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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Livonian

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See the test Wikipedia from Incubator at incubator:Wp/liv
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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.

  • 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 liv (SIL, Glottolog) A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name Livonian Language name in English
Language name Līvõ kēļ 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 Q33698 - 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 liv.wikipedia.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name Wikipedia "Wikipedia" in your language
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.
Optional settings
Project logo This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation).
Default project timezone Europe/Riga "Continent/City", e.g. "Europe/Brussels" or "America/Mexico City" (see list of valid timezones)
Additional namespaces For example, a Wikisource would need "Page", "Page talk", "Index", "Index talk", "Author", "Author talk".
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.
I see, that it can be too hard to make a good Wikipedia on Livonian, because the population, which know Livonian, is too little (about 500 people in common), but I request to give it a chanse, because this test-Wikipedia has an active contributer Warbola, also some Wikipedians know Livonian on intermediate level (p.e. Roalds), the statistics sais, that there are now about 150 articles, and it's growing up in it's development (statistics is here). Thank you very much for your help in the creation (and for your votes)!--Andrijko Z. 14:14, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments

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Other discussion

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I have three substantial questions in relation to this (and Votic request): --Millosh 14:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Who would write those projects? --Millosh 14:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. What is the purpose of those projects? --Millosh 14:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. What do you think about starting Wikisource editions instead of Wikipedia? That would be wiser action if the language conservation is the main goal. --Millosh
2. First, there have been Wikipedia projects in small languages from the beginning and it has been long time policy of Wikipedia to accept and support these projects. You have perfect right to think that world would be better without Wikipedia projects in small languages but that discussion does not belong to this page. The purpose of Livonian Wikipedia is to have a Livonian Wikipedia!
1. Who would write these projects, of course people who are able to write Livonian texts. New Livonian language articles appear quite often in a Latvian newspaper [[1]] and portal livones.lv. Most of these people have not come to Wikipedia yet but we have users like Ēlmaz, Ohpuu, Roalds, Avellano and me who are making contributions in Livonian. Btw Livonian has a very well documented literary language - something that even many languages with millions of speakers don't have.
3. Wikisource instead of Wikipedia? Livonian Wikipedia is project where users are making original contributions. Wikisource is a project where original contributions are specifically forbidden. If you want to start a project for Livonian Wikisource, go ahead, but again, that has absolutely nothing to do with Livonian Wikipedia project, which is the subject of the current page. Warbola 02:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK. You've convinced me :) According to the Ethnologue, native speakers population is too low, but it seems that it is not so accurate. --Millosh 05:04, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, you didn't. May you point to me to the texts in Livonian (let's say, which edition, which page)? I saw just texts in Latvian [2]. --Millosh 05:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, unfortunately they have been less active recently. In April number[3] I see just one paragraph in Livonian (Vänt kizūb: Kui sa mõtlõd? by Vents Priedoliņš.) But only half a year ago the articles in Livonian appeared regularly, EBLUL — kīeld kaitsiji [4] by Jānis Mednis Turaida Līvlizt päva and Muini Tuļ Īe by Julgī Stalte [5], Līvõ tieudõd by Linda Zonne [6], Ungārmōl by Jānis Mednis [7] etc. Portal Livones has even some longer articles in Livonian from the end of last year, like [8] or [9] by Valts Ernštreits. Many livones articles for some reason do not mention their author but I notice that at least Renāte Blumberga [10], Tiit-Rein Viitso [11] and Tapio Mäkeläinen [12] have written some. So there are still many quite wikipedian style articles written by quite young people, so I do not think the language can be declared dead enough yet.Warbola 12:05, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am convinced, but puzzled. For my curiosity, may you describe the present state of Livonian language? Is it inside of the revival process? Wikipedia says 30 speakers, Ethnologue says 15 in 1995. --Millosh 13:16, 13 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are certainly some Livonian language revitalization efforts. For example, they are trying to teach Livonian language to children in summer camps. There are also many young Livonian speakers who had Livonian speaking grandparents but parents with almost no knowledge of Livonian. Warbola 12:06, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The project is eligible. --Millosh 17:03, 17 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
status is: awaiting content verification. Vincentangeles005 (talk) 13:59, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Living first language speakers

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The project doesn't really meet the requisite of native speakers in the light on news stories about the last native speaker dead (e.g [13]) or found (e.g [14]). The 500, that could be capable of editing the project, esimated at the top of the page have studied Livonian in the university, isn't it? Then again, as the project seems active, maybe an artificial language like exception can be made (while Ancient Greek with probably far more speakers was rejected). 88.196.241.249 08:40, 22 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that the project has been deemed to satisfy the criterion by the Language Committee, and that now people fluent in Livonian have to demonstrate that they are up to the job of writing an encyclopedia.
The speaker in question may have been the last of his own generation of native speakers in Latvia. Reports about "the death of the last Livonian" tend not to be very reliable as they belong to a centuriy-old tradition among local news media of occasionally reporting "the death of the last Livonian".
According to some more recent and more reliable sources (like the PhD thesis of Valts Ernštreits ), there seem to be nine native speakers of Livonian of the same generation who live outside Latvia, mostly refugees from the time of World War II. For example, Grizelda Kristin lives in Canada.
And this leaves open the issue of determining whether a number of people from the generation Valts Ernštreits, Julgī Stalte, Dāvis Stalts, Jānis Mednis, Ulla Fraser, Renāte Blumberga or any of their ilk from the Līvõ Kultūr Sidām could qualify as native speakers or not. They all are ethnic Livonians and are proficient in Livonian. There were 250 ethnic Livonians living in Latvia in 2011 according to the preliminary results of the census, as compared to 177 ethnic Livonians according to the census a decade earlier. And, in fact, the number of self-described Livonians has been on the rise since 1970, as census data presented lv:Latvijas demogrāfija shows. This reflects some success in the revitalisation of the culture and language, I think.
The 500 people who know Livonian most probably include young people who have learnt the language in summer camps organised by Livonian organisations in co-operation with university scholars. If one were to count every person who has passed the routine course of Livonian in Estonian, Latvian and Finnish universities, the number would probably be a few thousand. The University of Tartu has had the basic course every year, with about a dozen people attending yearly in recent times. I think all these people should not be counted as second-language speakers of Livonian and the figure 500 seems to indicate that they have not been.
In any case, this all could serve as a good material for a more detailed sociolinguistic study, were some linguist to undertake one.
I think the most appropriate analogue (and perhaps also a role model) for a Wikipedia in Livonian would be the Wikipedia in Cornish. The issue of Cornish native speakers is as complex, interesting and debatable as that of native speakers of Livonian. The English Wikipedia article says: "Native speakers: a few speakers under 20 years old; 100 others fluent (2003)" (en:Cornish language). But it seems to me that the scope for the use of the Cornish language reached an even lower point during the 19th century than the Livonan language has ever experienced. -- Ohpuu 10:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Valts Ernštreits says in his PhD theseis (p. 10) that (now almost 102 years old) Grizelda Kristiņ is the only known person whose first language is Livonian. 88.196.241.249 14:55, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That is true. But I think the rise of the number of self-described Livonians as seen from the census data referred to above is a strong indication of the revitalisation of the Livonian.--Morel 01:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In regards of the deadness I'd like to expand on what I said above with my vote - when the "death of the last native speaker" was reported, I looked into it some more. I found (I think somewhere on http://www.livones.net) an article from which I gathered that reason for this is that he did not learn another language until he started school, to me this suggests that Livonian community itself might be underestimating number of native speakers by excluding bilingual speakers of later generations. Even if there aren't any - contrary to languages of Antiquity (like Ancient Greek case someone cited above) there is continuity of language use up to present day and contrary to some languages where when one old person dies there indeed is nobody who could speak the language, but some linguists, there is community of people who are children or grandchildren of native speakers, have learned language from them (even if it is not their primary language), are attempting to revitalize the language (and therefore they may be able to teach language to their children, producing new native speakers) and know enough language to be able to produce websites, poetry and song lyrics [15], political speeches [16] etc. this certainly reflects enough of knowledge to write article in Wikipedia. I therefore question if it is rational for purposes of evaluating eligibility of a project to consider death of last (monolingual) native speaker a sign of language death; there seem to be alternative definitions that suggest language death is loss of fluency, rather than making it of high importance at what age one gained it and at what age they started to learn other languages - babies do not write Wikipedia ~~Xil...(talk) 10:43, 15 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In 2002, Estonian Wikipedia was started by two non-native speakers, a French and a Dutch linguist, if I recall it correctly. They were surprised to find out neither of them was Estonian, and they had it pretty much on their own for quite some time. Not a very promising start. Recently, we reached 100,000 articles,and we're going strong. It's hard to say if a project will succeed, but it will certainly fail if you don't try. --Oop (talk) 11:29, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

localisation information

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