Requests for new languages/Wiktionary Nepal Bhasa 2

Nepal Bhasa Wiktionary

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Requests for new languages (Wiktionary Nepal Bhasa 2)

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.

Proposal summary
Language details: Nepal Bhasa (Nepal Bhasa, new ISO 639-3) Editing community: Eukesh (NP) List your user name if you're interested in editing the wiki. Add "N" next to your name if you are a native speaker of this language. Relevant pages: Previous request (closed in reform) External links: —
Please read the handbook for requesters for help using this template correctly.

Arguments in favour

• Nepal Bhasa wikipedia has been started recently and needs a wikitionary for proper functioning as regards
  1. Uniformity of the language (the old form of language, which is considered as the Golden Era form, is still used by some but is generally incomprehensible to many)
  2. The long and short form of the verbs are vital for comprehension. However, they are generally miataken which can be rectified with a wikitionary.
  3. The different accents and dialects can be properly represented in wikitionary which is less feasible in wikipedia
  4. Wikibots for grammar correction as well as for automatic translation can be created with the help of a wikitionary
  5. Nepal Bhasa wikipedia is fairly active and can maintain a wikitionary along with the wikipedia
  6. Most of the people do not understand the "deep" literary and technical terminologies which needs to be bridged with a good wikitionary
  —unsigned by Eukesh 18:21, 25 December 2006.
• Strong support per interested users (see mention in my length discussion with User:Eukesh) and lengthy discussion under "general discussion." --Iamunknown 19:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
• Support -MacRusgail (talk) 16:51, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

General discussion

Several questions and a general comment:

1. Form of language
   1. What form of language, whether it be the "Golden Era" form or the "new" form, is most commonly used today?
   2. Which is taught in schools?
   3. Was the new form created on a specific occasion, or did it just arise out of the common usage of the Golden Era form?
   4. Is either one mandated by the government or by the language institute, if there is one?
   5. Is there any political motivation behind using either one?
2. Accents and dialects
   1. How many different accents and dialects are there?
   2. Could there be a policy in place that ensures that the accent or dialect used to create the page is used thereafter? It would be somewhat akin to the British/American differences on the English Wikipedia.
3. Contributors
   1. How many contributors are there on the Nepal Bhasa Wikipedia?
   2. How many are active?
   3. How many are interested in creating and maintaining a Nepal Bhasa Wiktionary?
4. In order to help people understand the literary and technial terminologies, would you judiciously interwiki link to the wiktionary from the wikipedia?
5. Would the differences in accents and dialects be represented as different pronunciation keys?
6. How can the mistaken verb forms be rectified with a Wiktionary?

I question whether a Wiktionary can do all the you say it can. For one, doing automated lexicographical and grammatical updates would be very difficult. Even a comprehensive dictionary would not be the right solution. The dictionary entries would have to be formatted so that the bot could actually read them (that could be done, theoretically, with judicious use of very sophisticated templates), which would be very tedious. Even then, though, a dictionary provides only examples of word usage. It would be very very difficult to create a database of word usage that would be bot-readable so that the bots could automatically correct the Wikipedia entries.

Thank you. --Iamunknown 17:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the response. I have tried to answer your questions to my level best. If there are any more queries, please feel free to ask them as well.

• About the form of language used:

1. The Golden era language is not used in any form of publication, mass media or communication. It is of literary interest to scholars. So, the type of language used is the new one.
2. The new type of language is taught in schools.
3. The new form arose out of general use of the old form. It has evolved over a duration of about 300 years now with the new form being accepted as standard for more than 70 years now (with the publication of its grammar by Pandit Shukraraj Shastri (martyr of Nepal) and Pandit Nisthananda Bajracharya.
4. The various organizations and Tribhuwan University recognize the new form of language.
5. There is no political motivation behind using any of the two. It is primarily nostalgia because of which old form is still being used. Just like people have a wikipedia in old English, a similar nostalgia might be present in some (including me). However, these tend to cause confusion to some. Besides, due to lack of knowledge and the retension of some of the old language words in the traditional songs and dramas, some people who use Nepal Bhasa but havent studied it academically tend to use the old form.

• About accents and dialects

1. According to ethnologue, there are seven dialects of the language. They are Dolkhali (Dolakha), Sindhupalchok Pahri (Pahri, Pahari), Totali, Chitlang, Kathmandu-Patan-Kirtipur, Bhaktapur, Baglung. Pahari and Dolkhali are very different from others. Plus, due to the use of religious scriptures, there are some differences between the language used by Buddhists (more Sino-Tibetan infleunced) and Hindus (more Indo-Iranian influenced). However, to the best of my knowledge, the dialect most comprehensible to all is Kathmandu-Patan-Kirtipur. This dialect is used by the western flank of the Nepal Bhasa population. Plus, the new "standard" form of language is close to this form (the tone is formalized and the words are more official and generic to language among others).
2. I did not get the second question, but the wikitionary will contain words of all accents as well as that of the standarized form. We can not afford to lose the precious words of any of the accents. However, when the words are used in the wikipedia, alternative spellings will be redirected to the page which will contain all the different spellings)

• About the contributors

1. There are 36 registered users out of which only 3 have significant contributions.
2. Presently, there are only two active contributors, me and my sister.
3. I think there will be around 30-40 contributors who will contribute "on" and "off" (judging by the response that I am getting). The present low number of contributors in wikipedia is due to the fact that most of the people do not know about this project yet. There was this another user who has started another wiki software pertaining to Nepal Bhasa and Newars, here is his site. He has also developed a Nepal Bhasa dictionary which is linked in that page. I recently had a meeting with him and other people who are contributing there and they have committed that they will contribute to this project if it does initiate. Plus, there are 4 people who are not familiar with wiki environment but interested in contributing and I am teaching them about wiki environment. A local FM station RJ has also commited us to give some time on air to broaden the base of these two projects. So, I think in about 2 months of time i.e. when the wikitionary is granted a place of its own, we will have about 10 active contributors plus 30-40 "seasonal" contributors.

• About interwiki, it is one of our primary targets for developng this wikitionary. We would be more than glad to do so.
• About rectifying, it is a long term plan. We aim to look at the common mistakes that people make while contributing to wikipedia. These common mistakes will be listed in a database. Plus, I have requested a few of the people teaching Nepal Bhasa to contribute me a list of common mistakes that are observed while writing in Nepal Bhasa. So, the initial database will be very small which will increase with time. Plus, I have been observing Marathi and Hindi wikipedia (where I have been contributing) who are developing bots for similar purposes called "shuddhalekhan" there. With the help of these experiences, we will be able to develop such a system, I presume.

For any further queries or any suggestions, please feel free to post it here or to my discussion page. Thanks a lot.--Eukesh 16:32, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

(reset tab) First off, sorry for the long-delayed reply. Secondly, the whole idea sounds like something that could be very beneficial. But I have three additional questions.

1. [Question 2.2 which I did not make clear] There are clear differences (mostly with regards to spelling) between regional dialects of English. On the English-language Wikipedia, there is a policy in place to account for this. Whatever dialect an article was created in, whether it be British / International or it be American), the article stays in that dialect. For example, w:PCI Configuration Space is spelled with International spellings (e.g. "standardised" vs. "standardized"), while w:Color is spelled with American spellings (e.g. "color" vs. "colour"). Could there be a policy in place similar to this? That is, a policy doing two things. (1) Allowing pages to be created in either form of the language. (2) Ensuring that pages created using the old form stay in the old form and pages created using the new form stay in the new form.
2. Is there an ISO code for the Golden Era language? And for the new form of the language?
3. If the differences between the Golden Era form and the new form of the language are similar to the differences between Old English and the modern English, would it be appropriate to have a separate Wikipedia for each language? I ask this partly because if the differences between the two forms are as severe as the differences between Old and modern English, then (I would imagine that) it would be very difficult for those trained in one form to understand writing in the other form.

If question #1 (which was original question #2.2) is still not clear, please ask again, and I'll try my best to clarify. Thanks, Iamunknown 23:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for query and reply

Its good to see you again. Here are my answers to your queries:-

1. One thing which is different between Nepal bhasa and English is that American, British, Australan, South African, even Indian have their standard English. We have only one standardized form of Nepal Bhasa (which is largely derived from Kathmandu-Patan-Kirtipur dialect) but which accepts words which are completely different in some dialects. Using other dialects is like using the Southern dixie accent in the English wikipedia rather than American English. All the writings of Nepal Bhasa are done in the standarized form and it is the form used in almost all the media (there are some FM programs which broadcast programs in Bhaktapur dialect). The standard form acts as the main dialect when communicating between the people of diffenent dialects and due to its presence in media like TV and radio, even the ones who cannot write in Nepal Bhasa can speak and understand the standarized form to a large extent. However, as we are building a wikitionary rather than wikipedia, we plan to include words of all the dialects and redirect them to the standarized form. Plus, we will also do the same with the Pulan Bhaye (the golden era form). This way, we wont miss out any words or expressions in Nepal Bhasa.
2. There is no ISO code for the Golden Era language (its better known as Pulan Bhaye). The ISO code for new form is "new". There is an article in English wikipedia about Nepal Bhasa. You can find more generalized information there.
3. It would be appropriate to establish a wikitionary in the old form of language as well. In fact, if the new form does well and if we can convince a few experts of old form, we will establish one ourselves. The main limiting factor here is lack of volunteers to work in two wikitionary and lack of experts. I think if we can convince some experts, we may even work using a bot to create the basic articles and then expand it later to minimize rigorous entry. #The old form is extinct except for some experts, nostalgic people and the old songs sung ritually. So, is very less likely that the two forms intermingle.

Thanks for your interest. Please post more questions and suggestions so that we can create a better wikitionary. Thank you.--Eukesh 13:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Sorry (again) for the long delay. I feel a lot more knowledgeable now. I, in particular, like that the new form of the language is the form with which people of different dialects can communicate with one another. I will add myself to the "arguments in favour of support" with a notice to this discussion. Thanks for answering my questions. :) --Iamunknown 19:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Localisation update

• Currently 13.81% of the MediaWiki messages and 0.10% of the messages of the extensions used by the Wikimedia Foundation projects have been localised. Localisation of these messages is a requirement before your request is finally assessed. This is the recent localisation activity for your language. Thanks, GerardM 13:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)