Mailing List Archive

On 12/3/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Bence Damokos schreef:
> > ps. OFF. why are there so many wikis in Italy?
> When Italy was unified, the Florentine language was massaged and it
> became the Italian language. In many parts of what became Italy other
> languages were spoken, several of these languages are closer to Catalan
> than they are to Italian.
>
> NB the "correct" way to ask your question would have been "Why are there
> so many wikis for language spoken in Italy?" (All the Wikimedia
> Foundation wikis are in Florida :) )
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM
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Hi!
Thanks for the answer

Bence
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> Bence Damokos schreef:
>> ps. OFF. why are there so many wikis in Italy?
> ...
> NB the "correct" way to ask your question would have been "Why are there
> so many wikis for language spoken in Italy?" (All the Wikimedia
> Foundation wikis are in Florida :) )

In spite of the common Latin root, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Ligurian, Venetian,
etc... diverged enough from each other to make the speakers of those
languages poorly understandable to each other, when not understandable at
all.
Then the Florentian language was chosen as model to create a national
language (well before the creation of Italy as a unified nation). Today most
of the Italian citizens speak both Italian - recognized as common and
official language for the whole state - and their old local language,
according to the context and the situation; local languages like Sardinian
and Furlan got local official acknowledgment in order to preserve them as
cultural heritage.

The wikis in local languages of Italy are driven by the same purpose:
preservation of the wealth of that cultural past.
Some of their most active users, besides, never happened to learn Italian,
as because of the emigration Italy underwent they were born in the US or in
South America or in Australia or in Germany and they currently speak
Neapolitan/Sicilian/Venetian/etc and English or Spanish or German.

As far as I've seen up to now (probably with the exception of the Lombard
wiki) those communities are big, committed and open enough to keep their
wikipedias alive and growing, and not battlefields for nationalistic issues.

Because that's the point IMHO: Wikimedia resources should not be hostage of
nationalistic issues or (worse) become unaware megaphones of political
movements. That's not what we're here for.

Bye,
G. (aka Paginazero)



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