[Foundation-l] Fwd: Tokipona

Tue Jan 22 02:44:46 UTC 2008

I agree with this point, but from the opposite, more inclusionist perspective.

If fact, I think I hear echoes of some of the points I raised at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_subcommittee and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_subcommittee/2008
:)

Now, all "historical" languages are not created equal.  Some have no
contemporary literature, like Anglo-Saxon.  Others have an active
contemporary literature, like Latin.  Languages like Latin I would
classify as living "classical languages" that have a contemporary
literature, but few or no modern speakers.  It is these languages that
are comparable in application to constructed languages, and that
should share the same criteria for inclusion, which IMO should be the
breadth of their contemporary literature.

Some people would say that languages without native speakers are
useless.  I disagree profoundly.  When Newton wrote Principia, was he
writing in a 'useless' language?  If a language has an active
literature, it is not useless.  Yes, primarily written languages are
not ideally suited for teaching young children basic facts about the
world.  But they do have an important place in the intellectual
sphere.  Imagine Catholic seminary students, from different parts of
the world, writing articles on church history, using the original
Latin sources.  Would not such articles be ripe for translation into
many different languages?

And the argument that people are being siphoned off from their native
language Wikipedia to work on Latin just doesn't make any sense; it is
far more likely that the unique prospect of a Latin Wikipedia is
drawing people in who would not otherwise be associated with Wikimedia
projects at all.

Of course, the big question is, where do you draw the line?  And how
do you draw it effectively, so that we don't exhaust the resources of
the resources of the Language subcommittee in fruitless research?  As
you might have guessed, I'm a strong proponent of requiring active
contemporary literatures.  ISO doesn't evaluate this, so we need
alternate criteria. One way to determine if a contemporary
contemporary literature is legitimate, is if its legitimacy is
respected by scholars of the "historical" language (as opposed to just
being a product of amateurs with no connection to mainstream
academia).

But if the Language subcommittee wants something really simple and
quantifiable, I'll give you this modest proposal:  Is a language's
contemporary literature notable enough to be the subject of a Featured
Article on English Wikipedia?  Yup, simple as that.  So, can [[Modern
Latin literature]] make it?- probably, with some work. [[Modern
Anglo-Saxon literature]]?- almost definitely not.  [[Modern Ancient
Greek literature]]?- maybe.  This way, -you- don't have to do the
research.  The Featured Article Candidates team will do it for you.

User:Pharos

>Gerard,
>
> That line is not intended as an exception, particularly since I've
> proven with diff links that it predates the requirement for native
> speakers. Other subcommittee members also seem to be generally against
> simply exempting constructed languages without an equivalent
> requirement to replace it.

> The problem is not so much constructed languages in themselves, as it
> is the severely unbalanced restrictions between natural and
> constructed languages if we use this as an exception.
>
> Many historical languages are still used as second-hand languages by
> enthusiasts who invent new words for modern concepts. For example, the
> Vatican publishes the "Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis", a complete
> lexicon of new Latin words created to cover modern concepts. The terms
> invented by the Vatican are presumably considered both valid and
>covered by the ISO 639 code for Latin.
>
>There is no real difference between a historical language used by
>enthusiasts and a constructed language used by enthusiasts. You argue
>that speakers of a historical language must invent words to cover
>modern languages, thus making it a new language not covered by the ISO
>639 code. However, the same is true for constructed language; for
>example, a Wikipedia in Lingua Franca Nova would contain a huge number
>of spontaneously invented words, given its relatively small
>vocabulary. The Wikipedia might even become the official reference for
>Lingua Franca Nova terminology.
>
>It is not fair, as has been argued on Meta, that a language with
>thousands of years of history and thousands of modern second-hand
>speakers (like Latin) should be disadvantaged compared to a
>10-year-old language with 30 second-hand speakers (like Lingua Franca
>Nova), simply because the second one happened to be invented in
>someone's office or basement.
>
> --
> Yours cordially,
> Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
> (No messages by those on the language subcommittee are official.)