Requests for new languages/Wiktionary North Levantine Arabic
| submitted | verification | final decision |
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This proposal has been rejected. While this request has technically been rejected, in reality this is a request that has been sitting open or on hold for a long time with little evidence of a community coming together to build a project. If a community comes together in the future and makes a new request, LangCom would consider that new request without prejudice. A committee member provided the following comment: We are not resisting projects in Levantine Arabic. But someone has to create content for them. If someone starts creating content for this we will be happy to reconsider. For LangCom: StevenJ81 (talk) 15:11, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
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- 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 |
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| Proposal | ||
|---|---|---|
| Language code | apc (SIL, Glottolog) | A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ... |
| Language name | Levantine Arabic | Language name in English |
| Language name | عربي شامي | 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 | Q22809485 - item has currently the following values:
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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 | no indication | Is the language written from left to right (LTR) or from right to left (RTL)? |
| Site URL | apc.wiktionary.org | langcode.wikiproject.org |
| Settings | ||
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| Project name | ويكاموس | "Wiktionary" in your language |
| Project namespace | ويكاموس | usually the same as the project name |
| Project talk namespace | ويكاموس نقاش | "Wiktionary talk" (the discussion namespace of the project namespace) |
| Enable uploads | no | 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 | File:WiktionaryAr.svg | This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation). |
| Default project timezone | UTC/GMT +2 hours | "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 | |
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Proposal
editNorth Levantine Arabic is spoken by over 14 million people ([1]). While it is related to Modern Standard Arabic (the language of ar.wikipedia.org and ar.wiktionary.org), there is significant variance and the two languages are not mutually intelligible. The w:Defense Language Institute has a course developed especially and separately for this dialect ( ([2]) and some 200 free lessons ([3]) which are in the public domain and can help with standardization and serve as an initial corpus. There are not many books or other "official" literature published in the language, however, it would be easy enough to agree on spelling conventions for the purposes of Wiktionary based on the way the language is written online in places such as forums, Facebook, Twitter, Google Answers, etc.
I anticipate the argument that this is not a "real" language, but I do not believe it is valid. There are many television shows in the dialects of Beirut, Damascus, and Amman, and using a regular Arabic dictionary will not help the user understand them. Wiktionary has the opportunity to fill that gap.
One thing we will need to agree on is if it is better to use the widespread Roman alphabet/number combination (e.g., 3arabi chami, see [4] and [5] for possibilities), or the arabicized approach taken by DLI. The disadvantage of the former is that it seems amateurish. The disadvantage of the second is that it leaves short vowels or sukuuns to the imagination, unless of course, we use diacritics.
Discussion
editI don't know why wikimedia is against our wishes to make a Levantine Projects. The Levantine has become different from Arabic like Italian from Latin. More than 20 million people around the world speak it.
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.