[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek reconstructed an analysis of a proposal for a new Wikipedia

Thu Apr 17 12:01:31 UTC 2008

Dear GerardM,
Thank you for your explanations; it is sometimes difficult to me following
the discussions, a full history of the subject would be useful to me.
So, if I understand correctly, if nowadays someone would propose WPs in
Esperanto or Latin or Anglo-Saxon, they would be rejected, because they are
"constructed" (interlinguistics say: planned) languages or reconstructed.
And they do not have native speakers, or just a small percentage of them.
When judging the vitality of a language, one can make a list of criteria as
done by Detlev Blanke: Internationale Plansprachen, Bln. 1985 (I don't
remember by heart the exact list):
- publications
- conventions
- codification by dictionaries, grammars
- sociological or political diversification of the language community
- family language
According to that, Blanke divides into:
- Planned languages: a full language, in fact only Esperanto
- Semi-Planned languages (Semiplansprachen): only some achievements, today
only Interlingua and Ido, in history also Volapük and Occidental-Interlingue
- Projects of planned languages: a very faint existence if at all: all the
others (more than 1000 projects), including Novial, Lojban

Following Heinz Kloss (Die Entwicklung neuerer germanischer Kultursprachen,
1978), a small language does not cover all fields of a big language. It will
make it possible to speak on a level of low education about 1) matters close
to the language community (language and culture, history of the region,
maybe a craft common in the region), 2) cultural subjects of a larger range,
like general politics, philosophy, 3) subjects of science and technology.
On a level of higher education the small language works only on the subjects
1) and 2).
On a scientific level the small language works only on subject 1).