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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia East Franconian German

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submitted verification final decision

This language has been verified as eligible.
The language is eligible for a project, which means that the subdomain can be created once there is an active community and a localized interface, as described in the language proposal policy. You can discuss the creation of this language project on this page.

Once the criteria are met, the language committee can proceed with the approval and will verify the test project content with a reliable neutral source, such as a professor or expert.

If you think the criteria are met, but the project is still waiting for approval, feel free to notify the committee and ask them to consider its approval.

A committee member provided the following comment:

As for what "vmf" refers to, the older edition of Ethnologue said it was spoken west of Frankfurt and in Mainz, which is untrue of Main Franconian, but the new edition has been corrected and it now says "east of Mainz and Frankfurt", which does match up with the usual understanding of Main Franconian. [1]. --MF-W 23:56, 29 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The community needs to develop an active test project; it must remain active until approval (automated statistics, recent changes). It is generally considered active if the analysis lists at least three active, not-grayed-out editors listed in the sections for the previous few months.
  • The community needs to complete required MediaWiki interface translations in that language (about localization, translatewiki, check completion).
  • The community needs to discuss and complete the settings table below:
What Value Example / Explanation
Proposal
Language code vmf (SIL, Glottolog) A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name Mainfränkisch Language name in English
Language name Mainfränkisch Language name in your language. This will appear in the language list on Special:Preferences, in the interwiki sidebar on other wikis, ...
Language Wikidata item Q497345 - item has currently the following values:
 Item about the language at Wikidata. It would normally include the Wikimedia language code, name of the language, etc. Please complete at Wikidata if needed.
Directionality LTR Is the language written from left to right (LTR) or from right to left (RTL)?
Links Links to previous requests, or references to external websites or documents.
Site URL vmf.wikipedia.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
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Project namespace usually the same as the project name
Project talk namespace "Wikipedia talk" (the discussion namespace of the project namespace)
Enable uploads yes Default is "no". Preferably, files should be uploaded to Commons.
If you want, you can enable local file uploading, either by any user ("yes") or by administrators only ("admin").
Notes: (1) This setting can be changed afterwards. The setting can only be "yes" or "admin" at approval if the test creates an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) first. (2) Files on Commons can be used on all Wikis. (3) Uploading fair-use images is not allowed on Commons (more info). (4) Localisation to your language may be insufficient on Commons.
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Additional settings Anything else that should be set
Once settings are finalized, a committee member will submit a Phabricator task requesting creation of the wiki. (This will include everything automatically, except the additional namespaces/settings.) After the task is created, it should be linked to in a comment under "final decision" above.

Fränkisch is a language spoken today in parts of Germany which are under occupancy by federal land of the Bavarians :-) In fact about 1/3 of theis federal land is today Franken (=land of Franks) i.e. the souther part between nearly close to far east of Frankfurt/Main and Thuringia (Hof, Bamberg)

Old Fränkisch language has great tradition. Went to France and gave its name to language and Land. Went to Alsace, to zhe river Rhine and down til the see in holland, gave name and language to variose tribe in between. Also in Hesse.

It has ISO 639-3 codes which is frk (Frankisch, Oldfrankisch) and other codes which is vmf (Mainfrankish, i.e. Frankisch of the area of the river Main. Almost all of Frankenland today is near the river Main. vmf say they include Sity of Mainz at the rive Rhine. Wich having complete different language, indeed, that is not frankisch. So codes vmf describtion is nonsence, must I say. please do outplace the Frankfurt sity and area, and the Mainz sity and area from vmf)

There are Million of Franken who are speaking Fränkisch in well known place like Nürnberg, Bamberg, Würzburg, Schweinfurt, and many more sities. Manx of them are very proud to be using Fränkisch, and also many jung peepel and children who using the internet much are among this. So believable it is many will love this Wikipedia.

Arguments in favour

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Fränkisch is definitely not an extinct language. It is in daily use by more than 3 Million people whereas it is not confined to the region Frankonia but is also spoken in parts of Thuringia, France and Belgium. The argument "extinct" does not hold by any means. In that case there should not be a "Latin" wikipedia. The "frankonian empire" lasted more than 800 year which is longer than the roman empire. If I had to choose which dialect to learn in school I would rather take Frankonian than Latin (which is in fact is also another dialect) because Frankonian is actively spoken and has an even more complex grammar than Latin.

Furthermore, I do not by any means perceive a perfect mutual intelligibility with standard German. People not of Frankonian as mother tongue will arguable not understand "lou a moll di Rollou loudn no". Also Frankonian grammar, which in fact exists, is definitely distinct from German. Of course non-natives will understand Frankonians as they are polite people and will try to speak high-german. But try this after six or seven frankonian beers.... :-)

Another argument, which is probably more important than the ones above, is that two of the world famous adventures of Asterix and Obelix were already published in Frankonian language. One of the authors is Günther Stössl who "celebrates" Frankonian not only in these famous comix but also in other publications about this distinct dialect. He wrote several articles about grammar and published a dictionary (Fränggisch' Wördderbichla. 500 Ausdrücke aus dem Nürnberger Raum. München: Ludwig, 1991, 63 S., ISBN 3-7787-3389-3 ). This proofs thes distinctness of the dialect. Please also see: http://www.franken-wiki.de/index.php/G%C3%BCnter_St%C3%B6ssel.

There are wikis in Baavarian, Alemannisch ... kept alive by people speaking these dialects. So why not giving Frankonian a chance? Writted by 88.76.214.19

  • Vote in favor: I can see a substantial difference between Frankish and other varieties of German. I do see relation to other High/Western types, but things do indeed get a lil fuzzy when trying to make sense of some of it. Wōdenhelm 09:23, 29 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Although, as we can read below, the precise scientific denomination and formal definition is a complicated matter, I am confident that, defining a valid scope for a franconian language of today's wiki is pretty easy and rather simple on a practical level. Just collect every South East German local language that natives call a variety of "Fränkisch" in Standard German, or some variant of "Frängsch" when talking vernacular. From personal experience, I know that would work - I lived in Nürnberg for a while, and I was a regular visitor to other parts of Franconia for long, and I have several friends and colleagues from todays Franconia. --Purodha Blissenbach 12:52, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • if the "code thing" can be solved, I strongly support this request. There's no reason for treating Fränkisch differently to Bavarian, Alemanic or other "German" dialects. There are similiarities between Standard German and Fränkisch and there are important differences. If the wiki gets its chance, I'm sure it will develop as well as dozens of comparable dialect wikipediae. → «« Man77 »» [de]·[bar] 10:53, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • VERY SUPER DUPER TO THE EXTREME EXTREMELY STRONGLY SUPPORT TO THE MAX. This language deserves its own Wikipedia. One thing, though: Where are the Alsatian, Old Frankish, and Vandalic Wikipedias? There's a Norman one and an Old English one but the others don't get one? --Horrifico (talk) 23:56, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    Alasatian articles are on the Alemannic/Swiss German Wikipedia: als:Kategorie:Artikel_uf_Elsässisch. The LangCom won't approve dead languages anymore because they don't directly further Wikimedia's goal of spreading knowledge. And just to clarify: The Norman Wikipedia is in the Modern Norman language, not the old one (a dialect of Old French, Anglo-Norman may be its dialect, not sure). East Franconian is still a living language, but it doesn't seem to have its own ISO code. πr2 (t • c) 00:12, 6 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • ApoyoMe da lata que la gente siempre sea tan racista y supracista en contra de los idiomas germanicos que no sean el alemán estándar, simplemente por que use la palabra alemán en el sustantivo para su lenguaje no quere decir que sea el mismo idioma y obviamente siempre ha habido bastante apoyo, comunidad y escrituras en éstos idiomas de minoria europeos que les va mucho más mejor habilitados con una versión de wikipedia para preservar el idioma y enseñarle a los niños, curiosos e ignorantes acerca del sumo del conocimiento humano no hay razon por aponerse que valga la pena108.212.70.237 02:34, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support -XQV- (talk) 14:38, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 155.137.183.105 17:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support 103.6.198.192 17:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support --V0lkanic (talk) 20:19, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against

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You should not confuse the Eastern Franconian language (the native Speakers say fränkisch) with some kind of dutch or "Niederfränkisch" languages. There are about 5 Million people in Franconia and many of them are still able to speek this language.--Aldaileobadd 18:31, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fränkisch being one of the central dialects of High German, there is almost perfect mutual intelligibility with standard German. IMO, Franconian can by no means be considered as a language significantly distinct from German. --ARBE0 18:49, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I highly doubt that, Ethnologue says it is only 40% mutually intelligible here, I am a native speaker of Spanish and there is 85% mutual intelligability with Portuguese, and even at that i can only ever understand a bit, because it is spoken very differently than it is written.70.7.232.228 21:19, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The code selected is the one for Main-Frankish. It is not clear to me that this will cover the whole region where Frankish is spoken. I would not be surprised if what this proposal considers Frankish is what Ethnologue calls West Middle German. This is however not eligible because several of these already have a Wikipedia. GerardM 06:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Of course the project will not cover the whole Frankish area. You have to distinguish the scholarly use of the term Frankish and the popular. Scholars call all Germanic language variants spoken by descendants of the Old Franks Frankish. But only few speakers of these language variants call their language Frankish. Only speakers of Main Frankish do this on a regular base. Ethnologue as always is completely confused on Frankish. Main Frankish actually is Upper German and not Middle German. And Main Frankish as a subdivision of Moselle Frankish is a bad joke. Look at a map. The Moselle is a left tributary of the Rhine and the Main a right tributary. They are 80 km apart. No sane brain would make one of them a subdivision of the other and name another subdivision after the river flowing between both (Rhenish Frankish). The requester too realized the confusedness of Ethnologue. Mainz is indeed not part of the Frankish language area. The requester saying that he wants to exclude Mainz from Frankish should have been indication enough to realize, that the request does not include Ripuarian or Luxembourgeous or Limburgish. Just Main Frankish. (Which is called Fränkisch in the Mainfranken area) --::Slomox:: >< 00:19, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think your arguments are a bit over the top. At a border 80 kilometres covers a lot of ground. It is often mountains or other natural borders that make such a difference.. left or right side of a river perhaps ?? Given the lack of involvement of proposers and the lack of native speakers I am still really negative about this request. GerardM 12:00, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I really wonder why a Dutch is so negative about a Frankonian wiki. As you don't seem to be a native (Frankonian) speaker you cannot by any means decide how unique and important this dialect is for us Frankonians. You are writing "lack of proposers". To me it seems like there is only one Dutch against a Frankonian wiki. Once installed I bet there will be quite an amount of articles written in Frankonian. If not, people responsible may delete it again. Is that so difficult? If people were always that negative about things they don't know would there be a wiki at all? Delos1970 13:00, 3 January 2009

Yes there are. I really wonder why you put so much effort into retarding a Frankonian wiki?

  • It is mentioned above that >>People not of Frankonian as mother tongue will arguable not understand "lou a moll di Rollou loudn no". [...] Of course non-natives will understand Frankonians as they are polite people and will try to speak high-german. But try this after six or seven frankonian beers.... <<. However I doubt that anyone who speaks Frankonian would use a Wikipedia containing strange things like that (and written in a drunk state ;)?) as a real encyclopedia and source of information. --MF-W 16:07, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That is not an Argument against a franconian wiki. You just think, that it would not work. But hej, we have even some Universities in Franconia....:-)--Aldaileobadd 18:37, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See also

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Other discussion

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Du möchtest also eine Wikipedia in Ostfränkisch haben, sehe ich das richtig? In etwas so wie in der Karte rechts eingezeichnet? Und wie stellt sich das dar, sprichst du sowohl Fränkisch wie auch Schlesisch, für das du auch eine Wikipedia vorgeschlagen hast? --::Slomox:: >< 22:35, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The code frk, as i understood it, is for the extinct Old Franconian language, predecessor in history in a way of several modern Franconian languages.
I agree that the description given by SIL for vmf is a bit weird in the sense that it collects, or seems to collect, languages from three different groups by describing an area of use. Maybe only wording is unclear? I'd suggest to try to clear that up before using the code in a way which is possibly not matching the standard. --Purodha Blissenbach 11:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As this proposal seems to be about my native dialect, I want to put some comments here.

First of all, what the OP proposes (as is clearly discernible from his mentions of Nürnberg, Würzburg, Bamberg, as well as the contents of the incubator pages), is in fact the language/dialect group East Franconian, of which Main-Fränkisch is only a subgroup. However, as already noted by several users, this is not what vmf stands for, which, according to SIL/Ethnologue, also encompasses the city of Mainz, which clearly does not belong to the East Franconian language area. For East Franconian as spoken in Northern Bavaria, there seems to be no ISO code.

The language is used mainly in spoken form, but there are a few authors who write in it (usually "dialect literature", poems, songs etc.). Each of them uses an idiosyncratic orthography, as there is no official or at least wide-spread way of spelling. I'm not aware of any non-belletristic works, i.e. news papers, scientific articles etc.

There is quite some dialectal variation, as East Franconian is spoken over a large area. The most notable differences are in vocabulary and vocalism; consonants and grammar are remarkably uniform.

The latter two facts also apply to other dialect groups with an own WP (e.g. alemannic, bavarian), so shouldn't be an obstacle for creating one in East Franconian. It would however be nice if the users could agree on a common way of spelling (=> common sound/letter correspondences, thus still preserving the dialectal differences). However, as there is no ISO code, this request does not fulfill the requirements for a new language WP. --Schuetzm 18:13, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The classification of German regional languages in Ethnologue seems to be a little confusing. According to en:Main-Franconian vmf is the code for Main-Franconian, a part of Eastern Franconian. The language of Mainz and Frankfurt isn't Main Franconian but en:Rhine Franconian (in Ethnologue Rhenisch Franconian), that is really a confusing mistake in Ethnologe. There is some literature, which classifies Eastern Franconian as en:Upper German and some literature, which classifies it as a Middle (or Central) German (en:Central_German). I think Wikipedia - and especially this request - is not the place to discuss the validation of the Ethnologue classification. It seems to be clear that vmf is the code for en:Main Franconian and the articles which have been written in the test project are indeed Main Franconian. So I think there is no reason not to create a Main Franconian Wp with the code vmf, if a active community of native speakers wants it. Holder 12:59, 13 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need to discuss Ethnologue classification, because by them describing vmf as being spoken west of Frankfurt and in Mainz, it is clear that it is not the language this proposal is about. Note also how in the lineage it is classified under Moselle Franconian. If there is an ISO code for East Franconian, vmf is not it. --Schuetzm 18:30, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's clearly a mistake on Ethnologue's part to say that Main Franconian is spoken in Mainz and to classify it under Moselle Franconian rather than under Eastern Franconian. But Ethnologue is not the authority that issues ISO codes, so its mistakes have no bearing on the denotation of the code vlf, which, as w:Main-Franconian explains, covers the Main-Tauber-Kreis in northeastern Baden-Württemberg, Upper/Middle/Lower Franconia in northern Bavaria, and three districts plus Suhl in southwestern Thuringia. Angr 19:54, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
They also say it spoken in Mainz and west of Frankfurt, so that would be two mistakes. In fact, the title is the only indication that the language they talk about is "Mainfränkisch". And of course, Ethnologue is published by SIL, which is the authority that issues ISO codes.
w:Main-Franconian does not explain anything, it merely claims vmf to be the code. And before your merging of w:Mainfränkisch language (which was based entirely on Ethnologue) into that article, it didn't claim anything about an ISO code at all, it simply listed the sub-dialects that are still mentioned in the current version. These however, are much more narrow than what "Mainfränkisch" is claimed to be by Ethnologue. In short, I believe that your merging of the two articles was a mistake. I'm not sure whether Ethnologue's Mainfränkisch actually exists, and if it does, what real language it is referring to. It could be completely bogus.
The third thing is, that the requester doesn't seem to know what he wants: the title of this proposal is East Franconian, but in the summary box it says Main Franconian. The content of the incubator however is in the Nuremberg dialect, which, although belonging to East Franconian, doesn't belong to Main Franconian. --Schuetzm 16:57, 20 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I did ask for more sources at w:Main-Franconian, precisely because the article seems to be based entirely on Ethnologue (always dangerous), and because the books I own on German dialects (admittedly not very many) do not mention any such dialect at all, but only Ostfränkisch. Personally, I believe that Ostfränkisch is what SIL intended vmf to be the code for, but somewhere along the line they got confused as to its name and its location; but that's just my personal belief without evidence to back it up. w:de:Mainfränkische Dialekte implies Main-Franconian is a subset of Ostfränkisch, but (typically for German Wikipedia) the article is unsourced and unverifiable. I wish there was some way to request clarification from SIL as to what language exactly they mean by "Main-Franconian", because I suspect they don't mean the same thing as Wikipedia (both German and English) does. Angr 07:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I am a franconian native speaker. I think User:Angr is completely right! The precise (scientific) name is Ostfränkisch or East Franconian German and therefore there is a precise defined description what would be included in this wiki. A map in Klepsch, Alfred, Wagner, Eberhard: Handwörterbuch von Bayerisch-Franken. Herausgegeben von Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Verlag: Mediengruppe Oberfranken ISBN 978-3-936897-52-4 clearly shows the area of the Eastern Franconian language for the parts, which lie in the State of Bavaria. From my point of view the description of Main Franconian ("vmf") at Ethnologue is totally wrong (or in Eastern Franconian german: a gschmarri). The areas arround Mainz and Frankfurt actually do not even belong to the Moselle Franconian dialects as it is written here. The people there speak Hessian Dialects--Aldaileobadd 15:52, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mainfränkisch (Main Franconian) vs Ostfränkisch (East Franconian German)

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I think there is some confusion about the word Mainfränkisch (Main Franconian). As far as I know the word Mainfränkisch (Main Franconian) usually means the same as Ostfränkisch (East Franconian). For example according to Deutsche Dialekte im Allgemeinen By Claudia Nickel both words have the same meaning:

"Die ostmitteldeutschen Dialekte umfassen das Thüringische, das Obersächsische ... das Südfränkische, das Ostfränkische (oder Mainfränkische), das Bairische...". (en: The East-Middle German dialects contain the Thuringian, the Upper Saxon,... the South Franconian, the East Franconian (or Main Franconian), the Bavarian...).

The probably wrong distinction of a few East Franconian German dialects as a so called Main Franconian Group does not fit with the already mentioned Handwörterbuch von Bayerisch-Franken. Herausgegeben von Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften.. I know this definition of Mainfränkisch (Main Franconian) actually only from the Wikipedia.--Aldaileobadd 16:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

please have a look at this overview [2]. i believe the correct language code is frk and the attribute Extinct is wrong.[3]
btw. Ethnologue.com told me, that the bavarian are from austria [4]. :D --Stoerfall 01:39, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Hmmm, the big problem here is, that not only the attribute "extinct" does not fit with Eastern Franconian German, but also the wrong term West Middle German (Westmitteldeutsch). Eastern Franconian German belongs to the Upper German Dialects (Oberdeutsche Dialekte). And that does also not fit to Eastern Franconian German: Different from present day German language varieties.--Aldaileobadd 19:05, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Definition of vmf is unclear

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I recommend, not to use this language code until SIL corrects its definition, which is self-contradictive.
Currently. It says at http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=vmf

  • Region: Mostly River Main area, including Mainz, west of Frankfurt.
  • Alternate names: Upper Franconian
  • Classification: Indo-European, Germanic, West, High German, German, Middle German, West Middle German, Moselle Franconian

Facts:

  • The City Mainz is not at the river Main.
  • Upper Franconian is not an alternate name for Main Franconian.
  • Upper Franconian is unrelated to Moselle Frankonian. Upper Franconian is not part of West Middle German. Most Authors classify Upper Franconian not even as part of Middle German.
  • In the City Mainz, they do not speak Upper Franconian. The nearest Upper Fanconain speaking place is some 200+ km away from Mainz.
  • In the city Mainz, they do not speak Moselle Franconian. The nearest Moselle Fanconain speaking place is likely some 70 km away from Mainz.
  • In the city Mainz, they do speak a variety of Rhine-Hessian, which is part of the Rhine-Franconian group of West Middle German. So Mainz's way to speak is closer related to Palatinate German than to either Main Franconian or Moselle Franconian.

Comments:

  • From all these, imho, there is not even a way to guess, what the original intention of defining vmf was.
  • I repeatedly imformed SIL about all this already years ago per e-mail. As with other similar hints and requests, no reaction from SIL til today.
  • Maybe, the author of the Ethnologue entry confused the rivers Main, and Moselle. Both contribute to the Rhine, from opposite sides and at different places, which are about 100 km apart.
  • If you want more infos on the so called "Franconian group", which includes Afrikaans, Luxembourgish, and several 1000 German varieties, if you read German, see: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A4nkische_Sprachen It may contribute to more clarity :-)

--Purodha Blissenbach 08:57, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There are several concepts, or terms, "Franconian" in Germany today. Two of them need to be considered here, which are almost completely unrelated, a modern geographical one (Franconia part of Bavaria) and a historic linguistic one (Franconian languages). They clash, when we talk about languages of today in the area called Franconia today. So we carefully need to regard that, as I believe, this proposal is about the languages spoken in the area called Franconia today. Franconia is currently divided into administrative disctricts called Lower Franconia (Unterfranken) Central Franconia (Mittelfranken) and Upper Franconia (Oberfranken). These are totally unrelated to the language groups, such as Lower Franconian. While all three districts are in Bavaria in the South East of Germany, languages of the Lower Franconian group are mainly spoken in Belgium, the Netherlands, Suriname, and South Africa (and a small area at the dutch border in Germany inside the Rhine-Meuse-North Euregio (members), but best forget that quickly again:)
In German, languages of todays district Lower Franconia are called "Unterfränkisch", while the linugistic group having the historic name Lower Franconian, that is, the ones mainly spoken outside Germany, are called "Niederfränkisch". Unfortunately, when translated to Englisch, both "Unterfränkisch" and "Niederfränkisch" become "Lower Franconian".
A similar story can be told about Middle/Central Franconian. So just watch out, and keep your sights and brains clear. --Purodha Blissenbach 10:58, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You are completely right. Except one thing: "Unterfränkisch" is actually not precise enough for describing the languages of todays district Lower Franconia (Unterfranken). A better term is "Unterostfränkisch" (Lower East Franconian) as it is used in the map, wich I already mentioned in the topic above.--Aldaileobadd 11:40, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But there is one thing, I do not understand. Why does wikipedia care so much about SIL, despite the fact, that they obviously write completely rubbish.--Aldaileobadd 11:45, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you're absolutely right about "Unterfränkisch". I did not want to touch even more complicated matters, so I just left some details out, also all non-Bavarian parts of the Region of Franconia, etc..
SIL (currently) has been delegated the authority about the ISO 639-3 set of language codes - despite the fact that they are a christian missionary organization, only "accidentally" collecting data on languages likely starting from the idea of bible translations. A not so small group of persons in the Wikimedia movement tries to use, promote, and extend standards, such as the ISO 639 series, and thus uses them whenever possible. --Purodha Blissenbach 12:09, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
P.S.
I just e-mailed another clarification request to SIL. They meanwhile have set up a formal workflow of change requests, requiring one to download a lengthy text document in a proprietary format having fields to be filled in, and have the result e-mailed to them as an attachment. I do not own the (expensive) software that deals with that file format, and it did not really work for me with an open source program that shoud have been able to read it. Nevertheless, I've copied&pasted the whole bunch of text into an e-mail and filled in the needed fields asking to either drop the code vmf or to rewrite its specification, and included the above list of contradictions. --Purodha Blissenbach 12:25, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Update: My request to retire the ill-defined code vmf can now be found at http://sil.org/iso639-3/cr_files/2010-012.pdf being referred to from http://sil.org/iso639-3/chg_detail.asp?id=2010-012&lang=vmf and shall likely be considered in the course of the year to come by SIL. My parallel request to add a "modern Franconian macrolanguage" code seems not to be found anywhere at the moment. --Purodha Blissenbach 17:12, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The new edition of Ethnologue has corrected its entry for Mainfränkisch. It now says: "Location: Mostly River Main area, east of Mainz and Frankfurt", which corresponds with the familiar definition of Ostfränkisch/Mainfränkisch. For this reason, vmf has now been verified as eligible. Antony D. Green (talk) 20:57, 30 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Frankonian Supporters

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Generally I support the idea that each considerably large dialect group should be allowed to open its own wikipedia. In the Bavarian Wikipedia (bar) there appeared over time some users, who tried to write something in Frankonian there, so theoretically there seems to be some interest. We had to kindly request those to participate elsewhere, since the Frankonian dialects spoken in the federal state of Bavaria are linguistically not Bavarian. The difference here is quite clear. Nevertheless I have to admit, that even the Bavarian wikipedia itself is only growing slowly, even if there are theoretically 12 Million people in the world, who could participate. What I am wondering now is, whether there is really sufficient interest in having a Frankonian wikipedia by Frankonian users, since User:Holder, who initiated this request, is more from the allemanic South-West. (By the way: Thanks a lot for your support at bar.WP !!!)

My question now is: Are there Frankonian users who support this request and who already have the necessary skills from other wikipedias or is this just an idea from Holder himself? I think at least three to five really dedicated users should show up here and declare that they would support such a wikipedia with their commitment, at least in the beginning phase. Otherwise such a project seems to be redundant for the moment. --El bes 15:03, 15 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As one from Franconia I'd support this Wikipedia and I could imagine to write something (my skills are better than enough so far - cause it's my mother tongue). If this test needs some users to make it growing bigger, I'll be there to help. But it needs some more supporters, cause I can't handle it on my own, of course. At all: Pro. --Singsangsung 12:06, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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