Am Do., 21. Feb. 2019 um 00:03 Uhr schrieb Steven White < [email protected]>:
> MF-W, I felt the same way you did at first. But in truth this is an > extremely borderline case that the policy can allow to go in either > direction. There have been further discussions both here > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_committee#Wikisources:_Latin_vs._other_old_languages_(re:_Chinese)> > and here > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikisource_Literary_Chinese>. > Let me summarize a key point here, and then suggest what I think the real > issue is. > > Culturally, the comparison to Latin is apt. Literary Chinese was > unquestionably the lingua franca of the region, and people everywhere used > it. And the writing system of Literary Chinese was definitely used/adapted > for other languages like Japanese and Korean. On the other hand, neither of > those languages is actually linguistically descended from Literary Chinese. > Korean is a linguistic isolate, while Japanese is only related to some > languages used in and around Japan and neighboring islands. So Chinese is > the clear principal descendant of Literary Chinese; it's not like Latin, > where there are several strong descendants. > I have followed these discussions with great interest. "Chinese" is a language group, not a single language, so I don't agree with the claim that there is "the clear principal descendant" here. It also was shown that it can't be said that Mandarin is such a descendant, the other languages are as well spoken by millions and diverge more than some Romance languages. I am not arguing in favour of deleting Classical content, and appreciate the efforts of the local community to facilitate participation by non-Mandarin speakers. We are merely discussing eligibility here, and it is only consistent to follow the Ancient Greek showcase example (< https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikisource_Ancient_Greek_2>) and declare eligibility, as there is no reason for non-eligiblity. For these reasons, approach number 2 appears to be the sole reasonable one to me.
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