Hoi,
I am happy to see this happen given the urgency.
Thanks,
GerardM
Op wo 26 apr. 2017 om 14:38 schreef Amir E. Aharoni <
[email protected]>
> Hi,
>
> See the forwarded email from Prof. John Myhill, who is trying to set up a
> Dinka Wikipedia.
>
> Dinka is a language spoken in South Sudan. We already discussed its
> language code in the past:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/langcom/2017-February/000948.html
>
> In that thread agreed that even though there are several relevant language
> codes, it's acceptable to have one Wikipedia with the language code "din".
>
> Like myself, Prof. Myhill happens to live in Israel, but we are otherwise
> unrelated. (His work may have something to do with the fact that quite a
> lot of refugees from South Sudan live in Israel, but this is just a guess.)
>
> The translations at translatewiki.net look quite solid. The Most-used
> group, which is required for creating the project, is complete.
>
> My impression of the Incubator at
> https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/din is that it appears to have
> legitimate content. It's very basic: the pages have practically no
> formatting, images or links, but the text appears to be fine, and the pages
> are not too short.
>
> Technically, most of the pages were written by User:Dinkawiki (Prof.
> Myhill himself); most of the anonymous edits there were probably by him as
> well. In the last couple of weeks other users started uploading articles.
> Prof. Myhill says that most of the pages were actually written by other
> Dinka speakers (see the email below) and he only helped them upload them.
> In the last few days other people started joining the effort, although this
> is a recent development.
>
> I don't know the language, and if anybody wants to verify with another
> expert that this is indeed Dinka, it would be fine with me. Maybe Oliver
> can help with this—in the previous thread he mentioned he knows people who
> can read this language.
>
> Other than that, I'd be flexible and support approving this.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> “We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Amir Aharoni <[email protected]>
> Date: 2017-04-26 15:07 GMT+03:00
> Subject: Fwd: Starting a Dinka Wikipedia
> To: Amir Aharoni <[email protected]>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: john <[email protected]>
> Date: ср, 19 апр. 2017 г. в 18:19
> Subject: Starting a Dinka Wikipedia
> To: <[email protected]>
>
>
> Dear Amir,
>
> This is in connection to opening a Wikipedia in Dinka. We have translated
> more than 100 articles and put them them in the Incubator, and we have also
> translated all of the terms needed to open a Wikipedia. Almost all of the
> translations were done at 5 workshops of Akutmɛ̈t Latueŋ Thuɔŋjäŋ (the
> Dinka Language Development Association, or DILDA) in Juba, South Sudan, in
> the last 2 and a half years. I participated in these workshop but the
> translations were done by the Dinka participants; there were about 25-30
> translators at each workshop, but the specific people involved changed
> somewhat from one workshop to the next so that I would guess maybe 50
> different people participated in doing the translations. A few of the
> translations (maybe 5 or 6) were done by me and other members of the
> Facebook group of the same name. DILDA in Juba is a private NGO which has
> existed since around 2006 with about 60 dues-paying members, all of them
> Dinkas and citizens of South Sudan, and it is registered as an NGO with the
> South Sudanese government; the Facebook group of the same name has existed
> for about a year and has 12,800 members, the overwhelming majority of whom
> do not live in South Sudan. Very few of the people participating in the
> Juba workshops are in the Facebook group (maybe 3 or 4). I uploaded all of
> the translations to the Incubator myself although I did not do the
> translations myself, because I have more consistent access to the internet
> in Israel than do the DILDA members in South Sudan, because I wanted to
> regularize the orthography according to the conventions we agreed on at the
> workshops, and because I did not realize that this would create the
> impression that I had done all of the translations myself.
>
>
>
> There is some urgency to get this Wikipedia approved and on the internet
> in the next week or two. Until now all of DILDA's activities have been in
> Juba, because this is the effectively the only city in South Sudan and
> because this is the only place where members of the different dialect
> groups live together. However, May 1 to May 15 of this year, a number of
> DILDA members and I will be traveling around South Sudan to meet
> representatives of the state governments (there are 10 Dinka-speaking
> states) to talk to them about the organization and its work and to begin to
> coordinate our activities with the work of the state governments. It has
> been our hope that we will be able to show them the Dinka Wikipedia so that
> they will understand that our work is serious and that the Dinka language
> is being developed so as to be used in a wide variety of functions, so that
> it can and should be used in more functions and not excluded from
> government and education in favor of English (only a tiny majority of
> Dinkas can function in English (perhaps 2% of them), while Dinka is spoken
> by about 4 million people). Dinkas are in principle very supportive of the
> idea of using their language for all written functions but they are simply
> not aware that this is possible because they do not now about DILDA's
> activities. The trip around South Sudan was planned at this time so as to
> come as soon as possible after we completed the translations of 100
> articles in March and before the rains begin in South Sudan in June and
> make traveling around the country effectively impossible until next year.
> It is therefore very important that the Dinka Wikipedia be approved as
> quickly as possible.
>
>
>
> Thank you very much for your help and best wishes,
>
> John Myhill
>
>
>
>
>
> John Myhill
>
> Professor of Linguistics
>
> Department of English Language and Literature
>
> University of Haifa
>
> Mt. Carmel, Haifa, 31905
>
> Israel
>
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>
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