Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Maghrebi Arabic/2011 Discussion

This request has been proposed after discussion between Language committee and WMF Board members in response to the requests for Wikipedia Algero-moroccan arabic, Wikipedia Algerian, Wikipedia Tunisian and Wikipedia Moroccan. Note that just the first one (Algero-Moroccan Arabic) has been rejected, Tunisian is on hold, while Algerian and Moroccan has got eligible status. --Millosh 23:10, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The request should be used to determine are there enough native speakers support to create one set of projects for Northwest African Arabic varieties. --Millosh 23:10, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Native speakers comments would be counted, mostly. --Millosh 18:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments in favor

Favor. --75.119.226.202 02:25, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

IPs vote in Wikimedia ? --Helmoony 17:31, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Favor. This type of Arabic is very different from Arabic spoken in the middle east. It is similar to the difference between Scots and English. Snood1205 23:00, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Favor. This is not a dialect, this is a separate language. I'd say it's closer to Dutch and English instead of Scots and English. Many people who speak this language don't know enough standard Arabic or French in order to use Wikipedia. Just because it's catagorised as Arabic, doesn't mean it's a dialect. Arabic is not one language, it is tens of separate languages each having dialects. Selim_P 24:17, 19 December 202 (UTC)

Favor. Egyptian Arabic has over 100,000 articles on Wikipedia so why can't meghrebi arabic do the same. I agree that we don't want too many arabic dialects on Wikipedia, but if you just have the major ones like meghrebi, mesri, khaliji, shami, etc. I don't see a problem. I think it will help spread information especially to younger populations who can't understand formal arabic as well; after all, isn't the spread of information the purpose anyways?

Arguments against

No - Do we seriously need to create wikis in Dialects? We don't write wikis in slang... --Speedy Gonzalez 03:56, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is, of course, an invalid argument against. If you consider colloquial varieties of Arabic to be slang, then yes, we do write Wikis in colloquial varieties of Arabic. We already have one in Masri (Egyptian Arabic). The purpose of this request is not to decide whether or not we should have Wikipedias in regional or local varieties of Arabic (if there is enough speakers willing to contribute, of course), but rather to decide how to divide it: should we have one for Darija/Maghrebi and one for Amiyya/Mashreeki, or should we have one for each country (Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan, Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Hejazi, Najdi, etc)? This particular request is about Darija (=Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.) --Node ue 20:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
oppose --U.Steele 20:03, 29 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - The Arabic Wikipedia is in need of more effort, breaking it up into smaller projects will just make it harder to make a complete Arabic resource.--Aa2-2004 14:20, 11 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is, of course, an invalid argument against. We already have one in Masri (Egyptian Arabic). The purpose of this request is not to decide whether or not we should have Wikipedias in regional or local varieties of Arabic (if there is enough speakers willing to contribute, of course), but rather to decide how to divide it: should we have one for Darija/Maghrebi and one for Amiyya/Mashreeki, or should we have one for each country (Algerian, Tunisian, Moroccan, Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Hejazi, Najdi, etc)? This particular request is about Darija (=Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya.) --Node ue 20:20, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
oppose. No community ready for it. No resources written in that 'language'. In what language will the wiki be written ? Are you going to invent a new language ? What alphabet ? What rules ? Wikimedia is not a place to invent new rules and new languages. Give me 5 websites or books written in that 'language' ! Or you kbnow what give me just one website. --Helmoony 17:34, 28 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Our Bigger country is divided into 22 puppet states. Does this mean we need to have a separate Wikipedia for each? Absolutely NOT. Besides these emotional reasons, I doubt the existence of such "a Northwest African" dialect, let alone language, as the Arabic dialect in Libya is different from the one in Algeria or Morocco, so which one will be adopted? Furthermore, I doubt the presence of substantial support for such a wiki. There is no intellectual production in these spoken dialects? I would not even know how to write in this dialect, although I am a native Arabic speaker and fully understand the dialect. Having said this, this project will find no contributions and will fail if ever started. We don't need additional dead projects. عمرو بن كلثوم 01:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OPPOSE The above will be sufficient enough my friends. InTheRevolution2 23:43, 21 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OPPOSE There's no such thing as "Northwest African Arabic". There's three or four different dialects, that are different from arabic, the only logical solution is to make individual wikipedias for these languages (morrocan, algerian, tunisian and lybian) but not one unified northwest arabic. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.54.130.227 (talk)
Oppose - This seems analogous to setting up separate wikipedias for American English, Canadian English, Indian English, Sri Lankan English, Singaporean English, Hong Kong English, South African English, Zambian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, etc. The effect would only be to make Wikipedia less useful. M Carling (talk) 11:04, 18 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No ISO code - The ISO code determines whether there is a Wikipedia. The Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, and Libyan dialects have their own ISO codes and now are in the incubator. A pan-Darjia would only work if a standard Darjia is developed and gets its own ISO code. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:24, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

1. Any Arabic Slang Language is not a formal human language, it is slang ! having a Wikipedia in a slang Arabic, will lead for many problems, the main leading one : more Arab-speaking wikipedians will be starting more wikipedias in other slang dialects, therefore we shall have someday in the future more than 30 Wikipedia's in Slang dialects ! each Arab speaker would want to start a Wikipedia of his own dialect ! and we should keep in mind, that not only regional states have their own dialects, the cities within those countries and states have more specific slang's and dialects, and this will make the true value of Wikipedia drop down when it will be filled with slang's ! 2. how valid is a Slang Dialect : lets not forget it is a dialect : meaning there is total biding code to how to spell and write or read ! a dialect differs from a man to another ! for example in slang English : the word The : is turned into da and de ! as also it is a slang : a slang doesnt have a biding grammar or what so ever ! it is just what goes with the mouth ! a slang is saying what you feel your mouth can easily say ! this is how a slang develops ! and another thing is that in slang we might have sounds that do not exist in the formal language : for example in many slang arabic's we have the sound /g/ and there is no specific way to express this sound ! sometimes they use the Farsi letters sometimes else, here are four letters that all represent /g/ in slang arabic's :چ ڠ گ ڇ, and there are many more !

3. today we have a Wikipedia in a slang non-grammatical nor organized language, so why cant we have a Wikipedia in lolcat language, it already translated the bible : teh lolcat spek iz organizd !

4. if you accept to have a wikipedia in a slang language of a regional state, this means you now need to have a Wikipedia to each state in the US at least, having Wikipedia Masri, is a huge deal of turning Wikipedia into politically divided than nations and cultures contributing together, DO NOT TURN WIKIPEDIA INTO A POLITICAL DIVISION !

5. in All Arab & Algerian Universities, (and rest of the world), a scientific report - scientific page, in a slang dialect, even their own slang, is not acceptable and that report/page will never be regarded as true or even scientific unless in a formal Language like Formal Arabic Language !

6. having Wikipedia in this slang language or any other will lower the validity and the standards of Wikipedia : how would something valid/true/scientific and reliable as Wikipedia have a SLANG language, there is not scientific family in the world that would recognize a slang as a valid way to express science and studying !

7.when we have this Wikipedia & many others, that is already leading to more Wikipedias in other Arabic SLANG Dialects, the Arab-speaking Developers and editors will be divided in more than 30 Wikipedia in stead of all of them developing the one true formal language Arabic Wikipedia, thus they are destroying and corrupting in stead of uniting and building wikipedia, and expanding Wikipedia Arabic

8. treating Slang Arabic as equal for other formal Languages is a discrimination against the other slang-speakers of the world, thus for example we must also have Slang Arabic English, it is as the same level as Egyptian Arabic Slang, or Algerian or Bahrani Arabic

9. HAVING A WIKIPEDIA IN A SLANG IS STUPIDITY !

10. IT IS NOT A LANGUAGE , WIKIPEDIA IS GETTING FILLED WITH SLANG ARABICS, AND ARABS HAVE MANY SLANGS, THUS ARABIC SLANG WIKIPEDIA WILL NEVER END

and so I've presented my statement, with Logic and reasoning ! please respect and don not vandalize ! as I stress on you understanding #1 & #2 !

— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Asm17hawkeye (talk)

Oppose. I strongly support creating Wikipedias written in different Arabic varieties. However, it seems that this is a GROUP OF LANGUAGES which includes Algerian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Libyan Arabic, etc. We already have test-wikis in the above three SEPARATE LANGUAGES. Thus, it is meaningless to create a Wikipedia consisting of various languages, which violates the Language proposal policy.Professorjohnas (talk) 05:23, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose -MacRusgail (talk) 23:02, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Other discussion

I'll raise the same issue that I do for all Arabic colloquial proposals -- is there any kind of accepted or established orthography other than ad-hoc attempts to write dialect words using unmodified classical Arabic script? Because such ad-hoc attempts to write dialect with unmodified classical Arabic script are rarely very successful -- and would seem to be especially useless for many Moroccan Arabic vernaculars, which (from things I've seen in the linguistic literature from time to time) have a phonology extremely divergent from Classical Arabic... AnonMoos 07:52, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you suggesting that Wikipedians have to create a new scipt ? Is it our role ? Who are we to substitute the reality by imagining a new language with a special script ? --Helmoony 08:52, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm saying that unless there are some kind of established or accepted orthographic conventions for writing Northwest African Arabic dialects specifically, then this project is likely to be of rather limited usefulness -- because trying to write Arabic vernacular dialects in an ad-hoc improvised way using classical Arabic orthographic conventions (and probably everybody doing it slightly differently) is a losing game which almost always gives poor results (and seems guaranteed to give extremely poor results for many Moroccan dialects). AnonMoos (talk) 11:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]