2014-11-01

‎Wikipedia can develop a new world language

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Revision as of 05:11, 1 November 2014

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:::What I am proposing is different than [[A proposal towards a multilingual Wikipedia]] because I am proposing for articles to not be translated into another language. The idea is that people who edit and read the page will begin to learn new words and phrases from a variety of languages. English is a mixture of French, German, and Latin. It is possible that a new online language that is a mixture of a variety of languages could develop as editors establish a preference for words in some languages over others. In the Talk pages editors could negotiate what languages to use for different words, and the language used could evolve as the Wikipedia database grows. This would not be like Esperanto, Lojban, or Kingon because it would not be a language with fixed rules and perimeters; it would be an evolving language made of all the world's languages. Learning words from all the world's languages has a greater benefit than learning Kilingon, so editors and readers will have a greater incentive to participate. The only problem I see is that not all languages use Latin characters and some languages start from the right side of the page. I think these differences are minor and can be part of this world language experiment. This would develop into a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin Wikipedia pidgin language] [[User:Waters.Justin|Waters.Justin]] ([[User talk:Waters.Justin|talk]]) 03:18, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

:::What I am proposing is different than [[A proposal towards a multilingual Wikipedia]] because I am proposing for articles to not be translated into another language. The idea is that people who edit and read the page will begin to learn new words and phrases from a variety of languages. English is a mixture of French, German, and Latin. It is possible that a new online language that is a mixture of a variety of languages could develop as editors establish a preference for words in some languages over others. In the Talk pages editors could negotiate what languages to use for different words, and the language used could evolve as the Wikipedia database grows. This would not be like Esperanto, Lojban, or Kingon because it would not be a language with fixed rules and perimeters; it would be an evolving language made of all the world's languages. Learning words from all the world's languages has a greater benefit than learning Kilingon, so editors and readers will have a greater incentive to participate. The only problem I see is that not all languages use Latin characters and some languages start from the right side of the page. I think these differences are minor and can be part of this world language experiment. This would develop into a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin Wikipedia pidgin language] [[User:Waters.Justin|Waters.Justin]] ([[User talk:Waters.Justin|talk]]) 03:18, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

::::How does creating a conlang (even if it is a 'living' or 'evolving' one) help to fulfill Wikimedia's mission: to spread knowledge? If anything, it would just make it harder, since readers would have to learn another language (if I understand you correctly). Esperanto and Lojban already tried to do what you're proposing to some extent. They use words from a mixture of other languages. Esperanto does have a fixed grammar, but it can have [https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/is-esperanto-accepting-new-root-words new words]. I'm not sure what you mean by a language without fixed rules; it needs to have at least some grammar. I just don't see the point. Adding new words to existing languages makes sense, but creating a new one from talk page comments does not (to me, at least). Besides [since you keep referencing Wikipedia instead of Wikimedia] original research is forbidden. I doubt it would ever be taken seriously by non-Wikipedians. If you were to attempt something like this, you'd probably transliterate everything to one script (e.g. Latin), so the writing system and directionality of the original languages wouldn't matter. By the way, even though English is Germanic, it did not come from what we call "German" per se (it's a descendent of Old English, whereas German came from Old High German). I'm not sure if you're trying to reference the Middle English creole hypothesis though. [[User:PiRSquared17|PiRSquared17]] ([[User talk:PiRSquared17|talk]]) 05:10, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

::::How does creating a conlang (even if it is a 'living' or 'evolving' one) help to fulfill Wikimedia's mission: to spread knowledge? If anything, it would just make it harder, since readers would have to learn another language (if I understand you correctly). Esperanto and Lojban already tried to do what you're proposing to some extent. They use words from a mixture of other languages. Esperanto does have a fixed grammar, but it can have [https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/4009/is-esperanto-accepting-new-root-words new words]. I'm not sure what you mean by a language without fixed rules; it needs to have at least some grammar. I just don't see the point. Adding new words to existing languages makes sense, but creating a new one from talk page comments does not (to me, at least). Besides [since you keep referencing Wikipedia instead of Wikimedia] original research is forbidden. I doubt it would ever be taken seriously by non-Wikipedians. If you were to attempt something like this, you'd probably transliterate everything to one script (e.g. Latin), so the writing system and directionality of the original languages wouldn't matter. By the way, even though English is Germanic, it did not come from what we call "German" per se (it's a descendent of Old English, whereas German came from Old High German). I'm not sure if you're trying to reference the Middle English creole hypothesis though. [[User:PiRSquared17|PiRSquared17]] ([[User talk:PiRSquared17|talk]]) 05:10, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

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:::::In other words: Assuming Wikipedia can develop a new world language, why should it? [[User:PiRSquared17|PiRSquared17]] ([[User talk:PiRSquared17|talk]]) 05:11, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

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