Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Arbëresh

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Request for a new language edition: Wikipedia Arbëresh

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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. Once the criteria are met, the language committee can proceed with the approval and will verify the test project content with a reliable neutral source, such as a professor or expert. If you think the criteria are met, but the project is still waiting for approval, feel free to notify the committee and ask them to consider its approval.

• 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	aae (SIL, Glottolog)	A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name	Arbëresh	Language name in English
Language name	arbërisht	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	Q1075302 - item has currently the following values: English label: Arbëresh native label (P1705): instance of (P31)/subclass of (P279): dialect, modern language / Albanian Wikimedia language code (P424): writing system (P282): Latin script number of speakers, writers, or signers (P1098): 100,000	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	LTR	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	aae.wikipedia.org	langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name	Wikipedia	"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		This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation).
Default project timezone	Europe/Rome	"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
Once settings are finalized, a committee member will submit a Phabricator task requesting creation of the wiki. (This will include everything automatically, except the additional namespaces/settings.) After the task is created, it should be linked to in a comment under "final decision" above.

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Proposal

Arbëresh is spoken by approximately 100.000 native speakers in Italy and its diaspora. According to w:Ethnologue, the Arbëresh language is considered as endangered, meaning that it is no longer the norm that children learn and use this language. Therefore, an Arbëresh Wikipedia can have a significant contribution in preserving the Arbëresh language. --Ftillimi (talk) 13:01, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Strong Agree - Adding to the proposal, the Arbëresh had an outsized effect on Albania and Italy, through the influence of figures like w:Jeronim de Rada and it:Demetrio Camarda. The contribution of the Arbëresh writers to early Albanian national literature and the Albanian alphabet is incredibly interesting from a comparative linguistics perspective.

Other preservation efforts from academics and the Arbëresh community are ongoing, and an Arbëreshë Wikipedia would be a fantastic addition to such efforts. Finbee (talk) 18:55, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

• Oppose Albanian diaspora dialect, not a separate language.--Fenikals (talk) 10:44, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Fenikals Looks like there's a respond on langcom talk page who against your rationale? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:51, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

  Also inform @Amire80:, as this is a member languoid of Albanian (sq) where it already has sq: for several years, should there have more investigations before judging its eligibility? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 05:14, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

  We can consider 3-5 centuries between Latin and Early Romanian, yet you wouldn't say that Romanian is a dialect of Latin. The same timespan separates Albanian and Arbëresh. The former went through a lot of Balkan and Turkish influence, the latter incorporated a lot of lexicon and morphology from southern Italian languages, making them as mutually intelligible as Italian and Spanish, if not less. There are good arguments against this proposal, but "not a separate language" is not one. ~2026-15003-82 (talk) 07:19, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

  The number of centuries that varieties have been separated is not really a criterion, because the speed of language change can vary. Anyway, according to ISO 639-3, Albanian (sqi) is considered a macrolanguage, with Arbëresh (aae) being a member. Wikipedia usually accepts languages that have got an ISO 639-3 code as separate languages, so there is no reason not to do so here. According to my impression based on the incubator wiki, the difference between Arbëresh and Standard Albanian of Albania is not quite as large as between Spanish and Italian, but rather similar to that between Italian and Corsican or that between Spanish and Asturian, and some intercomprehension should be possible. --~2026-15119-09 (talk) 10:41, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose There isn't de facto a user base that would create articles in this language (unless you want to create it with translator bots or AI, but nobody then would control their grammatical correctiness based of Arbëresh grammatic and other language rules). --Gce (talk) 16:56, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

  There aren't any translator bots or AIs supporting Arbëresh, and there will not be until data will be created on online resources like a wiki. On the other hand, Arbëresh today remains largely unstandardized, which makes it impossible to set an orthography or a grammar as a basis for the articles. Even if I think a few passionate users would contribute, their output would be highly inconsistent, so I stand with you on the quality concerns. ~2026-15003-82 (talk) 07:26, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

  In fact, the incubator wiki uses the same basic orthographic rules as Standard Albanian does, only applied to a different dialect, appropriately noting the phonological, grammatical and lexical differences. This practice is not quite new either, as Albanian speakers of different dialectal backgrounds have been using the same version of the Latin alphabet with the same basic orthographic rules to write their respective dialects since the Monastir congress more than hundred years ago, when the current official Standard of Albania did not yet exist and when its forerunner, literary Tosk of Southern Albania, was only one of several competing literary dialects.

  It is correct that there is no unitary codified Standard of Arbëresh, however, such a unitary codification is not necessary for usage as a written language if the existing varieties are sufficiently similar and if users agree that everybody may use his own native norm. This practice is in fact quite widespread in Wikipedia versions of European regional languages without such a unitary codification, both in the Germanic and the Romance family, for example Alemannic, Bavarian, Lombard, Corsican. The current main page of the Arbëresh incubator wiki in fact cites the approach of Corsican language planners to their written language, called "polynomy" by them, as an example the Arbëresh should follow.--~2026-15119-09 (talk) 11:10, 9 March 2026 (UTC)