of my co-workers are Muslim.
But, at the same time, who cares, I'm sure they didn't.
Again: I agree to what Gerard says - write about your religions and
about those you know - create sentences, glossaries etc. etc. ask people
for translations and help - this helps to get attention to all -
"deleting" religion out of our lifes does not help anyone - creating
knowledge and understanding is the only way to go. Even people not
believing in anything: write about atheism, connect it to science. All
the world talks about globalisation - the only way to globalise is to
understand and accept diversity. If we try to uniform things we will
have some very unexpected results - dangerous results. We can only
accept things we understand - it is impossible to accept things we don't
understand. It is easy to create propaganda against a group of people if
hardly anyone knows details about their habits, if hardly anyone has
friends there - it is quite impossible instead to create propaganda
against a group of people you know well.
Let's take a part the political and religious points of view - everyone
has to be heard and no one may be surpressed.
Some short notes about my life: I was born in a protestant lutheran
region in Germany - when I was about 6 years old Siemens had lots of
workers coming from Turkey and I remember well their ramadam period when
everyone was waiting for dawn to start to prepare for dinner - it became
part of our life - often I was at a friend's home in the evening and
even not understanding a word of Turkish I felt at home - the same
poeple who did not believe in Christmas allowed their children to
participate when we prepared for our Christmas feast at school - often
you could also see some stars painted on the windows, just like we did.
As anywhere in Germany you find protestant and catholic people living in
the same place and we prepared things together. This was the
"globalisation" of a small village of approx. 6000 people. This kind of
"living together" is not possible in huge cities and so many different
cultures live one beneath another without knowing - really sad ... Now I
live in Italy - people in this small village hardly know any other
religion (at least up to some time ago) - better not to tell what they
considered me to be ... and how surprised some were that I have a
Christmas tree and a Crib at home ... some years ago I still worked as a
German teacher - imagine where: in a catholic grammar school - and they
wanted me to tell pupils about German protestantism as they believed
this would help pupils to find their place in life ... strange, isn't
it? To me it is not strange at all: only knowing whatever exists can
help us to find our way of life.
But back to the Christmas project: while it seems as if people thought
that the Christmas project would disturb other religions the strangest
thing of all is that many contributions came from people not believing
in Christmas ... so shouldn't we think a bit about what this means? To
me this means that those people are really tollerant - they know and
want others to know. And this takes me back to the conversation with
Gerard. Talking about the project and what came out of it there was a
point when i said: yes, really there's so much to tell about the
different usages that one could build up a Chrismaspedia ... and then
talking about religious and cultural feasts in general what came out was
"no, not a Christmaspedia, but an Eventpedia that aims on showing on
which day which feast/event is on anywhere in the world creating links
to all the relevant articles on the wikimedia projects.
I am sure there are translations, literature, proverbs, glossaries etc.
about any event of any culture and religion (don't forget to add them to
the different projects).
Wikimedia is made for people by people, the best thing of all: it is
free; culture and religion is part of all of us, understanding each
other is fundamental - it will never be possible to be neutral as even
neutrality is a very wide expression - to my opinion the only way we
have to really globalise the world is to contribute to understand each
other describing local habits, thoughts (even our own thoughts). Give
and conserve wisdom to and for people is great and all wikimedia
projects already do this - but wisdom is not all - we are humans and
like all humans we need "food for the soul" and not only for the brain.
If you, yes you, who is reading this long letter now, are from another
culture and/or religion - think about what you would like us to know and
write about it - and ask others for help to make it grow - make people
talk and more and more poeple will understand you and your culture, thus
leading to what globalisation really means: open up frontiers, live
together as peaceful as possible.
Thank you for your patience reading this long letter!
Wishing you all the best and
Seasons greetings ;-)
Ciao, Sabine