SignWriting 2025 - A response to a Wiktionary initiative.

On Diff, the aggregator for Wikimedia news, a case was made to support sign languages particularly for Wiktionary. Sign languages are used to communicate, there are many hundreds of sign languages, only half the people who know how to sign are deaf. There is one writing system, SignWriting that can be used for all sign languages.

There are a few misconceptions in the Wiktionary proposal; with over 300 sign languages, there is a potential for over 300 translations for each concept. Sign languages are not to be linked to countries; there are countries with multiple indigenous sign languages. All languages have their own ISO-639 language code the same, ase for instance is the code for American Sign Language. 

The characters of the SignWriting script are included in the same standard that includes all other scripts like Cyrillic or Devangari. The consequence is that as your computer supports UNICODE, your computer will be able to show texts written in SignWriting when you have a supporting font. At that Google may be your friend with its Noto Sans font and the Wikimedia Foundation may provision readers of its projects content.

A decade ago, there was a concerted effort from within the SignWriting movement to have Wikipedias in multiple sign languages. Much of what transpired can still be read on my blog. At the time the Wikimedia Foundation did not have the bandwidth to support the technical requirements in MediaWiki. It is why the deaf who express themselves with their sign language have no platform within the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thanks,

        GerardM

#Wikidata - #Marwari, a language from #India

Thanks to new #MediaWiki functionality, Wikidata can support languages that are not available elsewhere. It is a consequence of a change in the policy of Wikimedia's language committee. For languages that are "eligible", that is in essence that they are recognised in the ISO 639-3, people can ask for recognition of their eligibility.

The way it works is that you can add the language to your Babel template. This will make sure that labels will show in Wikidata. You can also change your user preference to rwr or Marwari and, it will be the default that shows the labels in all statements.

Reasonator is however the easiest way to work on Marwari. It will show labels in Marwari but it shows labels in the specified fall-back languages. This makes it convenient to add missing labels. One prerequisite however is that Widar has been set up properly.
Thanks,
      GerardM

Wikis waiting to be renamed

Many a #Wikipedia was created before  the language policy was created. One of the requirements of the language policy is that any request for a new Wikipedia is in a language that is recognised in the ISO-639-3 standard.

At that time several Wikipedias were created that were not recognised as a language. In the mean time several of these have been recognised as a language and as a consequence have their own code.

bat-smg -> sgs (wikipedia)
fiu-vro -> vro (wikipedia)
zh-classical -> lzh (wikipedia)
zh-min-nan -> nan (wikipedia, wiktionary, wikibooks, wikiquote, wikisource)
zh-yue -> yue (wikipedia)

With the deployment of  bug 34866, an important improvement has been realised; the content of the Wikis involved do now indicate correctly in what language they are written. This helps because there is now more content correctly available on the Internet.

It is a relevant step in the direction of giving many wikis the name we would like them to have.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Supporting a #font for #Arabic II

In January I wrote about the Amiri font. I wrote that it should be easy to support it in the MediaWiki WebFonts extension. This turned out to be not correct. One of the older more intractable bugs, one where Niklas prefers Brion to be involved in working on a solution, is preventing its use.

The Amiri font is as beautiful as ever and, we have implemented it in tranlatewiki.net as an experiment because the latest developments in the browsers' Unicode compliance is improving the rendering substantially. An Arabic text showing the Amiri font can be found here and the source looks like this:

<div lang="arb" class="mw-content-rtl" style="font-size: xx-large">
* بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
* حررد مييسن
* مُحَمَّد‎
</div>

the Amiri font with the Firefox nightly build

Do note that in this example we use the ISO-639-3 arb code and not the ISO-639-1 ar code.

When you look at it with the nightly Firefox build it looks good. With production browsers the quality is still lacking. A MediaWiki solution will not only make a difference for the Amiri font, it will also make a difference for the Arabic font provided with Windows XP. Such a solution requires expertise in the inner workings of the MediaWiki parser and Unicode.
Thanks,

     GerardM

www.wikipedia.org is not available for Wawa

The #URL for a #Wikipedia consists of an ISO-639 code followed by "wikipedia.org". Because of the configuration of the Wikipedia domain, "www" is not necessary in front of an URL.

The Wawa language of Cameroon has as its ISO-639 code "www" and, this poses a problem; when you type www.wikipedia.org, you go to the portal. A functional URL for Wawa would be www.www.wikipedia.org.

This is quite cumbersome and this has been recognised as one of those corner cases that pose a problem. As we have someone from SIL on the language committee, the request for a Wawa Wikipedia came to the attention of Melinda Lyon. She has now proposed to change the code for Wawa to "wwx".
Thanks,
     GerardM

Comment period for 2010 #ISO 639-3 Change requests

Every year #SIL, the maintainer of the ISO 639-3 prepare a list of changes that people can comment on with the changes of the previous period. This list contains changes like codes for new languages, changes to existing codes and last but not least codes that are retired.

When the language committee decides that a request for a new language is not admissible, applying for a code is the best way of getting a reversal of that decision. This has happened several times.

So this is your chance to peruse the crop of changes to the standard. When your language is in there, we will be happy to consider your request for a Wikipedia once these changes are finalised.
Thanks,
       GerardM

ISO 639-3 changes are coming

Every year, SIL the registrar for the ISO-639-3, publishes its list of the changes requested for this standard. There is time until December 15 for changes to be considered this year.

So far there are some 143 changes and, people can comment on the changes. This is the first time that the changes will directly affect the IANA Language Subtag Registry and consequently there is more interest for what the changes will bring.

In a way it is quite reassuring that many of the arguments we use for new languages in the Wikimedia Foundation projects are quite similar; how many people use the language, is there literature ... One of the proposed languages is Latgalian .. :)
Thanks,
GerardM

WALS, The World Atlas of Language Structures

In 2005, Oxford University Press published "The World Atlas of Language Structures" it is a 712 page hard-cover book and is available for £425,00. It comes with a CD that allows you to get a visual grasp where languages are spoken. It is filled to the brim with all kinds of information and it is considered an important work for people studying linguistics.

In a joint project several of the Max Planck Gesellschaft Institutes, published WALS online. It provides a rich resource and uses Google maps to indicate where what languages are spoken. The data is on the Internet and in order to be of value in a world where Open Access is increasingly considered to be essential, the data is available under a Creative Commons license.

For Wikipedians, the license will be disappointing; the CC-by-sa-nc does prevent the use of this data. WALS is considered a standard work and there are many references to the ISO-639-3 standard; check out Finnish for an example. However, many of the languages recognised in this Standard are missing, Stellingwerfs stl, Abau aau to name just two. I hope that this will be resolved as it will increase the value of WALS a lot.

Even when the use of this data is limited, there is a lot to learn from WALS. It integrates many of the facts known about many languages, it presents them in maps, and makes the best use of what Google maps has to offer. With this much information available it is fun to see what languages are spoken where. Wals on line is truly of interest and I heartily recommend it to people who share my interest in languages.
Thanks,
GerardM

Dalecarlian

Dalecarlian is recognised by Ethnologue. And according to the information provided, some 1500 people speak it. It is the first time that I did look up a record in Ethnologue to find that it does not exist in the ISO-639-3.

I looked it up because someone volunteers to localise MediaWiki in Betawiki. The question is, what to do with such a request. The first thing to realise is that the dlc code is unlikely to be ever used as an ISO-639-3 code. The second thing is that it IS a living linguistic entity and, it will be not too hard to argue that if it is not a lanugage, it is at least a dialect.

So allowing for the localisation of Dalecarlian is not problematic. From a standards point of view, there is only one issue to be resolved. What is the correct code that we should use for it?
Thanks,
GerardM

When a language is not a language

Kurdish is not a language, Chinese is not a language. They are both macro languages. Macro languages are a way that allow for one ISO-639 language identifier to refer to multiple other ISO-639 language identifiers. Chinese is in many ways easy to understand; these are many languages that are all using the same script, the same writing system; a script that is not sound based. Given that the Library of Congress was the maintainer of the ISO-639-2, it is perfectly understandable that many languages were considered the same, were considered to be Chinese.

Kurdish is distinctly different. Kurdish is also very much a political story. The Kurdish language and the Kurdish people and culture are seen as problematic in all the countries where the Kurds live. Linguistically, Kurdish is considered to be three languages. Central, Northern and Southern Kurdish. These languages are written in the Arabic and Latin script.

In the localisation of MediaWiki at Betawiki, there is Kurdish in Latin and Arab script. The question is, is it Kurmanji or Sorani because I have been told that transliteration is how you get the Arabic version.. I have been told that it is Sorani.

These questions have implications. Take for instance Persian or Farsi, There are successful WMF projects that start with fa. The language is also a macro language; it is divided in Western- and Eastern Farsi. I am quite positive that the fa.wikipedia.org is in Western Farsi. But the url should be pes.wikipedia.org.

There are people that I know and respect that tell me that the difference between Farsi and Dari is only 2 to 3 % and that consequently this difference is an abomination. Other equally respectable people tell me that the difference between Farsi and Tajik is only 2 to 3%. Nobody has so far insisted on bundling the two together.

The request for the fa.wikiversity.org is in the discussion stage. It does fulfill the requirement for localisation. There is a sufficient group of people interested in making this project a success. It is just that I do not feel comfortable with the designation fa for this project that prevents me from changing it to the "eligible" status.

What I want is to have the "fa.wmfprojects.org" renamed.

Thanks,
GerardM

Noumande (not nrm)

The Norman Wikipedia is a lively project. With 2834 articles it is doing well. Another Wikipedia, only 550 articles bigger is the Alemannic Wikipedia, another lively project. In size these projects are somewhere in the middle of the range. Both were created as a consequence of a problematic vote but it works out quite differently.

When the Alemannic Wikipedia was created, it was fully enabled in MediaWiki. This is not the case for the Norman Wikipedia, its language file only exists in the project. In order to support this project, some programming needs to be done. The BetaWiki programmers are however of the opinion, an opinion that I share, that this should not be done because the nrm code they occupy, is the code for Narom, a language spoken in Malaysia.

These two languages are treated differently. For both linguistic entities some people chose to ignore that there was no proper code. Both currently exist as a project but technically it is not possible to support them completely with the codes they abuse.

So how to deal with this. For a consistent localisation of MediaWiki it is important that we use a coding system that will not bite us. When properly implemented, the ISO-639 codes will not bite us. However it does mean that we have to fix what is broken.

On BetaWiki we have had a request for the localisation of Erzgebergish; no new project is asked for, just the localisation is requested. A request will be made, we already know that it is likely to succeed. This can also be done for Norman. When Norman is considered a dialect, it is certain that we can get a code. I do not know if Norman would be considered a language but this is something that can be discovered. With a proper code, we can have the localisation done at BetaWiki.

For Alemannic it is more complicated. It is not one language, it is several languages. What I do not know is to what extend it maps with what Ethnologue calls Alemannic ...

Thanks,
GerardM

Kotava - another constructed language

Kotava is a constructed language. There is yet not article in the English Wikipedia, there is an article in eight other language.. (myth busting; if it is not in the English Wikipedia, it is not in Wikipedia).

At this moment Kotava is not eligible for a Wikipedia, it will not be enabled for editing in OmegaWiki. It does not have an ISO-639-3 code yet. What is special is that there are clear indications that the process for a code is under way. The code is likely to be "avk".

At OmegaWiki there is a Kotava enthusiast who has started a lot of the preparations for another language. It will be given once the code is official. For a Wikipedia, they may ask for a Kotava Wikipedia. With the ISO process under way, the language committee does not have to do anything until the code is granted.

It is great that the language committee has reserved the right to do nothing..

Thanks,
GerardM

Dialects within a language

There are Wikipedias in many languages. So far there are some 212. Most of these languages have an ISO-639 code. There are two versions of this code that are "official", there is one version that is workable; the ISO/DIS-639-3 is currently maintained by SIL international. However, workable does not mean that it is perfect. Today there were to moments where the current practices relating to ISO-639 were the issue.

JAVA uses ISO-639 for its language codes. The codes used is the ISO-639-1. Consequently the Neopolitan language is not known. OmegaT is an open source CAT tool, it uses the languages known to JAVA as the languages that it can translate.. So in order to translate to Neapolitan you have to pretend that it is a different language.. Not nice.. So the nice people of SUN were asked this and we have great expectations.

Today there was a request on Meta, the website about the Wikimedia Foundation's project, for a new Wikipedia. The request is for tarantino, it is considered a dialect, a dialect of Neapolitan. This request is problematic because there is not even an ISO-639 code. Consequently there is little chance of there being a wikipedia for created. Now, with the new namespace manager, it is possible to create a seperate namespace within the nap.wikipedia.org for the tarantino dialect. This is also a solution for the problematic request for a Lower Saxon wikipedia that will be in an orthography that is not German..

It is sobering to see that standards can enable and prevent things to happen. Good standards are vital and ISO/DIS 639-3 is a big move forward.

Thanks,
GerardM