Requests for new languages/Wikisource Ottoman Turkish

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Ottoman Turkish Wikisource[edit]

submitted verification final decision
This proposal has been rejected.
This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy based on the discussion on this page.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

Please, use Turkish Wikisource for texts in Ottoman Turkish. If you need technical help for right-to-left writing system, contact LangCom member Amir E. Aharoni. --08:31, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal summary
Localization
  • Project name: ويكـى قايناق
    The name of the project in the requested language; for example, "Wikipédia"
    in French.
  • Project namespace: ويكـى قايناق
    The name of the namespace for project pages like policies; usually the same
    as the project name.
  • Project_talk namespace:
    The name of the discussion namespace for project pages like policies; for
    example, "Wikipedia talk" in English.
  • Wiki logo: Wikisource-logo-ota.png
    The name of the wiki logo uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons, like
    "Wikipedia-logo-v2-pl.png" (see logo).
  • Default timezone:
    The default timezone on the wiki, like "CET (UTC+1)". This is usually the
    default UTC.
  • User interface: See Translatewiki.
Please read the handbook for requesters for help using this template correctly.

The Ottoman Turkish language is a historical language in which a large volume of texts have been written and preserved. The language was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire (1299 — 1922). It uses the Arabic script with some accent marks peculiar to this language. The existing Arabic fonts are capable of representing this language. This language was used until 1928 by the Republic of Turkey but in 1928 the Arabic script was abandoned in favor of the Latin script and the vocabulary was drastically reformed by dropping the use of the Arabic and Farsi words. Today, most citizens of Turkey cannot read or understand this language. However, a large community of historians and amateur enthusiasts continue to study and learn this language. If approved, the Ottoman language Wikisource will become a repository of poems, stories, novels, inscriptions, treaties, etc. preserved in their original form. These works are largely free of copyrights since any works prior to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey are free of copyright restrictions. A large community of Ottoman language users in and outside of Turkey are expected to take interest in and contribute to this project. There is already a thriving multilanguage Ottoman Wikisource in existence with over 40 articles contributed in just the last 50 days. ---Vikiyazar 16:54, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments in favour[edit]

- Ottoman Turkish as a literary and administrative language have played an immense role within Ottoman empire. Over more than six hundred years a great number of historical documents, literature and administrative communications have been collected.

- Materials in Ottoman language are sought after by academia, historians, students and researchers of many fields. Small number of these materials are kept in major universities around the world and others scattered in private hands and Turkish archives and libraries. Ottoman Turkish Wikisource can act as an essential repository of source to gather and organise these materials.

- Ottoman language has influenced number of other Turkic languages such as Azerbaijani, Crimean Tatar and Uzbek languages and Wikisource is expected to attract the interest of such communities to participate and contribute to the wealth of materials in this rich language.

--Mehrdad 18:49, 28 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I took the discussion of whether Ottoman Turkish can be hosted on Turkish Wikisource to the users of Turkish Wikisource. Some of them directly opposed hosting the Ottoman texts there. While many other discussion participants did not directly oppose hosting the Ottoman texts there, every single one of them strongly felt that they prefer to see a separate Ottoman Wikisource. The folks there feel that Ottoman texts written in the Arabic script often with a heavy dose of Arabic and Farsi loanwords are completely unintelligible to them. They are uncomfortable with that. They feel hosting them there would be very distracting. The Ottoman language is a highly specialized "special interest" area. I think most folks feel it needs to be organized as a separate entity with different goals, one that requires special skills from its users. While Turkish Wikisource has a general appeal to all modern Turkish speakers, Ottoman Wikisource would appeal to academicians, researchers, professional and amateur historians. Furthermore, I envision Ottoman Wikipedia to grow fairly big, potentially matching or exceeding in size the Turkish Wikisource. The reason I am saying this is because according to the copyright laws there are no copyrights in Turkey prior to 1923. That date almost exactly coincides with the end of the use of the Ottoman language. As a result, most of the Ottoman texts have no copyrights restrictions while most of the modern Turkish texts do have copyright restrictions. The Ottoman language texts here could potentially drown out the modern Turkish texts and could potentially make Turkish Wikisource look uninviting to those majority of Turkish speakers who cannot understand the Ottoman language. ---Vikiyazar 14:05, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'Support' Definitely support. Modern Turkish speakers have big difficulties in understanding Ottoman even when Ottoman texts are transliterated into modern Turkish alfabet, moreover vast majority of Turks today cannot read Arabic script. So, it will be much more comfortable to host Ottoman texts in a separate site. Don Alessandro 16:14, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against[edit]

Other discussion[edit]

  • Why you don't want to use Turkish Wikisource for Ottoman texts? If eligible, Wikisource in Ottoman Turkish would get Modern Turkish localization anyway, as Ottoman Turkish is a dead language and it is not possible to create new words, like "file" is, for example. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be "Ottoman Turkish", but "Neo-Ottoman Turkish".) --Millosh 22:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Good question. Firstly, Turkish Wikisource requires the Latin alphabet; it doesn't allow the Ottoman alphabet. Secondly, the readers and contributors of Turkish Wikisource cannot read or contribute in the Ottoman language. Thirdly, there is no one-to-one correspondance between the spelling of words in the Latin-script-based modern Turkish alphabet and the Arabic-script-based Ottoman alphabet. Many words used in the Ottoman Language have been lost in the Modern Turkish. Some words that have found their way into Modern Turkish have changed their spelling. Some Ottoman words had spellings that didn't correspond to the actual pronounciation such as the word "Ygrmi" (20=Twenty). Those words are now spelled in a way that match their pronounciation now "Yirmi". Also, the Ottoman vocabulary and spelling have changed over the course of its 500 year-history. When the Turkish language was reformed in the 20s, the vocabulary changed completely again. Now, an educated Turkish speaker is unable to read the Ottoman script, unable to appreciate its evolution over 500 years, unable to understand a huge part of its vocabulary. Some texts are so incomprehensible to the contemporary Turkish reader that they may as well be in a foreign language. Turkish Wikisource often includes two versions of the same text, one is the transliteration of the original text, the second is the translation into Modern Turkish. Our goal is to preserve the exact original form of the text in its original script. This gives the reader a better sense of the often Arabic or Farsi origins of the words. Later corruptions of the words can be re-constructed. We truly believe that there is immense value in this. There are already many academic and amateur sites that collect Ottoman texts ([1], [2] ) on the web but we believe that Wikisource with its collaborative approach can give this a new impetus. ---Vikiyazar 18:44, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is it actually enshrined in policy at Turkish Wikisource that only the Latin alphabet may be used and the Ottoman alphabet is prohibited? That seems unlikely, and easy to get overturned if true. Your second and third points are irrelevant. As long as there are some editors at Turkish Wikisource who can read Ottoman Turkish and who maintain the Ottoman pages, it doesn't matter that other editors cannot. The average educated English speaker can't read Old English either, yet Old English texts are hosted at English Wikisource rather than a separate Wikisource for Old English. Because the request is for a Wikisource, not a Wikipedia, the lack of a conversion possibility plays no role: texts are simply given in the orthography in which they were originally published. Antony D. Green 19:28, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fair question. I just checked. I couldn't find a specific policy document in Turkish Wikisource that prohibits Ottoman texts but I think this is only because no one has yet tested the project's policies regarding this issue. Foreign language texts are rejected routinely by Turkish Wikipedia and Wikisource. I believe Ottoman Language texts will be regarded under the same umbrella. To an average educated Turkish person, an Ottoman Language text is the same as foreign language text. In fact, an average Turk cannot even tell Ottoman Turkish text apart from Arabic text. ---Vikiyazar 20:40, 8 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]