Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Constructed languages

More tasks

Instead of writing articles for the red links quoted above, I there are a few other things we should IMO give priority. I've listed them below. —IJzeren Jan _{In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij} 15:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Red links

First of all, we should really have a discussion about the question whether we REALLY want those articles. If we put up a list of red links in the Portal (a featured portal, mind ;) ), we should at least be able to promise the person who writes it that it will "in all likeliness" survive an AfD. Looking at the list above, I'm far from sure we can do that in all cases.

This is more or less the same issue Kaleissin addressed on Jon's talk page. —IJzeren Jan _{In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij} 15:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

New web on Universalglot: http://es.groups.yahoo.com/group/universalglot/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.146.148.149 (talk) 19:04, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Template

See here. Jon made a proposal, and I made one based on Jon's. I'm not going to advertise mine in comparison with Jon's. The basic difference is that Jon tries to cover almost all conlang-related articles, while I tried to limit myself to the most important stuff. Anyway, I think we should find an answer to the question which one to use:

• Jon's
• Mine
• Something else
• No template at all.

—IJzeren Jan _{In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij} 15:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I slightly prefer yours to Jon's, but I think it needs to be pruned even further. It's roughly the same size or even larger than some of the smaller conlang articles, which seems excessive. Probably it should just link to the main articles about types of conlang, and maybe some articles about conlang-related matters like Relexification and Translation relay, with very few if any links to specific languages. --Jim Henry 20:06, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - the point should be to link to general information about conlangs, not to send them to every other conlang page. It's not a webring :) DenisMoskowitz 19:00, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languages/Templates and added {{Constructed languages}}. Added 'notable' wording but didn't actually prune the list; someone else please do so. Templates displayed on all pages should be slender and widely applicable. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 01:38, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Order instead of Chaos

The way the article Constructed language is set up, is actually quite clear. But there are a lot of subpages that overlap, contain double and sometimes conflicting data... In short, I think it would be worth to reorganise this whole thing a little.

• First of all, we have no less than three different descriptions of fictional languages: Artistic language#Genres of artlangs, Fictional language, and List of fictional languages all contain descriptions of what a "fictional language" is. I think that's a bad thing. Since we've decided a while ago to treat fictional languages as a subcategory of artistic languages, this is what I propose: that we move all there's to know about fictlangs to the "Genres of artlangs" section in Artistic language, that Fictional language becomes a redirect to that, and that we merge the List of fictional languages (without its description) with the List of constructed languages.
• The lists themselves are a mess, too. The List of constructed languages contains a list of auxlangs and a list of artlangs (including several fictional languages). Lists of fictional languages can also be found in the List of fictional languages, under Artistic language#Examples of artistic languages, and in the article Fictional language. As if that wasn't enough already, lists of auxlangs are both in the List of constructed languages and under International auxiliary language#Auxiliary languages, again heavily overlapping. At last, we have a list of engelangs at Engineered language#Examples of engineered languages. Since the discussion at Talk:List of fictional languages#Merge proposal doesn't seem to get us anywhere, I think we better discuss it here. My proposal is: move everything to the List of constructed languages, remove all the list stuff from the articles and replace it with a link to the corresponding subsection in the List page.

—IJzeren Jan _{In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij} 15:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, never mind, I've already done most of that. I've merged all lists found under artistic language, fictional language, list of fictional languages, international auxiliary language, engineered language, and the list of constructed languages itself into one renewed and fairly complete list of constructed languages. The other lists have been replaced with a link pointing to the corresponding section of the latter.

I've expanded the description of "fictional language" somewhat in artistic language#fictional languages. Right now, neither fictional language nor the list of fictional languages have any info that can't be found on artistic language or the list of constructed languages. In other words, in my opinion they should both become redirects. That also solves the discussion about a merger of fictional language with its corresponding list.

That's at least my idea. But there is a possible alternative solution: that we move the entire list of constructed languages#fictional languages back to the list of fictional languages and replace it with a link to it. It's not my preferred solution, because there is quite some overlap between fictional languages and other artistic languages and we will soon end up with new doublets again. But before I go on and turn articles into redirects, I'd appreciate some input first. —IJzeren Jan _{In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij} 12:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I say you've done a good thing - let's leave it like that. DenisMoskowitz 16:56, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. So, what precisely do you mean? Turn fictional language and list of fictional languages into redirects, then? —IJzeren Jan _{In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij} 18:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Gibson Code

I added a stub for Gibson Code, which is as far as I can tell a constructed language. If anyone who watches this page knows anything more about it, please help the stub along. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
• User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
• User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
• User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 22:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now moved the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 14:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 16:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Language codes for constructed languages

I've made a table of language codes for constructed languages. Is this suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia? And if so, where? (I would need to add some words of explanation, of course.) --Zundark 16:35, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Moved to ISO, SIL, and BCP language codes for constructed languages. Please check for articles about language codes for other languages, copy their metainfo, and link both to an from. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 01:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

New Esperanto task force

I've just created an Esperanto task force to tag, assess, create, and maintain articles on Esperanto in particular. I've already tagged and assessed every known article in Category:Esperanto and all of its subcategories, but the task force is still very basic. I'm trying to create the {{Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Constructed_language_articles_by_quality_statistics}} chart for Esperanto-specific articles, but I'm not sure how to do it. Help would be greatly appreciated. TFCforever

I don't think you can do so easily. The current chart (on the WP:CL main page) is auto-generated by bot. It understands 'quality' and 'importance' (the latter tag is messed up in {{WP conlangs}} - needs fixing; I made {{WP conlangs sandbox}} but something's wrong in it). It doesn't know any other tags TTBOMK. You could make a bot for the purpose, or make a new category.... dunno really. Try asking on WP:1.0? Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 06:59, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Fictional Language article/category

The article Fictional language is, for some reason, not the main article for Category:Fictional languages. I don't know how this would be fixed, so I'm alerting you folks. Bowmanjj (talk) 09:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

 Done This could also be done by editing the category page to have a text intro with a link to Fictional language. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 10:44, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Userbox

If any of you guys wants to advertise your membership, I made a userbox for it.

This user is a member of WikiProject Constructed languages.

Which is {{User Conlang-Wikiproject}} correct it if you want, I don't really care. Manu-ve^talk pro Ski^contribs 22:40, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Moved to {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languages/Userbox}}. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languages/Templates. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 00:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

There was a bug in the way the template handled the project membership category, which I've fixed. Pi zero (talk) 13:02, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Category: Volapükologists

I've added Category:Volapükologists and tagged those who were listed at Volapükologist. -- Evertype·✆ 19:12, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Excellent!

However, I also noticed a new Category:Translators to Volapük. To be very honest, this seems like over-categorising to me. Wouldn't the translators in question feel perfectly at home in Category:Volapükologists?

For the record, how real and how relevant is the difference between Volapükists and Volapükologists, really? Is it documented somewhere, or is it in fact original research? I am asking, because to me this whole differentiation looks a bit artificial. After all, both must have learned or studied the language (at least to some degree), the only difference being the degree in which the subject takes the whole thing seriously. Obviously, nowadays nobody takes Volapük seriously as a contender for a world language, and in the case of people living 100 years ago it is not always easy to find out what there motives were.

At least, it's perfectly fine to categorise people as Volapükologists, but in my opinion the corresponding articles should somehow make it clear what makes them Volapükologists.

Best, —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 14:20, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, I had originally tagged Ralph Midgley as Category:Translators, and I was told that it was best to use a language-specific translator category. That's why the Category:Translators to Volapük and Category:Translators to Neo now exist. See Category:Translators_by_destination_language. There are lots.

I think it was the Esperantists who first distinguished between eo:Volapukisto and eo:Volapukologo, and the distinction seems fair enough, since today only the latter are really active. Your point about the corresponding articles is relevant enough, however. Do you think something like "So-and-so is considered (by whom?) a Volapükologist because of his work at [whatever]"? -- Evertype·✆ 15:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

From what I have understood, Esperantology is the science that deals with inner linguistics of Esperanto. That does not really match the description "a volapükologist is a person whose scientific interest is Volapük or who learns the language for hobby reasons". To say the least, this looks like one of those cases of the Esperanto worldview being projected way outside its realm. Well, in the case of Esperanto, the difference kind of makes sense, but in the case of Volapük I very much doubt it.

As for translators... To be quite honest, I don't see the need for any of those subcategories. To use Neo as an example, wouldn't it be sufficient if the article Neo language mentioned him as the person who made certain translations and the article Ralph Midgley mentioned that he made several translations into Neo and Volapük? If so, the information is stored already well enough, if you ask me - and that without creating categories which are very unlikely to ever grow beyond one or two articles.

I'd also add that we're getting on thin ice with such categories. After all, many conlangers translate longer texts into their own language(s), and so do I. Still, I wouldn't qualify myself as a translator because of that, but only because I am a professional translator anyway.

As far as adding people to the category Category:Volapükists, the definition of a Volapükologist does not require much (according to that very definition, I am one as well). It would be sufficient to mention that a person is a member of the Volapük Academy since XX/XX/XXXX, wrote this and that in or about Volapük, is an active member of the Volapük community, etc. IMO categories should never give information that is not contained in the article itself (but I am aware of the fact that it happens often anyway). —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 16:15, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Should certain articles be included in this WikiProject?

I've noticed that some of the articles are people who are on Wikipedia simply because they speak Esperanto & are well known. Shouldn't there just be a list titled Fluent Esperanto speakers that you can get to from the Esperanto page? If that is done it tells just about as much info as a good deal of these pages. If you need to also couldn't you say a sentence or two saying why they are prominent enough to be put on the list. T97π (talk) 12:58, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Help?

So I'm new to wipedia & I'd like to get involved in this Wiki project but this place seems deserted. I've found out its not but I would like perhaps a bit more guidance on maybe what to do. And maybe what you're looking for in articles & what do they need to be qualified into a Conlang article. Something like that. Sorry for tagging this project as inactive but it looked like it was & I knew if it wasn't people would change it back which they did. I'm glad this isn't inactive. T97π (talk) 03:37, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Welcome! Well, the place certainly isn't as active as it has been in the past. I suppose that is because practically every possible article about the subject has already been written - conlangs that don't have an article at this point are in all likeliness not going to meet the standards of notability, verifiability etc. anyway. In other words, for people who want to write new articles, there is little to be done here. However, there are several other things that need work. If you take a look at the hundreds of articles we have in this project, you will notice that many articles are full of ugly tags - expressing doubts regarding notability, original research, neutrality etc. - and that most of those that don't have them are very short articles that probably managed to fly under the radar. Indeed, many conlang articles have little or no references. One thing you could try is expanding existing articles, improving them, finding sources for them, addressing tags, and also removing stuff that actually shouldn't be there at all (for example because there is no way of checking certain info). Constructed languages that have not been added to the project yet should be added and evaluated. Category:Constructed languages contains many articles that are also part of one of its underlying categories (for example, Category:International auxiliary languages) and therefore shouldn't be there. There is the Portal to take care of... Well, many things in fact! Cheers, —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 04:05, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I have just a question or two. First off how should I find out if an article is of importance to this wikiproject or not & second how do I find some of the resources for the conlangs. Thanks for you help. T97π (talk) 03:56, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

User categories for Blissymbolics

I have taken the liberty of creating Category:User zbl and the associated templates Template:User zbl, Template:User zbl-1, Template:User zbl-2, Template:User zbl-3, and Template:User zbl-5. (I did not create any zbl-4 because a visual symbolic language can hardly be said to be spoken at "a near native level".) Maybe some members of this project can populate the category; maybe some can even correct my Bliss grammar. Fishal (talk) 00:07, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Creation of (an) article(s) on Romance IALs/constructed Romance languages

I had noticed for a while now that the Wikipedia article 'Interlingua' has a 'Romanica' redirect. This redirect is really unjustified. A community of users have been present online on social media platforms as well as mailing lists for many years using Romanica and various related varieties of that same language.

I would also like to draw your attention to the presence of Wikipedia articles on Romanica in different languages Basque, Dutch, Esperanto, Novial, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Interlingua!

Romance IALs are nothing new (with all the grammatical complexity of a modern Romance language), there was an effort by André Schild to create Neolatino in 1947 and he ultimately joined Interlingua. Internacional by Campos Lima was a similar Romance constructed language of around the same era. Interlingua Romanica was created by Josu Lavin in 2001 and Neolatino by Jordi Cassany-i-Bates has a strong online following for several years as well.

I believe we need one or several good articles to reflect the 'movement' of international Romance languages on Wikipedia. But firstly, we must remove the redirect of Romanica to Interlingua. Interlingua is not Romanica. See here some of the redirection discussions: Redirection of Romanica to Interlingua, Articles for deletion/Romanica language, and Talk:Romanica. --Cavallèro^Talk!! 14:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

I have a slightly different point of view on this one. First of all, for some reason it is always assumed that constructed languages cannot have dialects. They can have versions, iterations, reform projects and so on (where one automatically invalidates the other), but no dialects in the sense of different varieties under the banner of one language. In other words, as soon as a project has a name and an author, it is automatically assumed that it is a language distinct from any other. During my research on Interslavic, I quickly found out that this approach is not only impractical, but also inherently wrong. Not only are the numerous naturalistic Pan-Slavic language projects from past and present almost identical to each other, they are essentially attempts at the very same language—differences are mostly in orthography and personal bias of their authors. I imagine the same thing should also go for most Pan-Romance language projects.

This is how SIL defines a language: "Two related varieties are normally considered varieties of the same language if speakers of each variety have inherent understanding of the other variety (that is, can understand based on knowledge of their own variety without needing to learn the other variety) at a functional level." In the case of Romanica and Interlingua, this seems obvious, since both languages use the same dictionary, and there is no rule that forbids a language to have multiple standards. The exception made by SIL ("Where there is enough intelligibility between varieties to enable communication, the existence of well-established distinct ethnolinguistic identities can be a strong indicator that they should nevertheless be considered to be different languages. This is particularly considered when there are political boundaries separating the language communities.") doesn't apply in this case, since even the author of Romanica is also a prominent member of the Interlingua community. To push the same thought even further: in my view Romanica and Interlingua are both part of the same family of language varieties as Latina Sine Flexione, Latino Moderne, Romanova etc.

There is absolutely no shame in Romanica essentially being an adaption of Interlingua! In fact, I believe this is even much better for both sides than Romanica just being number 2055 on an endless list of auxlangs. Consequently, it would IMO be better for Romanica to be mentioned on the Interlingua page, which has ca. 200 visitors a day, than to have its own page with no more than 10 visitors a day. Besides, there is always the notability problem: without a reasonable amount of non-trivial coverage in reliable, third-party sources, a separate article wouldn't survive here anyway. Cheers, —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 14:02, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Expanding the Kēlen article

Hi all, I've signed up literally just today to start contributing to some Wikipedia pages. I speak Esperanto and Toki Pona pretty well and a bit of Klingon and Lojban, as well as dribs and drabs about other conlangs. I've started adding to the Kēlen article today adding in phonology and writing systems sections. I hope so far I'm doing everything okay, but like I said, I'm very new, so please let me know what I should/shouldn't be doing if you can (including whether or not I should even be posting this). I'll continue adding to the Kēlen article with Grammar, vocabulary, and so on, such that it is hopefully at least on par with the Klingon article.

MxMorgan (talk) 19:44, 10 April 2020 (UTC)MxMorgan

Enochian

I see this project claims this page. But I have yet to see a source that supports that. Nonetheless, I need editors to review the situation at Enochian. Another editor keeps adding stronger statements than the sources actually support. For example, a source reconstructs the possible Elizabethan pronunciation of this language. The editor titles the corresponding table "Dee's pronunciation" when the source never actually makes that claim, but rather the weaker claim that the table probably represents what the language sounded like to Dee. He is also repeatedly adding the category 'constructed languages', but when asked to back that up, cannot provide a source that makes that statement, instead providing definitions of the term, and claiming that is enough to support the category. Any eyes and editors willing to point out his error in understanding what synthesis is would be appreciated. Skyerise (talk) 04:24, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Micronational Languages

Hello! I think that there should be a page about Micronational Languages or a WikiProject about it.

-- A MicroWikipedian Wikipedian (talk) 19:30, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Interlingue Task Force

Hey all,

I'd like to make a proposal for a new Interlingue task force; several members of the project have been very active recently in editing Interlingue related content, so I think a place to organise further development would be beneficial. Example projects would be getting articles such as History of Interlingue, Interlingue grammar and Ric Berger to GA.

@Mithridates and @Caro de Segeda have expressed interest in founding one, so if anyone would like to discuss, please do. If no one opposes, I'll set one up.

Regards, Frzzl (talk) 09:05, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

I totally support this initiative. Caro de Segeda (talk) 09:18, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Toki Pona Task Force

I would like to propose a new Toki Pona task force as coordination between several Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource and Wikidata, possibly in the future including others such as Wikibooks and Wikiquote. currently there are two articles for toki pona, namely toki pona and sitelen pona. however, with the broader scope into other projects, I hope that it will attract more people into editing content, as the language has a large free and open content movement inside since its inception.

if there is no opposition, I will set up a subpage for it here. Juwan (talk) 10:59, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

I think there’s definitely a reason to have one; would it be better to put it on MetaWiki if it’s so cross-project? Pinging @Tamzin as I think they’d a) be interested if they haven’t seen it yet and b) think their input would be valuable as one of the most active tokiponists on the site.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  18:57, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Is there any kind of precedent for making cross-project task forces? Iostn (talk) 16:18, 30 July 2024 (UTC)