Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Livonian

Livonian Wikipedia

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Requests for new languages (Wikipedia Livonian)

submitted verification final decision This language has been verified as eligible. The language is eligible for a project, which means that the subdomain can be created once there is an active community and a localized interface, as described in the language proposal policy. You can discuss the creation of this language project on this page. (See an unofficial analysis of this request.)

Proposal summary
Language details: Livonian (Līvõ kēļ, liv ISO 639-3) Editing community: Andrijko Z., Warbola (P), Ēlmaz (P), Ohpuu (P), Roalds (P), Tamara Ustinova List your user name if you're interested in editing the wiki. Add "N" next to your name if you are a native speaker of this language. Relevant pages: development wiki project External links: About language and people on Livonian About language and people on Livonian
Please read the handbook for requesters for help using this template correctly.

I see, that it can be too hard to make a good Wikipedia on Livonian, because the population, which know Livonian, is too little (about 500 people in common), but I request to give it a chanse, because this test-Wikipedia has an active contributer Warbola, also some Wikipedians know Livonian on intermediate level (p.e. Roalds), the statistics sais, that there are now about 150 articles, and it's growing up in it's development (statistics is here). Thank you very much for your help in the creation (and for your votes)!--Andrijko Z. 14:14, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Arguments in favour

• Support: per above--Andrijko Z. 14:14, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support --Dark Eagle 15:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support Master Shadow 15:47, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support --Рашат Якупов 19:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support --Riwnodennyk 15:27, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
• It seems that there are enough members who can contribute to this project, as many articles have been created so far. Support --Wisconsus 18:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support Although this language often gets listed as dead, since last monolingual native speaker died, there appear to be several fluently speaking induviduals. There are language lessons available in Latvia and at least some interest in revival of this language. I also believe that any project has better chance of developing on seperate site (it gets more expossure in search engines etc. and contributing to incubator is a bit more complicated) ~~Xil...(talk) 15:28, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support I am an active contributor to the project. Look at it. Most of its articles contain actual text (10 sentences or more) in Livonian. Not "Germany is a country" and "Bear is an animal" style stubs, which most of small language wikipedias are made of. --Warbola 00:20, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
• {{support| --N KOzi^Talk 11:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support, because you worked well in the incubator. --LexArt 08:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support --Kaiyr 20:17, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support. There's still a chance to save Livonian, this would be a great step forward. --Sergii-rachmonov 06:26, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support --U.Steele 21:57, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
• Support --Jugydmort 12:45, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
• Support Blåmes 20:15, 21 September 2011 (UTC) This is a huge step for this, almost dead, language.
• Support It's about time to open the project. A lot of good quality articles at Incubator. Hugo.arg 17:41, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
• Support Doncsecz^talk 18:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
• Support simon1468 21:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Arguments against

• none

Other discussion

I have three substantial questions in relation to this (and Votic request): --Millosh 14:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

1. Who would write those projects? --Millosh 14:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
2. What is the purpose of those projects? --Millosh 14:44, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
3. What do you think about starting Wikisource editions instead of Wikipedia? That would be wiser action if the language conservation is the main goal. --Millosh

2. First, there have been Wikipedia projects in small languages from the beginning and it has been long time policy of Wikipedia to accept and support these projects. You have perfect right to think that world would be better without Wikipedia projects in small languages but that discussion does not belong to this page. The purpose of Livonian Wikipedia is to have a Livonian Wikipedia!

1. Who would write these projects, of course people who are able to write Livonian texts. New Livonian language articles appear quite often in a Latvian newspaper [[1]] and portal livones.lv. Most of these people have not come to Wikipedia yet but we have users like Ēlmaz, Ohpuu, Roalds, Avellano and me who are making contributions in Livonian. Btw Livonian has a very well documented literary language - something that even many languages with millions of speakers don't have.

3. Wikisource instead of Wikipedia? Livonian Wikipedia is project where users are making original contributions. Wikisource is a project where original contributions are specifically forbidden. If you want to start a project for Livonian Wikisource, go ahead, but again, that has absolutely nothing to do with Livonian Wikipedia project, which is the subject of the current page. Warbola 02:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

OK. You've convinced me :) According to the Ethnologue, native speakers population is too low, but it seems that it is not so accurate. --Millosh 05:04, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually, you didn't. May you point to me to the texts in Livonian (let's say, which edition, which page)? I saw just texts in Latvian [2]. --Millosh 05:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately they have been less active recently. In April number[3] I see just one paragraph in Livonian (Vänt kizūb: Kui sa mõtlõd? by Vents Priedoliņš.) But only half a year ago the articles in Livonian appeared regularly, EBLUL — kīeld kaitsiji [4] by Jānis Mednis Turaida Līvlizt päva and Muini Tuļ Īe by Julgī Stalte [5], Līvõ tieudõd by Linda Zonne [6], Ungārmōl by Jānis Mednis [7] etc. Portal Livones has even some longer articles in Livonian from the end of last year, like [8] or [9] by Valts Ernštreits. Many livones articles for some reason do not mention their author but I notice that at least Renāte Blumberga [10], Tiit-Rein Viitso [11] and Tapio Mäkeläinen [12] have written some. So there are still many quite wikipedian style articles written by quite young people, so I do not think the language can be declared dead enough yet.Warbola 12:05, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I am convinced, but puzzled. For my curiosity, may you describe the present state of Livonian language? Is it inside of the revival process? Wikipedia says 30 speakers, Ethnologue says 15 in 1995. --Millosh 13:16, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

There are certainly some Livonian language revitalization efforts. For example, they are trying to teach Livonian language to children in summer camps. There are also many young Livonian speakers who had Livonian speaking grandparents but parents with almost no knowledge of Livonian. Warbola 12:06, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The project is eligible. --Millosh 17:03, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

The project doesn't really meet the requisite of native speakers in the light on news stories about the last native speaker dead (e.g [13]) or found (e.g [14]). The 500, that could be capable of editing the project, esimated at the top of the page have studied Livonian in the university, isn't it? Then again, as the project seems active, maybe an artificial language like exception can be made (while Ancient Greek with probably far more speakers was rejected). 88.196.241.249 08:40, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I understand that the project has been deemed to satisfy the criterion by the Language Committee, and that now people fluent in Livonian have to demonstrate that they are up to the job of writing an encyclopedia.

The speaker in question may have been the last of his own generation of native speakers in Latvia. Reports about "the death of the last Livonian" tend not to be very reliable as they belong to a centuriy-old tradition among local news media of occasionally reporting "the death of the last Livonian".

According to some more recent and more reliable sources (like the PhD thesis of Valts Ernštreits ), there seem to be nine native speakers of Livonian of the same generation who live outside Latvia, mostly refugees from the time of World War II. For example, Grizelda Kristin lives in Canada.

And this leaves open the issue of determining whether a number of people from the generation Valts Ernštreits, Julgī Stalte, Dāvis Stalts, Jānis Mednis, Ulla Fraser, Renāte Blumberga or any of their ilk from the Līvõ Kultūr Sidām could qualify as native speakers or not. They all are ethnic Livonians and are proficient in Livonian. There were 250 ethnic Livonians living in Latvia in 2011 according to the preliminary results of the census, as compared to 177 ethnic Livonians according to the census a decade earlier. And, in fact, the number of self-described Livonians has been on the rise since 1970, as census data presented lv:Latvijas demogrāfija shows. This reflects some success in the revitalisation of the culture and language, I think.

The 500 people who know Livonian most probably include young people who have learnt the language in summer camps organised by Livonian organisations in co-operation with university scholars. If one were to count every person who has passed the routine course of Livonian in Estonian, Latvian and Finnish universities, the number would probably be a few thousand. The University of Tartu has had the basic course every year, with about a dozen people attending yearly in recent times. I think all these people should not be counted as second-language speakers of Livonian and the figure 500 seems to indicate that they have not been.

In any case, this all could serve as a good material for a more detailed sociolinguistic study, were some linguist to undertake one.

I think the most appropriate analogue (and perhaps also a role model) for a Wikipedia in Livonian would be the Wikipedia in Cornish. The issue of Cornish native speakers is as complex, interesting and debatable as that of native speakers of Livonian. The English Wikipedia article says: "Native speakers: a few speakers under 20 years old; 100 others fluent (2003)" (en:Cornish language). But it seems to me that the scope for the use of the Cornish language reached an even lower point during the 19th century than the Livonan language has ever experienced. -- Ohpuu 10:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Valts Ernštreits says in his PhD theseis (p. 10) that (now almost 102 years old) Grizelda Kristiņ is the only known person whose first language is Livonian. 88.196.241.249 14:55, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

That is true. But I think the rise of the number of self-described Livonians as seen from the census data referred to above is a strong indication of the revitalisation of the Livonian.--Morel 01:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

localisation information

• Currently 100% of the most used messages have been translated into Livonian.