[Foundation-l] Update on language codes and Wikidata/Ultimate Wiktionary

Fri Dec 2 12:47:08 UTC 2005

Hoi,
I found a nice update on the ISO 639-3 website .. 
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/default.asp is where you can even find a 
nice introductory page on the next version of this standard. For the 
hardcore language nuts among us there is even a nice download available 
including instructions on how to create an SQL table.

In the first public genuine Wikidata outing, we will show you the GEMET 
data in a true Wikidata environment. For those who do not know, GEMET is 
a thesaurus with ecological content produced for/by the European Union. 
Our aim is to be able to have this on line before Christmas, it will be 
a read only implementation.

We will also include the ISO-639-3 codes. As you may know, Wiktionary 
has the explicit aim to include all words of all languages. Ultimate 
Wiktionary (UW) shares this aim and shares the practice with the many 
wiktionary that we explicitly intent to include all lexicological 
content. As UW intends to eat its own dog food, we want to have 
localised labels for the languages chosen by the user for the User 
Interface. When localisation for a term is not available, we will have 
English as the lingua franca of this day and age.

The consequence is that there will be a clear difference between the 
user interface of Ultimate Wiktionary and the user interface of 
Mediawiki. UW does not intent to endorse a language for new projects, 
but it is likely that people will be stimulated to work on the Mediawiki 
user interface in order to have a user interface that is completely 
localised. I expect that people appreciate this difference.

In the ISO-639-3 codes there will be languages that have not been 
recognised. Having ISO-639 recognition is not necessary for inclusion in 
Ultimate Wiktionary.. There is only one thing that we will insist on, 
the acceptance of a code for this language, dialect or orthography that 
is acceptable for potential projects within the Wikimedia Foundation. 
Again, it is not to be seen as an endorsement for a language to have a 
project, it is intended to make sure that such a code has been 
"future-proofed".

Thanks,
   GerardM