[Wikipedia-l] A proposal for a new language in wikipedia

Wed Sep 15 21:40:24 UTC 2004

Hi Fredrik,

Your proposal for a Gothic wikipedia is very exciting!

I have a question though, will you be using Unicode gothic, or will
you be writing it in the Latin alphabet? Also, will you be using
spaces between words or not?

Also I think that the number of people who can "speak" gothic is
actually higher than most would estimate, there are people who learn
Gothic because they are obsessed with it, there are people who learn
it because it is useful for Germanic or even general Indo-European
linguistics, and there are people who learn it for various other
reasons; however I seem to recall having heard about a group of
university professors who are raising their kids in Gothic, together
their organization has 400 individuals worldwide I think, which only
includes academics whose primary interest is in Gothic (as opposed to
people whose primary interest is in, say, Old Icelandic, but speak
Gothic as well).

I have seen estimates as high as 2000 (well, one crackpot had a theory
about there being isolated communities in the Alps and the Balkans and
such that still spoke Gothic and his estimate was 1 million, but
that's very crazy and there's no evidence to back it up), but nothing
lower than 400.

Especially since it has a movement to pass it on to children I think
it's a good idea to have a Wikipedia in Gothic.

Also I feel that as long as it isn't a conlang, it doesn't matter how
many speakers there are as long as there are people interested in
writing an encyclopedia.

Best, Mark/Jin Junshu

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 10:18:09 +0000, Fredrik Adevåg
<gadrauhts at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to be responsible for the creation of a wikipediaversion in
> gothic.
> 
> Full name: gothic
> 
> Language code: got
> 
> Number of speakers: 0
> 
> Number of people which has knowledge about gothic: at least 400, probably
> much more.
> 
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