[Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

Fri Jul 15 01:37:15 UTC 2011

On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 01:56, M. Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Present research actually indicates the decline of linguistic diversity has
> accelerated in the last 10-15 years, possibly due to the exact factor you

May you point to some statistics or relevant researches for the period
2000-2010?

> Now when you say "Celtic languages", which ones do you mean? Irish and Scots
> Gaelic are receding daily, despite the claims of their defenders. Breton is
> in serious trouble, and Manx and Cornish, although undergoing hobbyist
> revivals, seem unlikely to ever reach more than a few hundred native
> speakers. Welsh is doing alright for now, thanks in large part to the fact
> that it is supported by an autonomous regional government, which very,
> very few endangered languages enjoy, and the fact that people decided to
> "save" it when it still had plenty of speakers. But again, Welsh is the
> exception rather than the rule, one drop of language survival in a sea of
> languages speeding towards extinction.

A number of languages of former Soviet Union, including Russia, whose
speakers mostly know better Russian, are in the process of revival, as
well. Many Romance languages highly endangered by the official
languages of their countries are getting more attention, too. Non-Han
languages of China have a lot of chances to survive, thanks to the
support of the government. Many native languages of US are in much
better position now thanks to the economic consequences of tribal
sovereignty. There are a number of other cases. Without such efforts,
many languages (I would say hundreds) wouldn't survive 20th century.

> I wonder how long Sorbian will actually survive as a full language. I think
> it's unlikely that Sorbians will never marry non-speakers. According to
> Ethnologue, Sorbian languages are both spoken by "mostly older adults". So
> your shining example that you repeat of language survival is actually not
> that. I wonder how many Sorbian native speakers there are of my generation.
> Now I wonder how many of them will speak Sorbian to _their_ children. Now
> what about the grandchildren?

By number of active Wikipedians, Serbian Wikipedia would have to have
four to five times more editors [1] than Upper Sorbian [2], while
keeping in mind that the top of the activity on hsb.wp passed five
years ago, while Serbian Wikipedia is now at the top of the activity.
Numbers on hsb.wp are stable and all four active editors belong to the
group of non-native speakers [3], expected for the situation of Upper
Sorbian language (German is their native language).

And, yes, as I said, I think that Sorbian will survive not as actively
used language, but as the language of cultural identity. That's good
enough.

> Livonian, I'm wondering where you're getting this information from. By most
> accounts, it's got between 10 and 0 native speakers and is now used by some
> hobbyists only.

Requests for new languages [4]. Children learn the language.

>> Not just encyclopedias, but books, dictionaries, even news sources.
>> All of that is inside of our job description. But not just that:
>> gathering active community around Wikimedia projects is almost the
>> ticket for language survival.
>
> This strategy couldn't help languages where speakers are already all
> bilingual. When there is a large number of monolinguals, this strategy still
> won't help much, as our job description doesn't include hiring interpreters
> for government workers and businessmen, or for people from rural villages
> when they go to sell crops at a market town. You are putting too much
> emphasis on a faulty idea that books kill or save languages. No matter how
> many books I can read in, say, Manx, there's still the fact that I can only
> talk to a couple hundred people in that language and there's no community
> where I can conduct my whole life exclusively in Manx. Or how about Romani
> in Serbia: if I want to rent a flat in Belgrade, I'll not be able to do it
> in Romani. If I want to go to a supermarket, or go buy parts for my computer
> or my car, or go to a meeting for alcoholics, or stamp collectors, or take
> classes at university, I won't be able to use Romani. That is what kills
> languages, and until we as an organization can find a solution to that
> problem, we can't solve the problem of language death.

Semi-integrated Roma speak Romano-Serbian in buses, on streets; it
varies from part to part of the city, but it is not strange to hear
them; children, as well. Besides the fact that it is not taught in
schools. Note, also, that Roma in Serbia (and elsewhere) have been
bilingual for centuries because of their specific way of life. (AFAIK,
non-integrated Roma don't live in Belgrade and they speak Balkan and
Vlax Romani.)

As the most of people want to have life easier than hunter-gatherer,
nomadic or so, they have to know to read and write to be able to get
it. In such circumstances information written in that language keep
languages and we provide the platform for creating and storing written
information. The important question is under which circumstances that
transition occurs. If it occurs during the expansion of Qin Dynasty,
there are not a lot of chances for languages to survive. If it occurs
in modern China, when schools, cultural institutions are available, as
well as willingness of majority population to help, then language has
chance to survive up to some extent.

Preserving a language doesn't mean that it has to flourish. Stable
~1000 of hobbyists are good enough for waiting for the better times,
as the case with Manx is.

[1] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaSR.htm
[2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaHSB.htm
[3] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaHSB.htm#wikipedians
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Livonian#Other_discussion