I researched it a bit more, and found another confusing issue.

There's the Rajasthani request:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Rajasthani
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/raj

It has a lot of activity recently.

There's the Hadothi / Hadauti request:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hadauti
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/hoj

It had a bit of activity long ago, but is inactive now, and is marked as
"waiting".

And there's also the Marwari request:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Marwari
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/rwr

It had some activity in the past, but isn't active recently (there were a
few minor technical edits in Decemeber 2024, but it's not really
article-writing activity).

It is marked as "eligible", and here begins the issue. Rajasthani and
Marwari are *probably* kind of the same thing. Here's why I think like that
it may be like that:

1. The English Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajasthani_languages says "The term
Rajasthani is also used to refer to a literary language mostly based on
Marwari." It refers to the book "The Indo-Aryan Languages" by Colin Masica.
I found the book online, and it indeed says that.

2. At the discussion on translatewiki, where the Rajasthani language is
requested (
https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Support#Request_to_enable_Rajasthani_(raj)
), there are several links to sites that demonstrate the language's usage.¹
I cannot read them, but for fun, I tried pasting them to Google Translate
and to Claude.ai. Google Translate identified it as "Marwari" (with the
code "mwr" appearing in the URL), and Claude.ai identifed it as
"Rajasthani". (I should also mention that Google Translate doesn't
specifically support "Rajasthani".) Of course, I don't trust either of
those blindly, but it *may* be a sign that the languages are the same, or
at least very similar.

Another issue is how language codes for Rajasthani and Marwari are defined
in ISO 639 3:
* raj ("Rajasthani") is a macro language, and none of its individual
languages are named "Marwari": https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/raj
* mwr ("Marwari") is a separate macro language:
https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/mwr . One of its individual languages is
called "Marwari (India)", and its code is rwr. Google Translate uses "mwr",
and the "Marwari" requests on Meta uses "rwr".

For what it's worth, according to both Glottolog and Ethnologue, Marwari is
part of the Rajasthani branch.

All of the above is just very basic information I could find. I don't know
the languages. It's very hard for me to make a good decision here, and I
need the committee's help. Ideally, if a Wikipedia is created, and the
software is localized, it should be done in a language that is already at
least somewhat standardized, and can be read by some people. The language
code usage should follow practices on other websites, but the only website
I saw that uses any of these codes is Google Translate, which uses mwr.

If we mark raj as eligible, and rwr is essentially the same language, then
perhaps we should revoke the eligibility of rwr.

But these are just thoughts. I would really appreciate more thoughts from
other members of the committee. Thank you!

¹ I have to comment that this is a very good thing in general. I wish that
all the people who request new languages did that.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬


‫בתאריך יום א׳, 6 באפר׳ 2025 ב-11:08 מאת ‪Amir E. Aharoni‬‏ <‪
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il‬‏>:‬

> ... I should have included it earlier—please see the discussion about it
> translatewiki:
> https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Support#Request_to_enable_Rajasthani_(raj)
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> ‪“We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
>
>
> ‫בתאריך יום א׳, 6 באפר׳ 2025 ב-11:05 מאת ‪Amir E. Aharoni‬‏ <‪
> amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il‬‏>:‬
>
>> Reviving this discussion from a few months back.
>>
>> There is now also a request on translatewiki to enable localization in
>> Rajasthani, under the code "raj", which is a macro-language.
>>
>> In November, Satdeep supported marking the proposal for the Rajasthani
>> Wikipedia as eligible. If I interpret his other response correctly, he also
>> recommended marking Hadauti ineligible and recommending its merging with
>> Rajasthani.
>>
>> If that's the interpretation, then I guess that it's OK to also enable
>> raj for localization on translatewiki.
>>
>> This is possibly sensible, but there are two issues:
>> 1. It would be great if someone who is more knowledgeable about India
>> would confirm it before we go on. In particular, it would be great at least
>> to check all the external sources given on
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Rajasthani
>> . It would be even better to find more sources that confirm it, or maybe
>> even sources that reject it.
>>
>> 2. According to Ethnologue, at least one individual language under the
>> raj macrolanguage is written using the Arabic script: Gujari (
>> https://www.ethnologue.com/language/gju/ ). I cannot find a request for
>> it now, but it's spoken by more than a million people, so there may be a
>> request in the future, and if it happens, it should probably be in a
>> separate domain. Would it be OK to have one Wikipedia in a macro-language
>> and another in an individual language? I think that it's OK in practice,
>> but I do ask for other committee members' confirmation.
>>
>> --
>> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
>> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>> ‪“We're living in pieces,
>> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
>>
>>
>> ‫בתאריך שבת, 9 בנוב׳ 2024 ב-10:11 מאת ‪Satdeep Gill‬‏ <‪
>> satdeepg...@gmail.com‬‏>:‬
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I wasn't aware about Hadauti before this but Rajasthani is well known.
>>> Given that there are books in Rajasthani and it is taught as a subject in
>>> the state of Rajasthan, I am more inclined towards *marking Rajasthani
>>> eligible* while Hadauti seems like a single person's effort and might
>>> be better suited to be a part of the broader Rajasthani Wikipedia.
>>>
>>> Best
>>> Satdeep
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 30 Oct 2024 at 02:54, Amir E. Aharoni <
>>> amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hallo,
>>>>
>>>> There are these two open requests:
>>>> 1. hoj:
>>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hadauti
>>>> 2. raj:
>>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Rajasthani
>>>>
>>>> raj is a macro language code, and hoj is one of the languages that
>>>> belong to it.
>>>>
>>>> I don't know these languages, and I'm not sure what to do about them.
>>>>
>>>> I sent talk page messages to people who contributed to them, asking
>>>> whether they actually plan to contribute to them more, and whether the
>>>> current incubator articles in them look related.
>>>>
>>>> Until we get any substantial replies, I recommend marking the two
>>>> requests as "Waiting".
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
>>>> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>>>> ‪“We're living in pieces,
>>>> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Langcom mailing list -- langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>> To unsubscribe send an email to langcom-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Langcom mailing list -- langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> To unsubscribe send an email to langcom-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>
>>
_______________________________________________
Langcom mailing list -- langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe send an email to langcom-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

Reply via email to