Welsh Wikipedia

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Favicon of Wikipedia Welsh Wikipedia
URL http://cy.wikipedia.org/
Commercial? No
Type of site Internet encyclopedia project
Registration Optional
Available language(s) Welsh
Owner Wikimedia Foundation

The Welsh Wikipedia (Welsh: Wicipedia Cymraeg or plain Wicipedia) is the Welsh-language edition of Wikipedia. This edition was started in July 2003. On June 23, 2007 it reached 10,000 articles, the 66th Wikipedia to do so. It currently has over 16,000 articles (May 2008). It is the only internet resource of its kind in Welsh, and therefore has an important place in Welsh language on-line culture.

The Welsh wikipedia has been growing at a considerable rate, for its size, over the last few years. It has often been referred to in the Welsh-language press, for instance in the current affairs magazine Golwg and Y Faner Newydd, and is listed by the National Library of Wales as a Welsh-language e-resource[1]

In an August 2007 interview, Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikipedia, used the Welsh Wikipedia as an example of the rationale for having wikipedias in smaller languages:

"Certainly within Wikipedia right now we are seeing some fairly successful projects in small European languages. You don't really need a Welsh language Wikipedia, perhaps. The number of people who speak Welsh who don't also speak English is very small and geting smaller every year. So why do we have a Welsh Wikipedia? Well, people wanted it, so they're making it. And language preservation is the main motive. It is their mother tongue and they want to keep it alive, keep its literature alive. Certainly some of the larger small languages like Basque and Catalan have very successful projects. I definitely see that preserving parts of your language and culture through collaborative projects makes a lot of sense."[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ National Library of Wales
  2. ^ Interview on geekillustrated.com, August 2007

[edit] External links

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