Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Hindustani 3

Add links
From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
​
submitted verification final decision
Discuss the creation of this language project on this page. Votes will be ignored when judging the proposal. Please provide arguments or reasons and be prepared to defend them (see the Language proposal policy).

The language committee needs to verify the language is eligible to be approved.

  • Check that the project does not already exist (see list).
  • Obtain an ISO 639 code
  • Ensure the requested language is sufficiently unique that it could not exist on a more general wiki.
  • Ensure that there are a sufficient number of native editors of that language to merit an edition in that language.
  • The community needs to develop an active test project; it must remain active until approval (automated statistics, recent changes). It is generally considered active if the analysis lists at least three active, not-grayed-out editors listed in the sections for the previous few months.
  • The community needs to complete required MediaWiki interface translations in that language (about localization, translatewiki, check completion).
  • The community needs to discuss and complete the settings table below:
What Value Example / Explanation
Proposal
Language code  (SIL, Glottolog) A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name Hindustani Language name in English
Language name हिन्दुस्तानी / ہندوستانی Language name in your language. This will appear in the language list on Special:Preferences, in the interwiki sidebar on other wikis, ...
Language Wikidata item Q11051 - item has currently the following values:
 Item about the language at Wikidata. It would normally include the Wikimedia language code, name of the language, etc. Please complete at Wikidata if needed.
Directionality no indication Is the language written from left to right (LTR) or from right to left (RTL)?
Links Links to previous requests, or references to external websites or documents.
Site URL .wikipedia.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name विकिपीडिया / ویکیپیڈیا "Wikipedia" in your language
Project namespace usually the same as the project name
Project talk namespace "Wikipedia talk" (the discussion namespace of the project namespace)
Enable uploads no Default is "no". Preferably, files should be uploaded to Commons.
If you want, you can enable local file uploading, either by any user ("yes") or by administrators only ("admin").
Notes: (1) This setting can be changed afterwards. The setting can only be "yes" or "admin" at approval if the test creates an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) first. (2) Files on Commons can be used on all Wikis. (3) Uploading fair-use images is not allowed on Commons (more info). (4) Localisation to your language may be insufficient on Commons.
Optional settings
Project logo File:WP-Hindustani.png This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation).
Default project timezone Continent/City "Continent/City", e.g. "Europe/Brussels" or "America/Mexico City" (see list of valid timezones)
Additional namespaces For example, a Wikisource would need "Page", "Page talk", "Index", "Index talk", "Author", "Author talk".
Additional settings Anything else that should be set
submit Phabricator task. It will include everything automatically, except additional namespaces/settings. After creating the task, add a link to the comment.

Proposal[edit]

Hindustani is allegedly the fourth most spoken language on the planet, even if we count Hindi speakers only and exclude Urdu. Yet at the same time, the wikipedia for Hindi is comparatively small with respect to wikipedias in other major world languages.

One problem with the existent Hindi wikipedia is its over-use of difficult language and obscure technical terminology. It is very different to Hindustani as spoken by a native speaker. A Hindustani Wikipedia could be thought of as a 'simple Hindi' wikipedia, not unlike the Simple English version.

The idea would be to write articles in as plain a language as possible, so as to be intelligible to as many speakers as possible. The existent Hindi wikipedia is mainly written in a Sanskritised register which one might call 'shuddh' Hindi, and uses an excess of words which are somewhat alien to many native speakers. Such a style of Hindi is mainly for the benefit of second or third language Hindi speakers, whose first language is another Indian language. Such languages are more often than not naturally Sanskritised even in their day-to-day colloquial register, meaning native speakers will have a good command of such vocabulary. Were the articles to be written in plain language, it would be easily intelligible to native, as well as non-native speakers, without the need to be well-versed in any specialist vocabulary.

A similar problem exists for the Urdu version of wikipedia, which technically also comes under the umbrella of 'Hindustani', even if it is written in a different script. Here the problem is not so much one of intelligibility, but of technical terminology. The moderators here maintain a very strict level of 'linguistic purity', and do not allow English terminology to be used whatsoever. If an article is created with an English word in its title, it is changed immediately to one more appropriate to the moderators' tastes, and the same scenario often occurs with technical terminology and specialist vocabulary within the article text.

Now the problem is not simply that the moderators' preferred terminology is 'difficult' or complicated, and does not fall within my or someone else's grasp of Urdu. The problem is that the terminology is simply made up. It is invented, out of thin air, not previously having existed in the Urdu language. This is no exaggeration - I have searched exhaustively for some of this terminology and failed to find it in any dictionary - even the most extensive ones. Furthermore, when searching for it on Google, I couldn't find any use of it anywhere outside of Wikipedia. The best I got was results in Farsi - but not Urdu.

Of course, you can't expect all technical terminology and specialist vocabulary to be in a dictionary, or it would be impossibly huge. But some of these words are those you would expect to find at least some mention of. For example, the names of everyday household items - but no such luck, I'm afraid. The terminology is not even used on the News, which uses the most Arabicised and formal register of any sort of Urdu. Where journalists and reporters frequently and exclusively use English or English-derived terms, like 'helicopter', 'TV', or 'police', the moderators seem to think this is unacceptable. Something seems to be amiss here.

Obviously, the terms used involve some degree of research - into Arabic and Persian equivalents - but it seems to me that the moderators are experts only in linguistics and nothing else. I doubt they have conferred with experts on such things as science and engineering, to find out terms actually used by Urdu speakers in the field, because much of the terminology is not current, and nor was it ever. Unless they have some kind of super secret magic lexicon which I am not aware of, but it is doubtful.

As such the language used on Urdu wikipedia does not reflect actual usage, either in colloquial speech, writing, or even journalism and formal speaking. It is therefore of little value both to experts and laypeople, as it does not actually provide any useful information. It seems like more of an exercise in coining neologisms. Of course it is not totally useless, because it does have useful content on certain select topics, such as Islam, Urdu literature, Pakistani Politics, etc.

So the proposal is to create a new Hindustani wikipedia to counter some of the problems evident in the two already existing ones which could be considered 'Hindustani'. Firstly, it ought to be written in ordinary language - but not 'slang' - think 'Simple Hindi' Secondly, there should be no objection to using English terminology, where any Hindi equivalent does not exist already, as is done in many languages. English terminology is used in speaking and writing throughout much of India - even illiterate people are said to use some English words in their speech. As such, having a Hindustani wikipedia but using English for specialist vocabulary would be more in line with actual language usage, and would provide people with real, useful, and usable knowledge and information on a wide range of topics, in a language which they perhaps find preferable, and can easily read and comprehend. Writing English terms in Devanagari also has the added advantage of imparting more or less the correct pronunciation, unlike English spelling, which can be bewildering to non-Native speakers.

I have noted that the Shahmukhi Punjabi version of Wikipedia, unlike its Urdu counterpart, has no qualms about using English words, and does so freely. Perhaps it is no surprise it is seeing a relative degree of success. Masri, or Egyptian Arabic is another colloquial dialect to have its own wikipedia, and seems to be gaining ground. The only unique thing about Hindustani is it has no unique language code of its own. Yet there are dozens of dialects and regional languages to have their own wikipedia, and are no doubt written in a more easily comprehensible register. So why should Hindustani be any different then? When it is not just any ordinary regional language, but supposedly, the basis of the 4th most spoken language in the world? The number of users it could draw would be many more than those of the existing Hindi and Urdu Wikipedia, I believe.

I know there is a 'Fiji Hindi' Wikipedia, and this is sometimes called 'Fiji Hindustani', but it is not actually the Hindustani dialect of mainstream Hindi-Urdu, it is based on the Awadhi dialect, which differs somewhat. It's also in the roman script, and has picked up vocab from Fijian languages, so is not wholly intelligible to mainstream Hindi speakers. (It does however, use an abundance of English.) But ideally, the 'Hindustani' I refer to should be the mainstream North-Central Indian dialect of Delhi/UP, as used in ordinary Hindi-Urdu, and written in Devanagari script. Automatic conversion into Roman could be something considered in the future if it goes ahead - Urdu speakers who cannot read Nagari could also access it.

Thank You

Fmc47 (talk) 23:34, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

What would happen to the Hindi and Urdu Wikipedias? What subdomain would this have? Have you already tried bringing this up on hi and ur Wikipedias? PiRSquared17 (talk) 03:17, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the existing Hindi and Urdu Wikipedias would stay as they are, there is no need to change anything there necessarily. Both Wikipedias do have many active users but again have shortcomings in areas which could be addressed in this way.
I don't know about subdomains. Maybe hi-simple or something? I'm not entirely sure on the rules and regulations on this.
I have not, no. But I do gather that this is something users have protested about in the past. In response, moderators presented a lengthy and defiant argument about linguistic purity, and refused to compromise.
In the case of Hindi wikipedia, it would be a huge ask to request that the entire register in which most articles are written to be simplified and the language 'dumbed-down'. The gulf between ordinary native Hindustani and the nationalised form of Hindi mostly used on Hindi wikipedia, is huge. Most vocab used in ordinary circumstances is replaced with loans, which are not native to the Hindustani-speaking area. As such, it can be like reading a different language at times. Now as I said, I'm sure there are people who find this sort of language helpful, given the success of Hindi wikipedia, but for many, it is unnecessarily complicated and is not really their mother tongue. It's a similar argument to the one given for Masri/Eqyptian Arabic - that it would be helpful to have a version in which ordinary language can be used to impart knowledge, so as to make it accessible to a greater number of people. After all, that is the central principle of Wikipedia. It doesn't necessarily have any implications for existing versions of Wikipedias - as we can see Masri and Arabic wikipedias are co-existing at present.
I know there is a strict rule about having to have a unique ISO-639 code, but is it really necessary to rely on such arbitrariness? This way many minority languages have a wikipedia, yet wikipedia in a native Hindustani, which is spoken and understood by many, can't exist?
Fmc47 (talk) 14:59, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support (and Bump): This is a very real language, and is the de-facto lingua franca of Northern India and Pakistan. It doesn't contain the highly sophisticated language present in Hindi (from Sanskrit) or Urdu (from Persian, Arabic, etc..). A transliteration system like this one could make it feasible. --RaviC (talk) 20:09, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose I agree with most of issues raised in the proposal. I myself has Hindi as 2nd language and yes, editors at hi.wiki uses rather difficult terminology, but I don't think making another wikipedia is the correct way. Hindustani has plenty of dialects and everybody will want to have their own little wikipedia. Efforts should be made to use simplified words at present Urdu or Hindi wikipedia. --Vigyani (talk) 01:11, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - although I suspect that Roman script may be more neutral in practical use, and wouldn't bias it towards either Hindi or Urdu too much. By the way Wikipedia has a Serbo-Croat version, so Hindustani would not be unique in this respect. The existence of the Serbo-Croat Wikipedia has not endangered the existence of the Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian etc versions. -MacRusgail (talk) 16:13, 30 January 2015 (UTC) p.s. Fiji Hindi version is already in existence see here[reply]


  • While a creation of Hindustani Wikipedia can be made, I don't think it should be something work like simple English wikipedia as from what I remembered the rule have been changed and thus there should not be another simple x wikipedia exist, and on the ither hand, while starting a wikipedia mean start out fresh, I don't think it is a good solution to solve problens exist in existing Wikipedia of hindi/urdu and it's probably better to gather community support in both Wikipedia to pedge for changes.C933103 (talk) 13:06, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: If such is the case, the language code for Wikis shall be rephrased to hnd or hind, if there is a consensus, and do set path for the creation of Wikipedia.—(harith·discuss) 08:15, 19 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Harithvh: What is the relationship between Hindustani and Southern Hindko? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 07:21, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226:, Hi Sorry for the late reply, I was off from this platform for some time. The Southern Hindko is one of the dakkini (deccan) dialects as far as my understating. I am not sure about the extend of it's usage as a language in written literature. I do not have details about the linguistic relation of it with Hindustani; as hnd is denoted to above said, it shall not be used for the proposed one. Thanks. —(harith·discuss) 06:35, 10 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

June 2019[edit]

Would anyone who is following this page please reply here? I would like to know if there is any point in discussing this, given that there is no ISO 639 code. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:42, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@StevenJ81: I feel that except Satdeep Gill, all other users who voted support above, are rarely active on either Meta-Wiki, or hi.wikipedia, and or ur.wikipedia, they just want a wiki to "mix" two languages, this won't make a new language, nor a sane community. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:28, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226: I don't necessarily disagree. But (a) I respect @Satdeep Gill, and (b) Hindustani is a pretty widely used lingua franca. So I wanted to see if anyone was really still watching this and interested in the outcome. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:39, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Liuxinyu970226 and StevenJ81: Not trying to start a fight, but I have made enough contribution to ur.wikipedia and continue to do so. I still support the idea of a Hindustani wiki and if one does end up being created, I'd very likely be helping translating and writing articles in bulk. RonnieSingh (talk) 06:47, 3 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@StevenJ81, Liuxinyu970226, and RonnieSingh: I wanted to edit in Hindi Wikipedia, but the language used is quite hard to understand, since I have learnt Hindi mostly from Bollywood movies and self-learning (my first language is Bengali). So, I was lurking around Metawiki to find any proposal for "Simple Hindi" (like Simple English) and I found this proposal. I support this proposal and want to start an Incubator with the Main Page and a short article on India in colloquial Hindi. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 14:40, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Hindustani_3&oldid=26353709"