Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Swabian

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[edit] Swabian Wikipedia

[edit] Arguments in favour

• • There are more than 4 million speakers of Swabian; mainly in the region of Swabia. Swabia covers much of Germany's southwestern Bundesland state of Baden-Württemberg (including the capital Stuttgart and the rural area known as the Swabian Alb) and the southwest of the Bundesland Bavaria.
  • Swabian is also spoken by part of the German minorities in Hungary, former Yugoslavia, Romania, and the former Soviet Union.
  • Swabian is difficult to understand for speakers of Standard German. It contains vocabulary that differs altogether from Standard German (e.g. 'jam' in Standard German is Marmelade while in Swabian it becomes Gsälz).
  —unsigned by 202.36.179.66 on 01:32, 19 September 2008.
• Per above reasons. All minority languages should get a chance. --OosWesThoesBes 16:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
• Swabian can be very different from the other dialects that the Alemanic Wikipedia includes.
• Persons speaking Swabian as their first language really never can speak German without "mistakes".
• The offical slogan, crated by the government of Baden-Württemberg and well known all over Germany is: "Wir können alles - außer Hochdeutsch" (We do can all - without standard German).
• When a Swabian is reading a text in Swiss German (a variety of alemannic), he often has to think about words for a long time to understand them and sometimes he can't, even if it's his habit to read texts in that language/dialect. Putting Swiss German and Swabian in one Wikipedia together is like doing the same with Welsh and Breton. Nearly nobody here in Württemberg says that he speaks an Alemanic dialect, but Swabian. We're an independent group of dialect speakers! Xammax 17:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Welsh and Breton are far more apart than Swabian from other Alemanic dialects. Speaking neither Swabian nor any other Alemanic dialect, I have no significant problems in understanding both. Welsh and Breton fall into two different families (Goidelic vs Brythonic) which split more than 2000 years ago. --AFBorchert 17:35, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, that was a bad example. But don't think that you can understand the "real hard" Swabian of the Schwäbische Alb. The Swabian used in the articles that exist yet is one which isn't very far from standard German, but there are others.Xammax 20:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Arguments against

This maps shows the region of Alemannic languages including Swabian (labeled Schwäbisch) in the upper right. Compare this against the map at the main page.

• The Swabian language belongs to the family of Alemannic languages which is already represented by an existing project. --AFBorchert 18:08, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• The test project provides so far just ten articles beside the main page which is written in High German. All of them are quite short and with one exception written by just one user named Max. The longest article so far, Wahrê Jesus-Gmoâd', achieves 876 bytes by enumerating the most important teachings of a pentecostal community. So far not a single article out of this list nor anything about the Swabian language or its region was written. There exists a large number of varieties how Swabian is spoken or written (this property is shared with the family of Alemannic languages) which asks for editorial guidelines, see for example these guidelines at the Alemannic Wikipedia. This is still missing for this project. In summary, I do not see yet significant progress in the Incubator nor a real community. --AFBorchert 18:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The Alemannic Wikipedia already covers the Swabian dialects, as is clearly stated on its main page. Additionaly, Swabian is generally mentioned in guidelines and the protocol of the most recent meeting in August 2008 also makes mention of it. Swabian and the other Alemannic dialects are usually mutually intelligible without too many problems (I speak high Alemannic from southern Baden and my mother's Swabian family has no trouble understanding me); Swabian and the other Alemannic variants have way more similiarities than differences. On top of that, there are 65 articles in our category for articles written in Swabian [1], though the actual number is higher because not all articles are categorized by dialect. These articles are also of considerably higher quality and length than the ones written so far on the incubator (one, Raveschburg, is even a featured article), and Swabian articles are regularly featured on the main page as "article of the week". There is no need to invent the wheel twice. --Chlämens 13:25, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] General discussion

• The localisation of the MediaWiki most used messages is a requirement. —unsigned by 202.36.179.66 on 01:32, 19 September 2008.
  • Please, request Translation rights here. Malafaya 16:38, 19 September 2008 (UTC)