Portal talk:Constructed languages

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Featured portal The Constructed languages Portal is a featured portal, which means it has been identified as one of the best portals on Wikipedia. If you see a way this portal can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, please feel free to contribute.
December 31, 2005 Featured portal candidate Promoted
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Constructed languages, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, and easy-to-use resource about constructed languages, aka conlangs. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

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Contents

[edit] Edit wars and deletions

To notify others, request review, or get third party & expert opinions on edit wars and deletions about conlangs, please use this page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languages/Edit wars and deletions

[edit] Tagging

On the article page:

General: use {{Conlang}}, {{Infobox language}} (see instructions on link) and Category:Constructed languages; possibly Category:Constructed language stubs. {{IPA notice}} may be relevant.

Specific conlang categories: Category:Artificial scripts, Category:Artistic languages, Category:Computer languages, Category:Fictional languages, Category:Formal languages, Category:Gibberish language, Category:International auxiliary languages, Category:Klingon languages, Category:Language games, Category:Logical languages, Category:Musical languages, Category:Reconstructed languages, Category:Volapük.

Conlangers: Category:Language creators

On the discussion page: use {{WP conlangs}}.

For combining with other project tags, use e.g.: {{WikiProjectBannerShell |1= {{HistSci|class=B|importance=High|nested=yes}} {{WP conlangs|class=|importance=|nested=yes}} }}

[edit] The Voynich Manuscript

Which heading in the portal should an undeciphered document which may possibly be written in a conlang be mentioned under?

--PeteBleackley 14:25, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, good question. It's a difficult case, that doesn't really fit anywhere. Personally, I hesitate between the "see also" part of the "artistic and fictional languages" section, and the "miscellaneous" section. I'll leave it up to you. --IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 15:18, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
There are some stealthlangs listed as "Conlangs created for special purposes". Maybe a "see also" in that section would be the best place?

PeteBleackley 16:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Featured language

I don't know how the system for that works but I would like to see Ithkuil featured. Now that is one crazy language. Mithridates 17:32, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Why not? My own original idea (see Jon Moore's talk page) was that we follow a pattern like this: auxlang/engelang, artlang/fictlang, auxlang/engelang, artlang/fictlang. Etcetera. That way, we can go through all the conlangs we have, provided that the article in question is substantial enough. In November we had Ido, now we have Quenya, so IMO Ithkuil (a logical language) could certainly be an option for January. ----IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 23:41, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
Maybe we could follow a nomination procedure? Either way, I don't see why not. Jon 18:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Featured language II

Based on a recommendation in the Featured Portal discussion, I have reorganised this section a bit. Instead of changing the "Featured Portal" manually, the page will link automatically to the featured article of the current month and the current year. If we create the article Portal:Constructed languages/Featured article/February 2006, that's all that needs to be done. When the time comes, the portal will automatically link to it.

Here are some thoughts about features languages that I'd like to share. Which languages would qualify for becoming a featured language? I think we all agree that Ido and Quenya did great, but we need to move on.

  1. First of all, I think the language should have a somewhat higher degree of notability than the average conlang. That does of course not mean that we should restrict ourselves to Esperanto, Ido and Klingon, mind.
  2. The article itself should have a high standard of quality, and no be too short. It doesn't look good if the "read more" link produces nothing else than some external links.
  3. The beginning of the article should somehow fit in the "featured article" box. It may sound trivial, but when I was doing Ithkuil, I noticed that it was actually a little too short for the box.
  4. It would be nice, but not imperative, if the article contained a picture.

Based on this, I think the following languages score well on all four points: Ido, Lingua Franca Nova, Slovio, Solresol, Blissymbols, Lojban, Klingon, Lingua Ignota, Quenya, Toki Pona, Zaum, and Signuno. Possibly also Baronh. Other languages that do not currently contain pictures, but for which it would be easy to add them, are: Folkspraak and Khuzdul.

No picture, but still suitable, are IMO: Afrihili, Basic English, Europanto, Occidental language, Latino Sine Flexione, Novial, Characteristica Universalis, Láadan, Loglan, Ro, Black Speech, Brithenig, Newspeak, Sindarin, and Talossan.

Now, I'm not saying that we need to plan everything a year in advance. But since the subject came up in the discussion about this portal becoming a featured one, I thought there would be no harm in talking a bit about this. And we could already prepare the articles for, say, February and March. If we follow the scheme I proposed earlier, February should have an auxlang. Lingua Franca Nova perhaps? Anyway, for March I nominate Klingon.

Thoughts? --IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 14:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

I think we should probably begin a wikiproject for conlangs, simply because there seems to be sufficient interest, and also at the suggestion of the featured portal suggestions, although I do not think this should be relevant to its pass or failure. Having a wikiproject would help us to coordinate the editing of conlang-related articles to featured status (so they may appear on the Main Page, and also to create more quality ones for the Portal, as well as generally improve Wikipedia). If no one objects, I can begin one. JonMoore 17:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Sure. Count me in!
If you want to invite other people too, here are some suggestions: (in alphabetical order) User:Almafeta, User:Chlewey, User:DenisMoskowitz, User:Jeffrey Henning, User:Jim Henry, User:Kaleissin, User:Pablo-flores, User:PeteBleackley + of course the people who are on the list of those who maintain the portal. You might also peek in the Category:User conlang.
--IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 17:41, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Also, I think we should probably change the link "Featured article" to "Language of the month" as per the talk here. Also, we should probably figure out some more DYK items and set them up in a same, rotating manner as the LOTMs. JonMoore 18:02, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I've renamed all "Featured article" stuff "Language of the month", and submitted the new redirects for deletion.
For the rest, I'm still not convinced that it's really necessary to refresh the DYK all the time. But I guess there's no harm in a rotating system either. In that case, I suggest we start with creating a whole list of possible DYKs (preferable on its talk page) and apply the same rotating system (but only using "current month", and not "current year" this time). --IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 18:37, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Good idea. We can simply rotate the DYKs on a monthly basis. We could continually edit the DYK if we find better items, retiring some items, if you want.
I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languages. Still a little rough, but we can get it going. Feel free to edit it. JonMoore 18:54, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
Excellent! I'm a little short of time right now, but I'll look into that tomorrow. As for the DYKs: I have a hunch that if we end up with ten to twenty DYKs, we can indeed build a nicely rotating system. And a little overlap certainly won't hurt! --IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 22:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Images needed: invalid

Currently the "to-do" section asks for images of Klingon script, but there are plenty of such images in the Klingon article. DenisMoskowitz 18:14, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. I'll remove that. —IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 18:27, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wikinews link

broken. in fact there are no articles to my knowladge about constructed languages. Bawolff 01:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shavian

The Shavian alphabet and Quickscript (along with their creators) should be mentioned in Articles under Constructed writing systems for natural languages, shouldn't they? Michael%Sappir 00:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kotava

I don't see the Kotava language in your lists and pages of your portal about constructed languages. Don't you know it ?

The portal lists only languages that actually have articles about them, or should have articles about them. It is not intended to be a full list of all existing conlangs. There was an article about Kotava for a while, but it has been deleted (see here) and subsequently removed from the lists. —IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 11:20, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia

Just thought I'd let people know well ahead of time that Lingua Franca Nova will probably be applying for a Wikipedia sometime this year. I've seen a number of applications get shot down and other Wikipedias that have been accepted go quiet for long periods of time, so back in December we decided to switch the existing wiki over to MediaWiki and use that to make Wikipedia-related content well ahead of time to show at the time of application.

The wiki is located here and has 218 articles at present, though a number of them are not Wikipedia-type content but rather course materials, some translated works, etc. There's also the list of articles each Wikipedia should have here, and it's my opinion and that of others that we should have all these articles with a minumum of ten sentences each before making the application, so there's going to be a lot of preparation before actually applying.

Anybody who would like to help out is welcome to register at the wiki, create or improve articles on lfn in a language they know, or keep an eye on things for when the application is actually made. Maybe in the summer or early autumn, hard to say. Mithridates 12:33, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conlangs on wikipedia?

How come there are almost only auxlangs that are featured and wanted on wikipedia? Aszev 19:58, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

The "wanted" list was imported straight from the German wikipedia, which traditionally has been pretty biased towards auxlangs. I've tried to evoke some discussion about this list in the corresponding wikiproject, but no response yet. Indeed I believe that some conlangs should not be on that list, although I also believe that most of them should (there appears to be consensus about the inclusion of "historic conlangs", i.e. created before 1950). Of course, if you can think of a significant artlang that is not yet represented but should, feel free to add it to the list!
As for "featured", I'm not sure what you're hinting at. At present, we have slightly more articles about artlangs than about auxlangs. The current Language Of The Month is Brithenig, not exactly an auxlang. So what do you mean?
P.S. Why did you blank out your pages about Cervenian on one of those other wikis? I like the looks of the language. Feel invited to create a profile for it on Langmaker.com! —IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 09:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
What I was referring to was that I saw a lot of articles about auxlangs that I've never even heard of (and I have heard of quite many), and they seem to be allowed to be there. Then I look around for articles about artlangs that I have heard of and that I consider quite well-known within the conlanger community, and sometimes outside as well. My reaction is just, that it seems like that they are allowed to be there, but if someone will put up an article about an artlang, even if it is a known one, then other users will call it self-promotion and try to get it deleted. Also I saw some criteria list somewhere on wikipedia about what conlangs that were wanted and that list excluded almost all artlangs. My point was, that I just didn't find a balance between aux- and artlangs on wikipedia, but, of course I might have been mistaken. Aszev 00:06, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for the Categories box

An update to MediaWiki has allowed this - <categorytree>Constructed languages</categorytree>, which produces:

[–] Constructed languages
[+] Artificial scripts
[+] Artistic languages
[+] Computer languages
[+] Constructed language organizations
[+] Constructed languages resources
[+] Esperanto dictionaries
[+] Fictional languages
[+] Formal languages
[+] Gibberish language
[+] International auxiliary languages
[+] Language creators
[+] Language games
[+] Logical languages
[+] Musical languages
[+] Reconstructed languages
[+] Role-playing languages
[+] Voynich manuscript
[+] Constructed language stubs


Just suggesting an update to your portal, but I won't make such an update myself, since I'm not involved here. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 14:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! —IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu? 19:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Portal theme color?

Is the portal's color set in stone? The current one isn't very soothing, and gets irritating after a while... Cctoide 00:39, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conlang Notability

Hi,

Is there any Wikipedia guideline for determining the notability of a conlang? Or just Wikipedia:Notability? --Amir E. Aharoni 14:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Wikipedia for Lingua Franca Nova

A request for Lingua Franca Nova was made today: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Lingua_Franca_Nova

It's not a vote of course, but there it is if anybody feels like commenting or observing. Mithridates 14:35, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New tagging, reviving WP:CL, etc.

I have revived WP:CL. (Maybe next, WP:CONLANG?)

This included:

  • creating & tweaking {{WP conlangs}} [note below]
  • tweaking Category:Constructed languages
  • revamping the WP:CL home page, moving several pages around, trimming irrelevancies, etc
  • adding WP:ASSESS-ability to all of the above
  • adding & moving separate edit wars / deletions page to WP:CL/Edit wars and deletions
  • running the WP:ASSESS bot - note that until {{WP conlangs}} is fixed it will not be able to index for importance, but you should still add the ratings for when that happens
  • merging Portal collaborators into WP:CL members (note that this all fixed the lack of edit links here) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saizai (talk • contribs) 16:56, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I have gone through all the items in the Portal sidebar up through the list of IAL Creators, and done the following:

  • ensured the article page is categorized
  • added WP:CL template to discussion pages, with class and importance ratings

Problems:

That's about all for me for now; I spent a fair amount of time on that and I think I'mma call it a cycle.

Please (feel free to) review my WP:ASSESS judgments using the box on WP:CL, cat/tag/assess all the articles I haven't gotten to, and fix the problems above. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍

Added {{Conlang}} for article pages. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languages/Templates. Also moved Jan's list of AfDs over to Wikipedia:WikiProject Constructed languages/Edit wars and deletions and cleaned it up. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 00:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reconciliation

I noticed that there were a few discussions about my "deletionist" attitude towards conlangs.

If anyone thinks that i hate conlangs and that i want to stifle them on Wikipedia, then you couldn't be further from the truth. My Linguistics studies and my general curiosity about languages are the things that brought me to be interested in conlangs, too. I am even developing one logic and math based conlang myself in my spare time (it's mostly in my head and very far from "release quality", so don't ask me about it.) I do, however, consider some conlangs to be incompatible with current Wikipedia policies and practices on notability, verifiability and citing sources. I don't just blindly follow these policies - i do believe that they are logical and beneficial for Wikipedia and for those languages, too.

If anyone thinks that i misuse my admin privileges, please discuss it with me, and feel free to bring it up on Wikipedia:Deletion review, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct. I really don't want anyone to feel that Wikipedia has a mysterious and evil group of "They", who delete everything they don't like.

Also, please see Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Mailing lists as sources. It's my good-faith attempt at clarifying the policies about citing sources which are common in the conlang community, such as mailing lists. You are welcome to participate in that discussion.

With hope for pacz, Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:00, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

First of all, I'm all for pacz! ;) I'm not questioning your good faith here, although I admit I'm curious about your motives regarding your crusade against Slovio. You'll have to agree with me about one thing: if a participant of wikipedia.en does virtually everything that lies within his possibilities to get an article about a subject deleted, and subsequently starts lobbying in many other language editions to get it deleted there as well, that exceeds the normal behaviour of the average wikipedian, even if he calls himself a deletionist. But then, even if you have some personal issue with Slovio, there's nothing wrong with that. I personally think you overstepped your boundaries as an admin somewhat when you speedily deleted Slavic IAL; after all, we always hear the argument that if a subject is notable enough someone else will recreate the article anyway. The disadvantage of speedy deletion is that only admins can see if it was really just the recreation of deleted material by the same person or perhaps an entirely new article by another person. In my opinion, speedy deletion is warranted only in the case of obvious nonsense, offensive stuff and the like. When it comes to the recreation of deleted material, I believe that should be done cautiously, and definitely not by an admin who obviously has a personal interest.
Personally, I'm not a fan of Slovio. In my opinion, it is way too influenced by Esperanto, it is oversimplified and sometimes outright ugly. Besides, I dislike all the pan-Slavic noise made by some of its adherents. But Slovio has at least two advantages, too: its vocabulary is huge (over 40,000 words, IIRC) and well-crafted. And it attracts attention. Don't ask me how many people can speak or write in the language, but I know there are several of them. And while I'm not really happy with the somewhat aggressive way Slovio is being marketed, I can't deny it is effective.
Unlike some others who deal with constructed languages here, I'm not an inclusionist. I'm NOT saying: wikipedia is not paper, and let's therefore have articles about thousands of conlangs. I do think politicies regarding verifiability, original research and even notability make sense. But for heaven's sake, Wikipedia remains a project of knowledgeable amateurs, and that is its charm! Rules are good, but they shouldn't kill the fun. I have the impression that all these rules have been over-bureaucraticised lately. Every AfD discussion is full of people throwing at each other with abbreviations for policies or guidelines to such extent that the average non-wikipedian couldn't understand a word from it. Verifiability and no original research are good, but we shouldn't push it. Look at Hannibal Rising (film)#Differences between the book and the film - isn't that original research, too? Yet, we know that the book exists and we know that the film exists, and anyone who has read the book and seen the movie can tell what the differences are. So why should we be forced to wait until some famous critic writes down the differences in a book or article in some important magazine? It's the same with constructed languages: if a language is online that proves its existence and anyone who reads it can describe it. If a language scores over 10,000 Google hits, that means there is more to it than just its author's website(s) and a mailing list. If the article about a language claims it has a certain amount of speakers, there must of course be proof for that, but the absense of such proof does not automatically render the language non-notable. Some things are just very hard to prove! My impression is that Wikipedia has become the domain of hardliners, who spend most of their time sticking tags to pages instead of writing/improving them. Anyone can propose any article for deletion, but while a few years back there had to be "rough consensus" for deletion, now someone's credibility seems to be a matter of which abbreviations he uses, instead of his own knowledgeability of a subject. And such a situation, where giving something the benefit of the doubt has become an antiquity, is frustrating for people like me.
So no, I'm not going to try to de-admin you, and I'm not going to deletion review. I don't have the will, the time and the nerve for that. Besides, you know as well as I do that undeleting something is a hell of a lot harder to accomplish than having something deleted. I would just wish that everyone here writes nice articles about things that interest him and that he knows a lot about, instead of killing the fun for others. —IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu? 11:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
First, a simple fact: I did't speedily delete Slavic IAL, i just nominated it. I speedily deleted Slovio once, which was a bad mistake that i regret - an admin must not delete an article if he was involved in its AfD.
Now, for other matters:
and subsequently starts lobbying in many other language editions to get it deleted there as well, that exceeds the normal behaviour of the average wikipedian, even if he calls himself a deletionist - First, i don't call myself a deletionist. Others call me that, when they are unhappy about my opinion.
I agree that what i did about Slovio exceeds the normal behaviour of the average wikipedian, but i didn't do it because i hate Slovio so much, but because i strongly believe in cooperation and harmony between different Wikipedias. Being curious about languages, the first thing i noticed on Wikipedia when i started reading it was the inter-language links. At first i thought that there's some committee that approves translations and harmonizes them, but then i found out that there's no committee. What's worse, when an article name changes, it needs to be updated manually in all Wikipedias! (Bots do that today most of the time, but they make mistakes, too.)
Now, most people aren't as thorough as i am about this, but according to my logic, encyclopedic truth is one, no matter what the language is, so when an article is deemed non-encyclopedic in a Wikipedia in one language, then how can it be encyclopedic in another? Slovio is not the only case where i have been cruising foreign Wikipedias to delete information that was deleted from English or Hebrew WP. I've done the same for Kypchakia, although on a much smaller scale, and more seriously for Nimrod Kamer and several articles related to him. Kamer is a minor Israeli journalist and aspiring filmmaker, who openly admitted that he had tried to pull Stephen Colbert-like tricks on Wikipedias in several languages. Unlike Colbert, there's nothing notable about him except his Wikipedia adventures, and his conduct was quite obnoxious, too, so he was very quickly banned from the Hebrew WP, but lasted for long under different names in en, fr, ro, it, de, sv and even sl wikis! I finished off his trolling for the time being. I strongly suspect that he's still around under several accounts, although he hasn't done any damage that i noticed.
Now, i do that, because - as you said - most people just don't give a damn about what's going in Wikipedias in other languages, and even if they do, they rarely do anything about it, because don't even dare to look at a language they don't know. Not me. I am lucky enough to know Russian, which essentially opens all the Slavic Wikipedias in front of me, and i can reasonably read in Catalan, Spanish and Italian (although i suck at French.) And generally, i am not afraid of looking at a foreign. And since you are in the conlang business, you may be interested to find out that studying Esperanto, Interlingua and a little Quenya certainly helped me with becoming a bit of a "polyglot".
So if it seems like i am on a crusade, then it's just an application of WP:BOLD on an international scale, and not something particular against Slovio.
During my "crusades" i found some very interesting things. For example, the Spanish WP has an extremely liberal deletion policy - it is a vote, which is already bad, and a 75% majority is required for deletion! The Bokmal Wikipedia seems to be similar to English, and AfD is a discussion; it had a pretty long discussion about Slovio deletion (too bad i can't really read it except a word here and there.) In my opinion, encyclopedic integrity policies should be the same in all projects, but i don't have enough power to enforce it everywhere.
So i am not authoritarian. I am just not afraid to be bold about things which are important to me. It's not "anti-conlangism" - it's encyclopedic thoroughness on an international scale.
As for the "attention" that Slovio attracts: you say yourself - "Don't ask me how many people can speak or write in the language, but I know there are several of them." Well, i need to ask - how do you know that? That's the most basic question in encyclopedia writing, and the right to doubt the answer is of crucial importance here. It is still my strong opinion that Slovio's main claim for attention is its appearance on Omniglot and Wikipedia, where it stayed unnoticed by "deletionists" for years. Now, Omniglot can carry it - it's anyone's right to carry any information. But in Wikipedia the community of editors decides what to carry, and that community didn't find Slovio notable.
Look at Hannibal Rising (film) ... isn't that original research, too? - There are a lot of discussion about carrying movie and book plots, and about such comparisons, many of which are quite close to original research. I rarely participate in these discussions, because i am more curious about languages.
such a situation, where giving something the benefit of the doubt has become an antiquity, is frustrating for people like me - consider joining Everything2. Seriously. It's far more liberal. It never said that it's supposed to be a serious encyclopedia. It carries literally everything except for the most blatant nonsense. Sometimes it's even somewhat useful; i even used it a couple of times as a quick reference for University papers that i wrote in my first year (there goes my academic integrity!..) And, what really surprised me - it doesn't have articles about Slovio, Lingua Franca Nova and Wenedyk!!!
I don't imply that you should leave Wikipedia, because i find your contribution here valuable, but you do need to understand that Wikipedia has hardliners. Wikipedia wants to be an encyclopedia, not a fun online site where people write anything they want, as long as they appear knowledgeable. I think that it's the great thing about Wikipedia, otherwise it wouldn't be half as useful. The Internet needs a free encyclopedia, the humanity needs a free encyclopedia and this free encyclopedia needs to be free about access and about copyright, but not about content. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:37, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Slovio

I think that Slovio article should be written again. It is a constructed language so, why not? MR.CRO95 (talk) 15:09, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Troscann

I, Mapar007 added in this portal the language I am constructing: Troscann. Please contact me on my user talk if you have commentaries. Mapar007 19:10, 15 May 2008 (UTC)