Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Education project leads to creation of new Wikipedia

Title ideas

• Education project leads to creation of new Wikipedia
• Education partnership leads to creation of new Wikipedia

Summary

A brief, one-paragraph summary of the post's content, about 20-80 words. On the blog, this will be shown in the chronological list of posts or in the featured post carousel on top, next to a "Read more" link.

• An education project led by Wikimedia Israel and a local Circassian school turned into a project to create the Adyghe language Wikipedia, taking it out of the incubator with the help of Adyghe-speaking volunteers in Russia. The Adyghe language is spoken by about 500,000 people around the world by minorities in countries such as Russia, Turkey, Jordan and Israel. It is classified as vulnerable by UNESCO, owing to its native speakers' knowledge of more widely-spoken local languages.

Body

February 2016 saw the creation of the Adyghe Wikipedia. The language was reclassified as vulnerable by UNESCO in 2009. It uses the Cyrillic alphabet, but isn’t similar to Slavic languages. Adyghe (also known as West Circassian) is one of two Circassian languages, which are not similar to any major language. Adyghe speakers can be found in a multitude of countries, including Russia, Turkey, Jordan, Israel and Macedonia.

The creation of the Adyghe Wikipedia is closely intertwined with an education initiative in Kfar Kama, Israel. Kfar Kama is one of two Circassian villages in the country, but the only one where Adyghe is spoken. Its junior high school partnered with Wikimedia Israel to instruct students on writing articles in the language. The students were responsible for about 30% of the articles written on the Adyghe Wikipedia, at the time a project in the incubator.

Kfar Kama, numbering only 3,000 residents, is in a particularly difficult place when it comes to preserving the local language and tradition. Its community is already part of a very small language minority, and there is not a large enough market to import Adyghe books into Israel. In particular, no Adyghe books exist in the Israeli education system, so the schools are forced to teach with Hebrew or Arabic books, despite the language of instruction being Adyghe.

Preserving the language is important to the Israeli Adyghe community not only for internal reasons, but also to communicate with other Adyghe people, who are dispersed among many countries. In particular, words for new concepts that come into existence (e.g. names for technological innovations) are usually borrowed from the language of the host country, splitting the Adyghe language in a way that risks international communication.

For the aforementioned junior high school principal, there is no alternative solution: the correct way to internationalize new concepts in Adyghe and create new words is through a digital platform such as Wikipedia. The principal contacted Wikimedia Israel, and a fruitful partnership was born. The project was coordinated by the Wikipedians Deror_avi and Amire80, and involved additional volunteers. The fact that none of our volunteers spoke the Adyghe language did not hurt the project or their motivation to see it through.

The project, which lasted two years, involved 40 eighth- and ninth-grade students, as well as two teachers. These students and staff attended bi-monthly workshops set up by Wikimedia Israel. Major challenges included overcoming the lack of the Cyrillic alphabet on the school’s keyboards, a poor Internet connection at the school, etc. Even so, the project was carried out in full, with over 100 new articles written in Adyghe about topics such as the local culture, geography and sports.

The final clincher for the incubator graduation was the vast assistance provided by Russia-based Adyghe speakers. They completed the students’ work and made the Adyghe Wikipedia mature enough to go live.

Wikimedia Israel is proud to contribute to language diversity on Wikipedia, and significantly help a unique ethnic minority in Israel. We wish the new project the best of luck and hope that it grows and prospers, and facilitates better international communication among the Adyghe people wherever they may be—while in the meantime they work on this exciting collaborative endeavor.

—Yan Nasonov (Ynhockey) and Deror Lin (Deror_avi), Wikimedia Israel