[Foundation-l] A proposal for new language creation

Sat Nov 26 09:13:58 UTC 2005

On 11/26/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/25/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Brion Vibber wrote:
> > > This is exactly the policy we adopted several years ago, which has
> proved
> > > insufficient.
> > >
> > > Relying on existence of ISO codes brings us:
> > > * split Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian replacing Serbocroatian
> [controverial]
> > > * Klingon
>
> Another issue is, that we've already created wikipedias in most ISO
> 639-1 languages.  So those that remain are by definition somewhat
> difficult.

There are nice tables for converting ISO-639-1 to ISO-639-2. The upcoming
ISO-639-3 code is like the ISO-639-2 in three characters and there will be
no conversion. However some codes will be removed and replaced by others.
For your information, in Ultimate Wiktionary we will have a table with the
ISO-639-3 codes but for convenience sake we have room for the ISO-639-1
codes. In order to make it more simple, we will have a field where we store
the name that the WMF uses.

> > and denies various languages/dialects/whatever which don't have their
> own codes
> > > but which are oft asked for.
>
> Should it be possible for language enthusiasts to pitch to Wikipedia
> directly, rather than to some third-party language-centered org that
> WP truts and works with?  If it were not possible to pitch directly to
> WM (say, acceptance by such a third-party group is a pre-req to
> applying for a lang-project), this would help avoid subsets of the
> world's language zealots engaging in subsets of global debates on WM
> mailing lists.

As Ultimate Wiktionary, aims to have all words in all languages, words
particular to dialects are certainly welcome. This will allow us to have
words in Westfries, spoken in the region where I was born, once a language
but now not more than a dialect of the Dutch language.. :)

> The only problem is that the list of ISO codes is highly politicized and
> > broken in many many ways.  It was fine for getting a list of things like
> > "English" and "German" and "French" and so on, but it breaks down when
>
> Who are the target audiences for a new and improved list of codes?
> language-enthusiast editors?  readers?  third-party content
> developers/aggregators?  linguists?  translators? educators?    If
> some of these audiences will have to do more work and others less,
> which should get priority?

By creating "the" list of languages, you remove the discussion from the
argument "is this a language or not". This removes the need from creating
your own list and it is important because as we know it can be an endless
struggle. Even when there is a language known on the list and there are
people denying the validity and there are always more languages to consider.
Being on the list is important when you care for a language. The audience ?
All of the above. However for organisations like ours it does not free us
from having the argument anyway. We have people that insist on a fixed
orthography, a literature or an army to have the argument going their way.

I would like us to be relaxed about it. Let us have the projects in the
languages that are requested, in the end the proof of the pudding is in the
eating, when a project is a success, it is a reason to rejoice.

Thanks,
    GerardM