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
<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 <http://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
<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]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: 2017-04-26 15:07 GMT+03:00
Subject: Fwd: Starting a Dinka Wikipedia
To: Amir Aharoni <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: john <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: ср, 19 апр. 2017 г. в 18:19
Subject: Starting a Dinka Wikipedia
To: <[email protected] <mailto:[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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