But why only "officially"? For many languages, either endangering or newly
revitalizing, official use are the least likely ground they would survive.
Like gow long it took for Hebrew revitalization movement to gain ground
from.being an ancient language to being an official language somewhere?
Languages like Classical Chinese is generally considered ancient language,
as people generally do not write in such language anymore in their nornal
daily life. It's a literary language, not a spoken language, so no one
speak it. But still, it's an language still commonly taught across and
beyond Greater China area, and people do use the language to create new
content, for instance a number of recent years' "Best Chinese essay writing
from China's National university entry exam", was written in Classical
Chinese, reflecting the language's continued usage, including usage for
content creation, despite being seen as a historical language.
Indeed, it's unavoidable that words from.old languages in their original
meaning might not be sufficient to reflect new cobceot and thus new word
are needed, but how would it be different from some living smaller
languages, or even larger languages like Japanese or Chinese or English,
which saw the import of foreign culture and technology throughout their
history? For example, the word "wiki", is a word which existed in no
language other than Hawaiian, and even in Hawaiian the word does not mean
what we're now using it on this website, but does that prohibit all
languages around the world, be it living or not, to simply borrow such term
into their vocabulary and use them as part of the language? If let say,
someone wrote a Classical Chinese sentence, 維基乃吾所欲, with 維基 being a common
transliteration and WMF trademarked term for "Wiki", and 乃吾所欲 mean "is what
I want", does that make the whole sentence "Wiki is what I want" not
Classical Chinese simply because it included a transliteration odmf the
modern word "Wiki", in the same way the word "Wiki" is being transliterated
into every other languages around the world?
The term Television is a term invented in English, with tele- meaning
faraway, and vision meaning vision. In modern Japanese, the term is simply
transliterated and shortened from English, into "Terebi". In modern
Chinese, the term is translated as 電視, meaning "Electric vision". Why there
need to be a formal institute using the language, instead of some general
committee around the world, using a language, in.order for new concepts to
be officially accepted as translated into historical languages, and cannot
achieve the same among communities of.old language users, especially when
such communities are usually where endangered languages would last stay and
where historical languages would first revitalize?



在 2021年9月9日週四 19:01,Ilario Valdelli <ivalde...@wikimedia.ch> 寫道:

> Hi all
>
> I suggest to don’t consider “Latin” an ancient language for the simple
> reason that is still “officially” used as “lingua franca” in some
> institutions like the catholic church.
>
>
>
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/14/world/vatican-introduces-latin-to-21st-century-with-new-dictionary.html
>
>
>
> I can assure that in several catholic schools and universities *and* in
> the “formal” communication the *latin is written, read and spoken* (yes,
> spoken).
>
>
>
> When Benedict XVI resigned, he did his announcement *only in latin*:
>
>
>
>
> https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/02/urgent-pope-announces-resignation-on.html
>
>
>
> I think that we must consider a language “ancient” only when is *not used*
> in “formal” linguistic registers and doesn’t have an evolution, so it’s
> basically “frozen”:
>
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)
>
>
>
> But if an institution like the catholic church continues to keep it
> updated to translate “new words”, is not ancient anymore.
>
>
>
> Latin must be kept updated in order to write something like that
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical and to have it as the “official
> language” of the legal codes of the Vatican (
> https://www.vatican.va/latin/latin_codex.html).
>
>
>
> So this discussion may not have a sense for Latin exactly because Latin
> users may consider it a form of “discrimination” of a minority of users 😉
> while Wikiverse should be inclusive.
>
>
>
> Kind regards
>
>
>
> --
>
> Ilario Valdelli
>
> Education Program Manager and Community liaison
>
> Wikimedia CH
>
> Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
>
> Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
>
> Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
>
> Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
>
> Tel: +41764821371
>
> http://www.wikimedia.ch
>
>
>
_______________________________________________
Langcom mailing list -- langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe send an email to langcom-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

Reply via email to