[Wikipedia-l] Starting a new language: Upper Sorbian

Mon Apr 5 08:56:15 UTC 2004

"Peter Gervai" <grin at tolna.net> schrieb:

> As a sidenote: Hungary have a population of 10,000,000 people (with speakers
> approximated around 15,000,000) and we have around 5 permanent active
> editors. (Though I expect that raise soon since there going to be some press
> activity.)
> 
> I always wondered what can a wikipedia do supporting a language of, say,
> 100,000 people. Half an editor? 
> 
> I haven't checked what's about wikipedias with small speaker base after 3-6
> months, what activity they possess. I wonder.

It varies, but then, it also varies for some much larger languages (Marathi
with 65 million speakers has only 4 pages, for example). There's four
Wikipedia languages with less than 100.000 speakers, none of them getting
anywhere serious, however the fifth smallest language (Icelandic, 250.000
speakers) managed to get to a number of 9 Wikipedians (with 10 or more
logged-in edits), and is seriously trying to make something.

Wikipedia languages with less than 1 million speakers:

             speakers   Wikipedians  pages
Manx             250      0             1
Nauruan        7.000      2            16
Maori         50.000      0             8
Scottish      60.000      1            14
Icelandic    250.000      9           209
Irish        260.000      3            62
Corsican     340.000      0            14
Occitan      350.000      7           493
Welsh        600.000      9           954
Basque       600.000      5          2319
Frisian      700.000      9           881

Andre Engels